Doggone: Mad Max vs Fallout 3 vs Book of Eli

Amazed I didn’t think of this sooner…

Where's Eli's dog?

Fallout 3 Left 4 Dead?

Looking back over the games of 2008 there were a couple of stand-outs with one sticking out like a sore thumb, or should I say a severed thumb. Left 4 Dead is fun to play in campaign mode with 3 buddies as you take on thousands of killer zombies or in versus mode where you can become one of the "boss" zombies and try to stop the survivors.

On the surface it's a brainless (pun!) shooter but when you get into it you need to really think about your strategies in order to survive, especially when you start playing on the harder difficulty levels. You need to stick together as a group, or in pairs at the very least, as the tables can turn in a second as a Hunter can take you down and rip you to shreds in an instant.

Then when you get into a versus game and you play as the infected your strategy flips from survival to ambush. Again working as a team here really makes a difference. If you go off on your own the survivors can easily fend you off but if you team up with the 3 other infected players you can take out all 4 survivors in short order. One of my favourite tactics is to have a Boomer vomit on or explode all over all 4 survivors (the bile attracts the horde). Then while the horde is attacking the survivors the 3 other infected players can attack.

One of the best aspects of the game is that you're not a super-human shooting machine or a futuristic warrior that just powers through the opposition. You get a real sense of being in peril and can even die during campaigns (you're magically resurrected if time permits as another survivor trapped in a closet). Without your teammates you're not going to last long and you breath an actual sigh of relief when (if!) you escape at the end.

L4D runs on a suped-up version of Valve's Source Engine and it runs really well. I was scooting along at high framerates at 1600x1200 with everything set to maximum but don't let that make you think it looks bad. While some of the textures are obviously low res the overall look of the game is dark and moody and in some places quite scary.

The screenshot here is of our little team of survivors posing in front of one of the many zombie movie fanboy references. This one is a lawnmower with lots of chopped up zombie bits as seen in Peter Jackson's Braindead... watch the click on YouTube if you have the stomach for it.

It seems as though I'm not the only one who thought L4D was a great game with the title winning more than 25 awards so far. Well done Valve, now how about some more maps?


While I'm talking games, I finally finished Fallout 3 over my Christmas break. Just over 40 hours of gameplay took me through so many environments, missions and landscapes in this crazily detailed post apocalpytic world that it's hard to believe it was all one game.

I played it on my PC after struggling to decide which platform to use as it's primarily a first person shooter and I had a blast. It ran like a train at 1280x1024 (yes, I still use a 4:3 monitor) with pretty much everything bumped up to maximum.

The best thing about Fallout 3 is that it was set in a refreshingly different world to all the other games around at the moment. It also didn't take itself too seriously with plenty of little jokes here and there including a crashed UFO complete with dead LGM and alien laser pistol.

Fallout 3 was a well realised and highly polished game, especially considering what it might have turned out to be if it had been finished back in 2004. It loaded up amazingly fast although it did have a tendency to hang on my system.

The best thing about it was that I actually finished it. I spent easily twice that time in Oblivion (Bethesda's previous game) and was stuck trying to complete the main story line.

Should I Get Fallout 3 on PC or Xbox 360?

I'm past the point of deciding whether or not to buy Fallout 3, my problem now is what platform to get it on.

I have a decent gaming PC (it does Crysis on Medium/High without trouble) and an Xbox 360 both of which have their own pros and cons and no matter how much I ponder the question there's never an obvious winner.

Both setups are running 5.1 audio with the Xbox 360 attached to a cheap-ass plasma and the PC using a 4:3 ratio 21" CRT monitor.

PC
Pros

• Finer control with the mouse for aiming and shooting in first person view. That said the game can be played using a non-realtime combat system where this pretty much becomes irrelevant.
• Can play with less chance of the kids walking in during one of those amazing "Crash Mode" death sequences.
• PC edition is $10 cheaper than the Xbox 360 version.
  

Cons

• I only have a 4:3 21" monitor but I am sitting closer to it.
• Moving around in the game is done in the third person (like Oblivion) which sucks dogs balls on a PC.
• No Achievements. :(
  

Xbox 360
Pros

• XBox 360 Achievements! Yes, I'm an Achievement whore...
• Third person movement is much more natural and intuitive with the analog sticks on the controller.

Cons

• Targeting in first person view is far from accurate with a controller but as mentioned above, may not be necessary to play the game.
• Xbox 360 version is $10 more than the PC version.

So which version do you reckon I should get!?!?

For the nerds among us my PC setup is as follows:

Intel Quad Core 6600
4GB RAM
GeForce 8600 GT (needs replacing as it's slowing me down but should run Fallout 3 OK)
64bit Vista Home Premium

Fallout 3 Is Go For Aussie Release

The Fallout 3 saga continues but hopefully this is the final chapter. The news today is that the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification has given Fallout 3 an MA 15+ rating for the slightly modified version of the game.

The rating was given for "Strong violence, drug references and coarse language". Originally it was these "drug references" that caused the ruckus as the use of them in-game was too realistic. Word on the street is that when you used morphine in Fallout 3 your character felt better. Weird hey... so the OFLC refused classification on that basis. Now you get a "health pack" in-game which makes your character feel better. The whole game has changed!

EB Games says Fallout 3 will be in stores in October (nice and precise there EB!). Anyway, read a little more about it over at Kotaku.

Game Ratings In Oz: Yes, We Suck

Kotaku put me on to a great post on abc.net.au by Tom Crago on the current Australian games classification system. Tom is the chief executive of Tantalus and president of the Game Developers' Association of Australia (GDAA) so you'd hope his words carry some weight.

Tom mentions that there are 2,000-odd game developers living and paying taxes (we hope) in Australia yet some of the games they work on can't be sold here due to the lack of an R rating (18+) for games using Fallout 3's effective banning as a good example.

One interesting quote is "Australia's absence of an R18+ category, and the financial imperative of getting a game onto store shelves in a timely manner, means that many games intended for adult audiences (and rated 18+ in other countries) are inappropriately shoehorned into the existing MA15+ category in Australia. Far from protecting minors from adult content, our uniquely incomplete classification system has allowed them, in many cases, to legally purchase and access such content.".

Read the entire thing, it's not long and points out how stupid our government (yes, even you KRudd) is in the eyes of the world.

Fallout 3 Banning Fallout

Further to this morning's post about the game Fallout 3 being banned down south comes the reason for it being banned.

Corresponding with the list of various "chems" are small visual representation of the drugs, these include syringes, tablets, pill bottles, a crack-type pipe and blister packs. In the Board's view these realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method bring the "science-fiction" drugs in line with "real-world" drugs.

That's right, the drug use is too realistic, not the killing. Pfff... did they not see Bioshock? Seriously, who in their right mind would pick up a giant syringe from the soggy carpeted floor of a run-down underwater city and shove it into their arm?

Read the full report over at Kotaku AU.

Fallout 3 Banned In Australia

Damn, now the world really knows we're a bunch of stupid hicks here in the land of Aus. Kotaku tells me today that Fallout 3 has been refused classification by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification which means, basically, we can't get it (legally).

I guess if the publisher sees fit they'll produce a cut down edition like Rockstar have done with past GTA games but seriously, this isn't the 1980s any more.

You know, I think now that it's banned, I might want to actually play it.