What's up everyone? It is the 29th of October and here is what I have been playing:
Fallout New Vegas
Totally awesome so far, really enjoying this. I find the criticisms of the game rather interesting. Listening to people Like Jess Chobot and others, the game has been criticised for being too much like the first one, for being buggy, for having a weaker story, and various other things. A few people have said it plays exactly like 3. Well, yes and no. Many of the mechanics are the same, but the fact that you keep spent shell cases and make new ammo, the fact you can create an awful lot more stuff, and the fact the game is much harder and forces you to make use of things like food and water sources, unlike 3, makes it a rather different beast to play.
Even without hardcore mode on, this game feels far deeper, more immersive, and far more like a survival game than 3 ever did. As far as the story goes, I much prefer this one, the story in 3 I found a little irritating and rather incidental to the plot, New Vegas to me feels much more important in scale, and gives you real choices about what you do. In 3 you pretty much just follow the main quest, whereas in New Vegas you shape the way the events go from an early stage. To me this makes it more much involving and rewarding, and gives you real choices, which is something I talk about an awful lot I know.
Jess complained too about finding a large number of radscorpions blocking her way to the next main quest location. Well I think that is inevitable in a large open world like fallout, and also is inevitable in a game where so much of it is based upon side quests and leveling up. If you can't get somewhere, get better until you can, that is pretty standard gaming stuff. Almost immediately upon starting the game my brother was attacked by a giant radscorpion in goodsprings, it wouldn't leave no matter how much he waited, slept, or hid in buildings, and in the end he had to just run away until it stopped chasing him. Unfortunate, but I think it is just one of those things, we both found it very funny.
If you really want to be disturbed, google 'fallout new vegas' and go to images, rather near the top is a pic of a naked man having sex with a giant scorpion...
As to the bugs, since I am in Britain the patch was out by the time I got the game home last Friday, and aside from the odd strange animation, nothing major has happened. It has only crashed the once too, which isn't bad in probably 20 hours of play. Yes I would have liked the game to work straight out of the box, and releasing a buggy game can be considered bad form, but they patched it immediately and so far I for one have had no real issues, so I am not bothered.
[youtube clip_id="BMHkFUQiQzo"]
this video made me laugh so much
So far I give this an excellent 9.5 deathclaw hands, and think it is a much better game than 3.
Castlevania Lords of Shadow:
Now this game too has drawn a lot of flack from many people, too much like other games, not enough like Castlevania. An awful lot like God of War/Dante's Inferno/Devil May Cry...
so?
Personally I do not care, the combat is excellent, the graphics great, the story is interesting. God of War is an excellent series, so if Lords of Shadows is a lot like it, well great, so it should be. The combat is every bit as deep and varied as God of War, they have done an excellent job on it. It is funny really, nobody thinks twice about there being lots of games all featuring shooting, or lots of 3D platformers, or 2D platformers, they are just types of game so there can be lots of them, but we got a few games taking the combat system of god of war, and suddenly they are copying. What exactly is the difference? Nobody makes this complaint of Super Meat Boy for example, a 2d platformer in which you press a button to jump, 'hey they have copied this from Mario' well yeah, it is a good idea.
As to the second point, it not being a Castlevania game, well that is kinda the point of a reboot, bring in some new ideas and new themes. The recent one, Harmony of Despair? shows the 2D Castlevania is still very much alive, so why shouldn't they change the 3D one, which in the past was always rubbish. All in all I am really enjoying this game so far, though I haven't played it all that much, the combat is done very well, characters are cool, story is interesting, I look forward to more.
Ongoing score, 9 staked vampires.
Front Mission Evolved:
Just picked it up this evening on the way back from work, played for an hour when I got home. I am a huge mech fan, and so far have always been really disappointed in mech games, which usually suffer from having too much time spent on the customisation side, and no time spent on the actual mission side. Armored Core could be an awesome series if the massively detailed customisation process was actually supported by missions you wanted to play. But they are always pretty dull in the actual game, so my enthusiasm for this game was wary.
In actual fact I am finding it awesome so far. Not too far in, so this may change later, but at the moment the mechs look really cool, the guns and explosions are big, the combat is very fast, and the mech customisation has lots of variety and options. Really everything you could need. I think Square Enix must have been listening in on my conversations lately, because not too long ago I told my brother I felt that mech games really needed to make the gameplay be more like a traditional 3rd person shooter, and that is what they have done. The four shoulder buttons control your two hand and two shoulder weapon mounts respectively, you can boost about at high speed, collect armour and ammo restocks, it has a lot in common with other traditional shooters. But you unleash very powerful weapons, boost about, and destroy buildings, so it still feels like a mech combat, lots of heavy impact.
All aspects of the game have been simplied and/or made more 'arcadey' which is exactly what it needed. Square have brought along their RPG trousers too in the form of skills. Skills can be equipped to each weapon slot, and have a chance of conferring a bonus, a melee skill for example gives you a certain percentage chance of scoring an instant kill critical hit, missiles can have a skill which triggers a larger area of effect, and so on. The visuals are good, it sounds good, and it is lots of fun.
It does have on foot sections too, which are usually the death of games not based around them (see some of the star wars games, Rebel Strike, Clone Wars) but these parts don't let the game down too badly. It is incredibly basic, but it all works, and I was very surprised at how cool the guns sound in these sections, really throaty and cool. So a simple distraction, it wont bother you too much either way, an inoffensive diversion. The characters are quite interesting too, in as much as they are quite generic JRPG types, whereas mech games are normally more gritty and hardbitten, this lot wouldn't look out of place in an episode of GUNDAM.
8.5 rockets of doom
Halo Reach:
Really enjoying this now, gotten quite near the end (so I am told) but see my blog post about it for more details here.
Yes, I have bought a lot of top titles this last week, but I worked for two solid weeks without a day off, so treated myself, what the hell. Now I am spoilt for choice, life is tough sometimes.
Fallout New Vegas
Totally awesome so far, really enjoying this. I find the criticisms of the game rather interesting. Listening to people Like Jess Chobot and others, the game has been criticised for being too much like the first one, for being buggy, for having a weaker story, and various other things. A few people have said it plays exactly like 3. Well, yes and no. Many of the mechanics are the same, but the fact that you keep spent shell cases and make new ammo, the fact you can create an awful lot more stuff, and the fact the game is much harder and forces you to make use of things like food and water sources, unlike 3, makes it a rather different beast to play.
Even without hardcore mode on, this game feels far deeper, more immersive, and far more like a survival game than 3 ever did. As far as the story goes, I much prefer this one, the story in 3 I found a little irritating and rather incidental to the plot, New Vegas to me feels much more important in scale, and gives you real choices about what you do. In 3 you pretty much just follow the main quest, whereas in New Vegas you shape the way the events go from an early stage. To me this makes it more much involving and rewarding, and gives you real choices, which is something I talk about an awful lot I know.
Jess complained too about finding a large number of radscorpions blocking her way to the next main quest location. Well I think that is inevitable in a large open world like fallout, and also is inevitable in a game where so much of it is based upon side quests and leveling up. If you can't get somewhere, get better until you can, that is pretty standard gaming stuff. Almost immediately upon starting the game my brother was attacked by a giant radscorpion in goodsprings, it wouldn't leave no matter how much he waited, slept, or hid in buildings, and in the end he had to just run away until it stopped chasing him. Unfortunate, but I think it is just one of those things, we both found it very funny.
If you really want to be disturbed, google 'fallout new vegas' and go to images, rather near the top is a pic of a naked man having sex with a giant scorpion...
As to the bugs, since I am in Britain the patch was out by the time I got the game home last Friday, and aside from the odd strange animation, nothing major has happened. It has only crashed the once too, which isn't bad in probably 20 hours of play. Yes I would have liked the game to work straight out of the box, and releasing a buggy game can be considered bad form, but they patched it immediately and so far I for one have had no real issues, so I am not bothered.
[youtube clip_id="BMHkFUQiQzo"]
this video made me laugh so much
So far I give this an excellent 9.5 deathclaw hands, and think it is a much better game than 3.
Castlevania Lords of Shadow:
Now this game too has drawn a lot of flack from many people, too much like other games, not enough like Castlevania. An awful lot like God of War/Dante's Inferno/Devil May Cry...
so?
Personally I do not care, the combat is excellent, the graphics great, the story is interesting. God of War is an excellent series, so if Lords of Shadows is a lot like it, well great, so it should be. The combat is every bit as deep and varied as God of War, they have done an excellent job on it. It is funny really, nobody thinks twice about there being lots of games all featuring shooting, or lots of 3D platformers, or 2D platformers, they are just types of game so there can be lots of them, but we got a few games taking the combat system of god of war, and suddenly they are copying. What exactly is the difference? Nobody makes this complaint of Super Meat Boy for example, a 2d platformer in which you press a button to jump, 'hey they have copied this from Mario' well yeah, it is a good idea.
As to the second point, it not being a Castlevania game, well that is kinda the point of a reboot, bring in some new ideas and new themes. The recent one, Harmony of Despair? shows the 2D Castlevania is still very much alive, so why shouldn't they change the 3D one, which in the past was always rubbish. All in all I am really enjoying this game so far, though I haven't played it all that much, the combat is done very well, characters are cool, story is interesting, I look forward to more.
- awesome
Ongoing score, 9 staked vampires.
Front Mission Evolved:
Just picked it up this evening on the way back from work, played for an hour when I got home. I am a huge mech fan, and so far have always been really disappointed in mech games, which usually suffer from having too much time spent on the customisation side, and no time spent on the actual mission side. Armored Core could be an awesome series if the massively detailed customisation process was actually supported by missions you wanted to play. But they are always pretty dull in the actual game, so my enthusiasm for this game was wary.
- boom
In actual fact I am finding it awesome so far. Not too far in, so this may change later, but at the moment the mechs look really cool, the guns and explosions are big, the combat is very fast, and the mech customisation has lots of variety and options. Really everything you could need. I think Square Enix must have been listening in on my conversations lately, because not too long ago I told my brother I felt that mech games really needed to make the gameplay be more like a traditional 3rd person shooter, and that is what they have done. The four shoulder buttons control your two hand and two shoulder weapon mounts respectively, you can boost about at high speed, collect armour and ammo restocks, it has a lot in common with other traditional shooters. But you unleash very powerful weapons, boost about, and destroy buildings, so it still feels like a mech combat, lots of heavy impact.
All aspects of the game have been simplied and/or made more 'arcadey' which is exactly what it needed. Square have brought along their RPG trousers too in the form of skills. Skills can be equipped to each weapon slot, and have a chance of conferring a bonus, a melee skill for example gives you a certain percentage chance of scoring an instant kill critical hit, missiles can have a skill which triggers a larger area of effect, and so on. The visuals are good, it sounds good, and it is lots of fun.
It does have on foot sections too, which are usually the death of games not based around them (see some of the star wars games, Rebel Strike, Clone Wars) but these parts don't let the game down too badly. It is incredibly basic, but it all works, and I was very surprised at how cool the guns sound in these sections, really throaty and cool. So a simple distraction, it wont bother you too much either way, an inoffensive diversion. The characters are quite interesting too, in as much as they are quite generic JRPG types, whereas mech games are normally more gritty and hardbitten, this lot wouldn't look out of place in an episode of GUNDAM.
8.5 rockets of doom
Halo Reach:
Really enjoying this now, gotten quite near the end (so I am told) but see my blog post about it for more details here.
Yes, I have bought a lot of top titles this last week, but I worked for two solid weeks without a day off, so treated myself, what the hell. Now I am spoilt for choice, life is tough sometimes.
So the youtube link doesn't exactly work for this sight apparently
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