Hello everybody. I’m not going to start this article with a pathetic attempt at comedy as to me, this is a serious and frustrating subject. My views on the whole idea of censorship and people seeing controversy in such insignificant things.THe many things that bother me, and what we’ll be talking about today, is that whole thing with sexual encounters with Mass Effect, the big thing of homosexuality with SWTOR, the mass-murder of innocent and more in modern shooters and all round hate of video-games. The problem with these things are, the negative side of them are usually supported by the majority of politicians, parents and the easily offended populace. The way I think is, things can annoy me, as in really annoy me, I feel rage at any small thing that will spark in my mind. But the difference is between me and them is, I don’t think of these occasions as ”Hey! That is annoying me way too much and I don’t like it! It must go!” I may appear that way in my posts but I really don’t think that way, it’s for dramatic effect and exaggeration, the way I see it, if somebody likes it, have at it buddy.The thing is, it really annoys me is, people attempt to enforce their views upon everybody else just because they deem something ”offensive” or that they just don’t like it. If Funnyjunk and 4chan like to insult diseased people, let them have their fun, hell, sometimes it’s really funny, sometimes. The thing is, when something annoys me, I take a second to think and realize it doesn’t give me a disadvantage so I leave it be. Sure things can majorly rustles my jimmies, but why is it worth getting out of my way to try to stop it from being enjoyed? No, of course not.

The first point, the problem with representing homosexuality. In video-games, and comic books, there has always been a big problem with any sort of questioning with sexuality. It appears in the eyes of the parents, specifically soccer moms, think that if their kids sees a homosexual character, or an interaction between two homosexual characters, they think”well look at that, might as well,” and it’s ridiculous. If anything, if kids see characters they think are cool or like, the most they will do is think “well would you look at that! Gays exist, I’m cool with that, some of them are superheroes!” There is no harm in showing young children homosexual people or characters, it will make them see that there is nothing wrong with them, nothing that makes them evil and show them they’re just like everybody else. The real question is, why do you not want your kids to be homosexual? I mean it won’t make them gay, it isn’t for everybody, but you know, what makes your child any lesser your child just by being homosexual? This comes from the attack on SWTOR after the announcement of gay characters and a gay scene within the game. The soccer moms claimed that they don’t want their kids to see these kinds of “inappropriate” actions within games, also include the claim that “it’s a kid’s game as it is Star Wars and kid’s games shouldn’t have anything like this in it.” Oh really? That’s funny because I’ve never remembered anybody saying that SWTOR is a kid’s game other than you. Its rating is sixteen-plus.

The other is the same argument against the sex scenes in the Mass Effect series. I wouldn’t even call them sex scenes, they’re just scenes implying an intimate incident between two characters. The parents imply that these would disturb the children or make them prematurely sexually active, which is bullshit, kids are again, not meant to play this game as well. They weren’t made for children, the complex moral choices alone are incredibly complicated and children might just take a random pick. Again, not designed for children.

And the third point, the shooters. The parents, politicians and utter ignorant twats of this world have always said that violence within video-games will cause children to be violent. I call bullshit, the thing is. Why would these parents buy these games for them in the first place if they already knew there are guns, blood or violence? The way they try to  blame the studios on these games that they shouldn’t be making games with so much adult content within these games, but that’s the thing, it is adult content, for adults. Now why these people can’t understand this simple pointers. The games were created for teens and, yup, you guessed it, adults! The age ratings should be enough to deter them from purchasing these games for their own children, but no, they’re too stupid to notice. I find it your fault that you think your kids are getting bad messages from games, they’re not, they’re getting the bad messages from you. You allow them to play violent games, it is you that’s the problem. Stop blaming others for the faults of your own. The developers have done nothing wrong, you just keep buying your kids the wrong things. The responsibility has always fallen upon the parents.

Thank you for reading.

-Clover.

Clover here. I just downloaded the new 2GB multiplayer update on Battlefield 3 and I have been playing it for about a week or so now. Well, I have some things to take back from my review. The weapons have now been balanced out properly, the fact that you can now make your own server is just brilliant and all these new features have really brightened up the game. I’ve managed to go up at the least 8 level in the past few days since I’ve downloaded it and currently I think I’m at level 36 and have never had so much fun on this game since… ever. I can actually use the support class the way I intended,, same with assault. I might say all this but it isn’t a Bad Company 2, of course the update has fixed everything that was previously wrong and I really enjoy it now but it won’t be that piece of gold that came out in March of 2010.

The thing about Battlefield 3 was, it was never finished when it was released, DICE was probably forced to release it in October because of EA pushing them to an earlier release because of the competition they had with Activision and the infamous Call Of Duty series. The months that came afterwards gave DICE the chance to finish what they had started with Battlefield 3 and here comes the game’s saviour, the multiplayer update.

Soon I’ll be getting premium so you’ll have my word on that too, the thing I’m not looking forward to unfortunately is that damnable SPAS-12, DICE has made a god awful mistake in making her an insta-kill weapon., I don’t care what weapon it is, you never make it insta-kill, be it a shotgun or sniper rifle, headshots are the exception. One problem I do have is the weakness of the frag shell of the 870 MCS, I’ve tried to use it for a while but to no avail, no kills, ever, so I just return to the flanchette shell was it? I can’t remember, but that thing makes me unstoppable!

The next thing I’ll be writing will be a review of the first Assassin’s Creed. Just to give you more details, we will not be reviewing the handheld Creed games.

Since I’ve posted this, I’ve gone up to level 40.

Clover out.

Clover here. As much as I say that I despise this game I’m still going to buy these new DLC. The first one of course is a new map pack that has new weapons and 4 new maps. The maps are all based inside buildings and was made for CQC (close quarters combat) and frankly, I love CQC in shooter games, long-range shooting can piss me off because the more I miss, the more they know I’m there. Another one includes huge open maps filled with vehicles, that one I’m not so looking forward to but I’m still going to buy it. Luckily I got a pre-ordered limited edition copy so I didn’t have to pay for Karkhand DLC. I have a compulsion to play this game even though it frustrates me so much, I like playing it for some reason.

Clover out.

Clover here, it’s really unsuitable for me to talk about this but what the hell I’ll do it anyway, maybe we can have Jot’s word in later seeing as I don’t play the game. But yes, the trailer is out and even though I don’t play it I’m excited for, not as much as Assassin’s Creed 3 though, seeing as I actually play that series. I’ll have to buy the first 2 games before I buy the third instalment so for the time being, I can’t tell you anything. Here’s the trailer, don’t bite me for this. What I have noticed is that it’s something to do with London and sunflowers. It’s a bit late for this because it’s already out.

Clover out.

Clover here, so there are rumours going round the internet about a new Assassin’s Creed that is actually a full sequel and not just some add ons on disk and have full title prices. Lo and behold, Activision released a picture of an assassin that appearts to be in the Ameriucan revolution with the title of Assassin’s Creed III. This is exciting as they are changing the tiem period to something completely different, in other words the American revolution. So let’s take a look at the picture. If it’s based in the same tiem period as I’m thinking, he’s in the American revolution. At that time the British wore red and from observations the assassin might be native American, the strange thing is the natives and british worked together against the settlers, still though the soldier might be French too.

Here’s the reveal video.

For all I know I could be wrong, I’ll just wait until it has mroe details announced.

Clover out.

Yo sup, it’s Clover. Got the stuff? Wait, wrong person, apologies. I’ll go to the matter in hand. Bad Company 2, bloody hell it’s good. The story might not be that good but the gameplay was damn solid and the multiplayer is the golden feature on the whole disk. I love the multiplayer, it is the best multiplayer I have ever played and nothing any of you old veteran Battlefield players say will change my mind. While I do say that the story is OK, the characters were all different in a hilarious way and a huge contrast to the other. You could obviously tell this game wouldn’t or at least couldn’t take itself seriously as of the ridiculous situations the four gunmen of the military apocalypse found themselves in. The story was far-fetched but what do you expect out of a game that clearly knows of itself as a joke but I would much rather play this over the top shooter than a shout of task.

I’ll start off with the visuals, the thing I like the most is the ambience of the environments. When I play the game, there’s dust in the air that the sunlight points out, I don’t know if it’s true but I can see it. The lighting itself is damn good. The light stops when a surface appears and many games don’t do this. The light appears even on your gun as you move by a window and if you move slowly the sunlight will also follow. One word for all this, immersion, it clearly prides itself on the aesthetics to make it believable enough to think the places you on-screen are real, especially with a HDMI cable. The Frostbite engine does a great job with the visuals but also with the audio. One time I swear I filled my trousers when hearing a sniper bullet whizz past my ear, I don’t play much horror games so I can safely say it’s the scariest thing ever if the bullet goes by your face a third of an inch. ALways makes me think twice about joining the military, yet so does the tank when it blows me up after spotting me a mile away.I couldn’t tell what made the hole, the tank shell or my shit flying out of my bum hole.

I really enjoyed the presence of the characters in this game, Hags, Sarge, Preston and Sweetwater, all 4 had great chemistry together throughout the whole story… well maybe not Marlowe, he was a bit of a mute douche through the whole thing while the rest of them we’re yapping away like it’s a family dinner. I’m guessing they were going for the everyman approach to try to suit everybody, if they wanted that they shouldn’t have given him a name and have Sweetwater shouting “Great shot, Marlowe!” But it doesn’t deter me from thinking it’s great. I can quote this game as well as I can quote Scott Pilgrim, especially when you stand around and do nothing. When you stand still for long enough they’ll start talking about scenes from Predator, apple pie, smoothies, the list could be endless. Another great line was the Dallas cowboys one where they asked who goes to war in a cowboy hat? Obviously cowboys. These are great minds.

The multiplayer is my favorite part of the whole game, The spawning system is the best I’ve seen so far in any multiplayer and the number of players you can get are clearly much better than Call Of Duty, there are 24 players to each match but it wold be better if it was something like 32, 2 extra squads would have been interesting. The maps were clearly made for tactical thinking and it should be used and respected as such, not for camping (hint). I always like to think which way I’ll go deal with a tightly positioned camper next. They’re easy to dispose of if you know the maps well and seeing as I have been playing it for a while now I think I know each of them quite well. The classes always benefit the other in a different way, they’re all as important as the other one, except for Recon, Recon is the class that is there yet has no use. The level progression took a little while to do but I have managed to unlock all the inventory items including perks. There hasn’t been a time where I was bored out of my mind in this feature but I never really found any use of the shotguns. I always used the rifles instead seeing as whenever i tried to shoot people with the shotgun, it never actually worked. If you ask what my favorite weapons are they’re; SV-98, M-60, M-416 and AKS-74U.

The vehicles are handy as well as easy enough to shoot down so there is a fair game for everyone. The helicopters are simpler to fly in this than BF:3 I’ll tell you that much for start. I could actually be a transport helicopter, carrying troops from one side of the map to the other so we could fight our battles faster. Some of them stayed on to use te miniguns but fair enough I needed the protection, so usually that meant only transporting 3 or 4 people at a time but it is a whole squad so who cares. It’s also handy to stow away an engineer at the back so they can repair the chopper when you’re getting shot at. You can do the same thing with a hind but not an apache so I always look forward to being in the russian team, This tactic really helps your team in getting the winning points You can also do this with tanks and cars. The ATVs are for moving in quickly and swiftly, I would recommend Recon use them most of the time because of their need to move fast around the map to different positions. The tank would be well suited for the engineers, be it light or heavy armor but the rest were made for all classes. Mainly for transportation is my guess.

As with he weapons, the sub-machine guns are clearly overpowered in comparison to assault rifles and that pisses me off, especially when I deliver ten rounds in the chest of an enemy with an M416 and lives while he can shoot my in the leg twice with a UZI and I die. Why are subs overpowered in every game I play, annoys me a lot… luckily they tuned down the range so long-range would be impossible, balancing bitches, it works. But whenever somebody tells me this is a Call Of Duty copycat I shout “IDIOT” in their faces and say “bad idiot gamers! Very bad!” Catchphrases, they stick with you.

THis has definitely become one of my favorite games and if I ever make a top ten list of the past 5 years this will be in there, no questions asked. people keep telling me it’s the worst battlefield in the whole series but a game doesn’t have to be like it’s ancestors to be good, games have to change all the time otherwise it’s the same thing over and over. I’ll talk about Vietnam later.

I give it a 9/10.

Clover out.

You just read that in his voice! Moving on.

Clover here. The Xbox somehow fixed itself and I am now back online! Let us all rejoice and… nobody rejoicing? Fuck you too then.

Clover out.

Clover here. It appears I have 3 MMOs to tuck my teeth into now, I have SWTOR  and Guild Wars 2 according to Liam and then Firefall from discovery. It looks pretty good, take a look, it doesn’t look bad.

I also might be getting a new mid level gaming computer and fibre-optic broadband soon. With that I’ll purchase an HD capture card. Look forward to videos in the near future friends.

Clover out.

Firefall

Clover here. I apologize beforehand about the picture sizes. I could’t find better smaller ones. I am quite proud to admit that this is one of my favorite racing games ever. I also have the sequel but I’ll write about that in the future. Many people, like me, call this a racing game while others call it a car simulation which is completely understandable due to the amount of engine customization on it, but I don’t notice that, I just buy whatever upgrade that makes my car better, I don’t look at the weight or anything. I just like to drive fast in my games. Anyways, down to the specifics.

I would like to mention that the game has a very good selection of cars in there. My favorites consist of Chevrolet Camaro SS, Lamborghini Diablo SV and Koenigsegg CCGT. Don’t ask me why, I just fucking love those cars, they’re fast and they can turn better than a GT500 Shelby. The career offers you hundreds of cars with each level you gain. The races become really long after reaching about level 35 or 40 but it makes sense, faster cars, longer races. Another awesome thing is I bought a Firebird, F class, and upgraded it into a black R3 badass. If you ever wanted to be a professional car racer you can do it in this game because the level of customization is amazing, I loved that car after I upgraded it. I love having old American cars like 1960s Chevy Camaro and upgrading them into modernized beasts. It’s also helpful that you have the obvious range of slow and up to super fast cars. I’ve managed to become attached to this more than my favorites modern shooters… I’m being sarcastic by the way.

The controls clearly vary between the different cars.Because I’ve become used to the game I can tell which one just sucks and which one doesn’t. As a British person I always select the European cars to actually race in, always have been better performers than American. The controls, as I have mentioned, are superior in say a Mercedes or Audi than a Ford or Pontiac. Sometimes when I get a little bit off the track my car does spin a little out of control (AHEM) but it’s probably just my fault. What I do find irritating is it doesn’t show you how to drift and I really do not know how to drift in this game… is it fair to say I suck at it or more of a straight forward go race person? I’d say the latter mainly to not depress and insult myself. Anyways yes, the controls are great but I always upgrade and tune it just to make it even better.

My storefront experience was mainly just buying a few cars, selling my Firebird (tear) and downloading some photographs. I uploaded a few of my own if you want to see them (hint hint) and to be honest my cars looked downright badass. The photo mode is fun because you can make you or other people’s cars look great with these special angles you can have that looks like they’re going and turning much faster than what they really do. You can edit it afterwards through colours and contrast and other thing I don’t understand. If you notice I’ve tried to find the photographs I took in the game of my cars but I couldn’t find them online so fuck that.

The rewind system clearly helps if you make a mistake but makes it clearly easier and feel you’re cheating. I probably could have played it without rewind but I couldn’t help myself. The visuals are just stunning. Even my dad was impressed with the way it looked. Each piece of environment was greatly detailed and the cars just look better. I haven’t tried it with my HDMI yet but I have time . I can’t imagine how great that will look like.

The summary is, great game, vast choice of cars, great controls but rewind feels like cheating.

8/10

Clover out.

Clover here. There has been news that Ubisoft is opening a movie studios in Paris. At the moment, I am rejoicing because there are rumours of movies the likes of Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed and Ghost Recon. Luckily I like all those games so I’m sure the movies will be just as good (just kidding can you imagine?) but regardless sI will go and watch these movies. I like Ubisoft’s games usually more than others because I’ve grown rather attached to the third person view in a lot of video games these days.

I am hoping they don’t much about with green screen and those things for the Assassin’s Creed movie, I like a sense of realism and not all of it digitally created in green screen. I much prefer a real set to high-tech stuff when it comes to movies. That is what they used in the short  movie Assassin’s Creed lineage which used a green screen at all times, much to my disappointment I didn’t like the way it all looked. If anybody from the studios read this, please don;t use green screen, make real sets. I was going to mention something about writers, but they’re Ubisoft, they’re clever enough to figure out their own stuff.

Anyways, they will be cleverly calling the new studio Ubisoft Motion Pictures. I am looking forward to seeing these movies in my nearest cinema.

Here are the lineage videos.

Clover out.

Clover here. Well this is strange. There have been an uprising in Call Of Duty posts recently hasn’t there. Well it’s obvious why, the news of a new Black Ops and my review that came to mind while i was in my bed trying to sleep. I thought of it when I was sleeping and couldn’t remember if a pillow hit me or if it was Captain Price trying to hang me (spoiler). Moving on. If you can count there have been 8 Call of Duty installments excluding the extra ones on the earlier games and they all seem to have something in common. They’re all the same game. No no, please listen, I think this is a good point, is your mouse off the close option? Good, I can carry on. The Call Of Duty franchise has been going on for nearly a decade now and unfortunately there is no sign of it dying out. I’ve noticed that the game as a whole has started to turn into a gimmick. The Modern Warfare side series started off as a serious game. It had serious plot points such as the threat of global nuclear war and a treacherous civil war for Russia. This was a good turning point for the franchise, if it could do more of this then it could have lived on to still be a legacy, but unfortunately the second Modern Warfare went a lot over the top. There was a little bit too much patriotism for America going on. It made me feel uncomfortable as a Welshman even though I carried on and finished it on Veteran. The later games after Call Of Duty 4 just repeated the same thing year after year.

The earlier games were games meant to give detailed stories about the life of a WW2 and modern-day soldier and show the hardships of being one. Now it’s a bunch of cinematics with a few cover based shooting situations in between. I remember playing Big Red 1 on my friends PS2 a few years ago and it was an incredibly good game. Now i play it and I feel like I’m playing out the actions of a James Bond style character. It is irritating that a game would repeat itself for the sake of money, it used to be good.

It must evolve and innovate itself to keep on living as a video game. If a game is worth keeping then it has to change itself at some point. Even Just Cause knows this, the first and second are incredibly different to each other. Every gamer that has his head out of a pile of sand will agree with me in saying that Cal Of Duty needs to change. For this I blame the publishers. seeing as Activision basically owns the franchise, they can decide what happens in it and what not. They know it sells by the multi millions every year so they don’t want to take the risk of losing money by changing the game entirely. If people go off the game that’s game over for them. Activision is notorious for milking a series out of its sweet liquid. This happened with Guitar Hero but thankfully that was stopped before the sweet liquid turned into dust like with Call Of Duty. They’ve ruined the Spyro series by giving him a new look and adding this strange machine to your console that you can stick these ugly little plastic… creatures on and you can play as them. I haven’t played it but I don’t want to either, thankfully the Tony Hawk series still has sweet nectar left in its fine bosom but because of the later series’ negative reception the next game might be postponed to this year or 2013.

Another thing that irritates me is the abbreviation “COD.” I despise it. Cod, is a fish, not a video game. Call Of Duty is a video game, not a fish. I say that but ironically Call Of Duty is metaphorically nowadays a mediocre tasting fish. Get it on your plate and you’ll enjoy it for a little while but that short enjoyment turns slowly into disappointment after eating one for 6 hours and eating one with your friends over the internet will make you feel frustrated and bloated. See the metaphor? I do…

I have a series rating here for you:

Good

Great

Meh

Brilliant

Bad

Shit

Worse

Dead

Clover out.

It’s awesome – buy it.

-L.A

I’ve played it since vanilla. I remember the satisfaction of levelling a character 1-60, exploring the vast world via foot and appreciating it, venturing into Molten Core and beating the shit out of Ragnaros for the first time and not managing to cross the bridge in Alterac Valley because of the opponents’ team-work and co-operation.

Blizzard cocked all that up for me. Over the years the game has just gone too easy. I recently scrapped playing it for Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Anyhow, Warcraft seems to just go backwards. It gets easier to make up for the younger audience, meanwhile ruining the experience for more… well, experienced players. My last night in WoW consisted of a “pick-up group” with nine strangers, each bad-mouthing each other. We zerged a raid and cleared the bosses without any prior knowledge of the tactics – in vanilla we’d be castrated by Blizzard for that type of stunt. Nothing like simplicity, right? I feel as though my intelligence has been insulted.

Not only that, but they’ve only just made an advert with Chuck Norris, years after the jokes were at their prime. Blizzard are holding back on us - I’m pretty sure  we all could use a personal time-machine. Admittedly, though, the ad is pretty badass – check out the picture below.

Where else can you get that sort of goblin-kicking action? Well, there’s one of two answers – either you’re a rogue, or you’re playing a Pandaren Monk.

I’m not going to hate on the Pandaren race. It’s pretty sound, lore-wise, and the game is in need of another hero class to over-power and unbalance the rest. Remember Death Knights at the start of WotLK? That’s essentially what we’re going to be experiencing again: lagging in the starting areas and a surge of black-and-white fuzzballs rolling around each time you turn about.

No, they aren’t copying Dreamwork’s Kung Fu Panda. Play WC3 (I think, I don’t recall all the old WC games) and they’re in the lore. Don’t hate on the races.

Although I’m skeptic on WoW’s future, I’ll probably log back in for Mists of Pandaria, if only to see the new talent system, race, class, Pokémon Battles (yes, that’s a real thing) and the new areas. I do foresee a plentiful amount of characters with a variation on the name “Po,” though.

But for now I’ll focus on my Sith.

Peace out,

-L.A

Clover here, I might have spoken too soon about Larten. I have been looking forward to making this for so long because it’s my time to rant for many paragraphs. Granted, the story is very good and it was definitely interesting enough to earn an over the top rating. The whole crazy person setting made it incredibly “What in the hell?” That was my reaction anyway. Especially when he was with the guy in the cave and Reznov came out of nowhere and the other guy acted like Reznov didn’t exist. It kind of made me feel uncomfortable but maybe that’s what they were aiming for (Swift! That’s his name!) What I can’t understand is how could one man perform the actions of two, regardless, it’s OK. Now the gameplay, this is going to be fun my friends.

FIrst thing I want to say is that the gameplay is bollocks. Shooting, running, knifing, performing sexually, you name it, it wasn’t made well. A team of highly trained monkeys could have done a better job at the design phase. Wait, I take that back, it’s Treyarch, it is a group of highly trained monkeys. Moving on. I would like to touch upon the visuals please. Don’t know why I’m asking you, but yes, I will now talk about the visuals. The game is ugly, it is grimy, unfinished and unpolished. The humans look like they have dirt smeared all over them and frankly I don’t like it when characters look like they’ve just trodden through a muddy jungle, probably running away from a Lion or something. Who cares they look dirty. When I say this I don’t mean the Vietnam soldiers, I talk about people like the president as well and the government officials going with you. Good writing doesn’t justify lazy visuals. They should have concentrated more on making the game look at least a little bit more pleasing to the eye. They’re using Infinity Ward’s engine so why can’t they utilize it as such? Well I say that, again one is Infinity Ward and the other is a team of highly trained monkeys.

The gameplay is terrible, it’s as simple as that. The guns are so weak I’m surprised they don’t fire foam sticks instead of actual lead bullets. It’s called sponging. Somehow the enemies and other players online manage to do the exact same thing. Would someone please explain how somebody that is human and not a genetically modified super-person can take about 20 AK-47 rounds. It’s one of the most powerful assault rifles out there and you tell me even a rabbit can’t get killed with it in this game. The diving mechanic was added for no discernible reason so I don’t know if it was added at the last-minute or just something they believed that would “change Call of duty for the greater good,” but no, it just turned into a tool to destroy windows with things other than lethal weapons, yourself. And also, if you can nearly kill yourself with it, what’s the point in having it. Sure it adds a bit of fun, but if it has no gameplay value then there is no point in keeping it in, waste of memory, it could have been replaced with something that could have made it, oh let’s see, A GOOD GAME!

The multiplayer maps are incredibly badly designed, if you are some sort of defender in a game then the map will always favour the attackers in some way. There are less spots around the defense points in Black Ops maps, it’s as if every place you could enter through gives advantage to the enemy player by the contrast of extra hiding spots and entrances and it doesn’t offer you any help like maybe a machine gun position or an anti flanking route. This is basic lazy design. What annoys me most is the idiots who defend this game. The game, is TERRIBLE! This game is an example of one that makes you so frustrated you want to throw a controller through an old lady’s head. Bad idiot gamers! Very bad! Soon I wouldn’t be surprised if I tried to take over the world of games and call myself “The Dictator” and stop any game I find displeasing from being made. Regardless, the gameplay is stupid and anybody who defends said gameplay is simply, an idiot.

The voice acting is good compared to the rest of the turd pile. But in honesty Sam Worthington would probably be more praised if he worked as a janitor for the Superbowl arena, at least he’d be more appreciated, cleaning the seats of everybody to watch the big game, he’d be proud. But this, I think he keeps out of his CV. If he did, I’d understand. Gary Oldman sounds as Russian and manly as he always did voicing Reznov, his character and the actual growling, rough voice he gave the character made it all the more convincing. If only he actually existed in this game. And to whoever did the voice of President Kennedy, well done.

The only things I liked in this game are:

1. Zombies with Kennedy, Castro, Nixon and MacNamara. (Mainly for the dialogue.)

2. Wager matches, especially gun game. (Because I like gambling.)

3. The story. (Because it was interesting and sometimes ballsy)

In conclusion, don’t buy this game. The story might be good but it would have been better as a novel or a film. You shouldn’t go through six and a half hours of horrible gaming for one OK story. In the end it’s a badly designed, over the top James Bond style war shooter that has no value in terms of gameplay.

4/10

Clover out. Dead Ops arcade was frustrating too…

Clover here, again. I’m sure some of you are asking “Where the fuck is Larten?” I’m asking the same question. Anyways, Left 4 Dead 2, it’s abbreviation sounds like the younger brother of R2-D2. L4D2. Do you see it? I’m starting to ramble here so I’ll get on the real subject matter. I am going to start this review off with the words, I, fucking, Love, Left, 4, dead, 2.

I’ll start off the review with the characters. My favorite is hands down definitely Ellis. I found it annoying that the rest of the cast stopped him in his stories while he was in mid-ramble. I’d have proudly listened to his tales of great accomplishments. The game has provided me with many laughs from Ellis alone, I always played as Ellis for the fun part. And not just that he’s faster than others too. The 4 characters of the game have great chemistry with each other and the dialogue in it is just perfect. They all have interesting back stories and the relationships between each other somehow develop better over the hours you play better than characters you have in a movie. The game managed to be successfully well written without even trying as you can clearly see it is a multiplayer based game.

The levels reflected cliché zombie movie settings rather well. The only problem I had with the game was the airplane in the swamp fever level. That place… bad memories from that place. That fucking tank is a douche , so is that Charger. “MEEEEEEAAAAUH!” And I’m off the bridge… I can hate zombies sometimes. The rest of the levels had some frustrating parts such as the ledge on that hotel and the gas station in the rain level. I can never remember the names of these places. Is it Dead rain? I can’t remember. Well whatever at least the game tried to challenge you like most of the others just don’t. Seriously, some developers are just fucking lazy. Bad idiot developers! Very bad! Sure the levels are usually corridors in this game but at least you have other smaller places to explore at your will. They can be vast if you try to explore it a bit and they were cleverly made that you have to remember where to go or either you get lost or have to walk for 15 fucking minutes to where you were 2 minutes ago…

Do you want to know something interesting about this particular entertainment tool? It is fu. That’s right, finally another game that is genuinely fun that is also modern. Are you surprised? Of course not, it’s a fucking Valve game. I had nothing but a great tie playing this whole title. To me, this is rare. I usually play an incredible amount of horrible and frustrating games nowadays and when I get a masterpiece like this I just orgasm with joy. I would much rather play this than any modern-day shooter. Don;t mention Homefront, that’s based in like 2017 or something similar.

I have to keep on track here. The weapons, be it a combat shotgun (favorite) or saucepan, work well. Even though I find use for all of them they are all used for different tasks such as close range to long-range. The funniest part of the melee weapons is the guitar. Whenever I play Dark Carnival I always pick up a guitar and start cutting up those asshole zombies. For some reason hearing those strings breaking while bashing the nose off a clown is just… pleasing.

Buy it. Seriously, or it will be the guitar on your head next time.

Clover out.

Clover here. I think it’s about time I can write something about this beauty. Where do I begin. Let’s say first things third shall we? When I downloaded the game oh so many months ago I was looking forward to having a try at this magnificent piece of software. I think I got the game when it wa sin 1.5 or 1.6. I started in this game on medium difficulty as I usually would because frankly I find easy a pussy’s way out, I start every game I play on the medium or equivalent difficulty setting. The first thing I did was cut down a tree with my bare fist (somehow, don’t look at me, ask Notch) but took a few minutes to figure out how to make a crafting table. I figured out it was 4 wooden planks but at least a little manual would have helped.

I say that but in all honesty it’s what makes the game good.Not just what makes it good mind you, I’ll get to that later. You have to think logically how things work in this game, two ingots or blocks on a stick is a sword. three ingots on 2 sticks is a pickaxe. See what I mean? It’s all about how you think they should look and find out in the later time. You have to find out what you have to do, it’s not like other games where you wait for someone to hold your hand through the world like most video games these days.

I’m not sure why some uber shooter fans are reluctant to call it a game. They think anything without dead russians or guns are toys and should be ignored completely by the mass community. No! Bad idiot gamers! Very bad! Minecraft has turned into one of my most played games of the past year. Look across Youtube and you’ll see it has a huge audience and people constantly play it.

Now back to what makes it a game. I started playing it as i said on Medium. I hit some wood, made a table. The first things i crafted were all the tools in wood. I then dug a few patches of dirt in the ground so I can start a shelter for myself. I thought to myself in the darkness ”Oh well this is shit…” so I left the little hole and moved on to getting  a lot more wood and built myself a small safe haven. I loved that house but noticed it was rather bland in the sense there was nothing there. So what did I do? I went and explored. I found out that traversing the landscapes of this world made the game a lot more interesting because of the world generator. You weren’t exactly sure what things were going to appear in the lands. I found and started digging like there was no tomorrow. I managed to find some iron ore, I was excited because I had the feeling that I was already awesome and now i find some iron I thought even higher.  i picked up all of the ore started walking home and noticed I had no idea where the hell I was. That’s right everybody I got lost! I couldn’t find my way home. And of course the unthinkable happened. A creeper found me. I only knew about zombies at the time and had no idea what creepers did or what they bloody were. I thought it was a friendly mob that wanted a hug so as stupid as i can be, I walked up to it with open arms. Those arms being 2 miles apart and the rest of my body splattered across a hillside I thought “fuck this I’m making a new world!”

So I started again, I’ve been through about 7 worlds now but I’ve yet to have tried an adventure pack with a buddy on the servers. I have found this wonderful creative server advertised on 4chan so I think I’ll stick to that nowadays. I had one where i created a bridge above my hideaway with a neat little sign saying “Fuck Creepers!” on it, but knowing my luck, I was attacked by one whilst walking on my bridge and I lost my bridge and everything. It was a dark and depressing day. I then got to download the 1.8 patch. On this was the creative mode.

Up to today I’ve manage to build a series of walls, but not just any walls, large castle walls surrounding a few buildings and a farm. I feel like a king. Go on call me lazy, trust me I’d have gone through so many picks and also would have turned the whole world upside down looking for that amount of stone. It’s good that I can have creative mode where I can vent my creativity in an otherwise limited world. Minecraft is good because it’s simple yet creative. It makes you think about what you do but also doesn’t force you to do anything anyway, you could even go through the whole game without hitting anything if you so choose. Buy it, now.

10/10

Clover out.

Clover here. Today i went to my nearest Gamestation in the hopes of finding a 2 for £10 offer there, lo and behold there it was. It was glorious, all sort of games for me to play. I only had £20 at the time so I had to be wise which 2 I would buy. Well I gave it a thought and bought Homefront and Just Cause (We’ll get to Homefront later). So I went home, had an argument with my mother again for buying more games, she doesn’t understand I am a journalist at this, even though an amateur, it is still logical to have a large collection so I can have a large perspective on games. Just Cause because i really enjoyed the second one if you have read anything earlier on and Homefront because my friend from across the street told me it was pretty enjoyable.

So the first game I played was Just Cause. I was actually very excited to play it which unfortunately made me disappointed afterwards. I played around 20 or 25 minutes of it. I went through the tutorial, rescued some freedom fighter I didn’t care for and liberated a small settlement by a bridge by destroying barriers, killing policemen and capturing a flag. How original.When I look at the second and first one, I feel the second was much more enjoyable and the animations much smoother. The first game looks like a kid tried to make a stop motion movie with detailed plasticine. They actually do look that bad, the entire world actually look like they have been made of clay. I was absolutely not impressed with the introduction.

The aiming has really weird sensitivity but for some reason when you drive a vehicle it changes it’s mind and can’t tell when you’re about to run into another car. The mounted guns force you to move slower than a snail. The absence of a grappling hook made me slightly depressed because that meant no movement or chance of hijacking an enemy car at high speeds. Unfortunately I didn’t try the stunt jump but something tells me I shouldn’t have anyway.

After i played this, it was surprising that they made a sequel in the first place but it’s a good thing they did because that luckily redeemed the game’s name. Without the sequel, I wouldn’t have bought the first one afterwards. See? That’s how much I love the second one. Moving on. The positive is that the 100 kills achievement comes in pretty quick so already feel like you’re a bit of a hot-shot even though the game does the aiming for you. I don’t really see why they needed to add the over the shoulder aiming mechanic… pretty pointless really. If there’s no need for it then it’s a waste of memory space on the disc. The real question is; am I still going to play it? Yes, I’m not going to waste that bloody fiver. In all seriousness I will still play it regardless if it is inferior to its sequel. Just because it’s inferior doesn’t mean it isn’t fun. Just because it isn’t good doesn’t mean it isn’t fun.

Another positive is it doesn’t have lazy design, no real racism even though the characters are all different ethnicities so it doesn’t tell you to specifically target one group of race. It’s a very safe game to play. You play a Mexican killing and helping other Hispanics. I see no trouble for that… even though a white guy tells him what to do… yikes…

Oh yeah I remembered one little thing, what the hell is up with the driving, once you hit another car it’s as if all momentum has momentarily stopped existing for a few seconds. The brakes are way too sensitive too. Once you press that left trigger it’s as if time stopped. You stop on the spot, kind of annoying when you want to go around corners, how do those NPCs still keep going? Stupid question, they’re controlled by the game so they could actually do what they want…

From a first glance, the game definitely isn’t as good as its younger sequel but still good fun which is rather surprising because I usual;y hate badly made games.

Clover out.

Clover here, each week I’ll be bringing you guys the best bargains I can find from around the internet. This week it will be Deus Ex: Human Revolution Limited Edition on Xbox 360. The price online is £12.99 in gamestation. It is less expensive than the standard which makes no sense. Luckily, I bought the augmented when it was £15 in Gamestation after christmas.If you want that it’s £30 in the same store. For the PS3, the augmented edition is much cheaper at £23 on Amazon UK. The standard version for PS3 on the same site is £12 again while for the PC  it is £13 but is limited edition. So it’s your choice, it’s worth more if you buy the limited or augmented edition because you get  more bang for your buck.

Xbox 360 Limited Edition (Gamestation)

PS3 Augmented (Amazon)

PC Limited Edition (Amazon)

Clover out.

Hey guys, this is Clover again. I’ve realised that quite a few of you want games to be considered a medium of art. Now don’t get me wrong, there is nothing more I’d love than our medium to be accepted as a mature art form to display emotions, flaws and feelings in the human condition. I would like it if we were up there on the pedestal with music, literature and film. But let’s not get into that right now. I’ll have time to write that later.

Back to my main point. So to you who thinks that all narratives should be deep and immersive, to those who want all characters to be compelling and different. I will ask you a question, where did you start playing games, or how? You probably started the same way I did. On Nintendo. Face it, almost no Nintendo title has had those kind of titles, it’s either go save a princess or level up your little pet until he evolves. You see what I mean? You didn’t start off with games with the most complex of stories, you started off simple and fun. Sure when you get older, you might need more thought-provoking titles to ease your hunger. But the thing is, video games have been, and always will be, made for entertainment.

I admit, I like a little compelling and complex story myself but on the other hand, I like to let loose and find some fun to have. Within a world so foreign I don’t believe it’s real. If I don’t believe it can be real then it’s all the more fun knowing you can do anything in there and it won’t affect you outside the game.

I feel I’m contradicting myself here. I’ll get to the point. For you, people of art, there are games made for you. I’ll give you a small list of modern games suiting your needs, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, GTA4, L.A Noire, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout: 3 and many  more. But you have to realise that “dumb” games are made for entertaining the masses and make money. Games like Call Of Duty, Battlefield, Super Mario, Dead Space, Space Marine 40K,  Halo, Gears Of War and Just Cause.

Gamers, one day we shall have our No Country For Old Men, Macbeth or Mona Lisa. One day, we will have the game that brings us out of the dark and accepted by all as our own medium of art.

And for those of you who have shit for brains, go play Duke Nukem Forever.

Clover out.

Clover here again with another review.

So let us start out. We start in a bloody, blurry room where you’re in some dark cave or something and talking to your Dad. You design yourself and see your future unfold by the way you look, like an ugly c**t I might add. Sorry Bethesda but come on, your humans in this game don’t look the best. Then your mum dies… oh wow… that’s a bad start in life…

OK satire aside, the game is awesome and as soon as you start playing you’ll be hooked. Even though I enjoyed it thoroughly, I started off properly after my third try to know what to do with which weapons when and what amount of currency why. It is difficult to start off with, seeing as it was the first time for me playing a Bethesda game so I didn’t know what to do or where to go. After I played It for a few more hours I became used to the combat system and the mechanics. After that I could play it without fault, each enemy I killed was another added to enjoyment. That made me sound rather… psychotic, please don’t arrest me.

What I found not suiting the game’s style were the subway tunnels and the caves. It’s not I have something against them; it’s just that the game shouldn’t be creepy or eerie. The vaults themselves were creepy enough and when you were walking around you felt as if something was there watching, following or about to jump out and attack you. But the darkness of the situation you’re in balances that out seeing as basically mankind has reached its end. The V.A.T.S might make you feel lazy due to the simplified combat but it is a great aid in actually getting some kind of damage on your opponents. Honestly, the more I tried to shoot the buggers outside of V.A.T.S the more bullets were wasted.

The story is as good as any game can have and the voice acting is well done, especially in the likes of Liam Neeson but unfortunately because of the story, the game is a little too linear for my liking. I enjoy a bit of freedom when it comes to deciding one’s fate. Seeing as it is an open world Bethesda game, obviously it is littered with glitches. I haven’t encountered many on my journey through the wasteland, but the glitches go by forgiven as the sheer greatness of the game outshines the flaws.

Another great thing about this game is the feeling you get at the end when you discover you’re the saviour of humanity, you save the lives of every living human and monster you like (if you so choose). The way you do this of course is monitored by the game’s morality system known as the Karma meter. The meter determines how characters act around you and what speech options you get in conversations. To me, it makes no difference to the way I played it, I always ended up doing the right thing and I’m always the good guy in the outcome. I can become bad but it’s just not in my nature.

The one thing i noticed was, the quest Oasis. I kept him alive. Now in the game, it registers as good karma but I don’t believe this, the fact that Harold and Bob suffers as they live longer is to me, a sense of torture. He tells you he wants to die, from what I’ve learnt in the Fallout Wiki and the game itself (http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Wiki) he’s lived for over 2 centuries and if you keep him alive you don’t ease his suffering. I kept him alive to see if I could get a lower karma but no, if you force him to suffer then somehow it’s good. But on the other hand, the immersion in this game is amazing. When I had Harold given the life-giving thingy. I actually felt really bad about prolonging his life. It’s the same with Megaton after I blew it up on my first play through. I loved the people who lived there, apart from moira, she can go suck a pipe… but yes I thought everybody there were great except for that thing where they stare at you in the whole conversation. But yes, when I nuked it, I felt like a monster. There was a pain somewhere in my head when I did it. I had such a weighing guilt in me so I had to start the game again. It can suck you in so easily, not only with the looks but the personalities as well. Fallout 3 has taught me not to nuke people. Everybody, it’s a bad idea, trust me.
I give Fallout 3: 9/10

It might not be perfect but it is a shining example of a great RPG that is matured with experience and has time invested into it by a great studio. It proves a game doesn’t need good visuals to be a great one.

Clover out.

It’s no secret that Dragon Age: Origins is my favorite game. To that extent, it’s slightly possible that I’m biased towards anything BioWare tosses at us. The Mass Effect games effectively kicked ass, but they lost a lot of respectability when they sold out with the sequel to Origins.

As resentful as I am for DA:2, it’s about time I commend them on their more recent release, Star Wars: The Old Republic. So far the game is good. My only issue with it is the toll it takes on my machine to work, but it’s a small price to pay to kill things with my morally-ambiguous twi’lek Jedi Sentinel. Hell, that’s a mouthful.

Firstly, SW:TOR is fantastic in quite a few ways. It’s the most immersive MMORPG I’ve played (so far), but there’re a few setbacks, primarily the amazing quality of graphics. I’ve got to be honest, I made the rookie mistake of “Oh, my PC handles WoW perfectly. TOR should be a walk in the park.”

It isn’t.

The detail is really good, and the textures look sublime. The downside is that it really degrades the frame-rate quality and therefore overall satisfaction if the settings are put to too high. I’m personally using a NVIDIA GeForce 8600 chip which generally did the trick on WoW – it could handle the shadows, textures and pretty much the view distance up to a medium setting, which was good enough. On TOR it’s different altogether: on medium settings I only got a single frame every several seconds.

I just turned the shadows off. Yes, it looks tacky when your Twi’lek Jedi Sentinel is somehow immune to light displacements but that’s the price you have to pay to slice up droids freely or fall down an elevator shaft and discover what happens when a Force-sensitive humanoid alien collides with the elevator (which is now at the bottom of the shaft) from a high point with the effect of gravity quickly bringing it to terminal velocity, which was essentially my experience.

The classes are fun, the races look good, customization doesn’t leave much to be desired and the voiced dialogue just rocks. Unfortunately it’ll be a while before it reaches its prime, as it’s still in the growth stage. I can’t talk about an MMORPG without mentioning WoW, which’ll be it’s main competitor.

Now I’m waiting for my euphoric merging of Blizzard, Bioware and Bethesda. Bethware Blizzard, or something.

-L.A

I’m not sure where to start with this one. Fallout New Vegas is probably my favorite game in the series so far, even for it’s flaws:

Bethesda have this thing that, when you talk to characters in any of their games, time stops and you’re forced to look the NPCs in the eye. They fixed this in Skyrim, their latest installation in the Elder Scrolls series, so perhaps we’ll be able to look away while Victor is speaking to us in the next Fallout game. God only knows.

As far as the gameplay goes, it’s pretty much the same as the last game in the series. the Vault-tech Assistet Targetting System (or VATS) pretty much does all your shooting for you. In fact, the main distinction (or, at least, factor that separates it from it’s predecessor) is “Hardcore Mode.”

So far, in every RPG that I’ve come across, I’ve never had the option to purposely starve my character to death. Nor deny him sleep, water or any of the necessary modes of protecting himself/herself from radiation sickness and the problems that incurs. Hell, F:NV takes “roleplaying game” to the next level.

Another benefit as far as I’m concerned is the Wacky Wasteland perk you’re given at the beginning. It warps the game into a funhouse of culture references, alien blasters and shows you the reality of Indie’s stunt from the recent movie, Curse of the Crystal… whatever (the name doesn’t come to mind, nor have I really had any interest in the Indiana Jones movies). The story is… flawed, to an extent, but the multiple endings are more-or-less satisfying and the quests are fun, one of them [SPOILER] sending me out to a robot-manufacturing plant to reprogram a robot into a sexbot… upon reprogramming, you’re given the option to test it out.

I took it.

So, in conclusion, Fallout: New Vegas has a mixed reception from me – it uses the same mechanics as F3, but as a role-player game it’ll be one of my favorites, at least until Bethesda re-invent Skyrim with the ability to starve my wood-elf.

-L.A