I’m a bit behind on this one, the game having come out in November, but I recently unwrapped a 360 copy of Infinity Ward’s latest freedom-is-awesome, terrorist Russian Arab South American buffet-of-crazy-insurgents-killing shooter. I’ve put in a good two hours now, which means that I’m probably 97% through the single-player campaign if some of the early complaints about the game are so (that’s not true, I kind of suck at shooters unless I play them on a PC, but Call of Duty games, including Modern Warfare, have always been 360 fodder for me, and always will be), and here’s my Close Impressions of the First Kind.
The forums will be offline for maintenance and software upgrades today. This outage should be brief, but we are attempting to address a fairly major problem on the back end so unexpected surprises and excitement are possible. Stay tuned. UPDATE: forums are back online. Enjoy! UPDATE UPDATE: we are currently looking into a problem with the blog comment system. All will be well presently. UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE: some horrible fanged monster has eaten the comment …
But in the meantime, while most of you are trying to alternately kill yourselves with drinking and resurrect yourselves from a killer hangover, I will turn back and look on 2009, trying to figure out what it is that people will remember it by once it is gone. When I say “people” I mean “me”, of course.
From all of us here at Tap-Repeatedly to all of you out there braving the cold to get stranded at an airport in a vain attempt to visit relatives, we wish you warmth and happy times. As usual, things will be quiet around Tap Central Command until after the egg nog hangovers have disappeared, but we look forward to serving up even more of our acerbic brand of wit in 2010. Best wishes!
Kotaku reports on Stephen Totilo’s experience with an incomplete, pre-release build of French developer Quantic Dream’s upcoming Heavy Rain, a PS3 exclusive that lots of people are watching, not only as one of the games that really leverage the inherent power of the PS3, but also as one of those exclusives that might tip the scales in Sony’s favor for the first time this generation. Totilo’s reactions weren’t entirely positive, though; and it’s not surprising …
Review by Mike “Scout” Gust Risen Developer Piranha Bytes Publisher Deep Silver Released October 2, 2009 Available for Windows (version reviewed), Xbox Verdict: 3/5 Middlin’ “I think I feel so let down by Risen’s ending because my first impressions had been so positive, the first half so satisfyingly realistic, especially for a fantasy RPG. Risen had purred along like a nice mid-sized sedan, like a Camry shuttling me around town only to be hijacked out …
Follow that title with a squeaked Pika! and the arrival of the Dark Lord in a fighting arena, and you’ve got yourself a Japanese-spawned megafranchise that just happens to be a tool of the Antichrist. Sure, it’s edited for effect, but even if it weren’t it’d be worth a good laugh.
While the rest of the editors of this site are gumming up their keyboards and controllers drooling over Dragon this and Dragon that, and RPG this and RPG that, I’ve been busily scouring the Interweb for the latest news in racing sims since last Spring. It’s hard to believe my steering wheel has been in a box somewhere since last April. This has set my sim racing career back a full decade in real racing …
1UP reports that Final Fantasy XIII, set for release in Japan on December 17, has gotten its very first review from Weekly Famitsu, one of the most widely-read periodicals in the biz.
And they FUCKING TRASHED IT, giving the release an unbelievable 39 out of a possible 40 points. It’s an epic fail! Gamers everywhere are gathering their torches and pitchforks, preparing to storm Famitsu offices. As Kevin Gifford of 1UP says,
Well, they like it – but not quite enough to give it the perfect score everyone expected.
What the hell? Why does everyone expect a perfect score? No one’s seen the god damned game except in tightly controlled junket settings. And now Japanese gamers are all hot and bothered because FFXIII is one point off from a perfect score. I think the real question is who would use an out-of-forty scoring rate.
I don’t play massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMOs) anymore. I’ve tried Eve Online, Age of Conan, and of course Lord Creator World of Warcraft. I’ve watched my friends play and heard them discuss numerous others, and from what I can gather, they all involve two key elements that millions of people confuse with fun: countless hours of grinding and prolonged interaction with players with names like “L33t Mastah Killah” and “IPWNNOOBZ.” WoW‘s marketing …
Far Cry 2 was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming history. Anyone who disputes this is… wrong. And yet Ben Abraham, an unassuming gamer, chose to play through the shitgasm that is this game with a caveat: die, and he’s done. His goal was to get closer to the relativistic experience of a game, to suffer with his character for real rather than through the lens of a monitor. Ben’s been blogging about this …