Again, as January has less game releases than a monk has mistresses and due to the fact that I have still not had time to finish L.A Noire (or stomach the thought of having to play the Battlefield 3 campaign, for a rant (Hey I've put it off for a while now, don't judge)) I have decided to review another one of these big demos which have arrived on Steam and this time, it is The Darkness 2.
In possibly the most shocking revelation since David Beckham was revealed to be the anti-Christ and subsequently kicked everybody's pet tortoises to death and pissed on there bodies, The Darkness 2 is a sequel to a game called The Darkness (Shock, horror), a game even more amazingly based on a comic named... You guessed it, The Darkness. There are so many surprises here I bet you wouldn't care if I told you that God existed and his whole purpose is to give out STD's.
You play Mob Boss/ Japanese tentacle porn creator, Jackie Estacado, a man who wields something sinister called The Darkness, and involves some other organisation trying to get this off you, headed by a man who looks like a cross between the Hunchback of Notre Dame and a cupboard.
Other than a bit where I am being crucified by this guy, the demo starts with him being walked through a restaurant with about as much interactivity as a wooden floor. As you walk through you hear more Italian Americans than in The Godfather if it was written by Super Mario. After a while of walking through this area, I'm shoved into what seems to be a section which is more on rails than Stevenson's Rocket, as you are dragged through the area while shooting at a rival gang.
So after having more excitement sucked out of me than a man with erectile dysfunction being offered a blow job, I finally get to control my character with his aforementioned tentacles. Shame that, due to the controls being more fiddly to control than a buttered up piece of butter, you can never see how fun they actually are. Instead they are more annoying than having a deer kick you in the balls continuously. Pressing middle mouse button and then swinging you're mouse around like a cat on ecstasy also leaves you disoriented in the same way that spinning around on a crashing car may do.
Even then, that is before mentioning the terrible game mechanic of having to shoot down the street lights. It is a jarring change of pace when one minute you are ripping apart crime like a psychotic Batman, when the next you're shooting down lights like a 5 year old hoodlum. And there is little way around this when, if you don't, it takes away you're power. You're basically a shit Superman, but instead of Kryptonite, you just have a phobia of streetlights.
However if the game decided to send more than three enemies at me (remember this is the demo, it'll probably be different in the actual game) or isn't wrenching control from me like a clingy 3 year old, then you will be able to see the amazing violence in the game. It seems to have been left over from the point when the developers decided to remove all the fun parts out of the game. The more and more bloodthirsty ways to kill people seem to have come straight from the mind of Jason Voorhees after he stubbed his toe on a nail. They get pretty shit when they repeat though, and it becomes the equivalent of watching a wall dry on repeat.
Another good point is the cell shaded art style, which really isn't a style I like in games, for example the Prince of Persian re-boot... However that may be because that game made me feel like I was hammering a nail through my spine. It suits the game really well.
The camera (i.e. you're view) bobs about more than a boat in a hurricane. It makes the game sickening and horrible to play, and I would rather have somebody piss down my throat than have to endure that again. It gave me a bigger headache than the time I slammed my head onto a railway track when a train was coming down. It also makes it harder to aim than it is too make a cake after having both your eyes torn out with ice picks. This is also not helped by the limited FOV.
So overall I wouldn't recommend this game from what the demo shows, unless you happen to like the taste of sucking on your own balls, as I would recommend it more than this piece of shit.
Or you could just ignore this whole rant and buy it on the sole reason that there is a cockney monkey/imp thing that says "God save the Queen", possibly the most redeeming thing in the entire demo.
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Monday, 23 January 2012
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo Rant
Due to being busy, along the lines of a man who sits in a bath full of porridge getting sucked off by a hoover may be considered busy, I have not had much time to play any game this week other than Minecraft, however a demo I saw did catch my eye. The one for a game named Kingdoms of Amalur, so I decided to download that and review it.
Kingdoms of Amalur is an upcoming Role Playing Game, with the lead designer of one of my favourite games, Ken Rolston working on it. He made Morrowind, he also made a game which I would rather have caught SARS from an infected Snowman than play, Oblivion. It was also written by R.A Salvatore, who I have heard is a good writer, but writer doesn't count, Black Ops had the same writer as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, in the biggest drop in quality since Winston Churchill applied for the position of sex slave. So for this review of a demo, which is like reviewing a film while watching it through a man hole cover, I will split this into different categories starting with... *play epic music*
Story
In the game you have the choice to play as Humans, More Humans, Slightly Grey Humans, and Even Greyer Humans. At least in the Elder Scrolls I get much more of a choice, in this it's the equivalent of having to pick if you want to watch Disaster Movie or be raped by Squirrels.
The Game starts with a cinematic which couldn't be more like Lord of The Rings if it had a top on saying Peter Jackson can I give you a back massage. The narrator is basically Galadriel, and there is even a bit which looks suspiciously like The Last Alliance of Men and Elves, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. The again I'm not sure why I subject myself to this crap, so don't listen to my opinion.
After this I was greeted by a screen of blackness, because the people who made this game couldn't optimise it for an ATI card, but I turned off post processing and it worked, only to be met by the faces of two midgets, who both looked like they were about to start dancing wildly that they had struck oil. They threw me into a pit full of more bodies than... Well any joke I make here will be ridiculously offensive. It's just a shame that all the dead bodies look like sex dolls after a holiday to the bottom of a river, taking away more seriousness than having a man do the Charleston at the back of a news report on mass homicide.
The whole plot is harder to get into than a brick wall, and seemed to jump more jarringly between subjects than a Bi-Polar raccoon, leaving me confused, but it doesn't bother me at the moment, it could become better later on into the game not in the demo. But it's fucking shit anyway. (More uneducated opinion by me.)
Combat
Let's start with the melee combat, which feels slicker than an oil covered eel. The maximum gameplay which involves melee combat may just be you spam clicking whatever button it is like you are trying to give yourself arthritis, but at least it feels better than the one in basically any Elder Scrolls game. It is however, supposed to be a combination of both an Elder Scrolls game and a God of War game, and it completely fails at the latter it may as well have fallen out of a building onto a brick floor. It's average to good though.
I feel like I should give a quick mention to the blocking though, which involves you pulling out a shield which you conveniently managed to store at the back of your arse.
Then we have the stealth, which is also ok, but nowhere near as good as the one which is in most modern games, like in Skyrim or Deus Ex Human Revolution. One thing it does have like these games is the awful stealth kill animation, which as always is more jarring than the scene in The Pianist where everybody in the Warsaw Ghetto stands up and starts singing In The Navy.
Now we have the worst part of the combat, the Archery, which has an aiming system like they had got a blind man to create it. It flickers about from box to box instead of that obviously less threatening spider in my path, which leads me to believe that the plot twist will be that all the boxes unite against whoever you are fight for and try to take over the world for the Holy Boxyness. So all in all, the archery leaves me feeling annoyed, like a turtle had just pissed on my head.
Movement
All I have to say about this is that my character runs about like they have had a spike shoved up there arse, and that the game has taken away my ability to jump. They may as well have taken away my hands at the same time. I hate games which remove the ability to jump, it feels like they have removed all sense of freedom I had in the game.
Also the camera positioning is terrible, like it had been designed by a person with a nail through there jaw... I don't know why that would affect camera positioning but the point stands anyway.
So overall, I will not be getting this game, as it is terrible, especially if you compare it to some of the other RPG's on the market at the moment. However I'm pretty sure at this point last year, we were getting Dragon Age 2, which it is better than.... Then again that is like contemplating if you should be infected with AIDS or having a glass bottle shoved down your throat. If somebody asked you to buy this game, I'm pretty sure this will be your reaction. (Ignore the fact that, that TV program is also terrible)
Anyway to end on a lighter note, here is a Turtle trying to fly... Also I'm probably on crack.
Kingdoms of Amalur is an upcoming Role Playing Game, with the lead designer of one of my favourite games, Ken Rolston working on it. He made Morrowind, he also made a game which I would rather have caught SARS from an infected Snowman than play, Oblivion. It was also written by R.A Salvatore, who I have heard is a good writer, but writer doesn't count, Black Ops had the same writer as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, in the biggest drop in quality since Winston Churchill applied for the position of sex slave. So for this review of a demo, which is like reviewing a film while watching it through a man hole cover, I will split this into different categories starting with... *play epic music*
Story
In the game you have the choice to play as Humans, More Humans, Slightly Grey Humans, and Even Greyer Humans. At least in the Elder Scrolls I get much more of a choice, in this it's the equivalent of having to pick if you want to watch Disaster Movie or be raped by Squirrels.
The Game starts with a cinematic which couldn't be more like Lord of The Rings if it had a top on saying Peter Jackson can I give you a back massage. The narrator is basically Galadriel, and there is even a bit which looks suspiciously like The Last Alliance of Men and Elves, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't. The again I'm not sure why I subject myself to this crap, so don't listen to my opinion.
After this I was greeted by a screen of blackness, because the people who made this game couldn't optimise it for an ATI card, but I turned off post processing and it worked, only to be met by the faces of two midgets, who both looked like they were about to start dancing wildly that they had struck oil. They threw me into a pit full of more bodies than... Well any joke I make here will be ridiculously offensive. It's just a shame that all the dead bodies look like sex dolls after a holiday to the bottom of a river, taking away more seriousness than having a man do the Charleston at the back of a news report on mass homicide.
The whole plot is harder to get into than a brick wall, and seemed to jump more jarringly between subjects than a Bi-Polar raccoon, leaving me confused, but it doesn't bother me at the moment, it could become better later on into the game not in the demo. But it's fucking shit anyway. (More uneducated opinion by me.)
Combat
Let's start with the melee combat, which feels slicker than an oil covered eel. The maximum gameplay which involves melee combat may just be you spam clicking whatever button it is like you are trying to give yourself arthritis, but at least it feels better than the one in basically any Elder Scrolls game. It is however, supposed to be a combination of both an Elder Scrolls game and a God of War game, and it completely fails at the latter it may as well have fallen out of a building onto a brick floor. It's average to good though.
I feel like I should give a quick mention to the blocking though, which involves you pulling out a shield which you conveniently managed to store at the back of your arse.
Then we have the stealth, which is also ok, but nowhere near as good as the one which is in most modern games, like in Skyrim or Deus Ex Human Revolution. One thing it does have like these games is the awful stealth kill animation, which as always is more jarring than the scene in The Pianist where everybody in the Warsaw Ghetto stands up and starts singing In The Navy.
Now we have the worst part of the combat, the Archery, which has an aiming system like they had got a blind man to create it. It flickers about from box to box instead of that obviously less threatening spider in my path, which leads me to believe that the plot twist will be that all the boxes unite against whoever you are fight for and try to take over the world for the Holy Boxyness. So all in all, the archery leaves me feeling annoyed, like a turtle had just pissed on my head.
Movement
All I have to say about this is that my character runs about like they have had a spike shoved up there arse, and that the game has taken away my ability to jump. They may as well have taken away my hands at the same time. I hate games which remove the ability to jump, it feels like they have removed all sense of freedom I had in the game.
Also the camera positioning is terrible, like it had been designed by a person with a nail through there jaw... I don't know why that would affect camera positioning but the point stands anyway.
So overall, I will not be getting this game, as it is terrible, especially if you compare it to some of the other RPG's on the market at the moment. However I'm pretty sure at this point last year, we were getting Dragon Age 2, which it is better than.... Then again that is like contemplating if you should be infected with AIDS or having a glass bottle shoved down your throat. If somebody asked you to buy this game, I'm pretty sure this will be your reaction. (Ignore the fact that, that TV program is also terrible)
Anyway to end on a lighter note, here is a Turtle trying to fly... Also I'm probably on crack.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Editorial: SOPA and PIPA blackout
John: As anybody who hasn't had his head stuck down a hole filled with rabid chipmunks should know, yesterday was the SOPA and PIPA blackout day, with many big sites such as Wikipedia, Reddit, and Rock Paper Shotgun as well as big youtubers such as Total Biscuit and Yogscast all blacking out. What did I do, I hear three of you ask, well I blacked up.... I mean blacked out as well, well as much as it is possible to on Blogger. This blackout lead to 10 senators dropping support for SOPA and 10 for PIPA, including one of its co signers Marco Rubio
Now you ask, why did I do this? Well I'll tell you this, I believe that the internet is an amazing thing, encouraging art, from you're pictures of cats getting annoyed at cheeseburgers, to people playing music instruments, and everybody should be proud of this. It has changed everybody's life, challenging and deposing of murderous regimes, and questioning business practices. It has created a free market, a place for anybody to achieve success if they want to, the new American Dream.
SOPA and PIPA however, will destroy this huge empire of freedom. They want this amazing thing to be controlled by the large corporations, reducing all our freedom. It is irony, that countries like the United States, are planning this bill, while at the same time criticising the North Koreans, Iranians and the Chinese for their similar regulations. Supposedly these bills will stop piracy, but it won't, all it will do is harm the general user. It is like DRM, people still find ways around it to pirate games, but the customer is stuck with a permanent annoyance whenever they try install or even use their game. Yes piracy is bad, but this would be like releasing murderers to stop thievery.
It is a mockery to all what the western world supposedly stands for, all due to the big corporations who need help because they feel they can't survive. That's not capitalism, that's corporationism (or Corporatism), an ideology which means that the corporations stay with the most power by having a corrupt government themselves take down competition. No, true capitalism gives everybody an equal chance, it allows the big companies to fail, and the small people to think of something creative and earn their fortune... It allows a Free Market
Now I don't like doing these serious posts, I'm just a man, on the internet, who wants to write about and watch people play the things he loves, games, however when this and the freedom of the internet is threatened, I do not believe I can stand by. This is why I, and many other people, blacked out, or campaigned against this bill. If you are in the US contact you're elected officials here (http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml) and if you are out of the United States (and if you're in it) sign here. (http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet) Well that was my opinion on this blot on the internet, now to get back to normal work.
Now you ask, why did I do this? Well I'll tell you this, I believe that the internet is an amazing thing, encouraging art, from you're pictures of cats getting annoyed at cheeseburgers, to people playing music instruments, and everybody should be proud of this. It has changed everybody's life, challenging and deposing of murderous regimes, and questioning business practices. It has created a free market, a place for anybody to achieve success if they want to, the new American Dream.
SOPA and PIPA however, will destroy this huge empire of freedom. They want this amazing thing to be controlled by the large corporations, reducing all our freedom. It is irony, that countries like the United States, are planning this bill, while at the same time criticising the North Koreans, Iranians and the Chinese for their similar regulations. Supposedly these bills will stop piracy, but it won't, all it will do is harm the general user. It is like DRM, people still find ways around it to pirate games, but the customer is stuck with a permanent annoyance whenever they try install or even use their game. Yes piracy is bad, but this would be like releasing murderers to stop thievery.
It is a mockery to all what the western world supposedly stands for, all due to the big corporations who need help because they feel they can't survive. That's not capitalism, that's corporationism (or Corporatism), an ideology which means that the corporations stay with the most power by having a corrupt government themselves take down competition. No, true capitalism gives everybody an equal chance, it allows the big companies to fail, and the small people to think of something creative and earn their fortune... It allows a Free Market
Now I don't like doing these serious posts, I'm just a man, on the internet, who wants to write about and watch people play the things he loves, games, however when this and the freedom of the internet is threatened, I do not believe I can stand by. This is why I, and many other people, blacked out, or campaigned against this bill. If you are in the US contact you're elected officials here (http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml) and if you are out of the United States (and if you're in it) sign here. (http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_internet) Well that was my opinion on this blot on the internet, now to get back to normal work.
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Our Top 15 Games of 2011
Dan: Welcome to our annual tradition of announcing the best games of this year, which we’ve narrowed down into 15 slots that were so hotly contested that some of the choices are actually kind of shit. Anyway, we’ll start (as countdowns from 15 often do), with number 15, which is a game where no one could CHART where it would end up, hence it was:
15. Uncharted 3
John: Nathan Drake is possibly the most insufferable character I have ever seen this side of Essex. He makes me want to rip my eyes out and shove them in my ears so I don't have to hear his bull crap anymore. However this in itself really doesn't make Uncharted 3 or any of the Uncharted series bad games, in fact I love them, and this one is more of the same with just a few additions. It is not as good as the second one, partly because the second one was in the top three games I have played on my PS3 and partly because the second one did innovate on the first unlike this inclusion into the series.
14. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Dan: Halo: Combat Evolved is the best game in my favourite gaming series, so by that logic I should just give the anniversary edition 10 and call it a day. But no, 343 Industries included some new features, so let’s have a look at them. There’s Multiplayer now, with some classic Halo maps thrown in, which seemed to be pretty good to me. The unfortunate thing is: it’s just Halo Reach multiplayer. And as fun and good as that is, I feel those maps should have just been added onto to Halo fucking Reach. But whatever, if this really bothers you then boo hoo, but personally I could just play that fucking campaign over and over again slapping my hands together and drooling. Just like 10 years ago, the campaign is as compelling and great as ever, and the weirdest criticism of the game I’ve heard as of yet is that “it’s the exact same campaign as 10 years ago”. IT’S A BLOODY HD REMAKE, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN? Master Chief vs Samus? A Captain Keyes boss fight? A Cortana sex scene?! There have been a few little changes here and there, mainly the addition of terminals that you can access to get backstory about the Forerunners and shit, if you love to find out about lore. Other than that, it’s the same great campaign of 10 years ago updated with some nice looking graphics. 343 Industries haven’t sold me on them yet, we’ll see how shite (or otherwise) Halo 4 is next year.
13. Dungeons of Dredmor
John: 2011's has seemed to have been the year in which roguelikes have come back in force shaping It like a piece of clay until the genre has completely changed. From games such Brogue and Desktop Dungeons, to even The Binding of Isaac. All have added their own charm to the genre. However the best of all is Dungeon Defenders, a game with the cartoon humour of a violent Looney Tunes, and more ways to customise your character (not in a physical way but in the way you play) than a plastic surgery clinic. It also updates the graphics of Roguelikes, which is nice.
12. Space Marine
Dan: When I first played the Warhammer 40k: Space Marine demo a few months ago, I was blown away by how fucking FUN it was. It was in the days of dread before Battlefield 3, MW3, Rage etc. You know, the boring cover shooting regenerating health shit that I keep fucking BANGING on about like the twat I am. Anyway, I got Space Marine and launched it, and within 10 minutes I was gleefully laughing my way through it. It’s been ages since I laughed at a game, not since Portal 2, but Space Marine was funner than using a shotgun that fires exploding lasers at zombies, which is an apt comparison as there is a gun that feels just like that. The jetpack is like being hooked up to a drip that feeds endorphins, jumping into the air, sniping 5 Orcs in the head and then smashing into the ground, sending another 20 flying off a fucking ledge is infinitely more satisfying than popping out of cover, shooting a bloke, then having strawberries thrown all over your eyes. This game is fucking great at its core gameplay so if you want a game where you want to chill out and kill shit for a few hours, or your some sort of masochist and enjoy Warhammer 40k lore, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Space Marine.
11. Arkham City
John: Just to be clear, this game would have been higher if they hadn't delayed it for so long on the PC and yet still having problems with it, just as the random framerate drops. I also occasionally find the combat, while smooth, be more fiddly than a buttered up fiddler crab, randomly having me attack somebody who I was not aiming for, probably because he stole my chocolate or something.
However once you ignore this, you realise that this game is probably the best Superhero game you have ever played, and when you think that there is more of a chance for a turtle to flip you off than a superhero game to be good, it is very impressive. The main quest is extremely good, as well as the amazing sidequests, such as the Zsasz one, and the great exploration, it really does give this slick game a place on the list.
And now we're into the top 10.
10. Battlefield 3
John: The campaign of this game is the sort of thing you would enjoy, if your list on fun things to do included being repeatedly stabbed in the balls, or being raped by a wild armadillo. I don't know who would want to watch a movie instead of play a game, but that's what this is... probably made by Uwe Boll. It is your generic Modern regenerating health shooter, which involve you staring at more strawberry jam than a fat person, and when you're not doing that, you're admiring the architectural skills used to create a brick wall. And I'm talking about the online as well here.
Ah the online, in my eyes practically the same as that of Modern Warfare 3 apart from a few maps. All it involves is running around before being shot in the arse by somebody probably just playing a practical joke. The worst for these is Operation Metro, where the middle of the map has more men in it than a gay brothel. And you can't appreciate how good (because god it does look good) it looks when it's raining or extremely light in almost every map, all that does is blur your vision, like watching porn while having a man's arse shoved in your face. There are exceptions however, and they are Caspian Border, Tehran Highway and Back to Karkand maps. The first two because they are extremely fun to play on, especially flying around in a helicopter on Caspian Border with the finesse of a one winged Ostrich (however I usually ride shotgun in vehicles as an engineer, or some guy from the Washington DC ghettos) and for Back to Karkand it was obvious that they would be good maps, as they were in the Battlefield 2. So all in all, other than in the few good maps online, I didn't find this game enjoyable so just went back to Team Fortress 2,
Daniel did like it though so here's his opinion, not that I care, as its shit.
Dan: Battlefield 3 is probably the best (realistic) shooter of the year, which really depresses me. This is because of how painful the campaign was to play. A mesh of ridiculously unforgiving Quick Time Events (shudder), a very silly plot surgically taken from Tom Clancy and Modern Warfare and almost on rails gameplay throughout poison this game. This game is not only the best realistic shooter this year; it also has the very worst campaign of any shooter I’ve played in a while. There is a 3 minute section before you do a rail shooter section where you aren’t allowed to fucking move your character up to the jet, you can’t look around, you can’t take your helmet, and you can’t have a look around the ship. It’s ridiculous. From start to end the campaign (however nice it looks, and oh fucking hell does it look nice) feels terrible, and the only remotely alright bit is the tank section, but even then a lot of control is stolen from you. Moving on from the FRIGHTFUL single player, the Multiplayer (in my opinion) continues Battlefield’s trend of excellence. The beautiful environments make me literally duck whenever something explodes near me, and there are some fantastic moments that are genuinely fun, one such moment is when you parachute down to the next part of the map in Damavand Peak, that feels brilliant. Doing a HALO (sort of) jump like that brings back bad memories of the campaign, but other than that Battlefield 3’s multiplayer feels excellent, just like it’s predecessors.
9. Terraria
John: Now this is the game that I wanted Minecraft to be, except in a 2D setting. It takes all the building parts of Minecraft and adds in more RPG elements than a Dungeons and Dragons party. You have the item progression and the bosses.
This game is unfairly described as a Minecraft rip off, but that would be like saying that all FPS' are rip offs of each other, or that snowmen are rip off's of real men. This game adds so much more depth to Minecraft, which can leave you feeling bored, while this game does not, with its challenging bosses and different enemies. It's not a game that I can talk about that much though, as it all depends on how you play it.
The name also sounds like your being orally raped by a dentist, but we will just skip over that.
However, even though I've said this is what I wanted Minecraft to be like, you may be wondering why Minecraft is one place higher, well just read about it next.
8. Minecraft
Dan: I am a newcomer to Minecraft, as I had other less nerdy things to do like read comics and play Warhammer, but recently launched a game and having been force fed random trivia from people and videos I knew exactly what to do to start. It peaked my interest, but I wasn’t totally sold on the “best game ever” stamp being stuck on it absolutely everywhere. In PC Gamer I saw a massive amusement park built in Minecraft, I read about fully functioning computers with rudimentary games playing on them. My jaw literally dropped. Minecraft is totally overwhelming to a newcomer, and it almost turned me off. But I persisted and mined and crafted and fought my way through giant cocks until I built a huge sprawling mine. Then I thought: I want a lava waterfall! So I made that. Then I thought: how about a train system. So I built that. I was lost. Minecraft had consumed me. I have absolutely no idea how to review Minecraft, it’s fucking huge. I still have no bloody idea how to get to the nether, I have no idea how to make cakes, but I can tell you I have had a great time for the little I’ve done SO FAR. This is one of the most interesting games I’ve ever played and it may have even turned me onto Terraria, so you owe to yourself as a gamer to check this out, because it seems like this will be the start of a golden age. To sum up as best I can: the graphics are cute and look like someone spilt tea on the scribbling of a 4 year old, coming up with a project (making large lava falls and a train system) then seeing it come to fruition is endlessly satisfying, because there are endless fucking possibilities. Phew. Have I finished the review now? Yay now I can play Minecraft again…
John: Easily this year's success story (I know, I know, it was released in alpha last year), this is the game which proved that having more blocks than a building supply shop can create a good game. I can think of no other game which will let me create a huge squirrel next to a diamond model of a arse (I didn't do either of those) before going out to kill some exploding, green phalluses. The possibilities in this game seem almost limitless, well other than the limit of creating a lesbian sex scene with Angelina Jolie, but it comes damn close to anything being possible.
The fact that people have made full functioning computers in this game shows the scale of things possible. I myself usually play this in creative mode, getting bored of survival (however I did just "finish" the game by killing the Ender Dragon), so have built some huge structures. It is a game that I will fire up every so often if
I'm bored and get lost in for hours and hours seeing new things to do. It will get updated regularly by Mojang, and even though Notch has moved on to working on a new game for them, the team still works hard on it. I applaud Markus Persson for this amazing game, and starting off (yes I know about Infiminer) this new genre, and I for one hail our blocky overlords.
7. Bastion
John: Easily one of the funniest games I have played this year, the Narrator is funnier than watching a fat person slip on a banana skin. The way he makes observations in his voice which sounds as if he's swallowed a ton of nails adds to the enjoyment of the game and helps create a story which feels like one of your own, even if you couldn't create your own character. After playing this game I feel that even Diablo 3 couldn't beat it.
And I haven't even mentioned the soundtrack yet, which sounds amazing, and is probably the best I have heard in any game, but I'm not a music reviewer, as reviewing music is like trying to get a turtle to drive a car so my opinion is worth fuck all anyway.
It is one of the games this year which shows that the higher the selling price, the better the game, is a statement which is certainly not true.
6. Serious Sam 3: BFE
John: Probably the best and most fun, first person shooter, I have played in a very, very long time. Serious Sam scoffs at all your fascination for your own strawberry jam and love of brick walls. That sort of thing is for people who get scared of kittens. Instead Serious Sam is armed with more weaponry than Sarah Palin when she sees a communist. And no you don't need to keep slamming your finger down on a button when it pops up on the screen as if your trying to perform some lewd sexual act with it either, because this is a man's game, not some pussy film.
Yes the first few levels of this game are pretty terrible especially the museum level, and are more on rails than a very good train, they also involve you journeying through more corridors than if you're working in fucking real estate. However after this, god is it a good game, enemy blood splatters over your eyes, not your own, and paints the map, like a psychopaths dream in the jam. The weapons all feel amazing to use, from the sledgehammer to the laser rifle, and leave you laughing in a manic fashion as you kick a clone to the ground before sending his body flying with the shotgun. However unlike the other violent, fun game, Space Marine, this isn't really a game you can chill out to.
I'm surprised I managed to go this long without mentioning the co-op, which is amazing if you have a friend to play with... Which I don't so Dan had to do. We could waste on end playing it online it was that fun, with infinite respawning and friendly fire on, it makes the game extremely hectic and enjoyable. There is nothing better than going on rampages with a friend (no we are not condoning mass murder) killing monsters. Overall, this game makes me happy after the crap we suffered with Duke Nukem Forever, and Serious Sam takes back the old school shooter crown... By killing the Duke with a shotgun blast to the face, while he stands around disgustingly slapping wall boobs like the weird necrophiliac (as opposed to those normal necrophiliacs) that he is.
Dan: Serious Sam 3 is incredibly fun, and I took no notice of it until I realised it was an old school shooter and therefore infinitely more fun than obese blokes wearing enough armour to wallpaper the entire fucking world lurching from cover to cover ala Gears of War. And it is. I am currently about a quarter of the way through the game I have more weapons than I have teeth and I can run faster than a uranium fuelled Usain Bolt. Not to mention fights are tense and exciting with the omission of regenerating health meaning I don’t have to crouch behind a wall rubbing my temples and willing my legs to reattach. No, I rub a health kit on my balls and return to life. Basically it’s a shooter like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, the golden age of shooters, and as such it’s fucking awesome. I’m a quarter of the way through without even a hint of a plot more than: aliens are here, blow them up. But what more do you want from Serious Sam? It’s so fucking fast paced I nearly had an epileptic fit, while playing Modern Warfare 3 causes me to have a NARCOLEPTIC FIT (OH SNAP). Not to mention this is an insanely fun co-op game; John and I could play for hours on end, running at close to the speed of sound while blasting Kamikaze’s with shotguns never ever loses its charm and fun. Basically, if you long for a return to the great days of shooters, play this now, and if you DON’T have a longing to return to the golden age of shooters, play this anyway, and you’ll see how fucking stupid you are.
5.Shogun 2
Dan: Total War is for the most part, a good game series. The strategy is almost unmatched, and the mix of RTS and TBS feels perfect. Unfortunately a lot of the recent titles have been a pile of shite marinated in piss. Empire and Napoleon were set in the most boring period to set games in ever. You watch squads of musketmen slowly walk up to the enemy, fire then take 15 seconds to reload then YERARRH. Watching this is normally more boring than watching paint dry and at least paint serves some purpose, Empire’s only purpose was to fuck up as many aspects of the series as possible But Shogun 2 takes the series back to its much better roots. Large (yet samey) units of racist Japanese people (the angry eye ones) charge at each other ferociously, and the new graphics make it more satisfying as ever. Shogun 2 is a very good strategy game; while still not as good as the exceptional Medieval 2 it still has the same style of great battles. The AI is also no longer pathetic. ANECDOTE TIME: One time a few years ago while play arguably the shittest expansion pack in Total War History, Rome Total War: Alexander, Alexander was trapped in a city under attack by Persians who vastly outnumbered him. I thought I’d try to get him an honourable death so I could be defeated in style. But after one wave of enemies the Persians just stopped attacking and started repositioning their army again and again, meaning I could just sit there peppering them with arrows and win the battle. There’s none of that anymore, I’ve lost count of the amount of times the great AI has taken all of my provinces within the first 4 turns. Unfortunately this game still has hints of the monumentally awful Napoleon before it laced throughout, such as attrition. It just goes to show you should never stop fucking that one awesome prostitute (Romeo Med-two) by moving onto another (Napolempire) to see if the experience is good. Most probably it will be shit and even if you go back that first prostitute won’t feel the same and you’ll still have chlamydia from the second dirty prostitute, hence Shogun 2. Very good, but poisoned by its shit predecessors.
John: God that analogy was strange and long winded, just like how long it takes to lead this game. Seriously, it would be quicker to paint the Sistine chapel in semen than to load this game. Still good though.
4. Portal 2
John: Well we have another game in the Half-Life universe, it's just a shame it isn't Half Life 2 Episode 3... In fact, no it's not just a shame, it almost made me slam an ice pick into my brain. But that's enough of that, and let's get back onto Portal 2. I know already I was one of the 0.01% of creatures who didn't think the original game was this revolutionary masterpiece, and the only other thing that thought that was probably a brain dead slug who is addicted to crack. It was a good game, but I was too busy playing the much better game of Half Life 2 Episode 2 like any sane person should have done.
However Portal 2 was an extremely good game, like all Valve game are. The story was excellent, and the puzzles where more puzzling than something which is very puzzling. They kept you thinking for hours (well about 10 minutes) until you finally felt success when you managed to complete it. The game had an extremely good (but cliché) story, which is like a marijuana cake having money inside of it, and the humour was amazing, well other than Glados, who's humour seemed to be that of a depressed undertaker, and Wheatley, played by Stephen Merchant doing his best impressions of somebody who's mother drunk a few too many pints when he was a foetus, he started getting annoying eventually.
The game has the re-playability of dying, even in its excellent co-op mode, which is extremely fun to play with an acquaintance (because, as I have stated repeatedly, I'm less likable than a Robot Hitler spreading leukaemia, so have no friends) and can lead to many laughs while you are trying to figure out the solutions to problems, or just pissing about.
Dan: So then: Portal 2, very much the sequel to Portal 1, and a very good game. Portal 1 was good, but it is not totally flawless and DOES NOT deserve all of the praise it got as “the best game ever”. So anyway, one of the redeeming qualities of Portal was its humour, and it’s very much back here. A lot of (particularly Wheatley’s) lines made me laugh a lot, but it’s GLaDoS that disappointed me the most. She is NOT funny at ALL any MORE. All her jokes are basically “you killed me, that was mean”, with different spins on that. The game seriously overstays its welcome too; it’s like a tramp you gave a pound to following you around the shops all day desperately seeking more. Near the beginning I was having a lot of fun with some of the new features so the game said “Oh! Then I guess you won’t mind if I drag everything out for 20 chambers?” The amount of repetition is startling, but it’s forgiven by me because the puzzles are genuinely challenging this bloody time. The first 16 puzzles in Portal (there were only 19 for fucks’ sake) were pathetic, and wouldn’t challenge a foetus whose head had been squashed by super compressed stupid. Portal 2 in comparison is very hard particularly near the end and the humour from Wheatley and Cave Johnson is great. This combined with the aforementioned new gameplay tweaks makes Portal 2 a fantastic sequel to a good, overrated game.
3. Orcs must Die
Dan: Orcs Must Die is the best Indie game I’ve played in a while (if not the best ever), but that’s partly because I naively stay clear from Indie titles until people say they’re excellent, because most are worse than a snake with rusty nails for fangs. Orcs Must Die continued this trend, after it received critical acclaim. It was on the Steam sale and I bought it and instantly it jumped up and down on any scepticism I had, and devoured any remains when I unlocked the extraordinarily satisfying wall trap that minced Orcs up into bloody pieces. This game sealed the number 3 spot when I got a catapult trap that launched Orcs into lava and acid pits. There are a few reasons this game didn’t get higher, one being it isn’t as substantial as the top 2, and it’s less substantial than Modern Warfare 3 (just) and it’s higher because MW3 sucked rat fur while this kicks so much arse that a shoe imprint is now a genetic disorder. You play some smug wanker, basically the equivalent of Merlin as a frat boy, but this is entirely forgotten around the time 20 Orcs are mashed into chunks while I scream with laughter. This basically is what games are at their core: fun. It doesn’t need a great story like Half Life, or gameplay overwhelmingly varied like Deus Ex, it just needs the genocide of the entire Orc race. The Orcs are all bafflingly cute, and never seem like much of a threat. They all sound like the clever gangster’s sidekick called Chug or Mugsy or something, who sounded like they learning to talk while voice acting. All in all Orcs Must Die is ridiculously fun, and the perfect thing to wind down to after a stressful day at work. Plus it’s cheap.
John: This was easily my surprise game of the year. I don't usually like arrow traps as they get more boring as you go along until the only way you can alleviate yourself from boredom is to watch dying grass grow. Orcs must Die however, is an exception to this. It is probably one of the most enjoyable games you will ever play ever and rightfully received acclaim and blow jobs off almost every reviewer.
If you want an indication of how fun this game is, just think, it managed to get higher than Serious Sam 3 on this list for that fact alone. The only main point of the game is for you to set up cunningly violent trap combinations to see how you can commit fantasy genocide on more Orcs than a Lord of the Rings convention. You can crush them, shoot at them, set them on fire, and then just catapult them back into the traps to see if they can get through the toughest obstacle course ever again. Your choice in traps is almost limitless, short of just nuking all the orcs.
The only real problems are the lack of multiplayer, as playing this game in multiplayer would be possibly one of the most enjoyable experiences I could think of, and the other problem is thatsome of the enemies are ridiculously overpowered. But that doesn't matter as it is hilariously fun and cheap anyway.
2. Deus Ex Human Revolution
John: You know what, when I first played this game, I thought, this will easily be the game of the year, nothing could compete with how great this is. I was later proved long as you can see in a minute if you read on, but that is a testament to rival those in the bible to show how good this game is.
I myself didn't think this would be a good game, the original is one of my favourite games of all time, and after Invisible War my hopes weren't high, however I was proved wrong and enjoyed this game. The ability to go into any mission in whatever way you want is great, you could just go in all guns blazing like a Bi-polar bank robber, or you can sneak in and take out the enemy non violently like a pacifist rapist to name just a few.
The story itself is amazing, and the bet I have seen from any game in a long time, introducing Adam Jensen, the man who seems to drink a glass of gravel every morning, as he tries to fight through a conspiracy bigger than what the secret ingredient for McDonalds is (hint, it's probably Chicken penis.) This is because it turns out he is a less competent security than Kermit the Frog, so allows every scientist in the facility to get massacred with the ease of slicing butter.
Then you have the large open world hub zones, with more to explore than a Temple of Treasures, and a lot of different side quests to take part in. These zones are extremely detailed and help flesh out the game world and make it seem more real. You even get experience for exploring these like Jensen is training to become a mouse. The world is also extremely complex with its politics, as you would expect from a Deus Ex game, with fighting between the Anti-Augs and the people for it.
Some of the Augmentations are amazing (for example the typhoon which allows you to fire grenades from out of your arse) and add a lot to the way you want to play the game in its early parts. Many can be very fun to use, however some give an extremely annoying cut scene every time you perform them , such as the Icarus landing system, but this doesn't stop them from being enjoyable to use. They also make you feel like you are actually superhuman, which is how augments should make you feel in a Deus Ex game.
Also the game brings back inventory Tetris, which is a great addition for the game if your nostalgic, like me.
I assume though, that I will have to talk about the criticisms of the game , for example the fact that you can get every augmentation possible by the end of the game, not varying the combat at all, and turning it just a little stale. Another is the inclusion of the boss battles, which in the original you could perform in any which way you want, from shooting them, to sneaking past them, to offering them sexual favours to advance to the next point. In this game however you just have to fight some a few guys who pop up like there the Spanish Inquisition which nobody expected and proceed to beat the crap out of Jensen even if he has become superhuman. The options for these guys are shoot or die (which happens a lot), which becomes very boring, very quickly. And the last boss isn't even a boss, more a target to shoot at.
I won't even talk about the fact that Adam Jensen has lost the ability to punch somebody, so instead you get a jarringly placed animation which could be replaced with a Glenn Beck sex scene for how well they are placed in. However all these reasons shouldn't put you off this amazing game, which you should all play unless you want me to take you around the back and shoot you through the back of the head.
Dan: Having only THIS YEAR played Deus Ex 1 and liked it a lot, I was looking forward to this being released. Then I realised that it’d already been out for about a month, so I found it cheap and bought it. I did a pretty in-depth review (put a link over the word “review” with the review from a few months ago) of all the pillars of gameplay, and what I like most about it is it mixes some of the good parts of modern action games (nice graphics, a particularly vibrant colour palette, good stealth) and mixed it perfectly with the element of choice from the first game, which let you play anyway you wanted. You could be a stealthy sniper who uses his silenced rifle to eliminate resistance then pick his way through, or you could just go balls to the wall and use a flame thrower to turn the NSF into a tasty snack. Human Revolution emulates this perfectly, and the story is almost as engaging and brilliant as the first. It definitely has the best story in any shooter this year, it’s also the best Shooter this year. That is, if you count it as a shooter. Personally I count it as an Action-RPG, but IGN class it as a shooter so there you fucking go, bitch. So then: criticisms. The boss fights is a nice juicy one, but that’s been ripped to pieces by every single critic ever, so I’ll just say that it surgically removes the element of choice in favour of chucking in some fuckwit we’ve never heard anything about. Fortunately I’ve heard the boss fight in the Missing Link DlC is much improved, so you can get that and shut the fuck up. Another one is the omission of melee weapons and instead just has stupid half-baked animation that blow you out of the experience like a hosepipe on overload, but you need never use this. All these critiques are nit-picks, so just ignore them and play the bloody game, because it’s great.
John: And now for the number 1 game, which should be obvious, as your all cheating scum who read what it was before reading this sentence, and so are all going to hell.
1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Dan: To repeat myself YET AGAIN, Skyrim is the best RPG I’ve ever played. Oh for fucks’ sake, I can’t think of anything to say that I haven’t said before, so see the review we did for Christmas if you want the full opinion. To show you why this is the best game of the year I’ll quickly tell a little story: Buttbeard, my Bosmer assassin, had just got a quest to assassinate a bandit leader in a fort, so I rode there on my horse. After entering the fort I went into sneak mode and got behind my target, after backstabbing a lot of his mates. Unfortunately, he was surrounded by more enemies than he would be if he was at a mass bandit reunion. So I equipped the Dragon Shout “throw voice”, which would make enemies think they heard the shout from the other side of the room. They immediately began to walk over that way, giving my time to sneak behind my target and slash his throat. No one noticed, and I escaped into the daylight. And then I heard it. The Dragon. One of the best pieces on the Skyrim soundtrack kicked in and I thought “let’s go motherfucker”. The bandits in the fort I hadn’t cleared out began to attack the dragon, firing arrows at it and being incinerated. Then the Dragon turned to me. I smiled, activated my power and became a werewolf. Grinning to myself, I charged out of reach of the dragon’s fire breath, and devoured the dead bandits’ corpses, giving me longer as a werewolf. I turned, and charged the dragon. My mighty claws quickly ripped the dragon apart, and its soul went directly into me, unlocking second stage fire breath, while I laugh. You see, none of that is scripted. It only happened in my play through, and will not happen to you (John: Correction, that basically happened to me, except I didn't turn into a werewolf, because it is pointless). But that’s fine, because something equally as thrilling will happen in your playthrough, and I can never get that. And that, people, is why Skyrim is the best game of the year. It’s fucking awesome.
John: Nothing much to say about it other than what he just said really, it is an extremely amazing game where you can all go and create your own adventures. It is not as good as Morrowind, but better than Oblivion by a large gap.
John: So there we go, an end to another year which has gone faster than a man with premature ejaculation. There were quite a lot of disagreements while working on this, the main one being if Team Fortress 2 should count, as even though it wasn't released this year, it was made Free to play, so just to say, if we did count it, it would have blow everything else away. Now go enjoy your New Year you bastards and we'll be back then.
Edit 28th January 2012- John- I have now decided that Skyrim is certainly not the best game of last year and is probably 2nd with Deus Ex 1st. Yes Skyrim in an amazing sandbox with an amazing world to explore HOWEVER, the combat as I have mentioned, is bloody well terrible, and in all honesty, none of the stories they try to tell you are done very well, and are actually boring and awful stories. As I said it's a great sandbox to create your own adventure but game wise, it is not.
15. Uncharted 3
John: Nathan Drake is possibly the most insufferable character I have ever seen this side of Essex. He makes me want to rip my eyes out and shove them in my ears so I don't have to hear his bull crap anymore. However this in itself really doesn't make Uncharted 3 or any of the Uncharted series bad games, in fact I love them, and this one is more of the same with just a few additions. It is not as good as the second one, partly because the second one was in the top three games I have played on my PS3 and partly because the second one did innovate on the first unlike this inclusion into the series.
14. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Dan: Halo: Combat Evolved is the best game in my favourite gaming series, so by that logic I should just give the anniversary edition 10 and call it a day. But no, 343 Industries included some new features, so let’s have a look at them. There’s Multiplayer now, with some classic Halo maps thrown in, which seemed to be pretty good to me. The unfortunate thing is: it’s just Halo Reach multiplayer. And as fun and good as that is, I feel those maps should have just been added onto to Halo fucking Reach. But whatever, if this really bothers you then boo hoo, but personally I could just play that fucking campaign over and over again slapping my hands together and drooling. Just like 10 years ago, the campaign is as compelling and great as ever, and the weirdest criticism of the game I’ve heard as of yet is that “it’s the exact same campaign as 10 years ago”. IT’S A BLOODY HD REMAKE, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN? Master Chief vs Samus? A Captain Keyes boss fight? A Cortana sex scene?! There have been a few little changes here and there, mainly the addition of terminals that you can access to get backstory about the Forerunners and shit, if you love to find out about lore. Other than that, it’s the same great campaign of 10 years ago updated with some nice looking graphics. 343 Industries haven’t sold me on them yet, we’ll see how shite (or otherwise) Halo 4 is next year.
13. Dungeons of Dredmor
John: 2011's has seemed to have been the year in which roguelikes have come back in force shaping It like a piece of clay until the genre has completely changed. From games such Brogue and Desktop Dungeons, to even The Binding of Isaac. All have added their own charm to the genre. However the best of all is Dungeon Defenders, a game with the cartoon humour of a violent Looney Tunes, and more ways to customise your character (not in a physical way but in the way you play) than a plastic surgery clinic. It also updates the graphics of Roguelikes, which is nice.
12. Space Marine
Dan: When I first played the Warhammer 40k: Space Marine demo a few months ago, I was blown away by how fucking FUN it was. It was in the days of dread before Battlefield 3, MW3, Rage etc. You know, the boring cover shooting regenerating health shit that I keep fucking BANGING on about like the twat I am. Anyway, I got Space Marine and launched it, and within 10 minutes I was gleefully laughing my way through it. It’s been ages since I laughed at a game, not since Portal 2, but Space Marine was funner than using a shotgun that fires exploding lasers at zombies, which is an apt comparison as there is a gun that feels just like that. The jetpack is like being hooked up to a drip that feeds endorphins, jumping into the air, sniping 5 Orcs in the head and then smashing into the ground, sending another 20 flying off a fucking ledge is infinitely more satisfying than popping out of cover, shooting a bloke, then having strawberries thrown all over your eyes. This game is fucking great at its core gameplay so if you want a game where you want to chill out and kill shit for a few hours, or your some sort of masochist and enjoy Warhammer 40k lore, you could do a hell of a lot worse than Space Marine.
11. Arkham City
John: Just to be clear, this game would have been higher if they hadn't delayed it for so long on the PC and yet still having problems with it, just as the random framerate drops. I also occasionally find the combat, while smooth, be more fiddly than a buttered up fiddler crab, randomly having me attack somebody who I was not aiming for, probably because he stole my chocolate or something.
However once you ignore this, you realise that this game is probably the best Superhero game you have ever played, and when you think that there is more of a chance for a turtle to flip you off than a superhero game to be good, it is very impressive. The main quest is extremely good, as well as the amazing sidequests, such as the Zsasz one, and the great exploration, it really does give this slick game a place on the list.
And now we're into the top 10.
10. Battlefield 3
John: The campaign of this game is the sort of thing you would enjoy, if your list on fun things to do included being repeatedly stabbed in the balls, or being raped by a wild armadillo. I don't know who would want to watch a movie instead of play a game, but that's what this is... probably made by Uwe Boll. It is your generic Modern regenerating health shooter, which involve you staring at more strawberry jam than a fat person, and when you're not doing that, you're admiring the architectural skills used to create a brick wall. And I'm talking about the online as well here.
Ah the online, in my eyes practically the same as that of Modern Warfare 3 apart from a few maps. All it involves is running around before being shot in the arse by somebody probably just playing a practical joke. The worst for these is Operation Metro, where the middle of the map has more men in it than a gay brothel. And you can't appreciate how good (because god it does look good) it looks when it's raining or extremely light in almost every map, all that does is blur your vision, like watching porn while having a man's arse shoved in your face. There are exceptions however, and they are Caspian Border, Tehran Highway and Back to Karkand maps. The first two because they are extremely fun to play on, especially flying around in a helicopter on Caspian Border with the finesse of a one winged Ostrich (however I usually ride shotgun in vehicles as an engineer, or some guy from the Washington DC ghettos) and for Back to Karkand it was obvious that they would be good maps, as they were in the Battlefield 2. So all in all, other than in the few good maps online, I didn't find this game enjoyable so just went back to Team Fortress 2,
Daniel did like it though so here's his opinion, not that I care, as its shit.
Dan: Battlefield 3 is probably the best (realistic) shooter of the year, which really depresses me. This is because of how painful the campaign was to play. A mesh of ridiculously unforgiving Quick Time Events (shudder), a very silly plot surgically taken from Tom Clancy and Modern Warfare and almost on rails gameplay throughout poison this game. This game is not only the best realistic shooter this year; it also has the very worst campaign of any shooter I’ve played in a while. There is a 3 minute section before you do a rail shooter section where you aren’t allowed to fucking move your character up to the jet, you can’t look around, you can’t take your helmet, and you can’t have a look around the ship. It’s ridiculous. From start to end the campaign (however nice it looks, and oh fucking hell does it look nice) feels terrible, and the only remotely alright bit is the tank section, but even then a lot of control is stolen from you. Moving on from the FRIGHTFUL single player, the Multiplayer (in my opinion) continues Battlefield’s trend of excellence. The beautiful environments make me literally duck whenever something explodes near me, and there are some fantastic moments that are genuinely fun, one such moment is when you parachute down to the next part of the map in Damavand Peak, that feels brilliant. Doing a HALO (sort of) jump like that brings back bad memories of the campaign, but other than that Battlefield 3’s multiplayer feels excellent, just like it’s predecessors.
9. Terraria
John: Now this is the game that I wanted Minecraft to be, except in a 2D setting. It takes all the building parts of Minecraft and adds in more RPG elements than a Dungeons and Dragons party. You have the item progression and the bosses.
This game is unfairly described as a Minecraft rip off, but that would be like saying that all FPS' are rip offs of each other, or that snowmen are rip off's of real men. This game adds so much more depth to Minecraft, which can leave you feeling bored, while this game does not, with its challenging bosses and different enemies. It's not a game that I can talk about that much though, as it all depends on how you play it.
The name also sounds like your being orally raped by a dentist, but we will just skip over that.
However, even though I've said this is what I wanted Minecraft to be like, you may be wondering why Minecraft is one place higher, well just read about it next.
8. Minecraft
Dan: I am a newcomer to Minecraft, as I had other less nerdy things to do like read comics and play Warhammer, but recently launched a game and having been force fed random trivia from people and videos I knew exactly what to do to start. It peaked my interest, but I wasn’t totally sold on the “best game ever” stamp being stuck on it absolutely everywhere. In PC Gamer I saw a massive amusement park built in Minecraft, I read about fully functioning computers with rudimentary games playing on them. My jaw literally dropped. Minecraft is totally overwhelming to a newcomer, and it almost turned me off. But I persisted and mined and crafted and fought my way through giant cocks until I built a huge sprawling mine. Then I thought: I want a lava waterfall! So I made that. Then I thought: how about a train system. So I built that. I was lost. Minecraft had consumed me. I have absolutely no idea how to review Minecraft, it’s fucking huge. I still have no bloody idea how to get to the nether, I have no idea how to make cakes, but I can tell you I have had a great time for the little I’ve done SO FAR. This is one of the most interesting games I’ve ever played and it may have even turned me onto Terraria, so you owe to yourself as a gamer to check this out, because it seems like this will be the start of a golden age. To sum up as best I can: the graphics are cute and look like someone spilt tea on the scribbling of a 4 year old, coming up with a project (making large lava falls and a train system) then seeing it come to fruition is endlessly satisfying, because there are endless fucking possibilities. Phew. Have I finished the review now? Yay now I can play Minecraft again…
John: Easily this year's success story (I know, I know, it was released in alpha last year), this is the game which proved that having more blocks than a building supply shop can create a good game. I can think of no other game which will let me create a huge squirrel next to a diamond model of a arse (I didn't do either of those) before going out to kill some exploding, green phalluses. The possibilities in this game seem almost limitless, well other than the limit of creating a lesbian sex scene with Angelina Jolie, but it comes damn close to anything being possible.
The fact that people have made full functioning computers in this game shows the scale of things possible. I myself usually play this in creative mode, getting bored of survival (however I did just "finish" the game by killing the Ender Dragon), so have built some huge structures. It is a game that I will fire up every so often if
I'm bored and get lost in for hours and hours seeing new things to do. It will get updated regularly by Mojang, and even though Notch has moved on to working on a new game for them, the team still works hard on it. I applaud Markus Persson for this amazing game, and starting off (yes I know about Infiminer) this new genre, and I for one hail our blocky overlords.
7. Bastion
John: Easily one of the funniest games I have played this year, the Narrator is funnier than watching a fat person slip on a banana skin. The way he makes observations in his voice which sounds as if he's swallowed a ton of nails adds to the enjoyment of the game and helps create a story which feels like one of your own, even if you couldn't create your own character. After playing this game I feel that even Diablo 3 couldn't beat it.
And I haven't even mentioned the soundtrack yet, which sounds amazing, and is probably the best I have heard in any game, but I'm not a music reviewer, as reviewing music is like trying to get a turtle to drive a car so my opinion is worth fuck all anyway.
It is one of the games this year which shows that the higher the selling price, the better the game, is a statement which is certainly not true.
6. Serious Sam 3: BFE
John: Probably the best and most fun, first person shooter, I have played in a very, very long time. Serious Sam scoffs at all your fascination for your own strawberry jam and love of brick walls. That sort of thing is for people who get scared of kittens. Instead Serious Sam is armed with more weaponry than Sarah Palin when she sees a communist. And no you don't need to keep slamming your finger down on a button when it pops up on the screen as if your trying to perform some lewd sexual act with it either, because this is a man's game, not some pussy film.
Yes the first few levels of this game are pretty terrible especially the museum level, and are more on rails than a very good train, they also involve you journeying through more corridors than if you're working in fucking real estate. However after this, god is it a good game, enemy blood splatters over your eyes, not your own, and paints the map, like a psychopaths dream in the jam. The weapons all feel amazing to use, from the sledgehammer to the laser rifle, and leave you laughing in a manic fashion as you kick a clone to the ground before sending his body flying with the shotgun. However unlike the other violent, fun game, Space Marine, this isn't really a game you can chill out to.
I'm surprised I managed to go this long without mentioning the co-op, which is amazing if you have a friend to play with... Which I don't so Dan had to do. We could waste on end playing it online it was that fun, with infinite respawning and friendly fire on, it makes the game extremely hectic and enjoyable. There is nothing better than going on rampages with a friend (no we are not condoning mass murder) killing monsters. Overall, this game makes me happy after the crap we suffered with Duke Nukem Forever, and Serious Sam takes back the old school shooter crown... By killing the Duke with a shotgun blast to the face, while he stands around disgustingly slapping wall boobs like the weird necrophiliac (as opposed to those normal necrophiliacs) that he is.
Dan: Serious Sam 3 is incredibly fun, and I took no notice of it until I realised it was an old school shooter and therefore infinitely more fun than obese blokes wearing enough armour to wallpaper the entire fucking world lurching from cover to cover ala Gears of War. And it is. I am currently about a quarter of the way through the game I have more weapons than I have teeth and I can run faster than a uranium fuelled Usain Bolt. Not to mention fights are tense and exciting with the omission of regenerating health meaning I don’t have to crouch behind a wall rubbing my temples and willing my legs to reattach. No, I rub a health kit on my balls and return to life. Basically it’s a shooter like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, the golden age of shooters, and as such it’s fucking awesome. I’m a quarter of the way through without even a hint of a plot more than: aliens are here, blow them up. But what more do you want from Serious Sam? It’s so fucking fast paced I nearly had an epileptic fit, while playing Modern Warfare 3 causes me to have a NARCOLEPTIC FIT (OH SNAP). Not to mention this is an insanely fun co-op game; John and I could play for hours on end, running at close to the speed of sound while blasting Kamikaze’s with shotguns never ever loses its charm and fun. Basically, if you long for a return to the great days of shooters, play this now, and if you DON’T have a longing to return to the golden age of shooters, play this anyway, and you’ll see how fucking stupid you are.
5.Shogun 2
Dan: Total War is for the most part, a good game series. The strategy is almost unmatched, and the mix of RTS and TBS feels perfect. Unfortunately a lot of the recent titles have been a pile of shite marinated in piss. Empire and Napoleon were set in the most boring period to set games in ever. You watch squads of musketmen slowly walk up to the enemy, fire then take 15 seconds to reload then YERARRH. Watching this is normally more boring than watching paint dry and at least paint serves some purpose, Empire’s only purpose was to fuck up as many aspects of the series as possible But Shogun 2 takes the series back to its much better roots. Large (yet samey) units of racist Japanese people (the angry eye ones) charge at each other ferociously, and the new graphics make it more satisfying as ever. Shogun 2 is a very good strategy game; while still not as good as the exceptional Medieval 2 it still has the same style of great battles. The AI is also no longer pathetic. ANECDOTE TIME: One time a few years ago while play arguably the shittest expansion pack in Total War History, Rome Total War: Alexander, Alexander was trapped in a city under attack by Persians who vastly outnumbered him. I thought I’d try to get him an honourable death so I could be defeated in style. But after one wave of enemies the Persians just stopped attacking and started repositioning their army again and again, meaning I could just sit there peppering them with arrows and win the battle. There’s none of that anymore, I’ve lost count of the amount of times the great AI has taken all of my provinces within the first 4 turns. Unfortunately this game still has hints of the monumentally awful Napoleon before it laced throughout, such as attrition. It just goes to show you should never stop fucking that one awesome prostitute (Romeo Med-two) by moving onto another (Napolempire) to see if the experience is good. Most probably it will be shit and even if you go back that first prostitute won’t feel the same and you’ll still have chlamydia from the second dirty prostitute, hence Shogun 2. Very good, but poisoned by its shit predecessors.
John: God that analogy was strange and long winded, just like how long it takes to lead this game. Seriously, it would be quicker to paint the Sistine chapel in semen than to load this game. Still good though.
4. Portal 2
John: Well we have another game in the Half-Life universe, it's just a shame it isn't Half Life 2 Episode 3... In fact, no it's not just a shame, it almost made me slam an ice pick into my brain. But that's enough of that, and let's get back onto Portal 2. I know already I was one of the 0.01% of creatures who didn't think the original game was this revolutionary masterpiece, and the only other thing that thought that was probably a brain dead slug who is addicted to crack. It was a good game, but I was too busy playing the much better game of Half Life 2 Episode 2 like any sane person should have done.
However Portal 2 was an extremely good game, like all Valve game are. The story was excellent, and the puzzles where more puzzling than something which is very puzzling. They kept you thinking for hours (well about 10 minutes) until you finally felt success when you managed to complete it. The game had an extremely good (but cliché) story, which is like a marijuana cake having money inside of it, and the humour was amazing, well other than Glados, who's humour seemed to be that of a depressed undertaker, and Wheatley, played by Stephen Merchant doing his best impressions of somebody who's mother drunk a few too many pints when he was a foetus, he started getting annoying eventually.
The game has the re-playability of dying, even in its excellent co-op mode, which is extremely fun to play with an acquaintance (because, as I have stated repeatedly, I'm less likable than a Robot Hitler spreading leukaemia, so have no friends) and can lead to many laughs while you are trying to figure out the solutions to problems, or just pissing about.
Dan: So then: Portal 2, very much the sequel to Portal 1, and a very good game. Portal 1 was good, but it is not totally flawless and DOES NOT deserve all of the praise it got as “the best game ever”. So anyway, one of the redeeming qualities of Portal was its humour, and it’s very much back here. A lot of (particularly Wheatley’s) lines made me laugh a lot, but it’s GLaDoS that disappointed me the most. She is NOT funny at ALL any MORE. All her jokes are basically “you killed me, that was mean”, with different spins on that. The game seriously overstays its welcome too; it’s like a tramp you gave a pound to following you around the shops all day desperately seeking more. Near the beginning I was having a lot of fun with some of the new features so the game said “Oh! Then I guess you won’t mind if I drag everything out for 20 chambers?” The amount of repetition is startling, but it’s forgiven by me because the puzzles are genuinely challenging this bloody time. The first 16 puzzles in Portal (there were only 19 for fucks’ sake) were pathetic, and wouldn’t challenge a foetus whose head had been squashed by super compressed stupid. Portal 2 in comparison is very hard particularly near the end and the humour from Wheatley and Cave Johnson is great. This combined with the aforementioned new gameplay tweaks makes Portal 2 a fantastic sequel to a good, overrated game.
3. Orcs must Die
Dan: Orcs Must Die is the best Indie game I’ve played in a while (if not the best ever), but that’s partly because I naively stay clear from Indie titles until people say they’re excellent, because most are worse than a snake with rusty nails for fangs. Orcs Must Die continued this trend, after it received critical acclaim. It was on the Steam sale and I bought it and instantly it jumped up and down on any scepticism I had, and devoured any remains when I unlocked the extraordinarily satisfying wall trap that minced Orcs up into bloody pieces. This game sealed the number 3 spot when I got a catapult trap that launched Orcs into lava and acid pits. There are a few reasons this game didn’t get higher, one being it isn’t as substantial as the top 2, and it’s less substantial than Modern Warfare 3 (just) and it’s higher because MW3 sucked rat fur while this kicks so much arse that a shoe imprint is now a genetic disorder. You play some smug wanker, basically the equivalent of Merlin as a frat boy, but this is entirely forgotten around the time 20 Orcs are mashed into chunks while I scream with laughter. This basically is what games are at their core: fun. It doesn’t need a great story like Half Life, or gameplay overwhelmingly varied like Deus Ex, it just needs the genocide of the entire Orc race. The Orcs are all bafflingly cute, and never seem like much of a threat. They all sound like the clever gangster’s sidekick called Chug or Mugsy or something, who sounded like they learning to talk while voice acting. All in all Orcs Must Die is ridiculously fun, and the perfect thing to wind down to after a stressful day at work. Plus it’s cheap.
John: This was easily my surprise game of the year. I don't usually like arrow traps as they get more boring as you go along until the only way you can alleviate yourself from boredom is to watch dying grass grow. Orcs must Die however, is an exception to this. It is probably one of the most enjoyable games you will ever play ever and rightfully received acclaim and blow jobs off almost every reviewer.
If you want an indication of how fun this game is, just think, it managed to get higher than Serious Sam 3 on this list for that fact alone. The only main point of the game is for you to set up cunningly violent trap combinations to see how you can commit fantasy genocide on more Orcs than a Lord of the Rings convention. You can crush them, shoot at them, set them on fire, and then just catapult them back into the traps to see if they can get through the toughest obstacle course ever again. Your choice in traps is almost limitless, short of just nuking all the orcs.
The only real problems are the lack of multiplayer, as playing this game in multiplayer would be possibly one of the most enjoyable experiences I could think of, and the other problem is thatsome of the enemies are ridiculously overpowered. But that doesn't matter as it is hilariously fun and cheap anyway.
2. Deus Ex Human Revolution
John: You know what, when I first played this game, I thought, this will easily be the game of the year, nothing could compete with how great this is. I was later proved long as you can see in a minute if you read on, but that is a testament to rival those in the bible to show how good this game is.
I myself didn't think this would be a good game, the original is one of my favourite games of all time, and after Invisible War my hopes weren't high, however I was proved wrong and enjoyed this game. The ability to go into any mission in whatever way you want is great, you could just go in all guns blazing like a Bi-polar bank robber, or you can sneak in and take out the enemy non violently like a pacifist rapist to name just a few.
The story itself is amazing, and the bet I have seen from any game in a long time, introducing Adam Jensen, the man who seems to drink a glass of gravel every morning, as he tries to fight through a conspiracy bigger than what the secret ingredient for McDonalds is (hint, it's probably Chicken penis.) This is because it turns out he is a less competent security than Kermit the Frog, so allows every scientist in the facility to get massacred with the ease of slicing butter.
Then you have the large open world hub zones, with more to explore than a Temple of Treasures, and a lot of different side quests to take part in. These zones are extremely detailed and help flesh out the game world and make it seem more real. You even get experience for exploring these like Jensen is training to become a mouse. The world is also extremely complex with its politics, as you would expect from a Deus Ex game, with fighting between the Anti-Augs and the people for it.
Some of the Augmentations are amazing (for example the typhoon which allows you to fire grenades from out of your arse) and add a lot to the way you want to play the game in its early parts. Many can be very fun to use, however some give an extremely annoying cut scene every time you perform them , such as the Icarus landing system, but this doesn't stop them from being enjoyable to use. They also make you feel like you are actually superhuman, which is how augments should make you feel in a Deus Ex game.
Also the game brings back inventory Tetris, which is a great addition for the game if your nostalgic, like me.
I assume though, that I will have to talk about the criticisms of the game , for example the fact that you can get every augmentation possible by the end of the game, not varying the combat at all, and turning it just a little stale. Another is the inclusion of the boss battles, which in the original you could perform in any which way you want, from shooting them, to sneaking past them, to offering them sexual favours to advance to the next point. In this game however you just have to fight some a few guys who pop up like there the Spanish Inquisition which nobody expected and proceed to beat the crap out of Jensen even if he has become superhuman. The options for these guys are shoot or die (which happens a lot), which becomes very boring, very quickly. And the last boss isn't even a boss, more a target to shoot at.
I won't even talk about the fact that Adam Jensen has lost the ability to punch somebody, so instead you get a jarringly placed animation which could be replaced with a Glenn Beck sex scene for how well they are placed in. However all these reasons shouldn't put you off this amazing game, which you should all play unless you want me to take you around the back and shoot you through the back of the head.
Dan: Having only THIS YEAR played Deus Ex 1 and liked it a lot, I was looking forward to this being released. Then I realised that it’d already been out for about a month, so I found it cheap and bought it. I did a pretty in-depth review (put a link over the word “review” with the review from a few months ago) of all the pillars of gameplay, and what I like most about it is it mixes some of the good parts of modern action games (nice graphics, a particularly vibrant colour palette, good stealth) and mixed it perfectly with the element of choice from the first game, which let you play anyway you wanted. You could be a stealthy sniper who uses his silenced rifle to eliminate resistance then pick his way through, or you could just go balls to the wall and use a flame thrower to turn the NSF into a tasty snack. Human Revolution emulates this perfectly, and the story is almost as engaging and brilliant as the first. It definitely has the best story in any shooter this year, it’s also the best Shooter this year. That is, if you count it as a shooter. Personally I count it as an Action-RPG, but IGN class it as a shooter so there you fucking go, bitch. So then: criticisms. The boss fights is a nice juicy one, but that’s been ripped to pieces by every single critic ever, so I’ll just say that it surgically removes the element of choice in favour of chucking in some fuckwit we’ve never heard anything about. Fortunately I’ve heard the boss fight in the Missing Link DlC is much improved, so you can get that and shut the fuck up. Another one is the omission of melee weapons and instead just has stupid half-baked animation that blow you out of the experience like a hosepipe on overload, but you need never use this. All these critiques are nit-picks, so just ignore them and play the bloody game, because it’s great.
John: And now for the number 1 game, which should be obvious, as your all cheating scum who read what it was before reading this sentence, and so are all going to hell.
1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Dan: To repeat myself YET AGAIN, Skyrim is the best RPG I’ve ever played. Oh for fucks’ sake, I can’t think of anything to say that I haven’t said before, so see the review we did for Christmas if you want the full opinion. To show you why this is the best game of the year I’ll quickly tell a little story: Buttbeard, my Bosmer assassin, had just got a quest to assassinate a bandit leader in a fort, so I rode there on my horse. After entering the fort I went into sneak mode and got behind my target, after backstabbing a lot of his mates. Unfortunately, he was surrounded by more enemies than he would be if he was at a mass bandit reunion. So I equipped the Dragon Shout “throw voice”, which would make enemies think they heard the shout from the other side of the room. They immediately began to walk over that way, giving my time to sneak behind my target and slash his throat. No one noticed, and I escaped into the daylight. And then I heard it. The Dragon. One of the best pieces on the Skyrim soundtrack kicked in and I thought “let’s go motherfucker”. The bandits in the fort I hadn’t cleared out began to attack the dragon, firing arrows at it and being incinerated. Then the Dragon turned to me. I smiled, activated my power and became a werewolf. Grinning to myself, I charged out of reach of the dragon’s fire breath, and devoured the dead bandits’ corpses, giving me longer as a werewolf. I turned, and charged the dragon. My mighty claws quickly ripped the dragon apart, and its soul went directly into me, unlocking second stage fire breath, while I laugh. You see, none of that is scripted. It only happened in my play through, and will not happen to you (John: Correction, that basically happened to me, except I didn't turn into a werewolf, because it is pointless). But that’s fine, because something equally as thrilling will happen in your playthrough, and I can never get that. And that, people, is why Skyrim is the best game of the year. It’s fucking awesome.
John: Nothing much to say about it other than what he just said really, it is an extremely amazing game where you can all go and create your own adventures. It is not as good as Morrowind, but better than Oblivion by a large gap.
John: So there we go, an end to another year which has gone faster than a man with premature ejaculation. There were quite a lot of disagreements while working on this, the main one being if Team Fortress 2 should count, as even though it wasn't released this year, it was made Free to play, so just to say, if we did count it, it would have blow everything else away. Now go enjoy your New Year you bastards and we'll be back then.
Edit 28th January 2012- John- I have now decided that Skyrim is certainly not the best game of last year and is probably 2nd with Deus Ex 1st. Yes Skyrim in an amazing sandbox with an amazing world to explore HOWEVER, the combat as I have mentioned, is bloody well terrible, and in all honesty, none of the stories they try to tell you are done very well, and are actually boring and awful stories. As I said it's a great sandbox to create your own adventure but game wise, it is not.
Saturday, 24 December 2011
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Christmas Rant
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!
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, 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.
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