Archive for February, 2006

I want this recorded.

I’ve had this game since it came out, what with buying Half-Life 2 over Steam, but I’d not got around to playing it.

Chose a server at random (more or less, filtered it down to Euro servers that had anti-cheat stuff enabled) and leapt in. Wasn’t sure what was going on at first, but I soon got into it after working out that Assault class characters fit my style of play best. I even recaptured one of our flag point things that the enemy had taken. I learned the best ways round the map for an Assault payer. (Assault players have short range attacks that do a lot of damage. Up-close fighters, suited to interiors. Nasty, brutish and short, basically.) When the map finished, I was about half-way down my team’s rankings. Fair enough.

Then we moved to a different map. I was a Nazi and started in a railway station. This map (dod_surrender?) has three of the flag points and each team starts with one each. The idea – as it is on all maps – is for one team to capture all three. My team kicked arse. We won and won and won and won and kept on winning. Not only were we winning, but I was the top player on my team. Yes, me. The one who’s rubbish at all games ever. I had more deaths than anyone else on my team, I think. I had a fairly low kill count, though it wasn’t embarassingly low. But the list is sorted by the number of flag captures and I was at the top.

Of course, being an Assault trooper I’d be expected to get more fag captures than a defensive player. It’s pretty much my job. But the point is, I was doing it. And not doing it badly. And I wasn’t the only player on my team who was on the offensive side of things.

I was competent.

I think my Counter Strike days are over. For one thing, you respawn when you die in Day of Defeat, so no watching your team run around after you’ve died at the beginning of a round. No worrying about money, either – you just choose your class, which you can change whenever you like.

Excellent.

Hmm. I downloaded and tried this ages ago, but didn’t seem to mention it.

It’s basically a quick and simple version of Space Rangers, which isn’t such a bad thing.

Only trouble is, I can’t work out how combat works. I can’t seem to attack ships at all. Might be demo limitation or might be me being incredibly thick. Possibly both.

Seems okay. Really, really, really needs to be on Live Arcade.