DICE has confirmed that multiplayer will be shown, and I know many of you guys are super excited about finally seeing the main portion of Battlefield 3.
So the town of Juarez, and Mexico in general, is not in the best state. In 2010, 3,075 homicides took place. Juarez now has a homicide rate of 229 killing per 100,00 inhabitants. Compare that to the 6.3 of my city (New York) and you can see how bad it is. Massive conflicts between drug cartels has lead to violence that is now spilling over into the United States
So when a game gets announced that takes place in Los Angeles, CA and Juarez, Mexico, it makes me feel a bit uneasy. Can a video game whose main gameplay mechanic consists of shooting people be capable of approaching this issue with the sensitivity and tacitness Juarez deserves? Forgive me for being skeptical, but I highly doubt it.
However, we have no way of knowing what tone the story will take, although Ubisoft does promise "an immersive and mature story" with a "very gritty and relevant plot."
Well, I guess we will see how it all turns out, but what is your take on all of this?
So, i love Chuck. Maybe not as much now as I have in the past, but it is still a great show. Yup.
Chuck is a fairly geeky show, and there are a few references to "geek culture", if that even exists. Either from the original Tron poster in Chuck's room, references to different SNES games, to lines like "yeah, I'm just saying that Left 4 Dead 2 could have totally been an expansion pack" - Morgan.
There has never been a lot of video game promotion, however. True they had a whole episode that aired near Halo: Reach's release about the release of a popular first person shooter at the BuyMore, but very rarely has there ever been very direct promotion. (although I do recall seeing some boxes of Halo: Reach on the BuyMore set, briefly.
In the recent episode of Chuck, however, Chuck is wearing a shirt for De Blob 2. This was pretty cool, as I have nothing against product placement if it makes sense, but I wondered... "why De Blob 2?"
It turns out that THQ, the publisher of De Blob, made a deal with SyFy Kids to bring some of it's franchises to TV. A De Blob TV show has been produced.
Now, how did De Blob get into Chuck? Well, the answer is pretty simple: NBC, Chuck's network, owns SyFy, but maybe we will see more game-related product placement in the future, who knows?
So, are you guys against product placement? What if it's video game related?
This is part one of my PlayStation 3 blog series. I have owned an Xbox for all my life (you get the point), and recently purchased a PS3. I am now playing a lot of PS3-exclusive games and blogging about them.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (2007) A pity those clouds don't animate like real clouds...
I'm enjoying the game so far, but I had to drop down to easy difficulty. ---- Sweet music that fades in and out for combat... great sound design overall, actually. Sounds blend together very well. ---- I have just finished the game, and while the difficulty spike at the end was very frustrating, I felt satisfied with the game's conclusion and can't wait to play Uncharted 2 to see what's in store for me.
This is part one of my PlayStation 3 blog series. I have owned an Xbox for all my life (you get the point), and recently purchased a PS3. I am now playing a lot of PS3-exclusive games and blogging about them.
This dual-joystick shooter from the PSN is loads of fun, mostly thanks to it's unique fluid dynamic-based puzzles. The player flys around in a series of caves, rescuing miners, killing turrets, and gathering gems.
I've only seen a few types of materials so far: soft rock, water and lava.
The puzzles are pretty easy for the most part, only requiring you to do a few basic actions to set the events in motion.
I wish there was a larger sense of scale with the levels, as it can feel fairly minute at times.
The progression feels pretty good, but I wish there was just... more... I guess that's what PixelJunk Shooter 2 is for.
I'm at the last world and am liking the new element and art style.
----
Okay, this game is pretty sweet. I wish there was more "sandboxy" section where I could play around with all of the elements more.
It was quite a process to finish the original Dead Space. I bought it in early spring and ended up finishing it sometime in October of that year.
So maybe I just don't like horror games? I guess that's fair enough... I still haven't finished Amnesia: The Dark Descent...
Anyways, the Dead Space 2 demo was alright... The controls were fine, the shooting felt improved from the first... the fucking hacking mini-games are a pain... I also was totally stuck on the puzzle. I just quit there.
It was also difficult to play it as the demo was so isolated... I had no idea what the story was or anything of that sort.
It actually turned me off to Dead Space 2... but I'll still give it a shot once it comes out.
This is part one of my PlayStation 3 blog series. I have owned an Xbox for all my life (you get the point), and recently purchased a PS3. I am now playing a lot of PS3-exclusive games and blogging about them.
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, let me give you a bit of information about my multiplayer background.
I am a huge Battlefield fan. I played a bit of BF2, and a lot of Bad Company, 1943, and Bad Company 2. I love large-scale, big team, objective-based multiplayer.
So I had some pretty high expectations for Killzone 2 online, and most of them were met or exceeded.
Large battles: 32-player servers and some very large maps allow for very large battles.
Maps: there are some maps that are very open with a lot of cover. One map is very sandy and seems to take place in some industrial location. There are some bridges that pose an interesting balance and allow for some pretty cool moments.
I was defending our base from the other team who was trying to destroy it. I was on the top level of the main building in the distance I could see six or seven glowing, orange eyes. The only way to the base from their position was to cross a pretty long bridge. I found a good firing position, crouched, and started to lay down some suppressing fire. They continued to advance, using the limited amount of cover to it's maximum effectiveness. By now, my teammates noticed the assault and started to pick off the attackers. We were able to successful repel the attack.
And that was just one of the many moments during my time with the Killzone 2 multiplayer.
Some maps focus a bit more on close-quarters combat, one of Killzone's major weaknesses. The slightly sluggish controls are adequate at range, but break down once you are required to kill enemies that are a few feet in front of you.
Objectives: I found some of the objective modes to be a bit underwhelming. Certain locations of targets in search and destroy felt unbalanced. The animation for setting a charge is nonexistent, and once a charge is set, there are no flashing lights or anything to notify the other team that the objectives are at risk.
So when I was sorting through my irrelevant "Best of 2010" list, I had to contemplate where I would place it. I haven't reviewed Bad Company 2 on Giant Bomb mostly because I have been so busy playing it, so I have a lot of opinions about the game.
Singleplayer
There has never been a singleplayer in any of the previous Battlefield games, so DICE took quite a risk with the original Bad Company. If they had stumbled and failed miserably, I would have been fine saying "Those guys should never try to make a singleplayer game again. Stick to multiplayer". However, the original Bad Company had such a creative story with great characters and writing that is set the bar pretty high for Bad Company 2.
The early marketing for the game made it clear that DICE was moving away from what the original Bad Company was in favor of a more "serious" game. But considering how humor was the strong point of the BC1 campaign, and after playing BC2 through a couple of times, I can say that moving away from the original Bad Company was a terrible mistake.
The humor that lightened the first game and that was always present in cut-scenes now had to be discovered by setting your controller down for a few minutes. The wide-open levels and player-choice from BC1 were swapped out with linear levels and scripting a la COD. The story from the first game was never even acknowledged to have existed.
I spoke to the lead-writer for Bad Company 2 (different than the one from BC1), and asked him why there was such a shift in tone between the two games. Unfortunately, he said he "couldn't go into it"
Is this the type of game someone can consider to be their "Game of the Year"?
Yes.
I have spent... *checks 360*... 216 hours playing Bad Company 2 online. Yes, I have a lot of free-time resulting from a relaxed highschool workload... and let's face it, I'm not getting panda every weekend. Anyways...
Despite having some very linear maps with annoying choke-points, the Bad Company 2 multiplayer experience is the best I have ever had on a console. (I still value BF2 as the "true Battlefield game")
Tight infantry combat, something the Battlefield series was never known for, was coupled with refined vehicle combat and large maps. The Rush gamemode that was originally introduced with BC1, is one of the best gamemodes in a multiplayer shooter ever. The way the balance can shift as the combat takes place in different environments is amazing, and I hope Rush is something that is elaborated on in future Battlefield games.
The unlockables are great, and while not as varied or as deep as in Call of Duty, still offer a great incentive to keep on playing without unbalancing things too much. Again, I hope this is expanded on in Battlefield 3.
Okay, so let's take a look at how the game has been supported.
VIP Maps: Disappointing. The game should have been sold with all of the modes unlocked for all of the maps (although even to this day there are modes that are not playable on certain maps). It was nice to have new maps, like with Map Pack 7, but the majority of previous VIP maps were pretty underwhelming.
The summer was a time when a lot of my friends stopped playing Battlefield, instead opting to play Starcraft 2 or Halo: Reach; the support was not there when it was needed most.
However, just this month, VIP Map Pack 7 was released, featuring two BC1 maps remade, as well as two ported maps from the BC2 singleplayer. Those maps were great, providing so much content for the price of: free!
While it would have been nice to have those maps during the start of the summer, at least they got to the community eventually.
Finally, Vietnam! I am stuck in Canada at the moment, away from my Xbox, so I have been unable to play Vietnam. However, Screened.com's Matthew Rorie has given his opinion on the expansion here.
Overall, I feel pretty good calling Bad Company 2 my overall Game of the Year for 2010 (full list). What about you?
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$9.99 All iPhone and iPod Touch models Real Racing 2, the sequel to Real Racing, is an evolutionary step for the franchise and remains to be the best racing experience on the iPhone. The all-new career mode has you earning cash and reputation by completing races. Using the money that you have earned, you can purchase cars from the library of 30 licensed vehicles, including cars from BMW, Ford, Jaguar, Nissan, Volkswagen, and more. There are some limited options to upgrade your car, such as improving the handling, acceleration, and top speed by a few increments. It won't compare to Gran Turismo or Forza, but is incredibly robust for an iPhone game.
The largest addition, however, is the 16-player online multiplayer. It works pretty well for the most part, but I haven't been able to get into any 16-player matches, mostly racing against 7-8 other people. The one gripe I have is that you can take your car from the career mode and race it online. This is cool for people who can invest the time to unlock the best cars, but for people like who is still sporting the VW GTI, we are at a distinct disadvantage.
The game looks great, the cars are very well modeled (cockpit view for all cars, btw), and the environments feel real. The $10 price tag might be a bit much for people, but if you are looking for a solid racing experience on the iPhone, look no further.
N.O.V.A. 2 - Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance
$6.99 iPhone and iPod Touch Oh Gameloft, I don't know if I should be upset at your total lack of creativity, or if I should be happy that you are bringing these uninspired, yet pretty decent, iPhone games to the app store. For NOVA 2, I'll choose to tolerate your business practices.
NOVA 2, for those of you who might not have guessed this by now, is essentially Halo for iPhone. You shoot aliens with assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, sniper rifles and rocket launchers. You will sometimes drive vehicles and shoot aliens. The campaign is interesting and varied enough to not be a total bore-fest, and is genuinely exciting in some parts. The voice acting is still quite terrible, but I believe that is a staple for all Gameloft releases.
The controls work pretty well for all of the actions they try to get on screen.
NOVA 2 also has 10-player online multiplayer, and allows you to gain exp to rank up and unlock different guns and perks. The multiplayer experience is excellent, and despite some spawning and balance issues, is a blast to play. There is a version for iPad, too, I believe.
Gameloft has also released Dungeon Hunter 2, a Diablo-esque game that has loot and 4-player online co-op. Additionally, if you are looking for some Uncharted on your iPhone, check out Shadow Guardian.
$5.99 Infinity Blade could coast on the fact that it is the best looking iPhone game ever to be released, but it actually has some pretty compelling gameplay. The game is not an expansive open-world RPG, rather, it is a fairly linear, on-rails Punch-Out with swords. You fight different warriors by slashing (swiping), dodging (tapping on the left or right sides of the screen), parrying (swiping in the opposite direction of an attack), or blocking (tapping/holding the block button). It all works pretty well, and is satisfying enough to not get old after five hours of doing the same thing over and over again.
The game is highly repetitive; you actually retrace your steps multiple times over the course of the game. Thankfully, there is a plethora of loot to obtain, from swords, shields, and rings, to helmets, and different armor sets. Infinity Blade was initially announced to have a multiplayer-dueling system, but did not release with that feature, and as of today (Dec 18th) has not been updated.
Overall, a pretty fun experience that should keep you entertained for 5-6 hours.
Other notable releases:
Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD $6.99 iPhone/iPad An ambitious open-world RPG.
World of Goo for iPad $9.99 iPad only
Dungeon Defenders: First Wave $2.99 This has 4-player Game Center multiplayer, and is a combination of tower defense and action RPG.
EA is also having a GIGANTIC sale, with ALL of their titles priced at 99 cents! (Go get Mirror's Edge for iPhone/iPad if you haven't picked it up yet!)
This is part one of my PlayStation 3 blog series. I have owned an Xbox for all my life , and recently purchased a PS3. I am now playing a lot of PS3-exclusive games and blogging about them. I just finished the Killzone 2 campaign and left feeling pretty satisfied.
I was able to customize the controls almost to my liking, but they still felt a bit clumsy.
The shooting doesn't seem to have the accuracy of COD or Battlefield, and feels a bit more like Gears of War in 1st person. I found myself spraying quite a bit, especially when the assault rifle with the holographic sights ran out of ammo.
Speaking of weapons, there are some pretty cool ones. The bolter rifle was a lot of fun, as well as the grenade launcher. The sniper rifle was really well done with the two zoom levels, as well as having to keep the dualshock still while aiming.
The game looks really nice, easily surpassing anything from the Halo series. However, Halo does have the awe-inspiring skyboxes as well as the varying environments.
The skyboxes in Killzone 2 felt very bland, although that is a relatively minor complaint.
My main gripe with the environments in Killzone 2 is that there is very little variation. Most of them were a blur of dark industrial centers. Some highlights included the military academy as well as... well, that's really all that comes to my mind.
The mission structure has a good variation and I enjoyed the different tasks assigned to me. There was a very immersive battle towards the end of the game where it really felt like my side was progressing and gaining ground. It felt more like a real, large-scale firefight than anything I have experienced in Call of Duty or Battlefield singleplayer.
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