Zero Credibility

Nothing changed in my dark realm for the last month. The weather became cold and snowy, no leaves on the trees anymore, it’s proper russian winter now. I had some connection problems with W0W during one week, so my gaming attention turned to other games, such as Team Fortress 2 where I continued to have immense fun and I also tried Neverwinter Nights 2. NwN2 turned to be a game with slow pace. One must be real solo RPG fan to continue playing it. It has a nice story development and cool gfx though. It’s real gem for the lovers of this style. Maybe I’ll return to it when my WoW connect will break again ;) Surprisingly, there’s no music updates this month, nothing new interested me and I haven’t ordered a single CD, i’m collecting moneys for the next wave of music though.В  I’ve started next book by China Mieville – “Iron Council”. The beginning is quite hard at the moment, but it’s promising. Will see how it develops. Monsieur Bal says the book is worthy, I believe him.

Of course I’ve bought and finished playing Orange Box. And I’m once again impressed by what Valve did. Episode 2 turned to be no less fun to play than the rest of the HL2. Portal is damn addictive game, yet atmospheric. This is not what I was expecting from some puzzle like game. I hope there will be more Portal levels to play in the future. One downpoint of all this new stuff is that it is painfully short. I want more! Team Fortress 2 is as fun as good old Quakeworld, every class has its own cool features. And I’m yet to discover full potential of the classes. Once again Valve proved to be one of the best game developers out there and they know what kind of fun to deliver. They also added nice Community feature to Steam, so you can communicate with fellow geeks like me and play and chat together. Valve are gods indeed!

I didn’t write about my WoW achievements for quite some time. Well, the PVE progress is slowly but steady there. I’ve got full T4 set by now, our guild have started doing evil Serpentshrine Cavern raid instance. We’re learning new bosses and having general WoW fun. Everyone in the game’s awaiting for the new 2.3 patch which will feature new 10 man instance Zul’aman, and a lot of new other content. So WoW addiction still exists and I’m not sure when it will end ;)

(Just was unable to mind out the news title, but really, there was moon eclipse several days ago). Anyway, this is general updabe about nothing. I’m playing WoW almost every night last two weeks and I’m now 21th level. Well, there are as addictive as boring moments but I must say that the game is perfectly designed in all aspects. Addictive moments are the atmosphere of the game, the levelup process, quest completion, interaction with the others, etc. And there’s one real boring moment, it’s to overcome those huge ranges between towns and villages or returning to your miserable corpse. But I can understand designers here, this is major time sucking thing and they make money using players’ time. So it’s ok in terms of money pumping. Nothing new on the music side, though I’m expecting some CDs from Coldspring and I’m selling out my d’n’b collection as I don’t listen to d’n’b these times at all and I just don’t have space for all the 600 cds I gathered through the years, so I’m just obliged to ditch some dusty ones.

It turned to be rather hot and wet this year and I’m glad it dies. Autumn slowly takes its role, it’s visible at nights and evenings especially. Mornings are foggy and surprisingly warm due to the frequent southern winds. But day by day everything goes to darkness and cold, which gives inspiration and equilibrium for the soul. Since the last update there are changes in my book queue as I’ve finished “The Picture of Dorian Gray” which impressed me by its vital quotes. Now I’ll look for the other books of O. Wilde and maybe other classics. And I’ve started reading Banks’ Consider Phlebas. That’s rather abrupt switch from the classic to hard sci-fi but I like switches you know. Also, I wanted to read yet another Culture novel for quite some time now, so it’s time.

From the other news, I’ve bought World of Warcraft and started playing it. But afraid not! I’m not going to get hooked by it like those kiddies, I need it for research purposes at work. Also I’ve got Battlefield 2 as one colleague persuaded me to get it and play with him. I didn’t try it yet but we’ll see. I’m going to switch from the shitty and lowspeed ADSL to proper cable in two weeks as well. That’s going to improve my online gaming experience hopefully.

Yea, two weeks of my vacation have passed like one second, but I feel refreshed and ready to make goddamned games again. During the vac I’ve finished Locoroco game which turned to be quite simple but brains relaxing and Metal Gear Acid 2 which impressed me beyond reality. What a well designed game! Everything from the graphics to little gamedesign elements is well thought of and works like a charm. Gameplay is balanced and yet unpredicted due to the card system there. You have to use your brains to reach the goals. The possibilities of gameplay situations are vast and it forces you to replay this game. Speaking of replay value the game has giant potential here. As you finish the stage you can replay it with 4-6 new tasks not connected with the story. And the story is plain awesome, japanese knows their business and made unpredicted and immersive story with interesting bosses, unexpected ending and all. I strongly recomend you this game if you own PSP and want to wrestle your head messing with cards and tactic situations. Now I’m thinking about getting MGA1 ;)
And as a little bonus I have some images for you. Proceed to the gallery and enjoy them.

Finally got this funny game. Started playing it right away in the subways on my way home and nearly missed my station :) This is damn addictive, cute looking and sounding japanese 2D platformer. It’s all so round and soft and bouncy you cannot stop playing it. The game features several worlds you have to save and there’s also 3 minigames which aren’t available from the beginning – you’ll have to play some time to get access to them. There’s little cute thing which improves replay value of the game – building LocoRoco house. As you play you collect items for the LocoHouse, so if you gathered alot of them you can stuff your house with alot of furniture. Speaking of replay value, the game is full of secrets which aren’t that easy to find, so as you look at the statistics screen after completing the mission you realise you missed 1/3 of the level, so there’s urge to replay it and gather everything. If you haven’t tried official demo which is available for download off the game’ site I recomend you doing that ASAP and get hooked instantly ;)

Well, this summer went frenzy. The heat in Moscow and suburbs is about 30C and there’s no place to hide. The only time you can relax is nights spent out of the city and in the woods. Good thing this is friday today and I’m going to the woods again to have some rest from the city hell. From the other news, I’ve bought Metal Gear Acid 2 for PSP and enjoying it alot. This game is turn based sci-fi tactics game. I’m new to the series and don’t know all the twists of the story but nevermind, this game is full of texts and turns me to the ‘what comes next?’ mode with the every finished mission. Also I liked the card system there, it adds alot of randomness to the process which is good and also I liked special cel shading look of the gfx there – very stylish. And the last thing I’d like to spot is the sound which is very well done for the PSP system. The other game I’m hooked by at the moment is Prey. I’m really impressed and love this game to the bits, I’ll write some thoughts on it later as I finish it.

Played Prey demo yesterday and was hugely impressed. This is the game I dreamed about: unique setting, soryline and never before seen gameplay. That antigravity paths are disorienting in a fun way, they reminded me good old Descent game which I was big fan of. Speaking about good oldness this game is real oldskool in terms of approach to interesting gameplay situations, cool sinister alien atmosphere and innovations made to Doom 3 engine. I’m definitely buying the game when it ships!

Well, I was catching the very moment of release of this gem yesterday. Was waiting looking at the counter at the game’ site and rejoiced when it became available! And it turned that all the excitement was worthwhile. Very well done addon! Proper character development, impressive script scenes and gameplay ideas, improved HDRI gfx adds that special smoothness. I won’t tell about the details here to prevent spoiling the game but if you love HL2, you just ought to get Episode 1. Now log in to Steam and go play it now!

Got this game via Steam. I was hooked by the screenshots. Very well done textures and overall colors and atmosphere. And it turned to be really nice game in fact. Top down look like in the Alien Swarm mod with the same type of gameplay. The progress is very well balanced, you always on the edge. As you upgrade your weapons, monsters are becoming more evil. Also I’d like to mention background music there. Very atmospheric ambient when you walk through the half-destroyed base and fast kind of techno when you fight monsters. Overall, rather nice game, it started crashing on me though, but I hope Frozenbyte will fix that soon ;)