The Hypocritical Gamer

Assassin's Creed 3

2012-03-04T13:13:00.000-08:00

Recently light was shedded on the upcoming Assassin's Creed threequel, and by light I mean a fucking lighthouse with an array of spotlights behind it.

AC3 is set to take place in colonialist America from around 1775 onwards, expected to end at around 1781 parallel to the war of independence. Our protagonist,Connor, is a native Mahican; mother is a Mahican father is American. The geography of the game is bound to take place in New York and Boston, right where AC Revelations ended. Connor is confirmed to be in cahoots with George Wahsington and Benjamin Franklin, who most likely will replace Leonardo da Vinci. The upcoming saga will continue Desmonds story but Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad and Ezio Auditore da Firenze are now as seems forgotten.

My two cents on the event are mostly negative.
Sure the premise of AC3 is cool and all, and a new protagonist is a very needed fresh wind in the ''Valley of Ezio''. But choosing frontier America over all the other historic settings, especially in the end of the 18th century, seems like a fanservice for the Americana audience. To be upmost anyone who has read history outside of the states knows that the history of America, especially at the frontier era, is very over detailed and only spans for 200 years or so. Not to mention the questionability of the motives of the leaders of this era makes this very thin ice to thread on. Also Connors ethnic and supposed moral neutrality is just plain political correctness, I gladly await how ubisoft use this in the story of AC3 and whether they actually tapped into anything worth while there.
In the end of AC revelations it became clear that individuals with high concentration of ''first-born'' dna are in dire need. Also a female assassin, Dilara, made frequent screentime visits, most noteably in the cut-scene of the ''first armageddon'' suggesting she and her bloodline had high concentration of first born dna. Theories were made etc. but it was pretty clear the next AC game would circulate on her, the most common theory was that she was Mary Wollstonecraft at the french revolution. Going against this theorem of fans is common but in this case people where in many cases falbbergasted by the reveal of Connor.

Now all this mockery may sound harsh especially coming from an European, but mockery is not my intent. I feel like frontier America has already been done, espcially on the case of Red Dead Redemption. To me AC has always been exploring something that no games (except AC games) had before. Frontier America or dare I call it The Wild West is a cliche and I don't think it will do any favors for the AC series.

These are my two cents. Tell me yours, I'm very interested on the opinions of others on this issue.

Assembly '11

2011-08-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

Assemly is the biggest LAN party held in my homeland of Finland. From the fourth to the seventh of august gamers got together in Hartwall Arena and did what people do when it comes to LAN parties.My highlights were:

The Jimm's booth:
I didn't buy anything but they had some great events like touchpad CSS and so on. And IMO they were prepared for window shoppers.

ES:
This shit kept me going when the small hours came upon us. I would pretty much have one with me all the time. The second rejuvinator was cigarettes. We honestly had a fag break every 30 mins.

Outskirts of Hartwall Arena:
We wandered outside Hartwall Arena and hilarity ensued as the ordanance people saw us. We split up and remained unharmed: yet it felt surreal and sort of awesome

Gaming in general:
It was liberating knowing that the couple days to come you could game as much as your heart desired. Nothing would stop you. And nothing did

My shitty PC:This hunk'o'shit accompanied me along Assembly. It only had an upgraded graphics card in it and the struggle with it was in the end quite rewarding. Next time ill hopefully have a better piece.

The Mainfloor: The hub, the center and the heart of Assembly. Everything from concerts to game finales took places here. Everytime you walked down to the mainfloor you would stand in awe astounded at the amount of everything that was going on.

Totalbiscuit: He was literally everywhere in Assembly. By the end of the four days he had commentated for 50+ hours, and it showed, nevertheless he still put up with the fans thus i got an awesome pic.

The ASUS ROG SC II event. Assembly made me a huge believer in e-sports. It was a crying shame that the preliminaries were stuffed into a small absess room. The same room was so packed when Stephano and Dimaga had their Z v Z that I could not finnish it. Luckily though the finale was held on the main stage.
After the first one hour game we were geared up for four more of those. After 2.5 hours Dimaga won 3-2 against Mana. Truly the highlight of the event

A melting pot and plethora of everything

2011-03-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

PS plus membership might be finally paying itself off. PSN plus members get a sweet little cloud to use. Every Gold member gets around 150 mb or so. What’s funny is that first I thought this was useless and the very next day I could have used this service real bad. Also PSN plusses will be getting early or just plain normal access to Infamous 2 beta. This factor might be the only reason I will buy PSN plus if I’ll buy it. I’m very hopeful that PSN plus will start to add more to its repertoire and make the pending decision a certain one

I’m a bit ashamed to be Finnish today. Rovio’s head honcho Peter Vesterbacka stated his opinion on console games and their apparent downfall of ridiculous proportions. Boldly he states that console games and consoles themselves are dying out. I think that a small gaming company that really hasn’t done anything new in the gaming world and struck a major mother lode by releasing a re-hashed game that everyone who has played a little bit of flash games is already familiar with. I can name a dozen better games that are now online playable and are free. So please when you think of Finnish games think of Alan Wake, Max Payne and Stardust HD

Homefront came out a couple days ago. And to be franc I’m not in the mood to pay and play another short game and/or a marketing shitfest. Five hours just doesn’t cut it no matter how good the multiplayer might be. What I am interested more so is the book. Looking at the reviews and general opinions the story and atmosphere and milieu and so on and so on is the best thing in the game and that is what makes it remarkable. It’s a brilliant move from them to put their eggs in a couple baskets;but being the cynicist that I am I think it’s rather the supreme marketing strategy that they had. Not everyone releases a billion balloons over Sanfran. But I’m excited to finally bring gaming into the English class without showing my ridiculous reviews and blogs and ending the teacher up in a state of uncontrollable hilarity.

PAX. Do I need to say more?

At least on the booth babe basis Duke Nukem Forever had it covered better than anyone else did. People have played it and apparently it suffers from clunky control syndrome. I’m a big fan of tight controls but what people said was also that the ridiculous humor and plain outrageousness of duke nukem will make up for a little case of stiff joysticks. Being as cynical as I am I will not believe this game will be out until I see it on the shelf and even then I will be in a state utter disbelief and flabbergasm.

The only game I’m sure to buy of the PAX coverage is Portal 2. What I find astonishing is that when you buy Portal 2 for the PS3 you will get it for the PC and MAC for free. Whether you have to have one steam account to activate this feature is yet to be announced. Otherwise I see a bright future of PC and PS3 gamers sharing the game and Xbox slowly being the left out kid in the school yard.

One other game that wasn’t as prominent that I am surely going to buy is Infamous 2. A new demo was playable showing the new cattle prod fights and cover that you can later fling at your enemies. Now that is pretty awesome.

One big title talked about was Bastion. Not really much has been mentioned except a scratch made engine and live commented play or something along these lines. Bastion was a big hit with the gaming biz insiders and is regarded a new Braid only better.

The shadowy figure of PAX this time was Rage; all thought IDtech shined bright and many titles still decided to stick with the unreal engine and IDtech in general not many big titles were shown off and only a little was mentioned of them.

Bulletstorm Review

2011-03-09T01:15:00.000-08:00

E3 2010 Cliff B showed off a game that was going to change the way we look at shooters and it was going to be the light at end of the tunnel and the final day for the reign of quoting Bulletstorm’s dev team ’’dull shooters’’. Bulletstorm presented had one central gameplay function: ‘’Kill with Skill’’. The moments when you play a FPS and you jump up screaming because you just shot three guys in the head with one bullet or you managed to blow a guy of the map with a noobtube or so on; Bulletstorm was going to be nothing but those moments.

The hype until release date was without doubt planned with outmost perfection. People Can Fly and Epic Games released an around 6 minute game called Duty Calls. According to them Duty Calls was how they saw modern shooters. Duty Calls was a blatant rant of Call of Duty games. Never the less Bulletstorm got its name up in the lime light even further.

In general

The story of Bulletstorm is less than stellar and sadly has a great blueprint ruined by clichés and cheesiness.

You are Greyson Hunt: leader of a space pirate rogue group that is seeking for revenge on their former task giver. They crash on a deserted planet and so the story unfolds. Greyson slowly embraces a new technology that rewards skillful killing to pick out the ones that are the best.

The storyline is full of slapstick, satire, sexual innuendo and all that bad stuff. If you think all this is childish or repent it just because leave Bulletstorm on the shelf it will seriously be the last nail in the coffin. But for me and probably for others the humor worked like a Hail Mary on Sunday. But even if all the pieces fit the story has major holes and is one of the factors of the main component that Bulletstorm has wrong.

The major theme of the game however is ‘’Kill with Skill’’. You have to get creative in the ways you kill to rack up points which you can use to upgrade and re-supply. The ace in the sleeve of Bulletsrom is ridiculously apparent and it is good that way. Let’s just say that the only bad thing in ‘’Kill with Skill’’

will be discussed later.

When you crash you are armed with your boot and a not so generic rifle called the Peace Maker Carbine. However once you pick up the leash a string like energy whip that lets you sling and hook enemies the game starts to show its good side. The arsenal of Bulletstorm is small but a ton of work has been put into the guns esthetically and gameplay wise. There is only one problem with the arsenal. The weapons seem distant; getting used to them takes a lot of practice and you’ll most likely end up preferring a couple weapons over the other ones. Adding up to this fact is that you can only carry three guns and one of them is definitely going to be the Peace Maker Carbine. Mastering the guns and their ‘’skillshots’’ is the salt of the game and really really entertaining.

The story however is not as entertaining. The game has a mode called Echoes which is just the game without dialogue and cutscenes and is to some extent a lot more enjoyable. Also the friendly AI is shallow and fully on retarded. The cant die and apparently can’t kill a healthy opponent. Dozens of times I had lined up a shot of massive awesomness just to notice that my ally decided to pop up in my line of fire and ruin everything.

Bulletstorm is like a painting. Just looking at the game and stopping once and awhile to look at the view was a great joy in itself.

Kill with Skill

Bulletstorms major drawing point is ‘’Kill with Skill’’. Now KWS is based on multiple so to say little achievements in game. Those ‘’Skill Kills’’ are creative and the repertoire is up to standards to say the least and Bulletstorms mechanic’s standards are very high. Racking up points from killing enemies and discovering and completing new Skill Kills if amazingly entertaining and pleases the achievement whore inside me like a handsomely tipping customer. But Bulletstorm depends on KWS a bit too much. The maps are linear and enemies repeating and KWS fixes it but it doesn’t work wonders.

The Awesome

-KWS is one of the most original methods of gameplay yet seen.

-The game is explicitly fun to play.

-And if the humor connects it is one of the funniest compositions around the gaming world.

-Ground breaking graphics and environment use.

The Good

-The arsenal is carefully thought out.

-The environments differ pleasantly.

-Unlinear gameplay to the max.

The Bad

-Ridiculous and useless friendly AI.

-Linear maps
-The game is like a train, you're in it and its fun but you have almost no freedom of choice

-Repeating themes: wrecked houses, wildlife, etc.

-Weapon bias strong and after a while weapons tend to get boring

-Short

The Ugly

This time the ugly is going to be a chapter to itself. There is one factor with Bulletstorm that is so fatally ugly that it needs a chapter.

Im talking about the game being designed to bang a buck. The campaign is short really short; anything from five to seven hours. Bulletstorm has left an opening for a prequel and a sequel. We were supposed to be spacepirates looking for revenge of course I looked forward to building up a posse and of course I thought it was going to be a necessity to do it. And what do we do in the beginning? We bare witness to why we want revenge after the whole crew has already died. The game leaves up on a frustrating cliffhanger; not as bad as God of War 2 but still really annoying. Epic Games and People Can Fly created something great and brought the ‘’ridiculous’’ factor back in to shooting. Why did they have to ruin a game that could have achieved absolute excellence with a good story and around 3-4 hours of more campaign content; not just the campaign re-vamped into a mode called Echoes. I’m sure there will be a Bulletstorm 2 and maybe a prequel. Why can’t we have those two in this game? Imagine Borderlands without the RPG elements and a bit of the open world mechanics taken out and then add all the Bulletstorm shennannigans. If this game would have had different playable characters, different worlds, side missions, 20 hours of campaign and a plethora of things that elongate games it wouldn’t have any kind of problem. It is obvious that Bulletstorm is just a good game turned into a circle jerk of marketers.

The act of catching a break

2011-02-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

Scusi moi. I have had business. Moving along

A lot has happened within the cluster fuck we call gaming and everything that orbits it.
the studio that bared the name Hudson Entertainment has bitten the dust. The PSphone inherited the 'worst kept secret of gaming' crown from the PSPgo. And they didnt even leave it in a bar.

Also on the smexy side of news our prominent lady gamers have well presented us and askmen placed. For example The Baroness Chobot on place 57 out of 99. Kudos and thank you for looking so fantabulous and actually making IGN torerlable.

So Activision decided that their flow of money isn't stable enough. So they took three games/franchises out of seeming existence. So Guitar Hero 'a franchise that is too expensive to keep up when contrasting the income it provides' has vanished like a fart in the Mojave. And True Crime has joined the list of fallen games STRIPPERS (if you got that give yourself a high five)
No really significant games came out (feel free to correct me) the tension of upcoming games like Killzone 3, Marvel VS. Capcom 3 and L.A Noire
One final thing and this is for the lulz, a really really faulty and judgemental article came out of Bullet Storm I would comment on it but Botchweed.com made such a good job already I'm not gonna bother, just know that Botchweed is/are my favorite person(s) of the day
Save the pic and watch it in its full glory it is worth it trust me

PSP2= NGP

2011-01-29T13:01:00.000-08:00

It is finally out. PSP2 a.k.a codename NGP for next gen portable.
It has the dual joysticks finally. Standard analog and control buttons. Two cameras on the back and on the front. 5 inch OLED touch screen. Six-axis control. And a touch pad on the back. Apparently NGP is going to be released similarly to the Ipad with one version with 3G and another one w/o 3G. Graphically the NGP will fiercely compete with the PS3
Now lets talk games. First party titles: Resistance, Uncharted, Killzone and Little Big Planet
. Third party games: Get this...CALL OF DUTY
And current third party supporters and devs are as followsGrasshopper, IREM, Level 5, Namco Bandai, Square Enix, Ubisoft, 2K Games, Rockstar, Capcom, SEGA, Tecmo Koei, Konami, Epic, Activision.
Personally I'm interested in Grasshopper. Now Sony please publish the PSphone i really need it. NGP is going to hit shelves like Muhammad Ali in the end of this year

Now Dead Space 2. Go buy it that's all

It is truly among the top 3 of all the many games i have played. I literally sit for five minutes just chain stomping stomping a necromorhp. Rule #32 enjoy the little things. Now pay up it is worth it i swear

Fanservice mmm.. tasty fanservice

2011-01-15T14:45:00.000-08:00

It is final.... DC universe online is ''online''. And I'm entitled to say i have played (and liked) it.
On other MMO news minecraft has with its ''Beta'' hit the one million mark. They should really (if they already haven't) pay SeaNanners something. The guy made Notch a billionaire.

Cliff B is publishing a game called Bulletstorm. In my opinion its not a game. Its fanservice.
Its full of memes, cameos and awesomness in general.
Im just afraid that the game has fallen ill to ''Serious Sam Syndrome''. You know where the guns are too big 'n' bulky not really charming at all. Plus they are just too unnatural. Even if this game is supposed to brimmed to the tip with extraordinary guns. Sometimes the feeling of just shooting a normal bullet in a guys head is more than enough. Borderlands did it perfectly. The weapons are unnatural and like you would never see these in real life. But yet even if i could set someone ablaze or give him cardiac arrest due to electricity. It still felt like i was shooting a gun: not some alien piece of technology......oh wait.

Anyway Cliff B take note now

Some of you might know George ''GeoHot'' Hotz. The first person to jailbreak an Iphone to be a wi-fi hotspot and to record movies and lots of more stuff. Currently it is legal to jailbreak your iphone before Geohot's jailbreak it wasn'n
Well apparently he didn't really like Sony taking away the OS support for all PS3:s. So Geohot decided to jailbreak the PS3 aswell. Now you can run homebrew appilcations like emulators and apparently pirate games (eventhough GeoHot denied this iin an interview with gamespot) If you are interested in jailbreaking your PS3 you can find instructions from http://www.geohot.us/ however it is considered illegal as of in right now. And sony might retaliate on your console for doing this. Wheter Geohot will again win court and change the digital millenia laws is pending.

Insert explosions and General Awesomness here

2011-01-14T00:24:00.000-08:00

So CES is over and nothing that really concerns gamers got released. Sony teased us with the PSphone (well not really leaks teased us) and yet it didn't get released.

On actually interesting news: the 3DS coming out in Japan February 26th has announced the eight debut games, and a hell of a lot of other titles. The 3DS will be published with Nintendogs+cats, Super Streetfighter IV 3D, Professor Layton and The Mask of Miracle and five other games that are barely worth mentioning. Other big names got their first or further confirmation. Such like ANOTHER Ocarina of Time, Tales of the Abyss the first Tales game with a ''the'' on it, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater and Kid Icarus Uprising. Titles TND are as follows: Resident Evil: Revelations, Kingdom Hearts 3D, Professor Layton vs Ace Attorney Mario Kart and Paper Mario. Now feast on cover arts taken straight from IGN yes i am ashamed.

Also 3D titles will cost 5000-6000 yen (60-72$) when ''normal'' titles cost around 4800 yen (57 $)

IT'S LEAKING IT'S LEAKING

2011-01-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Today is apparently the day of leakage. A video of a supposed 3DS was posted on YouTube with DSI and DS lite.
The funny thing is the leakers played the Mario theme on the back in what seemed to be a dorm of some sort.
3DS is a close match to the former versions if comparing size and so on. If Nintendo really made the 3DS more powerful than the Wii. I'm pretty sure the Wii 2 is just around the bend.
Adding news to 3DS. Apparently it isn't as safe for kiddies as we think. Nintendo proposes that the 3DS should only be used at 30 minute periods. Yeah sure name me the last time you played a game for half an hour. The other end of the deal is that you will not get headaches and other vision based conditions whatnot. And people still wonder why 3D flopped the first time around the seventies or something. I personally get a massive headache every time i watch 3D. Like motion-controlling 3D is going to be an expensive gimmick trust me.

Next up the PSphone ''leaked'' again. When will Sony learn to keep secrets. Let's remember 2009 E3 what did they ''publish'' PSPGo, we new that PSP2 was coming six months before hand we only screwed up the name. Crying shame.
The new picture confirms the dual-virtual-super-mega-cool-new-technology-joysticks finally giving PSP the joy of FPS:s and the douche bags that come along with them.
Personally i love the idea of a reliable gaming phone. With IOS titles being less ''casual'' every day taking for example Infinity Blade, Sony chose once again their market well. And like 3D the gaming phone is resurrected. Many of us still remember the grotesque N-Gage project. Let's hope Sony gets it right.

In other news. Commander Shepard is going to be keeping it real in 2183 again, New DLC is coming along with the PS3 edition of ME 2. The yet not to be named title will be the fourth DLC BioWare adds to ME2 good riddance for them. This along with other phenomena such like the fact that more titles were downloaded rather than bought for the PC is pretty good proof for the digitization of games.

Now for the proper bullshit. Microsoft denies that the Kinect causes more RRoD:ing in old XBoxes. Problems like this are migthy fine examples of something being so convenient for the developer. They release Kinect and a new Xbox. Conveniently the Kinect breaks old Xboxes so hey why not go buy the nes version. Too good to be true for Microsoft if you ask me. Just like the multiple Glitches in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood that keep us from playing the game such like the animus loop and the underground passage glitch. Conveniently leaving us with only the multi player to play. Get you shit together Ubisoft i have been waiting for the patch for a month and Canada already has it. Anyway I'm over and out

LPB2

2011-01-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

So the reviews for Sack Boy's second adventure are out today.
Sadly I myself have never had the chance to abuse and exploit the Little Big Planet universe, I guess i don't have the followthrough for games like that.
The concept is the same as it was on the first game. Create, Play, Share as their slogan puts it

What Media Molecule added was tools to create games; yes games like 2d shooters both lateral and acsending, overview racers, airhockey and so on.
It seems though thay Media Molecule didnt learn from their mistakes. Poor directioning in the create mode and sluggish sloooooooow loading are still present. And the average review points as of in right now are 70.0.

Also funny side note. Even when Mass Effect 2 for PS3 is running on the ME 3 engine, it only requires one disc. When ME2 for Xbox had two. Im sure if anyone would read this there would be a flame war commencing. But hey you cant win them all (any of them )

MMXI

2011-01-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

Luckily for me begginning of the hopefully most awesome year in general 2011 (because we all will die on 2012)
Is a slow one. Everyone is hyping for things to come or looking at the year past.

Forshadowing for january releases is also a thorn in everygamers side. Mainly for DC universe online, for which we all have seen a ton of beta footage (thank you TotalBiscuit) IF not even played beta. Mass Effect Dos for PStres and Dead Space 2.

Hmm apparently some sort of 2012 game is also released. Makes me wanna start a ridiculous releases segment :D
Apparently the feeling of anemia and '' Fuck this im on vacation'' feeling is mutual with me and the gaming biz.
Thus im over and out

The genesis of something AWESOME (I hope)

2011-01-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

Ah blogging. If you're one of those cynical bitter bastards who think blogging is the most narcissitic thing to do and that only the lowest of lifeforms do it: welcome to the club.
That is why I won't be bloggin about myself no. I shall not even blog I will write about gaming, games, the gaming community and all that shennanigans.
Now I know you're thinking : what the hell makes this bloke so special that he wastes our time. I am currently freelancing for a pretty big gaming website. Sadly for buisness reasons I cant name it :(
But because of random BS happening over there I need a different output for my opinions. Lets say that the shackles of ''The Man'' are now off.
Well of course i could be just pissing in your cereals, holding you for a fool. Only time will tell if you are going to stick here. I for certain will.
I am very involved with gaming and very involded with the gaming community. Thus my expertise is not questionable you will see.
The soulchild known as my blog has just been given genesis and im sure development will follow. Im thinking about different sections for different weekdays so on so on.