Gaming Crimes: Gamestop trading addicts.

There are some things gamers shouldn't do, but do anyways. Its all a mater of opinion, habits, and morals, and honestly we're all probably guilty of something someone else would call a crime. For example, whether I play a game on easy or normal is completely random and I may choose either. However someone else would call foul on this, and think I'm breaking some kind of hardcore code for even considering easy difficulty.Meanwhile I'm personally okay with this, and I don't think it really effects your gamer status. Well anyways, here is a new series where I will talk of things I consider crimes and why. It's all for fun really, so don't feel bad if you're a criminal within the series. Speaking of which, this first one will be familiar to a lot of you even if you don't know about gamestop....
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Constant trade-ins:

I grew up playing between the NES, SNES, and then playstation 1 and 2. Within this era, I never had much of a say in gaming. I played a list of random games my dad had, enjoyed things he tried and then threw to the side, and I usually just ended up waiting for him to buy the next game for me. I didn't know anything about a place called gamestop, or how trade-ins there worked. I kept the pile of games that I played, and enjoyed them. I kept this habit of game hoarding even to this day where 90% of the games in this house are mine and most were likewise bought or gifted to me. So when I learned about the trade-in business, somewhere in the middle of my gamer hobby, I kind of cringed at it. How would I be able to give up an old game for less than $10, these games were easily worth more to me and were worth way more to gamestop who would just re-sell them at triple the price of what I got back. What if I wanted to replay them again? Then when I got more involved in online gamer communities, and also met more gamer friends in real life. I soon found out the world of gaming was surrounded by people who constantly traded in just about anything they bought. Inversion? Oh yeah, it was meh so I traded it in after a quick run through. Crysis 2? Interesting, and fun, but I traded it during its launch week. Metal gear solid 4? Oh my god what a classic! I should re-purchase that game some time.

WTF!? Seriously? I can't imagine how this mentality works. People are selling everything from "meh" to classics with great replay value for 1/4th or less of what they just payed for with it. I don't go around crusading about this issue, because its self-destructive and hurts them more than it ever will me. Besides, I may end up buying their used games as I am a bargain bin digger. It wont harm me if somebody plays uncharted 3 to the end credits, and despite the $60 investment they'll take it back next day and get less than $30 back for it. It's insanely stupid, especially without at least giving a trophy hunt or multiplayer a try, but hey at least it's not harming me. Its also confusing, considering most of these guys still love the games they trade. They are literally getting ripped off selling their own happiness. I guess my alternative, hoarding a ton of discs, isn't the best solution either. Maybe I should have traded two worlds 2, mario party 8, Assassins creed brotherhood, and street fighter 4 when they were going for better sale prices considering they have been collecting dust for a good period of time now. However I'd rather have a collection of 40 discs where I only play 10, than a collection of 3 and no way to replay all the memories I had unless they just so happened to be on the 3 that I didn't sell (and don't forget about the conscience that is telling you about how much money you lost getting ripped off in the trades).

Most pictures that look like this are a joke or a satire... I can only wish this one was.

Sure some trading is a great thing. Especially if there is a great deal going around that allows you to get less ripped off. I remember getting the force unleashed 2 for christmas, beat it in 3 days, thought it was one of the most boring and forgetable linear games I've ever played, and sold it with a 30% bonus deal which took a lot of money off of my Killzone3 purchase. It was a win-win situation, and I enjoyed a discounted killzone3 10X more than FU2 (oh wow, those initials are hilarious when you think about it). Likewise, I should have traded a few more games when I had the chance. However I still think that the constant traders are on par with drug  addiction, and it simply shouldn't be done.

Some of the best multiplayers in the shooter genre

Okay, so here is a list of great multiplayer games worth mentioning. I can't really say this is a true editorial for the best, but its a pretty good view of my opinions towards them and why I think they're worth a try. So don't take it wrong if I'm missing anything, or forget something. These 5 games all have their own unique flavor, fun, and have hard effort put into them.
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Call of duty black ops:

Stating the obvious, there should be a COD game on this list. Lets face the facts, while this game is both loved and hated there is a good reason it's became popular. The game is open to everyone with its cheap thrills, but content packed gameplay, it has plenty of modes, and supports everything from Co-op to 3D. Sure its not the best game for hardcore gamers to stick with, and it could use better progress and more breathing space due to activision making it their cash cow, however the series is overall a solid FPS open to the masses. Even if you decide to hate on it, you still have to admit that its better than 80% of the other FPS games which are just trying to copy and paste the same gameplay and formula without the many user friendly features and rewards that COD is packed with. Now, which is the best COD? Simple, black ops. Black ops gave the series its greatest attempt at innovating multiplayer, and had some hardcore adjustments in mind to prevent the series from going purely casual. Truely noticeable gun recoil, and diving were introduced to improve on what used to be reflex based battles, A gamble mode was fun and had fun ideas that seemed to date back to counter-strike and old school shooters, and there were just small fun tweaks thrown in like 1st tier perks changing the character models, contracts for XP, bot mode with seperate ranking, and a seriously deep emblem maker. Also the leveling was put at 50, and while they claimed it was just like MW2's 70, it thankfully wasn't that bad of a pointless grind yet more prestiges were around if you liked that sort of thing. All of this was sadly thrown out the window in MW3, but lets hope black ops 2 stays true to black ops 1 and delivers another surprise. Oh, also I guess I better mention something about zombies since the internet is in love with that mode. I don't get it, but oh well it's a nice bonus.

Battlefield 3 and bad company 2:

I've got to admit, I'm disappointed with BF3. So I'll include them both since BF3 did some cool things, but I can't put it over BC2. Remember that 80% number of games that I mentioned earlier, that just steal COD's formula and water it down and reskin it? Well this is one of the few that stole it and actually succeeded in being awesome. Its success is thanks to its tactical gameplay, strategy, and the fact that it wants to be more open than most of its competitors. Plus it has terrain damage and large scale war, that's just awesome on its own. I really don't think much more needs to be said, it's one of the best ways to experience and online FPS war game.

Team fortress 2:

This one seriously deserves a lot of credit. It's pretty ancient, and came out borderlining the end of the PS2 generation, yet it still has strong fans, parodies, influence, and it never gets old. It does this without stealing, without following traditions, and without fitting into any category of gamer. Even after it went F2P, and after constant game changing updates, it's been a blast to just log on and blast people. It is now complete with bots, a variety of modes, huge fanbase full of custom maps and servers, and an endless supply of fun and laughter for nearly every type of gamer. This is truly one of the best class based games ever, no questions about it. It's free, and considering it runs on a ton of PCs there really isn't an excuse to not play it.

Killzone 2:

One of my personal favorites. It seems to be the popular pick among a cult of hardcore FPS gamers, or what's left of us after everyone else decided to be a "me too" product for the masses. With an amazing engine, fun and very deep gameplay, server lists, and plenty of options and other small details, this is just an awesome and unique game built from the ground up for the FPS enthusiast and hardcore gamer. The servers are extremely customizable, clans and unique squad system run well, the gunplay has a great learning curve with great recoil and weight feel, and then there are plenty of small details to appreciate like the physics, dark atmosphere, giant stat tracking list, custom music player, etc. This is a must have for the hardcore FPS fanbase that is dreaming for a return to the better days of shooters.

StarHawk:

Another one that feels more like a personal choice, however I will give you some facts. It will have free map DLC for its life cycle. It supports big battles made up of organized chaos. It has deep clan systems. It is very well balanced. Okay, enough fact talking, now its time for me to come right out and tell you how amazing it is! While this list is in no specific order, if it was this would be on #1. Most of this game can be summed up in fun based on how it doesn't follow hardly any traditions. It has a weapon for each weapon type, its ranking is useless because it only gives you skins and paint, the health is big, it combines RTS gameplay with shooting, and once a battle has unfolded it is a mess but a really fun one. In other words everything about this game relies on its fun gameplay, and nothing that distracts from it. You have one weapon for every weapon type, meaning you shouldn't be whining over how one rifle is more overpowered than the other and whatnot. You instead pick the type of gun you want, use it, and you either kill or get killed based on your made preference. No gripes about recoil, whether or not you snipe with bolt action, or if your rocket was a fair shot. Everybody has the same chance, yet thanks to the big health it takes skill and endurance to bring down people. Meanwhile you can also build and strategize with the innovative use of having a building system introduced into a shooter. There is also a unique sense of balancing, and anybody can kill a tank or hawk yet the hawk and tank still have amazing advantages. You get the point, this game isn't about gimmicks it's about a fantastic multiplayer. It's fun, exciting, and never dull. Oh, yeah and did I mention that the map packs will be free and that this is one of the best games to play a CTF match?

Honorable mentions:
-Uncharted 3 for being generally fun and having strong developer support.
-Resistance 3 for its combination of COD and arena style multiplayer.
-Far cry 2 for just being a LOT of fun the few times I could get into a match

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Could have done better (for those that disappointed the most)

Warhammer 40'000 space marines:

Now I love this game, and the warhammer 40k universe. However this just makes it kind of more disappointing. It steals the common and overdone COD formula, includes the crappy P2P matchmaking, lags constantly, leaves the combat kind of dry, and to finish it off... they impress us with an amazing amount of customization. It just makes you wish the gameplay was better so that you could have fun showing off your custom space marine gear and colors. It's like telling me you made me an amazing cake, drop it and ruin it, and then pick it back up and offer it to me despite the mud, grass, bugs, and mess that covers it. Overall warhammer deserves better. We should get that amazing customization, and some fantastic gameplay that is unique yet true to warhammer. It's a fun game overall, I'm not going to say its a complete loss, but the frustrating matchmaking and mediocre gameplay is just not the online I would expect if I were to buy an action packed warhammer game.

Brink:

Brink... what a sad fate. Hyped, loved, and released with amazing gameplay and effort. Oh, but that effort wasn't for the maps and replayabiltity. And they did accomplish the goal to blur single player with multiplayer, because singleplayer didn't exist. The entire game was a masterpiece without the proper levels and freedom to completely enjoy it. To top it off, the multiplayer was amazingly bad in netcoding. Overall that's all that needs to be said. If the sequel releases with a team deathmatch, more than 8 levels total, and allows you to actually play the game without running into a chain of lag freezes, then maybe you will find it on the opposite side of this list.

Modern warfare 3:

Again, this is about disappointment not just poor gameplay. Rest assured Modern warfare 3 can keep its 9/10 that I think I gave its multiplayer segment. However all of that praise that you can see above for black ops is pretty much scrapped without reason in this successor. Recoil is almost absent, no diving, theater was broken to a frustrating point the last time I used it, it took forever before the gamble modes were reintroduced, and a bunch of the smaller fun things that were in black ops were just tossed out. Not only that, but about everything was replaced with MW2 mechanics. With two companies working on it instead of one, you'd expect more new things than a bunch of gun rank and kill streak tweaks to play with while in the lobby. While I love the updated support this game is getting, the new modes are fantastic, and the game is overall worth getting and playing, it is just not as great as you'd expect it to be after black ops. Black ops raised the bar, and Modern warfare 3 came up too short to reach it. However I will say that I LOVED the survival mode a lot more than I thought I would, and while the maps are boxed in they by far beat the "meh" ones in black ops.

Honorable mentions:
-Crysis 2 for being a complete COD clone without much effort put into beyond throwing a suit into the gameplay. Hard to believe this was made by the timesplitter developers.
-Killzone 3 because the difference in server management really did kill the game for many.
-Resistance 2 for just being an extremely messy multiplayer without any point or fun to it.

The brighter vision of future gaming!

Before I start, I want to apologize for the strange white background in the text of the art games area. I don't know what is causing it, and nothing is done differently about it compared the rest of the article. It's just... there. It is still readable, so I guess I'll just accept it as a strange glitch and move one. Anyways....

All around the end of this generation of console gaming we've heard of changes to the industry that range from puzzling, and questionable, to downright heresy. Some say that we'll all be reduced to playing casualized shovelware, others say we will have our games locked after the first use, and of course this whole idea that we're ready for full digital distribution. Some say there will be no place for singleplayer, and that all of our games will force us to stay on a constant internet connection (right, because diablo 3 worked so well didn't it?). Sometimes there is no evidence or potential for these futures, but somehow they wind up getting thrown out there by both journalists and developers. It's almost like they want to worry the readers and gamers. Heck, I saw an article that spoke somewhat positive about the future, and then tried to make it sound bad: Free to play. The dude made free to play gaming sound like a future that would overthrow hardcore gaming... how can you make free to play sound dark and assume that hardcore gaming is contradicted by it? Here, look at this: Google images for free to play. All of those likely for free, is it really so bad? okay, anyways here is a list of predictions that are more of a brighter perspective of the future, instead of all the fear mongering crap that the common gaming media would like to tell you is the future. Of course, the future will have some bad effects, and it's not like the main predictions are wrong. It's just that they're throwing it at us in ways to make us fear the future, when there is obviously some good things to come. Well this list will look at a lot of the better potential future of gaming, maybe with a drawback or two, but nothing compared to the regular doom and gloom predictions.
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More Artsy Games:

Simply Beautiful!

I know art games aren't for everybody. Afterall, they're barely games. However after the amazing success of journey, limbo, flower, braid, dear esther, and more, it's quite obvious that there is a rising trend in both development and consumers. Simply put, we love brilliant experiences. Now on the same format that we're using to frag people over killstreaks, we're being given amazing emotional experiences tied in with abnormal but deep plots and covered in unique setting that bursts with atmosphere. Developers are taking new philosophies, new experiments, and a lot more emotion into the idea of game development, and shipping them out in wonderful and affordable experiences. Of course, there are drawbacks here. One of the reasons why they are so cherished is because they are rare. Should these be more mainstreamed, and they will, we will likely see more flawed releases, more cliches, interpretative endings will get moans like our current cliffhangers do, and of course some will be releasing these games simply for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon. This will result in poor releases, uninspired art, and of worst of all there is almost no way to warn people about it. Think, how would you review journey? "It's amazing because of all the colors, emotions, the way the multiplayer runs, and deep meaning.... " and that's it. You'd either have to press them for spoilers, ruin it with a trip to youtube, or blindly dive in and see for yourself. No way to actually get a good opinion without blind trust, or ruining something that was meant to be experienced first hand. And stating the obvious, we also would just get tired of a lot of art games. They are fun as a treat, and while our future should have more of them, we need to know the limit as well. Overall, I could look forward to more Journey and flower type experiences in between crashing starhawks, and collecting dragon souls.


Better motion controls:

Holy crap, what happened to the living room!?

Like it or not, the gaming market is obsessed with motion control games. Kinect being the new and improved eyetoy (which failed miserably last gen), the move being the new and improved wii, and the upcoming WiiU just being some sort of awesome tablet thing combined with this gen's motion controls, we're getting constantly improving tech based around motion gaming. Eventually people will be laughing about the "waggle" insult, and we'll be switching between awesome sword slashing RPGs, amazing VR simulators, and our more normal games. However, I'll bring up the RPG idea again... I personally can't imagine going back to a regular game if I had the choice to dive into an RPG with a realistic sword and shield combat simulating system. Haters are going to hate, but motion controls are here to stay and improve. Lets cheer their improvements along, and hope that our future is filled with.... damn, I just really want to play that realistic sword based RPG now that I thought of it. Someone hurry up and get to work on it!


A new crown of mainstream gaming:

Eventually another, better game will take the spotlight.

So everybody loves call of duty right now. Well, okay everyone except the internet's comment sections. Developers copy it, new generation gamers will put it as the top game ever, and eventually a piece of it will continue on through games forever. But then it'll go the way of halo, counter strike, quake, and other big name shooters that have a better reputation in the past than the present. Peoples moods often swing, and the fact that most of these games milk themselves to death doesn't help either. People will move onto something else that catches their eye better, something that takes just a piece of COD and either reinvents it or combines in with a brilliant new idea or style. Then that will become everything, get on magazine covers, get clones and copies, merchandise, cheap scams and marketing gimmicks, and an online community filled with millions... including trolls and mic spamming kids alike. Same way with minecraft, battlefield, and maybe one day we'll even have a more clear successor of WOW for MMORPGs. Why do I say this is good? Because it's about damn time! Honestly after a series milks itself for so long, and our only alternatives are more games copying the game that you are trying to escape from... it's kind of a crappy cycle and grind. While internet comments are full of trolls, whiners, and fanboys there is also some valid criticism coming from them that media and common person alike wont bring themselves to mentioning. Like the fact that the COD games are being pumped out at a rapid and unpolished pace, or how minecraft really isn't even close to being the best building sandbox game out there. Until we get this phase of change over with, we're stuck with a bad aftertaste of the current wave of mainstream games. At the ending time of a console gen, you can't help but appreciate the idea that a year into the PS4/720/WiiU we will very likely have a different ground breaking title that carries a fresher feel. Of course, we will be sick of that eventually and the internet comments will be filled with the same trolls hating on what is popular, but honestly thats just a problem with the mainstream itself. For now, lets be happy at the idea of a future that ends the grind of all the COD/Minecraft attention. Don't worry, they'll still exist and continue to do nice things for their loyal fans, and the series will be better off without getting the spotlight trolling and online cussing children.


Free To Play:

There are some amazing F2P games out there

Again, how is this supposed to be so bad? Clearly developers will be greedy enough that there will always be priced videogames, and at the very least pay to play subscriptions. However the idea of a mass amount of F2P games is interesting, and depending on how it is executed, this idea can be fantastic or the apocalypse of gaming. If we can get games that still allow you to be offline, single player games don't get held back or nerfed compared to paying players, and the online is controlled well... this can be awesome. Some things will need to be taken care of to go smoothly. One of the complaints that always occur in games that convert to F2P (such as Team fortress 2) is that you get a wave of noobs and players that just don't belong. This can be taken care of if you give special server options to paying or premium players. This rewards the playing, keeps free playing noobs away, and doesn't punish anyone. Quite simple. Then there is the concern of this happening to single player games. Simply don't fuck up. The developer needs to go light on transactions, make it playable offline, and reward the paying well with things like cheaper/free additional missions, optional cheat codes, exlcusive levels of difficulty, exclusive achievments, etc. Things that wont matter much to the free, but will greatly reward the paying loyal fan while keeping the game to a true singleplayer experience. This'll be tricky, and will likely never happen to begin with, but overall if single player becomes part of this F2P model it can happen with great care. There is no harm to the hardcore, casual, or mainstream in this turn of events. F2P needs to be handled with caution to get the best effect. However, think about the benifits? Developers almost have to keep the game supported if they want any money, any of your friends will be able to play what you're playing, no need for demos or large fees, and developers will be better rewarded. Think, if someone makes a crappy game and puts it out for $60 they either get it or they don't. If Someone puts out an outstanding game, people will basically be showering them with money over donations, subscriptions, items, skins, and other weird content that they love because they love the game. The more someone loves the game, the more money will likely show up in the developers hands.


And, to state the obvious...:

It's so pretty!

Well graphics, sequels, better engines, and a lot of other cool stuff that'll pop out of advancing technology. Imagine the online standard being bumped up to 50 player battles, terrain destruction, slick graphics with more of those shiny pop out textures and pretty rain effects, and of course sequels to all the games we love. improved on bigger better consoles, to. We've already gotten a look at pikmin 3, and while it's not doing anything impressive or surprising it's simply a sequel to a series that has never disappointed nintendo's audience. It's nice to see the upcoming console generation motivating sequels to games we love, and to see them progress in the mysterious thing that is the upcoming generation of consoles.


After all of this, I'm not necessarily saying that I'm ready for the PS4/720 to leap out in stores and for old servers to start shutting down. I'm quite content with what we have, and would be okay with 3-5 more years of PS3 and the 360. However I'm excited to see innovation, and like I said from the start, we shouldn't be expecting a doomed next gen that punishes the current gamers and gaming culture. Instead, we should be happy and positive about true progress, which is what will likely happen within the upcoming generation of gaming.

The nostalgic things that I miss about gaming

No rants, or major opinions this time, nor any listing stuff. Just some personal chat about gaming, and some bits of the gaming culture that I've missed. Nostalgia gets us all, and as time changes, we either adapt or get left behind. Here are some things that I do miss though. And after I'm done, you can post some cool nostalgic things you miss about gaming.

Cheat codes:

Yeah cheat codes. It's not just about cheating to play, I actually forced a personal policy where I had to beat the game once or get super stuck before punching in even silly codes. However codes could add replay value. They could actually influence my entire decision on games, and how I played them. For example, Star wars Battlefront was fun, but if I punched in the "no AI" cheat which could be toggled and disable spawning, I could wage a no respawn war and see who won through pure battle. It was also a blast playing with infinite ammo, especially back in the era where crazy guns was the standard. I don't know what really happened to them. It was likely the idea of trophies/achievement, and how nobody wanted a cheater winning them, however this is kind of invalid as the very few games that have cheats will have a disabled trophy mode. I guess the devs just decided to stop supporting it to the public, or possibly patch it out of games after they've used cheats to test stuff. One article I read even suggests that cheats were intended for the official journalists, and now they get a separate copy with cheats versus the public copy without cheats. Well whatever it is, It is a feature that I miss, and one that was always fun to goof around with once you played the game normally. It also kind of defeats this idea of casualizing everything, because if someone wanted to play a game that was too hard, cheats solved it. I beat the entire starcraft campaign with them because I honestly just suck at RTS games, yet I loved starcraft.


Jam pack, and demo discs:

Well this obviously died. I mean c'mon, we have digital demos for games now that you can get for free. However, back in the PS1 and 2 era you could get discs from magazines, stores, and bundles that contained 10-20 demos and some trailers. It's kind of how gaming publicity spread before everybody used the internet in the PS1 days, and it was also just a ton of fun to punch through each demo, even if a game wasn't your type. Back in these eras, I was also very young and didn't have much choice in my game library (most of the games I played were my dads, rentals, or games that we somehow stumbled upon in some luck). I think this was also around the time where the house rule was no videogames on weekdays. So having the time to play a disc full of so much variety in quick sample bursts was kind of awesome from my perspective. Just something that'll live on as one of the nicer small things of older gaming.


No influence:

I like the internet. Mostly because of the vast storage of knowledge and perspective, but secondly because of gaming. However they both combine to make a big chunk of the awesome gaming culture with reviews, forums, and interviews. You can even search up the cult following of an underdog game, something that I seriously need considering I play plenty of games that nobody really talks about. However, I didn't discover most of this until I was in middle school. I first found out about forums when I was watching some cool Worms 4 videos on youtube, and found the forums upon trying to learn how to mod. I wanted my super sheep to be a controllable flying UFO, and my air strikes to leave trails of flames. However after the amazing forums, then the leap to gaming journalism, you tend to wonder about the impact they leave on you. Don't get me wrong, I love all of this, but it's a gift/curse situation. I kind of miss the days when it was just me, my console, and a disc. No reviews to tell me how crappy the framerate or camera was, no feedback forums with whiny people who make up most of their complaints, and nobody telling me what was what. It was all about my thoughts based on personal interaction, and what I made of it. This was a truly relaxed and lenient time for gaming. We all get influenced in some way shape or form when we surf the net. And I love it, I love opinion, and I love the spread of word, and a fluid community. Otherwise, I wouldn't be putting hours and hours into a blog (that I'm sure no one is reading, but I don't care, it's fun). However sometimes I think we need the type of break from it that we can't really get. We get told that our game has some error that never crossed our minds, and now we see that error and remember all the criticisms when we play it. We think more critically because we see how that works, and now we can recommend games better, but we're also thinking (and evaluating) more about details that we didn't originally care about. For example, I didn't even know what framerate was until reviews came along and marked almost every awesome game down for bad framerate as though they had a speed gun for it. Sometimes it's just nice to remember the time when something like a spongebob game could be fun instead of thinking "Do I really want to play a cartoon tie-in game from some kids network?". Or you're looking at that shelf of games in the store, something catches your eye, and instead of trusting your insticts and trying to enjoy a new game you pass it by as "well metacritic gave it a 40, so it must not be worth it". Y'know the influence can be a good and bad thing. Your original mind and child-like innocence can be replaced with the distrust and criticism from "the real world" once you start getting into the whole internet scene with gaming. So I kind of miss the era when I had that pure mindset of just sitting down with a game and seeing what it was about.

5 things we have to start realizing about gaming

Today I'm going to go over some odd things I've been thinking about concerning the gamer crowd. There are some things that I think need to be recognized, or realized a bit more. I could be wrong, but here using my experience, opinions, and knowledge I'd like to discuss these 5 things.

#1) A lot of the "good times" and legends live on only through nostalgia

Look, look!! A game that is only fun in your memories!

We're all victims of nostalgic ignorance. We just refuse to admit it, or just haven't lived long enough to have it happen yet. However a lot of our games are dated. Lets face it, we enjoy our amazing games starting at child hood, and at some point we move on and life is good. However games change, and some of us are hard at accepting it. And there always are valid complaints about modern gaming, we can't ignore that, but neither can we ignore the problems of the games we often defend or look up to as a role model for what gaming should be. I will eventually use my own nostalgic memories as an example, but first lets start with a more obvious example of what I'm talking about: retro gamers. These guys will tell you all about how amazing gaming was in its infant days back when pac-man dominated, or how much fun the platformers were. Often they love making fun of how easy games these days are, how bad the industry is for flooding us with nonstop shooters, and how fun has gone extinct in exchange for gore, graphics, and multiplayer. But really lets take a look at their golden age, and a breakdown of all their complaints. This age had Mario. okay great! Even today that game is fun. Same for pac-man, and even donkey kong. But they are the exception rather than the rule. There are websites now that can host these atari, NES, and others like they were flash games. You can scroll down the list, and find about 4 genres: Fighting, sidescrolling platformer, RPG (JRPG by today's classification), and a few puzzlers. You could also throw in "other" for Metal gear, starfox, and a couple of others that tried their best to come up with innovation in an era that had around 1-4 buttons and a D-pad. The fighters were all the same button mashers where you just threw a punch, and a kick through a few stages, while platformers were all mario clones that were either broken to a lauging point, or too cheap and tough for the average person to play. These two genres by far overwhelmed the puzzles, RPGs, and any of those not fitting in a category. Not only was this era worse at over saturation than we are with FPS, but considering how limited the buttons, design teams, and overall tech was, there was almost no room to actually be different. Okay, so at least the piles of platformers, and fighters were challenging, right? Well yes, but I can't find this to be a compliment. When you have no save files, no serious control, and part of your gameplay is often who can spam more missiles on screen, you're going to find way more frustration than the type of good sportsmanship challenge you're thinking about. I'm sure some people  did enjoy the challenges of this era, but saving was done for a reason, and lets not forgot that giving the player more freedom (like through more controls, content, and paths) will make it easier but also more entertaining as it lowers the risk of running yourself into a cheap and stuck situation. Be reasonable, many just don't wont the type of "challenge" the retro age had. As for the complaint that games past the 90s just aren't fun... you're kidding me. You just have no taste if all you can call fun is stuck on games that can't even surpass the flash games that I can play on newgrounds. It is nostalgia. The entire retro gamer group lives off of nostalgia. It is living off of the memories of fun you had when you first picked up your NES, or atari. You remember how impressive it was at that time. You remember the value of simplicity. It is nostalgia.

Well, I'm not just talking about retro gamers. This applies to myself as well. One of the reasons I rant about modern shooters (instead of just playing unreal tournament, duke nukem, or turok constantly) is because I want some of the new touches to mix with the old. The older "golden age" of FPS games had its downsides. Power ups could ruin some games, undeveloped space marine plots were complained about as much as russian/terrorist enemies are now, and casual shooters didn't even exist which left out a big crowd that wanted to enjoy the genre more than they could. Sometimes I talk about older FPS with more credit than they always deserve. Lets take turok for example. Turok had great moments, but its story was strange, the controls were amazingly bad (good for its time though), and the dated engine left the levels pretty bare or boring at times. Devs at this time didn't honestly call their games corridor shooters like it was a badge of honor, it was called that because the tech usually forced them to make you go through a lot of hallways and close up monster bashing. Likewise, the enemies back then were often fun to fight in varieties because they had almost no AI. Basic guys were push overs, then you had chargers, big brutes, mini-bosses, and such specialties because they could not have good enough AI to handle anything but one special form. You couldn't have duck and cover enemies, or enemies who would choose when to run and when to shoot. Sometimes the AI was barley even walking, and could get stuck on walls. The enemies were almost always entirely based on their attack type, and a trigger point that the player would cross. A lot of the time when I speak proudly about these games, it's because of nostalgia. That doesn't mean all my points are forfeit. We still need a variety, and some games could use the health packs, and enemies that go beyond grunts with guns. However we don't need to duplicate everything that the older games did. A lot of the fun is nostalgia, and the truth is that the games I often point at are dated with certain flaws that should be avoided.

Now some games, classics, and "golden age" references still hold. Metal Gear Solid will always be an entertaining series,  so will that famous zelda 64 game, the original mario bros is still great to play, and certain traits from games of all eras deserve a chance in this changed one. For example we should have some more basic platformers, and we do deserve more variety in our shooters, but overall we shouldn't get carried away with what the modern games are missing as a lot of our memories of what was better, is the nostalgia talking.

#2) Graphics are a comparison issue

Graphics lovers will only love the improvement until a 3rd comparison comes along.

Remember how bad the graphics are back in the PS1 days? All blocky, pixels, and plenty of flat polygons. Then the PS2 era came along, and... wow, people actually liked these visuals? And I can't believe the wii. Oh, but the PS3, and 360 are Amazing! Look at all that detail, and HD perfection! Some of this is even running on 1080p. Well, at least that's what you would think until the PC fan comes in and gives you a bunch of stats about how crappy your consoles are. I guess you could almost say those techy numbers his PC can run have spoiled him... or you could look in the mirror and realize it's the same for you! Graphics are a comparison issue. The less people see "the future" of graphics, the more satisfied they'll be with what they have. It's always been that way, even if we can point to details about graphics that suck. I can talk about how bad the blocky graphics are, but really I was fine with it at the time I was playing those games, and I was even amazed at some of them. Even within a single console generation, you can see this effect taking place. Halo 3 will look amazing until you see the improvements in halo reach, then you can never look at halo 3 the same way. An even more obvious example would be a game like lair, legendary, haze, or half-life 2 compared to a more recent game like MW3, skyrim, etc. The graphics change with special little features in between releases like particles, glows, and textures. All of these eventually add up, but until you see them you usually stay impressed with whatever set the standard previously. Some people wont be happy until we get photo realism, but unless you're one of them there should be no reason to be upset with the current graphics. So lets honestly stop worrying about graphics, and how "bad" the older consoles look. They were just fine until a new shiny toy got your eye. Graphics will always keep outdoing themselves until it reaches reality level. No need to be perfectionists about it, or worry too much. I'd be more worried about the price that the future graphics will cost really.

#3) Casual gamers are NOT stupid

"Rated S for stupid" Said wannabe hardcore gamers.

Now this just bugs me. It gives hardcore gamers a bad name, and it's making the game site comments look like immoral, out of touch, bullies. I get on the internet and read about how Bioware games, killzone 3, Call of duty, angry birds, and basically anything else that isn't as challenging as dark souls is made or catering towards "stupid casual gamers" who aren't tough enough to handle a real game. The whole hardcore and casual gamer thing has severely lost its definition in today's gaming. Well really it never had a serious definition, and some people refuse to accept any classification beyond "gamer", but honestly just like defining love, religion, and spirit, there are guidelines and borders that will tell you what a casual/hardcore gamer is NOT. The hardcore gamer is NOT someone who strictly plays the toughest games available and sees everything else as kiddy toys. Likewise casuals are not stupid unless the individual is. Casual is a way of classifying people who want simple, easy, convenient, and "pick up" types of gameplay. A game like call of duty is casual because of some of its mechanics, like tiny health. The small health makes it simple and quick to get kills, ending the long battles to lower health count which usually requires the use of tricks and proper guns you get from mastering the game, or knowing when to run. Call of duty isn't doing it for stupid people, it's doing it for people who want quick and cheap thrills, or those who feel like they just don't have the time to study their way into the game. And yes, the game still takes some skill, just not as much as the non-casual. Likewise others started to do the same thing with their future installments. Does this make people mad? Hell yes it does. Not everybody wants the entire gaming industry to start pumping out games that have few or no learning curves. But that's not a reason to sit their and associate casual gamers with stupidity. Sometimes it's good to sit down on a coffee break, pull out angry birds, and enjoy it. They aren't doing it because they're too stupid to play bigger games, they do it because they simply don't have the time or desire to pursue after all of the bigger stuff. Casual gamers are often barely gamers. They play games like a hobby when they get all bored, or have some of their friends over for the latest dancing game. This isn't about their sanity, and intelligence on comprehending a game. It's about their interests. That's also why a lot of the actual hardcore gamers also play casual games. It's not out of stupidity, it is because sometimes they want some simple joys instead of cramming hours into a game to progress.

#4) We need to acknowledge and respect those who are trying!

No need to write a story, you'll only get trolled on.

Ever heard of brink? If you did from the comment section, it sucks completely. Pass it by as garbage. How about Killzone3, and bulletstorm? Mixed comments on the gameplay, but you'll always find a comment saying the stories sucked. No wonder our FPS market is in bad shape, the people fixing the flaws are the one being blamed more while others just get by with an ok stamp. Brink was a game that failed critically, but mostly for its lack of levels and modes as well as unstable bugs and lag. What it got right, and many critics have put this in sight, is that it tried to stand out. It gave us different combat, customization options, and an improved team work feel. Will the average comment or forum thread say that? Nope, that game got a 5/10 it sucked. instantly the comments on reviews, and forums were full of flaming trolls who acted like they had predicted a tragic fall since the first announcement. Now the story for killzone3? Look up its development. over an hour of cut scenes, great actors, movie grade story writers, a timeline of fictional history to work with, and yet somehow after digging through comments and opinions on the story you'll see "it sucked". Same with bulletstorm, and that even got punished on a critic level somehow. I know killzone3 and bulletstorm weren't amazing revolutions in story making, and they didn't cater to our every whim, but are we really going to sit here and slap them in the face for trying? Everybody else is just throwing terrorists, and "epic scenes" in their games and calling it done, with some even avoiding cut scenes. Yet these guys get by us with weak stories without much blame just because it's normal? guys can we please stop for a second and appreciate the attempts? Even black ops somehow got some story haters... why? What is there to hate about the obvious progress? Because you found one hole, or you didn't care much for one character? We don't need a metal gear solid or half-life game to come along every time we want a good story. I'd far rather praise a revenge adventure that gives me strange characters like bulletstorm than sit through a story where the characters hardly have any name or recognition past a voice and a mask or hair style like most games. We should just be a bit more grateful for some of the games that are trying to fix problems, even if they don't fix them all the way. Progress is progress. When we realize the attempts of progress, and stop bashing the games that try to avoid the negative standards, then maybe we can move the standards higher.


#5) The gaming advancements aren't that stupid or gimmicky

Gimmick or the future?

A lot of people are getting tired of the common trolling haters. We see call of duty haters, just randomly hating COD while secretly buying it and making the people who actually dislike it or critique it, look bad. For every one now, we have another making fun of them or fussing at them. Then you have people who just hate on each others consoles, which sparks up the horrible fanboy wars that we all hate. Hell, we still have people who blindly bash on halo.... even after that hate fad died out. why is anyone still acting like calling it "gaylo" is still cool? But there is one form of ignorant hatred that still gets away quite often, and.that's the crowd that calls everything that they don't like a gimmick. Touch screen, motion controls, microphones, graphics, 3D, your entire wii and kinect library and all sorts of other next-gen tech are as gimmicky as your light up toothbrush according to these haters. We need to realize that these haters are either over exaggerating by an great amount, or are just flat out wrong.

 First thing is that we must understand a gimmick, otherwise we're just throwing a fancy word around that we heard about. A gimmick is a marketing tool where you have something that looks special, but it in fact does nothing to help or can just get in your way. It often looks flashy, and gets the attention of easily excitable people. Again, the light up tooth brush is the perfect example of a gimmick as it is a tacked on feature that almost cannot help you in any way shape or form. It is literally flashy just to say "I'm different, buy me". Now look up at the picture, and you'll see the wii steering wheel. Maybe the plastic wheel itself can be argued as gimmicky (I disagree as it helps tremendously compared to steering with a gamecube or standard wii remote), but what it symbolizes is an innovation. People like this step up closer to VR or simulation. It's nice to have a cool option to steer your car around with a controller balancing in your hands. It's not some crap slapped one to make your kids buy it, it actually improves and adds a feature to some already fun games. Calling it a gimmick is like calling your bed pillow a gimmick. No you don't have to have it, but you want it, and it does help. It's a step forward. Is the PS3 blu ray a gimmick? No it is used along with the game, and can add some cool stuff as well as gives you the feature to watch amazing movies. Without it there would be a few more multi-disc games, and less features thrown on for the PS3. is the internet browser a gimmick? Yes actually. We have those on everything now, and often it runs way better than the slapped on console version. The browser is there just to say "look, I'm a special feature, buy me!".

The gimmicks come in with the individual games usually. In Killzone 2 you had a few areas where you were asked to just randomly operate stuff with the sixaxis. Why? Well because it just wanted to throw in the motion controls. There were motion controls done right with sniping that added to challenge and realism, but the rest of the motion controls were just gimmicks. A lot of wii games that are sold as party games, and kiddy games often have gimmicky parts where you're pointlessly swinging the remote around for the heck of it. Those are gimmicks, but features and advancements will change gaming with or without your support. There are people who abuse them, but there have always been bad cash-ins and bad games that specialize in stupid gimmicks.

Why reviews aren't the best judge

                          Honestly, how can you figure out anything from this?

Reviews have become a big part of gaming as the media for games has grown. There are around 100 sites by now that do reviews, recommendations, and editorials for video games. Almost every one of these sites have comments that are mixed with fanboys, trolls, and the regular gamers talking about the game or the review, often bashing or defending something. This is where you get to witness the dramatic gasps over the decent 7/10 scores, the fanboys trying to start a duel (even on a 3rd party multi-platform game), and comments about how the review was the sole decision maker in a purchase. It's actually kind of funny how these reviews became a big deal. However, it's necessary, since we spend so much money towards these game, and must at all times have a referee pointing at the good ones and shunning the bad ones, right? Well... not really. In this post, I'm going to give my two cents on why reviews can't be considered the make/break decision, and other good topics concerning the way reviews work.

Well first off, if  you're reading this blog you know I do reviews myself. So the idea that I'd demote the value of a game review would seem odd, or like blatant hypocrisy. Honestly that's not the case, as I enjoy making reviews and looking at them from that view point. But as a gamer, my review scores never suggest my actual value for them. If you asked me which shooter I prefered more, section 8: prejudice versus Call of duty modern warfare 2, I would likely hesitate and decide based on the mood I'm in. For a bunch of unlocking and level grinding with a good variety of modes and a better campaign, I'd pick MW2. For anything else, I'd choose Section 8. But my review scores would make it an obvious decision, right? MW2 got like an 8 or 9, while section 8 was held back in several categories, so it's obviously MW2. Nope. Section 8 fails a lot more on a review scale, but doesn't begin to phase on a common gamer scale. A real gamer measures his game by the entertainment value, and how you personally enjoyed it. I'd honestly laugh if you let your entertainment value diminish because the graphics could have been flashier, or because you thought the game's texture pop-ins were ruining your fun. Pop-ins, and flashy graphics cause a change in value when it comes to a review. They don't (or shouldn't) matter for a gamer's taste. Also (and I know this is going a bit off topic), take note you quick review defenders, this is why a review is not an "opinion". It is an evaluation of everything, including tech aspects and the fun factor (often based on the common preference instead of a quick opinion). If reviews were just opinion, you'd see games getting a lot more flat 0's, 5's, and 10's. I'd be giving killzone an instant 10, tell you how amazing it is in the tone of a young kid celebrating christmas, and then leave you with a "BUY IT IF YOU HAVE ANY TASTE!" recommendation. But no, there are tech aspects to go over, features to cover and rate, and you must cover the amount of effort put into every big detail of the game. It's not as simple as asking some random guy whether or not the game was fun.

Okay, back on subject: This is why looking at a 7, and scoffing at the game or review is a big internet wide mistake. The 7 could be brought on by a bad story, horrible glitches (that might have already gotten patched), or simply the reviewer dragging on about a small negative aspect too much, like a bad camera or how he didn't like where the sprint button was placed. You have to read it, the determin the value based on what you wanted from the game. If starhawk got a 7 because its story was trash, who the hell honestly cares? Anyone who was every hyped for starhawk for the right reasons knows that the story wasn't going to be good, and they'll shun the review that decided to chop off 3 points for the story. The sad thing is that there will always be that guy who sits there moaning "well I was going to buy this, but a 7 sucks so... bye". Not only is a 7 a good score, but it's missing the point of gaming if you just point at a 7 in shame all day. One of my favorite games on an entire genre got a 7 recently, and as I read the review I shrugged off everything negative because it just didn't matter, and the critic was making a big deal over nothing in some cases. The score doesn't make or break the game, and neither does the total review.

I guess it's a bit weird to talk about it this late into the post, but the question that inspired it was during an article about naughty bear 2. A comment said "Why would this game get a sequel, it got like all 3/10s! so stupid". Well I answered it pretty much with the above. But further more, I decided to talk about how the reviews these days are just out of touch with many gamers. It's like the silent majority rule. You can find a bunch of people commenting about how they agree with a review (without the game even being released yet), you can find a bunch of haters for a popular game, and you can also find a game with bad sales getting sky high reviews. The game that seems universally hated is getting a sequel because it actually has a fanbase that bought it, and enjoyed it. You can find nasty scores for popular games, but they are still popular games. And you can find good reviews for bad selling games, because it didn't do a good job appealing to the market. The answer to all of this lies in the fact that reviews aren't the same as the gamers. This case is even more obvious when we look at movie critics. Everybody loves a movie, each person likes it for their own reasons. Meanwhile the critics always look for the actor/actress's record instead of their character, they will always describe the action or suspense in 3 sentences or less no matter how much of the movie it makes up, and it will always spend portions trying to pit it up against another film for no reason at all. The only worthy thing in a review of a movie is the plot evaluation, and even that can fall short. You can't get the sense of action, humor, or emotion from a wall of text describing it to you. The case with gaming isn't exactly like this, but it is close. Naughty bear is getting a 2nd chance because it has an audience, just a rather quiet one that you wont find in reviews or followers of those reviews. Likewise people will raise pitchforks and torches up to some high reviews, because it can't cover the reasons why they hate it. You can continue to give god of war, call of duty, and mario their sky high scores, but there will be people out there sick of them with reasons beyond the critic's comprehension.

Again, I'm not saying reviews are useless, or bad. I'm just saying that they don't deserve the credit or high chair that they have been placed on, often with people thinking it decides a game's fate. The review can't measure the amount of fun that you'll probably have. They are there to classify your concerns on how good the graphics are, the recommended audience, and to tell you the length or if it was released unpolished. They will not tell what the best experience in the game was, they will give you the memories that playing the game could bring, they will not catch you off guard with a plot twist, and they can only describe the gameplay to you. These are things that you'll have to judge yourself, and you are completely missing out on these things if you only trust a review. Yes it can help you decide based on the length, or if you wanted to know the rules of a mode. But they cannot give you the experience. This is why I scoff at the bad reviews for Naughty bear, Turok evolution, Killzone 1, and the few bad reviews of starhawk. This is also why I also don't always agree with the super review scores that COD, or dragon age get. Ironically I would probably give them similar scores though, but that's because the review is different than the quick opinion. I can't take points off of COD for some of the small tweaks that I don't agree with, nor can I give Dragon age a bad score for it's terrible universe. I treat them as games that stand an equal chance for their genre and purpose, and take points off as I go through negative facts or gameplay mechanics that would generally be found as annoying or fun threatening. Opinions are given, but they are restricted to a certain level and get stated more off to the sides than to the score.

On a final note, I will say that I will make an adjustment to my style of review to sort of help the judgment. I will give off an extra score that is titled "Fun factor", and it will be a score that does NOT count as part of the overall view, and get the points based off of the experience and fun that I had instead of tech aspects and such getting in the way. So something like Dragon's dogma would get a 10 on the fun factor, but it would be kept seperate from the likely 7/10 score that it would probably receive. It may have a quick summary of how I reached that score. Like I said, it wont count with the total score and will be on its own. It's like a second voice that separates from the super analyses critic perspective that makes up the bulk of a review. It's still not something to weight on for your purchase, but it gives you an idea of how much fun you can have without considering the silly and insignificant stuff that a review has to cover.

StarHawk review

Surprise, another multiplayer heavy game! A sequel to the cult classic Warhawk, starhawk comes in this time with an emphasis on RTS-like structuring within a shooter, has a singleplayer and co-op, and most obvious of all a sci-fi western theme. Does it score high among the many shooters out there, or does it fall harder than its space pods?

Story:
I really hate starting this with the story, because its fairly obvious that this game will follow the pattern of just not caring. Warhawk was a MP only game, and starhawk keeps just as much emphasis on its online, so unless they pull for a year more on development it's pretty certain that this is going to be one of those tutorial/multiplayer with a fixed path sort of campaign. However I've gotta review it so...

You are a man named Emmett. He is half mutated into a monster known as scabs. Scabs are monsters who used to be people before raw energy known as "rift" got into their bodies. Sadly this rift hazard is the equivalence of gold during a gold rush. Our protagonist, Emmett, was with his brother during a rift harvesting accident. He was saved by cutters, his engineer/pilot buddy. His brother was beyond repair, and was left behind. Later, however many years after this has happened, your gameplay starts you out as a bounty hunter-like figure who accepts contracts usually involving the safety of miners. This starts up a series of events against the scabs, and things get personal when your brother shows up with the scabs. Nothing ever really develops in the story. Your character is just another guy seeking to finish his contract while being angry over what his brother has become. Cutter is the only interesting person, and I only say that because of his accent and his chilled out tone. The cut scenes are done through an interesting comic style, which I usually hate, but this game does a really amazing job with it. However the story just has no substance within it. You fight scabs, your brother is a scab, you fight to finish your brother. That's about it. Everything is an excuse to kill these monsters. The motives are simply never put out apart from survival, and nothing develops. We're done.

Single Player:
*long sigh* I already told you. It's part tutorial, has a lot of the multiplayer feel to it (minus the fun that comes with MP's chaos), and you get pointed around by story-ish objectives. Now it's actually fun, and boring all at once. Out of 10 levels, the first half is full of useful basics that you'll need to know unless you go blindly into multiplayer. The later half is a bit more fun, and making sure you can do everything right. There can be some boring moments, but some levels can be very entertaining to play. Especially the last one, with a surprising boss fight. The game can also be surprisingly difficult, despite how the enemies AI is just decent. The game often swarms you with enemies, gives you limited resources, and apart from pointing you in the right direction it doesn't hold your hand. The gameplay has a weird feel of being fixed, yet the question is whether or not you can handle the fix. Kind of like metroid prime, except without running in circles or back tracking for items. The enemies can fight pretty well despite their lack of good AI. Some parts will turn up frustrating, yet not too bad. In the second to last level I had ran into a death plenty of times only to find that I was building way too simple, and as soon as I did a proper wall, gun, and troop placement I was breezing by. The frustrating parts are about trial and error. If you fail and over, you are doing something wrong. Likely it has something to do with building.

I'll also count the survival mode as Singleplayer. It has you facing the enemy AI while defending the rift harvester. You get rift energy from kills, and can spend that on your defense. Your defending against about 7 waves of enemies including jet packs, super mutants, hawks, snipers, etc. Plenty of monster will go after your harvester, and depending on the survival level it can be very tough, and borderlines on insane. It becomes clear that it would be best to play split screen. Which brings me to the next section...

Multiplayer:
Yes, this is where the game shines, and it's brighter than most games out there. It destroys the traditions of most games, and just goes for match after match of destruction, teamwork, and fun. The game is set up as a normal 3rd person shooter with basic modes from a first glimpse. However it has so much more with its building system, the 32 player matches, dedicated server lists that anybody can create and customize, and some of the best balancing I've ever seen. Raiding territories in zones, speeding away with the flag in CTF, and out-fragging the enemy team in TDM has never been more entertaining in a 3rd person shooter. The build and battle system change so much alone. Have a hawk problem? Put up a beam cannon and force field, and you'll do some damage while being immune to it. Want to quickly swipe the flag? Build a coral and get ready to fly in and out of the enemy base with the flag on a speedy hover bike. Want weapons? Build a bunker with it stock piled with shotguns, and rockets. You get the point, you can do plenty of stuff based on how your building with your team. Perhaps it can ruin the team? Nope, if you have some idiots building up useless stuff just knock 'em back down. It was a risky move to include the reclaim feature for a whole team, but it works. I've almost never had somebody knock over a useful structure. The game gets people to either experiment or act responsible. Noobs wont stay noobs for long, otherwise the game would frustrate them to a quitting point.

Besides building, there is still plenty to do. Each vehicle has a new feel to it to where it's like a new ocupation. Flying, biking, tanks, jeeps, jetpacks, and simply walking are nothing alike each other. Bikes are the fastest land vehicle, jeeps has a standard feel with good shooting and decent driving, while tanks are slow power houses of the lands, and hawks dominate the air with power-up based weaponry and dogfights. Walking alone opens up a world of options with building a defense, building a secondary base, sniping, taking a hike around to gun fight in the base, etc. However all these choices have one thing in common: You are not safe at all. Tanks can beat bikes, but not much infantry, bikes beat jeeps, but are dead on sight of a tank, and hawks and infantry can destroy or be destroyed very easily. Everything has paper thin armor when up against a rocket launcher, and this feels amazing. You can have all the benefits of a hawk, and yet when on land your not going to fear hawks due to overpowering. Instead your going to lob grenades and rockets at them taking them out very fast. Same with all vehicles. They are all perfectly balanced. The guns are as well, with all land weapons being a type of gun rather than a number or gun model. The assault rifle is just the assault rifle. There are not 40 of them, 4 rocket launchers, and 20 shotguns. You have one type, and nobody is overpowering you by using any of the weapons. Everything balances out, and it gives you loads of options and entertainment per match.

By the end of the day the only complaint I have for starhawk's multiplayer is "Why not more?". I wish I could upgrade buildings. I wish I could have more levels and areas to explore. I wish I could use more than 1 perk at a time. I wish my clan did more. You get the point, it's such an amazing game that my first wish would not be "Fix this" or " Tell me why you did that?" but instead it's "MOAR AWESOMENESS PLEASE!" With the developers promising that all map DLC will be free, I think I can count on my wish coming true. This multiplayer has the feeling of a fast paced tactical chaos that few games bring. It's truly amazing, and deserves the $60 just for that.

Graphics:
I don't know what to think. I believe it looks great as it is, and prefer not to go too far into detail. But I will. The character models are very well done, having a shiny gloss of texture, and interesting designs. Battle damage, blood, and explosions are clear and will keep you informed if buildings need reconstruction. The backgrounds, and maps can be beatiful, although I personally wish there was more beyond dusty desert and space scenes (Again, free DLC is bringing cool stuff like a jungle soon). Also I must give a special mention to the rift choice, because I absolutely love blue glowy stuff. The fact that you see it in scabs, and Emmett's veins is just awesome. However everything has simple feel to it in the gameplay. Nothing ever captures your eyes as too special, and the maps feel rather plain until you find structures or get distracted by battles.

Sound:
Music is surprisingly excellent. It's the typical score type of situation, except these guys made sure it was the forgettable crap that plagues every movie and the serious games. They even include a free soundtrack in the limited edition copy of the game. It really captures a western sci-fi world full of suspense, war, and general action. The music audio is also used in a drop in and out way to. If you're walking along a lone field, no music will accompany you. Lift off a jetpack, or pop into a mech seat and you start hearing the music like it's your own theme song. The music will try to encourage you, and it fixes the problem of fading because of its timing. Music is neither completely absent, nor is it dull when it arrives. I feel like these guys understood my complaints, and fixed it without removing the dramatic score from its audio.

Voice acting is amazing to. They chose the perfect actor for Emmett in campaign. His voice has far more character than the actual character. Sound effects themselves are rather generic and basic. Nothing too good there. Lasers, explosions, engines, they all sound okay but nothing too brilliant. Another problem is that the sound effects are the glitchiest. Story mode also has audio skips. Some matches had half of the sounds fade away completely. I was firing silent guns, not able to hear steps, engines only had sounds when they were too close, etc. Glitches aren't too common to break the game, but they are common enough to be really annoying. This needs a quick patch.

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Story: 3/10. Emmett, meet scabs. Scabs, meet Emmett. Oh, and the twist is one of them is your brother. Enjoy!

Singleplayer: 7/10 It's okay. I love the boss fights, the difficulty is weird but pleasant, and the game has its fun and boring moments. It's not a mode to be taken too seriously though. Survival can be fun, although I'm willing to bet it's better when your not alone.

Multiplayer: 10/10 I love It! Perfect balance, so much to do, excellent building system, and it's a general blast to play. Very clan friendly as well. I feel like this game was just built from the ground up with gamers and fun in mind, especially when considering the fact that there will be free map DLC for the game and you have dedicated server lists. Perhaps there could be more to it, but there is plenty to be entertained for a year or more.

Sound: 8.5/10 Everything except the effects are perfect. The voice acting is brilliant, and the music is nice as well as cleverly put in. I would love this game a lot more if they would fix the awful glitch of having key sounds disappear mid game. A half-mute game is horrible to play and makes me wish for a quick match end.

Graphics: 8/10 Simple, yet awesome. The detail in characters, and backgrounds is especially good. However you wont notice much going on throughout your play and nothing truly catches you eye, unless you count the blue rift in the blood of scabs. That never gets old to look at for some reason.

Overall Score: 9/10 This game is among the best. If you remove the extreme lack of story substance, the sound glitch, and had a campaign worth more I'd be giving this game a 10... or 11. The multiplayer is just amazing, and offers you plenty to do. Best of all it's the finest example of strategic chaos, and I adore those types of games. If you are here for singleplayer, you got the wrong direction. Keep praying for half-life episode 3. Meanwhile if you're here for fun, multiplayer, or an example of what we need more of, welcome to the party. Stay a while.

First Impressions: Starhawk

So you slam down to the ground from a drop pod from outter space crushing an enemy in between space metal and dirt. You see a guy who orders a hawk for you, and then you take off with your super jet punching through the enemy rival hawks, bomb their base, steal the flag, and have a team mate pull up with a razorback jeep to escort you back to base with a point more closer to victory. That's not what actually happened to me, but that totally could if I had the skills and team in this cool game called starhawk! My first day of starhawk never fell below exciting. And no, I'm not talking about the excitement of set pieces or events. Starhawk is the good type of game that builds itself from the ground up around an organized chaos, just like section 8, halo, timesplitters, and any of the old FPS multiplayer arena games. That's what I adore about starhawk. You're thinking, adapting, and fighting in a game made for truly interactive action.

After the insane amounts of loading, installing, and waiting to get everything ready I played story first. The story mode is, much like you'd expect, a fun way to play a tutorial. I played the first 3 missions, with the first two covering basic combat from land and hawk, and the 3rd felt like a level to test what you've learned from the last 2. The story is decent, but nothing to keep my attention so far. The cut scenes are surprisingly well done for the 2D style that they went for. I was disappointed hearing about their choice at doing the low animation 2D style at first, but when I saw it for myself I was actually impressed. They animate more than most games would, and the color and detail within them are great. Best of all, there was no waiting done at all. I'm not one to talk or think much about loading times, but this games was amazing in its 0 loading screens for campaign.

The multiplayer has 3 modes of interest to me. CTF, Zones (which I have no clue about how it plays, but it's fun), and Team deathmatch. Survival is okay, but nothing special, and I still need to try deathmatch although it doesn't sound too fun fighting for a team of 1 in this game. Team deathmatch is fun, but makes building and teamwork a little more random. Zones seems to have one team swarming the other, which means if you're losing you're probably not having fun, but if you're winning it's quite amusing. CTF seems to be the central mode that gives you a good grip over everything and every type of player. Team play so far is awesome, and not nearly as frustrating as most people expect from team games. The game has a perfect sense of balance, fun vehicles, and you can learn everything fast yet mastering seems to take time.

Overall the game is good so far. I need to experiment more, improve my skills, and rank up. My complaints fall down to silly stuff, like XP taking forever, or just the idea that the game needs more of everything because of its entertainment. It's just a great game so far, and I'm looking forward to reviewing it eventually.

Recent games that excelled or flopped far past their hype

Here's a list of games that I think either flopped badly or excelled ridiculously compared to the hype. This editorial is likely one of the most biased since this is based around hype I gave it as it'd just be more difficult to combine all the general hype into this list. Plus there are plenty of super hype games that I've missed out on like God of war 3, Halo, or Dark souls. So here is a list of what I do have, both good and bad. All of these games are somewhat recent, so don't expect anything beyond the past couple of years.

THE GOOD:


Saints Row 3
I kind of thought the GTA style stuff would be dying down. I know the more recent entries have been well praised, but I kept thinking it was only a matter of time. Then I saw saints row 3, and thought it had some potential. GTA with stronger focus on humor and gang warfare. Sounded fun. Fun is an understatement when the game struck me like an asteroid crash of entertainment once I had rented it. I begged my mom, if under bad circumstances there was only one thing she could get me for Christmas, make it saints row 3. Afterall, I had been playing it for hours of almost non-stop fits of laughter and joy. This game was just fantastic. I enjoyed the hilarious voice dialogue, the driving, the missions were always exciting and cartoony, and of course it was built over an already long successful sandbox formula that I thought would eventually go stale. I stopped thinking that about GTA style games after saints row. It seems they do still have a long life span as long as you have a good direction with it.

Skyrim
Skyrim caught every RPG fan's dreams. Skyrim was a part of the super famous elder scrolls series, which I was about to buy for the awesome idea of fighting a dragon in first person sword combat... when I found out the series never had dragons. Luck hit, and it turned out Skyrim's main hype was dragons. I started looking forward to it to, but I thought it would only go down as a rent only game. I just wasn't that much into RPGs, and I started doubting Skrim would change my mind. Again, renting the game first showed me beauty beyond expectations. While the combat wasn't perfect, it was far more entertaining than other RPGs. The level up system was very interesting and rewarding with a sense of using your powers to build them up. The best thing that sold me though, was the world. Once I got off the tutorial mission, I got lost before I completed the first real task. I walked out into a lake, caught fish, climbed mountains, fought wolves, found ancient artifacts, cleared a cave, and then died at the hands of a master vampire after I cleared out most of his tower. Restarted at the bottom of the tower, left it, and THEN I found out how to use the map to get to my first mission. I was actually really close, just had to pass a river and I was there at the local village. I turned back, and got lost on purpose all over again because being lost was never so much damn fun. I had to own the game after that, and while I don't go losing myself as much I am always amazed at what new features, weapons, or story twists pop up. There is a lot to do in skyrim, enough that somebody who plays it like 5 hours a day could get by on the game for almost the entire console generation. Skyrim deserves far more hype than it could possibly get.

Bulletstorm
One of my most anticipated FPS games... how did it fall to the background? I actually went for months without it, after I was so excited for it. It was supposed to be a blast from the past, and show mainstream shooters why they can't be as good as the older shooters. Yet I just passed it by, possibly even buying a more popular shooter instead. I can't remember clearly. I got it on 2011's Easter though, and it was far better than I thought it would be even when I was hyped. I believed the reviews when they said "bad story" and "bad dialogue" or "a lacking multiplayer". Well once I bought the game, I found out they were not only dead wrong in my eyes, but they had to be playing the wrong game. Bulletstorm did stuff I didn't expect it to, like giving me a tiny but lovable cast, an awesome tropical planet that is one big wrecked tourist attraction, and scripted events that I surprisingly didn't hate. Oh, and I will never forget the disco scene, that alone is worth plenty of my money. The gameplay that I expected to be great, was better. There was an echo mode that added more replay than I thought would exist. The multiplayer is a survivor that's just as much fun to play as the rest of the game, just as long as you don't get bored of your surroundings. The story was not only better than the reviews said, but I was having trouble imagining almost any other shooter competing with it story wise. There were moments when I had some wishes, like for an older health system, or less frustrating challenges, but the game as a whole was so much fun that its biggest sin was having an ending.

Warhammer space marines
I haven't played this in a while, and technically I stopped at like the very last level. Still this game has shocked me, and I just love it. Warhammer is a series I never cared about, because honestly it never got into my path of games. Now it did, so I tried out this 3rd person shooter as it looked interesting. What I didn't expect was a cross of gothic and steampunk art styles, the overall fun gameplay, a decent story with an good twist, a fun multiplayer and survival, and again.... the fun of the whole thing. This game was just a lot better than I could have hoped for, and I can't explain why. I should hate it for the repetitive fighting that feel like a lesser GOW with some shooting tacked on, but it's actually great. I should hate how the characters are so boring, but I actually found their military morals to be rather weird and interesting at the same time. Much like bulletstorm, it gets a lot of unexpected old school things right, and throws in a lot of surprises to keep me enjoying the game. Like the cheesy enemies, amazing yet weird weapons, and a gameplay system that just seems to magically work. It also throws me into a new game universe that I probably should have been more involved in long ago.


THE DISAPPOINTING


Brink
I just have to start this part of the list off with brink. Brink is an odd game that is so amazing, and so sad at the same time. For every cool game that brings back old mechanics like bulletstorm, there are 3 that are put in the hands of incompetent developers who only make the older games and mechanics look bad. This would be one of them. Brink brought in a great combat system, great innovation, fun classes, great maps, a nice art style, and then... nothing else. There are 8 maps, and 3 challenges. Have fun. It'll keep you enjoying the game for 3 whole days if you know how to drag it out. Seriously, who even gave this the green light to go into stores as a completed game? Is this some kind of "test"? If so, they also failed the online department where the game shipped with terribly broken online where everybody lagged as though their internet was choking on its last breath. The game has more unlockables and customization that you can literally spend more time there than you can in the 8 maps. Bottom line is that this game had such an awesome score from a view point, and playing point, but if you wanted a full game... sorry. Modes don't exist, maps are limited, and the online shipped with an "under maintenance" error.

Battlefield 3
Right so I was thinking about putting this up here for the maps and lack of bullet drop as both of those are let downs, but then I realized that it was worse: The entire single player. WTF is up with the single player dice? You took bad story elements from cliche shooters, outright stole CODs formula as well as overdoing parts of it to an almost unplayable point, tack on quick time events, and then don't make sense of it in the end. By don't makes sense, I mean the entire campaign story and gameplay. It's just 2 hours (counting gameplay only) of running around doing more dramatic fighting in places and with people that you have no clue about because the game simply doesn't give you anything. At least in other games it makes it clear that russians have terrorists, or was put in a decent timeline for it to make sense. Here they are just thrown in in addition to a middle eastern terror group that we're not sure is even a terror group. We're just told that, they talk like they have motives, and then we battle russians who are doing.... stuff. WTF!? This is what people were waiting all year for? This is what was marketed to battle the current sales king? By doing what, stealing from it and making it worse? Again, even the multiplayer isn't as good as the hype wanted us to think, with bland maps that just discourage gameplay. What no rural woodlands, or snowy landscapes? No major places that strike us on an epic scale? Just a bunch of boring urban areas with the addition of a park/train area, and an island map? The maps just suck for some reason, and I can't get into this game as much as I want to. On top of that, the hyped engine is actually worse on a destruction level. It just chips chunks of a building away, basic things explode, and almost nothing changes. You can't even wreck but one or two buildings, everything else just gets damaged until you have a bone-like structure, which actually feels like it makes the game worse as the building becomes completely useless to anyone. The multiplayer is still great in general, but the maps just discourage me so much and the campaign is just a joke. There was a fun level in the campaign somewhere, but apart from that it's only good for trophy padding.

Duke Nukem Forever
Much like Brink, this should have been a shooter that helped give balance to all the flooding of the self-destructing military FPS sub-genre. Also like brink, it failed and had the opposite effect of making those games look bad because devs (not gearbox, probably one of the other many devs that took hold of it) chose to ship it in a condition that was blatantly made to fail in the eyes of review scores and to the majority of gamers. It isn't a blast from the past, the king returning, or even fun for its insane weapons. Nope, instead it chooses to ditch its old ideas for new ones that absolutely betray the series. Such as the typical 2 slot weapon system.... on duke nukem..... yeah that's like removing Mario's jump ability. The health system also degraded, and even if you wanted regen health it was a broken system of regen health. Bosses can squash you almost effortlessly, the health takes almost 15 second to start a regen , and it literally contradicts a part of the story. There are also outdated physic puzzles for some reason. It's like this game just shipped to remind us that duke is dead, and someone out there is laughing about it while giving us half-life's puzzles. The only redeeming qualities is the aliens, some of the set pieces and battles were surprisingly fun, and the nostalgic level design was great. It's not a completely trash grade game, but it's just bad.