'What!? You're playing Black Ops II?' Yeah. That's right. What are you going to do about it? Leave a comment? Actually. Please do. That's always good.
Despite never venturing into the second Black Ops, and pretty much saying goodbye to Call of Duty completely after Modern Warfare 2, I fell into it this week. As you'd imagine it still has a huge following, and it's still filled with teenage boys calling each other '****s', 'f*******', and '***t***'. Their parents must be oh so proud...
Ultimately, I wanted to see how it would all pan out, because the last Treyarch game I played - Call of Duty 3 - pretty much ruined the entire franchise for me. As .'s own Steve Burns has heard on countless occasions, attempting to finish its campaign is the equivalent of trying to shoot through treacle. Everything moves so damn slowly. Following on from the awesome COD 2, this was an atrocity.
Black Ops is obviously the developer's high point, though - a series within a series it can now call its own. Unsurprisingly it's just more of the same nowadays, but I still have beef with its map design. They're just not all that memorable. Or fun. I realise I'm in the minority, but Infinity Ward - before it got butchered like a dead pig - crafted near perfection with Modern Warfare and what followed. Every match felt like a big competition.
Now it feels like a bit of a slog.
Dark Souls 2 can be an infuriating game. It’s made even more rage-inducing when you have to spend dozens of hours in every inch of the world to the point of memorisation so you can write guides.
I now have three different save files: one my own, the second to learn every nook and cranny and the other to learn the game as a mage. I’ve discovered that mages are at a severe disadvantage for much of the early parts of the game, the lack of the shield being a big factor.
I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been killed while frantically trying to scribble notes between fights in areas I wrongly assumed were safe. I fear my desk may be on the brink of collapse from the amount of times I’ve slammed my fist against it.
If you’ve fallen on hard times in Dark Souls 2, you can read the guides I’ve done here. I’ll continue to update the site with walkthroughs to more areas as I get through them. Stay tuned for Forest of the Fallen Giants and Cardinal Tower soon!
I can't help but feel as if Konami has been a little sneaky with this one, but if you've bought Ground Zeroes I'd be fascinated to hear what you think. One week on, do you already feel like you're done with it, or do you feel there's enough content here to justify its release? Has it got you excited for (or put you off) The Phantom Pain, and is Kiefer Sutherland really as good a Snake as David Hayter? Sound off in the comments below.
Boring! Yes, I'm still only playing FIFA 14. So, what? I enjoy it. Well, I enjoy it about 10 per cent of the time when I'm not losing terribly or spending hard-earned coins on awful player packs that churn out mediocre rubbish.
I did manage to get my hands on Pirlo from a pack, although his 86 rating is perhaps slightly generous given that he's slower than an obese pug. Still, he's now the highest rated player I've ever owned, and is currently playing in a midfield triangle with Gerrard and Isco.
You’ve changed man… I’ve been playing a lot of Resident Evil 6 this week, and I’m finding the mercenaries mode is tickling some primitive perfectionist node deep within my brainbox. It’s really quite immediately satisfying, even if it doesn’t really feel like Resi in the classical sense.
Speaking of which, would it be safe to just properly chuck Resi out of the horror-genre clubhouse now?
Sure, genres are an imperfect, ephemeral concept, and the definition of any given genre is in a constant state of flux, but I german suplexed a zombie last night. I’m not saying that earlier Resident Evils were perfect examples of the survival-horror genre, or that there’s nothing left of the old Resi in RE6’s genome, but if a new film in the Alien franchise came out that featured Ripley whacking the sharpshooter on a facehugger, we’d probably agree that the franchise had made something of an inter-genre transition.
I mean, I’m running around in Mercenaries mode with Leon in a pirate costume, action sliding past walking corpses and bayoneting dogs. It’s as much about body slams and three-punch combos as it is about carefully placed headshots to conserve ammo now. It ain’t bad but it ain’t horror.
It’s like bumping into an old acquaintance who was always quietly intense at school and used to read Catcher In The Rye on his lunchbreak, only now he’s in a Walkabout doing a Jaeger Train with some rugby friends.
It’s weird at first, but if you can learn to accept him for what he’s become you might find he’s a right proper laugh.
So here’s my conclusion: Resident Evil 6 is the greatest wrestling game since No Mercy on the N64, and a perfectly decent dog-murder sim to boot.
What have I been playing this week? FIFA 14 on PS4, of course, where my front four of Ibra, Lewendowski, Reus and Jonathan Dos Santos are laying waste to everyone in my path. I've also been playing Watching Netflix On My PS4, which is probably the best 'game' on the system.
Oh, and Dark Souls.
