• 29Jun 10

  Metro 2033 review

  Hi all.

  Long time no see, I know. I haven't really been in the mood for writing reviews and I have been playing mainstream games like Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age and Rainbow Six Vegas where there are already 1000s of revievs for these games. But I really enjoyed Metro 2033 so I wrote a review for it.

  I really don't care much for previews and trailers nor did I care much for E3. But 2 games that cought my eye was Fallout 3 New Vegas and Deus Ex 3. Fallout NV looked disappointing – and it really doesn't seem to do anything new that F3 didn't do. I haven't played Alpha Protocol but it seems like that game is terrible and given that I also hated KOTOR 2 it should come as no surprise that New Vegas isn't a game I will wait in line to get on release day. My guess is that it will be another disappointing buggy mess from Obsidian. Deus Ex 3 looked much better and it seems like the guys who are making it really wanted to keep the spirit from the first game and keep the open-ended gameplay. Deus Ex is one of the best games ever made so if they can expand on the first game and avoid the mistakes from Invisible War then we could be looking at a great game. But we also know that with great ambition comes the possibility for great failures so I will wait and see what the reviews say when the game comes out.

  I am currently playing F.E.A.R. 2 and it actually seems like a slightly better game than the first one that I didn't like that much. The level-design is much better and the firefights are still spectacular. So far it looks to be a decent game that isn't scary AT ALL.

  Well take care all of you.

  • Posted Jun 29, 2010 8:17 am GMT
  • Category: Games
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 3Oct 09

  I want to transfer my application for the academy THIS year.

  Just a quick blog update to let everyone know that I have written a review for the game Jedi Academy. It was a fun little game that you will like if you are a Star Wars fan. If you hate Star Wars then stay away from this game because the game itself (without the SW setting) is pretty weak.

  In other news I have also recently tried to play Assasin's Creed and Far Cry 2. I almost completed AC but I had to quit just before the endgame began simply because the game was insanely buggy. Not once during the game could I make a combo-kill no matter how fast I clicked and the counterattack move towards the end of the game wouldn't work either. Altair would just kick the enemy rather than killing them and he would do this 7-8-9 times in a row while 15 would take turns to completely whack him with their swords. This simply must be a bug/glitch in the game since there is no way in hell this could be a feature. So I couldn't complete the game because Altair decided to become a pacifist and not kill others.

  Far Cry 2 isn't a bad game and is a 1000 times better than the first FC that ranks as one of the worst FPS games I have ever played. FC2 does suffer from repetition since you are basically doing the same thing over and over again. The game is also insanely long. I am halfway through the game according to the ingame stats and my playtime says 18 hours and 23 minutes. I like long games like Deus Ex, Thief and Half Life when the game remains interesting through the entire game by giving you new things to do but sadly FC2 doesn't do this. The game looks fantastic and runs really well so I will recommend everyone to pick it up if you like shooters.

  Well, take care all of you!

  • Posted Oct 3, 2009 3:39 am GMT
  • Category: Games
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 28Aug 09

  How much cheese can an RPG contain?

  This is a blog post about role playing games or rather the system that drives an RPG. I have played a little of Gothic III lately but this is not about the game as such, but rather the system that is at the core of any good RPG. Sadly the RPG system of Gothic III is deeply flawed and it got me thinking about cheating and immersion and suspension of disbelief.

  The biggest problem is the stun-lock issue where an opponent can hit you and it stuns you and then he hit again and stuns you and you can't break the cycle before you are dead. Often enemies will be spaced in close proximity to each other and they can gang up on you and then stun-luck you. In G3 you do get XP for completing quests but you will get most of your XP from killing enemies but because of the issue mentioned above, killing baddies and getting XP can be frustrating and this can lead you to trying to exploit the way the AI and combat system in the game works. The best way to do this is to shoot an arrow into a baddie which will cause him and his peers to chase you, and all you need to do is to find a rock or a log and move behind it and then continue to shoot arrows into them because they will not move around the obstacle but will simply stand in front of it and moan. I managed to kill two dragons this way when I was level 10 simply by hiding behind a bridge when they used their fire breaths against me and then shooting arrows at them. I wouldn't stand a chance in a fair fight with them but I needed the XP to progress in the game and hence I needed to kill them but could only do so by cheating.

  There are other games that almost force you to cheat like this by using a strategy that is cheesy to say the least. In World of Warcraft this is known a "mob pulling" that is you try to isolate a single enemy by pulling it towards you and avoid its cohorts that may only stand a few meters away. In Devine Divinity there was a spell called Frost that would freeze the enemy and it was a sure win spell and hence quite cheesy. In Morrowind you could get a spell called Chameleon 100% that made sure baddies simply couldn't hit you no matter what they did. In online games you can corpse camp or do some spawn killing and many consider this to be cheesy. In some strategy games the enemy will attack you the same way each and every time and once you know this, you can simply cheese your way through a mission.

  None of this is strictly speaking "cheating" because you don't use a cheat code to alter the source code of the game but many players would still consider it cheating. In an RPG like Gothic III the problem for me is that using a log to block the enemy pathfinding ability and then killing 15 orcs with 50 arrows this way, completely kills my suspension of disbelief or the immersion of the game. The system and the way it works remind me that I am only playing a game and that I am not really part of another world like immersion can make you feel some times. But some games (like Gothic 2 and 3) can be so hard that it forces the player to cheat by exploiting the system. In other genres exploiting the system may be a minor issue that can be labelled bad game design, but in an RPG I find it to be detrimental to the game. A role playing game lives and dies by its immersion factor and anything that can potentially destroy suspension of disbelief is bad in my book.

  But what do you think? When is something cheating and when is it "cheesing". How much suspension of disbelief must the player be willing to use and when can we simply call it bad game design? I don't claim to have the answers to these questions but I will love to hear what my friends think.

  • Posted Aug 28, 2009 5:07 am GMT
  • Category: Games
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg

See Previous Blog Posts »