Honest Gaming Prose

What I've Been Playing Jan 2012

2012-01-29T10:58:00.001+00:00

Just a mention of what I've been gaming with in the last weeks. Always told from an honest point of view with no fanboy BS in sight.

It's getting to the point now where I can't play everything that's out. Maybe it is in part due to lots of new responsibilities and commitments, work projects keeping me busy and various interests, but still, I suspect that the release schedule of late has made it hard for most gamers to "keep up" as well. Of course, this isn't a bad thing after all.

Why should you feel you have to keep up with new releases as they come up? So what if you have a huge backlog of games to buy? That's great. You will save money this way. If you keep buying the cheapest games of those you want, by the time you complete all of those, the latest games you want will be actively cheaper (unless they are COD or Nintendo titles of course, hehe). So you will always be onto a winner.

I've got a lot to choose from and many priorities to put in place. So what's been actually taking my time? Well for starters, the same thing that's eaten most of your collective gaming time as well: Skyrim.

Ah yes, this truly is a game changer, literally.
I'm not going to tell you how great the game is or review it - that would be silly. There's so much news and hype about this game my little voice would never be heard above the din! Too many people are reviewing this and it's quite obvious to everyone that this is probably the greatest game on the Xbox 360 - or a top 3 at least. I don't think anyone is going to sanely question that. What I might do instead, just to shake things up and perhaps travel a road a little less travelled is compile a report of things I did NOT like about the game - perhaps even a video about it.

There's so much said about this game and the hype monster just gets so big it makes it look like it cannot do any wrong, sometimes. That just isn't true at all.
So look out for that one appearing on your shores at an upcoming time.

The other thing that's taken up some of my time (not a lot) is Earth Defence Force Insect Armageddon.

If Skyrim was a six course meal of fine dining, EDF would be bubblegum. It's "okay" but only "okay". I did some research into it before buying and the reviews told me that it wasn't going to be amazing but that it was fun. I came into the game with suitably low expectations - but I have to say that even those expectations weren't quite met. Gosh.

We bought it because myself and the two other guys I play with frequently wanted an online game to co-op to. Dead Island was more expensive and EDF had a cap of 3 players - exactly what we were! We had had such fun co-oping Borderlands together that we needed our new teamwork fix. Yeah, this wasn't it, guys. There really is little feeling of teamwork involved here. It's big and dumb - oh and bland. It does have elements of fun, but gets really repetitive quickly, especially when you realise how dumb many of the guns are as well. A lot of the fire modes are point in the general direction and let the bullets/rockets/missiles do the rest locking on or homing into the mechanical or chitinous insectoid foes before you. Of course, this is a blessing too because the control aiming system doesn't feel capable enough of supporting proper point and aim play anyway! But that's not a good reason!

Oh and the ending is quite rubbish too. But if you play it on higher difficulties you get slight longer endings. Meh.

As I said, EDF is like bubblegum and it just lost its flavour.

See you later folks.

RJF

Dragon Age Set 3 Info

2012-01-29T10:29:00.001+00:00

New Dragon Age RPG TableTop set 3 info can be found here:

http://greenronin.com/2012/01/green_ronin_in_2012.php

As always, keep following the coverage of my own campaign of this on YouTube too.

http://www.youtube.com/user/RobertJFreemantle?feature=mhee

Dragon Age Roleplay Table Top Coverage

2012-01-29T10:25:00.000+00:00

In un-ashamed self advertising I will dutifully inform you of my coverage of the Dragon Age RPG in a YouTube playlist.
You can check out the coverage below

On Headphones and Microphones

2011-11-22T10:46:00.001+00:00

I've had a lot of noisy little people in my house over the last months, which can be very distracting indeed while I'm trying to play the Xbox, especially when you're trying to concentrate on a game like 'Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim' which has a lot of background dialogue that spectators could think is unimportant to you the player, so might speak over it, but to you, the person experiencing and immersing yourself in this world, you need every little bit of sound to keep you involved. Sometimes tiny little musical cues might be missed and you're never truly living and breathing the world correctly to create that magic, that bond.

So what can I do? I've been researching a potential solution to this with headphones. I'd narrowed my search down to two sets.
The first is the X31 by Turtle Beach.

These are quite expensive but look lovely with their sleek back and white looks and wireless capability. They are stereo though, which is a downgrade from the surround I can achieve with my T.V....that is if loud children weren't also in the room, hehe.

Then I started comparing it to this:

This is a really expensive option and is 5.1 surround. Well, it will be simulated surround really won't it, best when using an optical cable.

As a final mention, I discovered the

Although from further exploration of this, it appears to be for PC only as it does not state it works with Xbox like the others do. That's a shame, because it's cheaper!

I don't quite know what I'll do yet...

Other Reviewers...Score Hikes and Yikes!

2011-11-09T08:39:00.000+00:00

I really feel that small website blogs such as this one are needed, especially now as games have taken off as a major entertainment selller. When a large corporate magazine or website reviews a game, they tend to miss out lots of points that frustrate me, that make me wish I could tell the readers. That frustration led to me wanting to put in writing my own take on many recent games.

Then you've got this new insane mentality of high scores for games. A breakdown in understanding has led to many gamers seeing the 7/10 as "average" and anything lower than that is bad. What madness is this?
It seems that many of the games journalists, instead of fighting against this, have embraced it, trying to appease the terms of their audience and hiked up scores willy-nilly.
I gave Mass Effect 2 a score of 8.8 out of 10. I couldn't even bring myself to let it have 9 for crying out loud. There were flaws, they bothered me. I explained what they were so you could decide for yourselves. To me, this is honest journalism.

I hope to keep that coming.

Splosion Man Meets Pete

2011-11-09T08:31:00.000+00:00

This is even better than the portal one. Here's Pete completely losing it with Splosion Man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbKkj9iJNGc&feature=related

Portal Meets Pete

2011-11-09T08:26:00.000+00:00

Want to see my friend Pete going loopy playing Portal? Right then, clicky here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZxoBmTDCkk

Not So Happy With Mafia 2

2011-05-22T16:58:00.000+01:00

So I just posted on 2K Games forum regarding Mafia 2. I wanted to give them some feedback on a negative situation I had suffered while playing their game. Here is what I said:

Mafia 2 is obviously a great game, but I wanted to give you some feedback on elements that have marred this experience from being totally what it should have been. Here are my comments.

*WARNING SPOILERS*

The early part of the game where you steal the stamps from the safe. This feels a little silly. If you knock out all three security guards and open the safe, the alarm still goes off. Are we to assume that some sort of alarm is rigged into a safe door in that day and age? And the police response time is a little silly as well. They come into that building so quick, it's as if they live there. It's like catching a fire station on fire and watching how fast the guys would put it out...
This is a point that I found I kept reloading, because I did the safe part with guards still conscious and thought the alarm was because of them. So I reloaded to take them all out and wasted my time when the thing still went off. But if this alarm was going to go off anyway, why not just tie the auto save to breaking the safe? Why keep repeating the same guards thing over and over? It's a waste of player time.

Remember the scene where Joe shoots the black owner of the bar? Well for me in my save once it gave me control back after cut scene, I couldn't drag him out to the car because he hadn't died...He was standing there very much alive and moving...I was able to look him in the eye and walk through him. Another frustrating reload.

My final point (at time of writing) is a major issue for me, that is somewhat like the first. Poorly disbursed save points in places. This hit me particularly hard in Chapter 12 Sea Gift. When you wake up and are told to get over to the park to meet Joe and Henry, because you're going to deal drugs with the Chinese. So you have to travel all the way to the park and then go through a cut scene, then from the cut scene you have to get the three of you to the next place required. The problem is, the care you brought won't fit all three people...but you didn't know you would need to...so you are forced to LOSE your car that you've spent money on improving because you can't even get in it to drive home and change it for a larger one. So I had to run with the other two, through the park until I finally came upon a taxi which I stole and traveled all the way to the objective place.
Just as I was parking up something silly happened. Another car had stopped alongside mine, boxing me in on one side. I pressed the button to get out anyway and my character ended up getting out of my car by teleporting through the car next to me and opening THEIR car door on the other side to get out! It was as if I had always been in that car instead. Worse still, for some STUPID reason my character got out wielding the damned tommy gun! I had not, i repeat NOT pressed up on the D pad at any point to change him to it. He got out wielding it and the cops went by at that VERY moment. They put on the siren and went full alert on me because I had a gun. A gun I didn't actually draw... I decided to not be silly and start something right at the place I needed to be, I didn't want my time wasted after all - so I let them catch me so I could pay a bribe like normal. But a message appeared on screen telling me a bribe is not possible in this situation and I have to run! Have to run away from the very objective I tried all this time getting to!
Hoo boy.
So I am forced to run and drive away from them but I had an accident and ended up dying in the car anyway, seeing as they're guns blazing at me by now, thanks to the other guys returning fire at them and such.
And where does the reload take me? BACK IN MY BED!!!
That is not acceptable, guys. Come on! it's crap like that - when you're unfairly made to die or reload only to find your save point is miles away - that makes you want to switch the console off and play no more that day. The auto save should have at least been at the park. it's not like anything challenging happened to get to the park, it's just a drive to it. So I consider that a mean time sink.

That is my rage quit moment right there. I thought you might be interested in that story. I hope it helps you in further developments.

Thoughts On 'Splosion Man' and 'Hydrophobia' Xbox Live Arcade Titles

2010-12-01T23:17:00.001+00:00

I can feel another article in me, trying to get out. This time it’s about the XBLA games I’ve been playing of late. I won’t be reviewing them because, after all the words I say are more important than simply looking at some score and deciding on the merit of that. You might look at my score and that of a large gamer magazine/website and decide that because they scored a game high and I scored it low that I must be wrong. Well that would be your opinion, just like my thoughts on the worthiness of a game are mine – however, if you read the words instead of comparing scores, you might actually see why I do/do not like a title and you might decide that I am right.

Let’s kick off what will be a series of ongoing articles with two games for you to ponder.

Splosion Man:

An insane idea. You play a humanoid creature made of some permanently burning substance in a platformer where you have one primary gameplay function: Exploding. You explode to kill enemies, you explode to jump – sometimes a double or triple splodey-jump! That’s about it for controls, other than the movement stick. Simple? In concept yes, but in practice, devilishly difficult!

This game’s challenge factor borders on downright evil sometimes, with a finger squarely pointed at the developers in this! The challenge of negotiating platforms under duress from other elements around you, be they time, enemies or just really difficult timing on the angles is super high and you will find yourself dying – A LOT! This is a game that will sometimes make you hate yourself for dying “yet again”. However, this game is also fun and the reward of completing a difficult level is a feeling of bliss, of punching the air with your fist in celebration.

The main character seems to be an experimental subject attempting to escape from a massive underground laboratory and fighting the scientists and their robots as you go. It’s comedic to the extreme. You’ll grin with glee at your little character’s animations while idle, or different ways he’ll run along, in his hyperactive silly manner. This dose of silly does help lessen the blow of the game’s many difficult sections at least.

The graphics are nice and shiny, very polished for this XBLA specific title. The sound delivers as well, all giving you a good feeling to the gameplay ambience.

So, niggles then? Well, sometimes the physics engine involved will not be spot on and that lack of consistency will sometimes have you die repeatedly. Sometimes the camera will get stuck in position and you won’t be able to see yourself on screen anymore, no-matter what you do – more than likely you wander off and get killed by some unseen peril off-screen. There are (at least) a decent number of checkpoints scattered throughout the levels, but the perilous nature of the game will potentially see you making no progress for quite some time, stuck at a checkpoint.

Perhaps the biggest concern for me with the game is the skip level, chicken out option: “The coward’s way out” as the game calls it. Yes, if you die too many times the game offers you the option of skipping the entire level. The only penalty you suffer is the humiliation of your character playing the next level wearing a pink tutu…

This wasn’t such a bad idea really, seeing as when I was playing it, I researched and discovered from a source that the game will force you to complete the skipped levels at the end anyway…it turned out that this was not the case! At no point does the game try to have you go back over levels you skip. Worse than that though is that I couldn’t manually access the skipped levels after completion of the game…So…they give you the option of skipping levels as much as you like, with no way of playing them afterwards and no reason not to cheat. Ouch, that’s a blunder.

Regardless of this, Splosion Man really is worth looking if you want to spend some arcade points. I recommend it, but it will drive you as insane as the main character at times.

Hydrophobia:

It plays a bit like a Tomb Raider game with no puzzles and a huge emphasis on water and swimming. In fact, water is this game’s main feature, with a physics engine built around getting the look and feel “right”. It perhaps succeeded on this front to a genuinely interesting extent, with water pouring through rooms and passages and carrying you along with it – sometimes giving you a feeling of fighting against the elements as tides swirl you about and you’re suddenly underwater kicking to get back to the surface once more. Meanwhile, explosions rock you and fire (strangely and) dangerously moves towards you on the water’s surface.

I mentioned before that there is a strong comparison with the Tomb Raider game series. Well, you play as a female who has to negotiate a series of jumps and climbing between torrent engulfed areas. There’s also a little scanner that helps reveal direction markers for progression finds and a way to hack into CCTV security cameras, sometimes using the zoom function to access a console and so on. Then there’s the hacking she is called to partake of from time to time. It’s a little mini game not too dissimilar in style to that which you’d find in Batman: Arkham Asylum. The difference is that the hacking mini-game in that is better.

Your character can pull a gun out as well. Hurray! It takes quite a while though before you can access more types of bullets, so you need to get proficient at using the sonic rounds: an ammunition that is generally not deadly on contact (even with charged up shots). The real usage for these is environmental kills. See an enemy stepping into some water and he’s near an electrical box? Shoot the box and you can electrocute him. Not enough water near him? Sometimes you can shoot out the glass in a door to let nearby water into your passage (sonic ammo is unlimited – good thing too, seeing as it’s quite pants really). You can also blow up the obligatory red barrels to make them explode. An interesting idea for you to wrap your head around is the ability to fire single “light” shots of the sonic rounds at barrels to push them along into a potentially more favourable position.

The combat in Hydrophobia is actually a lot better than Tomb Raider’s poorly implemented lock on and hope for the best system, with this game offering you manual targeting, without the former title’s ridiculous range issues before you can shoot!

There is a lot of bad to say about this game as well though:
The water never truly looks or feels real, yes it sweeps you along within the reality of the game world itself but that’s it.
To aim your gun in a precision aiming mode, you must click down on the right stick but sometimes a click will not register, all the while you are getting shot up.
There is an “a button” contextual duck into cover mode. This works well enough some of the time, but at other times you might find yourself accidentally breaking that very cover without thinking you even moved the controls enough to justify doing so. I personally incurred at least one death from this happening.
The game is quite short but there is the promise of more parts to come at least. I had Some instability with performance was noted. At least on two occasions the entire Xbox froze up, requiring a hard reset.
Little niggling things like on the start screen, the game option that is always auto highlighted is “Start New Game”. Why?

I’m actually in two minds about whether I can suggest this one to you or not. It had elements of fun about it and moments where I felt I was wasting my time. For some reason though, I felt driven enough to complete it to its end. Perhaps that speaks something for the game in itself. It really could and should have been a lot better though.

Latest Games Played...

2010-11-09T16:16:00.000+00:00

This isn’t going to be a review of a game exactly, but instead a review of my current gaming habits, in an attempt at quickly determining what is good and bad about the titles played without troubling you with too many walls of text. Better still, I don’t have to give you a score out of 10. I can simply tell you if I think it’s worth playing. Let’s get started then!

The following console game assessments were made on the Xbox 360 platform.

Halo Reach:

It’s Halo! It’s obviously going to be solid. You’ve probably read loads of reviews of this, so I don’t need to tell you much do I? It was a solid, decent shooter, like any Bungie Halo game is going to be. The best of the series? Well, not really, but it certainly delivers that familiar Halo gameplay along with some nice new ideas, mainly to the pickup item system: jetpacks, armour lock, sprint, hologram and so on.

Reach really is worth a play and bear in mind it is meant to be Bungie’s final outing with the series…Well, perhaps Bungie’s, but there are still areas left for another company to come along and expand the mythos that we get to play, further.

Those who recall the true outcome of Spartan John 117 from Halo 3 will know one potential avenue for the series continuing. Another less known one is mention I seem to recall of a female Spartan still left in stasis somewhere after reach – in the Halo Fall of Reach novel that is, which was released quite some years before this game even came out.

Ghostbusters:

If you’re an avid Ghostbusters fan then this game plays true to the movie series. It should do as well – check out the writing credits on it…oh is that Dan Akroyd I see? Not to mention that the original cast are back to provide voices. This game continues from the movies, showing you what would effectively have been the next Ghostbusters movie, based in 1991.

But how does it play? I have to say I think the sum of its parts don’t add up to make it a recommended experience. The difficulty level seems a bit iffy for a start. Playing it on its “normal” mode means you will incur many frustrating deaths along with restarts leaving you quite a way back thanks to the sometimes stingy checkpoints in the game. Why are you dying all the time? Well for a start, you’re playing in third person view and 90% of the time you will succumb to some off screen attack that might fell you in one shot. Delightful. You have to really listen to your team mate warnings about where an off screen ghost might be in proximity to you, but when you’re shifting about a lot, “on your right” is a perspective prone to changing before you know where you were.

When a Ghostbuster goes down, you probably should go over and revive him. However, doing so can sometimes leave you open to one of those nefarious off screen attacks aforementioned and as your newly refreshed team mate stands up, you may perhaps fall, defeated. I had a series of back and forth revivals occur several times in fact, bordering on ridiculous. He’d revive me and die – I stand up and revive him and die from being there doing that – He revives me because I’m down, but dies because he stood there doing that and so on.

Saying all of that, the easy or “casual” mode is not satisfying to play the game in either. It’s far too easy and you’ll rarely feel in danger.

Ho-hum. Well, at least the combat mechanics felt satisfying to use. Capturing a ghost looks really good, just like the movies – and you can really feel the tug of the blighter trying to get “off the hook” as it were. Superb.

But in the end I don’t particularly recommend this title to you. It’s really quite average indeed. If what I’ve told you doesn’t seem so bad and you’re a huge fan of the series then go ahead, perhaps give it a rental, otherwise, why bother when there are so many other juicy games out there to justify your shiny pennies leaving your hand.

Splinter Cell - Conviction:

Ah, Sam Fisher’s pain continues, but this time so does ours in the somewhat messed up plot this time round. We’ve seen it all before – these are your friends or are they? These are the bad guys, right? This person betrayed you at such and such, blah blah. We want to know if it plays well don’t we? Well, yes, yes it does. The gadgets are groovy like always, the combat is exactly how I recall it but there are some noticeable changes to the game elsewhere. Knock out a guard and want to carry him away? Hmmm, not going to happen from what I could see.

Another new feature is the shadows cover mode – you know? That scale that tells you if you’re in darkness or not and whether guards can see you or not. We were used to seeing a meter rise or fall the further in cover you were. Those days are gone. The developers have integrated the hiding mechanics into the gameplay now in a simple yet effective way: If you’re in the open, the game looks normal, if you’re in cover, the screen turns greyscale (black and white). This works well, believe me, but you might find yourself wishing you weren’t missing out on the full benefit from those graphics around you. It’s worth playing if you’re a devout of the series. If you just want a tactical stealth shooter on the 360, grab Splinter Cell: Double Agent first and become a fan.

Bad Company 2

Oh dear! I am about to say something that many other reviewers won’t have the guts to tell you. Bad Company 2 is rather messed up. Let’s just get something straight from the off – I am a huge fan of these four characters and don’t get me wrong, the dynamic of their comedic interaction is still there but little else that made up the raw magic of the first game has survived…Of course BC2 is good but it feels wrong it being titled as a Bad Company game. It doesn’t play like the first one.

Liked the sandbox gameplay from the first game? The way you could go about completing a level however you wish? Large areas to fight in, skipping enemy troops if you choose? All gone.

Liked the way you’d respawn back into the game if you die, as if it was a multiplayer? Gone. You now restart from a sometimes too distant checkpoint just like any other military shooter.

Liked the cool secondary gadgets from before? Gone! Before we had access to cool little things like the repair tool to fix damaged vehicles. This time around I had access to a secondary item just once during the entire game - some C4 that I didn’t even get to use.

Liked the cool air strikes weapon you had access to several times in BC1? Yeah, forget the fun you had with that, now all laser marked air strikes will be full scripted position only events, the like of which you’d find in Medal of Honor or Call of Duty. What made the magic in BC1 was that you’d have access to the beautiful thing throughout certain levels. It was great to work your way through the streets of an urban neighbourhood, getting pinned down by a guy in the top floor with a machine gun and air striking his roof behind cover so that you can advance past it. Yeah…BC2 just isn’t as much fun anymore. That’s not to say that you won’t enjoy the multiplayer experience, because I want you to bear in mind that I didn’t have an opportunity to play the MP maps so decide that element for yourselves. I will say though, the building destruction mechanics aren’t even as fun this time around – and if seeing how it works in one player mode is any indication, the unusual elements promised by it in MP may disappoint…

Alien Versus Predator:

You know what? I played this for one session. I realised I couldn’t turn the auto aim off and felt frustrated with it yanking my aim onto the enemies in a way I didn’t like – so I turned the game off and never played it again.

Medal of Honor Tier 1 Edition

Some people don’t like that this game lets you play in a real warfare scenario, that of the U.S. versus the Taliban forces of Afghanistan, but I am going to say that I’m on the side of the developers in this one. Nothing has been blown out of proportion – nothing has been unfairly portrayed – both sides are dangerous with no “weak” enemy. In fact this game delivers a feeling of realistic atmosphere that I believe pays respect to all factions involved. It’s deadly serious in the business it delivers, even though that realism is sometimes interrupted by an obvious “gamey” explosive barrel or obvious set piece. Even with that, the game delivers an enjoyable experience. The guns handle well – in fact they handle DAMN well. I love the aiming here, smooth as butter, smooth like Halo.

Reviews will tell you that Medal of Honor isn’t good, that it doesn’t work as well as it should. Perhaps, if you compare it to the likes of Call of Duty Modern Warefare 2, but I’m going to go on record saying this: This is better than Bad Company 2 in every way.

The worst thing about MOH was perhaps the annoying on the rails shooting sections. The worst offender was the helicopters. There is a particular mortar team that is mystifyingly indestructible to chain gun bullets and missiles and the only way the game registers them harmed is by your helicopter’s third (heavier) alternate munitions.

Medal of Honor Airborne:

How stupid I was even buying this. I played MOH:A for one session and I quite simply stopped right there.

Do not play this game. The parachuting sections are bizarre and give little to the thin gameplay anyway.

Running around an open map like a multiplayer experience but playing a one player war game ought to be brilliant, right? Oh dear. Fighting your way into a building to kill the enemy there, even with their cunningly positioned MG at the balcony on the stairs and prevailing should give you a sense of achievement. That was indeed the case, however it was short lived when in the same level, my new and different objectives led me back to what appeared to be the very same building just to re-enter it again, killing Germans placed in the same positions, spawning from the same places – and on look, wonder of wonders, the machine gun at the top of the stairs is populated by “Gerry” again, even though we had just been all over it, effectively capturing it…surely.

If this was the only problem I might have been able to look past it, to find some other way of enjoying the game and calling it fun, because a sense of battlefield realism wasn’t going to be it. But MOH:A suffers from some of the worst clunky controls I believe I have ever laid my hands on. You move and shoot like a slug on roller-skates – and just so you know, the shooting mechanics don’t feel very effective either, with dubious bullet hit registration in the enemy pretty much all the time.

Alan Wake:

Let me just say, the storyline is pretentious, dark and confusing. The DLC (downloadable content) was even more kooky than the game’s first six “episodes” yet it made more sense…how?

Alright, Alan Wake might be a bit of a noggin boggler and if you were to truly understand the full complexity of what was going on you’d perhaps be insane but beneath my petty slamming of this one facet in Alan Wake, the game feels and plays like a breath of fresh air.

You might say, the three evenings or so I spent playing it was the “light of my life” because light is an interesting dynamic in Alan Wake. Darkness is your enemy, light is your friend. If you’re hurt, you stand in a large light source to heal. You use your torch with its limited battery to strip the darkness from the taken so that your bullets can do some real harm to them. There is a good degree of tactical play using this. Surrounded by taken on all sides? You need to prioritise targets with the torch and perhaps shift them to halt others who might be getting too close. Too close for comfort? Drop a flare and watch the taken fall back away from it. That’s not all though. The game lets you use flashbang grenades on the taken which work like fragmentation grenades would on people, because remember light is their weakness. Most genius of all is the implementation of a flare gun with its limited ammo. You use this as you would a rocket launcher in any other game – and that works out A-okay for me, seeing as the character you play isn’t some hardened military veteran – it’s a novelist who is starting to realise that his own creations might be becoming a danger to him and everyone around him, yet his writing too may well be his only salvation…sound good? Well it actually is. I don’t really want to tell you too much more because the fun in Alan Wake is its mystery and I do believe you won’t regret getting this title.

The last point I’ll leave you on is the way each chapter begins and ends like a T.V. episode, with the next episode starting with a recap from the last – We hear the typical American voiceover of “Previously on Alan Wake” that starts it.

The music in the game is pretty good as well.

I was a little downhearted though to find that even after all of this time past its release date there are only two pieces of DLC for it, expanding by two episodes. I was led to believe that the entire game would continue on with ongoing DLC episodes into the future. If that is still the case then it would appear that their releases will be rather slow. With that in mind, I believe I won’t keep hold of the game based on a chance of more DLC. I’ll trade it in and let more accumulate if it’s going to then consider a rental to see what is new.

Games Workshop Price Hike

2010-05-17T10:03:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. Games Workshop prices are going up on various lines from June 1st.

A lot of things are increasing in price, however some things are remaining as they were. It's starting to get a bit uneven.

Perhaps the most disgusting thing is army book/codex prices rising to £17.50. Come on! £15 was shocking as it was, I could barely forgive them for that...now this?
The problem is, a lot of players are going to feel priced out of the hobby.

This is where it all started, an announcement by Dark Sphere, the popular online minis shop.

To read the 50+ pages reaction on popular Warhammer forum Warseer click here.

I would also recommend checking out Beasts of War over at YouTube (just generally - because they're ace) who did a video on the subject here.

Warhammer Fantasy 8th Edition

2010-04-20T10:52:00.000+01:00

It's coming this July and has been the cause of concern for a lot of WHFB players out there who felt that 7th edition was a really good book - and that it was just some of the more recent army books (such as Daemons of Chaos) that unbalanced things.
The current state of balance issues has been clear to see at Warhammer GT events where the top three armies are always Daemons of Chaos, Vampire Counts and Dark Elves.

To see what Games Workshop themselves are saying about the new book, go here - http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=10100030a
You will see a teaser video too, which appears to be hinting at a grander scale of Warhammer playing, perhaps a fantasy version of Apocalypse?

Army of Two The 40th Day - Review

2010-04-18T09:52:00.002+01:00

Army of Two The 40th Day is a co-op based third person shooter. You can play it as co-op with another player or co-op with an A.I. You are always with a team partner, regardless.

The writing of this review will assume that you have already played Army of Two (the first game) so I won’t go too much into elements that are unchanged.

One of the major points of interest with AOTTFD is the mask creator function. Pretty cool eh? Design your own mask and take it online to show off your skills. That said, the system really didn’t work well for me!

You have to go to their EA site to do it. I had issues of the page containing designs on it taking longer than it should to load, all of the graphical images are bandwidth heavy, it would seem. Then there’s the mask creator utility itself which makes you sign in before you can make a mask. So you sign into or create an EA account. Fair enough. But then it said the registration process was a failure and I tried entering all of the info again. Once I hit submit, it told me that the name was already in use yet before it wasn’t…then I looked up to see it was saying I was now logged in, along the band at the top.

With that stupid design fault behind me, I hoped that being logged in would let me actually create a mask at last. I was wrong. The mask tool kept loading then disappearing off my screen. Ninety percent crashes was all well and good but the one time it didn’t crash I actually thought I was getting somewhere. I was wrong again. This time I encountered the idiotic “add a persona” function. So, logically I chose the Xbox Live Gamertag option and put my gamertag in the space below where it asks for “Existing Xbox Live Gamertag”.
When I tried to okay my gamertag as a choice I got the following unbelievable message: Sorry, that Xbox LIVE Gamertag has already been taken. Please try another one.
Seriously? Are they for real? Of course it’s taken! It’s my Gamertag! It does ask for an “Existing” Gamertag after all. Any Existing Gamertag is by nature, “taken”…
The only way I even got it working in the end was to change my I.D. to my EA one…
Even then, the damned thing took me to my account page, not to the mask creator. I just want to create a mask, guys. Come on!

Just so we’re clear, there’s no mask creator link on that account page.
Most other websites are smart and automatically load up the thing you were originally looking for. Not this though, and trying to find the page you need again isn’t overly easy within their site. Even when you do navigate their site via search, you the end up with a load of videos about the game to watch. I don’t want to watch videos, I have the game now, thanks. I want my mask and armour creator, damn you EA!
Then further down the page you’ll see a link at last to their actual game website…
This is a page I hadn’t been on before, which technically means I’ve gone round and round in circles getting further away from my actual goal of creating a mask…
Eventually it let me navigate back to the page once again, just for the mask creator to keep crashing while it tries to load, like before.

This entire procedure has only made me suffer.
Once I finally got it working, painstakingly choosing a design to fit what I saw best as my mask and shoulder armour it expected me to pay. It didn’t tell me how much, nor did it load up a proper page for me to do so with.
Quite frankly, I gave up on that.

This experience teaches us that they should have just made the mask designer an in game function instead, for many reasons.

It’s quite terrible when up ‘til now I’ve spent over 600 words just explaining why the mask creator is messed up. What I really wanted to be doing was telling you about the game itself, but I am thorough – I want you armed with everything I feel you should know.

Let’s actually look at the gameplay then shall we? The masks have taken up so much of my personally allotted review space already.

I enjoyed some of the sound aspects in the game. The weapons are well presented indeed, but gun SFX is two a penny these days. We take that old chestnut for granted. So how does the game ‘s audio department wow old timers? Well, it needs a good soundtrack. AOTTFD has what I would call a functional one. Not amazing, but it kicks up when combat scenarios begin, stopping when you’re out of combat. The fun was to be had though, in hearing the enemies communicating with each other. When you hear them trying to work out how to kill you, it’s rather immersing.

Graphically, the idea and overall result is impressive, because of the vast amount of destruction and chaos happening through the city. All of this has been represented. Buildings coming down, on fire - things blowing up all around you – and while it is all represented rather well overall, the actual graphics of the game, especially in its special effects seem to be lacking, somehow. The graphics engine isn’t quite up to par with the technology of some other new shooters coming out. There’s quite simply something lacking, something to be desired. That said, the overall feel of the game is consistent with the AOT world, after all. Having played the original I can say that the game looks more impressive than that.

But after all of that, how does it play? Okay, this is a third person shooter, so it’s going to be bogged down with a lot of the usual third person shooter woes. Because the aim is not a “true aim” down the barrel by eye, sometimes your crosshair will be on a foe while you fire, but the scenery will deny it, taking the hits instead. Sometimes you’ll try to target foes at awkward angles, such as below you and your own arm will obstruct the view, where the camera will have moved in closer. You’re shooting blind. Sometimes, in a back to back your own partner’s arm will get in your way if he turns around enough.

The back to backs are actually an element of AOT that I’ve never been a fan of. Why stand out in the open and shoot it out? Luckily there’s only a couple of them to be found in the game. One of them however (the second one) has a punishing save checkpoint nowhere near the start of the back to back, so if you do fail it you’ll probably groan when you see where it loaded you.

Back to back is an indicator of the game’s less realistic and more movie-like stance. It’s a lot dumber in its combat, than many other shooters. You simply have to do a lot of killing, like Rambo or some such. Big explosions and long shoot out showdowns. This is not a tactical shooter. The most tactical element is capturing enemies. You can grab them and choose to either tie them down or choke them out. Capturing the highest ranking of them (determined via GPS in-game vision mode) means the others will surrender.

There are some fun little touches in the game, such as you yourself being able to surrender, or co op surrender, then pull pistols and shoot them quickly. To do so, it even gives you a handy couple of seconds of slowed down game time.

You can flank the enemy, so that’s a tactical way around, but it’s nothing terribly clever. The game is quite good fun for it all though, if a little strange in its targeting system.

I’m quite experienced with shooters on the Xbox 360 but the targeting in AOTTFD always felt like an ongoing challenge somehow. I felt like I couldn’t quite get the aim on the enemy as fast as I’d like to. I adapted my technique though, to compensate. I would get the aim onto a larger part of their lower body and let the recoil let me ride bullets up to their heads.
The oddness in targeting for me personally was probably due to the control sensitivity being bizarrely limited. When you go to the sensitivity adjustment screen, you’ll see a long slider, but usage of it makes it move large incremental steps rather than along the bar for specific tweaking. I probably just didn’t get it quite the way I like it.

There are still sections where you’re forced to split up from your pal and are completely cut off from him. If this happens, you’re both alone and unable to revive one another if you go down. A lot of critical attack has come upon games for this aspect. I think overall though that co-op games splitting up the players is a nice change of element for them both, especially when they end up in positions to still be able to support one another with their targeting zones crossing over each other.

This time round, the game has a strange morality system. You can make good or evil choices as it were. Some sections of the game will specifically call for you to make those decisions. One early example that comes to mind is a fellow who helps you through an opening section. You get the call privately with an offer of extra money if you take him down as well.
It’s all up to you.
I wouldn’t say that any of this system plays out in a satisfying way however. When you make a choice, you get a short comic book style sequence play out, showing the fate of your actions. They never feel connected or logically suited to your choices, so don’t worry too much about what you choose.

At least you’ll like the two characters you play. Salem and Rios are two distinct personalities and they really do play off of each other, sometimes like a comedy routine. The deeper characterization between them is one of the accomplished things in the game.

The game is on the short side, unfortunately, weighing in at seven levels, which are being completed in about six hours by most players. However, XBL DLC is now available with two extra levels. I can highly recommend them, although I’ll warn you, the kill counts in them become ridiculous. My trigger finger ended up hurting (because I fight with short squeezes for controlled bursts instead of keeping it held down – this is for recoil (aim) efficiency and ammo management). Also, this new content costs 800 Microsoft points. Not good, when you’ve paid out for a game that is already so short.

Perhaps this is an indicator that yet more games will be released unfinished so that developers can release more DLC updates over time. I do hope gaming doesn’t go too far in this direction in the future though, because the savings made from waiting a while and purchasing a game second hand would become nullified. In fact, I believe it could kill off the second hand games market altogether!

AOTTFD is a stout meaty, action demanding shooter. You can pretty much leave your brain at the door when you come in – it won’t be needed here. But that too is its strength. It’s like a rollercoaster ride. It gets pretty crazy but doesn’t last long. It’s worth it though, if you liked the first one or if you like Gears of War, which is very similar in gameplay to this.

Pros: Some good old fashioned therapeutic shooting to stop you going postal in real life, big explosions everywhere – then when you’re done with that – more things explode, did I mention that there’s a lot blowing up? Just incase, lots of things blow up, boom! Salem and Rios are entertaining to listen to and “be” as usual.

Cons: Lacks depth, graphics could be better, controls and aiming aren’t perfect.

Total Score: 7.9

Just Cause Review

2010-04-11T19:56:00.001+01:00

I’m going to make this easy on you and me by not making a long review. Ready? Here we go.

Yes the game is old and it has not aged well but this review is written for anyone interested in the hype from Just Cause 2 (like I was) and want to check this out first.
It might as well be the original Xbox 360 for as much good as the graphics do. They’re bland and the characters look terrible.

Your character is operating as a special agent in a large open world, but the world is dull. The people in it just feel so, A.I. The way people sort of come and attack you sometimes but then can’t decide if they are attacking you and do that stupid wandering about thing that they do before they take another shot at you. Mental.

The game forces you to keep going into your menu and check the PDA. Going into this menu or the options menu is a nightmare too. The buttons don’t work via controller stick, only D-Pad and then they have a habit of either not working or terribly overshooting your selection so you choose the wrong one.

The combat is lazy. Remember how Lara Croft combat is quite bad (but the puzzles are quite good?) This game's combat is far worse than Tomb Raider, by a long long measure. That's not good, especially as the game is combat centric!
Good aiming is not rewarded. Instead you’re stuck with a lock on system and I’m afraid there’s simply no skill to it. Yes some people will like the parachute and hook shot ability your character has, but even this wasn’t enough to satisfy my gaming needs.

It plays terrible. Basically, this is a poor man’s GTA, ooh, or better yet, it’s a poor man’s Mercenaries. If you’re a fan of either of those two games series, steer away from this as you’ll think the developers are taking “the Michael” out of your good selves.

The game looks and feels like a terrible alpha version of what it should have been, yes alpha, not even beta.

You know what? This one as well as not earning a score (just like Ghost Recon 1) is going to not even earn a pros and cons list.

I’ll make this clear to you: This game looks and plays terrible, no skill, no immersion, no fun, ignore it. The People bigging this game up on the front cover need a damned good flogging.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter Review

2010-04-11T19:35:00.001+01:00

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. The newest modern military take on the ongoing “serious shooter sim” series.
This is the first game I’m referring to of course, not the sequel.

Yes I’m sure the graphics were considered great when it was released, all that time ago, but now they look rather bland and un-immersive. The cities looks barren of people, other than the soldiers trying to kill you, the controls are annoyingly “unique” and unnecessarily complex. Of course, if you’re reading this review, it means you probably haven’t played the game yet so of course I’m writing it from a current 2010 perspective for those like me who give this title consideration to play.

The game keeps boxing you into combat areas, when you know that if you go just actually venture down that next open street that you could easily find a way to flank the enemy in a new way.

The combat is dull and why for crying out loud is there no setting to alter the aiming speed/sensitivity? It takes you ages just to pull your slow aim alllll the way round to fire at the new threat and they only needs a few contact shots with you to kill you, sometimes, realistically.

You’re commanding squads to go here and there but they aren’t very good either! They have a habit of bugging on you, getting stuck on things and just being generally awful company.
It almost feels like it’s trying to be Full Spectrum Warrior, but it’s not a patch on it! It’s like FSW in that you can control teams where to go and that’s it. FSW destroys this for team mate control. Yet this has a stronger FPS element to it, yet it fails as a first person shooter as well, compared to much better titles out there.

Really, there’s no point in playing this at all. Earlier I said that it is at least an old game. But then that gets me thinking. Things like Full Spectrum Warrior were the last gen of gaming platforms (Xbox and PS2) so there’s really no excuse. Plus I feel that this game out of all of those from the Ghost Recon series makes the least impact on the player.

I won’t dignify this with a score. Forget it.

Dragon Age: Awakening (Expansion) Review

2010-04-10T21:48:00.002+01:00

Awakening is the first proper expansion to DAO, even though there have been several DLC updates online – this one even works without the DAO disc. It is a stand alone game you see.

If you had issues with Dragon Age Origins, this isn’t going to suddenly take them away. However, it is a considerable piece of new storyline to further enhance your DAO experience. It doesn’t just feel tacked on either. In fact, you don’t even get to use any of your previous team mates, well except for one…
This also means that Shale (if you downloaded it) is not usable either.
The new characters are interesting though and you get to see the outcome of some decisions made in DAO.
Saying that, you can choose to play as your original character or start a brand new one, this time a warden from Orlais.

Many times you will get the feeling that the game is unfinished. It plays a lot smoother, more stable than the original however, but lots of silly things occur that don’t usually hurt much, but are notable, glitch and bug-wise.
For example, some really odd A.I. behaviour: A squad mate set to ranged for example might run right up to enemies just to start engaging them…with his bow…
Even your own character will do it on occasion, but that said, this was also a problem in DAO. I used to find it most often with the oil template spell. For some bizarre reason, your character would auto run much closer than the range requirement just to cast it.

There are some other oddities within the game. When I took control of my rogue class squad mate to disarm traps “on point” within the woods, I noticed that my team mates had decided to run around the longer way and come join me from the secondary slope entry point to the small camp, setting off traps as they went! It’s really silly, as if my NPC team mates did it just to spite me – remember, disarming traps gives experience too!
Some of the quests are easy to bug as well. I destroyed any possibility of completing at least two quests during my play through.

This new offering does give you some great new spells/abilities along with rune crafting, new tiers and new sub-classes to pursue as you wish.

Talking with open multi-choice dialogue for team mates anywhere is gone now. It has become more like Mass Effect in that regard. Not that I really care anymore anyway. I think for this expansion, that’s not a bad idea anyway. Keeping you focused on what you’re doing more so. After all, what point would there be in getting into long winded conversations this time when the game is technically rather short anyway?

The story as usual is pretty good. If you do all of the side quests then you’re looking at a pretty lengthy couple of sessions of gameplay at least.

The new characters are pretty memorable too with their own motives and storyline to open, but as you might expect, this is not expanded on as much as DAO does.

There are some nice options in the game, moments when you decide what resources you will put where in the time you have. A nice touch, but the whole thing comes together at the end a little too cold for my liking.

A relatively good game, still full of the flaws that make the series what it is but containing some solid gameplay at its core, if you can see past all the bugs and glitches. I do recommend this if you played and enjoyed DAO. If you hated DAO, steer clear of Awakening.

Pros: Continues the good storyline, interesting new characters that you still care about, expanded ability/spell lists, far better than any DLC packs could ever be.

Cons: Bugs, soooo many glitches, similarly unsatisfying ending presentation like in DAO, can no longer chat to team mates freely.

Total Score: 8.2

Pokemon Soul Silver/Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (In Play Summery)

2010-04-02T14:25:00.000+01:00

I’ve been playing a couple of games over the last few days. I won’t be writing reviews on them so I will instead detail a quick but detailed summary for each here.

First up: Pokemon Soul Silver on the Nintendo DS. I’m really enjoying myself here. I never played the original Silver or Gold. These two new games are remakes of those. Heart Gold is basically the same version as Soul Silver, with some minor differences. I’m not hardcore a pokemon fan enough to buy and play both just for the optimal trading options available. After all, that’s what friends and the GTS are for.

I played and had a great time with Pokemon Leaf Green, which was my first pokemon game in fact. I quite enjoyed Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness on the gamecube. I really didn’t like the Mystery Dungeon series at all and I felt rather let down by Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl. This however is a remake as I said, so I decided to give it a chance. It does have the qualities, the magic of old pokemon games. It looks like it has a good length on it too, allowing you to battle through the entire original area too. That will all add up to yet more gyms and challenges. Brilliant.

The graphics are in line with Diamond and Pearl. The gameplay is unchanged, unfortunately. There is a lot that can be improved in these games, after all. The time it takes you to keep going through those boxes of writing every time you try to heal your pokemon up at a Pokemon Center. Or the time it takes, animation wise to get into each battle, especially when all you are waiting for is the flee button to appear on screen so you can press it. Perhaps it would have been better if they had created a flee attempt hard input, say both shoulder buttons and A button at once or something. In that sense, the game still doesn’t play very ergonomic, but if you are a fan of the series, this is one of the very best.

They have introduced new functions at least. Some new online interaction capabilities, a Pokeathelon for your lot to take part in and so on.
The pokewalker is pretty cool as well. A pedometer that will build up “watts” as a currency to spend on mini games to find new items and pokemon, as well as purchase of new routes to walk your pokemon on within the pokewalker.
The pokewalker isn’t bad. A way of getting some bonus happiness and experience for one pokemon at a time, on top of what you should normally be getting.
It runs on a wristwatch type battery, with those sort of LCD graphics. Don’t expect anything clever with the mini game elements to it though. It’s at best, a tamagotchi.

Pick the game up and see for yourself though.

The other one is Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

I played CoD MW1 and I honestly thought the entire package (online multiplayer included) was massively overrated. I played World at War and I felt that this was an improvement of CoDMW1 but it still could have been put out there with a sub-title of ‘Call of Duty – Die By Grenades A Lot’.

In CoDMW2 I’ve found that the death by grenades issue is a little less in your face, feeling a bit more realistic in approach.

The graphics are top notch, the missions are thrilling. The levels are a heck of a lot less linear than its predecessor. This in fact was my biggest problem with the other CoD games. You really couldn’t go off the beaten track, complete and objective with your own identity very much.
Now, I’m not saying that CoDMW2 has turned into Bad Company or Halo for “sandbox” thrilling fun – nowhere near, but for a CoD game, this is truly spectacular in its freedom.

The missions keep you interested because they keep throwing just the right amount of variety at you.
I’m only a couple of play sessions into the game mind you, but so far I’ve enjoyed the ride.

Oh, and another element that has always been a problem with CoD games for me is the seemingly infinite respawns at various points throughout the games. Enemy troops would respawn in over and over until you’d capture the point by physically pushing up and arriving at it. That is seemingly gone here. I say seemingly because this is after all a CoD game, but if they’re still doing it, it has been rather cunningly disguised with subtle gameplay positioning. The level layout is interesting too, giving you options of how to proceed, in most cases.

I haven’t take it online yet, but my hopes are feeling higher than they were!

Mass Effect 2 Review

2010-03-25T20:22:00.002+00:00

I reviewed Mass Effect 1 previously. You can read that review here - http://honestgamingprose.blogspot.com/2010/01/mass-effect-review.html

I won’t go into masses of detail about how the game plays here, because you’ll either know that from having played Mass Effect 1 or having read the above review.
This review will instead be written from the point of view examining the differences between Mass 1 and Mass 2.
As we would expect from a sequel, many of the game’s usage items are now contextually and practically different to interact with.
Omni tools for one. Then there’s the hacking and rewiring of electrical circuits that are in themselves mini games, rather than a solid succeed or fail, or a QTE. In fact, the QTE’s are totally gone, except for new paragon/renegade options mid cut scene where each trigger controls one of them respectively.
It used to be such a pain to find a box and discover that you didn’t have a specialist there with high enough skill to open it. Truly those days are gone, thank goodness.
These new touches work well enough, again making you feel more involved, but the triggers to decide actions can be a little unsure because you don’t really know what your character is going to do as a result of you choosing the option.
The other mini games mentioned above are actually quite good. One is a game that tests your short term memory. The other has you searching for pieces of code on a screen full of code that matches each piece it asks for. Both are entertaining enough.

Sending probes at planets is now more like a game of battleships meets pin the tail on the donkey. It gets boring but you feel like you have to mine for whatever is there because those materials are what upgrades you and your crew’s abilities. Better armour, better damage, ship upgrades – they come from research training and materials spent.

Fuel money and economy thinking keep you thinking about your budget. It makes you feel more involved in a way that Mass Effect 1 did not.

Ultimately, the scanning of planets parts are numerous and get tedious quite soon. You’ll find you’re getting twitchy to stop doing it, because it feels pointless. The only way I could get through it was to leave a radio on to play, so I would have something else to focus on. It’s worse than “grinding kills” in an MMO for rep or whatever. This is the worst thing about ME2 and stops it getting into a higher end review score.
The second worst is perhaps the way it doesn’t encourage conversation with your crew, just like ME1 didn’t.

To some people who are new to this sort of game, the options and conversations will seem wonderful I’m sure. To people who have played games like KOTOR (Knights of the Old Republic), ME1 and ME2 will be noticeably lacking in conversation options even though both games are by the same people.
The first way that conversation is discouraged is by the fact that you still have to endure a waiting loading screen just to change floors and speak to some of your crew. The second is that when you actually get there, you find that they still don’t want to talk to you, even though there has been an updated situation, in some cases. The third is that characters can end up in a repeated loop, a cycle of saying the same one thing to you each time you visit them, even after planetary updates. Jacob is one example. You will find that once he is loyal he’ll get to a point where each time you speak to him he will only speak about looking forward to sharing some drinks with you when this is all over. After four different visits to see what’s new with him, you end up feeling that you might as well not bother trying to talk. Even characters you’re supposed to be getting into a romance with. Miranda for example – once things are accepted, that you and she will be an item, she keeps telling you that she will swing by and see you when it’s quiet. That is unfortunately your cue to not bother talking to her at all anymore – not until she chooses the time that is quiet enough to come to you. Then there is a character being too busy to talk, as the fourth reason. The fifth reason is just as annoying. The loyalty missions pretty much all pop up at once. Once a character has stated that they need their mission doing, they won’t be interested in speaking to you about anything else but that, time and time again. You won’t escape that cycle until you do their mission. This means that you don’t get to talk to those characters with new updates of conversation after you complete even the other character’s loyalty missions.

It doesn’t matter all that much really anyway as the crew conversations and what you learn is pretty thin info at best. Consider any sort of typical Bioware conversation sim element here to be just a little added extra to give you some flavour to the crew - nothing important though I’m afraid.

Combat is now pretty smooth. I had some issues with the first game’s combat system, but many of those are now addressed. Guns are a lot more efficient to use right from the off. The game’s expectations of you as a player are a lot more combat focused, with elements of further expansion in tactical play. You can for instance order team mates to separate positions, using the D-Pad left and D-Pad right respectively. Cover is used with a lot more care and attention into it. You are now encouraged to place yourselves tactically behind something and it be meaningful to your chances of survival/counter fire.

Also new, adding more tactical insight into your gameplay expectations is the “right weapon for the job” type scenarios. An enemy Krogen might appear for example. It could have a layer of shield, then a layer of armour before getting to even see its health bar. Some guns are weaker/stronger against shields/armour/health. It isn’t unusual to be expected to switch weapons mid fight. In the case of the Krogen mentioned above, the flame thrower weapon is recommended, as flame or biotic attacks shut down their regenerative ability!
Usually, fights will have large numbers of enemies spawning at you for a while. You soon learn the rules of the mechanics though, that these numbers are finite. There are a couple of sections though that breaks the rules the game usually enforces - with non stop spawning enemies ‘Call of Duty’ style – and of course you stop them by capturing a new forward position, again COD style.

The mako type driving gameplay is gone from the normal game of ME2 (not including any Cerberus network DLC “downloadable content” that is brought out). So you can forget about exploring planets in that way – you just can’t.

The overall pacing and efficiency of the game is improved, the overall speed of getting from A to B. A lot has been streamlined, whether you’ll like it or not, like in the above example of mako driving to destinations being removed.

Lifts are now rather simple loading screens rather than painful waiting experience from ME1. It is still a matter of waiting though.

You can expect a crew of mainly new characters with some old faces thrown in. Again, the game is story driven. You feel as if you really do care about the outcomes of your actions. When you make a choice, whether someone lives or dies, usually you feel passionate about it. That’s a good sign.

Conversation options are still misleading. The text you see on screen compared to what actually happens when you select it. For example, at one point I let one person go when I didn’t even want that to happen and it appears that I could have stopped it. They’re too abstract about the meanings behind the phrases you select.
This though is what we’ve come to expect from Mass Effect. You know what you’re buying at least. Be warned about this though, it certainly upset me when I hear outcomes based on things I’ve said that I even don’t agree with!

Unlike some Bioware party based RPG’s, this game doesn’t have loyalty reading for each of your actions. Loyalty from your crew expands their abilities a little and gives them a new outfit to choose from. Think along the lines of Dragon Age Origins’ final outcome. But even then, DAO has a meter for team loyalty to you. As I said, ME2 doesn’t.
You’ll be gaining loyalty based on each crew’s loyalty mission. You can choose not to do it of course, but that’s the way you get them to “loyal” status - that or get 200 gym badges…wait a minute, wrong game – tee-hee. But the loyalty status of each crewmember also has an effect on the later game as well.
This can be frustrating also though, the loyalty matter. You can gain loyalty of someone just to lose it straight away from one decision you make. This happened to me more than once. It’s frustrating because everything you did felt like it was for nothing.

One major concern I noticed in ME1 was the gameplay stability. It didn’t run very well at all. There was lots of memory lag. Those days are behind us. Yes, not everything is instant, but then what is on a loaded disc these days? However, it now runs on par with any other RPG. Nothing negative to say about ME2 on that front then.

If you played ME1 and liked it, you need to play this. If you played ME1 and thought it was just “okay”, this might change your mind, if you can handle the stomach churning planetary resource hunting segments. If you hated ME1 before, perhaps consider this as a rental if you think the above I’ve mentioned has addressed your particular issues with it.

They have taken the story forwards in what will be a trilogy. I can say that I truly am fascinated by the wealth of information about the world. This would make a solid tabletop RPG too – for the same reason.

The decisions you make in Mass Effect 2 will have a huge impact on events in Mass Effect 3.

Ultimately, the sort of thing that will make fans of Mass Effect 1 play this is that you see more and do more. Remember hearing about the Quarian Migrant Fleet of 50,000 craft holding over 17 million quarians? This time around, it’s not just something to hear about. It’s somewhere to visit. That’s what I’m talking about, as an example.

Pros: Continue the story, a story told in its own way - not copying anyone else, combat is improved, those lifts are gone, streamlined gameplay elements in so many ways, fairer locked crate and password protected entry system, that DLC keep on coming.

Cons: The loyalty missions are a bit hit and miss, conversation is still weak for an interactive RPG like this, resource collection is appalling after a while.

Total Score: 8.8

Xbox Games Room - First Play Impressions

2010-03-25T10:03:00.000+00:00

24th March 2010. Mark this date down as the day Games Room on the xbox 360 was launched, courtesy of the new House Party (or Block Party in the USA) section of downloadable games.

This is a free download from xbox live, so there need not be much weighing up required on your part. If you like the idea of playing really old Atari/intellivision games.

You will find a demo type area where you can sample available games and see what the Games Room set ups can look like.
Take note of the sort of things that make up the design of each room because you’ll have a chance to make your own Games Room full of games you have specifically purchased.

There are a number of themes to give your room’s wallpaper as it were and slots for you to place games machines or items that were already available to you at the start or ones you earned from levelling up. You’ll level up just from playing Games Room with your friends and then you’ll get the idea.
You can go into friends Games Rooms and play the games they have paid for. A nice idea.
The games themselves though will not blow your mind at this point. It is in this area that I expect Games Room to expand the most with new games released every week.
I knew of games like Centipede and Lunar Lander, but many of the titles showcased were a new one on me.

From playing the showcase demos in the demo arcade, there was only about four or perhaps five games that I would consider having.

The incredible part actually is the vast amount of games that aren’t there.
The titles on xbox arcade are probably going to float your boat a bit more. I don’t think we’ll ever see Space Harrier in Games Room for example, but we might see it in Arcade one day.

There is a lot of derivative games to choose from. Some other versions of Lunar Lander for example. This is somewhat the fault of games designers of the period who did try to compete with well known franchises by copying. But you will notice that the Outrun copy is available here, but Outrun itself is not.

Here is the list of games available at launch:

• Adventure

• Armor Battle

• Asteroids Deluxe

• Astrosmash

• Battlantis

• Centipede

• Combat

• Crystal Castles

• Finalizer

• Football

• Gravitar

• Jungler

• Lunar Lander

• Millipede

• Mountain Madness: Super Pro Skiing

• Outlaw

• Pitfall

• RealSports Tennis

• Red Baron

• Road Fighter

• Scramble

• Sea Battle

• Shao-Lin's Road

• Space Armada

• Space Hawk

• Star Raiders

• Sub Hunt

• Super Cobra

• Tempest

• Tutankham

• Yars' Revenge

Of the games I played, some of the ones we liked were:

Outlaw – Pong-like game with cowboys shooting at each other between a cactus. Multiplayer only it seems.

Crystal Castles – You control an oddly effeminate little bear and have it mince around the screen at top speed picking up items pac man style before enemies kill you. We were concerned with the idea of having a mascot of this running around loose in the Games Room if we bought it.

Finalizer – Top down star ship shoot ‘em up action, complete with upgrades to change your craft into other things like a huge battle mech.

It’s too early to say whether Games Room has been a success or not. That will be decided by you. However, I do know that if they continue having their problems with the servers being offline as much, they surely will fail.

A great idea that we’d looked forward to. Didn’t quite meet expectation in the way we expected, yet was more exciting in other ways - Interesting.

Beasts of War You Tube Channel

2010-03-19T09:39:00.001+00:00

If you're into the miniatures and gaming hobby of all companies, not just Games Workshop then I cannot recommend Beasts of War's channel highly enough.

No more questions, no more explanation, go see for yourself - http://www.youtube.com/user/BeastsOfWar

Malifaux Rulebook Review (Not The Game - Just The Book)

2010-03-12T13:45:00.001+00:00

This is a review of my impressions from looking at the Malifaux rulebook itself. The review is written from the timescale/point of view of me having not yet played an actual game of Malifaux. As I said, the review is of the rulebook itself.

The first thing to hit me, as soon as I got the book in hand was that even though this is only a skirmish game with perhaps five models battling each other, the book has a nice size to it.

For those people who appreciate the finer qualities of workmanship in their books, this is a book that you will respect and want to look after.
The book itself is pleasing to hold, somehow. I know that might sound strange, but there’s just something about it. The feel of the cover and the pages, the thick quality stock of paper used on the pages themselves, the entire thing being full colour front to back, given an artificially worn look to the backgrounds as a border edging printed on the pages and so on. Every page supports the look and feel of the world.

The book is a paperback but so well made that to hold it at one side, it bends down on the other with an “American pizza” like quality to it, but always feeling well supported.
For any of you who know the history of how this came about, you’ll know why the book is so, but for those who do not, I shall explain.

The miniatures used in this game were not originally designed as miniatures for a game…
In December 2005 Nathan Caroland let loose these humorously sick and brilliant models on the world and ‘Wyrd Miniatures’ was created.
There was no supported game but people bought them for the sheer love of the miniatures. The challenge and delight in painting them amused painters all over the world. To him, behind closed doors it seems a game system was to be a natural evolution. Bear in mind though, this game was designed by artists, even those he took on to help him create it. Because artists, sculptors and creators are behind the very game itself, breathing life into their works of art, of course the rulebook would be spectacular too, of course it would!

The pages are sturdily stuck in place. They don’t feel like they’ll ever come loose. It’s soft back, so is easy and inviting to pick up and hold. There’s no cracking of a spine upon turning the beautifully rendered pages, just slick slipping by of one page after another as you flick the pages to the place you’re trying to find. It’s a delight to thumb through!

The vibrantly coloured artwork inside is suitably twisted in theme, you see many a “malign foe” there…
The pictures inside are a really good likeness of the models themselves, showing that in miniature model form they have captured the entire look of all complex components and “toon” type visual they are going for.

The storyline (or fluff as it’s called in player circles) for the main characters in the world is laid out in instalments, like ongoing chapters to a novel. Each piece reveals more information about the models you will be playing at the table itself.
These fluff instalments, about two or three pages long at a time are interspaced between the learning rules sections and through the book. This is a great idea!
It gives you several nice breaks between taking the rules in where you can kick back and read about the world itself.
On the other side of the coin, storyline itself is less appetizing when given to you as one solid chunk too. With this system, the writers have ensured that out attention is retained throughout, and as we learn the rules, we learn the world too. That is an important fact as well, because this is indeed a skirmish game that focuses on the narrative to properly enjoy the playing experience. Anyone who has ever played a game of ‘Mordheim’ will know the ground eye level of perspective I’m getting at.
The fluff too is an absolute joy to read. The creativeness that has gone into the entire world, realising its various elements as a story setting is an achievement – and this is only the beginning!

Because the book is so nice to own, I would recommend anyone picking a copy up and reading it first if they were thinking of playing the game. Even if upon reading the mechanics they decided not to, it is a truly worthy tome.

I won’t go into too much detail about the mechanics itself. That should be for a review of the gameplay, perhaps at another time.
I will simply tell you that this skirmish game uses no dice whatsoever, relying on its own set of playing cards numbered 1-13 along with two jokers to the deck. Each player uses a deck of their own. None of this comes with the book by the way (you simply buy the book itself).

You could actually even use a deck of your own playing cards, as the amounts are the same. The rulebook even has instructions telling you what the suit conversions are if you so wished to do it that way, on a budget or to test the game. You could even use miniatures from another range as "counts as" just to test the game.

For the complexity of the mechanics inside, the book does a good job of laying things out for you at least. I will however state that there is indeed an errata and FAQ PDF file available for download and it is rather large, but most of that is clarification of wording. They took comments/questions made by the player community, gathered it all up and made one definitive “patch”. I don’t feel intimidated looking at it though.

Having spoken to one of the Wyrd staff, I discovered that I needn’t wait to purchase a potential second printing of the book, as there would at least be no update/expansion yet and I didn’t want to wait, so…

Learning the rules initially, I found I have to re-read the sections at least one extra time to make full sense of it, but it’s probably something that will make more sense when the models are actually in front of us on the table.
I feel I have a handle on the most of it.

There is a useful glossary at the back with page numbers listed as reference points, pertaining to the given rule/term.

I will know more once I play the game and use the book while doing so.

A lovely book to own – as simple as that really. I won’t let my friends get their mitts on it; they can get their own copy!

9/10

Warhammer Fantasy Forge World?

2010-03-11T09:25:00.000+00:00

The word is that Games Workshop is about to create a seperate division for WHFB "other" lines with Forge World quality models.

The implications of this are of course, huge!
Those systems that GW's main division won't touch could well see some new life breathed into them. That could be things like Chaos Dwarfs, Dogs of War and general expansions to what is already there, like Forge World do.
You can see a thread of some player reactions to this at the always intruiging Warseer forums:
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215202

I liked one player's suggestion that we might start seeing a book series 'Tilean Armour' come about. That made me chuckle.

What's New With Me? March

2010-03-11T09:17:00.001+00:00

Some of you might be wondering where the computer game goodness has gone?
Worry thee not, however.
HGP is simply a 'gaming' site to encompass all of my interests in gaming, be they console, PC or tabletop miniatures.
It is this blog's intent to give honest opinions at all times - opinions from an experienced gamer in many ways. I'm about to turn 30 this year!
I love miniatures and consoles perhaps more than ever!

The other idea of the blog is to tell it my way. Therefore, I am only going to talk about the games I'm playing at any given time.
Sometimes if I've gone quiet, I might be playing something I've already written about. I'm not going to repeat myself or keep updated like a diary that I'm playing such and such.
I use each new thing I encounter as the potential basis for an article that can serve the purpose of warning or encouraging players about a game, perhaps some info that wasn't available when I was thinking of buying - doing my research rounds on the net.
It can frustrate me sometimes, where I will see lots of reviews of a thing for example, yet not one mentions a point that is glaringly obvious to me. That makes me want to review it too - my way.

Perhaps, from all of my hard work, reviewing and creating articles as I have, perhaps someone will notice and suggest me for a greater purpose - a professional one.
This blog at least serves as an easily accessible portfolio.

Alrighty then, so lately I've been playing a lot of WHFRP 2nd edition, some warhammer fantasy but not very much console gaming. It's a money issue mainly. Coming up soon though, I will at last be playing Mass Effect 2. As you might be aware, I wrote a fairly comprehensive review of the first game in the touted trilogy, so this could be my chance to see "what they've learnt" since then.

I've picked up the Malifaux rulebook too, so that system might be covered soon.

See you on the field.

RJF

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Second Edition - First Impressions.

2010-03-10T18:19:00.002+00:00

These are my first impressions of the game overall, not a review. The reason I say that is because I feel a pen and paper RPG really only shows itself once you’re deeper into the game, having opened up most of your abilities. As it stands, I’m only just starting my second career now.

I must also point out now that this applies to the second edition, because the third edition is too restrictive for what my players want to do.

The third edition (rather new actually) won’t let you have hedge wizards for example. It will also only cater for three of the eight possible wizard lores!
There are religious factions missing too. I see no reason to play this new edition. We are all happy with the amount of reference material in place for second edition. What we don’t like is how Fantasy Flight are not going to keep supporting it with new releases. Nor do we like the fact that the books are becoming shockingly hard to even get hold of!

A lot of things work differently in third edition, so what I say here is specific to second only. Some might be the same...

The third edition has a total lack of source material available for us right now and it is a really expensive starter box too, compared to the £25 or thereabouts that the second edition core rulebook came in at.

The game uses a D100 percentile system - generating scores from rolling D10’s. To sum it up, your characteristics have percentages. If a D100 amount beats your percentage after taking plus or minus modifiers into account, then the dice roll if a failure.

Let us say you wanted to push open a very heavy stone door. You might perhaps be called upon to take a -20% strength test. Let us imagine your strength characteristic is 46%. That would mean that you need to make sure the percentile roll does not beat 26% or else you’ve failed to open said door.

As is mostly the case, you should choose an RPG based on what world you as a group know best, especially if it’s your first.

When we decided on what game we would play out of the loads available, the most of us knew warhammer's world best.

It's a good game if you have a GM who knows enough of the world to really harness its full potential.

Also, you'll notice the careers can be a bit more restrictive than say picking careers in D&D. Just use this to your advantage. Don't let everything restrict you to the letter. Justify some things with personal character background perhaps. With others, remember you can access alternative lists too. There are some places where you will find bonus starting skills/talents to add to your list based simply on where you were born and what class you were born into. You won’t find that in the core rulebook!

While the character generation is a random stat process, do remember to keep common sense at the forefront. Perhaps if it is your first ever play through, you could use a system where you allow any two of the percentage stats to swap around with each other on top of the Shallya’s mercy one you get, where you can shift an under par stat to its average for that race – usually 31% if human…

This will help avoid foolish things like rolling a career that can wear armour of a certain type, but isn’t strong enough to actually wear said armour due to rolling a low strength.

The main rulebook has a lot of careers available, with entries and exits in to and from them. However, just like before, you should consider most of the other books available if you want the full breadth of choice, because the career compendium as one example gives you all of it in one place.

Our apprentice hedge wizard for example gets more options for his particular paths in the add on book ‘Shades of Empire’.

But again, boo and hiss to FF, because many of these books will be a nightmare for some of you to get hold of. If you simply cannot find them anywhere to buy, perhaps look into another option for finding them perhaps in PDF form online. If all of that fails, then maybe second edition wouldn’t be a good idea.

The game plays quite simply really. Your skills are in place and you gain new ones with each career you move into. Each skill has a related characteristic that you test on when using the skill. You might find you can specialize into the skill by two increments: +10% and +20%. This would then apply to tests for that skill, giving a bonus modifier to the related characteristic. Let us say you had gossip. That uses the fellowship stat. If you have a FEL of 38% (for example) then your gossip if not easy or challenging would be a straight test against that stat. You might then glean whatever info your GM feels he should give you from having “asked around”.

If you have Gossip ticked up one increment “+10%” then your fellowship score for other fellowship tests such as “disguise” or bartering attempts won’t be affected, but when you try to do a gossip test, that is then a permanent +10% modifier to all such tests.

Hardcore fans of D&D will probably get quite frustrated at the lack of support for the game, either edition one way or another.

Bear in mind though that the game uses 1” movement squares if you want to use models, so any of those D&D movement tiles you have laying around work here too!

More importantly, such dice rolls are also in keeping with the spirit of the original game too. Stats that dice need to not beat and the like. You even get to use the Warhammer templates set for things like spell area of effects and such!

Basically, if this is your first RPG and/or you LOVE Warhammer AND you can get the PDFs or books, you perhaps should play this. I do not regret doing so thus far.

If you want to read the happenings of my own group's travels, you can see them here at my deviant art page, where they have been written up - http://robafett.deviantart.com/

AAAAAAAND SO ON!

Legacy Not Set In Stone

2010-02-27T16:03:00.000+00:00

Hey guys, this is just a reminder that the Grungni's Legacy walker Dwarf Walker is still at conceptual stage and those rules/stats are by no means set in stone.

I still feel that for what is is, it's a bit over costed. I want to address a couple of issues with it. Namely it's bonus attacks from overdrive versus the -1 to hit and some other bits to justify the large 300 points.
If you plan on playtesting the thing, feel free to run it as a D6 bonus attacks instead of D3, for now.