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Freeware Files: Who Needs CPUs When You Have Free, Awesome Games?

David Murphy — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:30:35 -0500

Eh. Technology upgrades. You don't need the latest graphic, motherboard, and CPU combinations to have a good time on your PC. Sure, having realistic raindrops fall across your warrior's face is a nice touch. And you can never go wrong with all those fun volumetric shadows and such--you know, the ones that cripple your poor videocard whenever you try and crank your display's resolution to the max.

A good game is all about the fun it brings to the table absent of technical wizardry or flashy effects. I like to call this the Nethack effect. For those recently born, Nethack is that old-school ASCII game that's still beloved by many even though its graphics could easily be replicated by a graphing calculator. The game doesn't need top-shelf scenery or character models to be awesome. It just is--by virtue of its immersion, frustrations, and countless ways to die.

As you might guess, This week's freeware roundup is another gaming-focused edition, but I'm covering a wide range of graphical treatments with the racing, hack-and-slash, and building-creation games I feature (amongst other categories). You'll see games that look pretty good given their open-source and freeware roots; You'll also see games that are a bit less, er, polished... but still worth your time for their creative features and fun action. You might even see a game that involves ponies.

Shotgun Debugger

Contrary to the title, you aren't some psychopathic IT person on a quest to rid your software firm of crappy programmers. Although, if you guessed that as the premise of the game, you wouldn't be too far off. This top-down 2D shooter, reminiscent of the early Grand Theft Auto series, pits you against armies of robotic soldiers that are attempting to stop you from escaping an underground complex. No, you do not take the diplomatic approach.

Download it here!

Knights

Vaguely reminiscent of Nethack, Knights is best played with a friend. That's because you'll both be exploring the same dungeon together at the same time, each tasked with competing specific quests. If you're a jerk, this can lead to untold hours of hilarity as you ruin your friend's adventuring day with a well-placed weapon to the head--although, in some instances, you might actually have to whack your buddy to acquire the items you need for a specific quest. Knights is playable online, over your LAN, or even split-screen. No peeking!

Download it here!

Pink Pony

I told you there would be ponies. Rather than think of some creative way to introduce this title's gameplay, I'm going to spell it out for you real simple-like. This game is an awesome/unholy combination of Tron and My Little Pony. Instead of a lightbike, you're riding Sparkles Majestic (or whatever you choose to internally call your little creature). As you run around the map, you trap and eliminate other players by forcing them to run into the trail of flowers your pony leaves behind. I've always wanted to say this: LAST PONY STANDING WINS.

Download it here!

Yo Frankie!

This open-source platformer is as noteworthy for its ideals as it is for its imagery. The designers have toiled endlessly to not only create a beautiful little title, but they've gone to great lengths to walk fellow programmers through the detailed steps behind the game's technical creation--yes, the organization behind Yo Frankie! also works on the open-source 3D animation program Blender. As for the game, you're a squirrel tasked with working your way around a lush 3D landscape (I say that given the typical graphical quality found your run-of-the-mill freeware or open-source title). Before you ask, yes, you can use acorns as weapons.

Download it here!

Skyscraper

This one isn't so much a game, per se, as it is an cool little tool for building your own skyscraper designs. Before you start dreaming of a SimCity-like generation tool, I'll warn you that this piece of software can veer a wee to the complex side. Which is to say, in plain English, that it ain't like dusting crops, kid. That said, if you want a realistic way to create the next MPC Tower--complete with working elevators and all--it doesn't get much more thorough for a free program than Skyscraper.

Download it here!

David Murphy (@ Acererak) is a technology journalist and former Maximum PC editor. He writes weekly columns about the wide world of open-source as well as weekly roundups of awesome, freebie software. Befriend him on Twitter, especially if you have an awesome app or game you're dying to recommend!

Left 4 Dead

Norman Chan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:00:00 -0600

Hide the children and shield your brains — zombies have risen to claim the earth.

We’ve relished the movies about it. We’ve daydreamed about it happening in our own lives. We’ve even drawn up detailed plans for how to survive the admittedly unlikely event of a zombie apocalypse (answer: barricade ourselves in the local Costco). There’s just something so tantalizingly thrilling about the prospect of fighting for survival in an undead-infested world.

Left 4 Dead, Valve Software’s new multiplayer first-person shooter, delivers that awesomely terrifying experience to us. Abandoned metropolises, a ragtag band of hapless strangers, and an endless horde of infected humans—all the staples of a nail-biting George A. Romero zombie epic—are present and accounted for in this ambitious cooperative adventure. But how does this game hold up to our obsessive zombie fantasies? We busted a few thousand undead skulls to find out.

Survivor’s Journal: How We Lived through the Undead Uprising

In the global zombie apocalypse of Left 4 Dead, our goal was simple: just survive. But reaching a safe haven in hopes of getting rescued was easier said than done. We had to navigate through the crumbled ruins of modern civilization and defend ourselves against a mob of angry zombies that would stop at nothing to see us dead. Luckily, we were never alone in this frightening fight for survival. We were not only always accompanied by three teammates (controlled by either real players or AI) but also equipped with a zombie’s greatest weakness: bullets. Lots of bullets.

Our nerve-racking journey was broken into four story campaigns, each consisting of five sequential levels. These “movies” all followed the same structure: The four of us traversed zombie-infested territory to reach safe houses at the end of each chapter, building up to a lengthy final stand while awaiting rescue at each campaign’s finale.

We started off in the No Mercy act, which challenged us to find a way to the rooftop of a hospital from a distant apartment building. As we made our way through dimly lit hallways and claustrophobic stairwells to the street, we caught our first glimpse of the infected masses—soulless husks of our once neighbors and friends. It was a mistake to agitate them; once alerted to our presence, a wave of the ghoulish goons swarmed our position. These common zombies were easy to put down with our assault rifles and shotguns, but their overwhelming numbers and surprising speed made them formidable foes. Zombies would climb fences, claw through closed doors, and crawl over any obstacle for a taste of our flesh. Shooting off their limbs wasn’t even enough to keep them down—the undead were impressively determined (a well-aimed headshot, though, stopped them in their tracks).

Frenzied shootouts were dynamically timed by the game’s AI Director to give us moments to catch our breath after a slaughter (see the sidebar on the next page). These welcome lulls in the mayhem actually added tension because we weren’t sure how much time we had before the next onslaught.

Even more frightening was the presence of five Boss Infected. More freakish than the common zombie ilk, each boss had a special ability to cause disarray among our group. The grotesquely obese Boomer vomited bile on us to attract hordes to our position, the stealthy Hunter pounced from the darkness to keep us pinned on the ground, the lanky Smoker snagged and strangled stragglers with his tongue, and the hulking Tank swatted us around like we were flies. The only way to stay alive was to work together, communicating frequently and calling out threats to avoid being caught off guard. The necessity for teamwork here is unmatched by any other multiplayer game, and the payoff for surviving the full campaign is incredibly rewarding.

The other three campaigns were just as creepy, taking us through small towns, obligatory graveyards, construction sites, train stations, and even chilling forest regions. Our most memorable moment, however, was when we trekked through a large airport terminal and watched a full-size 747 airplane crash and burn on the runway. Wading through the wreckage of these realistically crafted environments was made all the more compelling by improvements to the game’s Source engine, which uses cinematic filters and so-called filmic effects like enhanced contrast to augment the terror.

We made it through the four acts in about six hours on normal difficulty (advanced and expert modes are also available, and make a dramatic difference) and then jumped into the Versus gameplay mode. Here, four players play as the Boss Infected, terrorizing four Survivor players in the No Mercy and Blood Harvest campaigns. The zombie perspective is a refreshingly unique experience, where you’re actually rewarded for griefing the opposing team. Cooperation is again essential for success, and we quickly learned how to string and combine our Boss Infected abilities to maximize the harassment. It’s an exceptionally satisfying gameplay mode that alone promises hours of joy.

Left 4 Dead didn’t just meet our high expectations for the zombie apocalypse, it exceeded them. And when the real undead uprising arrives, we’ll be ready for it.

Behind the Scenes: Meet the AI Director

Left 4 Dead’s zombie horde is controlled by a technology called AI Director, a complex intelligence algorithm that tracks and monitors your performance throughout the game to dynamically ramp up or tone down the difficulty. Attributes like the health of the team, available ammunition, and accuracy are taken into consideration when the director decides how many zombies to throw at you in each set piece.

This ensures that the game not only feels balanced when you’re playing with strangers of varying shooter aptitude but also that no two sessions will play out the same way. Variables that are changed include the number and location of the zombies you encounter, the timing of Boss Infected attacks, and the placement of weapon, health, and ammo drops. So even though you might learn the layout of a level after running through it a few times, you can still expect to be challenged and surprised by the AI Director’s unpredictability. Left 4 Dead will ship with a software development kit that’ll let modders build their own levels and populate them with the AI Director, as well. We can’t wait to see what the community will do with this powerful tool.

Left 4 Dead's Achievements

Dead Stop    Punch a Hunter as he is pouncing.    10
Drag and Drop    Rescue a Survivor from a Smoker's tongue before he takes damage.    20
Cr0wnd    Kill a Witch with a single headshot.    30
Untouchables    No Survivors take damage after contacting the rescue vehicle.        30
Blind Luck    You or another Survivor take no damage after being vomited on by a Boomer.    20
My Bodyguard    Protect any Survivor from an attacking Infected 50 times.        15
Akimbo Assassin    Survive a campaign firing no guns other than pistols.        30
Field Medic    Heal 25 Survivors with a first aid kit.        20
Pharm-assist    Give pain pills to 10 Survivors.        20
Helping Hand    Revive 50 incapacitated Survivors.        20
Hero Closet    Rescue a Survivor trapped in a closet.        10
Hunter Punter    Shove a Hunter off of a pinned and helpless Survivor.    10
Tongue Twister    Kill a Smoker who has grabbed you with his tongue.    20
No Smoking Section    Kill 10 Smokers as they are pulling helpless Survivors.    15
101 Cremations    Set 101 Infected on fire.        20
Do Not Disturb    Sneak past all Witches in a campaign without disturbing one.    20
Man vs Tank    Single-handedly kill a Tank.    30
Tankbusters    Kill a Tank without it dealing any damage to a Survivor.    20
Safety First    Play through a campaign with no Survivors taking friendly fire damage.        30
No-One Left Behind    Beat a campaign with all 4 Survivors.        20
Unbreakable    Beat a campaign without ever using a first aid kit on yourself.        30
Witch Hunter    Kill a Witch without any Survivor taking damage from her.    20
Red Mist    Kill 1000 Infected with a mounted machine gun.        20
Pyrotechnician    Blow up 20 Infected in a single explosion.        20
Zombie Genocidest    Kill 53,595 Infected.        20
Dead Giveaway    Heal a fellow Survivor when your own health is below 10.        10
Ground Cover    Save another Survivor from a Special Infected while on the ground.        30
Clean Kill    Shove a Boomer and then kill him without him splashing on anyone.    10
Stand Tall    Survive a campaign without being incapacitated.        20
Back 2 Help    Leave a safe room to save an incapped teammate and bring them back safely.        20
Zombicidal Maniac    Survive any campaign on Impossible.        30
What Are You Trying To Prove?    Survive all campaigns on Impossible.        35
Lamb 2 Slaughter    Incapacitate a Survivor after he has entered and exited a safe room.        20
Nothing Special    Survive a campaign with no Survivors taking damage from Specials.        30
Burn the Witch    Light a Witch with a Molotov.    10
Towering Inferno    Light a Tank with a Molotov.    10
Spinal Tap    Kill an Infected with a single blow from behind.        10
Stomach Upset    All Survivors complete a campaign without being vomited on.    20
Brain Salad    Make 100 headshot kills.        15
Jump Shot    Headshot a Hunter while he's leaping.    20
Mercy Killer    Survive the No Mercy campaign.        15
Toll Collector    Survive the Death Toll campaign.        15
Dead Baron    Survive the Dead Air campaign.        15
Grim Reaper    Survive the Blood Harvest campaign.        15
Barf Bagged    Cover four Survivors with Boomer bile at once.    20
Big Drag    Drag a Survivor x distance with your tongue.    20
Chain Smoker    Constrict two Survivors on one life as a Smoker.    20
Double Jump    Pounce two different Survivors on one life as a Hunter.    20
All 4 Dead    Kill all four Survivors on one life as a Tank.    30
Dead Wreckening    Dole out 5000 total Survivor damage as a Special Infected.        20

Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Norman Chan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:06:48 -0500

Let’s skip the bad Vegas puns and get down to the sober truth: Rainbow Six Vegas 2 looks and plays like a rehash of last year’s original. Put both action shooters side by side and you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish between them. This doesn’t mean Vegas 2 is terrible—the first game was a righteous shoot-’em-up that melded quick pacing with exciting firefights. The follow-up fleshes out the story and completes the plot lines left unfinished in the last go-round, but it falters from the same tiresome action sequences that are more frustrating than challenging.

The duck-and-cover tactic works a little too well against armed mercenaries.

As the new protagonist, Bishop, leader of Bravo Team, you embark on a drawn-out terrorist hunt that happens concurrently with the events of the first game. The twist-heavy plot sends you on seven missions, from seizing a biological weapon planted at a monorail station to rescuing hostages trapped in a towering casino. The diverse locales—most are actually off the Vegas Strip—are cleverly designed to accommodate the linear missions, and each includes a mix of large rooms and narrow hallways to allow for both open and close-quarters combat. We also have to give props to the developers for setting a level in the Las Vegas Convention Center, which houses the annual CES technology conference.

Less stellar, though, are the actual firefights, which are essentially glorified shooting galleries. Cowering behind cover keeps you impervious to all harm (even though penetrable surfaces are supposedly a new feature), but exposing your head for more than a few seconds will transform your cabeza into a bullet magnet. It’s also much too easy to send your overly competent teammates storming through maps on a killing spree while you sit back and miss out on all the action. The unbalanced combat is made worse by the inconsistent checkpoint save system, which forced us to rage-quit out of the game on far too many occasions.

Fortunately, multiplayer co-op and deathmatch games are genuinely intense and actually require skill and tactical planning. We felt tremendously satisfied and rewarded after perfectly executing a nail-biting online operation—it’s too bad this feeling never arises in the solo campaign

Frontlines: Fuel of War

Norman Chan — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:04:41 -0500

With the price of oil surpassing $100 a barrel, the apocalypse imagined in Frontlines: Fuel of War may not be so far away. In this vision of the future, the world’s remaining superpowers—split between two factions—clash in a winner-take-all war for Earth’s last oil reserves. Lucky for us, this makes a great backdrop for some intense multiplayer skirmishes.

On each map, teams of up to 32 players scuffle for control of capture points, which connect to create a “frontline” that divides the map between friendly and enemy territory. In order to win a match, a team must take control of the entire map by either moving the shifting frontline to the end of the level or killing enough enemy troops. While the premise is similar to Battlefield’s, the frontline concept prevents lone wolves from infiltrating enemy territory and capturing points away from the action.

In addition to selecting a weapon, players choose one of four roles, each of which comes with unique abilities that must be unlocked. An air-support player can call in air strikes, while a ground-support player can deploy mountable turrets. Our favorite role is drone technician, which gave us control of remote-controlled mini cars and helicopters to zoom around the map. These killer drones (which can self-destruct) were perfect for fishing out snipers hiding in the ruins of a fallen skyscraper and blowing up APCs filled with enemy troops.

Of the nine maps included, we favor the ones set in abandoned urban metropolises because they better accommodate infantry combat. Frontlines lets you pilot helicopters and jets too, but only one map was spacious enough for fun aerial dogfighting.
While the combat here feels solid, widespread bugs prevented us from joining servers, and glitches often crashed the game. Lack of joystick or voice-com support is unacceptable, and squad management feels like an afterthought. But if you can bear these frustrating shortcomings, Frontlines will adequately scratch your multiplayer itch until the next Battlefield game is released.

Zalman FPSGun FG1000

Will Smith — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:39:04 -0600

We've tested some crazy mice over the years, from ergonomic wonders designed to prevent RSI to dedicated gaming mice shaped like an actual handgun, but the new Zalman FPSGun is one of the oddest-looking designs we've ever tested. We approve of its neutral-grip, sensor-forward design, but the actual implementation has resulted in a mouse that's just too small for the vast majority of gamers to use.

We very much like the sensor-forward design for certain types of shooters. By moving the 2000dpi adjustable-resolution optical sensor away from the area directly beneath your hand, Zalman gives you much more precise horizontal control than a typical mouse offers, although it comes at the expense of vertical control. For gamers who play lots of headshot-oriented tactical shooters, such as Counter-Strike or Call of Duty 4, this could be a very good thing. For games that require as much vertical movement as horizontal, you'll need to load up the included software and tweak the vertical sensitivity pretty heavily.

Zalman got quite a bit right with the design, placing two triggers on the forward-facing edge of the grip, but moving the mouse wheel beneath your thumb. There's also a pair of thumb buttons and a profile-switching button on the front portion of the mouse. While the mouse ships with three default sensitivity profiles, you can manually adjust the sensitivity- and refresh-rate settings for each profile using the included software, and you can instantly tell which profile is active by looking at the multicolored, illuminated scroll wheel.

Unfortunately, the mouse is much too small to comfortably hold if you have normal-size hands. Because you hold the FPSGun with your hand in a vertical position, the blade of your hand rests on the mousing surface. In order to keep your fingers on the trigger button, you need to splay your pinky out to the side of the mouse, which can become quite uncomfortable—not to mention the dirtying effect your grubby mitts will have on your mousepad. Factor in that its unique design makes it difficult to use for more typical desktop work, and it's difficult to endorse this rodent.

Nvidia Launching New Hardware to Coincide with Crysis Release

Michael Brown — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:56:45 -0500

EA recently invited the gaming press to a hands-on preview of the most anticipated—and most hyped—game of the year: Crysis. The company pulled out all the stops, hosting the event onboard the USS Hornet, the retired aircraft carrier depicted in one of the game’s early levels.

Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli was there to thank each of the companies that have had a hand in funding and/or helping to develop Crysis. EA’s Global Manager, EA Partners David DeMartini; Intel’s Senior Director Software & Solutions Bill Kirby; and Microsoft’s Global Product Manager for Games for Windows Heidi Rademacher stood up in succession to make brief speeches praising Crytek and sharing their excitement about how close the game was to shipping.

NVIDIA'S NEXT SHOT IN THE GPU WAR

During his speech, Nvidia’s senior vice president Dan Vivoli let slip that Nvidia intended to “launch new hardware to coincide with Crysis’ launch.” Vivoli didn’t elaborate, but the rumor mill has been predicting that Nvidia would ship a new top-end GPU right before the holiday shopping season, just as they did with the GeForce 8800 last year.

Nvidia has been working closely with Crytek throughout the life of this project, according to Vivoli, who told the press that Crysis is “the most advanced game ever developed.” Comparing Crysis to Dinosaur Island, the tech demo that Crytek eventually turned into Far Cry, Vivoli claimed that the new game performs “3,000 operations per pixel, compared to 30 operations per pixel in Dinosaur Island.” He said Crytek had created “85,000 shaders for the game, about the same shader complexity as today’s animated films.”

Each weapon can be customized with scopes and other accessories.

But after having the opportunity to play one level of the single-player game for an hour, “power struggle” (a variation on capture-the-flag) for about 90 minutes, and “instant action” (a variation on deathmatch) for another hour, I came away from the event wondering if the Crytek team can deliver on its lofty promises when it finally ships the game on November 16. (Note: we were allowed to play the DirectX 9 version of the level titled “Assault” on Windows XP machines; both multiplayer sessions were played on Vista machines using DirectX 10.)

ALL'S FAIR IN WAR AND PREVIEWS

Now it wouldn’t be fair of me to judge the game before it’s shipped, but I can tell you what I saw and heard during the event. In an all-too-brief one-on-one discussion with Cevat before the hands-on sessions, Crytek’s CEO told me he thought they’d “shown too much of the game too early,” and that they had “built up people’s expectations.” But Yerli quickly returned to form and began boasting of the game’s visual flair. The game will exhibit a high degree of visual fidelity, he said, with extensive use of high dynamic-range lighting and HDR applied to depth of field. There will be 3D color correction and parallel occlusion mapping.

When I asked Yerli what differences gamers with DX10 hardware would see compared to and those with DX9 hardware, he reiterated that the two experiences wouldn’t be much different, but that there would be a “clear visual difference” in the multiplayer game. “The DX10 multiplayer experience will be completely different from the DX9 multiplayer experience,” Yerli said. “DirectX 10 servers will have day/night cycles, for instance” he continued, “so players will have to change their tactics as the sun sets because their characters will cast longer shadows.”

Yerli told me that players with DirectX 10 videocards will be able to join either DX9 or DX10 servers, but those with DX9 hardware will only be able to play on DX9 servers. “DX9 servers will not have day/night cycles,” he said, “but those DX10 players who do play on DX9 servers will still have better visual quality than players with DX9 cards.”

In Crysis' "power struggle" multiplayer game, teams represent U.S. and North Korean forces.

The single-player level we were allowed to play pitted the player against the North Koreans in an effort to secure the site where an alien craft has crashed. The aliens are not encountered in this level, and I didn’t see anything of the crash site. The first thing I attempted to do, of course, was shoot down a few palm trees because there’s been so much discussion of the game’s fully destructible environment. I managed to blow up a few trees, but many more refused to succumb to my efforts.

[More analysis--and more screenshots--after the jump.]

CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE?

I also didn’t encounter game characters that exhibited the amazing level of detail of those images released very early in the game’s development. As Crytek has begun the final push to get the game out the door, I think they’ve begun to realize just how much visual fidelity they’ll need to sacrifice in order to ship a game that’s playable on mainstream hardware.

I didn’t get to play enough of the single-player campaign to render judgment as to whether I think the game will be fun (again, that wouldn’t be fair based on an unfinished game). There also wasn’t much to the level we were given to play. Our objective was to secure an alien crash site before the AI-controlled North Koreans got to it. But for as much as has been made about Crysis in the umpteen million previews we’ve seen, I didn’t see much during my time with the game that will significantly advance the first-person genre. The graphics were pretty, but they weren’t nearly as sumptuous as all the early screenshots have been.

Can the hype match the reality? It's not likely with today's hardware.

The same could be said for the multiplayer matches. EA and Crytek divided the press into two camps: The U.S. and the North Koreans. Our objective was to capture and hold a bunker and then an alien crash site, the latter of which would generate energy for our team. According to Crytek’s wiki, bringing these artifacts back to your HQ will enable you to add alien technology to human weapons, but we weren’t able to do that in our preview. The ultimate objective was to capture the other camp’s HQ. Without headsets for communication, it was impossible for either team to establish much of a coordinated effort, so the game quickly devolved into something of a free-for-all. I don’t think this is a flaw in the game, only the conditions in which we were playing.

I was impressed with the variety of weapons and the accessories with which they can be equipped, both of which you purchase with “prestige points” you acquire during gameplay. You buy and can outfit your weapons and change your nanosuit’s settings from within the safety of a bunker or your HQ, where you’re relatively safe from enemy fire. But I got shot every time I tried this out on the battlefield, leading me to doubt the suit’s practicality. When I watched the Crytek team members play, however, I could see that it just takes a little practice: These guys could change their suit’s capabilities so fast it was difficult to see what they were doing.

The soft shadows, on the other hand, do look impressive.

EA allowed the press to shoot video of the multiplayer games, but they wouldn’t allow us to take our own screenshots. Instead, they sent the screenshots you’ve seen in this story. These are from the same multiplayer levels that we played, but they were not taken from the actual game sessions we played.

HERE'S HOPING

I hope my impressions of the game’s graphic quality are off base, and that the game as shipped looks as good as has been promised. Barring that, I hope that the game is at least as much of a blast to play as Far Cry was. I guess we’ll all find out next month.

Here are a few more screenshots, courtesy of EA:

Here's a good example of the the particle effects available in CryEngine 2.

Crytek tells us the day/night cycle in the multiplayer versions will impact strategy because your character will cast a longer shadow as the sun begins to set.

The multiplayer level on the aircraft carrier USS Hornet seems relatively small.

If Crysis is as intensely fun to play as Far Cry was, Crytek will likely be forgiven if the new game isn't as graphically intense as originally promised.

Battlefield 2142

Will Smith — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 13:41:23 -0600

Battlefield games have always offered fantastic action, as long as you can get past the bugs, crashes, and craptacular server browser that makes it hard to find a game with your pals. And none of that has changed with the latest version, Battlefield 2142. The game is still buggy, the client and servers still crash frequently, and the server browser still leaves much to be desired. On top of that, EA has added a whole host of goofy in-game ads, which further distract from the gaming experience. Still, despite the litany of flaws, the game is a ton of fun to play.

The biggest change, aside from the near-future setting, is the addition of a tiered advancement system. Instead of offering a lot of classes with just a few unlockable weapons per class, a la Battlefield 2, 2142 has just four classes. As you advance through the ranks, you can unlock specialized gadgets and weapons for each class, to sculpt your character to perfectly suit your play style. Your character can be as specialized or as general as you want. For example, if you use all your unlocks in the engineer class, you’ll not only acquire the default shoulder-fired anti-armor rocket, but also mines, mine defusal gear, vehicle detection gadgets, an anti-armor rifle, and a shoulder-fired SAM missile. You can even change your loadout (and armor) from one spawn to the next.

The developer also added an entirely new game mode that has you attacking and defending giant floating bases, dubbed Titans. The gameplay mechanic is simple: capture missile silos on the ground to destroy the enemy Titan’s shields and hull. Titan mode becomes complex when the shield drops and you have the option of sending soldiers to the enemy Titan to try to detonate the airship from inside. When teams don’t properly balance between protecting missile silos, defending their Titan, and attacking the enemy’s Titan, the tide of battle can shift.

In addition to fast-paced interior combat, the Titan also provides an in-game artillery platform, a mobile spawn, a helipad (complete with transport and gunship), and infantry rocket pods, which will launch you halfway across the map from the Titan’s spawn room. The new mode’s definitely a blast, but even on our beefy machines we experienced frame rate issues when transitioning from the outside areas to the Titan’s interior.

All the weapons and vehicles in the game are new—we love the new battle walkers, which stand on two legs and wreak havoc everywhere they go—and all fit in with near-future conflict. The weapons, including unlocks, feel pretty well-balanced, and the rock/paper/scissors game design remains in effect.

That said, for what is essentially a version 2.0 of a version 2.0 product, we’re disappointed by 2142’s unstable nature. During prerelease tests using final code being run on EA’s servers, crashes (both server and client) were alarmingly frequent. Plus, we’re not fans of in-game advertising, especially in full-price games. Although BF2142’s ads weren’t enabled as we went to press, there are literally dozens of billboards per level, just waiting to hold ads for everything from razors to soda pop. If even a fraction of these ubiquitous billboards are filled, it will be annoying.

We’d really like to like Battlefield 2142, but given our aforementioned complaints, we just can’t recommend it.

Month Reviewed: December 2006
+ GIANT COMMIE ROBOTS: Once you get in the game, it’s really, really fun; Titan mode kicks ass.
- GIANT FASCIST ROBOTS: Unstable servers and clients;
in-game ads; doesn’t support widescreen.
Verdict: 7
URL: www.battlefield.ea.com

Prey

Josh Norem — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:26:54 -0500

Prey has been a long time coming—it was originally announced in 1997, then cancelled, and then recently revived. Though it brings some innovative gameplay to the table, by the time you get to the end (the game’s only four to six hours long), Prey’s run out of tricks and it plays just like any other shooter.

We should state right from the start that this game, like many other shooters, begins brilliantly. You are a Cherokee Indian enjoying an evening in your girlfriend’s bar, when all of a sudden an alien ship sucks you, your girlfriend, and your grandfather into its underbelly.

This totally kills your buzz, and for the next few hours it’s up to you to lay down some Native American smack on the alien interlopers. You don’t have any clue what’s going on for the first few hours of the game, which we found frustrating. We don’t need a story spoon-fed to us, but we would have appreciated just a little more exposition. As it is, it’s not until the game’s finale that everything comes together and makes sense.

In most respects, Prey is a fairly standard first-person shooter, but the game does innovate on several fronts. The first “new” thing is the game’s use of portals, which allow you to move from one area to another unconnected area by stepping through a wormhole. Though they’re used in a few simple puzzles, the portals are essentially nothing more than fancy doors. It’s a shame they don’t add any interesting or unique dimensions to the gameplay.

The second way in which the game innovates—and is truly a pioneer—is in upside-down gameplay. Through the use of vertical walkways and switches that invert the environment, you find yourself walking on the ceiling and shooting at bad guys above you, below you, or on the walls next to you. Some rooms have switches that you shoot to invert the entire room, causing you to flip upside down. It’s utterly sickening at first, and your character brilliantly says “I’m going to be sick!” if you flip-flop the gravity too much. Then he pukes his guts out, just like you feel doing. The first time the world turns, it’s an exceptional gaming moment, and after a few spins the upside-down action becomes more tolerable.

We also like the game’s “spirit walk” feature, where you leave your body and walk around like a ghost. You use the feature to solve rudimentary puzzles, and we enjoyed slaughtering enemies and swallowing their souls in spirit-walk mode.

Where the game comes up short is in the FPS bread-and-butter: combat, weapons, and puzzles. The weapons are interesting in that they are all organic (living, breathing creatures, in other words), but for the most part, they’re just the standard FPS fare—reskinned. The only truly original weapon is a creature whose legs double as grenades. You tear one off and chuck it at your foes, then watch them go boom. The sniper rifle/machine gun, rocket launcher, and shotgun all look very cool but deliver no new thrills. The combat is utterly forgettable, with dumb AI, and nary a memorable incident or foe to be found. The puzzles are frustrating, unintuitive, and repetitive.

“MultiPreyer” could be entertaining, as the game’s gravity-switching, wall-walking, and portal gimmicks play a prominent role. But the included maps are all too massive—more suited to a 32-player fragfest than an intimate eight-man encounter. And they’re much too large for the one-on-one stalking that the weapons would be perfect for.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

+ WALL-WALKING: Looks great, wall-walking is cool, and portals are fun.

- UPCHUCKING: Bland comabat and enemies, so-so MultiPreyer, and too short.

VERDICT: 7

ESRB Rating: M

URL: www.prey.com