Crime and Dalliance

Apt.

I'm not a big fan of multiplayer. I always feel incredibly incompetent against a human opponent, knowing that at any moment I will just get knocked over in an instant because I'm not looking in the right direction, or just wasn't quick enough on the draw, or didn't pump enough bullets into them before they pulled one casing from the magazine and threw it at my head just to spite my pathetic skills.

So when I get into a gaming venue with friends, I prefer Cooperative formats. In this case I mean Heists, part of GTA Online's latest big update.

Everyone, their mother, their grandmother, and their decease families have been rolling in their graves wanting to get heists happening in GTA, and the day it came, the servers basically up and died just trying to handle the influx of returning players, myself included.

My Brother in Law and his best friend were excited too. The best friend works odd and long hours so it has been difficult to convene with him. But Bro-In-Law and I kicked it off with Gusto.

Lester lectured us about the ins and outs of Heisting, gushing with innuendo involving the popping cherries and future experiences that everyone will encounter.

It wasn't until we began the second Heist that we encountered a problem that not only we had to deal with: a lack of assistance.

Now the doctor was a small step towards resolving that solution, being the third to the required quartet of criminal masterminds. But we had nobody else to assist us. Our only solution was to turn to the Internet, request the help of complete strangers to help us through this transition. We found a few players who were all too happy to help, but there were others that were deceitful bastards, piking out at the last minute, less than a hundred metres from the destination before leaving a mocking card and pushing the ejection seat button.

So many times it has happened and it frustrates us to no end that nobody could simply help all the way through, to profit with the rest of us. No, they must give us a taste of what victory could be and leave like it was the funniest prank ever played.

The petty spite these internet trolls plague other players, those enthusiastic to complete these missions, is too much, driving everyone into madness.

Let alone playing by yourself with a pickup party.  It's impossible.  I would spend hours just waiting on players to connect, seeing invites go unaccepted, seeing interested players join and bail, either after seeing nobody else or after waiting five minutes before giving up like I want to.

I could just give up.  But I won't.  We will find our Fourth.  And we will call him Fourthy, and we will worship him like a god.

GTA VI: London? Could be cool

Four was in Liberty City. Five was in Los Santos. Six could be anywhere, and I vote for London.
London hasnt been mentioned in years in GTA, only one game in the series and it was the old 2D series, and with a long history of mobsters and underworld crime, it would be a shame not to play with it, especially in a parody sense.

But given the chemistry of GTAV with the very cool SWITCH system I don't see why they couldn't bring it back with some new characters. But who would fit the profile for the cast? I have a few ideas of who they could base them on.

Ace (Dr Who)
Ace is one of the best companions in the shows history. Pretty much prepared for anything, she was game to do just about anything. Especially if it involved explosives. As one of the first female lead characters of the series (GTAO characters don't count) the potential could start a new era for the HD series.

Rick or Vyvyan (The Young Ones)
Anarchists at heart, and in life, these guys cause chaos wherever they go. Why not take a more offensive and proactive role by giving them guns and a target to run down?

Bacon or Big Chris (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels)
This seems like an obvious choice, getting any Jason Statham or Vinnie Jones character out as the street wise gangster to level out the extremities of the other characters.

Then there's the Online Component. Sure, you could probably keep using the same toon you levelled up from when you were in Los Santos, have them fly in for one reason or another, but as GTA Online stands, it has the variety that some games lack, but falls short in depth. You get all these different missions, unlocked as you gain ranks, but no motivation to do them aside from different ways to get money, or different ways to be competitive.

So I propose adding some history to your favourite mute. Have him roll up and do his missions with some actual purpose and motivation, not some thinly veiled favour for Trevor or Martin "Mad Mex" Madrazo.

And how about some collectables? I would like a spot in my GTAO garage reserved for a Space Docker, or the various new stock cars that are up for grabs.

Grand Theft Avatar Online

Dakka dakka dakka!

I've been playing a Lot of Grand Theft Auto V lately, because it is an impressive cinematic game.  Three characters fighting together to get their ways in life without having to get screwed over by some other asshole.  Its fantastic, it's emotional, and it is more entertaining than a bag full of cats.

But it doesn't stop there.  GTAV also has an online mode which is, for want of a better description, an MMO set in Los Santos (The setting of GTAV).

In this Online mode you can do any number of things, from Holding up a convenience store, to joining a Death Match against a bunch of strangers, to racing your friends around the city, to organising heists for either the sake of hilarity or to actually attain a profit (Though those are yet to be properly implemented).

My only worry, and it's admittedly a silly worry, is that players would get bored of the city of Los Santos.  There's thousands of square miles of environment you can explore, I'm still discovering/rediscovering regions, but eventually one does run out of things to do.

So what can you do?  Why not add another city?  The setting has several environments as it is all set within San Andreas, all of which have their inconsistencies between 2D, 3D and HD universes, but that's Rockstar's problem.  That's the potential of a GTAV/GTAOnline Expansion, either reinventing old cities, or inventing new ones.  The potential is all up to the developers.

The System is what's fun though.  A very well designed Third Person game with Role Play Elements, along with a very good Vehicular system (covering anything from a push bike to a personal jet).

It's a tried and true method for a good number of years, and it makes for a really fun setup for GTA Online.

But as my train of thought moved on, it careened over to the Xbox All-stars MMO I rambled on about a few months back.

This would be a perfect setup for exactly that.  To have different regions that mimic exclusive Xbox games (or games they can get the rights to) which your player, represented by your Xbox Avatar, can roam about causing havoc or performing feats they get from whatever they have equipped, around areas that would appear in a demo levels of respective games.

I would love to jump out of a Borderlands Bandit Technical, wearing my Crysis Nanosuit, holding a Gears of War Lancer and killing a Halo Elite in a Doom Facility.  Just as an example.

Likely, Licensing and such won't allow Xbox to get that, but it's still an idea they can run with just to get some cool milage out of those charming little Mini-Me's.

---

Yes, it was that big.

The more I think about it, the more I wish it were true that my little Avatar would have a professionally made world available to him to roam, and shoot, and interact.  I say professionally because there are a number of Indie games that use Avatars, and they all seem very... Low budget.

I continue to play GTA Online, driving about in whatever spiffy car I've sexed up, finishing missions, or jacking Armoured Trucks, or being chased down by the Los Santos Rozzers, and I keep wondering other things that would make an Avatar GTA interesting.

Like all the weapons would be based on NERF guns, just so that kiddies would be able to join in on the fun without being subjected to the gore of a spurting headshot.  And with that you can customise them, from an extended clip or an underslung grenade launcher, to something like an elemental effect added to your ammunition.  Or get random drops and just improve on them from there.  It'll depend on how you go about it, and whether the character you develop matches your play style.

Skill trees could be massive, just starting off with a handful of straightforward options, and expanding out more and more making characters that much more unique for each persons playstyle.

Enemies could be based off of Xbox exclusives, throwing things like Halo Elites and Gears of War Locust into the mix.  Or have mock characters of other company personifications, like the Wiis "Mii"s and have them attack in droves against environments, turning them into their own versions of said exclusives and turning them against the avatars.  Better yet, have a Zomb-ii mission such as being placed in the Xbox HQ and have to make defences in there to stop the hordes of zomb-ii's.

Then take the piss out of themselves and fly up to a mothership designed on the original xbox, maybe fly around in fighters that are based on the original controllers.  Or do a mothership dungeon crawl and fight a raid boss.

The ideas are pretty endless.

Some days, I just want to play Cribbage

Excitement boils inside me like an egg waiting to be chowed down with a Caesar Salad, and skewered using those tiny little forks that cost about $2.50 at any kitchenware store.

Being the nerd that I am, I enjoy a good video game. Recently, I have had no desire to play video games, whether by personal motivation or by social motivation.

Some games look interesting, but not interesting enough to play myself as they seem very monotonous. An example of this is Crackdown. Now, I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto. It's a fun game. However, it became monotonous by ending up as a game that just wanted you to shoot the shit out of everything you could see, and mini-missions that encouraged this. I'm all for video game violence. Nobody actually gets hurt, and I'm not one to be influenced by this sort of inanity. Heck, I played Sonic the Hedgehog a ridiculous amount as a child and teen, and I don't jump on people.

Now, where was I going with the lead to Crackdown? Well, it's that after seeing someone play Crackdown, it seems to be the same deal as GTA. Just a bunch of missions where you hunt people down and things blow up all around you while you try not to get hit yourself and maybe deflect a missile, throwing it into a building, knocking it over onto the car of the target you're hunting, causing them to drive off into the water and because they can't get out of the car, it explodes, killing them.

While the situation is entertaining, it's a rare event. Most likely, you'll run down the vehicle, pick it up and throw it into the water.

Which is not my idea of entertainment, as later on in the game one would come across another mission where a moment of Deja Vu will occur and the same thing will happen again, except maybe more missiles for you to practice your fly kicks.

It's a 'leave your brain at the door' game.

I'll give it credit, however. Within my friends, I generated a good tagline for the game: "Crackdown: It's bullshit and it fucking knows it". This also applies to Prototype, a game of similar lineage of Crackdown with an added twist: Mutations and Cannibalism.

Thats right, Cannibalism. He's not a bad guy. He's not a good guy either. He IS a strange version of a Cannibal.

Leading back to my point, the same shit with a different smell is not my idea of entertainment for extended periods of time.

Mind you, the comment about Sonic the Hedgehog as a child probably had something to do with it. I became uncannily good in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and while I'm a little rusty at the moment it still shows that I know most of the neccessary tricks and tidbits for completing the game.

So, in search of a game to entertain me, I recently bought a couple of games from EB the other week: Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl, and Stormrise.

I bought Stalker because I have been in the mood for a First Person Shooter. Unfortunately, this hasn't had the same effect that I was hoping. I began play and after completing a mission or two, I became disinterested.

It is a Role Play game. Unfortunately, I'm not one for playing Role Play games these days. While this does provide a desire to actually use my intelligence to complete a mission, it is not the same receptors flashing away in my brain that I'm desiring.

Which leads me to play Stormrise, a Real Time Strategy game.

I enjoy a good RTS. I bought Warcraft III and Starcraft, along with their expansions, a long time ago because they are good RTS games. I've really enjoyed them, yet have grown a little tired of them. I've gotten into the habit of playing Dota on Warcraft III and not much compells me to play Starcraft at the moment.
I do patiently await Starcraft II. As mentioned, I do enjoy Starcraft, its world and its story. So I nibble on the little treats that are the rumours and Question batches taken from the development team, and the Battle Reports that I download and convert to play on my PSP.

Returning to Stormrise however, it requires Vista or later to play.

My beast of a computer, aptly named "Beast-09" by its builder, The Dick, coincidentally also a Warmachine Reference, still only runs on Windows XP.

What kind of developer makes a demand of it's player base to use an unpopular and dysfunctional Operating System just to play a game? Microsoft. The same company that knows that this OS is extremely buggy, and are halfway through development of the next OS Generation, "Windows 7".

This disappointed me.

Unfortunately, I can't return the games at full price, as it has been over a week. I may just trade it in for a new copy of Frozen throne, as my old copy has disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving me with a plastic Case with a near useless CD-key. I say Near useless as while the CD-key is valid, I receive another CD-key with the new copy.

A long time ago, I played Dawn of War as well. It was the same genre with a few little tweaks, mostly the currency and reinforcement options. The Currency format may have been done before, where you claim points on a map to increase your rate of requisition, then hold them off from your opponents as they batter against your forces. To keep the battle large and continuous, they have the reinforcement, where you spend requisition to add more members to your units over a small build time. Orks enjoy this because if you have more WAAAUGH! the faster they reinforce and the more they overwhelm the opponent.

Continuing on, I have bought Dawn of War 2. A similar system where you collect your points across a map to gain Requisition and Power to upgrade and spawn units. It was good. The single-player kept me entertained through its duration, although was a little monotonous with it's end missions where my squads were close to invulnerable with their Terminator Armour, Rally! ability used when someone is on low health, and Thunderhammers being able to tear apart a heavily armoured enemy in a few swings. Carnifex's, Killa Kans and Wraithlords have no chance of surviving when they are released onto the world.

A video game that is either in development, or soon to be released, I'm not entirely sure honestly, is Splinter Cell: Conviction. I have played the majority of the previous Console titles. I enjoyed them immensely, with Double Agent being quite well favoured. The meticulous execution of espionage in a variety of interesting settings really sets the game high in my favourites list.

The next addition to the series seems to kick it up a notch, speeding up the processes of the game for the player rather than sitting and waiting for a particular trigger to finish before moving on, repeating this process through the better part of the game. While triggers are still an occurrence, reflexes will be on demand more often.

But, that is for the future. For now, the only similarity I can find to this without repeating the previous games is to play World of Warcraft, playing a Rogue.

This is a game that grasps Monotony and expels it into an interesting spiderweb that will splatter across your face and leave a strangely salty taste in your mouth.

Now, I imagine that quite a few people are lacking a bit of iron in their diets, so I can't entirely blame them for the fact that it has taken over their lives. Anemia is a serious problem. But, I have reached close to the characters level limit with one character. I feel like calling myself Snowball Sally sometimes when I think about it. To make things a little more hypocritical, I've begun playing again with a friend. Mind you, I've started at a bad time as my schedule is rather cramped with birthday parties and other gaming events, but will be clear eventually, I'm sure.

Steering away from my occasional fetishes, we move onto the more fast paced games. Returning to the same developers of Splinter Cell, I present Rainbow Six. To date, I have only played the Las Vegas versions. These games are very entertaining with their fast paced action and Teamplay. While the computers are insufficiently intelligent to compliment your own skill, they do provide a good enough distraction here and there for you to take out your opponents. Overall, it keeps the mind at a rise and fall reminiscent of a drive through Brisbane's suburbs.

A few games match this. Gears of War and Army of Two come to mind. Both games that play a third person, cover-interactive style of shoot-em-up with a fast paced sense of mind.
Very entertaining games that had me enthralled all the way through. While Army of Two did lack that little bit of UMPH, a term I use for something inexplicable that reels in the barramundi of interest, it did still have its entertaining moments.

Gears of War did fantastically, keeping things interesting through the whole campaign. And, to top off the ice cream with a cherry, the sequel included an new cooperative option: Horde.

The basis of Horde is that you are a squad of humans taking on waves of Locust that become harder and harder to kill. While the enemies are somewhat set depending on what level you have, with generally easy enemies to start and then increasing to much more difficult enemies at level 10, they increase the difficulty of these enemies with simple things such as increasing damage, and health. It had kept myself and friends entertained for weeks, trying to reach the coveted level 50 where we were confident that enemies were near impossible to defeat and would kill you just by saying "CRUSH". Stupid Maulers.

Continuing through the first person Genre, another game that does enthrall me is Halo.

While being the Love Child of the Xbox franchise, it does stand as a very entertaining game with its setting and occasional aspects of gameplay.

There are only a few aspects that the games really lack, in my opinion.

Halo 1 and 2 suffered from repetitive level scenes. Whilst advancing, your sense of Deja Vu is only shattered by the enemies present in the area. Halo 2 did not suffer as much as the first, but lacked the UMPH.
Halo 3, truly the masterpiece of the set, only lacked from a short campaign. After returning home from EBGame's midnight release of Halo 3, cackling away with excitement with Aaron, we arrived home to play until the dawn with an only complaint that the flood levels were... Dissatisfying. Being that they were the final levels, it was a let down, but still very entertaining.

Which leads me to it's next addition to the family: ODST. ODST's are also known as HellJumpers due to their reckless and life risking entry into combat, dropping from orbit in specially designed pods to land in the midst of combat to disrupt aspects of the battlefield for quick missions.

The scene is different. You, of course, are an ODST. But you have been set off course, and have to make your way back to your squadron. This, to me, implied that it will have to be much more sneaky, maybe more like Splinter Cell. And with the setting of the Halo Universe, it would be very entertaining for an ODST to snap the neck of a Jackal that was in the wrong place, and the player would have to interact with cover alot more.

This is half true. The player will have to be sneaky. The player will have to interact with cover much more, however not with the ease of Splinter Cell, or even Gears of War.

No, the game is relatively much the same.

I'll still play, when it is released, but I may not be as enthralled as I would with my dreamt alternative.

So where does that leave me?

It leaves me waiting for the future. Starcraft II, Halo ODST, Army of Two: the 40th Day, Splinter Cell: Conviction... All very exciting, which is the aforementioned Egg.

What do i do in the mean time? I have World of Warcraft. Yes, it'll pass the time. But I won't be satisfied.
So what SHOULD I be doing? Painting. Painting my models for Gencon 09, in September. Only a few months away!

I play table top games. Warmachine and Hordes, specifically. I enjoy these games. The setting is entertaining, the system is interesting, and currently it works to be a fantastic mental stimulus.

I have lost quite a lot of interest in playing. My models are there, and they are collecting dust because I simply don't want to play. Heck, Vassal is on my computer and I don't even want to play that.

I will still attend the tournament events, of course. The only problem with that is that there haven't been any.
The regular get together I haven't attended due to a little bit of motivation, and a very disrupted sleep pattern. I still get myself into trouble for staying late at Fastbreak of a Tuesday night and waking up like a Zombie, so Wednesday Night I am a little apprehensive to attend.

Blind Pig is set at a good time. Fortnightly from the first Saturday of the month.

I don't attend because, frankly, if I can't wake up early enough to get there before the Sausages are on the BBQ, then it's not worth it. It's nothing against the players there, by far. I enjoy their company. They're all really good people. I'm just lazy.

But I have a mission for the next 2.5 months: Paint my Army of Skorne.

Where I was going with this blog, which has wasted the better part of todays worktime, I have no idea. But I have vented. I want Starcraft II now, to play in peace, to dabble in the intricacies of the Map Editor, and to get into an exciting game.

Update: Oh, yes, I do remember where I was going.

The intrigue that the mentioned games had is now, mostly, lost. I still have the hankering on the odd occasion to play them, but these new games coming out have me excited and anticipating their arrival, as they bring some of my favourite things and expand on them.

But, Time is still going. And I have no idea whether I can get the game any sooner. The game I look forward to most is Starcraft II. While it not only expands on the previous game, it also adds features in Warcraft III such as 3d graphics, and hero aspects. The hero aspect of Warcraft III was a very entertaining thing, because it added more character to the game.

Not to mention, it brought out DOTA. Dota, for those who are unaware, is a Hero-based melee map, where 5 players on each side choose a hero and then level up their characters, buying equipment to power themselves up, and eventually make their way to the opponents prized structure and destroy it, all the while defending their own prized structure. Three pathways, each with a set of 3 defensive towers, lead to these structures. It is one of the more popular Warcraft III: Frozen Throne maps, and is fully supported by the Blizzard Development Team.

Well, time will tell when the game is released.