You Must Construct Additional Blog Posts

Ya rly, Ryan Davis. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a week since my last blog but it’s time for me to once again put finger-to-key and produce something vaguely resembling a coherent string of sentences. Since last week I’ve moved into my new house and am happy to be blessed with two housemates who are way into video games, one of which is one of the UKs top Forza 3 players. Unfortunately being the highly co-ordinated individual I am I tripped over in the street yesterday and hurt my arm rather badly. I had to use my laptop one-handed for an entire day and today typing and playing some games has been rather uncomfortable but if love is pain then I love writing about video games. Personally I think I should be rewarded with some vast sum of money for my bravery in the face of such impediments to my PC use. Now all of you bros have enjoyed that cool story I’ll get back on topic and talk about what we’re here for: video games.

In my usual fashion I’ve spent another week filling out my free time with plenty of Halo: Reach which still plays as good as it did when it first came out. I have restarted the campaign mode to pick up some of the games largely easy achievements but this has comprised only a tiny fraction of my time with the game in comparison to how much multiplayer I’ve played. As was my issue last week SWAT, Snipers and the general annoyance of the numerous internet assholes inhabiting matching have again been a problem but Bungie have helped to satiate me with news that they are on top of the small number of hackers trying to exploit Reach and that they’re bringing the October playlist updates forward to the 5th (including moving SWAT to its own playlist). Bungie have also said that they are bringing in a whole slew of bug fixes and reverting the betrayal system back to the system they had in Halo 3, i.e. three betrayals and you’re booted.

 Like this but not an image file.

Forgetting the world of console games for just a minute if there’s one video games news item the internet has been abuzz with this week it’s the pricing and dating of the much anticipated 3DS. Of course when Nintendo said the console was going to be released in Japan for the equivalent of $299 (or £189.42 if you’re a UK games consumer like me) comments sections across the internet exploded with angry consumers and statements about what kinds of other products could be bought for that sum of money. I’m not feeling the unbridled rage against Nintendo that many seem to be but this is probably because I knew whatever the price I wasn’t going to be able to afford a new games console in the near future anyway. None the less if they are releasing the 3DS in the U.S. and Europe for anywhere near the equivalent of 25,000 yen that’s ridiculous and I feel that the majority of those who are angry at Nintendo over this will be justified. A lot of people who have bought the DS in Europe and the U.S. have been “casual gamers” and parents of children, and if “core gamers” are refusing to fork out $299 for the console then there’s no way the rest of the market is going to. However, video games fit into Japanese culture rather differently than they fit into western culture and maybe Nintendo will give a much lower price point for the 3DS for us Brits and you Americans that reflects that. We’ll just have to wait and see.

 There should probably be a picture of Hydrophobia here or something, instead I thought this picture of my drawer of snacks was much cooler.

The other big news item that jumped out at me this week was the ruckus between various reviewers and Deborah Jones of the Hydrophobia development team. There are a lot of easy ways to quickly sully the reputation of your company but harassing publicists of negatives reviews and stating that the journalists who didn’t like the game “weren’t playing it right” is a damn fast way to start making enemies. I’ve played the trial of Hydrophobia myself, but if you were to ask me how good the game is I genuinely couldn’t tell you. The Hydrophobia trial is one of the most bewildering trial versions of a game I’ve ever played; considering Hydrophobia is a third-person shooter prominently featuring exploitation of the water in the in-game environments it’s amazing that the trial game features neither third-person shooting, nor any real exploitation of your environment. I like the underlying story concept, the environments were exciting and the game generally looks very pretty but the trial seemed too heavy on the cutscenes, the gameplay seemed rather bland, some of the animations seemed a little off, the explosion effects (of which there are many) looked terrible, the trial ended abruptly and for a woman who has hydrophobia Kate Wilson didn’t actually seem all that bothered to be entirely submerged in water in the hull of a sinking ship. It sounds like Hydrophobia wasn’t an amazing title to begin with but the external publicity of the game seems to be a complete shambles, although perhaps it’s worth downloading the trial version just to hear the character Scoot doing his ridiculous constantly-surprised voice.

Because I never like to end on a sour note I’d like to tell you about an experience I’ve had this week with a little game called Starcraft II. I’d played through Starcraft II before and completed the campaign but I had never ventured into the online multiplayer, mainly because I was afraid I’d instantly get my ass handed to me by infinitely more skilled players than I. This week I took the leap and started playing my first few games of Starcraft II to discover, “Hey, even if I’m still getting to grips with the fundamentals of the game I can still win matches against real people”. I’ve been solely playing Protoss and it’s surprised me how difficult it is just to juggle constantly constructing probes and pylons while managing the rest of my army. I can’t say how long I’m going to stick with the game but it’s at least been an interesting and new experience for me and that’s something that doesn’t just come along every day.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and I’ll see you all on the forums. Good luck, have pylon.

-Gamer_152

P.S. The 16-bit ALU that dude built in Minecraft is amazing.