Microsoft @ E3 2012

E3 is well underway, and Microsoft is unveiling a multitude of a amazing games and products during the week.  So far, from what I've seen, Halo 4 is the big name that they're using to provide a current for the rest of the titles to flow through.  If you haven't checked it out yet, take a gander at the live-action trailer on Xbox Live; it gives you a sense of reality for the game that I hadn't yet had the opportunity to feel.

Though Halo 4 may have been the big hitter, as it were, South Park The Stick of Truth is truly impressive for any fans of the series.  You take control of the new kid and take part in an epic battle for South Park in the latest entry to this Comedy Central show.  This trailer is also up on Xbox Live, and it provides more than a few laughs and really gets you psyched for the game's release.

Resident Evil 6...that is all.  Nah, there's more that I have to say.  The trailer made the game look like an adrenaline filled Bond movie that's crossed swords with all of the Resident Evil games since the second iteration.  New and familiar characters clash and join up to take down Neo-Umbrella's plot.  during the game it looks like you make a mad dash throughout the world as you see scenes from all over.  It looks very different from the last few games, but in a good way, not in the ORC way.

What rounds out E3 for me this year is Borderlands 2.  In no way should this game be passed up for lovers of FPS games or RPGs.  It takes elements from both and mashes them up into something greater than the sum of it's parts.  Not only are there millions of gun adaptations to play with, but you'll take control of new characters while meeting old favorites on your journey.

That's what E3 felt like to me this year, a reuinion of familiar games with fans that are eager to get their hands on them, with a few new ones interjected at the correct intervals.  The convention's still not over yet so there's still time for some great new surprises too; keep your eyes open and on the coverage so you don't miss out!

Why Most of Today's MP Modes are Awful

I was playing some Battlefield 3, for the first time in awhile, the other day and realized why I don't play it as often as I do Halo: Reach.  Not only do I enjoy Halo: Reach more, but there is a skill difference that it has from those other "modern" multi player games.  For the purposes of my explanation, let's pit Call of Duty against Halo.

Call of Duty's ranking system and it's guns, kill streaks, and death streaks to buy makes for a pretty fun game if you're looking for something where your ranks allow you to develop your MP experience on a hierarchical level.  The higher your rank, the better stuff you can buy and the better you will end up being at the game. 

Halo's ranking systems are just to group comparable players together in matches.  Rather than allowing you to buy better and better equipment, this game has you rely on only your skill and wit when playing against others.  The ranking system may have higher numbers than others, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a greater chance at beating a lower number than that lower number has of beating you.

Since both of those are pretty terrible explanations I'll solidify my point here:  Call of Duty's ranking system allows the best to get better.  When you have large amounts of credits, you can buy the best equipment and start with the best load outs, most of the time.  So when you start a game on whatever map, those players with the best stuff have a greater chance of winning than those players just starting out.  Skill can be beaten out by better equipment or a chance kill streak from a care package.  When you look at a game like Halo, without the option to buy better stuff or get a random, awesome kill streak reward you can see a huge difference.  Since everyone starts off with the same weapon and the better stuff is lying on the ground, where all players have an equal chance to get at it, the game is much more balanced.  The only division between players in Halo is skill, and that's what it should be across the board.

Balance is the key word here: Halo is balanced and CoD isn't.  Halo stays balanced all of the time while CoD can only have brief moments of it when all of the players have the same load out, and that mostly happens never.  If we take the load outs out completely and eliminate that factor, we still see that CoD allows the best to get better.  How is that?  Because of the damn kill streaks!  It's ridiculous that the best player on the map is allowed to call in an air strike and just increase his/her lead.  Shouldn't the least effective players be getting death streaks that are huge air strikes and the best player get kill streaks that aren't as effective to balance the game out?

So as you can tell, I'm horrifyingly biased against CoD, but for good reason.  I don't want to play a game where there's no balance.  That makes for a flawed game experience.  To tell you the truth, I'm not even half-bad at CoD, I just can't stand the game based mostly on principle.  It just makes me sick...Makes me fucking sick!

Day Six: Nipton and Frustration

After seeing the town of Goodsprings safely into the hands of the Powder Gangers, I started on down the highway towards my would-be killers.  My first stop was the New California Republic Correctional Facility.  I heard on the radio from Mr. New Vegas that the Powder Gangers had recently taken it for themselves, and I wanted to get some caps from my good deeds that were done in their name.  The leader of the gang gave me a few jobs to do and offered to give me free explosives!  Of course I was going to do whatever they needed so I could get some more dynamite to blow shit up with.  After killing a few deserters and defending the facility from and NCR Army attack, I was given all the dynamite I wanted and a free pass back into the prison.  While I was there I took some time to sneak around and pickpocket a few sleeping convicts for some extra boom-boom.

My second stop of the day was Nipton a small town where I was hoping to gather some information and grab a few boxes of ammo.  The entrance to the town was quiet and strewn with blood.  I spied a single man in Powder Ganger garb who was running around screaming something about winning the lottery, I wasn't quite sure what lottery he won, or what he actually won, so I avoided him, just like all of the other crazies.  The general store was in complete disarray and the owner seemed to be dead asleep on a chair.  I noticed that he had a lottery ticket on him as well.  As he was sleeping I decided to help myself to whatever was left in the shop.  The rest of the town was spattered with blood and I noticed that the town hall road was lined with wooden crosses. Each cross had a man or woman nailed to it.  As I walked by I realized with horror that the people were still alive.  The end of the street was blocked by a squad of strangely dressed men that called themselves Caeser's Legion.  They let me walk on by as long as I spread the word of their deeds.  I highly value my life, especially after being killed once before so I agreed wholeheartedly and started my way towards the NCR's Mojave Outpost.





As a gamer, I often wonder what it is we love about frustration.  Some of the games that I play most regularly, Halo: Reach being a good example, frustrate me the most yet I continue to play them time after time.  I get to the point of swearing at every single kill and death, even if I'm winning the game.  I'm fairly certain that my most used phrase during any game is, "How the fuck?"  Even though the freaking game takes place mostly in a science fiction world, I still expect it to have some kind of "normal" physics.  That's the single most frustrating fact of any game that I play.  How in the hell do I get shot around corners?  It happens all the fucking time too!  Wanted didn't make any sense and made me my brain try to eat it's way out of my head, so when I see the same type of shit in a video game when it shouldn't be there I go into a blind rage.  And then I just start to lose more and more, it's really a terrible mechanism.  The bottom line is that I still play the game even if I don't like the way that the bullets travel or that the lag is handled, whichever of those items is the culprit.  In fact, I think I'm fueled by my frustration.  It's a piece of gaming that has been alive since the beginning.  Who didn't get frustrated on those levels of Super Mario Brothers that just seemed impossible?  Even so, we all continued to try and try again.  We even tend to look for games with levels of difficulty that frustrate us, take a look at Ninja Gaiden back in the day and for a current reference there's Legendary difficulty on the Halo franchise.  Why do we love frustration?