Living in fear of a crippling addiction is something that until around 8 years ago, only heroin users and heavy drinkers had to deal with.
And this guy, but I refuse to count sex with countless beauties as a crippling addiction. Maybe awesomeness. Can awesomeness be crippling?
But now, we live in a post World of Warcraft world. I want full disclosure. I was addicted as fuck to World of Warcraft.
I used to play an undead mage in vanilla wow. His name was Archancellor and my girlfriend would mercilessly rip into me for playing.
Nah, just kidding, she wouldn't even look at me if I brought WoW up.
The characters I played evolved through each expansion pack to a warrior tank, then a paladin and finally a priest.
I was basically the ManBearPig of Azeroth.
I ended at Cataclysm. Why? Well, the game had got boring as hell, sure. But the thumbnail sized bedsores I actually had actually on my bum from sitting for hours at a time grinding boars was also a pretty big signal that I should probably get up and do something with my life like climb a mountain or whatever it is tampon adverts tell me is a good way to meet chicks.
Like learn jazz flute at the beach, I guess.
So why am I offloading this now? Five words: Motherfucking Guild Wars 2, baby (shuddup, motherfucking totally is one word because in this blog I am God). That game looks like it has got it going on.
The reason WoW is so much more engrossing than anything the Xbox 360 has ever thrown at me is not because it has just enough carrots and sticks (I just need one more token to get that sweet axe!) to keep players glued.
It was the community element. Sure you can spend your day shouting racist, homophobic rants at 13 year olds over Xbox Live, but on WoW you can form meaningful relationships with strangers online.
Pictured: Less meaningful but I'm willing to see where it goes.
So why does this freak me out about GW2? Well, let's see what IGN says about it:
You expect to see only fields of grazing deer and idle monsters but when you turn the corner, there’s chaos. Crowds crush together, jumping around and blasting spells and swinging huge weapons. You join in, and though all possibility for any real coordination is lost in the frenzy, a sense of community, of belonging, solidifies as everyone strives to destroy a shared target.
Fuck me, that sounds incredible! Hook that shit straight to my veins and let me belong too. Justify me!
I ask myself, is that what I want? To sleep with a gross bearded lady? No. That is absolutely not what I want. By this logic (shuddup, it totally is logic) I don't want Dishonored.
So what fills this hole? Motherfuckin' zombies, baby. That's what fills this hole. I freakin' love zombies. In a few weeks, I'm going to hang out with a bunch of like-minded people in an industrial estate near Birmingham to shoot actors dressed up as zombies with airsoft guns because fuck actors.
This is the cleanest thing I could get from google imaging "fuck actors".
It's obvious then, right? There's only one game to fill that hole. Get over here Dead Rising 2, you little snuggle bunny.
On paper this game looks bad-ass. Running round and putting shit together and cutting zombies up with that put together shit. Cool, brah.
But I've been around, I've seen things. I've played Evil Dead Regeneration on the PS2. That game sucked balls, only made worse because I love the films, and looks a lot like Dead Rising. You're a lone guy, running round, cutting zombies up with shit. And it was hella repetitive.
And I'm scared, alright. I'm afraid. I can't take it if Dead Rising is the same level of bullshit over and over again.
But, at just ten quid in my local store, including store credit from swapping in the rape themed Resident Evil 5, I'm gunna do it. I'm going to go cheap on this and ignore Dishonored for just a little while longer.
I'm also guna wear my red striped shirt. Bitches love red striped shirts.
I'll come straight out and say it. I'm a liar. I lied. To you.
When I started this blog, I wanted to stay true to my cause. To only play games that were heavily discounted at my local GameMaster because until my fan fiction of Mario boning the three boobed chick from Total Recall gets picked up by a major publisher, I can't afford to buy new games every few weeks.
(Damn right you're punching the sky, you randy little plumber)
But that was before I started getting a virtual and real life hard on for Dishonored, out on Oct 9th. Seriously, have you seen that shit?
(Film: That shit)
The protagonist Corvo Attano is one real mean motorscooter, and in the trailer above that came out back in April he looks like the baddest sonofabitch in town. The supernatural powers he's bestowed in the chokey kinda help towards that.
Framed for the murder of the Empress, Corvo goes out and does the thing that looks so fun in games and movies but in real life leaves you looking like a real dick in the silent pub as the broken pool cue falls from your hand and everyone makes a promise they're never going to touch your little sister again, are they Carl?
That's right people, we're talking revenge. The dish best served dead. (You're welcome Arkane.)
Watching some of the level runs that have been put up on YouTube makes the steampunk world that Dishonored inhabits look like the beautifully polished offspring of Bioshock and the inside of a clock.
The game is not open world. That kinda sucks because after Skyrim everything should be open world. But it does promise a whole heap of ways to overcome obstacles found in each level. Think Deus Ex Human Revolution. Or don't. Whatever. I'm not your mum.
The action relies on traditional swords and super powers like teleportation and stopping time. Hey, it doesn't redefine the stealth genre but it does promise to be adding to it pretty freakin' well.
There's a power where you can call on rats to eat your foes. This sounds a bit too hammy to me and makes me think of some shitty Dr Dolittle-type guy running around Oldey Worldey Victorian England with a pocket full of street urchins or wherever Fagin kept those children he molested.
(You've got to pick a pocket or...HOLY BUBONIC SHITPLAGUES!)
The other power that isn't working for me in theory is possession. This skill lets you posses animals (later people if you spend talent points in the skill) and lets you wander around in their skin like a steampunk Hannibal Lector. This is cool. I can dig possessions. I'm down with Paranormal Activity.
But in Dishonored, you can use possession as a de facto teleportation. Falling off a building? Just posses that fool on the ground and then reemerge a second later and walk away. Easy peasy and no deaths! (Except months later when the formally possessed man is found with a note after failing to reconcile the brief period where another man was deep, deep inside him.)
(Unless you posses certain people. PIC UNRELATED)
Mike you stupid drunk, that sounds awesome! I can hear you saying ineffectively at your computer screens. But the thing I don't get is, if you can posses people like that, where the fuck does Corvo's body go? Like, inside the thing he's possessing?
What about all his weapons? Or that badass mask he wears? Do they all shrink down into the size of a rat or a fish or a bird or something? It all just feels a bit too 'you can do this, because wizards!' to me.
If you don't understand this reference, I'm a sad panda for you.
These are only two small gripes in a game that looks to be incredible. I feel sorry for my girlfriend because she is going to be missing out on more lovin' in the week Dishonored comes out than when my old guild first started raiding Molten Core (look it up, kids).
Borderlands 2 came out at midnight, and although it goes against my strict criteria for which games I'm allowed to buy, I am chomping at my mangled little bit to play it.
Lets watch the trailer to get all excited:
There was something so incredibly satisfying about the first Borderlands game. The RPG elements were spot on and innovative. Selecting the online mode and dropping effortlessly into a four player mashup within seconds was one of the most badass experiences Xbox Live has ever given me (ignoring that one time I worked out how to stream porn from it, no lie).
This looks like much of the same, only with better looking characters and more imaginative guns.
The characters are kinda based around the schmucks that went vault hunting in the first game but with some worthwhile differences.
First up we got Roland Axton, a no messing commando that drops turrets to take on enemies. He looks a bit too much like Corporal Hicks from Aliens for me to take seriously.
(Axton)
(Hicks)
He's also a little too similar to Roland from Borderlands 1 for me to care that much about. If I wanted to play the same character in a different skin I'd just hold select and roll blue Blanka.
(Do I make a ginger joke or a gurning joke here? Blanka you so cray-cray)
It's good to see the over-the-top violence has been toned down for the sequel. Nah just fucking with you, one of Axton's high level talents is a 'small nuclear blast' attached to his Sabre turret because fuck subtlety.
Next up, we got the one that's most likely to be my numero uno, Zero. She's the assassin character. She does this kickass trick where she throws out a decoy and turns invisible until she attacks, meaning you can hop around the screen like the fucking Predator or a rogue from WoW and shank people in the kidneys with your blue sword.
(Judging from baldy's expression, that blue sword just hit his pink one)
The third char is Gimli the dwarf, except hairier and called Salvador. Fuck me sideways, is he meant to be Latin American? I figured he was just a cross between a bull and a tree stump. Is that what Latin American's look like to the games designers?
His class is the stupidly named Gunzerker which I can only assume was invented by the games developer's kid cos that little shit just would not shut the fuck up about being part of the game. He's got the ability to dual weld guns and I remember when Halo introduced that shit and people practically came in their pants.
Not sure if this will have the same effect, but the big loud bangs of the Borderlands universe always welcomes another gun.
(Not pictured: Subtlety)
And the final playable character that's rolling into town is the bang tidy Maya. Like Lilith, the girl character from the first game, Maya is a Siren and uses all freaking elemental shit to toss bad guys around like rag dolls and freeze them in place. Unfortunately for the advertising team at developer Gearbox Software this ability kinda just makes it look like she's doing some aggressive pointing when displayed in stills.
(It's like the explosion went off out of sympathy)
I liked the Siren char from the first game, and I'm hoping for big things from Maya. I'm aware that of the four chars I've admitted a preference to playing the two female ones, but hey, MMORPG.
Sadly, I won't be buying the game until it gets knocked down in price at my local GamesMaster due to my stupid rules that I have to stupidly live by, but I will sure as fuck be watching plenty of YouTube vids in preparation.
Racial stereotypes in games are super fun yo. Consider Mario. Who in the gaming world can think of an Italian without a big mustache and overalls? Or an American without being rough and ready and in a cowboy hat? Or black people without picturing them stamping things to death and raping white women. Wait, what?
Before I go on, I'd like to point out that I am absolutely not one of the PC brigade that gets offended by anything.
(Except that man's suit; it's offending all our eyes. ZING!)
But I couldn't help but feel that a few elements of Resident Evil 5 were a bit, you know, black people = animals.
At the start of the game we are treated to our hero Chris Redfield strutting through an African village. Although things seem a bit off, there haven't been any face-monster attacks yet - though the player has been privileged to see some freaky stuff that Chris and his bang tidy sidekick Sheva Alomar are unaware of.
Then Chris walks past a group of villagers. Nothing too weird there, except they are totally stamping on something tied up in a bag. The bag isn't big enough to hold a person. So yea, they're just killing a dog in there.
(YOU STOP LAUGHING AT MY RUBBISH AIM)
These things happen though. They're infected with all sorts of crazy face cracking monster demons. That's cool. I can accept that maybe a bunch of dudes would get together, tie an animal in a bag and then stamp the crap out of it. I mean c'mon, who hasn't been to summer camp, am I right?
But then you see the first whitey in the game that isn't Chris. And she's a girl. And she's probably being raped. Yeah, really. (First few seconds of vid).
Wow. I mean, wow. Should we even go in that room after that or just call the cops? Because they probably need a psychiatrist or some other specially trained professional in there first. Last thing that girl needs to see after whatever the hell happened in that shack is some steroid-packing mercenary waving a gun around.
Don't agree with me? Go right ahead and bitch in the comments. But before you do, consider this – why the hell make her the only white girl in the game so far? It's not like it's referenced anywhere before hand.
Racism aside, the game offers some wonderfully worked graphics. Shading and faces are good with only one or two glitches on Chris' eyes as Capcom's MT Framework engine struggles to keep up.
The voice acting is okay-ish but the script is terrible. Not bad, not awkward, genuinely terrible.
How terrible?
(This terrible)
Considering how much time you spend popping fools in the head, Sheva gets very upset at strange times and in predictably God-bothering ways. Here's a few scenes from the script:
SHEVA: A bomber equipped with missiles? He can't fly around in that without
getting shot down...oh God!
SCENE ENDS
[By shooting explosive barrels, CHRIS and SHEVA manage to stop the truck and
eliminate a horde of Majini. Going down into the sewers, the two are ambushed
by packs of Adjule, but manage to get back outside. Sprawled out on the wet
ground are several corpses.]
SHEVA: My God...
SCENE ENDS
[CHRIS and SHEVA open the doors and run towards the crash site to find the
chopper ablaze.]
SHEVA (turns her head): Oh my God.
SCENE ENDS
Sheva's one expression of shock gets pretty grating after a while, as does her inability to differentiate between varying scales of concern. God gets wheeled out when she runs out of ammo just as He does when she sees swathes of dead bodies, like they're totally comparable.
This broke me out of the experience more than anything else in the game.
Resident Evil 5 is not scary, nor is it survival. Instead of cheap jumps that are so abundant in previous incarnations of the franchise, this is full on 28 Days Later streams of zombies, just begging for headshots.
(I guess there's worst things he could've done to that mouth)
Ammo's never really a concern. From time to time you run out, but the next suspiciously similar breakable crate is just around the corner filled with bullets. The game errs towards action and adventure. This is fun, but there's a few design flaws which don't stand up to the action genre.
The shooting mechanic is awkward. As with previous games, you push one button to put your pistol up and another to shoot. While aiming your weapon, you can't move. You're like a gun toting rabbit waiting for the 18-wheeler zombie truck that's about to slam into you from every direction.
(Like this, but with guns, and zombies, and nothing like this)
And forget changing weapon mid-fight. For a reason which I can only assume was driven by the designers' desperate need to go out and score more crack real quick, the game doesn't pause when you access the weapon menu to change guns. This means that to equip a new gun, you pull up a menu that takes up a large portion of the screen, frantically find the damn thing and then whip it out. All while this guy tries to cut your face off.
(Hey, mind holding up with the murder spree for a sec? Gotta find my boomstick)
Luckily, the AI of Sheva is almost up to the task of covering you while you flail around uselessly in a weapons meanu. From time to time she sprints around like a slack jawed moron but usually she's pretty good. I loaded her up with a machine gun early on and she was content plugging bad guys with that.
The bosses are satisfying, all big and need some mild, albeit entirely obvious unless you're a stone cold moron, lateral thinking to kill and shit. The puzzles are a bit of a letdown. They're as cryptic as a massive arrow on the wall saying PULL THIS LEVER!!! QUICK PULL IT!!!
Overall, I'd say the game was worth a punt if you can get it at a decent price. I got mine for £10 with instore credit. Wallop, job done.
When I play games I crank that fucker to the hardest level. Why? Cos as I've mentioned before I'm an adult with real things expected of me that take up my time. If I'm going to play a game, I'm only playing it once, and I want that first time to be as awesome as a pre-RNC speech Clint Eastwood lighting a cigar with a £50 note.
(Awww yeahhh!)
So when I rolled the hardest level on Deus Ex Human Revolution and then decided to up that ante by rolling through the game without killing a single person and instead using humane takedowns, I knew shit was about to get real.
(Pictured: Shit getting real)
I pranced about like a Matrix version of Solid Snake, springing out from the shadows to break arms and knock people the fuck out rather than riddle them with bullets. Deep down, I guess I like to think of myself as a nice guy.
The difficulty was uneven across the game. Some of the bosses seem infinitely harder than anything you've encountered up to that point. I guess this is good as it fulfills the boss' job but it'd be nice if some of the lead up enemies were real tough nuts too. Instead, the average goon is easier to ditch than Tails in Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
(What an asshole!)
And that leads me to the problem I had with this game. RPGs kick serious arse. Life is boring, we all know that. In life I have to do shitbastard things like pay bills or watch RomComs in the hope it'll get my girlfriend in a sexy mood (side note, I don't understand girls)
(This is what girls are like, right?)
But in RPGs I can be freakin' anybody. I can totally be a pacifist ninja strolling through the Blade Runner-style streets and punching noses, just as I can be a total asshat that puts bullets into everyone, even Unnamed Guard #3 who is just one day from retirement and has been given the job of watching Some Useless Door.
So it pisses me off when a game lets me think I am free to pick almost any route, but you're actually boxed in. Deus Ex Human Revolution is pretty naughty for this. It lets you think you can take any route you want, hell, here's an interview with one of the (hot sounding) designers that says as much:
But if you chose to not kill a soul - to be the Ghandi of half man/half robot badasses - you still have to kill at least seven people. I'm not going to be a dick and say who because spoilers are super lame, but at the end of the day there will be seven distinct screams haunting Jensen's dreams from now on.
It's just such a shame that when designers put as much effort in to a game as the team at Eidos Montreal did, they don't seem to think this shit through. In fact, the designers even apologised for the boss fights.
Notice how I haven't mentioned anything else yet? I haven't mentioned the graphics? Or game length? Or depth of game, voice acting, or weapons?
No?
That's because this game does all of those elements so beautifully, that the only flaw I can think to pick out is that I had to kill people in an FPS. #firstworldproblems
Buy this game. It is a gem and fully engaging.
(I suck balls at metaphor)
The graphics are crisp and smooth and there's some very nice touches in how you can approach missions. Even though I bitched and moaned literally two seconds ago about not having enough choice about killing folk, the game does perform in letting you take things as you want elsewhere. Do I pop the guard in the face with my shotgun or do I sneak around him through shafts? Or do I sneak halfway around him and then reprogramme the crazy-ass gun turrets to open fire on him and his mates? What to do, what to do.
Some of the rooms are a bit too linear for my liking. They're very clearly a box with some obstacles chucked in that you have to work your way around. Anyone who has played either of the Batman Arkham games will know the feeling. And to the one of you that hasn't played that game, it's cool, we'll wait while you catch up.
The mainstay of the RPG game - the leveling up - comes through the Praxis point system. This works in a similar way to the talent point mechanism in World of Warcraft. Generally speaking, one level up equals one Praxis point, though some can totally be bought if you're feeling flush. I picked the stealth tree and ended up missing a lot of the combat skills, which was cool because I would just Predator-vanish woop pow enemies with my moody leather jacket and robo-arms. But I got the sense while playing that if you were a dithering imbecile and went half and half between combat and stealth then you end up with a gimped character that will struggle against the challenges ahead.
One of the most important elements for me is length of game. Nothing makes me want to take out my misplaced anger on the workers at GameMaster more than getting settled into a game only for it to end within a couple of hours. Human Revolution does not do that. It lasts freaking ages. Around 40 hours by my count and none of it felt like I was going over old ground.
The story has a strong arc that follows some good ol' fashioned SciFi themes of free choice, technology vs nature and just what I would do if I had the power to turn myself invisible.
Gaming and getting older is God's own spiteful paradox. When you're young, you have all the time in the world to play games but no dinero to buy them, and when you're just a fraction of a liftime older, you're suddenly too busy with a 'real job' to be shooting insurgents 24/7.
When I lost my games virginity in the cupboard below the stairs on some shitty old console - I'm looking at you ZX Spectrum - it was the best thing in the 8-bit world.
(Pictured: A unicorn graveyard? Disease under a microscope? Urgh, 80s kids were stupid.)
Then I got a bit older and games got older with me. I'm no longer expected to fire a block of pink at a block of white in the hope that I will win the game before the cassette warps and renders itself as useful as bacon at a Bar Mitzvah.
But then I got older still and in terms of the games out there for me, it just could not get better. Now, I can put a bullet into the online avatar of some guy sitting on his sofa in America and watch it back in glorious slow motion. Even more win, I'm now in my mid 20s and gainfully employed so I could just buy the shit out of computer games if I wanted to. I'm an adult. Hell, I could decide to not eat for a week and instead buy every Final Fantasy and appropriate console and spend the week in my pants blowing the Doritos dust off my chest while I beat the fuckers.
(Yay, adulthood!)
But here's the paradox. The older I get, the less time I have to actually spend guiding a hapless Eastern European around a faux NYC. Worse still, being an adult sucks. Suddenly people want shit from me. I gotta spend money on feeding myself, feeding my girlfriend, rent, internet, even the electricity I'm using to type this is an insatiable leech, sucking money away from computer game spending.
(Pictured: An insatiable leech)
So I've decided to being an adult about it, what with all the practice I've been forced into having by the cold indifferent passage of time. I'm going to compromise. Instead of buying into the hype and jumping on board to pre order the latest buzz game just to get different in game pre order bonuses depending which retailer you get it from, I'm going to be more picky with my game choices based on a few criteria.
Firstly - no new games. All have to be second hand. The reasons for this are twofold. Namely, it's a fucktonne cheaper and I hopefully won't get caught up in the hype of a new release and feel like I've been shafted by a game publisher's marketing team when the game turns out to be a terrible dullard.
Secondly - A game that's been out for a while has had time for the studio behind it to get their shit together and release any essential DLC to iron out any glitches. I'm an ex-WoW player and nothing makes me want to punch the day in the face more than a buggy game that was released six months too early.
I'll be reviewing older games with a more mature outlook in mind, because when you've got shit like a £40 phone bill to take care of, you need to make sure the game you buy is worth skipping a few lunches over.
