L.A. Noire

Release: May 17, 2011  Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC.

Story: L.A. Noire puts you in the shoes of Cole Phelps(This one can't swim) a World war 2 veteran turned policeman as he rises through the ranks of the Law enforcement bureaucracy(contain your excitement). This puts you in charge of solving cases such as Traffic, Homicide, Vice, and Arson. The games story also focuses on Cole's personal life and how he copes with his war experience.

Gameplay: The game plays somewhat like Rockstar's other franchise Grand theft auto(except a complete role reversal) but with a greatly reduced amount of gun play and penalties for harming civilians. This highlight of the game is the crime scenes and interrogations, which are made challenging and intriguing by the use of a custom engine to make the facial expressions as realistic as possible.

Graphics: The games graphics were not its highlight (that's not to say they're bad). However the games facial animations are still incredible even two years later.

What they did well:

Interrogations: The facial animations incorporated during questioning and interrogations was and still is one of the games biggest draws.

Setting: The setting of 1947 L.A. was a great choice and the team did a great job recreating L.A. as it was at the time.

Characters: The characters were incredibly deep and believable. Many of the later characters introduced were Phelps squad mates who brought more of Phelps past over in the Pacific theater to light.(*spoiler* its pretty dark)

What could have been better:

Free roam: The game featured a perfectly recreated 1947 L.A. but not all of it was used. The game allowed you to travel but outside main quest's and a few street crimes there wasn't much incentive to do so.

Gunplay: The game takes the emphasis of off Guns but doesn't really replace them with much. It makes sense being that your in the shoes of a cop but the lack of action can be a deal breaker for some gamers.

Overall :8/10

Top 5 most disappointing games

5. Darkest of days

So I really only have myself to blame I didn't do enough research into the game before I got it. I fell for the hype, but how could I not, the game allowed you to travel through time and alter famous historical battles. Well needless to say  cool premise does not a good game make, this game has literally no redeeming qualities that I can think of at all.

4. Assassins Creed 3

Assassin's creed 3 is one that no one could predict would be disappointing, none of the others were. The game's protagonist was much less cool than the antagonist, the game lost nearly all of its verticality, and it put a heavy emphasis on the games new naval combat which was simplistic and really boring. The game tried to hard to change and messed up.

3. Fable 3

 After Fable Lost chapters the games got simpler and simpler to the point where I felt like Fable 3 was patronizing players. The game has absolutely not way to lose, if you lose all your health you fall over and get back up with a scar. Fable 3 was much more linear than its predecessors and yet still felt the need to add a line showing you exactly where to go, killing any and all exploration. Your main character is no longer able to use magic without special gloves. There is only 4 weapons in ALL the games weapon shops per game, because too many weapons clearly confuses and scares players.

2. Homefront

This game is painful to write about because it was so close to being a good game. It needed only one mechanic and a little more polish to be on the caliber of CoD and Battlefield. The game mechanic needed was bullet penetration and it would've been great. I'm really hoping Crytec see's the mistake and fixes it for the sequel.

1. Gears of war: Judgement

Another that's just so close to being good. Gears judgement had the series best campaign, a brand new gamemode, and was finally shifting focus off of the shotgun in multiplayer. Unfortunately the game shipped with only 4 maps. The Dlc only added 6 maps of which 2 were remakes. Gears of war 1 SHIPPED with 10 maps in 2006 and added 6 more on Xbox and 9 more on PC. Lastly Gears judgement added the ability to drop down from above which was incredibly game breaking and irritating.

Judging something based on it's Community

 This is a follow up on the Call of Duty Hate/Hypocrisy post that I had planned since I wrote it. In that article I mentioned that as an overall judgement. I said Call of duty has a bad community and should that make it a bad game then? The way I see it that's a biased perspective. But it's simultaneously understandable. If you have a bad experience in a game you'll blame it on the game. Now not all games are perfect and those opinions may have merit sometimes, but if its the game how can so many people like it? Simple because it wasn't the game, it was the people. There's never going to be a perfectly balanced game because in a multiplayer setting you can only control the weapons and the maps, not the people. You can make great maps and weapons but how the community plays may differ from the designers intent.

 The best example I can provide is the introduction of "quickscoping" to the Call of duty community. Quickscoping is the result of a slight flaw with call of duty's aim assist that allows players to rapidly scope in and shoot a sniper rifle at and enemy with little to no skill involved, due to the 1 shot kill weapon being slightly pulled towards an enemy. The developers tried to stomp out the problem by altering snipers, but were thwarted by the communities incessant need to quickscope. It wasn't the Developers intent for how the community would use the sniper rifles or the aim assist, but its become a part of the game now.

  Moving off of the call of duty example to show that it's not just a isolated problem. A game that I used to love but can no longer play due to my developed hatred for the community, Halo 4. If you read my review of the game you should know that I don't hold the actions of the community against the judgement of the game. However I can't stand playing it due to the matchmaking forcing me into matches with the worst of the worst. Its not game mechanics, aside from the matchmaking system, that are to blame for ruining the game for me, but the community. I refuse to say outright that Halo 4 is bad because I can still enjoy custom games with my friends but I no longer like to play the game with the online community.

  So hearing that is it right to let my personal experience lead me to call a game bad regardless of if the game was well made? Everyone is entitled to whatever opinion they may have but I feel too many people dislike popular franchises because of the community and not because the quality of the games are bad. I just hate the thought of a game being called bad or being disliked for things other than inherently bad game design or balance.

Borderlands 2

Platforms: PC , Mac, PS3 , Xbox 360 Release date: September 18,2012

Story: You are one of 4 vault hunters(6 now including DLC) who've traveled to the planet Pandora looking to open the vault, a mysterious alien portal said to contain unimaginable power(Halo?). Unfortunately you are ambushed and nearly killed by Handsome Jack(Plot twist!), the head of the Hyperion corporation, who's taken control of the planet to search and open the vault for himself. The game has you seeking out Handsome Jack(Not unlike myself, no?) and the vault to stop him from opening it and destroying Pandora.

Gameplay: The game is an FPS that borrows influence from certain RPG elements such as leveling up or powers. Each character has 3 different skill trees that usually appeal to 3 separate play-styles. As the game progresses your characters level up and gain more powers. The game has system of loot drops which include things like Weapons,Shields, Grenade mods, relics, or just money. As the game progresses so do these loot drops consistently giving the player something to strive for and generally lengthening the game experience.

Graphics: Borderlands has a distinct cell shaded art style making its graphics design really unique you can always tell that it's borderlands. That said if you get to close to things they may not look as nice but from a distance look really cool.

What they did well: 

Classes: As mentioned before all classes play differently. This is done real well, whereas some games may make some classes better than others (*cough*Dead island*cough*), all classes are generally balanced out to be even with one another.

Weapons: There are so many weapon types and variations that its unlikely you ever see the same weapon twice(barring legendary weapons and mission rewards). The weapons can vary in appearance, attachments, fire rate, fire type, elemental type, and manufacturer. Manufacturers which each have different specialties in weapons.

Villain: The Antagonist Handsome Jack is just a great character,whether its making sarcastic jokes at the main characters or invoking the players wrath, he never ceases to be entertaining. I can't even imagine how the sequel can get a better villain.

Humor: The developers go through great lengths to make the game as humorous as possible(unfortunately that only applies to this franchise, Sorry Duke Nukem) whether it's entertaining side characters or pop culture references, the games usually got something to offer everyone.

Co-op: The class balance is great for playing with multiple people in a generally seamless cooperative experience. Once again the game is great in single player albeit slightly harder. The game does however give multiple benefits to people in groups, such as increasing the chances of good loot drops and increased enemy levels allowing the players to level up quicker.

What could have been better:

Customization: I feel bad saying this twice in two reviews but in the particular case I feel really burned. The game can handle near infinite weapon variations but can't handle a decent character customization. Now you can change they head style, but not the body style, and you can only select pre-coded color schemes. While still a step up from the first, it still has a way's to go.

Vehicle types: I wouldn't have minded this as much if they hadn't made it out to seem like there'd be multiple vehicle types, some were even said to be able to be flown. Instead we got 2 vehicles both ground based(more types were added later via DLC, still no flying however) which ended up being a huge disappointment in an otherwise great game.

Overall : 9/10

Top Ten best Halo MP maps

This was an idea that just hit me to make a top ten list becuase it can be applied to nearly everything and can break the monotony of text. I think i'm going to make this a new sunday tradition and  I hope you like it. Anyway these will be based on my experience with the games and lists objects so without further ado my top ten all time Halo multiplayer  maps.

10. Epitaph

9. Ascension

8. Powerhouse

7. Solitary (Prisoner)

6. Relic

5. Relection (Ivory tower)

4. Beaver/Battle Creek

3. Colossus 

2. Turf

1. Guardian

Payday: The Heist

With Payday 2 coming out soon I figured it would be a good time to cover the original. That said the original is fun but isn't a particularly deep game so there won't be as much to say.

Platforms: Pc & PS3 Release date:  October 18, 2011

Story: Payday doesn't have much story besides the fact your a group of guy's who pull off heists(Totally unexpected given the title right?) under the guidance of the plan maker Bain(No not Tom Hardy).

Gameplay: The gameplay is more the games focus rather than the story. The game HEAVILY emphasizes playing with teammates (anyone who's ever played solo can tell you that A.I. team mates are pretty much a knife in the back). The game is playable in single player but it is incredibly difficult to succeed this way(This is no joke). The game play's similarly to Left 4 dead(they have a crossover map as well) with a group of 4 trying to achieve their goal. In this game you play against various forms of law enforcement trying to stop your heist.

Graphics: The games graphics aren't bad but they're not anything particularly special, some things look better than others. The Character models are nice but the environments are kind of bland by comparison. Also the Cops all use the same few base models and given how many there are in a mission it gets noticeably repetitive.

What they did well: Gameplay mechanics are done well, they throw enough objective twists to lengthen the heist without becoming unnecessarily tedious. The game has an incredibly fun Cooperative experience. Some of the heists are really over the top and awesome.

What could have been better:

A.I.: The AI are insanely difficult to face especially when playing in single player. The reason they're so hard is that the A.I. are programmed to literally not miss (No seriously 100% accuracy all the time, they are freaking terminators).

Customization: You can only change your characters mask and weapons/equipment between a few limited choices(The mask designs are at least pretty cool). In the future I'd like to see a larger selection of weapons and gain the ability to customize the mask I wear is all.

Overall : 7.5/10

Payday the Heist 2 comes out August 13th for Steam and within the week for the consoles.

And to anyone who reads this and has a Gmail account or any other Google account feel free to follow this blog or comment I'd love to hear your feedback/Suggestions.

Quick but serious post

  Hello every one I'm still trying to decide on the next thing I want to do whether that be a game review or the first anime review. In the mean time I wanted to take a moment to share a more serious post with you all.

  Recently my History/Psychology Teacher Mr.Schroeder's son Jack was diagnosed with type 1 Diabetes. Diabetes is hard on everyone involved but to make matters worse Jack has already been dealing with Autism. Mr. Schroeder is a great father but with a new born baby and Jack's current problems he needs some more help, so he started a fundraiser to get him a trained diabetes service alert dog.

  So I implore you to please consider donating to the  fundraiser here
 http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/diabetic-alert-dog-for-jack-schroeder/78344

Call of Duty: Hate/hypocrisy

Call of duty has become quite the juggernaut over the course of the last console generation. While its popularity grew so did the amount of people who grew to dislike it. While every game broke sales records one after another, the comments about the game grew harsher and harsher. The community seemingly grew to hate the game yet buy every installment. Let me clarify I am by no means a fanboy of Call of duty, but however I am against the unnecessary hate the game receives. Based on the domino effect of hatred that's been brewing everywhere.

So firstly some of the main arguments I've heard against the game are completely conflicting. The arguments are as followed "the game never changes it's always the same" and "the game has gotten so much worse since CoD ____". Now Neither argument is correct and neither has any merit.

So firstly to negate argument number 1. The people who say the game never changes would probably argue the CoD 4 is better than CoD BO2. A completely hypocritical stance on the matter at hand. If the game never changed than how can one possibly be better than the other? Simple answer actually it can't by their own logic the two games are different, with one being marginally better than the other.

Argument 2 is a little more difficult to counter because it really comes down to a matter of opinion. Opinions can be changed but can not be wrong. Now if you go strictly by facts however every game has improved over the last whether significantly or not, it has.Whether the improvements where engine related or gameplay related there is always an improvement I can go through a list as to what each game did better over the last but again its all a matter of opinion.

As a last note I have another thing that I plan to go in depth on in my next mini discussion so i'll keep it short. That is the fact that the games gotten a reputation for having a bad community. Many people make jokes and bash the game based on the community. While I can't really defend a community that makes death threats against the very developers of the game they play, I can say that the community shouldn't reflect upon the game as much as it does. The game itself hasn't changed just the people.

An Essay on Introversion

I wrote this essay back while I was still going to college, we had to write about our personality types, specifically about Introversion and Extroversion. I generally don't like to write or talk about myself but I feel like this essay came out to be way deeper than just me or some assignment and I wanted to share it with everyone. Perhaps open some minds to a new perspective so to speak.

Introvert, a word usually associated with someone who appears to be antisocial, but is that necessarily the truth? To those unfamiliar to modern technology they view playing Video games and being on the computer as signs of being anti-social. Those who share these habits, they know its not nearly as antisocial as it would seem. For through the computer and Xbox I have met many people who I would more than likely have never met else wise.  Some of the people who I’ve met have become very close friends despite never having met them in person. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t met in person that allowed us to become such good friends.

  Of course I wasn't always lucky enough to have such good friends. When I look back at my early years I had very few friends. Even worse than not having friends I was bullied. The teachers wouldn't do much of anything and most of what they would do made things worse. Perhaps it was a Defense mechanism but I pretty much stopped caring about other people I focused on myself and school work. I always played Video games at home but it wasn't until High-school(7th grade in the Highschool anyway) that I got a Xbox 360 and learned about online gaming.

  I never really thought about the social aspect of it, as a gamer I loved online gaming though. I added the few friends I had on it and played Halo 3. It was like that that I would meet many of my online friends just playing and having fun. Of course I also had started having friends and changing my personality to be more laid back. After a few months of playing I met my friend Zen/Jarrod I’ve known him since January of my 7th grade year. and despite never having met in person to this day were as close of friends as we would be if we did meet. Same for my friend ‘General’ (we didn’t know his name for 2 years and his online name went through variations of General_______) When he went away to Bootcamp we cared as if he were family and missed him the whole time he was gone. That's just my two closest friends online I’ve befriended many people , more than in person.

Though back to my closest online friends ‘General’ and Zen, ‘General’ lives outside of Chicago and Zen is in Arizona. I would never have met them without the internet, more specifically the Xbox. So I find it hard to believe that most of the time someone like myself is viewed as anti social by conventional thought. In a way I view my way of being social as much more social than conventional socialization. I’ve met people in different Cities,States, even countries whereas people through Socially acceptable socialization meet others in their general area.

 So while it’s true that I spend my days at home rather than out and about. Though while I am physically alone i’m not truly alone. That said while someone may view me as being antisocial it is far from the case. I’m enjoying hanging out with friends despite not leaving my house. While I do have introvert type social preferences by no means does that mean i can’t or don’t speak with others. Perhaps I’m not an isolated case and that what if others have a similar experience to my own, and are wrongly labeled anti social or introverted?

Halo 4

So i'm going to try a bullet point style review for this one I'd love to know which one is preferred.

Released:November 16 2012            Platform:Xbox 360

Story: Halo 4 picks up 4 years after the events of Halo 3 with Master chief being awoken to counter act the attacking forces(The covenant again because why create new enemies when you can just rehash the old ones).During this fight it becomes apparent that the ship is being pulled into the planet Requiem. The Game primarily follows Master Chief as he attempts to find a way off of the forerunner planet Requiem and save His A.I. companion Cortana from Rampancy a deterioration in A.I. active for 7+ years.

Gameplay: The Gameplay is most easily described as a hybrid between Halo 3 and Halo Reach. It takes a lot of the movement speed and Gun balance from Halo 3 but Incorporates the Armor abilities and Sprint from Halo reach(I personally Hate Reach and could do without any of its trash from now on). The game generally runs smooth but in split screen begins to have massive frame rate drops. a new Vehicle "The mantis"(or as I call it Metal gear) was introduced into Halo 4 as an all around vehicle capable of handling both ground infantry and of armored Vehicles. Halo 4 also Introduced Spartan ops a mini side story introducing new episodes weekly and adding onto the story.

Graphics: Halo 4 is undeniably one of the best looking Xbox 360 games. It most definitely pushed the limits of the console. However that isn't necessarily a good thing. I mentioned before how there's incredible frame rate drops in split screen play. That Happens because while the console can handle loading 1 Halo 4 when it has to duplicate loading it 2,3,4 times it just can't handle it.

What they did well: They did a much better job handling weapon balance with Halo 4, every weapon does its job as intended. Spartan ops was really well done and added a fair bit of depth to the story at hand. They've also done a decent job of taking community feed back and community made maps into consideration and even incorporating some of these ideas and maps into the game.

What could have been better: 4 things

Vehicular balance: The vehicles in the game are either incredibly under powered or overpowered with no middle ground. There are many anti-vehicle weapons but they mostly drop at random which leads to point 2...

Ordinance drops: Ordinance drops are essentially like Call of duty's Kill streaks except more random. This can be annoying as the opposing team may all be in vehicles but you get ordinance that just doesn't help the situation.

Matchmaking: Halo 3 late in its life cycle developed a matchmaking system called 'Trueskill'(I personally preferred an entirely random system). What it does is take your gameplay statistics and matches you with others who have similar Stats. This was meant to match players of equal skill with each other. Needless to say with how many people play the game it doesn't work, like at all. Now what it does is essentially check to see if you win and puts you with others who win, unfortunately it doesn't seemingly check to see how good that player did.

So say Player 'A'(I like to consider myself player 'A') wins and does really well  and scores 49/50 points for his team Player 'B'(player 'B' is that one dude who turns on his Xbox but is probably doing heroine or something) may have been awol or just plain bad but gotten a win anyhow thanks to player 'A's efforts. Now player 'A' will end up facing someone else like him but his team may be facing people much better than them creating a really uneven match.

 This as you may be able to tell from the length is my biggest pet peeve in the game, It usually punishes players for winning so it's almost better to throw a match.

Spartan ops: I mentioned earlier how Spartan ops was good. However the thing about those episodes was they stopped after a few months leaving the game recycling old reruns. Just like Cartoon Network and Tom and Jerry, if there were only Ten episodes. So while they were good and fun to play the fact they just abruptly end so soon after starting is something that could have been done better.

Overall : 8/10

So that's it for the bullet point style tell me which one you prefer better, however you feel like doing so.

Saints row the Third

This is an odd one to start with but I'm just replaying it because I recently re-bought it from the humble bundle, Which is a really awesome Charity, and I really recommend that any friend of mine that has a decent computer check it out I'll be sure to link it at the end of the review.

  Saints row the Third was released November 15th 2011 here in the states. It focused much more on the series' over the top wackiness than its predecessors. The Games opening generally sets the tone of the overall pace of the game, that is over the top with no real reason, with a bank robbery from the now World famous Third street saints main members(How the saints gained so much between 2 and 3 is never really explained). The robbery goes bad and they end up in jail after a mass shoot out with police forces and members of an unknown gang from atop the bank vault being carried by a helicopter. That's where we meet our new antagonists the Leaders of the Gang "The Morningstar" which is part of a group called the Syndicate(Incredibly original right?) from there we end up in the new city of Steel port.

  Now moving on from the introductory story I'm not going to tell the full story because this is a review not a walkthrough. The gameplay mechanics have changed since the second game not necessarily for better or worse, its a give and take from saints row 2 we have flashier melee mini cut scenes and the ability to Hi-jack a car by jumping through the window(apparently your character is part of the X-men now), but we lose the different fighting styles and environmental weapons from the 2nd game(No more throwing random trash bags at pedestrians :(  ) . Same could be said about the games customization. The Character customization is improved but the Vehicular and gang customization are either the same or worse( I can be Doctor Manhattan, nudity and all if I want, but god forbid I get a pimped out Garbage truck).  The amount of weapon choice is cut way back as well with only 2-3 things in each category. That said the weapons that are their are incredibly powerful, combined with the fact you character is as damage resistant as superman(No seriously the sequel coming out soon actually focuses on this), makes the game incredibly easy even on harder difficulties.

Now I've only focused on the negative aspect of the changes so far, the game is actually pretty damn fun. Kind of like old school GTA San Andreas. The game is an open world sand box so judging it primarily on the weak story and difficulty might be too harsh. It is this sand box that makes it worth it, the side missions are usually pretty fun but still lacking in difficulty. You can do basically anything you want roaming around from Tasering some random guy who looked at you wrong to driving a Vehicle that picks people up and shoots them out of a cannon, its all there(or not to forget to mention the infamous Dildobat of ultimate power). The game also does Co-op much better than its predecessor, by getting rid of the competitive multiplayer aspect and focusing on solely Co-op they've managed to do that quite well, whereas in Saints row 2 you could only free roam with friends now you can play through the story and side missions as well.

But does the good outweigh the bad? In my opinion no, because once you beat the game the sand box is great but pointless, with out a diving motivation there's not a single reason to come back. Like I said earlier the Story isn't particularly good and crazy short (less than 4 hours is 30+ % complete and that's with messing around included). So in  short the games a fun thrill ride while it lasts but ends far to quickly.



                                                                         6.5/10


So that's my first review I may experiment with the format a little in the next one but I hope you enjoyed it anyway.

Also here's the link to the Humble bundle  I mentioned up top https://www.humblebundle.com/ Any donations there go to the American Red cross and Child's play.

Welcome Friends,Romans,Countrymen...

  Hello Friends,Family, and whoever else may end up reading this. I've been putting this off for far too long,but today I'm officially starting my personal Blog. This blog will mostly be me finding different things of interest for me to write about to keep my writing skills up. Some of you may know I've recently rekindled my interest in writing and although I would love to make a living out of it, it just isn't something I can see happening overnight. So I'll write as a hobby and someday maybe it'll pay off.

  Now as for the contents of this blog I will probably be writing reviews of various things Games, Anime, Movies, ect. At the moment I have a massive back catalog of aforementioned things that I'll be retrospectively covering. In the future however I plan to write reviews fairly quickly after I purchase/watch said things.

  I occasionally write short stories, usually pertaining to my friends and inside jokes but if I think they're good enough for a general audience I'll share them. . I don't have any current plans for my reviews but I will begin shortly now. I also don't know how often I'll update this, I'm going to try to update 2-3 times a week but stuff happens and I'm a major procrastinator so hopefully I can keep a normal schedule of updates.I'm fairly new at this so the content may improve over time so bear with me and thanks in advance. If you have any suggestions or criticisms in the future please feel free to tell me I'm going to strive to keep improving.