Zero Credibility

Well, played this game almost till the end yesterday. Good game and I think it’s worth its money. Some people think opposite though. At first, I liked hi-tech atmosphere there and the warm evening lighting outside. The looks almost identical to HL2 and I wouldn’t say they’re plainer or worse. It’s different. Gameplay. It’s different either, I wouldn’t compare Sin and HL2. There are nice satisfying combats with hostiles where they send reinforcements till you capture the room they appear from, flying troops are fun to play with as well. I liked that there’s not much weapons, you just concentrate on proceeding and plain shooting. The new thing with the healer units where you have to gather health bottles and insert them into the healer is rather good gameplay turn. There are other things I liked (boobs anyone?) but i won’t spoil them. The most important is that this game didn’t seem to bother me and kept me tied to the screen till I fell asleep due to the late time. I’m looking forward playing second episode.

I’ve bought this game recently and in the middle of it at the moment. This is amazing game! Scores on all the review sites didn’t fail me and this game is really worth its money. Excellent level design, variety in settings, cool overall gfx and of course fun and inventive gameplay makes this game very addictive. Sometimes it isn’t obvious that you have to use some things that are part of the environment for you to proceed, but as you discover that, this is pure pleasure. It really feels adventurous :) Apart from the main gameplay there’s alot of minigames when Daxter is sleeping on his bed. You enter dream mode and there’s number of minigames that get unlocked with time. Every minigame represents popular movies like Matrix and LOTR and what forth. Daxter imagines himself as main heroes of those movies. Apart from the dream minigames there’s bug arena which is like some kind of bug fighting. When you walk in the game you can find special boosts for your warrior bugs for that minigame exclusively. Also there’s that shiny eggs you have to gather and get scores, this is good old way for replayability. All in all, excellent puzzle adventure game with cool characters and gameplay!

I’ve bought Tales of Eternia. Well, since it’s the first jrpg game for me, I play it being unsophisticated user. Well it seems rather fine for me. Fast performance/loading, interesting story (so far). I’m not sure for battles though, they’re realtime and rather messy. You operate with main hero, other 3 members of the party are CPU operated. Battles plays like some kind of fighting but with stats in mind. Well, I’ll play it more and maybe will adjust battles so they’ll be more meaningful and effective. I really dig the oldkool gfx, calm colors and cute pixelart. This is what’s most attractive for me in these games, also the story develops rather unusual for me, it isn’t straightforward as in the most games – it’s like watching japanese movie.

Another JRPG that I managed to play (borrowed from colleague) is Breath of Fire III. I’ve some words on it in my psp games post, but reading reviews and actually playing the game are very different things. According to the reviews it has big loading times which destroy gameplay, in fact it turned to be rather acceptable. The gameplay is more proper than Tales imo, because all the battles are turn based and you can select weapons/items properly and without much fuss. Graphics is the same cute oldskool, the story is the same japanese weird kind which I like. So, I’m seriously looking forward buying this game too.

At last! The demo is out and you can try the game I worked on the last year or so. It weights about 660 Megs and features a couple of single player levels, 1 custom game, 2 races and supports multiplayer. If you like those weird TBS games you might be really interested trying this one. If you like other games but not sure about TBSes, you may still like to check it out just because I participated in development there ;)

I’ve stared experiencing hunger towards the new games for my PSP, so I decided to dig through the review sites and see what I can buy now and what I have to wait without patience. Not that I finished games I already own, but I just want more variety on that little screen ;)

Ok, the first target genre is RPG. PSP is quite good for the games where you wander through some world and unlock puzzles. RPG suits this task just perfectly: the explorative gameplay and the growing experience of your character. I’ve been told that there’s alot of japanese RPG’s that are really good. Let’s see: Popolocrois, Ys: The Ark of Napishtim, Tales of Eternia, Breath of Fire III, and others.

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Got this game recently. Played as singleplayer as multi with people at work via wifi. Well this one is very much like NFSMW but it has its own fun bit. This bit is the possibility to destroy competing cars by pushing them off the road to the borders. They can do the same to your car. As soon as you crash you loose precious time and distance. So you have to make hard things to gain nitro acceleration by perforeming extra things like driving on the opposite side of the road, making cool drifting turns, etc. This game is actually qute addictive and has nice gfx. If you like racing games and got psp this game is good addition to your collection, especially if you got friends with psp and this game so you can play it via wifi and have alot of fun :)

Had 3 days off, the country celebrated the Day of Defenders of the Motherland. I’m not one but I have days off anyway, so I had rather mad parties and alot of gaming. I’ve borrowed a couple of psp games from my colleagues at work. The first one is some Diablo clone – Untold Legends. I’m not big fan of such games. Gameplay is nonstop mindless clickage with usage of found weapons and armor. You’re becoming more powerful with time but you meet more powerful monsters as well. Dunno, this game didn’t take my attention. The other game is Wipeout Pure. This is rather fine looking futuristic racer where you ride slick looking hovers. The gameplay is addicting and requires some time to get hold of controls. It’s not that easy not to touch track’s borders and keep speed high. Also, there are various weapons and boosts along the track wich helps you to slow down the opponents and boost your own speed. Also there’s additional tracks and skins you can download off the official site. Very quality and addicting game, I’m looking forward bying it for myself.

Also, I had nice Doom2 session and played Simplicity. This is still in progress megawad which consists of short but very quality hi-detailed levels with brutal gameplay. Recommended for Doom2 fans.

I’ve bought PSP afterall… After the long debates with myself either to buy PSP or iPod, I decided on PSP. There’s not only music but games and video. I listen to music in player walking to work and back home, all the other time player just lies and does nothing. With PSP it’s gonna be different. It has more uses. I won’t tell you how cool it feels in hands and how awesome its screen and graphics is – internet is full of praising words. Before bying it I browsed alot of game review sites and found out that the good games started appearing on the horizon. The first game of choice was Tokobot. I didn’t want to buy some mainstream racing game because I can borrow one at work. I wanted to get some relaxing puzzle game and found this one. It’s not only puzzle, you can call it action as well, because you actually have to fight and destroy things there to win. Also I liked the idea of the little robots running around the hero and how they help him to achieve goals jointing together and performing various acrobatic moves. Very well done gamedesign there I must admit. I’d recomend this game anyone who has PSP. So, I’m looking forward getting other games in the future and there’s alot of really interesting titles soon to be released or available already.

Got the BFME2 demo. I didn’t play the first game so I have nothing to compare this second part with, but I was impressed by the screens and ingame videos published earlier so I gave this demo a try. Well, I started from the tutorial mission which was easy and straightforward. You learned how to comand your army and how to attack enemies there. Also I hired Boromir (omg) to help me with my war. The gfx is impressive beyond words, but (!) only if you set all the gfx options to high (pixel shader 3 enabled). When all is enabled the game just shines. But it has tendency to slow itself down to some kind of slow motion if there’s alot of things happening at the moment on the map. The gameplay is generic: build town, gather army and defence/attack. One of the big differencies from the AOE games for example is that 1 unit is not a single soldier but entire platoon. So you just click on it selecting entire bunch of warriors. That easies things when gathering an army. Also I liked the way you build your town, how building process is animated. It’s all very impressive and funny to observe. There were some problems with the sound though, it tended to get stuck and repeat endlessly, but I’m sure they’ll fix that in the final version of the game. I didn’t explore much into the game though. Because of the sound and performance problems. I’ll try the final game as it appears here though. Hopefully EA will fix all those engine related things. The game looks promising, there’s alot of features that require extensive testing in actual gameplay.

I’ve got Trainz Railroad Simulator out of curiousity. Since I’m mechanical engineer myself all this train stuff was always close to my heart. Well the game is hardcore sim and offers all those details when you drive trains. It isn’t that complex though, there are not much buttons and there’s nice feature to program your commands in time which helps you to operate your train. I liked diesel sound too, it’s pretty real and when you drive for like 15 minutes from station to station it starts getting into your brains destroying all thought ;) The downside of the game is graphics. It’s awfully lowres and blurry. Well I can understand developers here. Graphics isn’t for reall railroad men. The core gameplay, this is what matters here. And it does its job indeed. Once you learn how to operate the diesel, the feeling is nearly orgasmic if you’re in the theme ;)

Software part: This weekend I decided to organize my mp3 collection. Yes, I have some mp3s, even if I don’t like em. I keep ones of the long deleted CDs which is impossible to buy anymore and ripped mp3s from my CDs for my player. And there are alot of them. So, since I’m going to buy iPod this spring I’ve decided to use iTunes to organize all the mess. iTunes does its job good, but there’re some things missing like sorting mp3s by path. This is really needed if you want to make tags for the nameless mp3s. And here goes little and useful program – mp3tag. czg recomended it to me while ago and i’m happy with it. You can edit your tags quickly and painlessly with it.