So I've spent a good deal of time playing the Halo: Reach beta. I'm not a long time Halo fan. In fact, 3 was the first game of the series in which I even took interest. I've had many complaints regarding the multiplayer of 3 and even the spirit of the multiplayer in the series. After seeing Reach first hand I'm somewhat disappointed that the steps needed to make Halo a serious multiplayer franchise have been neglected. The following are some of my comments/suggestions on the matter:

1. Players should only SPAWN WITHONE GRENADE. As there is already an abundance of grenades in both of the stages, players are hardly grenade starved. Matches (particularly capture the flag) become little more than grenade lobbing contests as logically players are going to use the attack to kill in one hit when they need to kill another player in a pitch. What I don't understand is why give players shields, if you are also going to have one shot kills? I have no problem with one shot kills; hell my favorite shooter is Rainbow Six Vegas 2, but pick a stance and stick to it.

2. WEAPON OPTIONS ON LOADOUT. This is pretty self explanatory as dozens of other shooters have been doing it for years. I find it annoying when playing that I'm constantly scrambling for the item or weapon which does the most damage. I can understand having the rocket launcher, grenade launcher or death beam guns spawn once a match and not give the players the option to loadout with them, but there is no reason every other gun shouldn't be fair game. It's ridiculous to have players wait by weapon spawns so that they can use their favorite gun. Let people have fun with certain limitations.

3. This brings me to my next point. DON'T HAVE EXPLOSIVE WEAPONS IN SMALL STAGES. Seriously, this should be easy to understand. If you have tiny rooms (ie Powerhouse) please don't give idiots the chance to kill everyone in said room because they were lucky enough to spawn closer to the "kill everyone in the room with one shot" weapon.

4. BUFF THE ASSAULT RIFLE. When you have game where a player can easily pick up a weapon that will 3 shot or 1 shot another player, why would they use the weapon they spawn with that takes an entire freaking clip to kill someone? This further turns the game into a scramble for weapons littered about the area of the map. Other games stopped doing weapon scrambles about 10 years ago; pick up the pace.

This is the meat of my suggestions for now. I'll come back to it if anything profound strikes me.

I looked today and was surprised.

Nothing like spending 5 hours a day in a virtual world full of people looking to "hook up" and being subjected to an endless barrage of advertising from Sony's sponsors. I was actually looking forward to a virtual lobby which would break the boundries of social gaming. Too bad Sony made HOME, instead.

... so that game isn't at all what I expected/hoped it would be. Lets review a little first on some of the key things which made the Resident Evil series special:

I. Moody, aptmospheric environments which are usually dark and could obscure any number of creepy things ready to pounce at a moments notice.

II. Survivalism in gameplay. Specifically making the player choose whether to expend valuable ammo or run and live to see another day. This creates tension and further signifies the series as "horror" based.

III. Slow paced, deliberate story telling which allows players to opt in their exploration to collecting files which further flesh out the nuanced story of the game.

Now lets look at Resident Evil (action packed super blockbuster state of the art graphics thrillride 3rd person shooter) 5. Well that gets most of it. Another list, this time of things I noticed and dissappointed me whilst playing RE5.

I. Nonstop action which does not give the player a choice between fight or flight. Every area has a fight in it. The fights are predictable and detracts from the (is something going to get me?) aspect of previous Resident Evil titles. In short, yes, things will get you. They will be obvious, easy to predict, and constantly there.

II. Co-operative gameplay. Another genius move by Capcom to make Resident Evil 5 just another second rate 3rd person shooter. If you play solo, enjoy having an ai partner who will consistantly take damage, move to the wrong area and squander every item (and bullet) you give them. If playing on co-op, you completely lose the feeling in previous titles of dread in which things may be ready to destroy you within moments. Having your partner at your side gives you the comforting feeling that everything will be just fine as you blow mutants to kingdom come. You can also forget about the story, because like every other co-operative game, its a competition to see who can kill the most. Story would just get in the way of gameplay. Would you really sit and read a file while your friend gets all the glory?

III. Bright, linear and cliched environments. Secret laboratory? You got it! Ancient ruins with mirror puzzles? As awkward and trite as you remember!

I might also add that gameplay has never been one of the finer qualities of the Resident Evil series. Action has not been the focus. Even Resident Evil 4 had the player choose their battles. It has always been more of an experience of adventure rathter than action. However, when Capcom switches the focus to a standard 3rd person shooter (with a few collectables) they may want to consider changing the gameplay formula a little bit from RE4's stand and shoot policy. In 4 players were not faced with bum-rushes of enemies all the time. In such few sequences where having a strafe may have been warranted, the game compensated by giving players a way to trick or delay the enemy so that they could fall back and continue shooting. However, in Resident Evil 5, the player is consistently jumped from all sides by enemies who attack rather immediately with no real way of getting out of the fray and thinning out the ranks. It becomes rather frustrating as the player is constantly running, pulling off a few shots and running again, usually backing themselves into a corner. There are simply too many things to fight from too many directions to keep the player from getting cheap shotted. Ultimately, this game should have contained a strafe feature.

Does anyone agree or are we still easily oo'ed and ahh'ed by fancy shading, textures and shiny bullets?

So I played Orange Box and Portals is by far the only thing actually worth playing. I was tired of how overrated Halo is and whenever I complain about it people agree with me and recommend Half Life 2... which I've learned is actually much worse. So I stuck it out and finished Half Life 2 and Episode 1 and got half way through Episode 2 when I was getting so incredbly bored with the dull physics puzzles, incredibly stupid enemy ai, the ridiculous story that even puts "Wally Bear and the NO! Gang" to shame that I dropped the controller and moved on.

Seriously, what in the world do people see in Half Life 2? It's not exciting, even remotely. The areas seem to linger on much longer than they should with no real "action" happening. I'm not a "PRO" fps player but I even found the difficulty laugably easy. I can easily just charge in and mow everything down then wait another 15 to 20 minutes for the story to happen a bit, go on a little jog, solve another stupidly done physics puzzle and mow down another set of enemies. At least Halo 3 kept me occupied with *shudder* ACTION. Won't find much of that in Half Life 2. I don't know if Half Life 1 is bad but I've had enough with these over rated FPS games. I could go on but Gamespot has a language filter....

... whenever I get to thinking that I spent almost 30 dollars going to the theater to see Spiderman 3 good god that movie was awful. More to come on that.

^topic^

I just posted up mah review of Mega Man Zx.

-Check This Out-

  For all of you lovely chaps who occassionally visit my profile, I am still alive and still stealing internet from my neighbors. I'm also motivating myself to update my website sometime in the forseeable future.
  Plus also, I'm going to be writing 398745 reviews again for those of you with taste. So far my list is (more so I don't forget than anything):
Tekken 5
Street Fighter Alpha Max
Contact
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Mega Man Zx
  Plus more when I think of them. Lemme know if you have any suggestions.

Love to all of you wonderful people on the innernet,
Geusprime

...for Star Ocean 2 so I'm going to direct you to the unedited version. Remember to rate me up if you read my reviews so I can get a cool Gamespot badge because that gives me self-esteem because virtual awards are the only thing that keeps my head out of the oven.
-k thx <3

P.S. Seriously click the link I'm in college for this crap. I write good reviews :P


My Star Ocean 2 Review