Dollar Bills and Explosions - Battlefield Hardline Beta - C4 Edition

Its not the start of a blog and beta run if I don't have some form of caffeine, normally a black coffee to get the brain firing on all cylinders.

'BETA'LLEFIELD.

Sitting in a dark room like a vampire, trying to remember the last time I opened my curtains, I'd say mid October.

So greetings people, this is my first sit down with the Battlefield Hardline Beta, I'm quickly reminded of the theme of this game as a quick edit and flash montage is burnt into the back of my mind with dollars, watches, c4 explosions and fire all flashing before me in a quick 20 second burst of 'look at me'

This subsequently turns into a good cop or a bad robber? who knows?! I can see cops in his glasses so I'm going to say bad robber.

The first thing I notice is that they've put a LINE through HARDLINE, clever Visceral games, but that doesn't blow my socks off like the Facebook integration, no Battlefield you can't black mail me into advertising your game to my friend in return for an In game battle-pack, not yet anyway.

First things first and most importantly I need a Badman patch to show I'm representing the U.K, I soon start laughing at a patch of 3 legs running in a circle. This amuses me and enlightens me that this is in fact the flag for the Isle of man, nothing manlier than 3 armour clad legs rolling along.

Its a real flag, Honest.

I look to customise my load-out, looks like I need 2 years wages to buy an AKS-74U, no wonder their robbing banks.

In total there are 3 match types.

Firstly we have Heist, the aim here is to rob a vault, escaping via helicopter get away, unless your lucky enough to be a respawning police officer, then your job is to prevent the escape.

Secondly we have Hotwire, this one sounds fun! Find and capture vehicles stashed around the level, drive the vehicles at high speed to deplete the enemies tickets.

Last but not least we have the classic Conquest mode, a staple part of the Battlefield franchise this high intensity game of 'control the points of interest' is my personal favourite.

I want to be a robber with a shotgun, If payroll permits it that is.

It kicks me straight into a match, it explains how to select a class and what roles it offers to the player.

100K back pack.

OPERATOR: Assault Rifle, First Aid Kit.
MECHANIC: SMG, Grenade Launcher.
ENFORCER: Shotgun, Ammo Crate.
PROFESSIONAL: Sniper Rifle, Tripmine.

First match and I choose the operator, gotta love me them heal points.

Turns out my wish doesn't come true and I'm a copper

The first thing I notice about Hardline is the serious change of pace this game offers compared to other games in the franchise, on a more positive note I stop the bag carrier dead with a head shot only to get blown away by a shotgun blast to the face seconds later.

There still seems to be the same problem most FPS suffers from and thats spawn camping scumbags with shotguns.

The first match I play is Heist, the lay out of this map can quickly change your style of gameplay, be it the tight claustrophobic corridors of the vault chamber, stalked by teams of shotgun toting maniacs or the open streets, sprawled with roof top snipers and full frontal assaults this mode offers multiple play styles to be quickly adopted on the fly upon death.

Do it now!

Every soldier has seen Predator as their screaming 'Get to the choppa'.

I adopt my new play style as the match is taking into the open streets, I swap to a ENFORCER class dropping ammo down for the long defence of the loot, this slows down gameplay a lot as swarms of robbers assault trying to re capture the duffle bag full of money.

This takes us to an easy win, dropping the bag in a large open area can bring the end of a match round very fast if defended well, chewing through tickets as they throw lives away for the greater good.

Hotwire on the other hand is completely different, that much so it doesn't even fell like the same game and more like a first person game of Burnout Paradise as I tear it round the streets at high speed in my sedan.

It sounded amazing when I read it but I spend 15 minutes driving around a map mowing people down till I finally die, my thought of high speed car chases being pursued by a car full of pressing cops trying to blow out my tires, money spilling out of open windows as my clan of robbers fire back never comes to fruition.

Hotwire mode? I think not.

Instead I drive around in slow circles performing three point turns where I can, the only excitement coming from an oncoming gas tanker firing past me, but instead of exploding and my car flipping down the streets I'm left driving down the street, slightly of track I might say.

The match ends quickly as the opposing team never manages to capture a checkpoint.

I tire of this game type rather fast, one benefit is the easy 2000 points my sedan gain's from a lovely Sunday drive around a sandy park.

That sniper.

I tackle the Large Conquest mode head on and call in the help of brother dearest, we join a party, fire up a squad and launch straight into a match no problem.

This is your standard defend and assault mode but its mostly just a snipe fest, certain weapons seem slightly overpowered compared to others.

when I'm out gunned by AK74U from a distance I call bullshit.

Some cool additions are added rewarding players spawning on there squad with extra cash, this being your main currency for buying upgrades and new weapons, Also the game starts to flex it's technical muscle by throwing in a very 'American Sniper' sand storm into the mix only this looks more realistic and fun than that of Bradley Coppers outing.

We bro it out for 3 match's and three wins.

Manic Army!

Caleb

Be sure to check out my first YouTube video -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcUM-hIYtAE


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Virtual Reality - Believe the hype

Virtual Reality headsets keep popping up in a lot of posts I see on twitter and other game related news outlets.

Virtual Insanity.

So I thought I'd share my experience with you, giving you a basic run down of what the market consists of and its main competitor, 2 only spring to mind at the minute.

The main VR headset in question being the Oculus Rift, coming from my experience I can say the hype is very real and technology is mind bottling.

My experience didn't come from waiting in a very real queue for 6 hours, no, mine came from  sitting in a friends man cave, development kit 2 in hand then feeling like I was going to throw up on a roller-coaster in the process.

Virtual Pirateship.

As I sat in his chair, putting on the headset all I could see was a basic build of houses, as I looked left to right and up and down I saw two people sitting next to me, then becoming sucked into the experience 200 %, It's weird to explain how real it actually feels.

The ride started to swing back and forth like a pirate ship, so did my stomach, Instantly hitting me with what felt like motion sickness, an amazing experience with a very basic game, all I could do was sit back and take in the view!

The strangest part of the whole experience believe it or not was taking off the headset and being sat back in his room like nothing had happened.

We then automatically giggled at a horribly designed sex simulator because you have too, which then lead to the awful experience of horror games, me being the biggest man child in the world.

Virtual Reality.

He quickly set up a 360 controller, placing it in my hand, he them stood back and watched what I saw on the monitor in front of me reflecting my in headset experience.

I navigate my way through corridors that decide it will be fun to bleed, doors flinging open at the same time, creeped out by the whole experience I push on, I spend half the time with my eyes closed but no one knew that until now, eventually deciding it was to much for me when creepy  people started to appear in my view.

Completely amazed and absorbed by the whole experience I can say I'm excited to see the new development kit codenamed 'Crescent Bay' in action.

Now for a little something I like to call, 'A basic run-down of all things Virtual Reality'

Crescent Bay

The Rift is an upcoming VR headset being developed by Oculus, a consumer product is expected to become available in 2015.

The original development kit was financed by a kick starter campaign which later on March 25th 2014 was brought by Facebook for a petty 2billion US dollars, Pocket change.

In September 2014 Oculus wowed people with the new and improved, also better named version of the rift codenamed 'Crescent Bay'.

This version having a greater resolution than the previously mention Development Kit 2, improvements where made with a lighter weight unit, built in audio and also 360 degree tracking, due to LEDs in the back of the headset.

Project Morpheus

A consumer version of the Rift is in development, aimed at the general public with improved features including improved head tracking, A once again mentioned higher resolution screen and wireless compatibility all under consideration.

I personally don't think we will see a consumer product until early to mid 2016 due to the amount of work that would need to go into the unit, considering 3 years in they've just added audio. but what do I know? I'm a kid sat in his room typing shit on the internet.

Morpheus headset.

The only other real competitor in my eyes being Sony's Project Morpheus, details being very hard to find on this model the basic run down states that it is being designed to be fully functional with Ps4 and PsVita and is currently a prototype with no release date

This product being announced on March 18th 2014 by Sony Entertainment Worldwide Studio President Shuhei Yoshida claiming Project Morpheus was 'The next innovation form PlayStation that will shape the future of gaming'

Hope you enjoyed that little crash course in VR headsets.

Koi Koi

Caleb

Forcing myself to write

What I write just seems to appear in  my head.

No thought about it, no notes about what I'm writing about or the subject, I just sit, it appears like it's already been written for me, just straight from brain to paper, even brain to blog.

As you could probably tell I have no format or style, It's bullet points joined together with crude words, bad humour and poor English, yet I enjoy every minute of it.

Mr at my best.

Sometimes I read them back a few days later and laugh at how badly arranged they are. All the misspellings and punctuation being part of the charm....I hope. There not perfect, just laugh at them, that's my style.

If you ever had the misfortune of seing my hard writing, you would soon realise this is all written over my bedroom walls in crayon.

2015 should be an amazing year for games, I'm super excited about a handful of games so far, one in particular being Final Fantasy VII, One more reason to play it through again being the newly announced trophies for the game, platinum being my only thought.

Everything else would just be failure in my eyes, hopefully this time I'll find Vincent as all the other times I missed him out.

Best game ever? I think so.

The rest revolving around some of the biggest titles of the year my personal favourite being The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, A huge fan of the series and follower of the books any reason to jump into Geralt's world is all the reason I need!

Hopefully leading to another stellar RPG I can quickly put over 125 hours into in the first 2 weeks, beating my recently achieved Dragon Age Inquistion speed play, 125 in the first 10 days. I loved that game and series but hopefully this game will take me above and beyond the 200 hour mark.

My top 5 time absorbing games being Diablo 3, Skyrim, Final fantasy X, Dragon Age Origins and Final Fantasy VII. These all being above and beyond the 200 hour mark, Diablo 3 being more near the 300 mark, and then there's Call of Duty 4's online mode which was 17 days in total.

Nothing compared to my brothers combined effort of 55 days on Modern Warfare 3, there rank beigng 2ND in the WORLD at kill confirmed!

I'm also looking forward to another weekend spent in heaven or to normal people called EGX, this
time being at the birmingham N.E.C. Last years being where I got almost all my hands on experience with some of the biggest titles including

Some show, can't remember the name.

FarCry 4 - I rode my first elephant and fucked up a fortress.

Mortal Kombat X - my girlfriend ripped my heart out fatality style.

Sunset Overdrive - I won a can of OverCharge for being badass at the game.

Dragon Age Inquistion - dodging a 6 hour queue and having my first online experience raiding a castle with my girlfriend and 2 strangers.

Shadow of Mordor - Riding wargs and popping orc heads has never been so fun and graphic

A Pre alpha bulid of Dead Island 2 - Zombie smashing good fun.

A breath taking look at The Order 1886 - I stood motionless watching the screenmthinking it had frozen, later realising that this in fact was the demo, me stood in the open getting shot at.

A lot of my time spent in the Nintendo Zone where I concreted my love for Shovel Knight and the fact i was going to buy it and later dribbling over the first playable demo I had seen of Super Smash Bros WiiU.

Stick with me as I'm sure my Blog will go through a lot of changes this year.


Alway's one to have and give my opinion on a diverse selection of games, I hope you enjoy what little sense I bring to the table

I want to create something, I'm tired of having these thoughts and this passion, not expressing any of it, I want to meet new people through social media and forge friendships over the latest release titles and opinions leading to new stories and chapters in my life.

My boiiiiii Kirby.

Talking Videogames, moving into the Podcast territory and doing something I love.

I do this out of love for the industry and nothing else, so join the conversation and get involved!

Koi Koi

Caleb

Social pages?!

So I thought I'd post a real quick blog about all the different forms of social media I'm available on

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Manicallydepressedmoderatelyfunny

Facespace

That's my badly whacked together Facebook page, the main use for it is a place to post all my blogs in one space.

Easy for people to share with friends and root deep into the brain of the internet.

Secondly I have an awful Instagram page full of shitty filtered pictures - CALEBATEMAN 

 yes, I missed a B out?! what can I say I'm a free spirit.

Finally I have my Twitter account @WinslowBateman , another perfect meeting place of short worded witty comments and banter alike.

Also I haven't read a news paper in 2 years so Twitter is my only form of news, just a safe haven of Comics, Writers, Anime, Games Media, Company's and all the things that interest me.

Twitcher

Please comment on the blogs and follow me on these pages so I know what new content to post aswell as stream as I've recently set up a Twitch account also!

http://www.twitch.tv/m4nicallyd_m0deratelyf

I hope to see some new followers over the next few days and don't hesitate to chat and say hi, just want to make new friends and meet like minded people that love all things video-games,

How do I know if I'm doing something right or wrong if no one speaks out?! more of this, less of that etc

Kirby Style 

Caleb