Well, it's about that time, closing up the year of gaming. We played a lot of games. We covered many genres. We played on many consoles (not the PS3 though!). So what is your favorite game of the year?
This year, I'm picking Fallout 3.
At the beginning of the year I was coming down off of Call of Duty 4, a revisit from last year, that I really never let go of. I took a hiatus and spent some time with my Wii, buying more games for that than any other this year. I also bought quite a few iPod games. I even played Spore on my Mac.
Then Fallout 3 came out and I knew it was going to be a toss up between it, Halo: ODST and MW2 to make my most played game of the year award. I couldn't talk myself into yet another driving game. They're repetitive and don't really bring much to the table. I probably spent as much time driving in Forza 2 as I did painting the cars in it. The other games pretty much ended up being sequels as well. More of the same. More of the same fun, mind you, but just more story with slightly better graphics.
But Fallout 3 was such a departure from the last few years of gaming that I had to pick it just because of it's differences that I ended up enjoying so much. Besides some issues I had with the crappy voice acting and bad animations (walking around for instance was like watching a bad 80's computer generated music video), getting into a deep RPG with fully a customizable character was just what I needed. I liked the missions. I liked the choices. I liked zeroing in on people's body parts and blowing them off with a scoped magnum. This was so much better than the space epic, Mass Effect (a game that had superior voice acting) that I tried last year and got tired of real quick. Roaming around generic looking planets that could have been modeled on a G3 Macintosh with Google Maps overlays. Of real boring places. Seriously, look at this crap.
In further...
If this is modern, where are the women soldiers characters? There aren't any in the story campaign or online. There aren't even any voice overs in multiplayer that call out "Hardcore Team Deathmatch" before the rounds start.
Discuss
What is it going to take to bring the lagging FPS war themed game Medal of Honor on a level platform with Call of Duty? They're going to try it.
When I tried to log into Infinity Ward's website for Call of Duty, it wouldn't take my password. When I had it sent to my email, it was the password I was trying. Odd. Then I tried logging into the forums site and got logged in, but for some reason I was using an account that someone already had started using and posting under. The gamertag was wrong and so was the registered email address.
When I went to send the community manager a personal message from my account, there was already a message in the outbox about the issue under yet a third person. When I resent the message again myself, I went to check the gamertag listed under the account and there was a fourth person.
IW has some major malfunctions going on and I hope it isn't causing people any problems other than mismatched accounts. Someone needs a database scrub and massage.
I'm sending FourZeroTwo (Robert Bowling) a twitter message and see if we can get this cleared up.
I finally finished Modern Warfare 2 last night and I'm happily ready to go back and play through it again on the harder difficulty. The graphics were beautiful, the voice acting was awesome (I love Lance Henrikson and Keith David's deep voices), and the gameplay was superb. Even the tantilizing and thought provoking misunderstood "No Russian" terrorist level was great (I even tried to play through it without killing innocent people because it was that powerful).
Of all the first person shooting games, Infinity Ward makes the one I will always come back to. Halo and Grand Theft Auto all have their place amongst the kings of killing off digital enemies, but Call of Duty is the cream of the crop for me. It's all about precision, timing and approach. The levels are completely original, well thought out and have great dynamics. Even though it's completely narrative and linear, it's like playing through a Tom Clancy novel (which strangely enough I don't like his branded games like Rainbow Six or Splinter Cell). Maybe Infinity Ward should write books.
One of the best things they've done with the Call of Duty series is take it into the "modern" future because it makes for awesome weapons, give you a helmet with a cool HUD that gets blood spattered on it when you're hurt (instead of classic video game beeping and warning lights) and just makes the game feel more real. I'm sorry I can't find the right words to describe it now.
We write a lot about Call of Duty on this site and for good reason. It's a top 10 favorite for two of us and for some reason never gets old. I hope to get another two years out of this Call of Duty and through in some Halo ODST and maybe some other games for the next few months while I go on a game buying hiatus.
So here's to Infinity Ward and Call of Duty for taking me out through the end of the year!
This is on your man Robert Bowling's Twitter page. I made it my desktop background. Pretty freakin' awesome.
I was reading through Robert Bowling's (fourzerotwo) Twitter feed and he asked the populous if they wanted convex or concave thumbsticks on a controller that Infinity Ward is apparently developing just for the game.
Call of Duty 6 is being released with a special "Prestige" edition of the game that I hope sets the standard for all other games. In the box, you'll get a plastic head statue with a fully working pair of night-vision goggles!
I'm not sure what made me do it, but since 7/7 is officially Bungie day in gamer land, I decided to throw back in Halo 3, drop $10 on the latest Mythic map pack and give it a go. Of course Halo is such a huge difference from Call of Duty's style of game play, but something about the maps that Bungie employees hand picked from the sea of user created maps made it pretty easy to sink back into.
That was 3 days ago.
Today, Halo online is back to where it was, settled from the storm of people trying to beat Bungie employees for the Recon horse armor. That's probably not an accurate comparison, since you can't buy it, but it's still dumb.
I still suck at Halo, but I don't hate it. I'm sure with some extra time invested in the game, I would do my level 22 proud. But for some reason the level of refinement is on a different scale that what Call of Duty is, where I feel like I can have beautifully trained aim on someone from across a map, Halo feels more like I'm wildly swinging the guns around, just praying for a hit. Halo players don't seem to have that problem though. I haven't mastered Halo's jerk-to-aim nature, whereas Call of Duty's aiming is more silky smooth and calm.
If anything, playing Halo does accomplish one thing: not spending time playing Call of Duty. Now I just have to stop comparing the two. ODST is a hot title on my list of upcoming games. September 22nd.
Edit: I would also like to call to attention Halo player's undeniable preference to NOT use the weapons in Halo 3 and instead opt for something a little more deadly: their hands. Of the eight players in my last game, five of them killed more people with a punch than with the 7 or so weapons in the map, not including two different grenades and exploding power cells. I, on the other hand, killed 7 people with guns. First Person Shooter. Not First Person Puncher. 
Last night I wanted to reinstall Myth: Soulblighter on my new iMac just to see how it would run. My older iMac did reasonably well with it and I figured the update would let me apply more textures and higher resolutions and so on...but in reality what I got was kind of like playing the classic Perfect Dark from the N64 on an HDTV. You really can't make a game animate better than it was designed to. Even after all the work of trying to find a patch to make an pre-OSX program run on an non-Classic running Mac. I may revisit that game since I didn't finish it.
I'm also interested in running Myst IV. I'm probably going to have to find an Intel-Mac patch for that too.
I really just wanted to show off the new Call of Duty 6 trailer. Apparently this was an ad that aired during the NBA playoffs. I had no idea basketball was even still in season. Heh.
Also, I've managed to hit a dry spell with Spore's creature phase. I found out quickly that I don't like running around to different species, finding if they hate me or not, trying to dance for them so they'll like me and then mating to edit my creature. I did however, run into a few of these. I appologize for the annoying music.
I'm sitting here fighting the urge to scratch my arms so I can type but I have this sunburn from playing golf today. There is a par-3 course in Bridgewater that we are starting to like to frequent. It was a bit muggy and overly hot for my likings, but at least the world will know that I, a gamer to the nerd core, do venture outside in the most uncomfortable of conditions.
This was probably the best game play section in Call of Duty 4 and I'm glad to see it's making a return. Shooting a little white dots running around, while oddly reminiscent of Missile Command, is so very very satisfying.
Here's the footage from Call of Duty 4:
There are 10 HD screenshots for Modern Warfare 2.
Check out this link.
http://www.nextgn.com/2009/05/11/12-high-def-screengrabs-from-modern-warfare-2-gameplay-promo/
I just spent 25 minutes in Call of Duty 4 getting the Your Show Sucks achievement.
Again.
So while I'm in the hospital, I just learned about this missing gamer.
The story is that the father of Ontario teenager Brandon Crisp's Xbox and game Call of Duty 4 because he was too involved in it and in return, Brandon fled his home. Among the suspected reasons were that he ran away with someone he met or possibly even a sexual predator and even the father's parenting has become suspect, the last two theories his mom sticks to.
Yesterday Microsoft donated $25,000 to the reward fund, bringing the total to $50,000. Microsoft is now even loosening privacy details of Brandon's XBLA account and Xbox 360 harddrive to help with the search, hoping to uncover messages or logs about who he had contact with before he disappeared.
Today, Canadian "reality" tv show star Terry Grant of Manhunter has also joined the search. Manhunt is a race-based chase show airing on an outdoor canadian channel where Terry gives the contestants a headstart with their map and compass and releases them out to the and Terry hunts them down on horseback.
Currently, that is where the search stands.
With such little information, it's hard to place blame or pose a solution for this kind of awful ordeal. I never would have thought of running away, at least past our 14 acre property, when I was a kid. It's easy to place the blame on an outside source, knowing how people can easily band together online with no possible reprocussion from their advice, not even knowing the person on the other end.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out, what happens to him when he's found (and sadly, if he's found) and what kind of effects this will have on gamers, local media, and more importantly, politics. Having such a rough time now being blamed for every youth incident you see on the news, video games aren't getting a better rep because of this, no matter how it turns out.
Well I got an email last night from the people who make Call of Duty and the sent me a key to play the beta of the multiplayer of the newest game.
I've never played in a beta before. There was no questionaire to fill out or forms to sign. You just download the game to your Xbox and away you go.
A cookie cutter review of the beta is posted here.
Personally, I was really amazed at the new sound work and graphics. Since this is based off of World War II, guns and explosions more mirror older weapon technology and the game does just such a great job with the feel of clackety weapons, fizzing Japanese flares and map landscapes of old world architecture.
The one thing I'm not interested in at all is doing all the challenges and perks that carried over from CoD4. It was a neat role-playing structure to a first-person shooter game, but in a second game it feels pasted in for content. I would have liked to have seem them completely change the challenges and started with a clean slate.
But for now, I'm just going to enjoy the 4 or so maps, opening new weapons and releasing dogs on my enemy foes on the battle grounds.
P.S. Keifer Sutherland sounds so awesome in the game. With Jack Bauer commanding me around the field, I can do anything!
As if people didn't know there are four new maps for Call of Duty 4. At this time, it is exclusive to 360 owners. (yay!)
There are Broadcast, Creek Chinatown and Killhouse.
Broadcast is a slaughterhouse. You walk through corridors and small rooms. The large room with all the desks and TV's (from the campaign) has it's problems because it has to many entry points. But..... there is a sweet spot on the map. Easy to get to and easy to hold with only two people. (I'm not telling you where it is. Gotta find me and kill me to find it and take it from me.)
Creek has to be the prettiest map on the game. From the shadows in the tunnel to the pebbles at the base of the waterfall. The advantage is had by being at the top of the hill sniping. But don't sit still too long, they will find you. You would think the hill in the middle would give you a good midway vantage point. Nope, a lofted grenade will end your dreams of controlling that hill.
Chinatown is a confusing map to understand with all of the buildings to enter. Each building has so many opening that people can come up on you from anywhere. There is a spot that gives you a clear advantage if the enemy isn't on top of it already. But anyone knows a well placed noob tube round can take you out. (Again, I'm not telling you where my hiding spot is.)
I have never played an online game at Killhouse but I did walk through it. If you're the kind that doesn't like Shipment, you won't like this. It is a small area in a hanger with an open roof, so you can get and Airstrike and Hellicopter. There is a tower in the middle that is pointless. The ladder is open for the world to see and it would be impossible to get up it with out being taken out. Then if you got up there you are unprotected from all angles. (even underneath with the thin wood floor)
Play a private online match with a good friend and only use snipers on the Creek map. You will have a lot of fun sneaking around, sniping from a far or knifing in the back.
Each map give you a different feel but plays a lot like existing maps. Broadcast plays like Vacant, Creek plays like Overgrown, Chinatown plays like District, and Killhouse plays like Shipment.
Play 'em and enjoy 'em. Is it worth $10? To the hardcore player, of course. To the casual killer, mmm, I guess. It adds new fun to a great game. Everyone is on the same level, looking for the sweet spot on the map. I wonder if someone has found glitches in those maps yet? I haven't checked, I bet they have.
Friday afternoon I tried to download the new maps for Call of Duty 4. It took 45 minutes to get to the point to download the maps, let alone download them. Then an hour before it was completed.
What other game could have created a traffic jam as big as a watermelon truck overturning in southeast D.C.?
There is nothing like being cussed at because your opposition saw you name come up too many time as the person that ended life. I had a guy at the end of a map say, "Your gamertag is cool but I'm tired of seeing it every time I get killed."
I'm not claiming to be the greatest player to play the game. But I think I'm pretty good.
The blood splatter that appears after you snipe a headshot, the limp fall of the targets body, the EXP points you see pop up on your screen as your helicopter takes out your enemy...those are all thing that drive me to keep going, to get better. I'll admit that I play headquarters a lot. I play it to get to a level 32 that gives me a the bandoleer. I need the extra ammo. I run out without it. No, my accuracy isn't bad, I just have a habit of living a while. But if you get a guy sitting still trying to snipe you and you run out of primary ammo, I have found out your pistol is pretty accurate at a distance. Sniping a sniper with a pistol must piss them off (say that three times fast!). I enjoy when you have killed a couple people numerous times from the same location. They get a little pissed off and decide to gang up on you. The only thing better is when you take out the team that was sent out to kill you. Playing in Headquarters it is just like playing Duck Hunt. Watch those little birds flock to a point and knock'em down one by one.
The only thing I am tired of is the public. I know that can ruin any game. I don't care about the crying or the cockiness, it's the Noob complaining, the Noob "Tube", the M16 being a Noob weapon and that Juggernaut is a Noob perk.
Any questions?
