jsmoke03 / Member

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jsmoke03 Blog

Finally finished gta4

i know i'm one of the last ones that finished the game, and i must say that it was a great experience. i've never been the type to finish long games quickly but i did most of the missions,aside from the assasins and the side missions like random character and races/vigilante,etc...

if i were to review this game, i would give it a 9 out of 10. Gta 4 has a great story. I think one of the all time best crime stories,because it has social consciousnes. It had a really good story with lots of compelling twists. By the end,i was really eager to kill of its villains,though i didn't expect the revenge ending to end quite the way it did.

some of the characters were great. These characters,especially nikko bellic, drew me in, and actually made me care. The supporting cast was equally strong with brucie and packie.

gameplay,though flawed, fared much better than previous gta games. the cover system really polished the missions up and made them fun. the varied missions were great and it gave enough change of paces for me to enjoy good firefights because those missions didn't always happen.

still hate the handling of the vehicles. its still beyond frustrating. animation is still lacking and the last island felt like it should have been the 2nd island unlocked. wish they kept some of the previous elements from other gta games like in san andreas.

don't exactly know what game i should dedicate myself 2. I'm still playing cod4. i might go back to 2 games at a time. Maybe one short game and one long game. an rpg and an action adventure. Or maybe i should just get into assasins creed (not sure how long that game is) and an fps. or i can go one game for every console that i have. having a job and school slowed my gaming habbits by a lot so i'm looking to catch up on finishing more games.

Game Impressions # 6

I finally got Metal Gear solid 4!!! after a long wait, i finally got it. and here is what i think.

metal gear solid 4-if the first 2 hours of gameplay is only scratching the surface, i can't wait to dive deeper. It really is an amazing start to a game. I was a little sceptical about how great this game looks but as soon as i experienced it for myself, i was in awe. This is where all ps3's graphics should start. if more games look like this...the cell would be more respected. Gameplay wise, i found this to be a better mgs than the others i have played. Im not patient sometime and this game doesn't force me to play that way, which stealth more fun for me. It gave me a chance to be a little reckless (which i am in all fps). This story is super epic. I cant get over the fact that i feel like i'm watching a masterpiece. it trully is an experience...a unique one at that.

grand theft auto 4-im finally @ about 45% completion with the third city unlocked. The storyline is progressing fine but some missions have annoyed me. The car/bike chase missions came back (which i hate since driving physics is irritating) It still is fun, but i think my quest in completing every mission frim every contact, that im missing out on a lot of aspects of the game. i don't really just cruise and experience mayhem (i never was) and after seing eastern promises (a dope movie!) i kind of wish this storyline couldve been incorporated in gta4. i always like the mafia aspect or territory take over (gta:Sa) rather than being an errand boy. all in all, the game is still up there.

call of duty 4-internet connection has been solid so ive actually had time to play it for more than 30 minutes. i'm finally at level 51 and my kill ratio has raised from .79 to .84 in a matter of 2 days. this is really a good game. awesome multiplayer! i found the perfect perks for my playstyle.

either : ak-47/red-dot sight/bandolier/stopping power/deep impact

ak-47/silencer/bandolier/uav jammer/dead silence

i'm having fun rite now. hopefully i'm gonna get to my 1st prestige soon if i find some time in the mornin before work

pretty short blog, but these are times where i sleep soo much more that i don't game much

ok re-assesing budget

i'm about to start soon so i'm going to have to scale things back since i'm going part time. my list of games i have to budget for is getting bigger and bigger thanks to soo many awesome games coming out from sony.

Games that have already been released that i plan to pick up.

PC

  • world in conflict (picked up)
  • crysis

gc

  • legend of zelda-twilight princess (picked up)

Ps2

  • dragonquest 8 (picked up)

Ps3

  • heavenly sword
  • uncharted
  • resistance
  • devil may cry 4
  • battlefield:bad company
  • soul calibur 4
  • gran turismo 5 prologue (picked up)

when i buy xbox360

  • mass effect
  • lost oddysey
  • forza 2
  • gears 1
  • gears 2

when i buy a psp

  • tekken dark resurection
  • crisis core
  • da gta stories
  • kingdom hearts game

Games that i want that are set to be released

Ps3

  • Star wars:force unleashed (picked up)
  • little big planet (picked up)
  • brothers in arms:hell's highway
  • fallout 3
  • resident evil 5
  • farcry 2 (picked up)
  • killzone 2
  • resistance 2
  • call of duty:worlds at war (picked up)
  • tekken 6
  • infamous
  • fracture
  • gran turismo 5
  • white knght story
  • final fantasy xiii
  • heavy rain
  • team ico game
  • la noire
  • 8 days
  • mafia 2
  • prince of persia
  • street fighter 4
  • mag
  • mirrors edge

hahaha thats a lot of games right? well i want a lot but well see which outs i pick up and which ones i don't. but this is my official budget list. i'm going to try my hardest not to go buy if its not on this list

pics of my collection

i decided to post pix of my collection. most of them that i don't have got robbed or traded in. this is what i spend my hard earned money on so mite as well show em off. Its not as impressive as others (especially ccu) but i'm happy with it

UNOFFICIAL top games that i've played version 1.0

as i posted a couple of months ago i am going to have a top ten games list. This isn't the official list. I want to do a top 100 but thats going to take years. I'm still waiting to purchase older systems for later. I'm thinking i should break it down to top 10 of genres then pick from there or whatever. Nonetheless, here is my unofficial list soo far of the games i enjoyed and loved. Its version 1.0 and like i said before, besides the top 2, the list will get revised BIG TIME.

  1. Star Wars Knights of the Old republic 2-xbox
  2. Counter-strike (pre 1.6)-pc
  3. Shining force-Genesis
  4. Star Wars Knights of the Old republic-xbox
  5. Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas-ps2
  6. Final Fantasy X-ps2
  7. Command and Conquer-pc
  8. Final Fantasy 7-ps1
  9. Tekken 2-ps1
  10. Call of Duty 4-ps3
  11. Tekken 5-ps2
  12. Streets of Rage 2-Genesis
  13. Age of Empires 2-pc
  14. Call of Duty-pc
  15. Gran Turismo-ps1
  16. Killer Instincts-snes
  17. God of War-ps2
  18. Gran Turismo 3-ps2
  19. Battle City-nes
  20. Top Gear-snes
  21. Fight Night Rd. 3-ps2
  22. Grand Theft Auto 3-ps2
  23. TMNT 2-nes
  24. Jade Empire-xbox
  25. MVP BASEBALL 04-ps2

pretty crazy list huh? hahahaha a lot of games rushed through my head as i was compiling this. I think i should devise some kind of way to organize my list. i have to factor times spent playing the game and addiction, so thats why you see fighting and sports games. like i said version 1. i still have plenty of games i have to get through. shoot i can do a top 226 games of all time, but i honestly haven't played all of em enough. I'm also trying to think about some of the games that i played back in the genesis/nes era. oh well its an ok list as of right now, but some of the games that i have yet to complete in my library and the ones i haven't been thinking about wil make it on there.

EDIT: there are games that i thought about that i need to put down before i forget. they definitely belong in this list somewhere but im tired so this will be in v.1.1

royal rumble-snes*super mario bro-nes*legend of kage-nes*x-men-genesis*sf2-snes*excite bike-nes*resident evil-ps1*prince of persia:sands of time-ps2*devil may cry 1-ps2*nfl football staring joe montana-genesis*mortal kombat 1 through 3* contra-nes*tetris-gb* pokemon:yellow-gbc

feel free to comment.

Game Impressions #5 (Tekken 6-yes i played it)

Like i promised in the last blog, i finally beat call of duty 3. i know its been 2 weeks since i posted the blog, but i really don't have time to play as much as i did, plus i've been having steady internet connections so i've been playing a lot of call of duty 4.

Call of Duty 3- well nothing really changed with my impression of this game. last time i stopped playing, i had about 4 stages left to finish before the end of the game. The story telling here really got stale. Jumping from one army/company scenario did not make it apparent that they had a collective effort. The british/french missions felt stupid. The Canadian/Polish missions at the end made a connection with the U.S. missions, but only at the very end. The stages didn't feel any different from the first. the chaos associated with ending or final stages wasn't apparent in this game. The intense action of the last stage happened for 2 minutes. The rest of the time i unknowingly stumbled upon checkpoints without encountering much action. I liked the little ending, though it may be a bit cliche. All in all, i give it a solid 7. Despite all its flaws and mediocrity, i love ww2 shooters. though this is more of the bottom rung, i couldve done worse. hope cod:worlds at war would be a better paced game. More action and more connected story (though i doubt it since its not all in the pacific theatre)

Tekken 6- I know there hasn't been any announcement of this game coming to the ps3 nor is it supposed to be out in north american arcade, but fortunately for me, the arcade next to my college has it. I went in thinking im going to play some t5:dr but instead saw tekken 6. Well from the $3 worth of coins i spent, this game is going to be awesome. This might not get the 9.0 score because it plays the same as the previous games (retraction, pls see edit). The tweeks you might notice comes from char specific. didn't really get to try out the new guys since i played 2 other guys. from what i can tell you though is leo and miguel (esp miguel) are pretty bad ass characters. juggles are still there and ive only tried a couple of juggles from christy and dragunov. The graphics weren't what i expected. The backgrounds were gorgeous but the character models lacked detail. They looked too plastic like. Comparing it to the skin textures of vf5, i'd still say vf5 is better. sound is still familiar, and the background music was forgettable for me anyway. all in all a good game. its one i'm going to be looking forward 2. hope they announce something soon.

edit: while i was writing this down i couldn't help but be bugged about my opponent who used miguel. he juggled me to death but while i was on the floor, he hit me and continued his juggle. i thought it was odd but figured it was just specific to his character making him easily top tier. BUT I WAS WRONG. with further investigation to tekkenzaibatsu.com (the best tekken site ever) there are 2 new major gameplay additions. the bound and rage system. bound system is what i was talking about with the miguel opponent. its a move someone can do that will cause a person to be slammed to the ground and bounce up, which means it continues the juggle and ups the damage. the other is rage system. its a balance tweak to make matches more exciting. When a person is near defeat (5% life bar ) where the character gets red shadows,which make his attacks (Except for throws and wall hits and some other things) more damaging. these 2 new additions really adds a great deal to the mix so i retract anything i said above that involves gameplay.

Tekken 5:dark resurection ps3- i coincidentally bought this game a couple of days before i played tekken 6, which kind of helped with my rust. graphics are ugly. i don't think this is a perfect port of the arcade version and i thought the original t5 looked better. the gameplay felt familiar and it is balanced. the online matches i had were unstable and the main reason why i lost twice. its solid and worth the bargain price.

college hoops 2k8-i had a high expectation from this game based on nba2k8, but i was seriouslly wrong here. this game is nowhere near its nba2k8 bretherein. the graphics look soo much worse than 2k8. I'm not talking about the faces, which i thought were better than the nba2k8 created players, but the whole graphics looked dull. the animations were spot on, but it really looked muddled. I know the college game plays differently from the nba game, but this is ridiculous. The standard set zone coupled with the cheesy cpu ai, where centers can guard pg's, made penetrating damn near impossible. I couldnt drive and kick in this game. The ratings of even the guards from arizona wildcats made me feel like i was controlling a bench warmer. The user team's defensive ai is laughable. I don't know how many times my players got mixed up in rotating a zone. its like they didn't know what a zone is. This lead to many open 3's for the cpu since my guys don't stay in their zone or simply gave too much cushion to people i wanted guarded tightly. The legacy mode is 2 daunting and i'm not sure how to get the most out of my recruitment chores. I haven't given up on this game, but it really is an unpolished game imo.

i'm going to put gta4 back in rotation and hopefully get somewhere with the og mgs game on ps1.

game impressions #4

so after kingdom hearts 2 i decided to finally immerse myself in gta 4, and i tried out a couple of my newly purchased ps3 games.

gta4-i've finally unlocked the 2nd city. The missions have been suprisingly action packed. some missions have really good action sequences due to the new gun fighting mechanics. its not gears of war, but its a great evolution. some characters are off the wall funny. i love the dynamic of nikko and brucie. im not quite hooked yet, but its getting there. One downside is that the character names don't quite fit the character. it puts me off, but other than that, gta4 is a great game.

call of duty 3- played a couple of missions and its not great, but it was better than i anticipated. the dialogues don't seem convincing enough for me, but its a good try. Better dialogue or better delivery from the voice acting may spice it up a bit, but for now its really forgettable. missions are standard and feel easy. the level design's are pretty standard and nothing new was really brought to the table from its predecessors (not comparing it do cod4). its a really solid game and treyarch did an admirable job. they are no infinity ward, but they didn't make a dissapointing game.

virtua fighters5- i've gotten the last three games but i seriously am still a noob at this game. its still a stiff learning curve. a lack of different modes make this game less fun for me. its not a bad game, but it really is a hard game to master. the only strategy i can see is get the quickest fighter and try to outpunch or outjab the opponent. i know theres more to it than that but its the only thing thats worked for me soo far. i'm more of a tekken player so maybe i play too much tekken to be a good judge of this game. the graphics are really sweet and the animation is as fluid as ever. this is probably going to be my last vf purchase unless my playing skills get an epiphany.

elder scrolls oblivion-i didn't have enough time to get a really good impression of the gameplay but it plays much better than morrowind because it feels more accesible. the graphics are gorgeous and the story is more intriguing.

i'm probably going to finish cod3 hopefully before my next blog post and hopefully get more things accomplished with gta4. til next time folks

gaming impressions 3: finished kingdom hearts 2

ok so im not going to talk about anything other than kingdom hearts 2. this isn't a review (been laggin on a new format) but my final impressions of a game without spoilers.

i ended up finishing the game with 85% completition. it really surprised me since it wasn't my plan to complete a lot of side quests. so im guessing that there isnt as many side quest stuff to deal with. leveling up was a breeze, and i got to level 50 without even trying hard to grind,which was good. in the end sora felt like a really good hero, which i thought didn't happen in kh1.

the end really was abrupt. it didn't have the same challenge, or even the same feel. i don't know if that was just me,but i expected a little bit more content before the end.

the last couple of boss fights were cheesy. since the combat was soo easy, there were 2 or 3 minutes where the bosses couldn't get hit whatsoever. it was a compensation and it felt they were milking it before the inevitabie defeat they were going to face. all this is weird because it really wasn't that difficult so i have to wonder why they couldn't have tweeked it in the middle.

the story finally tied things up, though i don't think it even compared to one of the chapters in hollow bastion. it isn't to say that the ending was bad, because it actually was pretty good, but the story couldn't have gotten better without getting more epic and tacking on more things to the story. the story just isn't as tight as it was in kh1.

there were a lot of positives to get out of this game, but it would have been better if kh2 story really stayed up to par with the other improvements. of the top of my head, this would fall under 7.5-8.3. man i have soo many reviews i want to write. but i'm 2 busy for em. oh well i'll get to it eventually.

so now im going try to start with the mgs series. also need to get crackin with gta4. i'm purposely taking my time. there is something about that game thats missing for me. i'm not hooked yet. its fun but its not wow. but then again gta:sa was the only gta that gave me the wow factor. til next time

working and purchases

ok so ive been working a lot lately. i havent really had a chance to spend a lot of times gaming because construction is very tiring. i havent really been spending either. i want to go back to school so ive been saving for tuition and my previous debt. but once i get that cleared away im going to save on stuff that i want to buy. so god willing, i hope to give myself some things. most are gaming related, others arent. so for now i have a preliminary list of what i want. i could add and subtract.

a gaming pc worthy of crysis

40+ inch lcd tv

psp

ipod

camcorder so i can do vidblogs

xbox360

games

AND A CAR

ok so i am a collector

so i said i was going to slow down in buying games after i picked up god of war 2, but in reality, ive actually bought more. i bought all hd gen games, which is good, but i promised myself i was going to hold of on gta4 and assasins creed. i have soo many games to finish, and i'm finding that i'm pilling my games up again. but there are soo many games that i want to purchase. so i'm just going to just narrow it down. unless i find an n64,snes or genesis at a cheap price, i'm going to stick to these games. i know its hipocritical cuz i said i could move on to collect only current games, i still find myself looking back so i'm going to narrow it down to these old,current, and future release games. if any other games come out im going to add, but it would have to be really good.

  • metal gear solid 4
  • star wars: forced unleashed
  • farcry2
  • little big planet
  • killzone2
  • heavenly sword
  • devil may cry 4
  • uncharted:drakes fortune
  • elder scrolls oblivion
  • fight night round 4
  • battlefield:bad company
  • crysis
  • world in conflict
  • company of heroes
  • final fantasy chronicles
  • legend of zelda:twilight princess-gc

the 2nd part of this is finishing games. as a collector, ive let that side of me hinder my gamer side. i try a game out, then move back. sometimes i just want to play casually and i dont want to advance in a game when i'm in that mode because i'm robbing myself of great moments because i lack the enthusiasm cuz of my casual gaming mood. but i'm going to start a list of games that i have to finish and i'm going to put this in order. the organization might help me be more dedicated.

  • kingdom hearts 2
  • crysis core
  • gta4
  • metal gear solid essentials
after these six games i'm going to start on some action or platformers.