The low user scores are a response to the way DLC is being handled. I'm sure Mass Effect 3 is awesome, but day 1 DLC pisses me off. The From Ashes pack is a new party member that you have to pay 10 bucks for, even if you buy a brand new copy of the game. Capcom is doing something similar with the street fighter vs tekken game. Hackers have found that the DLC characters are already on the disk. Someone actually unlocked Elena and she has her full moveset. Knowing capcom, they will most likely be charging customers to access this content. I'll be waiting for price drops or a bundle that includes everything.
Giant Bomb has been one of my favorite game-related sites for a while now, since they seem to be pretty honest and level headed about most games, and their reviews tend to match my thoughts on most games I've played. They gave ME3 4/5 stars. Summary paragraph: Spoiler At the end of the day, Mass Effect 3 is a game for people who liked Mass Effect 2 so much that they absolutely need to see how it all ends. Despite claims to the contrary from the game's publisher, I really don't think newcomers will get much out of it at all. All it would take is getting to the new character creation screen and being forced to select between Numerous, Ashley, or Kaiden from a screen that asks you who died during your previous missions for a new player to realize they're being asked questions they couldn't possibly answer in an educated way. The value in this story is from seeing characters you adore dealing with a continuing situation. Even though it doesn't come together quite as successfully as it did in the previous games, those of you with an attachment to the Mass Effect universe should still play it.
My video store got copies of ME3 and the Street Fighter/Tekken game on Friday. Saturday morning I was processing them, when a customer happened to see what it was that I was opening and putting into our cases. I think he nearly shit himself, and he proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes absolutely BEGGING me to let him rent it early. He was offering me way more money than anyone reasonably should to play a game three days before it was scheduled to come out. He ended up offering to give me $60 (all that he had in his wallet) to rent it early. After I explained to him that he could wait three days and buy the game for that, he told me it was already preordered. Apparently, there are some people that are really, really into Mass Effect.
Before I moved city a few years ago, I used a local game shop to buy games before they came out. Being from the UK, games usually come out on a Tuesday. The shop I used was closed on Mondays, and the guy would always sell games a day early. For GTA IV, I picked it up on the Friday afternoon as did a friend of mine, but some people would drive over 150 miles to get the copy early. Usually the guy would just sell it for the RRP or £5 more, but everytime he would sell out of stock on that Friday afternoon. My friend was the first person to complete GTA IV 100%. http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/16408/Gamer-Finishes-GTA-IV-in-17-Minutes-UPDATED-/ He played the game all weekend, and hit 100% completion 17 mins after Rockstar's server went up.
This confirmed what I had already surmised about the Metacritic user reviews for Mass Effect 3: <a class="postlink" href="http://kotaku.com/5891060/metacritic-says-it-has-removed-rule+violating-mass-effect-3-user-reviews?tag=mass-effect" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://kotaku.com/5891060/metacritic-sa ... ass-effect</a> . Stupid trolls. First Impressions: I'm almost three hours in, and I'm pretty impressed with the game. The fighting feels much tighter, and the enemy AI is much more adept at killing Shepard (I'm playing the "hardcore" difficulty). They thankfully brought back some of the RPG elements of the first game back into the fold, which is quite welcome. The stakes are much higher plot wise, and they did a good job at relaying that to the player. But some of the criticisms were right, just greatly exaggerated. Some of the dialogue feels a bit stilted at times. Maybe this will get better as I progress further, who knows. Also, I have no idea how a newcomer could even play this game without completing the first two. You'd be completely lost, and have no sympathy for any of the characters. I'm typing this while I wait for the "From Ashes" DLC to download. In my defense, only reason I'm even getting it is because I had leftover microsoft points. Judging from its description, its absolute bullshit EA decided to make us pay for something that seems so essential to the plot.
ME3 is pretty fun thus far. As promised the game's normal setting is much harder than the previous games, but still manageable. I'm about 6 hours in and I've done 2 missions outside of the starting missions and its been a good variety of places. They have limited my choices of squad mates on these early missions(even just blacking out 1 so I couldn't choose him), Hopefully there will a little more freedom in squad choices as the game goes on. The searching for minerals/special objects is still pretty lame, but at least they tried something different. It's definitely worth the money and far better than Dragon Age 2, My faith in Bioware is restored, for now.
The PC version of SimCity, with hilarious FMVs, was awesome. I wish I still knew where my CD was so I could boot it up again and see the ridiculousness of it. I can't even find the FMVs on youtube. If anyone knows anywhere to find the old CD version hook me up
The nerd in me saw this video which is basically in-game footage of a game that doesn't exist by the guys that made Heavy Rain. Fucking insane. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/03/07/heavy-rain-devs-kara-trailer" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/03/07/he ... ra-trailer</a>
I wonder about the new Assassin's Creed being set during the Revolutionary War. I honestly only made it 20 minutes into the first game, but aren't the Knight's Templar the bad guys? And aren't there a lot of people who believe the Knights Templar are connected to the Freemasons? And weren't a lot of the founding fathers free masons? And does this mean we might see a game where you assassinate a founding father? And can you imagine the media shitstorm after people hear about a game where the player kills a founding father?
According to what I've read, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin are both characters, and apparently allies. The main character is half English and half Mohawk Indian, who watches his village get burned to the ground and that leads him on the path to revenge. Now, how that plays out? I don't know, but I do know that I am fucking in. In truth, I don't know which way they'll go, but considering the main bad guy in ACII ended up being the fucking pope (including you fighting him), I can't imagine the outrage will be that much higher. If there was ever a group that can manufacture outrage, it is the Catholic church, and even they didn't get that up in arms about fighting the pope. The other major differences that I can see are that the usual haunts (i.e. tall buildings to climb in busy cities) are going to be gone, with a vast wilderness in their place. The game apparently takes place primarily on the frontier, where you can travel between villages (both English and Native American), and you have to navigate more nature (trees, cliffs) than buildings. There is a lot more information in this article. Seriously, check it out. It looks awesome.
Can anyone that plays DotA 2 give me a primer on how the fuck to play it? I consider myself decent at LoL, but last hitting in this is a million times harder, item builds are way more confusing, and goddamn even on easy bots I am getting my ass beat. It's not even like I'm overextending, it's like I'm sitting there farming then the screen flashes and I'm dead. The only character I've had a shred of luck with so far, even against bots, has been Skeleton King, cuz he gets a free revive every couple minutes.
This is exactly why I can't play ME 2&3. It was annoying enough in the first game running around like some college intern taking care of everyone's chores but since the whole first human spectre thing I figured it made some sense since Shepard had to show everyone he was a good team player and all. I've been lead to understand that by the time the third game comes around Shepard has accumulated some status and rank, but when I was watching my buddy play it yesterday and saw that Shepard was still running around like the galaxy's personal gofer bitch I almost lost it. Here's my rant to my friend when he was at the same spot in the game as the PA strip above: "What the fuck are you doing? Why are you talking to this fucking shithead? Why the fuck are you still having to run around like a bitch solving everyone's bullshit problems? Don't you have status or something? Why don't you have an office? This is bullshit. They should have made it so you have an actual office and fuckers like this guy have to actually haul their fat asses over to you if they want to whine about their problems. Like there should be a calendar in the status screen or something where if assholes want to bother you with bullshit so bad they can make a fucking appointment with your fucking secretary, which you can accept or ignore. Then, if they seem interesting enough, they can come to your office at your fucking convenience, and if you don't like what they have to say once they're there, you can throw them the fuck out and tell them to go fuck themselves. Fuck this running around bullshit."
Yeah, that'll be a fun game. Sitting at a desk waiting for appointments of shit you don't really want to do and barely get compensated for the work you put in. WAIT I already play that game, its called life. Is DotA Free? It looks like it is just in Beta form. Do you just have to request an invite?
It's in Beta, and free for now. I'm not sure if there's official word yet on whether it's gonna be free to play with a shop like league or what, but for now all you need to do is go to blog.dota2.com and hit the request an invite button on the right. I got mine in like 3 days. Have not finished a game yet cuz it's so hard, but I definitely like the tone of the game and character design better. Denying is cool too, although last hitting is way harder, and since there's no summoner spells like flash you get punished hard by being even a little out of position... But it definitely seems rewarding once you get a feel for it.
Of course not, sitting around at a desk would be boring as shit. You'd still have a desk and and an office though. Here's how it would work: You're out doing important and/or fun shit and you get notified by your secretary that Slappy McBallwasher wants to have a meeting with you about some proposal or another. If the description sounds interesting enough to listen to Slappy's drivel you tell your secretary to that you'll seem him at some time in game. Once you decide to finally return to your office - on your own schedule - Slappy can then come on in and grovel like a bitch for whatever bullshit task he wants you to do. If you don't like it you can throw his ass out. If you change your mind later you can call him up and have him come back to your office to discuss it further. Or if you're out in the field or whatever have him shlep his ass out to planet whatever. The point is that these fuckers should be coming to you, not the other way around. It's the third game and you're somebody important, so you shouldn't be having to play gofer bitch anymore.
I was pretty good at Dota and I have drained quite a bit of time in Dota 2, now I am not coming down on LoL or HoN I have played both and they are fun games. But if you are playing Dota 2 like its LoL you are overextending. If I remember correctly it was hard as fuck to kill people early game whereas in Dota 2 if you are slightly out of position you can die at any level. I didnt play a lot of LoL but no one ever bought wards which is a requirement to beat anyone who is semi competent Dota 2. Also don't take last hits/kills from carry's on your team. If you are a support hero (such as Vengeful Spirit) deny creeps and harass the enemy heroes in the laneing phase, let that Skeleton King (who I think kind of sucks, Dragon Knight is a far better carry IMO) get that gold. He will actually do shit with it.
The new Tribes is awesome, didn't see it mentioned on here. I never played the first, so I'm not sure how much of an improvement Tribes: Ascend is, but the skiing (basically frictionless movement) is an easy mechanic to pick up for a new player but clearly has a superhigh skill cap and separates top players from everyone else. Graphics are pretty, quick download. I think you have to like them on Facebook for a beta invite. Plenty of unlocks, call of duty style, if you're into that thing. I was surprised by how much the character classes define your style of play. This isn't a normal FPS.