Last week, our beloved botanical shooter Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare cropped up with the Garden Variety Pack, a FREE DLC that features various new additions, including: a new objective-based game mode called “Gnome Bomb”, the medium-sized map “Chomp Town”, new character abilities, and a handful of character customizations. Check out my recent video for my impressions of the Gnome Bomb game mode, and be sure to sub to my YouTube channel for more PvZ: Garden Warfare content!
Also, a special thanks goes out to Machinima Insider for tweeting my video. Thanks for watching! 🙂
Hello Strangers! So you know how I said I was going to start blogging more regularly? Well looks like I FAILED in that department once again. So here I am, playing catch-up. But really, this post has been on the horizon all along. Since Call of Duty: Ghosts was released about two weeks ago, I have been planning on making a post about the game ever since. I just haven’t felt the desire or motivation to type up a post about a gaming goliath that everybody and their grandmas already know about (that, and I’m a lazy wadbag most of the time). Nonetheless, the post is here…the obligatory OMG-hey-Ghosts-is-out-and-stuff blog post is finally up for your viewing pleasure.
What is there to say about Ghosts? The game’s positive attributes are overwhelmingly overshadowed by it’s glaring faults, and yet people always seem to push through the frustrations and come back to the game day after day. And much to my chagrin, I fall into that camp myself, with the hope that I can overcome those frustrations as well. Reload, rinse, repeat…just as any addictive arcade-style game gets us to do. However, I do think that this will be the last CoD title that I plan on getting. I used to love playing CoD, but the accrual of disappointments over the years has weathered my interest in the game. Ultimately, it is just another Call of Duty game, lacking in spectacular innovation and yet capable of maintaining a devoted fanbase. But did you really expect anything else?
I have linked some of my recent Call of Duty:Ghosts videos from my YouTube channel, the first of which adequately sums up my sentiments toward the game and it’s multiplayer. Although Ghosts has been out for a couple weeks, my like/hate relationship with it has remained fairly steady. I have been livestreaming the multiplayer once a week since my 8-hour livestream (I know, right?) on launch day, so feel free to partake in some of the live rage shenanigans by clicking here.
Thanks for reading this post, by the way. I do appreciate the eyes that make it to my small ramblings. 🙂
I just finished my playthrough of The Wolf Among Us Episode 1: Faith, and I am fairly satisfied so far. This is the latest creation from Telltale Games, the same devs who brought us the Walking Dead game (the good one…not that other garbage excuse for a shooter). The Wolf Among Us is based off of the Fables comics by Bill Willingham, so TTG’s signature graphic novel style fits well with this narrative.
The Fables series deals with familiar fairytale creatures called “Fables” that most of us have grown up with through common folklore. When the Fables are exiled from their Homelands, they find their way to our world and set up camp in New York, creating a secret community called Fabletown. The animal and monster-like Fables must use a magical concoction called Glamour to keep their identities hidden from us humans (aka “mundies”). Those who can’t afford Glamour must stay at a restrictive community called “the Farm” in upstate New York, but some have managed to sneak back to Fabletown, Glamour-free.
The Wolf Among Us is a prequel to the events in Fables, so you don’t need to have read the comics to get into this game. You play as Bigby Wolf (formerly the Big Bad Wolf), the town sheriff who must protect the citizens of Fabletown from one another. In Episode one, Bigby is thrust into a murder investigation with Snow White as news of a murder is brought quite literally to his doorstep.
So far, I am enjoying The Wolf Among Us. It’s basically an interactive graphic novel with a few QTE’s here and there, so the gameplay isn’t anything terribly complicated. But the game is meant to immerse you into the story rather than test your skills on the sticks. That being said, the core mechanic of the game is centered around player choice, so my experience of the story and characters may differ from your playthrough depending on the choices we both make. However, it seems that the ending of the episode will play out the same way regardless of the approach you take, so it really presents more of the illusion of choice than actual choices with separate outcomes. Nevertheless, I am willing to bust out a few QTE’s and make some arbitrary decisions if it means I am presented with a quality narrative experience, which so far seems to be the case.
I did experience some lag & framerate drops that occurred inconveniently during several good fight scenes, which is unfortunate because a narrative heavy, noire-style game can’t really afford to screw up the few action scenes it has. Also, the game suffers from some ridiculously looong load times while transitioning between scenes. Some load screens took so long that I thought my console had froze! I’m not sure if these issues occur for everyone, so feel free to verify for me.
I do have to say that I love Bigby’s voice…Adam Harrington gave a great VO performance as usual. I really kinda wish that I had an awesome, gruff voice like Harrington’s, or even a deep voice like Benedict Cumberbatch (a name that makes me giggle for some reason). I know they’re man-voices, but just imagine if I could switch between my squirly girl voice to a deep, dark, grumbly-ass man voice like theirs. How fucking AWESOME would that be??? I’d be a super versatile voice actor too. Hell yes! Sign me up.
*AHEM* Where was I? Oh yes, the game.
The Wolf Among Us has five episodes total, and each will be released probably every month or so, like how they released the Walking Dead game. You can buy episode one for about $5, or save money by getting all five episodes at once. Episode One is out now on XBOX 360, PS3, and Steam. If you don’t want to pick up the game for yourself, feel free to watch my playthrough of episode one, or at least humor me by giving the videos a “like”. 😉
I’ve provided Part 1 below for your viewing convenience. Enjoy! <333
Alas, another well-crafted TV show has come to a close. I’m not going to spoil anything here for those of you who are still plugging away at the episodes. However, I do have to commend Vince Gilligan for making a ‘finite’ show. There’s nothing wrong with a long-running TV series, but all too often I find TV shows that draaaaag onnnn with no end in sight, lacking a cohesive plot structure to guide the way (I’m looking at you, LOST). There’s an abundance of shows that would be better off wrapping up their seasons instead of renewing contracts. Luckily, Gilligan intended for Breaking Bad to be a finite show from the start. And, like turning the last page of a riveting novel, the end of Breaking Bad has left me feeling fulfilled, with a dash of melancholy. Even though I will miss seeing new episodes, I am happy to have experienced Walter White’s journey. A show like this deserved a good ending, and I couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying conclusion.
I stumbled across a fan-made Breaking Bad flash game that was released a couple weeks ago, and I decided to post some of my gameplay as a lighthearted tribute to the series finale. The controls aren’t the best, but it’s still fun and a bit addicting, as most 2D side-scrollers are.
I also found an updated infographic depicting the total death toll accrued throughout the series, and I thought you Breaking Bad fans might enjoy it if you haven’t seen it already.
StrangeLuv Gaming 