Aw man, I went and did it again didn't I? Forgetting to post and shit*. It was only like three months this time though, cut me some slack. I'm just going to summarize what I've been playing since we last met.
I'll start with Mortal Kombat, and my god is it special. In terms of a simple, one-on-one fighting game judged solely on gameplay and balance and all that, Super Street Fighter IV is still it's superior, but MK is so much more than that. There's the wonderfully in-depth story mode that takes you through the opening chapters of the saga rewritten by an enlightened Raiden trying to change the future that once was, there's the challenge tower featuring 300 battles with varying parameters (some of which can bring a grown man to tears) and the excellent King of the Hill mode, an online winner-stays-on fight with audience participation for those not currently playing. I could write about it all day, but I won't for your sake.
I'll rope Killzone 3 and Bulletstorm into one paragraph, because the two are intrinsically linked for me, having been bought on the same day and played parallel to each other. Bulletstorm came as a bit of a surprise to me, I bought it on a whim, and it turned out to be absolutely sublime. The carnage you able to, and are indeed encouraged to achieve keeps the adrenaline pumping and as a result keeps the game running at a wild pace without it ever getting boring. And on top of that, the voice acting is fantastic, the script is hilarious and you actually care for the characters, despite them being stereotypical meat head space marines. And Killzone 3 is the exact opposite. Everything great about Killzone 2 is gone, and is replaced by a borderline homoerotic excuse for a storyline and awkward attempts at Uncharted-style humour. It's by no means a bad game, but even though the campaign clocks out after three and a half hours, I was ready for it to end.
LA Noire came and went, and despite the universally positive reviews it just failed to impress me. While cruising the mean streets of 1940's Los Angeles I even began to question myself, thinking that I was missing something, because surely all of those reviewers can't be wrong, but the game just doesn't work, and I can't praise a game for what it wants to be; Two Worlds wanted to be Oblivion, and it ended up being dung. No, LA Noire does not work at all. Take the crime scene investigations; on an early case I went to question a witness before I checked the evidence, and ended up asking him how he was linked to the missing person (that the case was built around) by name, despite not having discovered his ID and learning his name for myself yet. On a later case I found a popcorn carton with a vial of illegal morphine taped to the bottom of it, travelled to the vendor, found the cartons, the morphene and even the tape in his stall, yet was unable to bring this up while interrogating him.
The interrogations are littered with faults like this, you could have a signed photo of the killer performing the act and fail a section because it wasn't the specific piece of evidence the game was looking for right there. And when you do do something wrong, there's no explanation why. I was on the receiving end of a bollocking from my chief at one bit because I arrested the wrong guy, and it took place right outside the door of the interrogation room that I'd just made the arrest in! Firstly, if you knew it was the other guy, why didn't you make the fucking arrest, and secondly, they aren't even in cuffs yet, it isn't too late! Gah. And again, I wasn't told why it was the wrong guy. It's so frustrating. The driving, shooting and fisticuffs are alright, but they should be, they are just stolen from GTAIV, but even though you can only enter a fist fight at certain events, and the environment becomes closed off like a fighting game, you still have to lock on with the L2 button before you can throw a punch, it's unnecessary. And the controls are all wrong, R2 to accelerate and R1 for the handbrake? Nah.
Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, received a lot of negative reviews and was actually a joy to play. By no means was it an above average shooting game in terms of running and gunning, but the game excelled in nostalgia for those of us old enough to remember it's 15 year old prequel, and is jam packed with the crude humour, pop culture references and the obligatory half-naked digital ladies of the night we've all come to expect. Duke's antics had me literally laughing out loud at times.
It is painfully obvious that this is an old game you're playing though, the gameplay is virtually prehistoric (no cover system here, folks) and the graphics are at best horrendous, but the whole look and feel of the game takes me back to games like Prey and Doom 3, both absolute classics. The texture pop-in and awful, awful load times (which happen between every death and respawn, and that happens a lot on the later stages of the game) are inexcusable though, and do mar the experience. But overall the game was just what I was hoping for, and the collector's edition was excellent too.
Finally, I owe an apology to Platinum Games. While I stand by my opinion of Bayonetta, that it's vain, sexist, ridiculous and a shit version of Devil May Cry, a shit game in it's own right, I now feel an absolute arsehole for letting that put me off playing Vanquish, which is an absolute blast from start to finish, Sure, it's only four hours long, but it's four hours of action, adrenaline and testosterone. Simply brilliant. And none of that Solid Snake smoking-is-dangerous-please-put-your-cigarettes-in-an-ash-tray health crap either - Sam, Vanquish's protagonist, actually has a smoking button, and when you press it he takes a single drag and then discards the cigarette over his shoulder nonchalantly, only to light a new one the next time you press it. That's two fingers up to the environment, to the NHS and to the recession with one push of a button. If you press square he hosts a cock fight**.
Alright, finally finally, good luck to our Trev, who's left 24HG-UK to pursue his own blog, which I'll provide a link to when it's ready. And check out a couple of new blogs doing the rounds: the awesome 'Square Eyes. Arthritic Thumbs' and the rant-tastic Nerd Kitten that had me laughing my arse off. See you in another three months.
*I didn't actually forget to shit for 12 weeks, it's a figure of speech.
**Nah, they wouldn't get away with that. Only really hardcore M-rated games can do that. Like Pokemon.
Showing posts with label Killzone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Killzone. Show all posts
Tuesday, 28 June 2011
Wednesday, 30 March 2011
Still Alive! Laptop took a bit longer than I would have liked to get repaired, I touched on the late collection by the courier last time I posted. Well, after it was collected a week late, another 10 days later they sent the fucker back untouched, claiming that the damage wasn't covered by the warranty (I did have a look in the warranty booklet, and indeed accidental damage is not covered, which gave them a small point in their favour until I realised that they'd given my a Hewlett Packard warranty booklet when my laptop is a Packard Bell machine, derp), despite the fact that they knew what was wrong with it before it even left my house. And to top it all off, some pikeys got hold of our details from the Curry's system and called us twice trying to rob us.
So I ended up getting an independent repair company to do it for me at my own expense, although I won't divulge how much here because they guy was really helpful and did a great job, and, let's be fair, gave me my life back after about 5 weeks of being bored and having to use the Internet browser on my Nokia N97. Moral of the story: don't buy anything from Curry's, they're arseholes.
So, with the gap in posting, where do I start? I've got Dead Space 2, Dragon Age II, Diabolik: The Original Sin, Bionic Commando and Killzone 3 behind me with Red Steel 2, Wii Sports Resort and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit in progress. I also wanted to talk about the fantastic Mortal Kombat demo and the not-so-fantastic Motorstorm: Apocalypse demo, a small anecdote about BlazBlue and maybe a mini unboxing of the Killzone 3 Helghast Edition. Thanks to a bonus from work I've also got Two Worlds II, Doctor Who: Return to Earth, Dead Space: Extraction (both versions in fact), Prince of Persia Trilogy, LittleBigPlanet 2, Bulletstorm, Arcania: Gothic 4 and Motorstorm: Arctic Edge all lined up for the coming weeks.
It's also been my 26th birthday in the last week, which has allowed me to upgrade my personal gadgetry with the Samsung Galaxy Player MP3 player and the HTC HD7 mobile phone, powered respectively by Android OS and Windows Phone 7, and both respectable gaming platforms in their own right, especially the phone, which is XBox Live compatible and plays a bunch of XBLA games, achievements and all. That's still on it's way to me though, but watching gameplay videos of Need for Speed: Undercover, Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles HD and Earthworm Jim HD have me very much excited. So it's all go at 24HG towers at the moment.
I suppose I'll start with the games that haven't left enough of an impression with me, less to write about, so I can get more in. Diabolik: The Original Sin wins the prize for the most aptly titled game ever, as playing the point-and-click crapfest was like spending a short time in hell. The graphics are piss-poor, like a high-end PS1 game, the voice acting is primary-school-nativity standard and the logic of some of the puzzles is frankly baffling, and this is from a man who finished Secret Files: Tunguska. Finally, the inventory system is terrible, especially with the copious arsenal of gadgets that your protagonist is equipped with before you even start. Diabolik? 'Dire bollocks'.
Bionic Commando wasn't much better, combining a bog-standard shooter with a rubbish version of the PS1 Spider-Man games. The visuals are nice, a bit Metal Gear Solid 4 reminiscent, but that's the only redeeming feature about the dull, uninvolving game. If you want to fly about on a grappling hook, Just Cause 2 does it better. Come to think of it, it does shooting and melee combat better too, and a ton of other things that Bionic Commando doesn't even attempt. What was I talking about again?
I'm going to leave it there for now, but I'll probably post again before the end of the week with a more in-depth look at some of the bigger games I've played. I think Trev's working on a new video too, so it's business as usual again here at 24HG. See you soon.
So I ended up getting an independent repair company to do it for me at my own expense, although I won't divulge how much here because they guy was really helpful and did a great job, and, let's be fair, gave me my life back after about 5 weeks of being bored and having to use the Internet browser on my Nokia N97. Moral of the story: don't buy anything from Curry's, they're arseholes.
So, with the gap in posting, where do I start? I've got Dead Space 2, Dragon Age II, Diabolik: The Original Sin, Bionic Commando and Killzone 3 behind me with Red Steel 2, Wii Sports Resort and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit in progress. I also wanted to talk about the fantastic Mortal Kombat demo and the not-so-fantastic Motorstorm: Apocalypse demo, a small anecdote about BlazBlue and maybe a mini unboxing of the Killzone 3 Helghast Edition. Thanks to a bonus from work I've also got Two Worlds II, Doctor Who: Return to Earth, Dead Space: Extraction (both versions in fact), Prince of Persia Trilogy, LittleBigPlanet 2, Bulletstorm, Arcania: Gothic 4 and Motorstorm: Arctic Edge all lined up for the coming weeks.
It's also been my 26th birthday in the last week, which has allowed me to upgrade my personal gadgetry with the Samsung Galaxy Player MP3 player and the HTC HD7 mobile phone, powered respectively by Android OS and Windows Phone 7, and both respectable gaming platforms in their own right, especially the phone, which is XBox Live compatible and plays a bunch of XBLA games, achievements and all. That's still on it's way to me though, but watching gameplay videos of Need for Speed: Undercover, Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles HD and Earthworm Jim HD have me very much excited. So it's all go at 24HG towers at the moment.
I suppose I'll start with the games that haven't left enough of an impression with me, less to write about, so I can get more in. Diabolik: The Original Sin wins the prize for the most aptly titled game ever, as playing the point-and-click crapfest was like spending a short time in hell. The graphics are piss-poor, like a high-end PS1 game, the voice acting is primary-school-nativity standard and the logic of some of the puzzles is frankly baffling, and this is from a man who finished Secret Files: Tunguska. Finally, the inventory system is terrible, especially with the copious arsenal of gadgets that your protagonist is equipped with before you even start. Diabolik? 'Dire bollocks'.
Bionic Commando wasn't much better, combining a bog-standard shooter with a rubbish version of the PS1 Spider-Man games. The visuals are nice, a bit Metal Gear Solid 4 reminiscent, but that's the only redeeming feature about the dull, uninvolving game. If you want to fly about on a grappling hook, Just Cause 2 does it better. Come to think of it, it does shooting and melee combat better too, and a ton of other things that Bionic Commando doesn't even attempt. What was I talking about again?
I'm going to leave it there for now, but I'll probably post again before the end of the week with a more in-depth look at some of the bigger games I've played. I think Trev's working on a new video too, so it's business as usual again here at 24HG. See you soon.
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
The Fate of Two Worlds...
No, I haven't got my grubby paws on an early copy of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, before you ask, you'll have to wait another two weeks for that. The title is in fact referring to the game, Two Worlds II, and it's fate, the reason it got pushed back again, as detailed here. This is the latest (although arguably unavoidable) setback in a long line, which keeps pushing the UK release further and further back, slowly earning the reportedly redeemed and quite well-received by critics sequel the same kind of laughing-stock reputation of the first. The release date of Two Worlds II (or Two Worlds Forever as some people have started calling it) now rests tentatively on the 25th of February, but if I was going to get any game that day it would be Killzone 3, or failing that The Conduit 2. Two Worlds II wouldn't get a look in. As it happens I'm going to hoover all three of them up (Plus LBP2 and maybe a couple of minor games) come April, when my real job grants me my end-of-financial-year bonus.
So, I took all of my TWII money (all £32.89 of it) and skipped merrily off to Blockbuster like a gay (happy) child on pocket money day, determined not to be left gameless on this dark day. Ten minutes later I left the shop with chief Two Worlds substitute Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga on 360 for £19.95, Bionic Commando on PS3 and Diabolik: The Original Sin on Wii for £4.95 each and Sega Superstars Tennis on 360 for the bargain price of £2.95, with 9p change and a feeling of relief for having something new to play.
The only game I've had a go on so far is Divinity II, which is very good but hard going. Happily in the middle between the expansive, open world Oblivion and the closed in areas of Fable, DII sees you in the boots of a Dragon Slayer hunting the last of the Dragon Knights, powerful beings with the ability to take the form of a Dragon. The Dragon Knight, in her dying breath, transforms you into one yourself, and teaches you of their apparently noble quest to save the world from the demonic 'Damian' (original name for a demon).
I'll admit, I'm still getting to grips with the game, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. The levelling up process is simple, gain XP from killing enemies and completing quests and pile them into different aspects (as a warrior I'm diverting it all into Strength and Health, but there's also things like Magic and Archery), then level up a particular skill, like dual-wielding or regenerating health. The only problem I'm having is with the difficulty spikes, one minute I'm wading through enemies taking barely a scratch as they crumble beneath me, the next I'm dead at the hands of a single Goblin, because he's two levels ahead of me. I think I'm a bit tuckered out by fantasy RPGs at the minute though, I'm still plodding through Dragon Age, so maybe Divinity will have to be moved a bit further down my pile to be rejoined at a later date.
So that's that then. I've been in talks with my cohort Trev, who will be returning to the site imminently, and both of us are working on some exciting new features for the site. We'll keep you posted. Once again, please 'like' us on our Facebook page, there's not only news about the blog there but news about our friend's sites and blog postings and general gaming news. See you later.
So, I took all of my TWII money (all £32.89 of it) and skipped merrily off to Blockbuster like a gay (happy) child on pocket money day, determined not to be left gameless on this dark day. Ten minutes later I left the shop with chief Two Worlds substitute Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga on 360 for £19.95, Bionic Commando on PS3 and Diabolik: The Original Sin on Wii for £4.95 each and Sega Superstars Tennis on 360 for the bargain price of £2.95, with 9p change and a feeling of relief for having something new to play.
The only game I've had a go on so far is Divinity II, which is very good but hard going. Happily in the middle between the expansive, open world Oblivion and the closed in areas of Fable, DII sees you in the boots of a Dragon Slayer hunting the last of the Dragon Knights, powerful beings with the ability to take the form of a Dragon. The Dragon Knight, in her dying breath, transforms you into one yourself, and teaches you of their apparently noble quest to save the world from the demonic 'Damian' (original name for a demon).
I'll admit, I'm still getting to grips with the game, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. The levelling up process is simple, gain XP from killing enemies and completing quests and pile them into different aspects (as a warrior I'm diverting it all into Strength and Health, but there's also things like Magic and Archery), then level up a particular skill, like dual-wielding or regenerating health. The only problem I'm having is with the difficulty spikes, one minute I'm wading through enemies taking barely a scratch as they crumble beneath me, the next I'm dead at the hands of a single Goblin, because he's two levels ahead of me. I think I'm a bit tuckered out by fantasy RPGs at the minute though, I'm still plodding through Dragon Age, so maybe Divinity will have to be moved a bit further down my pile to be rejoined at a later date.
So that's that then. I've been in talks with my cohort Trev, who will be returning to the site imminently, and both of us are working on some exciting new features for the site. We'll keep you posted. Once again, please 'like' us on our Facebook page, there's not only news about the blog there but news about our friend's sites and blog postings and general gaming news. See you later.
Friday, 14 January 2011
A look back: My top 10 games of 2009
I said I'd repost it, so I've dug it from the depths of Videogame Space and slapped it on here for your pleasure. Note that I hadn't played Assassin's Creed II by this point, and that would have nestled nicely in third place, and in my disorganisation I'd forgotten about the release of the epic Street Fighter IV somehow, which would probably have slid in nicely between Batman and Killzone 2. Tekken 6 wouldn't have placed higher than Borderlands, so with the other two additions isn't really worth mentioning. I assure you, I've been working on 2010's GOTY since the first of January, so there will be no schoolboy errors this time around. So, for posterity, enjoy.
Originally posted on the 15th of December 2009.
As the year is coming to a close and a lot of people are complaining about the lack of great games over the last 12 months, I decided to compile a list of games that have made 2009 a great year for me, and why. So without further ado, ten must-have 2009 games that have rocked my little world.
10: SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny - Namco, PSP.
Far from just being a port of SoulCalibur IV, Broken Destiny took the already impressive fighting game and expanded on it, adding two new characters (including God of War's charismatic hero and all-round nice guy Kratos) and a handful of great new features including a continuous play system based on Tekken: Dark Resurrection's Arcade Mode. The character creation facility from SCIV also makes a return, and it is possibly better than it's parent game's offering. Namco have definitely proven that they are the kings of PSP fighters, Capcom need to sit up a bit.
9: X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Raven Software, XBox 360.
Movie adaptations are usually kiddie-friendly rushed for release pieces of horse shit, and it was utter boredom that drove me to download the demo for Wolverine from the PSN store. When I later received the game bundled with my XBox 360 Elite in September, I expected it to get boring very quickly. It turned out to be an absolutely thrilling God of War style slash-em-up with bucketloads of gore and no sign of Ryan Reynolds anywhere. It's hard to imagine how this game could have been better for what it is.
8: Borderlands - Gearbox Software, XBox 360
Borderlands is a rare game, in that it completely polarizes it's audience. On one hand you have those that love it, and on the other those that hate it, and you'll find it very hard to find anyone sitting on the fence between. In a nutshell, Borderlands is a MMORPG, but without the MM part (although it still plays like one). Then take the fantasy setting and change it into a barren planet full of rednecks and mutants and liberally scatter about a thousand different guns around the game world and you've got it. Throw three friends into the mix and it all spells great fun, if you're at the same skill level that is.
7: The Conduit - High Voltage Software, Wii
The Conduit is actually the most recent game that I've played, and it really impressed me in a way that I didn't think anything on Nintendo's pre-school toy could. It's an awesome FPS that tells the story of an alien invasion orchestrated from within America's own government, and apart from the shitty ending and the fact that at times it's so fucking hard it can drive a grown man to tears, it's great from start to finish.
6: Ghostbusters: The Videogame - Terminal Reality, PS3
When I was a child I had a huge suitcase full of Ghostbusters action figures. I watched the cartoons religiously, loved the films (apart from the library ghost, that scared the shit out of me) and was so jealous of my friend's firehouse play set. I played the Megadrive game so much that me and my friend had written lyrics to the background music. So every second of this game was a fanboy delight for me. And I had my chance to finally get revenge on the library ghost. Just don't cross the streams...
5: Killzone 2 - Guerrilla Games, PS3
I had never even played Killzone 1 until this year, so the series was entirely new to me. Where Killzone impressed me, Killzone 2 absolutely blew me away with it's absolute chaos and phenomenal graphics. Where Gears of War is very organized in it's 'walk to an area, have a fight, repeat' mechanic, Killzone 2 just throws panic and constant action at you at every turn. There's even an attempt at emotive storytelling too, but it gets lost under the machismo and buzzcuts, which are more important in a military FPS.
4: Batman: Arkham Asylum - Rocksteady Studios, PS3
What, as low as number 4? Yeah, Batman is a fantastic game and would probably be at the top spot in a lot of people's lists, but I can't help feeling that it got caught up in the hype of The Dark Knight, which was hyped for a lot of wrong reasons, but let's not get into that. Arkham was, for those who've been living at the Earth's core for the last year, stated as the ultimate Batman experience, melding combat and detective work with a look that stays true to the comics and yet doesn't look too dissimilar to the more recent films (and indeed those from 20 years ago), and features the voices from the incredible Warner Bros. cartoons. Although not that original it sits at the top of the field in everything it does do, and as with Ghostbusters I'm a bit of a fanboy. The collector's edition Batarang was shit though.
3: Shadow Complex - Chair Entertainment, XBox 360
A surprise for me, I tried the trial version of this game on a whim, and it absolutely blew me away. I immediately got me some Microsoft Points and downloaded it. The game is a side-scrolling shooter/platformer in a similar vein to Super Metroid, but with less aliens and more evil subterranean masterminds. Aside from great shooting and simple yet effective melee combat, the platforming is like a 2D Tomb Raider, it actually reminds me of Generations Lost on the Megadrive. And with the platforming element, the only voice that could be used for the main character is Nolan North, which brings me to...
2: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Naughty Dog, PS3
I was a huge fan of the first Uncharted where a lot of people understandably overlooked it due to it's zero media coverage and exclusivity to a console that looked like it might die on it's arse, so in the 10 months between Uncharted 2's announcement and release I was practically shitting myself on an hourly basis. I think (I'm pretty sure) that the first one is better in my eyes anyway, but that doesn't stop Among Thieves being a fucking incredible game in every way that kept me hooked from start to finish with it's amazing graphics and Oscar-worthy narrative and voice-acting. The game is an absolute thrill-ride and aside from a pretty annoying train ride and an underwhelming last boss it's pretty much perfect.
1: Dragon Age: Origins - Bioware, XBox 360
No game this year has had me hooked so badly, especially as I'm not an RPG gamer by trait. While not as widespread and welcoming as Oblivion, the game I was hoping that DAO would fill the hole left by, it's expansive main quest and numerous side-quests keep dragging you back for more. Aside from the quests, the relationships that you build up with your entourage through gift giving and social interaction, like a perverted Animal Crossing, and the different paths you can take with every different decision made just compel you to carry on playing, and I found that even before I'd finished it I was already planning my second playthrough. It was only the amassing pile of unplayed games mounting up and my running out of things to blog about that forced me to move on. A slightly underwhelming collector's edition is all that tarnishes this masterpiece.
So that's that then. What, no Modern Warfare 2? No, while I acknowledge that a lot of people love it, it's just not my cup of tea. The campaign was pretty good but not fantastic, but the game was mainly multiplayer and that just doesn't interest me. And, perhaps criminally Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 have both evaded my grasp so far. I was very tempted to add Monkey Island SE and God of War collection, but I figured that involved a bit of rule banding, with neither being strictly 2009 releases. Well, until next year then, with it's fine bounty of Mass Effect 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Batman 2 and potentially a new Tomb Raider. I'm very much looking forward to it.
Originally posted on the 15th of December 2009.
As the year is coming to a close and a lot of people are complaining about the lack of great games over the last 12 months, I decided to compile a list of games that have made 2009 a great year for me, and why. So without further ado, ten must-have 2009 games that have rocked my little world.
10: SoulCalibur: Broken Destiny - Namco, PSP.
Far from just being a port of SoulCalibur IV, Broken Destiny took the already impressive fighting game and expanded on it, adding two new characters (including God of War's charismatic hero and all-round nice guy Kratos) and a handful of great new features including a continuous play system based on Tekken: Dark Resurrection's Arcade Mode. The character creation facility from SCIV also makes a return, and it is possibly better than it's parent game's offering. Namco have definitely proven that they are the kings of PSP fighters, Capcom need to sit up a bit.
9: X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Raven Software, XBox 360.
Movie adaptations are usually kiddie-friendly rushed for release pieces of horse shit, and it was utter boredom that drove me to download the demo for Wolverine from the PSN store. When I later received the game bundled with my XBox 360 Elite in September, I expected it to get boring very quickly. It turned out to be an absolutely thrilling God of War style slash-em-up with bucketloads of gore and no sign of Ryan Reynolds anywhere. It's hard to imagine how this game could have been better for what it is.
8: Borderlands - Gearbox Software, XBox 360
Borderlands is a rare game, in that it completely polarizes it's audience. On one hand you have those that love it, and on the other those that hate it, and you'll find it very hard to find anyone sitting on the fence between. In a nutshell, Borderlands is a MMORPG, but without the MM part (although it still plays like one). Then take the fantasy setting and change it into a barren planet full of rednecks and mutants and liberally scatter about a thousand different guns around the game world and you've got it. Throw three friends into the mix and it all spells great fun, if you're at the same skill level that is.
7: The Conduit - High Voltage Software, Wii
The Conduit is actually the most recent game that I've played, and it really impressed me in a way that I didn't think anything on Nintendo's pre-school toy could. It's an awesome FPS that tells the story of an alien invasion orchestrated from within America's own government, and apart from the shitty ending and the fact that at times it's so fucking hard it can drive a grown man to tears, it's great from start to finish.
6: Ghostbusters: The Videogame - Terminal Reality, PS3
When I was a child I had a huge suitcase full of Ghostbusters action figures. I watched the cartoons religiously, loved the films (apart from the library ghost, that scared the shit out of me) and was so jealous of my friend's firehouse play set. I played the Megadrive game so much that me and my friend had written lyrics to the background music. So every second of this game was a fanboy delight for me. And I had my chance to finally get revenge on the library ghost. Just don't cross the streams...
5: Killzone 2 - Guerrilla Games, PS3
I had never even played Killzone 1 until this year, so the series was entirely new to me. Where Killzone impressed me, Killzone 2 absolutely blew me away with it's absolute chaos and phenomenal graphics. Where Gears of War is very organized in it's 'walk to an area, have a fight, repeat' mechanic, Killzone 2 just throws panic and constant action at you at every turn. There's even an attempt at emotive storytelling too, but it gets lost under the machismo and buzzcuts, which are more important in a military FPS.
4: Batman: Arkham Asylum - Rocksteady Studios, PS3
What, as low as number 4? Yeah, Batman is a fantastic game and would probably be at the top spot in a lot of people's lists, but I can't help feeling that it got caught up in the hype of The Dark Knight, which was hyped for a lot of wrong reasons, but let's not get into that. Arkham was, for those who've been living at the Earth's core for the last year, stated as the ultimate Batman experience, melding combat and detective work with a look that stays true to the comics and yet doesn't look too dissimilar to the more recent films (and indeed those from 20 years ago), and features the voices from the incredible Warner Bros. cartoons. Although not that original it sits at the top of the field in everything it does do, and as with Ghostbusters I'm a bit of a fanboy. The collector's edition Batarang was shit though.
3: Shadow Complex - Chair Entertainment, XBox 360
A surprise for me, I tried the trial version of this game on a whim, and it absolutely blew me away. I immediately got me some Microsoft Points and downloaded it. The game is a side-scrolling shooter/platformer in a similar vein to Super Metroid, but with less aliens and more evil subterranean masterminds. Aside from great shooting and simple yet effective melee combat, the platforming is like a 2D Tomb Raider, it actually reminds me of Generations Lost on the Megadrive. And with the platforming element, the only voice that could be used for the main character is Nolan North, which brings me to...
2: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - Naughty Dog, PS3
I was a huge fan of the first Uncharted where a lot of people understandably overlooked it due to it's zero media coverage and exclusivity to a console that looked like it might die on it's arse, so in the 10 months between Uncharted 2's announcement and release I was practically shitting myself on an hourly basis. I think (I'm pretty sure) that the first one is better in my eyes anyway, but that doesn't stop Among Thieves being a fucking incredible game in every way that kept me hooked from start to finish with it's amazing graphics and Oscar-worthy narrative and voice-acting. The game is an absolute thrill-ride and aside from a pretty annoying train ride and an underwhelming last boss it's pretty much perfect.
1: Dragon Age: Origins - Bioware, XBox 360
No game this year has had me hooked so badly, especially as I'm not an RPG gamer by trait. While not as widespread and welcoming as Oblivion, the game I was hoping that DAO would fill the hole left by, it's expansive main quest and numerous side-quests keep dragging you back for more. Aside from the quests, the relationships that you build up with your entourage through gift giving and social interaction, like a perverted Animal Crossing, and the different paths you can take with every different decision made just compel you to carry on playing, and I found that even before I'd finished it I was already planning my second playthrough. It was only the amassing pile of unplayed games mounting up and my running out of things to blog about that forced me to move on. A slightly underwhelming collector's edition is all that tarnishes this masterpiece.
So that's that then. What, no Modern Warfare 2? No, while I acknowledge that a lot of people love it, it's just not my cup of tea. The campaign was pretty good but not fantastic, but the game was mainly multiplayer and that just doesn't interest me. And, perhaps criminally Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 have both evaded my grasp so far. I was very tempted to add Monkey Island SE and God of War collection, but I figured that involved a bit of rule banding, with neither being strictly 2009 releases. Well, until next year then, with it's fine bounty of Mass Effect 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Batman 2 and potentially a new Tomb Raider. I'm very much looking forward to it.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
We don't speak anymore of War...
As an avid Mortal Kombat fan and an avid God of War fan, I saw last weekend's new trailer for the upcoming Mortal Kombat game unveiling Kratos as a guest character, and promptly went mad. Heading over to the old Mortal Kombat forum that I used to frequent a while back, I found that, to no surprise whatsoever, the franchise's 'fanbase' were less than happy, as they have been for every new MK release since I joined the boards, back in the days of MK: Deadly Alliance.
Upon telling them all they were overreacting, as a response to one guy trolling the threads with Kratos spam-hate and another hypochondriac claiming that this single character addition, who might I add has no bearing on the storyline whatsoever and is simply there as an Easter Egg, had sent the 'good' (obviously ignoring the sales figures and the fans' own reactions to the series for the past decade or so) name of Mortal Kombat 'down the drain', I was informed that I have 'no respect for the series' that I have followed since the age of seven, and have bought and still own at least one copy of each game in the series in some form or another. So, I feel prompted to write in support of Kratos' appearance.
Financially, we'll begin with. Kratos himself is a household name. He's starred in six of his own games over four systems (look it up, there was a GoW for Mobile Phones), and made cameos in others such as LittleBigPlanet, Modnation Racers, Heavenly Sword (in a fashion) and SoulCalibur. Despite being a PlayStation-exclusive series, each God of War game has drastically outsold the Mortal Kombat that was released nearest to it's own date. So really, it's an honour that such a high-profile name should make it into a series which has fallen so far, and the GoW fans it will draw into MK, which no doubt greatly outnumber it's own fans (who all seem to hate the games anyway), will help ensure financial success and spur WB Games into funding the continuation of the series. But of course, if Mr. Ed Boon wants to make any money out of the game, then he's instantly a sellout.
Right then, my second point. Kratos fits in with the Mortal Kombat universe. I'm hard pressed to think of another videogame protagonist that is as brutal and visceral as the War God himself, and MK seems to be trying to push the boundaries of violence and brutality with the new release. Not only that, but Kratos is on a mission to destroy the Gods, and MK features no less than three Gods as playable characters throughout the series. In SoulCalibur he was potentially wasted, because of the lack of gore, and he didn't fit in with the uber-clean and shiny look of an eastern-made game. MK has both bases covered.
It's come to my attention that since the Kratos bombshell dropped, Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski and Mark Rein have showed interest in slapping a Gears of War character into the 360 version, which is sure to rub salt into the wounds of the pent-up masses. I'm hoping for the Cole Train, not only do I love him almost as much as Kratos, but his carefree, comic relief attitude is sure to ruffle the feathers of many a rectally clenched MK 'purist'. I can't wait.
So, as a little bit of fun, I set up a petition urging David Jaffe to include our beloved Kratos in every game he possibly can from now on. I would love to see him manually decapitating a Chimera in Resistance 3, applying sandal to Hig in Killzone 3, high fiving Lara Croft after helping her uncover some ancient Greek treasure or kicking back and relaxing after disemboweling the Grim Reaper for trying to interfere with his indoor barbeque in the next expansion pack for The Sims 3. You can view and sign the petition here, so go for it, just for a laugh. Get your pets to sign it too, and your gran, she loves a bit of dismemberment.
And to sign out, I thought I'd prepare a little something for you guys.
Not the biggest MK collection going, but not bad for someone who has no respect for the series. See you guys later.
Upon telling them all they were overreacting, as a response to one guy trolling the threads with Kratos spam-hate and another hypochondriac claiming that this single character addition, who might I add has no bearing on the storyline whatsoever and is simply there as an Easter Egg, had sent the 'good' (obviously ignoring the sales figures and the fans' own reactions to the series for the past decade or so) name of Mortal Kombat 'down the drain', I was informed that I have 'no respect for the series' that I have followed since the age of seven, and have bought and still own at least one copy of each game in the series in some form or another. So, I feel prompted to write in support of Kratos' appearance.
Financially, we'll begin with. Kratos himself is a household name. He's starred in six of his own games over four systems (look it up, there was a GoW for Mobile Phones), and made cameos in others such as LittleBigPlanet, Modnation Racers, Heavenly Sword (in a fashion) and SoulCalibur. Despite being a PlayStation-exclusive series, each God of War game has drastically outsold the Mortal Kombat that was released nearest to it's own date. So really, it's an honour that such a high-profile name should make it into a series which has fallen so far, and the GoW fans it will draw into MK, which no doubt greatly outnumber it's own fans (who all seem to hate the games anyway), will help ensure financial success and spur WB Games into funding the continuation of the series. But of course, if Mr. Ed Boon wants to make any money out of the game, then he's instantly a sellout.
Right then, my second point. Kratos fits in with the Mortal Kombat universe. I'm hard pressed to think of another videogame protagonist that is as brutal and visceral as the War God himself, and MK seems to be trying to push the boundaries of violence and brutality with the new release. Not only that, but Kratos is on a mission to destroy the Gods, and MK features no less than three Gods as playable characters throughout the series. In SoulCalibur he was potentially wasted, because of the lack of gore, and he didn't fit in with the uber-clean and shiny look of an eastern-made game. MK has both bases covered.
It's come to my attention that since the Kratos bombshell dropped, Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski and Mark Rein have showed interest in slapping a Gears of War character into the 360 version, which is sure to rub salt into the wounds of the pent-up masses. I'm hoping for the Cole Train, not only do I love him almost as much as Kratos, but his carefree, comic relief attitude is sure to ruffle the feathers of many a rectally clenched MK 'purist'. I can't wait.
So, as a little bit of fun, I set up a petition urging David Jaffe to include our beloved Kratos in every game he possibly can from now on. I would love to see him manually decapitating a Chimera in Resistance 3, applying sandal to Hig in Killzone 3, high fiving Lara Croft after helping her uncover some ancient Greek treasure or kicking back and relaxing after disemboweling the Grim Reaper for trying to interfere with his indoor barbeque in the next expansion pack for The Sims 3. You can view and sign the petition here, so go for it, just for a laugh. Get your pets to sign it too, and your gran, she loves a bit of dismemberment.
And to sign out, I thought I'd prepare a little something for you guys.
Not the biggest MK collection going, but not bad for someone who has no respect for the series. See you guys later.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Oh Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine, you blow my mind.
Where to start? Well, if I said that the last week had been a good gaming week for me, I'd be lying through my teeth. It started off well, with my re-discovery of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which has eaten up about 12 hours of time that I should have spent sleeping this week. I have played Oblivion before, about three times from start to finish actually, so I thought I'd mix things up a little this time. Playing as a Khajiit, an anthropomorphic cat for those who haven't played the game yet (although you really should, it's a very likely candidate for the best game ever made), I've taken it upon myself to make it my goal to hunt and kill every Argonian (lizard people, and historical enemies of the Khajiit) in the game world, after they've served any purpose they might have that is.
Aside from that, this is the first time I've tried playing the game with Light Armour, and only the second time using swords, as I usually go for heavy armour and axes or (my favourite) warhammers. And it's my first time out of the dungeon that I wasn't in the shoes of an Elf too, so a lot of the game is fresh to me this time. But that's the high point of the week over right there.
After the surprisingly great ObsCure, I was eager to fire up ObsCure II on the Wii, and was appalled. None of the atmosphere had survived, the creepy post-Gothic feeling of the original's high school setting had been replaced by a college frat house full of asshole stereotype douchebags with absolutely disgusting voice actors that they must have scraped up off the street. I commented on how Sum 41's 'Still Waiting' failed to set the scene in the first one, but the opening music to ObsCure II (god knows what it was) was comically inappropriate, actually cheerful sounding.
Then you get thrown into the gameplay, and the erratic animation combined with the standard sketchy-at-best Wii controls that make any attempt at a serious game (bar Resident Evil 4) a chore make the game virtually unplayable. The writers seem to have forgotten that our heroes found a cure for their infection at the end of the first game, because now they are having to take medicines to stop it spreading. Also, none of the returning characters look, sound or behave as they did before (our hero Stan has even stopped talking like Vanilla Ice), showing yet more lack of attention by the developers. And after a bad nightmare sequence that shamelessly ripped off Silent Hill and a run-in with the game's very first enemies who can tear about a third of your health away with one hit, it wasn't long before I switched it off. If I ever find it for a decent price on the PS2, I might be tempted to have a go at it with a normal controller, but as it stands I'm just not interested enough to put myself through it.
So I moved on to this week's main event, the infamous Rogue Warrior on the PS3. Rogue Warrior is a supposed true story based on the autobiography of former Navy Seal commander (and tourette's sufferer, if the game is anything to go by) Dick Marcinko. I'm not going to skirt around things here, this game is BAD. But it's not insultingly bad, like Haze, it's laugh-out-loud, piss-hilarious bad. I suppose, if you'd spend £40 on it, then it would be a bit of a kick in the balls, but I only spent £14.99 (I can only imagine how bad the person who sold it to Cash Converters felt, he can't have gotten more than a tenner for it less than a month after it was released. I hope for his sake he stole it).
I'm going to start with the script. Dick, voiced by muscular pensioner Mickey Rourke, must have said about 4 or 5 words before his first 'fuck' broke through, and then never looked back. Apart from the D-grade military action movie jargon I think I heard one line of F-bomb free dialogue in the whole game, and that was a reference to cunnilingus. At one point, close to death, Dick descended into one long, uninterrupted swear word, which went something like "fucknshitbastardcommiemotherfuckinfuck". That's quality writing right there. From his voice, you get the feeling that Mickey's heart wasn't really in it. But you also get the feeling that half of the expletives weren't actually on the script too.
Right, gameplay time. Rogue Warrior is a standard FPS, one man versus the whole of North Korea and the Soviet Union type of affair. It's cover system is like a happy marriage between Killzone 2 and Gears of War, and it feels great until you reload. If you leave cover half way through reloading, the action is cancelled. It's okay though, there's no reason to leave cover, because the enemies will just stroll over and stand at the other side of whatever you're hiding behind, happily firing round after round into the bulletproof barrier, allowing you to use blindfire and just poke your gun over the top and kill him without even aiming.
The enemies take cover too though, and I actually saw one throw a grenade at the cover he was hiding behind, resulting in the explosive bouncing right back and landing in his lap. So it's no surprise that Kim Jong Il's finest pose very little threat to you throughout the game. The only problem comes with the Shotgun carriers, who defy the laws of the world by being able to shoot the hairs off a flea's back at 200 yards. Attention to detail, nothing is spared.
Like with The Punisher on the PS2, I tended to favour the melee kills, which are triggered by moving close to an enemy and pressing the X button. This sends the camera out to a third person view so you can admire you suitably brutal finisher, ranging from turning an enemy's gun on himself to slitting his throat, to the frankly worrying move involving sticking your knife up a poor communist's arsehole. The mind boggles.
It's hard to imagine, that with the publisher of Fallout 3 and the developer of Rogue Trooper and Aliens vs. Predator, that an FPS with such a rich upbringing could go so wrong. Whoever thought it would be a great idea to let people play as a demolitions expert (the game's main aim is to plant explosives on missiles) was sorely mistaken. And who decided that 2 and a half hours was an adequate lifespan of a game was frankly insane. But at least it made me laugh.
And that's about it. I had a quick go on Madworld the other day, and it didn't really grab me. The visuals are headache inducing (reminding me of pictures I used to draw as a child, where I would only colour in the blood), and it seems to me that they had tried to come up with a valid storyline involving terrorists at the start of the game, but then abandoning it and leaving the cutscene in. One minute the president is addressing the nation over a terrorist attack and promising to send in a special agent, the next you're in a violent Running Man style game show. Then it's just hitting people until the game over screen. I'll have another go, but I don't predict I'll fall for it. Speaking of falling for things, I tried the Just Cause 2 demo last night, and I think I'll be bringing the full game home on the 26th. Even though I loved the original, for some reason I wasn't expecting much from the sequel, but was very pleasantly surprised. Gives me something to look forward to.
Check back next week for the DLC special!
Aside from that, this is the first time I've tried playing the game with Light Armour, and only the second time using swords, as I usually go for heavy armour and axes or (my favourite) warhammers. And it's my first time out of the dungeon that I wasn't in the shoes of an Elf too, so a lot of the game is fresh to me this time. But that's the high point of the week over right there.
After the surprisingly great ObsCure, I was eager to fire up ObsCure II on the Wii, and was appalled. None of the atmosphere had survived, the creepy post-Gothic feeling of the original's high school setting had been replaced by a college frat house full of asshole stereotype douchebags with absolutely disgusting voice actors that they must have scraped up off the street. I commented on how Sum 41's 'Still Waiting' failed to set the scene in the first one, but the opening music to ObsCure II (god knows what it was) was comically inappropriate, actually cheerful sounding.
Then you get thrown into the gameplay, and the erratic animation combined with the standard sketchy-at-best Wii controls that make any attempt at a serious game (bar Resident Evil 4) a chore make the game virtually unplayable. The writers seem to have forgotten that our heroes found a cure for their infection at the end of the first game, because now they are having to take medicines to stop it spreading. Also, none of the returning characters look, sound or behave as they did before (our hero Stan has even stopped talking like Vanilla Ice), showing yet more lack of attention by the developers. And after a bad nightmare sequence that shamelessly ripped off Silent Hill and a run-in with the game's very first enemies who can tear about a third of your health away with one hit, it wasn't long before I switched it off. If I ever find it for a decent price on the PS2, I might be tempted to have a go at it with a normal controller, but as it stands I'm just not interested enough to put myself through it.
So I moved on to this week's main event, the infamous Rogue Warrior on the PS3. Rogue Warrior is a supposed true story based on the autobiography of former Navy Seal commander (and tourette's sufferer, if the game is anything to go by) Dick Marcinko. I'm not going to skirt around things here, this game is BAD. But it's not insultingly bad, like Haze, it's laugh-out-loud, piss-hilarious bad. I suppose, if you'd spend £40 on it, then it would be a bit of a kick in the balls, but I only spent £14.99 (I can only imagine how bad the person who sold it to Cash Converters felt, he can't have gotten more than a tenner for it less than a month after it was released. I hope for his sake he stole it).
I'm going to start with the script. Dick, voiced by muscular pensioner Mickey Rourke, must have said about 4 or 5 words before his first 'fuck' broke through, and then never looked back. Apart from the D-grade military action movie jargon I think I heard one line of F-bomb free dialogue in the whole game, and that was a reference to cunnilingus. At one point, close to death, Dick descended into one long, uninterrupted swear word, which went something like "fucknshitbastardcommiemotherfuckinfuck". That's quality writing right there. From his voice, you get the feeling that Mickey's heart wasn't really in it. But you also get the feeling that half of the expletives weren't actually on the script too.
Right, gameplay time. Rogue Warrior is a standard FPS, one man versus the whole of North Korea and the Soviet Union type of affair. It's cover system is like a happy marriage between Killzone 2 and Gears of War, and it feels great until you reload. If you leave cover half way through reloading, the action is cancelled. It's okay though, there's no reason to leave cover, because the enemies will just stroll over and stand at the other side of whatever you're hiding behind, happily firing round after round into the bulletproof barrier, allowing you to use blindfire and just poke your gun over the top and kill him without even aiming.
The enemies take cover too though, and I actually saw one throw a grenade at the cover he was hiding behind, resulting in the explosive bouncing right back and landing in his lap. So it's no surprise that Kim Jong Il's finest pose very little threat to you throughout the game. The only problem comes with the Shotgun carriers, who defy the laws of the world by being able to shoot the hairs off a flea's back at 200 yards. Attention to detail, nothing is spared.
Like with The Punisher on the PS2, I tended to favour the melee kills, which are triggered by moving close to an enemy and pressing the X button. This sends the camera out to a third person view so you can admire you suitably brutal finisher, ranging from turning an enemy's gun on himself to slitting his throat, to the frankly worrying move involving sticking your knife up a poor communist's arsehole. The mind boggles.
It's hard to imagine, that with the publisher of Fallout 3 and the developer of Rogue Trooper and Aliens vs. Predator, that an FPS with such a rich upbringing could go so wrong. Whoever thought it would be a great idea to let people play as a demolitions expert (the game's main aim is to plant explosives on missiles) was sorely mistaken. And who decided that 2 and a half hours was an adequate lifespan of a game was frankly insane. But at least it made me laugh.
And that's about it. I had a quick go on Madworld the other day, and it didn't really grab me. The visuals are headache inducing (reminding me of pictures I used to draw as a child, where I would only colour in the blood), and it seems to me that they had tried to come up with a valid storyline involving terrorists at the start of the game, but then abandoning it and leaving the cutscene in. One minute the president is addressing the nation over a terrorist attack and promising to send in a special agent, the next you're in a violent Running Man style game show. Then it's just hitting people until the game over screen. I'll have another go, but I don't predict I'll fall for it. Speaking of falling for things, I tried the Just Cause 2 demo last night, and I think I'll be bringing the full game home on the 26th. Even though I loved the original, for some reason I wasn't expecting much from the sequel, but was very pleasantly surprised. Gives me something to look forward to.
Check back next week for the DLC special!
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of graveyard, and it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall
Another month, another candidate for Game of 2010. After Mass Effect 2 a month ago, I recall expressing concern and doubt about playing a game that I would consider it's equal in the preceding eleven months. Yet here I am, four mere weeks later with a game in my clammy paws that I possibly like even more.
The game in question is Quantic Dream's PS3 exclusive epic Heavy Rain, spiritual successor to the fantastic (if a little flawed narratively) Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy stateside thanks to the combined efforts of Micheal Moore and Osama Bin Laden). When I first played Fahrenheit, it was completely new to me. The only games I could even begin to compare it to were Shenmue, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, but even then the comparisons were vague and incomplete.
Heavy Rain goes down the same path in terms of delivery, but throws away the fantasy elements of Dreamfall and (to a lesser extent) Broken Sword and, taking the spiritual guidance of Shenmue, throws you into a very serious, very mature murder mystery. The story begins with a ridiculously perfect family living a ridiculously perfect life together, until one family day outing spells disaster for the father, Ethan Mars, when his eldest son of two, Jason, wanders off. Ethan eventually finds him, but their reunion is cut dramatically short when they are both struck by an oncoming car, sending Ethan into a coma and Jason into an early grave.
Two years later we rejoin Ethan a bit worse for wear. His marriage has ended and he's just picking up his remaining son Shaun from his ex wife's house. Instead of moving to Malibu with Charlie Sheen as some people do in these situations, he's got himself a shitty little house in the most depressing part of town. Shaun is quite understandably a bit pissed off at Ethan, obviously he never knows when he's going to get led into traffic by his dear old dad, and to make it up to him Ethan takes Shaun to a playground. Right about now seems a good place to mention that Ethan's coma rendered him a bit of a Schizo with a penchant for blacking out, and after placing Shaun on a merry-go-round (don't all playgrounds have them?), he promptly does just that. He wakes up later on to find his son missing, and a small origami figure in his hand, the calling card of a mass child murderer known as (wait for it) 'The Origami Killer'. So Ethan goes on a quest to find his son, along with FBI agent Fox M... sorry, Norman Jayden, lovable private dick Scott Shelby, his prostitute sidekick Lauren Winter and Madison Paige, a journalist who's clothes keep falling off.
Heavy Rain places itself in a very unique position in that it's not only one of my favourite games (I will go that far, I absolutely loved it), but also one of my favourite films too. A lot of the time I almost forgot I was playing at all, robotically hammering the quick time events in without even really noticing them even appearing onscreen. Another fairly unique thing about the game is that when a character dies, the game carries on without them instead of ending and letting you continue. Ironically, I can only think of one other game that does this and that's ObsCure, a game I only played a couple of weeks earlier.
Heavy Rain, like most PS3 exclusives, really excels in the graphical department. To say it looks beautiful is a criminal understatement. Even the graphical might of Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 doesn't seem to hold up against Heavy Rain. The only thing I don't like about it really is the creepy facial expressions from Fahrenheit occasionally crop up, as if the motion capture artists didn't smile when they should have and one was thrown in at the last minute, a shining example of this is during the nightclub scene where Madison dances on the podium. I am just nitpicking for the sake of it though.
Before Heavy Rain I returned to the macho, closely shaven world of Richard B. Riddick once more, with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Not so much a sequel to Butcher Bay, Dark Athena is more of an expansion pack. It plays exactly the same, which was quite disappointing to be honest. Even the main story seems completely plagiarised, with the prison planet that Riddick must escape from in Butcher Bay replaced with a mercenary ship filled with prisoners, that Riddick must escape from. It's considerably longer than Butcher Bay, but that's the only thing I can really say about it. If it wasn't for the first game being included on Dark Athena's disk, it really wouldn't be worth buying.
Thursday's PSN Store update saw the releases of demos for Darksiders and God of War III, both of which are bloody fantastic hack-and-slash kill-em-ups and like the earlier Dante's Inferno are both based on religious mythology, and have thus been locked in a friendly battle. There's no contest really, Kratos has made sure of that, but so far Darksiders seems to be superior to Dante's by a gnat's wing, mainly helped along by the bold imagery, great voice work (thanks Mark Hamill) and the fact that it's not shamelessly ripping off God of War in every way. But God of War III seems to be shaping up very nicely, losing none of what made it's three prequels brilliant. And it's just about the most violent game I've ever played: the demo sees you disemboweling a Centaur (raising questions about how their innards are arranged), yanking the eye from the head of a Cyclops (the stalk doesn't snap immediately like the previous games, it has to be pulled to it's elastic limit and then snapped off) and ripping the head from sun god Helios' shoulders with your bare hands, seeing the flesh tear bit by bit before it gives. Absolutely brutal, yet I would expect nothing less.
Finally, I finished my second play through of Mass Effect 2 this week. I didn't mention it so as not to give anything away, but the ending of my first attempt saw three of my crew in their graves: The Salarian scientist Mordin, Asari law enforcer Samara and Human/Llama hybrid Miranda. This time I was 100% successful, seeing all of my crew through the mission. I also went down the renegade route this time, essentially becoming a space Jack Bauer, and it made the game a lot more entertaining. Yes, there was a scene where I punched a woman news reporter completely without provocation, and I will admit I laughed out loud when it happened. It was her own fault, she was making disingenuous assertions, and Shepard had had enough of them. And for lack of anything to play on my 360 last night, I fired up Saint's Row. Big mistake. It hasn't stood the test of time well, with it's awful graphics and awkward humour. Don't think I'll play much more of that one. Anyway, I'm off to play Oblivion now, buh-bye.
The game in question is Quantic Dream's PS3 exclusive epic Heavy Rain, spiritual successor to the fantastic (if a little flawed narratively) Fahrenheit (known as Indigo Prophecy stateside thanks to the combined efforts of Micheal Moore and Osama Bin Laden). When I first played Fahrenheit, it was completely new to me. The only games I could even begin to compare it to were Shenmue, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, but even then the comparisons were vague and incomplete.
Heavy Rain goes down the same path in terms of delivery, but throws away the fantasy elements of Dreamfall and (to a lesser extent) Broken Sword and, taking the spiritual guidance of Shenmue, throws you into a very serious, very mature murder mystery. The story begins with a ridiculously perfect family living a ridiculously perfect life together, until one family day outing spells disaster for the father, Ethan Mars, when his eldest son of two, Jason, wanders off. Ethan eventually finds him, but their reunion is cut dramatically short when they are both struck by an oncoming car, sending Ethan into a coma and Jason into an early grave.
Two years later we rejoin Ethan a bit worse for wear. His marriage has ended and he's just picking up his remaining son Shaun from his ex wife's house. Instead of moving to Malibu with Charlie Sheen as some people do in these situations, he's got himself a shitty little house in the most depressing part of town. Shaun is quite understandably a bit pissed off at Ethan, obviously he never knows when he's going to get led into traffic by his dear old dad, and to make it up to him Ethan takes Shaun to a playground. Right about now seems a good place to mention that Ethan's coma rendered him a bit of a Schizo with a penchant for blacking out, and after placing Shaun on a merry-go-round (don't all playgrounds have them?), he promptly does just that. He wakes up later on to find his son missing, and a small origami figure in his hand, the calling card of a mass child murderer known as (wait for it) 'The Origami Killer'. So Ethan goes on a quest to find his son, along with FBI agent Fox M... sorry, Norman Jayden, lovable private dick Scott Shelby, his prostitute sidekick Lauren Winter and Madison Paige, a journalist who's clothes keep falling off.
Heavy Rain places itself in a very unique position in that it's not only one of my favourite games (I will go that far, I absolutely loved it), but also one of my favourite films too. A lot of the time I almost forgot I was playing at all, robotically hammering the quick time events in without even really noticing them even appearing onscreen. Another fairly unique thing about the game is that when a character dies, the game carries on without them instead of ending and letting you continue. Ironically, I can only think of one other game that does this and that's ObsCure, a game I only played a couple of weeks earlier.
Heavy Rain, like most PS3 exclusives, really excels in the graphical department. To say it looks beautiful is a criminal understatement. Even the graphical might of Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 doesn't seem to hold up against Heavy Rain. The only thing I don't like about it really is the creepy facial expressions from Fahrenheit occasionally crop up, as if the motion capture artists didn't smile when they should have and one was thrown in at the last minute, a shining example of this is during the nightclub scene where Madison dances on the podium. I am just nitpicking for the sake of it though.
Before Heavy Rain I returned to the macho, closely shaven world of Richard B. Riddick once more, with The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Not so much a sequel to Butcher Bay, Dark Athena is more of an expansion pack. It plays exactly the same, which was quite disappointing to be honest. Even the main story seems completely plagiarised, with the prison planet that Riddick must escape from in Butcher Bay replaced with a mercenary ship filled with prisoners, that Riddick must escape from. It's considerably longer than Butcher Bay, but that's the only thing I can really say about it. If it wasn't for the first game being included on Dark Athena's disk, it really wouldn't be worth buying.
Thursday's PSN Store update saw the releases of demos for Darksiders and God of War III, both of which are bloody fantastic hack-and-slash kill-em-ups and like the earlier Dante's Inferno are both based on religious mythology, and have thus been locked in a friendly battle. There's no contest really, Kratos has made sure of that, but so far Darksiders seems to be superior to Dante's by a gnat's wing, mainly helped along by the bold imagery, great voice work (thanks Mark Hamill) and the fact that it's not shamelessly ripping off God of War in every way. But God of War III seems to be shaping up very nicely, losing none of what made it's three prequels brilliant. And it's just about the most violent game I've ever played: the demo sees you disemboweling a Centaur (raising questions about how their innards are arranged), yanking the eye from the head of a Cyclops (the stalk doesn't snap immediately like the previous games, it has to be pulled to it's elastic limit and then snapped off) and ripping the head from sun god Helios' shoulders with your bare hands, seeing the flesh tear bit by bit before it gives. Absolutely brutal, yet I would expect nothing less.
Finally, I finished my second play through of Mass Effect 2 this week. I didn't mention it so as not to give anything away, but the ending of my first attempt saw three of my crew in their graves: The Salarian scientist Mordin, Asari law enforcer Samara and Human/Llama hybrid Miranda. This time I was 100% successful, seeing all of my crew through the mission. I also went down the renegade route this time, essentially becoming a space Jack Bauer, and it made the game a lot more entertaining. Yes, there was a scene where I punched a woman news reporter completely without provocation, and I will admit I laughed out loud when it happened. It was her own fault, she was making disingenuous assertions, and Shepard had had enough of them. And for lack of anything to play on my 360 last night, I fired up Saint's Row. Big mistake. It hasn't stood the test of time well, with it's awful graphics and awkward humour. Don't think I'll play much more of that one. Anyway, I'm off to play Oblivion now, buh-bye.
Friday, 19 February 2010
Now, I like Tatsunoko, and I also like Capcom. But which is better?
This week I've been playing one of those games that defines a console, defines a genre, even defines a generation. It's an FPS that features a protagonist with a crisis of alliegance, a group of chemically altered warriors with golden visors on their high-tech armour. It's vehicular combat is second to none. If I say that it's title is a simple four-letter word, and the first two letters are H and A, then I'm sure you will be able to figure out what game I'm talking about. That's right, Haze.
And you'll probably also be able to figure out that the last paragraph is riddled with sarcasm, as Haze is one of the most offensive pieces of garbage I've ever had to play. For those of you lucky enough to not know, Haze is a below average PS3-exclusive shooter developed by Free Radical (who, with the Timesplitters series under their belts, and with ex-Goldeneye developers on the team, should have known better) that's major downfall was it's overhyped pre-release. Upon seeing the yellow visor splashed all over the promotional material, everyone and their gran made the Halo connection, and thus was born the "it's Halo on PS3" stigma was born, and expectations were raised to a level that Haze was never going to deliver. When put into words like that, the fate of Haze sounds quite sad, but the truth is, it would have still gotten those piss-poor reviews without the Halo comparisons. It just wouldn't have been pushed into the limelight as much.
Haze begins with you in the shoes of Shane Carpenter, who works for an American military group known as Mantel, who dose up on a hallucinogenic chemical known as Nectar before each conflict. Nectar dulls the soldier to the horrors of war, making things such as blood, injuries and even dead bodies invisible, and making morally wrong actions (like throwing babies in fires, as we find out) seem all in a day's work. On your first mission, naturally to rough up some ethnic minorities, your Nectar Administrator malfunctions and you realise that you're on the wrong side and that your enemy, a supposed vicious dictator and cannibal known as Skin Coat is actually quite a nice guy, and that the reason the Matel are invading their apparently very religious country (Somewhere in South America by the looks of things) is to harvest the plant that Nectar is refined from. So you set off and join him instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The story, as well as being a not-so-subtle dig at current events in the middle east, is actually one of the only redeeming features of Haze (the other being that you can switch it off), It kept me interested enough to put myself through the horror of the game. Texture pop-in is a term that really doesn't apply here, the textures fade in is if they were hoping that you wouldn't notice. Each scene starts off looking like a PS2 game, and gradually becomes a sub-par PS3 game. I have also never seen clipping issues quite so bad since the last generation either. Okay, so graphics don't really matter. What about controls then? The reload button, for one, is entirely in the wrong place at Triangle, when it should be Square. There's no dash either, so you have to saunter everywhere, meaning quite often I resorted to driving across some of the open areas to save time. Well, I wouldn't call it driving, not with the handling that's casually thrown into the game. The vehicles are controlled as they would be in a racing game, as opposed to the Halo/Mass Effect twin-stick driving method. But instead of R2 being the accelerator, it's R1, meaning you have two speeds: A billion miles per hour, or standing still. There's a nitro boost that can be activated with the X button that doesn't alter your speed at all, and the vehicles corner like a wet turd on a frozen lake. Just typing about it pisses me off.
Because I like to do things a little differently around here, I'm going to finish off my Haze rant by comparing it, and it's PS3 FPS brethren to, what else, the Baldwin Brothers. Killzone would be Alec Baldwin, strongest and most successful of the brothers. Resistance would be Billy Baldwin, still good, but lacks the edge of it's older brother. Haze, alas, is Stephen Baldwin: Short, ugly, boring and spouts religious nonsense at every opportunity. To perfectly sum it up, here's a video of a Mantel soldier being a very naughty boy indeed.
The week hasn't been all bad though, as my fantastic wife brightened up my Valentine's Day with a copy of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars on the Wii last weekend, and it is absolutely brilliant.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is the latest in a long series of fighting games putting Capcom's greatest warriors up against, well, everyone really. The series started with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and Capcom have since gone on to fight the expanded Marvel universe, SNK and (in Japan only) Namco, until most recently coming to blows with 1970s' anime label Tatsunoko.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I knew anything about Tatsunoko. I remember watching Battle of the Planets (the American dub of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) as a kid, so characters like Ken the Eagle, Jun the Swan and Joe the Condor are recognisable to me, albeit with different names to what I remember them as. But aside from that, I'm still learning. But I do love the Capcom vs. Series, and I love seeing characters that I know and love outside of their surroundings, and the Capcom side of the roster does not disappoint. Whereas every one of the vs. Series up to this point has been 2D and mostly made using recycled sprites from other games, TvC features fully 3D graphics, and has given Capcom and excuse to port some other under-used characters over, like Batsu from Rival Schools, and PTX-40A, the giant robotic suit from Lost Planet. But the real star of the show, for me anyway, is Dead Rising's Frank West, who comes with some suitably "Faaaaantastic" moves, from throwing a Zombie in a shopping trolley at his opponent, to slamming a Servbot mask on them and faceplanting them into the ground, all in the comfort of his own stage at Willamette Mall (the game actually prompted me to play Dead Rising for a bit this week. It hasn't stood the test of time very well). The game also features characters like Darkstalkers' Morrigan and Street Fighter III's Alex, featured for the first time in 3D.
The whole game is about excess. The special moves, similar to Marvel vs. Capcom, often fill the screen, and whenever a combo is executed on your enemy, instead of a damage percentage being shown, it will tell you you've done 12.874 billion points of damage or something, which is completely bonkers. Then there's the screen-filling enemies like the aforementioned PTX and Tatsunoko's Gold Lightan, who are so big the camera has to zoom out. I absolutely love it.
To complement TvC, I also picked up the new Classic Controller Pro for the Wii, which is a great controller. The arms and the repositioned shoulder buttons improve the controller to no end, and the glossy finish makes it look really smart. The lack of vibration places a downer on things, but I still hold it as the best Nintendo joypad I've ever used. Obviously a sentiment echoed by others too, as I think I picked up the last one in the whole of Sheffield.
Right, I'll drop it at that. I finished ObsCure, and after dragging my characters kicking an screaming through the game without a single fatality, one of them died in the climactic boss battle, much to my annoyance. And as I had read, the game took me little over three hours to finish, which is also a bit of a downer. And, for those who didn't know, Street Fighter III's Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley have been announced for Super Street Fighter IV. I've been wanting some SFIII characters for SFIV since it was first announced, so with that news I put in a preorder. Next week's post could be a little late, as I might be too busy playing Heavy Rain to write anything. I'll do my best.
No Baldwins were harmed during the making of this Blog.
And you'll probably also be able to figure out that the last paragraph is riddled with sarcasm, as Haze is one of the most offensive pieces of garbage I've ever had to play. For those of you lucky enough to not know, Haze is a below average PS3-exclusive shooter developed by Free Radical (who, with the Timesplitters series under their belts, and with ex-Goldeneye developers on the team, should have known better) that's major downfall was it's overhyped pre-release. Upon seeing the yellow visor splashed all over the promotional material, everyone and their gran made the Halo connection, and thus was born the "it's Halo on PS3" stigma was born, and expectations were raised to a level that Haze was never going to deliver. When put into words like that, the fate of Haze sounds quite sad, but the truth is, it would have still gotten those piss-poor reviews without the Halo comparisons. It just wouldn't have been pushed into the limelight as much.
Haze begins with you in the shoes of Shane Carpenter, who works for an American military group known as Mantel, who dose up on a hallucinogenic chemical known as Nectar before each conflict. Nectar dulls the soldier to the horrors of war, making things such as blood, injuries and even dead bodies invisible, and making morally wrong actions (like throwing babies in fires, as we find out) seem all in a day's work. On your first mission, naturally to rough up some ethnic minorities, your Nectar Administrator malfunctions and you realise that you're on the wrong side and that your enemy, a supposed vicious dictator and cannibal known as Skin Coat is actually quite a nice guy, and that the reason the Matel are invading their apparently very religious country (Somewhere in South America by the looks of things) is to harvest the plant that Nectar is refined from. So you set off and join him instead, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The story, as well as being a not-so-subtle dig at current events in the middle east, is actually one of the only redeeming features of Haze (the other being that you can switch it off), It kept me interested enough to put myself through the horror of the game. Texture pop-in is a term that really doesn't apply here, the textures fade in is if they were hoping that you wouldn't notice. Each scene starts off looking like a PS2 game, and gradually becomes a sub-par PS3 game. I have also never seen clipping issues quite so bad since the last generation either. Okay, so graphics don't really matter. What about controls then? The reload button, for one, is entirely in the wrong place at Triangle, when it should be Square. There's no dash either, so you have to saunter everywhere, meaning quite often I resorted to driving across some of the open areas to save time. Well, I wouldn't call it driving, not with the handling that's casually thrown into the game. The vehicles are controlled as they would be in a racing game, as opposed to the Halo/Mass Effect twin-stick driving method. But instead of R2 being the accelerator, it's R1, meaning you have two speeds: A billion miles per hour, or standing still. There's a nitro boost that can be activated with the X button that doesn't alter your speed at all, and the vehicles corner like a wet turd on a frozen lake. Just typing about it pisses me off.
Because I like to do things a little differently around here, I'm going to finish off my Haze rant by comparing it, and it's PS3 FPS brethren to, what else, the Baldwin Brothers. Killzone would be Alec Baldwin, strongest and most successful of the brothers. Resistance would be Billy Baldwin, still good, but lacks the edge of it's older brother. Haze, alas, is Stephen Baldwin: Short, ugly, boring and spouts religious nonsense at every opportunity. To perfectly sum it up, here's a video of a Mantel soldier being a very naughty boy indeed.
The week hasn't been all bad though, as my fantastic wife brightened up my Valentine's Day with a copy of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars on the Wii last weekend, and it is absolutely brilliant.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is the latest in a long series of fighting games putting Capcom's greatest warriors up against, well, everyone really. The series started with X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and Capcom have since gone on to fight the expanded Marvel universe, SNK and (in Japan only) Namco, until most recently coming to blows with 1970s' anime label Tatsunoko.
Now, I'd be lying if I said I knew anything about Tatsunoko. I remember watching Battle of the Planets (the American dub of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) as a kid, so characters like Ken the Eagle, Jun the Swan and Joe the Condor are recognisable to me, albeit with different names to what I remember them as. But aside from that, I'm still learning. But I do love the Capcom vs. Series, and I love seeing characters that I know and love outside of their surroundings, and the Capcom side of the roster does not disappoint. Whereas every one of the vs. Series up to this point has been 2D and mostly made using recycled sprites from other games, TvC features fully 3D graphics, and has given Capcom and excuse to port some other under-used characters over, like Batsu from Rival Schools, and PTX-40A, the giant robotic suit from Lost Planet. But the real star of the show, for me anyway, is Dead Rising's Frank West, who comes with some suitably "Faaaaantastic" moves, from throwing a Zombie in a shopping trolley at his opponent, to slamming a Servbot mask on them and faceplanting them into the ground, all in the comfort of his own stage at Willamette Mall (the game actually prompted me to play Dead Rising for a bit this week. It hasn't stood the test of time very well). The game also features characters like Darkstalkers' Morrigan and Street Fighter III's Alex, featured for the first time in 3D.
The whole game is about excess. The special moves, similar to Marvel vs. Capcom, often fill the screen, and whenever a combo is executed on your enemy, instead of a damage percentage being shown, it will tell you you've done 12.874 billion points of damage or something, which is completely bonkers. Then there's the screen-filling enemies like the aforementioned PTX and Tatsunoko's Gold Lightan, who are so big the camera has to zoom out. I absolutely love it.
To complement TvC, I also picked up the new Classic Controller Pro for the Wii, which is a great controller. The arms and the repositioned shoulder buttons improve the controller to no end, and the glossy finish makes it look really smart. The lack of vibration places a downer on things, but I still hold it as the best Nintendo joypad I've ever used. Obviously a sentiment echoed by others too, as I think I picked up the last one in the whole of Sheffield.
Right, I'll drop it at that. I finished ObsCure, and after dragging my characters kicking an screaming through the game without a single fatality, one of them died in the climactic boss battle, much to my annoyance. And as I had read, the game took me little over three hours to finish, which is also a bit of a downer. And, for those who didn't know, Street Fighter III's Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley have been announced for Super Street Fighter IV. I've been wanting some SFIII characters for SFIV since it was first announced, so with that news I put in a preorder. Next week's post could be a little late, as I might be too busy playing Heavy Rain to write anything. I'll do my best.
No Baldwins were harmed during the making of this Blog.
Friday, 5 February 2010
I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favourite store on the Citadel!
Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't want to read about Mass Effect 2, then don't bother going any further. It's just about all I've done this week, literally.
When I reported in last week, I had played for maybe two hours, and truth be told wasn't too impressed, but was putting on a brave face in hope that things can only get better. The RPG elements that I'd become accustomed to in my four play throughs of the first one had been neutered within an inch of their life, everything had got a bit sweary (which I've noticed has happened with a lot of sequels, Assassin's Creed II, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resident Evil 5 spring to mind), and the shooting mechanic has gone for the old copy-and-paste Gears of War method. Couple that with the still ridiculous reloading mechanic, and well, my first impressions were a bit testing, as much as I didn't want to admit it.
Things, however, did get better. 34 hours of gameplay better in fact. And I never once, in all of that time, actually wanted to set the controller down out of boredom. I actually scanned every planet, did every side-mission on said planets, all of the loyalty missions, everything.
For a bit of a story breakdown, after Shepard and his multicultural band of brothers saved the universe from a giant metal squid in 2007, they spent their days flying around the galaxy wiping out stragglers from the ranks of their enemies, the Geth. That is until their ship got ripped in two pieces by a mysterious new antagonist, and thanks to annoying pilot Jeff 'Joker' Moreau (who shows no sign of remorse throughout the game), things ended pretty badly for Shepard.
Then his body was recovered by Martin Sheen, who could rebuild him, He had the technology. He had the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Commander Shepard would be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. Sorry, lost myself a bit there. Anyway, after two years of being rebuilt, Shep wakes up to find out that humans everywhere are being abducted by crazy bug people, and naturally sets out to round up a bunch of hardasses and do some damage.
At first, as I was secretly not enjoying the game as much as I wanted to, I jumped headlong into the main story with little regard for anything else. I recruited the squaddies, of course, and when I first met Garrus, my joint favourite character (with Wrex) from the last game, and unlike all the other returning faces he actually wanted to join me, I could barely conceal a smile. But it wasn't until about half way through the story, when I was deep in enemy territory and the plot was beginning to unfold, that I got that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that I was in for something special.
And something special it was. I know there's a lot of people out there who are still knee deep in this, so I will go no further, but a special mention has to go out to my new hero, ME2's krogan, Grunt. He's bloodthirsty, wreckless and at times laugh-out-loud funny. And he's the only squaddie I used in the game that never once needed a medi-gel. I have a new Wrex.
I was a little annoyed that such a good game was out in January though, as I had very little hope of playing another game quite as good as that all year. That was until last night's teaser trailer of Fallout: New Vegas though, and it's ambitious predicted release date of Autumn 2010. The trailer opens with some bizarre TV-headed robot sifting through a mass grave in the Nevada desert, with a surprisingly well preserved Las Vegas in the background. As the camera pans out, a mysterious long-coated character with a New Californian Republic flag looks on. He then turns to the camera, revealing a mask that resembles that of one of Killzone's bad guys, the Helghast. It's going to be a long 7 months or so for me now. Well, I still have three achievements yet to get on Fallout 3 anyway, so I still have a bit of Fallout to keep me going. If they fire out a new Elder Scrolls this year too, I'll be happy as a pig in shit.
I'll try and have more to talk about next week, I'm in the process of trying to get my grubby hands on a Heavy Rain demo, and I'll hopefully get motivated enough to finish Hellboy and start on something else, more than likely PS2 survival horror ObsCure. Bye for now.
When I reported in last week, I had played for maybe two hours, and truth be told wasn't too impressed, but was putting on a brave face in hope that things can only get better. The RPG elements that I'd become accustomed to in my four play throughs of the first one had been neutered within an inch of their life, everything had got a bit sweary (which I've noticed has happened with a lot of sequels, Assassin's Creed II, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resident Evil 5 spring to mind), and the shooting mechanic has gone for the old copy-and-paste Gears of War method. Couple that with the still ridiculous reloading mechanic, and well, my first impressions were a bit testing, as much as I didn't want to admit it.
Things, however, did get better. 34 hours of gameplay better in fact. And I never once, in all of that time, actually wanted to set the controller down out of boredom. I actually scanned every planet, did every side-mission on said planets, all of the loyalty missions, everything.
For a bit of a story breakdown, after Shepard and his multicultural band of brothers saved the universe from a giant metal squid in 2007, they spent their days flying around the galaxy wiping out stragglers from the ranks of their enemies, the Geth. That is until their ship got ripped in two pieces by a mysterious new antagonist, and thanks to annoying pilot Jeff 'Joker' Moreau (who shows no sign of remorse throughout the game), things ended pretty badly for Shepard.
Then his body was recovered by Martin Sheen, who could rebuild him, He had the technology. He had the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Commander Shepard would be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. Sorry, lost myself a bit there. Anyway, after two years of being rebuilt, Shep wakes up to find out that humans everywhere are being abducted by crazy bug people, and naturally sets out to round up a bunch of hardasses and do some damage.
At first, as I was secretly not enjoying the game as much as I wanted to, I jumped headlong into the main story with little regard for anything else. I recruited the squaddies, of course, and when I first met Garrus, my joint favourite character (with Wrex) from the last game, and unlike all the other returning faces he actually wanted to join me, I could barely conceal a smile. But it wasn't until about half way through the story, when I was deep in enemy territory and the plot was beginning to unfold, that I got that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach, the feeling that I was in for something special.
And something special it was. I know there's a lot of people out there who are still knee deep in this, so I will go no further, but a special mention has to go out to my new hero, ME2's krogan, Grunt. He's bloodthirsty, wreckless and at times laugh-out-loud funny. And he's the only squaddie I used in the game that never once needed a medi-gel. I have a new Wrex.
I was a little annoyed that such a good game was out in January though, as I had very little hope of playing another game quite as good as that all year. That was until last night's teaser trailer of Fallout: New Vegas though, and it's ambitious predicted release date of Autumn 2010. The trailer opens with some bizarre TV-headed robot sifting through a mass grave in the Nevada desert, with a surprisingly well preserved Las Vegas in the background. As the camera pans out, a mysterious long-coated character with a New Californian Republic flag looks on. He then turns to the camera, revealing a mask that resembles that of one of Killzone's bad guys, the Helghast. It's going to be a long 7 months or so for me now. Well, I still have three achievements yet to get on Fallout 3 anyway, so I still have a bit of Fallout to keep me going. If they fire out a new Elder Scrolls this year too, I'll be happy as a pig in shit.
I'll try and have more to talk about next week, I'm in the process of trying to get my grubby hands on a Heavy Rain demo, and I'll hopefully get motivated enough to finish Hellboy and start on something else, more than likely PS2 survival horror ObsCure. Bye for now.
Friday, 6 November 2009
I am Dungeon Master, your guide in the realm of Dungeons and Dragons!
Three Hours. That's the time it took me to complete Halo 3: ODST.
Fair enough, it's not a real game, just a glorified expansion pack. But three hours? Going by the recommended retail price (according to Play.com) of £39.99, that's £13.33 an hour, nearly twice what I earn. I happened to get my copy free with my Elite, but that's not the point.
And it's not even a full game. Just when you find this bizarre squid-cow thing with the potential to end the war, just when the romance subplot seems to be going somewhere, the game abruptly stops. It's not so much making way for a sequel, it's just cutting half of the game off so they can sell us the second half in a year or so.
Aside from that though, ODST is in my eyes the best Halo so far. You get more of a feeling of war, not just racial extermination in a Motocross helmet like the main trilogy, and as with games like Gears of War or Killzone, you start to get to know your team-mates and genuinely give a shit about their back-stories. Just wish it was a bit longer. But there's the multiplayer disk, which includes all the Halo 3 DLC, which I suppose gives it a bit more longevity. I can't be arsed with multiplayer though.
I've not had a good time with game-endings this week, as Borderlands' ending was, in the words of fellow blogger Raz7el, "a sack of horse shit". All of Borderlands' storyline seems to take place in the last hour, as if Gearbox realised they were having too much fun and needed to wrap things up. But I digress, the game is great, I'm just in a complaining mood. I'd be inclined to carry on playing it and mop up the remaining side quests if it wasn't for the fact that today is the day that Dragon Age Origins was finally released.
I've had two hours with the game, and it seems to be shaping up quite well. It seems to me like a healthy marriage between Mass Effect and Guild Wars, taking the movement and conversational style from the former, and, well, everything else from the latter.
I opted to play as the Human Noble, the good all-rounder, and so far it has been a typical tale of betrayal and family deaths, and I've been scooped up by the Grey Wardens, to Dragon Age what Spectres are to Mass Effect, to save the world from evil things and claim revenge on my Judas.
The most obvious comparison to Guild Wars, in my eyes, is the combat. Clicking an enemy will start your character attacking, and he/she will carry on until the enemy is dead or you tell them otherwise. Potions can be used on-the-fly and will queue until your character has finished any current action and so on, and you can flick to any party member and issue them orders too, like Knights of the Old Republic in fact. Or you can command the whole party at once, although I haven't tried that. I must confess I was hoping for the combat to be a bit more Fable to be honest.
And that's as far as I've gotten with it. No doubt I'll have more to say next week, hopefully more positive than negative, and it's looking that way. Is it a good game? So far, yes. Is it better than Oblivion? No. But then again, I don't think anything short of The Elder Scrolls V will be.
And that's that. Before I go, check out 30-Something Gamer, a great blog, and he's been playing all sorts of things that I haven't at the Eurogamer Expo. Oh, and try out Trine on the PSN store, it's really good. More on that when/if I buy the full version.
UPDATE: You can probably tell by my hasty scrawlings that my Dragon Age time ate a little bit into my 'going to work' time, and I had to rush the blog a bit. In the rush, I forgot to mention a couple of things. Firstly, after finishing Borderlands and ODST with a couple of days to spare before Dragon Age came out, I decided to casually play a bit of The Secret of Monkey Island: SE on the XBox Live Arcade. Apart from possibly the original Silent Hill, I don't think I've ever completed a game as many times as Monkey Island, so this had me wanting to play it just to see the graphics rather than discover the story. The graphics, while good, suffered from the same troubles as Street Fighter II HD Remix, they've updated the sprites but not added any extra frames, it makes the jerkiness in animation very noticeable. It's an excellent winding down game at the end of the night though.
And finally, I tried the Left 4 Dead 2 demo the other night, and while it is good, I want someone to explain to me how it's in any way different to the first one? I didn't buy the first one (although someone gave me a copy for my PC, which can barely run it) because I didn't want to shell out £40 on a game made for multiplayer when I'm essentially a single player gamer, and just when the price starts to drop, the second one's out and nobody will be playing it anymore. Anyway, it was a very fun game, but unless it depreciates in value faster than the first, It's not for me. Right, NOW I'm done.
Fair enough, it's not a real game, just a glorified expansion pack. But three hours? Going by the recommended retail price (according to Play.com) of £39.99, that's £13.33 an hour, nearly twice what I earn. I happened to get my copy free with my Elite, but that's not the point.
And it's not even a full game. Just when you find this bizarre squid-cow thing with the potential to end the war, just when the romance subplot seems to be going somewhere, the game abruptly stops. It's not so much making way for a sequel, it's just cutting half of the game off so they can sell us the second half in a year or so.
Aside from that though, ODST is in my eyes the best Halo so far. You get more of a feeling of war, not just racial extermination in a Motocross helmet like the main trilogy, and as with games like Gears of War or Killzone, you start to get to know your team-mates and genuinely give a shit about their back-stories. Just wish it was a bit longer. But there's the multiplayer disk, which includes all the Halo 3 DLC, which I suppose gives it a bit more longevity. I can't be arsed with multiplayer though.
I've not had a good time with game-endings this week, as Borderlands' ending was, in the words of fellow blogger Raz7el, "a sack of horse shit". All of Borderlands' storyline seems to take place in the last hour, as if Gearbox realised they were having too much fun and needed to wrap things up. But I digress, the game is great, I'm just in a complaining mood. I'd be inclined to carry on playing it and mop up the remaining side quests if it wasn't for the fact that today is the day that Dragon Age Origins was finally released.
I've had two hours with the game, and it seems to be shaping up quite well. It seems to me like a healthy marriage between Mass Effect and Guild Wars, taking the movement and conversational style from the former, and, well, everything else from the latter.
I opted to play as the Human Noble, the good all-rounder, and so far it has been a typical tale of betrayal and family deaths, and I've been scooped up by the Grey Wardens, to Dragon Age what Spectres are to Mass Effect, to save the world from evil things and claim revenge on my Judas.
The most obvious comparison to Guild Wars, in my eyes, is the combat. Clicking an enemy will start your character attacking, and he/she will carry on until the enemy is dead or you tell them otherwise. Potions can be used on-the-fly and will queue until your character has finished any current action and so on, and you can flick to any party member and issue them orders too, like Knights of the Old Republic in fact. Or you can command the whole party at once, although I haven't tried that. I must confess I was hoping for the combat to be a bit more Fable to be honest.
And that's as far as I've gotten with it. No doubt I'll have more to say next week, hopefully more positive than negative, and it's looking that way. Is it a good game? So far, yes. Is it better than Oblivion? No. But then again, I don't think anything short of The Elder Scrolls V will be.
And that's that. Before I go, check out 30-Something Gamer, a great blog, and he's been playing all sorts of things that I haven't at the Eurogamer Expo. Oh, and try out Trine on the PSN store, it's really good. More on that when/if I buy the full version.
UPDATE: You can probably tell by my hasty scrawlings that my Dragon Age time ate a little bit into my 'going to work' time, and I had to rush the blog a bit. In the rush, I forgot to mention a couple of things. Firstly, after finishing Borderlands and ODST with a couple of days to spare before Dragon Age came out, I decided to casually play a bit of The Secret of Monkey Island: SE on the XBox Live Arcade. Apart from possibly the original Silent Hill, I don't think I've ever completed a game as many times as Monkey Island, so this had me wanting to play it just to see the graphics rather than discover the story. The graphics, while good, suffered from the same troubles as Street Fighter II HD Remix, they've updated the sprites but not added any extra frames, it makes the jerkiness in animation very noticeable. It's an excellent winding down game at the end of the night though.
And finally, I tried the Left 4 Dead 2 demo the other night, and while it is good, I want someone to explain to me how it's in any way different to the first one? I didn't buy the first one (although someone gave me a copy for my PC, which can barely run it) because I didn't want to shell out £40 on a game made for multiplayer when I'm essentially a single player gamer, and just when the price starts to drop, the second one's out and nobody will be playing it anymore. Anyway, it was a very fun game, but unless it depreciates in value faster than the first, It's not for me. Right, NOW I'm done.
Friday, 30 October 2009
Just try to understand, I've given all I can, 'cause you got the best of me...
Borderlands is like Marmite. You either love it or hate it, there's no middle ground. I know quite a few people who bought it, and all had the same experience: mild disappointment at first because it isn't as much like Fallout 3 as they'd wanted, and then a few hours in either adoring it for what it is, or abhorring it for what it isn't. That's aside from my brother-in-law Trev, who has verbally masturbated at me at every opportunity he's had regarding the game since well before it's release, I'm not sure he was capable of the initial upset.
I'm of the former. My first day with it was a difficult one, physically as well as mentally because the game is very unforgiving at first and I very nearly met my demise in the first unavoidable encounter with the game's ever-present bandits. I carried on making frequent visits to the game's spawn points (poles with lights on, I was so upset they didn't make the checkpoint noise from Sonic) until I was about level 11, and then I had half an hour or so of plain sailing before there was a level hike in the enemies too, then it was back to the spawn points every 5 minutes again. Now my level is around the mid twenties, and I'm starting to cruise once more. For now.
As always, the mulitiplayer had me feeling a little underwhelmed, my first go was with the aforementioned Trev and his younger brother Ross, and they'd played about 24 hours of it solid and were around level 25, compared to my 13 and I basically sat and watched while they did stuff. They took me to the arena and we had a bit of a deathmatch, but with 3 players in a very small venue, even if I was strong enough to slightly upset the other two, it just felt like we were playing Quake II on the PS1, not a part of my life I want to go back to. But I'm still yet to find a multiplayer shooter that's better than Perfect Dark on the N64. CoD fanboys attack.
The second time I tried MP was with Raz7el, who was in the 'hate' camp, and it was much the opposite experience. I was level 23 I think, and he was level 7. Too easy for me, and he didn't see any action.
Borderlands is also like Marmite, in that it looks like shit. No, it's not a pretty game, and looking at old pre-cell-shading screenshots makes me wish they hadn't bothered. Although it makes a change from all of the other Unreal Engine 3 powered games where all the characters look like action figures. Thing is, the cell-shading isn't actually done properly. A lot of the black lines on the scenery are actually drawn on. A bit cheating, isn't it?
Last night, after realising that all I'd done all week was eat, sleep and play Borderlands I thought I'd reach into my shame pile to add a bit of variety to this week's post, and as I'd finished Wolverine quickly last friday to make way for Borderlands, the next game was Halo 3 ODST. Groan.
Guess what: I like it.
The squad thing going on makes it feel a lot more like Killzone, and I'm not being forced to blow off the Master Chief every few minutes like in the previous three. In fact, in the Hour-and-a-half-ish that I spent on it the big green twat didn't even get a mention. And the romance sub-plot in ODST involves a woman who is actually real, which is a bonus. I'd have preferred there to not be one though, they always seem out of place in this sort of game, see Gears of War 2 for example. I meant Marcus and Anya, not Marcus and Dom. Speaking of romance subplots, who should show up in ODST but Nolan North?
And that's about it. Preordered my copy of Dragon Age Origins this week, and I'm planning on hitting GAME at opening time to get it so I've got a couple of hours with it before writing. And to sign out on a laugh, while cataloging my game collection I came across the German cover for Tomb Raider Chronicles. Dr Dre would be so proud.
I'm of the former. My first day with it was a difficult one, physically as well as mentally because the game is very unforgiving at first and I very nearly met my demise in the first unavoidable encounter with the game's ever-present bandits. I carried on making frequent visits to the game's spawn points (poles with lights on, I was so upset they didn't make the checkpoint noise from Sonic) until I was about level 11, and then I had half an hour or so of plain sailing before there was a level hike in the enemies too, then it was back to the spawn points every 5 minutes again. Now my level is around the mid twenties, and I'm starting to cruise once more. For now.
As always, the mulitiplayer had me feeling a little underwhelmed, my first go was with the aforementioned Trev and his younger brother Ross, and they'd played about 24 hours of it solid and were around level 25, compared to my 13 and I basically sat and watched while they did stuff. They took me to the arena and we had a bit of a deathmatch, but with 3 players in a very small venue, even if I was strong enough to slightly upset the other two, it just felt like we were playing Quake II on the PS1, not a part of my life I want to go back to. But I'm still yet to find a multiplayer shooter that's better than Perfect Dark on the N64. CoD fanboys attack.
The second time I tried MP was with Raz7el, who was in the 'hate' camp, and it was much the opposite experience. I was level 23 I think, and he was level 7. Too easy for me, and he didn't see any action.
Borderlands is also like Marmite, in that it looks like shit. No, it's not a pretty game, and looking at old pre-cell-shading screenshots makes me wish they hadn't bothered. Although it makes a change from all of the other Unreal Engine 3 powered games where all the characters look like action figures. Thing is, the cell-shading isn't actually done properly. A lot of the black lines on the scenery are actually drawn on. A bit cheating, isn't it?
Last night, after realising that all I'd done all week was eat, sleep and play Borderlands I thought I'd reach into my shame pile to add a bit of variety to this week's post, and as I'd finished Wolverine quickly last friday to make way for Borderlands, the next game was Halo 3 ODST. Groan.
Guess what: I like it.
The squad thing going on makes it feel a lot more like Killzone, and I'm not being forced to blow off the Master Chief every few minutes like in the previous three. In fact, in the Hour-and-a-half-ish that I spent on it the big green twat didn't even get a mention. And the romance sub-plot in ODST involves a woman who is actually real, which is a bonus. I'd have preferred there to not be one though, they always seem out of place in this sort of game, see Gears of War 2 for example. I meant Marcus and Anya, not Marcus and Dom. Speaking of romance subplots, who should show up in ODST but Nolan North?
And that's about it. Preordered my copy of Dragon Age Origins this week, and I'm planning on hitting GAME at opening time to get it so I've got a couple of hours with it before writing. And to sign out on a laugh, while cataloging my game collection I came across the German cover for Tomb Raider Chronicles. Dr Dre would be so proud.
Friday, 4 September 2009
Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords eternally retold...
How did I get so far in life without the Killzone franchise?
Yes, Killzone 2 is now over, and I loved every minute. Even the bits that were so brutal it hurt, like fighting the ATAC on the roof, or the final assault on the palace, were both great set pieces.
I really don't know what to say about the game, other than it was awesome. The sheer chaos that was experienced during gunfights is unmatched, Gears of War's skirmishes seemed really tame in comparison. To quote a friend of mine; "Killzone 2 really depicts well what happens when the shit hits the fan", and I think that about sums it up.
Since Killzone was over, I've been playing SoulCalibur Legends, which I picked up a while back for a fiver from Blockbusters. After all the negativity, I was expecting the game to be virtually unplayable. Now, while it is shit, it's not offensively so. It's like a PS1 game that you remember fondly, or a mini game tacked on to a 1-on-1 fighter like Tekken Force, or indeed SoulCalibur's own Edgemaster Mode. And part of me is certain that it was originally conceived as the latter.
The game starts you off as Siegfried, and as you progress you pick up stragglers and other Soul Series mainstays. So far I've been latched on to by Sophitia, Astaroth and Dead or Alive reject Ivy Valentine, the latter two I have always perceived as being bad guys. I could have been wrong. Just seem to be strange choices when there's awesome people like Mitsurugi in the wings. Oh, and I decked Cervantes, but he wasn't up for joining me.
The voice acting is hilarious as expected, and every battle can be won pretty much by sellotaping the Wii Remote to an epilepsy sufferer and making him watch anime, but it's fun, and that's what counts. Whether it will still be fun later in the game, time will tell.
Of course if I'd parted with £40 for it, I'd be mortified, but for a fiver it's really not that bad. Could be worse, could be Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
When I tried my wireless PS2 pad finally, it didn't work. Turns out my PS2 had blown a fuse, typically the fuse that supplies power to the Dual Shock 2's motors and any wireless joypad's receiver, so I had to get myself a new PS2, and get rid of the old one. Well, I didn't have to, but y'know. Long story short, if you're going to trade a console in at CEX, be prepared to wait half an hour for them to test it, and bring some ID. And if you get served by the same girl that I did, smack her in the eye, the surly cow.
What else, what else... Oh yeah, tried Guitar Hero III on hard the other day, seeing as I can cruise through World Tour at that difficulty. Failed the first encore. That game is so much harder. And had a go at Motorstorm on multiplayer last night for the first time in ages to christen my mate's new PS3 Slim. There was a guy teleporting. If you have to cheat to enjoy a game, what's the point? Oh yeah, and I'm indifferent to Dissidia. The Final Fantasy VII freak in me will no doubt buy it though.
Yes, Killzone 2 is now over, and I loved every minute. Even the bits that were so brutal it hurt, like fighting the ATAC on the roof, or the final assault on the palace, were both great set pieces.
I really don't know what to say about the game, other than it was awesome. The sheer chaos that was experienced during gunfights is unmatched, Gears of War's skirmishes seemed really tame in comparison. To quote a friend of mine; "Killzone 2 really depicts well what happens when the shit hits the fan", and I think that about sums it up.
Since Killzone was over, I've been playing SoulCalibur Legends, which I picked up a while back for a fiver from Blockbusters. After all the negativity, I was expecting the game to be virtually unplayable. Now, while it is shit, it's not offensively so. It's like a PS1 game that you remember fondly, or a mini game tacked on to a 1-on-1 fighter like Tekken Force, or indeed SoulCalibur's own Edgemaster Mode. And part of me is certain that it was originally conceived as the latter.
The game starts you off as Siegfried, and as you progress you pick up stragglers and other Soul Series mainstays. So far I've been latched on to by Sophitia, Astaroth and Dead or Alive reject Ivy Valentine, the latter two I have always perceived as being bad guys. I could have been wrong. Just seem to be strange choices when there's awesome people like Mitsurugi in the wings. Oh, and I decked Cervantes, but he wasn't up for joining me.
The voice acting is hilarious as expected, and every battle can be won pretty much by sellotaping the Wii Remote to an epilepsy sufferer and making him watch anime, but it's fun, and that's what counts. Whether it will still be fun later in the game, time will tell.
Of course if I'd parted with £40 for it, I'd be mortified, but for a fiver it's really not that bad. Could be worse, could be Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
When I tried my wireless PS2 pad finally, it didn't work. Turns out my PS2 had blown a fuse, typically the fuse that supplies power to the Dual Shock 2's motors and any wireless joypad's receiver, so I had to get myself a new PS2, and get rid of the old one. Well, I didn't have to, but y'know. Long story short, if you're going to trade a console in at CEX, be prepared to wait half an hour for them to test it, and bring some ID. And if you get served by the same girl that I did, smack her in the eye, the surly cow.
What else, what else... Oh yeah, tried Guitar Hero III on hard the other day, seeing as I can cruise through World Tour at that difficulty. Failed the first encore. That game is so much harder. And had a go at Motorstorm on multiplayer last night for the first time in ages to christen my mate's new PS3 Slim. There was a guy teleporting. If you have to cheat to enjoy a game, what's the point? Oh yeah, and I'm indifferent to Dissidia. The Final Fantasy VII freak in me will no doubt buy it though.
Friday, 28 August 2009
When I need to sate, I just accelerate, into Oblivion...
Well, it's not been a full week since I last posted so not much has gone on.
I finished Killzone, it was entertaining to the end and a surprisingly long game too. Suddenly realised while playing that the Helghast were actually an entire army of cloned Alan Partridges, which made the game infinitely more fun. Although now I have an unsettling urge to kill Steve Coogan.
Killzone 2 was the order of the day straight after that, and it's fucking fantastic. People complain about the clunky feel, but I like it. And the cover system is great too. Beats the shit out of Gears of War's.
One problem I had with the first Killzone is that the enemies didn't really feel evil. Seemed to me that they had been oppressed a bit, and very British. And they never swore either. Compared to the ISA, who were kill-crazy arseholes bickering amongst themselves, who gave the impression that they couldn't out-think a jam sandwich, they didn't seem that bad.
In Killzone 2, they're foul-mouthed violent bastards though, and tougher than a Boxing Day turd. Killing them doesn't seem so bad. The ISA are still D-Bags though.
I tweeted about a problem my girlfriend had with Oblivion earlier in the week, allow me to explain, with possible spoilers. In the quest "Lost Histories", you have to get a job in a prison to give you access to a prisoner, Amusei, as the guard won't let you see him. You can't pick the lock and sneak in undetected, as the guard is looking right at the door. After that you find him gone and have to follow a trail of blood through a secret doorway. Anyway, the guy who gives you the job decided to throw himself from a bridge and die, which stopped her in her tracks. At a loss, she handed me the Dual Shock 3 and went in the bath.
After a bit of pondering, inspiration struck. I spoke to the guard, gave him some (of her) cash until his disposition was maxed at 83, and then went and picked the lock with the Skeleton Key. Before he got me, I dropped all of my armour and weapons outside the cell, then picked the lock of the cell and ran inside, dropping the Skeleton Key on the floor. The guard followed me into the cell, and I yielded, which worked as he liked me so much. He then tried to arrest me again, and I chose to go to jail.
Now because the guard was in the cell with me, he just unlocked the door and walked out, leaving it open for me to collect all my gear and escape through the secret door! Hurrah! I got Amusei, killed the Pale Woman and made like Maiq the Liar and got the fuck out of there. When Amusei was safely outside of the prison, I turned myself back in to the guards and did my time, to avoid their wrath the next time I was in town. And it's the way that you can do things like that that makes Oblivion and Fallout 3 awesome.
Bethesda aren't all good though, I tried the demo for Wet the other day and it's fucking disgustingly awful. And I can't quite explain why, it's just ugly, boring and repetitive. Stranglehold or Max Payne please. Also tried the demo for Colin McRae DiRT 2, and it is actually dirt. It's more like a Tony Hawk game in presentation, and gameplay wise Motorstorm does it much better. It's definately not the homage to Colin McRae that was promised. In fact, if I was related to Colin, I'd be pretty pissed. Downloaded the Dissidia demo today, but not had time to try it yet. Will Tweet with the verdict.
In other news, seeing as my PS2 has been re-promoted to the house's main gaming set up (with all the current gen consoles and the, ahem, Megadrive), I decided that wired pads had to go. I bought a Mad Catz Wireless Micro-Con from Play.com. Or at least that was the plan, I opted to go for the slightly cheaper one from a Play Trade seller, and when it turned up today it turned out to be a full size Mad Catz controller, and instead of being black like in the picture it was transparent blue. Blue is my favourite colour, so it's not a major problem, but black would have matched the aesthetic better. At least it's wireless, that's the main thing. Haven't tried it yet due to no AAA batteries, but I had a wired Mad Catz controller on my XBox which I actually preferred to the official S pad, and it uses 2.4 ghz radio waves as opposed to the shitty infra red wireless pad I had before, so I know I'll be impressed anyway. Wow, this actually turned out to be a pretty long post.
I finished Killzone, it was entertaining to the end and a surprisingly long game too. Suddenly realised while playing that the Helghast were actually an entire army of cloned Alan Partridges, which made the game infinitely more fun. Although now I have an unsettling urge to kill Steve Coogan.
Killzone 2 was the order of the day straight after that, and it's fucking fantastic. People complain about the clunky feel, but I like it. And the cover system is great too. Beats the shit out of Gears of War's.
One problem I had with the first Killzone is that the enemies didn't really feel evil. Seemed to me that they had been oppressed a bit, and very British. And they never swore either. Compared to the ISA, who were kill-crazy arseholes bickering amongst themselves, who gave the impression that they couldn't out-think a jam sandwich, they didn't seem that bad.
In Killzone 2, they're foul-mouthed violent bastards though, and tougher than a Boxing Day turd. Killing them doesn't seem so bad. The ISA are still D-Bags though.
I tweeted about a problem my girlfriend had with Oblivion earlier in the week, allow me to explain, with possible spoilers. In the quest "Lost Histories", you have to get a job in a prison to give you access to a prisoner, Amusei, as the guard won't let you see him. You can't pick the lock and sneak in undetected, as the guard is looking right at the door. After that you find him gone and have to follow a trail of blood through a secret doorway. Anyway, the guy who gives you the job decided to throw himself from a bridge and die, which stopped her in her tracks. At a loss, she handed me the Dual Shock 3 and went in the bath.
After a bit of pondering, inspiration struck. I spoke to the guard, gave him some (of her) cash until his disposition was maxed at 83, and then went and picked the lock with the Skeleton Key. Before he got me, I dropped all of my armour and weapons outside the cell, then picked the lock of the cell and ran inside, dropping the Skeleton Key on the floor. The guard followed me into the cell, and I yielded, which worked as he liked me so much. He then tried to arrest me again, and I chose to go to jail.
Now because the guard was in the cell with me, he just unlocked the door and walked out, leaving it open for me to collect all my gear and escape through the secret door! Hurrah! I got Amusei, killed the Pale Woman and made like Maiq the Liar and got the fuck out of there. When Amusei was safely outside of the prison, I turned myself back in to the guards and did my time, to avoid their wrath the next time I was in town. And it's the way that you can do things like that that makes Oblivion and Fallout 3 awesome.
Bethesda aren't all good though, I tried the demo for Wet the other day and it's fucking disgustingly awful. And I can't quite explain why, it's just ugly, boring and repetitive. Stranglehold or Max Payne please. Also tried the demo for Colin McRae DiRT 2, and it is actually dirt. It's more like a Tony Hawk game in presentation, and gameplay wise Motorstorm does it much better. It's definately not the homage to Colin McRae that was promised. In fact, if I was related to Colin, I'd be pretty pissed. Downloaded the Dissidia demo today, but not had time to try it yet. Will Tweet with the verdict.
In other news, seeing as my PS2 has been re-promoted to the house's main gaming set up (with all the current gen consoles and the, ahem, Megadrive), I decided that wired pads had to go. I bought a Mad Catz Wireless Micro-Con from Play.com. Or at least that was the plan, I opted to go for the slightly cheaper one from a Play Trade seller, and when it turned up today it turned out to be a full size Mad Catz controller, and instead of being black like in the picture it was transparent blue. Blue is my favourite colour, so it's not a major problem, but black would have matched the aesthetic better. At least it's wireless, that's the main thing. Haven't tried it yet due to no AAA batteries, but I had a wired Mad Catz controller on my XBox which I actually preferred to the official S pad, and it uses 2.4 ghz radio waves as opposed to the shitty infra red wireless pad I had before, so I know I'll be impressed anyway. Wow, this actually turned out to be a pretty long post.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
What the fuck is a Shakespeare?
OMG. late post, sorry.
First things first, I finished No More Heroes. The game got very tedious later on, even more so than when it started. There were a few shining moments when it ended though, like the reference to Duke Nukem Forever.
There's a section near the end where a cutscene is played in fast forward, to avoid it's rather adult nature, and as I went on YouTube to watch it slowed down I discovered the glorious violence that was featured in the NTSC release. So I re-watched the whole game's cutscenes. Taking away the violence from the game, as over the top as it was, actually took away the Tarantino-esque style of it, and I'm confident that the game would be more enjoyable for me had it been left in.
After that, I moved on Viking: Battle for Asgard, and after an hour and a half of running around in circles and not achieving anything, I gave up. It had the same problems for me as Morrowind and Two Worlds, not explaining my tasks enough and just dropping me in the dark. And when I did venture out into the harsh world, I was faced with literally armies of enemies, not standing a chance on my own. Sensing that I was looking at another Overlord, where I was dependant on my colleagues, I stopped right there.
God of War II was next on my list, and I quickly polished it off. It was enjoyable from start to finish, but I'm going to have a hard time parting with 40 beans for GoWIII if it takes three days to finish like it's three prequels. Three three three.
And so it's on to Killzone. For those of you who missed it, it's about a war between the earth's forces: The ISA (one letter away from USA), who are made up by the biggest D-Bags that America has to offer, and the Helghast (quite similar to Helmand, a province in Afghanistan), who are English. And MONSTERS. They are also pretty much the Nazi Party.
The game is great, all annoyances aside. There are problems, like the one-dimensional characters and repetitive speech ("COOOOOOME OOOOOOON!"), but all things considered it's a good game. The characters, not unlike Gears of War, are taken straight from that paint-by-numbers buddy war game/film hand book. There's all round great guy, token woman who may have a thing with great guy, angry wise-cracking and foul mouthed black guy and member of the opposition working for you as a spy and who's trustworthiness is questionable. His name is Hakha, by the way, and he's also a hacker. And all of them are able to use a variety of weaponry expertly, yet can't jump or open doors. Standard. But I am enjoying the game immensely. Take comfort, Sony, in knowing that at least I prefer Killzone to Halo.
First things first, I finished No More Heroes. The game got very tedious later on, even more so than when it started. There were a few shining moments when it ended though, like the reference to Duke Nukem Forever.
There's a section near the end where a cutscene is played in fast forward, to avoid it's rather adult nature, and as I went on YouTube to watch it slowed down I discovered the glorious violence that was featured in the NTSC release. So I re-watched the whole game's cutscenes. Taking away the violence from the game, as over the top as it was, actually took away the Tarantino-esque style of it, and I'm confident that the game would be more enjoyable for me had it been left in.
After that, I moved on Viking: Battle for Asgard, and after an hour and a half of running around in circles and not achieving anything, I gave up. It had the same problems for me as Morrowind and Two Worlds, not explaining my tasks enough and just dropping me in the dark. And when I did venture out into the harsh world, I was faced with literally armies of enemies, not standing a chance on my own. Sensing that I was looking at another Overlord, where I was dependant on my colleagues, I stopped right there.
God of War II was next on my list, and I quickly polished it off. It was enjoyable from start to finish, but I'm going to have a hard time parting with 40 beans for GoWIII if it takes three days to finish like it's three prequels. Three three three.
And so it's on to Killzone. For those of you who missed it, it's about a war between the earth's forces: The ISA (one letter away from USA), who are made up by the biggest D-Bags that America has to offer, and the Helghast (quite similar to Helmand, a province in Afghanistan), who are English. And MONSTERS. They are also pretty much the Nazi Party.
The game is great, all annoyances aside. There are problems, like the one-dimensional characters and repetitive speech ("COOOOOOME OOOOOOON!"), but all things considered it's a good game. The characters, not unlike Gears of War, are taken straight from that paint-by-numbers buddy war game/film hand book. There's all round great guy, token woman who may have a thing with great guy, angry wise-cracking and foul mouthed black guy and member of the opposition working for you as a spy and who's trustworthiness is questionable. His name is Hakha, by the way, and he's also a hacker. And all of them are able to use a variety of weaponry expertly, yet can't jump or open doors. Standard. But I am enjoying the game immensely. Take comfort, Sony, in knowing that at least I prefer Killzone to Halo.
Friday, 14 August 2009
Gonna take you for a ride...
Since I last posted I had a bit of a sit down with Dark Sector. While my previous complaints stand, something within me just popped and I started to really enjoy it. Might have been helped by the fact that I switched to my wired pad, thus removing the aforementioned problems involved, might have been that my expectations had descended so much that even the slightest positive event seemed monumental in comparison, who knows? Either way, I played it to completion, surprising even myself.
Another thing to note is that I didn't install it to my XBox 360's HDD, and the game didn't crash once. I think it's the only 360 game I've ever played not to do so without install.
As cash flow is tight right now, I've erected a 'Pile of Shame', games that I've had and never completed or in some cases even played. Dark Sector was at the top, followed by No More Heroes, Viking: Battle for Asgard, God of War II, Killzone, Killzone 2, SoulCalibur Legends, Alone in the Dark, Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Wii and Beowulf: The Game. Some Grade-A shit there, I know.
So after Dark Sector's fairly anticlimactic conclusion (I won't ruin the ending, not that there's anything to ruin), I moved on to No More Heroes. The absolute level of bewilderment I experience while playing this game is unfathomable. I'm at the 8th rank, having defeated three other assassins, so about 25% through the story, and I still don't get it. The garbled mistranslated dialog really doesn't help matters either, and I'm still trying to work out why having a shit enables you to save your game. Madness.
As for the gameplay, the combat sequences are really fun and energetic, but it's the bits in between that kind of ruin it. The game forces you into doing mini games and side quests to raise money to take part in assassinations, in a similar way to Saints Row's respect meter. That's right, you have to pay a fee to do your job. And when you complete the assassination, you get paid less than what you started with. I'd consider a career change. So between assassinations, the game is a bit of a chore. And the sandbox area is redundant too, the town is about as big as your average country village, with hardly any traffic or pedestrians wandering round. You can't hurt the pedestrians, steal cars or anything fun, so what's the point? Anyway, it's £6.99 new at Morrison's right now, and it's probably worth that. Maybe my opinions will change again.
After what seemed like an eternity, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is finally available on the PSN store. Seeing as my PS2 version crashes all the time and the Dreamcast's D-Pad is spastic, I stretched to the 12 quid price tag. Either I got shit at it, or it got harder, because even on the second fight I got my ass handed to me by Rogue, on easy at that. I found Street Fighter II HD Remix a lot harder than Hyper Street Fighter II though, so it might just be that they've made the downloadable games harder to keep the arcade feel.
And to finish off, a mate of mine picked up Tomb Raider: Underworld on the Wii, and informed me of a horrific game breaking glitch where a swinging pole actually disappears from the level, and thee only way to get it back is to restart the level, assuming you have a save from the previous level. He didn't, and thus had to restart the game entirely. Oh dear.
Another thing to note is that I didn't install it to my XBox 360's HDD, and the game didn't crash once. I think it's the only 360 game I've ever played not to do so without install.
As cash flow is tight right now, I've erected a 'Pile of Shame', games that I've had and never completed or in some cases even played. Dark Sector was at the top, followed by No More Heroes, Viking: Battle for Asgard, God of War II, Killzone, Killzone 2, SoulCalibur Legends, Alone in the Dark, Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Wii and Beowulf: The Game. Some Grade-A shit there, I know.
So after Dark Sector's fairly anticlimactic conclusion (I won't ruin the ending, not that there's anything to ruin), I moved on to No More Heroes. The absolute level of bewilderment I experience while playing this game is unfathomable. I'm at the 8th rank, having defeated three other assassins, so about 25% through the story, and I still don't get it. The garbled mistranslated dialog really doesn't help matters either, and I'm still trying to work out why having a shit enables you to save your game. Madness.
As for the gameplay, the combat sequences are really fun and energetic, but it's the bits in between that kind of ruin it. The game forces you into doing mini games and side quests to raise money to take part in assassinations, in a similar way to Saints Row's respect meter. That's right, you have to pay a fee to do your job. And when you complete the assassination, you get paid less than what you started with. I'd consider a career change. So between assassinations, the game is a bit of a chore. And the sandbox area is redundant too, the town is about as big as your average country village, with hardly any traffic or pedestrians wandering round. You can't hurt the pedestrians, steal cars or anything fun, so what's the point? Anyway, it's £6.99 new at Morrison's right now, and it's probably worth that. Maybe my opinions will change again.
After what seemed like an eternity, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is finally available on the PSN store. Seeing as my PS2 version crashes all the time and the Dreamcast's D-Pad is spastic, I stretched to the 12 quid price tag. Either I got shit at it, or it got harder, because even on the second fight I got my ass handed to me by Rogue, on easy at that. I found Street Fighter II HD Remix a lot harder than Hyper Street Fighter II though, so it might just be that they've made the downloadable games harder to keep the arcade feel.
And to finish off, a mate of mine picked up Tomb Raider: Underworld on the Wii, and informed me of a horrific game breaking glitch where a swinging pole actually disappears from the level, and thee only way to get it back is to restart the level, assuming you have a save from the previous level. He didn't, and thus had to restart the game entirely. Oh dear.
Friday, 10 July 2009
Dammit Tony, they've got Kim!
I've just spent the last week playing 24: The Game on the PS2. Damn Good.
Not only did I get to be Jack Bauer, The game is so far ahead of it's time it's untrue, and I'm kicking myself for not playing it back in the day. It even has physics! It runs on the Havok engine! And not to mention the much coveted cover system, from a time when every game wasn't centered around hiding behind a wall.
Also I've been messing around with Assassin's Creed (forcing myself to replay it because I played it on release and hated it) and Punisher: No Mercy, both on PS3. I've actually really enjoyed Ass Creed this time, although why a slightly-tanned American would be running around in the middle east killing people is beyond me. Maybe they have oil.
No Mercy is, well, it's Unreal Tournament III really. Fair enough, I can play as The Punisher, which would have sold it to me if I couldn't already play as Solid Snake and Cole Train in UTIII. I could argue that it's only £6.29, but you can pick up UTIII for around that now anyway. It's good, don't get me wrong. I still say buy it, but but the PS2/XBox Punisher game first. That's Brilliant.
I actually bought a bunch of games this week too. Killzone 2 is a mere £19.99 at Morissons right now, and Little Big Planet was on Deal of the Week at Blockbuster for a Tenner, so I snapped them both up, and I raided the dreaded '4 for £20' bin and came away with Beowulf, Golden Axe Beast Rider, Dark Sector and a friend got Kane and Lynch. Expect a look at Beast Rider next week.
Not only did I get to be Jack Bauer, The game is so far ahead of it's time it's untrue, and I'm kicking myself for not playing it back in the day. It even has physics! It runs on the Havok engine! And not to mention the much coveted cover system, from a time when every game wasn't centered around hiding behind a wall.
Also I've been messing around with Assassin's Creed (forcing myself to replay it because I played it on release and hated it) and Punisher: No Mercy, both on PS3. I've actually really enjoyed Ass Creed this time, although why a slightly-tanned American would be running around in the middle east killing people is beyond me. Maybe they have oil.
No Mercy is, well, it's Unreal Tournament III really. Fair enough, I can play as The Punisher, which would have sold it to me if I couldn't already play as Solid Snake and Cole Train in UTIII. I could argue that it's only £6.29, but you can pick up UTIII for around that now anyway. It's good, don't get me wrong. I still say buy it, but but the PS2/XBox Punisher game first. That's Brilliant.
I actually bought a bunch of games this week too. Killzone 2 is a mere £19.99 at Morissons right now, and Little Big Planet was on Deal of the Week at Blockbuster for a Tenner, so I snapped them both up, and I raided the dreaded '4 for £20' bin and came away with Beowulf, Golden Axe Beast Rider, Dark Sector and a friend got Kane and Lynch. Expect a look at Beast Rider next week.
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