8/21/2009

Holy hell, the Wolfenstein gripes

I would imagine that most people who played the RtCW and Enemy Territory back in 2001-2004 are about or a little under my age. So if I'm close to my mid 30s that means most people playing that game are late 20s or early 30s.

Well, if you decide to read the forums on wolfenstein.com you'd think they were all about 12 years old now.

"The new Wolfenstein is not like RtCW, or Enemy Territory, or blah blah bloo bloo!" Well no duh.

In fact, before we call screech like banshees lest not forget that RtCW had some issues out of the box and it wasn't all really and truly fixed until the 1.3 patch along with lots of and lots of mods like bani, shrub, and OSP. More importantly, it took months after release to get those mods out and on to servers in significant numbers. Yet, we all soldiered on and I would like to think the same will happen here.

Now I wouldn't dare say the multiplayer in the new Wolfenstein is great, no way. The omission of an in-game quick key bind voice chat is pretty ridiculous plus I'm not too crazy about how a classes special item (ammo/health/satchel charges) are not a weapon slot. BUT, there's already a few mods for both servers and clients being worked on based off of the multiplayer beta that leaked about a month ago. I see absolutely zero reason to panic and hopefully you do, too. But the actual running and gunning? Classic RtCW and I dig it.

So to paraphrase the Wolf in Pulp Fiction, "Pretty please, with sugar on it, shut up."

8/15/2009

Let's Celebrate this 100th Post Right

There's probably no better way to do this but to just throw the link up and let you get excited. I swear that when I saw this my left hand immediately moved to the WASD keys to prepare for the circle strafing slaughterhouse that is Serious Sam. Still the finest co-op shooter ever created by mankind. You want plot, a moral message, class based fighting? You all can suck it cause all Sam wants is a pile of corpses and one in the chamber.




I can't wait for when the consolers complain about the difficulty of this, even with autoaim if it has it. Another reason to get those other 50 million people without insurance is so everyone who's going to break their thumbs playing this on a console controller will get some sort of treatment.

8/08/2009

Batman: Arkham Asylum

If you're not too busy this weekend, giving the demo for Batman: Arkham Asylum is worth your time either on PC, PS3, or XBox360. While I never got into the FPS type games where stealth is often more important than clearing out a room of bad guys with heavy weapons, it is a safe assumption that if you are going to go bust some heads as Batman you'll need to rely more on stealth and surprise then aiming abilities. That rather suits me fine since I played this on my PS3 and so aiming with those thumbsticks has always been difficult for me.

In this case the demo lets you kick the tires quite nicely. Sure the first staged area has you fighting a swarm of unarmed baddies with fisticuffs and combo moves which let you introduce the bad guys to a dirt nap but by the time the final stage comes around the challenge is to avoid detection against armed henchmen using surprise and instilling fear into the enemies. One particularly nice touch is as your incapacitate your enemies quickly and quietly his buddies, upon finding the body, begin to panic little by little so by the time you get to the last baddie in the room you could probably have a button that says "boo" and the guy would fall over and quit.

Extra bonus points for the voice of Batman and Joker being the same as they were from the mid 90s animated series.

Obviously there won't be a way to play co-op in this game unless they give Batman a sidekick or something but hopefully if this game is successful they can do that as this could be a very fun co-op opportunity for gamers.

7/29/2009

Some Wolfestein MP information, finally!

So we finally (FINALLY) have some Wolfenstein multiplayer information. While this interview was given about the Xbox360 version it would be safe to say this would apply to the PC version as well. Let's go over the highlights.

1. Three classes (Medic, Engineer, Soldier)
2. Veil powers will complement the main goal of the class so having people run around like they're Neo while in Veil won't be happening.
3. Standard weapons will be in the game but the exotic Veil weapons won't be in there.
4. Game modes: TeamDeathmatch, Objective, and hell yes STOPWATCH!
5. Eight maps for multiplayer.
6. Multiplayer unlocks will be present but you'll be limited how many you can have per category (weapon, item, veil power, etc). This seems to suggest that there is multiple branching unlock tree but each category can only have one unlock per category so you have to make choices. The example they give is do you want your weapon to reload faster or kick less. That sounds pretty interesting.

All in all, I'm liking this so far.