"The inconsistency of Battlefield 4": Launch impressions for the PC version

Last Tuesday, Battlefield 4 was released for current gen consoles and PC. Carlos went for the PC version and has been playing it all week and has a few words for DICE's next gen title-- "Stop crashing on me!!".

Inconsistency

I go for games on day one because I believe I'll have a great time with it. Just like how everybody mindlessly buys Call of Duty regardless of what they change, I do the same with Battlefield. Is there a big change for Battlefield 4 though? Visually, sort of. Gameplay, well you still shoot people, and the stages are..bigger with more structures to blow up. But  my frustration doesn't come from the gameplay, I'm loving the feel of the game, but if it crashes on you every so often...that doesn't count for anything really.

Joining large conquest maps with 500 tickets can take a lot of your time. Halfway through one match, I was enjoying raking up the kills in different ways in the match. Then, it crashes. Losing any progress you made. 20 minutes wasted. So imagine that happening 50% of every match you join. The game feels like its running on dutch taps to keep it together. My PC specs is well enough to run the game on ultra with smooth gameplay, so believe me that's not the case, I've checked.

Game crashes happening often detached me from the experience. When it happens, I'm left with the thought of turning on the TV to watch a movie instead. What's more troubling is that the servers can be unstable as well, making you stare at loading screens more than having someone lined up in your gun's scope.  The mix of both of these issues makes it hard to really enjoy the game when you can't stay on one server for at least 5 games. It's inconsistent, and it makes me want to do something else with my time.  These issues are also present in the campaign. Which is hard enough to get into since I'm annoyed by the characters in just 3 missions.

Battlefield 4 is a great game, but only if it cooperates. Put game crashes and server shutdowns aside, you still have to deal with the random rubber band lag that occurs even though you have less than 100 latency stated on the scoreboard. People can argue that it hasn't been a week, but a rocky start is a rocky start. They will eventually get around to making the game as smooth as butter, but it seems like the pressure to make the release date is being felt on launch.

War never changes

Okay, game crashes and server issues...check! How does the game feel? I did mention earlier that it feels great, but overall you are still getting the same Battlefield experience. For some, like myself, that's all I want. But if someone wanted a groundbreaking game? you'll get disappointed. Don't even consider getting the game for a good campaign. Battlefild 4's campaign is tolerable now compared to Battlefield 3, but it isn't good at all. I'm not even done with it since multiplayer has caught most of my attention. As it should since that's the only reason why I bought the game. Don't be fooled by the "Levolution" term as well. The stages that alter the map are appealing, but only if people bother to activate it, and if your actually there to see it happen. And when they do, just hope you are not in front of it when it happens. Having a skyscraper falling on you or a dam breaking did make me break a smile when I saw it happen, but when it's over, back to shooting. Some are also pretty dull if you compare it to the skyscraper Levolution found on the Siege of Shanghai map. I'm having a hard time finding a server where I can always see it trigger, so I can't really say to how much of a degree it affects the experience.

Unlocking and leveling in this game is just the same as Battlefield 3. The more you use one weapon, vehicle, or class, the more stuff you unlock for that category. As you go through levels, you are given Battlepacks, which up to level 12(current level as I write this), seems to be the only benefit in getting higher levels. Inside those Battlepacks can provide random attachments for specific guns, and weapon/vehicle skins. And if your lucky, you get experience boosters that lasts for only an hour.

That's it for now. The game is great only if it wants to be, and hopefully DICE can resolve these crash and server issues soon. If you are considering the console version, take note that there's a player cap of 24 while next-gen titles and PC has a player cap of 64 players on each match. Why the very low cap? Ask DICE because the player cap was a  big factor to why I opted for the PC version.

Have the same opinion as me? Or experiencing the same problems? Vent on the comments below.

Impressions: Assassin's Creed 3

A few weeks ago, I walked up to a Datablitz store and bought a game I never thought I'd ever pick up. Assassin's Creed 2 was my last creed game and was satisfied with what the game had to offer. The next two games? Not so much. But Assassin's Creed 3 was a different beast. A new setting, a new ancestor, they even have a new game engine under the hood. With the PC version priced at P995, I convinced myself this would be a good buy. Boy, I didn't think I'd feel regret after spending 15 hours on the game.

Note: This is based on 50% game completion on Sequence 9 and is playing the PC version. I'm not finished with the game and all opinions and impressions of the game are only up to that point. This is not a full review.

Don't get me wrong. The game has some very good points. The problem is, there's an issue in almost every corner of the game. Be it a bug, gameplay flaw, or even a design layout,  there's always something that takes me away from the experience. There's always something that bothered me. It's one of the buggiest game's I've played in years. And to think this is considered a triple A title, whatever that's worth nowadays.

Bugs. There are so many it's a challenge to avoid them. Every now and then, you will come across NPC's leaning on a wall when there's no wall to begin with. Or whenever you loot, the camera controls lock up, forcing you to wait a few seconds in order to move again. Even during the start of the game, the young Conner fights and acts as if he has his hidden blades already equipped, but in reality, he hasn't acquired his assassin gear yet. The point is, the game keeps reminding you that it's not well polished, which is a shame because I most probably would have enjoyed the world more if I didn't see myself occasionally stopping to see something very bizarre.

Bugs aside, the problems with this game doesn't stop there. The gameplay has been completely simplified to the point that any sort of challenge is gone. Stealth is considered the optimal choice to approach most situations, but the fact that it's so easy to dispatch any enemy you come across, regardless of the equipment you have, I don't see any point in sneaking around. The simple gameplay make each encounter repetitive and down right easy. If ever you do find yourself in a bind with very low health, run away, wait for your life to go back Call of Duty style and just run back in. I feel too overpowered even at the start of the game, and as much as I'd like to be a badass, I would appreciate a challenge every now and then.

But Assassin's Creed 3 isn't all negatives and bugs. The best thing to come out of the third title is the naval battles, which looks amazing, and satisfying to engage in. This is one of the best parts of the game and every mission that involved me commanding my ship was worth my time. Thanks to the naval battles seen here, Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is now on my watch list. Another great thing about this game is how the animation looks on the move. Conner looks fluid as ever and it's actually a treat to watch. Moving from tree to tree, building to building, it all feels natural...until you accidentally jump into a bag of hay just because it was in your path. Again, it keeps reminding you of that it has problems.

It was really hard for me to continue playing Assassin's Creed 3. I just lost any means of interest at the 15 hour mark. Story is not pulling me in, and bugs are everywhere to greet you. It may be a big segmented open world game with many tasks to keep you busy, but I now feel it's a waste of time, having no strong incentive to do them. When I play now, I just want to move forward with the main story and get it over with.

I'll finish this game eventually for the sake of giving my full opinion of this game, but it's disappointing to see this world get dumbed down and feel rushed. Is it because of the yearly release? I would like to think so. I was never a fan of Ubisoft's choice to release a new title every year. I'm still eyeing on Black Flag though, not because of it being an Assassin's Creed game, but for the fact that I get to roam around as a pirate pillaging other ships freely.

We need more pirate games.

Currently Playing - DC Universe Online Free to Play, heck why not?

Back in March(I think) of 2011, a friend of mine convinced me to buy DC Universe Online for the PS3. I I brought the game home, updated the game(Which took literally a day) and off I go creating my first super hero mentored by Batman. I honestly loved the game but the fact that I needed to pay 15$ a month for it turned me off completely. Now it has gone free to play last month and finally bothered to give it another shot.

Even with having the disc, the update latest at least half of the day to download. Beats the whole day but still half of a day was used to get it up and running. Since I bought the physical copy, my account was instantly in the premium status. Since its free to play, free to play accounts and premium accounts have limitations. The legendary account, which is pretty much the people still playing monthly for it has no restrictions and get all DLC free. I'm obviously not going legendary and premium is pretty much the next best thing at least.

Why is there a money cap!?

Restrictions are a bitch since it affects how much inventory space, character slots, bank slots, and worse of all - the amount of cash you carry. Damn I can live with limited slots, but cash!? With my premium account, I pretty much get double the limit of free to play accounts plus auction slots which is cool. Problem is, I have a cash cap of $2,000, free to play have a $1,500 cap so thats a 500 cap difference. Of course, $15 a month junkies get no cap.

Thats just too damn much. All I can do with that money is buy pots(600 for 6 pots btw)and repair items. Worse part is, the money you earn when you reach your cap gets transferred to this bank where you can withdraw in-game money for like one dollar. That one dollar purchase gets you to withdraw 10,000 from your bank, assuming you have that much saved up. You even see the money saved in, its like its just staring at you every time you open your inventory screen.

To be honest though, I don't see a point in having that much money though since I can earn gear by going through instances or trading-in emblems for gear. Still, the fact that they chained how much I can earn was a bit too much in their part.  I' have a level 30(max level), I wanna feel rich.

That so far is the only bad thing about this free to play model to be honest, I'm still on my second day though so more issues will be surface. I've always enjoyed this game and it feels better with how alive the server is. Well thanks to it going free to play and only having 2 servers per platform, it better be full.

For a free to play game, its loads of fun

It's still is as fun as it was back when I tried it last march, but whats better is that there is no more of the worry that 15 bucks will go away on the next month to keep going. I have a maxed level character and decided to stop playing gearing him up because I had only 2 more weeks until I have to load up, where I had no intention of doing so. So Tier 2 content and raids is still unexplored territory for me so far. Currently leveling my Villain mentored by Lex Luthor, which is now at level 14, to experience the game with a live server. So far, its loads of fun. Especially on a pvp servers since you have a lot of hero players to fight against as you level. At the same time, instances and pvps are instant pops as you que which is amazing to see. When I tried it the first time it took almost 30 minutes to get into a group. Even at max level its a quick match up, which is what this game needs to keep it alive.

Sony Entertainment Online announced 1 million new players when it went free to play in November. That's honestly nothing since that's just the curious factor kicking in, and I'm sure they'd love to brag on how well the free to play model works. People know free gets people interested instantly, the real challenge is keeping them around.

I'm excited to fully gear my toon, I have the luxury to do so, and if this game feels worth the play in the next few weeks, might just get something out of the in-game store like the Green Lantern DLC or Flash DLC for different powers. For what the game was offering during the start for 15 bucks a month was not even close to being worth it, but with it now free to play, that's completely changes everything. It's looking good so far, but if things get boring, nothing is lost.

DC Universe Online is not even a year old yet and they already opted for the Free to Play model. maybe it was doing really bad? or maybe free to play is just as strong as subscribtion based? who knows. Should we bother DC Universe Online's new Free to Play model? heck why not? its free. If you don't like it then stop playing and delete, that's the beauty of it.

Impressions: Age of Conan: Unleashed didin't last...

When I heard that Age of Conan was going free to play, I decided that it might be a good idea to try it out now. Since it had a monthly before(and at the time I was on WoW) I didn't bother trying it out. Now that it's free to play, me and two of my friends decided to give it a try. Why not right? Well let's just say it didn't last long.

I tried to like it......

Ok, I did have the impression that Age of Conan is a bad MMO already, but since it was on a free to play model i thought that experiencing it first-hand might change that. Certain games that are considered horrible for most are amazing for some players, it's just preference, that's just how it is. So i gave Age of Conan a chance, see if its unique melee system and the world of Conan can amuse me. Well not only was it a brutal game with gore and finishing moves, it's also brutal to play.

I tried liking it, I tried staying positive all throughout, but there are so many aspects of the game that lead to frustration. Playing World of Warcraft for around 2 years made me expect a lot from MMORPGs nowadays, so expectations we're pretty high. But expecting a lot from Age of Conan is only a fraction of why this game couldn't even last 3 days on my PC.

The combat felt similar to any MMO but with more skills to press of your melee. There's no auto attack that most people are used to,  they have this melee system where you perform a normal attack by pressing it like a skill on your hotkeys. You have 3 kinds of normal attack which makes you do a normal attack from the left side, right side or an overhead.  So yea, melee is constantly in the move and pressing their hotkeys to keep the action going. Seems cool enough at the start, but from the feedback i got from my friends joining me in this out of the blue trip, its unique system got tiresome in just the three days we played.

Nothing clicked

I literally was bored in just a few hours playing with my friends, and that's already with a group. I imagine the experience would have been worse if I tackled Age of Conan alone. Even with two good friends looking for a good time wasn't enough to keep Age of Conan interesting.  I was playing the healer class of the game, my prefered class, and only played when my friends are online and ready to kill some barbarians. We did some quests and skipped through all the voiced conversations. Yes, they seem to be all voiced with choices coming out of an Elder Scrolls or Dragon Age game, only this time, your choices don't matter at all. Aside from the "I have to go" choice which obviously ends the conversations, everything else leads you to earning the quest or leading to the same conclusion in the conversation.

It was a good touch that Funcom made each quest voiced and making the player I guess, more involved in the conversation. I still find myself skipping through the conversations just like how I don't read the quest descriptions in other games, only read what to kill or what to escort. It's the same deal. Put voice and choices, but if it isn't interesting to begin with, it just becomes a waste of effort.

We hit level 15, going through the town, grabbing quests, looking barbarian-ish with no clothes on, and noticed we were just forcing ourselves to play it. We were all connected through Skype, but not of us we're talking already. We complained so much about certain features more than excited to head for the next quest. There wasn't enough in Age of Conan: Unchained to keep us going, which is sad because we were just in day 3 of when we installed the game. It felt dull and knowing that we have 65 levels(level 80 is the max) to go before hitting end game content made us call quits. "65 more levels of this??" that's what we asked ourselves and instantly uninstalled Age of Conan.

You might be thinking that we didn't give much of a chance, well maybe. Maybe in the later levels, more interesting things will open up, or maybe the high level content is more exciting that the starting ones. One thing is for certain though, first impressions do last, and the content given for starting characters isn't appealing enough for you to aim for the higher levels.

Looking ahead....

Age of Conan: Unchained is done for me. Well, the whole MMO genre as a whole is behind me. There's not much interest left in there. Everything seems similar nowadays, making the experience bland. Even World of Warcraft isn't worth going back to. But I haven't given up on the  genre just yet. Guild Wars 2 is still far away but definitely looks like a game changer. The game islooking to be the game I'll be investing hours and hours of game time just like the good old WoW days. Guild Wars 2 is most likely somewhere mid next year. It's fine, I can wait. i'll be steering away from MMO games until then...

Impressions: SOCOM 4 multiplayer Open Beta

Played SOCOM 4 last week to see what their multiplayer has to offer and how it stands out from the rest. Well, the Open Beta should be over by  now and after a few hours of game time it felt like it had nothing special. But what I noticed is the fact that it feels and sounds similar to a previous game Zipper Interactive released a year ago.

MAG is what keeps popping in my head when I was playing the multiplayer Open Beta. So much small things kept reminding me about MAG. Like the look of the Heads up display to the sound effect used when you get a head shot. It maybe just me but it seemed like they didn't exert that much effort in giving SOCOM 4 its own multiplayer feel.

Graphics in SOCOM 4 are amazing. It's well detailed so good job Zipper. But I think that's the only thing that caught my eye really. This year is all about shooter games, especially first person shooters, and from what i experienced in SOCOM 4's beta it's not enough. With how the multiplayer feels right now, it might not mix well with the rest and people might forget about it real quick.

Connection in SOCOM 4 is solid. I never had lag problems and compared to other developers, Zipper knows how to make it feel as if your playing through LAN no matter what country you're in. Zipper pulled off 256 players in one match with MAG so 32 players for SOCOM 4 must have been a walk to the park.

During my time with the Open Beta there was only one mode available and that was bomb squad. There's three bombs scattered around the map and one team is tasked to defuse these bombs using their Bomb Technician while the opposing team defends the bombs until time runs out. When one round is over, teams switch roles. It's a fun mode since a random player becomes the Bomb Technician and only he can defuse bombs. You'll have to escort that player to the bombs location So teamwork is key. Just like any other multiplayer that urges you to work together, you don't see it. It looked like it was every man for himself and our Technician usually dies since he goes Rambo all of a sudden. But that really isn't the issue here since it's present in anything multiplayer. The Bomb Technician is equipped with a different loadout. He's equipped with an automatic shotgun,a grenade launcher and fully covered in body armor so he can take a few more hits than the usual player.

The leveling system was the biggest letdown. It was completely dull. You level up and when you reach a certain level you unlock more weapons and equipment for your loadouts. It's pretty straightforward and yes some multiplayer games have similar setups but those games had other things going for them. SOCOM 4 in multiplayer had nothing unique aside from it being a third person shooter.

It's not out yet and I maybe a little harsh getting info from a beta but I also consider a beta as a demo. An  Open Beta is pretty much a demo already. I know I'll experience  bugs that might affect game play but I saw the concept and the feel of the gameplay. What I saw was not enough for me to get the game on day one. The only saving grace for this game is the campaign mode and lets just hope the campaign shows similarities to the older SOCOM games because i didn't see anything in the multiplayer .