It's pretty good, a bit short, but it's pretty seamless with the original game. Some new weapons, but the patch that got rid of some of the cheats has been a God send. I'm on the last boss, who's very nasty, but really enjoyable. If you like DS, you'll like the DLC.
Well damn you. I will no longer be buying skins. Even though its money I would have wasted on fast food or otherwise, I need to stop. Its silly shit and does absolutely nothing except make my nerd e-peen bigger. Well at least I paid my due to the game.
So I grabbed Assassin's Creed III yesterday from work, and played it for about three hours. Initial impressions: --They improved the menu screens and HUD, so navigating the databases and map is easier. --It took a solid hour to get to Boston. I am 3 hours in, and have YET to play as the main character, Connor. He is all over the box, and you don't get to play as him for the first four or five hours of the game (more if you do side quests). That just bugs me. --There are a lot more guns in this game, from muskets to hand guns. They have an "Aim" button that lets you zoom in for better aim, but guns still aren't ideal because the take forever to reload. The game encourages you to fire a gun, drop it, then pick up a loaded gun and fire THAT one, but what ended up happening was I would drop the gun, then immediately pick up the SAME fucking gun and start reloading, resulting in a guy stabbing me with a bayonet. Basically, they acknowledge that there are guns, but they make them so difficult to use that it sort of forces you to use swords and the hidden blade. --I know there are supposed to be naval missions, trees to climb, and all kinds of other fun stuff, but I haven't even gotten close to that yet. I feel like the game holds back too much too early; I want to run around the frontier, I want to kill some bears, or do some naval battles, but of course that shit won't happen until much later in the game. --The game does start out with a nice recap of the previous games' story lines, bringing you up to date on Desmond's story and why they are where they are. Overall, my primary impression is that they are trying really hard to bring in new players with ACIII, and make it as friendly as possible for people who may not have played the previous games. As a result, it feels slow and dumbed down at the beginning, but I am hoping once those new elements that they've been promoting show up, it'll turn into the game I wanted. Just sucks that I may have to play ten hours before that happens.
I never even made it to the first city in the first game because of that fucking horse ride. Oh, I have to travel damn near to Lebanon and I'm not allowed to push the horse past a slow trot or else some random mook will recognize me as a master assassin? Fuck you, I'll pass.
I'm not sure how well this site works in the US, but for the European PC gamers on this board (admittedly a small audience), Assassin's Creed III (key) pre-order is -60% on G2Play.net, making it 20€. The site does feel dodgy (like all the key sites), but I've used it quite a few times before without problems.
This review of Halo 4 has me thinking about buying an xbox as well. Part of me is regretting not picking one up when they were on sale for $100 a couple of weeks ago at Best Buy. If Black Ops 2 turns out to be a turd, I might have to buy this.
I have no freaking idea how they got those graphics out of a 360. Atmosphere-wise, it looks like Halo 2 was supposed to look (before they applied the bloom filter and added purple to everything). Spartan Ops is going to be fucking money too. In case you haven't heard, it basically takes a TV show release schedule and applies it to campaign missions. Season 1: new missions and cinematics released once a week for ten weeks. That's going to be awesome for maintaining interest over time. Supposedly the story will "rely more on mystery, exploration and discovery" than run-and-gun. The hint here is that some of the people who worked on Metroid Prime are now part of 343 Industries, which is taking over from Bungie. I was all ready to denounce 343i for ruining Halo, but I've got to say, the campaign looks like it might be the best since the first one. I'm probably not getting the limited edition like I thought, though. An extra $40 for a metal box, non-resealable packets and some DLC. I was hoping for some story-based goodies, or at least a bobblehead or something. (fake edit: I see now that the booklet is technically story-based, but I don't care so much about Gabriel Thorn or whoever as I do about MC and Cortana.) So yeah, game looks fantastic, will probably make me get XBL Gold again, but the LE not so much.
In AC:III, the first twist dropped my jaw. Fuck. You. God Damn. I've been playing all day, but doing side missions and collectibles, so I'm only at the place where you first get 3 stars wanted.
Have you gotten into the multiplayer? I like some of the changes they made, like swapping the stun button over to square so you can't just mash it in the hopes of getting points. I hate, however, that they let you just pay for any upgrades you want without leveling up to earn them. I don't plan to buy any, but it just means I'll be dealing with people online who have a ton of skills and perks, so it'll just make it that much more difficult. Oh well. As for single player, I just got to where I am playing as Connor. That twist fucked with my head, too. I haven't had a chance to play a lot as Connor yet, so I am hoping that things expand greatly once I can play as adult Connor. I am also hoping I have time to dive into the side quests. I can easily see this game taking me until well after Christmas to finish at this rate.
Spent a couple hours with Halo 4 last night (campaign only so far) and the best I can say is that if you love Halo you'll love this. Like I said I only spent a couple hours on it so far but it immediately felt like I was back in the swing of things. I was worried that 343 wouldn't be able to carry Bungie's torch going forward but I can say they it looks like they definitely can, and damn this game looks good.
Finished Halo 4 earlier today. It's very cinematic. Considering only narrative/cutscenes, it's better than any Halo game ever. Gameplay is good - will have to play on Legendary and see how it feels. Multiplayer is pretty fun but I'm goddamn terrible with the midrange rifles. Protip: The AR is a beast at short range. They really beefed it up. edit: Oh yeah, the graphics are amazing. But fuck me there's a lot of bloom.
To expand on this: Campaign gameplay is very good. The AR is a beast, the pistol is solid, the DMR doesn't rankle as much as Reach's, the BR is back, the Forerunner guns generally have interesting mechanics which seem to work well. The encounters themselves are generally fun, though it's hard as hell - Promethean Knights are a bitch to kill. Will have to see if it keeps the great replayability of the original trilogy. I will say this though - there are some things you will not like, if you like Halo for being Halo. There are scripted QTE sequences, a la Call of Duty. There is a character whose sole personality trait is "asshole". Characters harangue Master Chief all the time, even though without him humanity would be up shit creek without a boat, much less a paddle. Shades of Mass Effect here. I saw someone say this: Halo 1-3 is Halo, the story; ODST is Halo, the sidestory; Reach* and Halo 4 are fanfiction. [Reach, in this case, because it contradicts existing canon, slows the gameplay down immensely, is full of crappy one-note characters and narrative cliches, and is basically thought to be Bungie's attempt to shit out one last Halo game to finish their contract.] The lore is becoming a bit muddled; things are getting retconned here and there. You really do need to find all of the Terminals to understand why the villain is trying to kill you. Halo 4 is a damn damn good fanfic. There are worse things in the world.
I let loose a pretty good burst of expletives the first time I saw one of those flying things resurrect a Knight.
Playing through Legendary now, and it's actually pretty easy compared to the other games. Easier than Reach for sure, way easier than Halo 2. Same deal as the other games - take your time, take a headshot weapon and a plasma pistol. Ammo is all over the place. You rarely get overwhelmed, and you rarely use more than a bullet per enemy. I guess you could always use the Thunderstorm skull to up the difficulty.
Campaign for Halo 4 was pretty good, Halo 2 and CE are still better to play through as far as I'm concerned though. The jury is still out as far as multiplayer goes. I'm waiting until they implement ranked playlists to judge since that's what I play in. It's better than Reach, that's for certain, but that isn't saying much, but I think overall it's a step in the right direction as in my eyes the series has progressively declined starting with Halo 3 and reaching rock bottom with Reach.
So, I decided to pick up Hotline Miami over the weekend. Really the best way I can describe it is to say that it's just fucked up. Top down 2D game with pixel graphics, but it's got a bit of a psychedelic twist to the graphics. It's set in the late 1980's and the gameplay is that you basically get messages on an answering machine sending you to do various arbitrary jobs at random addresses, which really means that you are just supposed to kill everyone in the building. If you don't care for extreme violence, than this game is not for you. I thought it was pretty fun, the story was a little weird but it was really just there as a backdrop to the fast paced, visceral gameplay. Also, the soundtrack is fucking great, and all the music is right there in the root directory so you can listen to it any time (PC only game). My description doesn't really do it justice, so here's a video of the first level: The person playing that is really good, the game is all one hit kills so you'll be replaying levels over and over but in a good way like Super Meat Boy.
I'm replaying Odin Sphere at the moment. Anyone else ever played it? It's a beautiful game, and if you like RPG's with complex storylines this would be right up your alley. I beat it before, but I never got the seventh book since I picked the wrong characters to fight the bosses in Armageddon, so I'm off to try again.
Anyone pick up NHL 13? For my money, it is significantly better than 12. I like that the puck doesn't just randomly go through people even when they dive, and it seems more intuitive when you're trying to cycle through guys to get to the puck carrier. There were countless times in 12 where the puck would be down near the net and then it would give me a guy that was nowhere near the play. I like the new skating mechanics too - it's taking some getting used to, but it definitely opens up a lot more opportunities if you play it right. Beyond that, I've been doing well online...except for one guy that completely handled me. I'm pretty good at the NHL games, but I had nothing for him. The only goal I scored was one where he pulled his goalie to taunt me. SHIT.
Spot on. Halo 4's story unfolds like (I assume, having not read them) the novels, in that one has the overwhelming feeling that the original canon is exhausted and the writers are furiously making shit up to flesh out a story. While the plot in itself is decent by video game standards, in respect to the franchise as a whole it has a bolted-on feel, much like Reach and Halo Wars did, and at times directly contradicted the previous games. Overall, I felt I should have read the novels just to get up to speed on what was happening, which is not a desirable trait in a video game. I can't imagine this is going to improve through 5 and 6. As far as the remainder of the campaign goes, I thought it played pretty well. I didn't mind the QTE or the scripted actions, but I could have done without the "live-action" bookends; they didn't mesh well with the sequences rendered with the in-game engine. Chief talked too much outside of the cutscenes (or maybe I've played too much Half-Life). The graphics were great, but animations were wonky at times, especially explosions. At the risk of mildly spoiling the plot, the whole Chief-Cortana relationship has just gotten weird by this point. Especially throwing in Johnson toward the end of Halo 3. I hate multiplayer. The game itself is good, but there's too much going on around it. The announcer's yelling constantly, I'm getting medals for virtually everything I do, points are popping up while I'm trying to play, and then between games I'm getting experience points, Spartan points, tactical packages, support packages, care packages, FedEx packages, then I have to set up loadouts and look after the challenges and commendations and figure out what specialization I need. I'm not in high school, I don't have four hours a day to play this game, I just want to spend fifteen minutes shooting people in the face before I have to go to bed and I don't really care what armor I'm wearing while I do it. I know Call of Duty is a big competitor but you don't have to clone it to have a good game. Halo 2 had none of these things and people played the shit out of it. In any case, I'll gripe but I suppose I'll have to come around. This is the first new game I've bought since, uh, Reach and it'll do as my late-night diversion, at least until they come out with the Platinum Hits version of Forza 4.