Recreational Hazard

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 12 - Slash Whatever

2012-10-28T09:38:00.003-07:00

After a long break, We discuss the Eurogamer Expo, World of Warcraft and a lot of off-topic bollocks.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 11 - Fake Tan Edition

2012-07-13T12:22:00.002-07:00

This week we discuss Fake tan, Left 4 Dead 2 and destroying the moon.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 10: E3 Spacktacular

2012-06-09T14:19:00.001-07:00

We discuss E3 2012, Argue amongst ourselves and go off topic.

Diablo 3 Review

2012-06-09T05:39:00.000-07:00

I don't get it. I honestly don't.

Diablo 3 is the latest in Blizzard Entertainments long running Diablo Series of Hack and Slash Dungeon Crawlers with the emphasis on CRAWL. The Game has been a long time in the making and was a much anticipated release.

Prepare to Fight the Undead. A lot.

First off, Let's talk about the Launch shall we? Plagued by technical issues Diablo 3 was nigh-unplayable for the
first 3-4 days after launch due to server capacity. Issues, I might add, that were present in the open beta weekend prior to launch that remained unfixed. The Game suffered from lag, the inability to log-in, now why are these bugs such a huge problem?

Because the Game requires that you be online 100% of the time. Despite being able to play this game Single Player, you are required to log-in to play alone, No offline features whatsoever. This is complete horse shit, this was horse shit when Ubisoft did it with Assassins Creed II and it is Horse shit now with Diablo 3. Of course, Internet connections are easily available and I've been connected for well over 10 years, but there are times when your connection isn't stable, what of those times? Well, my friends, No Diablo for you. Another point if I start lagging in my single-player game because your servers aren't playing nice then that's a dog shit bullet right between the eyes.

Let's get the graphics out of the way now, the graphics are fine, they look ok, it would be a waste making the game look like Battlefield 3 since the camera hovers about 90 miles away from the action and you can't really see the fine details anyway.

The Gameplay is simple and fun (For a time), the premise is that you have to run around dungeons and fields beating down demons in search of Epic Loot. All very exciting. You gain XP and Gold as you murder things and you slowly level up gaining abilities as you go. You have 6 ability slots which are mapped to the Left Mouse Button, Right Mouse Button and keys 1,2,3 and 4. These skills are locked into specific ability trees unless you know to go into the options and choose "Elective Mode". The only problem with this? The game never tells you, I only found this out because I chose to dive into the Cesspool that is the battle.net forums and wade through that mire until I found some information of use.

There are 5 Classes to choose from : Monk, Barbarian, Witch Doctor, Sorcerer and Demon Hunter, All have very different play styles in that playing a melee class (The First Two) means you die alot on higher difficulties and the other ranged classes don't, nice balancing job, Blizzard. On later difficulties, Monks and Barbarians dies in two hits from most mobs and they don't have the option to fling arrows or spells from across the room, they have to kite the mobs for ages to get a kill on some elite mob that probably won't drop anything useful for them.

The Combat itself is simplistic enough on Normal, You click enemies to death with the left mouse button and laugh as enemies fall to your superior might and looting skills, the higher difficulties are when things start getting interesting (Read Cheap and Bullshit). There are various types of enemy archetypes you will face, you have the standard cannon fodder, White mobs, then you have rare blue packs who have ability suffixes such as Molten (Which leaves a pool of lava on the ground), Reflect Damage (Explains itself) and Arcane Enchantment (Complete bullshit), there are too many to list here. These Suffixes are combined with one another to create horrific fights which (especially on higher difficulties) result in keyboard smashing frustration.

See What I mean.

The Goal of the game as far as I could tell is to grind enemies to get loot, to grind bigger enemies to get bigger loot and so on and so forth. This is what I don't get, I beat the game 3 times on the first 3 difficulties, hit the level cap and thought to myself, Well now what? Apparently the idea is that I go through the game again, a fourth time on the Highest Difficulty. I don't get it, I really don't. I don't see the appeal of running through a game four times in a row where nothing changes just for the sake of getting better gear, I was bored the 2nd time because the combat is neither deep nor particularly stimulating, it gave my my clicking finger a particularly strong case of wankers cramp. (What?).

Are we that boring as gamers as to want to replay the same dungeon over and over again for better pixels You could argue the same for any MMO but the difference there is that will always been new content patches months down the line, Diablo will get no such favour, A premium expansion, Definitely. Fuck off, Blizzard.

The Gaining of Loot being the main motivation that it is, means grinding out the same mobs for days on end in hope of getting an upgrade instead of another fucking crossbow for a class you don't play. The other way of gaining gear is the Auction House, where you can bid gold or (Real Money) for items that are vastly superior to the actual items you find in-game. So of course the thing is flooded with crap items and rarely works thanks to Blizzard's epic servers. The Real Money Auction House isn't active as of writing but probably will be sometime in the next month.

The Story is fucking abysmal, On par with the terrible writing that World of Warcraft has endured these past years. Without Spoiling anything, A Star Falls from the sky, That just so happens to land on Tristram, the town where bad things always seems to happen and the plot unfolds from there, you kill all the bad demons and seal them away forever or do you? The Sequel is so fucking obvious and ridiculous that it makes all the main cast seem retarded. "That maguffin we sealed all the demons in just fell into the clouds, do you reckon we should go after it? Nah, It will be alright" - Roll Credits.

Bosses provide little more challenge that a trash pack

Not much to say about the sound, The Music is bland and unexciting and the voice acting is hammy as ever, Sound effects are good I suppose.

Inferno Difficulty is apparently the end game content, grind out the same mobs repeatedly except now they 2-shot you. Fan-fucking-tastic. I dipped my toe into Inferno briefly and found it as unexciting as I had found the previous difficulty. Now I do appreciate a decent challenge in my games, Dark Souls being the best game I own and one of the most challenging, but Inferno isn't a challenge, it is unbalanced bollocks, the suffixes mentioned before now have 4 on a single blue monster and certain combinations are downright unkillable as a melee player, obviously the white knights are going to call me a baddie and field the argument that I just suck to hard.

I may not be the best Monk whoever roamed the Earth but I'm a darn sight better than the average gamer might be and I don't see the appeal of grinding out the first of Act I of inferno for 40 hours to get an upgrade which will allow me to complete Act II of Inferno and then doing the same for Act II, III and IV. Fuck that noise. I have no interest in playing a game this tedious and grind-tastic. I'm going to put this out there and leave it at that, Diablo 3 is balls, I got 45 Hours of Entertainment out of it and I wash my hands of it. I got monies worth of enjoyment (If you can call it that) but I can't recommend it to anyone who has any value for their free time, spend it on something else, Anything else.

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this and want to keep up to date with what I'm working on please follow me on twitter https://twitter.com/#!/RecrHazard.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 9: Nobody touches me because I don't touch myself.

2012-05-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

This week we talk about Diablo 3, Franchise Games and bodily waste. Excellent.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 8 : Billie Piper Vinegarized

2012-05-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

We talk about Prototype, Sony All Stars, Internet Censorship and Joanna Lumley of all people.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 7: Time Travel Ramble

2012-04-22T11:45:00.002-07:00

This week we talk about PC Gaming, Time Travel and the Diablo 3 Beta.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 6: Scraping the Barrel

2012-04-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

This week I we talk about Mass Effect 3 False Advertising, Cliffy B and complete random tripe.

Plans for the Near Future

2012-04-12T04:22:00.000-07:00

Since this blog has been awfully content light for a while except Podcasts, I need to start doing more writing. The Occasional video would be good too.

I want to do a Dungeons Of Dredmor, Let's Play or something to that Vein, Amnesia will happen soon, Videos review are on hold for the time being.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 5: Plums of Power

2012-04-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

This week we talk about the Battlefield 3 Patch, True Dynamic Games, Conflict Resolution and Testicles.

Midweek Melee 1

2012-04-04T05:21:00.000-07:00

We talk about Wii U, Xbox, Get Angry and argue for a bit.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 4: Pissing in the Wind

2012-03-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

We're pissing in the wind this week as we talk about Playstation 4 Rumors, Mists of Pandaria and Gamer Entitlement.

Catherine - My Love Letter to Atlus

2012-03-30T04:33:00.001-07:00

Catherine is a third-person puzzle platfromer from the Persona Developers Atlus, who also made my other favourite games Darks Souls and Demon Souls. It's story revolves around Vincent, a 30 something man who is afraid of commitment with his long time Girlfriend Katherine, then things get serious when after a night of drinking he wakes up next to a Blonde Bombshell named Catherine (Confused yet? The Dialogue does not help). At Night, when asleep Vincent finds himself in a dream world where he must climb a tower or die in real life, this is primarily the game part of Catherine and where you will spend the majority of your time.

The Cut scenes are all lovingly rendered like this

The Gameplay of Catherine is excellent, the puzzles range from simple, to devilishly dificult. The game is extremely clever and I have not been challenged by a Puzzle game like this for many years. I was playing on the normal difficulty and the game was kicking my arse later on but never unfairly. The idea of the tower climbing revolves around push and pulling blocks to make a stairway to the exit at the top which is simple enough if rows of blocks weren't toppling away a few rows down which adds urgency to the climb as well as a sense of desperation.

You have a limited rewind ability (10 times) where you can undo mistakes. The Game starts adding more death traps to the game later on with blocks that explode, Ice Blocks, blocks that kill you and blocks that move on their own. These are deployed in rather brilliant ways and there is always a way to complete the section.

There are quite a few levels divided between 8 nights with a boss at the end of each level. As you might be wondering it isn't a boss you can fight per the norm instead you have to run your stupid arse away, the boss flinging attacks that can kill you or impair your climb. These are brilliant and terrifying, how arse-clenchingly close it gets at points is hilarious. The Bosses are manifestations of Vincent's woes during the day and are
monstrous.

At the end of each section, you are asked a simple question about life which will affect your ending, so I choose what I felt was right for me and I will tell you why this is retarded later on.

Every day, Vincent hangs out at the bar where you talk to his friends and learn there back stories, quite a few of them with deep-seated psychological problems, I found this quite interesting, you can also reply to texts from Katherine and Catherine with varying choices. The People you meet in the bar also turn up in the form of sheep climbing the tower, between levels there is a break area where you can talk to the various sheep-people who will tell you about their problems, you usually are given dialogue choices which decide whether they live or die.

The Story is awesome with twists and turns as Vincent tries to deal with both the women in his life. The Games cover may lead you to believe that the game is sex related and this isn't really true, there are references to sex quite frequently but other than that not a lot of dodgy stuff, the cover probably being the most guilty part of this. The story mainly revolves around Vincent's inability to say 'No' to Catherine or Katherine which gets a little irritating because your choices don't affect the path of the story, just which ending you get.

Now about your choices they fall into two different catorgories which I'm going to call left and right instead of the name which spoils it, you have to pick all left choices or all right choices to get a good ending, if you pick some of each you get a bad ending, which is fucking bullshit. Then the game tells you if you didn't like the ending to fucking play through again. Fuck you game, I would have considered playing through again if you hadn't took the piss. There is 8 or 9 endings total and the game took me about 12 hours to complete which is a decent amount.

This is what you spend the majority of your time seeing.

The Voice Acting is superb and is brilliant and if played any of the Persona games you will find yourself recognizing quite a few of the voices. The Music is also brilliant with a jukebox in the bar containing music from other Atlus games.

The Cutscenes are all beautifully rendered Anime-cutscenes and are the perfect way to tell the story, Tales of Vesperia did this too and once again I felt there wasn't enough of them in the game. The Game will leave you wanting more and that is such a rare quality.

If it seems I am struggling writing as much as I usually do, its because what can you really talk about with a story/puzzle game, it is brilliant, go buy it, it is an utterly unique gem and there is nothing like it in the gaming world. I can whole-heartedly recommend this game.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 3: Going at it with Crumbles

2012-03-24T16:49:00.001-07:00

We talk about Game and Gamestation, Mists of Pandaria and other less wholesome things.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 2: The Barry White Effect

2012-03-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

This week we ramble about Mass Effect 3, Dodgy DLC, Milked Franchises and Travel Lodges amongst other things.

Recreational Hazard Podcast Episode 1: Chew on my Gaming Nuts

2012-03-03T12:58:00.001-08:00

Here is the first episode of our first attempt at Podcasting. Cue fire and brimstone.

Final Fantasy XIII-2

2012-02-25T08:40:00.001-08:00

Final Fantasy XIII-2. I was dreading playing this game, I told myself I wasn't going to buy it on launch day and that it was going to be terrible. After a week of collecting my thoughts, I finally manage to put the thoughts to paper.

I was wrong. It is average, not completely horrible like X-2 but it still falls into the same traps that FFXIII did.

The Meat of any good RPG is it's story, which games like Dragon Age would have you believe is not mandatory, FF XIII-2 (What a bloody mouthful.) has a mediocre story until the final act where it actually gets good, this is still bad, the story is lackluster and unexciting with no character development in any of the characters, the story picks up two years after the end of FFXIII (Spoilers) where Lightning and Co. defeated the Fal'Cie opressing Cocoon and freed her sister Serah from the Crystal. Lightning has gone missing or rather the timeline has changed from the events of the ending of XIII and is nowhere to be found in the world.

The Game focuses on Serah and Noel (A Hunter from the End of the World) heading out in search of Lightning, trying to repair the damaged timeline and save Cocoon. The story lacks focus as you constantly jump between times, get a cut scene, maybe fight a boss and then head to the next, the events of the game are quite disjointed and only make real sense towards the end when plot lines start resolving. The main villain, Caius Ballad is desperately trying to be Sephiroth in an almost hilarious tutorial section where you play as Lightning.

The Characters in this story, are shallow and one-dimensional, they have one motivation usually and that is their main focus in dialogue. Special mention goes to two god-damn awful support characters, Mog and Chocolina, Mog is Serah's Bow and takes the form of a moogle outside of combat, has a shrill and high-pitched voice with annoying dialogue. Chocolina takes the horrible game character award by having the most irritating voice, painful dialogue and least helpful to the plot, she is the games vendor wearing what appears to be a dead chocobo who apparently also has the power to either time travel or is immortal and in every plot relevant area, sometimes in more that place at a time, there is no obvious explanation for this in the game.

For future reference Square Enix, do not pull a cliffhanger ending as bullshit as that, where you watch the ending, get a major plot twist, End of Game. I honestly thought that the game was going to carry on, instead it fades to black and we get To Be Continued... Seriously? Fuck that noise. There is going to be sequel obviously but I feel ripped off that the game just ends there.

The Gameplay is identical to Final Fantasy XIII's, Dumbed down and and little to no strategy in most fights, apart from some side bosses. The Combat revolves around the Paradigm shift system from the last, You pick roles for your two characters out of six roles, Commando - Melee combat, Ravager - Basically a Mage, Synergist - Buffs the party, Sabateur - Debuffs the Enemies, Sentinel - Tanks the enemy and takes less damage and Medic - The Healer. You set up your Paradigms in the menu before a battle and you can switch between up to six combinations of paradigms in battle at will. This doesn't sound too bad does it? Now remember that all you have to do is press Auto-battle, you don't have to select individual tactics (You can but unless the situation really warrants it you don't have to), the games difficulty is a breeze down easy street, RPG veterans won't have any trouble making their way to the finale, requiring a basic knowledge of the Paradigm system for victory. It requires no thought, you hit auto-battle a few times and the battle ends, repeat,ad nauseam.

The Combat is not as exciting as it looks

The Main part to the combat is raising the enemies chain gauge the maximum and then making them Stagger. Putting an enemy in stagger makes them take increasingly high amounts of damage as you increase the gauge up to a total of 999% where the damage becomes ridiculous and usually only boss enemies survives this onslaught at least once.

In Key Boss fights, at the end there are quick time events (Hooray) which are laughably easy and almost impossible to fail, I can't tell you what happens if you do because I didn't fail any but I assume to game carries on regardless.

The Crystarium is back from FFXIII once again but this time is a lot more user friendly, now you just start off with one role and unlock the rest as you spend crystarium points, now the roles have levels but don't worry, the characters are really fast to max out this time around and it will only take you a few more hours once you hit the endgame to max them out, this was actually a blessing since the combat system makes grinding one button busywork, I swear I nearly ended up with RSI from pressing the A button so much.

Instead of actually designing and adding a third character to your party, Square Enix has decided that you can capture and use monsters as the third party member, excuse me while I jump for joy in Sarcasm. You can capture any random monster in the game and this happens at random, sometime you might capture them and other times not, the monster all have a different individual role out of the six and cannot change between them, so the idea is that you pick a monster that has skills you lack and mould your other two members around that monster, you can switch between 3 monsters during battle who all have different roles, your paradigms reflect accordingly which monster will be used for what role. This seemed like just something to put on the box and the game would have benefited more from having another player character instead of a characterless monster.

Unlike the two main characters who level up by killing enemies, monsters are levelled up by gaining component off random battles and getting enough of them to level up. These components don't drop off just any monsters and you have to go out of your way if you ever hope to have enough of them to max out a monster. This just adds another layer of ridiculous busy work to the already thick cake of shit.

Outside of the Combat, you are free to roam the time that you are currently in and you can move between times at will, the Free-roam aspect of the game is enjoyable and is a big improvement over XIII. It is still essentially linear, just now you are limited to a more wide open area.

Random Encounters are back but not in the way you remember, in XIII-2 there is the Mog Clock System. An enemy will randomly appear on your screen and you have a certain amount of time to either initiate combat or get far enough away to escape, if you strike the enemy within the time and you will get a Pre-emptive strike which is instantly familiar to Final Fantasy veterans where you get the first hit on the enemy and raise the chain gauge to near full. This pretty much guarantees you victory over all but the toughest enemies, if you fail to hit the enemy in the time, the only consequence is that you have to fight the enemy and you can't select retry mid-battle. Woo.

Final Fantasy soundtracks used to be a staple of great music and still stand up as some of the best soundtracks in video games. Final Fantasy XIII-2's Music is so abhorrent, so blatantly awful, it enraged me, the classic chocobo theme by Nobuo Uematsu who has long since jumped ship on this series, has been warped and tainted in this game. See here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUOOgNzOv4. The Battle music is bad and the boss music is just as bad. I was actually please when they used music from XIII which had what now seems to me like a brilliant soundtrack.

Now, people who have read my review of Skyward Sword know my feelings on Fetch Quests and that I absolutely hate them if overused, now Final Fantasy XIII-2 takes the fetch quest and runs wild with it. You unlock new areas or times by going through a Time Gate, these are unlocked by Artifacts. Every single area is unlocked by hunting down artifacts which could be just about anywhere in the timeline, sometimes they're on bosses in the world that you're in at the time, others are located in places that are completely irrelevant to the time you were in, I found a few of them by complete chance and sometimes spent hours wandering around looking for the specific one I needed. The artifacts are completely superfluous to the plot, you could have the characters just be able to go through the gates as the plot demands, not have the player hunt down a key every few hours for a single door, this happens at least 20 times and some of the time, the places aren't even relevant to the main plot.

These QTEs are ridiculously easy and hard to miss.

The Fetch Quests mentioned above make up for the majority of the Side Content, as well as an collectible hunting sidequest, there are 120 (or 160 Something like that) fragments scattered throughout the timeline and if you collect them all, you get a scene after the ending and an achievement. Woo. Collecting all of these will take you about 10-20 hours, almost as long as the main storyline. There are random missions you can pick up from NPCs in different times where you have to collect an item or kill an enemy and these are completely optional but usually reward a fragment.

There is also a minigame place called Serendipity, which is in all aspects basically a smaller version of the golden saucer from FFVII including Chocobo Racing. There are only two minigames in this entire place, one being the Chocobo Racing and the other a slot machine, there are card tables which I tried to use but was told that they would be added in future DLC, what the shit. Was the game that rushed that they could add a card table but no actually game to go with it. The Chocobo racing has changed somewhat since it was in FFVII since now you have no direct control over your chocobo and only have to press one button to make the chocobo boost, this is ridiculously dull but you need to do it if you want to best weapons in the game, if you try to do it using the starting chocobo you're going to fail heavily, what you have to do is find a golden chocobo, level it up to max and then breeze through the races amassing points as you go. At least, you would if the AI chocobo's didn't use Rubber Banding and can catch up with a maxed out golden chocobo and then breeze past you. The Game also force you to start the racing season over after a few races and you have to work your way back up the ranks again, this means making points using the racing takes ages and is an absolute fucking chore.

Now something that pissed me off beyond belief is when you are led by to the story to a Colosseum and then told to leave and come back later because there are no fights here yet. I came back here in the endgame and was still told to sod off, so I research online and found that the Colosseum fights are DLC only. This is fucking disgraceful, I bought this game on day of release for full retail price and there are areas in the game that have had content cut from them to make room for premium DLC. This is a bad route for Square Enix to take, I don't mind additional missions being added after a game has been launched but obviously cutting content like this and then teasing the player by bringing them there. Now that is just wrong.

The Voice Acting is actually well done in most places except for the aforementioned Chocolina and Mog, other characters are well voiced and deliver their dialogue correctly if nothing else.

The Graphic are quite nice and it still uses the same engine from the last game so if nothing else it looks pretty.

Content Wise, the game is rather lacking with a main story running about 10-20 hours depending on the player, levelling up to full adds another few hours and hunting for fragments adds another 10, but the game is all skin and bones and there really isn't enough content to hold the price tag up. The game is padded out with blatant fetch quest and the need to revisit old areas, the areas themselves are just the same 5 or 6 areas with either different weather effects or there is now some rubble. This is shameful rehashing of content.

And word of warning, even though Lightning is plastered all over the games images on the web and on the game cover, you only play as her for the tutorial for a half hour and then its straight to playing as Serah for the rest of the game.

This is the only time you will play as Lightning.

In Conclusion, The Game is mediocre at best, with its average story, poor characters, terrible music and nice graphics, the Gameplay is fundamentally functional if dull and piss easy. I only recommend buying this game if you are fan of the series and even then pick it up at a bargain bin price if you must have it.

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this and want to keep up to date with what I'm working on please follow me on twitter https://twitter.com/#!/RecrHazard.

The Darkness 2 Review

2012-02-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

I managed to drag myself away from Final Fantasy XIII-2 to play and complete the Darkness 2, which I finished in one afternoon.

The Darkness 2 is the successor to the Game which made me fall in love with the Xbox 360, the Original Darkness Game which was a gritty supernatural first person shooter, a deep and enjoyable story with believable characters who draw you into the universe. The Darkness 2 is none of this, it is a shooter and it is a sequel to the original but it shits all over why the first game was good.

The Main Story revolves around Jackie Estacado, a Hit-man (Now Mafia Don) who on his 21st birthday gained the powers of the Darkness, an all powerful force which takes the form of two snake heads and tentacles. Awesome. The first game revolved around Jackie taking revenge on his girlfriend's murderers, the second game takes place some years later after Jackie takes control of the Franchetti crime family and sealed the darkness inside himself, a hit on the restaurant he is at causes him to unleash the darkness once more and must fight a Dark Order trying to take the Darkness for themselves. The story for the sequel is ok at best but fails in comparison to its more grown up predecessor and this is because of the games poorly paced storyline. Events happen so fast and are often very disjointed with little build up to the final battle other than being told "It's the final battle" which left me wondering where the rest of the game went.

The ability to throw enemies is quite fun for a while.

The Gameplay is your typical first person shooter affair, you shoot the guns and the people fall down, the gun play is very enjoyable and a vast improvement over the first game (One of the only things that is an improvement). What separates this from your standard FPS experience is the Darkness, these two tentacles that shoot out of your shoulders or something, these make you an almost unstoppable god. You can slash your enemies with a tentacle, often cutting them in half, you can stun them and then grab them and either throw them or perform a gruesome execution. You can grab pipes or parking meters to throw and impale enemies with, you can use a car door as a shield. There are even abilities to empower your guns with the Darkness which broke all difficulty the game might have had.

The sheer variety of options the darkness gives you is astounding and you are free to use whatever powers are at your disposal. The drawback however comes when you so much as stick your toe into a relatively bright light, your screen will go bright white and you will be completely blind, you will also be unable to use your powers, obviously something needed to be done to balance the Darkness powers, but they went way too far, especially when the guys with flash lights start showing up, you will be instantly blinded and if you're unlucky, gunned down. While staying true to the comic which this series is based on, this is extremely frustrating from a Gameplay viewpoint, especially when you are blinded by a light source you can't even see.

Get used to seeing this tribute to Alien. You will see it about a hundred times.

The Game has a character progressions system in the form of talent trees (This again). You can put points you gather from downing enemies or collecting relics into specific talents which give you numerous benefits or unlock powers. Some better than others, especially one which basically doubles your health by giving you armour or the ability to sometimes create a black hole after killing an enemy (Sods law that the one that does this is the last one in the room). This gives the game some added depth but it is rather easy to max out if you kill with only executions and pick up as many relics as possible.

One of my personal problems is the removal of the Creeping Dark ability from the first game, the ability to drop a tentacle on the floor and control it to insta-kill enemies with stealth, obviously it was completely overpowered and made the game a joke but it is replaced with a creature called a Darkling. People who played the original may remember the Darklings as summon-able creatures who were a great ally to fight the enemies in the first game with, now however, you have one NPC darkling who follows you around sometimes kills enemies, you have no direct control over him except in two sections where you have to take control to unlock a door. You can't take control whenever you want to, you can only do it when the game lets you which blows.

The Game is extremely short and lacking in depth compared to its last game. The Games main story on the hardest difficulty took me around 5 hours which is a terrible length for a full price retail game, there is a co-operative campaign which is 2 hours long but there is no competitive Multiplayer to speak of. The Game has little to no replayabilty because there is no freedom, you are strictly on a linear path and you are guided between places with no freedom of your own.

Where the game really drops the ball is with the difficulty, it is a joke. I breezed through the game on the highest difficulty with minimal deaths, the abilities you start off with are absurdly strong and remain that way until the end of the game, only gaining in power as you carry on. The enemies are stupid and only serve as fodder to get shredded by the darkness and to show off the impressive gore that the game has on offer. The absurdly easy difficulty with the extremely short story really makes this a lacklustre experience.

The games only Multiplayer, Vendetta, are a series of short co-op missions with a group of hitmen (and Women) with supernatural powers like the darkness. I tried this with and friend and we thought it blew chunks, the characters powers are just weakened versions of Jackie's darkness powers except they have melee weapons which makes all the ranged enemies an absolute chore to fight. If the characters were actually developed and had decent powers, without forcing you to use a Melee weapon (Except the lady with the Shotgun) this mode might have been worth a damn as it stands it is a brief diversion from the short storyline.

The Games graphics are actually quite nice and make a nice change from gun metal grey shooters which are so abundant these days. They nice pseudo-cel-shaded graphics which are pleasing to look at and make all the violence stand out that much more. There isn't really much to say except the game looks nice and it is one of the games redeeming features.

The Stupid Cockney Darkling, No-use in combat and only serves to irritate me.

The sounds is not amazing, the music is bland and basic metal but voice acting is rather good, the voice of Chris Patton as the Darkness makes you feel really immersed in the world as this voice acting is extremely good, other characters like Jenny and Vinnie are voiced rather well too. Jackie on the other hand, sounds like some Guido douchebag in comparison to how he sounded in the first game. Special mention goes to the fucking abysmal voice of the darkling, who has the most annoying fake Cockney accent I have ever heard.

In conclusions, the Darkness 2 is not worth purchasing at full retail price, I don't even think it is worth renting, I feel like a played a cheap rip-off of the darkness, The Dorkness 2. If you loved the first game, don't play this game, keep that first game a fond memory and bury this one in the shadows where it belongs.

Assassins Creed : Revelations

2012-02-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

So here we are again? February, the time of year that I catch up on all the backlogged games I can't be bothered to play at the time of release. Assassins Creed : Revelations (AC:R from here on) is a third-person action adventure where you play a variety of Assassins from the past. Let me explain: The series follows Desmond Miles, a bartender in the present day who turns out to be the descendant of some Assassin chaps, he gets hooked up to a machine called the Animus by a shady company to find ancient artifacts. The series has two main factions at work, The Assassins and the Templars, Good and Evil respectively and the series follows the ongoing battle throughout history between these two groups.

The Animus lets Desmond relive the lives of his past ancestors called Altair and Ezio Auditore De Firenze. In the first game, you played as Altair, in the second onwards you play as Ezio because he has more personality than a rubber duck. I can't really go into details without spoiling the series so essentially you live out the lives of assassins, bumping off the Templars. The Overarching story is all very interesting and enjoyable if infuriating as the game follows the pattern of ending every time on a cliff-hanger.

AC:R is the most recent iteration of the series and the Gameplay will be instantly familiar to anyone who played the last game, almost too similar, like they didn't change anything. Let me say this first: I enjoyed Assassins Creed: Revelations but only after I waded through the turd-encrusted swamp to get to the good stuff.

The Gameplay for those who have never played an Assassins Creed game, is similar to the Prince of Persia series, free-running platforming with climbing and sword fighting, the climbing and free-running are easily the best part of the series and some of the most enjoyable experiences around, climbing a castle to get to your target without being detected is most satisfying.

Constantinople looks Gorgeous.

The combat is slick and exciting if way too easy. There are dozens of Weapons available in the game including Swords, Daggers, Spears, Crossbows, Axes etc. The Ranged weapons tend to break the Gameplay over it's knee with a sickening crunch as they are all one-hit kills. The Melee combat revolves mainly around countering which achieved by pressing a button just before any enemy attacks and insta-kills most enemies. Your most used weapon is going to be the Hidden blade which has been a series constant since Game 1. It is used to assassinate your targets and guards with complete stealth, sequels added a second one, this is one of most iconic weapons in gaming at the moment as it is instantly recognizable.

The Game is structured around Missions in a very GTA-esque way, as you have to travel on foot to the mission start point every time. The Missions are all very varied and exciting especially one where you have to chase a boat down some rapids (Don't ask why) whilst under musket fire. The amount of main story missions is quite high and will take many hours to complete.

This time around you are trapped in one city for almost the entire duration of the game, Constantinople. It is relatively large but feels a lot smaller compared to previous games multiple cities and large maps. Horses are gone, as is the countryside roaming that was in previous games. Constantinople is very nice to look at and still is fun to roam around but you start to get tired of the scenery after a while.

The Enemies in this game are still extremely weak and the AI is roughly the same as it was last time around, i.e. of no threat whatsoever. I never died in combat, only from repeatedly failing jumps and falling to my death. There are not that many different types of guards and you will get sick of beating the same enemies repeatedly.

You can also use Zip lines to get around in a more Flamboyant way.

Like in Brotherhood, you have your Mini-assassin recruits who are recruited by usually saving them from some guards. You can summon them to help you with a fight you're struggling with (Yeah, Right) or you can use them to insta-kill all the guards in the area with an Arrow Storm. This ability is freely available and only further cements how easy this game is. You can level your Assassins up by sending them to other cities on missions which is done entirely in a text screen and doesn't really make them any better if you call them for help, on more than one occasion, I called them to help speed up and fight and they got killed by some bog standard guards. Levelling up your Assassins is pretty much mandatory so that you never have to do that shit tower defence mini-game. Once you get an Assassin to max level you can make him master of a den, you do a short mission and then that den can never be attacked again.

You can capture Templar Dens to convert them into Assassin Dens which enable you to have more mini-assassins. The problem with this is that the Dens get attacked all the time which makes you have to go defend the Den in a Tower Defence. The attacks are triggered by getting full notoriety which is so ridiculously easy to do because any action you do causes a gain. Buying shops, killing guards, buying items, seriously buying 4 shops in a row triggers full notoriety, are you serious?

The Tower Defence mini-game blows. You do no actual direct fighting, you are placed on a rooftop and you place units to defend the street towards the den, you can put down a variety of units but it is so bland and monotonous that is completely worthless, Your units get picked off extremely easily by enemies that you kill by the dozen outside of the game, why can't I get in there and fight? I avoided this feature like the plague and I suggest you do the same.

The Game actually adds very little to the franchise, the aforementioned Tower Defence Game, the ability to make and throw a variety of bombs and an item called the Hook Claw or something like that. The only use this has to reach ledges roughly 1 foot further than you could before. Hooray. The bomb creation is boring and isn't very deep, there are 3 types of bombs, Lethal, Tactical and Diversion. You have 3 choices of ingredient for each one with 3 parts for each, this adds very little to the game and I kept forgetting I even had access to the bombs when I had to go out of my way to craft the bombs because you have to go to a crafting spot to do it.

You can also buy property like in Brotherhood and this functions exactly the same, you gain a set amount of income every 20 mins and it goes into your bank, which I used to buy the rest of the shops and by the end of the game I was sitting on a pile of money with nothing to buy.

The Music and Voice Acting is good, as we can expect from the series. That's all the there is to it, it doesn't stand out as amazing and there are no tracks to the soundtrack that are particularly memorable.

The Multiplayer is excellent and one of the best parts of the game, it is different from any other experience out there. It is essentially Hide and Seek with face-stabbing. You pick a character and then you are giving a target, you then have to hunt this target who is a player, they will try to blend in with a crowd of similiar NPCs and you'll have to pick them out, you will also be being hunted at the same time by a player and can lead to exhilarating games of Cat and Mouse. It's a blast and easily the best component of the game.

The Multiplayer gets Hectic and is Awesome

The Games Story is mainly focused on wrapping up any loose plots for the characters Ezio and Altair and the game certainly does that, in a way that makes me feel like I have been milked for money. The Wafer-thin reason for this game is that *Spoilers ahead* Desmond is in a Plot induced Coma after the events of Brotherhood and he needs to see the end of his Ancestors memories to get better. *Spoilers End* This game feels completely unnecessary, like it should have been DLC for Brotherhood, the new additions are so insubstantial. There is very little extra storyline going on that couldn't have been added as DLC to Brotherhood, like the Grand Theft Auto DLC, Lost and the Damned.

That would have been fine but Assassins Creed is rapidly becoming a yearly stamping out of the same template. I hope this franchise is killed off after Assassins Creed 3 otherwise all the goodwill it has built up will be completely destroyed. This game was a shameless milking out of the franchise just in time for Christmas.

My Final words: Was it good? Yes. Did I enjoy myself? At times. Was this game neccesary? No.
Should you buy this game? At a Bargain Price, Yes, Not at Full Retail.

The Hype Machine

2012-01-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

Being Excited for a New Game Release is common amongst many gamers, myself included and it is generated by something I call the "Hype Machine". This is the process of watching a trailer and basing your opinion on the game solely off the trailer. This is a classic marketing trap that people fall into time and time again.

Let's take things back a notch, have you ever been looking forward to game because of the trailers and previews you saw about a game, only to find that its shit. I'm sure you have. Take a look at Dead Island's original trailer, absolutely jaw-dropping and caused quite a few people, myself included, to look forward to that games release, it sold out everywhere in the UK on the week it launched, I paid £50 to get it on time. So many people bought this game based on the trailer only to find out it was a chunky vomit milkshake. Bad Story, Bad Dialogue, Dodgy controls and buggy as fuck, hooray. Is it the Gamer's fault for getting excited because of an initial trailer or is the Game Developer's for misrepresenting what the game was going to be like.

This story is a good example of what happens time and time again and not just in the Games industry, take a look at the Movie industry so many examples of amazing trailers but abhorrent movies (Cowboys and Aliens, The Phantom Menace, The Phantom Menace, The Phantom Menace Oh god why.)

The problem for the consumers (especially the Gamers) is that it is very hard to know if you will like a game without playing it, Of course Demos are available but these are often very misrepresentative of the games overall content, Games are a huge investment (£40 upwards) and with a chance that you may not even enjoy it that's a huge risk to take and in the United Kingdom, you are not able to return a game if you have opened it unless it's faulty, Telling the Clerk "It's Shit" will not get you your £40 back.

13 Years of Hype is impossible to live up to. Polishing
this turd would just give you shitty fingers.

Games that don't live up to the Hype are usually the ones that don't live up to their full potential or they don't live up to the promises made by the developers, (Hello, Peter Molyneaux) the first point always makes me feel a little sad because with just a little more polish these games could become great. The Second Point is one that always pisses the fans off the most, features being cut with little to no justification except laziness (Path of the Titans in Cataclysm is a good example).

Reviews are probably one of the best ways to find out if a game is decent apart from a few problems.

One: A Review is purely opinion and cannot be taken as hard-fact
Two: These Reviews don't always come out before a release due to review embargoes (A good Hint that a game is shit)

Reviews should be taken into consideration when purchasing, the only surefire way to know if a game is good or bad is to play it yourself whether that be by buying it, renting it or borrowing it from a friend

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Why giving Games a Score is Wrong

2012-01-20T08:59:00.000-08:00

Jumping straight in, giving a games a score is wrong, a game should never be summed up as a number, of course, there is certainly a high number of criteria for the scoring system used by big name review sites such as IGN and GameSpot but I disagree with this way of thinking. It is pointless to give a score to a game when you can just give a thorough analysis of the game in the review itself, maybe the score is more for the Too Long, Didn't read crowd but they can go fuck themselves sideways. A Game review is above all else, an Opinion Piece and in my mind, an opinion can not be assigned a numerical value.

Onto my next point, giving a game 10/10 is the Cardinal Sin of Game Reviewers, one that will Damn you to Gaming Hell where you will play Dora the Explorer for the rest of Eternity. 10/10 implies perfection, if a game was perfect then all game development should cease for that genre because we have reached the pinnacle of gaming and nothing can top it. No game should be labelled perfect, there is a huge difference between "Amazing and Perfection". Of course, what is the point in having an out of 10 or out of 100 system when nothing can achieve the top mark? One Reason, Drive. The 10/10 should be unobtainable but should always be strived for, 9/10 should be the highest any game should ever receive as the drive to get the 10/10 will result in amazing games, ones that transcend what we've seen in the past.

This brings me to another problem with the Scoring System, what happens when you give a game a 10/10 and then a much better sequel is released?

Let's pretend that the Fictional game "Cobblar's Adventure into the Whimsical Void" is reviewed and given a 10/10 for being a game of utmost perfection and then in a few years the sequel "The Return of Cobblar: Save Phantasmagoria from the Kittenpocalypse" which is such an amazing improvement over the first which becomes shit in comparison, what score do you give it? A 10/10 and rate it the same as the previous game despite the improvements or should you retroactively reduce the first games review score. It is a huge problem.

Of course, All the drivel I have just written is entirely subjective. It depends completely on the idea that 10/10 means perfection and doesn't simply mean it's a gaming classic. The Scoring System should just be done away with and replaced with in-depth and intelligent reviews that are relatively unbiased. Now excuse me, I have to have another helping of the Spunk Flavoured Lollipop by the name of Saints Row: The Third.

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Why the Online Pass is Poorly Implemented

2012-01-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

Let's start off with saying that I think the Online Pass being used by games is perfectly acceptable, you buy the game used, you only get some parts of the content, example you lose the multiplayer portion until you buy it off the XBL Marketplace. My problem with the OP system is when it interrupts the single player and offline content.

Let's take a step back: Recently my friend picked up a copy of Saints Row : The Third (Brand New) and he had the online pass, but he didn't have access to the XBL for whatever reason, when we tried to play offline system link, it asked him to download the online pass off XBL, If you are unable to access Xbox Live then a portion of your game is missing, why is this acceptable? People who play offline with no Xbox live have as much right to all the content as possible, This is utterly insane, why should your OFFLINE gaming experience be stopped because of this, especially when the online pass is required to access some of the single player content.

Another problem I see with the Online Pass is the cost of the games in question. If you go to pick up a game in the first few months of release you are going to be paying full retail price (£40 in the UK) and sometime this may be a bit much so you go check out the pre-owned versions of the game in question and notice the price tag is £35, this is not much of a saving but a saving none the less, so you go home and pop the game in and try to play online "You require an online pass, please redeem your code" so you open up the case to find the code and more often than not you do find a code, so you enter it to find out it has been redeemed. Sometimes there is even no label on the case to warn of an online pass requirement which is extremely frustrating.

Why is it acceptable to sell a game missing parts of it for what is almost retail price, of course you can buy a code off the XBL using the extremely flawed points system for £8.99, so by buying the game cheaper pre-owned you have had to spend more money than if you had bought the game full price. Madness, absolute madness.

Despite all these problems however, I like the idea of the online pass because it directly supports the developers.

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

2012-01-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

I love Legend of Zelda. Fact. Every game released (Except those dreadful CD-I games) holds a special place in my heart. I love the Gameplay, the world and the lore behind it all, and as much as I love LoZ, Skyward Sword is not amazing, at least in comparison to previous games.

The story is, as always, Link sets out to save Zelda (Not a princess this time) from evil. This games as it interested me to find out is a prequel and is the very first in the Legend of Zelda timeline. This game is where all the shit went down and this Link is the legendary hero referenced in all other Zelda's. I won't go into spoiler territory, the plot is actually pretty engaging and you grow interested in where the plot is actually going. The main problem with the story is your sidekick, Fi. The single most annoying character in the series, yes, more annoying than Navi. She is a Entity who lives in your sword and jumps out to state the blindingly obvious and to handhold you through the entire game. Example: Random NPC tells you where to go, Fi will chime in and tell you that there is a 95% chance that the random maguffin you are chasing will be in the place just told to you five seconds earlier.

Link faces down a Recognizable foe from previous games.

As Protagonists go, Link is pretty hopeless, he spends most of his time being strung along by women, getting generally abused by side characters, fired out of cannons, falling from great heights and all-in-all being somewhat doomed to have the shit kicked out of him in every incarnation of his character.

The game is not set in Hyrule as the majority of the series is, the game is set in the skies above a land that in the future will become the Kingdom of Hyrule. The game is set in a place called Skyloft, a town floating high in sky away from all kinds of nasties that lurk on the land below. The Town is where you will come between temples to start the next part of the story, upgrade your items and partake of the games few side quests. The actual adventuring is done on the land below and the sky area is woefully underused for anything but the occasional side quest and travelling. The Sky feels unpopulated and empty which doesn't have the same effect as Windwaker's Vast seas.

You travel around the Sky on a Bird called a Loftwing which is not called Epona. (Cue Fan boy rage) This can be summoned by leaping off designated board walks in Skyloft and the random islands dotted around. The Mechanics for the flight are sound, which involve flapping your wings by waving the Wii-mote up and down and pointing where you want to go. I did not know this first piece of information because I skipped the dialogue like a prat and this made travelling a bitch. I found a way to exploit the boost of speed you get when summoning your bird, so I continuously mounted and dismounted to gain speed.

The Juicy Gameplay is where things get interesting. The key selling point of this game is that the Wii-Motion controls act as a real sword, you swing left, Link swings left, You swing right, you get the picture. This works, most of the time. There are times when Link will just not bloody perform the action you are performing. This wouldn't be an issue if some fights didn't (Particularly boss fights) require precise movements. Despite the issues the sword play is some of the best around and when it works it is satisfying and somewhat immersive.

The Flying sections are fun but few and far between

The meat and bones of the any Zelda is its dungeons, there were 7 in total and were all very well designed and enjoyable if somewhat short. The lead-up to said dungeons is horrible, it is good in small parts but far too often is dragged out to 2-3 hours worth of running around, there are multiple fetch quests for each and every dungeon just to unlock it. Some may argue that previous games had similar set-ups, but no of them revolved around fetching quest items or worse escorting an NPC.

The enemies in this game include most of the fan favourites with new spins on them to use the Wii-motion plus controls. In fact, this is used so much that in some places it is to the games detriment. It is disappointing to have to use the sword and only the sword for most cannon-fodder enemies. What disappointed me the most is that there is no single extremely tough and dangerous enemy in the game like the Iron Guard, this is just personal preference.

The Gadgets that you get in this adventure vary somewhat from previous installments, there are still the standard mainstays of the series: Bows, Bombs and Hookshot (Clawshot whatever). There are some awesome ones which haven't appeared before like the flying robot beetle which can be used to pickup items and fly around. This is the item I found was used the most and this is lucky since it is the second item you get. You also get a whip for the BDSM lovers out there which disappointingly has no combat application whatsoever apart from the boss in the dungeon you get it, this seems to be a theme in this game where your gadgets have no use in combat apart from 1 or 2 bosses. In previous games, the items were still useful combat, some to an almost game-breaking extent e.g. Deku Nuts and the Boomerang.

The games difficulty borders between semi-challenging and baby's first LoZ. The only boss that gave me trouble was the first and last. Fi pretty much explains most of the game to you, telling you where to go and what to do and there were only a few puzzles which actually challenged me. The Game even has an option to cheat and find the solution to puzzles and how to kill the laughably easy bosses. This option is of course optional but I find the inclusion of it downright insulting. If you can't solve a puzzle, you shouldn't be told how to do it, you should be stuck there until you can figure it out.

As seems to be a recurring thing, you get a musical instrument in Skyward Sword, this time a Harp. You play it by swinging the Wii-mote to the left and right in Rhythm, That's it. Now forgive me for thinking that the Harp is just a bit more complicated than that and in game when you're swinging left to right, it has no semblance of an actual song until a cut scene takes over and the song actually plays. The Harp is used 8 or 9 times in the entire game for the story, not counting a side quest. That's it. You can't even play around with it like the Ocarina trying to make up your own tunes, the songs are not possible to play outside of cut scenes. I'm sorry but that is just shit.

The game has an optional upgrade system where you gather parts and bits from fallen enemies and plants to improve your items and shield. This was an enjoyable diversion from the main story and one that I completed fully, the various upgrades are actually noticeable and help out during combat. None more noticeable than the shield upgrades, your basic wooden shield shatters in 3 hits and then you have to buy a new one. Your metal one absorbs more but doesn't block electric attacks. The best shield of all, The Sacred Shield, bears a striking resemblance to the Hylian shield and can block fire and electric attacks and it's health regenerates over time.

Some enemies can only be killed by slicing them
down on an obvious weak point

The lack of any meaningful side quests and mini-games was a bit jarring, actual side quests were few and far between as well as there being 3 mini games total. (No archery mini-game? Blasphemy.) This reduces the overall longevity of the game, although the main quest will take you around 40 hours (Well, for me it did, your mileage may vary), I feel the inclusion of any real side content is to the games detriment. The game feels padded out with a ridiculous amount of fetch quests which don't add any real depth to the game.

The Music in Skyward Sword is nowhere near as memorable as previous installments, The Ballad of the Goddess is memorable as is the theme for flying but other than that I can't recall any original songs in the game. Of course, Zelda's Lullaby makes an appearance and that is always nice. The problem with new songs from the harp is that you don't hear them enough to remember them, Ocarina of time's Ocarina songs were memorable because you had to play them all the time.

Graphics are nice and have a unique style to them which is a blend between the cel-shaded style of Windwaker with the more dark tones of Twilight Princess. The Graphics are probably the best on the Wii which isn't saying much considering that the it's like beating a fat guy in the 100-metre dash. The character and enemy textures are all well done and look pretty sharp.

Overall, Despite the games flaws, it is still a worthwhile addition to the Zelda franchise, it will not take Ocarina of Time's crown despite what any clueless morons might tell you.

The Problems with Subscription Based Games

2011-11-29T12:14:00.000-08:00

£8.99 or $15 doesn't seem like much, it can hardly buy anything nowadays, but add at the cost of that monthly and the figure raises astronomically (Obviously). Of course I'm talking about MMORPGs (Again) and the prevalence of a subscription based model. Beware I'm going to talk about World of Warcraft quite a bit.

The Big Selling point of an MMORPG is the vast amount of content that has been created and that will made in the future, the idea of a monthly fee is justified by the company as the way to pay for the content to come and the upkeep of the servers, 8.99 a month on server upkeep, you're joking right? The biggest MMO at the moment is World of Warcraft which has roughly 12 million subscribers, now imagine the amount of money this brings in to the company, this figure is more than any of can hope to achieve in a lifetime, let alone monthly. For that amount of money you'd expect the content to fly in fast and of a high quality, but as any rational minded player can see, this isn't happening.

The time between content in World of Warcraft is huge, Mostly of High Quality and sometimes not (Hello 3.2 and 4.1), the time between the two most recent patches 4.2 and 4.3 (Tomorrow in the EU) has been 6 months, the last set of content was the Firelands Raid and Daily Quest Zone, Blizzard put a 7 boss raid dungeon and a set of dailies.

A Galaxy Far Far Away, all for the price of 8.99

When a Developer releases content slowly or when they release content that is poor, then the subscriber base will react and people will unsubcribe, this has been problem for both established and brand new MMOs. This is an awful practice by companies, other games have adopted a much better model to work by.

Yes, I'm talking about Free to Play. Free to Play is by far the most cost effective way for consumers to enjoy their MMO. There is no subscription fee but you have to pay for the content you want. This is by far the consumer favourite, pay for the stuff you want, don't pay for the stuff you don't. Dungeons and Dragon Online do this fantastically with the entire game being F2P from launch and you pay for the extra dungeons. League of Legends is an excellent example, there is a set of F2P champions that are rotated every week, you can buy the ones you like with real money or a currency you earn by playing games.

Maybe a good idea would be for Blizzard and other developers to lower the cost of the subscription and the other premium services (Save that can of worms for another time) and then just have a nominal fee for each content patch, like £5 or something, that seems reasonable to me. This would also be a good incentive for developers to make decent content at a regular pace as the consumers would let them know if it was shit by voting with their wallet. (Not paying)

Would a game like WoW benefit from having a F2P model? No and that's because they're making millions a month off putting a content patch out every six or so, and an expansion every 1 and a 1/2 years. Am I going to try and make some kind of valiant statement about the evils of subscription based games and that we should all play F2P? God, no, I have to go pay Blizzard my 8.99 a month so I can keep punching internet dragons in the face.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, My Impressions

2011-11-26T15:58:00.000-08:00

In a Nutshell, Not worth the wait. I've been testing out the Old Republic at any chance I could get, Literally swimming in beta codes over the last year or so and about a month before release I'm finally ready to give my opinion. It is boring, it is every other MMORPG you have ever played with Voice acting and story. I tried to like it, I wanted to like it but I just can't. It's a shameless stamping out of the tired MMORPG mould that has been done time and time again, what the market needs is something truly revolutionary to bring it out of its stupor, EVE online would be the prime candidate if it wasn't so bloody tedious.

The Gameplay for Star Wars is the bog standard hot key formula. You hit a button and the character does that ability, simple yes? There really isn't much to say, it's all so bloody insubstantial and similiar to every other game out there that I'm at a loss for words.

What this game really is is Knights of the Old Republic 3 except this time thousands of other cretins are running around spoiling your fun, the story and voice acting is all top notch if a little cheesy. This game would be some much better if it was single player only which completely goes against everything that an MMO is, in fact from what I can tell it is pretty much single player only, the quests make up for a vast amount of the content, there is voice acting for every single quest giver and it's all very good, but the game feels so schizophrenic from this approach (What I mean is Single player orientated but a Multiplayer game).

The Multiplayer is something that I had a problem with, there is little reason to interact with other players apart from Flashpoints and the rare group quest. Maybe this changes at end game but that remains to be seen I'm not buying launch day and pissing away my time to get to level 50 and then finding out the endgame is so bloody insubstantial, (Hello Aion, goodbye Aion) for this game to be a purchase it needs lasting appeal and no amount of single player quests are going to keep me in a multiplayer game that I have to pay a monthly fee for.

The Multiplayer is actually quite hard to get into, trying to find a group for the few dungeons available is tough but I'll let it slide because of the few people playing. What actually is unforgivable and needs fixing right away is the phasing, Obliter8tedMoose and myself both rolled up bounty hunters to level together and had an absolutely diabolical time trying to play together because of all the phasing, even when we managed to get into the same phase, we found out that only the 1 person would get credit for it and the guest would get dick all. This is seriously messed up and something even World of Warcaft does better.

I tried really hard not to bring comparisons with World of Warcraft into this but let's make an example: Imagine if World of Warcraft released an expansion that was 90% Quest content and 10% endgame, we'd all think they'd gone mad and unsubcribe. Oh wait that already happened and look at the result, subscribers dropped several million in the course of year. You can't base an MMORPG off single player content it doesn't work, letting each and every player believe they are a unique and special snowflake only serves to the detriment of the game when they reach max level and can't work as part of a coherent group and/or play their class.

Don't be fooled, it's not this exciting.

Let me make a special mention of the community, man oh man, judging from the state of the forums and general chat in game at this time, the fans for this game are going to fucking unbearable, I mean I'm all for people enjoying a game that I can't but when they can't allow someone to draw a critical opinion without crying and raging then you have to wonder what hope there is for this world. (This is same for all games but Star Wars Fans are the fucking worst) . Watching as fans dismiss any kind of critical judgement with "It's beta" or "It'll be fixed before release", not with 20 days before release it is not.

The Graphics for this game are pretty standard, neither pretty nor ugly, I should say they're a functional at least, I had the game on the highest graphical setting and it still looked bland and uninspired. Curious as to what it looked like on low I turned it down and it look like someone had vomited on my monitor. Brilliant. The actual art style looks like that appalling Clone Wars movie released a while back and it really doesn't make a difference one way or the other, I'd have preferred something a bit darker but it doesn't really matter.

My final word, Unless this game makes drastic changes in the coming month and I mean some huge ones, I won't be playing it, especially not 8.99 a month. Depending on the type of Endgame content I may be able to change my mind but at this point I'm pretty tired of MMORPGS in general, maybe I'll change my mind in the future and Star wars will be a refreshing change of pace for me but only time will tell.

(If I didn't mention anything, its because I didn't do it, apologies)