Destiny - Destined to be forgotten

The beautiful scenery of Destiny

I've never really liked MMO's. So I'm not even sure why I picked up Destiny. Well, that's not entirely true, I picked it up because I really like Halo, and I played Destiny at a friends and kind of liked the concept of it. The part I played was where I teamed up with two other players to take on a number of enemies and at the end one really big and bad one. It felt kinda Halo-ish, I really liked that and to be honest, there is nothing wrong with the gameplay as it is. I loved the tense and kinda hard boss-fight, where you always had to weight offence and defence. 

Okay, enough praise, because I later picked up Destiny, and played it for a while, but has as of now laid it to rest. Unfortunately it suffers from the classic MMO-problems, something that you who reads this might actually like, but that I just can't stand. The first thing is the horrible try to be a story driven game. No, what drives an MMO has always been the quest to get the best loot, and the best level, to build the best character. I would love a MMO to do story right, but as it is, it's amazingly sloppy, and if the story didn't exist, I might have had another drive of motivation, and not gotten tired of it so quickly.

"I demand trial by shooting aliens in the face!"

But as I mentioned last week, a story is nothing is it's not backed up by great gameplay, and in some respect Destiny has that, almost. There is the usual regenerating health/hiding behind cover/FPS gameplay that Bungie do so good, as they have proven with the Halo-series. And that's all fine and well, but when I am supposed to do the same thing hour after hour, with enemies that all kinda look the same, and can be defeated by the same tactic every time, the game becomes the biggest turn-off for me of MMO's. It succumbs to grinding to get bigger and better gear. As I mentioned earlier, this is what builds your character, the thing is that a character is more than just your level and your gear, it's personality, it's the ability to change the way you think of things and so much more. Gear and level leaves me with an empty shell, guided by Tyrion Lannister, but without any character himself, just another empty shell with a nice voice. 

And there you go, from one location to another (nice location mind), same thing all the time. Even the big guys starts to feel like the same fight over and over again. Couldn't the big bosses at least have some kind of variation on how to beat them, other than shoot at them until they stop moving and explode with loot all over the place. I want something new, I want the game to keep challenging me, not just throw more of the same enemies at me. 

As it is, Destiny is nothing for me, and maybe I'm being to hard saying it's destined to be forgotten, but I have a hard time seeing this holding up. With the kind of money it cost to make it might be remembered, but the game is a good weekend at best, but forgotten in the long run. I'm not going to play it at least, it doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, it's back to Gamestop with you.

Yeah, so, bloggin'

Yeah, so, I realize that I haven't been the most frequent blogger out there, and for that, I do apologize. But yesterday I got my egoboost and longing to blog, back again. It was my friend who told me in a text, that while he was taking a shit, he read an old issue of the swedish game magazine GameReactor, and apparently, one of tye first things I wrote, made it into the issue. So I decided to start again, because I'm just that good! (to be humble it apparently not my strong side...)

So what to expect? Well, I have aquired a WiiU, Halo 4, and is currenty paining my way through Final Fantasy XIII, and wow is it bad... Review coming up. I also find myself still playing a lot o Skyrim so, you will be sure to hear more of that.

Yesterday I was playing Halo 2 with a friend (trying to get through the other Halo-games before trying Halo 4) and this is my thoughts.

Halo 2 is epic, I love it. It was the first Halo-game I played and did play it a lot with my brother. We really did have a great time with it, but I have not played it since 2005, so I've a lot of remembering to do. It is great in all the ways that Halo is great. The epic storyline, the equally epic music, the tight controller, the awesome weapons and vehicles and of course the multiplayer, even though it never seemed to matter much to me. I just loved the singleplayer. So what's bad about Halo 2. Well, the game suffers from the same fault as the first Mass Effect does; if you die, the checkpoint is often way back, meaning you have to play a lot of things all over again. Not whole hours as in the title mentioned above, but still enough so that it irritates you. Otherwise, not to much bad to say about it, it still holds up great.

Gaming makes you violent! Right?

Gaming makes you violent, a statement that brings up anger and hate towards conservatism in many gamers, ironically enough. But are they that far off? I will once again start my brain to explore this statement and finally come to a conclusion to the question, does gaming make you violent?

First of all, why would gaming make you violent? The most obvious answer to that would be, if you see violence, you do violence, therefore conducting violence in a video game would make you prone to do the same in the real world. This would be quite true if it wasn't for a couple of things, that humans can see that there is a difference from the real world and the gaming world, and that we have something called a conscience. We don't do thing that would hurt people for real, because it's okay in the gaming world.

But most children doesn't have a conscience the same way that adults have. Some doesn't see their selfish acts until they're 12-13 years old. But there is, ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, a reason why most violent games are not supposed to be played by children under the age recommended on the cover. I believe that allowing a child of ten or twelve, or even older, play games like Grand Theft Auto or Gears of War, could be bad for them. I'm not saying that they will grow up to invent chainsaw machine-guns and go around shooting people, but I'm saying that they might grow up to think that violence born from hate is justified. If you hate someone enough, you are allowed to smack them in the face. I don't think that is a healthy attitude. Violence born from love, you love someone so much that you can't stand to see them beaten up, so you use violence not more than necessary, to get the beater away. To take someones life is never okay, but I'm getting of topic.

There is a saying that goes, that which your heart is filled with, comes out your mouth. If you love games, that you're going to talk a lot about games with your friends, same with everything, films, music, football or horses. if you are fed with violence all the time, you are going to be jaded from violence, the same way that if you eat raw fish all the time, you don't find it as disgusting as someone who has never done it, the same way that someone seeing blood at a hospital all the time is used to it, while one who doesn't might be chocked by it.

Recently, founder of id Software and creator of Doom and Quake, John Carmack, said that gaming does not make you violent, his evidence were that if you go to a gamers-convention, you are less likely to get beaten up than at a collage campus. He said that gaming rather reduces violent behavior. This is, as the statement gaming makes you violent, not entirely true. But there is some truth to it. I can only take myself as an example. When I was ten to twelve, I got bullied a lot, because I was very rewarding to bully, I got very angry and often hit people I couldn't handle. When I was in seventh grade I started to walk home from school after a day where I was angry and go and play super smash bros. I took out my aggression on the figures and my anger, not on my classmates that had hurt me. I started calm down, and is a calm person. Gaming helped me get my anger out. Then, if you do like I did, but start picturing your classmates as the ones you're beating up, that might actually fuel your anger, so there is always a difference in how you do things.

Now, nothing is set in stone, just because you shoot people in the face in halo, does it not mean that you are more likely to shoot people in the face for real, but somewhere we need to understand that what you see and experience affects you. I mean, how many of you weren't just a little hungry to start a underground fight club, where people could beat each other for fun, no hard feelings, when you saw Fight Club? Gaming in itself doesn't make you violence. It might help someone violent to become not so violent. It might help it to become more violent. But nothing of this can be blamed on games. Games are fun. Violent games are really fun. but as with everything else, don't let it take over your life. I wouldn't want to see you on the news.

Microsoft's E3 Press conference

These are my thoughts of Microsoft press conference on E3 today.

First of, we get a demo of Modern Warfare 3, not too surprising. I have never played the former MW-games before, but this makes me want to. The graphics looks great, the gameplay is great, the game looks all around great and you get some sort of a wow feeling about it all. I hope to play it when it comes out.

The second game is Tomb Raider. I just have to say, as great as the new Lara Croft looks (I love the makeovers characters known to the gaming world is getting) I can't help but think that she's really whiny in the trailer. Although I must say that I feel the pain she's having during the first couple of minutes of the demo. The game looks not that different than it's predecessors, if anything, it looks a bit messy. But who knows, lets hope that it's not.

At this point, Microsoft starts to talk about a lot of Xbox innovations for the Xbox 360 as a multimedia platform. Things like easy access via voice and the addition of Bing searching and YouTube. This looks really great and well done. They have accomplished what they wanted. But is it what we want? I for one wants games, and this takes up way too much of the time of the conference. This is what Microsoft has to conquer Nintendos Café, and it's not enough.

Next they show a new Ghost Recon with Kinect features. I have always been a bit sceptical against Kinect, it's a toy, not a tool for gaming. Ghost Recon does not help prove me wrong. It tries, but I still prefer a controller.

And then, Mass Effect 3, and this is just great. I longed of this game when I had played the second one, and this just makes me want it even more. They have added some Kinect voice features that some seem pointless, like choosing a dialogue in the dialogue tree by saying the phrase, but some seem kind of cool, like quickly ordering your teammates to do certain attacks by saying the name and the attack. The sixth of mars 2012 is the date to look for.

Next they show two games quickly following each other. Ryse, which is the new name of Codename: Kingdome. Now THIS is what I wanted Kinect to be used for. Slashing and defending with shields, like it's real. I'm really looking forward to knowing more about the game soon.

The other trailer was for Combat Evolved Halo: Anniversary. It's Halo with HD graphics. Nice!

Forza 4 was shown, nice graphics, but I can't really say m
uch else about it. Not a big fan of racing games so not something I will buy.

Next up is Fable: The Journey. Now, I love Fable, all three of them. And this seems to be a first person version of it, going on tracks and completely being steered with Kinect. It looks rubbish actually. The atmosphere is great and I'm interested in the story. But it's not a movie, it's a game, and I'm not sure if I'm going to like playing it. I can just hope, because I love Fable.

They also showed Gears of War 3, of course, looking as amazing as ever. This, I'm really looking forward to, and I hope for four player co-op. Hopefully we will get more information during the week.

After this, the conference cools of for me. They show a conversion of Minecraft to the Xbox that looks kind of cool. They show some games for the Kinect that are clearly kids games, like Disneyland adventures, which just makes me long for Kingdom Hearts III, and the Sesame Street game, that looks really bad. The only thing going for it is that it is made by double fine. Kinect Star Wars were also shown, but that also looks quite bad. Let's hope I'm wrong.

More for Kinect, Kinect Sports 2 and Dance central 2. I know that Harmonix knows what they're doing, so for people who like to dance, this is the game to play. Kinect Sports 2 is... well, Kinect Sports 2.

Kinect Fun Labs is a tool to do a lot of things with the Kinect, like building your avatar quickly without needing to flip through a bunch of menus, and such. It look kind of cool, but again, nothing really game related, just a customizing feature.

The presenter ends the conference by thanking everyone here and the room darkens for a last trailer... A new trilogy. The screen shows the cells of a body... The heart... We can hear a muffled voice... I becomes clearer... "Wake up John." Of course, it's Halo 4, once again with Master Chief and Cortana in the leading roles. I'm exited to see what 343 studios does with the popular series. I hope it's amazing, and I hope it's new and fresh, but still recognizable. The hype is bigger than ever, lets just hope anything can live up to it. We will see at the end of 2012.

To sum it up, Microsoft's E3 press conference 2011 was a dissapointment, and I don't see how Nintendo and Sony could not top it. With too much focus on the Kinect, the only things I went "awesome" at were Ryse and Halo 4. It's not good enough. In a few minutes we'll se how Sony does.