F.3.A.R - Phuck1ng 5h1t.

So yes, F3.A.R or whatever the stupid name given to it is.

I had never played the original F.E.A.R. Just before it released I had to sacrifice my top end gaming machine in order to fund my car. For many years afterward I had a really poor PC based on a Celeron D with 256mb ram. It wasn't that I had gone off of gaming, just that I couldn't afford it and even if I could have my selfish ex wife would have disowned me for building a gaming PC.

With my gaming PC sold (the specs of which are laughable now but were so uber for the time) I forgot about gaming. Thus, F.E.A.R went by me completely stealthily and I had no idea it even existed.

I was sitting on the toilet one day reading though an old gaming mag (my reading room) and I noticed F.E.A.R 2 as a preview. I hurried back to my PC and sure enough it had released ages ago, so I bought it for like £2.50. I loved it. It was quite easy, but had one of the most gripping storylines ever in a game. I wasn't frightened by Alma, more completely intriuged. I just wanted to get further into it to see more of her, and figure out what was going on. F2 (I'm sick of typing F.E.A.R now so fuck it) was a fantastic game. I really, really enjoyed it. So imagine my pleasure at knowing that a third iteration was on its way !.

But, when F3 finally released my bubble was well and truly burst. It's fucking awful.

Let me explain why. Firstly the story gets rather muddled. At the end of F2 Alma has her wicked way with you, and the final scenes contain her putting your hand on her tummy. She's quite clearly baking a bun in the oven, so you would naturally expect nature to take its course and the popped sprog to be the subject matter of F3. The thing is F3 seemed rather muddled. There was no mention of Alma, and, during my incredibly upsetting eight hour attempt to get into it no sighting of her either.

Now I had made sure to read a good few reviews before investing and from what I could gather it was hailed as being a very good game. This was not to be sadly.

Firstly F3 was incredibly clunky. It just didn't feel good to play at all. At first I thought it could be my mouse as my mouse is rather fussy. I cleaned the mousepad and the lens of the lazer, callibrated it using Razer's software and even tried every DPI setting it had. But alas, the game was still very clunky. I tried speeding up my pointer but then the aiming was just incredibly twitchy and it was close to impossible to hit anything. The machine gun tends to lift as you fire it, and this coupled with the terrible clunky (or twitchy) aiming just made things very frustrating. I was becoming annoyed, and fast.

And then it got worse. I was tossed into a town with streets looking like they were literally lifted from COD MW2 and fucking dropped into the game. There was absolutely nothing new there at all, and if anything MW2 had it nailed quite well. Don't get me wrong I don't like MW2 at all as any fun to be had is very short lived (four hours short to be precise) and I don't do online gaming. However, there are some truly wonderful moments of bliss in MW2 so I would imagine that it's that they were trying to emulate in F3.

And, they fucked it up, royally.

The streets you are on have no way markers and no direction. I found myself running up and down like a fucking linesman on the Sunday football. After a couple of hours and being incredibly frustrated I finally managed to find my way out and started making my way to the rooftops.

Just a quick digression here folks. I don't like hard games. I like a challenge, but I don't like ending up stuck in a quagmire of MDS (multiple death syndrome). And F3 has that shit in fucking abundance. In the end I managed to stay alive for about an hour on this rooftop, taking out never ending enemies. I did try resorting to the "Fuck it and run" technique but then I just got my head ripped off. After about (literally) five hours of trying to pass that point I gave up and I haven't played it since. I simply uninstalled it and chucked the fucking Amaray up in the "Done" cupboard above my desk.

I can understand why game creators are taking a more hard lined approach. Games in recent years have been too easy. The thing is in my opinion I want to see all of the game. Games to me are like movies. If they tell a story (which F3 desperately tries to do but fails on every level) then I want all of it. I want the fucking ending. If I sit down for a wank I don't bring myself to the point of ejaculation and then stop and say "Sod it, will do that again later". So if a game is too easy it simply means I can play through it all very quickly.. HOWEVER, I can play through it all and I can see all of it. £29.99 is what a top end PC game costs now. That's about twice that of a DVD movie and if the game can provide me with four hours of entertainment I have gotten my bang for buck. If it lasts longer? bargain. If it lasts like Fallout 3 or FONV or Borderlands? hand it a fucking medal.

What a game can't do, however, is become so infuriatingly hard that it is beyond completion for some one like me. I don't have the patience to sit around on a rooftop for two fucking hours trying to kill two million fucking enemies just to make it to the next checkpoint. Talking of checkpoints.... Fuck sake where is the manual save? Why the fuck are PC owners all of a sudden being treated like fucking kids with a console? How much money and time would it fucking take to put in the quicksave function? Half Life was a hard game, you pressed F5 when you got cover and you carried on. In F3 you can spend an hour in a gunfight, die, and have to start it all over again.

Needless to say I really don't like this game at all. And before you say it no, this isn't a review as reviews involve scores and likes and dislikes. I fucking hate this game and there is nothing to like. I hate the graphics, I hate the fucking physics and I hate console fucking shit that ends up on a PC.

And that, said the mayor, was that.

Hard Reset early thoughts.

Well fuck me this one came out of nowhere. I don't really know much about its background, nor if it is available on multiple formats. What I do know is that I like it. A lot. Even after only thirty minutes of play I can say this game is truly a breath of fresh air in a polluted filthy game world.

Why do I like it? It cuts through the fucking shit and gets down to the goody straight away. No fucking around, no stupid fucking storys, no waffle and beans.

Quick intro, hands you a gun and lets  you get the fuck on with what counts - slaughtering anything in your way. It doesn't go through countless unskippable cut scenes and shows itself for what it is, a FPS. God how I have missed that. Story telling in 99% of games is fucking awful. These are not movie directors here, you know? Fallout 3 and New Vegas were the last games I played with a good story. Crysis 2 was fucking weak.

Any way, it's also very very pretty and only weighs in around the 3.5gb mark installed. Why can't all games fucking be like this? More to come soon, but the game is basic and hard core, so apart from a brief rundown on weapons there shouldn't be too much to say apart from get it.

Dead Island.

This will be my first blog on games, so a quick explanation is in order.

This is no game review blog, it's just a few quick opinions on games that are released.. Any way, less of the shit and on with the show, eh?

So Dead Island. Well, it released last week and I got it via Steam. It was broken, but it's now pretty much fixed. Personally I had no issues with it but then I play strictly on PC and this is a PC game at heart. So, without further ado let's get on with it ! Note - this will be the format, in brief, of how I see the game.

Likes -

It's different. It's kind of like Far Cry 2, far prettier and far less insipid. It allows far more free roam than FC2 and adds a few new things into the mix that have been pinched from various games.

It's quite obviously a B title and no doubt will gather a cult following. This is one of the main reasons I like it so much, as it isn't perfect. It also doesn't have that highly turd polished feel to it, nor a corporate feel. This is good, man.

It's fucking gorgeous.

It has lots of cool weapons, but it also requires some tact and skill. It's a dangerous island and brings with it some tough enemies. The harder enemies will level up as you do to keep things on an even keel. It also makes sure that this game does not roll over and die and, like other RPGs become a complete cakewalk.

Dislikes -

Are the weapons made from fucking balsa wood? seriously, what the fuck gives? a sickle is made for hacking through vegetation. It should not and would not break after hitting a human about five times. The weapons wear out far too quickly and if I'm brutally frank become fucking useless.

The voice acting is terrible, and the characters feel the constant need to keep fucking repeating themselves. "I wonder what is in here". I could tell you that myself you vapid bitch, the same fucking thing that was in the other twenty boxes you already looked in. Assorted shit.

The inventory is pretty basic and every time you want to look at the map in it you have to open it and then move to the map. This is pretty annoying really as sometimes map checking needs to be constant as the levels can be rather maze like.

That's about it really. I will tend to skip through the horse shit and get down to the goody with my blogs on games. This should save you a ton of time having a look through my opinions.

A score? hmm. I don't really dig scores but fuck it, let's do that.

I give Dead Island a 8.5/10. Try to remember though I liked Duke Nukem Forever. I like sticking up for the little guy and this game is the little guy. There is, however, a very big game to be had here for not a lot of money. From what I hear experts can bash this thing out in 22 hours of solid play. That sounds like value to me, though to be honest I've put in more than ten and I'm about 12 % through it. Make of that what you will.