So angry I could just blow up Shanghai.

Despite what a hell of a lot of players have been saying, Army of Tutu ain't that bad. In fact, there are some things I REALLY like about it, eyes mainly on the weapon customisation. Sure the storyline is completely non-existent, but the co op action is pretty damn well done. However, I encountered a problem. EnglishCarBomb and I over the course of a few days and a lot of frustration completed the game on Contractor difficulty, or 'hardest' to you or me. We were getting ready for a tasty meal of 100g to come blipping up... nothing. Wait for end cutscene to finish? Nothing. Wait till the end of the credits? Nothing.

We googled this problem and others have been experiencing the same. Some people got it when they loaded up a mission on that save file... not for us. Gee thanks, EA, run better certification next time.

Nonetheless, onwards and upwards. Or downwards, in the case of Dante's Inferno which I am now in temporary possession of, along with Mass Effect 1, which I'm playing entirely as a prologue to Mass Effect 2. Mirror's Edge will be the next rentage once I've sent Army of Tutu back.

The waiting game indeed...

Ugh. The very day after I said I'd be playing 'much, much more of the demo' and DICE have shut down the BC2 demo servers for good. I should have kept in mind when it was going to end. It's now a waiting time of a week until pure gaming happiness.

Anyhoo, thanks DICE despite you not being able to hear me for an awesome first look at some outstanding multiplayer. Can't wait for the real deal.

A happy sight to see.

Done. And now to play the waiting game.... and by that I mean more of the demo. Much, much more of the demo. This is pure anticipation. 

Youtube Comment of the Week 23/2/10

'add me on xbox live guys: SiiC x SniPeZz'

- SiiCxSniPeZz

Pretty much showcasing the modern gamertag in all its filth.

DICE, you stole my pro-ness.

While it's true I play quite a lot of games (well at least more than the ordinary, which today is literally just CoD, Guitar Hero and Wii Sports), I can't avoid that it's rare for me to actually get very good at one. I can be respectably good, beat-it-on-the-hardest difficulty good, but nowhere near the sort of skill it takes to have a K/D ratio of 5 and do jumping 360-degree headshots like wannabe MLG players with irritating tags like XxiiLiiTeRaT3xSNiiP3rxX you unavoidably find in every single match on Gears of War 2, Halo 3 and CoD.

An exception I found was in Battlefield: Bad Company. Yes I still wasn't getting triple spawn kills using nothing but a medipack and the jump button, but I could genuinely play it seriously and get a heckload of points. My K/D ratio isn't even 1 - entirely because I sent the first 70% of my playtime either being new or driving around Oasis in a HUMV with two or three friends singing David Hassellhoff and firing rockets in the air - but I played with a definite vigour later on and to be honest, I bloody loved it. However, all that changed after the release of the Bad Company 2 demo.

I'll make no bones about it; Bad Company 2's multiplayer is just about perfect. It's at least the best online multiplayer I've played in my life, and it's only a demo. Every problem with Bad Company 1 is effortlessly solved and we're given more, down to the very detail (like vehicle handling, damn that sucked in BC1). Problem is, after playing hour after hour of it in the same way Gary Glitter watches Saturday Morning CITV, I've become not just adept at it but adapted to it. Playing it isn't just now second nature to me; it's become how I envisage Bad Company. I've gone back to Bad Company 1 recently and I'm pathetic. For example, while being the Assault class, I was 'wowed' by being reminded how many 40mm grenades you get for the assault rifle. I instinctively let one off to feel the satisfaction of them without worrying about wasting them... only to forget friendly fire is on in BC1 and I blew a teammate sky high. On top of that, I shoot enemies so inaccurately now that they probably think I'm hoping the loud noise will scare them off. It's just an embarrassment. 

So it's all gone. The one game I had going for being awesome at I now play as I if I had one hand. A prosthetic hand. And it's all DICE's fault for making BC2 so amazing. Yet another situation where I wish some games didn't blow my mind so much.

Youtube Comment of the Week 17/2/10

'@LynxAdvert fuck microssoft fuck you xbox fanboys i love ps3 and i love some xbox 360 games fuck xbox360 worst shit in the world'

- unclefucker66

Turns out this kid's Croatian. Guess he learnt our profanities, but not to realise when he makes a clear contradiction of himself.

Bit of Fallout New Vegas news

I know I posted about 30 mins ago but I thought I'd do this separately. It's my blog, back off.

Yeah so Obsidian finally thought it'd be a good idea to say a little bit more than just a teaser trailer seeing as there's less than a year till New Vegas' release (still far too slow, especially for us impatient Fallout devotees). I read some stuff on IGN but I have to say the video from OXM on the Xbox Live dashboard at the moment is VERY informative and I suggest you check it out before it disappears.

Basically, it turns out that the glowy-eyed cloaked Californian dude (from Vault 7?) in the trailer is not you, and is probably an enemy. You are in fact the body buried in the ground being dug up by a robot, and apparently instead of starting your story coming out of a vault you have to find out what happened to you following a botched delivery mission. You were shot and left in the sand. That's as much as anyone knows for storyline.

They've also said that there will be a hardcore mode for people like me (yay) in which it becomes a real wasteland experience, complete with the ability to die of starvation or thirst. I pretty much want to die from it.

In terms of relations to Fallout 3, it's said to be not vastly different - thank shit - and will add some things like weapon modification, and speech is apparently a vastly useful tool. The area will be similar in that there is some city and a lot of wasteland. Just as it should be. Obsidian seem to be on track.

Good stuff.

EA, your timing is horrendous.

Haven't posted anything in ages, and I apologise. You see, I was working on a review for Halo 3: ODST and unfortunately Infinity Ward came to my door and demanded I take down both my Modern Warfare reviews and my blog post about them being sick. Fortunately last month Bethesda sent me a real-life Hunting Rifle for being so awesome at Fallout 3, so having whipped that out and taken out two of the lead developers, they began to send in a few hundred mindless CoD fans, screaming 'noob tube' and the like at me. A few hours later they were all dead, but I got a Predator missile stuck in my leg from one cheeky fan so I had to heal up for a bit. That's my excuse, anyway.

Basically this is just another update post....

AvP demo is awesome! Great fun, and absolutely terrifying sometimes as the Marines. Well balanced and quite tactical, and a three-way is definitely something new. Very mixed reviews of the actual game, (a 5.5 from Gamespot? Wah?) but I think it handles very well. Though perhaps that's what a demo is meant to seem like...

Been playing Army of Two: The 40th Day today with EnglishCarBomb and it's not bad at all, very strong co-op indeed. However, as it is basically Army of Two Two, it is to be called Army of TuTu. 

Speaking of Army of TuTu and what the title is related to, EA thought it'd be hilarious today of all days to close just about ALL of their servers for maintenance. Bad Company 1 was still up, but Bad Company 2 demo, Battlefield 1943 and worst of all Army of TuTu went down for a LONG time - BC2 demo ALL DAY. Thanks a lot. Could you next pick a time when I 1. Haven't JUST got Army of TuTu 2. I'm not addicted to the BC2 demo. And why pretty much all the EA servers at once? Why not one game's servers at a time? Gah.

That's all for now folks. No idea what to write about as a proper article, but 40th Day review sometime soon. 

Human contact? Never heard of it. Didn't that die when the internet showed up?

Ironically, I can't help but notice that while consoles are connecting us all a lot more with Xbox Live and PSN, games are also pushing us apart a lot more. I'm not saying that it 'ruins out social lives and makes us horrible, irritable people' as that's Daily Mail-standard bullshit, but more that as a whole, games are beginning to lack a vital part of 'true' multiplayer: splitscreen.

Of course, we're still getting the odd Gears of War, Left 4 Dead and Halo, but why do most games feel the need to sacrifice a little local play for online multiplayer, especially as the aforementioned games can even combine the two in the same match? It's genuinely as if they believe that as soon as we connected to Xbox Live for the first time, we burnt all our address books, deleted our friends' phone numbers and said sayonara to all the people we've ever met, forever. I mean, what's the point? Why go to a party when you can join an Xbox Live Party?

I think a lot of it is dev teams looking too objectively. Sure, sharing a screen is a little inconvenient and you'll always, no matter what, give in to that malicious desire to screenwatch, but the fact of the matter is, it's still a hell of a lot of fun. Why else are Goldeneye and Nightfire still treasured within the hearts of just about everyone who's been playing games for at least five years? Personally I love to see my enemies squirm right next to me, and be able to laugh in their face when I get one of those miraculous kills. Hell, I don't even mind if I'm the victim; it's always worth it. The fact is: Splitsreen isn't dead. It'll never be. Gamers still want it. Just because Live is convenient in that it connects gamers all over the world, splitscreen still has the magic and it's a totally different experience, and one that games need.

But sadly, far too many games are lacking in this. Should I have someone round and we want to play some offline multiplayer, I look at my games pile with shame. The obvious choices are there; Halo 3 (which interweaved splitscreen with campaign, customs and matchmaking PERFECTLY) and Gears of War 1 and 2, but apart from that, what is there? Left 4 Dead 2. And seeing as it's made by multiplayer maestros Valve, that's taken for granted. Excluding Red Faction: Guerilla's 'Wrecking Crew' mode - which isn't even splitscreen, it's pass-the-controller - there is nothing else. Shameful. 

Quite honestly, I don't care and I'm sure barely anyone else out there cares if it looks a little nerdy when you have four guys leaning forward on a sofa, munching Doritos and screaming at each other over a video game. There was a time when this was accepted that this is what games are about. We can only hope this is never forgotten.

Fallout: New Vegas trailer

I actually had downloaded this, converted it and uploaded it to this, but Blogspot video uploader is pretty bad and the code didn't work. But whatever, here it is.

I know it's a teaser trailer, but I wish they'd tell us a little more than 'look... Las Vegas!' and make a trailer that's overly referential to Fallout 3's trailer. Yeah, us Fallout fans will like the reference, but it's about time we got some meat on this game. With most games that have a 9-month wait left, there's usually a bit more said, and more than just a teaser released. 

Oh well, it looks like they've kept a great deal of Fallout-ness, which can only be a good thing.

BC2 and AvP demos, Fallout: New Vegas news imminent, and Pruane2Forever.

I plan to get a decently-written article up here soon, but for now, a news post.

The Bad Company 2 multiplayer demo came out just under a week ago now and it's safe to say: it's awesome. As in, literally as good as hoped and expected. To put it basically, Bad Company 1 with better squad dynamic, more vehicles and better vehicle-based gameplay, controls (left trigger to accelerate? Not any more...) and graphics. Can't say a huge deal for 'new guns' as not many have been shown but what has been shown are hugely improved BC1 weapons, for example the SCAR-Light is now a weapon to be feared, but also one that just feels great. The sound of it is perfect - capitalizing of course on Battlefield's top-notch audio - and you can look down the sights, and the way it is better than the SMG unlocked before it is so brilliantly balanced it puts all of Call of Duty's class system to shame. The Black Hawk helicopter is also as fantastic as I had wanted it to be, and while the Apache helicopters are still nigh-impossible to fly leaving it to the very experienced to aviate these monsters (perhaps a good thing), the Black Hawk is tough but masterable, and very, VERY, satisfying when your teammates manning the miniguns rack you up hundreds of points from their kills which couldn't have been done without you. Brilliant stuff.

Speaking of demos, the Aliens vs Predator multiplayer demo arrives tomorrow. This is pretty sudden considering it was only announced half a week ago, but I'm looking forward to it. A lot.

Obsidian have so far been deathly quiet about upcoming Fallout: New Vegas (as in the new Fallout game said to be released this November but WILL, mark my words, be delayed) but upon going on Twitter for the first time in months, I happened to come across a tweet from Bethesda saying Obsidian would be releasing news tomorrow. This could be a trailer or another hopelessly vague sentence describing it, but whatever it is, I wanna know. The fate of the Fallout series is in their hands.

In less game-related news, today is Pruane2Forever's birthday and I'd like to thank him for his fantastic contributions to the internet. I think we've all learned a bit about ourselves watching the Sexman.