This post relates to: Grand Theft Auto IV
| Rollup Stats | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| AlexMarra's Total Questions Answered | 222 | AlexMarra's Overall Trivia Ranking | 174 |
| AlexMarra's Total Questions Correctly Answered | 180 | AlexMarra's Best Subject | Assassin's Creed |
| AlexMarra's Total Percent Correct | 81% | Total Questions AlexMarra Submitted | 17 |
This post relates to: Gears of War 2
Giant Bomb looked better with all of that Gears of War 2 advertising everywhere.
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With the development of Halo 3, a whole lot of pressure was on Bungie to go and make another epic title. With a huge fan base, two excellent Halo games already under their belt, with one of them being the most played game on Xbox Live for several years, Bungie knew they had to make something even greater than what they had already done. Did they accomplish their task? Absolutely. The Good Fast, Perfected Combat: Halo 3’s all about either shooting stuff, blowing up stuff, or running over stuff, and each element to killing something has been perfected to a “T”. Combat is fluid and immersive, the enemies are perfectly attuned to each difficulty level, and each vehicle handles beautifully.Quick-to-Master Learning Curve: It’s very simple for anybody to just jump in and start playing. The control layout is easy to get used to and veterans of the franchise will feel right at home. Lots of Variety: Guns are never in short supply in Halo 3. Neither are vehicles, enemies, or equipment. There are three sets of weapons in Halo 3 - Human, Covenant, and Brute - and no one weapon feels strictly overpowered over another. Top-Notch Multiplayer: As with Halo 1 (for the PC) and Halo 2, the Halo franchise has always held on to the rank of master of the multiplayer shoot-out, and Halo 3 is no exception. Online Multiplayer is fast, fun, exciting, and everything you would except (and more) from a First Person Shooter game. With a multitude of ranks, medals, and character creation options, Multiplayer is truly something you don’t want to miss. Long Time Playability: With most games, there’s usually a single-player portion to it and then to extend its life expectancy, it throws in a multiplayer portion as well. Halo 3 doesn’t stop at multiplayer. With the inclusion of Skulls, which are random human skulls you can find hidden in a level, the game continues on. Better yet, each Skull you find unlocks a new game mechanic change, which you can then turn on in the Campaign Mission Settings to effect your game. You can also turn on Campaign Scoring, which allows you to achieve points by doing a multitude of tasks (like killing an enemy with a grenade or beating them to death), much like a classic arcade game. To sweeten the deal, Bungie included interesting achievements to unlock for both the single-player section of the game and the multiplayer. Excellent Story: Bungie’s never had a hard time telling a good story, and they do it again in Halo 3. Each portion of the game makes you feel like you’re in the boots of Master Chief, and each and every thing you do impacts the story somewhat. Terrific Combat A.I.: Your teammates are all hardened veterans of war, and they all act appropriately as such. You may be an elite super soldier, but your teammates can still hold their own even when you’re not around. That also goes for your enemies, as they will also group up, use equipment effectively, and do everything in their power to kill you. Awesome New Video Recording and Screenshot Taking Options: How did I just die? Where did that missile come from? Wow, I’d like to see that head-shot again! Now you can! Halo 3 came packed in with new video recording and screenshot taking options, so you can now show the whole world how you killed somebody with a traffic cone. Interesting New Forge Mode: A new thing to play with in Halo is something called Forge. Forge is basically a level editor, where you can take objects in any multiplayer map and place them where you would like to. Forge opens up many new possibilities and game options for players, and is quite easy to use. The Bad No Difficulty is Too Challenging: I’m no pompous asshole, but Halo 3 was just not that hard. Granted, there are a few moments where I would think “If Hell exists, it would be playing this scenario over and over again while listening to Black Lace’s ‘Agadoo’“, but those moments are few and far between. The highest difficulty is no pushover, but it definitely doesn’t live up to its description either, that description being: “Tremble as teeming hordes of invincible alien monsters punish the slightest error with instant death… again and again.” Unless it’s solely talking about the second-to-last level, where actual teeming hordes of near invincible monsters chase you throughout the whole level, that above statement is a crock of shit, through-and-through. Most of Halo 3’s Fan Base Sucks: The Halo franchise is known for it’s excellent story, action-packed combat, and tons of fun multiplayer, but it’s also known for its terribe mulitplayer fan base, which consists primarily of 12-year old boys who enjoy shouting explicitives at you for any given reason. Technically, Halo 3’s multiplayer is mostly free of problems, but in practice, it’s the game’s fan base that gives the game its problems. Unless you and a group of friends are planning on hosting your own game, expect at least one retard to be added to every random match you join. A.I. Teammates Never Got Their Drivers License: When a vehicle is presented to you in the campaign, expect to be driving it everywhere, as your teammates couldn’t drive if their lives depended on it. If you do take the passenger’s seat, expect to be crashing into walls, blowing up, and careening off of cliffs…a lot. Odd Dialogue: Seeing as how the game takes place in the 26th Century, I found it quite odd for my marines to be calling each other “dude” and yelling things like “you’re toast!” at enemies. In our lifetime, saying “groovy” or “righteous” went out of style 20 years ago, but in Halo’s storyline, people are still saying “dude” 500 years into the future? I admit, hearing these things don’t bother me and actually make me feel at home with my soldiers, but in a technical and logical sense, people aren’t declaring others as “toast” 500 years from now. Halo 3 is a phenomenal game which shouldn’t be passed up. If you still haven’t given a Halo game a try, do yourself a favor and play this one. Not only is it worth it, it will leave you with a lot of good memories and many stories to tell. Halo 3 was developed by Bungie Software and published by Microsoft Game Studios and was released on September 25, 2007. Retails for $59.99 to $129.99 USD. Available only on Xbox 360. Played single-player campaign to completion twice, once on Heroic and once on Legendary. Played several hours of multiplayer both solely and with others.
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Every once in awhile, a new type of RTS game comes out that makes people say, “Holy crap! An RTS game with a premise different than base building or it does something that vastly improves the genre!” Battle for Middle-earth II isn’t one of those games. The Good Diverse Troop Selection: If there’s one notable thing about the Lord of the Rings franchise as a whole, it’s that it has a lot of quirky and spectacular creatures. EA LA follows this concept and uses it to their advantage by creating a diverse selection of soldiers to choose from in the game. All of the troops relate to similar categories, such as cavalry or artillery, but, for example, a catapult is now replaced with a Mountain Giant.Huge Variety of Maps to Choose From: Since every RTS game is about traversing a terrain with some form of army to go kill another army, it’s nice to look around your surroundings once in awhile. Since BME2 takes place in the Lord of the Rings universe, there are many detailed locations that could have been put in, and indeed they were. Landmark locations from both the movies and the books make an appearance in some form in BME2, and each location can get a bit distracting as you’ll constantly find yourself staring at something interesting while your civilzation gets massacred. But seeing as how the LotR universe takes place in more than just open fields, you can also fight in military bases, fortresses, and on the sea. Remember the battle of Helms Deep? You can re-create that (somewhat), granted your enemies are smart enough to figure out how to get passed the locked gate. Resources Are Easy to Gather: In BME2, there is only one type of resource. To gather resources, all you have to do is lay down a resource-gathering node and forget about it. There are no settler-type people to increase your resource gathering output, but instead, resource gathering depends on your location. When you go to lay down a resource gathering node, a percentage of how many resources that node will bring in for each minute is displayed. For example, if you lay down a farm in an open field, you can gather 100% of about 250 resources per minute, but if you built that farm by a mountain, you might only get 50% resources per minute. It’s complicated to explain, but pretty easy to execute from within the game. Variety of Animations for Everything: One thing that bugs me about most RTS games is their lacking of animations. Usually, most RTS games have one animation for attacking, one animation for dying, and so on. That’s most definitely not the case for BME2. Everything from troops, to wildlife, - even buildings! - have a great variety of animations. Great Addition of a Stat Counter for Each Civilization: Want to know how many total people you’ve killed throughout those 12 Skirmish matches you just played? Or how about how many people Gandalf slaughtered throughout all of his battles fought? With BME2, all of this information is stored in a handy dandy stat counter, so you can look back one day and be impressed with all of your progress. The Bad Difficulty is Unbalanced: I pride myself on being an expert of RTS games, but I know when I’m playing on Medium and I’ve already got 300 enemies attacking my base within 5 minutes that something’s wrong. Easy is too easy, Medium is too hard, and Hard is just ridiculous. It would have been appreciated if EA LA had toned down the difficulty just a teensy bit to make playing against a Medium army bearable. Lacks Common RTS Settings: With what BME2 boasts in unordinary features, it lacks in common features. Where’s friend/foe colors? How about easy-drag miltary? Can’t I get a counter of how long my game’s been going or how many resources I’m bringing in a minute? None of this is available in BME2, and makes base building and fighting even more of a hassle. Your Soldiers are Unbelievably Stupid: And not just due to the player’s skill level, but definitely due to what the hell your archers were thinking when you tell them to attack a far away enemy, but decide to run right in front of them instead to get a better shot. And artillery - don’t even get me started. They couldn’t hit the Great Wall of China with a pebble while standing just an inch away from it if you asked them to. Shouldn’t that hulking beast of a Mountain Giant know to throw the rock in the direction those enemy soldiers are moving in, or was EA LA trying to replicate their stupidity? Game Has the LotR Look, but Not the LotR Feel: Lord of the Rings is all about epic storytelling and epic battles, but nothing takes that away more than base building. It’s just so completely awkward in a LotR setting to go and make a farm, while your “fortress” out in the middle of nowhere is getting butt-raped by a bunch of Goblins. Pro-Tip for EA on the next Battle for Middle-earth game: copy Medieval 2 and have just one huge, decisive battle between two forces and move on. No more base building and resource collecting. Save that for games like Age of Empires and Rise of Nations, where it actually makes sense. Super Abilities Are Interesting, but Extremely Overpowered: In BME2, you get these things called Power Points for killing enemy soldiers. Power Points go towards buying special abilities, such as things like spying on your enemy’s base temporarily, or making your army get a temporary attack boost, or better yet, calling a friggen’ squid monster to pop out of the flaming ground to wipe out your entire enemy’s army. Now I thought the battles were inconsistent enough, but when you can just use special abilities to take out your entire enemy’s base with absolutely no effort, that’s when you know that the game’s mechanics are just a bit wonky. Ring Heroes are Devastatingly Powerful: While out in the wild somewhere, standing around with your army, doing nothing, you might come across Gollum, a sad little creature that hobbles around the map aimlessly. If you kill the poor guy, steal the One Ring which he was carrying, and take it back to your Fortress, you’re now granted the ability to summon either Galadriel (for the armies of Good) or Sauron (for the armies of Evil). I think you know where this is going. Sure, Ring Heroes are hard to come by and finally produce, but when you’ve got Sauron out there, fighting along with your troops, your enemy doesn’t have a chance. It’s like pitting an M1 Abrams tank against a caveman. There’s just no way they can be killed. Flaunted Features are Weak and Feel Slapped On: BME2 likes to boast that you can now have naval fights and create your own hero characters, contrary to the first game where you couldn’t, but I don’t see why EA was so happy about promoting these features as they both feel painfully slapped on late in development and are both completely stupid features. For one thing, naval fights are retarded as you first need to find a dock (yeah, find, not build) to deploy your ships from. Naval fights are over quickly, as each boat is barely guarded and take damage quickly. The only off-set is that your enemy’s boats are crap too, so it’s basically a 50-50 gamble of who finally comes out the winner. But for Create-a-Hero - wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed with a video game. I actually got tricked into buying the original Spider-Man 2 game for the Playstation because they also flaunted that you could make your own character. Create-a-Hero is extremely limited, and is not even nearly close to what it was supposed to represent. You have no options to change to your character’s body or facials features, and you have about 3 different clothing sets to choose from. The only resounding feature of the character creation mode is that you’re allowed to add in and mix-up your own pre-set super powers, allowing you to create an extremely powerful nobody. Craptastic Campaign: You’d think that with a story as rich as Lord of the Ring’s is that they’d go out of their way to make a decent campaign. Definitely not with BME2. Nearly every mission revolves around base building (still, ugh) and the cinematics bring up some unrealistic expectations. For example, there’s a mission where you need to invade a dwarven fortress, kill everything in your path, and destroy some building at the end. The cinematic before you begin your mission shows your massive army stomping their way to the dwarven fortress, and then you start playing, and you need to…build a base to make a decent army to attack the fortress. It’s so completely disappointing and the campaign just has nothing going for it. To make matters worse, all of your enemy’s follow a scripted pattern and fight as if they’re all high on PCP. I’ll give you another example. In the same level, a group of Rangers (archers) will occassionally sneak through a secret passage in the fortress’ wall and attack your base. What did I do? I created a tower right by the hole in the wall and filled it with archers with flaming arrows, so every time the Rangers would run by, I’d shoot them and they’d burst into flames. Did they ever change this pattern? Nope. Did they ever attack that tower? They never even tried. War of the Ring Mode is Terrible: As if you weren’t already sick of being massacred in the Skirmish mode or gouging your eyes out over the Campaign, you’ve now got a semi-rip-off of Rise of Nation’s Conquer the World mode to go with it! Yay! Graphics Can Go Either Way: Simply stated, one second you’ll be staring at the beautiful water effects and the next you’ll be cringing at the sight of your heavily pixelated clone army. Enough said. The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II had a lot going for it, but overpowered military units, unbalanced difficulty levels, and a serious identity crisis left the game feeling average, boring, and not so Lord of the Rings-ish. If you’re a huge fan of Lord of the Rings, you might want to give this one a try, but if you’re a die-hard RTS lover, just steer yourself away from this one. The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-earth II was developed by EA LA and published by EA Games and was released on March 2, 2006. Retails for $9.99 USD. Available on both Xbox 360 and PC. Played most of each the Good and Evil Campaign, about three hours worth of War of the Ring, and several different Skirmish matches. No online games were played. Personally, between you and me, the most fun I had with this game was defending Helms Deep and pelting enemy troops with hundreds of arrows. Good times.
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I remember playing this game when I was a kid and being really disappointed because all you could do was race and you couldn’t walk around Tatooine. … That’s all I really remember about the game when I was a kid and when I played it for the N64. But, since my N64 is currently in the possession of my dad who lives in Florida, I recently went out and bought the PC version of this game and decided to give it another go, just in time for Retro Revival Week. So what do I think about this game in the present day? Well…it’s not too bad. The game starts out promising. You got a bunch of different racers to choose from when you first start. I just went with Anakin because he had the best stats. The initial races are pretty fun. There are several different planets you can race on, and there are four different tournaments in the tournament mode, so there are four different tracks for each of the planets. No matter what, every race in which you participate in is based off of a three lap system. Additionally, each lap can last from one minute to up to three and half. The tournament mode can get pretty fun until you get to the semi-pro’s. You can’t choose your level of difficulty in Racer, and if your pod racer isn’t up to date with all of the best parts, you can really take it up the ass in most races. Going 600+ MPH doesn’t really help either. Since it’s past midnight and I want to go to bed, here’s a handy dandy list of some of the complaints I had with Racer:
And to end this review, I’ll leave you with a story. There was this one race in the Galatic Tournament that I couldn’t beat. Each lap lasted about…you guessed it, three and a half minutes. I did this race twice and lost both times. I tried it again one last time before I would give up, and finally! I’m just about to win! And then my keyboard fails. And I crash into a wall. And I lose. … I almost threw my keyboard. Almost. It did warrant a “Son of a bitch!” however.
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Growing up as a kid, we watched a lot of Disney movies back then that came in those white, squishy Disney VHS cases. For me, my all-time favorite Disney movie was Aladdin. The action scenes, the characters, the voice actors; everything came into this perfect combination of greatness, and for it, became one of the finest Disney movie’s ever created. Other than movies, we also had a Sega Genesis. One of the games that I owned (and still do) was Aladdin. Unfortunately, my old Genesis is missing a couple of cables so I wasn’t able to play that version of the game, but I did get my hands on the SNES version. Aladdin looks like your basic side-scroller, and for the most part, it pretty much is. You start out with a couple of hearts, which act as life bars, and if you walk into an enemy, you get hurt and lose one heart. As the game progresses, you attain more hearts, which helps a lot as many enemies will be coming after you in the later parts of the game.
Speaking of enemies, the enemies were designed with a lot of care in mind and stick true to what you might find in that section of the game. For example, you start out in Agrabah, a city, so many of the city guards are after you. In another part of the game, you’re in a cave, so there are plenty of bats and scorpions around. To defend himself, Aladdin is equipped with 10 apples which are used to stun enemies for a short duration. The apples are really useless though, and don’t really begin to help until the last sections of the game. Aladdin’s primary form of defense is to simply jump on your enemies. From the city guards to birds made out of sand, nearly every enemy in the game can be jumped on. It’s a bit of a disappointment, seeing as how Aladdin never jumped on anything to kill it in the movie (I would of rather used his sword), but the game is a platformer after all, so I really can’t complain too much about it. The gameplay in Aladdin is simplistic (it was made for the kiddies after all). Your main objective is to hop and bop your way to the end of the level, going from the left side of the screen to the right. There are a few items you can get in the levels, which includes some food items that replenish your health, a couple of colored diamonds which, if you collect all 70 red diamonds, unlocks a different credits screen, a flying golden scarab that you can catch which unlocks a bonus game, and paper bags, but I dunno what the hell those do. You get two credits when you start the game and two lives to play off of. The number of hearts you have depends on which level you’re on. When you run out of lives, you can use one of your credits, which sends you back to the beginning of the level you’re on (there are sometimes one or two checkpoints in a level), but you get another two lives. Once you’re out of credits, the game is over. You can enter in a password given to you at the end of each section (each section consists of two to three levels, divided by a cutscene), but that brings you all the way back to the beginning of the section and you have to replay any levels that you did before you ran out of credits. It’s a decent system, with an easy, 4-slotted picture password system (the password selections are characters from Aladdin instead of numbers or letters), but it can really become a pain the balls during boss fights or extremely hard acrobatic situations, as it sends you all the way back to the beginning of the section, granted you can remember the password.
However, in spite of a few of the game’s core mechanics, the level design in Aladdin is simply brilliant. There are plenty of things to hop off of, swing from, jump on, fly over, etc. A lot of care was put into the level design, and it stays true to the movie, locales, and enemy placements. For example, you can swing from a horizontal pole, jump onto an enemy’s head for even more air time, grab onto another pole, and then kick some guard in the face. Simple scenario’s like this can be found all over the levels, and executing this “environmental combination” is extremely rewarding and extremely satisfying. Unfortunately, these fun experiments are usually hard to pull off correctly, and some of the end-game level design relies on you pulling off one of these tricks. It’s not too bad of an inconvenience if you have plenty of lives and credits left, but when you’re down on everything, those parts of the game can become nerve-wracking and frustrating. To make the game flow more fluidly, there are levels of the game in which you don’t just exclusively go from left to right, but instead fly on a magic carpet, or fight a boss character. There are only three bosses in the game, which is a bit of a bummer, but the magic carpet scenes make up for that and are as challenging as the boss fights themselves.
To compliment Aladdin’s excellent level design is a beautifully orchestrated soundtrack. As with the levels and enemies, the music fits perfectly with the game, and is pretty damn good as its for an SNES game. The action, the boss fights, the carpet scenes; none of it would have mattered much if it wasn’t for the properly selected music, and the soundtrack delivers. It’s compelling and it just makes the whole Disney experience come alive. There’s not much else I can say about Aladdin. While its difficulty may have been too much for the kids, it’s perfectly suited for an adult or teenage gamer, granted you don’t mind playing an Aladdin game. From its excellent level design, challenging foes, and outstanding musical score, Aladdin is a game which will live on forever in the great selection of the best games the SNES had to offer.
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World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online
Role-Playing Game) created by Blizzard and published by Blizzard
Entertainment. The game takes place in the world of Azeroth, inhabited
by the most bitter of enemies and the scariest of creatures. There are
two full continents to explore and plenty to do in the land of Azeroth,
so be ready to pick up your sword (or spellbook) and get ready to fight
for either the Horde or the Alliance.
Before you jump into Azeroth, you must first create your own, customizable character. There are two warring factions to choose from and four different races for each faction. Depending on which server you choose, players on one faction are allowed to kill players of the other faction when in contested territory. Anyhow, when creating your character, you have eight different classes to choose from (which aren't available to every race, but may be to others). Character creation isn't too varied and is pretty poor when compared to other character creation systems for other MMORPG's, like the Lord of the Rings Online which can get pretty deep. Other than the different hairstyles, most players of the same race pretty much look the same. You're not even allowed to change the body composition of your character, so Humans always end up looking like beefed up, muscular guys on steroids even when you're a magician, so it's pretty saddening to say the least. Also when creating your character, your not allowed to choose a name for your character that's already been taken by another person, but that's typical in most MMO games to steer away from confusion. To try and keep the game feeling like a realistic game world and to keep some sense of lore, World of Warcraft also doesn't allow you to enter numbers into your character's name (but character names like "LegolasOne" are abundant). The character creation isn't too shabby, but it could definitely use some updating to catch up with the times. After you're done creating your character, you're ready to begin your adventure. The first thing you are introduced to in the World of Warcraft is quests. Quests are basically missions, where you either kill a number of things, collect a number of things, or something to that effect, which eventually yields reputation gains, monetary gains, experience, or new gear. Quests can get repetitive, and there are a few instances where you'll be cursing the game wondering why a certain quest item hasn't dropped off of a monster yet, even though you've killed twenty of them, but the game does such a good job at sucking you into the whole experience that you don't even begin to care and you just start thinking of the benefits. To add to the fun of questing, it is also possible to group up with a pal or a bunch of buddies to tackle the quests together. Not only is it rewarding, but it also creates new friendships with people and makes the game move a little faster and smoother. To help you complete these quests is a database crammed with thousands of different pieces of gear to customize your character with. Depending on what character class you chose, some certain pieces of gear may not be available to you (for example, mages can't wear plate armor). The gear types in WoW are cloth, leather, mail, and plate, and they can be classified as junk, common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. All gear from uncommon to legendary are considered magical, and produce some sort of effect on the character. These effects can range from increasing the regeneration of your health to adding more points to your overall health. Once these pieces of gear are removed, the benefits go away. You will be able to obtain uncommon gear from the get-go, but that's only by using the auction house, which I'll explain later in the review. You probably won't be getting your first epic gear until at least level 40. Now that you're all geared up and you've been questing like a real hero, Blizzard knew that all of that would get pretty boring after awhile so there are things in the game called instances. Instances are areas loaded with "Elite" creatures (considerably tough monsters which are extremely hard to kill unless grouped with other people) and improved loot. At different intervals in an instance, you will be tasked with killing a boss monster, which is a single monster with extremely high stats, magical abilities, and rare gear (which can only be found from that monster). Instances are fun additions to the World of Warcraft and can create even larger bonds between your friends. Not only are they extremely rewarding, but they're also a lot more fun to do than quests, and they can be done as many times as you'd like to. However, after your done gearing up some more, doing more quests, and have gained a considerable sum of levels, now it's on to the big stuff: raids. Raids are basically instances but scaled to on a much larger scale. Instead of running into instances with four other players, raids consist of about 24 other players because they're so large and difficult. The enemies are tougher, the bosses are meaner, but the benefits are enormous. You can only get the best gear in the game from raids. Thankfully, as raids are x5 bigger than regular instances, it's also x5 the fun. After you get to Level 60 and have all of the best gear the game has to offer, there really isn't much to do in the world of Azeroth other than improving your tradeskills or commandeering the auction house to turn a hefty profit. Tradeskills are basically modern day jobs like mining or tailoring that uses regents like ores or cloth to create new items. At higher levels, you can create higher level gear, but the amount of regents needed increases with each level you go. Everything you make initially increases your level by one point, but as you continue to rise in levels, some creations will yield no level-ups, or it will be a 1/4 chance of it happening. If your not much into creating objects though, you can always pick up a tradeskill and head off to the auction house. At the auction house, players from your faction are able to trade all kinds of objects, ranging from useful gear to useless junk. The auction house is very simple to use, and is basically self explanatory. You can view lists of different objects or search up a specific one. When auctioning your own item, you can have the auction last up to 48 hours after you set a starting bid price and optionally a buyout price. Using the auction house can improve your gear drastically and without effort, or you can become rich instantly by using it wisely. You will probably be spending a lot of time in the world of Azeroth, and for an MMORPG, it looks pretty good. The game is intentionally cartoony looking, but they pulled off all of the visual capabilities splendidly. The game still looks pretty good even at the lowest graphical capabilities and resolution possible, but there is still a definite amount of lag when entering major cities (as there are dozens of players in one city at a time, crammed between all of the buildings and shops the city has to offer). Yet, even though the graphics look great, the sound is even better. Monsters sound realistic and rarely share the same sound effects between species. Weapons and such also sound great and to the greatest degree of realism. NPCs will greet you when you talk to them, and they'll say good bye when you leave. Even though there is a distinctive amount of voice acting thats lacking (all quests need to be read, the quest givers don't speak rather than the typical greetings and farewells), to include audio for all of the thousands of quest would require an enormous amount of space. To top it all off however, if you decide you don't really like the sounds in the game, you can easily add in your own without breaking the Terms of Service. As I've said many times throughout this review, World of Warcraft can be very addicting. Arguably, it may be the most addicting game ever created. Whether it's the size of Azeroth that astounds you or the certain charm that the game lays upon you, you will constantly find yourself coming back regularly. At a gamers point of view, the addiction of World of Warcraft may be it's biggest flaw. It gives internet trolls' something to regularly bash the game about and it often deeply affects the lives of the player. In recent times, people have actually died from playing this game non-stop. If you think that you're not going to get addicted to the World of Warcraft, think about it this way. Playing World of Warcraft is sort of like smoking a cigarette or taking a drug for the first time. You say to yourself "I'm not the type of person that gets addicted, I can quit whenever I want,". Unless you have some form of resistance to MMORPG's, WoW will most likely have you coming back for more. Fortunately, WoW addiction is easily breakable, as you'll eventually realize that you are essentially doing the same things over and over again. Fortunately for WoW, it was created by an outstanding team of game designers, and the game is constantly updated through patches. Not only do these patches fix up game errors and bugs, but they also bring about new game mechanics, instances, gear, etc. World of Warcraft just never ends. To top it all off, the game is backed by thousands of modders, so there are always new modifications to try out and make the World of Warcraft experience easier and more enjoyable to everyone. In conclusion, World of Warcraft is a game that appeals to just about everyone. You don't need to be a lover of RPG games or fantasy to instantly enjoy WoW. Having complete freedom to do whatever you want, talk to anyone, and to create your own hero is just simply mind-blowing. You just haven't play a fantasy game until you've played WoW.
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Riding on a massive media rollercoaster, Assassin's Creed is a game
that had me worried from the start. The idea of being able to run
across rooftops freely, kill with ease, and blend in with the crowd is
a technical gaming feat which is hard to master. Ubisoft Montreal ran
with this idea and produced a sugar coated fantasy which didn't uphold
to everything it promised, but gave enough to leave you satisfied in
the end.
Assassin's Creed is based off of two story arches and two characters. These two characters are Altaïr, an assassin living in 1191, and Desmond Miles, a distant relative of Altaïr living in the 21st century. The game revolves around the idea that Desmond has been kidnapped by a secret organization which wants to analyze the memories of a particular ancestor. To do this, they have Desmond lay on a machine called the animus which can search through his genetic code for key points in the memory of his ancestor, Altaïr. The main plot is largely uninteresting and seems uninspired. For someone who's being kidnapped by a shadow organization and being forced to relive the memories of his ancient assassin ancestor, Desmond seems perfectly fine with it and cool to a point. Desmond's actions and emotions seem out of place and do nothing to elevate the plot. Fortunately, Desmond is jacked into the animus early into the game and you are taught the simple controls of Assassin's Creed. In Assassin's Creed, there are two types of actions Altaïr can perform: Low Profile and High Profile. Low Profile actions, for the most part, will not draw the attention of nearby guards or civilians, while High Profile actions do just the opposite. By holding down the right trigger, every button that was originally mapped to be Low Profile will now become High Profile. For example, instead of walking, you will now run, and instead of just gently pushing people out of the way, you will tackle them or throw them to the ground. However, once you get farther into the game and perform more assassinations, choosing to be Low Profile or High Profile don't really matter anymore, because just about anything will make the guards want to kill you. Thankfully, the rest of the controls are fairly easy to learn. Climbing buildings requires no effort at all. You just grab onto a building and use the left analog stick to move in the direction in which you desire. Other than scaling buildings and jumping across rooftops, Altaïr also has a special ability called Eagle Vision. When fully synchronized (which means when you have full health), Altaïr can look at his surroundings in an entirely different way. The sky and ground become dark and blurry, but people, such as allies and guards, become more prominent and easier to spot, which in turn makes your current job easier. The main objective of Assassin's Creed is to gather intelligence on a certain person, find out where they're hiding or what they're doing on the day in which you plan to assassinate them on, and then follow-up by performing the hit. There are three ways in which you can gather intelligence on your target: pickpocketing, eavesdropping, and interrogation. These short mini-games are fun the first few times you do them, but throughout the game, you will be doing them over and over again, so they quickly become repetitive and boring. Aside from that, you can also save citizens from corrupt guards, but this only provides you with protection from "vigilantes" or scholars, which for the most part is unneeded. There isn't a whole lot of depth to the gameplay of Assassin's Creed until you get to the actual assassination itself. There are many different locations in which the assassinations take place, and every assassination is different (albeit the actual kill). Altaïr must always be close enough to the target so that he can take out his hidden blade and kill them with it. This means that no amount of throwing knives can kill your target, though you can weaken them with your blade. After each assassination is complete, you are shown a cutscene in which Altaïr and the assassinated target speak. These cutscenes are meant to add more drama to the story surrounding Altaïr, but in the end, they are bland spices sprinkled onto an already boring and tasteless plot. Between Altaïr and the target are hordes of enemy guards but Altaïr has a selection of weapons at his disposal to take care of them. This includes a long sword, a small dagger, throwing knives, his fists, and his hidden blade. The long sword is mainly used for taking down a small number of foes at a time while the small dagger is better for quickly and efficiently taking down larger groups of enemies. Throwing knives can be thrown either in or out of battle and each hit will usually kill your target instantly. For the most part, unless you're fighting another person who is also using their fists, getting dirty with just your hands is utterly useless unless they're being used for interrogation purposes. Last, we have the hidden blade, Altaïr's ultimate weapon. If done while not having nearby guards alerted, the hidden blade can be used for either Low Profile or High Profile kills. The hidden blade can also be used while in combat, but it is not a wise choice to do so as it leaves you unguarded against your attacker's blade. Other than defending against throngs of enemies by yourself, Altaïr also has the chance to ally himself with scholars and vigilantes. To gain access to these two types of allies, you must first save a citizen or scholar who is being abused by the city guard. After killing the corrupt guards, the citizen or scholar will thank you and either the vigilante or scholar allies will then be unlocked to you in that specific area of the city. Vigilantes are helpful when you are being chased by numerous guards, as they will leap out to defend you and keep the following guards occupied by grabbing onto their arms and allowing you a chance to make a break for it. Scholars on the other hand work as moving cover: if you are being chased but you have broken the line of sight between you and the guards, you can blend in with the scholars to walk away freely. As helpful as these two allies may seem through words, they are actually quite useless and it is only by chance that you might accidentally run by one of these two groups while fleeing. It is much easier (and satisfying) to just kill the guards yourself, and finding rooftop garden sheds and piles of hay is a much more efficient way of hiding rather than searching for a group of scholars. However, if not to add a sour note to one thing about Assassin's Creed, the game is simply beautiful. It's clear that Ubisoft Montreal put a whole lot of effort into their building design and characters. You won't usually see (or notice) the same citizen twice, but it still remains the fact that they are there. Beggars and drunks will usually use the same character models (and sound effects), but it really doesn't matter in the end because the game looks completely seamless. Even a great deal of time went into the water effects of Assassin's Creed, even though you don't spend a lot of time wading through it (or swimming for that matter; Altaïr can't swim). Assassin's Creed is flowing with a mysterious atmosphere, and you can really feel at times that you are an actual assassin out to gather intelligence on a target, no matter how mediocre or repetitive the objects may seem. A big let down from the graphics, however, is Assassin's Creed's sound effects. The voice acting is great, but the same voices for the beggars, preachers, citizens in need, and several different dynamic characters are recycled and used over and over again. Just listening to the sounds of Assassin's Creed is as repetitive as completing the in-game objectives. It almost feels like Ubisoft Montreal tried to make the game's sounds as annoying as possible. Beggars will follow you relentlessly begging for money, you will hear the same person over and over again asking for help, and you'll hear the same person preaching to a crowd about the effects of the Crusades and how it is taxing everybody and how bad Richard the Lionheart is. It just takes so much away from what little, imaginative gameplay Assassin's Creed clings on to. Aside from completing the main storyline and saving citizens, there are also dozens of flags hidden throughout the three different cities and its outside kingdom. But, just like in every game ever made, collecting things is just boring and pointless (unless you're an achievement junkie). A good mix Assassin's Creed does show with collecting things is the lives of 60 different Templars scattered around the kingdom. Rather than just searching for a flag and then running over it to collect it, you can also search for these different Templars and then kill them to obtain your reward. Templars are often overpowered and, if you fight fairly, a challenging target to beat, but these fights are always rewarding and it makes Altaïr not feel like a superhuman, killing-machine. Templar fights are, dare I say it? Fair? Overall, Assassin's Creed is a fun action adventure game for the first few hours, but quickly becomes boring and repetitive as the game drags on. It seems that Ubisoft Montreal knew that the game was going to feel repetitive as you assassinated more targets, so they just put a lot of emphasis on the unrealistic fighting by making guards more aware and wanting to kill you for simply running. It's a shame too, because Assassin's Creed was a game with so much promise and appeal, but Ubisoft Montreal just ended up failing with the execution of the formula.
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Runescape is a fantasy online role-playing game created by Jagex Ltd.
Lurking in the shadows of better RPG's such as World of Warcraft or
LotRO, Runescape has always been looked down upon as the poor man's
MMORPG. While delivering a positive first impression, Runescape
combines shoddy graphics, no real story elements, and horrendous sound
effects together to create a mediocre RPG game which generally isn't
worth playing.
Runescape takes place in the land of Gielinor, a place divided by multiple kingdoms, regions, and other random areas. You play as an adventurer out to rid the world of evil and generate a lot of income. When you first begin to play Runescape, you're taken to a character customization screen where you can begin to create your adventurer. The options are extremely limited, and most options basically look the same. You can't customize things like weight, height, or body disposition, but you can add different clothing options and hairstyles to your character. Combined with horrible graphics and a zoomed out camera, character creation isn't all that great and doesn't let you give much of an identity behind your character. After creating your custom adventurer, you're taken to the Tutorial Island, which does teach you a lot of things about the game hands-on, but it is more of a nuisance than something that is in a sense helpful. The worst part about the experience is not having the ability to skip the whole ordeal. The first thing you tend to notice is that there are no voice overs in the game. Everything is text based, and you will never hear anyone ever talk to you. After going through multiple trainers and people who just tend to talk on forever, you're finally given the chance to go to the mainland. While this may sound exciting at first, you're soon hit with your first dose of Runescape reality. After finally appearing in a town called Lumbridge, through testing the game with three different characters, I was greeted by the same thing each time. You will instantly have your chat log spammed with people trying to sell you in-game gold for real life cash, then have people trying to trade random items with you, and then a whole lot of people having arguments, who tend to use the word "nublet" in every other sentence. It's not a particularly inviting situation, but you will soon get used to it because this is the world of Runescape. After listening to the never-ending tutorial, you would know that Runescape is built upon a system of skills. These skills can range from mining to fishing, and are all in a sense used to make money. Half of the available skills in the game are members-only, which is a little discouraging to look at. To raise the level of your skills, you must do them...a lot. Leveling skills can take long, meaningless hours of boredom, and really isn't worth the effort. Runescape's entire economy is about making money, so you can buy new equipment to make you more money. It basically makes no sense, and once you figure that out, Runescape quickly loses its appeal. If you don't feel like mining rocks for hours on end, Runescape also allows you to fight with several different types of creatures throughout the game world. Once you are in an encounter with a monster, you have four basic attack options, which vary with each different weapon, but all have pretty much the same effects. Fighting in Runescape is extremely boring, and though you have stats showing you what you're good at doing with your particular weapon, most of the combat in Runescape is by luck. I've seen a person attempt to shoot a giant rat with a bow and arrow a good 40 times before actually hitting it, and even then, the rat still had plenty of life left. Some battles can even go on for five minutes or more, just because both participants can't hit each other. To add with the skill rising and tacky combat system, Runescape offers quests for the player to embark on. Quests can sometimes be a lot of fun, but most are just simple and boring "Kill this number of creature quests" or "Collect these items" quests. There isn't a whole lot of variation between the quest types, and most just end up falling flat. Practically all quest-givers you meet are uninteresting, and are rather goofy and strange. It takes a whole lot away from whatever story Runescape might have, when this guy who's completely screwing with you jokes around and is just generally acting odd, then tasks you with killing a monstrous dragon. As with most other online fantasy RPG's, Runescape takes place in a massive world based around a player-controlled economy. However, the world of Runescape's apparent goofy-ness and wacky sound effects shows that the game is clearly leaned toward children. So, in a sense, Runescape is filled with more annoying 12 year olds than Halo 3 and Gears of War combined. However, Runescape can teach you a thing or two in grammar. Here, in the land of Gielinor, was the first time I've ever heard anyone called "nublet" before. You're going to be hearing this word constantly through your travels throughout Gielinor, whether you like it or not, so if you plan on playing Runescape, you may as well get used to it. Runescape is also filled with spam bots and scammers, so it all just makes the experience that much more enjoyable. However, if you're into that kind of thing, Runescape offers you the choice to subscribe to a membership of their services. By subscribing to Jagex, your player is granted many new skills for you to endlessly grind with and a selection of new clothe options to wear. The rest of the land of Gielinor is also opened to you, and hundreds of new generic and tasteless quests are available for you to complete. In a quick overview of the benefits of subscribing to Jagex, $5 a month is just not worth the wasted hours of meaningless grinding and its associated childish community. As if traversing the land of Gielinor and completing meaningless quests wasn't enough, you get to do it all in an incredibly bland looking environment. Runescape is all fully done in 3D, but with a world so large and with a never ending associated community, Runescape just looks flat out horrible. Everything is colored one of about 16 different colors, meaning there isn't a whole lot of variation between the environments. Everything is also horribly blocky, and textures don't seem to blend all that great. Mix this with horrible effects and constant area loading (which makes the screen distort its colors for a short time), Runescape is one of the biggest graphical messes ever conceived from the internet. Believe it or not, but the sound effects are just as horrible as the graphics. Everything sounds like it was ripped from an old batch of NES games. I expect to hear something relative to a hammer hitting someone over the head, not the chime of a bell. Jagex tried to make a few of the monsters found throughout the game sound somewhat as passable, but a mixture of beeps and sound distorters doesn't make up for the lost feel of combat. It's a shame really; if Jagex had just added in some decent sound effects, combat might actually feel a little rewarding, or maybe even fun, but that unfortunately isn't the case with Runescape. Runescape, as a game in whole, will last you for a little while. There a few quests that you can complete before the list is cut off due to lack of subscription, but these quests become so boring so fast that you probably won't even make it halfway down the list before you quit the game altogether. Skills sound like a great idea, until you learn that it is all based around endless grinding that reaps no benefits. The entire economy based around Runescape is to grind materials, so that you can make money to buy new equipment to make more money. It's a never-ending circle of stupidity. With a terrible community, shoddy graphics, and horrendous sound effects, Runescape just doesn't stand up as an acceptable game, or a worthwhile experience to be had.
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Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter was one of the Xbox 360's
main selling points out of the starting gate and the breakthrough game
for the Ghost Recon series. Always a great series, but seriously
lacking in some ways, Advanced Warfighter started from the ground up
and, at the time, became the best in the franchise. Advanced Warfighter
is still a wonderful experience to be had, but its some-what
overwhelming difficulty and lack of long-time online players may drive
newer players away. As I've stated before, Advanced Warfighter can at times be an extremely difficult and frustrating game. AW pushes the envelope in realism, but it's so realistic that it's exceptionally hard to evade incoming enemy fire. You are usually outnumbered, with allies or not, and most enemies are armed with either assault rifles or high-powered machine guns, so dodging bullets relies on either luck, or how much cover you're under. In Advanced Warfighter, you control Captain Scott Mitchell, a hardened veteran of war and leader of a squad of "Ghosts", a special operations team. Captain Mitchell can hide behind most types of reliable cover, including walls, trees, sandbags; anything that looks remotely like a square can usually be taken as cover. To help ease down on the difficulty of the game, there is a feature in the game called the CrossCam. The CrossCam shows you what allies you are in control of, and what they're currently looking at. Through the CrossCam, you can issue basic commands to your allies, like "Move" or "Fire", and it's pretty easy to use. The CrossCam can sometimes be a hassle to use, however, as your allies will occasionally not follow your commands (especially when ordering Armor Strikes). However, its positives far outweigh its small negatives, and it is a welcome addition to the series. As always, Captain Mitchell is usually commanding a team of allies. These allies can range from a squad of Ghosts, to more powerful vehicles like tanks or helicopters. These allies all have their advantages and disadvantages, but when it comes to taking down the enemy, these guys are extremely helpful. Seeing as how you'll be dodging bullets for most of the game, you can order your squad of Ghosts to help you out in a multitude of ways, and each has a different function (like "Anti-Tank" or "Rifleman"). A useful tactic when facing a large opposition o |
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