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Uninteresting $#!% #10

By jakob187 August 20, 2010 11 Comments

IN THIS BLOG:

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light
Some final thoughts on Monday Night Combat
Thoughts on Summer of Arcade 2010

Howdy folks. It's been a long two weeks, as my work schedule has been all kinds of moved around and prevented me from playing many games. It did allow me to have my first real "I can go out on the weekends and do stuff" moment in the last four years or so, which was super nice. My high school reunion went amazingly, and it's odd how all the shit-talking and grudges in high school go away with alcohol. The whole thing was pretty damn great, and it's something that I'd definitely do again in five or ten years. I also got to see The Expendables last weekend, and let me tell you: that movie is something else. Flaws and all, that movie is everything I could've hoped for. If you haven't seen it yet, you should do so...multiple times. This week is Piranha 3D, which I won't get to see until Monday...but I'm expecting greatness.

Get Rid of The Tomb Raider Franchise!

Luckily, none of the pages were stuck together.

Don't get me wrong - Legend and Anniversary were pretty alright games, but as it stands, the Tomb Raider franchise of third-person shooters with puzzles and platforming have become completely stale. Sure, the first two games may have been worthwhile, but after that, there's just too much negativity attached to the name. Now that Eidos is under the Square Enix house, change focus over to this new style of game that has been shown in Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Hands down, I think Lara: GoL is one of the best games to hit this year, and it shows a deft new direction for a flailing franchise that demands to be played and seen.

The thing that makes Lara's latest adventure so great is that it's exciting! While the puzzles aren't going to take a massive stretch of thinking to solve, they are puzzles that give you a good sense of accomplishment after you've completed them. The level designs are really well done, and even more impressive, the multi-tiered designs allow you to see previous areas of the level you may have explored below you. The game does a really good job of never making you feel like you are out of the level until you see the "Level Complete" pop up at the end. The combat borrows a bit from dual analog shooters by using the right trigger button shoot while the right analog stick aims. Mixing all of this stuff together, however, gets you all giddy with joy when you are blazing through the levels. It's that pacing of immediacy that makes Lara Croft feel right.

Unfortunately, my time with the game has only been single player, as I have not dropped into the co-op stuff just quite yet. I wanted to get through the single player game to see just how different it is when playing in co-op. Since there is no Xbox Live co-op just quite yet, I'll probably be checking out the local co-op on the game at some point over the next week, and I'll hit a final impression of the game in next week's blog. Needless to say, though, the game is really damn good...and personally, it's worth more than the $15 asking price. So please, Square Enix...drop that fucking Tomb Raider franchise and give us more of this first.

How To Define "Balance" In Monday Night Combat

Don't leave home without your LazeRazor!

I've heard a lot of bitching and complaining about how Monday Night Combat leans to one side more than the other when it comes to classes. Support is OP because of heal guns and firebases, Snipers are OP because of the map designs allowing base camping from your own base, Gunners are OP because Slam slows down and they shoot shitloads of bullets...the list goes on and on. As I played some MNC this past week, a light bulb clicked in my head: the game IS balanced, but the balance is broken because no one plays as a fucking team. The matches I played in were with complete strangers, and I tried to get them to work together. Of course, I was greeted back with comments that are to be expected from a crowd that uses pot leaf titles on their Modern Warfare 2 profiles (in other words, being told "shut up you fucking fuck" or the equivalent of). Nonetheless, we were losing, and it was all because the other team...who also wasn't playing like a team very much...were picking classes that would go against singular players. Essentially, I'm just trying to say that the reason people are bitching about classes is because you aren't playing the game the way it was intended - as a team-based objective game with some strategy and tactical involvement - and it has led to many classes looking OP because one player against another player can be a frustrating fight.

For my final thoughts on the game, I will say that it is not the game's fault that the community playing it are a bunch of uncoordinated fucktards. Mind you, there are the intelligent few who will work as a team and literally wreck the opposition. However, without any form of honest teamwork showing up on XBL, I fear that this gem of a game will get lost in the fold by the time the end of the year rolls around. It's a sad thing to say, but it's also an easily understandable truth. Here's to hoping the community gets better, but once I've got my achievements off the game, I'm just going to take a prolonged break from it.

Now That School Is Back In Session...

...it makes me miss the Summer of Arcade. This year was pretty excellent, although the price points were the same for all the games. While I only picked up Limbo, Monday Night Combat, and Lara Croft, I'm sure I'll pick up the other two at some point...or at least Hydro Thunder Hurricane. I've heard nothing good about Castlevania HD, and frankly, it's not the game I want it to be. In comparison to last year, I think the lineup has been really solid. It has me wondering what next year will hold, as well as makes me realize all the Arcade games coming later in the year (Shank, Comic Jumper, A World of Keflings, etc) that I need to get when they get released.

Hey, this means I'm getting 400 points back! AWESOME! Oh, shit...it also just made me realize that I have 800 points just sitting on my fucking account that some customer could use. YIKES! Need to do something with those. Maybe I'll pick up the Dragon Age DLC that's on sale this week. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll just end up buying the DLC and forget about it as I play Starcraft II, right?
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That's it for this week, folks. If you haven't picked up any of the Summer of Arcade games yet, then I'd suggest at least picking up Limbo, Monday Night Combat, and Lara Croft. They are seriously worth the money attached to them, and you'll get multiple playthroughs with no problem.

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