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Showing posts from September, 2011

Uncharted 2. Is It Really That Grand?

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - what a treat of a game, what a grand adventure! It's packed with explosive Hollywood action and visuals that never stop to amaze. At the moment, I find it hard to think of another game that looks as gorgeous. It's not all action and glitter though, Uncharted 2 features a captivating story and, probably, the most interesting female character in the history of gaming. Nah, I'm not talking of Elena, the main character's unfortunate choice for a love object (the second time around). She looks and sounds very generic and is so dull, I would rather not see her included in Drake's story at all. I was referring to Chloe. Not only this girl has very distinctive looks, she also has the sexiest and most memorable voice I've heard in a while. Not only that, her character is the most realistic of the lead trio. She is neither too good or evil, she is very practical when appraising a situation, unlike Drake and Elena who, way too often, appear a

The Next BIG Thing. A 2D Adventure That Falls Flat.

The Next BIG Thing stands out among other few point-and-click adventure games that are still being made by being absolutely gorgeous! Namely, this game features full high def 2D art of amazing quality. I've never seen an adventure featuring that amount of detail and crispness in it's art. Oh, and by adventure I don't mean those mindless action games which are labeled "adventure" nowadays, I'm referring to the point-and-click ones, obviously. I couldn't be more excited when I first launched the game and saw all its beauty before my eyes. That excitement couldn't have survived for long though. Despite being a total eye-candy, this sequel to the Hollywood Monsters fails to offer anything else of value. The game starts rather tediously and, to my biggest surprise and disappointment, fails to become even remotely captivating. The story is told unevenly with characters just jumping between the six chapters. There's no fluid connection between those ch

Alan Wake. Running with a Flashlight for Hours and Hours.

Finally, I got around to playing the game that about every Xbox 360 owner has played a long time ago - Alan Wake. In all honesty, I don't get what the fuzz is about. I was very excited during my first two-three hours of the game. After that, it just got pretty boring gameplay-wise. For the whole duration of the game you do pretty much the same over and over... and over again. And what you do is run ahead following the always-present objective marker, meet a bunch of bad guys to either soften them up with a flashlight and shoot them dead or to just run past them to the next Safe Heaven (that's how a well-lit spot is called, usually from a street lamp). Sometimes you have to find a key or to start a generator, which hardly adds any freshness to the whole experience. In a short while your amusement with the light and shadows interplay, no matter how well executed, will grow  thin. After that there's almost nothing left to enjoy. Well, except maybe the story. The objective

Tomb Raider Trilogy. Comparison: PC vs Xbox 360 vs PS3

The Tomb Raider trilogy I'm going to talk about includes the following games (released in exactly the order I have them listed): Tomb Raider: Legend Tomb Raider: Anniversary Tomb Raider: Underworld There are a few things that appear to be worth mentioning. First, even though all the games in the trilogy were built on the same game engine, namely Crystal Dynamics engine, they use the different versions of that software. It looks like the versions of the engine are not actually mentioned to the public and a whole bunch of games use the same engine title. Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the 2012 Tomb Raider game both are powered by the same tech. Nonetheless, Legend and Anniversary appear to be sharing the same version of the Crystal engine (even if the engine was updated for Anniversary, the changes were minor). Underworld, on the other hand, is a whole new breed of beast. The visuals and, most importantly, performance are completely different from what is seen in the prior two

Red Faction: Armageddon. PC vs Consoles.

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I've been hearing about the Red Faction series for a very long time already. The series has been around since 2001 and became famous for the level of wreckage a player can cause, with practically every structure found in the game universe susceptible to destruction. It's pretty surprising that I haven't played any of the four games in the series up until now, on the other hand, I haven't played a myriad of other games I always wanted to play. A lot of random things are to blame for that. Anyway, it's never too late to start anything and I did start with the very last (and final) entry in the series - Red Faction: Armageddon. It's a beauty on PC, even with crappy hardware! I did come to a tremendously stupid purchase decision with Red Faction: Armageddon and ordered both, the PC and Xbox 360, versions of the game simultaneously. I'm not made of money and neither am I particularly stupid. It's just that the price for both was utterly ridiculous, c