Archive for the ‘General Gaming’ Category
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
I know gamers go nuts for multiplayer, but I’m not one of those. I’m a solo girl, making major exceptions for Rainbow Six: Vegas, bitches! As much as I trust BioWare in the RPG department, the announcement of multiplayer in Mass Effect 3 has slightly dampened my enthusiasm for the game.
Games that have great single player campaigns don’t need to tack on multiplayer to cater to the rest of the market. I’m not saying that’s what BioWare has done; I haven’t played the game therefore wouldn’t know, but the cynic in me is slightly worried.
Especially when I read this quote:
Success in multi-player will have a direct impact on the outcome of the single player campaign.
Noo! I usually skip multiplayer altogether, for various reasons, but it looks to be a crucial factor in one of my most anticipated games. Although BioWare are insistent it won’t compromise the single player campaign, and at least playing with friends solves the stupid AI issues I faced in Mass Effect 2. I really pray it doesn’t fuck up what was already a near perfect franchise.
Tags: AI, Bioware, Co-op, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Multiplayer, Rainbow Six: Vegas
Posted in General Gaming, Xbox Live | 5 Comments »
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
OMG. I know. I’m so late to the Gears party that none of you are actually going to read this, yet here I am typing. About Gears. Men in big boots (big boots don’t die), even bigger suits, and guns with chainsaws. Technically I should have orgasmed by now. But here I am having completed it on Hardcore, feeling a little “meh”.
Now, I can totally justify this. Let me start by saying that I get that Gears is a good game. In fact it’s a great franchise, but there are aspects of it I’m not fond of, and they fundamentally dampen the whole experience for me. Firstly, I hate the characters. They are stereotypical, OTT, butch soldiers with a complete lack of personality. Bo-ring. I think the only character I can stomach is the Cole Train, baby (I hope you read that in Cole’s voice). And Carmine. But he’s dead…
Secondly, the whole thing feels a tad cliche. Normally this wouldn’t bother me. In fact, the reason I get so angry at JRPG’s receiving low marks in reviews is because the reviewer normally describes them as cliche, and I’m always like “But that’s okay! We want traditional JRPG’s, no?!”.
I don’t know, maybe I just have a personal vendetta against Gears of War, because reading the above two paragraphs doesn’t really explain why I feel so “meh” towards Marcus Fenix and friends.
With that said I still enjoyed my playthrough, though it was only redeemed by the fact I played it on co-op with a good friend and even gooder (not a word, I know) banter. No, wait, something else redeemed it… The Lancer. What a great weapon! I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of slicing through a Bolter.
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Tags: Epic, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Horde, Multiplayer
Posted in General Gaming | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 7th, 2011
For the first time in, I dunno, six weeks I found myself with an unusually empty weekend. I was meant to be packing for my big move to the city next week (which only dawned on me earlier today that it is in fact, next week). Instead I polished off Fallout New Vegas’ DLC, Dead Money. Let’s just get the fact I’ll likely refer to it throughout this post, in err of course, as Blood Money out the way. Hitman seems to have had a lingering effect.
I usually turn a blind eye towards DLC. I find it rarely delivers in terms of content, often feeling like a watered down level(s) of the game, consequently meaning I begrudge spending almost a tenner on it. Meh. Dead Money was massively challenging, therefore felt considerably lengthy for a game add-on. Basically, I felt I got my money’s worth with all the time I put into it, and the locations felt quite varied, too. The only real disappointment being the Achievements totaled a mere 140 Gamerpoints.
What makes Dead Money so challenging? Okay, let me be a total douche, as always, and throw the fact I was playing the game on Hardcore out there (I feel I have to justify this for all the people who play on Easy and will comment telling me I’m rubbish at gaming for finding it tough). But on top of that, your character is fitted with an explosive collar around their neck, which is regularly disrupted by radios and alarms leading to combustion and, of course, immediate death. Add to that a hazy toxic cloud that has settled in many parts of the location, eating away at health rather quickly when you inevitably pass through it, and lethal holograms that will instantly kill you upon detection, there’s a lot of reloading earlier saves to do! Well, at least there was for me.
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Tags: Dead Money, DLC, Fallout: New Vegas, Hitman: Blood Money
Posted in General Gaming | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 19th, 2010
I haven’t updated my blog in over a month, which is strange given I’ve been playing my Xbox a fair bit.
I finally got into Gears of War 2, in particular the multiplayer mode, Horde. My friend and I are (very) slowly co-oping our way through the campaign thanks to intermittent connection problems, and the fact Horde is so damn fun the temptation to play it overrides that of the campaign itself.
I happened to buy Gears of War 2 during one of the crazy Anniversary weekends (or something), so the Epic developers had decided to multiply XP by 8, which saw me level up stupidly fast, and change every 9 waves from being a mixed bag of enemies to simply Tickers. Having never played Horde I didn’t know that 9 rounds of Tickers was unusual, and it certainly wasn’t as fun as it is when you have Boomers, Maulers and Bloodmounts attacking you from every angle.
Yes, I like a challenge.
With that said, by the time we had reached Wave 40-odd the Anniversary weekend was over and Horde returned to its normal formula. There’s a good tactic for facing the higher level waves on a map called Stasis, where you kill a couple of Maulers and block the steps with their shields. We managed to complete Wave 50 on Normal using this tactic.
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Tags: Crackdown 2, Epic, Gears of War 2, GTAIV, Horde, Infinite Undiscovery, Shadow Complex
Posted in General Gaming | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
Gears of War. Who could argue that those three words have become synonymous with Xbox 360? It’s ‘our’ exclusive, the one that truly demonstrated what the 360 was capable of, and it certainly deserved the praise both critics and gamers alike showered it with. Like many others, I let myself get caught up in the hype and put my pre-order down for the game’s release in 2006, and while it has become a game I never publicly fault, it’s one that no one ever hears me talk about.
Although I appreciated the game for what it was, and even now I find it difficult to fault the gameplay, I never fell in love with the game like many others did. There were only a couple of reasons why, but I think the main reason was simply a case of characters; big, beefy, over-emasculated, meatheads. Although I enjoyed my playthrough and the occasional dabbling of MultiPlayer (though I failed to master the ‘shotgun and roll’ tactic that success seemed to hinge on), I gave the sequel a miss because the characters pissed me off so much.
Okay, so Cole was pretty awesome. There aren’t many fine details I recall about the characters, but I did enjoy Cole’s quips. And Carmine. You never really know much about him, but I know I like him. However, I just found it difficult to relate to any of the characters, especially physically.
I know, I know, it’s lame, right? I don’t exactly relate to Lara Croft with my modest B cup (and that’s probably wishful thinking), yet I love Tomb Raider mainly because of her. I don’t particularly relate to a 16 year old boy who, despite his age, hasn’t appeared to have hit puberty, yet I still love Blue Dragon. You get my point. It’s pretty illogical, yet it’s just the way it always has been.
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Tags: Epic, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3, Marcus Fenix
Posted in General Gaming | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
I am Ashley, and I write about the video games I play. It is therefore my responsibility to deliver you an unbiased verdict of whatever has been occupying my Xbox’ disc tray. Usually I can expect a few disagreements . After all, video games aren’t tailored to suit every individual, and personal taste undoubtedly comes into it. Never have I played a game, however, where I’ve been so certain that the answer to the question posed in the title of this very blog post will indeed be a resounding “Yes!”.
Back up… Wasn’t Alan Wake announced in 2005? Yuh-huh. I wrote a little about the effect of the many delays Alan Wake has seen, and how, having only played Alan Wake for one evening, my apprehension had quickly dissolved into confidence that it was in fact worth the 5 year wait. Now I’m on the penultimate chapter, and the game has only gotten better (and my screams louder).
What makes or breaks a survival horror game (or psychological thriller action-adventure as Alan Wake is described) is the atmosphere. If it doesn’t provoke even the tiniest pee leakage, then it’s not doing its job. Unfortunately, after the disappointing lack of scares in Resident Evil 5, I haven’t played anything since Condemned, the Xbox launch title, that has managed to terrorise me. Ask any of my friends who have spent an evening in an Xbox Live party with me as I hesitantly traipse through Bright Falls, and they’ll tell you this game makes me scream. A lot. With the lights off, surround sound on, I somehow feel that it’s entirely possible an axe-wielding dark entity will creep up behind me *shudders*.
The environment is what you’d expect, although not to an entirely predictable degree that it looses its scare factor; desolate woods, dense trees, abandoned log cabins. All of which you are forced to explore at night, more often than not alone.
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Tags: Alan Wake, Remedy
Posted in General Gaming | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
I’ve been a naughty girl. I’ve shunned my ‘one game woman’ approach in favour of simultaneous variety. The reason being that I recently finished Splinter Cell: Conviction, and with only a week or so until Skate 3 is released, I didn’t want to start — and not be able to finish — something else entirely. This gave me the opportunity to tie up some ‘loose ends’.
My friend and I completed the co-op mode of Splinter Cell: Conviction on Realistic, which took longer than anticipated merely because of the connectivity issues we regularly experienced. I’m not sure what the issue was, but neither of us had a dodgy connection and were chatting without interruption over Xbox Live. This usually indicates it wasn’t an issue on either of our ends. I’m assuming it is, as usual, down to Ubisoft’s paltry Multiplayer programming. Bear in mind I’m a huge Rainbow Six: Vegas fan, which is also a Ubisoft (and Tom Clancy) title, but that would have never won any awards for running smoothly online, and I’m the first to admit that. As fun as the Tom Clancy games are in Multiplayer mode, they rarely seem to run fluidly.
With Conviction, you can guarantee the frame rate will drop repeatedly, and at one point you will inevitably get booted from the game. And with each co-op mode campaign being split into 4 chapters, you can rest assured that when you do get booted out, you’ll have to play through a fair bit of the game again. Considering the approach to SC:C is slow and stealthy, this gets frustrating.
With that said, there’s a lot to the Multiplayer that adds some much needed overall substance to Conviction. Even though we’ve polished off the co-op campaign, we’re now attempting the other co-op modes!
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Tags: Alan Wake, DLC, Fallout 3, Operation: Anchorage, Skate 3
Posted in General Gaming | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Firstly, let’s get my Splinter Cell history out of the way. Prior to Conviction, I had only played Sam Fisher’s 360 debut, Double Agent. It was hard. Very hard. Y’see, stealth isn’t my strong point. If I have a gun, I’ll use it just because I can. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea of stealth games, and the 360 seems to be sparse with games of the peepin’ and creepin’ variety.
Unfortunately, Conviction doesn’t fill this gap. Splinter Cell has changed direction, and from as much as a relative newbie can tell, it doesn’t feel like your typical Sam Fisher game. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does take some getting used to.
I tried approaching every scenario in as low key a fashion as possible; avoid detection, clean headshots, hand-to-hand take-downs where possible… But it seemed there were some situations where creating massive havoc was simply unavoidable. Disappointing.
Maybe this is justified by the story. Fisher has been alerted his daughter’s death was in fact faked, and after having spent years grieving her death he’s now on a mission to find her alive and well. I guess this means cutting out the sneaky bullshit and doing whatever it takes. Pretty understandable, right?
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Tags: Splinter Cell: Conviction, Ubisoft
Posted in General Gaming | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Since buying Mass Effect 2, it’s been the one game to solely consume my Xbox’ disc tray, which is why there’s been a distinct lack of chatter around here to do with anything other than Mass Effect 2. Hardly surprising, though, given it’s the much awaited sequel to one of my favourite 360 games to date. Even with its lengthy story (I’m currently 40 hours in and still have quite a few missions left/planets undiscovered), there’s rarely a moment my interest wavers and it doesn’t grasp 100% of my attention. Since it’s been available for a couple of months now, you’ve probably made your mind up as to whether you’re going to play it or not (and if you haven’t, the answer is yes, you do want to play it). Because of that, I’ll summarise my likes and dislikes as opposed to a full blown review.
Likes
Commander Shepard. Bioware did good by enabling those of us who had played the original to port our character over, but they stepped it up a notch by having all choices made in the original Mass Effect stored, thus certain aspects of Mass Effect 2 changing dependent on those. Not only that, but they reward those who have ported their character over with a little boost to stats. Bringing over a Level 54 Adept set me up at Level 3.
The original cast. It was nice to see familiar faces crop up in Mass Effect 2, even if recruiting most of them isn’t an option.
Romance plots. While the romance plots seem a little shallow, the option to forge relationships with members of your crew does appear to be there (although I’ve yet to have any raunchy sex scenes). I’ve been pursuing Miranda, and the attraction seems to be reciprocated. I also got drunk with the ship’s Doctor, but that didn’t seem to get me anywhere…
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Tags: Bioware, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, RPG, RPGs
Posted in General Gaming | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
As always with a game that spans many hours, I like to geek out and share my initial stats and early progress status; details such as character class, level, hours spanned, and anything else worth mentioning.
With Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, there is only one character you can command as the story’s protagonist, and that character is Lieutenant Commander Shepard (with varying degrees of customisation available). Thanks to the efficient devs at Bioware, Mass Effect 2 easily enables you to import a previous character from Mass Effect, with all previous plot and dialogue choices having been cached. I ported my second character, Chris Shepard, which in return gave me a nice boost to my stats. Thanks, Bioware!
On to the intel…
Chris Shepard is a level 8 Adept, an apathetic bastard who, given the choice, will usually go for the Renegade option in both dialogue and action. He was level 53 in my original playthrough of Mass Effect, which rounded his stats at Level 3 when I ported him to Mass Effect 2. A nice boost for jumping in on Insanity difficulty (which, so far, hasn’t been too insane).
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Tags: Bioware, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, RPG
Posted in General Gaming | 5 Comments »
Hmm. Uhh. Yeah. Skyrim. It’s massive. The quests are never-ending. My character has a mohawk. My class is Breton. Don’t