Early Impressions of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

Played a bit of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare today, Single Player portion. The graphics are much improved have to be said, finally a new engine and it looks good. It is a little bit more open than previous COD games because the exo suit opens up new traversal routes, but still, very scripted. The AI, well, just like previous game, I don't think they deserve the I word, they just follow script but don't react outside it. Oh well, at least its a progress.

Alien: Isolation - Review

Before we begin, a word of warning: This game is not for the faint of heart. I have been a fan of the horror genre all my life, read many books, watched tons of films, but none managed to pull my fear strings as hard as Alien: Isolation.

So with that out of the way, let me tell you why this review is different compared to all the reviews I have done before. I wrote fragments of my impressions and thoughts on a notepad as a played through the game and used them as the basis of my review. It breathes more life into the review in a sense. Hope everyone finds it interesting!

This game, Alien: Isolation, is based on the late 70’s cult classic sci-fi horror flick: Alien. There have been numerous games based on the franchise, but only by name, which is pretty much the case for all movie licensed games sadly. However, Isolation is a different beast entirely. Where previous Alien games used the license just as a name to cover a lackluster game, this however is the most faithful recreation of the Alien universe or any film to game for that matter. It flawlessly manages to capture the very essence of the Alien franchise while harnessing the power of this interactive medium to further suck you into Ridley Scott’s sci-fi nightmare beyond the proficiency of films.

You play as Amanda Ripley, the descendant of Ellen Ripley. Amanda has been working for a mega corporation called Weyland-Yutani for a while now. Her main purpose for working with them was because the corporation had ties with the disappearance of her mother some 15 years ago. She finally gets a break which hopefully will shed some light to the answers she is looking for.

Gameplay

When it comes to gameplay, there is just one important thing the game emphasis more than anything else: is to Survive. All the impressive sound and visual design aren't just there for the sake of immersion, finally, they actually serve as very important gameplay systems. You need to keep your senses in full capacity because of the all the different kinds of dangers that are lurking all around the space station. Because of the desperate situation, many of the people over there who managed to keep themselves alive formed various groups in order to work together and try to survive. Unfortunately, that means they tend to keep it to themselves and will consider anyone outside of their group hostile, like yourself. It is suicide to go head to head against them if they outnumber you, so you need to carefully plan out what you are going to do. Will you take them on all by yourself? Will you try to sneak past them with the help of your gadgets and wits? Or will you take the help of the Alien by throwing a noise bomb which as expected emits a lot of noise for the Alien to swoop down from above and kill everything in the vicinity. You can also manipulate the machines in the station to give you an edge by hacking into the systems. The hacking mini-games are fun very well grounded to the world design around you.

Then there are creepy androids or better known as Working Joe. They are basically a very simple version of synthetic humans in the Alien universe. Now, you never can trust robots no matter how friendly they appear to be at first, the same rule applies here. Some of the Joes are malfunctioning which is causing them to savagely kill any human that is not obeying the exaggerated rules planted into their head. What is even worse, they robots don’t go down easily and can take some serious punishment before it kneels over and dies with the same hollow look as if nothing happened. Yes, the Joes are perhaps the creepiest thing you will encounter in the game, more so than the Alien I felt. Something about their dead emotions, their stern attitude and the way they look at you with those dead eyes and talk in equally empty voice is very unsettling!

Going further up the top of the food chain we have, the Alien: it is unbeatable, unkillable and once it sees you there is a very good chance you are dead. So it is very important to make sure such a situation never even happens in the first place. In order to do that, you need to stay hidden as much as you can. Ripley is an engineer and just like her mom, a true survivor who can make the best out of the given situations. She can hide in lockers; hack terminals to alter some of the security systems around the space station to make new escape routes; use her extensive engineering skills to craft tools and gadgets like flash bang, Molotov cocktail, etc. to give her a better fighting chance and make it through. Despite all this help, it does not make your time any easier with the Alien lurking about, because the thing is…you are never safely hidden. For example when hiding inside the locker, the Alien can sniff you out at times. You quickly then need to it react by holding your breath and lean back for a few seconds – you can’t always do that though as it slowly eats away your health. Early in the game you find a motion tracker which gives you a small opportunity to sniff out danger few feet away from you. As with all things, you are not completely safe with the motion tracker either. It is one directional in accuracy; it interferes with the metal around you when confined under closed spaces (where more than likely you will be going regularly to hide). The Alien is a lot smarter and just all around better than you. I know it sounds unfair and it is supposed to be. Moments where a giant white light appears on the radar followed by a big thumping sound constantly reminds you of its presence.

You are constantly being haunted most of the game by this vicious, hideous, merciless creature. That is 20 hours of constant tension and that is not even the only thing you need to worry about, the environment is very unpredictable and changes in hostile ways as the story progresses. So take a deep breath and hope you won’t break while you playing.

Save System

You need to pay close attention to your environments as much as possible. Focus on scoping out escape routes and hideouts as you explore you enter new rooms. The game encourages you to memorize some of the key codes that unlock doors and such so that you can input them quickly. It only takes a few seconds for all hell to break loose and trust me, it just does not feel right when you get killed just because you lapsed concentration for a few seconds there and teleported to the last save station. Save station? Does that mean the game does not automatically save progress? Yes and there is a good reason why – As much as I can appreciate the simplicity of auto save system in modern games, it takes away a great deal of care and thought process when you deal with situations. That is because you always have the luxury of knowing that you will be able to restart somewhere near your death; however, with the save station system, there are long stretches when you have to play without the confidence of knowing you can load back somewhere near. This system plays well with the cautious approach the developer want the players to take.

Visual Presentation

The presentation can be summarized in one word: outstanding! The gorgeous lighting effects are some of the best I've seen and most effectively utilized like a horror game should. The way lights reflect when you point your flashlight around metal constructs like ventilation shafts, and further reflects back and radiates by bouncing off the surrounding metal plates, an effect called radiosity, is very hard to pull off in video games. This further gets complicated very easily when the surrounding surfaces where the light bounces off each other is made up of different materials, as different materials absorb light in different ways thus radiates differently. As you can you imagine, it is very computationally expensive to calculate such variables and thus many game out there do their best to fake this effect. However, the smart folks at Creative Assembly wouldn’t settle for anything less than realistic. They managed to find ways to achieve realistic light scattering and reflecting without bogging down hardware using a very impressive engine they made in-house for the game. Where there is light, there is shadow and the engine handles them dark regions of our world as authentic as the lighting. With shadows realistically defuse and sharpen depending on the source of light, distance of the object and the material it is cast upon. The engine also uses a new form of texture compression that allows the developers to add crazy amount of detail all over the world without sacrificing any texture quality as well. The particle effects like the fires and explosions take a massive leap forward as well. The first time I saw a flame bursting out of the ground below made me fixated towards it for a few seconds, it looks incredibly realistic! What is even more impressive is how easily you can make this fantastic graphical showcase of a game to run with very modest systems, an incredible technological achievement. If you want to learn more about the impressive technology fueling the game, read this article from AMD. All these graphical advancements are in full force to make you believe that you are in an actual space station. The station is not just made of pretty shiny metal, but it is complete with displays utilizing the CRT monitors with bumpy mechanical keyboards scattered across the desks to the punch card system which serves as a save point. When this technology and art combine, it creates the perfect retro sci-fi vibe the game is going for.

Sound

According to science, even though visual memory is the most prominent form of memory, it is the memory that is recorded through sound that evokes the most powerful of emotions. So for a horror game, audio is incredibly important, if not more than the visuals. Well then, lucky for us, Creative Assembly completely nailed it here. This game has probably the most advanced sound design I've heard in gaming. It is there not just to create the hollow atmosphere, but it is probably the best tool at your disposal to survive. With you being inside of an aluminum shell, every sound is more pronounced than it normally is. The sound of thudding metal of something big and hulking by the vents and ceiling right on top of you can be very scary, but at the same time it gives you the opportunity to hear you're foes and make decisions: which is to either fight or flee (just flee when the sound is too heavy!). Word of massive caution though, Ripley is no soldier. She has not much experience with fire arms and nor covering herself with armor. The game has a solid ambiance-heavy soundtrack that feels very inaudible most of the time, but you can still sense its presence. The rhythmic hum of the machines working away for no one, Amanda’s silent breath as she clears a room to the radio garble by the communication hubs, all which combine to create the best spooky soundtrack a game can ever make.  If you ever been holding out for high quality headsets for a game to properly utilize it, wait no further.

AI

One of the few drawbacks of this outstanding game is the hostile human AI. Oddly, they feel more robotic in nature than the Working Joes (synthetic human gone psycho). Their combat routines and walking patterns are very simple in nature, so does the human allies which I think is even worse in this regard. I think the issue is probably because CA was so much focused on the AI of the Alien that they had to make some cuts in the human AIs. The good thing is there are only very a few encounters with the humans in the game. The human AI is not terrible by any means, it just that it sticks out like a white paint on a black wall considering how well done the AI of Alien is. So how good are we talking about? Very good. The Alien is a truly a living, breathing hunter which reacts smartly to every situation happening around it, whether by the hand of the player or the environment. The Alien seeks you out like the expert human predator it is: It checks around every room, around corners, vents, underneath the tables and it can even can hear the smallest of noise you make or the scent out your location if you’re too near it. Clearly, a lot of work has been gone through Alien and I am very happy with the results, CA made the right decision here. The Alien is impressively detailed, it definitely is very faithful recreation of the movies. I can’t stop thinking how realistically its tail slivers across the floor, stuff of the nightmares I tell you!

Minor issues

Nothing is perfect, but Isolation comes closer than most games out there. I had some issues with the game highlighting the interactive elements of Sevastopol. Being a sci-fi ship, everything is littered with lights, however only with few of them you can interact with obviously. The game usually denotes the interactive parts with a bright shade of green. Now for the most part it works just fine, however, there are times I can't tell how much I lost time just for looking for a proper console to interact with. Upon pressing the action button on every console in the room, I finally triggered the right console. It turns out, this console was not green. Similarly I got stuck for almost an hour figuring out where to go next, the answer appeared to be right below me; it was hard to notice that because the green light was not very noticeable. These visual cues sometimes made it annoying for me to figure what I can interact with. Especially with a game like this when every second counts and timing has to be precise. Also there is a small immersion breakers here and there like nothing happens when you hit the environment with your wrench or anything. Early on the game, I was cornered to a spot by some pissed off Working Joes just because I tried to beat one of them with a wrench. I had no ammunition or any sort of gadget, all I had was my wrench. I thought of breaking some of the glasses on the tray near me to cause a distraction while I slip pass them by the other side, sadly, my wrench completely goes through the glasses. It could have opened up the game even more, oh well. There is finally the awkward lip-sync during cut scenes, I feel it just does not feel natural as the lip movement does not match to what the characters are speaking. Again, there are very small and mostly nitpicking issues in otherwise a fantastic game.

Conclusion:

It is amazing to think a lifelong RTS developer like Creative Assembly managed to make a survival horror game in the truest of the definition. At times it feels like Alien: Isolation takes the best elements of Dead Space and Outlast and creates an awesome experience. But that would do nothing but injustice to the game as a whole, it is stands out on its own.  I would like to end by saying that I loved every bit of my time at Sevastopol. I would love to return to it again but…definitely not anytime soon!

P.S. I actually documented my entire journey through Sevastopol by Twitch streaming and recording the entire thing from start to finish, complete with my own facecam(and scares). If you are interested, you can check it out from my YouTube playlist for the videos. You can also follow me you on Twitch, I really focus on interacting with the people more than playing games when I Twitch steam. I would appreciate the company so join in!

Broken Age - Review

I always thought that I started gaming while playing the platforming genre like Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog being one of my favorite series of all time. As I thought about it for a minute, I remember I used to play a certain type of game even earlier than that. It involved using the mouse to click on parts of the environment to move your character, interact with it and solve puzzles. I never knew the name of the genre until a few years later when it peaked my curiosity enough to Google it. The genre was appropriately called 'Point and Click adventure games'.

So why it was so hard for me to pinpoint the genre? Well, gaming between now and then exploded in a ton of different genres, which further splintered into a variety of subgenres. Between all this chaotic explosion of genres, one got caught in the crossfire and badly wounded to the point it almost got killed, yes you know what genre I am talking about.

After more than a decade after that incident, the folks at Double Fine used their powers of necromancy to Kickstart the Heart of the genre back to life. They had to tap into the power of hundreds and thousands of souls to make it happen. Ok, I am very dramatic here but it kinda works doesn't it! The crowd funded Kickstarter campaign was a huge success, not only they greatly exceeded the funds to make their original vision of the game possible, but they kept on breaking all kinds of Kickstarter records in the process. The additional capital went further into making the game we all deserved but never asked for...or something like that.

So how is the game? Double Fine crafted a beautiful imaginative world with colorful characters while some carrying surprisingly muted intentions. It tells a story about a boy and a girl from two entirely different environments, yet facing the exact same problem: being captive in one's fate, as they both try to defy the fate placed upon themselves.

The world looks hand-drawn and reminds me of the story books I used to gross over as a child with the smallest of details carrying the biggest impressions. What is brilliant is how Double Fine lays down such a mature tale through the light hearted visuals and very simplistic and pleasing audio cues.

As someone who played a lot of adventure games when he was a kid, but sadly gone out of touch with it - because of lack of such games out in the market. I got stuck in a couple of  puzzles, some of them took more than hour for me to figure it out!  I took about 6 hours or so to finish the first act. Your milage may vary depending on how good you are at solving the puzzles.

If I had a gripe with this game, it is how much you are limited in solving the puzzles: I wish the game was a bit more open to clever to players out there. At times I felt I had the tools to handle a situation in an alternate way, but the game never really responded to such ideas. I know the game is playing it to it's well documented traditions, but I wish the game explored a bit further out the boundaries of this genre like this without taking away it's heart.

For the asking price of 25$, it might put off a lot of people off considering the short ride they are getting. The ride may be short, but it is a much more memorable. They could have easily went the road most other games take by stretching the length with filler content, but they didn't. Not a single time in the game I felt it was wasted, it is even more true for games of this class as any sort of filler content will distract it further from it's puzzle solving elements. So what are you waiting for? Hop in the Double Fine express for a beautiful journey that you won't be forgetting anytime soon!

Wolfenstein The New Order Review: Hail to the Lord

First Person Shooters has been around since decades, it is one of oldest gaming genres that hasn't much evolved since it first came out.  The foundation of it was so solid that despite with relatively minor tweaks here and there, the genre still sells millions and millions of copies annually with likes of Call of Duty and it provided one of the key platforms for competitive gaming through the likes of Counter Strike for example.

Leading up to the release, I thought it was going to be just another shooter trying to market itself using the franchise's legacy. For the case of Wolfenstein, the legacy of being the first one there - thats right, the original Wolfenstein from id software is pretty much the first game that let you see through the eyes of the protagonist as you go from room to room, clearing enemies while wielding a gun on the bottom of the screen. Yep, it was the very 1st FPS in history.

The story takes place during the high point of World War 2 in Europe, you crash land into a Nazi occupied castle, accompanied by a small group of soldiers scattered from various regiments, you have a clear task of cutting the head of the snake and end this war. The game captures the agony of defeat at your most vulnerable time -  just when you thought you had it won. It carries a very powerful and emotional punch to the gut itself, but what transpires during those darkest hours will haunt you throughout the rest of the game. It further connects you to the game on a very personal level. The characters that you meet to help you fight against the Nazis aren't just there to move the story forward, they aren't your typical forgettable characters you find in most shooters, oh no, they feel like real people going through real hell thanks to the New World Order of the Nazis. Everyone here lost something dear and precious in the 'Old World' to the Nazis and hence have very personal vendetta against them. While on the other side of the fence the cruel and horror nature of the Nazi is brought to life through very well written, well designed and I can confidently say, well hated antagonists in the game. You just don't want to save the people around you, but you also really want to hurt the Nazis and give them no mercy of a quick death.

First impressions are always going to be the visuals, and this game looks good, very good. Not just id tech 5 looks amazing here, from ultra crisp textures, great attention to detail in every corner to bring the world to life. What really caught my attention was the cinematography and the art style of the game: The game uses colors and their contrast to great effect, combined with the sheer attention to detail I mentioned before, it creates a visually orgasmic experience! The environments are very distinct and crafted with a lot of care and thought just like the rest of the game, no two places ever feels the same. Another thing to note, not only the game takes you to a wide variety of places across the world, but across the time as well. The art style, the condition of the world and it's inhabitants reflect this brilliantly.

The level design also gives the player a lot of options in dealing with situations and change tactics on the fly, which the game actually forces you to do so when playing in harder difficulty modes, which I suggest. The weapons are mostly standard you would expect from a sci-fi shooter with some cooling alternate firing modes and there is something incredibly satisfying when you can dual wield weapons like assault rifles, shotgun and even...rocket launchers..thats right..dual wield rocket launchers.

What really stood out for me is also the main reason I will continue to come back to this game long after I finished it is how precise and satisfying the shooting mechanics felt. It is just pure joy to point your gun and just shoot. Further, the weapons feel solid, distinct and carry satisfying feedback all of which combine to make one of the best shooting experience possible . It is the most basic mechanic for a shooter, but you would be surprised that most fail to deliver here. Modern shooters have made great strides in graphics and other enhancements through this medium, but it also came at a price of deteriorating the key functionalities which made this genre timeless. A lot of the essence of the genre is getting lost with modern 'refinements' being made into the genre. It is very pleasant to discover that Wolfenstein have gone back to basics with their approach to shooting. I found the firefights challenging without being frustrating most the time on the 2nd highest difficulty mode I played. The AI was definitely smart to box me in, flank and even find higher ground to get a upper hand during combat situations.Oh yeah one more thing, the game doesn't even have regenerating health, Win!

There really isn't much negative I can think off to be honest, I guess I have to really nitpick and can I fine just one - some of the textures are oddly of low resolution which really catches the eye because they are at times placed right next to the usual high resolution textures of the game, making it a bit distracting. Also I am not sure why, but the game doesn't have proper anti-aliasing support on the PC, kinda shocking really as it is a standard feature of PC Gaming. Not that the aliasing is too distracting or anything, but it is always nice to clean those jaggies when you have the power at your disposal.

Wolfenstein is very likely not just my game of the year, but it is one of the most important games to come around in my opinion with a clear message: sometimes you have to embrace the past to guide you a better future.

Editor's note: Since Bethesda also acquired the rights to another legendary shooter, DOOM. If they give that game the same level of treatment they gave to Wolfenstein, we can safely anticipate for another solid good comeback!

Toxic Nature of Gaming.

I am a big PS3 fan, but I never failed to see it's short comings or notice things Sony did wrong or the competition did better. Ever since I switched to PC as my primary platform, it opened my eyes even further, I really don't care about platforms and their fanboy 'wars', I just care about the games. With this new outlook in my gaming life, I never been any happier while playing.

Today, I went to see N4G.com (a reddit like page where gamers post news stories) and realized the mess I left behind. The fanboys, used to be run by xbox fans in comments when it started several years ago, but for the past 3 years or so its completely run by Sony fanboys. What I find really fascinating and disturbing at the same time is their mindset, if something remotely legitimately negative comes about the PS brand or Sony, the poster gets thumbed down, yelled at for hours. Their common 'attack' right now against Xbox for example is they talk resolution and frames per second, granted, many of them have no idea what it is. Double standards seems to be a fully fledged weapon they use frequently: Talk about Drive Club's 30fps limitation, suddenly it doesn't matter anymore. If you talk about PC, they bring their list of exclusives and attack the PC by mentioning how you need a 2000$ PC to best the PS4, which is absurd obviously and no amount of logic does anything to help them.

Really, the fanboy atmosphere is extremely toxic. I will admit I myself love certain brands, but I love to equally criticize them. They don't own me nor I own them. Really wish this sort of cult disappears, as long as they are active, gaming will never flourish and will be treated as a poor man's entertainment industry.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons review - A short, but a much meaningful journey than most

I got this game a month ago, but with a list of ps3 games I've yet to play and soon PS4 being added to the list, this game somehow got lost in the pile. The list will only grow thanks to how PS plus giving away games like crazy, I needed to pick up the pace, I started with this game and ended with a single disappointed...how on earth did I neglect such a beautiful game?

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a story about how two brothers travel across mountains, valleys , sea and even battles to save their dad while putting their own lives at risk.  You control the two brothers using left and right stick independently. Which is odd and can be hard to get used to, but, it really makes perfect sense when you consider the theme of the game and is just one of the many examples of how the gameplay mechanics actually plays to the story which is incredibly rare. The gameplay is mostly puzzle based, not hard but still very satisfying.

The journey was short, but it was beautiful and most importantly, meaningful. Fantastic game, please play it if you haven't done so yet.

Gone Home - mini review

Not a single shot is fired, not a single blood is spilled and it over in 2 hours. Yet...in just 2 hours the game tells far more story and creates much more compelling characters than most videogames in their 20 hour run.
Gone Home was amazing experience.

It illustrates how far we have come in the videogames industry. Once it was all about scoring the most points or reaching the finish line; now it is about experiencing the lives of individuals and see the world through their lens. The game shows the might of interactive story telling where other entertainment media falls short in delivering.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - An Awesome Review

Even the title art is oozing awesomeness...

I really wanna know what happened at the boardroom during the first meeting behind Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, also what kind of substance the guys were on. All because the concept behind Blood Dragon is just ridiculous, crazy and not something any modern designer in his/her right mind would pitch in, but yet it did happen. Ok, I am just gonna put it out, Blood Dragon is  the most awesome thing happened to videogames since.... video games. I have no idea what ubisoft was thinking (if they were thinking at all), but was the most brilliant decision ever made and potentially, a start of another great new franchise for them.

With the core game being Far Cry 3, the game is extremely flexible allowing the player to reach his/her goals with vareity of  tools, approaching from multitude of direction.

It is the most fun game I've played in recent memory. The core game being the superflexible Far Cry 3, with added speed,agility and awesome weapons and everything coated with neon and purple hues make the game standout while still as fun as ever to play by your own rules.

The game is dipped in neon, to further emphaisize that this sci-fi world is the one you left in the 80's.

The nod to the 80's cheesy sci-fi moments and many references is what really makes Blood Dragon  pure...gold. What makes the game further standout from other games is that Blood Dragon is bold enough to make those references, not subtle at all, but in your face.  The game made me smile to all the way to falling on the floor while laughing like a maniac.

You're getting incredible value for 15$. All I can do is hope that the numbers turn out to be good and Ubisoft makes a separate franchise out of it.

To sum up Blood Dragon, this game is Ultra Mega Awesome!

Hotline Miami - A review drenched in acid

I love this game, you play as a psycho serial killer who goes through some serious acid trip every night with crazy music fueling the entire experience. He answers a phone call in the morning, nods and kills everyone he is instructed in the most gruesome way imaginable or sometimes unimaginable. Gets to a random restaurant with his bloodstained college jacket with seemingly the same owner popping up in different restaurants and offers him free food. He goes back home, wakes up the next morning, with no memories of what happened just blood and again the phone rings.

You gotta play this game maaaan!!

It is always Munchy time when you're Booker Dewitt

Man...is this guy hungry or what?

Is it just me, or does Booker Dewitt in Bioshock Infinite eats like a pig? I mean the dude eats from whatever is inside the store, fridge, box, picnic basket, trash can, basically whatever you throw at him, he'll eat it. Wait...is it something to do with his mysterious past or something? Maybe he was once a secret Govt. experiment to clean up leftovers?

All games are not created equal, but they worth the same?

One of the things I don't understand and I personally would love to change is the pricing model of retail games. Retail games vary in a huge spectrum between low budget titles to extreme high budget blockbuster titles, yet...all the games retail for 60$. More importantly, the value attached to the titles vary wildly as well

Lets compare a game like Medal of honor: Warfighter to a game like GTA IV:

MOH is one of the poorly rated military FPS to come out this generation because of poor gameplay, lackluster visuals and mediocre voice acting. Not only that you can finish the game in under 4 hours. Not sure about the budget but I am sure it couldn't be a lot.

GTA IV, a game fueled by 100$+ million budget is chocked full of content, quality voice acting, open ended gameplay all compiled in a neat package which takes around 35 hours to finish.

As expected, Medal of Honor: Warfighter did not do well at all, however, I always wonder if the game had a better chance of surviving if it cost something like 30$? Suddenly, Warfighter doesn't seem that much of a bad deal at all.

Yet...both of these games retailed for 60$, which I think is absurd and insulting to games like GTA IV, Skyrim.

So, what is the story behind fixed 60$ games?

Finally, I wish with this coming generation of console, the pricing structure of games would not be a static 60$, but more flexible pricing approach which could range anywhere from 30$ to 60$. 

Witcher 2 mini review

Witcher 2 puts players in the shoe of Gerald of Rivia in a rich fantasy world, awesome cast of characters and deep political story. 

I love how it is more Game of Thrones type of fantasy realm than Lord of the Rings, basically the focus is on political drama and turmoil than something like out worldly foes putting humanity on the brink of chaos.

The visuals are stunning  Not only the fantasy world comes to life with great graphics, but the artists need to be applauded for their fantastic use of hues and contrast to highlight the mood without getting much in the way. Witcher 2 is a great looking game.

The voice acting is equally stellar. The main characters are voiced by clear professionals who brings life into their characters. However, outside of that, the rest of the characters range from anywhere between average to poor. Also the random battering the characters make feel repetitive and takes you out of the experience if it happens too often.Considering how good the main characters are, its a shame they couldn't even the quality among the rest of the cast.

This game unfortunately has a horrible map, it makes it hard to know where to go: A big portion of my time I spent wondering where to go, who to talk to. The game is sometimes not clear on it's objectives and even if you know what to do, it is hard to actually do it with the horrible map which tries to be authentic rather than functional. 

The combat is deep and awesome in witcher 2 and requires tactical approach to them, however it is somewhat diminished by the uneven difficulty the game throws at you. At times playing on normal is virtually impossible because not only there are tons of enemies on screen, but mostly because their attacks hurt you a lot compared to a measly poke your sword slash comes out. When you switch to easy, the game comes way too easy and it just takes the tactical approach out of it

I enjoyed Witcher 2 a lot. Yes it is rough around the edges, but those are just that...edges. On surface however, this game shines. 

The creepiest thing about Resident Evil 4

The creepiest thing of Resident Evil 4 was not the zombies, the monsters, or the creepy dungeons. By far the scariest entity was this guy:

I know Japanese games sometimes doesn't make sense, but, why on earth there is a creepy gipsy merchant with an Australian accent in a remote village of Spain? Even more scary add the fact that he always ends up beating Leon to places he should never be. I guess...some mysterious are never meant to be solved

A very formal invitation from DICE ;)

HELL FUCKING YES!

Just like the good old days

 My favorite installment in  the series, either this or Porsche Unleashed.

During my early days into gaming, I could associate myself with some of the franchises which initially pulled me towards gaming, and one of them was none other than the Need For Speed series. I am a huge fan, at least I was for most of it's lifetime until the series lots its way with the more recent installments. It tried to add a story, open-world and what not and not only failed to make those new additions or changes interesting, but at the same time forgot what the series was all about. The series drifted & 'shifted' out of it's track and ended up on a completely new road which felt very unfamiliar to me and long time fans alike.

Then came a latest in the series to date, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. As with the namesake, the game from the creators of Burnout series was clearly focused to drive the franchise back to it's original lane, and by God they succeeded!

 

It feels soooo good to be back!

 No more bullshit storyline to worry about, it's just you, your car and the road and nothing else. The game features less Honda and more of the car's you really want to drive but can't in your lifetime. It goes with some of the most beautiful racing environments in any racing game, some of them a clear homage to the previous NFS titles. Also the Autolog can be so addicting, just a message on the upper right corner blinking that your friend has beaten your time by .89 seconds really punches the manly hood inside you.

I'm really glad that one of my oldest favorite franchises gone back to it's roots, even if for a short '*cough* Run *cough*.

Also fans of Assassin's Creed might want to check out this interesting article from New Scientist, recent advancements in genetic memory may lead to an animus near you.

Holy mother of a Rockstar!

This is what I call 'authentic' experience.

What do you guys think of EA Online Pass?

I absolutely hate it! So the rebel that I am, I'm taking the initiative and created a petition. Stand up and speak up for yourself and fellow gamers:

Petition Against EA online pass

What is online pass? - Paying additional 10$ to access multiplayer and content that should be bee free & no justification for additional cost.
Sign in


Make sure to spread the word as much as you can and as regularly as you through the power of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and use forum and blog signatures as a link to the petition. The more vote we get, the more likely it will happen. Power to the gamers! \m/

Note: You will get the code to place the widget like I placed on the right of my blog once you signed for the petition. It is highly attractive and guarantees to get more signatures :)


Long version:

According to EA about their Online Pass- "expands your quest for glory by fully immersing you in the entire sports experience. Activating your Online Pass gives you full access to online features and bonus content." Which basically means they are screwing you to pay for online and/or accessing a bulk of content.

Video games are as expensive as it is, online pass is a total slap in the face of all of us. Many of us have been supporting EA for a long time and this is what we get in return. We pay our hard earned money to buy sealed video games, however many of us just can't always afford new games and instead of EA being supportive of used game market and gamers in general, they are the only company that charges you around 10$ just to play online and access content that makes no sense to justify additional cost . Their system of online pass creates lots of problems like:

• You cannot exchange games with a friend as the EA game you are exchanging with or for won't allow you to play online

• Resell value is very low: Video games are expensive and sometimes we like to sell games we might not play anymore to help us buy new ones.

• This also applies to the person who might not be able afford to buy a new game of a particular old title, but could afford to buy a used game. The person needs to re-think his/her decision if its an EA game as they won't be able to play online or access a whole lot of content. This most likely causes that person to buy a used game from a different publisher.

• The online pass code are region locked from my experience on the PS3. So if you have a Hong Kong code, you won't be able to redeem it with a US account. Even if you managed to redeem the code with a separate Hong kong PSN account, chances are the 'key' to play online or access the content is only applicable to the hong kong account, which you only use to redeem content but do not intend to use it to play online.

I live in Bangladesh, I have experienced lots of problems with the online pass from my personal experience. Over here we get mixed region games for the ps3, sometimes we get region 1 or 2 or 3. I had bought a new FIFA 11 which was region 3 and packaged from Korea. I tried to unlock the code with my US (region1) and Hong Kong (region3) account, but it won't accept. The only way for it to work is to create a Korean account, which is next to impossible as you need a citizen ID for that. I contacted EA and they managed to give me a US unlock code, I redeemed it and downloaded the small file, I thought it worked but still it didn't. It will only accept region 3 'key' downloads. So basically I will not be able to play FIFA 11 online.

I request EA to remove this 'Online Pass' from their games in the future. If they don't they will definitely loose a lot of our support for their products.

Thank you

A look at Regenerative Health

You find yourself in a seemingly empty giant room. You slowly make your way across the dark room, but your spidy sense starts to tingle… something is not right. Suddenly a giant flash light paints over you and cuts through the darkness, after a few seconds of silence you are greeted by razor-sharp gunfire. You dash to find the nearest cover; your reflex was good and managed to save 50% of your health. You keep your cool and manage to pick targets off 1 by 1.  Are things always that easy? No. You soon realize that staying in one place for too long is not a good idea a cover is not only fragile, but scare and you need to end the fight as soon as possible if you want to survive. The battle ended with you saving only 2% of your health, with no health-packs or checkpoints near the vicinity; victory suddenly doesn’t seem all that glorious. You try your best to be as careful as possible, however accidents happen; you missed one corner and a foe blasts you off with a shotgun. Now you need to play the entire section all over again. Most gamers here have two options:

A: Play the difficult section all over again

B: Throw down the controller and call it quits.

C: Use cheats

You go with option A and no matter how much you tried; you just can’t progress much because the last checkpoint starts with a very low health. You get frustrated and eventually forced to opt for either option B or C. Any gamer worth his trophies will tell you it will be a cold day in hell if you go with option C.

The above scenario was all too common in games during the early and mid-90s; architected with a combination of poorly placed checkpoints / save points and scarcely placed health-packs. Often the means to rectify those situations from happening were manual save system and more health-packs.

The idea of saving when you want sounds all to comforting, however it won’t take long to find yourself saving before every room you enter. It not only feels like a chore, but also breaks up the immersion of the game. 

Placing more health-packs is another solution to the problem, however it is also feels ‘gamey’ considering how you magically heal when you just walk over it. One of the major draw backs is that it just breaks the pacing of a game with high adrenaline action like the ever popular Call of Duty games; the games encourage fast moving action set pieces instead of taking pot-shots from your cover until it is safe to run over the health-pack. However, survival games like Dead Space and Resident Evil series makes perfect sense for the system. When you know health-packs are scarce, it adds a lot to the tension to the world the games try to create.

Then came a certain game called Halo Combat Evolved. In my opinion is one of the best FPS ever made and best in the series. Not only the game introduced use to a brand of combat which showed the bad*** Master Chief gunning down aliens from another planet by on-foot and vehicle combat, but also a entirely new concept to gaming: Regenerative health.

This opened the doors for a whole new dimension for games. Developers and gamers alike no longer needed to worry too much about checkpoints and not at all for health-packs. Basically players with low health just need to lay low for a few seconds for the health to kick back in and then they are good to go! There are lots of great things about the system:

1: Less worried about health and more on the action

2: Try out new things you otherwise wouldn’t because of your fear of loosing health

3: Casual friendly, more people will be encouraged to finish it

Life is short, regenerative health makes it little longer :)

Bad Company 2 Demo Impressions

Truth be told, my gaming origins started from the glory days of PC gaming. I was so good at games such as Quake III, Unreal Tournament. However, it was not until Battlefield 2 came that really shook things off for online multiplayer. It proved that huge scale all out vehicle, on-foot combat can co-exist. I was never been so addicted to online multiplayer as I was with BattleField 2.

I had to move to console gaming since the start of this gen as it was more cost effective and most games came to the console. But there was always a gap that needed to be filled for the consoles which the BattleField 2 filled for the PC. Enter Bad Company 2

I tell you what, dont let the name fool you, this is battlefield game through and through and it is the best multi-player experience I had on a console and greatly mimics of those days of PC multiplayer gaming, and this is just from the demo! I played the PS3 Beta of the game so I had unfair advantage on the demo, I dont wana brag but, of my total 25 playthroughs of the demo, I was never placed below 3rd position and always WON. Thats right 25/0 so far. But I dont have with those aims in mind, this game is incredibly fun and addicting. The controls are just perfect, not twitchy like Call of duty series, and weapons obey the laws of projectiles; hence if you wana snipe a guy, make sure to have crosshair above his head if you wana score a headshot, as it will go like an arc if the distance is too much? I am really good with this, I completely dominated several matches using a Sniper, directing orders to my squad, pinpointing enemies for them to pick them off or help them along their way. The thrill of kissing the snow and pulling out the .50 cal over the cliff where you have an aerial view of the entire battlefield is exilirating. Also lurking amidst the trees, spotting unfortunate souls managed to find their way towards my territory. Not many people can snipe from where I was, mostly because projectile model of the weapons come to play (sometimes their bullets never go the far they intend), however I really got the hang of it so I can almost calculate in my mind where to aim for, and where the bullet will go.

I am also no slouch with the Assault class I get runs of 4-6 streaks easily. I mostly stick to the shadows, wait for my squad to come towards me and then attack the objective, this way you have better chance to arm the objective. Perhaps the best thing about the game, its really rewarding to play as a Squad, if you dont you will loose. Infact it is so damn serious that everyone plays as a team or try to which is really good to see.

Then there are vehicles, I am not good with them, especially the chopper after an...hmmm...incident where I crashed it. But a good player with supporting team can really control the battlefield with vehicles. This is when, I am sniper, I place a dart on the enemy tank. I radio in my friend to fire a RPG, which directs and goes homes in on the dart and boom.

Its amazing game, those who didn't try to the demo yet, I suggest you do. Easily one of the 3 must-buy for me on the 1st half of the year.