Friday 13 May 2011

The Saxxy's

This place is slowly turning into a TF2-fest.
Probably should play something else at some point.

Anyway, as some of you that play TF2 will have no doubt noticed, every youtube link in existence ceased to be trustworthy with the latest update, as countless people try and pawn off their kill videos as songs, movies, whatever, to garner those precious views and net themselves yet another hat. This is all, of course, with that final goal in mind; the Saxxy's. With quite a lot of categories, it seems there's nothing Valve are looking for exactly in a winner, meaning EVERYONE is making full use of the new replay tools, which are actually very useful, and allow or multiple takes of existing replays, and plenty of settings for your renders.

Oh.
Did I mention there's new hats? Because of course there's new hats, lot's of them for you to squander your drops on. Some of them actually look quite nice. I'd show you, but the drop system hates me, and refuses to give me hats.

Hit me up on Steam sometime, readers, good team mates are hard to come by.

http://steamcommunity.com/id/mellowbloom

PS: Randomiser servers, oh my god, randomiser servers <3
PPS: I need a randomiser server that will give me a lower ping.
PPPS: Zombie fortress is nice too.

Monday 9 May 2011

Hiatus

Alas, with every review there needs to be something to review.
I am lacking in that at the minute.
Just to let you know though, I am looking at a few things in regards to reviews, and should be good for something at some point.

Over and out.

Monday 2 May 2011

Mortal Kombat; Flawless Victory?

Well I promised a Mortal Kombat review, and I should probably deliver on that.


I was a little surprised about the lack of documentation in the case. Aside from the adverts to the left, all there was was a little 2 page booklet about Xbox Live ratings and safety; no buttons, no nothing. Which left me a little confused as I started playing, as it's been time since I played an MK game.

Gameplay wise, it's got quite a bit of variance. Among the options in the pretty feature-heavy menu, we have Fight (which contains classic ladder tournament mode, tag ladder, and the 'test your whatever' modes), Story Mode (which is sadly not anything like Konquest Mode from Deception; think more Arcade with cut scenes and special fights), Challenge Tower (A new feature consisting of levels that add special restrictions and rules to fights, with the levels becoming increasingly difficult), and Training. Training allows new players to come to terms with the retro gameplay of MK, and teaches them how to do fatalities, amongst other things.

Fatalities, or atleast the ones I've seen thus far, were so-so. A lot of them seemed samey; dismembering opponents over and over again. A few stand out, of course; Smoke, Stryker, Shang Tsung all had great fatalities, and a new addition to the game, the 'x-ray' attacks, were better than a lot of their respective fighters fatalities. Babalities make a return in MK2011, and are a nice little suprise when you don't realise what you've done at first.

Once again, the Krypt is full of enough bonus content to keep you fighting for long enough, and is split into areas. You can also still view biographies of characters, and view alternative costumes and fatalities that you have unlocked, aswell.

Graphically MK is quite a pretty game, although this can be hard to notice sometimes with all of the gore everywhere. Characters become visually more damaged as fights progress, which is a nice little addition. This damage can also be viewed separation in the Krypt.

All in all, MK2011 is a very welcome return for the series. A little over hyped maybe; but nonetheless, a great game that any fan of the series or anyone slightly interested in violence (or anyone who likes the colour red for that matter) will enjoy for hours on end.

Sunday 1 May 2011

The art style's just a guideline.

Dangeresque? Dangeresque.

If any other game were to get the fan service and updates that TF2 gets, the players would be over the moon. The forums would be eternal pages of joy, singing the praises of the developers.

Not the Steam forums, however. It seems every update brings negativity from the playerbase, despite the fact that, aswell as fixing bugs and adding new maps like they've been doing since 2007, every update brings yet more weapons, and hats, and teddies, than Valve used to pump out per annum.

That said, is the problem quantity over quality? Valves own models are, as they were at the stock level, good, detailed models; the same cannot be said for some of the community weapons, which usually come in groups of around 1230 (estimated), and are, in my opinion, usually of lower quality. I'm not pointing any fingers, but some models I just can't bear, and I think some were a misteak.



Also, how does my Demo loadout look?
Here's a hint; the answers AWESOME.

Portal, messing with your head, for fun.

Traded in a lot of my old games the other day and bought Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat, both of which are excellent games (and both of which are quite difficult, Mortal Kombat more so). Portal 2 really stood out for me; it's been over a year now since I played the original, and returning to Valve's nightmare of a testing facility was a welcome journey.

The levels start off easy and then slowly get devilishly tricky; the harder ones bring a subtle wave of satisfaction as you lay that portal that makes it all fall into place. The co-op takes everything you've learnt and doubles it, leading to some pretty mindbending puzzles. That said, even though the co-op has quite a bit of longevity behind it (I've yet to finish it), the same can't be said for the single player. Don't get me wrong, the campaign was great. The addition of Wheatley added yet another voice of humour to the game, a bright, cheerful counterpart to the monotone, vindictive GLaDOS. However, barring a few secret areas and achievements I missed, once I'd completed the thing I didn't really feel any need to revisit it.

Team Fortress? Team Fortress.

I'm sure a lot of you were playing the other week when the loadouts went offline; pretty much making the entire game vanilla again. Now I'm not sure if everyone liked that (seemed alright to me; did miss a few things though), and it was strange not seeing any hats... but one thing definitely saw an improvement.

Medieval Mode was, atleast for a day, melee mode. No Huntsman Snipers, no crossbow medics... in fact the only thing killing you from out of arms reach was lag compensation and taunting heavies, the latter of which was how I spent the majority of my day.
 "Pow, Haha!"

Nobody expects to get POW'd, nevermind from above, when there's seemingly noone about. From my little vantage point on top of the sign near A, I could just sit there and shoot down people as they capped, even nailing the odd few as the ran around fighting teammates (who were probably equally as confused, especially when steaks began to rain down on them). For good measure, apply x+5 liberally.