Resident Evil 5
After completing Fallout 3, one of my friends at the office lent me their copy of Resident Evil 5 to play over the 4-day weekend. I started playing a little on Thursday, and watched Tales from the Crypt and caught up on House M.D. Friday I played through all day, apart from the time spent trying to get my iPhone working again, and then finally completed it this afternoon.
I have to say I really enjoyed it, I haven't played a Resident Evil all the way through since the second one, apart from a little time I spent on four. As usual with shooters on the XBox360, it took me a little while to get use to targetting with an analogue stick. One thing that did annoy me, was that I couldn't move and aim (my favourite thing to do since Dead Space made to fear going around a corner).
Some of the new bosses were really creative, ranging from giving you a flamethrower than you need refuel, to firing a missile at the boss only for them to catch it then you shoot it to make it explode in their face.
Some of the enemies are annoying to defeat, the chainsaw guy at first killed me many times before I figured a strategy to take him one. And later in the game, I found out I could shoot different objects such as transformers to electrocute enemies.
The only thing that does annoy me about this game, are people thinking it is racist, I was reading about it on another persons blog, who was arguing against another persons blog.
http://www.blacklooks.org/2007/07/resident_evil_5.html
To quote them incase they decide to retract their blog entry
The new Resident Evil video game depicts a white man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the white man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity. “I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through.”
This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.
First of all, they aren't suppose to be zombies, they are zombies, and the fact these zombies are trying to kill you doesn't make the people they were originally inhuman savages. The fact it is a white person doing this is because Chris Redfield is white in the previous games, changing his appearance breaks the game history. And to top it all off, it was made by Asian developers.
Apart from that annoyance, I really enjoyed the game, and I hope for more DLC. I might even buy my own copy so I can do the multiplayer thing, actually that is another thing I wouldn't mind when playing it, someone to Co-Op it with, I died a few times since Sheva was too busy waiting for me to do something (i.e. holding an enemy, waiting for me to shoot an enemy, etc).
Original blog I found this link from:
http://theblacksentinel.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/resident-evil-5-outbreaks-the-racism/
Left 4 Dead
So I finally got around to playing Left 4 Dead. Last time I played it was prerelease on Steam, and I preordered it, but forgot when it was released, and when I did remember, it meant logging into Windows. And then when I did log into Windows, I could not get my WiFi to work due to some changes I had done when I went to Bolton to visit friends.
So tonight I decided to fix the WiFi, after much effort, it turned out it was because my computer was named glyphwire, instead of Glyphwire, my router didn't understand they were the same thing and so rejected me access (thats what you get for using the generic BT crap they give you).
I didn't think much of the Single Player, the AI for my team were idiots and in the end got me killed because they decided to stay behind and have a cup of tea or something, when around a zombie infested city, you don't just stand still and wait around for them to come for you.
However the multiplayer redeems this game, and using my dual GPUs of my laptop, I was kicking ass once I found a way to change weapons without scrolling, even the cut off the internet was fixed when I added Steam ports to the router. One downside is the limited number of levels, and although playing a zombie is fun, its usually short lived unless your a tank, which is fun, since if you take them down one by one, they have no chance, rather than just chasing them all and keep changing, make sure they're down, then go for another, lets the zombies finish them. The witch is one I would love to play as, but is not possible yet (probably since she can do one hit kills on expert). Boomers are just pointless, but can get you assist points if you bile them, hunters are fun, and the second most effective for attacking a stragller, and smokers are useless unless you've got tall buildings to hide behind, then you use them during a large invasion.
One annoying this is the respawn time, 20 seconds before you can become something, as Yahtzee said, it would be nice if you could choose to become a generic zombie till then. Still, once you've played it through a few times, it starts to get boring, I just look forward to the Shaun of the Dead mod.