Author - Ripper71

AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity Review (PC/OnLive)

2011/08/03

Ok much like the title this game doesn’t take itself too seriously, in fact it thrives on being silly and yet at the same time it is surprisingly challenging and addictive. In 1982 Polystructures fall from space into the air over Boston and people take to populating them and building around them. By the year 2011 you can no longer look up from a city and see the stars, but you can look down from the top of the Polystructures and base jump off of them. Hence a new dimensional timeline and lifestyle is born. Base jumping is literally taken to new heights as you leap down hugging and kissing the sides of building and other structures until you get to the bottom where you deploy your parachute fin before become a “sack of calcium” or a bunch of other amusing but dead options and try and land inside a red circle.

So for each time you succeed at hugging building, shattering glass panels with score values and landing without becoming mush you earn a score which is then applied to a star system. The more stars you get for equaling or increasing your star rating on a map earns you teeth. Yep, the currency of this dimension is teeth and the more you earn the more map drop points or special goodies you can unlock. Now one person’s special goodies is anothers bizarre and just plain hilarious moment so make sure to spend your money wisely. One of the unlocks, for example, is a glowing glove that makes it so that as you plummet past onlookers you can encourage your supporters with a thumb up or your protestors with a nice red glowing middle finger. Another allows you to spray graffiti, remember you are doing all this while plummeting to the ground and dodging buildings and structures at an alarming rate. If it all gets to be to much though you can listen to relaxation sessions (there are no insects on you… not on your face getting ready to crawl in your nose, not at all) or learn how to debristle a pig or get grandma’s special recipe for cookies (the secret ingredient is a dead relative’s ashes).

The wackiness of the game, the fact that no two jumps are ever the same and that this is a game with real skill and practice necessary to do good at it makes it addictive to watch and to play. I was trying it out on the OnLive service and I was constantly getting spectators watching and would sometimes try (and sometimes fail) spectacular moves to entertain my audience. I got friends request on the service as well by people who just wanted to be able to know when I would be on and playing it again. This game is perfect for parties, it is so visually engaging and the difference between a high score and becoming a bunch of femur paste is the slightest of moves. Also it is on OnLive so you can play the game on any PC anywhere, play it on tablets or use the tiny OnLive console and all you need to do is get it an internet connection and plug it into your TV and suddenly you can be playing it on a huge screen at someone else’s party. The OnLive system lends itself to portability and versatility anyways but this game showcases it so nicely. This next weekend I am heading out of town to visit friends and the OnLive system is going with me and going to get some serious play and I really see this game shining.

Last Call:

At first glance this game looks easy and silly, but it actually can be very challenging and no two jumps are exactly the same. But it is also silly, and has as much fun with itself as possible. If you have ever been interested in the history of base jumping there are factoids tucked in as well but this is really about having the American version of Monty Python-esque fun and laughing while sweating your jumps. Dying doesn’t bother you, it makes you laugh. My wife was at her computer laughing at the sound effects (there are old school arcade sounds in it very similar to Sonic) and the different odd things said in the game. When she walked by she stopped and just started staring at my game like so many OnLive spectators drawn into the visuals as well as the sound. This is a great party game which you can try for free at OnLive and it is included in the over 70 games on it’s play anytime PlayBundle so it would be at your leaping leisure for $10 a month. I picked it because of it’s funny name to be honest and now it is in my regular play rotation. Heck even the companies website is fun to go to!

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Limbo Review (PC/Steam)

2011/08/03

Ripper71

News, Reviews

If you are a console player you have probably already given this game a run but if you are pure PC or you had a friend who said “that game sucked” and that was enough to keep you from trying it then you may have only heard of the game. Just about everyone has at least heard of Limbo due to it’s incredibly stylized presentation and haunting mistreatment of its little boy hero. Every game magazine tried to write it up at one time or another without giving too much away and that can be extremely difficult to first get the style and feeling across but then also make someone feel the need to play it. It honestly reminds me of foreign movies and animations that I have experienced over the years. Anyone who watched the short film “Deadsy” (the band and most of my game characters’ names have been based off it) and got the beauty and horror of it might have some understanding. So instead of trying to tell you why you should play it or shouldn’t I will try to tell you what I felt while I played it, why this side game turned into a marathon playing for me and much like a foreign film, you will have to decide if this is where your tastes lie. To start here is a screenshot.

I purposely chose one with no action, no traps or big challenges in sight, just an average moment in the game. This is one of the brighter moments, the shadowed areas increase, the screen flickers like you are watching an old silent movie and usually the brightest thing in the whole game are the eyes on the little silhouette of a boy that you are helping through the journey. When you discover a new trap or fail a test those little white eyes blink out for a moment and then come back at the last checkpoint. He never screams in pain or terror, never complains, he just moves along to the next task and horror at hand. Music is sparse and the notes tend to resound, most of the game relies on ambient noise of frogs or flies or water splashing. If he falls off a tall cliff you will see his eyes shining in the thickening darkness, hear a crunch and then the eyes go out as the scene fades to darkness and he is standing in front of one of his tests again.

The tests are plentiful and seem to come from the mind of a child, one with some learning but also who has seen enough action movies and played Cowboys and Indians to have an imagination ripe with its own torments. The Lord of The Flies, arachnophobia, saws slicing people up, all in a world where flipping a switch can make gravity reverse or magnets can hold giant metal block in mid air. If a child were to place tests of horror in front of itself it would play out a lot like this game.

And you want to help this little boy who is lost in this dark place facing more and more moments of possible death. Knowing that death is not the end, but only a step back into the journey that is so dark and that he faces alone except for a little help from you. All the other boys are out to torment, sabotage or just plain destroy him on his journey through this dark land so you feel compelled to keep helping him. It becomes difficult to take a break especially after night falls and you are in the same darkness he is. This may sound somewhat melodramatic but the game does pull you in if you let it and it can be very much like you are helping a character on it’s way through a movie, wanting to see how it ends and having the satisfaction of no matter who finally lies in store you helped the little lost boy get there.

The game is just haunting to put it simply, generally more like nightmares than dreams but it is a dreamscape nonetheless and one that had me with my face 8 inches away from my 23″ LED monitor, the speakers pulled close, the lights off, fully entranced. The standard game controls are the arrow keys and Ctrl which I usually find confining in computer play but seemed very much to fit the game’s confined environment you are trying to help escape.

The ending will be a matter of debate for a long time, I am not showing you it in any of the screenshots nor do I plan to show you any. If you want to go to YouTube and watch it you can but to me it is like reading the last page of a very deep and surreal book, you won’t really get it unless you take the journey through the game and then you may come up with a different theory than the many, many ones that are out there and discussed on endless threads. It is this ending with such an opening to interpretation that really throws some people for a loop and makes them sometimes hate the game. These are usually the same people who hate every minute of a foreign or strange film because it made them think, made them wonder and in some ways just gave them questions and left them to fill in the answers. I find a certain beauty in this, a certain maturity that can be very difficult for someone just out to have a fun play and escape reality for a while to accept. It is a foreign film in game form and leaves questions instead of giving a tidy, clean and happy Hollywood ending. I love it for that as much as the great puzzles and gameplay.

Last Call:

This game is different, it is for a certain taste, I could see people watching others playing to experience the story as much as the action. The action of the puzzle solving may appeal to gamers and they may enjoy it simply for that but this was a game that was designed to engage you like a movie. A movie where you have to commit yourself to helping the main character, in this case a lost little boy, find his way to the end, whatever ending it may be. Much like many Hollywood remakes of movies I could see how the temptation to have a spelled out, The End kind of ending to this game could have been tempting but I think this game will live on in the imaginations of those who played it more as a result of the simple fade to black.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Multiplayer Madness with the Frag Dolls (OnLive)

2011/07/29

Ripper71

News

So those of you who have succumb to my barrage of game news and reviews from OnLive Game Systems and those who just want to check out what the fuss is all about have a great opportunity this Friday night to take on or watch the general chaos, chewing bubble gum and kicking ass the Frag Dolls are famous for as they tear their way through OnLive players leaving a grin on their pwned faces. This reminds me of a time when I got a chance to become one of Stephen Segal’s “sparring” partners.

Me: Sensei, that means he will just kick my ass around right?

Sensei: Yes, pretty much… but if he likes you he kicks your ass in a movie!

Me: Pass. Thanks.

True story. So if you haven’t had a chance to check out OnLive or Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood or the Frag Dolls (get your ass kicked by a hot chick, just like back in school!) this is a great time to do it! Prizes for the ones who spill the least of their own blood! (actually I don’t know what the prizes are for I have to work… DANG YOU REAL WORLD!!!) And remember it is only a game, they won’t kick your ass in a movie or school, I don’t think, that’s something you have to work out with them. But to give you at least a sporting edge, here is Frag Doll Phoenix with some Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood Multiplayer tips and a link to OnLive’s collection of the Frag Doll’s brutal stats (game stats guys!).

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Hope to sneak off at work and see you there! *looks around shifty eyed*

The I Am T-Pain Microphone Review

2011/07/26

Ripper71

News, Reviews

T-Pain has taken his name and made it synonymous with “auto-tune” over the years and there have been different ways to use this technique which he has marketed on various platforms such as the iPhone and the PC. It helps people, like myself, who have no musical talent whatsoever sound both bearable and amusing and has spawned a generation of auto-tune players. There are some, again like myself, who are so tone deaf that even these programs can only help so much and to help mask my painful tones T-Pain came out with the most user-friendly and party perfect version of the T-Pain effect out there: an all in one microphone.

The “Ellen” Effect:

Ellen had T-Pain on her show to discuss the microphone effect and Ellen showed just how easy it was to make a professional sound without professional training or even necessarily the best lyrics:

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After his appearance on the show (and the almost two million YouTube views that have followed) there became a huge demand for the iPhone app which went on to become one of the best selling apps of all time for them and is still a hot seller and well known today. But let’s face it though half the fun of this is the party environment that it can create and so T-Pain and CDi got together and created the most user-friendly and fun version of it, a microphone that takes you right into the energy of the Ellen show but with a simplicity that even a child (or highly intoxicated party going adult) could operate.

Using the T-Pain Microphone:

The buttons on the T-Pain microphone are pretty straight forward and self-explanatory. There is a blue button to give you some different background beats, none of which are from his songs though those are available for sale and can then be plugged into the mic via an input jack and an MP3 player. The red button starts the record and then you hit the effect button to turn on and off the auto-tuning. When done, you just hit the record button again and you can then hit the green playback button. The lower section of the mic doubles as a decent speaker system for the microphone though you can remove that and plug in a different speaker set or put the microphone into a USB adapter and download your song as an MP3. From there you can share it with the world! Or play it on your iPod friendly stereo system at your next party to show your friends how great, or in my case, how horrible you are (honestly I think I would probably violate some FCC regulation about sound pollution). I can’t describe the level of bad I am but the microphone performed like a hero trying to help me.

Never Time Enough:

The only issue I came across with the microphone was the short record time available. I guess the idea is that if you come up with a 3 minute song you really like you can plug it into a computer and save it down real quick and then go back to playing with it but in the middle of a party that doesn’t seem to practical. I came up with a pseudo solution by attaching a recorder to the headset output or speaker output but that kind of makes it awkward. My hopes for this mic in the future would either be a larger recording hard drive or make it micro disc compatible so you fill up a disc and load in another one so that the party never pauses and the recording can go all night.

Last Call:

So many party toys and games require setup or other systems such as consoles or computers to play. The iPhone app, which I have used much to my wife’s pained ears, is a lot of fun but really can only be used by one person at a time and is designed to be listened to by one person at a time. The I Am T-Pain microphone takes all these drawbacks and fixes them by putting them into the format all those people watching The Ellen Show that day wanted, a cordless microphone with built-in effects and beats that turns a little black stick into a party. And if you want, or dare, you can share it with the world.

SteelSeries Spectrum 7XB Gaming Headset Review (XBox)

2011/07/26

Ripper71

News, Reviews

1 Comment

SteelSeries has been known for years as one of the leaders in premium gaming equipment. Quite often it may cost a little more than other brands but for good reason, you know that you can expect great quality and versatility. So when I had the opportunity to review their latest Spectrum 7XB Gaming Headset I was more than just excited, I was downright thrilled. My XBox headset was Microsoft licensed and worked fairly well in it’s one earpiece but my mic was finicky at best. There had been plenty of night’s gaming where I just passed on the headset which caused me to lose some valuable intel but improved my comfort and placated my frustration with the poor microphone. So to get my hands on a SteelSeries was a very exciting moment indeed.

I had checked out and compared many brands of headsets at trade shows, conventions and testing for sites and I had a couple brand names that began to stand apart and SteelSeries was one of them. What surprised me was that the 7XB was actually outperformed most of the SteelSeries I had checked out over the years. They had obviously taken even minor customer concerns into consideration and had worked them into the latest release.

Setup:

The setup of the headset is not timely but it is a bit technical and definitely involves reading the directions mainly because of what it can do and the options available. It takes only a moment but you definitely need to read the instructions.

Comfort:

For long gaming sessions comfort can be almost as important as performance because no matter how good it sounds and communicates if it causes you headaches from weight or smashing your glasses then it will not get it’s proper use. Not only are the 7XB extremely lightweight but they are designed to rest the cups comfortably on the ears while at the same time allowing space for glasses. Even if part of the cup does press on the glasses they are so amazingly lightweight that they don’t compress the arms of the glasses into your temple so they wind up being some of the most comfortable ones on the market. One side is slightly heavier due to the AAA batteries required but it is a fairly unnoticeable difference that would practically require you to weigh to even know. The microphone section actually curls back into the headset to be out of the way if you are not talking on it which adds to the comfort of the headset by having it out of the way but also when it is slid out of storage it is very lightweight and adjustable. Comfort wise the only slightest improvement I could even imagine would be if they didn’t have to plug into the XBox controller at all and were completely wireless but since the cord is of a comfortable length and adds a very conveniently located mic button at the controller even this issue borders on a feature rather than an issue.

Sound Quality:

Powered by 50mm drivers the sound is encased in nice, comfortable ear cuffs that are an immersive audio experience that doesn’t rattle the house’s windows. Sounds seem to come from the direction they were intended which though obvious in plenty of games stood out pretty well in Blur, where cars are striking from the sides, your weapons are firing at things in front and you are getting attacked from behind. So much sound going on and yet determining their direction in a few seconds is really important to survival. At the same time there is chatter from other players in Blur and other games and this is another interesting place where these headsets shine. If another player speaks and you have your headset set on the LiveMix setting then when they speak the game volume drops so you can hear team chat then when they finish speaking the game volume came back up. This made it nice so that you could still enjoy the game volume at higher levels while not having to worry about missing important instructions or tactics. And if this doesn’t quite give you the mix you want there are separate locations to lower or increase each of the channels to set them just right.

As well as individually adjusting track levels you can also choose equalization to add even greater depth to the game sound. The equalizer has four setttings: Normal, Performance, Immersion and Entertainment. Normal is equalization off and normal game sound, Performance amplifies high tones and is perfect for those FPS where you are listening for every gun reload and step on a path at an ambush spot. Immersion kicks the bass up and you feel the gunshots and explosions rattling through your head (this one takes a little volume fine tuning to keep from causing ear damage) and Entertainment is just what the name implies, if you are using the headset to watch a movie, listen to music or play a game without a high importance on the sound or any team chatter. When doing the last the feature of tucking to microphone into the ear cup makes it easy to enjoy a streaming movie on console or PC without having to twist the mic out of the way while eating or drinking.

Compatibility:

As just a headset for listening the Spectrum 7XB is compatible with Xbox 360, PC, Mac, Wii and PS3. There is no team chat with them on the other systems with the PC in particular you may want a separate microphone set up for audio recording or transmission anyways. The Spectrum 7XB is great because it has such a crisp sound transmission it can just be used as headphones for so many different things but it can be hard to bring yourself from unplugging them from your XBox since they are such a solid addition to it’s gaming system.

Durability:

The headset is reinforced at key points to help with durability since there are certain sections of a headset that tend to take more stress than others. The cord that travels down to the XBox controller is wrapped in nylon parachute cord to prevent knotting and kinking, additional joints have been placed at areas of stress to allow extra movement and the whole headset is designed to break down into four parts to prevent damage during travel. Add to this that the microphone tucks safely into the headset and is wrapped in flexible metal and durable plastic casing when it is extracted and this is definitely a headset that if you treat it right will last you a long time. Besides if you are someone who can’t keep your temper and throws your headset against walls you don’t need to invest in quality headphones, you need to invest in foam and duct tape, maybe some spackle as well.

Style:

Gaming headsets can sometimes have a bit of a lack of style, often looking like they are designed for survivability rather than style. This headset is designed to look like high end very stylish headphones that happen to have a high quality very stylish microphone slide out of it. These things are enviable if they were just a wireless headset being used in your living room to listen to music or watch a movie without waking up the roommates (or wife). Then when you reach down and plug it into your controller and slide out the amazing looking microphone there will be that moment when your buddies look at you and just say “Damn.” Then when you let them try it they will either be buying them or saving up for them.

Last Call:

SteelSeries is known for their quality products as well as their style and the Spectrum 7XB gaming headset is absolutely no exception. I took the headset off of my Xbox 360 controller to test it out but it is going right back onto the controller as soon as the review is over and it may never come off there again. Ok, maybe when I am injured in bed and want to play one of my gaming systems in the bedroom without waking my wife. Ok and when playing games in the computer room that don’t bother with team speak. Ok and maybe, well you get the point.

F.E.A.R. 3 Review (PC/ OnLive Console)

2011/07/24

Ripper71

News, Reviews

OnLive has a whole bunch of trailers for just about all of their games and since they don’t have to buffer down and are playing straight off their server I can randomly click on different ones when I have a free moment and feel like picking my next game to plsy. So I clicked on F.E.A.R. 3 and saw the video featuring Marlyn Manson’s “Four Rusted Horses” and I had to play it. Part of me had no choice, I just knew that was the next game I was going to play and I played it well into the next couple nights.

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Those who played the first couple games have some idea of the storyline unfolding in the F.E.A.R. series, though probably not that much because it has always been a bit odd. Those who haven’t I can tell you in a nutshell what you would need to know to play the game. Point Man, the main character, never talks but is far more brutal than any mime in all of France. A one man killing machine he has the ability to slow time and in the process do amazing damage to all in his path. The one who does all the talking for him is his dead brother, who only he can see, that has a nice bullet hole in his forehead courtesy of Point Man. So the two of them go on a mission together. I won’t say what but it is kind of unique on its own and I am still not really sure the reasoning on the mission. But honestly you really don’t need to know what the reason for the mission only that it brings about amazing gameplay.

It isn’t quite the horror fest the preview promised. Horrible and gory things happen and Paxton Fettel, Point Man’s partner and dead brother, definitely does his share of supernatural and creepy things just as you would expect but it really for the most part is a twisted mess that you walk in on and spend a lot of time cleaning up. At first the less than living things are disturbing and killing them is almost as much reflex as actual thinking. Dead should stay dead and if this rule is broken it is reinforced with lots and lots of weapons. At some point though the battle shifts and becomes more about the evil living than the brain emaciated unliving. It becomes your job to just kill everything that moves and as they get tougher the weapons get tougher and the carnage and explosions get fun rather than creepy. I would at times forget that there even is a threat other than enemy soldiers, then after a big pack of undead would show up and I would forget the soldiers for a little while. Sometimes they will fight each other and you can stand back and watch a moment, even possibly wound one side to help the other only to destroy any that remain. How you kill and when you kill really becomes your choice for the most part with the exception of bosses which seem insanely hard after a buffet of bloodshed, all you can eat, leading right up to them. I would fly through a level then hit the boss and get stuck for quite a while, having to figure out strategies and approaches when I was used to just going forward and shooting all that moved. I’m not complaining about either aspect of the gameplay, they both have merits I like a lot, but I think it might be easier if the enemies ramp up to the bosses a bit rather than slaughter this, slaughter that, what just tore me in half?

You get to use some other vehicles here and there that are a welcome change and, if you are careful with their usage, can last you a while and do massive amounts of destruction to pretty much everything in sight. They will put things out there that can be the equal to your vehicle so you need to pay attention but I still loved every minute in them. A part of me didn’t want to give up the vehicle when I had to but after a few uses of the different weapons and attacks I had with Point Man I was back to having fun with interesting combos.

Single player is excellent but multiplayer has some very solid points too. You are able to attack soldiers in Fettel form where you throw globs of what I guess would be painful protoplasm at them or, more fun, take of their bodies and start tearing through them on the way to the other players. This is a deathmatch but with a twist because if you are good and quick enough the bodies you occupy may die but you will live on in another. This dynamic actually reminded me of [The 3rd Birthday] where you were an agent sent back in time to possess soldiers at major moments of battle and the key was always to jump right before death. Same goes with this multiplayer version. The co-op multiplayer is actually pretty similar to Uncharted 3’s multiplayer that you can revive other players in your group if you are close enough to them to make the save but whereas Uncharted had a pool of lives to work with if your whole team wipes it’s game over. Both are a blast to play but I really liked the Fettel form deathmatch which is funny because co-op usually wins out with me.

Last Call:

F.E.A.R. 3 is a great game with good atmosphere which slips a little but excellent gameplay all the way whether you are playing by yourself, co-op or multiplayer. The single player campaign has a good length and the co-op and multiplayer can go time and time again. I heard it was a bit choppy at times on some systems, especially the voice chat, but on OnLive on both the PC and the console it was extremely smooth. If I haven’t convince you to purchase it you can rent it from OnLive for $5.99 for 3 days or $8.99 for 5 days and you never have to return a game since you are playing on their server. If you are unsure about OnLive that is a good way to check it out anyways, you just sign up, pick your rental and you are playing F.E.A.R. 3 without the fear of late fees.

Homefront Large-Scale Warfare Multiplayer Review (PC/Onlive Game System)

2011/07/24

Ripper71

News, Reviews

Anger is an energy and I think the anger in the air about four hours after the release of Homefront is still out there across America, just waiting for someone to tap into it. Twitter and Facebook took a heavy blow as if millions of voices cried out at once and were suddenly silenced. Ok that is a total exaggeration but for those who lived through those hours they were left with an emptiness, in their game play time and their wallet. WTF do you mean it is over? I don’t mean to open old wounds but when mentioning the name Homefront to a gamer there is a very distinct wince associated with it. Everyone wanted to be out there reliving Red Dawn or at least be a part of this generation’s “Defenders of The Homeland” saga and it was just over too fast. So when I started talking about the experience of the multiplayer being one of the best out there right now I tend to get skeptical looks. So here I go explaining why.

First off you get to experience the setting that got you so excited about Homefront in the first place, you get to stand in the shadow of Randy’s Donuts’ iconic giant pastry and blow the enemy right out of boots that shouldn’t be on American soil. Or you get to move across a ruined neighborhood seeing the damage you have done to these capitalist scum and set up an ambush point inside the local Hooters. The maps are great in both their realistic settings and their destructive remains of iconic Americana and give a much more engrossing play platform. The burning debris and fluttering paper which catches your eye as movement and causes you to look one way may cause you to take a hit from another.

When you start the multiplayer you get a beginning set of weapons and skills to work from and, much like other multiplayer games, you are able to unlock customization of standard classes and weapons and get special items to help you with your mission. There are some particularly fun remote drones available that can really keep the game interesting and snoop out campers though the remotes have a limited battery life. These special items such as bazookas, drones, enemy sweeps ectc are earned by building up battle points during a match and the battle points are earned by identifying an enemy location, destroying an enemy or destroying an enemy vehicle. A very fun and interesting aspect of the multiplayer is the Battle Commander who identifies threats and assigns them as objectives to part of your team, increasing the number of players assigned by how many points they are earning. So let’s say you got a high level hotshot player who is tearing through your team like single-ply toilet paper, The Battle Commander will put a skull over them, mark their general location on the map to a few players and add skulls and information to more of the team until they hit the maximum of five skulls then your whole team knows where they are, they all want to take him out for an extra bounty on his head and to save your team the headache of his destructive path. At the same time the more skulls that player earns the more bonuses they get to help defend themselves against the growing threat. Suddenly your whole team is after one Rambo and drones are covering the ground and sky as well as vehicles like tanks and Humvees. The whole battlefield is hopping.

The game is available across platforms on the PC, Steam, XBLA, and PSN as well as my current system of choice, OnLive. If you have read some of my recent reviews you may have read how impressed I am with the system and it’s incredible versatility. Homefront Large-Scale Warfare Multiplayer is available as part of their Playpack Bundle which is designed a lot like Netflix streaming. You get over 60 games to choose from to play as much as you want for $10 a month on the PC, their mobile console, tablets and some smart phones. Just like with Netflix you can pause a game and pick it back up on another platform. So with Onlive I had the unique opportunity to see how it plays on a console as well as a PC. On both it performed flawlessly even with the full 32 players. Yep you read right, two 16 player teams shooting up maps and one another which is usually pretty rough for a console to handle without tearing or lag spikes but this game handles it great without any loss of detail. Out of dozens of multiplayer games at my disposal right now (most of which are on the Onlive Playpack) this is the one that keeps drawing me back in.

Last Call:

I have been playing multiplayer since, well since there was multiplayer. There are some that in their hay day were amazing and I still feel nostalgic for even though compared to today’s they wouldn’t hold a candle to them graphically (BF1942 and all it’s mods). It was because of their gameplay, the epic scope of the maps and play possibilities. For now I think I have found a home base of multiplayer operation in Homefront LSW and it will take one heck of a good system to knock it out. Especially since it is just one part of a $9.99 a month package.

A Brief Taste of Uncharted 3 Multiplayer (PSN/Beta Test)

2011/07/23

Ripper71

News, Previews

I logged on to play a little DC Universe Online before heading to bed and… what’s this? Would I like to play Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta? Yes please! I sat and stared at the download screen afraid it might stop if I walked away. Almost there, almost there, bam! In I dove having never played an Uncharted game. I have to state that because the initial headset chatter had a lot of “what the hell is Ripper doing?” or “So… you are just spraying and not aiming?” in it and I felt they deserve an explanation. After I figured out the controls though I was hooked and hooked solidly. This was a beautiful co-op! I usually like bigger teams for multiplayer but the four or less team intimacy worked great toward reviving each other and really forced players to either work as a team or lose. If someone always seem to rack up the kills, get all the loot and never do a revive they found themselves fresh out of help when they got surrounded or went down. Lives are pooled as well so it is in the team’s best interest to get a fallen comrade back on their feet (though they do get points for that too). There were two basic styles of play, PvP and PvE, so either two teams of four or less or your team versus the world. PvP was pretty straight forward stuff that we are used to, a scramble across the map to take out enemies. The maps are very graphically nice and detailed and the weapons are plentiful. It was the PvE that I fell in love with though, each map had a variance on how it played out dependent on map topography but in the end it came down to one thing: work as a unit or lose.

There were three basic setups for each wave of the PvE battles: transport, defend, or protect. Transport was a loot transport from a drop location to a chest and the team worked with one or two players trading off as carriers while the rest of the team defended (this was also part of the PvP battle maps, fighting over the loot, but the team closer to drop tended to have a huge advantage). This was a lot of fun since there were multiple ways to transport and each way had a choke point or sniper spot that you had to be really careful for because even if a player might miss that spot you can bet the game didn’t and there is someone waiting for you. The game populated with plenty of enemies too so even the smaller map had plenty of baddies as obstacles, maybe even worse from the crossfire possibilities. The defend is the most free flowing of the waves, basically a certain number of enemies are coming for you and you have to kill them all. This is where a lesser team player might split off and try to get their own head count but it is also where is shows the teammates you want to friend because you will all huddle in a room together, each on an exit and watching for one of you to fall or start to get choked from an enemy that flanked. Remember your lives are pooled so it is in your best interest to watch your teammate’s back but it’s when you get teammates who risk themselves getting you back on your feet in a hot spot that shows the players you hope to go into another game with. This is also shown in the last setup protect too, but to a lesser degree. In that one your whole team is assigned to stay in a square and if you step out of the square the kills no longer count. So your team needs to stand in a square, sometimes with very limited cover, as the enemy progresses from all directions. The square is in a different location each time this wave comes up so once again the team that stays together will get the kills to start counting sooner and increase the chances of clearing the wave faster. A certain amount of time is awarded for clearing a wave but the time reward is lower each time so teamwork really made the difference between winning and losing. To win you had to complete a certain number of waves in the allotted time with the waves being all three mixed together. This kind of play took much longer than the quick PvP rounds, that is if you had a good team that watched each others backs. If you had a lone wolf then the whole pack would go down fast. When a team was good you might find yourself playing with them for a few rounds and before you know it hours have past. Remember how I said I started playing right before I was supposed to go to bed? Yay for energy drinks the next day!

Last Call:

I mostly just talked about PvE here because there was plenty of that to fill my time and keep me thoroughly entertained. From what I hear the PvP players were kept just as busy if not more so in those games making me really excited when this ships later this year. I only got a brief taste of this multiplayer but I was immediately sucked in and would be playing it tonight if it hadn’t already gone dark again. It may still be in beta but is is already very polished and a must play when it comes out or anytime you see the opportunity to dive in on more testing. Trust me I will be checking for it later tonight.

Red Faction: Armageddon Review (OnLive/PC)

2011/07/10

Ripper71

News, Reviews

When I first started playing Red Faction: Armageddon I was a little confused. Wait I am supposed to take a hammer and smash a wall? Ok…BOOM goes the wall. Pretty darn cool. So for a while I went around all smashy smashy. Well what do you know, this game rewards you for smashing everything in sight, smashy smashy smashy. And boy do I wield a mean hammer! Thor eat your heart out. Let’s try the other weapons, not bad there either. Then along came monsters and I got a little nervous. Heck there I was following a trail of very ugly corpses to get here, this was going to be creepy and nasty. Only it isn’t really, the beasts, though creepy looking, are all the colors of the rainbow and when I start swinging my hammer the walls and heaven above thunder and quake. If I miss the beasts I might hit a pillar, then they get crushed by debris. Nice! They start attacking in great numbers causing me a harder time but as long as I have a good working concept of cover and don’t try to charge through every fray I move up through the levels fast and fun, though without a lot of fear maybe partially because of the fact that it is a third person shooter. I think a lot of it has to do with amazing weapons and the plentiful ammo. It just kind of renders the enemies inferior and I feel like a juggernaut as I tear through them over and over again, varying it up, finding what works best for each particular weapon but I just keep moving along, collecting corpses and upgrading attacks. There is a fun, large variety to choose from but in the end it really comes down to one. the Magnet Gun.

Once the Magnet Gun came into play I started clearing levels using just it and my hammer. All the other weapons remained on full ammo as I went through and beat everything in the distance with buildings, yes I threw whole buildings at the aliens and watched them smashed against cave walls, then took the aliens corpse and threw it at another alien. Some may try to compare it to an energy grapple gun in another game but this is both harder to control and much more amazingly destructive. In that one you had to grab a piece of metal or an enemy’s body part, something small, and hurl it at something else with sometimes with a weapons precision. With the Magnet Gun however, you pick what to pull and where to anchor it. Say you pick a 4 story metal walkway and pick a single enemy and suddenly a whole walkway is smashing into it. I even forgot about the hammer at one point and threw various buildings own walls at each other from the inside like an implosion. I would throw the base of the tower into the top of it crushing it like a can. I could also shoot an enemy then shoot a beam high in the caves and cause it to go flying through the air like a rag doll and crush its head on the beam. When all wreckage was on the floor I would sometimes take the corpses and slam them against a steel wall. Just because I could and because in a sick way it was kind of funny.

There are a few other vehicles you get to use, such as a mech walker, a spider tank and a compact flyer. The mech walker and spider tank are pretty dang impressive as long as, once again, you take your time and don’t rush into the middle of situations. They are practically invincible and can do massive amounts of damage and destruction as you move along with them. Their unlimited ammo also makes them fun for just shooting and blowing up every single scrap in sight. The flyer is a little different story, the rockets are outstanding but slow to re-power, the gun is a little weak and the armor is downright weak. I came really close… ok I can swallow my pride and state that I got killed in it a lot. Most of the game takes place in tunnels or caves which means you just follow the path in front of you, one way in, one way out. If you try to backtrack it considers it desertion of mission and kills you. In the case of the flyer you are in an extremely tight tunnel, very much a Matrix-like feel to the tunnel and the flying, and enemies blast the crud out of you with little room for maneuverability. This was probably the most painful part of the game to work through and unlike your godlike fighting status throughout the rest of the game you feel like a fish getting shot in a barrel. Even when you are a fish in a barrel you are a graphically great looking fish, the visuals are incredibly crisp, the sound is excellent and the destruction shows amazing detail in every single piece of debris.

Last Call:

This game is an absolute blast. I guess I was expecting more of a survival horror and this game falls somewhere between Dead Space 2 and Halo, which when you think about it is truly not bad company to be keeping. The creatures are scarier than Halo but not as creepy as Dead Space 2, the weapon variety is actually better than either and the enemy toughness falls somewhere in between the two. The key is this game has massive destruction capabilities and provides the perfect weapons to destroy just about everything in sight. You get your hammer for smashing through walls and even the floor if the doors or the stairs sound boring and they have the Magnet Gun which is almost like a wrecking ball in it’s destructive nature and takes your damage possibilities to the limits only of your imagination. Honestly this game, partially because of the quirky dialogue and mostly the damage system, doesn’t take itself as serious as the other two and is mostly about giving you big guns, fun targets and letting you destroy the world. There are even special game modes such as Ruin which it literally just designed to destroy everything in sight and four person co-op multiplayer where you get to see what happens with four Magnet Guns and hammers getting wielded at the same time. Talk about destruction and chaos! This is the part where I have to decide whether or not I would recommend buying this game. Is it just a stamp of another that you might already have? I think you have probably already figured out that I think it is a game of it’s own, designed with fun destruction in mind so that it doesn’t take itself quite as serious as some other games in the genre. The game has over 10 hours of playthrough just on campaign mode if you play through once, and then there are achievements to be had and different weapon combinations to be tried and that is without even bringing the multiplayer mode into consideration which can be as different as the players who play it. Red Faction: Armageddon is totally worth its price.

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Metro 2033 Review (OnLive/PC)

2011/07/09

Ripper71

News, Reviews

2033 will not be a good year for human beings if Metro 2033 has captured our future right, but it is a good time for gaming. Based on the 2003 (get the year?) book of the same title by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033 is set in a bleak underground world beneath a frozen wasteland that was once a thriving city and takes us to the dark edges of survival where every bit of light is welcome and almost everything that goes bump in the dark wants you dead. Though it mostly takes place in poorly lit tunnels where corpses abound, the game never really seems to repeat the same scenery and for such a bleak environment it is very rich in detail, every section tells a story even if it is not the one you are traveling through. You may stumble upon the corpse of a apocalypse time soldier and by the destruction around him and the blood smears on the ground you can figure out how he died even though he has become nothing more to you than an ammo bucket. The game is incredibly rich in such details, visually and audibly, making it quickly immersive especially if you find yourself like I was on an addicted marathon play of it through the night. The darkness is not just darkness, it is danger and oppressive doom and in every shadow you may find a reward in the form of a cache of weapons or you may have something knocking you on your back and chomping at your neck trying to tear it out. It has lots of jump factors but doesn’t just rely on them. The mutants though very canine like will sometimes stand erect on their hind legs and look at you and let out a long woeful wail. After which mutant beasts descent on you from all directions.

The game isn’t all doom though there isn’t much that doesn’t have gloom. There are sparks in the dark in the form of soldiers, like yourself, and others who still hold out hope for humanity winning. More often than not you will encounter what you would expect to see in such an environment, the mutants truly aren’t mankind’s only enemy. There are those who want to rule, warring factions who can’t give up their grudges just because they have a common enemy, those who prey upon others in times of disaster, all the bad elements of mankind that we would expect to rear their ugly heads in our greatest times of need. This game provides them all, well created and very believably, almost sadly believable and they prove obstacles on your journey as well. Without giving away the story too much your journey could almost seem a bit simple for what trials you have to endure but they show the character of the character you are playing and proves to be a value of their own.

Resources are very scarce in the game so weapon upgrades and ammo are cherished and sometimes used sparingly. There were a few times where I found myself relying on my knife rather than my gun in some dangerous battle because I knew something nastier was around the corner and I needed to make every round count. Ammo is so valuable that it is currency in the game, the pre-apocalyptic military grade ammo is the coin of the land so when you get it you have to decide do you buy a weapon upgrade or more of the inferior mutant day ammo or is your survival in this situation dependent on some well placed shots with some good rounds? It is a choice you have to make throughout the game and you definitely want to not take it lightly. Use up too much of the better ammo and you could find yourself wishing you had it when some scavenger in one of the few lit and populated train stations, the only bastion of civilization left, offers you a shiny item for the military ammo you have left. Another tip I learned the hard way, check all the scavengers in these hubs before you purchase, you may be excited to see new weapons to be had, but sometimes you might find something to provide light in the dark of the tunnel.

Since ammo is so valuable and scarce sometimes avoiding the conflict all together is the best way to go, though usually not the only way. The game is good about giving you options on how to get past situations. Generally what it does is present you with a situation such as a bunch of guards sitting around listening to their commander speak. You are watching from the dark and all the choices on how to proceed is up to you. You can try to cling to the ever present shadows and try to slip down the stairs to one side. You could try to take up a offensive position and start tearing them apart. You can take a defensive position and pick them off as they separate after the meeting. You can try walking past them and hope to get back into the shadows before they see you. Literally all these options are available to you and there is no wrong choice, some are more difficult than others, but they are all up to you. This freedom to clear obstacles is one of the most addictive parts of the game and had me playing the same sections over and over just curious how each scenario might play out. I wasn’t alone in my fascination of it either, the OnLive system has a feature called Arena in which people can spectate on other player’s games to see if they like it or to cheer or jeer them on. During the hours I played Metro 2033 I don’t think a single minute went by (no exaggeration) where I didn’t have a spectator watching the game and most of the ones that left wound up coming back to watch some more. The game isn’t just addictive to play it is also addictive to watch.

Few games are absolutely perfect and this one had it’s occasional issues. Sometimes with the animation you couldn’t tell something was dead already and so wasted a few extra shots of ammo though this might have been intentional. Melee combat can be awkward with your swipes appearing to land but missing entirely or the enemy walking right through you to suddenly be behind you even if you are in a dead end with no side to side movement room which in a first person game in particular can be frustrating when you find yourself trying to fight something basically underneath you. For the most part though these issues are very easy to overlook.

Last Call:

Metro 2033 paints a dark future for mankind with little sparks of light traveling through it though not all of them with bright intentions. The atmosphere is immersive and addictive, the gameplay mechanics and situations are extremely enthralling. I picked this game for the little bit of talk I had heard about it before it came out and I am extremely glad I did. It has replayability due to the great number of possibilities in each scenario and each play through will be over 10 hours. I think this game might be one of the best plays of the year and I know it is probably one of the best stories, heck I plan to order the book now. Now if they would only make a video game based on World War Z…

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