Rather than mess about trying to draw web traffic away from the big boys, I've decided to join them and post my blogs over at www.giantbomb.com which is a massive social gaming website from the guys who stood up to GameSpot over that review score scandal. Look it up. Anyway I hope you'll be joining.
Have Fun!!
Apollo
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Tell me COD MW2 is balanced! I dare ya!!
I have heard a number of people complaining about the fact that there seems to be a lot of people Noob Tubing their way through games on Modern Warfare 2. The term Noob Tube derived from the practice of using a grenade launcher as a quick and easy kill device.
Well here is the reason they have been able to do it. In my eyes this is a complete oversight in game design and a glaring error that just proves that Infinity Ward really didn't care about balance.
Using the One Man Army perk you can now switch classes during combat. This has the added bonus of reloading your ammo too. In COD4 the Noob Tuber was limited to just 2 grenades per life, bad enough some might say, how about unlimited ammo instead?
The video below shows how detrimental to the core balance of the game this actually is.
Well here is the reason they have been able to do it. In my eyes this is a complete oversight in game design and a glaring error that just proves that Infinity Ward really didn't care about balance.
Using the One Man Army perk you can now switch classes during combat. This has the added bonus of reloading your ammo too. In COD4 the Noob Tuber was limited to just 2 grenades per life, bad enough some might say, how about unlimited ammo instead?
The video below shows how detrimental to the core balance of the game this actually is.
Monday, 28 December 2009
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Zune showdown.
As everyone and I mean everyone knows Microsoft recently updated the Xbox 360 Dashboard with a few new additions. These updates come in the form of apps presenting you with Facebook, Twitter, Zune and Last.fm. I’ve used all these in depth now and have to declare a clear winner as to the best application.
For me it’s an easy one, Last.fm leads a clear victory. I love music, I love finding new music and even more than anything else the concept of a playlist that is constantly evolving to offer the genres I like most, will save me from the current ‘crapwave’ of modern X-Shite releases flooding our once great musical nation. It’s a good job the teenies have digital distribution instead of CDs otherwise we would have been looking at an ecological disaster when people started dumping all those unwanted CD X-Shite Christmas number one singles. Last.fm simply caters to people like me, I now find myself switching my Xbox on just to play Last.fm playlists through my audio system.
The second position would have gone to Zune. I say would only because to use it you really need to pay for it. 1080p HD streaming movies sounds good to me though and after watching the Avatar preview has convinced me it’s actually possible to offer high quality streaming HD that not only looks great but for most people is going to be very hard to distinguish from other HD formats such as BluRay. However I see it as no immediate replacement for physical medium and BluRay to me offers better value with you ultimately owning something rather than just renting. So even though the technology is absolutely surprisingly stunning Zune is in last place, but takes second place when you ignore the fact you have to pay for anything you watch through it.
When it comes to the last two apps most people I feel will probably favour these two social networking apps. Twitter and Facebook apps are very much alike in terms of functionality. Twitter is obviously a little more limited in what it offers because ultimately Twitter is just a simple service that offers nothing more than status updates. It does this in a very nicely presented interface and it seems quick too. Many people include links on their Twitter posts and these obviously do not function due to the lack of a Web Browser on the 360. For this reason Twitter takes last place.
The Facebook application offers more features and allows you to see your friends, their photos and pretty much everything on Facebook losing some of the more advanced functionality like app installation. It works quickly and does everything I would have expected it to perform.
I do have some suggestions for improvements however. Launching any one of these apps basically takes over your system and leaves you in the app of your choicewith no other dashboard functionality. So it would be nice to see these integrated into the functionality of the dashboard directly so updates could be seen while waiting for an online game to start. This goes for Last.fm more so than any of the other apps, it would have been fantastic if I could still listen to Last.fm while playing games. I realise that this may have a performance hit in relation to online gaming, but surely with the average broadband bandwidth being greater it could prioritise game traffic and still give room to play Last.fm while gaming.
Otherwise it’s all plain sailing and all worthy updates which I am sure people will find a use for. From a longevity viewpoint I can see Last.fm and Zune being the victors and predict these will ride out any novelty value that the Facebook and Twitter apps will be susceptible to as users longing for the full feature set return to using their PCs.
For me it’s an easy one, Last.fm leads a clear victory. I love music, I love finding new music and even more than anything else the concept of a playlist that is constantly evolving to offer the genres I like most, will save me from the current ‘crapwave’ of modern X-Shite releases flooding our once great musical nation. It’s a good job the teenies have digital distribution instead of CDs otherwise we would have been looking at an ecological disaster when people started dumping all those unwanted CD X-Shite Christmas number one singles. Last.fm simply caters to people like me, I now find myself switching my Xbox on just to play Last.fm playlists through my audio system.
The second position would have gone to Zune. I say would only because to use it you really need to pay for it. 1080p HD streaming movies sounds good to me though and after watching the Avatar preview has convinced me it’s actually possible to offer high quality streaming HD that not only looks great but for most people is going to be very hard to distinguish from other HD formats such as BluRay. However I see it as no immediate replacement for physical medium and BluRay to me offers better value with you ultimately owning something rather than just renting. So even though the technology is absolutely surprisingly stunning Zune is in last place, but takes second place when you ignore the fact you have to pay for anything you watch through it.
When it comes to the last two apps most people I feel will probably favour these two social networking apps. Twitter and Facebook apps are very much alike in terms of functionality. Twitter is obviously a little more limited in what it offers because ultimately Twitter is just a simple service that offers nothing more than status updates. It does this in a very nicely presented interface and it seems quick too. Many people include links on their Twitter posts and these obviously do not function due to the lack of a Web Browser on the 360. For this reason Twitter takes last place.
The Facebook application offers more features and allows you to see your friends, their photos and pretty much everything on Facebook losing some of the more advanced functionality like app installation. It works quickly and does everything I would have expected it to perform.
I do have some suggestions for improvements however. Launching any one of these apps basically takes over your system and leaves you in the app of your choicewith no other dashboard functionality. So it would be nice to see these integrated into the functionality of the dashboard directly so updates could be seen while waiting for an online game to start. This goes for Last.fm more so than any of the other apps, it would have been fantastic if I could still listen to Last.fm while playing games. I realise that this may have a performance hit in relation to online gaming, but surely with the average broadband bandwidth being greater it could prioritise game traffic and still give room to play Last.fm while gaming.
Otherwise it’s all plain sailing and all worthy updates which I am sure people will find a use for. From a longevity viewpoint I can see Last.fm and Zune being the victors and predict these will ride out any novelty value that the Facebook and Twitter apps will be susceptible to as users longing for the full feature set return to using their PCs.
Monday, 16 November 2009
Just to annoy the COD boys
I know I give Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 a rough time. I know just saying anything negative in COD circles will have the fanboys literally ready to lynch you on the spot just because, God forbid, someone might actually think it's not all that, but in my eyes it deserves some stick.
From a multiplayer point of view, it's as casual as it comes, with players scoring more kills from deployable airstrikes, automatic turrets, nukes and various other freebie kill power weapons, you start to wonder what players will do if they actually need to kill someone by actually shooting at something themselves.
It's not all bad, but players need to accept it is a lot more casual than Halo, Gears, Resistance and all the perk-less multiplayer games that don't give you exactly the weapons combo you want from the start of every game. Which is exactly why players brought up on COD struggle to adjust to those hardcore multiplayer games and find themselves getting wasted left right and centre.
To get to my original point for this post, a COD fanboy who has been giving me a hard time for liking Halo and unbelieveably to him will not believe that MW2 just isn't my game was sent the following message while he was playing, just to annoy him.
"You'd be better off playing something good!!! Like watching paint dry that's better."
To which I later replied again with.
"It takes no involvement to watch paint dry, you deploy the paint and wait until you score a dry coating.... much like COD."
I feel the need to protect myself from the COD boys, so as a little insurance policy and to balance things out Bungie have coded me an 'Instant Kill COD Fanboy' perk which has been deployed perminantly on this website. So fanboys beware, negative comments about anything non-COD will be met with an instant Killstreak for me and you'll definitely need some kind of Deathstreak to get you back in the game.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Star Fox in Iraq
People who disable embedding videos from YouTube don't really deserve the time of day. Unfortunately this video is actually too good to ignore and not spread the word, you *INSERT EXPLETIVE*.
Anyone who has played Lylat Wars/Star Fox 64 will relate to this. Unfortunately you'll have to click on the link in old fashioned style to continue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67t5WcwJ4YU
Anyone who has played Lylat Wars/Star Fox 64 will relate to this. Unfortunately you'll have to click on the link in old fashioned style to continue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67t5WcwJ4YU
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Modern Warfare is incredibly realistic *sarcasm*.
Not content with allowing a running player to run into half a clip of bullets and stab the player shooting at them, Infinity Ward are taking combat multiplayer realism to new heights. Despite the footage being taken down, we have confirmation of a strange new perk on MW2. Nukes?
That’s right, nukes. If you hit a 25 kill streak, which seems unlikely to appear too often you are awarded with a nuke. What the point of this actually is I am not sure as in the footage seen the player launching it dies too. Maybe there is a hiding place on the map, who knows.
Seems odd to me. I like the sound of Modern Warfare 2 less and less as more scant details emerge.
That’s right, nukes. If you hit a 25 kill streak, which seems unlikely to appear too often you are awarded with a nuke. What the point of this actually is I am not sure as in the footage seen the player launching it dies too. Maybe there is a hiding place on the map, who knows.
Seems odd to me. I like the sound of Modern Warfare 2 less and less as more scant details emerge.
Is the industry becoming more casual?
If you ever wanted proof that Call of Duty as a series is going more and more casual, then you only need look at the new Deathstreak system in Modern Warfare 2. What on earth are developers thinking? If you are bad at a game let’s give you no incentive whatsoever to improve? Certainly seems that way.
I play Halo a lot, it is easily my favourite online shooter, but not many casual players seem to play the ranked playlists anymore. In fact you can pretty much guarantee that any ranked match you play is going to be populated by tough opponents and you are in for a hard battle, win or lose. I can’t say the same for COD and some of my best kill streaks have come as a result of airstrikes, dogs and helicopter combinations. As a result of this I believe COD is purely the casual gamers’ shooter. Very few play the hardcore mode in comparison to the standard deathmatch playlist and I find it easy to rack up kills in general in that playlist.
With Modern Warfare 2 just weeks away more details about the multiplayer are starting to arrive, with more and more focus being directed towards something called Deathstreaks. This mechanism is by design Infinity Ward’s idea to level the playing field. In practice this might end up being a good idea, however in principle it sounds plain stupid. If a certain player is playing poorly, having a bad time and continually losing, the game will provide false means for you to get back in. To me this sounds like the game is rooting for the underdog.
As annoying and tedious it is to lose badly, to get very few kills and come away from a multiplayer game losing it is something you have to accept. Everyone starts off that way, you get better and you improve through continued play. I don’t care about the excuses people make, I have a life, I have kids, I work, I don’t have time to improve. TOUGH!! That is your problem, some people have more time than others, fact of life. I work too and I still find time to play and improve. You should not be rewarded for performing badly.
Modern Warfare 2 is not the only game that has added aspects of casualness. Forza 3 is easily the best in the series and although there is some debate about it, the rewind feature in my eyes is an absolute travesty. It just shouldn’t be there on anything other than the lower skill settings, it takes away that aspect of worry when racing. So what if you have just completed a 10 lap race that took half an hour for you to lose it on the last corner. TOUGH!!! You lost it, you failed and you should be punished as a result.
Forza 3’s unlimited use of the rewind feature is hellishly concerning. No limits? Really I can use it as much as I like without penalty, great, super fantastic, I'll do just that. Am I still able to post my lap times when I use it? Shocking stuff, it needs to go and players who do use it should have rewind stamped against any online lap times so other players know it was used. Not sure if it does this or not yet, but it certainly needs to make other players aware of how a lap time was achieved or just not post it when the rewind has been used.
This is a bad path for the industry to follow and I hope the trend doesn’t gain any more momentum. We should not reward the underdog, the underdog must improve or stop playing. It’s a cold and hard view, but it has to be that way, simple.
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