Remember that article about how goldfarmers/sellers had build themself a $5 million business? World of Warcraft's a hotspot for them, and it looks like the economic crisis has finally hit them, seeing as I never ever seen this before... Talk about desperate:

Without having to ramble on and on, this game's focus is tearing shit down. The focus of the player is to decide how exactly he tears that specific shit down. By car, by sledgehammer or even simply by high-jacking a state-of-the-art tank and roadkill two entire city blocks before you realize there were buildings between you and your destination.

But I guess that's fairly obvious.

Anyhow, I completed the so called "story" of Red Faction a couple o' hours ago and I can't really grasp... the story. Obviously, they hate the EDF because they shoot the workers at random for giggles with weapons twice the size of common soldiers, but what I don't get is - Why scaring off your contractors? Didn't you fools come to Mars to work to begin with, not to counter-pwn your employers? But then again, I don't really mind seeing as the story always involves blowing up half a town of somesort to 'silence' two Ultor execs.

The story contains all the standard elements of a what they call a balanced cast; Rugged stud, blonde babe, old coot/veteran and a evil money-leech that goes into a "Baww baww bawwwwww" mode seven times a day. Luckily enough, cutscenes are rare and you'll only hear from Colonel Sanders and Mrs. Double-D over radio contact. Some extremely predictable plot twists here and there, but in all good respect - Who gives a damn?

The entire story could've been "Sledge + Wall = Victory" tutorials and it still isn't any worse. The game's craving addiction for demolition is enough fuel to ride this game to a decent sales score, whether the story part's given a 1 out 10 by everyone or not.

So, moving on. The destruction/gameplay.

... Hotdamn. That's all. That is all.

The graphics, I don't know. Some people who live with their heads shoved five feet up their own asses claim the game looks like a PS2 game at most. I guess it's somewhere between Saints Row 2 and Mass Effect. Sometimes you think "It's decent, no complaints.", and then sometimes you think "... Now THAT is a view.". Quite frankly, if you claim the game is bad looking - You're... well... extremely thick-headed. I have a feeling they gave up on alot to maintain the very solid frame-rate it has.

Well, unless you yank out a Walker with rocket-pods and start razing entire towns within seconds, then it drops to slide-show mode. But even when there's four buildings falling apart, and roughly 200 EDF soldiers shooting your ass up; The framerate is rock-solid.

Speaking of 200 EDF soldiers shooting your ass up;
This game is hard...

On Normal difficulty, it's hard to raze a single building without endless hordes of EDF vehicles, APCs, tanks and even air-support vehicles to show up and fuck you up, badly. Countless of deaths I've had because the AI simply swarmed me, and due to the mid-game arsenal; No cover is safe... Especially not if they have the X-Ray Rifle... Considering you can snipe someone through the plating of a tank with that thing...

Especially the last two missions, and don't consider this a spoiler considering it's just daily business but on a huge scale - You have to plow through a mile of nothing but hundreds of EDF defenses, which is pretty damn hard to pull off.

But the penalty on dying, aside from having to start the entire mission from the beginning; Ain't heavy, and usually it resets the building damage, which I can totally handle...

... with a few RPG's, and a bit of sledgehammer work. And you can always tone down the difficulty without losing progress, unlockables or achievement-progress.


Yeah, I like the game. Thumbs up to Volition for once more understanding the concept of "fun". Less bullshitting around, more destroying crap.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought Battlefield 2 and all them booster packs and the like. Thinking I got myself the ultimate FPS with squad based place, and pretty certain of myself I registered the game which is a pain in the ass considering the game is about four years old and EA changes their website layout once every three weeks, so I had to dig through about fifty old links before I found one that actually allowed me to link my character to my account.

Anyway, usually when I think I found a golden brick of win, it's just a simple brick with cheap imported Taiwanese spray paint that doesn't even properly layer...

I was totally wrong.

Battlefield 2 is strangely enough the most entertaining FPS I've played in a year. Not since Call of Duty 4 have I ever been hooked to the gameplay that simply involves "Killing that guy...". Even though, now it's a mix of "Killing that tank" and "Hope no-one's killin' my medic before he revives me". In a way, what really got me nailed is the fact that every single class is shit in general. Not a single gun is accurate enough to get a kill without spending a whole magazine, and oh Lord dare to spray. In a way, that leaves you with equally shitty chances of survival.

How do you change your surivalism from "Whoever pulls off three lucky shots first" to success? Bring your squad mates and turn the table with a whopping 9% chance of killing a single enemy. This game almost punishes you for going out alone. But then again, it's got "WORK AS A GODDAMN TEAM!" written all over it.

Right, I guess it's my fanboy instinct talking here...

All in all; Balancing virtually doesnt exist, no gun is actually useful over a distance of fifty yards, if there's a person in a tank it'll require ten people to drop whatever the fuck they were doing and attempt to blow up the tank, the game requires teamwork... we all know that's the last thing you can expect from a generic FPS player, being a medic is highly underrated, THEM GODDAMN JETS, players always go teamkilling the lucky prick who's got the Hind/Apache first and Special Forces should've been put IN Battlefield 2 and not as a stand-alone.

That may be a laundry list of complaints - Nonetheless, I still love it.

... If only Battlefield didn't whore itself out to the console. I now realize how much more Bad Company could've been.


(On a side note: After having messed around with the files to put 120 bots in my game, considering the game's four years old and the only servers still running usually have barely anyone in - I play single-player maps, which are restricted to 16 players. Can you imagine 120 bots, on a 16 player map? Fuckin' chaos. Amazing.)

A nice little list with eye-comforting numbers.

What it needs:

1. Communists.
2. Russia displayed as evil bastards who stole the Space Race victory from us.
3. Americans displayed as warm-hearted stereotypes who stroke puppies with one hand and shoot enemies with the other.
4. Apple pie.
5. British S.A.S.
6. World War I mustache on Lt. Price is a must.
7. DONT EVER NAME THE COUNTRY THAT IS DISPLAYED AS EVIL.
8. See number 7; Russia.
9. See number 7; Iraq.
10. See number 7; Afghanistan.
11. Martyrdom. Martyrdom. Martyrdom.
12. The god almighty M16 rifle.
13. The god almighty rifle that isn't the M16 but is even better; AK-47.
14. Golden trim for my über shotgun.
15. Gore.
16. Last stand for giggles.
17. Desert Eagle .50 pistol.
18. StG/MP44 Rifle for old time's sake.
19. Russian babble CoD fanboys will stroke their balls over for months.
20. A one-armed bad-ass who looks like he ran headfirst into sixty walls who also is Russian.
21. Another one-armed bad-ass who looks like he ran headfirst into sixty walls, but then American.
22. Fifty thousand people used to live here...
23. ... Now it's a ghost town.
24. MOAR MCMILLIAN!
25. More explosives.
26. The lovely yells when you throw a grenade or place a claymore when playing as Spetsnaz; "PLAACCIIINN CLAAAYMAWWRRR".
27. Longer single player campaign with a bad ass who takes on entire armies while having a extremely fruity name. Soapy dropped the Soap.
28. Gaz.
29. Multiplayer must be the same as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and even better.
30. See 29 or mass riot will erupt.
31. See 29 once again...
32. 29... Make. It. Happen.
33. If it doesn't, apple pie will be fed to Russian.

What it doesn't need.

1. Tanks.
2. Anti-tank grenades.
3. A setting somewhere between the birth of Christ and the Vietnam War.
4. Multiplayer balanced so well, that SMG's effectively outmatch anything else.
5. Pistols that shatter Kevlar like glass.
6. Treyarch as a Call of Duty game developer.
7. Bayonets.
8. Tanks.
9. Machine-gewehren 1940.
10. Did I mention tanks? No?
11. Tanks.
12. Any firearms made in China, replicated by China or distributed by China.
13. What remains of point 12 should form a list of roughly four weapons.
14. Ain't that a bitch.
15. Tanks.

There you go.

Even though Left 4 Dead's new DLC ain't all that much, it sure did bring back life into the near-empty online. Survival mode's quite the bitch... As in, it becomes sorta difficult when two tanks, two smokers, three hunters and a boomer plus rougly a ton of zombies pile up on a lighthouse.

But what it lacks in new stuff, it makes up with old. Versus Dead Air, yay.



... GRABBIN PEELS

Porn stars r srs bsns man. SHES A MICRO-BIOLOGIST! Okay, fair enough. SHES A MICRO-BIOLOGIST WITH A RACK THE SIZE OF CLEVELAND AND THE DRESS CODE OF A BROTHEL!

Don't flame her, bro.


(Side note, the DLC's god awful, but whatddya expect? Volition got free BJs, we got new vehicles, we're all happy in a way)

As mentioned before; I'm a Relic fanboy. The PC games, atleast. Considering they make console games as if they hate them...

Anyway, I've bought Company of Heroes Tales of Valor the other day and I've had Dawn of War II for a good while now. So, a review for either would be suitable. Mainly because I need a reason to talk about Tales of Valor aside from complaining...

TALES OF VALOR:
In a nutshell; It feeds on other games' gameplay. Hence how it got brought on the market. Cause seriously, every mode that has shipped with the game is ripped directly from any game that has a fanbase the size of China. Anyway, the new modes are so called Operation modes. Without getting too complicated;

Stonewall - Horde Mode/Survivor Mode/Nazi Zombies.
Panzerkrieg - Hero Unit/Dawn of War II Campaign/Call of Duty 4.
Assault - World in Conflict/Tug of War.

Now, detailed;

Stonewall - One base, four players, and they all have to hold out against a superior opponent who throw units at 'em until they reach INFINITY/99 rounds.
Panzerkrieg - Straight out of Dawn of War II. One near-unkillable bastard commands a horde of unlimited severely nerfed bastards.
Assault - As simple as it can get. Think your local kids playing tug of war on a map the size of Sweden and with tanks.

And then there's three campaigns... Sounds like alot, doesn't it? All three campaigns last 2 hours. Total. Yes, if you do all three of 'em in a row. You'll be done in 2 hours. Now, I usually play on Normal - So it MIGHT just take you longer on Hard but... You command a unkillable team of elites who murder enemies as if they're nothing so difficulty won't affect your playlength that much.

Plus, campaign allows you to use direct fire. You gotta think FPS for that; You toggle between the AI firing or you. Then you just aim and spam click until your opponent is dead. Accuracy and all that stuff that kept it balanced just got thrown out of the window. Not that it matters, as direct-fire is only enabled in single player. Which again - Makes the campaign that much easier and even shorter.

All of it bundled together in a package that costs 30-35$. Steam rips you off so badly, you should be torturing yourself if you bought it from them. Some British online store-ala Steam sells it for 28$. Which still leaves you with the feeling "Did I pay 30$ for this?". Cause, I love the content n' all. It's just not that much.

It feels as if they just smacked the campaigns on the game to justify it's small content. It would've made some fine DLC which I would've paid 15$-20$ if I had to. But like GameInformer/EuroGamer/etc said - It feels like the devs at Relic scraped their DLC ideas together, and sold it for a price of a expansion pack.


And... that Dawn of War II review will come soon™.

I figured now PC's back in good state, why not buy a new PC game to celebrate it? Steam's running fine again after the God-knows-how-many-disasters... I looked around a little. The only things I came across at first were simplistic console games that one way or another made it on the PC. Long story short, I bought Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II.

I never played a single Warhammer game... Let alone, I don't know jackshit about the Dawn of War games. I only decided to buy this game because I'm such a deranged Relic fanboy. Company of Heroes is quite frankly a game, should it be human, it would hug you, feed you, rub your back and pay your bills. CoH running on a "base" version of the engine Dawn of War II's made on; I figured it cant be all that bad. And... I can run the game on maxed settings, so my eyeballs can be treated like Kings.

Oh, and it seems to be a PC "exclusive". With Xbox LIVE. Doesn't make much sense, does it? A console service, on the PC, doesn't share any services with the X360 but your friends list and private chat.

Well... I aughta watch more reviews and the like to see what the game's all about while it downloads on the background.

Steam's been a pain in my ass for a long time. But seemingly, it's necessary for the games I purchased through 'em... So, what the hell. Now, there was a new patch from Relic for the Company of Heroes series; Relic claims 'they send out the patch to Steam as soon as they could for equal distrubution'. Steam, the clusterfuck it is, on the other hand...

Steam makes us download the ENTIRE damn game again, because they used a game build with the patches enabled. So, instead of a 96MB patch, we have to download a 10GB game(6GB for those who don't have the expansion pack) for a simple 96MB patch. Why? Because Valve disallows users to manually patch games bought through Steam.

Fuckers.