Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Dragon Age 2: My Review
Hello again everyone! Its been a little while since I posted something. The reason? I've been playing Dragon Age 2. So, its time to get down to it and give the game a review!
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Mini Review: Call of Duty Ghosts Nemesis Map Pack
Hey everyone, its that time again!
Another DLC for Call of Duty Ghosts has arrived. The Final DLC of the season, named Nemesis, touches down and brings back a few of my favorite things.
Here is a video of the official preview. You can also see this on the Call of Duty website.
So, as usual, this DLC adds four more maps to the multiplayer experience and the final chapter in Extinction. I doubt any more DLC comes out for Ghosts since the next Call of Duty game, Advanced Warfare, comes out in just a few months. However, with the recent move by Activision to add another developer into the Call of Duty rotation cycle, we just may see a little bit more for Ghosts. I will take a wait and see approach for that. Anyways, to the maps!
1. Dynasty
Dynasty allows for a combination of play styles. It has tons of close quarters space, a good amount of medium range area, and a little bit of long range areas as well. The setting is an Asian village. The map itself looks nice, and promotes run and gun classes with its alleys and buildings. However, in my time playing, I also noticed a good bit of shotgun camping in buildings or snipers camping whatever spots they could that let them see high traffic areas. The map brings back one of my favorite killstreaks from the past, the Harrier jet. While the first part of the Harrier streak, the airstrike, is not as effective on this map as it would be on an open map, the second part, where the plane hovers above and rains down death on enemies is very useful as the alleys have little to no cover and some angles let the plane kill people in buildings as well. All in all, this map is well designed.
2. Subzero
This map is a frozen Canadian submarine facility. The map itself looks very nice. On one side is a set of buildings that allow for close quarters and medium or long range combat. The outside part of the map does the same. However, while playing, I found that 95% of my games on the map tended to become people fighting over control of the buildings and staying inside. Snipers would guard entrances with great lines of site while close quarters team mates covered their backs. If a team does this efficiently enough, the other team is locked out and the game can become frustrating for the team not able to get a foothold. This map has a special killstreak reward as well. You basically call in a blizzard, and a few tornado like creatures that are part of the storm kills enemies. Seems like on this map the building is the preferred area to be, which is sad because the outside area is very nice and balanced to play on as well, but the building and its importance in being able to camp and rack up killstreaks overrides that.
3. Goldrush
Set in an abandoned goldmine, this map is very busy. It has multiple levels since you can go inside the mine, or above it. In the middle of the map, a lift moves up or down at random, providing or taking away advantages in firefights. Two mine carts move through the map. You can get into them. While playing, I have found that the carts offer no protection whatsoever to the player riding inside it. Even if you lay down in the cart, your feet or head are still visible and it is easy to be killed. Also, the map feels unbalanced in that one side starts on the high side of the map and the other on the low side. A team needs only to camp the high side decently well and the other team will be reduced to spawning down below, and will have to run to areas that have little to no cover from the high side of the map. You can flank around, but it is ridiculously hard to do against a decent team. While the point of most Call of Duty games is run and gun, its become harder and harder to make that work as efficiently as it did back in Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. So, personally, this map is my least favorite of all of them. Anyway, the map has a special killstreak reward. Basically, you get two or three wolves that run around and kill people. Basically they are slightly upgraded dogs. The killstreak doesn't usually last long as everyone knows they are coming and focuses on killing them as quickly as possible.
4. Showtime
Showtime is a remake of Call of Duty Modern Warfare's map Shipment. It is set here as a death arena where players duke it out for a crowd of people. It is an accurate remake, with the exception that Infinity Ward added an extra layer on the outside of the arena to make the map bigger. The map has multiple killstreak rewards, in the form of jackpot prizes. These can be deadly gas in the corners of the map, 4 sentry guns that rain death down upon the enemies all over the map, or a set of care packages (6-9 I think) dropping down into the arena for your team to grab. Usually these are really good care packages too. In multiple games I've seen the killstreak care package drop reward drop the other two jackpot prizes and things like Lokis, Heli Pilots, etc. If your team is on the other end of this, it makes for a bad day as there is literally no where to hide. The game play is just like shipment was; fast and hectic. While I don't do that well usually, (its really hard to do well unless you just get lucky in your spawn and how the enemy moves around) the map is fun. Easily my favorite map.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, the map pack is a good finishing job by the Infinity Ward team for Ghosts. While I severely dislike the map Goldrush, overall the other three maps more than make up for it. While I personally wish that one of the Call of Duty developers would take and remake all the maps for all the games into one big playlist, I know that they won't. So, we live with re-imagined remakes of previous maps. Spawns do not seem to be as big an issue in this map pack as they were the last one.
My score: 80/100.
Have fun all!
Another DLC for Call of Duty Ghosts has arrived. The Final DLC of the season, named Nemesis, touches down and brings back a few of my favorite things.
Here is a video of the official preview. You can also see this on the Call of Duty website.
So, as usual, this DLC adds four more maps to the multiplayer experience and the final chapter in Extinction. I doubt any more DLC comes out for Ghosts since the next Call of Duty game, Advanced Warfare, comes out in just a few months. However, with the recent move by Activision to add another developer into the Call of Duty rotation cycle, we just may see a little bit more for Ghosts. I will take a wait and see approach for that. Anyways, to the maps!
1. Dynasty
Dynasty allows for a combination of play styles. It has tons of close quarters space, a good amount of medium range area, and a little bit of long range areas as well. The setting is an Asian village. The map itself looks nice, and promotes run and gun classes with its alleys and buildings. However, in my time playing, I also noticed a good bit of shotgun camping in buildings or snipers camping whatever spots they could that let them see high traffic areas. The map brings back one of my favorite killstreaks from the past, the Harrier jet. While the first part of the Harrier streak, the airstrike, is not as effective on this map as it would be on an open map, the second part, where the plane hovers above and rains down death on enemies is very useful as the alleys have little to no cover and some angles let the plane kill people in buildings as well. All in all, this map is well designed.
2. Subzero
This map is a frozen Canadian submarine facility. The map itself looks very nice. On one side is a set of buildings that allow for close quarters and medium or long range combat. The outside part of the map does the same. However, while playing, I found that 95% of my games on the map tended to become people fighting over control of the buildings and staying inside. Snipers would guard entrances with great lines of site while close quarters team mates covered their backs. If a team does this efficiently enough, the other team is locked out and the game can become frustrating for the team not able to get a foothold. This map has a special killstreak reward as well. You basically call in a blizzard, and a few tornado like creatures that are part of the storm kills enemies. Seems like on this map the building is the preferred area to be, which is sad because the outside area is very nice and balanced to play on as well, but the building and its importance in being able to camp and rack up killstreaks overrides that.
3. Goldrush
Set in an abandoned goldmine, this map is very busy. It has multiple levels since you can go inside the mine, or above it. In the middle of the map, a lift moves up or down at random, providing or taking away advantages in firefights. Two mine carts move through the map. You can get into them. While playing, I have found that the carts offer no protection whatsoever to the player riding inside it. Even if you lay down in the cart, your feet or head are still visible and it is easy to be killed. Also, the map feels unbalanced in that one side starts on the high side of the map and the other on the low side. A team needs only to camp the high side decently well and the other team will be reduced to spawning down below, and will have to run to areas that have little to no cover from the high side of the map. You can flank around, but it is ridiculously hard to do against a decent team. While the point of most Call of Duty games is run and gun, its become harder and harder to make that work as efficiently as it did back in Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. So, personally, this map is my least favorite of all of them. Anyway, the map has a special killstreak reward. Basically, you get two or three wolves that run around and kill people. Basically they are slightly upgraded dogs. The killstreak doesn't usually last long as everyone knows they are coming and focuses on killing them as quickly as possible.
4. Showtime
Showtime is a remake of Call of Duty Modern Warfare's map Shipment. It is set here as a death arena where players duke it out for a crowd of people. It is an accurate remake, with the exception that Infinity Ward added an extra layer on the outside of the arena to make the map bigger. The map has multiple killstreak rewards, in the form of jackpot prizes. These can be deadly gas in the corners of the map, 4 sentry guns that rain death down upon the enemies all over the map, or a set of care packages (6-9 I think) dropping down into the arena for your team to grab. Usually these are really good care packages too. In multiple games I've seen the killstreak care package drop reward drop the other two jackpot prizes and things like Lokis, Heli Pilots, etc. If your team is on the other end of this, it makes for a bad day as there is literally no where to hide. The game play is just like shipment was; fast and hectic. While I don't do that well usually, (its really hard to do well unless you just get lucky in your spawn and how the enemy moves around) the map is fun. Easily my favorite map.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, the map pack is a good finishing job by the Infinity Ward team for Ghosts. While I severely dislike the map Goldrush, overall the other three maps more than make up for it. While I personally wish that one of the Call of Duty developers would take and remake all the maps for all the games into one big playlist, I know that they won't. So, we live with re-imagined remakes of previous maps. Spawns do not seem to be as big an issue in this map pack as they were the last one.
My score: 80/100.
Have fun all!
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