Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - We Ran Out of Ideas

   Sorry about the late posting guys, this one took longer to write than I expected because of the content size. But here ya go, thanks for your patience! ^_^

   So I bet a lot of you have heard about and are possibly pretty excited about the announcement of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. For a lot of people, as the classic shooter that everyone knows of, this is an exciting announcement as the series is popular with the gaming industry and it's game mode "Zombies" that originally began as "Nazi Zombies" back in "World at War." Personally I'm pretty excited as I have a lot of nostalgia from playing the zombie mode with friends throughout high school and playing what we called "virgin gameplay" where none of us looked up the new zombies map would be and we played with all the surprises and recorded how long we would last. I think the most memorable moment that I've had was my first year in college with my roommate, which happened to be a "virgin gameplay" without being planned, and unfortunately we didn't record it we were so excited to play it. The map was "Buried" and it we made it to the mansion on our first try as we were just spending most of our points exploring the map. As my partner ran ahead into a hallway to the left, I turned right to check out a side room that was a dead end, I immediately turned around and hollered, loud enough to make our neighbor slam on the wall to quiet us down, as a ghost was in my face.
   Anyhow though, I wanna get into the real meat of this story. So the reason why this article is called, "We Ran Out of Ideas" is because watching through the trailer, I noticed some things that were shown that seemed pretty familiar. Watch it for yourself, then I'll go over what I noticed.

   Alright, so now that you've seen it, lets go over a few things that are very familiar ideas, that I think were stolen from other video games. Real quick though, because it was brief, a quick throwback to the "Ember" teaser for BO3 that was released not too long ago. In "Deus Ex: Human Revolution," there is a cutscene at the beginning of the game that shows a basketball player with a special contact lens that shows the exact trajectory and how he needs to throw the ball to make a perfect swish from the spot he is standing on the court, wherever he is. This scene in the middle of the "Ember" teaser, is almost a mirror image of this cutscene.

   But on to the meatier content of this latest trailer. So the first thing that I noticed in the trailer was the seemingly direct steal from the "Bioshock" series, the plasmid abilities (called Cyber Cores in BO3) "Insect Swarm..."

and "Incinerate..."

    I found this pretty funny, and it was a cool throwback when I first saw it. Unfortunately that wasn't the only thing that was very familiar. The next thing I saw was a throwback to a game released not too long ago even, I'm sure a lot of you have played and 100% of you have at least heard of it. The game "Destiny" developed by Bunjie. There is a helmet style in-game that is prevalent on the Warlock class, and given, it's not a direct copy and paste, but you can definitely see where they got their idea from...

   Now it is a little hard to tell from the angle of the second picture, but you can definitely see the similarities, and though I wasn't able to find a picture in the time that I spent writing this, a better picture, there is actually a very low-level helmet that is pretty much a starter item for the warlock class that bears an even greater resemblance to the one pictured in the BO3 picture. The next thing I saw was a reference to a pretty cool game that I actually didn't get to play a lot of, but was a pretty good game nonetheless. "Crysis," a pretty popular series with gamers due to it's futuristic and "Tom Clancy" style of game-play. Just saying, there's a lot of similarities that are here and the style reminded me of Crysis pretty closely.

   And another one, that most people kinda pulled more easily than the rest because of how recent it is and the popularity it had as the game took off, Titanfall. Plain and simple, they jacked wall-running, yes, but they did refine it a little better to add into combat a little more steadily and easier to handle shooting while wall-running from the game footage.

   And lastly, a game pretty near and dear to my heart. I've been playing a long time and have made some pretty good friends and spent a lot of time with other friends (IRL of course). "World of Warcraft," the Blizzard classic that will never end, and has changed the face of MMORPG's forever. The game recently had an expansion, I'm sure you heard about it. "Warlords of Draenor." But even before that, the expansion "Mists of Pandaria" showcased the object/machine/enemy, called an "Iron Star." A massive circular disk that is launched and rolls towards its target, typically exploding on impact, or just crushing it beneath its mass. Seems incredibly similar to the one shown in the BO trailer that is trying to create a futuristic "attack dogs" like scorestreak reward. The only difference perhaps is size, though Warcraft had several different sizes that the Iron Star came in. Anyhow, you can decide for yourself.

   So that's pretty much it from what I saw, but probably not all that was shown, please feel free to let me know of any others you saw in the video and I'll be sure to credit you and report on that one too. I haven't played every game ever made, so I can't catch everything.

   This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I'm not accusing Treyarch of doing this purposely. If anything this goes to show that ideas are few and far between these days and we're getting to the point that there isn't much "original" anymore from even the biggest developers. I personally can't wait to play this game and can't wait to see what Treyarch has in store for us this time!

Thanks again for reading! I appreciate the support now more than ever! Game On!

Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare

   Like I said in my previous post, I've had this game for a while in my PS4 gaming library. Since I've gotten I've had a lot of fun blasting zombies and plants alike. It's a very similar concept to Team Fortress 2, except there are less styles of matches, in comparison, mostly involving either a base defense style, or a straight up team deathmatch style games. So less kinds of game modes than Team Fortress, but honestly has a much more interesting style of match in these game modes. With the ability to change your costume of your "class" for a personalized or custom look while you're popping zombies or plants, as well as being able to change your character entirely to one of their special characters, changing your abilities and firing styles all together, it makes for a very entertaining game. Something that really was fun, kinda a mix between Tower Defense and the Team Fortress shooter style, was Garden Defense. You build a garden in one of several predetermined spots on common multiplayer maps and then around this "Garden," little pots pop up around the garden, usually on corners and they are used to grow little plants that you earn by buying "sticker packs" with in-game money or in-game transactions with real money. The game is very entertaining as cheap as it came, and if the $5 I spent in the HumbleBundle was just for this game, I'd still have bought it as this game will leave you laughing more often than angry when a little red chili pepper from a regular pea shooter plant blows your zombie brains across the plaza you're protecting.
   My next article will be covering the new Call of Duty: Black Ops III announcements, found some very interesting familiarity of the new things being added, check back in tomorrow!
   Game On!

Humble Bundle - Through April 28th, 2015 - EA

   So the newest Humble Bundle is sponsored by EA and their Origin game client. The newest bundle comes with some great newer games and some great oldies that are classic fun. For only the price of about $5.00, you get these all these games:

• Peggle
• Bejeweled 3
• SimCity 2000
• Wing Commander 3: Heart of the Tiger
• Wing Commander 4: The Price of Freedom
• Ultima XII: The Complete Edition
• Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault - War Chest
• Command & Conquer: Generals + Zero Hour exp
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Dragon Age II
• Dead Space 2
• Mass Effect 2
• Plants vs. Zombie: Garden Warfare

   It comes with a couple of smaller simpler games "Peggle" and "Bejeweled 3," a couple of great games for passing the time in between queues for LoL or CS:GO, they don't take up too much time and are simple fun. Then come the oldies, some great classics: "SIMCITY 2000, Wing Commanders 3 and 4, and Ultima 7." Not much to say about them, I recommend trying them for yourself ^_^. The next couple of games are Medal of Honor: The Allied Assault, the war chest no less, comes with the main game plus two expansions for it, which in those days, were real expansions, not a small little pack of like 4 multiplayer maps. *Cough Cough* Call of Duty... *Cough* When the expansions actually gave you more campaign missions and story to go off of. Anyhow... The next is also a fan favorite, I actually haven't gotten to play it yet but I'm hoping to get a little review on here before long because it's such a favorite. "Command and Conquer: Generals" has a few of my friends hooked so I can't way to give it a try. Some bigger name games that have a large following are the Dragon Age games, in this case, "Dragon Age: Origins" and "Dragon Age 2." These games originally advertised something that made it seem like it was a different kind of game, (Open World) and I didn't play very far before I got pissed off and sold it due to being upset that it was wrongfully advertised, however now that I own them for cheap and I know what to expect, hopefully I will be able to play through them without assuming open world, meant what the literal meaning is. Without that stigma, I've so far had a very good time playing through Origins and will probably write a review of sorts when I get well enough into the story. Next is Dead Space 2, a fantastic suspense filled adventure where you play as a man, Isaac, who is going to save the galaxy, as well as himself from his own demons tormenting him over the death of his girlfriend. Will definitely be getting to a review with that one. Mass Effect 2, unfortunately I haven't gotten the opportunity to play before, though I've heard so many good things about it, so soon I will definitely be picking up the controller for this one after all the positive feedback I've had. Finally, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare. I actually picked this one up for PS4 a while back and couldn't regret it. The comical and cartoony graphics really made this game for me, a long time fan f the PvZ tower defense series on mobile platforms and of course PC's. I'll definitely be hitting up a review for this one after a while as a much more, at least for me, fun version of Team Fortress.

Console Wars - An Absolute Waste of Time

   Short post today...

   I've recently had a lot of time to think about the console wars and how they are going. I would like to flip an argument that I've made in the past. The reality is that consoles: Wii U, Xbox One, and Playstation 4 are all awesome consoles and should be treated as such, they are a huge leap into the future and are very likely to continue to do very well. I've really grown tired of the war between the consoles on which one is best. Each system is great in it's own way and should be respected as equally as the next. Each one has something it's better at than the other, but they all do it very well.
   The main reason I write this article is to make the point that we need to stop arguing over which one is better, and just love our preferred console as much as we want, or even better yet, LOVE THEM ALL! I want everyone to stop wasting time arguing over chat's and forum posts and spend those few extra minutes playing on your console, and LOVE IT! Stop wasting time and enjoy that console.

Grand Theft Auto V - The Problem with Online Heists

So I'm sure all of you have heard of the Grand Theft Auto series. It's been a cornerstone of sandbox style video games for a long time and particularly started gaining a huge following with GTA 4 and it's side games, Stories from Liberty City, etc. Anyhow, not what I'm talking about, maybe another day. GTAV is out now (on PC), and it's been hugely popular with 3 successful launches. For those that might not know, the game has actually been out for 2 years already. It was first released on Sept 17th, in 2013. The game originally was only released on PS3 and Xbox 360 exclusively, with an enormous anger storm ensuing from the PC gaming crowd. The game then re-released a little over a year later (Nov 18th, 2014) for only PS4 and Xbox One, as you can already guess, this pissed off the PC gaming crowd even more, prompting several more (As there had already been ones created) petitions to put it on PC. The game finally released on PC about a week ago, on April 14th, 2015. The PC crowd couldn't be happier with the result. Many were still angry that it took so long to release on the platform, but hey, with higher tech possibilities, you need more time to develop it, especially because they had been in the process of developing an expansion to online play options called "Heists." Heists have become hugely popular as a different option to the typical "missions" that are available for online play with other people typically. The mission outcome was a couple-a few thousand dollars to complete a mediocre task that was typically pretty simple to finish, but it was a huge grind to be able to repeatedly do these missions over and over without any background really as to why it had to be done (story wise). Heists are online missions where (Small spoiler) you have 5 you do in order, then you can redo them in any order you want. The first one is a short 2 man heist that just gets you into it and is actually Very simple as long as you don't go in guns blazing without moving from cover to cover. Simple to complete for a decent reward (about $115k total payout; this cut can be split between the 2 members up to, 30% minimum for one of the members). A nice little payout for about 20-30 mins of time to spend on it. Maybe shorter if you can move quickly. And the other 4 heists require 4 members to complete and have Several setup missions that you must complete before the "Finale" of the heist can be completed. I really love heists, they're a lot of fun and you get a lot of backstory on the campaign, its pretty great. However, there is one big problem with heists. The requirement of party members to perform certain tasks makes it very difficult to complete it efficiently without any mess-ups. The heists are Not easy, and the setup missions are almost as difficult as the finales. They're not something you can jump into a random group, not say a word to each other, then knock out on the first try, if you can, you got a group of skilled people that you are Very lucky to have ended up with randomly, so congrats. A typical problem that you run into is that you Have to be able to communicate effectively, so you really need a mic. That's probably the easiest way to complete these mission fast without any mess-ups from random members. Being able to talk to your team to explain what needs to be done and what the plan is to do this right, is the only way to win with random people. My advice is that you wait until you have some friends otherwise, being able to communicate a plan and trust these people to carry it out properly is the best way to handle heists!

I'm Back....! And I've got a dream...

Been a while since I published anything so I figured it was about time to get back on track. Today's topic is focusing on a dream I have. This has to do with League of Legends and ranked, specifically solo/duo queue's.

I've been thinking a lot about it lately and just recently got back into ranked/LoL in general. Took a small hiatus where I avoided league quite a bit but just recently got back into it very heavily. A dream I have as I am currently watching a Voyboy stream on Twitch.tv is that I will reach Challenger rank this season. Yeah Yeah Yeah Sean, that's every LoL player's dream, cause it's a shortcut to the pros and being famous, etc etc.... Well see, that's not the reason why I'm fighting for challenger ranked, my reason is because I want to get into the loading lobby with all the other Challengers and sometimes Diamond players or master tier, etc etc, and them look over and see... "WTF? This guy was Gold last season, and now he's Challenger? What an improvement!" I long for that sort of recognition, sure it'd be great to get famous and all of a sudden be making a decent living off of streaming and YouTube videos an such, or being recognized at Conventions, sure, that'd be an amazing experience. But really I just want the recognition that I've improved that quickly and that much, more specifically within my close friend crowds and such. Anyhow, here's a shout out to all the people with a similar dream and a little motivational push to keep following that dream. I wanna see you when we get up there to the peak. Good luck dude, see you there. (Special shout out to the girls who want this too, we need more women in professional eSports, and I want to see you there too!

That's it for me today, short post just to ease back into this. Check back tomorrow for little bit of coverage on the GTAV release on PC recently! Game on bros!