DC Universe Online Beta

Well it doesn’t get any nerdier than this. Not only is it a video game but it’s an MMO video game. Not only that but it’s based on comics. Simply by downloading the beta client I instantly became 30% less attractive to the opposite sex.

My average handsomeness aside, DCUO is a big deal not least because it requires a substantial investment from you.

First off the disc costs £30 at least. Next you must subscribe at a monthly price point of £9.99. Then you must invest your time, because if I’m paying a sub every goddamn month then I will play at every opportunity I’m given.

Cracking one out? That means you’ve got one free hand mister (or ms).

Taking a shit? Time to invest in a commode.

So what do you get for your money? Why exactly should you drop cash on DCUO?

First you must create a superhero that you will be unhappy with in some small way for as long as you can stand to keep them.  Then you must select a generic power and combat skill which will be mismatched and will underwhelm you, at first. Then simply witness your super being birthed into a world of other people whose pseudo-DC avatars are making them feel the exact same way.

But damn it I WILL enjoy this.

I chose flying and then wished I’d chosen super speed. Then a grew to like the flying animations, they’re pretty smooth and handy for carrying stuff. I mooched around Gotham and beat up some guys, smashed some stuff and rescued some people. The tasks themselves were just happening and I just kind of ticked the objectives off the list. So far, so pedestrian.

What it really needs to give it meaning is context and just as I was getting fed up, so Batman chimes in and wants me to put down some thugs. So now I’m part of a world and I have a purpose. So I take out some thugs, smash some stuff….

Then I need to rescue Batwoman because she’s too smokin’ hot to escape from the Scarecrow. So I go fight him and smash some stuff. Then I fly around Gotham to see if I can scare a civilian by taking them up a tall building but I don’t really see anyone.

DCUO has a huge stock of source material and a potentially neverending stream of content. Whenever I began to go through the motions there’d be a new quest thread or I’d level up and gain a new trait to expand my skill set. You’re flying can get faster, you can tag on an extra move to your combo or develop a new power.

As it’s the beta, it’s unfair to criticise it based on glitches so I won’t go into that. It did however, have an air of being a little bit, well, boring.

Everyone has their costume which looks like the kind of costume an ordinary person would come up with. Which it is. Then some powers, so I had flight and fire. No real reason for this combination. Just because. Then I knew martial arts. Again no particular reason why I would know martial arts.

In The Incredibles Syndrome said of his plan to give powers to all ordinary peoples “when everyone’s super…..no one will be”.

That’s kind of what DCUO does. It’s like a massive, un-licensed DIY superhero costume party.

I could live with this though, partly because that’s an awesome idea and partly because there is the promise of tons of adventures and you do get to fight with the big characters but then another thing gets stuck in the craw.

The subscription.

I understand it costs a lot to make an MMO and to continue supporting it with new content. But come on. £10 a month.

If you can buy your PSN cards cheaper than their value, which is possible, then it’ll be slightly less. For pushing into a new market on console I expected an innovative new payment plan which took account of the fact console gamers by definition and virtue of their machine, will by-and-large play many games, and will not want to be tethered to one indefinitely. A standard sub does this.

I want to play this game, I really do. But I can’t justify that price month after month, and the amount of time that is worth, plus the other games that I will want to play. Then I’ll feel I need to keep playing or I lose my character and everything I invested. Sony Online Entertainment also operate Free Realms, a micro-transaction oriented family MMO. It make huge revenue. Lord of the Rings Online just tripled their income by moving from subs to free-to-play. DCUO needs to get with the times to go mainstream.

DCUO is good, it just isnt…Super.

Call of duty: Black Ops – review

I started this reveiw ages ago and just never got round to finishing it. so sorry for that but I’ve been playing a shit ton of this game. Anyway my thoughts are below.

So I’ve been busy playing a little game, don’t know if you’ve heard but Call of duty Black Ops is out.
Below is my review,

My first montage

So sorry for the lack of posts from myself. I’ve got a new role at work which restricts my time (not my choice) and I’ve been playing a shit ton of black ops.

Any way I made a quick montage today. I’ve never done one before so it’s a little rough but I felt like giving it ago. Check it out below.

Gran Turismo 5 Manual is Disappointing

Hi cats and kittens, sorry I haven’t posted in a week I’ve been trying to make plans and I had a little time off and so on down the list of excuses but in my defence; your face!

So I won’t own GT5 for another month but I know a man who does and instead of a 200 page colossus flopping out of his package (is it ever impossible to insert a dick joke?)(Heh-heh….insert a dick heh heh heh.) he was greeted with a ten page misery.

I love game manuals, it’s part of the ritual; the smell of it, the quality of the paper, the blurb. The game manual though is on its way out. Why sure I can see why. For one it’s much cheaper to do without in terms of materials cost. For another games are much more accessible these days and so the general audience can easily pick up a well designed game just from playing the opening levels. More games use the method of “show don’t tell” and include tutorial levels, even if they aren’t named as such. Most people probably just don’t read the manual, preferring instead to just jump right in, and I can respect that.

For me the manual was what I had to cherish between getting the game and playing the game. Be it christmas or birthday mornings where I’d have all the presents unwrapped but not access to the machine, or getting bought one in town and needing to interact with the game in some way on the journey home. Like I say; ritual. I guess we as a gaming audience grew up and were able to buy our own games and even play on them whenever we want (whenever we want ladies, that’s right I set my own bedtime) so the manual becomes an obstacle.

The game manual just has less to offer, control schemes are by and large intuitive and similar across a genre (any FPS will handle more or less the same), nobody cares about the warnings and concept art is a whole other thing and can get more money as Special Edition addendums or art books in their own right. The one for Okami is fucking lush by the way.

The games which would be well served by a manual tend to go a different route. Civilization V is one of the last games I bought and contained a couple hundred paged PDF. They cited the reason of saving paper for this delivery method and as they had clearly put a lot of work and a healthy dash of charm into it, I found no reason to argue that this was the correct decision. I was going to be on a computer anyway, right?

So it’s just one of those things that gets left by the wayside when progress is made. I don’t disagree with it, it’d be stupid to include a useless manual for nostalgia alone. I guess I’ve got plenty of old ones hanging around though. And at the end of the day it’s ultimately the game itself which inhabits the memory. It’s just a shame that a habit dies.

Prof Robots first BLOPS (Black Ops) game

This evening we have blops gameplay from Prof Robot. It was his first match ever on the game and he strangely decided to use the shotgun. It worked out ok though so what do I know.
Watch and listen to my super awesome commentary. I will finish my blops review soon (i’ve been trying since a couple of days after I got it) but doing that gets in the way of playing the game so we’ve got things to overcome.

anyway, enjoy the vid.

Undead Nightmare Review

You know how in crime dramas the detective usually makes slow progress to uncover the mystery? Sometimes though, right at the start he knows who did it and the rest is merely academics.

Similarly, let’s get right down to the crux of this thing.

Undead Nightmare is a post ejaculation blow job. Not strictly necessary to proceedings and you may not be able to get into it directly after the main thrust, but it’s very pleasant and welcome nonetheless.

Go play the main story in Red Dead Redemption if you haven’t already and I’ll see you in 20-30 hours depending on how sidetracked you get, which you will.

So after John Marston kills Dutch and returns to his family, Undead Nightmare drops in on the homestead and throws a plague of the undead down on the kitchen table. However inconvenient it is to the guy, it’s pretty entertaining for us and the placement of it within the main story is pitched just right. A time where several months elapse and many things can be assumed to have happened “off screen” as it were.

The family get bit so you have to tie them up, barricade them in the cabin and jolly well ride out to find a cure. John is nothing if not a man of action. Humanity was lovingly woven into RDR, no matter its leanings, disgraces, prejudices and triumphs and it is good to see that Rockstar have put the same effort into this content, and not just booted it out of the door armed with whatever they cut from the main story. Every person has a theory on the undead thumping about above ground. The government. The Jews. Gravedigger Seth. Mexicans. Sin. Anything people fear. Which is everything across the spectrum if you sample a large enough group.

Anyway John must ride back out west to see what the to-do is all about. He reconnects with various people from his main adventure, most unimportant to the plot but it helps to re-establish the neurons. It makes it feel as if it is a world, as surely these would naturally be places one would be drawn to.

Zombies are everywhere these days and the comfort is that we only fall over them in the street figuratively. This almost played out genre is thoroughly acceptable here because for one it is Rockstar, who we have come to trust. And for another because this western was so refreshing to us, by association the follow on content is as well. It exists under RDR’s graces for the most part but that is not to deny that it is a good piece of work in its own right. The application is the thing.

After all’s said and done most of the stuff is merely a skin. There are four types of Zombie and any animals are the same as their main game counterpart except for an “undead” prefix. Fine. My favourite part though, is how bodies of water on the map are displayed in red. Subtle but nice.

As with RDR the main plus is the lighting and environment. They’ve introduced a mist. A small alteration but you can see it floating over lowlands or while you’re in it at sunrise it will eerily illuminate the sky. It is the very faintest of nuances but expertly done.

The general mechanics are all the same. We have some new challenges for the journal; undead hunter, undead sharpshooter and so on. You may choose to liberate a town from a zombie onslaught for which you earn a new weapon and valuable ammunition, so we are encouraged to do so if we want to remain effective. A canny move to extend the play time, and far from un-enjoyable.

There are clear graveyard missions and bounty hunts are now missing person side quests. A particular highlight is the addition of mythical beasts. We have Sasquatch in the mountains, Chupacabra in Mehico and the four horses of the Apocalypse. The four horses give you almost unlimited stamina to get around quicker along with a fiery offensive from War and head bursting goodness from Death.

This gets into a small problem I have, with this and RDR. I want to level up, so I try to complete side tasks before I complete the main story. I want to get all the outfits so that I can use their benefits while there is still an actual point to playing. I understand that there must be a fine line walked here. If it is too easy to level up too early in the main quest then the game becomes too easy or is subject to an enemy difficulty grading in accordance with your abilities. Part of the charm of Red Dead is that even with a boss, such as they exist here, a headshot is still a headshot so the grading does not fit in. This leaves the essential placement of the levelling up segments.

Here’s my problem, I’ve completed the story on RDR and Undead Nightmare before collecting all the additional skills and items. So now I have no reason to go for unfinished outfits except to be completist, but as they serve a function I want to get some function out of them. Thus I now feel no need to revisit either the main game or this DLC to really finish up.

That said, the way Undead Nightmare ends by  slotting back into the main story is inspired. Slipping back into John’s worn boots is great after the surprise of being forced to ride around as that little gobshite Jack Marston.

“Work ya damn nag”. Shudder.

So yes, you do want to buy this. It is one of the better DLCs out of any game you care to mention. You can enjoy it on its own and pretty soon you can buy the standalone version on disc but for the full enjoyment and appreciation you need to have played and completed Red Dead Redemption.

CoD:Black Ops (BlOps) Gameplay

My boy Chelios has been playing Blops (I’m making it happen people) as much as he can get away with while still maintaining a stable marriage. Over the next year it may cause a couple rocky patches so  he should probably invest now in some back-up dildos just to keep things sweet.

The wager matches are pimp and here he is with some pretty smooth kills in Sticks and Stones, which loads you out with a Crossbow, Ballistic Knives and a Hatchet to bankrupt your victim, separating them from their hard earned points.

What a bastard.

My first black ops vid.

Finally my first Black Ops vid is up. There has been some problems but it’s finally here. expect some more in the next few days. The theatre mode makes things real simple.

The New LA Noire Trailer is as Creepy as it is Awesome

Team Bondi have used some wicked crazy facial capture on LA Noire and although it looks just a little bit off, like you’re squinting, it is also remarkably good at tying down a performance. The outstanding characteristic of this trailer, surpassing even the wonderful score and post -noire clichés is the breadth of character.

As you will be basing your investigation of the cases off how people act and react this efficient characterisation is essential. I’m assuming that we’ll be spending our game time trying to decipher the infamous Means-Motive-Opportunity triangle by squinting. And that’s why the faces look as though I am squinting at them.

Gran Turismo 5 Intro Movie Question Mark

I’ve only ever gone for arcade racers but growing some love in the lead up to Gran Turismo 5 and having played it at Eurogamer I can exclusively reveal I am very moist for this title.

In my underpants.

So even though the game has just gone gold, somehow, some people already have a copy and are being asked by Sony to take down their YouTube posts of screen caps. Because god forbid they should get free advertising.

So mooching around some I found this poor quality video of the game’s intro sequence.

It looks pretty legit but I will have to confirm its authenticity via my network of industry contacts.

*puts porn on continuous loop. screams at garden furniture mail order call centres. fails to realise phone is unplugged*

I guess the jury will have to remain out on this one until Sony forwards someone their review copy.

Ahem.