Let's focus on the physics and PhysX
Ok, so I mentioned earlier that Warmonger is a showcase game for Ageia PhysX and, to some extent, you can see the card doing its thing. Certainly, at 1280x1024 with everything maxed, the game was smooth and stutter free but I have to admit that the physics, like the AI, seems basically flawed.The most obvious area to check out the physics is the tutorial, where you’re asked to shoot wooden barricades with a variety of weapons before blowing up whole walls with the RPG or minigun. So I have to ask why it is that the bits I’ve smashed, blown up or blasted just melt away after a few seconds? Surely if there’s a PPU running the physics it can handle keeping a dozen chunks of wall on the screen. It can’t be a gameplay thing of clearing the way as the crappy clipping means I can stroll through the chunks anyway.
But before the chunks hit the ground we’ve got the problems of procedural shattering rather than a proper physical impact.. shoot a bit of wood and it’ll break the same way each time, no matter where you hit it. Sure, where you hit it makes a difference how it reacts after it’s shattered, but not how it shatters. So you have to ask, what’s the PhysX card doing if it’s not figuring this out?
Click for larger imageLet’s forget that for a minute and look at the flags and material fluttering in the post-apocalyptic breeze. This is a bit more impressive but again looks more procedural than any real-time physics going on. Yep, you can shoot holes in the fabric and a dart grenade reduces the flag to tatters which momentarily swooshes away from the blast… but that’s about it. I tried strolling into a sheet of tarpaulin to see how that’d react and it kinda bunched up before the crap clipping took over and suddenly I’ve got my head magically passing through the tarpaulin… *sigh*
Alright, how about the much vaunted, (according to the press release), destructible world? Now being completely fair, I’m not expecting to be able to level the entire map to little bits of rubble. I fully expect that certain pillars, floors and walls etc will be indestructible for gameplay reasons. Now smashing stuff up with the PhysX card on looks great but brings to the fore that flaw from earlier, which is what happens to the bits.
Click for larger imageSmashed walls break into pieces which then bounce around on the floor as they knock against each other, which is all well and good… but then a player goes and runs through the lumps, his legs passing through chunks of debris as they’re not there. And scooching down hoping some debris will cover you from sight is pointless as the AI can see and shoot through it anyway… not that they’ll hit you, but still…
So being able to smash up the world is fairly pointless unless you just want to destroy the enemies’ cover. You can’t block a route with a fallen wall as the blocks disappear after a few seconds and the clipping means they don’t exist as a solid object anyway… they’re only half solid even as a full wall in the first place. And surely part of the point in destroying the environment is to hamper the enemy? Perhaps collapse a wall on him or shoot the floor out from under his feet?
And of course the lack of logic in the game world makes it through to this area of Warmonger too. My favourite is the fact I can utterly decimate a concrete road block with my machine gun (fair enough, it’s a futuristic machine gun so I’ll accept that it can mince concrete), yet I’m foiled by a wooden door, of the kind B&Q sell in their budget range, which in the future is apparently hammer, bullet and rocket proof. Perhaps B&Q should use that in their advertising? They could get Barry Scott to do the ad: “HI! I'm Barry Scott! Being attacked by soldiers from the future? Get a B&Q half glazed door! That’ll fuck ‘em!”
Click for larger imageBasically, the physics, what I could see of it, looked ok with some nice particle effects and lots of bouncy debris but is let down by completely shoddy coding for everything else. I’m honestly surprised that I haven’t fallen through the world yet, or gotten stuck between textures or something equally as daft. But then again, seeing as there’s no intuitive logical thread of how the world works running anywhere in the vicinity of Warmonger, I’m hardly surprised.
Now this is the thrid game I've reviewed that uses Unreal Engine 3 and I've got to admit that I'm starting to wonder if it's possible to make a game with this engine? Yeah I know we've got Gears of War, which is very good, but look at Stranglehold for an example of a game with the same, though not nearly as prominent, clipping issues. That said, Unreal Tournament 3 doesn't appear to have any but then the engine was pretty much designed to make that game... so maybe it's just poor world design? Perhaps I'm expecting too much seeing as this is a free game and not a commercial release?
But either way, from Ageia's point of view, using Warmonger as a showcase for Ageia’s PhysX PPU is a bit like using the Titanic as a shining example of ocean liner design...
Click for larger image