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F*** YOU TEAM FORTRESS 2

October 28, 2011 in PC gaming by with 0 Comments

All right so today on October 27, the latest patch for Team Fortress 2 came out because of the Halloween event. Me never missing a single Halloween event for Team Fortress 2 was rewarded with this…

…20 minutes later I thought it had completed when it said this… turns out 100% means its not done as it’s been like this for the past 23 minutes, and if one clicks cancel or tries to close steam you get the exact same error.

Moral of the story don’t play Team Fortress 2, valve completely F***ed up a great game.

-C4ptain Canada

Going Rogue: Choices, choices

October 21, 2011 in PC gaming by with 0 Comments

This morning I finally wrapped up my business in Praetoria, City of Heroes’ mirror-world where familiar heroes turn corrupt and most interiors look like an Apple Store. Well, actually I wouldn’t say wrapped up because I did have a mission arc to finish, but I said eff it and headed straight for the portal once I dinged level 20.

For those of you who don’t know, the Going Rogue expansion throws you into Praetoria, in which after you hit level 20 you have the option to leave for either Paragon City (for heroes) or The Rogue Isles (villains). From there, you can shift alignment by completing specific side missions.

But I just wanted out, and I knew I wanted to leave as a Villain, because I already have a level 20-something hero. TO THE PORTAL!

 

Once you approach the portal, the choices are presented. Will you go to Paragon City and work things out with the people there? Or will you be a selfish power-hungry dickface in tights?

Obviously, I chose the latter.

And so, through the portal I went, eagerly awaiting to see what would be there to greet me.

And what did I find? ZOMBIES, that’s what! The damn things popped out of the ground to greet me, only they wanted instead to kill me. These guys must have been from the Halloween event that is going on, because I have no idea how else they would have gotten there.

Luckily, there was another Villain nearby with his own personal army of well… army dudes to help me out.

Unfortunately, his help was short lived and the ever-growing horde of zombies managed to finish him off before moving onto their next target – ME! I tried to run, but I had so few HPs left and my healing abilities were still on recharge, so with a few zombie hand-slaps, I was down.

A Hero’s Villain’s welcome.

Welcome to The Rogue Isles! You know what they say, karma’s a b*tch!

Just wanted to share that with you. I found it hilarious to be greeted by a horde of zombies in such a way. Excellent timing, you rotting meat bags.

-rav4ge

The Top 3 Reasons Why City of Heroes is One of My Favorite MMOs Ever

October 10, 2011 in PC gaming by with 0 Comments

CoH_Top3_Header

I have to admit, when I first heard that City of Heroes was going Free-2–Play, I was excited to be able to play my favorite MMO again. But there was a small voice in my head that told me otherwise. City of Heroes has always been kind of a MMO distraction for me. Whenever I play it, I do so because the game is fun in short bursts and I like messing around with the character creation system. I’ve never taken the game seriously as something I’d dedicate a lot of time to.

Yet, since City of Heroes: Freedom rolled out, I’ve been spending more time with it than ever. I keep coming back, and I still have the itch to play every day –  this is not something MMOs usually do for me. So what is it about City of Heroes that makes it so enjoyable to play –  and come back to?

Continue Reading…

Oh, you’re back City of Heroes!

September 29, 2011 in PC gaming by with 0 Comments

As I’m sure you may have heard by now, City of Heroes: Freedom has launched and is now free-2-play for everyone! As you may have remembered, I was pretty excited for City of Heroes to go F2P back in June. Now it’s here, and it’s all FREEEEEEE!*

* Note: All content only available to current VIP (very important players) subscribers, with a recurring charge of $14.99 a month. Cash or credit?

All hail the might F2P gods! Now, where are my microtransactions at?

I downloaded the new installer yesterday and then proceeded to patch the game from there. The whole patching/installing process was generally quite speedy and I was able to play within two hours of patching. I could have opted to play sooner too though, because new to the patched is an option to play while installing, much like how WoW’s installer works nowadays.

The game, as expected, is largely unchanged. There’s a new main menu and hero creation interface which is a great improvement, although I’m not a fan of the new menu music. I always thought City of Villains had freaking awesome music, but it’s gone now. Ah well. Also new is a short tutorial in which you will determine the alignment of your character by deciding the fate of this one guy. Yeah, I have to admit, that felt a little out of place. I get that Going Rogue let you walk/cross the line between good and evil, but when applied here once it feels out of place and insignificant. Unless of course, there are more alignment choices further down the road after the tutorial ends. There’s also a brief boss battle you’re thrown into towards the end of the tutorial that could have been cool, but kinda falls flat because the guy just sits there, letting you wail on him until he finally drops dead.

Grrr! I am a tutorial boss! Punch me in the face as often as you like! I might ocassionally try and fight you.

The first thing I did was log into my “Bearded Slayer” character, who was level 15 in the Praetorian zone. That was the last time I had played CoH, because that expansion was pretty disappointing. I had never reached level 20 and completed the main Praetoria storyline because the repetitiveness of the missions had totally turned me off from the game back when it released. So I played him for a couple levels, joined by some other players who had the same idea. We romped around for a while, doing missions and generally kicking ass. It was good for me, because not only did I have to learn how to play CoH again, but I had to learn how to effectively tank – it’s been a while since I last played an MMO of any sort. I failed eventually and got beat down, but luckily my teammates had me covered and were patient enough to deal with my untimely death. The way dying works in CoH, by the way, is pretty nontraditional. If you have a certain inspiration (power-up) you can self-revive or a teammate can give you one. Otherwise, it’s straight to the emergency room for your bloody, beaten ass. If you go with the latter, you take on debt which has to be repaid in the form of experience points. Luckily for me, I didn’t incur any debt for some reason… perhaps the game wanted to welcome me back in the most friendly manner possible.

 

I then decided to create another character to join up with WhiteSword’s super group on Triumph. Feel free to join us! I’ll post screenshots of my characters next time I play.

So yes, City of Heroes is back! I definitely recommend you give it a shot if you haven’t already played CoH in the past. I’ll be playing this for a while and may even resubscribe at some point – I saw some game time cards last time I was at Wal-Mart for super cheap. With three months to go until The Old Republic, it’ll be a good distraction for a while. Though really, there are so many other games coming out this year that I wonder how long this game will keep me occupied. Hopefully somewhat long, because I love me some City of Heroes. By the way, I’m downloading the sweet, sweet Battlefield 3 open beta right now. Praise Jebus!

-rav4ge

Dead Island PC Fiasco

September 6, 2011 in PC gaming, Ramblings by with 1 Comment

Update: This fix I came across has fixed my problems with the game for now, until the patch hits. Highly recommend you give it a look if you’re having similar problems to mine.

Angry_steam_guy

Failure! Madness! Terror! Anger!

All of the above and more describe the current state of developer Techland’s zombie-smashing island romp that is Dead Island on the PC. Seriously, if you don’t believe me for whatever reason, go check out the official Steam forum.

Anyway, here’s what went down. I decided to buy Dead Island yesterday at around 9:30 Pacific time on Steam. Usually, Steam unlocks new releases at 9:00 Pacific, and this time was no different. So, as I did for Brink and Duke Nukem Forever, I started downloading the game, dicked around on the computer for a bit –  no, not like that –  and then went to bed, awaiting to be greeted by a freshly-installed game for me to play and enjoy.

Well, from there things went downhill. I booted up the game at about 7:30, eager to play for the next five hours until school started for the year. The first problem I ran into was that the game wouldn’t actually start, and instead went to a black screen. This, however was a simple fix –  thanks to the Steam forums, I learned that disabling my second monitor would let the game run. So finally, I was playing Dead Island.

The intro was pretty underwhelming, and I hadn’t created a giant zombie-body count in my name just yet, but I was having fun and the game was running smoothly. Then I started to notice a problem. Every minute or so of gameplay, the game would stutter and freeze for a moment, then continue. I shrugged off the problem and just kept playing, but then it started to become a more often occurrence. Before long, the stutters started happening at closer and closer intervals. Now, instead of happening every minute or so, they happened every 10 seconds!

Eventually it got to the point where the game just decided to crap out and close on me –  a memory leak, perhaps?

That’s when I decided to pay a visit to the not-so-friendly Steam release forum for Dead Island. Sure enough, it was a angry pit of rage, hate, and general negativity. Turns out Techland had accidentally sent an Xbox 360 developer build to Steam as the final version, which is why it was in such a bad state.

Angry_steam_forums

before

Going to the Steam forums is always a good way to get an idea of a game in-question. If you see a lot of angry emoticons, thread titles, and general commotion, chances are you should probably wait on buying the game. Brink’s release was the same way, and reading all those threads filled with disappointment and general sadness made me realize the game was a disappointment to myself included.

True to their word, Techland put out a small patch that must have fixed a lot of the really crippling problems people were having, because now the Steam forums look like this:

Better_steam_forums

...and after.

Unfortunately, I still can’t play without crashing after about 20 minutes of playtime, and the stuttering problem remains intact. Am I angry? No, not really. I’d like to be able to play, and I kind of realize it might be a while before I can play the game properly. I also share a suspicion that Techland is covering their asses here with this whole “accident” deal because they knew the PC version wasn’t finished. I mean, is it a console port or not? Why is there an Xbox analog stick prompt when you’re smashing down doors? Jesus, you guys.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson today though… no more pre-ordering games for me on Steam unless I know the developer well. For now, the console versions of Dead Island look to be superior. Just because you can fix things post-release so easily via Steam doesn’t mean you should hand us an unfinished version of the game –  or in this case, a developer-build supposed Xbox version. Seriously! I am disappoint!

May we see less and less of these buggy PC releases in the future. I can only hope… and dream.

-rav4ge

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