SUMMER BALL 2007 - Seren - Bangor University

12 Seren - End of Year Issue 2007GamesS.T.A.L.K.E.R.:Shadow of ChernobylSTALKER is THQ’s newestPC first person shooter (FPS)on the block.The game is set in 2012, six years aftera second explosion in Chernobyl andtwenty-six years after the original in1986. Known simply as ‘Stalker’, a genericname used for all those living within theirradiated zone, you arrive in the game inthe back of a truck, carrying the dead outof the centre of Chernobyl. You are the onlysurvivor to come from one of the so-called“death cars”, but you have no recollection ofwhat you were doing there, or even who youare. The only thing you know is you wereon a mission to find a man named Strelok.You are delivered to a trader, someone whoprofits by buying and selling items found in‘The Zone’. He gives you your first missionand instructions for getting around, as wellas some basic plot information.The first thing you notice when you enterthe world, as you stand in the office of thetrader, is how graphically stunning the gameis. When you throw in the dark, moody areaof the game with high graphical settings, thegame is beautiful with detailed shadows andrealistic lighting effects that really bring thegame to life and set the mood. One problemhowever, is that after only several minutes inthe game I was clicking around the advancedgraphics options menu working out how toactually get a decent performance on thegame without sacrificing too much ingraphical quality. Despite turning most ofthe graphical features down, I still foundthe game to be sluggish in places, withdistracting drops in the frames per second.I found some of the lighting to be buggy asI went through the game, with areas oftenbecoming simply too dark to see anythingin, even with the Stalker’s torch turned on.Stumbling around outside in the middle oftwo battling factions in virtually pitch black,wondering where the road is and avoidingtrees and various other unseen obstaclesisn’t a lot of fun. It had me straining at mymonitor trying to see what to do.The game’s missions are pretty linear,but you don’t feel cramped as you haveplenty of space to roam free and scores ofoptional extra missions you can take toimprove your standing with the variousfactions of the game. Factions build up animportant part of the game, with certainmissions increasing your reputation withcertain groups, and others decreasing yourreputation, determining whether you areallied or hostile with these groups. As wellas that, STALKER is an open ended game,with a number of possible endings thatcould take place, depending on the path youchoose to take through the game. Will greedget the better of you as you profit from TheZone, or will you seek to leave The Zone andmove on? However, I felt detached from mycharacter and the factions because I didn’tfeel any connection as such and thus, didn’tcare much about what happened to them.The only reason I felt compelled to keepplaying the single player mode was to seewhat the next stunning area would looklike.The audio of the game really helps to adddepth to the areas in the game, with silenceaccompanied by only the quiet cracklingof your Geiger counter, often being just aseerie as hearing distant rumbling from whatit is that lies ahead of you. The music canbecome a bit repetitive with only one trackactually working, but at the time of writingthere’s a mode to unlock music that wasnever used for some unknown reason.The online mode sadly only hasthree game-play modes. Your standardDeathmatch, Team Deathmatch and anew mode named ‘Artifact Hunt’ in whichyou play as either The Stalkers or theMercenaries and seek to control the artifactsthat are spawned on the map and returnthem to your base before the other teamcan. Surprisingly, the one class you’d expectto see, your standard ‘capture the flag’, ismissing. There’s a decent choice of mapsto choose from, ranging from train yardsto abandoned military bases. Whether themaps are enough to keep players entertainedfor long remains to be seen however. I didn’ttry multiplayer out too much, as the clunky,heavy game-play controls were only made tofeel worse online. It’s more spray and prayrather than many other titles where goodaiming and planting that headshot would beall important and it didn’t appeal to me.Hopefully as time goes on, the usercommunity will generate new content forthe multiplayer mode to advance it, asthere’s a huge amount of possibility withthe game. A number of mods have alreadysurfaced, mainly unlocking features thatwere never implemented such as vehiclesand graphical/audio modifications.If your PC hasn’t got a strong heart, don’twaste your time with this title, so be sureto check what the minimum specificationsare, then make sure your machine surpassesthem by a fair amount to actually get adecent experience. The game is definitelyworth a play, but it might be a good ideato hold on for a couple of patches to let thegame mature slightly. One major problemwas that the first patch invalidated allprevious saved games, thus resetting yourprogress in the game.The game can feel unrefined in places,but it’s still a strong title worthy of a lookinto if the sound of an atmospheric shooterappeals to you.Alex TrebulWith the release of twonew Halo games soon, Serentakes a quick look back at theseries so far and looks aheadto the future to see what wecan expect from these eagerlyanticipated titles.Halo began development in 1996 byBungie Studios as an RTS title forthe Mac platform. Several years onMicrosoft on the verge of releasing the Xboxconsole, snapped up the outfit and the rightsto the game. Work began on building thegame for the Xbox and had, by this point,evolved into an FPS.In 2001, Halo was complete and ready toship with the Xbox as the main launch titlefor the system. It featured graphics neverseen before on any console platform, solidgame-play and a strong storyline. While thegame was not overly innovative, it got highratings across the board and helped boostsales of the Xbox.After a couple of years in waiting, in2003, PC gamers got a slice of the Halopie. The PC version ported by developmentstudio Gearbox Software featured manyimprovements over the original Xbox title,namely, an online multiplayer mode whichcame with several new maps, a new weapon,use of the Banshee and a new Warthog.After having to wait several years forthe ageing game to be brought to the PCplatform, PC gamers found the game wasfar from perfect. It lacked support for usercreated content, something which had beenpretty much standard in PC games sincethe dawn of the FPS genre without hideoushacks and workarounds. It also sufferedfrom a number of multiplayer problems.Initially, there was no dedicated serversoftware available and because the onlinecode had been poorly developed for 56kusers at the request of Microsoft, the onlinemode suffered from severe latency problemswhich were never corrected in the variouspatches that were released.Roughly a year after the release of thePC title, Gearbox released a standalonemultiplayer only version of the game tosupport multiplayer maps named HaloCustom Edition. Along with the game, theyreleased an editing kit to help with thecreation process for those seeking to maketheir own maps. Since this update wasreleased as a separate program, it servedto split the already small community intwo, resulting in a swift death for the HaloCustom Edition version of the game.At the E3 trade show in 2004 the worldbegan to get glimpses of what Halo 2 hadto offer. Stunning graphics, radical changesto the game-play and a promising storyline.After many delays, the game came out inNovember once again on the Xbox platform.It became a record breaking game, beatingtop-seller GTA in sales and raking in $125million on the first day of release alone.However, what gamers saw at E3 andwhat they got in game were quite different.The storyline turned out to be lacklustre andmany of the anticipated features had beenremoved without warning from the game.The biggest disappointment of all turnedout to be the ending of the game which wasHalo 2as abrupt as a car crash.In face ofa huge number of returns from disappointedfans, the saving grace of the game turned outto be online mode supported by the XboxLive service. The online mode saw tensof thousands of gamers logging millionsof hours played in total. That doesn’tmean to say the online side of the gamedidn’t have problems. Thanks to the lackof any dedicated server, cheating becamecommonplace in the game, which led toplayers’ ranks being reset, undermining thevery reason why many players continueto play the game - to increase their rank.Accompanied by what was generallyconsidered to be an immature player baseas well as a fleet of other problems, manygamers turned off from the game.Later this month we’ll be seeing therelease of Halo 2 for the PC after over twoyears of waiting. The game has already beendelayed at the last minute, but hopefully isnot a sign of things to come.Just as the original Halo was used topush sales of the Xbox, Halo 2 is beingused to push sales of the new WindowsVista operating system and their ‘Live forWindows’ service which essentially is theequivalent of Xbox Live for the PC. Opinionson the Live for Windows service have been amixed bag. On the one hand you can have afree account to play, but on the other handto make the most of the game you have topay a subscription fee, something many PCgamers are unhappy about.Halo 2 was developed by a small team inconjunction with Microsoft known as HiredGun. This time the game will feature a mapeditor and user created content straight outof the box. Details on the title have been a bitsketchy, but it looks to bring nothing muchnew to the table. It will lack the anticipatedco-op modes, support for rankings, fullmodel and textures changes for higherresolution modes and single player customcontent support. It will however support‘Gamer Achievements’, giving you points forcompleting certain tasks within the game.The game looks set to have little success dueto poor sales of the Windows Vista operatingsystem, and may drive away much of thehardcore FPS gaming crowd by the moveto support Xbox controllers and integratingauto-aiming into the game.Halo 3 is set to be released in the latermonths of this year. So far little has beengiven away about the storyline and thedetails on multiplayer mode are a bitunclear, though with an online beta testbeginning later this month, we’ll soon startto hear a lot more about the game.As for other games in the Halo franchisewe’re set to see two more games. Althoughone is completely under wraps for themoment, the second is being developed asan RTS named ‘Halo Wars’ by EnsembleStudios, however no details have beenrevealed for this title as of yet either. Planshad been rumoured for a movie adaptationwhich are reportedly still on hold due to theoriginal studio pulling out.Only time will tell what else is in storefor Halo, but the future looks bright withanother three titles on the way following therelease of Halo 2 this month.Ross ButlerBANGORLEAVERS2007Am gonna miss all you guys and ourTrash Wednesdays. Especially Baz’sferret-related ‘incident’. Good luckwith your exams John, Mark, Andrea, Jenand Andy.- Mark FieldingHey Candice, remember thechocolate sandwich we had?Ecstasy.- Pete SmithTo all the art crowd, Seren, hill walkers,Phil de la skill (but not so skill when itcomes to keeping tea vertical and publunchist), Liz (she likes the sound of cars ongravel and the smell of blown-out candlesdon’t you know) Catrin (known for herwhirlwind romances on the aisles of Tescos),Matt (Storm’s whiz-kid), Tim (frequenterof charity shops in search of pensionersclothes), Eilian (master of mysteries), Mark(mathematical mastermind and squire ofthe shire), Ruth (BA, LLC, QC, MC, PHD,MSC, DJ), Sam (sue-star superstar), CatrinC (lecturer extraordinaire), Adam and KJgood luck with your exams and have a greatsummer. Enjoy the festival season and havea good life. :-)- Ross ButlerBest wishes for the future to John,Ellie, Pete, Emma, Lexi, Chris andSean. For future reference Sean, whena barmaid asks how much head you’d like,that’s not what she means.- Jennifer KnottsGood byes to the geography thirdyears especially Elizabeth and herquality map reading skills on ourfield trip.- Tony HarrisStorm FM would like to thank third yearleavers and wish them lots of luck:Tom GiddingsMatt WoontonHailey WhittakerSean ClementsClaire StapletonDavid HoodAshley Fishman(and Spencer, but he’s staying!)SEREN would like to say goodbye to alltheir wonderful third years who haveinvested so much time into the paperand wish them all the best:Chris ThomsonClaire MannLuke WilsherLexi HindleyRoss ButlerTo all those who ran in the electionsand are now leaving, good luck.- Pete Banks