I’m back! This week it’s Murr’s turn to be away, although technically he isn’t really away, he just had a weekend away from his birthday. Should I say ‘away’ more?
Yes, I’ve been living it up in Las Vegas celebrating getting older. I had an amazing time and now I’m ready to get back to geeking out!
As we start to approach gaming season – or Q4, and all the blockbuster games are inching ever closer I thought it would be a good idea to start clearing a bit of backlog.
With that I started playing Far Cry 4 again. I think the reason I stopped playing was because the Witcher 3 came out (another game I still need to complete), but I was actually really enjoying playing it.
I’ve just finished off act 2 and have put around 13 hours in to the game in total, I don’t know how much more is left, but I’m hoping to get it finished off in the next week or so.
I tend to play the game mostly in stealth, sure it takes a little longer, but I find it a lot more satisfying using my bow, silenced sniper rifle and crossbow pistol thing.
Once I’m done with it I can get back some much needed hard drive space.
But with gaming season upon us, a new hard drive is going to be a must buy for me. No way I can free up enough space for all the games coming out.
The Call of Duty Black Ops 3 multiplayer beta opened up for everyone to try out over the weekend too so I thought it would be a good idea to try that out.
I’ve not actually been interested in buying the game at all – I’ve seen enough of Call of Duty for a while. But seeing as it was free I thought I may as well make the most of it.
The Beta has most of you standard gameplay modes available. TDM, Domination, Kill Confirmed etc… and a decent number of maps.
What is new to Black Ops though is that you have the option to pick a character – or ‘Specialist’, to play as and each one has a couple of perks only available to them. During the Beta I played as Outrider, Prophet and Battery and for each one I picked the offensive perk, A compound bow for Outrider, the Tempest for Prophet which is like an electric charge rifle and the grenade launcher for Battery. I did enjoy using each of the weapons and it added a nice little variation on top of what was already available with score streaks etc…
Advanced Warfare brought about a new wave of movement to Call of Duty – being able to boost jump, slide, bounce – and all the rest, around the map. It wasn’t something I loved, but it was alright. Black Ops 3 has taken this approach as well. However I really didn’t like it. It felt like a cheap version of Titanfall. Movement felt lightweight and I just really didn’t like it at all – and what is with sprinting? It felt horrible and really slow, it felt more like a hindrance to sprint and quite often I found myself just jogging around as it felt better. I feel that with Black Ops 3 and Advance Warfare, Call of Duty is just trying to move closer to how Titanfall played, and in my opinion Titanfall did movement so much better. I know that Murr said last week that he enjoyed it and felt it was back to its best, but for me I just didn’t like it.
Usually if I dislike a game right from the off it’s partly because I suck at it, but it wasn’t even like I was that bad. Sure, I’m not amazing but within a couple of games I was finding myself at the top of the scoreboards on a fairly regular basis. It just didn’t feel enjoyable or new. I felt like I’d played it all before.
Needless to say the Black Ops 3 beta did not change my mind about the game. With Halo 5, Destiny The Taken King and Star Wars Battlefront coming out over the next couple of months I feel the FPS genre is well and truly taken care of on my Xbox One and I can see no room for Black Ops 3 in my game collection.
-Will
NEWS ROUND-UP
Mad Max
It seems that Mad Max has been reviewing favourably for the most part. You can see from the metacritic that it’s doing ok. This was a game that I was really unsure about, it showed promise, but there was potential that it could turn out bad. I’m glad to see it sounds good, and a lot of people on forums and reddit are saying that it’s really good too. This will be one game I will think about picking up at some point.
Halo 5: Guardians
A new cinematic trailer for Halo 5: Guardians dropped and it looks amazing.
EGX
Our competition to win two tickets to this years EGX for the 25th & 26th September is still running. Check out how to enter here.
