Tuesday, February 21, 2012

*500th Blog Entry* Game Review (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Content Drop #3)

Now available for ELITE Premium members is the map "Overwatch". After "Liberation" and "Piazza", it is now the third content drop out of twenty for us Premium members.

If you watched any of the ELITE trailers, you'll have seen this map, as well as Black Box for March's map, but that's for next month's MW3 entry. "Overwatch" is a map that takes place on a currently-under-construction skyscraper that overlooks New York City. Does it sound a bit like "Highrise" to you? It did to me too. The bad news for fans of "Highrise" is that this map is really nothing like that map at all - it just shares the same location.

I'll admit, I haven't played this map much... maybe half a dozen full matches so far, with more to come, but I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how this map plays, and how it will play in the future. First of all, "Overwatch" looks great, just like Piazza and Liberation do, and it also looks better than "Highrise" did. There are a few different levels that you can walk up and down to, as well as a bunch of areas with long site lines, making assault rifles - or even snipers in certain places - a great choice for this map. But no worries, if you like to run with an SMG or a shotgun, there are plenty of areas around the map where you can use them effectively too -- just stay away from the sides of the maps.

Probably the biggest problem I have with "Overwatch" is that the spawns are completely terrible. I figured that any maps coming out at this point would have better spawn systems than the disc maps, but I was wrong. Still remains are the moments where you kill a guy, reload, he spawns 20 feet to your left or right, and kills you. I'm sorry, but there's something wrong with that.

Oh, and if you're wondering what the size of "Overwatch" is, I'd say it's a medium-large map. It seems small at first, but after exploring the levels of the map and running around it a little bit, it's surprisingly big, which leads me to believe that it'd most likely be excluded from Team Tactical game modes when the first map pack is released to non-ELITE members.

Compared to the first Content Drop, I'd say this one is better. Even though "Overwatch" is the lone drop this month, it's a better map than "Liberation", and maybe even "Piazza". "Liberation" strongly encourages sniping or a gun like the MK14 and "Piazza" wants you to use SMGs, while "Overwatch" is kind to users of any gun type.

This Content Drop is sort of disappointing, as I was really thinking "Overwatch" would be completely awesome. It's a good map and all, but I've been let down by IW yet again.

P.S. Where are the fucking Clan Operations? They add five more prestiges to the game (that don't even have new emblems, mind you.), but they don't bother getting a feature I paid for several months ago up and going.

3.75/5

Sunday, February 19, 2012

TV Show Review (The Simpsons 500th Episode)

23 years later, The Simpsons has just finished airing its 500th episode on Fox. If you missed it, I'll give you a brief recap, as well as my opinion. Don't worry, I'll keep it short.

The general synopsis of "At Long Last Leave" (S23/E14) is basically that the Simpsons get banished from Springfield due to each family member's antics, and sent to a place called "The Outlands."

As most people know, whether they've seen each and every episode of the show or tuned in time-to-time just to see how the show's doing, The Simpsons has been sorely lacking any truly "great" episodes for several years now. I decided to watch "At Long Last Leave" not expecting a GREAT episode, but at least hoping to see a memorable one.

Well, I was let down. This 500th episode of The Simpsons is completely passable. Right out the gate, the episode is sluggish, and doesn't really pick up much at all until halfway through. Throughout the episode, there are maybe two or three jokes that didn't suck... but the majority of them were flat out bad. *SPOILER* The two jokes that I thought were decent were Wiggum's can of "Jerk-Off" and Homer getting his head stuck in the airplane turbine he had attached to the back of his ATV. *SPOILER OVER*

If it's any consolation outside of those two jokes, the show's intro was pretty cool, as it showed various (possibly all, it very well could have been.) couch gags starting from season one going forward.

"At Long Last Leave" is a mediocre episode, and while I'm disappointed in that, I'm certainly not surprised.

3.25/5