Maximum Update

Okay... so I took another break from posting... I know I know... My bad. BUT it's not my fault! I got stuck in Borderlands and then Bulletstorm came out then I got lost in Crysis!!!!! Anyways... this will either be one mammoth update, or it will be the first of several over the next few days (probably lol)...

Let's start with the most recent thing to hit me... Crysis 2.

I don't know how many of you managed to upgrade your computers years back when Crytek's darling, Crysis, came out, but I did. I invested a small fortune on a new box JUST to run that game, and it was worth every cent. Crysis was amazing. A psuedo-free-roaming shooter with a LOT of freedom in gameplay styles, a nice story, and jaw-dropping pants-creaming visuals, I lapped it up and to date have played the game through at least six times, and replayed almost every section heaps more.

A couple of years later, Crysis Warhead came out. Telling the story of the first game from another character's point of view, it sported similar visuals, gameplay and was all together a nice addition to the franchise, if not the sequel we'd been waiting for.

Finally, now, we have the long-awaited sequel, and not just on nuclear power plant specced PCs this time, but also on Xbox 360 and PS3. And despite the concerns of 110% of the PC gamer audience that a console port would result in a borked game, Crysis 2 does a wonderful job at mass-marketing the franchise and expanding the world within it.

Let's start with the story.

WARNING: There are light spoilers in this section. If you haven't played the game yet and you don't want to discover small details of the story, then DO NOT read the section within the ***** marks.

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You play Alcatraz; a marine who basically gets killed in the opening segment of the game. Luckily for you, Prophet (remember him?) stumbles across your very messed up ass and says something along the lines of "Hey guy... want my billion dollar suit? It'll keep you alive... wont fix you but you will live in a state of perpetual dying within its suit, and despite your bones being shattered into a paste, and your organs being pureed into liquid, you will be able to walk around. No catches... except you gotta save the human race, kay?"... Prophet then proceeds to shoot himself in the head and TA-DA! Alcatraz has become a superhero... well, kinda... no cape though.

Unfortunately, everyone still thinks you are Prophet, and Prophet seems to have made some friends who like to play "shoot your friend in the face until he dies then steal his suit"... Naturally, you're all like "NO THANKYOU!" and run away to start going about that minor task that Prophet gave you prior to leaving this world.

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Good enough premise... and good enough suit. Seriously, the suit rocks. You know in Crysis 1 and Warhead you had to spend heaps of time swapping from jump/sprint to cloak, then back to sprint, then to armor? Well, now, they have made almost all the suit functions automated. You can sprint like normal games and it automatically kicks in the power-sprint... if you hold down the jump button you auto-leap (and Masterchief got nothin' on this jump!)... your melee is automatically a power melee if you hold the melee button down and so on. In fact, the only two functions you have to manually select is the cloak (which you will be using about 90% of the time) and the armor (the other 10% of the time). It may sound dumbed-down... but in fact it works really well and streamlines the whole suit feature really well. No doubt it was to help with key-mapping for console versions but it is, IMHO, a very strong step forward.

Other gameplay features that have changed mainly revolve around the environments. Unlike the previous two games, Crysis 2 takes place in a crumbling mid-apocalyptic urban New York. Along with this change comes certain drawbacks. There is not as much foliage for one. You wont be crushing and Koreans with falling tree trunks here. Also, levels are a LOT more linear. There is often still multiple ways and paths to complete objectives, but they all lie along the same main line. It's a little disappointing, but what does make up for it is the increased vertical gameplay.

I know a LOT of games are advertising "TRUE VERTICAL GAMEPLAY FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER!" these days, and some even manage to achieve it (Dark Void comes to mind, despite its overall crapness), but Crysis 2 really has nailed it here. The crumbling remains of Manhattan really do allow for a lot of height variety, and I found myself on several occassions forgetting to look up and down, and wondering why I died. This also crosses over very well to multiplayer (more on that soon though).

Overall, the single player of Crysis 2 is good. It's better than good, I'd say its a 8.5/10. It is not, however, as good as the first two games. I can't help but yearn for an open-world, filled with tropical growth and perfect trap/ambush opportunities to be a sneaky ninja fuck.

However, multiplayer on this beast is fucking brilliant.

I was about 2/3s through the campaign before I fired up the online component, and then it took me another 2 weeks to finish the story.

Bearing many similarities to modern popular shooters (such as Call of Duty), the multiplayer portion of this dish is very accessible to the mass market. Where it comes into it's own is simply put... "The suit". What Crysis has that other shooters don't is the nanosuit, which changes almost everything about multiplayer.

Furthermore, the suit has many upgradeable modules that alter how you can use it. And you can only attach 3 of these (one power, one armor, and one stealth) at a time, meaning that you end up with a lot of different loadout combinations. Now, obviously, this works similar to the perk systems of a lot of war-based shooters these days, but then throw into the game the increased jumping, the cloaking, the armor, etc. and you have something all together different. It is a LOT of fun and a very good game. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

Overall, Crysis 2 is a good release. I wouldn't say it was a disappointment, just different to what I was expecting. I would have liked to leave Manhattan and hit outer New York for a variety of environment, or perhaps some time in another part of the world, etc. But the game didn't get repetative either, so I guess it's a win.

On that note I shall leave it here... but soon will be a bit about Bulletstorm, as well as some other titles I've been hitting up in my break from posting.

Guitar Hero... it's back?

Well, those of you who've known me long enough might remember that back in the day of PS2 gaming I was heavily addicted to crack... uh... I mean Guitar Hero XD. Guitar Hero 2 mainly... I got so into it that I had every song on Expert 5-starred, and most of them gold-starred (100%)... to the point where I ended up making the decision that I HAD to sell all my guitar hero games, because I was unhealthily addicted to it... So I did.

Then, Guitar Hero 3 came out... and I was fairly MEH about it. The tracklist wasn't that great, the guitar felt cheap and tacky, and the sound quality wasn't amazing. I got over it fairly quickly. Since then I haven't bothered with the Guitar Hero/Rock Band world... In face the idea of paying $200+ for one game thats really aimed at a casual gaming audience makes me laugh out loud.

However, when Guitar Hero Metallica got announced I couldn't help but get a little interested. Then my boss at work started going on about how excited he was about it and how he'd had it on pre-order for months. Anyways, cut a long story short, I had it on release day. And I have to say, I was impressed. Since then, I've picked up Guitar Hero 2 again and my house mate has acquired Guitar Hero 3... On top of that I've got hold of one of the guitar hero drum kits (which only works with Metallica, not 2 or 3) and we've been having some fun with it. Myself, my housemate and my sister have all been playing it a fair bit and I'm enjoying it again... a little too much. I'm concerned I may have reignited the addiction, but I guess only time will tell.

So anyways, why am I telling you all this? Well... to be honest, since my last entry, I've played maybe 10 minutes of Bionic Commando, an hour of The Last Remnant... and an hour or so of Gears of War 2 Horde.

Oh wait, that's not true - I did try out the new 'deleted chapter' of Gears 2... It's odd you know. The idea of Gears of War 2 going stealth was sounding awesome to me, but in reality, when you play it with stealth its just boring. It really highlights that Gears is all about brutality and killing and that if you take that away, there's nothing much left. It's not like thats a bad thing... just... *shrugs* yeah. Having said that, the DLC is still worth it... up to 19 new maps (every map released for GoW2 thus far) for 1600 MS points is hardly something to scoff at! Haven't tried all the new maps yet, but given there are a lot of new Horde achievements, you can bet your bottom dollar I will be making an effort to!

Other than that... I dunno what else I can comment on. Speeros - Hell no, I have no intention at all to get Modern Warfare 2 lol... why the fuck would I?! as for Socom... I considered it but I dunno if I can be bothered. I really want a new online game... I've got the time now that there's no GF for me to want to spend time with (sadly) but there is really nothing that has appealed to me. I'm willing for someone to throw something awesome my way... but everything seems boring or just a COD clone. Suggestions anyone?

On that - Gonna be firing up UT3, Burnout, and maybe a few others next weekend with Lil_Azza if anyone wants to join us. You can pick up a copy of UT3 from playasia.com for like $20 now... express post and itll be here by the weekend - you've got no excuse. You know you wanna ;)

Actually, I would like to make mention of one game... There's a game coming up called Risen. I'll give you this vid...

Video Games | Risen | Nightwish Teaser Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

To me it looks like a darker Fable 2... which rocks. Doesn't hurt that the trailer uses Nightwish who are one of my fav bands =) Anyways, if there's any decent new games on the horizon gimme a shout, been out of the loop a little and could use a hand. Especially online ones! Til next time... game on!

Okay... so things suck at the moment... some shit is getting in the way of me wanting to post here... nonetheless... I'm going to try n keep to my commitment. It's a few hours late but here we go...

Gaming at the moment is really slow... there's really not a lot out. I've picked up a number of games  and enjoyed them all, but there's no huge titles. Fallout 3 still takes a lot of my time (I can't get away from that one), though I've managed to put it down for a week or so til the next batch of DLC comes out (tomorrow) and then I'll fire it up again. Other than that, I have been playing inFamous, Red Faction: Guerilla, and a few other oldies (Turok, Lego Star Wars, etc) that I picked up in some EB Games sales.

inFamous was a bit of a surprise to be honest. I didn't know whether I was going to get into it much or not, and I thought the gimmick of electricity-based powers would pass quickly. Nonetheless, starved for a new game, I got a hold of it and was pleasantly surprised to find a solid game with a decent amount of content. I know lots of people have played through it in a single sitting, or whinged about the short length, but I actually got into the side-quests. The fact that it frees up areas of the map from enemy control made it worthwhile, and by taking the time to free 100% of the world, the game takes quite a while to complete. On top of that, the story is decent and there's a very nice plot twist at the end (that I wont spoil for anyone). All in all I can strongly recommend any fan of action games, particularly sand-boxing action games, pick it up. The powers are even decently enough varied to keep you keen on them. But the one thing that really made the game amazingly fun for me was one of the side quest varieties... One of the side quests has you racing along rooftops from one point to another, and you do this via grinding along power cables. It's a real ball and you get a lot of speed up and running. Personally, if they were to make multiplayer in this game, I would hope it would take the form of rooftop racing!

Red Faction: Guerilla, my other gaming labour of recent times, also takes the form of a sand-boxing action game, and while it's fun, it's far less likely to appeal to as many people as inFamous. Basically Red Faction comes down to one feature - the destruction (AKA GeoMod). If you get into the destruction factor, like I did, you will love the game. If you don't, there's not much else here really. The multiplayer is decent, but agian, the destruction plays a big part. The story is weak as hell, the shooting mechanics are okay (not amazing) and the missions are fairly repetative. I'd suggest giving it a rent, trying the demo (available on both the Xbox and PS stores) or buying it at EB games (7 day return policy) before deciding to commit to it.

Beyond this, I've acquired the new Worms game on the XBLA, as well as that Habbo: Invasion game (the game where you play a ball witha  gun XD)... and there's not much else to report on. I've today bought Bionic Commando... so that will probably be the next post. Til then though, be sure to leave any comments you've got... makes it more interesting when people talk back =). Game on!

Welcome to The Loading Zone

Well, my old blog seemed a bit... I dunno. Characterless? So here's a new one.. and one I am going to stick on and use regularly. Gonna try n get to it at least weekly, if not more often. If nothing else, expect a new update of my gaming over the week ever Sunday, but if anything important comes to mind I'll chuck it on here asap.

So what can you expect here? Well, reviews of games, thoughts on the status of the industry, ponderings on the future of gaming, etc. All the usual things that a gaming blog has. Why bother with this one then? Well, you're here aren't you? You've read this far? So obviously you're at least partially interested... so why not? My thoughts exactly!

Expect a new entry, detailing my background as a gamer, as well as my current situation as a gamer, in the next 24 hours. Til then, game on!