We don’t get many thinking man’s games these days. It’s usually shoot first, ask questions never, and maybe occasionally press X to interact while the really cool stuff happens in QTEs or cut scenes. But XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a different kind of animal for a different kind of gamer. Of all things, XCOM is the most taxing on your brain — and sometimes your heart. Continue reading Review: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Welcome back to “What We’re Playing” Monday here on GamerSushi!
I grew up playing the old X-Wing game for the PC and it’s been sad for me to see that genre fall out of favor with gamers at large. True, that game was perhaps a little too complicated, but even simple space combat games have been few and far between the last couple of years.
Born Ready Games, with a Kickstarter backing, has decided to reboot the space combat genre and bring us Strike Suit Zero, a game for the PC that has not only spaceship dog-fighting but also lets you pilot a kick-ass mecha. Yes, you read that right: about an hour and a bit into the game, you get access to a Strike Suit, a prototype fighter that has the secondary function of transforming into a giant robot.
The controls for the game a pretty straightforward: as a fighter you get plasma cannons, a machine gun and a variety of missiles. Using the machine gun to strip the shields of enemy fighters and finishing them off with your plasma cannons keeps your fingers busy and doesn’t make you reliant on one weapon as the plasma guns tend to drain fast, especially when they’re linked. Once you get the Strike Suit, a simple tap of a button (or key, but I really recommend playing with a controller) turns your snubfighter into a death-dealing, missile spewing machine. Continue reading Bringing Back Space Combat with Strike Suit Zero
It’s GamerSushi Asks Friday!
One of the most important aspects of a shooter is the weaponry, but beyond that, having a powerful, satisfying shotgun in your virtual arsenal is key. Sometimes a shotgun can make or break a game, so we’d like to ask you what your favorite video game shotgun is.
Personally, I just can’t think of a better shotgun than the M90 Close Assault Weapon System from Halo: Combat Evolved. The first time you find this beastly firearm, you’ve just encountered the Flood and are hoping for a weapon that will put down the larger combat forms in one hit. The M90 CAWS is the answer to that prayer and for the rest of the game, this scattergun will occupy one of your two precious weapon slots whether you have ammo for it or not.
Runners up would be the Gnasher from Gears of War, which can turn you into a living meatgrinder in multiplayer if you can get the hang of it, or the SPAS-12 from Battlefield 3. I recently discovered that equipping slug rounds on the SPAS-12 turns it into a one-hit kill weapon at medium range, and it requires a bit more skill than the other full-auto weapons availible.
I may be skewing kind of modern here, so I’ll pose the question to you guys one again: what is your favorite video game shotgun?
Dead Space 3 will be hitting our screens very soon, but some news about the game dropped this week that may sour your anticipation. According to Eurogamer, Dead Space 3’s new workbench, where you can custom-make your weaponry, will include a microtransaction store for buying some additional resources.
While players will still be able to scavenge the materials for themselves or use scavenger bots to gather crafting resources in-game, real-world money can always be used to circumvent the collection process. This doesn’t mean that eager players can drop a ton of cash at the beginning of the game and get all the top-tier weaponry; they still have to wait for those guns to be unlocked as part of the narrative progression.
Even though this is the first instance of microtransactions in Dead Space, giving quick boosts for cash is nothing new in EA titles. Mass Effect 3 had this, as did Battlefield 3 and I wouldn’t be surprised if SimCity has something similar. What do you guys think about this? Is this a harmless addition for those of us flush with cash but strapped for time? Is it a foul on EA’s part to try and get their mitts into your wallet after you’ve already bought the game?
Source – Eurogamer
If you’re captured by pirates on a tropical island halfway around the world, what do you do? According to Far Cry 3, you get some sick tribal tattoos and start stabbing. Far Cry 3 doesn’t waste much time before dropping you into an island paradise full of dangerous predators and even more dangerous pirates and mercenaries and allows you to go about your business as you see fit.
Want to be a master of stealth and roll around with a bow and a machete? Go for it. Want to trundle in with a flamethrower and a bunch of rocket-propelled grenades? Perhaps you’d like the local wildlife to do your killing for you. Far Cry 3 has so many ways to interact with the environment and your enemies that it’s almost insane. Oh, did I ever tell you the definition of insanity? Continue reading Review: Far Cry 3
The GamerSushi Show is back for your listening pleasure two weeks in a row! Crazy, right? Unfortunately neither myself or Nick could make the cast this week, but that doesn’t mean that Eddy, Anthony and Jeff didn’t have enough to talk about on their own.
After going over a couple of 2012’s late entries, the guys talk about the upcoming games of 2013 and whether or not we’ll actually see the next gen this year (signs point to yes). There’s much more nerdery in the podcast proper, so what are you waiting for? Listen, rate, comment. You know the drill.
0:00 – 2:06 Intro
2:07 – 10:28 Hotline Miami
10:29 – 16:10 GamerSushi Schedule
16:17 – 21:46 Far Cry 3
21:47 – 27:55 GS Staff Personal Top 10 of 2012
27:56 – 31:50 Ni No Kuni
31:51 – 36:26 2013 and the Next Gen
36:27 – 48:58 The Games of 2013, January to May
48:59 – 52:21 Outro
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Peace of mind is hard to come by in the gaming landscape these days. It’s bad enough we have online trolls spewing all manner of filth at us, but in the age of voice acting, we also have to contend with certain characters that just won’t shut the hell up. It can be enough to drive even a straight-edger to drink and the calmest gamer to fling his controller across the room.
In keeping with our newly implemented schedule and using only the latest in high-tech research equipment, we here at the GamerSushi Labs are trying to determine which character should be fitted with a digital muzzle. Will Slippy’s constant need for help be enough to help him win? What about Kenny, who seems to take great pleasure in being an antagonistic hypocrite? Or Kratos, who only has one volume setting and really needs to take a chill pill. And of course, the ever-present Claptrap and the irksome Tiny Tina are prone to make someone scramble for the mute button. Except Jeff. He loves Tiny Tina.
So vote now and hit the comments to let us know who you think should enjoy a nice cup of Shut The Hell Up!
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There are 34 story missions in Far Cry 3. In my over 10 hours of playtime, I have completed 6. Out of 34. So what have I been doing with the rest of my time?
Whatever I want.
Far Cry 3 has brought out a new side of me, one that has no interest in hurrying through the story, but rather would like to take my time, hunt some animals, do some hang gliding and see the sights. Maybe liberate a few outposts or activate some radio towers, which then unlocks even more of the map, which in turn gives me more things to do. It’s a beautiful cycle. I’m going to get back to the story soon, I promise, but for now, I am loving just doing whatever catches my fancy. Continue reading Far Cry 3: Getting Sidetracked
Happy New Year, Sushians! Your glorious GamerSushi crew is back from our protracted holiday break, bringing you the first podcast of 2013! I know you’re excited.
Something strange happened to our staff over the break as everyone dipped pretty heavily into the PC gaming inkwell, and as such we talk exclusively about everybody’s favorite gaming machine. True, most of the titles we played were multiplatform, but Jeff does gab for a bit about Hotline Miami.
In addition to that we also spend some time talking about the new Steam Box and the Steam Winter Sale, which ruined more than a few wallets. Since it’s been just over a month since our last cast, here’s a quick refresher on how this goes down: listen to the podcast, rate the podcast, and comment on the podcast.
0:00 – 4:32 Intro
4:33 – 9:51 Sleeping Dogs
9:52 – 25:27 XCOM: Enemy Unknown
25:28 – 34:13 Far Cry 3
34:14 – 36:41 Torchlight 2
36:42 – 43:38 Dishonored
43:49 – 54:33 Spec Ops: The Line
54:34 – 1:00:30 Hotline Miami
1:00:31 – 1:07:13 PC Gaming and the Steam Sale
1:07:14 – 1:15:50 Steam Box
1:15:51 – 1:18:14 The Witcher 2
1:18:15 – 1:21:48 Outro
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS
It’s a sad fact that when you have the highs of a year, there will unfortunately be lows. With so many big name titles getting their next iteration last year (and in some cases, wrapping up a planned trilogy) it was inevitable that gamers at large would be let down by some of them. Not saying that these games were bad across the board, but when you wait fifteen plus years for something, well, expectations tend to be a little inflated.
So, here’s a list of games I’ve put together that generated the most stink during 2012. This isn’t me saying that I think these games are awful, but rather these are the games that critics and players won’t stop bashing. Let’s put it to rest once and for all. What was the biggest disappointment in gaming for 2012?
Loading ...Now that we’ve talked about Best Multiplayer/Co-op let’s move on to the next segment of GamerSushi Votes. On the docket today is Best Single-Player, and it’s been a heck of a year for solitary experiences. A couple years back it looked like the single-player experience was on the way out and a good multiplayer portion was the ticket to success, but near the end of this generation we’ve swung back around to games having a really fleshed-out single-player campaign and tacked on multiplayer modes.
It was hard to narrow down the selection of single-player games to vote on, but I think I got a good sample. As usual, if there’s a game you think I missed, feel free to tell us in the comments. Now, vote!
Loading ...Hello, gaming friends, and welcome back to GamerSushi Votes, our now annual tradition of asking you, the community, what you felt were the stand-out titles of the year.
For the first day of voting, I thought we’d tuck into the best multiplayer of the year, which I’ve expanded to include co-op because I’ve spent more time playing with people rather than against them this year. Mass Effect 3 lead this charge, having a surprisingly strong and deep multiplayer mode that has been repeatidly expanded on and I’m still playing to this day. Add that to plethora of other games that encourage working with your friends, and you have a very strong year for co-op.
So, choose a selection from the list below, or let us know what your favorite multiplayer/co-op of 2012 was in the comments!
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While Call of Duty moved into the realm of fictional wars with the first Modern Warfare game, the series has never strayed beyond modern technology; indeed, even jumping into today’s battlegrounds was deemed a huge leap for the series. Now that almost every era of modern war has been mined for inspiration (I’m still waiting for Trench Warfare), Call of Duty’s off-year team Treyarch decided to make a bold move and place their Black Ops follow up in the year 2025.
The whole game doesn’t take place in 2025, however, as there are several levels that occur in the 1980s that set up the origin of Raul Menendez, the antagonist of this particular outing. Switching back and forth between the shiny combat of 2025 and the shady battles of the 1980s, can Black Ops 2’s unique narrative break it out of the Call of Duty rut? Continue reading Review: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
Continuing my trend of reviewing the DLC for Battlefield 3, like Close Quarters and Armored Kill, I’m going to sit down here and rap with you for a bit about Aftermath, DICE’s newest contribution to the steadily growing stable of post-launch content for their combined-arms FPS.
Like the previous two pieces of DLC, Aftermath has a “theme” to go along with it, and in this case it’s picking up from the single-player story by giving us four new maps set in a post-earthquake Iran. This means rubble-strewn pathways, and in the case of Epicenter, aftershocks that will shake your camera around a little bit. It’s not too noticeable that it will affect your aim, but you do have to compensate for it a bit.
The new maps are more in the style of the vanilla BF3 maps, having several choke-points leading to wider areas for you to mess around in. Coming off of the Armored Kill maps, which sometimes felt a little too big, this is a welcome change of pace. The maps are more suited to infantry combat, as tanks are a rare sight even on 64-player Conquest. The new hotness is the customized vehicles, which are basically civilian vans and Humvees with a grenade launcher and a machine gun bolted on. They’re a ton of fun to rip around in, and in a nice change of pace from the armored jeeps of the main game you can actually kill the occupants with a few bullets or a grenade. Continue reading Battlefield 3: Aftermath is the Expansion We’ve Been Waiting For
As excellent as Mass Effect 2’s Lair of the Shadow Broker was, BioWare might have shot themselves in the foot when it comes to post-release DLC. While it would be unrealistic to expect that every piece of Mass Effect DLC would be up to the same standards, it kind of laid the implication that any quests given to the player outside of the main game would advance the story, or at least fill in some background information.
To BioWare’s credit, Mass Effect 3: Leviathan did dredge up a more fleshed-out history of the Reapers, but the newest effort for Mass Effect 3 DLC, Omega, doesn’t add anything new to the story, or change your perception of the established characters you’ll be interacting with.
Shepard is contacted by Aria T’Loak, the Pirate Queen of the space station Omega, to help her take her throne back from Cerberus, who threw her out before the main campaign of Mass Effect 3. Because of Aria’s dislike of your squadmates, you’re going in without any familiar faces from the Normandy. I’ve never bought into the character of Aria as much as BioWare seems to want me to, and being saddled with her for a couple hours just demonstrates how one dimensional she is. While the end of the Omega campaign has her softening a bit, for most of the time she grunts and threatens her way through dialogue sections, being so predictable that a new character, Nyreen the female turian, calls her on it. It doesn’t help that the voice actress behind Aria, Carrie-Anne Moss, sounds like she’s collecting a paycheck for most of her lines, only occasionally dipping into having any emotion besides bored anger. Continue reading Mass Effect 3: Omega is a Non-Essential Side-Story
When Halo: Reach launched, the future of the Halo games became rather uncertain. Sure, we knew that Microsoft had formed 343 Industries to shepherd the series now that Bungie was moving on from the games that made them famous, but there were still doubts as to whether 343i had the chops to take over. Their first video game effort didn’t come until 2011 with the re-release of Halo: Combat Evolved. While it was a nice update to this classic game, it was still just standing on the shoulders of giants.
Leading up to Halo 4 you could kind of sense the uncertainty surrounding it. An unproven studio with Microsoft’s most valuable franchise making a game that promised to uphold everything Halo stood for? 343i was in a tricky position, because if they played it too close to Bungie’s territory they’d be looked down on and if their Halo was wildly different, the backlash would have been immense. They needed to strike a balance between making a Halo game while at the same time moving it in an entirely new direction. Now that the game is finally out, have they become the Reclaimers to Bungie’s Forerunners? Continue reading Review: Halo 4
When a game originally starts its life as part of the True Crime series and gets dropped by its publisher in advance of its release, it doesn’t bode that well. Such was the case for Sleeping Dogs, until Square Enix swopped in and scooped up the rights to bring the game to the public, saving United Front’s Hong Kong-based open world game from development hell.
Starring the enigmatic Wei Shen as an undercover police officer infiltrating a local Triad gang, Sleeping Dogs takes the melee combat style popularized by the Batman: Arkham titles and mixes it with some familiar open-world tropes and in a brazen move, refuses to give the player a gun for the first few hours. Sleeping Dogs takes a lot of risks for what should be a safe bet in the video game world. Does the game succeed or is its cover blown?
One game that always had potential but hit too early was PlanetSide, Sony Online Entertainment’s sci-fi MMO shooter. When it originally came out, the computers of the time were barely able to keep up with the huge environments and massive firefights that the game had to offer.
Now that computing technology has become a lot better, Sony Online Entertainment is taking another crack with PlanetSide 2, this time making the MMOFPS free-to-play. Having the ability to fight as one of three factions over three giant continents with and abundance of vehicles and player classes may seem like a crazy amount of content to give away for free, but the game pulls it off without finding a way to beat you over the head with microtransactions.
Don’t get me wrong, those exist, but they’re mostly cosmetic. Upgrades to your character and your weapons are bought with Certification points which are earned by killing enemies and taking capture points. While the base level attachments are fairly cheap, higher-level purchases can run upwards of a hundred points which take a while to earn. Fortunately, basic modifications like small increases to your base health are not that cost prohibitive.
Each of PlanetSide 2’s three factions have their own theme and style to go with it, like the Vanu Sovereignty which is all purple body suits and lasers or the New Conglomerate which look and fight a lot like the Browncoats from Firefly. Straddling the line between them is the Terran Republic, so no matter you fighting style (or taste for clothing) you can find a faction that suits you.
The battles in PlanetSide 2 can range from small skirmishes to all out war between the three factions with dozens of players on each side. Tanks and air support mix it up with infantry and all the classes have their role to play.
The only downside of the game right now is the lag and the fact that the UI is extremely cluttered, which might be intimidating for some new players. Figuring out how to take down bases is also a little tricky, but watching the tutotrial videos will help clear that up.
I’m really enjoying my time with PlanetSide 2, and I recommend that you check it out. It’s free, so the only thing you’re wasting is hard drive space. Has anyone else played PlanetSide 2? What do you think of it?
One game I’ve had my eye on for quite some time has been Far Cry 3, Ubisoft’s latest entry in the series first headed up by Crysis makers Crytek (see a pattern here?). While Fry Cry originally featured a mercenary gaining animalistic powers, Ubisoft’s take on the franchise has been more realistic, almost to the detriment of the game in some cases.
Far Cry 2 was kind of a cult hit: you either loved it or hated it and wanted it to die in a fire. Between an archaic fast-travel system and constantly regenerating enemy outposts, Far Cry 2 was a frustrating experience that still offered a beautiful Savannah setting for you to play around in, or set on fire if you wanted, you just had to work around the game’s myriad roadblocks to do it. With Far Cry 3 coming in just over a week, reviews have been landing ahead of the game and my hype meter is being slowly stoked by reading them. True, Assassin’s Creed 3 received similar glowing reviews in advance of release, so I am being a bit hesitant, but the prospect of hunting animals to turn them into pouches to hold all your loot sounds really appealing to me. Here’s what critics have been saying about Far Cry 3:
Even if I’m trying not to get overexcited, the fact that the reviews are this good and they’re coming out so far in advance means that Ubisoft was feeling pretty good about Far Cry 3. Turns out they were right, and I’m eager to get my hands on it.
Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until Christmas, but I’ll be playing the PC version like a madman over the break. Is Far Cry 3 on anyone else’s radar? Have the reviews drawn you in?
As much as I love gaming, it’s never been able to elicit a reaction from me other than “I am having fun”. True, most games aren’t designed to be tear-jerkers, but 2012 seems to have bucked this trend and has had a collection of titles that has made me feel something other than elation for my polygonal avatar.
2012 started off strong with Journey, Thatgamecompany’s moving study of companionship and triumph. The end of that game is really well crafted and pulls you and your unknown companion together to overcome the nigh-insurmountable odds you’re facing. I never really thought that co-op, especially co-op with someone I didn’t know, would get to me, but Journey proved me wrong.
That’s not to say that Journey is alone in this, however. Spec Ops: The Line, The Walking Dead and Halo 4 have all given me some pretty hardcore feels. With Spec Ops and The Walking Dead I kind of expected it, seeing as how that was what the talk around those two games was centered on, but actually caring about Chief and Cortana’s story in Halo 4 really surprised me.
Cortana has always been, ironically, the human element of the Halo games, but seeing Master Chief’s resolve falter for just a moment made me remember that, underneath the armor and the genetic conditioning and the implied mental defects, there a real person there. 343 did an excellent job turning the Chief into a sympathetic character, something that the Bungie Halos never really touched on.
Overall I was quite surprised with the narative turnout in 2012. I don’t have high hopes for games, but these four titles really surprised me with their emotional depth. Do you agree that 2012 is a banner year for this? What other games have gotten to you in this way?
