Leveling Down

After two long months, I’m finally out of Africa

Far Cry 2
I finally finished Far Cry 2 by powering through over the weekend. It was a satisfying experience, although the endgame section frustrated me to no end. And like a lot of games these days, it didn’t seem like the end plot was very well thought out and I had lost interest in the story because it took too long to develop. It dulled a little bit of my appreciation of the game. Like espion4ge, I’m excited to move on to a new title though!

Halo Wars
The first thing I tried to do when I got my Xbox back was to finish up the Halo Wars campaign, but I got sidetracked by multiplayer. I finally finished the campaign on co-op, netting the OMG BFF FTW achievement (best name ever) and then I started playing a lot of multiplayer. I’m getting really into it, even though the game is pretty simple I am finding it a lot of fun. espion4ge and I have been playing some 2v2s but we’ve also tried 3v3s with other friends and I’ve tried a few 1v1s. I like the counter-heavy gameplay that Halo Wars encourages. There probably are some balance issues that need tweaking, but we’ll talk about that in our review later this week!

Street Fighter IV
I tried to pick this up again but now I’m even worse than I was before. So it looks like I either need to start putting in some serious practice or I need to move on and accept that I am not “IN. DE. STRUCTIBLE.”

Retro Game Challenge (DS)
I finished all of the Guadia Quest challenges, so I only have one game left to finish. Man, I forgot how annoying it was grinding in old school RPGs, and how frustrating the dungeon design could be. There was this one section where you would like fall through the floor and then you had to work your way back up. I just wanted to throw my DS out the window. This entire game really harkens back to the NES days when you only got one or two games a year and had to make the most of them.

Dead Space
A friend of mine just sent me his copy, so now I feel compelled to play it, but I don’t know if I can handle the scare factor! Why must I be such a chicken?

You only have one mission in Far Cry 2: Eliminate the arms dealer known as The Jackal

As I’ve stated before, Far Cry 2 was a title that not too many people heard about last year. Generally, a title that has sold 1 million copies doesn’t qualify to be under the radar, but I think this is a game that a lot of people skipped in favor of a lot of the other big titles that dropped last fall. The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, known for Assassin’s Creed and the Prince of Persia series, and published by Ubisoft. Due to…technical issues…I haven’t finished the game, but I finished Act II and have been playing for over 25 hours. I figured I’d write a review while the game was still fresh in my head, and also since I have a lot more free time on my hands. Some people have heralded Far Cry 2 as the next step in first person shooters, while others have been bored by its repetitive gameplay. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a little of both, and I am actually pretty bummed that I didn’t get to finish the game this week as I had planned to, because the story was getting pretty interesting. The best laid plans of mice and men… Hit the jump for the full review.

The Good
- Open world, sandbox nature of the game lets you choose your own adventure
- Gunplay feels realistic and planning/executing attacks is a lot of fun
- Beautiful graphics make you believe you are in Africa

The Bad
- Gameplay can get repetitive, especially since everyone shoots at you
- AI companions can act incredibly stupidly
- Presence of glitches can detract from the fun and immersion

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Alas…

I booted up the last mission of Halo Wars Sunday night, planning to cap off a fun week in gaming with a triumphant victory over the Covenant and Flood. After being treated to an exciting cut scene introducing the mission, my friend and I were prepared to finish the fight. But really, a picture is worth a thousand words. I should have taken the picture with my new phone, which I needed to get because my phone got run over by a car yesterday. All in all, not a good weekend for me and technology. Hit the jump for my thoughts on Far Cry 2, Halo Wars, Street Fighter IV, and Retro Game Challenge (DS)!

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Kind of a slow week for me, there’s been a lot going on and even though my fiancee was out of town this weekend I didn’t get to play as many games as I had hoped. I saw Watchmen instead, which was a pretty good substitute. Fans of the comic should definitely check it out (though I’m sure they already have), and those wondering what the big deal is might want to do some homework before they go to the theater. Television Without Pity has a pretty good primer for those who are interested (and it’s spoiler-free). I know this isn’t a movie blog but if people watched it I’m curious as to what everyone thinks (no spoilers!). It’s semi-game related, there’s an over-priced prequel that you can play through!

Halo Wars – Grabbed this on launch day and have been working with a friend on playing through on Heroic difficulty co-op (guess I’m used to playing RTS co-op now). We were doing fine until Mission 6 when the Covenant sent us straight back to Harvest. I was so upset I ended up beating it on my own, but it took me twice the “par” time for the map. I don’t know if I just stink at the game or the mission is unfair. Impressions on the game so far will be up this week. Teaser: Mixed bag.

Street Fighter IV - Finally beat Seth with every single character on medium. It felt more like work than fun, and it didn’t really help me get too much better at the game. I plan on spending all my time with the game online for a week or so, hoping to learn some new tricks to take back to the challenge modes.

Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 – Played this a little over the weekend to pick up some more achievements. Slowly working my way to 1000, but it’s gonna be a bit of a grind. The end of the final campaign was pretty fun, overall I definitely got my money’s worth out of this game. I’m curious as to how it plays online, espion4ge and I might try later this week.

Far Cry 2 – Playing through the back half of the game, still enjoying myself quite a bit. I’m starting to get some better weapons too so that makes everything fun. Also, the second half of the world map feels a lot different from the first half, which I think is a great design choice. More people should have tried this game! It’s not too late…

espion4ge asked me if I wanted to start contributing weekly gaming thoughts, so from now on I’ll be posting them to start the week off and he will finish on Fridays. Here we go!

Street Fighter IV – I’ve been working my way through medium difficulty, trying to unlock the “Storied Reputation” achievement. I can’t say it’s tons of fun, but I do have a good handle on how to deal with Seth now. Unfortunately, that’s not really helping me with online play. I haven’t won a single match against my buddy LargeLobster yet. I need a sensei…

Far Cry 2 – I finished the first act of the game and moved into the southern part of the game world, which means I need to wander around finding/collecting things again (even though I’ve given up on collecting all the diamonds, there are other smaller things to collect that I want to do). I have to say, the story is picking up – the transition from Act I to Act II was pretty heavy. I’m really enjoying this game.

Guitar Hero World Tour – I finally finished my last band career. Having a bass career is kind of lame, even though some of the bass lines are pretty difficult. I gotta say, the game actually was a lot more fun on my second run through (when I wasn’t playing it in the wake of Rock Band 2). Go figure.

Left 4 Dead – Got some Versus play in with some buddies. Still can’t drop this game yet, probably the best 40 dollars I’ve spent in a long while.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 – espion4ge and I are almost done with the final campaign. I don’t know if it’s because the Japanese require more micromanaging, or because they have the most difficult campaign, but we’ve come across some pretty hard missions. We’re trying to finish the last two missions before Halo Wars comes out tomorrow, but if the last few missions we’ve played are any indication, we might not make our self-imposed deadline. I’m pretty curious to see how Halo Wars ends up playing, since everything I’m reading says it’s too simple. RA3 is not, so I wonder if Halo Wars will feel even more dumbed down for me.

Far Cry 2 flew under the radar last year, but does it deserve a try?

Last fall was a huge season for gamers. A bunch of huge titles hit the stores, including (but not limited to) Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, etc. With the huge glut of titles, most gamers didn’t get to play all the big titles, and a lot of smaller titles went completely unnoticed. One such title that I always wanted to try out was Far Cry 2 developed by Ubisoft Montreal. It is now almost March and I finally got to start it even though it was released last October! Hit the jump for my initial impressions of the game.

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