Posts Tagged ‘xbox’

Modern Warfare

Modern Warfare, while maybe not as modern as it’s more recent sibling, Modern Warfare 2, is still a great game.  The single-player campaign is quite challenging (some say too short, but they’re either really good at it or haven’t played it on Veteren…), and the multiplayer offers players the opportunity to customize their character to their play style and gives you hours days of gameplay (albeit with 12 year olds).

Single Player :

The single player campaign is fun, involving and challenging (at least on Hardened and Veteran.  I have yet to try the easy setting, I wonder if it “plays itself” like Halo 3 does.. they’re almost right!  We got through the first several missions just meleeing guys to death, it’s great!).  Several missions left me uttering streams of obscenities for what seemed like hours (I think it actually WAS hours) at how hard they were (seriously, the dogs are a pain in the ass, trust me.. they’re so tricky you get 20 Acheivement Points if you manage to melee one to death).  Even then I only escaped some by the skin of my teeth.  If you get shot more than once, or sometimes less than once, means instant death.  Crouching and going prone can help… or make you even more of a target.  Jumping behind cover helps unless the bullets go through your cover.  They’re great at going through buses, trees, walls, wooden fences, the guy in front of you, windows, cinder blocks.. basically everything.  This does make for some great kills through walls as you fire randomly while running away crying like a little girl.

The plot follows two characters, “Soap” MacTavish (even your buddies think that nickname is odd) with the British SAS, or Paul Jackson with USMC.  Most of the missions take place in the present, although there are a few flashback missions (including the fun, but hellishly difficult, “Ghillies in the Mist”).  Each mission provides you with several objective that you must complete.  Fortunately the HUD has a compass which points you towards the next objective, and your squad-mates will move towards it with you.  In addition to the main objectives of each mission, you can also find up to 30 pieces of “Enemy Intelligence” or some such scattered throughout the levels.  (They all look like the same laptop, which leaves me wondering how it’s “Intelligence”.)  The only things I find objectionable to the single-player campaign more are the lack of a co-op mode and the fact that your NPC squad-mates cannot die.  You can shoot in them in the face and nothing happens (although repeatedly attacking them will cause you to fail the mission “Friendly Fire is not tolerated”.).

The overall gameplay is good, somewhere between a movie and a videogame.  All of the missions serve to build the plot line, with several cinematic cut scenes to give you more background on the plot.  It is easy to get absorbed in the plot, which, when combined with the gameplay, makes this really hard to put down.

Multiplayer :

The Multiplayer is fun!  It usually doesn’t take more than a bullet or two to kill you (much like the single player).  The most frustrating thing about it is when you think the person you’re shooting at / throwing grenades at / stabbing doesn’t die and then kills you.  Fortunately this works both ways, and sometimes you go all Matrix on someone for no apparent reason.

The Multiplayer maps are very well designed, there are no perfect sniper nests, almost every room has two or more entrances, making them almost impossible to defend by yourself (if you’re a high enough level you can place claymores, but that won’t stop everyone..).  Also, you can get shot through the floor/wall/ceilings, so nowhere is really safe.  That said, snipers can find loads of places to hide out and pick off their hapless victims.

Each class (Assault, Special Ops, Heavy Weapons, Demolition, Sniper) has an array of weapons it can choose from.  They are all variations on a theme, but each one has slightly different attributes.  Some shoot faster, or further, or have more ammo than others.  This gives the player a lot of customization options depending on playing style.  In addition to various weapons players have a selection of “Perks”, that give them additional grenades, make reloading quicker, or increase their accuracy.  The catch here is they are split into three categories and you can only have one of each (you can’t, for instance, sprint super far AND hold your breath longer for some reason..)

Unfortunately you have to unlock all of the above, with the exception of the basic starting weapons.  Players need to level up by completing objectives (get 15 kills which crouching, blow up 10 cars, with 5 matches etc), or get kills.  It does add a nice reward to all of your hard “work”.

Teamwork is pretty much required to be successful in Multiplayer.  Snipers are semi-useless at close range, while special ops (using sub-machine guns) are equally useless at range.  Given the atmosphere on X-Box Live this can make matches very, very frustrating.  (All of your 12 year old teammates get stuck in a “your mamma” loop while you’re vainly trying to do something).  Fortunately the game mixes up the teams every match so you’re in groups with different people each time.

Overall this is a great game.  While maybe not as… modern… as it’s older cousin, Modern Warfare 2, it is still quite entertaining and provides hours, if not days, of distraction.

If you’re looking for more info on Call of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare, check out :

Wikipedia’s Entry

Infinity Ward, the creators of the Call of Duty games.

Callofduty.com, the home of Call of Duty

Gamespot’s review of Modern Warfare

IGN’s review of Modern Warfare

Xbox Adventures

The Xbox 360 is to gamers what the Ferrari is to car enthusiasts.  The graphics are amazing, and the feature it offers are really cool (watching movies through it, Netflix, linking your computer to it).  Not to mention it has some really, really good titles (Halo, Gears of War etc).  The only downside compared to a PS3 is that there is no Blu-Ray player, and to be honest, I don’t really care about Blu-Ray right now… especially since the TV we have is 20 years old.  But moving on.

Having finally decided to get an Xbox 360 we ventured out to purchase one.  Figuring that it would cost the same everywhere (MSRP for the Elite is 299.99, for the Arcade it’s 199.99) we went to Fred Meyers to purchase one.  First, a little about the differences between the two.  The Elite comes in Black (it looks cool!) and has a 120gb internal hard drive.  This allows you to download content from online, save more games etc.  It is also backwards compatible with more games than the Arcade.  The Arcade, through cheap, only comes with 256mb of internal memory, which doesn’t allow you to do too much as far as downloads go, plus, it’s white… not nearly as badass as black.

Fred Meyers, or Freddies, being the closest store, we drove down and spoke to a clerk about getting one.  We asked a few questions about the differences between the Arcade and the Elite, including whether or not the heat sink (keeps the machine cool so it doesn’t overheat) is bigger on the Elite.  This led to the Associate hunting down someone else, who had some.. interesting.. ideas on how to cool a 360.  First he recommended that we mount it vertical and put a cheap desk fan blowing up through it.  That, being the cheapest way, seemed simple enough.  Then he told us about some guy who used liquid Nitrogen to cool his xbox, which seems very expensive.  Then we went to liquid hydrogen, followed by dry ice.  All of that to answer the question “Does the elite have a bigger heat sink?”.

So we purchased a 360, along with a second black controller and a new copy of Unreal Tournament.  Then we went home and had a grand olde tyme opening it up and turning it on.  I gotta say, it was qutie exciting opening the box and plugging it in.  Setup was a snap, very reminiscant of setting up a Wii (the other 7th gen console I’ve played).  Then we popped in Unreal and blew each other up for several hours, but only after about an hour trying to figure out how to play.  Not a bad game, we’ll have a review for you all on that one later.

The next day we ventured out (after another 6 or so hours of gaming) to find use a gift card to get more games.  This is where things get… odd.  The Associate at Fred Meyers assured us that we wouldn’t find a better deal on a 360 in town (I asked specifically if he could throw anything in or if they had any specials, they had none).  Then we got to GameStop and we saw this.

They were having a special, running from January 16th through the 21st.  They give you a $50 gift card for every 360 Elite you buy.  Now that sounds like a MUCH better deal than what Freddie’s had.  I took several photo’s of the fliers (they had no paper copies), and got a business card from the employee there.  Aside from research we also picked up a copy of Gears of War for 9.99 and Ghost Recon : Advanced Warfighter 2 (we had played the original Ghost Recons and loved them) for 4.99.

Freddies has a policy that if you would like to return an item, you may do so for any reason within 30 days.  They also do price matching.  So we went home, unplugged our new Xbox, got the receipt and went back to Freddies.  I told the guy at customer service what happened (we found a better deal, and had pictures and a phone number about it) and asked if they could match it.  He called his boss, who said that unless we had a paper copy of the ad, they wouldn’t match the deal.

Now lets do a bit of math.  We had purchase $349.99 worth of gear at Freddies (an Xbox + controller).  We were going to return it all unless they matched the deal Gamestop had (a $50 gift card).  So all-in-all they’d be out $50.  Instead they lost our business, we returned the Xbox and the controller (they’re out $349.99), and they now cannot sell that Xbox since it is “used” (it will get returned to Microsoft, refurbished and sent to be sold as “Used”).  Instead of keeping two happy customers, Freddies decided to inconvience (having to drive everywhere and lose all our saved game data) AND lost $350 in sales.  Very weird.

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We went back to Gamestop and bought an Xbox there (we’re out $299.99 again).  Then we bought a used controller, and 2 additional games (Halo 3, and Gears of War 2 : Collectors Edition).  The sales clerk also hooked us up with The Edge, which gets us 10% off used stuff and 10% more when we trade it (cost us 14.95, but saved us 8 bucks and got us a subscription to a sub-par magazine).  Our total, including all that was only $333.  Notice how that’s $16 LESS than Freddies price.  I know that I’ve ranted about Game Stop and it’s buy back practices (Halo : ODST new is 59.99, used it’s 54.99… wow, GREAT deal).

After we scurried home we hooked up our new, new Xbox, and played Halo 3 until we went blind.  Well, not that bad, but we stayed up until we beat it on “normal” (which is actually quite easy..)  And so concludes the Xbox adventure.  Let this serve as a cautionary tale to all, always check around for good deals… otherwise you might lose your save files and waste time trying to convince an associate to match a competitors deal (not to mention listen to theories on how to cool something down…).