WAR == WOW???
Ok so as most of you know i like to rant about games that rub me the wrong way... Halo was a great example, i didnt like it so i said so, much to the dismay of my friends who loved it.
Anyway as i havent really ranted about anything for a while, i thought one was in order, linking to a discussion i had the other day at home with Jode/Jen.
If any of you have been watching the <a href="http://www.war-europe.com" target="_BLANK">Warhammer Online</a> (Even the website is named like WoW) screenys and videos as the game was developing you may have thought either of 2 things....
OMG THATS AWESOME
or
OMG THATS WOW
As im sure you guessed i went with the latter, and a good friend of mine came up with the argument that Warhammer was around waaaaay before Warcraft, which is a fair point. However they didnt have an MMO or a game that looked anything like WoW before Blizzard did, which in my eyes means they are the ones who created that art style in an MMO.
Now its not entirely fair for me to say they look identical as there are a few differences in how they look. However any screenshots with dwarves looks like ironforge, and any shots with elves in looks like the blood elf lands. I mean the towers look IDENTICAL, and they even have a train in their dwarf lands like Ironforge...
I mean WoW wasnt anything revolutionary when it first came out, and i ranted about that as i didnt like the style of it (still prefer Lineage 2's graphics), and it seemed to lose alot of the community elements that other MMOS had. However there was one MAJOR thing that made WoW awesome in my eyes... ADDONS. Many people forget that but addons are the best thing since sliced bread, every MMO should allow you to make your own addons. I havent heard anything like this for WAR, but if they brought that in i may be a bit happier about it.
As far as gameplay goes, the only difference i keep hearing is this RvR, however it just sounds like a mix of battleground and open PvP which WoW has had forever and a day.
Ultimatly it looks like a game that should have been out 2 years ago, it looks dated and like WoW, which is the industry leader at the moment. There is no excuse for trying to reinvent the wheel, especially when the current itteration of the wheel is doing the job well. They have the 40k setting that they could have used to blow us all away, but instead they wanted to play it safe, i hope they will come out with 40k, but maybe World of Starcraft will beat them to it, that would make me laugh alot.
Kotor MMO confirmed!
So as i was doing my usual perusal of the current gaming news i came across a rather small article... which ended in me finding:
Good news to alot of the old SWG vets, and for people like me who have been waiting for another Bioware masterpiece!
Metal Gear Solid 4… I’m a bit lost
So gave in and bought MGS 4 last friday, looked good and like it was going to be a bit more interesting with the whole war going on around you.
Ok so to start with you are Snake but hes old and decrepid and has a bad back, BUT hes got a superdedupa stealth suit that lets you change your camo based on where you are sitting and lets him do the funky rolls and things. However I first of all got REALLY annoyed because like the Psp version they removed the radar. For lazy players like me it made things a whole lot harder, they also changed it so the KNIFE IS A FIRST PERSON WEAPON... WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT HIDEO... it worked perfectly well as a supplement to your whole punch and kick combo.
The levels are alot more open too so its not like there is loads of little places to hide, you get seen and you are pretty screwed, its either a massive gun fight or you leg it for a while and try to hide in a tin can or something. Although i did like the fact that you can influence the NPCs so they like you, we sided with the militia, im not sure if you can ally with the other side though..?
as we progressed things slowly went more and more crazy, such as nice looking girls dressed up as octopus robots and flying bats. Then there is some guys corpse in a bag that they need to break into a computer that keeps everyone on their toes in battle and helps them out, but at the same time makes them be a little less human and controls them a bit, but dont worry this is all controlled via some AI on a big boat in the sea somewhere that once upon a time was built by some people to be a safe haven for those who do not want to be part of the system... Thats not all of it, but that sums up alot of the crazyness in there.
The game as a whole was fun to play, but Hideo is so god damn full of himself, and WHY try to make Raiden a cool character, he sucked in MGS 2 he sucks in this. He just looks like someone grafted lots of metal to him... hes gone from being barely able to shoot some people to being able to break dance while throwing 2 metal gears round on his legs... why would you do that... its just silly.
I also bought Ridge Racer for the PS3, but it seems a bit hard. I do awesome slides round the corners and boosts but in the GPs i ONLY JUST get first, but i think you can tune your cars somewhere, but i havent found it yet...
Not much to report
I havent really done much recently, so not much point in me making any major updates...
Ive spent alot of time at work recently having to make sure their project hits its deadline.
Spent the other spare time ive had working on the Php game, as we are working on an alternative front end...
Rock Band Pricing… I laughed alot
Im a fan of the guitar hero series, although i dont play it that much these days i still love the concept and the fun 2 player modes.
While i was having a quick scoot around the net at lunch time i came across GI's article on the pricing structure for Rock Band in the UK...
In the US, where the game has been out for a while it is costing roughly $169 for everything you need to get up and running... well except for buying in some friends to play with you...
If you are a lucky gamer in the UK you are going to be facing £180 RRP... now im no <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Hawkins">Stephen Hawkins</a>, but im sure that with the current exchange rates, we should be paying about half that... a quick online convertor proves this:
$169.00 USD = £85.86 GBP
ok... so how does that above calculation end up being about £100 out?
Electronic Arts
Now i can understand a bit of a price hike, we always do get shafted when it comes to buying anything electrical, however its usually less than a direct port of the USD price. So a $50 usually costs us about £35-40 which is great, but this is utter crap. I love the responses people have given on their Eurogamer forums about this.
If game prices keep hiking up like they have been over the past couple of years for the *next gen* consoles then it may be cheaper to just take up alcoholism as a hobby instead of gaming...
<a href="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/uk-gamers-hit-out-at-rock-band-pricing" target="_BLANK">Main Article Here</a>
Guild Wars again!
As we have got a LAN night coming up soon we were discussing what games we could play... we came up with a few common favorites as well as discussing Guild Wars. For once Rolf decided he would put his hand in his pocket and fork out for a new game, so that was a surprise!
I was quite happy when re-entering the world and having a run round with my new super hero character with a mispelt name. It was refreshing to do quests that had a storyline, and I also love the fact that they have NPC characters, it helps alot when trying to find a group to an area that not many people would want to go.
I wonder how long it will last this time before everyone gets bored and plays something else
Phpmorpg Alpha Almost Ready!
As alot of you know ive been working on a web based MMO style game for a while, although its taken 3 years instead of 1 to get alot of the artwork done its almost ready for the public to use.
If anyone is interested in taking a look head on over to:
<a href="http://www.phpmorpg.co.uk" target="_BLANK">Phpmorpg Website</a>
We are hopefully going to be putting up the first test server soon for private alpha testing, so keep checking the website if you are interested and sign up to the forums.
Its crazy how one small project can spiral into a massive project and even still have LOTS of features and things that we want to add to the game, but as there are only 2 of us ACTIVELY working on it, its taking a while to get the game to the standard we originally wanted it to be...
Death Note & Days Of Ruin
If you have more than one brain cell and like Anime then chances are you have heard of Death Note...
Its a masterpiece, I REALLY enjoyed watching it but its only now that i think back to how engrossing it was that i can really appreciate it. If by any chance you have not heard of it...
It's about a student who comes across a notebook that can kill people by writing down their name in it. Now i know that may not seem like the best series ever, however the main characters in it are SOOOOOO god damn intelligent that their turds are possibly more intelligent than most people...
Even though its over i keep noticing IGN giving updates on where the US are up to with it, as it believe they are currently watching dubbed versions or something, and i keep wishing that the series didnt end after the 30 odd episodes. Its not often that i wish a series didn't end, im usually quite happy for most tripe to end after 20 episodes or so, however Death Note kept me engrossed for about 95% of the episodes, and i watched them all back to back for about a week straight after work.
Even if you are not a MASSIVE anime fan i HIGHLY recommend taking a look at this series if you can appreciate intelligent series.
On another note i also picked up Days of Ruin the other day when i was on the way to Flint to pass the time while Jen was driving. Anyway its quite a decent game, and im not usually impressed by games in general these days. It starts off well and kept the pace going while still keeping to the simple Turn Based Strategy playstyle. Well worth a look at if you have a DS, its even got online so you can play on Nintendo WFC or against friends... i will give it a bit more of a go later...
Incase you forgot... go watch Death Note... oh and possibly Bleach, although it only REALLY gets good after episode 5.
OH NOES, ILLEGAL DOWNLOADERS ARE NOT SAFE!!
After the news article the other day about them discussing implementing a system to stop people illegally downloading i couldn't help but laugh quite a bit.
For those of you who ain't heard its basically a case of ISPs would monitor if you are downloading illegal material, such as movies and mp3s and then they would send you an email telling you off. Then if you carried on doing it they would just disconnect your internet.
Now to most people who dont know too much about the internet but still scour for MP3s and other things, they may be crapping themselves right now, which is the desired effect. However for those people who are quite familier with the internet and computers in general know that this is a pile of crap.
To start with if they *did* implement this system within the first day their email servers would probably crash out due to all the emails it would have to send, as lets face it we all know LOTS of people who use the internet to get the odd MP3. Also one other thing that would happen is alot of ISPs would lose out on LOTS of money, as there are a few ISPs who are based around P2P downloading and they offer LOTS of speed and LOTS of usage, however if most of their customer base gets taken away they wont be too happy.
Before i go any further, they *could* implement this system, which they possibly will do in the future. However chances are it will be heavily relient upon checking where your data is coming from and what it contains. Thats all well and good if you are downloading from www.illegalmp3s.com, however most of the P2P applications that are used these days can make use of encryption on the data meaning they cant see what you are downloading anyway. So as far as the ISPs know you are just downloading lots of little things from other people, that will tell them you are P2P downloading. However P2P downloading ISNT ILLEGAL, its meant for sharing legal files, Blizzard uses bittorrent to allow people to share their patches and im sure lots of other companies do, to keep their bandwidth down.
So with this in mind if P2P apps just encrypt the data they send you are still in the clear.
Does anyone other than me notice that they are always pointing the fingers at P2P downloading and illegal sites, which to be fair are widely used for illegal downloading. However they never seem to point the finger at newsgroups, who to the experienced internet user is like the greatest library for illegal downloads known to man. This is quite funny really as for most decent news groups you have to pay, I know someone who paid £20 for a month of unrestricted downloading from newsgroups, which im sure was great for them, however where does that £20 go?
If you have £10-20 from each user and you have a few thousand users thats about £15,000 you would be taking in per month, and i doubt its ALL going on server costs. So why are the record and movie people screaming their lungs out about ISPs/P2P/illegal sites making so much money from illegal downloaders when they infact must make a pitance. I heard some bigwig on the radio complaining about how they are losing out on SOOOOO much money due to illegal downloading, and they want to make sure that the money goes to the artists and other bigwigs.
Now legally thats great, they put in the work and they should get the rewards, however its a joke really.
Do you ever see ANY poor mainstream artists or film companies?
Nope didn't think so, they make MORE than enough money, and thats even after the big wigs have taken their MASSIVE share. So i dont really see anything wrong with them losing some cash on illegal downloading as long as they make a reasonable amount on the legit sales. Im not condoning illegal downloading nor am i saying i agree with it, however the other end of the coin is siding with the big wigs, and i would never really want to do that as they are just greedy bastards.
SO! to summarise, if you are worrying, dont bother... if you are not worrying good job, if you are downloading illegal stuff, stop it...
Halo 3 vs Call of Duty 4?? what a load of crap!
My usual lunchtime consists of me dashing out with the 2 Als then having a quick look over Game Revolution and IGN.
I much prefer the reviews in Game Revolution but thats just personal preference, ANYWAY getting back to the rant at hand, i noticed IGN comparing Halo 3 against COD 4...
Most of the points brought up are fairly valid, but in general its one of the biggest sack of shits i've read recently. People know i like to rant, so i thought i would give this article a quick one. 
Campaign Mode
Now first of all they are evaluating this primarily on its online playability in conjunction with its main Campaign Mode. This is a bit of a rubbish way of comparing them as the single player campaigns seem ALOT better in COD 4 to me than they did in Halo 3. Now before i go any further i've only played the first few levels of CoD 4, i think we got to some russian place to save some guy, whereas in Halo 3 i completed it on day of release doing 4 player coop at a friends house.
4 Player coop is about the only thing that sets Halo ahead of COD imo, which granted is a pretty large thing as i LOVE coop games. However im sure most people will play it once or twice then just stick to death match...
"Again it looks like the Halo franchise is setting a standard for the industry to follow."
I wouldn't really go that far, Halo is essentially an average FPS with a good soundtrack and one or two good moments throught the game that make it worthwhile to keep going.
Matchmaking
The matchmaking in Halo 3 is pretty much the same as COD imo, difference is that with Halo 3 you can sign in multiple players under your Live account, which is GREAT and every game should aspire to do that. However thats about it, there is no other real differences, COD seemed alot better for me to find a game i wanted with the stuff i wanted in that game, however maybe i just wasnt looking right when i was trying to play Halo online.
Again my experience with playing Halo 3 online is fairly limited, we tried it a few times a couple of weeks ago when on a Live demo, however we didnt seem to get the games we wanted, and we couldn't figure out how to specify anything without making our own game. Although saying that i've only been playing COD for a few hours this weekend, mainly because Mez was on it for the other parts.
One other key thing that they mention about Halo here is that it makes sure that you face people who are your level, which is great if you dont want too much of a challenge, however compared to CoD its not that much of a big deal because the teams are always mixed so you usually get a mix of good/bad people per side meaning you get a variety of battles. Also combined with the sheer amount of customising you can do to each class it makes each game unique.
The Sweet Sense of Accomplishment
This was the first major part of the article where i felt the writer was just on drugs. He was pretty much making out that both games were fairly comparable with the online achievements and things. I thought this was utter bollocks, Halo has some stat tracking and some data about how you play... Ok thats nice to prove you are awesome but you are not really getting much for your kills, except the badges...
COD 4 shits all over halo in this department, not like a little piddly shit either, like a massive one.. RIGHT ON IT. Not only does COD have ranks in game that you earn as you play, but you also have a plethora of unlockables that you get from doing various challenges. Halo doesn't even come close to those sort of rewards in the game, so i would say you feel a hell of alot more accomplished unlocking stuff and gaining rewards than you would in Halo.
Unique Features
Well Halo has its forge, which i thought was fun for about 5 mins then got boring, if you could share your creations online it may be more fun and bring more diversity into the game. Whereas COD does not have anything like this available, what you see is what you get. Although these are nice additions, they dont really add much to the core gameplay, which is fairly straightforward. Whereas COD gives awesome core gameplay without farting around with other stuff that wont be used by alot of people.
The thing that puts me off here is that they are justifying Halos lack in other places because it has alot of artsy fartsy stuff that is not going to make or break the game for you. Its nice having replay abilities and forge, but it doesn't make the gameplay much different. They should be focusing on what makes the game unique from the gameplay point of view, and in this case both games are pretty much older games with a shinier front. However ive played countless Battlefield style games and i can play them for hours. I usually get bored of Halo after about an hour, maybe thats just because its not a game for me, or maybe its because i see the game as what it is without the fanboy glasses. An AVERAGE game...
Other Stuff
To sum it up they feel like they are always talking down to COD, however they should be talking up to it, as COD feels like alot better game, be it the graphics,sound,gameplay. Im not a Halo fanboy and im not a CoD fanboy, i just dont like the fact that Halo 3 fanboys talk down to all other FPS games calling them inferior and making out like Halo is the benchmark, but its not. It used to be Quake 2, then Unreal Tournament, then it became a bit misty with too many FPS games all doing the same thing with a slightly different set of colours whacked all on it.
Anyway you are all free to make your own minds up on the subject, but its worth a read