Battlefield 1 (PC) Single Player Review

The single player portion of Battlefield 1 consists of a collection of individual missions called War Stories, set in different parts of the world. War Stories are definitely better than Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 campaigns, though not as good as Bad Company 2 in my opinion. I obviously did not give the single player any consideration when buying Battlefield 1. I purchased it purely for the multiplayer. I would have preferred to pay for the multiplayer portion of the game and skip the single player entirely, but that is not possible. Hopefully Battlefield will go back to its roots of being a multiplayer only game, at some point.

That said, I wanted to see what DICE did this time around. Here are all the missions ranked in the order I enjoyed them.

1. Storm of Steel

Battlefield 1 starts strong. They did a great job with the setting, and even though it is highly linear, it plays out well, and I liked the concept behind it. I played this mission in surround (3 x 2560x1440), and it was quite an experience. Although this war story is fairly short, I enjoyed it the most.

I know this is an overused term in game marketing, but this mission is very cinematic, and I mean that as a complement. It is unfortunate that this is about as good as it gets for the rest of the game. Once the first mission is completed, rest of the war stories open up and they can be played in any order.

One thing to be mentioned here is how the game is not optimized for a surround setup. There are sections where the game does not recognize the additional monitors and only renders on the primary screen. This is disappointing because I wanted to play the entire game in surround mode.



2. Friends in High Places

This is the story about an American pilot who manages to sneak his way into the Royal Flying Corps. What starts as a basic training in dog fighting, turns into a full scale war on the western front. The visuals are excellent, and I enjoyed the flying mechanics. I never play as a pilot in multiplayer, but I enjoyed it in the single player. The production value is very high here, just like in the first mission.

In terms of story, everything becomes very absurd towards the end, and all suspension of disbelief is lost. However, the gameplay is entertaining. I highly recommend playing this missions without the HUD elements.



3. Nothing is Written

This mission is set in the middle east, and the later part of the mission takes place in Sinai Desert. It is one of my favorite maps in multiplayer, and after playing this war story, I wish DICE would release a night version of the map. It looks beautiful.

Gameplay was enjoyable because its varied, and there are some interesting weapons that can be picked up from weapon crates. My favorites were the tank hunter rifle and automatico. I thought it was rather funny that main character, Zara Ghufran, gets to run around the desert, mowing enemies down with a Lewis Gun.



4. Avanti Savoia

I have absolutely no idea if any of this is historically accurate, but this mission felt very out of place in a WW1 game. That said, Monte Grappa looks great, and the weather effects are very well done. Another mission that needs to be played without the HUD.



5. Through Mud and Blood

In this mission, you get to drive a British landship through the enemy lines in Germany. I felt that the initial part of the story was well done, but yet again, it devolves into an absurd scenario towards the end. This is a thoroughly run of the mill mission.

Through Mud and Blood. 

6. The Runner

My least favorite mission of the lot. There is nothing original about this particular mission. You run from checkpoint to checkpoint, killing waves of enemies, and predetermined events will trigger cutscenes and it’s very reminiscent of Call of Duty like mission design - I am not a fan of this at all. Thankfully, it is over very quickly.

The Runner

Overall, the single player had a lot of potential especially after the excellent start the game got, but it was not capitalized. They resorted to the same gameplay design choices that we saw in countless modern military shooters.

I am hoping that DICE will give up on single player and focus their efforts on the multiplayer, especially if they cannot do justice to it.

Verdict - If you are contemplating purchasing this game, do so for the multiplayer, not for the single player.

Far Cry 3 (PC) Review

Contrary to the popular opinion, I did not enjoy Far Cry 2. I didn’t particularly like the setting, and the gameplay padding in the form of respawning guard posts was very annoying. When Far Cry 3 was announced, I did not have high hopes for it. I thought it was going to be another generic open world shooter made for the consoles and I completely ignored it.

In the winter of 2014, Far Cry franchise pack went on sale on Steam, and I thought it might be worth buying it because Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon were included. I paid $9.99 for it. I did not want to pay anywhere close to full price for these games because Far Cry 3 requires Uplay - even the version purchased on Steam.

No shooter is complete without the 1911

The story of Far Cry 3 centers around a group of tourists getting captured by pirates on a tropical island. The main character has to escape and defeat the pirates. There is a lot more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it.

The villain in the game received a lot of attention. I don’t get the hype for this character. I didn’t think it was badly written, quite the opposite, but it is by no means original. I still think Bioshock had the best villain in video games.

I enjoyed the gameplay in this game a lot more than Far Cry 2. Activating radio towers can be repetitive, it is not as bad as Far Cry 2 with respawning guard posts. In this game, whenever you capture an outpost, it gets taken over by the friendly forces, and it will turn into a safe zone, which can serve as a spawn point. This is way better than having to fight the same enemies repeatedly throughout the game.

Scenery in Far Cry 3

The shooting mechanics are well done, and there is quite bit of weapon variety, but not a whole lot of customization. As a Battlefield 4 player, I couldn’t help but notice how limited the customization was. That said, they got the core mechanics right, the weapons definitely handle very well.

It is possible to approach the outpost missions as you please, but the enemy AI has this supernatural ability to pinpoint your exact location within seconds. When one guard discovers your position, all the guards know where and what to look for. This can get annoying when using the stealth approach, but more often than not, I take a more direct approach, so it didn’t really matter to me. The few times that I tried, I found it to be less fun.

I do have to mention the UI and the constant hand holding throughout the game. I do not understand why single player games use 3D spotting. I can see this being useful to an extent in multiplayer games, but in my opinion, if at all this exists in single player games, there should be an option to turn it off. As it stands, every enemy can be “spotted”, which puts an overhead icon on the enemy, and this even includes the wildlife...bad game design.

Exploring the island is a lot of fun, from land vehicles to wing-suit, it’s got everything! This is the part I liked the most about the game. Exploring new areas, finding vantage points to take out enemies using a sniper rifle is very reminiscent of the first Far Cry game.

Trees on fire, like in Far Cry 2

Apart from the exploration, there is a lot crafting and leveling up mechanics in the game. I used them sparingly. The most important item to craft are the various syringes and backpacks. Syringe kits can be used for healing, and for other buffs such as the special vision which will allow you to scout the surroundings for wildlife etc.

I didn’t particularly care about the leveling up aspect of the game. This does not have a lot of impact on the gameplay, and I ignored it for the most part.

The story is not bad, but some of the missions can be a little annoying, especially when they devolve into QTEs.

All in all, I enjoyed the game, and I would recommend it.

Conclusion

+ Excellent visuals
+ Weapon variety
+ Strong gunplay
+ Large and entertaining map

- Quick time events
- Some missions can be repetitive

Verdict - Worth the price I paid for it.

Max Payne 3 (PC) Review

I was looking forward to a sequel to Max Payne 2 for many years. When Max Payne 3 was announced, I eagerly waited for the reviews. They confirmed what I had suspected, this game deviated quite a bit from the classic Max Payne games. This was disappointing for me, so I did not buy it at launch. I picked it up on a sale for $3.99.

I am glad I did not pay more because this game is a thoroughly disappointing experience for me. I will never replay it, and it was uninstalled the moment I finished the game.

Max Payne and Max Payne 2 were not just great games, but they were great PC games. They have all the features you would expect from a proper PC game - quick save, quick load, smooth controls, support for mods etc.

All of this is gone in Max Payne 3. Other than the visuals, everything took a step back from the previous games.

Graphics settings I used

The biggest complaint I have with the game is the gameplay, which has changed for the worse, in my opinion. It is heavily scripted. Every combat sequence is followed by a cut scene. It is not possible to enter and exit an area without a cinematic. It was interesting the first few times, but it gets old, very quickly. The game gives very little control to the player when it comes to exploring areas. Entering a room is now done in the form of an in-game cinematic.

Out of the 9 hours I spent playing the game on normal difficulty, I get the feeling that I was watching cut scenes for probably 50% of the time. This hurt the pacing of the game. It’s almost as if Rockstar wanted to make a movie, but were forced to add some gameplay to it.

The change of the setting did not work for me either. I prefer the snowy New England setting for Max Payne as opposed to the sunny, tropical Brazil. The comic book storytelling is replaced by blurry cinematics with a film grain filter. This does not feel like a Max Payne game, but more like a Kane Lynch game.

Favelas in Sao Paulo Brazil. Great graphics, but uncharacteristic setting, and linear gameplay hurt the game.

The smooth controls from the previous games are gone. They are replaced by relatively sluggish controls, which are very reminiscent of GTA 4, although not as bad. There is a cover mechanic, and every firefight devolves into a peaking from cover and taking pot shots at enemies. There is bullet time of course and it definitely works well, but even that is nothing original anymore. It has been done to death in video games since the first Max Payne.



The game is perfectly functional for me. I never had any technical issues. All my complaints with the game are gameplay related. There was some cool moments during the short campaign, but  overall it is a disappointment for me.

Verdict - Not Recommended.

Wolfenstein (2009) PC Review

Return to Castle Wolfenstein was one of my all time favorite FPS games. When Wolfenstein was announced in 2005, I had very high hopes because it was being developed by Raven Software. I thought they did a great job with Quake 4, which I  recently played, so things were looking up.

Having played it, I am not sure I am happy with the final product.

The story involves, the Nazi occult division on their quest for world domination, two factions that are out to stop them, a medallion which grants the person holding it some supernatural powers, set in the city of Isenstadt, in Germany.

The game has an open world design of sorts, but it's not very well done. It’s not a persistent open world like we see in S.T.A.L.K.E.R, but rather like the one in Far Cry 2. Everything from enemies to fuel barrels will respawn up on re-entering an area. This makes gameplay tedious because often times it is required to pass through certain areas repeatedly, and each time you encounter the same enemies. Other than padding the gameplay time, this does nothing to make the game better. I found it very boring.

Veil powers which are granted by the medallion, are fun to use. They are very similar to the abilities of the nanosuit from Crysis. It is sometimes possible to completely dominate enemies in certain situations with use of veil powers along with the very powerful weapons acquired later in the game. Combat benefits from this. Unlike the nanosuit in Crysis, veil powers can upgraded, which is an interesting addition.



While there are a lot of positive aspects such as visuals and sound, the gameplay has taken a step back. Manual/quick save and load are gone, the game uses a checkpoint system instead. I do not see any reason why a game like this on the PC needs to use a checkpoint save system. This is one of those unfortunate side effects of maintaining parity between platforms.

The boss fights at the end are a prime example of how not to design a game, at least for the PC. Given that there is no save feature, and the player has to defeat each boss multiple times just adds to the frustration. There was no fun to be had here for me.

Wolfenstein (2009) is not a bad game by any means. I did not enjoy it as much as the previous game. I do not mind recommending this to those that enjoy FPS games if they can find it for around $5.

Verdict - Wait for sale