Firefall: Public Beta Weekend

Red 5 Studios have announced that their free to play MMO FPS Firefall will begin its first public beta test this Friday, as part of a 48 hour Beta Weekend.  To kick off the news, the studio has released a new action-packed trailer featuring the game’s latest content:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cStkVg5CLQw] (more…)

Bulletstorm Completed!

As well as completing my cube skin, I also completed Bulletstorm!

The rest of the game turned out to be just as much fun as the first part.  The sniper was the next awesome toy to be placed in my hands.. with added bullet-steering abilities!  I loved how the enemies tried to dive out of the way as the bullet got near to them.. but there was no escape!

Heading through the dam section, and ultimately destroying it was awesome too!

After this I encountered the Maneaters.. huge carnivorous plants which caught human-sized snacks!  I was caught by surprise a few times.. they move quickly and you don’t have a lot of time to press the button to try and escape once caught.  After being eaten by a plant I endured some mocking from a friend.. I’m looking forward to seeing how he manages!

The boss fight at the end of this level took a while, killing me with spores on the first attempt.  The sliding move turned out to be very useful for getting away from attacks and quickly getting around the boss to catch all the vulnerable points.. eventually killing him off to earn the Weedkiller achievement 🙂

After this, and knowing we were about to catch up with Sarrano, I thought I was heading towards the end of the game, and ended up staying up far too late.. in the end I had to give up and sleep.  So for length of game, I was rather impressed..  I was also impressed with the variety in the levels and enemies, as well as the story allowing us to meet up with Sarrano but in a twist, not letting us actually fight him until later.

There were a few tougher sections.. or at least, parts of the game where I stuck for a little while.. one started with a miniboss in the centre, and other enemies around the room, then more and more enemies and minibosses arrived while I was fighting which led to a few restarts 😉

These were especially satisfying to get through, especially after rampaging through previous sections.

I’ve now started playing through on Hard.. so far it doesn’t seem all that much harder, but I am used to the weapons now, and know what to expect.  Next up has to be the multiplayer, though 🙂

When Bulletstorm was originally released there was a lot of complaining in the media, with some idiots trying to claim that people would become rapists after playing, because of bad language, the fact you are rewarded for shooting bad guys in the nuts, and so on.  I took pleasure in shooting my enemies in the nuts (I struggled to get the ‘Mercy’ skillshot as I was killing them off too quickly), whipping them into environmental hazards with the leash, and gagging them with my flail-gun, as well as being rather amused at the language.. do I now want to go outside and rape people?  No.  That’s because I can tell the difference between a game and reality.. those who go out and commit crimes like that are going to do it regardless.

The media also rolled out the usual irrelevant whinge about children being affected, by seeing the violence and wanting to copy it.. well, young children shouldn’t be given access to games rated for adults, and if they are, then you have to ask what else their parents let them get up to..

Bulletstorm

I picked Bulletstorm up back in April, at i-42 after playing the first section on a friend’s PC, where Grayson and his group of ex-assassin-turned-pirates try to ram the General’s ship, the Ulysses.. and fail, crash landing on a planet filled with crazed gangs..

I finally got around to playing properly over the last few days, repeating the first section and then moving on to the planet where I came across the awesome Energy Leash!

I came to love this weapon when I found how easy it was to grab enemies from behind cover, dragging them to me and impaling them on nearby objects.  This also earned me Skillshots such as Pricked and Voodoo Doll.. and when I’d earned enough points, I discovered the Thumper upgrade, allowing me to fling all the enemies into the air.. this was more awesome still, and came in really handy when I found myself over-run 🙂

The Flail-Gun was also amazing fun, if a little sadistic a weapon.. two explosives tied together by a short chain, which easily wrap themselves around the targetted enemy for you to detonate at your leisure.. preferably near his friends to take them out too.  Normally I don’t really focus so much on guns, to the amusement and/or despair of those I’m with, but it seems the guns in this game are all rather fun.  Next up was the Boneduster, an insanely powerful gun up-close.. I discovered this just prior to heading into a miniature city in the Worst Family Fun Vacation Ever section, which meant all my enemies were up close!  Those who didn’t get shot by the Boneduster were kicked or whipped into surfaces which electrocuted them :>

I recently tried out the Duke Nukem Forever demo, and was disappointed by the fact you could only have two guns at a time, only changing them if you came across another on the ground.  Bulletstorm allows you to carry three, including the standard weapon, or four if you include the leash, with changes available at the Drop Pods.  So far, I’ve not felt that I’ve been limited.. maybe because the guns  are more fun to use, maybe because there are more enemies coming at you.. though I wouldn’t object to the Shrink Ray in here too 🙂

After escaping the miniature city, I got hold of the best weapon so far.. the MechaTon, aka “Waggleton P. Tallylicker”, a remote-controlled robot dinosaur which fired lasers from its eyes!

This section lasted longer than I’d expected.. many games don’t really let you play with the biggest weapons for very long, but this level let me kill lots of enemies and destroy rather a lot of buildings 🙂