I'm a little bit sore today...

12:00pm 22 Mar 2010 26 comments

After I was knocked off my bike cycling to work this morning (note: the photo is not the remains of my helmet, it's just a picture I got from Google), I might have trouble gaming for the next day or two as I've got cuts on the tips of three fingers and the thumb of my left hand.

Luckily, it's not my right hand, as most shooter games map the fire function to the right trigger of a controller.

Unfortunately, though, my helmet took the brunt of the smack when my noggin hit the tarmac (thanks Giro) but sadly, I think its days are numbered, as it seems to have received a life-threatening crack.

Being a video game-related blogger, I've been trying to come up with what game my accident might resemble, and I'm thinking XBLA game Trials HD, especially as I hit the left front of the car as it turned in front of me, I rolled across the bonnet and landed on the road with a smack. No gamerscore points or achievements for that, though.

Although Wammo, at KiwiFM, has come up with an appropriate achievement for me that could relate to Battlefield Bad Company 2: Achievment unlocked - successfully taking out enemy vehicle using own head (100 gamerscore points).

First Impressions: Metro 2033

10:30am 19 Mar 2010 13 comments

Today's First Impressions is on THQ's Metro 2033 (Windows PC/Xbox 360), a game set in the future in the nuclear wasteland that is Russia. It's an R18 and apart from an article I read about it in a recent Edge magazine, this one has flown under the radar for me. So far, I've played for about an hour and a half.

Metro 2033 is  partly based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Russian novelist Dmitry Glukhovski, and if any of you have an inkling that it bears some striking resemblance to the PC game Stalker, well, you'd be right: some of the team on Metro 2033 also worked on GCS Gameworld's Stalker. 

The player takes the role of Artyom, a young Russian lad born in the days before the apocalypse in 2013. Now aged 20, he lives with thousands of others underground, in Russia's twisted underground tunnels - he's never ventured outside the protective concrete of his settlement. That is, until he is forced to in a mission to save mankind.

OK, so the story is a little cliched - last hope to save mankind - but Metro 2033 has some quirky differences that pull it above the standard run-of-the-mill survival horror game. One of those is the gas mask that you have to put on whenever you venture into areas of the irradiated surface.

Putting on the gas mask really creates a claustrophic effect and is quite unsettling at times. The gas mask is reliant on filters that you have to keep clean, and it's cracked, and when a filter is too dirty, and Artyom is having trouble breathing, you can hear his breathing become laboured and quicker. It's quite unnerving, actually.

First impressions: God of War 3

11:30am 18 Mar 2010 30 comments

Time for another First Impressions blog, this time about my initial hands-on time with Sony's PlayStation 3 exclusive, God of War 3, which I started playing last night.

So far I've played for about an hour and a quarter (I didn't start playing until after 11pm so called it quits about 12.15am) but the game so far has taken me up to the top of Mt Olympus and to the depths of Hades. Expect a First Impressions of THQ's post-apocalyptic Russian survival horror, Metro 2033, which has a strong Stalker (a PC game) feel to it soon.

I've decided that when I mention parts that could be potential spoilers, I'll flag them with SPOILER and end it with END SPOILER. In fact, if you don't want to spoil your experience of God of War 3 (if you plan to play it) then maybe you should stop reading about ... now.

God of War 3 starts big. How big? How about "climbing-up-the-arm-of-earth-titan-Gaia-as-she-scales-Mt-Olympus" big?

GOW3 starts just after God of War 2 finished and opens with Kratos working his way up Gaia's tree-like body, assaulted by skeletal soldiers summoned, I guess, by king of the gods Zeus himself. Around Kratos and Gaia, other titans are working their way up Mt Olympus.

Iconic game characters

10:30am 17 Mar 2010 66 comments

Gerard Campbell

Sony's God of War 3 unleashes on PlayStation 3s around the world tomorrow, and it's fair to say that Kratos, the warrior with a huge skyscraper-sized chip on his shoulder, has become something of a poster boy for Sony.

He's brooding, incredibly violent and wearing a minimum of clothing - many gamers, PlayStation owners or not, will probably identify Kratos's blood-splattered appearance. The man who slaughters all in his path, be it human, undead or beast, seems to be the type of chap who slices first, ask questions later.

Over the years, there have been a handful of video game characters that have stood the test of time and are instantly recognisable by gamers - they've almost become iconic with the brand they represent: Master Chief (Xbox), Ratchet (PlayStation), Mario (Nintendo), Gordon Freeman (PC) and Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega) are just some that spring to mind.

Of those I mentioned above, Mario is probably the one that has best stood the test of time and will be recognisable by gamers and non-gamers alike, as will his "Itsa me, Mario" catchphrase. Mario will be Nintendo's legacy for years to come.

So in celebration of Kratos' latest outing, what do you think makes a game character most memorable and what characters - past or present - have resonated the most with you and why?

Watch where you stand ...

12:00pm 16 Mar 2010 51 comments

In Battlefield Bad Company 2 you can blow things up. Big things, like buildings and forests.

And in BFBC2 you can never guarantee that the building you are seeking cover behind will actually be standing in a few moments' time thanks to some smartly placed shells from an M1 Abrams tank. This isn't the first game to do destructible terrain but I reckon it's one of the only games that gets it right. In this game, destructible terrain can actually change the shape of the battlefield - mid-combat.

One minute you're bunkered down in a house, RPG at the ready for the approaching tank, then the next your ears are ringing and you're showered by fragments of brick and mortar, and there's now a large gaping hole where your right shoulder was leaning. You start to feel vulnerable very quickly.

Like no other multiplayer game before it, I'm hooked on the online side of Battlefield Bad Company 2 (in fact, I started playing the online game before I launched into the single player), and although I haven't had time to play any for the past week, I'm determined to get stuck back into it this week, play in a squad with some friends and rank up.

I played the multiplayer beta as a sniper but soon decided that wasn't the class for me: it's not much fun being a sniper who is continually sniped yourself. Now, I'm playing as the engineer class and loving it. There's even an achievement as an engineer if you can do a headshot with the repair tool!