Headshots & Friendly Fire: Round 7
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Boom! Headshot!!
PS3 Welcomes Netflix
Though this has no effect on the gaming side of things aside from possibly bringing in more PS3 owners, it is always a great thing to add a new service to the PS3. With the announcement and inclusion of netflix on the PlayStation 3, this just adds yet more value on this amazing system that is priced at ONLY 299. While I hope this does not mean the end to the PS Video Store, what it does do is give current PS3 owners and maybe perspective ones yet another reason to pick up the system and another reason to turn it on often. Hopefully the instant streaming selection is expanded but great news for Sony and the PlayStation 3.
Good Camera Work
It’s surprising how much a great camera can improve a game. Conversely, a bad camera can ruin a game, but we’ll talk about that later. After Playing Uncharted 2, I was reminded about how great camera work can be. A lot of the environments in Uncharted 2 have tons of detail, and it could be easy to get lost, but the camera always points you in the right direction. If the camera was any worse, these environments would be unnavigable and the player would always get lost. Some games with mediocre cameras then have to make the environments very simple for players, like many First-Person Shooters, but what can you do with camera that is permanently welded to some guy’s shoulders. The original Prince of Persia also had a good camera. It wasn’t great, but it made it easy to see the different ledges scattered around the room. A good camera seems to be most important in a platformers, but it shouldn’t be underestimated in third-person shooters or action games, either. It’s almost 2010, if a game dev hasn’t figured out camera control by now, then they probably shouldn’t be around in 2011.
Top Notch Voice Work
It’s so refreshing to see a developer hire proper voice actors for their games or for that matter actually have voice actors over scrolling texts. Too many times in games do we see the developer get really bad voice actors that do not fit the part that they are playing. But then you get games like Metal Gear Solid 4, Valkyria Chronicles, Uncharted 2 and Ratchet & Clank Future to name a few where you can tell they put some emphasis on the voice work and made sure that everyone sounded the part and made the gaming experience a better one. Especially in games where there is plenty of voice acting throughout the game, it makes it that much more enjoyable when the voices are top notch, it brings you that much closer to the story being told.
Gamefly
If it wasn’t for Gamefly, I wouldn’t have played half the games I played this year. With Blockbuster charging an arm and a leg for video game rentals, and games costing about the same as 7 meals from Panda Express, I couldn’t afford to play all these games without building up a mountain of debt. Yea, $22.95 a month for 2 games at a time seems expensive, but as long as I play at least 3 or 4 games a month, then I’m renting games for cheaper than Blockbuster would ever give them to me. The added convenience of getting a game a few days after its release and not having to go any further than my mailbox, is much better than driving down to Gamestop or Blockbuster, only to see that they are all sold out.
Well thats it for us this week but def. look out for Round 8 coming out as we own your face!
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18 Responses to “Headshots & Friendly Fire: Round 7”
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November 19th, 2009 at 3:57 PM
Haha you goes just get to the point without exagerating. Awesome and true stuff!
November 19th, 2009 at 3:58 PM
“but I’m sure these people have never seen a gun, let alone been in a near death experience, so their opinion still remains just an opinion and not the almighty word of God, as they would have you believe.”
Now, I am one of those people that hasn’t seen a gun in person, almost was in a near death experience, but I might not of died if it had happened so I dunno…
But I would go as far as to say being hit with bullets DOES NOT help the situation at all. Yeah its just a videogame, yeah it doesn’t have to get the screen all bloody, but what do you expect happens when you get shot? Bringing real life into this screwed you over because there is no possible way anyone that has survived war in real life would agree a health bar is more realistic. Going by what you’re saying we should be able to focus after we’re shot 5 times, and that this would be more realistic. HA.
“This leads to you dying a lot more than you should under normal circumstances.”
Under normal circumstances in war people die. A lot.
November 19th, 2009 at 4:03 PM
“The ratio of stress casualties to battle casualties varies with the intensity of the fighting, but with intense fighting it can be as high as 1:1. In low-level conflicts it can drop to 1:10 (or less).” BULLETS DO NOT HURT AND I CAN PERFORM PERFECTLY IN ANY SITUATION. yeah right, go play mario. I bet all the people that were messed up without being physically injured were faking it, and since their health bar was full they’re good to go.
November 19th, 2009 at 4:21 PM
Thank God I tought I was the only one who thought the final boss fight on Batman was WAAAAY too easy.
November 19th, 2009 at 4:26 PM
@ johnny
ofcourse health bars arn’t realistic. I wasn’t saying they were. Having your vision obscured with “blood” splatter or a black and grey screen isn’t any more realistic than a health bar. So instead of doing what is “realistic,” game devs should do what makes the gameplay more fun, and that is definitely not the grey death screen. I think the blood splatter in MW2 really hurts the game
November 19th, 2009 at 5:05 PM
@Trexman
I’m telling you that doesn’t make any sense. How an actual health condition(not to mention getting shot makes you bleed, and blood does splatter) isn’t any more realistic than a visual display of how much health you have left is beyond me. I could go ahead and say removing a health bar and having blood spatter or anything else adds to the challenge, and more of a challenge means more fun. Limiting the HUD also makes a game look more like you’re actual there instead of just playing a game, which can add to the fun. Also, anyone that owns a plasma TV is fucked if they play for too long.
November 19th, 2009 at 5:20 PM
Thinking about it, you might be just complaining because in MW2 it looks too much like jam and calling out MW2 is the cool thing to do here.
November 19th, 2009 at 5:44 PM
@johnny
screen burn in doesnt register if movements present.. with newer plasmas its a thing of the past.
@trexman:
it makes me laugh when people needed a health bar in a game that can take you 2-4sec to die. Do you really need a health meter for those 3 seconds of life or less if its a headshot? In KZ2 the AI was intelligent even in veteran mode. thats why you never expect the AI to kill everyone. exploding enemies in a game where you guide them (Jerico) is a bad example. that just means youd prefers less control. Just because your playing with an AI partner doesnt mean you let them to handle everything ..
@Joshtork
Really? i could have sworn theres tons of exaggerations or strange examples ..
November 19th, 2009 at 7:17 PM
agreed with the end boss statement- dead space was a big victim of this. The final boss was hardly menacing- especially in comparison to the surprise hoards of enemies that would get tougher and tougher and continually flank you.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:35 PM
Ah, the age old question of realism in video games. Which would be that no video game on the market, or ever has been, is 100% realistic. Let’s face it. Sometimes you just have to throw realism out the window. Hell, I’m still trying to figure out how racing games can be realistic when I’ve never been able to fit my couch into the front seat of my car.
November 19th, 2009 at 9:47 PM
Great stuff!
November 20th, 2009 at 12:34 AM
I want to be able to see what i am shooting at. it doesn’t matter if its a health bar or red tinge on the screen, i just need to be able to see. When the screen goes black and white, it hinders your ability to see enemies, so thats bad. When blood splatters on the screen in MW2, you can’t see, so that is also bad.
November 20th, 2009 at 12:41 AM
@Trexman
of course , just how in real life you need to see clearly when people shoot you.
November 20th, 2009 at 12:56 AM
@Trexman
If you’ve been shot enough to see all that red you need to get your head down, not eat the bullets while trying to find him. Toss a flashbang and now they can’t see, it works both ways you know. They didn’t put it there so they could laugh at you when you’re shot and to make it worse, it’s to let you know you just took a couple rounds to the chest and that’s not good.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:05 AM
l agre with the lame drey death screens, it’s a joke to handicap u any further since your about already, l could barely see anything. l agree with u also about gamefly, l played a lot of games and it’s all thanks to its rental service
November 20th, 2009 at 6:18 AM
I agree about the lame bosses in game especially if they are end game bosses. The lamest for me would probably be the one in Dead Space. Leviathan was a harder boss than the last boss. It’s really so easy that you could prevent yourself from getting hurt even in impossible mode. For starters, DeadSpace is no easy game especially in Impossible mode. The Last boss was really disappointing, they just put a large necromorph with orange targets, really??
November 20th, 2009 at 8:48 AM
Thank god someone else hates the MW2 Jelly. It doesn’t even look like blood! And really, at some point as a game developer, and a player, you have to ask yourself…. when does the “realism” detract from the fun? Wheres the line? The line is that damn screen jelly I see every time I get shot. Its aggravating, its ugly, and its unnecessary. On the completely opposite end of this topic is Batman AA, where I actually enjoyed dieing sometimes, since your enemies would taunt you, and it changed based on where in the game you were and who was your current opponent. That was frickin’ cool.
On the friendly NPC thing, RE5 was definitely guilty of this. I give Sheva a desert eagle and a rocket launcher both with infinite ammo. On cover mode, she won’t fire either of these weapons, at all (I guess the AI thinks they’re too powerful?). On attack mode she will, but only after running up to mere inches from an enemies face, in which case she dies. This literally makes the game unplayable on pro mode with out a human partner. Undoubtedly its more fun with a human partner, but a good one isn’t always available. Good AI should be.
November 22nd, 2009 at 6:42 AM
hah RE5….
No AI is going to get it right- look at Army of 2. It was advertised as the best AI possible, acting like another human… and we all know how mediocre that turned out.