The Homeschooling gamer

Far Cry 2 first impressions

2008-10-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

For too long has the corridor shooter been the only shooter. A corridor shooter is intensely linear, with only to directions to proceed in: Forward or backward. While the corridor shooters were great last-gen, with Halo and Half Life, they are getting a bit stale now. Hopefully, they will soon be replaced by the sandbox shooter. Games like Crysis and Far Cry 2 encourage you to make tactical decisions about things that are far above the corridor shooter. Rather then deciding, say, should I go left or right, you think about things like the time of day or whether you should let this character die or backstab faction A to do jobs for faction B.

The core difference between a corridor shooter and a sandbox shooter is that in the sandbox shooter you can play it your way. You could opt to make hit and run raids with a vehicle, or make a distraction with remote controlled mine and take your objective with little trouble while the guards are investigating. I hope that Far Cry 2,which allows you to do all these things, becomes the prototype for the genre.

Far Cry 2 takes place in Africa, and you play as one of 9 mercenaries from foreign countries. Your brought in to take out the arms dealer know as The Jackal, but that soon goes wrong when your character contracts Malaria. You eventually find some pills, and after a brief tutorial you are flung into a war torn Africa. The UFLL(United Front for Liberation and Labor) and the APR (Alliance for Popular Resistance) are tearing the Savannah apart with constant fighting.

The towns are all under ceasefire, but you will find plenty of guard posts hanging around the Savannah.

Far Cry 2's open ended gameplay flow like this: Get a mission, which are available at almost every point of interest. Find a vehicle, and walking is not an option. Most missions can easily take place 10 miles away from where you received it. Then you have to scout the opposition, marking points of interest on you map. Then you have to formulate a plan. The worst approach is to go in guns blazing. Then,after getting past the guards, you finish up the mission and find a new one.

The gunplay in FC2 is different than most titles.Hip firing is totally and completely inaccurate, so you have to look down your iron sights. This system works well, and it cuts off all those stupid run and gun things we are used to using.Most enemies can take about 5-10 bullets, though one snot to the head kills instantly. Some of the new mechanics are great though. First is fire. Fire is no longer just a lame effect confined to one small area. It spreads quickly through the dry grass,and tactical use of it really helps with an assault. It can go inside buildings and is even affected by the wind. When used properly, fire will force you enemies out of their cover or alienate them from the fighting.

The other cool thing is that enemies no longer just walk around. They have to eat, sleep, patrol at certain times, clean their weapons, check for ieds and socialize.

Far Cry 2 is incredibly innovative and just comepletely amazing. expect a full review soon.

Team Fortress 2 review

2008-10-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

TF2 has been under development for a long time. The first game was a free mod for Quake and was soon adapted for Half Life 1. Soon after that, Tf2 was announced. Now, a decade later, its out.

The most obvious thing about TF2 is the art style. It looks like a Pixar movie with guns. Since there is no way to describe it, here is a picture

The graphics actually have a much more practical application then just looking cool. They are designed so that each class has a distinct out line. In most games most classes have different skins, but animate the same. While this system is fine for seeing what class a certain player is up close, it fails utterly from afar. In TF2, since each character has such a distinct outline, you can see who's who from a distance. While this may not sound game changing, it allows you to see who is around you very quickly at any given time, this is essential when things get chaotic.

The nuts and bolts of TF2 gameplay is about class warfare. Each class fills a niche, and some will be entirely ineffective against certain classes whilst others will excel. The game is roughly based around supporting the offensive classes with defensive classes to slowly inch your way forward. The game does a great job of having a frontline mechanic, as sentry guns provide a very strong disincentive to go to far in into enemy territory.

The only real problem with TF2 are them maps. A few have certain instances where a single engineer can just absolutely dominate with a sentry gun, and pyros never really seem to do okay. They either laughably fail completely or kill the entire team. It makes playing them frustrating.

overall 9/10

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 review

2008-10-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Half-Life 2 was utterly amazing, an left you with a real cliffhanger. But rather than make a Half-Life 3, Valve decided to produce a series of episodes with a smaller amount of gameplay and a 20 price tag. Each episode is just that, an episode. Each has a fairly self contained story , but they also add a little bit to the main plot.

Episode 1 picks up right where Half-Life 2 left off. You awake in the ruins of the citadel and are greeted by Alyx and d0g. You are almost always accompanied by Alyx. She helps out in firefights and gives you hints for puzzles. The only real new game mechanic is that allot of times enemies will keep spawning until you have solved a puzzle, or blocked a door. In these times you are forced to leave Alyx with the enemies and find a solution. This leads to the real problem with her: dying. No matter how hard you try, Alyx will never die in combat. All this does is give you a easy way out of every situation where Alyx is right next to you. With her, hiding behind a wall is almost as effective as firing.

To counteract this, Valve beefed up the opposition. There are just more enemies then your used to dealing with. In the encounters where have to solve a puzzle during combat, you have to almost completely forgo firing, and just hope you have enough health to take everything they throw at you.

Besides this, Episode 1 is a blast. the pacing is great, there are no bugs, and few sections are downright brilliant. Most of the enemies are zombies, and the game does a great job of making them feel a bit more scary this time around. You really have to think in order to survive these attacks, rather than just shoot them before they get to you. There are no new weapons in Episode 1, and the environments are the same as the end of HL2. The sound is much better,and there is noticeably more music this time around. The only new enemy is pretty cool, but I wont spoil if for you.

Half-Life 2 episode 1 is a great game, and it leaves you wanting more at the end. 8.5 out of 10

The evolution of the shooter genre

2008-05-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

A trend has occurred in gaming. Genres are being blurred, and stealth and action are now fairly commonly appearing in the same game. Rpg elements are in games like Cod 4 and Bioshock. This is is the evolution of the genre.

Take Crysis for example. It has shooting, driving, stealth, open world gameplay, rpg elements (weapon customization), and a rudimentary class-like system which is all about using the right suit power when, with some highly scripted and fun gameplay at the end. Crysis is really a next gen fps.

So what is next gen? It's certainly not graphics, though amazing graphics do help with immersion. It's not downloadable content, even though thats quite amazing. Next gen is,simply put, freedom and options. It all started with Oblivion. This was, in my opinion, the first next gen game. You could be the character you wanted to be, not something shoehorned into a class. The quests were the same for each adventurer, and you could decide important things in the quest's, and these would have real impacts on the game world. Should you kill the corrupt baron or let him face justice in court? It was decisions like these that made Oblivion something special.

And freedom is not necessarily open world. Gears was free in that you could snipe or get up close and personal with a chainsaw. You could make choices about which path to go down, and the overall experience is amazing. You can order your squad to cover you, or you can cover them as they advance.

Even though you have a set of objectives, there are many ways to go about them. This is really a next gen philosophy. Bioshock, Assassins Creed ( in a different way the most though), and Cal of Duty 4's multiplayer are all great examples of this.

Another next gen thing is immersion. This is where the Wii succeeds with its motion sensing. While the Wii's motion sensing is ineffective at best, the potential is still there. A few motion sensing gimmicks thrown in here and there greatly help with immersion. Bear in mind that "shaking the wii mote upwards" is the same thing as shaking it downwards. Motion sensing control schemes lose allot of precision, to the points where only one or two of these should be used.

And this takes me back to the evolution of the fps genre. Rpg customization and more community tools are an inevitable thing. The basics are in place with forge (Halo 3) and the perks system (Cod 4).

Brawl: Competitive or Casual?

2008-05-03T07:46:00.000-07:00

One of the most surprising things about Melee was it's competitive following. Without online play, the community had to band together and help teach newer players the tricks of the trade personally. Then tournaments came in, and the whole thing took off. One of the remarkable things about Melee was how it catered to the competitive player and the casual one. There were competitive maps like Final Destination, and then there were casual maps like Icicle Mountain.

But rather then embracing the competitive community as they did in Melee, Sakurai shot it in the face. While Melee was precise, Brawl is floaty and unbalanced. Many characters have been unnecessarily nerfed(Captain Falcon) and the majority of items make the game to random, too unskillful. Many of the new maps are simply uncompetitive, whether they be easily too easy to throw someone off or simply kill players, and many have stupid gimmicks like Wario's map. No map has succeeded in coming close to Final Destination, and even some characters are broken. Take DeDeDe, for example. He can grab people and grab them again before they leave his grab range, but this only works on some heavy characters. The rest he can grab 4 to 5 times giving them an extremely small window where they can control their character.

The online has banded the community together in a new way: Against Nintendo. Awful lag in every game, a matchmaking service thats more like an A.I upgrade then playing against humans, no choice whatsoever for what game type you want to play. With Anyone ( the aforementioned online matchmaking service) is a joke. The only way to get a playable game is through your friends list and this is limited to 64 people. There is no way to communicate outside of a sentence long message for each taunt.

Nintendo has tested the patience of the competitive community, and without reason. There's not even any leader-boards!

GTA 4 first impressions

2008-04-30T06:51:00.000-07:00

GTA 4 is here, and it's everything its cracked up to be. Even though you play as illegal-immigrant Niko Bellic, the real star of the show is the city itself. Liberty City is an unbarred satire version of New York City. People behave exactly like they do in New York: Pissed off and on a Mission! Rather then get your license plate number when you hit them, they flip you off and start attacking you. All the landmarks are in place along with the boroughs (although they are all under different names).

One of the most talked about parts of the new Gta is the gunplay system. You pop in and pop out of cover at will, and can even blind fire. You can now free aim, but this is sort of finicky as it requires you to half pull the trigger. This as stupid as it sounds, and I think it would have been better off as a toggle option somewhere in the menu or something. Combat is pretty thrilling , but the police chases are really the highlight here. Its now radius based, so you might need to get a qaurter mile away from a cop before they stop chasing you. You can't kill them either, as all that does is raise your wanted level.

The driving is very good, but its all to clear these are not sports cars. Just jacking the first one you see will often get a ride that simply does not want to turn using a powerslide. At higher speeds they bounce along realistically, and will occasionally flip over. There's no "press rb to flip" option, so your pretty much hosed once they flip. The cars also take damage realistically and wont just explode out of the blue. You can shoot out of the car to, which is pretty cool.

Dark Sector First impressions

2008-04-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

Dark Sector has really been a long time in the making. It was the first announced next gen game,but back then it was a sleek sci-fi shooter rather then dark and gory game it is now. The core of he gameplay is very similar to Gears of War: Spirt from cover to cover and pop out occasionally to shoot at enemies. Your health regenerates a bit slower, although you have more of it. You tend to fight more enemies, and with no squad these are quite a challenge. However, the game gives you a quite interesting tool: The glaive. This little three bladed death frisbee is allot like a boomerang that decapitates people. It returns to you within a few seconds of throwing, and will glitch through walls to find you. If an enemies is hit by the glaive, they most commonly lose a limb.

Chopping someone's head off with it is a bit finicky though. I don't know whether hitting someone in their neck or their head will trigger it, and its nowhere near as satisfying as hitting someone anywhere else. The glaive is actually really easy to use, and is easily your weapon of choice, but only because it makes the game too easy. Since 60 or so percent if hits with it result in death, and it functions almost exactly like a gun ( just aim and hit RB ), you end up breezing through firefights. The game tries to make it less of a firearm and more of a super death frisbee with after touch ( slo-mo that makes the camera follow the glaive and lets you guide it ) and power throw ( cheesy timing minigame ). Both of these are optional, but are so good you feel guilty about using them.

Hopefully the complaints will resolve themselves later into the game (I'm only halfway through).

Super Smash Bros Brawl Review

2008-04-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

Super Smash Bros is a side scrolling, multiplayer centric beat em up action game. These have always had single player, but thats never been the focus. One of the series key points is huge amount of depth concealed in this while still being easy and fun to learn.

Not much (if anything) has changed in Brawl. Up to 4 fighters still desperately clamber to knock opponents off the stage, but it feels allot better then melee. Most of the balance issues are fixed and the game feels a bit more floaty, but this is a good thing as melee was a bit overprecise. The stages are good, but allot of them are just too random.

And this brings up another point: Brawl has been made for the newcomer. Roughly half the stages try to kill you, and most of those are just frustrating, not another threat to watch. Take spearhead. Sometimes the stage flips upside down, and then your controls get inverted a by a second effect. This almost always leads to death. Another thing is the smash ball. Its a little orb that comes in and floats around until some hits it enough, then gives the person that broke it an awesome move. If these were balanced, they would be great. But many of them cant get a kill in ideal situations. Lucario's and Jigglypuff's barely do any damage, and Metaknights does damage but not much else.

Overall these complaints don't take much away from the game. Its great fun and anyone who owns a Wii should check it out.

9 out of 10

World of Warcraft first impressions

2008-01-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

WoW. Not only is this an abbreviation for this game, it also describes it's size. The title is quite literal, this game is actually a world, at least landmass wise. It's probably larger then the states.

So Wow is an mmorpg ( massively multiplayer online role playing game) and the best one out there. I can't really sum up the experience vey well, so here's an overview of the game. You head out as your chosen race and class to complete quests. Most of them involve killing a few specific enemies or a boss level character, and the rest tell you to talk to someone or deliver something. The game is so huge you would feel completely lost if you were did not have some sort of objective, and the huge amount of quest fulfill that.

Another large part of the game is gear. While finding some cloth armor or an average battleaxe will occur every few enemies, a real nice piece of gear is a real rarity. I just found my first green (uncommon) item at level 10! Most itmes you find some useless crud like a dry scorpion eye worth a few copper.

The next part of this addicting formula is the combat. It feels really hectic at the higher levels, and this is great. While most monsters you have to kill rarely pose a threat, if you get careless you can easily be swarmed and taken down in a matter of seconds. This creates an environment of tension and excitement, and carefully creeping around to avoid being attacked by too many creatures feels like a minefield! Sometimes you have to assault a dungeon and this changes the rules. Rather then picking your fights in a huge canyon, you are up close and personal with a range of beasties in a claustrophobic environment.

WoW is an experience that cannot be described with words. Well, maybe one: Wow.

2008-01-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

I just realized that you can click on the images to get larger versions for the comic.

comic, part 2

2008-01-22T06:13:00.001-08:00

Ghost Squad

2008-01-22T06:03:00.000-08:00

Ghost Squad started off as an arcade game, probably in Japan. The basics of the gameplay is that you shoot terrorists, and then move around then shoot some more. The game supports the Wii Zapper, and that works quite well with this game. In true light gun fashion, you move the cursor to the edge of the screen to reload.

Now the game forces you to shoot quickly, but there's little payoff for accuracy. Simply spraying a hail of bullets orks better then a precise head shot. And since you have unlimited ammo, the game becomes more about how quick you can reload rather than how your gun skills are. Another fault is the terrorists logic. In one restaurant scene, you go prone under some tables to shoot people in the legs. Rather then run behind you and shoot you, they prefer to hurl themselves directly into you line of fire. Then they get their buddies to the same thing. The way the terrorists move and shoot could have been handled better, but it does not hurt the game too much.

Over all, Ghost squad is a decent rail shooter, but it only last about an hour and a half. 7/10

2008-01-20T12:21:00.000-08:00

Below is a comic I made with Halo 3 and My Comic Life on a Mac Osx 10. I will try to include a page or two whenever I update this blog.
Oh, I couldn't write this on the same post due to formatting glitch.

Comic

2008-01-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

Wii Zapper

2008-01-20T11:58:00.001-08:00

The Wii Zapper is one of those things you think you might need, but then realize you don't. While it's not critical to nay of the games that use it, it greatly enhances them anyway, even if it makes it a bit harder.

It's priced right at 20 dollars, and at that comes with Link's Crossbow training. While this is definitely not a full fledged game, in short bursts (30 minutes or so) its great. It's basically a shooting gallery, with some movement thrown in. Each level is a mix between a few different game modes, the most prevalent one being target practice which lets you shoot targets. This works well, emphasizing accuracy over blind firing, which makes the game very precise. Firing quickly but inaccurately will get you nowhere. For each successive hit, your multiplier go's up by 1.

There a few more game types, but the standout is ranger. Here you walk around the map firing at enemies. While the controls are a bit unwieldy it's quite imersive. It's also a bit too hard too find all the enemies so that holds down this one. The is overall a cut above average, and it's worth your time to play it if you pick up the Zapper.

The Zapper is compatible with most recent Wii Fps's, notably Ghost Squad and Medal of Honor Heroes 2. With a little bit of mucking around in menu's you can get it to work older game's too, like Metroid Prime 3. This is a bit harder to control then normal, but it works overall.

I give the Wii Zapper an 8 out of 10. This is the rating for the casing itself, not the compatible software. Links Crossbow Training is a 7 out of 10, and perfect for half an hour or so bursts.

Metroid Prime 3 first impressions

2008-01-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

So I just rented Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It's not really what I was expecting. In the past, Metroid was a side scroller with allot of shooting. So then the Gamecube comes out the game not only makes the switch to 3d, but to a fps. Most fps's control by moving the left stick and looking with the right stick. Not Metroid! Our off all the first person shooter's I have played, that game was the hardest to control. You to hold a button just to look around! Everything else was fine, but the controls were just so bad.

Well, now the inevitable Wii version is out. I was fairly impressed with the basics of the game, with the player sort of manipulating objects with realistic motions. You would twist things with a twist motion, pull them out by actually pulling out... The problem being that this only works one some objects, like controls panels where it only manages to be annoying and imprecise. But rather then move your hand around pick up objects, which would be quite amazing and immersive, but no. Quite like the speech craft mini game in Oblivion, it just feels tacked on.

Besides that minor flaw, everything else holds up fairly well. Combat is well handled and fun, and an intuitive control scheme for your grapple beam feels nice when fighting shielded enemies.

Metroid Prime is set to be the game that Wii owners have been waiting for since that rather bland Red Steel came out. I will try to review it soon.

Schedule

2008-01-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm trying to get this blog up and running again. I will try to start posting three times a week. Just a few things before I make the next post. First: Forums! Please post in them or register if your here. It doesn't take long!
2: Guest posting! I have set up a guest account, so leave a comment on this post if you are interested in posting on this blog, as I could use the help.

Mass Effect

2008-01-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

I finally got it! I got their lost copy, and it was the collectors edition. Its sort of hard to describe the game, and none of the revewiers really got the feel of the game. Have you played KoToR? Its exactly like that, but not. The basic gameplay sends you across multiple planets to do quests. You earn xp (it is an rpg) by doing various things, like killing enemies and reading books, plus hacking terminals. Its a nice split between tactical third person shooting (think r6v mp) and abilities.

Its not quite clear about anything in the beginning. I was actually a level 4 before I figured out how to do anything to do with abilities and stat progression. The combat is quite weird, with you micromanaging every aspect of your squad, or leaving it up to the AI. The best example being when you order one member to physically lift up an opponent while you snipe him and the next shoves him off a ledge. It switches from fluid and smooth to clunky and hard to use, then back the next second. Besides this, the combat is fun and overly challenging.

The game feels alot like GoW for its cover. Its cover system works okay, but you just move into cover rather then press a button which works better.

The next big thing is the speech. This is,simply put, unbelievably-mindblowingly-awsome!
You pick a response from a wheel, and your character gets the gist of that off. Example: You pick the response "the council should back off" and your character says this:" Tell the council to send off their men". It works much better then the stuff in KOTOR. They did a great job on making the aliens feel real, between the cold and calculating Turians to the ruthless Geth robot race.

The plot has a similar awesomeness. Bioware has created another masterpeice. I will review it soon.

And remember, if you wanna post something, leave a comment and I will get back to you.

A few things

2007-12-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

This is my final post before Christmas, so it will cover a few things. First off: Mass Effect. Then an update on a serious issue for the Wii, and finally a look at the current state of the industry. Here goes...

Mass Effect has been in development for a while. It was announced a year or two before the 360 was out, and was getting a fair bit of coverage. I think it was going to be a launch window title, but that soon slipped to make something far more epic. It is mostly a spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic, much like Bioshock was to System Shock 2. The overall feel is the same, with some game play and atmospheric differences. The game play differences: rather then switching to a squad mate and controlling him that way, you have a dial you can use to issue commands. This leads to orders like this: You lift him over your shoulders while I snipe his head off and you force push him off the ledge. It works fairly well. The next one being a change of universe. I recommend reading the book (out now. Mass Effect: Revelations) as it sets the tone and introduces the world while being a decent story in its own right.

I can't find the game to rent ( I now have a plan that lets me rent any two games at a time for a monthly price) and I would rather not buy it unless I have played it first. But the other reviews are good... Its a close call, considering I spend most of my disposable income on the rental plan...

And for the Wii. This is actually an update on "Has the Wii been left Behind?"

And the answer is: (suspensefull music)

YES!!! The Wii has been left behind. At least game wise. While the motion controls are innovative, they have almost completely alienated good ports from coming out. Here is a recent example: Need For Speed: Pro street. A decent game, but it did not blow away anybody. At least for the 360 and ps3 versions. The Wii one was a noticable downgrade, mostly due to the consoles unique controls scheme and inferior power. Before that, Call of Duty 3 was also a slightly above average game. The Wii edition was also a major downgrade. Now you may notice that I have not used any ports from excellent dev teams yet. Why not? Because they don't port to the Wii. Call of Duty 4? (completely amazing by the way) Nope. Assassins Creed? Nope. The Darkness? Nope. Skate? (okay, not amazing, but good) Nope.

Even through all this, the Wii has somehow maintained a steady influx of games, and they number many more then the 360s library of titles. This is because the Wii has such high sales. Now this a great thing. I congratulate Nintendo for making gaming such a mainstream thing. The sales have surpassed that of the 360, and demolished those of the Ps3. But tis also a curse. The Wildfire sales of the Wii has reduced publishers to downright spamming the console with atrocious games. This would never happen on the 360 or Ps3, as both of them make their games go through quality testing. The Ps3 has highish standards, while the 360 lags behind a little bit. The Wii, however, has none. This lets a flood of junk overcome the system.

Combined with a crippling number of third party games, the Wii has definitely been left behind, at least games wise.

And now for the industry.

Next Gen horse power brought a few changes to the industry. The price of making a game went way up, at least if you wanted it to stay competitive with the rest. The overall quality of games went up, and you were no longer as limited by the tech of a platform. While this may have produced things like higher polygon counts and High Definition Range Lighting and anti-aliasing, it gave developers a bit more freedom to express themselves. one could now have truly stylized game.

And this really helped the industry, with games now being nominated for artistic achievement awards. But the other innovation was downloadable content. Bite sized games that be downloaded in minutes were now quite feasible, and they extended past the realm of pcs and into our consoles hard drives. Even the Wii, which had been busy innovating control schemes and ignoring the games using them, embraced this new feature. While the Wii has a comeplete lack of original content, it oldies are great. X-Box Live Arcade has a good slection, with a lot of original content. The PlayStation Store has meatier titles, which are shorter then real titles but cheaper too.

Oh no!

2007-12-20T08:20:00.000-08:00

Well, the new patch for 360s brought good stuff and stuff. The good stuff: Social networking. Now you can display your real name, a litle blurb about your self, and look at other peoples friends list. So now for the bad stuff: Parental controls. This is not necessarily a bad thing. How it works is you set a timer and you are forced to logout hen that ends. Now I have a way to prove to my dad that I have not been playing for 5 hours straight. The bad news: M rated content. Even T rated content. None of this can be downloaded if you are flagged as a child account. So if you use your real age to sign up, and you are under 18, you can kiss that Halo 3 ViDoc goodbye. But Mricosoft is not completely heartless, and you can promote your self to not be a child account, so there is a way out.

This incident has left me and more then a few other gamers gasping. I tried to download the Frontlines: Fuel of War demo, and only to get a "you are not allowed to get this content due to age restrictions" message. I immediately went in search of a solution. After a bit of googling and forum searching, I found that promote to parent button. I was saved. But what caused this sudden and unwarned change of policy?

Probably Manhunt 2. This was an ultra-violent stealth game from Rock Star. The content was so bad that the ESRB forced Rock Star to filter all the kills. The game was not even that good, released to mixed reviews, and had average sales. The end result was a media opus that almost no gamers cared about. So this may have sparked this sudden change. The thing that shocked me was that this stuff could be locked away, but with a few passwords that could be undone. All Microsoft did was remove this and force it upon child accounts.

Wii first impressions, part 3

2007-12-16T07:41:00.000-08:00

This is the last one, I promise. Anyway back to the the impressions

Super Mario Galaxy

I'm not really that far, so I cant talk. But so far, the game has been: Amazingly spectacularly awesome. If you own a Wii, get this game.

Wii sports

Besides being a tech demo, Wii sports is a blast. Golfing is great, Base Ball is merely meh, Boxing is fun when it works, and bowling is great. The whole things feels just a little half baked though, but its free, so who cares!

Soul Caliber Legends (rented it two days ago)
Complete Garbage.

And thats the games. The console is fairly fun to use. Using motion sensing to operate menus is fun but impractical, and the virtual console has some real winnzers on its hands. I like the whole Mii system, and I think Nintendo needs to get rid of individual save profils on each game and adopt a unified system using a Mii, much like the 360s gamer tags. Over al the system is fun, and the motion controls are not perfect but will probably get better. They are great now, if a bit buggy.

Strangle Hold review

2007-12-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

Strangle Hold is an unrealistic third person shooter. I'm just getting that out of the way, just because I had to suspend disbelief so many times just to slightly enjoy this game. But taking a few hudnred bullets and having bloodstains all over you won't go away with a single medkit.

The basic gameplay elements of Strangle Hold revolve around slowing down time and doing cool moves to finish of enemies. One scene has you sliding down a rail while shooting down air condition systems and signs to crush enemies. Its over the top, but surprisingly not very bloody. So tequila time lets you slow down time and perform stylish kills, but you can only have that active for about ten seconds. Its gauge refills slowly. So you can leap through the air, ride rails, and back flip off walls. The next thing is is that the environments blow up quite nicely. A bullet could take out a chunk of a concrete pillar, while ten could take down the concrete to just re-rod.
A shotgun shell could demolish part of a wall. My favorite is when the house start blowing up. That was awesome.

The final part of this formula is the "Tequila bombs". Get enough stars (from getting stylish kills) and you fill up your tequila gauge. Then you can heal your self, fire off 5 clips worth of hot and be immune to damage for a few seconds, get a single precise shot and last but not least spin around and kill all the enemies in the room.

While Strangle Hold may sound like a blast, it has its fair share of flaws. Bad AI causes the enemies to just sit there firing until they get hit, and the signle player campaign is short and a little repetitive. Beside that, a nitcable lack of polish make this game feel a little rushed.
7/10

Heroic DLC out!!!

2007-12-15T06:54:00.000-08:00

Whoo! Bungie just came out with some new maps for Halo 3. There are noly three of them, but one has limitless configurations. After finding out of the popularity of Firge, they made this one: Foundry. It's a huge warehouse with two sort of bases on either side of each other and filled with a ton of crates and other odd scenery. While this configuration is not the most thrilling, all of that can be deleted and replaced with other stuff in Forge. In Forge on this map, you can place man cannons, walls, stairs and like 5 types of crates. The options are limitless. Two days ago, I helped someone make a ctf map on there, but it had a giant maze with turrets in the middle part of the map. The bases had shotguns and Battle Rifles. It's this type of thing that makes this map pack worth it's price: 10$. The other two maps are good, but not up to par with the other ones. Another ctf oriented map and a what seems to be a driving map thats all about splattering people with Warthogs round out this dlc. Its worth it. But only for Foundry.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare review

2007-12-10T06:37:00.000-08:00

I remember back in the day when Call of Duty (cod) came out. It as amidst a ton of cruddy WW2 shooters, and it really stood out. And I remember all the rumors when that first trailer came out for this game... Anyway, the final result is spectacular.

When I first got this, I wondered how the CoD formula would translate into the modern period. Well, it dos. Same intense CoD formula, just an ak-47 replaces the Thompson. But now you can call in air strikes, use flash bangs... The CoD formula has been updated and improved in this rendition. One of the key differences is the amount of allies you have. It's now about 12 vs 20 or 30, but your guys are allot better then the enemies. The next change makes a huge impact on gameplay: shooting through walls. You standard infantry gun will go right through a wall and into an enemy. While this might sound like a minor change, it really makes the game feel allot more realistic, while adding tactical depth. So while the single player campaign is great and all, the multiplayer is even better.

A variety of game modes give enough variety, but the customization system gives the game some legs. You can choose your weapons from submachine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, and assault rifles and a pistol, followed by another piece of equipment. This could be an rpg, or some claymores, or a few flash bangs. The final part of this formula is the perks. These give your trooper a leg up over he competition. They can give you more health, a better fire rate, more ammo, more damage... All the basics are here, but a few ones that you would not expect show up. On top of that, you can get attachments to your weapon. All of these factors lead to a few interesting classes, like a sniper that will pin you down then hit you through the cover, or a stealth class that never shows up on a radar and just knifes people. while some perks feel a little imbalanced, overall theres no clear winner.

Call of Duty 4 is an intense first person shooter that, while not perfect, provides some great times with an addicting multiplayer experience. This is one of the great games of the year, maybe even a little better then Halo 3.
9.5 out of 10

Assassins Creed review

2007-12-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

You move through the roof tops, searching for your target. You see him. Your alerted to a guard behind you. "your should not be here". You whirl around, and a blade concealed inside your gauntlet reveals itself, finding its way into the guards neck. He falls onto the street below, causing a panic. What do you do next? The choice is yours.

Assassins Creed is different. It set the path for the stealth game of the future. In that game, you hide in plain site. No more shadows. No more hiding. This type of gameplay is clearly on display in Assassins Creed, and looks good in Splinter Cell: Conviction. In AC(Assassins Creed), you can do allot. This simple thing is what sets apart this game from the rest. The period is th middle ages, in the middle of The Crusades. You play as Altair, a man who works for the Assassins. These people are not like the Assassins of today. They are not for hire, and strive for peace by killing anyone who prevents it. This may sound brutal, but it's really not. The game strives on shades of gray, mostly by making you wonder if you person you just killed is really that bad. This works, but the way of presenting feels forced. You and your victim have a tense conversation after you have stuck a blade into his neck.

So enough about the story. The gameplay is incredibly immersive , as there no true load screens and no non-interactive cut cutscenes. There might be one, but that's about it. In order to kill your target, you must first gather some information. This is done by intimidating the target through violence, pickpocketing, eavesdropping, and talking to informers. This works, but the method of gaining information is chosen. So you HAVE to eavesdrop on a conversation, instead of maybe pickpocketing. Luckily, the order is not chosen for you. This creates some real freedom, but that is an illusion, albeit a skillfull one.

So an average information mission might go like this: You scan the area for a high point. Upon finding one, you go ot it and climb it. You scan the horizon. The missions and view points are now on your radar ( a view point marks missions, but you can stumble across them through exploration). You drop down and once again take to the rooftops. You eliminate him, hoping no one else notices. Then you artfully bound from rooftop to rooftop. Closer to your objective, you get down from the rooftops to start preparing. You scan fro guards. Upon seeing one you grab him and stick the hidden blade into his throat, and slowly walk away. Now your ready. You listen intently to your target, and when he's done, you silently stalk him. You reach out your hand, and grab the contents. You slowly walk away, hoping he won't notice.

Now dos not really describe the stealth part. Simply put, you try and disappear in the crowd. You can gently push people out of the way, and you can even pretend to be a scholar. The guards are not trigger happy, so you can get away with a bit before they attack. You have three states: Anonymous, which is ideal and means guards don't suspect a thing, yellow means that they now something is up, red means that they are informed and will attack on the slightest disturbance. This system works well, but I found it a bit hard to shake a guard who was on yellow and red. It's realistic though.

When everything said and done, Assassins Creed is a great game, if a little repetitive. 9 out of 10.

Wii first impressions, part 2

2007-12-01T09:29:00.000-08:00

Well, sicne I have already talked about the console itself, I will now go into some undetailed impressions about the games I have rented or own.

Red Steel (rented)

Red Steel is extremely different then any other shooters out there. To start with, it's controls are... strange. There exactly hat you would expect them to be, so you use the wiimote to look around by turning it to the edge of the screen, and the nunchuck handles using things like reloading and opening doors. It's extremely immersive, but in a bad way. Even though the character you play as is a trained bodyguard, you feel like a civilian whenever you try to aim. The cursor tend s to jump from one side of the screen to the other, and you will often see your gun vibrating really fast, due to some technical glitches. Overall, it feels 's like Red Steel has potential... but, like many aspects of the game, that's has been squandered.

Excite Truck ( rented)

This game started off impressive. Tilting the remote to steer feels great, and works well. But after that quick tutorial telling you how to accelerate and steer, the game go's downhill. Some extremely unclear motions, and the fact that almost all tricks are performed by motions, forces the game downhill. It might be easy to pull off the most basic stuff, but anything else will kill your hands. Seriously. A misunderstanding about the controls scheme made my hand hurt. The controls are just that bad.

Super Mario Galaxy

Wow. And I don't type this sarcastically. This game amazing. Some of the concepts presented steel the show from other, more classic, Mario elements to the point where it makes the game feel like a new franchise.

You may recall Prey. This game had a long development time, and never really fulfilled on it's promises. It's main gimmick was that you could flip around gravity. This was extremely interesting, and was occasionally delivered upon by shooting at enemies on the ceiling. Super Mario Galaxy is remniscent of this game by involving gravity, and unlike Prey, it really feel's great.

In Super Mario Galaxy you shoot from planet to planet, but not in the way presented in game's like Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. Here you go from sphere to sphere by finding a launch star, and shaking the remote will shoot you to the next area. I have to go now, so I will continue this tomorrow.

Gamespot

2007-11-30T18:17:00.000-08:00

I have been hearing rumors about Jeff Gerstman being fired from Gamespot. That's not surprising. He gave a controversial score of 8.8 to Zelda: Twilight Princess while other publications gave it a 10, and a score of 9 to Bioshock, which seemed to be related to him being a bit unclear about the the best way to defeat enemies. Overall he was notorious for giving lower reviews to games then most. Still, in a sea of biased and payed off reviewers, he stood strong and refused to give way to the standard template.

It's no surprise. Gamespot let him go. But the circumstances of this seem... Fishy, to say the least. If you have looking at their site, they have ALLOT of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men advertising up. Jeff gave Kane and Lynch a 6.0 out of 10, which supposedly enraged publisher Eido's, causing them to cancel hundreds of thousands of dollars of adverting in the future. This cost poor Jeff his job. Harsh.

Wii first impressions (part 1)

2007-11-29T13:36:00.000-08:00

Well, as announced in this post's title, I now have a Wii! It's not exactly mine, my Dad payed for it (unlike my 360, which took about a year of saving) but I can still use it. I have had it for a few weeks now, and my impressions are mostly mixed.

The main flaw is the games. Third party's seem to be focused more on spamming the console with games then creating a solid title. I can't blame them though, as the Wii has a very large installed user base. And that use base is rapidly expanding. The nature of developing for the Wii is very different. The controls tend to be on the extremes. So moving might work, but anything else you might end up throwing a controller. And there seems to be a sort of balance in implementing motion controls. Have 3 or 4 that are used fairly regularly, and your game will be plagued by those controls rather then enhanced. Likewise, pure motion control schemes don't fair very well either, unless they are uniquely suited to that particular game. But motion controls can be a powerful tool of creating immersion when used correctly, as evidenced by Red Steel. It's controls take a bit of getting used to, but they do the job and greatly increase immersion. Unfortunately, everything else was either generic or just plain bad.

But motion controls are at their best in Nintendo's games. In Super Mario Galaxy, the Wii-mote is shaken to execute an attack. This is an ideal setup, as they are not used for much else and constantly tie you into the game. On a side note, Super Mario Galaxy rocks, and go get it. A review will be up sometime soon.

And they are also on display at their finest in Zelda. Also used for attacking, they are effective but not as good as in Galaxy, as they carry out different attacks with similar motions.

I'm running out of things to type now, so I'll make this a two part. Or more. Anyway I will try update tomorrow.

Game Informer = Biased

2007-11-28T06:50:00.000-08:00

Your probably wondering why I am now saying that game informer is biased. Well, it's for a number of reasons. And they are not biased in general. They almost always pick the person that likes the game the most anyways to do the review. This, more often then not, resutls in a higher score due sheerly to personal preference. And, there is one more, rather large, factor: Gamestop. Game Informer is sold exclusively through Gamestop and Eb games. And even then only subscription only. So they raise the scores to sell games. Also, ever notice how the previews never match up with the reviews? They tend to minimize the flaws while beating you over the head with positives, even they are not in playable form.

Now, Game Informer is still one of the best magazines for gaming. It packs alot of content, and their reviews for big games are not too far off. But if you plan on buying a game that get's something as bad as a 6.75 from GI, make sure to check a few other sites. Anyway, I just checked their site for Blacksite: Area 51 and they gave it a 7.5, ignoring the fact that other places gave it 6. Now, I'm not trying to get everyone to boycott Game Informer. Just don't trust their review scores without a little extra homework.

Oh, and on a side note, Official X-box magazine is the most biased peice of junk ever. Only buy if you really want some bad jokes and a demo disc. Same thing with official Playstation magazine, but without the disc.

Halo 3 reveiw

2007-09-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it's here. I have logged more time then I am willing to admit,mostly on the superb multiplayer mode. I'm two thirds of the way through the campaign. I have ranked up allot. And this game has really impressed me.

One of the thing's that I think really sticks out about Halo 3 is the wealth of features. Out of the 5 or so offered, all of them are extremely great with lots of options variants. The only one that I think drags a little is the film, but it is still pretty good. I can't really reveiw this game normally, so I will just review each feature individually.

campaign

The campaign mode of Halo 3 is one thing short of perfect. It feels unique enough to establish it's own identity in the Halo series, without alienating existing players. The options for weaponry and such are large, but not overwhelming. The enemies have great AI.Now the AI is really interesting in this game. One of the thing's I have always liked about this series is how the enemies interact with each other. The brutes will make ruthless,and often quite lethal, charges once the forces they command have been wiped out. The are often backed by more brutes, and its a great to barely survive a conflict with several groups if grunts and jackals, only to be charged by several ruthless armored gorillas wielding all sorts of spiky weapons once you thought it was over. One of the cool things about this is that you are confronted with a choice every battle: You can try and pcik off the brutes and send the enemy forces into confusion, but you could be picked off by Jackal snipers or overwhelmed by the grunts. Or you can nail the weaker grunts first and then close in a lethal melee on the jackals, then focus on the now enraged brutes.

It's a delicate balance, and one that will have to be made at the start of every encounter. And moire tactical decisions such as these abound in the campaign. Like balancing your ammo, which you will run out of really quick with a Battle Rifle. Ton's of little pieces of strategy are hidden in Halo 3, and it all changes with the truly amazing 4 player online co-op! It is a little on the short side.

campaign rating:9.9 out of 10.

Multiplayer

Muliplayer has always been a key part of the halo experience, and it has not changed in this iteration. up to 16 players can be playing, and the end result is madness. Grenades are being flung, assault rifles are almost always being fired, and cars are exploding. Everything is madness. In just a few short seconds, you could be dead. the weapons are basically the same, but with allot more maulers. One of the coolest things is just how fast everything can go to peaceful and secure to you staring at your own bullet ridden corpse and swearing into the mike.

The gameplay remains the same: Kill enemies while accomplishing cetain objectives and managing your armory. Sound simple? Well it isn't. You start with an assault rifle, which takes takes an entire clip of ammo to take someone out. It has an average melee and is short in range. It's just a peashooter, but works fine against other crappily armed enemie's. From that original spawn in, you have started a never ending quest for weapon. The battle rifle and carbine are useful and much better then an assault rifle, but it's easy to find. The best overall armory is probably a sniper shotgun combo. The sniper is the most effective anti infantry gun, as even a miss can cause jumpy players to stay in cover, letting your teammates flank for the kill. The shotgun is for any enemies sneaking up behind you.

All in all, the multiplayer is well balanced and the maps varied. The one flaw being that the assault rifle (which is almost always the default starting weapon) takes a bit to much to kill someone with. But slightly better weaponry is commonplace, so it's not too much of a flaw.
multiplayer rating: 8.9 out 10
The Forge

The most ambitious of Halo 3's features, The Forge is a map editing tool. While not allowing the user to make maps from scratch, the large amount of maps allow for a a lot of variety, and stuff you can do makes up for that. The amount of item you can put in makes for some maps that really play differently. From adding a few battle rifles to Snowbound, to making a mongoose racing map, the forge is an amazing feature, and already a large community has formed around making these types of maps.
The Forge rating: 9.3 out of 10

Theater
Another new idea from Bungie, the theater allows you to veiw the last 25 games you played, multiplayer or otherwise. You can fly around and stop time, take screenshots, and play things in in slow motion, the they play at a normal frame rate. As if this was not ambitious enough, you can save and send film clips. It's a really nice feature that will finally show if you lying about that triple headshot.
9.5 out of 10

You can even make your own gametypes. I won't spoil all of it, but theres allot of game variants beyond the minimal settings in most other games.

Overall 9.7 out of 10

Halo 3 first impressions

2007-09-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm so tired. I waited in a line for two hours to secure my copy of Halo 3, and I played it for seven hours straight in a mix of multi and single player modes. While I am not far enough in to post a review, I can tell you that Halo 3 is,by all means, an amazing game.

Halo 2 had the worst ending ever, but Halo 3 picks up right where that left off. From the second the cut scene ends, any halo vet will feel right at home. The combat is improved with melee's being boosted, but it still feels like the Brutes usurped the elites not only in some of the more trivial duties but also in hoy they move and fire, they just act really similar. The single player mode is really great with four people, and the only real flaw is that it's pretty short.

The multi player mode however, is where I spent most of my time. The mix of twitch gunplay and light strategic elements reeled me in and kept me hooked for 3 or 4 hours. The way the gun's all fit together, with each one having a role, it's one of the best multi player games I have played. It won't vary too much from the beta though, so you might be a bet weary of thiose thre maps.

With all this stuff going for it, Halo 3 is a strong candidate for game of the year, and many other awards.

Halo 3...

2007-09-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

is coming out tomorrow! Technically speaking, 2 days from now, but most people will be going to midnight launch parties, so you can look forward to standing in line for three hours! I guees the memories will be better then the game. Actually, no. That game will overwrite all memories of your childhood, and any other treasured things. So here's what's new since Halo 2, in list format.

The good:

New gear! Everyone loves new hardware, and halo 3 has plenty. Just thinking about them makes my head hurt. The standout's are: The Brute Spiker(gun), the Brute Chopper(Vehicle. Imagine what would happen if Brutes owned the show American chopper.),Spartan laser(laser powered ownage), Assault rifle, Spike grenade, the flare and the gravity hammer.

An ending. Need I say more? Gamespot has confirmed that ending is not,in fact, a steaming pile of crap like the one in halo 2.

The brutes. They look really promising.

Forge. For those that don't know, Forge is a map editor that can't edit maps. What you can change is everything else... Teleporters,shotguns, grenades, vechicles, equipment, and just about everything else. Besides the terrain.

And now the half a year or so old stunner: the x-button! For this, there's good and bad. The good is that when you hit x, you throw down a peice of equipment. The bad is Bungie's handling of this secret. They kept the the function of it a closely guarded secret until the beta. No one really used it, everybody was really let down. Maybe it will change in the final game.

skate. style video editing. Now everyone will be able to see your noob combo abuse!

The bad

The players. Halo 2 had so many high pitched little kids flipping out whenever they killed themselves with the rocket launcher, I might as well gouge out my eardrums with a pencil when halo 3 comes out.

The fact that the halo fps games have come to an end. For all of 10 seconds. Bungie will realize that the Halo series is a license to print money and announce another fps halo game pretty soon after the launch of Halo 3. I hope.

platforms

2007-09-12T17:11:00.001-07:00

Which platform should I buy the game for? Long has this problem plagued gamers. Last generation, it was x-box if the game was out for it. Superior graphics and superior online play made the x-box a clear choice for multi platform games. But, as of the new gen, the line is blurred. The motion controls on the Wii, when done right, can easily top graphics. The ps3 shines in that... well I can't really think of anything. But in the future, game's on the ps3 will have a significant graphical advantage over the 360, but the online play is less convenient. And motion controls don't work too well on the ps3, but can work, so that isn't really much of an advantage. I'm not saying that motion controls suck, but they ruined Lair. and that game was promising.

So the 360 boasts graphical superiority over all the other consoles for multi platform games.For the time being anyways. And it will almost always boast better online play through live. So what about the pc? Well it's too expensive over a console. But once you consider all the things a pc can do... It doesn't cost too much. Anyway, not as many people have a gaming optimized rig, so we will rule that out for.

My pc can't really handle all that much, so I was rather disappointed when I got oblivion for it. It worked but just barely. I just got it for the 360, and not only was it just better in graphics, it was just quite a bit funner. I'm still pondering why. So what really makes someone prefer a game to a platform over another? Well I'm not quite sure. Graphics make a large differnece if it's between the ps3 and 360, but not as much if a Wii is involved. I think, in the end it comes down to the controls.

That's really the most consistent thing throughout the game, so it's no big surprise. But besides all that, another major factor is just personal preference. One of the interesting things i have observed is the flop of the PS3 oblivion. No one really bought it when faced with the choice of the 360 one. The graphics were slightly improved, but it's barely noticeable. It was the downloads that did it. They weren't available for the ps3 one, so no one got that.

But In the end it all just comes down to personal preference, so this whoel article is pretty much moot.

Antique

2007-09-11T08:40:00.000-07:00

I'm in New York city, and I can't really afford to put a console in both houses, and I had a dreamcast laying around so I hooked it up. So I'm now playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater,yes the first one, and having a good time. I thought that my gaming experience in N.Y.C would be a bit more tortuous , mostly because of the fact that I got a copy of oblivion for the 360 laying unopened on my desk, but so far I have been pleasantly surprised. The game's, even through sucky graphics
and Ai, managed to be fun and challenging experiences. While playing through these game's, i really realized just how far gaming has come in just a handful of decades. I really strongly encourage you to look through your collection of games and just look for the oldest one you have and play it through. you will be surprised.

Updates,updates...forums!

2007-09-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

Yep. Stranglehold and Medal of Honor: airborne came out. Strangleholds great but wicked short, and Medal of honor:airborne is just sort of... meh. It's longer though. I don't own either of these game's, so don't expect any reviews. Oh and you know what also came out? Bioshock. Commence drooling. Expect a review soon.

On a side note, I just got official the homeschooling gamer forums up and running! Now you can show the world just how much of a fanboy you are! Head on over their and check it out, will you? Please?
http://thgforums.20.forumer.com/
I wuold reccomend getting to it from here, it get's complicated if you don't. So go over to my forums, make an account, and make a couple of topics! The more the merrier!

Bioshock review

2007-08-29T07:44:00.001-07:00

This game is amazing. There's just so much to explain. I don't know where to start. I guess I'll start with the story.

Welcome to Rapture. Biggest hellhole in existence. Andrew Ryan built it to escape the looming nuclear war around the time of World War 2. He invited the greatest artist, scientists, and pretty much the cream of the crop. Anyway, he didn't want to deal with the "Parasites" so he built the city underwater. So everything went fine and dandy until they discovered Adam. Adam allowed someone to modify their genetic code, it transformed one's genetic code into something that could be shaped to the shapers vision. So you want to get stronger? Just use some Adam and rewrite your code. At first people used it for major things, like cancer and other serious illnesses.
Then vanity kicked in. They used it like makeup. It's use got more and more trivial.

Until they used it as a weapon. You could freeze someone with naught more then a couple hand gestures. People shot electricity out of their hands, Emperor Palpatine style. And then, the shit hit the fan. As it turned out, if you use Adam, you need even more Adam to keep it from exploding in your face. The people that used Adam as makeup had their faces butchered. 9 out 10 people in Rapture had their minds and body's destroyed. Everyone looked like this:
Rotting bodys? Check. Sycopathic minds? Check. Genetically modified dna? Check. Yeah, well they look like zombies. Some of them are exactly like zombies, at least tactics wise. But the others do triple backflips and dodge bullets. Great. Splicers, as they are called, are very varied. They nail you with bullets, hack security drones( and no, that's not scripted. They will hack security bot's and get them on their side. It's pretty amazing) and climb on ceilings. They work with each other, at least until you get the enrage plasmid.

Speaking of plasmids, if Adam is blank paper, plasmids are the paint. Plasmid is just a codename for super gene modifying weapon. So, basically, you stick yourself with a needle and shoot fireballs out of your hands. So think about what happens if you have a crazed junkie that needs a fix and can fry you like your in an electric chair with his mind? Now you know what went wrong with rapture.

So you get in a plane crash. You swim to a lighthouse. You get to Rapture. You use some Adam. You become a goddamn Splicer.

One of the things that Bioshock do's good is screw with your mind. You don't actually have to get Adam, but you find yourself-not your character, but you! YOU get addicted to Adam(I'm not joking)- and you to choose how far you will go to get Adam.

How do you get Adam? You get it from Little Sisters. There these ghoulish little girls that walk around, jabbing dead people with huge needles and eat the fluid that comes out. It's even grosser then it sounds. They have the Adam. Everyone want's it. You need it. And there only defense is a...

TWO TON METAL HULK. A jules verne era guy in a diving suit armed with a huge drill or a rivet gun. Half your healths gone if your hit. It's insane. This adds another element of unpredictability to the game. Imagine a roaming boss battle that go's berserk if a stray bullet hit's a little sister. The last thing your experience is a huge roar before your pounded into a wall and get your face drilled to a bloody pulp. So he walks around, protecting the ghoulish little sisters as the continue their unyeilding search for adam.

So, I haven't really saidmuch about the basic gameplay yet. Well that's also amazing.

So Bioshock plays like a normal fps. You have to save your ammo, maybe think abit about tactics, and just keep in mind what enemy is vulnerable to what. But, in most fps's, your only option to take down enemys is to bury lead into them. Not so in Bioshock. You can turn them against each other, or set traps with proximity mines and cyclone traps. You can electrocute the water their standing in, or you can set fire to them and watch as the room turns into an inferno.

Or you can set the security forces of Rapture against them.

In order to be succsesful in Bioshock, you can't play it like a shooter. You really have to think. You really have to think outside the box, while most shooters force you inside the box. And I can't really explain the feeling of absolute freedom that I get when I play this game.

But, Bioshock is not perfect. I think, close to the end, the combat get's a little repetitive. If you really did no homework(didn't read some tips, just ignored the game until it came out) then you will be lost in a sea of innovation. So if you really don't know how to play and use the games awsome tutorial( there isn't one. The game teaches you while you go along and do's it really well) and take the advice to heart, you might feel like your being force-fed the game.

The game's atmosphere is amazing, but this is one of the creepiest games I have ever played. The game do's a good job of making your enemys feel human, and this just get's creepy. By the end of the game, you will feel like you could be a splicer if you were in the same city as them when it hit the fan. And Bioshock is the first game to do this.

Overall 9.9 out of 10

I'm unplugged!!!

2007-08-12T08:33:00.001-07:00

Yup. I'm unplugged. I'm going camping. Three weeks. Your probably thinking" Where will I waste my time for three weeks?". Well, there are a hell of allot more gaming sites out there. Here's just the cream of the crop:

Gamespot
www.gamespot.com
By far the beat gaming site out there. Coverage for every game, reveiws for a most, and a large community and good forums. And I also happen to be a member. My name on that site is Funkyskunk5.

Gamespy
www.gamespy.com
This site, whilst pc-centric, is notsble for it's planet site's, which are pretty sweet.

Electronic Gaming Monthly.
egm.1up.com
If you suscribe to the magazine, this is the place to go. Otherwise, only go for the small reveiw scores.

By using those sites, you can get to most most of the other decent ones.

Tequila!

2007-08-09T11:40:00.000-07:00

No, I am not drunk. I just beat the Stranglehold demo. And I was blown away. Quite literally, in fact.

For a while now, once in a lifetime moves(like Legolas shield-boarding whilst firing arrows in Lord of the Rings) have been solely in cut-scenes. Not with Stranglehold. The game is modeled after an action movie. So, instead of circle strafing, you will end up diving into cover, nailing some poor guy in the head with a gun, while everything around you blows up. Then, once your in cover, you can wait for enemies to come, then literally leap out and spew bullets at every exposed piece of flesh in your sight. But then you might jump on a trolley and ride it while still firing madly(yes, you will shoot allot in this game). When your ride comes to an end, you might leap off and backflip off a nearby wall.

And this happens every minutes in Stranglehold. You play as Inspector Tequila. I don't know too much about the plot, but it appears to be a kidnapping. You have to blast,backflip, and trolley ride your way through thousands of thugs.

One of the first things you will notice first about the Stranglehold is that everything will be destroyed. Not just the crates or one or two other items, but almost everything. They fly all over the place, and then end their trip by being completely and utterly destroyed. The end result is stunning. Instead of a scorch mark or two, everything is destroyed. Tables are smashed, fruit is squished, signs have fallen(more often then not killing someone in process) and all other matter of hell has been wreaked.

There's just so much to say about Stranglehold. So, do yourself a favor and download the demo. Now.

video game violence,part 2

2007-08-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

In all fairness, the game industry has not really been too worried about the ratings. You really have to go out of your way to make an AO game. Any game that receives this rating is,in short, screwed. But, game makers don't seem to care too much about the rating.

An after effect of this is the in-between state many game's are stuck in. You see, a game's rating greatly affects it's demographic. So, if a game is rated M for one small thing, and the rest of the game is T-content, then that game will hit that weird in between state. It definitely should not be rated M, and gamer's that aren't allowed to play M games (or cant purchase them) will not-can not- buy that game. And, just like that, a game loses about 20 to 50 percent of it's market.

And then there are game's like Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. They come default with plenty of blood and guts, but have the options to turn it off. While they still lose that youth demographic, they make gamers who would not normally be able to play them can.(note: Gears of War multiplayer,can, in all respects,become T rated. Just set the following options: Extreme content off, dialogue volume 0, and only play multiplayer. Works for me).

Video game violence,part 1

2007-08-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

Video game violence is very,very complicated. There are many side's and important figure's. On one hand, there are level-headed, somewhat honest and logical people(Patricia Vance, head of the ESRB)and on the other there are bull!@&$ spewing dumb#!*$(Like Jack Thompson, game hating and free speech constricting lawyer.) and even my neutral parties( My mom. Completely misinformed and pumped full of anti-game propaganda by the media.).

Everything is very confusing. For someone who is not "In the know", it's completely indecipherable. So, here are some of the major event's:

After the release of Mortal Kombat, which was over the top and brutal, the ESRB(entertainment software ratings board) was formed. They would rate every game they could get their hands on. Game stores would require the game's they sell to have rating's. It was Fact: After the release of Mortal Kombat, which was very brutal and over the top, the ESRB designed to help parents make the right choices for their kids. And, for the most part, it has worked. But, throughout all this, the system is not perfect. The one flaw that most people would say"Good. It should be that way". The flaw was that the system was to strict.

Let me put it like this. You know that little warning on a dvd case that says "Bonus Material not rated"? Well, that can't happen in a game. Anything on a the game disc must be rated. Even content that was locked out and can only be accessed by illegally hacking into the game's code and exploiting the content. Now, that's just stupid. If someone illegally hacks into a game, and find's content that would affect the rating, then that person should be held at fault.

Let's say the same thing happens on a dvd. The movie is rated pg, but there are some pg-13 visual and audio file's on the disc. These file's are locked out. You have to insert the disc into a computer and go through the file's onme by one to find the right one's. Then, whoever did it calls his kid's, shows them the scene, and sues whoever made the movie. The case would be closed and he would lose miserably. But, if exactly the same thing happens in a game, that same guy would win the case. Why? Why are video games rating's and anything to do with rating's twice as strict?

Crackdown review

2007-08-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

Crackdown, places you in the shoe's of a super cop(Really. This guy eats superman for breakfast) and task's you with the cleansing of the streets of criminal scum. I think that allot of the fun of Crackdown comes with just screwing around. This "screwing around" usually involves parking tickets.

Now, if you a parking ticket in real life, you get fined $50 dollars or so. In Crackdown, a parking ticket is one of the following:
1: The super cop shoots out all the wheels on the vehicle, get's in, and drives around town while being shot at by gangsters. It also involves a unhealthy amount of driving into large building's at high speeds. And a lot of failed stunts. The "Parking ticket" usually culminates with the being comepletly and utterly destroyed.

2: The second punishment, is a rather effective way of taking out criminals. You drive towards them, then jump out of the, sending it speeding towards a group of criminals. You then shoot the gas cap, and watch the resulting explosion from a safe distance.

3: This punishment is for less serious violations. Have you ever played the game "kick the can"? Well, you do that, but to a car instead.

Now, I will let you in on a little secret. There are no parking violations in Crackdown. You just do that when you get frustrated.
8.5 out of 10.

Call of Juarez review

2007-07-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

I rented Call of Juarez a couple of days ago. I must say that I am not blown away by this western fps. It's mainly about two people: Billy and preacher. I forget preachers name, so I will call him preacher. Anyway, Early on, Billy murders his parents and preacher go's on the hunt for him. Both of them encounter many hardships(mostly bandits and Apaches). Typically, Billy will go through an area, then preacher will chase him through that area.

The main twist to the game is that you play as Billy and preacher. This gets interesting. You emotions really get toyed with. One second you want revenge as preacher, the next you want survival with Billy. And with these differences come differences in play styles and ability's.

With Billy, stealth is important. He dies's allot quicker the preacher, and thus relies more on stealth. So, while playing as Billy you get a formula like this:
Stealth,stealth-kikll,stealth-kill, big battle. Rinse and repeat. And,for the most part, this works. It gets tiresome eventually but then you get the preacher formula:
Concentration mode kill, big battle.big battle with concentration mode, big battle ,run around trying to figure out what to do next, big battle. Once again, this works on a basic level.

Now, to preacher. He plays exactly like a normal fps. You grab some guns, blast some people, and do some more fighting. The fighting as preacher is actually pretty fun. It;s normal fps with one twist: Concentration mode. Each gun gets one cursor, and they are moved around the screen with the analog sticks. Time go's into slow-mo, but you don't. Your bullets move at a normal rate, your guns move pretty slow though. When an enemy gets hit,he die's really slowly(because it's in slow motion).

Once you get past the setting, you have a pretty standard fps.
7/10.

Bioshock is coming!

2007-07-30T09:57:00.001-07:00

Bioshock is coming august 21'st. And it will rock your world. To the groove of 50's music. You see, Bioshock takes place in the city of Rapture, which has been devoid of contact(probably because the entire city is underwater) and thus, fells like it's "trapped in time" as Ken Levine puts it. Anyway this game is going to unbelievable. You can find resources at gamespot.com, but the best site for Bioshock is cult of the rapture, which has so much info.

Or you can read this review. Thats right, Bioshock has a reveiw, and it's posted on thg first(or on the forums, but their hard to find):
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2258
The reveiw(in case you don't want to read it, read this: Bioshock got 10/10.) is from Official X-box Magazine, and was uploaded with a mobile phone by forum-member Flea 008, is completely positive.

And for those of you naysayers and bias screamers? Some pc gaming magazine has a reveiw, and it was a;lso uploaded to that very same forum. It's pretty easy to find.

Zen: An introduction.

2007-07-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

I approach writing this cautiously. I am no Zen master, nor do I pretend to one. Anyway, hopefully this will wet your palette and inspire you to research more Zen. Simply put, Zen is. The common image of Zen is someone floating a few feet off the ground, in the lotus position and meditating. Let me dismiss this bile. First off, it's impossible to levitate. Secondly, people(including me) meditate in allot of positions.

Now, about Zen itself. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to put into writing. It's actually a form of mushin. Mushin is a state of no-thought. You just let go of all logic and thoughts, letting instinct take over. In short, you let instinct take over. One of the best examples of it is archery. The archer pulls back his bow, aims, and releases not on logic, nut on what feels right. Another example is skateboarding. When your on a half pipe, your mind screams not to do it. If you drop in while thinking about it, you will most certainly fall.

One of main things about Zen itself is meditating. Before I began meditating, I felt stressed. But when I began meditating and took the time to do it properly, I was able to single out every issue in my life and felt a good bit more laid back about things.

And one of the last issues I will tackle in this article is religion. Zen is usually associated with Zen-Buddhism, which is a sect of Buddhist Monks that do Zen. And let me tell you that, while there are Zen Monks out there, you do not have to be a Buddhist to do some Zen. I can also tell you that there are a alot of Christian Zen masters. It is not necessarily sacrilegious to do Zen, but can be. Now this is not the ramblings of a drowsy gamer, but an actual answer from a paster that I asked about this.

My dad,the gamer.

2007-07-22T07:23:00.000-07:00

My dad is a gamer. Well, he is a pc gamer. He has never really done that much on a console. But that changed pretty recently. We were walking around around in best buy buy they had a ps3 on display. It was playing the Motorstorm demo, so he tryed it. From the second he touched the controller, he was hooked. For the most part, there were two things that really impressed him:

1: The controls. They were just so perfectly tweaked, he could handle them with ease. He also ended up getting pretty good at the game.

2: The physics. The fact that the track was 3 dimensional, and had rocks and stuff jutting up everywhere, was really cool. The cars really bounced around, and that just blew his socks off.

That was all good, but the first game he really liked was Half-Life. He loved the thiungs move,you shoot them formula. Since he played motorstorm, he has been searching for that game that hits the spot. I think we may have found it.

The game is is Ace Combat 6. Its an arcade style flight sim. You may be asking yourself "What the heck do's this have to with motorstorm' and the answer to that is: Absolutely nothing.
It's the fact that he could manuever the plane so easly(the controls are simple, while having depth) that made it fun for him.

I am back!

2007-07-21T13:57:00.000-07:00

I would like to apologize for the serious drought of posts on this blog. I was unplugged(for three weeks) at camp. I had no access to the internet(save for a spew sparse moments when someone let me check my email on their laptop). I will also be unplugged (at camp) for another three weeks, but I am at home and typing for another three weeks. yes, my life is one of extremes. It's either ten times too much of something, or ten times too little.

I would also like to announce two more things:
1: I have taken my skateboarding to the next level. you may recall a post about this early on, but I am about 30 times better now.
2: This blog is now about more then gaming and skating. I have been reading some real deep zen stuff,and I will be sharing my thoughts on life,Zen,spirituality,42 and 6 times 9(kudos to anyone who gets this reference), meditation, and more.

Funny live stuff

2007-06-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

I have been playing on x-box live for a while now, and I have had some funny stuff happen happen. I just thought I would post them. Enjoy!

Kid(in a high pitched voice): Mom!!! make me some chocolate milk!!! Now!!! And the hot kind!!! NO!!! You make it!!!

Me: Um... how old are you?

Kid: 21.

Another time, I joined a game. My dog started barking, and the sound came close to the mike. The end result was that everybody in the game slightly heard my dog barking. For some reason, at that precise moment, everybody(seven other people) began screaming at me to shut up as loud and hight-pitched(everbody in that game was 5) as possible. Then i got booted and everbody filed complaints against me. Go figure.

Perhaps the funniest moments happen right when you join. So I join a 5/8 game, and one guy starts telling everybody( The game was Gears of War) that they should play this round without any violence. He did it in the round after that, the one after that, and the one after that.

but the funniest one's are the insults:
I am coming through the internet and out your mike to slap you really really hard!!!
I will eat you if you take my sniper!!!
Im gonna fart through the mike!!!
Shut up!!! Wait, who am I angry at?
You stupid lancer noob!!!(next round) You stupid shotgun noob!!!(next round)!!!(talknig to the host) You stupid weapon noob!!!
You stupip oob!!!( Not a typo. Some kid actually said that)

If I think of somemore, I will edit this post.

XIII first impressions

2007-06-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

The first thing you will notice about XIII is the art style. It look's like a graphic novel,complete with little pop up windows and BLAM BLAM sound effects when guns are fired. They look a bit too rendered to really blow you away,but they are pretty nice. So XIII is an fps where your character plays an amnesiac assasin like ex-military thing. I'm not really far enough into the game to know what exactly he do's, be he seems to be ex-military. The basic gameplay is fine, even adding innovations into the mix. Your character can pick up chairs,broken glass, and bottles and use them to knock out enemies. It also adds a certain rpg-like stlye of play to the mix, with your character picking locks and healing himself through a somewhat easy to use menu.

One of the other things I noticed was just how real the gunfights felt. Some of them will really feel real, and you will end up playing exactly like you would in real life. One of the best examples of this is when your character get's in a room that cna't be forced open, and some enemies try to kill him. In a cutscene, they come and open fire on the glass windows to the room, but they are bulletproof. The cutscene ens, and they run off. I expect them to open the door and get a chair to use as a weapon, but no one comes. I equip my machine gun and run outside of the room. Immediatly I was cought in crossfire, and was taknig hit's from everywhere. I kill one of the gaurds with the gun, and run around and flank the other gaurd. In mot games, I would have just shot them both. But XIII has hit a sweet spot in the health. You will have to take cover, but not exxeecsively. If a gaurd manages to unload a clip on you, a qaurter or more of your health is gone.

And while I play XII, I realize that it only cost 4 bucks. And this is the bargain of the century.

Mlb slugfest:2004 first impressions

2007-06-20T04:26:00.000-07:00

I'm no Baseball fan. I never really learned that much about the rules, and I never cared for it. So, I was confused as heck when I popped this game into my 360's drive(it's a backwards compatible game), as there was no tutorial. I hit the quick start button,picked a team, and went onto the field to play. I got struck out once, and had the other two out's when they caught my hits.

I had no idea what the heck the controls where,how to start a season, and how to do anything else. And, while I hope that these initial impressions are not my entire experience with this game, it's probaly gonna be like that. It seems like they wan't you to read the entire manual just to start. I wonder what the developers were thinknig when they decided not to include a tutorial. It was probaly somethnig along these lines"Who needs a tutorial? Everyone knows how to play baseball!" And while that may be true, you need a tutorial for the controls. They have got a billion control schemes and layouts in the manual, but who's gonna read that? I did, but still had no idea what the hell was going on.

I think I can fairly say that sums up my experience with Slugfest:2004 until now.

Bargain Bin

2007-06-20T04:18:00.000-07:00

Just looking in my game store recently, and I went by the bargain bin. A TON of good games there for around 10 bucks. Sometimes, you can find some GREAT unkown games there. I,on that particular trip, got Circus Maximus, Medal of Honor: Frontline and Slugfest 2004 for 10 bucks.
And while I would not say that any of these deserve 10 out of 10 scores, they are pretty good. Definetly worth the money. So the next time your in a game store(or any store) check the bargain bin. You never know what you might find.

Super Smash bros reveiw

2007-06-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

When I got a game cube, I had this game. I still played it a year after that.And the year after that. And I still play it now. It takes a rare kind of game for me to play it that long( The only other game that that replay value was Gears.). And that's exactly what Smash bros is. Not only is it of a dying genre on consoles, it's also nearly perfect in it's own right.

What makes Smash bros special is that it takes many elements and executes them nearly perfectly. Your chosen character fights in one of many arenas, each with it's own unique style( not many simple retexturings here folks- almost everything is original) and wins it by killing the most enemies. You kill a hostile by smashing him to point where he flys off the map, resulting in a spectacular beam of light shooting up from where he died.

How do you hurt enemies? Your warrior has attacks in every direction, executed by hitting A button( not any button. Only the A button on the controller. Its for the game cube) and a direction on the analog stick. It's not quite perfect, but it's easy to use. Your character performs more powerful moves,usually ranged or something different then a melee, by hitting B button and an analog direction. you can use more melee attacks with z stick, and once you master these, you have nearly mastered the game. Combine these moves with a z button grab, and you have a fairly polished fighting system.

But all the fighting system polish in the world could not save a game from mediocrity by itself.
And this is where Smash bros suceeds even more. Everything about the game is polished to the point where the world shines on the disc. You have many unique maps, a TON of characters, and a lot of different items and game modes that add a level of randomness to the game.
All in all, 9.5 out of 10.

New releases

2007-06-18T14:30:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to inform you on some of the new releases that are coming out soon. I am using the site gamespot for this information, so you can get some more info on these games at that site:
(note: None of this stuuf is final. I have not even played most of the games here. So place one big IMO over this)
New releases:
Dirt
This offroad racer seems to be pretty good judjing from the demo, and early word from magazines seems to be pretty good. This could be a rental for any race game fanatics, and could quickly turn into a purchase.
Release date: June 19th,2007.

Band of bugs:
I don't know that much about this title. It seems to be a strategy game featuring...bugs? Know THIS is creative. It features a level editor, and I might buy this title( or at least get the demo) as I have a longing for strategy games as of late. You might see a reveiw here.
Release date: June 20th,2007

Transformers
Finaly, a licensed game that won't suck(sorry ridick!)! At leats not too much. It do'snt look like transformers will blow anyone away, but it seems to be solid in it's own right. I have not done a ton of research, but thats my impression of it.
Release date: June 26,2007

Hour of Victory
Unless this games core gameplay has changed since the demo, then this game is still pretty screwed up. While the gameplay do's not seem to have that much wrong with it, it's just not fun. Don't know why. Maybe it's just that everything needs mroe polish. I have no idea. Just,for your own sake, stay as far,far away from this miserable corpse of a game as possible.
Rlease date: Why would you want to know? Your not considering getting it, are you?

Overlord
Alas, the news is not all bad. This game lets you slip into armor of a Sauron like overlord. You control minions and direct them into combat. They will collect loot, and your character can gain spells. For more info on this promising gme, check my preveiw.
Release date: June 26,2007.

The Darkness:
Another good game, the Darkness sems to be pretty promising. You control darklings and send them after enemies. They will thne proceed to kill htme in gruesome ways. You then must recharge your powers by staying in the darkness. This game looks pretty good, and I may get some more info on it soon.
Release date: June 25,2007.

Not that much else, besides Rattatoulie, Bomberman,Carcasserone, Harry Potter, and The Bigs. Then you have got Kingdom under fire, but nata after that.

Half life two: The orange box preveiw

2007-06-18T10:24:00.001-07:00

For those of you who beat Half life 2, don't worry. This orange box holds plenty more content. It's got portal,episode 1,episode 2, Team fortress 2, and not to mention an improved version of Half life 2. For those of you who are unacquainted with Half life, you can find some reviews of that game in my archives. In order to properly examine each of these game's, I will give each one it's own paragraph

Portal: Well, this game is certainly unique. it revolves around the concept of setting portals. Once a portal is dropped, you need to set another one. Anything that go's through the first one will emerge from the second one. And this concept, while deceptively simple, has many layers of complexity. While this game is a puzzler and is radically different then the rest of the Half lfie series, Valve has confirmed that the game will tie into the Half life plot.

Episode 1: While I have not experienced this game yet, I have heard positive things about it from many sources. It do's not seem to differ from the standard Half life formula much. And while this game is out(It's an expansion pack, I have not played it cause my computer is crammed full of !@#$) it will make it's first appearance on console with this release.

Episode 2: Not that much is know about this episode, but it seems that it will feature more antlions(crap,those sections were wicked hard) and more vechicles.

Team fortress 2: This seems to be the only game here that has nothing whatsoever to do with half life. It's a team based, battelfield style - fps. One of the most interesting things about this game is the art style. It proves that you don't need fancy shmancy hdr and hd effects to have kick a major amount of ass.

Serious Sam: The next encounter

2007-06-17T15:17:00.000-07:00

Well this game is a blast from the past. Well, not just a blast. It hit hit me with a fair amount of laser beams, Uzi shots, and an overwhelming amount of hit from double dessert eagles. This game is,like Overlord, one of those games that's really gonna make you laugh. From over sized ants to... well who knows what the heck I just shot?

Lemme tell you a bit more about this game. It's a standard fps. You get a gun and some ammo and shoot,laser blast, or chainsaw anything that moves. Then you get another gun( usually a shotgun) and repeat. While this formula always provides some fun, it will run thin after a while. So most fps's will implement something unusual. In the case of serious Sam it's over the top comedy. The gun's are ridiculous, just like the enemy's. Your characters lines are ridiculous. And if I go on like this, I wail l end up calling everything about the game ridiculous.

Which would be entirely true. And it's this " its just for fun" element that really gives serious Sam it's edge. And,while this edge may not make you overlook every one of this games flaws, it will definitely keep me playing for pretty long.

And while speaking of these flaws, Serious Sam has plenty. Repetitive level design washed down by the same shooting formula sop the list. But once you get past these flaws, you will really start to enjoy this game. I did.

Note: I wrote this reveiw for the gmecube version of the game. Im not sure if it's on any other consoles. But the games should be same.

7 out of 10.

glitches

2007-06-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

I have seen too many multiplayer games ruined by glitching to sit down any longer. I simply can't stand when some moron with no skill thinks " if it's in the game, it's not cheating" and do's some glitches to make up for his lack of skill. It do's not matter if it's in the game, it's been confirmed by most developers that it's cheating!!! I don't mind it in private or custom game's, but doing it in ranked is just wrong.

Lets say your playing a ranked fps onlie. You see someone running towards you, faster then he should be and think " Uh oh. he has the speed boost power up." But then you remember that it only lasts thirty seonds. You hide in a corner and follow him. After thirty seonds, you fire on him with a shottie to the back. This should kill anything. But no. Since this guy is using some glitches, you can't hurt him. Then you think your lagging, and that was just an isolated glitch. You point blank him again, but the shot go's vright through him without doing anything. Then he turns around and kills you with a psitol with one shot. This is due to glitching.

I thought glitching would become impssoible to do with the rise of patches, but it seems that publishers are more content with shippnig woefully incomplete game's and maknig you pay for stuff that should have been in the game to start with. You sit down and game with the expectaitons of having a fun time,right? Well that's next to impossible when some imbecile with a pistol and unlimited invincability kills you with one shot that didnt even hit you.

Great illustrated classics: war of the Worlds book reveiw.

2007-06-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

This book caused a pretty big inicident when the author read it over the radio to the entire nation. See, this book is so good, most people thought it was real and panicked over nothing. The characters and events in the book were so plausible that even normally calm people got scared. Now, it takes a rare kind of book to do that. H.G. Wells made so many realistic characters, and his places seemed so real, that, after reading this book, you may panick as well.

Wells leads a normal enough life, until he spot's mysterious bursts of flame coming from mars. These bursts turn out to be canisters. One lands in a park nearby him, and it's hollow. When the top starts to unscrew, people begin to worry. Sure enough, martians are inside. Everybody scrambles out the way, but it's not quick enough. Martians fry everybody. Our hero barely makes it out alive.

And while that quickly sums up the first 50 pages or so, there is much more to be said for this book. It also start's to follow his cousin, which is very cool. And while I'm not going to spoil anything more(what I told you come's in the book early), you can be assured that War of the Worlds is that kind of book that your really going to enjoy. 10 out of 10.

Noobs

2007-06-15T11:30:00.000-07:00

I, as many of you people know, play Gears of War pretty much daily. But I have as yet to collect many of the acheivements. Recnetly I picked a random ahceivment of the list and went for it. It happended to be the " kill 100 hundred enemies with the pistol in ranked matches. I wnet into my first match thinking" This is gonna be easy. It will take a while, but it will be easy." How wrong I was.

In that first, 1 quarter of the players quit in the first 3 rounds, another quarter would steal my kills, and EVERYBODY went for a certain weapon. We had an extremely good sniper on our team, and this one noob gonig for the sniper acheivement kept stealing it, eventually costing us the match.So I thought" Maybe this was just a match with more bad eggs then ussual." Once again, I was dead wrong.

The next match went a little better, with less weapon stealnig then the first. The match tied out because EVERYBODY on the other team quit. At this point, I was just getting pised off.I still had a shred of hope in me, so I joined another match. Everything seemd to be fine( No high pitched voices screaming for the torque bow) until one team member follows me around with the lancer. The weapon I was using at the time was the pistol, which is incapable of killnig someone outright. It could only down them, leaving them to be finished with a melee or three mroe shots.

It was rather hard getting kills with the pistol. The teamate that was following me around finished off my kills, maknig it impossible for me to do anything. I left him some negative feedback and continued playing. Since I hapen to be able to play nice, when ever my team outnumbers the opposition two to one, I quit to even it out. I left that match due to the fact that, yes, the other team was grossly outnumbered. Now I was about to throw my controller dwon in disgust. But instead of that, I ran over to this computer and wrote this.

Have you had any bad experiences with other people on live? This blog allows annoymous comments, so post em.

OverLord preview

2007-06-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

The way I see it, there are three types of games. There are dark and serious ones,
like Gears and Prey. And then you have one's that are not overly serious, nor are they overly comedic. These tpyes of games, like Super Smash Bros and Mario, are mostly from Nintendo and sometimes other publishers. The third type of game is not serious in any way, and it go's out of it's way to openly mock it's subject matter. This is the catergory Overlord falls into. And, while I have n ot played the finished product, I really like the vibe it's going for.

From the opening scene ( in the demo. I have only played the demo, and that is what this preview is for) where you are being vicously dug out of the ground, exactly like Lurts or whatever his name is from the Lord of the Rings. While you are being dug out, it feels really cool, until one of the goblins- I thinmk they are goblins, could be demons- says" put some acid in his eyes, that will clear um up". And it's from that point on that you know that this game is going to be really,really,fun.

You are introduced to the game by a wise-goblin, and he shows you the controls and so on. The controls are very good, and I really felt like I was in control of my hore of things. You can send your goblins to any point with the right trigger( this game is for the 360) and then you can sweep them with the right thumbstick. You cast spells with x and make your character attack with a. You can lock on with left trigger.

One of the innovations of next gen gaming has been moral choices. They litterally beat you over the head with them in spinter cell: double agent. They are a bit more subtle in bioshock and oblivion. Overlord features it's own moral choices: You can be evil. Or you can be extremely evil. If you choose to be just plain old evil, you will walk along the countryside, gently beating the living daylights out of anything that looks at you.

If you choose to be really,really sinister and devious,not to mention evil, you should employ a more long term plan. I think your goblin advisor say's it best, so I will qoute him:" A good evil empire needs citizens. More specifically, LIVING citzens." So you have to get on the good side of everyone you meet. And only then can you gain absolute power!!!

New features

2007-06-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed some new features on Tgh (tgh=the homeschooling gamer). Particularly, some polls, a new greeting feature, a chatterbox, and some other stuff. This content was made using html, which I am learning. About the chatterbox. It has some adds, which I can't disable without killing the chatterbox. So don't click on them, I have no say on them, and they may lead to objectionable content. I am currently looking for an ad free version.

I have also added a hit counter. Once again, this has an ad.Nothing bad on the site it leads to, it's a link to get a free hit counter. I also added vid of the day. Now, I did not make those videos, and as such, have no control over them. I may post some videos that have rap songs on them, but I will try not. Just be ready to kill the volume if a video has qeustinable M games, be ready to exit the video.

There are also some newly added polls. These will change out nlow and then, but I can only make 20. So you may see the same polls if you read this site reguarly. That about covers it for now. Just remember, while I will try not post things that are innapropiate, they may work there way onto this blog. I will delete anything that I find overly obscene though.

Good games

2007-06-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

I have been surfing the net way longer then I have been blogging and as such I know some really good games on it. Here are just some of the cream of the crop:

Tabletop Defense
http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/
This is a real fun and addictive game. You have to build towers to defend your desktop from creeps, which are just little dots with smiley faces on them. You have several types of towers at your disposal, and many of them are imaginative. But for thouse of you with little time on your hands,beware! This game crack into that just one more game mentality, and you can't save!

Dofus
Just google Dofus.
Besides having a stupid name, this mmorpg has many other distinctive features. You get partys, buy gear, collect loot, and level up. And while it may not be the most original game ever, it is worth a look.Note: You will have to download some files before playing, so clear up some harddrive space.

Runescape
www.runescape.com
This game, while not too good, is a good introductory rpg. If you like this style of play, you will love Dofus.

Stinkoman
www.homestarrunner.com
Oh man is this game fun. It openly spoofs Mega-Man, with bad translations, funny cutscenes and enemys all while being 10 times better then the Mega-Man series. Like, seriously.

the homeschoooing gamers

2007-06-13T09:38:00.001-07:00

Starting today, I am inviting several more Homeschoolers to post on my blog. I have also changed the name of the blog to The Homeschoolnig gamers from The Homeschoolnig gamer. Also, this site is the number 1 hit on google if you search for the homeschooling gamers.

Murphys law

2007-06-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

Anything that can go wrong will . This is Murphys law. And, as I just found out in a play, it is 100 percent true. Now, this play had been practiced and rehearsed again and again. Besides a couple of line fumbles, not much had gone wrong. But, come opening night, Murphys law came true. Now let me explain what this play is all about. It is a play about Nick and Tickle, and they are detectives. Someone is stealing vital objects from many fairy tales. I know this is a silly premise, but it's a comedic play, not something even remotely serious. so anyway, my parts in the play are as following:

Jack, from Jack and the beanstalk.
Woody, a depressed tree.
And Father Bear, from Goldilocks.

So anyway, Here is just a list of some of the stuff that went wrong:

Screw up 1: My cue to go on as Woody is for Nick to finish a big monologue he has. Someone told the baby birds to go on, and they stumbled through the curtain way before the monolugue even started.

Screw up 2: My Woody costume. it was extremely floppy, so the top part continusly fell down. That, plus It was immpossible to stand up once it was used.

Screw up 3: The birds. Now, as Woody, I had several baby birds ( the younger actors) at my feet throughout the performance. Now, the bird parts were miniscule. So miniscule, they could be learned in 10 minutes if needed. It was due to this that all the actors that were birds kept putting off learing the birds part until the opening night came around. In order to make up for this, I had to study the parts of the script they should have known while backstage. Then, to get them to remember their cues, I told them that I would prod one of them with my foot when they missed a cue. And while this sounded pretty cheesy, it turned out to be REALLy funny, seeing a foot fly out and kick a baby bird.

Now, while there are many more mess ups in the play, none of them were as major as those ones. I have had other experiences like these ones, in fact far too many to count. So, the next time you are doing soemthing critical, remember: Anything that can go wrong will.

Pokemon Pearl reveiw

2007-06-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

Note: This should cover Diamond, as they are pretty much the same.

My thumb hurts. Not because of natural causes, not because I hit it with a hammer repeatidly yesterday, not because I am typing this. It hurt's cause I scrolled through a tidal wave of text while playing my copy of Pokemon: Pearl. Like, half the time you play that game is spent hitting the a button. Not to say Pokemon Pearl sucks, but that particular button is useed far too much.

Pokeomn Pearl ahs good parts and bad parts, and it switches between these quite frequently. One second you will be runnig along enjoying yourself, and the next you will be uttering things that I cannot and will not utter here. Usually this is because of the fact that the weakness and resistance systen is never very clear, and some pokemon, while appearing to be quite strong, are actually useless peices of dirt.

Then that useless pokemon will evolve into something unimagibly powerful. Like, into a slightly bigger form of it's self. of course, it will learn some good moves, and it will be overpowered till it gets nerfed again. Besides the rapidly changing level of enjoyment, Pokemon Pearl is remarkably similair to ruby and saphire. The layout is basicly the same- who am I kidding , it's the same thing. The teams behave the same way, the citys are the same, and the only thing that changed are the pokemon.

The formula is still the same. You wander around till something happens. You take care of that soemthing while levelnig up your up your pokemon. Wneh your pokemon are high enough level, you fihgt a boss. These battles are easy enough, assuming you have at least one pokemon thats is super effective. Then you can evolve pokemon, buy items, get in contests and that evens out the game.

All in all, Pokemon gets a 8 out of 10.

Same old crap, new graphics.

2007-06-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

The video game industry is under seige. Not by the cost to build a game, or by anti game laws, but by mindless sequels. I just purchased Medal of Honor: Frotnline. Now, it's a good game ( reveiw coming soon), but I also own Allied Assault. I just got Frontline yesterday, and I am about one third of the way through it. Almost all the gameplay so far was ripped off off something. I know it's a series and the gameplay has to be familiar, but the entire damned mission is the same! Add that to the fact that there is only a small change in graphics, plus Frontline has the same everything, and you have more of an expansion pack then a 50 dollar game ( I got my copy for three bucks though).

And not only MoH is doing this. The only difference in madden is that now you have to pay for standard features! No like seriusly. Everything that came standard is now downloadable content that you have to pay for. Many games are now feeling to similair. Now while these games are pretty fun, there is really no reason to buy them. Even Pokemon is guilty of this crime! The city layouts and map are the same in Diamond and Pearl as the ones in Ruby and Sapphire! Sequels should introduce NEW gameplay mechanics, not make you pay for old ones!

Acheivments: Yay or nay?

2007-06-05T18:18:00.000-07:00

When the 360 lanched, there were not many breaks from the norm. It had improved graphics, and better online play. But the one thing that Microsoft DID break away from the norm with is Acheivemts.

Previously, one gamer would lose a match of Halo or something like that. Then he would blame something broken like " You spammed grenades to much, noob!!!". When this failed, said gamer would throw out something like " I once beat the ENTIRE campaign on legendary using only melees." Of course, this is ridiculous. This claim would be denied by the winner, and could only be settled by a soda drinking contest. Well, Microsoft put aan end to that with acheivements.

Lets say you beat a game on super hard without any outside help. On the 360 this would net you an acheivement. This acheivement would boost your gamerscore. Your gamerscore had no value, exept bragging rights. And while this seems all nice, there are some pitfalls.

In Gears, you can get acheivments for killing 100 hundred people with the torque bow. Due to this, it is quite commonplace to come into a game only to hear three high pitched,sqeaky, and extremely annoying voices screaming " I will !@@#&*% EAT the !@@^)&# who teks my !@#$#%*%^&% torque !#!$#@!%$! bow". Then these voices will get into a shouting match witch sounds like this

Noob1: Stay away from my torque bow!
Noob2: Shut the !@#@ up!
Noob3: No you shut up!
Need I say more?

The other downside comes in the from powerbosters. These guys, much like powerlevers, will boost your gamerscore for a hefty fee. Hopefully anyone who does this enjoy their fake noob points.

Redoubt, chapter 3

2007-06-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

" Wake up! Wake up! Them damned rebs are coming! I was lying in a field. There was a union soldier talking to me." All right all right I'm up! Now whats going on? I got up as the old soldier explained the situation. " Dem damned rebs are coming. Dey have killed all the people in my sqaud. And they are charging this position! We need to get-" he was interupted by the roar of cannons and some explosions nearby. Well, more accurately very very close by. I heard the battle cry of the rebs and loaded my musket. Then I saw them. Thousands of rebs. It was like a tsunami, but made out of men. But that was'nt the bad part. The bad part was what came next.

In a moment I will remember for the rest of my posibly very short life, I saw men in strange uniforms, even stranger creatures, and weapons of many,many differnent forms. and they were all charging at us. But the union soldier next to me was not scared. He fired his weapon, but instead of bullets coming out, lightning shot out!

The lightning hit a strange four legged creature. That creature slumped to the floor, killed instantly. Suddenly, a man in a strange green uniform fired a rifle-like weapon at me. The effect was astounding. Instead of one bullet shooting, thousands did! Then a small, green object landed near me. Ten seconds after that, it exploded.

The union soldier began to scream, and I realizeed that one of the rapid foring bullets had hit him." Git out of here,boy, less you wanna end up like me" said the soldier, in a raspy voice. And I did. I ran and ran and ran until my letgs felt like lead. And then I crawled, desperate to get away from that horrible scene, the sounds of battle still ringing in my ears.

DO NOT BE AFRAID> VISIONS OF THIS TYPE ARE COMPLETELY NORMAL IN REDOUBT. It was that voice again." What is place? Why am I here?" I screamed in the general direction I thought the voice was coming from." Where are you? Who are you?!!!" I AM HERE. " But where is here?!?!". HERE IS RIGHT BEHIND YOU.

What? I whirled around, only to find the union soldier behind me his wounds healing.
" You should be dead!" I exclaimed at him. NO. The voice was coming from him, no doubt. But his mouth was'nt moving. " Your... your not real, are you?"

DEFINE REAL.
My god.

Pokemon rant

2007-06-03T08:26:00.000-07:00

Dammit! This was my initial Jack-Bauer like reaction when I learned that my pokemon deck had been banned. Not one or two cards in it. Like, half the deck. Even the energys. Luckily, my freind had a cell phone and called our ride to pick us up. Then we went to target for the notably cheaper decks and upgraded them.

Now let me give you the full story on this. My friend just got into a pokemon league and invited me to come with him. Soon we were beating everyone in sight. Well, until yesterday. The card shop had canceled the league this week, and both our decks were horribly dated and we could not participate in this official tournament. So we went to target ( cards are cheaper) and updated our decks. Now they're better then ever, and we are both ten bucks poorer.

Most trading card games will ban certain cards. This is fine, as it really only affects big tourneys. It usually happens when a certain card dominates every deck, and for the sake of keeping things fresh, they ban it. No one complains, but the rule is not enforced too much in casual games either.

Pokemon USA went the next step, and banned every card that had not been released within a year. This move comepletely alienated anyone even thinking of joining competitive play with a somewhat old deck. In order to get a really competitve deck, you may need to spend well over a hundred dollars. And this really sucks, not because of the price, but for old times sake, everybody wants to use an old card or two.

Now what would have been better is to graually increase the strength of new pokemon, making it harder to play an old deck in a tournament. This would have created the same effect. But no. They had to ban thousands of cards. And then remake them in the new sets. And while this makes a lot of money, it pisses off a hell of a lot of people. Including me. Lame.

Hour of Victory preveiw

2007-06-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

The Hour of Victory has arrived. Well, about 20 minutes of it. after numerous delays, the demo has hit marketplace. Perhaps it is apropiate that I am listening to the song Let The Bodies Hit the Floor and the thing that I enjoyed most about Hov. Killing a hostile will result in his body going AL over the place. And it is really amusing. But that is more then I can say for the rest of the game play. While I have not played the final game yet ( preveiw ), everything but the ragdoll deaths in this game are uninspired and unimaginative.

The one thing ( besides the deaths) that is origanal about HoV is the characters. You can play as a sniper, a commando, or a stealth killer. They each have a couple of special abilities, but most of them are just stupid. I mean, the commandos ability is to pick up stuff. What the hell? I mean you have got the sniper running up to people and bashing their heads in with the butt of his completely useless sniper rifle, but he can't pick up a damned chair? Lame. Just like the fact that, in this game, the knife is ten times better then a sniper rifle.

In conclusion, stick to Cod for or Medal of Honor Airborn for ww2.

Graw 2 first impressions

2007-05-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

Just rented Graw 2, and I am officially impressed. The game do's a great job of making you feel like captain Scott Michel. I t also, like many tom clancy titles, do's a good job of making the enemies realy feel alive. They will flank, use distractions, and in general be effeceint. You sqaud will get kills, and they sound like real people to.
That's not to say the game do'snt have its fair share of flaws, but the only really major one is the look sensitivity. It is really,really slow. If I have a sniper, and you are out in open running, then I should be able to shoot you! Besides this frustrating flaw, Graw 2 ( Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. kind of a mouthful, is'nt it?) semms to be pretty good. I mght get a reveiw up later in the week, but as stated earlier, I" m renting the game.

Redoubt, chapter 2

2007-05-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

I was in a white room. At least I think it was a white room. There were not any walls or floors oc ceilings so I don't know what you would call it. What is this? Suddenly, I felt a rising wave of panic inside of me. This was not good. Okay, okay calm down. What happened? How did I get here? I remember dyi.. Is this heaven?

"NO."
What the? Who said that? Panic overtook me. " What is this place?" I screamed to nobody.

" THIS IS REDOUBT"
What the hell is that? Who is saying that" I shreiked, but there was no answer. Suddenly a syringe appeared in front of me. I wanted to grab it, but I did'nt. I don't know why I did'nt grab it.

" DO NOT PANIC. STERILIZATION IS ALMOST COMPLETE."
The voice was... wierd. It did not sound to be of any gender nor had any accent or any emotion. And what was it talking about? I don't have any what sterilization means but it do'snt sound good att all. The syringe in front of me began to fill up with green liquid. It began to slowly move towards me, the green water pulsating within it. I tried to run, but found my legs unable to move. the green syringe depositing it's liquid inside me. And, for a split second, I saw something terrible.

I was inside a tube. I was bleeding all over the place. Many more were inside tubes inside this stange white area. Most of them were lying in this sort of chair. Other's were bleeding as badly as me. Some were in strange uniforms. This was not good.

Then, as soon as the vision started, it was over in a flash. But not before I could see something horrible. A strange, crippled creature was moving along empty space, holding a wicked looking device tht was sucking up blood.

And, for the first time in my life, I was truly scared.

redoubt

2007-05-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

This just some sci-fi I made, just for the heck of it.

The roar of muskets was unlike any thing I ever heard. “ Harper, fire your weapon!”. My commanding was talking to. “ I can’t see em” I yelled back, trying to keep my voice heard over the muskets. “ Just shoot it!” he screamed at me, and so I did. I loaded my musket and fired into the smoke. I was getting my ramrod unhinged when I saw my first rebel. Well not one. An entire brigade, charging us with their bayonets. Then, I fired. And again. And again. And I kept firing until I heard my officer yelling at me to retreat. Thois time I obliged, as the rebels were no more then 100 feet away! Then I saw the smoke clear from my rifle. And I was shocked. More then half of the men in my army had died. My god. “ Run you fool! Get as far away from here as you can!” ordered sarge. But I could not tear my eyes from the sight before me. People were laying all over the place, some still alive. What happened here?
“ Get hell away from here, private! That’s an order!”. I knew I should be goibg. The rebels were no more then 10 feet away now. But my legs felt like lead. Then it happened. A rebel stabbed me with his bayonet. Immediately I fell, dying and gasping for breath. And then I died.

Rise of nations reveiw

2007-05-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

You hear the sound's of battle as your troops swords collide with those of the enemy's. Trebuchets fire their payload and huge rocks hit enemy building's. Then you realize tht your infantry are being beaten by the enemy's. You let them keep fighting and begin pulling out other troop's. But it is too late. You infantry are killed and you retreating troop's are cut off anbd slaughtered by the enemy. Your invasion is a failure.

Skip foward a hundred year's or so. Your troop's now have gunpowder weapon's. You have made peace with the enemy by bribing their officials before they march on your capital.
But that old conflict erupt's when the enemy ( Ottomans ) attack your allie. This time you have the advantage. That last attack hurt the enemy. He do's not have gunpowder weapon's. You use this to your advantage. You create a horde of infantry and charge past their initial defenses at the border and slaughter their swordsmen in their streets. Cannon fire on their base. Many men are killed. You take out their barracks and stables first, denying them military power.

The rest of the battle is childs play, with you large force killing any survivor's they encounter. You quickly capture all the enemies cities, and sack their capital. The day is yours. For Now.

All this and much more can happen in Rise of Nation's, a rts from big huge games.
In this game, you take one chosen civ from spear's to nukes. Throughout this you will crush empires, destroy armie's, forge and break alliances and possibily trigger or survive a nuclear armegeddon. That, plus your army's ussually have a lot guy's ( around a hundred ) make for some high qaulity rts action unlike any other game's.

At it's most basic level, Ron (rise of nations) unfolds like this:
Emperor noobface hates you. Emporer noobface declares war on you.You train some units. Their is a big battle. It is a draw. Emporer noobface retreats. You counterattack him. He wants peace. You denie it. You destroy his capital. He loses. You win.

At it's most complecated level, ron plays like this:
You assighn villagers to mine and chop wood. You protect their camps with a series of towers and entrenchged military units. One age later, Emporer noobface declares war on you. Your scouts confirm he is going to come through the narrow valley pass in the backdoor of your base. You set up some defensive positions and assighn troops to spring a trap. A easily killed by melee cavalry unit of archers is deployed at the bottom of the valley pass. several units of counter cavalry or counter tank units are at eather side of the valley. once the attack arrives, the trap springs killing many cavalry in the process. You reset the trap, but this time set the bait for oneother unit type. This time, the entire enemy army attacks. But there is a problem. The enemy is one age ahead of you! His troops are extremely effective, your's are extremely dated. Luckily for you, clever tactics win the day.

Emporer noobface negotiates for peace, and you accept nkowing that it is beneificial for both civs. Now what I just described is noly a glimpse of the gameplay of ron. All this good tactics and diplomacy and strategy make this game on that, while not perfect, is still extremely great and cannot be missed.

8.5 out of 10.

Updates: Good or Bad?

2007-05-29T07:18:00.001-07:00

A new practice has emerged from the industry of gaming. Since most pc's are connected to the internet, developers have begun patching games on the Pc. Now, this is ussally a good thing, but certain games ( I'm looking at you dark messaih ) have shipped before they are done. Dark messaih of might and magic, when it shipped, did not have some of the promised game modes for mp. Many a great game have been rushed, and the publisher simply said to ship it, regardless of whether it is ready or not. The developers then had to patch the game, but they could not patch in ton's of planned content that may have been planned.

On the other side of the spectrum, the dev team can patch up a game once it has shipped, fixing any glaring imbalances or glitches. A particulary good example of this is what happened with Gears of War. That game's mp was rushed, and once it shipped the game was rampant with glitches. Said glitches put off many players who liked the single player game. Even though it took a while, Epic game's eventually fixed almost all the glitches, or made them next to immpossible to execute.

And now this practice has expanded to the console market, which is rapidly going online. Will publisher's continue to force dev team's to ship game's before they are ready, or will they use patches like Epic?

Powerleveling

2007-05-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

While playing Pokemon, I had some trouble with a Gym. The solution? Powerleveling. Powerleveling is when you go fight monsters only to level up, not to beat quests or something like that. Ussually, it is just clicking on monsters and it is not very fun. But, it is nessecary in most rpgs. And most gamers are okay with that. I am. But just leveling up for the sake of leveling up will alienate most casual gamers who can't afford to spend hours grinding will be put-off. There is no easy solution, but most casual gamers will not touch Oblivion or Zelda or any rpg, just because they do not have enough time to play.

Normally, this would not be a problem. Many genres thrive without the support of casual gamer. But the rpg genre is HUGE. It will be fine without the support of the casual market, just not as fine. But this whole problem could be bypassed, had rpg makers simply put adjustable difficulty setttings in their games. Any casual gamer who is serious about playing an rpg will probaly have to run a shared account, where a more experienced gamer helps them out. But, this will lead to arguments and is probaly not the best choice.

If said casual gamer is playing an mmo, he can hire a powerleveling service to level him. They work like this: You give then your credit card number. Then you give them your name and password. Then they hack your account and start playing. Well not playing, grinding. Grinding is when you go to an area where the enemys are low enough level not to be a threat, but are high enough level to give some good exp. You will level there very quickly. It is also very boring while grinding. So while the company is leveling your character, you sit back and relax.

After a couple of days, you will get an email of notification of your leveling is completed. Then you can log on play on your newly high level character. The downside to this is that you will not know as much about your character as you should, your quests won't be done and other players will avoid you as you will not know any abbreiveations. You gear will be crap. And you will have lost hundred to two hundred dollars.

Only time will tell whether people will get smart to powerlevleling services, or whether rpg maker's will include difficulty settings.

Bioshock

2007-05-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am here to inform you about a game that may have slipped under your radar. It's called Bioshock and it pwns. So anyway, you know how in WoW there are cougars and some prey animal, and it is implied that the cougars eat the prey, but you never see it happen? Well imagine what would happen if the cougars had to eat to stay alive. What if they eat to many and it takes forever for them to come back. What if the prey overeat on their food and have to move to find new food? Then the cougars have to move to. What if one cougar takes to much meat, and the other members of the pack attack and kill him for it? There are many other things that could with that kind of ecosytem.

That ecosytem is what makes Bioshock complete. Well that and a massive anmount of enviromental interactivity. Bioshock is being hailed as fps 2.0. And from what I have seen, it deserves that title. To be honest with you, I rould rather have Bioshock then Halo 3. But what have I told you about the gameplay itself? Nata.

Bioshock play's like an fps. Ammo conservation is critical. To save ammo you will have to use things called plasmids. These are basically superpowers, and are interchangeable. They range from Telekineses, the ability to make thing get set on fire, and my personal favorite, splicer irritant. Splicers are this games zombie. Use splicer irritant on a non-splicer enemy, and that enemy turns into a homing beacon for splicers.

So, if any of this stuff sounds interesting, go google Bioshock and do a little of of snooping your own.

Pokemon Pearl/ Blacksite area 51

2007-05-23T05:10:00.000-07:00

This is not a Pokemon Pearl reveiw. I just wanted to report that the difficulty has turned out t be fine, it is a lot harder then the preveious entries in the series though. The gameplay remains pretty much unchanged, and even the desighn of the cities is the same so far. What seems really odd is that some Pokemon will suck ( they don't even know a damage move) until level 8 or 9 ( about two hours worth of playing). Besides these gripes with the game, I am really enjoying my copy of Pokemon Pearl. It is definetly a cut above the rest of the Pokemon games. I will probaly have a reveiw of it up within the next couple of days.

So anyway, a new demo just got released over Live for Blacksite Area 51. I have played through it several times, and I am glad to report that it is coming along nicely. One of the innovations of this game, morale, I found do'snt matter very much. They only get a couple of kills, so who cares if there scared out of there wits? ( the sqaud, but you wil probaly get spooked to!).

Pokemon Pearl first impressions

2007-05-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

I just got got Pokemon Pearl, and I am feeling two things: frustration and a sense of accomplishment. The frustration comes from Nintendo screwing up the difficulty, at least on the starting zone. In the previous entries, newly caught Pokemon were good for one or two battles before they had little or no health. Now they last for one battle, if that. If you and a wild pokemon fight, the wild pokeman does more damage, gets more critical hits, and pwns better then your pokemon. But when you kill one , you get a greater sense of accomplishment. So it is an even trade off. But in the next game, there should be adjustable difficulty settings.

This is the series first puting to the Ds, but it is not very different then the normal ones for gba. It's use of the touch screen is not very inituitive, but it is a fun gimmick to screw around with. the graphics are somewhat better, but they look sort of corney. No one complained about the origanals grahpics, but these have lost any and all style in them, just making them a step back from Ruby's.

This is not a review, jsut a glimpse of what the game is like. I usually make reveiws when I am a good way thrugh the game but I just started this one.

Viva Pinata reveiw

2007-05-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

This is a breash of fresh air for me, as most xbox 360 games feature big guys with big guns. This game has big pinata with big candy. While this game is definitely rooted for the younger audience, it is also a great animal sim 9 or pinata, I guess).
It's gameplay is not very complicated, at least on a basic level. I'd guess a 5-year old could figure it out. Basically, you have a patch of land you must turn into paradise. By makeing, for example, a lot of soil, you will attract Whirlms which will then attract Sparrowmints. The Spparowmints will then eat the whirlms, and the whirlms will reproduce. Thus begins the circle of life. Eventually bigger pinatas will come, like this Syrupent (above) and 60 or so more.

This is Viva Pinata at a basic level. Thing's will quickly get more complicated as pinatas can get into fights, and there are also sour pinatas which will do bad things to your garden. Alas, Viva pinata is not perfect. It has one major flaw: repitition. Whenever your Pinatas mate, you have to play through this minigame. It's like a maze, but it's top down ,making it very easy. You have to play it every time a pinata is born.

All in all, Viva Pinata is an amazing game, but older gamers won't like it as much. For this , I give it an 8.5 out of 10.

Unreal Tournament 2004 reveiw

2007-04-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

While thinking about the upcoming Unreal 3, I remembered this old gem. Its's out for the pc, and you should be able to run it.

Ut2004 is basicly like the arena in Oblivion, but you ue guns instead of swords. And while the guns are not extremely new, they each pack a satisfying punch. While you will quickly develop a favorite ( flak cannon ftw!), you will quickly realize that Unreal is ultimatly about tactics, like picking which weapon to go for or whether not to engage in another firefight. Then you will come to your senses and realize that it's all about the reflexes.

But whether or not you think its about strategy or reflexes, there's still alot more to this game. There's a currency system which you ue to make bets, join matches, and pay for doctors. You will also get to pick your team, and asighn positions atthe start of the match. If none of this stuff sounds appealing to you, then there's always instant action. But by adding this sytem, Ut get's a whole new layer of ownage.

Now about the actual gameplay. Basicly, you spawn in with a weaksauce gun that barely has enough power to kill someone. Then you head of to find a better weapon and pray that you encounter no one along the way. One you have some real firepower, start looking for your favorite gun. Once you have that, it's time to start shooting stuff.

Even though it sounds pretty basic, the aforementioned strategic depth help flesh out the experiance. You can also customize the matches, albeit only in instant action.

With all this stuff, Ut becomes on of the better shooters on the market, but slowdown questinoble spawnig make this game fall just sort of classic.

Overall 9 out of 10

Annex

2007-04-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

If you have a 360, odds are you have heard of Gears of War. This third person shooter is one of the first must-have title n the 360, and it just got another reason for you to put it in your drive.

This reason is a new game mode called Annex, a domination like mode. You get it via a free update that your 360 downloads when you play Gears. You can only get this update if you have Live, and Im going to make a small guide on how to play the game, as it's very confusing at first.

So anyways here are the rules for Annex:
As soon as the game starts, you will notice ome weird symbols on the upper-left side of your screen. It should have a picture of a weapon on it. Now go the weapon it has pictured. If you do not know where the eapon is, there will be a small arrow on it. Follow it, and it will lead youto the weapon spawn you need to go to. Stay at the weapon spawn for a few seconds and wait for the little ion to fill up with your teams colors. Now find a good spot and hold the weapon spawn. Points will begin to fill up on your teams symbol. You can only get 60 point from each spawn, and after that 60 points, a new spawn will be chosen. Gameplay go's on like this until one team has the required amount of points. Another thing about Annex is that you respawn if you die. It will take up to 15 seconds, but you will get back in the game.

That pretty much concludes how to play Annex, so go pop Gears in you disk drive and Play!

Full Auto reveiw

2007-04-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Your car shakes as bullets ping and bounce off it. A beeping sound alerts you to the fact that your back armor just blew off. You pull a trigger on you dashboard and a mine drops out of your car, immediately getting rolled over by another racer. Perfect, you think. The mine detonates and destroys the car. You look back to see the ensuing destruction, but an explosion hits close by your car, sending it off course. You hit a large rock at 70 miles. Your car is sent flying 100 feet in the air, and other racers zip past you, and you open up with two 50.caliber machine guns mounted on your hood. The bullets find their target and rip another racers car to shreds. Then you car starts flipping in mid-air. You land on your side and keep sliding, the grating of the metal producing an awful sound. Your car comes to a stop on its side. Another car smashes into yours, wrecking it and killing you.

All this and more can happen in Full Auto, an over the top car combat game where you must race to be the first to cross the finish line with your car in one peice. The actuaal gameplay is like what I described earlier, but with one big twist: the ability to unwreck stuff. Lets say you crash and burn. A quick tap of the right bumper (this game is for the 360) brings you a couple of seconds back to before the crash. Add this to the aforementioned car combat, and you have a winner. Well unless you manage to screw it up like Sega did.

To many times you will be cruising along and an explosion sends you flying killing you. You unwreck it, but some guy shreds you with bullets. Again you unwreck it, but someone rams you and kills you. It seems that once you get killed, but unwreck it, the game concentrates all its efforts on you and kills you. It's ridiculous.

And I really wanted to tweak my ride. As it is, you can choose your car and weapons, killing almot all customization. But besides all this, Full Auto is still extremely fun. You can destroy anything you want Including buildings, it has great graphics, and some extreme gameplay. So this game is definetly fun, just rent it before you buy it.

Overall 7.5 out of 10
note: This game is extremely fun and you should give it a test drive, but some features are broken and frusttraing, which is why it only gets an average score.

360 blogs

2007-04-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

If have a 360 and am x-box live gamertag, then you will like this site
www.360voice.com
It will give your 360 a blog! It's an extrmely safe site, so don't worry about virus's.
Anyways, I have got to go, just check out the link!

P.S
When your on that site, search for funkyskunk5. That's my gamertag, and my 360's blog.

Artemis Fowl book reveiw

2007-04-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Artemis Fowl is not a game. It is a book. Just wanted to tell you that. So anyway, here's the reveiw:

Artemis Fowl starts simply. Artemis Fowl is a criminal. He has completed more schemes then most Kingpins even think of. So the book starts with him looking for a contact. Artemis Fowl has another scheme up his sleeve, and this one will piss off an entire civilization. At this point in the reveiw, it is wise to mention Artemis's bodyguard, Butler. His last name is actually Butler. Allow me to qoute the book: ( this whole conversation takes plave when the contact asks if Butler is armed)
Contact: Are you armed?

Artemis: I am unarmed. Butler however, has a Big Sauer pistol in his ankle holder, three throwing knives up his sleeve,and a aoutamatic tranquilizer rifle on his back. Am I missing anything Butler?

Butler: The stun grenades.

Artemis: But none of those would be nessacary to kill you. Butler could kill you a hundred ways comepletly unarmed.

This sums up Butlers character quite well. Well, that, along with the fact that he broke an unfortunate pickpockets fingers when he tried to pick his pocket.

I don't believe I will be spoiling anything when I tell you that Artemis is 12.
He is also a genius.

Overall 9.5 out of 10

Skateboarding

2007-04-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

You have not lived until you have skated. It's just such a rush. Going down a 7 plus foot ramp onto a half pipe, popping a 180, and finishing it all off with a backside manual to stop yourself really gets the blood pumping. Theres not even that many bails. I went to a skate park for 3 hours, did lots of stuff ( Mostly ramps and vert half pipes ) and only fell 6 or 7 times. Not to say their's not many screw ups. You jump off your board a lot, right before .you bail so you only have to chase after the board.

It's hard to get started, but skateboarding is 50 percent mental. If you think you can do it, you probaly can. So if you go off a ramp and think oh-no and pull the board up, your screwed- your gonna end up on the floor with your elbow bleeding. And if you just started, then you should probaly wear pads. While I don't fall on the ground much ( I jump off my board alot though) a n00b will. Like alot. And while you ussually don't get hurt to much, a bad bail will frustate you alot. And hurt. Like hell.

Oblivion review

2007-03-30T16:40:00.001-07:00

Obvlivion sucks. Do not get me started on this thing's faults. Well, to late I already got started. Anyway here is a list of why Oblivion sucks:

1: Someone screwed with the thermostat in the plane of Oblivion, so it's now blisteringly hot.

2: everysingle item, quest, person and thing in Oblivion is sucktacular. Don't ask me why, they just are.

Man, bet I had you thinking Oblivion was a really bad place, eh? Well the place is, but the game does not ( that was a reveiw for the city of Oblivion, in the small country of Hell.). Anyways, this a review for the game Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Luckily, that game is nowhere as bad as the city it named after.

Elder Scrolls Oblivion reveiw

So heres the review you probaly are reading this for:

Oblivion is massive. As in mind-numbingly huge. As in nearly as big as The Elder Scrolls Morrowind ( great game, get it now). Your brain would pop out of your skull just thinking about how big it is. It probaly takes around 200+ hours to beat.

Will you play all those hours? Probaly not. Id say you will probaly beat about 50 hours or so of the game. The gameplay consists mainly of talking to peeps, killing monsters, doing quests, and LOADS of other stuff. The combat is pretty enjoyable, as are most of the quests. There's so much to say on this game, I'm just gonna list the stuff:

Pros:

Combat: Combat in Oblivion is throughly enjoyable. All the weapons hit with a nice thud, but it gets repetitive when you fight the same enemie again and again, which happens alot in CENSORED FOR SPOILERS.

Magic: is done pretty well, but most spells look the same. There's a good amount of them, but they all feel too similair.

Monsters: Pretty good. They all feel and fight pretty well, with some good sound effects.

Quests: Each one is great, and there are tons, so this area of the game is quite good.

Characters: Usually pretty bland, but the major ones ( mostly quest givers and important figures ) are all extremely memorable.

Tons of other stuff: most of the other stuff is genarelly pretty well done.

Con's:

Oblivion: everything in the plane of oblivion is pretty craptacular.

not really to much else.

Overall, Oblivion is a pretty crappy city. But a great game. So if you have held out on buying this installment in the Eldar Scrolls, I strongly urge you to buy it before I open a gate to Oblivion in YOUR living room.
Overall 9 out of 10

Half Life 2 reveiw

2007-03-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

In case you do not know now about Half life ( highly unlikely ), it is a popular fps series. The first game took ai to the next level, with enemys covering there squadmates, chucking grenades, flanking you, and many more manuvers. It also happened to be one of the best games on earth. If you do not own it, get it. Like right now. Get out of your seat and go to your local gamestore and buy it. If I had to rate that game on a scale of 1 to 10, it would get at least a 12 ( note: it you look at my top five list and see GoW at the top, it is because I play that the most now).

So can the sequel measure up? Definetly. Is it better then the origanal? No way. So anyways, here is the reveiw:

To start off, one thing Hl2 does right is atmosphere. Valve has always been good at making atmosphereic fpses, but this takes it to the next level. From the moment you boot up the game, you feel immersed in an oppressed world. You watch as citizens are interrogated for no reason, and Civil Protection officers harass you and then beat you with stun sticks. And the plot only adds to this.

Apparently, aliens known as the combine have invaded, enslaved, and oppressed the people of Earth. You job is to topple there empire. Suffice it to say this game's plot, while it sounds cheesy on paper, is one of the best in gaming. I do not want to spoil anything, so I will just leave it at that.

Also worth mentioning are the characters, who are memorable and realistic. You can really see there expressions, and this is digital acting at it's finest.

And Hl2 does not stop with all these story elements. The gameplay, while standard for fps gmaes, is executed with alpomb. Enemies realisticly react to the enviroment and zombis will throw debris at you, while Combine chatter on the radio and call for reinforcements. And, suprisingly, they will come. Not scripted, but Combine will pull out a flare gun and shoot off a flare. This will draw more Combine to the area, making you life a hell of a lot harder.

All in all, Hl2 is a masterpeice shooter.
9.5 out of 10.
( note: While you are at the game store, buy this too. You will not regret it.)

Exclusive! Or is it?

2007-03-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

Recently I have seen several games jump ship on exclusivity ( Assasin's Creed, Devil May Cry 4) and it it seems like there are a lot less exclusive games nowadays. In fact, it seems that exclusive now means on so and so's console first, and other platforms later. Now I am not saying this is a bad thing, in fact it is a good thing, since gamers without deep pockets get to play more games. But it could be bad, as Sony is undoubtedly learning. Many of their games are jumping ship, ( I hear Final Fantasy XIII is getting off the boat) and some already have.

So is exclusivity dead? No way! Flagship titles like Halo, Mario, and Resistance will more than likely stay on the publisher's consoles. But it is still pretty likely that other franchises will stray to the other consoles. It also seems like there could be a case of everybody buying a game on a particular console for better graphics and online support. If a Wii and 360 owner is excited about a game, they will probaly buy it on 360 for the better graphics and online support ( Wii online makes use of "Friend Codes" and Live is just easier to use). So Wii and Ps3 could lose out to the 360 because it has better online support.

It will be intereting to see if any of the consoles become the one to buy a multiplatform game. Please comment.

Map advice: Gridlock.

2007-03-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Ah, Gridlock. By far the most popular map.

Plans:
Plan 1 send half of your team to the boomshot and the other half to the sniper. Boomshot team will flank any enemies at sniper nest and then elimanate all other enemies.

Plan 2 Get every one to rush sniper, and one half of your team will flank around and kill any enemies at the sniper spawn.

plan 3 rush the boomshot and send one member of your team team to flank and kill the enemies.

Advice Keep your head down and stay on your here as the oppopsition will usually have a boomshot or a sniper. Rushing is nto very effective. Pistol wipping and chainsawing is effective near the boomshot and sniper spawns. Lancer fire is also quite effecitve, but only when two people fire. Also remember the frags. These can come in quite handy.

gow tips and tricks part 3

2007-03-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some good tips for Gow online mp.

1 Stick together. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Alone you aere weak. Together you are ownage. Stay together or die. I think I have stressed the importance of this enough.

2 Make a plan. You can not win on skill alone. You need a plan or you will be demolished. Stick with the plan once your team has agreed upon one. If you do not, you will be owned.

3 Dont take weapons your not good with. Let the sniper have the sniper rifle. It is OK to stick with the starting weapons for a round or two. They are more then good enough for helping your teamates out.

While these tips will help you through a ranked match or two, I am going to the next level and giving you map by map advice.
Note: it could take me a little to get these up, so bear with me as I post them.

Gow tips and tricks part 2

2007-03-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

I said check back soon. And I meant soon. As one of my lessons today I have to write ALOT of stuff. So here is part 2 of Gow tips and tricks:

List 2 : some more n00by stuff I found.

1 using the same strategy over and over. Regardless of how good your strat is, there is a counter. Depending on how tacticly effecient your team is, it could take anywhere between 1 and 10 rounds to find a counter. It usually takes me about two rounds to find an effective counter. So keep it varied. Mix up your plans a little having two or 3 plans will usually screw up your opponent to the point were they can not play. Well that is assuming they are good plans.

2 Glitching. Now glitches can be very useful, but only use them with the permission of the host. If I host and you use glitchs, then your gone. Booted.

3 Kill stealing. There is nothing more annoying then have an epic shotgun duel with that guy who chainsawed you last round and having some sniper kill him while he is on the ground and you are in the process of curb stomping him.

That is all for now, but check back in about half an hour for some non-nooby tips and tricks

Gears of War tips and tricks

2007-03-18T07:21:00.000-07:00

While playing GoW online I have noticed some various, for lack of a better word, n00by strategys. Here I will list some of things you can do to get better at GoW online.

List 1: nooby things

1: torque bow beatdowns. Too many too many times have I seen noobs take the torque bow and then charge fowards and beat someone down with it, thinking it has a better melee. It doesnt. In multiplayer all melees are the same thing.

2 Wannabe troikas. I have also seen people that take a couple of lancer shots, hurt a locust or two, then go away before downing anyone. Not only does this give away your position, but it also wastes ammo ( I know it is hard to run out of ammo in mp but if you are pinning enemies down then you will not be able to fire as long, and pinning is pretty effective). If you are going to start shooting, at least try to down someone, if not kill them.

3 Lone wolfing it. GoW is a team game. If you are playing a 3vs3 game or a 4vs4 then you do not want to ditch your team and go loner. If opposition is working in teams of two ( which they should be ) you are screwed when you encounter them. The exeption to this is if you are working with your team. If you decide to flank the fire base that has your team pinned down, then that is not n00by.

Check back soon for more lists and I will probaly have more guides up.

Civil War reveiw

2007-03-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

Games have not been kind to the History Channel. First comes the abomination that was Civil War ( that was a craptacular turn-based strategy game). Then comes this reincarnation of Civil War. I must say I was suprised.

It starts simply with your commanding officer telling you to hold the bridge. The sounds of battle are ringing in your ears, and sound is one thing Civil War: A Nation Divided does right. Muskets go off with a rather loud pop. There is an extremely satisfying thud as the butt of your rifle connects with your opponets head and you stab him with your bayonet.

Speaking of weapons, Civil War features tons of them, and each one is realistic. This includes the reloading times. While I was used to pop the clip out and stick in a new in about four seconds, I found myself waiting for 20 seconds while my character loaded in a fresh bullet and rammed some gunpowder down the barrel. Well, at least for the muskets. They are useful for the long range firefights, but I found myself using repeatinng rifles far more. The ability to fire off five ( unnacurate and short-ranged) shots compared to a single one hit kill shot really neutralized the need for a musket.

With all these features, you would think Civil War would really make an identity for itself. This is not the case. It feels WAY to much like Call of Duty to have one. I mean, the mission structure is the same ( hold the bridge, plant the explosives,yawn)
and enemys and allies msysticly poof in. The ai is good, but not perfect.
All these flaws place the game in the above average zone rahter then the great zone I would like it to be in.

A weird thing I noticed: you can get acheivements jsut for killing enemies. At first lance it seems like the developers were lazy in the acheivment area, the are cleverly implmeneted here and will keep this game in you disc tray for awhile.
Overall 7.5 out of 10.
While I may have given it a lower score then most of my games, the realistic weapons and battles make this a must have for anyone who likes the Civil War ( like me, I was in 2 reinactments).

Dark Messaih reveiw

2007-03-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

One of the most overlooked games in gaming is Dark Messaih of Might and Magic. This game has some of the best melee combat.Ever. The world is your weapon. Light things on fire, roll barrels down steps to hurt enimies, kick enemies onto spikes, and many more ways of killing are at your disposal. All thses elements combine to make a very good game, even though it is extremely buggy. Several patches were released and they fixed that problem. I hear a 360 port is coming soon, so do not buy the pc version. Odds are thet will have fixed all those problems, and given the game a new coat of paint.

This game is,bassicly, a non-linear linear game. There are allmost many ways to go about your objectives. You can sneak atound and avoid combat, or you can hack and slash through all the enimies in your way. DMoMM also has an extremely effective upgrade system. You earn points by completing objectives, and then use those points to buy new skills. Each skill has several ranks to it, but you will have to spend points to unlock the next rank.

This game is for you if you liked the combat in Oblivion, and make sure to get the game when it comes out on 360.
Overall 8 out of 10.
Note: If you have noticed all my reveiw scores seem high, it is because I only buy games that get good scores. I use lots of sites like GameSpot, anmd get magazines like Game Informer. And don't expect to see any PS2 or PS3 reviews up here. I dont own any of those consoles.

Prey reveiw ( x-box 360)

2007-03-08T05:41:00.000-08:00

Prey is a first person shooter. Prey certainly stats off slow. Your in your girlfreinds bar, and to guys get drunk and wont leave. You then need to beat them unconcious with the wrench, your primary melee weapon throughout the game. Then you, in on of the best scenes in gaming, get abducted by aliens. While your shackled to a metal slab, a human causes a malfunction and your holder drops to the ground. You have to club some giant space chickens to death with the wrench. After killing your first enemy soldier, you will get your first firearm. All the weapons in Prey have a squishy, organic feel. This weapon slowly regenarates ammo, so you wont't have to worry about that much. That is if your good with peashooters.

The game is one big ride after that, with normal firefights and puzzles. Well, not exactly normal. Prey has a cool wall flipping feature, where gravity will reverse and it seems like the room your in just flipped on its side, but It didnt, and it is quite possibile to be shooting at enemies on the ceiling, or in some other crazy area. But it does not stop there. Large blue strips on the walls indacate a wall-walk panel. You can walk on these, even if they go straight up walls. This leads to some cool moments with you shooting at bad guys on the floor.

Unforunately, Prey is not perfect. When your not on the wall, action is pretty normal. Allmost all the puzzles are solved by flipping gravity. It also runs its self to the ground with far too many gravity flipping puzzles. Prey is a great game, and definetly a must for fps fans.
Overall: 8.5 out of 10

Quake 4 review

2007-02-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

Man, it has been a while. I could'nt updatew this blog because I did not have easy access to a computer. So now that I'm back, I will get the ball rolling (again) with a review of Quake 4. So, without further ado, here is the review:

For tose of you unfamiliar with the Quake series, it is rather popular fps that started with a weird, so-so beginning installment. After that firts game, the series picked up the slack with the spectacular, but still flawed, Quake 2. This game had almost nothing to do with the first one, and it seems like the developers just slapped the name on the game to genarate more sales. It placed you as a lone marine, part of landing force to invade the home planet of the Strogg, an alien race of cyborg( note: im using a weird keyboard, so forgive an typos).

The series had some more luck with Quake 3: arena. While this installment did nothing to further the plot, it was still a pretty decent shooter. It was an arena based game and probaly draws insparation from the Unreal Tournement line of games.

Now for Quake 4. This game is the first one in the series to somehow relate to the games in the series. You played as the same marine from Quake 2, and fought pretty much the same enemies. Once again, your ship crash-lands but luckily, most of your squad makes it. You then proceed to fight through a good amount of enemies with your squadmates and pick up a different, but not unoriganal, set of weaponry. The graphics are pretty good by todays standards, but there is just really not to much new here. If you like fps's, then this is defenetly worth checking out. While it may not do anything new, what it does it does REAL good.
Overall 8 out of 10.

Phsyche outs

2007-02-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

While I was playing 40k yesterday, I realized something very interesting. Now in this game, I had added to my army The Nightbringer. He is basicly the best unit in the game. He is definetly not un-killable, but my opponent seemed to think so. He gave him an exteremely wide birth, and he never enen tried to attack. I then occured to me that, maybe, I had phsyched him out to the point where he thought his only defense was to run away. This huge fear of The Nightbringer handed me an easy win, and I think this could apply to other games as well.

Lets say your up against some guy who is ranked number 3 in GoW. You might not even try to attack him, even if you have a heavy advantage. This gives him an even further advantage, and this can really criple. If this happens to you or your teamates, remember one thing: stick together. The best player probaly can't kil 3 average players. If this dosnt work, then you are pretty much screwed.

In conclusion, do NOT get phsyched out.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade Review

2007-02-19T08:34:00.000-08:00

I have been doing a lot of posts about Warhammer 40k and it seem's like I have forgotten about it's video game translation. Dawn of War: Dark Crusade is, basicly, 40k on a pc. In most strategy games you make villagers or workers to collect reources. Not DoW. Here you train miltary units to capture strategic points. So I might train a couple of Scouts early on in the game( like in the first minute) to capture some strategic points. Then yu can augment the effectiveness with little mini forts built on top of them. While this a good system, at later times in the game it becomes far to easy or far too hard to gain resources, depending on the selected map. Another notable feature of this game is the pace. If you attack early on (known as rushing) in other games, your army will probaly be ready for the attack in the first 13 minutes. In this game, to be good at rushing you need to attack n the first 7 minutes.

All the races in this game play extremely differently, and it is nearly impossible to master them all. I can't win against the computer with Eldar, but I could own two at the same time with Necrons. The battles are extremely well translated from the game. Morale plays a huge in the game, along with cover and, my favorite, terrain. All these elements add a certain flare to this game that simply can not be found anywhere else.
Since it's a standalone expansion pack, you don't need the other Dawn of War games to play it.

But if your interested in multiplayer, it is definetly worth getting the other two, becuse even if you have all the single player content, it' mp is still worth trying.
Thi game is a real bargain for thirty bucks, so over all you have to get it.
over all 9 out of 10.

The WarchIefs review

2007-02-18T17:41:00.000-08:00

If you have plaued AOE3, then you have probaly realied its main fault: no variety in races. Some of them have interesting gimmicks to them ( ottomans ) and some of them are just plain screwed. Now the Warchiefs takes this problem and adds three new races which are extremely different then the other races. They are the Lakota, Siux ( probaly really bad spelling), and Aztecs. The two main differences between these and the other races are that they have a Fire Pit and a Warchief. The Warchief is a extremely powerful explorer unit, but not to the point were you can ruh with him. He gets more powerful as you age up, so he is never really useless. The other difference is that you can assighn villagers to dance at the fire pit, and thi will give your civ varius perks. The most useful of these is a major bump in unit production. This i a really nice thing as it lets you specilize your civ to a whole new level. These are the main difference, but each new race has a heavy specilization in a certain field:

Siux: these guys are extremely god with hores, and as such they ahve extremely good with them, but they also have en extremely overpowered infrinty uni, the Wakina Rifle.

Lakota: All around pretty good and they are the best race t start out with out of all the Indians.

Aztecs: they have the best infantry.Period.

This is an allaround good expansion pack, but you can still play the game without it and feel satisfied. Only for those who have played the original game to death, but If you find a copy cheap, its worth picking up.
Overall 8 out of 10

Age of Empires 3 review

2007-02-17T10:05:00.001-08:00

If you like strategy, then you should defintely be familiar with this series. It was one of the fathers of the genre. With this newest installment, not much changes. They updated the engine, aged up the game ( it went from swords and bows in AOE2 to rifles and cannons in AOE3). The biggest change however, is not in new units, but the cities you play as. In the past games, you would choose your civ while setting up the game. They were all balanced and each one had pros and cons. Now the new system allows you to choose your civ and upgrade its shipments, along with naming it's explorer. You can then level up your civ and gain new shipments. A shipment is a one time boost, for example I could get 5 or so musketeers from one. Each shipment is treated as a card, and everytime you level up your civ you get to pick a new one. To level up your civ, kill enemies and do other useful things to add experience to your civ. Once you have a predetermined amount, you level up get a new card. Once your done messing around with all that stuff and decide to take your new civ for a test drive, you will have to wait to get to the right age to use your shipment. You get new shipments ( in game, that is) by amassing a certain amount of exp. You need more exp for each shipment.

The basic gameplay is very simple: Collect resources, build troops, get more resoucres, age up, rinse and repeat. This simple formula is easy to get a basic grasp for, but very difficult to master. It has some flaws, such as bad pathfinding( if I tell you to get food, dont walk through the enemys foward base!) and some civs are underpowered, but overall, this is a must for fans of the series and definetly worth checking out for strategy gamers.
Overall 8.5 out of 10
P.S check ni tomorrow, when I will probaly review the expansion pack, The War Cheifs( unless some really urgent comes up).

oops

2007-02-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

I hit the publish button too many times.