Fighting Games

Any fans out there that aren't Asians? I've very recently rediscovered, along with Silent (my brother-in-law), Tekken 2. It's 6 bucks on the PSN and it's marvelous. We've spent the last 2 days playing the Arcade mode back and forth to unlock everyone and it's been a stellar experience.

Tekken 2 is a game that I only ever rented and played a lot during those times. I loved the game way back then and to this day it's still a heart pounding fighter. Silent unfortunately pounds me into the ground with Law, but when I get my Heihachi skills back up to snuff I'm hoping to embarrass him on the daily.

Were there any fighter games you played a lot and actually got good at? SoulCalibur 1 and 2 were it for me. Kalik in 1 and Spawn for XBOX in 2.

Anyways, this has inspired me to get Tekken 6 from Goozex on PS3. I've done a lot of research and decided for that over Street Fighter 4. I was never really that into SF and I keep reading that several of the characters are overpowered.

Maybe I'll see some of you online.

P.S. Don't play Mortal Kombat against Lead Salad....he'll push your poop in.

Are there fanboys amongst Popular Science editors?

I know that the Wii and Kinect have an audience, but you have to love this backhanded comment from a very well respected magazine.

I'm impressed at their knowledge of the device. I guess it's their jobs, but I didn't expect that zinger at the end.

Black Ops: Declassified

Black Ops has done pretty well for itself so far.  I don't think there's a person on this blogroll that doesn't own it.  This title provides us with a unique opportunity, however, because as a group we're all getting to know it better on different platforms.  I'm curious to what might be different about the game depending on the community of players, style of play, or open communications. I'm also wondering what set-ups are working out for you all best.  Customization has become a staple gameplay element in the last few COD games, and the game seems to thrive pretty well regardless of set-up one may use.  Black Ops balances this better than some of the preceding titles, in my opinion - the modern warfare games seemed to encourage different weapon set-ups as apposed to Black Ops that seems to make sure that everyone can have fun as they wish.

I'm currently fiding great success with the M14 and the FAL.  I do a fair amount of hardcore TDM, but the guns still pack a punch so they end up working out pretty well in core TDM as well. I've yet to venture into any of the objective playlists, but those all seem to be variations on a theme (read, "kill everyone") anyway.  Perk wise, I've been sticking to Ghost, Warlord, and Ninja, all "pro" as I've earned them.  Occasionally if I run into it more often, I'll use Hacker instead of Ninja, but I don't prefer it.  Equipment really doesn't become a huge part of my set-up, but the claymores seem to do nicely.

The reason I am curious at all about this is due to the success I've seen with this set-up.  It seems like everyone on the 360 is rolling out with some variant on this set-up.  You run into different styles of groups, but for the most part, Ghost seems used all the time.  I'm not surprised either - it seems like all of the killstreaks revolve around being seen by the enemy in some fashion and avoiding that should be priority one. It probably doesn't help that there isn't much of a better choice for the first slot of perks either.  Lightweight isn't bad, but without the runners having their dominance, lightweight seems to be a waste of a selection for me.

What's taking control of your platforms set-ups? Am I the new "runner", or "noob tuber", or is my set-up legit? Anyone else think the RC-XD should be a bonus for 4 or 5 kills, not 3?

Singularity Review

I finished Singularity last night and it's the best SP FPS campaign I've played since Bioshock. A neat trailer for you here.

The game was developed by the underappreciated "Raven Software". The guys that do a lot of work for id games with Quake and if my memory serves me right they ported Doom 3 (too lazy to fact check). Bottom line is they make a fine shooter with tight controls.

The game takes place between 1955 during the Cold War and 2010. You're a trooper sent to a mysterious island where there's been large energy readings and when you get there a bunch of crazy cool time stuff happens and to make a long interwoven story very short....you save a very bad Russian man in 1955 and he pretty much rules the world in 2010. The rest of the game is spent trying to right what you screwed up. The "butterfly effect" if you will.

Likes:

Controls were very tight and the gunplay is immensely satisfying.

Time Manipulation Device (TMD) - You'll eventually get the TMD and with if you solve a lot of puzzles and use it in combat to totally screw over the bad guys.

Time travel and pulses. Switching between 1955 and 2010 and seeing your actions affect the game world in such drastic ways is a friggin blast and is very well done. Shockingly well done at times. I found myself marveling at the details over and over again.

The story was a lot of fun to watch play out and while it wasn't anything too ground breaking it was refreshing to actually play a game where I cared about what was going on instead of going through the motions.

Puzzles are pretty easy, but nothing too complex.

Using the TMD in imaginative ways. One of my favorite ways to dispatch enemies was to basically make a "slowing time ball" (my term) and shoot it at a group of guys. Anyone caught in it moved slow and their bullets were slowed. What you do is you unload a ton of bullets into the ball and then use the TMD to get rid of the balls. When you dissolve the ball the enemies are hit with a hail of gunfire. Not super needed or necessary, but a lot of fun. Using the time ball as a sort of shield to dodge bullets was neat, too. You can def use your imagination in this game.

Perfect length for the game. Not too long and thankfully, unlike most big shooters nowadays cough CoD cough HALO cough not too short.

3 different endings and 1 of which is a mind screw!

Dislikes:

Unreal Engine 3. When the shit will developers stop using this damn thing. I hate it!

The game borrows, stylistically, from Bioshock pretty heavily at times, but they do it justice IMHO.

Puzzles can get repetative.

Really there wasn't a lot I didn't enjoy about the game. Even the boss fights were pretty cool...esp for an FPS.

All in all it's a great game that will most def get passed over by just about everyone because Activision didn't promote it at all.

It's a great game that plays like a great mix of Bioshock, Half Life 2 and even Dead Space.

I know most of you guys don't play many SP shooters, but you should def give this gem a chance because there probably won't ever be a sequel.

"Wii is a piece of s&*$!"

Ran into this a week back and thought it was funny and figured I'd repost it. It's 3 years old now and this guy was hating it back then. I like that he not only said it sucks because it's underpowered graphically, but also the CPU is too weak to make a complicated AI. Got to give him credit for not sugar coating it.

The next day he apologized, but I just read another article that was written yesterday of him defending what he said, but that he regrets the way he did it. Still funny.

5.6 Million people can't be wrong...

As of this moment, I'm not impressed with Black Ops.  It's hard to put my finger on since I've only played through the campaign once and dumped a couple hours into the multiplayer, but I'll try...

Memento did it best...
Campaign wise, I feel like it was a pretty weak story overall. For the sake of spoilers, I won't go into specific story details, but I didn't like the story structuring.  The flashback nature of starting each mission worked pretty well as a means to diversify the gameplay (new locations, etc.) but as it's own I always have felt this be a very lazy way to construct a story.  If done well, this narrative layout can be extremely powerful, but if done as a justification, it comes off feeling a little bit forced.

Why can't you be like your older brother?
Multiplayer is probably my biggest disappointment so far.  I remember hopping into MW2 and getting giggly with 3N3MY over how cool it was.  As time went on, we obviously found things that annoyed us, things that we would have done differently, but I still distinctly remember that feeling of knowing that I had something special in my hands while I was playing.  It wasn't perfect in the end, but that initial response really set the tone for the whole experience, and for the most part, it was accurate. Black Ops just hasn't done it for me yet.  It almost feels like it wants/wanted to become it's own new multiplayer experience but was left with a strong sense of obligation to look and play as much like MW2 as possible.

Missed Opportunities
My experience so far in Black Ops is already riddled with so many lost chances to do something cool and unique...
- Should we clean up the messy pile of killstreaks and perks we had in MW2? Nah...
- Should we add in some social and political commentary into this incredibly controversial point of American Military history? What?
- Should we use the F-word more? Mos Def.

I'll do some more playing with the Multi before I dive into details about it all. It wouldn't be a fair review it now - I'm dead tired and haven't past level 7 yet, so it wouldn't be all that beneficial to discuss it...

Sam Worthington Sucks

I was just texting to Lead Salad last week about my gripe with Black Ops SP is that it's main voice is voiced by none other than Sam Worthington. AKA "the guy that still can't sound like he's American and keeps landing huge roles in Hollywood playing Americans and now he's ruining video game immersion as well."

Avatar and Terminator are two very large blockbuster movies, but Terminator sucked huge goat balls. This guy tries to fake an American accent for 2 to 3 hours and fails miserably the whole time. Now he goes and does it to Black Ops, too.

I don't get casting directors....I really don't. It could be that he's even worse than Kevin Costner in Robin Hood, but at least Kevin Costner seems like he's not a flipping prick in interviews.

It's also been studied that there are very few actors that pull people to the theatres and Sam Worthington def isn't one of them. Will Smith, Brad Pitt and Cher are like the only ones.

LA Noire

Finally a trailer for a game announced like 4 years ago.

Trailer

Looks promising..take note of the phenomenal facial animations, best i've seen in a game yet.

Black Ops

Impressions Time!

I believe that just Skatch, brjahu and myself are the only ones that have the game and have played it. These are my initial thoughts.

Multi (3 hours played so far):

-Plays EXACTLY like every CoD since MW. Not that that's a bad thing because if it's not broke don't fix it.

-Balancing. While Treyarch may be known as the company that puts out CoD games between the real CoD games I find their MP to be more balanced. World at War, while not without faults, was far more balanced than MW and Black Ops feels a lot less "asshole" friendly than MW2. Kill Streaks don't build towards other kill streaks so there's a lot less crazy amount of crap going on. Only saw 1 or 2 games where someone had a very large K/D ratio unlike about every game of MW2.

-Perks. Everything is available from the start, but now you have to "buy" them. They took out some oldies like "Juggernaut" and "Stopping Power" which I am very happy about. Now the perks feel more like a preference and play style attribute and not a "use this or die" type of thing.

-Kill Streaks. Again, these are all unlocked, you just have to buy them. The RC car was particularly annoying to me at first until I realized that it replaces that rocket that you control which almost always guarantees a kill. At least the car needs a little more skill to find and kill a guy.

-Buying anything and everything. Talked about this with brjahu and he agreed. Not only do you have to reach a certain level to be able to unlock a gun, but then you have to buy that gun just to see if you like it. Not that that's a huge deal, but when you're trying to find a setup that works best for you, depleting all your funds to realize you hate that gun is frustrating. I've found after a couple hours you have so much money that it isn't as big a deal as it first seems.

-Audio. What's missing from it? I can't seem to pin it down. Music? There's something that's missing and it irks me and I can't figure out what.

-Maps. Not only do I feel Treyarch makes a better MP, but they undoubtedly make the better maps. Every one of the maps I've played has several levels and almost all of them are much larger than most of the maps in MW2. One of the snow maps in particular is a little too large with too many hiding spots, but other than that I like the complexity of them.

-Knife. It's back and retarded as ever. Why the hell you can lunge is beyond me, but at least there's no "Commando" anymore. I have seen, probably 10 times now, guys flat out sprint at me and try to knife me like in MW2, but it's only been successfull 2 or 3 times so while there's still frustration with it it's not nearly as problematic as MW2. It's funny watching kill cams because you can totally tell who is trying to recreate that perk setup of "Marathon, Light Weght, Commando." It's just sad that this game is the proof of how viable a strategy running at someone with your knife actually was.

Single:

-It's official, the CoD formula has grown thin. You can make the most riveting story, over the top action shooter ever, but when it's every iteration of CoD trying to "one up" each other it starts to feel grating.

-It's very over the top with so much action and explosions going on that it is actually difficult to tell who the hell you're supposed to be shooting. I found myself rolling my eyes at one point just wondering how much more of a hard on they could possibly have for Michael Bay.

-Story does seem cool though as it actually has a plot with mystery and intrigue.

(Impressions) Verdict:

After my first hour of MP gaming I was a little worried that I had bought a game that was less than thrilling. After unlocking stuff that doesn't suck and teaching myself to play with new guns I got that old CoD boner that we all love from time to time....or all the time. It's a very solid online shooter that does (so far) fix some gripes of MW2.

I'm pleased with my purchase because it's a shooter that will hold me over till Gears of War 3....brrrrt.

P.S. This is awesome. Because of the new theatre mode you can have proof of people glitching and Treyarch isn't gonna stand for it!

Dead Space 2 Lullaby

Consider my pants and the chair I'm sitting in...totally ruined.

Reminds me of the Dead Space "Twinkle" trailer.

Reminisce

Ever get nostalgia for a game and desperately wish they would make a sequel (and not a crappy one)? One particular game has always stood out to me and in particular, helped pull me into PC gaming.

Freelancer

It was a space-simulator, think Wing Commander or X-Wing, that involved a pretty decent plot with aliens and artifacts and what not. I forget if it's another part of the galaxy or whatever but these world ships settled on all these planets and systems. Anyways, you get better ships and weapons and there are secret weapons you can find and collect from areas of the different systems. The side missions were all generic and pretty much summed down to 3 different missions. You could also mine asteroids, trade, and just explore the different systems. There were hidden areas in clouds of gas and minefields and you can see my love affair with this game, haha. It was release in 2003 and I bet any computer could play the game nowadays and I suggest any gamer give this game a try.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancer_(video_game)

It really needs a sequel...

Dead Space on the brain....

I know you all know, but there are few games I've played that stick with me like Dead Space. Something about it's mix of horror, atmosphere, mysterious story and ominous setting just mix perfectly with me. I have very few criticisms with the game and have played through it an embarrassing amount of times.

Should I be surprised when I find myself seriously considering purchasing the Playstation Move to play Dead Space: Extraction when I get Dead Space 2 in January? It's a rail shooter, but still one of the better Wii games in existance and from what I've read actually does the genre a favor by showing that it doesn't have to suck.

I can find no better reason or game type to get the Move for. Not that I'm looking for a reason to buy one, but the thought of playing a great game in one of my favorite IPs in a style I absolutely loved as a kid (Lethal Enforcers or Time Crisis anyone?) just seems like a perfect storm for me to throw it on the Christmas list.

Plus, Killzone 3 will be Move compatible, but let's be honest....that'll probably play like garbage.