Jackreyes' Gaming Blog

This year’s E3 happened just a week or so ago, and there were a lot of announcements by a lot of people as usual.
This is a roundup of the main announcements:
Microsoft:

‘Project Natal’ – A motion sensing camera for the Xbox 360.

Halo 3: ODST

Halo Reach

Metal Gear Solid: Rising – Will now also be available on Xbox 360 when released.

Xbox 360 Games on Demand – The ability to download full games onto your hard drive.

Sony:

PSP Go! – Probably the one thing everyone knew about before E3. It will feature 16GB onboard memory and no UMD drive. This means all digital downloads for the PSP in the future.

PS3 Motion Controller – Yup, another motion controlling announcement.

Resident Evil Portable

God of War 3 – To be released… March 2010. just 9 months to go.

MAG (Massive Action Game) – Bad name, yes. True name, also yes. This (FPS) game will feature 256 players online at a time. Sounds… massive.

Nintendo:

Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Rather than Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo’s biggest announcement seemed to be software in the form of a sequel to the very sucessful game, Super Mario Galaxy.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii – Continuing the Mario theme (surprise, surprise), Nintendo also announced a new 2D Mario game for the Wii with multiplayer aspects.

Metroid: Other M – Not continuing the Prime series, a new Metroid game for the Wii from Nintendo.

Wii Vitality – This was the only peripheral/hardware announced by Nintendo. And they weren’t too keen on sharing the details. Seems strange to me, and they’ve said its targeted at the people who still refuse to become gamers…

Its not that I just haven’t included it, there really wasn’t much announced for the DS, other than Golden Sun.

Best of the rest:

EA:

FIFA 10 -  Whilst it was to be expected, the graphics seem to be sublime. I will definitely be looking into getting it.

Scribblenauts – DS – This was my highlight of the convention, it seems to be an almost perfect game from what I’ve seen. You need to watch videos to see the extent of the brilliance of this game!

Ubisoft:

Splinter Cell Conviction – Looking like it will be a great game.

Valve:

Left 4 Dead 2 - Who didn’t enjoy L4D? Well, its already causing quite a controversy because fans think that this should be released either as DLC for L4D, or an expansion.

Well, thats about it really. I might have to write an individual article for Scribblenauts soon, but for now, I think I’m done reading and writing about E3.

~Jackreyes

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

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

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

Earlier, well… just now, I found this: http://www.gog.com/en/search/sort/price/000

You can’t really say no to free games, sure they’re old, but the site is ‘Good Old Games’ so, it was to be expected. Anyway, firstly, I’d like to thank the site for offering free games -which are admittedly freeware games, but still-, and I hope they sell a lot of other classic games.

So Sven and I decided to take the challenge of playing, and reviewing – in 200 words or more – one of the three games each. Sven chose ‘Beneath a Steel Sky’ and I chose ‘Lure of the Temptress’. It should be interesting to see how the games turn out, and we welcome your comments on the third game, or any other game for that matter.

~Jackreyes

N for the PC is a flash game released in March 2004. So why am I reviewing it?

The answer is because N+, a sort of sequel to the game is coming to the DS and PSP shortly and it has already been released on the Xbox Live Arcade.

N is a game in which you are a ninja and the aim is to complete the level in the time given. You usually have to get a key for the door and then go through the door to complete the level whilst collecting Yellow squares on your way each giving you plus 1 second to complete the level in and avoiding mines, falling from great heights and things that look like they want you dead.

Screenshot:

Controls:

Left and Right arrows to move and Shift to jump. Nothing special. Average controls, but easy to use and work well with the game.

Graphics:

They’re… nothing special, in fact they’re not that good on the flash version and I imagine they’ll be pretty much the same on the PSP and DS, but the Xbox graphics are supposed to be next-gen.

Download Link:

http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n_downloads.html

Ratings:

Gameplay: 9/10 – Very enjoyable.

Graphics: 6/10 – Below Par, but you can’t expect too much for a free flash game. Though they do work with the game.

Controls: 8/10 – Work well enough, nothing fancy, nothing bad.

Overall: 7/10

76%

As with all new PC games Halo 2 comes with hefty specs. Not glasses, requirements that your computer needs to meet to run this game.

It is a Windows Vista  exclusive title that requires at least 1gb of RAM and at least 7gb free hard drive space.

Now onto the actual game.

The graphics… Amazing!

They could hardly be better. Well maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but some of the best graphics I’ve seen in a while.

Gameplay… Brilliant!

You’ve got to love sniping the bad guys in the centre of the forehead. The storyline is reasonable and the campaign is pretty short. But it is still gripping. Great stuff Bungie.

Controls… Fantastic!

Its not too hard to remember the controls for keyboard/mouse and they work great. Though it would probably be even easier / better with a 360 Controller for windows PC’s.

Online… OMG!

This is the section I really wanted to write. The online is so fun, even without a Windows LIVE Gold account you can still play online, you only need a free (silver) account. Capture the Flag has to be the most engaging, fun online game concept ever, and the Halo series puts it to excellent use! (as does Team Fortress 2, review coming soon) There are also other online modes which are just as fun as Capture the Flag. Sniping bad guys in the campaign may be fun but sniping another guy online… this just takes fun to a new level!

Final Scores

Gameplay: 9/10

Graphics: 9/10

Controls: 9/10

Online: 10/10

Overall:

10/10

97%

Jack

Crysis was the first thing in mind when I got a new computer. It’s a great game, but sadly has some big flaws..

The game takes place in year 2020 where a group of American researchers found an amazing discovery. Though, they are taken captive in the Philippine Sea by North Koreans. You, Jake Dunn (Codename Nomad) are equipped with a special suit that can adapt into any situation while on a mission to rescue the researchers. But soon, a war starts against the North Koreans. As you progress through the story, you discover extraterrestrial life and you must defeat them. Throughout the game, you go through many hostile environments, like an alien spacecraft in zero gravity, the Korean jungles, the ice sphere (a frozen version of the jungle), and much more. There are 8 guns in single player mode, and more in multi player. This is what I think of the game:

Graphics: 8/10

The graphics are amazing in this game, and it looks like someone just put the jungles, and everywhere else in a little CD. Problem is, to see those graphics, you need a super powerful computer. It even lags on a 5.9 grade PC, so I recommend playing on Medium graphics. In other words, it’s almost impossible to play on very high graphics without mass frame lag.

Sounds: 7/10

Sound effects were realistic. Every gunshot, every explosion made it feel like I’m in the action. The music was rather boring (most of it is silence with random sounds to make it a little scary, and a couple sound like the stuff you’d find in those war movies like Saving Private Ryan), which gave me the low rating. The dialog is very original, and some of it is a bit humorous.

Gameplay: 9/10

The game is very interactive, as you can pick up almost every object lying around (I like to throw keyboards at Koreans). The AI is smart, and even walking through the grass and making the slightest noise can make the enemies notice you. What adds to the game is the nanosuit. You can use armor mode (the default mode), which uses suit energy as a substitution for health; You have speed mode, which makes you walk faster, and sprint faster at the cost of suit energy; strength mode, which reduces gun recoil, makes you jump higher, and throw stuff further; and cloak mode, which makes you invisible at the cost of energy. The game has a bit of replay value due to how much you can do to the environment, and do objectives in different ways. Some levels have major bugs, which can be frustrating (It took me 6 times to complete a section of a level since the enemies froze and wouldn’t die), and the game is a little shorter than expected (Likely because I am used to 40 hour RPGs). Luckily, it’s going to be a trilogy. There are many attachments to put on your weapons to make them stronger and more accurate than they are. The multiplayer is very good, and I am spending a lot of time on it. It uses an objective style format requiring you to capture objective points to make weapons of mass destruction.

Controls: 9/10

The controls are 10 since this is my first FPS on PC. But I loved the controls. They are the default of most shooters. F to interact with things, WASD format, point and click shooting, and that simple stuff. Only problem is that they never implemented a function to hold your breath. Sometimes you need to snipe enemies in the game.

Overall, this game was very good, and I am hoping that you pick this game up, because it is PC shooter of the year, and it’s better than Halo.

Sakuramaxx.