Sunday, March 18, 2007

Map advice: Gridlock.

Ah, Gridlock. By far the most popular map.

Plans:
Plan 1 send half of your team to the boomshot and the other half to the sniper. Boomshot team will flank any enemies at sniper nest and then elimanate all other enemies.

Plan 2 Get every one to rush sniper, and one half of your team will flank around and kill any enemies at the sniper spawn.

plan 3 rush the boomshot and send one member of your team team to flank and kill the enemies.

Advice Keep your head down and stay on your here as the oppopsition will usually have a boomshot or a sniper. Rushing is nto very effective. Pistol wipping and chainsawing is effective near the boomshot and sniper spawns. Lancer fire is also quite effecitve, but only when two people fire. Also remember the frags. These can come in quite handy.

gow tips and tricks part 3

Here are some good tips for Gow online mp.

1 Stick together. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Alone you aere weak. Together you are ownage. Stay together or die. I think I have stressed the importance of this enough.

2 Make a plan. You can not win on skill alone. You need a plan or you will be demolished. Stick with the plan once your team has agreed upon one. If you do not, you will be owned.

3 Dont take weapons your not good with. Let the sniper have the sniper rifle. It is OK to stick with the starting weapons for a round or two. They are more then good enough for helping your teamates out.

While these tips will help you through a ranked match or two, I am going to the next level and giving you map by map advice.
Note: it could take me a little to get these up, so bear with me as I post them.

Gow tips and tricks part 2

I said check back soon. And I meant soon. As one of my lessons today I have to write ALOT of stuff. So here is part 2 of Gow tips and tricks:

List 2 : some more n00by stuff I found.

1 using the same strategy over and over. Regardless of how good your strat is, there is a counter. Depending on how tacticly effecient your team is, it could take anywhere between 1 and 10 rounds to find a counter. It usually takes me about two rounds to find an effective counter. So keep it varied. Mix up your plans a little having two or 3 plans will usually screw up your opponent to the point were they can not play. Well that is assuming they are good plans.

2 Glitching. Now glitches can be very useful, but only use them with the permission of the host. If I host and you use glitchs, then your gone. Booted.

3 Kill stealing. There is nothing more annoying then have an epic shotgun duel with that guy who chainsawed you last round and having some sniper kill him while he is on the ground and you are in the process of curb stomping him.

That is all for now, but check back in about half an hour for some non-nooby tips and tricks

Gears of War tips and tricks

While playing GoW online I have noticed some various, for lack of a better word, n00by strategys. Here I will list some of things you can do to get better at GoW online.

List 1: nooby things

1: torque bow beatdowns. Too many too many times have I seen noobs take the torque bow and then charge fowards and beat someone down with it, thinking it has a better melee. It doesnt. In multiplayer all melees are the same thing.

2 Wannabe troikas. I have also seen people that take a couple of lancer shots, hurt a locust or two, then go away before downing anyone. Not only does this give away your position, but it also wastes ammo ( I know it is hard to run out of ammo in mp but if you are pinning enemies down then you will not be able to fire as long, and pinning is pretty effective). If you are going to start shooting, at least try to down someone, if not kill them.

3 Lone wolfing it. GoW is a team game. If you are playing a 3vs3 game or a 4vs4 then you do not want to ditch your team and go loner. If opposition is working in teams of two ( which they should be ) you are screwed when you encounter them. The exeption to this is if you are working with your team. If you decide to flank the fire base that has your team pinned down, then that is not n00by.

Check back soon for more lists and I will probaly have more guides up.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Civil War reveiw

Games have not been kind to the History Channel. First comes the abomination that was Civil War ( that was a craptacular turn-based strategy game). Then comes this reincarnation of Civil War. I must say I was suprised.

It starts simply with your commanding officer telling you to hold the bridge. The sounds of battle are ringing in your ears, and sound is one thing Civil War: A Nation Divided does right. Muskets go off with a rather loud pop. There is an extremely satisfying thud as the butt of your rifle connects with your opponets head and you stab him with your bayonet.

Speaking of weapons, Civil War features tons of them, and each one is realistic. This includes the reloading times. While I was used to pop the clip out and stick in a new in about four seconds, I found myself waiting for 20 seconds while my character loaded in a fresh bullet and rammed some gunpowder down the barrel. Well, at least for the muskets. They are useful for the long range firefights, but I found myself using repeatinng rifles far more. The ability to fire off five ( unnacurate and short-ranged) shots compared to a single one hit kill shot really neutralized the need for a musket.

With all these features, you would think Civil War would really make an identity for itself. This is not the case. It feels WAY to much like Call of Duty to have one. I mean, the mission structure is the same ( hold the bridge, plant the explosives,yawn)
and enemys and allies msysticly poof in. The ai is good, but not perfect.
All these flaws place the game in the above average zone rahter then the great zone I would like it to be in.

A weird thing I noticed: you can get acheivements jsut for killing enemies. At first lance it seems like the developers were lazy in the acheivment area, the are cleverly implmeneted here and will keep this game in you disc tray for awhile.
Overall 7.5 out of 10.
While I may have given it a lower score then most of my games, the realistic weapons and battles make this a must have for anyone who likes the Civil War ( like me, I was in 2 reinactments).

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Dark Messaih reveiw

One of the most overlooked games in gaming is Dark Messaih of Might and Magic. This game has some of the best melee combat.Ever. The world is your weapon. Light things on fire, roll barrels down steps to hurt enimies, kick enemies onto spikes, and many more ways of killing are at your disposal. All thses elements combine to make a very good game, even though it is extremely buggy. Several patches were released and they fixed that problem. I hear a 360 port is coming soon, so do not buy the pc version. Odds are thet will have fixed all those problems, and given the game a new coat of paint.

This game is,bassicly, a non-linear linear game. There are allmost many ways to go about your objectives. You can sneak atound and avoid combat, or you can hack and slash through all the enimies in your way. DMoMM also has an extremely effective upgrade system. You earn points by completing objectives, and then use those points to buy new skills. Each skill has several ranks to it, but you will have to spend points to unlock the next rank.

This game is for you if you liked the combat in Oblivion, and make sure to get the game when it comes out on 360.
Overall 8 out of 10.
Note: If you have noticed all my reveiw scores seem high, it is because I only buy games that get good scores. I use lots of sites like GameSpot, anmd get magazines like Game Informer. And don't expect to see any PS2 or PS3 reviews up here. I dont own any of those consoles.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Prey reveiw ( x-box 360)

Prey is a first person shooter. Prey certainly stats off slow. Your in your girlfreinds bar, and to guys get drunk and wont leave. You then need to beat them unconcious with the wrench, your primary melee weapon throughout the game. Then you, in on of the best scenes in gaming, get abducted by aliens. While your shackled to a metal slab, a human causes a malfunction and your holder drops to the ground. You have to club some giant space chickens to death with the wrench. After killing your first enemy soldier, you will get your first firearm. All the weapons in Prey have a squishy, organic feel. This weapon slowly regenarates ammo, so you wont't have to worry about that much. That is if your good with peashooters.

The game is one big ride after that, with normal firefights and puzzles. Well, not exactly normal. Prey has a cool wall flipping feature, where gravity will reverse and it seems like the room your in just flipped on its side, but It didnt, and it is quite possibile to be shooting at enemies on the ceiling, or in some other crazy area. But it does not stop there. Large blue strips on the walls indacate a wall-walk panel. You can walk on these, even if they go straight up walls. This leads to some cool moments with you shooting at bad guys on the floor.

Unforunately, Prey is not perfect. When your not on the wall, action is pretty normal. Allmost all the puzzles are solved by flipping gravity. It also runs its self to the ground with far too many gravity flipping puzzles. Prey is a great game, and definetly a must for fps fans.
Overall: 8.5 out of 10