Boiling Point - Road to Hell

[Huw the Poo]

BAH!

I've barely had a chance to touch it today, and even when I could it was slow as hell on my machine. I'm going to have to upgrade the old video card before I can seriously play this one.

Anyway, for those interested, the (European) game comes with a slim multi-lingual manual that covers the basics. It also comes with a poster, though...on one side is a map of the whole region complete with "points of interest" and places to get taxis or buy cars etc, while on the other side are information panels about weapons, vehicles and keyboard commands listed for each vehicle.

What I did manage to see of the game is very promising. I know this is a lazy, cheap way to do things but I'm just going to throw out the phrase "present-day Deus Ex" because I'm tired. That's what it's like, though. Even the interface is very similar, right down to the configurable hotkey slots at the bottom of your screen. NPCs mill about and occasionally talk to you. There are numerous factions; blow away a used car salesman and suddenly the "civilian faction" will hate you. There's also government, mafia, drug barons, and plenty of others.

Missions look like they're handled well. They're organised into groups, and you can select an "active" mission any time. Making a mission active will activate a navigation system to make your life easier.

I had a quick go in a vehicle, namely a bus I agreed to drive to a prison to make some cash. Vehicle control is WSAD, but steering is a bit odd. The longer you hold down A or D, the further your hands turn the wheel, so to speak. Took a bit of getting used to. You can also use the mouse to steer.

Sorry I haven't had much to write, but I've literally played for five minutes, and that was slow and jerky because of my PC. Hopefully I will have more to add this time tomorrow.

Oh, by the way - it comes on a single DVD and as far as I can tell does not use Starforce...or if it does, it's a lot quieter about it than Silent Hunter 3.

[bobsmods]

Thanks for the quick impressions. I'm interested in picking this one up, so please keep the impressions/reviews coming!

[Huw the Poo]

Right, I managed to play for an hour or so just now.

I'm afraid it is a bit buggy, but the largest annoyance for me is the pitiful frame-rate I've been getting. The bugs I've seen aren't show-stoppers by any means, but they do irritate. There's a bug with the compass, for a start. It sometimes doesn't point in the correct direction to a mission - although to be fair, the minimap has always been bang on target so far.

I also found a door that wouldn't open. When I clicked on it, the tooltip changed to "close". Clicking that would change it to "open" again, and so on, but the door didn't budge. There were a couple of other things, just as minor.

As for the game itself, however, I've been pretty impressed so far. It really is a big game. It can take several minutes to run from one side of the first town to the next, and driving to the next town in a bus took quite a while. I bought the cheapest car I saw in town and took it for a spin to a nearby military base, and it was a lot faster but a bitch to handle - not least because of the jerkiness.

Driving around is fun, though. The scenery - even with all graphics options turned down - is not bad looking, and there are plenty of sights like a waterfall, rivers and bridges etc. Every now and then I'd drive straight through a gunfight taking place between the military and the mafia. Both sides are dug in on either side of the road and gunfire streaks back and forth.

When driving a vehicle you get two gauges on the bottom left of your screen, one showing vehicle health and the other showing gas levels. There are numerous gas stations for refuelling. There are even taxis that will take you to seemingly all the major and some minor places in the region.

Combat is functional enough. You point, you shoot. Weapons can jam and of course you need to keep ammo levels topped up, either by looting enemies or buying it. So far I've seen two kinds of handgun and an assault rifle. I've also carried a knife, camera, mobile 'phone and even found alcohol! You can drink a bottle of tequila and get pissed, swaying as you walk and making a general tit of yourself. Why you'd need to drink in the first place hasn't been revealed to me yet...

It's very much RPG as well as shooter. There's a pretty detailed character profile screen that lists your skills and proficiencies with different kinds of vehicle and so on. It also tells you how addicted to certain substances you are.

The missions tab is really useful. It will tell you what to do next for any task at hand and it's really detailed too; after buying my car, getting into it was a selectable mission, complete with waypoint! Also, and this is a very useful feature, all people you meet - whether vital to the plot or just a bank clerk - are logged in the missions tab and they can all be selected for navigation purposes. This is excellent when someone is a constant source of jobs and you need to keep going back to him.

You have a general health meter that goes from 0-100, but you can also incur location-specific body damage. Get shot in the legs and don't expect to run fast. The manual helpfully explains that head and torso damage is most fatal...

There's a full day/night cycle. The time can be checked by hitting H to look at your watch...nice touch. When tired you can check into motels which automatically advances time. Apparently you can also sleep rough but presumably this doesn't do much for healing.

Looks like the faction thing is pretty full-on in Boiling Point. There are people everywhere and they all belong to one faction, even if it's just civilians. Placing your crosshair over someone shows his/her faction. Most of your actions will have effects on factions' attitudes toward you. I drove through a firefight earlier and accidentally ran over a mafia guy who'd been sent sprawling into the road; they weren't exactly falling over themselves to buy me drinks after that. I also shot dead a soldier at a barracks, which destroyed by relationship with the government and had the whole base coming down on me. We're talking soldiers with assault rifles and grenades, helicopters, attack dogs.

Oh, swimming is in too. And you get no "breath" meter, so you only know you've overdone it when your character starts choking for air (with some alarming realistic sound effects, I might add).

Anyway, that's all I have time to write for now. My lasting initial impression is that if it weren't for the damn sluggishness (which is brutal but still not as bad as Bloodlines was for some of us) and occasional bug, this game could be a proper gem. I first got interested because it looked like it was offering something the people behind STALKER are offering, should they ever deliver. I think I was right. In a nutshell, it's a huge first-person RPG that appears to be very open-ended and can be as action-based as you want. More impressions will follow over the next few days.

[Grifman]

Sounds promising, despite the bugs. What kind of rig do you have? I'm not saying you're one of these, but oftentimes complaints about framerate and sluggishness come from people trying to run a game maxed out with PC that they have no business trying to do this on.

[Huw the Poo]

Holy shit! After I read what you said I looked at the minimum requirements on the box - 128 MB video card.

Oh.

I have a Radeon 9000. Looks like it's upgrade time then.

My video card is the only bad bottleneck on the rig though. It's a P4 2.6 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. I've been playing on the bare minimum effects settings I could.

[CeeKay]

Huw, is your copy on DVD? I pre-ordered mine and all they had available was the PC-DVD version and I was just curious if this was the norm.

Also, how are the vehicle physics?

[Huw the Poo]

Yep, one DVD.

As for vehicle physics, all I've driven so far is a bus and a small car (looks like you have to gain experience to drive certain vehicles; it wouldn't let me pilot a speedboat). I can't really help you with the physics too much because the game is so jerky on my rig. They look at least functional. I haven't seen any rolling yet - the only collisions I've had so far have been straight head-on - but I'm sure I saw some in a trailer.

Vehicles are pretty hardy, I'll say that for them. Driving through those firefights in both a bus and a car, I didn't really take much damage. Tyres can be popped, I know that much, and if it happens to you you can change them. Cars seem to come with spare tyres in their trunks.

Oh, in fact you can use trunks like you would in real life. Keep stuff in them, use them to transport heavy objects like sniper rifles, etc.

[Grifman]

Holy shit! After I read what you said I looked at the minimum requirements on the box - 128 MB video card.

Oh.

I have a Radeon 9000. Looks like it's upgrade time then.

My video card is the only bad bottleneck on the rig though. It's a P4 2.6 GHz with 512 MB of RAM. I've been playing on the bare minimum effects settings I could.

BUSTED! That said, 512 MB of RAM is on the low side for FPS style games such as this also.

[Grifman]

Huw, is your copy on DVD? I pre-ordered mine and all they had available was the PC-DVD version and I was just curious if this was the norm.

I think Euro releases are more often on DVD, while US releases are more often CDs.

[Dhruin]

Thanks for those impressions - I think it's enough for me to place an order.

[Suitably Ironic Moniker]

I just preordered the American version and it is also on DVD. I think that we are slowly coming to our senses on this side of the pond.

[Turtle]

Looks like I'll be buying this game, but only after the first patch is released.

Any word on a patch?

[D.A.Lewis]

Thanks Huw, I'll keep my eye out for this one. It sounds like a fun game to play. My CPU is only a 2.53 but my mem is 1 gig and my video card is 128 so , it looks like I'm good to go.

[Eduardo X]

I like how in the game, the textures are so corrupted that you can't set the options! That's a nice feature.
I updated my video card right before installing the game, so it may be that BP doesn't like Radeons, but man, that's annoying!
Back to fixing it.

[Huw the Poo]

BUSTED! That said, 512 MB of RAM is on the low side for FPS style games such as this also.

Really? Damn, I've already had to convince my girlfriend to let me upgrade the video card (helped enormously by the fact that we'd have to upgrade to play Oblivion, heh). I think I'll need to leave it a month or so to upgrade the RAM.

Some more snippets. Looks like gas stations are used for repairing damage as well as refuelling, but the tyre change thing is for when you're in the middle of nowhere. I think you can also sleep in your car if you don't have a room for the night.

Stealth kills appear to be in - the manual says something about being proficient enough with the knife to be able to do it. Grenades and explosives are also in, along with all the usual suspects like shotguns. Even a crossbow, it seems!

I just spotted vehicle handling schools on the map, so that must be where you acquire licenses to use the vehicles in the game. There's no tutorial, but the first time you look at different screens (inventory, profile, etc) and the first time you approach certain things (bodies, vehicles etc) you get an info box telling you what you can do. Each box can be ticked "do not show me this again." To be honest though, I found that a tutorial isn't really needed. Weather effects also made it into the game.

If anyone wants to know about specific things, lemme know and I'll take a look after work today.

[Turtle]

I'd like to know if there's any sort of multiplayer, especially if there's a coop mode in there.

[Huw the Poo]

Nah, 'fraid not mate.

[Vinda-Lou]

This game sounds excellent - but should I be worried that I never heard of it until today, reading this post? A cross between Farcry (it looks like) and Deus Ex is better than your chocolate in my peanut butter!

[Caine]

any good deals on this one. i see that gamestop has it for $40, but if it hits the shelves tomorrow at that price, then i won't bother to order it, especially since it wouldn't even ship till tomorrow.

looks fun, and with any luck, the bugs and slow performance won't be a hindrance for too long.

few questions. is it a reload on death only game, or are there rescues or some such ala gta? is it save anywhere? load times? estimated length? alternate endings? all of that would be icing on the cake for me.

[Grifman]

How does the skills system work?

[Big Jake]

For some reason, I VERY highly doubt any stores in my area will have this tomorrow. Or the day after. Hell, if it showed up in the Best Buy, Fry's, Gamestop, or EB (all within 10 mintues of my apartment) this weekend, I would be shocked. All the stores around me never have any new releases. for PC.

[CeeKay]

According to the guys at the local Gamestop, the only way they would be getting in any copies is if someone pre-ordered it. So I put 5 bucks down and they are getting 3 copies in (I guess they have to order in 3's).

[Huw the Poo]

Caine:

Death works just like GTA. When you die, you appear in a hospital minus a few belongings and cash. It is save anywhere. For me there's an initial loading time of about a minute, but so far there's been no loading at all during the game (which boasts there never will be). Estimated length, I dunno, it's a huge island and it looks like there are jobs everywhere, so....pretty long? I've heard you can theoretically go confront the guys who kidnapped your daughter straight away, but you won't last five minutes without the skills and equipment. Dunno about alternate endings.

Grifman:

Sorry, not sure about the skill system yet, but I get the impression you just level them up as you use them. It's always the same skill set.

[Gorath]

There´s a new review up on Eurogamer.
I have no idea if it correctly represents the game - it completely flew under my radar - but the review in itself is excellent. We´re so often talking about bad reviews; this is a well-written and interesting one. I recommend you pay them a visit.

Boiling Point (wasn´t it called Xenus at some point?) seems to be a very ambitious, large scale, interesting game lacking polish.

[RookieCAF]

I think I'd like to try this one...

[farley2k]

The Eurogamer has three reivews seeing to fly all over the map.

The lowerst scoring one seems most honest to me. I am sick of bugs. I am sick of gamers acting like sheep, putting up with bugs becuase of the "hidden" greatness of the game.

Do note the subtitle. To hell with good intentions. It doesn't matter how many things a game tries to do, all that matters is how well they work. And Boiling Point's many innovations and ideas simply don't work in any acceptable way at all. Abstractly, it mixes Grand Theft Auto with Deus Ex in a South American jungle. In practice...

Let's start with the bugs, because that's the first thing you'll notice too. The game's a mess. An embarrassing mess. In fact, it's almost worth playing for comedy value. It's difficult to pick highlights, but how about the time when reloading caused the car I was driving to become invisible and thus allowed me to hurtle across the countryside in a Wonder-Woman-esque invisi-vehicle manner? Or the time a jungle jaguar flew a hundred or so metres through the air to attack me when I was on the top of a Ziggurat? Or when someone running away got caught in a looping animation, in a Road-to-Nowhere Talking-Heads video manner?

Away from that, there are less amusing examples. For example, if you drop an object, expect to see a standardised box rather than the item you've dropped. Leave your car on the pavement, and you'll come back to find passers-by stuck to it (who all die when you start off again, harming your reputation). Laugh at constant sound errors and random voiced and non-voiced lines. Regularly heaving performance dips, with things entering slide-show-o-vision whenever you reach a major gunfight until your machine has had a nice little think.

While you can't expect a game that mixes genres to match a game that concentrates on a single one, you'd hope they'd do better than this. While you can crawl and crouch, the actual sense of physicality in your guns is entirely lacking. Sure, there are plenty of weapons, but none of them match even the least of Halo's arsenal. The vehicles are equally as lumpen, with none of GTA's tactile pleasure. And the enormous map? Not actually that good a thing, since the majority of it is simply empty jungle. You'll spend most of your time driving between two distant checkpoints, along windy roads, forever.

All the good ideas in the world can't save this road-accident of a game, and it's obscene that it's been released in its current state. If you buy this you're doing the equivalent of jamming a tube in your mouth and paying someone to pour silage down it. For God's sake, don't encourage them.

[Greg Wak]

The reviews were written by the same guy. It sounds like it's a hard review to write because while the game is apparently very cool it has serious issues. It's hard for me as well because the game sounds right up my alley but of course it sounds very flawed. I think I have to wait at this point and see if it gets fixed. It's easier because I'm a slow player and there is still alot of good stuff out that I haven't played. I do hope it gets fixed as the good parts sound excellent.

[shaggydoug]

Yep....a few patches and a price reduction down the road and it might well be worth it.

- shaggy

[Grifman]

The Eurogamer has three reivews seeing to fly all over the map.

The lowerst scoring one seems most honest to me. I am sick of bugs. I am sick of gamers acting like sheep, putting up with bugs becuase of the "hidden" greatness of the game.

No, not really. It's quite apparent that all three are true, depending upon one's perspective, which is the point the author was trying to make. And it is quite obvious that his final oveall opinion is the last one. But he wrote all three so that all perspectives were represented. For you, since you are "sick of bugs", the lowest scoring one is "true". But for others, they might find the "truth" elsewhere.

I commend the author for going to this much trouble giving varied perspectives on the game.

[farley2k]

The Eurogamer has three reivews seeing to fly all over the map.

The lowerst scoring one seems most honest to me. I am sick of bugs. I am sick of gamers acting like sheep, putting up with bugs becuase of the "hidden" greatness of the game.

No, not really. It's quite apparent that all three are true, depending upon one's perspective, which is the point the author was trying to make. And it is quite obvious that his final oveall opinion is the last one. But he wrote all three so that all perspectives were represented. For you, since you are "sick of bugs", the lowest scoring one is "true". But for others, they might find the "truth" elsewhere.

I commend the author for going to this much trouble giving varied perspectives on the game.

Yes, I agree it is my perception of being sick of games with tons of bugs which has me already disliking this game.

[Dhruin]

^That was the best review I've read in ages. An entertaining read in itself. I think I am more closely aligned with view #1, so I'm glad I ordered it.

Ed. Sp.

[Grifman]

^That was the best review I've reading ages. An entertaining read in itself. I think I am more closely aligned with view #1, so I'm glad I ordered it.

Yes, I'll expect I'll order, depending upon what I see from the first patch due out soon. I love these types of games, even with bugs. Deus Ex had it's share, and yet I could see past those to a game I loved. I understand everyone doesn't have that perspective, which is fine for them and fine for me. I just think the game sounds cool and carries it off at least half way

[Caine]

any word on early sales of this one? i have it on pre-order at a gamestop, but i'm hoping that fry's has a sale on it tomorrow.

that said, i'll still pick it up because of what it could be after a patch. good or bad, this game has a chance of being great.

any word on a patch or fan modifications for getting this one going at full speed?

[Grifman]

any word on early sales of this one? i have it on pre-order at a gamestop, but i'm hoping that fry's has a sale on it tomorrow.

that said, i'll still pick it up because of what it could be after a patch. good or bad, this game has a chance of being great.

any word on a patch or fan modifications for getting this one going at full speed?

There's a patch "coming soon".

[Caine]

well that's good to hear. hopefully it's not just a rush patch for a few issues, but something that the devs have been working on for a while, knowing the game would ship early and address the flaws quickly.

as long as it doesn't go along the same route as another eastern euro game from a few years back, and the devs always say "soon", then i'll be happy

[Vinda-Lou]

Any store sightings? More impressions?

[Huw the Poo]

Sorry but I think I'm going to hold off until my new video card arrives next week. I will barely have time to play this week anyway because we have guests.

[Vinda-Lou]

EB has this game listed now as 5/30. Hmmm...

[CeeKay]

My local Gamestop said it should be in tomorrow.

[CeeKay]

Here is a babelfished version of what the first patch is supposed to fix:

Text:
- the texts do not remain any more with the screen after a phone call
- the enemy messages appear now in a correct way
- the assistances are posted now at the good time

Missions:
- the CIA: the missions are not rewarded any more as much as they are not successful
- the mission of the suicide: the mission disappears from the list if you fail
- the problems minor which prevented the realization of certain missions are now solved.

Graph:
- the problems graph at the time of died of the hero or at the time of died of the NPC in the cities were solved.

Its:
- problems minor such as the dialogues which buckle were solved.

Camera:
- problems minor of camera were regulated.

Vehicles:
- the problem of the cars which disappear (rare problem) was solved
- the problem of the vehicles which are blocked in the decorations or which do not appear correctly on the mini-chart is solved.
- the missions of taxi post from now on the options correctly.

Localization:
- Some defect of translation were regulated

Various:
- the station of police force donot can be destroyed any more by the crossbow.
- From now on, when Saul makes fall an object, only this object disappears from the inventory.

Improvements:
- Crashes: some crashes rare (not easily reproducible) was noticed especially during the loadings of the safeguards rapid. The patch will correct this bug.
- Artificial Intelligence: the behavior of the NPC is improved by the patch.
Some examples: the NPC avoid from now on the obstacles at the time of their displacements, they are defended when they are attacked and their animations were worked over again.