Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Titanfall, Dark Souls 2, Basement

Titanfall (Xbone)

A non-stop thrill ride!   The action never stops!  Finally I don't have to press a button to run!  Wish I could Parkour in real life!   Please quit talking I'm trying to shoot things!

I either thought or said these phrases out loud last night after playing a couple hours of Titanfall.  I played the beta a couple of weeks ago and the game really didn't grab me, but after spending a couple of hours with the full game I can say that it's awesome and does reinvigorate the multiplayer shooter.  The first thing you notice while playing a pilot is how smooth the movement is just running around the environment is fun.  You can double jump, latch onto ledges, and wall run all in about 5 seconds and it feels great and it easy to pull off.  The best part is that you don't have to press a button to run, I setup my controls to have a delay run so after pressing the analog stick up for about 2 seconds I start running which is a thumb saver and really needs to be incorporated in every other shooter.  You will need all this quick movement once an enemy Titan comes into view as a well placed rocket will kill you so moving to a higher vantage point is necessary and the anti-titan weapon will allow you to kill one eventually. 

Once you have your own Titan the movement slows down a bit, you are in a big mech, but you are still agile enough that it doesn't kill the pace.  Getting into your Titan is cool as there are different animations depending on how you approach it, jumping into the air the Titan will catch and slam you into the cockpit, it looks really cool and makes you feel awesome.  Titan on Titan fighting is really fun as you have a number of different skills that you can employ, but as soon as another enemy Titan shows up you probably need to retreat or you will usually have to eject and that animation is awesome as well as it throws you up into the air where you can pull out your weapon and start shooting while falling or try to land on top of the Titan that killed you and take it down. 

I'm playing through the campaign which is still multiplayer matches but with some context and voice overs.  You need to play through the campaign twice to open up the other two Titan bodies. They have dialog going during the match but since the action is so fast paced I rarely pay attention and really the story is not that interesting.  Each match as AI bots on both sides that are usually easy to kill and they make the battlefield fill complete.  For those of you that have a hard time playing multiplayer shooters because you may not have fast enough reflexes will still have fun shooting the AI bots and you can rank high on the leaderboards just running around shooting those so Titanfall is really for everyone.  The game is great and highly recommended.  The PC version is 50G and most of that is because the sound is not compressed so about 38G of just audio files. 


Dark Souls 2 (360)

Rented the game from Redbox because I wanted to try the game before it releases on PC in April.  It feels like a refined Dark Souls which is a good thing.  The combat feels quicker but it's just as deadly as I died within 20 minutes of playing.  I'm playing a 2 handed swordsman so no shield which is different for me and requires you to use the roll move so you have to be aware of your armor's weight.  The opening section of the game is a bit easier and they do guide you along better than the first so new players should have an easier time getting used to combat and enemy behavior, in the original you could take a wrong path from the start and be killed with one hit and could get really frustrating if you didn't see the other path which lead to easier enemies.  They have made some changes to the core gameplay, when you die you lose a bit of your overall health which could be bad if you die a lot like I did in the original.  I used a tool that looked at the save game and I died 426 times, which is crazy.  The enemies will stop respawning though if you kill them enough times so that alleviates the issue with the health loss.  You can get items that will restore your health and even respawn the enemies at a higher level if you need to grind a bit which is a good feature.  It's really going to be a long month waiting for the PC release but the enhanced resolution and Directx11 features will hopefully make the game better.  

SouthPark Stick of Truth

About 15 hours in and I think I'm getting close to the end and it keeps getting better and raunchier, the underpants gnomes need to watch their language.  I've seen both parts that have been censored in Australia and Germany and they probably should have been.   The combat is still fun and using the different abilities never gets tiring, Butters is still my favorite buddy. 

Basement Update

They put down the subfloor and finished out my staircase so the floors are ready to be covered.   The door frames are almost up and the trim needs to be painted so hopefully in 2 weeks it will be done and I can start putting in my equipment. 


Stuff

Hearthstone -  Officially released.  If you haven't tried the Blizzard card trading game you really should it's awesome.

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