Friday, November 28, 2008
Hello. I woke up quite late today because I was up until 3am early this morning watching Tropic Thunder. It's a nice movie that's genuinely funny, and while the story is ridiculous, it makes the movie even more entertaining to watch. There are some parts of the movie when the cheese factor gets really high, but there are some cool parts as well.There's this part when the antagonist, a prepubescent kid, realises that Kirk Lazarus [played by Robert Downey Jr] isn't really a farmer. Kirk had dressed up as a local farmer so that they could rescue another character. He is wearing a large hat, and a scarf conceals most of his face. He covers his body with a coat.
So the kid demands to know where his farm is. Of course Kirk doesn't know. The kid becomes hostile and he draws his weapon. He demands to know where Kirk's farm is. "Where is my farm? Where is my farm? Here's my mutha****ing farm!" Kirk says as he pulls out two machine guns, which were hidden under his coat. He fires at the enemy and his friends captures them. Kirk then says "I'm a lead farmer mutha******." Sweet.
It's a good film, but I am still disturbed by the scene where Tugg Speedman [played by Ben Stiller] is continuously stabbed by a baby that's grabbing onto his back. The disturbing part is that as the baby stabs Tugg, it is still smiling and laughing. Creepy stuff.
After I woke up I played Fable 2 for 4 hours. The game is really getting awesome. My hero enters a place called the Spire to rescue the Hero of Will, but he has to wait 10 years before the Hero gets his powers back. Once he does get his powers back, both of us fought our way out of the spire. Seeing two high level mages beating the shit out of guards with visually impressive spells is a good experience. Right now I'm recruiting the Hero of Skill.
One piece of advice for anyone who hasn't entered the Spire yet. Before you enter the Spire you will beet a man at Westcliff who asks you to invest $5000 so that he can rebuild the town. Don't be stingy. Give the man his money. 10 years later, after you finally exit the Spire, he will send you a letter. When you go and meet him, not only has Westcliff become a bustling village free of corruption, the man will also given you $15000 as a token of appreciation. Good investment.
There was a beggar is the game who claimed that he knew that I was a bigamist, and he wanted to blackmail me, so I paid him $2000 to shut up. Of course, I could have just killed the guy, but I'm walking down the path of Good, and I don't want to ruin that by doing unnecessary evil deeds. I also got some Achievements from Fable 2, including the huge 100 point one for recruiting the Hero of Will. Right now my Achievement score is 9835.
I said yesterday that I would be posting my thoughts about Gears of War 2. So here it is:
The Good.1) The story
The story is written by Joshua Ortega, a comic book and graphic novel writer who has worked on Spider-Man, Batman, The Escapist, Star Wars, Star Trek and The Necromancer. He has done a great job with Gears 2's story. The story properly ties all loose ends of the story of the original Gears of War. In Gears, the story was alright, but it lacked a human touch. In Gears 2, this is fixed. Dominic Santiago, one of the main characters, is searching for his wife. This makes the game much more human, and it really plays with your emotions at certain times.
2) The scale
Anyone who has played the original Gears' campaign will immediately know the difference with Gears 2's campaign. The scale of thing is much larger now. The enemy encounters are no longer small scale. In Gears 2, players are thrown into huge, epic battles, and it really feels like you are fighting in a war for humanity's survival. The fight moves from large forests to the humongous Locust hollow vast underground tunnels and facilities to mountain to human cities and finally back to the Locust Hollow.
3) The control
This is the reason why Gears of War doesn't work on the PC. In fact, it will not work for any console except for the Xbox 360. The controls for Gears 2 is assigned in such a way that the easiest way to play it would be with a 360 controller. It feels right to use such controls in a game, and the cover system is also improved. Right now, players have much more control over the characters are they duck for cover.
4) The audio
The music in Gears of War 2 is top notch. The developers wanted the music to reflect the Gears universe, so they came up with the theme "destroyed beauty". The music really did turn out that way in the end product. The music sounds like end of the world music, but there are hints of other kinds of music mixed with it, making you feel as if the music could have been beautiful at one point of time, but now it has been corrupted until it sound that way. Voice acting is pretty damn good too.
5) The guns
All of the guns that appeared in the original Gears have been improved, and several new ones are added to the mix. The Lancer, dubbed "the chainsaw gun" by fans, is just a reliable as it was in the original Gears. The Hammerburst rifle now fires in single bursts, making it deadly accurate. When you shoot the guns, the vibrations from the controller make the guns feel really powerful. The addition of a flamethrower makes it even more fun to kill opponents.
6) The graphics
I can sum up Gears of War 2's graphics in one sentence: It is the best looking game so far on any console. No matter how good you might think a game's graphics are, they cannot compare to the graphics of Gears 2. The fire is beautiful, the water is beautiful, the environments are beautiful, the weapons are beautiful, the character models are beautiful, the blood is beautiful, kill some one is beautiful, an dying yourself is beautiful.
I'm sure you understand now that Gears 2 is a beautiful game. And you must play it on a HDTV. Playing it on a normal TV will give you graphics better than most games. To give you an idea of how it looks in HD: it is not as good as sex, IT IS SEX.
7) The characters
The character in this game are really memorable. Gears of War is a new franchise, and yet, main character Marcus Fenix is a well know as any other famous game character. In fact, the characters have so much charisma that they have developed a cult following. Each member of Delta squad has their fans. When characters die, you actually feel sad for them. That's quite hard to achieve; making gamers care for the characters.
8) The boss fights
In the original Gears, players fought sub bosses known as Beserkers, and we had to take down the final boss General RAMM. In the PC version of Gears, which was released a year later, players faced a boss encounter with a Brumak, which is a giant dinosaur like creature. In Gears 2, Brumaks are nothing but sub bosses. And if you think a Brumak is big, you should see the other bosses.
Players get to take on a HUGE worm [it's length is longer than the height of a mountain] that can only be killed from the inside. There's also an encounter with the Kraken, a gigantic sea monster. Players also fight Skorge in a chainsaw fight, and the game ends with a fight against a Lambent Brumak, which is a mutated [and super-sized] Burmak.
9) Chainsaw Duels
When two players rev up their chainsaw bayonets at the same time, what happens? You get into a chainsaw duel. Both players rapidly tap the button indicated on-screen. Their characters push at each other with their chainsaws clashed. Sparks fly everywhere. The winner is rewarded with his opponent's blood splattered all over his screen. It's satisfying as hell.
10) The finishers
In the Gears of War series, players don't immediately die once their health reaches zero. Instead, they enter a near death mode and their team mates have a set period of time to revive them before they die for good. However, when you down an opponent, you have an option to finish them with brutal finishing moves.
In Gears, you could finish the opponent by sticking a grenade to them, by chainsawing them, or by curb stomping them [you crush their head with your foot]. In Gears 2, you still have all these options, but there are many more ways to finish your enemies. You can punch them to death. You can also use certain weapons for special finishers. For example, if you use a sniper rifle to finish your opponent, you will use the rifle as a golf club and you will hit his head off. You can also pick up your opponent and use him as a meat shield. Once you're done with him, you can thank him by snapping his neck.
11) The vehicles
In Gears, players could control a UV light firing tank, but that was it for vehicles. In Gears 2, players get to ride of large trucks called Derricks, drive a Centaur tank, ride on flying creatures know as Reavers, and ride a Brumak. There is nothing more satisfying than riding a Brumak. You can shoot and stomp and beat the shit out of everything. It's like having god mode without actually having it.
12) The multiplayer
Big improvement from the original Gears. Gears 2 ships with 10 maps, and 5 more remakes of maps from Gears. There are fun new game modes. The multiplayer is also much more balanced now. All weapons have stopping power, which means they push you back. This means that players can no longer run up to an opponent and finish them with a cheap chainsaw kill. If you rush madly up to an opponent, you will only be pushed back constantly, making you a sitting duck.
The inclusion of A.I bots also allows players who don't player online to get a fraction of what it feels like to play against real people. And then there's Horde mode, a mode where up to 5 players work together to fight off hordes of enemies of increasing difficulty. There is 50 levels of enemies to fight against, and the difficulty increases every 10 waves. Horde is a gift from god.
The Bad.
1) Environmental kills
In Gears 2, there are certain levels where you have to avoid environmental hazards like deadly hail and automated turrets. It is fun at first, but when avoiding stuff while having to fight enemies at the same time, it gets quite frustrating.
2) Online Matchmaking
Why is it so freaking slow?
3) No Beserkers
WHY?!! Everyone loved Beserkers, wonder why Epic took them away.
4) Other game graphics
After playing Gears 2, your brain will automatically make you think that all other games look like shit.
5) Language/Violence filter
This is stupid. It clearly states on the box the Gears 2 is targeted at a mature audience, and it contains strong language, blood and gore. After reading that, who would buy the game and turn on the filter? I think it's unnecessary. If a parent is irresponsible enough to buy the game for their kid, then they can also be irresponsible enough to lie to him. Just tell him something like "Son, that thing spraying out of the bad man's head is BBQ sauce."
6) Meat Flag becomes Submission
In Gears 2, the Capture the Flag mode was originally called Meat Flag, but it got changed to Submission. Meat Flag sound nicer. More badass. Submission just sounds like some type of sex.
Overall, Gears of War 2 pwns your face off. If you have a Xbox 360, you have no choice but to buy it. If you don't have a Xbox 360, buy or steal one and play this game. Sure, stealing is a crime, but it is an even bigger crime not to play it. It has a great story mode, and a great multiplayer. If you like shooters even a little bit, this game is for you.
I just read the first review of Price of Persia on IGN.com. It got 9.3/10. Good, now I can buy it without hesitation.
A new Angry Video Game Nerd episode came out last night. It's the CD-I part 2 episode. After the underwhelming CD-I part 1 episode, I thought that the Nerd had lost his touch, but this episode proved me wrong. The Nerd is back, and he's as angry as ever. Great episode. Check it out:
Ok, I'm done. Off to read One Piece. I'm also going to check out the new Naruto and Bleach chapters. Ok, ending off, see you tomorrow.
posted @ 9:01 PM
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