Battlefield 3 Rant!!!

The single players is full of bugs on the 360 (PS3 was astonishingly better with single player) I can't finish the last co-op level because the quicktime at the end of my game doesn't work and I planned to be part timer online but soon as I find some time to get into I notice the servers are not EA and full of clans. The last game I played I was put up against a clan of 4 I think with one other person on my team who kept running towards the edge of the map lol.
I remember killing one of the members of the clan but soon as I had killed him I was trapped in a triangle formation, which clearly meant that the person who I killed had told the rest of the team exactly where I was!

and at that moment in my head and since then "Sod this". Full of bugs and for someone who likes the matchmaking system as I really am a part timer online, this is not for me. Terrible on your own but great for clans and in my view I paid ten quid for online and EA have offered nothing with servers paid for by others with their own set rules.


End of rant!

Sony buys Gaikai: My rough thoughts

For those clueless about Gaikai from their official site...


"Gaikai is a technology that lets gamers play the latest state-of-the-art video games instantly on any web browser or internet-connected device - including mobile, tablets, and televisions. No game to download or install. Just click and play instantly.

Our open cloud platform lets publishers brand their own cloud (powered by Gaikai) and deliver their current games to places never possible before."

It might come this generation as it's browser based. The PS3 was the first console to have BBC Iplayer and now the BBC are trying out the BBC Sport app on PS3 first.
The internet browser (which was terrible at the start) has improved a great deal (I think it's mobile based as some sites launch the mobile site) and I assume it's similar to the ones Sony use for their phones which use Gaikai and I think and even Onlive.


I just can't imagine Sony paying all that money just to stream old games and they are losing a lot of money so I doubt it's for the distant future but in the next couple of years instead (5ish years).
At the moment there is the option to download full games on PSN (and Steam and MS etc) but the tech Gaiki use possibly allows them to put any games on their devices in the future.
So in the next generation or sooner Sony could be selling TV's "Playstation Gaiki ready" as a selling point which allow PS3 or PS4 games at a hight cost (like they are now on PSN)
Sony's only real brand is Playstation and they clearly feel placing "Playstation" in as many of their products will help them be competitve in the market.
Just think about it...you go into Currys and two TV's are exactly the same except for one think, one is "Playstation Gaiki ready" and all done through the TV.

I honestly think it's a great business move by Sony as their TV's are struggling to sell and that option for their TV's, MP3 players or tablets etc is a big possible advantage over their rivals.

Lollipop Chainsaw

Started playing Lollipop Chainsaw Saturday I think ad t's alright just not really my cup of tea.


Mainly bought it for the humour which quickly wears thin after an hour but the mini games in the levels are brilliant.
I think button basher's who like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry etc will love it mind but I was happy to get to the end of the game unlike Journey which I last played. All round it's a good bit of fun but I will forget about it afterwards but soon as I hear this song now I quickly remember it again and how can't I!

Sports Interactive details split from Eidos after nine years of silence

Finally we know! Well I always wanted to know why anyway and perhaps others here wanted to know.


Quote:

Miles Jacobson, studio director for Sports Interactive, has broken his silence on why his studio left Eidos in 2003. Turns out, the studio though Eidos was looking to replace it with Beautiful Game Studios, while life president Ian Livingstone said the firm brought the later into the fold because it has heard rumors Sports Interactive were planning to split.

This image has been resized to fit - view original

Quote:

Speaking together during a “fireside chat” at the GameHorizon conference, both Jacobson and Livingstone explains their perspective sides. Jacobson saying they thought Beautiful Game Studios was brought in to take over Championship Manager; Livingstone saying they brought them in to protect the firm in case the studio jumped ship.

“I’m sure there are two sides to this story,” Jacobson said “We have never spoken about in the past. At the time we felt there was a lack of respect that we did for our work from Eidos. There seemed to be an attitude at the time in the industry that anyone could make games.

“Eidos wanted more control. We wanted more control. We were asking for high royalties. Eidos set up Beautiful Game Studios nine months before Championship Manager 4 was due to come out. They told me that BGS were making a platform game. I thought our number was up.”

Jacobson continued stating that there was nothing more stressful than “breaking up a brand that took 11 years to build,” but that Sports Interactive is stronger than ever in the hands of its parent company, SEGA, where it is in charge of the ever popular Football Manager.

“I went for a curry with the CEO of Sega in Japan and Europe and he made me an offer on a napkin,” Jacobson recalled. “I kept telling them we were not for sale. I told them they would have to double the offer for me to even discuss it with Paul and Ov Collyer.”

The following day, SEGA doubled the offer, securing the studio’s financial future and enabling the studio to retain independence.

Sports Interactive will reveal the next Football Manager in the fall which is said to contain a less conservative design than past iterations.

I love the fact their relationship with Sega started with a curry with the CEO of Sega but I agree with them going their seperate ways from Eidos and wanting more control and clearly more money which is understandable as they are in my view doing most of the work.

Quite surprised Eidos were gonna fiddle around with the franchise though but then again I have little knowledge in how a gaming business works.



http://www.vg247.com/2012/06/28/spor...rs-of-silence/

Journey

Well I played on this...last week I think now and I'm still thinking about it which means I either loved it or hated it.


I loved it! and it was well worth the ten pounds of PSN points to buy it but the annoying thing is I want to talk about it to someone...well an audience who haven't played it but in doing that I think I would ruin it for them and my mates all have 360's and laugh when I mention about PS3 games.


But I will say this about it, you paid for Journey and you get exactly what you pay for...A Journey. I know it's not saying much and all games are a Journey/world you explore etc etc but this is called Journey and it felt like I had travelled thousands of miles, experienced all sorts of things in my travels in the space of two hours and staying physically in my room, even though in my head I was somewhere else simply reaching B.


If you get a chance to play this game play it! It's without a doubt one of my favourite games of all time now and I will be astonished if it's not my personal GOTY.


I'm also sure that I will be playing this again very soon in the near future unlike most games I play.

The Darkness 2

Currently I am playing this game and so far to my surprise it's been good fun.

It originally came out January or February this year and I thought "Meh looks average and I didn't like the first one" but so far it's been very enjoyable with a good comic book style gloss to it with so many ways to kill your enemies it has to be respected, especially in a shooter!

The story has been really good as well which is a mixture of horror and gangster which on paper you would think it wouldn't work but it does in this game.
The only real negative of it so far is it's quite short which I can tell as the story is heading towards the end now and the detail of the levels isn't great but the choice of things to pick up and kill enemies with more than makes up for this.

Not game of the year material but worth checking out if you can get it cheap.

Videogame violence...yes this issue again

Now us gamers are more than aware for the media's (Newspapers mainly) disgust at the videogame industry. To me it's easy headline's with no foundation or facts to their argument.
The most famous one being Manhunt which was blamed on the Stefan Pakeerah murder. Giselle Pakeerah, the victim's mother, claimed that Leblanc had been "obsessed" with the game after he pleaded guilty in court.  During the subsequent media exposure the game was removed from sale by some vendors including international branches of GAME and Dixons. The police denied any such link between the game and the murder citing drug-related robbery as the motive. The presiding judge also placed sole responsibility with Leblanc in his summing up after sentencing him to life. This case has been the only one I can think of where the media hasn't added a certain videogame to a major story but from the people who have suffered from the crime.
But lets put it in another perspective which disagrees with the evidence from the police and the Judge about the game Manhunt wasn't to blame.
Lets say for just very briefly in this article to make a point, that Manhunt did cause the death of Stefan. The game is rated 18 as shown in the below picture.

Warren Leblanc was 17 so how did he get a copy of the game? Poor parenting to me and it's unfair to blame Rockstar North in this horrible attack. They submitted a copy of the game to the BBFC, they played it and felt it was ok to be released with an 18 certificate. They are the very same BBFC who decide the certificates of films as well.

But lets go further back in time to the murder of John Lennon and look at his murder Mark David Chapman. Chapman went to New York in October 1980 planning to kill Lennon. He left the city for a short while in order to obtain ammunition from his unwitting friend Dana Reeves in Atlanta. He returned to New York in November, but after going to the cinema and being inspired by the film Ordinary People, he returned to Hawaii, telling his wife he had been obsessed with killing Lennon but had snapped out of it. He made an appointment to see a clinical psychologist but instead, on December 6, flew back to New York. He offered cocaine to a taxi driver. He reports having re-enacted scenes from The Catcher in the Rye.

So two sources of influence to Chapman's motives already and to some people that means Catcher in the Rye and Ordinary People killed Lennon, just like Manhunt did to Stefan?

Look out for some bad French from me...Fucking bullshit, Chapman killed Lennon and he's a selfish individual who wanted Lennon's fame and by killing him, he felt he would have that. I also feel this way about Leblanc as if he didn't play Manhunt, I'm sure he would have still persuaded Stefan to go to Stoke Woods Park known locally as The Dumps to meet two girls that would never come, and he would have still armed himself with a knife and a claw hammer. I also believe that knives's and claw hammer's have been used in fiction for a long time before Manhunt.

But having said that I do feel that sometimes videogames makers can sometimes push boundaries with their tastes a little too much. There was a game called JFK: Reloaded 

via Wikipedida

JFK: Reloaded puts the player in the role of Kennedy's alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The player is then scored on how closely one's version of the assassination matches the report of the Warren Commission. According to the company, the primary aim of the game was "to establish the most likely facts of what happened on 1963-11-22 by running the world’s first mass-participation forensic construction", the theory being that a player could help prove that Lee Harvey Oswald had the "means and the opportunity to commit the crime", and thus help prove the Warren Commission's findings.^[3]

Players were able to submit scores, rating how close their version of events were to the Warren Commission's, for a competition that ended on February 22, 2005.^[4] The competition promised winnings of "up to" $100,000, but the final prize was just $10,712.^[5] Afterwards, the competition option was disabled and the cost of the simulator was reduced to $4.99. It was later offered for free download before the official website closed in August 2005.

Now that to me is in bad taste as even though the makers of the game state it's "to establish the most likely facts" and is for educational purposes, it's clearly more like "Hey I bet you fiver that it was Oswald" and to do that when the victims family is alive is disgusting.

The late Senator Ted Kennedy, President Kennedy's brother called the game "despicable" and I really felt embarrassed to call myself a gamer when I first read his quote, which also unfortunately is also how I first heard about the game which gave the game more exposure.

Last but not least and the most famous one which I think for once I was on the media's side was the No Russian level in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Now it wasn't the most violence I had seen in a game or the most foul in it's language from what I remember but in my gaming history, it was very bad taste.

It was a level where you were Russians storming an airport with no one able to fight back at you with women and children screaming and trying to run away from you (there is a brief part at the end where security and swat fight you back at the end which is a cheap way in my view to give the level some kind of merit and reason) and isn't required in the story of the game. If that is acceptable in gaming then we may as well give high five's to terrorists as all that level was made for was to create controvsy towards the game, a cheap marketing plan by Infinity Ward/Activision to wind people and that annoyed me as the game would have sold millions anyway.

Now perhaps you are thinking reading this and wanna shout back at me "But we play as bad guy's all the times in games...GTA, Command & Conquer...even Manhunt which you mentioned in your article earlier and you thought that was alight???"

Which is more than fair and I honestly have no beef on people who went out and bought Modern Warfare 2, it's just to me that level was solely designed to create a bad atmosphere to the public about videogames and it makes gamer's look like they enjoy killing defenceless civilians who are trying to run away from being killed.

There is no challenge in the level and it isn't required to move the story of the game, heck if the whole game was like that then it wouldn't have been a good game if you could just stroll through.

I just think that we should consider stepping back from what we are building or designing sometimes and try looking at the situation from a third person perspective. Is this right?