Gamer Outraged

So, I've bought Nintendo Switch day one. It was the beautify Neon Blue/Red edition. I also bought an additional charger (not to detach the one from the dock at home all the time), an official carrying case and the new Zelda game on cartridge, of course. Although I was not impressed by the performance of the console (especially in docked mode), I immediately grew to love it and carried it with me all the time. Today will the first day I am going outside without it. Yesterday I've lost it - it was either snatched out of the backpack (while I was carrying it on my back) or fell out of that same backpack in the cinemas when I went to see Life. Sadly, I found out about the disappearance of the precious thing only hours later, already at home. I did immediately go to work and checked there (just in case), went to the cinema and not only asked about the lost and found, but even went to the same cinema hall I attended earlier and looked around. All useless. I did lose over 400 euro...

Overall, if not paying attention to how disappointed I am with technical details (another post), I've been enjoying the new Zelda *a lot*. It is a very well designed game, indeed. Except for one thing that drives me utterly mad. So, Link goes into the shooting stance by *holding* the right trigger (ZR) - this allows to put an arrow in a bow and aim. The focusing on target is enabled by *holding* the left trigger (ZL). Now, holding both triggers doesn't do any third thing. So, the problem I am *constantly* having is that after shooting a bow and then going into targeting mode (first ZR, then release ZR, then hold ZL), Link doesn't get into the targeting mode (which means no shield and even no dodging) automatically. This does not make any sense. This looks like a bad design. This makes me avoid using the bow in the middle of a long and tough fight (like Lynel without having any decent gear) as after using the bow I have to remember (and be fast enough) to the first push the...

Yes, died again. I was holding it in my hands and using it in all sorts of ways (audiobook, photography, messenger) but it's 4 degrees Celsius outside. Died at 25% and refused to turn back on until I plugged it. As soon as I plugged it in, it turned on and showed a healthy 26% of battery charge.

This is getting overly annoying. Now the iPhone died at 15% with "power saving" mode enabled. This time it's even less excuse as it's spring outside. Estonian spring is not overly warm, but it was certainly above zero Celsius outside. What is funny though, I was doing a Swarm check-in seconds before and Swarm actually gave me a badge for checking with low battery charger. It's very cool that they actually implemented such a thing as checking the battery. Kudos to Foursquare but rays of anger to Apple.

So, it's the second morning in a row today that my iPhone turned itself off in my hands. The battery was at 54% percent of charge. My assumption is it happened because of the cold, but it was only -3 degrees Celsius outside and the phone has been out of my pocket for about 10 minutes only. I remember how happy I was that my previous phone, that was iPhone 6, turned itself off when I left it lying on a leather chair under the direct summer sunlight. It gave a nice little warning about overheating and turned itself off. That time the temperature was really, really high and it was for the best. But -3 degrees Celsius? Ridiculous! iPhone 6 before turning itself off when overheating

I've purchased Deadpool game at last. I've long waited for it to be discounted at Steam and the moment has come. During this week's Activision sale, on 15th of September, 2013, the game was discounted 50% and I snatched it right away. I wanted this game badly for a very long time. Sadly, it was and still remains incredibly expansive on Xbox 360 and I never seen it discounted on Steam before now as well. Originally, after looking though the trailers, I thought about paying the full price of the PC version of the game. But then I saw some mixed reviews and decided to hold my horses. Now I know I was wrong to do so. After playing the game halfway through, I must say that it's not only the funniest games I played in a really long time, it also boast an incredible simple but addictive gameplay and offers a welcome (although not that serious) challenge on maximum level of difficulty. Not only that, Deadpool has become my favorite comic book character. Yes, overshadowing ...

I've just finished PoP: The Forgotten Sands on PC. I've originally purchased the Xbox 360 version several years ago but never got to play it. The PC version was bought during one of the amazing Steam sales but managed to say off my hard drive for quite some time. Only now, three years after the release, I managed not only to play but also complete the game. It's worth mentioning that completing the game wasn't much of a feat. On "normal" difficulty (maximum available on first playthrough) it took me 5 hours and 40 minutes to reach the end credits. This has to be one of the shortest games I've played recently. There are arcade games and games on mobile platform boasting better length. Nonetheless, I managed to get bored of at least some of the aspects of the game. Namely, combat. The combat in The Forgotten Sands is ridiculously dull and repetitive. This is the first and only PoP game that has a skill development tree. Thanks to that tree, the Prince c...

Just as I completed (as in 100% trophies gained) Escape Plan on my lovely PS Vita, a patch making the already easy trophy even easier has been released. If before to get most of the stars on each level you had not only to think and act fast, but also to do it in limited amount of gestures, now you are only bound by time. I am extremely disappointed and totally outraged. Originally, I came up with an extremely simple trick to save on gestures - to not let go off of the screen. This way it was possible to have multiple gestures count as one. Easy as that. Probably everyone who gave this game serious time found out about this neat little trick. But no, the developers decided there is a whole bunch of mindless blobs out there who couldn't get their trophy fast enough. Just think about it - the adjustment made is only simplifying the trophy work. It doesn't affect the gameplay overall. I say, next patch should allow to trigger all the achievements on game start up...

Yesterday, got to playing Assassin's Creed Revelations on PC at last. Not only I had this game day one from Steam release, I already manged to buy a second copy and gift it to a friend of mine without even checking it out for myself first. First of all, PC version of AC never felt better. Ubisoft continued the trend (started only in Brotherhood) to include graphical setting that will push the game much further from the looks of the console versions. Not only PC owners get to enjoy higher resolutions, it's possible to have nice looking shadows and a highly detailed crowd, among other nice details both, X360 and PS3 can't even dream of. Revelations runs very smoothly at 30-60 FPS (averaged at 45) at 1920x1080, all settings on maximum, on my severely outdated E8500 with 3GB RAM and GTX 295. Yeah, I'm getting a hell of a ride for what I've spent on my hardware 3-4 years ago. AC: Revelations doesn't stand out from the other games in the series. The setting is di...

After finally acquiring all of the God of War games currently available for PS3, I decided to start my adventure with God of War Collection: Volume II. This disc contains two of the Kratos adventures, Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta, both previously PSP-exclusives, now rendered at high resolution with AA and 60 FPS. Despite being located on disc labeled Volume II, Chains of Olympus is the very start of Kratos epoch. I started the game on the maximum available game difficulty, Spartan Mode (one more difficulty level is unlocked upon game completion), and was having a blast of a time throughout the whole game. I haven't felt like the game is offering any serious challenge at any point of Kratos' short but brutal undertaking to save the world from the wrath of Titan Atlas. I felt like game is cutting some serious slack up to the very end, the final battle, the dance to the death with Persephone, queen of the underworld. After dying for at least ten times in a row and aba...

The first time I heard about Red Dead Redemption, I got overly excited. I was excited for such a long time, too. I remember the game was already out, and I was visiting London and there were these huge RDD posters plastered all over the Tube. I was still dreaming about playing the game months after its release. I couldn't really afford the game, not for full retail price anyway. Sadly, the game was so damn popular, the price refused to go down. Finally, after already all the DLC for Red Dead was released, I got the game. I couldn't have been more thrilled. I've put the game disc in, launched the game, preparing to dive head first into the adventurous world of wild west. After as short intro, the game greets you with a tutorial of sorts. It can't be skipped. Basically, you are forced to do a whole bunch of really-really mundane stuff. Most of it concerns animals. You do some horse racing, you get about 30 minutes of horse back breaking, then herd cattle (several time...

I've just finished Deus Ex: HR on PC. According to Steam statistics, I've played the game for over 60 hours. Even though I did take my sweet time exploring every nook and corner, and hacking everything to be hacked, Steam data is surely wildly inaccurate, as usual. Sadly, Steam client doesn't make any distinction between you actually playing the game and going away from PC for an hour or two (or even a night). There are two infamous achievements to be gained in HR, Pacifist and The Foxiest of Hounds. An enormous amount of people seem to misinterpret the description the game provides for the latter. It clearly states that you have to avoid setting alarms on your playthrough. It couldn't be any more clear than that. Still, a lot of people aiming for the achievement make a great effort to go though all the levels without being noticed or heard at all. Probably developers could be blamed for that, if only a bit. Every enemy can have a state called "alarmed". It...

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 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...

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 ...

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...

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...

Yeah, it's all over the Net - Electronic Arts acquired PopCap games. I see a lot of negative comments on the topic. A lot of people hate EA for all the wrong reasons (in my opinion). From what I personally encountered, the most common reason for public hatred towards the video game colossus is its habit of shutting down the servers. Especially unhappy with it is the console crowd. Achievement lovers to be specific. I've never heard anyone saying "damn, the servers are off for good, now I can't play my favorite game online", it's usually something like "geez, now I have shitloads of unobtainable achievements, thanks EA". I'm an avid achievement hunter myself, but I don't think EA should be blamed for shutting down their servers. They do have good reasons to do so - license expiration. I don't see why they should extend their license and keep some old sports game alive online just so some achievement fanatics could get 100G. I mean, the...

I've been waiting a long time for a good price on Heavy Rain. I'm not in the habit of buying games for the full price no matter how much I want them. I just don't see the point, as I already have a vast collection of excellent video games for all the possible platforms, most of them still waiting to be played. Heavy Rain is certainly a title that you wanna play right here right now. It's also one of those games that makes me proud to be a PlayStation 3 owner (my main gaming platform is Xbox 360 as Sony made some horrible design choices for their system and does nothing to improve the situation). My wait for the right price was a painful one. Finally, I got the game. Not only was I able to spot a satisfying price for this gem of a game, I was excited to find out that the version of the game I was ordering, the Platinum Edition, was a re-release of the Move Edition of the game. Sadly, I don't own the Move controller, but Move Edition is not only offering an ability ...

I got Enchanted Arms for Xbox 360 a long time ago, in 2006. Along with most of my other purchases for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, this one was confined to a shelf life for many years, as my sole attention was devoted to World of Warcraft. I've just got to complete the game, it took me less than a week to do so. All the major characters are fantastic, dialogues are brilliant and the story - a pleasure to follow and see unfold. Also, the most of the music is grand and most of the scenery is spectacular. Unfortunately, the gameplay casts a huge shadow over all the game's advantages. I didn't like the whole battle process for many reasons. For instance, the battlefield has a horrible design. You have to switch camera angles just to be able to spot some of the enemies on the field. Sometimes (namely, last, the most important and lengthy fight) it's just impossible to see what exactly you are targeting, as the colors of the battlefield don't allow you to see not only ...