Game Reviews

Thought i might as well add this since there's one for movies. Final points given can be any system you like, out of 10, 100%, 101 , so long as there is a bound. oh, and explain why you gave it the points you did, it doesn't help slapping a game with a 2 out of 10 without reason.

So first up.

Crysis 2

Okay, the basis of this review comes from the fact that i played the crysis 1 and warhead after that. I liked those games, i would give them an 8/10 on a bad day. They were open, they had an actual colour palette. The missions felt cohesive, the story was merely filler, not great, but not tragically lame.

And of course, it looked killer, even on my weak card (8600GT).

Enter Crysis 2.

I bought a graphics card for this game. I installed windows for this game.

I have to say it, i won't be happy until i do. Crysis 2 does not come close to the first two on the graphics front. This is not to say that it looks bad, it's just not as good as its predecessors. I compare it to the first games because this game has a number 2 at the end, practically begging for comparison. Version n means it's supposed to be better than version n-1.

Okay graphics don't make a game. I'm still excited about the gameplay though. basic shooter mechanics, check. Included the feature to slide on my backside, sweet. Suit powers, check.

Wait a minute. Go back to the suit powers. Armour mode drains energy even when i'm not getting hit, i can't sprint without draining energy, to activate strength i have to press and hold the melee button. What is this? Is this Nanosuit V2 or Nanosuite V0.5 RC? Cloak seems to work fine though. Needless to say,the streamlining of suite powers is disappointing. I liked being able to sprint on my own steam, i liked having to manage the trade-offs of using one power instead of another. Apparently, you can combine powers now. Hardly useful. and another thing, barely counts though, i find the suit voice obnoxious.

But, the powers are still there. so onward. New York, being destroyed, switched out the tropical jungle for the urban. Boring walls, boring corridors, boring stairs; you can practically sense the boxes that were built for combat spaces and the corridors between them, no longer the seamless transition of the battlefield in the first. Objectives. Half-baked checkpoints; you never seem able to complete them, something is always there to ruin your effort, you get nowhere fast; although this is only in the first half, second half is marginally better.

Weapon customization is still there. But this has also been tainted. Now each attachment is weapon specific. You argue why would i want to put a sniper scope on a shotgun; well, because i can .

There are Nanosuit upgrades, but honestly, you can complete the game without them, in fact, the game's more of a challenge that way, but you'll have to turn up the difficulty.

I found myself getting up to go make tea, never did that with the first one.

Replayability. Zero. Truth of the matter is, there isn't that many ways to go through the levels. Crysis 1 had two ways of going through a level, but that's still two more than Crysis 2. Oh, and there are collectibles; i never bother with these, so their value is entirely up to the player.

Multiplayer! Multiplayer!
Usual, nothing entirely extraodinary here. You've played xonotic, you've played crysis 2. But they have removed Power Struggle, which i liked.

Some of you may argue that all i have done was point out the bad. Well, when V2 does nothing better than V1, why would i. I was expecting to add another point to the 8 i gave for V1, but after forking over the 420 bucks (US$60), i don't feel like i got the +1.

Maybe i should buy a gamepad, and it might earn that +1? ... Nah.

i'll be sticking to donating to open source projects.

Verdict

• Good graphics, not great
  
• Passable gameplay, gimmicky additions
  
• Stripped down nanosuit, both design and implementation
  
• Console port, PC pedigree is nowhere to be found
  
• Weapons only look cooler, not useful, one weapon can finish the game
  
• I was actually able to let my mouse go
  

I can't make myself give a game a two, not even this one though, so -0.5 for each point above. If you feel you should subtract the full mark, then do so. 5/10.

PC gamers get shafted yet again due to publishers feeling a need to satisfy console players this late into the generation... The sad thing is most console players won't even touch this, so Crytek went out of their way to merely destroy a franchise. Also most GAMERS aren't on console this gen (though the truly hardcore own most of them in addition to gaming PCs, mostly for exclusive titles), they've migrated to PC due to it getting cheaper, it's almost all casuals that play consoles at the moment.

So, another review. This time it's Far Cry 2, the Ubisoft - Crytek offering of 2008. Old i know, but i managed to get a second-hand copy, and i thought might as well have a bash at it, i think i'm starting to loose my excitement over playing games. making one is more fun.

So onward with the beheading ... i mean review.

With the amount of games i have played up until now, you would think i would have learned to go on first impressions of a game. The opening action sequence for Far Cry 2 is suitably fun, so i perk up in the hope that the game continues in this vein. You can do doubt already tell, that this is not the case. Far Cry 2 is an exceptionally mundane shooter, of which 90% is driving.

Let us start off with the missions. These are the usual, go here, pull a rambo on said destination; rinse, repeat. Granted this is what most objectives in FPSs are, but the good ones make you forget that is exactly what they're doing, Far Cry 2 does not.

The open world. The developers were quick to point out an open game world with multiple solutions to tackling a mission, and a certain emphasis on the time of day you choose to do it in. Now, in a world where everything is your enemy, there are two ways to approach a mission, stealth, or guns blazing. The stealth in Far Cry 2 is broken. If you drop an enemy with a stealth kill, you alert everyone else in the immediate area. So, it leaves you with going in guns blazing. Notice i didn't mention time of day above, that's because it hardly matters.

I was at first intrigued by the world they set it in. Africa is a relatively uncharted arena in games. The maps are beautiful, without a doubt, but they would have done better to focus on a single biosphere, shifting from desert to tropical jungle in under a minute strikes a disbelieving chord in me. Variety is good, but disparity is not. Oh, and as an aside, being an African, the inclusion of local languages in the game was a nice touch, but to have Zulu and Swahili in the same faction is again hardly believable to someone familiar with how ethnicity affects African groups.

Moving along to characters. Ubisoft has always consistently had poor character personalities. I have never liked their characters, not a one. The quality of the dialogue is lost in their stiff emotionless delivery,or if not emotionless, then underacted. Word of advice, switch to Japanese and get Japanese voice actors.

Story. Some may argue here (those that played it) that the story was exceptional. I argue it was not. This may come from the fact that i do write my own and so am able to pick up on the general thread a story is going to take (Japanese manga are exceptions to this rule, but i'm getting the hang of them). The story is FPS filler. I would have given it a better criticism if it had an impact on the game, but it does not, so it can be ignored.

Now, the points above can be applied to any shooter, but some them are still excellent. So on to the most important point; gamePlay, note the capital P. Shooter basics, check. Iron sights, unnecessary, but check, although this is not toggle based, it tires out your middle finger. Selection of weapons, check. So far it got everything alright. But Far Cry 2 does not focus on these basics. It in fact focuses on long boring drives from one end of a map to a another, and then serving up boring shootouts. The driving is particularly bad because of the regularity with which the cars tend to break down. You can upgrade your mechanical skills, but that would be wasting precious diamonds(game currency) on a skill you don't need to progress in the first place; and then on top of that, this skill is only evident if you stick to the road, if you take you car off-road, they break down as frequently as when you started out. Stay on the road on you say, then tell Ubisoft to remove the open game world, that's what its there for. Oh, and the guard posts don't help either.

Ah, yes the guard posts. This is biggie. You approach one, you wipe out every mercenary in sight, drive on to your objective 30 secs away, drive back 30 seconds later, and the guard post is fully manned once again, forcing you to get out, wipe them out again, and drive on. If you're thinking, leave them behind, this does not work. The AI is smart enough to chase after you in their cars, destroying yours in the process, along with being smart enough to sense its buddies dying without seeing it. The AI is not particularly dumb, but its just mundane. Shoot at player, shoot at player; player running? chase after player, shoot at player.

The game does come with an editor, but i gave up on it as there is no way to import blender models.

Far Cry 2 is mundane. Mundane open world, mundane shooter, mundane driving, mundane AI. Far Cry 2 is not revolutionary, evolutionary or whateverlutionary the developers and other reviews said it was.

So there it is. And so as above, Far Cry 2, being a sequel of the excellent Far Cry, i start deducting points from the 9/10 i gave the first for each point above, coming to a 5/10.

Stick to S.T.A.L.K.E.R, its a better game, in every way, minus the driving and minus even the pretense at catering to the casual gamer.

Seeing this thread makes me want to break out some of the older games in my collection and see how well they stand against modern games. I got some classics that some of you may have never heard of. I'll let you guys choose what I should review actually since I'm indecisive, what will it be?

Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei (one of the Saturn's best games, beautiful, fun, atmospheric, and intense)
Perfect Dark (original N64 release, best all-around-fps to date)
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (PC or N64 release, I have both versions, beautiful atmospheric fps with Metroid game mechanics)
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (my favorite in the series, also had one of the saddest endings of any game I played)
Legend of Dragoon (easily the best PSX game I played, best character development of ANY game I played)

I vote for Turok 2!

naaa, Perfect Dark 10/10

lol I'm surprised no one said Panzer Dragoon II. Also, I think I'm leaning more towards comparing the PC and N64 releases of Turok 2 as each version has something over the other.

In this time you can see many game review with the help of internet, there are so many site available for the game review, they all are so important for the review, in that all site you can see game review what you want to see.

lol I'm surprised no one said Panzer Dragoon II. Also, I think I'm leaning more towards comparing the PC and N64 releases of Turok 2 as each version has something over the other.

I loved the original Turok on N64, but the demo of the new one blew pretty hard. I don't know if there's much the can do to revive the series.

lol I'm surprised no one said Panzer Dragoon II. Also, I think I'm leaning more towards comparing the PC and N64 releases of Turok 2 as each version has something over the other.

I loved the original Turok on N64, but the demo of the new one blew pretty hard. I don't know if there's much the can do to revive the series.

Heh. Clever spambot is clever. Also, you're banned.

Even with avatar! :O

Haha, please remember to edit their signature too, or they still have what they want. They might still lure some cash out of someone's pocket for their clunkers!