Montana Fragfest

I found Bastion after hitting a game boredom wall with my selection of titles. I was actually planning on trying out Trine 2 (still haven’t played it) after watching some of the Hatventures videos, but I ended up at Bastion after a couple days of looking around. In part because of the Totally Rad Show reviews of it from last year.

Overall, it’s a pretty cool game. I classify it as a hacky-slashy-burny-isometric-platformer (I don’t know the official genre). Battles are fun! There are a bunch of different weapons to try out and each one seems cool in its own way. Some of the weapons are centered around a certain type enemy. For example, in order to fend off these nasty beasts called Anklegators you use this long sharp pike that allow you to poke them right in the nose.

The narration is one of my favorite parts of the game. It reacts with you as you go along. If you are just smashing boxes to see what is in them, you get something like “Kid just rages for a while.” If you are just running past enemies as fast as you can, he’ll say “Kid makes a break for it.” It works really well, especially with the gruff voice of the narrator.

The game starts off at a decent pace and progressively gets harder as you go along. I have had to retry a couple levels because I died so many times, but I haven’t got frustrated at the game. Use your shield! I’m actually surprised at its size considering it is a $15 XBLA game.

It put a smile on my face – Recommended

Valve has posted up a funny little comic on their blog. The comic details the torrid friendship of the blue soldier and the red demoman. The “friendship ends tomorrow”, so I guess we’ll get to see the rest then. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of update announcement tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled.

If you live in Montana and want to join a large online franchise for Madden 10 (on the Xbox 360) check out this Facebook page, join the group and call your team. We want this to be as big of a franchise as we can get so be sure to join up if you play Madden 10 or at least tell your friends about it if they play Madden 10.

I’ll be writing up a Madden 10 review soon, so keep posted!

Well I’ll be honest, I never really got into Battlefield 1942 or Desert Combat, but MAN did I love Battlefield 2. It was my World of Warcraft. I’ve never had more friends playing a single game at a single time, and I loved it. I was often the squad leader, and we would ROLL other teams. When I heard about Battlefield 1943 being release my excitement was tempered because of Battlefield Heroes, but let’s hop into the game and see how it goes.

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.

Boonie

Growing up we all loved the movie The Goonies. It was always a feel good movie that our school would let us watch when the teachers didn’t feel like teaching. Our love for this movie continued throughout our adulthood eventually peaking mid 2009 when we so lovingly coined the phrase “Boonie it up!” I was at home when I received a call from my Fragfest buddies who were at the store buying some beer for the night’s festivities. “What  your favorite snow cone flavor?” Not really thinking that the question had any real relevance I answered “blue” and hung up the phone. Ten minutes later my friends arrived carrying some particularly nasty looking is Blue Hawaiian Boone’s Farm. Now if you’ve ever drank much Boone’s Farm you know one thing: YOU WILL HAVE A HANGOVER. We were very all very aware of this fact and didn’t really want to drink the Blue Hawaiian, but our manly competitive spirit prevented any of us from actually ADMITTING that we didn’t want it. This left us with a dilemma, how do we decide who has to Boonie (the phrase used to signal to another man that he needs to take a healthy swig of Boone’s Farm, usually followed by all of us yelling “BOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!”) in a manly and equitable manner.

Games for Boonies

After much deliberation we decided that the best way to dispense drinks was through video games. But what video game to use? It can’t be a game with a high learning curve and it needed have a high turnover (from player-to-player). We found just the perfect game: Geometry Wars 2. The pacifism game mode is perfect a competition such as this. We would have “rounds” which consisted of each of us getting one life on the pacifism game mode. He with the lowest score would have to Boonie.

The Result

The result was one hell of a good time! This was competitive gaming at it’s best! This was the first competitive gaming I’ve done with real world consequences. If you lost you had to drink the death wine (Boone’s) and wake up with a splitting headache. As the night progressed we REALLY didn’t want to lose, but in the end it was all in good fun. We eventually expanded the Boonie game to other games (such as the new Scene It: Box Office Smash) and it holds true that it is super fun and gives you great motivation to win.

Give the Boonie game a shot and let me know how you all fare!!!