Merits of the Modern Warfare 3 campaign - Michael Bay would be proud

The latest installment in the Call of Duty series, Modern Warfare 3, offers a great and polished multiplayer experience in line with its predecessors, and it is sure to become an incredibly popular internet pastime for the digital war loving masses.
But how about the single player component of Modern Warfare 3? Has the series become so focused on its incredible multiplayer success that the single player campaign has become a dried up vestigial appendage devoid of gaming juices?

Green fonts lets you know it's modern!

Explosions to the right, explosions to the left, straight ahead, above and below. Big explosions, small explosions and explosions that make the big explosions look like small explosions.
That is a pretty good description of the single player campaign of Modern Warfare 3. There is more crap blowing up over the course of the 6-8 hours of modern warfaring, than in a full season of Mythbusters.

This should not necessarily be taken as criticism of the campaign, but you should understand right from the start that there is absolutely not a shred of intellectual cleverness or morsel of subtlety in Modern Warfare 3's campaign. It's as underplayed as a bright pink rhino on top of a burning monster truck.
But hey, pink rhinos and burning monster trucks are kinda awesome too, you know!

Skyrim Journal 10 Hours In - I'm a wizard. You burn now!

It's been a week since Skyrim launched. Way too much stuff has being going on for me to play it anywhere near as much as I would like, but I have gotten in around 10 hours with the game by now. Of course, 10 hours of Skyrim is really just scraping the very outer layer of the near bottomless content pit that Skyrim offers.
It's kind of crazy, when you think about something like the Modern Warfare 3 campaign, which offers around 6-7 hours of gaming to complete. Skyrim is a juggernaut of a game that promises to munch down all my free time with some with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

My first week with Skyrim has really just been about getting my bearings in this overwhelming world. I've done a little bit of the main story line, but I was quickly distracted by a deluge of side quests that saw me finding dead bodies and listening to the tales of old crones.

The initial city of Whiterun can keep you occupied for hours. There's just so much to do!

When playing these big RPG games I normally tend to focus on just the main quest line and supplement a little with side quests. It's not that I hate doing side quests, but I really enjoy following a story, and most often I'll get sucked into the main storyline of a game and find myself blasting through it and missing a lot of content. But with Skyrim I feel more compelled to do other things than just the main quest. Perhaps it is because Skyrim feels so much like a real world, and you can't help exploring a lot and wanting to peak just around the next corner in case there is something cool there.

5 Tips On Gaming For The Busy Gamer

Over the past 10-15 years, I've gone from being able to spend up to 30-40 hours a week playing games, to probably more like 10 hours a week. As the duties of a grown up life start to add up, I simply can't spend as many hours on my hobby as I used to. Not that I am complaining, but it does mean that spending a week leveling my Soldier in Anarchy Online is no longer a viable course of action.
I have found that in order to still get the most enjoyment out of my biggest hobby, I needed to make some adjustments to the way I handle my gaming.

Can't game as much as you used to? Take heed of the immortal words of the Hitchhiker's Guide and read on!

Here are my 5 best tips to anyone that also finds themselves with a big desire to nom-nom-nom on all the gaming goodness that the video games industry offers up, but have a calendar that does not easily allow for 8 hour galaxy saving gaming sessions.

5: Read about games and be selective about what games you want to play

With little time to actually play games, you'll want to try to make sure that the games that you actually spend your time on will be worth it.

I try to keep up with game coverage on various gaming sites. I have several favorite gaming sites that I read regularly. Through these I check out previews and reviews of new and upcoming games, and I generally have an idea about if I want to try a game well before it is out. Of course, it does take a little out of the fun of stumbling upon something you never heard about, but I think it's worth it to reduce the risk of playing a game for 5 hours and then going "meeeeh, this kinda sucked".

Rediscovering Ridley Scott’s “Alien”

Today I'm happy to bring you another great guest post. This time Jordan Siron joins us to rekindle our love for the original "Alien" movie. I remember being seriously freaked out after watching Alien as a small kid, and it still remains one of my personal favorite scary sci-fi movies.

As a fan of science fiction, it shames me to admit that I had not once watched the Ridley Scott classic Alien over the past six years. For sci-fi fans, that is essentially akin to a gambler saying he hasn’t stepped foot in Las Vegas since Frank Sinatra used to roam the strip.

It isn’t that I didn’t love and respect the film, but my focus had drifted elsewhere for a moment. However, upon hearing murmurs regarding the in-production prequel (Prometheus) that should hit theatres next year, I knew I had to revisit my old friend.

How does Alien stack up after all of these years? Is it still the classic example of space-horror as so many have claimed? The answer, of course, is a resounding “Yes!”, and here’s why.

To The Moon Review - An emotional interactive story

With all the big budget games from the large publishers that are hammering us relentlessly at the moment, it would be very easy to forget completely about the indie gaming scene.
But that would be a shame, because then you would miss "To The Moon", which is a quirky and emotionally engaging indie game that makes for a perfect palette cleanser in between your Batmans, warfares that are modern or rimmed skies.

Prepare yourself for a different kind of gaming experience

To The Moon is not so much a video game as it is an interactive story told through the medium of video games. Think of it as a 4-5 hour long movie that allows you to really soak in the story by making you actively drive it forward, and you have a pretty good idea about what kind of experience that you are in for in To The Moon.

This may sound disappointing and terribly uninteresting, but trust me, it is not.

Assassin's Creed Revelations Review Round Up

We've barely had time to dip our toes into the deep oceans of Skyrim, but Q4 2011 marches on and keeps pummeling us with blockbuster games that demand our attention.
Next title to be served up on the bulging gaming buffet table is Assassin's Creed Revelations, which ones again puts you in the (now rather well worn) shoes of Ezio Auditore and Altair Ibn-La'Ahad.

Reviews are up of this wrist bladed stab-em up and we're looking at another strong game, but perhaps not quite up there with the best contenders for 2011.

Gamespot Review (8.0/10)
Joystiq Review (4/5)
IGN Review (8.5/10)

It looks like Ubisoft has given us another great Assassin's Creed game that builds on all the successful elements of the past games, but the new additions are not all that meaningful. Worse, a few of the new additions seem to be unpleasant experiences that actually detract from the enjoyment of the game.
So if you are already buried in fantastic games that you want to play (Skyrim, Batman and multiplayer Battlefield 3 says "Oh hi there!"), then perhaps you can postpone your trip to the Animus machine until the new year.

IGN video review:

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Coming up next week on Light Speed Gaming

It's been another good week here on Light Speed Gaming.
Starting out with a video look at the Anno 2070 demo, where I went through the first demo mission in this sci-fi settlement manage-em up fro Blue Byte.
In the middle of the week it was time for another "Sci-Fi Do Want", this time blabbering about the awesomeness of the Predator shoulder cannon.

Shoulder cannons. Much better than wrist cannons

This Predator goodness continued in the Friday post, which was a "silly" post detailing the 10 reasons you don't want a Predator as your roommate.
Oh, and let's not forget the great class and unlock guide for Battlefield 3 that a guest poster contributed to the site with.
Finally, I gave you insight into the thoughts behind my class choice for Diablo 3, which is a consideration I'm sure that many of you have also already started to have.

But I have good news! Next week is, as always, going to be even better than the last.

Skyrim early hours impressions

I have been looking forward to Skyrim a lot. I was so keen on playing that I decided to stay up until midnight between Thursday and Friday and wait for the game to unlock, just so I could get in a couple of hours of play before I had to head to bed (stupid work making me get up early in the morning!).
Unfortunately I discovered too late that apparently Skyrim was going to be unlocked at midnight GMT and not local time (I'm in GMT +1), so it was 1am before I sleepily got into the game.
So I only got a brief amount of playtime in on Thursday night, and with a busy weekend I was only able to play a couple of hours more.

Skyrim - For all your fantasy fetish needs

But still, I have already seen enough to tell that I think I'm really going to like my stay in Skyrim.

Skyrim the most anticipated game of November on Light Speed Gaming

Our poll for the most anticipated game for November has ended.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Skyrim was the winner of this contest.
More surprising is how big of a winner it was. The below snapshot of the poll results demonstrate the size of the humiliating defeat that this dragon exterminator simulator managed to inflict on the defenseless competition.

70% of the responses were for Skyrim, while the mega franchises of Uncharted, Modern Warfare and Zelda managed to scrape in just a single vote or two.
It's interesting that Skyrim has such a strong appeal, as it is perhaps not as flashy and easy to market as something like Uncharted 3 or Assassin's Creed. I was actually expecting Skyrim to take it, but I had assumed that Assassin's Creed in particular would give it a run for its money.

However, this is good news, as I am about to hit you up with some impressions of playing Skyrim, and it looks like I have an interested crowd for that subject!

Thanks to everyone who responded to the survey. Stay tuned for a "Game of the Year" poll, and make your favorite game the "Reader's Choice Game of the Year" for Light Speed Gaming!



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