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This was originally going to be a positive review of BF3′s multiplayer… but then the article lagged out and for every three words I wrote, two of them lagged right off my page before finally informing me there must be a problem with my words, would I please check my keyboard and try again.

I thought this was odd as I had just finished writing some words about another game, and they didn’t lag all over the page with sudden punctuation marks appearing out of nowhere. I guess if all my other words on every other subject work fine, but not for a BF3 review, it has to be my fault and not BF3′s fault that my words don’t work. Thanks for clearing that up for me EA.

It pains me to say this as a long time Battlefield fan but till they sort out the servers so I can walk for longer than 2 seconds without rubber-banding back to my original position, BF3 can suck it.

Ports are open, all other games work fine and DO NOT lag like this. This has been a constant problem for myself since release making it extremely hard for me to recommend this to anyone in it’s current state. Don’t get me wrong, if it worked, I’d love this game. As it stands it’s an exercise in frustration, all the way from simply trying to get in a game on the same side as your friend, to just trying to navigate the map without rubber-banding all over the place. I turned off in frustration for the last time yesterday feeling it was just pointless to keep trying to play through it.

I had heard today that the servers have been updated so I hold some hope that tonight may be slightly less painful. If not, I’ll be hammering Uncharted 3 some more.

If things are working out for you in BF3, I’m envious

Got to play a few hours of the beta last night… very fun, although, Op Metro leaves much to be desired.

First section is fine. Outdoors, flanking routes etc. Plays like Battlefield.

Second section takes place inside a subway. Plays like any choke-point corridor shooter filled with camp happy players.

If this is how “infantry only” maps play out in the full game, I wont be going anywhere near them. Or any other map that puts a large section of playable area indoors and forces you into corridors.

Will post up more impressions after I spend some more time with the beta over the weekend.

Just a quick post to recommend ilomilo to anyone looking for a fun puzzler on Xbox Live Arcade.

I’ve not completed it yet, but I’m really enjoying it so far! Will post up a more detailed review when I get done with it.

Starting to get a backlog of half written reviews in my draft folder at the moment so hopefully I’ll get a few of those cleared off this weekend. If the Ico HD collection and the BF3 beta let go of me for enough time to get it done anyway

Ahhh the gaming drought is over! I love this time of year, even if  my bank balance does not.

1. Driver: San Francisco (Xbox 360)
2. Deus Ex: Human Revolution (Xbox 360)
3. Minecraft (PC)
4. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Xbox 360)

Driver took the number one spot this month despite heavy competition from Deus Ex. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Driver is really good! A lot better than I was expecting, and quite possibly some of the most fun I’ve had with a driving game.

Not far off completing Deus Ex now, just need a chunk of time spare so I can sit down and crack on with it. Not the type of game I can play in 20 minute chunks really. Is it as good as the original? Well, no.. but it’s still a great game and certainly more enjoyable (to me) than Mass Effect or most of this generations RPG offerings.

The new Minecraft 1.8 patch added a lot of reason for me to pick it up again. Lot’s of changes and reasons to explore and fight things again. Game had kind of got boring once I set up the Wheel of Pain mob grinder and had no need to ever leave my ice lake, now I’ve started a new world, minus the mob grinder, and gone back to basics.

Creative mode was probably the best update with 1.8 though. I started out using it to test out some redstone ideas and before I knew it I was working on an adventure/puzzle map! I think I put more time in on creative now than I do on survival. Maybe because I feel like I already beat survival, many times on many worlds. Creative actually gives me a point to all the building beyond killing time.

As you know, Bad Company 2 is a frequent guest of the “Playing this month…” section so not a lot to say on that front. Although… I will say, I’ve seen more cheap tactics over the last three nights than I’ve seen in months! Crate bashing, 8 man strong medic trains, 8 man strong USAS recon groups, circle jerking, tank sniping, even C4 on the bloody UAV has been going on. From level 50 players too? I know you’re probably bored of the game at this point, but really? No need for the cheap tactics..

Don’t really have time to post a decent review of this yet but here is a quick summary till I get a little more time…

It’s damn good!

Multiplayer is a blast…. as of 2:30am this morning I was ranked 94 on the overall board, and 25 for both Tag and Trailblazer! I doubt I’ll get it, but I’m aiming for top ten Tag/Trailblazer tonight! Not usually a fan of leaderboards but this kinda crept up on me so I’ll try to take it as far as poss before a slew of people overtake me.

…and no, I’m not an Alleyway Allen either! You all know who you are! Get out into traffic and get tagged you chickens! Spinning in alleyways because you can’t drive is pretty low. I can spawn a vehicle where I want so it won’t work either

Will be posting a full review and some multiplayer footage soon.

Microsoft confirmed a growing suspicion I’ve had for a while with their E3 presentation.

They are slowly losing touch with gamers.

At least 70% of the Microsoft presentation was fluff. They have an amazing piece of technology in Kinnect and the highlight of the show was voice recognition? Couldn’t we have done that with the existing Xbox headset already?

It seems to me as though they are trying to make the Xbox the ‘everyman’ console and focusing on the media aspects a little too much. Gamers, and their Live subs put the Xbox where it is. Invest that money in gaming. Not bringing UFC pay-per-view to the Xbox for smegs sake!

Last year it was motion control dashboards, this year it’s voice control. Neither of which were shown to push gaming forward at all in my opinion.

Second attempt at a commentary for BFBC2.

Thanks for watching!

Running around a shoebox map, with CoD killstreaks, and OP melee is about as fun to me as pulling teeth.

That’s not to say there are not things I like about Crysis 2.

Graphically it’s decent. Certainly not what the hype would have you believe though. The nanosuit abilities are interesting and help make navigating the map quite fun.

However… Killstreaks, perks… one hit rifle butt kills… shonky controls. There are too many negatives outweighing the positives in the multiplayer for my liking. I’m sure the offline campaign will be fun, but as I buy games for both single and multi I’ll likely give this one a miss.

My gaming shelf is already overflowing with shooter games and I have no real incentive here to play this instead of Bad Company 2 or Killzone 3. Maybe if I had a graphics card in my PC good enough to run the game at full specs I’d feel differently, and to be honest, I fully expected the console version to not play as good as the PC version anyway.

If you enjoy CoD and Halo, you’ll likely find something of interest here. I’m not sure it will be enough to take many players away from either of those franchises in the long run though given the draw those two games seem to have in the console market, but as always, grab the demo for yourself and try it out.

I’m not saying it’s bad as such, just that there is nothing here that grabs me in comparison to the other shooters I already play. With Socom 4 coming out soon I’ll be set for FPS games for a while anyway (as long as classic mode plays ok. Normal sounds a bit naff online).

Till Battlefield 3 anyway

Finally played through the Undead Nightmare DLC for Red Dead Redemption.

Not bad, not bad at all. In fact, one of the better DLC releases if you ask me.

Firstly, because of the zombie content, it’s sufficiently different enough from the main game that I’m certain it was not denied inclusion to make more money. Many other devs put out DLC that really seems as though it should have been on the disk in the first place (That’s right Assassins Creed 2, I’m looking at you here with your missing ‘chapters’). Not only that, but a lot of developers start talking about how much the ‘day one’ DLC is going to cost before the damn game even ships these days!

I’m sorry, but even if you have a legitimate reason for not including that DLC as part of the retail package, you do yourself no favours in gamers eyes by talking about how much it’s going to cost on launch day before the game has even shipped. Delay it a month, give gamers a chance to sink their teeth into the game before you start the squeezing extra cash from them maybe?

Anyway, back on topic. The Undead Nightmare pack was perhaps some of the best value I’ve seen in a DLC pack outside of the recent Battlefield Vietnam addon. A new 6 hour single player campaign (albeit with some issues), some new weapons, new enemy types (or at least some reskinned ones that act a little differently), and some good use of the existing game mechanics in a fresh way.

I think I actually sank about 16 hours in total in to the DLC storyline. That’s not far off what I actually spent playing the full game if memory serves me right. Now that’s value in my opinion.

If that weren’t enough , the standalone DLC disk doesn’t even require Red Dead Redemption. I could be wrong on this, but as far as I’m aware you can grab the retail version and play it as a standalone game. It costs a little more than the marketplace version, but still. A stand alone DLC release? You can’t argue with that really.

The singleplayer campaign of the Undead pack begins with Marston protecting his family from a zombie attack, unsuccessfully as it turns out. You are then tasked to try and find the cause of, and cure to, the undead plague sweeping the land. Many people believe Seth and his glass eye to be the cause, some think West Dickens and his tonic are responsible, others believe the infection was brought over the border by the mexicans.

Along the way you will encounter several characters from the main game, alive and undead as it happens, and complete various themed missions for each in an attempt to discover the true reasons surrounding these events.

Missions include burning graveyards to ensure no more dead rise from the graves, securing towns from zombie attacks (enabling you to save in a safehouse), and many other undead related malarky.

Missions still have a ‘same old, same old’  feel about them. Once you secure one town, every other town is more of the same. In addition, towns only stay secure for a few days before another attack. Once the town is overrun you have limited time to secure the location before the survivors are killed. If all survivors are killed you lose that location as a savepoint. Not really that big of a deal as they tend to stay secure long enough for you to get a lot done without it being an annoyance. Quick travel helps immensely here and securing a town never takes too long. Either wipe out the zombie invasion or provide the survivors with ammo to take care of the issue themselves. If you give the survivors ammo, you will have to clear up any remaining zombies to secure the town, so either way, you’ll be fighting a lot of the undead.

The undead provided me with some issues. Specifically some of the smaller animals at first. Headshots are the only way to down enemies as you would expect, but the smaller the target, the more frustrating it is to headshot. Especially if bushes are obstructing your view. I gave up killing undead animals and elected to speed past them all on my horse in the end. There is an achievement to kill one of every undead animal in the DLC but I lack the patience to deal with that right now.

Combat against the normal undead zombies is fine and you soon get into a headshot rythm. Occasionally the control system will fight you at exactly the wrong time, but nothing too bad.

The new weapons are great and I especially appreciated the ‘boomstick’ of sorts you eventually get for the authentic Army of Darkness vibe. The new enemies are a bit… meh. Well the normal zombies are fine, the ‘special’ types are really just copies of Left4Dead2 special zombies without any tongue in cheek reference to why they are like that. Something I found a little odd given R*’s tendency to reference things for a joke.

Other than that, the usual Rockstar humour is at work here. Seth can be found hosting an undead party of sorts, West Dickens is still attempting to peddle his wares as zombie repellent when actually it attracts them (yeah, boomer bile). The film director spots the opportunity present and asks you to bring him live zombies for a film he is planning. As you can imagine, this does not end well.

Ahh yes, and for all the San Andreas fans, there is finally a Sasquatch in the game. It’s actually quite a sad mission really, but I wont ruin it for you.

Conclusion?

Great DLC, well worth the price of admission and a great example of how to implement paid content.

So I was always a huge fan of the original Tony Hawk series. I thought it lost it’s way in terms of map design somewhat by the third game, but the fourth made up for that. The THUG and Wasteland additions killed off any interest I had in the series for good.

TH1 & 2 were great games. Yes they were still arcade based and you were racking up million point scores with never ending runs, but they were enjoyable for gamers and skateboarders alike. Somewhere along the line, Neversoft felt what the series needed was more Bam Margera and Jackass related humour. What most players over the age of 12 felt the series needed was more of what actually made the game great. Skateboarding.

When challenges degraded into mimicking Bam Margera’s trademark idiocy splashed around like so much urine on a drunks shoe (to re-quote myself), many gamers were understandably turned off the series. I personally played the games because I skateboard in real life and I enjoy any extension to that hobby that I can get. Once the Jackass style gameplay was added and focused on, I walked away from Mr. Hawk, never to look back. His recent attempts to win gamers back by bundling the same old game with an expensive, unreliable, plastic gizmo have fallen on deaf ears. In fact, as I understand it, it has been so poorly received they have slammed the final nail in the franchises coffin, given up and geared the entire thing to appeal to the twelve and under age groups. I’m sure TH’s marketing will include some guff about trying to get the youngsters into the sport, and if it does then more power to him, but I think TH, Neversoft, and Activision know that they will never reach the lofty heights they once enjoyed and grew complacent upon.

Now it’s Black Box’s turn. Now is the age of Skate.

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