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Archive for the ‘Review’ Category
I vividly remember the first time I played a Splinter Cell game; half the time I was busy retrieving my jaw from the floor. Right from the amazing graphics to the stealth, from staying in the shadows to making sure that the guy you just knocked out had to be tucked away in the shadows as well, each and every mechanic of the game worked together to make it a truly memorable experience. Sam Fisher has come quite a way down the line. So much so that in his fifth outing, it is almost for the fans of the original game to even recognize Sam Fisher, and for that matter, Splinter Cell. But is that such a bad thing, more so when we harp about games like Call of Duty never staying from the tried and tested formula? Let’s find out.
I could never really understand the obsession of setting their games in a nuclear winter setting in this part of the world. First there was GSC Game World with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and now we have A4 games, a bunch of developers from Ukraine with their rendition of a nuclear winter ravaged Moscow in the near-future. Based on the best-selling novel by the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky, the game features Moscow, devastated in a nuclear war, leaving it’s survivors trapped below the wasteland in its intricate metro tunnels, as they try to survive in any which way possible. Is the game good enough to send chills down your skin as you fight your way through claustrophobic underground tunnels as you battle hideous mutants? Let’s find out.
When was the last time you hopped on to a propane tank in a game, shot the tank and then actually took off into the sky, riding the propane tank all the way? Or hijacked hovering helicopters? Taken off on a parachute while racing towards the edge of a cliff on a motorbike? Or actually ended up on flying 747’s, riding on its wings? If all these things sound crazy enough to not even make it into a video-game, then my friend, you are oh-so wrong for you haven’t yet paid a visit to the crazy-yet-fun world of Just Cause 2.
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The God of War series burst into the console scene just when the ageing PS2 was on it’s last legs. Many a jaws were left hanging after seeing what Sony Santa Monica could do with technology of 1980’s vintage. While the original God of War (GOW) showed what the PS2 was still capable of, God of War 2 (GOW2) pushed the bar even further in terms of visuals, presentation and the sheer experience of Kratos with his twin blades of chaos. No surprise that gamers worldwide were dizzy with anticipation ever since the next-generation PS3 hit the shelves. A cliffhanger ending for GOW2 all but confirmed that the next game in the series will show up on the advanced PS3 hardware. Possibilities were endless. Would the wizards at Sony Santa Monica (SSM) weave an even more spectacular spectacle again?
Creative Assembly’s Total War series has reserved a special place in the hearts of RTS aficionados across the world. Empire: Total War (ETW), the latest in the series till now, was breathtaking in its scope. No wonder that it is on the must-play list of all RTS gamers. Maybe that is what prompted Creative Assembly to go for a sort of stand-alone expansion in form of Napoleon: Total War (NTW) instead of a full-fledged new game in the Total War series. So instead of a free-flowing game style that most Total War fanatics would be accustomed to, you will instead be stepping into the shoes Napoleon Bonaparte.
Veterans of ETW will feel immediately at ease with NTW as they happen to share the same code. There have been tweaks and new features being added into the game so gamers hopefully should be able to see some of the niggles from ETW being addressed in NTW. So at the end of the day, you still have the good old turn-based game which transforms into a real-time war game when the need arises. The only thing different would be that you would be following the exploits of Napoleon over a course of four campaigns, namely, Egyptian, Italian, European and the infamous Waterloo.
Wrapping up the adventure of Ezio that he set upon in Assassin’s Creed II, Bonfire of the Vanities is the second DLC for the game, which also happens to be the missing 13th chapter in the game. A corruption in the memory sequence meant that you jumped straight from chapter 11 to chapter 13 in the game. The two missing chapters were provided as DLC’s by Ubisoft, costing 320 MS points each. Battle of Forli (BOF) made up for chapter 12 and now Bonfire of the Vanities (BOTV) completes all the missing chapters.
Ever since the concept of Downloadable Content (DLC) gained popularity within the gaming scene, we have been offered everything as a DLC in games; right from new islands (Burnout), brand new single player campaigns (GTA IV) to new multiplayer maps (COD4, COD:WaW, BF:BC) and even something as inane as horse armor (Oblivion)! Infact, now it is assumed that any new game will eventually have a DLC for it.
Anything that would extend the life of a good game is always welcome but if a couple of chapters in-game are dropped in order to be sold to us later on, then that raises certain doubts in mind. Battle for Forli, the first DLC for the brilliantly made Assassins Creed II manages to raise a few doubts of its own. Fans of the series will love the fact that Ubisoft is releasing two additional chapter (the second DLC sometime in February) missing from the main campaign, which purportedly would have delayed the game. Leaving the questions aside for a while, let’s see what the DLC has to offer.
After being in development for close to 15 long years, Avatar, the movie finally saw the light of the day a couple of weeks back. After having smashed all box-office records with Titanic, Avatar happens to be James Cameron’s next movie which all but guaranteed that the hype-wagon will steam-in, full blast. As it goes for any new high-profile Hollywood release nowadays, it is almost mandatory to have a video-game tie-in and so did Avatar, except that, this time around, the game was released earlier than the movie hit the theaters. Did letting gamers scour the make-believe world of Pandora on their PCs and consoles actually work in favor of the movie by generating an even greater buzz? Or the decision to craft a parallel story-line rather than following the one in the movie resulted in Avatar, the game falling flat on its face? Let’s find out.
You have to hand it to those guys over at Bioware. Whether its intentional or not on their part, the times at which a player is presented a particularly dicey scene right after jumping into one of the developer’s games at the very first chance they get can either be highly arousing or terribly underwhelming until enough hours have sunken. For me, it was pretty amusing right from the get go when I chose to play it safe as a Male Warrior. While walking into a kitchen where my soon-to-be-possessed pup was found stirring up a bit of conflict with the local Nanny, a gang of rats had ambushed us in the pantry. Rats! You can’t imagine how underpowered we were for this battle, even if it was a mere 1/10th of an entire nanosecond. Regardless, we took those grimfaced bastards back to the Maker. One of my party members takes the time to reflect on the situation through a dialogue tree, while looking absolutely smeared in rats blood. Clearly, this was no ordinary encounter. This was goddamn war.
Right, so maybe it wasn’t completely intentional on their parts, but I couldn’t help laugh. For all the grandiose I’ve witnessed through their trailers of epic tease and those previews of journalistic gloat, it was clear that Dragon Age: Origins (a role-playing game that’s been in the making for some time) had some hefty +2 DEX boots to fill in. Returning to their roots, Bioware once again proves that it knows how to work the fantasy realm, and that some fancy-schmancy Dungeons & Dragons ruleset wasn’t going to make or break it for anyone’s who come to love the Baldur’s Gate series. But how does such an experience fair on the mighty world of console gaming?
It was a cold winter in New York and I was one of the unlucky few that had to go to work. It had been snowing all morning, and by 2 PM, we had 12 inches of snow. Business was done, and my co-worker and I were sent home. Getting home was not a problem for me since I lived a few blocks away, but my buddy Andrei was totally screwed. So as a gesture of concern I invited the guy over for a cup of coffee. By the evening, the roads had cleared and buses resumed service. Andrei went home but forgot his goodie bag, and out of no fault of my own, I was compelled to open the plastic bag only to come upon something which would change me forever. Andrei had forgotten his very new and very precious copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I popped that bad boy in and that was it, my first sandbox-style Action-Adventure.
Being a true metal-head and a gamer, I always felt that video games need more metal, which is probably why I loved Quake II – one of my favorite tracks till this day is “Quad Machine” by Sonic Mayhem. Although Vice City did have ‘V-Rock’ and those splendid tracks by Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth, it kinda left me craving for more. “Couldn’t they have more Metal,” I would ask myself. And then after all that time, here is Brütal Legend!