Breaking Benjamin dropped by with Three Days Grace the other night. Crazy and I are huge fans of Breaking Benjamin and went to see them. Not that big of a surprise to us, they played Blow Me Away, featured in Halo 2. Vocalist Ben Burnley has admitted to being a fan of the Halo franchise and had even given out his gamertag at one point (It's Killemloud). A while back, the band played a show with Master Chief's helmet in front of the drumset, but now they have a bigger budget and put some multimedia work in to it.
Splinter Cell turned out to be a great franchise. It put you in a different style of FPS where you sometimes had to think carefully about what you wanted to do: stealth or just run in shooting? Sometimes you didn't have a choice and stealth was the way to go. After Splinter Cell: Double Agent, some say it jumped the shark and would end the series. Kotaku has a video that suggests otherwise. This game looks like it could be the revival of the Splinter Cell franchise.
Boosting and glitching has gotten to the point in COD: MW2 that having a emblem or title is becoming less and less credible. Boosting was possible in COD4: MW, but Infinity Ward with their finite wisdom decided to make it all the easier with tactical reinsertion on MW2.
Do you know how often I use resinertions? Never. Do you know how often I see an opposing reinsertion and destroy it? Everytime I come across one, which isn't very often. Even less common, I kill a guy and then see him respawn on his reinsertion and shoot him again. Easy double-kill. I never hear anyone talking up or being thankful for using tactical reinsertion. Why can't Infinity Ward swallow their pride over putting a tool almost exclusively useful for boosters in the game and just remove it? Seriously, I see at least one pair of boosters daily using tactical reinsertions to cheat.
It's gotten so bad, unless I know the player personally, I doubt whatever merits they have to show for their skill in the game. As far as I'm conerned it's all owned up to boosting or glitching.
As far as glitches go, IW just released a patch mainly fixing infinite tactical reinsertions and run glitches. Here is their post explaining the patch in more detail. Rejoice!
Word is spreading pretty quick about Microsoft making "the greatest benefit to the Xbox Live community." Xbox Live support ended for the original Xbox when the 360 was launched, however you could still play Xbox original games on your Xbox 360. Microsoft even took it a step further by offering Xbox Originals in the marketplace allowing you to purchase and download original games and play games like Halo 2 on Xbox Live. On April 15th, that will be a thing of the past. Here's the official announement from Microsoft.
It's a real pisser if you purchased Halo 2 via XBL marketplace to play online or you plan on buying it in the future. Microsoft says to keep an eye on your XBL messages and your email inbox for further details. Perhaps an alternative is in store for Halo 2 fans? Will they update certain games to work on the current XBL framework?
Bungie, however, seems to confirm the writing on the wall when they are announcing a gaming event on April 14th where Bungie staff will play Halo 2 online. It sounds like it'll be an emotional night for them. No details in what's going to go down, but mark your calendars as it's sure to be a night to remember.
I'm left asking on question: is this a benchmark for how long we can expect Microsoft to support service on our games? Seriously? Halo 2 came to the Xbox only 5 years ago. I have PC games laying around nearly 10 years old that I can still play online. A while back, there was a massively-multiplayer PC game called Earth and Beyond that shared the fate Halo 2 will soon meet. Today, open development of a reverse-engineered server is an active project for the diehard fans of E&B. Hopefully someone will tackle something like that and issue a mod for original Xboxes or Xbox 360s.
I'll speak for many of our members and say they and myself will be participating in the final night of Halo 2. It's the best way we can send off the game and give closure as we say: Rest in peace, Halo 2.
This reminds me of that scene on the Simpsons where Lou asks Chief Wiggum, "Hey, Chief, can I hold my gun sidways? It makes me look so cool."
I know that school is still out for the holidays, but that's no excuse for kids (even adults dammit) to "forget" how to read what gametype they join and the object of that gametype. It never fails: every game of Domination or Headquarters I play, there is at least one bastard playing Deathmatch. Instead of capturing a HQ or station, he is running around shooting people as blissful as a naked Alzheimer's patient. That's all fine and fun so long as you don't care about your win-to-loss ratio. I do care about that!
But why play Deathmatch when you get less of a timeout between deaths in Domination and Headquarters? Aren't the kills worth the same amount of points across the board. You're right, you do and they are. Sometimes worth more. But some jackass at Infinity Ward decided not to crank down the value of those kills in gametypes where killing isn't the entire object of the game. If you get more points for shooting someone inside the capture zone, why not get less points (a lot less) for shooting someone who isn't even trying to capture anything? How about giving more points to the individual players who are holding down their captured territories/HQs? Infinity Ward and I are far from the same page apparently.
Once again I'm left with the ever so useless "solution" of just avoiding this players. I'd love a perk that would set their Xbox on fire.
The other day while playing Modern Warfare 2, I realized something. Most of the time, the victors manage a silent magnanimous. However, the losers typically criticize the victors method of winning. Even if it's an honest win, those who you defeated will tell you whatever method you used is wrong. Nevermind the fact that you beat the other guys: you still did something wrong! A "better" weapon, a more strategic class or team, simply being a better shot, or the usual scapegoat: camping.
Ok, let's look at some things that could give you an edge.
The Better Weapon
I am going to immediately discredit this one by defending the game's developer. No matter what game you play, a lot of development, quality testing and adjustments go into a weapon's attributes. They all have their pros and cons but are generally level on the playing field. Do weapon perks give you an edge? Sure, but they also come with their limits. Now, to play devil's advocate against Infinity Ward: the 1887 shoots ridiculously far for a shotgun. Really, cut it down some.
Better Class
Once again, the classes are pretty level as far as the playing field goes. Each one has its pros and cons. Bling may give someone a edge over a guy with a red dogt sight and no silencer, but that guy could easily add Scavenger so he could spray bullets a little more liberally. Cold Blooded will save you from NPC choppers and harriers, but Stopping Power Pro will help you knock them out of the sky quicker.
Skill
Why would you pick on someone for being better than you? You're just opening up your own anger for not being as good. Someone who puts lots of hours into playing and gets good at it is just getting what they put in to it. "Oh, the only reason you guys won that round of Headquarters is because your team knew you should focus capturing before killing!" Idiots.
Camping
Ok, eventually you can get any weapon with any attachment in the game, you can learn strategy. So you boil it all down to this, what's left? Perhaps you realize that the first instinct that comes to mind when you play a first-person shooter is to run around an look for things to shoot. Well, if there's enough people running around, then one is bound to run by you. Especially when you find a swell spot that has a lot of traffic. You can just sit back and wait for them - or camp! But to camp, you need to know a map well: where people will go and where the cover is and how to use it. This takes patience and plenty of research. It's really a skill, something you need to excel at anything else you do.
But alas, no matter what you or I do to win a game, even if it's dumb luck, it's still the wrong thing to do in the eyes of those you defeat. You can just bask in their pain, or tell them what I say, "Go ahead and talk [crap], we still won."
Anybody that would look at my status on Xbox Live would know I go through these periods where I play a lot of Mass Effect. Simply put, I love that game. It reminds me of one of my favorite games of all time: Deus Ex. It's not just a shooter, it's also a role playing game. You have to be aware of your surroundings as you go through the game, make relationships, and if all else fails run in shooting. The gameplay of Mass Effect wasn't the most action-packed, however the story kept driving me through the game. There was something going on, something on a massive scale that I just had to figure out.
The new game is boasting changes in gameplay, resolved problems with the first game, and improved images. One thing that bugged me when I first started playing Mass Effect was the delayed texture loads. This meant when you'd see something full of detail, it would start rather dull looking and the detail would gradually load. It took a second or two for the details to load in, but on a console like the Xbox 360, it is an unforgivable sin.
One of my favorite features of Mass Effect is being removed: infinite ammo. In the first installment, your gun was limited by heat build-up. If your weapon over-heated, you'd simply take cover, wait for it to cool, and run back out firing. It was refreshingly different. Now, for no damn good reason, the designers have decided to have their story take a technological downfall and require you to reload your weapons. However, they will no longer overheat.
So far, the graphic enhancements are looking beautiful in Mass Effect 2.
In Mass Effect, you investigated a mystery enshrouded hyper-advanced race called the Reapers. Now you encounter a new galactic threat known as the Collectors. They speed across the galaxy in a massive starship and wipe colonies clean. As Commander Shepherd, your job is to find out what's going on and stop the Collectors. There is speculation the Collectors maybe tied to the Reapers, but we'll all find out soon enough when the game is expected to release in January 2010.
