Congratulations, It's a Blog.
By Capum15 1 Comments
So, yeah, a Blog. Since this is a video game site, I might as well type about games I've played recently or have stuck in my mind.
First off would be Rome: Total War.
So Rome...I'd assume it's similar to the others, but I haven't played Medieval or Empire since I'm still on my first campaign run trying to take over the map at around 40+ hours I think. Good thing is I only have two civilizations (or cultures? can't remember what they're officially called) to obliterate. Well, one actually. The only enemy (I think they're actually Neutral, but does it really matter? No) left is Pontus, and whenever I get around to booting the game back up they'll be gone. The other culture left would be remnants of The Seleucid Empire with two cities left (a lot of people didn't like them) who remain my steadfast allies and have been since roughly a quarter into the game. Others have fallen to mighty Roman Scipii steel for stupid reasons. Two of my allies went to war, one ended my alliance when I refused to join the war so I destroyed them, the other ended the alliance for seemingly no reason (so I went to war yet again and unknowingly shattered my relations with Germania, serious Domino effects going on). Kinda realize now the importance of that lady who gives you advice saying "make sure you know your enemy before going to war".
Anyway, the gameplay is pretty great and requires some tactics to come out victorious. I say some because I won a few battles by highlighting every unit and saying "Go kill this unit." Which would work until more enemy units showed up, then it was a matter of "get everyone attacking and hope the enemy routes" with the occasional flanking to decimate a unit in the streets of a city. Real tactics and micromanaging were required in another battle though, I had accepted a fight against two full Egyptian stacks (you can have 20 units per "stack", anywhere from 80-120 men per unit) against my single stack which wasn't too well prepared. After about 10 or so minutes of repeating "oh crap" in my head I managed to drive off the first army with a resounding sigh. Never a site more beautiful quite like an enemy army routing. Well, as I was watching that army run, I see this huge line of the second damned army and basically said, "Well, I'm boned." Another few minutes later with constant charging of cavalry and eventually my main foot soldiers brought that army to its' knees and made it route. You feel pretty good winning situations like that. Anyway, that's the battle map.
The over world map, others say, is like Civilization. You have cities which you can build better buildings, train soldiers, spies, diplomats, assassins, heavy weapons, stuff like that. You control army stacks as a single soldier representing the army, which can only move a certain distance before the move pool runs out. Typical stuff in games like this, you can make alliances, go to war, become trading partners, blockade ports (which the S.P.Q.R., or Roman Senate, has you doing constantly before the civil war), and if you hover around an enemy settlement you can "decimate" the land and make it bring in less money. You can also set up an army on a road which will block non-trade partner or non-self trade routes.
Overall it's a really fun game. Oh, and one of the best parts of it? Depending on what traits your Generals have (or Captains if you don't have a General or if one dies), not only do those traits effect multiple stats (trade income, poverty, command, moving distance on the over map) like it lists, it also effects what type of Speeches they give at the start of a battle. It can range from, "We will be victorious...I think." to "The omens have been read, and we cannot lose!" to "We make our own destiny! We are not owned by some bird!" to "By the end of the day, our sword arms will ache from overuse!" with your soldiers cheering in the proper places. The speeches have to be one of my favorite parts of the game, some are inspiring and get you pumped for the battle, others can just be hilarious. Also, the song "Soldiers Chant" plays when you move your units into position after a battle has started, and fits incredibly well. There could not be a more perfect song for that part.
Alright, what next...uhh, Half Life 2 and both Episodes I guess.
So...there isn't much to say because you should know what it is. And if not, then go play it. I recently replayed HL2 and the episodes, and they're still just as fun as ever. After I tried out The Lost Coast with Developer Commentary, I found out that both episodes have it too, which is nice. Listening to the commentary is pretty cool, because they take the form of "Commentary Nodes" which you look at, then use the action key (default of E) to turn on and off commentary about that particular area or subject. One of the best was during Episode 2, with the combine stationary gun and a bunch of zombies. One of the guys says basically, "Even though the story is pretty heavy, we try not to lose all forms of humor." I never before noticed the fast zombie torso being chased by a combine soldier running after it. They also talk about how certain places changed from the beginning of development and their current state, why they changed it, etc. Really interesting stuff.
I've always loved how the game plays, the physics of the source engine, everything. I've bought the game three times actually, a long, long time ago where something happened and I couldn't play it. The next two times were for The Orange Box. I got it on 360 (eh, not bad, but definitely not better than pc), then got The Orange Box on a Steam sale. Getting it on Steam brings me to my next point: Cheats! Yes, they were there for the 360, but there wasn't a developer console. My favorite thing ever has to be the "Bind Key" commands. You can bind them to anything, which, again, brings me to another point and possibly my favorite part of these games ever: Spawning. There is nothing like spawning hordes of zombies, antlions, combine soldiers, vortigaunts and resistance soldiers (along with two Antlion Guards to spice things up), in the first level before you even get your crowbar. Every single level in the game becomes a huge battleground with dead bodies covering the ground. Even places that are suppose to be calm puzzles turn into bloodbaths when I'm playing. Also, the "chase" music during various parts of the Water Hazard airboat level is awesome.
In both episodes there are parts where your female cohort, Alyx Vance, can use combine Sniper Rifles to help you. The thing is, they only consider you friendly, and not any citizens I may spawn. To be honest, it's kind of hilarious. There's a part in Episode 2 where you end up in a warehouse that zombies assault and Alyx can help you with said sniper, and I spawned a bunch of citizens with shotguns to fight. Good news: They held off the zombies alright. Bad news: Alyx wasted about fifty of them before it was over. Also, it's great seeing how many SMG-wielding Combine it takes to kill an Antlion guard. I lost count of all the dead bodies flying, but it had to be more than twenty before the big guy fell. I don't really feel like writing up the story, because, like I said above, you know it (and if you don't, you should play it). Suffice to say, it's a really good story, and a prime example of no matter how much you play it, those fucking Headcrabs will still find the darkest fucking places to jump at your face from, the tiny, clawing head-humping bastards.
Alright, next and probably last up, Saint's Row 2.
Also, you get rewards for completing stage 3 and 6 of each event, and there's usually two locations for each major event. The rewards can range from weapons, to Heat/Gang level cooldowns going faster, to infinite something. Yeah, so now I'm rolling around with faster Police Heat cooldown, Ronin gang cooldown, a laser-guided RPG, an AR-50 with underbarrel grenade launcher, Auto Shotgun, Dual Auto Pistols (with laser sight) and Dual SMG's which can tear through vehicles like nothing, and infinite ammo for all of those weapons. Mind you, this is without cheats. Also, infinite sprint and no falling damage (from the insanely easy parachute diversion).
I also grabbed the DLC, the free Unkut pack (because why not?), and the two other ones (Ultor Exposed and Corporate Warfare). Both are pretty good, and the great thing is that you can do them both before you do the main missions (end reward for one is infinite Rockets, so yeah) even though it would seem to screw up the continuity. Well, as I got to playing some of the main missions after the DLC ones, I'm reminded of one simple fact. You are an asshole. One of the biggest assholes I've ever played. Even though I tend to go around doing at least some semblance of good, the main character, with one swift move, will completely bowl over what I've done. As if being an asshole wasn't good enough for him/her, the MC will go out of their way to make a point, which usually involves some way to kill someone which is completely unnecessary. Or just be a jerk for seemingly no reason to your own guys. The biggest example of assholeitude I can think of would be a major spoiler. So, major spoiler ahoy!
I guess that's it for the somewhat in depth games. Umm, I played a bit of the Halo: Reach beta while it was out. It was really fun, and I was pretty danged good at it for not playing Halo multiplayer in forever. The new stuff was pretty awesome, and my favorite armor ability was the Active Camo, compared to other loadouts, I did the best with that. When Invasion came out, my favorite things to roll with were Active Camo, Sentinel Beam Rifle (no idea of the proper name) and the Plasma Launcher. You can be a serious threat to infantry and vehicles, while remaining at safe support range. Also, the times I played as Spartan's and the Elites got to the AI Core, no one ever seemed to grab the Scorpion. I even saved us once because I grabbed the tank and protected the core (which was about halfway to the extraction Phantom). The Elites never seemed to grab anything able to hurt the tank, someone kept hitting me with Overcharged plasma pistol shots, but they didn't do squat because I didn't need to move (and wasn't moving, actually) to protect the core. Anyway, I can't wait to play some Reach Campaign.
I guess lastly would be Red Dead Redemption. I actually started this Blog the day RDR came out, and only got to the end of the Rome: Total War part before I left to go get it. What can I say about it...hmm, how about... "It's fucking awesome." It's also about time to be able to kill some animals in a game like this. I love pretty much every aspect of the game, other than the fact that cheats disable saving. Doing that killed Red Faction: Guerrilla replayability for me. I'd love to be able to go through a second run cheating my ass off along the way, but I can't unless I run through the whole thing in one sitting or leave the console on overnight. The thing that kills me? I wanted Invincibility in GTA IV so I could repeatedly jump out of helicopters from miles in the air, and it never happened. Now we do have it, but there's no way to save. And no, cheats do not "ruin the game" as many think, it makes it more fun. And it's not like you have to use them.
Anyway, aside from that little gripe, the game's great. Well, there is that multiplayer issue that's slamming Rockstar's servers. But that's to be expected from games with no public beta (CoD4/MW2 from what I can recall), and didn't Live crash when Halo 3 went up? Or something? Either way, that many people trying to do all that at once is bound to cause some trouble. Still, what few gang matches I have played were good fun.
The biggest thing I love about this game is the rain. Oh man, the rain is amazing. It's possibly the best I've seen in a game. The lightning in the sky, the puddles that form in the ground...it's just good. And if cheats didn't disable saving, and if there actually was a weather code, it'd almost never be not raining for me. The physics are great, from the character movements to animal movements (it's always fun seeing a deer faceplant and flip after a headshot). Also, another point, Animals. There are a lot of animals in the game, and most will probably kill you after some time. Luckily, I've avoided death by animal so far in the single player, death by six guys with revolvers...not so much. Another great thing is that the random events are actually pretty dang random. I'd say up to par with the "randomness" aspect of Fallout 3.
Here's a little tale about an experience I had in the wilderness: I went a ways away from the town of Chupasa (I think that's the name) to go kill some animals to skin and make some money. An hour later I went back in to the General Store with about 10 types of herbs, and with a kill count of: 4 Snakes, 7 Rabbits, 6 Armadillos, 8 Deer, 4 Coyotes, about 10 birds, and here's the kicker, twenty four wolves. The bastards just kept spawning and spawning, and I kept killing and skinning. I got down to 9 rounds of Revolver ammo (from roughly a hundred) and used up about 20 shotgun shells. Though my Improved Campsite refills my ammo to capacity :P.
Anyway, that's it for now. Probably won't do this for a while. Hope anyone who does read it doesn't find it too boring. I'm gonna sleep.