Is anyone else freaking amazed that the PS2 is still alive? They are still making games for the thing! And not just crappy movie games that have a version on all the systems but actual AAA games exclusively for the PS2! I've been watching Atlus put out a JRPG like every freaking month for the last 2 years so in my head I was thinking of them as just a fluke. But then I see that Naughty Dog is releasing a new Jak and Daxter on the system! What? In 2009?! I'm amazed. I think I might buy it (gasp, NEW) just to see what a AAA 2009 PS2 game is like.
The PS2 really is a great system, and although it is technically still active the games have plummeted in price. I'm going to launch a buying campaign (or "pogrom" if you will) in which I will hunt down a bunch of classic PS2 games to round out my collection. These are games that defined the system but that I never had interest in playing or just never got around to. I'll see if I can put together a list for a future post. I've already made a couple cursory Game Stop scouting trips and most of these games are under 10 dollars and almost all of them are under 20. I made a list of 7 of them and their total price was less than the cost of a new game for a current gen system. You know how I love value.
My Pogrom will preclude me from getting any new 360 games for a while. The last one I bought was Ridge Racer 6 last week. It was 6 bucks (again, value = <3), very reasonable. It was a launch title so its not state of the art but I can see how it got high marks when It came out. The graphics are very nice for 2005, and the game play is simple but fun. It's an arcade racer all the way, there are no simulation elements at all. After spending the last year churning through Forza 2 it feels refreshing to jump into a racer that's only concerned with fun racing. Ironically Forza 3 just came out. Most of my online racing buddies picked it up, I went in the opposite direction. As an observational aside I was impressed with Namco's ability and willingness to put a full sized instruction manual in with the game. A full 40 pages of info! This truly is the manual of a bygone era. Kudos to you Namco.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Never Rememer, Never Forget
So I told you about my trip to Plan-N-Trade the other day where I bought a couple old Nintendo games (see last post). While there I saw that they had a copy of Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance II. This was worth noting because it's an uncommon game, and the price was reasonable. Long story short I got it with the intent of playing the co-op game with my friend. I'll post on the details our adventure later.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
The Game Boy... err Man
When I was a kid I didn't have a Game Boy, which I thought was a grave injustice. A lot of my friends had one though and I spent a good amount of time playing theirs. Most of that time was spent playing Super Mario Land, mostly because everyone had it and most of the other games sucked. When I met my wife she told me she had an old game boy that had belonged to her and her brothers and when I expressed interest it and she dug it out of their basement. She had a few good games like Metroid II and a few bad ones like Spider Man, but one game she didn't have was Super Mario Land. This surprised me since like I said before, everyone had it.
So fast forward a few years to yesterday when I got a hankerin' to brows for some classics at my local Play-N-Trade. They didn't have a great selection but they had a few I was interested in. I ended up getting Ken Griffy Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for the SNES and Super Mario Land. KGJPMLB is a really fun baseball game from '94 that one of my friends had. It's everything that a baseball game needs to be, lots of fun with little complication. It was nice to buy a SNES game, it's been a long time since I picked up a new one.
Anyway, so this morning I got up from a 6 hour LOTRO bender (my trail subscription is up tomorrow) and sat down for a little classic Game Boy action. If you've ever played SML you know what a great game it is, really an example of hand-held game design done right. Now I never beat the game as a kid. In fact I don't think I ever got past the third world because things got unfamiliar after that. World 4 has a Chinese theme with bamboo in the background and kung foo guys jumping around. Its really weird how uncharacteristic this game of a typical Mario game. It definitely doesn't take place in the Mushroom Kingdom. The worlds (or I guess lands) are: World 1 Egypt, World 2 Water World with Aliens and Robots, World 3 Easter Island, and World 4 China. I was surprised to find that World 4 is the last one. The game culminates with a flying shoot-em-up level and a two part boss fight. Then you save Daisy (This is the game that she comes from) and the credits roll. So that's it. I beat in an hour the game that kicked my ass my entire childhood. High score 276080 bitchez.
I can see where I would have had trouble as a kid, the game is challenging. I found... holy shit I just played it again! Sooo much fun! OH Daisy! Anyway the game is pretty hard but for me this was entirely because my hands are no longer child-size and I was playing it on my Game Boy Advance SP. If you don't know, SP stands for "really fucking small." The other thing is that the control feels a bit loose or slippery which can make a hard performer even herder. Like controller throwing harder. I found myself unexpectedly falling off of ledges and saying things like "no fucking way", and "that's fucking bullshit". I'm pretty sure I didn't say those things back in 1989. I'm not saying the control is bad, it's just not Super Mario World precision. Kind of like how Disney Land isn't a cool as Disney World. I also got an occasional feeling of bad hit detection but then, it IS a tiny screen so who knows.
Did I mention there are shooting levels? So cool. OH Daisy!
Friday, October 16, 2009
Relaps
I gave the 360 a rest this week and played some good old PS2. Three games that I abandoned but would like to finish: Dirge of Cerberus, Odin Sphere, and Okami. Two of those, DoC and OS, I don't think I ever will finish mostly due to the frustration factor. DoC gets a bad rap. A lot of people would say that it sucks but I don't think that's fair. The problem is that it came out at the tail end of the platform's life but looks like a launch title. It's not a bad game, it's just that it's a Square game that isn't great. Expectations were high and it was unprepared to meet them. So now in October of 2009 when I play it I find myself wondering why I'm spending my time on it. My biggest beef with the game is the stupid-awkward control scheme. A shallow game like this should be easy to pick up. I shouldn't have to spend a couple hours re-internalizing the buttons. If you're unfamiliar with the game let me break it down for you: Left on the d-pad uses an item and Right on the d-pad cycles through your items. Enough said.
Odin Sphere is an entirely different situation. It's an excellent game made for (and I mean exclusively for) a particular subset of hardcore gamers. I can't imagine a casual player with this game, I have a feeling the meeting would be brief and unpleasant for all involved. Odin Sphere is a game in which every facet of your game play experience is a challenge. I have a feeling that if the designers could have made it harder for you to hit the power button on your console they would have. I think I'm working myself up for a full blown review/rant but that can wait for a future post.
Lets move on to Legend of Zelda.... I mean Okami. Zelda is a great way to describe the game. It's a bright colorful world where you run around, fight some things, solve some puzzles, repeat. Here I have something worth playing through to the end. It's designed well, it's moderately challenging, and there isn't anything tedious I have to spend an inordinate amount of time on. So yeah, I guess I'll be playing Okami this weekend.
Odin Sphere is an entirely different situation. It's an excellent game made for (and I mean exclusively for) a particular subset of hardcore gamers. I can't imagine a casual player with this game, I have a feeling the meeting would be brief and unpleasant for all involved. Odin Sphere is a game in which every facet of your game play experience is a challenge. I have a feeling that if the designers could have made it harder for you to hit the power button on your console they would have. I think I'm working myself up for a full blown review/rant but that can wait for a future post.
Lets move on to Legend of Zelda.... I mean Okami. Zelda is a great way to describe the game. It's a bright colorful world where you run around, fight some things, solve some puzzles, repeat. Here I have something worth playing through to the end. It's designed well, it's moderately challenging, and there isn't anything tedious I have to spend an inordinate amount of time on. So yeah, I guess I'll be playing Okami this weekend.
Monday, October 12, 2009
New Temptations
Downloaded the demos for Lucidity and Shadow Complex, two recently released games for XBLA. I got to play them for all of 5 min before I had to go to work. Oh and also a tower defense game called Defense Grid which I played for about an hour. I've been feeling a new XBLA purchase coming on. The barriers to acquiring downloadable games is frighteningly thin. I can, on my couch, simply keep pressing the A button and I will receive games. I don't have to move my right thumb more than a fraction of an inch, let alone get up and find my credit card. Scary. It's really surprising that I haven't given M$ more money than I have. I like to think it's a testament to my iron will and thrifty nature but that thought seems pretty suspicious. I don't know what else could it be?
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Why is October the Tenth Month?
Doesn't "oct" mean 8? That's always bothered me.
So I've been playing Fallout 3 mostly with small doses of MvsC2 and Monkey Island. I've gone through two play sessions of LOTRO now, both of which being multi-hour affairs. The second one I actually played with a friend. He had some characters on other servers but not the one I was playing on. You can't switch servers without paying a fee so he didn't want to do that. I didn't want to start over and play through the "intro" levels a week after playing though them the first time. I convinced him to play a new character on my server. So in actuality our time together was spent IMing while he went through the bullshit opening stuff and I walked around doing fetch quests. I never actually saw his character. Wheee.
These are the kind of multiplayer online hassles that I like to avoid by... well... not playing with other people. I remember as a youth a group of us doing a kind of gymnastics just to get a one on one game of Star Craft going. This was the time of dial-up so there was lots of hanging up and reconnecting and then disconnecting to use the phone to call the other guy to try to figure out why it wasn't working. These experiments always degraded into one volunteer running back and forth between houses to relay messages like some WW2 soldier running cable under enemy fire. It's amazing to think about all the physical activity and in-person social interaction that those early online games created.
Now we have a much more advanced infrastructure on which to place our virtual meetings. The games however seem to have a level of complexity that requires just as much work to create a satisfying online experience as it did back then. I'm not saying that I've never had fun online; I have, even with strangers. It's just that these experiences have never measured up to the feeling of playing in the same room with someone else. Over the years I've had tremendous fun playing "same couch" with people, even games that aren't multiplayer. I have particularly fond memories of tag-teaming RPGs like Final Fantasy 3 or Earth Bound, one person controlling and the other drawing maps, or taking notes, or flipping through guides, or just being there! How about four-player Goldeneye in a dark basement all summer, or hot-seating Soul Caliber 2 between 6 rowdy drunks until the early mourning hours? What about three friends buying Guitar Hero 2 and deciding not to sleep until they had played through it? You just can't get that from online play.
So I guess I'm whining. Online play does have its merits, particularly the ability to get large groups together in a short about of time... provided it's a popular game. This topic is timely because a good gamer friend of mine is moving back into the area and I'm looking forward to a return to the long sessions of beer and slaughter we used to indulge in.
Oh, and LOTRO isn't half bad really.
So I've been playing Fallout 3 mostly with small doses of MvsC2 and Monkey Island. I've gone through two play sessions of LOTRO now, both of which being multi-hour affairs. The second one I actually played with a friend. He had some characters on other servers but not the one I was playing on. You can't switch servers without paying a fee so he didn't want to do that. I didn't want to start over and play through the "intro" levels a week after playing though them the first time. I convinced him to play a new character on my server. So in actuality our time together was spent IMing while he went through the bullshit opening stuff and I walked around doing fetch quests. I never actually saw his character. Wheee.
These are the kind of multiplayer online hassles that I like to avoid by... well... not playing with other people. I remember as a youth a group of us doing a kind of gymnastics just to get a one on one game of Star Craft going. This was the time of dial-up so there was lots of hanging up and reconnecting and then disconnecting to use the phone to call the other guy to try to figure out why it wasn't working. These experiments always degraded into one volunteer running back and forth between houses to relay messages like some WW2 soldier running cable under enemy fire. It's amazing to think about all the physical activity and in-person social interaction that those early online games created.
Now we have a much more advanced infrastructure on which to place our virtual meetings. The games however seem to have a level of complexity that requires just as much work to create a satisfying online experience as it did back then. I'm not saying that I've never had fun online; I have, even with strangers. It's just that these experiences have never measured up to the feeling of playing in the same room with someone else. Over the years I've had tremendous fun playing "same couch" with people, even games that aren't multiplayer. I have particularly fond memories of tag-teaming RPGs like Final Fantasy 3 or Earth Bound, one person controlling and the other drawing maps, or taking notes, or flipping through guides, or just being there! How about four-player Goldeneye in a dark basement all summer, or hot-seating Soul Caliber 2 between 6 rowdy drunks until the early mourning hours? What about three friends buying Guitar Hero 2 and deciding not to sleep until they had played through it? You just can't get that from online play.
So I guess I'm whining. Online play does have its merits, particularly the ability to get large groups together in a short about of time... provided it's a popular game. This topic is timely because a good gamer friend of mine is moving back into the area and I'm looking forward to a return to the long sessions of beer and slaughter we used to indulge in.
Oh, and LOTRO isn't half bad really.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
LOTRO or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love MMORPGs
OK maybe not love. I'll just start from the beginning.
So at PAX they were giving out full copies of Lord of the Rings Online with the Mines of Moria expansion. I find it impressive that a company other than Blizzard is making enough money from subscriptions that they can just hand out full copies of AAA games. But then, maybe they should all be doing that. My biggest problem with MMOs is that you have to pay to keep playing a game you have already paid for... forever (unless you pay hundreds of dollars for a lifetime subscription). So really why charge for the game at all? I'm not certain but I think Blizzard gives away the base version of Wow, and has for some time. I can't help but think of a pusher on the street corner going "hey man, want to get your game on. Have a little taste, first one's on me!" Well actually the second taste is on them too because they give you a 30 day free trail, which in the case of LOTRO I am now using.
My second biggest problem with MMOs is that they never end. There is no discrete limit to the game. Potentially you could keep playing it forever and they could keep adding little bits of new content to entice you. What this means is that playing an MMO is a huge time investment. Or more like time sink hole. I already spend way more time than I should on the hobby. If I tried to play an MMO something terrible would happen: I'd have less time to play other games! There's just to many great games coming out all the time and an endless library of older games. I couldn't in good conscience dedicate myself to just one.
Anyway, lets talk about the game. Its cool I guess...
Yeah that's pretty much it. I like the story elements and the visuals for the setting. It feels like Middle Earth, which is exciting. The game play is actually kind of boring but again, this isn't my usual cup 'o tea . You click on a monster and your character starts trading blows. I imagine that as the game progresses the battles become more intense, requiring you to use your abilities in a tactical manner. I got to the point in the game where you pick a profession and can start making stuff. This is the part of the game I find most appealing. I have yet to discover how deep the crafting system goes but from the little I've done it seems like I could get pretty into it. I chose the Tinker job which involves cooking. I was very stoked to learn that I could brew beer. Beer and video games have always been a match made in heaven and now you're telling me I can drink beer while playing a game in which I'm drinking beer? You sir are a champion of men! ...not sure who I'm talking to there...
So I've got a month to play for free and I'll probably spend a few more sessions with it. My friend has an account so I'm going to try to play with him at least once in order to enjoy the MM aspect of my MMORPG... or maybe just the M... the second one... yeah. I'll let you know how it goes.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
PAX Music
So I didn't get to see Metroid Metal live at PAX because I was volunteering in another part of the con.
On a much less game-related aside, I ran into a guy standing outside the entrance to the convention center. He asked me if I had heard of Sir Mix-a-lot. I replied in the affirmative. He explained that just like Sir Mix-a-lot he was a rap artist from Seattle trying to make it big. He handed me his latest album and said they were giving them out in exchange for "donations", whatever I felt like I could give. Now I'm not really a fan of rap music. I have a select few groups that I like to listen to and it's mostly white-people-friendly rap like the Roots. But I do have a soft spot for a: sales people (having been in sales myself) and b: people trying to make it (also being in that position myself). I told him I'd give him 2 dollars. He said "OK but we are asking for 5". I gave him 2.
So I gave it a listen when I got home. Again I'm not a big rap person. I mostly find it hard to relate to the subject matter. I didn't grow up in "the hood", I never shot nobody, I'm not gangsta. I find that most rap is just the rapper telling everyone how much better at rapping he is than everyone else. It's this kind of circular self awareness that just seams sort of masturbatory. I feel like I'm watching clothes in a dryer. Anyway I'm getting off track. The album was pretty good. Like I said, I had a hard time with the lyrics but in the words of American Bandstand it had a beat and I could dance to it. The words are delivered in a rapid fire style that I found pleasing to the ear. I can see this guy getting pretty big in the next few years. The production quality was high and they seem to have a sense for the single.
Oh yeah, I never said who I was talking about! The guys name is Juga Hill and the album is called One Way (Pre-Album Chapter 3). I'm guessing there are Chapters 1 and 2 out there somewhere. JugaHill.com will take you to his myspace page which has a good selection of his work.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
PAX09 For Realz This Time
Oh all right all right! Fine. I'll write a proper post.
Lets talk about games shall we? I only played one hands-on demo: Darksiders. It was pretty fun I guess. I walked away feeling like I had just played a next-gen God of War. You run around beating people with a sword and climbing things. The coolest part is that you can pick things up like people or cars. Grabbing enemies buy the neck and insta-killing them was pretty fun. So you're supposed to have a horse in the game but that wasn't in the demo. So... yeah, God of War.
Best demo I watched someone else play: Bayonetta. This one's been on my radar for about as long as Darksiders has. It's another third-person action hack-and-slash staring a... um, yeah the plot escapes me... she's a gun... witch? Whatever, she runs around killing stuff. The first guy I watched play the game was pretty good at it. I watched him take down two bosses. I think they were bosses; they were pretty epic. As she fought these huge monster things they destroyed the environment in ways that completely changed the battlefield. There were at least four "oh snap" moments in the 3 min of gameplay I witnessed. The shifting environment during the boss battles were half of them. The finishing moves used to kill the bosses were the other. Apparently the player's character has the ability to use her hair and clothes to turn giant beasties into piles of goo, and in a ludicrously spectacular manner. I'm not going to go into detail because you really have to just see it, but wow. Wow.
Also impressive was Brink. They had a big screen set up and a guy with an English accent was giving live demos every hour or so. The game takes place on this floating island and you play as a soldier from one of two opposing factions. Your goal is to complete missions, but the twist is that the missions are generated by the AI. Your character class can be switched around during the battle and your missions are assigned to you based on the class you are playing. You can choose which mission you want to do from a pop-up menu, so you're not stuck having to do one thing. I think this is especially cool because I hate getting stuck on one mission! To me this approach could streamline and maximize the fun factor. There is an RPG element with your character as well. It wasn't made clear to me exactly what you would be improving stat-wise, but he did go over a pretty robust visual customization system. As your character progresses he (or she?) will have access to more armor and regalia. Also cool is this action button they built in where your character can intuitively move around the environment, traversing obstacles, and just not getting stuck on stuff. It looks pretty slick in action, and I can imagine it will be pretty important because the environments I saw were tangled, jungle-like mazes of metal and debris.
So PAX was sweet. There were a lot of great games there but Bayonetta and Brink were the two that really caught my eye.
Lets talk about games shall we? I only played one hands-on demo: Darksiders. It was pretty fun I guess. I walked away feeling like I had just played a next-gen God of War. You run around beating people with a sword and climbing things. The coolest part is that you can pick things up like people or cars. Grabbing enemies buy the neck and insta-killing them was pretty fun. So you're supposed to have a horse in the game but that wasn't in the demo. So... yeah, God of War.
Best demo I watched someone else play: Bayonetta. This one's been on my radar for about as long as Darksiders has. It's another third-person action hack-and-slash staring a... um, yeah the plot escapes me... she's a gun... witch? Whatever, she runs around killing stuff. The first guy I watched play the game was pretty good at it. I watched him take down two bosses. I think they were bosses; they were pretty epic. As she fought these huge monster things they destroyed the environment in ways that completely changed the battlefield. There were at least four "oh snap" moments in the 3 min of gameplay I witnessed. The shifting environment during the boss battles were half of them. The finishing moves used to kill the bosses were the other. Apparently the player's character has the ability to use her hair and clothes to turn giant beasties into piles of goo, and in a ludicrously spectacular manner. I'm not going to go into detail because you really have to just see it, but wow. Wow.
Also impressive was Brink. They had a big screen set up and a guy with an English accent was giving live demos every hour or so. The game takes place on this floating island and you play as a soldier from one of two opposing factions. Your goal is to complete missions, but the twist is that the missions are generated by the AI. Your character class can be switched around during the battle and your missions are assigned to you based on the class you are playing. You can choose which mission you want to do from a pop-up menu, so you're not stuck having to do one thing. I think this is especially cool because I hate getting stuck on one mission! To me this approach could streamline and maximize the fun factor. There is an RPG element with your character as well. It wasn't made clear to me exactly what you would be improving stat-wise, but he did go over a pretty robust visual customization system. As your character progresses he (or she?) will have access to more armor and regalia. Also cool is this action button they built in where your character can intuitively move around the environment, traversing obstacles, and just not getting stuck on stuff. It looks pretty slick in action, and I can imagine it will be pretty important because the environments I saw were tangled, jungle-like mazes of metal and debris.
So PAX was sweet. There were a lot of great games there but Bayonetta and Brink were the two that really caught my eye.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Seattle Bound
So this week I'm traveling to Seattle for the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo. This will be my first time in the state of Washington and my first "con". I know it's an "expo" but con is pretty accurate. Nerd con to be exact. I don't know if there is a more general purpose meeting place for all things nerd. The primary theme is video games of course, but just like the comic for which it is named PAX is about more than that. It's about our culture (nerd culture). I mean it grew out of a COMIC so there is another nerd cornerstone right there.
Anyway I'm going and it's going to be fun. I had hoped to bring a working demo of a game to show people but laziness prevailed and I haven't gotten much done on it. I'll will be working as an Enforcer, the volunteer army that runs the show. I'm hoping it will help me make some new friends and gain some industry contacts.
Speaking of PAX I've heard some new music recently. Penny Arcade shared this link in their latest post: http://2playerproductions.bandcamp.com/ It's an album from the 2008 Blip Festival which is all about using unconventional hardware to make music. Hardware like the Gameboy. There are 32 songs and I listened to about 10 or so. It's worth a look. Also search for "Gameboy music" on YouTube to see some neat-o videos about the making of such things. So then later I was checking out Nuklearpower.com and he had a link to these guys: http://metroidmetal.bandcamp.com/album/varia-suite. Checking out THEIR site I saw that low and behold they would be playing at PAX! This is cool because as I discovered from listening to those three tracks, these guys rock my ASS!! I'm thinking of ordering the album because like Austin Powers, that sort of thing really IS my bag baby.
Anyway I'm going and it's going to be fun. I had hoped to bring a working demo of a game to show people but laziness prevailed and I haven't gotten much done on it. I'll will be working as an Enforcer, the volunteer army that runs the show. I'm hoping it will help me make some new friends and gain some industry contacts.
Speaking of PAX I've heard some new music recently. Penny Arcade shared this link in their latest post: http://2playerproductions.bandcamp.com/ It's an album from the 2008 Blip Festival which is all about using unconventional hardware to make music. Hardware like the Gameboy. There are 32 songs and I listened to about 10 or so. It's worth a look. Also search for "Gameboy music" on YouTube to see some neat-o videos about the making of such things. So then later I was checking out Nuklearpower.com and he had a link to these guys: http://metroidmetal.bandcamp.com/album/varia-suite. Checking out THEIR site I saw that low and behold they would be playing at PAX! This is cool because as I discovered from listening to those three tracks, these guys rock my ASS!! I'm thinking of ordering the album because like Austin Powers, that sort of thing really IS my bag baby.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Murder Simulator
So I've had time to log some hours on Fallout 3. I'm not going to speak about it from a review standpoint. It's enough to say that the game is more than sufficiently awesome. It is totally worth buying and playing. The only complaint I can think of is the jumping seems a little glitchy. But jumping really isn't an integral part of the game to the point where you could probably get through it without ever hitting the Y button. I guess I could also say that item collecting has become annoyingly repetitious. To explain, there is a lot of junk lying around for you to pick up and either use or sell. However, you have a limit to how much you can carry. This limit can be increased by raising your strength but ultimately it's still a limit. So really this boils down to a decision: do you take the time to run back and forth between the site where all of the items are and home base or do you grab only what you need and press on? Of course if you pass up the extra swag you may find yourself short on something vital later on, and if you do take the time you may find yourself at the end of a game session not much further than when you started. All of this just seems to add to the realism though. So I guess I have to go with "no complaints".
The cool thing about the game is what it lets you do. The Fallout series has always been great about giving you a lot of options in a world with plenty to do. Number 3 takes it to a whole new level. I could go on and on about all the nifty little things you can do, but instead I'm going to talk about killin'. Fallout is not a game about killing people. It certainly has a lot of features designed around killing and you can't really avoid it but that's not what the game is about. "Murder simulator" is a term I recently heard (read) used to describe Prototype, an action game that recently came out. From what I've seen, Prototype is about killing stuff, it's at the center of everything you do. In Fallout it's simply a means to an end. However, if your end happens to be killing people then you are in luck. The game can be converted from RPG to "murder simulator" with disturbing celerity.
I had been playing about 10 hours when I came upon a little house in a burned out neighborhood. Up until this point I had been playing "seriously", staying focused on the objectives and not really messing around. The house was the home of this woman who was living alone. I saw a knife sitting on the counter in the kitchen and thought, "I wounder if she'll get pissed if I pick it up?" She didn't do anything about it so I thought, "I wonder if she'll get pissed if I stab her to death with it?" Yeah, she didn't like that very much. Oh, she fought back of course but she was no match for my hit points and I just slashed away until she slumped to the floor dead. I searched her for loot and realized with surprise that if I stole her clothes it would leave her model lying in her underwear. A bit taken aback by this I did the only thing a decent person would... I stabed her a few more times. What happened? SHE KEPT ON BLEEDING! Even after being dead the models in this game continue to render damage and in gory detail. After a few more cuts her freaking arm came off!!!
Now I don't have a problem with this. In fact I think it's awesome. My question though is where is the public outcry over this game? Remember back when some guy made a big deal over the romantic elements of Mass Effect? I think he made up some bull shit about creating your own whore or something, and parents everywhere flipped their shit... and it wasn't even true! I have heard nothing about Fallout 3 being overly violent yet this is a game where you can murder someone, strip them to their underwear, and carve them up until they are nuggets! This is several steps beyond GTA. Has Jack Thomson seen this game? Am I just late to the party?
Anyway, great game. I look forward to logging a couple hundred hours on it and then playing through the game again as an "evil" person just so I can KILL EVERY BODY.
The cool thing about the game is what it lets you do. The Fallout series has always been great about giving you a lot of options in a world with plenty to do. Number 3 takes it to a whole new level. I could go on and on about all the nifty little things you can do, but instead I'm going to talk about killin'. Fallout is not a game about killing people. It certainly has a lot of features designed around killing and you can't really avoid it but that's not what the game is about. "Murder simulator" is a term I recently heard (read) used to describe Prototype, an action game that recently came out. From what I've seen, Prototype is about killing stuff, it's at the center of everything you do. In Fallout it's simply a means to an end. However, if your end happens to be killing people then you are in luck. The game can be converted from RPG to "murder simulator" with disturbing celerity.
I had been playing about 10 hours when I came upon a little house in a burned out neighborhood. Up until this point I had been playing "seriously", staying focused on the objectives and not really messing around. The house was the home of this woman who was living alone. I saw a knife sitting on the counter in the kitchen and thought, "I wounder if she'll get pissed if I pick it up?" She didn't do anything about it so I thought, "I wonder if she'll get pissed if I stab her to death with it?" Yeah, she didn't like that very much. Oh, she fought back of course but she was no match for my hit points and I just slashed away until she slumped to the floor dead. I searched her for loot and realized with surprise that if I stole her clothes it would leave her model lying in her underwear. A bit taken aback by this I did the only thing a decent person would... I stabed her a few more times. What happened? SHE KEPT ON BLEEDING! Even after being dead the models in this game continue to render damage and in gory detail. After a few more cuts her freaking arm came off!!!
Now I don't have a problem with this. In fact I think it's awesome. My question though is where is the public outcry over this game? Remember back when some guy made a big deal over the romantic elements of Mass Effect? I think he made up some bull shit about creating your own whore or something, and parents everywhere flipped their shit... and it wasn't even true! I have heard nothing about Fallout 3 being overly violent yet this is a game where you can murder someone, strip them to their underwear, and carve them up until they are nuggets! This is several steps beyond GTA. Has Jack Thomson seen this game? Am I just late to the party?
Anyway, great game. I look forward to logging a couple hundred hours on it and then playing through the game again as an "evil" person just so I can KILL EVERY BODY.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Update: Ultimate Sapphire Edition! pt 2.
Oh yeah, and Marvel vs Capcom 2 finally came out. And I bought it. And it's just as stupid hard as I remember it. Nothing makes you feel like you suck quite like getting beat on the first match on the "easy" setting. Really, calling it "easy" is just plain disingenuous.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Update: Ultimate Sapphire Edition!
Time for some updates! That title was supposed to be a play on the Pokemon naming scheme and not have anything to do with the actual post but I just realized that it does:
A couple weeks ago I finally bought that new video card I wanted. The Radeon HD4650 as manufactured by... Sapphire! How do you like that? Anyway it works great although I've had some problems getting it to work with one of my monitors. The other half of the story is that I finally played Unreal 3. It looks awesome, I'm able to run it on the highest settings just fine. That's about the best thing I can say about the game though. It looks great and beyond that it's pretty much the old Unreal with maybe a few tweaks. there is a single player story now, but I couldn't bring myself to care about it though. A game like that doesn't really need a story. Before each match you are looking at a map of the planet with icons that represent the different battle locations. This suggests some sort of strategic campaign but disappointingly there really isn't one. Occasionally you get to choose to do an extra mission but other than that the progression is completely linear. Still, it's fun to play and I'm looking forward to creating some maps for it.
I found a copy of the Castlevania Double Pack for GBA... and this time I actually bought it. The Double Pack is a reissue of the hard-to-find Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow. I justified the purchase buy telling myself I needed something for an upcoming trip I was taking. I responded by saying that I already have some GBA games I haven't spent enough time with. I responded to that by saying fuck you I'm buying it because I want it I don't need a good reason you jackass!
A few weeks later I used a remarkably similar justification (the "fuck you I want it" one) to buy Fallout 3. I may have mentioned that I tend to be about a year behind on new games. I don't like to drop $60 on a new release and I'm happy to play all the older (cheaper) games until the blockbusters come down in price. Speaking of Blockbuster, that's where I got it. Surprised? I was, when I saw it there for $40 used. I waited about a month before I actually picked it up, but once I saw that it was $15 cheaper there than it was at GameStop I was sold and it wouldn't be long until I found my way back there clutching a wad of bills.
That's it for now. I'll write up my impressions of Fallout 3 next time.
A couple weeks ago I finally bought that new video card I wanted. The Radeon HD4650 as manufactured by... Sapphire! How do you like that? Anyway it works great although I've had some problems getting it to work with one of my monitors. The other half of the story is that I finally played Unreal 3. It looks awesome, I'm able to run it on the highest settings just fine. That's about the best thing I can say about the game though. It looks great and beyond that it's pretty much the old Unreal with maybe a few tweaks. there is a single player story now, but I couldn't bring myself to care about it though. A game like that doesn't really need a story. Before each match you are looking at a map of the planet with icons that represent the different battle locations. This suggests some sort of strategic campaign but disappointingly there really isn't one. Occasionally you get to choose to do an extra mission but other than that the progression is completely linear. Still, it's fun to play and I'm looking forward to creating some maps for it.
I found a copy of the Castlevania Double Pack for GBA... and this time I actually bought it. The Double Pack is a reissue of the hard-to-find Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow. I justified the purchase buy telling myself I needed something for an upcoming trip I was taking. I responded by saying that I already have some GBA games I haven't spent enough time with. I responded to that by saying fuck you I'm buying it because I want it I don't need a good reason you jackass!
A few weeks later I used a remarkably similar justification (the "fuck you I want it" one) to buy Fallout 3. I may have mentioned that I tend to be about a year behind on new games. I don't like to drop $60 on a new release and I'm happy to play all the older (cheaper) games until the blockbusters come down in price. Speaking of Blockbuster, that's where I got it. Surprised? I was, when I saw it there for $40 used. I waited about a month before I actually picked it up, but once I saw that it was $15 cheaper there than it was at GameStop I was sold and it wouldn't be long until I found my way back there clutching a wad of bills.
That's it for now. I'll write up my impressions of Fallout 3 next time.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Gum
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am almost always skeptical of marketing vectors (slogans, ads, promises and so forth) and when I saw that my newest pack of Dentine Ice said "better than ever" on it I was fully expecting it to taste exactly like the last pack. My friends, I was wrong.
I received it's "arctic chill" up my nose and directly into my brain like never before. Exquisite.
On another note I have a lot of game related stuff to write about which I should have done later this weekend.
I am almost always skeptical of marketing vectors (slogans, ads, promises and so forth) and when I saw that my newest pack of Dentine Ice said "better than ever" on it I was fully expecting it to taste exactly like the last pack. My friends, I was wrong.
I received it's "arctic chill" up my nose and directly into my brain like never before. Exquisite.
On another note I have a lot of game related stuff to write about which I should have done later this weekend.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Also: Space
Today is the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing. Am I the only one who thinks that's cool?
I really hope we see a resurgence of the space program both here in the US and abroad in the near future. Obama has said that he wants to go to the Moon again soon but I don't see it happening any time soon since they are halting the shuttle missions for 10 years or some-such.
I think the next big step (or giant leap, whatever you want) for mankind will be establishing a permanent settlement on the lunar surface. Hopefully I'll see it in my lifetime.
I really hope we see a resurgence of the space program both here in the US and abroad in the near future. Obama has said that he wants to go to the Moon again soon but I don't see it happening any time soon since they are halting the shuttle missions for 10 years or some-such.
I think the next big step (or giant leap, whatever you want) for mankind will be establishing a permanent settlement on the lunar surface. Hopefully I'll see it in my lifetime.
That's OK, I'll walk
You know, I was going to write a post complaining about Battlefield 2 Modern Combat, and then I saw this.
I don't think I can put it any better with words. And yes I know they are talking about Battlefield 1942 but it's the same thing.
I don't think I can put it any better with words. And yes I know they are talking about Battlefield 1942 but it's the same thing.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Elite
It only took me eight months but I have finally reached the Elite rank in Rainbow Six Vegas 2. Yay me.
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Tenuous Veil
ARG! Why isn't Marvel vs. Capcom 2 out yet?! Not even a demo! ARG!
Sigh. I'm at work as I write this. My job allows a certain about of down time between tasks. Usually I spend this time surfing the net and reading about games. Recently though I've reached a saturation point were everything I care to read about has been read. Digested, regurgitated, consumed again. It feels very bovine. But my pasture has turned sour and the sweet veil of this distraction has been lifted. What it reveals is the harsh reality that I am at work, and as such I am not playing video games. I need to find some other sort of mind candy to suckle so I don't have to spend the next 9 hours facing this reality. To form an analogy (because I like analogies), I am like a small child being made to sit quietly through some long, gray, adult ritual, and I need some freaking crayons.
Wikipedia to the rescue.
Sigh. I'm at work as I write this. My job allows a certain about of down time between tasks. Usually I spend this time surfing the net and reading about games. Recently though I've reached a saturation point were everything I care to read about has been read. Digested, regurgitated, consumed again. It feels very bovine. But my pasture has turned sour and the sweet veil of this distraction has been lifted. What it reveals is the harsh reality that I am at work, and as such I am not playing video games. I need to find some other sort of mind candy to suckle so I don't have to spend the next 9 hours facing this reality. To form an analogy (because I like analogies), I am like a small child being made to sit quietly through some long, gray, adult ritual, and I need some freaking crayons.
Wikipedia to the rescue.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Funny Man
I've recently discovered a new tasty treat and it's name is Zero Punctuation. Now I know what you're thinking, you're thinking "How in the hell are you only now finding out about this?" I know, I know. It's been around for a while. BUT NOT A LONG WHILE!!! So I'm OK.
Anyway if you don't know what ZP is I will explain it like this. Imagine you are a tourist taking a tour of something that most people like yourself find fascinating and somewhat sacred (let's say the White House). On this tour your guide is an underpaid, bitter, jaded little man who hates his job, the White House, the president, the country, you, dogs, Halloween, carnivals, flowers, Kobe Bryant, and his brown bag lunch, and feels the need to share his opinions in an endless stream of vile commentary. Now imagine that every bit of what he says is riotously funny and more than a bit true. It's like that, only about video games.
The guy's name is Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, and he reviews games. The reviews are these animated videos that enhance his rapid fire criticism which plays as the soundtrack. This guy really puts the "critic" in game critic. Most of his reviews are scathing attacks, usually on games that receive high scores from more established reviewers. I love every second of it.
He gets a lot of venom from the fan community claiming he doesn't understand the game or is being overly harsh. But I think what he does is very important. It's easy to get sucked into believing that games are better than they are because you have fond memories of their prequels or because the magazines told you to. But it is dangerous to hold these things up on an untouchable pedestal. Maybe you love a game and maybe is really is a good game but to someone else it may not be enjoyable at all. It's helpful to have a reviewer who points out the shortcomings of even the best games so we can better know what we are buying (and so we can laugh at them). Despite the name of the show, what Croshaw really does is "punctuate" the never ending steam of media hype and nonsense designed to open our wallets. He pokes holes in the wall of noise and lets the light shine through. And he makes me cry sweet tears of laughter in the process.
I've added the link in the "Sites I Enjoy" section in the side bar. (Or whatever it is I called it)
OVER 5000!!!!!! (WHAT?! 5000?!)
Attention readers:
I have achieved a gamerscore of 5000! Like all nerd pastimes, the many hours required to reach such a level of awesomeness are a testament to not-getting-laid. I'd like to thank my thumbs, my electric company, and my low self esteem. That is all.
I have achieved a gamerscore of 5000! Like all nerd pastimes, the many hours required to reach such a level of awesomeness are a testament to not-getting-laid. I'd like to thank my thumbs, my electric company, and my low self esteem. That is all.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
A letter to Infinity Ward
You sons of bitches are just the spawn of the very living devil you mother fuckers. I swear you’re a bunch of circle jerk baby killers. You slaughter them in their cribs and feast on their tender flesh. I’ll bet you even laugh at their mothers as you smear the blood all over your faces. You fascist shit suckers.
What the fuck made you think it would be a good idea to put a checkpoint RIGHT FUCKING IN FRONT OF A GROUP OF ENEMIES? Did you do it on purpose? Did you really feel it was necessary to force me to watch myself get gunned down over and over again and have to read some bullshit war quote every time?
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about here is the scenario. Call of Duty 2. Second mission of the second level. Veteran difficulty. I and my comrades (read: guys who run in front of my gun while I’m firing so I can be called a traitor and have to restart) have just liberated a station house in the middle of the train yard. As soon as I clear the top floor the enemy stages a counter attack. No problem! I just happen to be on the top floor with a sniper rifle. I’m happily picking off Krauts when suddenly I see checkpoint reached message in the top corner and about two seconds later I’m being shot in the back! I turn just in time to see four Germans who have ascended the staircase behind me pump me full of hot German lead.
So, first of all, WHERE IN THE HELL DID ALL MY GUYS GO?! Are they so fucktarded moron useless that they can’t hold a position for 60 fucking seconds? I don’t even see their bodies. They are just gone. Did they jump out? Did the Germans use a cloaking device and sneak past them? Did the thin third floor atmosphere cause them to pass out? And we just cleared the building! A building surround by open courtyard. So where did those soldiers even come from? Repel in from helicopters? Hide in a cardboard box?
So now every time I respawn I have about 3 seconds to turn around, throw a grenade and crouch behind a flimsy wooden table, shoot the guy who runs around the table, and then pick off any one else. I died about 40 or 50 times. Only twice did I… Wait I forgot one, I had to change weapons in those 3 seconds too because I got the fucking checkpoint holding a rifle instead of a machine gun and it only had ONE FUCKING ROUND LEFT! This means that I had to turn with the right stick, hit the b button to crouch, the right bumper to throw the grenade, and the y button to swap. Usually I died half way through the swap animation. As an aside, why is b crouch? Why isn’t it left stick down like many other games? That makes more sense since it’s movement oriented and frees up your right hand to do other stuff. Like STAY ALIVE. So anyway I managed to get past the initial 4 man onslaught only twice and when I did I found myself trapped on the top floor and when I moved over to the staircase I was immediately shot in the face buy the guy who was just waiting there with his gun pointed at the space where he knew my head would be. That wouldn’t have been such a bad challenge if I had a checkpoint right before THAT. Why couldn’t they have put it there? What did I even do to trigger that checkpoint? I all did was shoot a few guys, I wasn’t even moving! Did it trigger because some of the enemy made it to the building? That would be an example of BAD GAME DESIGN. You put a checkpoint somewhere safe. Somewhere the player can pause if he wants. Somewhere he is not going to get his head BLOWN OFF. You don’t put it right before the enemy kicks down my door, especially not while my BACK IS TURNED!
The checkpoint is designed so that the player doesn’t have to start the level all over again every time they die. This is a wonderful invention that some games don’t even have and for most of this game you do a good job with (this is especially important considering the difficulty level). All of that is ruined by this one experience. In this case the checkpoint did the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. I decided to just start the level over (I didn’t have much choice). As soon as I did I found that I no longer had the same weapons! Instead of the sniper rifle and machine gun I had from the previous mission I had a crappy iron sight rifle and a pistol. A fucking useless pistol! I guess you guys just had to have one more little laugh at my expense. Next time why don’t you just come to my house and stab me in the eye, it would be easier than making a game.
What the fuck made you think it would be a good idea to put a checkpoint RIGHT FUCKING IN FRONT OF A GROUP OF ENEMIES? Did you do it on purpose? Did you really feel it was necessary to force me to watch myself get gunned down over and over again and have to read some bullshit war quote every time?
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about here is the scenario. Call of Duty 2. Second mission of the second level. Veteran difficulty. I and my comrades (read: guys who run in front of my gun while I’m firing so I can be called a traitor and have to restart) have just liberated a station house in the middle of the train yard. As soon as I clear the top floor the enemy stages a counter attack. No problem! I just happen to be on the top floor with a sniper rifle. I’m happily picking off Krauts when suddenly I see checkpoint reached message in the top corner and about two seconds later I’m being shot in the back! I turn just in time to see four Germans who have ascended the staircase behind me pump me full of hot German lead.
So, first of all, WHERE IN THE HELL DID ALL MY GUYS GO?! Are they so fucktarded moron useless that they can’t hold a position for 60 fucking seconds? I don’t even see their bodies. They are just gone. Did they jump out? Did the Germans use a cloaking device and sneak past them? Did the thin third floor atmosphere cause them to pass out? And we just cleared the building! A building surround by open courtyard. So where did those soldiers even come from? Repel in from helicopters? Hide in a cardboard box?
So now every time I respawn I have about 3 seconds to turn around, throw a grenade and crouch behind a flimsy wooden table, shoot the guy who runs around the table, and then pick off any one else. I died about 40 or 50 times. Only twice did I… Wait I forgot one, I had to change weapons in those 3 seconds too because I got the fucking checkpoint holding a rifle instead of a machine gun and it only had ONE FUCKING ROUND LEFT! This means that I had to turn with the right stick, hit the b button to crouch, the right bumper to throw the grenade, and the y button to swap. Usually I died half way through the swap animation. As an aside, why is b crouch? Why isn’t it left stick down like many other games? That makes more sense since it’s movement oriented and frees up your right hand to do other stuff. Like STAY ALIVE. So anyway I managed to get past the initial 4 man onslaught only twice and when I did I found myself trapped on the top floor and when I moved over to the staircase I was immediately shot in the face buy the guy who was just waiting there with his gun pointed at the space where he knew my head would be. That wouldn’t have been such a bad challenge if I had a checkpoint right before THAT. Why couldn’t they have put it there? What did I even do to trigger that checkpoint? I all did was shoot a few guys, I wasn’t even moving! Did it trigger because some of the enemy made it to the building? That would be an example of BAD GAME DESIGN. You put a checkpoint somewhere safe. Somewhere the player can pause if he wants. Somewhere he is not going to get his head BLOWN OFF. You don’t put it right before the enemy kicks down my door, especially not while my BACK IS TURNED!
The checkpoint is designed so that the player doesn’t have to start the level all over again every time they die. This is a wonderful invention that some games don’t even have and for most of this game you do a good job with (this is especially important considering the difficulty level). All of that is ruined by this one experience. In this case the checkpoint did the opposite of what it’s supposed to do. I decided to just start the level over (I didn’t have much choice). As soon as I did I found that I no longer had the same weapons! Instead of the sniper rifle and machine gun I had from the previous mission I had a crappy iron sight rifle and a pistol. A fucking useless pistol! I guess you guys just had to have one more little laugh at my expense. Next time why don’t you just come to my house and stab me in the eye, it would be easier than making a game.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
I Want the Chipper Chicken
I am very excited that in 9 days I will be able to afford Marvel vs. Capcom 2. It is coming to XBLA and PSN, presumably for less that the $80 it goes for on ebay. It would be really funny though if come the 29th it cost 6400 Microsoft Points.
I rented this game quite a few years ago. It was fun to play against others because of the extreme button-mashiness of it. Fighting games are great when everyone sucks. I spent the one player mode screaming hurtful things that I will probably have to answer for in the after life. The game is hard. Yet I still want to play it again. If nothing else I'd play it just to spend hours getting my ass kicked, grinding out points to spend on unlocking the 300-some characters. I really like unlocking things.
*It's not really 300, it's like 50 something. Still though, FIFTY SOMETHING.
I rented this game quite a few years ago. It was fun to play against others because of the extreme button-mashiness of it. Fighting games are great when everyone sucks. I spent the one player mode screaming hurtful things that I will probably have to answer for in the after life. The game is hard. Yet I still want to play it again. If nothing else I'd play it just to spend hours getting my ass kicked, grinding out points to spend on unlocking the 300-some characters. I really like unlocking things.
*It's not really 300, it's like 50 something. Still though, FIFTY SOMETHING.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
A letter to Valve: Addendum
Addendum:
OK, I figured it out and it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be but you guys are still jerks.
PS:
I'm so glad that the AI in Left 4 Dead is better than the idiot followers in this game. I'm happy when they die because then they aren't in my FREAKING WAY.
OK, I figured it out and it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be but you guys are still jerks.
PS:
I'm so glad that the AI in Left 4 Dead is better than the idiot followers in this game. I'm happy when they die because then they aren't in my FREAKING WAY.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
A letter to Valve
TO: Valve level designers
RE: Second turret stand off at Nova Prospekt
Dear Valve,
FUCK YOU. You are a sadistic bunch of inflamed assholes and I want you to die. Thank you very much for giving me three auto turrets to aid me in my defense (and by defense I mean futile attempt to survive your hopeless death trap). It's too bad that they are completely worthless. It's too bad that the endless waves of heavily armed soldiers can just run up to them and push them over. It's too bad that if I try to put them up again I am defenseless while I fumble with your awkward controls trying to get them upright. It's too bad that my own weapon runs out of ammo ridiculously fast even though I've worked painstakingly through the past ten or so levels to conserve every bullet I could, and it's nice that you've given me some ammo and extra health laying around but it sucks that I have to hack through a crate to get to it wasting precious time. I'm sick of your god damned game and it's boring endless stupid "puzzles" and cheap deaths and stupid characters. I hate that I have to pick off a shit-ton of little spider things to get to some action and once I get to some action its impossibly hard bull shit. FUCKING GOD DAMMED BULLSHIT!!!!
Love
-The Player
RE: Second turret stand off at Nova Prospekt
Dear Valve,
FUCK YOU. You are a sadistic bunch of inflamed assholes and I want you to die. Thank you very much for giving me three auto turrets to aid me in my defense (and by defense I mean futile attempt to survive your hopeless death trap). It's too bad that they are completely worthless. It's too bad that the endless waves of heavily armed soldiers can just run up to them and push them over. It's too bad that if I try to put them up again I am defenseless while I fumble with your awkward controls trying to get them upright. It's too bad that my own weapon runs out of ammo ridiculously fast even though I've worked painstakingly through the past ten or so levels to conserve every bullet I could, and it's nice that you've given me some ammo and extra health laying around but it sucks that I have to hack through a crate to get to it wasting precious time. I'm sick of your god damned game and it's boring endless stupid "puzzles" and cheap deaths and stupid characters. I hate that I have to pick off a shit-ton of little spider things to get to some action and once I get to some action its impossibly hard bull shit. FUCKING GOD DAMMED BULLSHIT!!!!
Love
-The Player
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Radio
Been listening to a lot of on line radio lately. I have an iPod with every album I own (and some that I don't heh heh) on it which is a lot of music. But I've been opting for internet radio because of the opportunity to discover tons of new music. Usually I listen to Pandora, and I have about 12 finely tuned stations made that I would link to here if I could figure out how to maintain my secret identity. Anyway, tonight I was in the mood for game music which Pandora does not do well. In the process of looking for a site that just streams game music I came across one that's probably even better. StreamingSoundtracks.com plays soundtracks from both movies and games. I find that as movies and games are representative of journeys so too is listening to this station. You would think that that all the different sounds and themes mashed together would be jarring but so far it works quite well. I started out hearing the dramatic main theme from Dante's Peak, then on to an impressive all drum piece from Drumline, then on to Macross Plus. How's that for range? Next up was the intro to Alien Resurrection and then the ending to Final Fantasy VIII. The transition between the two songs was so seamless (their ending and beginning so similar) I didn't realize it had happened. Kind of eerie. Anyway check it out.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Digging in pt. 2
Part II: Playing with friends
So my brother-in-law finds out I have an XBox360 and generously decides to send me one of two games so that we can play online. My choices were Gears of War 2, or Left 4 Dead. I chose Left 4 Dead because the concept appealed to me more than Gears and because my friend (who I will call "William") had it and had been badgering me to buy it as well. So I had gotten together online with William and another friend with the game (who I will call "Jeff") thinking that we would play some L4D but the game had not yet arrived.
I initially convinced them to play some co-op Aegis Wing which is a delightful and might I add free little XBLA game. Bored with that Jeff convinced us to pick up Castle Crashers. I had not anticipated buying anything that night but he promised that if it sucked I could kick him in the nuts the next time I saw him. So we both downloaded the game ans spent the next 4 hours or so with it. Fortunately for Jeff's nuts the game doesn't suck.
If you are unaware Castle Crashers is an old school hack and slash (button mash) side scroller where you play as a knight or any of 20-odd unlockable characters. The fun comes from the frantic action and some small RPG elements. As you grind through the enemies you also grind levels which gives you points to put into speed, strength, defense, and magic. If you play through the story your character will end up around level 30 with probably one of your stats maxed out. You can then continue with that character up to level 99 or play through with someone else. This lends a high replayability to the game because you can choose to specialize in something different each time. There is also an "insane" mode that you can access with any character that's gone though the main game. The part of the game that really sets it apart are the comedic elements. The tone is akin to something you might see on Adult Swim (is that even still on?) with lost of mad-cap poop jokes and references to pop culture. The scene that sticks out in my mind is one in which you ride a deer through a saw mill trying to escape a monster. The deer (apparently due to fear) is propelling itself solely by explosive diarrhea.
So the next day my copy of Left 4 Dead did arrive. I'm not sure I have a lot to say about it. You play a "survivor" making their way through one of four levels going from safe house to safe house (the save points) on your way to some destination that ostensibly will help you escape danger on a more permanent basis. By danger I mean endless swarms of zombies or "infected". The game is fun but you really need 3 friends to get the most out of it. It's designed to be a co-op game and it does a wonderful job of it. Once you've played multiplayer though you really can't enjoy the single player game. At least I couldn't, it just feels... lonely.
I will also point out that the competitive multiplayer mode is the most enjoyable of all. The game has special types of infected that have deadly abilities aside from the normal run-screaming-towards-you-and-eat-your-face attack. In the VS mode four players play special infected and four play as survivors. The survivors play the level as normal but the infected try to stop them. What's great about it that there is a high level of teamwork needed on both sides in order to succeed. Coordinating your abilities into an organized attack with devastating results is a real thrill.
So my brother-in-law finds out I have an XBox360 and generously decides to send me one of two games so that we can play online. My choices were Gears of War 2, or Left 4 Dead. I chose Left 4 Dead because the concept appealed to me more than Gears and because my friend (who I will call "William") had it and had been badgering me to buy it as well. So I had gotten together online with William and another friend with the game (who I will call "Jeff") thinking that we would play some L4D but the game had not yet arrived.
I initially convinced them to play some co-op Aegis Wing which is a delightful and might I add free little XBLA game. Bored with that Jeff convinced us to pick up Castle Crashers. I had not anticipated buying anything that night but he promised that if it sucked I could kick him in the nuts the next time I saw him. So we both downloaded the game ans spent the next 4 hours or so with it. Fortunately for Jeff's nuts the game doesn't suck.
If you are unaware Castle Crashers is an old school hack and slash (button mash) side scroller where you play as a knight or any of 20-odd unlockable characters. The fun comes from the frantic action and some small RPG elements. As you grind through the enemies you also grind levels which gives you points to put into speed, strength, defense, and magic. If you play through the story your character will end up around level 30 with probably one of your stats maxed out. You can then continue with that character up to level 99 or play through with someone else. This lends a high replayability to the game because you can choose to specialize in something different each time. There is also an "insane" mode that you can access with any character that's gone though the main game. The part of the game that really sets it apart are the comedic elements. The tone is akin to something you might see on Adult Swim (is that even still on?) with lost of mad-cap poop jokes and references to pop culture. The scene that sticks out in my mind is one in which you ride a deer through a saw mill trying to escape a monster. The deer (apparently due to fear) is propelling itself solely by explosive diarrhea.
So the next day my copy of Left 4 Dead did arrive. I'm not sure I have a lot to say about it. You play a "survivor" making their way through one of four levels going from safe house to safe house (the save points) on your way to some destination that ostensibly will help you escape danger on a more permanent basis. By danger I mean endless swarms of zombies or "infected". The game is fun but you really need 3 friends to get the most out of it. It's designed to be a co-op game and it does a wonderful job of it. Once you've played multiplayer though you really can't enjoy the single player game. At least I couldn't, it just feels... lonely.
I will also point out that the competitive multiplayer mode is the most enjoyable of all. The game has special types of infected that have deadly abilities aside from the normal run-screaming-towards-you-and-eat-your-face attack. In the VS mode four players play special infected and four play as survivors. The survivors play the level as normal but the infected try to stop them. What's great about it that there is a high level of teamwork needed on both sides in order to succeed. Coordinating your abilities into an organized attack with devastating results is a real thrill.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Digging In pt. 1
Ok so let’s dig in to that list I gave you last time.
Braid. Great little game. I say little when I really mean short. I suppose that if you really just couldn’t figure out the puzzles that the game could be very long indeed. To my credit I finished the game in a couple of weeks but I will admit to looking on line for the solutions to two puzzles and felt awful both times. I guess it’s inevitable but whenever I cheat on a puzzle I immediately go “ooooh, DUH!” I could and should have figured that out. One thing I did learn from looking online after I beat it was that there are 8 stars hidden through-out the game. This isn’t advertised in the game and I don’t know how anyone could have accidentally stumbled upon them because they are freaking HIDDEN. I started to collect them but got distracted by other games and haven’t been back. There is also a timed challenge that I have read is pretty nasty but would nab me the final achievement for the game. Time will tell if I go back to complete these herculean tasks.
The two things you hear the most about this game are the ingenious puzzles and the unorthodox story. Both of these things are great, no doubt, but what I enjoyed the most was the music. Music is always important for setting the mood in a game and Braid has mood to spare, in no small part to the music. It’s almost spiritual, I don’t want to use the word haunting, but spiritual, and makes you feel like this game is some sort of journey or pilgrimage, which I believe is one of its themes. I think I read somewhere that there was going to be a soundtrack available. Ah, here is a collection of links if one wanted to by the tracks individually. I spent some time on Jonathan Blow’s webpage, and I found the time to be well spent. He is a man of many interesting ideas, and I recommend his musings to anyone interested in the state of games, which I assume if you’re reading this that you are.
Unreal Tournament 3. Still haven’t played it. My current highest-tech computer has adequate RAM and CPU speed but is equipped with the Radeon X300 GPU. Not a bad card but older and not designed for games, at least not games that came out four or five years after it did. Looking at the Radeon 4650 HD as an upgrade, not top of the line by any means but more than enough for my purposes. Of course my purposes are ostensibly to use the level editor to practice my game design over the summer. But we both know I just wanted the game… and then an excuse to buy a new graphics card. Shhh, don’t tell my wife.
Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls. I had forgotten until just now that this game was made for the Play Station back in 2003 as Final Fantasy Origins. I passed up on it then, largely because I bought Final Fantasy Anthology in 1999 and was disappointed by the crippling load times. I'm glad I waited six years to pick this up and for a platform more suited to it. The Game Boy Advance has served as a system for the rebirth of great classic games, especially Final Fantasy. It makes sense, being that it's a cartridge system with graphics capabilities on par with the 16 bit systems. Also the game is something better suited to casual entertainment while traveling or sitting on a conference call than sitting down in front of a TV and logging hours.
Really I waited longer than six years to play this game (or games really since the long lost FFII is on there too). Final Fantasy came out for the NES in 1990. I did not have an NES in 1990 and in fact do not own one now. I spent many hours watching other people play this game. Later when I had acquired a SNES and had FF3(6) all to myself that the mystique behind the first game grew and I always meant to go back and play it.
Well now I can. I have to say that even though the game is 19 years old its is still fun to play. The addition of a bestiary is cool I guess. The best part is that you can save anywhere, not just at inns which is nice especially since it's on a portable system and you may be in a place where you have to put it down in a hurry... like traffic. I haven't played FFII yet. Looking forward to forgetting to do that.
Braid. Great little game. I say little when I really mean short. I suppose that if you really just couldn’t figure out the puzzles that the game could be very long indeed. To my credit I finished the game in a couple of weeks but I will admit to looking on line for the solutions to two puzzles and felt awful both times. I guess it’s inevitable but whenever I cheat on a puzzle I immediately go “ooooh, DUH!” I could and should have figured that out. One thing I did learn from looking online after I beat it was that there are 8 stars hidden through-out the game. This isn’t advertised in the game and I don’t know how anyone could have accidentally stumbled upon them because they are freaking HIDDEN. I started to collect them but got distracted by other games and haven’t been back. There is also a timed challenge that I have read is pretty nasty but would nab me the final achievement for the game. Time will tell if I go back to complete these herculean tasks.
The two things you hear the most about this game are the ingenious puzzles and the unorthodox story. Both of these things are great, no doubt, but what I enjoyed the most was the music. Music is always important for setting the mood in a game and Braid has mood to spare, in no small part to the music. It’s almost spiritual, I don’t want to use the word haunting, but spiritual, and makes you feel like this game is some sort of journey or pilgrimage, which I believe is one of its themes. I think I read somewhere that there was going to be a soundtrack available. Ah, here is a collection of links if one wanted to by the tracks individually. I spent some time on Jonathan Blow’s webpage, and I found the time to be well spent. He is a man of many interesting ideas, and I recommend his musings to anyone interested in the state of games, which I assume if you’re reading this that you are.
Unreal Tournament 3. Still haven’t played it. My current highest-tech computer has adequate RAM and CPU speed but is equipped with the Radeon X300 GPU. Not a bad card but older and not designed for games, at least not games that came out four or five years after it did. Looking at the Radeon 4650 HD as an upgrade, not top of the line by any means but more than enough for my purposes. Of course my purposes are ostensibly to use the level editor to practice my game design over the summer. But we both know I just wanted the game… and then an excuse to buy a new graphics card. Shhh, don’t tell my wife.
Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls. I had forgotten until just now that this game was made for the Play Station back in 2003 as Final Fantasy Origins. I passed up on it then, largely because I bought Final Fantasy Anthology in 1999 and was disappointed by the crippling load times. I'm glad I waited six years to pick this up and for a platform more suited to it. The Game Boy Advance has served as a system for the rebirth of great classic games, especially Final Fantasy. It makes sense, being that it's a cartridge system with graphics capabilities on par with the 16 bit systems. Also the game is something better suited to casual entertainment while traveling or sitting on a conference call than sitting down in front of a TV and logging hours.
Really I waited longer than six years to play this game (or games really since the long lost FFII is on there too). Final Fantasy came out for the NES in 1990. I did not have an NES in 1990 and in fact do not own one now. I spent many hours watching other people play this game. Later when I had acquired a SNES and had FF3(6) all to myself that the mystique behind the first game grew and I always meant to go back and play it.
Well now I can. I have to say that even though the game is 19 years old its is still fun to play. The addition of a bestiary is cool I guess. The best part is that you can save anywhere, not just at inns which is nice especially since it's on a portable system and you may be in a place where you have to put it down in a hurry... like traffic. I haven't played FFII yet. Looking forward to forgetting to do that.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
A Long List of Games
So I've picked up some games recently. Depending on how far back in time we can include as "recently" it's a lot of games. I kept meaning to write about them but I'd put it off and before I knew it I had bought another freaking game. They seem to come in pairs too. I'm just going to make a list and say a few words about each and I'm going to try to do it in order of acquisition starting from early March.
OK actually February... I think...
Braid: Just as good as everyone says it is.
Unreal Tournament 3: Haven't played it yet since I don't have a beast enough GPU
Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls: This is FF 1 and 2 on GBA. I've only played 1 so far.
Castle Crashers: A game I was talked into buying by a friend so we could play online.
Left 4 Dead: A belated Christmas gift from my brother-in-law.
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat: One of a few older FPS that I wanted to try.
Call of Duty 2: Another of a few FPS I wanted to try.
Penny Arcade OTRSPOD ep.1: Like Briad, this XBLA game was a weekly special and 50% off so I grabbed it.
So 8 games in about 2 months. I'm ready to admit I have a problem. I'll talk more about some of these games later.
OK actually February... I think...
Braid: Just as good as everyone says it is.
Unreal Tournament 3: Haven't played it yet since I don't have a beast enough GPU
Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls: This is FF 1 and 2 on GBA. I've only played 1 so far.
Castle Crashers: A game I was talked into buying by a friend so we could play online.
Left 4 Dead: A belated Christmas gift from my brother-in-law.
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat: One of a few older FPS that I wanted to try.
Call of Duty 2: Another of a few FPS I wanted to try.
Penny Arcade OTRSPOD ep.1: Like Briad, this XBLA game was a weekly special and 50% off so I grabbed it.
So 8 games in about 2 months. I'm ready to admit I have a problem. I'll talk more about some of these games later.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
More RSV2 online
Getting a little tired of the bull that goes on in Rainbow Six muliplayer. Mostly I hate that selecting a match based on game mode doesn't always mean you'll be playing that game mode. I find that most of the "attack/defend" or "team leader" games that I join have been convened in disguise and are really team death match games. By this I mean that if you actually try to achieve the objective (such as reaching the extraction point in team leader) it pisses off everybody and gets you yelled at. They don't want to play that way they just want to play deathmatch with the respawn twist that team leader provides. That's fine I guess but it's not an excuse to cop an attitude when someone who just came in thinks you are playing an actual team leader match. Speaking of which, that leads me to my biggest issue. Certain people will host a match and simply have everyone in the room agree not to use a certain weapon. That too is fine, but if you have "allow join in progress" turned on newcomers don't know about the rule and again end up getting whined at. The thing is, you can exclude weapons from use in the game rules and then no one can use them, but no one takes the time to do this, they would rather whine after the fact. The thing that really makes me mad is how common this is. I bought a game with 40-some weapons in it and I'd like to play that game please. One time I got so fed up with finding nothing but pistol-only matches I decided to rebel and just use a sniper rifle... in close quarters. Hey, when you're not scoped in it’s like a pistol! Eventually the whiner booted me. But then I joined another match not realizing that it was the same game only on a different map! After walking up behind the host and executing him with a shotgun I was booted again but the parting shot (pun intended) was well worth it. OH! and speaking of getting weird about weapons, what the hell is wrong with using grenades!!! "Oh wow, you killed me with a grenade, how do you feel?" I feel freaking great knowing that you get pissed when I own your camping ass by being smarter than you. Thanks for asking. Then my absolute favorite is people who talk shit... to their teammates. I had one guy who had died and was spectating me telling me how much I suck. The guy who was DEAD telling me how much I suck. Let that sink in for a while. Oh well, he got to watch me make the winning kill... on a camper... with a grenade.
Cough Drop
It occurs to me that the Brian Eno - David Bowie collaborations are like a cough drop. Eno is like the liquid medicine center, soothing relief but hard to swallow by itself. Bowie is like the menthol sweet candy shell, hard, chewy, and a little sticky, but tasty and head-clearing. You don't want to take one every day, only when you need it.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Ranbow Six Vegas 2 - Reviewed
So I think I mentioned before how Rainbow Six Vegas 2 was a surprisingly good game. Or maybe not surprisingly good but surprisingly enjoyable for me as it is not the type of game I'm usually into (tactical shooters). Though, the elements that I enjoy are the ones that are less tactical shooter and more regular old run around blasting things shooter.
The game has several modes, a story mode, a terrorist hunt mode and several versus modes. The story mode is great, really top notch. There is just enough actual story in it to be worth having one, though you may have to play through a couple times to really get whats going on. Basically you and your team mates are pursuing these mercenaries through Las Vegas trying to stop them from blowing up buildings. The line between terrorist and mercenary is pretty thin here. I suppose the main bad guys are terrorists who have hired an army (and I mean a friggin ARMY) of mercs to basically hang around and shoot at you. There is no shortage of generic tangos to mow down. Where did they get all these guys? Who cares. One thing I will note is that certain points in the game allow you to overhear the enemies as they stand around talking. These conversation are hilarious and well written. I recomend waiting to hear the whole thing before you rush in and take them out.
The campaign will take you through a variety of buildings and streets. It's all urban but there is enough change to keep things interesting. The graphics are great, details are sharp and lighting effects um... light stuff... well. They did a good job delivering the flavor of Las Vegas. The game is an appropriate length, and it's paced well. There are opportunities for sneaking around and sniping, and there are 4 or 5 big set-piece battles. One part of the game has you trying to reach the top balcony of a tall square room full of climbing walls, while the enemy shoots at you from all sides. The final battle is just crazy. Crazy.
The story mode can be played solo or co-op. Co-op is a blast. I had the opportunity to play through the whole thing with a friend (in the same room) when he was visiting. We played for a day and a half strait. We couldn't put it down. Co-op online is pretty fun too. I've played both with people who are willing to talk and coordinate and jerks who don't understand the "cooperative" in co-op. It's a grab bag. Fortunately if you are hosting other people can join you or leave (or get kicked) on the fly, without interrupting the game.
Terrorist hunt, fills one of the many multiplayer maps full of bots and makes you go kill them all. This mode is also a lot of fun despite being quite hard. I found myself trying to figure out the zones that the AI was programmed to. Meaning, the bots will spawn and attack based on where you go with your team, so it becomes a game of fishing. You try to lure them out so you can drop them as they charge out into the open. Trying to through the halls Doom style will result in a quick and brutal end. Hunt can also be played in co-op, which is how I beat some of the levels. Let me tell you. there are some people out there who are VERY good at the fishing method.
Ah, mutiplayer. The adversarial modes are attack/defend, control point, team leader, team deathmatch, and deathmatch. I'm just going to come out and say that I don't like the team modes. As I stated in the first paragraph I'm not a big fan of tactical shooters. This is largely because it's team based and I'm never on the good team. Here is what happens:
"OK match started, now what I am I supposed to do? I guess I'll follow that guy I bet he knows where to go BANG! What?! who the hell shot me? Oh well, respawning. OK I'll go this way this time. Hey there's an enemy BANG! Damn that guy's good. OK, respawning. Maybe this time I'll BANG!!! WTF!!!! I didn't even last 5 seconds!!! Well I'll keep trying, oh wait, I'm out of spawns. Now I get to sit here for 5 min while the big kids play. Screw this."
For the most part I'm exaggerating, but that exact scenario happens more than I'd like. I understand that having limited spawns makes it more challenging and makes for interesting game play, but that's only true if you last long enough to enjoy it. I don't really hate team gameplay either, but it's ment to be a co-op versus co-op kind of experience and when no one works together it tends to suck.
Now deathmatch is more my style. The shift from one game type to the other is for me the shift from newbie to motherfucking specter of doom. I've played me some deathmatch. I understand the universal laws that govern it. One such law is, never stand still. Knowing this law has served me well in RSV2, particularly because most people are used to playing the other modes where hiding behind cover and camping is advantageous. Another thing that I love about DM is that you don't have to know where you are going. While it always helps to know the level, all you really have to do is run around and kill anything that moves. Beauty in simplicity. Of course the best part is that it can be set to unlimited respawns so I spend the maximum amount of time actually playing the game.
Team deathmatch can be cool, I'm not actually against team games (I may have given that impression). However, the host has the capability to put whoever he wants on his team. And they always stack their teams. This wouldn't be too bad (after all I like a challenge) if the spawn points weren't static. Instead of randomly placing you around the map, everyone spawns at their team's spawnppoint. In some levels this is OK but most of them are tucked away in a dead end with one, maybe two exits. So the game goes like this:
The match begins and both teams rush out into the map. Eventually the stronger team makes its way to the other team's spawn point. They wait outside and shoot people as they come out. If they game persisted the dead bodies the weak team would eventually be walled in by their own corpses.
So there are some things I like about this game and some things that really frustrate me but overall it's a great game. I have about 12 games for the system so far and I would place it in the top three. I've even considered buying RSV1 just to give it a try.
The game has several modes, a story mode, a terrorist hunt mode and several versus modes. The story mode is great, really top notch. There is just enough actual story in it to be worth having one, though you may have to play through a couple times to really get whats going on. Basically you and your team mates are pursuing these mercenaries through Las Vegas trying to stop them from blowing up buildings. The line between terrorist and mercenary is pretty thin here. I suppose the main bad guys are terrorists who have hired an army (and I mean a friggin ARMY) of mercs to basically hang around and shoot at you. There is no shortage of generic tangos to mow down. Where did they get all these guys? Who cares. One thing I will note is that certain points in the game allow you to overhear the enemies as they stand around talking. These conversation are hilarious and well written. I recomend waiting to hear the whole thing before you rush in and take them out.
The campaign will take you through a variety of buildings and streets. It's all urban but there is enough change to keep things interesting. The graphics are great, details are sharp and lighting effects um... light stuff... well. They did a good job delivering the flavor of Las Vegas. The game is an appropriate length, and it's paced well. There are opportunities for sneaking around and sniping, and there are 4 or 5 big set-piece battles. One part of the game has you trying to reach the top balcony of a tall square room full of climbing walls, while the enemy shoots at you from all sides. The final battle is just crazy. Crazy.
The story mode can be played solo or co-op. Co-op is a blast. I had the opportunity to play through the whole thing with a friend (in the same room) when he was visiting. We played for a day and a half strait. We couldn't put it down. Co-op online is pretty fun too. I've played both with people who are willing to talk and coordinate and jerks who don't understand the "cooperative" in co-op. It's a grab bag. Fortunately if you are hosting other people can join you or leave (or get kicked) on the fly, without interrupting the game.
Terrorist hunt, fills one of the many multiplayer maps full of bots and makes you go kill them all. This mode is also a lot of fun despite being quite hard. I found myself trying to figure out the zones that the AI was programmed to. Meaning, the bots will spawn and attack based on where you go with your team, so it becomes a game of fishing. You try to lure them out so you can drop them as they charge out into the open. Trying to through the halls Doom style will result in a quick and brutal end. Hunt can also be played in co-op, which is how I beat some of the levels. Let me tell you. there are some people out there who are VERY good at the fishing method.
Ah, mutiplayer. The adversarial modes are attack/defend, control point, team leader, team deathmatch, and deathmatch. I'm just going to come out and say that I don't like the team modes. As I stated in the first paragraph I'm not a big fan of tactical shooters. This is largely because it's team based and I'm never on the good team. Here is what happens:
"OK match started, now what I am I supposed to do? I guess I'll follow that guy I bet he knows where to go BANG! What?! who the hell shot me? Oh well, respawning. OK I'll go this way this time. Hey there's an enemy BANG! Damn that guy's good. OK, respawning. Maybe this time I'll BANG!!! WTF!!!! I didn't even last 5 seconds!!! Well I'll keep trying, oh wait, I'm out of spawns. Now I get to sit here for 5 min while the big kids play. Screw this."
For the most part I'm exaggerating, but that exact scenario happens more than I'd like. I understand that having limited spawns makes it more challenging and makes for interesting game play, but that's only true if you last long enough to enjoy it. I don't really hate team gameplay either, but it's ment to be a co-op versus co-op kind of experience and when no one works together it tends to suck.
Now deathmatch is more my style. The shift from one game type to the other is for me the shift from newbie to motherfucking specter of doom. I've played me some deathmatch. I understand the universal laws that govern it. One such law is, never stand still. Knowing this law has served me well in RSV2, particularly because most people are used to playing the other modes where hiding behind cover and camping is advantageous. Another thing that I love about DM is that you don't have to know where you are going. While it always helps to know the level, all you really have to do is run around and kill anything that moves. Beauty in simplicity. Of course the best part is that it can be set to unlimited respawns so I spend the maximum amount of time actually playing the game.
Team deathmatch can be cool, I'm not actually against team games (I may have given that impression). However, the host has the capability to put whoever he wants on his team. And they always stack their teams. This wouldn't be too bad (after all I like a challenge) if the spawn points weren't static. Instead of randomly placing you around the map, everyone spawns at their team's spawnppoint. In some levels this is OK but most of them are tucked away in a dead end with one, maybe two exits. So the game goes like this:
The match begins and both teams rush out into the map. Eventually the stronger team makes its way to the other team's spawn point. They wait outside and shoot people as they come out. If they game persisted the dead bodies the weak team would eventually be walled in by their own corpses.
So there are some things I like about this game and some things that really frustrate me but overall it's a great game. I have about 12 games for the system so far and I would place it in the top three. I've even considered buying RSV1 just to give it a try.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The New Toy part 2
So why the 360? I'll start with the small reasons. Price really wasn't a big issue but I suppose it mattered. Obviously the 360 is cheaper, but it can be argued that the PS3 plays blue ray disks and the online is free. Still the price difference is pretty big, 100 to 200 dollars currently. I don't know I guess price really didn't play too big a roll since you can compare system features and bundles until your face turns blue. I spend several hundred dollars on games a year anyway so whatever.
I think one big thing that got me was that most of my friends had 360s already and being able to play with them was a draw. I'm not usually into doing the popular thing, but in this case it pays off. I have old school friends all around the country, California, Virginia, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, even a friend stationed in Italy (who's never friggin online). If they all had PS3s would I have a PS3 now? It would be more likely.
Another thing that drew me in was achievements. The community has grown to have a love/hate attitude toward achievements. Some people think too much emphasis is put on them and that they distract from gameplay. Other people say they create new reasons to play a game and provide more to do. Others are obsessed with bumping their gamerscore. Others hate the people who are obsessed with boosting their score and couldn't give a crap about their own. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. Back before the system came out I was reading about the features and the magazine that had the article described achievements as a way for gamers who aren't into climbing online leaderboards and prefer more single player games to show off what they have accomplished. At that time I wasn't really into online play (and was under-enthusiastic about the online revolution in video games) and I was intrigued with the idea of a gamerscore. Now I have to admit that I am one of those people who are obsessed with it. Getting an achievement is a great feeling and I like seeing my gaming habit tied to an ever-growing number. I even track my gamerscore in a spreadsheet, how nerdy is that? Very. So do I think achievements are ruining my gameing experience, distracting me from the gameplay? Can an addict admit he has a problem?
Getting off topic. A third reason I chose the Xbox360 is the games. Now most of the big games that come out now come out for both systems. There are few noteworthy exclusive titles (percentage-wise). However, It seems like the 360 exclusives are more frequent. I don't have numbers to back that up it just seems that way. I only own a couple at the moment, one of which is Forza 2 (which is awesome and I may have to do a post on why its better than the GT series). Shit, I'm beating around the bush here, allow me to knock that off.
The only game I really care about is Final Fantasy XIII. Originally this game was going to be exclusive to PS3. At E3 last year it was announced that this was no longer so. Coffin nail. In my last post I claimed that I was not a fanboy. This is true to the extent that it does not include Final Fantasy. I will always buy Final Fantasy games. Even if they came out with a really crappy one I would buy it blindly and the next one as well. I short, I like them. When that announcement was made I was already leaning towards the Xbox and that was the final deciding factor.
So now that I have had the system for a few months, what do I think about it? I shall evaluate it in a future post.
I think one big thing that got me was that most of my friends had 360s already and being able to play with them was a draw. I'm not usually into doing the popular thing, but in this case it pays off. I have old school friends all around the country, California, Virginia, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, even a friend stationed in Italy (who's never friggin online). If they all had PS3s would I have a PS3 now? It would be more likely.
Another thing that drew me in was achievements. The community has grown to have a love/hate attitude toward achievements. Some people think too much emphasis is put on them and that they distract from gameplay. Other people say they create new reasons to play a game and provide more to do. Others are obsessed with bumping their gamerscore. Others hate the people who are obsessed with boosting their score and couldn't give a crap about their own. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. Back before the system came out I was reading about the features and the magazine that had the article described achievements as a way for gamers who aren't into climbing online leaderboards and prefer more single player games to show off what they have accomplished. At that time I wasn't really into online play (and was under-enthusiastic about the online revolution in video games) and I was intrigued with the idea of a gamerscore. Now I have to admit that I am one of those people who are obsessed with it. Getting an achievement is a great feeling and I like seeing my gaming habit tied to an ever-growing number. I even track my gamerscore in a spreadsheet, how nerdy is that? Very. So do I think achievements are ruining my gameing experience, distracting me from the gameplay? Can an addict admit he has a problem?
Getting off topic. A third reason I chose the Xbox360 is the games. Now most of the big games that come out now come out for both systems. There are few noteworthy exclusive titles (percentage-wise). However, It seems like the 360 exclusives are more frequent. I don't have numbers to back that up it just seems that way. I only own a couple at the moment, one of which is Forza 2 (which is awesome and I may have to do a post on why its better than the GT series). Shit, I'm beating around the bush here, allow me to knock that off.
The only game I really care about is Final Fantasy XIII. Originally this game was going to be exclusive to PS3. At E3 last year it was announced that this was no longer so. Coffin nail. In my last post I claimed that I was not a fanboy. This is true to the extent that it does not include Final Fantasy. I will always buy Final Fantasy games. Even if they came out with a really crappy one I would buy it blindly and the next one as well. I short, I like them. When that announcement was made I was already leaning towards the Xbox and that was the final deciding factor.
So now that I have had the system for a few months, what do I think about it? I shall evaluate it in a future post.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The New Toy
So to start things out I'll talk a little about what is new in my gaming life. The most significant recent development is the addition of the Xbox360 to my arsenal of systems. I picked it up bright and early on Black Friday of last year, spurred on by a door buster deal. I got the Pro model with the 60gig HD and included double pack of LEGO Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda. The Black Friday door buster special was a free copy of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 with the purchase of a Pro or Elite system. At the time I was intending to buy myself the system as a Christmas present anyway and when I saw the ad online I decided that a free game is to good to pass up. I hadn't played a Rainbow Six game since... well the first one on the PC waaaay back in day, I'm gonna say '98? I didn't have any special interest in this game other than that it was free but it has turned out to be one of my favorites for the system so far. So I ended up with a new system and essentially three free games, not a bad start.
So why the 360? I feel obligated to explain myself given the rabid system war that plays out over the net every day. I don't want to be stuck under that dark cloud. I will start by saying that I am in no way a system fanboy, I am not beholden to M$, and I am not an XBot. I have pretty much zero loyalty when it comes to systems. If I did I would be playing a Wii right now and waiting desperately for some decent games to come out. The SNES was my first system and I loved it dearly but I proved to be a fickle consumer when I passed on the N64 in favor of a PS1 (even though all of my friends got the N64). Similarly while I love the PS2 and was initially rooting for the PS3 when it was first unveiled, I ultimately had to go with the Xbox360.
In my next post I'll go into the whys and wherefores.
So why the 360? I feel obligated to explain myself given the rabid system war that plays out over the net every day. I don't want to be stuck under that dark cloud. I will start by saying that I am in no way a system fanboy, I am not beholden to M$, and I am not an XBot. I have pretty much zero loyalty when it comes to systems. If I did I would be playing a Wii right now and waiting desperately for some decent games to come out. The SNES was my first system and I loved it dearly but I proved to be a fickle consumer when I passed on the N64 in favor of a PS1 (even though all of my friends got the N64). Similarly while I love the PS2 and was initially rooting for the PS3 when it was first unveiled, I ultimately had to go with the Xbox360.
In my next post I'll go into the whys and wherefores.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Press Start
Cliche title huh?
"Press Start" as if you were entering some new exciting cyber-world full of techno stuff and... excitement.
Well anyway this post will serve as the obligatory statement of intent to start a "blog" as it is called by the young folks. I solemnly swear to be good and post every day and write a bunch of interesting stuff and bla bla bla... Right, because that always turns out well. Three months later and only two posts, one about how awesome blogging is and another about why they never post. I'll avoid that then and just say what this is about.
My purpose here is to write about video games. I wanted a place to talk about what I'm playing and how I feel about it with out the need to start my own site (we have plenty as it is), and to be able to put in more detail than is appropriate in a forum (and to not have to argue with anyone). So that's what this is. I intend to talk about the industry and review some games, most of which will be old games you don't care about but that I'm just getting around to playing. I'll do my best to bring some insight that you wouldn't find elsewhere.
Alright then. Begin.
"Press Start" as if you were entering some new exciting cyber-world full of techno stuff and... excitement.
Well anyway this post will serve as the obligatory statement of intent to start a "blog" as it is called by the young folks. I solemnly swear to be good and post every day and write a bunch of interesting stuff and bla bla bla... Right, because that always turns out well. Three months later and only two posts, one about how awesome blogging is and another about why they never post. I'll avoid that then and just say what this is about.
My purpose here is to write about video games. I wanted a place to talk about what I'm playing and how I feel about it with out the need to start my own site (we have plenty as it is), and to be able to put in more detail than is appropriate in a forum (and to not have to argue with anyone). So that's what this is. I intend to talk about the industry and review some games, most of which will be old games you don't care about but that I'm just getting around to playing. I'll do my best to bring some insight that you wouldn't find elsewhere.
Alright then. Begin.
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