Played a round of Dust514, did not experience any noticeable lag. I’m not too savy with these types of games as I generally don’t do online multiplayer fps, but seemed rather nice.

A post about PS3 and junk.

Exams are over and I received my copy of Skyrim, complete with Dragon statue :D

Also I received my 500gb notebook hdd, which will be replacing my 80gb hdd that was in my ps3.

I used this article to learn how to update the hard drive and the only issues I encountered was getting the right format for the ps3 to recognise the external hard drive I wanted to back up to, and unscrewing the screws that held the hard drive in place.

Read More

Playing so much Splatterhouse

I had my doubts about this game, and even though the “storyline” isn’t anything to write home about, it’s on par with most video game storylines. The blood and brutality of it really pleases me though. In the side scrolling sections (which I thought I’d hate) you run along with a pipe or a 2x4 and as you start whacking enemies as they come at you, you watch their bodies splatter against the wall, against each other and most excitingly against the camera. I also love the blood stains on the camera. Kinda lame but it’s a nice touch.

Also very much enjoy the destruction of the character as your health weakens or as you take heavy damage, torn skin, exposed muscles, organs and bones and dismembering of ones own limbs which one can than pick up and proceed to smack the heads of annoying enemies.

Quite fun really.

And the voice of the mask is played by the same person who did Ed the Hyena from Lion King. -> totally relevant.

Brink

I’ve been seeing lots and lots of either mixed or negative reviews. Most commonly they say it doesn’t live up to expectations etc. I do agree that I expected there to be more levels or I didn’t expect the campaign to be essentially multiplayer maps in a specific order.

I also agree that the AI in the game is less than poor, when you first start out they seem smart enough, they do the objectives and there’s usually a balance but for solo play you’re usually the one that has to go around an do the main objective, which isn’t bad, until to getting into higher levels and you’ve customized your character a specific way, suddenly that route you’ve chosen is useless for your class.

On that note, I really enjoy how you can change class on the fly, I think it’s very cool because then you’re not left to resort to the same tactics (something the AI doesn’t understand). And I think this is what the designers aimed for, an environment that required you to change to suit your environment. “Survival of the fittest”

As for the claims where matches become deadlocked so to speak, well yes, there are a lot of key positions on the map (especially for escort and capture-the-flag type missions) where there is a sort of narrowing of the playing field, but there is always other routes to flank the enemy and cut them off that way. The problem here arises when the AI doesn’t follow these routes and instead runs blindly into the enemies trap. On a similar note, I found the AI to be lacking in commitment so to speak. You could be defending a post for over 15 minutes, but suddenly in the last minute of gameplay the entire friendly AI decides they want to either go an do an unnecessary secondary mission or just go and have a wank, leaving yourself alone amongst 6 to 8 enemy AI that kill you on sight and win their objective (i.e. you lose). On a similar note, I’ve found that the enemy AI will 9 times out of 10 be better than your friendly AI.

BUT that’s my experience with solo play, and apart from spending up to 30 minutes trying my darned best to win a map and still losing as a result of the friendly AI being a piece of shit, it is just computer players, so how can I really expect much better?

In terms of pvp, I’ve tried it a few times since the playstation servers have been restored and this is where the game excels, but only if you know how to win the match, I think it would be much better if you could have 2-4 player local games because it would allow for communication about your intentions much better than your character screaming out your main objective, but the idea is that you’re meant to work as a team, if your task is to escort someone some place then it’s a good idea for a few people to be medics, if your task is to defend, it’s a good idea to be an engineer or a soldier or a medic. Personally the stealth/operative class in my opinion is vastly lacking in options, their only real good points are that they can disguise themselves as the enemy to let them slip behind defenses, which usually doesn’t last long or once you die you can blow your head up and hurt anyone nearby.

But if anyone has issues with being stuck in a match playing online they only have themselves and other incompetent players to blame. As far as graphics concerns and such go, I have experienced minimal problems with lag playing online, suddenly jumping from one place to the next and such are the only thing I’ve noticed. Apart from that I personally love the design and haven’t experienced any problems with graphics taking a while to load when you enter a room.

I do agree that grenades are a bit lacking in explosive power, but soldiers can upgrade that, some guns really don’t seem to do much unless you’re firing in bursts and moving behind cover regularly (which any person experienced in fps games would know how to do), but the knockdown effect from sliding into enemies and gun butts are very effective once you know how to do them well, I do wish the slides were faster but thats my only issue there. Also another thing I don’t think people realise you need to do is climb, vault, slide and hide. Brink is mechanised so that you’re meant to be shooting at enemies while jumping over obstacles and sliding under pipes and vaulting over railings, anyone who is expecting to just be able to stand there, occasionally crouch or jump and win usually won’t.

The only other disappointing things I found was that weapon customization usually ends up just detracting from the weapons overall stats and there isn’t many upgrades that actually upgrade,

But overall I am highly pleased with this game, I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly. Yesterday my main character reached level 20 (highest level), but I’m considering re-mapping his abilities because they are only beneficial for solo play (customized to be primarily an engineer class). I think it’s worth playing, I enjoy the customization options for clothes and look etc, some very exciting options, and despite the horrible AI and the “fighting a losing battle” style of missions it is a very excellent game which brings a good amount of rpg/class-based game play to the fps scene.