Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review

I'll start of with the daddy of gaming: COD. The twitchy shooter that makes LSD look like a relaxing beach-hut holiday. Quite frankly if you add in any more melodramatic explosions we could be in danger of thinking that we need Michael Bay at all. It's campaign is ludicrous and it's online multiplayer a downright travesty of bandwidth.

So, lets peel the rotten, worm-infested, ticking-time-bomb of an onion that is the campaign. Once more you are put on two separate timelines, one following the now big time fugitives, Price and Soap, easily confused with an ITV3 mid-morning detective show, who are able to take down what ever the government's military might throw at them. Which in this case means a combined effort of army, navy and air force supplying all the most up-to-date and slightly-ahead-of-our-time weaponry in order to obliterate them off the map. However they now have the back-up of some rebel Russians hell bent on doing something, to somebody. Quite frankly the plot is so loosely tied together a 3 year old could have done a better job with pritt stick. In fact a 3 year old would have done better writing it. (Something that could be said, and I believe I have said, about the entire COD franchise.) On the other narrative we are put in the shoes of Derrek, a man who name shows that Infinity Ward are down to the bottom of the cool-commando-name-barrel. I wish I could tell you what his narrative was but quite frankly I don't remember and nor do I care, that how bad this game is. You seem to be on a conveyor belt that shows you pretty explosion after pretty explosion while in or around vehicles, shooting at anything that moves while you watch some family get nerve-gassed to death. (Spoiler alert). The entire thing is beyond sub-par and quite frankly we need to plead with Infinity Ward to put down the bat and stop beating the crap out of a smelly, rotten, half-eaten corpse of a horse.

And the multiplayer can be summed up fairly easily: utter, monumental, colossal crud with a garnish of annoyance and flavours of hormonal 13 year old lads running round calling everyone else a 'fag'. The whole thing is beyond crap, it's spawn system places you staring down the barrel of the person that just killed you, if not down the barrel of one of their equally trigger happy teammates. Every gun deals a gazillion damage per bullet to people who seems to catch death from oxygen, and take damage from tripping over pebbles, and as such the only way you stand a chance of going positive is if your host and therefore when you shoot YOU HIT THEM!

To be honest you could add something to what I said earlier, once the bat is down find your precious M4 and turn it on your beloved COD Infinity Ward, because, quite frankly, it's kinder if we put it out of it's misery now than to let it suffer. A 3.5 out 10.

J Stanley

OK I'm Back

Apologies for the long hiatus, to which I would like to say was down to intense studying and revision for a series of exams I've just taken, but, though it was in part, mostly it was down to forgetting or remembering, but being my usual lazy self, not bothering with it anyway. Still, I'm back, hopefully will be more reliable than I have in previous time. (Specifically the fact I have only got ONE news article out, and that was more than a fair while ago.) I also hopefully will be bringing you a few more reviews, the past Christmas bringing with it a merriment of games of all shapes and sizes. So I think we'll get those out of the way first.


Yours

J Stanley

News For Week 26/09-02/10 2011

To start off this week brought us the Battlefield 3 beta, which despite being as jumpy as a badger on crack looks like a very enjoyable game, and does seem to have some ability to finally kill COD, but won't because of how many 13 year olds will get MW3 anyway. It seems more balanced and actually more controlled, fun and actually makes you work in a team in order to survive and win, as you would in real war and not run into your 6" by 6" room with an ak74-u and spin on the spot certain to win. The beta is now open to everyone after some time being only accessible to medal of honor owners and origin users.

Also in Battlefield 3 news, DICE/EA have released a new online service to track stats called battlelog. Can't help but see a connection to something else. Surely Activision are already doing this with something else, some sort of fish franchise, haddock or cod or something. Still, regardless of my poor puns you get the sense that EA are so determined to steal the Call of Duty market that they not only copy everything they do marketing wise but then put their fingers in their ears and say in a harsh loud voice "What? Call of Duty already said they were doing that?  It's called Elite? Never heard of it! lalalalalalalala". Spoken like the children they are. However surely they must realise that their game is better because anyone with a modicum of sense switches to it while all the annoying 'noob-tubing' 13 year olds stay with Call of Duty so they can call each other fags a lot.

In other news Star Wars: The Old Republic has finally gotten a release date of December 20th for the US, and December 22nd for the EU. Unfortunately it will be a montly fee payment which makes me less inclined to purchase the game. For 1 month it will cost you $14.99, 3 months is $13.99 and 6 months is $12.99. Now quite frankly if you can get the most amount of time for the least amount of money why the hell would you buy any other time frame? And why have 1 month, if you seriously planned to only play it for 1 month why bother. Still, looking forward to seeing what this game is actually like.

In other news Rage will be on 3 discs for xbox 360 users, 2 of which are single-player and the third is entirely multi-player. If that seems excessive then i'm thankful I'm a) not a PC player and b) not interested in this game anyway because it is looking to being a huge 20GB download. I'll stick to my mac and also, stick to gaming on my xbox.


There's going to be a Dead Space 3!......... Possibly. It's rumoured but not officially announced so keep your eyes open but don't get your hopes up totally yet, although it is highly plausible. If it is true there saying it will have planet levels. But remember these are rumours. Speculation. So don't quote me on it.


L.A. Noire on P.C.! Not like it's four months late, and won't be on P.C. until November. Well better late than never I guess Bondi. Bondi? BONDI!? Oh yeah, Rockstar shut them down last month. Bummer. Guess it is too late then.


And a quick couple of lines of other news: Team Fortress now has a free to play arcade game, Dead Island could have a movie made of it, produced from that guy who brought you the mummy and in even more Battlefield news, yes you thought we were through with that, no I'm not a fanboy honest, they are having a $1.6 million Battlefield 3 tournament next year. Um, EA, please, please, stop trying to copy a company that is ultimately worse than you. Thank you.


And the major game release is of course Gear of War 3. I hope to have a review up of it soon, however there will be no multi-player review of it due to a lack of xbox live at the moment. However we did get a bit of news about it, the first DLC will feature totally new characters to the GOW franchise.


So, EA wants to be Activion, Rage is huge, The Old Republic seems to be real, and Dead Space 3... might be.


Until next week...


J Stanley

My Articles

Thus concludes my reviews of my gaming library. From now on my articles will come in the form of a post every Sunday on the past weeks news in the gaming world. I hope you enjoy.

Comments are always welcome.
As are followers.

J Stanley

Mass Effect 2 Review

I went into Mass Effect 2 with no experience in Mass Effect 1 so it was almost a blind leap of faith, putting my trust in both the reviews out there on the internet as well as my friends judgement, but said friends aren't all always the best judges of such things, for example suggesting Assassin's Creed.

Yet, with reckless abandon I surged forward into the world of Commander Shepard and his alliance cohorts. I can report after completing the game twice over, one as a soldier and once as a infiltrator. Both times I found that the story was very entertaining and engaging. You first find yourself on the Normandy, a ship travelling in space, when it is suddenly attacked by what looks like the combination of spaceship and dog muck. You travel through the wreck of your vessel to rescue Seth Green because he's being a selfish annoying teenager and won't leave his seat, even though the entire vessel is likely to explode around him and crumble to dust. So you'll throw him into an escape pod in just enough time to wave him goodbye, shed a tear and let the growing ball of flames engulf you. You then watch as you fall lifeless to the planet below. All for Seth Green. Personally I would have left the cry baby where he was.

Anyway, the rest of the story takes place as you have swapped sides and joined the opposing fraction who have brought you back from the dead in a space aged montage that puts most sci-fi movies to shame. You head round the galaxy, going where you are told to do by 'The Illusive Man' who does as his name suggests, only poorly. He shows himself at the mere drop of hat, sat in a room, on the same chair, surrounded by holographic images, always smoking a cigar. Apparently either in the future we have eradicated lung cancer or the memo got lost in the hyperspace of galactic mail. However you can also visit other planets in other parts of the galaxy to collect resources by probing their surfaces. From this you can buy upgrades for your ship and weapons. You also head around collecting squad mates that you can use to aid you in the final battle against the collectors.

On my first play through I didn't think to upgrade my replacement Normandy ship and so blindly went into battle for the final mission having upgraded all the weapons as much as I could only to find that I really should have as half my team were dead before we even got near to the collector ship. And only two remained after we went through the ship. And all my crew who we needed to rescue from collectors died while making their escape so it was me and 2 others left to fight. 'I must have missed something' I thought so immediately selected to try the story again, swapping my class and this time visiting EVERY SINGLE planet in the galaxy and then upgrading EVERY SINGLE weapon to the maximum I possibly can. Once my ship's stats basically told me I would be able to wonder in to any battlefield unabated, kill everything in sight and still royally mess up an aliens day with only a meer scratch to both ship and ego, I decided it was time to once more march into the Mass Effect equivalent of Mordor. This time was a lot more successful, I was was able to take the full force of the enemies attacks with no damage to the crew, I then chose my squad mates more wisely and set about giving them the right roles to do. At the end we all regrouped, all squad and crew to the merry tune of bleep bloop as an achievement told me I had gained more gamerscore to add to my worthless score.

Yet after all my digressing I must say something that bothers me about this game, it was the best done of it's kind, but still bothers me, the speech system gives you a choice of various different responses each with a different attitude that helps you steer one way or the other, nice or nasty. However I would often find myself selecting what I would perceive to be a reasonable answer based on the small line of text given to you but Commander Shepard proceeds to let of a stream of child like talk that come fresh from is perfectly rounded arse. Thus making me nasty and thus making me feel like a total arsehole.

Which brings me to my only big issue with the game, quick time events. These are used in moments when you can either do an extremely nice or a violent and psychopathic response to the NPC in front of you. Now,  I see why they did it, but please Bioware, no more in number 3. Thank you.

An game that had me as hooked as Bioshock, must of course have the same rating, 9 out of ten. Immensely fun and engrossing.

J Stanley

Kung Fu Panda Review

The movie was the worst one Dreamworks have ever done. I'll open with that and see if you can guess were this review is going.


The game felt as if someone had taken a fleeting glance at the film and then thought, how can we make what is already a pile of crap even worse. Well I am happy to say they succeeded. It is the worst game I have ever had the misfortune to play. I only dared play the first level, for fear if I continued my brain would try to escape via my nostrils ancient Egyptian mummy style in a desperate plea for escape. The following is what I found while playing this level:

- A story that could have been better if I barfed alphabetic spaghetti onto a plate
- A camera that had a mind of it's own, with it's default being inverted, and to switch it you have to select 'invert' camera. Thus permanently confusing the children who play this garbage for the rest of their natural lives
- A combat system that was so easy I practically beat any enemy by spamming x, sometimes switching to y on larger opponents. There is a dodge move apparently, but I a) didn't learn it and b) didn't need to use it as the enemies dropped healing food all over the food like a 1 year old flailing his dinner all round the kitchen, so there is an even coating on every surface.
-Quick time events seem to be involved in this game, and quite frankly this is only added into the game if the developer realises there is nothing else you can possibly do otherwise in a game mechanic that sits in a corner, on a stool, wearing a dunce cap.

All in all though this is a kids game, made for kids who enjoyed the film, and some are genuinely entertained by this game, but it lacks the same fun and enjoyment factor for them as Lego Star Wars or Lego Indiana Jones. And that is paraphrased from a 8 year old.

Out of ten the best I can give the game is a 3. But that's if I was feeling nice. So it gets a 2. Possibly 1 if I'm made to play it another time.

J Stanley

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames Review

You blow everything up. Simple as.

This title does exactly what the name suggests. You will leave the world in flames. Now wait, you 13 year old pyromaniac, I have haven't finished yet. This game see you take on the role of a mercanary, whether that be mohawk white guy, stereotype black guy, or woman. From here you are dropped into Venezuela, because Middle East was just to over done, and then complete task for various factions that all seem to have been drawn to one lake in the middle of Venezuela. You have the big bad American oil company, the freedom fighters that are meant to be guerilla fighters but the amount of helicopters available for use with them suggests otherwise, the Jamaican pirates, a UN type peace keeping army, solely comprised of Americans that seems to have a hidden agenda to find peace through nuking the hell out of everything, also there is the Chinese army, because the Americans can't except the cold war is over and the Venezuelan army, who, simply for being the only ones who are meant to be doing the fighting, are always the enemy and you can never work with them, to my protest.

I spent most of my time on the freedom fighters who wanted to liberate Venezuela from their cruel American overloads in the form of the UP oil company. This was mainly as this meant blowing up oil stations, although this caused lack lustre results, with an explosion that could have gone unnoticed in the middle of Pride and Prejudice, and the UP get slightly annoyed at you, easily remedied by blowing up one of the opposing fractions trucks. Which brings me to a pointless thing, why incorporate a meter for measuring what allegiance a fraction is to you, when they let of fireworks and host all night booze ups at you if you do so much a cough at the enemy.

Another thing I liked to do was when I unlocked the part of the map with the UN vs Chinese war, localised to 3 streets it seems. You would blow up some missile launchers for the UN, meanwhile behind their backs your siding with the communists to stop the yanks in their tanks. Needless to say when a mini nuke blows up the UN base, with little effect other than loss of a small piece of map, which is irritating when you have to fly your helicopter around, I found it quite thrilling. Still, the Americans still fought I was on there side as took out a couple of high value targets, which seems to count anyone from generals to milkman. You can either kill them and photograph them, or knock them out, signal in an extraction via helicopter to remove the HVT, however before it gets in one of the never ending horde of fraction members, who have become quite annoyed by your exploits, have got a lucky shot in and killed their commander. At which point the pilot lands and tells you off for wasting his time.

Despite all of this I found the experience rather a good way to let off some steam, and it's always fun to buy a helicopter and blow people to kingdom come, or use the winch to pick up civilan cars and toss them into the ocean/drop them from 50,000 feet.

I give the game 7.5 out of 10. A great amount of explosive fun, but a story that was written by someone watching every Jason Statham, Bruce Willis and Vin Diesel film and decided to vomit the scripts onto a C.E.O.'s lap.

J Stanley