Shmee.Me

March 12, 2014March 12, 2014

Titanfall Lands Upright!

It wasn’t that long ago that I was talking about how excellent the beta for Titanfall was, well now the real thing is out, and I am glad to report that the game has delivered on its promise. Titanfall by Respawn Entertainment and published by EA exclusively for Microsoft platforms, has made me love playing multiplayer first person shooters again.

Not much has really changed since the beta except that they have loaded the game up with more stuff: more maps, more guns, more customization options, more gameplay modes, and last, but definitely not least, more Titans. Sure there are only twelve people per match, but the craziness that can happen with those twelve people over tenish minutes is amazing.

Not everything is perfect in the game however, I am not a big fan of the Titan versus Titan mode, and the main gameplay mode that was not available in the beta is what is known as “Campaign Mode”. For most games this would be the single player, but in Titanfall they just use it to add story to the maps during multiplayer, and give you background in to the world that Titanfall takes place in. This is a cool idea, but since the story progresses whether you win or lose the match, it makes you seem inconsequential, and then they are talking and stuff is happening in a small window in the corner of the screen, but you are way to busy fighting in a war to be paying attention to it. I would like to see this idea fleshed out more for the next game, but this time around it was mostly something to do to unlock the customizable Titan chassis.

That may sound like I hated a major component of the game, but since I was playing Titanfall the whole time, it was still a lot of fun. It was just the story didn’t integrate well. It is a minor negative awash in a sea of positives. There is nothing better then wall running on a building, shooting a sniper, and then landing on the back of a Titan and taking it down, sure that has only happened once for me, but it was exhilarating.

Xbox One finally has their system seller, yeah it was a few months too late, and then when they launched people couldn’t sign in to their new Xboxes, but this is a game to buy a console for. I don’t know how much Microsoft paid EA for the exclusive rights to this game, but they got a bargain. All I want to do right now is to go play Titanfall some more, and it has been a long time since I have said that about a First Person Shooter.

March 5, 2014

Strider Is Back And In HD!

Strider, the game from the now Amazon owned Double Helix and published by Capcom, was not really on my radar, but when I heard that it was a Metroid clone in the vein of Shadow Complex, I was very interested. Plus I had several Microsoft Bing Points gift cards to use, so I went for it.

The story is really simple. You are Strider Hiryu a future ninja assassin tasked with killing The Master. First you will have to battle your way through a fictional Eastern European city gaining new powers, and slaying tons of bad guys and bosses. The more bosses you kill, the more powers you get, so can advance further on your quest.

I guess there is more to the story than that, but it kept popping up in the bottom of my screen while I was killing hundreds of robots, so I didn’t really keep track. But it has that awesome 80’s-90’s nonsensical feel to it, and as a child of the 80’s I can tell you that Soviet bad guys are right up there with Nazis in my book. They are just so easy to hate.

What I love about this game is how fast it is. You can attack as fast as you can press the “X” button. The other attacks may be a little slower, but I never felt like I was failing because of the response time. By the middle part of the game you get so many powers you really feel like an awesome ninja. It is great.

I never really paid much attention to Strider when I was younger, but I do remember Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi, and Strider feels like their brother, so it kicks the nostalgia in to overdrive making the game just that much more fun.

By default since this is a Metroid-like game, there is a lot of back tracking once you get a new skill that opens up new doors and looking around for random power ups, so that can get tedious at times. Some of the bosses can get a little cheap until you find their pattern, but those are just minor annoyances.

I have had a lot of fun with this game, and it is more than worth the $15. It is out on just about every major platform, so if you are interested there should be nothing stopping you from playing it, and I recommend it whole heartedly. Especially if you fondly remember your side scrolling adventure game days.

February 27, 2014

Moving Forward Unto Dawn!

I know you are thinking, “Why is Shmee reviewing something that came out on the web for free two years ago?”, but you know what there is a lot of stuff to watch, and I just got around to it, so I am reviewing it two years late. Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is a long commercial, but a good long commercial.

The story is about a group of new UNSC cadets, and the training they are going through to get ready for deployment in a civil war. They are then attacked by an unknown enemy, and aided by the one and only Master Chief.

There is a saying out there that all the stories around the Halo games are more interesting then the stories in the Halo games, and Forward Unto Dawn seems to add more fuel to that fire. It gives us some good backstory in to the events leading up to the war with the Covenant. There are a couple scenes that happen right before Halo 4, but not enough that you would have had to play through all the Halo games to understand what is going on.

The actors all do a fine job with their roles, and they are much better then you would find in a normal web series, but it all feels a little like a made for TV movie. You can tell that they were doing their best with the money that they had, but not all the special effects are convincing. Still it is probably the best full length feature commercial I have ever seen.

If you like Halo at all then Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is worth watching. For everyone else this is probably a skip unless you want to get a little flavor of the Halo universe. I am glad that I watched this, but it definitely is not life changing in any way.

February 18, 2014

The Trouble With The Elder Scrolls Online!

I have played in The Elder Scrolls Online beta quite a bit, and I can say it is one of the best Massively Multiplayer Online games I have ever played. That being the case, I will not be playing it when it comes out. My friends know that MMOs are my least favorite genre of games, and TESO does nothing to change that. It is the same as just about every other MMO out there, except it is extremely polished, and full of content.

If you like MMOs that last paragraph should be very exciting for you. TESO is the best World of Warcraft clone I have ever seen. It has a deep story, they have added first person combat, and a good blocking and dodging system, but for me The Elder Scrolls has always been about my hero’s journey. It is hard to buy that I am the chosen one if I cannot affect the world I am playing in, and everyone is lining up to hear the same plot points I just heard. Plus when you are sent to some dark cave to find something and there are twenty other people in there it kind of ruins the exploration, and I don’t want to wait around to party up so I can go and complete my quests.

These are the same problems every other MMO has, so if you don’t mind these things, than The Elder Scrolls Online should be high on your list of games to play. If you are like me, and you have never liked the MMO genre, than The Elder Scrolls Online will not change your mind. It is simply the best of an existing genre, it doesn’t push it forward and become something new. I am sure that TESO will have an open beta soon, and I do think you should give it a try when it does, but this game is just not for me. I hope they come out with The Elder Scrolls 6 soon!

February 17, 2014February 17, 2014

Thoughts On The Titanfall Beta!

So Microsoft, EA, and the developer of Titanfall, Respawn Entertainment, released the beta for Titanfall over the last weekend, and it was magnificent. There hasn’t been a beta or a demo that has been this much fun for me since EA and DICE released the Battlefield 1942 Wake Island demo, and I think Titanfall is going to be just as important for the First-Person-Shooter genre.

For those of you that don’t know Titanfall is made by the original makers of the Call of Duty franchise who have left Activision and formed a new studio. The game is about a war in the future, and it is fought by pilots who can call giant Mechs in to battle with them. They also have jump jets on their backs so they can double jump and wall run over the cityscapes.

Titanfall plays like they took, Halo, Battlefield, Call of Duty, MechAssault, and Mirror’s Edge and shook really hard until just the best parts remained. It is better than the sum of its parts, and they only released a little bit of it for public consumption. I can’t wait to see what is left to discover.

If you like FPSs you should be extremely excited for this game, and even if you don’t this is a game that you are going to want to play. Save your penny’s because Titanfall is a day one purchase, and something people will be playing for years to come. Heck if they charged $60 for the beta I would probably pay it because it is just that good.