Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

First things first I'm a huge Dawn of War fan and have loved all of the games up to Dawn of War 2 , Super excited when first details emerged from the game with the updated graphics and was also looking forward to the small yet more tactial battles that are similar to the style of play in Company of heroes and stays true to the tabletop relation of the game.

I have to admit I was a little apprehensive at the change Relic and Jonny Ebbert made to the existing and successful formula that was Dawn of war with a growing fan base that loved the straetgy in the game , the feel of the maps , large amounts of units on screen and generally the epicness that was happening.
With such a rich universe for game deveoplers to dive into the game had many different races all with their own unique story and background

Although the mechanics of the game have changed and no longer are there huge battles between dozens of squads of space marines and Orkz with tanks, aircrafts and large squads. The battles are scaled down but from playing the game espically in multiplayer I feel the game hasnt lost its epicness when it comes to battles , As its much more tactical on the multiplayer front with keeping units alive could be the tipping balance on winning or losing a game and the game still feels great with all the races having their each indivdual play styles such as eldar being the speedy stealthy type and you have huge towering space marines who are few in number but pack a hell of a punch and also the melee experts of the Orkz and Tyranids ,so everyones play style can be catered for in the game.

I wish the single player was as good as the multiplayer however as the single player doesnt seem to have a huge variety to it with reptitive missions that all seem the same and dont require as much tactical awareness and cunning as you need in the multiplayer. With the same objectivies of capture this or that building and kill the boss at the end of the mission which gets very boring very quickly even with the choice to choose which planets you visit.

Although the single player is lacking the multiplayer really does it for me with more gorgeous maps coming out every few months and more variety such as new game modes, new customizable limits on time and victory points the game is becoming a hot competitive game and with epic 6 player battles which with two equal teams can be awesome and tense and either win or lose you usually have a great game.
1v1 maps are just as tactical and tense as 3v3 and 2v2 maps as there is no base building all the action is orientated on creating and looking after units as well as upgrading them, so keeping your squads alive is in this Dawn of war is just as important as capturing victory points or annihilating the enemy headquarters depending on which game mode choose.

With continued support on the game expected with new maps and game modes on the way the game hasn’t run out of steam yet. With expansions expected as Relic have done in the past with the Dow series and in their other games , Dawn of War 2 is expected to go on being fun for a long time yet especially with the potential of the Warhammer 40,000 universe for Relic and other developers to dive into.

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Grand Theft Auto : IV

I'm a big GTA fan and I've played most of the GTA's with my first being GTA : London which was just my favourite game for a long time being its in London and the UK , even if you couldnt tell it was in the UK due to the graphics being well not the best.

Grand Theft 2 Auto was released soon after GTA: London in October 1999 and with improved graphics and the location returned back to the USA and was my favourite game once again from a GTA game.
Fast fowarding to October 2001 when for me the series really hit its breakthrough status for the series with GTA : III when the series moved from a top down view to a 3rd person view and the graphics were amazing at the time and the eventual release of Vice city a year later also boosted respect from crtics , gamers and average people alike on how far the series has come and how it continues to improve on each and every new GTA that is released.

The series continued to improve with GTA : San Andreas adding a great new character and the challenges he faces and the series continued to amaze people , and now we arrive to the latest GTA , GTA:IV which arrived on 29 April 2008.
I'm usually a huge GTA fan but I was so occupied with some great games in 2008 and had a little bit of media blackout while playing Team Fortress 2.I was also carrying on with some of my other top 10 games like DOW:Dark Crusade and with 2009 I had Uncharted 2 on the ps3. I tried to keep up to date with  MW2 news as well , and of course my favourite RTS game the total war series specficily  Empire : Total War.
But I eventually picked up the game for my PC at the end of 2009 , but while I was reading about the PC version of the game I noticed how people were having lots of problems with trying to get it to run efficiently and trying to get through all the garbage of Games for windows live and Rockstar Social club.
After a very long installation I loaded up the game , started a new game but the game was recieving errors here there and everywhere but after extensive tweaking the game finally worked.

First things first the game looks absoultley amazing on the PC version if you get it to work that is and on full settings as even on strong system there is some frame issues in certain parts.

(Take in mind this screen isnt on max settingson my computer)

There is another cool character on the block this time around called Niko Bellic who is a Ex-solider from a war (Bosninan war) in Europe and comes in search of the American dream off a ship.
Following his cousin Roman who persuaded Niko to leave Europe for the promise and opportunity of America , but realises its not all what Roman said it was chopped up to be.
While settling in Niko meets some of Roman's "friends" who he gets involved with in order to save Roman from any harm and this is the beginning of Niko falling into crime , gangs and violence.
The guns in the game are pretty similar to the San Andreas and Vice City with some refinements and a new cover system in place to add a new straetgy to the game and so you dont get shot to pieces as quickly as you would in San Andreas if you were surrounded by cops or thugs or possibly both.

Like all GTA's the story and character of the game are top class with Michael Hollick voicing Niko Bellic and rightfully winning Best Male Voice Actor at the 2009 Video Game Awards.
The games main story focus is Niko looking for a ex-soldier like himself from the Bosnian war who betrayed his friends and squad whom all of which were killed in the set up.
He follows one of them to Liberty City only to find there are actually 2 of them in Liberty City , revealing any more may spoil the story for some , So I will stop there.

The multiplayer is actually good fun as a maximum of 32 players can cause havoc in the city blowing up every and anything and a large 15 game modes to play around with , also persistent ranks can be earned through earning cash and changes to traffic , police presence , weapons and may more.
For a game like GTA which is mainly concentrated on the single player aspect the multiplayer is really good fun with a large range of modes and 32 players its chaos but amazingly fun chaos!

The story overall is very gripping and is a fresh change from the standard characters who were mostly locals and knew a lot of the surrounding people where as Niko has none of that except his cousin , once again Rockstar have made another great GTA but still were able to keep it fresh and still managed to create a new awesome character and also those characters around him , I also like the choices you have to make in the game for some of the characters "should I kill this guy or not hmmm?" it changes how the game plays out which is great for playing the game through again.

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Thoughts on Modern Warfare 2 (PC)

The first Call of Duty game I played was Call of Duty 3 on the PS2; I was instantly hooked on its great multiplayer and generally loved the game and I hadn’t played any previous COD titles before then. When Call of Duty 4 was announced I was extremely excited , however to find out it was being developed by another developer and the time line had changed my initial thought and feeling was disappointment, although I had realised the setting from WW2 had dragged on from previous titles but I never did have a chance to play them all.
When Call of Duty 4 was released it set a new standard for modern FPS games when it was released in November 7, 2007 and dominated most other FPS games out there with unrivalled multiplayer and although a short campaign it was one hell of a roller coaster and had some tense actions and top notch missions lke "Overwatch" for example.

The one thing that made Call of Duty 4 one of my favourite games was the dedicated servers set up by many different clans, groups and people. The ability to mod the game was also a great part of the game with modding communities creating mods and maps that were top class and extended the life of the game for a whole lot longer, those mods also had some influence on some of the new modes and weapons on the sequel Modern Warfare 2.

Modern Warfare was also one of my favourite competitive games with great maps, good perks and solid weapons all that were carefully balanced and kept the game down to earth and a was a general solid experience (except with the dodgy spawn system , hackers , glitchers and a few others)
To my surprise Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 wouldn’t be supporting dedicated servers and with potentially no modding from the community , instead a new creation from Infinity Ward IWNet which would dictate what games players would go into and using a Peer2Peer system instead of a server solely dedicated to the game.

As from my experience with Peer2Peer from Free-2-play games that were relatively low budget games compared to the $40-50 million that was spent on the production of the game for Modern Warfare 2 , and a huge marketing and launch budget of $200 million. This seemed like a step backward for me personally as Infinity Ward just seemed to forget about the PC players and were trying to pull the PC in line with the consoles and as Infinity Ward had previously made Call of Duty games for the PC and gave full support to the PC community this moved surprised me.
I didn’t want to pre-judge the game but with thousands of petitions against the game to boycott it due to the dedicated server issue, I wasn’t far from that stage as I couldn’t see how long the game would last with no modding and a strict experience controlled by Infinity Ward. The increased price tag also was another annoying decision although I realise this isn’t anything to do with Infinity Ward but Activision, I did buy the game however as I just had to see what was done with the game and with the constant views of Infinity Ward and Robert Bowling claiming that IWNet was an improvement and would fit better to the general user base of everyone not the specific few.

With the promised of finding games quicker that match that users skills and relatively low lag and fast games, I felt this was too good to be true from IWNet and truth is, it is as for one I notice lag pretty often and it’s a regular occurrence and the host seems to have a slight advantage over the rest of the users and in competitive play that's criminal for a previous game that was one of the most competitive around.




Finding games can also vary depending on who is on and from where other people are , now this is also the same for dedicated servers in some aspects although someone from the UK could play someone from US and the lag would be barely noticeable , considering you can’t even do that for IWNet shows how restricted the experience can be.
There are some good points to IWNet with less effort required to find games and every mode seems to be regularly populated which in COD4 I found was a problem with a heavily limited amounts of games for certain modes but couldn’t play due to lack of players.

Another good point of IWNet is everyone is playing on a level playing field, with skill levels trying to be matched as close as possible and with fair teams is also a great advantage. With Dedicated servers however it would usually be clans Vs public and un-fair teams that were only based on numbers not skill level. This became frustrating at times in COD4 but with clans making parties and joining Public games to dominate most settings for MW2 much hasn’t changed in that sector , but they have nowhere else to go is the argument , although they have private parties to play amongst themselves it still isn’t the same as Dedicated servers with custom rules and clans staying away from public games and giving players the option who they want to play , maps , game types and many more all of which have been removed from the PC version of the game and once again the game limited.

Infinity Ward seems to want to dictate the gaming experience on how you play the game and restrict users on modding, but to me it seems the games potential will be greatly limited to what it could have achieved.
The campaign this time around is slightly similar to the first being it’s short but a roller coaster and with some familiar characters back on the scene it’s a decent campaign with some great missions like the "Cliff hanger" mission which had many different aspects in it from stealth to all at gun fights then to snow mobiles.

The story seems to be all over the place however as one minute you are fighting in the Slums of Brazil and the next minute busting someone out of a Russian prison then shooting civilians! This was highly controversial especially for a video game which I felt was nearly stepping over the line.



The story is over the top and is set out like a movie set more than a game, with a plot that seemed a little far fetched although I did enjoy the campaign, not so much the story though.



Spec ops was a new mode added onto the game that enabled 2 friends to hook up and play some pre-set missions set apart from the original campaign (being as there was no co-op in the campaign due to Infinity ward trying to keep a strict experience they wanted you to experience) , this mode is by far my favourite from the game with a different range of missions that require different skills for different situations and is a great experience two friends can have although one player must host the game and lag can sometimes get the better of the experience much like the multiplayer.
Overall Infinity Ward had taken some notice on what players wanted from Modern Warfare 2 especially multiplayer aspects with more customised weapons, perks, kill streaks, interesting maps, achievements and many more little things that make the multiplayer of the game pretty dam good from a public point of view but lacking towards the hardcore fan base.
The game uses very recognisable formula's from the console versions of the game and it seems Infinity Ward wanted to bring the PC version of the game in to line with the console games, but they just don’t seem to understand all 3 aren’t platforms have different users although PS3 and Xbox360 are quite similar and the PC is very unique in its own field.
Even with all the controversy I still like the game, but the life of the game I feel won’t be as long as COD4 or even World at War for that matter, although spec ops stole the show for me as my favourite part of the game and I hope other developers take not that Co-op game play is still alive and can be used in so many different ways and I hope to see more missions added in future DLC and more multiplayer DLC to go with it.

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