Sony Say Shovelling Their Own Grave "Not Going Fast Enough", Buy Fleet Of ExcavatorsSunday, September 24. 2006
1up reports (emphasis mine):
Thought Bethesda had balls for their downloadable Oblivion content stunt? Think again. LABATOMYFriday, September 1. 2006Hold your breath...Thursday, August 10. 2006
So I finally finished Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay last Friday. I can only echo the sentiments that so many others have already voiced - it's a refreshing change from the rule in that it's a movie tie-in game that's actually pretty fucking good. On the other hand, it doesn't really have much to do with any of the movies, but is rather just an episode in The Misadventures of Richard B. Riddick - then again, this holds true for the rest of the franchise as well. The actual plot of the game is rather short and thinly spread, and in retrospect most of the things that happen between the introductory parts and the endgame feel like filler material. Funny enough, they don't do it while you're playing, or at least not nearly as much. What impressed me is that, according to the game's (ridiculously1 long) credits, Vin Diesel took quite a bit of involvement with this game beyond the voice acting - including production and design involvement. My respect for the man, which was barely even existent at first (I used to make horrible jokes about how Vin Diesel and Van Damme having the same initials), grows with just about any new project of his. Okay, let's gut this sucker. EFBB is pretty much a standard modern FPS, but it has quite a few things of note. One - it looks pretty freaking good, even with the low-res textures on the Xbox. We're talking "puts up quite an impressive fight against HL2 and Doom3" good. Two - the stealth is good as well. There's not overly much of it, but it feels natural, good and is quite a lot of fun. Props to the design team for making this work so well. Three, and most importantly, at least the first third of the game - while being just as linear as the whole rest of it - has quite a few adventure-y elements. Different factions to align yourself with, side quests to do when you're bored with the main plot, the whole shebang. Again, while it's not excessively much, it feels like it just belongs. Even more respect to the design team. There's a few bad sides too - mostly, as I said, the mediocre and thinly-spread plot with lots and lots of filler material. It's a bit like Half-Life in that respect, trying to tell a story but apparently not quite knowing how to talk2. It feels less forced than it did in HL though, and the disjointed feeling of the plot with not only itself but also the rest of the franchise is more of a general problem of the Riddick franchise than a flaw in the game. Remember that biomechanical beast in Dark Fury that served no purpose at all but was pretty kickass when it showed up? Butcher Bay is basically like that, only that in Dark Fury it didn't take you a couple hours of gameplay until you got around to wondering what the fuck that was all about anyway. Other than that, the selection of guns isn't exactly huge, and the guns are more tools than toys. Remember Doom's shotgun and chainsaw, or Turok's tree-felling triple rocket launcher and Cerebral Bore? Those weapons are toys, ie. insane fun to plough your way through the enemies with. Riddick's weapons are - sadly - a lot more utilitarian than that; on the other hand, this helps the non-shooty elements of the game come into focus better (and boosts sales in the simulationist part of the target audience). Also, the hand to hand combat has a few very good ideas, but doesn't work as well as it probably could. It's cool and pretty complex for an FPS, but somewhat hard to willingly control. Next on my mental list, the endgame has a few pacing problems. Not of Arx Fatalis proportions, but quite noticable nonetheless. The last half hour of gameplay has a sort-of climax, but a short and not exactly satisfying one. And that climax is not the final boss fight, which makes the pacing near the end of the game seem even more hell yes this is awesome oh hey there what the fuck is going on here wait what it's over already what happened where's my epic asskicking. This is sort of amplified by the insanely long credits, which give you about three hours of time to reflect on the game - and of course particularly on the part you just played. Finally, it's sort of missing the oneliners and "that's totally badass" moments that the movies had. The tea cup/can opener from Chronicles, the fire extinguishing system and knife-burying threat from Dark Fury, that kind of stuff. Aside from Riddick, there's less than a handful of even remotely memorable characters, and even those are... well, they're in there somewhere, at least. Oh, and: there is a final cutscene after the credits. Which you will have to sit through if you want to see it. Have fun. To summarise my main points about the game with a (slightly expanded and horribly "I need a girlfriend" nerdy) oneliner that came to my mind when talking about it on IRC: It's a bit like sex, only every time you look at your partner it's somebody else and you don't quite come in the end. Nevertheless - if you haven't played Escape from Butcher Bay yet, you should probably give it a spin. A few parts of it don't quite know how they should do what they're doing, but once all punches are pulled it's a pretty damn good game. And that's what counts. 1 trust me, I had to try very very hard to not make a horrible, horrible pun here. 2 and even harder to not make a soul-crushingly bad dead-horse Gordon Freeman AND Riddick combo joke here. Continue reading "Hold your breath..." The beast is hunting for a prey that cannot dieWednesday, July 26. 2006Well, well. Let me summarise what I've recently been doing - in my lifelong quest for, uh... I actually don't even know what for, but in my quest for it, I finally gave up college. Well, I didn't really want to, but I was growing very sick of it anyway when the college administration asked me to get my ass out of their college because I'd missed an exam time limit. Shortly after, I found a want ad by a games company that fit my profile rather nicely. Games biz? Hell yes, I've been wanting to end up there anyway. On top of that, it's in Cambridge, so it sort of coincided with my recent thoughts about leaving Germany at some point. So I applied, got the job, packed my car with the basic necessities (my three computers, my xbox, most of my clothes and a box of food), and made the drive of a rough 1000-1200km. Spent a night in a bed&breakfast in Dover, continued the drive, had my car make weird noises that made me afraid it may be dying. Arrived in Cambridge, headed toward the place I'd negotiated a private rental at, unloaded the car. I'm still living there right now, after three weeks, because frankly the accommodation situation in this town is DISASTROUS. I've had two appointments to view rooms by now. The first one, nobody was there when I arrived. The second one was a bit less aggravating but still somewhat WAHT - the person who placed the ad went on holiday the day after the appointment, but forgot to send me an address beforehand. In merrier news, the company is pretty kickass so far. Much like what I imagined and hoped the games biz would be, and it earns me money the kind of I'd have no fucking chance of making in Germany with my educational history. Cool people too; I had two spontaneous barbecue parties last week alone, several of them are at least aware of the existence of humppa, most have an at least somewhat similar taste in music, the whole nine yards. I think I'm gonna stay here for a while, at least once I've found a place to live that I can actually store my stuff AND live in. Pics to follow as soon as I have a home with interwebs access. Continue reading "The beast is hunting for a prey that cannot die" If you were me, you'd be good-lookin'.Saturday, May 13. 2006
I just found a DVD of Six-String Samurai while I was shopping for groceries. HELL YES. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, 6SS happens to be pretty much my favorite movie of the past, oh, I don't know, ever. Kickass music, glorious camera work, and a premise that is made of crack and awesome. Because I'm a lazy bum, I'll just copy&paste a short review of it that I'd written someplace else when I'd first seen the movie.
So I had a vid night with some of the mates last night. We watched The Iron Giant, Seducing Doctor Lewis... and the one I'm going to recommend. Six-String Samurai. Think Lone Wolf and Cub meets Mad Max meets 1950's Rock'n'Roll.
The basic premise is a wee bit wacky, but stick with me for a moment.
In 1957, the Cold War escalates and the Soviets end up nuking and invading the US. Hilarity ensues, Elvis (yes, the Elvis) gets crowned King of the remains and takes seat in "Lost Vegas". Fast-forward forty years. The King Is Dead. Vegas needs a new King. Road Rockers from all over the place start flocking towards Vegas to claim the throne as theirs. Among them Death himself, incarnated as a postapocalyptic version of Guns'n'Roses' Slash. And, of course, the unnamed protagonist whom everyone just calls "Buddy" and who looks a very slight bit like Buddy Holly would after having survived the Nucular Holocaust Of Doom. I think. Thus, Buddy sets out equipped only with his trusty six-string electric guitar - which conveniently happens to have a katana taped to it - his postapocalyptically torn-and-dirty tuxedo, his broken glasses and a battered parasol, for he has "a gig in Vegas". As we join him on his journey, he encounters a group of badlands wildmen chasing after a little kid and his mother. They kill the Mom, Buddy arrives and disposes of them with a little help from his awesome Rock'n'Roll Kung Fu (and his katana). The Kid sits there, pokes his Mom with a stick a few times, then bleats at Buddy who passes him by. Buddy tells him to "Float away, little butterfly, just flutter away", the kid stalks him. Buddy tells him a bit more directly to back the fuck off, but the kid just bleats and continues following anyway. The beginning of a wonderful friendship fo sho'. The two travel through the desert heading for Vegas, kicking some wildman ass in a breakneck 15mph car chase, getting caught up with the Postapocalyptic Sitcom Family From Hell, running from guys in badly-taped space suits, and slaughtering the whole remains of the Red Army along the way. I love it. This flick is stuffed to bursting with various pop culture and rock'n'roll references, from the lead character, his nemesis, a cameo by A Guy Who Looks Suspiciously Like Clint Eastwood, the whole Samurai Tale concept, a bunch of Spaghetti Western spoofs, the all-pervasive Mad Max style, up to the store in a town called Fallout (seriously) which is owned by a Gangsta Midget who quotes The Wizard of Oz (yes, seriously). Oh, and the soundtrack is played by a Russian-spawned Rock'n'Roll band called The Red Elvises. There's a trailer and ad blurb here. Six-String Samurai being a rather Indie production from 1998, it is somewhat hard to get regularly now, but can still be acquired through the usual intarweb outlets for decent prices. Review: Call of Cthulhu - Dark Corners of the EarthSaturday, February 25. 2006
(German original and pictures) "That is not dead which may eternal lie..." Would you?Tuesday, January 31. 2006Sometimes I wonder...Monday, January 16. 2006
But, for a certainty, back then, We loved so many, yet hated so much, We hurt others and were hurt ourselves... Yet even then, we ran like the wind, Whilst our laughter echoed, Under cerulean skies... So... I started playing Chrono Cross again a couple days ago, thinking that a game whose mere memory has moved me to tears once would be worth actually finishing some time - and it just had me burst out in tears again while I was just thinking about it, so I decided to write a bit more about it than I did back then. Many people don't consider Chrono Cross a worthy sequel to Chrono Trigger. I'm inclined to say that it's not much of a sequel at all, at least not as far as I've played. Either way, its beauty far surpasses its official predecessor in my opinion, and makes me wonder why the Final Fantasy series is so popular and this isn't. I love this game from the deepest bottom of my very soul. It's all a bit hard to explain without heavy spoilers, so forgive me if some of this seems a bit long-winded. In the beginning, the game sets you up with the stereotypical oversleeping young lad called Serge as the lead character, but as soon as the clichéd "wake up, you're late" opening event is over, you're assaulted by an utterly, gloriously gorgeous little fishing village in which Serge leads a calm, idyllic life. He has a caring mother, a loving (if somewhat bossy) girlfriend and generally leads the good life in one of the most beautiful environments I've seen in a game. Even here though, the game's basic plot point shows through at every corner - people keep wondering about the past, about how things would be had they made different decisions ten years back, about whether "there's another me somewhere, leading a different life". I'm very, very prone to this kind of thinking myself, which makes this another big point where I can emotionally connect to the game. Either way, the idyllic life of a kid in a fishing village wouldn't make for much of a game, so soon the world changes. Again going with the basic point, the changes are subtle, but the repercussions for the lead character incredible. Small stone, big pond, you know the concept. After the event that starts the actual plot of the game off, all of the beauty and idyll is still there, but no longer Serge's to share. The game just tears you out of all the happiness, all the calm and repose, and leaves you a complete stranger in the only place that was ever familiar to you. The game toys with the "what if" concept all the time. There's about 40 recruitable characters in there, but you're unlikely to even notice most of them if you only play it once. It has you make decisions without you even noticing that you are making a decision, because you normally don't expect having this many alternatives in a game. And, of course, if you notice later on that you did make a decision that could've lead to multiple outcomes, it leaves you wondering what would've happened if you decided differently. Not unlike Deus Ex, the decisions you make don't influence the actual course of the plot much, but rather change the paths you take through it. Although I do read there's eleven (!) endings in there, I haven't reached a single one yet, so I might be off on this point. The relationship to Chrono Trigger is not really there as far as I've played, although there are quite a lot of references and recurring themes. I hear that this changes later on in the game, with the plot evolving to a point where it's an actual sequel to CT - again, I haven't got that far. Still, the basic plot point and the utter beauty the atmosphere of Chrono Cross radiates are very, very engaging to me. I'm somewhat loath to talk about this game in technical terms, because I fear it might take the magic away, but I guess I won't be getting around it now that I've started whetting your appetites (I hope). The polygonal characters merge beautifully and barely noticably with the painted backgrounds, and they're more detailed than many other RPG characters I've seen on the Playstation. The graphics are very, very colorful, but in a good way. Everything just looks like it would on a beautiful summer's day, and it gives me a massive craving to actually be there, soak up that beauty, and live a calm and laid-back life there. Walk along the beach with a nice girl, enjoy the sun, the clear water and blue sky, that kind of thing. The music has quite a few pieces that were in Chrono Trigger already, but also quite some original stuff. The instruments are most probably synthetic, but don't sound anywhere near like it, and together with the gorgeous tunes add even more beauty to the atmosphere. Time's Scar (the theme from the intro video) is what actually made me cry about this game for the first time; I was just listening to it and started crying right out of the blue. Even today I have no idea what emotion it caused that brought me to tears, but it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling somewhere deep inside. Other gorgeous tracks in the game are Time of the Dreamwatch and Dream of the Shore Bordering Another World, both of which are actually just different interpretations of the same basic theme. The gameplay itself has a few points of note. First off, I normally loathe turn-based combat in RPGs. It bores me out of my skull. I hate it. Hate hate hate. Not so with Chrono Cross - the combat includes a stamina system, which breaks up the turns a lot because as long as any of your characters have stamina, you can switch freely between them and have them do stuff. Normal attacks use either one, two or three points of stamina for weak, strong and fierce attacks respectively, casting a spell (or "using an Element" as it's called; more on that later) uses all of the seven points a character can have - but you can go into negatives. If you do, the character is unable to act until he's back to seven points of stamina. I still haven't quite figured out when enemies can or can't attack; I assume they're using the same system with less maximum stamina though. Stamina is recovered just like it's spent - a character that doesn't do anything regains as many stamina points as the one that is doing something expends, except when an element is used - that uses up seven stamina points, but all other characters only regain one. So basically, elements use stamina at seven times the rate of normal attacks. On top of normal physical combat, there's a unified magic/tech/item system called "Elements". Every character has, based on their growth level (another interesting detail, read on), a certain "grid" in which elements can be arranged. Elements can be bought in stores or looted off dead enemies and treasure chests, and range from attack spells over one-use healing items to character-based special attacks. The latter are put into the grid at fixed points, the former can be freely arranged. Every element has a certain level; if it's put into the grid at that level, it works at normal efficiency. Arranging it on higher levels gives bonuses, lower levels subtract from its effect. To use an element, a character first needs to attack - for every time an enemy is hit, the level of usable elements goes up by one, and once an element is used, the level it's on is subtracted from that. So if you hit an enemy three times, you could use one L3 element, or one L2 and one L1 element. If you have the stamina, that is. Moreover, there are no "levels" or "experience". After every battle, however small, every character has a certain chance of getting a bonus on some stats. The probability for the stats differs from character to character, of course. The only kind of "levelling" there is are the Growth levels, which define how many levels and slots the element grid has. Even there, there's no use in grinding for levels though, because new growth levels are awarded automatically for plot encounters. This way, Chrono Cross completely eliminates the need to levelgrind, which is what made all of the Final Fantasy games unbearable for me. Another thing I like is that there are no random encounters, which I loathe just as much as turn-based combat and levelgrinding - enemies just walk around on the map, and if you touch one, you go into combat. If you can avoid all enemies, you don't need to fight any battles that aren't plot relevant. You can, of course, kill enemies to gain stats, but even there you can only kill as many enemies as are walking around. So, yeah. I love this game. It makes me cry, and I love it for that just as much as I love it for being one of the most utterly, utterly beautiful games I've ever played. What was the start of all this? When did the cogs of fate begin to turn? Perhaps it is impossible to grasp that answer now, From deep within the flow of time...
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who are you?25, male, located in Cambridge, UK. Likes games, gadgets and b-movies, hong kong flicks, metal and various electronica. Also Bridget.
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