Bit of a slump there, I hadn't been playing anything for a while. In recent times, I've caught up a bit though.
Recently, I've finished Fable: The Lost Chapters. I'd review it, but the fact that has already been done sort of reins me in.
Almost done with Gun, loosely billed as 'GTA in the Wild West'. Story and voice acting's pretty great - only the side missions are a bit too repetitive to really bother with, so I tend to focus only on the main storyline. Has some really cool parts, especially the horseback scenes.
Been having a go at Thief: Deadly Shadows, and I'm quite gratified to find that I don't suck as much as I did the last time I played it. The fact that it was on the Xbox then and the PC now might have something to do it, but I'm attributing the bulk of it to my evolution into a total ninja. Story so far is pretty good, except the missions get to be a bit too similar - "go into this place and steal this item." Yeah, I get it, Garrett's a master thief - there's not going to be all that much variety in the broad nature of his occupation (and I should be thankful they're not having me killing the undead just yet), but I'm hoping they break it up just a bit now and then. So far, the atmosphere has been great - one of the high points was eavesdropping on a conversation with another thug pretending to be you to secure a job, and the employer being a bit puzzled by his...lack of refinement. And as you progress through the mission, you pick up bits of info about the people in the place that you're in, revealing elaborate backstories - all very cool. Some of the accents are BEYOND campy though. Hope I get to finishing it this time.
In other news, played Bioshock on a fucking 55 inch TV with 5.1 surround sound at night and I've got to say, the experience was brilliant. I didn't feel as clumsy as I thought I would playing with a gamepad, and plasmid-weapon combos are second nature now. Sometimes it's a bit tricky switching between plasmids and ammo types to counter changing threats (like Electro Bolt to electrocute the water an enemy is standing in to totally fry then and then quickly to Telekinesis to block a grenade another guy has chucked and throw it back their way. Anyway, so far things are going well. Fantastic art direction, brilliant water effects, somewhat spotty AI (but forgivable) and loads of information passed on through conversations and audio logs. Sweet. I hear it's a short game, though. Let's see how much longer I've got left.
Otherwise, I might get Halo 3 in some time, but since the single-player on that is supposed to be underwhelming, I'm not all that psyched about it.
On my end Ballistic Weapons for UT2k4 is a great amount of fun. The new weapons (including uber-powerful Miniguns, Blades, Railgun, Flamethrower different shotguns and assault rifles) look great and have terrific firing effects and can have user-defined firing rates. Stuff like blood stains across the visor in close quarter scrambles looks great. The alt fires can also get pretty nifty, like setting up a stationary turret for the minigun.
Whoa, haven't seen this happen in a very long time but playing Ballistic Weapons UT2k4 made my graphics card black out in agony. Was playing Team DM with 8 players on a huge and detailed mesh-heavy map (DM-Injector). Add to that a number of close fire-fights with lots of visual FX the original game never had, and KABLAMMO! I got thrown to the desktop with a corrupted 8-bit color display.
A restart however showed that this was only a temporary setback and no long-term damage appears to have been perpetrated.
Been going through completely opposite vibes right now!
On one hand I am playing Broken Sword : Shadow of the Templars, which is the first game in the much acclaimed series and apart from two avoidable restart from beginning bugs is quite a charming , good old point and click game. Also played The Dig recently , which in my opinion, is quite over hyped and contains some insanely illogical puzzles.
On the other side, hold your breath, I played and saw a kid mow through Halo 3 on a gigantic [ i don't know exact inches , but it's i think the biggest you can accommodate in a room of a homo sapiens house] HD plasma screen , with full high def connection; and I must say it has to be one of the best gaming experiences i've ever had [ apart from the game pad though, I think Microsoft knows that the day they bring keyboard and mouse to Xbox ; it's the end of PC gaming! ]
What I watched of the single player campaign is unbelievably better than Halo [ haven't played 2 ], and seems like they really were very self conscious while designing the environments ; because the variety here rivals some of the best PC shooters I have played. Weapons and sounds were extra ordinary and all the graphical and technical wizardry is obviously in the superlatives. But the basic gameplay and the pure adrenaline rush of it is quite mind boggling.
Kid also had some ultra-golden-supergeek edition or something [ around 150 bucks, which sent the shivers down my spine] which came with this extra discs with behind the scene material and books and a full size Master chief head gear, which he was actually wearing while playing!! And the way he played the multi player [which apart from the tech awesomeness I always find the same in all games]literally made me feel good I was not his age and that video games wizardry is a side activity and not to be taken seriously! Jeez! They have introduced some new thing called The Forge, where you can custom design a level from a scratch and can do pretty much anything you can think of with it.
SO this kid and his firang pals designed a level where you go back and forth from a waterfall for capture the flag or something like that and frag grenades keep spawning on around it in the air and explode on the ground and the way they were playing back and forth around this premises just blew me away! Plus you can also shoot a movie of your play and see it from say a gazillion angles or zooms or perspectives.
It was such a spoiled and over indulgent experience; I think I need to keep playing my cute point and clicks lest i go berserk and sideline the studies!
Damn cool, Nilay. I missed the second entry too. Though I've heard mixed reviews about the single-player portion, I wouldn't mind giving it a go soon. And BS is one of my favourite point and clicks!
Installed The Neverhood and am still quite charmed by the total oldschool feel thanks to everything being in claymation. Must have been painstaking as hell to make this game, too bad it was so underappreciated.
Playing Farcry again, this time leaving the bells and whistles on (thanks to the Core2 Duo and 8600GT at work) - still quite frustrating if you approach it like a regular shooter, but if you're willing to crawl on your stomach in the foliage for considerable stretches, waiting till you account for all targets in your binoculars/radar before you chuck a grenade in and begin picking them off commando style, there's few better ways to feel like an ultimate badass. Unless you're my cousin, who went as far as to chuck rocks to lure solitary guards away from the others, and then knifed them in the back. Fucking Rambo!
Played a bit of this horror game called Penumbra Overture (episode 1). Introduction and atmosphere is promising, but the frame rate outdoors in the blizzard at the start of the game is unforgivable. Especially compared to the fluid play indoors right before. If I can get that to run decently, I'll give the rest of it a chance.
Played some Titan Quest online, and scored some sweet loot.
Also...played the Unreal Tournament 3 beta demo and HOLY SHIT! Yeah, they haven't fixed what wasn't broken and basically just prettied up some textures, shaders and lighting effects from the look of things. The character design doesn't look as varied and cool as the guys from UT2004, but I'm guessing that's because it's a demo. What blew me away the most was the Vehicle CTF and especially the addition of the Hoverboard. I can see this looking awesomely cool during tight LAN sessions. Tony Hawk Apocalypse! I started out getting my ass kicked at Experienced difficulty and got furious for a while before I remembered that it was because I didn't know the maps for shit and so once I got familiar with the weapon locations, I was back to unloading that ol' whoop-ass. Oh man, I've missed this. And by the way, that Dark Walker vehicle on the Heat Ray map is LUMBERING DEATH! And feels very cool to control, just what I'd expect to feel if I were in a huge-ass strider. Got a decent PC rig, check this out! This is as much fun as you'll have playing with yourself.
chaxster wrote: Playing Farcry...my cousin, who went as far as to chuck rocks to lure solitary guards away from the others, and then knifed them in the back. Fucking Rambo!
Holy shit. Your cousin must be God. I tried that once in Quake, using only the melee, and got only a few levels in. Fiends and Shamblers do you in. In Quake 2 it's actually easier since the idiots do the whole "duck" thing and you can keep letting them have it with the blaster till they keel over
Also...played the Unreal Tournament 3 beta demo...Got a decent PC rig, check this out! This is as much fun as you'll have playing with yourself.
I tried loading the demo and every time it reached the menu screen, the monitor just blacked out as though my card just gave up. Let's check if a driver update solves things because I have had reports of people being able to play, albeit in the most abysmal way, with even an FX5200.
My copy of Sin Ep1: Emergence wasn't installing, so I copied a friend's pre-installed version from his portable HDD. I suspect this one has been user-modded. Why, you ask? Because of THIS:
Yeah, I imagine this is how a lot of gamers might have narrowed their perception of Elixis down to anyway. It's sort of funny. Dunno if this is against Photobucket regulations, but fuck it.
Actually, it's you flat out on an operation table somewhere, and she's doing the usual villain trash talk. Somebody's obviously replaced her skin texture.
Played a few hours, got stuck now (think it's a minor bug) but I suspect I'm near the end. Review can happen soon. Otherwise, played Timeshift for a bit - not really that fun yet - I have to start getting used to the suit's timeshifting abilities before really getting to the meat of it, I guess. Also had some time with Spider Man - Friend or Foe. Lots of fun, old-school campy superhero goodness make this a very easy, intuitive beat-em-up to play. More soon.
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