AHHHHH!!!! THIS GAME IS DRIVING ME NUTS!!!
I’m taking a break from elbowing commies to take on some oppressors from another galaxy; namely The OmniBrain and his followers who have taken over the planet Grenulon in The Feeble Files. So far the story, dialog, and voice acting are some of the best I’ve ever seen in an adventure game, but some of the puzzles are downright obnoxious.
Rail-sliding wearing only sandals? Now that’s Real Ultimate Power!
If there’s one thing I keep confirming year after year, iteration after iteration, it’s that Splinter Cell is virtually unplayable during daylight hours. It’s a game that thrives on the dark in much the same way Doom or Silent Hill do and playing it in contrary conditions is robbing yourself of the heart of the experience (not to mention causing permanent eye damage squinting trying to make out what that dark blob is in the shadows behind the sun glare). Time to switch gears and get hopping on I-Ninja, a game I started this past summer down the Cape. Garnering all of my knowledge solely from videogames, the true ninja is faced with a profound choice of paths….the “Gaiden” road of the lithe, lethal, and brutally efficent assassin, or the “I” road of smack talk, overcaffeination, and hamsterball rolling.
(Read on …)
Well I’ll be the first to admit that I have gotten a bit soft playing World of Warcraft these last, er, few months. When you mention ‘twitch skills’ in reference to your prowess bidding in the auction house…..well, its time to get back to some gib-blasting action for a (virtual) reality check.
Enter the EMB Winter Games. Thank you, EMB….you made me remember why I have enjoyed wasting so many hours of my life getting a cathode ray tan. Plenty of action and options are the cornerstones of good gaming….and Unreal Tournament 2004 has them in spades.
Long dormant, the Alfredicus Destrucum has returned to wreak havoc upon bots everywhere…..and occasionally commit the odd self-kill.
I’ve reached the top of 3 out of 4 ‘ladder matches’ and the lauded Finals are so close I can taste the bio sludge. Will the Ultimate victory be a cake walk like the preliminaries? Stay tuned for visual confirmation…..
They’ll stunt your growth.
I’ve gotten a bit more into Messiah over the past couple of weeks and it’s shaping up to be “pretty good”. First things first: Any time I start up a game and see the Interplay logo movie where the gold rocket is circling the planet, I get verklempt. If anything stands out about this game, it is the Shiny Software sense of humor. It makes for a good contrast because they’ve put a lot of work into the detail of the game but they don’t take themselves too seriously. One example (shown above) is the roving cigarette machine. It drifts about aimlessly chanting things like “The surgeon general is a fool!” and “First one’s free!”. These little touches go a long way in my book.
Public toilet seats are just too dangerous…even for me.
Mission 5 ate the brat yesterday. The chief sure dicked me around on this mission. He tells me to save some Russkie from the terrorists, then he says I need to open some fire doors to get to him, but before that I need to rescue some nerds on floor 3, then diffuse a bomb, then restore power to the fire system and when I finally get the fire doors open he tells me he’s called in the FBI to rescue the Russkie and I should just get the code from him and leave! Now I’m pissed! He can forget about ethics on this one. I’m not wasting a single elbow on these fuckers!
Fuck swords and tunics…the Prince got himself a gat!
Last night I loaded up the demo of Timeshift, a promising concept that I’ve been really excited about. It’s a short demo but it certainly gives you enough of an idea of how the play mechanics will work. The premise here is the usual pap about a future war but the hook is that you have a special suit that allows you to slow, stop, or reverse the flow of time around you while you remain unaffected. You are up against vastly superior enemies and firepower and they’ll cut you to ribbons if you don’t utilize these powers. Although it sometimes resembles a puzzle game, it’s open-ended enough in design that there can be several different solutions to completing your objectives. For instance, the last task on the demo required me to cross a courtyard to get into the parking garage on the other side. As soon as you enter the courtyard 2 turreted APC’s come rolling out from around the side of the building and start putting on the hurt. My first attempt, I decided to use Reverse and they backed up towards the garage allowing me to get far enough into the courtyard that I could hide in the bushes as they passed and then right run up and open the garage. Although this successfully beat the demo, I felt like I’d taken an easy way out so I reloaded the save point and attacked the APC’s by blowing up barrels and using Slow to slaughter the soldiers. Doing it this way triggered another cutscene and several more enemies to fight before the area would be clear enough to proceed.
(Read on …)
