Mass Effect 2 is so far one of the greatest games I have ever played. It is just like Mass Effect 1, but with better graphics and without boring stuff.

Good gameplay, great story, interesting world. I can’t say anything bad about this game. It doesn’t even have any of those boring RPG elements that Mass Effect 1 had.

Importing saves from me1 can changes lot of scenes on the second game. It is always fun to remember some things on the first game that comes up on the second one. Example meeting Wrex on Me2 is one of the best moments.

Well yeah, yet another post about game that everybody already knows.

Great game that you should try if you haven’t. (and don’t do the mistake I made, just play the me1 first)

Last weeks one game, one week post is some late, but that can’t be huge problem.

I played the first Mass Effect, I had some technical issues with it, but nothing big. (First I managed to delete my saves after 9 hours played… then the game had 2.5meg corrupted files and it took while to find the problem and force steam to redownload those files (verify cache didn’t work first time I tried))

Mass Effect is single player RPG-FPS game that is very much story based. The story is awesome, but the ability to change the way it goes makes it even better experience. If some character dies in the game, he/she is permanently death. He/she is dead even on the Mass Effect 2. So there is some big choices to make, and the results can change the dialogs lot.

The RPG is system is not very good, the inventory is broken and it is not fun to change weapons/mods to weapons. It is slow and annoying to use. (good that they fixed this to ME2.) Good that I dont need to use it lot. The leveling up system is also somehow broken. I really don’t care what level I am, because it seems like all enemies scale to my level so it is never too hard for my level. (And scaling of enemies is actually good thing) Skill tree is only RPG element that is not broken. (But it is better on ME2)

Combat is fun, but there is some features that I barely ever used, like commanding squad members to position/attack/etc. I only used the pause menu to activate skills. However the cover system is good. Works very well after some playing.

Most likely everybody knows that Mass Effect is good game and they won’t need more obvios stuff about the game. If you don’t have Mass Effect, just get it. It is one of the best games I have played.

This weeks game for my One week, One game project is Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter.

Serious Sam isn’t regular game in anyway. It is very weird game, from it names to the gameplay. I can’t really say that it is a good game, but I can’t say that it is a bad game either.

The story is horrible, some levels are extremely boring and gameplay is only about killing everything. I could easily write whine post and tell how horrible this game is, but I don’t.

Because I like this game. There is LOTS of stuff to shoot. It isn’t about the aiming skills or reflex, it is more about managing large groups of enemies. I really can’t say why I like it. It is just so fun to sometime just play something so stupid.

There is also a multiplayer that makes the game twice more fun. There isn’t much players on Serious Sam, but when you find server full of people, the game is seriously awesome. 12-24 people running and shooting everything that moves on same server is just so damn epic. Btw, I uploaded some demo files from game where I played on a 12 player server. If you want to see them, you can download them from the files section.

One thing to note, the game-engine is AWESOME. It can draw hundreds of objects with LONG view distance without any problems. Effects, textures and all the other stuff also looks nice. The engine is also very lightweight. (And it has nice console with some kind of lua stuff on it )

Just for note, I have not finished this game. I have played trough the first encounter in coop. But this is Serious Sam and nobody cares about the story. I just like to join random server and kill everybody.

I note right at the start of this post, that these two games can’t be compared, because they are totally different kind of games. Modern Warfare is more focused on infantry combat, as the Bad Company has vehicles and large destructible levels.

This post isn’t about which one is better, this is more like a dual review of both of the two games in one blog post.

Single player

Both games are heavily multiplayer based, but both have a single player campaign. Neither of these games have good campaign as some other great single player games like Half-Life or Portal, but they are worth of playing trough.

MW2 tries to get “cinematic” style and have succeed pretty well. The story isn’t great, but it is interesting enough. It jumps from place to place maybe too much. The problem is that the actual gameplay is mostly just “go and shoot everything” type of game.  Sometimes there is some random vehicle parts, but mostly the game is just going around and shooting people.

In mw2 I highly dislike some parts of the game. Especially those part where you need to rush forward to endless spawns of enemies. The regenerating-health system has its own disadvanges. Example in games where there is the normal health system, you can get to situation where you have only 1-15% of health and you need to move very carefully. But with regenerationg health system you can rush forwar. In some places this can become annoying, because you are at “hurt”-state for a long time when trying to push forward. Good example is the level on the screenshot below.

But in the mw2 has also couple of very good missions. The sneaking levels are just awesome. Example the “hidden” special ops mission is awesome. I also like the “Estate Takedown” mission.

In BC2 the story is somehow better, but the game itself isn’t so fun. Yes, there is lots of weapons and big levels and so on, but still. Its even more like just a random fights. It doesn’t have so many “wow” moments.

BC2 has nice cutscenes. I really like them, but the way how mw2 shows cutscenes is also great. Most of the loading videos are amazing on mw2, great way to “remove” the waiting when loading the level.

To note, I have not played trough the bc2 single player campaign. This is one reason why I say that mw2 has better single player. The bc2 just isn’t good enough to force me to play it trough in one weekend.

If you want a good single player game, buy Modern Warfare 2. It has much better singleplayer campaign.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is the most important part of both of these games.

Common for these games is that both of them have a leveling system with collecting xp,levels etc. I kinda don’t like the idea that players with better level in fps games would have better changes to kill other players, its not rpg, its fps! The real way to do leveling system in fps game is the way how Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or Enemy-Territory: Quake Wars does it.

In ET:QW there is two kinds of levels. There is “global” level that is just the total numbers on your stats site and then there is the campaign level. The campaign level is reseted every time the three map campaign ends. This way everybody has the same weapons at the start of the match, but still be able to gain new stuff.

But the way how ET:QW handles the unlocks may not work well on this kind of game with much many unlocks. And that brings a new problem. Balancing those weapons.

The main difference in mw2 and bc2 is the size. In bc2 you are small part of the bigger battle. The levels are also big and there is vehicles. The mw2 is more about small situations and quick combats.

BC2 is much more team oriented, because the levels are so big. Its hard to run to enemy base alone when the enemy outnumbers you easily. Thats why you need to go in as a team. In mw2 you can easily win the match alone.

The vehicles in bc2 are awesome. Movement, Physics, HUD, everything is so great on the vehicles!  This game has the best vehicle system I have seen in games. And the destructible environment just makes vehicles even more fun to use!

I can’t say which game has better multiplayer. I have played over 100 hours of the mw2 multiplayer and about of 20 hours of the bc2 multiplayer. If you like big battles with vehicles, take bc2. If you like infantry combat and 1v1 situations more, take the mw2. As the mw2 is starting to get boring slowly, I may move to play bc2.

Technical stuff

There is so much to say about the technical side of these games…

In my opinion, the mw2 game-engine is much better. It works, it crashes almost never and it has the snappy feel. Movement is great and everything just works. This game engine is maybe my third favorite engine. (My favorite is source and second favorite is unreal engine)

Mw2 has also much better netcode. There is only one problem in mw2 when talking only about the techical stuff. The lack of dedicated servers. It isn’t a huge problem, but when you get problems, its hell. Lots of failed to connect messages… Laggy games…. And so on…

But dedicated servers on BC2 haven’t ensure lag-free gaming. The engine just isn’t very good. First of the menu system is horrible. The server browser is the worst browser I have seen. The EA network stuff is horrible and slow. Why should I login every time when I start game? Why it can’t update my stats on background?

And the forstbite engine (the bc2 engine) is somehow bloated and laggy. It just doesn’t run smoothly as it could. Modern Warfare 2 looks better, and still runs much better on older computers without any problems.

The destructible environment can be a bit heavy, but not that heavy! And the destructible environment isn’t so “awesome” as told. The walls will destroy at the same places every time, for some reason the stairs are extremely solid material and some walls can never be destroyed. After playing Red Faction: Guerial, this just doesn’t feel so destructible. You can just open the pre-defined walls with your grenade launcher. The houses will fall time to exact same position every time… But yeah.

The destructible environment is great feature, I am not against it. You can’t just say that it is “modern” destruction. It is still just a pre-defined holes on walls. But still, it is pretty great feature.

Sound system in bc2 is AWESOME. There is “high-dynamic sound” or something that makes the audio sound so awesome. All the explosions, gun fires, battlecrys just melt so well together. This has the best sound environment I have seen in games.

The bc2 isn’t so horrible from technical side as it could sound from this text… It just isn’t perfect. Just make sure that your machine is powerful enough to run the game and you should not have any problems.

Mw2 has steamworks integration (Steam cloud, achievements, etc) and I love it. Steamworks should be on every game nowadays…

Cheat protection

Quick summary about anti cheat to the end.

BC2 uses punkbuster that I don’t like at all. Punkbuster kicks many more player from games just because the software bugs or you haven’t updated. It also doesn’t like steam overlay on same games for some reasons…. It had lots of problems at start, but now it is starting to work slowly…

MW2 uses VAC that is in my opinion the most successful anti-cheat system. The problem is that VAC is designed to be help for a server admins that kicks player first, but mw2 doesn’t have servers with admins… Because of the delayed bans, cheaters can ruin games for players for even weeks before the ban activates. This is not fault of VAC. Its iw’s fault that they didn’t include the dedicated servers… I have seen three cheaters in mw2 so far. So the problem isn’t so huge. (But some people have said that I have aimbot/wallhack. Its kinda weird that having better k/d ration than 10 makes some people think that you have all kind of cheats installed…)

Which I should buy?

At first, check if your machine runs bc2. It is bit heavy game.

The best choice is to buy both, but if you want to buy only one game:

UPDATE: Because there have been couple of patches to BC2 fixing many problems and lag issues, I can’t anymore say that MW2 is better. MW2 is only better in the single player, and buying it only because of the single player isn’t worth of it. Just get the BC2.

UPDATE2: About the graphics. BC2 is technically much better and has some really cool effects. However overall look of the MW2 may be somehow better in my opinion. You can’t really say which one is better, because it is everyone’s own opinion. Hell, maybe I just say that BC2 has better graphics and everybody can stop whining about it.

UPDATE3: Now I have played the single player campaing of the bc2 also. The story was much better than in the mw2, because it didn’t jump so much from place to place. But it was way too short… Update post may be coming soon.

• Take bc2, if you have computer that can run it.
• Take mw2, if you just want some kind of shooter and your computer can’t run BC2

Woah… That was a bit long post. Maybe this way I can forgive myself that I didn’t update this blog last week

Second version of my map is now released! Its whole new cave to discover.

While creating this map. I learned lots of things. Example, in this map I started to use Source engines Entity Input Output system to create scripted doors and traps. I also learned howto create doors.

As this is my second map, it may not be as great as it could be. But I would really like to get some feedback from this level. If you can/want, I would like if you would record demo from playing this level trough, and then sending it to me so I can see how the level works.

There is some things I could improve. There isn’t lots of props and some of the materials can look awkward. I also don’t have any assault/nodegraph system build, so most of enemies just wait that you come and kill them.

In case somebody wants to see what I have done, but can’t/doesn’t want to download the map, here is a video from the map. Please note that it is major spoiler.

Download links are at my project page. Please let me know what you think about this map.