Finished the ultra-cinematic Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It was a blast throughout. Lot of complaints about its short length, but when you consider that there's absolutely NO filler, that's not such a bad thing. Even the slow parts in the brilliant sniper level ooze atmosphere. Woof. Checkpoint system is a bit irritating though - I want my saves. The curses of multiplatform games. Otherwise, top class. They've taken a few steps forward in a few areas, some bold, some very smooth. Review in a while, I guess.

Rahul Chacko wrote:
Checkpoint system is a bit irritating though - I want my saves. The curses of multiplatform games.
I suspect checkpoints are more the function of shortness of length rather than being multi-platform. Even consoles have memory slots y'know.

Getting back to the subject of HL2...well, I can in theory get back to the speedboat I left a couple of level loads back, but...with all the armored turrets constantly firing rockets and machine-gun fire (and add the fact that you have a stamina meter that runs out if you sprint) there's no practical way I can reach it and then backtrack without losing all health. Grr.

ravenus wrote:
I suspect checkpoints are more the function of shortness of length rather than being multi-platform. Even consoles have memory slots y'know.

Doubtful. I haven't been able to quicksave in a console game to date. I thought memory slots were just for transferring save games from one machine to another.

My guess is that quicksaving throws stuff like Achievements and Stats on Xbox Live (and whatever the PC equivalent is) out of whack, and since bragging rights have become such a big part of the whole package, it was simpler to do away with it altogether. Playing on Hardened difficulty is going to be painful now.

Played a bit of Kane & Lynch. Looks like there could be some cool scenarios set up, but the story so far really hasn't sucked me in. And control is damn clunky after CoD 4.

Abandoned Kane and Lynch after a few missions and started playing The Witcher instead. Spent around 15-20 hours on it so far and there's plenty to say about it, both bad and good. Think I'll save it for a full review though. Easily one of the best experiences gaming for me this year. Makes me feel a lot better about not being able to play Mass Effect yet.

My HL2 ventures continue...

In the end I had to cheat to get back till where I had left the boat because no way I could get there with any reasonable amount of health. After that it was pretty alright in a linear as a rail-ride vein, although making some of those navigations with the chopper dropping bombs all the while meant I wasn't getting through in one shot. Major motion sickness with all the boating.

But immediately after that was my favorite chapter this far...Ravenholm. You can get through a fair bit of the survival horror-themed chapter using very little ammo because of the huge number of objects lying around that you can use the grav-gun on to batter or blow up or burn or decapitate your enemies. The level design was top-notch; I especially liked that unlike the rest of the game it wasn't trying to rush you from place to place without properly taking in the scenery. And zombies and howlers >>> nondescript soldiers. I was really sorry to get out of that place.

Ravenholm is awesome. That and Nova Prospekt were probably my favourite levels from the game.

Finished the rest of Kane & Lynch - it got pretty fun once I got in the mood for it. The Tokyo nightclub level is great if you handle it right; manages to come off feeling like some 80s action flick. The prison break was also killer. But it's an ugly game - I don't mean visually (though it's pretty weak there too, following CoD 4 and Crysis). It's the subject that's all wart-covered, and not really in a good way. And it all leads to an ending that's, well, bad in a different way than usual endings.

Also tried my hand at Death to Spies, supposed to be an ultra-hard sneaky spy game, got turned off by the lacklustre graphics and animation, and also by the fact that it was pretty intimidating as well. If I'm going to be sneaking around instead of blowing shit up, I want to look as cool as Sam Fisher or Garrett. A quick uninstall followed.

Back to The Witcher. Hell yeah.

Am continuing with Heroes V - at easy difficulty its a bit too much of a cakewalk. But the ramping up from Easy to Normal is quite insane. I'm breezing through the game but am also getting kinda bored. Lessee.

Played the PC port of Guilty Gear X2: Reload, latest in the series of one of the few fighters to stay hand-drawn after the 'three-dee' phenomenon rammed into the genre. To compensate for what was never a shortcoming, they've gone totally over the top, with eye-catching artwork and completely OTT characters.

I haven't seen all yet, but from the ones I have, we've got a chick with an electric guitar for a weapon, another who uses her hair to attack, a third with a nun's headdress, a miniskirt, rollerblades and a yo-yo. Then there's this guy possessed by a demon which keeps manifesting itself during the attacks. The metal soundtrack is a big plus too, and with character names like Slayer, Venom, Testament, Axl Low and Zappa, you get the feeling that being stuck in a car with the developers may not be all that uncomfortable. If they spoke English, that is. Should get a gamepad for this, though. Some screenies:

Played Portal start to finish in one sitting. Probably gets a 5/5 for me, for a whole bunch of reasons. Also tried running around in Team Fortress 2, and while the much-lauded art style is a blast, it obviously isn't enough to keep me in too long when there's no one else to play with over the LAN.

Attn Chackoster:

I was playing through that part in HL2 where one first meets the ant-lions. I drove the buggy up to the hill but could not get it to climb the hill because of the rocks and other obstacles strewn across the path. So I footed it from there on, dodging and shooting the critters till I reached each hub with that pounding gadget that confuses them. I cleared 2 such hubs and saw through a binoculars which showed friendlies across some lake.

QUESTION:
Is it OK for me to be on foot at this point or do I reach another situation where the game tells me to go back across 2 level-loads to get the buggy?

It's cool, you were supposed to ditch the buggy before the antlion bit. Rejoice, you're not far from Nova Prospekt, with some great battles ahead.

Assassin's Creed is happening. The whole 'story within a story' angle is doing nothing for me right now, but the main game is real exciting. Free running all across the city looks absolutely spectacular and though the fights are usually small and contained, the flow is decent. My beef is this: they're trying to come across all poignant and deep, which is alright by me. But make those 5 minute dialog exchanges skippable, goddammit! If you can't do that, you'd better have a world-class writer penning your scipt. And instead of trying to come up with plausible reasons to, say, task the player with finding 20 flags around the city in 3 minutes, just let me SKIP LISTENING TO THE REASON ALTOGETHER! How many variations of "I lost my flags, all in a carefully plotted route from start to finish, each one of them delicately balanced on convenient platforms! Please help!" am I going to have to sit through?!

In all, lots of very cool ideas here and a bit of bad implementation as well, alas. Still, the good parts make it worth the while. Looking forward to finish this all the way.

Oh, and Sam and Max: Season 1 as well. Two episodes down - it's quite fun, and from a developer standpoint, it's smart having a lot of reusable areas and characters.

Finished Assassin's Creed on the PC, which was a great experience overall, despite some very clunky and laborous storytelling, pretty lazy mission design and completely useless saving system. It's definitely one of the most visually impressive games I've seen in terms of character motion and maneuverability. If you want to dislike it, there are several reasons you could, but I'm going to recommend it anyhow.

I started playing Act III of The Witcher after a break of around 5 months and realised I don't know wtf is going on with my quests, so I ended up restarting from the beginning. That's about 30-40 game hours down the drain. Anyway, remembering how I did stuff the last time through helped a lot and I breezed through Act I and most of Act II in two (LONG) sittings. Even the dreaded swamp levels aren't as pissing off this time around. Plus, I'm finding a lot more goodies too - two full meteorite sets already.

Also finally found an emulator for Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, possibly the best fighting game ever made. Had about 4 hours of punching time with an evenly skilled colleague at office, and it was a total blast. You need to play this, and you need a gamepad to do it best. Alternatively, if you have a PS2, you could get that version instead. But for PC users:

Download the emulator here (The CPS3 emulator)
Download the SF3:TS ROM here

Am playing a free online RPG called Dungeon Runners. This one's made by Richard Garriot's company. It has been described as a poor clone of WoW but hey, it's free. As of now, since I haven't played WoW, I'd describe it as a poor man's Titan Quest.