I’ve been playing a lot of Call of Duty 4 again at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it. I have flown my way to rank 19, meaning I’m well on my way to unlocking the stuff that I remember loving before I lost my profile (claymore mines, iron lungs perk and the double tap perk especially.) Unfortunately I don’t have much to report with CoD other than two comedy screen shots:

What I can say something about though is the Left 4 Dead demo…which is fantastic. Killing hordes of zombies with a couple of people is a wonderful experience, but there are two things letting it down.

The first thing is the way in which you connect to a server. Valve have decided that we are all too stupid to use a normal server browser, and have tried to do everything for us. This does not work. Without going in to the boring detail, in my experience, getting a decent game of Left 4 Dead going is akin to stabbing yourself in the eye with a rusty spork.

The other problem is some of the people you play with. For the most part everyone gets along, sticks together and are generally helpful. There is always one or two though that are total pricks. This is what they do; they start by running in front of everyone trying to be ‘l33t’. When they inevitably get into trouble they run back to the safety of the pack, then keep on running and hide behind everyone else. Now safe, they spray bullets wildly hoping to hit a zombie but 50% of the time hitting team mates. This leaves at least one person on low health with no med-packs while our resident dick head is on full health with med-pack in tow. Will he heal the comrade in need? Will he fuck, he’ll just carry on repeating the same cycle.

Thats enough of me ranting anyway, the L4D demo is quality, if you don’t have it downloaded, go get it. If you ever end up in a server with me and behave as above though, I will shoot you down and spit in your eye. And I’m not even talking about in game.

Previously me and Arazmus took on 6 of the hardest AI there is in Supreme Commander. Without further adu, Part II:

My battleship sinks. Nooo! *sadface*. As I watch it fall to the depths, a Czar (giant UFO of death) flies over head….fuck. Double fuck actually, as that’s not what was hitting my ship. Part II is not starting very well for us.

I send everything Anti-Air that I have got to kill the Czar, but it’s being stubborn and not dying. Just then, a Fat Boy (very, very big tank, that can make more tanks) appears in view. Thats what sunk the Battleship. Mother fucker. One of my Soul Rippers is now ready, so I set it over to meet the Fat Boy. As it’s on its way, a Monkey Lord shows up (a very big spider robot). For fucks sake! My soul ripper kills the fat boy, and I see the Light Greens commander is in visual range. I send my Soul Ripper over. Even if it gets shot down, it will crash land in their base and kill some stuff at least. It gets shot down and lands on a mountain…not killing anything…useless. Some of their big units are dead though, so a small victory, but a victory none the less.

I cue up a Scathis (huge rapid fire artillery) and 5 Monkey Lords of my own, it looks like I’m going to need some serious fire power. That Czar is still alive, and seems to be heading straight for my base. It takes out loads of my ground defense, but my battalion of ships shoot it down just before it can do any serious damage. I emit a sigh of relief.

I currently have 2 soul rippers built and see a gap in the Light Greens defense. I send the Rippers straight around the back, only they spot a Monkey Lord on the way. The Rippers gun it down easily though (it doesn’t have any significant Anti Air) and I send them back on their way. Thats one less thing to worry about anyway. They charge into the middle of the Greens base and actually manage to take the commander out, though end up sacrificing themselves. Fuck it though, commander down! 3 Left. Hold up though, I notice Arazmus has killed the Dark Reds. I have been so wrapped up in my own little battle, I forgot to see what he was doing. 2 left! Bonus.

I order all of my ground troops to occupy where the Dark Greens were. My Scathis is built, and I order that half way between my base and where the Dark Greens used to be. That should put it in range of the last Commander on my side of the map, the Yellows. However, another Czar intercepts my ground troops on their way. This is bad. It forces me to hold off my Artillery, as I can’t afford for that to die. I find that a Monkey Lord is still in the Dark Greens zone as well. This all has to go before I bring my artillery in. I shift all my ships over to take care of the Czar as they have good anti air, and the Czar is distracted killing other units to take them out.

The Czar dies, just leaving the Monkey Lord. But wait - whats that coming out of the water? Three sub commanders courtesy of the Light Reds. Oh joy. Oh, and whats that? One Galactic Collossus, a massive fucking robot courtesy of the yellows. Thankfully, Arazmus assures me that he has a Soul Ripper on the way over to help me. Thank god, otherwise I could of been in trouble.

By now, I have 3 Battleships ready and send them over to park outside the Yellows base. They get there without much hassle and start firing. The yellow then surprises my Battleships with yet another Czar. I issue a Run the Fuck Away command to my battleships, but one of them still dies. No matter, as all those stupid units holding my artillery back are now dead, and my artillery in in range of the yellow base. Ha! Fuck you yellows! Fire. It takes about 2 minutes for the Yellows to die, in which time, Arazmus has taken out the light reds with his own artillery. 0 left.

We won! We fucking won! 6 AI on the hardest setting, against us, and we won!! Feeling utterly proud, and somewhat knackered, we called it a night, but we are going to have to find a way to ramp up the difficulty.

Not long ago (last post in-fact) I mentioned that me and Arazmus were considering taking on 6 of the hardest AI there is on Supreme Commander. We did it. It took a couple of hours, orphan blood, dodo sweat and fairy tears, but we did it. If you have Supreme Commander installed, you can open this file and watch the full replay.

From looking at the map, I knew water was going to be the way to do maximum damage with minimum resistance. Land was narrow with lots of bottlenecks - easy to defend, hard to attack. This inspired me to get a dockyard quickly set up with lots of engineers helping it out. After knocking up a small line of defense with some little tanks to hold the land, I got my first lot of subs out of the dockyard and sent them off to the middle of the map. This gave me some decent anti-naval weaponry, and an early warning system of anything headed our way.

So far so ordinary, and so it progressed. Nothing much exciting happened for a while to be honest. Because we were against six AI, we really had to pick our moment. Rushing in with a load of tech 1 units wasn’t going to do anything, so we really had to wait until we were running smoothly at tech 2 until we could make a move. The tension slowly mounted.

The first move was made by Arazmus with a small force of rocket bots. They broke the Blues defenses and damaged a lot of their base, but ultimately failed. Wise man say the only way to follow up an attack with rocket bots is with more rocket bots though, so wave 2 went in. This time, I supported him with some gunships, and the Blue commander went down. 1 down, 5 to go.

I started spamming engineers from my docks, as boats take a long time to build, and I needed some big boats. When the docks were supported enough, I had one making tech 2 destroyers (boats that can walk with a massive range) and the other build big nasty Tech 3 battleships. These took 14 minutes each to build, but they were well worth it, as will become proven.

My first Battleship eventually built, and I set it after the elusive Dark Greens. I think it got a bug though, as it got stuck doing laps of my docks. Silly robot programmers. After getting very frustrated and suiciding some units, it got out and off it went supported by a load of fighter planes just in case of a surprise air attack. When it finally knocked on the Dark Greens door (quite heavily and using bullets) it started shelling, and beautiful it was. It was nailing the Dark Green base so I sent in my reasonable army of ground units to help mop up. While Battleships are hard as nails, they are not indestructible. I was forced to send some engineers from my docks to help it stay alive, a sacrifice worth making but it meant my next battleship would take longer to build.

I had the resources by now to start building some uber units. I cued up four Sould Rippers (big gun ships) to be going on with. Meanwhile, my Battleship is still alive, and pummeling the Dark Greens. Eventually it landed a lucky shot on the Commanders head and Boom! Dark Greens are down…4 AI left. Just as we think this is a bit too easy, something big starts hitting my battleship and ground units. It’s out of sight, so god knows what it is, but it’s hitting hard.

Experimentals are going to be coming thick and fast now, and we haven’t even won half of the battle. Will we be able to fend off the remaining teams? Will they launch a surprise attack together, screwing us over? What is hitting my Battleship? Find out in Part II.

Since completing Far Cry, I can’t settle on a game to get stuck into. I tried Assassins Creed but it was very, very slow, and a little bit crap. After being told it doesn’t get any better, I gave up. I have given Sup Com some well over due attention though, which resulted in a fantastic match.

Basically, we enabled a mod which made everyones resources double. This meant that building lots of big stuff should be twice as easy. Cue me sending in thee Monkey Lords (giant spider robots with death rays), two Soul Rippers (giant flying gun-ships of death), a 350-400 unit mix of Hard as fuck assault bots, tanks, rocket bots and artillery, all backed up by a Scathis (giant rapid fire artillery, decimates a base in seconds from a ridiculous range). I just loved every second of sending all that in. That was me and Arazmus taking on three of the hardest AI there is, we are going to take on six soon.

While Sup Com is utterly brilliant,it’s too mentally tasking to play all the time. I started to sulk out of frustration, but then remembered I had Deus Ex: Invisible War in my Steam account, completely un-played.

Donning my Hat of +10 Abruptness, I put to you this: I don’t like it. For purposes of simplification, and at risk of being a ‘whiny, arrogant, bastard’, have a numbered list:

1. Every time a new area loads, Deus Ex throws me to desktop for a second or two, then back to a load screen. It’s really distracting, and completely breaks (I know I have been using this word a lot lately, but meh) any immersion.

2. The pistol is like a joke weapon. If I shoot someone in the head at point blank range they should die, not scratch themselves and ask for a cup of tea.

3. The game is totally deficient of any character. I don’t know how to describe this really, it’s just like the whole affair has no soul. It’s like Invisible War is an imitation of Deus Ex thats just trying a bit too hard and slightly lost its way.

4. People stand like they have balloons on their arms.

I want to play it, I want to love it…I just can’t. I give up on Deus ex for now and go back to sulking. What shall I play? What shall I play….I have a few rounds of counter strike while I think…Ooh! I know. I know what has been missing from my life for way too long now. I have been putting it off for ages as I lost my profile, and the thought of starting again was daunting…but fuck it.

I install COD4, just for the multiplayer. I fall in love all over again. I’ll be starting from the bottom, but this is going to be fun.

I picked up Assassins Creed shortly after it came out and hated it. The controls were awful, the forced wide screen on a normal monitor cut off loads of my screen, it ran like shit and crashed loads. Now that I have finished Far Cry 2, I had a peruse through my back catalog to see if anything would take my fancy. Well, obviously I decided to give Creed another go. I have a 360 pad now, so controls should be better with that. I have a wide screen monitor so I should be able to actually see something, and it has been patched, so should run better.

It installs fairly promptly, and the patch is nice and small. After some very quick introductory nonsense, I am awoken to be confronted by this pretty face:

I look over to my right and am confronted by this…

I think I’ll stick with the left hand side. For those who don’t know, Assassins Creed is based around this guy called Desmond. Desmond is a descendant of the amazing Assassin Altair, and this two crazy kooks are messing with your ‘genetic memory’ to find out what went on with him. Unfortunately, to find out what they need to know, you have to ‘re-live’ a load of memories to get to where they want. Game ensues.

After spending about 45 minutes being shouted at for something I had no say about, pissing around with tutorials, and doing the mandatory dull-as-fuck shit with Desmond, I finally get to play as Altair properly, and go do some assassining…only I’ve been stripped of all my weapons and get sent on a recon mission.

I have to go get some general intel about a guy, which Altair isn’t too happy about. By this point, I want to scream at the screen. Altair is fucking me right off. He is a whiney, arrogant, bastard, and I just want to punch him. No doubt this is what he’s meant to be like, but so far I’ve been able to play as Dull Desmond and Annoying Altair…yay. At least the game is yet to crash this time round though, and I can see what is going on.

I do the first set of missions without incident, and report back to the Big Boss. He tells me to go off to Damascus and get permission from some other dude to kill some guy. So far so generic. He does promote me though, so now I get a sword and my hidden ‘cool-as-lettuce’ knife. Actual yay. I jump on my horsey and off I go.

It seems that riding your horse at anything other than walking speed is a crime. Some guards come rushing at me and try to kill me for riding my fucking horse quickly. Whats the deal with this? God knows what they would do if I were in a car. Finally I arrive at Damascus and go to work gathering more intel, and at one point, saw a man with a tree for a penis. I stopped playing here for now, as it was Supreme Commander Saturday, so, thats all for now. Abrupt end I know, but thats just the way it goes I’m afraid.

So far, while its been far from brilliant, Assassins Creed has been enjoyable. Free running around cities is fun if nothing else, and I’m yet to have to enjoyment of carrying out my first proper hit. I’m going to definitely carry on playing it this time, but to whether I complete it or not, I’m not sure.

Sometimes a game will suck you in so much your face literally comes off. You will be sat there enjoying yourself, then suddenly you will go “OMG, my face has gone”. Then you will cry. If you were playing Far Cry 2 at the time of the incident, you won’t be crying just because you no longer have a face, but because you can no longer play the amazingness that is: Far Cry 2.

First and most shallow things first; this game is pretty. You could stand stock-still, pretty much anywhere, look at anything and you would think ‘Thats pretty’, and also ‘can I blow it up?’, but more on that later. The jungles look like proper, dense jungle, filled with vibrant, detailed leaves and wildlife. The Savannah looks bone dry, hot and brutal in the day, but cool, relaxing and peaceful at night. I cooed at how my shiny silver Desert Eagle reflected the mid day sun. I looked on in awe as a fire spread through dry grass, setting fire to a tree, then an explosive barrel, then a jeep, then more grass. Things that explode, it seems, are not in any sort of shortage in FC2 Africa. Chaining explosions together is as easy as throwing a Molotov cocktail into a patch of grass away from anything and watching the flames spread. In fact, I blew up a whole guard post once with one carefully placed sniper shot. Not that this is a problem. Explosions are fun….and very, very beautiful.

Speaking of guard posts, this is one on the fair list of problems with Far Cry. All over the roads are posts with baddies, that always want to kill you. Even if you give them a wide berth, offer them cake, or sing them a song, if one person spots you they will hunt you to the end. After so many hours, this can get a little tedious. When you have a game that is so open, and requires so much travel from A to B, making that journey should be as enjoyable as possible. Filling every journey with basically ‘filler’ action, does not make for a better game. It’s the same problem I have with most J-RPG’s (Final Fantasy, Skies of Arcadia, etc etc), random battles get tiring. Sometimes, I just want to get where I’m going. Like the local Tesco Express.

Something that not many games have managed to do well is an open world. Far Cry sort of scrapes by. It is truly free roaming, but thats doesn’t necessarily make it an open world. What it is, is a world segmented into pockets of openness. You are free to travel between and within these segments, but they are segments none the less. Let me clarify what I’m bloody well talking about. Each mission will see you at a landmark. Be it an air field, a villa, a ranch, whatever - while these are in an open game world, and you are free to come and go from them as you please, they are nearly always surrounded by mountains, making for only a few ways in. Once you are in, those same mountains are restricting your movements. When you want to find a quiet way in or out of somewhere, and you are so restricted, you will suddenly be very aware that it’s not the first time it’s happened. “Why does this game keep doing this to me” your brain will question. You suddenly become aware you are playing a game, shattering the immersion momentarily. That doesn’t make for seven years bad luck, but it does grate. It’s the same when you find you can’t get into a certain building, or you clip through tree branches trying to get somewhere weird. You suddenly snap from the game world, and wonder why these restrictions are here. If this was a truly ‘open’ world, these issues wouldn’t arise. In any other game though, I probably wouldn’t care; but as I mentioned before, Far Cry really sucks you in, and getting spat out is jarring at best.

Furthering being jarred from the world is the character inconsistencies from both you and your buddies. Throughout, you and your friends are hardened mercenaries, just ‘in it for the money’. You are constantly working to further a war between two factions so you can profit from being in the middle. Sometimes, suddenly, you have morals forced upon you, then have them taken away again. You can shoot an unarmed DJ in the face on minute, then read that your character is upset about all the casualties in this war the next. Basically, what I’m getting at is the whole plot and certainly the main character is hypocritical. I know that in the marketing for Far Cry it tells you ‘you must become what you despise’ or something to that effect, but there is never any hint that my character ‘despises’ what he is becoming. In fact, he seems to already be such a person before the game even started. This effect peaks at the end game, to a level that I just rejected what was going on because it just didn’t fit the character that I was playing. It was dumb and while I’m sure Ubisoft were trying to get some message across, they seem to have failed miserably. I have no idea what my character stood for, or why what he did and what he thought had no correlation.

So far then, we have a slightly dodgy framework, a not so open world, breaks in immersion, a shitty plot, and rubbish characterization. Forget these things. They are all true, but completely irrelevant. This is because Far Cry 2 works. It works because it’s fun. It works because the AI is just stupid enough to make you feel clever. It works because the guns feel rugged. It ultimately works because for the roughly 25 hours I played it for, nothing else mattered. It had me. It grabbed me by the throat with its gritty, burnt, dirty hands and refused to let go. I got sucked into the characters to the point that I cared/nearly cried when Warren Clyde died on me, because I failed him. I was charmed by Nasreen and then completely furious when that incident happened. I don’t want to spoil it, but I was actually angry at what some of the characters did to me….especially him. Far cry makes you feel cool. I nearly patted myself on the back when I swung round a corner and got two clear head shots on two unsuspecting guards with my Desert Eagle. It makes you feel hopeless when everything around you is on fire, you are nearly dead and running out of ammo. It makes you feel loved when you hit the floor just about to die and someone comes in, drags you somewhere safe, gives you a gun and tells you to look out.

Far Cry is brilliant, but with brilliant games any problems with them seem exaggerated ten fold. They are just silly little design flaws that should have been addressed, but Ubisoft have listened to and discussed these flaws, which makes me pray for a Far Cry 3. To be missing out on Far Cry 2 now though would be missing out on something that could well shape the future of the FPS genre. It’s a brilliant piece of work and one that is most definitely on my ‘to revisit’ list, especially when the modders get busy. Don’t let any of my negative ramblings above put you off. I can not recommend this game enough.

And to prove that it’s not just me, on TestFreaks (who analyze most reviews), Far Cry 2 has scored 8.1/10 with top reviews coming from Videogamer, GameSpot etc.

My humblist apologies, but I don’t really have a post for you to read today, from me anyway. I have completed Far Cry 2, but I cant really tell you all what’s been going on without ruining it all for you. I am planning to do a full review, but I just haven’t had time these past couple of days. Suddenly there has been loads of work into GD that you can’t see, which is also a contributing factor to why there is nothing to read here, as it all takes up time. That along with fueling my crack habit and penchant for murdering homeless people.

I know you’re thinking, “well this is all well and good, but I want stories from the gaming world”, well, you have a Saviour. He is called Arazmus, and he has contributed An evening with eve, accessible via the Your stuff page.

Having set aside a day for gaming today, I decided I might as well try Far Cry 2’s multiplayer this morning. I’ve not played a great deal of it, but its quite fun. What isn’t fun though, is the amount of bastard hackers on it.

I came across the first one on a team death match. I was doing my usual thing of sniping, when I spotted someone and emptied at least 5 shots into his chest. He was still standing. WTFOMGHAX! Because there was around 16 people on the server though, it wasn’t that big a deal. I had plenty of other people to kill. I say kill, my team was getting thrashed. So much in fact, that they were doubling our score.

After that abomination of a round it was on to a little four player deathmatch. One of these had the same ‘hack’. He would not die, no matter how many bullets or profanities I threw at him. It was infuriating. No matter how many times anyone shot/blew him up, he would still be standing. I got some sort of revenge in the end however. I spotted him just over a ridge and shot him a couple of times then hid. He came down looking for me and I darted past him, to just behind where he was originally. I hid in a little hut and prayed he never saw me. He never, and went back to his sniper post. That’s when I crept up behind him, and shoved a machete in his back. He died! Hazaa! I figured that he must have some sort of ‘I can’t take damage’ hack, but a machete in the back is a one hit kill. I thought it might just work, and it did.

It didn’t take me long to get used to FC2 multiplayer. It plays a lot like COD4, and I was quite good at that. I could see myself getting into it a lot more if it weren’t for one thing - the stupid, stupid ’server browser’. I call it that because I can’t think what else to call it, other than ‘waste of fucking space’. Needless to say, it barely works.

Basically, to get into a game, you have to wait ages. After you have waited ages, you have to wait longer for people to stop pissing around and be ready for the game. Then you wait for it to load, then you can play. You can’t just pick a server and jump in…well you can, but only if the game hasn’t started yet. Its ridiculous, slow, and just over intrusive.

What FC2 multiplayer has probably done more than anything is make me want to play COD4 again, but that’s for another day. For now, hunting The Jackal is my only concern. Anyway, I have all day for playing today (Sunday), so I better make the most of it. Byes!

That time of year is upon us again…the releaseathon. The inevitable time of ‘get it out before Christmas’, which leaves us gamers spoiled for choice and utterly frustrated. Why can’t I play more than one game at once?! I just want to consume them all. Im having great fun with Far Cry, but Fallout will be released by the time you read this. Not long after it will be Left 4 dead. Thats not to mention the fact that Dead Space is already out, and the imminent release of a new Call of Duty (even though it’s not made by Infinity Ward it still looks good). Even just after Christmas (well…February) Empire: Total War is released, and that’s going to be massive.

So, with so many things coming out, I think a bit of a buying strategy is going to be needed. Far Cry will probably last me until mid November until I’m done with it for a while. By this time Left 4 Dead should of just been released, so can make it’s way down into my steam account and provide me with some festive Zombie mashing. To take the load off my wallet, I’ll beg Santa to bring me a lovely copy of Fallout for Christmas. Because Fallout will be so big, and I’ll be playing Left 4 Dead, I can probably hold off Empire: Total War until march. About that time, the Gaming Drought will set in. The same period every year where nothing half way decent gets released. Empire should hold me through that, backed up by a copy of COD5 or Dead Space, which I should be able to get nice and cheap by then.

So, thats a rough plan, but I see two fundamental flaws.

1. I’m impatient
2. I like buying things

I know I’m going to end up pre-ordering Empire for release day, and I’ll no doubt be getting a copy of Call of Duty way before March. I’m just a sucker for new shiny disks…and the smell (if you don’t know what I mean, next time you get a new sealed game, take a good long smell when you open it). It’s like I want to play everything all at once when there is loads out, but whenever I overwhelm myself with games, I end up not enjoying any of them to their true potential. I’m going to try and promise to myself “one game at a time”, but we will have to see. My accounts manager (aka wife) assures me the plan isn’t worth the hard drive space it’s written on.

I just can’t stop playing Far Cry 2, but I have a couple of problems writing this post. Firstly, I haven’t been taking screenshots of what’s been going on. It’s just not something I’ve thought about while I’ve been playing. Dam immersion. Secondly, I can’t tell you what’s been going on without massive spoilers. It’s a tough line to find of what to tell you and what not, so I’ll be extra cautious. These two things, I’m afraid, are going to result in a bit shorter and a bit vaguer post. Therefore, as an apology/remedy, I’ll be ‘making’ the screenshots/pictures myself.

My team is dead. They are all dead. After having quite a moral choice put on my shoulders, I attempted to save my brothers in arms. I failed and they all died. Dam it! My finger hovered over the quick load key for a while, but refused to press it. It would defeat the point if I didn’t let my actions create consequences. In fact I’m yet to quick load, and it’s been a superb experience. And anyway, fighting your way out of the mess you have created is what it’s all about. Poor Warren Clyde though…I’ll miss him…and it’s all my fault!

Far Cry took pity and pushed two new friends on me quickly. I don’t really know how me and Andre (the black guy with dreadlocks), became chums. I met him in a hospital very briefly, and now he will willingly risk his life to come save me. Nasreen, my new female best friend, I can sort of understand. We stole a boat together, but she tainted our friendship when she sent me off ‘in front’ when a town with a cease-fire decided it didn’t like being under cease-fire anymore. Bitch. We have made up since then though (if you count making up as me killing lots and lots of people while she hid, ultimately saving her life). In the end though, while I thought no-one could replace Warren, I’m starting to like these two.

One major thing that has happened, for me anyway, was that I made a moral choice…because I wanted to. I was offered a job to take out the means of production for Malaria pills. The other faction to the one that offered me the job was producing these pills, and the general population was liking them more because of it. My job was basically to stop that happening. My reaction to my potential employer was three fold.

1. People will die so you can ‘get one over’ on the other faction
2. I have malaria and don’t want to shorten the circulation of medicine
3. Fuck you! I’m not doing it.

I went to the ‘other faction’ for a job instead. What they offered was also morally dubious, but it involved soldiers dying instead of the innocent public…and me. Does this mean I’ve become….a goodie? With all the murdering I’ve done, I don’t think so.