I’ve mentioned that I bought an iTouch in recent posts, but why should any of you readers care unless I write about it? And so, today I’d like to debut a new series I like to call “Free App Spotlight”. There’s no point in reviewing free iTouch/iPhone apps, because if people are even mildly interested in one, they’ll download it real quick and see if they like it. Paid apps, on the other hand, are something people might want to read an review on before laying down a dollar or two to buy it, so I’ll make sure some paid apps get reviewed on this site.
With that, let me tell you about this surprisingly fun game available for free on the App Store. Vampires Live is one of developer Storm8’s many rehashes of a singular game formula, but Vampires Live is the first one I played, so why not talk about that one? It could be classified as an MMO, though there are no worlds to explore and all actions take place by pushing a button and the game telling you the outcome. Even so, managing your vampire clan is addictive enough to keep people coming back to the game several times a day.
After a short tutorial at the beginning, the extremely light story is set up and you learn about all the different things you can do in Vampires Live. Being an MMO, most people will be drawn to attacking the vampire clans of real people all over the world and gaining experience and blood (the game’s currency) through battle victories, but managing the abilities of your clan (basically, the types of attacks/defenses everyone uses) is important if you want to win any fights. Missions, such as “Drain a Human” or “Terrorize a Park”, are all done with the push of a button and drain energy, which can only recharge over time. Similarly, health and “frenzy”, the thing that allows you to attack other players, must be recharged. As a result, you can’t really play this game for a couple hours straight – it’s really more of a “few minutes here, few minutes there” type of thing, and that’s just fine. However, if you care about your character, you’re going to want to play often, as players can attack you and steal all your blood even when your device is off.
In terms of graphics, there’s mostly just text and some icons that represent abilities and the like. The sound is minimal and is only heard after completing a few specific missions or after a battle. The real star here is the simple but surprisingly addictive gameplay. Give it a look, and if you like it, add me to your clan: JTMQW5.
JustMattPwn3r gave me the choices for this new poll weeks ago, but only now am I putting it up….
Same concept as the last poll. Whichever album gets the most votes, Matt will review. The only thing I am doing differently this time is not including the poll in the post where it is first revealed. Polls can only be displayed once on a page, and I would rather have it where more people can see it – the sidebar. Including the poll in the post prevents that from happening until enough new posts are published to push it into the second page.
This poll has been up for so long, everyone probably already knows the answer. But here’s the pie chart anyway:
First Place:
In the City (Kevin Rudolf) – 36%
Second Place:
The Battle of Los Angeles (Rage Against the Machine) – 27%
Third Place:
The Pick of Destiny (Tenacious D) – 18%
Fourth Place:
Appeal to Reason (Rise Against) – 9%
Graduation (Kanye West) – 9%
Fifth Place:
Lead Sails Paper Anchor (Atreyu) – 0%
Analysis:
The poll lasted so long because I waited for a clear winner to emerge, and that winner is the up-and-coming pop/rock musician Kevin Rudolf’s first album. I was honestly hoping for Lead Sails Paper Anchor to win, because I have a lengthly draft for that review written already, but unfortunately no one voted for it (maybe because they didn’t recognize the name?). So, I’m not setting a deadline for myself for when this In the City review will go up, but you can expect to see it sometime in the future.
Depending on who you talked to, there have been a lot of different opinions people have had going into Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. While many critics hated the first Transformers, the general public, ages 5-16, thought it was amazing. I myself thought the first Transformers film was good, but not entirely great. However, I went into the movie theater showing Transformers 2 last night not expecting a great movie like all the adolescent boys of America, nor expecting a similar film to the first one like the 35-40 year olds would say; no, I believed I was about to see a bad movie. Combined with less-than-desirable reviews and a long hate rant I heard on one of IGN.com’s “Three Red Lights” podcasts, my expectations were not set very high. Why did I bother going to see it? Why not – it’s always fun to go see movies at the theater. I’m probably lucky I set my expectations of Michael Bay’s second blockbuster about robots in disguise so low, because when I walked out of the theater two-and-a-half hours later, I was pleasantly surprised.
Now although I had a good time watching Revenge of the Fallen, the movie will not appeal to everyone – namely, those who expected a lot from it. One of the main problems with the film was that it could never really decide what to do. For example, the plot flew all over the place, introducing characters then leaving them for the rest of the movie, re-introducing minor characters throughout the movie without ever making the viewer care about them, and changing settings before you realized the setting had just been changed. Most of all, the movie could never really commit to either being a mindless summer blockbuster or an epic action classic, and as a result, it doesn’t work as either of those (the latter in particular). There’s definitely enough action to keep the ADD kids in your family happy, and thankfully the cameramen finally learned to zoom out a bit and stop shaking the camera so much during fight scenes – some of my biggest complaints towards the first Transformers. While there are some truly spectacular moments due to the excellent visual effects, sometimes there’s too much of the same going on and you zone out without realizing it. Some people might say, “You can never have too much action,” but I disagree.
If you thought the story in the first Transformers was hard to follow, then don’t even try to make heads or tails of Revenge of the Fallen’s convoluted plot. I saw the movie yesterday and can only recall the most basic of the plot points – a fragment of the AllSpark has transferred all its knowledge to Sam Witwicky (Shia LeBeouf) and now the evil Decepticons want to dissect his brain. Much dialogue is packed into this 150 minute film, and while the acting is adequate, it’s never enough to get you truly interested into the characters or their troubles, unlike last year’s incredible Dark Knight. Normally for an action movie with a forgettable story, I’d tell you to “turn off your brain” and just watch the explosions. But for a 150 minute story, that’s not the most enjoyable thing to do.
Even with these faults, Revenge of the Fallen is not the worst movie out there. It kept my attention for the first hour and a half or so, and for the last hour where I wasn’t quite as enthralled, I still wanted to keep watching. It’s obvious Michael Bay and his team wanted to make a better movie than the first Transformers. Their high ambition is clear in the outstanding sound and visual effects as well as the scope of the story. Although not all of the ambition pays off, enough of it does to make Revenge of the Fallen a better movie than the first, and an interesting, if not tiresome, action movie.
Pros: Incredible visual and audio effects, fight scenes between Transformers are much easier to follow than first movie, Megan Fox
Cons: Convoluted story that goes all over the place without actually going anywhere, characters are poorly developed, too long, a couple racist scenes, doesn’t have the quality to back up its high ambitions
… Of blogging on the iTouch. I noticed a free WordPress app on the iTunes store today, but when I tried to download it to my iTouch, it said I needed to have the 3.0 firmware upgrade. So far I’ve pretty much ignored the 3.0 upgrade, as it doesn’t appear to offer anything worth $10. And while I probably won’t spend the ten bucks just to get WordPress on my device, it’s got me wondering whether or not I might soon have to get 3.0 in order to get my apps running. I hope not… or if that does end up being the case, I just hope the price goes down. To nothing, preferably.
Yesterday I walked into a Best Buy without any intention of buying anything and left with a shiny new 16 GB iTouch. You see, my dad wanted to buy an iPod Nano for himself, but I suggested that I could sell him my Nano and upgrade to an iTouch for just $100.
So far I’m happy with my purchase. I’ve downloaded quite a few free apps and purchased an iTunes card at Walmart today so that I can get some of the cooler apps with price tags on them. For all of the $1 games I’ve been buying, I see reviews people have put up on the store talking about how angry they are about the current sale because they bought the game at $6-$10. It kind of makes me hesitate to spend more than a dollar on any app, because you never know when the price will suddenly drop. For example, the recently released Doom: Resurrection looks pretty cool, but there’s no way I’m going to spend $10 on it when it’s pretty much guaranteed to drop in price before too long. The only thing I wonder now is, “How low must an app price be before I consider it cheap enough to buy?” Not everything will drop to $1 eventually, so I suppose I just have to do some guesswork in terms of deciding when a price is right.
Also, I may be starting a Twitter account soon. How many of you readers have Twitter accounts? If a lot do, I might even consider starting a Frayed Wire Twitter page, but I probably won’t unless I know some people will be following it.
Being the gamer that I am, I’m sure I’ll be playing a lot of iTouch games and game trials, so look forward to a few iPhone/Touch game posts in the future. I’ve also found a lot of interesting apps, so I will probably talk about some of them too. In other words, a whole new side of Frayed Wire is soon to come!
If you think the site has been a little slow lately, that’s because I’ve been away on a camping vacation. I have a couple drafts (one in particular) that could be made into posts very soon, so be on the lookout for those. Gamingwise I’ve been playing a lot of demos lately and started The Sims 3, so you may hear something about those in the near future. Also, I already know what the next poll will be and will put that up soon. If you’re wondering why it has taken so long for me to put the current one to an end, it’s because no one album has come in first in the results for a very long time. Thankfully, that has changed, and I will now be writing an album review of In the City by Kevin Rudolf.
However, what I really want to do with Frayed Wire is update the archives page. Instead of having a bunch of boring text links take people to our many reviews, I want to be able to display the box art of whatever is being reviewed right next to the link, to catch people’s attention better.
One last thing – why were there more things on the sidebar when I came back from my vacation? I didn’t add them…. extra security measures have been put into place to prevent any trouble.
While I have always planned to write about the second map pack for Call of Duty: World at War, I didn’t originally plan to review it – rather, I was thinking of giving some impressions about the pack. But now that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time gunning people and zombies alike in the different locations it offers, I think a full, scored review is what I should write.
If you’re a big COD: WAW fan, you have probably already bought this map pack – unless you own the Wii version, in which case it’s about time you bought a real console (burn!). However, I’m sure there’s a few undecided people out there who can’t decide whether or not three maps and a Zombie level are worth ten dollars. And so, this review is for you guys.
I’ll start off with the three maps. Corrosion was the first one I played at, so why not start there? If you’re a fan of small, tightly packed areas like Dome, you’ll find plenty to like about Corrosion. There are few ways to enter the main building. While the doorways are the most conventional, they may not always be the best, as smart players can set up bouncing betties or camp right outside them. Luckily, an alternative entrance is available in the form of a pipe that leads up the side of the building and opens up to the second floor of the building. The second floor is little more than a walkway that can allow those standing on it a good angle to shoot enemies walking below, but it can also make you more vulnerable if you don’t watch all sides below. Out of the three maps, Corrosion is my favorite. I like how its small size means you can quickly find enemies, even if that also means I’ll be getting shot up a lot more often as well.
Sub Pens is a medium-sized map with both open areas for massive fire fights and smaller hallways allowing players to sneak up on each other. The main open area is smack dab in the middle, on a path that connects the two sides of the map. Both a parked airplane and docked submarine are located in the middle, and some cover can be found once you step inside the submarine and hide behind the walls. Inside the submarine is a great place for bouncing betties, but don’t be surprised if you get killed while trying to set one up. This map takes a little more strategy than Corrosion, but it’s still easy to rack up a high kill count if you know what you’re doing.
By far the largest map out of the three is Banzai, which is home to a large bridge and a stunning waterfall. It’s hard not to appreciate the beauty of the Japanese jungle, but it’s also hard not to get sniped by players sitting in one of the many ideal places for doing so. While laying at the end of the long central bridge can get skilled snipers a fair share of kills, it’s the river below the bridge and the caves behind the waterfall that offer the most interesting battlegrounds. I tend to rush into fights instead of taking my time, so as a result, I die a lot on this map. For those who don’t mind waiting a bit for their next target, Banzai is a decent place to practice long distance kills.
Watch the above video for some gameplay footage at Banzai and Corrosion
The Zombie mode of COD: WAW has gotten very popular since the time I first reviewed the game and noted that “this mode hasn’t really caught on with the general playerbase of COD: WAW.” Needless to say, if I reviewed the game today, I would not say anything like that at all. And so, because of the mode’s growing popularity, people have come to expect lots from each new Zombie map. Shi No Numa (or “Zombie Swamp”) delivers a noticeably different experience from the first two levels, which is exactly what it needed to keep Zombies feeling fresh.
The thing that sets Shi No Numa apart is the element of teamwork that is required to go far in it. Depending on whether or not you are working together with the other team members, Shi No Numa is either the hardest Zombie map or the easiest. The first few times I played Shi No Numa online with strangers, we didn’t get very far at all. It wasn’t until I went through it with some friends and used my headset that we were getting our game lengths to around half an hour every time.
Spending half an hour at one map may get tiresome and boring if you’re playing on either of the first two Zombie maps, but on Shi No Numa, there’s always somewhere new to go. This is due mostly in part to the fact that the mystery box changes locations much more frequently than on Zombie Verruckt. When a player opens the box and finds a teddy bear instead of a weapon, the box stops working and gets transported to a new spot. Most of time, this will cause the team of players to move to the next box location until a teddy is found again. As the match progresses, the box travels through each of the four huts that branch off from the main structure rising out of the Japanese swamp. These huts consist of a perk machine, a window or two in the back, and the main doorway in front where the majority of zombies pass through. With four players and a little communication, it’s not too hard to easily survive wave after wave if you assign two people to the front entrance and two to guard the back windows. Of course, it doesn’t stay easy forever; zombies get faster, tougher, and come in greater numbers as the rounds pass by. Occasionally, you’ll face an entire round of hell hounds. It’s essential to work with your team when they appear, or the overgrown zombie dogs will take you out in no time. The hell hound rounds are made a little easier with the addition of a new gun: the Wunderwaffe DG-2 (or, as many people online have come to call it, the “Waffle Maker”). This fictional weapon shoots a bolt of lighting that can destroy multiple targets in one shot. It’s a worthy addition, but I see people replace it often when they open up the mystery box looking for a new gun.
Achievements/trophies have finally been added to Zombie mode, and they can only be attained through Shi No Numa. Luckily most of them fall under the “you have to be good to get them” side of things, as opposed to challenges only deliberate farming would achieve. Maybe the “kill only one zombie with a nuke” achievement is a little in the farmable category, but the rest, which include “survive 15 rounds without going down once” and “have all four perks at one time” require some skill to get.
As happy as I am that there are now Zombie achievements, the few problems I have always had with COD: WAW’s Zombie mode remain unchanged: no XP of any sort can be earned through the mode, the game starts off way too slow, and there is no way to choose to start on a later round or retry a round once everyone goes down. I’d like to think those problems will get addressed in the next map pack, but in all likelihood that’s how it will always be.
That won’t stop me from wanting to buy the next map pack, however. If Treyarch continues to release DLC of this quality for COD: WAW, I’ll be happy to join the millions of others who will gladly pay for some more well-made maps.
Pros: Good variety of map sizes/play styles required for each, all three maps are graphically detailed and fun to play at, Shi No Numa adds an element of necessary teamwork to Zombies mode that hasn’t been seen before, new achievements
Cons: $10 seems a tad expensive, Banzai isn’t my favorite map in the world, Shi No Numa keeps all the nagging faults Zombie mode has always had
If you don’t understand what that thing is in the header, then you haven’t been following The Conduit, one of the most anticipated Wii titles in a long time. The release is almost upon us, so what better way to celebrate than with a header?
At Microsoft’s 2008 E3 press conference, one of the company’s main focuses was making the Xbox 360 into an all-purpose entertainment device, and one of the ways they were going to do so was with “Xbox Live Primetime”. Blurring the lines between television and video games, Primetime was an ambitious idea. Now, about a year later, the beta for 1 vs 100, the first of the Primetime titles, has opened to the public. The beta has been around for a few weeks now, and after several sessions with it I think I can write about it with some good insight.
Primetime games are only open to be played a handful of times each day. That not only gives them the feeling of a TV show, but it also makes sure that there won’t be any sessions without players. Each game of 1 vs 100 lasts for half an hour, with the next one usually starting soon after.
Every so often there is a game with a live host, and that one actually follows the real rules of the show. There is “the one”, “the mob”, and apparently real prizes given out. I’ve never played one of these games, so my beta impressions are limited to the general trivia sessions, which are much more common.
1 vs 100 is, at its heart, a simple trivia game. A question is given, three choices are shown, and points are awarded to those who answer correctly. Bonus points are awarded for speed in answering the questions, getting a streak of correct answers, and through the “mob knockout” after every question. The name “mob knockout” implies that some people will be eliminated, but the truth is that the people who answer the question wrong do not get the same bonus everyone who answered right get. The bonus is the percentage of incorrect answers out of the 100 real players, divided down into a more fair score.
Although there are 100 people in each game (multiple games go on at once to accommodate the thousands of players), you really only feel like you are playing against three others. Everyone who enters a game is put into a group of four, and during the half hour you can see their answers to the questions, their scores, and their avatar’s expressions. The game is fine when you are playing alone and get matched with three strangers, but the most fun I had with 1 vs 100 was when I was playing with my friends and we were all talking with each other.
The questions I’ve answered in the beta where well made. It’s clear they were written to challenge people (all the eight year olds playing Halo won’t want to bother trying), but more often than not there are obviously wrong answers to choose from to help struggling people out. Adults can enjoy the trivia just as much as high schoolers, which I’m glad to see.
There are a few things I don’t like about the game. First, the game could move at a little quicker pace. It’s fine now, but I don’t want to see the unintentionally laughable expressions of every avatar in my group after every question. Also, joining a friend’s match could be smoothed out a bit more. The biggest problem though, is the fact that there is no way you’ll win if you join a game part way through. Your opponents can rack up such a high score in just a few questions that anybody joining in after the game has begun has no hope of catching up. I don’t see how this problem can be fixed, so this will probably carry over into the final version. I guess people just have to make sure they start their game on time.
I think 1 vs 100 is a worthwhile beta that everyone with a gold Xbox Live membership should try out, and it’s got me looking forward to the next addition to Xbox Live Primetime’s lineup.
Josh60502:
Soul Calibur IV
Call of Duty: World at War
The Sims 3 BurningBaboon:
Profressor Layton & the Curious Village
Left 4 Dead
MadWorld JustMattPwn3r:
Shadow of the Colossus
Call of Duty: World at War
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
Spore RockingSpaz:
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Heroes 2
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (PSP)
NFL Street Vol. 3 (PSP)
Call of Duty: World at War Tamama:
Team Fortress 2
Left 4 Dead JoeWillBeatJohn:
Killzone 2
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
LittleBigPlanet
Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm
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