The Rusted Musket

My John Marston’s awesome. He wears the Legend of the West outfit, uses dead eye to shoot dudes off horses, and once killed a grizzly with nothing but his bowie knife. His long arm of the law is the double action revolver.

Red Dead Redemption’s redeeming features are sweeping vistas, a good cowboy storyline, dialog that’s never a bore (at least when Marston’s doing the talking), and assorted moments of pure cowboy bliss, such as storming the mansion in Tumbleweed. Also, I just can’t tell you how much fun riding a virtual horse is, that is, until you accidentally shoot it in the back of the head while riding during multiplayer. Honorable mention goes to the audio, I once was playing during a thunderstorm with my surround sound on and couldn’t tell the difference between the thunderclaps in my living room and those outside.

Still, let it be known, in my opinion the games not worth paying full retail. But I suppose if you haven’t much going on this summer it’s not a bad one to pick up.

The things I didn’t like about the game are as follows.

There was a stiffness, a general clunkiness of 3rd person movement that annoyed. All I want to do is walk up the stairs, in between the railings, to the front door, before the rancher’s daughter gets shot darn it. Then there was the default snails pace walk speed which guarantees you’ll never want to walk. And the multiplayer, I just don’t think it’s great. The open roam will see you recycling the same six gang hideouts again and again. I mean, I can only do Pike’s Basin or Fort Mercer so many times. I suppose there is a lot to do if you get a posse going on, like taking on other posse units that are sharing your free roam session, maybe I lack the creativity to exploit that which is actually awesome. The team based games are great, okay, and terrible all at the same time. Some guys rock your socks off and usually have their friends with them, which makes for backing out of games to find a different server an often occurrence because the skill level match maker is on vacation (yes, I had some very rough rounds last night, hence my vitriol).

In conclusion I foresee myself playing Red Dead Redemption for another week or so, enjoying it, and reselling it on Ebay for something respectable before the price starts nosediving towards the thirty dollar mark, which, by the time of this article, hasn’t happened yet. Which goes to show there might still be room in this semi auto world for a six gun man, at least, for a little while longer…

Here is my video of the week…

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

Let’s get the frustrating out of the way. The single player pillar of MW2 is garbage, absolute Micheal Bay over the top garbage. Time and time again you’ll find yourself in unbelievable situations that can be solved only with an equally unbelievable amount of bullets. Also be prepared to die, again, and again, and again, and upon death be subjected to death quotes which are to long to read before the respawn timer is up and are frustratingly bad in the first place. For instance, there’s like 5 JFK quotes and then a whole batch that make you feel like Patriotism is for blockheads; they round out the quotes by throwing in a Dick Cheney for good measure.

Then there’s the franticness, which is frustrating, even on hardened difficulty, most SP levels crawl slowly by. I’m not a fan, it’s not fun, it’s a pain, only if I’m really hard up for gamer score will I ever attempt these levels on Veteran. It’s just that there’s so many angles to keep track of and no “hugging the walls” cover system to help make quick peeps around corners. The SP has a few select moments that rock like the snow blind mission and the oil rig hostages but overall the journey is full of fail which brings me to something full of win, MW2’s; Spec Ops.

This is Co-op gold, I’ve now got help taking care of all those angles! Spec Op’s is the second pillar of MW2 and is separate from the single player. So, you can’t redo those SP missions that I was telling you about which is fine, because the offering of mission snippets you get with Spec Ops is robust, featuring all kinds of different objectives, time limits, and scenarios. Each Op has three stars of difficulty for a total of sixty nine possible stars whereby unlocking an achievement. One level I tried at the second star rating, had you and a buddy defending this platform against 4 waves of infantry with a few truck and jeeps mixed in, it was awesome and the kind of “frantic” I enjoy. I’ve only played  a few of these Op’s and they rock. I’m holding off on doing the majority of them till I can enjoy them with a friend.

The final pillar is MW2’s multiplayer which is undoubtedly the most frustrating and fantastic thing in the game. Everything is better than the original, the killstreak rewards are awesome, the perks are refined, the guns are cooler, the attachments steller, and everything is, dare I say it, balanced! I carry around a Stinger missile launcher as my secondary weapon and am always on the ready to knock the enemies Cobra’s, AC130’s, and Pavelow’s out of the sky. Post match I love hearing the guys complain how their ten kill streak reward crashed to the ground ten seconds after they called it in. I love it! The maps are great with Scrapeyard probably being one of the better MP maps around. The ranking up takes time and has legs, there’s so many ways to get bonus points that it makes it really addictive. Every gun and piece of equipment has challenges and rewards for those challenges. I can’t sing the praises of the multiplayer enough. The only negative for me is the franticness of the multiplayer slightly echos the SP campaign. You will feel like a loser if you haven’t killed anyone within three seconds of spawning. Indeed you ‘ll be losing if you don’t because more than likely you’ll be dead in three seconds. Don’t feel bad if the person I just described is you because it is me as well. In order to prolong my life from two seconds to three I’ve built my perk set around detection and evasion. Hopefully some day I’ll be good enough to have a K:D ratio of 500!

My conclusion is this, man this game’s difficulty curve is high and frustrating but good grief it’s addicting, you’ll have no regrets if you pick this one up…

I like it when cynical people write reviews, they tend to be blunt and honest.  If I buy this game early, like tomorrow’s release date, I’ll add some of my own cynical thoughts…

The last two days I’ve been hopelessly addicted to EA’s free new online shooter called Battlefield Heroes.  The art direction is really similar to Team Fortress 2’s cartoonish animation but game play wise it remains a battlefield game at heart.  To start you sign up, download, choose a faction (loosely based on either Axis or Allies) and then basically hit play.  Before you start capturing flags though you can dress your character up in all kinds of funny team centric styled outfits. Often, I’ll start laughing when I see the guys outfit that killed me in my death cam!  Once you capture enough flags and frag enough dudes you’ll rank up and get to choose what skill you want to boost with your precious skill points earned after every few levels.  Once again, BF Heroes is free but there are these things called micro transactions that you can do were you basically pay real world money to get game world money used for purchasing cooler outfits and accessories offered ingame.  Thus far I’ve been able to deny myself the shiny eye monocle I want for $1.50.  All in all Battlefield Heroes is a great, funny, not to be taken too seriously little shooter that’s worth looking into.  A little tip though, if you end up spending some real world money dressing up your Hero like a man Barbie just don’t tell anyone:)

Image Credit: shfts.com

Mechwarrior is making a comeback!  This snippit of gaming news certainly fills the mech sized hole in my heart!!  Hopefully the graphics are sick, the missions cool, and the story as Mechwarrian as ever.

Image courtesy ign.com

For me Xbox 360’s Mass Effect proved to be a game with long distance legs, I’ve got saves going back to December 2007.  So, fast forward to May 2009 and I’m basically on my fourth play through of the game and here are my thoughts for how to make Mass Effect 2 even cooler than its little brother.

1. The Mako – They could’ve done so much more with this land rover.  It is completely boring and lame in its current state.  All you get is machine gun, big gun, and a small booster lift.  Where are the invisibility shields, gun upgrades, suspension adapters, camo paint jobs, different weapon systems, different scan upgrades, so on and so on?  Also, I hate how the turret turns to the direction your facing when you enter the Mako from ground level not to mention the driving scheme which really sucks.  I’d favor the BF:BC style vehicle control any day over the current lameness.

2.  This game jitters all over the place – The frame rate is abysmal in game and even during the rolling end credits. Jaggies and slowdowns are unacceptable.  This actually may be showcasing the Xbox 360’s weaksaucedness.

3.  For God’s sake don’t fear being a 2 disc game – Word is that the Devs were really surprised they fit all the game on one disc.  Good for them, but we know this means they cut corners.  I’d gladly swap a disc in and out if it was the only thing keeping me from all the other good ideas, textures, and upgrades they had to leave out.

Thus ends my vitriolic comments for Mass Effect.  In no way does this mean the game stunk, matter of fact it rocked and the story was freakin awesome!  So do yourself a favor and go buy it cheap from someone!

It appears Diamond Jim can’t get enough money from the casino’s these days to pay for all his big government plans and government employees so now he has to tax my downloadable content starting October 1st 2009.  Good ole progressive Wisconsin, taxing it’s way to a better tomorrow.

Videogamer.com has compiled a very good list of last years 10 best games.  I’ve spent many an hour with quite a few of the excellent titles mentioned in the video and I’m tempted to run out and get the ones I haven’t…

I bought the limited edition Fallout 3 that came with the lunchbox, the bobblehead, and the behind the scenes DVD exclusive. I bought Fallout 3 because I was excited for a post apocalyptic RPG shooter blend, not because I was familiar with Fallout 1 and 2. And then I played the game and it was amazing, the vault was spectacular and when I left the vaults safety I felt awestruck by the wastelands chaotic majesty. And then, what felt like seconds later, I beat the game and was totally dumbstruck. I thought I was only half way through the game! The story had just started rolling and I’d only spent about 6 hours on the main quest. I wish I would’ve known to make a hard save before telling one of the NPC’s that I was “ready to go” whereby kicking off the final mission. At the end of this last mission I died, not in the “crap I just died” kinda way, I died because the game killed me. I reloaded, I died again, I reloaded and tried to get out of that horrible chamber of endgameness, but just like the Hotel California, you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. You must end the game, and your character must die. It occurred to me at this point that no matter how much I wanted it, there would be no coming back to the world of Fallout 3 after beating the main quest for this hero, even if the hero had only 40% of the side quests done. And the real kicker is the final end chamber battle and climax is so underwhelming you hardly believe it’s the same game. Truth be told, the blundering main storyline isn’t Fallout 3’s only flaw, the graphics kinda suck, the lack of different skins for special weapons is lame, and you can’t create and custom name anything a la Oblivion. Really, the neatest thing about Fallout 3 are the side quests, these are phenomenal triumphs of apocalyptic awesomeness, and worth playing.

All in all I feel so horrible about the way this game ended I’m tempted to sell Fallout 3 on Ebay while I can still get a solid $40 for it. I think I’ll keep the lunchbox and bobblehead though:)