JD's Videogame Awards 2014

It’s time for me to hand out my videogame awards for titles released in 2014.

 

Games like Tomb Raider: The Definitive Edition, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and GTA V are not eligible, as they are re-releases.

 

Best Graphics

Assassin’s Creed Unity

 

Best Gameplay

Titanfall

 

Best Story

Watch Dogs

Best Music / Score

Alien: Isolation

 

Best Sound

Alien: Isolation

 

Best Acting

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

 

Most Innovative

Alien Isolation

 

Best Local Multiplayer

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

 

Best Online Multiplayer

Titanfall

 

Favourite Game

Titanfall

 

Best Game

Alien Isolation

 

Games on my watchlist for 2015:

Tom Clancy’s The Division

Star Wars Battlefront

Mirror’s Edge

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt

Call of Duty

Battlefield Hardline

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Forza Motorsport 6

NHL 16

Madden NFL 16

Assassin’s Creed

 

What are you looking forward to?

JD's Film Awards 2014

It’s that time again for me to hand out my Film Awards. These are for films released in 2014 and that I saw either in the cinema or on DVD.

 

Best Actor

Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

 

Best Actress

Amy Adams (American Hustle)

 

Best Music / Score

Interstellar

 

Best Sound

Interstellar

 

Best Screenplay

The Wolf of Wall Street

  

Best Story

Two Faces of January

 

Best Special Effects

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

 

Best Director

Richard Linklater (Boyhood)

 

Best Film

Boyhood

I would have liked to have seen Exodus: Gods and Kings and I have a feeling it would have been up there for the Special Effects award if not more. But sadly, I just didn’t get chance.

 

Films on my radar for 2015:

Whiplash

American Sniper

Foxcatcher

The Theory of Everything

Spectre

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens

Fast and Furious 7

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Ant-Man

Terminator: Genisys

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

Big Hero 6

 

What will your next film be?

Come the Revolution: The many troubles of Homefront

Since its release in 2011, I have been a big supporter of Homefront, but it isn’t an IP that has made it easy for you to love.

 

Developed by Kaos Studios and released by THQ in 2011, Homefront is a first-person shooter telling the story of a united Korean republic invading a weakened United States in 2025.

 

The gameplay is your standard shooter fare, though the action is fun and explosive. The campaign is gritty and pushes the boundaries compared to the action movie-esque shenanigans of the likes of Call of Duty.

 

Review-wise the campaign was criticised for being too short. Now I don’t really mind this myself as life is busy and I like games that don’t take forever to get to the point, but at barely 4 hours long, I can see where the critics are coming from.

The multiplayer received the most praise on release and it really is brilliant – or should I say was (more on that shortly).

Large maps, a high player count and with satisfying gameplay the multiplayer, for me at least, was one of the strongest examples on store shelves at the time.

Its primary innovation was the Battle Points system. Traditionally, points earned in multiplayer matches can be used to upgrade your gear and abilities back in the lobby, but Homefront allowed points to be spent during the multiplayer games themselves. After gaining points from kills and capturing objectives, you could then choose to spend these points on the likes of weapons and drones or let them mount up in order to spend on larger assets like helicopters and tanks.

This system made for matches that started out fairly low-key, but by the end were chaotic with armoured vehicles rumbling around the field and choppers harassing your overhead.

 

The multiplayer was not without its problems though. Technical issues plagued the game from the start making partying up with friends almost impossible. These issues were eventually ironed out for the most part, but the game still had poor map rotation, few customization options and some connection issues still lingered.

 

Despite its problems Homefront had a small but loyal following. Not enough for THQ it seemed, as Kaos Studios was closed in June 2011, a mere 3 months after the game’s release. Nevertheless, the publisher announced strong sales for the game and that a sequel would be developed by Crytek UK.

 

Things were left unclear when THQ filed for bankruptcy in December 2012 which finally closed the door on Homefront’s multiplayer outside of private matches.

Crytek bought the rights to the franchise in January for $544,218 and announced they were co-developing Homefront: The Revolution with Deep Silver Studios.

 

Shifting the action from San Francisco, the game will be set two years after the events of Homefront and four years into Korea’s occupation. Following a new uprising in Philadelphia, the game promises to be much less linear than the original, with an open-world design, allowing for random events to occur in the world around you that you can choose to take part in, ignore, or use as distractions to your advantage.

 

Financial problems then hit Crytek with reports of missed wages and bonuses for staff. A number of employees filed grievances against the company and some left entirely – the Homefront director Hasit Zala amongst them.

 

By July 2014 Crytek had to admit to being in a “transitional phase” of restructuring which ultimately led to the Homefront property being sold to Koch Media, Deep Silver’s parent company.

 

Homefront: the Revolution would now be solely in the hands of Deep Silver Studios, though under British transfer laws, all Crytek UK employees would be moved over also, giving some cohesiveness to the project and the vision of the game.

 

Looking at the breakdown of the game on console I have concerns that the multiplayer aspect currently reads “co-op” only. Surely they haven’t ditched the strongest element of the original game have they?

Considering this franchise’s turbulent history, nothing would surprise me at this point – except maybe the game getting a release date. At the time of writing, Homefront: The Revolution has no clear release window beyond “TBA 2015”.

 

Pre-orders are still being taken at retailers, however, so for those of us who have supported the property since 2011 and have campaigned and clamoured for its return – there is still hope.

 

Home is where the war is.

Slide....

I couldn't sleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling, listening to the house cool and settle. Something was bothering me and I knew what it was. I reached for the bedside table, grabbed my phone and without hesitation, deleted two apps....

I’m not sure exactly when it started, but it’s been growing for a while. Whenever I took my phone from my pocket or reached over to check it at work, there’d be a tiny pin prick of annoyance somewhere inside my head. A little niggle of frustration.
This feeling made me notice a few things about myself. How I’d take my phone with me to another room of the house if I was planning on spending some time in there, eg. from the kitchen while we were in there eating, to the Xbox while I’m playing games, to the lounge while I’m watching TV. How, whenever I found myself waiting for anything - in a queue, on a train platform, in a Doctors’ waiting room - I’d whip out the phone and be staring zombie-like into it until my train arrived or my name was called.

And I noticed the people around me doing the same. Every other person looking down at their phone. We used to watch the world go by, now it’s going by without us.
People come round to visit and ask for your wi-fi password and I’m not judging, because I’ve done the same. Everyone sat around the tv, a phone or tablet under-lighting their faces a pale deathly blue.

These devices are sold to us in adverts that show how full and joyous life can be with beautiful people and euphoric anthems. The reality is hunched over in the dark trying to get past level 312 on Candy Crush.

"The things you own end up owning you."

As these thoughts and observations grew in me and began to fester, several things happened that just hammered the point home.

The Look Up video was released. 

Parody it all you want on YouTube, if you don’t see yourself somewhere in this video, you’re probably lying or you have a bigger problem than you thought - one you can’t see.

Then this one - sincere and hitting all the right buttons.

Passenger - the great sing/songwriter Mike Rosenberg - released Scare Away the Dark with the line: “We should stare at the stars and not just at screens.”

The main character in my film of the year, Boyhood talks about the subject of phones and social media taking over our lives and experiences.

All these things clarified what I had already been feeling. They gave coherent words to my babbling thoughts.

So; what’s to be done about it? It isn’t my place of course to try to change anyone else, so these are just a few things I've come up with for myself.

One way would just be to ditch the phone and social media accounts, but here’s the thing - I’m not going all Tyler Durden on you here. This isn’t a tirade on technology. Technology is good. I enjoy talking about card games with a select few on Twitter and I enjoy sharing trailers and discussion on the videogame page I’ve created on Facebook. These things are not inherently bad; I just think we need to take a step back a bit. I don’t need the immediacy of Twitter news. I don’t need to know right then and there that a friend has announced something on their status. These things will wait. I’ll catch up.

I often check my phone for messages because I don’t like being late. I don’t like the idea that anyone is waiting on me to get back to them. I just need somehow to relax a little and realise that if it was urgent, if they needed an answer right away, they’d call.

So this is what I’m trying out:

I’ve deleted the Facebook and Twitter apps from my phone.
I have also deleted the app for an Xbox forum  I am a member of.
I found when at times I didn’t have a good enough mobile Internet reception to use Facebook or Twitter, I would look through my photos. So I am going to back these up on my computer and take them off the phone.

I will take 10 - 15 minutes each evening to open my tablet or laptop and check Facebook, Twitter, the Xbox Forum, my YouTube subscriptions and other websites to catch up on any news I’ve missed or things I might be interested in. Then it gets switched off.

I have set my text message tone to repeat 3 times if I don’t hear it the first time, so that I don’t feel inclined to keep checking my phone whenever I pass it.

At work, my phone is switched off. I will make sure that anyone who might need to get in touch with me urgently at work, has the details to do so.

When I’m at home, the phone gets put down somewhere and stays there until being used as an alarm for the morning.

When I’m leaving the house for something other than work, I’ll decide whether I need my phone. If I’m out with my fiancée somewhere we’re not likely to separate, I could simply ask my parent’s to call her if they need to reach me in a hurry.

Those are the ideas I’ve come up with so far and I’ll update you with how it goes and whether they’re enough, or whether I just need to dig out the Nokia 3310 and throw the “smart” phone in the bin.

He shoots! He scores! - Review: NHL 15

I was there. At the beginning. EA Hockey on the Sega Megadrive, 1991. Sure, there have been gaps since then. I got the follow-up, NHLPA ’93, but didn’t get another until NHL 2000 on the Playstation and then it was 2004 on the PS2. Being a fantastic game, it suited me just fine until a new console and the next big step up for the series in NHL 07. From then, I haven’t missed an entry.

There have been misteps along the way for sure. In NHL 08, while spoken of with reverence by myself and friends, it was - if we’re honest - a little too easy to score. NHL 09 went totally in the other direction, making it incredibly hard to hit the back of the net. NHL 10 balanced things out, but then 11 and 12 could be accused of treading water. But for the most part, EA’s NHL series has been an awesome ride through the years and NHL 13 and 14 came along and perfected the formula - Truly great hockey games and amongst the best sports games on the market.

With the arrival of new consoles I was particularly looking forward to NHL 15. Every year as a new entry in the series approaches, my mates and I always say “they’ll never beat this year’s.” But they always do.
Will we be able to say that next year before NHL 16 is released? Probably not actually, but that isn’t to say NHL 15 isn’t great. Let’s get into it….

Visuals:
NHL 13 and 14 looked the business, but the last gen consoles could only take things so far. NHL 15 is perhaps not the biggest jump visually as you might expect, at least not at first glance. But once you pay attention to the details, you’ll appreciate a lot more. On the ice the player’s faces look better than ever, more life-like and expressive. Around the rink you’ll see Ray Ferraro in his booth, TV crews and cameramen. Further back, a lot of attention has been paid to the arenas this year. They all look very distinctive and, I’m sure, as identical to their real-life counterparts as they could get. 

There are now over 9000 individual crowd models, which makes repetition hard to spot and the folks in the seats are animated and individual. You’ll see people in outfits for their team trying to get the crowd fired up; some fans remain seated even when their team scores; they bang on the glass when your players are against it fighting for the puck; they taunt visiting team players in the penalty box; you’ll find away fans dotted around the arena or grouped together in the cheap seats; security staff stand at the exits.

Gameplay:
When they switched fighting back to third person in NHL 14, that was it for me - there was nothing more I could think of that needed tweaking for gameplay - and NHL 15 hasn’t done a great deal. And that’s fine, because it plays like a dream. 

Commentary/Broadcast presentation:
The commentary has been a real sticking point for the series for some years now. They’ve basically been phoning it in each year. When they announced a deal with NBC and a whole new broadcast presentation and commentary team for NHL 15, I was excited to see the difference.

I don’t think the commentary is as good as it could have been, but as a whole, I’m enjoying the presentation.
Before each game you get a video of the home team’s stadium or city and then Mike Emrick and Ed Olczyk appear to open the broadcast. Their comments are quite generic, but as they are actually on camera at this point, you can understand it in this case. To their credit, some of the scenes do mention the home team and are specific to the city.
On the Ice, the commentators will talk about the starting goalies and any players to watch out for and when playing a season, Olczyk will often comment on a team’s progress so far.

The actual play by play is…..sufficient. It’s lively enough and does the job, but there are too many generic statements - “the player did this..” “he hit the opposing player…” and so on. Some of the statements are laughable: “We now have a scoreline other than zero-zero.” What?

I like the new broadcast presentation and I like the commentary team, but I think a lot of that comes from the fact we’ve had it the same for so long, so any change would have been welcome. When you play 2K’s NBA or baseball games, the commentary is truly remarkable - conversational and so varied you simply don’t notice any repetition. EA Sports have done a good job with NHL 15, but they aren’t quite there yet. The problem is, if the past is anything to go by, this will be the default commentary now for a good few years, so don’t expect much change next year.

Features:
Here’s the area responsible for some low review scores. As we approached release day, EA Sports admitted that some features would not be available in this year’s game. Strangely, some of the features would still be there in the last-gen versions, which puzzled everyone. EASHL is out, as is GM Connected and Be-A-Pro’s Live the Life, while continuing on last-gen versions, are not on the PS4 or Xbox One, leaving a very stripped down mode without even coach feedback or the ability to sim to your next shift.

Since launch, EA have added coach feedback back into to Be-A-Pro, 3 stars to the in-game menu, online play where every player on the ice can be user-controlled and other features, but for many, the fact that some fundamental options weren’t there to begin with has been jarring.

Personally, I didn’t play EASHL or GM Connected, so I wasn’t bothered by its absence and I don’t mind developers adding things post-launch, providing the core experience I came to the dance for is present, correct and awesome - which in NHL 15, it is.

The move to new consoles was bound to be a bumpy ride, but NHL 15 has far from derailed the series. If you want a realistic sports game that plays brilliantly and looks great, NHL 15 comes highly recommended.
All EA Sports has to do for NHL 16 is add a few bells and whistles and it’ll be back into everyone’s good graces.

The pirate life for me - Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag

Oh, Assassin’s Creed, we’ve had our ups and downs, you and I. To be honest, probably more downs than ups. It couldn’t have started better for me. Sure, many people found the first game to be repetitive, but it had such ambition. Here was something genuinely new and exciting that played great and was the best looking game on the market.

Then Assassin’s Creed II came along and again the world and I disagreed. They found it to be a massive improvement on the first game and still consider it to be perhaps the best in the series. While I liked the new protagonist and loved the Italian setting, I found the game frustrating.

Brotherhood only continued this frustration on and it wasn’t until Revelations where I realised by the end that I’d felt more enjoyment than annoyance.

Assassin’s Creed III came with the promise of an overhaul. A new main character and historical setting. It did feel fresh, there was no doubt, but the tutorial ran to about 3 hours and the new character was terrible.

I was getting close to quitting the series. The yearly instalments were taking their toll on the franchise in much the same way as was happening with Call of Duty. But then, with a ho-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag crested the horizon.

Set in the Caribbean in the early 18th century, the fourth main entry in the series tells the story of Edward Kenway - a privateer-turned-pirate and his involvement with the Assassins order. The modern day sections are now little more than first person hacking mini games and though I wouldn’t want to do away with the sci-fi framing device, I think the added emphasis on the historical setting here is a good move. The wanted posters, over sensitive AI and need to buy and upgrade property - all the pointless and/or annoyances from the previous games - have been all but stripped away, leaving us with the stealthiest, smoothest Assassin’s game we’ve had in years.

The ship battles which were the best part of the third game make their appearance here (it is a pirate game after all) and they are great fun. Occasionally over the course of the game you will be told your ship - the Jackdaw - just isn’t up to the task of the next mission and this prompts a period of grinding out enough money to upgrade. That aside, the sequences at sea remain a fantastic addition to the series.

On land the gameplay, is a great deal of the time based on stealth, which I love and the main character is a massive step up from AC III - in that he has character!

On the last gen consoles Assassin’s Creed Rogue will be staying in this historical period, albeit with a protagonist on the Templar’s side hunting down the assassin’s. On the Xbox One and PS4, Ubisoft are moving the series to revolutionary France with Assassin’s Creed Unity and it’s looking very good indeed. For the time being though, Assassin’s Creed IV stands tall as - for me at least - the best entry in the franchise since the original and as welcome proof that there is life and innovation still to be found under the hood.

Has Battlefield lost its way?

While Battlefield as a franchise may not see the same sales figures as Call of Duty, it has become the connoisseur’s choice for military shooters. Only in Battlefield will you experience such scale, destruction and epic multiplayer gameplay.

With its Frostbite 2 engine, Battlefield 3 really set the bar , but with the power of the new consoles, the fourth instalment was all set to rise to the challenge. Bigger maps, “Levolution”, 64 player games, great visuals - Battlefield 4 can still, in my mind, be counted as the best multiplayer experience on the market. But online problems since launch have been so prevalent that you are unlikely to find an article on the Internet that doesn’t refer to Battlefield as a “troubled shooter”, as if it is getting over a bad break up and self-harming.

Connection issues, server problems and other issues, have overshadowed the game and its many achievements. EA have apologised. DICE have apologised. Was it rushed to market for the release of the new consoles? Was it simply too ambitious? Whatever the case, the developers and publishers involved will be looking to make the next game a much smoother transition to the masses.

But they’ve already hit a snag. Battlefield Hardline was announced earlier this year with this gameplay video.

It all looks great and a lot of fun, but it is difficult to pin down the game’s identity. Yes, they’re going for a cops and robbers theme, but is it sufficiently different from the normal Battlefield series? To me, it looks more like a DLC expansion that reskins the game as police against thieves instead of the military and heist game modes instead of Conquest and the like.
The beta for the game which has now ended, appears to have only highlighted the game’s similarities to its military cousins and EA have delayed the game into 2015, presumably to make it different enough to warrant a full price tag.

Battlefield as a franchise is very strong and has many fans, but with Titanfall a new and exciting entity and Call of Duty Advanced Warfare looking to revamp the aging series, the future for Battlefield is uncertain. With DICE also working on a new Star Wars Battlefront, perhaps it is time for Battlefield to take a break and come back stronger in a year or two.