After several hours of play I’d flown through three “systems” and become bored out of my skull. The developers, Egosoft, obviously missed the point of single player RPG games and that is that they’re supposed to be fun and actually have things to do in them. They should not be megalithic constructs of confusion. Egosoft seem to have the largest ego I’ve ever seen in the gaming world, apparently they think they can make three games with “X” in the title and then use their profits to make a MMORPG (Mumorpuger) based in the same universe.

Excuse me if I’m wrong but X3 WAS a Mumorpuger but only for one person at a time. It has all the things that identify a Mumorpuger. The universe is huge, the AI is limited and only seems to stay in its original “system”, you have to grind to be able to get anywhere in the game. It’s a MMORPG, but without the Multiplayer Online part.

Anyway, now I’ll try to talk about the games good points…ok, it only has one. The graphics are pretty. That’s it. I can find nothing else that is good about this game.

Now the bad points, and there’s alot of these. It’s long-winded, the HUD has more data and buttons than the starship Enterprise, the manual is huge and the ships have no consoles in them, they’re just a camera floating in space.

Ok, I can’t summarise anymore. According to a piece of text in the manual, which occupies most of the box, you can do the main story whenever you feel like it, you can drop in and out of it. So the point of this main story is what? It becomes a side quest…the main story becomes a side quest. Seriously, what incentive is there to see the story play out if it’s not that important. In my opinion, the main story of a game like this should always be hanging over your shoulder like an annoying sibling.

I couldn’t even keep hold of the story, and I was actually trying to do it. Having been talked at by a man who my character apparently knew, I was immediately told to go on a patrol. Ok, I thought, it’s only the first mission so it’s bound to be easy. Eventually, I reached the West jump-gate of something like the second “system” only to find that my patrol buddies were no-where in sight. I checked my objectives, yes I was in the right place, but where were they?! This was about the point I gave up with X3, I hadn’t even fired a shot or seen anything that looked remotely hostile.

The “systems” in the game aren’t actually systems, they’re planets. One planet in fact where everything is in orbit. When you bring up your system map it’s an un-inspired 2d jobbie with little pictures of space stations and stuff stuck higgledy piggledy over a black background. It looks like a 3 year-old made it.

Alot of reviewers apparently called this game “deep” and I agree with them. It’s so deep that everything, even peoples sanity, seems to drown in it. Overall, I think it’s a bad excuse for an RPG and an even worse excuse for a game. Well, that’s a little harsh, it’s not a bad game, it’s mediocre, boring, tiresome and many other words for bad.

Here’s the thing Egosoft, if you’re going to make an RPG then give it a story that is interesting, propelling and always there. Make the interface easy to understand and easy to use. Make the universe easy to navigate. Basically make things a little simpler. If you’re going to make a game the manual should not come to 85 pages, ever. If I can put shelving together with two pages of instructions then a game should only require one page. The controls and some back story.

Going back to something I mentioned earlier, Egosoft are planning to release an MMORPG. A proper one at that. Just one question. Why? Is there really any point? EVE Online already exists. Also, this GOTYE of X3 is a re-release, the game was made in 2005, being re-released in 2007 makes it only 2 years old. Why was it re-released? had it been 5 years old then I would have understood but 2 years. Man, Egosoft must be laughing at all those people who bought the game again because it was “patched to 1.4″. That’s right, they released a patched game…which people paid money for. I despair at the gaming community when they allow companies to sell a patched game for £30.

I’ve digressed quite alot, so I’ll try to finish off. I found X3 to be a boring, over-hyped, long-winded game with none of the fun or finesse I first imagined it would have. It was a big disappointment for me personally, but apparently some people think this game is the best they’ve ever played. If you’re one of those people you should buy the game but chances are you have already. If you don’t think you’ll like this game then you’ll probably be thinking that the 260,000 people of the “X” community are idiots and you’ll go spend your money on something better…like Mass Effect.

P.M.

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But I digress, I’m here to talk about 3D editing programs, two in particular though. I consider them to be the most main stream and if I were to review all of the 3D programs out there then I would be here far longer than I’d planned, though some may be mentioned in passing.

Ok, firstly, I’m going to talk about 3DS Max (3DS Max 8/9 in particular). Now I’ve had some bad experiences with this program, mainly because it’s so difficult to understand and the majority of tutorials seem to rely on you knowing what the hell they’re talking about, rather than explaining it to you.

I have to start with the UI as it’s the first thing you’ll notice when/if you open up Max. For want of a better word, it’s cluttered, don’t get me wrong, I applaud Autodesk for cramming so much stuff onto one screen but surely there’s a simpler way. Use tabs or something for Pete’s sake. To be honest, the UI in Max 9 is slightly better than in Max 8 but only because they’ve removed a set of buttons that were only useful if you’d been working with the program for years. To a newbie it’s just more confusion.

In my experience lots of people tend to harp on about how ‘powerful’ Max is as an editing tool. It is powerful, bloody powerful in fact, but no matter how powerful something is, if it’s confusing or difficult to use then none of that power is actually accessed. It just sits there doing nothing remotely awe inspiring. Another thing I’ve found, particularly with my dabbling in the modding community, is that many requests for modellers/animators have the addition of “3DS Max Experience required”. Unfortunately, no-one, especially in the mod community, seems to have realised that 3DS Max 8 costs over £2000. Way more money than many modders have. Basically, some people are asking for the nigh on impossible, unless you work for a company who uses Max or have obtained it through less legal means then it’s bloody hard to get the experience.

If you actually know how to operate Max effectively, which generally requires going on a course of some kind, then you can be modelling and animating in about 10 minutes. If you don’t know then you’ll probably try it out for a few minutes before deciding that it’s too much confusion and hassle before buggering off and doing something else.

Right, onto another 3D program, this one is for all of those people who want experience in 3D modelling but don’t want to fork out enough money for a small car. The program happens to be called Blender, just Google it for the official website, I’m not doing everything for you. I’ve had a good years experience with Blender and have found the community and tutorials to be very helpful and easy. This is probably due to Blender being FOSS (Free Open-Source Software).

When you travel about the internet you’ll certainly find people who claim that FOSS programs are not properly developed and have terrible technical support. This might be the case with some small and recently released FOSS but it’s not the case with Blender. Then again, when was the last time you used Microsoft’s Tech Support? I certainly haven’t recently, due to it’s poor development and general badness. Anyway, this isn’t a review of Microsoft, if it was I’d have exploded by now.

Blenders UI feels a little friendlier than Max’s, mostly because it’s far less cluttered and it doesn’t feel like you’re peeking through a tiny hole in your screen just to see a cube. The fact that Blender splits up alot of it’s interface into different “tabs”, for want of a better description, means that they can actually fit more stuff into the program and make the tools more versatile. The sections within sections can be a little confusing at times but as long as you know what you’re generally looking for then you should be able to find it.

The tools are quite powerful, despite the large amount of them, and there is always one for the job. I’ve found that Blender tends to be overlooked by many recruiters, probably because it’s not in the limelight as much as Max is.

Ok, I’ve been trying to review Blender in the same way as I reviewed Max but it’s actually extremely hard to not compare them, so I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway.

Max is more cluttered and feels less refined than Blender, though some of Blenders tools are in odd places or even non-existent, though this is rare. Both are almost equal in power though Max is only slightly more powerful, probably due to being produced by people who are paid. But then, if that’s the only difference then why should you use Max? or why should you use Blender for that matter? I think it comes down to your preference, if you like paying for stupidly expensive software (XP and Vista I’m looking at you) then get Max. It’s more mainstream but far more daunting and confusing than Blender. On the other hand, if you like free things and are all for easy-use then get Blender.

I’ve just realised that I haven’t really reached a conclusion with this review. Then again, I’m glad I haven’t, as to do so would mean I’ve made a decision which is probably wrong in one way or the other. Now, I happen to use both of the aforementioned programs and find that they both have their advantages and dis-advantages, many of which gladden and dishearten me, in that order. I think I’ve found that Blender is a far simpler program, it doesn’t force everything to you at once, like Max, it allows you to find what you want when you want it. However, Max gives you all the options at once, which is more complicated, but can be very good at doing what you want.

I think the best way to sum up this review is like this: 3DS Max is like city-life, all busy and fast, whereas Blender is like country-life, quiet and slow. In the end I can’t tell you which one to use, it’s up to you, but I hope you’ve found most of this review useful in helping you reach your decision.

Enjoy.

P.M.

To start off with I’m going to review Call of Duty 4. Having played through the campaign and played a fair share of multiplayer I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a damn solid game.

The AI is much better than many previous FPS games, rather than running straight into your line of fire, they will move quickly between cover and generally never advance too close to your position unless “persuaded” by a grenade or two. They work together aswell, covering an advance and looking out for each other, most of the time at least.

The graphics are beautiful, even on my steadily ageing machine. They make the game far more dirty and gritty, you can practically feel the sand under your flak vest as you fight through streets in an un-named Middle-Eastern country, than any previous CoD or war related FPS.

I found Call of Duty 4 to be an enjoyable and exciting experience the first time I played it
but I think it’s biggest downfall is the replay-ability. As with most shooters
CoD4’s single player replay-ability is almost nill, unless you happened to miss the story first time round.

Now don’t get me wrong, CoD4 is a brilliant game, but it does have it’s faults, though they are few.

The multiplayer seems pretty solid though, with a nice easy ranking system to unlock more kit.
CoD4 succeeds where the Battlefield series seems to have failed. The environment is very interactive,
with the ability to jump over walls, through windows and such like. Grenade spamming doesn’t occur like it
does in games of BF2 (this is the only suitable game to compare it to.) due to the fact that you can throw them back, a wonderful little addition to some great gameplay.

Overall, I’d have to say that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is one of the best FPSs out there at the moment. It’s solid gameplay, excellent graphics, good story and terrific multiplayer make it a good investment, no matter what price you get it at. Though getting it for £150 or something is just stupid…

Anyway, I hope you found my first review reasonably good, feedback is always appreciated, just make a thread on the forums.

Thanks for reading.

P.M.