Medal of Honor Beta First Impressions

On 07.29.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

Thanks to the generosity of a random person on Twitter, I obtained a beta key for the latest Medal of Honor game that is set to come out in a few months so I thought I'd give you guys my first impressions. Now keep in mind that I've only had about an hour or so with the game so I haven't gotten to experience everything there is to offer yet, and plus it's a beta so not everything is there and polished.

The beta is multiplayer only and contains 2 different game modes that you can play, one is team deathmatch and the other is sort of an attack and defend type game, similar to "war" from Call of Duty: World at War and CoD3, I'll get into the game modes more in a minute. The game starts off and you can go through and edit your guns. You only have a choice of 3 different load outs to start, a rifleman, a specialist and a sniper and each of these classes only has 1 gun available at the beginning as far as I could tell. You have to level up in order to unlock new guns and attachments, similar to MW2. So once I figured out the menu system and turned up my sensitivity, it was time to play.

I jumped right into a quick match which dumped me in the "war" type game (I can't remember what it's called at the moment). It's still a team based game, but one team is trying to defend certain areas while the other team is trying to take them over. The offensive team must take over one area before they can move onto the next as they slowly make their way from one end of the map to the other. I actually thought this game mode was pretty fun, but I did have one big problem with it that could kill the whole game for me... the respawning. It got to a point where someone on the other team got right behind our spawn and just sat there. As we respawned in the same spot over and over again this guy would just kill us instantly. I know when you get to certain spots on the map you can choose to respawn in your base or on the frontlines, but each spawn seemed to only have one set location rather than randomizing it a bit, so even when the teams switched and I was on the other team I got trapped in spawn camper hell. For me to really enjoy and play this game they are going to have to rethink the respawns and figure out a way to curb the spawn campers. On a positive note I didn't seem to have the same problem when playing a team deathmatch game though.

Aside from the game modes, lets talk about gameplay. The multiplayer aspect of Medal of Honor is being developed by Dice, the same guys that brought you Battlefield Bad Company 2 and if you've read my review of Bad Company 2 you already know where this is heading... kind of. Coming off of Modern Warfare 2, I was not a fan of Bad Company 2's multiplayer so going into Medal of Honor I was pretty worried. When I first started playing I was very annoyed with it because it wasn't Modern Warfare 2, but once I convinced myself that it wasn't, I was able to get into it a bit more. I like the scale of things in MoH much better than Bad Company 2 so that was a nice change, but the control aspect that I hated the most in Bad Company 2 is very much alive in MoH... you can't strafe when you're running. I think this is just something I've got to get over because the more I think about it the more it seems realistic that you wouldn't be able to strafe while running full speed ahead, but it doesn't help that I've been used to it for years now in the CoD series. So strafing aside I think I could grow to like this one, but I hope the single player is really good because I could still see myself going back to CoD when Black Ops comes out, but I will probably pick up Medal of Honor in the meantime.

I'll play a lot more this weekend and see if my perspective on the game changes, but I think I got the gist of it after a few sessions last night.

Don't forget to sign up to Get Medal of Honor(TM): Limited Edition and a game console. Free!!

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iOS 4 GM on iPhone 3GS

On 06.11.10, In Technology, By AC Slater

Last night I went ahead and installed the Gold Master (GM) release of iOS 4 (formerly known as iPhone OS 4.0) and just wanted to give a little rundown of my experience with both installing it and how it runs. My iPhone's have all been jailbroken since the day they could be and not because I want to pirate apps from the appstore like most people that do it, but because I don't want to pay AT&T a ridiculous amount of money for text messaging and would rather use Google Voice. Sure there's a web app for Google Voice that does essentially the same thing, but GV mobile just seems more stable to me and I like it better, but the problem is, is that it's only available from Cydia and not the AppStore since it wasn't approved. That's the main reason for jailbreaking, the other reason is the calendar on the lock screen... I'm not sure why Apple hasn't allowed us to customize our lock screens yet, but I hate having to unlock the phone and click into the calendar to see what I have going on for the day so Lock Calendar is a much better option, again only available in Cydia. So those are my main reasons for Jailbreaking, along with better resale value if it can be unlocked, so when I heard that the GM release of iOS 4 did not require a Developer key, I decided to give it a go.

First there were some things I needed to find, 1. The firmware file for iOS 4 GM and a copy of iTunes 9.2 beta. They weren't very hard to find, but I'm not going to post links here. Next I needed to find a decent set of instructions that walked me through exactly what to do so I didn't mess anything up, ihackintosh provided those. The instructions are very straight forward and simple if you have some tech knowledge, but it's MAC only at this point, so if you have a PC don't even bother trying right now. Also, make sure you BACKUP YOUR PHONE before you do this. I got a message from a friend last night that said he didn't back up his phone and now had to go back and re-download all his apps, not to mention it will lose all your settings as well. I hadn't done a backup to my computer in a long time anyways so this was as good a time as any. I have MobileME so I don't worry about backups too often because my contacts are the main thing and they back up Over The Air with MobileME, as does the calendar. As for the apps, once you've purchased them they are linked to your iTunes account so if you lose everything you'll still be able to get everything from the AppStore without paying again, so no issues there.

So after you backup your phone, follow the instructions on iHackintosh and you should have no problems updating. Just remember that this is Mac only, I'm not sure if there is "hacktivation" built in, meaning that if you don't have a legitimately activated phone on AT&T it may not work, also make sure you download the correct firmware based on your phone. I have a 3GS so I downloaded the firmware for the 3GS and the instructions I linked to are for the 3GS, they won't work with the 3G, but I'm sure you can find instructions out there.

As for iOS 4 itself, I won't go too in depth since there are a million articles out there regarding it's performance and what not. It's a nice update, things feel a lot snappier as far as opening apps and closing them. The browser feels a bit quicker as well. I'm a huge fan of being able to combine apps into "folders" or whatever you want to call them, more so than running apps in the background. Most apps don't even have background processes enabled yet since iOS 4 isn't officially out, so in Pandora for example, you can't yet listen to music in the background. So while I think the background process stuff is cool, I didn't really need it, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it. What I'm not a fan of is the fact that pressing the home button twice now brings up the apps that are running in the background instead of being a shortcut to the phone app. I can't remember the last time I actually pressed the phone app to launch it so that will take some getting used to. The combined email inboxes is a huge improvement as well, so much easier to manager rather than having to back out of one mailbox to get to the other.

So overall it's a nice improvement, but I'm anxious to see what developers are going to do with the new features. I think the background stuff could be cool, but obviously nothing utilizes it yet so I have no way of seeing said "cool" stuff. So if you have any questions regarding the process for installing iOS 4 GM leave a comment and I'll try to help out.

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Blur Xbox 360 Multiplayer Beta Impressions

On 03.09.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

Yesterday I received a code which gave me access to the multiplayer beta of Bizarre's new racing game Blur. I'm going to be honest and say that I really don't know a whole lot about the game, but I'm a fan of arcade racing games (don't really care for the sim ones) so it looked interesting and hey, free beta so why not. The downloaded clocked in at a little over 1 gig and seems to include 4-5 tracks (?) and a handful of cars. I haven't had time to mess around with all of the customization or anything like that, but I did get a solid hour and a half of playing time in so that's basically what I'm going to be telling you about.

So seeing as how I knew nothing about the game going in I wasn't really sure what to expect, but right off the bat I figured out that it's kind of like Mario Kart, but with real cars. Essentially you are racing through a city, shipping yard, whatever, against other players trying to finish first, but along the way you can pick up different power ups to use against enemies or to help yourself. Just like in Mario Kart you can fire these power ups forwards or backwards, you can cycle between the different things you are carrying and the power ups themselves are similar to what you would find in Mario Kart. There's a gun of sorts that gives you 3 bullets to fire off at people, there's a red bomb type weapon that seeks out the person in front of you and hits them, there's another red bomb thing that goes backwards and sits on the track waiting for someone to run into it, there's a shockwave weapon that emits a pulse that damages any vehicle around you, there's speed boosts, there's shields, etc... you get the point.

So the muliplayer beta is basically just a handful of courses where you race around trying to finish first. You get different amounts of points depending on what place you finish and these help you level up which I'm assuming nets you different cars and mods and stuff. The menu interface is very clean and easily navigated, the game lobbies don't seem to have any problems, there's a nice voting system to choose which track will be next, overall the menus seem pretty thought out. The gameplay itself is actually pretty good, I didn't have any problems with it although a lot of people in the game were complaining about the drifting, which I felt was alright, just took a little getting used to. It also took a few races to figure out what each of the power ups does as they are just colored icons without any description of what they are, but it's easy enough to pick up on. The cars handled like I was expecting them to handle in an arcade racing game and I actually had a lot of fun playing online. So overall the beta seems pretty promising, but I'm not sure whether I'll be picking this one up or not. I have quite a few games to play at the moment and am still having a hard time pulling myself away from Modern Warfare 2, so we'll see. I'm always up for a good racing game and I'll probably pick this up eventually, but I won't be running out on release day to get a copy.

Is anyone else in on the beta? What do you guys think of the game so far? Does the drifting seem off to you or do these other people just need to get used to it?

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MAG Beta Impressions

On 01.05.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

The 256 player FPS MAG went into public beta yesterday and I had a chance to sit down and play for a few hours so I thought I'd give you a quick rundown of my experience. Normally I would wait until I've had a little more time to experience all that a game has to offer, but I wasn't that impressed so I don't know how much more of the game I will be playing.

First of all let me start this by saying that my PS3 was purchased mainly as a Blu-Ray player and I currently only own 1 game for the system (Little Big Planet), which has not gotten much playing time. My main reason for not playing games on the PS3 is the controller. I've never liked the way the analog thumb sticks felt in my hands. It just seems like they are too loose which causes my movements to be a lot more erratic than with the Xbox 360 controller. So with that in mind I already knew that I was probably going to suck at MAG and get very frustrated.

If you haven't downloaded the beta yet from the Playstation Network you may want to set aside some time to do that before you get the urge to play. The demo itself only takes a few minutes to download and install, but once you launch it there is a 2gb "update" that begins to download and can take quite a bit of time. Once you get past that it's time to make a character. There are 3 different groups  you can choose from and this group will determine which team you fight with, RAVEN, VALOR or SVER. I don't know if there's a difference between each group as when I made a character in VALOR (the US group I believe) I could not get into a single match, it kept erroring out. So after reading a bit on the internets I determined that if I chose SVER I would be able to get into a match right away, and I was right.

So once I got into the main screen there were a bunch of options that I didn't have any clue what they meant so I just chose Deploy as I wanted to get into a game quickly. I tried to play the tutorial so I could get a feel for the controls and adjust my sensitivity, but for the life of me I could not figure out how to get into it. So despite the fact that I had no clue what I was doing, the only other option was to play Sabotage ( I think that's what it was called), as all the other game modes are locked until you hit higher levels. So Sabotage consists of one team guarding 2 bases and the other team trying to capture them, once the capturing team as done so to both bases a 3rd base appears on the map and they must plant explosives there while the other team defends.

The game mode itself isn't bad, it's only 24 players or something like that, not the full 256 like advertised (I guess that's only for certain game modes), but I still found myself dying almost as soon as I got to any of the bases. And the gun selection didn't help me either. You start off with 3 guns, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle and a machine gun and in order to get new guns you need to level up and then spend those skill points (1 per level) on different upgrades and/or weapons. It's a decent system, but I definitely think there should be more than 3 guns to choose from at the start of the game.

The maps and graphics looked pretty good. I've read some other people saying that they didn't think the graphics were up to par with games like Modern Warfare 2, but I think they are still pretty good, especially considering how massive some of the maps are. I still feel as though the Playstation 3 controller is a huge crutch when playing FPS' on the system, but again it's probably just because I'm used to the Xbox 360, so those of you that are used to the PS3 controller and it's response time and movement will probably be just fine. Other than that, I can't really comment on the lag issue in a 256 player game because I have yet to get into a game with that many people, but there was no lag that I noticed in the Sabotage games that I was playing in. I may have to play some more just to unlock the other game modes to see what a huge game like that plays like.

So overall I'm not terribly impressed with the game, I'd much rather play Modern Warfare 2 to get my FPS fix. I had considered purchasing this game as a blind-buy when it comes out later this month, but I think I'm going to hold off now and just wait for God of War III which will probably be my first and only PS3 game considering the new Final Fantasy is coming to the 360 this year as well.

Has anyone else given the beta a run through, what do you think so far? What did I miss? And are the other game modes more fun than the Sabotage one?

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MAG Public Beta January 4th

On 01.04.10, In Video Games, By AC Slater

If you have no clue what I'm talking about than this probably isn't going to interest you, but for those of you that are familiar with MAG, the public beta is opening today January 4th, but you can get the demo today apparently (can anyone confirm this). All you need to do in order to be a part of the beta is to log on to the Playstation Network and download the beta demo, that's it.

And for those of you that don't know what MAG is, it's a fully online First Person Shooter game for the Playstation 3 that boasts 256 player multiplayer games. I'm guessing the point of opening this beta up to almost everyone is so that they can test the network and make sure the game can actually handle 256 people in a single match without there being way too much lag and honestly I'll be very impressed if the games actually run as smooth as intended.

Has anyone been involved in the private beta that has been going on for a few months now? How is it? Have you gotten into a game with the full amount of people? Was there lag?

Update: Apparently the source I read yesterday was confusing and the beta is actually opening up to the public on January 4th, but it sounds as though you can start the download today in anticipation, but I can't confirm this. Sorry to get your hopes up, but it's still not that far away.

Update 1/4/10: Instead of writing a new post I thought I'd just amend this one and move it up, but as of this morning the MAG servers should be open (in North America at least). So give it a shot and let us know how it plays. I'll be on later this afternoon to give it a go and I'll do a write up a little later in the week.

Update 1/4/10 3:30PM CST: It appears as though the servers may be bogged down a bit as lots of people are reporting issues even logging in. Hopefully they will get the problem sorted out before I get home tonight.

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