Medal of Honor Online Beta Impressions

I quite enjoyed the online side of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, so theoretically I should enjoy the multi-player side of Medal of Honor as they were both made by DICE. Yet for some reason this isn't the case and I can't quite work out why. Medal of Honor online plays a bit like Call of Duty and Battlefield mixed together. There is a level system like in Call of Duty where gaining levels gets you better weapons, throw in the ability to call in Mortar Strikes and other such kill streak rewards and that is about it for the Call of Duty side of things. (Oh wait there are also the popular Noob tubes as well, oh joy)

The battlefield elements are basically the level design (Only one level is included in the Beta) The gameplay is your basic rush affair where you have to keep pushing forward to capture strategic points and push the enemy back, or defend from the attacking forces if your on the defending side. Sounds great doesn't it, yet for some reason I am not enjoying the game, one thing that has always been said about the Call of Duty series is the unbalanced side of things that the level up system creates.



A level one gamer with nothing unlocked will find it harder to kill someone thats a level 55 with nearly every weapon and enhancement unlocked, and the same can also be said of this game.(I am not saying that I got killed every 2 seconds in the Beta, but half the rounds I played I finished in the top 3 players, then the other half I was mid table at best due to playing people at higher levels)

Graphically the game isn't as polised as you would expect it to be either, hopefully it will get tweaked and polished a bit more before the final release. Maybe this is going to be one of those marmite games like Modern Warfare 2 (Some will love it, others will hate it) I guess we will find out when the game finally arrives later on this year.

1 vs. 100 cancelled for Xbox 360

Microsoft announced this morning that Xbox Live’s popular show 1 vs 100 has been cancelled. In a statement released this morning, Microsoft Game Studios’ general manager Dave McCarthy said that the 1 vs 100 dev team has been affected to new projects that will be using what was learned from the interactive game show.



"When we started on this journey, we knew we were creating an entirely new genre of entertainment that would be a continually evolving concept," said McCarthy. "We’re very proud of the 1 vs 100 team and their accomplishments, and are excited to apply what we’ve learned to future programming."

Sony & Microsoft Suck!

Last night I thought I would play some online Red Dead Redemption with a few of my buddies, sounds like fun doesn't it. Well it would have been if Sony had party chat like Microsoft have on Xbox Live so we could all band together and talk as we played without hearing some asshole playing music and screaming down their microphone. (Assholes aren't just limited to the 360 so it seems) The only problem is that Sony don't have the feature so we decided to use our 360's to chat on while we played on our PS3'3. (Yes I know how retarded that sounds, but hey it kinda works)

So we fired up our 360's to jump into a party, only one problem apparently my Xbox Live Gold had ran out last week. Add in the fact that it was around 7pm at night on a sunday as well and I had little choice but to pay on my card so I could join in. So I hopped onto xbox.com and decided to just go for the monthly offer of £4.99 per month and within seconds my account was showing I now had Gold membership again. Only one problem when I turned my 360 on it said I had a silver account. After resetting and logging out and back in for 30 minutes it still said I only had Silver which pissed me off as you can't join a party chat with a Silver account.

I then hit on the idea of trying a multiplayer game hoping that would refresh my account so I could finally join the chat. So I popped in Modern Warfare 2 and attempted to join Party Chat and it worked, so I then quit to my dashboard only to be kicked out of the chat. One minute later I booted up the game and joined the party again and it worked. For some strange reason I can only join Party Chat when I have a game loaded into my 360, if not it just won't work. This morning before I came to work my 360 was still saying that I had a Silver account, while Xbox.com says I have gold. So for all the crap I have had to go through just to get into Party Chat while playing a game I proclaim that both Sony and Microsoft suck.

Games You Probably Didn't Play

I was recently searching Ebay for some PS2 games for my nephew. (3 year olds don't really care about HD graphics, that's 4 years and up) While searching I stumbled across Global Defence Force and Global Defence Force Tactics, (The prequels to E.D.F. 2017) so with little hesitation I clicked the buy button and a few days later had them in my grubby little hands. Now I know that a lot of people dismissed E.D.F. 2017 on the 360 as it had shitty graphics and wouldn't rate in most peoples top 20, heck even top 50 360 games of all time. Yet there is just something about the game that I find so appealing and enjoyable. As a result I just had to buy the prequel games. (Although GDF Tactics isn't really the same type of game at all)

Global Defence Force basically does everything that Earth Defence Force does only in some ways better. Sure the game looks even worse than the follow up, but it is the ability to play as another character that adds a nice twist to the game. The first character is your standard infantry soldier that basically just runs around using the standard type of weapons that you would expect to see with one or two super powered versions thrown in. These are things like rifles, missile launchers, grenades and a few others.

Yet it is the secondary player (that I just ignored for the first 5 hours of playing) that really mixes things up, you see the secondary player (Pale Wing) uses a jet pack to get around and some great weapons that really change the way you play the game. The weapons are all futuristic styled plasma weapons that are such fun to use, although you do have to watch your energy consumption to avoid getting swarmed by the Gigantors (The name given to all the enemies in the game) and left panicking that your gonna get killed and have to restart the level over.

Global Defence Force has a lot of charm underneath it's surface, and really is a joy to play as you run/fly around shooting over sized Ants, Spiders, Godzilla clones and Spaceships as well as much more. The weapon drops are completely random and you do end up sticking to using the same ones over and over, until you find a superior weapon that you picked while playing a level in the game. It really does hook you in with simple game play and its ability to make you feel bad for liking something that you really know you shouldn't.

If you still have a PS2 laying around the house and fancy playing something a little different than the usual stuff you play, then I recommend that you give Global Defence Force a try. Heck buy it and get a friend around to play the game in split screen cooperative play. This is one game you probably won't have played and lets face it you probably won't bother picking up. Yet if just one person tries it and likes it then my job here is done.