xbox – broom's blog

Gears of War: Judgement

最近两作CoD和GoW3玩得都有些兴味索然，感觉好久没玩到好的FPS了。看到这次的GoWJ评价很好就预订了，通了单人战役，果然相当不错。个人感觉可以算是现在最好玩的科幻系FPS游戏。我基本上一直喜欢GoW胜过CoD，朝兽人身上倾泻子弹和爆头如爆西瓜比打那些只能挨个三五枪的纳粹和恐怖分子好玩多了。。

本作虽然是一个资料片但是剧情长度很有诚意。除了一个Judgement的剧情之外还附加一段Aftermath的短篇去补完3代的剧情。总共玩下来游戏时间应该在20小时以上，比最近那些一个周末甚至一天就能通的FPS“大作”要好得多。

游戏保留了GoW系列的绝大部分枪械和其他武器。新加了Markza/Breechshot这个系列，手感和音效都很赞，比传统狙击枪Longshot实用不少。Sawed-off shotgun也是这一作可以经常找到的暴力霰弹枪。总得来说比GoW3里面大部分时候都拿着Lancer或者Hammerburst要好玩得多。

敌人方面多了一种拿着Breechshot，会狂暴变身的敌人。变身之后就会冲来冲去只能打头。Normal难度下不是什么大问题，随便霰弹枪轰一轰或者丢个手雷就完事儿。说起来这代的normal难度貌似就是偏简单，前作中比较棘手的敌人比如全身钢甲拿两把手枪的家伙我到通关就见到了一两次。这游戏对大多数玩家来说重点还是在网战吧。于是看来又要买Gold member给微软送钱了，nnd

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

I don’t like this game.

I’m kind of a lame CoD player: almost only play campaign mode offline, and almost always at normal level. Competing FPS game online is not my thing. I feel that is a too “professional” entertainment.

The first CoD I played might be 3 or 2, then all the way to this one (Black Ops 2 is actually the 9th). This game series is like long action/shooting/military theme movies to me, playable and exciting. It had served this purpose well until this one.

I really can’t appreciate the “strategy” mode brought by black ops 2. It’s like a crappy RTS, hard to control, hard to win, hard to enjoy. I passed the first one at the 3rd or the 4th try, and failed a few times on the 2nd one, then I gave up on this mode. It seems they forgot why CoD became popular: fast revive and fast resume! This mode broke it and frustrated me.

There are both modern and old-time guns in this game, but few of them gave me a powerful or interesting feeling. Instead, most guns made me feel weird. And those “super weapons” and “bonus small games” didn’t shine either, and some of them were quite awkward.

Well, this game does have a few brave imaginations, such as shooting planes with RPG on horse back, and sniper which can charge and shoot through walls and armors… But it is far worse than previous ones to me.

Mass Effect 3

Finished it just now. Normal difficulty, Sentinel class, 31 hours.

The ending was not as bad as I expected, maybe because there had been too many bad words about the ending of this game so my expectation couldn’t be lower. I don’t think its ending is especially bad, compared to other parts of this game. In my opinion, the whole game is quite boring.

The battle system is too similar as ME2: barrier/shield/armor, fast weapons, slow weapons, skill system almost stays the same too. I can hardly find any new interesting places in ME3 battles, after playing through ME2 for 3 times. Actually, I think it’s even worse because of a few glitches. For example if you want to stay behind a cover of “L” shape, you’ll notice Shepard turn to some directions you don’t want. It turned out to be a very annoying problem because this is not a game encouraging you to rush and melee. So at most times you have to stay in cover and deal with glitches. And those cool melee skills don’t seem very useful to me.

In the ME3 story I feel almost everyone died. I got 4 companions at a very early stage, and ended up with these 4 comrades.. Tali joined a while then killed herself. I guess there is some way to get more companions alive, but I want to experience the “original” gameplay in the 1st pass. And my feeling is the story is very simple: need to gather power => [get a mission => mission accomplished, someone died] x n => final mission. The structure is so simple that I don’t see any suspense. Again, boring.

An obvious improvement in ME3 is there are much more weapons. And grenades become more useful. I can see they built a pretty big gun system, maybe for online play, maybe for catering shooting game lovers. But I don’t really like this. If I want to use 100 different guns and throw grenades, why not I play CoD?

Anyway ME3 gave this trilogy an ending. Maybe I’ll try another pass or online play. But now, after finishing the 1st pass, I’m not in the mood.

FFXIII-2

Beat FFXIII-2 last night. About 50 hours game time. It was a nice journey with old friends from FFXIII.

FFXIII-2 to FFXIII is kinda like FFX-2 to FFX, a mission oriented continuation of a story oriented origin. I gave up FFX-2 after 1 hour because I didn’t like Yuna’s costume in that game. On the contrary, Sarah in FFXIII-2 is very lovely, even better than Lightning , who is a little bit “neutral”. And the bikini DLC pushed the joy to a new level…

FFXIII-2 is a typical time travel story. Heroes jump among different eras, save people, prevent disasters. Not very interesting, you may even say it’s stale. So the whole attraction of this story is what happened to Lightning/Snow/Fang. Therefor, it’s VERY annoying to see “To Be Continued” at the end of this game! I know there are some more plots scattered here and there, after finishing the main story. But the main story still feels way too incomplete. Or let’s put it more directly: the ending CG is too SHORT! Come on Final Fantasy, where is your 5 minute ending CG??!

The fighting system is quite close to FFXIII. It’s fun to collect and grow monsters. However most fighting fun is probably left to the after－ending play, because when I beat the game, most monsters I used are “Early Peaker” style. It requires some farming to feed those cool “Late Bloomer”s. I don’t really like a Japanese RPG that requires you to farm. Well, maybe I’ll get back to it some day.

Music of this game is definitely a wonderful part. Lots of woman voices are well used. My favorite track is the Dying World theme.

In sum, I would recommend any FFXIII player to play this successor, any Japanese RPG fan too since there are very few good Japanese RPG games today. It’s not a good choice if you’re neither of the 2 types above.

CoD:MW3 and FFXIII-2

These games have really long names, ha.

MW3 single player campaign is as short as it was criticized. I started it around 1pm and finished it at 1am. Total play time should be less than 8 hours. In fact it was a very nice experience, to fight in NYSE building, watch Eiffel tower collapsing and shoot enemies with super modern weapons. I can imagine some player would be pissed off if they bought this game for single campaign. This is a game designed for online play.

I tried it on Xbox live the next day, and found it wasn’t a game for me. It is so easy to kill or be killed in this game, 3~5 bullets, less than 1 second. Usually even before you realize which direction you’re being shoot, you’re gone. It’s very different from GeoW3, in which those “Gears” are much more tough and can eat more bullets. I’m not a CS lover so I’ll just return this game and continue my FFXIII-2.

I’ll talk about FFXIII-2 later after I beat it. So far it’s better than I expected. Time travel plot is always attractive to me, though I’ve prepared for a broken ending because it’s quite difficult to make a time travel story logical.. The battle system is OK, and Sera is good-looking. What else do you expect from a “FF*-2”?