We've had a long weekend here in Perth, Australia, and I haven't spent my free time playing the $90 Battlefield 3 game, no...
I have spent it playing a $0.99 App Store game for the Ipod Touch and iPhone called Zombieville USA 2.
Over the last couple of days, I've hardly touched Battlefield 3. I was close to having finished the campaign, but came up against a showstopper bug that literally would not let me proceed.
The train sequence at the start of the game is something you will actually go through again later on, and like many of the sequences in the game, it's full of annoying quicktime events. Something happens, usually a melee struggle with a terrorist, and at the prompt, you have to press the right key at the right time. If you're not on time, or you accidentally let loose with another key, you die, and have to start the section over.
Anyway, this event required my pressing the space bar (as prompted), at which point my character would then die. This happened over... and over... and over again. When I think about it, my own personal Groundhog Day.
I couldn't even figure it out by googling it, and the last time it happened, I was so frustrated with the game, I forced it down with Alt+Ctrl+Del.
That's when you know I'm not happy.
It's ironic sometimes, though, how things happen, because I ended up browsing the Ipod App Store once again, and noticed the sequel to one of my old favs, Zombieville USA, had been released.
$0.99 later, I was ready to rock and roll, and I'll be damned, but it has occupied my time so much more than Battlefield 3 was. It's got a number of different levels to fight in, zombie types to slay, and weapons and skills to both unlock, and level up.
Great, great game, and at the price, an absolute steal. Battlefield 3 at $90? Not so much.
As it turns out, however, I once again googled the problem preventing my ability to continue in the Battlefield 3 campaign, and this time, actually found the solution. Yes, apparently if you have rebound your jump key to something other than the space bar, you have to press both that key AND the space bar.
Once again, some great game testing going on over there at DICE.
It's academic really, because like most of the campaign, the bit that I had left to do was utter rubbish.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Battlefield 3
Yeah I know, I said I wasn't going to get it.
What can I say, I've been so very bored. Waiting for MW3 has been driving me positively insane, and there are only so many times you can play the MW2 campaign over and over.
Granted, thanks to a nice trade-in at EB, Battlefield 3 didn't actually cost me anything. As it turns out, that's just as well, because if I'm being honest, I'm not really having the time of my life with it.
That's partly my fault though, because as you know I'm not really a multiplayer gamer these days, so it was arguably pretty stupid of me to invest in what is primarily a multiplayer game.
They have gone to the trouble of creating a single player campaign this time around, along with a couple of missions that you can actually coop with a friend, so you could argue there's now something for everyone.
I must be about 2/3rds of the way through the campaign, but I'll admit that I'm really not enjoying myself all that much with it.
I'd have to say the biggest problem I have with it is that the game's AI completely sucks. For both the bad guys, and also my teammates.
Teammates have not been programmed to adjust to what you're doing atall. A number of times I've actually been pushed out of a cover location by an AI teammate who has just decided that it's a spot he will be occupying instead.
This complete indifference also includes running out in front of you while you're busy shooting at bad guys.
Speaking of which, most of the bad guys will pretty much only ever shoot at the player. I've completed a number of escort quests during the game, and I've lost count the number of times they've focused just on me.
Basically, each and every play is a setup, and a rather obvious one at that. We advance to a certain area. Bad guys show up. They take cover, my teammates take cover.
At this point, they could all shoot at each other until the cows come home for the difference that it will make, because advancement is only ever made when the player caps all of the bad guys. A number of times, it's actually been obvious that my teammates aren't even really actively trying to kill anyone in particular. The job's always up to me.
And that's pretty much how it is. That ever constant reminder that you're just playing a videogame, it breaks the immersion every time. Takes you right out of it.
I don't know how else to describe it, and it's such a pity, because it's a great, great engine. Nothing else looks or sounds quite like it, and I should be having the time of my life.
Something went terribly wrong.
What can I say, I've been so very bored. Waiting for MW3 has been driving me positively insane, and there are only so many times you can play the MW2 campaign over and over.
Granted, thanks to a nice trade-in at EB, Battlefield 3 didn't actually cost me anything. As it turns out, that's just as well, because if I'm being honest, I'm not really having the time of my life with it.
That's partly my fault though, because as you know I'm not really a multiplayer gamer these days, so it was arguably pretty stupid of me to invest in what is primarily a multiplayer game.
They have gone to the trouble of creating a single player campaign this time around, along with a couple of missions that you can actually coop with a friend, so you could argue there's now something for everyone.
I must be about 2/3rds of the way through the campaign, but I'll admit that I'm really not enjoying myself all that much with it.
I'd have to say the biggest problem I have with it is that the game's AI completely sucks. For both the bad guys, and also my teammates.
Teammates have not been programmed to adjust to what you're doing atall. A number of times I've actually been pushed out of a cover location by an AI teammate who has just decided that it's a spot he will be occupying instead.
This complete indifference also includes running out in front of you while you're busy shooting at bad guys.
Speaking of which, most of the bad guys will pretty much only ever shoot at the player. I've completed a number of escort quests during the game, and I've lost count the number of times they've focused just on me.
Basically, each and every play is a setup, and a rather obvious one at that. We advance to a certain area. Bad guys show up. They take cover, my teammates take cover.
At this point, they could all shoot at each other until the cows come home for the difference that it will make, because advancement is only ever made when the player caps all of the bad guys. A number of times, it's actually been obvious that my teammates aren't even really actively trying to kill anyone in particular. The job's always up to me.
And that's pretty much how it is. That ever constant reminder that you're just playing a videogame, it breaks the immersion every time. Takes you right out of it.
I don't know how else to describe it, and it's such a pity, because it's a great, great engine. Nothing else looks or sounds quite like it, and I should be having the time of my life.
Something went terribly wrong.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Modern Warfare 3, hurry up!
I am chomping at the bits, so to speak, for Modern Warfare 3.
Call of Duty, you ask? What are you, a 'console kiddy'? No, I'm a married 37yo gamer, and I do the vast, vast majority of my gaming on the pc.
Check this out. It's the trailer showing off Modern Warfare 3's new survival mode. That might be me you can hear in the corner, drooling.
It's pretty popular these days to hate on Call of Duty. I've been seeing a lot of that. Either it's got something to do with the fact that it keeps smashing its own sales records, or that it's made by Activision, and people just love to rain shit on Bobby Kotick.
I kept an open mind though, I promise you that. You may remember that, back at E3 time, it was all about MW3 vs BF3 for me.
I tried, really, but following E3, it all went to shit. Every news item that has come out about Battlefield3 since then has sucked. Firstly, no bots. Well, I knew that already. What with not being a multiplayer gamer, there goes any kind of longevity I was hoping for. What am I going to do, play the campaign over and over?
Then they announced it wouldn't be on Steam.
I remember first installing Steam back when I bought Half Life 2 on release day. It was a necessary evil, granted, but in all fairness, it was worth it to play that game.
Since then, Steam has just gotten better... and better... and better. I now have over 30 available games for it, and it's great being able to uninstall games knowing that they're always available again, if I ever want to play.
Battlefield 3 not being on Steam is a pretty big hit for me, and the game requiring EA's Origin service, well, that shit certainly ain't helping.
By about the time they announced that Battlefield 3's co-op campaign was only going to support two players, I had long since stopped caring.
No, it's all about Modern Warfare 3. It doesn't help that survival gameplay footage has just been absolutely rocking my socks.
No, I even preordered the fucker.
*gasp*
Do you have any idea how long it's been for me since I did that? It's been at least a couple of years.
And I'm not talking the preorder where you pay a $20 deposit or some shit, I'm talking about having paid in full.
I'm making a commitment to myself, with this. My wife and I may be buying a house, and our funds may be stretched to the limit, but nomatter how tight my funds are, every year come holiday time, I'm buying a game.
This year it's Modern Warfare 3, and it'd better not suck.
Call of Duty, you ask? What are you, a 'console kiddy'? No, I'm a married 37yo gamer, and I do the vast, vast majority of my gaming on the pc.
Check this out. It's the trailer showing off Modern Warfare 3's new survival mode. That might be me you can hear in the corner, drooling.
It's pretty popular these days to hate on Call of Duty. I've been seeing a lot of that. Either it's got something to do with the fact that it keeps smashing its own sales records, or that it's made by Activision, and people just love to rain shit on Bobby Kotick.
I kept an open mind though, I promise you that. You may remember that, back at E3 time, it was all about MW3 vs BF3 for me.
I tried, really, but following E3, it all went to shit. Every news item that has come out about Battlefield3 since then has sucked. Firstly, no bots. Well, I knew that already. What with not being a multiplayer gamer, there goes any kind of longevity I was hoping for. What am I going to do, play the campaign over and over?
Then they announced it wouldn't be on Steam.
I remember first installing Steam back when I bought Half Life 2 on release day. It was a necessary evil, granted, but in all fairness, it was worth it to play that game.
Since then, Steam has just gotten better... and better... and better. I now have over 30 available games for it, and it's great being able to uninstall games knowing that they're always available again, if I ever want to play.
Battlefield 3 not being on Steam is a pretty big hit for me, and the game requiring EA's Origin service, well, that shit certainly ain't helping.
By about the time they announced that Battlefield 3's co-op campaign was only going to support two players, I had long since stopped caring.
No, it's all about Modern Warfare 3. It doesn't help that survival gameplay footage has just been absolutely rocking my socks.
No, I even preordered the fucker.
*gasp*
Do you have any idea how long it's been for me since I did that? It's been at least a couple of years.
And I'm not talking the preorder where you pay a $20 deposit or some shit, I'm talking about having paid in full.
I'm making a commitment to myself, with this. My wife and I may be buying a house, and our funds may be stretched to the limit, but nomatter how tight my funds are, every year come holiday time, I'm buying a game.
This year it's Modern Warfare 3, and it'd better not suck.
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