Played a good deal of FIFA 09 on the PC. Having taken a long hiatus from football games, I'm unaware as to what the status on the FIFA vs PES battle is. Last I heard, even PES was getting a little complacent...oh well. Anyway the big deal this time around is that they've implemented mouse+keyboard controls - you either have a system where you move the player with the keys and point/pass/shoot with the mouse, or you can set it to move the player with the mouse itself and use the keyboard exclusively for tactics and specials.

Most people online are totally trashing the mouse/keyboard thing as being gimmicky and useless against a good opponent. That may be true, but I've always sucked with just the keyboard controls (never got to play a console version for long enough) and now I find myself somewhat competent. I can control through balls and aim at the goal a lot better this way a lot better this way. While earlier, I used to get beaten or win by slim margins even on Amateur, now I get scores of 8-0 in my favour (also in Amateur) and am considering moving up to Semi-Pro even.

The new 'Be a Pro' mode where you can create a player or choose an existing one and control him for the entire season is interesting, but I don't know how long it'll hold up. I find it a bit hard pulling off tricks in this mode, though.

Downsides - commentary is understandably silly a lot of the time. They say stuff like "Not too many people can score from that distance" after Fabregas tapped it in a few feet from the goal, as well as "Oh, that's one of those calls that could have gone either way" when the striker was a couple of yards too far in. It'd be nice to think that they were intentionally being sarcastic, but I'm not buying it.

The ref is lost half the time. Sometimes he just stops and stares at the ball, which looks mighty funny. The goal gfx/physics is pretty lame - I think there's a patch that replaces them with some realistic goals, so I'm on that. Some of the players look deformed and except for a few notable exceptions, there's usually only a sort of resemblance to the player they're supposed to be be.

Picked up a few games some days back - X-Men: Wolverine - Origins, Sacred 2 and the new Chronicles of Riddick.

Wolverine is probably the most violent game I've played (then again, I haven't played Manhunt and a few other contenders). Stuff like decapitation, impalement and dismemberment become commonplace - soon, you need special acts like seeing an enemy chopped in half or shredded to tiny bits to be impressed again. There's one scene where you leap onto the front of a helicopter, smash through the cockpit glass, yank the pilot out and jam his head into the main rotor. All that happens in the first 10 minutes of the game, so it pretty much sets the scene. The melee system is ace - the only weapons that he has are his claws, so they've done a good job giving you options without cluttering up the system.

Downsides - Control scheme is a little messed up on the keyboard/mouse - it's clear they designed this with a gamepad in mind. Boss battles are WAY too repetitive. I've seen two so far - the Leviathan and the WENDIGO - and they both operate the same way: dodge their rushes and then jump onto their backs and stick it to them. Rinse and repeat some 8 times. Doesn't sound too bad, but I've had to fight each of these guys 3 times in the span of about 3 hours. I'll speculate that boss battles were rushed so that they could release alongside the movie. I've seen a couple of physics bugs, but nothing too glaring. The indoor levels are a little boring; the outdoor jungle levels are way cooler. And finally - well, it's too easy. Like in Assassin's Creed, you have to try really hard to die. And if you equip some health mutagens, it's a total cakewalk.


Sacred 2 is mostly...well, weird. The character classes are unique, but slightly rigid. There are 6 classes - 3 female (Seraphim, High Elf, Dryad) and 3 male (Temple Guardian, Shadow Warrior, Inquisitor). Apart from the classes, you get to choose a patron god and the choice between Good and Evil, unless you're a Seraphim or Inquisitor, in which case your stances are fixed at opposite ends of the morality spectrum. Their looks are pretty distinctive too - for example, the Seraphim looks like a member of the KISS army and the Temple Guardian is an android Anubis, complete with attached laser blaster.

Like Diablo2, it's a quest-taking loot-grabbing ARPG, but with some clear differences, not all of which are good things. First, this is one of the campiest big-budget games I've played. The action and visuals play it straight, but a lot of the text and voice-acting is farcical. I chose the Shadow Warrior class, and he sounds like that guy who does the movie trailer voiceovers, spouting lines like "I'm a warrior! Stay away from me, you pesky gnomes!", "You know how to die!" and "I love the smell of warm blood!". Enemies have interesting parting words as well:
"This had to happen 3 days before my birthday!"
"I see a bright light. I think I'll go towards it."

The visuals are pretty good - you can go inside a lot of buildings, and everything is well crafted. Physics are quite buggy - there are plenty of times when you'll kill an enemy and he either freezes or repeats his attack animation endlessly. And in general, handling of the game feels quite sloppy after something as tight as Titan Quest. Also, the play area is HUGE and there's no convenient way to get around quickly. So if you're the kind of person who gets lost easily, prepare for lots of frustration.


Haven't tried Riddick yet.

Watched a few minutes of Prototype being played, and damn, it looks MAD. One of the last things I did before leaving Chennai was to copy that and a bunch of other games onto my 1TB HDD (dubbed Terabyte Patrick), so I shall get to know it better in the coming days.

Since I was hanging around at BLUR a bit in the last 2/3 days, I got to play Tom Clancy's HAWX, which was just about ok in my experience. I was playing co-op with a friend, but typically we found ourselves far away from each other and generally blasting the shit out of random enemies instead of flying in formation or anything.

Mirror's Edge on the PS3 was real fun. Since that was one of the PC games I acquired in the course of my looting and pillaging, there are good times ahead.

I tried a bit of the new adventure game Mata Hari and found one interesting mechanic - the one where you receive new conversation topics as tokens when you talk to others, and you can use those tokens in later conversations. Otherwise, the progress seemed pretty tedious and the main character didn't seem all that interesting, despite her reputation. Uninstall occurred soon.

Secret of Monkey Island SE is a blast. It's been so long since I played the original that I've quite forgotten some of the solutions, so it's not a breeze to play through and I can take my time with it. Screenshots coming up...

Played GoW 2 on 360 back in US and to my delight, I could easily play it with the controller this time! May be the game is designed with the controller in mind, but this is the first time I played a shooter on a console and didn't end up putting the controller down in frustration.

Launch of the screaming narwhale is fun but somehow I miss those cartoony 2-d graphics of The Curse! To my surprise, I can't get into the game much. May be it's heavy nostalgia constantly comparing the game to its illustrious predecessors.

Yeah, 3D games (on an equivalent budget) can't really match the level of detail and personality you get on 2D. Currently am playing Ep4 of Sam & Max, Abe Lincoln Must Die. Taking it slow this one.

Dabbling with a bit of Shogo: MAD. The difficulty balance, like with Blood 2, is all out of whack but this is, in its good parts, a fun shooter.

Glory be! Batman: Arkham Asylum runs at a decent clip on my pc with all the bells and whistles turned on. Seems to be a pretty well-put together and polished game, judging by the few hours I've spent.

Quake. In Widescreen. On a 50" TV. Gngg! :D

Serious Sam. Same as above.

Rediscovered Allan Border's Cricket & the original DOOM yesterday!
Kick-fuckin-ass!

On PS3 I am currently hooked on to Dragon Age : Origins - pure heavenly stuff !!!!

More problems with the now-farcical FIFA series (on PC). I'm running a dual-monitor setup and this creates havoc with the new mouse control that FIFA 09 has gotten me used to. Namely, if my mouse wanders too far to the right of the screen, it enters the 2nd monitor and any click pauses and minimises the game. Since long range shooting does involve aiming to the far right, I end up botching plenty of goalscoring chances this way. Ergh.