I haven't finished Black Ops yet, but overall I'm enjoying the adrenalin riddled Black Ops single player campaign a little more than the new very competent and definitely more realistic Medal of Honor campaign, but I remember Jeff being really annoyed at MoH's scripted scenes, and how you couldn't avoid them anyway. Well... that's pretty much the definition of scripted; you CANNOT avoid them. I think Jeff was a little unfair at picking on the game mainly based on that.
Black Ops is also filled with scenes such as those, and equally annoying, IF you happen to notice them-- which is pretty much what happened to Jeff. And once you notice one, you'll most definitely be on the lookout for more. Just from the top of my head I clearly remember a few examples from Black Ops:
I shot some guy equipped with an RPG about 6 or 7 times in the head before he fired that thing and ended up killing one of my squad mates-- I killed myself so I could repeat that scene and try to save my mate a second time, but no matter what, the RPG guy just wouldn't die.
There's a tower in the "river chapter" that I know will be shooting rockets at us whenener I get closer, so I took it down with a missile ages before I actually got to it. Still, a few seconds later, a rocket emerges from midair, where the tower was no longer-- now, that clearly shouldn't have happened!
I was quick enough to shoot a guy in the head in the "rat tunnels" before it actually reached my squad mate, but it was as if my bullets went right through him-- nothing happened and the "movie" proceeded as if I hadn't shot a single bullet.
Also in the "rat tunnels", I shot another guy, but it was written that it had to be my squad mate to take it down and so once again my bullets had no effect whatsoever...
There's probably a couple more that I'm not remembering right now, but all in all, I guess that bottomline, pretty much all games these days have scripted scenes or sequences, and they can be pretty awesome if gone unnoticed. However, if you do happen to act ahead of the game's script, before these scenes get triggered, then things can get frustrating, 'cause you clearly feel like you could've altered the sequence of events. I guess that all in all, you can either choose to be annoyed and start bashing the game for actually trying to tell a story, or you can just realize that there's actually nothing you can do to change these events and just go with the flow..... and try to enjoy the rollercoaster ride as much as possible.
After all, we gotta keep in mind that these are NOT open world games.
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First of all, a sincere thank you to those who left me a good luck message, it really meant a lot :)
I got the job. I'm now gonna be working from home from now on; most of the time anyway. It's really cool and the pay is a lot better, but all in all I'm gonna end up having a lot less free time, 'cause this new gig is a much more demanding and time consuming than my previous one-- deadlines galore! I'm sure you're all familiar with the concept of "ghost writing" but here goes anyway: you know all those autobiographies out there? Well, most of them (not all, though!) aren't really written by the actual subject, and shouldn't really be considered autobiographies, but hey, that's the market for you-- it just sells a whole lot more that way. Now that's where ghost writers come into play. These uncredited writers get paid reasonably well to gather a mish-mash of information and facts (and also some exaggerations) and turn all that boring data into a compelling and interesting book. So yeah, I'm now a ghost writer, for the time being anyways.
I'm under a very strict contract, so please don't even ask whose "autobiography" I'm writing, 'cause I really can't answer-- at all : /
I'll still try to add more data and info to the wiki pages whenever possible, and I'll definitely keep following GB and its community very regularly, but I'm likely to be spending less time on the site from now on.
I was wondering if anyone could "counsel" me on Dragon Night Saga... I haven't actually played any of the Divinity games, and so I was wondering if this pack would be worth my money or not. If you're reading this and you've played any of the games in the Saga or this pack itself, would you kindly let me know if you think it's worthy or not?
So I've played a "few" hours of Fallout:NV yesterday. I was afraid there'd be lots of bugs, crashes and insanely long loading times, but in all honesty it seems that the PC version is no where near as chaotic as its console counterparts-- apart from a couple of NPCs walking into walls and an Ant getting stuck in a rock, I've had no problems of this sort whatsoever. Also, I don't think I've ever waited more than a couple of seconds during any of the many loading screens the game has. Finally, the framerate has been at a constant 75/85 frames per second, so no problems there too. Go PC, I guess, lol :) The only real technical downside is that even at the highest quality settings possible, the Gamebryo engine is noticeably starting to show its age...
Story Premise and Gameplay
As for the game itself, so far (at least for me) it has been a subpar version of Fallout 3. The beginning of the game isn't anywhere nearly as engaging and memorable as its predecessor and the story premise is nothing more than your run-of-the-mill "hunt down the guy who tried to kill you". But hopefully that will change soon... I hope. Apart from not giving a damn about the story from pretty much the start of the game, yeah, I'm having lots of fun discovering new places (even if some are completely useless and most caves are pointless), shooting guys in the head and crippling creatures. I sense hours and hours of good fun to be had, hehe.
Broken Quests?
There are two side quests I think are broken, though... I don't want to leak any spoilers, so I'm just gonna say that in one of them I've done all I was asked for and when the next step in the quest is revealed to me, I get no marker whatsoever telling me where to go. On the other one I'm supposed to get an item and then head back to the same character that had requested it in the first place; I did just that, but whenever I talk to the guy again, I get no new dialogue option, one that would allow me to complete or at least carry on with the quest :(
Here's me comfortably leaning against a wall just after my one and only death so far-- any resemblance to the real me may not just be a mere coincidence :P PS: am I the only one who rarely ever uses VATS? I mean, I didn't see a real use to it except for aesthetics and design purposes in Fallout 3 and I sure ain't finding any need for it in New Vegas as well.
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I just blew a good chunk of my October's paycheck on a bunch of games, and right on the first day of November, nonetheless. Am I proud of it? Not really... but I couldn't help myself, lol.
That should make it a busy month... Actually, I'll probably only be playing some of these next year or something... Believe it or not, I haven't even been able to touch StarCraft II yet. And yes, I did buy it when it came out :O
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This is not as much an actual blog entry, but more of a request. "Would you kindly" please go to this Giant Bomb forum link and answer that poll for me? It's actually work-related so the more people answer it the better for me!
Deadwood (the TV series) was over in 2006, but because I hate westerns I've never picked it up, thinking it would just be like your typical run-of-the-mill cliched-western; until last week, that is. I luckily caught up on the first episode of the first season on a TV-rerun and by the end of it, I was like "I NEED to buy the DVDs!"
And I did just that, right the next day. And I finally finished watching the first season yesterday. I can't wait to pick it up again tonight after dinner and I couldn't be more happy to admit that I was wrong: Deadwood is an incredible and enthralling drama that just happens to take place in the wild west-- it's definitely not a John Wayne-type flick. The cast is amazing, the acting is top-notch (Ian McShane is particularly phenomenal!) and the writing is nearly flawless.
24 more episodes to go... :)
PS: if you're gonna comment, please don't ruin the ending for me :P
This is a bit of a late entry, but I've been on Giant Bomb for a little over a year now, yay :) It doesn't feel that "long" though, 'cause I've only been actively logging in to the crazy madness (the good type, that is!) that is GB since late May or even early June, can't tell for certain.
Anyway, between spending time with my girlfriend, getting work done, playing games and sleeping (and that is in fact the correct order), I'm trying to be an active member of the community and to keep adding some info to the wiki pages. So far so good, but it is true that the amount of work I get usually comes around in cycles, which may mean that I may not be able to add anything to the site for weeks in a row, or even for as long as a couple of months straight. So yeah, I may as well keep doing it while I still can :)
Finally, I'd like to thank the awesome staff for their amazing work, and also the not any less amazing mods that keep this community running smoothly. Kudos to you all! "See" you next year ;)
I think Valve's third surprise for 2011 won't actually come as much of a surprise. Maybe it will be the announcement of an upgrade to their Source Engine-- I'm pretty sure they've been working on it a while. I'm also pretty sure they realize that fans expect "Half Life 3" to be the best game EVER, and the current Source Engine is starting to show its age, so I think that upgrading it would be the next natural step before any new Half-Life related release. That's what I'd do anyway...
PS: yes, I know I wrote Half-Life 3. I don't actually think there will be an "episode three" at this point, but an actual third game.
edit: sorry to those who had already commented on this... I wanted to edit it and pressed the delete button, lol. That's what you get for writing blog entries while being at work :P
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