SpaceRodent

I just finished Modern Warfare 2. It was, in a word, EPIC. The single player campaign is pretty short. I finished it on normal difficulty in about six hours. That being said it was a wild ride. I wasn’t sure the sequel could live up to the original but it did and surpassed it. This game goes to great lengths to show you a realistic depiction of war while still maintaining that video game feel. More than once I felt uneasy about what I was doing in the game. I was also at times thinking “why the hell did I just go through that?” The plot is dense and twisting. The story was totally believable and there were parts that I predicted and many that I didn’t.

I don’t want to give anything away so I am being vague on purpose. You really need to experience it without prior knowledge to get the full effect.

My biggest complaint of the first one was how wave after wave of baddies would just keep coming at you until you passed some spot. That is fixed now, yay! I don’t normally go for multiplayer but I have been playing the free for all mode and have been enjoying it a lot. I am going to try some of the other modes as well.

I got the XBOX 360 version so the lack of dedicated servers doesn’t affect me. I can say though that so far online play has been smooth and easy.

I got the three games mentioned in the title. So far the only one I am really happy with is Torchlight.

Borderlands: Diablo done wrong. Uninspired levels, repetitive creatures and a million weapons that all look and act the same and no armor! So the only loot is weapons; boring.

Dragon Age Origins: If Oblivion was a Porsche then Dragon Age Origins is a Toyota. Its the third day and it still hasn’t captured me. I don’t feel like I have to play this game.

First of all the story is right out of every single fantasy novel, movie and game you have ever experienced.

Second of all there is this lush beautiful world and you get to interact with none of it. There is a narrow path you can walk along. I loved in Oblivion that I was able to go anywhere. In Dragon Age Origins the environment seems very small and confining. The gameplay is ok but I prefer the pause based system of Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).

Finally, if you haven’t purchased it yet get the PS3 or PC version; they are both better than the 360 one (which I got) if you can believe that. The PC is the best though because you can zoom out and see a more tactical view.

Tonight after playing for about an hour I felt like playing Oblivion again! I just wish I hadn’t completed everything in the game. Oblivion is the only game where I got every single achievement. Right now I am not even sure I will finish Dragon Age Origins. I bought this game sight unseen due to the developers previous games (Baldur’s Gate II, KOTOR, Mass Effect) but I wish I would have waited for the reviews and peoples opinions first.

Torchlight: Gorgeous game that looks like Warcraft III and plays like Diablo II. Seriously fun times. I downloaded the demo and played for three hours straight then purchased it. I love it. I will definitely be playing this game a lot. Kudos to Runic games for pulling off a masterpiece. Apparently they are working on a MMO component and I am pretty excited to see what they come up with.

I picked up a PSP over the weekend and have been enjoying it quite a bit. I got the 3000 not the Go. I got a used 8GB memory card for it and have quite a few games installed on it already. Games I have been playing on it:

• Fieldrunners
• Thexder Neo
• Final Fantasy VII

The screen is gorgeous, the speakers are so-so but that is okay I got a headset. The controls are quite comfortable. I got a slick custom theme too.

Tonight I finally beat the Archdemon False King and in doing so beat the game. My final level is 89 and total time played was 67 hours and seven minutes.

The game was hard but very fulfilling. In my opinion it is definitely the best game of 2009.

The other games I will be playing this year:

• Brütal Legend
• Dragon Age Origins
• God of War Collection (re-release of God of War I and II on the PS3)
• Left for Dead II
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Games I am skipping (or at least waiting till I can get them used and cheap):

• Assassins Creed II
• Borderlands
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Quite simply Demon’s Souls is one of the best games of 2009. The game has sucked me in completely. I have been playing for the last week. Some people call it an RPG but I feel it is more of an Action RPG. Yes; you do level up stats and get better weapons but the story is pretty weak. The meat of the game is the combat. It is very tactical and when you die you always know why – you made a mistake. Death’s never feel cheap (except for when you fall:)).

All the character classes can eventually do everything so you never feel like you picked the wrong class. The knights and soldiers do have an easier time of it in the beginning but the magic users get deadly quickly.

You have two states of being: Soul Form and Living Form. In Soul Form you are safe from other players but when you are alive prepare to be invaded. The meat of the online play is cooperative and versus play. In cooperative play you help other players slay demons. In versus play you try to kill the player whose game you invaded.

I experienced an invader tonight. It was exciting. I was just doing some soul farming (repeating an area over and over to collect souls; I do this on level 4-1 since you can get about 3000 souls in five minutes) when my game was invaded.

It was a long battle (at least 10 minutes) but I finally defeated him. It was a great feeling. The great feelings come frequently. Every time you beat a part of the game you feel great. Keep in mind though that this game is hard and you will die a lot but don’t give up. You will also feel incredibly frustrated at times but mostly in yourself not because the game is cheating.

If you have been on the fence regarding a PS3 purchase I suggest you get one – the good games are here. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves comes out tomorrow as well. I bought my PS3 to play the first one and wasn’t disappointed. I am very excited to play the sequel.

I have been playing Wolfenstein for the 360 for the last week and was having a good time until all of a sudden whenever I loaded a save game past my last one the game would completely lockup and I would have to power cycle the 360. Some googling revealed this is a known problem if you get more than 80% of the items in the game. Being a completion-ist I hit it the 80% mark pretty quickly. So now my options are to:

1. Wait for a patch
2. Start a new game and don’t collect that many items

I have decided to wait and hopefully it gets fixed soon. It’s a wonder how this made it past the Q&A process.

I finished Shadow Complex last night. For those of you who don’t know Shadow Complex is a 2D Platformer in 3D that uses the Unreal Engine. It’s for the Xbox 360 and available via Xbox Live Arcade. It took me about 10 hours to finish it over three days on normal level.

This is the only game I can remember in a long time that as soon as I finished it I wanted to play it again! Luckily the game rewards this. When you start another game you continue at the level you finished at.

For my second play through I am playing on hardcore level. I am also striving for 100% completion. I had 68% completion on my first play through.

The game costs 1200 points which is about $15. The download size is 800MB. I guess the original 200MB limit is no more.

So if you have a Xbox 360 do yourself a favor and play this game!

So the other night I was playing Fallout 3 and the graphics started getting weird. There were red vertical bands where shading would be and when I went into VATS mode the highlighted body parts looked like TV static. I thought I would power cycle my XBOX and hopefully that would clear the problem – wrong!

Came back up with an error E74.

So I bought a new one last night and will ship the broken one off to Microsoft to get repaired.

Once I get it back I will sell it on craigslist.

So over the weekend I got Duels of the Planeswalkers for the XBOX 360. I played Magic the Gathering a lot when it first came out. When I started playing “The Dark” expansion had just been released so I consider myself an old school player. I am rusty though and have been getting my butt kicked all weekend on Live. Tonight finally I am about to win my first ranked match and am feeling good when the host drops. Nice. Instead of loosing a match fair and square and affecting their rank they drop. I don’t know if this breed of jerk has a name so I am going to call them “live droppers”. I think they deserve their own level in hell right below traitors.

By the way the game is excellent! If you like Magic The Gathering or card games in general its worth picking up for 800 points.

So I have been playing Infamous for the last two weeks and have a love/hate relationship. There are some things that really piss me off but I am still playing so it must be a good game. I picked up Prototype and Red Faction recently so I am going to compare and contrast the three games as they are very similar.

First the similarities

1. Open world
2. You’re a lone hero/villian against the government
3. You have special powers (or in the case of red faction weapons)
4. You can blow shit up
5. Game play gets repetitive

Now the differences

Infamous PS3

• Good/Bad system
• Climb everything

Prototype XBOX 360

• Very diverse powers including stealth
• Climb everything
• Extreme gore

Red Faction Guerrilla XBOX 360

• Fully destructible environments
• Vehicles
• No climbing

All three games have a cheesy story but its passable. Of the three I like Red Faction the least. Something about having superhuman powers, being able to scale everything is just too much fun, Red Faction feels not as fun by comparison but its still a good game.

One of the things that bothers about Infamous and Prototype is you have this super human power, you can fall off of a sky scraper but bullets hurt you; both are kinetic impacts why does one type hurt you but the other doesn’t?

In Red Faction you can blow up just about everything except blue barrels and rocks it doesn’t make any sense.

Of the three games I think Prototype has the best crowd system. The crowd reacts like I think they should: they run in terror. In Infamous they either boo you or give you the “you’re the man” sign. In Red Faction folks just wander about not really caring what you do and they tend to clump up in front of buildings so you have to bully your way in.

In Infamous you can ride the rails and electric wires so you can get around quick. In Prototype you have super speed and in Red Faction you have vehicles. Now Prototype also has vehicles but they are tanks and stuff and not meant to get you around. All three makes it easy to get to the main and side missions.

Of the three I think Red Faction and Infamous have the best side missions but that isn’t saying much. Prototype’s side missions are time trials. I hate time trials. I want to play the game at my own pace. Any way I want in depth side missions like in Oblivion or Fallout 3 not shallow “kill X things” and “run X maze”.

All three have an upgrade system so you can get more powers or better weapons. I like the Protoype system the best then Infamous and finally Red Faction in dead last. Red Faction makes you collect scrap metal like Rachet & Clank. So stupid.

I am still going through the single player missions so I haven’t played multiplayer yet.

Finally above and beyond everything I said above all three are great games and if you can only afford one you won’t be disappointed with any of them.