Ah my beloved Fallout, finally back where it belong; back East in Nevada and Mojave Desert, but not, of course in its original isometric style. But that’s the old school fan in me talking. So what do we have to look forward in this latest standalone incarnation in this post-apocalyptic series?
In this incarnation you don’t start playing as a Vault Dweller, but are instead identified as ‘The Courier’ carrying important information to the New California Republic, a faction that old fans will recognise from Fallout 2 who has now come to dominate the whole of California and is spreading beyond.
I have been looking through the Plus XP archive and I have realised that me being the keen FPS player I am, I haven’t mentioned anything about Rage yet. Now seeing as id software is one of the grandfathers of the FPS genre and they have indeed been working on Rage for a long time.
So what is Rage? Are we going to see if this is the next FPS marvel from the original creators of the FPS genre? Well sit back and find out.
So some of you FPS fans are probably every now and again playing the old Duke Nukem 3D, as it’s the only true first person Duke game you have. Previously You have probably been looking at your watch sitting in a darkened corner of your room between bouts of Halo and Duke Nukem 3D staring at your time device for 13 years. Why? This is because you have been waiting for the next FPS game in the Duke Nukem franchise, Duke Nukem Forever, and it had been taking 13 god damn years to make.
But sometime mid-last year you probably gave up hope, with the news that 3D Realms had bitten the dust and that Duke Nukem forever was pretty much buried in the ground forever you probably reluctantly returned back to playing Duke Nukem 3D for the twenty thousandth time and every now and again looking at this trailer and thinking what could have been.
Ok so these past few weeks have been Halo: Reach crazy, and to be honest it is totally understandable seeing as this is going to be Bungie’s last outing for the Halo Franchise. Bungie have always said they wanted to leave the Halo franchise with a bang, and what I have heard thus far, they are right on schedule. With things like Forge World and pretty much a play upgrade from several new features, Bungie are defiantly going all out on this one.
The For-runners are back, and this time it’s up to you what is built.
Halo 3 brought us something that console fans had been yearning for in one shape or form since Halo: Combat Evolved, and that was a level editor of sorts. Dubbed Forge, this basic level editor would let players customise some of their favorite maps with a variety of weapons, props and vehicles.
Later on in Halo 3’s life Bungie released some unique DLC expand forge further, 2 maps came out over the months the first of which was Foundry, where keen level editors were given a small blank space to play with and a lot more terrian objects to play with, such as bridges, shipping containers etc, this got gamers such as myself pretty excited at the amount of freedom you had in such a small area. But when Sandbox came out for Halo Forge this took map editing for Halo 3 to a whole new level. You could create pretty much anything you wanted within reason, you were given 2 tiers to customise with a wealth of terrain and landscaping tools. With Sandbox I created my own game pretty much, which never really took off, but I may bring it back.
As I was doing my day-to-day scanning of the internet. I found out that some of the Halo Reach achievements have been announced officially by Bungie. I also noticed that these were announced a while ago *facepalm* but never the less I will endeavor to go through what has been announced.
Note: If you don’t want to feast your eyes on the Halo Reach Achievements, I suggest you take a look at the other posts on the site to take your mind off this one. There is always the Halo Reach Fire Fight article I did to keep you occupied.
Ok if you have been keeping up with Plus XP you will know full well now that I absolutely love everything Halo. I have been a fan of this game since its first game back in on the original Xbox, or X Brick as I liked to call it back then.
My first taste of Halo came about when I was round my mates house playing multiplayer split screen. We were playing split screen death match and we chose a nice little level known as Blood Gulch. This was a very simple map that had a base on either side of the map, and a huge wide expanse of land in between. The perfect setting for pretty much any team based game variant. It was also perfect for vehicle battles and anything you can think of. The most simple of maps but the most used throughout Halo: Combat Evolved
Now I think I would be under exaggerating just a tiny bit when I say I like halo. I think this every time I look at My Xbox 360 game collection and see almost a 3rd of my games are Halo (yes ok My collection Isn’t that big), but the more I think about it. The more I think “is there anything different they can bring to the FPS genre, are they just gonna stick with the old Halo Mechanics?”
One of the very few games I always come back too when I have nothing else to play is Portal. The very idea of a first person puzzle game that uses portals to get around and solve puzzles really puts a smile of my face each time I think about it. God knows how many times I have played through the first Portal and loved it.
Usually every year I am excited about the Microsoft E3 Press conference. Nothing puts a smile on my face more than the thought of some big game announcements and previews for my beloved console. But to hear that most of the conference was about Kinect and how much this thing is about as revolutionary as the latest Final Fantasy title I feel a little disappointed and underwhelmed.
To be honest I am pretty much done with speaking about Kinect. So if your interested at all at what Kinect does or whatever. Check out my previous post devoted to the thing. It will tell you what its all about and the games coming out for it.
