2012 Gaming Resolutions
Every year millions upon millions of individuals around the world start the new calendar year with new year resolutions. They mostly include get in shape, go to the gym, eat healthier, etc some individuals succeed in keeping this goals but the vast majority of society fail.
I’ve set out some gaming goals for 2012 that I think our realistic and achievable for myself.
The first gaming resolution I have for 2012 is to control my gaming purchases. By this I mean just because 3 or 4 new releases come out on any given Tuesday that I shouldn’t rush out and buy every single one of those games. So let’s buy a game and finish it before moving on to the next one instead of buying a game and playing a bit and putting it on the shelf and moving on to the next game. If I can achieve this I think I can reduce the number of games I have on the go, my gaming back log and most importantly allow me not rush and finish a game just to get to the next one. There are a lot of great games out there let’s enjoy them a bit more.
I’m a huge first shooter, racing and sports gamer. Plain and simple those are my bread and butter. In 2012 I’d like to expand my gaming genres and enjoy other types of games than I normally would. This year I’ve already started playing Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and MMO developed by Bioware. I’m at level 11 as a Sith Warrior and struggling as I go. I’ve also started Skyrim. I”m only level 2 but I vow to invest more time in the coming weeks to this game. Let’s see if I can become a better RPG player in 2012.
Blog more. Very simple I want to review and write about more games here whether there on PC, console or iOS platforms. I also want to produce my own original content at least bi-weekly.
Establish or join a board game group. In 2011 I started to play board games and started to acquire a nice little collection as well. I picked up Carcassonne, Gears of War, Munchkin Quest, Munchkin Zombies, Arkham Horror, Flux and probably my favorite of Pandemic. I really need to get that expansion pack.
So that’s what I want to accomplish this year. How about you ?
read moreDj Hero 2 Review
wiki wiki wiki what! Scratch that, hold up, the batteries in my turn table died. That’s right I’m here to review DJ Hero 2. As you may remember just under a year ago Dj Hero was launched and I reviewed it here and I loved it because of the music. Nothing has changed this time around. The music is kick ass and there is already downloadable content on the market place. There is no secret that the DJ Hero franchise is my music genre game choice.
The track list in DJ Hero 2 is awesome and aims to attract and branch out to reach a different type of audience. Sure, Lady Gaga, Pitbull, Rhianna and Janet Jackson are stars but they’re not my thing. The first game featured a ton of Jay Z and Eminem and they don’t have many tracks in this game, however, my favorite tracks so far have been Eminems “Not Afraid” and Lil Wayne feat. Static Major “Lollipop.”
When I first played Guitar Hero 2 it was all about the music and that’s evident here in Dj Hero 2 as there is no world tour and story modes. Empire mode is where you begin DJ’ing house parties and you can make it all the way to an international sensation. The issue with this approach is that I never felt like I was progressing my career at all. Another problem is that all the characters are pre-defined and sometimes you get replaced a real life DJ. I can use my Avatar in the game but why they did not go the extra mile to incorporate that piece of functionality into the single player is beyond me. Along the way you have to battle fictional dj’s as well as David Guetta and Tiesto, but it never felt like it was a real challenge against these real life stars.
Once you’re done unlocking all 83 songs for quick play mode set up some play lists, rack up the high scores, and challenge your friends to beat it. Alsok from the main menu you can enable party mode which will randomly play songs so you can sit back and enjoy the remixes. The only downside to this mode is all the song selection is randomized.
One of the main complaints of the original DJ hero was that as the DJ you had no control of the mash ups. In each mash up there are freestyle sections where you can control the crossfading, scratching and trigger samples as you like. The best implemenation of this is crossfading where you can choose to play either track A or track B or mash up the two tracks how you like it. This is one of the best parts of the game for me, I wish I had more control of the mash ups. trigger samples are hard to keep in tempo with the song and scratching is fun but doesn’t sound as good as the recorded scratches.
DJ Hero allowed players to sync up a microphone and give shouts over the music, this has been taken a step further in DJ Hero 2 and allows players to sing along to the songs. Since the songs are mashed up this can make singing along to your favorite song very impossible since the lyrics to another song could pop up at any moment. I personally would have been happy with this portion of the game not being included.
The two-player battles have also seen a face lift. Now player 1 will perform a section of a song and then player 2 will have to perform the same section of the song and try to out perform the other DJ. A winner will be decided at each checkpoint and when a player reaches a certain number of checkpoints won there is a winner. This mode can be played locally or on Xbox Live/PSN against other players.
Also, from the main menu you can view your Rep, check how you are progressing on your Achievements/Trophies, compare your your scores on the leaderboards and you read the Hero Feed which provides all sorts of statistics from how many mixes you played to how many hours you’ve played.
Overall this DJ Hero 2 is a good improvement over the original game and it’s kept me entertained for hours and hopefully through DLC it will continue to provide many more hours of entertainment.
read moreForza Motorsport 4
The world’s first look at Forza Motorsport 4. Hopefully we don’t see a rewind feature in this iteration of the game!
Thanks to Game Trailers for the video.
read moreCall of Duty Black Ops Goes 3D
On October 5th Activision Publishing Inc put out a press release stating that Call of Duty Black Ops would be going Stereoscopic 3d. Well this is great news as today October 5th 2010 is the PlayStation Canada Holiday Preview event at the newly renovated Sony Centre in downtown Toronto. Yes that put us among the first to see this newly announced mode for the Call of Duty franchise on the PlayStation 3.
To continue with its annual release, Call of Duty will be coming on November 9th 2010 and is being developed by Treyarch Studios. Black Ops will be available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC and will come with 3D support if you have the required hardware to take advantage of this technology. Don’t worry, if you don’t have a 3D TV simply just hop into the menu and ensure 3D is turned off.
Jay Puryear Senior Manager at Treyarch studios was on hand to provide us with a 20 minute demo featuring 2 levels from the single player campaign called WMD and some time with the Number’s chapter which is yet to be shown publicly.
WMD starts with an interactive cut scene where an SR-71 Blackbird recon airplane takes to the sky and provides its eyes for a squad of troops down below. You direct and navigate them to various checkpoints throughout the level. Upon reaching each checkpoint you switch and take control of the squad of troops and fight off the enemies.
Numbers chapter starts with an interrogation scene where glass windows get smashed and a piece of glass gets put down a throat of the villain as we seek to get information out of him since he’s working for the enemy. Since we didn’t get the information we want we might as well throw a few good punches at his jaw. Before the interrogation is over, the enemy zeros in on your location and storms the building. Our prisoner takes the lead and heads up flights of stairs to the roof top where we proceed to take big leaps and jump across buildings. Once we make it inside we find a nice stash of weapons that our prisoner has stored away for us.
We also had a chance to check out some of the combat training mode which is essentially you and up to 5 of your friends taking on 6 AI bots in a multiplayer game. Don’t worry, the bot’s difficulty setting scales just like the single player campaign; Easy, Normal, Hardened and Veteran. It teaches and allows you get a feel for COD multiplayer without going online and getting your butt kicked by those trash talking 14 year old kids. It looked really good in 3D, however, I’m not sure I want my multiplayer shooters in 3D yet as there is to much going on for me.
Enough talk about Call of Duty Black Ops and on to the 3D talk. Considering that a decision at Treyarch was made no more than 5 months ago to implement 3D to this iteration of COD is astonishing. Back when the discussions first started this idea was looked at as a nice option to have for the game, but as things progressed it became obvious to the team that 3D needed to happen. I’ve seen a lot of 3D movies lately and some of the implementations were awful and felt more like a checklist requirement the movie needed to have. Have no worries here folks, this is the first video game that support’s 3D that has made me go OMG I think I need a 3D television. The first thing I remember seeing when I turned on the 3D glasses was Jay having his character looking down the scopes of his rifle and going shit that looks crazy real. The cross hairs and debris looked they were flying my way.
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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 – Prestige Edition Unboxing
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 – Prestige Edition Unboxing
