Jay’s Internet Log

[Note]  This was written up between October 11-18 2010, but held private

This past Saturday, around 2PM, I finished the story for Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.  That’s an amazing game, but instead of starting to go back through it again, I picked up Borderlands and started playing that for about thirty minutes until I got an invite to play Modern Warfare 2 (MW2).  As soon as the match started, I got a message on XBL with a code saying not to share any videos or photos.  I backed out of MW2 and downloaded “First Strike”, which I found out to be the Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer beta, developed by Treyarch.  The only Treyarch games that I’ve played were the 007 one, which I enjoyed a lot, and the Call of Duty: World at War (WaW) beta, which after playing made me decide to skip that game.  The reason being that I didn’t like the large amount of single fire weapons, especially after playing Call of Duty 4 for so long.  I heard that WaW was a pretty good game though from those who have played it.  Anyways, these are my impressions after playing for about 20 hours over the span of a week, mostly in Team Deathmatch (TDM).  Comparisons, when not noted, will be to CoD4 and MW2 which I have a combined playtime of about 75 days.

First Strike consists of a non-level-capped beta version of what we’ll get to play on November 9th in the form of Black Ops.  It consists of four maps that are named Cracked,Radiation, Launch, and Summit, my personal favorite.  They all vary in size and amount of cover, and they are all artistically well-done.  There don’t appear to be any tanks laying around ready for you to jump in, and I approve of this.  That was another thing that turned me away from WaW.  I want to run around and shoot other people, and that’s what I’ve been doing in this game.  The scoring is identical to MW2 where TDM matches run up to 7500 points.

Okay, so what’s new?  There is a new move so to say, and I’m not sure if WaW had this as well or if it’s new for Black Ops.  If you are sprinting, and immediately hold crouch, you’ll dive into the prone position ready to shoot.  I haven’t had much luck with this and would probably prefer just immediately being set into a prone position, but it is probably more realistic, and honestly, it’s really funny to watch people do this.  The character almost leaps out and lunges forward into a prone position.  Gameplay seems identical to the Call of Duty games that I know, though hit detection seemed a bit off.  This may be because at most there were about 100 people playing worldwide, most probably not near me out in Massachusetts, and lag was definitely an issue at times.  I did play around with the regional settings and had a much better experience when playing on the “Local Only” setting.  This only worked however when many people were playing.  When only around 30 people were playing, I never found a match.  I have high hopes for this functionality when the game releases.

This game features a theater.  Every match you play can be viewed from any aspect of it.  I’ve saved a few matches locally, but this morning I went looking for a match from last night where I threw a grenade and had no idea where it went, but it killed someone, so I wanted to look at it, and I noticed that I had 87 matches saved, which I assume are all of them.  I’m sure there will be a cutoff, but just know that if you forget to save a match to the theater immediately, you can go back and grab it at a later time.  One match Saturday night was on Launch, and someone on my team let the dogs out, either via care package or killstreak reward.  At the 4:30 mark on the countdown of game time, a huge rocket lifts off, and it’s quite amazing.  I heard a dog yelp as this happened and mentioned something about the rocket killing a dog.  Yesterday I was perusing the theater and found that I could search anybody’s videos in which I was in the match during, which is a REALLY cool feature.  I found one by Mattks, a Treyarch employee, called “The life and death of Dog #4″ or something like that.  I watched it and it was awesome.  He had taken multiple clips of the dogs running around, killing enemies over and over again, and then finishing with the rocket killing the dog.  I laughed really hard.  I’m not sure if he realized that the dog got killed or if he heard me mention that I heard the dog’s last whelp or not, but either way, he made a really funny video out of that match!

Something that Infinity Ward (IW) took out of MW2 and I wish they hadn’t, was the coloring scheme used to identify people on your team.  There are little messages on the bottom left of the screen that tells you who kills who as it happens.  This is a great way to quickly tell how your team is doing.  In CoD4 (and I assume WaW), your team is always silver in color and the enemy team gold.  In MW2, IW changed it so that the color of your team was the color of these names, and it is extremely confusing this way.  Sometimes your team names would be black, or red, or silver, or gold, and it changed each game depending on what team you were on.  I liked the silver/gold color scheme of old, where I knew who was doing what on the battle field.  I’m glad to see that Black Ops has this in place like I believe it should be.

The way you unlock and upgrade weapons is different, and maybe this should go into its own section to talk about customization.  In this game, you gain XP by killing people on the other team, winning, and completing challenges.  You also earn CoD points, and I’m honestly not sure how the scaling works.  It seems like you get 1000 points every time you gain rank, but other than that, you just get some each game, or if you complete a contract, but I’ll talk about those below.  Now what you do with these CoD points is anything from upgrading and customizing your weapons to creating your customized emblem.  The range of emblem customization is enormous.  I made a triangle out of three pieces of bacon, as well as an adult situation between a horse and a bunny rabbit.  Nothing seems to be blocked in terms of customization.  For some reason though, I couldn’t name my Assault Rifle class “Assault” because it was a banned term.  I’ve only used two scopes in the game; a red dot scope and the “Reflex” scope, which gives it a small amount of zoom but keeps the scope tiny.  It’s definitely my favorite so far.  As you earn levels, you unlock new weapons, but still have to spend your CoD points on them, so it kind of detracts from trying out new ones.  I liked having to use a weapon to unlock its attachments, but in Black Ops, you can fully deck out a weapon how you like upon unlocking it.  This is good and bad really.  It can be good for those who know the weapons, but it seems to take away a bit of the fun in using the weapons to unlock attachments and camo colors.  For instance, instead of having to kill 25 enemies to unlock the red dot scope, you just buy it outright with your CoD points.  The same goes for camo.  All but one camo color are unlocked immediately upon being able to customize it, so having red camo on your gun doesn’t show that you’ve earned  a lot of headshots with said weapon, something I always notice about other players.  You can change up the crosshairs in the scope, and there are a lot of different options to play with.  I tried a few and chose one that looks like a plus sign, so when I hit somebody, the X that pops up works well with the plus sign and makes an asterisk of sorts.  I also made it green in color with a blue lens.  I’m not sure why I want to change the lens color, but I guess it’s cool.  You can also spend your CoD points to add your clan tag and emblem to your weapons.  The emblem is cool to add to most guns, but the clan tag is barely visible as it’s kind of scratched into the gun.  I am one level away from unlocking face paint, but I assume it will work just like everything else, where I just choose one, buy it, and it’s done.

Black Ops introduces Contracts into the game.  This is a way to spend a few CoD points in order to possibly earn many back.  These are timed challenges and if you don’t meet the requirements before the time runs out, then you lose your initial investment.  I’ve completed 9 of these so far and haven’t let one expire.  You can choose how difficult you want to make it for yourself, and the harder ones do return more in the end.  I’ve done one that requires you to simply win 2 TDM games.  I spent 50 CoD points and earned 250 out of it I think.  I’ve also completed a few that require you to get 14 Assault Rifle kills in a single match, and get 5 Assault Rifle kills without dying.

Warlord will be the next Stopping Power.  I’m just saying this now.

I’ve played a total of three Wager Matches.  I don’t think that there is any XP involved in these matches, but I could be wrong.  Everyone puts down 10 CoD points and the top three players take all the points.  I played one called “Gun Game” where everyone starts with the same weapon, and upon killing someone, the weapon changes.  After you go through 20 weapons, the game ends and whoever is in the top 3 is “in the money” and gets some CoD points.  The other game was called “One in the Chamber” and everyone starts with a single bullet with low health.  If you kill someone, you get an additional bullet and keep going.  If you miss, then you have to make a melee kill or just die and respawn.  I see this as a fun way to play with friends, but not much else really.  Overall this is shaping up to be a great game, and one that I’m glad to say, after playing the beta, that I will be keeping my preorder and am looking forward to the release.  I don’t know what it’s like to play Zombies, and wouldn’t be buying it for this mode anyways, but as far as multiplayer is concerned, it looks like a winner.

I had a lot of fun last night, mostly in the Theater.  After seeing the dog video that Mattks made over the weekend, I decided to try my hand at the video editor.  Every match you play gets saved to be viewed later, and it saves a lot of matches.  You can then choose a match to bring into your file share, of which I’ve currently got 6 slots.  There are a total of 18 slots but most of them are locked and I’m not sure how to unlock them.  I assume it’ll be locked until the main game ships.  Anyways, when you view one of these videos, you can toggle between first person, third person, and free roam cameras.  You can also choose who to focus on, slow down (difficult to control), and speed up the action.  You can record up to 10 segments to place together into a montage (Montage!).  I chose a match from the previous night to play around with.  In this match I got a

random grenade kill from underneath Radiation, up through the closeable doors, and I wanted to see what actually happened.  I made a few clips of the grenade from my perspective as well as a few free roaming ones of the enemy dying.  I think it came out pretty good for my first time.  Now after you’ve created a few segments, you can rearrange them and choose between a fade or cut transition.  More transitions would be nice, but this works.  I then uploaded my video to share with others.  The video editor is nice, but you won’t be making professional videos with just it.  For example, you can only have up to 10 segments, and as far as I can tell, you can only take segments from a single match, so you can’t mix and match between different games.  When you are searching for user videos to watch, you can filter the game type or map, but the best filter I’ve seen so far is the one where you can choose to see videos that you were actually a part of, and I think that’s really cool.

I made a few new classes last night.  In MW2, my favorite weapon is the SPAS-12, and this game has one too, albeit a much different weapon.  This SPAS-12 reminds me of the automatic shotgun in the 007 game that Treyarch developed, and it even has a silencer attachment, though I haven’t unlocked it yet.  It has 8 rounds that fire and reload very similar to the Striker in MW2.  I’ve been running with Lightweight, Steady Aim, and Marathon with it and it’s rather beastly.  I killed two guys with one shot last night and of course made a little movie of it.  In the same match I got two tomahawk kills, one for the final killcam, so this match made a pretty sweet little movie.  This is where I learned that I could only have 10 segments per movie!  I’d like to say this here:  Tomahawk >>>> Throwing Knife.  I say this because the throwing knife’s learning curve is extremely steep, and even though I’ve gotten proficient with it, the Tomahawk feels easy to start with.  The reticule it larger, and it lights up red when you’ll hit something.  I really do like it better.  After a few more matches I unlocked the Crossbow and decided to try it out.  My first crossbow shot has been my best.  It was on Cracked at the start of the round.  On Cracked, pretty much everyone rushes the middle and lobs grenades over.  I entered the round about 3 seconds after everyone else and saw a guy up high sniping.  I sneaked up and missed him with a Tomahawk, ran away, then realized I had the Crossbow.  I sneaked back over and hit him smack in the middle of his head.  He ran away and then the arrow exploded.  It was awesome, and also made for my best video yet.  From one angle you can see me sneaking over the rubble and shooting the arrow.  From another you can see it land in his head, and in yet another, you see him blowing up.  It was really awesome.  I hit another guy with the Crossbow but he didn’t die, so I finished him off with the Tomahawk.  Overall, I’m really starting to get the feel for this game.  I have all the maps pretty much memorized now and you can tell that the others playing also know them pretty well, so the competition is heating up.  I’m still finding bugs here and there, but don’t know who to talk to about them, so I’ll just keep writing this to release whenever it seems like a good time.

I only put a few hours into the game last night.  I reached level 37 and played around more with the crossbow.  I’m finding it very easy to get some really impressive kills with the crossbow and tomahawk in this game.  I like how the crossbow sticks into the enemy and then about a second later it detonates.  I tried out a new shotgun, the H21 I think it’s called.  The only attachment for this weapon is to dual wield it, so I have been running with this, the crossbow, tomahawk, concussion (stun) grenades, and motion sensor (LOVE the motion sensor) with Lightweight, Steady Aim, and Marathon.  It’s not as much fun as unlimited sprint in MW2, but it’s better than I had originally thought, and I’ve been going very positive with this setup.  Another thing I like about this game is that when you hit the back button to look at the current game stats, it calculates out

KDR for you on the screen so you can always quickly tell who’s doing well, etc.  The people who are testing this game are all very nice, which is a change from the imminent slums that will appear when the game releases.

Last night I spent some time in the theater with another player and we watched each other’s videos.  It was really cool and I look forward to creating and sharing videos when the game releases.  I was going to create an Infinity Ward emblem last night but decided against it.  I’m seeing more and more adult wacky emblems and they all make me smile.  I’m sticking with my “Rabbit on Shield” emblem for the time-being.  After looking through the theater, we started playing and actually played with a full team of people who were calling out enemy locations, and it felt good.  As far as weapons go, I used the MPL to get 75 kills in 40 minutes, a feat that I failed the previous night at 74 kills before the timer ran out.  I then failed a few other contracts because I set them up to contradict each other.  I’m learning that you shouldn’t just pick 3 trials to go after.  You should complement them with each other so you can work them down together.  For instance, set up a contract that states to win 2 TDM matches along with one that states to get 14 kills with an Assault Rifle in a single TDM match.  These two work well together.  Killing 5 people with the M72 LAW and 75 people with the MPL however, don’t work well together.  It’s doable, but could be difficult.

The servers were only running Team Tactical last night, and honestly, I’m not convinced that games other than Team Deathmatch are properly balanced yet.  Summit has spawning problems throughout, and I believe that it will be very easy for a competent team to spawn trap on this map.  When you bring Capture the Flag (CTF) into play, things get a

little strange.  Spawning of both teams starts happening in the middle of the map and it starts to become a mess.  CTF scores differently than MW2.  Both rounds go to 3 captures and end.  The first team to get 3 captures wins, or if the time runs out, the team with the most captures.  When I played, we lost the first round 2-0, then won the second round 3-0, so we went to Overtime.  In MW2, overtime consisted of just getting a player to the opposite flag, but I believe that someone on our team actually captured a single flag.  I’m not positive about that, but it seemed a bit better than how MW2 handles it.  There will be many more tied games after 2 rounds though as your total number of captures doesn’t come into play.  I played a few rounds of Domination and Demolition, and a single round of Search and Destroy.  Before jumping on, I set up a few TDM-related

contracts which were all but useless when playing other game types.  I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on last night, and think I’m sitting at level 41.  I’d like to get to 50 by the end of Sunday, but I’m not sure how plausible that is.

END
Other than playing a beta build for a game that hasn’t been released yet, one of the best aspects of this experience has been playing with people who built the game or work closely with them, as well as sans annoying children who screen into the microphones whenever they feel it necessary.  This all ended on Day 7 when I noticed an influx of annoying people, but didn’t really know what was going on until later.  Supposedly, someone with the beta lent their profile to a hacker who then spread it out around the Internet.  I got into a match where people had unlimited ammo and it was quite annoying.  I left said match and searched again and got into a room with a few Treyarch developers as well as Community Manager Josh Olin.  I explained what I had just seen and Josh and I watched my video footage of the previous match, though the hackers with unlimited ammo were not present in it.  This was strange, and I really had wished that I could have proven to Josh of what I had just seen.  He took my name down and asked me a few questions as to where I got the code for the game, and then left.  He sounded stressed and I can see why.  I really hope that this will be a game with less hackers and cheaters than I’m used to with MW2, but I somewhat doubt that this will be possible until Microsoft updates the 360 itself.  The next morning I tried logging into the beta and was denied, and that’s where this story ends.  The World at War open beta two years ago dissuaded me from purchasing that game, but this Black Ops closed beta proved to me that Treyarch has created a quality piece of work that appears more balanced in terms of multiplayer than any other FPS game that I’ve ever played.  It looks like it will be a great game, though I doubt it will have the same impact on me as CoD4 did three years ago.

Bugs:

1.  When a care package lands over a fence but right next to a path, it is unreachable.  I landed one on the back side of Summit near where the gondolas come up, behind the middle building with all the computer equipment, and I stood there trying to grab it (it was RIGHT next to me) but couldn’t because it was on the other side of a 2 foot tall fence.  This may be by design, but I wanted to point it out.  In MW2, if a package fell on a roof, you could jump and lock in the grabbing process, and it was really cool.

2.  There is a spelling error in the word “Minimum” in the Clean House challenge.  It is spelled “Minimun”.

3.  Hit detection seems a bit off, but that may be due to lag.  I’m finding that many bullets don’t hit when I’m aimed right in, but sometimes they do when tracking somebody and it looks like I never hit them.  It’s different each game I play, so I blame lag for this.

4.  Audio during Final Killcam doesn’t seem to slow down along with the video.  You’ll see a slow motion final killcam, but the bullets sound like they are in normal speed.

[EDIT] – I only see this some of the time…sometimes it does seem to slow down with the video.

5.  This may have been a fluke, but I could have sworn that I saw the contents of a care package change while it was sitting on the ground.  It’s also possible that somebody dropped two of them and I saw it change when one of them was picked up. [EDIT] – I read in OXM that Hardline Pro allows you to do this.

6.  In the regional settings, there is a setting for “Local” and one for “Locale Only”.  I think that both of these should line up with each other, with or without the trailing ”e”.  For Us-based games, the trailing “e” should not be present.

7.  Red, explosive barrels that get a few bullets into them and light on fire will never explode on their own.  They will just stay lit until another bullet blows them up.

8.  I think I saw a Level 50 person (employee probably) underneath Summit on the second floor of the main building opposite the side with the gondolas.  I’m assuming this is a known bug and he was replicating it.

9.  Classified Face Paint can be purchased without unlocking earlier Face Paints.

I’m lumping these three together because they all arrived together (along with my sweet new 27″ monitor, but that’s not really pertinent here) and go together.  Kinect is Microsoft’s answer to the question “Why is Nintendo making so much money?” and it’s quite impressive.  There are two reasons that I preordered it; first is that the technology to use yourself as a controller in a 3 dimensional space intrigued me, and secondly, Heather wanted the dancing game.  Kinect uses I believe two cameras, an RGB one as well as an IR one to find you in the room.  It also uses four microphones for voice commands and aural placement recognition.  You place this little sensor near your TV as you would the Wii sensor, but this thing is much more advanced.  It has a small motor in it to track up and down, and one of the cameras contains a hexogonal red light array which, when you look right at it, resembles a Terminator’s eye looking back at you, and that’s very cool.

I sense a bit of irony here when it comes to the Fable and Fallout franchises.  Two years ago I preordered and received Fable II, writing off Fallout 3 because it was too dry and brown in color.  After a day of playing Fable II, I learned about all sorts of game breaking glitches and read that Lionhead was going to address them.  I stopped playing and decided to pick up Fallout 3, which stands as one of the best games I’ve ever played.  Fast forward two years and the opposite reaction is happening.  I’ve been playing Fallout: New Vegas for a week and was holding on to Fable III until I made some progress with it, but it started freezing up on me and I’ve lost a companion, and have now decided to put it down for a bit.

I started Fable III last night and have been absolutely loving it.  The opening movie is hysterical, involving a small adventure of a chicken.  I am playing as a princess (I play all these games as women after being tortured by Mass Effect 1) and found what I suppose is to be my love interest.  He grabbed my hand and said that he would lead me to our next destination, but I had to do the leading in the end.  It’s all just a tutorial.  I then had to kill some innocent people and escape the castle with John Cleese.

So far, this game feels to me like an updated Fable II, which is nothing that I would complain about.  I loved Fable II, and so far, I’m loving Fable III.  These games are just relaxing.  I made some pies and played Lute Hero for 15 minutes last night to earn a little gold to rent out a house and earn some more gold while I slept.  I haven’t come across any slowdown except when Bates joined my room while I was playing Lute Hero and it got a little slow for a few seconds.  The Fable games are not hardcore RPGs, they are games that put you into a very well-made fantasy world, full of people with attitudes that would tend to be realistic.  I’ve only scratched the surface with this one, and I’m looking forward to putting a lot more time into it!