After playing it for the second time, I encountered a very disappointing aspect of the game, which led to many, many frustrations until I just turned the game off (due to lack of time and higher blood pressure).

I didn’t mention this when I played the demo, but the combat can be really frustrating.  No matter, I thought, after seeing the little help screen that said “run away from your pursuers and avoid all combat.”  Okay, so far so good.  Faith isn’t some kind of hulking beastess taking on 10 guards at a time, she specializes in OMG GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.  This isn’t to say that she’s completely incapable of defending herself; she HAS had some form of self defense training and is able to disarm her opponents using a Tai-chi mentality of “using your opponents force against them”.

Gameplay wise, this translates to getting close enough to the guard to provoke them to swing at you with the butt of their guns, and pressing a button to counter and disarm them when their weapon turns red.  When the demo first showed me this, I was having a lot of trouble getting the timing right.  The weapon also doesn’t turn a bright red instantly.  Apparently this “warming up to red” period of time is the wrong time to press the counter button, and since you only get two chances to get it right before you slump to the floor, it can lead to instant nerd rage.

Even WITH the slow motion button, it’s really hard to tell when exactly they expect you to press the countering button, so instead of taking your enemy out in cool-slow-motion animation, you end up getting bitch slapped in slow motion. 

Parkour is meant to be about running away efficiently, and although some parts of the game truly have the right essence, they sometimes literally lock you in a room with a group of baddies to take out.  Factor in the gameplay mechanic of only being able to take out ONE enemy at a time (more than one and you just end up getting pummelled), you end up with foolishly running around the room desperately trying to lure a guard to a corner to take him out and pray that the other guard isn’t right behind him.

It’s such a shame that the game had to be bogged down by such a terrible nuisance.  I’m up to chapter 7 now, and so far the game has been great up till this point.  Let’s hope that I either get better at the game, or the game throws me a bone instead of trapping me in a room with several guards with no means of escape.

Seriously?  Seriously???  AGAIN????

Okay America, we get it.  You like wars.  World War 2 was the greatest war ever.  Yes.  It’s time to let it go.  Drop it.

No, just because you finally decided to FINALLY bring the other half of the world war does not mean you can sneak in yet ANOTHER Russian campaign, with yet ANOTHER Enemy at the Gates reference (I wish I was kidding with that one).

I really tried my best to judge this as something more than just a re-skin of COD4, but it’s really difficult when they actually managed to not only rip off the movie, but also at the same time rip off the fantastic COD4 sniper mission to a certain extent.

It didn’t even go the route of realism, either, as you find out right off the bat that you can re-load the M1 garand on the fly (previously known as a weapon that you can only reload AFTER using up a clip).

The obligatory russian tank sequence was not only boring, but there was never a sense of being part of a whole;  rather, it felt more like picking up the ENTIRE RUSSIAN ARMY’S SLACK.  I had a tank in front of me and 3 tanks behind me, and each one promptly blew up before giving me an ounce of help.  I could not believe I had to take out an entire Nazi field base with my one (inexplicably regenerating) tank.  To top it off, I used the edges of the map and ended the sequence by accident.  To this day I’m still not sure whether I should have rejoiced at the fact that I beat it, or grimace at the fact that it felt like a rushed mission.

They even added an “airplane gunner” sequence, except it was with a pacific WW2 skin, therefore no neat heat-vision sequence either.  Also, your supposed “partner gunner” is absolutely worthless as you push and shove him away casually while you frantically move between 4 different gunner positions.  What the hell was he on that plane for?  To warm the seat up for you with his ass?  It also didn’t really seem to matter how many planes you shot down, either.

I could only count 2 missions that I found myself enjoying, and those mainly involved a tight, linear indoor sequence with a standard cover/fire procedures. 

So, to put things into perspective, they didn’t really improve anything from the COD4 formula except maybe a flamethrower aspect (which was annoying since you really couldn’t tell how far the flame reaches from your perspective) and the fact that your enemies yell BANZAI instead of ALLAH.

They even added a “bonus” zombie mode, but playing it by myself was neither thrilling nor exciting.  Definitely felt tacked on.  It’s funny…it’s almost as if they knew this game was going to be so generic that they had to try to lure gamers like me by the promise of zombies.  With something as great as Left 4 Dead being released, this “nazi zombie mode” is an EPIC FAIL.

*queue the motion sickness jokes*

Got that out of our systems?  Good.

I. Love. This. Game.

Some of you may remember the Assassin’s Creed review I did a few months ago about free running.  I thought Assassin’s Creed was already very well-done in its portrayal, concept and execution of the “sport”, but Mirror’s Edge has taken it to the next level adding a first person experience to everything.  This does NOT mean this is your average first person shooter, however.  FAR FAR from it.  FPS’s pale in comparison and really makes you realize how ridiculous it is that you can’t even see your other body parts when you look down (minus a few FPS games that actually added legs).

What impressed me the most (and subsequently made me pre-order it like a rabid fanboy) was experiencing the calm music and the deep blue sky stretched across the pristine white rooftops of giant skyscrapers as you leaped over and under multicolored obstacles highlighted by your “runner vision.”

To say that this game is poetry in motion is an understatement.

I was so enthralled with the way the game portrayed the feeling of running, something so simple yet so many games fail to accurately give a tangible feeling of.  Perhaps it was the previous lack of technology, but I was so happy that they finally added some wind resistance effects while running.  Usually when you’re sprinting or moving at any considerable amount of speed, you can’t hear very much due to the rushing of wind in your ears (or maybe it’s because of my huge geeky ears…).  Up till now running has only been portrayed as pumping your forearms (wow, that sounds very very wrong) and maybe a little head bobbing (…) on top of increased speed, but it’s mostly felt like a difference between slowly sliding to sliding a little faster.  Mirror’s Edge incorporates all of the above and adds wind effects and realistic footstep sounds to really give you an accurate sense of speed.

All this added sense of realism comes at a gruesome price, however.  For example, on the off chances that you just *barely* miss the ledge, the game doesn’t just kill you off and make you restart right away.  No, they make you actually face your consequences of failing that jump by making you watch yourself plummet to your death.  It’s actually very disturbing that they added a realistic crunching sound as you literally crumple to the ground.  It’s a very harsh reminder that you’re not invincible, and this is not the Matrix.  Every jump you make must be calculated and precise; after all, you are a just a human being.

More to come after I beat the game.

Those of you who know me know how much I loooooove zombie games.  Check out my review on Dead Rising for that one.

Naturally, I couldn’t resist the urge to pre-order Left 4 Dead to try out the demo.  The game is everything I expected it to be.  Thrilling, action-packed and oh-so-sweet.  It’s also….easy.  I didn’t expect Valve to be so liberal with the ammo, so much as giving you infinite ammo for dual pistols (ala Devil May Cry), but this didn’t stop me from playing the demo over, and over, and over again.  The AI director system is incredible, I’ve seen a swarm of zombies rush at the 4 protagonists from a multitude of locations, breaking down WALLS if they have to.

Yes…it certainly has been a while since a demo made me crave more so badly.  If playing against (literally) braindead AI zombies could be this exciting, I can’t imagine how much better it would be to have HUMAN brains behind the zombies in Versus mode.  Mmmm….braaiins….

*wipes mouth* wha?

The online (i.e. LAGGY) system wasn’t much different from the AI companions you’re given in single player mode.  Since most people are playing for competition, I felt even LESS teamwork than with the AI team, in some instances.  People would stand in front of doorways picking off zombies left and right from a distance, racking up their individual score.  People were also more reluctant to go into the next area, and once again I suspect it is because the person who goes first always ends up getting hit the most as well, thereby bringing your score down even further.

Left 4 dead also uses a dreadful “lobby” system where after you FINALLY receive 3 other players to play with, you then need to wait ANOTHER few minutes while you search for a “dedicated server”…without any indication as to whether it froze or not.  Valve, you’ve always had a wonderfully user-friendly server list/choosing system…why did you make it all automatic and crappy like Soul Calibur 4’s online make-you-wait-for-hours-and-then-drop-you system????

Then again, this is a demo, so here’s hoping things get better from here on out.

Fallout 3: Oblivion with Guns (har har)

I must say, having been a part of the “old school Fallout” crowd for quite some time, I was VERY skeptical of the new Fallout.  Much to the dismay of the “new comers” to the Fallout universe, who incessently spout that “old school gamers” should sit the fuck down and stfu, it’s NOT because Bethesda took Fallout’s gameplay in a new FPS direction.  I’m fine with that.  In fact, I’m delighted with the changes.

Nay…my skepticism arose from the tone of the game.  Fallout’s always had a wonderful writing cast, and the irony and dark humor that I love so much was never lost in the original series.  Upon hearing that they were taking out eye-shots and groin-shots and adding to the fact that Oblivion’s gameplay was utterly boring and dreadful, however, I feared the worst.

Fortunately, my fears were mostly allayed as I began to traverse the world starting as a crawling infant to a fully grown adult.  The main storyline was actually engaging, I found myself caring for many of the characters in the game.  I noticed a huge improvement in the voice acting department, and I believe they actually doubled the cast of voice actors.  Of course, “doubling” the cast of voice actors from two leaves us with merely four voice actors, and once again I felt slightly disillusioned once I realized how the voice actors were being recycled again, but it wasn’t as obviously bad as Oblivion used to be.

The level up system was much better than before as well.  I’m glad they kept the skills, but I couldn’t help but be a bit disappointed with the SPECIAL system and the perks.  In previous fallouts, your base stats actually had a huge impact on how the world would react to the player.  If you had low intelligence, you really suffered with dialogue.  If you had low charisma, people really acted like you were beaten with an ugly stick several times.  In Fallout 3, this aspect was toned down and basically the only real deciding factor in the game was your skill points.  Sure, you may get a different line to say every once in a while if you have high enough intelligence, but it’s not a deciding factor if you have enough speech or any other skill depending on the situation.  In other words, there’s multiple ways to get to the same “win” result, but not enough restrictive ways to “fail.”  That, my friends, is a mark of watered down RPG mechanics.

On a similar note, almost half the perks are utterly useless.  Of course, the previous Fallouts had useless perks as well, but instead of being useless and hollow “boosts”, they were more in line with creating a “style” with your character.  They were the tools with which to carve your David, not just extra padding on your blow up doll. 

Let’s look at an example, shall we?

The perk “Gun Nut”adds 5 skill points per rank for small arms and repair.

At first glance, it may seem like a very good choice if you are planning to create a character focusing on regular handguns and rifles(which there is always plenty of lying around in the wastelands).  However, in the grand scheme of things, taking this perk is practically shooting yourself in the foot since 5 skill points is hardly an improvement over the vast amount of skill points PER LEVEL you would get if you had max intelligence.  In the face of being able to raise your base stats (especially intelligence) which affects your skill points PER LEVEL, choosing a measly 5 points pales in comparison.

Also, like Fable 2, Fallout 3 suffers from premature ejaculation.  Bethesda created a MASSIVE world with many, many side quests, but it’s really up to you to uncover them all.  Naturally, one might think that doing the main quest would open up most of the important areas, but beware: the game actually ends before you are ready to end it.  I actually ended up not even reaching the max level of 20, stocked up thousands of stimpacks, ammo and weapons for the final battle, and ended up beating the game by accident.  Really Bethesda, would it be too much to ask to be able to continue the game after finishing the main story?  Part of the fun of RPG’s is building up a character to actually USE the perfected character, you know.

Despite these setbacks, Fallout 3 is still impressive in its own right, it’s really just a few major hitches along the way that really prevent the game from giving that “shiny polished perfect” game. 

I come to you from the murky dark depths of the infentisimal mountain of videogame releases.  Also known as: November.

It always creeps up on you, as you wander the damp, cold tunnel of darkness, as you reminisce about the games that you left behind, games that you think “maybe I should go back and beat that game…”  And then, it happens.  It snatches you further into the shadows…and before you know it, you become blinded by the sheer amount of gold that you find in a dark and unexpected corner.  Early rejoicing turns to agony as you realize there’s just..too..much…awesomeness.  Just too much…for one gamer to bear.

Now, on with the blog.

I present to you: The Oblivion edition.

(A little backstory about my experiences with Oblivion: This is a game that I thought was going to be awesome due to the “huge expansive world” and “non-linear gameplay.”  Reviewers couldn’t stop gushing over how lush the environment was, how realistic your horse’s anus looked and just how “fun” the entire game was.  I have given Oblivion at least 3 tries, and each time I was unable to bear playing it more than half an hour before I was utterly bored to tears.  The combat is awkward and stale, the character level up system is wonky and pointless since the monsters all level up with you anyway, and the fast-traveling mechanic ruins the game completely since you spend time and energy to get a horse when you really don’t need one.  Oh and there were only 2 voice actors, one for male characters and one for female characters.  Either someone needs to explain to me why this game is so good, or this game was just totally overrated.

FAR CRY 2: OBLIVION IN AFRICA

I made the mistake of choosing a white character in this game, but I heard that there isn’t much difference between the characters besides visual differences such as the forearms you see.  I’m not sure if every character is like this but one thing is for damn sure: everyone, and their grandmother, hates your guts.  I mean it.  It doesn’t matter if you saved a kitten from a tree or rescued wildlife from a random wildfire.  No. No I don’t care.  Everyone hates you just because you exist.  PEOPLE THAT SO MUCH AS SEE YOU ON THE ROADS WILL TURN THEIR CARS AROUND AND HUNT YOU DOWN.  JUST FOR BREATHING THEIR AIR.  OR SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW WHAT.

The reason I call this Oblivion in Africa is because it gave me the exact same stale and boring feeling I got when playing Oblivion, and yet, it got rave reviews(just like Oblivion).  People were bedazzled by the graphics, and while I’ll admit that the game doesn’t look bad, it looks basically on par with everything else on the market right now.  It doesn’t hold a candle to the realism found in the Crysis series, however.  Reviewers also loved the immersiveness of the game.  It would be nice to agree with the reviewers except for the glaring problem of everyone hating you like you’re the white devil.

Imagine you’re driving along a beautiful savanna, wild animals running along side your jeep wrangler(tm) and your eyes squint as you see a beautiful golden sunset upon the horizon… and what’s this?  You see a friendly African neighbor driving past you.  You watch in confusion as your African brother runs over all the gazelles and zebras as he RAMS YOUR CAR IN A FIT OF INEXPLICABLE RAGE.  You stop and ask, “What is your problem, sir?” and you are only met with bullets from his AK 47.  Enemies respawn everywhere, across the map, within a few minutes.  This means your car will break down every few minutes and it’ll take you twice the amount of time to get anywhere than you normally would have to if you didn’t have this stupid AI characters beating you down every step of the way.  What the hell happened to immersiveness??

While we’re talking about NPC’s, you have a bunch of other foreigners (who seem to be in the exact same predicament as you are) who you can help out.  They’re supposed to be your “buddies” but all I see are “quest givers”.  They also talk monotonously at unnatural speeds.  You can literally FEEL the voice actors reading the lines in English.  Sometimes for certain missions, you get fed the EXACT SAME LINE.  Once again, where’s my immersive environment?

A trip to Africa wouldn’t be anything without an unhealthy dose of Malaria.  Instead of actually becoming progressively worse or being a productive plot device, it’s more of a nuisance.  Every once in a blue moon you suddenly see yellow spots on the screen, and you need to take your magic pills that make it go away.  You only need to obtain these magic pills once, apparently, because you seem to have an INFINITE SUPPLY of them.  So now Malaria has just turned into “press H every once in a while to fix your vision!”  I have no sense of urgency or “oh shit oh shit I’m gonna die I need medical attention NOW” since I can just keep popping pills for the rest of my life.  Once again: where’s the immersiveness?

Now that we’ve got all the bad out of the way, let’s put in some good words, because after all, this is a beautiful looking game.  There’s a wonderful article on how fire was implemented as a mechanic, and it’s definitely believable.  With a flamethrower you can set fire to almost anything you want, whether it’s people, animals, grass, trees, even houses.

The gameplay, i.e. shooting and running are all pretty solid as well, minus the fact that you can shoot off branches in one shot but you can’t kill a man with a single headshot.  It’s just such a shame that they promised so much immersivity and took away most, if not all of it by the incredibly dense and overly aggressive AI.

But IG, what about the quests themselves?  Well, they’re pretty repetitive and usually involve lots of driving from point A to point B and killing something/blowing something up.  Literally more than half the game is travelling, unfortunately.  Which also means running into the hostile natives. 

There’s a great article piece written by Ashley Davis at Destructoid.com that shows an innocent person’s triumph and understanding of what “hardcore” retro gaming was all about.

It reminded me a lot of my days as a young boy playing Megaman 3, how I got very frustrated with Megaman’s limitations but soon learned to work around those limits and conquer the bosses by learning attack patterns and how to avoid them. 

Upon playing Megaman 9, 12 years after last playing the old school megaman games, I found myself discovering a lot of the things mentioned in the article…learning obstacles, how to pass through them, how to beat bosses.  Each death was as much a step back as it was a step forward, as I found myself flying through stages at an almost speed-run pace, almost never getting hit, just to get to retry that difficult room that I died in.  It took patience for sure, and I needed to take breaks to save my blood pressure, but passing through them made them feel like they weren’t so bad after all.  I’m certain there’s a lot about life we can learn from these sorts of challenges we face in the megaman series as well.

Each obstacle we face in life is merely a chance to come back harder, faster and stronger.  It may break us in the moment, but the next time we collect the pieces of ourselves and start running again, we’ll be faster, more efficient, less prone to the same pitfalls and laughing as we blast through past mistakes and prevent further similar mistakes.  At the end of the day, you become proud of who you really are.

It’s getting closer to that time of year again, when the new and anticipated games of the year start pouring into the market.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (PC)
I’ve had my wary eye on this one.  I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself into the first game—until the game just decided it does not want to run on my computer anymore, despite several hours of reinstalling and pleading and begging, coaxing the game with various defrags, clearing out more space for it and promises of sweet sweet lovin’.  It didn’t help that I mistakenly read the ending for the game and spoiled the entire game for myself while searching for a solution to my problem.

I’m hoping that Clear Sky won’t be as buggy this time around…or require such strenuous amounts of load time.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Wii, PS2, PS3, 360, DS, PSP)
I’ve tried the demo on current-gen systems and I merely have mixed feelings to show for it.  On the one hand, I greatly admire the amount of new physics and graphical flare that has been brought to the table by Lucasarts.  Throwing bodies around isn’t anything new since Half Life 2 first implemented the gravity gun, but this is the first time anyone decided to take it to the next level by making the ragdolls actually physically react.  We’ve still got a long way to go, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Surprisingly enough, gameplay-wise, the PS3 version demo felt inferior to the PSP version; something I was not expecting at all.  Not only was the control scheme much easier to handle on the handheld, but combat felt more natural and fluid.  Throwing objects and/or enemies was very instant and satisfying, whereas in the current gen version you’re busy getting shot up as you slowly try to aim and throw your object.  It’s also impressive how they were able to implement a lot of world destruction considering what they had to work with on the PSP. 

Also, why are you a sitting duck when you block in the current gen version, but can walk while blocking in the PSP version?  It makes no sense why they made the current gen’s controls clunkier when the PSP has even LESS amount of buttons to work with.  I figure that it’s due to them working on their superb physics and graphics engine, but we are reminded once again that in the end, all that matters is whether the gameplay is satisfying or not as opposed to impressing the audience.

Crysis Warhead (PC)
I’m still confused as to what this is supposed to be.  A sequel?  An add-on?  An expansion?  A standalone expansion??  The first game was a great game, despite its short length.  Still, looking forward to what ze Germans are bringing to this new iteration and I look forward to becoming reacquainted with the suit telling me MAXIMUM this and MAXIMUM that while I’m killing commies.

 The Witcher Enhanced Edition (PC)
I might take a look at this, but “Enhanced Edition” sounds to me more like “oops we forgot to put this in the first time we released this” Edition.  Isn’t it nicer to just release things like this as a patch?

Armored Core: For Answer (PS3, 360)
Very happy about this release, especially considering that Korea got shafted with just a Korean manual for a completely 100% Japanese game.  Hopefully I’ll manage to pick up an English copy somewhere, because the demo was very breathtaking and mindblowing.  The scale of the fight in the demo was very epic indeed.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (PC)
I’m very interested as to how this will do.  From what I’ve heard and read about the game, it seems like a very strong competitor to WoW in that they seem to have made it even more user-friendly, and were able to change a lot of things that make WoW annoying (as far as questing, grouping and PVPing go). 

There’s tons more being released, but the others are really not worth mentioning at all.  Hell’s Kitchen, for example.  Are you serious? 

Our previous discussion into the MMORPG concept took a fairly critical view of the genre itself, but having gone into a “relapse” into the MMO world once again, I have found several positive aspects found in our online fantasy worlds.

The most obvious of these, of course, is the social interactivity.  We as humans need a certain amount of social interactivity in our lives, but we as gamers also need a “special” kind of social networking, and what better way is there than interacting through our most favorite medium?

With the advent of microphone-based chat room programs such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo, mmorpg’s have been taken to another level of social networking.  Hearing another human being on the other side is far more engrossing than reading text on a computer screen, obviously.  It’s no surprise that most guilds are almost guaranteed to use these programs and encourage members to use it.

Let’s split this into the PVP and PVE categories.

In cases where two groups of players are relatively equally matched, teamwork and cooperation among players is paramount to victory.  Voice chat seamlessly integrates communication into the game, eliminating the time it takes to type a strategy out (and thereby leaving your avatar more helpless than a sheep with a farmboy).   This is especially true in timing specific situations such as Arenas in WoW.  In the PVE aspect, it tends to be a way for players to wind down and just talk about everything in general.  The daily grind can get quickly tedious and repetitive, but it seems to melt away when you’re talking to your friends online.  I’ve come to realize that indeed, it’s not necessarily the game itself that makes an MMO addictive… it’s the community, and the sense of belonging.  Conventions such as PAX have become huge successes and is still growing every year.  Game shows and other conventions are opening up more and more to the gaming public, but it appears that it’s not only about the latest and greatest, the newest freshest marketing campaigns, the booth babes… it’s about being part of a community, fulfilling that essential human need to belong, where humans can accept each other regardless of who they are or where they came from, and transcends all the politics and drama that clutters our chaotic world today.

Hello again.

At the risk of sounding as awkward as old lovers trying to re-connect their long-dead relationship, I have returned from my long hiatus from life’s journey to continue the old internet tradition of clogging up webspace with things nobody reads or cares about.

Recently I became an employee as an Editor, deluding myself that I was some sort of Holy Knight that came to vanquish the fowl evils of “Engrish” and revive the lost punctuational societies. Needless to say, things have settled down a bit and I have returned to reclaim this forgotten island in the vast sea of the interwebs.

There’s going to be changes around here; gone will be the dry, serious tone of yesteryear and in with the wet(buh??) and more personal embracement that this is, indeed, a blog, just like any other. The rivers will flow with geek-terminologies and the trees will be ripe with ramblings. Rejoice!!!