Gamer Outraged

There are five games in the Fantasy Wars series and I have already covered the first one - Fantasy Wars. This time I am going to review the Fantasy Wars successor, Elven Legacy. Elven Legacy - There Will Be Blood Fantasy Wars established itself as a very intelligent wargame with a memorable story and lovable heroes. Elven Legacy continues the tradition, but brings exiting innovations and is quite different from the original. One thing found its way to the sequel unaltered - the game mechanics which made the game so amiable in the first place. As can be derived from the title, the game story pivots around the Elf folk. The noble Elves were introduced back in Fantasy Wars as one of the playable races of the Alliance Campaign. Instead of having a full-blown army of mighty Elves, we were served only a few Elven units and had to rely on a Dwarven-Elven-Human vinaigrette overall. This time around it's going to be Elves exclusively, new types of units come into play. Elven army can't ...

I was planning to devote myself to playing AGS games for at least a month, but got sidetracked. While browsing for games to buy, I stumbled upon the Gold Edition of Fantasy Wars . I was aware that the title was well-received by both, the press and players, but never had a chance to play it. I was greatly enthused over the find and thought it would be the perfect specimen for my vast video game collection. Unfortunately, I decided to install and run the game, just to check if it was as exciting as everyone else thought it to be. The game sucked me right in and didn't let go for three long evenings. After completing it (only the original Fantasy Wars ), I felt horribly tired. Not only I barely got to sleep, but also struggled to have a single normal meal during the hours I spent playing. So captivated I was. Quick Reference Fantasy Wars was developed by Ino-Co , a Russian video game development company, a subsidiary of one of the biggest (if not the biggest) Russian video game publi...

Ben Jordan Case 5: Land of the Rising Dead was the first game in the Ben Jordan series I played, it also was the first one I wrote about. Just to be true to the chronological order of the series, I played it again after finishing Ben Jordan Case 4: Horror at Number 50 and am going to re-write the original post a bit, moving it to a later date. First off, lets take a look at the changes in the Ben Jordan's latest case compared to the previous games in the series. Ben Jordan's portrait has been updated, now it looks more realistic (Deluxe Edition of Ben Jordan Case 1: In Search of the Skunk-Ape featured the updated version as well). To tell the truth, I don't see it as an improvement and think that the original cartoony look of Ben's portrait was more adorable. Simon Booth and Alice Wilkins, friends Ben made in his previous case, re-appear as the lead characters in this adventure. Simon, as well as Ben, received a new portrait. Once again, I find the original portrait ...

It's time to write about another Ben Jordan adventure, Ben Jordan Case 4: Horror at Number 50 . This case leads Ben to a haunted house where he, together with his brothers-in-arms - people in the paranormal investigation business, - gets a chance to come face to face with an evil spirit. In the end, the evil is perished and Ben finds good friends. The plot of Horror at Number 50 is relatively good, even if not that original. Still, I wouldn't say that this is the best of Ben Jordan cases. The problem with the game is that it features an extremely dull gameplay. Most of the time Ben will have to venture into the same rooms and talk to the same people over and over again. I have nothing against extensive conversation, heck, The Moment of Silence is one of my favorite games only because it boasts with long conversations. Sadly, Ben's fourth case consists of almost nothing but conversations, and they are not good enough to keep things fresh and interesting. Other than talkin...

I continue expressing my opinion on Ben Jordan adventure game series. Just to sum up a bit. Case 1: In Search of the Skunk-Ape (both, original and the Deluxe Edition) was a complete atrocity. Case 2: The Lost Galleon of the Salton Sea was pretty good, but a bit boring. This time I am going to write about Ben Jordan Case 3: The Sorceress of Smailholm . Well, without further introduction, I would like to say that this game is the best of all the Ben Jordan games I've played so far. It tells a story about a Witch Cult and a story of love. It's definitely not The Lost Crown: A Ghost-Hunting Adventure , but is extremely good and deeply satisfying! The Sorceress of Smailholm has it all: good graphics, logical puzzles and a swift storyline. There is almost nothing to dislike about this title, but still there are at least two things I found disappointing (if only a bit). First of all, the game is extremely easy. As it came out in the end, there are two different endings, lets call ...

It is really surprising how Francisco Gonzalez managed to recover from the piece of shit that was Ben Jordan Case 1: In Search for the Skunk-Ape with the follow-up title in the series, Ben Jordan Case 2: The Lost Galleon of the Salton Sea . The game is funny and the plot, even though a bit boring, lacks the stupidity of the predecessor. Case 2 looks exactly like the original release of the Case 1. It has the same ugly thick gray frames around all the dialogue messages (I don't understand why the frames used for character portraits were not utilized for dialogues as well, they look very neat) and the same horrible blue game menu which is not harmonic with the rest of the game looks. Nonetheless, the game is visually appealing, but what is most important, the story is tenable. The sad part is that the length of Ben Jordan's second case is only moderate at best. Without a doubt, it is much longer than that of the Skunk-Ape case, but still is very humble, considering all the game...

Adventure Game Studio freeware game engine created the perfect opportunity for people who can draw even a little bit to create great adventure games. There are plenty of games using that engine which are truly wonderful and exciting. Not surprisingly though - with an easy to use, flexible tools at the disposal there is no limits but imagination. There are, of course, plenty of terrible games as well. What is astounding, at least for me, is that some of not so good AGS games are highly praised by the community. I am going to talk about the first game in the Ben Jordan adventure game series, Ben Jordan Case 1: In Search of the Skunk-Ape . There are two versions of the game available at the moment, the original one and the Deluxe Edition. There are plenty of differences between the two of them, so I played them both in a row. Without a doubt I can say that this title is total crap, deluxe or not. To explain my opinion better, I will have to mention the key plot elements (I giggled when I...

Well, I've been away from the Internet for about three weeks now and had a chance to play a lot of freeware adventure games created using Adventure Game Studio game engine. At first, I was very excited about those games as they were very well done considering them being freeware and developed by a single person (mostly). Still, after thinking about it for a while, I decided that those games could have been much better. In my following posts I am going to review several AGS games and will start with Ben Jordan series created by Francisco Gonzalez .

A while ago, I played the latest Prince of Persia (2008). This is the the second series reboot already (there is the Original Trilogy followed by the Sands of Time trilogy) and I was eagerly awaiting its release from the moment I heard about it, being a huge fan of the Prince of Persia franchise. I ordered the game on eBay and couldn't wait to receive the package. The day the game arrived, I was totally hyped up and cleared my evening plans to be able to completely immerse into the world of a fairy tale. Without further ado, I would like to say that even if the game looked very impressive in the beginning, I got totally bored with it in an hour or two. Ubisoft Montréal managed to take a step back not only with the Prince of Persia games, but with games in general. Seeing as video games should be the ultimate interactive form of entertainment, I just can't understand why Ubisoft decided to turn their game into some sort of an interactive movie. There is almost no way to do ...

Recently, I got a chance to talk to Jens Andersson , an ex-employee at Starbreeze video game developing company, now working at LucasArts . Jens is an amazing guy, not only he was the designer of Enclave , The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (one of my favorite action games of all time) and The Darkness , he also developed an amazing piece of software for Nintendo DS and iPhone - Colors! . In addition to all those things mentioned above, Jens created an independent game called Rorschach . This is a very innovative adventure game. The most interesting part of the game is its dialogue system which revolves around the idea of gathering conversation topics while talking with different in-game characters. The selected topics are stored in an inventory and can be used later on to advance the plot. There is a limited amount of slots in the inventory, so it is important to think ahead and select to carry only the appropriate topics in order to save some legwork. That approach ...

There is one thought that constantly saddens me - there is not a chance in the world that there will be another game as good as Grim Fandango . Never ever. Why? Only because an independent developer couldn't pull such a great game and no major video game publisher will agree to finance something like that, seeing that the world is hooked up on the visually stunning games without caring for a solid plot.

No matter what MMOG you play, unless you block the general channel for one reason or another, it is hard not to notice plenty of people saying how bad World of Warcraft is compared to the current title. I guess this is pretty much inevitable with WoW being one of the most popular MMOGs in the world and all. The real problem about this is people actually feeling the necessity to bash Warcraft . I have been playing the game for almost 4 years. During that time I tried several other MMO titles, some of them I grew fond of, the others were not to my fancy. And of course, no matter what, I always kept comparing (to some extent) all the games I played to World of Warcraft, as it is kinda impossible not to, the game really set high standards. But, unlike so many people, I really couldn't really say that World of Warcraft was clearly better or the other way around. All the major MMO games are really unlike each other, they all provide the different things to the player. The only thing I...

There are real hardcore fans of Command & Conquer series. They collect all the different releases of the games in the series, they make their own movies and write stories based on the C&C universe, and so on. I can call myself a hardcore fan of C&C as well, but my obsession spanned only over a single game in the massive series. I first read about C&C on the Internet. At the time Internet was a beautiful and new thing (at least where I lived), and I didn't know anyone who had access to it at home. That included me as well. I was spending hours and hours surfing the Internet at my father's work place and that's how I stumbled over an article about the original Command & Conquer game. The first thing I've done after reading about the game and drooling over the screenshots, was downloading the demo version. I've already admired the previous Westwood real-time strategy, Dune 2 , and completed it a dozen of times, but when I launched the C&C ...

Spore (released on Sep 7, 2008) - you hear about this game almost everywhere. I've seen dozens of advertisements, read several reviews, watched some youtube movies - the game looked like a gem, so, finally I decided to buy it. At first, Spore really made a great impression but the more I progressed through the different stages, the more I was getting disappointed with it. Foreplay Cell Stage This stage is really fun and is pretty much identical to flOw , the game released for PS3 on Feb 22, 2007. You have to guide a cell - feed it, avoid getting eaten by other cells and grow bigger. Controls are easy at this point, customization is simple but very fun. The stage is over in less than 10 minutes. Creature Stage The stage is great - your life form gets out of the water and starts roaming the land. Creature customization is still pretty simple and is even funnier than before as you can shape your alter ego as you wish, possibilities are endless. Also, to advance further you have to co...