Warfactory

Based on a flash game created Jenova Chen, Nick Clark, and Austin Wintory.  This new make of the game was designed and created by “thatgamecompany.”  In this version of the puzzle game the standard PS3 sixaxis is used to move your organism around level after filled with smaller organisms and occasionally a few bigger more evolved ones.

Starting up the game the player is greeted with soft ambient music, soft colors, and the simple controls.  After hitting the start button you are immediatly immersed into the beautifully colored primordial soup.  Your first organism is bigger than the other organisms that inhabit this first level.  To move your organism around you tilt the controller.  This form of control can take some time to get the hang of but once you get do the movement becomes natural.  A black mark on the score for control comes in after a few “evolutions” when you become a fish like creature with a small mouth which you have to use to hit the “food” just right.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward.  You are an organism that is trying to do what every organism does eat and grow.  Each organism has its own ability such as boost, spinning, and disappearing.  Further into each evolution you come across creatures that are the same size or bigger than you that fight back eating your life orbs.  However, these creatures don’t provide that much of a challenge in terms of AI.  This game, in terms of gameplay, is unlike any other game I have ever played or seen played personally.

The soft ambient music, the noncompetetive gameplay, and the soft colors combine in this game to create a unique and soothing gaming experience.  I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a game to relax with and a way to kill time with.  Overall I give the game an 85 on a scale of 100.

Warhawk

Developer: Incognito/SCE Studios Santa Monica

Publisher: SCEA/Incognito

Genre: Multiplayer Shooter

Platform: Playstation 3

Rarely does one find a game that completely forgoes any sort of single player mode and becomes a multiplayer only game.  Within this genre of games is the even rarer multiplayer-only console game.  Warhawk for the Playstation 3 is just that, a third person team based shooter that is 100% multiplayer only.  Developed by Incognito (formerly Single Trac), the game is loosely based on a PSone launch title of the same name.

The game consists of 2 teams, the Eucadian team (blue) and the Chernovan team (red) with 16 players on each team.  In it the two teams compete to earn points or attain various goals depending on the gametype.  Like most games, Warhawk supports a wide variety of game modes to pick from.  There’s the usual deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag, as well as some more unusual modes like zones where the two teams compete to expand their territory or Hero mode where each team is assigned a hero who has five times the health of a normal soldier and deals out double damage.  All of these modes create a varied amount of gameplay and extend the life of the game significantly.

Warhawk is reminiscent of other multiplayer shooters such as Battlefield 2 in that while walking around the level you will find vehicles that you can freely hop in and out of, albeit with a large emphasis on the flying aspect more than the land based vehicles.  The three vehicles which come with the shipped game are the Jeep which is fast and lightly armored, the Tank which is slow but usually only requires one or two hits to kill anything, and the warhawk, or plane (subsequent expansion packs have added a gunship, an APC, and jetpacks for infantry).  The tank and jeep are pretty strait forward while the warhawk element is a bit more robust. The warhawk itself uses any one of 9 different weapons outside of its main machine guns which it can receive via pickups around the map.  The plane can hover, as well as fly regularly and is easily the most plentiful vehicle in the game (usually about 3 planes to every jeep and tank).  This compliments the game’s more arcade-like style and differs quite a bit from similar games like Battlefield which rely on a much more realistic style.

While this take on vehicles may seem too simplistic, it helps that each vehicle is highly specialized and balanced.  It’s kind of like playing a game of rock paper scissors, except sometimes scissors outruns rock and other times paper drops a cluster bomb on scissors.  When it comes to vehicles, the only real loser is someone who isn’t in one.  Unless you’ve got a flamethrower or rocket launcher, if an enemy vehicle rolls up you can pretty much only hope that they don’t see you.  However the game is incredibly balanced and even a lone infantry man can stand up against a tank so long as he’s got a flamethrower and some guts.

Warhawk tends to be very over-the-top with some levels that take place on islands that are no more than 100 feet across yet stick strait out of the water nearly 600 feet.  Other levels take place on floating cities or on top of huge glaciers and even crashed spaceships.  The levels themselves dwarf nearly every other games, with some levels over a mile across.  The downside to maps this large is that if a player finds himself without a vehicle it can be a long trek until they can get to where the action is.

Technically speaking Warhawk is something to behold.  It’s draw distance is essentially infinite, which is great considering how huge some of the levels are, and its graphics are decidedly next-gen.  Even if you’ll never get close enough to see the individual hairs on your enemies face, they are there.  It’s impressive  that a game that takes place in third person and on a scale that is in the thousands of feet has little details like destroyable chairs outside a vacated shop or the way your character ejects a spent magazine sideways out of his gun when he reloads it.

The game’s sound design is also well done.  Simple things like the faint whistling noise of a TOW missile or the high pitched buzzing sound of a laser designator let you know that in a few seconds you’ll be destroyed.  Every single weapon has its own unique sounds, in particular the sniper rifle which sounds more like a cannon than a gun.  Other things like the plinking of machine gun bullets as they bounce off a tanks armor or the warning sound of a missile that’s locked onto your plane all help to immerse you into the game.

Warhawk is not without its flaws however.  The game is a bit shallow and can suffer from Counter Strike syndrome where although the game is fun, after a few hours you soon realize you’ve been doing the same thing over and over again. Fortunately there are numerous gameplay modes which can change up the pace and a rank system that allows the player to unlock new skins for his player model and aircraft.  The game also has a steep learning curve and can (In my case) take up to 2 hours before a player gets his first kill.  The game utilizes fantastic sixaxis control, probably the best of any game I’ve played thus far, but it can take some getting used to and the result usually ends up being shot down an awful lot before you can start some real dogfighting.

Overall the game is a well balanced shooter with some interesting and addictive elements. It’s a lot of fun and its arcade style of gameplay is a welcome change from the standard realism most shooters tend to follow.  If you can get past the shallow repetitiveness you can find some pretty deep and balanced gameplay that can keep you entertained for many hours. At a mere $30 it’s worth picking up if you’re looking for some fun online.

Developers: Aardappel and Eihrul

Genre: First person shooter

Platform: PC (Windows, Mac, Linux)

Cost: Free, open-source

Minimum System Requirements:

Pentium 3 733 MHz
128MB RAM
32MB GeForce 2 MX
56K Dial-up for online play

Intro

The deathmatch FPS seems like a distant memory in today’s market of cinematic, “realistic” shooters, and it seems to have been nearly forgotten by modern audiences. Some would argue that this style of game is outdated or irrelevant, that we have evolved past it. However, there are those of us that admire the simplicity of deathmatch games and the raw skill that it takes to be good at, let alone master, them. Considering this, I’d like to take a look at a unique open source FPS that combines deathmatch gameplay with an in-game map creation system: Sauerbraten.

Graphics/Look and Feel

Sauerbraten is technically good looking. The graphical capability of the engine is greater than that of Unreal Tournament 2004; with the light bloom, soft shadows, reflections, and dynamic lights, Sauerbraten certainly has all the eye-candy necessary to provide a fun fragging experience. However, good graphical capability means nothing without good art direction and presentation, and this is one area where the game suffers.

Because Sauerbraten is open source, the art assets come from a variety of artists. Maps are created by different authors, and there is no overriding style or game universe for them to adhere to. The gun and player models are also created by various artists. The result is a game that is artistically disjointed; there is very little style or visual direction. This is not to say that the existing art is bad, far from it; it’s just not consistent.

Also, the game’s presentation is rough at best. Upon starting the game, you are plunked directly into a map with only the menu screen open. There is no main menu or splash screen, nothing to welcome the player to the game. Finding a game online can be mildly frustrating, too, since the map editing servers are listed among the gameplay servers. Another annoying thing: the default player model is difficult to see in dark maps and makes it hard to discern friend from foe. It is simple things like this that make the game feel incomplete and inaccessible. Although most of these issues are easily fixable or customizable, first impressions are powerful, and all this can leave a player thinking, “What’s the point?”

Gameplay

The point of Sauerbraten is not the art. It doesn’t need a backstory, it’s a deathmatch game. The point is the gameplay, and this is where Sauerbraten shines. It’s apparent from the moment you fire up the game and move around: the Cube 2 engine is solid. In multiplayer, the netcode is superb. Weapon shots do not lag or freeze, they fire instantaneously, making the combat satisfying and reliable. On a good server, the amount of delay between players is so miniscule that it feels like a LAN.

The gameplay itself is fast and brutal, with powerful weapons and very quick movement. As it is with other games in this genre, the key to staying alive is constant movement and hoarding items. The weapons of Sauerbraten all serve their purposes in different situations, and power-ups such as armor and quad damage give players areas of the map to focus on controlling.

Sauerbraten comes with a variety of single player maps and multiplayer modes. The options for multiplayer include free-for-all, instagib, arena, capture the flag, capture the base, and efficiency, with team variations to most of these. Of course, the big draw of Sauerbraten is its unique in-game cooperative map editing, in which players can join a server and build a map together, switching out of edit mode at will to test their creations. Edit mode is fast and powerful, making it relatively simple to transform ideas into game arenas in a short time span.

Control

Sauerbraten uses the default WASD key setup with the numbers corresponding to weapons. By default, edit mode is bound to the “E” key, placed within easy reach to quickly switch between modes. Keyboard and mouse settings are all configurable, with the ability to any bind key to any action desired. Mouse movement is very crisp and responsive, with no noticeable input delay. In comparison to Quake 3, Sauerbraten’s movement is less “floaty”; you feel more grounded and in control of your character.

Sound

Sound is one area where Sauerbraten falters. The groans of pain are downright annoying and the announcements are slurred. In addition, the sound effect for the crossbow is a rifle shot, and jumppads make a comical spring sound that just doesn’t seem to fit. The soundtrack is great, but might not be to everyone’s taste. Other sounds, such as reloads, weapon pickups, and the quad damage hum, are good. Overall, sound in Sauerbraten is a mixed bag.

Conclusion

Sauerbraten sets itself apart from other freeware shooters with its amazing, built-in map editor and custom engine. It’s a great game as well, and one that I’d recommend to any shooter fan; it’s free to play, so what do you have to lose?

Despite all the good aspects of Sauerbraten, it’s easy to imagine how new players could come into it and be completely underwhelmed. The problems it has with presentation and art, however, are easily fixable, and the game is constantly being improved upon. If you can get past the hodgepodge of art and the rough edges, you’ll find a superb engine and fun game underneath. It’s not the type of game that appeals to everyone, but those who love Quake-style games should not pass it up. The gameplay is simple to learn, hard to master, satisfying, and addictive; it’s the kind of game that keeps you saying “one more match” until four in the morning.

-miscreant