So I wanted to write something about my current escapades in the games I'm currently playing, more so this week than any other, as you can tell there is actually content on here. Foregoing anything fancy as this might just be a one time thing, I just felt like I needed to share some of my experiences this week whether they be good or bad. So without further intro...

Max Payne 3 (Contains Spoilers, kind of)

I ended up picking this game up through Gamefly, as being jobless has put me into sort of a bind with Mass Effect 3 being the last retail copy I have actually bought. After that game it seems like a lot of games recently haven't actually warranted a legitimate purchase, and this service pretty much solves the age old problem of how to get new games without actually buying them or resorting to piracy. So anyway within the first day or two I completed Hard, Old School, and Hardcore (in that exact order) with none of it being as challenging as the description made them out to be. I had a lot of fun playing on Old School, as it felt like the game was supposed to be played in that mode all along forgoing the Last Man Standing mode and trading it with "Oh man you just straight up die if you get shot for real". This made Bullet Dodge a much bigger ally on this difficulty on the other ones since revealing yourself trying to John Woo people will get you sent to the last checkpoint instantly. This isn't where I have been spending most of my time with the game though.

I've been investing a buttload of time into the New York Minute mode, which is like a time attack mode through all of the chapters of the game. I instantly fell in love with this mode, trying to top leaderboard spots as fast as I could. I ended up grabbing a few top spots within the first week of the game's release, with I believe only retaining one spot (last time I checked before this blog) on the Cemetery level (which also happens to be one of my most hated chapters of the game, whodathunkit). I wanted to complete all the chapters for that phat 100 point achievement and the see what the hubbub was with this Hardcore New York Minute mode. So I ended up doing that, what came out of this became my own personal descent into hell.

You see, I think New York Minute mode made the game 10x better, even having to sit through story elements was tolerable since it was all split up into individual levels you could choose. What New York Minute did on Hardcore was the EXACT opposite of what you want to do for a time attack mode. Hardcore makes you go through the chapters back to back, carrying over your time from the previous levels, and allows absolutely no death. This makes sense since it's a "Hardcore" mode, right? Yeah, I'll admit that, but the fact that the game goes through the chapters back to back and makes you start over from the beginning if you die only get more tedious as you have to sit through ALL OF THE CUTSCENES OVER AGAIN. I mean MY GOD, I must know EVERY line from Chapter 3 at this point (which has actually become my most hated chapter due to how long all these unskippable cutscenes are) only because of how wonky this game can get. This mode has no remorse on what it does in order to kill you. An example would be I once got to Chapter 10, only to get shot by a guy who had NO VISIBLE shot on me, and all I could see of him was a foot and a head behind a rack of bus tires. Now some of you may be wondering "If you could SEE him in Last Man Standing, why COULDN'T you prevent this from happening?" GOOD QUESTION, Even though I could SEE him, it didn't mean my bullets could HIT him. Yes, even though my crosshairs turned red, and I could visibly see him, it turns out BUS TIRES CAN INVOKE INVISIBLE WALLS DURING GUNFIGHTS. So this ended up tumbling me back a bit, so I ended up trying again. NOT A GOOD IDEA AT ALL

It was Chapter 9, I'd have gotten through the whole part of the level where I actually control Max Payne. I got myself to the ONLY significant QTE in the game (which seemed EXTREMELY out of place in this game). I went to disarm the man of his Machete in order to kill him. I pressed the Left Trigger in order to do this, and even though I had hit the correct button at the correct time, the game, the Almighty Game of Games, decided that pressing that button wasn't GOOD enough, and decided to play the failure animation instead of continuing with the event. THUS TUMBLING ME BACK TO SQUARE ONE. In a massive flurry of mad I just decided to quit for the day, and save it for tomorrow. Yet not known to me, I would get even further to my goal. Everything was going right the next day, I was killin' dudes fast, almost racked up an hour of time on the clock. I got every dude who put me into Last Man Standing, got through the QTE, got through the impenetrable bus tires. I had no issues on chapters 11, 12, or 13 making it a cakewalk to the final chapter. Chapter 14 isn't painfully long at all, but can be annoying as the UFE love to FLOP all over the place when shot in their body armor, almost making it EXACTLY like the NBA playoffs. After the train ride to the airplane hangars, I sat getting amped up for the Becker fight. I had loads of ammo and 7 painkillers, I thought to myself that nothing could possibly go wrong at this point in the game, I had it NAILED. I basically had the whole hangar cleared of UFE, almost about to trigger the Bullet Dodge with Becker. When all of a sudden Becker shot out a Grenade from his Launcher, and being the ex-Sharks fan I knew, I was all like "DON'T WORRY ME, I GOT THIS" mid-way through the Grenade's route of travel. I poked out and got ready to shoot it, only when I popped out, there was no grenade to shoot. Nope, it was already at its destination, blew up and took me out with it.

I was devastated, how could I choke so hard at a part I KNEW how to get through, all you had to do was just stay behind the damn cover Meester. Even after that defeat, I made a pact with myself that this game would not beat me. I instantly loaded back up and got all the way to Chapter 6 Part 2, you know, at the part with the three guys trying to push the cabinet down to get out of the room. I killed all of them in Bullet Time and got the kill cam on the last guy. I thought to myself... well no, I KNEW at that point they were all dead. Oh how wrong I was, even after the Kill Cam I was INSTANTLY BLOWN AWAY by the last guy, who did not falter after the barrage of bullets I put in him. Nope, he was still aiming down his sights and pumping me full of lead faster than you could say "CHEATER". My spirit was broken. The game won, I'm not playing this bullshit mode after that. Well as of writing this blog I have the first chapter loaded up and waiting for me to get back to it, so clearly I'm some sort of masochist. Or maybe I'm just out of games to play until Dragon's Dogma gets here.

I might as well cover a bit of the multiplayer in this bit before moving on, but I'm not really a fan of it. As Rockstar usually does nowadays they carry over all the mechanics of the previous game and build or strip on that design for the next one. In this case, Max Payne 3 feels like a Red Dead Redemption lite, as it seems like only one or two weapons work in the multiplayer at any given time. The only thing I like is that they decided to make Soft Aim and Free Aim modes, instead of having the player choose his preference of aim, since ANYONE in RDR going into a game with Free Aim on was dead in the water. Everyone seems a bit more brittle in this game more so than RDR too, as shots to the hand as the target dummy show when you die seem to be as lethal as actual headshots. Mechanics in Rockstar online games just aren't good, and if I had to be fair about it, they just aren't my thing. I lean more on the latter because if you ever play with any of the old RDR clans on Max Payne 3, they're so convinced that this game is a legitimate competitive shooter. I didn't know being delusional was in this month.

Super Monday Night Combat

If I do decide to continue this blog, you might as well expect to see a bit of SMNC talk in it. I am 100% in love with this game, the universe, the characters, the humor, the atmosphere. Everything about this game appeals to the inner sports fan/competitive gamer in me. I've been trying to get my friends to start the path of an SMNC Pro but to almost no avail except save for a few cool guys I happen to have played with last night.

The day started off pretty bad as we were instantly thrown into Gun Mountain, the latest map in the SMNC roster. I hadn't played it since I took the week off of playing the game so I was pretty raw going into the game too. We ended up getting rolled and rather salty towards Gun Mountain due to the bias of playing on it the first time. I just counted it as a bad game and proceeded to Karl up the next game pretty good, which the game boiled down to a last minute clutch Anni fight me and a gunner pulled off to get it. My friend proceeded then to invest in a Jackbot to finish off their turrets and Moneyball, it was a pretty baller performance.

Game 3 was ANOTHER Gun Mountain roll, Gotta say guys, not really a fan of it. We took a small break before returning for one more game on another Bullet Gorge. Only this time I was all like "Hey guys I got an insane idea, what if I went Luchadeer?" They were not opposed to it so I picked up Vet for the first time in months. What followed was perfect Harmony. Our team basically stomped all over the competition. I was able to Ka-Klaw guys into submission, even pull a guy so hard into a pillar he rebounded off of it into a ring out. I'd have to say a 10-2 performance on an Enforcer I barely played but knew what to do was a pretty good thing. So now I'm probably gonna pick Vet more often cause of that, so that Luchadeer outfit will not just sit in my inventory in vain no longer. After that we tried one more, but knowing Spunky Downtown it was bound to go bad, and it did as the whole game just crapped out for everyone. It was pretty much a sign to call it a day, but not before I picked up another Pro to add onto my already expanding list of go-to guys along with Karl, Support, Tank, and Wascot. Due to the Vet being close to a Commando though, I think my Wascot days are over.

Minecraft for Xbox 360

It's a pretty retarded notion that I got the 360 version as I already own the PC version, but thanks to peer pressure I got it anyway due to the fact that getting a group of dudes in a room is a lot easier than it is on the PC. No random IP changing or anything, nope, just a day ruining crash here or there. Ever since we figured that out though I save pretty much every 30 minutes, as we mostly play on my world anyway. There really isn't much to talk about here except for the time we tried to commit Ragnarok on all of our houses. One of my friends was dumb enough to build his house out of wood, so I just managed to take Flint & Steel to burn it down. Letting him know what I did, it wasn't the house being on fire that made it funny, it was the fact he instantly went to "DUDE, MY WOLVES ARE SITLL IN THERE". While as morbid as that sounds (And I do not condone of animal cruelty), we couldn't help but laugh at the fact that you could hear the poor things burn to death. In retaliation my friend tried to leak Lava down into my mountain home through my attic, but to no avail because Ladders don't GIVE A DAMN about physics, meaning if you want to avoid the apocalypse, my house was where it was at.

What to expect soon (If I decide to pick this up again)

Well I've already pretty much dedicated to all weeks having an SMNC update if it gets played, since its the BEST game EVER. Hopefully Dragon's Dogma will come in by next week and I get around to that, and who knows I might just pick up some games I never S-Ranked just to see if I can do it, and I might share the outcomes of that. I guess while I wait for Dragon's Dogma though I'll dredge through more Max Payne 3... There were so many good feelings coming from that game too, oh well.

The End?

Who knows! I might get that feel to share my experiences again only to have nobody read them! Maybe fancy the thing up a bit with pictures and such, since words are so analog.

SEE YOU GUYS LATER.

So I wanted to write something about my current escapades in the games I'm currently playing, more so this week than any other, as you can tell there is actually content on here. Foregoing anything fancy as this might just be a one time thing, I just felt like I needed to share some of my experiences this week whether they be good or bad. So without further intro...

Max Payne 3 (Contains Spoilers, kind of)

I ended up picking this game up through Gamefly, as being jobless has put me into sort of a bind with Mass Effect 3 being the last retail copy I have actually bought. After that game it seems like a lot of games recently haven't actually warranted a legitimate purchase, and this service pretty much solves the age old problem of how to get new games without actually buying them or resorting to piracy. So anyway within the first day or two I completed Hard, Old School, and Hardcore (in that exact order) with none of it being as challenging as the description made them out to be. I had a lot of fun playing on Old School, as it felt like the game was supposed to be played in that mode all along forgoing the Last Man Standing mode and trading it with "Oh man you just straight up die if you get shot for real". This made Bullet Dodge a much bigger ally on this difficulty on the other ones since revealing yourself trying to John Woo people will get you sent to the last checkpoint instantly. This isn't where I have been spending most of my time with the game though.

I've been investing a buttload of time into the New York Minute mode, which is like a time attack mode through all of the chapters of the game. I instantly fell in love with this mode, trying to top leaderboard spots as fast as I could. I ended up grabbing a few top spots within the first week of the game's release, with I believe only retaining one spot (last time I checked before this blog) on the Cemetery level (which also happens to be one of my most hated chapters of the game, whodathunkit). I wanted to complete all the chapters for that phat 100 point achievement and the see what the hubbub was with this Hardcore New York Minute mode. So I ended up doing that, what came out of this became my own personal descent into hell.

You see, I think New York Minute mode made the game 10x better, even having to sit through story elements was tolerable since it was all split up into individual levels you could choose. What New York Minute did on Hardcore was the EXACT opposite of what you want to do for a time attack mode. Hardcore makes you go through the chapters back to back, carrying over your time from the previous levels, and allows absolutely no death. This makes sense since it's a "Hardcore" mode, right? Yeah, I'll admit that, but the fact that the game goes through the chapters back to back and makes you start over from the beginning if you die only get more tedious as you have to sit through ALL OF THE CUTSCENES OVER AGAIN. I mean MY GOD, I must know EVERY line from Chapter 3 at this point (which has actually become my most hated chapter due to how long all these unskippable cutscenes are) only because of how wonky this game can get. This mode has no remorse on what it does in order to kill you. An example would be I once got to Chapter 10, only to get shot by a guy who had NO VISIBLE shot on me, and all I could see of him was a foot and a head behind a rack of bus tires. Now some of you may be wondering "If you could SEE him in Last Man Standing, why COULDN'T you prevent this from happening?" GOOD QUESTION, Even though I could SEE him, it didn't mean my bullets could HIT him. Yes, even though my crosshairs turned red, and I could visibly see him, it turns out BUS TIRES CAN INVOKE INVISIBLE WALLS DURING GUNFIGHTS. So this ended up tumbling me back a bit, so I ended up trying again. NOT A GOOD IDEA AT ALL

It was Chapter 9, I'd have gotten through the whole part of the level where I actually control Max Payne. I got myself to the ONLY significant QTE in the game (which seemed EXTREMELY out of place in this game). I went to disarm the man of his Machete in order to kill him. I pressed the Left Trigger in order to do this, and even though I had hit the correct button at the correct time, the game, the Almighty Game of Games, decided that pressing that button wasn't GOOD enough, and decided to play the failure animation instead of continuing with the event. THUS TUMBLING ME BACK TO SQUARE ONE. In a massive flurry of mad I just decided to quit for the day, and save it for tomorrow. Yet not known to me, I would get even further to my goal. Everything was going right the next day, I was killin' dudes fast, almost racked up an hour of time on the clock. I got every dude who put me into Last Man Standing, got through the QTE, got through the impenetrable bus tires. I had no issues on chapters 11, 12, or 13 making it a cakewalk to the final chapter. Chapter 14 isn't painfully long at all, but can be annoying as the UFE love to FLOP all over the place when shot in their body armor, almost making it EXACTLY like the NBA playoffs. After the train ride to the airplane hangars, I sat getting amped up for the Becker fight. I had loads of ammo and 7 painkillers, I thought to myself that nothing could possibly go wrong at this point in the game, I had it NAILED. I basically had the whole hangar cleared of UFE, almost about to trigger the Bullet Dodge with Becker. When all of a sudden Becker shot out a Grenade from his Launcher, and being the ex-Sharks fan I knew, I was all like "DON'T WORRY ME, I GOT THIS" mid-way through the Grenade's route of travel. I poked out and got ready to shoot it, only when I popped out, there was no grenade to shoot. Nope, it was already at its destination, blew up and took me out with it.

I was devastated, how could I choke so hard at a part I KNEW how to get through, all you had to do was just stay behind the damn cover Meester. Even after that defeat, I made a pact with myself that this game would not beat me. I instantly loaded back up and got all the way to Chapter 6 Part 2, you know, at the part with the three guys trying to push the cabinet down to get out of the room. I killed all of them in Bullet Time and got the kill cam on the last guy. I thought to myself... well no, I KNEW at that point they were all dead. Oh how wrong I was, even after the Kill Cam I was INSTANTLY BLOWN AWAY by the last guy, who did not falter after the barrage of bullets I put in him. Nope, he was still aiming down his sights and pumping me full of lead faster than you could say "CHEATER". My spirit was broken. The game won, I'm not playing this bullshit mode after that. Well as of writing this blog I have the first chapter loaded up and waiting for me to get back to it, so clearly I'm some sort of masochist. Or maybe I'm just out of games to play until Dragon's Dogma gets here.

I might as well cover a bit of the multiplayer in this bit before moving on, but I'm not really a fan of it. As Rockstar usually does nowadays they carry over all the mechanics of the previous game and build or strip on that design for the next one. In this case, Max Payne 3 feels like a Red Dead Redemption lite, as it seems like only one or two weapons work in the multiplayer at any given time. The only thing I like is that they decided to make Soft Aim and Free Aim modes, instead of having the player choose his preference of aim, since ANYONE in RDR going into a game with Free Aim on was dead in the water. Everyone seems a bit more brittle in this game more so than RDR too, as shots to the hand as the target dummy show when you die seem to be as lethal as actual headshots. Mechanics in Rockstar online games just aren't good, and if I had to be fair about it, they just aren't my thing. I lean more on the latter because if you ever play with any of the old RDR clans on Max Payne 3, they're so convinced that this game is a legitimate competitive shooter. I didn't know being delusional was in this month.

Super Monday Night Combat

If I do decide to continue this blog, you might as well expect to see a bit of SMNC talk in it. I am 100% in love with this game, the universe, the characters, the humor, the atmosphere. Everything about this game appeals to the inner sports fan/competitive gamer in me. I've been trying to get my friends to start the path of an SMNC Pro but to almost no avail except save for a few cool guys I happen to have played with last night.

The day started off pretty bad as we were instantly thrown into Gun Mountain, the latest map in the SMNC roster. I hadn't played it since I took the week off of playing the game so I was pretty raw going into the game too. We ended up getting rolled and rather salty towards Gun Mountain due to the bias of playing on it the first time. I just counted it as a bad game and proceeded to Karl up the next game pretty good, which the game boiled down to a last minute clutch Anni fight me and a gunner pulled off to get it. My friend proceeded then to invest in a Jackbot to finish off their turrets and Moneyball, it was a pretty baller performance.

Game 3 was ANOTHER Gun Mountain roll, Gotta say guys, not really a fan of it. We took a small break before returning for one more game on another Bullet Gorge. Only this time I was all like "Hey guys I got an insane idea, what if I went Luchadeer?" They were not opposed to it so I picked up Vet for the first time in months. What followed was perfect Harmony. Our team basically stomped all over the competition. I was able to Ka-Klaw guys into submission, even pull a guy so hard into a pillar he rebounded off of it into a ring out. I'd have to say a 10-2 performance on an Enforcer I barely played but knew what to do was a pretty good thing. So now I'm probably gonna pick Vet more often cause of that, so that Luchadeer outfit will not just sit in my inventory in vain no longer. After that we tried one more, but knowing Spunky Downtown it was bound to go bad, and it did as the whole game just crapped out for everyone. It was pretty much a sign to call it a day, but not before I picked up another Pro to add onto my already expanding list of go-to guys along with Karl, Support, Tank, and Wascot. Due to the Vet being close to a Commando though, I think my Wascot days are over.

Minecraft for Xbox 360

It's a pretty retarded notion that I got the 360 version as I already own the PC version, but thanks to peer pressure I got it anyway due to the fact that getting a group of dudes in a room is a lot easier than it is on the PC. No random IP changing or anything, nope, just a day ruining crash here or there. Ever since we figured that out though I save pretty much every 30 minutes, as we mostly play on my world anyway. There really isn't much to talk about here except for the time we tried to commit Ragnarok on all of our houses. One of my friends was dumb enough to build his house out of wood, so I just managed to take Flint & Steel to burn it down. Letting him know what I did, it wasn't the house being on fire that made it funny, it was the fact he instantly went to "DUDE, MY WOLVES ARE SITLL IN THERE". While as morbid as that sounds (And I do not condone of animal cruelty), we couldn't help but laugh at the fact that you could hear the poor things burn to death. In retaliation my friend tried to leak Lava down into my mountain home through my attic, but to no avail because Ladders don't GIVE A DAMN about physics, meaning if you want to avoid the apocalypse, my house was where it was at.

What to expect soon (If I decide to pick this up again)

Well I've already pretty much dedicated to all weeks having an SMNC update if it gets played, since its the BEST game EVER. Hopefully Dragon's Dogma will come in by next week and I get around to that, and who knows I might just pick up some games I never S-Ranked just to see if I can do it, and I might share the outcomes of that. I guess while I wait for Dragon's Dogma though I'll dredge through more Max Payne 3... There were so many good feelings coming from that game too, oh well.

The End?

Who knows! I might get that feel to share my experiences again only to have nobody read them! Maybe fancy the thing up a bit with pictures and such, since words are so analog.

SEE YOU GUYS LATER.

I cant read the max payne part , the pc versions not out for a week or so, looking forward to it so i kind of hope you enjoyed it, as for SMNC its a game i really love, i have had so much fun trying out the different classes, my favourite is probably the engineer or the pit girl(i cant remember if thats the class name) i lvoe being the support class but also being able to hold my own in a fight, while i was a big fan of MNC i think the changes they made to the game make it truly special.

playing minecraft myself atm through the generosity of friends, first week we totally wrecked the original world on the server, had to get my buddy to generate a new world what with all the raging lava rivers and out of control surface fires but since then we have built a proper mine and production facility and finsihed a small town complete with a pantheon style building and what looks like the start of a colliseum. fun game, didn't think it would be my cup of tea.

you're not new here so i will instead encourage you to post more and thanks for the enjoyable part read.

@AhmadMetallic: Unfortunately yes, I do explain a tiny bit of details of Chapter 14. I would have walked around it but my grief unfortunately fell into a key story point in the game (Which again is the main downfall of New York Minute Hardcore)

@buft: For what Max Payne 3 is worth it's an enjoyable experience, I had a lot of good moments just doing regular New York Minute and the Single Player, just don't go looking to deep into the Multiplayer, only because you'll hit your face on the surface way too soon. As for SMNC the class you're talking about is the Combat Girl, which is genuinely just the Pit Girl so you're not far off, and I do agree, the Super Crossfire ruleset in SMNC really made the game 100% better, I'm not going to be playing the new Turbocross anytime soon.

@AhmadMetallic: of course there are spoilers at the end of the game!

New York Minute Hardcore sounds insane. I know I'll attempt it eventually but having to start back at square one must be demoralizing.

Although i'll never do it because i know my blood will boil past the point of frustration, i heavily commend R* for making NYMH as difficult as it is by having to do it all in one sitting with no deaths. 
 
This is not aimed at the OP but it amazes me how many people on different forums bitch about the difficulty of this mode. Gamers everywhere are always complaining about games being too easy and offering no re playability and complaining about a $60 price tag. Unskippable and lengthy cutscenes aside, this game offers a lot in the way of replayability compared to your average TPS. Unlockable skins,  unlockable cheats, various modes that offer quite the challenge and of course multiplayer (that again, people complain takes too long to level up) People always want to have their cake and eat it too but i digress.
 
I've beat the game about 3 or 4 times now so i have a very good handle on where enemies spawn, the best cover in certain situations and the placement of painkillers that i MIGHT try NYMH one day but that being said there were plenty of times where i'd have 100% health and take one stray bullet to the head and just die or go into LMS. I'm not saying that to insinuate that the game is cheap but instead that it could all be taken away from you with the notion of a single bullet which is where the frustration comes in for me.

@hbkdx12: It isn't the fact that NYMH is difficult to say, its just that the game can and will most of the time kill you in a cheap manner and send you back to the start. I mean I would be 100% okay with that, IF, and that is a big if, it had skippable cutscens. It's tedious that you have to sit through ALL of Chapter 3's cutscenes again in case something just got the better of you in a cheaply manner. I must have heard Passos say "THESE GUYS ARE SERIOUSLY FINANCED!" a million times by now.

Seriously man, Chapter 3 is the worst part of Hardcore period, and the fact you have to play through it one more time is what is keeping me from banging my head against it like I usually do.