Tag Archives: Killzone

Perhaps pirate plow?

That is the stage we see and we can go in any direction you want. I am not being mean or negative, because I have not played Black Flag Resynced and that should be the operative setting if you want to judge it. I have the original and I got it on day 1. So when I saw the ‘reviews’ stating that it is the most ‘successful’ AC game ever released, I went “wait a minute” there are a few facts that are ‘overlooked’. I got the PS4 on opening night and I got 2 games. The first one I returned the day after. It was the worst game I ever played. It was Killzone. It wasn’t my choice in gaming, but the choices on day one were exceedingly limited. When you looked down at your feet, they dance the jig, there were a few other issues, but it was not the game of choice. So a few weeks later AC Black Flag came out, so I used the cash to get that game. I reckon that is why Black Flag did so well, it was out in the first month and it was good, we can argue how good, but it was more than a head above all others games, so it had an excellent timing schedule. That benefit is no longer here. That does not mean that it will be a bad game, good games usually end up well. 

I had a few issues with the original (like music sheet chasing) and a few other settings. You see, I never regarded it ask AC game, a good game, not an AC game. But overall what I just saw is that the graphics are definitely improved, if it was originally 80%, it is now a definite 95% and that is just the graphics. There is not much more to say. I reserve my feelings towards changes made. I see that part as mostly ‘presented views’ on the parts that might not have been seen as great. I have the issue that there is too much fighting. A real AC game is taking out the enemy before they are aware you are there. But that is just me. 

So, will I try the new game? It depends on how the play throughs are shown. How stealthy is it? That matters to me, perhaps for others too. Then there are the settings of the new missions, the ‘altered’ views and the improvements to the Jackdaw. I get that a 100% transfer his unlikely to work, no matter how the graphics are. But the original game had promise, so it has the inner working for it to be a really great game and after 13 years there are all kinds of people who never played that game. So if you want to plow pirates, there is enough to make the cake delicious.

So whilst IGN gives us “Much remains to be seen of how well these new additions will be integrated into Black Flag’s original content, and how the game’s existing missions may have been tweaked, too. After years of leaks, though, we now at least have a better idea what to expect — and that July 9 release date on the horizon, which is now just three months’ away.” I personally have two issues. I personally believe that these so called ‘leaks’ are tempting data collectors on how to get a game more for ‘everyone’ and I have always believed that when you try to appease everyone, you will please no one and that is a setting I fully believe. As such there is a problem within Ubisoft. Either they have no security on their games, or they are testing the waters (for years) by feeding some people the parts and this puts the game at the test. But consider the rule I set as the most important one “when you try to appease everyone, you will please no one”, so when you see the ‘improvement’ to parkour running, what are they setting? How is that a AC game? It could be, but I merely wonder. As for the best game, we see the publications that AC black flag is the most popular one, personally I like AC Origins the most, closely followed by AC Brotherhood and AC2. Of course others might have another view and that is fine. We will see in the second week of July how the game is accepted and how others see this game. 

Will the game hit home? I am curious to see what comes from this. No matter how it is seen, I wish Ubisoft the best of success, because luck is not a factor here. 

Have a great day

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Nextgen console first failing

There are these moments a person cherishes. In my case it was the info as I saw it in the last week. I am not in a gloating mood, but the idea that I can say to the CEO of Sony (and Microsoft) “I told you so!” feels pretty good.

So what happened? As I looked at my PlayStation Plus options I saw a great thing (really!). You see, Killzone is available as a free download for those who have PlayStation Plus. So, a new game, which was $100 at release night, is now a freebie if you have PlayStation Plus! This is truly a great thing! I did take an initial look, but I did not like the game (a personal choice), so it was not for me.

Make sure you take note, that I am not calling this a bad game! It is just not the game for me. This is fair enough as we can’t all like the same game!

It was at that moment that I noticed the little setback (for those who want it). The Download is 39Gb. Yes! It is 39,000 Megabyte, the size of 900 DVD’s. This is what my issue was from the very beginning with all that Microsoft online store approach for games and movies. This online approach is all nice, but take into consideration that many will likely have less than a 60 Gb monthly allowance. Adjusting that, a person’s internet costs would go up by $240-$600 a year, this means ADDITIONAL costs, not your overall internet bill. The second part is now also clear. Those who want this would sacrifice 10% of their hard drive in one go. Now, I will admit that you can buy a larger drive if need be (and you will need to). Instead of adding the $20 at the very beginning and giving the consumers a drive twice the size would have been so worth it. Now, they will need to spend $89 – $179 to get the size a gamer needs long term (1-2 Tb, which is 1,000-2,000 Gb).

Oh, and it seems that people with the Xbox One, they do not have that option, they will only have the option to add an external drive, so more cables, possible additional power plugs, it will get messy quite quickly!

So, we have two issues, our internet will max really fast and in addition we will need more storage space and all this becomes visible within 5 weeks of these NextGen consoles being released. There is of course the other side too; did these ISP’s consider the issue when millions will all download the latest games and movies? These people might all be connected through different ISP’s, yet when the internet needs to facilitate a data need of 35,000,000 Gigabyte on the night of release, things will go pear shaped really fast. That part was shown when 100,000 people tried to connect to their GTA-V online part, routers all over the world could not keep up and that was just the login. Yes, we know that the makers themselves had issues as well, but when we see issues where ISP, Rockstar and Console makers are pointing at one another we the gamers lose and that was ‘just’ a 7Gb game. I foresee that many ISP’s will get massive issues when tens of thousands of gamers try to get that 35 Gb download.

This is where we stand and there is more to come sooner than most think. Even if you have the game on disk, what happens when you have to download patches that are several Gigabytes in size? Killzone needs a large patch (not sure the exact size) and it seems that a patch will need to come for Lego Marvel super heroes. What happens when you have a dozen games? How much bandwidth for downloads will be required then? Let us not forget that downloads for patches and updates have existed forever, when we see that these larger games are above 35 Gb each, the size of these patches will dramatically increase as well. When you move from a broadband plan of $49 to a plan of $120 each month? Will you still be happy with your Next Generation console? I will admit that $120 was the largest I saw in one case only (worst scenario approach), but the reality still remains. How long for these downloads to complete? That really depends on your connection, but unless you have ADSL2 or better, downloading games that big becomes a non-option, even in the best circumstances of ADSL2 it could take around 9 hours to get through it all and if you are doing other things on the internet whilst it downloads (like Facebook/Google+) that download time will go up by a lot, so it is more than overnight. If there is a connection loss at any time you might lose more than a day. I feel certain that many people had not thought that through and did not reckon on having to deal with a download Behemoth (unless they stick to buying discs). Now, many games will not get to be that large!

Anything below 10Gb (which is still 2 DVD’s) can easily be downloaded on most connections, even though it might take a little while. Yet the NextGen is all about really high resolution (like Blu-ray), which makes the 35Gb minimum space more likely to be the average standard size then the exceptional large title.

So, do you still feel good about your Next Gen console? I truly hope you do, just make sure that you do not cut your own fingers on the download issues and if you have a PS4 (or will get one), then upgrade that hard drive sooner rather than later, because upgrading the drive immediately is just an annoyance, upgrading it after a year of gaming might turn that operation into a small nightmare.

 

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