Critical Acclaim +: Open Mic

[Sly Reflex]

Call of Duty 4.

[DANGERMAN]

well it's certainly left a legacy

I've missed a few. Bubble Bobble always gets paired with Rainbow Island, and I prefer the latter. It was fine in its day though, I can't say I've been itching to go back to it.

Soul Reaver was awesome, like a few others said the acting was brilliant. When I went back to it a few years ago it felt very empty, huge, enormous rooms and open areas, if they were to ever remake it they would need to tighten things up. And the end, while exciting, was kind of bullshit, especially if you played Soul Reaver on the Dreamcast

[RoboticMonk3y]

call of duty 4?

yea, it's alright

shoot things, walk to the next section shoot things walk to the next section shoot things... and so on.

multiplayer was well polished and fun.

ticks all the boxes for an FPS war shooter...

[Craymen Edge]

CoD 4 is probably the most influential game this generation, certainly in terms of multiplayer with the progression, perks, etc. Horde mode from G's of W is the only thing I can think of coming close in terms of how it got put into everything.

I loved the stupid, bombastic campaign, which had some genuinely awesome memorable moments.

I also really enjoyed the multiplayer for several months playing as a team with various forum folks for hours and hours. It was also fun for a while laughing at the cretins in the lobbies trying to insult us, but eventually these toxic dickheads seemed to infect my regular team mates and it went from laughing at them to people throwing insults back, to some people preemptively being dicks to anyone who spoke up in the other side of the lobby. I went off it rapidly after that.

I played one more CoD after that (Modern Warfare 2) and then stopped. Having been in from the start with CoD 1 on PC, the fantastic CoD 2 and the rubbish CoD 3, then the 2 Modern Warfare games, I got what I needed from that franchise. I don't feel like I need to play any more.

[Sly Reflex]

Call of Duty 4 is a game of two halfs.

The good stuff is in the single player. The set pieces are brilliant, not so far fetched that they're unbelievable, but insane enough that you sit up and take notice. The way the game flits between different forces is admirable, I get really tired of playing as Americans in every fucking game ever, so getting to play as the SAS in a modern day setting was really nice. The level design around those British levels was unparalleled at the time too. I think we all have good memories of the first time we played All Ghillied Up. I mean, you didn't even use a gun for most of that level, You shoot a few guys at the start making your way to the objective but mostly it was you playing follow my leader, one of the few times in the series that the mechanic actually played to its strength. The game does have its faults, but they're easy to ignore. However, I don't really think they're acceptable mechanics to put in a game now. Six years have past and the series is still doing the exact same thing. It's the gaming equivalent of Peter Kay shouting "Garlic bread!" and expecting us to give a fuck.

The bad stuff. Multiplayer. Yeah, I'm going there. Again.

CoD supposedly revolutionised the online shooter. Except it didn't. It really didn't. It ripped off pretty much every game. The leveling up? Battlefield. The weapon customisation? Rainbow 6. Online lobby system? Halo 2. The level up bar at the bottom and the XP number popping up? World of Warcraft. Pretty much everything that the game is built on was ripped. The only thing I can think of that was introduced solely for this game was killstreaks, which is the dumbest thing I think I've ever seen in a player vs player game. I can see where the designers were coming from with the risk reward though, but the userbase totally fucked that idea in the arse. When you give people something like that, they're are going to go to lengths to get it, even if it means playing like complete pricks. The camping and kill whoring in this game is ridiculous, I've never played a game that devolved so much into the usual clusterfuck so often as CoD. Once one team manages to pull in front you are done, you're either going to win or lose. The killstreaks absolutely ruin the flow of the game.

The map designs are horrible. In a game where TDM is the main draw, both teams must have the same advantage/disadvantage. The amount of maps tailored to this style is pretty disgusting. Those that do exist are broken by killstreaks.

Killcam is the most infuriating thing ever. What you're doing between getting killed never matches. If you kill someone it doesn't look like what they were doing. Getting kills basically is a crapshoot, unless you happen upon someone who has their back turned.

The biggest thing that pisses me off about this game is the legacy it has left. It's completely homogenised the shooter genre. Everything has to have level ups. Everything has to have customisable classes. Everything has to have numbers popping up on screen every time you do something that warrants scoring. The horrible map design has bled into games that used to have excellent map design. It's got to the point that people that were fans of other games don't play those games anymore because they might as well be playing CoD. This leads me to the actual userbase that inhabit CoD. It's toxic. I've seen some pretty bad instances of communities in both Halo and Gears, but the people playing CoD take the biscuit. Their stupidity and hate knows no bounds.

Another legacy it's created is the gamer that doesn't know how to play anything else. When playing a game you know who the CoD gamers are, the camping cunts racking up kills but not actually doing anything useful. It's like they understand the concept of kills equals rewards but nothing else, anything more complex than that just washes over them. Having anything other than the objective 'kill' bores them. These people are zombies, zombies created by this very franchise.

As a whole I like CoD as a single player game, but I feel the series has done more damage than good overall due to the multiplayer part of it. It's caused some widespread dumbing down for the masses.

[HandsomeDead]

I'm not gonna lay the fault at the door of Call of Duty's bad design habits cropping up in other games. That is the result of a cowardly AAA industry as a whole and not Infinity Ward's fault. They just do what they do. The CoD crowed aren't seeping into other games but they are being convinced they can get the same kind of experience in these other games, where often it isn't that simple.

Call of Duty 4's single player campaign was something of a revelation. I'm fairly sure it still holds up now. It's about as good as it gets in the pop-and-shoot genre and paces itself well and interestingly, with the type of set-pieces that were big and brash at the time (not so much now) but they are still good in how well they fit the kind of game it is. It's like the game equivalent of the original Die Hard before they got increasingly dumber and noisier.

The Call of Duty gameplay is very simple and they peaked with CoD4. That's as good as that game is ever going to get and every follow up has just been the same game but not done as well (just going from MW2 and a few levels of BLOPS).

CoD4 is a decent action game... maybe even one of the best ones. Maybe the others are good if its your first CoD but I can't believe how long this series has gone on. It's not interesting enough to carry a series as big as it is. There is not enough meat in it.

Oh, the multiplayer. It just encourages a really selfish style of play and while I think the killstreaks were fairly well restrained in CoD4 they did get worse later on, turning into this very selfish meta-game. CoD4 was fast and simple fun that could get plain frustrating but fuck what it has turned in to.

[retroed]

One of the games of the generation. The MP is one of the best things I've ever played. I can't wait for Ghosts. Bite me!

[Sly Reflex]

Next up, the only Vita title to get on the list.

Gravity Rush.

[retroed]

This was excellent. I loved the world, and once I'd become accustomed to the controls I found it an absolute joy to play. A few of the later battles felt a bit awkward, but not enough to detract from the overall experience.

[spatular]

Yeah, great game, great graphics, nice story and something a bit new/different in the controls. I found the controls are mostly ace for moving around but did struggle a bit with some of the fighting. I sort of think it'd be better on a big console.

[Sly Reflex]

Gravity Rush is the only game on Vita that really stood out for me. It's one of those weird games that clicks once you get used to how it works. I'd love to see it on a a home console, but I'm not sure how the gyroscope stuff would translate.

Gitaroo Man is todays game.

[Sly Reflex]

I cannot contain my disappointment for lack of love for this game, I thought some would have posted by now.

As far as the gameplay goes I really have nothing to say, other than fuck that shark.

Stylistically and musically I think it's top drawer stuff. If I was a woman I'm pretty sure the acoustic Legendary Theme would make my pussy wet.

It's a shame it had catastrophic sales. I guess people don't want to play stuff like this when they can have all the boring shit that did really well on the PS2. Sometimes gamers disgust me.

[HandsomeDead]

I like Gitaroo Man as much as the next person who has played it. It has a great look, great music and is fun as any well made rhythm action game. I guess its because games like this aren't common so when I really good one comes along its clinged to with much love. You have Space Channel 5 and the Parapper/Lammy games and a bunch of stuff just made for Japan and that's about it. You don't see them now, at least not outside of the 3DS.

I wish I was better at it. I couldn't do the second level against the UFO when you unlock hard mode, and that's the true game. Hard as nails, it is.

[radiofloyd]

I really want to play Gitaroo Man, I'm sure I'll love it.

[spatular]

Awesome game, great music /graphics/mad story. The gameplay was great too, very manic, and I like manic. I think I need to go back and give it another go because even though I've played it on ps2 and psp, I'm not sure I ever tried it on hard mode. Was there a shark level, if so I remember that being really tough. Don't think it's quite up there with stuff like ouendan and rock band, but it's close.

[Sly Reflex]

Xenoblade Chronicles.

[radiofloyd]

I have to laugh when I hear Xenoblade Chronicles described as an inventive or forward-thinking rpg when really everything in it is as old as the hills.

But that's not even relevant, it's a beautiful game. From the moment I held the box in my hands I knew Xenoblade was the real deal. The title screen confimed it.

http://youtu.be/gfhom1H77Vo

If that doesn't encapsulate the heart of a jrpg then such a thing doesn't exist. For me the highlight of the game was the affinity system where you talked to people and learned about their changing relationships with other people, building up a sort of information web. And the dialogue had that effortless warmth and charm to it like the dialogue from games like Pokemon, Dragon Quest and the Mother series.

I suppose the real selling point of the game is the expansive evironments, and the frankly infinite number of things the game gives you to do at any one time. So I should mention those.

[Sly Reflex]

Can someone who's finished this game tell me in spoilers why the Monado is in the field in the title screen. I'm guessing something really cliche, but as I'm not going to get a chance to play the game I'd like to know.

[Bob]

I have to laugh when I hear Xenoblade Chronicles described as an inventive or forward-thinking rpg when really everything in it is as old as the hills.

I thought the same. Although my overall opinion is not nearly as positive as your own. I was just kind of bored by the whole experience. The affinity system looked really good but after 15 hours or so I had still only seen a couple of them. The rest would give me question marks and say I didn't have the right people. It felt very slow and I am sure if I had played it for another 15 hours everything would have been available for me to enjoy, but at the point I reached nothing was compelling me to go forward.

It does do some things very well. The ability to quick travel was nice and there were a huge amount of side quests to do if you enjoy that sort of thing. They all felt very lazy to me though and unless there was a quest marker or they involved killing things I would normally kill, I didn't bother. The quest markers seemed kind of half arsed as well. Only showing up when you got really close to someone so I spent most of the game looking at the mini map rather than the game screen, then when it was time to turn quests in it would be a case of scrolling through the list of characters for each town, finding where they live and then again, navigating by the mini-map until their marker appeared.

I didn't hate the game by any means and I will probably go back to it because the voice acting is lovely and the world is impressively vast.

[HandsomeDead]

Can someone who's finished this game tell me in spoilers why the Monado is in the field in the title screen. I'm guessing something really cliche, but as I'm not going to get a chance to play the game I'd like to know.

I'm not that sure to why it's in a field like that. Clearly, the field isn't on the Bionis which the game takes place on as you don't have those kinds of vistas in the game since it takes place on a creature. But I can see what it might allude to.

The ending is insane. At the end you find out that the game does take place in the real world. An experiment fucked up on a space station and it destroyed the Earth but left these two giant creatures: the Bionis and the Mechonis, and life evolved on each of them. What the Monado is, as well as a sword, is actually some kind of super USB stick from the space station with information on how to rebuild the world as it was. I think that's why it in a big field with an uninterrupted vista.

But as for Xenoblade Chronicles. I think it's damn awesome, and here's why.

It's just jam packed with great stuff. It plays like an MMO but you feel like you have more agency. When you play as Shulk it's all about positioning yourself in a way to inflict extra damage or status effects. It has all these systems like Break, Stagger... something that doesn't allow them to use attacks... the usual stuff, but it they are linked in a way that can be chained and planning out your move set across all characters, since combos can be spread across characters, is really fun, in a way. I think it's like Pokemon in that it's full of cool systems and maths, and its pretty deep. I really like what's under this game's bonnet. And every character plays a really different style. I loved Melia's wizard style of play and spent a chunk of the game as her. I wish I got better as Reyn's tank but weirdly I found him hardest to get my head around because there are so many systems involved.

But that's the boring stuff I suppose (it isn't) but I suppose the star of the show is the world. It's not so much the characters and story. The characters are damn adorable and would be considered naive if they didn't get everything so right and kick arse all the time but there is barely an arc to them; and the story is paced in such a way that you forget it's even there. You spend so much time exploring and doing the hundreds of side missions there are that main story beats can happen every four hours, or even longer apart if you did as much Monster Hunting and Things Finding as I did. That stuff is menial but I liked the combat so much and I liked wandering around this world so much I genuinely wanted to do all the side stuff.

But that world. It's awesome. While the characters don't really have an arc the Bionis and Mechonis kind of do. Finding out the truth about these weird creatures is where the heart of the game comes from. I couldn't help but be fascinated by what I was walking on and why the environments were what they were: why do these trees glow at night? how is this sea on top of a giant tree? why is this game so damn magical?

I have finished it but there are still parts of the map unexplored, guarded by hard level 90 bastards, and I can't wait to go back and looksy at what creatures, environments and things that are hiding behind them.

I love Xenoblade Chronicles. I love Xenoblade Chronicles like Icona Pop loves 'It'.