Video Games | Gumballs Plays Games

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 is as bad as you expected

Posted on September 30, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Robomodo’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 finally released this week, and a lot of people didn’t even know the game existed until it arrived on store shelves. This isn’t a great sign, especially when combined with the fact that Activision apparently didn’t send any advance copies to reviewers. Almost everyone in the video game community saw all this as a surefire sign that the game would be a dud, but some of us had hope.

The only piece of promotional material I actually saw in advance of the game’s release was Tony Hawk and Lil’ Wayne’s appearance on Conan’s Clueless Gamer segment. The segment was amusing, but it didn’t exactly make the gameplay shine.

I still held out hope, and headed to Redbox yesterday to try out THPS5 for myself. I played the game for just over an hour and the expectation that it would be terrible was 100% accurate. The gameplay is very poorly executed, and the game looks and functions like a game for the PS2.

The game dumps you into a freeplay mode where you’ll skate around with other skaters, but there’s no way to interact with them besides bumping into them. There’s literally no point to showing other players in the world, other than to say “hey look, people are actually playing this crap!” If you want to engage in any multiplayer you have to bring up a menu and load into a separate waiting area before entering a match. I tried to get into multiplayer matches, however I could only ever find one other player and the matches would always fail to start.

Completing missions is no better. Once accepting a mission you’re met with a loading screen before loading into the same environment, minus all of the other players in order to accomplish the mission. Once complete you again have to load back into the free skate area. All of this is slow, clunky and poorly executed.

As you complete objectives and missions you earn skill points, but should you want to spend them you have to load back out to the main menu to do so. This is unintuitive and annoying. What’s worse is that should you choose to play as a different skater, Lil’ Wayne for example, you lose your progress and have to re-accomplish objectives on that character. The objectives and missions aren’t even fun to do the first time, why anyone would want to do them on every character is beyond me.

There’s so much about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 that I haven’t seen, but in the hour I’ve played I’ve seen enough to know that it’s not worth a second more of my time. There’s no charm in the world, there’s no local multiplayer and the game has no soul. The only positive is the halfway decent soundtrack, but not even that could save this game.

I don’t generally assign scores to games, but I couldn’t see how THPS5 would ever deserve anything more than a 1 out of 5. Avoid this mess at all costs.

Encountering Metal Gear Solid 3’s exploitation of women

Posted on September 22, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Yesterday I progressed a little further into Metal Gear Solid 3 (I didn’t get far, as I spent a lot of time being lost and going the wrong way into the jungle) and I encountered some sequences in the game that seem entirely unnecessary and are quite exploitative of women.

Almost as soon as the character Eva is introduced she is sexualized almost to the point of belittling her character. As she is first introduced to Snake, for some unknown reason she unzips her coveralls to expose her chest. There doesn’t seem to be any logical reason for her to do this. You could argue that maybe she is trying to seduce Snake to get him to follow along with her plans, but is exposing skin the only way a woman can be attractive? Hardly.

During this same sequence the player is prompted to press a button to see through Snake’s eyes, and his focus is rather inappropriate.

As long as the player holds R1 the image above is all the player will see. It’s as if her physical features are the only thing of any importance.

The sexualization and exploitation of Eva continues for many scenes to come. In a scene where Snake is waking from rest the player is yet again prompted to press a button to view through Snake’s eyes, and this time Eva is exploited even further during a voyeur scene.

Kojima isn’t done yet. Moments later Eva is felt up by another character who discovers she is a woman as his hand lingers on her chest.

He not only rests his hand on her chest, he squeezes as if he needs further confirmation that his hostage is a woman. From there he sniffs her neck and rattles off a derogatory phrase.

Maybe Ocelot is a chauvinist, and a complete jerk, but during all of this Snake doesn’t even bat an eye. He makes no attempt to stand up for Eva, nor does he allow her to kill Ocelot after the ordeal, stating that he’s “still young.”

Despite all of the sexualization and exploitation, at least Eva isn’t portrayed as entirely helpless. Ultimately she’s the one who breaks free from Ocelot (after Snake foils his plan), but Snake still interferes and almost defends Ocelot’s actions by writing him off as young and dumb.

The entire introduction of Eva was uncomfortable, especially after seeing how another female character, Quiet, is treated in Metal Gear Solid V.

I haven’t played enough Metal Gear Solid V to encounter Quiet myself yet, but I’ve heard a lot about how her character is presented in the game and it seems that Kojima’s portrayal of female characters hasn’t progressed at all since Metal Gear Solid 3. Much like Eva, Quiet is shown wearing very little clothing without much apparent reason.

Not only is Quiet a combatant dressed in hardly any clothes, but she is also sexualized throughout the game via disturbing camera angles and a shower scene in which male characters try to watch her shower.

As much as I’ve enjoyed playing Metal Gear Solid 3 and V so far, I can’t quite swallow the way female characters are exploited in the games. Does it happen on TV and in film all the time? Sure, but the sexualization of women in video games too often feels entirely unnecessary and wildly inappropriate. It’s just not cool.

Yet another post about Destiny

Posted on September 20, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’ll have something other than Destiny to talk about soon (I hope), but until then I’m going to keep enthusiastically posting about Destiny. The first week of The Taken King has been awesome so far, and at times I’ve found I’ve been unable to put the controller down. Destiny seems to have finally gotten the loot driven gameplay loop right. I’ve never seen so many items and engrams drop at almost a constant rate during missions and strikes and I’ve found myself wanting more and more as I’m almost always finding something useful that edges my light level higher.

I worked my way through the story missions throughout the week, and with a little help from the Crucible I managed to hit level 40 by Friday. It was a slow rise, as many players hit 40 the day The Taken King released, but I wasn’t dedicating an insane amount of time to the game. I was excited to see Xur return on Friday with new wares, and purchased my first Taken King Exotic, An Insurmountable Skullfort, to get a decent light level bump.

My goal was to get as close to a 290 light level this weekend as possible, so with that in mind Friday I began running Strikes. The very first Taken King Strike I encountered was Cerberus Vae III, one of my least favorite Strikes in Destiny. Luckily they reworked the Strike a bit with new enemies, however the overall Strike plays out exactly as it did before.

After this disappointing rehash I finally got into the new Strikes, and they were great! Every new Strike has an interesting aspect or two that makes them more fun to run through than the older ones. For example, the Sunless Cell boss fight in the dark is a blast! The first time I dove into the dark pit I felt my palms get sweaty as I had no idea what I was about to encounter, and my heart raced during the entire encounter until Alak-Hul finally fell.

The Project S.A.B.E.R. Strike has its own wonderful moments, such as the beginning of the Strike in which your Fireteam has to avoid being overrun while defending an uplink. The Taken enemies really make this section of the Strike challenging and exciting. The last time I ran through it I could tell I was grouped with people who were running the Strike for the first time. Unfortunately, neither was utilizing voice chat (I have yet to encounter a single person in playlists who does) and I found myself the sole survivor of the initial onslaught which I somehow survived. The boss fight at the end of this Strike can be challenging the first few times, especially if your teammates don’t know what to expect, but once everyone knows what’s going on it’s actually rather easy.

The Shield Brothers Strike can be one of the most frustrating, especially with no communication. Encountering the dual boss fight the first time is chaotic, however a lot of jumping seems to help the chances of survival.

I’ve had a blast playing through all the new Strikes, even as I ran through them multiple times. The amount of engrams dropping all the time makes it hard to stop running Strike after Strike. I’ve watched my light level constantly creep higher, and ended the day at 254, just shy of the 260 recommended for the Heroic Strikes. I tried entering a Heroic Strike at a lower light level (the Shield Brothers) but it proved too much to handle and I had to bail out as we never would’ve completed it.

I’ve also had fun in the new Crucible modes, although I’ve always been a terrible PvP player. I’ve played more matches than I normally would have throughout the week because after every other match I was getting Strange Coins while on a losing team. I looted at least ten Strange Coins through just a few matches which left me with more than I had ever had at one time by the end of the week. If they continue to drop as frequently in the Crucible I’ll probably play more than I ever have to prepare for Xur’s weekly visits.

Destiny: The Taken King is a blast so far!

Posted on September 15, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Destiny’s third expansion The Taken King released today, a week after the 2.0 patch introduced a significant amount of changes to Destiny’s gameplay. I ordered the expansion and the $20 Collector’s Edition upgrade, and so far it seems like the purchase has been worth it.

I didn’t really play any Destiny after the 2.0 patch launched, so I was still level 32 when I jumped into the game earlier today. With the level cap raised to 40, I decided to it would be worth checking out the House of Wolves quests I had never finished in order to get some experience. Even though much of my time spent in Destiny since the Taken King release has been spent with older content, I still feel the impact the newest expansion has made. Earning experience instead of hoping to get the right loot to increase light level feels great. I also thoroughly enjoyed the House of Wolves quests as I finished the quest line and gained a handful of levels in the process. Not only was I leveling, but I also came across a ton of Taken King gear along the way (mostly greens and blues). It felt great to see so many engrams flying all over the place as I blasted my way through enemies.

Sorry for the quality of the screenshots, I was streaming to Windows 10 and couldn’t take any in game screenshots while doing so.

Once I did get to the Taken King content, it blew me away. The cut scenes, music and voice acting are all phenomenal. I had never experienced something so well produced during my time with Destiny previously, and I was literally in awe. I had also never been as excited while completing story content in Destiny.

The new locations are visually pleasing and the new enemies are a blast to fight. They introduce new mechanics that are exciting to encounter. I’ve only completed the first story quest and the Sunbreaker quest but both were an absolute blast. In fact, the Sunbreaker quest is my favorite Destiny story mission by far. Unleashing the power of the new subclass was incredibly thrilling alongside the epic music and relentless onslaught of enemies. I can’t wait to see what else the new subclass has to offer.

So far I’m loving The Taken King, and can’t wait to spend more time with it!

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (on the Vita)

Posted on September 13, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Shortly before the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, I decided I wanted to try to catch up on Metal Gear. I purchased Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater on the Vita, and figured it would be a good of place as any to start.

Snake Eater was released on the Playstation 2 in 2004 and the HD Collection came to the Vita in 2012. My last experience with Metal Gear was with Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance on the Xbox, however I remember very little about the game other than the underwater section being frustratingly difficult.

I had hoped that Snake Eater would shed some light on what is happening in The Phantom Pain, but so far I’m more confused than ever. The story so far (in both games) comes across as comically absurd, and I’m not sure whether to laugh or shake my head most of the time.

What I can say for sure is that the game looks great on the Vita. The game also controls well and makes good use of the Vita’s touch screen (it’s especially easy to change weapons), however I’ve run into quite a few camera issues. While sneaking in the grass the camera switches to first person and I can’t seem to find any way to see what’s going on around me. I just have to wing it and hope no enemies are looking when I emerge from the grass. I’ve changed the camera settings in the options but it doesn’t seem to change anything at all. Maybe I’m just doing something wrong, but so far this is making the stealth aspect of the game extremely frustrating.

I haven’t gotten too far into the game yet (I’ve only just started Operation Snake Eater) but its absurdity so far has me wanting to see just how crazy it gets as the story advances. The hard part is decided whether I want to focus my time on Snake Eater or The Phantom Pain primarily. MGSV is much more enjoyable to play, so that’s probably where I’ll spend most of my time for now.

Mad Max is an enjoyable game so far

Posted on September 8, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

Avalanche Studios and Warner Bros.’ Mad Max game finally saw its release last week, and so far the general consensus seems to be that it’s rather mediocre (it currently has a 70/100 on Metacritic). I’ve played just over two hours of Mad Max and have had an enjoyable time with it so far.

The game takes place in a gritty wasteland atmosphere filled with fire, dirt and grungy cars driven by post-apocalyptic mad men, but otherwise has little to do with the Fury Road movie. That said, the game does have enough personality of its own to make it enjoyable whether or not you’ve seen the films.

Mad Max features plenty of open world activities to keep you occupied outside (or even during) the story missions. Invading strongholds is a blast, as you either ram down the base’s defenses or attempt to sneak in unnoticed in order to complete an objective. Most strongholds seem to feature an open area near the middle which acts as a fighting arena of sorts, complete with a war crier banging a drum in order to rally the fighters.

I’ve found myself detouring several times during missions in order to tear down scarecrows (towers of bloody bodies and fire that increase enemies’ influence in an area), take out compounds or to just chase down enemies in order to scrap their cars.

The combat is solid, but nothing new to anyone who has played a Batman game or Shadow of Mordor. Despite being recycled, it still feels awesome to pull off counters and explosive combos, especially when fueled by Max’s fury.

Car combat is also enjoyable, although so far I feel a little underpowered. It’s often best to try to harpoon the enemy out of their car instead of trying to engage in vehicular combat. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it’s incredibly satisfying to watch the enemy fly out of their car and into the wasteland.

The characters of the world are unique, but not exactly on par with those of the films. Chumbucket feels too much like Gollum to me, though he plays a vital role by constantly repairing Max’s ride, the Magnum Opus. This mechanic ensures you’re never left with an inoperable vehicle which is convenient, and adds an important reason for Max to carry Chum around wherever he goes.

The story so far isn’t anything special, but the world itself is the enjoyable part. There’s some sort of drive to constantly complete activities and collect scrap to improve Max’s abilities and that of the Magnum Opus.

Unfortunately, Mad Max ended up releasing the same day as the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The game has been largely overshadowed by MGSV, and that’s a shame. Had it released a few weeks earlier I’m sure many more people would be playing it. In fact, I’d like to play it more, but even I find myself wanting to return to Metal Gear, before I get left behind.

If Metal Gear isn’t up your alley, I definitely recommend Mad Max, especially if you’re into the Batman / Shadow of Mordor open world formula. There’s plenty to enjoy!

MGSV: Phantom Pain servers down again

Posted on September 6, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I still haven’t been able to connect online since the game launched. I know the servers were up the other day, but I didn’t happen to play that day. Hopefully they’ll be running smoothly before long. Have you had any luck?

Destiny has taken ahold of me

Posted on September 4, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

In the past month I’ve gone from having completely forgotten about Destiny, to at times being borderline addicted and obsessed. Last week I ordered this cool looking Destiny shirt that finally arrived yesterday:

I also got a window sticker for my car:

How did I get here? Well what finally hooked me was doing the raids for the first time. As I’ve already said, completing Vault of Glass was an absolute blast, and last week I finally did Crota’s End for the first time as well.

The Crota raid was much easier than Vault of Glass, however the two times I did Vault of Glass were on Hard, so I’m not sure if that was a factor. Either way, the mechanics of Crota were much easier to get the hang of, and it was awesome to finally down Crota. It was even more exciting, because I looted my very first exotic from the raid (the rest came from Xur): Ice Breaker!

Continuing with my obsession, I’ve tried redeeming the Red Bull codes for the XP boost (hoping to level up my weapons), however have yet to have success. All of my codes redeemed without issue, yet nothing ever showed up at the postmaster. I’ve tried three codes so far and haven’t received anything. Lame.

Next on the Destiny Agenda I plan to do my first Nightfall and Prison of Elders if I can find groups to do them with. We’ll see how it goes.

My time so far with Metal Gear Solid V

Posted on September 4, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

I’ve never really gotten into the Metal Gear series, however everything I saw about MGSV looked intriguing. I liked the idea of trying to sneak into bases and take out a target or rescue a hostage. I also liked that MGSV would provide players with plenty of firepower and the option to go in guns blazing if they so choose. This sounded appealing, because I’m terribly impatient and am horrible at stealth missions in games. I decided I’d purchase Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

I should note that my only experience with the Metal Gear series comes from watching someone play the first Metal Gear Solid back in 1998. I remember trying to play it, however my eleven year old self couldn’t handle the sneaking and I would always get angry when I got spotted and panic. I also played Metal Gear Solid 2 on the Xbox, but remember very little from it besides getting so frustrated with the underwater section that I nearly quit. I played around with Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, but never really got too far in it.

Because of my lack of knowledge of the Metal Gear series, the opening of MGSV left me dumbfounded. Not only did I not know what was going on with the characters (or who any of them really were), but the incredibly strange nature of everything that was happening caught me off guard. I expected Metal Gear to be something of a serious game, not quite as sci-fi and nonsensical. I’m still uncertain if the opening sequence was some sort of dream or hallucination. Everything seemed so normal at the start and before I knew it I was being chased from characters out of a comic book movie. This all put me off, and I thought for awhile I may have made a mistake by trying to jump in with the fifth game.

The opening sequence is long, and the player has very little agency. I almost would have preferred to have it all be one long cutscene, because every time the game gives control to the player there’s quite literally nothing to do but look around or press forward. In fact, the opening bored me so much that by the end of it I had fallen asleep (I was playing after work) and I awoke to a mission complete screen. I’m not sure what I missed but it probably doesn’t matter.

Once I got into the game proper, I finally started to enjoy myself. The game looks great and controls very well. Everything Snake does feels just right. The sneaking isn’t too difficult, but I still always find myself getting spotted. Luckily once you’re spotted the game provides you with a reaction moment where you can save yourself by either pulling off a headshot with a tranquilizer round or by knocking the enemy out with a close quarters combat maneuver. I haven’t failed a mission yet, however I have been downed by a flurry of enemy fire, but was able to heal myself and get out of the situation. I’m not sure if there’s a limitation on healing, but when you’re badly injured you can hold ‘Y’ to get yourself back in the action. In this case I switched to a rifle and just blasted everyone dead before sprinting out of the complex and to the helicopter without ever turning back.

Shooting myself out of bad situations hasn’t always been helpful, however. I was on a side ops mission and ended up shooting the person I was supposed to extract, thus failing the mission. Luckily the game doesn’t greet you with a fail screen, but rather leaves you in the open world with a ‘side ops cancelled’ message.

I’m not quite certain how I should be managing the Mother Base, but I’ve been having a blast fultoning any knocked out enemy back to my base to be one of my new “employees”.

I’ve only completed two missions in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, but I’m certainly looking forward to diving deeper into the game. I’m not sure if I’ll ever understand the game, but at least the gameplay is a blast!

Working out Playstation Now’s connection issues on the Vita

Posted on August 30, 2015 by GumballsPlaysGames

The Playstation Now subscription service finally arrived on the Playstation Vita and Playstation TV earlier this month. The PS Now app was previously available on these platforms, but users couldn’t sign up for the subscription model unless they did so on a PS4 first. You could rent individual games at excessively expensive rates, but the real draw of the service is the subscription model.

For $19.99 a month PS Now subscribers get unlimited access to over 100 games, including hit titles such as The Last of Us, Batman Arkham City, Bioshock Infinite and God of War III.

This all sounds great, however I had been having connection problems that prevented me from enjoying the service. My Vita would pass the connection test and launch into a game and would work flawlessly for anywhere between ten and fifteen minutes. At around the fifteen mark I would almost always get connected from the PS Now service. My Vita wasn’t losing connection to my WiFi, but the PS Now service would seem to time out. This constant loss of connection (which boots you out of the game and back into the PS Now menu) made the service unusable.

The Playstation Vita can only use a 2.4GHz WiFi network, and my 2.4GHz network was much slower than my wired internet speed. Using the cable modem’s WiFi I would average around 12mbps whereas I get a solid 50gbps over ethernet. I tried another router (in the $40 price range) that offered dual band WiFi, and while the 5GHz network was much faster, I didn’t see any improvement on the 2.4GHz end, and PS Now was still unusable. I tried following any advice I could find online, such as deselecting the Vita’s WiFi power save mode but had no success.

Frustrated, I decided to go big or go home.

After being assured by the Best Buy salesman that the behemoth Linksys WRT 1900AC router would provide better speeds over 2.4GHz WiFi I took the plunge, and bought the most expensive router I’ve ever owned.

I unboxed the spaceship looking router yesterday evening and set it up hoping for the best. Once everything was set up I crossed my fingers and ran a speed test using the 2.4GHz network. To my delight, the speeds were double what I was getting using the Motorola modem. To further assure success I used the Media Prioritization feature to give my Vita bandwidth priority on my network. I then anxiously fired up PS Now on my Vita to see if it would finally work.

I fired up Super Mega Baseball and was able to play a game without getting disconnected. Success! I then booted up NBA 2K14 and let it sit on the menu and to my delight it also never dropped the connection.

The $200+ investment may be a little much just to play around with PS Now on the Vita, especially when a used PS3 can be found for $100, but the beastly router has many other benefits. The 5GHz WiFi network is just about as fast as an Ethernet connection and the range is much improved over any router I’ve used before. The router has plenty of features, most of which I don’t understand, but having more control over my network will be more beneficial in the long run.