Category Archives: Game Logs

Dropping on to the Lost Planet

Oh shit, it’s game log time and I actually played some things this time!

As predicted my next 360 foray was Halo 3: ODST. ODST has pretty much been talked about to death lately on all of the gaming forums, blogs, podcasts, and the like so I won’t go into it too much. I played through it co-op via splitscreen on Heroic difficulty and enjoyed it quite a lot. It’s nice and short but well paced and a lot of fun. If you’re a Halo (particularly Halo 3) fan then this is a must buy despite the lack of the iconic Master Chief. I plan on going back and getting more of the achievements, including going after all of the audio logs, in a subsequent playthrough sometime soon. I also dabbled in the new Firefight mode a couple of times with some friends and, as predicted, enjoyed the hell out of it. There’s just something to be said for working together with friends in just about any game and the Gears of War 2 “Horde” mode template that everyone has been shamelessly copying lately really seems to nail a certain pure aspect of that.

“Silenced pistols are the new black.”

Next up I decided to play Lost Planet: Extreme Condition on my 360. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps it was the ever increasing nip in the air around here as we move into the fall that made me want to jump head first into Lost Planet’s abundant virtual snow banks… or maybe I just dig mechs? Who knows. I remember thinking the game looked cool since well before it was released but until the relatively recent announcement of its upcoming sequel I feel like it has been overshadowed by newer games. I’ve got a couple of friends who really dig the game though and one of them, NetworkShadow, even demoed it for a few of us at his place one day not too long ago. I really got into the idea of trudging through the beautiful snowy environments. The graphics might be fairly dated nowadays but people were blown away by them at launch and they’re just stylized enough to remain easy to appreciate even now.

“E.D.N. III has some pest control troubles…”

I managed to beat the game in just a few sittings and although there were some tricky sections (including lots of old school set piece boss battles) I found the game to be fairly easy. In fact a lot of my difficulty came about from trying to collect the achievements for all of the “target mark” collectibles for which I had to replay a few sections, even a few entire levels to complete. The character’s movement and control felt slightly off to me (though admittedly I play relatively few 3rd person action games) but once I got used to the controls it all felt quite smooth and I was generally quite happy with it. I was a little disappointed by the last boss fight which hit on a pet peeve of mine – throwing entirely new game mechanics at you in the last level. I didn’t feel like Lost Planet’s case was as gross as a lot of other game’s and I once I got a good feel for it I could more or less tell what they were going for. Still, it was fairly annoying and I ended up having to replay it like 15 times before I finally managed to beat it.

Lost Planet is also one of those newer Capcom games that seems to heap on a large amount of Western influence for some mysterious reason I don’t suppose I care enough to speculate too much about – something about increased international sales or a bold new direction or something, I don’t know. Indeed the game reminds me a lot, the setting, graphics, control, and the core gameplay, of a lot of Western 3rd person shooters, however there is an unmistakable Japanese feel to the entire game. I’m not just talking about the often silly extended cutscenes but the game itself often feels like somewhat of a 3D take on an oldschool side scrolling shooter like Contra or something. It’s hard to explain but I’m sure some of you who have played it know where I’m coming from. Regarding those cutscenes though, I’ve got to say that not playing many Japanese games, particularly the cutscene heavy JRPG genre, I do find an occasional dip into the cesspools of insane Japanese cutscenes to be pretty refreshing.

“What’s better than mowing down aliens with a minigun? Mowing down aliens with two miniguns!”

Next up for the 360 is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. An interesting note, and one I remember mentioning once or twice on the old podcast, is that I’ve had Call of Duty 4 since right around the time it was first released. I had the PC version and only really bought it to play multiplayer with friends however. As a result I never even started up the single player campaign and somewhere in the back of my mind I had always figured I’d probably enjoy it more on the Xbox 360 and that the achievements wouldn’t hurt either. So, here I am, nearing the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and I’ve finally tracked down a decently priced used copy of the game for 360. I can’t wait! I’ve heard so much about the campaign and, who knows, I might even give multiplayer on Xbox Live a try while I’m at it since it’s such a blast.

On a non-console related note I also continue to play Half-life 2 from time to time – I’m about to start Episode 2 and wrap the game up. I’ll talk more about Half-life 2 in a separate post when I finally get around to finishing it.

1943: Dawn of the cataclysmic half prey

Whew, I can’t believe it has been almost a month since I last updated this.

First thing first, I beat Prey. I don’t have much more to say about it than I did last time. I’ve since read that a lot of people were annoyed by the “flying” parts but they didn’t really annoy me, personally. They were definitely a little bizarre though I felt like that was probably intentional, going right along side the gravity walkways, gravity changing buttons, and the portals.

“Holding the line…”

I would like to expand a tiny bit more on the death mechanic I mentioned briefly last time. Basically, when you die you’re transported to a level where you can shoot at passing spirits in an almost Duck Hunt like manner. One type gives you additional health when you respawn, while the other gives you additional spirit. This sequence ends after a short time and you’re soon respawned where you left off. Your only punishment for dying, really, is that you had to waste 30 seconds of your life playing this mini-game. The repetitive nature of the mini-game annoyed some people but whenever I encountered it for the 3rd or 4th time in a row I realized that I’d rather be doing that than starting over from a check point or even loading a manual save. Neat.

I bought Battlefield 1943 on XBLA. Excellent game. There’s not a lot to say about it that hasn’t already been said by everyone else when it was the flavor of the month. It’s a near perfect game for when you need to kill 30 minutes or so and don’t want to invest in anything too meaningful. I’ve got to say that I’m pretty damn depressed at how much I suck at it compared to the original Battlefield 1942 though – I used to rock at Coral Sea (AKA Air Superiority) damn it! 🙁 It’s also amazing how much Frostbite’s destructible buildings change the infantry part of the game – you might as well be playing totally different maps when in one version every structure is essentially bulletproof and in the other strictly temporary. I don’t intend to play this one much as I rarely play online on my Xbox 360 but it was worth the 15 bucks in my mind.

“All out attack against The Avatar.”

Next up? I don’t know. I’ve been wanting to play more XBLA games but since I haven’t bought many of the ones I want yet and I’m broke it seems a bit silly to pass up on all of the games I already own and haven’t played yet. Speaking of spending money, I suppose Halo: ODST will end up being the next thing I play.

Changing platforms, I finally decided to finish up Dawn of War 2’s campaign. I felt like I could probably keep playing it forever. If only their were more maps to play in the random side missions – it just got way too repetitive. 🙁 Great game and they just announced the first expansion pack. Just my luck it’ll be continuing the campaign of the original game, raising the level cap, and adding a bunch of new stuff. Bought!

“Peekaboo!”

Hmmmm, what else? The news of World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion got me all hot and bothered to return to Azeroth so I dusted off my newbie Draeni character to try some of patch 3.2’s additions, most notable probably being earlier access to mounts, and to check out the old world one more time before the Cataclysm hits. We’ve not been playing too hardcore but advancement was fairly steady until we fell off the wagon again a couple of weeks ago. I also finally got around to getting Wrath of the Lich King although I haven’t touched any of the post 70 content yet on my main as I’m considering transferring servers and possibly even changing sides so that I can play with my friend’s main. If only it weren’t so damn expensive.

I definitely love the idea of them revamping Azeroth’s 1-60 content. I’ll be sad to see some of the zones totally changed forever but it is probably a needed change. I remember many a conversation about flying mounts in Azeroth once The Burning Crusade was released but the problem was obvious to anyone who had explored the world even a little. Except for travelable boarders and flight paths most of the zones were patch worked together with harsh seams. Many of them even featured areas that you can’t and aren’t meant to be able to traveled or even seen.

“Ravenholm, anyone?”

Finally, I started playing through Half-Life 2. Wow, old school right? It’s for a good cause! I’ll be playing along with Rebel FM’s Game Club and since I haven’t played through Episode 1 or Episode 2 yet it’ll give me a good opportunity to refresh myself on 2 before playing them. This will be my first actual participation with Game Club or it’s predecessor 1UP FM’s Backlog which I’m pretty stoked about. Ugh, I had forgotten how long some of these levels were…

Update

Again, as I mentioned in my last Game Log update, I’ve not had as much time for gaming or even blogging as usual. This is almost entirely thanks to my much more hectic work schedule as of late. This week is probably the quietest week I’ve had in several months and thanks to a cold my office mate so generously inflicted upon me I won’t even be able to fully take advantage of it. That’s not to say I haven’t played games, however. Oh yes, I’ve played games.

First of all I finally finished Battlestations: Midway. Perhaps it finished me? As much as it shames me I actually put this one back on the shelf without finishing it off to the degree that I had planned. I breezed through the single player campaign fairly easily but once I got into the special “challenge” missions I hit several sheer walls of difficulty. After trying to beat the same challenge about 20 times without making much progress despite experimenting with various tactics and strategies I decided that I should be happy with beating the campaign and move on. This was confirmed by seeing that I already had above the average number of achievements for the title.

“Not so much the Love Boat.”

I have a feeling that I would have a much easier time with these challenges, or at least some of them, on the PC version where I could have greater precision with my shots and the like. Since I own it too, plucked from the bargain bins for next to nothing, I may have to give it shot one day.

None of these difficulty issues really make me any less interested in Battlestations: Pacific though. I still enjoyed the game and its relatively unique gameplay. Regardless, I originally decided to place Battlestations: Midway where I did in my backlog because I thought it would be quick and easy to playthrough so spending weeks (of admittedly very little actual gametime) trying to beat one or two missions seemed counterproductive. On to the next game!

Next up in my 360 backlog is the first person shooter Prey. Another quick one, I hope. I didn’t played Prey when it was first released though I remember a lot of my clan/guild buddies raving about the demo. I mentioned over a year ago here that a Toys R Us counter monkey had basically forced it on me one day, talking about how great it was, and at only 4 bucks news I couldn’t really pass up the recommendation.

“Every now and then the game gives you a hand.”

Sure enough, the game seems to be worthy of the great reviews it got at launch. It’s an oldschool FPS in some respects, the Duke Nukem 3D influence is obvious with the lead character quipping constantly, and it wears the fact that it’s using the Doom 3 engine on its sleeve as well, yet the game also does some very interesting things involving portals, gravity, and puzzle solving and all well before the release of Portal to boot. There’s a puzzle solving element involving exiting your body and entering the spirit realm which is pretty interesting. Speaking of the spirit realm, there’s a very interesting, non-punishing death mechanic in Prey as well. I’m still less than half way through it so I don’t want to say too much more until I know more but so far I’d say it’s worth saving from your local bargain bin if such a thing sounds at all appealing to you.

I’ve also been playing Dawn of War 2 quite a bit in the last couple of months. I really enjoyed the first Dawn of War and its expansions. This is probably helped quite a bit by being a Warhammer 40,000 fan but regardless Relic has doing some interesting things with RTS conventions and yes, I loved Company of Heroes as well. Dawn of War 2 mixes things up a little bit by further changing the way single player works once again.

“That’s right – I defend my glowy things to the death!”

I’ve often heard the game described as Diablo-esque in that randomly loot of varying rarities drops off of enemies and is awarded for missions but that’s is pretty much where the similarity ends. The player takes charge of a small force of Space Marines. Each squad or marines is similar to a hero unit (such as from Warcraft 3) in that they level up which can earn them specific skills, they can be equipped with new gear, etc. It still plays more or less like a RTS minus the base building and resource gathering aspects though. Of course, the combat part of the game is what Relic does so well with little touches like destructible buildings and unit cover mechanics.

The player equips and levels his squads while using a campaign map to select which missions to go on next. Some missions are plot related while others are purely side missions. The side missions appear to be mostly randomly generated but unfortunately they often recycle the same maps over and over again which makes grinding on them a lot less fun than it should be. Within the story itself players will find themselves battling all 3 of the game’s other armies: Eldar, Space Orks, and Tyranids. Since the player’s army is relatively small the battles are as well with few vehicles coming into the picture. Still, the constant equipment and skill upgrades are enough of to keep things interesting.

“Orks iz strong!”

Anyway, the game is a blast. I’m close to the end at the moment but am still grinding on side missions. This is the first PC game I’ve played with a full Games for Windows Live implementation and it works quite well so far. I admit that I’m a tiny bit of an achievement whore so having PC game achievements combine with my Xbox Live achievement score is awesome. It does seem to confuse some of the Xbox 360 players on my Friends List when they can’t invite me to a party or use some of the other Xbox 360 only features though. Who cares, points is points! 😉