Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

I had a rough time with its predecessor, but it had enough good in it for me to finish the game.  I had seen some cool trailers for Bloodshot (Condemned 2) so I was pretty excited to pick it up last week and check it out, and I am glad I did, they took a mediocre game and took up a few notches in several areas. 

Onto the to the world of Ethan Thomas; an angry drunk and begrudging serial killer hunter! In take 2, the graphics are a bit better overall and they fixed one of my major complaints with the prior version: the constant darkness!  You could certainly adjust the brightness to suit your preference, but even when doing so in Condemned, it was a lot of work to make out objects on screen and required squinting and changing your focus from the task at hand.  Even though I still had to turn up the brightness, the darker areas seem to have a higher contrast with more detail, so playing those drab scenes in the sewers, basements, bathrooms, and alleys is way easier on the eyes.   Moreover, Bloodshot actually has some levels that are lighter and more visually aesthetic then the infested rot that shadows most scenes, like the FBI labs which is a nice change, even though it quickly fills with tar like sludge and delusional blur.    It’s still a very dirty game and I feel slightly sullied after playing.  The unsanitary bathrooms painted with blood and feces and rotten infested carcasses and garbage strewn everywhere, make me want to my wash hands when I let go of the controller.   Visual unsanitary, but I suppose it adds to the tone of the story.

My favorite Super creepy baddie!

The real upgrade in the game is the melee fighting techniques with combo and parry moves that add a great of texture to your combat.  Though some of these moves are prompted trigger pulls, it’s quite an improvement. 

The investigative techniques are still mostly the same, (camera, spectrometer, UV Detector, etc.), but now you get upgrades and new equipment as the game progresses, including armor.  There are more puzzle investigations that add texture to game play and to get a perfect score you have to answer all questions correct on the first try.  Which means you have to put a little more thought into your investigations this go round. 

The achievement scheme is a lot different and those investigations are a big part of getting your points.  You don’t just collect 6 birds per level and collect your cool 25 points.  There are transmitter collectable’s, player responses, and emitters all of which are required to be a top notch investigator.  There are 25 single player achievements and 13 multiplayer achievements, but you don’t get achievements for finishing anyone mission on any particular level.  For example, you have to get all perfects on all levels to get that achievement or your have to make gold investigator on each level to the gold achievement, etc. 

It’s a scary and entertaining game, better then the first, even though its caked with nastiness and the baddies are uber gross!  The boss in the doll factory (left) is toe-up!  You have to love a crazy clown chick with a psychedelic laugh that makes your skin crawl but somehow looks sexy in her dirty corset and striped stockings.   Even though she wants to kill you with the rotary saw blade lollipop she’s wielding you might feel sad to have to stick her head through the grinder…ewwww.  

Highlights

• A new melee combat system which includes offensive / defensive combo moves, grabs and holds, and death moves interacting with the environment, i.e., throwing a body through a TV.
• New environments like outside areas, labs and warehouses.
• New gear and forensics tools and a redesigned process for the investigation of the crime scenes that is all upgradable based on new scoring system.
• Many new items in the environment can be used as melee or throwing weapons like golf clubs, bricks, and exploding dolls.
• More gun play with weapons like the sub-gun and crossbow, but keeps the cool stun gun from V1.
• More accurate game play for difficulty levels, i.e., normal is actually medium and hard is difficult!
• All-new multiplayer modes like fight club “Circle of Death” add to the game after your story mode is complete and some texture to the new fighting system.
• Much more cohesive storyline keeping the same characters yet introducing new characters, new baddies, and new bosses.
• A killer creepy soundtrack enhancing the overall “fear factor”!

I wouldn’t recommend you play this game with the kiddos around, it almost gives me nightmares, certainly the heebie-jeebies. 

Kiss Kiss,

 
Dawngrrl Gametart

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare has been a blast to play!  In fact, the one major downside of the game is how short the single player campaign is.   So I started over on veteran with the intention of getting the mile high club achievement rumored to be almost impossible. 

I am about halfway through this difficulty mode and it could be one of the most frustrating in my FPS gaming career.  I’ve died a 100 times to make one checkpoint and its figuratively and literally a long slow crawl from level to level.  The game has enough variety and required concentration to keep it interesting but sometimes its like sticking hot pencils in your eyes to make any progress.

So my question is…has ANYBODY reached the unlockable mile high mission at the end of Veteran game completion?  Will I find myself entirely disappointed after working so hard to get there?  At some point, I have to return the game to its owner ( thanks Leif! ) and I would love to get some feedback from those of you that have tried to make it.

Kiss Kiss,

 
Dawngrrl Gametart

You bought Crysis, fell in love with it, then you downloaded the Jan 08 patch for all the cool fixes and tweaks and all of a sudden it takes 30 minutes to load your saved game or 45 minutes to recover from the freeze at every checkpoint! Ubersuck! Disturbing isn’t it? EA should thank its shooting stars that the game is stellar enough to send people out searching for a fix otherwise we’d all give up and toss it into the pile of unplayable trash games we wish we could turn in for a refund.

I was resolved, but everywhere I virtually turned, I read tales of woe from numerous people having the same problem. The Internet geek squad responds to our desperate gamespot bulletins with instructions to clean our temp files and defrag our hard drives. *eyeroll*

Without further ado:

Behavior:

· At the end of Onslaught, the game freezes and you are unable to save the last checkpoint to move onto the next level; Awakening.

· Once you get into Awakening, you start to load your saved game, and you might as well go rebuild an engine or knit a sweater while you wait for it to finish.

· Every checkpoint takes 30 to 45 minutes to save and move forward.

Resolution:

STEP 1: Delete your superfluous saved games located in:

(XP) “C:\Documents and Settings\yourprofile\My Documents\My Games\Crysis\Savegames” or (Vista) “C:\Users\yourprofile\Documents\My Games\Crysis\Savegames”.

Make sure you only delete the multiple entries for each level. Your saved game will include a file for each level such as “dawngrrl_Onslaught_crysis.crysisjmsf” and then you will see some with a date included in the filename such as “dawngrrl_13_Onslaught_crysis_03m_32s.crysisjmsf. These are the interim save points within your game. Delete them all save for the most recent (highest number order).  If this doesn’t work, your saved games are likely corrupted. Yuck!

STEP 2: Head over to Incrysis, because thankfully, from somewhere in nowhere Kansas, Luigi has been hard at work so you can yank a saved game from him. Download the level you’re stuck on and replace it with the one in your profile (You will need to change Luigi_ to YourProfile_, of course.) and then start the level without any delays. Moo Chess Grassy Ass, Luigi, I for one am most grateful and hopefully you can help the rest of the sad searching crysians find their way!

Alternatively, you could just uninstall and reinstall the game without adding the 1.1 patch and your stuck yuck should go away - but the patch has some sweet memory leak fixes that are beneficial enough to be worth it.

Kiss Kiss,

 
Dawngrrl Gametart