Multiplayer gaming.

So recently i’ve been thinking alot about multi-player gaming, this includes both online gaming and split-screen gaming. The reason for this is because i’ve recently found great pleasure in inviting people over as well as inviting people to my party and just playing together for several hours.

The game of choice is currently Halo 3 and even though i’m not too proud about it that doesn’t mean that i don’t enjoy it. I think a lot of us are forgetting the joys of playing with a friend as you can either take it to the extremes and try to pretend like you’re two Professional players or you can just mess around and do whatever you want. In most cases i usually play like a hardcore Halo 3 player but at the same time muck around enough to make it seem like i’m some sort of schizophrenic with a big group of lunatic friends. One thing i really love about it is the fact that if you kill your teammate, which happened quite a few times with me, you don’t get a load of abuse or a boot from the game you just get a tonne of laughs from both parties, the murdered and the murderer.

One thing that is really yanking my chain is the whole lack of co-op gaming and multi-player games. Not that i don’t find Halo a completely different game every time we all play together, with MicroFrog it is always a different game, its just the fact that its always Halo as they’re really one of the only games that has 4 player co-op online play. I’m not forgetting the fact that other games have 2 player split screen but half of the people i know either don’t have an Xbox or don’t have Live.

Now one thing i ask you all, Does CoDMW2 have 4 player split-screen online play?

Well does it? If it does then i need to get it but if it doesn’t then why not? Whats the harm in adding guests to a “Social” game. You’d surely get more people playing games as teams, therefore increasing the skill that people gain from playing, instead of all playing as complete rambo’s. Understandably though there are some games that definitely should not have 4pss, 4 player split-screen, that being Left4Dead. I say this because i find that with that type of game you need at least half a screen to actually see what the hell is going on. Even when i play split screen i still sometimes find it hard to shoot a zombie in the face! That’s not something i should say on the internet!

Regardless i’m curious about your thoughts on co-op gaming as well as multiplayer gaming.

If you get a chance go to www.noscrub.freeforums.org and sign up and talk about shizzle

Ciao.

Runes of Magic :S

So i’ll quickly give a recount of whats really been happening recently and the reason why i’ve been unable to talk much on the blog The first thing is that i’ve been busy with a project at University as well as an outside Music Project with an Online Newgrounds band. So two days after the project hand in date i’ve had a nice think about what this blog is going to be about and i thought i might as well talk a little about Runes of Magic, the most recent MMO i’ve been on. This is not a review, just a little blog about it.

If you haven’t heard of it then i’m sure you’ve seen the advertisements and not taken any notice. Its an ever-growing WoW clone that pretty much has been copied and pasted into a FREE downloadable game that i am very impressed with. So originally i saw this game and immediately thought of my girlfriend as it looked like a hack ‘n’ slash type of MMO, the sort that i think she would like. It turned out to be what i like, fast-paced and time based PvE and PvP.

So i downloaded the client, took 3 or 4 tries on a stupid network but eventually got there, installed the game and bang! I was back into an MMO. This game starts with a tutorial quest that you can choose or not choose to do. The great thing about this is that it rewards you for taking 5-10 minutes out of your gameplay with a stat buff and some extra armour. After immersing out of the tutorial bubble you are told to go to a town and speak with its leader. He gives you a quest to collect armour, weapons, potions, herbs, runes, gravy, sheep and other items that will essentially be replaced within 2minutes.

As i’ve said though the game is basically World of Warcraft. It looks like WoW, plays like WoW, feels like WoW and hell it even loads like WoW. This game is practically WoW but it has one key feature that makes it better. It is free! How come its free? Because it has a marketplace for diamonds, the currency in the marketplace that you buy with real money, and these diamonds can be spent on gear, potions, mounts and other things. Speaking of Mounts! The game rewards you with mounts that you can only use for certain periods of time. So when you need to travel to a completely new city they usually give you a mount to do so. Although if you do want the mount to be permanent you can always purchase it off the marketplace.

Now i won’t explain anything extra about the game like its dual class system, mass PvE content and its housing and guild mansion content but what i will say is that it is definitely worth a look at. I’ve been playing with my girlfriend and even though i don’t think she likes to admit it but i think she’s enjoying it even though it contains all that she hates. This game is definitely worth a look at because i know that it will get bigger in time because they’re doing everything gamers want and that is expanding.

Sorry for the short blog but i promise that tomorrow i will talk about something that will definitely shake the masses.

P.s. I will post images on the forum of me and my girlfriend and things that may attract certain groups in the nation.

 

Excitement is come in 2’s!

I have to quickly apologize for not being as regular as i’d hoped with my blog. I seem to have an addiction to forum-ing more than blogging but by neglecting the blog for a while i have been able to look on the internet more for topics that may interest you.

EXCITEMENT IS COME! Oh indeed what an optimistic title and optimism is my key word of the day, i say this whilst listening to Slipknot.

L4D2, Assassins Creed 2, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, Army of Two 2 and Modern Warfare 2 are just a handful of 2’s that are pretty exciting. As some of you have seen on the poll i’m not a massive fan of sequels unless the game is beyond godlike in terms of gameplay. The reason for my hate of sequels is that most of the time they take the original game, wrap it up in a new batch of wrapping paper, put some ribbons on it and sell it again. Don’t say i’m wrong because i make complete sense!

But Scrub, you love the Zelda franchise and that is pretty much a copy and paste of the original game! Uh-ha you caught me, or did you? Number 1: Zelda has been released on nearly every Nintendo Console released, revealing a different type of art style every time. Number 2: The story, minus the first 3 Zelda games, is never the same. The concept of saving the Princess is always there but there is always something different to collect and use to your advantage. For example: Majora’s mask and Link the Past have a completely story and even though you play as Link and still possess the same equipment you had in the last 10000+ Zelda games there is still a difference! Number 3: Link is badass.

So now Mr “Im-a-genius” what game do you play? Halo? Fabulous! What is the difference between Halo 1 and Halo 2? You’re still Master Chief? There’s some council debate involving warfare? Anything else? Goodness me! So whats the benefit of having Halo 2? Online play? New guns? Well, why couldn’t they do that in the original game?

Now before you all get ninja on my ass and start ranting and raving that there were not enough Technological advances back then i have to say one thing, you are a numskull, old school cuss. Of course they’ve had this technology! They’ve had HD tv ready for years on end, none of this is brand new!

So my optimism has turned into Pessimism, so what? I’ll have to wait and see if these number 2’s actually do anything completely new.

 

Mirrors Edge Review

Mirrors Edge is a game that was everyone was talking about… Yes its true, at one point everyone was talking about. Then the next day they woke up and realized that Halo was releasing new maps and Mirrors Edge was no longer needed in everyday topics. Mirrors Edge is definitely one of those games that deserves a place on a shelf as its in no means a bad game but at the same time I haven’t specified where this shelf should be. Like Shadowrun, one of my favourites, i feel it is one of those hidden gems but only for a couple hours.

In Mirrors Edge you play as a young Asian women known as “Faith”, i’m not too sure whether that is her real name or alias, that has the body of an Olympic athlete and the brain of a super computer, well not when i control her. You are in a rather bright and clean city known as… and you originate from… and you live… Ok so maybe i don’t really know much about her but that is purely because the game doesn’t tell you about her. You don’t even see her computerized face until the ending and its not even that great! So as Faith you are what is known as a “Runner” that delivers information from runner to runner in the form of packages, I don’t know what is kept in the packages. You’ve recently come back from being away in the…(honestly i’ve completed the game and read the manual and i still have no idea) and so you’re being shown the ropes yet again. After following Celeste, a fellow runner, and speaking with Mercury, he’s like Cortana from Halo but he happens to be real, you receive a message from your sister asking you to meet her somewhere. You find her next to a dead old man and are led to believe that she did not kill this man, who you later realize happens to be running for Mayor of the City. Oh and before i forget the government is evil, for some reason you don’t understand, you ran away at the age of 16 because your mother died fighting the government in a riot and your sister happens to be a policewoman. You got that? Good me neither.

What i’m trying to get at here is that in the game you hardly know what is going on until you stop and think about it. Hell i was enjoying the running around so much that i actually started to not care about anything other than jumping from building to building. As many people had told me about Mirrors Edge its definitely not the sort of game where you become involved in the storyline but i can definitely say now that i did get involved in the actual game. One thing i really find brilliant about the game is the flow of it, by flow i mean the general speed and pace in which you can do things. When being chased, which i will tell you now is extremely intense, i found that when jumping over a box, somersaulting over a bigger box, wall-riding, jumping on a guards head then head-shotting another guard all in one quick moment of succession you feel absolutely amazing. You pretty much can make a very action-driven movie out of each chapter of the “story” as you can do whatever you want. At some points it feels brilliant to be able to do this but when you’re trying to successfully do this the 20th time it can be fairly tiresome. TAE some would say, Trial and error, but that pretty much sums up the entire game. The game can leave you entirely frustrated at one point or marveling in its beauty at any point which in my head is fairly schizophrenic. Its a bit like the old Prince of Persia trick where as soon as you get completely pissed off with the gameplay and the way the Prince moves it shines an adoring cut-scene into your face or an intense location shot that makes you think more about life then your hours of frustration.

The controls are fairly good, on the Xbox 360, with LB being your jump/lift, LT being your crouch/drop, RT being your melee buttons. Other than that i didn’t really use the other buttons as they didn’t really do anything useful. Of course i used the two toggle-sticks but apparently there is a slow-motion button too… If anything it became annoying as i didn’t know which button triggers it and it always used to happen at the wrong time. Although i say the controls are good i found that often Faith felt very heavy even though she is a size 6, ironic how i know her body size but not where she came from. It was just how she moved and often how she would take her sweet ass time getting upon an object or trying to grab a weapon. Y would trigger her to pick up and as i said i was hardly using any other button purely because she would try to grab something and if it wasn’t there she would fail and take all the time in the world to realize she has nothing. It was something that i realized quickly was an annoyance and not really needed the way i was playing. Obviously for achievements i may need to start using everything else but why fix something that isn’t broken, by that i mean why change something that is working.

The game in itself though is fairly inconsistent with at some points you turning into a ninja of combat and the next minute you’re running away from guards as you’re going to be manhandled, and not in the good kind. I don’t really understand why i am complaining though as the combat can be so biased that you should pretty much run away 90% of the time. All the disarms are really hard to do, some are triggered through melee attacks and others by purely being close to the foe, and you will miss most of your melee attacks to then take five 5.56mm bullets to the face. Using guns is also a complete pain in the backside because aiming is very difficult as well as your guns hold around 10 bullets at a time, meaning you have to run into a firing-zone and pick up another gun. I would like to also say now that if you dodge bullets once, when running at the target, you will not do it a second time as the game likes to punish you for being cocky. I shouldn’t really be complaining though as without this part added to the game it would seriously lack playability with Faith just aimlessly mimicking Spiderman.

In regards to what it is like after-completion, with completion time being around 5min and 8max hours, I feel that it is completely lacking. I tried some of the speed-runs but nothing has changed other than there being a little timer in the right top hand corner of the screen. There are still cut-scenes, elevators, which are doubly more annoying than the frustration of dying, and Mercury is still bugging you. Its as if EA wanted to give out a short-ass game and then the 3rd party producers screaming until they agreed to add something shitty and cheap. Yes that is the only way i can describe it. One thing i cannot comment on though is the online leader-boards, sounds pretty boring though in all honesty. I would like to check out some of the times that some of the Japanese have laid down but i seriously don’t think that i would stay interested for that long to make up for the lack of playtime in the game.

If you’re a person who likes numbers to represent game scores then here is one for you; 52. If you’re someone who reads a review and bases it off of that then i salute you good sir. I will say though that if the game is going for mega-cheap and you’re looking for a fun few hours then Mirrors Edge will definitely be up your street. Its a completely different game experience from anything i’ve played, other than PoP, and regardless of its flaws it does have some shining moments in it.

Scrub.

Pain or Pleasure, whatever.

Sorry about the recent lack of blogging, i’ve been finding it hard to find stuff to talk about and write about when i don’t have the internet at the tip of my finger but one thing i really want to talk about today is my 4, yes four, recent purchases.

Sadly enough i wasn’t able to pick up the new Call of Duty:MW2 for 26 pounds from Sainsbury’s, as well as now not being able to afford anything until my next loan comes through, but what i did manage to find is a Blockbuster golden deal. Now Blockbuster happens to be the closest video game store, if i can call it that, around, other than Morrisons, so every so often i go in there to see if i have missed anything in the gaming world. As i waltz into the place the usual thing happens, i look, i see and i buy, this one was no different. I saw an amazing offer of 4 for 20 pounds! Honest to whatever deity you follow there was a deal for 4 for 20 quid. Obviously you’re now thinking well Scrub you obviously have some crap in your hands, well you are wrong because i’m holding a sandwich and it is good. Oh wait! The video games! I was very much surprised when i looked through the selection of games i could essentially purchase in the deal because none of them were really that bad.

These were the games i could have: Clive Barker’s Jericho, Mirrors Edge, Black-site, Two Human, Prince of Persia, Saints Row, Kane and Lynch DEAD MEN, Conan, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and a few others that i don’t care to remember.

So look at this list of Xbox 360 games and think about which ones you would choose. Apparently in other Blockbusters there are other games like GOW, Tomb Raider Underworld, Ninety-nine Nights, Enchanted Arms etc but i didn’t go to another one as i had already made my choice.

I bought Mirrors Edge, Prince of Persia, Kane and Lynch DEAD MEN and Two Human. I thought that all of them, than Two Human, were really good buys as in usual game shops they can be from 20 pounds each.

I have played each one of them for around an hour each and so far i’m by far impressed by how these games were not better than they were made out to be, especially PoP. Regardless i will make a review of each one of them once i feel i can’t handle it anymore or once i finish them and then maybe it will inspire you to go to your local Blockbuster to see what bargains you can find as the 4 for 20 is not the only deal out there.

 

Modern Warfare 2…

I’m not a large CoD fan but be that truth or not i’ve been getting a lot of notices about the PC version of Modern Warfare II. Obviously i am going to rent this game, complete this game and hopefully tell you guys all about it but in the mean time i’m going to quickly tell you about what Infinity Ward has recently done to make PC gamers look away from this apparent marvel of a game and look towards another shooter.

I read on the Counter-strike forums that

“• IW has control of the game
• IWnet servers will host multiplayer
• DLC will be a charged item for PC
• No dedicated servers
• Matchmaking system used to play with similarly ranked players
• VAC instead of PB
• Semi-capable password servers
• Semi-capable ad-hoc servers
• Competitive play is dead
• MW2 mods would not be possible (not directly stated/confirmed)
• Full integration into Steam”

Now as i have not yet played the game nor am i a major PC gamer i can’t really say anything about the game as i haven’t religiously followed it to the depths of hell. Although what i can say is that i’ve been looking at another more interesting game… Oh yes my children, oh yes. I’ve been looking at Battlefield Bad Company 2…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbYwVyaoNZk&feature=player_embedded

So with PC gamers suddenly bursting for a piece of the old Battlefield action i might as well jump on that wagon too ^_^

Ciao.

 

Airtap!

It’s not everyday a man comes up to you on the train and asks whether you like Dogging or not. Regardless of if you know what Dogging is, engaging or being a voyeur of people having sex in public places, i felt slightly out of place when i realized that i actually hadn’t played Rock Band. Lolwut, you ask, lolwut indeed.

Today i went over to my brothers house, oh the glory that is my brother! He is the member of my family that actually got me obsessed with games in the first place, could i call him an indoctrinator? Maybe so but he has a good taste in video games. Anyway as most of you probably know i am also a bit of a musician, studying Music Technology for goodness sake, and so i jumped at the chance to play the drums. We started on some 2 star drum song that i did on Medium and to be honest it was very easy, i’m not an amazing drummer but the lines were simple enough to follow. Eventually i got pretty tired and chose a Paramour song that i knew quite well and tried it on Hard. Ironically i started messing around during the short interval of the song and found myself failing. Regardless of that i was awfully impressed at how accurately the drums, bass, guitar and vocals were realized. The fact that i felt like i was playing the drums made it all the more sweeter when we cracked out a sweet Nirvana song

News wise it seems that Sony and Nintendo are giving the IPhone a complete buffet of new applications that it can take underway. Its about time that they started devouring the other competition by bringing out some real true spirit games. In other news it seems that Xbox Live is finally accepting Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm but apparently are not allowing children to download the applications for reasons that i don’t understand. One last piece of news, did you ever like Prince of Persia? Well i loved the first one then was put off by the 2nd and 3rd and 4th. By first i mean PS2 by the way. The reason i ask is because they are going to be releasing a PoP film that is apparently very true to its original content, lets just hope they don’t screw it up by changing the Prince into a lame emo kid that wears black and cries. <Permalink for PoP>

One more thing for you to be aware of I will soon have Batman AA as well as L4D2 and Dragon-age. The Sacred Review will come before all of these but as soon as they are released i will definitely be spending a couple hours on each to give you a nice in depth cruise through this months games.

The Cashews? News?

I don’t know why i’ve chosen to have that title but all i know is that i had an amazing time last night and was so suprised when i heard “Civilization (Bongo Bongo Bongo)” by Danny Kaye. It was a sort of WW2 themed party at the place we were at and it was immense! (Pretty much Fallout 3 in a nutshell) So me and a couple of friends started doing the twist and naturally having a good time without worrying about someone trying to grind on our legs, that usually happens to a handsome stud like me.

Anyway the word on the street is that there is a new Alice and Wonderland game coming out, yet its not got any connection with the upcoming Tim Burton re-make. Apparently its been planned for a while but some fan boys had made a very professional stop-frame video that they then leaked and claimed that it was an official trailer for the game.<Permalink> After American McGee had realized this was happening he made an official statement revealing that it was not their official trailer but the game is currently being developed… WITH ELECTRONIC ARTS!

To be honest i’m pretty excited about this game anyway. I’m not a huuuuge fan of the Alice game but after playing it for a good period of time i actually came to enjoy its originality and dark quality. From throwing a deck of cards at my foe to using the knife in a creative and devilish way. Speaking of Devils there is a couple of problems at the moment with the whole Modern Warfare 2 release -.- Apparently its being pirated by loads of people and being SOLD over internet websites.

Anyway i thought you’d like a bit of the old news and i’m proud to bring you stuff i know Regardless i really would love all of you lovely readers to go to the forum and sign up! Heres the link Go there and help make it a community, not just me and Kelevra fighting for arcade points.

 

 

Left 4 Dead 2 Demo :D

I’d like to call this a review but obviously this can’t be a full scale review as its only based on the Demo but i thought it would be worth taking time out of my busy schedule, yeah its very busy -.- ,  to look at htis game and compare it to the original L4D.

The demo puts you on a brightly coloured picturesque location, a complete difference to the original L4D, where you and 3 others have just been dropped off by a nice sailor. Now go off and buy, as well as play, the original Left 4 Dead and you’re pretty much at the end of my review. Oh wait? You want more then that to easily fob you off to go and buy it? Right, well lets look at this in more depth.

Instead of having 3 doses of white you now have 2 doses of white as you get two very well made black characters. Coach: Obviously a big man who used to coach a football team. Rochelle: A young women who wants to make it large in the journalism business, perhaps this will be the story of her success? Ellis: Young red-neck who basically thinks this is all a big load of fun. Nick: Probably my favourite out of them as he seems to be the only one who is used to seeing violence. Shady sort of character and the only one who healed me throughout the whole demo. Each charater is, as i’ve said, well developed and as soon as you play them you feel a connection with them and the other characters. When i looked at Nick, i was playing Rochelle, she said “Heeeeeey Nick!” whereas when i looked at Coach she said “Coach!”. I know its not much to base upon but from that i could assume that there is some form of connection between Nick and Rochelle, be it sexual? You be the judge.

Regardless of that the game is pretty much the same as the original but this time you seem to be in more of a crisis. Things are scattered about everywhere and you actually get to go places other than the pretty little pattern Valve had put in your face. The game has brand new weapons such as a silenced Uzi, AK47, Sniper Rifle, Combat Rifle, Tactical12 Gauge, Frying pan, Police Baton, Guitar and the very lovely machete. There are also brand new secondary items such as Boomer Bile, apparently it chokes the infected when you throw it on the ground, as well as something called Adrenaline, this increases your speed but at the same time slightly distorts your screen. Of course in true Left4Dead fashion each of these items can and should be used in a very creative way other than the standard way.

The graphics have been immensely improved but i’m not completely certain if its just the new look of Left4Dead or they’ve actually used a new engine to develop it… The zombies have all had a makeover and they all look scary. It was hard to tell whether i actually saw some of the same zombies so that must mean something. All of the special infected also got a nice new look with the Hunters looking more rotten, Smokers looking more devoured by the infection and Boomers seem to have lost wait but look more contagious but guess what, there are 3 new types of special infected! There are the Spitters which are tall women with moldy faces that spit acid onto the floor which bloody hurts, chargers that charge, obviously, and pin you down until they are shut down, they take a lot of killing, and Jockeys which are small hunter sized characters, they look slightly like Golum, and they climb onto your head and you have to steer where you need to go to give your teammates a hand. The guns also look as if they’ve had a nice little re-vamp with the assault rifle looking more dangerous than pansy.

As me and a friend were saying earlier we feel that they only just managed to make it as its own game. Lemme explain: Many of the people who purchased Left4Dead, the original, were not very happy when they announced the second as they were all promised more guns, levels and settings. These prayers were answered as soon as L4D2 came out but it wasn’t really their idea of a promise being kept. So basically in my mind i have the question of “is it worth it?”… I remember the day i bought L4D, it was a nice day and me and my current housemate spent at least 5 hours straight on it with no breaks. It was fantastic and i will always remember it but i don’t feel that this game will cut it for me as its just more of the same thing. Sure the graphics are better and everything is prettier and nicer etc but i mean i really don’t know if i’d want to play what i’ve played and loved for so long all over again.

One thing which really did catch my eye was when the “event” started. Now instead of the usual flood of zombies, usually triggered by a bell of some kind. We actually had to run to the center of this maze-like area and push a button to stop this alarm. It was fun for a fact that they kept pouring in but when playing with the AI it made my run not even worth while.

Regardless of this review of the demo it still is a demo and as soon as it comes out i’ll rent it or do something and give you all a real in depth look into how and why you should buy it. All i have to say though is that it is exactly like the old L4D and if you like that then you will definitely like this one.

Forrrummmm and Arcade!

Well i thought i’d start a forum and it gave me an arcade

So heres the link!

http://noscrub.freeforums.org/index.php

Enjoy and join up ^_^ Be the first to post