The Lamer Gamer

4th of July.  Up way too early on a holiday.  Got in an 8 mile run before 9AM.  That should count double or something.

Considering I haven’t fired up the Xbox in 4-5 days, I’ve banked a good amount of play time.  I think I’ve nearly given up on Alpha Protocol anyway.  It’s really annoying trying to figure out how to get certain outcomes over the course of the game and even with my OCD I find it unlikely that I’ll get 1000/1000 out of this one.

Made a slight mistake in grabbing Alpha Protocol.  It’s not that it sucked bad in general, but it did suck bad at being an RPG.  About the only thing that they get right is the abundant talking.  Other than that, it tries to be a Mass Effect-ish action RPG and it’s just not well executed.  The inventory customization bit fails as the weapons just don’t feel very different when customized and aside from the Endurance/Damage Reduction bonuses on armor, nothing else feels like it has a huge effect (e.g. hacking bonus).

On to another pet peeve I have.  Without reloading saves at critical points 3+ play throughs are necessary to get all of the achievements.  I know I’m just achievement whoring at this point, as enjoyed my one play through but am now fast forwarding through all the dialog and  at the same time trying to pay enough attention to it to sway one NPC or another into doing what I need for the achievement.

On the plus side, since this game isn’t so awesome and I already sent back Red Dead, I’ve been getting a little more exercise.  about 10+ miles this week.  Nothing ridiculous, but still good for me.

Lego Harry Potter on its way.  Gotta get something family friendly once in a while.

I can’t really put my finger on why, but I never got into Grand Theft Auto.  I like mob movies, love sandbox games, tried most of the GTA games in the last 5-10 years and they just never grabbed me. 

So for me, Red Dead Redemption was a bit of a risk.  I might play it a bit and the lose interest just like with all the rest of its more modern ilk.  Yet after a few hours I was legitimately hooked.  The game is beautiful, vast, the characters deep, and gunfights abound.  The combat system is great, though I still don’t have Expert targeting down just yet.  There’s so much to do in Red Dead that it’s hard to get bored.  Skin some bears, hunt some boars, fight a few duels, haul in a few bounties, all in a day’s work.  Single player took to around 1.75-2 days play time.  Not bad.

Multiplayer is better than I thought it would be, though worse in some ways too.  Playing coop through gang hideouts is plenty fun, and the Outlaws to the End hasn’t even been released yet (plus it’s free DLC, gotta love that).  On the down side, it’s a little too easy to get bullied by higher ranked players who just feel like constantly shooting you in the dome.  Since the weapons get significantly better as you rank up, as opposed to MW2 where in general there’s a lot of parity, you can be held at the mercy of a guy that just lives to give you a hard time as he’s harder to kill with your cattleman’s revolver than you are with his high power pistol.  I’ve blown a few hours being harassed in that way already.  They can follow you if you go to a different Free Roam session too, so that kind of adds to it.  The PvP modes don’t appeal to me much.  Played some Gold Rush, thought it was okay.  Maybe the experience there is better with a bigger crowd of friends.

All in all it’s a great experience.  Well worth the current rental, likely to a buy in the not so distant future.  Before Red Dead becomes too much of a time sink, I need to get into Alpha Protocol.

I’m kind of surprised to see a bunch of mediocre reviews of Alan Wake.  83 isn’t a bad score on Metacritic, but I find it hard to believe that people were really that dissapointed.  Claims like “There aren’t any memorable moments” were clearly made by people who dislike hair-metal, rock shows with pyrotechnics and zombies consumed by darkness or simply hadn’t actually played the game.

I’m speaking of course (spolier) about the showdown at farm when you face waves of the Taken while Barry works the light show.  The game had been up until that point been fairly serious, and this was a great break in the otherwise darkdarkdark atmosphere.  I had some much fun playing this part I restarted my checkpoint when it was cleared I’d nearly reached the next.

I can see some gripes about the nightmare difficulty not being all that nightmarish which also goes against how this was billed a bit as survival horror, it’s really not.  Also another pet peeve of mine, why do I have to unlock nightmare mode?  You’re wasting my time.  The enemies are rather unvaried.  But the story!  It’s good.  It has a solid novel quality twist near the end, I continually wanted to know more.  Visually it’s well done, but the facial animation sucks major ass. I’d already mentioned that the atmosphere was great, it’s scary and dark though not nearly as scary as Dead Space.  Speaking of which, Dead Space 2 coming up!

After waiting way too long for the Halo: Reach beta to download, I got into a handful of matches last night.  It plays pretty well, better than I expected.  Controls are going to take a little getting used to though.  Green Thumb is generally how I like it, click the thumbstick to melee. http://gruntsrus.com/2010/04/halo-reach-control-scheme/

Really, the strength of Reach at this point is the variety of game types and the addition of some new ones.  Slayer gets kind of old.  Not that people, myself included, don’t play every game like it’s slayer anyway, but I love objective matches.

The Modern Warfare type exp system is unremarkable, but being able to buy customizations with those credits is at least kind of amusing.

I ocassionally hunt Nuke Boosters in MW2, but never really thought to catalog them.  Followed a guy around for a few games this evening.  I wasn’t the only one apparently.  Now that is amusing.  Piss off enough people that there’s a posse following you to your next game.

Here goes.  Booster in Bold, helper in Italic

1. ledbulletsniper
2. CPTxKluTCHx

Been trudging through Bioshock 2, and in one of the random corners of a level that I’ve explored, I found this:

Schrodinger’s Cat, no?  I laughed a bunch when I found this after melting a patch of ice in the frozen gallery in Dionysius Park.  Since there’s no box, I think it’s pretty clear that this cat is dead, but you never know.  Anyway, great Easter Egg.

Bioshock 2 is surprising me bit by bit.  The main game is more of the same, the story is new of course, but most of the enemies are the same, the weapons are essentially the same (just updates of the originals) and rapture, looks about the same.  I’m having fun with it, though I’m having trouble keeping track of some of the characters.  I think it supposed to be obvious that you are this guy who’s daughter was kidnapped and turned into Little Sister, and you yourself turned into a Big Daddy, but I’m rather confused.  Oh well, I’m almost done, and it’ll be sorted out by then I hope.

Multiplayer is what’s actually surprising.  It’s obviously not MW2 or anything of that ilk, but a decent set of derivative game types with the spin of Bioshock’s Plasmid and Tonics + weapon upgrades.  Doubtful that I’d want to keep the game just for that, but it’s a nice diversion after  some of the more tedious collecting of things (all Little Sisters, audio diaries) in single player.

One has to find ways of passing the time at work, and this has proved a great time sink today.  Though I find it annoying, I don’t get quite as bent out of shape about the whole Nuke Boosting thing as a lot of other people.  I’ve found people doing it and killed them, cause hey, I want to win.  Anyway, there are of course those who REALLY hate it, and those that for some odd reason record every moment of the time they spend playing MW2.  Occasionally you find someone exhibiting both traits.

And thus I found http://www.youtube.com/user/PS3HouseMDPL, only the most prolific recorder of MW2 booster hunting.

This guy is great!  While his gameplay is good, the greatness comes from the comedy.  He’s added some pretty solid music and sound effects to the recordings along with a running annotated commentary, and I can’t stop laughing at points.  Not only does he have some recordings of the DUMBEST boosters ever, but some of the most indignant I’ve ever seen.  If I had to nitpick, he does seem to like teabagging just a little too much, but to each their own.

Unfortunately he’s playing MW2 on a PS3, so I’m never going to see him.

Geez FINALLY!  Maybe playing all this MW2 is rotting my brain but I’m less excited about this than I once was.  Seeing any more of the Halo Bible is great though.  Oh, and is that a Needler Carbine I see?  Nice!

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/02/microsofts-own-e3-halo-reach-beta-dated-fable-iii-details.ars

All of a sudden Modern Warfare 2 is the worst game I’ve ever played. The Javelin/Semtex thing was kind of anoying, but it didn’t ruin a whole game.  Tonight, every fucking game I join has assholes rapid firing grenade lauchers, thumpers, RPGs whatever.  Nice hack…

I hope the fuckers who came up with this one are banned for life. 

Hey IW!  Fix this shit already!

Read more:  modernwarfail.com hahahaha