Level 50 (4%) Rank: Strawberry Candy

 

 

 

 

 

Gamespot has changed how users level up. Instead of gaining XP for browsing the site, browsing the forums and watching vids, now the only way is to check the main page once a day or post comments on the forums/stories/blogs.

This is how you can level up now:

Visiting a GameSpot.com page while logged in: 500 XP (can be earned once a day)
Commenting on a story: 20 XP
Posting in a forum thread: 20 XP
Creating a new comment thread: 30 XP
Posting a user blog: 100 XP
Earning an emblem/achievement: 50 XP
Rating a game: 10 XP
Following a game: 10 XP
Being followed by another user: 100 XP

Most of the time I don't reply to the forum posts unless I have something to add.. I guess we'll see a lot more spamming done. Not that it really matters. I don't think anyone cares about the levels anymore.

It's that time of year where our wallets will be hurting. Steam is having their annual Summer Sale!

I'm trying to be very picky about what I buy as my backlog is still huge.. however this is what I've picked up so far:

Half Life Complete - I owned every HL related game back in Australia. However since moving to the US all my discs are back in Aus. It's nice to be able to run through the class HL, expansions and sequels which will sit in my back log until I find the time. For $9.99 it was pretty hard to resist getting so many games.

Portal Bundle - For $6 I get Portal and Portal 2? Yes please! I played a bit of Portal 2 on PS3 and thought it was awesome. Now I have both finally. I've wanted to pick them up for ages, and what a bargain price! Portal 2 alone is more than $20 in stores.

Pay Day - It was $5 and a mate picked it up. Looks interesting so I thought why not.

I'm now hoping Metro wins the vote and becomes 75% off. It's another game i've wanted for a long time and it's over $20 in stores on 360.. for $5 on PC.. it's a must buy!

What have you all bought so far?

It's that time of year again.. sadly a few developers/publishers stated they won't be at E3 this year.. so that means no more news about the next GTA.

As for the conferences, well once again MS talked about Kinect. They started off with Halo 4 which looked pretty sweet. Overall it wasn't that interesting to me. Fable Journey really doesn't look any good and I'm not sure why they would put that trailer in.

Sony, by far the best of the show.. as usual. Sony seems to know what we gamers want.. and thats news about GAMES! Beyond looks very interesting, the new God of War is going to have fans going nuts with it's multiplayer. I'd heard rumors about them possibly mentioning Agent, but that wasn't even hinted at. Sony showed off some nice footage of upcoming games and looks like I have a few more games to preorder now.

Nintento.. ahh Nintendo. The WiiU looks very interesting. The new tablet controller looks great. The only thing I don't like is having to hold the controller up in front of the tv which blocks your view.. like in the game ZombieU. Looks great using it to access your inventory but when I need to scan an area and can't see the tv, I can't see that zombie that just popped up and is munching on my face. The graphics also looked pretty horrible. Why even bother going HD if your not going to make the games look good? OF course I'm talking about the games that will be on WiiU that are currently on other systems.. like the Assassins Creed games. If you have a next gen console, it can't look worse than current gen systems. I'm not sure why Nintendo wants to copy PSHome at this stage.. everything seems to be about social networking. As gamers, we just want to play games. Sure, sometimes we want to play with each other. That doesn't mean I want you to spend all your time working on Miiverse instead of focusing on making games look and play well and making a system that can actually compete with the others already on the market, as well as future systems.

I really don't want to sound to negative about E3 this year.. so far there are some fantastic games coming out. However I want to see what developers are doing with their awesome games. I want to see where these big companies are looking to create things that will actually be used and enjoyed. If I was interested in social networking I would be on facebook instead of watching E3. Maybe I am alone in this. Maybe I'm the only one who wants to sit on my couch, grab a controller and blow something up. Maybe everyone else wants to sit in a cartoony carnival setting and have people type in speech bubbles about how cool those cartoon fireworks look.

Battlefield 3 has announced it's premium.. which was pretty sad since when it was announced COD would have an elite subscription they said they'll never do anything like that. However while they did decide to do a premium charge, you do get a LOT of content and it is cheaper to buy premium and get the expansions that way than buying them indiviually. The only downside is.. what about those that already have Back to Karkand? Most people already have it and you get that with the premium. Anything that gets more people playing Battlefield 3 is a great thing.. since it really is a fantastic game.

Now on to the live shows.. I'm really hoping to see some Company of Heroes 2 footage or get some extra info on it.

Oh and if anyone missed seeing the AC3 footage, go check it out. Being able to control the ship made me think of Sea Dogs. It's going to be amazing. Now I need to find something to keep me awake so I can watch the live shows.

It seems that people just don't have any patience anymore. I know people seem to always be in a hurry to get where they are going, and most people live very stressful lives but it has become pretty ridiculous. You hear (and sometimes see) road rage. People will actually get out of their cars and start a fight over stupid things.

The last two times ive pulled into my driveway i've had idiots behind me who for some reason expect me to pull into my driveway at 40mph without slowing down. Rather than go around me, they sit right on my tail. The first guy even stuck his finger up at me for slowing down before pulling in. Now i dont come to a full stop or anything cause that would be pointless.

Everyone can have road rage at times, thats understandable. When someone goes 20 under the limit and your late, you'd obviously going to get annoyed. But would you get angry and stick your finger up at someone just because they turned into their driveway?

People need to learn to relax. Stress is only going to kill people at an earlier age. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not wasted rushing around for things that are (most of the time) not even that important.

Even dogs have patience.

Seems to be a habit of mine, i make blogs when E3 comes around and not in between.

So the MS conference just finished and wow.. just wow. All kinect games. Great for kinect owners? Not really. Unless your a 5 year old who loves seasame street, wants more sport and dance games or prefers on rail shooters compared to COD, BF, Gears etc. Most people in the chat were laughing their heads off. MS really did fail bigtime this year.

Highlights were MW3 (which was a great way to start and made the conference look promising). Ghost Recon: Future Soldier looks incredible and at the end a really short trailer for Halo 4. Not sure why they announced it as being a new trilogy coming to 360? Everything else was garbage. Next up.. EA Conference.

This is what you get for watching it.

MS Conference.. as in my last blog, HUGE disappointment. Only a few games shown at the start followed by watching them tell us they have something all new and fantastic when its exactly the same as WiiFit and WiiSports. EA Conference, the best yet! FANTASTIC job EA! You showed off some stunning games that are heading our way. With trailers, gameplay footage and even live gameplay.. today it was the only thing worth watching as it showed what we are all here for.. and thats GAMES! Ubisoft.. was just more Kinetic stuff primarily.. wasn't all that impressed. Zone 3 and Laser Zone has been around for many many years now.. why bring out a couple guns and tell us its new technology when its been around for years? Are we meant to really be that stupid? Not as bad as MS Conference but it was primarily focussed towards MS's Kinetic gimmick. On the spot.. what the... seriously... i don't know what this was. All they keep showing is pointless things.. champagne room, beer room, pole dancing zombie stripper, sushi, another pole dancing stripper, gambling, another pole dancing stripper, more gambling, standing around doing nothing for 5+ mins waiting for an interview.. then asking pointless questions like "so your taking a night off tonight" and "so tomorrow your back to work".. we want to see the game, stop wasting our time with crap and show us more footage of the game. Big disappointment. The host clearly didn't want to be there with the strippers, and thats all the camera man seemed to want to look at. So far only EA seems to understand that we are watching cause we want to know about the GAMES! I should commend the host Jane.. she clearly didn't want to be there and yet did the best she good. So thankyou for trying. It didn't seem like GS was aware it was going to be more of a party party with people drinking, gambling and perving on pole dancers. It looked as though Jane was just thrown out there and had to try to find something to give us info about. There didn't seem to be any plan, just walking around asking people about the game. Great job anyway, it must not have been easy. Maybe GS needs to rethink their strategy plan for the future. Usually in the past there has been proper interviews that were pre organised.. maybe that will come tomorrow. Only time will tell.

I dont think ive ever been quite as disappointed during a conference.. they showed only a few games at the start.. MGS: Rising looks interesting. Cant wait to see how it turns out. After they showed off a few games the rest of the show was all on Kinetic. I was in the GS chat, and everyone has similar views. No one cared, we all wanted to see some games. NATAL is the project name, Kinetic is the product name. They had some girl showing everyone how you can watch movies with other people on the Xbox over Live.. why would i want to do that? She spent a few minutes talking about her family.. who cares? Each person that got up on stage seemed to blab about things that had no relation to the game or product they were there to show. They proceeded to show a few Kinetic "games".. All they were was WiiSports and WiiFit for the Xbox360. Then a Dancing game and you could walk around a car.. and even sit in it.. wow. Im sorry, but who wants to sit in a car? Lets RACE the car.. but no, that was just sitting in it. They finally showed a game you race.. holding your arms up holding an invisible steering wheel.. imagine a long race, your arms would get pretty tired. The people that got up were all incredible bad actors.. one of whom needed a shave desperately and wore dark sunglasses with shaggy hair making him look hungover. At the very end they showed off their new XBox360.. its smaller, its "faster" (provided your modem, router and internet provider will allow that speed) and it looks just like the PS3.. there were hardly any claps or applause from the audience. Until the end.. when they turned around and said they were giving a free Xbox to each of them.. the whole thing was just sad. They make the audience clap at the end by giving them a free new Xbox. Its as though they already knew their conference was horrible. Not to mention every single thing that was shown involving Kinetic seemed to be scripted and they could have found better actors if they randomly chose someone from the audience and let them just read the script on stage. Next up is the EA Conference.. can't be any worse than what we just saw.. and at least we will finally see some GAMES! That is after all what we watch E3 for. I hope you do better next year MS.. i was very disappointed with what should have been a huge conference. There is so many upcoming titles that could have been shown off, and to focus on ONE single thing for the entire conference is pretty bad. Its just a gimmick, everything it can do is already done on the Wii. Unless your a 9 year old girl that wants to pet a tiger.. in which case you could have just bought a Tamagotchi 15 years ago for a few dollars.

Wow time flies! Its already time for E3.. and first off the MS Conference has been delayed for 30 minutes. It should have started by now, so we can just sit back and wait for the "buffering" to stop and the image to come up.. unless its delayed again. Ive heard the conference has in fact started on other sites but GS hasn't started streaming.. they'll have it going soon though. Its the same every year and missing out on 5 minutes is worth all the coverage they give us, the interviews, previews etc. Several of us are in a chat here: http://tinychat.com/ts0cha0tik Will be there after the conference discussing it if anyone cares to join.

I bought Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. I've finally finished the campaign, that last mission is hard.. trying to take out the AA vechiles in time seemed to cause a headache. The actual last part, clearing and securing the Naval Base was actually easier even though there were a LOT more enemies. Im now replaying it on hardcore, and collecting a couple extra trophies.

I bought Saints Row 2 recently and have spent a lot of time playing through it. I've almost finished the game and it really is a surprise hit! I picked it up cheap, its in those "hot hits" titles. Ive heard many people comment about how its "what GTAIV should have been". While the graphics aren't quite as pretty as GTAIV, the content is FAR superior! Everything they took out of the GTA series is in SR2, with a heap of extra goodies! Character customisation, more weapons, more vechiles, a lot more side missions, property to buy, more "safe houses" to purchase.. you can save at any point in the game which is really awesome when you have to stop playing suddenly and dont have 5 minutes spare to drive across the map to save. The story is actually pretty good too. The game doesn't have trophies, but that shouldn't stop anyone who missed out on picking this one up. I've almost finished the story, but i still have a lot of side missions to go back and do.. the ones i have done are a very fun. Zombie Uprising.. is a blast too! If it had more maps, or arenas it could almost be a game of its own. The humour in this game is also something that GTAIV seemed to miss out on quite a bit. Not to say that GTAIV is a bad game, cause i seem to be one of the few who still says that i really like GTAIV! (a lot of people seem to have jumped on the anti-GTAIV bandwagon as if its cool to say they hate a game that they previously said they love). SR2 just seems to have more content, more humour and is a more "fun" game.

Damnation, silly me.. i bought this game. I mistook it for another game of another title. Luckily i got it cheap, but still.. STAY AWAY! FAR AWAY! Im forcing myself to play through it.. the more i play, the more i find it isn't quite as bad as i first thought.. but it still is not worth buying. If anything, rent. Its a futuristic western setting.. that might make you curious. Dont be. The style is an odd Gears of War type, its third person platformer/shooter.. think Uncharted with far worse graphics, take out the fun, exploration and incentive to play. The cutscenes aren't any good, the weapons are.. bland. The voice acting is the worst ive heard in a game in a long time. The worst is just how long missions go for.. seriously, what were they thinking? I played on and off for 4 hours, and im only up to mission three! The missions seem to go on and on and on and on and on. This wouldn't be a bad thing if they were broken up more. Instead of having 6 or so missions that go for 2 hours.. they should have had more missions that were broken up. the insane length just makes things frustrating, since generally you'll want to finish a mission before taking a break.. not here. I found myself pausing the game and taking a break. Especially in areas that dont really give you much direction to go in and so you get lost. Most of what ive played is linear, you know where to go since you have no other options. There are some places you'll find yourself feeling a bit lost and pretty much everything looking the same. You get a "spirit vision" that lets you see all enemies in the area, even behind walls. I dont know what the point of this is.. either its because you seem to go into an area, kill all enemies, do a "vehicle section" or a platform section", then you arrive and the next area to clear all enemies. Rinse & repeat.. over and over. The game offers nothing new, is rather tedious, very ugly and other than the interesting cover i can't see why anyone would get this game.. unless you were after some easy trophies, in which case you would rent it. Sadly i thought the game was another one.. one of the other Western themed games that was released not too long ago (still can't remember the name of it hehe). I have learnt my lesson though, i will make sure i know exactly what the game is and what its like before buying it. I got lucky with Saints Row 2 and a lot of previous purchases and since i did pick this one up cheap it doesn't feel too bad. I will finish it, but it will be a long struggle. Hopefully i'll get lucky and it'll get better as i play more in.

FEAR2: Another game i picked up very cheap and was the only copy they had. I have the first game on PC and thought it was ok.. the graphics and battles were awesome, the story and "scare factor" i felt were very below par. Hoping the sequel has a better story, but since the original had some intense gun battles, i thought it was worth the price to have some fun with those again.

I haven't played much of Bioshock, it seems ok.. i'll get through it eventually, too many other games keeping me busy. Same goes for COD: Modern Warfare 2. I finished it, plan on playing through on the hardest difficulty and playing more online, but have been too busy with the above titles.

There seems to be some debate going on, a lot of people like COD:MW2 over Op Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.. to those people i say this.. of course thats what you prefer. Your the type that wants to blow stuff up. You want to run in, rack up your kills and then laugh while you call in a gunship or airstrike and watch big explosions and wins you the round. Op Flashpoint is NOT a standard FPS game. You can't run around killing everything in sight as you charge through emptying round after round into your enemy. For started its not a corridor shooter. You towards your enemy firing and you wont hit anything, and if the target doesn't shoot you, one of his buddies who is on your flank will. The game requires you to think, plan and then act. Use your squad (better yet, play online and work as a team with other humans). Use tactics to defeat your enemy. Lure them into an ambush, use vehicles and out manouver them. Sit back and pop off a few, use your squad to supress them while you flank, or simply call in an air strike, artillery or roll in with a tank (and hope they dont have any anti tank weapons). You will take down enemies, you will need to search their bodies for extra ammo or weapons. This is more of a military simulator rather than a standard FPS game. If you played the original, you'll have some idea what is on offer. The game doesn't offer nearly as much as the original in terms of content.. as many say, it does feel dumbed down for consoles. That doesn't mean its a bad game. It just means that if your playing it after the original on PC you might feel a bit ripped off. If your playing it on console, and playing it knowing what the game is meant to be, then you will love it. Its currently my favourite PS3 title to date.