Team Fortress 2

I have recently been getting into more PC games, partially so I could play with friends and partially because every game developer decided to release their games all at the same time at the end of the year. Anyway, I upgraded my piece of crap computer to a better one, not exceptionally good but pretty good to do what I need it to do, I’m not a PC gamer so I’m not going to shed out ridiculous amounts of money on a computer.

My friend told me that I must get Team Fortress 2 because it’s ‘amazing’. I remember seeing this title in a store a long time ago, probably when it just came out and I thought it looked pretty damn awesome but I never played it until a few weeks ago, and I have to say this is  one of the best multiplayer experiences I have ever had. Team Fortress 2 is so much fun despite the high learning curve of each class.

I love the way this game looks. I have never seen a game that looks cartoony and fun yet so amazing and hard. Most of the classes actually take skill to master unlike in COD when anyone can have at least a small amount of success. If you’re one of those douche bags who run around with Ghost, Second Chance and a noob tube then this game might not be for you.

Each class is made up of a primary weapon, a secondary weapon and a melee weapon, some classes have more things, the Engineer has another two spots to create and demolish buildings and the Spy has an extra slot for disguises. Each class is different in it’s own way, they all wield their own weapons. The Soldier has a rocket launcher, shotgun and a shovel, the Scout has a Scattergun (shotgun), a pistol and a baseball bat, the Pyro has a flamethrower, a shotgun and a fire axe, the Demoman has a grenade launcher, don’t worry, it’s not like the noob tubes in Call of Duty, the grenades don’t explode on impact unless they hit someone, a sticky bomb launcher which can be detonated at anytime and a whiskey bottle, the Heavy has a mini gun, a shotgun and his fists, the Engineer has a shotgun, a pistol, a wrench, a PDA to create buildings and another to demolish. The Medic has a syringe gun, a medigun which heals people and a saw. The Sniper has a sniper rifle, a sub machine gun and a sword. Finally, the Spy has a revolver, a sapper which destroys buildings, a knife to backstab and finally a book of disguises.

These are all the vanilla loadouts of the classes, these slots can be change to different weapons, e.g. the Scout can change his secondary to a jar of milk or different energy drinks, the Demoman can have a range of different swords. There are a lot of items that I’m not going to go into because it would take forever.

Even though there is a learning curve on this game, there is a class for everyone. My favourites are the Scout and the Soldier. The Scout is definitely one of the hardest to master along with the Spy. The easiest is the Pyro, you’ll often hear people say W+M1, the mantra of the Pyro. If you play this game you’ll understand.

One thing I love about this game is that it is so balanced, there is nothing in this game that I’ve really gotten worked up about or that’s made me rage quit, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever raged quitted from this game. I have shouted at my monitor because of Spies killing me a lot but then I stop and realise that the Spy class is really hard and either they are too good or I’m not playing right. Obviously Jesus made a really good comment on this game, ‘The moment you start making your vanilla weapons looks bad is the moment you have an unbalanced game.’ This is so true and Team Fortress 2 doesn’t fall into the unbalanced category. I still use the vanilla Scattergun for the Scout, I used the vanilla rocket launcher for the Solider for a long time, I use the vanilla syringe and medigun for the medic.

This game was recently made F2P, you may be called a F2P noob when you start, somehow I didn’t. A lot of people complained that they bought the game the day before it went F2P but to be honest, it’s worth the $10 or £10 or €10. There are a bunch of benefits to upgrading to a premium account, you can trade with other players, get more inventory space, that was the big one for me. I went into the store and found a cheap item that I wanted and bought it, it cost me 74 cents to upgrade my account. I have hardly covered anything in this article, maybe I’ll do another one on each class, discussing strategies and ways to play each class. There’s no reason not to try out this game, it’s free!

Competitive Gamebattles

I’m a huge fan of Machinima and Machinima Respawn and they do a great job of posting content of video games that people want on YouTube. Recently Respawn have been posting gamebattle matches with some of my favourite commentators playing. I’ve always loved the idea of playing competitively in a team and watching those videos coupled with watching the Call of Community a couple of days ago has really got me wanting to play some competitive Call of Duty.

Not too long ago was I hating the idea of putting Black Ops in my disc tray and even buying MW3 but lately I find myself really enjoying Black Ops once again. Maybe just playing some scrims or just playing some games for fun would satisfy me. Just playing against actual organised human beings would be good enough. Even though I would love to start up a team with my friends most of my friends aren’t beasts are Call of Duty, one is beast, two are good objective players and I would consider myself to be all right, maybe not a beast, an inconsistent beast would be the best way to describe me. I guess I could start up a team but we would get raped!

If you’re on Xbox and you want to play, not even gamebattles then add me and message me, Gamertag in ‘About’.

Battlefield over Call of Duty

I haven’t posted anything in a while so I thought I’d talk about something that is kind of important in games right now and will be later on this year. Lately I’ve been a lot more interested in Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I bought the game when it first came out and I immediately fell in love, I played a lot of COD near the end of MW2 and pretty much played COD over Battlefield most of the time, only going back for a game or two. Now I’m back in and really excited for Battlefield 3 and not so excited for MW3.

For me it’s the gameplay, I do enjoy arena games like Halo and COD but I love the open battlefields and realistic gameplay that is showcased in Battlefield. I understand that games like COD may take more gun skill to drop opponents and complete objectives but in Battlefield you have to work together, I mean it’s like real war! You have to revive to keep ticket numbers up, give ammo, spot people etc. There are a lot of games that I want for example, L.A. Noire, Portal 2 and games that haven’t come out yet like Skyrim but I haven’t been feeling the same way about MW3. The engine has hardly been upgraded since COD4 and I’m not a graphics whore! But seriously, the Frostbite engine has was upgraded from Bad Company 1 to Bad Company 2 and now they are upgrading it again! That shows that DICE aren’t looking for a game to crap out every year whether it’s ready or not, they want to take their sweet time making a quality game. Who knows, with Sledgehammer helping Infinity Ward on the campaign and Raven Software takes care of the multiplayer, we could see a great experience in online gaming, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

I know it sounds like I’m crapping on the Call of Duty franchise which I am and not very subtly but I do love Call of Duty no matter how much it angers me sometimes. In fact I am getting into it a little more thanks to Machinima Respawn posting competitive gamebattle matches and the Call of Community which just passed really got my hyped up to play Call of Duty.

I’m not sure if I’ll get MW3 but I’m not going to say no straight away. I know if something sells why stop selling it but I hope Activision one day see that enough is enough and do something about the franchise.

MW3 Wishlist

My first Call of Duty game was World at War so I started when COD still ran with basic 3, 5 and 7 killstreaks. When MW2 if you sucked nut sack you were left watching kill cams over and over and over again. I wasn’t that great on World at War, I had mixed results in MW2 and I only started to get mostly consistent scores in Black Ops. MW2 was the beginning of the killstreaks, Infinity Ward finally released the potential of the real gamers in the community by allowing them to get killstreaks up to 25 kills. I was very inconsistent in MW2 so I pretty much ran the whole time with 3, 5 and 7. When Black Ops came out the made it so you couldn’t unlock killstreaks with other killstreaks e.g. you couldn’t use your Predator Missile to get a double and unlock your Harrier Strike. Personally I really like the new system, you can only unlock killstreaks with your gun, grenades, melee and equipment. It’s a lot more fair and it doesn’t create ridiculous amounts of death and destruction.

Black Ops might be the most balanced Call of Duty so far but it does have its slight problems. The randomised scoped shots with a sniper is extremely annoying and I don’t even quick scope. If you don’t know what that is, Treyarch made it so for a small amount of time when you first scope in your shot could go anywhere in the hip fire sights to bypass quick scoping. In my opinion they’ve made it more unrealistic. One thing that everyone hates, except for the douches who do this is, stacking up RC-XDs then spamming them, one after the other. I recently had a match where I got killed by the same guy with both his RC-XDs in a row. You’re pretty much guaranteed to get a kill with an RC-XD, maybe 80-90% of the time. Everyone has the period where you use RC-XDs and I pretty much got a kill with nearly every RC-XD  I had. Obviously I came to my senses and put 8, 9 and 11 on. I hate RC-XDs and I know people are going to use them, especially low level players but it really annoys me when a prestige 15 player stacks up remote controlled cars filled with explosives and obliterates me on an 8 killstreak. With Hardline all a noob needs to do is get 2 kills! 2 kills! And for bad player who most likely isn’t getting high killstreaks and dying a lot is going to stack up loads of them and just mess the other team up!

Treyarch have done a pretty good job at making the game balanced and fair but if you can spam something so much it makes the player consider stopping playing the game then there is a serious problem. Make RC-XDs like a 5 killstreak or something! At least the stacking will stop a little bit. All I wish for in MW3 is that they keep the balanced game and increase the amount of killstreaks, if I’m having a good day I’ll get blackbird, chopper and dogs in most of my matches. I don’t usually go higher than a 15 killstreak but it would be nice to have the option. I hope Infinity Ward don’t go over the top with the killstreaks like in MW2, not only do they need to keep gun damage balanced but they need to keep the killstreaks balanced, in MW2 you could have Harriers and Pave Low absolutely raping everyone on the server. Another huge thing I would like to see is killstreaks only by weapons etc. If not it’s going to be death and destruction and that can be fun but not when it goes over the top. Keeping the COD currency would be nice, that was widely accepted in Black Ops and I would be pretty pissed off if it were to disappear. More guns would always be nice, especially submachine guns. Maybe it’s just me but most of the subs in Black Ops aren’t that great, the best are probably, AK47u, Mac 11, MPL, PM63 and the Kiparis, there are other good ones but those ones are the ones that are the most consistent for me.

Battlefield 3 will most likely blow MW3 out of the water because all CODs are the same even if MW3 learns from past mistakes. As long as they keep it balanced and fair and try not to underestimate killstreaks to avoid stacking and spamming then it’ll be a better version of the same game they’ve been making for the past 10 years or so.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

A lot of gamers whether hardcore or just recreational gamers will say that COD 4 is one game that you must play. I first played the COD 4 campaign a couple of weeks ago and it turned out to be my second favourite COD campaign, Black Ops being my favourite. It just felt so much more realistic.

Obviously I was a little confused at some parts of MW2 because I had never played the first Modern Warfare but this one filled in all the pieces. I managed to knock out the whole campaign in one sitting in an afternoon, determined to get it finished. Whilst playing I encountered the best Call of Duty mission I have ever played, sniping with Captain MacMillan. MW2 was epic, I loved the airport massacre mission just as much as the next guy and I love Ghost and the rest of the characters but the overall atmosphere of COD 4 captured me.

As soon as I completed the campaign I hopped over to multiplayer and had pretty good results. My friend previously mentioned that the snipers were immense, just like the rest of the community. I’m not a Call of Duty sniper, I can only snipe on Battlefield, so having good scores with a sniper in Call of Duty was a big deal for me. My best scores were with the MP5 and the M4 Carbine.

At first I was surprised that I hadn’t come across any hacking, turns out I just had to play the game a little more. Pretty much as soon as I came across the first floating enemy I took the game out of the disc tray, not only floating enemies but people advertising their COD hacking websites at the side of the screen.

Finally I can see why most fans still think COD 4 is still one of the best Call of Duty games

Crysis 2 Tips

• Crysis 2 isn’t like other FPS games. It’s not like COD where you just run around shooting people, I’m not saying that you don’t need a strategy to do well in Call of Duty but all it is, is you and your gun and nothing else. In Crysis 2 you are equipped with a nanosuit which possesses nanosuit abilities. This leads on to my first tip, use all of your nanosuit abilities. You can use one more than the other but it is important that you use all of them. If you don’t use all of them you are going to get beaten time and time again.
• A lot of people might not think this but I do, this is a very important tip, do not get distracted by the awesome water animation. On Skyline, I once sat in a corner to recharge and I got distracted by the water dripping off my visor and I was stealth killed. It might not seem like a big deal but you could be about to collect your 7th dog tag.
• Understand the maps. This one can apply to all first person shooters but in Crysis 2 it is especially important. If you are low on energy you’re going to need some where safe to recharge, you don’t want to be caught with your pants down in the open.
• Never shoot whilst cloaked. A lot of people didn’t know this one at first but if you shoot whilst cloaked it will drain all your energy, this goes for grenades and melee too. Handguns are the only weapon that doesn’t completely drain your energy. An easy way to switch out of cloak rapidly is to switch to armour, you’ll probably be getting into a gun fight anyway and it protects you from other enemies around you.
• This one applies to other first person shooters but again, I think this one applies more to Crysis 2 because of the nanosuit. Choose your modules wisely, they can help greatly with your nanosuit.
• A lot of people don’t like the idea of cloaking too much in Crysis 2. Some people say it’s like camping or it’s noobish or some people just aren’t used to it but it’s not. The game has given it to you, use it. If your opponent isn’t using it you’re already one step closer to killing him and not getting killed by his team mate.
• Watch Crysis 2 videos. Before I got Crysis 2 I drooled over it watching commentaries and tips videos. It will improve your game even if you don’t realise it.
• Finally, play the game. With experience you’ll know what the best attachments are, what the best modules are etc. Over time you’ll also know what cloaked enemies look like and understand the maps more.

Crysis 2

Finally I have my hands on this game! I instantly fell in love with this game. It was a something different! After years of playing COD and after a few weeks playing around with Halo: Reach I needed something different and Crysis 2 is a breath of fresh air.

The campaign is great. The story line is complimented with amazing graphics. Light pours over scenery like water over rocks in a waterfall. The music is amazing, getting Hans Zimmer in on the job was a good choice. The campaign plays a little like a Call of Duty campaign but more complex because of the nanosuit capabilities. Campaigns and singleplayer modes in video games are becoming less and less important as players are more interested in multiplayer and pwning noobs but the singleplayer is a must in this game, even if you don’t care about the plot you must play it just to see how amazing the world looks. In some parts of the singleplayer it can be a little ‘stop and go’. A lot of the times you are required to sneak around cloaked and with the restrictions of the nanosuit it requires you to stop for a second to recharge. I don’t think this is a bad thing because it adds to the suspense in some parts of the game, will you be caught or can you make it to the elevator?

The singleplayer may look amazing but I think people are more interested in the multiplayer. It’s nothing like anyone has seen before and I  must say, I’m hooked. The multiplayer is so good, for me, it may have surpassed the best multiplayer I’ve ever played. Sure you can count on Call of Duty to make a decent, reliable multiplayer that will last but what have they done different since they started making Call of Duty games, they haven’t taken a risk. Halo can make a decent multiplayer too, with loads of different game types but none have created a game like this. It’s a challenge to get good scores in this game, it’s not one of those games where you party up with ten people and chat and play, you have to be concentrated or you will fail. It’s not like Homefront which is a noob friendly game. The multiplayer has introduced some great things that could be used in others, dog tags. The dog tags are a great way to eradicate camping. You must walk over their dead body and pick up their dog tag (callsign in Call of Duty) to start your killstreak or dog tag streak. I call it that but I don’t think it’s the official term.

You won’t see ridiculous K/D in this game. The tops of the leader board are scores usually something like, 20 – 4. A lot of people say that beginners will have trouble starting out but I’ve got to say, I’ve had a lot of early success with this game. I don’t think it’s because I’m amazing at games but because over the past couple of months when I was drooling over this game, I watched countless videos on YouTube about Crysis 2. Tips, how to’s, commentaries etc. When I was watching those videos it was clear that the key to success in this game is how you use your nanosuit. A lot of people say, “I rush a lot in Call of Duty so I use armour the most,” this person will not be very successful in this game because he isn’t using his nanosuit to it’s full potential. To be good at this game you must use all aspects of your nanosuit well. I’ll be posting a tips article on Crysis 2 multiplayer.

Team based or lone wolf?

I enjoy a good game of Call of Duty but I also enjoy a game of Battlefield or Halo. I enjoy these games for different reasons and everyone will have a different opinion. Call of Duty, even if you’re playing a team game, is a lone wolf game. Even in Team Deathmatch or Team Slayer, everyone is competing for the kills. The fact that there’s a kill limit really increases the competition. In Battlefield the games aren’t necessarily based on kills as it is a class based game. The multiplayer is split up into different classes that are meant to perform different tasks to benefit the team. By introducing tasks that don’t involve killing, the game turns into something a bit more sophisticated. By not even showing the amount of kills, assists, deaths and kill death ratio, it changes how the game is looked upon even more.

Halo may have games like Team Slayer and Lone Wolf game modes but there are more team based games that are actually team based. Doubles requires a lot of team work to effectively eliminate the other two enemies. In Halo: Reach, with the introduction to jet packs, sprint, evade, active camo and armour lock it creates even more team work, different people who are good at different things need to choose the best load out to achieve their goal. A sniper might choose a jet pack to get to high places or active camo. A player who likes to rush might choose sprint or evade or even armour lock. Halo and Battlefield and other games like Homefront (a game that I have no intention of playing) all have vehicles, something that Call of Duty STILL lacks in it’s gameplay. The use of vehicles creates a sense of team play, especially in Battlefield, one player in charge of something, the other in charge of another thing. Personally the best game that has mastered both of these things is Halo, it has the team work part in some game types and has other game types that suit solitary players but in the end I would take a game that takes team work and communication, like Battlefield, over Call of Duty. It forces you to communicate with other players and actually use a strategy and use your skills to complete the objective. I would love it if games started to meander to the team work side of gameplay but there will always be games like Call of Duty that live on, I can only dream that a team based game will be the next COD killer.

What does Kill/Death Ratio mean to you?

I’m going to start this off being nice and frank, K/D means something to me. It shows how well you play, it shows how well your strategy is working, it shows how many points you are giving away and it shows how careless you’re being. All these things are important in Team Deathmatch and Deathmatch or Free For All, whatever you want to call it. Currently my K/D on Call of Duty: Black Ops is 1.50. I know a lot of people argue that it takes the fun out of the game, it makes the game too serious and too competitive. For me it doesn’t, I pretty much only play Call of Duty with friends because I’m not trying to capture gameplay, I’m just trying to have fun and getting impressive K/Ds is fun for me. I’m not saying I’m SeaNanners and get ridiculous K/Ds nearly all the time but I wouldn’t say I’m a stranger to them.

In my opinion an impressive K/D is a ratio over 10. That would be impressive to me, a high K/D to me would be a 5 or over, I’m not saying I get these all the time but if I get over 1 I’m happy. I usually go above 1, if I come top of the leaderboard but I have a K/D below 1 I wouldn’t be content, no matter how many kills I got. For me K/D is important to me, it’s just as important as anything else on the leaderboard. By the way, my highest K/D is 32.00, 32 kills and 0 deaths. That was on Nuketown, I was shaking.

My Gamertag was different back then, I was so excited when I got Microsoft points.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

I bought this game when it came out and I loved it. Me and my friends would role in a squad raping everyone. We had plans for world domination, we would all have our class that we played as, it was very organised and it worked well. The game is extremely different from COD and if you like first person shooters and you’re getting bored of COD this is a great change. Eventually my friend persuaded me to come back to Modern Warefare 2 because he didn’t like it.

Admittedly, the single player isn’t as good. The storyline lacks the imagination of the Call of Duty series but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. The game itself looks amazing, the landscapes are beautiful. The single player might not be as good as other FPS games but there are definitely parts of the game that you won’t find in any other FPS. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 makes up for the single player with it’s multiplayer. The multiplayer is by far the best online experience I have ever encountered. Sure in Call of Duty there are loads of options and game types but you won’t find the maps, and the cooperation of the players in this game. The game doesn’t focus on kills and deaths, more so on points gathered. I enjoy games like this because you don’t get so frustrated when you die or become a different player when you’re on a massive killstreak. Instead of building up kills you are encouraged to gain points by either repairing vehicles, destroying vehicles, planting bombs, defusing bombs, healing, reviving, giving people ammo etc.

This brings me on to the classes. The multiplayer is divided into four different classes, Assault, Engineer, Medic and Recon. As an Assault your goal is to rush into the battlefield and kill. Killing isn’t everything, dropping ammo packs will also give you points, when another player is low on ammo they can resupply by walking over it. As you may have guessed, you can only use assault rifles as an Assault. As an Enginerr your job is to drive the vehicles. The vehicles being, tanks, quad bikes and helicopters. As a Engineer you can have a gadget, a drill that allows you to repair vehicles and this also gives you points. You can only use sub machine guns as an Engineer. As the Medic, your objective is to heal and revive. Healing works in the exact same way as resupplying as an Assault. Reviving brings people back from the brink of death and can potentially give you a lot of points. The Medic can only use light machine guns. I usually hate LMGs but they are really good in this game. As the Recon you are supposed to take people out to aid your fellow players on the battlefield. In my opinion there are only three good snipers in this game. They are all bolt action, the others have horrible sights and are semi automatic, one is full automatic. As a Recon you can call in mortar strikes and throw motion mines which help your team mates. Sniping in this game is insane. The sniping in this game is like no other. It’s not like in Call of Duty where the snipers are basically used like M14s. You actually have to snipe, you have to think as a sniper and when you get that kill from across the map, it is extremely rewarding.

Another thing that puts this game above others is the use of vehicles. You can drive a range of tanks, helicopters, quad bikes, boats, jet skis and humvees. The vehicles like tanks and helicopters can dominate if put in the right hands but if you aren’t an experienced pilot of gunner you are not going to last in a vehicle. Experience does play a key role when lethal vehicles are involved. Another great thing in this game is the UAVs. Instead of just calling one in, you use a stationary computer to fly it around, call in Hellfire strikes and shoot enemies if you have the right specs.

This game is severely underrated in my opinion and a lot of games are taking credit for things that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have brought into the gaming world. Homefront for instance the Parrot Drone is pretty much the UAV in Bad Company 2. There is also a version of Conquest and Rush mixed into one game type in Homefront. I don’t know the name because I have no intention of playing Homefront, I haven’t heard great things about it even though I was excited for its release. Conquest in Bad Company 2 is when you capture flags and Rush is when you destroy things called ‘M-COM’ stations and move up the map when two are destroyed and repeat. Homefront act as if these things are new but they aren’t and now Homefront are taking credit for it when Bad Company 2 have already done it.

I have recently started playing this game again and I am loving it. Battlefield 3 is coming out and I am very excited for its release. The online can only get better.