I just PURCHASED God of War III. Why might I put the word "purchased" in caps you say? Well, usually I rent my games off gamefly. You may think that's stingy, and any true gamer would support his fellow game developers by buying each and every game. To tell you the truth, I am a full time student and I have no job. I live at home with my mother. How am I supposed to pay for a 60 dollar title each time a developer comes out with one? Yeah, exactly. Once I get a real job I'll start buying games, and even then I may still keep my gamefly account, for those games that end up getting bad reviews that I might want to try out for the sake of trying them out. I've had success with GOW in the past, and I choose to support the developers so they can bring more fun my way.
Yeah. So I bought this game on a half-assed whim while on my way to go "eat dinner" with a friend while pretending to drink water out of a water bottle when really it was vodka, in a restaurant, and then go watch "Hot Tub Time Machine" (not a bad movie I must say). I probably would have bought it later anyway, but what the hey, it was right there. So we drank and were merry, watched HTTM, got drunk some more, went to a party, sipped on some Bacardi, got high, all the while clutching fiercely to the beloved Kratos box. Finally, upon getting home I unboxed what can only be called God of Gore. Why do I call this legendary franchise such a name? Exactly. It's a horrific, bloody, insane rendition of someone getting brutally raped in the ass time and time again. Alright, it's not that bad, but you get the point. It's a bloody mess. I could only hope to see more gory violence in a shoddy 1980's grind-house flick. Anyhow, that is just my first impression on a game that will surely go down as a great adventure in the annals of men.
So I just finished playing BioShock. Not the new one, the first one. I'm way behind on my original games quota I know. Twas a good game, full of fantasy, violence, horror, and beauty. To be honest, I'm not really a survival/horror game fan mostly due to the fact that there is 'shittingmypants' potential, aka I don't wanna shit my pants while playing video games. But you know what? When I got down to the grind with Bioshock I enjoyed the thrill. I enjoyed having those ADAM enhanced splicers coming at me with their hooks, machine guns, and what have you. It got my adrenaline rushing. With that said, lets get down to the technical aspects.
Story: Bioshock has an awesome story. It's a bit complex and going into it full detail would ruin the game for anyone who hasn't played it yet so I'll just summarize the beginning: You're basically a 1940's dude named Jack and your plane crashes next to a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. You enter the lighthouse only to find a bathysphere (spherical submarine) that brings you to an underwater Atlantis called Rapture. You arrive and discover that the city has fallen to shambles, and that it is filled with some crazy ass wrench wielding bitches. An Irish man named Atlas asks you to help him find his wife and child via radio and you continue on that course for sometime, and then shit really starts to hit the fan. Just play it and you'll know what I mean.
Gameplay: For an fps I thought the gameplay mechanics and animations were slightly off. The controls feel kind of clunky and slow. The aiming cross-hairs consist of a big ass circle and pressing R3 to scope is no easy task. However, killing Splicers and Big Daddies with your super powers is quite a lot of fun. To summarize, a player can buy and find tonics which will give them powers such as, wasps, ice, fire, or electricity shooting from hands (just to name a few), and the ability to upgrade these powers. The game does feel stiff at times but fluid at others. Little sisters' voices don't queue up correctly with the way their mouths move, and they tend to look past you when talking. Fighting Big Daddies is very cool. They turn from seemingly slow lumbering giants, into quick and agile beasts if attacked. Their animations are on the spot if you ask me. Another thing that bothered me was that there were virtually no verbal interactions between my character and other characters. This took away big time from immersive effect and left me feeling, well, kind of lonely.
Graphics: Nothing short of astoundingly beautiful. It's an underwater city made of flashy neon lights. Can't go wrong with that. The supernatural powers and upgraded weapons also give off detailed and vivid colors and light effects.
Overall, I usually don't play games like this, but Bioshock is something unique. I'd recommend it, but it's really something you have to play for yourself to see what it's all about.
Hmm battlefield. I don't know about battlefield. I just played the demo for about an hour. I tried out all the classes. Essentially Sniper, LMG, SMG, Assault rifle - just with different names. I like the fact that each class comes with support for other players like a med-kit that you can drop in case your teammate is injured, or a tool for fixing machines like tanks or sentry guns, or extra ammo that you can drop for teammates as well. Another good aspect of team play is the ability to tell the team what to do and where to go with a click of a button (although one can already do that with a mic in any other game). It is these two things that provide more of a team aspect than other good FPS' I have played. Aiming is annoying though. Lots of recoil and the sights are terrible. The gun when in zoom looks really big and blocks half of the screen. It's like looking through a really small hole in a big ass wall. Aesthetically, the game looks really nice - very vivid and interactive environments that make the maps seem like real battlefields. As far as the controls go, I have to say they are kind of clunky. Running around corners is no easy task as your body wobbles tremendously(which I guess is pretty realistic). Clicking the R3 button to crouch is annoying, and clicking the R2 button brings out a ridiculously slow knife movement. I'll update this post as I play some more. One hour is not enough time to truly realize the potential of this demo.
Sorry if this might feel rushed. I haven't been posting recently due to a busy school schedule and I really shouldn't even be posting now! I will have the Bioshock review up in due time, but like I said, busy schedule :(.
When I look at MAG(Massive Action Game), I see a game entirely devoted to gameplay. It's sole mission is to have GOOD GAMEPLAY. The story doesn't matter. If you read my Half-Life review, you would know that the story isn't necessarily important to a military fps(or you probably knew that already). The bottom line is that MAG, while having a great premise and future potential, doesn't in its present form, look like it will live up to its epic predecessors (Counter-Strike, COD4, Halo). Really, in terms of both storyline and gameplay, nothing new (besides the online 256 player aspect) has been introduced that hasn't been seen before. The graphics, also, are nothing special. The game straight up lacks shock value. I have yet to play MAG but chances are I'll probably stick with Modern Warfare 2 or Bad Company 2(if that turns out to be any good).
Wow. I just played the Bayonetta demo and what a good demo it was. It's basically just a tutorial with a few other levels of gameplay, one against what seems to be the protagonist's main rival, two against mini bosses, and two against some grunts. The graphics are spectacular and the move sets are riveting. This game is really looking up and I can't wait to play the full version. I think I'll set this to second in my gameq, after Uncharted 2.
Of course I have to show a video just 'cause it looks so darn purtty :)
I've just finished playing the old-time classic Half-Life. The game follows the likes of Gordan Freeman, a theoretical physicist, and his trusty crowbar, shotgun, .357 magnum, and some crazy alien rocket launcher arm thing. Freeman and his pals find themselves in a predicament when Freeman's smart ass superiors accidentally tear open a rift to another dimension full of aggressive aliens who want to obliterate planet earth.
Now initially, I had started playing Half-Life 2. Then I got curious about the origins of Half-Life 2's story, which tempted me to look up Half-Life on Wikipedia(best tool in the world). It was at this point that I realized that I had bought Half-Life years ago to play Counter-Strike with. I decided to install the game and play it in one night. But that was a fail because my ass got tired at 4am, so I decided to make it two nights instead. Nevertheless, I had a surprisingly good time playing this game over such a short span of time. To be honest, I didn't think such an old game could entertain me at this point in my life, but all the elements were there. The story was solid and original, the gameplay kept me interested and alert, and the graphics were not bad, given the fact that the game was made in 1998.
I think for certain games like BioShock, Oblivion, God of War, or Half-Life, the story is an important, if not the most important, aspect of the game. Without an interesting story, you might as well be slashing and gunning your way through endless pixels for no good reason. You may think, "But isn't the story always important to a game?" Not necessarily. There are a lot of good games that do not really have a great story to tell, such as, oh, every single military first person shooter out there. The story is usually generic or unoriginal, but the gameplay is usually phenomenal due to the fact that developers spend the time they would have been working on the story, working on the gameplay. But before I go off on a tangent, let me make a point. Half-Life has a great original story to tell. In fact, if it didn't have such an original story I probably would have shut it off mid way through. It's about an MIT graduate nerd guy, who somehow turns out to be a bad ass who's good with a gun. It's about supernatural space-time rifts and shooting BAMF aliens with BAMF guns. Real Stephen King type shit(the game actually took aspects from "The Mist," a short story by Stephen King and one of my favorites). You may have heard of all this space-time continuum stuff before, but Half-Life was one of the original tellers of this idea. You gotta respect that.
The story isn't the only great thing about this game. The gameplay is redonk. Instead of just grabbing a gun and shooting everything all hunky-dory, the game requires players to solve puzzles, navigate rat mazes, and bounce around obstacle courses in every single level. Some mazes lead to rewards like power ups for Freeman's suit, health kits in case the player is running low on health (and health kits mean a lot in this game, get it? "Half-Life?"), and ammo or new guns. I may have gotten frustrated once in a while by all the mazes, but I was never bored.
Graphics. Let me just say, I've never seen such a beautiful pre-2k alien world as I have in Half-Life. This thing looks like the Aurora Borealis or something. Obviously, the graphics can't compare to any other game by today's standards, but I'm certainly sure it was impressive way back when.
Lastly, because I'm getting really tired, I'd like to say a few words about glitches. This game has A LOT. I can't even count how many times I took a leisurely elevator ride down to the fuel and oxygen chambers only to be smashed upwards into the ceiling by the elevator. Or how about sneaking into a vent and getting stuck in between two invisible walls. Or even smashing a crate and having the game crash. Yeah, just a few of the problems I had while playing Half-Life. Regardless of the glitches though, I'd say this is a must play. I'll start playing Half-Life 2 tomorrow.
In light of Visceral Games' "Dante's Inferno," I have picked up a translation of The Inferno by Dante Alighieri. I was excited to read this after seeing the trailers for "Dante's Inferno," but upon reading about halfway through, it has decidedly begun to bore me. The story consists of Dante following his guide, Virgil, through each vestibule of hell (there being nine in all). Dante had initially become lost in the forest traveling, and his dead lover Beatrice sent Virgil to guide him back to the light of day, which consequently took them through hell. I think it is not necessarily the story that bores me, but the Shakespearean poetry that throws me off. I just don't like the writing style. The ideas are great. There are souls wandering around hell and depending on their punishment are either being burnt by ovens that are also coffins , wallowing in their own anguish and knowing nothing else, or even wading in feces for centuries upon centuries (awesome, right?). Regardless of the fact that I find this book as boring as reading a map of Nevada, I will finish it. I really want to compare the book to the game, even if the book is more about philosophy than slaughtering demons with a huge scythe.
This is my first blog. I would like to address a few things off the bat. I am a gamer. I absolutely love gaming. I am not a fanboy of any one platform, but instead I indulge in all game types. I enjoy playstation games, xbox games, pc games, wii games, psp games, board games, soccer games, beer pong. You name the game and I'll probably like it - hence the name, "thegamingfanboy."In this blog, I shall be discussing the games I've been playing and the games I am anticipating and probably some other random crap. If you would like to discuss these games with me, please don't hesitate to comment. *awkward first blog silence*
Anyways... I've been playing Modern Warfare 2 on my PS3. For those of you who haven't been living under a rock for the past three months, Modern Warfare 2 (which I will be referring to as "MW2" from here on in) is the immediate sequel to the highly acclaimed first person shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. MW2 is the pinnacle of first person shooters. It is so realistic that I personally, get completely lost in the game. I'm talking about if my house were on fire, I wouldn't give a shit or probably wouldn't even notice. All I would care about is getting my chopper gunner, or my AC130, or my EMP.
But I'm not here to talk about how good the game is or how I get so focused that my eyes start to bleed. No, I'm here to talk about ten second invincibility. I'm here to talk about how a soldier carrying an eight pound rifle plus a ten pound shotgun, geared up in clothing and other equipment weighing at least 50 pounds, can jump six feet to knife someone in the face. I'm here to talk about how it takes 50 bullets in a regular team death match to kill someone, yet a knife in the toe is a one hit kill. I'm talking about the painkiller death streak, the commando perk, and the totally unrealistic amount of bullets it takes to kill someone.
Now, I will admit I have used both of these at some point or another; I still use the commando pro perk to run around maps stabbing people (call me a hypocrite). This still does not change the fact that these two things are complete and utter bullshit. The painkiller death streak perk allows players to simply respawn after a certain amount of deaths with ten seconds of crazy bullet stopping flesh. Yes, bullet stopping flesh. Why does Infinity Ward reward players who die three times in a row? It's not my fault they suck. THEIR death streak can actually end up ruining MY kill streak. I can't tell you how many times I've been shooting someone with painkiller, only to be killed by someone else because it took me a whole five seconds to fire a full clip into the guy with painkiller. Either that or I get killed on the fourth assassination attempt by the guy with painkiller, BECAUSE he has painkiller. Commando? Yeah, it certainly takes a lot of skill to lunge forward at someone six feet away after they've shot you at least 67 times and yet you still somehow manage to stab them in the large intestine. This leads me to my next complaint: it literally takes a fourth to half a clip to kill an enemy. Depending on the gun, that's still bullshit anyway you look at it. A fourth to half a clip! (Don't forget it's a full clip with painkiller!) To top it off, the developers didn't include many hardcore modes, which certainly would have made the game better, since I wouldn't really have to deal with painkiller because the game mode is based on two shot kills, and commando is rarely used since everyone camps, AND since I mostly like to play ground war (doesn't come in hardcore flavor).
So, now I'm stuck dealing with all this bullshit (bullet stopping flesh, superman stabs, and insanely weak bullets) . I know... "it's just a game," but I get frustrated when things aren't portrayed realistically. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it (only when bullshit occurs of course). On a last side note edit, I HATE Akimbo shotties, but that is for another day.
