Games I have been playing.

So it's the end of the month and with it another post of me rambling on about what games I've been playing since the last time I did this. To start things off I am still playing Payday: The Heist (which I still need to finish writing up on here I'm about halfway done but keep getting distracted by other things, I'll try get it up soon). It is seemingly getting more popular. A number of people on my Steam friends list have now bought it, more than likely due to the recent Steam sales. I love this game it's great and I suggest you pick it up if you haven't already, I've put a good 60 hours in to it already and at £15 I feel I've got more than my moneys worth out of it already.

I gave the new Jurassic Park game a download recently as well whether you will like it or not depends entirely on how much you like quick time events. I happen to like them I feel it adds to the immersion of the game but that's just me.

Next on the list is Titan Quest, it's a pretty old game now as it was released back in 2007. I got it ages ago when I bought a THQ pack during a Steam sale at some point, and have up until now had only played a couple hours of it when I first got the game then more than likely got distracted by other games. I have got properly in to it this time round and am quite enjoying it. It's got a kind of Diablo type feel to the game. I'll admit it's not the greatest game in the world but it's pretty cool and easy too get in to. I'm about 20 hours in and am up to level 25, I believe the level cap is 65 so I've got a while to go yet. It's one of those games you can either play little by little doing a quest or two every time you play or you can easily get sucked in and play for hours at a time.

There is only a couple more games I have been playing first one is Serious Sam 3. I have been looking forward to this game ever since I heard it was coming out. Saying that I haven't played all that much of it so far. I have played a good few hours, I have died a lot and not got too far yet as I am playing on Hard, I am glad I didn't choose Serious though. At times it is quite ridiculous, but it is fun, it is challenging and it will take up a lot of my time over the coming months.

Last game I am going to mention is a small indie game which has taken up far too much of my time under the name of The Binding of Isaac. It's quite a strange little dungeon shooter, the levels are all randomly generated so each time your play it will be a different level, unless you play the game so many times it starts to repeat itself but that would take an extremely long time. Anyway it's strangely addictive and for a few quid you can't really go wrong with it.

I lie about the last game being the last game for this post. I found Psychonauts going cheap during the last Steam sales and picked it up for £3 I think it was. Anyway if you haven't heard of it you should check it out. Here's a trailer for it.

Half-Life: Origins

I came across this pretty cool fan made video of the start of the first Half-Life game over at Gamerant. It's pretty cool and this trailer has left me wanting to see more, anyway I guess this is as much of a certain Mr Freeman we will be seeing any time soon as we all know Valve like to take their time. Anyway here is the video, check it out.

The Binding of Isaac

This game has been out for a few months now on Steam. I have just come across it though. It is a quite random little indie shooter from a top down perspective where you fight through dungeons full of weird and random enemies. Each time you start the game, the levels are randomly generated so you get a different game each time you play. The game isn't all that long but I find it strangely addictive and I have put a good number of hours in to it already. It is 50% off on Steam at the minute bringing it to the low, low price of £1.99. For £2 you can not go wrong with this game. If I hadn't bought it already I'd be more than willing to pay more than full price for it.

Serious Sam 3 Launch Trailer

Here is the launch trailer to (long awaited at least in my opinion) sequel to Serious Sam. I shall be playing the shit out of this game tomorrow. Can't wait til I've downloaded it.

Jurassic Park: The Game - First Thoughts

Telltale Games have recently put out another Jurassic Park game. To be honest they aren't the developers I would have picked to make the game considering their game history of point and click games like Sam + Max and Monkey Island.

The game starts off with a cut scene of some woman getting tracked down by some dinosaurs, in which you have  a number of quick time events to do to dodge them and get away. This game happens to be all quick time events like Heavy Rain I guess would be the last game I can think of that uses this type of gameplay. So this is more of an interactive movie than a game. It can get quite frantic at times with the need for good old fashion button bashing goodness. If you aren't quick enough you can die quite nastily. There is one point in the first chapter where you are trying to shoo a baby triceratops back in to it's enclosure, just as you have it back in and nearly have the dino back in with use of the car horn and lights, you piss off mummy and it comes charging at you and knocks down the gate which traps you underneath, so you have to frantically button bash your way out from under the gate on top of you before before mother dino comes and crushes you to death by walking over the gate. There is a fair amount of different ways this game can kill you. 15 of which are shown on this video courtesy of gamesradar.com



I wasn't sure what this game would be like as it was coming from Telltale. It is actually pretty good so far, I've played maybe a couple hours now and only stopped to write this up. I would suggest using a controller over keyboard and mouse if you pick it up on PC as I did, as button bashing is a hell of a lot easier with a controller. It is also available on Xbox and Playstation as well so if you get it for console ignore the last sentence. I realise there are a lot of big titles coming out at the moment so no doubt this game will be completely over looked by most people. But if you see it on sale or if you have a spare £20 with nothing to spend it on. I suggest giving it a shot.

Serious Sam 3 Blood and Guts Trailer

Another trailer has popped up and is getting me excited for the release of Serious Sam 3 on the 22nd. Here it is:

Wii U may use Origin

I came across an article at gamerant suggesting Nintendos new console might uses EAs digital distribution service. I actually plan on getting a Wii U as I have had a Nintendo console since Snes (or gameboy if that counts). It's an interesting concept anyway. I know a lot of people aren't a fan of Origin. I can't say on this matter as I have never really used it. If anything this may give Nintendo some better games if they are to team up with EA. I also noticed the comments ripping on Origin and how Steam is better are coming in as well. It's a new system it's not going to be amazing straight off, just like Steam wasn't and still isn't (I love it but it's not perfect). I am giving EA benefit of the doubt with Origin to see how it turns out.

Are gamers too cynical and unforgiving these days?

Over the past few months we have seen a number of new games out, I mean actual new games rather than sequels to older games, such as Homefront, Bulletstorm, Dead Island and Rage. I can't talk for Rage as I have yet to play it but will do in the near future (probably christmas). Anyway even though each one of these games had rocky launches and lack luster reviews, they are pretty decent games. But as these are unknown titles the majority are more willing to automatically shun these games, while the likes of your CoDs and Battlefields among other well known titles I can't think of right now can get away with not so brilliant launches.

This mentality among gamers is wrong. If you are going to shun a game for a crappy launch, it should be done for every game. While I'm not saying everyone does this of course, there are a lot that do. I believe in the fact that not every game is going to have that perfect launch that they planned as mistakes happen, there's hardware issues, the list could go on. Dead Island is a perfect example of this, they had a terrible launch, especially their Steam launch (I'm still not sure how they ended up releasing the completely wrong version of the game but I'm not going to get in to that rant) but behind this crappy launch was infact a pretty awesome game. The point I'm getting to is you have to put faith in developers to fix problems when they occur, this is the exact reason patching of games was invented (along with with adding new content of course).

Along with that people these days seem a lot less forgiving with new titles than franchises. My theory on this is if we keep shunning new games the market won't change and get stale and we will be left with nothing but the same old generic game over and over. It is getting to that stage with shooters right now. There are many decent shooters out their but because they aren't Call of Duty they get completely over shadowed by months of advertising for the same game. Homefront is a prime example of this, the game in itself was a good game in it's own right and yes it had a bad start MP wise with server issues. But tell me other well known shooter franchises have never had problems at release. At the end of the day, they worked on it and sorted it out. The single player on the game was pretty good, the ending was a bit disapointing as it could have went on a bit longer, but it had an interesting storyline and decent gameplay.

Bulletstorm while it got over looked some what, it did have some momentum behind it but the hype about the game lasted ... well it didn't last. I'm sorry but that game put fun back in to games. Far to many games are trying to go all hollywood with their almost life like graphics and serious storylines. This game gave you guns put a load of enemies in your way and told you to go nuts. You could sit and complain about the storyline which I think was fairly decent, but it didn't really matter. The game focused on gameplay and I believe it truely pulled it off. Bulletstorm to me was a warm up for DNF. The only thing I didn't really like in the new Duke game was the fact you only got 2 weapons. Duke is supposed to have a massive arsenal of weapons. Putting that aside the game was fun.

It just seems people are far too cynical and unforgiving when it comes to games these days. If you don't get what I'm on about go read comments on damn near any review site and look at the amount of fanboys ripping on shit and abusive flame wars. There's always going to be the 'my dads harder than your dad' kind of flaming but people are generally full blown dicks these days. I am getting to the stage where I'm almost ashamed to call myself a gamer these days. Which is why I have moved away from the mainstream side of things and started to show smaller and indie games a lot more love. I for one would rather support developers with new original ideas even if they don't come across perfect over the franchises that chun out slightly tweaked games year after year. If you are going to update a game do it on your current game we don't need a yearly update for £40. Take Valve or Blizzard most of their games are old as balls but because of the support they have given their games over the years. People love them.

At the end of the day this industry needs innovation not repetition. Innovative ideas are rarely perfect on their first attempt which is why it keeps the industry moving. Games are supposed to be an investment, some thing that you can go back and play in a few months, years or even decades. There are games I still play from the days of early Nintendo and Sega, because they are good games. Will I be playing Black Ops 20 years from now? Probably not. I can't say for sure but I pretty certain I won't be. Half Life, Doom, Red Faction, Painkiller, Command & Conquer, all these games have been out for year yet I keep going back to them. Was it because they kept releasing pretty much the same games over and over? Hell no it wasn't. It was because they were creative and innovative would I enjoy them as much now if they were just a carbon copy of some other game? No. These games were not perfect, but they are great games so the flaws get over looked.

My top 10 games of all time.

This list is in no particular order, it is just 10 of my favourite games some are newer than others.

Guild Wars

I shall start the list with a MMO under the name of Guild Wars, I believe this game has been the under dog in the MMO market especially compared to the likes of WoW. Yes it does have quite the core fan base. But any casual gamer if they have heard of it and a lot of them will tell you no. The game is getting on a bit now as it was released mid 2000's, 05 if memory serves me correctly as of probably beginning of this year I finally escaped it's grasp on me, yeah I do have a few titles left to grind away at before I can say I have absolutely nothing left to do in game, to be honest I can live with my legacy left behind in the Guild Wars world and until Guild Wars 2 comes out I probably won't be getting back in to it. I have dabbled in a number of other MMO's but Guild Wars was the only one that took hundreds of hours of my life from me. I still to this day don't know why I was so addicted to this game but it does hold a special place in my heart.

Half-Life
The game that started Valves journey in to the hearts of many, many gamers. This game was probably the first game I played that had quite an in depth story behind it. Everything I had played before this game shooter wise, the story was 'There's the bad guy go kill him. Why? Because he's the bad guy.' While I still love those kind of games that essentially just give you a gun and tell you to go nuts, this game changed that. There was a lot of thought effort and time put in to the story, not saying it was the first one to do that of course it was my first story telling shooter game. I am much more of a fan of this game than the sequel. Half-Life 2 I still love that game to bits but there is far to many holes in the gap between Half-Life and Half-Life 2. Valve totally could of done other games to fill in the missing pieces. Even if they had done a sequel to Blue Shift and Opposing Force that would have been more than enough game to explain a little more. I still think they should do a Blue Shift 2 with Barney and the events running up to Half-Life 2. You start off and he is undercover with the combine. You could have easily made a game with Barney and his time under cover with the combine, watch him make choices he later regrets so he doesn't blow his cover. I could sit down and come up with many situations you could make a story for a new Blue Shift or Opposing Force game. It has so many missing links you could fill in and you know from Valves huge fan base that people would be all over the games should they be released. I'm gonna stop my little rant there anyway and go play through Half Life up to Episode 2 as soon as I'm done writing this.

Road Rash 2
Now I am going back even further in time to one of the games from my childhood which I used to play the crap out of. Road Rash 2 for my Sega Mega Drive. I loved this game, it's racing motor bikes while trying to beat your opponent with bats and chains what is not to like. My only gripe at this game is the lack of save ability, but that's more at the console than the game it's self. Saying that though if I was able to save my game and beat it, the replay value probably wouldn't be as high as it was. Saving on this game involved leaving the console on with the game paused. All that time spent playing this game just so I could get the best bike available, I believe I got it about 4 times but because it took me so long to save up for it, I never got that used to the bike and crashed a lot due me not being used to the handling and speed of the bike usually ending up in me getting game over.

Final Fantasy IX
That's right Final Fantasy 9 not 7. Not to say 7 isn't a good game but it's not my favourite. I was a little late to jump on the Final Fantasy bandwagon getting into it with the release of the 9th in the series. But it is my favourite of all the Final Fantasy games. I have played it through so many times I could probably sit down and tell you the entire story start to finish.

Burnout Series

Burnout is probably my all time favourite racing game. Probably Burnout 3 being favourite of the lot. It's the most fun you can have crashing cars without being hospital bound.

Deathspank

It is a small(ish) game from developers Hothead Games. I am including all three games as this entry as well. I fricking love Deathspank and his random humour, abuse of orphans and just the generally weird ass hack and slash adventure. If you haven't heard or played any of the Deathspank games, be it the original, Thongs of Virtue or the latest adventure with our random hero, The Baconing. I suggest go invest in one of them, I believe they cost round about a tenner for each game. It's definitely worth the money.

Team Fortress 2

I have been a fan of Team Fortress since the days of TFC, never did play the quake mod though. I have only one gripe again TF2 and believe it or not it's not about hats. It's about how escort maps such as Hunted were never brought along with all the other game modes. For those of you unaware of this map type. Basically one person was a VIP which one team had to protect while getting them to a certain area to win the game while the other team had to assassinate them. I spent more time playing escort maps than any other type. I should really go look see if modders have made custom maps with escort objectives. I realise we have payload which is technically an escort type game but it's not the same. Anyway rant aside, this game is well it's fun as hell whether you enjoy using the variety of weapons available or just using the stock loadouts through one of the many vanilla servers which don't allow anything but stock weapons.

Left 4 Dead

Third entry in my list from Valve. This doesn't really much explanation why it was put in my list. It's killing zombies with your buddies. How can you not like it.

Unreal Tournament

This game was probably the first multiplayer competitive shooter I played. Epic totally need to revive this game and when they do they need to make it just a tournament, no storys like UT3, just pure good old fashion killing the other guy purely for the fact that you want to be better than them. They have Unreal if they want to put a story behind the game, Unreal Tournament should be kept as a Tournment nothing more nothing less. Anyway before I get in to a full blown rant I have to admit this game is fantastic, and whether you pick up the original or any other version of the game it doesn't matter.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 - Yuri's Revenge

While this is technically an expansion pack, one which I dub greatest expansion in existence, you can argue with me all you want you will never change my mind on the matter, I believe this game could have easily stood by itself without a problem. This game along with with Unreal Tournament was one of the games that got me into lan gaming, primarily with my brothers, while I haven't been to a lan for ages as it's a lot easier just to play online, I used to love sitting in playing over lans trying to out do one another. Though I hated playing my younger brother as he was always Yuri and made sure he was near enough to both Allied and Soviet bases so he could just send in Yuri to get their construction yard and get the best of each faction. I always swayed away from Yuri and went either Allied or Soviet, had a solid plan for each team though. If I was Allied it was simple as getting a shed load of rocketeers and prism tanks. If I was Soviet I just defended my base until I had a ridiculous amount of Mammoth Tanks, I would go for a minimum of 50, this would be followed by the complete and utter destruction of anything that got in my way, while this massacrer was in progress I would be preparing a second wave of Mammoth Tanks to join them.

Serious Sam 3 Melee Trailer

This trailer just proves why Serious Sam kicks ass. Seriously can't wait for this game to be released (see what I did there). Good old fashioned over the top shooter game, just like they should be, there really should be more games like this out in the market.

Hard Reset Survival Mode

The guys at Flying Wild Hog have released another patch 1.2 for Hard Reset.  The main update of this patch is Survival Mode, the game is difficult enough just playing the campaign I dread to think how hard this. It's to bad I can't play it right now due to my graphics card crapping out a while back and the one I'm using now doesn't run the game very well, come christmas I will be all over this. Along with survival mode, 3D Vision is now fully supported as well as a number of small tweaks, I imagine this game would look quite fantastic in full 3D glory. Full details of which can be found here.

Jurassic Park: The Game

I posted the trailer to this game a while back and earlier today I noticed the game is now available to pre order on Steam, and is due to be released 15th November. I am quite interested to see how this game turns out actually. Especially considering it is being developed by Telltale Games who are more accustom to the point and click adventures like Sam and Max. I kind of expect it to be at least some what of a shooter, I mean you in a world full of dinosaurs you have to shoot at least few of them down, no doubt there will be a lot of puzzle solving as it's what the Telltale games are renowned for. I will be looking at reviews closely on this one when it comes out in a couple of weeks. If you haven't seen anything of the game, it's at least worth a watch of the trailers to see what you think. There is the main trailer along with a behind the scenes trailer which you can find here.

GTA V Debut Trailer

We have yet another Grand Theft Auto game on the way with it's debut trailer released today. It's gonna be interesting to see what they do with the story. I'm sure the guys at Rockstar have something up their sleeve no doubt.

Games I have been playing.

I haven't been posting much on here as of late, I just haven't had the enthusiasm to do so. I tend to either read loads of gaming news and write a lot or just game a lot. Lately I have been gaming loads so I felt obliged to do an update of what I have been playing. While we are seeing a fair amount of big titles coming out, none of them really take my fancy. Battlefield I couldn't give a damn about, same goes for CoD. I generally play military shooters for single player, yes I know shock horror, someone who doesn't fall victim to the multiplayer military shooter trap which has seeming caught a boat load of folks over the past few years. Then we have Skyrim coming along, I did play Oblivion a while back with games like those I always get side tracked and just end up just going round killing stuff rather than following the story and never end up finishing it, I probably will get it some point down the line but really it's not all that high up the priority list. We have Rage which I'm kind of semi interested in, but due to my graphics card crapping out a couple months ago, I doubt a Radeon 3850 would do the game any justice, so I will probably get that at christmas along with a new graphics card. There is one game I am truely looking forward to though which is out later this month. That game is Serious Sam 3, if you do not know about this game go look in to it, and if you can't be arsed to do that I will sum it up for you in one simple sentence: Lots of enemies, lots of guns, lots of violence and lots of fun. That about covers it.

Now I will actually get on to games I have actually been playing. I will start off with a little game under the name of Payday: The Heist, this game came to my attention a few months back through some random playstation promotion they had on. About a week or so ago I noticed it was available on Steam as well (has yet to be released on Xbox). The game cost a mere 15 quid. So I thought I would pick it up and give it a shot. I am glad I did, at the point of writing this I have played about 18 hours according to Steam and that is within a week. Needless to say I have been quite addicted to it. The game is 4 player co-op where you get to pull off heists such as banks jobs and ripping off drug deals. The game only has 6 levels thus far however the last 2 in the list can only be played on hard or overkill difficulty, both levels in question I have yet to beat but I am working on it. I will do a little piece on the game in the near future giving a bit more detail about the game and my thoughts about it. I strongly recommend you go pick up the game if you have a spare £15 laying about with nothing to do.

While Payday has taken up a fair amount of my time, I have also been working through some of the games I got on the Steam Halloween sale. Which makes a change from me randomly buying games on Steam due to the ridiculously cheap price of it and never getting round to playing it. I bought Bioshock, Resident Evil 5, Painkiller and Ghostbusters all for £17. I haven't touched Bioshock or Ghostbusters yet, but I am about halfway through Resident Evil and slowly making my way through Painkiller, though I am playing PK on the hardest difficulty which is ridiculously hard but it has to be done. Just like Serious Sam has to be played on Serious difficulty otherwise your not doing it right. Anyway Painkiller will no doubt keep me occupied for months to come but I will persevere and eventually beat the damn game. I have also started to play Borderlands again as that was in the latest Steam sales so no doubt people will be playing it again.

I think that's about it really. I shall do another post about what I've been up to either late this month or beginning of the next.

Operation Raccoon City Trailer

Capcom have released a trailer for the next upcoming game in their Resident Evil franchise Operation Raccoon City. Up until now it hasn't really grabbed my attention however the trailer is rather good. Look like it takes place in the Resident Evil 3 time line as you see Nemesis in the trailer, also you seem to play as Umbrella Agents trying to get rid of any evidence linking Umbrella to the Raccoon City incident. It's an interesting twist on the story. Here is the trailer.

Also there has been a number of screenshots released as well which you can find over at Gamerant