Mod matters, with Ashton 'I believe in Mod' Mills.
Gothic 3 Community PatchGame: Gothic 3
Few games get as much loving attention from modders as Gothic 3 has had. The Gothic 3 Community Patch 1.73 is a passionately crafted update to Gothic 3 that makes some 1200 changes to the game including graphic, balance, and AI changes. It's worth noting that JoWood, the publishers, helped out by actually providing source code to the game. This allowed the development of features such as adding HDR rendering, soft particles, new shaders and 'Rim lighting' highlighting the edges of objects. Along with higher-resolution textures, the patch helps Gothic 3 keep up with its modern counterparts.
And while the engine does show its age in some areas - certainly not helped by menus that look they were made on a Commodore 64 - there's still something beautiful and charming about it, and with the community patch it is in many ways more graphically appealing than some modern titles.
Same goes for its gameplay. In Gothic 3 you can see inside and enter buildings seamlessly without loading screens (here's looking at you Fallout 3) and do things like scale down cliff faces and run along roofs, not to mention explore the world in any direction. It's kind of the antithesis to Dragon Age: Origins in terms of freedom, and it's brilliant.
The patch is, according to its homepage, the last instalment. So it's fair to say this is as good as it gets for Gothic 3. If you loved the original game, or got the game cheap in a Steam sale, install the Community Patch before playing as it'll greatly enhance the game. And as a testament to how lovingly crafted it is, it even comes with its own 22-page PDF manual detailing the changes complete with screenshots.
Galactic Warfare BetaGame: Call of Duty 4
Star Wars. Too words that are catnip to most any geek, and the pronunciation of which can cause strange groinal stirrings for the more hardcore fans among us. In short, you can't usually go wrong tagging 'Star' and 'Wars' anywhere in the one sentence.
Call of Duty 4. A game synonymous with synonymity, multiplayer on a level of awesome, and franchise milking at an epic scale - but with good reason. The COD games are all classics and none more so then COD4.
So what happens when you combine the two? What happens indeed - for few could surely stand against the power of such a joining. But you can find out for yourself - head to www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-mod-galactic-warfare to download Galactic Warfare and join the ranks of the rebels or the empire and feel the thrill of wasting your friends Star Wars style among the streets of Mos Eisley.
Is it a good re-creation? So far so good. Not only does it look great, but running on COD4 it's also runs smooth and, aside from the variety and type of weapons, combat is similar (except fire fights take you back to those like in the movies!). But as a beta it's not yet complete.
There's just one map in the beta, but more are on the way. While there are still more character models to come, you get to choose one of four classes on either side: assault, specops, heavy gunner and sniper. Naturally there's a range of classic weaponry for you to play with including (let's see how well you know your lore) the A280 blaster rifle, DLT-20A blaster rifle, T21 repeating laser, DH17 blaster pistol, E11 blaster, and the Tuskan Rifle. Again, there will be more to come in subsequent releases (including Chewbacca's bowcaster and Boba Fett's EE-3).
It may be a while before it reaches 1.0 status, but don't let that stop you from re-living childhood memories. There aren't many servers about yet, but there are some. Head to www.game-monitor.com and search on 'mp_tatooine', or host your own.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012