What I have been playing

Holy shit, I haven't updated this blog in ages. Work. Mental.

Excuses, excuses. Anyway. I refuse to turn into Christopher Livingstone so UPDATE TIME:


LEFT 4 DEAD 2

The officail verdict has been out on this one for a while so I won't bore you all with my thoughts. Suffice to say: It improves on the original in every way I could think of. It even includes several things that dramatically improve the gameplay (dismembering zombies etc) which I thought would be mere gimicks.

Valve did good.

And there's DLC coming in the new year - which sounds fecking awesome.

Modern Warfare 2

...

This one is less clear cut.

Put it this way, I fucking hate Modern Warfare 2.

This section is going to contain severe spoilers.

Okay, so alarm bells started ringing for me when, in the intro sequence, they say that the baddie from the first game - Zakayev - is now heralded as a hero by the Russian people...

Okay...

I thought the point of the first game that Zakayev was leading a fanatical group of Russians who had the support of some of the populace but, crucially, were not officailly sanctioned or anything. Hence why the Russian gov't gives Price the abort codes at the end of MW1.

Anyway, minor glitch, I thought.

We start with a fucking excelent level in an ice storm. You infiltrate a base, plant explosives and generally sneak your way around in the best traditions of MW 1. The ending where you escape on snow mobiles is a little silly but whatever.

There are then a couple of... reasonable but very scripted levels. Warning sign number two was that the SAS were no longer referred to as the SAS but as "task force 141". Or, if you prefer, this.

There's then the notorious airport level.

I actually liked the airport level. It's nice to see standard FPS staples like blasting everything that moves subverted. It was well designed and fairly disturbing - in a good way.

Then things go extremely fucking wrong.

Russia invades the united states.

It's such a stupid move for any game to make, I can't even begin to start talking about what's wrong with it. If I had to pick just one reason, it's that MW 2 at this point starts following the plot of Patriots: A Nation Under Fire - a game I had to review when I was working for a games review site.

It boggles the mind how Infinity Ward can have produced one of the most mature and politically aware games ever - Modern Warfare 1, can produce something which is a cross between Team America World Police and Patriots.

There are other things wrong with it - the levels are far too linear, the characters are 2-d, it's too difficult, the cinematic sections are fucking stupid and the new gimicks they bring in - like the riot shield - are crow barred in at every available oppertunity.

Modern Warfare 2 is a terrible, terrible game. The multiplayer may make up for it but it's the sort of multiplayer I really hate anyway. I played some of the multiplayer in MW 1 and was far from impressed.

Dirt 2

I'm not really sure why I bought this. Codemasters make very good racing games, admittedly, but I never finished Dirt 1 or Grid because they suffered from what practically every racing game suffers from. Viz: when you reach the half way point, the developers have run out of ideas for tracks so you have to visit the same ones again but you have to do six laps round them instead of two. This gets annoying very quickly.

Dirt 2 is very good, though. It's incredibly good looking (possibly the best looking game I've ever seen) and its gameplay has that magical quality to it that all briliant racing games have. For the first month or so.

It does have a very appealing front end to it and it is very, very polished. I don't feel bad about the £30 I spent on it but I am dreading the day I suddenly find I'm not interested in it any more.