So recently i have become unemployed (you know me, work's just too much effort) so now the government is going to be giving me benefits. i have become my enemy! waah!
Ok too dramatic, think on the positive side, more time to play games! so thats what ive been doing, that and looking on the jobcentre's website for positions nearby and big shock! theres feck all. im not qualified for management, not built for construction, and too grumpy for care work. Id love to work with videogames so im gonna hold out for that or at least a job that wont fill me with murderous rage! (im looking at you, supermarkets)
And thus the games began, and it was good, i've been playing a lot on my psp but first i would like to give mention to the Vietnam addition to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 by Dice, a company owned by EA games. Now not many people will have played Bad company 2 (BC2) as roughly 90% of the population haven't heard of any shooting game not in the "call of duty" series. Call of duty is good but people, it is NOT the only game out there, broaden your minds. Playing only call of duty is like only eating chicken, its not bad but how do you not get sick of it?
the battlefield series goes back to battlefield: 1942 on the PC in 2002 (not to be confused with battlefield 1943 for the xbox 360 and ps3 or battlefield 2142 for the pc) the series has always focused on online multiplayer on large scale maps with a balanced class based role system. Like in real combat, each soldier cannot perform any role they wish as they will not be trained or equipped for it, so you choose to be a medic, and engineer, a sniper etc etc and you are given points on how well you perform your role, not just on how many people you kill.
You see when your objective is to occupy an enemy camp, you do not just send in 8 infantrymen armed with assault rifles, you have to support your troops with tanks and air support, so in order to win the round you must work as a team, repairing tanks, healing teammates and calling in airstrikes and of course good communication is key, In my eyes this creates more of a "thinking mans shooter" and puts the battlefield series head and shoulders above call of duty, which is great for explosive action and fast paces combat but lacks the depth and sense of accomplishment you get when you have beaten an entrenched enemy to a pulp with tank shells, hellfire rockets and mortar fire you have called your squadmates to deploy.
The recent Vietnam addition to BC2 brings the timeline back to the Vietnam war, with dense jungles, old-school weapons and vehicles and a killer 60s soundtrack. theres no red dot sights for your weapons, no motion sensing equipment for snipers and no defibrillators for medics, just good old fashioned ironsights, intuition and lots and lots of morphine. This change adds a fantastic backdrop to the award winning battlefield formula, and built using DICE's frostbite engine you know you're still getting fantastic visuals, long draw distances and destructible landscapes that change with every tank shell, airstrike and grenade.
Also worth mentioning is EA's Medal of Honor, a series which hasn't seen a game since the lackluster medal of honor airborne on 360 and ps3. this latest iteration is the first in the series to attempt modern warfare and received a lot of bad press for trying to knock call of duty off the Christmas best seller spot (which it failed to do, obviously, as COD fans are as unlikely to change as a hobo with only one outfit) however i LOVED it. at first i was skeptical as the game (the single player campaign that is) starts off slowly and the graphics aren't on par with other series (what with being made with the unreal engine, a decision which doesn't push any boundaries) the story escalates however to a real blood pumping edge of your seat endeavour that i couldn't put down. I'm not going to explain the whole story here, just suffice it to say its very good and well worth a look. Its also worth mentioning that the multiplayer was made by DICE using the frostbite engine so is fantastic
During my time off from work i have also had opportunity to play on my PSP (playstation portable by sony, a powerful little handheld that boasts fantastic 3D graphics, online capabilities and a whole lot of connectivity features for your ps3 such as the ability to watch live television on your psp and control your ps3 remotely) This little console never ceases to amaze me, as the developers just do things RIGHT. the games made for it arent so ambitious as the big consoles in terms of graphics, so the developers instead focused on stuffing content and top notch gameplay into their games. To give a very old school example i have been playing metal gear ac!d, one of the first games made for the psp. Metal Gear ac!d as the name might suggest is an installment in the metal gear series by award winning writer-director Hideo Kojima, however it is not your typical stealth game it is essentially a card game (odd combination between a stealth/card game with a great setting and storyline, complete with the same MGS sound effects and soundtrack). The game doesn't take itself too seriously (which it cant if the characters cannot move if they have no cards in their hand) and the characters are varied and memorable.
The gameplaysocom pistol, famas assault rifle and the ever present rations. Famous faces from the series also feature as cards: revolver ocelot, big boss, vamp, raiden and gray fox to name but a few. The game is set in the year 2017 and is a continuation of solid snake's storyline (but before foxdie caused him to age rapidly as in MGS4) ac!d is a brilliant foray into the MGS universe through an entirely new medium which is tactical and action packed throughout, although frame rate issues and some bland textures are present i would recommend this to anyone who loves strategic gameplay or is a fan of metal gear solid.
This is but one game in the PSP's arsenal, games such as Patapon, Valkyria chronicles II and the EPIC, truly wondrous Monster hunter series (developed by capcom) will forever cement the PSP as the handheld games console that defined hardcore gaming on the move. The Nintendo DS is great, it has brilliant uses of the touch screen and an entire repertoire of brilliant first paty games, but when you want a game that is no nonsense gameplay, the PSP is the system for you, not to mention you can play movies, music, watch tv and surf the web on it!
It may be worth noting that like the DS piracy is a big problem on the psp, so much so that developers have started asking what the point was in making games that many people download for free. Whilst i have modified my psp to run games i own from the internal memory card i still actively purchase retail and preowned copies of games, because if a game is worth playing its worth owning. if we as gamers wish to see high quality games at reasonable prices we have to stop stealing their games.
When i worked in x games (a videogames retailer) we would be asked if we sold R4/M3 flash cards for the Nintendo DS and we would actually have to explain to people that we do not stock them because downloading games is illegal. one woman was adamant that because she had bought the card she could have all the games for free as the cost of the card paid for them. how exactly did she think that £15 would cover the costs of thousands of pounds of games? other people refused to believe because their friends had the cards and that if they had them it wouldn't have been illegal. Anyways Nintendo eventually won the battle as flash cards are now ILLEGAL to buy and sell in the UK, sadly it is a small victory as people still import them but at least its a step towards stopping the pirates.
Well that's enough from me for now, until next time keep on truckin'
