GTA V Quick Impressions

GTA V (360)  Quick First Impressions

I debated picking this up because I really wanted to wait for the superior PC release but that could be 6 months away so I went ahead and got the 360 version.  I've read the PS3 version is a bit better because of some texture issues but so far the 360 version has ran fine.  The game comes on 2 disks and one is a mandatory install that is 8G, the second one is a play disk and you do not want to install that to the hard drive as that causes pop in issues because the game was designed to stream off the disk and Hard drive at the same time.  Since I have a 360 slim the drive noise is not that bad but every time I loaded the map I heard it and it bugged me so I installed the play disk on a USB drive and it works fine because it uses a different channel than the hard drive so if you have an extra 16GB usb stick lying around you probably want to use it.  I did notice a bit better loading times as well.

I've never liked the character movements in the GTA games and they have made some small refinements but controlling the characters still feels a bit like a tank, a little sluggish.  The shooting is a little better then before and I did have to turn up the aiming sensitivity.  Driving cars is a mixed bag, I had a lot of trouble controlling rear wheeled cars as they would move all over the road and not feel very realistic, the other types seem to drive fine.  I had some spectacular crashes and when you go over a special jump you can control the car in the air and slow down time which looks really cool.

The world is huge.  On the map I saw a place to take a ski lift so I found a dirt bike and started climbing a mountain.  It took me about 4 minutes to climb to the top and there were places along the way to stop and admire the view, even on the 360 which is 8 years old it was impressive.  Once I got to the top I wish that I had a parachute so that I could base jump but instead I just rode the lift down which took a couple of minutes.  I robbed a couple of gas stations where you had to point a gun at the cashier and that was hard to do, something didn't feel right about that until I made up a story in my mind that the cashier was cheating his customers......

You play as 3 characters in the game and I was about to open up the 3rd character when I quit for the night.  They each have their own skills that you can level up plus a special skill unique to each character so it does change up the game play.  There are special people you meet while playing where you do some type of mission for them and then when you go on the heist missions you can call on them to help you, just be careful helping the guy trying to legalize pot. 


New Releases - GTA V Finally releases

PC

Dragon's Prophet (free-to-play)
Foul Play (download)
Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver
Ironclad Tactics (download - $15)
MechWarrior Online (free-to-play)
Takedown: Red Sabre (download - $15)
Urban Trial Freestyle (download - $15)

Xbox 360

Foul Play (XBLA)
Grand Theft Auto V
Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver
Takedown: Red Sabre (XBLA - $15)
Foul Play and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD

PlayStation 3

Capcom Fighting Evolution (PSN - PS2 Classic)
Grand Theft Auto V
Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver

Wii U

Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver

Wii U

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (eShop)
We Sing 80s

Vita

Real Boxing (PSN)

Nintendo 3DS

AiRace Speed (eShop - $5)
Hot Wheels: World's Best Driver
Star Wars Pinball (eShop - $7)

Spliner Cell Blacklist, Diablo 3, iPad Mini

Splinter Cell Blacklist (Steam)

Played through a couple of the opening missions and it felt like a refined Splinter Cell game.  The graphics look amazing especially on an Nvidia card, Ubisoft and Nvidia partnered up to make the PC versions of their latest games look awesome.  I did have some issues playing the game on the launch day, I had to modify an .ini file to make the game load in a window otherwise it would crash, that issue is fixed now.

I have a love/hate relationship with stealth games.  In most stealth games once you are spotted it's reload time and for Splinter Cell, even though you can run away and hide, I want to try and make it through the level without alerting guards so I have to be in a mood to replay sections.  There have been times that I've been spotted and didn't think I should have but it hasn't happened that often.  The stealth is handled pretty well and you have a lot of gadgets to help you move through the levels.  Each level has multiple paths so if you explore the area you can find some easy ways to eliminate targets. 

They changed the voice actor for Sam, the new guy does a good job, but I do miss the voice of Michael Ironside.  Your main base of operation is a plane and you have various crew mates in different sections where you go and talk to them and get information and some secondary missions.  It feels a bit like Mass Effect.  One of the secondary missions I went on was to eliminate 20 hostile targets and that was a lot of fun even though I restarted multiple times.  The AI is very good in this game and they have varying routes so you have to sit, watch, and time your movements.  I opened a door in one house and a bit later I had an enemy checking it out asking who left the door open.  In another a passing guard was looking around for one of his buddies who he talked to earlier before I took him out.   

Diablo 3 (360)

Having so much more fun playing the console version versus the PC.  I've already found a couple of legendary items and that's just in Act 1,  also vendors are selling quite a few of them.  The loot is so much better in this game that it just adds to the I just need to play a bit more to see what cool thing I can find next.  I started out playing a Witch Doctor and was enjoying the ranged attacks, it felt a bit like Pikman or an RTS because of all the minions I had fighting on my behalf.  I could stand back and play general as I was hurling jars filled with spiders and sending in my 2 summoned zombie dogs to attack the enemy.  I created a Monk and that class is really cool, I barely played with that class on the PC version.  The sound design in the game is amazing as every melee attack just has a resounding thud when it lands that just makes the hit feel powerful. 


iPad Mini

I bought my parents the original 3G iPad when it came out since they live in the country and don't have Internet access.  My mom used it a bit to look at pictures but my Dad was never got interested in it until 2 months age, now he's hooked.  He's never used a computer or a smart phone so there is quite a bit of a learning curve, the iPhone seems easy but in reality it's not very intuitive. The hardest thing is all the passwords you have to remember.  He wanted to attach pictures to an email and when he went to the photo page he selected 10 pictures but the email option didn't show up he could only send the photos as a message.  After doing some researching I found that In iOS 5 you could only send 5 photos in an email, the email option should have been grayed out to let you know this instead of just disappearing.  I was impressed that he signed up for Paypal and eBay.

The original iPad is pretty old now and since it doesn't support iOS6 I upgraded him to an iPad mini this weekend.  We got the Logitech keyboard/case and it works very well.  I like the feel and the size of the mini.  The speed increase is very noticeable and he's able to get 4G speeds where he lives so that will help as well. We got the 3GB plan for $30 so I'll see how long that lasts before he has to upgrade to the 5GB plan for $50, it also includes tethering at that price so it's not too bad.  Last night I got a call about him having trouble connecting to email so I spent about 40 minutes on that. We eventually had to delete his email account and recreate it to fix the issue. 

New Releases - Next week it GTA V.

PC

Aarklash: Legacy (download)
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (download - $20) - First game was probably one of the scariest games ever.
Arma 3 - Multiplayer only.  Single player campaign to come later.
Huntsman: The Orphanage (download - $15)
Iron Soul (download)
Legend of Dungeon (download - $10) - Cool indie Rouge-Like
The King of Fighters XIII (download - $30)
Volgarr the Viking (download)

Xbox 360

DuckTales: Remastered (XBLA)
NHL 14

PlayStation 3

Carnivores: Dinosaur Hunter HD (PSN)
Dragon Fantasy Book II (PSN)
Hunter's Trophy 2: Australia (PSN)
Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix  -  A remake of a classic Disney and Square Enix calaboration.
Mystic Heroes (PS2 Classics)
NHL 14
Puppeteer  -  Awesome looking platformer.  Probably picking this up.
Sanctum 2 (PSN - $15)

Wii U

The Wonderful 101 - Finally another game for the WiiU probably pass though.

Vita

Killzone: Mercenary  - A good FPS on a handheld?

Rayman Legends, Diablo 3 Console

Rayman Legends (Steam)

Fun, Fun, Fun. Remember when you were a kid and games were just fun, they weren't trying to be super realistic or edgy, but just wanted you to have a good time?  I really liked the last Rayman Origins game and thought it was a spectacular platformer, Legends is so much more so. The graphics in Origins looked great but they really went all out for Legends, it's probably the most colorful game I've ever played.  The screen is filled with stuff, the backgrounds have a lot of detail that is easy to miss when you are running through a level.  The platforming is varied and each location feels different so there is no chance of getting bored.  The best levels are the music levels, the first one has you platforming to Black Betty and the jumps and attacks are all tied to the beats of the music, they are awesome. 

My only gripe is the Murphy levels, the game was originally designed as a WiiU exclusive so those levels involved using the touchscreen gamepad.  On PC using a controller you just press the Y button and Murphy moves automatically so it does slow the pace down during those levels luckily there have only been a few so far. 

There are a ton of different ways to play from daily and weekly challenges to 4 player local couch co-op which seems like it could get real crazy.  They included 40 remixed Origin levels, I played one of them and even though it looked familiar they did a good job of making everything new.  If you have the money you definitely should pick this game up, it's awesome. 
Diablo 3 (360)

Well I double dipped and got the 360 version yesterday and spent about an hour playing and I really like it.  The graphics aren't as sharp as PC and there is some screen tearing but other than that the core Diablo game play is there and it works very well.  One of the biggest issues of a PC game that only uses KB/M that moves to the consoles is how well the controls are translated.  So far I haven't had any issues, I like having direct control of my character with the analog sticks as it makes me feel more connected to my onscreen persona.  The powers are mapped to the face buttons and the right analog is used as a roll for every character so you can move away quickly if needed.  I find the movement and use of powers to be a lot easier, it just feels more fluid using the controller than the KB/M.  I haven't tried a ranged character yet so I'm not sure how easy/hard it is to target enemies out of a group but there were a lot of times on the PC where it would be tough to click on the correct one.   The inventory system uses a radial menu that works very well so they did an excellent job in porting the controls.

There is no auction house so they had to redo the loot system and it's much much better than the PC version.  I played around 50 hours on PC and hardly ever got anything worthwhile for my character, sometimes I would get something cool but it would be for another character class.  The loot on the console version will drop more items based on your character class.  There isn't as much loot either but there is a bigger percentage of getting better equipment. Some people are seeing 8-15 pieces of legendary loot playing on normal difficulty which I only think I got 1 piece. 

The console version is based of the latest PC patch version which added the option to play on normal but with hard enemies, kind of like the maxplayers command in Diablo 2.  I tried starting out on this level with a barbarian and died about 6 times in 10 minutes so I had to back it down. 

Overall I'm really impressed and think that the console version is the best one.  They are supposed to be releasing Loot 2.0 which fixes the issues on PC,  I wish they would port the console controls over to the PC game, but I don't think that will happen.  I need to try some online and see how that works and from what I've read it works very well.  Blizzard does it again.

Something big is coming........

Witcher 2, Dead Space 3

Witcher 2

Finally finished the game this weekend after starting it about 5 different times during the past year.  The graphics and presentation are probably the best in any game, the detail is amazing.  I played it on my triple monitor setup and it was awesome.  My main gripe with the game is the combat, when the game first released there was some lag in the combat so it wasn't as fluid as it needed to be.  They did release a mod that fixed this issue but even after that I still wasn't a fan of the combat. 

I played most of the game on the easy mode because the story was interesting and I just wanted to be in the world.  The best part of the game are the decisions that you have to make.  Just about every decision in the Witcher games are tough because your choice will have it's consequences, there really isn't an easy, good vs bad choice.  Even the smallest decisions could have long term impacts on the future, it's a really cool aspect that does make you want to play again or reload the last save to try something different.  I reloaded my game several times to see the different outcomes. 

Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt is coming out in 2014 and looks to be awesome.  Hopefully they will get the combat right this time.  The first game is still one of my favorite games of all times and even thought the second one falters a bit it's still an enjoyable game. 

Dead Space 3

I fired that up last night and I'm not sure why I stopped playing it when it first came out.  I loved the first 2 Dead Space games and so far the third game has been awesome.  They did seem to speed up the game just a bit and they introduced more human enemies, but it still retains the eerie feeling of moving through tight levels and not knowing what might be around the corner.  The enemies are as scary as ever and they do create tension when you see a couple running towards you. Some of the battles have been intense and I do catch myself breathing a little harder at the end of them.   The opening sequence of the game has some great moments so I hope the rest of the game has more of them.  I really liked the zero gravity missions of the second game and they seemed to have opened that up more in this game.  


New Releases - Quite a few good games this week.  Diablo 3 is now on consoles. 

PC
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse HD (download - $15) - Remember this fondly on the Genesis
Cosmic Predator (download - $4)
MirrorMoon EP (download - $10)
Outlast (download - $20) - FPS horror game.  Looks very scary.
Rayman Legends - Pre-ordered and ready. Game has gotten some great reviews.  The last game was one of the best platformers. 
Total War: Rome II - Interested but probably too much learning curve.

Xbox 360
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse HD (XBLA - $15)
Dead Or Alive 5 Ultimate
Diablo III -  Not sure how well this will translate to the consoles they did have to dumb down some of the UI. 
Freefall Racers (XBLA)
Rayman Legends

PlayStation 3
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PSN - $15)
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse HD (XBLA - $15)
Dead Or Alive 5 Ultimate
Diablo III
KickBeat (PSN)
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 (PSN - $50)
Rayman Legends

Wii U
Rayman Legends

Vita
KickBeat (PSN)
Rayman Legends