So, time for another gaming update on what I have been playing.
Valkyria Chronicles
Finally got round to finishing this this week. I got to the final mission more than a month ago, but it is rather like a boss fight, and doesn't require all that much strategy, so I got annoyed and left it. But I came back and finished it off, to a great ending. It has a real feel good finish and is beautifully animated. Also, once you finish you can play the game again keeping your high level characters, which is a lot of fun. Still incredibly annoyed that the sequels are on PSP, I really want to play 2 and 3, but I refuse to pay £200+ for a handheld. It has given me a desire to return to some other alternative strategy games too, like Fire Emblem and Advance Wars.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
I received this for my birthday yesterday, so haven't played it all that much, but got a few hours in. It feels more dramatic than MW2, instead of being one soldier in an army, like the opening MW2 missions, you are one guy in a small group doing ludicrous things. It is about as stealthy and discreet as a sledgehammer, black ops really sounds like it ought to be a splinter cell style game, but it is more serious sam than anything. If you want to single handedly win the Vietnam war, this is the game for you. There are explosions and bullets flying everywhere, it gets pretty crazy. I have also found it to be a lot more of a grind compared to earlier Call of Duty games. It has the standard issue of your AI team mates being utterly useful, but some missions really do feel like you are desperately trying to reach the next checkpoint, to manage that extra step forward and it can feel like a bit of a chore. You try sections again and again, hoping for that one go where you manage to get everyone, maybe your allies actually get a kill, so you can push into the next room and die over and over again there too. I am a veteran of shooters, but this feels much harder than others, and a bit more arbitrary too, you get little help sometimes with regard what you are actually trying to do, and I appear to have been killed on numerous occasions by enemies behind me.
All in all, it is good, but not brilliant, and can be very frustrating. The story feels very disjointed and random too with your character leaping around memories. It is moments of brilliance separated by periods of tedious grind.
Vanquish
I need to play more of this game. This could well be my all time favourite shooter. It is a brilliant combination of cover based and none cover based shooters. One major issue with cover games like Gears of War is that because you need cover for every fight, the placement of walls can feel very artificial, they feel like they have been put there deliberately to shelter you, rather than feeling natural. Vanquish gets around this by using one simple method. The cover can be anything from something you stand behind, to something you lie behind. The widely varying size makes it feel much more realistic, like you are diving behind anything close by, rather than moving from one preset chest high wall to the next. Enemies die fast enough that firing from cover never feels like slow target shooting, and there are enough enemies to keep you busy and mindful of your surroundings.
What really sets this game apart is the fact that any time you are bored of shooting from behind a wall and need a change, you can dive out, slide along the floor at high speed, and gun down Russian robots in slow motion. What this means is that you can alternate between careful cover based shooting, and high speed arcade fun any time you like, both options work really well. This gives the game significant depth and mileage over games that rely on one or the other. It is like Devil May Cry meets Gears of War.
Everything about the game oozes style, it is beautiful to look at, it flows very naturally. The environments are varied, as are the actions needed in various sections, from running gauntlets of fire, to wide city squares, to cargo trains. These are regularly interspersed with larger min boss type battles which do a great job of further breaking up missions. The cut scenes are kept short and are well written, the characters various and interesting, which means you spend the majority of your time actually playing, not just watching. There are very few loads too, making it feel like you can just play the game start to finish with almost no interruption.
I cannot recommend this enough to any shooter fan out there.
Valkyria Chronicles
Finally got round to finishing this this week. I got to the final mission more than a month ago, but it is rather like a boss fight, and doesn't require all that much strategy, so I got annoyed and left it. But I came back and finished it off, to a great ending. It has a real feel good finish and is beautifully animated. Also, once you finish you can play the game again keeping your high level characters, which is a lot of fun. Still incredibly annoyed that the sequels are on PSP, I really want to play 2 and 3, but I refuse to pay £200+ for a handheld. It has given me a desire to return to some other alternative strategy games too, like Fire Emblem and Advance Wars.
Call of Duty: Black Ops
I received this for my birthday yesterday, so haven't played it all that much, but got a few hours in. It feels more dramatic than MW2, instead of being one soldier in an army, like the opening MW2 missions, you are one guy in a small group doing ludicrous things. It is about as stealthy and discreet as a sledgehammer, black ops really sounds like it ought to be a splinter cell style game, but it is more serious sam than anything. If you want to single handedly win the Vietnam war, this is the game for you. There are explosions and bullets flying everywhere, it gets pretty crazy. I have also found it to be a lot more of a grind compared to earlier Call of Duty games. It has the standard issue of your AI team mates being utterly useful, but some missions really do feel like you are desperately trying to reach the next checkpoint, to manage that extra step forward and it can feel like a bit of a chore. You try sections again and again, hoping for that one go where you manage to get everyone, maybe your allies actually get a kill, so you can push into the next room and die over and over again there too. I am a veteran of shooters, but this feels much harder than others, and a bit more arbitrary too, you get little help sometimes with regard what you are actually trying to do, and I appear to have been killed on numerous occasions by enemies behind me.
All in all, it is good, but not brilliant, and can be very frustrating. The story feels very disjointed and random too with your character leaping around memories. It is moments of brilliance separated by periods of tedious grind.
Vanquish
I need to play more of this game. This could well be my all time favourite shooter. It is a brilliant combination of cover based and none cover based shooters. One major issue with cover games like Gears of War is that because you need cover for every fight, the placement of walls can feel very artificial, they feel like they have been put there deliberately to shelter you, rather than feeling natural. Vanquish gets around this by using one simple method. The cover can be anything from something you stand behind, to something you lie behind. The widely varying size makes it feel much more realistic, like you are diving behind anything close by, rather than moving from one preset chest high wall to the next. Enemies die fast enough that firing from cover never feels like slow target shooting, and there are enough enemies to keep you busy and mindful of your surroundings.
What really sets this game apart is the fact that any time you are bored of shooting from behind a wall and need a change, you can dive out, slide along the floor at high speed, and gun down Russian robots in slow motion. What this means is that you can alternate between careful cover based shooting, and high speed arcade fun any time you like, both options work really well. This gives the game significant depth and mileage over games that rely on one or the other. It is like Devil May Cry meets Gears of War.
Everything about the game oozes style, it is beautiful to look at, it flows very naturally. The environments are varied, as are the actions needed in various sections, from running gauntlets of fire, to wide city squares, to cargo trains. These are regularly interspersed with larger min boss type battles which do a great job of further breaking up missions. The cut scenes are kept short and are well written, the characters various and interesting, which means you spend the majority of your time actually playing, not just watching. There are very few loads too, making it feel like you can just play the game start to finish with almost no interruption.
I cannot recommend this enough to any shooter fan out there.
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