PlayStation 3 Call of Duty: Black Ops PrecisionAIM Controller Review

PlayStation 3 Call of Duty: Black Ops PrecisionAIM Controller by Madcatz was a controller my dad found used and in perfect condition at Gamestop the other day for $25. Why was he looking for a new controller? Not because he's big into FPS games - in fact he doesn't play those at all. He wanted it for Marvel Pinball. *pauses as you take that in*

Thing is, my dad broke his wrist playing basketball with me, my best friend and his dad over a decade ago, and sometimes it still bothers him - especially when playing video games when he's gripping it too tightly. The form factor and angle of the Sony Dualshock controller just bothers him after awhile, so we have been looking for a new controller for him and after a lot of looking, found one that looks like it is a winner for him.

The features:

The grips have a rubbery feel to them (with some cool Black Ops design to them) that he feels is much better than the Dualshock controller - and he picked up a rubbery skin for one of his controllers recently and he likes this one's grip better as well.

Combat/precision aim - there are new buttons on the underside of the controller that can replace the need to press down on the left/right sticks (sprint/melee) and can be 'flipped' over to precision aim to slow your aim and try to make you more accurate.

'Quick fire triggers' - the top shoulder buttons are a bit 'squishier' than the typical controller and are designed to 'shoot' just a bit more quickly.

2.4 GHz wireless

Red backlights to the analog sticks

Rechargeable internal battery

So, what were our thoughts on the controller?

- My dad: he likes the grip a lot better - the texture is more to his liking and the rubberized texture feels better to him as well.

- My son: he likes the glowing backlights to the analog sticks and the appearance of the controller, but he did not feel it was as responsive as a Dualshock

- Now, my full thoughts:

* Pros:

- I really liked the combat/quick buttons on the bottom, though I used them for sprint/melee only - I did not find it convenient to simply switch it back and forth between those and the aim feature. Still, those under buttons are far better than having to click down on the right-left sticks.

- It is a very cool-looking controller. I like the art on it, and the backlit sticks look neat in the dark.

- The rubberized texture feels really good in my hands and the analog sticks seem very responsive - I didn't noticed any dead zone on them.

- The wireless worked well and I didn't experience any lag with it.

* Cons:

- The directional pad doesn't seem quite as good as the Dualshock one in my opinion.

- Not a fan of how the start/select buttons are laid out as they are set up on top of and under the PS button, instead of the right/left of

- You need to keep something of a direct line of sight to the USB dongle. It's way too easy to get it out of 'range' and have it drop signal. It works great in my den where the PS3 is a few feet away, and that's the room I use it in most, but in the other rooms you can sometimes lose connection.

* Other notes:

- The trigger buttons bugged my son, but they didn't bother me at all. They were a bit 'squishy' feeling, but they were very responsive, which is the key.

- The analog sticks are rounded on the top - I prefer a concave design myself as it's a bit more comfortable/less likely to slip, but their texture worked fine - I never actually slid off of the nubs.

- Seems to hold a good long charge - I played about four hours straight with it and never had to recharge it during that time.

Final thoughts:

I need a new controller as my youngest accidentally broke the shoulder buttons on one of my Dualshocks by dropping it on the kitchen floor recently, and this one rings in just a shade cheaper than the Dualshock. I will probably consider picking this controller up as it suits my needs, but I'd love to catch it used like my dad did or onsale for $10 less - something along those lines. I'd score this controller a 7 out of 10. It's good, but not perfect.

Read More

Gaming Thoughts... 9/6/11

I've been slowly chugging through a pretty large backlog of games, not only in terms of playing the games, but blogging about them. I've been trying to keep up a pace of posting about every 3 days. Aside from all of the reviews and newer stuff I've posted about, I have plenty of other games I've been revisiting as well.

I recently got my wife a Sony Bloggie and got a PSN $20 card with it, so I got my grubby mitts on Heroes of Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes - which has been a fun little puzzle/rpg hybrid. I've also recently downloaded and started to replay Record of Agarest War on the PSN (this was one of my earliest reviews on here, for the 360, and I had said I enjoyed the game despite its many technical shortcomings) - and I have to say I think I'm enjoying my current go-round more than my original one. At $30 you get a lot of gameplay out of it if you enjoy the formula, and now that I have a newer PS3 with more HD space, I can actually download more games to my drive.

Speaking of purchases for my wife that has benefits for me, I got her a new HP computer about a week and a half ago, and it came with a free Xbox 360 slim. I also had access to a cheap 250 GB hard drive for the slim, which is going to give me the opportunity to play and purchase more stuff for my 360 soon - my old 20 gig HD on my 360 was completely full (like 40 mbs left full) - I have some designs to get some more play time w/ DLC for Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, so I'm hoping to post on those.

Another side-project I had started was breaking down a lot of the PS Home content after the PSN came back up early this summer - but I read an article recently that said Sony's going to completely redo Home, so I never bothered finishing that project. I'll post my thoughts on it very soon, but I never got to complete it.

With my dad up and visiting, I've been playing some games I haven't touched quite as much of late like Peggle and FX/Marvel Pinball. That's going to lead me to another review here soon as well - my next post actually.

Neat trick on Peggle. I've gone to #1 in the world on one board and #2 in a couple of others, top 20 on a few - using the Rabbit. What's my trick? Well, it involves a ton of luck, but I'll share it. I realized that the last orange peg when you finish a map is worth a ton of points, so I try to leave 1 or both green pegs for right at the end, and then hope I hit the triple score. Then, whatever you get for the orange pegs plus the final 'point bucket' gets tripled. On my final shot on the map I took #1 on, I got over 350,000 points on that last shot as a result. There's a lot of factors that go into it, but I am up on 2nd place by more than 100,000 points. Cool trick I learned, figured I'd share.

 

Read More

Call of Duty: Black Ops Playstation 3/Xbox 360 review

The Call of Duty franchise is one of the biggest and best-known out there. I actually had not played the earlier ones, as first person shooters were never one of my favorite genres. But some buddies of mine got me into Modern Warfare 2, and I loved it. Then I started to play a few others and eventually got myself real excited about the recent Black Ops game. Obviously there were videos and stories leading up to its release, and these coupled with a good marketing campaign has led to an amazingly successful launch for the series. So, what’s my take on it? Here goes:

Graphics – 8:

I liked the look and feel better than Modern Warfare overall, but I ran into some odd glitching more often than I cared for, where textures would pop in and out, and lightning effects would mar the otherwise nicely crafted experience. Still, the expressions are often very good, providing good emotional values to the scenes while the environment were varied and in some cases, wonderfully colored and realized.

Sound and Music – 10:

The voice acting was excellent, and the dialog was great as well. It really helped to carry along the story, which I thought was a lot of fun. The music was also generally very good, and in some instances simply amazing in choice and context. There were a wide variety of sound effects that add to both the action and the feel of the storyline itself. This is a game that makes excellent use of my surround system, and is actually helpful in giving away things like footfalls and bullet direction. If I have a pet peeve with any of this, is I have the game on my PS3, but I don’t have a headset for my Playstation. As such, I find myself muting people constantly in the online games because I can’t talk with them – so I sure don’t want to hear them. I found that trying to globally mute other players was a popular question online when I Googled it, whereas it is quite easy to do on the 360 using your personal preferences in Modern Warfare 2 (and from what I read online, easy with this game as well).

Gameplay – 8:

The game controls well – aiming and movement are sharp, and with a quick twitch game such as this – especially with the online mode, that is a must to have. There’s a ton to do as well, and the menus are generally pretty easy to navigate around in, though there were a few control scheme options I think that got neglected. I’ve seen a lot of people online looking for how to unlock perk pluses and not realizing what button they needed to press on the unlocked base perks to see it. Also, the online connectivity is borderline maddening at times. With the online being such an integral part of the package, I’ve found my connectivity most nights being really rough – at least half of the time I try to play, the servers are almost unplayable. I’d think it was me or my connection but I can A) hop on Halo with my 360 and have no problems b) play other online ps3 games and have no issue and c) I’ve been reading about a lot of other people having trouble with it as well. I’ve heard that this issue is being looked into and I am hopefully it’ll be improved upon, but I have to knock off a point or two just based on this.

Intangibles – 9:

The story mode is amazingly fun – but ridiculously short still. This is a common complaint/observation I’ve heard about the series since at lead CoD 4 – and one I levied against Modern Warfare 2 myself. This mission was a bit longer I think, but not by much. Still, the story was excellent, with my older daughter having watched me play through about 85% of it. Why is this significant? A) she’s not a gamer b) she doesn’t have any interested in war movies – but she sat through almost all of this, fascinated with the storyline and even commenting several times that it felt, looked and sounded like ‘one of those war movies you’d watch, dad’ – so kudos to the team for that.

Online is where the majority of people will play this game, and for good reason. The maps are well made, the classes and progression are fun. Instead of relying completely on levels and accomplishments (like in the prior games) to unlock things, you play for ‘currency’ you can spend as well. So at a certain level you may unlock the ability to get a gun, but you still need the credits on hand to purchase it. I suspect this will drag out the game’s playlife a bit for people like me who like to unlike pretty much… everything. This mode is more rewarding for me than Halo: Reach’s rewards system, because there the upgrades are only cosmetic and here they affect gameplay. However, a huge demerit for this mode is the online connectivity issues that appear to be anything but an isolated problem only for me.

Zombie modes are almost starting to annoy me in games. Bad enough that there’s so many ‘zombie’ games out there lately (between the RE series, Dead Rising – even Plants vs. Zombies), and now it’s creeping in as a ‘mode’ in a lot of games (I just saw something on IGN about how the upcoming Yakuza game would have one). Here however, it’s still pretty fun running around blasting zombies with a shotgun while trying to earn credits and repair broken doors and windows. It is not stand-alone game material, but for an add-on it’s pretty solid.

There’s some other pretty cool stuff in here, including an online training mode, a Smash TV-like overhead arcade style shooter, unlockable intel, a zork text game (though playing it on that keyboard they provide you with seems like it would get old and fast) – and this secret thing you can do in the main menu to stand up and walk around to access a computer (and some of these features). There’s a ton of content here, and most of it is very well done. If I could go 2 or 3 weeks without bad online connectivity issues, I’d probably bump the score to a 9.5, and if the online mode had just a *bit* more variety from say, Modern Warfare 2’s online weapon loadouts and options, it would be a 10 in my mind.

Overall – 8.75:

The game feels great overall. I was a day-of-release pickup for it. There’s a handful of things holding it back from complete greatness – online issues, some areas that feel like they’re a bit rehashed and a very short single player campaign mode (I beat it in a day). But there’s a lot going for the game too – from fantastic production values to a variety of modes that really add to the game’s depth. It’s definitely not one for little kids – the violence can be scaled back, which is what I make my son due, but there’s a good deal of strong language to keep the violence company.

More Call of Duty: Black Ops Videos

Read More