Category: FPS

Our Sense of Discovery Is Disappearing

Dishonored Spoilers

A recent pattern has emerged over the years and it’s one that makes this crotchety gamer flabbergasted. Video game websites are on a desperate mission to spoil games in as many ways as possible. I’m not just talking about story spoilers, either. No, now we get gameplay videos of full missions of Dishonored, at least 3 of which have been released thus far. The game came out on Tuesday. And yet so far, just from one prominent website that I shall not name (but you can probably guess), we have had posts on: a possible sequel, Easter eggs, tips on how to play the game best, videos showing how many different ways there are to kill enemies, etc…

It’s mind blowing. The game came out this very week and if you had read all these articles, I would question why you even would play the game. Part of video games is about having a sense of discovery, of exploring the world, the environment and figuring out your own way to play it. These posts aren’t doing anyone a service. And other websites do these as well. The most famous game site on the Internet will regularly post videos of endings, while another well-read site will show you the location of every hidden collectible in a game on the day it comes out.

Seriously: Stop doing this. I know there is the argument that people can choose whether or not to read these posts, but can we agree that they shouldn’t be posting things like this on the week the game is released? It’s destroying half the fun of playing the damn thing. We’ve finally reached a point where most websites will not post spoilers about the story, or at least warn you if they are about to, but now we are have inverted the problem by spoiling gameplay.

Am I alone on this? Don’t you think it’s more fun to try things yourself first and not have your hand held through every nook and cranny? Tell us in the comments!

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is a Surprisingly OK Live Action Adaption

Live action Halo adaptions have a lot to live up to, what with Landfall, We Are ODST and Deliver Hope setting the bar pretty high. Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is set primarily during the United Nations Space Command’s war with the Insurection, years before the Covenant invasion. It follows the story of one Thomas Laskey, a new recruit at the Corbulo Academy of Military Science. Along the way, he ends up meeting the Master Chief, an event which changes his life and puts him on track to be a highly-placed office on the UNSC Infinity, the giant spaceship in Halo 4. You can check part one here, with part two after the jump.

Continue reading Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is a Surprisingly OK Live Action Adaption

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 54: We’re So, So Sorry

the gamersushi show ep 54 resident evil 6

It’s been a few weeks, faithful listeners, but we’re back. It’s kind of hard to get a balance going once we start the podcast again, but we’ll probably be back up to weekly casts right before we go on another break. C’est la vie, non?

In this episode we’ve got some apologizing to do around Resident Evil 6, which is apparently the worst game ever. Seriously, we’re really sorry about how much time we devoted to this game over the past year.

We also talk about Cliffy B and the BioWare Doctors leaving the industry which evolves into a talk of whether there are anymore big name people left beyond the standards (Newell, Miamoto and the like). It’s a really cool talk about the state of the industry and how faceless it’s become in some ways.

We also talk about Borderlands 2 (nee Bonerhands) for a while and then we chat about our most anticipated games for the rest of the year.

So! You know how it goes. Listen, rate, and please accept our apologies.

0:00 – 1:33 Intro
1:33 – 14:25 Resident Evil 6
14:26 – 17:17 Over/Under Checkup
17:18 – 31:10 Cliffy B and the BioWare Docs
31:11 – 40:42 Borderlands 2
40:43 – 53:00 Most anticipated game of the rest of 2012
53:00 – 54:45 Outro

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Review: Borderlands 2

bordlerands 2 review

2009’s Borderlands was an interesting animal back when it released. A mishmash of RPG and FPS with a lot of loot thrown in, it stayed aloft mostly on a wing and a prayer. It was a little bland in its environmental design, the story lacked any real payoff, and it was too easy to break the various classes available to you. That said, it was fresh and unique and had an excellent crop of post-release DLC to keep it in people’s minds.

Three years later, Gearbox is taking another crack at it. With more polish, more PC options and even more guns, does Borderlands 2 hold even more for gamers or does it deserve to be sold as vendor trash? Continue reading Review: Borderlands 2

Black Ops 2 Zombie Mode Goes on a Road Trip

Somehow a throw-away game mode from Call of Duty: World at War has taken on a life of its own (with its own convoluted back-story), and with every new Treyarch-produced Call of Duty game I find myself anticipating what kind of new crazy twist they’ll throw at us. The new way to slay in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2’s zombie mode is apparently a roving murder-bus, where you and three friends will go on a road trip in an armored vehicle, stopping along the way to kill the undead. There’s a new trailer, which you can check out below.

Apparently this new game mode will be an expansive sandbox for players to explore, and the driving sections in between the hubs will not just be loading screens, but another arena to fend off the living dead. There will also be a CIA vs CDC mode where the two opposing teams can grief each other indirectly; they’re not able to harm each other one on one but will be able to find other ways to indirectly cause the death of their enemies. There’s not too much more info about that mode, but it looks like the old zombie formula is being expanded on yet again.

I’m not going to lie, Treyarch’s Call of Duty games have usually hooked me in with zombie mode and Black Ops 2 looks no different. What about you guys? Are you feeling the familiar tugging on your purse-strings, or is that just a horde of shambling grotesqueries reaching for you from beyond the grave?

GamerSushi Asks: What Are You Playing?

ftl game

Games, guys. Games. Well, more accurately Borderlands 2 and some other stuff, but still. The big season is picking back up and there’s already too many damn things to play. I can’t keep track of it all, so I thought I would make a handy dandy post so you guys can write down the titles current spinning in your console or taking up your hard drive.

The top of the list for me is Borderlands 2, and I’m already in the new game + mode, or “True Vault Hunter”. Yes, Axton and I are going through that game again and the loot you get on the second run through is just insane. There’s an old World of Warcraft joke “green is the new purple” and that’s very apropos here. Just as an aside, the Commando is so much better than the Soldier from the first Borderlands. Having a turret that is able to rotate 360 degrees is a godsend.

Other than that I’ve been playing some FTL (including the ill-fated Flight of The Sushian), Black Mesa and Battlefield 3. I picked up Spec Ops: The Line for super cheap and I’m excited to start that. I also need to finish Mark of the Ninja and I have Sleeping Dogs waiting in the wings, so yeah. A lot of stuff.

What have you guys been playing? Any of the above games or something different?

Ten Years of Battlefield

battlefield 3 tenth anniversary

If there’s any franchise that I have an unrequited love for, it has to be Battlefield, DICE’s multi-arms warfare FPS. It’s kind of hard to believe that it’s been ten years since 1942 introduced us to an almost new style of gameplay with wide-open playgrounds and a multitude of vehicles. When you look back at the release dates for the Battlefield games, they actually came out at a fairly fast clip (one every two years for the most part) but the wait between each game felt like a long time to my young mind.

My favorite game in the series is a tie between Battlefield 2 and 2142. It’s kind of funny to look at my stats for both 2 and 2142 because it felt like I played them for hours, when in reality I’ve spent more time in Battlefield 3. Battlefield 2, 2142 and Bad Company 2 were all played in groups with friends, with the numbers slowly dwindling over time. As people move on and computers get more expensive to upgrade (for some of us), my BF crew got whittled down to myself and my friend Chris, with occasional guest appearances by Eddy and his brother.

While Battlefield is best played with friends, the game still offers up plenty of sublime moments even if you’re playing solo. No Battlefield game is perfect (by any means, all of them have been heavily patched and still launch with some pretty glaring flaws) but DICE is up to the challenge of balancing and fixing their games, sometimes completely changing the way the game feels and plays.

Do you guys have as long and storied a history as I do with Battlefield? Anything to say on its tenth anniversary? What are you hoping for in the future of this franchise? Go!

Borderlands 2 Roll Call!

borderlands 2 impressions

It’s been a little quiet around these parts for the last couple of days, but I bet you all know why: Borderlands 2, Gearbox’s follow-up to 2009’s FPS loot-fest, dropped at 9pm on Monday for me and I’ve been spending my evenings playing it since.

So far I’m having a lot of fun with it, as I really like the new Commando class (although useful assault rifles are still hard to come by for me) and the game is freaking gorgeous on my new PC. There’s a ton of customization options available to PC players, which is nice after the abortive console port of the first Borderlands. I am have screen-tearing issues occasionally, but I think that might have something to do with my settings.

Shooting-wise Borderlands 2 feels much improved over the workman-like mechanics of the first game and so far the promise of even more crazy guns is being fulfilled. My favorite weapons at this juncture are the ones that you throw like a grenade when they’re empty (complete with explosion) only to have a new one materialize in your hands. The writing is also a lot better and it feels like there might be an actual story this time. The game never stops talking to you though, as there’s always one person on your radio, jawing to you about this and that.

Now that I’ve given my thoughts about it, who here is playing Borderlands 2? What do you think of it so far? Which system did you get it for?

The GamerSushi Show, Ep 53: Oppan Sushi Style

gamersushi show ep 53

What ho, faithful Sushians, we’re back with the opener for Season 3 of the podcast! While the break was a little shorter than we anticipated, we still had lots to talk about, ranging from the recent Wii U announcements to Hero Academy, The Walking Dead, CS:GO and Mark of the Ninja. Oh, we also played a little Over/Under.

It’s a longer cast that our last few, clocking in at about an hour and a half, but it was super fun to get back into the groove of recording it. We’re a bit rusty, and Eddy disappears a couple times, but I think it’s a fine return to form. Oh, also, a wild Nick appears right before we launch into our game, so you’ll get to hear his bearded tones once again.

Since it’s been a while, I’ll remind you how this goes: listen, rate the cast, and always remember, OPPAN SUSHI STYLE.

0:00 – 3:19 Intro
3:20 – 20:31 Wii U pricing and launch date
20:31 – 28:56 FF7 Twenty Fifth anniversary
28:57 – 36:42 Hero Academy
36:43 – 43:50 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
43:51 – 54:14 The Walking Dead
54:15 – 1:04:57 Mark of the Ninja
1:04:58 – 1:24:28 GAME TIME Over/Under
1:24:29 – 1:26:17 Outro Style

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Battlefield 3 Armored Kill DLC Impressions

battlefield 3 armored kill impressions

Battlefield 3’s third expansion Armored Kill dropped last Tuesday for Premium members, and because I am part of such a prestigious club, I’ve been playing the maps and have had enough time in them to form a pretty solid opinion.

In a big change from the last DLC, Close Quarters, Armored Kill is good old fashioned Battlefield fun. I’m talking Battlefield 2 type of action here, with huge maps, tons of vehicles, and lots of carnage going on everywhere. The four new maps, Death Valley, Alborz Mountain, Armored Shield and Bandar Desert, feature big swaths of open terrain, with Bandar Desert being the largest Battlefield map in the series history. It doesn’t hurt that these maps are really good looking either, from the rural countryside of Armored Shield to the almost Skryim-esque landscape of Alborz Mountain. DICE also removed the damn blue tint that really downplayed this game’s otherwise great style, so props to them for that.

Armored Kill adds a couple new vehicles to the mix, namely the AC-130 Specter Gunship and the new Tank Destroyers. The Tank Destroyers are great fun as they’re essentially Infanty Fighting Vehicles with a huge cannon strapped on top, meaning they have greater maneuverability than the MBTs and can take out a full-health tank in a couple of shots. Being based on a lightly-armored chassis, they’re fairly vulnerable themselves, but a tank push with a couple Destroyers for backup can devastate an enemy position.

The AC-130 was one of the features that was touted the most leading up to Armored Kill, but it isn’t as big of a deal as you may think. Sure, in Rush mode when the attackers have the gunship and are railing the mostly static positions of the defenders it can be a little infuriating, but in Conquest mode, getting killed by the gunship is more of a momentary annoyance than anything else. The gunship is available to each faction, they just have to hold and control the capture point associated with it (denoted by a little plane icon beside the flag). I’ve only had a couple kills with the gunship, as it’s such a big target for jets and AA emplacements that it doesn’t stay in the air long.

If you were hesitant about the BF3 expansions after Close Quarters, rest easy because Armored Kill is DICE at the top of their game. Ripping around gorgeous maps with explosions going off all around you, shooting down fully-loaded transport helicopters with a Tank Destroyer and parachuting in from the circling AC-130 is all classic Battlefield. While playing the maps one after the other (especially on high ticket-count servers) can be a little draining, once they get inserted into rotation with the vanilla and Back to Karkand maps, they’ll be a great compliment to your BF3 experience.

Has anyone played Armored Kill? What do you think of it?

Halo 4 Promethean Enemies Gallery Unveiled

Halo 4 Promethean Pwned

One of the most exciting things about the Halo series are the varied enemies. Each enemy is unique in appearance and behavior, from the cannon fodder of the Grunts to the charging ferocity of the Brutes. It’s a trademark of the franchise and something other games just can’t quite nail. When 343 Studios took over the reins, some fans were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to live up to the strong legacy set by Bungie.

Well, this gallery of Promethean enemy classes, brought you by All Games Beta, shows those concerns just might be unfounded. The different classes and behaviors, not to mention weapons that are showcased in the gallery, lead me to believe that 343 is on point with Halo 4. The Knight alone sounds scary enough, but the Knight Commander seems like an uber-powerful version that might make me wet my pants the first time we meet. Hopefully, Master Chief can snag some of those bad-ass weapons and do some damage himself.

What say you? Do the Prometheans look like they carry on the Halo tradition or do they look generic to you? Hit the comments!

Source: All Games Beta

The GamerSushi Power Rankings: September 2012

CS GO

It’s been a couple of months since we’ve updated our Power Rankings, and the tumultuous nature of the top 10 list should show that quite a bit of time has passed. This has given some new challengers room to flex their muscles, smashing new resting places for themselves right at the top, casting down all other games in a mighty display of strength. All future games for 2012, take notice. Walking Dead is the way you want to make your entrance. Continue reading The GamerSushi Power Rankings: September 2012

A Hero Awakens in Halo 4’s New Vidoc

Hey, it’s been a while guys, but I’ve been busy with…stuff. Let’s not look to closely at my flimsy excuse, and rather take a gander at the new Halo 4 ViDoc from 343 Industries, which is, in a word, hot. Halo 4 is looking pretty good, and this new trailer does an adequate job of building the hype.

After 343’s attempts at cracking Halo into other mediums, I was a little concerned that they would have the chops to pull off a sequel to Bungie’s blockbuster series, but my fears are being slowly put to rest. I’ll reserve my final judgement for when I actually play the damn thing, but for now consider me on board. What do you guys think of Halo 4? Is this a must have?

CS: GO and Source Filmmaker Make a Beautiful Match

Yikes. Been a bit quiet around here at GamerSushi, what with everyone busily working on their backlogs and preparing for the fall blitz. One bright spot in a not-so-surprisingly dim summer of gaming is the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which just graced monitors and TVs around the world this past week. It’s the first game I’ve played in a month or so regularly, and I find myself itching to jump into it almost every night. It feels like a great mix between Source and 1.6… and just feels like Counter-Strike again, which is hard to quantify, but easy to recognize once you experience it. And this is a good thing.

Even cooler? Valve’s treatment of CS: GO with Source Filmmaker. For any of you Leet World fans, you can imagine that this kind of caused some collective jaw-dropping with that particular gang. Lots of jaw-dropping indeed.

So, who out there has CS: GO? Drop your Steam name in the comments and let’s have some fun.

Trailer Trash: Call of Duty Black Ops 2

Trailer Trash

And we’re back, this time to do some trashing on Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. We talk about Old Snake, Call of Duty canon, Crisis on Infinite Earths and all kinds of other nerdy things. Like we do. Continue reading Trailer Trash: Call of Duty Black Ops 2

TF2’s Mann vs Machine Gets Off to a Rocky Start

mann vs machine

Valve’s crazy new addition to Team Fortress 2, the co-op mode Mann vs. Machine, launched last night, and if you had a similar experience to me, you spent most of the evening waiting in a queue for a community server because you’re too cheap to buy a Tour of Duty ticket.

If this is the first you’re hearing of Mann vs. Machine, here’s a quick rundown: you team up with five friends and fight robots. Even if you haven’t played Team Fortress proper in years, the prospect of co-op in that game is probably enough to entice you to come back (I know it worked for me). The problem last night was that, given that the mode just launched, the demand for community run servers far outpaced the supply.

To play in the official Mann Up mode and get access to the Valve servers, you need to buy a Tour of Duty ticket. When Mann vs. Machine launched last night, there were a whole bunch of Valve servers waiting for paying customers. The co-op is still free-to-play, but it has to be on community run servers, of which there were a ridiculously low number; somewhere in the neighborhood of hundreds as compared to the thousands of official servers. If you’re still confused about how Mann Up works in conjunction with Mann vs. Machine, Icrontic has a great flowchart explaining how the whole thing works.

I would have loved to play MvM last night, but the fact that you can’t even host a private server to get a game going (at least not yet, without console commands) kind of killed my enthusiasm. Well, that and the waiting an hour in queue for a community server without success. Once more unofficial servers start popping online, this hiccup will go away, but unless you’re willing to spend money to play on the Valve servers, expect Mann vs. Machine to be a less than stable experience for the first few days.

Did anyone actually manage to play this last night? If you did, what are you thoughts?

BioShock Infinite, The Last Guardian and the Perils of Sensationalizing

BioShock Infinite multiplayer cut

Yesterday was kind of a strange day for the video game journalism industry at large, as two odd pieces of news hit about a couple of anticipated games: BioShock Infinite and The Last Guardian. One garnered an almost “they sky is falling” type of reaction, and the other was met with a sort of apathy. Let’s look at them, shall we?

First up, BioShock Infinite hit a rough patch yesterday after two key staff members left the project and multiplayer got the axe. Art director Nate Wells and director of product development Tim Gerritsen recently left the project, news which was only compounded by the whole multiplayer fiasco. BioShock Infinite was delayed earlier this year to 2013, and its absence from major trade shows did not go unnoticed.

This was enough cause for alarm that almost every single news outlet declared this the “end times” for Infinite, leaving Ken Levine and Irrational to do a serious amount of damage control. The game is still on track for its February 2013 target and Rod Fergusson, formerly of Gears of War studio Epic Games, was brought on to take Infinite into the home stretch. While this string of events is unfortunate, I doubt tht it’s the major disaster that it was made out to be.

On the other hand we have The Last Guardian, the next game from Team Ico which we haven’t seen in what feels like a couple of years. Sony let the trademark filing for The Last Guardian slip which news sites were quick to brush off as “nothing major”. It’s a sort of odd contrast where one unfortunate event can spur paragraphs the of woe that will betide us, while the trademark expiry of a vaporware game is no big deal. Sony has said that The Last Guardian is still in development, so take from that what you will.

What do you guys think of these two bits of news? Thoughts on BioShock Infinite’s multiplayer trouble? Does the trademark issue for The Last Guardian herald anything? What about the sensationalizing that happened around Infinite while Last Guardian got the brush-off?

Source – Kotaku and Kotaku

After Aperture: Chell’s Life Beyond Portal 2

And here we go, more good stuff out of Source Filmmaker. Created by my bud Zachariah Scott, After Aperture is just what it sounds like, a short piece about Chell after she escapes the infamous lab that specializes in portal science.

The description of the video on YouTube notes a few limitations encountered during its making. For one, Chell’s model doesn’t have a ton of facial animation possibilities, seeing as how the player is never meant to see her directly. So that certainly presents a challenge in terms of shot selection. Despite that, it’s definitely a nice piece, although it is just a bit of a preamble to another project that Zachariah is working on, one that I think will outclass it by far. Enjoy!

Thoughts? Got any other awesome stuff you guys have seen in SFM yet? Go!

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Multiplayer Looks Kind of Fun

If broshooters are your thing, you can’t really get much more bang for you buck than Call of Duty. Even with a new title releasing every year, there’s enough ranking and unlocking packed into the games to keep you busy for a while.

While the Call of Duty series has been waning in the eyes of the gaming public for while (to those of us “in the know”, at any rate), I’ve always appreciated Treyarch’s willingness to stick their necks out and deviate from the formula set up by Infinity Ward. Things like zombies, crazy Cold War conspiracies and now trips to the future are all helping to keep the series somewhat fresh while Modern Warfare approaches stagnation. The new multiplayer trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 shows you how you’ll be fighting in the future of 2025. If you thought that Call of Duty needed more ridiculous kill-streak rewards, then you’re in for a treat.

Walking tanks and helicopter drones and suicidal UAVs, oh my! The only thing missing from this trailer is the crazy customization that Treyarch packed into the original Black Ops, but I’m sure all of that will be revealed in another trailer closer to the release date.

So, what do you think? Does the multiplayer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 do it for you? Is it worth going black to the future?

Trailer Trash: Dishonored

Trailer Trash

So it’s been some time since our last (and only) Trailer Trash. But that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten about the series, or you, our wonderful Sushi readers. If you don’t remember, Trailer Trash is a series where we trash on video game trailers, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style. Or, if you’re not familiar with that, just consider it a bite-sized version of our illustrious gaming podcast, where we say whatever garbage enters our minds and mouths.

Basically, it’s pretty entertaining. But I’m biased. Continue reading Trailer Trash: Dishonored