Review: Battlefield 3

An explosion rocks me as I stagger before continuing next to my squad mates as we run towards our objective. "Take out the guy with the grenade launcher!" someone yells. I skid to a crouch and aim carefully down my sights at him. He is reloading to send another rain of death. I squeeze of a shot to his head and he drops, one less thing to worry about. I get back up and catch up with the rest of the squad that is all crouched at the base of a hill as everyone reloads and makes sure they are ready for the firefight we will face at the top of the hill. Suddenly a chopper flies over us and we all turn and open fire on it, the enemy clearly waited to play this card until they needed an ace up their sleeve.

I said I wouldn't do it but I did, I got caught up in the craziness that is Battlefield 3. However, after a stint in multiplayer I was convinced that being caught up was a good thing. While the game play is good, the graphics are better. So very pretty and well polished. At times I almost had to remind myself I was playing a game and not watching a news report from the front. After just a good amount of my night spent in the multiplayer I have found out which maps I love, which I hate, and which ones I hate but can't seem to stop myself from playing on them.


Single player is somewhat enjoyable, the story is more believable then Modern Warfare 2 and less ridiculous as it builds on the wars and situations we have in the world currently by using the easy option, Iran. I don't understand why more games haven't gone this way recently. Why create a fictional crazy leader in another country when you have a real one in Iran? If your opposed to Iran then use North Korea but I digress. Not to mention that hand to hand combat is an option and everyone likes that.

Where the game shines is multiplayer. I have been yearning for a multiplayer shooter where people act and operate like a squad and I finally found it. Not to mention that fighting others on multiplayer consists of more then just charging in and spraying bullets randomly. Ammo is not usually laying around all over but the hand to hand combat makes up for it. At one point I ran out of ammo and found myself still pinned down by enemy fire. I was trying to get to a balcony to signal my team that the hallway was clear but I couldn't make it. I decided that charging was the only option. I drew my knife and after the the opposing player shot another burst I charged down the hall and showed up right next to him. I guess he was surprised to see me and before he could shoot me I drove my knife right into him, problem solved. Such things earned the rating it got though.


Battlefield 3 seems to gently force you into that mode as most of the time taking an objective by yourself is suicide and since Duke Nukem is not around, your going to need some help. But not just on the ground, your also going to need some vehicular assistance.I was never a fan in the early Battlefield games of driving things because my driving skill made the insurance rates skyrocket (five jeeps, three strikers, two tanks, and one aircraft) but now I seem to have increased in skill for some reason. After finding that I was much better I jumped in the nearest jet and promptly crashed. After figuring out what I did wrong I jumped into the next game and before long was flying just fine. After a dogfight with a chopper that I prolonged by playing around with him I kept on flying to assist my team on the ground. I spotted my squad and noticed where they were headed. I took off at full speed and unloaded what I could at the objective. After causing quite a few deaths I turned around and after a few more turns found myself just behind the squad as they kept on their course towards what was left of their objective after my pass. A thank you popped up in my chat window as they moved in and took care of the last few defenders left.

On the flip side I found AI behavior to be painful. There were several times in single player where I would look to my right and I would see sweat on my AI squad mate but I would notice his gun was at a resting position while the entire time I was firing at the enemy pouring through the door and he was standing by and watching. Shoot! Don't watch! Not to mention I got shoved off more then a few balconies when my AI squad mates would rush out to help me. I died four times from the same balcony in one level before I had to rage quit and read a book so I could decompress.

All in all the game is good just like its predecessor, the thing that the Battlefield series has always excelled in in destructible levels. You can destroy almost everything in the level. No back door to the house? Create one with a grenade. And honestly, who doesn't like virtually destroying things?

Review
Grade-Harvest It!
Highs-An action packed shooting fest! Multiplayer makes this game good and the single player story is good.
Lows-AI behavior is maddening and some of the vehicles are jerky in control
ESRB Rating-M for Mature, Ages 17 and up
Kid Friendly?There is cursing in single player mode, multiplayer of course will have cursing and the blood and guts, I would say respect the rating
Overview-A great game and tons of fun let yourself get caught up in it.

Saturday Soundboard: Choice Gaming

Many role playing games today have changed into a game that is heavy on story and action and CHOICES. The choice for the gamer specifically. What to say or do. Do you want to offer help, get more information on the situation, or question a man's eyes by doubting him. Maybe you will shoot your disrespectful squad mate instead of calming him. If someone threatens to leave maybe you let them and you don't care. Sooner or later all of these choices come back to affect the game.

This new trend has improved the gaming world, it makes the game more immersing. When you role play in games you are stepping into another person's shoes and a different world. The hero you created will save the world and bringing choices in not only allows you to dictate what your hero looks like, but what kind of person they are. Are they a jerk who doesn't care and always takes the route that is mean and offensive? Maybe they like the middle ground road, not wanting to be mean but not wanting to be nice. Are they straight up nice guy and always doing the right thing?


Choices have been in games before, on a much lower scale though, early Star Wars role playing games would change your light or dark side alignment based on what you did and how you treated people. You could make snide remarks and watch people die to become a Sith. Or you could be nice, calm, and save people to go Jedi. Those games had people playing again to see just how dark they could go and if they could choke people to death with ease or persuade people to give you their life savings as a donation to the Jedi Council.

Choices and their effects are allowing people to replay the games countless times, maybe you decided that after playing through nice and straight you want to play through as evil and bent, then maybe you play through making all choices on your own instinct instead of aiming for a path you say what you yourself would say if put in that situation.


But the question now is how to make it better or how to immerse someone more. Character creation and appearance editing, moral choices from dialogue to how to handle squad members, romance, and....well that's the question, and something. Something else in games, much is made about your own companions in games making remarks. To use Mass Effect as an example, bringing certain squad members with you on missions can help. One of my squad members once made a comment that instigated a gun battle. When I replayed the game I brought a different squad member and actually got out of the situation without a gun battle due to the absence of that remark. What about cameos of characters in other games like in TV Shows? Could the make it better or be the "something" we are waiting on? How would Morrigan from Dragon Age react to the self-proclaimed hellcat Chief Ashley Williams from Mass Effect? Which I would pay to see.


Conflict between party members is already creeping in and it is still bringing the gamer back to choice, choose a side. Some games the choice is easy because one of your party members has clearly went dark. But games are now making it harder on who to choose, both party members are important and both has been on missions or quests with you. So who do you help? Who dies and who lives? It makes you question yourself later on. Did you have to shoot Wrex on Virmire in Mass Effect? Was keeping the council alive worth it? Or in Dragon Age, was telling Lielani to leave a good idea?


So what is next for games and choices, more of the same for now and in the end as a gamer I love it and so does the gaming community, it is bringing a little more of yourself into the game and allowing the RPG to work the way you want it to. Your life choices change your life, your in game choices change the game so it you can shape the experience as much as possible. How will it change? Maybe have your party members yelling at you, "Kill the dragon! Shoot the arrow!!"

Shooters don't like to bring too many choices in, the war is already there and so the shooting is natural but what if they did. The small aspect of choice they have is choosing the route into the building whether to go in quiet with knife kills or go in loud with guns blazing. But what if the game gave you choices on what to do to people. What if in a sniper mission you could choose to take out the target or not?


Back on RPGs where romance has been brought in. Your choices and the party members you pay attention to more will react differently. You can ignore someone all game and they will tend to ignore you and not talk to you at all. But if you give tons of attention to a certain party member in games they seem to give plenty back in return. It brings a nice sense of appreciation and gratification to the gamer that their effort paid off for lack of a better term.

In the end, just remember what the well known game maker John Carmack said, "At its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior." Perfect if you ask me, maybe the developers will look at our behavior as a cue for the next thing.

Sequel Playthrough: Mass Effect 1 & 2

A laser blast goes by barley missing my head before smashing into the wall and an explosions rocks the nearby stairwell, not exactly the welcome I expected in the office suite of a pharmaceutical company. I simply turn and fire down at the enemies and throw a grenade letting the blast do the rest. I am there for one reason, the computer in the CEO's office has evidence against the administrator, I plan to use it so I can blackmail him into doing what I want. I might be called evil but I need this and the galaxy needs it in Mass Effect.

Since the first Mass Effect in 2007 the saga has enthralled gamers. The choices you make in the game, the relationships, and the way things turn out based on your choices. In 2010 the second game came out and it took RPGs to a new level. After beating the first one you can take your character and transfer him into the second game and continue the story. All your choices from the first game affect how the second game works. I beat the first one as the lap dog of the alliance and the second game remembered that as I noticed certain characters resented me for it and others were more then happy to help me out due to that fact. I beat it a second time as a complete jerk and in the second game I had a completely different experience and I was treated differently.

Mass Effect still holds up to graphical standards well and I am once again back to playing the first game through trying to see if I can get another different ending and another new experience in the second game. Why? Why would I play through the games again, well its simple. Because the tentative release date of March 6, 2012 looms. Mass Effect 3 is on its way and being able to transfer my character over to it is just too big of an opportunity to pass up. You have a character you have had since day one, all his or her choices and actions from the first two games will affect how the third game is played and how you make your way through. Anyone who has played Mass Effect will also tell you that the voice acting is superb headlined by Seth Green's voice as your pilot and he pulls it of well. Seth Green is known for some funny and goofy roles but his role as the voice of your pilot is superb. Star power got bigger in Mass Effect 2 when Martin Sheen's voice played a character known as the "Elusive Man", a rich man bankrolling your mission. The voice acting from Sheen was superb as well.

Any RPG gamer will tell you that gameplay changed by choices is huge. For example, in Mass Effect 1 I had the option to kill or talk down a certain character. I talked him down and in the second game when I ran into him, he remembered me sparing his life and was all to happy to lend me a hand. Another character from the first game remembered the same thing and tried to kill me for it. Mass Effect 3 has been confirmed as the conclusion, it's the end of the triology and I can't wait to see how it ends it. What is the game about? Well there are always trailers for them(See below).

Review
Grade-Harvest Them!
Highs-Missions are good, the storyline is compelling, voice acting is good, and overall the way your choices affect the game is good
Lows-Sometimes you just can't feel the tension in the missions sometimes making the urgency hard to feel ESRB Rating-Both are M for Mature, Ages 17 and up
Kid Friendly?The storyline is for older gamers.I would respect the rating on the game
Where Can I Get It?Amazon has it, but local stores still carry both games, what, that's what happens when your good
Overview-Both are very good and worth the money

Saturday Soundboard: Fallout

Fallout has become one of the best series in games. It is a golden piece of gaming, no matter what number or title it is, it is hyped up and then lives up to the hype. Fallout 3 was Game of the Year. On October 19, 2010, the next chapter of the Fallout Saga came out, Fallout: New Vegas. This Saturday, lets take a journey down memory lane.

For those of you who don't know, Fallout is a game set in a post apocalyptic earth. Nuclear war took place and almost everyone died, the world has become a wasteland. Those who survived the war had taken shelter in massive underground vaults. The number of those who survived is close to one million out of billions that were wiped out. These games are set hundreds of years after the bombs, the radiation is mostly gone except and those who have come out of the vaults are trying to restart their lives.


The first two titles in the series are Fallout and Fallout: Tactics. Fallout: Tactics was a bit of a squad/turn based combat game. You had a squad of men and you ran around taking people out. It was set the in Fallout universe, while it didn't advance the story, it did have some relevance. It has a very basic concept.


The actual main Fallout storyline took place in the first game named Fallout minus any additional words. You played as a well respected and well known officer in vault. The problem was the vault was running out of water due to the fact that their shipment of water had gone somewhere else before the war. Your mission was to go and get them new water. You had 100 days to do it before the vault ran out of water and people would start to die. The game was good and featured an open world where you could go anywhere and everywhere, so much to explore and do except for one problem, you had a time limit. You had 100 days to get water, and calculate you were traveling on foot and across the mountainous terrain of the west coast, your time would quickly run out. You had to go all or nothing on the quest, exploring was not an option unless you didn't want to beat the game. The question I asked myself was why they gave you an open world to explore but didn't allow you time to explore it. I still beat the game hoping it would allow to me watch the end or continue to explore, it did not give that option.


Fallout 2 was a vast improvement the graphics weren't updated much but the gameplay was amazing, more of the good old turn-based combat and life in a post apocalyptic world. In this game you were a descendant of your character from the first game. A member of a tribe. Apart from that, what made it better? The open world was back along with a quest, but no time limit. You could explore wherever you want and do whatever you want for as long as you want. Sure you could complete the quest quickly if you wanted to but you didn't have to. I myself completed most of the quest in five hours. I got what I needed and made it to the next objective which is the final part but I held off. So after five hours which equals to about 30 game days I stopped working on the main quest and just started doing whatever I wanted. I went to new cities and became a boxing champion. I saved a town from certain death and killed two mafia big shots while at the same time getting in good with one of them by marrying his daughter so he could tie her down by claiming she had a husband to be there for whenever he (that being the player) returned from his adventures.

Sadly, not long after Fallout 2 there was a problem. Interplay and Black Isle, the two makers of it, they went bankrupt. Black Isle vanished and Interplay said they were alive but basically was dead and are now officially after selling all Fallout rights to Bethesda. Bethesda is known for the Elder Scrolls games and is quite successful at making blockbuster games. Bethesda bought the rights for Fallout from Interplay and began to make Fallout 3.


Bethesda changed up Fallout quite a bit. They took the turn-based combat out of it making it real time. But they kept one thing from the combat that most players loved. They kept a system called V.A.T.S. The letters stood for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. What V.A.T.S. did was allowed players to pause combat and tell their character to target certain body parts of their enemy, it can make for some very bloody results in combat while at the same time can allow you to take down bigger opponents who would otherwise kill you. Bethesda also made the view point first person whereas in the previous games it was a third person view where you were looking at your character from about 20 feet up in the air at an angle.

Fallout 3 was moved away from the west coast by Bethesda. It was moved to Washington DC. It featured a very in-depth storyline and featured the voice acting of Liam Neeson. I don't want to give anything else away apart from the fact that you never hear about the events of the first two games and you can walk around inside Capitol Hill and check out all the places you only see on C-Span. The game may be on the older side and some people say "You can't spoil it!" Yes you can.


Fallout:New Vegas took the series back to the west coast right next to the Mojave Desert near what is left of Las Vegas. Some of it was spared the war but after spending time around the world you discover that maybe one street was left untouched but other then that, everyone took hits. New Vegas takes place 10 years after the events of Fallout 3, which doesn't seem to matter considering those events are not even discussed. They kept the same perspective but they changed up body types and made the storyline a lot more interesting. Just to give you a taste, the intro features a well dressed man, voiced by Matthew Perry from the iconic TV Show Friends, says a few words to you before shooting you. Your rescued and nursed back to health.

The most recent game (New Vegas) takes a much different approach then all the other games. In Fallout 1 you were in a vault, in the second game, you were descended from someone in a vault. The third game had you back in the vault. Vault, vault, and vault, all of the games centered around them, I understand people survived in them but the game is about a post nuclear war world, not the vaults. Someone at Bethesda agreed, there are mentions of the vault but they are just off hand comments and people don't even seem to care. You can find vaults if you go looking for them but apart from a doctor mentioning it, you can go through the game without even finding one. It was nice change, you were no longer a "vault dweller" or "tribal", you were just you. Mind you that in the previous games you were treated differently due to being a "tribal" or "vault dweller" and especially worse if you were a "tribal" and it got worse if you were a female in that role.

New Vegas also brought back something Fallout 3 missed, and that is, the sex, violence, drugs, and rock. Fallout has been iconic for these features, not porn movies, but the suggestive nature of why you went to "that club" or why your character's vision is blurry and the question someone asks when they come into their house to find you standing next to a pile of something red, "Where is my husband?" Fallout 3 dropped all of that which were staples of the first three titles before it. New Vegas realized that it couldn't let it stay away and it was brought back and the Fallout universe was back as it should be.

With Fallout still going strong and New Vegas still making money it seems another Fallout game will have to come out, Bethesda says they have something in the works, but just what will that look like? No one knows one can only hope we get to see the iconic: Fallout.4 But more importantly hopefully the famous Pip Boy will be there!

Review
Fallout:Tactics-Let it Ripen- Amazon
Fallout 1-It Could Grow- Amazon
Fallout 2-Harvest It!- Amazon
Fallout 3-Harvest It!- Amazon and local game stores
Fallout:New Vegas-Harvest It!- Amazon and local game stores
Rating-All Fallout Games hold a M for Mature, Ages 17 and up
Kid Friendly?No, do not get your 12 year old this game, the rating is completely justified!
Overview-Early stumbles but the games are now a staple of what a post nuclear war world would look like

Reinstall Review: Age of Empires III

"Your quest for treasures will not matter once I burn your village to the ground!" the cocky AI player says to me as my explorer picks up a nice little sum of gold. I decide that I have heard enough of his insolence and I giggle with an evil grin as I send my 30 men armed with muskets into his village and proceed to wipe him off the map. Gives his allies pause and perhaps they will keep their mouths shut next time they decide to take shots at the Dutch.

Only days away from the six year anniversary of Age of Empires 3 being released and after all that time it still is one of the most fun and beautiful games around. Its not up to the graphical quality of some titles but it is still a pretty game. Its mechanics are still good and its multiplayer base is still strong. It still can shine and bring out some of the best rage quits and come from behind victory dances.


I still enjoy each nation and the way the game deals with the time of the world portion in regards to the fact that your village is a new city being established in the new world. You can send away for things from your home city and based on how well you do you can upgrade your shipments and make them better. Sometimes a battle can turn on the 10 soldiers you called from your home city who arrived just in time to save you.

The resource system didn't change much which kind of was a staple of the franchise. However it needs work, the balancing of it was out of whack. Some nations can advance faster then others due to the resource system and upgrades and it makes the game unkind at times. The AI also is bad at times, I have had to win games by myself countless times after my allies die even after I have given them tons of resources trying to help them along.


Multiplayer with humans can also be challenging as the way the game matches people up is horrible. I played a game where I was matched up aganist a new player and I intentionally played worse to make it fun.

Other then that, it is a very fun game and worth getting if you haven't already. Just don't count on a sequel, Microsoft shut down the studio that made it.

Review
Grade-Harvest It!
Highs-Good strategy, shipments from home city, strategy, and the differences between nations make it good
Lows-AI allies die quickly and the resource system is a disaster
ESRB Rating-T for Teens, Ages 13 and up
Kid Friendly?It's a bit complicated as stated I would respect the rating on the game
Where Can I Get It?Amazon has it, they sell the normal version of the game for about $19.50 but you can also get the deluxe edition for a bit more, that has all the expansions
Overview-It might be $19.50, but there is a reason for that price six years later