The Three Rs N3twork is a primarily British viral entertainment network, with standings in many niche interests involved in a variety of different groups. Ranging from gaming to adulthood to video creation.
1/10 - "Just, No." 2/10 - "Avoid." 3/10 - "Gamebreakingly flawed" 4/10 - "Not so great" 5/10 - "Pretty Average." 6/10 - "A few nice touches, nothing amazing" 7/10 - "Not brilliant, fun anyway" 8/10 - "A decent enough game, Well worth a look." 9/10 - "A really good game. Highly Recommended." 10/10 - "An absolute must buy, a defining game for the genre."
This relates specifically to this article. You should read it if you'd like this post to make sense.
I think it's great that we finally get to see the updates on the 360, and it's awesome to have them all at once. I was the first person I knew to get 100% of the achievements in the console version when The Orange Box came out. Granted, it looks like Microsoft is pulling the whole "The trains run on time, and the DLC costs money" Mussolini-esque totalitarian content scheme. It's a crap shoot and they know it- they've known it since Epic itself tried to go against that and release free packs, only to be stiff-armed by the big M$.
The question is, will I buy this? I got all of my achievements in the PC version through several achievement-specific servers, as the normal ones seem ridiculously challenging for the payoff. Nobody will have the liberty of dedicated custom-map servers on the 360. There'll be people who stand there for hours and hours grinding them, sure, but none of us have that kind of time in the fall season! I'm happy for the new maps and weapons, but they'd need to be drastically rebalanced for the consoles. I can say that I don't know if I've ever talked to anybody who got all of their weapons legitimately. I'd bet most of you could say the same.
So when the time comes, will I support this venture, or recommend it to you guys? I don't know. Sadly, probably not. I own the PC version and get this stuff for free, earlier, and it's better. Perhaps if the PS3 version wasn't a port, and it had an Unreal Tournament III style content sharing structure, I'd go for it; but I don't really like the PS3 controller for shooters, or even have a PS3 to play it on yet.
So I'll stick to my mouse and keyboard. Thanks for greedily screwing up good concepts again, Microsoft.
EA has finally come through on its promise to deliver a free conquest mode for bad company, and has named a date: August 7th. What is conquest mode? Made famous by Battlefield 1942™, Conquest mode pits players against each other in a fast paced battle to eliminate the opposing team’s tickets. Players deplete their opponent’s tickets by one point per kill and can cause their opponents tickets to spiral downwards by capturing control points. Four maps that are currently available for online play in Gold Rush mode will be available to conquer with Conquest mode.
This has caused much rejoicing amongst players of battlefield, including myself, as sometimes gold rush seemed slightly... unfair on certain maps. I'm unsure how it will be implemented, whether it'll randomly select between gold rush and conquest, or whether you can choose one or the other. More when I know.
In addition to all the tasty, tasty, E3 goodness [Which i'll probably post up some of tommorow, Theres just so much to wade through] the Too Human demo dropped today. Word is, its a sci fi dungeon crawler, think.. Diablo in space, with norse gods.
Impressive eh? Well, the demo weighed in at a hefty 1.1 gig, The demo was typically "fantasy" and there was 5 classes on display, but only one to choose from, the champion. The opening intro looked very nice, with the norse gods seeming like the colonial marines from aliens,weirdly enough.
The game play? well, the controls were very nice and it looks awesome to roll in a dodge, pull dual handguns, and start shooting, and I hadn't even left the initial area yet, Let alone seen any monsters. Controlling your sword is done via the right analogue stick which is a concept i've loved since playing Blade 2 back on the PS2. When I finally reached enemys, I realised something. This game is fucking awesome, Like Diablo on steroids. When you level up there are 3 skill tree's to choose from. The setting is certainly unique, but it plays like the popular "Action RPG's" of the last generation of consoles.
Basically, what i'm trying to say is, I was blown away by this game, and i'm buying it. Try the demo, its free.
Also I managed to download the Vegas 2 gift pack today, Containing Dark versions of CQB training and murdertown, and Calypso casino from the original game. Its free on the 360 marketplace. Its a worthy reason to try the game, as there appear to be new A.C.E.S as you play, Gifted you 5k exp per level.
If your a halo fan be sure to check out the marketplace this monday for bungie day!
As part of the celebrations [on 7/7] Bungie are giving the Xbox360 marketplace not 1, not 2, but 3 amazing gifts.
7 Exclusive new gamepics and a bungie day Skin [ONLY AVAILABLE ON 7/7 so act fast]
The legendary map pack will drop in price to a not so different 600 points
A new map: Cold Storage, based on Chill out from the original Halo will be available for free.
So, there you have it.
Major Nelson states that the halo community are trying to get 7 billion halo 3 kills by the "seventh day" so if your stuck for what to play this weekend, Fire it up and brush up on some skills. Personally, i'll be on Bad company.
For our 99th post, I'm merely going to post the battlefield TV spots.
This is more of a normal trailer, it's notable for "Haven't they got guys trained for that?" "Well, yeah, but those guys are too expensive to waste."
They are frankly, amazing, I had a fair few sniggers as I realised what games they were spoofing in these following trailers.
Mocking Rainbow Six Vegas...
Mocking Metal Gear solid..
Mocking the Gears of War TV spot.
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Pretty moving pictures aside, since playing the Beta of this game back in April, I've been well up for taking the full game for a spin, and it launches this Friday.
Since the beta, there's been a lot of talk about the "micro transactions" to buy certain guns in the game, and while i disagree with it solely on the idea that someone willing to pay shouldn't have an advantage over someone who won't, or can't, its an academic difference seeing as EA quickly removed it. However, the fuss has remained. This is a similar shit storm to the one conjured up by Oblivion's various small additions, like horse armour. And it got me thinking.
The games buisness is just that, A buisness, and however much we love to get free stuff, you have to face the fact that somewhere, somehow, someone has to get money out of this. In my opinion, Map Packs are okay, Camo packs, or character customisation packs, they are okay. But Weapons and armour? No. Too far.
Single player content is all fine. After all, they have the right to offer said items, and we have the right to turn down the items, but when those items threaten to divide the community, like Ghost Recon's map packs did, they shouldnt be allowed. Xbox live is one big community, and for developers to change fundemental aspects of this, by seperating us by money, there's a big flaw.
The Ao2 free content I talked about here is now available for free on the European marketplace. Still doesnt ring true for EA. I'm considering borrowing a copy of army of two so I can play the new end mission.
The Battlefield: Bad Company demo came out while I was away playing Ninja Gaiden 2, and so iImissed it. From what I'm reading its got major connection issues. I managed to get into the original Beta well back in april, and I enjoyed it. Although, there was the occasional lagspike. I hope this gets ironed out before its release, Because if it launches with lag all over the place, it'll put alot of people off [me included.] otherwise, I'm still pretty eager to pick it up, I like class based FPS, what can I say.
Do you live in "North America, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan"? Do you own Army Of Two for your 360? Then congratulations, you can download the free Veterans map pack[Sponsored by pontiac]. Do you live in europe? Tough shit. No free DLC for you.
Weirdly enough, this is reversed for PS3 owners. The PSN has the Army of two content for free in europe, and unavailable elsewhere.
While i have unfortunately already played through and traded in my copy of Ao2, Major Nelson states that the pack contains: "two additional co-op campaign maps, plus a new multiplayer map, more exciting co-op experiences, including an alternate ending to the game!". The second Co-op level contains a "real" boss fight, missing from the original copies of Ao2, where you return to the SSC building.
Again, the Multiregion clusterfuck has been met with general confusion by the gaming community, and no reason has been presented for the delays.
I'm alittle behind on this one. The "Dope Bag" Free DLC add's 4 new maps to Kane and Lynch's multiplayer "fragile alliance" mode, and a handful of achievements. As one of the unlucky launch day buyers of Kane and Lynch, i thought the only thing close to a saving grace was the Fragile Alliance game mode, where up to 8 players could work together to heist a variety of targets. unfortunately, the game was quite buggy, and 75% percent of the time when you tried to enter a game you were plonked back to the main menu.
Anyway, i downloaded the Dope Bag last night, and when i woke up this morning, I loaded up Kane and Lynch, and settled in for a few sessions, noticing it was newly patched. Now, Kane and Lynch's multiplayer is somewhat difficult to explain, the objective being to cooperatively rob your target, and make it to the extraction point, where all the money is pooled, and shared out equally, if you die you respawn as one of the enemy's and can earn a cash bounty for killing the surviving players, and stopping their escape with the loot. So far so simple, right? Well, this is where it get's devious.
The winner is the player who escapes with the most money, However thats done is left to the player. You can be a team player, and escape as part of a group and split the money fairly and equally, or you can pick your moment, and gun down the rest of your teammates, to take their share of the heist, and escape alone, the only problem being that the guys you just shot are now on the other team, and they really dont want to see you escape with what was their money.
Its this combination of Hurried negotiations,backstabbing and paranoia that makes fragile alliance so much fun to play, unfortunately it was marred by Innaccurate weapons and poor damage, meaning it took about 5 minutes to gun down your teammate and turn traitor and as a result no one ever bothered.
The new patch made the weapons more accurate, and damaging, and made it easier to join games, meaning that the free dope bag has made Kane and Lynch a very interesting prospect with the new globe trotting maps, it's just a shame we had to wait almost 6 months for the patch to make the game fun.
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