Saying “If you like Call of Duty 4, then you’ll love Modern Warfare 2” is a little redundant. In fact saying anything about Modern Warfare 2 is fairly redundant seeing as it is probably the most talked about game at the moment. Rather than jump on the bandwagon of a straight review, I’ll talk more about the specifics, if you want a more general review then head over to somewhere like Gamespot where people are paid to spend hours glued to the screen.
First up I’d like to talk about Special Ops. Special Ops adds a whole new dimension to the game. If there was anything wrong with Call of Duty 4 then it would have to be the unbelievably short campaign, and Modern Warfare 2 continues this trend. That said, the campaign is anything but bad. I would guess that the reason for the length would be the amount of time they took up paying attention to each detail because just like CoD4, each level is brilliantly crafted and designed to be immersive. The voice acting is great, the dialogue isn’t cheesy, the story is engaging and it retains that filmlike quality. But it eventually ends, which is where Special Ops comes in. Whilst Special Ops was considered more an extra, I see it as where the game really is. Special Ops contains a load of extra missions for you to complete on your own or with a friend and it really adds to the replayability factor of the game, making it less of a game played only for its multiplayer value.
Within Special Ops there are a variety of game modes. One of which stretches the whole FPS genre slightly with a race. Racing snowmobiles to be exact, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. It is by no means a polished competitor to specialised racing games, rather it is a simple matter of accelerate, brake and reverse. It is more akin to go-kart racing that racing racing. Which in my opinion where the fun really is. Other modes involve the simple task of releasing that murderer we all have within us and just killing wave after wave of enemies. Or sneaking past enemy lines without being detected. And of course the dreaded escort missions. Why any developer thinks escort missions are a good idea is completely beyond me, they are freaking irritating.
As for general gameplay, several tweaks have been made to the overall feel of combat. A graphically realistic yet irritating and scientifically unsound watered down blood effect is used when hurt, replacing the old red around the sides look of CoD4 and 5. As Sandmonkey said at the time “Why would you have blood on your eyes?”, a good question, and why does it fade? Personally, I find it very annoying as it distorts your field of view, which makes it very difficult when surrounded on a hard level when your vision is constantly blurred. On a good note, Last Stand has been replaced with Final Stand, which varies from gametype to gametype. In Co-op, you first collapse and you are given a pistol to shoot bad guys whilst crawling around. This lasts until you’re shot again, at which time you lose the pistol and you crawl around very slowly waiting to be revived by your partner. You cannot die in Special Ops unless both participants are in final stand or the one in final stand is left for two minutes to bleed on the ground. In head-to-head game types final stand involves collapsing and crawling as usual, but you can use your primary weapon to fend off attackers, albeit with very slow aiming. If you survive in this state for a certain amount of time, you just get back up and resume fighting rather than dying. I think this is a good upgrade. The addition of crawling and the use of a weapon other than a pistol that you probably didn’t have two seconds ago actually makes the last stand make more sense, at least to me anyway.
If you have a (real) console or a PC then you would be stupid to buy another game over this one. If you are a PC user you should know about the lack of dedicated servers which means you will be the victims of some really really painful connections. Oh and you’re capped at 8 vs 8, which is nice. But still, the rest makes it worth it.
Sandmonkey is back! I bet you missed me. Yes you. Anyway, Renegade and I have finished exams now so we should be posting here more regularly.
So I've been staying at friend's place for the last few days and we have been playing co-op Borderlands. I did a preview of this game a few months ago and mentioned that I was a bit disappointed that the developers planned to make it cell shaded. After playing the game I can say that my opinion on it is the same and I think that cell shading looks like a cheap way to get away with being too lazy to actually develop decent graphics. Although I know many people don't mind too much about the quality of graphics and some even like cell shaded graphics. Just not me.
Graphics aside the game is a solid FPS with well implemented RPG elements. And there are very few bugs that we encountered while playing the game. Although there was one point where we were looking for an object to complete the mission, the object turned out to be nowhere near the marking on the map.
After playing the game for a while you are given a vehicle that you can use to get places a lot more quickly. Unfortunately it can be difficult to drive and can get stuck between objects quite easily.
The levelling system is fair and balanced. So there is not too much to comment on here. Killing people = XP = upgrades. Missions = money = new equipment. Pretty simple. The upgrades differ depending on what class you choose to go as (soldier, siren, hunter & berserker). The equipment you buy includes: weapons, ammo & shields. You can also pick up equipment from dead enemies.
If you finish doing missions and stuff then invite a friend over. The characters can jump so high that playing leapfrog with a friend could be considered an "exclusive additional feature". And if your friend is too n00bish and doesn't want to play leapfrog, you have the ability to challenge your teammate to a duel in which you fight each other one to one. Then you slaughter them and force them to play leapfrog.
Since I finally got my sorry excuse for a computer working today, I’ve been putting off writing this article. The main reason for that is I bought Prototype yesterday, and have been playing it non-stop. So all you people reading this should feel very lucky that I decided to halt my gaming-fest for ten minutes in order to appease you.
I’ll start by saying that Prototype is “balls-to-the-wall” awesome. A compliment I do not award lightly, even in light of such amazingness. As you may have read in my previous articles on the various trailers and gameplay videos, Prototype is an open-world third person game where you play Alex Mercer, a guy who woke up in a morgue just in time for his own autopsy. As he rushes out in shock, he realises that everyone wants to kill him. And to top it all off, he seems to have more super powers than any Marvel superhero could dream of. But why does everyone want to kill him? Why has he got superpowers? Oh, we don’t know, because he has amnesia. Didn’t see that coming, did you.
The game centres around him trying to get to the bottom of who he is, what he is, and who is responsible for his own augmentation, and the increasing cases of “zombification” across the city. What I quite like about the mystery is what the game calls ‘The Web of Intrigue’. One of your powers is to consume people, whether it be pedestrians or the military. Consuming a person builds up your health, and it allows you to shapeshift and assume their identity. But you can also access the memories of the people you consume, and each memory you find that relates to you is pieced together in an interface called the Web of Intrigue. Fragments of seemingly unrelated memories that you can watch over and over again to try and piece the puzzle together.
But of course, the real fun begins on the streets. Where you literally rip people in to pieces with your awesomeness. Your awesomeness manifests itself in the form of fricking huge claws, which you use to proclaim superiority across the land. What I also like is what the game calls the “shield”. I think that is pretty boring name though. I call it “battering ram”. Because its pretty useless as a shield, but very effective in letting you sprint down a road at 200kmph, and just ram through anyone and anything. All you see is a cloud of death and destruction in front of you whilst you plough forward through a mangled gory mess of the remains of bodies and cars.
If you have played Spiderman 2 or Ultimate Spiderman, you know how awesome they were. And how revolutionary. This is the same. Except this time you have so many more weapons, vehicles and powers at your disposal. And also, you can slice those annoying pedestrians that call out your name in two. Its like a cross between Spiderman 2 and Grand Theft Auto.
I declare the graphics “ok yet irrelevant”. In this case the gameplay makes up for the crappy textures and the simplistic and repetitive building design. It also makes up for the lack of character variation. Whilst a street of 200 civilians has around five character models copied over and over, and every single high ranking officer you have to consume looks the same, the game is so fast paced and fun that you tend to ignore petty details like that. And trust me, if I can overlook the low-end graphical capabilities, you can too.
I haven’t quite finished it yet. But my guesses are on whoever designed his clothes being behind it all. I mean, not only do his clothes morph with him, but he never changes them. A whole fricking 18 days without changing his goddamn clothes. Those machines that can detect you when you are disguised probably work on the basis that the smelliest object in a mile radius must be our guy. To top it all off, I don’t understand why they haven’t picked up on the fast that his hood seems to be fused to his skull.
Remember when Windows used to be fun. Neither do I, but I do remember sitting in my Dad’s office in 1996 and a nice woman logged me on to a computer. I remembered my Dad was very proud of the new state-of-the-art computer system they’d just installed, so I was filled with excitement when I heard the whirr of the modem coming to life and the Windows 95 logo fill the screen. I’d only ever used the NT workstations at school, so I was fairly computer illiterate, however she navigated to Accessories, then to Games, then clicked on a little item called ‘Hover!’.
Hover! was a fun little game which is sort of capture the flag combined with bumper cars. You drive around in a “Hover 950” from the future trying to collect the blue flags before the other drones collect your red flags. The floor however is loaded with traps and boosts that you have to avoid, made difficult by the limited traction control in your Hover 950. You also have to worry about things like fuel and knocked out of the way by an angry AI bumper car.
Windows 95 was the first Windows OS to be sold on a compact disc as well as 13 floppy diskettes due to the increasing number of CD-ROM drives. But fitting files that can fit on a 13 1.44MB floppies on to a 700MB CD probably felt like a bit of a waste, so Microsoft bundled what they called “Fun Stuff” along with the installation. They included a few music videos and some games, one of them being ‘Hover!’. Hover! was designed to be a showcase for the possibilities of PC gaming, it features a fully 3D experience coupled with real world physics and artificial intelligence. Games like Doom had already shown the world what MS-DOS based PCs could do, this game was fun little game to show what else can be done in terms of 3D space, texturing and intelligent opposition.
I’ve been racking my brains all week trying to remember the name of the game that I played every week on Mondays after school. I finally remembered it, and found it on the Microsoft website, still available for download from their servers. Playing it again first brought nostalgia, but before long I was swearing out loud at the fricking AI that captured my flag as I zoomed in my Hover 950 at full speed in to his rear end, sending him spinning out of control. This game, after 14 years, is still amazingly fun and so addictive.
In 1998, we got our first computer. The Windows 98 behemoth. Whilst I Sim City 3000’d it up a few times, I found it sad that Microsoft had decided to scrap Hover!. Microsoft have attempted to de-funify Windows over the years. It began with 98, which only carried through the classics of Minesweeper, Solitaire and Pinball. Then Vista arrived, who decided to do away with Pinball and all the internet based card games. However, they did introduce InkBall, a favourite time-waster of mine for a while until Windows 7 came along and destroyed that too.
Games are an integral part of Windows, Microsoft! Its the only defence against the Mac fanboys that they have no rebuttal to! Don’t let us down again. I think you should employ Crytek to make the new Windows games. MAXIMUM MINESWEEPER.
I played the entire demo of Fear 2 when it came out and thought it was pretty good. I would have bought the game as well if it wasn’t for my lack of funds. But since renting the game out and playing a few hours of it, I’ve changed my opinion and decided that its better of that I didn’t buy it. If you have played the original Fear or even Fear 2 then you will know that it’s an FPS based around about trying to scare some people and a some mentally retarded girl who wants to rape you. No, I’m being serious. Anyway as far as scary goes, being raped in-game by a crazy anorexic telepath rates pretty high (well for me anyway).
When playing through the demo, you are led to believe that you are playing through a level in the game. WRONG. I always wondered why the demo seemed a bit disjointed. First you start off in a ruined city, the next minute you’re in a school, followed by subways, then you’re outside again, and before long you’re in a giant exoskeleton robotic combat suit. Well, after playing the actual game for a while I figured out that the demo is in fact a lie. They took the best bits from the game and stuck them together. Playing through the full version of the game, the only bits that were any good were the bits I had already played in the demo. In essence, if you’ve played the demo, you’ve played the game.
In other news, the developers had an odd habit of sticking ‘combat’ onto the name of every gun. For example you could have the ‘combat shotgun’ or the ‘combat pistol’. I can only assume they did this with the assumption that stupid people wouldn’t realize that there is no such thing as a peace shotgun. Or perhaps the developers didn’t realize that shotguns are generally used for combat.
So I recently went to see the latest Star Trek film with Renegade, and it was awesome. Of course being a bit of a nerdy guy I have the geek genetics forcing me to have watched Star Trek at least once before. In fact I’ve actually I’ve seen several episodes from various seasons and the movie Star Trek Nemesis. But I’m more of a Star Gate fan myself because just like normal people of this world I generally find Star Trek to be boring and too cheesy when the crew all roll around the bridge pretending that there was just a massive explosion, and then they get ‘hailed’ and then all of the ships ‘primary’ functions suddenly become offline.
I prefer a bit of real action. And the new Star Trek film had tons of it. It was well paced, the plot made sense, all conversations consisted of one liners and hopefully any future Star Trek series or films will be a lot more like this film. It’s so good even people who are not into Sci Fi are going to see this film, and are liking it. There are no extremely famous actors in the film but they all do a great job and work really well together. I’ll leave you with my favourite quotes from the film and a satirical video.
“I’m going to be monitoring your frequencies” And “So what combat training do you have?... Fencing”
I just want to make it clear that I do not review games. I give my opinion of them. I have a problem when a game is given a rating, since it based on the opinion of the reviewer and does not always take other people in to account. Everyone has different tastes, different likes, different dislikes. I’m going to give an opinion of Burnout Paradise, feel free to dis/agree with me.
Anyway. With the powers invested in me, I hereby declare “Burnout Paradise” to be the best racing game I have ever played. It has everything, high speed, open world, freedom of choice and awesome car crashes. The game is over a year old now, so I’m a bit late with the review, but not as late to review a few of the new expansions that have been released. Those who bought the newly released “Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box” for PC have got all the packs bundled with it for free. Much to my distaste as someone who has it on the Xbox 360. For us mortals, the packs cost money. I, being the Scrooge that I am, downloaded a few extra cars instead of downloading the discounted bundle of legendary cars, toy cars and boost special cars. And are the only ones that are, in my opinion, worth the money (out of the ones I have bought).
Jansen 88 Special Not only is Burnout Paradise given the honour of being the best racing game I’ve ever played, it is also host to the time-travelling DeLorean from the Back to the Future films. This is my favourite car, it is part of the “legendary cars” set and is a remake of the Jansen P12. It has terrifying speed, massive Stunt Type boost and the added bonus of being able to hover at will. Hover! Whilst the name is inspired by the fact that Marty McFly’s time travelling DeLorean travels in time once it hits 88mph, I was disappointed to find that even when tearing down the high streets at superluminal speeds I could not find the 1950s, the future, or the Wild West.
Toy Krieger WTR A toy version of its big brother, the most robust vehicle in the game but also the slowest. Whilst you trundle along at 10mph, you can hear the little electric motor whirring as cars whiz past you. You think, why did i waste my money? Oh yes, then you remember as you ram 10 different cars in one creating a trail of debris with your tiny little toy car. Its a sight worth the $3. Minimal speed, minimal boost, maximum strength.
Close Range is an indie game which has received 4 great reviews from gaming review sites such as “OGN”, “Game Insider”, “Electronic Gaming Weekly” and “Game Relay”. How real these reviews are is to be disputed because the game is basic. Gameplay consists of clicking your left mouse button while head pop up in front of you to blow their heads off. Other initiative ideas consist of reloading… and that’s it. The graphics are mediocre and the only real appeal to this game is the gore which due to the mediocre graphics isn’t really that good.
When you first start the game you start off with a pistol and as the game moves on you go through an arsenal of weapons, each offering a new way for a head to get blow to bits. The trouble I had with this game was that it got boring after a few minutes of blowing peoples head off. Sure at first its fun seeing bits of head and nose and eye and blood flying off everywhere and even more fun when an emu appears and you get to see an emu’s head get blow away but then the novelty wears off.
The game has no AI, at all. One the targets head appears it stays there looking at you until you blow its head off. I left the game for five minutes once just to see what the target would do. Nothing. They just stay there waiting complacently to die. The game turns into much of a muchness with no skill, goals or achievements.
And I wont get started on the story line, its just that good.
But if you bored stupid and have nothing better to do then I suggest that you read other blog posts here. Or if that doesn’t interest you, you could always check this game out. http://www.closerangegame.com/
I downloaded the Windows 7 Beta back in January and I’ve decided not to write anything about it until I have had to live with it for some time. I didn’t perform an update of Vista, because this is a beta. And even if it is probably less buggy that the commercial version of Vista, it is unsupported and I want Microsoft to be liable for any self-induced errors. Instead, I installed it on a separate hard drive, and the first thing I noticed is that it installed within half an hour.
Half an hour!
Just stop to digest that for a minute. If anyone has installed a copy of Vista or XP, you’ll know it takes a lot more than half an hour to copy the files from the setup disc over, expand the files, and install the files. More like 3+ hours. That’s not even including the set-up time after you boot it for the first time. I went from putting the disc in, to web surfing within half an hour. Second thing I noticed was that within 5 minutes of being connected to the internet, all my drivers were installed. A little bubble pops up telling me that al hardware is ready for use. People who use XP know that the old Windows Update sucks, and people who use Vista know all the incompatibility problems it has. However 7 just…works…
The new taskbar (or “superbar”), is great. Though while I think its so much better and easier, as soon as it is released everyone will go all “RAAAWR” and go on a change-fearing rampage that will ultimately kill us all. Just like the Office 2007 interface update and the times that Facebook has changed. I like the way it groups all the programs together and sort of melds the Quick Launch and opened programs. I can’t wait until they find a way to faze the System Tray out too. Also, jump lists and Aero Peek are my new best friends.
My heart sank when the prompt came up asking me if I would give myself permission to open a control panel window, but my heart left in the air when it gave me the option to tone down the severity of protection. Mine is one above lowest, so it hardly ever asks me something unless something is trying to edit the registry or save stuff in to the Windows folder.
I have also had no OS caused problems in four months (“OS caused” means something that wasn’t blatantly my own stupid fault). It is more stable that Vista, easier to use than Vista and has a lot of the features everyone wished were in Vista. And also a lot of features missing that nobody wanted in Vista. Like Flip3D...why…?
I do have a but though. I think that regardless of Windows 7 apparent awesomeness, 3 major things will drag it down:
1. Baggage. Windows 7 will carry the previous baggage of the failures associated with Vista, such as incompatibility errors, inconvenient security measures and the fact that it only ran on “Vista Capable” PCs. Whilst 7 eliminates some of these problems, people will always hark back to previous experience, and their previous experience of Windows is not always a happy memory.
2. Stigma. In this day an age, the ability to bash Microsoft and its products automatically makes you a technology guru. Just as owning an Apple Mac makes you a superior being that frowns upon the mere mortals who have just bought a computer that does everything yours can do, at half the price, but without the glowing Apple seal of approval burnt on it somewhere. Ah…I digress…my Apple fanboy ranting is reserved for a future blog post. Anyhow, the fact that the industry standard and societies norm in any field is always subject to the most abuse will always be Microsoft’s downfall. Geeks like to have something different than the other geek, and owning a Windows PC makes you a conformist. Because of this, the “rebels” shun the social norm and decide to use something that isn’t as understood and widespread, just so other geeks will say “Wow, you’ve got a macbook”, “Wow, you use Opera”, and “Wow, you use OpenOffice”. Some geeks have even noticed that even Macs are becoming widespread and switch to Linux, just so people can say “Wow, you’re a cheap-arse communist who hates Bill Gates and Steve Jobs so much that you’ll download a crappy piece of freeware built by hippies and call it an adequate replacement”.
3. Pricing. I think a lot of people were put off of buying Vista because of the price. I would hazard a guess that most people who did buy the standalone CD bought the Home Basic version because it was cheaper. I bought Home Premium, and I was not even in two minds about buying Ultimate. It was just way too expensive. Honestly though, I think in a way Microsoft should make this free. It wont happen. It would never happen. But this is what Vista should have been. Vista was a failure and they know it. And as soon as people had bought it, and been disappointed with it, they bring out a new OS that is everything they told us Vista would be, and everything that is wasn’t. In my opinion, Windows Seven should be the biggest Service Pack in the history of Windows. Instead of screwing their customers who have only just payed for the extortionately priced and buggy Vista.
I think I managed to criticize three operating systems in one blog post. A new record has been set. Have fun trying to top that, Sandmonkey.
Having played the demo on the Xbox 360, I can safely say that my expectations were exceeded. I never played the last Chronicles of Riddick games, and even though people said it was excellent, I never quite believed it. Mainly because of my preconceptions based on the film (which is just bonfire material, if you ask me). So I downloaded it because it was the only FPS demo that looked worthy of using up my download quota.
I don’t know what it is about bad guys that make constant clicking sounds. It just makes me want to kill them all the moreso.
What I love about the game is the differences. The stuff you don’t often find in a game. For instance, instead of shooting a fan to make it stop and let you through. You go to the nearest terminal, take remote control of one of the drones, and make him walk through it in order to clog the turbine up with the creatures mangled guts and intestines. Thus creating a path (if not blood and pus stained) for you to walk to safety. At this point you’re thinking, “…that is completely unnecessary and disgusting”, but that sadistic part of your brain is thinking “That would be fricking awesome”.
So, I appeal to the disgusting sadistic little voice inside all of you, download the demo and check it out. Maybe even give it a rent when it comes out next week.
Renegade likes to point out the flaws in the world and has an intense dislike for stupid people. He is also tall, intelligent, couragous and a compulsive liar.
Saying “If you like Call of Duty 4, then you’ll love Modern Warfare 2” is a little redundant. In fact saying anything about Modern Warfare 2 is fairly redundant seeing as it is probably the most talked about game at the moment. Rather than jump on the bandwagon of a straight review, I’ll talk more about the specifics, if you want a more general review then head over to somewhere like Gamespot where people are paid to spend hours glued to the screen.
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