Sandy Ravage Interview Up, Links Galore!

     The only gaming I did this weekend was some solo Spec Ops. I'm semi-obsessed with the O Cristo Redentor level on Regular difficulty, playing it over and over and over. And I think I figured out why: It's the level that comes closest to duplicating the bot experience of Unreal Tournament 1999. (Of course, with UT, each game against the bots was different and you could vary their play style any way you liked.) I never get tired of gunning down the Militia in that level, and I like to mix it up by trying to scoop up different weapons to use. My favorite is the Glock 18 machinepistol. Playing that level on Hardened and Veteran, I notice, is less fun than work. Plus, as soon as the enemy sees a single hair on your ass, there are bullets banging into you, filling your POV with strawberry jam. (Bad idea, IW. Really.) What's really less than cool is when the bullets also immobilize your ass to make you an easy target. Then it becomes a Favela-style "dog pile on the rabbit" and you're dead. Worst of all, Ghost's voiceover tells you "we need to rethink our strategy". Maybe it's Infinity Ward that needs to rethink, since increasing difficulty shouldn't mean aimbot-AIs spamming in unerringly accurate bullets in from every corner of the map.
    I played the Hidden level a bit, too. That level is mostly stealth, requiring a cross-country flight to a green smoke marker with snipers and Spetsnaz in between. It's weird, but I played that level the first time and there were claymores, which I used in a pitched gun battle inside the church. The last couple of times, no claymores. It's a cool level, but there don't seem to be enough enemies. I tried the Favela defuse the bomb map, but I don't think there's any way I can finish that map in time. At least, I'm not willing to play the level enough times to learn how to finish without running out of time to defuse the bombs. After seeing a video tutorial about beating the the Snatch and Grab level on Veteran, I thought I'd give it a try. The level essentially repeats the airplane scrapyard segment of the single player campaign, except it tosses in Juggernauts. Juggernauts are uber-healthed, armored douchebags who take about 5 sniper shots to kill. The video tutorial showed the player skipping engaging the Juggernauts completely, just sprinting through, grabbing the intel, and running to the objective. Shadow Company baddies along the way are dealt with using a SPAS-12. It looked easy... until I tried it. I got killed every time, either picked off by Shadow Company or gang-raped by the bomb squad-suited Juggernauts without so much as courtesy reach-around.
    I went back and looked at the comments, and there were things like: "Gee, thanks, I only had to run the level 41 times to get through it!" Screw that noise. Gaming is supposed to be recreation, and I get enough frustration in real life without a gratuitous megadose from a game in the name of "fun". As I've blogged before, I'm not masochistic enough to consider getting it in the asspipe videogame-style 41 times fun.

    More Gaming Links:

• GameDaily: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 still tops Steam's sales list.
• GotGameNews: BC2 Xbox Live gaming event: Play the BC2 community managers.
• GameDaily: Dead Space 2 preview.
• 1Up: Why there's no homosexuality in Mass Effect 2. There's no way to write a snicker-free headline for that without using a whole paragraph.
• Kokugamer: Blamestop: Idiocy on Both Sides of the Gamestop Counter. I've never had a problem with pushy sales associates at GameStop; as for not being really knowledgeable about products, that extends to every retail setting ever.
• Edge Online: Indian company buys 50% of Codemasters.
• Xbox Live: FAQ for new USB storage capability on the Xbox 360. Looks like the space for profiles and gamesaves has to be configured using the 360 itself, probably to deter cheating.
• HPlus Magazine: Applying game theory to the real world.
• Damnlag: Gaming Maturity: Stop Being Embarassed and Just Play. FTA: "I am 22 years-old, asshole, and if I feel like playing some damn Pokemon, then I should be allowed to." The only Pokemon game I'd play:

    Non-Gaming Links:

• Slashdot: A real user-oriented iPad review by Cmdr Taco.
• GamesRadar: Real Gamers review the iPad.
• Kotaku: Resident Evil Movie Producer Wants To Unite With Games. Take your iPad with you to the movie and you'll be able to play along as you watch.

    And if you thought that was just an excuse to add another gratuitous pic of Milla Jovovich, you're right. Here she be:
PS