Ranting Kenya

I’m really looking forward to this game. It’s kinda making me think I should re-visit the original on my other Xbox and have a couple different saves to play off of.

Here’s the latest video:

And here’s the initial teaser:

I am so excited. I’m still playing COD4 probably 6-10 hours a week. Can barely wait for November 10, 2009.

On the single player side of things, do the same. It was a perfect length, you did unique things in unique places, it had very unexpected storylines, had an awesome intro, great set-pieces and was just a blast to rip through. If Infinity Ward can keep me on the edge of my seat again, then that would be perfect.

As somebody who has played a lot of COD4 multiplayer, here are my ideas for the second interation.

Overall, don’t change it. It’s intense, fast, gripping and satisfying. I’ve played this game to the complete detriment of many of high quality titles. It’s very very good, and it’s very not Halo (and other like titles). Keep it that way.

That being said, there are some things I’ve noticed with COD4 that could be tweaked for the sequel.

1. Don’t take away any of the current weapons. I am very familiar with almost all the weapons in COD4. I know what they are, how to use them correctly, and I have my preferences. Rather than tweak the current weapons or remove them all together, just make sure any new weapons fit in the current selection.
2. Allow another perk and/or split some apart to allow a fourth. I understand that splitting the perks into their groups allows for balance (for instance, stopping power and juggernaught being the same perk class, which I agree with). But I fail to understand why putting a grip on a RPD takes away Perk level 1 that has Grenade x3. Or why Matrydom removes the possibility of Deep Impact. I’d like to have a fouth perk option so that players are more customizable. Most people play with a small group of perks.
3. Slower knifing when being shot. This is something that drives me nuts. You pop around a corner and you start shooting somebody. You’re already hitting them. Then they knife you like you aren’t even there. They should still be able to knife, but the action has to be slower. You have to give the advantage to the person who deals damage first. I can’t imagine it would be easy to pull out a knife after taking your hand off your gun then actually knifing someone when you’re being hit with bullets.
4. Include the old mp levels. Please take the Rockband 2 model. You paid for the variety pack, you have the original disc, let us keep playing those maps. I’m happy with COD4, but I want more maps. If you’re going to make me buy another $60 game, let me keep those levels and ease the learning curve for the new game.
5. Add some options for beginners. It is very hard for beginners to get the feel for the game when they’re getting sniped by a level 55 that they didn’t even know was there. If there was a beginner playlist, or “similar skill only” playlist, this would allow beginners to learn the maps and have a chance against the other players. It’s pretty much common for new players to score 1 kill and 15 deaths for their first 100 games. More people will play it if they can learn it at a reasonable pace.
6. Spawn position tweaking. The spawning in COD4 was good, but it could be exploited by a knowledgable team. Probably everyone’s played a game on Downpour where your team was either annihilated, or was annihilating. With little cover on the lower side of the map from helicopters, if the killing team keeps their distance just enough, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The other team really has no chance. Also, sometimes when you’re killed, you get spawned so far on the other side of the map it takes to forever just to get back to the action, only to be sniped just as you get there to start the process over again. And occasionally, you’ll spawn right behind the person that killed you for an easy kill.
7. Seemingly strange hit detection at times. Sometimes, and I’m not the only person who’s noticed this, your bullets seem to be doing nothing. I’ve had many times where I’m playing well, leading the team in kills, then all of a sudden in the next game I can’t kill anyone. I’m shooting them, the “x” that appears when you’re making contact is there, but you’re dying everytime. It really feels like you’re shooting blanks. I suppose it could be a connection issue, but it’s like night and day from one game to the next. I’ve certainly played the game enough to know when I’m playing well, and to know how things react, and when this happens it feels like you had no chance at all.

Hopefully, Modern Warfare 2 will address these concerns/ideas plus improve in other areas that I had not considered, and then I can play that game everyday instead.

Again, let me start by saying that I have not played it. I have however seen the reviews, watched some videos of people playing the game etc.

So why don’t I want it? Basically because there’s no reason to.

One of the big issues with Call of Duty 3 developed by Treyarch was that COD 2 from Inifinity Ward was so good, that any differences and/or short comings were going to get jumped on by the community. There’s really no reason to think that Treyarch couldn’t create an excellent shooter in the COD franchise.

So even though I don’t believe that Treyarch deserved the skeptism they’ve received prior to releasing COD: World at War, I none the less feel that everyone’s concerns were accurate.

So, looking at what I’ve seen of their new release’s multiplayer, I can see that they have done everything possible to lose the “not as good as the other one” argument. In fact, from what I can tell, the game is basically the same only with WWII weapons and perks. Even the menus that I’ve seen in the videos look just like COD4′s.

Therefore, yet again, there’s no reason to pick up this title (unless you’re way obsessed with WWII weapons, or never played COD4). So although Treyarch did what they could to “be as good as”, the problem with that is they are “only as good as” COD4.

So Activision, forget the yearly COD releases and just let Infinity Ward handle it. The fans will accept no less.

I haven’t read any reviews of Gears of War 2, but I have listened to a few podcasts that talked about it quickly. Hopefully my thoughts will be unique. I haven’t played it online yet, haven’t played co-op yet, and I haven’t finished it yet.

And I will start with a common theme among what I’ve heard. It is the same as the original, just better. More enemies, more executions, bigger levels, better visuals etc. It is the same game. If you liked the first, you’ll like the second.

To me the story is better, not great. I’m not really playing Gears for the story anyway, so the improvements are fine. There are sections in the game where I’m quite interested in what’s going on in the story arc. It doesn’t change how you play the game (if you could skip the cutscenes, it wouldn’t change anything about how you play, just take cover and shoot stuff). There was one particular section that was quite creepy and really interesting, but I haven’t seen or done anything along those lines since. I’m unsure if that part of the story will be completed in this game. I’m going to assume there’ll be a Gears 3 since it’s a successful franchise (I’d bet as a launch game on the NEXT xbox console).

The texture poping that was quite prevalent in the original is still there, but rather than sudden changes from no texture to full texture, there’s a subtle fade effect so it doesn’t catch your eye unless your looking right at it.

They have added some interesting things so far. One particular scene that I thought was interesting was a section where you and Dom must carry something together while fighting. I felt that section was something new and fun I hadn’t seen in other games before.

The boss battles have been quite fun. And there’s certainly no shortage of new bosses. Nor is there a shortage of new enemies. One thing I’ve noticed, and I could be completely wrong since I haven’t played the original at all in probably a year, is the difficulty of the enemies feels different to me. The normal guys (the drones and grenadiers, the ones that you’ll kill millions of) seem to be harder to kill than previous incarnation. This is good. The enemies from the last game were textbook bullet sponges. The fresh units still take a lot of bullets to kill, but they seem harder to hit. Plus, many times they’ll just go down, and one of their teammates will revive them. Conversely, the tougher enemies like the Boomers, seem quite easy to take out this time around. Maybe it’s because I’ve learned how to attack them properly, but even some of the new similar style enemies seem to be easy to take down as well (save the Bloodhounds, those things require your attention).

Another good example of expecting a bigger problem than you’ll actually have is the section where you fight 3 corpsers at the same time. I died a couple times quickly, but once I did what I was supposed to do, I killed all three in 5 seconds. Victory there was just too easy, especially with the setup that section receives.

Which reminds me of the one scene in the original where you face the Brumak (I didn’t play the pc version). I can’t tell you of how many Brumaks I’ve dispatched already. Four or five by now I think. That just seems weird.

Now I realize it really sounds like I’m complaining about the game, but I’m really not. I’m really enjoying it. And I’ll be playing it a lot the next couple days. Then I’ll start to dig into the multiplayer, which I hear is awesome. We’ll see if it can pull me away from Call of Duty 4′s online multiplayer.

Update
I’ve beaten the whole game now. For those of you that would complain about the final boss battle, I think you’re thinking about it wrong. It’s not a boss battle, it’s an interactive cut-scene. That being said, I felt a little underwhelmed myself.

Therefore, go play Horde mode with 4 friends. That is pure sweetness.

So I finally finished HL2: Episode 1 this last weekend, and now I’m digging into Episode 2. This game is magnificent. I had kind of forgotten about the Orange Box for my 360 that I had yet to complete (basically because of COD4). Never the less, I really really really like the gameplay.

I’m playing on the hard difficulty, which means to need to be on your toes when 3 hunters and a bunch of combine soldiers pop out of nowhere. Anyway, what I like most about the game are the sections where you need to stop and think. Of course, this is nothing new to Half Life.

I can remember Shawn Elliot talking on the GFW podcast way back (at least a year ago, probably a bit more) about Episode 2. He was referring to a specific section of the game where a grenade jump is needed to reach some locked up weapons and ammo. And as Shawn pointed out, only Valve could create such a puzzle (especially on the console). Now I didn’t realize I was in the room he was referring to until I had figured the puzzle out for myself.

***SPOILERS***

Basically, I will re-hash in my own words what I did and what Shawn said on the podcast. You enter the room, you have some items you want, a box of grenades, and a metal sheet that’s hinged on the floor that covers a 1 foot deep slot in the floor. In addition, there’s a switch up on a catwalk that is seemingly inaccessible that will unlock the loot you want.

And as Shawn said, once you figure it out, you’ll realize that as usual, Valve has provided you with all the necessary tools and info to solve the puzzle. Most developers will force you one way or another to walk somewhere (or give you a point on a radar) and will tell you to “hit A to activate” or some other garbage like that. No thinking involved.

Well, in this case, the metal sheet is hinged up, revealing that the area where it would cover has a blast mark on the floor. It took me a while to figure out that I need to fold the metal down, drop a grenade underneath it, and then stand on the metal sheet to grenade jump up to the switch to free the rocket launcher etc.

Valve had literally provided me with everything I needed. And my sense of accomplishment when I successfully figured out the puzzle was awesome. Sure there are plenty of other puzzles in the game that I solved, but this one was different because never before have I ever seen a developer purposely put a grenade jump into their gameplay.

I only wish that other developers would be bold enough to let their users figure out their own solutions to games, rather than hold their hands through ever single process.

Really looking forward to Episode 3 now. Hopefully the wait will soon be over.

Check out the video first:

Personally, looks like an expanded single player campaign. If that’s the case, that’s awesome. Halo 3 obviously has great multiplayer, but I feel too often once developers release their games with multiplayer components, only the multiplayer section receives any post-release love.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

It’s Rock Band. It’s good. Here are two best new features:

1. Quickplay setlist creation – Select up to 5 songs to play without going back through the song list to select a new one. Awesome.
2. “Fast” navigation between categories to avoid scrolling through the massive song list. Jump down to the hard stuff in like 3 or 4 presses rather than 80.

I haven’t played the battle of the bands mode or anything like that. I play Rock Band pretty casually. There are a lot of new songs that are awesome (Everlong, Eye of the Tiger, Living on a Prayer), and I’m glad the songs are generally harder (some are silly hard).

What I’d like to see is lots more music from the mid 90′s, but that’s probably because of my age.

And like so many others online, I want to play Guns ‘n’ Roses (the real GnR, not the abomination they are now) and Led Zeppelin. Harmonix, please, make it happen. I suppose I want to play the stuff in my Last.fm profile.

If you go around online reading about the game, you’ll hear a lot that it’s the best hockey video game ever. To that, I agree.

My Xbox 360 had online issues with NHL 08 (poor performance getting into games and downloading rosters). Luckily, those issues have been solved. And in addition, they added the most obvious online feature that I wanted in 08; Play a Friend. It’s simple, you click it, you select someone from your friends list, and boom, you’re in a game.

They’ve also added Be a Pro mode. It’s really cool, and you should try it (apparently it’s been in baseball before?).

And there’s a slick thing where you can manually select the “arena music” for a hockey team (or all of them) from your 360 or from your computer. A really neat touch.

All that being said, here’s the one thing that needs to be said.

As with many new features that make it into video games, the first year implementation of them is frequently massively over-powering. So for this year, I’m referring to the defensive stick lift.

Of course this is a typical defensive move for a defender, but if you’re good at it, you can completely dominate the game.

One such game, a friend of mine and myself were playing online. We were sharing the controller, switching each period. We are both pretty good at the game, we beat most people online. We played one fellow who was SO proficient at the stick lift, it made the game super frustrating and nearly impossible to play. He controlled the puck probably 80% of the time. We were lucky to only lose by a goal.

One feature I’d like to see online is a mode where both players are forced to play a random team. I’m really tired of seeing the same 4 teams online (this year it’s Detroit and Pittsburgh, last year was Anaheim and Ottawa). Seriously, I’m really sick of playing Detroit.

Again, I haven’t played the co-op over Xbox Live (patch forthcoming). But here are my thoughts of playing multiplayer, and single player.

It’s awesome and fun.

I have beaten the game once now with one character by myself, and also got played the whole game (minus completing the final battle) with two other players locally. The game is just fun. The art style is bright and engaging, the game play is just what it should be for a brawler like this, and it IS a good value for the money. I mean really, $15 for the number of hours of enjoyment I’ve already had has been totally worth it.

One thing I noticed that was really well done in the game are the levels. You get different environments frequently. You don’t usually play in any one locale for much more than 5 minutes. The result is a constant sense of accomplishment. It also allows you to play sections over again if you want to level up.

I don’t want to say too much, because I enjoyed discovering things in the game greatly, and I feel that everyone should at least check out the trial version.