Friday, December 27, 2013

Sales Everywhere.

It's no secret that I like a video game sale. So much so that I've purchased a number of games over the years because they were on sale but have played little to none of said game(s). I chalk it up to having way too many interests and not enough time management skills to play those games.

Back at the end of August I made a conscious decision to not purchase a game on sale if I knew that I wasn't going to play it right away. Between the months of September to November I purchased a total of two games, a record for me. Those were Nascar on Steam which I did play but didn't like because of the bad controller support, and an Ultima game for less than a dollar on GoG.

I decided that I would loosen the purse strings for the Holiday sales come the end of November and into December. Honestly I think I bought more games this year between the Thanksgiving and Christmas sales than any other year. The Christmas holiday sale isn't quite over yet, and even thought I'm sure I've purchased all I want, I'm going to wait till the New Year to post a damage assessment. Should be interesting.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

So Many Games, So Little Time Before ESO!

I find myself in an interesting predicament (at least to me) with my gaming hobby. See, now that I know when Elder Scrolls Online is launching I have this weird need to try and schedule what games I'm going to play until that day arrives.

I've really wanted to replay some of the awesome games I've already finished, yet with World of Tanks and some of the games I have yet to play I kind of feel like I'm in this state of flux. A couple of years ago I purchased Rift and was starting to get into that when the release date for The Old Republic was announced. At that point I just quit playing any and all MMO's cause I knew I wasn't going to play them once TOR was released. I'm in that position again.

The difference now as oppose to then is that so many games are now using the F2P model. Still, I purged my computer of a few of the MMO's that I haven't played in ages and with ESO around the corner I doubt I'll get to them any time soon.

I did keep a few games like STO cause I have a hankerin' for some ship combat, TSW is probably has the best f2p business model and it's my favorite MMO right now, Champions Online I have a lifetime sub and Defiance is more like a coop game anyways.

The odd one out is TOR. I've played not nearly as much this year as I did last year and only a couple of times since September. I continue to sub and support the game because it has the worse f2p model right now and I love Star Wars. Really not sure what I'm going to do with this one.

The backlog is not immune to this either, I continue to make some headway but my time is spent mostly in WoT which leaves little time for other games.

April is still a long ways off and honestly I have no idea what will be going on then gaming or personal, and even though I'm interested now in ESO that could all change by then. This is probably Much Ado About Nothing I'm just a lunatic with too much time on his hands to think about these things. Yeah, that seems about right!

Monday, December 16, 2013

It's Coming!

I haven't played much of The Secret World over the past three months and even less of Star Wars The Old Republic. Playing Hearthstone lately has given me the unfortunately desire to get back into World Of Warcraft again, but that changed when this happened.



I know little about the game, I've kept myself on a media blackout as to not get too overly excited and anxious for the release. I am, however, a fan of the previous Elder Scrolls games and I do love Bethesda as a developer so I am naturally interested in ESO. Personally I don't see the need for an 'online' version of The Edler Scrolls, instead I would have rather liked a new single-player TES. Still I can't help but be excited.

I wonder if it's too early to ask for some time off at work......

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Eye Of The Tiger 1



Haven't posted in a long while due in large part to my addiction to World of Tanks. But I thought I would share that I have completed my first goal and the reason why I started playing the game - I purchased my Tiger I tank tonight! Now let's hope I don't stink it up too bad.

Monday, September 23, 2013

Misogyny Bad, Violence OK.

I must admit that I am probably bothered by Gamespot's recent review of Grand Theft Auto V and the subsenquent response to the review and the comments it generated in the recent episode of Feedbackula more than I should be. To me it speaks of a massive double standard with these supposed professional game critics.

So the tl;dr goes like this: Carolyn Petit gave GTAV a score of 9 out of 10 with a criticism of the game being 'politically muddled and profoundly misogynistic'. She goes on to say'...these are exaggerations of misogynistic undercurrents in our own society, but not satirical ones. With nothing in the narrative to underscore how insane and wrong this is, all the game does is reinforce and celebrate sexism...'. I have a big problem with this.

I must stress before I go on that I don't believe it's ok to mistreat someone because of their gender, race, religion, etc. Also, I have not played GTAV as of yet, but if the game is as outlandishly misogynistic as she claims, then it's not ok to accept it on the grounds that we should expect this kind of behavior from a GTA game.

The reason I have an issue with Caro's (as she is often referred to on the Gamespot Gameplay podcast) review is with her focusing on only one of the many horrible things that go on in a GTA game. The politically muddled portion Caro is referring to is a sequence where you have to torture someone to get information, otherwise is seems ok that there is drug use, racism and rampant violence against mostly men in the game. This is the double standard with which I speak of that has permeated some of those who work for Gamespot.

I don't understand how it's acceptable to say one aspect of the game reflects our current society as a whole and be outraged but be ok with the rest of the game and pass it off as satire. On episode 15 of Gamespot Gameplay the hosts say that the violence in a GTA game is acceptable and ok because it's cartoony and within context of the game but then go to say that games like Call of Duty and Battlefield send a bad message that war is ok and that there's no repercussion for the violence.

There's a nice conversation about GTAV and the whole misogyny issue on episode 113 of Podcast Unlocked from IGN. One thing that is brought up is that there are no strong female characters within the game and that it would have been great if one of the three characters you play could have been female. I have yet to play the game so I can't say whether or not having a female protagonist would enhance the game or not, but I do think it would be interesting and maybe the next GTA game will do just that. What I do believe is that if GTAV had a murderous psychopath female protagonist, feminists would still not have been happy and complain about that.

I don't need a game to tell me that war is bad, that if you shoot someone they can die or that treating women poorly is wrong. Video games for me are entertainment and not a source of empowerment. Ok, so some days they are less entertaining than others.

Ultimately a review is the opinion of the person writing it and Caro felt strongly enough that the misogyny within the game was to the point that it needed to be addressed. I can't argue or fault her for this. It's not my place to tell her she's wrong, what to think or how she should have written her review, but I do believe she could have done a better job at presenting her objection to what offended her in GTAV. You wouldn't know it by reading the review that she gave the game a 9 out of 10.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

A Little Bit On WAR.

I just wanted to give a couple of quick thoughts about the Warhammer Online closure. WAR released five years ago and it's safe to say it launched with huge expectations. Unfortunately WAR was never able to live up to the hype.

I will admit to being surprised when I read the article on Massively last night that WAR was permanently ending in December, yet I had been expecting this announcement for quite some time. I really liked WAR, it was the first MMO that I really wanted to get better at PvP since it was such a large part of the game. So much so that I purchased my first Razer Naga after using a trackball mouse for years.

It's sad to see a game that you once enjoyed end but I don't regret not playing WAR all these years as there have been other MMO's that I have enjoyed more. I'm sure we'll see a flood of blog posts doing some sort of post mortem which is fitting. It's unfortunate that use of the Warhammer license is such that going f2p can't keep WAR from shutting down. Reminds me of SOE and Matrix Online. Now that's a game I regret not playing more of.

So to sum up my few thoughts: I liked WAR, we'll probably never see another MMO using the Warhammer Fantasy setting, I'm sad to see it's closing down but it's probably for the best.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Overwhelmings.

Here is something I never thought I would say let alone think: World of Warcraft is hard now. I guess I should put that into some sort of context. I can't remember the last time I had an active subscription to WoW, probably over a year ago. So recently a couple of my friends were treated to a tour of the Blizzard offices in Southern California, and I couldn't help thinking that if I was still actively playing WoW I too would have been there. I patch up my game, pay for a month of game time, load into the game and WHAM!!! Suddenly I was overcome with the worst case of the overwhelmings. Yes I made that word up.

I logged into the game and I instantly had no idea what I was suppose to do, why I had the stuff I did in my backpack or even why I was where I am. It's like when you move away from your hometown, and after years of being away you go back to visit only to find that everyone and everything has changed. 

My thirty day subscription is almost up and I honestly am finding it hard to come up with a good reason to keep playing. There was a time in my life when I played mostly MMO's, it was not uncommon for me to have more than two paid subs going at a time. Not anymore. I still and will probably always have a paid sub to The Old Republic, but with the plethora of F2P games and my increasing number of backlog titles I find that I am less willing to pay for a MMO that I am less likely to invest time into like I did in the past. But that's just me and my terrible game time management skills.

Then again, WoW may not actually be hard, my mind just might be trying to tell me that I've already spent way too much time with that game and it's finally time to move on and never look back. Maybe.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

MechWorld Warrior of Online Tanks!

With the plethora of f2p games around there are no shortage of games to play. The downside, for me atleast, is that I just don't have enough time to play everything. Currently I have a sub for The Old Republic and World of Warcraft, although I haven't played much of WoW, I'm still kind of playing The Secret World and slowly working through the massive backlog of games. Now add to the mix two new f2p games, MechWarrior Online and World of Tanks, and even with my pretty open schedule I find it difficult to find time to play everything.


 Both games are very similar in what they do. MWO allows new players to choose from four free mechs to battle with much like League of Legends does with its free champions rotation, WoT actually gives you one light tank from the countries represented in the game and you can research and upgrade them as well.

I'm not sure what I expected with MWO, but with WoT I had this idea that it was an open world style MMO like World War II Online was and it was going to be super difficult and overwhelming to play. I was so glad to find that WoT is just like MWO in that regard - once you choose your vehicle or mech of choice you then click on launch and you're put into a match with a group of random players on a specific map and must duel to the death!

I started playing MWO first and while it took a few games to become comfortable with the game, it did make jumping into WoT much easier because of the few similarities they share. You launch the game, pick your weapon and jump into a game, it's that easy. What happens once you're in a match is not so easy.

I have really enjoy myself in both games and get my butt handed to me as well. There's always this excitement when loading into a match followed by this tension as I make my way around the battlefield which is almost always followed by a sigh of sadness as I sit there watching my burning mech/tank on the screen. No matter what, I am having loads of fun in both games.

Monday, August 26, 2013

This Is Madness! Madness? This...Is...DLC!!!

A number of years ago I remember standing here in the office at work having a conversation with my Manager about Dragon Age DLC. I remember making a remark about how I didn't like DLC because the cost of purchasing all of it would end up being more than what you paid for the original game with a fraction of the content.

Fast forward to today when said Manager tells me how excited he is for Total War: Rome 2 and reminds me that he took the day off just to soak in it's Roman goodness. I know little about Rome 2 but I do know there is a preorder bonus for some faction on Steam and there will be both paid-for and free DLC after release. I also made some snide comment about how paying for factions is part of why I have been less than interested in Rome 2.

Thing is, I am pretty much calling the kettle black here and I know it. It seems pretty hypocritical of a person who has sunk money buying Riot Points for silly champions and skins in League of Legends to complain about DLC. And yet, I'm still kind of bothered by the Rome 2 DLC.

Part of my issue may stem from the fact that Rome 2 is going to cost $60. $60 freaking dollars!?!?! I'm not here to argue value vs time investment nor the fact that I think games are just too expensive because those are topics for another discussion. But at that cost knowing there are factions being withheld or added later just doesn't jive with me. On the other hand Creative Assembly is going to offer free DLC and I should be happy, right?.

I think this quote I say from a PCGamer article that talked a bit about post-release Rome 2 DLC sums up what I am feeling at this moment:

"In Medieval II:Total War I unlocked the side factions for play by destroying them in the campaign. In Shogun 2 I unlock them by paying $5".

If you were wondering, Shogun 2 was the last entry in the Total War series.

Do I think that DLC is bad? No. Do I think Rome 2 DLC is bad? In the long run no. Do I think there is good and bad DLC? Most definitely yes. Do I think that a DLC Season Pass is a waste of money? Only if not purchased on a holiday sale of some sorts.

In the end I have no leg to stand up on when it comes to complaining about DLC seeing as I've purchased my share of it over the years. I've also used the 'if you don't like it then don't buy it' defense for DLC to random Internet morons.  That statement applies to me with regards to Rome 2. DLC has become the cash shops for retail games and if I don't like it, well there's nothing telling me I have to buy it.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Not My Kind Of Game.

From differencebetween.net:

Definition of Objective and Subjective
Objective is a statement that is completely unbiased. It is not touched by the speaker’s previous experiences or tastes. It is verifiable by looking up facts or performing mathematical calculations.
Subjective is a statement that has been colored by the character of the speaker or writer. It often has a basis in reality, but reflects the perspective through with the speaker views reality. It cannot be verified using concrete facts and figures.

Definition of Game: activity engaged in for diversion or amusement.

I bring these two things up because of the Gone Home phenomenon. By the very definition of what a game is I can objectively say that Gone Home is a game. I personally prefer more from my games so I can say subjectively that it's not a game.

Gone Home is described as an interactive exploration simulator. I have not played this game, but it seems that the goal of the game is for you to walk around your house looking at stuff. There could be a little more than that but for maybe a two hour experience at twenty bucks, I find the whole premise to be kind of boring.

I will never tell anyone that they're wrong if they do enjoy Gone Home nor will I say that Gone Home is not worth the money because that's all personal.

I don't plan on reading every review for Gone Home, but I have no idea why it's receiving such high scores. My first thought is that the subject matter is why it's getting such praise. My next thought is that game critics are just cynical, pretentious people who constantly pine for innovation from the games industry. Of course that's a cynical way for me to look at it.

I don't hate Gone Home as I have not played it and it would be nice if I appreciated what Gone Home is trying to do, but I really don't. The reason I am not into Gone Home is the same reason I don't care for Journey - not because I dislike good games, they're just not games to me. I cannot argue what is or is not a game as clearly those are both games, I just prefer more.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

What I Think of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City.

Watch this video.


Who wouldn't want to play this game! I know after watching this trailer one day on Steam I sure did.

So what is RE: Operation Raccoon City? It's a third person action game that begins prior to the events of Resident Evil 2. You play as one of four members of a U.S.S., or Umbrella Security Service Delta Team sent to Raccoon City to retrieve the G-Virus. Of course things go terribly wrong because if not the game would be even shorter than it already is, and you find yourself going to various locations fighting infected and Spec Ops soldiers in the hopes of being extracted from the city.


ORC was built to be a four-player co-op game. Yes you can play a private campaign by yourself with three AI squad mates, but ORC's gameplay is balanced around having four human players. If you take a restrictive FOV, a cover system that requires you to stick to walls which for the most part is broken and useless, a complete lack of a dodge mechanic, enemies that are bullet sponges, and mix that together with a game that likes to throw as many enemies as possible at you in small areas, what you get is a rage induced coronary from a game that is way harder than is should be even on casual difficulty. It's ok to make a game challenging, but ORC falls within the realm of cheap rather than difficult.

That's not to say everything is bad in ORC. The audio and visuals are quite good and the story is serviceable and doesn't get in the way. My favorite aspect of ORC, and the only reason why I played so much, is the gunplay. If you've played a modern military shooter within the past say five years then you know what to expect with ORC. There are a number of weapons to unlock and pick up in the game, each with its own characteristics such as accuracy, damage and ammo capacity. Standing still gives you the best accuracy but at the risk of being hit by enemies. Move around and you suffer in accuracy as you increase a weapon's bullet spread while eating through precious ammo. The gunplay is not revolutionary, but I found it to be very enjoyable.

Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City is a competent, but generic third person shooter. It breaks tradition by forgoing the puzzle aspect which is a halmark of the franchise and instead focuses on the action. While I found enjoyment in the gunplay, I find ORC's focus on co-op with a difficulty exacerbated by bad gameplay decisions such as a lack of a dodge mechanic, bad FOV, a broken cover system and bullet sponge enemies to be less enjoyable.

Saturday, August 3, 2013

The Shadow Has Been.....Run?


There's this little game called Shadowrun Returns, you may have heard of it, it just came out after being a successful kickstarter. Honestly I had no idea about this game till a few months ago when it was on the front page of Steam. I know little about the Shadowrun universe and certainly didn't know there was a kickstarter for a game based on the source material.

I'm not writing a review here and am going to avoid any spoilers as well. I did however just want to share a few things about the game and express how much I really enjoyed Shadowrun Returns.

The Shadowrun universe is kind of neat - imagine fantasy creatures from the D&D games in a cyberpunk world like Blade Runner. The game is a top-down isometric game in the same vein as the Baldur's Gate series or the old Fallout games that takes place mostly in Seattle during the year 2054.

I really like the look of the game, the music and atmosphere, the characters, the writing, even the combat was quite fun. The only criticism I would have is the story - it starts off so well and is very interesting, but about half-way through the game it spirals a bit out of control and heads off in another direction. It's not bad by any means, I just found myself wanting more of the stuff at the beginning of the game rather than what I was doing towards the end of the game. It only took me about thirteen hours to finish the game and honestly that is just fine.

Shadowrun Returns is actually just a framework for mod support through Steam Workshop, the actual story in the game is called Dead Man's Switch. I'm really looking forward to the many story campaigns that the community comes up with.

For twenty dollars Shadowrun Returns was a great investment. I find myself wanting to play through the game again with the other races and classes despite my feelings about the latter stages of the game's story.

Monday, July 29, 2013

For The Emperor!

This post will be out of left field, mostly because I haven't posted anything in what seems like months. But I wanted to say that I am FREAKING EXCITED ABOUT THE NEW SPACE HULK GAME!

I figured using caps would drive my point home.

I have no idea if the game is going to be good, but the fact that a Space Hulk game is almost here is, to me, pretty awesome. For those not in the know, Space Hulk was a tabletop board game based on the Warhammer 40k universe. Space Hulk is actually a term for a massive derelict ship that, and those ships tend to become the habitat for an alien race known as Genestealers.

The board game consisted of a set of floor tiles which could be arranged in multiple ways to give subsequent playthroughs a different feel. Think of the random generated dungeons from Diablo. One player would then take control of the Genestealers while the rest of the players controlled a squad of Terminator Space Marines.

I love the Warhammer universe and I also have real fond memories of playing with a group of friends until the wee hours of the morning back in high school. So yes, I am looking forward to Space Hulk. I just hope it doesn't suck.




Sunday, May 26, 2013

Someone Say Four Day Weekend!

I had really hoped to post a bit more over the past week, but working two jobs and only having one day off a week is really kicking my butt, and getting old. That will change after today, hopefully, as I have the next four days off, including getting a paid holiday for Monday from both jobs! Woot! I am hopeful that the following week I'll get at least two days off then starting July 1st I'll be a one job man again.

It's not that I haven't had time to do stuff, but the little time I have had I spent watching some TV with the family or playing games. I went from having three days off to only one and the one thing I've known for awhile is that I am really bad at managing my time and it has shown during this past month.

I did, however, make a list of all the games I've either not played or played just a smidgen last. One thing I learned was that I've purchased very few games from a brick and mortar store over the past two and a half years. If memory serves me, I have only purchased ten PC games from a retail store since buying Fallout New Vegas from Gamestop back in October 2010. How many digital games have I purchased? Way too many.

Instead of creating a road map which was incredibly overwhelming, I think I'll use my list as a sort of bucket list for games. Once I feel satisfied I've played the game, I'll cross it off the list and move onto something else. I know that I will never play every game on my list but maybe this will help curb my spending on random games. Only time will tell.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Roadmapping The Backlog.

Wow, so it's been just over three months since my last blog post, talk about neglect. Even before that my posting history has been nothing short of sporadic anyways. I've been so inactive that I doubt I'm on any one's reader anymore, and speaking of reader, I am going to have to find a replacement for Google Reader here pretty quick.

I really hate having a backlog, I even dislike using the term as well. When I listen to various podcasts and the backlog is brought up in conversation it seems like it's a revered thing, as if it's some right of passage for the "core" gamer. I know for myself it's sales coupled with liking too many different types of games. I like RPG's, RTS's, MMO's, shooters, sports game - well you get the idea.

What I had done over the past year to alleviate the backlog pressure was break up my games into two lists: those games that I need to play and those that I wouldn't mind playing but won't feel guilty if I don't. One thing I have done to help myself was curb my spending, specially when there's a sale going on. Sure I want to play those games, but when am I going to find the time between life, MMO's and what ever other game I'm playing to play that shiny new game I bought on sale?

For the past month I've been working two jobs and have only had one day off each week, so as you can imagine my game time has been cut way down. After I finished Tomb Raider the other day (spoiler: I hated it!), I found myself in a situation where I wasn't sure what to move to next in the virtual stack. I'm waiting for Marvel Heroes in June, there's the Rift F2P coming as well on top of the few other MMO's I've started playing again and the monster that is League of Legends which eats up a bit of time. It's a time management issue really.

I'm a big proponent of the idea that you play what you feel like playing at the time, but I thought maybe creating a list, a roadmap as it were, might help me manage my time better and give me a better understanding of just how many games I have that I truly need to play. It could be way too daunting and overwhelming which might cause me to break down and cry, but it's worth a try.

This of course is just a tool to help me and things can and will probably change. A few months ago I was planning on playing through all three Mass Effect games, even started the first game again. Something came up, my interest changed and I have yet to get back to Mass Effect.

We'll see just how far I get into this project, but for now it sounds like a good idea.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

What I Think of Spec Ops: The Line

 
Been working on this post for awhile now, let's see if I can get this done! THIS IS A SPOILER FREE POST! At least I will try as hard as possible to not give any sort of spoilers. Also, I played the PC version with a wired Xbox controller.

I am going to assume that by now most people already know what Spec Ops: The Line is - a third-person cover based military shooter that features a story based on the movie Apocalypse Now and the novella The Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Some may say the gameplay is just average at best which I think is a tad shortsighted and I believe there's a bit of hyperbole surrounding the story with these intense moral decisions.

Without going into spoiler territory let's begin with the story.

Six months before the start of the game Dubai is engulfed by a massive sandstorm burying most of the city under sand. Lieutenant Colonel John Conrad, commander of the 33rd Battalion which was in the process of returning home from Afghanistan has volunteered his unit to go in the Dubai and attempt to rescue those stranded in the city from the sand storm.

In the mean time Dubai has become surrounded with what is called the sand wall making flights in and out of the city impossible along with any sort of communications. Four weeks later a mysterious and slightly broken message penetrates the sand wall from Conrad and the missing 33rd. Players take on the role of Captain Martin Walker as he leads a three man recon team tasked with investigating the source of the transmission and to see if there are indeed any survivors before pulling back to the sand wall for extraction.

This information is pretty much revealed during the opening cutscene while the credits are rolling, anything further would be in that spoiler territory. Now initially there is a tutorial where you learn how to aim and shoot, run and use cover and interact with objects, from that point forward though the game goes into what I like to call the Heart of Darkness weirdness. Well actually, that kind of starts before the opening cutscene.

What I can say about the story is that I loved it the first time I played through Spec Ops. I only knew of Heart of Darkness from the many references made on various podcasts when talking about the game and I had very little knowledge of the movie Apocalypse Now because I've never seen the movie. Not knowing what happens in the movie or novella and how they influenced the story in Spec Ops was for me perfect. By the end of the game I was blown away by the story, found it interesting from start to finish.

Unfortunately after that first play through I spent some time looking for information on both the novella and the movie to see just how close in story all three were. All that time learning about how Spec Ops compares to the novella and the movie and what exactly it took from them, reading about the clues from the author and then playing through the game two more times to see if I could see the twists coming caused me to lose some of that initial love and admiration for the story that I had.

In the end the way I experienced Spec Ops the line with no prior knowledge of the source material I believe was the best way to play the game. However, if you are familiar with the novella and/or the movie I still think you will appreciate what Spec Ops does.

So what about the gameplay you ask? Well there's really not much to say honestly; you can aim, you can shoot and throw grenades, you can sprint, take cover, sprint in and out of cover, pick up all sorts of weapons and blow enemies heads off. It may sound generic or average, but it is a whole heck of a lot of fun. The gameplay was part of the reason why I played through the game three times in two and a half days.

There was a half-baked squad command system in the game which isn't a real detriment to the game, but on the harder difficulties it can be annoying when you have to repeatedly redo sections because your squad dies or you die from trying to revive them. Speaking of difficult, Spec Ops is not easy. It's easier on normal but it can still be pretty tough at times.

Spec Ops isn't revolutionary, it doesn't introduce any sort of new gameplay mechanics. It's not like when Gears of War was released and suddenly every third person game had to have cover mechanics. It's not like that at all, but what it does do gameplay wise is done I think very well. The camera never interfered with my enjoyment of the game, the cover system works great and the weapons had a hint of realism with bullet spread and kick when fired.

For me Spec Ops: The Line had the whole package - it looked good, the audio was fantastic with the voice overs, sound effects and music, the controls were tight, the gameplay was great, the pacing was perfect and the story was amazing. I picked up the game on sale for five bucks and it was money well spent. I would say Spec Ops is easily worth twenty or thirty bucks, if not for the gameplay then at least for a story that you don't normally get in game like this.

A few small tidbits - I did try one game of the multiplayer and if you've played Call of Duty or Battlefield then you know what to expect. A coop mode was added in later but I did not get a chance to try it out.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Why? Well Why Not I Guess...

I was listening to Episode 84 of the Rocket Jump Podcast the other day and something one of the hosts Aaron Phokal said had me ask a question. Before I get into that let me ask this - do you like podcasts? Do you like video games? Do you like listening to people BS about games on a podcast? Well then I highly suggest the Rocket Jump Podcast, it's one of the few that I don't miss. 

Now back to the topic at hand. On the podcast Aaron let it be known that he purchased a Wii U and one of the other hosts on the show had the same reaction I did - Why? His response was along the lines of 'I own the others so it was a matter of time'. So the question I asked myself was if most games are multiplatform then is there a need to buy more than one console these days?

I know I had a PSOne, then a Dreamcast, then a PS2, then a Xbox and eventually I picked up a 360 and stopped playing on those older systems. What sold me on the 360 was Gears of War, but I really hated that game still the purchase of the system was well worth it. I didn't become interested in getting a PS3 till after watching a friend play Uncharted Drakes Fortune and for some reason I just had to have a PS3. So eventually I did get one and wouldn't you know I didn't really like Uncharted either. Oddly enough the sequels to both games were amazing with Uncharted 2 being the best game I've ever played on a console. But I digress.

After awhile my 360 melted and I was left with just the PS3 and it's been that way for almost five years now. I won't lie, I've been very tempted to pick up a 360 mostly because it has a huge library of cheap used games. I can't help but ask myself why every time the temptation arises. I have a PS3, why not just pickup said games for that system instead of spending the money on a whole other system.

I guess the answer to my own question is yes, there is still a reason to own more than one console, for now. At some point I do see myself picking up a 360 because I would really like to play the Gears of War and Halo games but since I hate anything and everything Nintendo I won't have to worry about spending good money on crappy hardware.

With the next generation of consoles just around the corner and them most like costing a small fortune I personally feel there needs to be a good reason to buy one let alone more than one system. I'm perfectly happy with the current gen still and unless I see a must have game I'm perfectly content with sticking with my PS3 for a few more years.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Much Of Nothing.

I had hoped that I was going to post something worthwhile on the blog this month, but using your time wisely  on my days off is proving much more difficult than I had hoped. Basically I've been spending a boat load of time playing games at home and when I have some free time at work I've been watching hockey games on the computer.

I did take two solid days to play and finish Spec Ops: The Line three times and I have some thoughts about that game that I want to share. I've also installed and started playing Velvet Assassin, a game I picked up on a deep discount from Steam just before the holidays. The majority of time however has been spent playing Borderlands 2.

So there you have it, a post about much of nothing  feature nothing much.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Insert Witty Title Here.

This poor blog, seems like I don't give it the time and respect that I once did years ago. It's definitely not from a lack of inspiration, it's more like a lack of motivation mixed with laziness with the ability to waste time. So really this is a post to myself in an attempt to motivate me to post more, besides I always have something silly to say and it's great writing practice.

So what have I been up to the past few months? Playing lots of games. Actually there haven't been too many games so I've been spending quite a bit of time gaming. The game that has grabed the most attention from me is Hitman Absolution - the game is bloody brilliant! Sure it's not perfect, but it is pretty darn good and I do like the new direction the game has gone to. Yes Blood Money is an exceptional game, but sometimes things need to be shaken up a bit to avoid that sequal-itis feeling. Personally I believe that most who criticize Absolution give up on the game early on and never actually get to experience just how great this game really is.

I've also had a hankering for some sort of fantasy RPG gameplay and not necessarily the party kind of game like Dragon Age II (which is a wonderful game). Been playing Borderlands 2 quite a bit lately and as fun as it is, it's kind of too long and I just want to bash something in the face with a sword of mace of some type. I think Skyrim would work to fulfil this desire, but I think what I'm really feeling is a pull towards the MMO again.

I have Guild Wars 2 that I haven't played in a month, but I'm looking for something with good questing, not that crappy run around the land doing errands for people garbage questing that GW2 has. At one point I almost entertained the idea of returning to World of Warcraft, but quickly squashed that idea. Instead I think it's about time to sub to Rift, a game that I've enjoyed quite a bit while playing the F2P portion. I figure between Rift, Eq2 and something single-player I should satiate that fantasy sword bashing thirst.

In the coming weeks I think I'm going to do some sort of best of and worst of type posts for my 2012 gaming. I don't think I'll have anything unique of interesting to say that will differ from others, but it's something I want to do so I will.

So here's hoping that 2013 is a better year for me personally on the blogging front!