Guns Blazing != Stealth Game
I’m a huge fan of stealth games. I love the sort of puzzle, sort of action game, but you have to think in order to survive and play by the rules of the game. It’s one of the best examples I can think of where you have to think about stuff like how the AI will find you, or what happens if I did it like “this”. Love Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2, love the Deus Ex games, etc.
So then there’s Splinter Cell, the first 3 games (especially the first one) was almost bullshit hard… in a good way. It forced you to think about what you were doing ALL THE TIME and plan your attack. It redefined what stealth games should be, and where you could go with them. You had gadgets, a Tom Clancy-type story line (obviously), and the voice actor for Sam Fisher is goddamn Micheal Ironside. Awesome. (Double Agent is pretty good too, though I consider the first 3 a “trilogy”)
So then we get to Splinter Cell Conviction. They are sort of rebooting the series, but not really. The gameplay itself is great and the darkness mechanic with the monochrome vs color mode is great. Most of the locations are actually pretty cool, the EMP factory being my favorite. But there’s one flaw with the whole game that has absolutely killed it for me.
The gun play. Sorry, the FORCED gun play. There are sections in the game where you are forced run through guns blazing at enemies. Sections where you can’t sneak past or can’t distract them. Nope. There’s even a few sections where you have to hold your position and protect a location from waves of enemies… in a stealth game. There’s an (almost) entire level where you’re pretty much forced to run and gun through it using cover mechanics. Cover mechanics != Stealth.
If I wanted to shoot guys in the face by the dozen, I’d play Call of Duty, or Just Cause, or pretty much ANY shooter game. But this isn’t supposed to be a shooter, this is a stealth game at heart. It just blows my mind how much of it you have to do.
The game took me 6hrs too. On normal difficulty.
Let’s up Splinter Cell Blacklist picks up the pieces.
Read more/comments (4)
The Search for Spock
Let’s talk about Mass Effect 2
ME2 is FAR surperior to the first game to me because it streamlined everything I hated about the first game, mostly the invtentory system. The inventory system of the first game was trying to hard to be complicated, that it didn’t really need to be. Different guns, that had different stats, but then ammo types, but then mods OHMYGODTOOMUCHTOTHINKABOUT. But really, it was. For the type of game that wasn’t trying to immersive and was pretty much focusing on the story and not the combat, it didn’t need a system like that. Because when you really get down to it, the combat is pretty generic aside from stopping time and assigning orders, the focus is the characters and story.
ME2 fixed this and added an armory. If you get a better gun, everyone in your party can equip it. That’s it. Sweet.
ME2 starts off with the Normandy getting attacked by an unknown ship (see Star Trek reboot) and exploding and Sheppard getting blown away into space. Fast forward 2 years later, and Sheppard has been regenerated (also like Star Trek) by a group called Cerberus. Being woken up and escaping from the haywire droids serves as our training and another major change happens. We have ammo.
ME1 used an overheating system for it’s weapons, meaning you could fire any gun to your hearts content without reloading, but it would take up heat, and that was your consequnce for just wailing away on enemies. I don’t really have a problem with it. The ammo/overheat system works either way as long as the game stays balanced.
sheppard escapes with a woman named Miranda, who’s been helping you escape, and Jacob, a marine who has biotic powers. They take sheppard to the Illusive man where he gives us a quest to look into missing people on a remote colony.
That’s where our adventure starts. Also, I imported my Sheppard from Mass Effect 1, so I have a bunch of resources and stats for doing that.
Read more/comments (0)
Redo everything!
Here’s the deal bros, my original Wordpress site for this 100 Game Oath site got hacked by a Wordpress injection. My db is fine, but I’ve decided to abandon Wordpress altogether (because it’s way too prone for hacks like this if you aren’t compltely up to date with everything) and create my own thing. It’ll also be a great learning experience with learning Git and just make a little project on my own.
I still want to focus on large imagery and writing, it will just be layed out a bit differently. If you guys have any suggestions or features, post them in the comments. I do web development full time and I can integrate pretty much anything you guys want.
See you on the other side.
Read more/comments (2)
Bleak Falls Barrow
Let’s get a few things out of the way before I start.
First, I’m playing with graphics mods and the SkyUI mod. I might throw in invincible horses mod in there just because that’s annoying as hell when they die,but otherwise no gameplay changing mods. With that, here’s the list of graphics mods I’m using.
- Serious HD Retexture (2048px version)
- Skyrim HD 2K (1.5 Full version)
- W.A.T.E.R.
- Superb ENB-RL (enb config)
Second, I’d like to point out that I’m not a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series. Not really much into the lore/story, I’m a dragonborn, whoopdefuck. I thought the thieves guild quests in Skyrim and Oblivion were pretty good, especially in Skyrim (won’t spoiler that yet), and the vampirism quests in Oblivion were a neat side story, but the main story I never really cared about.
Third, this game is a “Fallout 3 Start” game for me. It’s a term I use when I’ve started a game dozens of times, only to be fed up with starting a new character or a long intro (Fallout 3 with the intro) that I quit within the first few hours. Borderlands is slowly becoming one of those games too, though it’s arcadey enough that it probably wouldn’t happen. So I’ve played the first couple of dungeons in Skyrim a bunch of times, each time thinking “This time I’m going to get farther” and then never do. HENCE THIS BLOG!
So I chose to be a Khajiit ranger character, mostly because I generally join the thieves guild and love getting a multiplier attack bonus if I hit someone before they see me. I’ve put my skill points equally into archery, lockpicking, and (of course) stealth. So far I’ve only done the Bleak Falls Barrow quest (see screenshots above) and killed the first dragon.
Bleak Falls Barrow is a pretty good first “dungeon”. It’s pretty much built for my kind of character, espcially around the Draugr areas. It’s almost too easy, because if you know which tombs the Draugr are going to come out of, you can hit them (and kill them because of the stealth multipler) without them even moving. The “boss” at the end of BFB is a powerful Draugr warrior who hit hard if you’re a light armor wearing Khajiit like me. Thankfully I was carrying a ton of potions, so I just kept using arrows on him and he eventually died.
We also picked up the Golden Claw in BFB, but I have no idea who to give it to yet (I think it’s someone on Riverwood). See, this is a slight problem for me. BFB is pretty much your first story quest so you’ll obviously get the Golden Claw, and you need the Golden Claw to get to the end of the dungeon for a puzzle. With that said, why would the quest giver for The Golden Claw be all the way in a non-Whiterun town? Because you don’t get the quest unless you talk to whoever is looking for it, OR you pick up the golden claw. Am I missing something here? Just seems a bit off to me.
Read more/comments (3)
Fifth Game Complete
Forgot to crop the images. My bad. The game runs at the resolution in the images and blows it up. A bit weird.
Finished this game. The last few levels I was yelling at the computer literally.
The Police Station was probably not the hardest, but definitely the most bullshitty because the amount of windows/enemies there are (and there is a SHIT TON). I’m pretty sure there’s no “smart” way to do that level, you just have to kill everyone and hope for the best. At least the police batons are an almost guarantee one hit kill. You also have to face off against the Police Chief (see image above somewhere). He’s really easy. Spray, move into cover, go in from a different angle, repeat.
Something that seemed to happen more regularly is I kept running out of ammo. I should point out that you can’t reload any of the gun, you have what’s in the clip and that’s it. Some of the harder enemies (namely the big black dudes) REQUIRE a gun to kill them, so that was frustrating to me sometimes.
Also beat the Mafia boss, he has 2 panthers and some ninja chick. You have to grab a bottle and kill the 2 panthers, and then throw the bottle at ninja chick before she gets you, and then use her throwing knives against the boss to cut off both his arms (one knife per arm of course, total 2 hits) while he sprays you with gunfire. It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds, the hard part is positioning yourself to grab her knives and run away. There is a little bit of cover, so it’s not too bad, and he takes a break by reloading and gives you a chance to hit him. I think you only have 2 knives for 2 hits, and I did it on my first try, so I’m not sure if you’re fucked if you miss.
Anyways, really solid game. For me, this is the type of game that I’d hate to watch someone play. Especially if their reflexes or “freakout” sense is really poor. You have to be ready for pretty much anything and have incredible timing sometimes, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever played. I left a few things out so you guys wouldn’t be spoilered by everything.
Read more/comments (5)
