‘S funny because a week ago I was getting kinda sick of getting nowhere in Fallout 3. Turns out that despite the fact its an open world game that scales enemies with you, there is definitely a lot to be said for sticking to the script rather than just wandering aimlessly. Now I’m back on track and have banished the thoughts I had a week ago of giving the game away after 10 hours.
10 hours was as much as I got into Oblivion, but I later regretted not keeping the game and going back to it later. Fallout 3′s setting is much more palatable to my more SF influenced mind. Cyrodil as fun to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. Not to say post-apocalyptic Washington DC is much better, but it just speaks to me more than pseudo Tolkien. I’m glad I left a bit of a buffer in between playing Fable II and this because my lack of attention and disposable time meant the commitment you need to make in order to get the most out of Fallout 3 is large.
Fallout 3 is definitely not a hopeful game. You can’t save the world because its already been mostly destroyed. So there’s often a hint of sadness in a lot of your wanderings. If emo teens ever discover this game, there’d be a severe razor blade shortage worldwide. I’m invested enough in the game now that its currently my intention to finish the main story. We shall see. Looks like Prince of Persia and Banjo will have to wait a little longer. There’s not a shitload of new games I’m interested in coming out (apart from Killzone 2) so maybe there’s nothing to be gained by rushing.
Day of Defeat Source has been getting the afterwork PC gaming bug out of my system. There’s maybe one server I can connect to, though I’d probably prefer to go and give the older Call of Duty games a bit of a spin but there’s not a huge community for those anymore. For some reason, anytime there’s a major change to DoD, there’s always a TF2 update at the same time. Why- because in many ways TF2 is a very similar game. I have some time each day where I have a high powered HP PC as my timewaster and I’ve been trawling Steam for some interesting older games to play but nothing’s really taken my fancy.
What the hell is Dead Spacebeef you may be asking? Its a horizontally scrolling shooter for the iPhone and iPod Touch and its free.
You basically touch the screen above or below your ship to control vertical movement and run your finger over the waves of enemy ships that swirl around you Galaga style. If you run your finger over the enemy fighters, your missiles lock on and fire once you let go of the screen. You can fire off a power up charge by holding your finger on your ship and letting go. That’s about it.
It looks rather spiffing and since its free and every man and his dog has an iPhone (or more likely, his wife), there’s no reason not to check this out.
As I write this, I am close to the end of Gears so I won’t speak about it too much other than to say this is really a much better game (for me) than the first. The first wasn’t bad but it felt like a slog to get through the game (even on casual). Gears 2 has none of the crappy bits from the first game that I hated- Krillitane and those blind Brutes who charged you.
There are other diversions such as driving a tank, manning turrets and a reaver chase as well as boss battles that aren’t just shoot 50 mags into a big sonovabitch. But basically this is a third person shooter at its finest. The next Max Payne (and Uncharted 2, while I think of it) have some catching up to do.
Controller1.com contributor Cameron held a little soiree last weekend and we cracked open the plastic toys and rocked out to Guitar Hero World Tour. We loved it and although we plan to focus test it soon enough, we all want to play it a bit more before we do so. As you see from this next podcast, we aren’t the most tuneful trio (well, better than The Police at least) so the eventual World Tour show will be epic in its disaster like qualities.
I’ve been attempting to play drums. I’m a sound guy in real life but drums have always been something that’s alluded me. I was hoping the drums with GHWT would help my rhythm a bit but the drums aren’t sensitive enough to make a decent MIDI controller.
The make your own song thing is rather crappy to use compared to Garage Band or Logic or Cubase, but then I find simplistic sequencers a pain to use. For many people, its great and I applaud this feature. But imagine a PC based program where you could import your own tracks if you have access to them (like you own indidual mulitrack ecordings with separate Bass, Guitar, Vocals and drums.
But then Activision would be out of business.
So I hope to play more GHWT before we focus test it and finish Gears 2 this weekend. Two more games have turned up- Little Big Planet for PS3 and Call of Duty World at War for PC.
I’m primarily a console gamer these days as I don’t have a gaming PC at home anymore but I now have a beast of a work machine that can run PC games at a decent clip so CoD WaW is getting a run on PC. If I end up wanting to play more multi at home, I will pick up a 360/PS3 version as well but for now I think the PC will soothe me. I have the Cod1 and its expansion, CoD2 (my all time favourite multiplayer game) and CoD4 on PC. I also have CoD 2, 3 and 4 on 360 and have also played some of the last-gen only cod titles on Xbox1.
So, yeah. I’m a CoD whore. Whether I become a CoD WaWhore, is another thing entirely.
