DUST 514: Another One Bites the ...?

Dust 514 from Icelandic developer, CCP Games is touted to be the future of MMOG because it is indirectly linked to the other MMOG, EVE Online. Not that I care, but that link could spell doom for Dust sooner than it settles.

Dust was suppose to be a game changer of sorts but even after it was launched, it became apparent that it is nothing more than cheap freemium masquerading as a MMOG.

Having played the mercenary events, I couldn't help but think how that would affect the Dust world as it was touted so by the incredible team behind EVE Online. This game was released online to PSN members in May, 2013. Powered by Unreal Engine, the graphics are surprisingly average, and if if kicking the dust was ever a protocol, then this feather weigh development should be at best forgotten.

Too Complex, Too Simple

Here is my beef on it. The damn game is just too complex to get to grips with and just too simple a shooter to qualify it as a deal breaker. Sure it is free to play but more importantly, it is Pay to Win.

First there are four in-game currencies, three of which are earned in-game while the fourth, Aurum, must be purchased on the PSN network. Each are disguised to mask the fact that you need it for a an upgrade. The skill point is an in-game currency as you can't upgrade stuff without it.

As a first person shooter, I am not sure what to make of it. It is not a bad game but then again, not entirely a good one either. The whole concept is based upon the old Capture the Flag scenario where you and your buddies go about capturing nodes or points in the game and hold them for as long as possible. Each Node represents a Weapon of Mass Destruction, where you mother-ship (MCC) gets pounded should the WMD nodes ever fall in the wrong hands.

The game play is simple enough but the massive detail where you need to get into for upgrades is boringly complex. You have to spend hours earning points to upgrade your skill level. This means playing the game over and over in the Academy. You can ante up those skill points and head on to the Mercenary events. The gameplay is the same except that you group yourselves into squads of 32 people.

The Academy events are lonely affairs. Online players can jump in at any time and take a side. Sometimes you won't find a soul online willing to play with you. Yes, you earn lots of points here for playing here but this is not where the real action is. The Mercenary and Corp Events is where you should be.

The is where the EVE Online linked-in comes into play. Whenever the folks at EVE decide to invade or attack a planet, they hire the DUST players to decide its fate. So most of the time, if there is no invasion planned for the day, the Event roster is empty! You can spend an eternity waiting for something to happen and sometimes, it just doesn't happen.

For the instant play Academy events, there is always a battle going on where you can just jump in. Problem is, these are ongoing events so any number of people can hop into the action. Academy events are training grounds for you to earn points to redeem for weapon and vehicle upgrades and skills. You get to familiarize yourself with the tools of war and cash in those points to boost your skill level.

In a freemium model, everything has a life span. So if you bought a spiffy Drop ship with your hard earned points, and end up crashing it, then you lose that ship forever and have to buy a new one. You need more money in the kitty and that said it is never a good thing.

The same applies to your armour, weapons and whatever you care to spend your skill points on. Get killed and everything resets. You have to buy a new suit because each time you die, a new 'clone' of yourself is spawned. But this does not mean that the dead guy you killed can be robbed off all his gear. This isn't the case. The upgrades self destruct along with him.

Controls Suck Big Time

Online Latency is one big factor to bad controls but my broadband latency was 30ms but the controls still sucked. Sprinting seems like jogging while walking is more like strolling. The weapons you have with you are limited and ammo can only be found at Supply Dumps. Melee is hopeless, so don't bother rushing up to an enemy to give them the chop. There is no crawling down to level ground and this means you become easy target.

One of the things I hate about these games is that everyone does the Kangaroo hop just to avoid getting hit. So it is not really realistic to expect a kill except in the case where these folks are piloting a tank or a flying vehicle where your Swarm Missiles can lock on.

Sadly, I didn't find the game play any more enriching than say the other MMOPG, which means if you didn't have body armour and kick ass weapons upgrades, chances are you'd be cannon fodder for more elite players. In other words, you're the extra who gets greased in an action movie. Sucks doesn't it?

Drop Suit Loadouts

You can custom your load out in any of the drop suits so this really depends on you. Weapons by far are the most difficult to equip as you may not have the points required to redeem those upgrades and end up using puny sized weapons with very little stopping power.

Each drop suit can also be equipped with shields and armour. Not bad but not great. Those with higher skill points can of course have more sturdy armour which gets very frustrating. Try shooting some expert and you'd see that his armour will hold up to your puny bullets. You could try lobbing a grenade at them but they move so fast, it's like trying to spit gum at a passing Ferrari.


Why Dust is a Let Down

 At the present moment, about 30K players get online during none peak but I can't even find a game outside of Academy training that does the gameplay any justice.

Your puny weapons are no match for those who have upped their armour or shields so there is little reason to expect a quick kill if you are playing outside the Academy. Within the Academy, you are pitch with zero skilled morons like yourself, so those with a higher skill rating and better armour can easily drop in to slaughter the lot of you just to earn more skill points.

Dust to Dust

There are interesting moments, where you get to overwhelm your opponent by sheer tactical wit and luck but those times are very rare indeed. As with many MMOG, your best bet at winning is to team up with other godless killers to ensure your win. Playing with complete strangers is more comedic and is ill advised. But the whole problem with this game is that the playing levels from the very beginning is not engaging enough to excite players to make them  part with their money.

There isn't enough variety in the game to keep you going even though the play area is large enough for you to fly drop ships and take the scenic route should you ever with to drive on land. The Night and Day environments are nice distractions but in the end, my only fear is that I would get bored waiting for a battle to happen. And that seems to happen all the time when I am online. Enough Said.

Lastly, there is nothing pioneering about this sort of gameplay. I would have appreciated some kind of tactical training where Academy levels are places you train to shoot and bomb robotic enemies to get a feel on what it is like in controlling your online altered ego. But instead, you have an extremely boring take on an online game. There is no chance of you meeting a like minded player who might form a team since everyone is assigned a side to fight for. There is also no waiting room where you can associate with one another. This only happens in the Mercenary events so you only get to associate with more experienced players. In all, Dust just doesn't go far enough to appease the appetite for MMOPG just by going Freemium, it offers nothing new in terms of gameplay and challenges you by having you wrestle with the gamepad controls. Sad to say I won't be playing this any more.

Dust 514 @ Sony PSN

Rating 

Categories: DUST, Freemium, MMOG, MMOPG, PSN

Amalur Goes Under The Hammer

Rhode Island is preparing to sell the Kingdoms of Amalur IP, with a website offering its assets going live this month, 38 Studios' court-appointed receiver Richard Land tells WPRI. 38 Studios collapsed in 2012 after launching Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, taking $90 million of Rhode Island taxpayer money down with it.

The main focus of the Amalur auction will be Project Copernicus, the studio's incomplete MMO.

Categories: 38-studios, amalur, kingdoms-of-amalur, project-copernicus, rhode-island, taxpayers

How did Sleeping Dogs Bombed?

Critically acclaimed, Sleeping Dogs is going to sell about 3 million copies at retail in total for year end 2013. That's a real poor performer and you wonder why a game like that could bomb so badly when GTA games rake in billions in revenue.

Wait a minute, what the heck is Grand Theft Auto being brought into the picture? Didn't everyone say that Sleeping Dogs was highly original? Well now you know.

Sleeping Dogs is in essence a GTA rip off. From the open world mission based scenarios to the driving, and car stealing. It's the same. What people expected was that there would be more creativity in execution instead of being just another GTA clone. Truth is, Square Enix didn't try hard enough. I gotta give it to them for spending all that money on the Voice Talents for the cut scenes, which are fabulous. I love the Hong Kong atmosphere and the wonderful departure from the GTA nonsense which have seen done to death. But it just doesn't go far enough.

What Went Wrong??

From the onset, playing both sides wasn't going to cut it. You had Wei Shen, who is an undercover cop doing stuff for both the Law and Outlaws. Damn, that's confusing. This makes the whole gameplay outlandishly myopic as most of the Police Cases are often boring, you get to use a gun for most of these pursuits but using one in daytime just causes the game to kick up its heels and go belly up. I remember testing the AI to see if it could respond when a gun was fired on a desert island. It did send the Marine Police after me which I manage to dispatch with a few well aimed shots. Then you had the utter stupidity of seeing a street cop suddenly running up from the water's edge to arrest you. This is indeed damn silly.

The health bar makes no sense. If you ate or slept to rest, your health regenerative powers doesn't improve one bit. Did someone miss out on something here? In a fight, you have no idea on how your health is holding up as there are two health circles to take notice of. It was downright confusing as you didn't know you were too low in health to take on 9 dudes.

The gameplay failed me. I hated the stupidity of picking locks and installing bugs. If Square Enix made it less GTA and more like Far Cry, it would have been a better game. 

Where's my Car Dude?

As you progress, you'd realize that much of your missions are related to driving and racing. I love the way the environment of HK wraps around you as you drive about but that's about it. The racing? It's second rate. I think that it would have been a tad better if the cars could have been upgraded to give better performance but that took too much time to develop and was omitted. And you can't steal a car to race either. This could have been fun but the game designers just didn't allow you to do it. It could have been a great racing game if you had to steal your ride and you had a fixed time frame to find the correct spec car just for it.

I do like the touches where you could race around with the flares in place to show your route but it could have been made better if the circuit was fixed by route with the customary arrow showing the way. Instead of running into humans along pedestrian walks, the route could have been better designed. For example, the racing on bikes could have taken you round to mainly alleyways instead of the main streets and pedestrian walk ways, where street furniture is placed to confuse you.

Turkey Shooting

I love my guns but there is no way to store them. Fuck. I think as a crook or a cop, you should be given a chance to own a weapon even after it runs of bullets. Instead you get to pick up weapons at places where some fool drops them and shoot them until you run out of ammo.

The shooting experience is good. You get rewarded for head shots. But this is something that the games gives very little to you. Gun play is kept just for mission that are related to it. You can't use a gun in a knife fight, the cops will come after you. This is very stupid. There are missions where I came into with a gun but are not allowed to use it for fear of arrest as this causes you to lose your gun.

There are no gun shops. You cannot bring a machine gun back to your hotel, drop it onto the floor and hope it stays there. You cannot keep ammo. You cannot buy ammo. You have no access to the types of guns to your liking. This is all very stupid.

I remember that I had to kill a cop to get access to a shotgun. Once it ran out of ammo, you are left to use your fist. There is no way for you to  holster your machine gun or shotgun. WTF? The moment you run around with it, it is in plain sight and people will flee and cops will come get you.

Brawling is Boring

It is true. After a while, you get really bored with it. It is fine that you need to learn moves, some of which are too complicated for the gamepad to handle. I realize that the responsiveness of the controls is a problem. It just doesn't quite register the button hits fast enough.

To ante up on your brawling skills you get to collect 12 Zodiac idols. Fine. That I can take. But the game revolves around brawling for most of the police and triad work. Finding stuff and fighting enemies is based on how much skill you have accumulated on this. There are some pretty insipid moments. Like when you get confronted in a 12 to one fight and the moment you step away to catch a breather, all the dudes are gone! And there are also invisible enemies that suddenly become visible out of thin air. One moment you are shooting in front of you and someone pops up behind you from nowhere.

For those of you who love the hand to hand fighting, it is generally acceptable. It is probably a lot better than GTA in that respect but you have to learn and remember those moves in order to use it.

 

Poor UI and Navigation

There is a lack of finesse in the UI design and UX you get from it. The lock picking is probably the most stupid. The rest, well, it feels like a 1980s game. Trusted that the gamepad has limited potential in creating a gratifying response, too little attention has been paid to the overall quality of the game. The user experience (UX) is pretty fucked up. You don't get to ante up on health as you are totally oblivious to it and you can only see it once you buy and eat food.

I had hoped that Sleeping Dogs would not be a copy of GTA, but because it is, it becomes quite a messy affair when it comes to navigating vehicles. The camera spins all over the place when you are driving round corners instead of focusing on the road ahead. It gets very annoying as you try to out speed your opponents in racing and have the camera spin all over when you turn into a corner. This is very bad. The driving experience should be top notch since you spend most of the time going from one place to another. Why not put in the MTR if you don't want people to drive around? The taxi is pretty lame way to get around.

Conclusion

UFG have taken a safe route by copying GTA in the hope to piggy back on a successful franchise. To be fair, GTA 5 is going to produced at a cost over US$200 million. Wow. Now I have no idea what Blizzard/Activision pumped into the game before it got canned and later picked up by Square Enix. But I can assure you that it is no where near the US$200 million mark.

The concept was good to go but the game execution on how it dealt with UX was very poor. The progression is stuck on rails. If you don't complete one particular mission, you can't go on to the next. You can of course spend your time doing stuff like looking for idols and health shrines to boost your mojo but beyond that, the open world exploration gets a tad boring.

The weakest elements is the looting mechanism. It should be made in a way where each sector of HK was off limits to you until you complete all the levels required in one sector. The reason for this is simple. There is a finite amount of RAM memory on consoles and to flesh out a sector or region of gameplay, you have to restrict it to loading the next region. To get cash, you get to run over parking meters to get a few bucks. Right...like there was a lot of thought that went into that.

Gambling, a favorite with the Chinese is no where evident besides the racing and cock fighting. They should have added an element where you can go to wager bets in Macau, the Las Vegas of the East.

I love the concept. The voice acting is superb, the urban design and idea of a game based in Hong Kong but unfortunately, it just didn't go deep enough as it plays too much like GTA. If this was their intention, then they have done themselves a huge disservice.

Categories: open world, PC, PS3, rpg, sleeping dogs, true crime, Xbox 360

Splinter Cell Blacklist: A final farewell to Sam?

Sam Shepard makes his final appearance on the current generation of video game consoles, as well as the PC, as part of a slew of farewell gifts from the old stalwarts of the heady 80s who have silently evolved into the most prominent publishing and software development company the finicky yet deadly world of video games.

As the story goes, Shepard has a brand new voice which doesn't differ that much from the old one. Naturally, the gamers of today who are considerably more knowledgeable but surprisingly quite clueless were cajoled by wicked gaming sites into making a huge outcry about the whole voice acting thing. A new big ass Hollywood star was roped for the voice acting and has truly done a fine job of portraying the cold and murderous protagonist. The subject is now officially closed and the idiocy of it all has been quickly forgotten.

But as the games story goes, bad old Sam has been given a new lease of life. Some big wigs have decided to put Sam in charge of an unconstitutional group consisting of highly specialized agents in the hopes of finding and smoking out an organization hellbent on subverting the very foundation of the good old USA. That's bad news. Its also a bad situation that requires the wrong man for the right job. Enter Sam and his team of misfits, crazy enough to follow the ex-Third Echelon super agent over the cliff if they have to. Such a team has merits, but if this team should get their asses in a sling, the US Government will disavow any knowledge of them without batting an eyelid. What the government doesn't know is that if they give Shepard enough rope, he will hang them all.

So off we go one Shepard's most perilous mission that takes him and his new team to exotic locations as diverse as Uptown Afghanistan, the Iraqi Boardwalk and Downtown Chicago just to name a few. There's absolutely no time for sight seeing or looking up whorehouses here. Such a shame, I always wanted to take a picture with a $10 hooker in Iraq.

The action moves at the players pace. This time around Ubisoft have added a new element to the old hide and shank game play. Players may opt three different play styles that gives the game a lot more depth and replayability. Choosing to be a Ghost is basically the old 'No Alerts, No Kills' challenge from the Metal Gear Solid games. Then there is the Panther, striking from the darkness all the while remaining hidden from view. Finally, my favorite, Assault, which is the no holds barred, kill em all and blow em up style. The choice of play styles is highly dependent on the gear and weapons a player must choose before committing to a mission. Pick the right toys for your style and off you go.

The graphics are a step up especially on an old SD TV where the degree of darkness is as cruel as some of the locations in Dark Souls. Playing this game on it highest difficulty with a shitty SD TV is actually unlocking the hardest level of all. Unfortunately, Ubisoft will not be giving out prizes for unveiling that secret. Of course, with expert use of Sam's goggles things get a little brighter and a little more bearable. There's nothing worse than hearing some mangy mutt growling close by and then end up getting your nuts bitten off without warning. Unlike Game Fuhrer's old hound from hell, Brutus, these stinking dogs do not respond to treats, imitating the masters voice or the old stone throw fake out move.

While the single player missions offer a lot of fun and laughter in the many ways of murder, the story about Sam and the bad guys is a rather gritty one. Fraught with treachery, brutality and some pretty dramatic moments that alter the course of the game quite drastically. For instance, during rescue missions, if the guards are some how alerted, the scenario is altered to include a fire fight that has Sam worrying about the encroaching enemy and the fragile life of the rescued prisoner which is constantly at risk during a shoot out.

Apart from the solo missions, there are a variety of co-op tasks to perform where Sam and a fellow agent must work together as a team. One bad foul up can lead to a mission going bad in an instant. With the variety of play styles; players can experiment with different tactics and maneuvering to out smart the overwhelming enemy force. Not all the baddies are smart but eventually they will use pincer and flanking maneuvers or overlapping fields of fire to either surprise or pin down the two agents and finish them off with a few well cooked grenades. Death is cheap in co-op mode. Only smart play will see the missions through. Lowering the difficulty works too.

Finally, there's the Spies Vs Mercs online multiplayer co-op that guarantees hours of fun with 4 vs 4 match ups and a variety of game modes that not too dissimilar from ones found in a host of other multiplayer shooters. Death Match, Capture the Flag etc done in a Splinter Cell sort of way. To be honest, this is one mode that has not been fully explored due to our horrendous "fraudband" connection speeds. Unfortunately, the extremely expensive broadband pricing we are forced to pay acts as a deterrent to the lower income groups from the smaller towns and villages from having access to the internet. This is the most effective type of censorship, and boy, I wish Sam was here to do something about this.

Conclusion

For good old Sam, its business as usual. With a bold new story and a pretty innovative level up system, Splinter Cell Blacklist stands out as one of my favorite Sam Shepard adventures. Hopefully, this will not be his last. If you are a fan, then buy this game at all costs, for those new to the series, don't worry, with the huge amount of 'Tenchu' inspired stealth games that have been released this past year alone, it is unlikely that you won't be familiar with this one.

Splinter Cell Blacklist 

Rating

Categories: Blacklist, Co-op, PC, PS3, Spies Vs Mercs, Splinter Cell, Stealth, Ubisoft, Xbox 360