I wrote a rant about a lot of stuff I didn't like about the latest entry to the Zelda franchise in my last blog post. Now I am about 37 hours into the game, and from the fourth or fifth dungeon forward I must say I am really enjoying the game. For some reason the limited amount of tools you had to your exposal in the early parts of the game really made the levels feel like a chore. Usually the earlier parts and first dungeons of Zelda games make up for this by being really simple in their structure. Not so much in SS. The Desert dungeon (number three?) is a real bitch in how complicated it is. To me it feels more like one of the late dungeons when compared to Twilight Princess or Wind Waker. This was one of the couple of places where I got stuck really badly as well. It's a fine line to balance on when making the game difficult enough so it's challenging, without making it too hard so you get stuck and sick and tired of playing. SS didn't hit on the right side of this line in the first parts I feel.
Another thing which gets better the more you play is that you learn how to use the motion controls. They are not bad or unresponsive by any stretch of the imagination, but the features that use them the most - like flying your bird or using the sword - takes some time getting used to. Once you have mastered them they work like a charm though. This is mostly just a matter of getting used to something that is different from the previous games. Having to slice the enemies from exactly the right angle and with the right timing is mighty different from just jamming the A-button until your foe has been properly disposed of.
People have complained about the excessive amount of backtracking in the game, and I must say I agree that it's less than satisfying. There are only three main areas that you go to in the game that I'm not going to spoil, but you go back to them at least three times each! Also there is a kind of disjointed feel to the way the game and the story progresses that makes you think the story is just there to loosely tie the different gameplay devices that can be found in the game together. Compare this to the story in Wind Waker, where there is an afterthought behind everything, and it ties back all the way to the very first Zelda game! These games are all about nostalgia, so being able to do that in a convincing manner is a real homerun as far as player satisfaction goes.
The goddess cubes which you find and strike to activate chests in the overworld sky are a genious addition, and to me doing this sort of side quest really is the best part of these games as it is relaxed and laid-back, and feels really rewarding and challenging. I haven't finished SS yet obviously, but if I would rank the Zelda games currently it would look like this:
1. Wind Waker
2. The Legend of Zelda
3. Link's Awakening
4. Twilight Princess
5. Majora's Mask
6. Skyward Sword
7. Ocarina of Time
8. A Link to the Past
9. Zelda II (to be fair I haven't played this one much)
Not listed: Various Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance knockoffs, as well as the horrific PCi-games ("Great! I'll grab my STUFF!").
As you can see I'm not a huge fan of OoT, I never played it through until long after its release when I got it along with WW. Link's Awakening I played on a long flight to the US when I was a kid and it was the game that got me hooked on the franchise. SS doesn't get higher than number six on this list which is less than impressive, then again these are some of the best games ever created so the competition is pretty steep. As mentioned I haven't even finished it yet, and most likely it will grow on me with repeated playthroughs.
tisdag 13 december 2011
tisdag 22 november 2011
Skyward Sword: First Impressions
Right now I am a few hours into Skyward Sword (I'm currently at work so I can't check the exact number), and about to enter the third "dungeon"-area. From what I've read this is a pretty long game so it's not really fair to come to some sort of final judgment just yet, but I still want to share some initial impressions and discuss what's good and not so good about the game. Zelda games are probably among the most anticipated games to get released, and as such the expectations are really high every time a new one sees the light of day. Skyward Sword is no exception to this rule.
Each new Zelda game tries to come up with something new while staying true to the old tried and proven formula of gathering stuff from chests and hackin' and slashing the old Moblins. New in this one is first and foremost the Wii Motion Plus controls which really are something else. This is what you envisioned the Wii being used for when it first came out. I've read mixed reports on the responsiveness of the controls, but in my humble opinion they work fine. Swordplay really immerses you into the game in a way few other games right now do, especially on other systems. I believe this really is the future although Wii-U, Nintendo's next console, seems to take a step back and forego motion control for a more traditional (X-box hueg) gamepad. My only gripe would be that when fighting even the easiest opponents that wield swords, they anticipate your strikes with great success. When playing you sort of feel the need to exaggerate your moves in order for them to register which makes even the weakest enemies parry them effectively. Of course there are enemies that don't carry swords and can't parry your attacks, but the ones that do should've had an easier tier I believe.
As a nod to Wind Waker, probably my favorite Zelda game of all time (and it would be appear that it will stay that way for at least a while longer), you start out on an "island" in the sky appropriately named Skyloft. Instead of a boat you have an Avatar-inspired bird compatriot that you can fly around with to other small island or down below a cover of clouds to the dungeon areas below. One of the main complaints about Wind Waker, unfortunately was that sailing on the huge sea became tedious after a while. Personally I thoroughly enjoyed doing this and never really felt it became boring (after a while you could warp to most places instantly like in any Zelda game anyway). Nintendo have obviously listened to this piece of critique and the area that you can fly around in is as a result extremely limited in scope. this is a bit of a bummer, but again flying around contrary to sailing really is boring since there is zero sense of movement or speed about it. The distant islands slowly crawl toward you, a bit like flying in an airplane.
Some reviewers have focused on the dungeons now being less defined to the start of the "cave"-part of the dungeon and instead stretching to the area outside as well. I can't understand how this is any different than any of the other 3D-Zeldas going back to the very first one; Ocarina of Time, but maybe these reviewers know something I don't.
Speaking of the dungeons, the first couple of ones that I've been to so far have not impressed me. Even though the first dungeons should be simple in their design and easy, that doesn't stop them from being able to be interesting or challenging from a novice's perspective. I found the first two ones in SS quite bland and uninspired. The new items don't feel that innovative and frankly aren't that fun to use.
Wind Waker, and even Twilight Princess, although to a lesser degree, both had that wow-feeling when playing them for the first time which largely is missing here. Aside from the Wii Motion Plus-aided swordplay, SS more or less feels like Twilight Princess 2. That accounts for the graphics resolution as well which to be honest is not up to par in SS. Wii-U with its 1080p resolution can't come around fast enough.
What I've written so far sounds very negative, but make no mistake that all these things aside, SS is still a very good game and quite addictive to boot. I'm just worried that it won't pick up and become the awesome game you expect every new entry to this series to be. Time will tell.
Each new Zelda game tries to come up with something new while staying true to the old tried and proven formula of gathering stuff from chests and hackin' and slashing the old Moblins. New in this one is first and foremost the Wii Motion Plus controls which really are something else. This is what you envisioned the Wii being used for when it first came out. I've read mixed reports on the responsiveness of the controls, but in my humble opinion they work fine. Swordplay really immerses you into the game in a way few other games right now do, especially on other systems. I believe this really is the future although Wii-U, Nintendo's next console, seems to take a step back and forego motion control for a more traditional (X-box hueg) gamepad. My only gripe would be that when fighting even the easiest opponents that wield swords, they anticipate your strikes with great success. When playing you sort of feel the need to exaggerate your moves in order for them to register which makes even the weakest enemies parry them effectively. Of course there are enemies that don't carry swords and can't parry your attacks, but the ones that do should've had an easier tier I believe.
As a nod to Wind Waker, probably my favorite Zelda game of all time (and it would be appear that it will stay that way for at least a while longer), you start out on an "island" in the sky appropriately named Skyloft. Instead of a boat you have an Avatar-inspired bird compatriot that you can fly around with to other small island or down below a cover of clouds to the dungeon areas below. One of the main complaints about Wind Waker, unfortunately was that sailing on the huge sea became tedious after a while. Personally I thoroughly enjoyed doing this and never really felt it became boring (after a while you could warp to most places instantly like in any Zelda game anyway). Nintendo have obviously listened to this piece of critique and the area that you can fly around in is as a result extremely limited in scope. this is a bit of a bummer, but again flying around contrary to sailing really is boring since there is zero sense of movement or speed about it. The distant islands slowly crawl toward you, a bit like flying in an airplane.
Some reviewers have focused on the dungeons now being less defined to the start of the "cave"-part of the dungeon and instead stretching to the area outside as well. I can't understand how this is any different than any of the other 3D-Zeldas going back to the very first one; Ocarina of Time, but maybe these reviewers know something I don't.
Speaking of the dungeons, the first couple of ones that I've been to so far have not impressed me. Even though the first dungeons should be simple in their design and easy, that doesn't stop them from being able to be interesting or challenging from a novice's perspective. I found the first two ones in SS quite bland and uninspired. The new items don't feel that innovative and frankly aren't that fun to use.
Wind Waker, and even Twilight Princess, although to a lesser degree, both had that wow-feeling when playing them for the first time which largely is missing here. Aside from the Wii Motion Plus-aided swordplay, SS more or less feels like Twilight Princess 2. That accounts for the graphics resolution as well which to be honest is not up to par in SS. Wii-U with its 1080p resolution can't come around fast enough.
What I've written so far sounds very negative, but make no mistake that all these things aside, SS is still a very good game and quite addictive to boot. I'm just worried that it won't pick up and become the awesome game you expect every new entry to this series to be. Time will tell.
måndag 21 november 2011
Super Mario 3D Land
Inbetween playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and checking out the coverage of the last real World Championships in Magic: The Gathering, I have also had time to kick back and play some Super Mario 3D Land. There's not much of a story more than the princess being kidnapped and you as Mario having to rescue her, as usual. Because of this you can check your brain by the door so to speak when you play it and that's always nice for a change of pace.
The levels in SM3DL are in 3D just like Super Mario 64 and the subsequent 3D Mario games for the Gamecube and Wii, but it plays more like the New Super Mario Bros games. Even though the levels are in 3D, their layout is similiar to the ones you find in a 2D Mario game because of their linear style, and most of the time they only have a certain limited depth. SM3DL is a 3DS-game where the 3D actually serves a functional purpose in the game. As you maneuver Mario through the levels you have to time and calculate your jumps based on your 3D perception. In fact playing without 3D makes the game harder. Reviews have stated that SM3DL is the first game to do this, but I would digress, Rayman 3D for example uses it as well although perhaps not as explicitly.
SM3DL uses the same art style as in the NSMB and Mario Galaxy games. Together with the 3D it looks really good even considering the 3DS's low resolution compared to a smart phone's screen. The selection of powerups includes the leaf from Super Mario Bros 3, a fire flower which is untimed thank God and a new Koopa Brothers-boomerang. My main complaint is that the levels in the game are too short and a bit too simple in their design, which in turn makes the game very easy. There is a ton of replay value though in getting all three star coins in every level, and a dark "special" world where the stages are played backwards and are a lot harder.
The controls which usually are spot-on in Mario games are not that perfect here, they are a bit "floating" and Mario is too slow when running. Calculating your jumps based on the 3D takes a while getting used too, so I suspect there is a reason for this in it making controlling Mario more forgiving. The same case can most likely be made for including the SMB3-leaf as well since it makes missing a jump less of a concern when you can float in a slow descent to the nearest platform.
SM3DL is a nice relaxing game but ultimately I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to just make a Galaxy-type game with nonlinear big stages, or just make the stages a bit more detailed and complicated. Still if you are a fan of Mario games I heartily recommend this one. I want to write a blog post about my initial impressions of Skyward Sword so far too, but I will save it for another day.
The levels in SM3DL are in 3D just like Super Mario 64 and the subsequent 3D Mario games for the Gamecube and Wii, but it plays more like the New Super Mario Bros games. Even though the levels are in 3D, their layout is similiar to the ones you find in a 2D Mario game because of their linear style, and most of the time they only have a certain limited depth. SM3DL is a 3DS-game where the 3D actually serves a functional purpose in the game. As you maneuver Mario through the levels you have to time and calculate your jumps based on your 3D perception. In fact playing without 3D makes the game harder. Reviews have stated that SM3DL is the first game to do this, but I would digress, Rayman 3D for example uses it as well although perhaps not as explicitly.
SM3DL uses the same art style as in the NSMB and Mario Galaxy games. Together with the 3D it looks really good even considering the 3DS's low resolution compared to a smart phone's screen. The selection of powerups includes the leaf from Super Mario Bros 3, a fire flower which is untimed thank God and a new Koopa Brothers-boomerang. My main complaint is that the levels in the game are too short and a bit too simple in their design, which in turn makes the game very easy. There is a ton of replay value though in getting all three star coins in every level, and a dark "special" world where the stages are played backwards and are a lot harder.
The controls which usually are spot-on in Mario games are not that perfect here, they are a bit "floating" and Mario is too slow when running. Calculating your jumps based on the 3D takes a while getting used too, so I suspect there is a reason for this in it making controlling Mario more forgiving. The same case can most likely be made for including the SMB3-leaf as well since it makes missing a jump less of a concern when you can float in a slow descent to the nearest platform.
SM3DL is a nice relaxing game but ultimately I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to just make a Galaxy-type game with nonlinear big stages, or just make the stages a bit more detailed and complicated. Still if you are a fan of Mario games I heartily recommend this one. I want to write a blog post about my initial impressions of Skyward Sword so far too, but I will save it for another day.
måndag 14 november 2011
Battlefield 3
This weekend I had time to play through the campaign of Battlefield 3 and since I made some fixes no crashes were to be had. The campaign was fine, but I would say a notch worse than the one in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The one in the aforementioned game was more tounge-in-cheek and had some fun characters, were the BF3 one feels like a failed attempt at recreating a Call of Duty campaign. Like many professional reviewers have mentioned, the interview meta-story with flashbacks is pretty much lifted from Black Ops. And while the jet flying-mission is really cool the gameplay in it has nothing to do with Battlefield, same with the quick-time events. There is a reason there was no campaign mode in Battlefield 1942, the first game of the franchise (except for playing with bots). The multiplayer is where these games shines and the reason you play them.
The multiplayer mode of BF3 is clearly a continuation of the one in BF2 and its strong points lie in things that were good in that one. There are a lot of small things to unlock, lots of weapons and gadgets to keep you playing for a long time. I can't help comparing this game to BFBC2 since that was the previous one, one that I really enjoyed and put a lot of hours into. BC2 has a more casual approach where BF3 goes for realism which I think is a bit of a negative. I have only played the BF3 multiplayer around six hours so it's a bit early to come to conclusions, but there was a spontaneous teamwork that appeared out of nowhere in BC2 that is not around in the same way in BF3. Also these games stand and fall with the maps available. When it comes to rush mode, maps with a lot of open spaces are not always a good idea since it becomes too easy for the defenders to just sit back and well, defend. Slightly more confined spaces are better since rush after all just is bomb defusion mode of Counter-Strike ported to Battlefield. In conquest mode large maps are fine since there is no front line where all the players are. I feel the maps in BF3 are not perfect, but with that being said I haven't played nearly enough to learn them so I could be wrong. Not all of the maps in BC2 were perfect either but overall they are better.
I must say that the problem with crashes I have had is really bad of DICE too. You shouldn't release an unfinished game is number one, two is the official support STILL haven't managed to solve the crash issues. Personally I did three different small fixes that I read about on forums at once, so I can't tell which one of them fixed the game for me, but it's really bad I had to go through that channel. Someone who is new to computer games likely wont have the knowledge or patience to scour forums for this kind of stuff, so they will likely return the game for their money back or not buy another BF game again.
Compared to BC2, the average skill level you encounter in BF3 is way higher which I also think is a problem. The only BF game I haven't played extensively is BF2, and in BC2 I almost always finished in the top three players, but I was struggling with BF3 and is just now starting to get the hang of it. It's a bit of a problem that the more you play the better weapons you get because the best players will have even more of an edge on the low-ranked or new players. Losing is never fun, even less so when you're constantly losing an unfair fight against opponents that are more skilled, have better knowledge of the maps which is crucial, AND have way more powerful upgrades.
Another problem with the points and rank system is that in rush when you play as a defender, it's correct to sit around and do nothing guarding the objectives. And this will more than often not gather you that many points. If you go after the attackers you are much more likely to get killed, and it's way easier for the opponents to slip past you and plant the explosives.
BF3 is still a very good game and I will play it for hours to come, but all things considered I feel it's a downgrade from BC2 which is unfortunate. Realism in computer games has never been directly related to a good game experience (try a flight sim with 100 % realism if you don't believe me), and I think that's the only thing holding BF3 back. If it was a just a few notches less "hardcore" it would be an even more enjoyable experience even though the BF2 purists would probably beg to differ.
The multiplayer mode of BF3 is clearly a continuation of the one in BF2 and its strong points lie in things that were good in that one. There are a lot of small things to unlock, lots of weapons and gadgets to keep you playing for a long time. I can't help comparing this game to BFBC2 since that was the previous one, one that I really enjoyed and put a lot of hours into. BC2 has a more casual approach where BF3 goes for realism which I think is a bit of a negative. I have only played the BF3 multiplayer around six hours so it's a bit early to come to conclusions, but there was a spontaneous teamwork that appeared out of nowhere in BC2 that is not around in the same way in BF3. Also these games stand and fall with the maps available. When it comes to rush mode, maps with a lot of open spaces are not always a good idea since it becomes too easy for the defenders to just sit back and well, defend. Slightly more confined spaces are better since rush after all just is bomb defusion mode of Counter-Strike ported to Battlefield. In conquest mode large maps are fine since there is no front line where all the players are. I feel the maps in BF3 are not perfect, but with that being said I haven't played nearly enough to learn them so I could be wrong. Not all of the maps in BC2 were perfect either but overall they are better.
I must say that the problem with crashes I have had is really bad of DICE too. You shouldn't release an unfinished game is number one, two is the official support STILL haven't managed to solve the crash issues. Personally I did three different small fixes that I read about on forums at once, so I can't tell which one of them fixed the game for me, but it's really bad I had to go through that channel. Someone who is new to computer games likely wont have the knowledge or patience to scour forums for this kind of stuff, so they will likely return the game for their money back or not buy another BF game again.
Compared to BC2, the average skill level you encounter in BF3 is way higher which I also think is a problem. The only BF game I haven't played extensively is BF2, and in BC2 I almost always finished in the top three players, but I was struggling with BF3 and is just now starting to get the hang of it. It's a bit of a problem that the more you play the better weapons you get because the best players will have even more of an edge on the low-ranked or new players. Losing is never fun, even less so when you're constantly losing an unfair fight against opponents that are more skilled, have better knowledge of the maps which is crucial, AND have way more powerful upgrades.
Another problem with the points and rank system is that in rush when you play as a defender, it's correct to sit around and do nothing guarding the objectives. And this will more than often not gather you that many points. If you go after the attackers you are much more likely to get killed, and it's way easier for the opponents to slip past you and plant the explosives.
BF3 is still a very good game and I will play it for hours to come, but all things considered I feel it's a downgrade from BC2 which is unfortunate. Realism in computer games has never been directly related to a good game experience (try a flight sim with 100 % realism if you don't believe me), and I think that's the only thing holding BF3 back. If it was a just a few notches less "hardcore" it would be an even more enjoyable experience even though the BF2 purists would probably beg to differ.
fredag 11 november 2011
Check those corners!
Danger close!
Like I have proclaimed many times in this 'ere blog, I did in fact get MW3 on its release day. Having played through the campaign mostly on Hardened difficulty in five hours, I sort of regret getting it though. The old Call of Duty games that took place in WWII were really good (-spinoffs on Medal of Honor), and I mostly consider the four last entries guilty pleasures. Call of Duty 4, MW2 and Black Ops are not much more than interactive movies, but once you realize this they are actually quite enjoyable - if very linear - experiences. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the multiplayer mode in these games (epic quickscope ecks dee, ecks dee) so I disregard it when discussing them. In the last entry in the series it is painfully obvious that what the now ousted developer Infinity Ward brought to the table was something special and not easily replaced. On its surface, MW3 looks and plays just like the previous games, but once you look past that you'll notice that something is missing. The three previous games made you feel something - they really felt larger than life and visceral, like computer games directed by Michael Bay. That's why they sold in droves and that's why people keep coming back to the franchise for more.
Essentially MW2 and Black Ops were just reiterations of the first game just as much as MW3, but the "soul" is missing in the latter one. World War III is in full rage in New York, but it just feels meh because there are no memorable characters to connect to. That and the graphics have not evolved one iota since Black Ops. Battlefield 3 has a new graphics engine called Frostbite 2 which looks insanely good, bordering on photorealistic on the highest settings. Compare that to MW3's plastasene, unconvincing and tired old graphics. The weapon models still look pretty nice but that's about it. The computer game industry moves so quickly these days that not keeping up is just not forgivable. Five hours is inadequate for a full price game, and when the multiplayer is deathmatchy, run-and-gun, strategy-less and infested with kids who aren't old enough to play the game that's no excuse. Bottom line: A very dissapointing entrance to the franchise and (spoiler alert) thank God it seems like it's the last one continuing with this storyline.
I've also bought BF3 which I have not been able to play that much due not having a lot of spare time and it crashing on me a lot. I've finally managed to get it to work though and will play it over the weekend to a great extent. From what I've played so far I've enjoyed it a lot more than MW3 to be sure. I'll save it for another blog entry though once I've finished the campaign and played some more multiplayer. Next week will be pretty busy too, with two huge bombs dropping from Nintendo: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land. Well until next time, I'm Oscar Mike out of here and Ramirez - do everything!
Stay frosty!™
Like I have proclaimed many times in this 'ere blog, I did in fact get MW3 on its release day. Having played through the campaign mostly on Hardened difficulty in five hours, I sort of regret getting it though. The old Call of Duty games that took place in WWII were really good (-spinoffs on Medal of Honor), and I mostly consider the four last entries guilty pleasures. Call of Duty 4, MW2 and Black Ops are not much more than interactive movies, but once you realize this they are actually quite enjoyable - if very linear - experiences. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the multiplayer mode in these games (epic quickscope ecks dee, ecks dee) so I disregard it when discussing them. In the last entry in the series it is painfully obvious that what the now ousted developer Infinity Ward brought to the table was something special and not easily replaced. On its surface, MW3 looks and plays just like the previous games, but once you look past that you'll notice that something is missing. The three previous games made you feel something - they really felt larger than life and visceral, like computer games directed by Michael Bay. That's why they sold in droves and that's why people keep coming back to the franchise for more.
Essentially MW2 and Black Ops were just reiterations of the first game just as much as MW3, but the "soul" is missing in the latter one. World War III is in full rage in New York, but it just feels meh because there are no memorable characters to connect to. That and the graphics have not evolved one iota since Black Ops. Battlefield 3 has a new graphics engine called Frostbite 2 which looks insanely good, bordering on photorealistic on the highest settings. Compare that to MW3's plastasene, unconvincing and tired old graphics. The weapon models still look pretty nice but that's about it. The computer game industry moves so quickly these days that not keeping up is just not forgivable. Five hours is inadequate for a full price game, and when the multiplayer is deathmatchy, run-and-gun, strategy-less and infested with kids who aren't old enough to play the game that's no excuse. Bottom line: A very dissapointing entrance to the franchise and (spoiler alert) thank God it seems like it's the last one continuing with this storyline.
I've also bought BF3 which I have not been able to play that much due not having a lot of spare time and it crashing on me a lot. I've finally managed to get it to work though and will play it over the weekend to a great extent. From what I've played so far I've enjoyed it a lot more than MW3 to be sure. I'll save it for another blog entry though once I've finished the campaign and played some more multiplayer. Next week will be pretty busy too, with two huge bombs dropping from Nintendo: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land. Well until next time, I'm Oscar Mike out of here and Ramirez - do everything!
Stay frosty!™
söndag 7 augusti 2011
Fable III
Hi!
As I have mentioned in a previous entry not too long ago I got a new X-Box 360 Slim when my old one RRoD'ed. The guy who sold it to me managed to convince me to buy the package deal with two extra games - Halo: Reach and Fable III. Since I don't have anything to play right now, I decided to at least give Fable III a chance and check it out.
Fable III is an RPG that takes place in a fantasy world called Albion (an anagram of Albino perhaps??). It says in the intro of the game that it takes place in the age of industry, but when playing the game it becomes apparent that it's really about Fable III being steam punk rather than fantasy. At first I thought this was a bit of a bummer, because I prefer straight-up high fantasy to steam punk, but the latter works fine in Fable III. This is a fantasy-skewed steam punk where there still is a lot of magic and melee combat involved (I don't know about you, but did they really use swords in combat after the age of industry had been introduced here on Earth?).
The game plays pretty much like any other RPG. You are a man or woman on a quest to bring the people together to overthrow the evil dictator who rules the kingdom, this person also happens to be your brother. You hack and slash through monsters to level up. I didn't realize it until I had finished the game and saw the credits, but this actually is a Peter Molyneux game, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. As you play the game you can decide to go on all these strange side quests, like interacting and becoming friends with NPCs. You can also marry people and have children... All for an extremely mariginal gain, it's just thrown in there. There are also many choices throughout the game to determine whether you are good or evil - which I suppose change the ending, I've only finished it while being a goody two shoes.
I think Fable III was a nice experience, not something you write home to your parents about, but perfectly fine all things considered. The graphics are of varied quality, the characters for example look so-so. I get that they are supposed to be at least somewhat stylized, but their textures and models look only slightly better than those found in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which is an old game by now. The enviroments look awesome though, probably the best I've seen in a game so far actually. Normally I'm not a huge fan of RPGs outside of Zelda or Pokémon, but they did a good job here of mixing it up with hack n' slash and it also has some good voice acting by who has to be John Cleese among others. My main complaint concerns the story and pacing of the game. It's hard to say too much without spoiling it, but when you think the game is going to be over, a deus-ex-machina-like revelation occurs and you have to continue playing through a seemingly pointless and strange final portion of the game. They could've handled this part better for sure, but it's just a minor annoyance in an otherwise nice game.
Laters!
As I have mentioned in a previous entry not too long ago I got a new X-Box 360 Slim when my old one RRoD'ed. The guy who sold it to me managed to convince me to buy the package deal with two extra games - Halo: Reach and Fable III. Since I don't have anything to play right now, I decided to at least give Fable III a chance and check it out.
Fable III is an RPG that takes place in a fantasy world called Albion (an anagram of Albino perhaps??). It says in the intro of the game that it takes place in the age of industry, but when playing the game it becomes apparent that it's really about Fable III being steam punk rather than fantasy. At first I thought this was a bit of a bummer, because I prefer straight-up high fantasy to steam punk, but the latter works fine in Fable III. This is a fantasy-skewed steam punk where there still is a lot of magic and melee combat involved (I don't know about you, but did they really use swords in combat after the age of industry had been introduced here on Earth?).
The game plays pretty much like any other RPG. You are a man or woman on a quest to bring the people together to overthrow the evil dictator who rules the kingdom, this person also happens to be your brother. You hack and slash through monsters to level up. I didn't realize it until I had finished the game and saw the credits, but this actually is a Peter Molyneux game, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. As you play the game you can decide to go on all these strange side quests, like interacting and becoming friends with NPCs. You can also marry people and have children... All for an extremely mariginal gain, it's just thrown in there. There are also many choices throughout the game to determine whether you are good or evil - which I suppose change the ending, I've only finished it while being a goody two shoes.
I think Fable III was a nice experience, not something you write home to your parents about, but perfectly fine all things considered. The graphics are of varied quality, the characters for example look so-so. I get that they are supposed to be at least somewhat stylized, but their textures and models look only slightly better than those found in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which is an old game by now. The enviroments look awesome though, probably the best I've seen in a game so far actually. Normally I'm not a huge fan of RPGs outside of Zelda or Pokémon, but they did a good job here of mixing it up with hack n' slash and it also has some good voice acting by who has to be John Cleese among others. My main complaint concerns the story and pacing of the game. It's hard to say too much without spoiling it, but when you think the game is going to be over, a deus-ex-machina-like revelation occurs and you have to continue playing through a seemingly pointless and strange final portion of the game. They could've handled this part better for sure, but it's just a minor annoyance in an otherwise nice game.
Laters!
torsdag 28 juli 2011
Dules of the Planeswalkers 2012
Hello!
I thought that I'd already written something about DotP12, but it appears I've only ever so briefly mentioned it, so here are a few short words about it. It's basically the same game as the first one only a bit updated. The decks now each have a planeswalker associated with it, and there is a multiplayer "Archenemy"-mode. The AI has been slightly improved, the amount of incredibly stupid plays it does has been cut down significantly. The Archenemy mode works fine, I've only played it with computer allies so I think this one would be a lot more fun with other people. One of my biggest gripes with the game is that the decks are not varied enough.
While it's good that you now can take any card out of the decks (not just the ones you unlock like in the first one) and that the lands are changed automatically based on how many other cards are in the deck, they are all basicly aggro decks where you play creatures and attack with them. This means you get tired of them quickly, the only real fun deck that does something different is the Kiora Atua's blue-green manaramp deck. It however has some bad matchups, if you play against the illusion deck you are basically going to win one out of ten games. Speaking of Jace's deck, that one should not have been in the game to start with. The illusions are stupid creatures to base a deck around since if your opponent has access to removal they suck, if not you are just going to straight up win. Worst of all though is that Jace always seems to have the Lord of the Unreal which just makes the game very non-interactive which in Magic is never fun. All in all I would still very much recommend the game to new players and old alike, even though it is simple it's fun and worth the money.
Later!
I thought that I'd already written something about DotP12, but it appears I've only ever so briefly mentioned it, so here are a few short words about it. It's basically the same game as the first one only a bit updated. The decks now each have a planeswalker associated with it, and there is a multiplayer "Archenemy"-mode. The AI has been slightly improved, the amount of incredibly stupid plays it does has been cut down significantly. The Archenemy mode works fine, I've only played it with computer allies so I think this one would be a lot more fun with other people. One of my biggest gripes with the game is that the decks are not varied enough.
While it's good that you now can take any card out of the decks (not just the ones you unlock like in the first one) and that the lands are changed automatically based on how many other cards are in the deck, they are all basicly aggro decks where you play creatures and attack with them. This means you get tired of them quickly, the only real fun deck that does something different is the Kiora Atua's blue-green manaramp deck. It however has some bad matchups, if you play against the illusion deck you are basically going to win one out of ten games. Speaking of Jace's deck, that one should not have been in the game to start with. The illusions are stupid creatures to base a deck around since if your opponent has access to removal they suck, if not you are just going to straight up win. Worst of all though is that Jace always seems to have the Lord of the Unreal which just makes the game very non-interactive which in Magic is never fun. All in all I would still very much recommend the game to new players and old alike, even though it is simple it's fun and worth the money.
Later!
onsdag 27 juli 2011
Mirror's Edge
Hi!
It's slower than slow on the video game front right now, I guess it's the time of the year. You're supposed to be outside and play in the sun, not be indoors and play vidya gaems. The next game I'm interested in won't be out until September, and that's Dead Island (talk about an unfortunate title considering the terrible recent events that took place in Norway). Gotta keep busy somehow though, so I downloaded Mirror's Edge from Steam. I've always been hesitant about getting this game from the reviews and what I've heard about Mirror's Edge, but it was cheap and like I said I have no other game right now to play.
When playing the game it becomes clear that it was advertised completely wrong (I believe most of the reviews touched upon this as well). If you've seen the movie Fight Club, it was advertised as an action film in the trailers, even though it's more of a psychological thriller/drama with a very small numbers of action scenes in it. In a similar fashion, Mirror's Edge was wrongly portrayed as an FPS, when it's really Le Parkour-the game. If you're not familiar with Le Parkour, it's a kind of urban "sport", where the participant jumps from buildings to buildings and do flips and other crazy stunts, originating from France. And that's what you do in this game, as a "runner" -- a sort of unlawful Robin Hoodesque character, although you are gathering information instead of riches.
In the game you are Faith, who lives in a 1984-inspired heavily controlled world, a sort of police state. Most buildings and surfaces in the city are white - supposedly heightening the feeling that everything is ordered and under control - although the feeling it creates to me is more that it feels like you are in a hospital or a big playground with bright colors (not just the whites). In fact I think that if the city was more gritty and grey, it would feel more realistic and heighten the tension because as it is now you never really take the game seriously since the world it takes place in feels so plastascene.
Personally I really liked the game, it was a pleasant surprise. As mentioned I was very hesitant after having read the reviews for the game, but I don't really agree with the points that seemed to be the consensus of the reviews. That's a first right, me not agreeing with professional reviews of computer games? First of all, this game never claims to be an FPS, it just so happens there are guards that try to stop you and sometimes you have no other choice than to unarm them and use their gun against them. Faith is not supposed to be professional at handling weapons, so it's only natural you can't aim down the sights, that the accuracy of the weapons is not perfect and so on. The game was made by DICE after all, the creators of the Battlefield franchise, so if they wanted perfect weapon handling they would have no problem implementing it, that's for certain.
Another common critisism was that the game is too short, and while it's certainly not Heroes of Might and Magic-length, eight hours is fine. Most games today are a lot shorter - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, CoD: Black Ops and Portal are all much shorter and they have never gotten much of any critisism for that. And speaking of Portal, that's one game this one really reminds me of which makes Mirror's Edge flopping even more confounding. Portal has absolutely zero gunplay, but still was a huge success and has a big following on the Internet. DICE probably almost literally shot themselves in the foot by including guns in ME at all, if they wouldn't have, maybe the puzzle fanatics would've found this gem instead of being turned off by the huge FPS-stamp on its figurative forehead. Because to me ME is everything Portal ever wanted to be and then some.
When playing Mirror's Edge it felt like a breath of fresh air in a more and more homogenic video game market, which is probably one of the reasons why it supposedly didn't sell that well. It was just too different in a way that its supposed target audience (FPS-fans), did not know what to make of. I also think that it lies in the nature of people who like this genre that running away is not what you want to do, you want to have a weapon and confront every danger with your own lethal force. Oh well, I sure hope they make a sequel. And now I'm going back to thinking what the hell I'm going to spend my spare time with until September. Emulators I guess?
Until next time, signing off.
It's slower than slow on the video game front right now, I guess it's the time of the year. You're supposed to be outside and play in the sun, not be indoors and play vidya gaems. The next game I'm interested in won't be out until September, and that's Dead Island (talk about an unfortunate title considering the terrible recent events that took place in Norway). Gotta keep busy somehow though, so I downloaded Mirror's Edge from Steam. I've always been hesitant about getting this game from the reviews and what I've heard about Mirror's Edge, but it was cheap and like I said I have no other game right now to play.
When playing the game it becomes clear that it was advertised completely wrong (I believe most of the reviews touched upon this as well). If you've seen the movie Fight Club, it was advertised as an action film in the trailers, even though it's more of a psychological thriller/drama with a very small numbers of action scenes in it. In a similar fashion, Mirror's Edge was wrongly portrayed as an FPS, when it's really Le Parkour-the game. If you're not familiar with Le Parkour, it's a kind of urban "sport", where the participant jumps from buildings to buildings and do flips and other crazy stunts, originating from France. And that's what you do in this game, as a "runner" -- a sort of unlawful Robin Hoodesque character, although you are gathering information instead of riches.
In the game you are Faith, who lives in a 1984-inspired heavily controlled world, a sort of police state. Most buildings and surfaces in the city are white - supposedly heightening the feeling that everything is ordered and under control - although the feeling it creates to me is more that it feels like you are in a hospital or a big playground with bright colors (not just the whites). In fact I think that if the city was more gritty and grey, it would feel more realistic and heighten the tension because as it is now you never really take the game seriously since the world it takes place in feels so plastascene.
Personally I really liked the game, it was a pleasant surprise. As mentioned I was very hesitant after having read the reviews for the game, but I don't really agree with the points that seemed to be the consensus of the reviews. That's a first right, me not agreeing with professional reviews of computer games? First of all, this game never claims to be an FPS, it just so happens there are guards that try to stop you and sometimes you have no other choice than to unarm them and use their gun against them. Faith is not supposed to be professional at handling weapons, so it's only natural you can't aim down the sights, that the accuracy of the weapons is not perfect and so on. The game was made by DICE after all, the creators of the Battlefield franchise, so if they wanted perfect weapon handling they would have no problem implementing it, that's for certain.
Another common critisism was that the game is too short, and while it's certainly not Heroes of Might and Magic-length, eight hours is fine. Most games today are a lot shorter - Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, CoD: Black Ops and Portal are all much shorter and they have never gotten much of any critisism for that. And speaking of Portal, that's one game this one really reminds me of which makes Mirror's Edge flopping even more confounding. Portal has absolutely zero gunplay, but still was a huge success and has a big following on the Internet. DICE probably almost literally shot themselves in the foot by including guns in ME at all, if they wouldn't have, maybe the puzzle fanatics would've found this gem instead of being turned off by the huge FPS-stamp on its figurative forehead. Because to me ME is everything Portal ever wanted to be and then some.
When playing Mirror's Edge it felt like a breath of fresh air in a more and more homogenic video game market, which is probably one of the reasons why it supposedly didn't sell that well. It was just too different in a way that its supposed target audience (FPS-fans), did not know what to make of. I also think that it lies in the nature of people who like this genre that running away is not what you want to do, you want to have a weapon and confront every danger with your own lethal force. Oh well, I sure hope they make a sequel. And now I'm going back to thinking what the hell I'm going to spend my spare time with until September. Emulators I guess?
Until next time, signing off.
fredag 8 juli 2011
Games on mobile devices
Hello!
I've recently given in to temptation and bought myself an iPhone 4. Like any computer nerd worth his salt, I've always reviled Apple and their products (namely Mac's), but I guess even my self-imposed restrictiveness when it comes to electronic gadgets has a limit. To be fair I've owned an iPod for quite some time, since my previous mp3-player by Sony did not like when you played *cough* *cough* "home-made" mp3-files on it (i.e. ones not downloaded legally or ripped from a CD you own). Not to mention that the iPod had a much better interface than my previous mp3-player.
This is a blog about video games so that's what I had in mind writing about, believe it or not! I've downloaded Resident Evil 4 Lite for my iPhone, as well as Mega Man II Lite. Now, my favorite genre when it comes to video games is without a doubt games that include some sort of action component. For example Mega Man is an action game where timing is of the outmost essence. This becomes a bit of a hassle when it comes to playing a game like this on a mobile device which - unlike the 3DS for example - has no buttons. You instead need to use the touch screen to control the game, and it's not perfect since you can never really tell when you've "pushed" the right button, and it doesn't always respond. Unlike on a real console where pressing a button always nets you the same result. Games like Angry Birds work fine on an iPhone since it's a slower kind of game, but trying to jump in Mega Man and failing is equal to dying instantly.
Some people on various discussion forums on the Internet claim that the iPhone and its imitators is going to take over the handheld gaming scene completely, which I think will not be the case because of the reasons I've discussed in this post. The library of games available might be very extensive, and downloading a game sure is cheap (although at least on my iPhone I have to download it to the computer via iTunes first, because of limitations imposed by my operator (I think)), but a console like 3DS is made purely (well) for gaming and it shows.
Laters!
I've recently given in to temptation and bought myself an iPhone 4. Like any computer nerd worth his salt, I've always reviled Apple and their products (namely Mac's), but I guess even my self-imposed restrictiveness when it comes to electronic gadgets has a limit. To be fair I've owned an iPod for quite some time, since my previous mp3-player by Sony did not like when you played *cough* *cough* "home-made" mp3-files on it (i.e. ones not downloaded legally or ripped from a CD you own). Not to mention that the iPod had a much better interface than my previous mp3-player.
This is a blog about video games so that's what I had in mind writing about, believe it or not! I've downloaded Resident Evil 4 Lite for my iPhone, as well as Mega Man II Lite. Now, my favorite genre when it comes to video games is without a doubt games that include some sort of action component. For example Mega Man is an action game where timing is of the outmost essence. This becomes a bit of a hassle when it comes to playing a game like this on a mobile device which - unlike the 3DS for example - has no buttons. You instead need to use the touch screen to control the game, and it's not perfect since you can never really tell when you've "pushed" the right button, and it doesn't always respond. Unlike on a real console where pressing a button always nets you the same result. Games like Angry Birds work fine on an iPhone since it's a slower kind of game, but trying to jump in Mega Man and failing is equal to dying instantly.
Some people on various discussion forums on the Internet claim that the iPhone and its imitators is going to take over the handheld gaming scene completely, which I think will not be the case because of the reasons I've discussed in this post. The library of games available might be very extensive, and downloading a game sure is cheap (although at least on my iPhone I have to download it to the computer via iTunes first, because of limitations imposed by my operator (I think)), but a console like 3DS is made purely (well) for gaming and it shows.
Laters!
fredag 17 juni 2011
L. A. Noire
Hi!
Even though L.A. Noire has gotten a lot of praise in the review department, and I recognize it as a very good game, it's interesting that there are far less points to talk about in it, compared to Duke Nukem Forever. The controversy surrounding all the negative reviews gives you a lot to talk about and discuss when it comes to DNF, whereas L.A. Noire is "just another game".
The game borrows much from the motion picture L. A. Confidential, one of my absolute favorites. That movie also happens to be based on a book written by my favorite author: James Ellroy. So you can imagine I was stoked about getting to play this game.
The graphics are really nice and detailed, much like the GTA games that use the same engine. The most interesting part is of course the hyped "motion captured" faces, that express more than any other game has done before. This is crucial because the core of the gameplay is trying to guess whether people you are interrogating are lying or not. To me it feels like Team Bondi, the developers of the game, put a little too much faith into their new fangled toy. Because, even though it looks awesome, it's still really hard to tell whether an animated character in a video game is lying or not. That is unless of course you can figure it out by logic and prove that they are lying with a clue that you've found. As mentioned, this guessing game is the core of the game which proves a bit problematic since it's just too damned hard. Of course, you can't really fail a case, you will progress further even though you end up killing an innocent person, and you can even restart the cases to try again. Since you already know at least one wrong answer, trying again just seems like a chore of coming up with the right answer by trial and error. Another problem with failing to guess the correct answer, is that once you do you will get less clues which turns into a downward spiral of failure. Except for the interrogations, there is nothing to complain about when it comes to gameplay. Searching for clues and trying to figure out whodunit is a nice relaxing exercise, and for once you actually have to think while playing a game which is nice.
The story is everything you would want from a game like this, ridden with clichés/genre conventions - whatever you want to call them. A highly recommended game if you are a fan of noire/crime fiction in general.
Later!
Even though L.A. Noire has gotten a lot of praise in the review department, and I recognize it as a very good game, it's interesting that there are far less points to talk about in it, compared to Duke Nukem Forever. The controversy surrounding all the negative reviews gives you a lot to talk about and discuss when it comes to DNF, whereas L.A. Noire is "just another game".
The game borrows much from the motion picture L. A. Confidential, one of my absolute favorites. That movie also happens to be based on a book written by my favorite author: James Ellroy. So you can imagine I was stoked about getting to play this game.
The graphics are really nice and detailed, much like the GTA games that use the same engine. The most interesting part is of course the hyped "motion captured" faces, that express more than any other game has done before. This is crucial because the core of the gameplay is trying to guess whether people you are interrogating are lying or not. To me it feels like Team Bondi, the developers of the game, put a little too much faith into their new fangled toy. Because, even though it looks awesome, it's still really hard to tell whether an animated character in a video game is lying or not. That is unless of course you can figure it out by logic and prove that they are lying with a clue that you've found. As mentioned, this guessing game is the core of the game which proves a bit problematic since it's just too damned hard. Of course, you can't really fail a case, you will progress further even though you end up killing an innocent person, and you can even restart the cases to try again. Since you already know at least one wrong answer, trying again just seems like a chore of coming up with the right answer by trial and error. Another problem with failing to guess the correct answer, is that once you do you will get less clues which turns into a downward spiral of failure. Except for the interrogations, there is nothing to complain about when it comes to gameplay. Searching for clues and trying to figure out whodunit is a nice relaxing exercise, and for once you actually have to think while playing a game which is nice.
The story is everything you would want from a game like this, ridden with clichés/genre conventions - whatever you want to call them. A highly recommended game if you are a fan of noire/crime fiction in general.
Later!
torsdag 16 juni 2011
"I'm from Las Vegas and I say kill 'em all!"
Hi!
It's busy times now when it comes to video games for me. Got L.A. Noire on release date but I got sick so I didn't play it until a few weeks later. Yesterday I downloaded Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012, which doesn't seem like it adds that much but still is enjoyable. However, I'll save those two for other entries since I want to talk about something that is hot off the presses right now; namely the Dukester himself's return to form (?): Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released!
I'm an old school gamer and for sure I played Duke Nukem 3D back in the day, in fact I even played the 2D-ones. Duke 3D took the Doom-engine in a whole new direction with the interactive enviroments, much more advanced level structuring and probably most of all, letting you play an actual defined character. The Duke has always been a walking stereotype, much like the borrowed movie quotes he keeps yapping; a mish-mash of various campy 80's and 90's action flicks' mary-sue-like anti-heroes. It really feels wrong calling the Duke mary-sue, but he sure is the male variant of that, even more so in the new game since his health regenerates (sadly) and it takes a lot before he dies. Even though D3D was fun and enjoyable for its time, I still have a feeling that most people remember it as much better than it actually was. Most of the hype concerned how innovative it was, not so much about the quality of the game itself. The game shone in the first episode, the other were more of the same and the gameplay became rather tedious (a bit like Doom in that the first episode - Knee Deep in the Mud - is hands down the best.
The fact that it's been 14 years is most assuredly a contributing factor to people (well video game reviewers, it's not confirmed that you can call them people) forgetting that D3D was not the paragon of gaming people remember it as, greatly influencing their confounding stellar expectations of DNF. It reminds me very much of the Star Wars-prequels that - all things considered - were never going to live up to people's expectations. DNF has gotten awful reviews, the meanest one being the one on Gamespot where the X-box 360-version got 3.0. When reading these reviews it feels like the reviewer has decided what to think about this game before even playing it. Big parts of the texts is just downright bashing, far from any sort of constructive critisism. The reviewers are really scrutinizing the game with a magnifying glass looking for even the smallest detail to hate on. It's rather embarrassing to be honest, but I suppose the 14 year wait warrants it, not to say calls for it. It feels like the reviewers are mad that George Broussard didn't invite them to his birthday party when they were kids or something, and this is their long in coming way of getting back at him.
I bought this game expecting very little. Through the years I've read the reports and seen the screenshots of the latest engine they've used for the game. The last one was the video that a guy who worked on the game leaked right about the time when 3D Realms said they pulled the plug for good. I really liked the look of that video, and judging from the final game that's exactly the graphics they've used in the end. They've sort of stitched together what they had as best they could in order to make it as coherent of a game as possible. And with me, that is perfectly fine.
At the time of writing this I've played through probably around 3/4's of the game, and the bottom line is that it's FUN. Period. I am actually enjoying myself playing this video game. There's a challenge and I want to continue playing and exploring the area that comes next. And to be fair, I don't think you can ask for more from a game. It is sad, if not deplorable, that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare part ad nauseam is the measuring standard for a good FPS game today. In my opinion, by now CoD is not much of a game, it's more of an interactive film. And like I've said before I get the CoD's on release, but when all FPS-games just have to be CoD that really puts a hampering limitation on the genre.
There are a lot of problems with DNF. DNF is not a great game, by any means. The graphics are fine but dated, especially certain parts. Coming from the extremely advanced facial animation in L.A. Noire and playing a supposedly brand new game with barely any facial animation at all like in DNF, is not very nice. There's a strange blur effect on all textures that are far away which I think they could've gotten rid of all together. But the graphics are still functional and do what they need to, I mean look at Minecraft! Graphics have never been everything in a game and it sure as hell rings true for DNF as well.
The sound is not more than OK. It was a part of D3D that was really good, the weapons sound a bit weak here and overall it's not as spot on as in the predecessor. The intro version of the Duke Nukem-theme rocks, but the rest of the music is quite forgettable.
The game plays like an ancient relic from the Half-Life 2-era. A lot of water has passed under the bridges since then, which poses a bit of a problem. The regenerating health and two weapon-limitation is a Cod/Halo-era feature that they've jammed into the game with brute force. It clashes with the HL2-era mechanics like a high speed train into a rock wall. I'm just going to say that I hate the aforementioned two alterations to the Duke formula and leave it at that, they add nothing and just take away from the experience. The Half-Life games brought scripted events into the world of gaming, which were at the time considered the best thing since sliced bread, but now just feel unendingly stale. My hope is that the reason the game reviewers are not aware why the scripted events exist in the game, is because they simply didn't play games back then. Because if they did and still can't make the connection there is simply no excuse for what they are writing in their reviews. There is no question that if DNF was released a couple of years after HL2, the reviewers would praise the scripted events and how they provided a nice pause from the action at points in the game - instead of them being a negative. Of course, today we live in the CoD-land where the action has to be in warp nine at all times, otherwise it's a bad game. I for one think the variety of the gameplay in DNF feels like a breath of fresh air, as weird as it sounds, compared to the on-rails feeling of games like CoD. And don't get me started on the turret sequences, CoD has TONS of turret sequences yet the ones in DNF get all the bad rap? You have to be kidding me.
People should play this game and judge for themselves, it's possible I like it mostly because of the nostalgia. But that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, the old school gamers who played D3D is the target audience Gearbox should've gone for, not the CoD/Halo-kids with ADHD who have not taken their pills. Next up: I will discuss L.A. Noire and trying to detect lies successfully.
Later!
It's busy times now when it comes to video games for me. Got L.A. Noire on release date but I got sick so I didn't play it until a few weeks later. Yesterday I downloaded Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012, which doesn't seem like it adds that much but still is enjoyable. However, I'll save those two for other entries since I want to talk about something that is hot off the presses right now; namely the Dukester himself's return to form (?): Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released!
I'm an old school gamer and for sure I played Duke Nukem 3D back in the day, in fact I even played the 2D-ones. Duke 3D took the Doom-engine in a whole new direction with the interactive enviroments, much more advanced level structuring and probably most of all, letting you play an actual defined character. The Duke has always been a walking stereotype, much like the borrowed movie quotes he keeps yapping; a mish-mash of various campy 80's and 90's action flicks' mary-sue-like anti-heroes. It really feels wrong calling the Duke mary-sue, but he sure is the male variant of that, even more so in the new game since his health regenerates (sadly) and it takes a lot before he dies. Even though D3D was fun and enjoyable for its time, I still have a feeling that most people remember it as much better than it actually was. Most of the hype concerned how innovative it was, not so much about the quality of the game itself. The game shone in the first episode, the other were more of the same and the gameplay became rather tedious (a bit like Doom in that the first episode - Knee Deep in the Mud - is hands down the best.
The fact that it's been 14 years is most assuredly a contributing factor to people (well video game reviewers, it's not confirmed that you can call them people) forgetting that D3D was not the paragon of gaming people remember it as, greatly influencing their confounding stellar expectations of DNF. It reminds me very much of the Star Wars-prequels that - all things considered - were never going to live up to people's expectations. DNF has gotten awful reviews, the meanest one being the one on Gamespot where the X-box 360-version got 3.0. When reading these reviews it feels like the reviewer has decided what to think about this game before even playing it. Big parts of the texts is just downright bashing, far from any sort of constructive critisism. The reviewers are really scrutinizing the game with a magnifying glass looking for even the smallest detail to hate on. It's rather embarrassing to be honest, but I suppose the 14 year wait warrants it, not to say calls for it. It feels like the reviewers are mad that George Broussard didn't invite them to his birthday party when they were kids or something, and this is their long in coming way of getting back at him.
I bought this game expecting very little. Through the years I've read the reports and seen the screenshots of the latest engine they've used for the game. The last one was the video that a guy who worked on the game leaked right about the time when 3D Realms said they pulled the plug for good. I really liked the look of that video, and judging from the final game that's exactly the graphics they've used in the end. They've sort of stitched together what they had as best they could in order to make it as coherent of a game as possible. And with me, that is perfectly fine.
At the time of writing this I've played through probably around 3/4's of the game, and the bottom line is that it's FUN. Period. I am actually enjoying myself playing this video game. There's a challenge and I want to continue playing and exploring the area that comes next. And to be fair, I don't think you can ask for more from a game. It is sad, if not deplorable, that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare part ad nauseam is the measuring standard for a good FPS game today. In my opinion, by now CoD is not much of a game, it's more of an interactive film. And like I've said before I get the CoD's on release, but when all FPS-games just have to be CoD that really puts a hampering limitation on the genre.
There are a lot of problems with DNF. DNF is not a great game, by any means. The graphics are fine but dated, especially certain parts. Coming from the extremely advanced facial animation in L.A. Noire and playing a supposedly brand new game with barely any facial animation at all like in DNF, is not very nice. There's a strange blur effect on all textures that are far away which I think they could've gotten rid of all together. But the graphics are still functional and do what they need to, I mean look at Minecraft! Graphics have never been everything in a game and it sure as hell rings true for DNF as well.
The sound is not more than OK. It was a part of D3D that was really good, the weapons sound a bit weak here and overall it's not as spot on as in the predecessor. The intro version of the Duke Nukem-theme rocks, but the rest of the music is quite forgettable.
The game plays like an ancient relic from the Half-Life 2-era. A lot of water has passed under the bridges since then, which poses a bit of a problem. The regenerating health and two weapon-limitation is a Cod/Halo-era feature that they've jammed into the game with brute force. It clashes with the HL2-era mechanics like a high speed train into a rock wall. I'm just going to say that I hate the aforementioned two alterations to the Duke formula and leave it at that, they add nothing and just take away from the experience. The Half-Life games brought scripted events into the world of gaming, which were at the time considered the best thing since sliced bread, but now just feel unendingly stale. My hope is that the reason the game reviewers are not aware why the scripted events exist in the game, is because they simply didn't play games back then. Because if they did and still can't make the connection there is simply no excuse for what they are writing in their reviews. There is no question that if DNF was released a couple of years after HL2, the reviewers would praise the scripted events and how they provided a nice pause from the action at points in the game - instead of them being a negative. Of course, today we live in the CoD-land where the action has to be in warp nine at all times, otherwise it's a bad game. I for one think the variety of the gameplay in DNF feels like a breath of fresh air, as weird as it sounds, compared to the on-rails feeling of games like CoD. And don't get me started on the turret sequences, CoD has TONS of turret sequences yet the ones in DNF get all the bad rap? You have to be kidding me.
People should play this game and judge for themselves, it's possible I like it mostly because of the nostalgia. But that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing, the old school gamers who played D3D is the target audience Gearbox should've gone for, not the CoD/Halo-kids with ADHD who have not taken their pills. Next up: I will discuss L.A. Noire and trying to detect lies successfully.
Later!
onsdag 18 maj 2011
Red Ring of Death
Yo!
I've had my X-box 360 for more than six years and it has worked like a charm all those years, up until now. All the talk about "Red Ring of Death", I mostly wrote off as a hate campaign from jealous Sony-fanboys, but last week reality hit me when my 360 froze during the intro animation, and promptly RRoD'd when I tried to reboot it. The warranty lasts for three years, so the alternatives were to either send it in to Microsoft and wait one to four weeks for them to repair it, use some home-made reparation kit, or simply buy a new one. Sending it in for repairs seemed like the cheapest alternative, but since L.A. Noire is going to be released on friday I don't really want to wait a month to play that game. So I figured I'd buy a new console, a 360 Slim with a 250 gig hardrive. One of the biggest upsides of this one is that it looks way better than the old version.
I bought the bundle that comes with Halo: Reach and Fable III. Yes, I actually bought a Halo-game, but the guy who sold it to me was very convincing. Unfortunately, as I played it all my fears were realized as it was a highly mediocre game. The graphics look pretty bad, grey and brown with few details. Gameplay is as poor as you would expect an FPS-game on a console to be, except pretty much worse since the auto-aim which console FPS's rely heavily on in order to be playable, is turned way down. The enemies look boring, the story and gameplay plays very much like Call of Duty in space (well, technically on another planet). This game got a 9.5 on Gamespot which is unbelievable, I know I go on about this, but I just can't get over it. Fantasy RPG-games are not really my cup of tea usually, so I haven't had the time to check Fable III out, but I will when I get around to it.
Laters!
Yo!
I've had my X-box 360 for more than six years and it has worked like a charm all those years, up until now. All the talk about "Red Ring of Death", I mostly wrote off as a hate campaign from jealous Sony-fanboys, but last week reality hit me when my 360 froze during the intro animation, and promptly RRoD'd when I tried to reboot it. The warranty lasts for three years, so the alternatives were to either send it in to Microsoft and wait one to four weeks for them to repair it, use some home-made reparation kit, or simply buy a new one. Sending it in for repairs seemed like the cheapest alternative, but since L.A. Noire is going to be released on friday I don't really want to wait a month to play that game. So I figured I'd buy a new console, a 360 Slim with a 250 gig hardrive. One of the biggest upsides of this one is that it looks way better than the old version.
I bought the bundle that comes with Halo: Reach and Fable III. Yes, I actually bought a Halo-game, but the guy who sold it to me was very convincing. Unfortunately, as I played it all my fears were realized as it was a highly mediocre game. The graphics look pretty bad, grey and brown with few details. Gameplay is as poor as you would expect an FPS-game on a console to be, except pretty much worse since the auto-aim which console FPS's rely heavily on in order to be playable, is turned way down. The enemies look boring, the story and gameplay plays very much like Call of Duty in space (well, technically on another planet). This game got a 9.5 on Gamespot which is unbelievable, I know I go on about this, but I just can't get over it. Fantasy RPG-games are not really my cup of tea usually, so I haven't had the time to check Fable III out, but I will when I get around to it.
Laters!
lördag 30 april 2011
Now I am thinking with portals!
Yo!
I have now completed Portal 2 and Pokémon Black Version. I've already spoken a bit about PBV, and pretty much what I said earlier still held true throughout the game. The developers of the game have upped the difficulty a few notches from Pearl/Diamond for example, which is a big plus in my book. Instead of just leveling the hell out of your starter pokémon, you now have to have good reserves in your team of other types. Some trainers you meet have pokémon that can use attacks of completely different types, or simply use different pokémon like one fire type, one grass and so on. Still, leveling your starter pokémon a lot works for most fights since it will outclass your opponents because of the higher level, but all in all the game is a lot harder. I also like that they've done away with some of the more unnecessary elements of the game, like baking your pokémon a cake (it's a lie, ECKSS DEE ECKS DEE), planting seeds in order to harvest berries or having to enter it into a beauty contest... This makes the game flow nicer but also makes it a bit less interesting I guess.
As far as the design of the new pokémon goes it's probably the most dissapointing part of the game. It seems as if they are running out of ideas since most of the pokémon are uninspired, bland or plain boring. I mean, who wants to have a pig as their starting pokémon? Nothing rivals the pokémon in the original game, Pearl/Diamond was fine bit a bit too strange and outlandish in general I think. The question is whether we'll see something as good as the first game in this department, time will tell, as long as the franchise keeps selling like butter on a hot day there is still a chance.
I got the original Portal when I bought the Orange Box a while back. I bought that bundle of MODS (because that's what it is), since I wanted to play Team Fortress 2 to see what all the fuss was about. I was severely unimpressed by TF2, and played Portal only since I got it too with the aforementioned hot deal. Portal 1 was a pretty fun and nice puzzle game (I do love me a the Adventures of Lolo), but my major gripe was that it was too short. It's amazing what a following it has gained considering you can easily finish it under four hours and there's just not much in terms of substance, in every level you do the same thing.
Portal 2 is more of a real game, at least that's what it tries to be. It has a different tone, where Portal 1 had a mostly humoristic tone, Portal 2 is more grim and goes for a more post-apocalyptic feeling not different from the one found in Half-Life 1 and 2. The game certainly is longer than its predecessor, but it's still not "long" by any means. I finished it in seven hours which is an eon compared to how long it takes to finish the Call of Duty games' single player modes, but it's just not enough for a full-priced game. There's little to no replay value to be found here unlike the CoD games' multiplayer modes for example. All the major game review sites like Gamespot and IGN have given the game raving reviews and 9+ ratings. This is baffling to me to be honest, and I think this might just be the final nail in the coffin for me to ever trust these bought sites again. There is just so much trust you can give these people and it's used up for me. And that's not even taking into account the inflation in the review scores, for this to get a 9.5 rating on IGN is beyond retarded. There is just no way to justify that score, no matter how much you twist, turn or use portals on it.
What I expected from the game, which I don't think is too much to ask for, is some sort of juicy backstory or tie-in to the Half-Life universe. There is a part - minor spoiler alert I guess - of the game which takes place in the lower levels of Aperture where stuff are from the 1950's and the company's beginnings (clearly heavily inspired by the Bioshock games), but Black Mesa is just very briefly mentioned and that's it. Portal 2 plays just like the first one except it's easier, which is not very good. It has more of an overworld feeling where you get to see how the puzzle rooms look from the outside, a bit like looking at the Cube in the movie with the same name. There are more afterconstructions in this game than in the Star Wars prequels combined, and this feels like one of them. Accompanying you on your trip is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-inspired british robot called Weasley. This is a matter of preferences, but I hated this guy from the beginning and just thought he was very annoying. For me, the game would've been better of without him (like the first game). Glados is a more interesting character, especially as you get to know more about her origin.
The graphics look awesome and epic, they really do. Looking at the neverending expanse of cubes that Aperture sience consists of is something else, but there is still something about the source engine that makes everything look unnatural and plastasene. Now granted that's perfectly fine for a game like Portal 2 considering where it takes place, the graphics just don't look as good as in Resident Evil 5 which is not even that recent of a game, or games like Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Which brings me to my next point. Just like in Portal 1, what the game does more than anything is make you want to play a new Half-Life game. And with that I mean a new game, not a modification like Episode 3. They've pushed the source engine as far as it goes now, the next Half-Life needs a new graphics engine.
That turned out much longer than I intended, but oh well might as well use this space to "review" games I play. I'd rather do it here than at the fascistic censoring bought websites that have one hand in the pocket of the game companies.
Laters!
I have now completed Portal 2 and Pokémon Black Version. I've already spoken a bit about PBV, and pretty much what I said earlier still held true throughout the game. The developers of the game have upped the difficulty a few notches from Pearl/Diamond for example, which is a big plus in my book. Instead of just leveling the hell out of your starter pokémon, you now have to have good reserves in your team of other types. Some trainers you meet have pokémon that can use attacks of completely different types, or simply use different pokémon like one fire type, one grass and so on. Still, leveling your starter pokémon a lot works for most fights since it will outclass your opponents because of the higher level, but all in all the game is a lot harder. I also like that they've done away with some of the more unnecessary elements of the game, like baking your pokémon a cake (it's a lie, ECKSS DEE ECKS DEE), planting seeds in order to harvest berries or having to enter it into a beauty contest... This makes the game flow nicer but also makes it a bit less interesting I guess.
As far as the design of the new pokémon goes it's probably the most dissapointing part of the game. It seems as if they are running out of ideas since most of the pokémon are uninspired, bland or plain boring. I mean, who wants to have a pig as their starting pokémon? Nothing rivals the pokémon in the original game, Pearl/Diamond was fine bit a bit too strange and outlandish in general I think. The question is whether we'll see something as good as the first game in this department, time will tell, as long as the franchise keeps selling like butter on a hot day there is still a chance.
I got the original Portal when I bought the Orange Box a while back. I bought that bundle of MODS (because that's what it is), since I wanted to play Team Fortress 2 to see what all the fuss was about. I was severely unimpressed by TF2, and played Portal only since I got it too with the aforementioned hot deal. Portal 1 was a pretty fun and nice puzzle game (I do love me a the Adventures of Lolo), but my major gripe was that it was too short. It's amazing what a following it has gained considering you can easily finish it under four hours and there's just not much in terms of substance, in every level you do the same thing.
Portal 2 is more of a real game, at least that's what it tries to be. It has a different tone, where Portal 1 had a mostly humoristic tone, Portal 2 is more grim and goes for a more post-apocalyptic feeling not different from the one found in Half-Life 1 and 2. The game certainly is longer than its predecessor, but it's still not "long" by any means. I finished it in seven hours which is an eon compared to how long it takes to finish the Call of Duty games' single player modes, but it's just not enough for a full-priced game. There's little to no replay value to be found here unlike the CoD games' multiplayer modes for example. All the major game review sites like Gamespot and IGN have given the game raving reviews and 9+ ratings. This is baffling to me to be honest, and I think this might just be the final nail in the coffin for me to ever trust these bought sites again. There is just so much trust you can give these people and it's used up for me. And that's not even taking into account the inflation in the review scores, for this to get a 9.5 rating on IGN is beyond retarded. There is just no way to justify that score, no matter how much you twist, turn or use portals on it.
What I expected from the game, which I don't think is too much to ask for, is some sort of juicy backstory or tie-in to the Half-Life universe. There is a part - minor spoiler alert I guess - of the game which takes place in the lower levels of Aperture where stuff are from the 1950's and the company's beginnings (clearly heavily inspired by the Bioshock games), but Black Mesa is just very briefly mentioned and that's it. Portal 2 plays just like the first one except it's easier, which is not very good. It has more of an overworld feeling where you get to see how the puzzle rooms look from the outside, a bit like looking at the Cube in the movie with the same name. There are more afterconstructions in this game than in the Star Wars prequels combined, and this feels like one of them. Accompanying you on your trip is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-inspired british robot called Weasley. This is a matter of preferences, but I hated this guy from the beginning and just thought he was very annoying. For me, the game would've been better of without him (like the first game). Glados is a more interesting character, especially as you get to know more about her origin.
The graphics look awesome and epic, they really do. Looking at the neverending expanse of cubes that Aperture sience consists of is something else, but there is still something about the source engine that makes everything look unnatural and plastasene. Now granted that's perfectly fine for a game like Portal 2 considering where it takes place, the graphics just don't look as good as in Resident Evil 5 which is not even that recent of a game, or games like Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Which brings me to my next point. Just like in Portal 1, what the game does more than anything is make you want to play a new Half-Life game. And with that I mean a new game, not a modification like Episode 3. They've pushed the source engine as far as it goes now, the next Half-Life needs a new graphics engine.
That turned out much longer than I intended, but oh well might as well use this space to "review" games I play. I'd rather do it here than at the fascistic censoring bought websites that have one hand in the pocket of the game companies.
Laters!
lördag 16 april 2011
Gotta catch 'em all!
Hi!
Despite buying all of those other games, including actual 3DS-games, the game I've been playing the most is Pokémon Black. I thought I had had enough of this franchise when I finished Heartgold version without dying once, as I mentioned in the last post. It appears not so much, which really shows how addictive these games are. For some reason this game seems every so sliiightly harder than HG, since I've died twice now, the first one being the initial battle you have with your friend "rival". For variety's sake I chosed the grass pokémon, which I've never done before in a pokémon game since I think it seems bad and those pokémons usually are a bit boring. However I think you early on meet pokémons that are good against grass type, like electricity ones, ground types, psychic, fire and so on. Obviously, at least in my play through, your rival has the type that is bad for you (fire), and the first gym leader adapts so it is that one as well.
In Blue/Red I chosed Charmander (which apparently is the most difficult one) and for Diamond I grabbed the water one which coupled with an electricity type I almost never had to switch to any other for any battle whatsoever. Since I ground out the battles with wild pokémon even though I could've ran instead or used repel more, my water type dude (Empoleon eventually, can't remember the name of its first form) had such a high level it didn't matter if the enemies were a bad matchup. The possible exception was when you fought against some dragons towards the end, but even those I could one-shot once I got the opportunity when their attack missed or whatever. The game said you had to train at least three pokémon of different types equally in order to do well, that sure as hell wasn't the case for me. In Diamond I remember losing one single fight throughout the playthrough, which I wouldn't have done if I had not been too stingy with the potions at that point in the game. Of course, the game's main target audience is children, so this is not that strange, the difficulty is geared towards that target audience and I should move on to hardcore games for mature audiences like Halo and Modern Warfare 2... I played Pokémon Red back in the day and I think it's a genius idea for a game, likely I'll continue to play them so bite me. Pokémon is the only RPG I've really enjoyed, which says a lot. And yes I know some people don't think Pokémon is an RPG at all, but I digress. What is it if not an RPG? Some people would even say that Zelda is an RPG game, something I however don't agree with. It's more of an action/adventure game with RPG elements, but no proper leveling for one.
Oh well, gotta go now and watch MorroW pwn some noobs in the TSL!
Later!
Despite buying all of those other games, including actual 3DS-games, the game I've been playing the most is Pokémon Black. I thought I had had enough of this franchise when I finished Heartgold version without dying once, as I mentioned in the last post. It appears not so much, which really shows how addictive these games are. For some reason this game seems every so sliiightly harder than HG, since I've died twice now, the first one being the initial battle you have with your friend "rival". For variety's sake I chosed the grass pokémon, which I've never done before in a pokémon game since I think it seems bad and those pokémons usually are a bit boring. However I think you early on meet pokémons that are good against grass type, like electricity ones, ground types, psychic, fire and so on. Obviously, at least in my play through, your rival has the type that is bad for you (fire), and the first gym leader adapts so it is that one as well.
In Blue/Red I chosed Charmander (which apparently is the most difficult one) and for Diamond I grabbed the water one which coupled with an electricity type I almost never had to switch to any other for any battle whatsoever. Since I ground out the battles with wild pokémon even though I could've ran instead or used repel more, my water type dude (Empoleon eventually, can't remember the name of its first form) had such a high level it didn't matter if the enemies were a bad matchup. The possible exception was when you fought against some dragons towards the end, but even those I could one-shot once I got the opportunity when their attack missed or whatever. The game said you had to train at least three pokémon of different types equally in order to do well, that sure as hell wasn't the case for me. In Diamond I remember losing one single fight throughout the playthrough, which I wouldn't have done if I had not been too stingy with the potions at that point in the game. Of course, the game's main target audience is children, so this is not that strange, the difficulty is geared towards that target audience and I should move on to hardcore games for mature audiences like Halo and Modern Warfare 2... I played Pokémon Red back in the day and I think it's a genius idea for a game, likely I'll continue to play them so bite me. Pokémon is the only RPG I've really enjoyed, which says a lot. And yes I know some people don't think Pokémon is an RPG at all, but I digress. What is it if not an RPG? Some people would even say that Zelda is an RPG game, something I however don't agree with. It's more of an action/adventure game with RPG elements, but no proper leveling for one.
Oh well, gotta go now and watch MorroW pwn some noobs in the TSL!
Later!
onsdag 13 april 2011
Going Big
Hi!
Today I decided to give in to temptation and buy Nintendo's latest gadget, the 3DS along with Street Fighter IV and Rayman 3D. I also got Marvel vs Capcom 3 for the 360 and Pokémon Black for DS. The 3D effect on the 3DS is actually pretty cool, something I have not really read anything about in the numerous reviews I've checked out. If you've seen a 3D movie at a theater lately, this is pretty much exactly like that except that it's a lot sharper (the movies sometimes get a bit fuzzy especially when there's a lot of movement going on), and of course that you don't need any 3D-glasses to get the effect.
It's also a matter of which game you play. Street Fighter is the one game out of the release titles that has gotten the best reviews, however it's a 2D fighting game so the 3D effect isn't fully utilized. Rayman is I'm sure a very mediocre game, but the way the perspective is used makes it way cooler and more immersive than the aforementioned fighting game. The game itself is as I understand it a port of an old game and plays basically as a low-grade version of Super Mario 64. But that's fine since I got the game cheap with the console itself and it's fine just to showcase the 3D effect.
I haven't had time to play Pokémon Black or MVC3 that much but so far they are promising. Fighting games isn't usually the genre I play the most, but I do enjoy it and I'm trying to get into it more. The only fighting game I've really played a lot before is Super Smash Bros Brawl, and that's mostly for the nostalgia factor. What's more is that a lot of people probably don't even consider that one a "real" fighting game, whatever that is. The last Pokémon game I played - Heartgold version - I finished without even losing one single fight. Which kind of sucked because one of the main things I look for in a game is a challenge. Oh well at least in this one they've tried to change things up a little, and a positive is that I lost the second fight so that's promising at least. More news to come as they unfold and as I venture into the wonderful world of the third dimension.
Peace out!
Today I decided to give in to temptation and buy Nintendo's latest gadget, the 3DS along with Street Fighter IV and Rayman 3D. I also got Marvel vs Capcom 3 for the 360 and Pokémon Black for DS. The 3D effect on the 3DS is actually pretty cool, something I have not really read anything about in the numerous reviews I've checked out. If you've seen a 3D movie at a theater lately, this is pretty much exactly like that except that it's a lot sharper (the movies sometimes get a bit fuzzy especially when there's a lot of movement going on), and of course that you don't need any 3D-glasses to get the effect.
It's also a matter of which game you play. Street Fighter is the one game out of the release titles that has gotten the best reviews, however it's a 2D fighting game so the 3D effect isn't fully utilized. Rayman is I'm sure a very mediocre game, but the way the perspective is used makes it way cooler and more immersive than the aforementioned fighting game. The game itself is as I understand it a port of an old game and plays basically as a low-grade version of Super Mario 64. But that's fine since I got the game cheap with the console itself and it's fine just to showcase the 3D effect.
I haven't had time to play Pokémon Black or MVC3 that much but so far they are promising. Fighting games isn't usually the genre I play the most, but I do enjoy it and I'm trying to get into it more. The only fighting game I've really played a lot before is Super Smash Bros Brawl, and that's mostly for the nostalgia factor. What's more is that a lot of people probably don't even consider that one a "real" fighting game, whatever that is. The last Pokémon game I played - Heartgold version - I finished without even losing one single fight. Which kind of sucked because one of the main things I look for in a game is a challenge. Oh well at least in this one they've tried to change things up a little, and a positive is that I lost the second fight so that's promising at least. More news to come as they unfold and as I venture into the wonderful world of the third dimension.
Peace out!
torsdag 7 april 2011
Limbo
Hi!
I'm subscribed to the comedy group Mega64's channel on YouTube, and a few days ago they posted a new video. In case you aren't familiar with Mega64, they do comedy skits related to various video games, where they take a game and sort of put it into real life in a public place. The guys first started doing this around the time Jackass first came out so that's probably an explanation for the format of the skits. The harrassment that ensues is usually pretty funny as long as you as a viewer is familiar with the game in question. Anyway, the video in question was for a game Limbo that I hadn't played so I looked it up and decided to give it a try.
Old school 2D-games really is my cup of tea, and that's what this game is all about. Two of the games I've written about previously here - Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Meat Boy - both have dark levels where the foreground just is a pitch black outline, and the background very toned down. This seems to be a trend with current platformers as the whole Limbo game uses this graphics style to a very good effect. The game is extremely moody even though it uses little to no music and more ambient sounds, and it's completely in black and white. The character design as well as the animation is spot-on. The gameplay is a mix between platforming and solving puzzles. In many ways it feels like a 2D version of Half-Life or Portal (obviously without the portals and/or guns). My biggest gripe is that the game is very short, some reviews state that it clocks in at around five hours, when I played it through in one sitting yesterday it felt more like three to four hours. Then again it's an independent game that you download, while you certainly don't get as much replay value as Super Meat Boy dishes out, the experience is... less frustrating, I guess? Anyway, it was a welcome game to fill out the time waiting for Duke Nukem Forever (delayed again!) and one that I recommend.
Laters!
I'm subscribed to the comedy group Mega64's channel on YouTube, and a few days ago they posted a new video. In case you aren't familiar with Mega64, they do comedy skits related to various video games, where they take a game and sort of put it into real life in a public place. The guys first started doing this around the time Jackass first came out so that's probably an explanation for the format of the skits. The harrassment that ensues is usually pretty funny as long as you as a viewer is familiar with the game in question. Anyway, the video in question was for a game Limbo that I hadn't played so I looked it up and decided to give it a try.
Old school 2D-games really is my cup of tea, and that's what this game is all about. Two of the games I've written about previously here - Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Meat Boy - both have dark levels where the foreground just is a pitch black outline, and the background very toned down. This seems to be a trend with current platformers as the whole Limbo game uses this graphics style to a very good effect. The game is extremely moody even though it uses little to no music and more ambient sounds, and it's completely in black and white. The character design as well as the animation is spot-on. The gameplay is a mix between platforming and solving puzzles. In many ways it feels like a 2D version of Half-Life or Portal (obviously without the portals and/or guns). My biggest gripe is that the game is very short, some reviews state that it clocks in at around five hours, when I played it through in one sitting yesterday it felt more like three to four hours. Then again it's an independent game that you download, while you certainly don't get as much replay value as Super Meat Boy dishes out, the experience is... less frustrating, I guess? Anyway, it was a welcome game to fill out the time waiting for Duke Nukem Forever (delayed again!) and one that I recommend.
Laters!
söndag 20 mars 2011
Pro gaming
Hi!
I was planning to talk about pro gaming in this post, and as it happens I catched via the almighty Interwebz that there was going to be a few matches tonight. It was the TSL starcraft league, whatever that is, and some players I recognized competing like Huk and Jinro. Now, I don't play multiplayer SCII I prefer to watch it instead for various reasons. As long as the casters are good you still understand what is going on enough to enjoy the games. About a year before SCII was released, I watched Brood War from Korea religiously, even the replays. Part of the fascination was not only that koreans get so excited about this game, but the fact that Starcraft was a really old game by then with ancient (ugly) graphics, and despite this still going strong.
I think Blizzard took the easy way out when they used the old resource-gathering system for SCII instead of a more modern one - but they had their reasons - and from what I gather even the koreans have adopted to play primarily SCII instead of the first one. This could be wrong, but at least the GSL uses SCII and that's the only thing I watch these days when it comes to SCII pro gaming. In the first Warcraft game, your workers chopped down trees and went into a mine for gold, which made perfect sense but various workers collecting glowing minerals and some sort of gas makes less sense. Oh well, the point is rather moot anyway since the game is already finished and released and has been so for over six months.
For some reason I think that games of SCII are less diverse than BW, again I'm no expert, but it seems that there certainly is more of a chance of a long macro game on BW which in my opinion are the most interesting ones to watch. So after a while I got tired of watching random dudes playing eachother each and every day on GSL. However, things change around when someone like Jinro is playing (or even Idra for that matter). I'm from Sweden so being able to root for a countryman makes watching the games all that more entertaining, much like any other random sport which I guess makes sense when you think about it. Just any foreigner (as in non-korean) is fun to root for as well, since it's inspiring that they make it all the way to Korea in order to duke it out with the godly koreans with their insane APM. If this sounds racist that's not the case, for example the name player koreans are often very cool to watch as well even though that was more of the case with the BW leagues. Besides from Starcraft, Counter-Strike and Quake Live are great games to watch pro gaming matches of, although they're not as popular and I'm not as involved and knowledgeable about exactly when and where you find these games streamed.
Until next time, signing off.
I was planning to talk about pro gaming in this post, and as it happens I catched via the almighty Interwebz that there was going to be a few matches tonight. It was the TSL starcraft league, whatever that is, and some players I recognized competing like Huk and Jinro. Now, I don't play multiplayer SCII I prefer to watch it instead for various reasons. As long as the casters are good you still understand what is going on enough to enjoy the games. About a year before SCII was released, I watched Brood War from Korea religiously, even the replays. Part of the fascination was not only that koreans get so excited about this game, but the fact that Starcraft was a really old game by then with ancient (ugly) graphics, and despite this still going strong.
I think Blizzard took the easy way out when they used the old resource-gathering system for SCII instead of a more modern one - but they had their reasons - and from what I gather even the koreans have adopted to play primarily SCII instead of the first one. This could be wrong, but at least the GSL uses SCII and that's the only thing I watch these days when it comes to SCII pro gaming. In the first Warcraft game, your workers chopped down trees and went into a mine for gold, which made perfect sense but various workers collecting glowing minerals and some sort of gas makes less sense. Oh well, the point is rather moot anyway since the game is already finished and released and has been so for over six months.
For some reason I think that games of SCII are less diverse than BW, again I'm no expert, but it seems that there certainly is more of a chance of a long macro game on BW which in my opinion are the most interesting ones to watch. So after a while I got tired of watching random dudes playing eachother each and every day on GSL. However, things change around when someone like Jinro is playing (or even Idra for that matter). I'm from Sweden so being able to root for a countryman makes watching the games all that more entertaining, much like any other random sport which I guess makes sense when you think about it. Just any foreigner (as in non-korean) is fun to root for as well, since it's inspiring that they make it all the way to Korea in order to duke it out with the godly koreans with their insane APM. If this sounds racist that's not the case, for example the name player koreans are often very cool to watch as well even though that was more of the case with the BW leagues. Besides from Starcraft, Counter-Strike and Quake Live are great games to watch pro gaming matches of, although they're not as popular and I'm not as involved and knowledgeable about exactly when and where you find these games streamed.
Until next time, signing off.
torsdag 17 mars 2011
Buddha Provides
Yo!
Not a lot of updates lately, as I mentioned in the previous post, much because I haven't played a lot of video games lately. Which in turn is because there aren't that many interesting that have been released. However, at times like these one can resort to friendly people like Buddha for example. Buddha provided me with the ability to replay Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country for SNES. Don't ask me how he knew that I wanted to play exactly those games, I suppose if you have reached complete insight and become one with the soul of the cosmos these things kind of come natural?
SMW I borrowed from some kid who lived on our street when I was younger and played it on my SNES (I never actually owned it). I remember finishing it very quickly and I enjoyed it but it never made that much of an impression on me. Playing it again today it really dawns on you how finely tuned a game like New Super Mario Bros for the Wii is. It might seem that NSMB for Wii has very few differences gameplay-wise when compared to the original Super Mario Bros for NES, but they really have come up with the perfect mix. I say this because SMW has not aged that well, it's not a bad game by any means, but today when a lot of features it introduced aren't that impressive it feels a bit lackluster of an experience. The enemies feel a bit off (baseball-throwing football players seem strange both flavor-wise and the way they play out - no wonder they have not returned in another Mario game), and the levels are bland. If I were to recommend a mario game for SNES it would be Super Mario All Stars - especially The Lost Levels (the real SMB2), or Yoshi's Island. The latter has awesome graphics and the only real downside is that you always run as Yoshi which can be troublesome in some parts.
I recently played through Donkey Kong Country Returns again and got all the Kong letters and pussle pieces. Playing Donkey Kong Country again it becomes more clear why I think the latest Wii outing doesn't really match up to its predecessor. DKC just has a more smooth and fast-paced gameplay, where you in DKCR often have to stop and shake the controller which turns it more into a dithery experience. Speaking of the popularily termed "waggle"-function of Wii games, it really is a blight on many games. The only rational explanation for it is that Nintendo forces the developers to put some sort of motion-controlled action into all games, even 2D platformers like NSMB and DKCR where it's completely unneccessary. Waggle would be fine it wasn't for the fact that it can fail, unlike the press of a button. If you press a button the game always responds, but when you waggle there is always a risk that you don't do it enough for the game to register it. This is particularily bad in games like NSMB where you need to waggle to fly with the helicopter hat. Many times in this game when you intend to activate the rotor, it doesn't register and Mario falls down to his untimely death. This is another downgrade to DKCR compared to the original game where you just had to press a button to perform a roll, as opposed to waggling it up in DKCR. I'm not opposed entirely to the motion sensor function of Wii, but there is a right and a wrong way of using it, waggling I think is a horrible idea - at the very least you as a player should be able change the button configuration for each game to get rid of it.
I'm gonna stop here for now but do have another topic ready for another blog post even if I don't play any video games so see you soon!
Peace out!
Not a lot of updates lately, as I mentioned in the previous post, much because I haven't played a lot of video games lately. Which in turn is because there aren't that many interesting that have been released. However, at times like these one can resort to friendly people like Buddha for example. Buddha provided me with the ability to replay Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country for SNES. Don't ask me how he knew that I wanted to play exactly those games, I suppose if you have reached complete insight and become one with the soul of the cosmos these things kind of come natural?
SMW I borrowed from some kid who lived on our street when I was younger and played it on my SNES (I never actually owned it). I remember finishing it very quickly and I enjoyed it but it never made that much of an impression on me. Playing it again today it really dawns on you how finely tuned a game like New Super Mario Bros for the Wii is. It might seem that NSMB for Wii has very few differences gameplay-wise when compared to the original Super Mario Bros for NES, but they really have come up with the perfect mix. I say this because SMW has not aged that well, it's not a bad game by any means, but today when a lot of features it introduced aren't that impressive it feels a bit lackluster of an experience. The enemies feel a bit off (baseball-throwing football players seem strange both flavor-wise and the way they play out - no wonder they have not returned in another Mario game), and the levels are bland. If I were to recommend a mario game for SNES it would be Super Mario All Stars - especially The Lost Levels (the real SMB2), or Yoshi's Island. The latter has awesome graphics and the only real downside is that you always run as Yoshi which can be troublesome in some parts.
I recently played through Donkey Kong Country Returns again and got all the Kong letters and pussle pieces. Playing Donkey Kong Country again it becomes more clear why I think the latest Wii outing doesn't really match up to its predecessor. DKC just has a more smooth and fast-paced gameplay, where you in DKCR often have to stop and shake the controller which turns it more into a dithery experience. Speaking of the popularily termed "waggle"-function of Wii games, it really is a blight on many games. The only rational explanation for it is that Nintendo forces the developers to put some sort of motion-controlled action into all games, even 2D platformers like NSMB and DKCR where it's completely unneccessary. Waggle would be fine it wasn't for the fact that it can fail, unlike the press of a button. If you press a button the game always responds, but when you waggle there is always a risk that you don't do it enough for the game to register it. This is particularily bad in games like NSMB where you need to waggle to fly with the helicopter hat. Many times in this game when you intend to activate the rotor, it doesn't register and Mario falls down to his untimely death. This is another downgrade to DKCR compared to the original game where you just had to press a button to perform a roll, as opposed to waggling it up in DKCR. I'm not opposed entirely to the motion sensor function of Wii, but there is a right and a wrong way of using it, waggling I think is a horrible idea - at the very least you as a player should be able change the button configuration for each game to get rid of it.
I'm gonna stop here for now but do have another topic ready for another blog post even if I don't play any video games so see you soon!
Peace out!
tisdag 8 mars 2011
Future releases
Hello!
I'm not really playing a lot of new games these days, I'm unemployed at the moment so my budget is a bit restricted, also there aren't that many games released that I'm that excited about. So I thought maybe I'd write a bit about some upcoming games that look promising and that I'm certainly looking forward to. So without further ado here goes a list in no particular order with the game, the platform I plan on getting it on and preliminary release date:
Silent Hill Downpour - 360 - Q3 2011
Battlefield 3 - PC - Q4 2011
Duke Nukem Forever - PC - 3 May
Resident Evil Revelations - 3DS - TBA 2012
L.A. Noire - 360 - 17 May
Mega Man Universe - 360 - TBA
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Wii - TBA 2011
I guess out of those it's just DNF and LA Noire that have an actual release date and one that is about two months away. So that's a lot of waiting left to be done, in the case of DNF two months feels like nothing though considering I've been waiting for that one for over a decade. Duke Nukem 3D has not aged very well, but at the time it was one of the most innovative Build-engine FPS games available alongside Dark Forces. It was funny that I learned about some of the quotes Duke uses from DN3D before actually hearing were they come from. Most of them are from Army of Darkness, classics such as "Groovy!" and "Hail to the king, baby!" to name a few.
I usually play quite a few old games, it's nice to relive classics and to play games I've missed for whatever reasons. Haven't been doing that a lot lately though. To be honest I don't quite know which direction I want to be taking this blog right now, the idea was to talk about current games I'm playing. But since I'm not really playing any games right now maybe the updates will have to wait, or I'll have to come up with some related topics to talk about. Another alternative would be to talk about Magic: The Gathering, but I feel that there are already a multitude of blogs about MtG out there so it wouldn't add much (of course there certainly are a lot of blogs about video games as well). I'm thinking that starting a separate blog for that topic would perhaps be a better idea. Oh well, the future will tell, time to sign off for now.
Laters!
I'm not really playing a lot of new games these days, I'm unemployed at the moment so my budget is a bit restricted, also there aren't that many games released that I'm that excited about. So I thought maybe I'd write a bit about some upcoming games that look promising and that I'm certainly looking forward to. So without further ado here goes a list in no particular order with the game, the platform I plan on getting it on and preliminary release date:
Silent Hill Downpour - 360 - Q3 2011
Battlefield 3 - PC - Q4 2011
Duke Nukem Forever - PC - 3 May
Resident Evil Revelations - 3DS - TBA 2012
L.A. Noire - 360 - 17 May
Mega Man Universe - 360 - TBA
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Wii - TBA 2011
I guess out of those it's just DNF and LA Noire that have an actual release date and one that is about two months away. So that's a lot of waiting left to be done, in the case of DNF two months feels like nothing though considering I've been waiting for that one for over a decade. Duke Nukem 3D has not aged very well, but at the time it was one of the most innovative Build-engine FPS games available alongside Dark Forces. It was funny that I learned about some of the quotes Duke uses from DN3D before actually hearing were they come from. Most of them are from Army of Darkness, classics such as "Groovy!" and "Hail to the king, baby!" to name a few.
I usually play quite a few old games, it's nice to relive classics and to play games I've missed for whatever reasons. Haven't been doing that a lot lately though. To be honest I don't quite know which direction I want to be taking this blog right now, the idea was to talk about current games I'm playing. But since I'm not really playing any games right now maybe the updates will have to wait, or I'll have to come up with some related topics to talk about. Another alternative would be to talk about Magic: The Gathering, but I feel that there are already a multitude of blogs about MtG out there so it wouldn't add much (of course there certainly are a lot of blogs about video games as well). I'm thinking that starting a separate blog for that topic would perhaps be a better idea. Oh well, the future will tell, time to sign off for now.
Laters!
måndag 7 mars 2011
Consolitis
Greetings!
The first time I played video games for real was when I played Ice Climbers on NES. For a long time consoles really helped to shape what we have come to know as video games and its genres. So it feels really strange and ironic that today I believe consoles are responsible for dumbing down video games as a whole and sort of restricting what comes out and is available to play.
In the late 90's a really hyped FPS that was coming out for the PC was one named Halo, developed by Bungie, a company at that point mostly known for the FPS Marathon for Mac. One of the selling points of Halo was that you would be able to drive around in vehicles in the game, which sounds silly today but at that time it was the coolest feature imaginable. The incredibly tedious buggy part of Half-Life 2 is there because of this. As the release date for Halo was getting closer however, some things were stirring in the pot that was going to cause a ripple effect resulting in what is today known as consolitis. The Face of Evil, Cthulhu Arisen, also known as Bill Gates and his company Microsoft was not far from releasing their first console X-box. What the console lacked was a good game to sort of flagship its release, and Halo fit that role like a glove. Like the giant amoeba it is, MS absorbed yet another company and the PC gamers (yours truly included) who had been waiting for years for Halo could rest assured that the X-box players were going to be able to play the game first, and iirc about a year before it was released for PC.
Flash forward about a decade, and here we are. Even though there is no debate that FPSs are best played on a PC with a mouse and keyboard, the console versions outsell the PC counterparts by miles. If I've been a bit bitter about stuff in my previous updates, I'm really pissed off about this. I can't believe I'm sitting here typing this stuff like some sort of doomsday prophet. Microsoft, consoles and frat dudes playing Halo can't be held solely responsible for the state of video games today though, of course pirates play a big role as well as PC games are easy to pirate. If you really want to, pirating console games for most of the current generation of consoles is not particularily hard either. It just seems very stupid that PC games lose basic features such as leaning in FPSs, proper surround sound etc just because of them being little more than straight console ports. I guess money talks and rules this world, which is true for video games as much as for everything else. Also I suppose people in general are just too stupid to realize that aiming with an analog stick is not very good and pretty much impossible if you don't have any sort of auto aim. I don't know what the solution is either, I do think games like Mega Man 9-10 and Super Meat Boy is a step in the right direction though. Games are not one hundred percent about graphics and 3D, when push comes to shove it's the gameplay that counts.
Peace out!
The first time I played video games for real was when I played Ice Climbers on NES. For a long time consoles really helped to shape what we have come to know as video games and its genres. So it feels really strange and ironic that today I believe consoles are responsible for dumbing down video games as a whole and sort of restricting what comes out and is available to play.
In the late 90's a really hyped FPS that was coming out for the PC was one named Halo, developed by Bungie, a company at that point mostly known for the FPS Marathon for Mac. One of the selling points of Halo was that you would be able to drive around in vehicles in the game, which sounds silly today but at that time it was the coolest feature imaginable. The incredibly tedious buggy part of Half-Life 2 is there because of this. As the release date for Halo was getting closer however, some things were stirring in the pot that was going to cause a ripple effect resulting in what is today known as consolitis. The Face of Evil, Cthulhu Arisen, also known as Bill Gates and his company Microsoft was not far from releasing their first console X-box. What the console lacked was a good game to sort of flagship its release, and Halo fit that role like a glove. Like the giant amoeba it is, MS absorbed yet another company and the PC gamers (yours truly included) who had been waiting for years for Halo could rest assured that the X-box players were going to be able to play the game first, and iirc about a year before it was released for PC.
Flash forward about a decade, and here we are. Even though there is no debate that FPSs are best played on a PC with a mouse and keyboard, the console versions outsell the PC counterparts by miles. If I've been a bit bitter about stuff in my previous updates, I'm really pissed off about this. I can't believe I'm sitting here typing this stuff like some sort of doomsday prophet. Microsoft, consoles and frat dudes playing Halo can't be held solely responsible for the state of video games today though, of course pirates play a big role as well as PC games are easy to pirate. If you really want to, pirating console games for most of the current generation of consoles is not particularily hard either. It just seems very stupid that PC games lose basic features such as leaning in FPSs, proper surround sound etc just because of them being little more than straight console ports. I guess money talks and rules this world, which is true for video games as much as for everything else. Also I suppose people in general are just too stupid to realize that aiming with an analog stick is not very good and pretty much impossible if you don't have any sort of auto aim. I don't know what the solution is either, I do think games like Mega Man 9-10 and Super Meat Boy is a step in the right direction though. Games are not one hundred percent about graphics and 3D, when push comes to shove it's the gameplay that counts.
Peace out!
söndag 6 mars 2011
Game review sites
Hi!
I've not been doing an update the latest couple of days because I've been busy playing local IRL Magic tournaments. I'm not really playing a lot of video games right now besides the ones I've gone through in the last few updates, but I thought I'd talk about one of the reasons why I started this blog, namely the infamous video game sites that you can find on the good 'ol Intarwebz. When I play a game that either really impresses me, or on the opposite really lets me down, I feel some kind of urge or whatever to tell this to the rest of the world. So for a period a number of years ago I would often go to Gamespot and write a review. Two years or so ago though I bought the Orange box by Valve, only to get to play this Team Fortress 2 game a lot of people talk about as a really good game. FPS is my favorite genre by some amount and I think Half-Life is certainly among the top five games ever created. So TF2 has to be great, right?
As it turns out however, TF2 is little more than a mediocre game, pretty much Counter-Strike for children with wacky and colorful graphics. I was not very impressed, in fact I think the original Team Fortress mod for HL is a better game, only the graphics obviously are not up to par nowadays. So long story short I wrote a review at GS for the game, pretty much bashing it even though I gave it like a 5.0 which should be mediocre, but obviously is very bad since everything under 9.0 is bad and not a game you want to buy. After a while my review gets taken down from the site for "trolling" or something along those lines, even though I was perfectly honest. So I stopped writing user reviews at that site and wanted to delete my account. Which the site says is not possible since the "deletion tool" is not currently working. Right.
The problem with sites like Gamespot is that they probably are paid by the game companies to give the latest Call of Duty a 9+ rating (and don't get me wrong I get the Call of Duty games on release day, I'm just not sure they deserve that kind of rating), and that their target audience is 14 year olds. It's pretty sad when an innovative game like Muramasa - the Demon Blade gets around a 6-7 rating and a very negative sounding review, and the latest CoD or Madden game always get 9+ and raving reviews like "AWESOME IMMERSIVE CINEMATIC GAMEPLAY". Muramasa gets pirated to hell and back and doesn't sell well, while CoD sells for new record numbers every annual release. This partially has to do with the consolization of video games which is another topic entirely. Right now I use IGN for game news which is not perfect but fine enough. Nobody reads the user reviews on there though so it feels pretty pointless to bother.
Until next time, signing off
I've not been doing an update the latest couple of days because I've been busy playing local IRL Magic tournaments. I'm not really playing a lot of video games right now besides the ones I've gone through in the last few updates, but I thought I'd talk about one of the reasons why I started this blog, namely the infamous video game sites that you can find on the good 'ol Intarwebz. When I play a game that either really impresses me, or on the opposite really lets me down, I feel some kind of urge or whatever to tell this to the rest of the world. So for a period a number of years ago I would often go to Gamespot and write a review. Two years or so ago though I bought the Orange box by Valve, only to get to play this Team Fortress 2 game a lot of people talk about as a really good game. FPS is my favorite genre by some amount and I think Half-Life is certainly among the top five games ever created. So TF2 has to be great, right?
As it turns out however, TF2 is little more than a mediocre game, pretty much Counter-Strike for children with wacky and colorful graphics. I was not very impressed, in fact I think the original Team Fortress mod for HL is a better game, only the graphics obviously are not up to par nowadays. So long story short I wrote a review at GS for the game, pretty much bashing it even though I gave it like a 5.0 which should be mediocre, but obviously is very bad since everything under 9.0 is bad and not a game you want to buy. After a while my review gets taken down from the site for "trolling" or something along those lines, even though I was perfectly honest. So I stopped writing user reviews at that site and wanted to delete my account. Which the site says is not possible since the "deletion tool" is not currently working. Right.
The problem with sites like Gamespot is that they probably are paid by the game companies to give the latest Call of Duty a 9+ rating (and don't get me wrong I get the Call of Duty games on release day, I'm just not sure they deserve that kind of rating), and that their target audience is 14 year olds. It's pretty sad when an innovative game like Muramasa - the Demon Blade gets around a 6-7 rating and a very negative sounding review, and the latest CoD or Madden game always get 9+ and raving reviews like "AWESOME IMMERSIVE CINEMATIC GAMEPLAY". Muramasa gets pirated to hell and back and doesn't sell well, while CoD sells for new record numbers every annual release. This partially has to do with the consolization of video games which is another topic entirely. Right now I use IGN for game news which is not perfect but fine enough. Nobody reads the user reviews on there though so it feels pretty pointless to bother.
Until next time, signing off
torsdag 3 mars 2011
Crysis 2 Demo
Hello!
Yesterday I downloaded the demo for Crysis 2 that I found out about from a site that should not be named. Ok I found out about it from /v/ on 4chan. You definitely have to take the good with the bad at that place, but it is a good place for tips about new video games. Crysis has long been the defining game to judge wether your computer is up to par, as it at least for its time had very detailed graphics that demands a lot from your computer. I can safely say that my rig is about a year old now and was pretty much the shit back then, and Crysis certainly did not run completely smooth when maxed out on all graphics settings. On the other hand, I suppose partly because the game was somewhat old by then, in my opinion it didn't look that nice or detailed. A game like Resident Evil 5 I think certainly looks better even though technically Crysis might have more polygons or whatever. Even more to the point is that it wasn't that good of a game, some silly macho marines in stupid-looking suits fighting north koreans that speak english with an accent (?). Now I've never been to North Korea so I can't verify that the random disposable henchmen do not actually speak english with accents, but somehow I doubt it.
Back to the part deux of Crysis, it appears the demo is for the multiplayer part of the game. No matter how much they try to innovate with your combat suit having different abilities such as a cloak and an armor mode, it still is at the core the same old FPS multiplayer game that it feels like you've played hundreds of times before. This particular one is clearly inspired by MW2/the latest Call of Duty installation. The gameplay is very fast paced, even though you seemingly are supposed to be working as a team that doesn't really work very well because of the way the maps look. There are just too many open spaces and it's too difficult to cover all directions, and the way the weapons work if you catch someone off guard it's almost impossible for the other guy to react and shoot back before he's dead. Oh well, I guess outing number two for Crysis is just as much of a lithmus test for testing how a computer handles graphics as the first one, so the gameplay is not really what is most important to the makers of the game. There is still hope though, Battlefield 3 is coming out I guess not soon, I think late 2011, but a gameplay trailer was recently released and it looks awesome (better than Crysis 2).
Peace out!
Yesterday I downloaded the demo for Crysis 2 that I found out about from a site that should not be named. Ok I found out about it from /v/ on 4chan. You definitely have to take the good with the bad at that place, but it is a good place for tips about new video games. Crysis has long been the defining game to judge wether your computer is up to par, as it at least for its time had very detailed graphics that demands a lot from your computer. I can safely say that my rig is about a year old now and was pretty much the shit back then, and Crysis certainly did not run completely smooth when maxed out on all graphics settings. On the other hand, I suppose partly because the game was somewhat old by then, in my opinion it didn't look that nice or detailed. A game like Resident Evil 5 I think certainly looks better even though technically Crysis might have more polygons or whatever. Even more to the point is that it wasn't that good of a game, some silly macho marines in stupid-looking suits fighting north koreans that speak english with an accent (?). Now I've never been to North Korea so I can't verify that the random disposable henchmen do not actually speak english with accents, but somehow I doubt it.
Back to the part deux of Crysis, it appears the demo is for the multiplayer part of the game. No matter how much they try to innovate with your combat suit having different abilities such as a cloak and an armor mode, it still is at the core the same old FPS multiplayer game that it feels like you've played hundreds of times before. This particular one is clearly inspired by MW2/the latest Call of Duty installation. The gameplay is very fast paced, even though you seemingly are supposed to be working as a team that doesn't really work very well because of the way the maps look. There are just too many open spaces and it's too difficult to cover all directions, and the way the weapons work if you catch someone off guard it's almost impossible for the other guy to react and shoot back before he's dead. Oh well, I guess outing number two for Crysis is just as much of a lithmus test for testing how a computer handles graphics as the first one, so the gameplay is not really what is most important to the makers of the game. There is still hope though, Battlefield 3 is coming out I guess not soon, I think late 2011, but a gameplay trailer was recently released and it looks awesome (better than Crysis 2).
Peace out!
onsdag 2 mars 2011
Duels of the Planeswalkers
Yo!
I play the trading card game Magic: The Gathering regularily IRL, which made me get Duels of the Planeswalkers for X-box 360. Prior to the game's release it was hyped a lot and for some reason I thought it was going to be a pretty extensive game like the old Shandalar Magic game for PC. In that one you would walk around and battle mages to gain new cards, RPG-style. So when I first played Duels of the Planeswalkers I was a bit dissapointed since the game is a bit limited when it comes to customizing your deck and such.
I like to grind playing the game in order to try to win seemingly unwinnable situations, to win with horrible decks against really good ones (the last "boss" deck in the latest DLC is what I'm thinking about, Sorin Markov). Even though the decks are pretty simple for the most part, and since I don't have X-box Live I only play against the computer, you actually become better at Magic from playing this game. I used to think that the computer is slightly worse than the average human Magic player you play against IRL at FNM or prerelease level, but I would argue that it's actually better. One of the most common mistake, if not the most common at least when it comes to limited and sealed deck in particular, is that people don't attack enough. The computer at Planeswalker difficulty is not particularily smart, but it always attacks when it has an advantageous board position.
Signing off,
I play the trading card game Magic: The Gathering regularily IRL, which made me get Duels of the Planeswalkers for X-box 360. Prior to the game's release it was hyped a lot and for some reason I thought it was going to be a pretty extensive game like the old Shandalar Magic game for PC. In that one you would walk around and battle mages to gain new cards, RPG-style. So when I first played Duels of the Planeswalkers I was a bit dissapointed since the game is a bit limited when it comes to customizing your deck and such.
I like to grind playing the game in order to try to win seemingly unwinnable situations, to win with horrible decks against really good ones (the last "boss" deck in the latest DLC is what I'm thinking about, Sorin Markov). Even though the decks are pretty simple for the most part, and since I don't have X-box Live I only play against the computer, you actually become better at Magic from playing this game. I used to think that the computer is slightly worse than the average human Magic player you play against IRL at FNM or prerelease level, but I would argue that it's actually better. One of the most common mistake, if not the most common at least when it comes to limited and sealed deck in particular, is that people don't attack enough. The computer at Planeswalker difficulty is not particularily smart, but it always attacks when it has an advantageous board position.
Signing off,
tisdag 1 mars 2011
Super Meat Boy
Captain's log, stardate 20110301.
I've been playing Super Meat Boy quite a bit lately, my aim is to get A+ on all of the levels including the dark world, although I doubt I will have the patience to attain this goal. It's a really nice game though, one that grows on you. When I first played the demo I didn't like it that much, I thought it was little more than a slightly easier I Wanna Be The Guy with better graphics. The main reason for this though I think is that the level selection for the demo was not very good. In the real game you get a very smooth introduction to the mechanics, only ever so slightly raising the difficulty level. In the demo some levels were a bit too hard for a new player. This is probably not much of an issue though since the game is relatively very cheap and has a lot of replay value with unlocking characters, achievements etc.
I want to live up to the title of this blog though by going over a few things that bug me with SMB. I think the main one is the "class" of enemies that shoot homing projectiles at you. It is the stages with these guys, either the missile shooting ones or their even more evil counterparts, the black gates to hell that shoot what I can only describe as langoliers, that feels the most unfair. Sure, you can avoid at least the missiles fairly easy, but there is something fundamentally wrong about you not being able to defeat these enemies in one way or another. Even when you finish the level they're still around. Another small thing is that you can't always hold down the run-button, since doing so makes meat boy fly faster through the air. I'm pretty sure SMB is the first platform game that works like this, which is not that weird considering it makes absolutely no logic sense. In Super Mario Bros always holding down B to run is default, there is no downside to doing it, but you often have to let it go in Super Meat Boy which - on the upside - makes for a more complex game experience. It takes a bit getting used to though, or in the game's terms, a few thousand messy deaths.
Gaming wise it's looking a bit dry with new games right now for me, I'm probably not getting the new Pokémon even though I've played all of them for DS up until now. I have a lot of other gaming-related topics to discuss though so I'm pretty sure I won't run out of stuff to write about in the near future.
Peace Out!
I've been playing Super Meat Boy quite a bit lately, my aim is to get A+ on all of the levels including the dark world, although I doubt I will have the patience to attain this goal. It's a really nice game though, one that grows on you. When I first played the demo I didn't like it that much, I thought it was little more than a slightly easier I Wanna Be The Guy with better graphics. The main reason for this though I think is that the level selection for the demo was not very good. In the real game you get a very smooth introduction to the mechanics, only ever so slightly raising the difficulty level. In the demo some levels were a bit too hard for a new player. This is probably not much of an issue though since the game is relatively very cheap and has a lot of replay value with unlocking characters, achievements etc.
I want to live up to the title of this blog though by going over a few things that bug me with SMB. I think the main one is the "class" of enemies that shoot homing projectiles at you. It is the stages with these guys, either the missile shooting ones or their even more evil counterparts, the black gates to hell that shoot what I can only describe as langoliers, that feels the most unfair. Sure, you can avoid at least the missiles fairly easy, but there is something fundamentally wrong about you not being able to defeat these enemies in one way or another. Even when you finish the level they're still around. Another small thing is that you can't always hold down the run-button, since doing so makes meat boy fly faster through the air. I'm pretty sure SMB is the first platform game that works like this, which is not that weird considering it makes absolutely no logic sense. In Super Mario Bros always holding down B to run is default, there is no downside to doing it, but you often have to let it go in Super Meat Boy which - on the upside - makes for a more complex game experience. It takes a bit getting used to though, or in the game's terms, a few thousand messy deaths.
Gaming wise it's looking a bit dry with new games right now for me, I'm probably not getting the new Pokémon even though I've played all of them for DS up until now. I have a lot of other gaming-related topics to discuss though so I'm pretty sure I won't run out of stuff to write about in the near future.
Peace Out!
måndag 28 februari 2011
First blog post
Citizens of the Internet!
This is my first foray into the wonderful world of blogging. Prior to this I have always disliked anything and everything even remotely connected to blogs, but word on the street is that it is what all the cool kids are doing these days. If you can't beat them, join them. So I am joining the mindless grey mass of followers who let the current trends dictate their every move. This is where I'm going to try to cut it short because I could go into a tirade about the glorified idea about blogs some people have, but in order to try to keep to my subject I will save that for another day.
Video games have always been a part of my life to some extent, from childhood until now at 28 years of age (yes I am born the same year as Chris-Chan). Sometimes I've played less videogames, when I was a kid a lot. A couple of years ago I bought a Wii and a Nintendo DS and since then I've played quite a lot and I've tried to keep up with the video games news flow. Don't worry though, I also own a X-box 360 and a gaming PC.
So what games have I been playing lately? First off I bought Fire Emblem: The Shadow Dragon for DS about a month ago. The game is fun and all but it has some JRPG traditions holding it back. First off is the saving system which should let you save at any point and/or backtrack one or more turns (it is a turn-based RPG). Heroes III came out over a decade ago and has this feature, there is no real reason why Fire Emblem doesn't have it too, other than it not being a tradition in JRPGs. This becomes a problem when you spend around 20 minutes on a drawn-out battle, only to make a slight miscalculation resulting in one of your best characters dying. Now you have to either A) quit the battle and start over, or B) continue knowing that your party is considerably weakened and all the time you put into leveling that character is for naught. Lazy as I am, option B was my choice throughout my current play through. This hasn't been much of an issue up until now when I've reached a level with one enemy who can't be killed and whose attack kills in one swift stroke. Which is always fun. Apparently he leaves after six turns or so, but it's still quite a pain in the ass.
There are more games I've played but I'm going to leave this as it is for the moment since I feel this one is already long enough.
Peace out!
This is my first foray into the wonderful world of blogging. Prior to this I have always disliked anything and everything even remotely connected to blogs, but word on the street is that it is what all the cool kids are doing these days. If you can't beat them, join them. So I am joining the mindless grey mass of followers who let the current trends dictate their every move. This is where I'm going to try to cut it short because I could go into a tirade about the glorified idea about blogs some people have, but in order to try to keep to my subject I will save that for another day.
Video games have always been a part of my life to some extent, from childhood until now at 28 years of age (yes I am born the same year as Chris-Chan). Sometimes I've played less videogames, when I was a kid a lot. A couple of years ago I bought a Wii and a Nintendo DS and since then I've played quite a lot and I've tried to keep up with the video games news flow. Don't worry though, I also own a X-box 360 and a gaming PC.
So what games have I been playing lately? First off I bought Fire Emblem: The Shadow Dragon for DS about a month ago. The game is fun and all but it has some JRPG traditions holding it back. First off is the saving system which should let you save at any point and/or backtrack one or more turns (it is a turn-based RPG). Heroes III came out over a decade ago and has this feature, there is no real reason why Fire Emblem doesn't have it too, other than it not being a tradition in JRPGs. This becomes a problem when you spend around 20 minutes on a drawn-out battle, only to make a slight miscalculation resulting in one of your best characters dying. Now you have to either A) quit the battle and start over, or B) continue knowing that your party is considerably weakened and all the time you put into leveling that character is for naught. Lazy as I am, option B was my choice throughout my current play through. This hasn't been much of an issue up until now when I've reached a level with one enemy who can't be killed and whose attack kills in one swift stroke. Which is always fun. Apparently he leaves after six turns or so, but it's still quite a pain in the ass.
There are more games I've played but I'm going to leave this as it is for the moment since I feel this one is already long enough.
Peace out!
Prenumerera på:
Inlägg (Atom)