Coder, Tester, Writer, Gamer.
Posts tagged console
Blops II: The Bloppening
Or: How I learned to stop shooting and love the hack
Is my gaming credibility put to the test when I say that I like the Call of Duty series? I understand that there’s a somewhat bad reputation for having a dreadful (and mostly underage) fan base, and I can hear other friends sneer at me about rehashes and expensive DLC packs, but I believe that it’s a great series. I prefer to think of it as ‘refined’ rather than rehashed, always setting the new benchmark for the first-person shooter genre’s gameplay… well, certainly not the graphics.
And just like the rabid fan base, I dove straight into the multiplayer mode, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it. It provides a great fast-paced take on the genre, and really shouldn’t be compared to Battlefield and other ‘tactical’ online shooters. Everyone knows what to expect from it, so instead I’ll tell you about the magical class combo known as Engineer / Black Hat that makes everything fantastic and let’s you hack everything:
- For enemy explosive equipment you can use the Engineer perk to see them through walls, then use the wireless hacking device to turn them ‘friendly’. It works particularly well on snipers camped in an upstairs room guarded with a claymore or bouncing Betty, where you can arm their own device and lure them to their doom.
- BLOW UP ALL THE THINGS. I’ve found the Black Hat device the easiest way to take down turrets and other large scorestreak rewards quickly, purely because you don’t have to be in their line of sight (but I wouldn’t try it against a K9 unit). You can even use it against aerial vehicles, which is great news when a gunship takes three hits and you only have two AA rockets!
- Both items combine to make care packages the most useful reward in a game! If you don’t like what lady luck has given you, reroll it! Stealing an enemy care package and replacing it with a trap is also a better system than in MW3 where nobody touched enemy packages at all. Finally, use the hack box to capture care packages from a distance, from out-of-bounds, and (if you’re a complete dick) capture an ally care package before your teammate even gets a chance to pick it up.
So now you know that it’s not all about shooting! Most of my points come from anti-air and hacking, and it’s an incredibly fun! If you want to play with me on Xbox 360, feel free to add my gamertag – ‘philcsf‘. Happy hunting!
Across Enemy Lines
There goes all my money…
Well, maybe I shouldn’t be that mean about the PlayStation 3, as I certainly hold no grudges or biases when it comes to the supposed ’console war’ now raging seven years strong. I stuck with Nintendo growing up, and made the dive into Microsoft’s realm about three years ago (and don’t regret it). I knew I’d eventually buy a PlayStation 3 down the line because I was interesting in playing some of the exclusives like Uncharted and Heavy Rain, but I never expected it to be so soon! I’ll blame it on a combination of a big pay day from my new job, and Gamestation’s clearance sale last week. Now that I have a console and a large pile of first-party games, I should have plenty to write about over the coming weeks.
The console itself is pretty good (I ended up with a 320GB Slim model), it’s certainly quieter than my old Xbox 360, and the user interface seems solid enough. If we’re comparing it to the new-style ‘Xbox Home’ dashboard, there’s no annoying adverts everywhere, and the store browsing implementation is a lot better than the 360′s marketplace. I say ‘browsing’ only, because the real integration doesn’t work as well – Having to quit out to view the store and related DLC is a pain, but I guess it’s unavoidable with the PS3′s sand-boxed security protocols. The big thing that’s been annoying me is a lack of background updating, and there’s a lot of updating. I’m used to buying a game and be playing it straight away (or with a tiny <5MB title update), not waiting hours for a 1GB+ patch to download on my slow connection.
The friend system implementation could be a little better as well, but I don’t really have any friends at the moment – Add me (‘philcsf’) so it’s not looking so lonely. Expect first opinions of Uncharted and ModNation Racers soon, along with reviews of Heavy Rain and PlayStation Home… if I can get it downloaded and working.
