Tomb Raider Review

So, I'm a bit behind the times with games these days. While people are having fun playing the sequel to one of my all-time favorites (Metro 2033), I'm just finishing up with Tomb Raider.

Anyway, here's the gist of it. The game is good. If you've ever played Uncharted, think that. Lots of climbing and shooting and environments blowing up and breaking apart and last second jumps to salvation - basically, it's like playing a Hollywood blockbuster action flick.

Is that good? Well, sometimes. But the game really got away from the original adventure aspect of it, with pretty much nothing I could consider a "puzzle" in the game. At most there's 2 switches or some object you need to use your rope-pull on, but it's all pretty obvious and this is a complaint I've heard from many.

On the flipside, the game takes you through a pretty neat environment, an isolated island with constant storms  that demolish any nearby ships or planes. The so-called enemies in the game are mostly all survivors of said crashes, but who are brought under control of a pretty psychotic leader. Basically, the island used to be home to an ancient Japanese tribe with an immortal leader who could control the storms, and now that she (the Queen) is dead, the storms are raging crazily. The psycho survivor leader thinks he needs to perform the ancient sacrificial rituals involving any women he finds, in order to appease the Queen and get off the island.

Our hero, Lara Croft, is quite young in this game - in fact, it's her first big adventure. The character development is quite well done, as she starts off as a scared and poorly equipped survivor looking for help. In the end, she's quite the bad ass and is dead set on her mission. Overall, it's quite enjoyable and fun to get through the campaign.

There's collectibles and the like to be found, but only the Scrap is of any use - the rest is just busy work to hit 100% at the end. Scrap can be used to purchase/construct weapon upgrades. In addition, you occasionally find a weapon part in the scrap boxes, and with 3 or 4 weapon parts you can upgrade the whole gun. For example, the scrap might let you put leather on your wooden bow for better grip/accuracy, but with the upgrade parts you can turn the wooden bow into a composite bow (all upgrades carry over).

My final thoughts are this: it's a well made AAA action adventure video game, but lacks the gameplay depth I was hoping for in the form of some complex puzzles and secrets. It's a nice, casual, and entertaining romp and certainly worth playing if you enjoy cinematic 3rd person shooter games, but it doesn't do anything special and will probably be forgotten by the time we get to our year-end top 10 roundups.

Dead Space 3

Well, I know this might be a little late but I beat Dead Space 3 and needed some time to simmer on it.

First and foremost, there's 2 things I feel I need to talk about. One, is the micro transactions. EA, the publisher, seems to have decided that micro transactions are the future - at least for their games. So, for Dead Space 3 (DS3), they added micro transactions in the form of upgrade supplies. Basically, at any time you could spend your real life dollars on in-game materials in order to build more health packs, ammo, or weapons. I'll talk about this a little more later on, but while I was very worried about how micro transactions would affect the crafting components of this game, in the end my fears were not realized.

Co-op!? Damn!

The second major thing I want to talk about is co-op. No whether it is good or not, because I don't know (I played single player), but whether it should even exist and how it affected my game. I was a big fan of DS1. I didn't quite know what to expect going into it, and ended up completely in love with it. It may not have been a pure horror game, but it had a wonderful combination of scares, isolation, action, and especially exposition and story. In DS3, though, a lot of that seems to have gone out the window and I think co-op is kind of the blinking danger light warning us of this. The most frustrating part, though, is the times where there was a door locked to me because it was for "co-op only". Really?

Ok, so what about the actual game? You know, the shooting scary aliens' limbs off and exploring derelect space stuff... well, it was pretty good. The game definitely has become more of an action romp, with very few surprises. Enter room, necromorphs. Wait for elevator, necromorphs. Finally about to turn on a huge generator... necromorph boss thing. Etc. It is fun, though.

I enjoyed upgrading my guns once I got a few different things to try out and resources became a little less scarce. It was fun to change things up as the game went on, since you can only equip two guns (instead of 3 like previous games), but each gun can have up to guns essentially stuck together. I tried a lot of combinations, like dual plasma cutters, or plasma cutter with flamethrower, or rifle with grenade launcher. There's also small addons, like a scope, an ammo box that auto-reloads the gun, and even addons to give each shot a bit of fire, electric, or stasis.

Parts of the game have you fighting actual humans, and I must say those parts I found myself think "ok, let's just get through it and onto the next interesting bit". I mean, Isaac (the protagonist) might be a pretty hardened guy after his last two adventures, but I don't see him as the type of guy that can murder entire troops of soldiers - up until now he's almost only killed necromorphs. Not to mention, the "bad guy" was extremely cheesy and over the top.

The game was quite long, it must have taken me around 20 hours to complete. This is quite a bit different from the last games, and not necessarily for the best. I just found myself not really caring too much for what was happening. The few NPC characters were forgetful. Even in the first game when you don't see the NPCs I felt more attachment to them. In the first one, you're finding out all kinds of interesting stuff about what happened. You see video and read text logs of people who slowly went insane by the Markers. You piece together the puzzles of what happened, and figure out exactly what happened on the Ishimura - and it was terribly interesting. In DS3, you're entire goal is to end the Markers and so there's very little investment as the game has now become a hero-adventure.

Back to the co-op, besides the disappointment at finding doors locked to my single player experience, at least they made the co-op partner stay out of my game. Basically, he continually winds up on the other side of a door or broken passage or whatever and you end up taking different routes to the objective, so that you don't have a stupid NPC tagging along with you like in that Resident Evil game nobody likes.

My final thoughts are this: the game was mediocre. It was lacking in story and development, and is only a shadow of it's former brilliance (for those who appreciated DS1). While the first game was confusing, you felt like there was enough threads to piece it all together, but in DS3 the head scratching was more about what the writers were thinking. Bad plot devices move the story along, and in the end the game is only really saved by it's interesting crafting feature and still pretty intense action scenes, even if they are horrible obvious.

Worth playing, but only because you've already played the other two... if you've never touched a Dead Space game, please just try the first and maybe leave it at that.

Black Mesa Source HL1 Remake. Free.

I wish I had more time to play this game. I'm around 4 hours in since its release last Friday, but so far it is absolutely amazing. Besides a few stand-outs, shooters for the last few years have all been rather generic as BMS makes glaringly obvious. I understand the fun of online shooters, but when it comes to single player, I haven't really loved a FPS since Metro 2033 or BioShock 2.

BMS is a completely free remake of the original Half Life game, easily one of the most widely known and revered shooters of all time featuring the iconic Gordon Freeman and his crowbar. Half Life was released in 1998 and was immediately a hit. I never owned it at the time, but I did play through it at friend's houses. The sequel, Half Life 2, was released in 2004. I did not get it until the release of the Orange Box which included HL2, HL2 Episode 1 and Episode 2, as well as the acclaimed Portal and Team Fortress 2 games. HL2 really blew me away and it stands as one of my favorite shooters of all time.

Back to the Black Mesa Source mod, a dedicated team of individuals spent years recreating HL1 using the HL2 engine, as well as making new sound effects, music, everything. It's truely a work of art. Not only that, but these fine gentlemen are offering the game completely free of chrage! You can also get the sound track for free from their website.

To get Black Mesa Source for yourself, just go here: http://release.blackmesasource.com

After my time spent in the game thusfar, I am truely amazed at the quality and effort the creators put into it. The attention to detail is just amazing. The engine being used, Source 2007 (available free on Steam, and required to play the game), doesn't necessarily allow for ultra high pixel pushing capabilities. It's no Frostbite or CryEngine, and my graphics cards aren't breaking the slightest sweat trying to run it. That said, the game looks great. Objects may be slightly blockier than many modern titles, but at the same time there's so much detail that it doesn't really show. They also made the textures rather high quality, so everything looks nice and sharp.

All I can say is there's no reason to not play this game. Even if you don't like shooters you should play this game. It's free, and many people rated HL1 as the best shooter of all time - a little piece of history that any gamer should partake in.

Alan Wake on PC Review

I recently played through Alan Wake. Going into it, I didn't know what to expect. I have heard some good things in general about it as it was out on consoles for a while before its fairly recent PC release. However, I wasn't keen enough to look into just what this game is all about as it didn't really affect me at the time. I can now say that this game flew WAY under the radar. This is a game that should be a highlight of your recent gaming endeavors.

Alan Wake is awesome. What is so good about it? Well, the game itself is kind of a halfway between Dead Space and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, two games I have very much enjoyed and for very different reasons. Alan Wake is more action than Amnesia - afterall, you do get weapons and can kill the baddies. On the other hand, it's nowhere near Dead Space with your futuristic arsenal of ass-kicking. Until the later game, your main weapon is a simple pistol that pretty much takes a full clip to kill the "medium" baddies. The Shotgun and Rifle round out your gun choices, with a few other tricks like flash-bangs, flares, and a flare gun... not to mention your trusty flashlight!

 Alan Wake is based around the concept of darkness. There is a darkness in the lake; it is evil, and it wants out. Almost all the enemies are corrupted, dark versions of real people you meet in the game, which gives those encounters an extra chilling effect. The story starts with the protagonist, Alan Wake, going to some little town out in the mountainous woods with his wife. Alan, or Al as he's often referred to, is a writer suffering from writer's block, so his wife thought going out to this relaxing little town could be of help. You wind up at this cabin on a small island on the lake, where things quickly take a turn for the worse. And by "for the worse," I mean things go batshit insane.

 If you played Bastion, you probably enjoyed the narration. In Alan Wake, Al is the narrator. Quite often he will describe his thoughts as you come across various things as an internal monologue. Generally this works very well and helps enhance the story. On top of this, you collect manuscript pages of, well, a story of what's happening. You can access these in your menu and Al will read out the pages. I don't want to put any spoilers in this review, but these pages are central to the game. The point is, the game manages to keep you interested with this narration as it gives you something to focus on when maybe not a lot is actually happening in the game. It definitely adds a lot to the character of Al, making him much more believable and it helps create a bit of a bond with him.

The game is split into day time and night time. The day time is when you meet the sheriff, the doctor, the waitress... and the night is when you fight. Again, without trying to spoil anything, the short of the story is that you are trying to get Al's wife back. You're led by the nose a little bit, for a little while, but then about halfway through the game steps it up a bit and Al seems to be more driven to end his nightmarish adventures and things get very intense.

During the nights, you generally explore an area. The game is not open world, but the levels are large enough and so well designed that it does feel fairly open. I never really felt like I was "on rails" or anything, and often you can go off the beaten path to find manuscripts or additional items. At all times during the night, Al has his flashlight turned on. It acts as a cross-hair during combat, as Al always aims right down the beam. The enemies are shrouded in darkness, so you have to use your flashlight to burn off the darkness and make the enemies vulnerable to weapon fire. The flashlight can run 100% of the time normally, but you can hit a button to "focus" the beam and burn the darkness faster - however, this also consumes battery power. If you stop focusing, the batteries will recharge, but you also find many batteries and can just swap them in on the fly as needed.

 The game, sadly, doesn't have many puzzles. Off the top of my head I can only think of 1. I think that is a bit of a shame, but fortunately the tense atmosphere and often chaotic combat keeps things interesting. It's also a heavily story driven game, which is something I definitely appreciate. In fact, I have to say, the way the game ended was rather impressive. Not exactly a happy ending, but appropriate. Bittersweet would describe it best.

 There's a few levels of the game that are just outrageously fun, there's levels that are very creepy, there's a little mix up with the action gameplay here and there. Probably the worst executed aspect to the game is the driving controls... the cars handle horridly, but I don't mind. It's a pretty minor aspect of a couple levels that just switch things up.

I'm not big on number scores, so all I can say is that if you like "horror", "thriller", and "action" games then this is a must play. If you don't believe me, here's a video I shot of one level up until I was murdered. Very minor spoilers, if any (but proceed with caution).

This video is somewhat spoiler-ish. It's basically a full level near the end of the game, though it's not going to spoil the interesting story bits:

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Demo Review

I just spent most of this evening playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Yikes, what a mouthful. Anyway, the game is an action RPG being released across all platforms (Windows, Xbox 360, PS3). I never really heard about it until seeing that the demo is released, and thought I should try it out. The story, as I understand it, has to do with these Fae creatures, who it would seem are immortal, that run the country. However, an evil Fae took over and began a campaign of murder and conquest and all that other evil stuff - his eyes even glow red, so you know he's really bad.

Freshly Reanimated

Your character, however, starts the game as an experiment. Some gnomes, you see, were trying to put people back into their bodies (or maybe new bodies?) using this Well of Souls, and you are the first one on which it succeeds. However, the evil Fae army is attacking the Well so there's plenty of resistance on your way out to the world.

Eventually you find out you are "fateless" and are therefore free to determine your own fate, which is the basis behind part of the leveling system.

The gameplay itself I would say most closely resembles Fable. There's plenty of linear or "corridor" style areas, with almost no branching. In the more open world area, you are still quite restricted in terms of exploration although it's nothing like Final Fantasy XIII. Again, it's like Fable.

As you progress through the beginning of the demo, you are given the most basic weapons for each of the 3 main class types. You can be a warrior, rogue, or a mage, or any combination of the three depending on how you level up your Fate. Warriors favor large weapons like swords and hammers, rogues prefer daggers and bows, while mages prefer staves and magic. That said, at any time you can use any of these weapons, however, your perks and armor will determine the effectiveness.

Whenever you gain a level, you get 3 points to spend on specific perks from either of the 3 class trees. You also get a point to spend on general attributes like black-smithing, alchemy, persuasion, etc. And then at the end of choosing those you can modify your fate, which appears to require a certain amount of class perk points before being able to unlock the next fate upgrade.

Equipment is divided into a multitude of sub menus, which frankly are annoying to navigate. When you hit ESC, it brings up the menu. From there, you can select Inventory, then Weapons, then Primary or Secondary (same weapons are selectable, but you can quick select between the two in real time during gameplay), and then the specific weapon you want to equip. For armor it works much the same, starting from Inventory you would select Armor, and then pick the pieces from a menu showing each type of armor - head, chest, gloves, legs, and feet. On top of that there's yet another menu for Accessories, another for Items, another for Consumables... you get the picture. The menus definitely need to be pared down.

Instant Stealth Kill

Combat in the beginning of the game is pretty much the same for any class. Spam left click for attacks, and right click uses magic. There is no stamina bar, but there is mana which regenerates - there's also, of course, instant potions. You also learn that you can dodge/roll, sneak, and block. A note about blocking - once you equip a shield, it is active on your block button (L Shift) but is not visible on your character. When you hit Block, this massive iron shield comes out of nowhere and you hold it in front of you. It's a bit odd, to say the least. When performing a stealth kill with daggers, you get bonus damage and if it's an instant kill, it also gives a pretty cool kill animation.

Fate Kill

The combat does get more complex later on. As you level up, you can begin to assign perks to give you new attack abilities, passive and active abilities, and higher base weapon damage. There's also an interesting feature where you somehow manipulate fate and can perform some really bad ass kills. Basically there's a fate meter and you can use it to first slow down time and become a killing machine, and secondly when an enemy is downed but not dead, perform a fate kill. It's a bit overwhelming at first, but it gets a little more natural later on.

The story, questing, and narration are... ok. The voice acting is fine, not outstanding but more than acceptable. Story wise, well, after the intro sequence I had one of those "oh... great..." feelings, like this would just be some lame, typical fantasy setting. Sadly, so far, it is. As far as I can tell, there really isn't anything to make this game stand out from a story perspective. I just didn't feel like there was any reason to do things. The whole "evil king" thing is fine as an overarching story element, but there needs to be a reason more personal to the player to want to keep going, and the game failed to give me that. It felt very mediocre and impersonal, rather than drawing me in and making me just itching to get to the next part of the story. I think that with a semi-open world game like this, you need to have strong story elements. It's not like Skyrim, where you can just take off in a random direction and come across all sorts of interesting things.

Dialog Wheel

Interaction in this game has a lot of familiar concepts, but mostly it's pretty well implemented. There's the now standard coversation wheel taken from BioWare games, though for the most part your conversations boil down to asking background questions rather than having interesting things to say. It's definitely not like Dragon Age 2, with the complacent, silly, and aggressive dialog options.

Dialog... box?

Oddly, at certain points you no longer use the dialog wheel but instead have a dialog box. There's no real explanation as to why this is. When there is a dialog box, there is a blue highlighted response that is meant as the "use this to continue the game" option, but even after using it you can still use the other dialog options and are required to use ESC to get out of the conversation to continue on your quest.

Oh look, a glowing plant for alchemy!

Alchemy Shop

Besides that, the game features many other now standard RPG elements, like black-smithing, alchemy, and rune forging. You also collect ingredients from plants scattered around the world, and require certain talents to increase your chances of successfully harvesting the ingredients.

Cities have guards, and since you can lock pick and steal, they can and will arrest you and throw you in jail. You can also turn on hostility and attack any neutral or friendly NPCs, if you so choose.

Aesthetically, the game is alright. So far, it has a pretty consistent design scheme and everything fits pretty well. Graphically, however, the game is a disapointment. It looks rather dated, kind of washed out, like there's too much bloom effect. I had to force 4xMSAA through Catalyst to be able to watch cutscenes, otherwise it was a blank screen with voices. Even so, aliasing is definitely present.

As I mentioned before, the game is a lot like Fable, but I also think that graphically, they took a lot of inspiration from World of Warcraft. Everything is cartoony and overly proportioned. I don't think this is bad on it's own, but my problem is that the game also has an extremely short draw distance, so textures keep popping in as you run, and objects distort to get slightly more detailed which I find very noticeable in outdoor areas. I hope they optimize the graphics for PCs much better at final release, because currently it runs like a direct Xbox port. My GPUs were practically at idle the entire time, holding a solid 60 fps.

I don't expect every game to push the limits of graphics, and especially not multi-platform releases, but I did expect more than this game offered. Screenshots look ok for the most part, but if I can direct your attention to details, just look at how grass is only showing for a few meters around my character. It's not just terrain, either, but NPCs will pop in too. I recall approaching a group of small hostile creatures - little balls with arms and legs - but at a distance they looked like floating wisps or something. Only when I got close did their legs and arms show up, as well as a proper body. Perhaps I'm a spoiled PC gamer, but I really hope that these issues are either fixed for release, or else worst case scenario able to be modded via a config file or the like.

All in all, I can't really say I'm looking forward to release. I'm definitely not putting my money down until after reading some final reviews and watching some gameplay clips. I think there is potential here, but they need to be able to draw the player in much earlier in the game with something exciting. On top of that, I'd like to see some interface and menu adjustments as well as more demanding graphic options, even just increased draw distances and some anti aliasing.

Games of 2012

I just was browsing the internet and found a rather exciting post on Rock Paper Shotgun of the games of 2012. I was already rather looking forward to a few games: Metro Last Light, BioShock Infinite, and Diablo III to name a few. However, after browsing this list, I have to say there's quite a few more exciting games than I had anticipated. Looks to be another good year! I had totally forgotten, but Risen 2 is one that I really look forward to. For me, anyway, the original was a random find that totally blew me away. RPS: List of 2012 Games

Mklinks - Or, How to Move your Steam Games

I made this video on mklinks for Windows. Basically, it's a way to move a folder so that it is stored in a different location, but then to have Windows think it wasn't moved at all. This can be very handy as in this example, with Steam games, but also if you want to move a program you have installed and don't want to go through the hassle of uninstalling and then reinstalling somewhere else.