It pisses me off when games make me struggle to do something that should be easy. I’m looking at God of War right now. After slaughtering a hydra as the level 1 boss we’re then tasked with a feat of strength, forced to tap the ‘X’ button 50 times a second… to open a door. Any door.
Let’s assume that @!#$ing Kratos, is strong enough to open a GD door or break a barrel without making a major production out of it.
Y’know, normally I would say Batman > All.
But against ninja turtles? Shit just got real.
My last post I mentioned that there were 2 reasons I’d stopped playing World of Warcraft. One was the community being jerks and the other, is DRM.
Now obviously I’ve had to log into WoW since the beginning, every time I played I had to enter my password – hell in ‘ye oldin days’ the client didn’t even remember your account name. I’ve been fine with that however, I expect to have to log into an online game. It’s not an issue. Then I got hacked. I don’t have any idea how, I’ve never given my login information to anyone, virus scans didn’t show anything nefarious. Still happened though and I added an authenticator. This adds an extra step to the login process, one that requires me to grab my ipod which is usually charging across the room. Call me lazy, and I do myself, but this is extremly annoying. I can’t count the number of times I’ve started a game, logged in, and then been asked to log in again. WTF?? It’s even worse with single player games. Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, I’m looking at you. I have zero interest in getting my ass kicked in MP, why the hell do I have to log in to play my single player game?
This is not an anti Blizzard post. Rockstar makes me log into a ‘Social Club’ to play GTA4. I don’t care, just let me play the damn game when I double click the icon on my desktop.
I’m not against DRM itself, I’m against annoying DRM. DRM should be invisible once started. Steam is handy this. Also Dragon Age Origins is a perfect example here. There’s online activation and then there is a little box ‘Login automatically’ I can check so I don’t have to deal with this crap anymore.
Two months ago when I started to get back into WoW I stopped again due to two reasons. One I’ll get to later, but the main reason is the WoW community, such as it is. I was on my mage running Drak'Tharon Keep. After the run was over someone in the group immediately requed. I declined seeing as I had quests to turn in and there was the event to sit through before I could do so. After explaining why I was declining to reque I was votekicked. Well, I ragequit and managed to not delete mage.
Yesterday, I CCed a mob and pulled the other five. A rogue decided to attack the only mob I didn’t have control of. A minute later the same rogue decided to run in first and fan of knives the group. I hope the extra 4 seconds saved pulling the group before me was worth the 15 minute que for a new tank.
Today I lost 2 need rolls in the same run. One went to a death knight, it was kinda a sidegrade so I didn’t care much, besides, he could use it. The next one though was a clear upgrade. I lost to the druid healer. Now, I’d understood that the loot revamp was supposed to prevent things like that, apparently not. I hope the druid healer gets good use of his new strength/parry necklace. And get this, after winning he left the group. He also won the OTHER item but didn’t get it because he’d dropped group. I can only assume his intention was to specifically piss me off .
My point, is that people suck.
My entire group of WoW friends originally started from a Deadmines run. After a particular display of badassery I was invited into the guild at level 20. I was in that guild up to 60, that guild merged with another and we started raiding ZG and MC and the rest is history.
That will never happen now. Dungeons are so ‘gogogo’ oriented you never pay attention to others (except shithead rogues). And even if you did, they’re on a different server.
I’ve previously stated I’m really bad about not finishing games, I tend to burn out fairly quickly. However this past Steam Sale I made a concerted effort to finish a few… and I did! Maybe even more than a few. Bear in mind when I say ‘finished’ I mean single player campaign is over with credits rolled, I generally have no interest in any MP as I suck.
Crysis, Crysis Warhead and Crysis 2
That’s right I finished all three. Crysis and Warhead are just about perfect and I highly recommend them to anyone with a passing interest in shooters. Crysis 2 is an odd beast. It’s obvious it was dumbed down a bit to work on consoles and doesn’t quite stack up to the original. However, mission structure aside, there were vast improvements to the nanosuit controls that make it hard to go back to Crysis. Let’s hope Crysis 3 keeps the control improvements with the original’s more open world. And doesn’t require a new video card.
Transformers: War for Cybertron
Was a fun game though I do think a few of the fights can be a bit cheap. I might suggest a run through on easy to prevent some aggravation and still get the story. Lots of shout outs to old school Transformers. I remember distinctly seeing one level where Warpath was a playable character and wondering if he shouted POW. Yes, damnit, he does!
Portal and Portal 2
I’ve had Portal forever but was stuck. Well I broke down, watched a youtube video and finished the game. And Portal 2. Now I get the potato jokes from last year. Yay!
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
This was actually of Origin, they had a 1 year anniversary free game and I picked this. Graphically looks great and I thought they did a great job with the squad dynamic, for the most part. The squad is useful without doing everything for you. There are a few points where you really get a sense of how squad tactics work when your buddies lay down covering fire and you move to flank.
There were two things I did not like though. One was weapon selection. The rifle you start out with is just about perfect and I rarely felt any reason to change to one of the other 20 I picked up. There was one level I thought might shake things up a bit. I was stripped of all weapons ‘cept a pistol with a single clip. Well, one dead enemy later and there was a friendly supply crate giving me full access to my entire arsenal.
Also, after being the freakin’ Predator in Crysis it was jarring being a regular ol’ human. A few bullet holes and they drop dead quite quickly. Often deaths felt cheap with seemingly random explosions and bad guys that seem to spawn from nowhere.
Well those are what I finished. I’ve been also playing Saints Row The Third. Game is an insane sandbox. I think I may have burnt out on doing random crap. Little of the story has actually been done.
I’m pondering what to do next. Assassin’s Creed, Dead Island, Dead Space maybe…
Sony FINALLY updated the Vita to support PSone classics. I swear if I’d realized support wasn’t out of the box I wouldn’t have traded in my PSP and games. Oh well, trade in paid for Lumines VITA and Sly Cooper HD.
Sony it seems can’t do anything good without screwing up part of it, so while we got PSone support, only 9 games are ‘officially’ supported with promises of regular updates. Seriously? Ah well, UNofficially it seems the vast majority work anyways. I’ve run Castlevania SoTN (still awesome) and Legend of Dragoon (never played it before, doesn’t appear to have aged well). Final Fantasy VII works as well, though I notice Sony was damn sure to make sure that was officially supported.
As far as how it actually works, looks great. Vita’s screen is gorgeous and the size is very nearly the PSone’s original resolution. What looks blown up and blurry on my 32” TV looks sharp and clear on the Vita. The missing buttons L2, R2, L3 and R3 are covered with the rear touch pad. Works fine. Curiously enough when a PSone game loads we get a PSP warning screen, looks like they’re emulating the PSP, not a PSone. Weird.
My only complaints are for the Vita itself; memory cards are to expensive and my thumbs have a tendency to rest on the speakers muffling sound.
I hate it when a webpage is loading and I immediately see the link I want. A split second before I click it a goddamn toolbar loads shifting the page making me click the wrong link. Now I have to wait for the new page to load so I can back to the page I was just at and re-click the link I already clicked!
Pisses me off.
