Emerging from my little Western cave

I can't deny it, I've barely left my Xbox for the last two days. Why? Well, in short, my Red Dead Redemption arrived.

I was one of those people who, while agreeing that GTA IV was a monumental technical achievement in having what is probably the best realised sandbox environment ever, didn't actually find the game all that fun. The things available to do were great, but in the end, once the story was done, I struggled to find anything enjoyable to actually do.

Not so with Red Dead. This world manages to bustle with things to do, yet also manages to have the open, arid plains of the wild west. A favourite of these for me is definitely hunting. So much so that yesterday I saw a deer in a forest (in real life) and genuinely felt an urge to activate Dead Eye targeting and shoot it in the head, mid-leap. Pretty much the Tetris Effect.

Will have a full review of this up on the reviews blog soon, but for now I just urge you to buy it. Don't bother waiting for a price-drop, this is worth it.

Youtube Comment of the Week 26/5/10

Haven't done these in ages, as I haven't stumbled across many, but couldn't resist putting up this absolute gem from a Bad Company 2 video.

'this game is like... soooooo shit. you run and walk like a retard. pull out som massive gay knife....etc..'

-MW2RKOSniPeZz

Wow. We're all entitled to our opinion, and if BC2 ain't your cup of tea, that's fine, but I don't even get how this is an opinion of the game at all. If he thinks people in Bad Company run like retards, I really begin to wonder how he gets about. And massive gay knife? Gay comment aside, seeing as I didn't know knives could copulate anyway, since when was the knife big? It's not exactly a bowie knife, but it's not a penknife either... Whatever. I guess this guy can get back to doing his 'RKOSniPeZz' on Modern Warfare 2 where everyone seems to be doing a fast-forward waddle for a run.

Battlefield Bad Company 2: A Summary

I won't deny it; I talk about Bad Company 2 a lot. Too much, perhaps. Whether this is a result of the game actually being incredible or me being a lovestruck little fanboy is up to you, but I've decided to bring all the talk to a close with a final summary of what I think Bad Company 2 has cracked up to be, what it is in terms of multiplayer today and as a sequel to the original Bad Company.

There are two main aspects I can think of when I think about DICE's Bad Company 2. Firstly, it's a departure. A departure from its predecessor into what is a much more serious game centred around an authentic battlefield experience. Sure, we all know real warfare today isn't nearly as intense, and is based more on small urban skirmishes and the odd airstrike, but what we've been given here is a multiplayer game in which, unlike Call of Duty or other competing titles, there are things happening all over the map at the same time; people fighting their own skirmishes, tanks assaulting strongholds, helicopters raining lead from above. It's brilliantly cinematic stuff but, while I don't think Bad Company 1 beat its sequel in this sense, it brought something different instead. The light-hearted feel of the game was something completely new, something we simply don't have in shooters today, and it did it without being disrespectful to any of today's war heroes. I'll never forget losing a match as the American team, and hearing the classic comedy failure noise of 'wah wah waaahhh' played on a blues guitar, and having command say 'You lost our retirement fund, dammit!' or, when we won, hearing an upbeat bluegrass lick and getting the voice in the ear saying 'Yes! The gold is mine- I, I mean ours!'. It never wore off, even when the lack of polish in the game showed up.

The campaign is perhaps another issue. It's complained about a lot in reviews for Bad Company 2, for being too boring usually. I think it should be taken with a pinch of salt as the multiplayer is clearly the focus of any Battlefield game but, I can't help thinking that it is a letdown in what it was trying to do. I don't like to think about it but I know that the reason DICE made the characters and the storyline serious and related to 'saving the world' is because they were competing. They tried to step up the intensity of the storyline to be seen on the same level as Modern Warfare. But this was entirely unnecessary. The only reason it's taken so badly by the players is because this intention is clear and, when they look back to Modern Warfare's campaign, they remember it being better (for the record, I don't think it was, but it's the general consensus). This wouldn't be the case if they kept it like Bad Company 1's campaign. Going AWOL and accidentally starting a war with a neutral country to get some gold? Flying in a gold-plated helicopter? Driving golf carts and hearing Sweetwater desperately fail at flirting with 'Miss July'? Get another story as amusing as that, give it the amped-up gameplay of Bad Company 2, and it could have been a blast, and wouldn't have been so heavily compared to Call of Duty.

However, I also have to think about Bad Company 2 as an arrival. What it has essentially brought is, in my opinion and many others', the best multiplayer experience possible of this generation. The improved class customisation, destruction, big maps and everything that I mentioned early put together works seamlessly and DICE have truly achieved something, despite its few minor problems that I'm sure are being worked on. I feel that I know for sure DICE won't go back to Bad Company 1's style, in the same way I know Epic won't make Gears of War 3 as dark and not over-the-top like Gears of War 1, ditto for whatever lies ahead for the Modern Warfare series. They'll keep going in the direction they've gone in with the sequel because going backwards is considered too hard to do without making an oddly patterned franchise. Perhaps then, the answer is to simply enjoy Bad Company 2 and the fact that it has achieved what it wanted to do; get Battlefield's crown back and get it back in the public's eye. Players are already peeling away from Modern Warfare 2, naming it the 'disappointment' and 'hacker and bug-fest' that it is, and migrating right into DICE's welcoming arms. It's what the developers deserve and I, maybe, as a Battlefield player, should want.

I've let you all down.

Ok, it has indeed been 20 days since I last updated this and I don't feel good for it. It's been a mix of my laptop still being in repair and this crappy home computer having its problems, trying desperately to do some work for my AS exams and doing hideous amounts of gaming. But hey, I gotta do the gaming for the blogging right?

Well the predominant three games I've been playing in the last fortnight are Aliens VS Predator, Splinter Cell: Conviction and the much-anticipated Alan Wake. Respectively, the short reviews I'd give would be bad, good-and-bad, and very good.

Aliens VS Predators is, shortly, a good idea gone horribly wrong akin to a movie-to-game title like Wanted: Weapons of Fate. This isn't to say they're similar games, but the authenticity of the moves is bang on in the games, it's just not fun. Three diverse campaigns along with starkly original and pacey multiplayer was clearly too ambitious a task, perhaps not just for Rebellion but as a game in general. Great shame.

Splinter Cell: Conviction is, thankfully, a revamp for the series that was going dead with an unnecessarily dragged out storyline that was losing momentum, and giving you the same old Sam doing the same sort of thing in new places. Now, there's a bigger emphasis on cover and shooting (with an incredible cover system that trumps just about every other game), a brilliant art style and more mature feel due to Sam's anger and grief. However, I'm a little disappointed with the things other than the campaign, the co-operative modes simply haven't proven that fun.

Alan Wake, lastly, is the end product of a development cycle spanning into the last generation, and while I can't say it's a timeless classic in the same way as Max Payne 1 and 2, it's definitely an artistic achievement and one that shows Remedy's great strengths as much as it defines the Xbox 360's capabilities for visuals. Not to mention the brilliantly written storyline, as always by the genius Sam Jarvi. Pick it up, is all I can say. Sure, it's not over 8 hours long, but it's an unforgettable ride.

That's all for now gamers. Got an article cooking up summarising Bad Company 2 as a whole, and as a sequel to Bad Company 1, and look out for upcoming full reviews of the games mentioned above. Adios!

New Vegas news, Halo Reach beta, Bulletstorm looking awesome...

Well it's been quite the information flood recently. I guess it just seems that way because I've barely been paying attention to news of late, or blogging. I am a horrendous person.

However, hate me as you might, if you're looking forward to New Vegas in the least then you should get on the 'netz RIGHT NOW because Obsidian finally deemed it a good time to release some snippets of info about the upcoming successor - rightly or not - to Fallout 3. Companion commands? Upgradable weapons? And not changing the engine? Count me in sir!

Unfortunately, because I was wise enough not to buy the disappointment fest known as Halo 3:ODST, it appears Bungie have hit back because now that means I can't play the Halo Reach beta that came out last night. However, as if to give me one morsel of smugness, the beta almost completely crashed and died in a hole last night as thousands more than Bungie expected stormed online to get another hit of Halo into their veins. While I respect Bungie for almost always keeping things under control and understanding the community (even if I do despise their arrogant developers) this seems a bit of a schoolboy error of EA magnitude. How many you think would play it, Bungie, ten?

And for something I previously didn't care much for, Bulletstorm is actually looking damn good. I didn't play Black but from what I heard it was a defining FPS of the PS2 era, and this looks to be a good follow-up, even if it's not official. As well as having Killzone 2-quality graphics, the general style of the game looks great. How can you look at this and not think 'awesome'?

Wanna get a bit more in-depth to New Vegas than my pitiful dogmatic fanboyism? Take this link and leave me in peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8hmKX3CmTg