Week 4

There’s a lot to cover this week.

As someone who’s experienced in the survival horror genre, I tend to have certain expectations, or “benchmarks”, that I use to measure the games amongst one another. While I value originality, I always appreciate a well-used “bow to the masters” addition to a game’s basic development. This game, however, is like a multi-genre whore, stealing from 8 different popular games (that I’ve recognized so far), and seems to include no original content of its own. The gameplay is a little glitchy, the vehicles are difficult to control, the visuals were left a bit unpolished, and the characters all have potty mouths. (It bears noting that no penalties were assessed for the swearing, due to accuracy; I believe in a real zombie apocalypse people would, in fact, be swearing left and right – myself included.) Despite all of these factors, the game manages to be reasonably entertaining in less-than-2-hour doses. The lovely, albeit unpolished, artwork has a certain charm, and the many side-quests and necessary looting will keep you busy with or without your co-op friends, for at least a week or two.  I give Dead Island an Overall Rating of 7.1.

I had my first group experience this past weekend. Some of the members of a clan (that I’m not a member of), put me in a party and let me play with them for a while, and I have to confess, (although this is probably sad for me,) I think it was the best time I’ve ever had playing Black Ops. The really good news there is, well, that I had a lot of fun, but also that when MW3 comes out, I should hopefully have a clan in place to fully enjoy the multiplayer experience, right from day one. Now I’m looking forward to it even more.

I also learned something really interesting (to me) – when you play in a party in black ops, your teammates show up in light blue on the mini map so you know which people on your team are regular people and which are your friends. It also automatically mutes the people not in your group, which is fantastic. In one lobby, I could see someone’s mic was continuously active; I don’t know if he was just going blaahwahahjushiiijabah or actually speaking, but I was grateful I’d never know.

I had the live feed from Call of Duty XP streaming on my computer for most of Friday and Saturday, and saw some neat stuff. (Man, I wish I could’ve been there – Scrapyard, The Pit, a zipline, Burger Town, Juggernaut Sumo, the Jeep ride-a-long thing, plus the competitions and panels – whoa Nelly.. Once-in-a-Lifetime is the right phrase to describe that!) After the opening ceremony (too-much in-for-ma-tion sys-tem over-load) I quickly upgraded to the Hardened Edition of MW3, (to be forever known now by me as MW3-HE) which I believe will only be costing me about $35. Woo-Hoo!!