Daimon's Lair

I recently discovered this Halo-themed spoof of Mystery Science 3000.

Here are two of my favorites:

I was playing more Gears of War last night--finally got to use the Hammer of Dawn, which is a laser-designator activated sattelite weapon that becomes available from time to time during the game.

The most interesting part is where you have to use it to kill a Berserker, but first you have to lure it outside so the satellite can hit it. I died a lot because I would try to get the satellite to lock on while the Berserker was charging at me. That part has a time limit because the satellite is only available to Marcus for another 7 minutes. I found it interesting because at least for me, the time limit was incredibly generous (I killed the Berserker with about 3:30 left). Normally time limits in shooters are my bane (witness some of my COD4 posts), but this one was easy. If I'm ever crazy enough to try Gears on a harder difficulty level, I'll be curious to know whether part of the balancing is decreasing the time on the clock.

My wife swears I hate the game, but I like it. It's just really tense. She was watching me for a bit last night and we both commented on how Epic really nails the horror movie vibe. So it's a game I'm finding I only want to play in limited increments.

So when I had had enough, I played Halo 3 multiplayer for the first time in a while. They had grifball back, but I always ended up on crappy teams, so I stopped. Lag still remains an issue. Maybe it is my connection, I dunno. I'm considering upgrading from 1.5Mb/sec to at least 3.

Let me preface this by saying that while I'm a huge fan of the original Metal Gear Solid, I only made it about half-way through the second one (I was stymied by the boss 'Vamp') and haven't yet played MGS3 (though I've seen much of it).

MGS4 is a great game so far. The graphics are amazing, even though my PS3 is (1) hooked up to only a 27" SDTV and (2) using only composite video [the 360 has component cable priority currently]. Even more so than COD4, the game begins and plays much of the way through in a very cinematic fashion-- though in some ways there may be a few too many cut scenes.

A couple gripes so far:
Automatic weapons aren't necessarily. I don't know if it's just because the weapons stop firing when Snake gets hit or the controls are sticky, but it's quite difficult to spray down some enemies with suppressing fire.

Why do I need to press two buttons to aim down the sight? Granted, the Metal Gear games have never been first-person shooters (and only the last two have even allowed you to shoot from first-person), but when you have a rather long combat sequence against 20-30 enemies while escaping a building, it's annoying to hold one button, press another to aim down the sight, and then press yet another to fire--every time!

Compared to MGS and MGS2 (don't know yet about MGS3, obviously), hand-to-hand combat blows. Maybe it's because there are too many nuances introduced that weren't there in the first games, but whereas I was pretty good at throwing (and especially choking/breaking necks) in MGS, I suck at CQC (close-quarters combat) in MGS4. Suck may not actually be strong enough. I pretty much get my ass handed to me every time I try to throw someone (partly because I hate CQC being mapped to the R1 button.

Which opens up another gripe--when the L2 and R2 buttons are the most trigger like (though not nearly as comfortable as the X360 controller), why are weapon commands mapped to L1/R1 instead? Wtf?

Which opens yet another grip, more about consoles in general. I'm not sure if PC games are still so flexible, but pretty much every PC game I've played allows you to completely remap the controls if you desire. And, given the hard-drives on the next-gen consoles--especially the PS3, where game software is regularly installed into the OS--why can't developers offer the flexibility to remap buttons. While I admit most control schemes are pretty well laid out, there are some (MGS4 in particular) that I really wish I could customize.

This doesn't mean I don't like the game. It's pretty good. I just think there are some definite improvements that could be made.

Still updating. Ah well. Even a superior piece of technology can be crippled by a bad OS. We'll see how things go as I actually start to use it vs. my experience with the 360.

Now all I need to complete my techno man cave is my 47" LCD HDTV. At least I can compromise on 720p. . . . :P

My limited video game time now has an even more divided market share than before. Earlier I mentioned I was getting a bunch of new games for free from my bro-in-law. Tops of those on my list are:
1. Gears of War
2. Bioshock
3. MGS3

So far I've started Gears, which I'm enjoying. The single-player campaign is very cover intensive, but not as obsessive as GRAW. GRAW is almost too methodical for my tastes, though I will eventually finish it. Gears is pretty even paced. It's definitely not run and gun like the Halo games (though even those are far from as run and gun as Goldeneye). You are constantly maneuvering behind cover, but since the default cover is usually squatting behind a low object, you can easily see what's going on and decide whether now is the time to aim or whether now is the time to let your ever fragile health (even on 'casual') regenerate.

Let me just reiterate this here: I LOVE regenerating health systems, even though the only games so far which have made it "plausible" are Halo:CE-Halo 3, with the Master Chief's shields constantly regenerating. When it comes to video gaming, I don't necessarily care about what's plausible, I care about good game mechanics, and regenerating health is definitely one of those.

On the other hand, Gears multiplayer is so far "meh". I could take it or leave it, but I might invest a little more time before I write it off completely.

But the real competition comes in the form of the PS3, which I just invested a considerable amount of money in. With much appreciated assistance from my wife's family and my wife herself and that wonderful quarterly check I get called Kichler Kash. So, it's a b-day present and me spoiling myself all at the same time. I got the 80GB bundled with MGS4--a game I'm thrilled to play. I'll also use it as my default PS2 game platform--hopefully they're as compatible as it is said (since MGS4 is the only PS3 game I'll have money to buy in the near future).

But. . . I haven't been able to start using it yet because it's just spent the last 1.25 hrs updating its OS. It's ready now, so it's good night Blogger. Hello PS3!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Halo 3 is a great game with great multiplayer, but it's really pissing me off right now because 4-5 nights in a row I get absolutely awful lag. A couple times I was winning and probably would have won if the lag monster hadn't attacked.

I don't think it's my connection because I haven't had problems until recently. And they haven't been sporadic. It's like every time I go on--boom! And I haven't had the same issues with COD4, either.

Bungie, I love you, but right now I hate you!

Great news! My brother-in-law decided he doesn't want to play video games anymore, so I've got a slew of new games coming in the mail (for PS2 and 360)

Most notable are Gears of War (sorry honey, but we'll have to return my b-day present), BioShock, God of War, and many more.

I'm also looking forward to the release of Too Human in a couple weeks (assuming it gets good reviews). I'm cautiously optimistic about the game because I've loved all the ViDocs and stories I've read about the game, but the demo was kind of flat-footed. The combat system was different, but not in a bad way, but I was disappointed that they had locked out all the other classes. Plus, the storyline part of it was pretty confusing (was this the beginning, somewhere in the middle, or separate levels?)

If it was the beginning, the game is probably going to be more confusing than a JRPG, and that's saying a lot bec. those Japanese cook up some pretty weird plots. If it was the middle, it still wasn't that good because it didn't seem linear. So, I'm hoping what I saw was pieces of the storyline. We'll see what the critics say.

Soon the demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is coming out. This looks REALLY COOL. I'm not sure what the release date is, but it's one of the many games on my list.

Well, I'm finally done with COD4. What a GREAT game. I like the ending--very true to real life. SPOILER: Everybody but 'Soap' dies. But the way it's done is cool, where you're barely alive and Cpt. Price is dying but he throws you his pistol across the road and you use it to take out Zakhaev and his lieutenants.

What's interesting is that until you take him out at the very end, I thought they were setting the game up for a sequel (which I believe would be a first for the COD franchise).

Plus, the bonus mission at the end was fun. A great little relaxer after such a tense game. I'm going back through on hardened now (the next difficulty level). So far it's noticeably harder, but not to the point where I would call it 'work'.

I've gotten stuck at some of the same points as the first time through, but I think I got through faster this time even on the harder difficulty level, partly because I'm paying much more attention to what to pick as a secondary weapon, usually either the Dragunov sniper rifle or an AK-47. Much better than the nearly useless pistol.

A guy I work with likes the AK a lot--I'm starting to respect it as well. It has more stopping power than the M14A1 which contributes to the all-important fact: ammo is scarce at times unless you pick the right weapons. Not, however, as scarce as Half-Life (where at any one time 50% of the guns in your inventory have no or very low ammo).

What's funny is that I suck with the sniper rifle in Halo, but I'm pdg with them in COD4.

Those are my thoughts so far. I'll post later on with further thoughts on the difficulty level balancing--especially when it comes to the timed missions *shudders*