I bought Kane and Lynch 2 for $5 during the steam sales and I can't honestly say that it was great value for money. The single player itself is 3 hours of which maybe 1 hour was enjoyable enough to be worth playing. The online community is basically nonexistent, I had to join steam groups to get a game and even then we are talking bare minimum numbers for games. K&L 2 is certainly not recommended unless you really have nothing else to play. You can read my review of that game here.

My home internet was down for about a week (I survived) and thus I was playing a lot of Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3. It is true what they say, at times the game looks kinda ugly, at times it looks spectacular. The gameplay is probably just as mixed with the super frustrating b-spec (commanding AI drivers) and the ludicrous rules of licenses. Yet some of the races are great and it can be very satisfying to take a Lamborghini to a hatchback tournament and lap the other drivers in a race. :)

The game includes a photomode which from what I can tell just renders the entire game in a much higher resolution and then scales it back down again (bit like what Crysis does) but it also makes things like reflections and shadows look better. In game shadows can be very block at times. Pictures below are from photomode.

I managed to play through Dark Void also which would be best described as a mix of Gears of War, Lost Planet, Tribes and Half-Life. It has the jetpack which pretty much took me the whole game to get competent with; the controls are pretty horrendous as is the sensitivity. You move pretty fast with it, and need to use the brake a lot for turning and aiming. They also do this slightly weird vertical cover along with just normal jetpack floating in big hangers. The story is B-grade type action movie scary but not without some charm with Nolan North voicing yet another lead character. Overall I have to say Dark Void is not a bad game at all but one that for mechanical reasons is difficult to fully enjoy. Certainly the franchise, should it ever continue, has a lot of potential.

Still playing Black Ops online and getting close to prestige level 2. Not sure how much longer I'll be playing it because it seems more than half the servers seem to be running Nuketown which is complete rubbish for gameplay with a full 18 man server. But people must like it because you can get a lot of points during games, spawn killing does that I guess. The new patch fixed some things and I guess right now it's the quality it should have been on release.

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Spike VGA were nice with some great reveals on Elder Scrolls 5, Mass Effect 3 and of course Uncharted 3. 2011 is shaping up to be a very good year for gaming.

After a brief hiatus I'm back online with faster internet at home, all it means is that I will be getting even more games digitally. I expect I will post a blog about my best games in 2010 in a week or two. I'm still deciding over a few good games. I wish everybody a Merry Christmas for 2010. :)

Been playing a fair bit of Black Ops online for PC, which has been a lot of fun. Right now there are only a few minor issues for me in regards to the multiplayer (like final killcam stuttering) but its still better than the MW2 system. I think I've only lost connection to a server once so far. Currently level 47 and will likely go into prestige because it is so quick to level up.

Played some wager matches including one in chamber, sharpshooter, sticks and stones. They are all fairly good fun, lot more at stake during the rounds. MP wise I'm sticking with CTF / Domination / Demolition most of the time due to the speed and structure. Most of the maps I think are great. apart frome Nuketown which is just ridiculous with 9 v 9. Needs to be more like 4 v 4.

The game feels a lot like MW2, they tweaked some of the perks and killstreaks but the speed and even most of the weapons feel like they would be right at home in MW2. Single player was good, some poor missions but a solid story and great musical score. If you want to read more check out my review.

I signed up for PSN+ which hasn't been the best decision due to the lack of content, but there are some discounts. Hopefully over time it becomes more worthwhile. Anyway yesterday I noticed that I can play Killzone 3, the multiplayer beta was ready for download so I decided to check it out.

KZ3 definitely looks nice, although improvements over KZ2 aren't huge. The biggest visual change is probably better LOD system, so moving away from objects doesn't seem to make them drop it quality rapidly.As for online well its slow paced but includes a level up system that makes it hard for lower levels. Netcode was good even though I'm pretty sure I wasn't playing with people in my country.

The ranking system also seems really slow played a few hours and I'm still on rank 1. The other thing is that I can't aim very well with the PS3 controller, I haven't really used it for a shooter in a long time so quite frankly I suck at it. Kinda frustrating when they build an objective below a few platforms for campers to get easy kills.

Screenshots (1280 x 720 captures). And yes they have a pretty aggressive film grain filter applied.

Worked my way through a Medal of Honor review, in summary the single player isn't bad but suffers presentation issues like NPCs running through trucks. The multiplayer is weak and suffers from a vast number of balance problems that make it uncomfortable to play. Here's a gif of my buddy running through a vehicle, remember kids quantum tunnelling allows for this! Keep in mind he did this about 5 times.

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Almost december, and you know what that means right? Correct, no more big PC game releases until next year. Oh well still GT5 I might pick up on PS3 to keep me busy driving each of the 1000+ cars and smashing them into barriers for fun :P

I completed a review for New Vegas. A great game in its own right that has more mature quests and mature characters with plenty of options on how to complete quests. You can simply go for aggression or deception. You can win trust with speech or convince with science. My approach was generally find out everything about the situation and decide who best to kill.

I also thought the main story quests were good with a few exceptions. Exploration is still good fun in a similar way to the Stalker games. Disappointed that the performance is at times horrendous and a few crashes and glitches hurt the game. If you liked Fallout 3 for the side quest stuff then New Vegas is highly recommended.

Finally finished the main campaign in Halo 2. One word to describe the entire experience would be: dull. It is true that the game doesn't have extreme laborious repetition like Halo 1 had in sections. But there is still excessive repetition. They copy 3 smaller sections / rooms and then change to another layout and copy that 3 times. Then mix in a vehicle section and do it all again. It's like they decided to push the absolute limits of copy and paste without annoying people, well I still got annoyed.

If I had to guess the amount of actual unduplicated content (minor changes aside) the game is really only half the length. Took me about 8 hours to grind though the game. I'm thankful the game didn't get worse and although the ending was no shade on Halo 1s end sequence it was still fun enough to keep my rage down.

It's hard to get over how ugly the game looks, it feels like a game from 2002, not 2007 (or 2004 for xbox) but graphics aside the campaign was just tiring and lifeless. The whole duel wiedling thing just meant I used two guns 90% of the time and spammed grenades the rest.

Haven't tried multiplayer yet but I enjoyed Halo 1 mp on PC so maybe I can get some enjoyment out of that.

Quick update on Medal of Honor multiplayer which I feel is just as broken if not more than single player. Not really techincally broken (apart from the stupid ragdolls) as it runs great and looks fantastic. Gameplay is broken with awful spawning, poor movement and absurd chokepoints. DICE wanted something like modern warfare 2 but only managed to get halfway there and I don't think it works. I may finisha review for it at some stage in the near future.

Black Ops comes out tomorrow and although I don't know much about it I'm still looking forward tomy preorder arriving.I'm just about due for another good mp game with my l4d2 addiction fading away. It may be the last new game release that I'll be getting for the year although depends on when GT5 comes. Analysts predict it will sell 18 million copies, insane numbers for Activision.

Medal of Honor came out last week and I've made my way through the campaign. It took me just over 4 hours (4.2 on Steam) so those wanting value for money in a single player game look elsewhere. I haven't tried tier 1 mode yet.

Straight up I will say that MoH is not a bad game at all, in fact I kinda liked it. Drawing from recent CoD games but also doing a few things different enough so it's not a complete rip off. MoH doesn't have you going from one country to the next in the space of 5 minutes like the modern warfare games. What it does is lets you see the battle from a few different perspectives and the way those perspectives link together is at times impressively done.

The major missing piece in MoH for me are that the last minute polish. I had probably a dozen game glitches that really let you know this is a game. Examples include: Friendly AI running through a truck, AI through a closed door, MG gun firing without a gunner, ATV driver getting stuck, cutscene getting stuck, Invisible walls. It's easy for me to overlook a few issues (hey I played the stalker games) but when you have around 10 issues in 4 hours in a extremely tightly scripted movie like experience it has a telling detrimental effect on the experience for me.

Multiplayer has been OK so far, too many chokepoints. Defenders can get ridiculuos kill death ratios. It's improved a little bit over the beta but the ragdolls still suck. Early days but I doubt I'll be spending more than 20 hours online with it.

In summary MoH is alright, but I really think 6 months more development time would have helped it compete with the CoD series, instead it will likely be overshadowed by Black Ops.

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I'm still playing Halo 2, not sure how far I have to go but I'm thankful the gameplay hasn't gotten worse. Cortana just told me that coming up soon is a "Library" like that seen in the original Halo. And if you played the first you know it was the point the game copied the same room layout dozens of times (with flood). Not looking forward to it. I don't think I'd say Halo 2 as a bad game, again the action can be pretty fun sometimes - but it has to be because the rest is in my opinion very mediocre.

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Fallout New Vegas comes out today (currently downloading on Steam) and it could be another good timesink like Fallout 3. Graphically it is starting to look aged but I can live through that (I'm playing Halo 2). Will be interesting to see if the main story quest is actually good this time but even still side quests make the game.

Just noticed Gamespot still have the GFW Live box art for Fallout New Vegas which is no longer correct given that New Vegas is a Steam game now.

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No Mercy in L4D2 is great, some good spots for the new infected but mostly it just changes the rules. Spitting and incapping 2 survivors at the elevator crescendo (the infamous corner camp spot) is something quite special. My other favourite spots include a charger instant kill out the elevator in the finale or off the open rooftops or into the car up the stairs in NM1. Now that I think of it, I haven't seen somebody charge anyone into the exploding gas station yet. Something to try.

The year has gone by pretty quickly, very much like last year. Full time work probably the main culprit, not enough free time at least for me. The last few months haven't been huge gaming months sadly. There only seem to be a few games out before the end of the year.

I picked up F1 2010, being fan of codemaster racing games - GRID and DiRT 2 were great. F1 2010 is not as great sadly but it does a pretty good job with the trademark. My biggest issue probably has to be the inconsistent penalties but also the fact that my season save got corrupted (a known issue still left unresolved).

You can check out my review for F1 2010 here

WHAT. Yeah Halo 2 PC. Saw it for cheap and thought what the hell, this was the game on the xbox back in 2004. My first impressions were terrible because the game wouldn't even work. I had to do this crazy renaming of windows folder and deleting some files to get the thing to start. Nothing has been patched to fix this, which I think summarizes quite well the attitude Microsoft has about PC gaming. Once started I can't say my impressions got drastically better.

From purely cosmetic perspective this game is pretty ugly. In fact I think it looks worse than Halo 1 on PC, mostly because I think Gearbox at least upgraded some of the common textures, here they are just blurry everywhere. Faces and characters look like something from 2002, not 2007 when it released on PC.

Moving to gameplay leaves me a little underwhelmed, the pacing isn't the best and the dialogue is pretty dry. You can dual weild now (remeber that lol). The vehicle action is decent enough. Supposedly the single player is kinda weak with a cliff hanger ending so doesn't sound like things will improve much for me.

Medal of Honor comes out soon but I'm not expecting big things. Just a few days ago DICE posted in their forums asking for top 3 things gamers wanted changed. The list grew quite long but there simply isn't enough time to make these changes. I have it preordered on steam though, hoping for the best in regards to single player but kinda expecting the worst.

L4D2 got DLC last week, including campaigns The Sacrifice and No Mercy both with the survivors from L4D1. It's a strange feeling to be playing with the Zoey, Bill, Francis and Louis again, it's basically like seeing old friends again. The sacrifice seems decent so far and No Mercy plays out differently with the new infected. Great DLC for free.

I haven't blogged in over a month time but I have a few things to blog about today. Namely game reviews! I have three of them completed. Mafia 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Amnesia: The Dark Desceent. You can read them by following the links or just read my quick summaries below!

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

If you played the Penumbra games think of Amnesia as a natural evolution of those mechanics, but picture it with better presentation and well crafted scares and you get the picture. Basically Amnesia is a very good game with cool puzzles. I wish there were a few more physics puzzles like Requiem but I can't complain. Highly recommended unless you don't like scary games :P

Mafia 2

Wanted to get this review out, yes it's a bit of a rant and I spent a lot of time on the negative aspects. It does look great and combat works well. It really does feel quite atmospheric at times and the music / cars are amazing. The rest is not so rock solid - I found it generally inferior to the original and I couldn't stomach the ending. Apparently the new DLC is pretty much a waste of money too from what I've been hearing. I just call this an average-good game, nothing amazing

Left 4 Dead 2

I've played 184 hours of this game so far and there is a ton of stuff to talk about. I tried to keep it to the basics but map design, new infected and new survivor tools just take it up a notch from the original. Good news is new DLC is on the way for the game and we get to play no mercy with melee weapons and new infected. Can't wait to spit corner campers while they wait at the elevator.

NOW PLAYING

Playing Worms Reloaded, which is pretty fun online actually. Lot of problems actually getting into a game sadly but it can be pretty funny to watch people do brilliant and stupid things at the same time. It's also a nice change of pace from other games, laid back turn based

Finished Starcraft 2, really enjoyed the campaign and even went back to play the other missions in the sections where you need to choose which mission to complete. It is nice to have a base building RTS with good quality missions and attention to detail. I did try some multiplayer, but only played a three games online, of which I won two. I wish I played more but I didn't get much enjoyment even out of winning. I think I definitely need the adrenaline rush of FPS games in multiplayer. Even still great single player well worth it

Xfire has been particularly slack of late. As many of you would know Titan took over Xfire (apparently at no cost) and have been moving servers and slowly learning to add updates. It took them a month to get an update out and they only added one game - Mafia 2. Many games still remain unsupported including worms reloaded, kane and lynch 2, amnesia.

The support has been pretty poor and they are effectively slowly killing a great tool with many opting to use Raptr or just stick with Steam. It would be a shame to have the xfire program fade into oblivion because the new owners can't update it frequently enough but it appears to be the way it is going

UPCOMING GAMES

Sadly most of the game I was waiting for have been moved to early 2011 (Dead Space 2, Crysis 2, Max Payne 3 to name a few) but there are still a couple of releases that should tide me over until the new year

Fallout: New Vegas - Hoping this one has as much side quests and exploration as Fallout 3, not completely phased that it looks much the same as Fallout 3

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Dedicated servers are back, albeit restricted. Still hopfully I can get many good hours of multiplayer out of this game. Lots of game modes so chances are there is good replay value if it is balanced enough and I'm sure the community will be there.

Saw the movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time recently and have to say its one of the better game movies I've seen. Funny enough with good action and a decent storyline. I think so far only Hitman, Prince of Persia and Resident Evil 1 (not 2 or 3) are decent game movies. I would certainly watch sequels to Hitman and PoP.

Long blog! Thanks for reading.

I noticed that I've been on Gamespot for six years now (as at July 17th 2010), although it is not the oldest community I am apart of it is probably the oldest I spend the most time on these days.

In six years I have made

11970 Posts

2017 comments

74 Blog Posts

36 Written Reviews

Currently Playing

Left 4 Dead 2 – Yes I tipped the scales with this one and have racked up over 100 hours so it joins that exclusive club for me. Most of it again is versus and I absolutely crave those moments where the infected are working like a well oiled machine, timing is essential to success and charging people never seems to get old. :D

Rage quitting is sadly a big problem in L4D2, probably worse than the original I think. I also think the game is more frustrating because the distance between complete success and utter failure is larger.

Mafia – I got this with my Mafia 2 preorder on Steam. This game starts out excruciatingly slowly, the cars are slow the combat is slow and cumbersome; the cut scenes are full of long cinematic pauses. Then if you want to avoid the pestering police :o you need to drive at 40mph.

But I pressed forward and it only took me a few hours to appreciate the flow of the story and the variety of the missions. After finishing it I ended up enjoying it, the graphics aren't too bad for an eight year old game either. Really looking forward to Mafia 2 now can't wait till the end of August.

StarCraft 2 – Not sure if you guys heard of this game? It's a little RTS created by the small dev team Blizzard :). Something about Zerg Rushes. Well I'm taking my time with this game playing through the campaign slowly because I'm in no rush to finish. I've played about 6 missions now and its starting to get really good actually. I really enjoyed some of the missions with the variety and the objectives. Also appreciating the way they handle characters on your ship and mission briefings. Hopefully some of the good stuff is stolen by EA for the next CnC game :P

Singularity – Finished that, reviewed it. It's not a bad game and I actually enjoyed it a bit more than Wolfenstein, but whether that is because of the expectations of the franchise or not. If you like FPS games then perhaps it is worth looking at but fairly standard affair. (not for multiplayer though)

My imod phase is over, eight weeks of learning the ropes of being a gamespot moderator and I'm now a general mod. All I will say is that there is a lot of work done behind the scenes for the gamespot community that most people wouldn't be aware of.

Best villain of all time voting is up on gamespot for wildcards not already selected for the bracket voting. Although I have to say I'm a bit sad that G-man (Half-Life) and Vlad (Max Payne) didn't make the cut.

Hope everybody is well :)

Medal of Honor PC Beta Impressions

Got my feet wet with some Medal of Honor action. If you are wondering it's mostly like Bad Company 2 but with a few ideas from Modern Warfare 2 like killstreaks (scorechains) but sadly there is virtually no destruction present from BC2. The game has a lot of bugs, even for a beta. Some are presentation, some are map design (bad chokepoints) and some are just gameplay balances. If you want to know more just click the picture and away you go!

Finally after my long boycotting phase I've joined the "new" survivors for a taste of L4D2. I got it during the steam sales. So far it's proving to be like visiting an old friend, skills are coming back to me. To start with the spitter, jockey and charger would often completely destroy me but slowly I'm getting used to them and the levels. Played versus just before and managed to incap 3 green survivors with one shot by knocking a car up the side of a railing. :)

Jockey is funny but I also like the spitter, no more pesky campers! I think I've played all the campaigns now in versus but only finished like half the maps (if that). Haven't yet completed a campaign. :P

Forgotten Sands Review

This one was a pleasing surprise. I expected something like Sands of Time but generally inferior. Instead what I got was something like Sands of Time without frustration. The combat is easy, but that just makes the combat become like a break between the platforming. The platforming also gets interesting toward the end with frozen water and invisible walls. A very solid effort and one I recommend.

Got my hands on Singularity, and so far it seems alright. I'm only a few hours in and I am suffering badly from the texture streaming problem. It's probably even more annoying when my framerate is 120fps and I see these extremely low res textures below my feet. The game takes plenty of inspiration from Bioshock, Dead Space and even Wolfenstein. I will let you know how successful that is.

Also playing some Infamous on my PS3. The similarities between it and Prototype are uncanny. If you played prototype imagine a game that has a better story (also better presented) with some more conventional weapon type powers (rockets, grenades etc) and it revolved around electricity not an infection and you probably have it. I'm not sure the actual combat (when things get crazy) is as good as prototype but the game is still good fun.

Enjoy your weekend everybody :)

I picked up Blur on Xfire store - download was actually from GameTap so I guess they are connected. The system worked pretty well, basic download and install with activation. Will probably use them again if they have a good deal or something.

Anyway the game is pretty fun, think Wipeout or if you are really old school Wacky Wheels! Combat and racing, but the combat is done pretty well. Works fantastic with the 360 controller if you have one. You can read my full review here

I mentioned Splinter Cell Conviction in my previous blog and I had a disagreement with the choice to move to a more action centric bad-ass Sam Fisher. I pretty much gave up on the multiplayer - pure frustration. My opinion didn't change and I also reviewed that

I've stopped playing Bad Company 2 altogether. At this point I'm really struggling with the balance issues and long term enjoyment. The fixes that are coming int he patch are things that really should have been around weeks back. I had a good run with it, Rank 31 with all unlocks and many good matches, bring on BF3.

Alien Breed is a new game on Steam, it's a top down shooter similar to something like Shadowgrounds. It uses the unreal engine 3 so it actually looks pretty good at times. The game is only $15 and it has a demo if you want to check it out.

So far the game is ok, it's a lot slower than Shadowgrounds during these first few levels. The biggest problem with Alien Breed is probably the lack of imagination, it's pretty sterile and all the gameplay elements are basic. Even the story seems pretty cliched. Mostly you are walking around turning switches to open doors etc. It hurts me to say that it needs something gimmicky or at least a bit more personality.

E3 Expo 2010

Starts next week. I'm not sure how many new games will be announced this year at the show - over the past week we've already had quite a few that have been announced. Secretly I'm hoping for many PC games but my chances are slim. BF3 would be great, Hitman 5 would be awesome, maybe another Stalker? So many possibilities.

I would be pretty disappointed if Valve goes to E3 again and fails to even mention Episode 3 or something more from the Half-Life universe, October this year will mark the 3rd year since Episode 2 - a very long time between drinks.

HD Capture Card

I picked up AverMedia CaptureTV HD. It's basically a Digital and Analogue TV tuner, but I wanted to pick it up mainly to capture some videos and screenshots of games on my PS3. It captures a range of sources but I just use HDMI. Max capture is 1080i which doesn't look too good in motion due to the interlaced nature. 720p is pretty crisp though. Definitely one thing I miss on consoles is the ability to take screenshots or video as easy as on PC.

To start with I had a lot of problems with the software on this card. It's basic at best but the thing would crash as soon as it got a signal from my PS3. I had it for a week without success (I tried a lot of things) and eventually a new software update from AverMedia fixed it. Here are some pictures I've taken only recently with it. Uncharted 2, PSN menu, Wipeout HD and Heavy Rain (excuse the chopped head)

Some of you guys will already know that I'm currently a moderator. Techincally I'm on a trial so that doesn't mean I'll still be a mod this time next month. I was contacted by JodyR a little while back and decided to give it a shot. So far its interesting, there are a LOT of rules to remember and apply correctly and it's far from easy.

I'm not meant to moderate for friends, so don't ask me to :P

Here's hopng Australia does alright in the World Cup 2010, Germany first :)

Splinter Cell Conviction came out on the PC not too long ago (29/4/10) and I finished the game on realistic. I would rate this game about a 7/10 at this point and didn't enjoy it as much as splinter cell or chaos theory. Make sure you play it on realistic though, even that is easier than normal from the original game.

The actual gameplay is a little different than the other splinter cells and some people might enjoy the more action type game I don't think they should have gone down that route myself.

Platforming / level layout is sometimes pretty silly. You will have pipes in the middle of a room to ascend, you have a whole lot of moving lasers to dodge around using your "sonar vision" You have strategically placed boxes to hide behind etc..

The story is also pretty poor, and I've read a few bits and pieces about it being a good story well I disagree. The interrogations are nothing more than cutscenes you can move around in. Including a full on action third person level was move that did not work out well at all.

Multiplayer has given me more troubles than any game in recent history. Takes 20+ minutes to find a game and that's assuming the ubisoft servers are running. When I got in a few games I got disconnected each and every time. The longest I got to play was 5 minutes - then the game stuttered and crashed.

On the up side Mark and Execute actually works reasonably well and the deniable ops levels are much better than the single player levels, the game also looks reasonably good at times. I guess my hopes now rest on Thief 4 and Hitman 5 for some good stealth gameplay.

Screens!

My review for Episodes from Liberty City is up. I enjoyed it quite a lot, they made a few little changes to the gameplay but its really the characters and missions that I enjoyed the most. GTA 4 fans will love it.

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Not really anymore games for me until June, when Prince of Persia, Singularity and BF1943 come along. I guess I'll keep chugging away at Bad Company 2. Red Dead Redemption is coming out on PS3 soon, any thoughts on that one? I might just wait and see what gamers are saying about it before I get it.