Finnish games

[pershainovitsh]

For some reason I thought it could be a good idea to have a thread about Finnish games. Without further ado, here we go!

Flatout

A racing game developed by Bubear Entertainment that is all about carnage on the road. In the first one, you race on rural areas with low-end vehicles. You gain nitro boost by crashing into anything, but of course crashing slows you down... And the driver can go through the windshield if you hit an obstacle at a too high speed. There is also a wide array of different mini-games based on this feature. You will be slinging your driver for distance, height, play darts with it...
Bugbear also developed the sequels Flatout 2 and Flatout: Ultimate Carnage. Flatout 3 was not devloped by Bugbear, and has received negative reception.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatout

Max Payne

Max Payne, made by Remedy Entertainment, is a 3rd person shooter with a cool feature: bullet time, which allows you to slow down time. And just like in any action movie, you can leap through the air in slow-mo while shooting.
The story is told in a graphical novel form, due to a low budget, but it does its job extremely well. The budget was actually so low that the lead writer, Sami Järvi (also known as Sam Lake) had to give his face to the main character, which makes him one of the most recognizable faces in the gaming industry.
The gameplay is excellent, as are the graphical novel cutscenes, the voice acting, the music, and the story. There are also some TV shows shown on TVs, which make the world more real. The episodes are short and worth watching.
It also has a sequel, Max Payne 2, but I have only played the demo. The graphics seem to be better, but I've heard it's shorter and not as good as the original. Both of them also have many great mods, such as "The Real World" mod for MP1, which adds moves, characters, weapons and levels from the Matrix films. It is still in development, and they have said there will be another demo this month.
Max Payne 3 is also in development, but it is not made by Remedy, since they sold their rights to Rockstar so they could create Alan Wake. Max Payne 3 will come out at some point this summer.

Max Payne is a true PC game. It was first devloped on the PC, and only afterwards ported to consoles. Nowadays it seems to go vice versa, for example with BF3. The game's modding tools actually are in the game disc itself! I managed to make a room by following an online tutorial, but I gave up before I could get the AI to do anything. The aiming is really smooth, unlike in other games from the same year (or around that time): the aiming in Deus Ex, Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon is jaggy, but they are still very playable. And the game supports quite high resolutions: even 1680x1050, which is my monitor's native resolution!

The game can get extremely difficult especially on the higher difficulty levels, but it's never impossible. If you complete the game in all three difficulties, you unlock a very challenging bonus level, which plays completely in bullet time! There is also a time attack mode, where you have one minute to complete a level, but you gain more by killing enemies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_payne

Alan Wake

Also made by Remedy. You play as a writer who is suffering from writer's block (he just can't think of what to write) and travels to Bright Falls with his wife on a holiday, hoping he would gain his writing skills once more.
The gameplay is fairly repetitive and a bit clucky, but the story is what makes it so good. At least I liked it very much. If you are interested, I suggest you not to look at the new (or any) trailers, but at best at some gameplay videos, so you don't get spoiled of the story.
And just like in Max Payne, there are TV shows to watch, and now also radio programs to listen. A horror series named "Night Springs" can be followed throughout the game. I enjoyed the episodes very much.
The game was previously only available on Xbox 360, but it will soon be released on the PC as well. On 16.2.2012 on Steam and 2.3.2012 on retail. The PC version will include both DLC's for free.
There is a sequel in works called Alan Wake: American Nightmare, but as of now it seems to be more arcade-ish and only coming out on Xbox 360.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_wake

Angry Birds

Everyone has probably heard of this. It's a gae for mobile phones with touch screens. You use a slingshot to fling your birds towards the pigs' fortresses.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_birds

Air Buccaneers HD

Made by LudoCraft Ltd. Now this is a strange one. It's a multiplayer only game where teamwork is essential. You are flying in the air in a hot air balloon equipped with cannons. One player controls the direction and speed of the balloon, one player aims the cannon(s) and one player sets the fuse. The HD version is in development, and there is an open beta out. I haven't tried, but seems to be pretty interesting.
www.ludocraft.com/games/airbuccaneers/

Unstoppable Gorg

A tower defence game. In space. I don't like tower defence games, and I haven't tried this one anyway.
www.unstoppablegorg.com/

And no, Battlefield is not made in Finland, it's made in Sweden.

(I don't want to make a list of Finnish movies, but anyway, Iron Sky is made by Finns. Here's the trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_IndUbcxc)

[swfwebmaster]

Very Interesting

[pershainovitsh]

Yes it is.

Alan Wake has been released on the PC and is being sold cheap. Buy it if you want a game with a good story. The gameplay isn't that good.

I just played some The Real World mod for Max Payne. The demo was recently released. It adds a couple of training levels in dojo-style maps, and the first scene of the first Matrix movie. I am not going to spoil what happens in it. If you're interested even a bit, I very strongly recommend watching the movie. Anyway, the mod is of an extremely high quality, on par with PR and FH (in quality, not quantity). There are still some bugs, but the modder (Maddieman) is still working on it.

You can also play the regular Max Payne levels as Neo, the main character from the Matrix movies. You can use kung fu, do acrobatic moves and even run along walls, which is pretty much the coolest thing you can do in any game.

I uploaded some videos and screenshots on XFire to show the mod. www.xfire.com/profile/pershainovitsh/screenshots/
www.xfire.com/profile/pershainovitsh/videos/

[pershainovitsh]

Can you run Max Payne 3? pc.ign.com/articles/122/1223548p1.html#disqus_thread

Operating System
Windows 7 32/64 Service Pack 1 | Windows Vista 32/64 Service Pack 2 | Windows XP 32/64 Service Pack 3

Processor
Intel Dual Core 2.4 GHZ - i7 3930K 6 Core x 3.06 GHZ | AMD Dual Core 2.6 GHZ - FX8150 8 Core x 3.6 GHZ

RAM
2GB - 16GB

Video Card
NVIDIA 8600 GT 512 MB – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB | Radeon HD 3400 512MB - Radeon HD 7970 3GB

Sound Card
100% Direct X 9.0 compatible | Direct X 9.0 compatible supporting Dolby Digital Live

HDD Space
35 GB

AND YES! I can run it! Even if my rig hasn't been upgraded in the past five years! I don't know how is it possible, maybe it's because it will be a console port, maybe it's because Rockstar is making it and I've understood that they don't know how to make PC games very well.

... But 35 GB hard drive space? That's ridiculous. And I thought 15 GB for BF3 was way too much. How can it take over twice as much as Battlefield 3? Does it come with a free copy of BF3? Have they packed any files? Is it terribly optimized like GTA IV? (haven't tried, people say it runs badly no matter how good your machine is) The biggest game I've had on my computer is Company of Heroes, 6.5 Gigs. Some mods like the Complete mod for STALKER: Call of Pripyat and Project Reality for BF2 take about 10 gigs each. But still, 35 gigs for one game.

In 35 gigabytes you can fit:
- 35 Ghost Recons. With the Heroes Unleashed mod about 4.
- two copies of Battlefield 3. Plus Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (almost)
- about 700 songs... In WAV format. (if I did my calculations correctly)
- 11700 5 megapixel images. (of some resolution, I have no idea what my calculations are based on)
- 11 copies of Need for Speed: Most Wanted (great game, had to reinstall and start again)

....But anyway, I can make space for it and it will probably be a very good game. I'm just worried about it being a console port and not having proper mouse controls and having lag. And there's the thing that the original developers have very little to do it, although Rockstar has consulted them and they have been satisfied with what they've seen. So technically, Max Payne 3 isn't a Finnish game at all, unlike the first two. Anyway, I'll wait for reviews and a possible, but unlikely demo.

Max Payne 3 is coming out on pc on May 29.

[pershainovitsh]

Seriously, it's going to be on at least three dvd's. (about 10 GB per disc, 35GB in total) Just like when dvd's were slowly coming and you had four cd's for one game.

In the best case scenario, every single character in the game will be unique, no textures are reused and the textures are extremely sharp. Probably it's just because Rockstar doesn't know how to make PC games. Which is a shame. Max Payne originates from PC and was best when played on PC. Now it seems that the console versions are the best ones.

[pershainovitsh]

Note regarding the earlier posts: Max Payne 3 is not a Finnish game. Remedy sold the rights years ago to Rockstar so they could start developing Alan Wake. But they have consulted with the devs of Max Payne 3.


A hint of Alan Wake 2: www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/03/e3-2012-remedy-tweet-hints-at-new-alan-wake

This should be good. I enjoyed the first Alan Wake despite its repetitive combat, bad lip synch and other problems. Sam Lake is a very good writer, as seen in Max Payne and Alan Wake.

Alan Wake and Alan Wake: American Nightmare (the arcade-style mini-sequel) are both available for PC and they aren't even very expensive. If you'd like a game set in a Stephen King -style world, this is it. I recommend Alan Wake to people enjoying a good story, but can't comment on AW:AN because I haven't played it yet.

[pershainovitsh]

Gaikai is a cloud-based gaming service. At the moment it only provides demos. The point is, if you can watch videos on your computer, you can play games on Gaikai. The server itself is doing all the processing of the game while you are basically only watching a video of the game you're playing. Of course there will be input lag and the graphics are not maxed, but it's an interesting concept. I'd still rather get myself a powerful PC and play with it. At the moment it actually is the better option when it comes to graphics and lag. I have tested a couple demos on the site, and it was pretty much like watching a Youtube video on 360p with slight input lag. You have about 30 minutes to play the games. I don't know how far you can go in the game in those 30 minutes. There are demos for Dead Island, Mass Effect 3 and 2, Crysis 2, Sniper Ghost Warrior and Mount&Blade: Warband and many more games. (there's a Warband demo on Sream with a level limit rather than a time limit, to reach the limit you have to play about 4 hours, at least if you're as good/bad as me)

But what does this have to do with Finnish games? Well, Alan Wake has a demo there! I don't know how well does it play (last time I played anything was months ago, maybe they have improved the service) or which level does it show, but if you're interested, give it a try. You might even like it and buy the full game.

[pershainovitsh]

Tested the Alan Wake demo. It's the first level of the game, or actually just how far you can get in the 30(?) minutes you're given. It shows pretty well what the game is about. For some reason boosting the flashlight didn't work with the right mouse button so I switched it to "t" to see if it works. Apparently the game/Gaikai didn't find the entire button for some reason. I don't think the retail version has the same problem.

A couple of other bad things I have to say about Alan Wake. The lip sync is off and the characters don't look like what they are supposed to. The Finnish actor Ilkka Villi is the model for the titular character, but the two don't look alike very much. Here's a side by side comparison: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr0tiBaYmew&feature=player_detailpage#t=7s

Anyway, if you like Stephen King you'll like the game's story.

Here's the Gaikai demo: www.gaikai.com/games

[pershainovitsh]

You can get Alan Wake for 6,99€ for the next 4,5 hours from Steam! You can also get Alan Wake franchise (includes Alan Wake, collector's edition extras, Alan Wake: American Nightmare) for 8,99€! They are a whopping -75% off the regular price. If you think you'd enjoy a good horror story (maybe not so terrifying but the plot is very good and interesting) here's a good chance to get one!

[swfwebmaster]

I have told several people that Angry Bird was developed by the Finnish.

[pershainovitsh]

And you were correct!