You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
Masterful.
Better than I have come to expect from the Wii, so it will be a fun party game I guess, but besides that, I doubt it will hold my interest for long. Luckily GTA 4 will be in the house this afternoon, and such frivolities will be long forgotten.
Also midterms suck.
Also, I just realized the insanity of our household next year… two 360s and a PS3. That is just two PS3s away from optimum.
Okay so I finally got a chance to sit down with the Metal Gear Online Beta this afternoon, and while it’s no Call of Duty 4, it does have a certain charm to it. I was a bit skeptical over how a Metal Gear game translates to online play, but MGO feels a lot like its offline predecessors in many ways. Conversely, the game has a very unique side to it as well.
I mentioned in an earlier post about the poor network Konami has going for MGO, so I won’t go into that any further, but once you actually get past the main menu, things get interesting. The game features a character appearance customizer akin to Rainbow Six Vegas, a skill system somewhat like Call of Duty’s perks, and a weapon buy system reminiscent of Counter Strike. What the game adds is a very unique 3rd person perspective, weapon customization, and all the humor and trademarks of the Metal Gear series. Obviously as a beta, Metal Gear Online has a rather unstable network and a rather limited map and weapon selection, but what I got to see was impressive.
The ususal mix of FPS game modes are present, but the truely innovative mode is called “Sneaking Mission”. This randomly chooses one person in the game to play as Solid Snake, and the rest of the players are split between the red and blue teams. Snake is a neutral party who can shoot anyone on either team, but his ultimate objective is to collect a number of tags from enemy soldiers. The blue and red teams are rushing to be the first to kill Snake, while fighting off the other team at the same time.
Snake has quite a few tricks up his sleeve, as I discovered when I played as Snake one round. His first, and arguably most useful asset is the OctoCamo which blends in with the terrain around you. This makes Snake extremely difficult to see, and coupled with his Snake Eye he can effectively hide from enemies while knowing their whereabouts on the radar. Snake has a few guns at his disposal, as well as the obligatory cardboard box and girly magazines (not sure how those are supposed to work in online play).
Additionally, if more than ten players are in a Sneaking Mission match, another player is chosen to play as Snake’s teammate, the Metal Gear Mk II, and gets to cloak around the map electrocuting everyone. Only Metal Gear could pull off gameplay elements like that.
As for the downsides, the cover system could use some work; it doesn’t feel as clean as Gears or Rainbow Six, and the realism factor is a little toned down for my taste. Konami may be a little too close to launch to really adjust these features much, but I will be interested to see what the full release looks like anyway.
Not gonna buy it, but I am thinking about renting it. I’ll be all over it once the full release comes out next year… I liked this review; I generally like most of the content Ars Technica puts out.
As a note, if you like to follow tech/gaming news I’d recommend Engaget and Joystiq as well. I generally don’t bother with RSS feeds though, I like checking the sites individually.
In other news, it has been one HELL of a week, I’ll be glad when it is done and I am sipping a stein of german beer.
Next week’s prospects aren’t looking great, as the inevitable household console war begins. TV time will be harder to come by than Radiohead tickets, and while I would love GTA4 to win the war, my money is on Mario Kart. Woof.
Started playing through Metal Gear Solid a week ago, though once I got to the Sniper Wolf battle I got pretty frustrated with the primitive control scheme. I think I will simply remember MGS as the glorious game of its time, but replaying it is just too aggravating.
I gave up on MGS about halfway through, so I decided to start MGS2 instead, which I have actually been playing fairly regularly for the past few days. It still surprises me how good of graphics MGS2 has for a PS2 game, and it is quite a fun game even today. The only real downside is playing as Raiden instead of Snake for the majority of the game. Konami looks like they learned their lesson with MSG2, because Raiden is shaping up to be a complete badass in Metal Gear Solid 4, due out in June. I still need to play Snake Eater….though for some reason the PS2 emulator on my PS3 doesn’t work with MGS3, so I am out of luck for now.
Finally….Metal Gear Online Beta delayed, no big suprise considering the horrible Konami network system. I don’t understand why Konami doesn’t just use the PSN for hosting the beta servers, maybe they have some qualms about secure beta servers, or maybe the game simply isn’t optimized for the standard playstation online network yet. New Beta start date is scheduled to be the 25th, but I’m not really holding my breath.
I’ve found I have been reading a ton of Tech blogs daily, namely Joystiq, Engadget, and Ars Technica. I came across this on Ars a few months back, found its a quick way of getting all your tech news for the day in a truncated form.
in other news…probably gonna give up on WordPress pretty soon. it definitely doesn’t have the features blogger has, nor can I seem to figure out embedded videos and pictures. So its not really worth my time, stay tuned for the new blog.
Never thought I would actually start listening to Coldplay, but I finally have. I guess I’ve grown to love the falsetto vocals of Matt Bellamy and Thom Yorke, so Coldplay was the next logical step.
The caption says it all, pretty sad that American parents see “two men kissing” as more offensive than a “graphically severed head” in video games….yet they seem to have no problem blaming video games for every school shooting in recent memory.
One word: masterful. I am glad to see the writers haven’t lost their touch after that strike.
Also starting to try out the Rhapsody free subscriptions I got…pretty damn slick system, its a shame it doesn’t work with most mp3 players. I listen to a ton of music on my computer though, so that isn’t a huge loss. I see these free subscriptions as a great way of finding new music to own later.
I don’t know what the deal is with the South Park guys lately, they are either very funny, or kinda pathetic. Last season was consistently funny, though this season is starting off a little bittersweet.
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