• 22May 11

  The Witcher 2 - A slightly flawed classic

  It is an awesome game, and depending on a few games like LA Noire, Deus Ex, Battlefield 3 and Uncharted 3, will probably be my GOTY. However it isn't without its negatives...

  Difficulty -

  I had planned to play through the game on Easy my first time through, and I certainly didn't didn't expect to die as much as I did. It is very easy to get swarmed by enemies and die in seconds. On my second playthrough I switched to normal and I managed to get to the courtyard fight in the monestary before you raise the gate to let Foltest in, and I just got bored of it.

  Constantly rolling in, hitting an armoured enemy once or twice and rolling away, over and over again. If you get hit you end up running around the courtyard in circles until you health regenerates...I mean it is just ridiculous. Geralt is supposed to be a bad ass, and at no point in the Prologue on normal difficulty did I feel like a bad ass.

  I read somewhere that the developers loved Demons Souls and wanted to implement a similar level of difficulty. Well, they are nothing a like. Demons Souls' difficulty was never monotonous, and no normal enemy ever took longer than 15 seconds to kill. I tried using signs and traps, but at that point in the game your signs are weak and you don't have a lot of gear to work with.

  Also the fact the game doesn't allow you to drink potions on the fly is a bit weird, but that's more personal preference.

  Combat -

  The combat is much improved from the original (which I still didn't mind), but it does feel slightly loose. Perhaps holding down a button to lock on to an enemy would have been better. Still I did enjoy the combat for the most part.

  Stealth sections -

  Sometimes they work (lke in the dungeon), and sometimes they don't (sneaking through the camp). Stealth is a hard element to implement in a game that focuses on action, so I'm not too bothered about this.

  The save system -

  After consulting this forum earlier today, I wiped the majority of the contents of my save folder, which amounted to 3.7 GBs... WHY OH WHY does a manual save take up a new slot every time? Why can't I just pick from a number of slots like in the first game? This should be relatively easy to fix...

  Crashes -

  Every hour or two my game will boot me to the desktop for no apparent reason. Normally happens when I open the menu or enter a door. This is what led to the manual saves every 5 minutes, which in turn led to the 3.7GB save folder, and the complete slowdown of the menu system as a result (sometimes opening the menu would take 12-15 seconds).

  Gamepad issues -

  They bigged up the fact that this game was designed with a gamepad in mind, and for the most part it works. However, a few things could be tightened. When you are trying to bribe someone, the keyboard doesn't work, which means you have to hold down the left stick until you reach the allotted amount. If the bribe is rejected, you have to do it all again, from zero...which is massively time consuming. All they have to do is either let you type in a number or remember what sum you got to last and open on that sum.

  Some of the menus also spaz out a little on the controller. Scrolling through mutagens one by one is impossible on my gamepad, they normally skip two or three, even if I use the d-pad.

  • Posted May 22, 2011 9:33 am GMT
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• 4May 11

  Homefront. Home is where the disappointment is.

  I picked up Homefront yesterday and F***ING HELL. Wow. It is a seriously bad game.

  I thought for a long time that the game looked very promising. The idea of setting the game in an American suburb of a f***ed up alternate future where Korea becomes an Imperial superpower intruiged me.

  The developers said their biggest influences were Half Life 2 and Children of Men - in my opinion two pieces of media that have a brilliant atmosphere and an appealing setting.

  They promised it wasn't just going to be another COD clone; shuffling behind Activision's behemoth, feeding off of any scrap or morsel that it leaves in it's wake.

  They promised the game would focus on the people, and the real horror of war and occupation. That it would focus on the lives of Americans trying to survive in an unimaginable situation.

  If only...

  I think the moment that I came to the realisation that I hated Homefront was when I was tasked with blowing up AA guns. Not being funny, but how many times have I blown up AA guns in a game before? In fact, I think I have blown up AA guns in every single COD game I've played. The first COD game had AA guns, and it came out in 2003...seriously I'm f***ing fed up with AA guns.

  ****************SPOILERS INCLUDED FROM HERE ON OUT. NOT THAT THERES MUCH WORTH SPOILING************

  Rage {ON] OFF

  The first 10 minutes or so are very promising. The introductionary cutscene does a good job of explaining how world events have created the future of Homefront, and the bus-ride is honestly one of the most poignant moments I have ever experienced in a game. Then you are rescued, and from that moment on the game takes a pretty big swan dive; never truely recovering. A moment when you walk through a resistance camp gives you a nice breather, but when you later return to the base and find everyone dead, there hasn't been enough of a connection with the resistance themselves to truely give a s***.

  The fact that KAOS were apparently aiming to avoid similarities with COD surprised me, since there are so many things copy pasted from COD games: a fight on a bridge, PERHAPS ABOUT HALF THE GAME THAT IS SET IN AMERICA SINCE MW2 ALREADY DID THAT, a level where you are tasked with sniping specific targets, a level where you and your mate(s) move around stealthily knifing people and you CANT BE CAUGHT, an ingame cutscene in a moving vehicle, forcing you to watch horrifying events, a fight in a farm, a vehicle turreted section, a keep the convoy alive level, and they even manage to shoe-horn in one of those COD levels where you're in a really high plane using the black and white grainy camera to destory vehicles and people...

  The problem with COD and its clones is that they don't understand pacing. At all. Not even in the slightest. In fact I always liken COD games to Michael Bay movies - a lot of flash but no f***ing substance. Homefront follows suit, though does have a few breathers.

  Then there's the story. Not even really worth mentioning.

  And the characters? Wow. That guy, the generic macho, angry, tattooed, veteran guy. Why...WHY do people put these types of characters into games? Even COD manages to avoid them (except Black Ops - thanks Treyarch).

  There's that girl and shes sad because the other guy dies, and there's the guy who looks east-asian that everyone they meet seems to hate, and I still felt no sympathy for him what-so-ever because NO ONE IN THIS GAME IS FLESHED OUT. NO ONE. NOT EVEN BIG-BALLS (I forget his name - the angry one).

  To top it all off, the game took me all of 5 hours to complete, and there's no difficulty levels...and the difficulty spiked quite wildly. Also, why do bullets hurt more if they are shot by someone who is closer to you? Is that a real life thing? Because it started massively f***ing me off.

  The checkpoints were **** too, especially on the convoy level...

  So yeah don't play this horrible f***ing game. Just watch the opening 10 minutes on youtube and think about how awesome the game could have been.

  I only rented it so yeay.

  Rage ON [OFF]

  • Posted May 4, 2011 4:28 pm GMT
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• 15Apr 11

  ****ING HELL. Mafia is so ****ing bad...

  Bought in the 2K steam sale for like a quid, and then got round to playing it today and WOW. The first mission tasks you with losing a vehicle that can double your speed and knocks you into walls. The amount of times I got stuck in a wall, unable to move, or clipped into another car, only for my ****head passengers to be shot...

  I literally spent 15 minutes trying and retrying the first mission. Then, by complete luck, on my 9th try I manage to lose the enemy. Afterward, my new buddies tell me to drive them back to a bar or a cafe or something, so off I go with nowt but a compass to direct me.

  I realise too late that I need to cross a bridge, so I back track and accidentally run into a cul-de-sac. As I go to turn my vehicle around, I come to the odd realisation that MY ****ING VEHICLE DOESN'T REVERSE. So I'm stuck, with the clock ticking, unable to turn my car around. I go into the options and change the key for reverse, and nothing happens. All the while my passengers are telling me to hurry up.

  I exit the vehicle, and re enter, hoping that these pointless actions will somehow appease the game. But no, I'm sat, car unable to reverse, in a ****ing cul-de-sac. Knowing full well I will have to outwit these guys and start the game all over again, I quit.

  And I will never play this game. Ever again.

  Money well spent. ****ing brilliant.

  Leads me to wonder how the **** this game was so critically acclaimed back in the day. The first mission is probably the most difficult and unfair in any open world game I've played, there were no checkpoints and no 'save where you like' system...

  When I completed Mafia 2 and was very disappointed with it, a bunch of people told me to play the original because the story is better...but wow how did anyone put up with this?

  • Posted Apr 15, 2011 12:18 pm GMT
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