Best VGM

Here’s the playlist.

By the way, the list is in no particular order.

I’ve currently got 5 songs in there, although, at the time of writing, the 5th video is processing.

Gears of War Review

There once was a time when the Xbox 360 really didn’t have any good shooters. Hard to believe, with great games like Left 4 Dead and Far Cry 2 on the system, but it’s true. Then, Gears of War came along, and is widely recognized as the first great shooter on the Xbox 360. Since it’s release in 2006, the Gears of War series has had a huge amount of fans. It even won Game of the Year for 2006 (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, anyone?). Since it was just about the most praised game on the Xbox 360 (maybe the most praised in this generation), I decided to check it out. Is it as good as people say?

The game takes place 14 years after Emergence Day. You play as Marcus Fenix, a former COG (Coalition of Organized Governments) soldier who spent 4 years in prison, and have been reinstated back into the Military.  You join Delta Squad and it’s your job to destroy the Locusts, who threaten to drive humanity into extinction. The story is by no means anything new, the gist of it is similar to loads of shooters, if you can swap the word Locusts with Aliens or Terrorists.

Unlike most shooters, a huge amount of emphasis in this game has been placed on the cover system. The game is what some call a “stop and pop” shooter, where taking cover is all too necessary in order to complete the game. To get into cover, you press A when you’re near a wall. You can get into cover against pretty much anything! The cover system is better than any other cover system I’ve seen in a game. One use of the system I found ingenious was on Act 2. There’s a car which is burning at the front. You have to stay in the light, so what you have to do is get in to cover and tap X to push it nearer to the Locusts. Anyway, in the cover-system, you can blind-fire. This works well for the Lancer, but not for some other weapons (such as grenades). You press the L Trigger to aim, and the R Trigger to fire. If you aim in cover, Locusts will be able to shoot you, so don’t aim constantly. When in a fire-fight with the Locusts, you’ll have to duck while running, by pressing A. Unfortunately, this is the fastest you can go. So, even when it’s not necessary to do so, Marcus will duck to run as fast as he can. It’s not a huge deal, it just feels clunky, and is an easy problem to spot. Such an easy problem, it makes me wonder why the programmers didn’t take some time to fix it.

There are a lot of different enemies in this game. The most common enemy is the Drone. The Drone is the equivalent to a human soldier for the Locusts, and are the soldiers on the front line for the Locusts. A horde of Drones can be challenging, but they’re not nearly as strong as some of the other enemies. Probably the most annoying enemy in the game is the Kryll. Kryll can only attack in the dark. If you’re around Kryll, you’ll have to stay in light, otherwise a horde of Kryll will almost certainly kill you. To stay in the light in some stages, you’ll have to shoot fuel tanks to make them blow up. Some of them are really hard to spot, which causes problems. And the next enemy is the Boomer. The Boomer has a huge grenade launcher which takes the majority of your damage. Boomers can take a lot of bullets before dying, so going out of cover isn’t a fantastic idea. And then we have the Berserkers. The Berserker is a very powerful enemy, and can only be killed using the Hammer of Dawn; an incredibly powerful enemy, which needs to be connected to a sattelite to fulfil it’s purpose. The Berserker is very fast, considering its size. It hunts by sound and smell, so steer clear of it’s range of attack, because f you touch it, you’re going to die. Easily.

There are a lot of guns to be used in the game, the most famous and over-used being the Lancer. The Lancer is an automatic rifle, with a chainsaw bayonet. You press B to use the chainsaw bayonet, but if you use it too much, smoke will come out of it and it will be temporarily disabled. Using it on an enemy looks cool, with an explosion of blood appearing on-screen, but if you’re on speed runs, or just don’t care too much about it, you’d probably do well to just use the shotgun.

Overall: 8.8

+ Superb graphics

+ A near flawless cover system

+ Some good voice acting

- The campaign is lacking

- The online is average, at best

- Running feels clunky

I had some debate on whether to give this a high 8 score (8.8 or 8.9), or a low 9 score (9, 9.1). As you can see, I chose the high 8 score. The game is very over-praised, the same applying for most shooters. It is still a very good third-person shooter, and one of the first on the Xbox 360. The campaign is lacking a bit for me. Not that I don’t have any friends to play Gears of War online with (almost everyone I know with a 360 has this game), but a very good campaign is what turns a good game into a great game. And, sadly, Gears of War doesn’t have that for me. What pulls it into the high 8’s is the great cover system and a solid online. There’s not too much to talk about in terms of online. It does what you’d think it would, and nothing more. Still, I strongly reccomend that you buy this game. Despite the problems I’ve mentioned, it’s at the very least good enough for you to rent it.

A few things

1) My Dazzle is going to be ordered this weekend. I was thinking of waiting until my birthday and letting my mum buy it, but my descision is now final.

2) I MAY do reviews on Gears of War and Animal Crossing soon. I may also start doing video reviews, Let’s Plays and other stuff once I get my Dazzle.

3) Another thing I’ve thought of doing is fan made trailers, capturing footage from DVD’s with my capture card, and finding the appropriate tracks from the int0rnetz.

4) I know have two computers with the suckiness that is Windows Vista. yay.

Grand Theft Auto IV Review

Grand Theft Auto, released in 1997 on the PlayStation, introduced the Free Roaming genre of video games. It since has become one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, up there with the likes of Mario and Sonic. The series was introduced to 3D back in 2001, in the game Grand Theft Auto III. 3D made the genre feel truly “free”, allowing you to do absolutely anything possible. Since the game was released numerous spin-offs were released, introducing new elements while improving on old elements.

Now, a “true sequel” has been released, and it seems like a fitting time to release the true sequel as this is also the first Grand Theft Auto game on the current generation of consoles. The series returns to Liberty City, the setting of GTA III and Liberty City Stories.

Niko Bellic, a Russian  man illegally immigrating to Liberty City, was told all sorts of amazing things about his cousin’s success. His cousin, Roman, had told stories of women, sports cars, and a huge mansion. Niko comes off the boat, only to find that Roman lied to him. The sports car is just Roman’s cab, the mansion is just an appartment in a poor state, and the women are only to be seen in strip clubs and dating websites. Roman’s in a lot of debt, so Niko has to help Roman out of his struggle. In short, Niko needs to earn cash to make a decent living in the city. By any means nessecary.

Grand Theft Auto IV introduces some new things to the series, while it perfects the shooting and driving that was featured in the previous games.  The added complications of San Andreas are now gone, whether you like it or not. I personally found it a chore to have to go to a resteraunt or go to the gym in between missions, so I’m glad these parts were left out of this game. You can still go to resteraunts, but its not as complicated as in San Andreas, it’s just there to increase your health when nessecary.

Grand Theft Auto IV also introduces the mobile phone to the series. This is used to access missions, you’ll frequently recieve phone calls for missions. The phone is also used for arranging  things with friends. You can play Darts, go Bowling, go to a resteraunt and go and do other things with your friends, or date, in some cases. If you want to keep good relations with these people, you’re going to have to go out with them in between the main missions. I’ve never had any fun while going out in the game, and it just feels like a chore.

Now, on to the main gameplay elements. First, the shooting. Shooting in this game feels much better than it did on the previous Grand Theft Auto games, where it just felt clunky. I’ll be going through the Xbox 360 controls for this. To aim, hold the left trigger. You can use the right stick to move the aim a bit. There’s a new cover system in this game, remeniscent to that of Gears of War. You press the Right Bumper to get behind something. You can get behind nearly anything, so in shoot outs, it’d be wise to park a car in a clever place if the shoot out is outdoors. You can pop your head out and aim, or you can just blind-fire.  Shoot outs don’t feel as much like a drag as they did in previous games because of the refined shooting mechanics.

And then we have the driving. Driving is done by holding the Right Trigger to accelerate, and the left trigger or A button to stop. This works flawlessly, and I think going back to the PS2’s driving controls could be hard for me as a result. The only problem: not effecting the controls at all, is the speed. Sometimes it can go a little too fast. I understand in a Ferari/Lambourghini (or at least GTA’s version of a Ferari/Lambourghini), but in a normal car, it just seems a bit wierd. Slowing down when you’re going that fast is really hard. In fact, 99% of the time you try to stop, you’ll just end up hitting a car. Another problem is how egotistical the police are in this game. If you even scrape their car, they’ll bump you up to a 1 star wanted level.

Speaking of the wanted level, police chases are a bit different now. LCPD now has a search radius, displayed on the games HUD. How big it is depends on how many stars you’re on. 1 star is not a problem, you can escape in about 2 minutes. 2 stars is still not a problem, but you’ll have to drive really fast (which I’ve already said has a few problems). And then we get to 3 stars, where the whole thing is just really annoying.It might even take you 5 minutes to escape the radius!

Now, let’s get on to the free-roaming. The free-roaming is not to different, it’s the same classic free-roaming you saw in the previous games. Now, there’s a little bit more to do. You have 3 islands in Liberty City. The first island is the poor-mans island, as I like to call it. The clothes shop there is OK, but you might be a bit annoyed that you can’t see Times Square or the Statue of Lib… I mean the Statue of Happiness yet. The second island is pretty good, it’s a middle-class area. And the third island is the same, pretty much. Not that it’s that bothering, you’ll probably want to do the missions, anyway.

This is the first GTA when I actually felt more like doing the missions over free roaming, and I see this as an accomplishment. The story is interesting enough to keep you going to the missions for more. The characters are interesting and funny, and Niko Bellic is a likable guy, unlike the protaganists in the previous games.

Overall: 9.7

+ A much more compelling story

+ They fixed the shooting

+ Stunning graphics

- Phone calls can be annoying

- Some cars are too fast

- Erm… Niko doesn’t always wear a helmet on his bike?

Hopefully you can see why I had to spend so long on this review. A lot of people think that this game didn’t live up to the hype. While this is true for some, it lived up to the amount of hype I had for the game. Was it overrated? If Metacritics review average is to be believed (9.8), then yes, it was a little overrated. Still, it is an amazing game, and one of the best games of this generation. Scratch that, it’s one of the best games of all time. My personal pick of game of the year 2008.

By the way: Ricky Gervais appears on one of the radio stations in this game. He’s the funniest comedian in the UK, so it deserves an honourable mention.

GTA IV

Just to let you know, I’m writing a review for Grand Theft Auto IV at the moment. I haven’t written a review in a long time, and there’s a lot to cover in this game, so I’m taking my time with this one. Also, I’m back to school this Monday, so if I haven’t finished by then, you could probably be able to understand if the review were to be on hold for a few days. That’s pretty much all I wanted to say.

A late happy new year from me, and I’m going to order to Dazzle from Amazon.co.uk over the weekend, assuming my parents allow me to.