I'm giving a few demos a whirl atm so I thought I'd give you my appraisal of them.

Call of Duty 4
Tried it, and bloody hell I died a lot more than I was expecting. But I think Infinity Ward realise that because it autosaves seemingly every 5 seconds (its actually after every small objective, but thats still a lot).
Shows off nice character animations but the gameplays nothing all that mind blowing if you ask me.
This was just the single player however. But I dont see the multiplayer being all that different. Just without the autosaving.

My opinion, entertaining, but too linear.

Enemy Territory:Quake Wars
I wasnt expecting too much from it after hearing average things about it, and thats about the jist of it. Shooting is just basic and the weapons don't seem to have much character i.e anything that sets them apart, vehicles are ok but nothing special and the whole promotion thing doesn't have any visible benefit, apart from letting you get a new, slightly different gun.
What I did like was the scope of the battles. I like the way you can set up long range artillery and target massive missiles on anything you want. The menu screen showing Strogg ships in orbit was nice too.

All in all, average.


Next up: Unreal Tournament 3

Unreal Tournament 3
Holy Christ on a bike! It's fantastic!
I came in having never played a UT before, but people are always saying how good it is. And for once they're right.
Installer stalled, and gave me some Ageia PhysX stuff I didnt ask for. And when I finally got in I had to deal with the unusual graphic options to make it not look like my avatar needed glasses (literally looked like someone had smeared lard over a camera lense).

But when it got going it was pure fun.

Weapons were colourful, vehicles were great to drive/hover/fly in (theres this one thats a speedy blighter, in which you can jump to get over obstacles and avoid fire, and hug the ground to crush everyone in your way. Brilliant.), and great sound. Looks fantastic too. Perhaps best of all theres no hanging around waiting to spawn.
It's pure unadulterated fraggage!


I had a few odd freezes for a few seconds (they were odd because it was on the smaller maps, not the massive vehicle ctf one), but its probably just my settings need fine tuning. And the fact that it's a demo.

I think I'll be buying this. Not immediately, but certainly at sometime in the near future. Just a great fun game.

Can't wait to try UT3 myself. I've always been a huge fan of the other tournament games!

me too, when I get my main PC working I'll definitely be buying it

UT 99 > Any of these newer UT games tbh

Although I don't really play UT99 anymore, but I was up there as one of the better iCTF / iDM players. I actually got selected in the England squad for a mod called Bunnytrack, but only played one game for us because all the main members were ill or on holiday or something.

While I agree in principle, I think you are doing yourself a massive disservice by dismissing it based on one level. The only other game that can touch COD4 in terms of immersive story telling and emotional engagement with characters is Half Life, another entirely linear game. The linearity is down to the fact that every scene is meticulously crafted for maximum effect. The key to getting the most out of COD single player is just to sit down and blast through the whole campaign in one marathon sitting. In essence it is an interactive movie where you get to shoot people in the face.
The multiplayer is similarly fantastic. COD has always remained my online FPS of choice and number 4 is no exception. The RPG style promotion and leveling system to unlock new weapons keeps you going for "one more game". The custom class system and use of perks is another fantastic addition. They vary from increased stopping power and extra ammo to "Martyr" where you drop a grenade on death and "Last Stand" where you can pistol your attacker with your dying breath. Its not quite as perfectly balanced as TF2, but with the right gun you and tactics you can dominate in any situation. Grenade spam is still a problem, but the handy indicators and ability to throw them back helps greatly.

I'm a bit biased though, I could play COD till my eyes bleed. You're not the first person to be unimpressed with it, but I do suggest you try the whole thing before you write it off completely.

Well, I watched gameplay videos and the ilk in the run up to its release, and I was never all that interested if I'm honest. If you ask me they should have either stuck with the WW2 theme that they were incredibly good at, or gone for a different war. All this modern combat stuff has become a dime a dozen these days, much like WW2 shooters before. Essentially they've jumped on another bandwagon. In fact, first time I saw it, thats exactly what I thought.

I had heard about the promotion system and tbh that puts me off. Not because I think it doesnt belong in an fps, but because as I see it, it would unbalance multiplayer games completely.
And I like a bit of replayability and expandability out of my games. I can see myself playing it through once, maybe twice, but no more than that. The advantage a game like Half Life has is that its easily moddable.

I presume you mean FPS games. There are, in my opinion, many games that could beat CoD 4 with story. emotion, characters etc. just not first person shooters.



Well, it looks like CoD 5 will be doing just that and taking the frachise back yo WWII according to internet rumour. Once again though, it's going to be developed by Treyarch and not Infinity Ward. Treyarch were the dev team behind CoD 3.

I do. I still think it stands out even outside the genre though. I'd take a bullet for Captain Price.

Im playing most o them except ETQW atm (and im hoping to get that too).

CoD4 is a great game but so far for me i agree with PCG in it being a little more detached and slightly less emotionally involving than the past games; purely because of the subject matter and the modern setting, though u could argue the topic itself was engaging enough to warrant the slightly vauge geographical placing and plot. On the other hand it is classic CoD underneath and looks better than ever, the game mechanics are great too as long as ur not expecting a Crysis-like sandbox, or MoHA style levels.

UT3- for someone coming into the UT experience, what a beautiful place to start! Pretty enough and a smooth-running bit of code. Underneath it feels like the same game- but i came to realise that was not a bad thing at all. And fgs its got hoverboards in it! God damn hoverboards!! All the old vehicles look like they're in (manta included, ur right spider classic vehicle!)- but on my demo there's no look at the bigass mech-tripod-ufo thing that i really wanted to see!

Im loving Bioshock more than anything tho- and ive avoided the reviews as much as poss being a massive system shock 1+2 fan and am enjoying the audio files that make up the story immensely. Theres just a physicality to the game thats hard to describe, all the water, smoke and crazy cartoonish detail, the kinetics of it all. Wonderous!

Crysis Ive just started playing- looks ridiculous, plays well (though a total hog)- but it really does feel quite a bit more like farcry than i thought it would- ill see how it plays out.
We've been spoilt with all these games!