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User Accounts October 6, 2008 at 11:38pm |
| For any wondering, I removed the user section of the site, I decided that maintaining user accounts was a little overkill. Your comments are still there, and you can still comment, the creation of a profile just has been removed, if you have any thoughts, let me know. |
| Star Wars Galaxies...Why Sony Why October 08, 2007 2:48pm in gaming |
 So something got me thinking about my experiences playing Star Wars Galaxies sophomore and pre-junior year. It was actually the first MMO I ever played. When I first started playing it, it was really fun, it did a lot of things right. Sure, there were bugs, but such is the way with MMORPG's and Sony did a good job fixing the bugs as best they could. They had a good mix of professions, content, vehicles, etc. The one thing I really liked was that you could respec your profession at will. You could start out as a scout, play for a couple days, realize that it's not for you, and change to whatever else you wanted without penalty. You could do that after playing for years too if such were the case. And you could have a mix of many professions limited only by your profession points. For every skill in each profession you learned, you lost a profession point. Run out of profession points and you can't learn anything else. When you unlearn a skill, you get a profession point back...simple, yet done right. They did a pretty good job with the vehicles, adding speederbikes, swoops, etc. It made travel so much easier. The Jump to Lightspeed expansion did a very good job with integrating starships like X-Wings, Y-Wings, etc. into the game. No longer were you limited to the ground, now you could do space battles too. And the controls were beautifully integrated into the game. I really enjoyed the time I spent playing the game. Then came the disastrous combat upgrade where Sony did a lot of things wrong. Here are some to name a few. 1.) You could start out as a Jedi. OK, that may sound cool on the outside, but think about it. One, this is just after Star Wars A New Hope, there are only two known Jedi at this point, Luke Skywalker, and Yoda, save the Emperor and Darth Vader. The story line does not match the game. Now I accept the fact that you have to put Jedi in the game, it's Star Wars, you got to have them. But the way they did Jedi in the first place was much better. You had to work hard to become a Jedi, it was not something that you just got one day. Which was fine. You had to master 5 professions and then the Jedi profession. Took some work, but they were there, and because of the hard work, there weren't a flood of Jedi. Needless to say, post-CU, the new Jedi's were hated by all, particularly those Jedi who did all the work to get there only to discover people were starting off as Jedi. 2.) The whole profession system was all screwed up. I don't know whether they tried to model it off of the way WoW and Everquest did it or what, but either way, it was the wrong move to take. Now instead of using profession points, you simply choose one of the premade professions, really unable to constantly switch things around to suit your interests. Much like in WoW where you choose to roll a Warrior, Priest, Warlock, etc, you now do basically the same thing in Galaxies. The profession system was one of my favorite things about the game...and they ruined it. 3.) Tied together with the profession system was the leveling system. The old way allowed you to level up one or more aspects of your professions at a time. The new way. You're now level 1 through whatever its capped at. From what I remember in the little bit I played post-CU, there wasn't much else to it. There is probably more, but it disgusted me so much, that if I played for more than 2 months, it was a long time. As bad as it was, they did keep some of the better things the same. The worlds were still vast. The battle between good and evil, Empire versus Rebels was still there and done relatively well. But those things, just couldn't make up for what Sony Online did to a once good MMO. Part of me has considered trying it out again, giving it a second chance, as I still have my account, but I just don't know. The game I played and enjoyed just went away. |
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| Moving Away from PC Gaming... October 05, 2007 1:06am in gaming |
| So with my heavy doses of Halo 3 lately, I've been thinking why I, and I'm sure others have sort of moved away from PC gaming. I'm trying to come up with reasons, because I used to have a lot of fun gaming with friends or even alone on various computer games including Battlefield Vietnam, Battlefield 2, Rise of Nations, Age of Empires 2, Neverwinter Nights, Half Life, and many others. And this was when I did have consoles to play on as well. Yet for maybe the last two years, I have not been playing much on the PC save for World of Warcraft. Most of my gaming has been on the consoles. I think the primary reason for my leaning towards playing on my consoles, most notably the XBOX 360, is probably XBOX Live. I have a fair amount of friends that I'm often playing with. XBOX Live features voice chat capabilities and is a lot easier to set up. In fact there actually is no real setup, just plug in and go. I mean you can always set up Ventrillo or TeamSpeak to talk with other players on PC, and some games are even building it into the game, so it's not completely impossible or even hard to do, but can at some points be harder to do than it is on the XBOX. PlayStation is pretty much the same way as the 360, plug in and go. I mean another reason some people do with consoles is the whole issue with hardware. With hardware, system requirements are always going up and the price to maintain hardware able to play the big games keeps adding onto the price of gaming. Versus with the consoles, you just pay a couple hundred and it lasts about 4 years give or take. No need for new hardware save for controllers breaking etc. All you need is to pay for are the games. Thats not so much the case for me. While I may not have a top-of-the-line desktop computer, the requirements are for most games met with some leeway for wiggle room. So why don't I play more PC games? I think I'm still trying to figure that one out. Maybe I should get back into it more, play some of the games I've neglected for a while. |
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| My Halo 3 Review October 04, 2007 11:35am in gaming |
 I have defied gods and demons I am your shield, I am your sword I know you, your past, your future This is the way the world ends Those words excited many Halo fans in July 2006 when they all got to see their first taste of Halo 3 at E3. Now, a little over a year since the first teaser, and almost 3 years since Halo 2, Halo 3 has come home to the excitement of many. So how does it stack up compared to the hype and expectations? SINGLE PLAYER **BEWARE SPOILERS*** I'll start with the single player campaign. New to the campaign is the ability to do online co-op. Now not only with 2 players, but with 4. This feature seemed to run very smoothly for me. The mic is always on so you can always talk and coordinate with your teammates. The biggest difference is that only one of the 4 players plays the only spartan...Master Chief of course. The other 3 play Elites, including the Arbiter. The campaign starts off almost where Halo 2 left off, although there is somewhat of a gap. You start off meeting the very familiar characters of Master Chief, the Arbiter, and of course Seargent Johnson. The Master Chief almost ends up killing the arbiter not realizing that the two of them are fighting for the same cause now. Like in Halo and Halo 2, you get right into the fight pushing through Grunts, Brutes, and the occasional Hunter. The enemy AI has overall gotten better. The Brutes fight in a dynamic group mentality, and the Grunts are still stupid, but do seem to surprise you with the occasional flank. Your allies AI I often see as being hit or miss, but still primarily good. When they miss, they look like idiots, but more often, they're on fire. I remember driving around on a Mongoose with a marine on the back with a rocket launcher. He was nailing ghost after ghost and was doing a great job against the Wraith tanks. The music in the campaign follows the quality of the music from Halo and Halo 2. The mood of the music ties in directly with what is going on in the game. The right music at the right times. The story is done well as I feel that it was in the previous 2 Halo games. It does a good job at finalizing the storyline. I still was disappointed at it. The game ends with the Master Chief and the Arbiter running for their life to escape the activated Halo ring. In a manner very similar to the ending in the original Halo by racing a warthog to the landed Earth ship Dawn. The playable part ends with you jumping the ship into Dawn's cargo bay. During your escape, Cortana says something like "I hope we make it". The Master Chief says "We will" and the screen goes black. The story continues with Lord Hood, the Arbiter, and several marines at a memorial in Africa honoring those who were lost. Before the Arbiter departs he has a conversation with Lord Hood. Lord Hood: "I can't believe he's gone" Arbiter: "Were it so easy" On that memorial is the number 117 scratched in. (For those that do not get the reference, the Master Chief is Spartan 117) If you were smart enough to watch the credits, you would find out that the Master Chief and Cortana are indeed alive. Part of the hull of Dawn broke off entering the portal. Cortana sets a distress beacon and the Master Chief enters Cryogenic Stasis after being warned that it could take "years" before they're found. The story finally ends with the Master Chief telling Cortana "Wake me if you need me". The story finalizes the Halo and Halo 2 stories quite well. While the ending was almost depressing, the storyline is pretty much complete. The Covenant was defeated, the Flood was contained and defeated, and Earth is saved. Unfortunately its not without its casualties. Sergeant Johnson is dead, Commander Keys is dead, and the Master Chief is believed dead. While somewhat disappointing, the campaign did a good job in finishing the story. There were two things that disappointed me. One was that the campaign was notably shorter than it was in Halo or Halo 2. Not a deal breaker, but I still wish there was more. The other thing was that the levels while large, seemed a lot more constrained than they were in the original Halo. Again, not a deal-breaker, but somewhat of a disappointment. All in all, the campaign was pretty solid. MULTIPLAYER  Despite being almost 3 years old, I still played Halo 2 on XBOX Live a fair amount of time, only surpassed by Rainbow Six Vegas of late. Halo 2 multiplayer was fun and fast-paced. Halo 3 lives up to expectations by far. I believe there are 10+ maps, new weapons, and of course, vehicles. The first thing I noticed is that the weapons have been rebalanced overall. The biggest notable is the energy sword. Yes, it's still there. But, here's the good news, its not quite as cheap as it used to be. The sword is no longer infinite. This means that after so many strikes, it runs out and acts more as a paperweight than a weapon. Also, the range for the lunge seems to be lessened, meaning you need to get closer to your target before the reticule turns red and you can lunge and strike. Something else that's interesting is that if two people have it and lunge at each other, the swords will collide and both parties will survive. I've done it like 6 times in a row with someone, our swords just kept interlocking and we kept surviving. Another notable is the Needler. The Needler is more powerful than it was in Halo 2, but no longer can you carry 2. It is now just a single wield weapon. The Battle Rifle I feel has also become a little more powerful per shot. To balance this, the firing rate seems to be a tad bit lower. The pistol is now back to half its former glory. It seems to be about as powerful as it was in the origingal Halo, but still no scope (sadly). A few new weapons have made it into the game, both in single player and multiplayer. The Spiker (standard Brute weapon, can be dual wielded), The gravity hammer (much like the sword), and a small shotgun like weapon (can be dual wielded, but seemingly not as powerful as the normal shotty) The vehicles are still there in some levels, and remain as fun as they always have been. They remain destructable as they were in Halo 2. The maps are done for the most part very well. Val Halla is the new Blood Gulch/Coagulation, the big fan favorite. And you have several recognizeable maps remembered from Halo 2. Overall I am very pleased with what Bungie has done with Halo 3. The matchmaking works very well with pairing you up with appropriate players. Servers are running notably smoother than those for Halo 2 thus far. And the veto feature is definitely a plus. If matchmaking sets you up with a gametype/map you don't like, press 'x' and veto the game. If over half the group vetoes, a new map/gametype is chosen. It's incredibly easy to start parties up to go into custom games or matchmaking, or even the single player co-op. There's even a shortcut button that brings up the XBOX sidebar for friends for easy access. In the end I was quite pleased with what Halo 3 brought to the multiplayer aspect. It's what I expected and more. They even listened to fans and made some custom gametypes that were popular in custom games, but previously unavailable in matchmaking. GRAPHICS The graphics are better than they were in Halo 2 and better than the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. They're actually pretty amazing. The best the XBOX 360 can offer? No, not at all, but they're still pretty good. the lighting is done pretty well and the world's look amazing. But again, not the best the 360 has to offer but still pretty damn good, and by no means a deal-breaker. WRAP-UP So, did Halo 3 live up to the hype? I would have to say the the multiplayer by all means did. In terms of the campaign? I don't think it lived up to they hype, although it did live up to what I expected of it. Overall, if you're a fan of the Halo series or just want a fun FPS, Halo 3 would be a good pick-up. Halo 3 doesn't revolutionize the FPS, it's fun and fast-paced, and what it does, it does well. Definitely a game that will get plenty of playing time and not get old, at least for me. |
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| Sick of This... September 28, 2007 1:37pm in gaming |
| I'm sick of so many Sony Fanboys bashing Halo trying to say it's a shitty game. It's not. It's one of my favorite games and probably one of the best around. (Notice I didn't say best, but its up there) Could Bungie have done things to improve Halo 3? Of course they could have. What video game could not be improved? But what Bungie has done with Halo 3, they have done very well. The campaign's story was finalized quite nicely, and the storyline is done very well over all 3 games. The multiplayer lives up to the hype. It's fun and fast-paced and the weapons seem to be better balanced. The music is nothing short of amazing, the right music at the right time. Halo 3 has the Forge and Theater and their matchmaking does a good job at pairing players. Sure you still can't change the gametype or map, but with the press of a button, you can vote to change the map and game type (get enough votes, the map and game type will change). The graphics, while admittedly not the best the 360 has to offer are still amazing and quite a step up from Halo 2 and even better than the Halo 3 beta. But still you see many people complaining about every stinkin' little thing in the game. Sony fanboys are the worst. Too caught up in their RPGs and Final Fantasies to even consider the fact that maybe Halo is a good game, just want to bash it for being Microsoft and not Sony. I myself probably fall close to a XBOX fanboy, but seldomly do I bash any of the other consoles or PS Exclusives. They either excite me or they don't. And for any of you wondering, I have a PS3, XBOX 360, and a Wii. |
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| It's Over... September 27, 2007 3:38pm in gaming |
| So, I ended up beating Halo 3 last night. Wasn't that long of a campaign which was kind of disappointing, they breezed over a lot of things that I think they should have spent more time on. It was still pretty good though. Did I play too much over the past 2 days? Probably, played all Tuesday evening and most of yesterday. The ending wasn't too bad. Shocked the hell out of me and made me think "did that really just happen?" I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might not have beaten it yet, so I'll leave it at that. I started my review of it last night and I'll probably finish that up tonight or tomorrow, or maybe the weekend, who knows. I'm happy about it yet I still feel empty like...it's over. Now I gotta freakin' wait to see if there will be a Halo 4 as the ending opened up the possibility. I kinda hope they do make a 4, I'd like to see more story. Multiplayer so far has been awesome, but I'll go into more detail of that in the review. I was kind of worried last night when I heard that XBOX Live was having issues because of the mass number of players signing on to play Halo 3, but I didn't see any problems whatsoever so who knows on that one. Playing Poker tonight so I probably won't be playing that much Halo, but we shall see. |
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