I love Battlefield 3! End Game Game play.
I have been having so much fun over the last two days playing Battlefield 3. I absolutely love the End Game DLC. It’s so much fun playing Capture the Flag on dirt bikes! Of course, Battlefield 3 is a million times less rage inducing than Black Ops 2, so I’ve been much enjoying my CoD break.
I love the fact that on Battlefield, you can go and choose the server you want to play on, and that the game lets you know your connection to the server. I also find that players are more friendly, and more objective driven instead of kill/death ratio driven, so it makes for some intense games and it’s super fun. I am an objective player, I’ll go for the B flag on domination on CoD even though I know it’s a high death risk. What’s the point of going 50-0 if your team loses? I fully understand that CoD needs an anchor (the guy who goes around killing everyone so his team can get the objective) but the amount of times I’ve been the only person going for the objective is infuriating. Now, in Black Ops 2, you get those anchors, who will hop on and off the objective to point hoard to get killstreaks. They hop on the hardpoint, and then are never seen again. They end up with 9+ captures, and their team still loses because they didn’t bother to stay on the hardpoint because, “You can die from doing that”. Then they claim, they are objective players because they have so many captures!
This doesn’t happen in Battlefield, the amount of times I’ve been on a full team of objective players has to be close to 100% of the time. You are rewarded more in Battlefield for completing the whole objective, you get to unlock guns and such. I don’t know why I had such a long break from Battlefield, I needed a new disc, and put off getting one for a long time because of Black Ops 2 release. I will still play Black Ops 2, but probably mostly Zombies from now on. Battlefield is so much fun, and with the introduction of the close quarters DLC, I can play that fast paced game mode that CoD usually offers over Battlefield. I don’t think I’ll be getting bored of playing Capture the Flag on dirt bikes for a very long time!
I cannot wait to see what Battlefield 4 offers. Interacting with your environment (like shooting down buildings to kill enemies, or trees that fall down instead of being bullet proof a la Black Ops 2), the engine, it’s so superior, despite it being now, an older game. Hats off to the developers for making me have so much fun on multiplayer.
Heres a funtage from clips of me playing last night:-
Hi, I’m Commander Shepard (Comic)
Had to draw this! I am such a huge fan of the Mass Effect series. I am currently playing through the Citadel DLC, and can’t wait to experience it, and talk about it! I have grown attached to the characters in the game, and I cannot wait to see where they go with this hefty 4Gb DLC.
Anyway, this was drawn from scratch on Art Rage Studio pro on a wacom bamboo graphics tablet, with in game pictures for references.
Enjoy! 
New Black Ops 2 Camo’s!
Who is stupid enough to buy in game camos and player cards? Me, that’s who! I may as well sign my bank account over to Treyarch and be done with it. Whoops.
I bought the bacon, zombie and party rock camo packs. You have to buy all of the packs separately and I think it should have been one whole pack for a small amount of points because if you buy all of them, we are talking a large sum of points. Anyway, I am with Xbox live rewards, and have earned points for having a gamer score over 10,000 so decided I’d buy some just to see what they looked like and if they added any value to my gaming experience.
They are quite fun to use, and different, and I like that, however, I worked hard to get my diamond camos so this takes all that away. Diamond is still my preferred choice of camo, it looks the best, and most of these new camos don’t look very good unless you are using the Peacekeeper, which I do in my gameplay that I will insert at the end of this post. I don’t really like the Peacekeeper, I find it weak as I have said before.
You also get reticles in the pack you buy, there’s 3 in each pack, one for each sight. I hardly use red dot sights, however, the red dot sight one for bacon, is a pig and that’s fun to use.
Red dot sight reticles
EOTech Reticles
and, Hybrid scope reticles.
I quite enjoy having a Wales player card now, though. I bought the Europe flag pack, and yes, they do Wales, which is awesome because in Black Ops 1, I had to have UK or nothing, and I consider myself Welsh, more than British. Also, trying to do the Welsh flag as an emblem was impossible.
You also get one player card with the pack you buy and I do like them, I just don’t really understand why they were not in the game to begin with. We all wanted more customisations, but not at a price. I, like many others, have already spent a lot on this game, to spend even more, just seems a bit ludicrous. I technically didn’t spend money on them as I had free points from Xbox live rewards, but even that probably was a bit wasteful of points, when I could have put the points towards a new game or something. But, alas, I have purchased them now, and decided to show them off, if you like.
I have to say though, the bacon player card, looks pretty awesome with my Minecraft pig:-
And here’s the other two that came with my pack:-
The packs are 160 Microsoft points each, and you can also buy an extra ten custom classes on top of the ten you already have. Nuketown Zombies is available for 400 points, and Nuketown multiplayer map is now free for everyone. The camos are good if you use big guns, if you mostly use the smaller SMG’s, then don’t expect them to look awesome. They don’t.
Here’s some random gameplay of me using it. I had just purchased the packs, and wanted to see what they look like. The gameplay is nothing special, mostly because I was using the Peacekeeper.
Rhio out!
Black Ops 2 Emblem Tutorials – NASA Logo (Video).
I decided to make another video to show another one of my emblems. As a big space and science fan, I just had to make the NASA emblem!
If you would like to know how to use all the tools like I do in this video check out this post:- How to make Black Ops 2 emblems- the basics.
Here is the video:-
Feel free to check me out on YouTube and subscribe/like if you do so wish.
Black Ops 2 – Misty got Rhio’d (Comic)
Drawn on Art Rage Studio Pro with a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet.
This was so much fun to draw!
Revolution DLC for Black Ops 2 – Die Rise is awesome!
I have never played Zombies on the previous Call of Duty titles, I’m rather a Zombie noob. As I have had the worst luck with Multiplayer connections in Black Ops 2, I have been spending more and more time on Zombies. I didn’t like Tranzit and was quite disappointed with it, it wasn’t worth all the hype surrounding it. Die Rise, in the new Revolution DLC pack, however, is really a lot of fun and despite not playing Zombies before, I can get to highish rounds using some basic tactics and using strategies with the new wonder weapon, the “Sliquifier”. The Sliquifier is an easy buildable, and after purchasing Quick Revive, and the PDW from the Spawn location, I make my way down to the power to go and build it. It’s so much fun to use, and is best used when you have a train of zombies. You can kill all of the train in one shot because of it’s chain reaction. It’s also a lot of fun to shoot the floor, and dolphin dive into it… So long as you don’t slide off the edge of the map!
My favourite “training” room is the Chinese Restaurant and I spend most of my time there in the beginning rounds, and then usually head on over to the upside down buddha room in the later rounds to get the AN-94 pack-a-punched to replace or add to the PDW (depending on if I have the Mule Kick perk). The PDW is excellent to begin with, but doesn’t do very much even with it being pack-a-punched and with double tap in later rounds.
The boss rounds are great for using claymores and either bowie knife or galvaknuckles only to get the free perk. I generally do not build the Trample Steam unless I am playing Co-Op because I don’t find it useful unless there are two of us or more. Also, they break quickly above round 25. I have managed to get to round 33 so far, but I think I could have gone further than that if I didn’t have “Who’s who”. That perk is either awesome, or very bad depending on what round you’re on. Dying whilst in who’s who, means the game ends even if you have quick revive, but if you can revive yourself, you keep all the perks you’ve acquired so far.
Here’s a video of me playing Die Rise in the Chinese restaurant mostly using the Sliquifier. For some reason it wouldn’t upload in HD.
The most causes of my death on Die Rise, have been from falling down. Either because the pink mattresses are not soft enough, or from missing the jump or landing weirdly in the elevator shaft where the galvaknuckles are.
Also with the Revolution DLC came “Turned” where you can actually be a Zombie. This was a lot of fun and the best version of “tag” ever, and I actually played it last night for the first time and did pretty well. I was lucky enough to get instakill to get the Polyarmoury achievement. Here’s another YouTube video, this time of me playing Turned (Watch out for the guy who rage quits out of Turned!!):-
The new multiplayer maps and Peacekeeper weapon are also a lot of fun. I find the Peacekeeper weak for the way I play, I’m better off running around with the MSMC or the MP7. I’m more of a player who rushes into choke points to play the objective because I want that B flag, or Hardpoint! The Peacekeeper requires you play at mid range, and it is really good for that and you can win most gunfights with other SMG’s at mid range and take advantage of it’s minimal recoil. I generally use it as an assault rifle, and will add long barrel and a red dot sight. I was firstly using it as an SMG and I think that’s where I went wrong. However, to use it like an SMG, adding rapid fire or silencer to flank the enemy team, laser sight and extended mags using the Primary Gunfighter Wildcard, enabled me to use it that way. I’ve already managed to get diamond camo for it, as all my other SMG’s were already diamond. It was one of the easiest guns to get diamond/gold camo for, because using it mid range, and with it’s already okay iron sights and minimal recoil, I tend to get headshots without even trying. The 150 kills no perks and attachments were done in the chaos moshpit playlist and it only took a few games to get.
Diamond Peacekeeper
I really like the new multiplayer maps, Grind is my favourite, it has lots of choke points, is relatively a small map, and features ramps that are so much fun to run an RC-XD around on. Hydro is also a really good map, and the flood is brilliant when you are playing Hardpoint, it changes the game and your strategies and is again a small map. I generally prefer small maps over larger ones for the way I play. Mirage, is the best domination map because the A, B and C flags are all in a triangle, so it’s not unusual to get more caps than any other map. When you spawn in, you are nearly equal distance between A and B, or B and C, so it makes for a very close quarters, fast game.
I think the Revolution DLC Pack, is highly worth downloading and definitely worth the money. I hope Treyarch keep up the awesome DLC and I am definitely most looking forward to another new Zombie map.
Black Ops 2 Emblem Tutorials #2 – 3D Minecraft Creeper.
This post will show you how to make this 3D looking Creeper in Black Ops 2 Emblem Editor. I have also done a video, if you just want to watch that, you can skip to the end, but as videos are sometimes hard to follow, I decided to do a step by step written guide on how to make it.
Step 0 - Get a drink, load black ops 2 and go into emblem editor. This wont take you long, don’t worry, you’ll be back shooting noobs before you know it.
Step 1- Creeper Body –
To get the Creeper body shape, press A, and then press RB to go into “Ranks” and grab the rectangle shape (Second lieutenant), and place it slightly off centre in the middle of the blank square. To tilt slightly, use the RT trigger and press it really softly. Skew the shape by pressing in the right toggle stick to get it perfect looking.
This shade of green works well, you want it slightly darker than normal, because we are going to make a 3D shape and we will layer another shape on top of this. To pick the perfect colour, press the start button to go into colour mixer. Here you can make any colour you want.
Step 2- Creeper needs a head.
Creeper heads are just off square shape, use the square tool, and slightly skew it, by pressing in the right toggle stick again, to make a “fatter” square shape. In the above picture is the colour mixer. I tried putting images into photoshop to get the exact colour, but unfortunately this RGB scale seems off. Probably has to do with screen resolutions, so I would suggest not doing that, but to pick colours you want and that you think looks best.
Step 3, Starting the 3d shapes.
Grab another rectangle from the rank tools, and put it on top of the body you created earlier, but make it slightly smaller and move it over to the left. Make this rectangle a lighter green. As I said in my previous post, you don’t have to be entirely accurate with shapes, using colour cleverly, you can create just as good a 3D shape. I made this in layer three, but used the left button on the D-Pad to move it down a layer, under the head.
Step 4 – Creeper needs feet to creep.
Again using the rectangle shape, make two feet. To make them exactly the same, make the first one, then copy and paste (using back and start) into the next layer. It’s a good idea to make these the same colour as his head.
To make his feet 3D, grab the diamond object from tools and place it like this:-
Then move this layer down, underneath the original feet, and copy and paste and do the same on the other side, so it looks like this:-
You want these diamonds to be lighter than all the other shapes we’ve previously used, so it stands out.
Then to complete the 3D effect, you want to grab another diamond or copy and paste the last one, so it looks like the following picture:-
Again, you then need to move the layer underneath, and copy and paste and do the exact same thing on the other foot. Then your creeper should look like this:-
Then all we need is a back leg to make him even more 3d. To do this, go back to the layer of one of the square/rectangle shapes that make up his front foot, copy and paste it into a new layer, and make it darker than the shapes already present. Place it at the back of him like this:-
Then, move it down underneath all the layers already present using the left button on the D-pad.
Step 5 – Creeper Face!
All you need to make his eyes and mouth/nose shapes is squares, and just skew them to your liking. I made them black but lowered the opacity slightly to about 80%. It looks better than 100% black.
Step 6 – Making adjustments.
Now you have the basic creeper shape down, you can make adjustments by making him taller or fatter, and centering him properly in your square. The grid lines come in very handy for doing this. When you are completely happy with the size and shape, you can now move on to the next step.
Step 7 – Personalisation.
Want to add a background? Cool. In a new layer grab a square shape, make it as big as the emblem square and colour it to your liking, and move it all the way to the bottom.
To make my creeper look more “real” looking, I added lots of squares and rectangles in lots of different green colours to give that lovely minecraft pixel look. Make sure you lower the opacity to barely visible (a lot of mine were about 15-20%), and place them below the correct layers. See the beginning picture to see what I did.
If you want to add guns, or text, like, Tssss that’s totally your call. There will be plenty of layers left over for you to do so.
I left my background blank, because I think it looks better on my gun.
Here he is on my diamond MSMC.
EDIT :- Something appears wrong with the colour of this video, click to watch on youtube for high quality
Black Ops 2 Emblem Tutorials. #1 The basics.
I’ve been having a lot of fun making emblems on Black Ops 2 Vahn Editor, and decided I’d do a step by step tutorial on how to make your own. I have an Xbox, and will be showing you Xbox controls, but it’s fairly simple to convert these on to PS3 if you have that instead.
Here are two of my favourite emblems that I’ve created:-
I’m going to start with the basics and how to use all the tools and features of the emblem editor and in this post concentrate on controls, opacity and cubes. It took me a while to figure out exactly how to make things the way I wanted, and figured I’d share my experience with anyone who wants to read it. I have spent a lot of time making emblems, probably should be concentrating on the actual game and getting my KD up [lol], but nevertheless when you know exactly what you have to do, emblem making can be a lot of fun. Especially now I’ve prestiged some of my weapons twice so can have them on my gun.
In this series, I’ll add videos as well as step by step written instructions. It can be hard to see exactly what I am doing by video alone.
1. Controls.
Controls are pretty obvious, but I’ll tell you the ones you’ll need to learn how to use most. Pressing in the right toggle stick to skew an object, the RB and LB buttons to control opacity, and the left and right d-pad to move current layer up or down a layer. These are the most important tools to use when creating 3D objects like the Minecraft Pig above (I will do step by steps of all my emblems in follow up posts).
2. Opacity.
a) Shiny Shiny!!
Opacity, is without doubt my favourite tool to use, to create shadows, and to make objects shine. To do this, you need to always start with a block background colour. To make shiny objects, the best background colour to use is black.
Here I created a star effect, by just using the circle object over and over again. It’s easier to copy and paste each circle, copy using back/select, and paste into a new layer using start.
Start with the lowest opacity by pressing the LB button so that the outside circle is barely visible, and copy and paste that circle into the next layer and make it slightly smaller. Do this over and over again, and move the opacity up slightly each time until you’re left with a small 100% opacity circle in the middle. You don’t need to change colours to grey, all I’ve used here is a black background and white circle. Nothing else.
This is how I made the pubstars clan emblem, and the Saturn above as it also helps to make objects look more spherical.
b) Shadow.
Creating shadow on objects, instantly makes them more interesting and real to look at. It adds dimension.
To create shadow with opacity, again you need a block background colour and you can make shadow one of two ways, use a dark background colour and build up the light, or use light colours, and add darker opacity shadows. First off, you need to decide in which direction the light is coming from. This is totally up to you, but I find it best that it comes from the top right. Most logos use this, like the YouTube one.
I created this letter R, with just what you see on screen. A background, one pink R, and 3 black R’s. I started off with the pink R, then copy and pasted it into a new layer, changed the colour to black and moved it down a layer by pressing < on the D-pad. I made this R, 26% Opacity, to make it look like a shadow, it looks too “odd” at 100%. I copied and pasted the black R into a new layer, and put it on top of the 100% opacity pink R. I skewed it by pressing right toggle stick so it fit inside the pink R, creating the first bit of shadow, which makes the original pink R really bright.
I then copy and pasted this layer into a new layer and did the same thing again, skewed by pressing in right toggle stick, so it fit inside the other two R’s, I lowered this R’s opacity to 8%. Now it doesn’t look 2D and flat anymore. You can use this example to make anything instantly look more 3D.
3. Creating cubes.
The emblem editor is excellent for making 3D shapes, and cubes. The rule of thumb here, is to forget the square object, and use the diamond object and skew it instead.
I made this cube type object using 4 diamonds skewed and a black background. Remembering that light helps to create 3D objects, changing the colour of each side is important.
This is how this shape looks, not put together, so you can see exactly how I’ve skewed the diamonds.
Then just slotting them together creates a cubed shape. This works for all different shapes and at all different sizes, and what I used mostly to make the Minecraft Pig.
These are the basic and fundamental tips you will need to know to be able to follow my upcoming step by steps.
