Battlefield: Hardline

A different take on the usual formula. 

The Battlefield franchise usually has players in the shoes of soldiers anywhere from world war I to future battles with robots but in this title the battle is simply the modern day war on drugs. Unfortunately there seemed to be no servers I could join to experience the multiplayer aspect of this one but it does come with a very solid single player campaign with a decent story where you play a cop. 

How it feels waiting for the server search which then returns with no results...

While you can still shoot people dead (and that will happen a lot) you gain more XP to unlock gear by arresting baddies, increasing the focus on stealth and getting up close to flash your badge which can "stun" up to 3 enemies to arrest them (but need to be fast and aim down sights at others to keep their hands up). Your load out options increase quickly with some very gamey items like grapple hook launchers becoming available but you also get to try out some of the vehicles the game has to offer. I quite enjoyed it, but only will recommend buying it when its on sale.

Battlefield 4 Hong Kong

Looks like my list yesterday that included Blizzard was far too short. Here's a more complete record (just scroll down a bit) that also has the "other side" which includes the likes of South Park and Ubisoft (at the moment anyway).

What I really wanted to post was this cool Battlefield 4 Hong Kong compilation video though which is a nice summary of what's going on there. Such realistic graphics and huge player capacity! Downsides are it looks like there's a lot of running due to the huge maps, an overload of spectators and the respawn times take forever.

Switching back to regular content tomorrow, unless something else explodes overnight.

Insurgency

One part counterstrike, one part frustration.

In this first person shooter you generally have to take and hold points, with little variation and a lot of shooting. It comes with good music, decent graphics and decent enough AI to enable full coop missions of 6-8 players, complete with in built voice chat which is pretty handy. I also quite like the notion of finding and destroying enemy caches to reduce their respawn numbers or make them weaker. You can also customize your load out a fair bit but what you can't do is ride any of the decorative vehicles in game - which is slightly annoying but forgivable.

It's important to note that this is a multiplayer game though, as only the training mission can be done solo. Furthermore, hosting requires a dedicated server so unless you have one lying around and know how to set it up, you and your buddies will have to share your gaming space with others. That's not really too bad though - this is one of those the more the merrier sort of deals.

 I wish we brought more dudes!

Where the game falls down a bit is in its respawn time. There is no life meter or HP in the game. Basically the more fire you take , even on the "forgiving" enemy AI level, the more likely you are to die. This is great if you are in cover but out in the open it usually means one shot insta-deaths. Because: Realism! (see here for a good argument as to why realism sucks :P)

I'm actually ok with that though. What's not OK is: "Your team will rapidly deploy once an objective is taken". Yep. Any dead players become spectators until the remaining team members can complete a task. The end result is a lot of waiting, for either that to happen or for everyone to die and have the map restart (which by default happens if you are trying to solo).

I suppose in the PvP mode (which I have no interest to try) this might work ala Counterstrike, but in coop you end up being idle for around half your game time. Why they didn't take the Battlefield series approach and just give a hard x seconds respawn timer, I don't know. Because of this severe flaw I can only give it two insurgents out of five and don't recommend it unless you are a die hard, realism FPS fan.

Battlefield 4: China Rising (Single Player Experience)

Been awhile since I've played a Battlefield franchise and boy has it come a long way since its first iteration of Battlefield 1942. The graphics are sharp, controls very easy, and the single player storyline compelling enough to get invested in the characters. A negative for me was again the difficulty, because the hardest mode is actually easier than the Rambo Video Game, mainly since your squad is on god mode. That's not much of a fault though because as the main content of the game is the multiplayer side, it serves as a good seven mission tutorial on the various weapons, vehicles and other systems present in game. It also sets out the background as to why there's another war on. Might be a shallow reason but hey, it's there.

A surprisingly accurate load out depiction for  a change.

Despite the game complaining that it hates my video card, it never once crashed on me in single player. Indeed the only thing I find puzzling about the whole thing was actually trying to play the game. Not only do you have to log into Origin, but you then are taken to a website where you then decide if you are going single player or multiplayer and it is from there that the game starts up. That's a big step backwards for me. Instead of a title screen or cool intro, you first see a web page. That is shit. Did it become too hard for them to put that in game?

Lastly while the video card thing was passable through single player it is nightmarish for me in multiplayer, as it creates another layer of lag for me to go through making the game pretty much unplayable (if I wanted to actually be competitive). Since that is mostly my issue though I'm leaving out the multiplayer part from my score of three bullets out of five. Since I got it gifted it's not too bad, but if you spent money on it you would want the multiplayer mode working as you will blast through the solo missions in two or so nights of gaming.

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

There's nothing Chivalrous about Chivalry, but for what it is - it is great! The easiest way to describe it is that it is like Battlefield but with knights instead of soldiers, and it comes with the similar unlocking weapon and equipment tree for each of its four, very different classes. Knights are the slowest but can take a truck load of damage, Vanguards dish out the most pain, Archers can hit from a distance (with a lot of practice) but are otherwise prone to decapitation and my favourite - the man at arms who is both the quickest and nimblest of all four, being able to dodge attacks if you have good timing.

The expansion of Deadliest Warrior adds other factions but since the gameplay there is restricted to team deathmatch or free for all I tend to stick closer to the main game where the Knights of Agatha and the Masonic Order both try complete objectives with alternating defender/attacker roles (always harder to defend) which is absolutely great fun. Pity there are only around six maps for it though, and that sometimes Team Objective games are empty.

Having to be up close and personal really adds to the tension too with wide swings able to hit your own team mates. Even sniping archers need to be ready to melee at any moment, and finding foes of equal skill level to you (as a player) makes for pretty good duels. Some guys are just fantastic in their swordplay while others intentionally wait for the enemy to be distracted for a back stab. If only there were more campaign type missions I would give it a higher score. Still, since it is pretty damned fun I give it three trebuchets out of five and recommend it for any who like this sort of martial diversion in their games.