Author: Shmee

I was supper excited to play the Titanfall 2 Open Multiplayer Tech Test this weekend, but after this weekend I am less enthused to pick up the game.  Before I get too far in to this I should say I am all for developers changing up their games.  No one wants to play the exact same thing over and over again, but in most cases the changes Titanfall 2 has made have not been for the better.

First up and most bizarrely it seems that Titanfall 2 really hates Titans.  Instead of having a timer to get your Titan you have to earn them by doing things in the game, like killing other players or completing objectives.  Which is fine, but it takes forever to gain enough points to charge up your Titan meter, so if you are playing Hardpoint mode where you have to take different locations on a map and hold them and you are having a bad round you may never even get a Titan.  In fact the best way to get a Titan in Hardpoint is to just camp at the location closest to your spawn point and get points for ‘Holding” the Hardpoint.

Things are a bit better in the new mode Bounty Hunt where you get money for killing AI controlled players and Titans, and then you have to try and rush to different locations to bank your cash.  You can also kill other players and steal their cash.  Because you are always shooting something the Titan meter fills up much faster, so there will always be a couple of giant mechs around.

The problem is that the Titans in Titanfall 2 have been majorly nerfed.  They die much quicker, and they do way less damage.  They are also locked out of important areas.  You can’t take control of any Hardpoints while in a Titan and you have to get out to bank your cash.  In other words even though you spend a lot of time getting your Titan it may not be worth calling it down anyway.

The maps in Titanfall 2 have also gotten much worse.  In the original Titanfall the maps were very vertical so you could use your pilot’s advanced movement to get around.  In Titanfall 2 the maps are flat.  So you mostly just run around and then use your grappling hook once you are close to a building for a speed boost.  They are like Battlefield maps, but you don’t get the jeeps to make them fun.

Granted all of this is based off of a few hours with a small subset of what the game has to offer, and I didn’t play the Pilot versus Pilot mode, but I am assuming that would not fix this game’s lack of Titan problem.  If the Tech Test is indicative of the final product I will probably skip Titanfall 2, and I loved the first Titanfall.  There is still a lot of time until October, so a lot of things can change, and maybe the modes and maps I want to play just haven’t been show yet, but this test was really disappointing.

Way back in March the game Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments by Frogwares was given away as part of Microsoft’s Games with Gold program.  I had been meaning to give it try since then, but there have been way too many things to play.  I am happy to report that it is a pretty good modern adventure title, but just be prepared for a lot of loading.  Seriously, you may need to get a book.  A Sherlock Holmes novel perhaps?

Taking its queue from the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels on which Crimes and Punishments is based, the game is split in to six different cases.  Each one with clues to find and chumps to make look stupid as you bring up things they thought they were hiding.  Also nodding to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, when you wrap up a case you can choose whether to imprison the perpetrators or take pity on them and set them free.

Like most games in the adventure genre, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments involves a lot of walking around and looking at things, touching things, and talking to people.  The more you look and touch, the more options you get when you talk.  To help you look for stuff there is a Holmes vision that turns everything gray, but then highlights things you may have missed in yellow.  Also when you talk to people you get to slow time and check them out all over so you can make those Sherlock Holmes snap deductions, like that they are a poor son of a rich man who now works as a fish cleaner.  That is by far my favorite part.  There are a few little mini-games as well that Frogwares uses to try and break up the monotony of all the looking, touching and talking.  Some are good, and some are not.  Luckily they are all skip-able.

My second favorite thing is the way Crimes and Punishments lets you piece the clues together.  You go in to Holmes’ brain and make deductions, but some decoctions have multiple conclusions you can make, and based on those conclusions you can then make your final judgment.  Once you accept this judgment a very Sherlock Holmes-y cut-scene will take place with him explaining everything.  What is even better is that it saves before this cut-scene, so if you have all the clues you can watch them all.  The downer is that the loading takes so long that you may not have the patience to do so.

If Frogwares could have found a way to cut down on the excessive loading times Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments may have been a must play for fans of the adventure genre.  As it is, it is still pretty good and worth a look since it usually can be found for cheap.  I am enjoying the feeling of being the Master Detective, I just wish that there wasn’t so much down time, but maybe they were just trying to give us more time to think about the case.