Man Fat

As usual, picked up the new CoD (Black ops) on day of release and have put in a few hours straight away to take a look at the changes in class selections and to fined the easiest way to get your XP up. Straight away I have found a class set up that would enable the most poo players to rack up the kills. It wont make you popular and people will wine about you being a “noob” but, you will be leading the leader board not them. Its pretty simple but I will break it down for youanyway, starting with:

Main Weapon
Go to assault rifles and equip the Enfield. Go to attachments then buy and equip the Grenade launcher. If you don’t have enough cash to buy it, play a few games till you do have enough as this is essential. Because you cant play hard core till level 19 this will make all your kills, 1 hit wonders. The splash damage is not as good as MW2 but if you hit it at their feet, they will go BOOM.

Secondary Weapon
Go to launchers and equip the M72 LAW. For the same reason as the primary weapon attachment this is a 1 shot kill. Change this weapon to the RPG as soon as it becomes available because it then has 2 shots.

Lethal
Frag grenades, because they do what they say on the tin… frag people. Great for flushing someone out or testing to see if a room is empty. Remember to hold the trigger down for a few seconds before you throw it, you don’t want to give them time to get away.

Tactical
Flash bangs as always. These are brilliant at getting you out of a tight spot. They blind everyone near them for what seems a little longer than MW2.

Equipment
Claymore, claymore CLAYMORE! The easiest way of claiming a remote kill. As before just put them down in high traffic areas and walk away. I have noticed that they are not as powerful as the previous version and you need to pay a bit more attention to exactly where you are placing them.

Perk 1
Ghost. Buy it early and it will make life allot easier. All the noobs tend to use the auto map allot more than they should. If you get this perk it will make sticking a grenade in their face allot easier.

Perk 2
Slight of hand. Makes reloading between grenades on the launcher and RPG allot quicker which helps allot for getting kill multipliers.

Perk 3
Second Chance. Always good in my opinion as it nets me at least a couple of extra kills a game. Oh, and there is always that satisfaction of being put to second chance to the flaw by a sniper from miles away, then pinging him with a head shot with the pistol. Just to show him how it should have been done.

Thats the basic setup I have come up with at the moment and it basically revolves around using your weapon attached grenade launcher to get a couple of easy kills then switching straight to the launcher for another 1 or 2 kills. Add them to your well placed claymore kill and you could have a streak of 5 kills. This in turn opens up your killstreaks selections:

Killstreaks
RC-XD – 3 Kills
This is a remote controlled car that you drive around till you fined someone. Once you fined them drive it up to them and pull the trigger. BOOM, another easy kill. REMEMBER to leave your body somewhere safe while you are off on your joy ride.

Napalm Strike – 5 kills
This is called in like an air strike and drops napalm on your desired location. Great for keeping and doping on spawn points. Easy kills again.

Attack Helicopter – 7 kills
Unlocked right from the start (so it wont cost you anything) its a great one just to click and forget about. Not as effective as the MW2 choppers but will still net you 3 – 6 kills on an open map.

So by using the combination of 1 shot kills, claymore and the RC-XD/Napalm Strike you should never be without a chopper gunner in the air. This in turn will make climbing those levels to the good weapons allot easier.

If you have any feedback please feel free to comment below. If you want to join me for a game of black ops then please feel free to add me as a friend or invite me to a game. My gamer tag is still MAN FATdotCOM.

While on yet another random net romp i stumbled across this blast from the past. Although its launch date was well befor my time, it did bring memories flooding back as the arcade table game was in my local pub while i was at uni. As it as only 10p a go, and my friends were pretty unsociable, i spent many an hour trying to beat the top score that was set by BAZ. I never new who BAZ was and never did get to beat is score, happy days, with a bitter twist… Anyway, enjoy this nostalgic game for yourself:

I still get that the excited childhood feeling that any real gamer gets when they obtain a new joy box (game) and in my opinion the cover art is an integral part of the experience. It is very important for a number of very good reasons of witch, I think, giving the game a visual identity is the most important. Yes, most people will also picture strong characters instead of cover art when prompted for games like Mario or Sonic but the covers tend to re enforce this by standing the Hero in some action pose with their name plastered over head. The cover art that I am talking about are the ones that try to sum up the game in one glorious picture. This does not mean that all cover art should use the same formula as different subtleties and ideas can look very different but yield the same satisfying results. Examples in questions:

Hear are 3 game covers arts from the golden ages of, the NES, or Nintendo Entertainment System for you youngens. They have all taken a different tack on the style of the cover but all convey very well what the game is about. Mega Man is like a can of white paint, it does exactly what is says on the tin. By looking at the game art you know you are going to be playing a boy with a big gun for an arm that he shoots at robots in an effort to get to the old man boss. Simple formula.

Final Fantasy has a completely different spin. It does not really tell you anything about the game you are about to embark on but it looks interesting and poses questions that you want to fined the answers out to. Questions like What is that floating castle, what is that floating eyeball thing and why do I need an 84 page handbook?










Finally Castle Vania 3 Dracula’s Curse (the best one). This cover has loads of stuff going on that just makes the cover look super exciting as your eye has allot of action to look at.

So now nearly 20 years since the release of the NES the formula for game art must have changed, right? Well hear are 3 more games taken from the machine of the minuet, the xbox 360. All three games have again taken a very different tack on there game art but all have very strong covers. Sonic the hedgehog could not be clearer. By the cover you can see that you are going to be playing a big blue running hedgehog, but if you did not know that already you need to get out a bit more.

Left 4 Dead poses more questions than it answers. Questions like, where is his thumb and how come he never married. But this is a very striking cover in its own right and again makes you want to play the game to fined out more.

Finally, Grand Theft Auto. A busy cover with lots of images of different exciting things. It does not make it clear what you will be doing in the game but again, you know it will be bad ass!

So in summery, I personally think that Game’s Cover Art is very important in defining the identity of the game. It can be made up in many different ways but they should all invoke that excited feeling when viewed… or maybe that’s just me…

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part of this, please email him for details.

Man Fat: How Important Is A Game’s Cover Art?