I am not a highly trained soldier. You can tell by watching me play a shooter, where I tend to shoot all around my target and hope it has the courtesy to step into the line of fire. But the first Modern Warfare made me feel like a highly trained soldier by lining up my gun for me. I squeeze the gamepad’s left trigger and my weapon points at a bad guy! Then it’s up to me to either finesse the aim for a headshot, or pull the right trigger to fire. From there I learn that awesome move where I pulse the left trigger to drop a cluster of bad guys one-by-one, with nary a wasted bullet. Years of virtual military training, sidestepped with an interface tweak.
After the jump, I’m not a professional race car diver either Continue reading →
I bought the game when a mod called Call of Pripyat Complete had just been released. It’s a huge mod with tons of new high-definition textures, expanded view distance, enchanced vegetation, and a ton of small changes to the AI, NPC behavior, UI, and soundscape. Apparently a similar mod has been released for the previous two games to great acclaim. Lots of people like this mod. And I want to, too!
After the jump, addicted to mods Continue reading →
These days, any shooter is two separate games: the single-player and the multiplayer. So when you read one of the recently written reviews of SOCOM 4, which doesn’t come out until next week, it’s more useless than normal. Particularly given how the SOCOM games have put so much emphasis on multiplayer.
To Gamepro’s credit, they’re letting me write two reviews. The review of the single player was just posted. Find out how awesome it is when your shooter includes stealth missions!
Remember when you thought you’d never again read the words “you have been detected” followed by the words “mission failed”? According to SOCOM 4, you’ve got another thing coming.
Thumbs down for SOCOM 4’s single player.
I can’t really get worked up for Resistance 3, partly because it looks like any other competent unremarkable shooter. But mostly because it’s going to be missing my favorite feature: the cool co-op mode from Resistance 2.
However, one of the most encouraging things Resistance 3 will do is bring back the weapon wheel, which lets you carry an unlimited number of the game’s crazy guns. This is a reversal from Resistance 2, which limited you to two guns at a time. In other words, the next game will be more like Ratchet & Clank, and less like Halo.
On 1up, I’ve written a list of completely new things you’ll be seeing in Resistance 3.
I’ve played almost every Final Fantasy game released in the United States. I bought Final Fantasy VI a second time just so I could play it at work on my Game Boy Advance. There’s an army of Final Fantasy action figures on my desk. I have twenty-nine versions of the chocobo theme on my iPod. I have a plush tonberry doll. I named the plush tonberry doll.*
And even I think the Dissidia story is completely bonkers.
After the jump, Final Fantasy fanfiction Continue reading →
While talking to someone recently about real time strategy games, I was trying to explain the distinct appeal of Company of Heroes as opposed to Starcraft II. They’re both excellent games, they both look fantastic, and they both reward skilled gameplay. But they’re hugely different in an important way.
Starcraft II is designed as an e-sport. It rewards skill above all else. It’s based on the placement of a sentry shield, the crucial seconds spent moving drones between resources, and the timing of a chronoboost. It’s a gorgeous game, to be sure, but it was built primarily for its long and arguably infinite learning curve.
Company of Heroes is a war movie game to end all war movie games, and it captures the feel of World War II action as well as any shooter. You can’t help but be awed by the destructible terrain, the animation, the voice acting, the explosions, and the spectacle of it all. It requires skill, to be sure, but it’s one of those rare RTSs that lives in your gut more than your head.
This idea of a skill vs. spectacle is a spectrum. I can’t think of any RTS that doesn’t appeal to both skill and spectacle. It’s just that some lean one way or the other.
After the jump…wait, did you paste the wrong text into this entry? Continue reading →
Stalker Call of Pripyat is a gorgeous game. All the graphical elements are top-notch, but of particular note is the art direction, which evokes an incredibly bleak environment and still manages to be mysterious and beautiful at the same time. Sure, the grass sort of appears around you as you walk, and some of the objects in the world are a little chunky, but overall the game is totally gorgeous. Most importantly, it does a fantastic job of placing you in the blasted, worn out world of the Zone, making it feel lived in and picked over and rusted and real. It’s a gorgeous game.
After the jump, something may or may not happen Continue reading →
At one point in the co-op action game, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, the players drift down a river on a round raft. The raft has four motors on the edges. When a player uses one of the motors, the raft drifts in the appropriate direction. This being a raft floating on water and physics being physics, it is liable to turn as it moves. So that can get messy. Then there are the other three yahoos on the raft who might have their own ideas about where the raft should go. I once went canoeing with my buddy Kevin when I was a kid. I was awesome at paddling the canoe. But he kept screwing us up by paddling different from me. Canoes, man. It’s a wonder humanity ever made it across the Bering Strait.
Anyway, while you’re spinning and drifting down this river, you’re trying to pick up flaoting loot boxes. And did I mention that there are bombs floating all over the place? Also giant turtles with spiky shells. I suspect it will be one of those levels I’ll be driven to finish solely because I never want to have to play it again.
During a demo of the level, the game’s developer, Chad Dezern, calls the raft “an extremely democratic vehicle”. And, yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty good approximation of the contemporary political process.
(In case it’s not clear, the raft represents Barack Obama, the port motor is Harry Reid, the starboard motor is John Boehner, the turtles are Rush Limbaugh, and the bombs are Glenn Beck’s tears. The river itself is stuff Fox News says. The loot boxes are the state parks that didn’t have to close this past week.)
Sims Medieval was a real revelation to me. I expected some sort of cheap EA add-on. Instead, I got something brilliant. Just when I think I’m over The Sims, it’s pulls me back in.
Thumbs up. Way up.
Dissidia 012 [duodecim] Final Fantasy is the sequel to Dissidia Final Fantasy. That might be a little hard to figure out at first glance, because generally, a 1 is not followed by a 012. The title refers to something that makes (some) sense in the story, but it’s yet another entry in a long line of confusing Square Enix game names. It’s also not the last time you’ll be forced to make sense of numbers in this excellent fighting game.
After the jump, why two life bars are better than one Continue reading →
Retro is big these days. Retro remakes are everywhere, from Bionic Commando to my personal favorite, Pac-Man CE DX. Most of the time, retro games are simply retro style and improve or enhance the game with the use of modern hardware. Forget-Me-Not isn’t like that. It’s a game that looks and feels right out of 1980. And the title, I think, has double meaning.
After the jump: all that’s missing is the quarter slot Continue reading →
I’ve been having a fantastic time with this dark and immersive and scary and imaginative and weird game. And then I fall down a funny rabbit hole. After the last play session, I did more writing about the game than playing the game. I enjoy engaging with the game is a creative and reflective way. I was also, I admit, thinking about how much people might like to read what I wrote. My game diary was gonna be good! And sexy! And funny! Fun to do, and it was going to get me accolades and possibly women? Man gaming is wonderful.
After the jump, gaming isn’t wonderful Continue reading →
This will probably sound as random to you as it sounded to me when I started playing a few days ago, but I’ve been playing Phantasy Star Portable 2, the PSP version of Phantasy Star Online that came out six months ago. I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. What I’m about to tell you after the jump makes even less sense. It’s even kind of, well, icky.
After the jump, eat your heart out, Second Life! Continue reading →
Quick, read this before it gets buried under the rest of the Front Page spam errrr content! No really I love Little Big Planet! Heh!
It wouldn’t be the internet we all know and partially loathe if it didn’t have threads where selfish people whine about their relationship dysfunctions like petulant babymen and are thusly called out by clueless social mutants who compensate for their own empty lives by criticizing the lives of others. Games are tearing this house apart!
And it wouldn’t be Qt3 if we all didn’t show how cheap and old we were and pretended like the computer age never happened and even if it did, it disappeared in the mid-1990’s. Wow, guys.
More objects of scorn and ridicule after the jump. Continue reading →
Nothing! Twenty four hours of absolute diddly squat! Not even a seagull to break the monotony — we’re too far from shore! This time command really screwed the pooch in sending us all the way out here. There is nothing useful floating out here at all.
After the jump, a twist ending Continue reading →
