Computers And Video Games

[Ananth]

Grand Theft Auto IV will be hitting the PC on Nov. 18 in North America and Nov. 21 in Europe.

Found this Info in so many G T A Forums. So, Is the GTA IV (PC) releasing in a weeks time??

[Aryan]

Originally Posted by ananth

Found this Info in so many G T A Forums. So, Is the GTA IV (PC) releasing in a weeks time??

Yes, probably! GTA-IV for the consoles have been a terrific game and have received with huge euphoria. Now, I just hope that the PC version of the same is as good, if not better, than the console version. I have been waiting forever for GTA-IV!

Just read through the review of Call of Duty - World At War and it seems to be a good game, though another World War shooter game is a little cliched. But, would ofcourse give it a try, nonetheless, since it's a CoD title!

[kriss]

Originally Posted by Aryan

Yes, probably! GTA-IV for the consoles have been a terrific game and have received with huge euphoria. Now, I just hope that the PC version of the same is as good, if not better, than the console version. I have been waiting forever for GTA-IV!

Just read through the review of Call of Duty - World At War and it seems to be a good game, though another World War shooter game is a little cliched. But, would ofcourse give it a try, nonetheless, since it's a CoD title!

@aryan... So you read review... Dont you know to post it here for poor souls like me ...who cant access gaming sites in office ??

[Aryan]

Originally Posted by kriss

@aryan... So you read review... Dont you know to post it here for poor souls like me ...who cant access gaming sites in office ??

Okay, here it is Kriss, courtesy IGN.

Call Of Duty - World At War PC Review.

Page-1
War, as Fallout 3 so famously puts it, never changes. While the weapons and tactics may differ, it's still about chaos and fear and the overwhelming of the senses as adrenaline surges through your veins. That's a hard experience to capture on a screen, but the Call of Duty series comes close thanks to its constant redefinition of what "11" is in terms of intensity for first-person shooters. Last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare delivered an awesome and varied single-player experience that was matched with an even better multiplayer suite, and it made for some really big shoes for Call of Duty: World at War to fill.

If you've been living in Antarctica the past year and haven't heard, then yes, World at War returns back to the series' World War II roots. This has caused no end of grumbling from fans of Modern Warfare's contemporary setting, as well as the fact that this installment was done by Treyarch, a sister-studio to Call of Duty-creator Infinity Ward. Treyarch did the somewhat-maligned Call of Duty 3, but the studio looks to atone for that by delivering a game with an impressive amount of content. There's a solid single-player campaign, co-op play, a huge multiplayer suite, and even a fun, silly mode featuring zombies.

It certainly helps that World at War focuses on the less popularized theaters of World War II. Instead of serving up Normandy and D-Day for what would have been the umpteenth time for World War II shooters, the game covers the island hopping campaign in the Pacific as well as the Red Army's reversal of the tide at Stalingrad all the way to the Fall of Berlin. This provides some interesting new battlefields set on sun-bleached coral atolls in the Pacific. You will see some more familiar spots with the bombed-out cities and farmlands ofthe Eastern Front missions, but it's still well done.

War tends to be a savage affair, but the Pacific and the Eastern Front were especially so. In the game, Japanese soldiers swarm out of the brush, erupting out of spider holes to charge straight at you in an attempt to run you through with their bayonets. They'll play dead and wait for you to walk into the middle of a trap. Though set outdoors, it feels like close-quarters combat much of the time. Meanwhile, the Russian Front is full of merciless moments; there's plenty of gunning down of wounded and unarmed soldiers by both sides, and sometimes you're asked to pull the trigger yourself.

This remains a Call of Duty game through and through. What that means is that the action is fast and fluid, as well as rigidly scripted. The success of the franchise proves that there's a vast audience for that, and this won't change anyone's mind. Enemy soldiers and your computer-controlled teammates respawn endlessly until you advance far enough to hit the triggers to make them stop reappearing. Then you advance to the next firefight and repeat the process over again. The thing is, you're far too busy shooting and ducking and dying to really notice much of the time. The sense of immersion is pretty complete.

There are plenty of deafening, large-scale set-piece battles, but there's also variation to change things up. Case in point is the PBY mission, where you man the guns on a Navy aircraft. At first glance, this seems to be a mirror to the Spectre Gunship mission in Modern Warfare; in both missions you rain fire down from above. But the Spectre Gunship mission has a cold detachment to it; those tiny blips on the screen that are human beings die from a foe that they cannot see and fight back against. In World at War's PBY mission, you're in the midst of a raging air and sea battle, taking damage and fighting for your life. Or there's a sniper mission to whack a German general that doesn't quite have the cat-and-mouse feeling of Modern Warfare's sniper level.

The campaign does suffer a bit due to its broad scope; the narrative skips over months at a time, showcasing the major battles of the war. The result is that the sense of story doesn't seem as strong as it did in Modern Warfare. It probably doesn't help that we all know how the war eventually turned out; Modern Warfare had the advantage of a fictionalized story with plenty of shocking twists and turns.

Page-2
All told, the single-player campaign is about as short as that in Modern Warfare, but it doesn't drag on. Plus, there's considerably more replayability here because the bulk of the campaign is playable in cooperative mode with up to three other players. I say the bulk because a handful of missions are missing, notably the sniper mission and the PBY mission; the former wouldn't make sense with four snipers, while the latter doesn't have enough room in the narrow PBY for more than one player to scamper about. Not only is the campaign in co-op, but there's also a Death Card system reminiscent of Halo 3's skull system. Scattered throughout the campaign are death cards that you can find. Each one unlocks a different capability, like Sticks & Stones, which only gives you a knife and dud grenades. Sure, it might seem strange, but it lets you have fun if you want to challenge yourself.

Given that it uses the Modern Warfare engine, World at War looks every bit as good on both the PC and the Xbox 360. I've always been impressed with the level of detail on everything; walk up to a fellow soldier and you can see the seams in their clothing. The most memorable visual in the game for me has to be the arterial blood spray that happens when a human body gets torn apart by explosions and gunfire. The dark red of the blood is in stark contrast to the dust and smoke in the air. And the frame rate is Call of Duty-smooth on both platforms from that I saw. (For comparison purposes, the PC I used had a Core 2 Quad processor with an 8800GTX and 2GB of RAM. All detail settings were set to maximum at 1920x1200 resolution.)

Activision tapped Hollywood's top talent for the voice acting. Kiefer Sutherland does his part for the Marines, while Gary Oldman is the main voice for the Russians. Sutherland's voice is so distinct that it's easy to imagine him in the recording booth, bellowing his lines into the microphone (that must have been some recording session). Oldman, who has made a career out of being an utter chameleon, is almost unrecognizable in his role, and he delivers a convincing Russian accent. The rest of the sound effects are as authentic as we've come to expect; when you hear the metallic thunk of various machine guns you know that the sound guys spent a lot of time shooting and recording those World War II guns in a desert somewhere. Yet it's the mixing of all these elements that makes a Call of Duty game; there's so much audio erupting all over the place, from gunfire, explosions, guys yelling out commands or warnings, the whistle of artillery above, to the rumbling of vehicles nearby. It all combines to create a rich soundscape comparable to those in movies.

Closing Comments
It's easy to be jaded about World War II shooters, but Treyarch makes a convincing argument to stay excited with World at War. The game is packed with a deep amount of gameplay to appeal to every type of player, from those who want to experience a gritty single-player campaign to those who like to play with their friends to those who just like to play multiplayer. This is a solid, confident shooter with plenty to offer the casual and hardcore alike.

Presentation - 9.0
Graphics - 9.0
Sound - 9.5
Gameplay - 9.5
Lasting Appeal - 9.5

OVERALL - 9.2 (Outstanding).

[kriss]

Thanks aryan...

[BOOO]

just started playing fallout3 last nite. looks good so far. similar to that of oblivion.

downloading the COD. I am a fan

[Aparajith]

Thanx a lot Aryan! I have always been a fan of the CoD series - right from part -1. And they sure have delivered. BTW any of u guys care to post the review of FallOut - 3 from ur POV(since most of u guys are already playing it).

As for FarCry - 2, well I simply hate that concept of shooting 3-5 times using a damn shotgun at the head of enemies to die; hate the concept of a guy having to sleep every now and then to continue his mission; hate the concept of inability to use weapons dropped by enemies; many more hates...
So FarCry - 2 is simply not my cup of tea!

[Aryan]

@BOOO: Kindly give us a first hand impression of CoD-5, for all of here who are waiting to get their hands on it.

@Apar: Yeah, FC-2 is a real monotonous game but not as boring as some other games.. But then again, when traveling takes most of the time in an so called FPS, it's bound to be dubbed boring and "without a soul". Anyways, as for Fallout-3, I have started playing it just a couple of days back and find it to be quite an amusing game.

You start as a child, right from the mother's womb and then slowly the character develops into an adult, and finally you get out of Vault-101 and the visuals just stares you flat on your face - it's phenomenal.

I hope the rest of the game turns out to be as good as the visuals, the art design, the sound, etc.

P.S:
I love my companion - Dogmeat..

[Aparajith]

Originally Posted by Aryan

I hope the rest of the game turns out to be as good as the visuals, the art design, the sound, etc.

Alright! I see that its ur new GTX card talking here!! But how is the overall gameplay compared to Crysis, Cod-4 etc?

[Aryan]

Originally Posted by Aparajith

Alright! I see that its ur new GTX card talking here!! But how is the overall gameplay compared to Crysis, Cod-4 etc?

I have had about 3-4 hours of playtime up until now, so I cannot really comment on the gameplay that deeply, but from what I have seen so far, the overall gameplay mechanics is pretty satisfying. About the V.A.T.S system of combat, although at first I found it to be a little too stretched for my personal liking, but with time I am now beginning to appreciate the use of it (not to mention having fun with it as well..)

So, yeah, overall I would say the gameplay is good, somewhat better than Oblivion even. The comparison with the Elder Scrolls series is bound to happen as 'Bethesda Studios' is behind both the games.

Crysis and CoD-5 are two different games and those cannot really be compared to a game like Fallout-3. The Elder Scrolls-IV Oblivion would be a more likely competitor (if at all there is a comparison). Crysis and Crysis Warhead are action games, while CoD-5 and games like Brothers In Arms and the likes ask for tactics et al when you play the titles but Fallout is a mix of both first person elements as well as RP (Role Playing).