To Blog or not to Blog?

I've been wondering if I should start a public blog that concentrates on Videogames in its every aspect: as entertainment, art medium, business model, the industry, influences, etc.  If I were to start one, who would read it?  There's already hundreds of blogs dedicated to videogames already.  The difference would be that the blog would have my own opinions and insights to them.  But it also arises the question of "who cares?"  It's a troubling debate, but I believe it would be a good way for me to continue improving my writing and prevent it from deteriorating from not being in school and from my unstructured writing here on this blog.  It might also help me get a job as a game reviewer?  Not sure, but I write so much on videogames that I feel I should start that new blog.

Medal of Honor didn't receive as grand of a review from critics and gamers as EA had hoped and landed an average of 7/10 on all 3 platforms (PS3, Xbox360, PC).  The many trolls, haters, and fanboys had downgraded MoH by comparing it to the upcoming Call of Duty and past Modern Warfare games.  I haven't gotten a chance to buy the game and play it myself, but this is what I think from the open beta:

[Medal of Honor - Electronic Arts - PC Open Beta]

The game blew away all expectations I had on this game.  The graphics are amazing, the environment immerses the player into the situation with realistic sounds, smooth gameplay, and unique multiplayer experience.  The multiplayer is fast-paced, but is very team orientated.  This is both refreshing and the bane to the experience.  The gameplay demands that you work cooperatively with your team mates in order to fulfill the objectives.  Most all First-Person Shooters do not have this element within their multiplayer, despite it being a team-based game.  Even in Modern Warfare 1 & 2, people will most likely run off on their own to get kills and brag about how they had to carry the team without working with the team to capture points.  Well, in MoH you have to work with your team if you even WANT to get kills because of the way the level was designed.

This can also be a problem.  The level is designed so that there are very few options of which path to take and it can be very open ranged.  So if the opposing team played the game enough and memorized the spawn locations, it's possible to fall into a infinite loop of spawn kills.  This happened a few times when I played, and I could not do anything about it.  It also doesn't help if your team goes off on their own and keep getting killed.  When I'm playing a good game, the team is in a line pushing forward carefully and strategically.  When both teams are playing well with their team mates and there isn't server lag, the experience can be more exhilarating than many other FPS games out there.  Besides lag, poor design choices for spawning, and the reliance on good team work, the biggest complaint I would have on the multiplayer for MoH would be the limited amount of customization the game allows the player to work with.  I think I mentioned it before in the last post, but there's only 3 classes with only 8 levels on each class making a total of 24 customizable parts and weapons.  Compared Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the amount of content is very shallow and kills a bit of the replay value from the multiplayer.  Many gamers have expressed their hatred of EA copying CoD:MW2 in MoH.  Well after playing the game, I can't say I agree.  The gameplay feels distinctively different from MW2 as strategies change and gameplay is utilized differently during a fire-fight.  In MW2, you want to keep moving and press on forward.  In MoH, players will take cues from their team mates when to move up, when to support, when to cover, when to attack, etc.

Because I haven't played the actual game yet, I can't give a concrete score or opinion of the entire game.  But given the chance to play open beta multiplayer, I will possibly buy the game in the future because of how impressive the experience was.

You can check the critic reviews at Metacritic.com.

Anyways, I've been reading news a lot more recently.  Sure over 75% of those news are related to videogames, but it's a chance for me to learn more about the industry.  The amount of changes and the pace the world moves at shows the prevalent evolution of technology and modern living (or at least the deterioration of our lives).  Some quick news:

-Vindictus went Open Beta today.  Sucks I don't have enough Hard drive space for it.

-Dynasty Warriors Online goes Closed Beta tomorrow.  I already downloaded it.

-DotA 2 officially announced by Valve:

Need I say more?  I found it funny and strange right from the beginning when they copyrighted the term "Dota" just recently.  Pendragon and Guinsoo (who worked on DotA and then went to Riot Games to work on League of Legends) expressed their concern over the copyright and how it might affect the community.  I understand what they're saying and how it might affect the modding community of DotA, but perhaps it's time for DotA to evolve.  Valve is well known for embracing the modding community and bringing those games to greater heights, making them better (Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat, Killing Floor, etc.).  Along with bringing all the original 100+ Characters from DotA, the game will be enhanced and the limitations of the Warcraft 3 editor will be taken off as Icefrog (one of the original developers of DotA and work on Heroes of Newerth) now has the resources and know-how to create the dream creation of DotA he had always hoped for.  I hope I can one day do something of that nature and lead a game project of my own.

That's about it for short news I think...I read an article about story writing in videogames!

While reading through comments about the issue of Valve's copyright over the term "Dota,"  I found out about two games:

[Gang Garrison 2 - 2D online version of Team Fortress 2]

The gameplay is similar to games like Soldat, Gunster: Rain of Bullets, and Booster Trooper.  I downloaded it, but I haven't had the chance to try it yet.

[Monday Night Combat - Xbox Live Arcade Game]

It's supposed to be a word play on Monday Night "Football" where the game scenario is like a sports game in a futuristic, Team Fortress 2-like setting with influences from DotA where the two lanes of computer AI attacks the other side with players attacking the other team while defending their main base using towers.  So it's a mix of Team Fortress 2 and DotA.  I gotta say that it caught my attention, but too bad it's not on PC.  I'd probably buy it if it was, haha.

Lastly, despite the arguments between Infinity Ward and Activision and the rivalry between EA's Medal of Honor with Activision's Call of Duty, Call of Duty: Black Ops certainly looks impressive and is a step up from Treyarch's last CoD: World at War.

The graphics look so clean and slick!  The customization is limitless, even compared to Modern Warfare 2.  I'm going to have to resist buying it though since I already have a large amount of FPS games within my library of games.  As someone who's going into the industry, I should really balance myself and play a wide range of genres (which means I should really play those PS2, Gamecube, Wii, PSP, DS, and PC games that are just sitting there untouched...).

I've been overworking so much that I end projects and work at 10PM or later now.  I'm about to do some drawing right now too since I didn't the past 2 nights.  I know I can't do everything, but I would really like to.  Doing my best then, now, and in the future.

Beta beta beta beta beta~

I had an okay weekend I guess.  I spent most of Saturday playing piano and beta testing Legend of Edda in its closed beta.  Sunday (yesterday) I spent about 2.5 hours playing violin and guitar and then spent the rest of the day beta testing Kitsu Saga from Aeriagames.  After that, I did some game hopping.  I'm not sure if its an actual term, if not, I invented a new term!  Dahahaha~  Anyways, it's the act of jumping from one game to another in small durations so that one can play various games in a short span of time.  It also shows will power if you can pull yourself away from one thing to go to another.  So, I think it went something like: Team Fortress 2 (PC), Beat Hazard (PC), Trine (PC), Global Agenda (PC), Mount & Blade (PC), Cabal Online (PC), Sega Superstar Tennis (PS3), Demon's Souls (PS3), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (PS3).  I think that's the best game hopping in terms of quantity I had.  And yes, I enjoyed it.  I got something out of every one of those games (well, maybe except Mount & Blade because all I got were extra items...).

Anyways, it's a new week and I'm planning it out as I go along kind of.  I might skip finishing a game this week in order to devote time into beta testing Medal of Honor and work on a music project I have in mind.  I haven't much got to do what I wanted to set out for post graduation, and so I thought I'd start doing some of that now.  I've also noticed how much I written about videogames and have been considering doing an actual public blog to share with the gaming community.  We'll see.  I'm also debating whether I should do some open beta testing for CosmicBreak since it's back up for a 2nd round.  I enjoy that game and am considering to play that game for real and devote some time into it.  I don't think I've devoted as much time to any game lately as much as I have for Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends, both which have over 100+ hours of gameplay logged in.  I've been trying to log more hours into Global Agenda since I haven't really played it since I've bought it.  It's a shame that I don't since it's a fun game.

Here are some quick comments on recent betas:

[Legend of Edda - CampusGames]

The voice-over is kept in its original Korean language, which I don't mind and am kind of glad for.  The game is pretty straight-forward in terms of typical MMORPG elements.  You are sent somewhere, you get a quest to kill x amount of enemies and then you turn it in.  There are six classes to choose from, and you get one of the skills right from the start.  The graphics are adorable and the environment is very clean (meaning it's not cluttered and hard to get around).  It bothers me a little that the camera is fixed, but it's not that big of a problem.  Honestly, it's not a game I'd want to really log in hours to.  The fact that I've played over 30 Point-n-Click MMORPGs makes me more picky on which ones are good and which ones feel more desirable to play for long durations.  If you've never played an MMORPG or want some type of time killer, then it's worth a try when it's out of beta.  The quality of the game is nice though.

[Kitsu Saga - AeriaGames]

Had to do some research, but found out that this game was developed in Taipei, Taiwan and a lot of the text still has grammatical errors, coding errors on names, and some text is still in Chinese.  A lot of the games that come from China have been kind of "ho-hum," cookie-cutter, boring with good ideas.  The number one common issue I have with Chinese developed MMORPGs is that there is an incredible amount of walking an each one.  Not so with Kitsu Saga.  The places are close by, the story progresses smoothly, and battles don't take forever (seriously, Legendary Champions takes 2-3 minutes for one enemy to die...)  Something that bothers me specifically in this game is that the labels of names of your character, players, NPCs and enemies are huge!  They take up so much screen space that I can hardly find my way around.  I'll be sending that in to Aeriagames and see if they'll do anything about it.  I do like how in Kitsu Saga, and many other Chinese MMORPGs, how there is a auto-routing mechanic that allows the player to click on the destination name or person they need to speak to and the character will find that place.  I spent much more time on this game than I did for Legend of Edda.  It takes some time to really get into the game's core combat system when you choose a clan and is given abilities that can fight multiple enemies at the same time.  The quality of the game is poor, but the gameplay is interesting.  I may beta test it longer, but I don't think I'll be playing the actual game.

[Cosmicbreak - Cyberstep]

Back up with its 2nd open beta in the process, Cosmicbreak provides all that's fun in an MMO and allows the players to do them fairly quickly.  Instances, PvP, FvF, PvE, Quests and such can be started remotely from the main city or by walking to a certain area.  The RPG is action based is reminds me of games like Virtual-On and Exteel, both which I really liked.  The game is fast paced, the PvP is exciting, and the boss battles are large scale and intense.  The voices are kept in its original Japanese language, and I think it fills a certain atmosphere into the game that makes it feel right.  Oh, and the game doesn't take up that much hard drive.  It's less than 1 GB worth of memory.  Lots of customization, lots of characters to use at the same time, no grinding, levels between players don't mean as much as the team-work and skill it takes to pvp, and clean graphics makes this at least a must try.  I'm gonna continue playing it when it launches.

[Medal of Honor - Electronic Arts]

I'm about to try it right after this blog post.  It's open beta from today till friday.  I didn't care much about this game, but the more I see footages of it, the better it keeps getting.  I just hope the gameplay is just as good.

[Nucleon - Team Awesome Fabulous]

What's this you say?  Why it's one of the games that spawned from the Week-Long competition I hosted in the videogame development club!  I also did the music composition and sound effects for it.  We're practically done with beta and planning to publish it this Friday (I hope).  I'll finally have a published game under my name to add to my resume.  Once I get word that it's out on X-Box Live Arcade, I spread the word.

That's it for now, I wanna try Medal of Honor.