Disc be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so…
Tag Archives: humour
Birthdays Are a Piece of Cake.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms: A Stealthy Surprise or a Sneaky Pay-to-Win
Every now and then a free game comes along on Steam that doesn’t require you to sell your Nan’s living room to play it. Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Phantoms is one of those games – well, nearly one of those games… Me and Sprout decided to download this new title on a hot, stuffy Friday night after we had a sudden urge to shoot someone’s brains out. We were not disappointed – at least not for a month anyway.
The game plays out like many Ghost Recon games, as in it requires you to kit-up, duck-down and shoot people. Simple. But the controls can feel a little stiff and clumsy at times, something we wouldn’t usually associate with a game made by the master of being a sneaky-bastard, Mr Tom Clancy. There’s a new cover system that provides an added level of strategy, but sometimes it doesn’t work. In the game, you hit the space bar to initiate a cool, slide-to-cover animation or to stick to a wall, but aim it wrong and you end up flat on your back, slide tackling the corner of a wall, whilst politely inviting an enemy to come stick a bullet in your brain-box. The game is fun though.
The maps are well laid out with plenty of places to creep, crawl and stalk your enemies. It’s a basic capture-and-hold setup on each map, but, like all capture-and-hold maps, it is often coupled with the sub-objective of shooting as many mother-fuckers as you can find. There are 3 classes – support, recon and assault – all with their own personal weapons and abilities. These can be upgraded using the in-game currency – Nan better say goodbye to her living room!
We wouldn’t call it pay-to-win, but you will end up with a demoralizing feeling that some people are going to whoop your ass because they’ve spent real life money on a fourteen foot sniper scope and amour piercing rounds – cue the hair pulling and screaming at the screen. You will earn credits by playing, but they build up about as fast as a puddle in a desert does. You can get away with a few upgrades early on, which really does add to the fun, but inevitably you’ll have more chance of your grand kids inheriting your credits and finally buying that new muzzle attachment you always wanted.
The graphics aren’t about to put Sony Santa Monica out of business, but they are decent enough and hey, it’s a free game, so we should probably shut our mouths. The most fun we had is with the shield ability of the assault class. It’s a heavy-duty battering ram that lets you flatten any enemies in your way. Getting pinned down in a tight corner by three enemy players only to come storming out with your shield raised and a evil look in your eye is pretty satisfying – they don’t stand a chance, unless they shoot you in your back, in which case they’re dickheads. There’s also the opportunity for shield on shield action which is a blast.
TCGRP is a fun game, no doubt. It satisfies that urge to shoot people and it does it in an over-the-shoulder, Gears of War style manner that makes you feel all tough and it won’t cost you a penny. It takes up valuable hours of your day, which is always a good thing, and it does make you want to keep playing, but we can’t help but feel that you will need some serious patience to click that re-spawn button after the well endowed sniper kills you for the tenth time in a single match.
If the game had a little more flexibility with its upgrade system and a few more game modes, it would have scored a 5. For now, we’ll give it a “Protect the Disc” rating of 4 – well worth spending some time on.
Our Ratings Explained
We know ratings are a big part of all review sites, so we have spent a long time coming up with how we rate our games. Some blogs use the 1-10 system, others use 1-5, all ranging from poor to excellent. But we favor the old 1-6 system, with ‘shit your pants’ used for only the best, most impressive games and, of course, ‘eject the disc’ for the worst. What follows is a quick breakdown of how we roll.
The Bare Necessities
So, this is it, the first post on a new blog, a scrawny scrap of meat on a bare skeleton of empty widgets and redundant categories. Naked, pointless and pathetic, all words that can be used to describe this first, most useless, post – and they just so happen to be words that could be used to describe me at this very moment as well.
In short, we are two gamers, named Brussel and Sprout, who are tired of playing and never conveying, tired of doing but never reviewing. Now, we’ve decided to do something about it. So stand back, reload your weapon, duck for cover and get ready for a new blog – one that isn’t afraid to say ‘shit your pants.’ It might be amazing; it might be appalling. Either way, we’ll share the games that we think deserve respect or a swift eject.
So, this is it, the first post on a new blog, a scrawny scrap of meat on an empty skeleton – the bare necessities.
Brussel and Sprout
P.S here is picture of our first post – tuck in!
Eject The Disc 
