Graw 2 first impressions

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.