As you may well know (perhaps from our earlier entry), Battlefield: Bad Company 2 came out last week. I've devoted most of my game playing time since then to playing the game and thought it was about time to do a review. Now some of this review of Bad Company 2 (BC2) will be a comparison to how it stands up against Modern Warfare 2 (MW2). It isn't that I believe the games are in anyway the exact same kettle of fish, but MW2 is the undeniable "big shooter" of the moment, so it is that which all other new shooters will be compared against (until something undeniably better comes out).
Let me give you the ultra short version: It is definitely an improvement over Bad Company 1. My major complaints for BC1 single player were addressed in BC2. The single player campaign of BC2 isn't long, but it is enjoyable and longer than MW2 was. The online multiplayer is also quite enjoyable and mostly major bug free (so far that I've seen). BC2's multiplayer is much different than MW2 and personally I prefer BC2. If you enjoy shooters in general and haven't bought BC2, you're missing out.
Now we get on to the long version of the review. First I'm going to cover the single player game and then I'll get into the online play.
Continue reading "Review: Battlefield: Bad Company 2" »
Tuesday, March 2. 2010
Why we bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Both John and myself have gone ahead and pre-ordered Battlefield: Bad Company 2 even though we originally had no intention of doing so. I've been seeing advertisements for the game for the last month and said "meh" to it. I had enough games to play, not enough free time, and Modern Warfare 2 has been satisfying my multiplayer needs (not that I normally multiplayer much). This was up until we actually got around to playing the demo the last week before it was shut down.
So what changed? Well first off in my research on BF:BC2, I saw a video which was showing off PC dedicated servers and game play, but more importantly their test server was named "Server of DOOM and cake". This is a server name I fully approve of. I mean, who doesn't love doom and cake? I know I do. Beyond devs with a good sense of humor, there was a demo that was enjoyable to play.
Continue reading "Why we bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2" »
So what changed? Well first off in my research on BF:BC2, I saw a video which was showing off PC dedicated servers and game play, but more importantly their test server was named "Server of DOOM and cake". This is a server name I fully approve of. I mean, who doesn't love doom and cake? I know I do. Beyond devs with a good sense of humor, there was a demo that was enjoyable to play.
Continue reading "Why we bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2" »
Friday, February 12. 2010
Mass Effect 2 on first playthrough - Part 2
As I mentioned yesterday, I recently beat Mass Effect 2. Today I wanted to talk about a few things, what I liked/disliked, my end game team, guns, and lastly what the "bonus" was for beating Mass Effect Galaxy (the iPod Touch/iPhone game).
Liked:
End Game Team:
When you begin your assault on the collector ship you need to pick a Tech Specialist and a leader for the second team (Fire Team).
I used Tali as my Tech Specialist (though I've heard Legion works as well).
Miranda as my Fire Team Leader (heard that Jacob or Garrus also work).
For the next section you need a Biotic to shield you, a Diversion team leader, and an escort for the survivors.
I used Samara as my biotic (I've heard Jack works as well).
Miranda once more headed up my second team.
I used Jacob to get everyone back to the boat.
Since everyone in my party was loyal, I suffered no deaths.
Guns, guns, guns! Someone over on the bioware forums had this to say about the effects of guns on resistances/armor/shields/barriers: Mass Effect 2 Gameplay Data. Useful bit (of course I didn't find it till AFTER I finished playing). Basically, if an ammo/gun type says it is good at something it does at least full damage to that (usually 1.5x damage though).
Now, far and away this is the most useful bit I have found, a Weapon Chart by Arthelinus which shows weapon stats for... EVERY weapon in the game, including the guns that came in other editions (Collector's and Digital Deluxe). It also points out the gun that is only available if you are playing on Hardcore or Insane difficulty.
Last, but not least... Did you play and beat Mass Effect Galaxy? Wondering what the bonus is? I finally found the answer via a post on the IGN Forums:
That's right, the bonus is some random conversation about an NPC. Congratulations.
So yeah, it happens toward the beginning of the game, after you have gotten Archangel and/or Mordin, you see him outside Afterlife and he asks you to find him some datapads. If you have both Miranda and Jacob they will talk about it. Seems pretty darn lame to me, but such is life.
Liked:
- The improved combat system
- The upgrade system - no more pausing mid-fight to adjust ammo types as necessary, or installing an upgrade for one weapon and moving your upgrade into another, etc, etc
- The planet scanning instead of taking the Mako down to run around the planet
- The heavy weapons
- Three different versions of Barrier: Fortification (for more Armor), Geth Shield (for more Shield), and Barrier (for more... biotic Barrier).
- No achievement/bonus/incentive for having one particular squadmate(s) for most of the game. This encouraged me to try out everyone.
- New weapons weren't always better than the old ones. Specifically, I went from the semi-automatic sniper rifle to a bolt action (that looked like an M107). It did more damage, but the constant reload was annoying. More on this below.
- Only being able to use one "power" at a time. In the previous game, I enjoyed being a biotic because I could fire off multiple abilities at a time.
- This one comes from Jon: no measure of what your squad is composed of; in the previous game, you had 3 bars letting you know how much Tech, Combat, and Biotic prowess your chosen squad had. This goes inline with your squadmates not really having classes in this game (thought it was fairly obvious what they were in most cases).
End Game Team:
When you begin your assault on the collector ship you need to pick a Tech Specialist and a leader for the second team (Fire Team).
I used Tali as my Tech Specialist (though I've heard Legion works as well).
Miranda as my Fire Team Leader (heard that Jacob or Garrus also work).
For the next section you need a Biotic to shield you, a Diversion team leader, and an escort for the survivors.
I used Samara as my biotic (I've heard Jack works as well).
Miranda once more headed up my second team.
I used Jacob to get everyone back to the boat.
Since everyone in my party was loyal, I suffered no deaths.
Guns, guns, guns! Someone over on the bioware forums had this to say about the effects of guns on resistances/armor/shields/barriers: Mass Effect 2 Gameplay Data. Useful bit (of course I didn't find it till AFTER I finished playing). Basically, if an ammo/gun type says it is good at something it does at least full damage to that (usually 1.5x damage though).
Now, far and away this is the most useful bit I have found, a Weapon Chart by Arthelinus which shows weapon stats for... EVERY weapon in the game, including the guns that came in other editions (Collector's and Digital Deluxe). It also points out the gun that is only available if you are playing on Hardcore or Insane difficulty.
Last, but not least... Did you play and beat Mass Effect Galaxy? Wondering what the bonus is? I finally found the answer via a post on the IGN Forums:
Not too far from the entrance to Afterlife in Omega, you bump into a Salarian named Ish who asks for some help finding a pair of datapads. If you have Jacob and/or Miranda with you, you get some dialogue that references their dealings with Ish in Mass Effect Galaxy.
I didn't realize this was the "reward" before because I never had Jacob or Miranda with me while completing his mission.
That's right, the bonus is some random conversation about an NPC. Congratulations.
So yeah, it happens toward the beginning of the game, after you have gotten Archangel and/or Mordin, you see him outside Afterlife and he asks you to find him some datapads. If you have both Miranda and Jacob they will talk about it. Seems pretty darn lame to me, but such is life.
Thursday, February 11. 2010
Mass Effect 2 on first playthrough - Part 1
Beat Mass Effect 2 recently and managed to get all but 3 achievements: Insanity - Beat the game on Insanity difficulty; Overload Specialist - Use Overload to destroy a shield 25 times (only did this 22 times); Warp Specialist - Use Warp to destroy a Barrier 25 times (only did this a few times). I probably could have gotten Overload and Warp, but didn't realize that you actually had to finish off the Shield/Barrier with Overload/Warp in order for it to count. That and not many enemies had Barrier.
I ended up putting in just over 40 hours in my first playthrough.
At the end it tells you that you can keep playing and will now have the option to use this character for your next playthrough (basically New Game +). I had already done well... everything so I just ran around listened to the conversations and then decided to start a new game to see what carries over.
What carries over:
Since I beat the game at Level 30 (which is the level cap), I don't know if I'll do another playthrough as that character. Yeah, I still need to beat the game on Insane mode and having a fully leveled character will help with that, but I'd rather try out a different character class. I was an Infiltrator and rarely used my Class Ability (Cloak), though the time slowdown when zooming in with the Sniper Rifle was great. I'm thinking of being a Sentinel next, that way I have both Overload and Warp on my character.
Any readers played/playing/beaten Mass Effect 2? What class did you choose and did you like it?
Tomorrow's post will contain some more thoughts on Mass Effect 2, specifically, the composition of my End Game Team and how I kept everyone alive!
I ended up putting in just over 40 hours in my first playthrough.
At the end it tells you that you can keep playing and will now have the option to use this character for your next playthrough (basically New Game +). I had already done well... everything so I just ran around listened to the conversations and then decided to start a new game to see what carries over.
What carries over:
- Level/Experience
- Guns - both Heavy and Regular
- Skills - Your skills look exactly the same as how you left them on the save before you imported, minus your bonus skill (Tip: Use Retrain Powers before you save and import, that way you can reallocate everything when you start).
- Armor - All the armor pieces and sets you have are still there
- Bonus Skills - Each of the squadmates that were loyal to you had a bonus skill that you could use, you get to pick which you want when start a new game
- Paragon/Renegade Points - This was the biggest disappointment to me
- Upgrades - Anything you researched will need to be researched again
- Money/Resources - I finished the game with over 50k Element Zero, 300k Iridium, 250k Platinum and Palladium, and 44k Credits - all gone. However, you do start with 50k of each mineral and 200k credits.
- Squadmates/Loyalties - Not surprising that you don't get your buddies as getting them was a large part of the game, or that they aren't still loyal
Since I beat the game at Level 30 (which is the level cap), I don't know if I'll do another playthrough as that character. Yeah, I still need to beat the game on Insane mode and having a fully leveled character will help with that, but I'd rather try out a different character class. I was an Infiltrator and rarely used my Class Ability (Cloak), though the time slowdown when zooming in with the Sniper Rifle was great. I'm thinking of being a Sentinel next, that way I have both Overload and Warp on my character.
Any readers played/playing/beaten Mass Effect 2? What class did you choose and did you like it?
Tomorrow's post will contain some more thoughts on Mass Effect 2, specifically, the composition of my End Game Team and how I kept everyone alive!
Tuesday, February 9. 2010
Bafflingly stupid programming & error reporting
Last night I was playing Star Trek Online for the first time in a few days. I played a good couple of hours before the game took a dump on me. After they got over the initial hurdles of the launch, the game has been relatively smooth to play so I've been happy. Plus the problem occurred during a load from one zone to another after a quest was completed, so I didn't "lose" anything. I got a message saying that I was "Disconnected From Server", but it doesn't give me any options to do anything about it (like quit, or reconnect). Being the good little QA minion that I am, I like to report these type of issues to the developers so they can fix them. I knew there was a tool that came with STO for this exact purpose. It wasn't widely published, that I know of, but I ran across the EXE once. So I dug into the folder, found and launched "crypticError.exe" and then it started to crumble.
The first screen is fairly simple, you select the running process name and explain what you did/what went wrong. Simple enough; I did so then it started collecting data. Great, after about 10 minutes I came back to find it still uploading a dump. I thought this was a little odd so I looked closer. The "dump" was over 1 GIGABYTE in size, which corresponded directly to the exact size in RAM the game was taking up. It was uploading the ENTIRE game's RAM state. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand how that can be useful... but this is a VIDEO GAME on a CONSUMER'S machine. You launch the thing and it is taking up over 300MB of RAM. Even on my go go speedy DSL line, it was going to take about an hour and a half to upload the entire dump. My DSL is also fast, and uncapped. What about those people who have 1.5meg lines, and have bandwidth limits.
Seeing things like this just blow my mind. It wasn't like I clicked some checkbox that said "Upload over 1GB of RAM state", because you don't have any checkboxes to hit. Plus, I hate to say this, but there is no damn reason for the error reporter to upload the entire RAM state. Why does one need to upload all the texture data? Report the file names loaded into memory and the checksums. If a checksum doesn't match, then that could have been the culprit.
It is safe to say that shitty design like this is why some error reporting tools never get used. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs were actually shocked the first time anyone let this tool run it's full course (provided anyone has been that dumb).
The first screen is fairly simple, you select the running process name and explain what you did/what went wrong. Simple enough; I did so then it started collecting data. Great, after about 10 minutes I came back to find it still uploading a dump. I thought this was a little odd so I looked closer. The "dump" was over 1 GIGABYTE in size, which corresponded directly to the exact size in RAM the game was taking up. It was uploading the ENTIRE game's RAM state. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand how that can be useful... but this is a VIDEO GAME on a CONSUMER'S machine. You launch the thing and it is taking up over 300MB of RAM. Even on my go go speedy DSL line, it was going to take about an hour and a half to upload the entire dump. My DSL is also fast, and uncapped. What about those people who have 1.5meg lines, and have bandwidth limits.
Seeing things like this just blow my mind. It wasn't like I clicked some checkbox that said "Upload over 1GB of RAM state", because you don't have any checkboxes to hit. Plus, I hate to say this, but there is no damn reason for the error reporter to upload the entire RAM state. Why does one need to upload all the texture data? Report the file names loaded into memory and the checksums. If a checksum doesn't match, then that could have been the culprit.
It is safe to say that shitty design like this is why some error reporting tools never get used. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs were actually shocked the first time anyone let this tool run it's full course (provided anyone has been that dumb).
Wednesday, January 27. 2010
Mass Effect 2 - The First Hour
Mass Effect 2 came out yesterday.
Jon and I both preordered long ago and were quite happy to receive our release day deliveries from Amazon (Prime, FTW).
I have only played an hour or two thus far but here's what I think, and yes there will be spoilers. Continue reading "Mass Effect 2 - The First Hour" »
Jon and I both preordered long ago and were quite happy to receive our release day deliveries from Amazon (Prime, FTW).
I have only played an hour or two thus far but here's what I think, and yes there will be spoilers. Continue reading "Mass Effect 2 - The First Hour" »
Monday, January 25. 2010
Lifetime game subscription - Is it worth it?
Recently, I've been playing the Star Trek Online open beta. During this time they announced the availability of 12 month subscriptions and "lifetime subscriptions". I understand why they do this from a business perspective, after all developing an MMO costs a lot of money and if you can recoup $240 a person now instead of 18 months down the line, all the better. But what about from the player's point of view, is it worth it?
Continue reading "Lifetime game subscription - Is it worth it?" »
Continue reading "Lifetime game subscription - Is it worth it?" »
