October First Impressions (Catching Up Edition)

Okay, now that School Money Crisis 2011, I need to catch up on some stuff, gaming wise. No, I'm not dead, the VA took forever with my benefits (they admitted this, and felt pretty bad about it taking so long for everyone), but it's all worked out now. Oh, and I'm working on gaming articles again, but for a different magazine, since the old one went up in flames! Not literally. Let me put some context here:

I was OSDB's top article writer (sad, no?), which meant that I was there big draw to developers. The magazine was going to be published, but only if my blog broke 50 page views a day. They never told me this, and our magazine was going bankrupt. This meant that if I didn't get the page views to get us published, and the magazine went under, I would have had to pay for it. I wouldn't have been okay with this in the first place. What made it worse was the fact that they did all of this behind my back. Now, after most of the people I worked with have left, we went off and started finding another publisher and finance adviser for the magazine, and we're starting from scratch.

Without further ado, though, I am going to give my first impressions of some of the Fall's newest games to come out this month.

1: RAGE: I remember people talking about how RAGE was going to be the revival of the FPS, solely because ID was doing it, and it had a new engine. When it tells you that it was made by the developers of Doom and Quake, yes, that sounds like it'd be good. I thought that it was going to be a Borderlands/Fallout ripoff. Well... it is, but with one exception: those games had a plot. I seriously feel like I was rescued in the game just to kill indiscriminately. Haven't we moved beyond this? Okay, let me rephrase that. Didn't thy advertise this game as having a story? They delivered Doom with cars, minus half if the fun. Oh, but it does run at 60 FPS. The new ID Tech 5 engine has that, at least. Playing on the PS3, though, it looks very jagged, as if they made very little improvements with the models, save for improved lighting. The backgrounds do look beautiful, though. Lastly, far be it for me to talk about a game being too short, but this needs mentioned. I'm halfway through the game, and I've been playing for an hour and a half. It's good for about five minutes, but then, once you realize that its Borderlands (so much that the enemies are called "Bandits" and act like the ones in Borderlands) with Brutal Legend style driving, the veneer wears off quick.

2: Batman: Arkham City: Arkham Asylum is hands down one of my favorite games of all time, with Blood II, Bioshock, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Heavy Rain, and Condemned. This fits right in, as well. It's beautiful to watch, and very fun and fluid to play. Plus, it's jam-packed with characters. Oh, and one character acts different on certain days of the year. Rocksteady didn't make a cash in sequel, they made a project that feels like something the fans deserve. My few gripes are the character designs (seriously... Bane looks awful, and Mr. Freeze looks like a bad Big Daddy), and Harley's voice. It's not the same without Arleen Sorkin. But, those are very minor gripes for an overwhelmingly great game.

3: Battlefield 3: Everyone knows that this game looks great graphically. What they don't know is that this is single-handedly the most accurate modern war shooter I've ever played. When I get chills down my spine from hearing that an area has no civilians, just a fraction of a second before we get attacked, you know you did something right. If you play this as CoD, you will die. A lot. Tactics are needed, and you need to adapt. DICE knows there stuff. The best thing is that this game is very fun, as well.

4: Gears of War 3: I would review this one, but the update corrupted my save, and I sold my 360. It is a good game, but the writing is a little flaky. Here's an example:

Ice-T: Bitch you killed my fucking town, fuckers!

Marcus: I lost my fucking *redacted* fucker!

Ice-T: Fuck you fuckers! I'm Fucking out the fuck here! Fuck!

And Ice-T is never seen again.

Oh, the high point is playing as Cole. Cole is awesome. Anya and the Totally not Chloe from Uncharted character who is sleeping with Post Dead Wife Dom are not. Oh, and Epic screws Dom's character up a tad... but I'm really conflicted as to whether or not it's that bad. I'd recommend it to fans, but not many others.

5: House of the Dead: Overkill- Extended Cut: *Grindhouse Mode Activated* Motherfucking awesome fucking game made fucking longer. Oh, and you fucking play as a motherfucking stripper in a level! My one fucking complaint is that they fucking cut out one fucking song that is fucking funny.

Seriously, it's awesome.

I'll have some more articles up, including a first impression of Uncharted 3.