I have a idea, lets make the same game!

    So just going to make a quick post. What is with gaming companies lately and just rehashing the exact same game! We've seen it a lot folks, but allow me to bring to your attention our two culprits for the day. Dead Rising 2: Off The Record and Prototype 2, both of which are newer titles, both of which got a lot of hype and both of which are just attempts to cash in more money on the same game.

Now lets start with Dead Rising. The idea behind this title is that its a re imagining of the original Dead Rising 2. They wanted to tell the story of what if Frank West was at this scene instead of Chuck Green. Alright on paper that sounds like a good idea. I also wont try to hide the fact that I was pretty excited by this concept. I pictured scenes of Frank West going into areas Chuck never got to go and us as the audience getting to see that Frank was there the whole time working to help Chuck! This is not what we got, we got a game where they pretended Chuck went crazy and we play out a story that basically doesn't happen in the Dead Rising canon. to top all of this off Frank West is running around all of the same areas that Chuck went. The exact same areas, which only a couple of items moved around to keep you guessing. To warrant this as a new game they re scripted a few characters to talk to Frank, threw in two new bosses and a new area. I bought it and about a hour in realize I basically wasted my money. I had already spent so much time on the original that I didn't care to go through this game more then once, even finishing it that one time was painful. Just a shameless attempt to cash in on a successful game.

The next culprit is even worse then Dead Rising 2, and is my current game I'm trying to play through. Prototype 2 had a ton of hype behind it, it was supposed to build upon what the original gave us. We were promised a great story in which our new lead character was trying to kill our old lead character. New powers, new areas, new story and new graphics all of it promised at some point. What we actually got was a game with one new power, the exact same area(new york city) as the first game and basically a plot that is a excuse to rewrite everything they already created. The graphics are rehashed, even the cut scenes are ass. The game is just a attempt to make a quick buck off the original game.

So as my heading says, I have a idea, lets make the same game! I swear that must be how these corporate meetings go.

-BP

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To give me a ulcer, or to give me the most rewarding experience

Dark Souls Rant

   You died. Yep I saw it again, for the 78th time...So here's your review of Dark Souls, not a full fleshed out one that everyone and their brother can give you, but a Benny special. The game is simply amazing the graphics, the game play, the online(from what I understand still in Afghan.) and my only complaint is the lack of any music.
   All of that being said about this game, I'M GOING TO THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW! Seriously I'm all for bringing a challenge back to my video games. I'm tired of putting in the latest triple A title and blowing through it on hard in 2 days. So its very refreshing to be working on the same game for two weeks now. But do we have to go to such a extreme. The game is already insanely difficult with the regular enemies able to take you down in 2 swings. The difficulty by itself is so insane to cause you to throw the game out a window, but throw in the death penalties. I have played MMORPG's with less harsh death rules. When you die you lose all your humanity and souls. Both of which play very rare and hard to come by currencies in this game. Your given one chance to get your things back, by recovering them where you died. If you die again on the way there; that's it you've lost it forever.
   Its just too much! I hate to think that I'm whining or complaining, but you make a insane amount of progress, the gets more and more tense as you go because your gaining more and more humanity and souls, only to eventually lose them to some random skeleton who was hiding in the dark that you didn't see and back stabs you.
   I don't think very many, if any, people are reading this yet as I havent advertised that I'm writing it yet, but if anyone does read it, what do you think. Is there a point where games are just too punishing? Or is this a favored change and more and more games should go this way.

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-BP

Weekend, Packing for Home

   So currently I am a soldier located on deployment to Afghanistan. Its been a tough year over here being away from my wife, family, friends and my true love which is gaming. I have found a few people here to play some Xbox with and a group of guys who enjoyed Magic The Gathering cards. I have ordered about five hundred dollars worth of comic book back story to get caught up on and spent my days perusing all that YouTube has to offer while leveling a hunter in World of Warcraft to level 85. Oh I did some military based work at some point also in there. You see while I am proud of the work I do, unlike a good number of my co-workers I do not let the fact I am a soldier define me. I am a husband, a gamer, a geek and damn talented at everything I enjoy doing. So this blog will be my way of expressing my opinions on the gaming news at large. I may have to expand it to multiple blogs for multiple gaming topics in the future, especially once my TERA Online podcast kicks up, but for now I will just separate everything by breaks.

 TERA Online, A Good MMO Launch? Impossible...

   Does anyone else feel awkward with all the mostly naked woman in this game? Just saying.

   Anyway TERA appears to be off to a good start and this has me even more excited to get involved in this amazing looking MMO. I've been tracking this MMO for years, but didn't want to ruin the experience for myself by jumping in headstrong early on Korean TERA, or KTERA as its known by the community. Sadly my situation of being deployed has kept me from experiencing the betas and head start that have come with the American version though. Right now I spend my time reading their forums and from what Ive seen, they have a lot of the same issues most MMO's have at launch, but their moving quickly to fix them.
   The first issue I noticed is there is a major server queue to log into a PVP server. This is a very large problem when the queue is a 2 hour wait and some people only have 2 hours to spare in their evenings. But fear not, tracking Emass's twitter feed, they are tracking these issues and beginning free server transfers beginning on April 30th to allow people to move to less densely populated servers. A rather nice fix considering this is still a issue for some people on SWTOR and the transfers have yet to launch.
   The second major issue that seems to be cropping up yet being resolved quickly is server bugs. There have been multiple server restarts, but they have a handle on it keeping the downtime to a minimal.
   Overall so far the launch doesn't appear to be going too poorly, yet the rest of the world wont be joining the preorder people for a few more days, so we'll see how it handles.
   Not much else to say on the topic til I get some hands on time myself...
   Once I return home expect there to be a TERA Online Podcast hosted by my wife and myself within days of us getting the game up and running, along with recorded game play on the YouTube channel we intend to start soon.
   Current plan is to go to the Arachnea Server.

Xbox draught season has begun, luckily I've been out of the loop...

   Whats there to say about our favorite little console. There isn't much coming out or new on its way as is the normal situation presented every summer season for console gaming. Without any big holiday's there is no real incentive for the parents to buy the games for their children. Plus in the day and age of a video screen everywhere you turn, more and more parents want their children outside. So I might as well talk about the games I'm playing catch up since I was deployed and unable to enjoy when they launched.

   First off, I am insanely shocked that I'm enjoying Need For Speed the Run as much as I am. If you ever wanted to feel like Vin Deisel in a fast and furious movie, you need to play this game. The graphics are amazing and the story(yes the story in a racing game!) is right up there with plot behind Fast and the Furious. Now that means exactly how it sounds, don't expect anything insanely deep and meaningful from this game. Expect plenty of "I am amazing, look at my cars." Also the whole scene where you race down the mountain's in Colorado trying to stay ahead of the avalanche is simply stunning, yes something stunning in a racing game.

   Secondly there's Dark Souls, which is simply amazing, but I'll talk more about that in future post. The game has been out for close to half a year, a few more days before I say something wont matter. There will be YouTube videos of Dark Souls as soon as I get back home though.

In closing, I would like to thank Green Lantern

   In closing, I hope I can get more on track eventually and place a real goal to this blog, but as it stands I'll just rant about my adventures in gaming in general! Oh the new 52 is a awesome restart for most of the characters and yes there is milk in the fridge so I'm not picking some up on the way home from Afghanistan.

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