Calling CoD:MW3 pre-orderees

Hello! This is Todd calling from Gamestop, just wanted to let you know we're going to be having a midnight release for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. That'll take place on Monday, November 7th. Starting at 6pm you can come and get your number and line up, we'll have food and entertainment as well as a tournament to win some cool prizes. Again, this has been Gamestop, we hope to see you there.

Had a couple of people that actually picked up think I was a recording, which is really a testament to my speech-preparedness, as my enthusiasm was clearly unmatched!

Need for Speed: The Run Demo

Need for Speed, a franchise which has been through somewhere between five and a bajillion iterations. When "What's the best Need for Speed?" is asked there are really only a few answers: Most Wanted and Underground 2 and Hot Pursuit 2. Most Wanted and Underground 2 were massive open world street racers, however Underground 2 did not feature police chases whereas Most Wanted made them pretty central to the gameplay and featured pursuit breakers. Hot Pursuit 2 was the first NFS title done by Black Box and gave the cops an arsenal. Why?

I have no idea, to be honest. Carbon and Undercover never struck it with the fans, though Carbon wasn't that bad albeit a bit one-trick-pony-ish, and I never played Undercover. Prostreet was reviewed really poorly, which is all well and good because it was eventually followed by Shift, and then Shift 2 Unleashed which for whatever reason dropped the "Need for Speed" bit of the title. Their Prostreet -> Shift -> Shift 2 Unleashed progression followed their entrance into the simulation racing world, which got off to an incredibly rocky start. Shift won points for its superb cockpit view and visceral feel, but was just under the cusp of awesome due to vehicle handling troubles, and then Shift 2 Unleashed polished it out nicely. Need for Speed had up until then been entirely arcade racing focused, so some people are probably upset that it's not solely arcade style.

But now there's Need for Speed: The Run! Yay. It's like Uncharted in cars. Cinematic-style action and racing mixed in with traditional arcade style racing, but all point-to-point like Hot Pursuit (as far as I can tell), complete with out-of-car quicktime events. While it seems like they may indeed deliver that awesome movie experience, driven by action scenes which the player participates in and an incredibly generic protagonist whom they can not give a fuck about, what's going to happen to those that loved Most Wanted etc.? I wonder what game they will play.

Not Need for Speed: The Run, that's for sure.

Building a better blog

I wish I knew HTML, but unfortunately I don't. However, my original plan a long time ago for a blog included separating blogs or pages rather for the different bits of my life that I work on. Unfortunately I'm still sucking at being productive. HOWEVER! In an effort to reach that goal I figure I'll go ahead and start building those blogs and pages until I can make an actual website of some sort.

What those blogs are, we'll see. I think the original plan was for a sort of... word-vomit blog which would be this one for the moment, though eventually I'd want a main page which has posts from all of them, one covering what I do at XBLAFans, one for my work on my card game (which I've not yet talked about in the slightest), one for my video game design... things, and probably some other project I'll never get any work done on.

Hopefully I'll get work done on at least one of them.

Discussion explosion

Had a really sudden and lengthy discussion in my Sociology class about the criminal justice system. Very nice discussion piecing apart the ways in which we view people we do not know and how we allow others to dictate the ways in which we make decisions about unfamiliar people.

I absolutely love driving home from work or school (or to, whatever, I mean anywhere honestly) listening to BPM or Electric Area (more so EA) on Sirius XM. The sessions with Paul Oakenfold and Tiesto are absolutely fantastic, there's always such awesome music being played. BPM's nice for like top 100s and stuff, but every other time I turn that station on they're playing that awful Skrillex remix of Cinema. I think nice Dubstep music can be made. I do not think that song is worth listening to in the slightest.

Gone so soon?

No no, I'm still here. I've been crunching out level guides for Orcs Must Die! which comes out tomorrow (10/5) and we're not too done with the guide. My partner really slacked it up, and my Mom took the 360 today to play Dark Souls, which inevitably served to distract me as well. On top of that, I had math class, Sociology class, homework for both, and I have a Linguistics test in the morning tomorrow for which I'm not prepared.

Sure, it's all my fault, but the point is that I'm still here to post! I'll talk at length about Orcs Must Die! in the coming week.

Rotastic: frenetic death rotation

The deathmatch mode in Rotastic seriously needs to be in the demo, it's way more fun and features far more interesting maps than the boring one in the demo. I only got to play against bots, but the deathmatch mode has you aiming and focusing your momentous rotating goodness and working with the maps to get your rotation as tight as possible to ensure you won't be killed trying to kill someone else. Very awesome action.

Adventures in Worms: Ultimate Mayhem

I'm playing some WUM (wumwumwum) online against some players and it's amazing to see just how consistent these games are, and their players as well. We're playing a match with a gametype created by one of the players where-in all weapons are available (I think, at least several of them are) and many of them are infinite, along with infinite utilities. So the first thing that happens is everyone jetpacks as high as they can and places sentries and whenever possible, jetpacks/walks to the nearest worm to kill them with dynamite or a dragon punch, nobody has the balls (I don't think Worms have balls...) to aim anything.

It's pretty embarassing. It's not the game's fault at all, I just wish the players were a bit more adventurous.

Rotastic's demo is awful; game isn't

I'm really glad sites like www.xblafans.com exist to review obscure XBLA titles like Rotastic because the demo for the multiplayer is pretty lackluster. I can understand that fear of showing off too much of your game in the demo, but showing off boring maps is a bad idea.

Rotastic is a simple game and it does what it wants to very well. Hold A to grapple onto anchor points and swing around them (in perfect circles) and use momentum to go to different points. Different multiplayer modes exist in the game but the only two that can be played are the one for collecting jewels and one for getting points (which is essentially the same thing except points are also awarded for tricks and kills). Speaking of kills, the game has a deathmatch mode but there's no deathmatch maps playable in the demo, despite it being the best part of the game other than its simplicity. Cutting enemies ropes while they're rotating at the right angle can send them rocketing towards the floor, it's pretty hilarious!

Check out Rotastic and my buddy's review for it as it is a great couchy sort of multiplayer game. And the single player isn't horrible either.

Artillery Strategy games and the fact that they're all Worms

I'm a sucker for the Worms series. Team17 catches a lot of flak for not being able to step outside this game and its mechanics (Alien Breed is awful) but at least they do this, they do it well, and they've been doing it for at least a decade. My favorite in the series has always been Worms 3D (with Worms Forts being a nifty addition), but the last time I played it was on PS2. Well thankfully, its made its way to this-gen with Worms Ultimate Mayhem.

I haven't played it too much yet, but so far I've ran through the customization options for the most part and they're incredibly robust. The majority of Worms games have been 2D, which is fine but it does shut out quite a few people due to the lack of 3rd dimension. Why? No idea. Some people are so meticulous. This version is 3D, and that means bigger, better models. With biggetter models comes more customization options, where previously there were only hats, now exist hand and face customization! So that's neat. The next customization option is for making custom games which is so absolutely robust this time around it's mind boggling. All kinds of awesome weapon control, time control, what things are on the map, do mines spawn constantly, it's crazy awesome funtimes. Lastly, and I believe this is new to Worms (though Ultimate Mayhem is 3D + Worms 4 the latter of which I've never played, so I could be wrong), you can make custom team weapons. This feature is absolutely fantastic, I love being able to make my own little weapon to take into battle, or however it's implemented.

Looking forward to playing this online and hotseat, will report more in the future.