thirdworldgamer

Everyone has a preference. Whether you like Coke or Pepsi, Honda or Ford, Golden State or Cleveland, Xbox or Playstation - preference is unavoidable. Now in online arguments, for many years now it's a free-for-all, no holds barred debate about one thing or another. I'd focus just on console preferences for now. Things have been heating up in online discussions because Microsoft is about to release its newest console, the Xbox One X.  This is bothering a lot of people who have invested a lot of money in their preferred platforms. In particular, Sony fans have been very upset. In the local gaming community that I visit, users who prefer Sony would come in and do one thing or another: - argue the point that Playstation has more exclusive games - argue the point that discussions are not being fair/neutral - outright attack other gamers by sending them hate-filled private messages Honestly, Xbox fans have had to deal with a lot of negativity for their preferred p...

For Honor is an incredible multiplayer game. It really feels like a whole new concept, and for the first time we're seeing an actual NEW IDEA for fighting games. And it's coming from Western developers Ubisoft. There's a lot of great stuff in For Honor and I'm sure a lot of other bloggers/Youtubers have already covered them. I'm just going to write some constructive feedback for the devs so that maybe they can make the game even better than it already is....because by itself, it's a really, really good game. And, I have to say this again  - IT'S A GREAT FIGHTING GAME! Requests 1) Please fix the disconnection bugs. If you can convince Ubisoft to switch to dedicated servers, that will really help this game keep its player base. Granted the P2P system you have is already quite good and generally works. But occasionally I still get disconnections and very odd glitches which I'm sure a lot of fans have already told you about (like the 'Require...

This is a game I never planned on buying. I saw it being demoed at E3 a few times. The more recent demos they had were a bit glitchy, and the premise wasn't too clear. I only tried that one demo they had, the Platinum demo, and it completely turned me off on buying this game.  I've been burned before by Final Fantasy. Full disclosure, Final Fantasy VI and VII are some of my favorite games of-all-time. From that point onwards, the series has been having a steep decline in terms of relevance. At some point the games just become way too Japanese in their strangeness and it can be hard to relate with a few of the later titles. Yeah, I even gave Final Fantasy XIII a shot. I never finished it because it just didn't pull me in. At that point, I realized that maybe Final Fantasy can never realize its past glory. It just didn't have that shot of inspiration which the older Final Fantasy games had. The series was just behind in terms of technology, storytelling and ga...

"Press LB to time travel". I'll never forget seeing that on my screen the first time. I was half expecting the usual FPS level (abandoned science lab....search for ancient artifact...). But I didn't see enough previews of Titanfall 2 to even expect THAT from the game when i was playing it. Titanfall 2. Where to begin. I don't really have a great relationship with this particular game in the beginning. The developers of the game, Respawn Entertainment, had conducted a 'tech test' a few months back. While I enjoyed the first game, Titanfall 1....trying out the tech test had given me immense doubts on whether the developers understand what made the first game so good. A few days after T2 got released, there was a lot of buzz on the internet about its campaign and its multiplayer mode. Initially I brushed these off as the usual paid shills on the internet doing marketing for the game....but eventually the opportunity arose to try it again, and I don'...

As a father of two who has to balance spending time with the family and also occasionally gaming, Forza Horizon 3 really fits the bill by respecting your time, letting you enjoy its various systems at your own pace. You can customize various aspects of your experience such as the driving difficulty, AI difficulty, etc, so you will have an experience that fits your skill level. There's also a lot of diversity in the environments. The game features Australia, which has a wide variety of locales like beaches, deserts and rainforests. It almost feels like an old Sega arcade racing game at times with all the amazing scenery you'd be whizzing past in whichever fantastic sports car you can pick from over 350 in the available stable.  Eventually you will complete the game but even the ending acknowledges that there's really no end to it....the game is meant to be enjoyed just like that. Feel like a quick race or two? Fire it up and just spend 30 minutes or so on a leisurely...

Hard to write a new review when busy with work. Nonetheless I'll be reviewing this game and Forza Horizon 3 at a later time. For now here's what i thought about Gears 4 after completing it within 3 days (a few hours a day so i think that adds up to about 10-15 hours of campaign play and a few hours of versus mode play). I'm reviewing it without having played Horde yet. Yep, it's hard to find time to play games when you got a job and two kids! Here we go: For the campaign the one thing that stood out for me was the AI. I was playing the game at HARDCORE difficulty, and the AI was doing some interesting tactics where they'll rush at you, they'll grab you from cover if you're nearby, they'll flush you out with grenades and more. Interestingly enough the AI of your squadmates is also pretty good and they'll do their best to help you when you're down. There was one act in the game with a major boss fight where I took a few tries to beat the le...

So there I was, staring in awe at the latest footage for Call of Duty Infinite Warfare out of E3. In the scene they had, the player would ride a spacecraft, fight through waves of enemies and capital ships, and eventually board one, switching from fighter ship controls to first person shooter in just a few steps. When I was watching this, I thought it was an innovative scene and something that I haven't experienced before....so it seemed interesting to me. Then a few weeks after Activision had shown COD:IW, I had installed Halo Reach on my Xbox One. I had finished this game years back and already forgot about most of its campaign missions. Then I arrive at one mission in the game which was about the same in concept as what COD:IW had shown at E3 2016. Of course, Activision's version was newer and shinier, but Bungie had already pulled off something similar years back, with hardware running on 512MB of RAM (now tiny by today's standards). Replaying Halo Reach, I reali...

There's lots of talk about the announcements Microsoft made a few weeks back. Summing these up: 1) Essentially their goal is to make every Xbox One exclusive a Windows 10 exclusive also. 2) The Xbox One will eventually be an 'upgradable' console. My reaction to #1 - It's a damn shame that Microsoft doesn't want to sell its Xbox One console as hard as it should be. As an international user, the marketing is pretty abysmal for Xbox One, particularly here in the Philippines which is now pretty much Playstation dominated. Dropping exclusive games for Xbox One is great news for PC users, but it really doesn't encourage Xbox One gamers to keep their machines. I mean, you already get a lot of pressure from outlets like Digital Foundry saying the Xbox One is inferior to the PS4 (even if, to be honest, the difference in performance is so small to even be worthy of discussion). This does not help sell the console at all, and is just a strange move from MS. The onl...

Tip for people who bought the horrifically disappointing Street Fighter 5. 1) Go to Training Mode 2) Pick the character you want to get good as. 3) Pick an unfamiliar opponent, like Nash or something. 4) Make sure your network settings are set to find a ranked match or casual match. 5) Now when training mode starts, pause the game. Look for the menu page where you set the gauges (the V Trigger, EX meter, life bar, etc). Set all these to NORMAL. 6) Look for the menu page where you set the Player 2 behavior. Set it to CPU, and set the AI level to 8. For some reason, the AI of the game at level 8 is incredible. It's loads better than Ultra SF's and is a good way to see some strategies usually employed by human players. I'm no super fighting game player, but i think its good enough, at least, for an average fighter to enjoy, since there's no arcade mode at all. 1) You can get 'knocked out', then the training mode resets the match (without reloading the en...

First and foremost we all know that Microsoft is a software company.  For the past few years, its primary bread and butter, Windows has lagged.  The world began to shift towards mobile devices and began to leave the PC behind.   They can bank on corporate solutions but even that isn't enough to keep them relevant in the minds of regular consumers.  What is relevant now to regular folks (not really the MIS team in your office) are Google and Apple.  Microsoft is beginning to be a thing of the past... The truth of that matter was that the fault lay squarely on Microsoft's shoulders.  Before Google or Apple, MS had already dabbled into mobile and consumer devices.   While Redmond had a vision for the future, it is unfortunate that the rest of Microsoft (it's regional offices and whatnot) resisted the consumer centric platform and focus more on corporate sales.  No demand, they say.  Too small of the market, they say. ...

For the past few days I've had the opportunity to go through some older games. First, definition of terms so this isn't so confusing: Current gen - Xbox One, PS4, Wii U Last gen - PS3, Xbox 360, Wii The last console generation started around 2005. 2005. Think about that. That was over 10 years ago. Hard to believe a console cycle lasted this long. Technically it's still 'current gen' for many players who haven't bought a new console yet. When you play what is considered 'last gen' and you've already played 'current gen', you'll be surprised at how good last gen games are, even with comparatively less impressive graphics. One time I fired up the original Gears of War (inspired to play it over thanks to Microsoft's Xbox One backward compatibility announcement). The game holds up. It really does. Gears of War has this look that belongs to it, that no one else could ever pull off right. I'd dare say it does 'post-apocalypti...

Microsoft: - They get a lot of points from me for actually announcing games that will be out in 2015. - The Backwards Compatibility update is a huge surprise that I absolutely did not expect. Having BC is difficult and expensive to do, but somehow MS managed to do it, which leads me to believe the solution they found is an inexpensive one if they've decided it's practical to do QA work for the Xbox 360s gigantic library of games and make them all work on the Xbox One. If it was too complicated or expensive they probably wouldn't have bothered. But since they did, I think we're going to see full BC some time soon for all games. It's only a matter of time. - Halo 5 looked fantastic, but 343 has a lot of work to do to restore faith, after the horrific launch of the Halo Master Chief Collection. I think they can do it, and I'd imagine they're certainly motivated now. If they screw this one up....MS might reconsider forming a new team to handle the Halo franc...

I will admit, I was initially doubtful of Titanfall. Having tried the beta last year, it didn't feel right to me. I tried it on PC at the time and I had a few minor gripes: - Your Titan went down pretty quick in the beta.  - There was this weapon called the 'Smart Pistol' which shoots enemies without aiming - The parkour didn't feel very critical to the gameplay (at the time) Couple that with the knowledge I had that it won't have a single player campaign, and I ended up dismissing the game entirely.  So when it finally came out on Xbox One  I wasn't the first in line to buy it. In fact, I bought Titanfall during the recent Black Friday sale where it cost $13 to buy the game, the season pass and all the map packs together. It's a huge steal at that price, so I went ahead and picked it up. Now note that I picked up this game after I had played the much hyped Destiny from Bungie Studios, Battlefield 4, and Halo Master Chief Collection. These...

I read online that (unfortunately) most people are still not aware about all the changes that MS implemented for the Xbox One since E3 2013. As we all know, E3 2013 was a disaster for Microsoft and it permanently tainted their reputation with a lot of gamers. I do follow the news daily and I know that Microsoft has made amends. I think more people have to know that a lot of their policies were already changed, even before they actually released the Xbox One in the marketplace. What irritates me a bit is how one of the local stores, Datablitz, seems to be promoting these false notions. I heard that their clerks would tell potential buyers that the Xbox One requires a patch every week, and, in native tagalog, they would say "yan ang sakit nung Xbox One"....which is a really stupid, incorrect thing to say. Do their sellers know the products that they are selling? Do they even want to sell them and make any money? Regardless of what platform they favor, it's a pretty st...

There is a place where you can drive endlessly for miles, as fast as you want, as much as you want. Where you can purchase expensive sports cars relatively easily because of all the money you get just by driving around for fun. Where you can go off the road in your McLaren P1 and not worry about the consequences. This is Forza Horizon 2. And as you can probably tell by now, I'm absolutely smitten with this game.  Every car fantasy that inspired classics like Daytona USA, Ridge Racer, and even Gran Turismo has culminated into this one ridiculously amazing racing game. You're put into a huge, open world where you can drive wherever you want, and participate in various types of races in different sorts of weather and all kinds of road environments. You've got the choice of over 200+ cars, and can tune, upgrade, and customize their look all you want. All sorts of colors, paints; you name it, this game has it. This game has all kinds of environments --- city type environ...

I generally don't agree with most gamers when it comes to having games always be 1080p. 1080p is nice to have, but it's not something I need for my game to feel worth it. I'd rather be sure that a game plays smoothly, or that a game has a sound gameplay mechanic, than be actually counting individual pixels on my screen.  That said, I believe that Digital Foundry is doing a huge disservice to gamers by creating ridiculous expectations for game graphics. I just find it a bit irritating that most game discussion now boils down to resolution debates, and whether you're getting value for your money or not.  If you're still doubtful that your spending on a new console was a waste of money, it probably was. You move on to a new generation of systems to get to play the games you want, not to count the pixels and declare one company a winner over another, or get to trample down on another person because of their choices. 

Destiny is the hot topic of the week in the games industry. A lot of people are saying that basically it was overhyped to be this fantastic, large-scale game, only to turn out to be a shooter with MMORPG elements. I have to agree with some parts of what most are saying: advancement in Destiny requires that you play the missions over again. Finishing the game is a good thing to go for, and when you do finish it, you'll notice the whole single player campaign is about 16 hours long (or even less, if you're good as speed runs). But the impression I got from the 'end' of the game is that it isn't the real end, and that this game is something like a TV series or a saga that you would have to follow for a few weeks or months to get the most entertainment out of. So, in the time that Destiny is asking us players to wait for them to release more story content, they're asking us to play the missions over again, with different play mechanics or harder challenges. From t...

Gamescom 2014 just happened and there's been a lot of anger over the Rise of the Tomb Raider going exclusively to Xbox One. That was yesterday. Today we found out that it's not really a true exclusive but a timed exclusive. So in the past 24 hours, all I've been reading on Neogaf is just page after page of vitriol loaded posts. It's pretty upsetting. Personally, it doesn't bother me that ROTR is going to be exclusive to any platform at all. It's just one game. It's a great series, and we all know how iconic Lara Croft is. But still, the level of anger and the stuff people are saying online about it is kind of ridiculous. In the first place, if the game was fully exclusive to Xbox, it's not like Playstation owners don't have enough games to play anyway. They've got practically every multiplatform title coming for them, supposedly in full 1080p so they already get the best versions of everything. They've got Uncharted 4, which is probably goi...

I got this game a few weeks ago and I'm really enjoying it. As a showcase for the Xbox One it definitely works; it demonstrates what 'next-gen' visuals should be all about. Great art direction, extremely sharp CG level graphics...this game is just beautiful. And it's a first gen game! Imagine how good Xbox One games will get after 2-3 years. It's mind boggling to think about after seeing this game. The combat reminds me of old games like Golden Axe but with hyper-realistic graphics, great voice acting, sound effects and music. This game is a like a big tribute to major films like 300, Troy and Gladiator...it just has a lot of great moments that make you think back to those films, but---this game manages to have a character all its own. A lot of the action involves button mashing and good timing with QTEs...it just feels good to play. Maybe some would say it's repetitive because there are just a few enemy types but I don't know....have they played Double D...

One thing that bugs me about Asian/Philippine console game pre-order bonuses --- those damned black t-shirts. 1) They're always too small [hey guys, we aren't all teens!] 2) They always come in BLACK [which makes their usability quite limited, in my humble opinion] Enough with the pre-order bonus black t-shirt!