DIABLO 3

Holy crap I am so excited that Diablo 3 has been announced.  Diablo 2 was such a great game which I spent countless hours playing during my high school years.  I remember my first character was a sorceress which I got to level 99 (she was pretty crappy I specced her terribly).  I also had a few other high level characters including a Paladin, which I think ended up being my favorite class.  Anyhow, Blizzard has their official Diablo 3 site up which has a ton of info and videos.  The gameplay they have released so far shows 2 classes (Barbarian and Witch Doctor).  Shacknews has a great compilation of everything they know so far about the game.  I think my favorite features that are being implemented are personal loot dropping and the destructable environment.  The loot was always a big problem for me in the second game.  Grouping felt like a big competition to see who could grab the loot first and often arguments would break out.  Also, Blizzard might allow characters to be re-specced so that if you make a mistake with a skill point it won’t be a permanent flaw on your character.  With Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 announced, I see a lot of fun in my future… 

Donkey Kong

Recently, I have been playing the original arcade version of Donkey Kong.  I started playing it after watching King of Kong on G4.  King of Kong is a documentary about the battle between Steve Weibe and Billy Mitchell for the Donkey Kong world record.  It is a very entertaining film, but it takes many liberties when portraying the people and storyline linking them together.  For instance, it makes Billy Mitchell out to be the villain and Steve Weibe to be the hero of the story, but in actuality it appears that both are nice guys that just really like a game of Donkey Kong (there is a bit of bad blood between them though).  The film also seems to raise questions about the official videogame recordholder’s (Twin Galaxies) apparent bias towards Billy Mitchell whom they have had a long history with.  However, After reading the official statement from Twin Galaxies, it is clear that the film has only been edited to make it appear that Twin Galaxies was biased, when they actually were very fair.

I have been playing Donkey Kong on my laptop using WolfMamePlus 0.106.  There are more recent versions, but 0.106 is the official version that TwinGalaxies will accept record submissions for.  I use it because it is probably the most stable GUI version of MAME available.  I have played a lot of classic emulated games with my friends from college, and we had a ton of fun getting high scores in Geometry Wars on the Xbox 360, but I never actually played Donkey Kong for more than a few minutes total.  I have found out that is not only a really challenging game to play, but it is really fun to figure out ways to survive in such a difficult game.  New games are so much different from these classic ones, but they are not necessarily better.  Classic arcade games are still a ton of fun to play, and in most cases they are much more challenging than current games.

In Donkey Kong, I am currently trying to teach myself how to get the highest possible score on the first level.  I feel that this is a good place to begin challenging myself, because learning how to get good at the whole game will take much more time.  However, getting a lot of points on the first level of Donkey Kong is proving to be a very difficult task.  The levels are on a timer, and there are only so many barrels or flames to use for points.  It seems that the key to getting your points up in the first level is the timing and use of the two hammers you are allowed to use.  If I can learn how to get the maximum points out of the hammers on the first level, I might have a shot at it.   The best I have done so far is 7000 points after using only the bottom hammer (I died while picking up the top hammer).  The current record for points on the first level of Donkey Kong (*on MAME) is 11,300 by Joe Cain.  I probably won’t beat that, but It is fun to try.

Resistance: Fall of Man – Weapon Perfection

What paintbrushes are to paintings, weapons are to First Person Shooter games. With the right set of weapons, a player can create their own game play experience in a unique and enjoyable way. However, players of FPS games usually find themselves clinging to a favorite weapon, usually due to the superiority of the weapon (or the lack of usefulness of other weapons) within the game play setting. A lack of good weapon choices makes for a more monotone game play experience.

Resistance has an almost perfect balance of weapons for single player game play. Since this game was created by Insomniac (Makers of Ratchet and Clank), I was expecting some good weapons, and they delivered. Each weapon is good at certain tasks and is bad at others, with almost a rock-paper-scissors like system. There are some standard type weapons (shotgun & M5A2 Carbine), but the rest of the weapon set is quite original and fun to play with. Most amazingly, I didn’t find any weapon useless. Here is what I liked about each weapon:

• M5A2 Carbine
  This is the first weapon you start out with in the game. The main advantages of this weapon are its high accuracy and projectiles velocity. This makes it useful for medium to long range attacks where slower traveling ammunition can be easily dodged by enemies. The secondary fire (grenade launcher) is also very powerful, but ammo for it is limited throughout the game.
• Bullseye
  The Bullseye is the main weapon of the Chimeran force, and it is obtained early in the game. The main fire of the Bullseye is inaccurate and weaker than the carbine, but the secondary fire is what makes this gun useful. The secondary fire can be used in two ways, which allows the gun to have almost three firing modes. First, it can be used to tag an enemy, which allows the projectiles from the weapon to navigate exactly to the enemy you tagged. This allows you to shoot around corners, or hit fast moving enemies with perfect accuracy. The third fire of the gun uses the tag functionality, but instead of tagging an enemy the bullets will collect wherever the secondary fire landed and will collect there until it eventually explodes. This grenade mode is useful for taking out turrets.
• Rossmore 236
  This is the standard shotgun. Nothing new in this weapon, but it is useful for close quarters fighting and is a standard in FPS games. Secondary fire unloads two rounds at once. It is most efficient at killing anything close to you.
• Auger
  This is the first really fun weapon in the game. It one of the very few weapons in FPS games that allow you to shoot through walls (I have a love affair with the Tau/gauss gun from Half-Life). The projectiles fired from the Auger slow down and become more potent after each object they pass through. This weapon is extremely useful for not only killing enemies behind walls, but for locating them because the reticule will actually turn red if there is an enemy behind an object you are pointing at. The secondary fire is somewhat less useful, but can be a life saver at times. It creates a small energy shield which you can hide behind for a little while. The catch is that Auger rounds can not be blocked by this shield.
• L23 Fareye
  This is a sniper rifle that can slow down time with its secondary fire. It should be used for head-shots as often as possible since it can only hold 12 rounds. It seemed to be best used by the “Steelheads” that used Auger fire to obliterate you. It was really a fun weapon to use since seeing the Chimeran’s heads exploding in slow motion was crazy cool.
• XR-005 Hailstorm
  Another unique weapon, the Hailstorm shoots a ton of greenish needles which bouce off of walls and is generally mediocre when using its primary fire. I actually, never used its primary fire after trying it for the first time. This gun is another one which shines with its secondary fire use. The secondary fire launches the entire remaining clip into the air, which turns into an auto turret that is amazingly devastating. This gun saved my butt so many times when I became overwhelmed by enemies from multiple directions. I could fire the clip as a turret, and it would take care of one group of enemies while I focused on another. It is especially useful during the last fight sequence of the game.
• XR-003 Sapper
  This gun can be best described as the Bio Riflein Unreal Tournament. It lays down organic blobs that serve as mines. The secondary fire will detonate them, but they will blow up if an enemy approaches anyhow. This gun had a very specific purpose in my game play: if something big started running at me, I laid down a ton of these mines and then took out another gun and started firing while the mines weakened whatever was charging. For certain enemies that just run at you relentlessly, this weapon is fantastic by backpedaling and making a line of mines for the enemies to run right over.
• L209 LAARK
  This is the rocket launcher for Resistance. It can be used as a standard point and shoot rocket launcher, but if you are feeling crafty, you can control the speed and direction of the rocket that you are firing. Additionally, if one feels so inclined, the rocket can fire out mini projectiles by holding both the secondary and primary fire buttons down. This weapon can be almost as devastating as the BFG if used correctly.

Wii Remote Marvels

This is mildly old, but still incredible.

from www.ted.com posted with vodpod