Unreal Tournament 3

I know this is an older game, but I have recently started to go back to this game because it now supports trophies which aren't impossibly hard to get. This is also a great game to escape to when you are sick of campers and the god awful spawning of all the Call of Duty games online.

This game has online but I rarely play it because the servers have integrated the PS3 and PC's together. So you basically have a bunch of keyboard/mouse players that are insanely good vs. us PS3 players with joysticks and low sensitivity levels that can't compete. There is however an option for PS3 users to choose servers with PS3 users only so bravo to the makers of Unreal Tournament. If only we had smarter people like you working for Infinity Ward instead of the monkeys that work there now.

I play this game mainly for the instant action that doesn't require you to be online. The game produces bots that are completely adjustable from novice bots which are easy to kill and god-like bots which are half impossible to kill. I love this about the game because I get sick of playing online a lot so I love popping this game in and enjoying a nice death match or capture the flag that is more relaxing than games like MW2 or Black-Ops.

This game also has a great weapon selection as long as you can find them in the maps. My gun of choice would have to be the Link Gun which fires fully auto bursts but has a secondary fire that heals allies and ally vehicles. There are many guns to choose from and it depends on the player and their playing style to which gun suits them the best.


There is also a player customization menu with items that can be unlocked while playing the campaign. The customization isn't the best I have seen, the items are unique, but the options are limited which is a slight downfall, BUT there are websites online that allow you to download all kinds of mods that give you more stuff for the game including options for this customization.

This biggest downfall to the game is the campaign mode. You can definitely tell that this game was designed for online game play and the creators really slacked off when making the campaign. It is basically made up of a series of death matches, capture the flags, and warfare matches that progressively get harder as you play through chapters. There is almost no story line and no goal except beat the other team in the matches. I thought it would be more of a story filled campaign where you fight your way through hoards of creatures to save the universe or something but no it is not like that at all. You might as well just create your own instant action match because there is no difference.

This website www.ut3mod.com has crazy amounts of free content for Unreal Tournament 3 including maps, mutators, and even entire gamemodes! I personally recommend the third person mod which allows you to toggle the camera view from first person to third person and the jet pack mutator that give your charactor the ability to fly by holding the jump button. I have yet to download a map that I didn't like and almost all the material can completely change the game somehow. That is why I refuse to give this game up because there is always new things coming out for me to download and the game is constantly changing. I highly recommend this game especially now that the trophies are available. My rating = 8/10

FarCry 2 Trophies

I have finally beat FarCry 2 and received 100% completion. It is unnecessary to get all the diamonds and do all the side missions to get this which is sort of dumb in my opinion. As long as you do the main missions for the APR and the UFLL you will get the 100% completion. So right now I am going back and trying to get the trophies which is very time consuming. I fear that I won't get the "soldier of misfortune" trophy because it requires roughly 85-100 hours of online gaming time and I simply do not have the time for that. All the other trophies are very easy to get, but very very time consuming. Well that is where I am at now, I am thinking about putting FarCry 2 on hold for a while so I can play Black Ops more in depth along with Medal of Honor. I will have reviews up on those games very soon.

What is up with NCAA football games?

I am going to come right out and say it, but I think that EA has not made a decent football game since 2007 which was the last title for PS2. Once they made the switch over to PS3 everything went downhill. What the heck happened? I was an avid NCAA player but now I can't stand seeing the thing without having urges to pull my hair out.




There are two main problems that come with the NCAA games. The first is fluidity in the graphics. The graphics seem fine while you play because everything happens so fast you don't notice it but if you pause and watch the replays you can see everyone is very robotic and jerky while they run and I believe this occurs because of all the information that the PS3 is trying to process for the stadiums and the people. The first couple of games had 2 dimensional people in the stadium which made it very easy for the PS3 to process, now EA is trying to make more and more people 3 dimensional to make the stadiums more realistic and I am afraid that the game ends up being laggy because of it. Don't get me wrong, I think the PS3 is one of the most powerful consoles on the market today BUT the downfall is the fact that producers only decided to put 256MB of system memory and 256MB of video memory into it. That brings the total RAM to 512 MB which is barely anything compared to what PC's are running these days. You are only as good as your worst hardware and the RAM is definitely the weak spot for PS3.

The second problem with the NCAA games is the fact that nothing huge ever changes with the games. Introducing new players, plays, and maybe a new game mode isn't that big of a change for me. I guess that because I have always had high hopes for the NCAA games that they would develop something that would blow my mind but it never happens. They are pretty much selling me the same game every year so I decided to stop getting them.

I honestly think EA is holding back in their game-making ability because what if you did make the perfect game? If you set the bar so high that you can't beat it the following year, you just screwed yourself. So I think they hold back a little bit because they actually DO want those small changes every year to keep people interested in there games.

Can't Wait for Killzone 3

I am counting down the days for the release of the much anticipated Killzone 3. From what I understand the official release date is February 22, 2011 and will continue where it left off in the first PS3 Killzone title.

Just in the few trailers that I have watched from Youtube and gaming sites, there will be some sort of jetpack that will allow you to fly temporarily and attack the enemy from wherever you choose. My biggest question is: "Will this be in the online gameplay?" because I can see that being a huge hit with the online community but I can also see it being very annoying. Every new idea has positives and negatives however and hopefully this game will not be a disappointment like so many games that I have played thus far.

This game will also have Move compatibility! This finally gives me a reason to buy the move because I am not a huge fan of the generic games like bowling and baseball for an active gaming style. On the other hand, the new Socom and this Killzone title will completely revolutionize the PS3 move for all shooter games and my guess is that they will release patches and updates later on that will allow older games to have the PS3 Move support. We might see games like Modern Warfare and Medal of Honor on the Move, but that is me just being a wishful thinker.

Prince of Persia

I finally achieved the platinum trophy for this game the other day so I thought I would do a quick review. This wasn't a bad game, but it is definitely not the first one I would reach for if I was itching for some quick action. It took me less than 8 hours to beat the game but took about 16 hours to collect all the trophies and those weren't really that hard, just very time consuming. The most difficult is collecting 1001 light seeds. I had to look a few up online to see where and how to get to them. The most IMPORTANT thing to remember when going for Platinum is right after you beat the God of Darkness to completely set the controller down! there will be a video but dont touch your controller! Even after the video is over and your able to move, DON'T TOUCH IT! Wait one minute and you will get a trophy.

The game itself has a decent story line that isn't too hard to follow, the biggest downfall in my opinion is that it is impossible to die in the game so there is zero suspense while playing. When fighting, there are mini games and if you miss a button, Elika (women that helps you throughout the game) will save you. Also while running from place to place, if you fall or find yourself in a life threatening predicament...Elika will save you so that is one thing I didn't much care for.

The graphics for this game are quite unbelievable for the people. It has that genre of graphics much like Borderlands with the black outline around everything. Almost like everything is a cartoon but it looks very good. However even with the amazing people graphics, the environmental graphics are lacking. Good but not great.

The gameplay is sort of repetitive in the fact that there are 5 bosses you fight including Elika's father 4 of which you have to fight 6 times! You basically travel (jumping through/over/under the same stuff every time) from land to land defeating the creature and open up a new territory. Afterward, you must collect light seeds to gain special powers that make you move better...then repeat over and over again. So there is a bit of repetitiveness to it.

All in all, I had fun while getting the trophies because I was able to accomplish it quickly but I think if anyone would spend an extended amount of time with this game would get bored fairly quickly. I give it a 6/10.

Far Cry 2

So for the past few days I have been playing FarCry 2 for the PS3. Let me warn all of you ahead of time, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS GAME! This has to be one of the worst titles I have ever played in my 10+ years of video gaming. I had high hopes of this game being the complete package after playing the first FarCry but sadly this was probably one of the biggest disappointments in Ubisoft history.

There are MANY problems with this game so lets start with the single player. You start off in a taxi with a man that is able to drive through the map freely without being shot at with you in the back seat. Out of nowhere you have malaria and you have to escape a warzone right in the middle of town. Now as you start moving about the map, EVERYONE is out to kill you and it doesn't make any sense. You can be standing next to a river doing absolutely nothing and a Jeep will come out of nowhere and just open fire! Basically if you are not in the "Cease-fire Zones," which there are only two very small zones in the entire game, you will be shot at from everyone.

The AI is absolutely terrible. Don't bother buying silenced weapons or the camouflage because both do absolutely nothing to stay hidden. I have quietly killed a man by sneaking up behind him with the knife knowing no one was around, then moving through brush to the other side of the camp I am randomly surrounded by 10 guys that knew my exact location somehow. What the heck are you thinking Ubisoft? Why are we using AI from the 90's?

Not only are the weapons pointless but you have to unlock them by doing side missions for the arms dealers. And these missions are the highlight of the game but that is not saying much. They are the same thing over and over again. You have to destroy convoys (one truck) to unlock the weapons and these trucks just drive around in circles.

After destroying the trucks you have to then buy the guns to use them which brings us to our next problem with the game. Buying the guns would be fine and dandy if you were paid enough money for the missions you do...but no, that would be too easy. Instead there are diamonds spread all throughout the map. 221 to be exact, and the only way to know where they are is a little green light flickers on your personal radar when you get close to one. So you are pulling out your map/radar every ten seconds to see if you are close to any of them which gets very annoying, very quickly.

The map/radar that you use probably 50% of the time covers more than half the screen depending whether you are driving or not and you will be driving more than 75% of the game which is the worst part in my opinion. Seriously the game in a nutshell is as follows: Drive 10 minutes to the location to receive mission. Take 5 minutes to listen to what you need to do for your mission. Drive 10-15 minutes to the location site (getting shot at by EVERYONE along the way). Take 5 minutes to complete the mission, then start the cycle over again. It is sad but it is true, there is no break from the repetition and it will drive you nuts after the first 2 or 3 missions.

The mini radar you get on the vehicle will show you about 200 feet on all sides of you which is WAY too small of a region to know where you are going so you end up pulling this huge map out while driving/running just to know where to go. I don't even think Ubisoft tested this game to be honest. How could they seriously create this crap without noticing?

Now onto the online game play. All I can really say is "wow." I was hoping I could escape the nightmare from the campaign and "pwn noobs" online but I literally only find one good thing to say about the entire online part of the game and that is the create your own map mode that allows you to create a map and upload it to the FarCry server that can then be played in the online game modes as long as it meets the requirements.

There are just too many bad things to say about the online which takes away from its only map creator plus side. The aiming is God awful with a touchy sensitivity that makes it almost impossible to hit a moving target and that is only when your standing still, I don't even think it is possible to hit a moving target while you are moving yourself.

On top of that, depending on the gun choice, it may take an entire clip to the upper torso/face to actually kill someone. The only game modes to choose from are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Diamond (capture the flag knock-off), and Uprising which is a game based on three checkpoints and a team leader has to go around capturing these points while his team mates protect him which never happens. This game mode usually turns into a team deathmatch.

The lobbies are set up so that the host starts the game. Everyone has a button to select to show the host that they are ready and a little green light shows up on the right side. This feature is completely pointless because ultimately the game won't start until the host says so. If you are not ready he/she can "force start" the match. I have sat in lobbies before with 16 people (max) and everyone's light has been except for the host that refuses to start the game. Sometimes these lobbies will set in a stall for hours.

On top of that, the host has the ability to ban anyone from the lobby. I have joined a match before and not 2 seconds went by of me being in the lobby and I got kicked out. This is very frustrating and I usually create my own lobby so that I have that power to kick people and start the games whenever I choose but even then you will find disappointment because for some reason when players create matches nobody ever joins the player matches. So you can set in a created lobbies for extended periods of time and nobody will show up.

Well that is all I can think of now, but I know I am missing a lot. I wish there was some way to get my money back because this game BLOWS. My rating = 4/10