Gears of War Review

Summary:

A terrific technical achievement that's well worth your time, but somehow falls short of greatness.

+ Superb graphics
+ Some unique weapons
+ Nice cover system...
- ... that becomes very repetitive
- Odd stylistic choices
- Impotent guns
- Extremely unstable
- Choppy performance

Introduction:

I found Gears of War a bit difficult to review. On the one hand, it gets so much right and truly brings something unique to the table. The game looks phenomenal, the cover system adds a new wrinkle on typical shooter gameplay and at times, the game feels like a sci-fi movie. On the other hand, the game experience can feel very repetitive and shallow. This game has gotten high praises from tons of game sites and is without a doubt worth a try, but I wouldn't put it anywhere near the list of greatest games of all time.

Let's break it down:

Graphics: 9.5/10
The GoW graphics engine (Unreal 3 engine, I believe) is excellent. The player models are extremely detailed, the lighting is top notch, there are high resolution textures everywhere, explosions look amazing and various special effects (HDR, blur) are used effectively. The game also gets massive credit for pulling off a flawless 3rd-person camera.

Artistic Design: 7.0/10
This is an area where GoW is much more uneven. The game shows some great attention to detail: the "shaky cam" when running, the brutal chainsaw animation, the even more brutal curb stomp, and the hammer of dawn are all unique and undoubtedly impressive. But I just can't stand some of the stylistic choices: most of the game settings are the same drab, boring color; all the (biped) characters in the game wear giant, ridiculous looking boots that must weigh 50lbs a piece; despite wearing armor on almost all of their body, in typical Unreal fashion, they don't wear a helmet; the tremendous overuse of HDR/soft light that makes everything look soft & washed out; the list goes on. While you can see the tremendous potential of the graphics engine, many of the stylistic choices really disappoint.

Sound: 8.0/10
The music in the game is reasonably well done, and the voice acting is pretty good. However, I found the sound effects to be more of a mixed bag. Most of the bad guys, for example, make the same stupid screaming/grunting noise every time they appear. Many of the guns don't have any real "boom" to them - they just sound like like a piece of paper stuck in a fan. Combined with the impotency of many of the guns (see the gamplay section below), you sometimes feel like you're firing spitballs.

Plot: 5.0/10
A completely generic, throw away plot. The focus of the game is definitely the action, not the story telling.

Level Design: 8/10
The majority of the game follows a very simple level design strategy: you walk into a room or outdoor area with scattered stone slabs/furniture/walls/etc. You hide behind these obstacles and pop out briefly to kill the enemies until the room is cleared. Then you move on. This cover system is pretty amusing initially but gets repetitive very quickly. Fortunately, GoW does toss in a reasonable number of unique set pieces that change up the pace. It's a good thing too, as the game is completely linear, so you definitely need the variety to break up the monotony of the cover system. You'll fight several types of enemies that are impervious to bullets, all of which require alternative strategies to defeat.

Gameplay: 6/10
At its core, the game is entirely focused on hiding behind obstacles, popping out to shoot and hiding again, repeat over and over until a room is clear. If you try running around in the open, you are often killed very quickly, so you have lots of incentive to stay well hidden. The cover system works well and definitely adds a unique flavor to the combat. However, it becomes boring in a surprisingly short time. The level design is already linear, so being forced into this repetitive mechanic can get monotonous real quick. One other gripe is that the game uses the same button to (1) take cover (2) sprint (3) perform acrobatic maneuvers (4) jump over obstacles. The result is that you often end up performing the wrong action at the wrong time, such as jumping for cover on the wrong side of a wall when you were actually trying to sprint around to the other side.

You have the typical shooter weapons at your disposal - machine gun, hand gun, shotgun, rocket launcher, sniper rifle - but all of them tend to be very underwhelming. There's really no way around it: most of the guns in the game are WEAK. On any difficulty setting above the easiest, you'll empty almost a clip of ammo to take down a typical grunt. It gets better if you go for headshots or take out their knees, but the fact that even the basic grunts take multiple hits to the head is still ridiculous. Some of the smaller bosses in the game that you'll encounter frequently can take a stupid number of headshots from the sniper rifle to their helmet-less heads, which is a mechanic few previous games would dare to ignore.

To pussify the guns even more, it's interesting to consider the weapons in GoW that do allow one hit kills. One of these is the chainsaw - yup, a good old chainsaw can cut through armor far better than a futuristic gun. Another lethal weapon is the crossbow, which fires explosive arrows. That's right, the arrows on the crossbow are even better than the grenade launcher. The game also features an active reload system, where if you time reloads just right, it makes your gun more powerful. Huh? Is the guy putting in the bullets backwards the rest of the time? Finally, to add insult to injury, hitting a baddie with the butt end of a rifle is often a 1 hit kill. You heard me correctly: the butt end of the rifle is more deadly than the bullets it fires. It's nothing short of ridiculous.

Fortunately, the game does offer some motivation to play it all the way through. On the Xbox 360, the ability to easily play through the whole game in coop mode adds a LOT to the experience. Some of the levels involve set pieces that are quite different from the standard cover & shoot mechanic and can be truly heart pumping. But in the end, the game feels oddly stale and unsatisfying.

Length: 8/10
As far as shooters go, especially those with such high production values, the single player is reasonably long, lasting around 12 hours.

Stability/Bugs: 4/10
While the game works flawlessly on the Xbox 360, it can be a nightmare to get it running for many PC users. Issues include (1) crash to desktop when the game launches, (2) crash to desktop after a couple minutes of play, (3) crash to desktop at specific points in the game and (4) massive amounts of stuttering. I personally struggled with #2 and #4. The former prevented me from playing the game until I found a workaround on the Gears of War Forums. The latter plagued my entire game experience, despite the fact that my hardware (see below) should have been able to handle the game fine. In fact, most of the game ran at a terrific framerate, but typically after a level loaded, and at random other points in the game, I would be watching a slideshow.

Performance: 4/10
As explained in the section above, the game stuttered like crazy on my system. In fact, the stuttering was identical at 1280x800 medium settings as it was at 1680x1050 high settings, so I ran with the latter. My computer:

AMD X2 3800+
2GB RAM
ATI x1900xtx
WinXP SP2

Overall: 7.5/10
I really wanted to like this game. It looks beautiful and is full of meticulous detail. However, the gameplay, some of the design decisions and the technical issues really diminish the game in my eyes. It's still worth checking out, but with a few tweaks here and there, it could've truly been great.

Additional Notes: I did not test (nor review) the multiplayer of this game.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Review

Summary:

Call of Duty 4 is one of the most exciting single player adventures in years. If only it was a bit longer...

+ Terrific graphics and presentation
+ Awesome sound
+ Amazing variety in gameplay
+ Incredibly tight pacing and scripting
+ Great set pieces
+ Tons of attention to detail
- Really, really short singleplayer

Introduction:

For the last year or so, I have found myself extremely underwhelmed by just about all the games I had tried. Even the "best of breed" - games that got rave reviews from virtually everyone - weren't doing it for me. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, for example, got boring just 15 minutes in. Halo 3 - my first experience with the Halo series - was so absurdly unimpressive, I began to question the sanity of Xbox owners. BioShock, despite my recent interest in Ayn Rand novels, held my attention for no more than a few levels. During a particularly boring spell, I actually did play Quake 4 all the way through, but was left with a stale taste in my mouth. The game had brief glimmers of cool ideas & plot twists, but didn't develop any of them, and ended up feeling just like the original Quake, which I beat during another dry spell years ago. The list of disappointments goes on and on.

Only two explanations came to mind: either I had outgrown video games or I had ADD. I actually wasn't sure which would be worse. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare blew both of these excuses out of the water. The game is phenomenal and a testament to the fact that strong game design can impress even the most jaded gamer.

Let's break it down:

Graphics: 9.0/10
If you've got the horsepower to run it, this is one beautiful game. Great lighting effects, awesome particle effects (smoke, sparks, explosions), terrific use of blur, good player models, and high resolution textures really make this game worth looking at. The graphics engine is very well rounded, doing a terrific job with a wide variety of environments - day, night, middle eastern streets, central Europe in winter, ocean liner, office buildings, etc. Technologically speaking, some graphics engines out there might top CoD 4 in certain areas, but there's really nothing to complain about here.

Artistic Design: 10/10
The game is full of meticulous detail that really make it a pleasure to look at and play. It's really the little things that make it shine: the awesome tall grass & camouflage that actually allows you to hide; the subtle blur effect when looking down the site of a gun; the ability to shoot through certain materials (wood, sheet metal, etc); the realistic death animations; the way soldiers hold their guns as they enter a room; the heat coming off the barrel of a gun after firing; the lighting fast transitions from briefing to combat. And the list goes on and on. Quite simply, it's a pleasure to see the game in action.

Sound: 10/10
The sounds in this game are a huge part of what makes it so immersive. Every time a gun fight breaks out, it really sounds like a war zone. All around you, cars are exploding, pipes are bursting, glass is shattering, and RPGs are flying. Guns sound (and are) powerful, bad guys are constantly shouting in their native languages, and bullets will be wizzing by you non stop. The music is a perfect fit and the voice acting is top notch.

Plot: 7.5/10
The single-player game is story driven, but for the most part, it's a very generic tale of terrorism, war and nuclear weapons.

Level Design: 10/10
While the story itself is fairly forgettable, it does provide the setting for some incredibly memorable and exciting levels. The game is filled with "oh sh*t" moments that you'll be dying to show your friends. From the very first level (the one after the training), the game pulls you in and won't let go. It's very fast paced and tightly scripted, and is best described as being part of an incredible action movie.

Gameplay: 9/10
At the core, CoD4 is a first person shooter, so most of the mechanics are familiar. However, given the game's length (see below), there is a huge variety of missions. You'll do close quarters battle aboard a ship, go through an incredible stealth sequence as a sniper, man the guns of an AC-130, battle through the war-torn streets of a middle-eastern town and more. There are tons of effective weapons at your disposal and the combat tends to be fairly realistic. For example, even though there isn't an "official" duck & cover system (as in Gears of War), you'll often find that if you don't find cover, you'll be shot to pieces in seconds.

The damage/health model is a bit different than most shooters: there is no health or shields explicitly visible. Instead, your character automatically heals, as long as you don't take too much damage at any one time. For example, if a stray bullet hits you, it does some damage, but you recover fairly quickly. However, if you take a spray of AK47 fire from close range, you're likely dead. The main advantage of this system is that you don't have to waste time hording health packs or medkits, which allows for a more continuous game experience. The disadvantage is that there is relatively little penalty for getting shot, so long as you're not shot too badly. Overall, I think the pros outweigh the cons, as it allows for a faster and smoother gameplay experience.

Length: 5/10
The single player campaign is short. Really really short. The first play-through for an experienced gamer would probably take no more than 4 hours. There is a little replay value in trying some levels on harder difficulty levels, or in "arcade mode", but the length is truly disappointing. Having said that, it's worth noting that just about every second of those 4 hours is a blast. The game never lets up, going from set piece to heart-pumping set piece, not wasting any time on repetitive gameplay.

Stability/Bugs: 10/10
I did not encounter a single bug or crash while playing CoD4.

Performance: 10/10
The game ran beautifully with max settings at 1680x1050 on my computer:

AMD X2 3800+
2GB RAM
ATI x1900xtx
WinXP SP2

Overall: 9.5/10 (Not an average)
This is one of the most thrilling games I've played in a while. Other than the length, this game does just about everything right.

Additional Notes:
I have not tried (nor reviewed) the multiplayer component of CoD4.

I Hate CSS

Those of you who design webpages have probably seen this rant before. In fact, if you search google for "I Hate CSS" you will find. lots. of. results. Still, I need to rant a bit.

CSS, or cascading style sheets should be used, as their name implies, just for style. And by that, i mean fonts, colors, text size, borders, etc. Unfortunately, the "expert" web design community is pushing hard to use CSS for layouts and having a great time denouncing tables. Now, i agree tables aren't the best solution. Tables are very simple to understand and use and are generally well supported in most browsers. However, they are not terribly flexible and can be very hard to maintain. You need to use hacks here and there, throw in spacer images, invisible gif's, and so on. So, i certainly understand the motive for developing an alternative to table-based layouts.

But CSS is NOT it.

The idea behind CSS was to:

1. Separate presentation from content. This allows you to layout & decorate the same content in many different ways, which is very handy.
   
2. Remove the hacks needed to make tables layouts work.
3. Save you time.
4. Give you far more powerful presentation and layout options.
   

The CSS Zen Garden is a brilliant example of what, in theory, could "easily" be achieved with CSS. My own website uses CSS extensively and it does allow for some beautiful effects. It's probably one of the main things that separates a modern website from those made in the late 90's. But CSS is severely lacking and flawed as a means of layout.

First of all, it's completely unintuitive. Many constructs that we were used to - and those that make logical sense - are gone. For example, let's talk about center align. With a table, you could set the table, and each cell (td) in it, to align="center". Couldn't be easier.

How does CSS do it? Well, you can try text-align: center. This works every now and then, but typically only on text or inline elements. Fine, it is called text-align for a reason I guess. But why isn't there a everything-else-align? Instead, you end up trying margin: 0 auto. What do margins have to do with it? And when this fails, which it often does, you try relative position, putting the left edge at 50%, of the container width minus the width of the item... Which doesn't apply to all layouts, so then you resort to absolute position. But of course, that's not flexible and also tends to work poorly at times...

And that's just center align horizontally. Center align vertically is significantly worse. With tables, each cell/row supported the valign property. Again, simple and effective.

To get this to work in CSS, you have to go through page after page of techniques until you find one that works for you. One idea calls for padding and negative margin. Another requires you to set line-height to the height of the container. Another tells you to set the container to be a table-cell (irony, anyone?). Almost none of them, as ridiculous as it sounds, use the CSS vertical-align property.

Isn't center align a VERY basic task? Doesn't virtually every website on the planet require center alignment (look at my blog, google, cnn)? Why is it so painfully difficult and unintuitive with CSS?

The relationship between containers in CSS is also pretty unintuitive. With tables, it was very obvious how cells interacted: it's just hard to mess up rows and columns. Say you wanted a webpage with a classic 3 column layout. With tables it's easy: tr td td td. Done.

How does CSS compare? Take a look at one of the highly recommended approaches. We're talking several pages of styling, involving absolute positioning, gigantic margins (margin-left: 201px;) , and a few hacks. Don't people realize how ridiculous this is?

Heaven help you if you wanted 3 columns with a header in footer. In the world of tables this was: tr td (colspan=3) tr td td td tr td (colspan=3). Done. Now check out the CSS from this site that shows you how to achieve it. We're talking several pages of complex CSS. And the ultimate irony: many of the containers are set to display: table-cell! Better solutions exist, but in terms of simplicity and intuitiveness, CSS cannot come close to tables.

Now, the numerous flaws and drawbacks in CSS could be forgiven, if not for one thing: ridiculously inconsistent browser support. It's probably not the fault of the CSS creators, but it'll make your eyes bleed trying to get your page to look the same in different browsers, not to mention in different versions of the same browser, different resolutions, on different OS's, in different languages, etc... It's impossible.

Want to use max-height? Sorry, Microsoft decided not to implement it, at all. Padding and margin should be simple, right? Nope, each browser does it's own thing. And don't every try setting the width to a percentage to have a flexible layout... That's ridiculous and you should be ashamed to have thought of it. You need a giant chart just to figure out what's available on each browser.

The main culprit tends to be Internet Explorer, which is not only riddled with CSS bugs, but does not implement the same CSS features as other browsers. You end up using the Holly hack for the IE6 peek-a-boo bug, selector hacks for everything else IE6 related and reading entire guides and websites on dealing with IE/CSS issues. You use JavaScript to fill in the gaps, you yell, scream, kick, break down to a cry, and finally fall back to tables. It's obscene and ridiculous. As a web designer, I end up spending 10% of my time on design, 10% on coding and %80 fighting with compatibility issues.

CSS is just not cutting it. But, as I said before, tables are not the ideal solution either. I think what we really need is a separate language designed specifically for layouts. Let the basic HTML code handle your content. Let CSS handle the styling of the content. And let this new layout language handle how all the pieces fit together.