Blog Posts from "Old Blogs"

Gaming Ramblings #6 - Modern Warfare 2 Edition!

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:50:39 -0500

Okay, so there's a few things that I feel that I want to ramble about recently. Just a couple of things that get to me, piss me off completely, or just make me go "Wait...what?!".

<-----Previously on----->

The Sitoxity Blogs - Gaming Ramblings

Gaming Ramblings 5 - Bonus Update!
Gaming Ramblings 4
Gaming Ramblings 3
Gaming Ramblings 2
Gaming Ramblings 1

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Welcome to my special Modern Warfare 2 Gaming Rambling! It's also my first Blog post on V 4.0. The site is AWESOME btw, can't wait to start using it to it's full potential. Hopefully when I get my new PC I might even get a capture card or something and make VIDEOS. Zomg. Just something important I want to stress before I start this. I LOVE Modern Warfare 2. I've been playing it a lot and am completely addicted to it. I find it much better than CoD4 and WaW as it improves on a lot and brings a lot more weapons and attachments to the table. Now that that's done with, I can begin.

Ramble No. 1 - Javelin Launchers
Main culprits: High level players, players trying to get prestige

My first ramble is something that has recently come to my attention, after everyone is progessing. Once people unlock the Javelin, which is amazing when usecd against vehicles, I see many people, on both sides, fire it randomly into the air. Why? To get random kills from it. Only once have I had the unfortunate luck to be hit by a run-away Javelin, but really? It's even less purposeful than Grenade Spamming! You can't even aim it that well, and it's DESIGNED to fire against vehicles. I really don't see the point in this at all! It's just pointless, especially when it's VERY rare it kills someone. It's a waste of it, and I just cannot get my head around people using it. Maybe I'm just insane...maybe there's a challange for it or something, but I don't use it, so I haven't looked at them yet. The only "Launcher" I've used frequently is the Thumper, mainly because I like it. It's kinda useful. I may get called a Noob Tuber for that, but I don't run around with it that much, I prefer shooting people. Pew pew.

Ramble No. 2 - "Connection Lost"/Bad Losers
Main culprits: Players that don't like to lose.
*Not proven, may not actually be happening like this*

There are moments in games of Call of Duty online that have been rectified in Modern Warfare 2 due to Host Migration, meaning if someone knows they are host, and are losing, they can just quit out and end the match for everyone. This also happened if someone just had to leave but happened to be host. This isn't there in MW2, but somehow, a shadow of it still exists. There are many moments where, for example, I'm on a winning team in Domination, and somehow the game just ends before we win. The message comes up "Connection to Host Lost" or something, and everyone is left in the game. Weird, huh? Well a lot of people have been saying that it's sore losers that are causing the games to quit out meaning they don't get counted as a loss (as far as I'm aware). I'm not sure if this is due to something like Stand-by-ing or anything else. It may just be a glitch and just happens to appear when there's a big gap between points. It can be very frustrating, especially if you're like me and trying to do challanges for weapons or gametypes. Grr at them! (if it's true).

This kind of leads onto another point with Bad Players. Why do a lot of the players who you beat seem to yell profanities about how much you suck for beating them? It happens in almost every online game out there, and it's never really made sense. We obviously don't suck if we kicked your ass. Just say "Good Game!" and try again. We need more good Sportsmanship (Or Gamership?) in games. It'd be such a better place, and a lot more fun! While we're at it, all the arrogant pricks can go to hell. We can all see you're good, you don't have to rub it into everyone's faces 24/7, even if they aren't even that bad. Respect other players, encourage them to do better, and congradulate their achievements.

Anyway, before I go completely off topic, the next ramble!

Ramble No. 3 - Auto-Aim
Main culprits: Call of Duty/Halo Franchises/Console FPS

Now this isn't Modern Warfare 2 specific, but it's an issue that arises in this just as much as other console FPS games, keeping it on a specific tangent however, I'll only talk about this in context to MW2.

Auto-Aim is in console games to help aiming. Call of Duty has their specific ADS (Aim Down Sight) mode with Auto-Aim that will snap to targets. I have ALWAYS, played with this off, but Auto-Aim is still present! Countless times I'll be looking down a hallway, see an enemy run past, and my view will slowly crawl either in front or behind him. It can be frustrating and more than a couple of times have messed up my shots in near close range. The only weapons I notice it less in close range with is Shotguns and Snipers. This is how I feel it should be. If I choose to switch it off, I expect it to be switched off completely. I like having the freedom and power to aim for myself, without the assists on. Maybe it's just because I'm a huge fan of PC FPS games, but I still feel that the hardcore console gamers will feel similar to I do. Some games on the consoles do this. Please make it so for Call of Duty's next entry!

Ramble No. 4 - Weapon Unlocks
Main culprits: M4A1, ACR, Barret .50 Cal

I know what you're thinking. G1 Sitoxity, what's wrong with weapon unlocks? It gives you far more choice as you progress through the game!
Well faithful reader, as you may have noticed I have some specific guns as culprits! Why? Well, let me explain.

I believe these guns are a few you start off with that are some of the best in the game. Now that isn't exactly a bad thing, but it is kind of weird. I've recently reached level 50, and I've been using the same weapon for most of my time levelling! The M4A1 is one the best guns in the game, the accuarcy is good, the power is good, and the recoil is minimal. I don't understand why such a good, all-round weapon would be one of the first unlocks. Surely it should be near the end? Maybe it was Infinity Wards way of making it more balanced, having many good weapons at the beggining so new players never feel too overwhelemed with the veterans of the games. I like trying out new weapons though, and this is giving me less of an urge to. I know players will always have their favorites, and Prestige mode lets you try the new weapons again and again. I like trying everything out, even after I have a favorite weapon, just to get good at as wide a range as possible. This is just how I play the game, and I find it a lot of fun. It also levels you really quick, btw. I've already almost have unlocked all the attachments for 2 weapons. That's probably not that much, but I do vary what I use between games, depending on maps and gametypes.

Final Ramble! - Care Packages
Main culprits: Care Drop, Emergency Drop

Ah the care packages. Such an awesome and useful addition. There are a couple of issues with these that I'll have a little ramble about right now. Bouncyness and what's in them.

The bouncyness of these care drops can be very unreliable. Sometimes they'll fall, kinda sink into the ground, and just lie there. Awesome. You go and grab it and move on. Then sometimes, they bounce all over the place, making you run to get it, or going completely out of the map or into unreachable places. This can be very frustrating. The first time I had an AC130 in one and it bounced right over a fence out of the map, right in sight, on a train rail. I was a bit annoyed at that, and very upset that I didn't get to pew pew with the gigantic guns on that plane. I really don't know why sometimes they bounce and sometimes they don't, but I don't find it nearly as bad an issue as my luck with them.

The luck I have with care packages seems to be Bad. Bad in what way? The majority of mine are UAV, UAV Jammers and Ammo. I realise that they're not supposed to be rare streaks in each crate, but I seem to get them more often than everyone else. Ammo is probably the best in my opinion, purely because in some guns, I can go around with a lot of kills but run out of ammo fast. The UAV I find useful too, the Jammer I never really notice a difference on the other team. I do get the occasional Stealth Bomber and Chopper Gunner, but most of the time it's nothing that spectacular. It makes me sad.

And with that, my Modern Warfare 2 Ramble comes to an end. But don't be sad, I'm sure I'll have plenty to ramble about in the future! Don't you dare think that'll be the last I'll delve into this game either. I'm sure something will come up to ramble about, or I might even write something different concerning my current favorite game. I have articles coming up on Square-Go soon, so keep a look out!

Thanks for reading, and thanks to ScrewAttack for an AMAZING update to the website!

The Sitoxity Blogs - Controllers

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:19:05 -0500

Hey, it's me again. This time I've decided to do a blog about controllers. I've not had enough things to ramble about, and I'm not really in the mood for it, so perhaps a special Modern Warfare 2 Ramblings edition next week? I'm hoping to cure my writer's block I've had all week, hoping to finish an article. Let's see if this will help!

First, as always, an update of goings on in my world. <---Previously on the Blogs---> The Sitoxity Blogs - Forza Motorsport 3 The Sitxoity Blogs - Fanboys Gaming Ramblings 5 - Bonus Update! The King of Fighters XII - First Impressions Halo 3: ODST - My Take <---Square-Go Articles---> Coming soon! - Video Game Trends: User Interfaces Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Review The King of Fighters XII Review For the love of... Sonic And Knuckles Preview: MAG

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So there have been many variations of controller in the world of video games, from the Atari's, to Nintendos, and even recently to Microsofts. Many have their own tastes and like certain ones, others praise them all for being unique, but good at doing their jobs. Each have their own roles, and what they're best at. I'm going to try and touch on this, and other things concerning them.

Wow, look at that. That's not even all of them! Many are from the oldschool days, and some companys are not even in the console business anymore, all of them look quite different, yet all are made for the same purpose. The only controller out of that bunch that stayed similar, and consistant, was Sonys. The Dual Shock series have seen improvments, but never a cosmetic ones, bar a few colour tweaks. Eventually losing out the wire, the Dual Shock 3 is Sonys best controller thus far. HAving intergrated the old PS3 Six-Axis with vibration functionality, this remains one of the best controllers to game on. It's comfortable, you can just pick it up and it feels right when you hold it. It can also be used for a great amount of games, without losing any controllability. The one downside? Battery. Once the battery inside dies (Which, let's face it, WILL happen, eventually) you are generally screwed. Since it's built in, a new controller needs to be bought. This isn't really handy, but if the lifespan of the battery is good enough, should never be a problem. One thing that people complain about is the set up for First Person Shooters, some blame the button layouts in the games, other blame the controller. I personally, feel that one other controller this generation is more suited, and no, I'm not counting a mouse and keyboard. The Xbox 360's controller, in my humble opinion, is the best current gen controller for playing First Person Shooters. Why? The positioning of the Thumbsticks. Further apart from the PS3's, it leaves room for manouvering much better. It just feels much more suited to that type of game, and it really shows, especially when most games just have the same control layout mapped in their games. This could be from a Developers own ideal scheme to use, or just how it makes sense when they hold this controller when they play a game on the 360. Now, hold on a second. I wonder if you're thinking the same as I did. After closer inspection of the two above controllers, do you see any similarities? I do. Screams of Heresy and blasphemy now fill the air! The fanboys rage. Hold that thought though. What is it that's similar? It's the SHAPE. The general shape of them. Why? Because that's what fits our hands neat, with the most comfort possible. Yes, the 360 controller is a little bulkier, not as much as the original Xbox, but still, compared to a Dual Shock 3, it's about twice the size. The shape remains the same. Our thumbs and fingers can easily get to every button on these controllers, and that's the reason why they're like they are. A LOT of thought goes into the designs of these things, and it's not surprising that they stick to a general design to help with something as important as comfort when playing. The motion controllers of today, (The Wii-Remote, Playstation Eye, and to an extent, the Xbox Live Vision Camera), are similar in nature, especially the latter two. I personally, see the gimik in them, but not much further than that. It might be because the Wii has never had much compelling titles for me, or something that struck out as an amazing control scheme. But that's just me. You can see in the chart, the slow progression of the curved nature of the controllers however. They started off boxy, and slowly began to curve out. This is when the comfort started being very important I believe, and it's what started where we are today.

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A short blog indeed, but I believe I like it. Hopefully I'm starting to perfect my layout, although I may have to edit it when Version 4.0 rolls around soon. Again, thanks all for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it. See you guys next time. I'm off to play Uncharted 2 online.

Sitoxity Blogs - Forza Motorsport 3

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:02:54 -0400

Hello, and welcome to another Sitoxity Blog. This time I'm going to be talking about Forza Motorsport 3. This is not a review, or a first impressions. This is just so I can talk about the game, what I think of it, what I've been doing in it, and what I plan to do in the future, as well as playing it, of course.

First, a little update of goings on. <---Previously on the Blogs---> The Sitxoity Blogs - Fanboys Gaming Ramblings 5 - Bonus Update! The King of Fighters XII - First Impressions Halo 3: ODST - My Take <---Square-Go Articles---> Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Review The King of Fighters XII Review For the love of... Sonic And Knuckles Preview: MAG Now that that's done with, onto the blog! Be aware, all screenshots are taken from ForzaMotorsport.net and were all created by myself. All but one of the designs (the Evo) are my own.

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Last Friday, I recieved Forza Motorsport 3 (and Borderlands) through the mail. I had ordered the Limited Collectors Edition, as I managed to find it almost at the same price as the game itself. The box it came in is quite nice. Very stylish. I'm not here to go on and on about the packaging though, this is all about the game itself. I've been playing this game a lot. I mean, I'm hardly ever off it! When I am on Forza, I'm not even doing that many races. I've been doing a couple of "weeks" of races in-between, but that's just for money and other things. The first couple of days, I played around with just designing patterns on a couple of cars, and buying ones I like, taking photos during races, and just looking at all the features in the game.

I did spend quite a long time playing around with the photo tool, just seeing what I could do, and taking some nice looking pictures, but that wasn't as much time as I spent in other features, and there is a lot of other things to do in this game. Even just looking at the stats pages there is a ton to do, whether it be during a race or not. You defiantly get value for your money with this game.

The first three cars I bought myself, rather than being gifted from racing, consisted of a Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, and a Nissan Skyline. I designed some decals for them, and put one I liked onto the Storefront. This is where my time is now spent. I liove playing with designs for cars, even just for Vinyl groups, for logos and such. The first design I did upload, which was for the Skyline, was bought immediatly. I felt very proud about this. I felt like someone liked my work, and it motivated me to get better and create even more work. Here it is, I called it "Sitoxistripe1" to be completely original, haha.

I do however, feel overwhelmed, as the ability of other players is staggering. While I sit making abstract pieces without meaning to look like anything other than looking good on a car, other people are recreating cartoon and anime characters with the same precision as they're drawn in the real world. It really is insane. I try not to let this get to me, as I never really was interested in recreating things, but creating. I like my original designs, it's what I love doing, and each day I'm improving, picking up new tips I see around and just experimenting. I can only get better.

Mainly today and last night, I've been trying to play the auction house. I looked up a few cars, looking to buy, and saw a lot of people selling, all looking different. That gave me the idea to buy cars, upgrade them, and paint them. That way people can buy cars in a category they want, without having to bother upgrading, and have a nice paintjob with it. So far, I only have two up. A '96 Dodge and another Lancer Evo. The Evo even has a simple subtle flame efect I was playing with to make it look slightly 3D. I felt it was quite good, and I look forward to see how much people bid for it. Playing the Auction House is a tough game. Earlier today I got stuck in a bidding war for a '99 Lancer Evo 6. It went on for over 5 minutes, back and forth, but I eventually got it. I was very happy, although I ended up paying almost 100,000cr for it. It can be very unforgiving, but if you find out what people want, and like, you'll do well. I'm still finding my way, but I do hope I'll be able to figure out some way to play the auctioneer. Here's a picture of the car in question:

It's actually surprising when I notice how long I've been painting or just looking around in the storefronts, but when I do notice, I decided to go race. Particularly if I need money for a reason, like my idea for the auction house. After getting a few annoying tracks (damn tight roads, I can't overrtake the bastards!), I get a lot of good runs, and a lot of photo oppertunities.

Though a lot of the time when there's a tight corner to begin with, or like I mentioned, small roads, damage occurs. Thankfully, it's not always myself that gets hit, and I laugh as some AI drivers scrape and run each other off the road, while I scream past at full speed. It's satisfying when that happens, but when you try and sneak past someone, and they clip you, it can be the most frustrating thing in the world.

It's an amazing game. I love it. The fact that you can be on top of a leaderboard without even racing is a great thing to integrate. People who are great at designing, tuning, taking pictures, putting together replays, making logos, they can all excell at their own field, and get recognised for it. You can even make a lot of money by doing these and never racing, just to get that one car you desperatly want. Turn 10 did an amazing job, and I couldn't be more pleased that I bought the LCE and became a VIP member. I'm sure I will play this a lot more than both other entries in the series, and I can't wait to unlock and create some truely amazing things, as well as see what other people can come up with, just to try and beat out someone else. There's nothing I can find wrong, and I don't think I'd care if I did. It'd be so small that everything else they did so right would just overshadow it. It's one the best racing games I've played, and a lot of the time I've played it hasn't even been the racing.

This has been Sitoxity, and that was my thoughts and experience on Forza Motorsport 3. I hope you enjoyed it, and liked what I showed. I realise the pictures kind of take up the brunt of it, but it's better than a wall of text.

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I'll be working on a Gaming Ramblings soon. Possibly this weekend, but it may be later than that as I'll be busy and I'm back to college this week. Again, I hope you enjoyed reading this, and thank you if you did. Be sure to look up my storefront if you have the game! Just look up my gamertag Sitoxity See you guys next time!

The Sitoxity Blogs - Fanboys.

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:26:49 -0400

<---Previously on the Blogs---> Gaming Ramblings 5 - Bonus Update! The King of Fighters XII - First Impressions Halo 3: ODST - My Take <---Square-Go Articles---> The King of Fighters XII Review For the love of... Sonic And Knuckles Preview: MAG Coming Soon: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Review <----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Welcome stranger. I have decided to set out my blogs a tad more professionally. No big deal, just looks nicer to me, lets you guys who read know about previous blogs and some articles I write. However, on to the main discussion! Fanboyism - Observations and Opinions Now, don't go saying "Hey, everyones a fanboy about something! They're the scum of the earth!". I know all of this. These are just some observations and my own opinions about Fanboys and Fanboyism. The most recent happening was just a few minutes ago, playing Uncharted 2 online. It was just a brief moment I noticed of a teammate talking to his friend. Here is what I heard (there was gunfire, punching, climging etc, going on. I didn't get the rest). "I can understand if you got an xbox you have to get Call of Duty, there's nothing else on it!". Now, many people would argue with this statement. "Xbots" would say "What the **** does that PieceOf****3 have? NOTHING!" "PlayslaveS" would say "They're right! There's nothing on either console" PC Owners would just lol. My main reaction? "..You what? What about Halo? If that's not your cup of tea, what about Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Gears of War 1 and 2, Lips, there's many good exclusives, and a lot of downloadable ones too. Not to mention every multiplatform game with inbuilt live functionality and the certanty that there will be achievements to unlock." There is a ton of benefits to having an Xbox 360! Not just for the games and the great Live service. Though I hear the opposite when I play on Xbox Live. I tend to hear it more often too, whether that be the fact that not many people talk on the PSN, or that I play Xbox a lot more, I don't really know. The game I hear all of this mostly has to be Halo. This, however, shouldn't really be a surprise. Even if you don't like the exclusives, there is a reason to get multiplatforms on that console. Mainly what I hear is that it displays in 1080p while the PS3 multiplatform games don't. (This is just what I hear, this could be entirely incorrect). There's also console exclusive content. This is why I have both a PS3 and an Xbox 360. I can get all the exlcusives and some great multiplatform games for both consoles. A good example happened to me recently. Batman: Arkham Asylum was coming out. I had recently gotten my PS3 and was considering buying it. When I had a little cash left over, I decided to. Now came the choice, what console? The choice was made easy. The PS3 had a free, exclusive Joker download. Challange maps sure, but more content for the same price? That's a deal breaker for me. It was a great game, and I still have it and plan to get all my trophies, especially the platinum. Besides having the extra free content coming out that's on both platforms. It's because of things like this that I've always wanted to have all consoles that had games that interested me. I can benefit from everything! It's this that made me understand Fanboys even less! Sure, before I got my PS3, I still thought it was a very expensive piece of hardware, maybe just a cheap blu-ray player, but it's definatly a brilliant little piece of black electronics. I'm not even a fan of one of the big console exclusives, Resistance. I think it's not a good game, it's not fun. That's just me. Everything else about my PS3 and game choice I like. The same goes for my Xbox. I have more games for that, but simply because I've had it for a much longer time, but my PS3 library is catching up. Fast. Now, I will admit that I am a bit of a Valve fanboy. They haven't done anything wrong in the long time they've been making and I've been playing their games. If anyone asks me about games however, I will always, ALWAYS tell them it's superior on PC, and that they shouldn't buy it for the Xbox. I can justify these reasons. 1: They look better. The PC can ramp up the graphics a lot, and knows how to handle the source engine. 2: Free content. All valve content is released, for free, through patches. 3: Regular patches. Games are fixed, bugs removed, almost weekly unless there's not a lot to fix. Even Counter-Strike Source had an update recently. 4: Community Content. The amount of content created by the community is insane. A lot of Hi-Res textures for CS:S and even the boob mod for Left 4 Dead. Again, all for free. I may be able to justify this, but that doesn't mean I'm not a fanboy about it. I can admit it, but I really feel that way. I do have some savior, as my Xbox 360 calls out to me for new achievements. Left 4 Dead 2 may be on my list for Valve 360 games, it would also help if my PC was better. There will always be fanboys around. I just think everyone should open their eyes. Each console (yes, even the Wii, which I haven't mentioned) have their benefits. They all have great exclusive games, and the most important thing of them ALL. They are ALL made for fun, and they deliver. <----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> That's all I got to say about Fanboys at the moment. Just decided to start this new layout to see how it works out, and keep blogging semi-regularly. I'm getting Borderlands and Forza Motorsport 3 this weekend, and with that being five new games since my last ramblings, you bet I'll have something by the end of the month for damned sure. I'm looking forward to both of these games, and have really enjoyed my time in Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend just now. Hopefully I'll continue enjoying them for a long time. I've barely scratched the surface of what they both offer. Other than my Gaming Ramblings I'll try to work on some other things. Maybe a review for Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2 especially for you guys, since they've been done on Square-Go by other people. You may be that lucky, if I have the time and the motivation to do it. Could even do Borderlands and Forza 3 when I play them after a while. These I can't really put a timeframe on, or even make sure I will do them, but there's always that oppertunity. There could be a new review on the way besides MUA2 as well, but that all depends on the time I have and how much games come into Square-Go, although having 2 this month I may pass on it for a while. Oh, and if I can find it (when I have money again, getting really short) I will definatly look out for Demon's Souls. Jared's VGR was very entertaining, and after hearing so much good things about it, I am very interested. I could do with a game that'll challange me. Proper hardcore stuff! I hope this was an interesting read to all of those who took their time to read. Thanks for doing so. Peace out!

Gaming Ramblings #5 + Bonus Update!

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:48:02 -0400

Okay, so there's a few things that I feel that I want to ramble about recently. Just a couple of things that get to me, piss me off completely, or just make me go "Wait...what?!". I made a logo. You like? Felt that it'd make it look a bit more professional. Especially since I like doing these, and I plan to continue. I may edit or recreate it, but if you wanna give input, I'd be glad for the critism! I've not made anything in Photoshop for a good long while. <----BONUS UPDATE!----> So I decided to add a little update in here as well as my Gaming Rambling. Hard to believe this is my fifth...but I won't well up just yet! I just submitted my King of Fighters XII review to Square-Go!. Keep checking back so you see when it's posted! I have a lot of games coming this month. Well, 5 to be precise. Tomorrow Motorstorm: Pacific Rift. At the weekend, Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2. Next week, Forza 3 and Borderlands. So expect me to either blog about them, or expect my sixth Ramblings up by the end of the month. I have also been thinking of trying out a video of something. Maybe a recommendation or a review. Maybe even a rant. I'd have to see how my camera is for video, and how I'd edit it together. I'm not great infront of a camera, so we'll see how that goes. That's it for the update though, so let's get this ball rolling. <----BONUS UPDATE!----> So what's the first topic for my little ramble today? Autosave Features Main Culprit: Fallout 3 Ah, Fallout 3. I recently got really into playing this. More so than I ever have, actually. I bought it a few weeks after release at a deal in Gamestation for £20. So it wasn't that bad a deal. I liked it, sure, but after playing Oblivion obsessively (yet still not having all the achievements...) I kinda had the same feel. Though I no longer have that, it secured my boredum or wandering the wasteland. After playing it a lot more recently, the Autosave function annoys the hell out of me. It's kind of understandable why, but it applys for more than one game. Each have their own way of functioning. Fallout 3, after you enter or exit an area through a door, or other opening, after you rest, after you sleep, after you wait, it autosaves. That's all well and good if you're fighting through a very tough building, but what if you're out in the wastes? You don't have that luxury. Yes, you can save where ever you want, the only thing missing being a quick-save button on the 360, but games with autosaves frequently (or varied occurances) tend to make you lazy. You don't save often, you just think you'll go back to the last Autosave. Which might be fine. But you might have just lost an hour or two of exploring, killing, and getting some awesome gear. Halo is probably the main culprit for the lack of feeling the need to save often. With it's checkpoint and save and quit feature, you always play from where you left off, it's not like games of old. Speaking of Halo... Achievements/Trophies: Multiplayer Main Culprits: Halo 3, Call of Duty: World at War(to an extent), Red Faction: Guerilla, Far Cry 2 Ah, achievements. A blessing or a curse? Possibly both. I like having achievements, but they certainly do affect how I play a game. I try not to view any achievements pre-release, or even when I'm first playing a game, as tempting as it may be. Because I like to discover things like that on my own. I like to feel that I achieved them, not just looked it up and did what was asked. They do help me have a want to finish a game completely to see the whole package. I get to experience what's all on offer. Then there's the multiplayer acheivements... They come in a couple of forms. Ranking up, which is in Far Cry 2 and Red Faction Those are easy enough, but these are not what I'm generally talking about. It's Halo 3's multiplayer achievements. A lot of them are hard, if not impossible, for regular players to get. I would call myself above average, merely because I can hold my own in most matches with a positive ratio, but not good enough to be a general, or rank 50. I will never get the last two acheievements I need for this game. Perfection and Extermination on a Mythic Map. Why? I'm just NOT that good. I've seen a few tactics on trying to get it, but I simply don't play with people that I know that often, nor do I have the skill to pull it off myself. It really annoys me that I will have that game sitting at 1700/1750, without any hope for filling that up. Maybe one day...but I doubt it'll be anytime soon. Oh, and **** you 10th level prestige. I'm not even finised the first one yet. Ugh. I'm leaving out World of Warcraft achievments for a very good reason. They're for the skilled to achieve. I'm not saying that things like Halo 3's and Call of Duty's are not, but it works differently for WoW. In WoW you get special rewards, and granted titles. There is more reason for making them harder to acheive, rather than a few measly points. My main reason I don't like them is the stupid ones. I think it was Quake 4 that has a "Reach #1 on the leaderboard" achievement. Which is really retarded, in my opinion. The general ones in Halo 3 are okay, because they come from just playing the game. There is, however, the ones where people "achievement *****". These are using a specific weapon, to do a specific thing. This can encourage teamkilling, and general assholeishness (Woo for making up words). It really sucks when you get hijacked from a ghost then a teammate swipes it when you're busy killing something else, just so they can get an achievement. I honestly tried to get the Mythic map achievements by just playing the game. If I was having bad luck with the weapon, or just couldn't be bothered, I'd just play the game normally. Oh, and don't think the Xbox 360 is solely to blame for all this! I'm looking at you Killzone 2 and Resistance 2. That my friends, is the main reason why I hate them. What's next I hear you ask? What else could possibly be bothering this gamer's mind today? Hate Bandwagons Main victims: Call of Duty 3, Call of Duty: World at War, Halo Franchise I've touched on this before, with Call of Duty: World at War. People who hate games for silly, retarded and plain ignorant reasons. The reason people bash CoD3 and CoD:WaW are because Treyarch made them, and not Infinity Ward. Are they bad games? Hell no! They're good, fun games! Especially World at War, which recieved the most flak. It's too similar to CoD4? I thought that was perfect, now it's bad? WW2 is dry? When has killing Nazi's been boring? At least they made a great story. The Halo Franchise in general also gets a lot of hate for stupid reasons. A lot from PS3 fanboys, a lot from general gamers. The one that I hear most often and hate people saying, "Halo is the worst franchise ever created". Really people? Are you going to be that ignorant and stupid? It's not the best game out there. Not NEARLY the best First Person Shooter out there either. But worse Franchise? Come the **** on. It's fun, that's why it sells. It's a good game, they all are. The story is at least interesting, it has it's own twists to a regular "invading aliens" formula, and they improve on the gameplay with each title. The story can even be a lot more in-depth if you choose it to be, by reading into books, graphic novels, and soon the Halo Legend anime. I really don't get where all the hate comes from. It seems to be the "cool" thing to hate, and yes, even Call of Duty 4 had a phase of that when it first came out, although that was drowned out by the mainstream love for a great game. It just gets on my nerve so much. I'm the first to admit it's not my favorite game, shooter or whatever, but I never say I'm not a fan. Because I am. The multiplayer is fun, the story is the first I was interested in for a game, and I love to see the new perspectives and where the story goes from here on out. I like seeing what Bungie, and even Ensemble do with the source material. ODST stands as my favorite out of all 5 present Halo games, the story was just told in a very different way, and it was a lot of fun. Hate trains like this really need to stop. For everything! Consoles, games, developers, whatever. Stop hurting the places that make the games we love. If we keep hating, they'll just stop making them, because they will not feel appreciated for what they do. Go out and buy the games you love, if you don't like something, speak up, but don't over exaggerate. Accept other people's opinions and don't be a stuck up *******. The world deals with enough of that as it is. It really is not needed. That's about it for my guys and gals. Like I've mentioned, I'll try to get something done by the end of the month.

King Of Fighters XII - First Impressions.

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:57:18 -0400
So I got sent out a copy of King of Fighters XII for the PS3 to review for Square-Go. My first full blown game review for the website. ATTENTION: This is NOT my review of the game. Merely my first impressions as I have just recieved it. My full review will be posted on Square-Go in the next couple of weeks when I've finished it. When the memo/email came into my inbox saying there was games to be reviewed I was happy. My articles so far have been small, although my MAG preview even got questions sent off to them. I was excited to have the opportunity to review something more substantial. A full game, that seemed pretty new. I decided to ask for King of Fighters, as it was the one that I found most interesting. (The others being Aion, which I have no time for, and Fifa 10. I don't like football, so it was an easy decision.) So, I've never actually played a King of Fighters game before. So I was kinda shocked when I heard it was number twelve in the series. No big deal, I like most fighting games, they're fun, this'll just introduce me into another fanchise. I was eager to see how different it was to the big hitters of this generation like Street Fighter 4 and Soul Caliber 4. When I got it, I was a little surprised. It's in a small jewel case, similar to what PSOne and PC Gamer demo discs used to come in. The disc is marked as Promotional Only, Not for Resale. But I expected that, just thought it'd be that on the cover. I popped it in, ready to try it out. Not too hopeful to be amazing, and not too worried it'll be terrible. I pulled up the Wikipedia page as it was loading, only to see the Metacritic score being around 58. Ouch. Honestly, that's a really low rating, and that did cross my mind that it might be a bad game, but I didn't let it phase me. After all, I'm reviewing it myself, so who cares what other people think of it. Once the title screen appeared, I was ready to go. The "Arcade" mode that most fighters have is slightly different. It's basically 5 rounds, all time trials. Beat your three opponants in the fastest time, and then your total is added at the end of the final round. Picking 3 characters is a nice feature, it sets it more apart than other fighting games. Instead of having the same character for three rounds, it mixes things up. So, not knowing any characters, I picked random three times. I can't remember the names of the three characters, but I did pretty badly my first time round. I managed to get past the first round, but lost in the second. So I let my continue run down, and went into practise. I played that for a little bit, then went back into Arcade. With three characters picked, I went on and finished in just under 15 minutes. I was pretty proud of that for a first try, especially after finding a couple of characters I like. Now, in fighting games I learn by doing. I don't tend to look at command lists unless I really desperatly want to know how to do certain things. This can be bad, as I would go through not knowing moves, but sometimes I wouldn't need them. Street Fighter 4's Training Challanges helped me in this, as it teaches you how to play each character. King of Fighters XII doesn't have anything like this. Yes they have a practise mode, but you don't get button presses you use on the bottom of the screen, and you can't access the command list. What you can do, is watch the AI fight. This actually helped me see how fast paced the gameplay is, and how you are supposed to play. Blocking, dodgeing, etc. My first impressions are actually pretty high on this game so far. I'm liking it a lot. It's pretty fun, and seems like my kind of fighter. The biggest point I love is that it doesn't feel unfair, or way too difficult. Street Fighter 4 has this problem. I feel that none of my punches contact and that I just get annihilated by the AI even on "Easy". I'm glad this game doesn't have that problem. It provides challange while letting you learn the ropes. I'll be playing this for the next couple of days as I gather everything I need to know for my review. I still have the Online to try, and more characters to test and perfect. I thought this would be a nice incite to my impressions of a game I will review. I'm really happy I was given the oppertunity for this job. It's payless, but benefits like this are fantastic. Even if games aren't that great, you're getting them free. I'll have this review done hopefully by next Friday, which is the 16th. Be sure to check out Square-Go after then to see if it's up! If you want to check out my other articles, go here. Thanks for reading! I will try to blog here more often in the future, maybe keep weekly or monthly updates of happenings. Whenever I post a new review or article, I'll be sure to link it. Hope everyone who reads has a great day. This is Sitoxity, Out.

My Take on Halo 3: ODST

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 11:25:04 -0400
I know I've not actively done much blogs here lately, and that's purely because I've been very busy. I just recently started a new college course, and as I previously may have said, I'm now writing for Square-Go.com. I have a few Reviews, Previews and Features up, so please, if you have time and are interested, check them out. There have been a lot of reviews on this site for Halo 3: ODST, and pretty much every website has theirs up, or have done for about a week now. That's not what I'm doing here. I'm going to deliver my take on the game, and the direction Bungie's Halo games seem to be going. I admit it, I'm a Halo fan. Consider myself quite a big fan acutally. This by no means makes me a fanboy. I don't go round saying it's the best game ever, the best FPS ever made, etc. It's by no means the best game ever. Nor one of the "good" FPS games. Why? Because it's on a console, but that's what made it shocking in the first place. For me, Halo was the first console FPS that I felt worked well with a controller and was fun. To this day I beleive that, but if I had to choose, PC FPS games tend to be a lot better. Halo 2 dissappointed me, I didn't find it as fun as Halo 1. Halo 3 I liked better than Halo 2, but something still felt... missing. The reason I'm a fan of Halo? The story. It was always told exceptionally well and always interested me. It was actually the first game I had played that I actually cared about the story, and it's the reason now I critisize games that have a weak or no story if the rest of the game doesn't have other features up to a standard. When I first heard of ODST (then known as Halo 3: Recon), I was very excited, especially to hear it'd be more similar to the first Halo, and be more on the tactical side, than the twitch gameplay I was used to. I was waiting for this game. I had my doubts about the rumors of "Squad Based Tactical Halo Game", although that could be realised with Halo: Reach. Time will only tell on that front. I waited and kept my eye out for any and all info on ODST, and when I heard about the Firefly cast returning, my excitement for the game went even higher. I love Firefly, and having Nathon Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk on the main cast, was a joy. I was not dissappointed as all of their parts are excellent, funny, and well suited. Once I got my hands on it, I was relieved, it was EXACTLY what I was expecting. I love every second of it. The story is far superior to Halo 2 and 3's, and presented so much better. It's interesting, Bungie took a real risk making the storyline like this. Flashbacks and a mission hub? I don't know of many games that do it, but Bungie made it work. Even wandering round the city I was never bored. Especially on Legendary, the tension of wondering if the next corner will have a squad of grunts, brutes or even Hunters. It was an awesome feeling. Like Jose had said on Out of the Box and his VGR, every fight feels epic. You have to manage your health, weapons, grenades and be CAREFUL. You can't just go running in. It's a definate change of pace, and it's a welcome one. Seeing the Halo franchise from this perspective was a fresh one for me. It felt like pure fan service. They explained things that we've known about for a while, especially the Engineers, who played a much bigger part than I expected, but I won't go into it, because of spoilerz. Firefight is incredible. It was a lot more fun that I expected it to be, I even like it more than Horde and Nazi Zombies. The flak it's getting however, is completely unwarrented. Gears of War did NOT start this game mode, neither did Nazi Zombies or Left 4 Dead's Survival mode. It's been around in games for years and years, they just made it popular in the main stream titles that most people play regularly or have played. Halo's version has it's own flavour. It has the skulls, it has vehicles, it has a shared pool of lives, it just feels like they put a lot of effort into it, and it really pays off. I truely think this is Bungie's best game yet, and if people actually play it, the price tag may not seem so dire. Especially when you get Halo 3's entire multiplayer with it. It was well worth it, and I'm sure Firefight will make me lose a lot of sleep over the next few weeks.

My Gaming Set Up.

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:34:14 -0400
Just a quick little blog I've decided to do to show you guys my set up at home. Hope you enjoy! Ahh, my console set up. My HDTV, only small though, around 20" I believe. From left to right, my Xbox 360 (with my PS3 wireless bluetooth headset on top) PS3 games and Blu-Ray movie and obviously my PS3. Above my PS3 is a Sky Digital box. It just lets me get TV. My PC. Saitek Cyborg keyboard, Razer mouse, steelseries Headset, other assorted stuff. Yes. That's alcohol. I've not drank it yet. Naughty me. Close-up of PS3 stuff. If you can't read, The Incredible Hulk, inFamous, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, Metal Gear Solid 4, Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty, Resistance, Resistance 2, Uncharted. My Xbox 360 games. (and one Xbox Game. Doom 3 collectors edition) I don't really wanna sit listing them. Most you can make out, the ones that can't, Fable 2 Limited Edition and at the very very end, Wolverine Uncaged. And a close up, just for good measure! I don't have a picture of my PC games, simply because a lot are digital downloads, a lot are really old, and just generally, there's so many of them. I wouldn't even know where to start to FIND them all. Just a quick little glimpse into my gaming world! I'll try and get a blog up pretty soon, probably a new ramblings. If I post another review, I will actually be linking to a website, http://www.square-go.com because I now am a writer for there. I'll be sure to link my first big review when I get it written! Hope your summers are all going well.

Killzone 2 - Review.

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:06:29 -0400
The PS3's FPS Giant release in 2009, we all know the early footage looks pretty, but does the final release live up to the hype? A bit of a late review, but let's get it started right now!

Killzone 2, for the Playstation 3, is an exclusive First-Person Shooter with a sort of World War 2-esque Sci-Fi setting. Compared to others in the market just now, such as Call of Duty 4 and 5, and Halo 3, it's slighty more slower paced, but still packs a hell of a lot of action.

The graphics, to put simply, are stunning in motion. I was skeptical before I got a PS3, thinking it just looked good because of the amount of blur and grain added. I was wrong. This game is gorgeous. I cannot fault the system. I don't even mind the silly looking textures of the revive gun and flamethrower. It just looks so good. It even stays this good in the multiplayer.

The sound is equally as good. It sounds like a real warzone, and is simply put, a cinematic feel. It's bound to sound even better in surround sound.

The gameplay is typical for a FPS, not much is revolutionary, or new. What it does do, however, it does extremely well. You are allowed Two weapons at any time, a Pistol and a Main Weapon. There are two pistols to choose from (a Magnum and a Semi-Automatic) and dozens of primary weapons dropped by the multiple enemy types. Enemies tend to just be normal soldiers, sometimes APCs and Tanks. The Soliders tend to carry Assault Rifles, SMGs, Shotguns and RPGs.

Throughout the campaign you tend to have a buddy or two with you, who thankfully, have pretty good AI. They don't get in your way a lot, they shoot the bad guys effeciently (apart from a final battle near the end of the game), and enemies react as much to them as they do to you. The enemy aI is also pretty smart. They take cover, try to flank you, and generally react in fun and interesting ways, helped by the amazing animation in their deaths and movement, a mixture between Ragdoll and what looks like Motion Capture.

Mission objectives are also typical. Go destroy this, go defend this, etc. It's not exactly original, but the characters are colourful enough that you do care enough about what happens to them, and you do value their help in the harder secitons of the game.

Saying that, the game can be quite difficult at parts. It is however, that fun kind of hard, the encourages you to try and keep going, rather than just being frustratingly annoying. There are also Intel and Helghast Symbols as a sort of collectable. The intel is scattereed around the single player levels for you to pick up, while the Symbols are there to be destroyed. These are there to unlock Trophies, and other content released through the Killzone 2 websites, such as Wallpapers and other documents for fans of the universe. Which, admitedly, is pretty darn cool. It's nice to see something like this when most people won't even know about these benefits unless they look at the games own website. The main campaign can take the good part of a weekend to finish, and I felt it was a very good length.

This game also comes with Trophies, the PS3's own version of the massively successful Xbox 360 Achievement system. This gives Killzone 2 a lot of replayability, and they have a good amount of diverse trophies, that will keep you interested, rather than bored of doing the same dull old things to get these. They can invole killing a certain amount of enemies with one grenade, with melee attacks, not dying in any level of the campaign, and so on. The list is huge, and expands onto the multiplayer portion of the game.

Which brings me to what sells most games these days. The Multiplayer.

Killzone 2's multiplayer portion is one of the best multiplayer experiences I've had in recent years. It sets itself apart form most games by using different features, such as Experience, Classes, and putting their own twists. You get Badges, which lead to medals. These medals affect your points in game, whether it's more points for headshots, during the Deathmatch gamemode (called Bodycount), or more points for a melee kill.
There are a number of classes too. Engineer, Medic, Sniper, Sabateur, Tactician and Assault. These all unlock as you proceed through the ranking system, and the more you use them, the more badges you unlock for each class. This unlocks a secondary ability, and eventually, the ability to combine abilities of classes to create your own mix.

The game modes are also pretty standard. Bodycount, as I said before, Search and Destroy, Search and Retrieve, Capture and Hold and Assasination, it's HOW they're played which is interesting. The host can choose to play a match with all of these game types, and the game will switch between them randomly, and play every gametype in one match. This leads to a change in tactics for your teams regularly, and really shows the better players in a game, not just who can kill the other the team the most. It also leads to some games that last quite a while, and you love every second of it.

Overall, Killzone 2 is amazing piece of gaming. The campaign is fun and engaging, the multiplayer is quite possibly revolutionary, and extreme fun. It will keep you coming back for more, and you won't want to stop.

Online ID's

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:44:59 -0400
Your gamertag, your PSN ID, your Game ID, your Alias, your online name. Whatever you call it, whatever system you play on, you have one, everyone else has one too. Some playfully original, some not so much. Some are funny, some are serious, some are just plain random, but all of them reflect on you as a gamer. It's who you are, past, present and future. (If you keep that name anyway.) There are also, the majority of people, who have the similar names. XxX_C00ld00d_xXx or YOUGOTPWNED These type of names are what I'm gonna discuss in this little blog today. Particularly the names telling everyone they're gonna "Get Owned" "Lose" "Get their ***** kicked." This tends to be categorised into the same groups of people. The pricks online that think they are gods gift to gaming, and nobody is better than them. Any mistakes, or them losing, is blamed on lag, the other players cheating, exploting or hacking, and generally everything else bar themselves. This also tends to happen all the time during their play of games, as they tend to be BELOW the average gamer in terms of skill. This, is what I find absolutly hilariously ironic. After all, seeing the kill message "You killed GONNAOWNYOU" is always a good laugh, and brings a grin to my face. The most recent occurance of this, was playing Killzone 2. I saw a join message of the player GONNAOWNYOU. I saw that this guy joined my team. I chuckled a bit to myself, thinking "Yeah, okay. Let's see if you'll help our team out." The first time I see him physically (or, virtually, to be more accurate) in the game, he runs around a corner, shooting blindly, and gets killed. A teammate revives him, and he doesn't run for cover. Oh no, he's too good for this, remember? He's gonna own everyone. He runs towards the enemies who killed him, again, shooting blinding. He dies again, not 30 seconds later, killing none of the opposing team members. Throughout the rest of that game, I saw him around, from a distance, getting himself into sticky situations with no teammates around. I even revived him myself a few times, hoping he'd learn to stick back with the rest of us. In the end I think he stopped running head first into all of the enemy team, but I'm sure this started again on the next game. He didn't exactly do terribly, he did get a fair number of kills, although I don't know how he faired in that game overall, or if he contributed to the other missions in that game. My problem is, that with all these players with these names, they feel that they are too good for everyone else, and just try to "win the game" all on their lonesome. They always seem to join games on their own, with no intent to try and co-ordinate with anyone else on the team. These guys are NEVER tem-players. But what boggles my mind is why they pick these names online. Especially when it gives them absolutly no identity at all. Although maybe that's what they want? To be an anonymous entity that will annoy other people, for the reasons they don't intend, just so that no one will care for griefing against them. I've not even touched on the age issue. This type of person tends to be in the age range of 13 to 16 I would say, although age isn't really a factor with this. They don't always communicate, so it's not easy to tell their age. A lot of the kiddies that play Xbox Live and PSN do tend to have names like these though. Thinking they're "all that" but never acting in a mature way that would give them the respect of their fellow gamers. Age shouldn't be an issue when playing online. Everyone knows the little kids that play Mature Rated games. Sure, some of them are just like us, and wanna have a godo time. The majority however, are not. They yell, scream into their microphones, and ***** and moan a lot. They sing into their microphones and disrupt and annoy anyone who just so happens to be on th eir team. This happens tenfold when the youngster in question has his friends over, who you can always hear in the background, being as loud and obnoxious as the player. They basically abuse the fact that their playing a game that they shouldn't be at their age, and think they're better than you because of it, or just yell constantly because you told them to be quiet. Here is a prime example, funnily enough, not on the obvious suspect for little kids, Xbox Live, but on the PC, Counter-Strike. WARNING: Very Bad Language. This kid has been captured in other videos, and in Counter-Strike Source too, speaking the same way, yelling into the microphone, generally pissing off other people. I do give kudos to the younger gamers out their who play the M rated games but just play the game, who communicate well, and generally have a good time playing the game without ruining everyone elses time. The other minor rant I have is people who add X's beofre and after their name. Or any other prefix that's common, for that matter. Where is the need? It doesn't make you look cool. If that name is taken, try to think up something a little more original. There are literally MILLIONS of names out there that you could choose that would NOT be taken up by someone else online. It's impossible for every concept of a name to be used on something. Just take some time to think about it. If you really are stumped, and everything you try is taken, go to a random word generator and pick a couple that don't nessisarily go together, but sounds awesome, funny, or weird in a good way. Take some time to think about how you want to be viewed online. Your ID is the equivilant of a first impression when you meet someone in real life. Some first impressions stick with you where ever you go. Try and make it a good one, and don't bother trying to disrupt other peoples games. You are all playing for the same reason. To have fun. If your way of having fun is to stop others from having fun, don't even switch on your headset. Thanks everyone for reading, and I hope everyone who managed to go to SGC had a fantastic time. Heres hoping I can go next year. Peace out, guys and gals.

Metal Gear Online - A Review, Of Sorts.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:11:29 -0400
After having my PS3 for almost a week (woo) and Metal Gear Solid 4, thus Metal Gear Online too, for the same amount of time, I have decided to share my thoughts on the games,(Or game, since it COULD be considered a multiplayer "mode".) or at least one of them, for now. Metal Gear Online is a Tactical Espionage Action game spinning off from the Metal Gear Solid franchise, putting the basis of the Metal Gear Solid 4 gameplay, in Multiplayer scenarios. You create your own character, and take him into battles of classic Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, CTF, etc. varietys, of course, with their own twist. There are also special gametypes like Sneaking Mission. It generally plays out with a more action tone than the single player, but that does not mean stealth isn't a factor. Creating an account for Metal Gear Online requires you to register a Konami ID and a Game ID. This, I feel, is rather pointless. Sure, it makes a little sense when dealing with Konami specifically for the expansion packs or other content, but this could have easily used the PSN IDs and Playstation Store, rather than going through a sign up process. This is just a small gripe I have with it, although not my only one. You then create your character, choose their clothes, colour of said clothes, gender, etc. Which is pretty cool, honestly. No gripes here. After ranking up my character to level 3 (Woo!) and played a good 3 or 4 hours online, I feel that I have dabbled enough to get a good sense of the game. You get a set number of skill slots to place skills, which could be "expertise" in a certain range of weapons to make you better with them, running faster, setting traps faster, you get the idea. I have myself, leveled two of these up to level 2, and there seems to be 3 different levels total. They get leveled up as you use that particular skill. This system I feel works really well, similar to the perks system in the latest Call of Duty games, but with a little more depth to them, as they gradually get better as you do. With each match, sometimes it's listed as (although every game I play seems to be this) a Rewards Match, which gives players Reward Points depending on how well they do. Reward points are used to purchase new items of clothing to customise your character. You do this by clicking the link in the menu, this opens up the website in the Playstation 3's internet browser, and you can browse the items through this. I do NOT like this system. I would much prefer it to all be in-game, but it's a minor thing that doesn't seem to be that bad, as I could easily use my computer (situated in the same room as my PS3) which would essentially be faster, but for other people, this could be quite tedious, as it could take a while for the pages to load, and even with a HD tv, the text can be small. (I've yet to find out if you can zoom in on webpages. I know, I know, I'm a noob, I should know these things). There's also Mail sytems, in-game friends lists, clan support, basically a hell of a lot of really good features that pretty much every major multiplayer game should have these days. (Looking at you Call of Duty! Clan tags isn't the same as clan support!) I have yet to test these out much, simply because I have no friends on PSN yet. (baww for me). The personal stats for yourself and the rest of community seems to be split up into Weekly and Overall, which is a nice touch, especially for Clans to see who is doing good consistantly, or tripping up a lot, as well as just being nice to keep track of stuns, kills, headshots, etc. Which, honestly, I always like to keep track of, seeing a Kill/death ratio always encourages me to try and make it higher, and do better. Even the stun lists made me want to try out being more stealthy and use the tranq weapons more. (So far, after fniishing the main game and playing a lot of Online, I still have not gotten used to the CQC system, introduced in MGS3, which I haven't played much of). Now, for the gameplay. The controls work out almost exactly as Metal Gear Solid 4, with some minor differences. Select brings up a voice command menu, pressing it a second time, brings up a chat menu option for All or Team. This is a really nice feature they have added, it especially helps if one or none of the players in game have or are using microphones. It can help keep at least a little teamwork going when you're not able to speak to each other. Most games I have played seem to have been a mixture of pure action, and sneaking around, just like the main game. This is one thing I was surprised to see, as I imagined it would just end up being a run-and-gun action multiplayer experience, but it does give you some room to improvise, and hopefully fool your opponents. You can even lay down porno mags, which makes your character abruptly stop, to look at it. A very strange tactic, but used effectively, I could imagine it being a great way to trap someone. Lag also doesn't seem to be much of a problem in this game if you have a good connection, only once have I been disconnected from a game due to a connection problem, and that instance I think it was just a bad host. The sound in this game is amazing, just as Metal Gear Solid 4, and I absolutly LOVE that you get to pick something to listen to at the start of the match. Hearing the classic Metal Gear Solid 1 sneaking and action music while playing this makes me really happy, and brings back a lot of fond memories, even listening to stuff from Metal Gear Solid 2 is awesome. My final verdict? This game is a MUST for Metal Gear Solid fans who always wanted to have matches against their friends. Sneak up on people, hide in cardboard boxes, oil drums, anything from Metal Gear, you can pretty much do it here. There are some things which I think could be implemented better, and some things I've not even tried out yet, but I really like this game, and I was pleasently surprised when I first played it. I'm sure I will be playing this for a very, long time.

Gaming Ramblings #4

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:20:54 -0400
Okay, so there's a few things that I feel that I want to ramble about recently. Just a couple of things that get to me, piss me off completely, or just make me go "Wait...what?!". Multiplayer Ah multiplayer games. They're so awesome. What could I possible rant about them? The fact that they all frustrate the hell out of everyone playing them. This takes multiple forms, but mostly, I'll be talking about Call of Duty (World at War specifically), but most of these can be transfered with little changes to any multiplayer game. The recent Call of Duty games have this "class" system. Now, looking at it, it's not classes at all. Not in the same way as normal "class based multiplayer" like Battlefield games. You basically picked your own weapons, and perks, and let loose. Playing it online with the kill cams enabled shows you just how SIMILAR everyones classes tend to be. The most common being the MP40 with extended magazine, bouncing bettys, juggernaut/stopping power and then one of the Perk 3s which most don't really change you up that much. This isn't really annoying, it's just predictable, everyone ends up using what is the most popular, but may not be the most effective. This is relevant to other games in that theres always the majority of players that do the same things, go for the same weapons, and brag about it. Then put YOU down for using what you like or, god forbid, think is better. It's insane. Now, the one thing that bugs me most about the multiplayer in World at War specifically, is the inconsistancy of the weapons, the MP40 being the best example. Even with stopping power off, sometimes a couple of shots can kill you. Other times it takes multiple. The accuracy also seems to vary too. It's a very strange phenomenon. I never really understood it, especially when I'm paying attention to my latency, which is fine in most of these matches. It leads me to use this gun less and less, while I try to find the best gun I can use on that day, since my own skills seem to vary just as much as the damn gun. Sometimes I'm using the Japanese SMG and sometimes I'm using the Semi-Auto Rifles, but that's what I like about how I play. I use a varied amount of weapons, depending on my mood, the gametype, and how many players are in that game. And another thing, The dogs. Why does killing them basically do nothing? More just come. At least in CoD4 the Helicopter blew up and didn't come back, but the dogs keep coming, no matter how much you kill, and good luck if they all die and you just happen to be at a window where they jump in. They just eat your face. Lots. Singleplayer Only Games. After talking about Multiplayer it did make me think of this. Becoming a more rarity, games with only a singleplayer componant are mostly overlooked, and given low ratings by reviewers and gamers alike for not having multiplayer or co-op. This, in my opinion, is wrong. Some of these are fantastic games. Recently, Bioshock and Fallout 3 being examples, people are playing them and not even thinking about multiplayer, but others are bashed because of it. This ends up leading to games with TERRIBLE multiplayer, and then what happens? People complain even more. Did Resident Evil 5 need that verses mode? **** NO. It makes no sense for a game where you have to STOP to aim and shoot to have a competative multiplayer mode. It would basically water down to who see's the other first, or on the rare occasion of a stand off, who had the better gun. It's tottally stupid. Game companies should NOT be compelled to throw in multiplayer if it's not their intention, and DEFINATLY not as an after thought. If it works well early on in testing, develop it, but if it doesn't, STAY THE **** AWAY. It ruins the fantastic single player experince, and I will always prefer sitting down for a few hours to play a game only by myself than jump into a repetative multiplayer cluster****. Quick Thought! Gears of War 2 Co-op is ****** up when you play on two different difficulties on the same screen. IT MAKES NO SENSE. Also, I suck at gears. A lot. I need to start playing it again... Death of Tactical Shooters? What happened to the old Rainbow Six games? I miss the tactics. I miss them. They were awesome, especially the multiplayer. Going through levels and one-shotting terrorists were awesome. Vegas and Vegas 2 were steps in the right directions after Lockdown or whatever that terrible game was, but it's still not as good as it was. That's what got me interesting in MAG, and hopefully, Battlefield 1943. Sure, they're faster paced, but they still seem to have the TACTIC tied to them. I like being a nerd and pretending I'm a bad ass Coutner Terrorist/SWAT memeber or Soldier. So I like being trying to have a good strategy going into things, and having people to co-ordinate with. Ah, I miss the old times. That's all I got for this week. I'm just gonna go back to watching my 8-Bit Glory DVD. Peace out guys.

Demo Impressions - Red Faction: Guerilla

Tue, 26 May 2009 09:11:42 -0400
I've been a fan of Red Faction since I played the first game. Which I LOVED. Especially the first level. You could tunnel anywhere you wanted, sneak up on enemies, and just rein down hell inside a mine. The sequel was a bit more dissappointing. In the first level you could see that the geomod tech was toned down. Not everything in site could be dug into, blown up, etc. It was a good game, and I had a blast playing it, but I missed that feeling of being able to go anywhere with my trusty little demo packs. Then came the announcement for the third one. A third-person shooter, with open-world gameplay. Really?! Red Faction, but...not?! How could this be?! I was not looking forward to this, so I never kept track of it. I heard my friend talking about the beta he played, he enjoyed it, but like me he didn't feel that Red Faction gameplay. So the demos were recently released on Xbox Live. I downloaded the Single-player demo pretty early on, but never got round to playing it. When I tried it however, I had a lot of fun. When I got the walker, I just decided to smash up some stuff, so I tried to. Instead I just walked through the buildings. AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT. It was truely a great experience just waltzing through a building and seeing it crumble in front of you is just amazing. I've played the demo a couple of times now, not for very long, but enough to complete it once. The first time I was just trying it out of boredum, and didn't really have much time to delve into it. Now, a week or so later, and the multiplayer demo is released. Now this is the stuff I've only really heard about. Something about special backpacks and game modes centered around destroying stuff. So I decided to try it out, download it, and see if the multiplayer would warrent maybe considering buying the game when it comes out. At this moment in time, I have completed two games in the multiplayer, and it was pretty fun. The shooting I'm not entirely used to yet, but the game mode I have down, and I'm having fun just knocking the **** out of a tower with my sledgehammer and then reconstructing it. Hell, I could run around reconstructing everything people blow up and I'd still have fun. I've experimented with almost all the backbacks bar the Stealth, Heal and Tremor. (I've not found the latter two, and I've just not felt stealthy yet. Although some ****** did jump out and whack me. Not very nice.) The Rhino I seem to use the most. Just charging through the big walls on the map, and just generally enjoying being able to do that. The Jetpack is just like every other jetpack in a game I've played. Useful, but not to my taste on this map. Fleetfoot being the same as a sprint button. Concussion I have tried and failed to use effectively more than once as of yet, but I can see that it's potential to annoy your opponents will be great. The others I haven't tried I just haven't found on the map I've played on. I'm not sure if there are other maps in the demo, but it is probably limited for that very reason. Long story short, these demos simply changed my outlook on this game, and I am very close to pre-ordering it right now. Before I do that however, I will keep playing the multiplayer, and maybe mess around in the singleplayer a bit more. If only they were on one file... I thought I'd give my impressions again for my blog. I may have a ramblings up soon, but we'll have to wait and see. I'll try and keep more reviews or something else meaty coming, so that my blog doesn't descend into me *****ing and moaning a lot. Still waiting for that 8-bit Glory DVD and Simple-T to finally arrive. Hopefully they'll come within the next week. Peace out guys, keep gaming.

Gaming Ramblings #3

Mon, 18 May 2009 16:45:41 -0400
Okay, so there's a few things that I feel that I want to ramble about recently. Just a couple of things that get to me, piss me off completely, or just make me go "Wait...what?!". Sitting hear thinking back of the past month or so I've been gaming, and I have more than my last couple I can get to. So I have my music on (Starting aparently with Second Heartbeat by Avenged Sevenfold), and I'm ready to start typing away for a while. So let's get this baby going. Of course, it's Bioshock. I know, I know, I'm late. By a couple of years. But I recently bought, and have now finished a full playthrough, of Bioshock. I have to say, I did rather enjoy this game, but I didn't find it too amazing. I have no doubt it was good, but I do have my gripes with it. Mainly, the SHOOTING. Man, I couldn't get my head around this part. Especially the more accurate weapons, for some reason all my shots would go past people, and I would end up relying on my Thompson most of the time and spraying. This didn't really make the time playing it less enjoyable, I just kept trying to get used to the aiming so I didn't waste plasmids and ammo, which I ran out of way too much until the end. Which is another thing that got to me, the last boss I expected to be really ******* hard when I saw him. I mean, he looked like a god! Then I down him in pretty quickly without even dying. I had more trouble with the Big Daddys. So I was rather dissappointed. I will, however, most likely play through a second time to get the other ending and finish the achievements I don't have. (And get ALL the Little Sisters this time. I missed ONE last time...) I did enjoy the inventing and hacking in this game though, although it seemed kind of out of place in the 50's setting, they did adapt it so that it kind of made sense, while still feeling System Shock-y (I did play System Shock 2 for a bit, never got far, and I liked it). I'm rather looking forward to the sequel, and I hope I find it better than this one. X-Men Origins: Wolverine Ahh, this game was such a relief. I had pre-ordered this a while before it came out, and when the reviews started to appear I got a bit worried. Thankfully, I think it's ******* awesome, and is really, REALLY fun. Even the little touches I like. (Stand still, and release your claws. It looks AWESOME.) There are a few little things about this game though, not much, but they are there. This stops it from being a truely grand game. The first thing, was the first sections of the game, and their "mini-boss" encounters. Both types are exactly the same. I guess it's to draw parallels to the Africa section and the present days, but it wasn't needed to make them so easy. Wait for the right moment, lunge, mash X, wait for them to almost grab you, jump, rinse, repeat. This only changed up, when you can fight 4 Wendigo's at once, which I actually managed to do by accident. The first one smashed them all open himself, but that fight was freaking awesome. This isn't too bad, as the 3rd chapter just seems to get rid of them, and instead gives you about 3 boss battles in a row. Kinda weird, but at least those were different. The other thing I was annoyed at, was when I started my "Hard" playthrough. I thought it'd be fine, I'd get all the tags I missed, level him up some more, finish getting Mutagens too. Oh how wrong I was. Little did I know that, starting a new game on Hard, deleted all that progress. The only thing I got to keep was the costumes I had unlocked. (which was all of them, but still.) This got me a little annoyed, but thanks to Geoff at Achievement Hunter, I can use the guides to get the tags as I go, so I know I won't miss the 20 odd I did last time. And I'll just have to work on killing those 2000 people, and all those other kill achievements. Bawwww. I do however really like this game. It brings out the nerd in me, and obviously makes you feel awesome pulling off the gorey glorious moves. The little trivia in the loading screens is quite good too. WoW, I know, I know. I can't NOT rant about this game. But seriously. People who think they are amazing pissing me off. Earlier I was tanking a Heroic Violet Hold. Just to get this straight before hand. I have NEVER had problems tanking this before. The group wasn't terrible, but there was this one guy, a Rogue, who would ALWAYS pull aggro, so I would constantly be spamming my taunt when it wasn't on CD. Which is something I never have to do. When we actually wiped (on the last boss, no less) I asked if he even used Feint. Which he responded, "Why? It's a heroic, I shouldn't have to." Now, how ******* up your own ass do you have to be to NOT use an attack to reduce your threat when you see yourself getting more?! That's completely moronic! And he even went as far as to claim he was taking aggro all the time. This was just not true. People like this piss me off to no end. Especially when they can't admit they are in the wrong. It's really frustrating, especially since I'm doing this mostly as a favor to people, not because I have to. I'll leave this short though, WoW is something that doesn't need to be talked about. This is where I accidentally hit Submit when I wasn't finished I don't need to mention the title for this. I am really upset that 3D Realms has closed down, and I am devasted to even think that Duke Nukem Forever might not ever be released to us gamers. Yet all the time I see is hate for them. "They were taking too long" "Good riddence" etc. Why?! It's not like they stopped working on EVERYTHING to make this game. They made multiple games during this games development, just to name a couple, Duke Nukem Manhatten Project and Prey. Sure, restarting the project multiple times wasn't a good idea, but just look at the 2001 footage and compare it to the leaked footage. Wouldn't you be glad to see that much difference too? And yet people say that the game looks like it was going to be crap anyway. I'm sorry, but in a Duke game, being blown back and flipping a guy off while riding an elevator? COME ON. That's ******* win right there. I even went back to play 3D for old times sake and I still get the great feeling from it. There's just no game out today with a main character like that. I think Duke is needed in his new game, and I for one, really hope that this isn't the end. But alas, I am out of things to rant about, so I'm gonna stop here. Hope everyones doing good, and I look forward to my 8-Bit Glory and Simple-T to arrive in the future. Hail to the king, baby.

Oh shi-!

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:16:24 -0400
Okay, so everyone knows how Peggle is an addictive game. They also know that WoW is addictive. So why would PopCap get the idea, to not only make the Bejewelled WoW add-on but a PEGGLE one now?! This is just the most awesomely retarded idea ever. It just...WHY?! It makes no sense whatsoever. But it's so awesome! And dumb at the same time.

Scrolling Shooters - Dying Breed, or Already Dead?

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:42:02 -0400
I love scrolling shooters. I always have. The first memories I have of these games are on the master system, and I was too young to know anything different. I only remember having a lot of fun with these games, but for the life of me I can't remember names of the old school ones I used to play. They were just awesome. In a space ship or a plane just fighitng waves upon waves of enemies flying straight at you. Grabbing that one weapon power-up for the second or third time to power it up even more and praying that you don't accidentally pick up a different weapon, only to get a lesser powered one. There's a lot of different kinds too. Ikaruga is the one I could be caught playing recently. The difference between this, and other shooters was that this didn't have power ups or different weapons. It was all about the colours. If you were white, you can absorb the white shots coming at you, but do double damage to black enemies. And the opposite if you switched colours. It is very fun, yet I've not even finished the second level. This game, is ******* hard. Probably not considered the hardest, as just searching on YouTube can find ones that look near enough impossible. But since this, I've not seen much, if ANY other games like this released. Where are they? Are the gamers of today not into this type of game anymore? What happened? I was happy when I found a game for my iPhone. iFighter is pretty fun too, and reminds me of the old school shooters, and it just makes me wish that more games like this would come out. They were one of the first gaming genres that when I saw a new one, I'd love it. But what do you guys think? Is it long dead, or are we just waiting for that one release that will slip under our noses? Or are you glad it's gone?

Gaming Ramblings #2

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:14:25 -0400
Okay, so there's a few things that I feel that I want to ramble about recently. Just a couple of things that get to me, piss me off completely, or just make me go "Wait...what?!". Call of Duty: World at War Hate Okay, this has bugged me for a very long time. The hate for this game is unnessesary, and tottally uncalled for. Most of the time the comments I see hating on this game are VERY contradictory. "It's so unoriginal being a WW2 game..." Yeah? Well the first Call of Duty was too. Medal of Honor previously held the spot of top WW2 game, Call of Duty knocked them off. And if they didn't, you wouldn't have your "precious" CoD4. "It's just a reskin of CoD4 with new weapons!" And if you look at most game sequals, you'll find it's pretty much the same thing, if they come out within a year or two of each other. ESPECIALLY if they use the same engine. What else do you want? And the one that REALLY gets to me the most, "Oh, it's not Infinity Ward? That means it's ****." "Treyarch suck and should stop making games, etc." Really? Come the **** on. Treyarch aren't bad at making games in the SLIGHTEST. Sure CoD3 wasn't as good as 2 was, but it wasn't a bad game. I liked playing it. I had fun. Hell, even the other games of theirs I've played haven't been bad. The multiplayer was also really fun, and they added in classes and reviving teammates. I did like CoD4, it was a blast, I played it for months, I got all of the achievements. But the multiplayer, for me at least, got very stale. It was the same kind of people I'd come up against, and they'd all just spray and pray, camp, or glitch. I got bored, and I traded it in. When CoD5 came out, I bought it because I missed that CoD multiplayer, and when I played it, I enjoyed it more than I ever did in CoD4. Sure there are the same problems in this game, but that goes for pretty much EVERY FPS game out there, except for one thing. Compared to CoD4, people playing W@W don't all use the Automatic weapons. It's less a game of "Will this guy just gun me down?" and more a game of "Damn, he got me!". The bolt action and normal rifles are my favorite weapons in WW2 games. And I use them as much as I can. I find it more fun. All my opinion, obviously, but it's true. I honestly think I would have liked CoD4 more if the weapons weren't all Automatic by default. Or at least if there wasn't so many. It would be more enjoyable for me if you could switch between Single, Auto and Burst fire, to adapt to a situation. Other games have done it and it works really well. It's one of the things I hope they add to MW2, as well as the fun elements and perks of World at War. The hate for that game really needs to stop. Most of the people hate it just because it's not Call of Duty 4. It's like they're too scared to try a new game, and they all have pre-conceptions that it's badly made, and not fun, when that's just not the case. That and you can't go wrong with shooting Nazi Zombies in the face. Achievements in World of Warcraft and Xbox Live Okay, this is kind of a weird rant. What's actually the point in them? I myself have to admit, I can be a bit of an achievemnt ***** at times, as we all can be. We strive to increase our Gamerscore/Achievement Points total. But to what end? Currently, Xbox Live Gamerscore has no real point other than Bragging rights. Which is fair enough...it was what it was made for. But did they not say eventually Gamerscore would be useful? I could have just been incorrect about that, but it seems a bit strange to have them for no reason. The difference in the World of Warcraft achievement system is that for some, you can gain rewards. Whether it be a title for your character, a rare mount, or a special tabard, some of them have actual in-game benefits to them. But they still have that snag of having the Achievement Points just floating above the window, being there for no real reason. Blizzard's reason is simply "To show how far the player is in the system." Is there not something they could do to make it more useful though? Sure it's making players do things they didn't use to. (I know for a fact before this system most people wouldn't bother trying to explore EVERY zone in the game.) Currently, I beleive it is the best working system, because of the rewards, but it still seems trivial in the end. Hell, there's even an addon that someone made so that you don't have to type out "Grats" everytime someone in your guild achieves something. Which happens more often than you'd think at level 80. Especially with the achievements that you get for, and I kid you not, simply BUYING something. And there's multiple of these things. There are the fun achievements in WoW too. Just there for amusement rather than anything else. Some of them even have things happen when you complete them. But I won't spoil anything I've seen like this. You guys will ahve to find them for yourself. I would say they're worth it for a laugh. Overall the achievements in WoW seem to be half worth while and half not. I'd encourage anyone who plays WoW to go for the titles they want, or that one mount that sounds awesome, but if there's anything there that's missing, I wouldn't worry about it unless you're the type of person who has to 100% something. And if anyone here is like that concerning the WoW achievements, I give you good luck. It'll take you a while, and I certainly don't envy you. I can't really comment on the PS3's "Trophey" system since I don't have one, and I'm not sure if there's any difference in it. From what I know, is that it doesn't reward "Points". But whatever. I can't talk about something I don't actually know about. That's all from me this time though. Not much for me to rant and ramble about, because honestly, I've not really played much recently. I'll hopefully get back into some more games before next time I write this. I have the F.E.A.R.2 campaign to finish, Lost and the Damned, Far Cry 2, and others. Peace out, Sitoxity.

Gaming Ramblings #1

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:15:55 -0400
Okay, so there's a few things that I feel that I want to ramble about recently. Just a couple of things that get to me, piss me off completely, or just make me go "Wait...what?!". Resident Evil 5 - Partner AI The first half of my first playthrough, the AI was just how I felt it should be. Bearing in mind I kept it on Normal. It just backed me up, and stopped me from dying while I got used to it. Going into the later levels, it started getting more sloppy, letting themselves get into trouble then not running away much, and just generally being a bit of a burden more than a help. When I started the veteran playthrough, this seemed to stick. And get elevated. ALOT. Examples being them getting into the "Dying" state, and then staying right where they are. This happens frequently during boss fights. Shooting a certain enemy when you're walking by them. And the ONE thing that pisses me off most, is when I'm trying to clear some space in my inventory. I'd give something to them, to pick up a herb or something, and as soon as I get to said herb, they run up, and give me as much ammo as they have on them. Usually some ammo that I don't even need. This even happened when I was in the levels inventory screen, sorted out the inventory prior to actually playing, and as soon as it loads up, BAM. I'm recieving ammo that I specifically GAVE them. This really blows my mind at how random this AI can be. It makes absolutly no sense to me whatsoever. "Pugging" in World of Warcraft To get it out of the way first to "pug" a group in WoW, is to randomly look for other players that you don't actually know to fill up a group for a Raid, Dungeon or Group Quest. This is out of your guild and friend list. My friend refused to do this at 80 kinda early on. I didn't really mind, but whatever. After being 80 for a couple weeks now, I know why this is completely warrented due to how many people on this game (at least the server I'm on) either don't know how to play, are in it just for one piece of loot and will leave when they get it or if they don't. Don't get me wrong, I entered a group the other day where we did a timed run through the Culling of Stratholme, and it was awesome, but the amount of groups you can get that are the complete opposite is ridiculous. The only problem around trying not to do this, is because most of the time there's not enough of our guildies on to fill up groups, or if there is, there's none of the essential roles to finish off groups. (Tank, off-tank and heals mainly). It just kinda annoys me honestly. It should be better than this. I shouldn't have to second guess myself as to whether or not I should look for a group when I want to do a Heroic or something. Peggle Why is this game so addicting? Seriously. I do not understand. I'm not the only one to say this, but come on. It's SIMPLIFIED PINBALL. And I can't get enough. I even have "Peggle Extreme" on Steam and the XBLA version. I think it's plainly because it's fun, like most PopCap games. It's just a strange concept for a game that works pretty damn well. And it shows. It's also a good game just to load up and blow a couple minutes playing if you aren't sure about a "proper" game you wanna sit down and get into. Mega Man 9 Now, I wanna make it clear. I never had an NES or SNES when I was younger. I grew up with the Megadrive (Genesis). So I've never really played a Mega Man game. I did try the trial of Mega Man 9 and I thought it was pretty fun, although hard as hell. Recently, I've been having the urge to actually buy it, but I'm not sure if I should. I mean, I don't wanna get too frustrated at it and then never play it again, or just play it once and then the novelty wears off, especially since I don't have that much money, and I'm a sucker for impulse buying, sometimes that DOESN'T pay off. Maybe it'll be in the same vein as Street Fighter IV for me...

Review #1: Resident Evil 5

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:02:49 -0400
So, I just finsihed Resident Evil 5. *I will try to remain this SPOILER-FREE* I got my copy yesterday, thanks to Play.com, getting it a day early, like most games I order from there. I played it all day, and finished it today. The control scheme I like. I prefered playing it with the default setup rather than the Resident Evil 4 Default (which I played with a controller on the PC). I felt that it was suited more to gamers who play alot of Shooters, and this is probably why I prefer it, for others, I'm sure they'll find the control setup to suit them. The story, I felt, was really good. One of the best of the series. It did have a couple of twists that I was surprised at, and some that were kind of obvious, with a main villian that just, won't, die. But throughout the story, unlike a lot of the reviewers that have already had their say on the game, I was constantly in that state of mind, thinking this WAS a Resident Evil game.I always felt the tesnion. This was hightened by the fact that the Inventory screen doesn't pause the game, and seemingly running out of ammo at the worst possible moments. The one gripe I have with the gameplay, is the fact that the "puzzles" they had, were few, far between, and mind-dumbingly simple. This is the one thing I miss about the old games, which I loved. But this doesn't spoil it for me, as it fits with the setting more. Why would there be a lot of puzzles in Africa? It wouldn't have made much sense. I liked the new "Inventory Manager" screen. I'm not sure if I prefer it over the Merchant in RE4, but it was good none the less. It's awesome being able to organise your inventory and prepare yourself if you died, and are retrying the stage. The music I felt was good as well. Although in one particular boss battle, the theme sounded almost identical to the main Gears of War tune, others sounding inspired by the earlier Resident Evil games, or the African setting, similar to the Black Hawk Down soundtrack. The gun sound effects are equally as cool, and all sound quite realistic. I don't really need to say much about the graphics. The texture work is phenominal, the lighting is outstanding and the game just look gorgeous. All in all, I really like this game, and I've only finished the story mode once. I still have to try Co-Op, Mercinaries, and eventually the Versus mode they'll be adding. (Although I don't think I'll enjoy it much... the gameplay never really suited a competative multiplayer game in my opinion. It will most likely be a "who shoots first" scenario.) That and I'm sure I missed a ton of unlockables on my first run through. Just thought I'd try a quick review here. The next ones I'll do, I'll try to make a little more thorough, but since today is this games release day, I tried to make it spoiler light, so that anyone can read it. If anyone is still so-so about this game, I'd say buy it. Especially if you liked previous Resident Evil games (4 especially).

Street Fighter IV - Impressions

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:23:34 -0400
So out of a whim, and the ScrewAttack guys always rating this highly, I decided to buy Street Fighter IV. After all, I did enjoy Street Fighter 2: Hyper Fighting on the live arcade. Now I know for a fact this is a really fun game, and I'm not good, pretty much TERRIBLE, at fighting games in general, but this game seems to be harding than all of them. I decided to play the challanges first, the trials, just to learn the characters, and when I got to the combos I couldn't do yet, I went to arcade, set it to Medium, and tried to play. I couldn't beat the first level of it, being Zangeif. Man it was hard. I ended up moving it down one level of difficulty lower, and that seems the right place for me to be playing at right now, and I'm having fun and a challange playing against these guys now. I've tried a few of the characters, but I seem to stick with Ryu and Ken, and when I read posts about SF4, everyone seems to be ripping into people who use them, which I really don't understand. If the game is SO balanced like everyone says, why ***** when people use these characters? The only reason I use Ken so much is because he's the character I seem to be ABLE to use, slightly better than Ryu, and this is only me starting out in the game. I just don't get it... After a while of trying Arcade and frustratingly trying to do the combos in Trial mode, I decided to put on the Fight Request system, after seeing it in action on Out of the Box, I thought it seemed pretty cool. What I DIDN'T expect, was that you COULDN'T play arcade if you had that on. Even if it past showing the Fighters, and got into the match, it would just go straight into A New Challanger! and I wouldn't even get to play on my own. Which was pretty annoying, seeing as everyone I played was either better than me, or a lot better than me. Out of the 15 online games I've played total, I won a grand total of 1. I seriously need some pointers in this game. -____- So far, I haven't regretted buying this one bit. It is really fun, and I hope that I will actually improve over time. Just need to practise more I guess. But if any of you guys have any tips and pointers, please feel free to give me any. =)

Assault on Dark Athena Demo: First Impressions

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:33:30 -0500
I didn't expect this game to be out with a demo. But I'm so glad it is. Starting it up, I'm greeted with a nice backdrop with the logo, and "Press Start" flashing on the screen, as soon as I do, that old familar cube comes back, and I quickly hit "New Game". Instant familiar feeling hits in the beggining of this level as I struggle to try and remember how to get the melee fighting down, managing to kill the guy I alerted, getting used to the slightly different controls. It also looks really, really good. The one bad thing I've noticed so far, is that the texture of Riddicks top isn't hi-rez in the slightest. But do I care? Hell no. It's all black anyway, who the hell cares? The first person skins are all, hi-rez from what I can see. The Weapons have a lot of very nice detail, and every swipe and stab looks very cool. And painful. I've not even finished the demo yet, but I'm already liking the shooting. It's not as clunky as The Darkness, and it feels good. I can't wait until I get my hands on the full game. This will be one of the best games out this year. No doubt. And when I get it, I'm playing through it slowly. Starting with Escape from Butcher Bay.

Halo Wars Online: People Resigning?

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:37:03 -0500
Okay, so I had hoped my first blog on here wouldn't be a bit *****y, but then this is annoying me. Out of the two games I've played on Halo Wars so far, BOTH players have resigned after I destroy one of their bases. ONE. On the first game, he built this second base NEXT to mine. And quit after I destroyed this base, twice. Okay, fair enough. This second time happened moments ago. I send in a squad of Hornets to distract one base, he sends his dudes, I kill his turrents, some of his supplies, and they fight it out, while I send in Scorpions to a second base, with MAC blasts and ODSTs to boot. That's all fine and dandy, I destroy the second base with a couple of casulties, and then build my base over his, get more ODST drops, and have already re-built the Hornets. So I send them back to the first base, which had rebuilt some turrets. So I bomb his supplies with MAC blasts, and his base a couple times (Fully upgraded MAC ftw. 4 shots. *drools*) After I kill all but ONE of his Hornets at this base, all I see is "Player resigns". Come on people, are the people who bought this game for consoles all really like that? What happened to RTS games being about sticking it out to the very end? Trying to mount a scrappy defence to hold them off while you build back up? I've had games like up to and over 2 hours on PC, and that was with RECENT RTS games too. I used to play against my sister on Red Alert (1), and if she had killed most of my base, or I killed most of hers, what did we do? Quit? Oh no. We'd sell EVERYTHING and march on with all the infantry from the buildings. If that worked, we'd run around looking for a lucky crate with an MCV and start again. This just annoys me...bleh. I really hope all these games on Halo Wars aren't like this. I really like this game, and it impressed me... First console RTS I actually WANT to play.