Haze

Haven't written a blog in a while, so I decided to put some random video game stuff here.
 
First off, I got 100% of trophies on Infamous a few days ago. Those damn blast shards are all over the place. It's just... awful. I understand the want to have collectible items in an open world game. It inspires exploration through an open world environment. Just... 350 is way to many. Well, luckily it's over now. Now that I'm done with Infamous (or inFAMOUS if you want to be politically correct) I may write a review for the game. Now that I have two reviews under my belt, I feel I'm getting into the swing of things. 
 
Gamefly sent two games, and while I have not finished either one yet I'm going to give a bit of a preview of them.
 
The first is Call of Juarez: Bound by Blood and the second is Stormrise. Starting with Call of Juarez: Bound by Blood, I found this to be a pretty good FPS. It's a really fun representation of the wild west setting we've all grown to know and love. It's kind of interesting how a simple  switch of settings can make a game feel different. Really, raise a hand if you've played a FPS recently that wasn't set in A) World War II B) modern times or C) a science fiction setting. While this does cover a lot of ground, there are more places to do an FPS. I do want to point out the game Darkest of Days looks like one of the more interesting examples of an FPS. Anyway, back to Bound by Blood. One of the better points of the game is the relation between the three McCall brothers, Ray, Thomas and William. The three are fun to watch in cutscenes and their arguments. Overall I'm enjoying the game and I'll give it a review when I'm done.
 
On the other hand... Stormrise... Just... Oh my god. What the hell went wrong with this game? There is just not one redeeming feature of this game. I've called a lot of games my personal worst game of all time, like Haze, Lord of the Rings: Conquest and Lair but this... this may just be that game that tops all of those in suckage. The camera lets me see nothing, the controls are awful the characters are either boring or annoying and the gameplay is just... slow! I know it's suppose to be an RTS, but it's slow even for an RTS! One of the biggest faults is the inability to select more then one unit, making any strategy to damn hard to pull off. Another huge huge problem in the game is a minute long delay between the time you tell a unit to do something and when they actually do it. Finally, units get stuck all the time. I can't do anything because they keep getting stuck on stairs, walls and all kinds of objects. Even more, if this can get any worse, units won't stop to fight something if they get attacked. I know this is more of a common problem in most RTS, but it's especially bad in this one. Is there anything good about this game? Well, it has an interesting plot premise, but I'm likely to send it back before even finishing the first fucking level so that amounts to nothing. The premise, for those that don't know: We figure out how to control the weather to prevent a crisis. Still we manage to screw up and accidentally create a huge firestorm that blows tons of shit up. Commander Geary attempts to help people by forming a group called the Echelon, but there are so many people he is unable to aid them all. There he forces himself to leave a large chunk of people outside as there is not enough room in their hibernation pods. Those that live become a new group called the Sai and they adapt to the environment and are trying to get revenge on the Echelon. I can see such potential in this, but... it just backfires! Such a mess! Infact, the whole game just reeks of the potential that could have happened. It had so many good ideas that just fell short. What a mess.
 
Anyway, a Kaerwyn update, which I may do from time to time. A hurricane hit the town, leading to the destruction of a lot of stuff. Of my characters, one has lost a home, two lost a business (They both owned it.) and one was impaled in the chest by a pipe. Isabella, my character who lost the home, is already suffering from the problem that is a missing lover so she's sorta broken right now. We were able to choose rewards for characters if they lost anything major, so I chose some for Groggy and Sen, the two who lost the business. Sen was able to find a new building in town where the owner had died. I was aloud to make a plot out of this, so I decided to make something interesting. Pretty much a plot that's heavily inspired of the Edgar Allen Poe books The Cask of Amontillado and  The Black Cat, with a little bit of the game Shadow Hearts: From the New World throw in for some good measure. Groggy, on the other hand, got an item called "The amulet of the asshole." It's pretty much an amulet that makes him act like a evil little bastard. Well, even more of an evil little bastard, since he already acted like enough of an evil little bastard to begin with. I really like what came out of the storm, and I'm pretty sure this plot could be fun. Hopefully things won't go wrong anywhere along the way. =P
 
Anyway, I'm going to post this in the general forums and ask a question for those that read through the whole thing. Have you played Stormrise? If so, did you care for the game at all? If not, what is the worst game you have played and why? And please don't say something like Halo or Final Fantasy VII because it's popular. I want reasons people. Good reasons.

'nuff said

I didn't play a whole lot of terrible games but the worst was Haze, since it was just a bland first-person shooter that could have been somewhat promising but fell flat on its face with braindead AI on both sides.

In all seriousness I'm not giving any fanboyish hate to Sony's console but come on! Look at this past week. Two great developers shut down this week. First was Free Radical which was making Timesplitters 4 a game that I would build a time machine and travel to Austria and kill Hitler right as he was being born to get. And now it's been revealed that Factor 5 has shut down and I know a lot of Wii owners looking forward to their Kid Icarus game that was "rumored" to be in development. The only thing that these two guys had in common was the last game they made was a high profile disappointment. Free Radical put forth the disaster known as Haze, and Factor 5 made Lair which disappointed nearly everyone. Both games were PS3 exclusive for reasons I quite don't understand. Now given the current economy I can't blame it all on the PS3 but what if these titles were avalabile on the 360, as multiplatform titles. If that were the case could we still be looking forward to Timesplitters 4 and Kid Icarus or do you think it wouldn't of mattered? What do you guys think?

As I mentioned, I will be posting all my blog posts on blogger so they can stay consistent across various sites.

This feature is about games that fail to meet expectations.

Please head to: What Happened Vol 1: Haze to read the post.