R.U.S.E. Beta

A few weeks ago, the R.U.S.E. Beta opened up to everyone on Steam. Knowing nothing about it, I decided to jump right into it.

R.U.S.E. (and I have no idea what R.U.S.E. is an acronym for) is an RTS game set in WW2. In the same vein of EndWar, R.U.S.E. tries to add a new spin on the RTS genre. R.U.S.E.'s big spin on the genre is the ability and emphasis on tricking your opponent. In R.U.S.E. you have the power to fool your opponent with ruse cards. You get two at the start of each round and another about every 5 minutes. You can do things like hide your base, or your troops, or send fake units to attack them. That's all fine and dandy but Ruse also sets their maps on a war room board in a different environment. Sometimes it's a bombed out building, other times it's an actual war room. They say they did this because now they can have bigger maps than other RTS games. I'm not too sure about that, but it is interesting to zoom out and see what the war room looks like for a few seconds until you start to realize the enemy is sending a shitload of paratroopers to take over your base.

RTS games aren't my thing, but I can tell that this isn't that special.

Since it's beta, there's not too much that I can be truly mad at the people for, because it isn't done. Sure, the whole ruse thing is neat, it just isn't that new or amazing. Tricking your opponent has been a tactic in RTS games for a while now. Building a bunch of Black Hands or something to go attack your opponents teammate while you send the actual army of tanks and shit has been my tactic for a while. Sure it hasn't worked. Apparently my idea of an army of tanks would be like 20 of the lowest ranked tanks, but still. It's an average RTS game, but by opening the beta to everyone on Steam, they reached out to the crowd of people who never play RTS games, and they're going to get them to play and buy.

Tricky.

Army of Two: The 40th Day

A long time ago, when Army of Two first came out, I decided to play through it with my brother. After about 4 levels, we forgot about it until a few days after The 40th Day came out. It was a fun game. Just a bit annoying and stupid. Now, The 40th Day decided that annoying the fuck out of us was an integral part of the game and decided to amplify it to the extreme.

You know, I love co-op games. Making on the spot plans with a buddy is awesome. That's why I enjoy tactical multiplayer games. What ever happened to those days? These games are going down the shitter because people feel the need to make them overly complicated. The basics are basics because they were simple and good. Now, things like split screening seem to be so fucking hard to do. Resident Evil 5 decided to fall into this category of shit split screening. Their idea of a split screen meant that they shouldn't just have it split off in the middle with both people having widescreen top and bottom respectively. No, they thought it'd be a good idea to make it widescreen, but be fucking broken off from each other and have huge black bars on the sides of each of the screens. One takes the top right and another takes the bottom left. The fuck is their problem? Couldn't find a place for the radar? Fuck you, put the radar on each one of the people's screens and have it where you cut out everything when you made it retarded.

Army of Two: The 40th Day decided that they loved the idea of failure even more than just making the game annoying. No, they had to make it so that it's hard to see too. The Split Screen is vertical. VERTICAL. Are you fucking kidding me? I have to make it 4:3 in SD to get widescreen. I don't give a shit about your 'vertical elements', at least give me the option to make it widescreen in HD. Assholes. Do you know why 16:9 is better? It's a physical reason. Have you looked at how human's eyes are placed? They're placed horizontally. Our main field of view is left to right, not up and down. You should notice how it's easier to look left to right than up and down.

Anyway, AoT:40D is just as annoying as the first one was, just this time they made it so that it's hard to see though. I've barely played the game because it pisses me off so much.

Call of Duty: World at War

The other day I bought 'Call of Duty: World at War' for Nazi Zombies. The regular game is pretty good but I've played wayyy too many WW2 games. Seems as though a lot of people who play this haven't.

I tend to hate all of these gamers who are new to FPS games. It's not that they suck, or that they only play them on consoles (which can also make me mad), but it's because they are so annoying. These FPS game noobs always think that they are awesome, and they've played a lot of FPS games. These people played Halo 2 as their first game and think that they've played a lot of FPS games since then should be slapped. I was saddened when I was talking to my friend who was just born a year or two after me to call himself a 'hardcore' gamer. He says his favorite genre is shooters and his first game was Halo. He only plays on consoles, and he's never even played the classic games that define today's shooters. He hasn't played any of the Dooms, Duke Nukems, Quakes, Medal of Honors, early Call of Duty, Counter Strikes, Half-Lifes, Battlefields, Serious Sams, etc. If it's a 3D FPS, and you can't iron sight aim with it, he hasn't played it. He thinks that he's a 'hardcore' gamer just because he dedicates 12 hours a week to gaming. Fuck him. I play a lot longer each week than he does in a month. He thinks he's a 'hardcore' gamer because he's been playing games since Halo. Fuck him. I've played games since Duke Nukem 3D came out. I've played Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project, Dooms, Serious Sams 1 and 2, Battlefield 2, Quakes, Counter-Strike: Source, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the first Medal of Honor, and many many others. Still, he calls himself 'hardcore'. I don't even consider myself 'hardcore'. I just call myself a gamer.

Anyway, World at War is pretty good. At least Nazi Zombies is. I've played like 3/4s of the way through of the Single Player though. Still, I think that it is pretty good, and that Treyarch made something half decent that nobody else had done. At least with Nazi Zombies. There's only so much WW2 you can do. I think it's been long enough for another Omaha Beach level. Mohaa had a Omaha beach level ripped straight from Saving Private Ryan and it was bad ass.