Grand theft auto? More like Grand theft time.

So sorry about disappearing for a week between the last post and this one i've been somewhat busy.... well the last 3 day's haven't been busy so much as completely absorbed by GTA 5, That said despite having been playing it vigorously for 3 day's pretty much straight I still don't feel as if I can review it as a major portion of the game has yet to be released. That being the much hyped online portion.

3 days, poof!

I HAVE however started thinking of short stories I could write ,probably branching off of the larger story I wrote sometime ago, that will likely not see the light of day until much later. However the story was dark and serious.(REALLY DARK going with the bad ending) and I'd rather write something more comical or light hearted so It may end up as something entirely different.

Gears of war Judgement

Release:March 19, 2013 Platform: Xbox 360

Story: Gears of war judgement is a prequel story to the Gears of war trilogy focusing on series familiars Damon Baird and Augustus"Coletrain"Cole(COLETRAIN BABY WOO!). This game details the events following E-day as well as tie in to the trilogies original story.

Gameplay: Gears of war is a cover based third person shooter. Gears Judgement broke away from the series' traditional gameplay which had many adverse effects. One of which was making the game more vertical allowing players to use height to a greater advantage. The movement was also made to be more fluent. Gun balance was changed to adapted to the new faster gameplay.

Graphics: Judgement had a more refined version of Gears 3's graphics, it looked a lot nicer at first glance but upon closer inspection traces of textures from 3 can be seen.

What they did well:

Movement: The game greatly improved the movement system set by it's predecessors(Not getting stuck to every wall ever is an improvement, trust me). This smoothed out many of the nuances with Gears 3's movement system.

New Executions: Gears of war has been traditionally violent so when executions were introduced in 2 expanded upon in 3 and further so by Judgement. Judgement did executions very well(although they were not introduced back into multiplayer until later by a dlc)

Story: Gears of war Judgement had one of the most entertaining stories throughout the series(not many shooters have legitimately fun campaigns) and the way it was executed was nearly flawless, unfortunately this was the games best aspect...

What could have been better:

Gun balance: The guns in the game generally served there purpose but some were noticeably better than others. More over the guns you were able to spawn with were a little questionable, such as a semi auto sniper which in gears is normally power weapon to be sought after.

Stim gas Grenades: This sort of ties into the last issue but its such a game breaking and prevalent problem that it has to be addressed separately. Stim gas was a medical grenade meant to be throw to revive or heal teammates at a distance. What it was used for instead was a temporary immunity grenade(also know as D-bag grenade and HAX). A player could throw it at their feet and were unable to be killed by anything not insta kill until its duration was up.

Verticality: The ability to jump of of high ledges was nice but after a while became an irritation, in a hectic gunfight people were able to escape by merely rolling off the edge quick enough.

No active reloads: Active reloading was a system in Gears where a player could time the reload to reload faster and gain a damage buff through what can be compared to a small QTE. It was featured in every game and its sudden removal confused and angered many veteran players.

Only one weapon: The load out system only allowed a player to pick a single weapon (perhaps as way to counter the questionably powered spawn weapons?). The series normally allowed players to pick a rifle and a shotgun for long and short distance fights. This new system meant you had only one option once you selected a weapon you were force to go either long range or close range, which lead to much less versatility(although lets face it Gears is sort of meant to be close range).

Over run mode: Over run could easily have been a really fun game mode, and by all accounts it can be really fun with the right people but the balancing on the maps and characters left much to be desired. A team could run 4 soldiers and a medic and more than likely stone wall the opposing locus team.

The money grubbing: Gears of war one released in 2006 shipped with 10 maps Gears judgement shipped with 4 , eight including the isolated overrun mode maps. They followed up by increasing the prices on micro transaction weapon skins. This made it seem as if the game was massively unfinished and rushed out and that the developers were desperate for money the season pass also included half as many Dlc maps which made Judgement have the lowest total map pack count of all the games in the series

Overall : 4.5/10

Black ops 2

Released: November 12, 2012  Platorms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii-U

Story: Black ops 2 follows the story of Alex mason, and his son David mason as they combat a man named Raul Menendez and his organization 'Cordis die'. The conflict rages(almost as much as those playing mulitplayer) throughout the 70's as Alex mason and into 2025 as his son David mason.

Gameplay: The gameplay follows Call of duty tradition of not necessarily changing that much but the changes that have been made such as the pick ten system really altered many playstyles mine included, but things like Scorestreaks replacing killstreaks were experiments gone bad in my eyes. This has lead to many divides in the community as many would like to see greater change between the games. Call of duty is as always is an FPS and has a heavy emphasis on competitive multiplayer.

Graphics: Black ops 2 doesn't really stand out graphically(some even say its a downgrade from the previous installment graphically) theirs many nice set pieces but in standard gameplay it has little to offer in uniqueness although thats not to say the graphics are bad either.

What they did well:

Story: Black ops two had in my honest opinion on of call of duty's best narratives, it had a lot of good writing which really made some characters stand out much more than in previous games, on example is the games antagonist Menendez(maybe its because people constantly scream his name?) is incredibly memorable.

Camos: They introduced many camos that broke from the normal patterns we'd come to expect. They later added many purchasable camos that also look very good on the guns.

Zombies: One of Treyarch's major selling points for its games is the inclusion of a zombies mode which has continually grow in popularity in each game and has been continuously expanded upon(though these expansions weren't always great, I'm looking at you Mr.Romero) in every iteration.

Emblems: Black ops 1 had a decent emblem editor, but it was limited to 12 layers or 12 objects so to speak. Black ops 2 has many more base objects and easier methods of editing as well as increasing the amount of layers to 32 which makes making detailed emblems much easier(although the community still contains many immature individuals so perhaps this isn't such a good thing lol).

Pick Ten system: Treyarch created a pick ten system for the games multiplayer which I think was a really awesome addition to the game and I hope it becomes a series staple. This system introduced new playstyles such as the no weapons class or sidearms only players.

What could have been better:

Maps: Black ops 2's multiplayer is fun and does have many maps at this point but looking at it objectively rather than as a player there's more maps i'd avoid than want to play on. Whats worse is that there are many DLC maps I'd want to avoid and having paid for them separately paid for them it is a slightly bigger issue than if it were just a few of the on disk maps.

Scorestreaks: These were a nice way to try to coerce the comunity to employ more teamwork(although who am I kidding this is CoD teamwork is a myth). At least on paper but in practice it really punishes anyone who isn't an objective player by making these once easy streaks much more difficult to obtain without objective captures.

Community: The Call of duty community is one of the largest and most fickle of any of them. It's also become on of CoD's most polarizing aspects, Most are either Fanboys or Haters. It's gotten rather sad honestly but then you have the actual players who can never be satisfied no matter what tweaks or balance changes happen it isn't good enough to the many self entitled players. It's not as if everyone is so whiny, but the most vocal are the most heard,and as such have given such a negative connotation to the community.

Overall : 8.3/10