The Good

The game is fun. It has all the classic elements of Battlefield combat: land, sea, and air vehicles mashed in with a large ground-based capture the flag maps. Another huge plus is that the game is only $15. I think that this is a great step in the right direction. I hope it sends a message to game publishers that you can publish a game that might not look the best or be game of the year but if it’s fun and cheap people will buy it.

They are also doing a challenge where the community unlocks new content by getting a large number of global kills. At 43,000,000 kills the respective system (Xbox360 or PS3) unlocked the Coral Bay map (which is an air-combat only map). This REALLY incentivized people to get on as much as possible and keep the fight going 24/7. Editors Note: Both systems have unlocked Coral Bay, although the Xbox 360 was the first to do so.

The Bad

This game is slow. While I enjoy playing it, I never get really passionate about it like I do COD4 or TF2. You have no sense of teamwork, or team goals, which is a problem in a game centered around team and squad based objectives. You basically run around capping points, trying to kill the enemy. When the game is over you are never really surprised about who won, because you have no clue what is going on elsewhere in the match.

The game in general seems very non-immersive. When I shoot my gun or run around I don’t FEEL like a soldier on a battlefield. I almost feel like I’m playing a rail shooter in an arcade.

When I hopped back into COD4 after playing this game for a couple reasons, I realized why COD4 is SO GOOD. When you run the camera moves around like I’m running, when I shoot my gun the camera makes me feel like I’m actually shooting a rifle, Battlefield 1943 just doesn’t do that.

The Down-Low

This game is fun and cheap, plain and simple. As you can tell, it wasn’t the best game I’ve ever played by any stretch of the imagination but it keeps me entertained and got me to pry open my wallet instead of GameFly’ing it like I do most games.

The Good

The game look great. Very stylized (like Team Fortress 2), good sounds, great models. I like the “gain points to buy new items” aspect, because it encourages players to play consistently to buy and keep better weapons. Besides the pilot there are two extra seats on planes, and by seats I mean you sit on the wing and shoot at people.

The Bad

The game has no focus. The loss of the mini map makes you feel like you are just one guy running around a field. The weapons dont’ feel like they do damage (except to you, of course), and you feel thrown into a game with no teamwork whatsoever. My favorite ability in the Battlefield games was the ability of teammates to spot enemies for you. They have removed this from Battlefield Heroes and without this it is VERY hard to find snipers (and trust me one good sniper can just wreck a spawn) or let your pilots know where enemy planes are. There is also no voice chat or commander, which makes it TERRIBLY difficult to coordinate a team.

The vehicles are TERRIBLE. When flying a plane you have no clue where the other planes are and no seeming way to gain an advantage on them. The tanks just seem silly and without the mini gun for the driver there seems to be no good way to kill infantry with it.

The sounds get annoying QUICK. They tried to make the sounds as cartoony as possible, but I can only hear the sad trombone sound (only much higher pitched) so many times before I want to choke myself with my mouse cable.

The Ugly

As it stands right now, I would pass on this game. It just feels too disconnected. There is no teamwork and therefore it’s just another run around and shoot things, only this time you are stuck in a cartoon.

Changed backstab handling to fix facestabs

I kidding, of course I care about the rest of the update! I’ll play around with it when I can and report back, in the mean time you can read the full update details and hop on yourself.

This update is looking to bring back the thunder to TF2, I know I personally have completely given up on the game. Perhaps I’ll have to start practicing again so I can hit a home run or two.

It’s independent and cheap

If you haven’t played this game then go RIGHT NOW to PlayAuditorium.com and try it out. You can play the first 3 acts of the game for free. This game appeals to the ears AND the eyes. The goal of the game is to fill up each of the color containers with particles from the “The Flow” that are the corresponding color. You do this by using the various controls to manipulate the stream.

This Game Relaxes

Due to the beautiful flow of colors and delightfully poignant soundtrack, this game will put you in a relaxing trance. This isn’t a game for the hardcore FPSers looking to get their heart rate up, this is for people who want to relax at the end of the day, or hide in a browser tab for when the boss isn’t looking.

There is no one solution to each level

This game is different each time you play it, and there are always multiple solutions toe each problem. In the process of writing this post I replayed the first two acts and still found some of the puzzles difficult and just as quizzical as my first time around.

Bottom-Line

At least play the first 3 acts for free on the site, you owe the creators of this game that much. If you like it, but the full version for only 11 bucks.

My thoughts: VERSUS MODE IS FUN AS HELL. Nothing beats being an infected setting up an ambush on the survivors. I personally like being a Boomer and vomiting all over the survivors (calling in the always fun horde), but it’s also very satisfying to be a hunter and pin someone down tearing at their flesh!!

I do feel, though, that people’s worry about L4D’s lack of content and multiplayer staying power is warrented, but hopefully Valve will keep us in downloadable content so that this game will be fresh and fun for quite some time.

If I can get a crew of people together I’ll be sure to play as much of the game as possible and give the entire game a full feldged review soon.

Go buy this now and support people in the industry who actually make quality products and don’t shovel out shit games *coughEAcough*.

First off….

Dead Space (PC)

This game pretty much takes survival horror and re blends it.  It feels like it takes pieces from Resident Evil 4 and Bioshock and mixes it with some RPG elements.  This game uses the over the shoulder 3rd person view which seem to work better for immersion and the scary factor then the First person view.  This game kinda reminded me of what Doom 3 would have been if it was more than a flashlight simulator game.  Its dark in space but its overall dim lit and not completely black.  Doom seemed to get this wrong.  Immersion in a Horror game is all about the aura and the vibe that the maps give you.  And when you just plain old can’t see the map it kind of kills it and turns it into, “I’m scared because there is just shit jumping on me and I can’t see”  Don’t get me wrong Dead Space is full of cliche horror scenes like the typical monster comes out of the wall and attacks you.

The game rides on the pretty common theme of Alone in the Unknown.  The story line is pretty lame though, I’m not going to spoil it but its a bit predicable.  I did however like the weapons.  When I play a game i like to see some originality with the weapons.  Typically in many games there is the pistol, machine gun, and heavy weapon shtick.  Though this is how the weapon cast system is in Dead Space they seem to change it up with the Power node upgrades.  Its a system that allows you to modify and unlock attributes to your weapon with a series of branched out upgrades.   Another thing about this game that I haven’t seen in any other game is that you DON’T want to head shot, you want to take out the limbs.  This adds a fun element to the game.  And craftily flows over to some of the weapons.

As you may have seen from screen shots or videos, some of the weapons shoot out ammo in a line.   These are denoted by the 3 laser sights.  The fun thing is, is that you can choose on the fly how your gun is positioned  to shoot i.e. vertically or horizontally.  So if you want to shoot off an arm the best position is to have your gun shooting top to bottom.  And if you prefer to slow down the enemy you can adjust the weapon to shoot a line of ammo from left to right and take off a leg pretty easily.

The game had a good length to it as well.  It was just long enough to keep you from getting bored of the scenarios that it could throw at you.

Moving on..

Farcry 2

At first I thought I really liked this game.  I had the mind set that it would run just as shitty as Crysis which actually takes away from the overall game play experience.  When I launched this puppy, I found a gorgeous world that actually ran like butter.  Which was surprising, and a total bonus.  A few hours in I was even content with the story.  But after being let out on your own to do whatever (sandbox), it just got old.  My train of thought was lets get some good weapons going immediately.  Well to upgrade your weapons you have to talk to a dealer and he will give you a mission to unlock said cool weapons.  The missions given to you by the dealer are fucking identical every time.  Go to (X) on the map and take out convoy.  The convoy consists of a Truck and 2 Turret mounted hummers.  No difference, every single time.  Which leads me to my next grievance.  The roads are pretty repetitive too, it goes something like this.  1) take out map, 2) find location and drive, 3) drive past check point 4) get out and kill everyone, 5) continue till next check point and repeat.  Its kinda like GTA but the roads have nothing cool on them, its not like your driving down a street and have someone to run over or something to look at.

So at this point I am bored and go to get back on the main story line, which turns out there really isn’t a main story line.  Its pretty much run around and help out whatever faction or what ever friend you make.  I was pretty disappointed.  I tried to go back to the butcher to continue my quest but he wasn’t there.  I walked in and was getting shot at from all around.  And on my objectives all it said was get a mission from random person i.e. gun guy or faction, which I was bored out of my mind with. I need some drive to keep me from continuing.  Some story line to keep me involved.

I’ve had some time on my hands as of late so I have played an beaten most of the game I play.  I will have to talk about Fallout 3 and Call of Duty: WoW and even my aspect on Left 4 Dead.

Check out version 1.0 (there are are often people playing on that) but not all of the features are there (no disguise for spy, or sentry for the engineer), but if you have enough interested friends start up a server in 2.9 beta. You can get more information or download it here.