Modern Warfare 2 PC - A Bad Deal

Image is courtesy of Puck at NeoGAF.

Q Is there a console in the PC version of the game, so we can change our field of view from the xbox's default 65 FOV to 80 also can we tweaks the weapon damage for each gun, removes perks, graphical debris, breathing sway, also thru console like we where able to before or is this all gone?

A We would like you to play the game the way we designed and balanced it. - Vince-IW

I can't recall ever seeing such a hilariously awful and fucked up handling of a game. I thought that TF2 on 360 was handled terribly, but at least it was part of an incredibly awesome package deal in The Orange Box. This is really disappointing.

Calls

I just finished the single-player campaign of Call of Duty 4. It was incredible! Not to mention very intense. I'd heard how good it was, but I'd also heard about how totally staged everything felt. Both are true, but I was expecting the latter to overshadow the former, but I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't, really. The weapons were great, and the settings and plot were also excellent.

There are some really cool moments in there, but I'm glad I only played it as a loaner, because it's probably not a campaign I'd ever play again (as it's pretty linear, and not really compelling for a replay, awesome as it is), and because I'm not about to get involved in CoD4 multiplayer. From what I hear it's buckets of fun, and I don't doubt it, but I'd rather play multiplayer Team Fortress 2 than just about any other shooter--when I decide to spend some time playing anything multiplayer, that is. I've got plenty of single-player stuff on my plate, and lined up on the buffet table taking up half of the room.

Speaking of which, I've been playing Etrian Odyssey a lot this week. Imagine my surprise when, on B7F, I discovered an item that opened up whole new wings of floors B5F through B3F(as far as I've delved so far)! Damn, I thought I was done with those floors! This game is serious business. I've been reading some about the sequel that just came out in Japan, and it sounds even greater. I'm hoping I can finish the first sometime before the sequel is released stateside (it's yet to be announced at all, so there's a decent chance of it).

I've felt an odd calling back to FFXI lately. It's as if a million gil farmers cried out at once, and were silenced. But seriously, I don't know what it is. I know I shouldn't get into that again, but I miss the friends I made there, and I'll be damned if I didn't have some amazing gear for Nascia (kinda miss her too...). I'm looking into things.

I've also heard a call to a couple of Blizzard products, oddly enough. I wouldn't call myself a PC gamer at all, but waaaay back in the day I did play some stuff. I owned both Warcraft 2 and Diablo (still got them somewhere). To see if I could stem my FFXI yearning, I downloaded the free 10 day WoW trial, as much just to see if it'd run on my MacBook as anything. It runs, alright. I don't care for the trackpad in WoW, so I'd have to get a mouse, but it does run. At the moment I have a level 3 Night Elf Hunter. I had a level 8 Human Warrior on my brother-in-law's PC, but I'm sure that guy's long gone. Jeff doesn't even play WoW anymore, as far as I know.

Then today, I was listening to some Starcraft 2 talk on a podcast (GFW radio--The Brodeo, for the win), and thought I might try to pick up the original. I'm pretty sure Blizzard games are dual Windows-Mac OS compatible as a rule, and Starcraft is basically the paragon of RTS excellence. I played the demo way back in the day, but that was it.

Not falling for it.

I really enjoyed the demo I got for God of War: Chains of Olympus, but there are two reasons why I'm not going to buy the game:

A) I'm pretty sure that, like any somewhat decent PSP game from a western developer, it will see an enhanced PS2 release before the year is up, and no doubt shortly thereafter all three God of War games will be available for $29.99 in a boxed trilogy pack, a la GTA, DMC, Hitman, Resident Evil, MGS, and even those WWE games, ffs.

B) Quick-time events suck. They are the most contrived bullshit play mechanic to come out of the last generation of console gaming. Chains of Olympus takes their suckitude that much further by placing them in the middle of boss fights. So yeah, if you don't manage to hit X or the Circle or whatever the fuck button in the half-second window you have, the boss recovers from their stun state and gains back a whole shitton of health. As far as I can discern from the demo, there is no way to defeat the bosses without succeeding at this retarded crap. They aren't even the same each time you try it, either, so you can't just memorize the necessary sequence of buttons to hit. Who the hell thought this was a good idea?

Who the hell thought QTE's were a good idea in the first place? You'd think that something being the one real flaw in a game like RE4 would let people know that, hey, this mechanic sucks shit, and maybe they shouldn't put it in their game. Maybe this is just par for the course with GoW games. I wouldn't know; this is the first one I ever tried.

So, I had a $30 gift card to use at Circuit City, and if you got GoW:CoO there, you could get half off any PSP accessory, such as a bigger memory stick, which I could probably use. However, due to the reasons I outlined above, I held off on the game, and instead picked up the newest Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney game, Apollo Justice, purely on faith (and because I already have the first three, and I might as well get it too, at this point).

A coworker lent me his copy of Call of Duty 4, too, so I'm giving that a run-through, and I want to try the multiplayer, even though I have no time to really spend on that, and would really prefer to dig deeper into Team Fortress 2 if I came across time to do so. Meanwhile, my DS pile of shame continues to mount, and so I've taken some time over the last two evenings to venture forth into Sekaiju no Meikyuu, that forest labyrinth of Etrian Odyssey (another game I need to complete before the sequel arrives)!