I've been facing a strong state of insomnia lately. It's currently 8:37PM CST Friday, and I've been up since 10:00PM Thursday. While I've pulled longer times of being awake (and I'm sure you guys have as well), there's a lot of stuff that is leading to this issue.
The first is personal issues, namely moving back in with my parents for a month or two. Why? Well, a couple of reasons:
Not having to pay rent means I can focus all of my money into my car and my upcoming vacation, planned for the 10th to the 16th...going to Ohio for cooler climates and a family reunion
My mother is having foot surgery on the 19th, so someone will need to be around to help her while my dad and brothers are out of the house for work and such
This gives me a chance to dedicate MORE money into my car and other necessities at the moment. I was able to get work done on my car just fine before, but it wasn't at the pace I wanted to get it done at. Without paying rent to my parents, it means that I'm able to put more money into it without having to worry about real life for a month or two.
I know. It's sad that a 27-year-old is living with his parents. Too bad. Sorry if you don't agree. Not like it'll be for very long.
The second is, of course, achievement whoring...so on to the games, folks:
This week, I decided to hit up a couple of games that looked intriguing: Damnation and Wheelman. What do I think?
Terminate Damnation. The album name now has new meaning for me.Well, I haven't even unlocked a single achievement from the story in Damnation, and I don't want to. That game is barely playable. The basics of the game: it's an attempted Gears clone without a cover system, while trying to inject the platforming elements you would find in something like Prince of Persia without the fluidity. It also tries to offer a multiplayer that relies heavily on verticality and standard match types (deathmatch, team deathmatch, and CTF are the only ones I found on there...and I only found three other people that were playing). Basically, the game is tragic. There's almost no hit detection unless you are point blank with a shotgun, the graphics are constantly plagued with pop-in, glitches abound everywhere to the point of multiple Xbox reboots being necessary, the platforming controls feel stiff and unresponsive. The worst part of it all: it could've been at least a mediocre game with a better budget and a little more polish time. The story, about some dood named Lord Prescott trying to turn America into New America - The Empire, could've been expanded and treated properly. It's RARE that we see ANY games placed in the Civil War time era, and yet here was a PERFECT chance to offer up something interesting. Instead, it was wasted.
My biggest problem with the game, though: they have a railway spike gun...and because of the lack of decent hit detection, you barely hit anything with it. Even when you do, the physics engine is so weak that it can't even TRY to rival the Hammerhead from F.E.A.R. 2. Sure, F.E.A.R. 2 has a higher budget, but they could've AT LEAST tried to have ONE awesome thing happening in this game.
Damnation isn't even worth achievement whoring, folks. It's a miserable game for miserable people. Even $20 is too much for it.
I also picked up a copy of Wheelman, the notoriously delayed Vin Diesel project. How's that one?
Despite Mark Vincent's rather bland stare, the Unreal Engine 3 renders a good level of subtleties in the cutscenes.I'm enjoying it. When you first start out, the game is rather boring and drab. The story feels very much like a dry Hollywood blockbuster flick, aka "half of Vin Diesel's movie catalogue". Therefore, he feels right at home playing the badass Milo Burik...if that's his real name. There's something about Romanians and some Dominicans and Spanish gangs not liking each other, and you are constantly moving in-between them to stir up tension, but really, the game is about side missions. I'm not kidding you when I say that the main story of the game features less missions than the amount of side missions available in the game...and there are only, like, 70 side missions. Granted, they all follow one of the same five or six archetypes (insomnia leads to memory loss, I think...find the irony in that statement...), and only about three of those are truly fun to play. There's an achievement for getting an S rank on all the side missions that's worth 100 points, so I'd probably be done with all the missions completely and such now if I hadn't been restarting the races and missions over and over again to try and grab an S rank. lol Damn my competitive nature... Overall, the game's controls are a bit stiff, but it's whatever, because you're basically just crashing into tons of shit the whole time. I'll say this much: vehicle melee should be standard in almost every racing or vehicle-based, and aimed shots and cyclones are pretty much fucking amazing. Other than that, it's basically a Teen-rated version of Grand Theft Auto in Barcelona with Vin Diesel and a bunch of people saying "tits" a lot more than most games do. Achievements are fun to get, so long as you are okay with getting frustrated as fuck from the aggressive AI.
And with that, I bid you all a "Game Over" until next week...
I've been facing a strong state of insomnia lately. It's currently 8:37PM CST Friday, and I've been up since 10:00PM Thursday. While I've pulled longer times of being awake (and I'm sure you guys have as well), there's a lot of stuff that is leading to this issue.
The first is personal issues, namely moving back in with my parents for a month or two. Why? Well, a couple of reasons:
Not having to pay rent means I can focus all of my money into my car and my upcoming vacation, planned for the 10th to the 16th...going to Ohio for cooler climates and a family reunion
My mother is having foot surgery on the 19th, so someone will need to be around to help her while my dad and brothers are out of the house for work and such
This gives me a chance to dedicate MORE money into my car and other necessities at the moment. I was able to get work done on my car just fine before, but it wasn't at the pace I wanted to get it done at. Without paying rent to my parents, it means that I'm able to put more money into it without having to worry about real life for a month or two.
I know. It's sad that a 27-year-old is living with his parents. Too bad. Sorry if you don't agree. Not like it'll be for very long.
The second is, of course, achievement whoring...so on to the games, folks:
This week, I decided to hit up a couple of games that looked intriguing: Damnation and Wheelman. What do I think?
Terminate Damnation. The album name now has new meaning for me.Well, I haven't even unlocked a single achievement from the story in Damnation, and I don't want to. That game is barely playable. The basics of the game: it's an attempted Gears clone without a cover system, while trying to inject the platforming elements you would find in something like Prince of Persia without the fluidity. It also tries to offer a multiplayer that relies heavily on verticality and standard match types (deathmatch, team deathmatch, and CTF are the only ones I found on there...and I only found three other people that were playing). Basically, the game is tragic. There's almost no hit detection unless you are point blank with a shotgun, the graphics are constantly plagued with pop-in, glitches abound everywhere to the point of multiple Xbox reboots being necessary, the platforming controls feel stiff and unresponsive. The worst part of it all: it could've been at least a mediocre game with a better budget and a little more polish time. The story, about some dood named Lord Prescott trying to turn America into New America - The Empire, could've been expanded and treated properly. It's RARE that we see ANY games placed in the Civil War time era, and yet here was a PERFECT chance to offer up something interesting. Instead, it was wasted.
My biggest problem with the game, though: they have a railway spike gun...and because of the lack of decent hit detection, you barely hit anything with it. Even when you do, the physics engine is so weak that it can't even TRY to rival the Hammerhead from F.E.A.R. 2. Sure, F.E.A.R. 2 has a higher budget, but they could've AT LEAST tried to have ONE awesome thing happening in this game.
Damnation isn't even worth achievement whoring, folks. It's a miserable game for miserable people. Even $20 is too much for it.
I also picked up a copy of Wheelman, the notoriously delayed Vin Diesel project. How's that one?
Despite Mark Vincent's rather bland stare, the Unreal Engine 3 renders a good level of subtleties in the cutscenes.I'm enjoying it. When you first start out, the game is rather boring and drab. The story feels very much like a dry Hollywood blockbuster flick, aka "half of Vin Diesel's movie catalogue". Therefore, he feels right at home playing the badass Milo Burik...if that's his real name. There's something about Romanians and some Dominicans and Spanish gangs not liking each other, and you are constantly moving in-between them to stir up tension, but really, the game is about side missions. I'm not kidding you when I say that the main story of the game features less missions than the amount of side missions available in the game...and there are only, like, 70 side missions. Granted, they all follow one of the same five or six archetypes (insomnia leads to memory loss, I think...find the irony in that statement...), and only about three of those are truly fun to play. There's an achievement for getting an S rank on all the side missions that's worth 100 points, so I'd probably be done with all the missions completely and such now if I hadn't been restarting the races and missions over and over again to try and grab an S rank. lol Damn my competitive nature... Overall, the game's controls are a bit stiff, but it's whatever, because you're basically just crashing into tons of shit the whole time. I'll say this much: vehicle melee should be standard in almost every racing or vehicle-based, and aimed shots and cyclones are pretty much fucking amazing. Other than that, it's basically a Teen-rated version of Grand Theft Auto in Barcelona with Vin Diesel and a bunch of people saying "tits" a lot more than most games do. Achievements are fun to get, so long as you are okay with getting frustrated as fuck from the aggressive AI.
And with that, I bid you all a "Game Over" until next week...
@jakob187: Meh, it's not really that bad of a thing to live with your parents, as long as you have a job (and obviously, you do). What's really sad is when parents get so sick of their kids that they kick them out at 18. That doesn't make them cool, it makes them homeless.
I don't really have any interest in Wheelman, and I have heard absolutely terrible things about Damnation, so I will pass on that.
Also, Terminate Damnation is an incredible album. As a matter of fact, their newest CD (Dichotomy) is pretty great, as well.
I didn't even know Damnation was out, not that I was too interested in it anyway. Wheelman sounds like it'd be a pretty good rental title, maybe even a purchase when I see a good enough price drop.
Damnation looks like crap, through and through. I have no interest in it. However, there are some cool railway spike guns I could think of. The Railway Rifle in Fallout 3 is pretty sweet, as it cripples enemy's limbs easily and sometimes sticks the enemies to walls. Just an example, mind you.
Wheelman isn't a terrible game, by any means. Part of the reason I've been up for 24 hours is because at least 12 of that was playing Wheelman. However, I'm also the same person that would play SSX3 for about 10 hours a day working towards higher and higher scores, so getting S rank on all those side missions has captured me at the moment. The things I'll do for a damn achievement...
Damnation's cover art reminded me a bit of Darkwatch, and I enjoyed Darkwatch quite a bit (so much that I wish Capcom would greenlight a NEW Darkwatch game, FFS). I also saw the Codemasters logo on the front and remembered "hey, their racing games are pretty good, this can't be THAT bad". = / Shame on me...
6 Comments