first person shooter

Early Impressions of Killzone 2

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With the Killzone 3 beta having recently started, me starting Killzone 2 is either just right or horribly late, depending on how you slice it. I must confess that I had little interest in this game going into it and only bought it because I was able to get it for really cheap alongside Infamous.

All I knew about this game going into it was that it was hyped to be a Halo or Call of Duty killer. I still dislike the Halo series, but I really enjoyed the Modern Warfare games. I haven’t played nearly enough to say one way or another, but from what I’ve played so far, it appears to have a lot of potential.

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Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me – Why I’m Reluctant to Join the Call of Duty: Black Ops Hype Train

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Call of Duty: Black Ops is set for release in the next few weeks and based on the pre-order numbers alone it’s almost certain to be a monsterous success. Could it outsell the Infinity Ward developed Modern Warfare 2? It wouldn’t necessarily be out of the realm of possibility.

Will I be jumping in on day one, contributing to its success? Ha. I really enjoyed Modern Warfare 2, but that game was awesome thanks to the developers at Infinity Ward (before 1/3rd of the company bailed). Call of Duty: Black Ops is being made by Treyarch, who made Call of Duty: World at War, which I was less than impressed by.
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Brothers in Arms 2: Global Front HD Impressions

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For someone who is tired of WWII games, has never played a Brothers in Arms game before and already has too much to play on the iPad, I sure did scoop up Brothers in Arms 2 really quick when it hit $1. I picked it up because it was a brand name, the screen shots were pretty and it was $1.

I haven’t played too much of it, but so far, it’s made a good impression with me.

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To Infinity and Beyond? BioShock Infinite Announced

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BioShock 2 was a real letdown to me. I’ve never played the game, but everything I have seen and heard about it has completely turned me off. The game’s main selling point was that it was a return to Rapture, but the first game ends in a way that doesn’t give you a reason to go back. The game lets you play as the Big Daddy, but what made Big Daddies cool were the fact that you had to fight them, not be them. The game featured multiplayer, even though multiplayer wouldn’t have fit within the context of the BioShock universe. I understand that the video game industry is a business like movies and music, but it seemed like all the creative in the first game was funneled out by business teams that wanted a quick sequel that would improve on the predecessor through lots of focus testing and marketing dollars. Ugh.

BioShock Infinite was just announced today and it’s coming from Irrational Games, the creators of the original. This post won’t be a thorough preview or a breakdown of the trailer. There are places that will do a much better job of that than I. The following are just a few gut feelings about what I know as of now.

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Halo Apathy

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Over the last decade of gaming, probably the biggest hole in my gaming knowledge and experience is the Halo series. Not to say that I have zero experience with the series: I’ve regularly heard a lot of Halo discussion on the podcasts I listen to, and have played some Halo 1 multiplayer, Halo 2 single player and Halo 3: ODST co-op and online multiplayer. But each time I’ve played a Halo game, I’ve walked away with a general sense of apathy.

I Join The Mile High Club

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For a game series I keep saying I have no interest in playing, I’ve done a terrible job of avoiding them. During a rash of cheap game buying, I ended up picking up the every Call of Duty game on the XBOX 360 that I didn’t already own (which was everything but Modern Warfare 2). My first experience was Modern Warfare 2, which has made enough of an impact on me to try out the rest of the series.

It just turns out that I’m working backwards from Modern Warfare 2. I felt that World at War at its best was pretty good, but it oftentimes felt like a knockoff of Modern Warfare 2 and at its worst, infuriated me to the point that I don’t want to play it ever again. I know that World at War was made by the Call of Duty “B-team”, so I was looking forward to playing the Infinity Ward game that first took the world by storm.

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Metacritic and My Video Game Collection

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Hate it or love it, review aggregators are becoming an increasingly important service for consumers of just about anything. In the video game space, people like them because it gives them a quick and quantifiable way of knowing what games are good and what games suck. The counterpoint to those people are those who don’t feel that aggregates tell the whole story and put an emphasis on a number rather than the context from which that number is derived from.

I’m not here to choose sides. Out of boredom and curiosity, I decided to take my XBOX 360 and Wii game collection, full retail games only, compile all of their Metacritic scores and see what the results say about my game stash. I must preface that this is far from scientific and that my collection has changed since I compiled these numbers.

With that said, lets hit the results.

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Call of Duty: World at War Pushes Me to the Brink

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Call of Duty: World at War was a game that, even after Modern Warfare 2 blew my mind, I had no interest in going back for. It had two major hurdles: it was a World War II shooter and it was made by Treyarch, whom I’ve been lead to believe made the “not-so-good” Call of Duty games.

Well, I decided to give World at War a shot when I saw it on sale at a price I couldn’t refuse. Did it earn a Purple Heart, or make me wish I was killed in action? After finishing the solo campaign, I would say a little from column A, a little from column B.

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How I Left Left 4 Dead 2…4 Dead

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Last time I wrote about Left 4 Dead 2, I had some very nice things to say about it. Since then, I’ve played it only once or twice. While I still stand by the belief that Left 4 Dead 2 is a good game, I don’t really have any motivation to go back any time soon.

Two things happened that made me fall off the Left 4 Dead 2 hype train: I’ve grown tired of the L4D formula and I’ve gotten a number of other games that have offered a fresher experience to me.

When the original Left 4 Dead came out, I had never played anything like it before. My brother played the hell out of that game. Those characters, special infected and scenarios became iconic. Eventually, I grew tired of it and was excited to see what Left 4 Dead 2 had to offer. While Left 4 Dead 2 does add a lot to spice things up, it’s still Left 4 Dead at it’s core, which I’m pretty much done with at this point.

The other reason I dropped it relatively quickly is that it came out around the time I got a bunch of games that were fresh experiences to me. I tore through Assassin’s Creed 2, Borderlands and Liberty City Stories, and still have a long way to go in Modern Warfare 2. And now I’m at a point where I’m currently playing other stuff and can’t really fit Left 4 Dead 2 back in the queue.

If you’re still enjoying the zombie apocalypse, power to you. For now, I’ll spend my gaming time elsewhere.

Make It A Blockbuster Night

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Blockbuster has had it rough over the last few years. With multiple threats coming from piracy, DVD mailing services like Netflix and direct download options from sources such as iTunes, Things have been so bad, that I’ve seen a number of Blockbuster stores go out of business in and around my area.

I’m not one to rent stuff, but I have been raiding as many Blockbuster stores as I can of late, because they’ve been a great place to buy cheap games. A combination of closing sales as well as clearance deals have helped me flesh out my catalogue. I jumped in on most of these sales fairly late, so I wasn’t able to score games like Modern Warfare 1 for $10 (which I heard a bunch of people did get), but I did get some good stuff (and some not-so-great freebies).

Hit the break to find out what I’ve gotten so far.

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