I came into Halo Wars with high hopes and dreams of a masterly crafted RTS, and I expected it to be a bit dumbed down because hey it’s a console real time strategy game. There was a lot of stigma attached to Halo Wars for that reason, and for the reason that a lot of people expected it to fail because they believed the Halo audience didn’t have the patience for Halo Wars. Halo Wars didn’t make it out as well as Halo 3 did, of course anyone could predict that. However the question remains.. is it good?

Some people will dismiss it without playing it and those people suck, if you’re going to bash a game, at least try it first. That being said, Halo Wars, believe it or not, is a good game. The missions are interesting, and even challenging, and everything just seems right. Let’s run through some of the strong points.
(continue reading…)

The title, or something along the lines of the title, refers to the achievement in Halo Wars for beating the game, start to finish, in co-op mode. Now I have to say right off the bat, that Ensemble did a wonderful thing by making a co-operative campaign. Playing games by yourself is fun, but if you play with a friend, the fun get multiplied by two.

In the older days of gaming, there wasn’t much co-op, it was more of a pass the controller style. You know, you’d die in Super Mario Bros. and you’d pass the the controller to your buddy, who would die sometime and this would just continue. This type of co-op was very crude, and hardly effective, reason being that half the time you weren’t even playing the game. If your buddy was really good at said game, you were watching for a while. We eventually got to the point where multiplayer was introduced, and this meant now  you could play together, at parties, etc. There was a certain point where the multiplayer got stale because you were essentially doing the same things over and over again, however this didn’t happen for a while.

Next came an online system, which astounded people because now you play with someone and they didn’t even have to be at your house. They could be halfway around the world and still play with you, and people thought this was the pinnacle of peer to peer gaming, until we got co-operative campaign, and this in my opinion is the best aspect of any online type. Sure you can play different game types, kill some people, have a good time while playing online multiplayer, but with the campaign comes a shared experience, one that is unique from online multiplayer. With online multiplayer you work together for a common cause, you share the achievement of victory, and you share the laughs and the outrages. What co-operative campaign does is that that foundation, and add a story for you and your friend(s) to experience. Now you get more out of it.

Halo Wars feels to me like a dumbed down RTS, which is true in all perspectives, although it features co-operative campaign. A co-operative campaign in an RTS?! Are they crazy?! It’s possible, but it’s more like one of the best ideas introduced. I’m not sure if Halo Wars was the first to implement co-operative campaign but it sure as hell does a great job at making the experience fun for everyone and when you’re doing co-op, that’s what matters.

“Woah dude, where did you get that cool stuff?” “Oh this? Yeah I bought it from xxxxx.com”. This is a common conversation in MMOs nowadays, the amount of people purchasing online currancy is rising steadily. Often now more than ever, people just go out, spend a few hundred dollars on gold for let’s say World of Warcraft, and are content with themselves. I may be a bit harsh when I say this, but these people are immoral tools, and furthermore, assholes. Why? Let’s look at it from some different perspectives.
(continue reading…)

The Halo series has always been a frowned upon series for some, but for others has been a beacon of good times and all kinds of crazy stuff. That being said, what is it about Halo 3 that makes some dislike it, and what is it about Halo 3 that makes some people love it? Stay tuned as I explore the strong points and the weak points of this giant of a video game.

It all started with Halo: Combat Evolved, the game had introduced some new elements and had fixed up some older elements, and overall the game was extremely enjoyable. Halo had a unique storyline (at the time), a well orchestrated soundtrack, and an adventure that seemed to be pretty expansive and epic. The game was regarded as one of the best games released at that time, and most people who played it seemed to think so as well.
(continue reading…)

“Oops, this game has stopped working and now must close” is a frequent message for some of the games being released today. What we see now is companies in a rush to push out games that don’t work. Case 1: Fallout 3. Case 2: Dawn of War 2, there are many games that have been released with fatal game flaws at are later patched, my query to those companies releasing such games is: why? Why do you like to shit on your customers for getting one of your games? Why do you like to release games before they’re fucking finished? Why do release patches that don’t do shit? Let’s go into this topic for a bit.

When I first got Fallout 3, I was impressed with the graphics and in some ways the gameplay, but I wasn’t impressed with the staggering amount of crashes, glitches, and overall graphical tomfoolery in the game. The worst part is, that this problem still exists. I can understand you want to keep a schedule for the game being released, but you’re only going to hurt your future prospects by releasing an unfinished game.
(continue reading…)

What is this you ask? This is Crayon Physics. You’ve probably played games that involved physics before, but like this? I think not. Crayon Physics (not a really smooth name), takes a normal physics game and add a nice childish twist onto it, and I’m absolutely fond of it.

In another article I stated that my personal game of the year was World of Goo, and there’s a reason for that, I’m a sucker for games involving thinking and physics, and those are the two things that CP Crayon Physics have a lot of. If you go into this game doing random stuff then you’ll find yourself lost and probably frustrated. The reason being is now you have the freedom to do whatever the hell you want with your situation. You wanna draw a penis bridge? Do it, you can draw anything you want as long as it doesn’t exceed the amount of lines you are allowed to have in the game, and that amount is pretty high.

(continue reading…)

“HEY GUYS, YOU ALL SUCK AND I’M NUMBER ONE BITCHES” is something one will often hear while playing Halo 3. For instance, my friend and I were playing capture the flag, we’re losing because we’re up against 4 generals in a party and some random guy. So this person on our team had a real trouble keeping his temper in check, and was quick to burst out in “OH MY GOD GUYS, JESUS YOU ALL SUCK, HOW CAN PEOPLE BE SO NEW TO THIS GAME?!”. Let me say that I’m by no means an easily angered person, so I waited until the game ended, then my friend and I commenced the impersonations. I’d like to also say, this fine gentleman we were playing with was the worst on our team, so irony was there too.

Video games are a source of entertainment, not a job, and definitely not serious business. Despite what gaming enthusiasts what you to think, gaming exists for the sole reason of entertainment, and why people take games so seriously is beyond me, unless you enjoy popping a nerve vessel every time something doesn’t go your way. You’d think that it’d be only younger people doing this, sadly that isn’t true. I’ve also noticed when people act like this they tend to do worse within a game, sometimes a few points down, sometimes to the where they’re killing their own team, and I wish I was joking.

(continue reading…)

I often remember the N64 being the best console I ever owned, that isn’t to say that this generation is complete shit, but it lacks that certain pizzaz that we had back in the days of the Playstation 1, the N64, and the Sega Dreamcast (rest in peace). I often also find myself remembering back to some of the great games that I really enjoyed when I had owned an N64. This is one of those rememberances.

Racing games nowadays seem to be more about who can be more realistic in terms of car dynamics and have the best graphics. What ever happened to games like Carmaggedon, Twisted Metal, Star Wars Episode 1: Pod Racer, and Extreme G. Shoot, what ever happened to games like Road Rash? Road Rash was probably one of the best experiences I had with a racing game because it wasn’t afriad to push the boundaries what’s acceptable.

(continue reading…)

Way, way, back when I used to play Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat frequently on Steam, I found out about a Half-Life mod that my friends were talking about. The mod was called Natural Selection. What is Natural Selection you ask? Well my friend, it’s like Alien vs. Predator, only it’s not a movie, and it doesn’t suck.

Natural Selection is a mix of strategy and first person shooter, as often you find that unless you plan how you attack, and you play how you play with your teammates, you’ll die almost every time. Going back to the AvP comment, it essentially is the same thing, you can play as a human or an alien. Your abilities develop as you level up from successful kills. As a human you use technology to better yourself, as an alien you use natual ablilties that grow as you play. Once you reach the commander possition for the human side, you command 5 soliders together, and this alone offers a real unique experience as far as first person shooters go. Aliens evolve to include ablilites like cloaking and additional tracking methods, and along with those ablilites come a change in shape. You start off as a kind of headcrab, then evolve to run on walls, fly, and become big enough to eat human soliders whole (1 HIT KILL!).

The graphics are a bit outdated, but as far as gameplay goes, Natural Selection is very original, and completely free. They’re also working on a Source version of the game which I hope turns out to be better than the original. This game really represents the whole theme of “learn to adapt and evolve, or die out”.

Ever since I finished F.E.A.R. 1, I’ve been itchiny myself to get into F.E.A.R. 2. Now I have! Well, I’m not sure I really feared Alma in the first place, more feeling sorry for her then fear. So let’s pick up where we left off with the previous article. F.E.A.R. was something to behold in it’s time, but as time went on, it seemed to be less and less impressive, there’s no real fault to cause that, it’s just how technology advance. The main question I asked myself while playing F.E.A.R. 2 was how much like F.E.A.R. 1 was it?

F.E.A.R. 2 starts out half an hour from where you finished in F.E.A.R. 1, so there is a great continuation in the storyline from another point of view. I personally admire the approach from a different angle, but it handicaps the story. The story in F.E.A.R. 2 is much like the first, in the way that it essential is the first. The whole storyline from F.E.A.R. 2 is essential F.E.A.R. 1 but without a backstory, and that really ticks me off. There isn’t much new content to low and behold.
(continue reading…)