Overdue

Ok, so this week I'm a little late with my posting. I can attribute this to one thing. Dead Rising 2.
If you've not played Dead Rising before, its pretty much an exercise in zombie genocide.  At its heart, dead rising 2 is a dumb game. Its got a wafer thin plot about a extreme motorbike rider who is trapped in a Vagas like casino complex that has been overrun by hoards of the undead. You mission (whether or not you choose to accept) is to kill lots of zombies, get the medicine your daughter needs to survive, and clear your name. Not exactly from the pen of William Shakespeare.

What Dead Rising 2 does well is Killing. Whether that is killing thousands of zombies, murderous psychopaths or marauding looters. At your disposal are a huge array of weapons. Everything from hand bags to park benches can be picked up and used to beat a zombies head in.  Then there are combo weapons. These are combination's of two other weapons to make an instrument of mass zombie destruction.  Some examples are boxing gloves with bowie knives stuck to them, to a cement saw the spits plates out. There are so many different choices you can make that it never seems to get old.

There have also been some drastic improvements from the first Dead Rising too. Survivors AI has jumped ahead, choosing to follow you through a crowd of zombies rather than try and kill everything that comes with in 50 meters. That's my job.This makes the task of retrieving survivors from various locations a lot less painful.  Couple that with a more open environment and less pressing time constraints than the first game and you can see that Capcom have really set out to raise the bar.

Now the downside, and yes Dead Rising has its fair share of annoyances.  Firstly the psychopaths. I imported my character from Dead Rising: Case Zero, so I already started at lvl5. Even with this head start I found the psychos impossible at early levels. It seemed that to beat them you really had to find ways to bug them out. Now most of the forums online suggest ignoring them as long as you can, and if need be restarting with the character at a higher level, it feels as though these are things that you shouldn't be required to do to enjoy the game first time.

Poker. Several of the missions you're given revolve around playing some poker, hell there is even a group of people who won't let you rescue them till you've beaten them at a high stakes game seemingly ignoring the swarm of brain eaters massing around them.  Combine that with the length of time it takes to play and win, you really start getting pushed for time.

Finally Multiplayer. This comes in two flavors. Co-op or TIR. Co-op feels a little tacked on. You both play Chuck Greene, and if the host saves you get booted out of the game.  While Co-op could have been awesome, it always feels like your running around in someone else's game.  TIR on the other hand truly surprised me. It plays like a game show where you and three opponents are pitted against each other in a variety of zombie killing games.  What ever money you win you can cash out and add to your saved game, increasing Chucks bank roll.
Over all I am enjoying Dead Rising 2, despite its flaws, and I know that as soon as I've finished the main story, I'm going to be starting again and seeing if I can save some more of those damn survivors I missed.

Next Week: Spiderman Shattered Dimensions. Can this game finally break Spideys run of craptacular games?

End Of An Era

Well, in case you missed my last post, Halo Reach was released last week, taking a staggering $213 million on day one. So basically if you're reading this chances are you already own it.  The game itself if the perfect swansong for Bungie, with a combination of an epic campaign and near flawless multiplayer. 

The campaign tells the story of the fall of Reach, a human colony, from the view point of Noble Six who along with the rest of Noble Company are charged with defending the planet.  While only 9 missions long, and taking about 6-7 hours to finish, it is a satisfying conclusion to the series. I liken it to Limbo in that its not overly long, but the enjoyment you get from that is more than enough. 

As far as multiplayer goes, as would be expected from Bungie, Halo has more options than you can shake a gravity hammer at.  Firefight is back, where up to four of you have to defend yourselves against wave after wave of bad guys.  Deathmatch has a slew of options, from standard slayer to headhunter, where you need to collect and deposit the skulls of your fallen foes.  All this is made more interesting with the addition of armor abilities. This range from jet packs to invisibility to holograms and more. They all add a tactical element to the game, and none seem overpowered.

All in all if you haven't played Halo and are into FPS then go and get a copy. Now. No questions asked.

Coming this week
Dead Rising 2.  Sweet sweet zombitastic killing fun. 

Halo Vs Move

So this week is a big one for both Microsoft and Sony with Halo Reach (the last/first in the series) being released on the Xbox, and Sony releasing their motion capture device Move later in the week.  I've been weighing up between the Move and Kinect (due out November) and I've decided to wait until some more solid games are released before I'll shell out the $$ for it.  A quick calculation on the cost works it out to be about $350 for the Move adapters, plus a second set of controls, plus a game.  At this stage I'm still more keen on Kinect.

Halo.  What is there to say about Halo.  For those of you who don't know much about Halo (for shame) its effectively the title that sold the original Xbox.  Originally developed as a RTS, then a 3rd person shooter for the Mac until Microsoft swooped in (possibly in a hang glider made of pure gold) and brought the exclusive rights to the tile and earning the vocal anger of Mac users everywhere. 

With it's fast paced combat, truly epic story telling and amazing multiplayer content Halo and its 3 sequels have truly cemented their place in video gaming history.  I'm sure there are plenty of haters out there who will reel of a stack of reasons why its a flawed game, but the sales figures alone set the franchise apart in the gaming world selling over 20 million copies internationally. 


So with its release tomorrow (I plan a few sleepless nights) I've decided to celebrate by inviting a group of mates to bring their Xbox's around for a good old fashion LAN party this weekend, cos I still believe that as much fun as it is to own your mates online, its much better when you can see the look on their face when their on the receiving end of the butt of your gun for the 100th time.  Sweeet.

As you may be able to tell, I'm slightly more excited about the Halo release than Move, but that could be because I'm still relatively new to the PS3 experience.  Time can only tell.

Pew Pew

Ok, so this week I've got a few things I'm going to talk about this week. I've been playing (and as of yesterday finishing) inFamous. I know its a bit old now, but I figured that I should have played the first one before the second one comes out. Now I should start by saying I'm a huge fan of the open world sandbox style game. I loved prototype, and I think that Red Dead Redemption is still game of the year without contest, and given the caliber of games released so far that's a pretty big pegging.

So naturally I was presold on inFamous, and after playing I'd have to say its a mighty fine game. Heaps of fun to be had doing such fun things as zapping a chain link fence with electricity then basting a bad guy into them. First time I did that I burst out laughing like some sort of evil super villain. Anyway the game itself has a good story, with choices all through the game (basically broken down into good and evil choices) and some really great looking cut scenes. I'm not too sure if I'll go back and try for the Trophies I missed, but ask me that again in a month or two and I may tell a different story.

I also downloaded Dead Rising: Case Zero for Xbox during the week. For those who played the original Dead Rising, well it's like that, but better (It bridges the story of Dead Rising and the upcoming Dead Rising 2). If you haven't played dead rising, think of every cheezy, camp zombie film you've seen and you're close to being upto speed on things. The important thing in Dead Rising is that pretty much anything can be used to kill the hoards of zombies shuffling around the small desert town. A new feature is the ability to combine weapons to make stuff thats even more awesomer. For example, get a leaf rake and a battery, slap em together and you've got an electro rake. Massive Win!
Dead Rising 2 drops at the end of the month, so for a good look at how it runs, and what improvements they've made *cough* gun aiming system *cough*, its well worth the 400 odd points it'll set you back.

In a final note, I had some quite tragic news during the week. Up until a few months ago I was a WoW addict, playing with a small guild becoming friends with most of the members. I found out (through facebook of all things) that the guild leader, Malac, passed away after a motorbike accident. A lot of people in the past have told me that because I didn't know these people in real life that they I couldn't really call them "friends". Well on this matter I am forced to strongly disagree, and am morning the passing of a good friend, great guild leader, and a pretty damn good raid leader too. Malac you'll be missed.