Video Games

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Post-Patch Update #1

Battlefield: Bad Company 2’s been my one and only online addiction, nearing 90 hours of playtime since I got the game at launch. For some, it’s a small number, especially with some nearing their 200^th hour, but Bad Company 2 is the rare and well, only, online game that I’ve genuinely stuck to, learning its weapons, its maps and attaining a level of combat awareness that I’ve never developed for any other online shooter. As of writing, the PC version seems to have been given preferential treatment, with constant server updates and it is always the first to receive patches. Last week, a massive balance patch was deployed for all PC users and with that has come with the usual moaning and groaning of things being too overpowered or things being nerfed beyond comprehension. Some of it justified, some of it overblown, let’s break down the major changes.

Jason Rohrer’s Passage on the DS

Jason Rohrer’s Passage is a beautiful game. In a mere five minutes Rohrer is able to convey actual emotions and thoughts regarding life, marriage and our impeding deaths. I must confess that I cried when I played Passage. I shed tears and wept. At that moment I knew that games are actually art and not just toys to play on my Nintendo

Final Fantasy V and VI on the DS?

Shinji Hashimoto, producer for titles such as Final Fantasy VIII & IX and the Kingdom Hearts series has been recently speaking with fans through the Square Enix Twitter Account. In discussions with the fans he addressed questions regarding a number of games that they enquired about.

Blur vs. Split/Second

The racing genre has always been a very competitive (HA!) genre of video gaming. Be it sim-style racing or the more arcade style, they’ve always been constantly jocking for position (HA! I done it again!). However, in the past few months, two racing games have seemingly been going at each others’ necks, Blur and Split/Second. This feud is the 2010 version of inFamous vs. Prototype. Except one of these games will not be an absolute travesty. I say it’s the inFamous vs. Prototype argument again because the main similarities here are that they’re both racing games, and they are releasing very close to one another.

RUSE Pushed Back to September

RUSE, a real time strategy game which focuses on deception, has, once again, been postponed until late September. RUSE revolves around a “ruse system” which allows the player to fool or deceive the opponent. There will be a total of ten or more ruses which are separated into three categories: those that hide information, those that reveal information, and those that allow fake structures or units to be placed in order to deceive the enemy. The game will take place in World War II and will focus on the major theaters of the war. Although the United States will be the only playable faction in the games campaign mode, other factions are present and will be accessible in RUSE’s online mode.

Zipper Interactive Defends Playstation Move

SOCOM developer Zipper Interactive’s Travis Steiner spoke regarding SOCOM 4, the Playstation Move, and addressing skeptical fans. For all those that are worried that the Move will ruin the experience of the future SOCOM games, Steiner assures fans that everything is going to be fine. Zipper has designed SOCOM 4 with the standard DualShock controller in mind, and that the Move controller is just another option.

In regards to the quality of the motion controls, Steiner asserts that they work quite well and players have reacted positively to the new control scheme. Both control schemes have the same functionality. However, testing has shown that the Move offers faster and superior target acquisition. Mr. Steiner believes that people that prefer to play shooters on their PC will see the type precision and fluid movement from Move that they get from a mouse and keyboard.

How To Train Your Dragon Review

Very rarely is a movie-game good, so my expectations for How To Train Your Dragon were already non-existent. How To Train Your Dragon’s formula is very apparent, make a game where kids that loved the movie will buy, play for an hour, then never play again. Not even a child that was in love with the movie would enjoy this game. It’s un-fun in every single way. 

Once you start playing, you can see a bit of potential. The game looks decent when you’re wondering around the very small world and the managing of your dragons seems like, if done well, it could be interesting. Your hopes that the game will be good are shattered within minutes. Once you start training your first dragon, you see how tedious it is before you’re even done. The way to train your dragon is simple; you have to do a certain button combo 4 times. After doing one combo 4 times, you move onto another. There are around 15 combos per dragon. You have to train 4 dragons. Now, if my calculator doesn’t deceive me, that means doing combos 240 times. 16 times doing the same combo (all combos are the same on each dragon, just do different things). Seriously.