Ranting Kenya

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.

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.

This game really looks like it’s going to deliver.

What is there that is left to say about this game. The review websites all love it. Here’s a link to the Metacritic score for the Xbox 360.

Well, I like it as well. I haven’t really played the other GTA games except for 2 for the PC (a top down view if you remember). The driving is really loose, which is hard to master. However, were it easier to drive it would make some things too easy quite honestly.

Crashing is really fun. I’ve flown out the windshield a number of times, and it’s always exciting to see your limp body fly through the air.

Jumping the vehicles is also totally rad.

The character are what surprise me the most. They are phenominal. They have such personalities it’s hard not to get sucked in. I can’t stress how great the people in the game are presented. I can’t even understand Little Jacob when he talks because his Jamaican accent is so thick.

I think it’s funny that Crytek is just discovering that their game Crysis is being pirated so much that it’s affecting their bottom line. Here’s the direct quote from Next-Gen.biz:

“I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy… PC gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more,” he said in an interview with PC Play. “It was a big lesson for us and I believe we won’t have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.”

Now call me crazy, but what do people know about Crysis? Probably this: Crysis is that game with the craziest graphics ever that runs on like a dozen machines worldwide because the hardware requirements are so high.

So assuming that the vast vast majority of people don’t have a gaming rig PC that they bought in the last 6 months, then their machine probably isn’t powerful enough to get these “crazy graphics” everyone’s heard about or seen on the internet. So they have a middle of the road gaming PC. Are they going to go buy Crysis and risk it not running? Not likely, so they’ll give it a go with a pirated copy.

Now I see two scenarios.

1. The game runs fine or even well, and the pirate continues to play it since it’s running now, they can buy it later. But that’ll get put off forever and will never happen.
2. The game doesn’t run as well as the pirate would like, and they don’t play it or buy it.

So how many of those are really lost sales? I’d bet not that many. Everytime I heard about the crazy Crysis system requirements, the developers said that it’s a game that you can buy three years from now and it will still look amazing. That was their strategy.

My feeling is quit complaining, I believe you painted yourself into this corner. You’ve still sold a million copies, you’re bound to sell more later. Once everyone stops waiting to buy a Vista machine, there’ll be more machines out there capable of running Crysis.

Also, on the graphics front, how good does the Dunia engine look? Props to Far Cry 2 from Ubisoft. Coming to consoles right? No PC needed? That’s still smarter, despite my comments regarding Crysis.

This is certainly not a new complaint/request, but I really feel like I should voice it as well.

NHL 08 is probably the best hockey video game of all time. It plays like hockey, it looks like hockey, and it’s so much fun. The stick control actually does put the user in control of what happens.

However, taking this game online is barely satisfactory because once you are playing it is excellent to play. However, trying to get into a game is a major frustration, especially the first time.

The very first time you go online with it, it wants you to read what feels like 300 documents. And it wants you to create an EA account. Why? I have an Xbox live account, that should be enough. Strangely, once you do that, you never see any of that stuff again. So at least that’s a one-off.

Next, if you select “Quick ranked play”, or one of the other “quick” games, it checks for rosters (and asks you if that’s ok). If there are new rosters then it downloads them (but again, asks you if that’s ok first). But it seems like you’ve already joined game while it’s doing this. So about 90% of the time, your opponent leaves the game because there’s seemingly nobody there. So then you must re-start your search.

No big deal right? Wrong. It seems like if does that whole “checking for rosters” for every single game you play (or at least until sombody doesn’t quit on you). So annoying. EA, fix it.

The other thing that should be included in NHL 09 (and indeed every multiplayer Xbox game) is the party system. For those of you that don’t know what that is, it’s the system that Halo 2 pioneered on Xbox live. It’s currently used in Halo 2, Halo 3, and Call of Duty 4. I don’t think there are any others.

The party system allows you to essentially create a custom lobby for you and your friends, and that party goes and plays game together all the time.

This would be ideal in NHL 09 (and indeed all games) since I frequently want to just play with one friend. Why do I have to do that whole stupid lobby system. The lobby system works on PC, but I think it’s usefulness on consoles is pretty lame.

Also, with a party system, then you and your friend could more easily take on another opponent together. Then you can eliminate all those other options for finding a match. There could be ranked, unranked, and maybe a “large-group” option. No more lobbies, no more confusion.

EA’s got the money to make their online games flawless. There’s really no excuse for not having a party system.

P.S. Can we have monthly roster updates? I mean seriously.

I was glancing through the website for the Spike TV Video Game Awards today. Noticed some interesting things about the Game of the Year nominees.

1. All the nominees are available for Xbox 360.
2. Currently, at the time of publishing this post, all the games are not available on Playstation or Wii (Orange Box hasn’t been released for PS3 yet).
3. All four games involve at least some First Person Shooter elements.

Now I own all the nominated games (for game of the year), and they’re excellent. However, I hear Super Mario Galaxy is possibly the best Mario game ever, which alone should give it a nomination. It’s nominated for best Wii game, but not Game of the Year. Perhaps it has to do with the release dates of the games (however I think it was out one week before Mass Effect, or at least the same week).

The VGAs have been accused of being a popularity contest in the past, and I’d say that critisism holds true today. Aside from The Orange Box, all those games had big marketing campaigns. Of course, that doesn’t explain why Guitar Hero III isn’t on there.

Also, other games that I own that could easily be nominated, Call of Duty 4 and Assassin’s Creed.

And on another side note, are racing games just out of style now? Forza 2 is a very impressive simulation racer.

I’m not sure when or what it was, but some time back I stopped following news about Assassin’s Creed. I saw the screenshots and I saw the demos at the conventions. It looked good. But there was something about it that just seemed to me like it would never happen the way they were presenting it. It was similar to many games, but different enough that it was still doing something new.

Anyway, I forgot about it. Which was easy since there’s Halo 3, COD 4, Mass Effect, Bioshock, NHL 08, and The Orange Box. I could easily save myself a few bucks and not buy it. But Best Buy had a deal. COD 4 and Assassin’s Creed bundled together for $90. I re-checked the reviews of Assassin’s Creed, and decided it was worth the money.

I admit, the game started a bit slow, but that didn’t last too long.

At first, I played it how I would play any similar game. I found guys, and button mashed to kill them. It was fun, but no big deal really. Then the game forced me to change my tactics. It forced me to play like an assassin. Hiding in plain sight, attacking targets unknowingly.

Now the game is so awesome. It’s open-world-like, but not overly. And there’s even spots where the graphics and the scale made me say wow out loud. Remember the first time you played Halo and the environment’s scale really jumped out at you? Same thing, when I saw Jerusalem from a nearby cliff.

My character now has counter attacks that make me jump out of my seat. There’s a lot of them too, they don’t feel like scripted actions yet. They kinda feel like moves out of a Kung-Fu movie.

Basically, everyone needs to give this game a shot. It’s BETTER than you think it is.