Monday 14 January, 2008

GAMEPLAY:
After playing the campaign mode for a while I switched to the multiplayer mode on Xbox live. There are a variety of modes to play in, but I chose to play the normal team deathmatch. The teams are limited to 4 per side, which at first seemed a bit small but after playing multiple games, it is an adequate number for the size of the maps.

Getting cover in multiplayer is even more essential in multiplayer as the people you play against will waste no time taking advantage of you being in the open. This definitely gives an advantage to teams that can communicate with one another and provide cover fire and out flank the other team. Still with all the different kind of weapons and chainsaws the outcome of the match is always unpredictable. And the good part about having only 4 people per team is that if you die early on you only have to wait for 3 other people to die till the next round.

DESIGN:
This is without a doubt one of the best action shooter video games I’ve ever played. The cover system that is essential to the game is very intuitive to use. By pressing the “A” button near a wall or barrier the character will press itself up against it. Pointing the movement joystick one way and pressing “A” again will make the character swap to another nearby piece of cover, and just pressing “A” will take the character off the wall. There is also a sprint your character can go into by holding down the “A” button. This feature starts a tunnel vision that while enabling you to run faster limits your maneuverability and vision. The only problem with all this is that all the features rely on the “A” button. While it may be simple to remember, I often found myself sticking to a wall when I wanted to sprint around a corner, or swapping to another wall when I wanted to get off the wall and run forward.

The game also has a cool active reloading feature that rewards your accuracy. When you want to reload you just have to press the right clicker a line will move along a bar and depend on when you stop the bar again you will be rewarded with a damage bonus for your next couple of shots or a jammed gun.

Despite the games short campaign, the multiplayer more than makes up for it, and is sure to be the games main appeal to most players.

Very nice work. I like your commentary in the gameplay section, and you did a great job of conveying why you enjoy the game. I'd like to see more on why you think the multiplayer makes up for the short single player campaign.

What do you feel makes this game "innovative", as you claim in the summary? Other than being fun (which I completely agree with), what makes this game stand out from others in its genre in terms of game design?

-Gillian Smith (TA)