John: Oh Skyrim. Oh Skyrim, Oh Skyrim, Oh Skyrim. Finally an Elder Scrolls game which can stand tall and proud alongside the great game of Morrowind. There are no words to describe how much I enjoy this game, other than imagining a truck load of naked woman and money. It feels like an almost real world, which you can explore while other people go on along with their daily lives. However as this is such an extensive RPG we have run into many problems on how to review it, so instead we will write many subsections on different parts of the game and give our views on them.
Dan: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the best RPG I’ve ever played. The amount of choices in character levelling alone is astounding; it allows me to build an assassin who can silently roll behind his mark, cut their throat and dissipate into nothingness before the unfortunate fellow’s mates can do anything more than stare at his body. I can sprint and jump off a cliff, land in a river and blast a dragon flying over head with lightning. I can use my Unrelenting Force shout to use a massive force of wind to make Imperial soldiers sail over entire forts. I can listen to guards tell me about how they took arrows in the knee. I could literally go on for pages and pages, describing the quests and situations the almost immaculate Skyrim allows you to do and get into.
John: Anybody who says this game is best RPG ever is an idiot and deserves to be immolated after having his balls doused in petrol. It is not as good as Morrowind, no matter how close it comes and retarded people believe it is. However that doesn't mean it's not the best RPG I've played in the past 5 or 6 years, the only other one which can even come close in The Witcher 2 (I am not classing Deus Ex: HR as an RPG for this comparison ok... Got that), but Skyrim easily outshines that. Now on with the review.
Main Story
John: So Skyrim is the 5th game in the Elder Scrolls series, and not Oblivion 2 as some idiots believe. If anybody thinks that, I want them shot in the head with a laser rifle controlled by a rabid dog. The story revolves around a giant Dragon named Alduin coming back during the time of a huge civil war in Skyrim and subsequently reviving a load of other Dragons. So as Dovakhiin you have to go stop them by shouting at them like you're a character from any British soap.
I still haven't finished the main story because I kept getting distracted, however from nearly finishing it, it seemed extremely short and boring, which is why I was distracted, and also very strange for any game which includes dragons. However who plays an Elder Scrolls game for the story in all honesty. Also has some pretty good looking parts in it, just not as good as everything else.
Dan: The Main Quest of Skyrim is, unfortunately, a let-down. That’s not to say it’s not good: in some cases it feels spectacular, the first dragon fight near Whiterun is great. The way the dragon swoops and breathes flame on you as you desperately take cover in the tower, and how you charge forward and start hacking at its head looks and feels amazing. The problem was this: the next dragon fight had me running away from a flying lizard that was breathing fire on me as it swooped over then I charged and starting hacking at its head. And the same thing for the next one. And the next. The dragon fights do get very repetitive, but they ALWAYS stay rewarding. I can sit through Generic Dragon Fight #37 if it means I can use its soul to turn enemies to ice. The story (I haven’t actually finished it yet) is… well it’s good, I guess. The Main Quest has some great moments, as I say, but also some really irritating ones, mainly the one in the Thalmor embassy where they seem to either spot you from 200 yards away or block every door you need to get through, meaning stealth is almost impossible (so I was buggered).
The Civil War
John: The Civil war is possibly my favourite part of the game, fighting off many of those Imperial bastards to free Skyrim for the Nords (Yes I'm a Stormcloak.) Some of my favourite moments have been attacking forts and the cities of [redacted] with my Stormcloak allies to get Ulfric Stormcloak on the throne. (No I don't care if they are more racist than an angry Nick Griffin)
Dan: The Civil War that ties sort of into the backstory and a bit of the Main Quest feels a lot more rewarding and satisfying. In Oblivion the great battle for Tamriel was fought with about 12 soldiers in a small clearing. This is the gaming equivalent of going to watch the Lord of the Rings to find out it’s the pacifist version. In Skyrim the battles even stretch across cities, with catapults that do fuck all firing flaming rocks that do fuck all. I can Fus Ro Dah people off the walls while I decapitate an Empire prick in front of me. Anyway, I’ve gone on too long about that, so I’ll summarise the Main Quest/Story. The Main Quest is good, if underwhelming and repetitive, and the quests about the Civil War are, although not the main quest, excellent and tie in to the Main Story nicely.
Dragons
John: The Dragons themselves are pretty damned cool for the first few times you see them, however later in the game with good armour they just become a nuisance, as if you were being attacked by a very angry dust mite. And the fact that the game seems to throw them at you every 5 seconds just leaves you feeling disappointed. However no matter how many times you fight them, they are always, always more interesting than the fucking Oblivion Gates, however even if they had been replaced with some guy poking a needle in your eye they would have been less irritating.
The World
(Caution, this is me basically wanking over the world design)
John: My god the world is beautiful. It appears to have been forged by God himself. This is one thing I believe it does better than Morrowind. The amazing looking rivers, the awe inspiring mountains which form the skyline of the province, the wonderfully built cities. It's all amazing. It's not the most graphically advanced game I've played, but the detail, the detail must have been created by Vincent Van Gogh while high. Each city has its own style, its own personality, where the people go about their daily lives as if this was real.
It is easily the best part of the game, just exploring the word to see what you can find is endlessly enjoyable to take part in.
Dan: The world of Skyrim is vast, and you can literally keep playing forever, apparently. The Radiant Story system keeps generating quests for you, even though these are utterly generic and dull as fuck. It’s like being promised cocaine for the rest of your life then about a year in it’s switched to Coca Cola (ATTENTION: The Rofling Officer and John Smith definitely do NOT advocate the use of Cocaine, if you use such drugs please snort them so hard they enter your brain and you turn to mush you loser, thank you). Skyrim’s world is magnificent, glorious, incredible, unimaginable, and now I’m starting to run out of synonyms, but the point stands. Skyrim is so dense, so rich, so detailed, that everything like a Dungeon has its own backstory. I enter one and a ghost tells me to leave, but then I discover it’s not a ghost at all, but some wanker pretending to be one. I enter another, and another, real, ghost helps me proceed so he can take revenge on a Draugr called Olaf One-Eye. The cities are generally brilliant; Solitude sits atop a cliff looking gracefully down at the frozen sea, Whiterun lies in the middle of the tundra where giants herd their mammoths, and Windhelm is in the frozen, snowy north and has Jack the Ripper. Saying that, one city (Markarth) is SHIT, it looks awful, all the NPCs are hollow and have the same character trait and the design of the city is fucked up.
John: He is right, Markath is shit. Staying there is like applying to have a nail through the foot.
Dungeons
John: The dungeons are, for a start much better than Oblivions, which made me want to endlessly slam a hammer down onto my head due to how boring they were. However they are also nowhere near as huge as the ones in Daggerfall, which is actually a relief. The ones in Skyrim are extremely linear, and also some seem very similar, however they are varied enough to not get boring, and the stories in some of them are very intriguing. They do feel like they have been designed by a man with a fetish for long corridors though, and I hate that.
The Dark Brotherhood
Dan: The Dark Brotherhood quests of Oblivion were my favourite part of the game, as being an assassin is a route I always take in games like this. But now in Skyrim my choices were so open and great that I could stealthily roll behind my target, slash him with my daggers, doing 30x normal damage then disappear into the shadows as the targets bodyguards turn around. This is around 13 times as fun as Oblivion. Saying that the actual quests themselves are a little disappointing; they all feel like just one LOOOONG quest leading up to the target that I stopped caring about 3 quests ago. And even that isn’t that hard as you can just hack your way through everyone as they’re sailors and have no armour and are stupid. I was expecting this to be an ultra-hard test of my sneak skills, to help me appreciate all I’d learned like the last quest for the Thieves Guild in Oblivion. Don’t take this to mean that I didn’t LIKE the Dark Brotherhood quests, overall they all feel great and have some very satisfying moments that I could (and will) do again and again, but it just doesn’t feel that climactic.
The Companions
[Kind of/not really spoilers here for the Companions quests, you should be safe]
John: As the character I usually play as is some sort of stealthy warrior who is also a duel wielding badass, I felt that the guilds which seemed to fit me the most where the Dark Brotherhood (the only good part of Oblivion) and the Companions. At first the companions quests seemed extremely boring, involving the same collect an item shit that spreads through RPGS like the plague... or an STD. However half way through the quests, when you become a werewolf, it suddenly becomes a whole lot more fun. Your attacking strongholds of wolf hunters, hunting down the remaining organisation in revenge missions. It even becomes a little sad near the end after the Silver Hand assault Jorrvaskr. This all lead up to one of my favourite final quests of any organisation as you journey through Ysgramor's tomb.
Put it this way, I liked the companions so much I married Aela... Also that leaves me thinking, does marrying an NPC who just happens to be a werewolf, BUT you only see them as a wolf once, mean your into bestiality. What about if your also a wolf?
Bards College
John: Fucking, fucking terrible. I would rather have my balls pierced by a boiling hot spike than have to sit through this crap again.
Thieves Guild and Mages College
John: Haven't done much of these really and neither has Dan.
Marriage
The marriage in the game does at first seem pretty pointless as all it means is that you can have a meal cooked for you. However if you think about it, this is a role playing game, and add a lot to the immersion in the game. But then again if you enjoy immersion in a game "you're probably less popular than Hitler dancing on the graves of puppy's who have died from leukaemia" - Some retarded person.
Other Bad Points
John: The game was almost certainly not ready for it's release date, it was filled to the brim with bugs. It was and still is more buggy than a termite mound, with countless crashes to desktop for me, like a blind person driving a Ferrari. And (as I play on the PC as i'm part of some master race) the UI was, and still is dreadful, it was as if they had a 3 year old without a brain to create it. Somehow it was even worse than Oblivion's. Yes there are mods to fix it, but it is dissapointing nonetheless, no matter how much I love this game.
Conclusion
John: Even if you do somehow get bored of this game, just remember, mod tools will be released in January, so people will be creating new stories for this game for years. (And if you're not on PC, always remember Bethesda's own DLC, no don't shudder, it's not horse armour, and they have vowed to be releasing huge content in these, my bet, something about the Thalmor.)
Dan: In conclusion, YES SKYRIM IS THE BEST RPG I’VE EVER PLAYED SHUT UP, and it takes my game of the year slot. I can tell I’m going to be playing this excellent game for years and years, just like I did with Oblivion, the difference being this one is far better. There are a few let downs (which include a LOT of hilarious and game breaking bugs which we haven’t really touched on), but overall The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a wonderful RPG, and the only one I’ve played that lets me customise my character’s play style to the point of absurdity. A massive step up from Oblivion, and also a massive one from Fallout 3, but that was shit anyway.
John: In conclusion, it is not the best RPG ever, but it is certainly the game of the year and is amazing, so if you don't play it you deserve to be raped by a pig, or due to Darwin's theory, killed in the name of natural selection.
Both: So have a Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season from us guys, and just remember FUS RO DAH!
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Orcs Must Die Rant
John: A game genre which seem to be popping up more than a cock with viagra, this year, are the 3rd and 1st person tower defence games, such as Dungeon Defenders and Sanctum. They all involve setting up a long path for the enemies to walk down, with many corners in it for rapists to jump out and molest them. Along these paths you set up different weapons to slaughter whatever mindless AI you happen to be fighting, hoping they don't get to the core full of puppys/chocolate/ hookers which you want all for yourself. However now theirs Orcs Must Die, which removes all the unnecessary crap like forcing enemies down certain paths, and replaces it with more killing and gore than Friday the 13th as made by a Sweeney Todd. But god is it good killing.
Dan: Oh yeah, I’m so smart… and handsome,” says the smug wanker I’m having to play as he sets up what will surely be the greatest trap ever, a floor plate that catapults Orcs into wall blades that tear them into teeny tiny pieces. At which point I have a little squirt. This is what gaming is all about. Orcs Must Die is the funnest thing I’ve done since that time I accidently inserted my cock into a washing machine. Every level is fulfilling, the traps unlock in a tantalising order. At first I thought “Wow wall blades! They sound awesome!” which they were (oh fucking hell they’re AMAZING), then I unlock the floor plate that catapults enemies into fucking lava. Right now I’ve just got a masher plate that crushes enemies from the ceiling… simply saying those words makes me want to go and play this game. There’s only one possible criticism I can think of; the cunt you play is so arrogant and smug and stupid that I don’t really want him to win. I want him to fall in lava, or acid, or get catapulted out of a window like the 4,500 Orcs that have already gone down that path. Another little nit-pick is that ogres seem a little over powered. I could have designed an elaborate set of traps that massacres any Orc within a 10 mile radius into little hilarious pieces like in an insane asylum crossed with a butchers, then an ogre will run in and sprint at me, ignoring the arrow traps and smack me like the wanker that I am. But this is very minor; this is just a great game, hands down one of my favourite games of 2011, certainly the best Indie game I’ve ever played. Buy it. Now. Please.
John: This game reminds me of the Saw films designed some frat boys. The main character sounds like he looks at himself in the mirror more than he kills orcs by the sound of what he says, and he has the intelligence of a monkey dropped as a child, but in all honesty he doesn't bother me that much, and if it was a serious character, this games tone would have dropped more than a heavy black and white camera. One thing I have noticed however is that some of the traps are more useless than a tampon for men, and by half way through the 2nd act of the game, you basically have every trap and spell worthwhile, in comparison some are extremely overpowered, such as the fire floor thing (can't remember the name) which annihilates almost all orcs faster than if I just nuked them with ponies.
Another complaint which many people have with game is the lack of bloody co-op. This is a game which would suit co-op more than chloroform and anybody from Weight Watchers when chatting up women. However I myself don't believe that co-op is necessary, as I think the joy is seeing that one of your friends has beaten you on the leader boards for a level, and thus spending the next few hours trying to beat it, and adding re-playability. This is certainly my Indie game of the year as well (yes even better than Bastion and Minecraft), so commend Robot Entertainment for their effort here. I look forward to their next game, but before that, buy this now or suffer the wrath of a lead pipe to the crotch... While on fire.
Dan: Overall, Orcs Must Die is a great game, the traps are the most satisfying thing in a game since Hitler Blaster 3, the third game in a series where you blast Hitler in the face (with Stalin joining him in a final boss fight). Speaking of Hitler and Stalin, Orcs Must Die is really just a fantasy genocide simulator, except floor traps that catapult Orcs back into walls with blades on them wins out against firing squads. The guy you play is a wanker, but whatever. It doesn’t bother me that much, and it shouldn’t bother you that much. Now as I’m about half way through Orcs Must Die, I’m going to go and play it some more. For those that are unsure of buying this game, please just do it. Support the developers who made this great, great game. Slaughter some Orcs, set up traps, and level up abilities.
John:.... And wipe out a race of humanoid creatures, Now buy it for £11, it's cheaper than an ugly hooker.
Dan: Oh yeah, I’m so smart… and handsome,” says the smug wanker I’m having to play as he sets up what will surely be the greatest trap ever, a floor plate that catapults Orcs into wall blades that tear them into teeny tiny pieces. At which point I have a little squirt. This is what gaming is all about. Orcs Must Die is the funnest thing I’ve done since that time I accidently inserted my cock into a washing machine. Every level is fulfilling, the traps unlock in a tantalising order. At first I thought “Wow wall blades! They sound awesome!” which they were (oh fucking hell they’re AMAZING), then I unlock the floor plate that catapults enemies into fucking lava. Right now I’ve just got a masher plate that crushes enemies from the ceiling… simply saying those words makes me want to go and play this game. There’s only one possible criticism I can think of; the cunt you play is so arrogant and smug and stupid that I don’t really want him to win. I want him to fall in lava, or acid, or get catapulted out of a window like the 4,500 Orcs that have already gone down that path. Another little nit-pick is that ogres seem a little over powered. I could have designed an elaborate set of traps that massacres any Orc within a 10 mile radius into little hilarious pieces like in an insane asylum crossed with a butchers, then an ogre will run in and sprint at me, ignoring the arrow traps and smack me like the wanker that I am. But this is very minor; this is just a great game, hands down one of my favourite games of 2011, certainly the best Indie game I’ve ever played. Buy it. Now. Please.
John: This game reminds me of the Saw films designed some frat boys. The main character sounds like he looks at himself in the mirror more than he kills orcs by the sound of what he says, and he has the intelligence of a monkey dropped as a child, but in all honesty he doesn't bother me that much, and if it was a serious character, this games tone would have dropped more than a heavy black and white camera. One thing I have noticed however is that some of the traps are more useless than a tampon for men, and by half way through the 2nd act of the game, you basically have every trap and spell worthwhile, in comparison some are extremely overpowered, such as the fire floor thing (can't remember the name) which annihilates almost all orcs faster than if I just nuked them with ponies.
Another complaint which many people have with game is the lack of bloody co-op. This is a game which would suit co-op more than chloroform and anybody from Weight Watchers when chatting up women. However I myself don't believe that co-op is necessary, as I think the joy is seeing that one of your friends has beaten you on the leader boards for a level, and thus spending the next few hours trying to beat it, and adding re-playability. This is certainly my Indie game of the year as well (yes even better than Bastion and Minecraft), so commend Robot Entertainment for their effort here. I look forward to their next game, but before that, buy this now or suffer the wrath of a lead pipe to the crotch... While on fire.
Dan: Overall, Orcs Must Die is a great game, the traps are the most satisfying thing in a game since Hitler Blaster 3, the third game in a series where you blast Hitler in the face (with Stalin joining him in a final boss fight). Speaking of Hitler and Stalin, Orcs Must Die is really just a fantasy genocide simulator, except floor traps that catapult Orcs back into walls with blades on them wins out against firing squads. The guy you play is a wanker, but whatever. It doesn’t bother me that much, and it shouldn’t bother you that much. Now as I’m about half way through Orcs Must Die, I’m going to go and play it some more. For those that are unsure of buying this game, please just do it. Support the developers who made this great, great game. Slaughter some Orcs, set up traps, and level up abilities.
John:.... And wipe out a race of humanoid creatures, Now buy it for £11, it's cheaper than an ugly hooker.
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Rant
Dan: Another year, another map pack. Except a bit bigger this time. Modern Warfare 3 is fucking fucking fucking awful, the worst game I have played this year. It took everything that Black Ops changed about the CoD formula (admittedly not much) and destroyed it, instead releasing Modern Warfare 2 again. The Multiplayer is identical, the campaign is barely interactive, too short, has a ridiculous and retarded story and is as boring as ever.
Without further ado:
Campaign!
Dan: I thought arcade rail-shooters were a thing of the past, but they make a full return here in Modern Warfare 3. Every move you make (every breath you take) is scrutinised by the game before you can do it, and 9/10 they'll refuse to let it happen. Say I want to scout ahead of my squad to check the enemy positions, if I go too far ahead of them, I'll fail the mission. I can't open doors, so I can't flank enemies and so on. Not to mention how the game falls ill to the Black Ops problem of being designed by a 5 year old playing with his toy soldiers. Everything on screen explodes at some point, and whenever something isn't exploding it's building up to something exploding. Every section I played (controlling a drone, manning a minigun) all started with an actor half-heartedly saying: "Yuri! Get on tha' minigun!", and ended with it exploding and blood splashing onto my eyes like I've got sunglasses on. The shooting hasn't changed at all, there are no good changes to note really, except maybe Strike Packages, but that's for the multiplayer segment.
The story is 69 kinds of oral sex, that is to say shit. It feels like they interviewed an 8 year old with what his perfect story would be with loads of explosions and deaths and things falling over (it'd be alright if people cared, but when the Eiffel Tower falls over no one gives a shit), then animated the notes. It's both ludicrous and incredibly basic. There are no plot twists at all, it'd be like building up to a titanic boss fight and then he just slips on a stone and dies (which is almost what happened in Fable 2). I could forgive almost all of this, all of it, IF THE GAME HADN'T RECYCLED SET PIECES FROM PAST GAMES. That's the unforgivable part. The favela level is copy and pasted here twice, and then theres Gulag 2: A Castle This Time.
I think Modern Warfare 3 is the unholy offspring of arrogance and laziness. Infinity Ward have become cocky... cocks. They think just releasing the identical game again and again, year in year out, is acceptable. Well it fucking isn't. Yet another thing that annoys me about this game is that it's selling millions upon millions of copies, encouraging Infinity Ward and Treyarch to just rinse and repeat with Call of Duty. Imagine if that spreads to Valve like an STD in a brothel, soon Team Fortress 3 will be released but is a cover shooter with realistic graphics and you have to pay £12 for a handful of maps ARRRGGGHGGHAG{ O@GAUEGUKGEFILYGAYG!YILG!O@!GHGAFO!
Now then, rage from me over, John's turn:
John: The story of Modern Warfare 3 appears to have been written by George Bush if he had ADD, it jumps around more than a frog with a stick up its arse, and there are more explosions than a firework factory run by Bomberman. The story starts in India before inexplicably jumping to America, and then back to India, and then to Russia and then to Sierra Leone and then to London and then to Germany and then to Somalia and then to Paris and then to Russia and then to Dubai... God that list is less tedious to read than playing the damn game and probably more interactive as well. The story is Russia invade the world (and by world I mean America), you stop them, then some Russian guy you hate because he refused to share sweets when you where kids tries to blow up the world... Explosion. That's the background of the whole story. Then you and Phileas Fogg go on a trip to kill him, who at this point is probably twirling his moustache and laughing manically
It's obvious their trying to give a "realistic" impression of war, but this is only realistic if war was a rollercoaster designed by Michael Bay. At one bit, the Eiffel Tower collapses, the characters are so nonchalant about it, I think if the world had blown up, they wouldn't bat an eyelid. It is at that point I decided the game had gone from shit to being a huge sign saying "FREE CHOCOLATE FROM LOOKING AT THESE EXPLOSIONS!!! BOOM, EXPLOSIONS ARE COOL!!" The game appears to have been created from levels trying to outdo the last for explosions and Magnostruction (a combination of Magnitude and destruction... Making up words is fun.) In all honesty, these explosions look shit anyway, especially considering that the engine was probably created from sticking a paperclip in some bluetack.
Then you have the points where it becomes a movie, and by those points I mean the whole game. The amount of times it takes control away from you is astonishing; I'm playing a game not watching Team America. But even if you do get control of your character, it doesn't stop the lack of control. I can't even open doors on my own for Christ sake. I only have 4 explanations for this, 1. My characters actually been lobotomised and forgotten how to use a door handle, 2. My character is so low in rank if he dares open a door he's be court-martialled and even probably shot due to treason and reasons of national security, 3.The developers are worried I would walk through a door and step into Narnia or the land of strippers and 4. The developers think we're retarded so want to hold our hands in case we get lost in their grey corridor of "fun" (and by fun I mean utter boredom.) If I was them I'd put signs over every door saying that through them are the "Chocolate Lands" or the "Unicorn and Puppy Sanctuary."
And on the subject of doors, why are they indestructible other than with the plot convenience explosive devices, which also seem to turn you into an X-Man for 10 seconds. Why aren't we making Tanks or Jets out of doors if they're so indestructible. Get on that US Military.
Now I think we should talk about "that level", you know the one where the kid dies. I don't know what the developers where trying to show at this point, but it seems more pointlessly added in than if they had a level where Captain Price is molested by a Silverback Gorilla. My reaction on that level was just to search it for anything generically British, just so Americans could actually recognise it was in London. Also this and the previous level also show how retarded the terrorists are, and how they only succeed in these attacks due to how even more Brain Dead the Special Forces are. Seriously who believes that a truck with the words "Charity International" on it are actual Charity Truck.
Now to round off my views on it. It's a boring round the world trip, with generic, guessable moments which were supposedly shocking, but failed at that due to my lack of caring about the characters, and how cliché and forced out the subsequent dialogue was.
Special Ops!
Dan: Special Ops, or Spops for short, was without doubt, the best part of Modern Warfare 2. And it was the part people took the least notice of. The missions were short and satisfying, especially playing them with a friend (which is unfortunate as I don't have any). Admittedly some missions were shit, an example being the ones with Ghillie snipers whose scopes flashed like the Paparazzi had just seen Lady Gaga's cock. But what are they like this time around?
Well, they're exactly the same. The difference between this and the situation with the Multiplayer and Campaign, is that they're still fresh enough to enjoy. The survival mode is also a step up from the incredibly monotonous Zombies mode when it takes about 15 rounds to get going and then you find out it's shit anyway. The Spops missions are pretty fun, with a nice variety of styles and objectives to complete. There are some I wanted to go stealth on but since the game is so scripted I wasn't allowed to, and every enemy in the current solar system homed in on me if I so much as blinked. So yeah, other than a few scripting issues (AGAIN!) the missions in Spec Ops are very good. Moving on...
Spec Ops survival. A better, more frantic Zombies mode to be honest. It is a good step, using Predator drones and stuff like that instead of listen to vaguely racist Russian stereotypes drink vodka while you barricade a window for the squillionth time. It still takes ages to get going, with the first five rounds basically sending about 5 men at you and patronising me to the level I wanted to play Multiplayer and get called a "n00b" by 12 year olds.
But this is all irrelevant. Even though this is the best part of the game, people don't give two yellow shits about it. It's all Multiplayer. Speaking of that...
Multiplayer!
John: The Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer is boring. All it involves is you running around, before being shot by some hacker from underneath the map while he shoves his metaphorical cock down your mouth.... Wait this is Modern Warfare 3, oh sorry, well easy mistake to make.
So other than a few changes, and by changes I mean the equivalent of somebody untying their shoelace to seem different, this is more similar to the online in (Insert any Call of Duty game here.) And as this is a Call of Duty multiplayer, it requires so little skill to play, a tree stump could do well... while blindfolded. Which to be honest is a good thing in a way, because requiring skill from the Call of Duty community would be like trying to have them explain to you what puberty is.
As this game is made using 7 year old technology, the game creaks like a lose floorboard in a haunted house, at times you feel like a lone hamster is just holding the graphics together. And then as most people will have bought this on console, you also have an aim assist helping you to kill somebody because 1. You're multiplayer character is probably augmented so can have his robot arms move the gun around, and 2. Playing shooters with a gamepad is like trying to play a racing game with your nob.
Modern Hackfest 3 has the 12 year olds that we all love, (groan) telling us that they fucked our mother last night. This seems to represent skill now a days, in the same way that Skill is also probably measured in how many times you can walk into a wall, or how many times you can stab yourself with a glass bottle.
These "highly skilled" players seem to believe that getting a high amount of kills, with a good kill to death is the ubër way of playing the game... Because you know, in team based games I always love the feeling of not being able to win due to a retarded team, it would be like having John Prescott on your football team for Christ sake. On a game mode like domination I would much rather have somebody who goes 5/10 but caps the control points often, rather than somebody who goes 20/1 but is sat at home shitting himself and crying to his mum while he does nothing for the team because he hasn't got the brain to comprehend anything other than himself.
It doesn't help that less is done to help this than is done to give Dust Mites the vote, and the support packages only helped a little, (Dan will talk about them) but the quickest way to level is to play these games in completely the wrong fashion, which is awful, it would be like the quickest way to cure an STI is to infect yourself with AIDS.
No matter what, this is still better than the Multiplayer of Black Ops, which was the equivalent of having my balls attacked by a rabid hamster. It was awful.
My rant is over now, Now Daniel can explain strike packages and other crap.
Dan: Let's get one thing clear from the start: this is NOT a new multiplayer. This is a patch for Modern Warfare 2 that gives some more maps. It's a £45 map pack. There are minimal gameplay improvements, literally identical interface to Modern Warfare 2. Death streaks are back. Fucking death streaks. The feature that rewards people for being dreadful at the game. The idea behind it is to "get someone who is shit back into the action", but 1) That is an awful idea, it gives no one the incentive to stop being 12 and awful and 2) The death streaks were things like "Run faster for 10 seconds... IT TAKES 10 SECONDS TO GET INTO THE FIGHT. Most are literally useless, and not to blow my own trumpet but I haven't used one yet. There is no need for them, they are awful.
The "new" game modes are either re-hashes of previous game modes crossed with another, and "Kill Confirmed", which would be a good idea if every FPS since the original Counter-Strike hadn't used it. You shoot someone and grab their dog tags to confirm the kill, at which point your announcer... announces "KILL CONFIRMED". Since he announces it with every single tag collected you'll be playing on mute within 2 minutes just to avoid the constant "Kil- kill con- kill confir- kill" like your listening to an awful remix in a montage, you wanker.
As you can tell, I hate montages. Why would you want to look up how other people play their game and record it because they're smug idiots, JUST PLAY THE DAMN GAME YOURSELF. You'll (probably) have more fun, and if you get a decent kill (I say you, but if your on console it'll be your auto-aim) you'll feel much more superior than those montage wankers like Zzirgrizz.
The Strike Packages seemed like a good idea to me, but they're awful in real life. The Assault package just let's you unlock overpowered rewards you can pelt at people to kill them, because skill is overrated, so just as shit as ever. The Support package's gimmick is that when you die, your killstreak doesn't reset. So it isn't a streak then. To balance this out, the rewards are dreadful. The Juggernaught springs to mind, which makes you nigh-on indestructable while you unfairly rack up kills. Specialist package is yet another way for the game to be imbalanced. People get more and more perks for getting kills, so you can have a guy charging around at double speed with double health and extra bullet damage. There's not even anything to balance this out, say taking their radar off. No, if you're up against this guy, your only viable tactic is camp or quit.
CONCLUSION, YAY!!!! (I wanted it to sound important)
John: So their finishes our rant on the annual Call of Duty game, which is more of a definite than me being Cynical. So next year, when they release more than likely Black Ops 2, (and make me pray that the end of the world in 2012 was real) you will more than likely watch a movie instead of a singleplayer, with the most interactive experience you will perform is having to press a button every 5 minutes asking if you're sure you don't want to play online. Also zombies will be back, which is pointless, I think they should have a mode where we fight wves of snowmen who just want to be friends. I'm also going to call on a Call of Duty MMO now, it's almost a definite, the charge could be you getting violently sodomised twice a month and millions would still play it. Goodbye for now, and expect a Skyrim review (As it would be more like a love letter than a rant) sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Without further ado:
Campaign!
Dan: I thought arcade rail-shooters were a thing of the past, but they make a full return here in Modern Warfare 3. Every move you make (every breath you take) is scrutinised by the game before you can do it, and 9/10 they'll refuse to let it happen. Say I want to scout ahead of my squad to check the enemy positions, if I go too far ahead of them, I'll fail the mission. I can't open doors, so I can't flank enemies and so on. Not to mention how the game falls ill to the Black Ops problem of being designed by a 5 year old playing with his toy soldiers. Everything on screen explodes at some point, and whenever something isn't exploding it's building up to something exploding. Every section I played (controlling a drone, manning a minigun) all started with an actor half-heartedly saying: "Yuri! Get on tha' minigun!", and ended with it exploding and blood splashing onto my eyes like I've got sunglasses on. The shooting hasn't changed at all, there are no good changes to note really, except maybe Strike Packages, but that's for the multiplayer segment.
The story is 69 kinds of oral sex, that is to say shit. It feels like they interviewed an 8 year old with what his perfect story would be with loads of explosions and deaths and things falling over (it'd be alright if people cared, but when the Eiffel Tower falls over no one gives a shit), then animated the notes. It's both ludicrous and incredibly basic. There are no plot twists at all, it'd be like building up to a titanic boss fight and then he just slips on a stone and dies (which is almost what happened in Fable 2). I could forgive almost all of this, all of it, IF THE GAME HADN'T RECYCLED SET PIECES FROM PAST GAMES. That's the unforgivable part. The favela level is copy and pasted here twice, and then theres Gulag 2: A Castle This Time.
I think Modern Warfare 3 is the unholy offspring of arrogance and laziness. Infinity Ward have become cocky... cocks. They think just releasing the identical game again and again, year in year out, is acceptable. Well it fucking isn't. Yet another thing that annoys me about this game is that it's selling millions upon millions of copies, encouraging Infinity Ward and Treyarch to just rinse and repeat with Call of Duty. Imagine if that spreads to Valve like an STD in a brothel, soon Team Fortress 3 will be released but is a cover shooter with realistic graphics and you have to pay £12 for a handful of maps ARRRGGGHGGHAG{ O@GAUEGUKGEFILYGAYG!YILG!O@!GHGAFO!
Now then, rage from me over, John's turn:
John: The story of Modern Warfare 3 appears to have been written by George Bush if he had ADD, it jumps around more than a frog with a stick up its arse, and there are more explosions than a firework factory run by Bomberman. The story starts in India before inexplicably jumping to America, and then back to India, and then to Russia and then to Sierra Leone and then to London and then to Germany and then to Somalia and then to Paris and then to Russia and then to Dubai... God that list is less tedious to read than playing the damn game and probably more interactive as well. The story is Russia invade the world (and by world I mean America), you stop them, then some Russian guy you hate because he refused to share sweets when you where kids tries to blow up the world... Explosion. That's the background of the whole story. Then you and Phileas Fogg go on a trip to kill him, who at this point is probably twirling his moustache and laughing manically
It's obvious their trying to give a "realistic" impression of war, but this is only realistic if war was a rollercoaster designed by Michael Bay. At one bit, the Eiffel Tower collapses, the characters are so nonchalant about it, I think if the world had blown up, they wouldn't bat an eyelid. It is at that point I decided the game had gone from shit to being a huge sign saying "FREE CHOCOLATE FROM LOOKING AT THESE EXPLOSIONS!!! BOOM, EXPLOSIONS ARE COOL!!" The game appears to have been created from levels trying to outdo the last for explosions and Magnostruction (a combination of Magnitude and destruction... Making up words is fun.) In all honesty, these explosions look shit anyway, especially considering that the engine was probably created from sticking a paperclip in some bluetack.
Then you have the points where it becomes a movie, and by those points I mean the whole game. The amount of times it takes control away from you is astonishing; I'm playing a game not watching Team America. But even if you do get control of your character, it doesn't stop the lack of control. I can't even open doors on my own for Christ sake. I only have 4 explanations for this, 1. My characters actually been lobotomised and forgotten how to use a door handle, 2. My character is so low in rank if he dares open a door he's be court-martialled and even probably shot due to treason and reasons of national security, 3.The developers are worried I would walk through a door and step into Narnia or the land of strippers and 4. The developers think we're retarded so want to hold our hands in case we get lost in their grey corridor of "fun" (and by fun I mean utter boredom.) If I was them I'd put signs over every door saying that through them are the "Chocolate Lands" or the "Unicorn and Puppy Sanctuary."
And on the subject of doors, why are they indestructible other than with the plot convenience explosive devices, which also seem to turn you into an X-Man for 10 seconds. Why aren't we making Tanks or Jets out of doors if they're so indestructible. Get on that US Military.
Now I think we should talk about "that level", you know the one where the kid dies. I don't know what the developers where trying to show at this point, but it seems more pointlessly added in than if they had a level where Captain Price is molested by a Silverback Gorilla. My reaction on that level was just to search it for anything generically British, just so Americans could actually recognise it was in London. Also this and the previous level also show how retarded the terrorists are, and how they only succeed in these attacks due to how even more Brain Dead the Special Forces are. Seriously who believes that a truck with the words "Charity International" on it are actual Charity Truck.
Now to round off my views on it. It's a boring round the world trip, with generic, guessable moments which were supposedly shocking, but failed at that due to my lack of caring about the characters, and how cliché and forced out the subsequent dialogue was.
Special Ops!
Dan: Special Ops, or Spops for short, was without doubt, the best part of Modern Warfare 2. And it was the part people took the least notice of. The missions were short and satisfying, especially playing them with a friend (which is unfortunate as I don't have any). Admittedly some missions were shit, an example being the ones with Ghillie snipers whose scopes flashed like the Paparazzi had just seen Lady Gaga's cock. But what are they like this time around?
Well, they're exactly the same. The difference between this and the situation with the Multiplayer and Campaign, is that they're still fresh enough to enjoy. The survival mode is also a step up from the incredibly monotonous Zombies mode when it takes about 15 rounds to get going and then you find out it's shit anyway. The Spops missions are pretty fun, with a nice variety of styles and objectives to complete. There are some I wanted to go stealth on but since the game is so scripted I wasn't allowed to, and every enemy in the current solar system homed in on me if I so much as blinked. So yeah, other than a few scripting issues (AGAIN!) the missions in Spec Ops are very good. Moving on...
Spec Ops survival. A better, more frantic Zombies mode to be honest. It is a good step, using Predator drones and stuff like that instead of listen to vaguely racist Russian stereotypes drink vodka while you barricade a window for the squillionth time. It still takes ages to get going, with the first five rounds basically sending about 5 men at you and patronising me to the level I wanted to play Multiplayer and get called a "n00b" by 12 year olds.
But this is all irrelevant. Even though this is the best part of the game, people don't give two yellow shits about it. It's all Multiplayer. Speaking of that...
Multiplayer!
John: The Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer is boring. All it involves is you running around, before being shot by some hacker from underneath the map while he shoves his metaphorical cock down your mouth.... Wait this is Modern Warfare 3, oh sorry, well easy mistake to make.
So other than a few changes, and by changes I mean the equivalent of somebody untying their shoelace to seem different, this is more similar to the online in (Insert any Call of Duty game here.) And as this is a Call of Duty multiplayer, it requires so little skill to play, a tree stump could do well... while blindfolded. Which to be honest is a good thing in a way, because requiring skill from the Call of Duty community would be like trying to have them explain to you what puberty is.
As this game is made using 7 year old technology, the game creaks like a lose floorboard in a haunted house, at times you feel like a lone hamster is just holding the graphics together. And then as most people will have bought this on console, you also have an aim assist helping you to kill somebody because 1. You're multiplayer character is probably augmented so can have his robot arms move the gun around, and 2. Playing shooters with a gamepad is like trying to play a racing game with your nob.
Modern Hackfest 3 has the 12 year olds that we all love, (groan) telling us that they fucked our mother last night. This seems to represent skill now a days, in the same way that Skill is also probably measured in how many times you can walk into a wall, or how many times you can stab yourself with a glass bottle.
These "highly skilled" players seem to believe that getting a high amount of kills, with a good kill to death is the ubër way of playing the game... Because you know, in team based games I always love the feeling of not being able to win due to a retarded team, it would be like having John Prescott on your football team for Christ sake. On a game mode like domination I would much rather have somebody who goes 5/10 but caps the control points often, rather than somebody who goes 20/1 but is sat at home shitting himself and crying to his mum while he does nothing for the team because he hasn't got the brain to comprehend anything other than himself.
It doesn't help that less is done to help this than is done to give Dust Mites the vote, and the support packages only helped a little, (Dan will talk about them) but the quickest way to level is to play these games in completely the wrong fashion, which is awful, it would be like the quickest way to cure an STI is to infect yourself with AIDS.
No matter what, this is still better than the Multiplayer of Black Ops, which was the equivalent of having my balls attacked by a rabid hamster. It was awful.
My rant is over now, Now Daniel can explain strike packages and other crap.
Dan: Let's get one thing clear from the start: this is NOT a new multiplayer. This is a patch for Modern Warfare 2 that gives some more maps. It's a £45 map pack. There are minimal gameplay improvements, literally identical interface to Modern Warfare 2. Death streaks are back. Fucking death streaks. The feature that rewards people for being dreadful at the game. The idea behind it is to "get someone who is shit back into the action", but 1) That is an awful idea, it gives no one the incentive to stop being 12 and awful and 2) The death streaks were things like "Run faster for 10 seconds... IT TAKES 10 SECONDS TO GET INTO THE FIGHT. Most are literally useless, and not to blow my own trumpet but I haven't used one yet. There is no need for them, they are awful.
The "new" game modes are either re-hashes of previous game modes crossed with another, and "Kill Confirmed", which would be a good idea if every FPS since the original Counter-Strike hadn't used it. You shoot someone and grab their dog tags to confirm the kill, at which point your announcer... announces "KILL CONFIRMED". Since he announces it with every single tag collected you'll be playing on mute within 2 minutes just to avoid the constant "Kil- kill con- kill confir- kill" like your listening to an awful remix in a montage, you wanker.
As you can tell, I hate montages. Why would you want to look up how other people play their game and record it because they're smug idiots, JUST PLAY THE DAMN GAME YOURSELF. You'll (probably) have more fun, and if you get a decent kill (I say you, but if your on console it'll be your auto-aim) you'll feel much more superior than those montage wankers like Zzirgrizz.
The Strike Packages seemed like a good idea to me, but they're awful in real life. The Assault package just let's you unlock overpowered rewards you can pelt at people to kill them, because skill is overrated, so just as shit as ever. The Support package's gimmick is that when you die, your killstreak doesn't reset. So it isn't a streak then. To balance this out, the rewards are dreadful. The Juggernaught springs to mind, which makes you nigh-on indestructable while you unfairly rack up kills. Specialist package is yet another way for the game to be imbalanced. People get more and more perks for getting kills, so you can have a guy charging around at double speed with double health and extra bullet damage. There's not even anything to balance this out, say taking their radar off. No, if you're up against this guy, your only viable tactic is camp or quit.
CONCLUSION, YAY!!!! (I wanted it to sound important)
John: So their finishes our rant on the annual Call of Duty game, which is more of a definite than me being Cynical. So next year, when they release more than likely Black Ops 2, (and make me pray that the end of the world in 2012 was real) you will more than likely watch a movie instead of a singleplayer, with the most interactive experience you will perform is having to press a button every 5 minutes asking if you're sure you don't want to play online. Also zombies will be back, which is pointless, I think they should have a mode where we fight wves of snowmen who just want to be friends. I'm also going to call on a Call of Duty MMO now, it's almost a definite, the charge could be you getting violently sodomised twice a month and millions would still play it. Goodbye for now, and expect a Skyrim review (As it would be more like a love letter than a rant) sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Welcome to-Indie Royale Bundle 1
Today, dear invisible people who I wish read this Ranting Page. This is me bringing back my Rant "series" named Welcome to... About different Indie Games, which I started longer ago than it took for a Kardashian Marriage to finish, about World of Tanks.
I support indie Games, I don't know why most are crapper than a man who raps about the letter C, but I believe, as a gamer, it is my duty to help out Indie Developers and hope that some of them become a success story. This is why regularly I buy them on Steam with as much greed as an overweight Koala. And occasionally I do come across a gem of a game that I believe a lot more people should play, especially as most cost less than a blowjob from a vacuum cleaner.
And I'm not just talking about games like Minecraft, which became a success in a more amazing story than an erotic fiction book written by J.R.R Tolkien. No I'm talking about the ones which haven't been as much of a success, for example Dwarfs!? (Starring Simon from the Yogscast) which is more about Dwarfs than a program about Warwick Davis. It is for this reason I believe people should buy these games more, instead of just the big releases which cause more inflation of Hype than a Hot Air Balloon being blown up by an American Blow Job Dispenser.
So step in first the Humble Indie Bundle, and now the Indie Royale Bundle. These are bundles of Indie games which you can pay your own price for, from the cheapskate cunts who are a bigger disgrace to gaming than the person who made Muslim Masscare, until you get to the people who pay a hundred or Thousands of pounds to support the companies more than Viagra. In the Indie Royale Bundle all the money also goes to the developers. Now lets beging with the first game A.R.E.S. (By the way, I paid £10 for the bundle.)
A.R.E.S
Oh god it's a weird form of anime... Like all anime then but without the tentacle sex. So welcome to, what at the moment, appears to be the worst game in this bundle, and if I was caught saying that in Japan I would probably be lynched, more than likely from being strangles by school girls' underwear (oh family racist stereotypes.) It involves Robots kidnapping some woman you care less about than you care about than a fallen banana. So it's up to you, a cunt in a generically bad ass suit to go and save her.
It's a sidescrolling game, with guns which feel worse to shoot than a water pistol filled with bricks, and it causes more boredom than a dead squirrel, so I will probably never play this game again. And neither should you, unless you want to give yourself serious brain damage.
Sanctum
I know less about this game than I do about quantum physics, because to get the most fun out of it you need to play co-op, and I have no friends because I consider them more infuriating than a back rub from a jellyfish.
If you want to know about the game though, it is a co-op, first person, Tower defence shooter, in which you have to defeat waves of enemies before they get to your core, which seems to attract more people than a brothel. That is all I know about this game.
Gemini Rue
This was supposedly the best game of the bundle, and from what I've read on Rockpapershotgun, is widely acclaimed. But I hate Point and Clicks, I may as well have been asked to animate the sex life of Glenn Beck for how much I hate these games, but I played it anyway.
First thing I noticed was the art style, which fit the game extremely well, and from what I saw of the storyline, it was extremely interesting, but then we got to the point and click parts.
Playing a point and click game is like seeing a PowerPoint presentation designed by Stephen Hawking just to piss people off. They involve you clicking on random things on the screen until you break your mouse and have a stroke. There is absolutely no immersion, and you eventually resort to having to interact stupid stuff with other stupid stuff, for example Can this Condom kill a rat holding a grenade while wearing a top hat.
I left this game feeling bored, annoyed and angry, why the hell do people like Point and Clicks, do you also like getting a back massage from Freddy Krueger?
Nimbus
And now we get to the best game of the Bundle by a long way. It is a strange Race/puzzle game, in which you have to get to the end of the level by just bouncing yourself off of the different objects. It is extremely fiddly to control, and can be infuriating at times, but that all adds to the appeal of the game,
The game has a great art style, which is extremely shiny and glossy, like a mirror covered in varnish, and is an easy game just to go into and play, so go get it, or don't, because to be honest even after all this i'd rather spend £5 on other better games.
I support indie Games, I don't know why most are crapper than a man who raps about the letter C, but I believe, as a gamer, it is my duty to help out Indie Developers and hope that some of them become a success story. This is why regularly I buy them on Steam with as much greed as an overweight Koala. And occasionally I do come across a gem of a game that I believe a lot more people should play, especially as most cost less than a blowjob from a vacuum cleaner.
And I'm not just talking about games like Minecraft, which became a success in a more amazing story than an erotic fiction book written by J.R.R Tolkien. No I'm talking about the ones which haven't been as much of a success, for example Dwarfs!? (Starring Simon from the Yogscast) which is more about Dwarfs than a program about Warwick Davis. It is for this reason I believe people should buy these games more, instead of just the big releases which cause more inflation of Hype than a Hot Air Balloon being blown up by an American Blow Job Dispenser.
So step in first the Humble Indie Bundle, and now the Indie Royale Bundle. These are bundles of Indie games which you can pay your own price for, from the cheapskate cunts who are a bigger disgrace to gaming than the person who made Muslim Masscare, until you get to the people who pay a hundred or Thousands of pounds to support the companies more than Viagra. In the Indie Royale Bundle all the money also goes to the developers. Now lets beging with the first game A.R.E.S. (By the way, I paid £10 for the bundle.)
A.R.E.S
Oh god it's a weird form of anime... Like all anime then but without the tentacle sex. So welcome to, what at the moment, appears to be the worst game in this bundle, and if I was caught saying that in Japan I would probably be lynched, more than likely from being strangles by school girls' underwear (oh family racist stereotypes.) It involves Robots kidnapping some woman you care less about than you care about than a fallen banana. So it's up to you, a cunt in a generically bad ass suit to go and save her.
It's a sidescrolling game, with guns which feel worse to shoot than a water pistol filled with bricks, and it causes more boredom than a dead squirrel, so I will probably never play this game again. And neither should you, unless you want to give yourself serious brain damage.
Sanctum
I know less about this game than I do about quantum physics, because to get the most fun out of it you need to play co-op, and I have no friends because I consider them more infuriating than a back rub from a jellyfish.
If you want to know about the game though, it is a co-op, first person, Tower defence shooter, in which you have to defeat waves of enemies before they get to your core, which seems to attract more people than a brothel. That is all I know about this game.
Gemini Rue
This was supposedly the best game of the bundle, and from what I've read on Rockpapershotgun, is widely acclaimed. But I hate Point and Clicks, I may as well have been asked to animate the sex life of Glenn Beck for how much I hate these games, but I played it anyway.
First thing I noticed was the art style, which fit the game extremely well, and from what I saw of the storyline, it was extremely interesting, but then we got to the point and click parts.
Playing a point and click game is like seeing a PowerPoint presentation designed by Stephen Hawking just to piss people off. They involve you clicking on random things on the screen until you break your mouse and have a stroke. There is absolutely no immersion, and you eventually resort to having to interact stupid stuff with other stupid stuff, for example Can this Condom kill a rat holding a grenade while wearing a top hat.
I left this game feeling bored, annoyed and angry, why the hell do people like Point and Clicks, do you also like getting a back massage from Freddy Krueger?
Nimbus
And now we get to the best game of the Bundle by a long way. It is a strange Race/puzzle game, in which you have to get to the end of the level by just bouncing yourself off of the different objects. It is extremely fiddly to control, and can be infuriating at times, but that all adds to the appeal of the game,
The game has a great art style, which is extremely shiny and glossy, like a mirror covered in varnish, and is an easy game just to go into and play, so go get it, or don't, because to be honest even after all this i'd rather spend £5 on other better games.
Thursday, 27 October 2011
Blizzcon 1
So over this last weekend another Blizzcon has been and gone like a snowman in Mordor and as always.... I didn’t go, because I have no money like at every other Blizzcon. However I did watch the stream live, as well has have some sort of internet party with a group of mates who also did by talking on our IRC channel, so because of these (what some may consider sad, but those people are larger idiots than a fat person with no brain, so there opinions don’t count) qualifications, I believe I can talk about it anyway, like a fat person could talk about Mcdonalds.
So Blizzcon, Blizzards annual conference thing, which has more things to do with Blizzards than a presentation on safety in the arctic, where they announce all their games or show coverage of ones that already have been, and this year was no different, which many major games in production by them. However all in all it’s really just an excuse for everyone to get drunker than the city of Essex, which I have no idea how that is possible, but still. Anyway this year at Blizzcon there were four major announces, along with a load of little crap I care less about than I care about the financial situation of Activision, or the Death of Gadaffi, pick one of those which least offends you and then follow me on a magical tour of these.
Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm
Now we’ll start this off with the game I know the least about because.... well I just never got that into Starcraft 2, I played a lot of the first game but I was less into Starcraft 2 than a Tortoise is in a Marathon.
So basically all I know is that you guys get a new campaign to play where you get to play as the Zerg, so has more bugs in it than a fat frog’s stomach. There are also a few new additions and tweaks to the multiplayer game which will either piss off or excite the pros, I’m not sure which yet, because I’m not a pro.
To be honest if you want accurate news on Starcraft 2 your better asking somebody who has more knowledge of the game, instead of forcing me to spout more bullcrap than a cow on laxatives. Try Husky Starcraft, Day 9 or even Total Biscuit, they all know more about this game than me, and it also allows me to shamelessly plug youtube channels for people who care less about my existence than North Korea does for democracy.
One piece kind of piece of Starcraft news which I was interested is the next game I’m going to talk about, as it is really a complete game in its own right like that analogy I could use at this point but choose not to...
DOTA (The Blizzard version)
There are more MOBA games hanging around the interwebs now than there is porn and eventually we’ll all be wanking to towers in lanes... God that's a terrifying future.
The popular version of DOTA which we know today started with a Mod for Warcraft 3 (yes there where similar concepts before that), and is a slight cross between a Real Time Strategy and RPG, and is strange in the way that you go through the whole RPG cycle in about a 40 minute game. The game is split into 3 lanes with towers in them and the goal is to push the enemy back to their base and destroy their nexus (yes I play too much LOL.)
The good thing about this version of DOTA is that for a start it is free, which makes everything seem better than a money covered icecream... surrounded by naked woman. It also differentiates itself from Valves version (which is so similar to the first game it may as well be called Dolly the fucking sheep) by adding many new gameplay mechanics, to make it more aggressive than a rabid dog with a stick up its arse. Any creeps you now kill will join your lanes to help you attack the enemies towers giving you more reasons to go and kill them. Your inventory will also be more aggressive, as boots have been removed, so you can use more damage boosting items. The boots have been replaced by different mounts you can use.
The final reason this game seems extremely good is the fact that the champions are all Blizzards original characters, which I like, even though they may as well put Buzz Lightyear fighting Terminator in it for all the good it does.
So all in all, I’m really going to look forward to this game, and the fact that I can play it without having to buy Starcraft 2 makes it better.
Look forward to part 2
So Blizzcon, Blizzards annual conference thing, which has more things to do with Blizzards than a presentation on safety in the arctic, where they announce all their games or show coverage of ones that already have been, and this year was no different, which many major games in production by them. However all in all it’s really just an excuse for everyone to get drunker than the city of Essex, which I have no idea how that is possible, but still. Anyway this year at Blizzcon there were four major announces, along with a load of little crap I care less about than I care about the financial situation of Activision, or the Death of Gadaffi, pick one of those which least offends you and then follow me on a magical tour of these.
Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm
Now we’ll start this off with the game I know the least about because.... well I just never got that into Starcraft 2, I played a lot of the first game but I was less into Starcraft 2 than a Tortoise is in a Marathon.
So basically all I know is that you guys get a new campaign to play where you get to play as the Zerg, so has more bugs in it than a fat frog’s stomach. There are also a few new additions and tweaks to the multiplayer game which will either piss off or excite the pros, I’m not sure which yet, because I’m not a pro.
To be honest if you want accurate news on Starcraft 2 your better asking somebody who has more knowledge of the game, instead of forcing me to spout more bullcrap than a cow on laxatives. Try Husky Starcraft, Day 9 or even Total Biscuit, they all know more about this game than me, and it also allows me to shamelessly plug youtube channels for people who care less about my existence than North Korea does for democracy.
One piece kind of piece of Starcraft news which I was interested is the next game I’m going to talk about, as it is really a complete game in its own right like that analogy I could use at this point but choose not to...
DOTA (The Blizzard version)
There are more MOBA games hanging around the interwebs now than there is porn and eventually we’ll all be wanking to towers in lanes... God that's a terrifying future.
The popular version of DOTA which we know today started with a Mod for Warcraft 3 (yes there where similar concepts before that), and is a slight cross between a Real Time Strategy and RPG, and is strange in the way that you go through the whole RPG cycle in about a 40 minute game. The game is split into 3 lanes with towers in them and the goal is to push the enemy back to their base and destroy their nexus (yes I play too much LOL.)
The good thing about this version of DOTA is that for a start it is free, which makes everything seem better than a money covered icecream... surrounded by naked woman. It also differentiates itself from Valves version (which is so similar to the first game it may as well be called Dolly the fucking sheep) by adding many new gameplay mechanics, to make it more aggressive than a rabid dog with a stick up its arse. Any creeps you now kill will join your lanes to help you attack the enemies towers giving you more reasons to go and kill them. Your inventory will also be more aggressive, as boots have been removed, so you can use more damage boosting items. The boots have been replaced by different mounts you can use.
The final reason this game seems extremely good is the fact that the champions are all Blizzards original characters, which I like, even though they may as well put Buzz Lightyear fighting Terminator in it for all the good it does.
So all in all, I’m really going to look forward to this game, and the fact that I can play it without having to buy Starcraft 2 makes it better.
Look forward to part 2
Saturday, 8 October 2011
Battlefield 3: Beta Preview
(Oh look at me i'm every cock who works at Machinima Respawn and i'm talking about a popular First Person Shooter)
The end of last week saw the launch of the Battlefield 3 beta, the main competitor to Call of Duty in a sub genre of First Person shooters which have been milked more than a cow which lactates an overly average amount of milk, and as a person who has been extremely annoyed due to a certain company fucking up my Red Orchestra 2 like a Mouse in a bar for cats. So for that reason, I will start my collection of previews with this beta.
*Warning, review may contain a large amount of generic and cliché reviewers use to make themselves sound smart. Don’t have a brain haemorrhage, most are actually idiots*
The first thing I noticed about the game was the complete lack of menus, and this is a great addit..... wait no, WHAT THE FUCK, who decided that this would be a good idea, it’s like taking the Statue of Liberty and deciding wow what a beautiful statue before tearing it down and replacing it with a 200ft cock made out of lead. This just makes it almost impossible to change any of your options, and also makes it more hassle than a program about David Hasslehoff to switch between servers you wish to play on. This was, in many years of gaming, the most retarded decision (non game play wise) to put place in a game, and they may as well have an angry midget fly out of your computer screen trying to kill you whenever you start a game. Just fuck you EA and Dice.
So after 30 tedious minutes of trying to start a game, which would have been put to better you smashing a lamp over my head, I finally managed to get into a game, and wow how blue is this fucking thing, we may as well have entered the Kingdom of the bloody smurfs. The whole beta has a blue tinge over anything, but at least its better, and more colourful than your average FPS, which is browner than a cows arse.
The whole game is also extremely smooth and slick, with the movement feeling extremely good and not clunky at all. The guns feel a lot better to use than a lot of games that I have played, except the shotgun which is more useful than a pea shooter loaded with cotton wool. The game play is also a lot more tactical than your generic FPS, such as Call of Duty, which require as much skill as going to the toilet, so it feels a lot more satisfying with each kill.
There are many bugs which will more than likely not be fixed by the time the game comes out, as it is only about 2 weeks till the release date, which puts me off like being offered the opportunity to be crushed by a piano, however as much as I hate the practice of releasing an unfinished game until way after launch, hopefully they will be fixed within a few weeks (which is better than Call of Duty which will probably charge you to fix it like a particularly bad mechanic). And this ends my preview as I will probably do a proper review of the game when I buy it.
The end of last week saw the launch of the Battlefield 3 beta, the main competitor to Call of Duty in a sub genre of First Person shooters which have been milked more than a cow which lactates an overly average amount of milk, and as a person who has been extremely annoyed due to a certain company fucking up my Red Orchestra 2 like a Mouse in a bar for cats. So for that reason, I will start my collection of previews with this beta.
*Warning, review may contain a large amount of generic and cliché reviewers use to make themselves sound smart. Don’t have a brain haemorrhage, most are actually idiots*
The first thing I noticed about the game was the complete lack of menus, and this is a great addit..... wait no, WHAT THE FUCK, who decided that this would be a good idea, it’s like taking the Statue of Liberty and deciding wow what a beautiful statue before tearing it down and replacing it with a 200ft cock made out of lead. This just makes it almost impossible to change any of your options, and also makes it more hassle than a program about David Hasslehoff to switch between servers you wish to play on. This was, in many years of gaming, the most retarded decision (non game play wise) to put place in a game, and they may as well have an angry midget fly out of your computer screen trying to kill you whenever you start a game. Just fuck you EA and Dice.
So after 30 tedious minutes of trying to start a game, which would have been put to better you smashing a lamp over my head, I finally managed to get into a game, and wow how blue is this fucking thing, we may as well have entered the Kingdom of the bloody smurfs. The whole beta has a blue tinge over anything, but at least its better, and more colourful than your average FPS, which is browner than a cows arse.
The whole game is also extremely smooth and slick, with the movement feeling extremely good and not clunky at all. The guns feel a lot better to use than a lot of games that I have played, except the shotgun which is more useful than a pea shooter loaded with cotton wool. The game play is also a lot more tactical than your generic FPS, such as Call of Duty, which require as much skill as going to the toilet, so it feels a lot more satisfying with each kill.
There are many bugs which will more than likely not be fixed by the time the game comes out, as it is only about 2 weeks till the release date, which puts me off like being offered the opportunity to be crushed by a piano, however as much as I hate the practice of releasing an unfinished game until way after launch, hopefully they will be fixed within a few weeks (which is better than Call of Duty which will probably charge you to fix it like a particularly bad mechanic). And this ends my preview as I will probably do a proper review of the game when I buy it.
Wednesday, 21 September 2011
Mini Rant:Torchwood Miracle Day
So Torchwood has ended again, with a series that introduced more conspiracy theories than a conference full of retards, has come to an amazing ending. At first I was sceptical, considering the last series was shitter than a man rolling in a field full of cows, and even this season started off slower than a tortoise racing a Formula 1 car. However this series eventually got the ball rolling around the episode where you saw people getting burnt by sinister companies, and it genuinely made you feel something, so much so that it became better than the latest Doctor Who series (but that's harder than beating a one legged man in the egg and spoon race.)
So this season has had its highs and its lows, the lows mainly being the fact that there are more gay sex scenes than there where in Freddie Mercury’s private life. This didn’t stop the series ending on a fitting, epic ending, which ties up all the plot lines more neatly than the house of a person with OCD. I felt like I wanted to see what would happen next all the way through it, and when it did end it was quite moving.
Well Torchwood was easily one of the best things I’ve seen on TV all year, or even for a long time, and I can’t wait for a next series... Well that is unless it’s a shit as the previous season, please don’t let that happen.
So this season has had its highs and its lows, the lows mainly being the fact that there are more gay sex scenes than there where in Freddie Mercury’s private life. This didn’t stop the series ending on a fitting, epic ending, which ties up all the plot lines more neatly than the house of a person with OCD. I felt like I wanted to see what would happen next all the way through it, and when it did end it was quite moving.
Well Torchwood was easily one of the best things I’ve seen on TV all year, or even for a long time, and I can’t wait for a next series... Well that is unless it’s a shit as the previous season, please don’t let that happen.
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