These Are The Games Of Our Lives

This post was removed due to violations of SOPA.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.3261:

Duke Nukem Forever… an essay.

I like this game a lot, on PC. On the 360, I can’t stand it.

Here is why.

The PC version is a much better game technically speaking. The framerate issues, the loading textures, and controls are all very solid. I played the 360 version for about 2 hours today and I have to say I am shocked. It took me about 40 seconds per loading screen to get to any actual gameplay compared to the 3-5 seconds it took on the PC. I tried installing the game to the harddrive and it didn’t relieve the loading times in the slightest, which is horrible to say the least. Why does this matter so much? Because this simple thing removes you from the world you so desperately wanted to get sucked into for all these years. Its disappointing, especially after seeing it from both platforms.

Maps: Every map is linear. There are really no secondary routes that you can go to achieve the same goal like in D3D, even in the first level of that game you had about 3 different ways you could get to the exit. This isn’t so much of an issue because of the amount of interaction within the levels. I was counting just how many things I could do in the first couple of levels and I was impressed with all the little things that you could find. Granted, I am not talking about secrets such as blowing up walls with pipe bombs but I am talking about the Ego Boosts. I can’t think of many games with the depth of player interaction within levels as displayed in this game. While it might seem pointless to some, I enjoy taking the time to find the little things like this in a game.

Weapons: Ugh, the two weapon system. Granted the developers probably grabbed this idea from Halo 1 while being designed earlier, which is funny considering that it pokes fun at the same game, it can be lame. While it is annoying that you can only hold two guns at one time, I also found that it doesn’t really matter that much in this game. You never really seem to have an instance where the weapon that you want isn’t within your reach and you never seem to run out of ammo of said gun either. This has two effects that I noticed.

1) On the easier difficulties it can make the game really seem sluggish, you never get that rush that you are going to die.

2) It makes the harder difficulties a lot more fun. In my experiences in the heavier spawn zones of enemies I was grabbing more ammo from around the room and was constantly being attacked from several different directions and had that rush that gets you into a game.

Popping some roids or drinking a beer on top of that to run around and just smash aliens with your fists/boots is a lot of fun too.

Another reason why the two weapons mode was choice, it seems, is for the multi-player. While carrying all the weapons would have been nice it really just comes down to a couple of weapons in the end anyways. All the really matters is getting to the heavier damage weapons the fastest and just blowing stuff up.

Multiplayer: I got tired of the loading times on the 360 version so I didn’t try it out yet but on the PC it ran REALLY smooth. I like the different maps they have, albeit they are small. Capture the Babe was a lot of fun and was even more so because of the size of the map. Having someone always attacking you it a much different pace than in CoD or Battlefield, where you have the far away spots that you can get away in. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, again just not needed in this type of game. I didn’t get to unlock much of the customization yet but it seemed decently varied.

Humor: In my opinion this is where the game shines, I had a smirk on my face pretty much the whole time while playing DNF. There were several instances where I was busting out laughing as well. While it isn’t a graduated state of comedy, it is very sophomore in nature which is expected. Its Duke. I love it.

In conclusion, none of the good features of this game matter at all when you don’t have a solid foundation to build it on. The PC is that good foundation. I had so much trouble getting into the world that I was being shown on the 360 that it almost made in unbearable to play. Which is such a shame. Growing up playing Duke3D with my dad on the N64 were some awesome memories from my childhood and I wanted to have at least SOME good times through XBL but I don’t think it will happen at this point unless it gets a pretty substantial patch soon. Nobody should have to wait 1 minute every 5-10 minutes to get back into a game. Not only is it boring to read the same tips every time and look at the same picture. It removes you from the world you are trying to get into in the first place. It is much easier to get absorbed into the game when you are playing the PC version, and should be the system of choice when playing DNF.

ronis asked: 1000000000 internetz for this beautiful music gentleman!

Thank you kind sir!

@Lulzsec

I have lost faith in Sony’s ability to secure my information. They have spent countless millions securing their products but it seems that customer information has fallen to the wayside. I figured that with the first attack Sony would shape up but it is obvious that this is just not the case.

Cheers!

Duke Nukem First Access Club Bonus!

Hello First Access Member,

As the launch date for Duke Nukem Forever approaches, we would like to offer a heartfelt thanks to you, the true believers who have already placed your bet on Duke with your pre-order, or Borderlands Game of the Year purchase. As a sign of our appreciation, Gearbox Software and 2K Games are thrilled to present every First Access Club member who has registered as of today the very first Duke Nukem Forever multiplayer downloadable add-on for free! Surprise! Thank you again for all of your support. We’re almost there.

Hail to the King, Baby!

Gearbox Software and 2K Games

I received this in my e-mail today. Hopefully everyone got there accounts setup before today.

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge (PC) Review

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge is like Gears of War mixed with Demon’s Souls… without the difficulty?

Let’s start out with the basics. You have two characters that you have the ability to control throughout the game. One is a melee fighter and the other is more of your ranger type character. They each have skill trees that focus mainly on their specific role, such as the melee character can upgrade the ability of his rage and the ranger upgrades her arrows. The gameplay is very simple, left click to attack, right click to aim/block. There is also a button for heavy attacks but I found myself rarely using it. You also can use magic abilities that can be upgraded as well. This abilities come in handy especially at the more powerful tiers.

The game is divided into chapters that are basically VERY linear level designs that have scattered enemies throughout. There are no times where you can really explore the levels and you have a button that can actually show you where to go in case you get lost in the straight forward design. The areas have items on the ground such as health and mana pots, revive vials, arrows and the occasional gold piles which also can drop from enemies. At the start you can hold only 1 of each potion but can upgrade that amount by finding secret items that increase your powers. Revive vials are used to… REVIVE others. You can’t use it on yourself or at least it never worked for me.

“You’ll see a lot of me…”

The puzzles of the games were actually, in my opinion, the best part of the gameplay. Some of them were simple fetch the runes that are hidden in the tomb, while others require lighting specific torches. On the ground there are fires burning and you can direct your PC controlled character to do certain tasks by pressing E. I found myself using my partner quite a bit to solve most of the puzzles as most of them seemed to require fire and arrows.

The gear is by far the most disappointing part of the entire game. You can hold so few weapons that you spend most of your time dropping your magic-expired weapon for another enchanted weapon. When you pick up a magic weapon they have about 15 charges in them that make them incredible. However, once you use those charges the weapons are a piece of wood. Literally in some cases. I found this very annoying, I want to be able to use a cool looking weapon the entire game! The weapons drop from weapon racks, channeling Diablo there, and can be either very useful or very useless. I found myself not upgrading my weapon several times after destroying a rack and wondered if I would ever find anything good. One good thing is that the armor that your character has actually changes your character appearance, which is nice! However it seemed to far in between and not as varied as I hoped.

The co-op play was decent. It hard to get your partner to do some of the things that you need them to do, and actually much easier to do with the PC as they are very competent in my experience with them. The check-point system is also pretty bad as well while playing on co-op and only the host gains that progression. Boo! I found myself much rather wanting to play with the computer, which is sad because this is an aspect that could have really made the game shine.

“Look at that things teeth! MWHUAHAHAAHAUHU!”

That’s not to say that this is a bad game. It is actually quite good. The story and the gameplay are very fluid and well done. The graphics are stunning at times, just ignore the mouths of the characters. Overall, I really enjoyed Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. I haven’t tried out the Map making module yet as it requires gold collection through the single player experience in order to unlock all the enemies for use. Pretty cool idea, but taxing.

To buy or not to buy?

I would say that from my experience with the PC version I could recommend this game to console players and PC players alike (this seemed to be a port of the console version anyways). It has its good and its bad points but most of the good really outshines the bad. It was never advertised as a game that had what I wanted in it so I can’t bash it for my personal feelings towards certain aspects. If you are looking for a decent co-op experience in the essence of Gears of War meets Demon’s Souls this might be just the game you’ve been waiting for. That is until Gears of War 3 or Dark Souls comes!

                                             

Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale (PC) Review

Man, Dungeons and Dragons: Daggerdale is a mixed bag. I was expecting exactly what I got with this game. A hack-n-slash with a little bit of DnD thrown into the mix in the similar vain of Champions of Norath and Baulder’s Gate: Dark Alliance for the PS2. DnD:Daggerdale is a pretty bare bones example of what a company can do with the rules of the popular table top.

For $15 this game has some decent gameplay. There are no customization options for the appearance of your characters features, however the gear that your character gets allows you to be unique from others. There are four classes that you can choose from; Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Mage. Each class is varied from each other enough to where playing each class is somewhat different.

You can level each character to 10, which gives them plenty of skill points and stat points to customize your character with. However, you can pretty much come close to maxing out most skills. The gear options are very expansive, borrowing much from the DnD universe. There are some pieces of epic gear that you can get and I noticed that they can have varying stats on them such as +33-36% reduced chance of getting knocked back.

The PC version seems fairly stable. The graphics are decent and a lot of options can be changed through manually changing the .ini files such as specific resolutions. The one major issue that I did run into was with the textures of quite a few items. They were seemingly completely missing. I was running around for a good portion of the game it seemed with a purple and white model of my character. It wasn’t game breaking but definitely annoying not being able to see my awesome gear.

“I like your textures!”

The best thing about this game is by far the co-op play. Three other players and yourself can join a game through Gamespy (eh) and can leave at any time without causing interruption to the other players. The lobbies are setup in a very simple manner and you can’t see which classes the other players are until you enter the game itself. You can use mics to communicate with the other players but I wasn’t able to figure out how to text chat with them. In the little time that I did play the multiplayer I didn’t experience much lag or very many bugs.

The music and sound effects are pretty much bargin bin, but there are some decent music. I could have sworn they sampled music from Terminator 2 in the mines, but besides that the grunts and stuff was pretty simple. The narrative cutscenes between chapters was pretty decent and the artwork was nice, but not having voice throughout the game was disappointing to say the least. I’d be happy to do some voice overs for you!

To buy or not to buy?

While the game can be fun at short spurts, it can definitely get tiresome if you aren’t a fan of loot grinds and simple quests. I would say that for the $15 price tag, you can have a pretty decent time with the game. If you are looking for that table top, deep role-playing experience you might want to move along.

- A quick edit for this post: After about 20 hours of gameplay my character file became corrupt and I am unable to load up the game with him. I would be wary of buying this game if you aren’t cool with losing your work haha.