Shooting The Breeze: A FPS strategy workshop with COD5

So I've decided that seeing as how so many online-based, first person shooters are hitting the market, I should probably have some sort of workshop or something to help the everyday gamer with their strategy. Now I am not the best gamer in the world, no. But I will share some useful hints that any FPS fan can benefit from.

Now I won't let all the cats out of the bag at once; this first one will be a more general FPS Strategy overview, while the next 3 that are planned will be more specific.

First thing you have to be concerned with if you are trying to improve is how you measure yourself. Now many people look at pure kills, without context. Some games provide scores. But the real measuring stick for any FPS player is Kill to death ration. Take all your kills and divide them by your deaths. Some of the better players have 8,10,even 25 or 50 K/D, but a normal person can see anywhere from .25 to 5. Over the past 25 games I've been averaging about a 4/1. Sometimes I'll go crazy and get 21/1 or 39/5 but sometimes I'll be off and get 11/8 but that's just how it goes. Don't get discouraged.

Another important thing to know is that people in team based games will always try to establish a battle line. Rather than viewing a battlefield as happening all around them, they will try to find the general direction of most of their enemies and focus entirely in that direction. This is due to our idea of war, instinct, comfort, and a whole bunch of other things. Try to break that habit. Moreover, try to exploit it. Wherever you expect the enemy to look for you, try not to be. Try to stay away from grouping with teammates, because it makes you more personally vulnerable.

OK well those are two tips for now. With the explanation this post got pretty lengthy. I'll have a bonus post on Thursday night, along with my regular posts on Friday and Saturday. I am doing an Unusual PS2 game of the week, My Top 5 list of games that could have been, and Saturday will feature a comparison test as well as The Terrible Game Idea of this month. Until then, happy hunting!!!

The gotta have PS3 game of 2009, MAG

MAG is a really, really exciting game. Its a first person shooter, made for the online gamer. MAG features an advanced anti-cheating system, stunning graphics, and a well thought out future based scenario that sets the stage for an awesome shooter.
Basically, in the future, 3 divergent mercenary factions compete for mercenary contracts because countries find it easier to outsource their war rather than fight it themselves. In doing this, they tip off a war for contracts between the factions.
The three factions offer their own weapons sets and styles of play. For instance, there is a futuristic faction, which features high tech weapons and outfits, as well as a more ramshackle looking faction with lower tech weapons, which are visibly tattooed with graffiti. There is a third faction, but no information is released about it as of yet.
OK so the real selling point, the real reason why you should run out and get this game on TBA 2009, is multiplayer. Now you know I love COD4 and COD5. I play them online almost everyday. I love it. But when you think about it, in the true scale of war, Call of Duty and similar multiplayer set ups can only offer skirmishes, 9 on 9, etc. I mean, granted, Call of Duty has made 9 on 9 totally captivating, riveting, and awesome. But its still just 18 players, fighting it out.
MAG offers something different: 256 Player maps! 128 on 128! This offers probably the best glimpse of real war yet. I still can't even imagine the scale.This alone makes you run out and want to get it, just to witness all out war taking place.
So put this on your list. Its all out war, and it should be pretty cool. Besides MW2, this is the most exciting game this year for me. I really can't wait.

Blog News

Its Saturday, and this week that means I should be catching up on a blogging, as wells COD4 and COD5 play. Instead,I'll be bringing you some news about this blog.

At some point in the next 6 months this blog will be integrated into a .com. I am running it with my friend, it will be a sortof gaming,tech, and relevant culture blog. It should be exciting. I am doing this to expand the scope of this blog, as I feel I can reach a greater audience with a more marketable home.

The website is already registered and hosted and we're working now to develop content, and the site itself. Information will be released in the future, and I'll keep writing here as the site is readied. Exciting stuff.

Please comment with suggestions for the site, if any.

Back From Vacation

Hello Campers, Its Friday. If you've been following my blog, you may have noticed I haven't posted zilch in about 2 weeks now. The reason for this is that I went away on vacation a couple weeks ago, and stayed there for 17 days or so.I apologize for my lack of warning, but alas I thought I would be able to keep up with my MWFS posting schedule while I was away, I made only the first Monday post, and that was it-fairly unprofessional of me.

I will resume usual blog operations tomorrow, with Unusual PS2 Title of the Week, among other catch-up stories, some of which regarding the future of the blog. Until then I'll be attempting to get my groove back in COD4 and 5 on the Playstation Network. Check me out, my id is sliponthisbanana.

Check back tomorrow night for 3 fresh makeup stories, a special feature, and blog news!

Unusual PS2 Title of the Week

Its Monday chinchillas, and therefore its time for another blog. This time around we are again showing another feature of this blog. Every week, we will reflect on one unusual PS2 game and discuss it briefly. This is mostly for comedic enlightenment, but it also shows what happens when you let just about everyone and their mom publish a game for your console.

With that said, the Family Feud video game is our unusual PS2 title of the week.

Released in late 2006, Family Feud tried to deliver a trivia experience to gamers world wide. The experience was trivial indeed. The game suffered from poor graphics, poor gameplay, and did not even seem to provide a good simulation of the TV show, which one would guess would be the goal. gameratio.com rated it #4 on its 100 worst PS2 games list(gameratio.com). IGN gave it a 2.7(terrible) in its review here at IGN.com.

Family Feud coupled a poor game concept to a terrible execution.

I mean game shows aren't really proven to be packageable as video games that people will buy. Even Who wants to be a Millionaire for PC was given away, and that was the PC audience which is much much broader than PS2 owners. The conundrum about this game is that the only people who will buy it don't have a PS2, and the people who have one aren't going to buy it.

This is why Family Feud is our Unusual PS2 game of the week.

The First Top Ten...Favourite games

As this is a new blog, I figure that my first of many Top Tens should be my favourites, so that any readers can get to know some of my tastes. A Top Ten will be another re occuring feature of this blog-although unscheduled. Many sites have top tens, and I don't like blending in, but its a classic. I promise many non traditional features soon! Oh so soon.

Until then, this is a top ten of my favourite games. I rank them without bias to year of manufacture-meaning, I rate with respect only to how much fun I had playing them.

Without further ado...

1. Goldeneye (N64)
2.Gran Turismo 2 (PSX)
3.Mario Kart(SNES)
4. Gran Turismo 4(PS2)
5.Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball(N64)
6. Donkey Kong Country(SNES)
7. Nagano Winter Olympics 1998(N64)
8. Road Rash(N64)
9. F-Zero(SNES)
10. Medal of Honor(PSX)

Let the commenting begin...


Up Next Week: We'll have Terrible Game Idea of The month, Unusual PS2 Title of The Week, and Xbox Release of the month, We'll also run a feature story on Wednesday. Check it out!

Release of the Month!!!

So as you may have anticipated, every month one of the features of this blog will be release of the month. Release of the month essentially is all about which game I am most excited about this month based on its previews, it will usually be a game being released for PS3, though not necassarily exclusively, and probably not usually exclusively.

With that said, I am starting off by picking the release of the month for June 2009. After consulting the PS3 release calendar, Fuel takes the cake for this month. Fuel incorporates fast paced racing across a myriad of terrain in all sorts of different modes and types of vehicles, with a massive(and we do mean massive 14,000 square kilometers according to IGN- http://ps3.ign.com/articles/984/984341p1.html) open-world setting. It looks great, features multiplayer, and was hailed in many of its previews, including the aforementioned most recent IGN preview.

The vehicles seem to resemble off-road toys like dirt bikes mixed in with a variety of machines that could best be described as rally cars and trucks on crack, and then with an occasional muscle car with dirt tires. So it should make for some interesting match making.

If you happen to have some cash lying around this month, check out Fuel.

Six Days of Fallujah and what we're really missing

Maybe a month or two ago, I was browsing through IGN.com in the middle of my Engineering and Design class on Friday mornings. I was on the preview section of the PS3 site, I had initially been browsing for racing games. I had just picked up Dirt and wanted to see if there was stuff on Dirt 2.
Anyways, I came across this game Six Days of Fallujah, and it seemed ok. I mean, it looked a little like that game Desert Storm for playstation 2 that came out years and years ago, but it had cool looking graphics, so I kept reading. Somethings caught my attention, and I was interested. Interested enough to check back on it about a week ago.
When I did, I read it the comments section that it had been cancelled, for now, due to its content. Apparently, releasing a game based on actual battles is taboo these days.
I mean I see their point, if people at Treyarch can cook up the very fictious Operation Barbarosa or if the Medal of Honor cronies can cook up D-day, then why do we need real battles to reference?
More importantly, what we are really missing out on is a lot more than just a standard 3rd person shooter.
Aside from having reportedly rather accurate, intense, but also rather unpolished gameplay, Six Days of Fallujah incorporated a totally unique game engine. In most games when you put a charge on a wall, the charge blows up, kills nearby enemies, and the wall remains intact.
In SDoF, when you put a charge on a wall, it blows up, kills nearby enemies, and blows up the wall. Yes thats right, SDoF used a totally interactive environment. You can impact anything in the game ,cars, walls, buildings-all totally destructible. This is the selling point of this game, it totally makes it worthwhile being upset over. But, it also means we can get excited, because it is likely in the future such engines will be incorporated into shooters of all variations, and possibly even open world games like Grand Theft Auto and company. Six Days of Fallujah has left me dissapointed with society, but very excited about the future of gaming. This may be the dawn of a new generation of console based games. Totally destructible environments-awesome.

On the side: there is a possibility that SDoF could get picked up by another group and released but this seems unlikely at the moment, but there is hope.

The First Post..Aniticpated Games...A little Extraneous info

First,

I'd like to say I appreciate all my readers. I am a current PS3 owner. I would own an Xbox too, but alas, I really can't afford that. I may show bias to PS3 games, like GT5, but many games are multiplatform so I hope that won't keep Xbox readers and PC enthusiasts away. With that said this is the first of many posts, please comment and please follow me, so I can follow you and respond.

Ok,


So the summer gaming season is upon us. With E3 fast approaching and an onslaught of summer releases coming at us I cannot begin to tell you what games I'm most excited about.

Numero Uno on my list has to be Gran Turismo 5. I expect it will be previewed at least in some length at E3 2009. I cannot wait to see what turns up. I will have a full report on June 5 about the most exciting things to come out of E3.

I am also very excited to see developments of Need For Speed Shift. Shift is a fitting word to say the least because this classic arcade series looks like its steaming hard for a major overhaul.

And who could forget the sequel to the 2007 Game of the Year? Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is posed to release in November. Last time the Infinity Ward team took to E3 in 2007 , Modern Warfare took best graphics honors honors, so we can only imagine what they have in store for the convention this year.

I'm also excited to see MAG, Dirt 2, Operation Flashpoint 2, Star Trek Online, Battlefield Bad Company 2 and many others.

Well I have to go for now, but come back tomorrow night!

In the next post, our feature will be why we really missed out if Six Days In Fallujah was cancelled, it will also include a Top Ten List, as well as Release of the Month.

Don't Forget to Chime in!!!