Posted on Jul 12, 2010 under Counter Strike |
Resistance 2
Score: 5.7
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Genre: First-person shooter
Single-player length: 10 hours
Difficulty: 6
Developer: Insomniac Games
Publisher: SCEA
Release Date: 11/4/08
Pros
- Large number of enemies on screen without slowdown
- 8-player co-op with addictive experience system and classes that rely on each other
- Skirmish mode constantly changes the game’s objectives
Cons
- The majority of the campaign sets you against 2-3 very generic types of enemies
- Only one boss requires you to approach the game differently
- Co-op’s extremely large enemy forces noticeably slows down the pace of combat
- Very little multi-player objective or mode variety
by Rabid Rabbit
There are so many first-person shooter games made every year that many times it’s hard to differentiate among them. Some games, such as Call of Duty: World at War, offered varied gameplay that requires you to react to different attacks in varying environments with a wide range of weapons, vehicles and powers, but Resistance 2 is not one of these games. Both the campaign and multi-player game modes are extremely repetitive by simply marching out the same generic enemies thousands of times and supplying you with very few interesting weapons to deal with them. Co-op offers the best gameplay because you can earn powers through an addictive experience system, but even its gameplay slows to a crawl as you face an endless stream of the same boring enemies. It’s best to avoid this game and spend your time with other far better shooters on the market that offer a much more complete package.
Resistance 2 follows up where the original game left off. You play as Nathan Hale, an American soldier that is partially immune to an infection threatening to transform the human race into monstrosities called the Chimera. You’ve managed to slow the infection in England and now must bring the fight to America’s shores. Throughout the campaign, you’ll be shipped to various parts of the world to find the problem’s source and stop the threat once and for all.
While there are an adequate variety of enemies in Resistance 2, the problem is that a great majority of the game’s campaign is spent fighting the basic Hybrid soldiers over and over again. While you are sent to various locales, including swamplands, enemy bases, inside capital ships, and large cities, none of the levels are unique from anything you’ve seen in other shooters. While there are many weapons, only a couple of them actually differ from other shooter’s arsenals.
Gears of War 2 is an example of a game that ensures you don’t see the same enemies repeatedly. Every level varies its pacing by including squads comprised of different enemy types. It also makes sure to let you fight them in various ways, such as in vehicles, with melee attacks and letting you use enemies as human shields. Many enemies also require different ways to defeat them as well, which also helps keep you from getting bored. Resistance 2 never strays from running and gunning down enemies on foot.
The few enemies that differ from the regular Chimera troops appear far too infrequently in the game. You’ll fight some Chimera a couple of stories tall, some large spider robots, and robot drones that attack in packs, but none of the enemies have really unique weaknesses or attack patterns to set themselves apart from the rest of the game. You just need to shoot the bigger enemies more to lay them down. The only unique enemies are the Chameleons that are invisible until the moment they lunge to attack you, which leaves them vulnerable to your shotgun blast.
There are also some large shielded robots that require all of your squad to focus their firepower on to stand a chance at overloading their shields. You’ll also encounter some creatures that try to sneak up on you and blow themselves up to cause massive damage. It’s best to shoot these guys while they are still in the midst of your enemy to use the explosive attack against them. These explosive Chimera were fun to fight, but they literally appeared only twice in the entire game.
An example of a game that actually makes combat interesting is Dead Space, which creates glaring weaknesses that can be exploited such as shooting enemy limbs to extol a greater amount of damage. This gameplay mechanic actually makes you think about combat differently and approach combat by targeting specific body parts to improve your efficiency rather than just blindly shooting enemies.
There are a few efforts to break up the repetitive run and gun gameplay, but none of it is novel or interesting. There are a few turrets that cannot be destroyed by shooting them. You must sneak behind cover to manually shut them down from their rear controls. There are also some deadly Chimera fish that will instantly kill you, so you’ll need to time your jumps between platforms to ensure you don’t fall into the water they swim in. The Goliaths are gigantic robots that you destroy by shooting the engines on their backs. They look really cool, but the mechanics of killing them involves only one shot. These unique creatures are pretty cool but you’ll only encounter them one or two times in the entire game.
The first Resistance game introduced a couple of new weapons, and this sequel introduces a few new weapons as well. In the first game, you could carry several weapons, but now you can only carry 2 weapons at once. This game design introduces a layer of strategy because you have to decide which weapons will serve you best in various parts of levels. The Bullseye returns with its erratic fire that can be focused on a single creature with its secondary fire option. The Augur is still the most interesting weapon. It lets you see enemies through walls and it causes more damage if you fire through walls to dispatch your foes. It also has a secondary fire which erects a temporary shield. The Far Eye is a sniper gun that shoots 5 rounds to dole out damage from a distance on the Chimera.
One of the new weapons is a huge gattling gun with a secondary fire mode that deploys a shield with a longer deployment time than the Auger. The Splicer is a new weapon that sends saw blades at enemies and works best in close quarters. You also have your standard issue grenades and grenades that spit out spikes at nearby enemies.
The bosses at the end of levels offer the only meaningful change of pace to the game, but even these monstrosities aren’t very memorable. A couple of these big nasties require unique methods to kill them. Unfortunately, most of them don’t have any glaring weaknesses, so you’ll just need to mindlessly shoot any area of them to eventually dispatch of them. It would’ve been nice if these monstrosities required you to exploit a weakness or at least learn their attack pattern to further differentiate them from the countless other Chimera that you face in the game.
One level ends with a massive squid attacking you from the water as it tries to tip you off a platform into its massive maw. He looks different than other Chimera, but all you need to do is unload on him until he eventually dies. There’s a huge spider-like Chimera that spits out smaller hatchlings, but all you have to do is keep moving and firing at him until he succumbs to your attacks.
One of the few unique enemies is the Leviathan, which is a Chimera who is the size of King Kong. As you fight him, you’ll have to defend yourself as he picks you up and tries to eat you, run from some of his attacks, and finally use the environment to finish him off. Even the game’s final boss isn’t very interesting. It isn’t completely obvious how to deal with him, but the game actually tells you what to do, which removes any novelty the fight could have offered.
While a couple of multi-player modes are initially fun, they also follow the repetitive nature of the campaign. The main weakness of the competitive modes is that there are very few modes to play. The game modes include deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag (called “Core Control”), which are so generic that they are barely worth even mentioning. Only the Skirmish mode is worth your time.
In Skirmish up to 60 players are split up into twelve 5-man teams. Each team competes to complete varying random objectives that change as the match progresses while opposing teams vie to stop their progress. Objectives change as you play through the match, which creates a frantic game where players are constantly trying to gain and regain the upper hand as tasks are changed. You may start out fighting to control a key location, later may have to defend it and could finish the match by needing to eliminate a high priority target. As a match reaches it finale, all of the teams are funneled into one central area where a large war erupts to finish the match.
Initially the mode is quite fun, but there aren’t that many objective types to complete, so many matches feel very similar. Online matches would have been much better if more weapon, vehicle and power variety was included. It also would have helped if players could choose among more unique player types with different strengths and weaknesses to reduce the redundancy of repeatedly shooting the same enemies. More imaginative modes, such as the numerous modes in Call of Duty: World at War, also would have made it a better game.
The co-op mode requires up to 8 players to work as a cohesive team of interdependent classes to complete varying objectives in levels modeled after the campaign’s stages. Each player chooses among three different classes that are similar to those used in other class-based co-op games, such as Counter-Strike. In order for a team to succeed, each class needs to be represented and perform their unique abilities well to better the team.
The medics can drain enemy health and use it to heal teammates. Soldiers can soak up tons of damage, erect a shield to protect the team and fire large gattling guns to deal large amounts of damage. The Special Ops player is the only source of ammo refills for the team and can deal damage from a distance with their Fareye rifles. No team can survive without having a balanced group of each class. The resulting teamwork with varying classes and abilities really helps push the mode beyond what other co-op games provide, such as Left 4 Dead where every character is identical.
The game balances matches by increasing the difficulty as teams grow in size by increasing the number of enemies you face. A side effect is that you will repeatedly face hundreds of the same generic enemies, which is the same problem the single-player campaign suffers from. Your progress also moves at a snail’s pace as your team frequently must stop for several minutes to gun down large enemy squads. Similar to the Skirmish mode, there are also a limited number of objectives available. The game may choose them randomly to make each match unique, but you’ll quickly notice the monotony.
While games can easily get monotonous, the game’s experience and abilities system does provide some variety. For each kill and objective you accomplish, you gain experience to unlock some advanced abilities, weapons and stat boosting gear. For instance, the soldier can gain the Ironheart ability to reduce the amount of damage he takes. Experienced medics can use the Ring of Life ability to create an area that regenerates health for the troops in the area. The experience and skills system is similar to Call of Duty: World at War, but lacks the same level of depth.
It’s quickly evident that the developers were focusing on ensuring the game has a very high presentation quality. Many levels show massive capital ships flying in the background as you fight on the ground, towns are filled with Chimera sacs waiting to erupt with newly converted humans, or landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Many of the game’s level settings are truly epic and make you really feel like you are part of a massive war. Frequently there are 20-30 enemies on screen at once and the game never suffers any framerate slowdown issues. As you’d expect, the innumerable enemies and gunfire all sound excellent and lend that extra layer of realism to the battles you are fighting amongst.
Resistance 2’s campaign adeptly creates a grand setting for its campaign. While the grand setting may inspire you, the actual gameplay will bore you as you constantly face the same enemies that fail to differentiate themselves far too often. Overall the game’s focus on simply throwing thousands of generic troops at you gets very repetitive in all of its modes and falls short of other shooters, such as Call of Duty: World at War and Gears of War 2, that provide a better array of weapons, enemies, gadgets and varied multiplayer modes to ensure the experience rarely gets stale.
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Posted on Jan 13, 2010 under Other |
Farmville Secrets Review may be the fastest growing Facebook game ever. It was only released in July and in August, over 33 million people played it. What’s the secret of its success?
Maybe it’s just because it’s summer, but we seem to have got farming on our brains. Look at the top 25 games on Facebook in August.
That’s four farming games in the top 25, with Farmville at #1 and Farmtown at #3. Farmville is only two months old, but it had 33 million unique players in August.
Yes, you read that right. 33 million players.
Click Here For Farmville Secrets Instant Access Now!
According to ComScore (via TechCrunch), Facebook had 340 million unique visitors in June (although Facebook only acknowledges 250 millon), which means that around 10% of all Facebook users played Farmville Secrets Review last month.
That’s a phenomenal success. I argued in July that Zynga may have overtaken Yahoo! Games to be the largest games “site” on the Internet. With this latest performance, I think that there can be no doubt that Zynga has claimed that crown.
The six secrets of Farmville’s success
Farmville came out at around the same time as Playfish’s Country Story which, while doing well, has only achieved 4 million users, 16% of the size of Farmville’s playerbase. Farmville Secrets Review has got six key elements absolutely nailed, and it’s reaping the rewards of its clever, viral design. So what are they?
1. The joy (and shame) of gifting
Gifting was one of Facebook’s earliest memes. When Facebook first emerged, it was about “poking” your friends and giving them virtual beers or dogs.
Zynga has cleverly picked up on this. When you visit your farm, the first screen you see is not a picture of your farm, but a list of gifts that you can give your friends. In many games, this screen would say “invite your friends to play this game”, a thinly-veiled attempt to get you to spam your mates. Zynga turns this on your head by asking you to send them a gift.
Gifting is particularly clever because it evokes an ancient anthropological need that is common to almost all cultures: the need for reciprocity. If someone gives you a gift, you have to reciprocate. It might be writing a thank you card, or getting your round of beers in, or taking a bottle of wine to a dinner party. Across all cultures, there has to be an “exchange” of gifts.
So if someone sends me enough Farmville gifts (and the default message asks me to send a gift back, to press the point), I’ll feel honour-bound to give them one back.
Much better than spam.
2. Farmville gifts have value
The objective of Farmville is to build a thriving farm. You spend money to dig plots, plant crops, buy animals and plant orchards.
Trees and animals are expensive. They look pretty but it’s hard to justify the investment compared with growing strawberries. But look! Your friends are sending you all these expensive trees and valuable animals. Aren’t your friends thoughtful?
Click Here For Farmville Secrets Instant Access Now!
Unlike the original virtual beer or birthday cakes, gifts from my friends in Farmville Secrets Review enhance my enjoyment of the game. In fact, the more gifts I receive, the better my farm looks and the more fun I have. So it is in my interest to:
Invite as many of my friends into the game as possible, so they give me presents
Give them all presents as often as I can so that they give me a present back
That’s viral marketing at its most brilliant.
3. Farmville gifts cost me nothing
Here’s where Zynga departs from the real world: sending a gift costs me zilch. I can only send them sporadically (I think it’s once a day), but it costs me nothing more than the time it takes to select an avocado tree and the friends I want to send it to. My cash reserves stay the same, but I have just asked a dozen people to send me something worth real value. Aren’t Farmville gifts wonderful?
4. Farmville doesn’t really bother with levels
There are levels in Farmville: you can’t buy certain crops or a combine harvester until you reach a certain level. But the real limitation is cash. And you can get more cash by playing more often. (In contrast, Playfish’s Country Story, which I generally prefer, has pretty strict limitations by what level you are, and you don’t level up very fast). So the size of my farm is dependent more on how many friends I have who are sending me gifts and how often I play. This makes it very easy for me to keep coming back to Farmville.
5. Choosing what crops to plant matters
Strawberries grow very fast in Farmville-land. Only four hours in fact (whereas wheat takes three days). But there is a quid pro quo. Strawberries wither and rot quickly too. If I don’t get back in time to harvest them quickly, then all my work goes to waste. So as well as choosing crops based on their in-game value, I choose them based on when I next expect to play. I vary them, so that I have fast-growing and slow-growing crops, because that way there is something to do every time I visit my farm.
In other words, I control my own gameplay experience which makes me feel a sense of ownership of my farm, and means that I want to return to check on it often.
6. If you don’t return frequently, your crops wither and die
With Country Story, you have to visit frequently to water your crops. If you don’t, they “pause” their growth, and won’t start again until you water them.
Farmville is harsh. Fail to harvest their crops and they rot. Gone. Money down the drain.
So you have to visit regularly, just to make sure that the game doesn’t punish you.
The moral of the story
There are two things that matter to making your social game a success: getting users to return frequently (stickiness) and getting users to invite their friends (virality).
Farmville has achieved this, and has 33 million users to prove it.
Click Here For Farmville Secrets Instant Access Now!
Posted on Mar 08, 2009 under Counter Strike |
Amongst the most famous games produced by the also famous Valve Corporation we find the one called counterstrike source which was supposed to be a modification to the half-life game. Just like all of the Valve’s games this is also a first-person shooter which puts the player right in the middle of the action.
Unlike Half-Life where the player has a golf against all sorts of aliens as well as undead creatures or team Fortress were the player joined hands with the rest of his team in order to defeat the other, Counter-Strike source takes the game to a whole new level by matching an antiterrorist group against a terrorist cell.
This game is played in missions for instance, the player may be asked to detonate a bomb and release hostages or the players may also be asked to eliminate a terrorist cell. This game is a complete remake which takes full advantage of Valve’s source engine, instead of using a port which leads to additional content.
Since the player is placed as an antiterrorist soldier the characteristic features of the weapons change accordingly, the source version features an improved radar which features a green-HUD translucent mini map which shows a lot more details compared to the previous version.
Counterstrike Source Hacks:
A Vac2 hacks has been released which offer players many advantages such as: an aimbot, a prediction system, silent aim, autoshoot, anti spawn protection so that the player wont shoot against spawn-protected players, vector adjustments, aim point, FOV and even a feature which allows you to aim at your own team.
This hacks are mostly distributed as executables inside a zip file which is why it is strongly recommended for those who download such content to run it through an antivirus program before unzipping it and executing it.
Posted on Jan 06, 2009 under Pro Evolution Soccer |
For all football fans, games such as Pro Evolution Soccer have given us the chance to play as our favourite team and take on the rest of the world. A new version has been released each year since its introduction to the market in 1998, and each time the graphics and special effects never let us down.
This year’s version is no different with extra special add-ons designed to make the game play even more realistic. The first, and most notable, is the deal they have with the Champions League. The game now has a fully licensed tournament complete with the traditional theme tune.
Looking a bit more into the game play, it is obvious that Konami (the makers) have put a bit more thought into special effects. It is the small details that make it a great game, for example, if it is raining you have to make sure your passes have more weight behind them or else they will not reach their target.
The other major addition to the game is the inclusion of “Become a Legend”. This is where you start as 17 year old that has just turned professional and trying to make it in the game. You only control your player during matches, which at first is strange for those who have played the game for a while. This means you have to make your own runs and get yourself in a position to score that all important goal.
The only quarrel that many people have with the Pro Evolution series is they only have the rights to have the official data for 2 teams, this changes each year and this year it is Manchester United and Liverpool. All the other teams have nicknames based on their geographical location.
Those looking to buy the game on the PS2 need to be aware that this does not have the Champions league on and due to the PS2 you do not get the full effect of the graphics. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 is a great present for football fans this Christmas. Pro Evolution Soccer 2009 one of the best football games ever, it is available on the PS3 and Xbox 360 where you can find the best deals online.
An experienced advisor in the financial sector, dealing with customers throughout Europe.
Posted on Dec 25, 2008 under Pro Evolution Soccer |
While ‘FIFA Soccer’ was reinvented to important issue on the on-going generation of consoles, ‘Evolution Soccer’ has fairly distributed along, banking on the late pattern to save it at the lead of the conference.
As we’ve heard in the outside two twelvemonths, that is intelligibly not sufficient any longer, and in ‘Pro Evo 2010′ we see the start signs of the series eventually getting its individual back and making to terms with the more hard hardware.
For example, in my basic 10 minutes with ‘Pro Evolution Soccer 2010′ I get Andrea Pirlo to play an excellently weighted little chip which Pato then slots home past a hopeless Van der Sar. AC Milan 1 Manchester United 0.
It is an experience that says most of what you need to know about ‘Pro Evo 2010′ – almost significantly, that ‘Pro Evolution’ is again about making the enjoyable game attractively.
By contrast, sitting down with ‘FIFA 10′, it had me rather a piece to feel the back of the net, ne’er mind playing so in style. Whereas ‘Fifa Soccer’ is proper a terrifically perfect and real footballing simulation, it doesn’t admit you to play Brazilian-way soccer as easy as ‘PES’ does – and that above each is what ‘Pro Evo 2010′ has working for it.
Whereas the player vitalities and soft cathartics still do not compare with that of ‘Fifa Soccer’, there are certainly meliorations this time round. The game depends and flows a bit better than what it used to. The holds also look harder and more nociceptive than earlier. Supply a simplified tactical management organization and a broadly slicker interface, and we’ve found a set of little promotions that add up to something material.
Better executed player card and squad style systems assist make the tactical side of matters lots softer than it’s ever been. While it is feasible to run ‘Pro Evolution’ without ever even considering around tactics, operating with the more serious face of things in ‘Pro Evo 2010′ is very repaying and certainly supplies a receive layer of depth to the experience.
As ever, on the pitch ‘Pro Evo’ plays a relatively fast game of soccer.
That told, when place alongside ‘Fifa Soccer SOCCER 10′ with its splendidly accomplished 360 grade move and its significant feel of player weight and momentum, one does feel there is a disconnect in gameplay pragmatism. ‘Evolution Soccer’ may be fun, but ‘Fifa Soccer’ is the real affair.
‘Pro Evo 2010′ also offerings a gorgeous solid Be A Legend mood, which permits you to control only a one player on the pitch as reacted to full 11 in your team. Be A Legend brings just about as good as ‘Ea Sports FIFA’s’ Be A Pro and has the gain of a high cam that leans to zoom out more intelligently than that in ‘Fifa Soccer’. Yet, Be A Legend, though a receive novelty, is hardly where you’ll spend almost of your time.
It is lots more likely you’ll spend your hours in ‘Pro Evo’s’ lots-improved live mood. Though instead stingy in comparison to ‘Ea Sports FIFA’ with its Live Seasons and the like, the merrier take on football does make for some extremely pleasurable on-line matches. I made experience some lag while meeting on PSN, but matches were never unplayable as they’ve been in previous years.
All that said though, it continues simpler to play exquisite soccer in ‘Pro Evolution’. And, after all, when you play a hot one-two, then scrap the ball into open space for an on-rushing forward to slide home cheekily, you’ll fall in love with ‘Pro Evolution’ – not for its reality, artworks, or greatest physics, but for its generosity toward your football-loving heart.
FIFA 10
FIFA SOCCER 10
PES 2010 Rocks
My name is Nicola. I live in Germany and I’m a fanatic soccer fan. I like all about european football.
Posted on Dec 10, 2008 under Medal of Honor |
Medal of Honor: Airborne is a PC, Xbox 360, and Sony PlayStation 3 exclusive centered around the World War II timeframe. The World War II premise has been done countless times. Since the World War II genre has been done a plethora of times, I am not going to go into too much detail about the storyline. The gameplay works like this: each mission begins with the gamer jumping out of an airplane and maneuvering his parachute to a specific location. This prevents the usual linear aspect of first person shooters. Players can control the parachute any way they see fit, but this might alter the experience. Landing at a dangerous area will almost guarantee an uphill battle; however, landing at a perfect place could give you an advantageous position. The parachuting part of the game is engrossing, and it works really well. I am sorry to say that it is all downhill after that. I am not sure if this was a glitch in the game, but I noticed that opponents re-spawn all the time. There was one particular moment in the game where I pummeled at least fifty enemies from afar, nevertheless they kept on coming in waves. It was an endless stream of adversaries. The artificial intelligence in Medal of Honor: Airborne is lackluster.
All of the foes that you will encounter in vehicles drive around like they are drunk. Do not even get me started on your allies.The teammates that you have will act like absurd clowns. I lost track of the amount of occurrences where I shot my own men because they walked right in front of my line of fire. To make matters worse, they intentionally run towards grenades. If my teammates see a grenade, they will say something like “fire in the hole” and sprint towards the grenade. I have not seen artificial intelligence this dismal since I played Black. Your opponents and teammates have the same IQ as George Bush. The majority of the gameplay is redundant: jump out of an airplane, run, point, shoot, rinse and repeat. Unrealistic physics really decreases the enjoyment in the game. I must have thrown three or four grenades at a building; regrettably, the building never exploded. No roof or ceiling catching on fire. Not even a scratch or a single dent on the building. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was immaculate and almost as if I had never even thrown grenades at the structure. This makes eradicating your rivals gratuitously difficult. The dreadful physics do not stop there. No, no, no. There is more. I remember raining grenades on enemies, and they were protected by a significantly thin piece of wood. How the hell does a small piece of wood provide cover for an enormous explosion? That is not my way of defining a realistic game. All I was doing in Medal of Honor: Airborne was going from point A to point B and killing an immensely asinine number of foes. Medal of Honor: Airborne does not have a bevy of bright spots. There are a few positives here and there (audio). For the most part, it is a rudimentary first person shooter. Nothing flabbergasting about the multiplayer at all (only 12 players online). Fortunately, gamers will only have to endure approximately seven hours of gameplay from start to finish. Falling down through the air with a parachute is not exactly death from above. Unfortunately, the parachute gameplay twist does not merit a real reason to buy this game. The parachuting element of Medal of Honor: Airborne is more of a gimmick than an actual innovation. It does not really add much originality to the game. The game is definitely not on the same level as Call of Duty. Medal of Honor: Airborne does not even come close to the same gaming experience as Call of Duty. Overall, it is an average game but not as amazing as Medal of Honor Frontline. I am being fairly generous when I even consider Medal of Honor: Airborne as being an average video game.
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