Week two got
off to a great start by including two new maps, a new game type and one new
weapon. If you checked out volume one, you know how things stand
regarding the new weapons. For this one, I’m going to go over the most
important changes. If you have played a lot of either game’s multiplayer, there
are certain things you’re going to have to understand in Gears 3. Otherwise, you’re
going to die… a lot.
Inversion is a third person gravity manipulation game that was announced way back in October of 2009. For around a year after that, there seemed to be almost a complete media blackout on Inversion. We’ll dive further into the recent developments of Inversion in a bit but as of now, let’s talk about what the original announcement press release set up for this gravity shaking (get it?) game.
Inversion is developed by Saber Interactive and Published by Namco Bandai. If you don’t know Saber, they made games such as Timeshift and the recent Battle: LA XBLA title. Both of these games were bashed pretty hard by critics for being too derivative of other shooters. Saber seems to have taken these complaints to heart as now they will combine the destructibility of the Havok engine (as seen in Red Faction: Guerilla) and the uniqueness of their many concepts placed within Inversion.
Do you care
about your kill to death ratio? A lot of other people certainly do, it’s part
of something that has become somewhat of a staple in our multiplayer modes
these days, that being statistics. While this is certainly not a bad thing, we
all love to compare our stats with other people, they are becoming far more
important than perhaps they should. I’m sure you have encountered the people
that prioritise their statistics higher than everything else, like playing the
game.
First person
shooters are the genre that has been affected the most by this recent trend. A
lot of people simply don’t care about playing the objective when they can just
farm a bunch of kills and appear better because their kill to death ratio is
higher than others. This is obviously a load of bull, but that doesn’t change
the fact that stat tracking is having a much more negative impact than it
should. Especially when you consider that people actually reset their accounts
and create new ones for the sole purpose of having better stats than other
players.
The beta is
up for all the epic edition owners of Bulletstorm, and any worry that spending
that extra money wasn’t worth it should be long gone. This is simply a massive
improvement over the previous multiplayer
experiences, this entry will cover the new weapons currently in the
beta, keep a look out for volume 2 later in the week. Anyway, let’s get
started…
Retro Lancer
Easily my
personal favourite so far, this is an absolute beast of a weapon in close
quarters, you can easily go toe to toe with someone wielding a gnasher and come
out on top. Holding down the melee button will initiate the charge move; if
your target is damaged enough, or you hit them in the back be ready to roar in
satisfaction as you impale them on the massive dagger attached to it. The big
disadvantage with this gun is that it has massive recoil when you fire anymore
than a couple of shots. Pace your shots and you can easily down someone in no
more than 6, this weapon is tricky to get the hang of, but you’ll be racking up
kills left and right once you get the timing down. The reload time is also very
long, timing the perfect active isn’t really worth the trade off though, it’s
much better to play it safe and reduce the risk of jamming.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working through my backlog that builds up every now and then. Nearly all of them involve boss battles in one way or another and I think it’s time boss health bars became standard across the board. They’re one of the few mechanics that can be included in a game that have no real downside; conveying clear information to the player is never a bad thing. Allow me to elaborate a little more.
Ideally, a boss should be the highlight of a particular level or section of the game you happen to be playing through and there are various things that determine whether a boss fight is great or not. The first one is that they are fair — nobody likes a boss with haywire attack patterns and moves that cripple you instantly. The second is a clear strategy that is obvious to the player relatively early on in the fight. It’s no good being at death’s door when you finally figure out what you should have been doing. The most important thing a boss encounter should be is consistent. Once you have figured out a strategy it should work every time. There are few things more irritating than thinking you have a boss fight figured out only to get destroyed on another run.
Despite their high quality and genre-crossing sounds, it took until last month’s Grammy Award ceremony for any kind of video game music to be recognized for an award: a six year old song from Civilization IV. Now the Grammys are doing some trimming and 30 categories from their previously long list of 109 categories are going away. This means four new categories have been created to consolidate what has gone, each of which consider “Video Game Music” as a genre, and will be eligible for nomination.
Welcome to Franchise Recap, a new feature here on
Player Affinity where we take a look at the core instalments in a long running
series. For this first edition, I’m going to look at the Resident Evil series and
how it has changed over the years as well as its impact on the gaming industry
and where it could be heading for the future.
Resident
Evil (1996)
The first
entry in the series is widely recognised as the pioneer of the survival horror
genre for its time. The game inspired many developers to try and recreate the
same experience but there was simply nothing like Resident Evil back in 1996.
The atmosphere is still this games strongest aspect, it managed to inspire fear
in the player due to clever use of static camera angles showing you just enough
but at the same time concealing every corner. The structure went against everything
for the time, you had to conserve every item you had in order to survive and wandering
around the mansion when you were low on supplies created excellent tension. The
boss encounters were always the highlight of the act
You really
don’t have to look very hard nowadays to find someone who will say games these
days are a lot easier compared to the days of the arcade. This is definitely a
point that needs a little clearing up, most of the time the notion that modern
games are easier is simply because the player has more health, frequent
checkpoints or (wait for it…) being able to save your game. While these
points are certainly valid, these things do make games easier, but more often
than not these points are thrown out with very little knowledge behind their
appearance in games.
The most
important aspect regarding this topic is also the most simple. It’s just a case
of storage space, modern games take up several gigabytes of space which is
literally thousands of times bigger than the games of yesteryear. Those lovely
cartridges back in the 80’s and early 90’s had anywhere between 8 and 64 MB to
store the entire game on, if you know anything about modelling or programming
then you know that is not much at all. Especially when you consider all the
technology that exists now which is designed to keep things as efficient as
possible didn’t exist back then.
Konami’s been in a rough spot on the XBLA recently. Hard Corps: Uprising was sub-par at best, and Battle: LA was so bad I called the aliens and told them I now totally understood why they wanted to kill us. But with their latest arcade offering, maybe Konami can turn that around.
Rush’N Attack: Ex-Patriot hit XBLA yesterday, and after playing through the demo, I can honestly say this game is great. Actually, let me clarify that: the gameplay is great. Mechanics, button scheme, controls, all of that is fantastic. The rest? Not so much.
Welcome to the Xbox Team’s new feature that myself, Jay
Malone, will post every three months. In this, I’ll discuss the games released
in the past three months (the months being January, February, and March in this
installment), specifically the games’ quality, and at the end make a list of the top 5
Xbox games of 2011 so far. Now I know not everyone cares about my opinion so to
get readers a bit more involved, I want you all to comment with your own current
top 5. If you haven’t played 5 Xbox 360 games, just list the ones you have
played, as long as you enjoyed them. And then at the end of the year, I will add
up all the games mentioned in the comments section and we’ll have an official
Player Affinity fan voted Xbox 360 Game of the Year. And hell, while you’re here,
mention some games you’re anticipating in 2011. Let’s get started, shall we?
