Almost Time to Get (Crack)Down

I've cleared out my social calendar for the next few days (not difficult if you're me) and bid a tearful farewell to the demo. I'm ready for tomorrow's release of Crackdown. Are YOU?

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Gears of War Insanity

Last night Heero and I finally took the plunge and started a new co-op campaign on Insane difficulty. We managed to slog through the first two Acts before calling it a night.

Here's what I think about Insane difficulty: it's not that bad.

I do feel it is still incredibly challenging. Every single firefight becomes an exercise in maximum intensity, which is makes the game very thrilling to play. I still think Insane difficulty has been hyped up by the gaming critics more than it needed to be. If you've played through on Hardcore, then you are very well-prepared to face the challenges that await in Insane. The transition is much smoother than the shell shock of moving from Casual to Hardcore.

To not sound overly confident, I do realize that I still have to fight through Act 3 and deal with those wretched Lambant Wretches and that infuriating cart ride through the death tunnels. That's the one where you get exploding wretches falling into your ride. Joy. Still, I've learned some basic gameplay principles that should help out anyone thinking of trying their skills on Insane:

• Patience & Positioning: On the lower difficulty settings you really could get by most fights by parking yourself behind one wall and stopping & popping form the same wall until everything was dead. Not so on Insane. Besides having the patience to fully heal when absorbing fire from multiple sources, you really do need to master movement from cover to cover and also the art of disengaging from cover effectively to deal with grubs that rush at you with the shotgun. But above all else, it's having great patience and discipline, so you can effectivley squeeze off short rounds of fire before ducking back down for cover.
• It's the bee's knees: Enemies can take an enormous amount of punishment. You'll find yourself scavenging for ammo like a madman sometimes. Shooting out the knees of your foes is a great way to conserve ammo on your Lancer or shotgun. Once they're out of commission, saunter over for a quick coup de grace curb stomp or switch to your handgun and pump that bent over sucker full of executioner's lead.
• Active Reload: Master it. 'Nuff said.
  

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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Made Me Drool

The official website of the next action game set in the Star Wars universe went live a couple days ago.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed


Oh my golly. The home page through me off a bit with their badly formatted list of supported platforms:

Platforms: Next-Generation Platforms, Playstation 2, PSP, Nintendo DS

Which, upon initial inspection, I took to mean that the game was only coming out for the PS2, PSP and Nintendo DS. Silly blogger: that would be insanely stupid for Lucasarts to do such a thing.

The Xbox Fanboy 360 has scooped an impressive exclusive with a post featuring a couple sweet tech demos of the game's physics engine.

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Your Gamerscore and You - Part Deux

I was probably supposed to follow up on my gamerscore post about, oh, 9 or 10 entries ago. Frankly, I've lost the gusto to continue on much more on that topic. I broke the 1000-point mark in my gamerscore weeks ago, so it's hardly newsworthy anymore... not that it would've been a banner headline if I blogged about it right away either. Well, let's see where this ramble takes us...

It's clear that the achievements concept has become a big hit and if the rumours are to bear any fruit, gamers will have even more reason to obsess over their gamerscores. Aside from bragging rights and personal pride, attachment to one's gamerscore does serve a more practical function, at least from the perspective of Microsoft and, more specifically, their departments responsible for monitoring codes of conduct. The latest issue of the Official Xbox Magazine features a revealing article about the life of an Xbox Live community watchdog, known only as "Chris". Part of the rather amusing story focused on an OXM editor's experiment to try and get himself banned from Live. He set up a dummy Live account and went about harassing teammates, griefing Uno opponents and generally acting like an obnoxious ass, all in the attempt to find out how far one has to push it before the powers that be take action.

It turns out he never got banned, even after a 4-day period of sending curse-laden voice messages and webcam-ming his crotch for all to see. It was later revealed on the weekly OXM podcast that although his account was not suspended, the editor indeed caught the attention of "Chris" and his fellow community watchdogs and had been put on a high-priority "to watch" list.

In the end, if you are someone who is intent on disrupting the experience on Live, you will find a way to do it by constantly changing up accounts. I think a large deterrent for doing that, of course, is the loss of gamerscore. Losing all those hard-won achievements just so you can continue to be an Ass, is simply not worth it for the overwhelming majority of gamers, even from the hardcore griefer set.

Gamerscore: addictive meta-points grind and invaluable EULA enforcement tool!

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Terrorist Hunt Still a Challenge

It was another sleepless night of Rainbow Six: Vegas (R6) with Heero as we hammered away at Terrorist Hunt. Out of our dozens of matches, we emerged victorious twice. The first win came after several unsuccessful runs of Kill House. I grew tired of getting picked off by stragglers catching us unaware from behind so I suggested that we camp out near the initial spawn point and lure the baddies to us. On previous attempts that first wave of enemies always went so smoothly: I'd park myself at the corner of the first building, covering the alleyway and fast rope while Heero would circulate between shotgunning guys rushinig down the stairs or through the opposite alley. Things would quickly fall apart as we ventured further into the map, however, as we'd get to some magical moment when we'd engage a mob of terrorists in an area accessible by multiple entry points. A lone enemy would find his way through a route we'd already taken, get around us and shoot us both in the back.

I figured we could expand on our winning formula and turn the tables on the overwhelming odds stacked against us. Our camping tactic worked beautifully. It didn't take long for piles of bodies to gather around my assigned alley. The soler remaining terrorist, not taking notice of the blood-splattered death trap, valiantly rushed my fortified position only to be cut down with manic glee by my rifle-scoped MP9.

Our second victory didn't require much of my input, as I was gunned down early in the game attempting to foolishly escape a frag grenade by running TOWARDS the sender, out into the open Dantes courtyard FILLED WITH ENEMY SOLDIERS. Heero, against all odds, went on to eliminate the remaining 20+ terrorists single-handedly. Times like this I wish Ubisoft Montreal had coded in a replay feature into online play, not unlike the replays you get now in very modern car racing game. Heero's heated firefight in one of Dantes' tight construction zones is the stuff of highlight reels. Taken out of the match so early, I had decided to phone my father and hardly registered the intensity of the game during my conversation. I honestly did not expect Heero to survive beyond the 5-minute duration of my phone call. Yet there he was, frantically loading shells into his M870, dodging 'nades and stubbornly refusing to die.

I sat there, mesmerized, and started to offer up some play-by-play advice/commentary, which was promptly greeted with a breathless, "Shut up, man... I'm freaking out here!". Ah Heero, you lost your cool but you pulled through anyway. The last terrorist didn't put up much of a fight, sort of stumbling around in the smoke, taking cover just outside Heero's makeshift bunker then hobbling away in the opposite direction. His ass was promptly perforated with a load of buckshot.

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