My Gaming Diary for 24 August, 2014 - Multiplayer UP!!! Need for Speed: Rivals and The Last of Us (multiplayer; PS4) and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (multiplayer; PS3) - Well, I guess while the PSN is inaccessible, it is a good time to catch up on my Gaming Diary. Fortunately, before it went down, I got in a pretty good amount of multiplayer. NFS Rivals (PS4) - I caught up with Gamers Spheres Playstation editor, Matthew Shiflet and put some time in on the streets of, well, whatever town it is this time in NFS. It was a travesty. An entirely byzantine, convoluted, mass of crap that makes me want to vomit. I am SO frustrated by the continuing trend to junk crap into multiplayer modes of racing games that creates overhead that takes time away FROM ACTUALLY RACING!!!. It is really simple. Go look at Project Gotham Racing 3 for the XBox 360, check out its multiplayer mode, and just...do...that. Let me also say that this is the absolute last time that I will spend one nickel on any game that is tightly coupled to the Origin game service. I now have four Origin accounts. This is because in Rivals, the Origin login will only allow you to associate with an account that uses the same email address that is tied to your PSN login. Well, guess what, you miscreants?! Imagine the possibility that I would not use the same email addresses for those two accounts?! So this has happened in a few games over time, and for other reasons, I now have multiple Origin accounts. So as I am earning points in NFS Most Wanted on the PC, it is not doing anything for this new BS account that I had to set up for NFS Rivals, and vice versa. It is bad enough that EA, Activision, and Ubisoft have each created their own online account mechanisms, which layer on top of Steam, XBox Live, and the PSN. But these additionally hard-coded constraints are further bolloxing up the mix. The Last of Us: Remastered (PS4) - in sharp contrast, my time in this games multiplayer mode was an absolute joy. I caught up with another former Gamers Sphere co-worker, General News Editor Rachel Leigh, and we both tried this out for the first time. Having read some of the info on the setup for multiplayer before we went in, I thought this was going to be a huge pain. But other than the sometimes long wait for the system to match you up with an optimal game, this is pretty much the most engaging multiplayer I have played since Chromehounds. We encountered one group playing it like Call of Duty and that was a bit irritating, but there are enough other good players and games out there to make up for it. Ill definitely be heading back in. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (PS3) - I caught up with a local buddy of mine and hit the highway in multiplayer modes. This game is still just as good as ever. Ill add that Criterion continuously increases the stylization of their games and the specular backlight to the point that the screen is just a jumbled mess of flashing lights and I am rarely driving so much as just doing streaking-light avoidance at maximum speed. NFS Hot Pursuit precedes a lot of that damage, which is at its pinnacle in Most Wanted and is still a problem in Rivals. By comparison, Hot Pursuit is crystal clear, and makes for an incredibly engaging and competitive experience when in multiplayer.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 14:39:03 +0000
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