The mysterious blog from another dimension commands you to read
ITs been forever. Yes, but I feel its hard for me to update a blog consistently.
Anyway, Street Fighter 4 is coming to PC finally after like a 4 month gestation period. It arrives on July 7th and has a controller bundle for Retail versions at $59.99. The Digital Distribution version and regular retail is $39.99. The hype has probably died down on the console front, but I can’t wait regardless.
A Downed Tank Infected
Its been a while since the last post, being lost in Gaming season will do that. Left 4 Dead met all of my expectations and more. The AI is superb, the graphics are great and the gameplay is top notch.
For those who don’t know, Left 4 Dead is a survival Co-Op game where the object of the game basically is to get from point A to point B without dying. But the AI won’t make it easy for you. The “AI Director” is the driving force behind the zombies. It monitors your progress and will even push you along (with zombies) if you stall for too long. Lagging behind your friends is also not a good idea since the AI has a knack for sending a super infected after you. Super infected are these special zombies with certain abilities.
Each campaign plays like a movie and none of them are connected to each other story wise. The game also sports a Verses Mode where 4 player survivors fight through 4 infected players and their AI brethren.
A Beautiful Day In Africa
The other game I’ve been playing recently is Far Cry 2. This game is a different beast. A single player shooter where you play as one of many predetermined aliases. The other aliases eventually become your buddies in the game. Certain buddies become your rescue and even give you help in completing missions.
This game did take a while to get into and has a couple of drawbacks. For one, the enemy vehicles will spawn relentlessly at times when you just want to move forward. They become a constant hindrance until you get more explosive weapons that can take them out in one shot.
The other seems to be an oversight, but no patch has corrected it yet. It takes several rounds to down an enemy. Unless you aim straight for the head for a quick kill, they just get up like the Terminator until they absorb enough lead that would kill a cow. Other than those issues and a few others, the game is a great experience especially if you have a machine that can run it.
One of the many mountains in Howling Fjord
Let me say this, I have not enjoyed World Of Warcraft as much as I’ve had the entire time playing it for the past couple of years like I had in Wrath in the past few days. Blizzard has really raised the bar on quality once again. Art is top notch as always, but the atmosphere is so awesome. Quests are so much better and varied this time around. There is so much to do, from rescuing npcs from the Scourge or mowing through undead with basically a steam roller with cannons and harpooning enemy bases with flaming spears. Some of the old, go kill this and bring that and go over there quests are still there, but mostly to drive you to the next quest hub where something else awesome happens. ITs a great addition and its going to compete very much with Left 4 Dead.
And no its not President Obama, haters.
Two of my most anticipated games are going to be released nearly back to back.
The first of which are….Castlevania! (No, I kid.) The first is actually World Of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Its a mouthful for sure but its the second expansion in the MMO’s history and brings a lot of new and interesting things to the table. First of all, it revamps the entire game. No kidding. Each class got a retooling, some more aggressive than others. A lot of convenience additions that save bag space. Mounts galore(my favorite is The Hog), 10 more levels to grind, more dungeons, a new Death Knight class, and an entire new continent to explore. PvPers get new arenas and a world battleground. The client was retooled and offers performance enhancements, dynamic shadows, a larger drawing distance and supposedly better water(it looks the same to me). I can’t wait to play this on the 13th of this week!
The second most anticipated(and very much equal in my eyes) game is Left 4 Dead. This 4 player Co-Op mega game is about 4 survivors that have to shoot, explode, punch and burn their way to safety from a legion of zombies that infest the populated areas of the land. These aren’t your mom’s Resident Evil zombies. These are very fast, very lethal, very smart and overwhelming zombies. They pop out from any and every crack that’s bigger than a human person.
The demo was released this week and gave a very AWESOME insight into the gameplay mechanics and Co-Op dynamics. First of all, no Rambos or douchebags or you will be overwhelmed in no time from the lack of cooperation. Second of all, this plays like a Source game. That means it will feel very familiar if you played Half Life 2 or Team Fortress 2. You are given a pistol and one other weapon, whether if its an Uzi or Shotgun, and a one time use First Aid Kit at the start. From there, you are sent to get from point A to point B without getting sodomized by undead. During the course of the game, they eventually grant you rest time in the form of a Check Point. The Check Point usually has ammo, first aid or weapon upgrades like an Assault Rifle, Hunting Rifle, Automatic Shotgun and extra Pistols. Pistols themselves have unlimited ammo and can be dual wielded (It comes in handy).
In addition to the 4 Survivors, there are 4 types of PLAYABLE Zombies. The regular dime a dozen zombie, The Hunter (Which is VERY Fast and Spider-Man like), The Smoker (which snares with a long tongue) and the Tanker (which should be obvious). These 4 spawn at anytime in addition to the Boomer and The Witch which hasn’t been confirmed as playable yet. The plan for the playable zombies is to give your fellow players on the Survivor team a run for their money (like the AI wasn’t smart enough?). Did I mention that the AI is pretty damn smart and cruel? It learns from your success, and if you succeed a little too much then it will attempt to raise the difficulty on you. The game also has a single player mode so if you rather not play with others, then the 3 AI controlled characters will then become your backup. I can’t wait for the release on the 18th!
And the reason for the Castlevania riff? Its supposed to be IN THE MAIL DAMMIT! USPS is sloooow. Anyway, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, the latest in the Metroidvania DS series was released sometime last month(I think). It took me this long to buy it since well, its Gameageddon. Too many games got released this month.
After nearly a month, my Gaming legs are back. Back form a RMA, my PC’s motherboard was repaired and everything is right with the world again(well, atleast my world). And just in time, a whole bunch of events are going on in the gaming world. One is the launch of Wrath Of the Lich King. For the last few days, the land of Azeroth has been attacked by zombies. The plague got so bad that it almost instantly turned everyone into the walking dead. On the Guild Wars side, Mad King Thorn has returned with his usual antics. Promising goodies and grief along the way. The only thing that is usually different is the type of seasonal hat he has to give out this time around.
Also on the way is Left 4 Dead. I’ve been waiting for this game for a long time now. Everything I hear about it seems to be very awesome. Even those who have played it, loved it. And it releases the same week as Wrath. How’s that for splitting your time in gaming. I also plan to pick up Castlevania: Order Of Ecclesia for the DS whenever I get a chance.
September has been a VERY dramatic month, atleast for me. So much crap has gone on in the last few weeks than I would normally see in a year. Running from Gustav to sitting out Ike (Eat yo cake Texas), dealing with my gaming PC having a heart attack in the MIDDLE of gaming season, things breaking everywhere. Gasoline prices are on a Yo Yo, and the economy continues to eat itself.
Gigabyte Drama
So, my Motherboard had a heart attack after a bad bios update. Gigabyte’s silly recovery measures don’t do jack. And now the board has to be RMA’d. I don’t know who thought that the boot block just had to be a writable piece in the bios, but that seems to be a dumb idea. Why not a recovery bios that you can manually invoke, something that can’t be overwritten, something that can be absolute in recovering the bios. Maybe that was what that automatic brick maker was trying to do, but it failed. This is the ONLY motherboard brand that I’ve ever had problems flashing and I’ve built quite a few systems so far. And then there is the DPC latency issue that came out of nowhere that made the PC completely intolerable. Too bad, flashing the bios made it worse.
Hurricane Drama
Around the beginning of September, Gustav came out of the blue to wreak havoc on the Gulf Of Mexico. It floored the Carribbean and set its eye directly on my home state. Me and my family went to Houston to get out of the way of the storm. Then a week later, Ike shows up and destroys the Carribbean once again and this time set its sights on Houston. Being a nearly 200 mile wide storm, the thing actually reached to my home town. We experienced the most Tornado Warnings for the entire year in a 24 hour period. After the 5th warning I was exausted but adrenaline kept me awake for nearly 48 hours. After everything was done, thousands of homes were damaged and flooded in Louisiana alone. We lost 2 trees in the process which have been there since before I was even born. That means a whole lot of cleanup.
DRM Drama
Spore, Stalker: Clear Sky, Crysis: Warhead and The Witcher: Enhanced Edition has all came out since I lost my motherboard to dumb design. However EA has been in the hot seat with its Digital Rights Management software attached to Spore and Warhead. A lot of gamers learned this week that DRM hurts them legitimately when they legitimately buy the game which is heavily ironic. As a rule, I try to live with as little of DRM as possible. Meanwhile, illegal downloaders have had no problem stripping the popular SecuROM software. It makes you think, who is this really supposed to stop? A typical illegal downloader or grandma who just wants to install the game on her grandson’s computer?
Zune Drama
I don’t know if I can call it drama, other than my Zune headphones going dead after a year since I had the thing. Though I won’t blame it on the Zune hardware. Headphone design these days just plain sucks. I bought some Sennheiser headphones a couple of years ago and right when the warranty expired, they developed a short. Shortly after, the glossy cover around the cushion areas started crumbling. When will headphone design improve, or will they eventually force everyone into a premium $100 market to find the exact same quality?
Anyhoo, the awesome Zune 3.0 software was released on the 16th and with it a ton of new functionality. The software gained a slew of stuff, like Zune’s Genius function called Mixview, a Channels function which is pretty much automatic playlists, and a Social overhaul. On the firmware side, Games…finally, wireless marketplace because they really want you to spend those Microsoft points, a clock (yes, a clock), audiobook support and performance enhancements for both software and firmware. Though, I experienced my first hardware crash with Zune…ever. I just hope that its the firmware and nothing more serious. The last thing I need is something else breaking on me.
So by now, Spore should be ready to go for many people on Sunday. The previous Sunday, I was in Houston after a near 8 hour drive from my home town in Louisiana because of Hurricane Gustav. The great thing about that was I got to see my family in Houston and then come back to my home still in one piece. There were a ton of tree damage throughout the area and raised a concern of mine. A LOT of those trees were diseased and rotting. I don’t know if its because they are simply old or because something changed in the atmosphere here that caused them to slowly die out.
But now that I am back home I am just in time for Spore which seems to be getting a lot of mixed reviews from enthusiast press. Even more mixed is Stalker: Clear Sky which some of the press says “more of the same, but buggier“. I have no idea because I never played the first Stalker. And right behind it is the sequel of the king of render, Crysis: Warhead. This one I am looking forward to because I played the first one and it was great. Not too far behind IT is Warhammer Online which just looks like World Of Warcraft but “serious“. I haven’t even begin to find out about the Nintendo DS games and others coming out this month. And its only going to get worse.
Fall season for games makes my wallet ache.
So, I’m finally getting around to personalizing this blog. The header is now semi-done and more edits to this theme will follow. I could have made my own theme but I got lazy. I’d figure I would use something already done and just change up a few things. I find Wordpress’s theme engine to be a bit cumbersome with LOTS of php files repeating the same markup over and over with subtle changes. One day I’ll finish the one I started on (which looks much more different than this one), but for now small edits on this one should do.
Bionic Commando: Rearmed (PC)
So I finally bought Bionic Commando: Rearmed after much mulling about the non existent Steam version. Despite distribution shortcomings, the game is REALLY good. For those who don’t know about Bionic Commando, its a classic NES game made by Capcom some time ago. Ben Judd (American Producer For Capcom Japan) was set out to prove his worth so to speak at Capcom Japan.
So he contracted a developer named GRIN out of Sweeden to make two games. One was named Bionic Commando the sequel to the NES game and the other was Bionic Commando: Rearmed which is a remake of the original on NES. The game was released for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Since I am a PC guy at heart, I bought it for PC and played it using a cheapo Logitech Precision controller (It doesn’t even have analog sticks).
Stage Select Screen
I gotta say, this game is good. First of all, there is no Jump button. There never was in the original. You get around by using the bionic arm. In the original, it was just used to grab things or swing around like Spider-Man. But in the remake, it can pick up barrels and people. The object of the game is to save a character named “Super Joe” however it evolves into stopping the evil mastermind who kidnapped him from taking over the world. Basically, you shoot stuff while skillfully using the bionic arm to get from point A to point B. The game is fueled by PhysX, now owned by Nvidia. On PC, this game is able to take advantage of the new GeForce PhysX platform released sometime earlier in August. The engine will also be used with the Bionic Commando sequel which looks as equally gorgeous as this game however its not 2D like this one. I guess you can call Rearmed 2.5D.
It costs $15 ($10 for 360 & PSN), but it will be the best money ever spent. It even features Challenge Rooms to test your grappling skills and Co-Op so that you can save the world with your friends, Or fight them in Multiplayer. Don’t be fooled by the graphics and the videos you might see. The game gets progressively harder when in Co-Op or a higher difficulty level. Hard is…well damned Hard, and I don’t even want to know what Super Hard is like (yeah, yeah make jokes but its really not). You are still here…Go buy the thing already.