Jackreyes' Gaming Blog

So, I’m really looking forward to this game. The first Uncharted was a very good game and had superb graphics. The sequel has nothing to do with the first game, its a whole new story. But the greatest thing to look forward to is probably the multiplayer. There’s not much released yet, but we know that it’ll have a capture the flag and team deathmatch modus. The game will also contain a co-op modus up to four players. If you look at the screens you can see they implemented the climbing into the multiplayer, this could be something awesome!

Check back for more news! (upcoming post: review of SOCOM: Confrontation)

-Svenn

This week has been pretty poor article-wise, but nonetheless, here is our Weekly Roundup.

This week:

• Svenn Reviewed Frets on Fire, the freeware PC Guitar Hero-like game. See here.
• I wrote an article about games to look forward to in the coming days (and months). See here.

Ok, so it really was a bad week, but next week will be better (I hope).

~Jackreyes

So, this weekend I (re)discovered a great game: Frets On Fire. It’s a game based on Guitar Hero, Rock Band and other games like that. It let’s you play guitar with your keyboard, so no expensive guitar controller needed!

FoFix using the Rock Band 2 theme

Gameplay + controls: It’s a real guitar hero clone: You have 5 colored frets and one ‘pick’ or strum bar. You hold the frets (F1-5) and hit the’ strum bar’ (enter) at the rhythm of the music. Yes, just like in Guitar Hero. The original Frets On fire doesn’t have a career option, you can  play a song and try to beat your highscore and that’s pretty much it. However in FoFix (Frets On Fire X) you DO have a career option with different songs and objectives to unlock different tiers. The only downside is: you have to set up the career yourself by adding some code to certain files. It’s not hard, but the casual gamer wont be bothered to do this. The controls work very well except if you have a keyboard with certain key combo’s turned off. Some manufacturers do this, but I have really no idea why…

When  the Rock Band theme is used with FoFix you can also play the drums and bass. I’m not sure if you can sing, because I haven’t tested it myself.

FoF has 3 songs installed. On the frets on fire fan forum you have a HUGE database with songs, even the original guitar hero and rock band songs. You download them and copy them to your songs folder and you’re ready to rock! Note: These songs are all created by fans of the game, normal gamers like you and I, so these are not official. Yes, some are real crap.

The original Frets On Fire

Graphics: The graphics in FoF aren’t pretty good as you see above. In the mods however they’re awesome. The graphics look exactly the same as in the original games. There’s only one thing to mention: you can’t have movable backgrounds, so it’s just a picture. It doesn’t irritate me but it takes away a bit of the ‘Guitar hero atmosphere’.

Frets On Fire X with the Guitar Hero Theme

Music and sound: Can’t be better… It’s a music game after all.

My conclusion: don’t try FoF. Just immediatly download the modded version (FoFix) and install the guitar hero or rock band theme. Your expierence will be ten times better and you get better graphics and a career option. I know, there are still minor bugs in those versions but the coders update it once in a while. It’s all done by the community so they really care about what you think and what you like to have added.

Gameplay: 9/10 (depends on which song you play)

Controls: 7/10 (Drum is hard with a keyboard, some combo’s dont work, but that’s probably my keyboard)

Graphics: 9/10 (For the modded version, obviously)

Music and Sound: 10/10 (It’s a music game after all)

Overall: 90%

-Svenn

Here is our Weekly Roundup.

This week:

• The blog is up and running again. Great news, obviously.
• Svenn and I took a challenge, to write a review about a couple of old freeware games. This resulted in Svenn reviewing Beneath a Steel Sky and me reviewing The Lure of the Temptress. 
• New PS3 Rock Band Instruments.
• Stalin vs. Martians Interview.
• Assassin’s Creed 2 Information.
• Pandora Article.

Happy Easter all.

~Jackreyes

Ok, I’m a bit late to post about this seeing as I believe they’ve stopped taking pre-orders on the first batch of consoles now, but I for one placed my order.

It should look a little like that, but I believe they’ve changed the design a bit through various stages of development.

This is the Pandora, in case you haven’t already heard about them. They are open source consoles running a Linux operating system. Although it probably won’t have any/many closed source games made specifically for it, it does have the possibility of porting a lot of games and applications that are designed for Linux computers. It can also emulate a lot of older consoles, including the PS1 (PSX) and SNES.

It has a Touch Screen,  Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a USB port, a 43 button QWERTY keyboard, 2 SDHC slots and 10+ hours of battery life. It is supposedly more powerful than the PSP and DS and their site, say it is powerful enough to run Quake3.

Obviously though, it doesn’t sound hugely impressive so far due to the lack of console specific games, however, this is not just a game console, it is more of a netbook really. Due to its Linux OS, it can run many applications including Firefox, a Mail application and Spreadsheets. But it is still hugely portable, more-so than a netbook. It is actually roughly the size of the original DS.

Video:
 

I will hopefully make more posts about the Pandora when I get mine.

~Jack

I found some information about Assassin’s Creed 2 on a dutch gaming website http://www.psfocus.nl.

• There will be a lot of new weapons: an axe, a hammer, a javelin, two types of swords and two types of small swords.
• You’ll be able to swim.
• The Da Vinci workshop will be in the game.
• The game will offer you different locations: Saint Marks Basilica, The Grand Canal, The Little Canal and the Rialto Bridge.
• The game will start in 1476.
• The Landscape of Tuscany will be one of the settings.
• You take control over Ezio Auditore de Firenze.
• The game will feature Machiavelli, Caterina Sofrza and Lorenzo de Medici.
• You’ll be able to steal enemies’ weapons and use them against them.
• There will be 16 types of missions, unlike in the first game where there were only five or six.
• Collecting special items like flags will now unlock special things in-game that are worth it. (so says Ubisoft)
• There will be a day and night cycle.
• There are 240 people working on this project.

Rumours are spreading on the internet saying you’ll be able to fly (some sort of gliding) but this is not yet confirmed by Ubisoft!

-Svenn

You may or may not have heard of the upcoming game Stalin vs Martians. If not, then it is described as an action RTS, involving Russian dictator  Stalin and… Martians. Sounds weird enough to be brilliant, doesn’t it? Here is the trailer:

and after seeing that you can safely say… It also looks weird, whether that is a good thing or not, I’m not sure yet.
Well, Sven and I had the idea to ask the people behind it a few questions. Here is how it went:

1. What inspired you to make Stalin vs Martians?

Hundreds of identical World War II strategy games, pseudo-Russian stereotypical stuff popular in the “Western countries” (as we call them), like faux cyrillic and bear’n'vodka shit. And, most of all, the fact that we had the opportunity and resources to actually produce the game THAT weird. We just couldn’t miss the chance.

2. Is your game as humorous as the title would have us believe?

With a title like that, who really cares?

3. Would you compare your game to any other on the market?

I think that Stalin looks a little bit like Mario. So we can compare the game to Super Mario Galaxy.

By the way, our game sometimes plays almost like a platformer, so it makes some sense!

4. What sort of gameplay modes will there be? (i.e. Multiplayer? Skirmish? Campaign?)

Campaign only. No one needs multiplayer in a game named, well, Stalin vs. Martians. Just think for a moment. Stalin. Versus. Martians. Multiplayer? Boy, you must be kidding!

5. If it has a campaign mode, would it revolve around a storyline?

Sure. Very stupid storyline. Interrupted by insane music videos.

6. Are there any interesting or unique gameplay features you’d like to tell us about?

The last game to implement REALLY unique gameplay features was, i believe, killer7. We don’t want to play the usual bad PR games anymore, so the answer is no, nothing unique. You’ve seen it all before. Action-packed RTS? Not really unique. Power-ups, bright shiny coins? Check out any Mario/Sonic game. Same old shit.

7. And finally, when can we expect to see your game released?

April 20, digital download for North America and Europe. Available through the main digital distributors like Steam and GamersGate. Published by the Mezmer Games label of Paradox Interactive.

So, there you have it. It could be very good, or it could be not so good.

You can probably expect a review sometime after the 20th of April, assuming the price isn’t too high.

~ Jack and Svenn

With Rock Band 2 being released EA saw a good opportunity to launch a couple of new instruments. The question is: are they really worth buying? I’ve did some research and came up with this..

Stratocaster-guitar

There’s nothing new to the guitar except for the faceplate and a stronger ’strum-bar’. The Guitar Hero-model is still the best guitar, and also compatible with Rock Band 2.
Price: €70~ $95~ £65

Drum-kit

This is something worth to buy. It’s a brand new kit with a stronger pedal due to the metal, it’s finally wireless and the new drumpads make it possible to hear the track you’re playing  (Now you don’t need to put towels on the drumpads to reduce the noise). You can also expand your kit with extra cymbals.
Price:  €90~ $120~ £80  Cymbals: €40~ $55~ £35

Ion Premium Drum-kit

This kit is for the real music lovers. It’s compatible with a PC and you can use it as a standalone electrical drum-kit. Another strength is that every drumpad and cymbal can be adjusted in height to your liking.
Price: €300~ $400~ £270 (without shipping fees)

-Svenn

As I said in my last post, Sven and I decided to review 2 of 3 freeware games we happened upon, so… here we go.

The Lure of the Temptress was a point and click game for the PC, made by Revolution Games and released in 1992. Before I was born as it happens.

The game starts out with a cutscreen: The story takes place in a fantasy land

where you play as a civilian named Diermot. The King orders you to join the army and fight off a rebelling force led by a sorceress called Selena. You ride out to fight however, this is no normal rebellion, instead of people, there are evil ‘Skorl’ fighters. All of the King’s army are killed except you, you are taken to a prison where you awake and the game starts. You must first escape the prison and find out what you can and ultimately, save the kingdom. Sound a bit too clichéd? Well, in 1992, it was probably a reasonably new idea.

Not surprisingly, this game plays like a lot of other Point and Click genre games from the era. The storyline is fairly unoriginal as I already said. As for the actual gameplay though, a lot of the things you have to do on the game require logic, or just persistence. For example, to free your sidekick-to-be –Ratpouch- you need to find the knife on top of a barrel then cut the bonds, ok, that was a bad example seeing as its easy to see however, there are some more challenging tasks. Once you do have Ratpouch as your sidekick, you can tell him to do many complicated tasks. The game though, just screams generic point and click at me, but who doesn’t like the odd point and click game?

Controls:

What can I say? The clue is in the genre, you point, and you click. The default action for left-clicking is shown in the top left of the screen, for different actions you must right click and select an option.

Graphics:

Well, you have to remember, this game was released 17 years ago. The graphics are bound to be outdated, however, I must admit, I’ve seen similar graphics on bad DS games, and good GBA games. They were probably pretty impressive for the time. Personally, I really like the presentation of the game, it just reminds me of past games. Its not like you can’t see what is happening, they are reasonable, but its no Crysis, obviously.

Overall:

I know I keep saying it, but you have to remember, 1992. Long time ago. Besides, now its free, what have you got to lose in trying it? About 12mb bandwidth, but I’m sure you can cope with that loss if you don’t like the game. I do like the game and I imagine I will open it up again every so often and try to complete this tricky, logic-requiring game.

Gameplay: 8/10 – Classic point and click.
Controls: 7/10 – The right clicking can be a little hit and miss, maybe thats just me.
Graphics: 6/10 – Like I said, reminiscent of a GBA game.
Overall: 72% – Its free.

~Jackreyes

When Jack came up with this I was pretty excited. You can’t reject a free downloadable game, even if it’s old. After downloading the game and reading the 15 page manual (the game itself is +/- 70MB) I was ready to play.

When you start up the game, you see a comic-book stylish ‘cut scene’ explaining the story. Surprisingly, the story seems strong and revolutionary (especially for a game that’s released in ‘94). It goes like this: you’re Robert Foster and as a young boy you were discovered and raised by a weird tribe in Australia. The old wise man from your tribe predicts evil is coming towards their village. As you can guess, the wise man was right and you get kidnapped by some special organisation. You manage to escape but you’re stuck in some kind of super controlled and supervised city, Union City, and you want to get to ground level. And the worst thing is.. you’re on the highest point in the city. (Nobody could’ve guessed that.)

The whole game is about getting to ground level. Only people with high LINC statuses (a system that controls access to buildings, bank transfers, ..)  can get to ground level. If you have a low status, your stuck on the highest levels in the city and have to do the dirtiest jobs.

Gameplay: It’s like every point-and click adventure game. You click on items, combine items and talk to a lot of people for finding that special piece of information. The dialogues are filled with humour (well, it probably was funny back then) and not boring at all. You can skip every dialogue by clicking and the best thing of all, you don’t have to read everything. Yes, there’s voice-acting in the game, and I think it’s great! The lip-sync doesn’t look that good, but we can’t be too critical, the game’s 15 years old. So the whole game is clicking and being logic. If someone wants to go on a holiday, you buy tickets at a travel agency and trade it for some valuable information. You can die at certain points in the game but you’ll never expierence a dead end. You just get stuck until you find the right items or talk with the right people.

Controls: Just click it! The cursor switches between different icons for actions or walking. With right clicking you can combine items or use something.

Graphics: With every next-gen console having a resolution of 720p or higher the graphics are a bit disappointing, they’re not even good for their time. Because the game was very big the programmers had to reduce the animations and graphics and that’s a pitty. The game is built on the same ‘engine’ as Jack’s game (Lure of Temptress) but is four times as big, that’s the reason why the graphics are blurry and the animations are choppy.

Music and sound: The music is horrible in my opinion. On the other hand the voice acting is great. A dialogue with sound is way more interesting than just reading some text.

Overall: Everyone who likes old school gaming should try this. It’s a great game to play when you’re bored or when you have 20 minutes spare time and you don’t know what to do. The biggest weaknesses are the graphics and the bad animations.

Graphics :  5/10

Music and sound:  7/10 (due to the voice acting)

Gameplay:  8/10

Controls:  6/10 (I don’t like clicking, but the controls do their thing)

Overall: 70%

-Svenn