So once again I am waiting to play the most talked about game of the week. I had preordered The Witcher 2 which dropped this week as well but after consuming all the LA Noire related content I could find I just couldn't handle the poorly controlled roboting puppet faces of The Witcher. I am deadly serious when I say that LA Noire has made it hard to take even cinematics in other games seriously hence my status warning: "Once your faces go MOCAP, you never go back." I think my brain is seriously broken, years had conditioned me to accept how faces looked and moved in games. A couple of weeks ago I was even impressed looking at the Witcher 2 stuff that was coming out. Now, that is all gone and I just about have to close my eyes to take dialog seriously and it really doesn't help that the voice acting is still so stilted and awkward. I think it will be something that is talked about later in LA Noire but the voice acting alone is a step above what any other game has brought to the table and when you combine that with the faces, its just on a whole other level. Of course, I haven't played LA Noire yet, as I am still waiting by the mailbox, so actually seeing it in person might break the spell a little. I guess we will find out, unfortunately for The Witcher 2, it has just gone on the Steam Shelf as I like to call it (like it seems to already be for most sites, but I guess that is related to the amount of promotional content they provided) and lets just say that there are a bunch of really solid games on that Shelf, and it will have to fight it's way off.
As a final aside, it really didn't help when The Witcher 2 was choppy and unpleasant to play on my PC. When it does find a way off the shelf hopefully I will have upgraded my GPUs (2x275GTX) which at the moment are a little aged, but still fairly capable. I honestly feel watching the quicklook, that I am getting worse performance than the GB team and they only have a 270? Maybe this game inversely scales with SLi, wouldn't be the first time. I didn't want whinging about needing a PC upgrade to become a theme, but I seem doomed to this end.
While I am still waiting to receive my copy of what has only recently for me become a highly anticipated game (thanks to GB QuickLooks) I am already wishing that Ubi had taken this opportunity to include a co-op mode. The multi-player probably indicates that this will happen in the next main episode of the series but this game seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out. From a story perspective since you already have AI 'assastants' (assassin-assistants) and it seems like they could have easily slipped another player in without some 'gamey' explanation. Still, I hope I am right about the next one and will keenly await details of the next installment.
I have to admit that I am really looking forward to trying the multi, it seems to have the fairly underutilised 'hide in plain sight stealth' hunter-hunted thing going on which hasn't really been done well on consoles yet and offers a clear alternative to all the COD style shooters around. On a final note, this couple of months have and will continue to be expensive for gamers like me, it's pretty crazy to think how many big titles are coming out or have already come out this month. My wallet is groaning, my PS3 glowing hot and my PC sings it's siren 'upgrade me' song to me every night.
Heading out to my local EB to grab my copy of Black Ops at midnight and take part in the ridiculous tie in promotion they have with V Energy drinks in Australia. Anyway want the chance to win a Black Ops branded beer fridge? That's pretty gold. Anyway, will be back shortly after midnight and will be installing post haste to get my first taste of Black Ops. I love that this is one of those releases that it pays to live in the geographically distant antipodes. Woo!
Well, these are my very first impressions having completed the first mission on 00 and played a little bit of multi. Groan. I wish they had just released the original as a Wiiware title. Frankly the framerate is pretty horrible, the graphics are sub average (even for Wii), the controls are alright but my major complaint is that all the changes that they made haven't been improvements. The multiplayer is some weird MW2 via GoldenEye thing and has lost most of the charm of the original. The single player story is weird, taking little detours from the original and to be honest, it just feels wrong with Daniel Craig. Also I noticed they didn't use Sean Bean's likeness for Trevalyan, they could have at lest thrown him a bone, I haven't seen him in much recently. Frankly I don't know how much more I am going to play, I really wanted to like it but so far it's not pushing any of the right buttons.
Well, now playing isn't strictly true but I did pick up the game and have opened the box, but that's as far as I have got. The Golden controller feels ok, it has this sort of matte rough feel on the underside but smooth on the top, not too sure how that will feel after a long game session. Will hopefully get to spend some time with it over the next few, try out the multi with the old guard and see how it goes. It feels weird to get the wii out really, it was a strange sort of grey colour from all the dust but it still works. Funny how I had forgotten about those few wiiware games I had mean't to play at some point. Oh well, holidays are coming. I might get sick of COD and WoW and GT5... maybe... actually, anyone want to buy a wii?
So last year's TF2 Halloween Event was pretty great but the TF2 Team at Valve have really upped the ante this year. The boss battle is epic and really changes up the game, the dlc content is pretty great and the quest to craft a Saxton Hale mask is all consuming.
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