DOOM Multiplayer video’s

Doom Multiplayer Video’s

Just A Quick Update…

So after finishing off everything I need to do, I decided to purchase the new DOOM game. Turns out the game has kickass multiplayer but unfortunately I have it on Playstation 4, fortunately the free weekend and trial let me try it out. It’s a shame that this won’t last but it’s quite possibly the best multiplayer FPS I’ve played in the past decade. Move aside Halo 5, Halo is dead, DOOM killed it. R.I.P 343 industries, no one needs to play your shitty micro-transaction bullshit anymore, halo has been dethroned.

Now why do I mention Halo you ask? Well, DOOM is very much like it. It’s the spiritual successor to all of the classic Halo titles. However if you think about it, Halo has always been a modernized arena FPS and almost all classic FPS were like this (including the legendary Painkiller). So DOOM sticks to its roots but manages to appeal to both casual players like myself and hardcore FPS nuts. A damn good combination if you ask me. Halo is DOOMED!!!

In case you would like to see what DOOM’s multiplayer is like then I have some video footage here… in case you haven’t already played it.

Doom Multiplayer Video’s

As you can see, I improve over the course of these video’s, that’s a great example of how a good multiplayer experience. If you guys are still waiting for the next Call Of Moneyvision or EA’s latest Battlemoney 4 for some multiplayer fun, think again. Give DOOM a try, it has zero microtransactions and though it does have a season pass, there’s no online pass or anything like that. If you get it on PC you can play the Multiplayer right out of the box so I recommend getting that version.

So I’ll be focused on playing DOOM for the time being. As for Star Ocean 5, I may do a short write up to cover the story in greater detail, spoilers may be present in it though. Even though I kinda got the gist of the Japanese version, I’d like to see the story with my own eyes, see if it’s really the best game in the series for me. Hopefully I’ll get round to doing some more writing sooner or later.

 

Micro Rant: The Last Of Us is an overrated Pile Of Garbage

So I gave The Last Of Us another go… still I fail to see the appeal this game has. The story? I’ve got no comment. If it gets better then that’s cool but I’m not going to bother seeing the whole story because at this point I’m not really invested into it at all. The characters are generic so far, Joel is basically an “I’m a tough guy” character and Ellie is just an annoying bratty teenager. Ok maybe those are too stereotypical but it’s just boring. I mean the concept of a zombie apocalypse is one thing but where the story itself is going? I haven’t a clue. Apparently it comes down to finding a cure for something and having to go on a huge quest to deliver it.

Regardless, even if the story is a masterpiece as people claim it to be, it doesn’t make up for the abysmal gameplay. Now it’s no secret that I dislike third person shooters but this takes the cake for being the worse third person shooter I have ever played. Mafia 2 at least gave you some great weapons and the gunplay wasn’t that bad, it was mostly the level design and the enemy placement which caused the most issues in that game. In this game, you are given a pistol and you can only hold up to around 13 rounds maximum, there are also other guns you acquire throughout the game which hold even less rounds. Hang on a minute… is this supposed to be a shooter? Because the fact that it has multiplayer (barricaded by online pass bullshit no less) which revolves around cover shooting seems to say that it is.

But this isn’t even the worst part. The worst part of this game is the bloody aiming. Not only does your hand shake while aiming (which I can put up with because it adds challenge) but to shoot you use the bumpers instead of the triggers. Who’s idea was it to make this a thing? How the fuck can you say with a straight face that this is a good idea? Add to this, the whole control scheme is a mess, every time I pick up this game for the first time in ages, I spend half an hour trying to find out what button does what. This should be something you pick up right at the start of the game and I still can’t get the gist most of the time what button does what.

So with limited ammo and terrible aiming controls, shooting is pointless in this game. What about stealth? Well… it’s passable. There’s not much depth to it, you just move around occasionally throwing bricks and bottles and just walk past. Simple stuff but to be honest that’s not much better than Farcry 3’s stealth mechanics, difference is, Farcry 3 also had good shooting mechanics as well and a relatively entertaining storyline that adds way more shock value than this game tries to give.

In fact you could even say that The Last Of Us is like a clunky, linear and more tedious version of Farcry 3. Farcry 3 does everything better. It’s crafting system is great, stocks are constantly replenished so you merely have to go and get it. It’s fun to kill animals, use their pelts and craft holsters. In The Last Of Us however, it’s not. They just add random items sparsely littered around each area and you have to loot them. Heck you’re expected to. If you don’t have a molotov cocktail when you’re fighting a bloater that comes out of nowhere… have fun. The crafting system in The Last Of Us is basically the equivalent of Odin Sphere’s alchemy system (in the original) in the sense that it’s just tedious, clunky and the game is pretty much impossible if you do it wrong.

Another thing I hate about The Last Of Us is the linearity. I mean sure, they’re trying to tell a story and all… but the gameplay mechanics don’t work well with this style at all. If you miss an important manual or crafting materials, they’re gone forever, you cannot backtrack and get them later, they’re gone. Same goes with pills too. In addition, workbenches are hard to come by and even when you find them, all they let you do is upgrade weapons which you will barely use the whole game because of their limited ammo capacity and their horrible aiming controls. If you shoot a pistol, you’re pretty much giving away your position and you’re going to die. Of course you can trial and error it (that’s what I did for the most part and it was not fun) but it’s simply a lot easier to just walk past them in stealth.

Most of the infected enemies have a high resistance to bullets anyways which basically requires you to use stealth. Clickers in particular are pretty much immune to headshots and the most effective way of getting rid of them is… well, walking past them. You see, clickers have no eyesight and they can only hear sounds. So if you’re walking in crouch mode very slowly they won’t attack you. This in theory makes them pointless as you don’t have any challenge getting past them. However if you are too close to a clicker, they will attack you anyways even if you aren’t even making a sound. This is because the game has triggers that automatically trigger the instakill clip which happens every time you die to a clicker. Why clickers can instakill you and other infected cant is beyond me but whatever.

The thing that bugs me is the horrible inconsistency I mean they can only sense sound which is in itself a silly thing because for the vast majority of the game you will be crouched and moving slowly. There is very rarely a moment when you are playing this game uncrouched. This brings me to another point, Ellie. With clickers especially, it really bugs me how Ellie is constantly running around making lots of noise yet the clickers don’t notice. This is even worse for hunters when she pops out of cover and the hunters can clearly see her but do absolutely nothing yet if they see Joel, they attack you immediately. It breaks the immersion completely, why did they think this would be a good idea?

So all in all, what redeeming qualities does this game have? None, absolutely none. There is barely any music besides a few occasional classic guitar notes every so often, the visuals aren’t bad but the world design gets old fast and they aren’t really that special. Nothing really stands out as being… well, good. I really tried to like The Last Of Us but I think it took the last bit of my patience. I don’t care how good the story is, I can’t put up with bad gameplay. If you wanted to make a story-driven experience, just make a movie… or do what Heavy Rain and The Walking Dead did and… hang on, there’s one more thing isn’t there?

Of course, how could I forget the ever lovable QTE’s? They’re everywhere in this game, you’re constantly put into situations where you have to mash the square button or something, they do this so much that it just gets old. Add to this the constant usage of ladders and other apparatus to reach high platforms which serves no other purpose other than to extend the game’s length. Considering how slow the pacing of this game is, my beard would grow twice in length by the time I finished it.

So to wrap things up, The Last Of Us is overrated trash. I mean I can understand if you could consider it another mediocre TPS because that’s exactly what it is to me. Mediocre would be the best word to describe this game and sometimes mediocre games are the worst because they’re soooo boooring!!!

I’m not going to put images up on this because I don’t want to touch the game anymore and as such I don’t want to have to return to it just to add some extra screen caps because did I forget to mention that the loading time for when you start the game is ridiculously long? So I’ll leave this on the trash blog pile, no feature for you!

Feel free to disagree if you like but my stance won’t change on the matter, I’m done with the game, I’m never returning to it, it’s going on the selling pile. Hopefully it’s still worth a bit, it’s the PS3 version so I’m not sure. Nevertheless this game is so overrated that selling it shouldn’t be an issue. It’s not as if I’m trying to sell Vortex for the SNES.

One of my most regrettable purchases of all time.

Warcraft Movie: My Thoughts

So I just finished watching the Warcraft movie. Needless to say I had a lot of fun watching it as it was Warcraft and you can’t really go too far wrong with it. The Warcraft movie stays true to classic Warcraft rather than World Of Warcraft which I was glad to see… though there were a few knocks to World Of Warcraft, they were very minor.

The first thing to note about the movie is that it is very straightforward and simplistic, they kinda sped it up to keep people engaged which was a good thing. The second thing to note is that the movie is very graphic and pretty dark for a 12 rated film which is great considering the fact that it stayed true to the Warcraft novels which were dark to begin with.

The characters didn’t disappoint, Durotan was as you would expect him, you get to see him a lot in the movie and you get to see many different sides of his character which was nice. Lothar gets a bit more exposure in there too with more plot relevance than he had in the original games. He and Durotan pretty much steal the show, though Khadgar makes a few appearances as well and acts as Batman’s Robin toward’s Lothar.

Orgrim Doomhammer returns, he’s just as badass as he was in the books but we don’t see too much of him at this point, he does play a role but it’s not as major as Khadgar so he is kind of a temporary side kick. Instead, Garona plays as Durotan’s sidekick even though they barely had any relevance to one another in the lore which is interesting. This brings me to another point.

The lore in the movie is different, most of it however still ties in to classic Warcraft and there are Loopholes which tie it in to Warcraft Orcs and Humans, I’m not going to say too much due to spoilers but things change in the movie, I believe these changes were directed towards the general public rather than Warcraft lore nerds since they wanted to give the movie a somewhat satisfying conclusion and they wanted the viewers to become invested more. So they changed it up to give extra investment to certain characters.

I will say that for the most part however, these changes are actually for the better as they made things a bit more interesting. On the other hand it causes a few plot holes. We get to see a lot of fight scenes, most of them are large-scale battles (in classic Warcraft style) there are also a few duels AKA mak’gora which adds a bit more focus in the choreography department. For the most part though, a lot of the action is pretty chaotic and difficult to take in though it was always satisfying to see Orgrim casually bashing people with his hammer with no fucks given, like a boss.

Naturally Blackhand plays a part, he’s slightly different now, rather than being ruthless dictator like he was in the books, he is a little more rational this time around but he is still rather brutal. Interestingly enough, they chose to keep him clean of the fel magic for some reason, this seemed somewhat out of character but it was replicated by his new attitude. Blackhand is very much like Orgrim Doomhammer in the sense that he is conflicted about Gul’dan’s actions but sees no other way around it. You never get to see his daughter, Griselda though. It would have been interesting to see how that would have worked out with this new personality he’s got rockin’.

Gul’dan is pretty much the main villain of the story and he is very different this time around. Rather than being a silver tongued schemer, Gul’dan is very much like he was in World Of Warcraft: Warlords Of Draenor in the sense that he is a lot more forward and up-front rather than hovering around from behind the scenes observing his grand plan from the background like he did in the lore. You could say he has basically replaced Blackhand’s role completely which kinda simplifies a lot of things but it’s really not Gul’dan. Nevertheless he’s still a great villain and he has a lot of badass moments, you thought he was starting to show his badass side in Warlords Of Draenor? Ha you’ve seen nothing yet.

Medivh was a pretty great character this time around, I like the way that they dealt with his character though the whole fel thing was a bit unusual as it came out of nowhere (I’m not going to spoil precisely what i’m talking about). We do get to see him do some cool things though. In a way, I’d say Medivh kinda replaces… nah I’m not going to say it because it’s a spoiler but if you know the lore, you probably know what i’m referring to.

I will definitely say however that I like how Medivh was portrayed in the movie better than the actual book which surprised me. In this you get to see a lot more of his unexpected character quirks than you did in the movie. He is also very protective over the human lands this time and takes his role as guardian a lot more seriously than he does in the book where he seems somewhat annoyed at the constant pestering of the humans for help and would rather keep himself to himself.

One thing that did disappoint me though was the ambiance of Karazhan, I guess I was expecting something a bit more ominous… I don’t know but it seemed like just a normal tower. The Dwarves make a brief appearance but the lack of a Scottish actor felt kind of off. I mean come on guys, it’s only CGI, get a Scottish actor to do the role, we identify the Dwarves with that Scottish accent as it gives off that Nordic feel which feels close to its roots (since the Dwarves are based off of The Lost Vikings) but it’s only a minor issue.

I also would have liked certain things to remain true to the lore such as all the orcs being green due to the dark magic taint that occurred in Draenor before the first war ever happened. Instead, Gul’dan just shoves magic up their asses and turns them green immediately, a bit late for that aren’t we Gul’dan? It felt rather inconsistent and awkward that all the fel orcs were completely irrelevant to the plot and were just there to add a backdrop (including Grom Hellscreem, yes he is there). You would think that Blackhand would have been one of the first to volunteer to drink the fel blood but it seems that he is instead commanding a bunch of steroid infested orcs and still manages to upstage all of them in combat… but this is Blackhand so why am I surprised?

The choreography was simple but good, all the hits connected well and had a good punch to them which made the fight scenes appear more gruesome. There was a lot of effort put into the sound design in the movie and the ambiance, you get to hear a lot of screeching and it gives the orcs in particular a very intimidating feel. Put simply if you’ve only play Warcraft 3 or World Of Warcraft, you might be a bit surprised as to just how intimidating they are. They are menacing and it’s sometimes difficult for Orgrim and Durotan to stand out amongst all the screaming of the orcs but they surprisingly manage to.

Seeing some of the imagery as it was conceived in the books brought to life was actually very frighteningly accurate and I really think they managed to capture those points quite well in the film which helps the viewer feel a lot more invested in the story if they haven’t read the books.

Put simply, Legendary thought of everything with this movie… but they focused mainly on the important parts of the story and building its foundations on it rather than looking at the broader picture and trying to level it all out with the rest. I think this decision was for the best. As much as I’d have liked to have seen the shadow council, the ogres, Mannoroth and maybe Kil’jaeden. I’m pretty satisfied by what was offered and it was really worth watching for what I was shown.

There is also one thing with Medivh that I won’t spoil but we get to see something that we have never seen in any Warcraft game before… beyond concepts of course. All I’m going to say is, it’s a bit small but for understandable reasons. However it is still pretty awesome and I’m so glad to finally see it, worth watching for that alone if you ask me.

So all in all, the movie is a must watch for Warcraft fans. I believe others who aren’t too invested in the Warcraft universe will enjoy it too since the story simplifies itself and changes things up to explain things better and get people’s investment quickly. Even if you aren’t a fan of Warcraft, you’ll either be invested in this film or it’s just simply not your kind of thing.

Though I did mention my hiatus in a previous post, I took it down since I made this closely afterwards. I may try to do something in the summer but there’s no promises. I can only hope to be back in winter.