...of throwing my goddamn controller through my TV that is.

Some context seems may be necessary.

Last week saw the release of Splash Damages latest foray into team based first person shooters having previously done Enemy Territory Wolfenstein and Quake Wars: Enemy territory. Brink has been on my radar since middle of last year and I have been anticipating its release greatly.

It's international release saw Brink score below expectation but having faith that this was purely due to it being a multiplayer focused game I took the fall and picked it up anyway have hit a severe dry spell in the co-op department since finishing Halo Reach with a friend.

A here we are three days post release, 3 days in which I have yet to actually see another human being in my campaign, with the exception of the one I invited in, even though I have "visible to everyone" selected.
I have unlocked most of the weapons and their attachments even though I am yet to finish the second mission, none of these weapons seem to be able to hit other people and ammo drains faster than a leaky sif. Their SMART (read glorified sprint) button should be renamed DNFWAA (Does Not Fucking Work As Advertised) button. And most frustratingly of all.... WHO THE FUCK did these guyz get to play test the SP campaign or code the bots for that matter? because if I was Splash Damage i would go ask for my fucking money back.

Lets start with the "Revolution" Brink was suppose to bring to online shooters. Have these people seen Halo Reach? THAT is how you blur the lines between online and offline. Why the fuck are there no lobbies? Why doesn't anyone join my campaign, since the box clearly says you can play the campaign with strangers online. Also why do I have to be in a level before I can invite a friend to join my game. I say again; Have you see what Bungie did in Halo Reach, go check it out, seriously.
Since they decided to so gracelessly fuck with what has become common practice online shooters would a little section in the manual been so much to ask?

What a proper MP lobby looks like

Next, where the hell did these people learn to build a XP ladder and its rewards? I need to play some half-assed challenge maps to unlock better weapon and their attachments? The small number of weapons I can still understand if they where a bit more unique but as it stands you have the same weapon with slightly different rate of fire, damage and range, they don't even sound all that different, what gives? Now we get to the "aim assist" or should I say lack there off, I know the PC guyz dont need to worry about this one but for console guyz its a biggy, aiming in this game is fucking pointless, even at maximum sensitivity it feels like my character is running through waist deep sludge and turns like a 80 year old with sever arthritis. Since two coughs of any weapon means you are now out of ammo the lack of a snap on aiming system on the console version results in Nerd Rage from a guy that has finished Demon's Souls multiple times. On the topic of rapidly depleting ammo, why in the name of all that is holy can you not pick up ammo from fallen enemies? As it stands you start with a few rounds tucked into you jock-strap which lasts all of 30 seconds in a gun fight at which point soldiers are suppose to resupply you... In full MP this might work and I stress the MIGHT heavily here. If you are playing any class that isn't the self refilling soldier by your lonesome be ready to die due lack of ammo on a regular basis, with the only way I have been able to resupply is command posts and the odd supply post when the Bots capture it.

The SMART, Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain, has been one of the most discussed "features" of this title from its very outset. On paper it sounds brilliant, Mirror's Edge like movement in a MP shooter = WIN. In practice the system is little more than a glorified sprint button and Smooth is one this it isn't. The animation is clunky and trying to pull of a semi-acrobatic move while 8 people are shooting at you just doesn't work. It may need another few incarnations before it is ready to be adopted for the main stream.

Brink has been, from the very beginning, about blurring the lines between online and offline play - single player and multiplayer - however as it is now Brink is a multiplayer game with SP stuck on with some take and old gum. The entire campaign consists on the same maps as MP, the same objectives with the only real difference being that the SP is filled with Bots that work too well as opponents and fail completely as team mates. Would it really have killed them to write some proper behavioral A.I for the SP campaign? Give us a coherent plot and the means to follow it with out resorting to cheap gimmicks like auidologs and loading screens? This is truly sad since the underlying idea behind Brink's plot is incredibly interesting and this ham-handed treatment does nothing but hurt the title which has already disappointed its audience a few times too many.

I remain convinced that buried deep inside Brink is a decent - even borderline good - game to be found but this confusing handling of the MP - which shows a clear lack of understand what is currently happening in online shooters removes Brink from the top of any shooter fan's list. I personally would rather boot up the year old Halo Reach to get another fix of perfection since after these 3 days feel like I have waisted my money on Brink.

For those of you who don't know during the lead up to the release of Epic & People Can Fly's Opera of Vulgarity & Violence we, here on the forum, had a bit of a debate about the title, here is a rundown: (Full thread here: Here are some Bulletstorm Reviews) I felt that a game as juvenile and pointless shouldn't be what we aim for in gaming, needless to say MANY disagreed with my feelings, saying that I am too serious and that Bulletstorm wasn't meant to be taken seriously, instead it should just be enjoyed for what it is, senseless, pointless violence that is fun.

Hearing the mass outcry that I was plainly and blatantly wrong made me consider, even if just for a few minutes, that I might be. So I decided the best way to prove that I am right was to get it, play it and the criticize it. So here is my first impression of Bulletstorm.

Campaign wise, though the plot is alot more fleshed out that I anticipated, simply does not reward. I am about, Im guess from the 6-8 hour expected time mentioned by multiple reviewers, that I am about 3 quarters of the way through possibly less, and while some of Grayson Hunt's dialog is genuinely funny I have lost interested in the main plot. The set piece aim to convey a sense of epic scale which it manages for the most part.

I have however fallen in love with Echo Mode, where you replay specific sections of the campaign with the aim of getting the highest score. I never thought myself a score junkie until I tried Echo Mode and saw myself 2nd on my local leaderboard. With a few hours of play and replay I am now sitting atop the leaderboard, though not for long I hope as this would destroy any motivation to keep scoring.

While echo modes scoring does draw me in there are a few design issues that I must confess bring the experience down significantly. The way the weapons are unlocked in the campaign makes sense, you don't want the played to have a superpowered weapon the moment the game starts but in Echo Mode, where the focus is on reply why not make it that players could experiment with different weapons, instead you are stuck with the weapons that where available in that specific section during the campaign. If this was done in favor of balance or to give everyone a fair chance, which makes sense, why not use the stars you earn as a currency that unlocks weapons for use in any Echo Mode Map. That way everyone would start out equal and when enough stars have been earned you can unlock a specific weapon for use in any map. As it stands the score and stars have no real value outside of the leaderboards and some bragging rights to your friends.

I have not played the Anarchy Multiplayer mode so can not as yet comment on that.

Once I have finished the main campaign I will post a full review of it.

To be Continued...

- How the new Assassin's Creed wants to change multiplay-

When I first heard that the latest installment in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, will feature multiplayer I dismissed it as yet another after thought feature, something the developers tacked on to broaden the games appeal. I did not expect it to push any envelopes or change my level of anticipation for the game, which until recently dwindled on the “wait for bargain bin”.

A couple of days ago during the course of a Thread Killer conversation a fellow formmite mentioned how excited he was about the Multiplayer in AC3. For some reason I was unable to fathom how multiplayer would work inside the parameters of an Assassin’s Creed game, weak attempts at Deathmatch style modes came to mind none of which I imagined working particularly well or becoming at all popular. However being someone who prides himself in at least checking the facts before condemning a new idea to obscurity I went and did some, brief, research.

Doing what most people do when they need info on something I googled AC:BH and opened the Wikipedia entry for it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassi...d:_Brotherhood) Skipping though all the boring stuff I read through the multiplayer and was almost immediately deeply intrigued. I then watched a Youtube vid of one of the developers playing Multiplayer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_umJ8WfCWdg) and was sold.

At this point in time online gaming is saturated by FPS competative multiplayer (Halo, Call Of Duty, Medal of Honor, BattleField: Bad Company 2), Co-op multiplayer (Halo, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead 1&2), RTS Multiplayer (Warcraft III, Starcraft II, Ruse, DoTa) and finaly MMO multiplayer. (WoW, Guildwars, Aion, Eve)
Each of those multiplayer types are almost unique to that specific genre, yes you have Gears of War which brings regular FPS style Multiplayer to 3rd person shooters, but other than Horde Mode there is nothing unique about its multiplayer. While other 3rd person action games tried implementing multiplayer all of it fizzeled out into obscurity, Red Faction Gaurilla and Uncharted 2 jump to mind.
What Ubisoft has done is create a new form of multiplayer. In Wanted mode, for example, up to 8 player are spawned in a map each given a single target to assassinate, while simultaneously being hunted by another player. This effectively means that instead of the match descending into chaos as 4 players run around the map killing left right and center while the other 4 find a nice spot to camp and get the drop on the the four running around, players will now have to balance stealth with action. Killing the wrong person looses you points, while dodgy behaviour is bound to alert your pursuer of your presence.
Now 8 unique characters moving about a map, inbetween NPCs, will making finding your target dead easy to spot as they will be standing out like hooker at Sunday mass. Ubisoft uses one of the shortcomings of current gaming technology, multiple of the same character models. Now this previous shortcoming becomes key to the gameplay. Is the courtesan your following a player or a NPC? Is that Priest walking your direction about to slit your throat or merely stroll past.

Further more Ubisoft decide it doesn’t have to reinvent to wheel completely and implemented something many Call of Duty players will recognise: abilities, perks, and streaks. Abilities are re-usable tools like smoke bombs, disguise (which turns the player into a npc look alike), speed boost ect. Perks are passive ability modifiers such as blender which automatically morphs one of the NPCs into a clone of your character when you blend with a group, making it harder for your follower to kill you. Streaks will reward you for multiple kills without dying or grant temporary skills if you die too often in a row.

(There is a decent Multiplayer Beta Hand-On piece on Gamespot that is well worth a read as well as on IGN)

Although it all sounds promising there are several aspects which could potentially silence Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.
Matchmaking and LAG: If you want to stay ontop with multplayer you need decent matchmaking, especially on consoles. Although I won’t expect anything as finely tunes as Halo Reach’s matchmaking system Ubisoft will have to ensure that finding and joining a game is quick and easy. Similarly being able to play with a specific player or group of players is also important, running around assassinating strangers is all well and good but getting the drop on a friend and being able to taunt them is even better.
Lag might actually be less of a problem for AC:BH than for Halo or Call of Duty, but if it becomes too bad it will destroy gameplay.
The last thing that AC has going against it is release date... its being released just over a week after Call of Duty BlackOps that is bound to attract alot of attention, especially multiplayer wise. Of course this maybe be a blessing in disguise as players wont have to worry about cod or halo idiots ruining their games.

Given the release window and the known facts its hard to say whether or not Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood will sink or swim. It is looking promising and if nothing else will bring a welcome change of pace from the endless shooting (and getting shot) of Halo or Call of Duty.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is being released locally on the 19th of November 2010.

-Fenix Out-

Since last week Tuesday, September 14th 2010, the internet had been aflame with all things Halo, particularly Halo Reach. Anyone who knows me and the level of my love for the Halo franchise and its extended universe will be scratching their heads at the title of this piece. Let me elaborate…

Halo Reach is one of the best console shooters out there, PERIOD. If you are thinking about comparing it to Modern Warfare 2, KillZone or any other FPS out there, stop, you are wasting your time. With Halo Reach Bungie has crafted something incredible and as Halo Combat Evolved, back in 2001, Reach will be remembered for the next decade and quite possibly played by adoring fanboys everywhere for the same amount of time.
But, like everything, it has it’s flaws some of which can easily be forgiven, other… well we will get to that in a minute.

1.The Community: As with a lot of things it is often the Human element that can make or break an experience. Playing the campaign with a good friend can be nothing shy of awesome on an epic scale. Loud exclamations of “NO” or “Did you F@#cking See That?” where common place during my first play through. And when its all said and done with the credits rolling by virtual hi-fives are exchanged along with “That as F@#cking AWESOME!” Similarly surviving the last wave of the last round of a set that has been slaughtering the party for the last 5 games in a row is a feeling not easily matched.

The opposite end of the spectrum is also unfortunately common enough. From whiners to idiots who enjoy playing the entire team their favorite selection of horrible distorted trash music and everything in between, they all infest the servers like worms in an otherwise delicious apple. Nothing is more frustrating that getting into a firefight match with a few wankers who don’t know which end of the Spartan Laser the bright light comes out of or run around a close-quarters map with a SPNKR (rocket) launcher doing more damage to their own ranks than the enemies.

2. Pre-Game Voting/Map Selection: Reach has 9 or so maps, some better suited Slayer than say Capture The Flag. But can someone explain to me why of the 3 possible map/game variants to choose from pre-game the same keeps coming up match after match after match. If I just finished a game a Slayer Pro why only give me more of the same options to choose from, Slayer DMR or Slayer Pro or Classic Slayer. What if I want to play plain old regular Slayer complete with Armor abilities and all?

3.Co-Op Campaign Spawning: This drove me nuts during my co-op time in the campaign. If the player dies, and die they will, why is it that you spawn with your default weapons/armor ability? If I had a target designator and Armor Lock when I died why can’t I pick it up again? Sure I guess it punishes the weaklings who die but it wouldn’t have killed anybody to let me pick my armor ability back up….

End of Part 1
Continues in Part 2

We now come to, in my opinion, Halo Reach’s biggest shortcoming, It WILL contain spoilers, not only from Reach but from the Eric Nyland novel, The Fall of Reach, as well. If you are yet to finish either of there and do not wish to encounter any spoilers stop reading right now….

SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4.Continuity Errors & the Extended Universe: Shooters in general are not know fortheir narrative plot. BioShock being one possible exception to that rule. The Halo game franchise is really no different, no matter how hard the fanboys shout, the plot in Halo 1-3 was loose at best. Halo ODST pushed the story telling of the franchise into a new direction and it was moderately successful. The deep and compelling universe of Halo is largely thanks to the stellar novels, the comics, animated shorts and so forth. It is there fore that I found myself scratching my head as to the main plot of Halo Reach.

· Firstly SPARTAN III’s on Reach during the Fall of Reach and in plain view of not only civies but other UNSC personal who don’t really seem all that surprised. Now anybody who has read Halo: The Ghosts of Onyx will know that the SPARTAN III where basically glorified kamikaze troops made up almost entirely of orphans from planets the Covenant glassed. The entire first company was wiped out after its 3rd mission, there are a couple of exceptions. Beta company, the second group, where sent on a suicide mission at the age of 12 where 99% of them died blowing up a Covenant reactor complex, again a couple of exceptions. However the precence of SPARTAN III’s can, and I am sure will, be explained away by saying that they where there covertly or whatnot.

· Now the fact that the covenant managed to sneak a entire invasion force onto Reach with out anybody noticing is also a bit fishy. In The Fall of Reach the covies storm the plant with a large armada of ships, during the ensuing space battle a small detachment manages to land at the poles and push to take out the reactors powering the orbital super mac cannons, Reach’s primary planetary defense weapons. So unless nobody bothered to inform the SPARTANS that there was a GIAGANTIC space battle happening a couple of miles above the planet I fail to see how Noble Team could be surprised to find the Covenant on Reach. This could also be explained away, but the fact that Reach was the UNSC’s largest military installation in the outer colonies and that once Covenant where discovered in the system every UNSC ship in range was summoned to help defend the planet it makes the idea of Noble Team not knowing of immanent Covenant contact ludicrous.

· During the course of the game players bump into Dr Kathrine Halsey, Mother of the SPARTAN II project, (That’s why Jorge was as nervous as a 12 year old when speaking to her.) in Sword base. What the devil was she doing there? He lab was deep under the Castle base facility… This is also something that is partially explained in the game itself, just before the final mission Dr Halsey and Jun fly back to Castle Base. So maybe she was just there check on the findings of the scientist who Noble found dead early in the game?

But there are 2 fact given in the game that is near impossible to explain away. The first was the AI Dr Halsey entrusted to Noble Six, for anybody not paying attention that was Cortana… Master Chief’s faithful, hot and cocky AI companion… WTF? Cortana was, according to The Fall of Reach, developed as part of the final stages of Project Mjolnir… The Mjolnir Mark IV armor was designed to house a fully functional “smart” AI that would interface with the suit and the wearer, John-117, to further boost his performance. She was made using Dr Halsey’s own cloned brain and programmed with the best intrusion and counter intrusion software that O.N.I could come up with. All this was done to help the SPARTAN II’s on their mission to capture a Covenant ship, pilot it back to their home world and capture a Prophet in order to force a truce. Infact during the battle for Reach the Pillar of Autumn, that ship that leave the ship yard at the end of the game, was on its way out system with about 30 SPARTAN II’s and 1 smart AI by the name of Cortana on board. So if this is the case how could Noble Six hand over Cortana to Cpt Keys when they are suppose to be fighting in a space battle?

Not having the kind of divine energy it will take to wade through the countless Halo related forums, inhabited by all manner internet scum, to try and scrounge up a half way decent explanation say one I read in passing. “Bungie made the games, not the books. So they decided to hell with the books…” This I find very, very, VERY hard to believe. Though Bungie made the games the IP belongs to Microsoft Corporation and since they own the rights to the books, films, comics I cannot see why they would disregard the canon. Secondly every item included in the Collectors edition gives hits to the extended Universe. From a medical record of Kurt, also know as Kurt Ambrose, the SPARTAN II recruited to train the SPARTAN III’s, to maliciously created “Interstellar News Letters” all show a deep and devout level of fan service. All of this adds to the extended universe, a rich and deep universe, to imply that Bungie would just blatantly disregard a vital piece of the Halo mythos is near unthinkable especially when you consider than every time a Halo game fan gets curious and buys a novel or dvd or comic or graphic novel Bungie gets a cut, I would think they would be keen as hell to get every single person who has played a Halo game to go out and get all the books, music, everything…
This apparent break in continuality will hardly matter to any one of the millions of Halo fans who have not read the novels but this seemingly simple fact will stop Halo from becoming the FPS that furthered an already deep universe. Instead the Novels, Comic and short films will now exist in a canonical limbo where nobody is sure if it’s Canon or not and where devout fans will feel a little emptier inside.

END OF SPOILERS

None of these points stop Halo Reach from being anything but one of the years best titles. It does however show that even the greats have their flaws.

-Fenix Out-

A Look at a New Generation Player Characters

Being able to customise the main character has long since been the staple of role playing games where the player picks sex, race, name, hair color etc. This is done to help the players “inhabit” their chosen character, projecting their own or some fantasy personality on to the character and in so doing add to the escapism offered by games. Helping the player “inhabit” the character is also why early first person shooters where often littered with faceless, nameless protagonists, this is also why Gordon Freeman of Half-Life fame never speak and why we are yet to see John-117 a.k.a The Master Chiefs Face.

However from a story point of view giving the player carte blanche with their character customization does tend to wreak havoc with story elements. In the old text only RPG’s its was easy to use the players chosen name, even if it was Tittylicious or something similarly stupid, however as we moved into the era of voiced dialog this became harder and harder. Blizzard worked around this in Diablo 2 by simple referring to the Player Character as “Hero” when ever dialog was spoken. As a result of this slippery slope when it comes to custom player characters in story driven titles we have had a lot of Marcus Fenix, Kratos, Nathan Drake and that guy from Kill Zone 2, Sev, telling us different stories. While there is nothing wrong and all the stories are brilliant Imagine Uncharted where the title character was of your own creation.

Mass Effect gave us the first taste of something along these lines. Bioware gave players the freedom to mold their own galactic bad ass within set parameters, such as the Shepard suffix along with a manageable selection of Pre-Service History and Psychological Backgrounds. This coupled with the different classes and dialog system allowed players to create a surprising variation of Shepards. Mass Effect 2 took this character customisation a little further giving players the ability to mix and match their armor which would appear in cut-scenes. This rather simple change means that even during scripted cut-scenes the player sees their own Shepard on screen adding to the immersion.

Now this is all well and good for an RPG like Mass Effect but First Person Shooters or Action Adventure games are yet to bring any real such character to the player characters. While we all may have our own opinion of Gordon Freeman’s favoured hobby (stamp collecting maybe) few of us imagine ourselves Gordon Freeman, our brains simply wont let us BE something or someone that has a name. Similarly Master Chiefs rich history and subsequent literary outings have given each and every person who read the Halo Novels or done some surfing of the Halowiki a decent idea of the kind of man John-117 is, nobody thinks him a selfish, egotistical, knowitall (Do they?). In Halo 3: ODST Bungie tried something different to John’s rich history, they gave us a nobody, a nameless, faceless and seemingly mute soldier to guide through New Mombasa. In the upcomming Halo Reach Bungie is once again giving players a Nameless, faceless and from all we’ve seen silent hero. Where Noble 6 or SPARTAN B-312 differs from the Rookie is that his/her (yep Noble 6 can be a chick, SPARTAN Babes are Hot :p) armor is highly customisable and not just in Multiplayer. Players will be able to customise a large variety of Noble 6’s armor which will feature in all the campaign cut-scenes meaning players will be able to BE Noble 6. As far as “inhabiting” the character goes this is still a far cry from Mass Effects Shepard but for a first person shooter this is a good step in the right direction considering there are no dialog trees to flesh out Six’s, player chosen, personality and is still able to tell a story even with a Bright Pink SPARTAN B-312 kicking the snot out of those Elites.

There will always be a place for the likes of Nathan Drake & Kratos but I’d wager there are a few people out there who wouldn’t mind creating a custom character to dangle precariously over a ledge or extract bloody revenge on the Greek gods. Let us hope that as gaming continues to evolve and mature we will eventually get our chance to be exactly who we want to be... Jedi, Warlock or Space Marine...

-Fenix Out-

On Saturday evening my wife Dragged me away from my gaming time to go watch Prince of Persia, a film I wasn't overly eager to see before its DVD release. The Prince of Persia, Sands of Time Trilogy has been one of my favorite and most loved franchises, I could see no way Hollywood could make a decent, let along good, attempt at a movie based of the game.

The movie starts of by showing us that Prince Dustan (Jake Gyllenhaal) was not born of royal blood but that the King (What happened to Sultan or Sheik?) saw young Dustan risk his life for a fellow street urchin and decided to adopt him. The film then jump forward 15 years to the Persian Army looking over some Holy City believed to be supplying the enemies of Persia with weapons. Large battle ensues the Persian's being victorious thanks to the efforts of now adult Prince Dustan and his band of Gutter Trash (Fellow Street Urchins Maybe). The King is assassinated and Dustan is held responsible, he escapes with the ruler of the Holy City Princes Tamina (Where the Hell is Farah?) with the Dagger of Time hitched to his belt, having picked it up off a defeated Persian.

From here on the plot twist and turns as Dustan struggles to find out who really killed his Adopted Father, along the way he discovered the daggers time bending properties but manages to use all the sand up. This lack of sand means there is only about 4 or so scenes where its actually bending time and it now also only reverses time, no more slow motion wall-running for the young prince.

The story does manage to have some sherd of Originality as it doesn't simply try and retell the plot of the first game. This is already a step in the right direction, however the plot does feel schizophrenic with the Prince and Princess rushing all over the desert from one location to the next trying to prove Dustan's innocence, well thats what he tries to do, the Princess on the other hand is more interested in stealing back her dagger. The constant to and fro leaves alot of time for dialog but the city where the dagger is kept would have been enough to set the entire movie in.

There are some good action sequences but it is a crying shame that only one features the dagger. But there are alot of slow-mo action moves, especially featuring arrows.

All in all not the appalling load of crap it could have been but still a Far Cry from the brilliance of the Games. Its Nice to see Hollywood is able to take an game and retell it in their own way, however I still believe that Games & Movies shouldn't mix. Im sure there are alot of Fresh Ideas flowing around so it is unnecessary to continue this constant reconversion of Games to Movies & Vice Versa.

If you need to take your girlfriend/wife to a movie and want to get out of being dragged to Sex in the City, go see this. The women will love beefy Jake and the guyz at least wont be completely bored. [There is one awesome cleavage shot];)

21 - 23/05/2010

The fast 3 days have been interesting. Got Neir up to lvl 18 and found that I want the full version of the game. This was Friday afternoon/evening.

On saturday I played for an hour or so between getting home from work at 13:00 @ leaving to go see Prince of Persia at about 16:00. While at the mall i took the plunge and bought BattleChest from Look & Listen. After getting home I sent Oculate an sms saying to meet me online I took the plunge.

Rolled a Tauren Hunter and BillyBigHorn was soon joined by Unbelievabul(Oculate) a Warrior & Harcos (MissM) a Shaman. Now for some mysterious reason MissM decided that Tauren Females are fugly and is now a Male... listing to her [male] Tauren flinting with Oculate's [male] Tauren is nothing short of unsettling.

We jammed for several hours and I was soon knocking down lvl 7's door. I finished that evening off at about 00:30. Was up again at 8am since I had to go pick up my wedding photos at 9... sigh.

While out I happened across a copy of Read Dead Redemption which I promptly traded my Splinter Cell Conviction for. This is where my weekend of Wow stopped. It is however not where WoW stopped in my house... Having made the suggestion to my Wife that she try it out, under my account since there is no point in waisting game time, she has been playing mostly non stop till 11pm last night. I fear i might never get my account back. :p

I have decided to keep Neir, she is there on her server waiting to be called upon again, since I'll group with my Tauren and Solo with Neir. :p Just for a bit of variety.

20/05/2010

WOW, Ive been playing for six days... this means my trail is nearing it end...:(

I found when i logged on that I was actually lvl 13 already:confused: Must have missed that one:p Though I only progressed to 14 & 3/4 last night. I had the cheek to take on several Quests 4/5 levels above me. I managed to finish a lvl 17 one where i had to retrieve shrooms, damn night elfs and their shroom addiction:rolleyes:, from a cave filled with what MissM tells me are Naga. I also tried multiple times, and failed, multiple times to kill a Thistle Bear Den mother by myself... I could probably have been level 17 all ready if i had taken on quests closer to my own level. But its good to test the challenge level of the games quests.

My 2 buddies joined me, Oculate and MissM both showed up in my tavern. Unfortunatly since they are just level 4 they had to go back to the starting level to level a bit. We did however discover trail accounts can't trade amongst them selfs and also no sending mail.

I was also privy to some Lesbian Night Elf Flirting :cool: and even my pussy (ShadowFang you sick minded pigs:p) got a petting.

The idea of playing with a couple of good friends, in the same world at the same time is really appealing to me. Looking forward to the full version so i can experience some of this these other features, specifically VOIP.

19/05/2010

For the 2 and a half hours I did play last night I think i did remarkably well. I completed a level 14 and a level 16 Quest which helped me to rocket past level 12 and now have my sights firmly set on 13.

I am in Darkshore as it turns out and I am unable to find a Hunter trainer or a Leatherworks & Skinner trainer. So I headed back to Darnasus and purchases some more skills from my Class Trainer and patches up my leatherworks to journeymen along with a few more items to make. The one level 14 quest i did had me slay 20 Rabid Thistle Bears which, along with all the other unfortunate critters i killed & skinned, gave me enough leather to boost that skill to just under a 100 and my leather works by 36 points in one go. AWESOMENESS.

This is where i ended my day in WOW, asleep on the floor of the leatherworks merchant since i had other.... husbandly duties to perform. Hopefully with the weekend edging closer i'll have a little more time to run around in WOW.

18/05/2010

Ive hit level 10... actually I'm almost 12 already, and I got my pet, a Nightsaber called ShadowFang (Someone explain to me why I cant put a Space in my character name or in the name of my pet?)

Having run from one side of the Night Elf starting Area to the other, multiple times, and having issues finding any fun quests (fun = challenging and/or yielding LOTS and LOTS of xp) since i seemed to have pissed off some sort of council :confused: and now ever npc and his/her mother want me to "seek redemption" I headed back to Darnasuss (I think thats how you spell it) and picked up a quest to take something to a fish vendor at the coast, did that and I was asked to travel to the main land and compare fish (Personally I go to the main land to relieve some locals of their.... never mind that....). So i set out to the main land and this is where the scale of WOW started to sink in, it take almost 2 minutes to travel, by Hippogryph, to the the mainland. I completed my quest and picked up a lvl 13 one just for kicks, it was right after I completed the lvl 13 guest, having gotten mah ass kicked once, that I decided I was starting to really enjoy this.

See in EVE you had a massive single universe but it was a massive single universe with nothing in it, i dont mean nothing in the sense it was empty but its set in space, a giant vacuum, its not like there are little critters running around or unique players, every ship looks just like every other one. When in this sea-side village of Darkshore (I think) i saw a gnome on a horse with feet of flame, several human characters and yet more Night Elfs but it looked so much different from the Starting Area, there are high level mobs around to chase me and Shadowfang's xp up and a whole new set of quest to do. I also have a feeling that there is a helluva lot more of this available in Azaroth and unlike Aion where the 2 factions felt so much alike, even its quest lines, and i got bored before even leaving the second area, Azaroth beckons me to explore it, to live in it with my character and most of all, just to have fun.

Now before Oculate starts jumping up and down and opening champaign thinking he has converted me, let me just say this: I am still not sold on the whole re-buying the game ever 60days BUT if the content remains fresh and does not get stale, like other MMOs I played, then it will be worth it, even if just for a few months.

I have actually contemplated stopping this trail right now as I am getting rather attached to Neir & Shadowfang and it will be very sad to simply leave then while they stand on the Precipice of a grand adventure, never to be played again...

17/05/2010
After a rough day at work I got home and decided to continue my adventures in Aziroth with Neir, the female Night Elf Hunter. When stating I was a lvl 7 (I think) and when I hung up my bow I was halfway to lvl 10 (& Getting a Pet :D)

Nothing Spectacular, well unless you count discovering the Night elf city, that one that starts with a D... Darsusess or something....:confused:
One thing i can say is that Blizzard could/should add icons for the specific traders/trainers and merchants on the map and/or mini-map. Having to run through the city looking for a dwarf hiding in some tavern basement is NO FUN.

Having purchased a skinners knife I set forth skinning every skinable animal i came across and made myself a nice pair of boots, a cloak, a pair of braces and a shirt.

I have decided that I will purchase 1 60-day game card and try the full game out for that period with some friends, do the whole grouping thing, and then make my final judgement of World of Warcraf.

For the duration of my remaining trail I will keep up the daily post.

Oh yeah I also got a blue axe as a drop from some critter i killed. I know its a pretty cool item as it does twice the damage of my old one. So that was pretty cool.

16/05/2010
Having had a late night thanks entirely to WOW i decided to sleep in and only got up at around 8:30 and proceeded to boot up the client once more. Through the course of the morning and later that afternoon I managed to get Onic the human Warrior up to level 9/10 (Cant remember exactly) before running into a bit of a problem, in order to complete a quest i had to kill 8 knoll something-or-others but these knoll's stood in groups of 3 meaning I pull agro from all 3 if i get to close which inevitably leads to a trip to the graveyard. So i decided to try out some ranged combat, after all this is what the trail is all about, trying different things. Thus Neir the Night Elf Hunter was born and promptly reached Level 6.

Im still not sold on the idea of people dumping month of they every free waking moment into this title, or any MMO title for that matter. Sure there is alot of variety, 2 factions, so many different races most with their own starting area and starting quest I can see myself playing through the starting area of each race with different characters (maybe, maybe) and getting 1 horde and 1 alliance character to level cap. But that would be it, then its done, i would have experienced a large portion of it and after doing that once... i can not see myself doing it again. But its still early days, the trail is limiting in the way that you can't group which makes the entire thing feel like a glorified single player game.

As a side note I hate the chat mechanic. I think its idiotic, why can't i open a private window to chat to a friend of mine and why is there no "pop" or some sort of sound effect to let me know "you have a message" since now if im busy fighting Knolls or something and my friend speak to me i might miss it. Also trail = no VOIP which sucks coz voice < text everytime.

Maybe tonight i'll get my pet...

15/05/2010: So i finally too the plunge and created a 10-day trail account for World of Warcraft. I booted up the client at around 10:30 and went into create my very first wow character.

Since I'm just trying it out before going the whole nine-yards I decided to start with something regular, just incase i do decide to play this "long" term with some friends I dont want to ruin the experience now by playing my preferred class and thus Onic the human warrior was born.

I was taken aback by the lack of options in the character creation screen, being use to Mass Effect, Dragon Age & Aion's level of character customization. I do however see that by making the graphics very, very, basic Blizzard has made it so that anybody and his grandmother can run WOW, which is maybe part of the reason they do.

I started running around getting my bearings, with alot of the controls being pleasantly familiar to some other titles that i have played. Combat was a bit different since i actually have to manually face my enemies and the character didn't run straight at any enemy i did happen to click on.

When I looked at the clock is was 1:29 and I had just hit level six and was actually enjoying myself. :eek:

First Impression is good thus far, except some <censored> little person hit me with a Mohawk grenade... twice. And you cant get the frikken thing off. Someone explain to me WTF is the deal with the Mohawk grenade? I did get a bunch myself and did proceed to "pity" several "fools" but must admit that since it doesn't do anything for the character I don't see the point. :S

Stay tuned as I, through my online counter part Onic the Human Warrior, delve deeper into the World of Warcraft to see what all the fuss is about.

As a person who is asked to review games for a publication such as MyGaming I am regularly faced with having to dish out a score for the game. In trying to understand game scores I also make a point to read other reviews of the same games and get a better understanding of how different people experienced said title. The first thing to remember is that review are opinions, you can ask 2 reviewers to review the same title and come up with 2 vastly different review, as is evident in MyGaming's Review of Just Cause 2. In this review our own Dan Parmenter & Taryn Van Der Byl had vastly different experiences with the title.

Lets first explore out of what game scores are built. Most publications use a variation of the following:
• Graphics
• Sound
• Gameplay
• Longlevity
• Inovation
• Fun factor (this is sometimes combined with Gameplay)
• Story

Now a quick count will reveal to you that there are 6 categories, 7 if you count Fun factor but since it is often swaped out with Gameplay we will work with 6. So lets say each of these 6 points receive a score out of 100. That will give you a total score out of 600. A quick conversion to a percentage will reveal the games Overall score.

This brings me to my point… the perfect score. For a game to receive a perfect score each of the 6 categories has to be perfect. I, as a reviewer, feel there is no game that justifies a perfect score since not only is it practically impossible for any game nails each category perfectly, but no game is perfect, no matter how good it is, even the most loved of titles had their flaws.

There have been a few games in recent memory that received the perfect score, games like Modern Warfare 2, (14 perfect scores According to MetaCritic.com), Halo 3 (20 perfect scores according to Metacritic.com), Mass Effect (11 Perfect scores) & its sequel Mass Effect 2 (With a mind blowing 30 Perfect scores) was by any means perfect in all 5 categories.

Those who know me know I am a shameless Halo fanboi that does not mean I would give Halo 3 perfect score. After having completed in multiple times and getting waist deep into the Multiplayer I would only rate it somewhere between 92 and 96. The game play is brilliant but the plot could have been better. Sound design wise brilliant and Visually beautiful although a little too bright at times. Longevity also suffers if the player wasn’t into the Multiplayer. (Which they should totally try out if they haven't already :p)

With Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 I would also have scored it well below 100, 80 to 85 would be my rating. Story was too short by any measure and if the player isn’t into the multiplayer the price is simple day light robbery. There is little to no inovation in the Single Player campaign as the dramatic POV death sequences of COD4 is used to Death, Modern Warfare 2 did bring some new tricks to the tried and tested multiplayer modes. Gameplay also remains largely exactly the same as COD4 but “don’t fix what ain’t broke” could very well apply.

Mass Effect one would have gotten a 85 – 90 from me. It nailed story, innovation with the brilliant dialog system and did a decent number on action gameplay. The game was marred by boring side quests and annoying texture pop-ins. Its sequel, Mass Effect 2, would be the game I score the highest with at least 95+. It took what Mass Effect had done and improved upon every single aspect. Texture pop-ins are almost completely gone, no more boring side quests (although the mining can become tedious) and much better combat mechanics. It is however not perfect, some texture pop-in did sneak in, the recourse gathering was flat out boring and the world felt smaller, even though it really wasn’t.

Some other reviewers disagree with this way of thinking as they feel credit should be given where credit is due, so what if the graphics had loading errors the story and gameplay was perfect, why nit-pick? And that is perfectly fine, reviews are after all just one person’s opinion of a specific title. I simply feel that naming a game perfect which isn’t, is not being objective. Also if the perfect game has been made what is the point of making ay more games since the panicle has already been reached, every other title that emerges will just be a failure.

-Fenix Out-