Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Gaming update

I just recently had 10 days off from work and I did a whole lot of nothing.  Well, I did a whole lot of sitting on my couch vegetating and gaming.  I hadn't done that it forever.  Just hours upon hours of gaming.
 
You know what?  I don't like it.  Sure, it is just as addicting as it used to be when I was younger.  But I just feel awful about it now.  Countless hours wasted.  I could have been far more productive.  My entire apartment needs a severe deep cleaning.  Laundry needs to be done.  My car needs to be washed.  I need to get back to the gym.  I basically needed to do anything except what I did.
 
And time just flies when you are lost in a game.  I'd look at the clock, tell myself I would stop playing in an hour and get some things done, and the next time I  would look at the clock four hours had gone by.  Again, terrible feeling.
 
That being said, I put in a ton of hours in CoD: Black-Ops, beat the game on Hardened, and already reached level 50 (max) in multiplayer.  I also spent a good deal of time with Gran Turismo 5.   I also played some Enslaved, but not much.  Not because it was bad, but because I was addicted to fragging people on-line and modifying cars to make them go fast.  I'll hopefully get back to Enslaved soon.
 
So I once again find myself with a ton of games left unfinished and not knowing which to play.  Black-Ops and GT5 are no brainers, I'm seriously addicted to those at the moment.  But I have Enslaved going, Castlevania has been all but forgotten, Super Meat Boy is begging for attention, and RDR: Undead Nightmare needs to be finished!  And that is not counting the full back-log of titles I have incomplete and pending.
 
Anyway, I'm definitely putting up some Black-Ops and GT5 impressions soon.
 

Friday, November 12, 2010

Black-Ops

Picked it up on Tuesday.  Haven't touched the single-player and I have played about 20 multiplayer matches at this point.  Any CoD veteran will be able to jump right in and feel comfortable with the general gameplay and controls.  I'm just dealing with the initial learning curve of learning all the maps.  I hate this time.  I'm running around lost and scared and getting killed far more often than I like.  But that's the way it goes.  I'll know these maps like the back of my hand in no time.
 
So far I have found my favorite map.  As is always the case, my enjoyment of a map is solely dependant on how well I do on it.  Nuketown is apparently my map.  I went 30-3 on it the other night and I always seem to finish with a k/d ratio over 4 on it.  The other maps?  Not so much.
 
Not sure what it is about Nuketown.  It is a small map and extremely chaotic.  I usually don't like those.  But so far I own on this map.
 
A few things I really like about Black-Ops:
 
- The Wager Matches are a lot of fun and a great change of pace from the regular Team Deathmatch that makes up 99% of my usual playtime.
 
- The game keeps track on a crazy amount of stats.  Far more than in MW2.  You don't unlock this until you reach level 12 though, which is kinda odd.  It keeps individual stats for every weapon, every map, and it even keeps track of where you typically shoot your enemies, so you can see if you like to go for body shots, head shots, or if you are terrible and just hit limbs.  It also keeps charts on your performance over the last few games, etc.  Very, very cool stuff.
 
- You can now saves replays of your matches and create clips and take screenshots, just like with the Halo games.  I SOOO wish I had this option in MW and MW2 since there were plenty of matches or just kills that I would have loved to have saved.
I'll put up impressions of the single-player and further multiplayer thoughts as I dive in further.
 
On a side note, I ordered Enslaved:Odyssey to the West from Amazon for $25 and I should have that to play over the Thanksgiving weekend.  Sweet.