I don’t get the players half the time in this game anymore.  It seemed at the beginning that people played as a team, took the shots together and got the job done.  Now it seems that everyone wants to preserve their KDR and could give a shit about wins in both Conquest and Rush.  Panama Canal is a good example, you have 4 players on your team, you take a tank out and no one ever spawns in the tank, well that is unless you’re about to take a point and then it fills up and immediately empties when the point is taken.   Half the freakin’ team is snipers at this point in a lot of games that could care less if we take a point or not as long as they finish with a good score.   After the game they seem to pat themselves on the back as if they were the single thing that won a game and if not, it’s complete silence or “my team sucks”.

The game is set up so well for team play, unlike MW2, and yet they play it like MW2, forgetting that there is an objective to this game. that isn’t won by a KDR.  I’m only assuming, but thinking, that a lot of MW2 players have migrated as MW2 has grown old and they’re looking for something new to play and completely disregarding that THIS GAME is team and objective based.

Just getting really tired of joining a squad and finding that my 3 teammates are all snipers or like being a camping engineer with a Gustav.  I blame EA/DICE only for the freakin’ run and gun that seems to exist with the sniper kit.

[End Rant]

I finished up Half-Life 2, Episode 2 this past weekend and started on Wolfenstein.  I have to say that I’m impressed by it so far and surprised that it didn’t get much fanfare.  I’m probably 1/3 of the way through and I’ve had a lot of fun with the balance of Nazi and paranormal.  I remember 3D went straight from being a WWII shooter to weird crap and didn’t seem to teeter back and forth, where this has, at least better than it’s predecessor.   I just completed the Church mission and you keep rather busy, especially when you’re suppose to be looking for gold and intel.  I did well on the dig site but not so well with the church on getting the bonuses.  But that’s fine, I’m having fun with this game and while a few things irritate me (like losing gold/intel after dying) it’s been a lot more enjoyable than I thought and I wish I would have played it when it released.  I have a few vids that I’ll probably post at some point as well.  One of them was a quick run through using some of the veil powers and making quick time with the Nazi’s.

Until next time….

So I spoke too soon last night about BFBC2 needing a boost, this was announced a few hours ago on Facebook, however it appears the two staples didn’t get any love (Conquest, Rush):

Hi, Battlefield fans!

We have just released our sixth VIP Map Pack on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. This means that you now will have the chance to play Squad Deathmatches on one of my absolute favorite maps, Panama Canal. You also have the opportunity to engage in fierce Squad Rush fights on Laguna Presa.

As per usual, the VIP Map Pack is free for new game buyers. If you picked up the game used, you can get a VIP code either through the Playstation Store/Live Marketplace, or via the in-game store. For PC players, this new content is free for all.

To give you a glimpse of the new action that awaits, here is our freshly squeezed trailer for the Map Pack. Enjoy!

Finally took the time to finish this, actually started over from the beginning and finished it in under 6 hours.  Good game, short for the $20 I originally paid for not adding a MP component but Valve does a good job of updating other games without charging like TF2 so I consider it part of the deal.

The game itself wasn’t too bad, the Strider boss fight was a pain in the ass until I figured out that the best position was staying to the far right of the platform but even then you’re fighting your own stray rockets that seem to come back to bite you if fired while you’re too close to the cover.   Running the citizens was fun as well but Alyx got on my nerves telling me to get the next group over and over when I had combine on my ass leading them to her protected area.  What took the cake is her saying “we did it!” as you’re leaving at the end after she hid behind a barricade with a turret during the rescue and then again while you fought the Strider by your self!   All-in-all it was a fun add-on, will probably start and finish Episode 2 this weekend.

So I took down Crysis (somewhat) and HL2E1 this week and as I said, probably HL2E2 this weekend.  I think I’ll take a look at Doom 3 again after that.

A nice break from Bad Company 2, too much time playing lately with nothing really new other than a few map converts from one mode to the other.  I’ve even went back to Conquest recently for something new to do and my most hated map at release, Panama Canal, is now my favorite in that mode after learning it better and playing engineer.

How many times is this here?  So I hoped into a Battlefield Bad Company 2 server on Team Rush (my favorite…Panama Canal), revive someone almost immediately, set the charge, kill someone and boom… An error on PunkBuster B not getting a handshake.  Neat stuff.  So I do an update…. I have 7 games installed that use PB…. Do they use dial up for updates at PB?  These are relatively small files and it shows 10 minutes for the update!!! While updating, it hits Battlefield 2 and errors out that it can’t copy a file from the temp directory to Battlefield 2: error 3: the system cannot find the path specified, followed by error #0121: ERROR: Could not copy xxx to xxx during HTM conversion.  I don’t use UAC so it’s not that.  Good stuff, PunkBuster… You’re a quality company.

When I went out to download the latest version (I thought it took care of itself), it prompts me for a security verification code… Huh? To download a file?  Are there people fraudulently downloading PunkBuster?  The nerve of people!!  Or is it that they suck so bad that people were downloading it over and over as a manor of a DoS attack?  Who knows.  Of course the update for a full install of, what 5, 10 mb(?) is now 34 minutes.

So I decided to finish Crysis and had many issues along the way.  Understandably I’m running Windows 7, however the game had Vista support.  Since I’ve been running Windows 7 x64, I’ve ran flawlessly in terms of games outside of the initial issues with Battlefield, which always seem to exist on releases from Dice and they were clearly the issue of a game needing TLC from the developers.  However, with Crysis it seems to be bugs, as well.  I ran into turrets that wouldn’t fire properly (they’d stop, only fire once per click or not work at all) and then suddenly start working without issue.

There was one point where I saved the game while trying to take a boat with heli’s on my ass and I died in the boat, however, when I re-spawned they were on top of me and I died immediately every time I spawned…over and over and over again.  I got pissed, left the game to play something else and started the next night and viola, it was like it was the first time through, where the heavy fire was after I got into the boat and I made it after a few tries.  This occurred a few times including the game saving during a fight for some reason (reminded me of Men of Valor issues) and I died every time I spawned and had to go back and start over from the previous save.

I had a few lock ups here and there that reminded me of the old days of gaming where after a few hours of play, a game would crash.  This seemed to remedy itself when I restarted.  Finally tonight, I get to Reckoning, the final level, and the game started locking up again.  There’s a cut scene with the Admiral that requires you to knock down the door and head for the flight deck for the showdown.  First time through the flight deck door wouldn’t open so I restarted the last save and pressed space bar to get past the cut scene.  I kept locking up when I went out, so I restarted, rebooted and finally reloaded the previous save, which put me through the freakin’ cut scene again that I let play through since I thought that skipping it corrupted the last save game.  FINALLY!!  The game saved as I entered the flight deck door (that opened this time) and I was on to the finale, or so I thought.  I hit the flight deck and it crashed again.  I rebooted, turned off AA and got out on the flight deck, kicked some ass and boom…blue screen, which is where I draw the line.  I finished the game by watching it on YouTube after reading a lot of people having issues on Reckoning but most of the posts were from 2008 and even 2009.  I didn’t go far enough to see if anyone tried the game this year.

I can only hope that Warhead won’t be the same crap.