Appletell review - Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Section: Software + Apps, Games, Features, Review Genre: First-Person Shooter Format: DVD Developer: Infinity Ward Mac Port: Aspyr Studios Mac Publisher: Aspyr System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.5.4, 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, 128MB ATI Radeon X1600 or Nvidia GeForce FX 7300 graphics card, 8.0GB free hard disk space plus 1GB swap file, mouse and keyboard Review Computer: 2.4GHz 24” Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, 2GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 Network Feature: Internet (TCP/IP) or LAN (TCP/IP) multiplayer supported Processor Compatibility: Intel only Price: $29.99 ESRB Rating: M (intense violence, strong language, blood and gore) Availability: Out now Official Website: www.callofduty.com As has been noted numerous times here at Appletell and throughout the gaming world, there are three things you can kill in computer games without fear of reproach: Nazis, zombies and Nazi zombies. If you like, you can lump aliens in with the zombies, and you can lump robots in with the Nazis. But you can’t use cops, hookers, marching bands or video game reviewers without expecting to eventually stand before Arlen Specter to explain why the downfall of modern civilization is not because of your little video game. And yet, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) is set in a realistic, timely world in which the battles you’re fighting don’t really stray from those you might hear about on “All Things Considered.” The developers get away with this for two reasons. First, then invent militant organizations to serve as their bad guys. Second, this game is a brutal depiction of war. Brutal to an unsettling degree. It doesn’t glorify war, and it doesn’t even really lionize soldiers. If this were a movie script, John Wayne and Chuck Norris would run from it in terror. Is that the appeal of CoD4? Not entirely. It’s the gameplay itself that drives CoD4 to the upper echelon of first-person shooters. More specifically, the multiplayer gameplay, because although the single player are varied and intense, they never really feel like more than a training session for the multiplayer game. In CoD4, you play the role of a United States Marine and a British S.A.S. operative. As with other Call of Duty games, you’re sent on different missions in which you will have different roles, usually assigned to you by your commanding NPC. Sometimes you’ll snipe, sometimes you’ll lead an attack, but almost always you’ll be accompanied by a squad of fellow soldiers who help you in your quest. Keeping your comrades alive can make things easier for you, but there’s never really an emotional involvement with them. You don’t get to know the bulk of them, you just see their names over the head as they run in front of you. Although there are some powerful story elements that make this game smarter than most war games, a little more care with the story leading up to these moments would have greatly improved their emotional impact. But, the developers made the decision—and probably correctly—that a combat-based game should focus on combat. Here, CoD4 delivers. You thought previous Call of Duty games were wild? Huh uh. The action on many of these levels is just insane, with enemies attacking you from all angles and using terrain and weapons better than any AI characters I’ve ever seen. Yes, they’ll occasionally poke their head out from around the wall to give you a chance to shoot them, but by the time they do, you’ve already been killed by a grenade that seemed to come from nowhere. Even a lot of the cover provided in the game won’t protect you long. In CoD4, bullets can travel through items such as wood, so it’s no longer enough to hunker down behind a table and wait for your shot. You’ve got to create your shot by making better use of the terrain and your weapons. This makes CoD4 quite difficult. In many cases, you’ll have to die multiple times before you can even figure out who’s killing you, let alone develop a strategy for killing him/them. It’s frustrating in that matter, and I anticipate that some gamers will be turned away early. Those who stick around, however, will be rewarded with a satisfying gaming experience, and the practice necessary to compete in the multiplayer game. Thankfully, there’s a lot there to satisfy. Mac users can play PC users online, first of all. And, unlike most multiplayer first-person shooters, CoD4 is somewhat RPG-like in its approach; the character you create is rewarded for kills, assists and such, allowing you to accrue experience points that unlock further levels. These, in turn, unlock new weapons, accessories and abilities. My favorites are “Martyrdom,” in which a dying character can go all Jennifer-Grey-in-Red Dawn by blowing up the enemy with a grenade, and “Last Stand,” in which a dying character will be able to get off a few more shots before dying. It’s all very Hollywood. I expect it won’t be long before they release the “I can’t move my legs, go on without me” mod or the “Tell my wife I was thinking about her” extension. What brings all of this together, of course, are the visual and audio effects. If you’ve got the system for it, CoD4 looks fantastic, even when the action is at its most intense. The smoke and particle effects are especially amazing, and really do become strategic elements. The audio is equally stunning, totally immersing you in the action in a way that graphics alone couldn’t accomplish. Using just my iMac’s speakers, I was impressed. Playing the game with headphones, I was floored. If you’ve got a decent set of speakers, your neighbors will be hiding in their basements. Of course, all of this comes at a price. My test computer is at the high end of the system requirements, and I still couldn’t max out the graphics. My home computer, which is my normal test system, is at the bottom end, and I had to dumb things down to the point where I knew I wasn’t doing the game justice. The game still plays, but it looses a lot of its punch. I’ve read numerous reports/reviews that claim Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the greatest first-person shooter of all time. I attribute that more to the emotional impact of the surprising turns along the way, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t an amazing game. The single player game seems shorter than previous Call of Duty games (setting aside all the restarts, of course), but flows well and serves as excellent training for the multiplayer version. There, you’ll be able to kill hours at a time, if you’re inclined to do so. You could also pop in and out within half an hour and still have plenty of fun. Well, as much fun as one can have in a game without zombies and robots. Appletell Rating Buy Call of Duty 4 Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Of gyroscopes and gaming: the tech behind the Wii MotionPlus

The new "MotionPlus" add-on for the Nintendo Wii is supposed to again revolutionize motion-controlled gaming. Check out this exclusive look at the tech in the MotionPlus direct from the source of the unit's powerful brain, InvenSense.Read More...

Appletell review - Sid Meier’s Pirates

Section: Software + Apps, Games, Features, Review Genre: Action/Sim Format: DVD Developer: Firaxis Mac Port: Robosoft Technologies Mac Publisher: Feral Interactive System Requirements: Mac OS X v10.4, 1.6GHz PowerPC, 512MB RAM, 64MB video card, 1.4GB free hard disk space Review Computer: 2GHz 20” Intel Core Duo iMac, 1GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon X1600 Network Feature: No Processor Compatibility: Universal Price: $29.99 ESRB Rating: E Availability: Out now Official Website: www.2kgames.com/pirates/pirates/home.php This review was a long time coming. I started preparing for this review 18 years ago when I first played Sid Meier’s Pirates on my Apple II GS. I also recall playing Pirates Gold on my LC II, but I didn’t like it as much. Can’t remember why, other than that it seemed the sea battles were relentless, and got in the way of the… Oh, wait. I’m not reviewing Pirates Gold. I’m reviewing Sid Meier’s Pirates for Mac OS X. From Feral Interactive. In 2008. It’s all just so weird, especially considering I’d given up hope that the 2004 remake for the PC, Xbox 360 and PSP would ever come to the Mac. But then, Feral announced its Legends Series, with Sid Meier’s Pirates as the flagship game. Joy! Come Friends Who Plough the Sea Rather than try to explain what type of game Pirates is, it may be easier to just say that it’s not a first-person shooter, and it’s not a hidden puzzle game. It is pretty much everything else. Pirates combines action, adventure, turn-based strategy, resource management, people sims and rhythm games (yes, rhythm games) into one unit. Each element stands on its own, but they work together well. The story is that your happy and apparently well-off family was about to sit down to a tasty meal, when the traditionally evil government-types barge in and send everyone away to prison. You escape, and grow up resorting to a life of piracy to get by. Throughout the game, the locations of various family members is revealed. Find them, and you’ll be rewarded with treasure tips and such. But, you don’t have to find your family. The beauty of Pirates is that the goal is simply to retire rich and married, and it’s completely up to you on how you get there. At the very beginning, you’re asked if you’d like to align yourself with the French, English, Spanish or Dutch. Once you decide, you’ll be told with whom your country is at war, so you’ll know whom to attack. The more enemy ships you plunder, the higher you’ll rank. National alignments change, though, so you may find yourself having to smooth out relations from time to time. Or, you can forgo any alignment and decide to live life as a true pirate, attacking everyone. I Am A Pirate King Attacking ships and towns yields money and goods. The money pays your crew, the goods can be sold for money. As you acquire more and bigger ships, you’ll need a larger crew, and keeping them fed and happy isn’t always easy. The unhappier they get, the harder it’ll be to keep them on and to hire new sailors, and it could even lead to mutiny. So, you attack the enemy. By sea, Pirates becomes an action/arcade game with you utilizing your best ship and wind direction to fire canon salvo into the hull of the enemy ship. Do enough damage, and the enemy will surrender. But, if you plan to add the ship to your fleet instead of sinking it, damaging it too much will lead to costly repairs. So, best to board it early and engage in a sword duel with the captain. Here, Pirates becomes a rhythm based game. Using the number pad, you dodge your enemy’s attack by hitting the appropriate button at the appropriate time (indicated by which attack he’s about to use), then use an attack of your own while he’s off balance. Score enough hits, and you win. Lose or take to long (your sailors are fighting all the while, and their numbers will be dropping), and you’ll find yourself walking the plank. When invading towns, battles are fought in real-time strategy mode on grid-based land. You move a squad of pirates on the grid, then attack those you can reach. Do this for each of your squads, then the computer gets its turn. If you eliminate the enemy or send them screaming into the woods, the town is yours. How Can I Live Without Her? In said towns, friendly or otherwise, you can visit the tavern to get important gossip and recruit sailors, go the merchant to sell or buy supplies, get your ships repaired or enhanced, and talk to the governor. The visits to the governor are very important as they lead to promotions and, well, the ladies. Apparently governors’ daughters are all smitten by pirates, and they all love to dance. You’ll be doing a lot of dancing in this game, and it’s played just like a sword fight. Your partner indicates which direction you’re to turn, and you quickly hit the corresponding number key to move in that direction. Dance well, and you’ll get more juicy gossip and perhaps a wife out of it. Dance badly, and you’ll be laughed out of town. You know, because pirates were always pretty big on dancing and marriage. These elements come together in a great package that plays quite a bit differently from most sim style games. The goal isn’t to set up a thriving economy or character you can tinker with forever. Rather, because the end is always in sight (retirement, you know), the game is about making as much money as possible in the short period of time you’re given. Pirates can be played in one sitting, or you can stretch it out over a couple of weeks. Finish it, and you just start again with a different affiliation in a different time period. Pumpin’ and Blowin’ Unfortunately, not everything is smooth, here. You spend a lot of time exploring (looking for people, buried treasures, specific ships, etc.), but there’s no handy map to help you along your way. You can pause the game to pull up an on-screen map, but it’s clunky and hard to read. The constant pausing gets in the way of game play, too. I’d rather a printed map be included, as with the old version. The note system is also a mess. At times, you’ll be given so many things to do that it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Key bits of dialog are saved to your journal, but there’s no way to separate your mission goals from random bits of gossip you may have picked up at a tavern. After trying for a week to make sense of the mission goals, I finally had to start writing them down on a piece of paper: ships with tremendous treasure, locations of key figures, which towns are paying the most for various goods, etc. It’s too much to manage without notes, and there’s simply no reason I should have to be writing them down myself. The game looks attractive enough, but dated. Some nice water and cloud effects enhance the sailing portion, but it’s the ambient sound effects that really carry the game. The wind and the surf are almost relaxing, and the music reminds you that these are happy pirates. Fun pirates. In other words, the type of the pirates that never actually existed. Happy Ending (version 1) Robosoft again did the port for Feral, and they continue to be one of the best porting houses out there. The game ran very well on my iMac (of course, Pirates being nearly five years old, it had certainly better run well on my iMac) and is built to run even with GMA graphics cards with shared RAM. Good to know that if you’re forgoing the new MacBooks to keep FireWire, you can still play some good games. Happy Ending (version 2) Sid Meier’s Pirates does feel dated at this point, which is not surprising considering the core gameplay hasn’t changed much since the 1980s. Hard core sim players will be put off by its simplicity, while hard core action gamers will grow bored with all the sailing and dancing. But for all of us in the middle, Pirates is a fantastic blend of genres, requiring just enough strategy and skill to keep it challenging while providing just enough adventure to keep the game moving. Yes, it’s old, but there’s a reason a game like Pirates continues to be updated 20 years after its initial release; because it deserves to be. Appletell Rating Buy Sid Meier’s Pirates Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

Thought control: it's the computer world's latest game plan

First came the joystick. Then came the motion-sensing Wii remote. Now get ready for another radical and rather unsettling leap in video games technology: thought control.

Appletell review - Bomberman Touch for iPhone/iPod touch

Section: iPhone + Communications, iPhone, iPhone SDK & Apps, Features, Review Genre: Arcade action Developer: Hudson Soft File Size: 9.3MB Version Reviewed: 1.0.1 Requirements: iPhone 2.0 software Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch Rating: 4+ Price $7.99 Throughout gaming history, there have been many popular men: Pac Man, Mega Man, Ms. Pac Man, Mega Man 2, Pac Man, Jr., Mega Man 3, and so on. Another of these is Bomberman; a little man who may actually be a robot with a white helmet who runs around mazes and blows stuff up. The franchise has been around forever, gracing pretty much every gaming system you can remember, and many you cannot (ZX Spectrum? Sharp MZ-700?). Recently, Bomberman could be found blasting himself free from the confines of your iPod. Now, he’s found his way to the iPhone/iPod touch. I guess when you’re Hudson Soft and you don’t have a lot of franchises to milk, you gotta milk the ones you do have for all they’re worth. And so… Man and Bomberman I’m not well-versed in the Bomberman lore. The iTunes App Store says the series has over 60 titles, of which I’ve played one. Well...two, now, if you include Bomberman Touch: The Legend of the Mystic Bomb. In the iPod version, you ran around the maze and dropped bombs, occasionally playing a mini-game to break up the action. Here on the iPhone, there’s a story. There are little cut scenes to watch and characters to meet and choices to make. I’m not sure how these enhance the gaming experience, or how much they’ve been used in the past. In this version, the story isn’t very interesting, or well-told, for that matter, and pretty much just gets in the way. In fact, everything you really need to know about what’s going on is already in the title. You’re a man, you have bombs, and there’s a legend about a mystic bomb. I think you’re smart enough to take it from there. Arms and the Bomberman Once the gameplay gets going, though, it’s old-school arcade action all the way. The point of Bomberman is to work your way through a maze in an effort to find the hidden exit. You do this by planting bombs, which explode in plus shapes to knock out the walls of the maze. Power-ups are often revealed, granting you larger explosions and such, which you’ll need to protect yourself from the myriad enemies along the way. In typical arcade fashion, they only have to touch you to kill you, while you have to blow them up. Plus, they are many, and you are one (or three, I guess). So, you’ll have to worry about avoiding/killing a good number of enemies as you develop your strategy for finding the exit and moving on to the next level. It’s not easy, and the task is exacerbated by a confounded timer that prevents you from just loitering about the maze. Major Bombera The design of Bomberman Touch is quite nice. The graphics are vivid and colorful, the sound is fantastic, and the mazes are vast. I guess that when you’ve been developing a franchise as long as Hudson has with Bomberman, you learn what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, the one thing that doesn’t work here is the one item that’s new to the iPhone: the controls. You drop a bomb by tapping the bomb button in the lower right corner of screen, so that’s simple enough. But you move Bomberman by placing a finger or thumb anywhere on the screen and dragging it in the direction you want to move. This seems simple enough, but is harder to execute that you’d think. The system isn’t that precise, and you’ll often find yourself overshooting the opening through which you want to run. When being chased by a bad guy or trying to avoid a bomb explosion, that can prove terribly frustrating. Also, you’ll find yourself constantly having to move and reset your control finger/thumb to either get to the bomb button or to see what’s going on beneath your hand. Constantly picking up and resetting your control finger is roughly the equivalent of dropping your gamepad every few seconds. Although the widescreen display makes for some big and elaborate puzzles, I’d prefer to see this extra retail space sacrificed for the placement of a virtual d-pad that remains in the same spot throughout the game. Bomberman Touch is already difficult enough without the faulty control system, so it can become terribly frustrating when you know what to do, but can’t seem to do it. And don’t even get me started on the Options menu, the button for which is placed so close to the gaming area that you’ll suddenly find yourself staring at the options screen three or four times per level. Almost as bad, when you finally complete a level, you know it’s only to move ahead to more of the same. The screens may look different, but the action is quite repetitious. This probably won’t bother fans of the franchise—this is what you want out of a Bomberman game, after all—but those coming in fresh will probably wonder how such a game managed to reach over 60 incarnations. The Bomberman of Destiny Bomberman Touch: The Legend of the Mystic Bomb is selling for $7.99. I think this price is a premium because of the name alone, and should actually go for $4.99. Most iPhone owners won’t actually finish all of the levels (even though there aren’t that many), but could still get their $5’s worth out of it. $8, and you’re pushing the cost/reward ratio. In fact, I think it’s more useful for simply showing off the iPhone as a gaming device for a few minutes than it is for sitting down to a prolonged gaming session. Maybe by Bomberman 70, they’ll have this all worked out. Appletell Rating: Purchase Bomberman Touch - The Legend of the Mystic Bomb Full Story » | Written by Kirk Hiner for Appletell. | Comment on this Article »

With new Wii Sports, Wii Music, the Wii's future is casual

Nintendo's press conference held few surprises, but a new Animal Crossing, Wii Sports, and the announcement of Wii Music show that Nintendo is more dedicated to the casual market than ever. Ars reports from Nintendo's E3 press conference.Read More...