Company of Heroes

PC Gamer 96%
Best of E3 2005
Best of E3 2004
Best presentation of E3 2005
Eurogamer 10/10

Some call it “A Legend”.
Some say that it is the best RTS since StarCraft.
Some say that it is next-generation RTS.

All the hype made me desperate for this game. 3 days of it on my com, however, and I’m already getting really bored of this game. I can see why some think that it is a revolution for the RTS genre, but to me, it is waaay too far to be considered ‘Revolutionary’.

Company of Heroes is an RTS based on WW2. Like all World War 2 games, we start of at Osaka Beach. The single player campaign of this game is very well planned and very cinematic. In fact, CoH has probably one of the best single player mode compared to other RTS’s. But I don’t play RTS for the campaign. I play RTS for the multiplayer, the competitiveness and anything else regarding that line of stuff. If I wanted single player games, I would look for RPGs.

The Essence Engine created by Relic is top-notch. By far the best RTS engine ever. Mechanics of the game is more or less copied from its predecessor: Dawn of War. Things like heavy cover and exposed are in. Supression and Pinned Down is just some other form of morale. Some of the unit’s ability to deploy and only being able to see things at around 120 degrees axis is also something new.

Okay let’s stop the mechanics and head straight to gameplay. CoH IS the ULTIMATE take-and-hold game. Imagine Dawn of War with 5 times more control points, and resources generated by the control points itself (no generators for Power, you sort of like capture points to generate power). Not to mention there are 3 resources.

The strategy of a player replies heavily on the map chosen. Some think that this idea is great and ‘revolutionary’. Me? I feel that a strategy relies too heavily on the map chosen. I think it is a con more than a pro.

More cons: 50% of the units from each side is the same. The variety of things for each side is already incredibly few. Sniper, MGs, standard infantry…all the same. The only difference is that some can do what others can, but as far as combat and overall use, it’s very hard to tell the difference. Oh sure, riflemen can build observation posts. Oh sure grenadiers can shoot AV stuff. Oh sure, riflemen can do supression firing. The abilities is what makes units different, but other than that, that’s all. Both races have the same starting crap, used to do the same boring crap.

Look at Starcraft: zealot, zergling and marine is 3 completely different stuff. You send a marine to squad to look for stuff, well, watch the zealot rape your squad within seconds. Look at WC3 : ghouls and footman. Look at DoW: Scouts and Guardians. CoH just cap cap cap and ninja decaps. It’s utterly boring. Boring. Heck even Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends has more than just that crap.

If that’s not bad enough, in multiplayer, there are NO mirror matches. I dunno what the hell is Relic thinking. The whole game only have 2 friggin comparatively boring sides and NO mirror matches. I downloaded the interview from Buggo who asked why isn’t there mirror matches in CoH to the lead designer. The reason is not worth remembering at all. The reasoning has something to do with adding realism into it. Kinda dumb seriously. It just simply don’t make sense why wouldn’t they want mirror matches.

Overall, the game introduced a nice new way of playing, but the gameplay, the sides, and all that crap is just bad. Tiering is very shallow. Practically everything in this game is about teching and right now, the game is a race to the first tank.

I give Company of Heroes my utmost humble opinion: 6/10

Where the 6 comes from great engine, great single player, nice sounds and music, and awesome graphics. Multiplayer is below average meh.

Com finally gg

Finally I get to make good use of my LGR1 laptop on a daily basis. God this labtop is so cool and so powerful…I think I’m in love with it. Dedecated Geforce 7400…Core2 Duo…1GB RAM and 15″ monitor. Awesomeness. That’s Half Life 2 without lag on max settings ppl.

My desktop finally died on me. Piece of junk just refuses to display a thing on the monitor. It’s been making a whole fucking load of noise since a month or two back. I guess it’s the graphic card. Time for another upgrade =/

I’ve been playing Vampires The Masquerade: Bloodlines for quite awhile, until my computer died on me. It’s from Troika, same team of guys that created Fallout, Temple of Elemental Evil and some other RPG. It’s dead now though. Vampires had such an amazing concept, amazing setup, amazing roleplaying elements…truely a great RPG. But there are of course, tons of cons. The game is incomplete as far as ‘putting all the game elements in’ is concerned, meaning they did not complete what they planned. Also, the game is littered with tons and tons and tons of bugs. Sounds like Temple of Elemental Evil.

Getting Company of Heroes tmr, I really hope it is worth all the @!#$ hype that’s praising it practically everywhere.

Am I Creepy?

Yes I am creepy =D

.HARUHIISM.

PREY

My com finally managed to complete torrenting PREY. It is a rather small file, only 1.6GB RAR’ed. However, it is a great FPS. It is not ‘alienlike’ like HL/Doom, nor is it ’scarymovie-like’ like FEAR. It is also not spiritual-like like Jedi Knight, nor is it super high tech-like like Quake. In fact, it is all in one. The HL2/Doom part of disgusting gooey creatures and places are in like in this screenshot below, however this screenshot does not do it justice. There are far more vile environments out there. Observe the weapon though, it is pretty uniquely designed. All your weapons are designed in that kind of genre; high tech inside, looks ‘Doomish’ outside. And yeah, I don’t play much FPS’s but it is one of the few weapons I know that animates on its own (not the character touching it or anything. Also not minute movements. The movements are pretty obvious, you’ll have to see for youself =( ).

After checking through my screenshots, I realized that I totally suck at taking screenshots mostly because I fail to capture effects and certain movements. Then again, the game is kinda fast pace, I got no time to think about that. There is supposed to be a ghost of a little girl (sounds familiar?) that you have to fight. The music playing at the background coupled with the little girls echoing voice PLUS the synchronization of the environment (“It all fall down! *door opens* hahah!!!”) it kinda…creepy.

Now let’s have a screnshot on somewhere more ‘high tech’ shall we?

I forget to mention that this game is a complete fucking MAZE. Seriously, sometimes I feel like taking a break, but it is…er…’refreshing’ to see such fantastic stuff in an FPS. Then again, even though it looks like a maze, it is still a straight line. A really complicated straight line filled with all kinds of really really screwy stuff that make a first timer totally confused. Below is a screenshot of me, upside down, walking on some gravity walkway. Note that this is just early game. There are worse cases where you have to shift the gravity of the room (from a first person view: “spin the room”).

Things got worse when you gain spirit form, which allows you to project your spirit out. Note that your spirit can still be seen by organic lifeforms (living things) , but machines cannot detect. Spiritis can go through forcefields and…see and walk on…er…spiritual stuff. Pretty cool, but remember, more abilities mostly means more puzzles. And god the puzzles can make anyone dizzy. (eg. you leave your body so that your spirit can reach some mechanism that shifts the gravity to the ceiling. Seems fine at first since you see the transformation occuring (you should get used to it by then) but when you return to your body, the first thing you would think of is “where is hell am I?”.

Spirit World: You know the tests in Jedi Outcast? Yeah…

And spirit form
I wish I had taken better screenshot really (like one of the little girl! How the hell can I not take it?!). Oh yeah, this game you cannot die. At all. If you die, you will enter the spirit world and battle…er…what they call ‘dishonored spirits’. Okay nevermind that. Just take it that you cannot die in this game. You’ll see when you get it.

One last screenshot. remember the giant vile virgina you probably seen in some random screenshot maybe in gamespot or whatever gaming forum/website? Yep, it comes from PREY and I found it on a floor where a monster…er….came out of it…and….went back after it was damaged. ENJOY <3

Faylar.

Long Silence? part 2

So i’ve decided to watch the show that rumors turned me off. I hate people tell me not to watch shows only when they got a horrible first impression of it, and later say that ‘it gets really AWESOME at the later part zOMg!’. The anime is called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I am not gonna describe what kind of impact it has on me YET, it’s going to take another couple of posts and a looooooong time to write. I loved this show a lot. More than any other anime OR Manga OR show at I’ve ever watched.

*thinks*

Okay I don’t watch much shows as compared to other people I guess but seriously, this is by far the bestest anime ever. I am totally infatuated about it. I’m worshipping the show more than I worship the ingeniousness of Full Metal Alchemist and the first time I watched Haku fight and Gaara vs Rock Lee in Naruto. Serious. Ask anyone if they remember me wearing Naruto headbands (I’m sure they don’t wanna remember :p) and Kakashi gloves. That kind of fanboyism (Narutard as they call it), doubled. HARUHIISM as they call it. I even went to read the novel it’s based on. And look for games. And stuff. It’s that crazy I am about that anime. Goddamn. This anime probably will have the longest lasting effect it have on me. We’ll wait and see.

I downloaded the character set albums for MoHS. I don’t care what people say about ‘Mikuru’s songs and voice being kute i lub dem all <3<3<3′. Each to his/her opinion, I can’t stand 5 seconds of ANY songs I downloaded that sounds like that. Aya Hirano (voice actress for Haruhi) is pretty awesome. God Knows and Lost My Music were probably two of the best J-pop songs I’ve heard. Chihara Midori’s character album (Yuki) have a song I really really like: Yuki, Muon, Madobe. Awesome song, fits Yuki extremely well. Probably on par with God Knows to me.

I dunno how others listen to music…perhaps some comments here would enlighten me. The first time I listen would be to hear the overall song, and then I’ll pick out the instruments like some of those sound modifying programs and listen to them carefully one by one and finally appreciate the music as a whole. So it probably takes me like 2 to 3 times to listen to fully grasp what the song is about/like.

I’ve downloaded a few Jpop songs…arg…need more… :p

Long silence? part 1

It’s been awhile since my last entry, not that anyone cares. Been pretty busy to the brim with work and now finally, the whole project is done. I do not ever want to be reminded of it. I do not ever want to remember this particular project OR semester. This semester has been pretty screwed up, fucked up and totally unorganized and useless compared to the last two.

Actually it’s been like more than 7 days ago since my project is completed, packaged, and finished. Good thing that comments are good so far (though I ran into a bug at the winning screen). This few days have been pretty eventful. I wanted to grab all the fun I can get before returning to the dreaded place. That’s why I’m not going to the SGCC mentor program I volunteered for. It may be irresponsible of me to do that but hey, everyone should know now that I don’t carry responsibility with me, only interest and mood…largely interest. Right now, my interest is taking a break and get away temporary from programming and do other stuff like collecting WH40k models.

I went to Ivan’s house recently with Bren, John, Sam and Eric, and we played Settlers of Catan. I don’t care what Ivan said about ‘this game is not luck based’. The sentence he said, “Catan is a probability based game and there is no luck involved” never stands to me. Of course, strategy is still important in the game, but luck ALWAYS kills probability. For 2 dices, rolling a number is 4 like 5 times in a row is just plain luck, and so is NOT rolling numbers like 7 (I was desperate to move the robber people keep putting on my turfs). I’m not gonna explain about the game here; it will take way too long.

On the arcade side, Evo2k6 is done. Daigo got kicked early in 3s, BAS never made top 10 of CVS2, $50000 money match? or was it $70000. Or was there another zero? Anyway, probably the biggest money match in gaming history was hosted by Sanford and Duc for MVC2. Daigo/Kindebu/ RF only managed to get a 2nd in GGXX. JWong kicked in 3s, but made it in CVS2, Daigo kicked JWong out in CVS2. Tons of bullshit happening over there.

Locally, Anthony is BACK. K-groove is too damn popular now. It don’t believe it’s because of people winning in A-groove too easily that they wanted to switch to grooves like K as opposed to what airconman says. It think it’s just airconman and perhaps a few others, but as far as I know, all the new guys are mostly playing K. Those using A-groove is still using A. Those using C-groove is still using C. The only guy that uses A-groove and switch to other grooves as a MAIN groove is airconman. I can’t think of anyone else really. Finn…? He plays for fun like alvin and leo, but I remember Finn saying that he is planning to have his main groove as N or something. N-Akuma/Iori and one more I can’t remember.