So many games, so little time.

Sorry all for the long wait between posts. Between real life, work, and Skyrim, I'm finding it hard to write on here. The last couple months have been great for games. We've had BF3 come out as well as Modern Warfare 3. Skyrim has come out and the new Legend of Zelda. I've also been trying to play more games of Warhammer 40k, I added a small page on the side with pics of most of my Space Marines. Ill add more pictures as I play games with more people and get more of my other armies painted up.

Back to the video games though. Lets start with BF3. I still haven't played the single player. To me BF3 is all about the online play. I own the game for both PC and PS3. Finding games is easier in the PS3 version due to battle log being buggy and finicky about letting some computers and browsers enter games. Both versions have great graphics and game play. I still prefer to use a mouse to shoot though. The game really gets better when you play with friends who are great at communicating. The unlock trees work well with the game giving you steady rewards for just playing. Weapon specific unlocks are great because it means you have to use the weapon and be good with it to get the really good unlocks. The vehicles in the game are of course fun. They added the ability to immobilize vehicles now. Getting a lucky shot on a tank and making it stationary for a few seconds can be pivotal to winning a close match. Aircraft zoom around engaged in dog fights which makes even the air its own unique battlefield. helicopters armed to the teeth provide wonderful moving fire bases, unless piloted by completely inexperienced people. Then they become easy targets. In the right hands I've seen choppers tear up entire squads of enemies over and over and over. The different classes or kits of players have great customization and pretty cool gadgets. Recon personnel can laser designate vehicles for other classes to blast down with javelin missiles, or use drones to spot out and mark enemy movements and positions. That last tactic worked wonders in a match where all I did was spot people on the map for them and tell them which way people were coming after them.  I've played some games with the members of GaW (gaw.enjin.com) they have great communication and rip up the battlefield where ever they go. Overall the game is great fun so far and  it only gets better when you have friends to play it.

Now for the one I've spent a ton of time playing. Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim. This game is big. Not just on a scale basis, but on the "holy crap its going to take me a long freaking time to do everything in the game big." With several races to choose from and unlimited possibilities, or seemingly limitless, of how to play the character you create. It has to have replay value as well. Skrim is set as the northern most nation of Tamriel and is part of the Empire. Civil war has broken out amongst the native denizens of Skyrim, the Nords, and threatens to cut their ties to the Empire. That big plot point is but a minor quest in the game though. As you start out your about to be executed by the Empire all because you got caught around the same time as the leader of the rebellion. As you lay your head down on the chopping block a monstrous echoing roar fills the air and a dragon comes sweeping down and begins to lay siege and torch the fort. After escaping you find that dragons have returned to the world after thousands of years of nonexistence. As you report to a major city, after traversing a beautiful landscape and navigating around a mountain, you hear about another dragon appearing and it making its way for the city. You end up slaying the beast with the guards and only to find its soul becomes sucked up by you, and its body burned up to the bones, leaving a large skeleton as  reminder of the battle. After you return you find out you are a dragon born, a legendary warrior foretold in prophecy. The story continues for hours and there are many ways to go about the quests that revolve around it. Dragons randomly attack you and villages. The world has a working ecosystem and beautiful night and day cycle. Your character gets more powerful the more you do things. Want to use a bow, cool go ahead and when you get better at it it brings you closer to leveling up. Wearing armor and getting hit helps your armor skill, crafting items, selling stuff, casting magic, and even picking pockets are all some of the ways of getting more powerful in the game. To make it better you have talent trees in the form of star formations. They represent the different things you can do to level up your character. When you level you gain one point that can be put into any star formation, As long as you meet the right proficiency of the skill.  These add amazing abilities to your character and give them a general archetype of what they do. Even after you've hit max level, 50, you can still improve skills and get better at everything.  Overall this game is amazing. I've encountered a few glitches but on a game scale this big a few glitches aren't game breakers. I still have to finish the story, due to the ridiculous amounts of side quests and faction quests I have not even done. This game will be one of my long running favorites.

Like I stated already there were a lot of games that are out that I still haven't had time to play. Modern Warfare 3 is most likely next on my list. I have played ample amounts of both BF and Modern Warfare. I know that there tends to be hostility and bias between people who play them. I promise I won't bring my bias to the table when I review and play MW3. Both games are great and both have their faults and flaws. I just really don't like playing with cocky prepubescent high school kids on MW that have mics. They anger me. Assassins Creed: Revelations is also in the works. Zelda will be played in time as well. There are only so many hours of sleep I can choose to not have.

For those of you who play or are familiar with Warhammer 40k I plan on putting some more pictures up of my armies soon. When I play my friends I'll try to have pictures of games being played. I have a ton of new necrons to paint as well as finish some of my space marines.

Thanks for reading and remember: Follow. But. Follow only if ye be men of valour, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived. Bones of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth. 

Lets RAGE!

I'm not talking about swimming with the dolphins or whatever. Im talking about ID and Bethesda's new shooter. Bethesda is well known for its amazing games such as fallout and fallout new vegas as well as Oblivion and the upcoming Skyrim. Id is of course known for Doom. Their formula for a game was simple, combine Ids shooter with Bethesda's massive worlds. The result is giant explorable world with lots of guns and plenty of bloody corpses.

One of the great prospects of the game was the ability to make items. They range from bandages to explosive RC cars. Honestly I'm disappointed in the crafting system. You never discover recipe's on your own from using the system and most of the time have to fork over cash to learn the recipes that are really useful. Not that getting money in the game is hard, it just seems like they could of made the system more rewarding by letting you "unlock" crafted items.

The weapon selection in the game is the standard array: fist, pistol, shotgun, assault riffle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher, smg, and a crossbow. The game goes back to the roots of first person shooter, you can carry all your guns on you at the same time. It seems like the industry ditched that idea years ago for a more "realistic" approach to games. The thing that makes all of the weapons so fun is all the different ammunition available to you. Regular shotgun ammo is great, but exploding shotgun ammo is better. Crossbow bolts are great for stealth, bolts that let you controll the mind of your victim before making them explode into red mist are better. The ammo really makes the game fun. Dynamite crossbow bolts are my personal favorite. Regardless of how much armor the target has they take tons of damage from it.

Ai in shooters is something that is usually lacking. Deus Ex: Human Revolution had amazing AI. This game does in a different way. Most shooters you cant flank your enemies. They always seem to know where you are, That is not the case in Rage. If you shoot at them from one place and they duck behind cover, you can quickly move to a new spot and watch them still fire at the last spot they thought you were at. Reposition yourself and get clear shots where they have no cover available. The enemies aren't stupid however. They will use grenades and covering fire to allow their allies to close the gap to you. If you manage to kill enough they will run and alert another batch of baddies. When you flank them or are ambushed the enemies will climb over, under on or jump around tables chair pipes or any other object in their way to get to you. In a game with so many weapons you'd think that the idea of melee enemies would not work well. Id makes it work REALLY well.  Melee units jump, roll, tumble climb, and are just plain freaking fast and do massive damage. Mutants are the most sporadic moving targets in the game. Able to run on walls climb on pipes hanging from the ceiling and are clever enough to know if your aiming your shot gun at their legs to jump in a doorway and hold on so your shot hits nothing but the concrete below them.

Racing....I hate racing games. But I LOVE racing games that allow me to destroy my competition. Your range of vehicles is limited and your upgrades are plenty. The only way to get upgrade currency however is to race. Or to go into the vast wasteland and slaughter other bandit vehicles and collect a reward in town. Targeting your enemies in a vehicle is automatic, just wait til you see a red hexagon on them and fire away. You can also upgrade your wheels with spikes or your grill to do massive damage when ramming.The mini-gun and rockets are easy to come by and easy to go through though so beware not to run out of ammo while fighting four or five other cars at once.

Story is almost always lacking in shooters. Not too much different here. Its not a post nuclear war landscape. Its a post giant meteor landscape. Include your evil military regime and resistance faction and tada you have a cookie cutter story line. Oh wait, whats that, they are doing genetic experiments, oh wait its an Id game, no surprise there. In all honesty though, story lines like that are what I have come to expect from almost all shooter. Its the way they tell it that makes them good or not. Rage does a good job of making your character an intricate part of the story, I wont continue cause I don't want to spoil any surprises however.

Overall rage is a good buy. It has competitive racing multi-player, shooter co-op and a nice amount of time to beat the game, especially if you try to beat it 100%. It is the product of two amazing game companies, and wont surprise me to see if dlc is available with new stuff for it in the near future.

Other reviews and posts in the near future: Battlefield 3 (I'll be joining a co-workers clan and shooting lots of people), Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Ill be working on a page for my Warhammer 40k stuff.

Until next time: Follow. But. Follow only if ye be men of valour, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived. Bones of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth.