Battlefield: Bad Company 2

I'm currently quite disappointed with Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Deeply disappointed, in fact, because when I first started playing the multiplayer online demo, I was in love. Extensive vehicle combat, completely destructible landscapes, and trace RPG (level-up) elements. It was a blast to play, and I stayed with the demo for a few hours, despite having access to only one type of match and only one map. "Squad Rush" was a great mix of tactical objectives, team cooperation, and good ol' fashioned shoot 'em up. Class differences, level up and weapon enhancement opportunities...I was hooked.

And then it all changed. I had trouble logging on the next day, and I thought that was odd. It looked like EA authentication servers were having some trouble, and EA's unresponsive website confirmed this, in my mind. But I was wrong, it wasn't mere authentication server issues, it was...perfidy! They were altering the game, making it different... When I next logged on, my engineer had more RPG rounds, which was nice, except...I rarely got the chance to use them, as I was being air-dropped without a parachute. Tank rounds were melting faces entirely across the map and shooting through mountains, engineers were throwing Hail Mary passes with their RPG rounds with unprecedented success, and the game became, for lack of a better word, dismal.

The graphical layout of the game pales in comparison to Modern Warfare 2, and I would think a "hotly anticipated" title such as B:BC2 would understand that MW2 had already achieved something close to full-market saturation, and not on gimmick alone, but merit. Why release, in the wake of what was probably the most successful title of 2009, an FPS that's graphically less pleasing, mechanically less functional, and significantly less customizable?

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has two advantages over Modern Warfare 2: increased vehicle combat, and fully destructible landscapes. That being said, those advantages are minor. Modern Warfare 2 was a masterfully orchestrated title that quite literally distilled the carnage, chaos, and violence of warfare into something dimly recognizable as beauty. In Battlefield: Bad Company 2, you can knock down walls. You tell me which is better.

Modern Warfare 2

First of all, let me say that I know I'm way past the point where this post could be considered timely or relevant. I know that, OK? So lay off. That being said, it wasn't until recently that I started playing the XBox LIVE aspect to the game. I was turned off by the fact that, unlike games like Halo: 3, MW2 doesn't have the ability for players to play split-screen LIVE, which was without a doubt my favorite aspect of Halo: 3. So, it may have been out of spite that I waited this long to play.

I'm hooked. I can't help it. It oscillates between deeply satisfying and bone-jarringly frustrating so quickly I almost vomit in the back of my mouth, and I like it. Bring it. Bullets flying, airstrikes ripping apart the map, sentry guns shearing enemy soldiers in twain. It's like melting down violence in a loving spoonful and injecting it into your eyes.

Beyond the universal, gory, and visceral appeal that the whole game exudes, I'm a sucker for one particular aspect of the online play: leveling up. I think it's a residual imprint from playing World of Warcraft for two and a half years, but there's something very satisfying about being rewarded for how you play. Ah, great, I specifically used this inferior scope on my sniper rifle, and now I have the thermal scope, and motherfuckers are sticking out on my screen like a Swede walking through Harlem. Wtfpwned.

I suppose I'm not surprised that the LIVE portion is a masterful blend of raw FPS action and trace RPG elements. The single-player campaign elevated FPSs to an entirely new level; it moved the player into the whole body of the soldier, and not just the finger on the trigger. Story elements pushed some boundaries as well: in an FPS, it's game over when your character dies, not part of the storyline. I was surprised the first time they killed off my character. The second time I was offended (well, they did light my corpse on fire). And when I thought they were going to do it a third time, I ended up the victor. I was sure they were going for the hat-trick.

This isn't all there is to say about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I'm aware. I'm not sure that I could say all there is to say. This is a start, though, and for now I think I've hit all of my main points.

Heroes of Newerth

I just got an Email from HoN support reminding me that I have three more beta invites to hand out. Now, I seem to recall several months ago signing up for the beta when I'd first heard of the game, but I can't seem to remember sending out any invites... With account hackers going wild for WoW accounts I wonder if this plain email is really from the good people at HoN. Either way it has reminded me of HoN's existence and I'll hopefully be able to sneak in the beta soon.

It makes me really want an authenticator.

And the Wait Begins

Last Sunday I joyfully watched as Peyton Manning threw a Pick-6 ending the Colts' chance at winning the Super Bowl. As I watched the game clock tick away I knew to savor the last moments of football for a few months. Now that the season is over, all that us football fans can do is wait until August to fill our fix for the sport. No, I'm not referring to the pre-season, that excuse for football the NFL calls its exhibition, I speak of Madden NFL 11.

While my other contributors may not give sports games the time of day (although Kevin did just post a review of the Vancouver Winter Olympics game which I could've told him would most likely suck considering the Torino installment sucked), I greatly enjoy the thrill of sports games. It gives un-athletic gamers like myself the chance to throw a football 60 yards, run a 4.2-40, and give Peyton Manning a shoulder injury.

The Madden franchise has proven time and time again to be among the year's best games and has only gotten better since the people at EA realized no one wanted to listen to John Madden. And if you are like me, you consider the release of Madden to be the unofficial start to football. There is a lot of hype about the upcoming edition, what changes will we see, who will be on the cover, and the like.

What I am waiting for is there to finally be trick plays thrown into the mix. It seems odd that such a large component of any team's play book would be absent from the game. I hope the creators have given the idea some thought and they finally add in some. I would also like to see the default game time be switched back from the 7 minute quarter time it has now; it's just way too long. Oh, and give kickers enough leg to make a field goal over 45 yards; they shouldn't be easy, but come on kickers make them all the time. For now, though, all we can do is wait and hope EA does something awesome like putting big ol' Vince Wilfork on the cover because it's about time D-line gets some respect.

Review: Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games

I can't help it: there's something I really like about the Winter Olympic Games. Maybe it's the pride one feels in cheering for one's nation, maybe it's the inspiring spirit of competition that transcends international boundaries, or maybe it's just Curling. Yeah, nevermind, it's Curling. That's what I like about the Winter Olympics.

I caught the biathlon yesterday, which has always been favorite of mine ever since I first played it on the 1994 Winter Olympics Sega Genesis game. The sheer nostalgia involved in that moment was almost more than I could bear--I could feel the Sega Genesis controller in my hand. I could smell the RF Switch tied into the co-ax cable. As those biathletes shot the wimpiest and yet most complex .22 rifles I think I've ever seen, and the little black circles turned white, I knew what I had to do. I had to download the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games demo.

I was almost embarrassed to start it up. I'm not a huge sports video game fan, and I'm not a fan of blockbuster-movie-based video games, and frankly this felt like a little bit of both. I had to relive my childhood though; I had to try.

The demo is disappointingly sparse: there is one Olympic event (downhill skiing) and one "Challenge" event to play (ski jump). The downhill skiing course takes roughly 2 minutes to complete, assuming you make it through the course in a reasonable fashion. The ski jump Challenge is futile--they provide no tutorial on how to land once airborne, and I thoroughly refused to look it up online; it would have taken more time to do that than to play the demo start to finish. After three attempts at the ski jump, the demo shuts down and returns you to the XBox dashboard. Let me say this: it made for a bad demo. How does one make a judgment of the game if you can barely play it? I refuse to purchase this game for several reasons, but not least of all out of spite: it's insulting to be fed the slightest morsel of mediocre gameplay and have there be any expectation at all that you might want to purchase the game, and I think it shows a supreme arrogance on the part of the demo designers.

I'm not done. My resentment grows: the demo shows the player the entire list of playable Olympic games, and "grays out" all but the downhill skiing. You're made aware of the fact that there are way cooler events to be played, but they're not going to give them to you. Solid marketing is to show off your best stuff. Arrogance is to say, "you want something better? Pony up the dough, asshole."

The worst, however, is by far this: there is no biathlon in the Vancouver 2010. Not even a little bit. Are you fucking kidding me? The biathlon has to be the single easiest event to make appealing to a video game community. It has fucking guns in it. You discharge a firearm, which has to be the single largest pull for most gamers anywhere. Unacceptable. Without the biathlon, there's pretty much not a single chance that I might actually play the game if I ever were to buy it.

I have felt my resentment grow throughout this post, and no, I don't think I'm working myself up into a nauseating rage. I think I'm finally understanding what about the demo turned me off: it was literally crushing. It was a being of unimaginable and terrible malevolence, a dark and vicious specter cloaked in familiar and friendly garb, that chinked cracks into one's very soul and extended spindly tendrils of evil through that gap to suck out the very soul-marrow of the player.

My fond memories of the 1994 Winter Olympics video game have been sullied and tainted by the terrible experience; never before have I been closer to the sublime and abject truth that innocence is dying than I was during the Vancouver 2010 demo. I long for the opportunities of my youth, and I am denied.

I should have known it was a bad idea.

On My Radar: Just Cause 2

I have previously given little thought to Just Cause 2, probably because the Just Cause demo stood out in my mind as being pretty terrible. The trailer for its sequel looks pretty promising, in truth, so I thought it only fair to revisit the demo and give it another shot.

I wish I hadn't.

I would be significantly more excited about Just Cause 2 if I had not replayed the demo for the original, and now I'm frankly disappointed. The original Just Cause misses the mark entirely. The concept is actually really cool, and the freedom to interact with the environment is enjoyable. Good qualities end there. The mechanics are simply off: the camera's hard to control, the character rarely responds as you'd wish, and trying to control yourself in "parachute mode" is futile. Mission mechanics fall short as well; the demo took me far too long to complete, because any time I failed a mission (which admittedly happens), it would invariably restart me at a point that made it nigh on impossible to complete the mission. Almost everything involved doing something or getting somewhere within a given time limit; however, there's no timer or action cam to let you know whether or not your time's about to be up, and guess what? It is. The retry point puts you back in a situation where you're STILL not going to make it in time, and there's no option to restart the mission completely or enter back into free-roam mode. At one infuriating point in time, I had pressed retry and it brought me back just far enough to immediately see "Mission Failed" post again on the screen, less than second (I swear to it) after the game reloaded. Unbelievable.

Now, I'm willing to admit that this game originally came out in 2006, and that there's a chance the demo doesn't do it justice, although I hardly doubt that they completely revamped the gameplay between demo and release. There's a chance that all of this has been fixed in Just Cause 2, but I have no way to know that. They're certainly not going to launch an ad campaign that says, "Remember how hard our first game sucked? Yeah we fixed most of that," though it'd be refreshing to see.

What I'm getting at is this: without a Just Cause 2 demo posting to XBox LIVE soon, or some really stellar reviews from some really trusted sources, I'm not going to waste my time on the game. I'm actually hoping I eat my words on this, I want it to be a good game, but...I don't see it happening.

Taking matters into my own hands.

In my last post I mentioned Blizzard and their inability to solve my server's lag issues.

I know that lag and internet inconsistencies are expected for a mmo, but for the past 2-3 weeks I've lost significant play time and I feel Blizzard owes their paying customers something for the problems. So if you are like me and experiencing server issues that Blizzard refuses to deal with please report them to the Better Business Bureau at http://www.la.bbb.org/ComplaintDetail.aspx?CompanyID=13050668 .

I know this is a video game blog but...

Beer is my other love. So since I don't have anything enlightened to say about gaming at the moment, besides I'm going to drive to Cali and burn down Blizzard HQ over the absurd lag I've been experiencing. Com'on, fucking 1 min loot lag? FML.

Anyways, this post is dedicated to Smuttynose Wheat Wine Ale. I'm on the fence right now as I'm finishing the first half of my bomber. The flavor is good. It's something new and different I can't tell if I like it...its too new, foreign...my review:

Severing type: bottle

A: dark copper, minimal off white head, some lacing

S: caramel, vanilla, slight hop aroma, minimal alcohol

T: the caramel and vanilla come through, the wheat provides a spiciness, mild hop bitterness

M: low carbonation, warm alcohol, slightly syrupy but not as much as a barley wine

D: definitely a sipper

On My Radar: Final Fantasy XIII

I'm really of two minds about the upcoming Final Fantasy release on March 9th of this year. Previous Final Fantasy releases for the XBox 360 have been lackluster, in my opinion, although I can honestly say that this title looks like it'll live up to the true spirit of the Final Fantasy franchise. My only real problem is this--I stopped. I got out. I played most of Final Fantasy X before making the switch to XBox, and since then I haven't really touched a turn-based game since (though in fairness I'm excluding the KOTOR franchise from this, which in my mind was only quasi-turn based).

What I'm getting at is, I don't know if I go back. I fully recognize that this title has the potential to be one of the most promising of 2010, and will certainly reinvigorate a franchise that seemed to be on its last legs. I have full faith that Final Fantasy XIII will become a proud part of the Final Fantasy canon and live up to its fabled predecessors. I just don't know if that's what I want. More later, I suspect.

KM

How in the hell?

I started this post entirely differently, and now I'm rewriting it, so I'll have to rethink my lead in. I was preparing a post about how my longing to replay Mass Effect 2 and my strange nostalgia for The Force Unleashed and KOTOR have reminded me how much I'm looking forward to The Old Republic MMO. That being said, while writing the original post, something new floated across my radar.

The Force Unleashed 2.

How has this existed without my knowledge, and for how long? I encourage everyone to check out the trailer, which is all different sorts of awesome, but there's no official release date at the end. We can expect it sometime in 2010, certainly, but that could still mean a lot of waiting. Internet chatter places it sometime in Q3, but frankly I wouldn't be surprised to see that get pushed back and have this become a hot-selling Christmas item. It's a lot of waiting, for sure, but most of us waited for a long time for the first one.

I continually wish I could jump forward in the future. With Force Unleashed 2 coming out late 2010 and The Old Republic hopefully hitting the web in Spring 2011, we've got a lot of waiting to do, and a lot to wait for. A year from now, though, I imagine I'll be a very happy man.

KM

Mass Effect 2

**Spoilers**

I finished Mass Effect 2 last night, in a breathless panicky rush. I didn't want it to be over, I enjoyed it too much, and yet...the time had come. I'd played all of the loyalty missions, gathered all of the possible crew mates, flirted with Kelly, saw Tali without her helmet on (well Shepherd did), and fucked Project Zero. All of my goals accomplished. There was nothing else to do except eye-fuck a giant skeleton-shaped Reaper with a miniature nuclear device, and I knew I was the man for the job.

Throughout the game, some of the loading screens encouraged a second (or third) play-through, and on various message boards I saw a lot of people doing just that, but I didn't think I'd actually do it. Now, I'm not so sure. Total play-time came out to something like 31 hours, which I could pretty easily repeat if the mood struck me, and I do see now a lot of things on which I missed out. I'll admit I played through Knights of the Old Republic (first and second) more than once, and I can't pretend like this new Bioware title didn't strike precisely the same chords with me as its Star Wars predecessor.

One thing that really struck me on about Mass Effect 2 was its cross-game synergy. For example, I was able to play through the game with the Blood Dragon Armor, which I secured by pre-ordering an entirely different game (Dragon Age: Origins). Furthermore, ME2's loading screens tempt you with thoughts of a Mass Effect 3, and certainly the ending leads you to believe there will be one. What I've seen on many message boards is that people are playing through Mass Effect 2 many times to create the exact type of save file they'd like to be able to import to Mass Effect 3. It's an interesting concept: playing one game to affect your experience in a completely different game. I'm not sure if I think it's innovative or scary. Gaming realities have generally always existed within the confines of the cartridge or disc--expanding this reality, or at least a consciousness of this reality, into other game universes...well essentially I'm worried that the event horizons will cross and rip the entire gaming world into an infinitesimal singularity. I mean, I don't know for sure, but...it could.

I guess I'll post later whether or not I return to Mass Effect 2, but my guess is I will crawl back to it and grovel before it, so that it may reveal its treasures unto me.

KM

I can't believe I'm doing this...

Kevin, first off I hate you for this. By typing these works I am confirming what years of video games, Star Trek and WoW have been telling me already. I guess its sort of empowering, acknowledging that my level of nerdiness has reached the point where I need to vent it through the internet.

The very idea of a blog bothers me. It assumes that I have something to say that people want to spend time reading. It's not like I have any sort of credentials for this kind of thing. I mean I guess I spend way too much time starting a screen or TV, but what self respecting 23 year old doesn't?

So strap in and prepare for poorly written, grammatically incorrect, pathetically attempted posts which will continue until Kevin teaches me Engrish.

Dante's Inferno Demo

I recently played through the Dante's Inferno Demo. I was pleasantly surprised by the way that it elevated itself above your normal hack 'n' slash, especially with ethical choices (to punish or not to punish?) that affect gameplay and talent customization. More than that, however, this game signaled to me that we are entering an entirely new era of video games. How so, you ask? The sheer and inexplicable amount of frontal nudity. I don't think I've encountered any video game that's had nearly that amount of bare breasts. It's incredible. While this appeals most naturally to my male sensibilities, it was also encouraging. Allow me to offer a corollary: in Assassin's Creed 2, Ezio's mother says the word "vagina." The first thought in my head was that awkward virgin gamers everywhere squirmed uncomfortably at the word. This thought echoed in my head when I saw all of the breasts in Dante's Inferno, and let me remind you--that's a lot of breasts. My point is, barriers are breaking down. At both of those moments, I briefly thought, "You can't do that in a video game. You just can't." But you know what, maybe you can. Maybe I'm the problem, believing that there are things video games should leave well enough alone. Onward, soldier.

Fill it up.

Recently, I've found that I've begun to peruse video games as if in search of a fine wine, and begun to appreciate them in much a similar fashion. At times, I'm in the mood for something light and crisp, and at times I'm looking for something darker, slower--something to sip and savor slowly on a cold night.

It sounds ridiculous, I'll grant you, but I can't shake it. More and more, I've come to realize, as so many others have, that video games are experiential art. Their gameplay and flow as much as an expression as their sceneries and characters. The world of video games has progressed so rapidly that they don't even remotely fit in with their bygone 8-bit predecessors. This is a bright new world.

I've felt the urge to begin this blog for months now, but I've never gotten around to it. I have many a thing to post on: Arkham Asylum, Assassin's Creed 2, Modern Warfare 2, Army of Two: The 40th Day, Mass Effect 2...a lot of sequels, apparently. They'll be coming shortly, hopefully with some help from some friends. Stay tuned.

KM