Teens in Tech Games

Introduction-

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Officially announced on February 11, 2009, the game was released worldwide on November 10, 2009. It is the sixth installment of the Call of Duty series, and the direct sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, continuing along the same storyline.

First Impressions-

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has gotten more hype than virtually any game ever released, and the midnight launch showed for all the hype. At my local Gamestop the lines were probably 3 times as long as the lines for the Halo 3 midnight launch, and they had booths with screens to play some of the game while you were waiting, along with a live DJ! When I started the game up, even the title screen got me excited to play this extremely hyped game. My brother wanted to play too, of course, so we decided to play some Spec Ops. The graphics were great, the gameplay was extremely fun, and the missions were actually very challenging, what more could you ask for. Also, they implemented a ton of new weapons into this game, along with new vehicles too! (Weapons list). My overall first impressions: This is a great game that any hardcore or casual gamer should most definitely play. It has all the components that make a great FPS (First Person Shooter), or any gametype for that matter. And for those of you who loved Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, this sequel will not disappoint. Try to imagine Call of Duty 4, but any problem you had with it fixed to perfection, yeah, its that good.

The Good-

It is really hard to pin point the good aspects of this game, as the whole game is really good. One thing that I found particularly good was the online play. Multiplayer in this game is incredibly fun, and it is challenging too. I cannot stand a game that isn’t hard, and this game definitely does not lack any challenge. Also, the amount of different types of weapons and vehicles keeps a never ending cycle of new adventures going throughout you experience. Another thing that I found really cool about Modern Warfare 2 was the third-person mode. This adds an extra twist to the game. Most games are either first-person or third-person, but they took it another step and just added both, fun! I have seen lots of people complain about how it is really unbalanced because as a low level it is hard to kill higher levels because they have better guns…DUH! Is that not the point of the game? What Infinity Ward really did is made it so there is a driving force that makes you want to play more…the higher level you get, the better guns you will get. Any RPG (Role Playing Game) style game will be like this, otherwise there is no point in leveling and gaining experience.

The Bad-

There is not a lot of bad in this game, but if I were to have to point out one bad thing, it would simply be that you can’t play online with more than one person per Xbox 360. This really sucks for me because I have 3 siblings, so we have to take turns when we want to play online. Also, the campaign is single player, and Spec Ops is only for 2 players per Xbox. It was the same way with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, so I really wasn’t expecting a change, but I would really have loved to see that change specifically, it definitely would make this game the perfect FPS. I have also heard a lot of complaints about the campaign being too short, but from what I have played, it seems really fun so far.

Overall-

Overall, with multiplayer, spec ops, campaign, split screen, and third-person mode, this game is awesome. I see no reason anyone would rate this game less than a 10 out of 10. The game is about as balanced as it can get without making it way too easy for anyone to kill anyone, regardless of rank. I was kind of disappointed about the one player per Xbox again, but that is just the smallest spec of dust on an otherwise perfect game.

Introduction-

Aion: The Tower of Eternity, is another MMORPG that was released September 22, 2009. This RPG has been up and running in Korea for a couple of years now, and the anticipation level of its release in all other parts of the world have been high. Aion is being release by NCsoft, who also created City of Heroes, City of Villains, Guild Wars, Lineage, and Lineage II. With all these other great predecessors, you cannot expect anything but greatness from Aion: The Tower of Eternity.

First Impressions-

Upon entering the game, you get to choose your race, class, and what your character looks like. With Aion, NCsoft took an extra couple steps in character customization–everything about your character is unique to you! There are multiple colors and scales to use to adjust your characters nose height, width, eye width, eye angle, head size, head shape, chest size, eyebrow thickness, eyebrow angle, and much more. Once character creation is out of the way, you enter the world, and the graphics are unbelievable! On my laptop I currently run the game on medium-high settings, and everything looks great, and the game runs smoothly at the same time. So it is obvious that NCsoft really wanted to concentrate on the overall look of the game, but how about the actual content? The game starts you out with some quests that help you get the basic controls down, and then you quickly move on to more adventurous quests and zones. The quests in this game are nothing compared to the quests in World of Warcraft, but they are still neat. Overall first impression, solid game with good graphics that has a world of space to continue the game with new content.

The Good-

Aion: The Tower of Eternity has a lot of good characteristics. First, the graphics. The graphics in this game match those of Half-Life 2 games, yet the game still runs very smoothly. Second, they have a great system for class creation. You first create a main class, and at level 10 you get to choose your subclass, each main class has two subclasses. This brings even more diversity to the game. Also, each subclass is very balanced, unlike in World of Warcraft. Thirdly, They have a really good PvP (player vs. player) system that adds an extra challenge to leveling. At level 25, you must go to a zone called the Abyss, which is a complete in-air PvP zone, with in-flight combat, cool! The challenge to this zone is that every time you kill a monster or another player of the opposite faction, you gain what are called Abyss points. However, if you die to a monster or another player, your Abyss points go down and you will lose experience. This twist to the game adds a challenge not yet experienced in any other MMORPG.

The Bad-
The main issue that I have found with this game that there are a lot of points in the game that you will find yourself with no more quests to do. When this happens, you have to start grinding to the next level, or until more quests become available (which could be 1-4 levels). The term grinding refers to when you sit and just kill the same group of monsters over, and over, and over again for a given amount of experience. Grinding is the most boring part of any MMORPG, but almost always will be an inevitability. Another problem with Aion is the lack of GM (game master) support in the game. The chat channels are constantly being flooded by Kinah (currency in Aion) sellers, however this is fairly easily stopped by blocking the spammers.

Overall-

Despite the long, hard core grinding sessions you will encounter, and the Kinah spammers in trade chat, Aion is actually a very good game. Leveling is for the most part fun, and the game is actually rather challenging, unlike many of today’s MMORPGs. I would definitely recommend that anyone looking to play an MMORPG at least give Aion a shot, because once you start to play it, you probably will have a hard time stopping.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is the second expansion of World of Warcraft. This expansion was released November 13, 2008, and was probably the most anticipated game of the year. Everyone had high expectations for this awesome new expansion, and the enthusiasm was shown at the night of the release. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and some would argue the best of its kind. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade was a great expansion to the game, and all of Blizzards users had faith in them to continue the greatness with Wrath of the Litch King.

First impressions-

You would think that this World of Warcraft expansion is the greatest game ever to be released. Look at the lines to get the game on the release, ridiculous wait times and people dressed up as fictional characters… this game should be awesome! I of course got the game on the release, and played for a long while into the morning. It was extremely fun for me, especially since I was leveling with a friend of mine. Overall, the leveling to 80 is fun, and you will never have to spend time grinding out a level, since there are plenty of quests and zones to explore. The problem exists at level 80, however. My first impression of level 80 game-play was “wow, you have got to be kidding me”. A bunch of old content revamped to be playable at level 80, how lazy can Blizzard get? So basically, a lot of old content followed by re-used skins and models–my first impression, not worth the money or the time.

The Good-

One of the good things that Blizzard did with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, was the amount of content they put into quests and leveling. New quests have elaborate stories behind them, which makes questing really fun. Also, the new instances that were created have some really fun boss fights that were really challenging for a while.

The Bad-

Be prepared, there are a lot of bad things about this game due to the rushed release and overall misunderstanding that Blizzard has with its users. First of all, almost all of the end-game raids are just old raids from level 60 that had the level of the monsters inside them increased. The fights are all the same, and the bosses even say all the same old lines. Second, the new content is way too easy! The first level 80 raid, that was supposed to keep people with a challenge for a couple months until the new raid would be released, was cleared easily in just weeks after the game’s release. Lastly and most importantly, arenas! For me, arenas are the most important part of World of Warcraft. In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, arenas required more skill than anything else in the game, and not anyone could excel in them. With the Wrath of the Lich King, arenas were made a mockery of. Instead of arenas taking skill, they altered the rating system so that as long as you played a ton of arena matches, you could get your rating up into the 2000s with a win loss ratio of 52% (in the Burning Crusade, 1850 was a good rating, and you had to win more than 80% of your matches). Also, Blizzard completely botched the class balance, making is so that any arena composition with a Death Knight or a Retribution Paladin would win with ease. The unbalanced classes and wretched rating system completely ruined arenas for World of Warcraft.

Overall-

Overall, I would not recommend that anyone start to play this game, unless you enjoy replaying old content and really easy end-game material that will require absolutely no skill, whether its arenas or raiding. If you want a solid game that has even classes and is a challenge to play, I would definitely recommend you check out another game. Granted, there really aren’t many good MMORPGs available right now, but if you want one that easily beats the overall gameplay of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, then I would definitely recommend the game Aion (review will be coming soon).

Hello everyone, Brandon here. Welcome to the new Games blog. Here we will be posting about any games that come to mind. Good games, bad games, any games that you feel are worth talking about. Hopefully we can get this blog going smoothly and quickly with a couple of good game reviews, and then we can take it from there. Thanks for your time, and feel free to post about any game you have ever played, doesn’t really matter! Have fun!

TTYL, hopefully I can read and write some cool reviews soon,

Brandon Anstett
Director, Games at Teens in Tech