Hello all! (7 of my followers) I appreciate the time you take out of your day to see what it is that I have to say.
Anyway, It's been a while. I took a break from blogging because of finals. Now that its after finals and i'm on summer break I just took a break from everything and pretty much hung out at home and with friends.
Well let's get on to what this blog post is all about. A few days before my last day of finals I participated in a twitter contest and long story short I won a copy of inFAMOUS 2! The game arrived the night of my last final. So I celebrated by playing a new game.
Right off the bat what I noticed was the significant upgrade in graphics from part 1 to part 2. The game looks stunning. Also one thing I discovered early into the game was the variance in powers. For example, in the first game you only got one version of the electricity bolt but with upgraded strength. In the second you get a variety of electricity bolts. Like the old school one thats an adequate strength and speed, another thats a slower but stronger bolt, and another that shot a stream of bolts like a machine gun letting you pretty much spray and pray at enemies as well as a few more. Not to mention all of the other powers (R2, X, Square, Triangle, and the ionic abilities) that have different variations that can be easily swapped without slowing down the pace of the game. Powers can be accessed by a quick in quick out menu triggered by the left button on the D Pad.
I won't go too much into the story mainly because I have a tendency to give away too much as I talk about it. The main plot of the game though is Cole going to New Marais to get new powers that will help him defeat The Beast. Powers include upgrades as well as fire or ice depending on if Cole has good karma or bad karma or triggers a good or bad karma moment.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack for the game. I saw that it was being sold on the Playstation Store so I bought it through my PS3 and I listen to it regularly to add a bit of epicness to my everyday life. Kudos go out to
Jim Dooley
JD Mayer
Galactic
Brain and
The Black Heart Procession
all who contributed to the soundtrack for this game.
Oh almost forgot. The game has a custom level designer. I messed with it a bit but found myself struggling a bit in creating a level. I worked my way through creating a mission like making text pop up on the screen. People say things to Cole, adding waypoints for Cole, having friendlies follow him, and enemies attack him, but I could not for my life find out how to make the level end. One of the downfalls to this level creator is that there is no tutorial in game or even in the sleeve that comes with the game. The only thing I found in the sleeve that referenced the UGC missions was this "Green exclamation marks on Cole's map show UGC Mission start locations"
So yes a bit lacking on that part but all in all this is a fantastic game which left me feeling satisfied. I would have gladly paid retail price for it and in fact I was actually planning on doing so. I still have only beat the game on Hero and I hear that there is a different ending if you finish the game with the bad karma decision so i'll get to that as soon as I can.
One added bonus to getting this game was an early access beta code to The Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta. The beta launched this past week and had a bit of a bumpy start. Some people could download the beta but once they launched it they could not get online to actually play it. I was one of those people. But I just laid back and kept up with the twitter updates from Naughty Dog and Christophe Balestra to see the all clear call.
After playing the game for a short while I fell in love with the level Air Strip, the customization of characters and classes, as well as Uncharted TV that can be viewed in between matches and matchmaking. Of course the beta still has its faults and thats why its still in the closed beta stage. The players are supposed to call out issues and let the developers know so they can fix it before the game's launch.
I hope to mess about in this game a lot more and look forward to its release on November 1, 2011. Thanks for reading this brick wall of text and I hope to update this blog more frequently. Thanks again! ^_^