Online Gaming

What the hell is all this online gaming talk?

There’s only so far you can go conquering your games collection by yourself nowadays. You can’t really claim to have mastered them until you prove yourself online.

Previously online gaming has only really been at home with PC’s. Console developers were wary after the demise of the first online console, the Sega Dreamcast in 2001. It was a relatively poor start in 2003 with the PlayStation 2 and Xbox going online for the first time and only producing a few titles that performed well, namely Timesplitters Future Perfect and Battlefield 2: Modern Combat in 2005.

All that has changed with console online action now being absolutely huge. Today the Xbox 360 is the current leader in the online console market with Sony’s PlayStation 3 playing catchup.
The 360 has the richest line-up so far for exclusive online games such as Gears of War, Halo 3 and Virtua Fighter 5 Online, while the PS3 has exclusive titles such as Resistance, Haze, Warhawk and Singstar. Most big titles however are released on both consoles with little or no difference between them. Great examples of this so far being, Call of Duty 4, Team Fortress 2, and Burnout Paradise.

All you need is a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360 (note: the 360 requires an additional £35-£40 fee to play online) and a broadband account. A headset is essential for taunting your opponents, but don’t be one of those people that blast bad music into it non-stop!

It’s only fair to warn all you online ‘newbies’ out there, expect an ass kicking for your first few games. If you’re only used to playing against the computer then you’re probably not going to be prepared for playing against real people. Games AI is getting better but it’ll be a while before it can be as vicious, conniving and cunning as the human race.

If you’re still trying to decide which console to buy to play online games there is little between the two, depending on your preferences for their exclusive games. However, right now, you’re likely to find more people to play with on the 360 as it’s been out longer than the PS3. The Nintendo Wii’s online capabilities haven’t really been explored yet but the upcoming Mario Kart title could change that soon.

Today’s gamers have a great choice of genres to play online, but you’ll find most playing first person shooters (FPS). Almost any shooter released on PS3 and 360 will feature an online mode. Favoured features of the FPS are: Deathmatch (kill everyone, highest score wins), Team Deathmatch (kill everyone wearing different coloured clothes to you) and Capture the Flag (steal an item from the other teams base and return it to your own). So whether you’re into teamwork or you’re more of a one-man-war-machine it’s all good.

There’s more and more emphasis being put on co-op play too. The upcoming Army of Two will let players team up and take on story missions against the computer in this new third-person shooter.

If you want something a little less violent there are plenty of sports titles out there with online capabilities. Sadly though most of them don’t have a great setup and feature a lot of lag. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 is a common example. The lag can be so bad that your screen will stutter and sometimes freeze and when it finally catches up you’re 2-0 down and they’re attacking again. It’s not always that bad but will put you off playing.

In general, so far at least, sports games are still better played at home with your mates around and mocking their skills to their face.

The arrival of the latest Burnout game has changed the face of driving titles with a very easy setup and no lag issues. Plus if you hook up a USB camera it will take pictures of you when you win or get taken out, you also get pictures of your opponents screaming faces as you ram them off the road for the umpteenth time.

If you want a break from gaming there’s so much to do apart from multiplayer action with Sony’s PlayStation Store and Microsoft’s Marketplace offering extra content for your games such as extra levels, weapons, modes, costumes and even older previous generation titles for free or a small price.

Free game demos allow you to try a sample of a game without having to pay to rent it or buy an expensive magazine with a demo disc. Film fans are well looked after too with plenty of trailers available for download. 360 owners can download full films and TV episodes too. You can also video chat with plug-in video cameras (sold separately) on both 360 and PS3.

So get your broadband sorted, start climbing those ranking tables and show the world you’re no ‘newb’.

Burnout Paradise (PS3 Review)

The single player mode has suffered in order to make this great online multiplayer racer / crasher. The new menu-less free-roaming city feels too vague and unstructured for racing. There aren't any tracks so to speak as races have turned into point A to point B style races letting you find the best route, but it’s a nightmare trying to keep your eye on the compass, the map and the road. If you screw up a race there isn't a restart option, this becomes really annoying when you are in the hills and it takes ages to drive back to the city. This could have been fixed with a restart option or even an option to teleport to any event or area of the map, a loading screen would have been forgiven for the convenience.

The new style of races should have only been included as an extra mode rather than replace the traditional circuits. Even more has gone missing from the old titles, controlling your crashes with 'aftertouch' has gone so you can’t take out the AI cars when you plough into an oncoming bus at top speed. Crash Mode has been replaced with Showtime, where you bounce your car along in any direction you want hunting down traffic to boost your score and keep the carnage going for as long as possible.

You can no longer hit traffic going in the same direction, you can get away with the odd clip sometimes but it’s inconsistent so it’s best avoiding it altogether when driving.

Marked Man is a new mode where you have to race to the end and survive a pack of cars trying to take you out. Very, very hard.

A strange addition to the series is a handbrake button, this is for all the 90 degree turns you’ll be doing and countless 180s for going back for that turn you missed. You can’t help feel the drifting has been toned down too much to make this seem like a worthy addition.

Try to stick with it because you need to progress through single players events to unlock extra vehicles to give you an edge online, whether you want speed, strength or handling. Some of the later cars are face-meltingly fast while others are more lethal than a train hurtling towards a car stranded on the tracks.

For all you road fiends out there without broadband yet (seriously why?), you’ll be disappointed to learn that there is no offline multiplayer whatsoever. Bad EA! Bad Criterion!

This is all forgiven because of the excellent online mode where clearly most of the development time has been spent. Up to eight players can meet up to complete up to 350 challenges as simple as everyone perform a drift or something requiring more team-work like having seven people park between two jump ramps and the eighth player barrel-rolling over them all! There are a set number of challengers for groups of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 players all requiring everyone to take part. If you want to get them done you better start forming a large varied group of online burners that are like-minded because there’s nothing more annoying than doing a challenge where you all have to meet on the dam waterworks roof and one player is ignoring you all at the other end of the city. Kick em’ out and start again when someone else joins in! As the Host you will be able to boot out any uncooperative players and set up challenges and races.

You can race, but it suffers from the same problems mentioned earlier but at least your human opponents are vulnerable to the same mistakes. Or you can all just mess around crashing into each other or compete for the longest drift or see who dares dodging oncoming traffic for the longest distance.

Another great new feature is the way you can compete with your friends for the best time down a street or the most damage caused in Showtime. If you top both, the sign on the map will turn gold and you will 'own the road'.

It goes without saying that it all looks incredible too with no lag or pop-up issues at all. The crashes will make you wince and cringe as you car is crushed in half when you barely see the brick wall you've just disintegrated into. Though some of the slow motion crashes can really begin to grate as they take forever and the aforementioned aftertouch has been removed.

But hey, PS3 car nuts finally have decent game, so if they can fix the dodgy single player elements and the soundtrack for next year’s game it’ll be perfect. Get playing with a good gang and you’ll enjoy possibly the best online experience yet.