Cars going in a straight line. A rarity.

We might as well start with the best, the character editor. Streamlined and extremely detailed, the editor should be a defacto standard for all games. The ability to edit every aspect of your character, as well as create your own designs and decals for clothing and tattoos, results in something very unique and well accomplished by Realtime Worlds. There are not many games out there that come close to the amount of options available to you when it comes to developing who you are in the game world.

It’s a shame therefore that the customization in APB seems to be the only aspect of the game that is well polished. APB itself is at best a GTA clone without the charm and style of GTA. The city is empty, soulless and devoid of interest. It acts less as a functioning cityscape and more of an arena for the players. Where the likes of Liberty City, San Andreas and others could live without their iconic main characters going through it, APB’s city would become a barren lifeless landscape without its players. To make matters worse the city is split into three sections that have no real connection to each other other than through a menu screen. The two main districts for the game contain the missions and action of the game, while the social district acts as a neutral hub for customizing your character.

Pretty and quiet.

The game itself is heavily dependent on PVP; so much so in fact that APB could not seriously be recommended to someone who wants to play solo. You choose between two factions within the game; Enforcers or Criminals. You can guess really what each faction entails, and the flimsy story that accompanies APB doesn’t really explain much other than “You’re the bad/good guy, go kill the good/bad guy”. The missions themselves are supplied by different NPC’s in the game, who have you perform different actions that results in you levelling up and improving your relation with the NPC. The higher the relationship and level, the better the guns. There’s no story though, no real reason as to why you do the numerous fetch quests or attack quests that you perform in the game. In the end these missions exist only as the background objectives for what occurs in the PVP game.

The PVP can be fun at times. There was one situation in which I was running down the street with a fellow enforcer, chasing after a crim. Starksy and Hutch, Miami Vice, all the best cop shows rolled into that scene as we tried to hunt the bad guy. These moments though are fleeting, and you soon find yourself on the other side against what can seem like overwhelming odds. Missions you perform can result in an APB being sent out against you, in the form of another player or even a group. You can call backup if a group is against you, but there’s no guarantee you’ll get help, and given how small the player count is there’s a high likelyhood you will be on your own.

The likelyhood of this many people in the same place is slim

This results in missions becoming a race to the objective, because if the opposing player is already there, it’s extremely likely you’ll fail the mission. The player simply has to wait and find a good camping spot near the objective, resulting in death after death as you try to capture the objective, but find yourself shot from out of nowhere because the bad guy is camping in the vicinity. It isn’t fun. It’s tedious, annoying, and poor gameplay. Groups results in the same situation, but instead of one person killing you, you have three or maybe four. Call some backup to resolve this is APB’s tip, except everyone is eating donuts, or doesn’t care.

Vehicle combat and movement has improved from the beta, but it’s difficult to tidy up something that is pretty much garbage. The cars are sluggish heavy lumps of metal in which it’s advisable to pray to the car driving God before you attempt any sort of steering. Gaining a faster car is a death trap as it’s almost uncontrollable. The better your connection the less likely you’ll suffer from extreme lag spikes in your car steering, but you’re still in the end driving cars that feel like they have no physical attachment to the road, and can easily spin out of control.

And this many pimped out cars.

Combat itself is supposed to be a balanced affair, but you’ll increasingly find yourself taking on opponents who seem to have the upper hand in weaponry, despite so-called balancing in attributes. Shotguns are overly powerful, sniper rifles don’t really work, rifles work depending on what type and grenades are a nightmare. It feels all very rough, and to make matters worse there is a feeling that the engine is performing some sort of calculation or dice roll before the bullet hits the target. It’s as if you never really feel you’re doing any damage to your opponent.

In the end APB is a disaster that will take a while to iron out. When we first saw the information and news about APB at the conferences there was some worry, a little voice in the back of our head going “Customization is all fine and well, but where’s the game?” Sadly it seems our fears have come true; APB wants to be GTA Multiplayer, but fails miserably at it. The dubious subscription method of buying time in order to play the game raises questions as to whether Realtime Worlds perhaps knew that realistically they had a dud on their hands. Why buy this when there’s a perfectly good GTAIV multiplayer that’s free accross the road?

Duran Duran needed a new look.

Either way, APB as it is today isn’t very good. Like all MMO’s we’ll check back on it in a year to see if anything has improved over time, but in its current state APB cannot be recommended, even with an excellent customization tool. Soulless and without life, you should really just stick to GTAIV for now.

4/10

Hide and Seek?

A perfect example of this is a scenario you meet very early on in the Soviet campaign; defend the train until it loads up cargo and is ready to go. The aching slowness of the percentage meter gradually increasing is an experience most games fail to get right, resulting in either boredom or annoyance at getting so far then failing. With Men of War it’s an exhilarating fight to the death as Nazi forces move in from every single position and attempt to destroy you. By the end of the scenario all my men had been wiped out and pushed back to the very brink of the map. A smattering of soldiers were left to defend the train with it almost complete at 99%. Another minute to hold out against tanks and multiple infantry. By the end the train left with no soldiers remaining, the German tanks only a metre away from its destruction. Exciting, intense and horrific all in one, and that was just one of the scenarios.

Men of War is a perfect game in many ways. The ability to enter into and use any vehicle in the game becomes not only a boon, but a tactical choice. Do you move that truck out into the road so as to give yourself cover and a better firing position? Do you move up near to where the enemy is likely to attack so that you can blow it up later, creating enough of a shockwave to knock out the enemy? Company of Heroes taught us the meaning of clever cover usage on the map. Men of War takes this cover usage and adds in its own spice of action. Enemy tanks for instance are extremely deadly, but they’re not invincible. By clicking on the tank you can determine it’s area of attack, and therefore how best to flank around it so you can drop a grenade in and destroy it. You have to be quick though, as everything on the map is destructable eventually.

Bad guys are here somewhere.

Once you get to grips with the game it can be both challenging and fun. The tutorial supplied with Men of War is a bit flimsy, but thankfully performing actions on the field isn’t to complicated. All you have to remember is that in Men of War, left click is for actions and right click is for deselect! This little change has caused me confusement a good couple of times since i’m used to right click for orders RTS games. Once you get over that you’ll also find a couple of surprises in the game. Enemies, some tanks, boxes and other items on the map can be looted, resulting in an inventory screen opening up, creating a peculiar RTS-RPG feel to the game. You can effectively loot the enemy for ammo, weapons, mines and other items in order to survive. Indeed you soon find as you play Men of War that it becomes advisable to do so. Ammo isn’t unlimited in this game. You will run out of grenades and reloading options, and once that happens you’ll need to restock or watch your men be killed easily.

There they are!

Graphically the game is in par with Company of  Heroes as well, though attempts to maintain a more gritty look to it as well. Sound is where the problem lies really, as the English dubbing for the cut scenes is sadly poor. Not dissimilar to another game i’ve played that was published by 1C Company, the dubbing sounds like it was performed afterwards to the game, and the English voice actors in question weren’t given an idea as to what’s happening in the cut scene. The result is quickly talking, slow pauses and generally terrible voice overs. It lets down an otherwise great game.

Other niggles are that the objectives aren’t always clear, and indeed the tutorial makes no mention of how to find the objectives screen to discover what to do. In one mission i’m told to retreat to the forest, but with a forest all around me it doesn’t bother to point me in the right direction. The result was I was killed a couple of times before I got it right.

Overall though Men of War is a great example of modern day RTS fun. It’s hectic, complicated and at times you’ll wish for a pause button just to breathe, but the rewards of fighting off endless hordes of Nazis are wonderful, as you feel you’ve achieved something. Definitely a recommended buy.

9/10

Ow. That wasn't very nice.

Presentation

Alpha Protocol’s presentation has its positives and negatives. The game world hud looks good and is unobtrusive to your vision. It’s not cluttered and remains informative. Overlays, such as enemy positions and their alert level, are easy to see and don’t blend in to the background. The menu system is another thing entirely, however. It is often bugged and unwieldy. Sometimes you click on one option and it takes you to another. The game also does not do a good job explaining all the controls in the control menu. The buttons for bringing up the map and your skills are simply not in the list. They are not hard to find on your own (example: the map is M) but by not listing them it is an inconvenience to the player.

Story

Is that a gun or are you please- oh, it's a gun...

The story in Alpha Protocol is about a new recruit to a secret United States black ops program named Mike Thorton. The game is set up that it is played as a flashback. The game opens with Thorton in an interrogation room having talks with a man named Leland. His role in the story is unclear at first, but you jump between conversations with him and the missions you are on which reveals more and more about what his role in the whole thing is. In the early game, Thorton is brought through various training courses and meets many of the players in the story early. You are then sent on your first mission, to stop a terrorist group in Saudi Arabia from using stolen missiles to blow up civilian airliners. What you learn on that mission sends everything spiraling out of control and Thorton quickly has to turn rogue. From there, Mike decides to unravel the mystery around what happened in Saudi Arabia which leads to many twists and turns a long the way. Even with the turns, the story is fairly easy to follow. Obsidian did a good job of not over loading the player with too many characters and only a couple of them were underused or superficial.

Graphics

In short, AP looks good most of the time. The animations all look excellent, whether it be a character’s reaction to your snarky comment or a jab to throat take down. It all looks good and flows very smoothly. The textures are high quality, though sometimes slow loading. Hair and clothing look like real 3D objects and not like a flat painted on surface. Backgrounds are similar as well as they do not like flat pictures but rather objects in the distance. The draw distance in the more open areas is also very good. There is no fog that an enemy can pop out of and you’ll never find yourself running somewhere before the area can fully load. It is not perfect, however. During quick movement of the mouse or quick character movement, a blur effect comes on the screen that is less than ideal. During the same quick movements you not only have the blur but can also be subject to stuttering graphics. There are various fixes out on the internet for the PC version to fix these, but that’s not really an excuse for them to in the first place. These slight flaws do detract slightly from what otherwise is a good looking game.

Sound

Note that he's missing the bad guys!

With a game like Alpha Protocol there is a lot going on with the audio. From footsteps of guards to the voice acting of the characters audio is very important for this game. When out on a mission, the ambient noises are also done well. In one particular mission, a passing train can be used as cover for your gunfire and in another, the roaring of a crowd can be used to the same effect. There are also various gadgets that mimic radio noise to confuse guards. Gunfire varies from weapon to weapon, as well. One assault rifle might not sound like a different one. But the meat of the audio in this game is the voice acting. There are a lot of conversations and a lot of responses from every character you meet. The voice acting is up and down, depending on the character. Certain characters, such as the main bad guy, are voice acted very well. You believe he is a cold and manipulative, looking out for his bottom line and no one else. Still, others fall flat, such as your boss. The VA attempts to come across like a police chief from an eighties cop movie but it misses the mark and can be dull to listen to. Thorton can be compared to the male version of Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect series. The voice actor portrayed Mike as though he is constantly a smooth talker, no matter which speech options you select. For a game that lets you play in various styles, it would be nice if the Aggressive options didn’t have the same tone of voice as the Sarcastic ones. As with all voice acting, though, your mileage will vary.

Game Play

Alpha Protocol’s game play can be broken down into two parts; the missions, meaning the combat and the actual player control, and the conversations with the characters that you meet. One of these is very strong, the other could use improvement.

Let’s start with the missions and the combat around them. The first thing to note is that almost all of AP can be played without killing a single character. When you sneak up behind someone, you have the option of knocking them out or killing them. If you use a Pistol, you can also employ tranquilizer ammo that renders enemies unconscious instead of killing them. The stealth element of AP plays similar to Metal Gear Solid. There are soldiers on patrol paths, alarms that must be shut off, moving cameras that you must avoid and turrets that all must be avoided. For the most part, stealth works well. Entire rooms of guards can be snuck past with clever use of traps and skills gained. You don’t even have to fire a shot or knock someone out at times. Stealth unfortunately fails on boss fights. Some of the boss fights render it completely worthless and you’re forced to engage them head on. This can be frustrating for a player that specializes in melee combat and stealth, as some bosses can not be fought that way. Melee combat is a very powerful way to go through the game. With higher skill levels you can take down enemies in a few amounts of hits before they can even harm you. Unfortunately, as noted before, some bosses can not be fought melee and there are no bosses that can not be fought with guns, so the balance there is a bit off.

Speaking of guns, weaponry in Alpha Protocol is broken into four classes. Pistols, Sub-Machine Guns, Shotguns and Assault Rifles. You can carry two weapons at a time and specialize in one or more of these classes. Sadly, this is where AP loses a lot of points. Recoil in the weapons is completely unforgiving, even with high skill levels in a particular weapon. Pulling the trigger more than once on a pistol causes the reticule to blow up huge, and that has nothing on the SMGs which are simply impossible to aim at a single target no matter what the range. They are a spray and pray weapon from beginning to end. Ranged combat disappointingly is all about relying on your cool downs and special abilities to be effective at it at all.

What Alpha Protocol does right are the conversations Thorton has with the people he meets a long the way. For these style of games having good dialogue and, more importantly, good choices for the player is absolutely key to making a memorable and good product. AP pulls this off better than any game that has come along so far for one simple reason: your choices have a real effect on the game and not in a superficial manner, as some other games in the genre do. Different characters respond to different actions in different ways and will often remember what you did at various points in the game, effecting the conversation and the subsequent actions. This game is very thorough and very thought out with its options. Every character you meet has a different set of rules of what they like and dislike and learning those, to use them to your advantage, is important to the story. If you are too crass to someone that could potentially help you, they will not show to help out. Subsequently, if you make another character angry it could cause them to make a mistake and allow you to more easily beat them. Everything about this game’s player choices and its decision making process is the best to date.

Final Thoughts

For Obsidian’s first attempt at an original product, Alpha Protocol is a good game. The combat and menu system drag the game down from being truly excellent but AP does a lot of things right. The player choices and their outcomes are phenomenal, the graphics and audio are also very well done. Despite its flaws, Alpha Protocol is a good and enjoyable experience that should be on everyone’s list of games to play.

Note: This review is based on the PC version at max graphics settings.

They weren’t that far off the truth. Playing video games through Steam was marred by an interface that stole processing power like it was sweets. Running a video game required the game to talk with the Steam server first, meaning the user had to be online to pass information back and forth. Rather than this being a simple quick process, 56k users found themselves having to wait the past part of 5 to 10 minutes before finally getting to play the game they wanted. Offline mode existed but was effectively useless as it still required the user to be online for the activation. After that the user could disconnect, but the timely process of going on and offline meant it wasn’t recommended.

The argument of course was that 56k was on the way out, replaced by the growing infrastructure of high speed broadband (high speed to the power of 512k!) and so the need to stay online was something the majority of people using Steam could do. There were other problems though as well; downloading Half Life 2 was a disaster as everyone at the same time attempted to download it. The rule of thumb for all Internet traffic of course is, if tens of thousands of people attempt to access your server to download something, you’re going to see your server go up in flames.

Steam prevailed though and continued, expanding its offering of games available on the market and continuing its ability to distribute games online. In a fairly short space of time Steam started to offer none Valve games, indie works and other objects of interest for the gamer. The community started to grow and so Steam started offering community based features and groups for multiplayer games in order for people to get together to play. Bugs ironed out, the offline system improved, the library fixed, anti-Steam consumers soon found their complaints removed, their arguments void.

It wasn’t long that others wanted a piece of the online distribution pie. Steam established itself very early, Valve brilliantly seeing into the future that the ability to download full games online and have them in one tidy client was the future of PC gaming. By the time EA Store, Gametap and others appeared, Steam was already a fully working powerhouse, that had moved from a program that could be used every once in a while to access games, to a primary gaming centre that sat happily on every PC’s taskbar and didn’t interrupt or chew processing power. Complaints about being constantly online started to decrease, perhaps as Valve expected, as more and more people moved on from 56k to DSL.

It wasn’t surprising therefore that other online distrubution clients found it difficult to keep up; they had to deal with the bugs and problems Steam dealt with years ago. They were well behind in the race. Eventually competition became cooperation. EA, Ubisoft, Activision, Atari, almost every major game publisher started to put there games onto the Steam market. After all, if it works, why try something different? Steam became not only a Valve distribution client, but the distribution client to use for PC gaming needs.

It’s not all rosey however. If you’ve walked into any game store as of late you’ll likely find the PC gaming section shoved into a dark recess somewhere in the back of the shop. It reminds of the time when the Dreamcast was on its last legs, and you had to crawl to the back of the shop to find the game you want, and usually wouldn’t be able to because the stock was so small. Section of games stores today for the PC give a smattering of new games mixed in with £3 “classics” that your gran would give you, such as Horse Riding Tycoon 4 (8/10!) or Random Generic RPG 2 (3/10). The result of Steam is that the retail market for the PC is becoming smaller (although it should be noted that the online market remains comfortably the same). The other problem I find is I like the neatness of Steam. The ability to find my gaming library through it, and use in game chat software and features, means I want all my games to run through Steam. Sadly however it’s still not that easy to do, and the result is that I can have games on and off Steam, muddled in my folders and library.

So what’s the future for Steam? With the continued rise of community interaction being created by the likes of social websites such as Facebook, the future is likely to be one involving even more community. The recent UI update for Steam has removed the chunkiness of the client and made it more streamline in market and community interaction, so it seems likely that the ability to make multiplayer parties like the ones seen in Xbox Live aren’t that far off. More games, more sales, more content is the hallmark of Steam, with better integration and games library access for all games installed onto your computer system. Valve has become the powerhouse of online distribution and will likely to continue this for years to come. Things look very rosey indeed.

Anyway! Onward now to buying more games in Steam’s massive weekly sale! My poor wallet…

Left Mouse Button will be covering the biggest news items from E3 throughout the conference, as well as any media and videos that come out. We’ll also be doing feature articles on our thoughts for each of the conferences, as well as articles on games we like, and maybe ones we don’t! Stay tuned for more today and for the rest of the week!

Current Coverage

Microsoft Conference – Our thoughts on Microsoft’s outing of the Kinect, games and other stuff that popped up at their conference.

Ow. That looks painful.

First Impressions

On the load up for the first time, there are already a few complaints. First, it must connect to XBL before it lets you play. It was taking forever to connect last night, so a restart of the Xbox360 would mean waiting through five minutes of “Connecting…” before even getting to the first menu. Then it would pester me to download DLC, the Online DLC (yes, you have to download it). I finally redeemed my code for Online play (on the back of the manual) just so it would stop bugging me. The “Connecting…” delay is obnoxious and took anywhere between one and five minutes. Not a good start overall. Load times for the game aren’t all that great either. It could be that I’m playing from the disc on a vertical Xbox, but simple things like loading up a custom shirt for your Create-A-Fighter takes a good ten seconds.

Finally after all that, I loaded up the tutorial. I played the demo and I got the basics of stand up fighting, but clinches and ground fighting completely escaped me. I played through the tutorial to understand how all that worked. It helped a lot. The tutorial is well detailed and is recommended for first timers to the Undisputed system.

Presentation

The presentation for the game is very good looking. Menus are sleek and easy to navigate. The bouts themselves feel like watching a TV or PPV broadcast. The commentators for the fights are also decent. They can be repetitive at time, but no more so than other sports games. In Career mode they will reference previous fights that your fighter has had and give some analysis of mid-match highlights. It definitely feels like you’re watching a real UFC fight.

Gameplay

Gameplay between 2009 and 2010 is largely unchanged. The addition of Southpaws leads to new host of animations to accommodate their fighting style. The control scheme is mostly the same with only one change, when you’re in a submission you no longer mash the face buttons to get out of it, instead the right stick is rotated clockwise. Grapple and clinch transitions are still performed by swinging the right stick in various arcs; your strikes are still done with the use of face buttons. Anyone that’s played 2009 will have no trouble adapting to 2010.

Beating him into submission, UFC style.

Graphics

Graphic wise, the game is polished. Sponsor logos adorn the ring, your coaches and trainers cheer you on from the outside, the crowd looks good in the darkness (house lights are turned down). Bruce Buffer looks like Bruce Buffer. This year, longer hair models have been added and there is some minor clipping issues with them during clinches. It’s not that big of a deal as it is not that noticeable. The biggest concern with the graphics is the re-use of models. Because Yukes packed in 100 fighters, more than they’ve done for any WWE game, some of the models are reused. Certain fighters look like they changed the skin tone and the face model while leaving everything else the same. This mostly goes for the lower card and lesser known fighters. The big name guys like Brock Lesnar and Rampage Jackson all have distinct and unique character models.

Audio

Audio is probably the most lacking feature of UFC 2010. The menu music is cheesy generic rock with no licensed music, which is a norm these days. It’s a short loop of the same riffs on repeat. I wound up turning off the music and putting on some music of my own. Voice acting is hit or miss. Dana White does a good job in the career mode with his parts but the voice actors for CAFs lack emotion and have no passion in their voice. On the positive side, the fight sounds are good. When you hit someone with a big shot the sound reflects that. A strong shot provides an ample thud when it connects while a weaker one is more of a tap sound. You really know when shots are connecting from the audio clues.

Career Mode
Career mode is a big emphasis this year as well. They didn’t want you to just climb a ladder of fighters but to experience training, media events and other aspects of being a UFC fighter. There is an added aspect of managing your relationship with other fighters that sets up rivalries and friend ships. But career mode has its issues.

Ahh yes, nothing more exciting than watching sweaty men grind and grunt.

Heading into Create-A-Fighter to make Justin Sane, the Light Heavyweight kicking and takedown master. I noticed as I was creating him that “Hmm, they certainly give you a lot of creation points to start with.” Why? Because this is literally Create-A-Fighter. You can’t load these guys into the career. When you start a new career, it takes you to the Create-A-Fighter screen but without all the creation points. There is nothing warning you about this. I wound up having to make Justin Sane twice, though I think my second one came a lot better. One of things that’s neat is you can put sponsor logos on your gear, meaning your shorts, t-shirt and hat. The only two sponsors available to me off the bat where THQ and Yukes. I tossed their logos on all my gear just to jazz up my stuff a little.

And we’re off into my life as a professional fighter! The first thing they do is offer you to do the tutorial. I skipped it as I already played through it. Then they let you pick your first amateur fight. The amateur fights are different in that the guys are ranked by order of difficulty. Meaning the 4 difficulty settings and not some sort of ranking or rating. There’s also only 4 weeks before fights. During those off weeks, you have a couple options. Training which works on your base stats and is automatic, Sparring which works on your more detailed stats and can be automatic or manual (more on that later), Camp Invite which lets you learn your special moves, Rest which is what it sounds like and Game Plan which lets you pick bonus stats for the next fight. On top of all that, there’s two stats that have to be balanced before going into your fight. Conditioning and Fatigue. You want to have Conditioning as close to 100 before your fight and Fatigue as close to 0 as possible. It’s a tough thing to balance. You can also be injured if you try training, sparring or going to camp with too much fatigue.

In my case, I fought three amateur fights before moving onto the pros. A max of five fights is available and it’s recommended to do all five. When you become pro, they drop you into a minor league. They also make you pick your difficulty. This matters for not just the fights themselves but also for Sparring. They penalize you forty percent in Beginner, twenty percent in normal, no penalty in the third tier difficulty and give you a twenty percent bonus in the hardest. The minor league is made up of a fake league and fake fighters. The fights are awkward since there is no commentary or Buffer intros to go with them. It’s just the crowd and the fighters. A bit odd with silence. The game lets you pick your opponent and they tell you where on the card the fight will be. The ranking starts at thirty and you start at Unranked. I do my first bit of training and I am terrible at Sparring. I’m earning so little points that I notice all my skills have dropped to zero.

As I later learned, skills decay when you don’t put points into them. And they decay fast. The same goes for your basic three stats. They’ll drop four points in a week if you don’t train them enough. When my stats and skills cap at forty early on, dropping from twenty eight to twenty four is a huge drop. I really don’t know what the hell to do at this point but I head into my first fight. I spent most of the match dropping kicks into the mid section, ruining my opponent’s stamina. I left some obvious welts as his rib and stomach area turned bright red. Everyone always remarks on face damage, but the body damage is done well. Eventually my rib kicks put him on the ground and I got on top. Some haymakers finished off my opponent and I had my first professional victory.

There's something definitely wrong about this...

At this point, I decided I wanted a knockout move and went into the Camp Invite section. There’s a lot of camps to select from and I selected American Top Team and decided to learn the Muy Thai Left Leg Head Kick. To do this, I had to land 2-hit combos using the new move. It took me two training sessions to learn it, but if I was better I could have done it in one (later, I went to Brazillian Top Team and learned GSP’s Right Head Kick in one session, then back to American Top Team to upgrade my Left Kick to level 2, that took two sessions. Then again back to ATT to learn the Flying Head Kick which I learned in one session). One thing I noted is that my training partner at ATT is Thiago Silva and my relationship with him improved as we trained. Now I have a real KO move and I’m still trying to figure out how to keep my skills and stats from decaying. And most importantly, how to do Sparring effectively.

Post-fight, you get Cred Bonus based on the fight and your sponsors. As you win, the sponsors you put on your gear upgrade to be better (for example, THQ and Yukes started out worth twenty cred per item they are on but I now have up ranked up to level five and they’re worth sixty each) and you earn better sponsors. When cred reaches certain thresholds, you can upgrade your either the Training or Sparring. In my case, because my skills were so bad I upgraded my Sparring partner. This gave me a twenty percent bonus to my points, effectively canceling out the twenty percent penalty I have for being on a lower difficulty. It also raises the cap on my skills from forty to sixty. The same would go for my Training if I upgraded that. But the two things I learned the most was about the stat decay. There are “caps” in place, so if you get a skill or stat past thirty it won’t decay below thirty. The two caps are fifty and seventy. All this means that the way to train early is put your “main” skills to thirty and then work on the other ones as you go. In my case, that meant my Takedown and my Stand Up Offense – Kicking skills should go to thirty first. The other advice is that you only need to put 1 point into a skill to reset the decay timer. So you can pump your main skills and drop single points into the other ones to prevent their decay.

Remember, the safety word is banana!

I won my next couple fights, improving my record to 10-0 and in the process I became the number seven ranked Light Heavyweight. One of those wins was against Tito Ortiz, who I had the pleasure of knocking out in the second round. After the fight, Joe Rogan approached me in a post fight interview and I was able to disrespect Tito twice. By contrast, I had a fight with my ATT training partner Thiago Silva and I showed him respect in the post fight. On my relationships screen Tito was fast in not liking me while Thiago was somewhat of a friend. I’m not sure how this plays out in the long run but any time Tito Ortiz does not like you it is a good day. Dana White came by to see me again and offered me a spot on the upcoming UFC pay per view. I picked Forrest Griffin as my opponent.

This is where the first real issue with Career mode pops up. When you crack the top ten in ranking the game cranks the difficulty way up. In my first ten fights I was winning close matches in the first two rounds but Forrest beat me in less than thirty seconds. I’m not even sure if I landed a strike. He put me on the ground, I could not escape and he made me tap. For anyone that doesn’t follow UFC, Griffin is a bad submission fighter so for him to make you tap is pretty embarrassing. This process repeated itself against other top ten fighters. There is no difficulty curve here; it is a brick wall of frustration. This difficulty problem plagued the 2009 version and it is really detrimental to see it remain in 2010.

Overall

UFC Undisputed 2010 is a great game and is a must buy for any UFC fan. It is by no means perfect as there are a few annoyances with certain aspects of the game and there have been network issues over the first few days. But THQ and Yukes have done a good job capturing the immersion of the UFC and improving on last year’s effort. Career mode is deep, the graphics look good and the game play is fun. A recommended purchase for sure.

8/10

Our hero wears a tweed jacket with pads. Not exactly awe inspiring...

Wake plays upon one of the oldest fears of all: darkness. The creeping night that can make us see strange objects, shadows and curves that creep us out. The true dark where light cannot penetrate and where we’re all alone. This fear is different to that of Dead Space; there are no creatures jumping out at you, no screeching noises or metallic rattling of demons behind the scenes. Instead there’s just the fear of the unknown that lurks around you, which can be the scariest feeling of all. Of the occasions i’ve played it at night it can be rather scary when i’m done and left in a dark room, wondering if the same things haunting Wake might be around me.

Alan Wake’s story reads like a Stephen King novel with a blend of David Lynch cinematics and characters. Remedy have done well to create a rich interesting world with movie like quality. It’s perhaps not quite the standard of Heavy Rain, but for Xbox 360 owners it’s the nearest rival in presenting a game that feels like a series you’d watch on TV. The only complaint that can be forged from it is that the animation for voices is extremely poor, which is a shame given that the game looks visually stunning throughout. The forest retreat in which Alan Wake goes to is quaint and quiet, a perfect getaway for a writer who has lost his ability to write. Like Remedy’s other infamous anti hero Max Payne, Alan has good character traits that draw you into enjoying the game. He can be rather stubborn and mean to friends and fans of his work, but his strife is endearing and drives you through the game.

Truly horrifying.

Like all horror novels it starts sweet and then turns sour. Before you know it you find yourself in the darkness after a car crash, your wife missing, yourself hurt and for some reason you’re finding manuscripts of pages you wrote that eerily predict future events unfolding in the game. The manuscripts are short snippets of information that can guide you as well as explain the story. The odd problem with these notes though is that they’re scattered about the world as you travel, with not alot of sense as to why they just happen to be lying around all over the place. The result is that gathering the manuscripts becomes a fetch quest, a poor design choice that doesn’t quite mix well with the cinematic episodic effect Alan Wake is trying to achieve. Indeed, even though these manuscripts are scattered about Alan makes little mention of them, and in one situation a character makes a mention about the manuscript, yet there’s no real explanation as to how he knew what it said.

Strange design choices aside, Alan Wake redeems itself with an unexpected defence; your torch. Becoming both sword and shield, your torch “burns” off the darkness that shields the enemies you face, allowing you to destroy them with a weapon at hand. Light becomes your natural friend, shielding you from the evils around you. Lights also become a tool of healing, beams shining down from light poles acting as replishining energy and a breather before you have to continue on in the dark forest.

The world itself has maintained some of its open feel while still dragging you down a linear pathway. Trees sway in the wind as a dark forces that seem to swim around the air pushes them; the result is that trees can take on a nightmarish life of there own, with you wondering if there’s anything in the dark that could come out to attack you. If you explore hard enough you can find secret stashes and optional manuscripts that tell you more about the characters of the world.

I mean you would at least think he'd buy himself a proper jacket with all his writing money.

There are a couple of problems to this however. One is that any attack performed by the possessed psychos that are haunting you in the forest will trigger a slow motion cinematic scene showing you in which direction they’re coming from. Either that or they become fairly noticable rather quickly, with only one situation when I was playing in which an attacker jumped out of a scene unexpectantly (I cried a little). This rather ruins the heightened terror of the forest since after a while you begin to realise that you won’t be attacked unless these situations occur, so suddenly its just a case of running through the forest from A to B.

The second problem is that you seem to gain alot of ammo and batteries (courtesy of Energizer, thank you product placement) rather quickly, resulting in you never really having to worry about ammo. This is lightened slightly as you increase the difficulty, but it never quite feels like the desperate struggle that Dead Space had in attempting to conserve ammunition. Couple this with the fear factor being diluted by the fact that the possessed aren’t good at jumping out of bushes, and the result is a game that isn’t overly scary.

You get to drive cars in some of the episodes, but the handling is hilarious (hilariously terrifying!).

Perhaps this is unfair though, as Alan Wake doesn’t bill itself as a horror game, but a psychological thriller. Its method of telling the story in episodes is well thought out and isn’t as painful as, for example, Alone in the Dark’s attempt at performing the same task. Each episode tells a particular part of a story and then ends either in a cliffhanger or a resolution, with the next episode opening in the “Previously on” style that exists on most TV shows today. The story itself is intriguing throughout and leaves you guessing; has he gone mad? Is it him that’s writing this story? Who is the mysterious scary woman that is causing this nightmare to occur? Stephen King would be proud of Remedy for creating a masterful piece of writing in the game.

The biggest gripe of the larger review groups is that the story never quite blends with the game to well. Certainly this is true in some instances; the manuscripts being left around as described earlier doesn’t work. There’s also a feeling that it could have done with a bit more polish here and there. The voice work is excellent, but the dubbing is absolutely terrible, with the facial expressions limited and only just managing to convey emotional expressions.

What’s important is I can’t wait to see what they do with the story. Planned DLC should hopefully expand what is in the end a particularly fascinating game. It’s taken a long time to develop, but Alan Wake is a great success for Remedy. It may not be as exceptionally animated as say Mass Effect, but it holds up well against other heavy storyline based games such as Heavy Rain. I would recommend you give it a shot.

8/10

When exploring for information on this 23″ widescreen monitor I’m about to review today, I found a surprising lack of informative critique on the matter, mainly because Samsung’s newest outing in the LCD Widescreen Monitor market is so new. So I thought I’d fill in the void. I shall attempt to do this as most other places see fit; discussing packaging, design, calibration and my general feeling towards it. Read on!

Packaging and Construction

One of the big plusses for me with the Samsung SM2333SW was that it came with cables. Lots and lots of cables! Usually monitors can be somewhat stringent on the types of cables they supply in the box, but I was happy to find not just a DVI cable, but a VGA one as well, which is pretty nice of them. Along with the cables came a CD containing tuning, drivers, documentation and other software to improve your monitor. Sadly most of the content on the CD wasn’t designed for 64bit Windows 7, but I can hardly fault them for that. The monitor itself was well packaged along with its stand. One of the important aspects to buyers of Samsung monitors may be how the stand was constructed, given that there have been complaints that Samsung stands require heavy force in order to push the stand in and aren’t always great. I’m happy to report this stand was a simple screw in alignment feature that was placed onto it and constructed with ease. My only slight complaint with the stand is that it cannot be pushed up or down, and that at times the monitor appears to wobble. Whether this is a stand fault or I haven’t put it on properly remains to be seen.

Design

Samsung make extremely stylish looking screens, and the 2333 is no exception. The front face is similar to Samsung screens in having a curvature at the bottom, with a blue led horizontal stripe to represent power. The screen is polished piano black and makes the display stand out. The controls for the display options are at the side of the screen, and my only complaint about these is that they’re not particularly obvious, preferring to maintain the blackness of the entire screen than add anything that would make them stand out as an obvious control feature. Samsung tries to compensate for this by having a navigation bar on screen that tells you what button is where, but i’m still finding myself pressing the wrong button when controlling the menu interface. This is a small niggle, and I’d far rather have the controls on the side than the front, for aesthetic reasons.

Screen Options and Calibration

The Samsung SM2333SW runs at a screen resolution of 1920×1080 pixels on a 23″ widescreen monitor size. If you want non technical “market” jargon, the resolution is True HD. This means you’ll need a fairly powerful computer if you intend to use it for gaming. Games that aren’t able to support this resolution will be expanded to “best fit”. Luckily the monitor comes with an option called “Image Size” in its display options that allows you to determine whether you want to expand everything to widescreen, or to leave it at it’s native resolution. This means you’ll end up with black bars at the sides and possibly top, but it does stop games that are old from being overly expanded to ugly an degree.

The monitor is TN-Panel based. This can raise the ire of reviewers as Twisted Nematic is considered the weakest of the panel technologies. Sadly however most monitors on the market today use this technology due to it being cheap and the price war that it has created. To look for an alternative technology such as IPS you would need to spend a good amount and it may not be worth it. The good news is that TN has improved alot recently, and if you are using your monitor primarily for gaming or watching movies you’ll likely not notice the difference. You could even edit your photos and probably still not notice the difference. Professional experts however in photography may want to look for a more dedicated monitor. During our photo test the Samsung faired well but compared to the old Viewsonic VP930 it wasn’t as clear in colour clarity. The Samsung does have its advantages however over the old Viewsonic in that the monitors contrast, brightness and ability for colours to shine out was far better. Indeed in one photo the Samsung was able to point out blemishes the Viewsonic failed to notice.

Viewing angle also suffers though because of the TN based technology. This won’t affect you if you’re using the screen directly in front of you, but if you require the screen to be viewed at different angles similar to a television then you’ll find the colour and screen start to wash out beyond a 180 degree horizontal viewing angle, with similar results for vertical.

For testing of the monitor we put it through the LCD Monitor test images over at Lagom LCD Test. These images help to determine how an LCD monitor is performing and gives you a rough idea as to how to “calibrate” the options to improve it. Surprisingly the results of the image test found that the monitor was already calibrated out of the box, and by the end of the test no adjustments on how the monitor is set up occurred. This may change as usage continues and we’ll update this page if neccessary. During the colour test all colours displayed perfectly, but due to the technology the monitor uses the lilac/purple screen did show noticable differences in colour wash, with the top of the screen a pinkish lilac colour and the bottom of the screen becoming more deep purple.

The menu system is rather helpful and as mentioned earlier attempts to compensate for somewhat difficult to see buttons by offering an on screen interface that shows where the buttons are proportionally. The display options are fairly detailed, and give you good options in tuning the monitor as you like. They also include a magic tuning that will automatically tune the colours of the monitor depending on the scenario you are using the monitor for. At the moment these options are off for me as I prefer to control my colour and contrast options myself.

Testing

In order to test the SM2333SW we ran it through an assortment of every day applications we are likely to use. These include the internet, the game Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and the recent Tron Legacy trailer.

Our first port of call was internet usage and everything is HUGE! Even as I type this there is wide open space to type things and even though I might be on another line by now i’m still on the first line and wheeeeee!!! It’s actually fairly daunting for me since my old monitor was a 20″ standard TFT screen that ran at 1280×1024. Be warned if you’re making the leap into widescreen monitor usage that things appear LARGE and small all at the same time. Happily though everything displayed online is crisp and sharp without being to jaggedy. Text and images both appear bright without any loss of colour or saturation. Flicking through pages quickly results in no refresh rate jutter or ghosting of text.

Our next test was with gaming. Loading up Battlefield: Bad Company 2 I found the colours to be oddly richer than the screen is in normal use. As a comparison I shut it down and attempted another game (Rollercoaster Tycoon 3) and found the colours to be normal. I can only conclude therefore it was Bad Company 2′s fault! Continuing on, the screen suffered from no ghosting during hectic fighting in the desert, and thankfully my graphics card was able to cope with the new resolution push. My only complaint may be that the contrast is a bit too high in the game. Desert based maps for instance were extremely blinding, with objects in the distance becoming difficult to see. To investigate further I switched on Team Fortress 2, but didn’t notice the same problem.

Our last test was with a movie. For this we downloaded the recently released Tron Legacy trailer at 1080p. I was happy to find the monitor performed very well with the movie at full screen – the movie was rich in colour and was very sharp with HD quality goodness! Again no ghosting or artifacts occured and the movie played out excellently.

Conclusion

The Samsung SM2333SW is priced at around £160, and for that you get a very good bang for buck. The packaging, image quality and ability of the Samsung is brilliant. Like most Samsung monitors on the market it breathes style and looks well built. This monitor is definitely recommended if you’re thinking about going into the Widescreen future. The colour and clarity will wow you and despite a few niggling faults and that these monitors continue to use budget technology of TN, I would still highly recommend it.

Pros

-Excellent Colour, Contrast and Brightness

-Very good image quality all round

-Easy to construct compared to older Samsung monitor stands.

Cons

-Stand feels a bit wobbly

-TN panel may put off some people

-Photo quality will likely be better on more expensive monitors.

Score: 4.5/5