tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19462406839696303582024-03-06T02:57:21.147+01:00The Rage BarGamer's blog, covering anything and everything.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger105125truetag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-35507498242624130332019-04-17T03:20:00.001+02:002019-04-17T03:26:37.668+02:00It has only been 6 years since I last posted something here!So here's a post!<br />
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I've actually been playing a little bit of WoW again, but the draw is quickly fading and at the time of writing I dont think I've logged in on it in the last month or so. Cookie! I had an allright time revisiting it, though, but the 'endgame' of several layers of randomness in order to get upgrades from raids, dailies 2.0 in the form of world quests, and generally not having a community to glue myself to anymore makes the whole experience much different and not in a good way from back when I was playing it proper.<br />
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These days, I'm playing a bit of Forza Horizon 4. Its a bleeping great game. It has a great driving feeling, just right balance wise between completely unrealistic arcade driving, and overly complicated sim stuff. It has a playfulness that I also felt with The Crew, which is missing completely from The Crew 2. Perhaps that plays a large part in why I enjoy FH4. Anyway, its good. And everyone's a winner:<br />
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There's more as well, but I don't think I'll be able to keep myself awake long enough to go through the highlights, more later. Also would be nice to figure out why the feck I can't add my own youtube channel videos as embeds on these posts anymore.<br />
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LATER, THINE NOOBS.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-77354376910058266682013-10-24T18:59:00.001+02:002013-10-24T18:59:58.124+02:00SSFIV AE 2012 - Honda Cup 2013Ahoy!<br />
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I participated in a hilarious online Super Street Fighter IV tournament that is still ongoing, with a pretty severe restriction: You got to play as E. Honda! Sadly I'm knocked out of the tournament now, having lost one match and then losing again in the loser's bracket, but damn.. it was fun! Honda is a character I've only briefly touched before in SSFIV AE 2012, but(t) he's pretty dang fun to play!<br />
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I'll post the video of the last match I played here, against the notorious and mysterious 'Hermbutt', sometimes known as 'Herminator', or 'I aM Fake zZz'.<br />
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If this kind of thing sounds like fun, I strongly encourage everyone to register at <a href="http://www.blockstring.com/">www.blockstring.com</a>, a friendly and helpful fighting games community. This is a great place to level up your game with tips and feedback from players of all skill levels, and you get to participate in events like this one.</div>
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If anyone's curious how these tournaments are set up, here is page laying down how the rules and how its organized, for example that this particular tournament is 'double elimination'.</div>
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SSFIV AE 2012 is STILL the king of fighting games far as I'm concerned that's well worth getting into even after the few years it's been out, so if that video above looks fun, and you're not familiar with the game? I consider it the best fighting game your money can buy still. So pick it up during sales or something! :)</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-31786036716340050192013-10-20T05:30:00.000+02:002013-10-20T05:30:59.922+02:00Short review: Civilization V - Brave New World<i>Disclaimer: This review is written by a Civ fanatic with a critical eye on its features. </i><br />
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The Brave New World DLC adds a few noteable updates to Civilization V.<br />
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You now get a different method of cultural victory, using your superior culture to spread your nation's culture through a new resource called tourism, to the other civilizations. If the other civ's own cultural developments can not keep up with your pop culture, you win. Contrary to marketing, this is not a new feature, but a replacement for the old Utopia culture win. That aside, it makes the culture race much more interesting with civs now having an offensive and defensive stat to compete in for culture.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Culture is a powerful thing</td></tr>
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Major Social policy overhaul: BNW adds Ideologies upon reaching the industrial age, where you'll choose to follow Order, Freedom, or Autocracy. You'll need to pick this wisely as your civ's happiness can easily be swayed by other civilizations if their orders are proving influential. Policies overall are completely redone, and the just recently released Civ V fall patch changed it up even more.<br />
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Congress: There is now a world congress which forms quite early in the game, compared to the G+K United Nations congress. The world congress will not enable diplomatic victory, but there is a lot of very powerful choices to propose and vote for/against, which can turn tables completely.<br />
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Diplomats: Your nation's spies can now infiltrate other civilizations dressed as diplomats. They can not steal techs, but they have other uses... <br />
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Trade Routes: Introduces new units for land and sea trade caravans. These are completely defenseless units which you can send to other civilizations or city states on frequent trade missions to bolster your economy. In addition to income, these routes will also leak science and religion based on which cities are the most developed, so pick your routes carefully. And for the love of [religion], pick your routes carefully so they're not ransacked by barbarians. <br />
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New civs: Nine of them. Poland, Brazil, Assyria, Zulu, Portugal, Indonesia, Morocco, Venice, Shoshone and Ethiopia. They're all good. More civ flavour, what's not to like ?<br />
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Wonders: 8 new and returning wonders are now available for construction including hits like the Parthenon, Broadway and the Globe Theater.<br />
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Scenarios: Scramble for Africa and American Civil War. I've played a couple games on Scramble for Africa, it is a really good and fairly open scenario that lets you do what you want (and fail of couse) in the race to civilize Africa. I haven't played the Civil War scenario yet. May update this review when I have. But Scramble for Africa is really good!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">War. War never changes.</td></tr>
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This post is so far just a long list of DLC features, but what do I think of them ? From a balance standpoint, culture is now much stronger and will happily steal a win versus science or conquest if given the chance. Tourism is a good new resource, but it has no means of countering meaning players will always want to get as much as they can of it, always, this is helped by very strong tourism bonuses given through policies and ideology. If you want to win non culture now, you really race against the clock. This is of course balanced by the civs going for this win having slower tech and military. It usually plays out quite well.<br />
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I pretty much love all the new cilivizations. Won't spoil anything. I think they're all very solid, add flavour and gameplay variety and make Civ V a richer experience, not a bad word to say about them.<br />
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I'll be honest, trade routes need some revising. If you're lucky, you'll have a central placed, quickly growing city with good connections to send routes to. If so, you're in the money. If you're not, you will fall FAR behind. If you got your routes going and other civs don't, you can ally every citystate easily, but if you don't you're not going to be able to make a purchase, almost ever. I like the feature, but it desperately needs balacing. As it is now, being able to set up a good trade city wins or loses the game. This is somewhat evened out by the fact barbarians LOVE to ransack trade routes, forcing you to rebuild them frequently if you have risky routes going, but this once again makes an early city with safe routes for caravans that much stronger.<br />
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Everything summed up, it is really hard to argue against Brave New World. It adds so much stuff, on every level. Not all of it is in my subjective opinion good, true, but it really can not be argued that this DLC adds depth on every level of the game, and for that, I can only recommend you to get Brave New World if and when you can. It makes your Civ V better, just like Gods and Kings does (get that too btw). Every Civ V player who enjoys their game should get this upgrade, which is unfortunate to say about a DLC, but I choose to treat "Gods and Kings" as well as "Brave New World" as expansion packs.<br />
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Verdict:<br />
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Mandatory if you like Civ 5 and want to expand your experience.<br />
Pass or get on a sale, if the game is not a big deal to you.<br />
Pass if Civ 5 doesn't do anything for you, it adds more of everything, sure, but it's probably not going to change your opinion about the game.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-8201776200489990202013-09-27T22:57:00.002+02:002013-09-27T23:02:15.860+02:00Wicked Video Games OST's: Part 2Hello again!<br />
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I'm horrible at updating, I know, allright? :) The second part of Wicked Video Games OST's is coming your way right about right now!<br />
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As everyone who ever played a computer game knows, the sound of a game has a huge impact on one's experience. In this series I am showcasing what game soundtracks (or sound in general) I was personally moved by, this is not necessarily another 'best VGM OST' list, though.<br />
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#1 World of Warcraft: Cataclysm - Gnomeregan<br />
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This is the second known case for me where I've had to just stop playing to listen to the music. (The first one would be the title theme for vanilla Civilization IV. If you don't know WoW gnomes, they are basically child sized inventor geniouses who consider safety a distant second consideration in the face of progress. In WoW, their race was nearly wiped out completely in a rebellion that caused their capitol city to be completely irradiated with chemicals that killed or mutated most of the population. This lore was unfortunately never put ingame in a proper way until the Cataclysm expansion was released. In WoW: Cataclysm, Gnomes were finally given a more meaningful introduction and this music piece that I will finally post is one of the many fantastic musical artworks WoW was updated with when Cataclysm was released:<br />
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Cello, clockworks and wazoo (!) in harmonic powerplay!</div>
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#2 World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade - Lament of the Highborne</div>
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Night elves in WoW are nowhere as treehuggy as their bouncy appearances may first look. They live so close to nature they are generally avoided and often considered feral by the other Alliance races, and have a strict caste system topped by powerful huntresses and archdruids of Elune with immense power. They have been and still suffer their fair share of hardship, for example they are no longer immortal. This next piece is sung by Sylvanas Windrunner who heads the Forsaken undead faction of World of Warcraft. She was a night elf ranger captain slain and then resurrected as a banshee by Arthas Menethil, later known as the Lich King. She may be an elf originally but the forsaken faction comprised mostly of humans all share the pain and loss in her lament, of the extinct highborne and follow her without question as their freakish race fights for their continued survival (such as it is):</div>
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Banshees may look hideous but damn can they strike a tune...</div>
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#3 World Of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria - Way of the Monk</div>
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Pandaren as a race were largely ridiculed (and still are, I suppose) when Mists of Pandaria was announced, I'll admit I was quite sceptical as well hearing the news. I have to give praise where its due, however; Blizzard did one hell of a job fleshing out absolutely everything in rich detail storywise, to the point I now see Pandaren as one of the most legit races in WoW (Of course it helps having a whole expansion themed around them). Pandaren in WoW are one of the races that lived for ages under Mogu slavery. The Mogu allowed a caste of Pandaren to form to create herbal remedies to combat slave fatigue. Over the years they rose in power, unknown to the Mogu, to become skilled healers, leaders, unarmed combatants but most importantly a symbol of hope for the slaves that finally granted them the power to rise up against the Mogu and rebel, eventually freeing themselves from slavery. That caste was the first of what is now called the Monk class in WoW.</div>
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Too much epic strings and horns to begin getting into, just listen.</div>
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I could list more great music from the game, but I'll stop here. If any of this was of interest then the rest of the soundtrack is just a youtube search away. World of Warcraft has been a part of my life for many years now, thanks to the great fantasy world it has immersed me in, and the music of the game has been a large part of that. As a bonus, if any of the pieces above were good for you, or you are just interested in some story on Mists of Pandaria, here is the link to the first of a great seven part storytime video series made by Blizzard:</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-90589270445748015692013-09-21T04:02:00.004+02:002013-09-21T04:12:34.771+02:00I don't know if anyone is reading this blog anymore, but here goes.I've been slack as hell at updating here, I've made a few attempts at picking it up but it's all gone to the dickens, I'll admit that. One thing I never do though, is give up.<br />
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So here's a filler post of sorts with select videos I've posted on Youtube since my last stint here, and I hope you'll find something interesting! As usual, if your embedded video player doesn't let you go 1080 or 720p fullscreen I recommend clicking the Youtube button on the videos and watching them there instead.<br />
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To get the pace going, here's a test video I made on the not so recently released anymore Need for Speed: Most Wanted, still a fun game, despite a few dire issues on the PC version (I play mostly on PC exclusively these days btw)<br />
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I've been playing a lot of strange and wonderful games over the years. One of them that has charmed me more than others is the rather simple mechanically but very challenging Bit.trip presents: Runner 2, Future Legend of Rythm Alien. This is a game that fits into the 'endless runner' category, except this game has production value, actual levels that end at some point and online leaderboards and all that good stuff. This next clip is from a (after some practice) pretty decent run on a level played on hard difficulty.<br />
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If there's one thing I got a nerd soft spot for its oldschool pc games. A perfect example would be.. Doom, for example. As it happens, Doom is still kicking despite popular belief, and it's gotten rather bad ass thanks to faithful modders. This next clip is the last level of Doom 1 episode 1, freely downloadable in shareware form still I believe (but still worth your money). Oh yeah, mods. Have a gander at Brütal Doom! And Doom Metal level music remakes, and high quality texture packs! And a really challenging game, I actually recommend saving before opening any door on this game unless you're familiar with the levels. Also, funny thing I found out while making this post, the instructions I posted in this video got stolen to the extreme by various other youtube uploaders. Not that I mind too much, its rather amusing, also if it gets people back into this game its a win across the board.</div>
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Speaking of really challenging games, I had a C64 back in the days, and one of the most played games on it was the Great Giana Sisters. It's back! Okay, it has been back a while, since there has been remakes for handheld devices already, but now it is also on proper systems in a very lovingly created reinterpretation of the original game. I say that, because it plays very different than the old C64 game I loved back then. The original was a blatant copy of Super Mario Brothers, this remake keeps the charm of that game and the difficult platforming, borrowing some gimmicks from more recent 2d platformers but also adding the 'twist' mechanic that changes your abilites, and the levels themselves, which is rather novel. Also, the music is freaking sweet.</div>
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Speaking of sweet music, and in the same genre to boot, Rayman Legends is no longer a WiiU exlusive and has spread its limbless limbs over all current platforms. I'm just going to drop this bombshell. Ubisoft got better at 2D platform games than Nintendo. Rayman Legends is SO much more than any version of the Mario games we've seen the last decade, I really hope it inspires the good people over at Nintendo to get a bit more original with their next Mario stuff. Anyway, this game has the sweetest 2d/3d visuals I've seen in a long time. The animation quality is so good (and that's saying something, we're animating a character without arms or legs here). And the music? Well, instead of trying to explain it let me show you 'Castle Rock', one of the musical levels you can unlock at the end of each world in Rayman Legends:</div>
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So that's a bit of content on this blog again after all this time. I haven't forgotten about writing completely, I just don't have the drive lately. I'm still about, though. And I will yet again try to get back into this! I hope some of these clips were enjoyable and if you like what you're seeing here, there's a bit more on the channel they lead to. For now, thanks for reading and see you next time! </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-50239551529570039562013-03-18T04:29:00.001+01:002013-03-18T04:34:13.430+01:00Stop the pre-purchasing.As the title says, gamers really, really need to stop blindly buying into pre-purchase for big game releases. I'll tell you why. For one, Pre-ordering is a thing from back when availability was a real concern. Today, that is not the case. You can swipe your Visa online anytime and start downloading your day one game. There is no fear of not being able to grasp your trembling hands around that game that you've waited so long for, anymore. Second, today's preorder 'bonuses' are absolute rubbish. Yes, you can preorder and save 10% if you buy early, and if you know you'll be playing this thing out of sheer religion, do so. I've done this myself, I shan't lie. <br />
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But lets not disregard the fact a preorder on a video game is basically throwing money at something you have NO idea about before you recieve and play your product. Gearbox Software's Aliens: Colonial Marines illustrated well enough what kind of bait and switch is actually being done with their latest release, the end product being a far cry from what they promised, and what they actually showed before the game went 'gold'. For those not familiar with that story, Gearbox showed some very good looking footage from their game, then stripped it down to something you might expect to get from your money on a PS2. They also showed some pretty interesting looking gameplay, which too has been taken out. They basically advertised.. Oh I don't know, the next Tomb Raider, Uncharted, God of War or Call of Duty, and then they shipped out a game from those series we already saw on PS2, or other platforms the same caliber.<br />
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Also, please do not buy games blindly based on press release copies sent out before release. Please. Just look at SimCity. While there were some eyebrows raised over the need for online connections to play this thing, most of the gaming press went out of their way to endorse this game, with its tiny city building space and downright retarded sim AI (SimCity inhabitant's dont own houses, or have jobs. They just take what house or job slots are closest to them, and free. Have fun following your citizens throughout their lives, as the ads go, and marvel at the sheer incompetence that has gone into this game)<br />
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Lastly, look at the things you get if you do pay out for a pre-order. A pair of sneakers for the scout class in Team Fortress 2, or a copy of a game from the olden days. Stop it. If you had any interest in playing that old game, be it bad or good, you would have done so years ago already.<br />
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To sum up, I think the concept of pre-ordering a video game is outdated and need to go away, right now. Even if you are a big fan of a series or developer, wait for release, see what kind of bugbears they've knowingly hidden before you give them your money for a product you have no idea about. It's the only way we can turn this trend around, where publishers are free to promise whatever they feel sells best, and then deliver whatever the devs had time to crank out in the time allotted.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-58711356073251006672013-02-17T05:12:00.000+01:002013-02-17T05:12:20.247+01:00Aliens: Colonial Marines tip!I was looking forward to this game, won't deny it. Fortunately I know Gearbox have their quirks and didn't buy their game on impulse when it was released. Anway, the game is a fraud, as everyone knows by now, but that's not what I'm here for tonight.<br />
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Nope, today I have a sweet tip for making A:CM more enjoyable that I read on the gearbox forum. Here's what you do to improve the visuals:<br />
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1. Lower gamma/brightness.<br />
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Yah, we're done, were you expecting more ? Too bad, all we got for you is making everything darker thus making the shitawful design less eye-gougingly painful to watch.<br />
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You're welcome.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-27059038154055350072012-12-02T06:57:00.001+01:002012-12-02T06:57:48.750+01:00Wicked Video Game OST's Part one: Rusty HeartsSoundtracks associated with video games can sometimes be beautiful, masterfully done and memorable, yet are rarely recognized widely. Not entirely, thanks to wonderful things such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u_EWzmvI8E&feature=BFa&list=PLBC7A46BA477DF1C2" target="_blank">Video Games Live</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNzOVxHhjmQ" target="_blank">The Ohio State Marching Band</a>, and other rare but appreciated concerts and other events, but they still need a lot more love.<br />
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In an effort to shine light on the mad talent involved in bringing video games to life through music, I want to do a series of posts highlighting some of my most memorable encounters with Video game music.<br />
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Starting us off, we'll stay a while and listen to the soundtrack from Korea developed MMO/beat'em'up (a rather unique genre!) Rusty Hearts.<br />
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First off, the main theme of Rusty Hearts:<br />
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A very dreamy piano theme that just wants you to stay on the title screen. There's nothing very advanced going on in this piece but the melody is incredibly smooth, a beautiful piece. I won't hold it against you if you just leave this track on repeat.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Next we'll play Requiem, from one of the battle stages:<br />
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Another very listenable piano piece here as well, this time accompanied with acoustic guitar, strings and organ. I do love listening to this, and it fits right in with the coop hack and slash action from the earlier levels of the game before things get entirely too crazy.</div>
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I could just put the whole soundtrack here but I will pick one more song to play, this time the track named "Wings":</div>
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Slighty deeper into the game here where things are getting quite a bit tougher, but the music puts you right into it with an epic and fast paced violin theme accompanied by electric guitar, organ, drum and bass.</div>
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These are just a few examples of the soundtrack from Rusty Hearts. There are themes more rocked up with metal riffs too, and even some dance tunes as well, overall of very high quality.</div>
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If you liked the music and wish to hear more, search it up on Youtube or just get the game, Rusty Hearts is available as a Free-to-play release on Steam. I do like the game, and it should appeal to anyone fond of fighting games or beat'em'ups, or faster paced MMO's. :)</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-2213979774738342062012-12-01T01:51:00.002+01:002012-12-02T06:11:29.247+01:00Stealing pets from popular people!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Mass brain cell harakiri possible:</b></div>
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If you lost your pet, perhaps check with this chick first, also be less popular!<br />
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<i>Edit: Yup, she's pretty awesome. here's another!</i><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-86631285780486427122012-12-01T01:06:00.002+01:002012-12-01T02:06:03.318+01:00Review: Defender's Quest<i>Released: Nov 2011 ? I have been looking hard to nail it, but I'm not entirely 100% sure. Bust my balls if I'm wrong, here.</i><br />
<i>Developed by: Lars Boucet</i><br />
<i>Published by: Lars Boucet</i><br />
<i>Demo: http://www.defendersquest.com/play_demo.html</i><br />
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Defender's Quest throws you into the soles of Azra, a victim of a plague, who somehow gains magic talents and spirit world powers from a plague related near death experience, letting her tap into power from the beyond, being half dead from the plague but not quite and everything. She's very frail but quickly finds out she's able to fight this plague from her half spirit realm, through spells and summoning companions into the "half way there" realm, the only place plague zombies, snails and acid spitting serpents can be put down for good.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>This sets the stage for a tower defense experience slightly out of the ordinary. Basic gameplay is straightforward, but instead of just buying towers and upgrading them, you instead summon companions and recruit new ones to take up arms against the plague army, and they all gain experience from your battles, filling in talent points to specialize their roles as you go. They can also be equipped with gear you find or purchase along the story campaign, and Azra herself also learns and improves her spell arsenal with experience gained from each battle.<br />
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Pushing you from one level to the next is a very humorous and at times emotional comic slides story which does a beautiful job telling the player why the main heroine and her companions do these spirit world battles. You can name your companions as well, as well as any extra hirelings you bring along for the battle. A good story is always appreciated, but it is even more so when you see them told through your custom named characters! I certainly got a number of kicks out of the lines my berserker hireling Vadrigald had to share in the intermissions. :)<br />
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Meat and bones gameplay then: Defender's Quest's level gameplay is traditional in nature. You have your summoner who can place down defenders with specific strengths and weaknesses to fight and survive a number of waves of attackers per level. Placing defenders, upgrading them, and casting Azra's spells all cost mana points which are gained by killing the onslaight of enemies. Sounds almost dull, right ? What if your defenders (towers) were carried over from level to level and gained stats, skills and gear upgrades as you go ? Beat the game and "New Game+" unlocks, not only giving all the enemies new abilities but also enabling Azra's personal journal, sidequests to take on and hellish challenge levels which will really test your abilities. Throw in achievements for completing campaign and new game+ without hiring extras outside of the main recruits, and there is already a staggering amount of hours required to get to the bottom of this game. If you like TD, and don't mind some RPG to go with it, there's a strong possibility you will love the trip.<br />
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Defender's Quest is written in Adobe AIR which will run reasonably well on most half decent systems, while still being somewhat CPU throttled. That said, it performs FAR better than for example Binding of Isaac which was done in straight Flash, the difference between them is very plain. Tossing a bone to lower specced systems, there are options for lowering the flashy bits and particle effects. Of course, it doesn't hurt also that you can easily lower the game's speed which will also help people of either slow pc's or minds (me). Speaking of options, you can also adjust money and XP gains through the accessibility options, letting you go through it as quick or slow as you please! This can of course be abused to beat the game easily, but that's your choice. I like that it's given in the first place. It is also very useful if you decide to start a new game with just the story companions without extra hirelings, and take a shot at the achievements related to main party only story missions.<br />
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As I'm sure you'll no doubt have picked up by now, I'm rather enjoying this game. Its no secret I tend to enjoy well done Tower Defense games, and Defender's Quest is happy to tickle my sweet spots. The game is as easy or fiendishly hard as you want it to be, while offering a story stronger than most of its genre. Chuck rpg elements like levelling and gearing your defenders into the pot and the end product is a pretty sweet game.<br />
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Defender's Quest comes heartily recommended for anyone enjoying a decent TD bash, be it at casual or pro levels.<br />
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Verdict: 7/10<br />
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+Solid tower defending through good levels and companion customization options<br />
+Likeable campaign story<br />
+New Game+ is a lot more than just the same levels again with 10x hp enemies <br />
+For a flash game, runs darn well considering the amount of effects on screen at times <br />
-Lack of advanced TD mechanics, no mazing and arguably weak defender debuffs+synergy<br />
-Sprites, animation and sound effects, while functional do not stand out in any way, a missed opportunity to draw players outside of the usual TD crew in.<br />
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Trailer:<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-67129628938236256722012-11-30T23:50:00.003+01:002012-12-01T02:07:26.538+01:00Seriously, though:It's weekend!<br />
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Enjoy a song from the lovely and wildly talented Sarah Donner!<br />
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Once that's done, feel free to check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHpDPuh8A2Q" target="_blank">Motherfucking Pterodactyl</a> by the same artist. Isn't she great? Thanks to fellow motherfuckers Stan and Chris for getting me into her in the first place!</div>
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Have a great weekend everybody!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-643598929395513072012-11-25T03:11:00.001+01:002012-11-25T03:11:19.674+01:00On a more serious note:I still have a ton of games I'd love to do indepth reviews on. I may already be spending unhealthy amounts of hours playing these things, but putting down representative and honest reviews for them takes time, as well. Currently I am working on my review for a lovely indie game called Defender's Quest, which is half traditional Tower Defense, and half RPG/Story content. I'm enjoying my time playing it a lot so far. Until the review is done, there is a demo available here which may be of interest It is a rather enjoyable game for anyone liking TD style games. <a href="http://www.defendersquest.com/play_demo.html">http://www.defendersquest.com/play_demo.html</a><br />
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<i>Short list of definitely happening reviews: Borderlands 2, Darksiders 2, XCOM: Enemy Unknown</i><br />
<i>Longer list of reviews I want to do when I can: Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 2, Serious Sam 1+2+3, Torchlight 2, Magic The Gathering, Duels of the Planewalkers 2013.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-3107770779347574742012-11-25T02:39:00.002+01:002012-11-25T02:43:34.517+01:00The world has officially gone crazy.That's it, Earth's fate is sealed, we are setting sail for insanity frolics. For today, I recieved proof that the race of man is as I have suspected for a while, is still sailing hard towards its doom. I have heard stories of my revelations before, but I have most healthily discarded these stories as wild superstition, but unfortunately I am here today to tell you that the end is, indeed, coming. For today, outside of my house, I found myself at a coffee bar, and I had a woman in front of me in the line, who ordered a "frappuchino", with extra chocolate, extra cream, and no coffee. And the barista responded that it was coming right up. So this person went to a coffee bar in order to get herself a fashionable cup of coffe, that has no coffee in it. Furthermore, this woman who has allegedly studied and taken an actual education in coffee making, said sure, coming right up.<br />
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So that's it, then! Next we'll have babies made without actual sexual intercourse involved! Hold the press, thats already happening, too. This is DEFINITELY it, then. It's been good y'all !<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Today's post may be <span style="font-size: x-small;">exaggerating certain po<span style="font-size: x-small;">ints f<span style="font-size: x-small;">or humour. A<span style="font-size: x-small;">s much as the author would like it, the world will most likely not end for a good while, yet.</span></span></span></span></span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-60697739141689447432012-11-24T04:14:00.005+01:002012-11-25T02:24:26.475+01:00Is being hello!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Words are moot. You're welcome!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-20914507801203716362012-11-24T03:53:00.001+01:002012-12-01T02:08:08.781+01:00Is being hello ?Please to direction Moxxi Underboob Palacio ?<br />
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Here you go luvs!<br />
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xoxoxo<br />
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(Jesper Kyd rocks)<br />
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(Maybe more Borderlands soon)<!--3--><!--3-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-58257551843409339992012-11-24T03:01:00.002+01:002012-12-03T20:13:48.765+01:00Review: NFS Most Wanted PC<br />
<i>Released: Oct 30, 2012</i><br />
<i>Developed by: <a href="http://blog.criteriongames.com/" target="_blank">Criterion Games</a></i><br />
<i>Published by: <a href="http://www.ea.com/" target="_blank">Electronic Arts </a></i><br />
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Jumping in with both feet, here. There's no story involved in Most Wanted. As soon as you launch the program and it's done loading, you're thrown head first into a big city with no clue what's going on, apart from event locations plotted into EasyDrive. If the developers can't be assed writing any form of story that puts you into the game, then neither will I, sorry.<br />
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(I was going to write this review for players unfamiliar with the original Most Wanted, but it just can't be done, my apologies) If you played the first Most Wanted game, you will probably know what's expected of you, but I suppose Most Wanted rookies might like to know just what is their incentive for burning rubber and getting chased by police as soon as they round the first corner. No such background is given. To briefly fill in those blanks for you, you play a fresh arrival in the city the game takes place in, and for unknown reasons get into the underground racing scene with an ambition to become the most wanted by the police. Why you would want to be that is anyone's guess.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-_H7E82qthfiOV5fiyoHcVreurRj9d3v_kCpaxrCle-iMP6JN5SR1H64xFxq6e3z3ZB_c_dHPWaAYTvFgIVd4Pk9G-IlorXU69szJgpzINfLWS8WUFufnfVuP2pRerfjeJ_nNvBWkhLg/s1600/Most+wanted+online+lowest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-_H7E82qthfiOV5fiyoHcVreurRj9d3v_kCpaxrCle-iMP6JN5SR1H64xFxq6e3z3ZB_c_dHPWaAYTvFgIVd4Pk9G-IlorXU69szJgpzINfLWS8WUFufnfVuP2pRerfjeJ_nNvBWkhLg/s400/Most+wanted+online+lowest.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taking it online (720p all details lowest, best I can play at online, its still too choppy sometimes, tho)</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<a name='more'></a>After the minutes long (the heck is my PC doing all this time loading these low def textures?) loading screens are done, you can drive around a bit, and also access the EasyDrive function, which you'll mostly use for changing car parts when they're unlocked, but the first feature you will use is the GPS that points you toward races.<br />
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The next thing you will probably notice is that you are playing at an absurdly low framerate, for a racing game. I have some bad news for you. The PC version of NFS Most Wanted is the worst PC port yet from the newer line of the Need For Speed games. PC <a href="http://ragebar.blogspot.no/2010/11/totally-subjective-review-of-need-for.html" target="_blank">Hot Pursuit</a> was broken for the longest time, and guess what? PC Most Wanted is broken, too. There are vast reports of players with specs way above the recommended Specs stated for the game, that can only play the game in a playable state at 1280x720p, and only then as long as you dont try to make a turn with your car..... There is something fundamentally broken with this PC release/console port. I would strongly recommend trying a "demo" before a purchase even if you rock a current generation quadcore CPU + geforce 680 or higher. You might still suffer 15-30 frames per second on screen when driving through central city areas, or until whenever you try to make a turn (not even joking), even at 720p, with your graphics options turned to minimum. In case I wasn't abundandly clear already: disregard the recommended spec for PC when considering a purchase for this game, it has sadly been proven by loads and loads of PC gamers that even if your PC wastly surpasses the recommended settings, the game just won't run well, at all. And before the finger pointing starts, my PC too far surpasses the recommended system requirements for this game. PC framerates are throttled heavily by poor CPU optimization. Despite having options for lower settings, the PC version is also locked at High detail regarding cityscape detail and rendering distance. You can lower it, but it doesn't DO anything, set them to Low and the game still loads at High. It's broken. <br />
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Disregarding all the technical difficulties, there are unfortunately broken gameplay elements to deal with as well. The whole cops and bandits scheme is broken. For one, you are 100% guaranteed to get into a cop chases as soon as you start playing. I actually had one starting when I first started the game, and fiddled with various Autodrive options. I handn't moved a metre, then after a minute or so I suddenly had cops busting me. Welcome to Most Wanted, ey? So, lets say you want to try and evade the cops ? You earn a currency called SP while pursuits (and other stuff) are going on, which moves you up the Most Wanted ladder. This sounds like a decent incentive to try and dodge the police, except it isn't. You earn WAY more SP than needed to unlock Most Wanted ranked races just by doing the regular events, and you don't lose anything at all when the police catches you. Furthermore, you can't access races through EasyDrive while you're being chased by police, not even if you want to retry an event you just failed, so what you'll almost immediately end up doing is ignoring the cop chases completely, and let them catch you, just so you can acess your races again. I should probably mention that SP is the "currency" you earn that lets you challenge Most Wanted rival drivers, as well. I've been focusing on getting upgrades for two of my cars through races so far, and I've done one Most Wanted rival race, but I have enough SP to challenge the top Most Wanted cars, if I wanted to. So yeah, if you want to "complete" this game, that's just a couple hours or so of doing random events, disregarding Cops completely, and you can take on the Most Wanted and roll the credits. Yay ?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lined up waiting for the next up event: 1080p and medium'ish graphics. Its certainly not an ugly game.</td></tr>
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Next up in my checklist of whine is the driving itself. Now, its not BAD. Its just that almost all the cars feel the same on the road. There are customization options to radically change how cars handle, mind, but these all unlock through 5 race "campaigns" available to each car, to change how the cars behave while driving. It really feels like its these upgrades that change how cars behave on the road, rather than the cars themselves. This touches onto another complaint I have about 2012 Most Wanted: There are just five events, some not even races available for each car you drive. This hinders replay value and the option to tactically choose your car and gear for each event a lot, you're stuck with those 5 events for each car, do them with varying success, and never look back. This system ties into car upgrades, and the five events you can do unlock all the upgrades for the cars able to race them, but it still feels very, very shallow.<br />
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I did say it wasn't all BAD, didn't I ? Well, I think I've covered most of my gripes with the game by now, here's the good stuff!<br />
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First off, the driving is satisfying. Its like Burnout, almost, except you drive licenced cars now. And they can and will get banged up something fierce, from purely visual effects such as bumps from crashing into walls, to blown tires from spike strips drastically reducing your top speed. Your rides WILL get mangled, and you're probably going to love watching it. Car handling is still far from realistic, hovering somewhere between Burnout and Shift standards. I have gripes even when it comes to the physics, though. First of all is the AI rubberbanding behaviour, shown VERY obviously whenever you're far behind, or in the lead in races. If you're in last, AI racers will literally brake down to a crawl until you catch up, even in the most extreme cases. You can start a race, leave your PC to take a pee and put on some coffee, and come back, and still catch up with the other racers in most events. Unfortunately this seems to be a standard in racing games these days, but it doesn't make it one bit less ridiculous when you see how extreme it can be. On the other hand you can be in the lead, and have an oncoming lane police car intercept you, do an 180 turn, instantly drive at 230 km/h + and overtake you in a matter of seconds. The same law applies to AI racer cars, although a bit more consistent, in that they wont always zoom past you if you're cruising at top speed. But rest assured, if that exotic car you're driving happens to bump a wall, expect to have an AI SUV driver zoom past you at 250 km/h.<br />
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As ridiculous as all this sounds, it has become standard for racing games over the last 10 years at least, and damn me for saying it.. Its still fun. Ten years ago I would have been in the crowd that would violently protest against any game featuring rubberbanding, but damnit... I will admit its really annoying.. But I'm still having a lot of fun. Anyway, onto the BIG redeeming factor for Most Wanted PC...<br />
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The Multiplayer is bonkers! If you get this game, I strongly recommend just hitting multiplayer->find public game. Cops are gone, making multiplayer already a LOT more fun, ironic, being "Most Wanted" and all, but really? The badassest fun is to be had when going online. You'll be thrown into a city free drive game with 11 or so other players, with 5 events queded up. These vary from straight sprint races, to team takedown checkpoint runs, to team "score x team takedowns in X obscure location" or team " cooperate to drift so and so far around this tiny space within this limit of time". So there's objectives, but above all, the Multiplayer is about being a COMPLETE JACKASS. You even score bonus points during events if you finish early and mange to backtrack to take stragglers out. It gets hilarious, to the point you just grin even when all the players are supposed to be racking up time parked on the wing of a plane in an airport and some dumb asses repeatedly crash people off, ruining everything. Its just.. FUN. Playing online you also unlock cars and their upgrades just as you would playing the frustrating single player campaign. So why go single player? Simple answer is don't, just play online and save yourself from the frustration of the AI cops, traded for the sheer idiocy of your fellow gamers... But at least you can chase those guys down and T-Bone wreck their arses against an apartment block, or something more creative.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcfX23hGbknFv96gXXWnvRvcUJn5uNhvUp64NaM1qJLXjyrWLLUzmwoHwAN9op2RIyEjRxUZnzWHTylnykwaUDLpFU4h_DBI-KG4u0F_QlSZxppbAOuQOIoPfCHhla0L_SMiTONU-5ZwE/s1600/Spot+the+illegal+racer!.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcfX23hGbknFv96gXXWnvRvcUJn5uNhvUp64NaM1qJLXjyrWLLUzmwoHwAN9op2RIyEjRxUZnzWHTylnykwaUDLpFU4h_DBI-KG4u0F_QlSZxppbAOuQOIoPfCHhla0L_SMiTONU-5ZwE/s320/Spot+the+illegal+racer!.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I think they may have got me, this time...</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />
These are also radars that check your speeds at a bunch of places in the city, which acts as a leaderboard among your friends of sorts, if you happen to have Origin friends that also play Most Wanted. (I don't! :/ ). Apparently you can even see mugshots of your friends' Origin profile pictures ingame if you race past radars where they hold the speed records, pretty neat.<br />
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I think its time I wrap this up and come to some form of opinion about the game. I think as a pure single player game, Most Wanted will only cause frustration, both from PC performance problems and the plain stupid system for Cop chases that haunt you, yet are completely pointless. If that, and the sometimes extreme rubberbanding are okay with you, or you're really really hungry for an arcade ish racer right now, Most Wanted will provide some entertainment. If on the other hand you've been waiting since Burnout Paradise for an online sequel, this isn't it, but it will most likely keep you quite happy until it arrives! <br />
Most Wanted is not Burnout Paradise 2.0, but it's the closest thing we have right now, and damn, its stupid fun.<br />
<br />
Verdict:<br />
Single Player: 3/10<br />
-Horrible gameplay system with completely pointless cop chases, in a game that's supposed to be about cop chases<br />
-extreme rubberbanding<br />
-very poor CPU optimization for the PC port<br />
+Drive licenced cars and smash them up<br />
<br />
Multi Player 7/10<br />
-No server browser. Only random join options for online lobbies, unless you make friends only games.<br />
- No written chat online, reeks of console port<br />
- Poor performance online, severely CPU throttled FPS especially evident during online sessions even at lowest of low settings (yet still well above RECOMMENDED stats for the game. Broken game....)<br />
+Looks great, even at low settings. Looks gorgeous with bells and whistles attached, but good luck turning those on and still maintaining even 30 fps during races. <br />
+Get wrecked by complete tool players, or be one.<br />
+Encouraged to be a damn jackass online.<br />
+No AI drivers, no rubberbanded AI.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/aTi6uinHT30?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bit of Multiplayer trailer stuff. Not representative, unlike this video, MW online is about smashing stuff, and cars!</span></i><br />
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Down the line:</div>
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(30th nov) There has been a patch for the PC version, but I see no noticeable improvement in game performance. Furthermore, there's been an emergence of hacks online that freeze events proceeding, meaning if you're playing a full lobby, theres a chance one guy might do something fishy his end and freeze the whole thing, forcing everyone to leave unless they're content free driving indefinitely after an event. I've seen it a couple times and this last time I decided to just wait and see what happened. 30 minutes later we were still driving freedrive since that last event 30 minutes ago...</div>
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This game can be great, but it needs serious tinkering, still. Techs need to work out how to make this thing run on quadcore cpu's, or how to unload some of the work the CPU is doing onto the GPU. Until that work is done, it is hard to recommend buying Most Wanted until you've seen if it runs okay on your system. Also, Criterion/EA need to plug in some holes security wise for online play. If that's all done, this game should be fucking awesome! (Get to work you guys!)</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-77575667467045083682012-10-22T23:34:00.001+02:002012-11-30T23:43:56.841+01:00Review: Death Rally<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Ij8BwZju4Sx9XcpCqrNhDU0SfK0h_xtdrqCtzqq52IK1KjhemW9NOSzP6ATSjt9nT0o5cCwnhDNw6HKtQQrs6mb51xy9MHp2spZZw4AiIC0004afPUC5-yB-57b7uwI3D9jF1nhSuZw/s1600/Death-Rally-Logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Ij8BwZju4Sx9XcpCqrNhDU0SfK0h_xtdrqCtzqq52IK1KjhemW9NOSzP6ATSjt9nT0o5cCwnhDNw6HKtQQrs6mb51xy9MHp2spZZw4AiIC0004afPUC5-yB-57b7uwI3D9jF1nhSuZw/s320/Death-Rally-Logo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Developed by Remedy Entertainment</i><br />
<i>Released Aug 3. 2012 </i><br />
<br />
If you're as old as me, which you probably aren't, then you may know the name "Death Rally" from the hazes of nostalgia. But you probably don't. Death Rally was a top down racing game along the lines of arcade superstar Super Sprint and multiple platforms release Micromachines. Yes there were a lot more but these examples will do. But this game also had guns , Rock'n'roll, explosions and Duke Nukem.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>It was actually a rather good game. Quick to get into, decent ladder (campaign) system, and you earned cash for winning races and destroying your opponents, sometimes with special bounties and whatnot, which you spent on new upgrades and rides. For what was a Shareware release, it was really good.<br />
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Fast forward to 2012 and the release of Death Rally on Steam. This is gonna get ugly!<br />
<br />
At time of purchase a few months back, there was no mention at all on the Steam store page that what I was getting was a IOS port, priced 8,99€. Which is <u>nearly 10 times as much</u> as you'd fork out buying the game on your iPhone, prices will vary per region of course. What do we get at this price point ?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/542941821094134648/3D61811369CC8E62C2F0E083094E72F923948956/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/542941821094134648/3D61811369CC8E62C2F0E083094E72F923948956/" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Deathmatch. Looks cool before you realize all the AI opponents just circle around on the spot, firing their weapons.</i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></td></tr>
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Apparently I am too late to the punch at reviewing this, because on Steam release, this game boasted HD graphics. That claim has now been removed from the store page, for good reason. This game looks cheap, at best. I'll have to give Remedy some credit for even including video settings in the game, but even when setting it to "Extreme" I'm still looking at washed down, extremely low resolution textures, so what's the point ? I'm already wondering if I've thrown my money away.<br />
<br />
Onto a few races then. First things first, and this is absolutely vital, do NOT buy this game thinking its good for some amusement with your gamepad hooked up. The gamepad controls are atrocious, I can't actually remember a racing game with such poor controls, going all the way back to C64. If you play this game with a gamepad, as you would if you have one, seeing as this is the type of game you'd want to use one for.. You control your car with the D-Pad. Yup. Just point that sucker around and the car goes the direction you point it. Nevermind control setups that most racing games, both arcade and simulations, have had you perfect for the last oh 30 years. (<i>Hold the press!! I just remembered playing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwnzsIH_1Uk" target="_blank">Radar Rat Race</a> on C64 which had the same control setup, I stand corrected</i>) Now we're using the D-Pad for steering, gas and braking, and there's nothing you can do about it. Its a horrible experience. Even after putting time in to try and get comfortable with the controls, it just feels awful. Don't take my word for it, try the Demo. If that didn't sound bad enough, your vehicle weapons auto-fire, as in, you can't fire manually. You want to break that crate with your vehicle gun to see whats inside it before you decide to make a detour for it? Tough luck, you can't. You'll have to point your ride at it in the hopes autofire takes the crate out before you crash into it, costing valuable race time. And even then you risk having your car not fire its autoguns, failing to break the crate, making your run even more wasted.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/542941821094154735/31B379AA6E55F76A8965BD97E3935E5422AF5320/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/542941821094154735/31B379AA6E55F76A8965BD97E3935E5422AF5320/" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Your upgrade station, available only post-race. Also, we just got a call from the 80's, the A-team wants their car and their digital artwork for it back.</td></tr>
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Controls then, my second let down. Surely it will look up from now, right ?<br />
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Enter single player "campaign" mode, and what you get is a series of choices of races to do, one of each difficulty, neatly enough. In Death Rally of the old times, you'd earn money based on your race results that you could spend somewhat strategically on upgrading your vehicles, repairing them or buying new ones. In Death Rally 2012, thats all gone to the dogs. You earn new cars if you crash into random crates on the race tracks that you would NEVER normally aim for, seeing as they're always positioned in really awkward places on the track you just lose a lot of time aiming for. At least you earn some credits for the races, but what's this? Gone is the old, in is the new 'one button' upgrade system where instead of buying parts, you just press X and the game gets an upgrade for you if the creds are enough. Every semblance of an economy is just thrown to shits, you'll repair the car first if you can, then spare money is thrown into auto-upgrades. There's no incentive ever to save your money either since new cars and weapon systems are all randomly dropped during races, never available to purchase between them.<br />
<br />
Another thing I have to point out is how ridiculously short the races are! Many of the tracks you complete in somewhere between 8-15 seconds, and most races being three laps, most of the time (unless you're really bad) your races are done less than a minute after they start. This is a REALLY poor design on the PC version of Death Rally. If I was playing IOS Death Rally, okay, I could do a race while I'm on the potty, but this ? You hunker down for some racing and its done within a minute, 1:30 TOPS. UUUUGH. <br />
<br />
This is looking grim so far. But Death Rally has some cool characters, at least!<br />
<br />
... Wrong. They're all gone. Some of the old characters are listed as drivers, but they sport random colours, have no speech, and believe it or not, Duke Nukem who was the main bad-ass the old game, is completely gone! Copyrights be damned.... Well, that's gone too, then...<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/542941821094166816/B24EE2B53939EBB63F34256FC7EB5128AD224903/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/542941821094166816/B24EE2B53939EBB63F34256FC7EB5128AD224903/" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That tense moment, just before the race is over.... (we didn't start, yet)</td></tr>
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Can you play it online, then ? If you still want to if you've read this far? Kind of! To play this bad boy online you'll have to host or join a channel with a specific name. If you don't know any, you're out of luck. If you have a poor imagination and just want to invite a few friends to play, you may also be out of luck because any random typing in a channel name can join or ruin your party. Even if you play online in a lobby you've joined or hosted though, theres no guarantee you'll race your chums or nemesises. You see, each player gets their own set of race options in the lobby, and if you choose different ones? Well, then you're not racing eachother.<br />
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You read this far, and you still want a verdict? Fine.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Verdict : 2/10</b><br />
<br />
Death Rally 2012 does almost everything wrong. Only thing that saves it from 1 or 0 out of 10 is my nostalgic sentiment for the original. Remedy, which I hold to my heart for their Max Payne series, should be ashamed of having their name associated with this release, but what's a name to some quick bucks on brand cash-in's, eh ? Even at the IOS price this game would be a terrible purchase, heck I might be tempted to ask my ISP for the bandwidth back if I unwittingly had downloaded a demo of this. Also, the soundtrack is crap.<br />
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Down the line: <b></b><br />
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(30th Nov 2012) Nothing's changed, this is still a crap, 10x overpriced handheld device PC port. Steer clear, PLEASE.<b><br /></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-5503386602474472992012-08-20T18:49:00.000+02:002012-08-20T18:50:26.249+02:00Early impressions on Path of Exile betaHello there!<br />
<br />
I've been fortunate enough to get accepted into beta testing for Path of Exile, and I thought I'd throw out some thoughts on my experiences with it so far. To the best of my knowledge and from what I could find through forums, PoE testers are not under any form of NDA. If I'm mistaken here though, let me know and I'll remove this right away. PoE will also switch from closed to open beta "soon"!<br />
<br />
For anyone new to Path of Exile, short and sweet description follows. PoA is an online only action RPG, with a lot of similarities to games such as the Diablo series, Torchlight and Titan's quest. It is in closed beta testing for a full year already, with open betas right around the corner. Once released it will follow a free to play business model, sustaining itself on "ethical microtransactions", hopefully meaning there will be no way to "pay to win" as many F2P games unfortunately end up as.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Here's my thoughts so far on the game itself after a few hours under the belt.<br />
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I've only rolled one character so far, a ranger. With no idea what lay ahead I figured it a safe bet to go for a class with good ranged damage and options for kiting strong enemies. I got started off well enough, having just swimmed to land after being tossed off a ship, sending me off on my path of exile. Found a bow, promptly got attacked by an enemy and whats this ? A gemstone to insert into sockets on my bow already? Cool. I merrily ran along, eager to find enemies to plink now burning arrows into.<br />
<br />
As I'd soon find out these gems gain experience the same way your character does, and play a much bigger role compared to say, the Diablo games. The gems I find here teach abilities, and levelling the gems unlocks higher rank versions. A pretty neat system, I'll admit and so far its fun to track progress on levelling all my equipped gems along the level progress of my character.<br />
<br />
Anyways, a few minutes of hunting various cretins later, my character hits level 2, and thrown in her face is... :<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540684054134721438/F530103181F1F589C4414757AFE3B69B7D50F0EA/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540684054134721438/F530103181F1F589C4414757AFE3B69B7D50F0EA/" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">THIS.</td></tr>
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Say hello to the skill tree! Believe it or not, this is just a fraction of the skills you'll be putting points into each level, too. The tree zooms out with the mousewheel revealing literally hundreds of talents you can branch your skill choices towards. Whaaaaaat... The other thing I found out, is that with even with this staggering list of skills, and your active skills depending on what gems you run equipped, these are all passive boosts to your character, too. +10 Dex, 4% attack speed, and so forth. I foresee managing this screen turning into a game in and of itself. Personally, I thought the way I just had this screen presented, that is, no presentation at all, is rather disgusting. I do hope there will be some explanations to go with it at some point, when the game's launched and all that. That said, its very refreshing to be offered so much choice in character specialization, especially if you just played Diablo III with its ridiculously dumbed down progression system.<br />
<br />
Another interesting feature I noticed moments later when I'd made my way to the first npc encampment, is that there's no common currency on PoE. No gold, zorkmids, nothing. Instead you barter using scrolls and different types of orbs and such that you'd normally use to imbue your gear with different enchantments. So far, this has had two noticeable effects for me. First, I found I had to examine gear I pick up closely to consider if it might be worth anything in player trading, or if I can safely barter it off to vendors for petty scraps of paper that can be combined into useful identify and town portal scrolls. Second, I quickly realized I have to grab and sell every piece of gear I come across to sell for identify scroll scraps, and this part is quickly becoming a bit tedious! Its quite common I exit the camp and find I have to return and sell just a few short moments later since I'm full on bad quality junk gear to unload at the vendors. I sure hope I'll stumble over a gem that allows casting identify item or somesuch, so I can stop picking up every piece of junk I happen to find.<br />
<br />
So few annoyances aside, I'm actually having a rather good time with this game. It doesn't look nearly as well polished as (again.... I'll stop comparing to this game soon now, promise) Diablo III, but that's to be expected I think, given the companies between these two games are leagues apart in funding. The gameplay itself is rather smooth stuff. I've yet to notice any lags while playing despite the always online requirement, and the combat works good. Its also decently challenging, and I didn't make it that far into the quests before I had to own up to my first character death. Good thing I'm a wuss and decided to start with a normal mode character, instead of a hardcore (perma-death) one which I'd normally do on games like these.<br />
<br />
The different areas I've seen in the game so far, having finished the first act of the story, look good. These's a good mix of colourful countryside areas, gloomy swamps and also, really dark dungeons. This last point was a particularily pleasant surprise, as I've come to grow slightly annoyed with how night time and darker areas in games tend to look in this generation of games. Night time in Fallout: New Vegas and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim look just like day time, just slightly grayer toned but otherwise just as bright. The same goes for all the interiors in Diablo III, everything is well lit up. In PoE I've once again felt that sting of unease when I scurry around in almost pitch dark dungeon caves or prison complexes, something I've missed since Diablo 1.<br />
<br />
I think that so far, PoE is shaping up to be a good contribution to the action rpg / slash/hack/loot'em'up genre, especially considering it will distribute at the low cost of nothing. I'm definitely going to follow it onwards as beta continues, and it will be interesting to see if this becomes a successful release once its done!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-80030836093523107042012-08-09T17:39:00.002+02:002012-11-30T19:57:09.345+01:00Review: Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony<div align="left">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879427718/1088C48394135AA2552429940EB53BF4EBB651B9/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879427718/1088C48394135AA2552429940EB53BF4EBB651B9/" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jamestown, released June 2011 from Final Form Games.</td></tr>
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Bullet hell shooters, now here's a genre of games that puzzle me. In these games you control a small craft typically armed with ridiculous firepower faced against scrolling levels chock full of enemies firing swarms of bullets at you, pretty much covering the entire screen in death. Its your job to find your way through the levels without taking a single hit, preferably while also killing as many enemies and picking up points as possible in the process for a high score. Why would one expose oneself to such sadistic punishment ? The answer is of course, because its incredibly satisfying to beat them. Really, that moment when you've failed over and over, but finally get through a level after several minutes of one hundred percent complete concentration and adrenaline.. That's why.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
These games typically come from Japan and are most popular there, but they also have a lot of fans across the globe. Not surprising then that most of these games are Japanese and rarely translated and distributed worldwide.<br />
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What a blessing it is to have fans of these games form small indie companies such as Final Form Games then, based in the US, Philadephia. In june 2011 their first game was released, Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony. A western bullet hell shooter, these are kinda rare, but is it any good ? What's good about it ? Lets find out!<br />
<br />
To start us off, we can listen to the soundtrack of the game while reading through this all!<br />
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The entire soundtrack composed by Francisco Cerda can be listened to and purchased if so desired, <a href="http://finalformgames.bandcamp.com/album/jamestown-soundtrack" target="_blank">here</a>. I think you'll agree, Jamestown features a great soundtrack to go with the carnage. It also goes well with the presentation and, shockingly, story of the game. Yep, there's a story to go with Jamestown, a lovingly bizarre one, of course. In an alternate timeline than ours, there's a terrible war raging between England and Spain, on Mars (of course). And the spanish have allied with the steam punk martians, those bastards. So your pilot heads there to whoop spaniard and martian arse, basically. There's more story than that involved, but lets not forget what we're here to do now, namely shooting things while trying to not get shot back.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879348112/9CE831582C7940DB283DA6136D3404D6431ED8F9/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879348112/9CE831582C7940DB283DA6136D3404D6431ED8F9/" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">All games should have at least one of these things. *nods*</td></tr>
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Lets dig into the core then, the gameplay and its mechanics! You start the game off with one craft to control, with three more available from the shoppe (in game currency earned from playing based on how well you're doing, not RL dosh). As you'd expect, these four craft operate wildly different from one another. You starter ship is a good all round ship with decent speed and firepower. Then there's one thats slower but fires more powerful rounds, another that instead of carrying bombs as secondary weapons has a second cannon that can be controlled to fire in any direction, and finally a ship that lacks bombs but instead fires rounds you can manually detonate to deal high area damage. I'll be honest here, I mostly do my runs with the allround or slow but powerful crafts! They are all fun to play with but the more advanced ships can be very hard to use effectively, especially when your main focus while playing is avoiding bullets. Also available is a DLC which includes three more ships (and a mysterious fourth one) to crashland with, if the original cast isn't enough.<br />
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There's a wide range of ships to choose from then that behave differently, but one mechanic they all share is the Vaunt system. Vaunt is a limited use powerup players build up by collecting cogs that drop from all enemies when killed. Once you have enough Vaunt, it can be activated for a very brief shield that will stop all enemy bullets but it will also power up your weapons to roughly twice strength and start depleting your Vaunt meter. Vaunt can be maintained by picking up cogs while its active and its possible to keep it going a fairly long time when you get better at managing it. Vaunt can also be cancelled before running out for another short duration shield if needed at the cost of all remaining Vaunt meter. It is a very nice mechanic that encourages reckless maneuvers to pick up point increasing cog drops, but it replaces the more normal ship power up systems bullet hell shooters typically feature. I kind of miss having regular power ups to strive for, but Vaunt works well on its own and an important plus is that when you mess up and lose a life, you are not automatically completely screwed since you lost all your powerups.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879381146/8728C4D42488013A85963562B2EC8CC0EFD41D84/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879381146/8728C4D42488013A85963562B2EC8CC0EFD41D84/" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the first level things look manageable at least for a few seconds.</td></tr>
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The game has five difficulty levels that affect the number of shots enemies fire and their speed. At its lowest setting, enemy bullets travel rather slow and one can usually casually play through the levels without running out of lives/continues. Already on the next setting things get much more hectic, and the fourth one which is all I have unlocked so far for most of the levels, things really get crazy! At its top difficulty, I imagine this game will measure up against some of the hardest bullet hell games out there. You can play each unlocked level in any pace you like, start from the beginning and follow the story between the levels and stop wherever you like to continue later, or you can play Gauntlet mode, in which you start level one and play the first few levels on easiest levels, or the whole game on the harder ones and your score gets summed up at the end, should you get through it all. There's also a separate set of usually short challenges you can try, on the theme of surviving for X seconds, passing through all the ring checkpoints on a course or score attacks challenges. Overall, I'd say theres something for players of all skill levels and experience here, big fan of that. I do think the game is too short however, it only has five levels. Its fun to replay them on different difficulty and retrying for higher scores, but it is still a very short game.<br />
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Jamestown is clearly meant to be enjoyed in company with some friends, too. It supports local co-op multiplayer for up to four players that can join easily playing any combination of mice/keyboards/gamepads. I haven't been able to get someone to play this with me unfortunately so I can't comment on how well the multiplayer works, but I assume as in all multiplayer coop games, the fun goes up exponentially with the number of friends you got playing! Its understandable that there's no online multiplayer featured, this game published as their first release from a three person indie developer studio and all, but its still sorely missed. I reckon this game's an instant hit to play when theres friends over, however.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879364349/B29B463B8D90D7D66D926CCC3B53636936A5AF35/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/540680239879364349/B29B463B8D90D7D66D926CCC3B53636936A5AF35/" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bullets, bullets everywhere!</td></tr>
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Jamestown's visual presentation is built from pixellated hand drawn sprites and artwork that works really well for the setting of the game with its colourful 1619 low tech meets steam punk approach, it has a certain charm to it. It also captures the retro style gameplay bullet hell shooters are, and despite some art being just a bit too low resolution pixellated (this a term even?) for my personal tastes, everything still looks clean during gameplay when the bullet showers hit and cogs fly everywhere.<br />
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In summary, I feel I got my money's worth for the indie pricing. The game is heckloads of fun to play even if you're forever alone like me, and I have a strong feeling its a great game to play with friends over. Solid art for the game, good soundtrack, neat steampunkish setting all add up to a quality old school shooter game. However! The game is very short, expect to run out of things to do after a fairly short time unless you like rerunning 5 levels over to improve scores. That all said, I still find Jamestown to be a really good title, well worth having for the tenner or so it will set you back on Steam or D2D.<br />
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<b>8 / 10</b><br />
<br />
<i>Down the line, the post review look back:</i><br />
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<i>A number of players have reported Jamestown running in slide-show framerates whenever lots of bullets are fired on screen. Lo and behold, upon firing Jamestown up again, I too notice a severe drop in framerates whenever there's a lot of stuff happening on screen. A possible solution offered is to change the CPU affinity for the process through CTRL+ALT+DEL->Task Manager, however doing that provided no help for me. There is no word on a fix for this issue.</i><b> Make sure you pack a fast CPU if you're buying this game, or there might be trouble.</b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-20189956333946927912012-07-04T14:07:00.002+02:002012-07-05T02:53:12.054+02:00Don't need no stinking CoD for my FPS fix.Because these last few weeks I've indulged one of my childhood nerd-dreams, playing some of the old school FPS's online, cooperatively. I'm talking about the various shooters pre-Quake 1 here. Prior to my current stint my only only experience with these old timers online has been playing 2 player Duke Nukem 3D via 28.8kbit (or therearound) dial up modem, which was fun at the time but also incredibly unstable and laggy. These days however, with fast net connections and source engine tweaks that improve net code drastically, setting up a game of say, Doom 2 online is doable even by the most technically challenged such as myself!<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
So far I've been able to play Doom 1 and 2 (plus Final Doom), Heretic and Hexen online and it has been a blast. In particular, Doom 2 with the incredible amount of custom files you can tack on has been amazing. We use a game engine program called SkullTag to run the game, which has a ton of features on its own such as OpenGL support with high resolution, decent shader sets and visual tweaks making the games look much more relevant by today's standards compared to the 320x240 or whatevs these games ran at in their prime. Slap on a couple custom .wad and .pk3 files such as Brütal Doom and hi-res enviroment texture packs and you got yourself a whole new beast to play, completely transformed. There's even 3D packs you can fetch that change all sprites from item pickups to enemies to 3D modeled varities, but personally I find they change the game too much, while also not really looking that impressive (at least the packs I've tried).<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540679788120148562/02F57705D07C326B22093214C03D60D0B153F499/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540679788120148562/02F57705D07C326B22093214C03D60D0B153F499/" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brütal Doom chaingun replacement and a look at some of the textures in the hi-res replacement packs</td></tr>
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I'm sure theres a ton of old farts like me out there with secret wet dreams of revisiting these classics, so I'm going to put down a quick and dirty guide that will cover various clients needed or recommended, and how to get an actual game running with a few custom files tacked on.<br />
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<u>Stuff you'll need:</u><br />
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1. Doom 1 / 2 or both. Be aware that these games are still sold online and downloading torrented versions is considered software piracy. They can be bought for a pittance at Steam, for example.<br />
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2. <a href="http://www.skulltag.com/download/" target="_blank">SkullTag</a> or another source engine program, there's at least a dozen different ones of varying quality.<br />
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3. <a href="http://home.comcast.net/~mrrocket/dcsite_finals/doomconnector.htm" target="_blank">Doom Connector 3</a>. This program handles server browsing and is also in my opinion the easiest tool available for setting up your own lobby that friends can join and play with you on.<br />
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4. <i>Optional: Custom files</i>. Save these someplace convenient to find back to such as your Doom folder.<br />
<a href="http://www.4shared.com/file/N_D9I1vo/Doom_Metal.html" target="_blank">Doommetal.wad</a> <- Replaces the regular midi with headbanging metal remixes of all Doom1+2 ingame music.<br />
<a href="http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom" target="_blank">Brütal Doom beta 0.16</a> <- A total conversion mod, adds extreme amounts of gibs, execution moves, sounds and a whole new set of weapons. Be sure to download the version relevant to the source port you're playing with (such as SkullTag).<br />
<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/qohizm0otlo/jdtp-20071114.pk3" target="_blank">Doom 1/2 enviroment textures</a> <- replaces most/all textures on ground, roof, walls and things like doors and switches with high res versions that look good even at 1080p +.<br />
<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/ygy2gftdwmk/jdtp-comp.pk3" target="_blank">Final Doom enviroment textures</a> <- same as above, but includes the new textures from Final Doom<br />
<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/dywmmwmmz1i/jdep-20060601-1.pk3" target="_blank">Skybox replacement textures</a> <- Replaces the various ugly sky textures with slightly better ones<br />
<a href="http://199.91.152.178/svg5as5vkw0g/bt5bv472h4dlf6s/doomcoop2-bd-hc_hellonearth_update02.zip" target="_blank">Doomcoop2 Brutalized Hardcore</a> <- Replaces all Doom 1+2 levels with much, much tougher versions tuned for 2-3 players co-op. Besides adding hundreds of enemies these levels also have new areas added to them and stuff generally moved about. Great to try after you've beaten the regular levels a few times.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540679788120186421/E05F8263D6ED724C9618EB4E5D10B1086624FDD6/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540679788120186421/E05F8263D6ED724C9618EB4E5D10B1086624FDD6/" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am NOT cleaning that up. Brütal Doom rocket launcher replacement and an assortment of gibs and gore.</td></tr>
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<u>How to get this running:</u><br />
<u><br /></u><br />
First off, you need Doom 1/2, Skulltag and Doom Connector 3 installed. Once that's done you will need to run Skulltag once to let it know where your Doom game folder is, also try launching the game to make sure it works, and you should probably take a few minutes to tweak your game options to your liking.<br />
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Done with all that, close your game and SkullTag, and launch Doom Connector 3. You will need to register a user here, very simple stuff with no email activation required, done in a few seconds. Once logged in, Doom Connector will also need to know where your custom files are saved and also the SkullTag folder.<br />
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<i>Almost ready to get that shotgun out now.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<u>Joining online games on Doom Connector 3:</u><br />
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Simply hit "Refresh" to get a list of running games from the masterserver and get cracking! If you are missing custom files required for any of the lobbies you're in, type /getall in the chatwindow and Doom Connector 3 will try to download and install them for you from a list of hosts. If that doesn't work, google is your friend.<br />
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<i>Hosting online games on Doom Connector 3:</i><br />
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Click "Create Room", set room name and password if you'd like the game to be private (the lobby will show up in the masterlist while open). On the next screen click "Setup Game" to set what game and engine to run, and look through the various config options for your game. If playing Co-op its a good idea to check "Weapons stay" for example so your friends can all get those rocket launchers. Double ammo is also something to consider, some maps are designed to run you very low on ammo, double ammo balances this slightly to be playable for 2+ players. Also, team damage? Leave the field blank for friendly fire off, or enter a percent value to make looking where you shoot that gun slightly more important.<br />
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Next, click the second tab of the Setup Game screen and you can pick your custom files to use. If you've configured Doom Connector 3 correctly you should see some of those custom files listed above when you hit Add PWAD or PK3. Add some or all of them, confirm your game setup and once you and everyone you want playing with you are set to go, click "ready to play" and launch game!<br />
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Have fun!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540679788130315192/2B11D66124194AC1B4A86CD5C7F9E3443307956A/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/540679788130315192/2B11D66124194AC1B4A86CD5C7F9E3443307956A/" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You punched out ALL my blood!</td></tr>
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Oh, and if you or your friends are stuck at "connecting to.." when launching the game, you will need to get technical a bit. Go to your router setup and enable port forwarding for port 10666 and it should be resolved (might have to reboot/fetch new IP)<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
H4VOKK frapsed a level of play from one of our co-op sessions. Custom files used: Brütal Doom beta 0.15, Doommetal.wad, D2reloaded.wad (level replacement megawad)</div>
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<i>As always, if any visitors have questions or problems setting things up for themselves, feel free to ask in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them!</i></div>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-22393600001832143862012-04-01T23:11:00.002+02:002012-11-30T20:11:19.383+01:00Review: Defense Grid: The Awakening DLC'sThe main review for Defense Grid: The Awakening was getting lengthy, so I thought it best to go through the DLC's available for it in a separate post. In this post I will be going through all the DLC released so far for the game with short reviews and opinions on value for money.<br />
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For my Defense Grid: The Awakening main review, click <a href="http://ragebar.blogspot.com/2012/04/review-defense-grid-awakening.html" target="_blank">here</a>!<br />
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First up is the free map pack that's included with the main game, Borderlands. It contains 4 challenge maps that each have 4 game modes. These maps do not follow the campaign story in any way but are included just for the extra content and challenge. The four maps are Onslaught, Forge, Entanglement and Infiltration. I found them all to be great maps which took a while to "master", using that in the loosest sense possible as even though I've gold medalled the lot, there's still plenty of room for improvement according to leaderboards. Expect to spend a few hours on these if you want to collect all the medals. Overall map difficulty is slightly above the later Awakening maps.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxR95zshRPwDwMU-NWHWrbdFaAVZxlc7F7treIqC1CGM45-VGlyRB_lQmyFCWHqIgOxnfHVA1yxZtvjsGeBkLCs-LhJpHUpHlmkXSZ-2ed0T9bkQK4ByMSkAlXv7wZyZQBJ6R0YILUmZw/s1600/Borderlands+Entanglement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxR95zshRPwDwMU-NWHWrbdFaAVZxlc7F7treIqC1CGM45-VGlyRB_lQmyFCWHqIgOxnfHVA1yxZtvjsGeBkLCs-LhJpHUpHlmkXSZ-2ed0T9bkQK4ByMSkAlXv7wZyZQBJ6R0YILUmZw/s400/Borderlands+Entanglement.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the free Borderlands Map Pack - Entanglement</td></tr>
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Next up are four map packs called Resurgence Pack 1, 2, 3 and 4. These packs cost 0,89€ each and comes with two challenging maps per pack. Each map has 5 game modes to play which are all quite tough to beat. I just now noticed I lied in my game review, I haven't collected all the medals from these packs yet. So they're pretty tough! Or I'm really bad. Or maybe something in between.</div>
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Like the Borderlands maps, these maps have no story elements, they're just more Defense Grid maps to play on. I think these maps are all good, there's certainly a good amount of time investment required to 100% them. Are they worth buying ? Well, if you've played out the original Awakening completely and want more Defense Grid, I'd say so. Is 0,5€ per map pricey? Perhaps, a bit. I look at it as supporting Hidden Path. I don't mind throwing money at a company if they've given me an awesome game. Others may look at it differently! Overall though, these maps are all good and should provide good players a run for their money. At the same time, casual player isn't really missing anything big by not buying these packs.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.hiddenpath.com/_storage/MapResurgence04Roundabout_00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://www.hiddenpath.com/_storage/MapResurgence04Roundabout_00.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roundabout, from Resurgence Map Pack #2</td></tr>
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The last and most recent DLC we're covering is the You Monster DLC, released december 2011. It is priced at 4,49€ and adds a new 8 mission long campaign to the game. The player and his companion AI find themselves in some strange simulation, in the grasp of the maniacally charming AI from the Portal series, GLaDOS! She has us run through a number of simulated alien invasion tests, but is also prone to change things up on the fly when the player finally thinks he's doing something right. I won't spoil it too much, but you will be swearing. And laughing. Maybe scream a bit (in manly panic, of course) as GLaDOS suddenly decides your temporal towers should speed up aliens instead of slow them down.</div>
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The 8 maps include a total of 35 challenge missions, and a slew of Steam achievements. One small negative on the maps though, they mostly look like sterile simulation rooms and are not in any way pleasing to the eye much unlike all the other maps so far for the game. Its not a big deal, but the game does boast its highly detailed graphics and levels, which the You Monster maps definitely are not. What the maps do have however is all new story dialogue from the AI you know from the base game but also GLaDOS, being GLaDOS, which is in itself incredibly entertaining and worth the price of the DLC alone if you loved her from the Portal games.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIUOA1zW-27Q5OweK8t3qoI-UJ8MFKnEQWmNBU9QBClyw0xPLqt2CK2oI6pMjfWnOn4_iCC_XvcamL7UW_MHtW8ndQcQs8c82LFzlzDNWXYVFM4OKQ7V2gt6uy-6Uu4UNQ_JIBCrO1AZ0/s1600/You+Monster+Portal+II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIUOA1zW-27Q5OweK8t3qoI-UJ8MFKnEQWmNBU9QBClyw0xPLqt2CK2oI6pMjfWnOn4_iCC_XvcamL7UW_MHtW8ndQcQs8c82LFzlzDNWXYVFM4OKQ7V2gt6uy-6Uu4UNQ_JIBCrO1AZ0/s400/You+Monster+Portal+II.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">7th map in the You Monster DLC, Portal II</td></tr>
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The store page says to expect more than 15 hours of game time from this DLC, but I think most people can easily double or triple that if they want to hunt medals and achievements.</div>
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Worth the 4,49€ ? Yep! "You Monster" should be the first stop for anyone looking to buy DLC content for their Defense Grid game. Hidden Path, please make more DLC like this so I can throw more money at you!<br />
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<i>Bonus! GLaDOS sings us a song, from the end credits of Portal 1. Composed by Jonathan Coulton and performed by Ellen McLain (also known from Team Fortress 2 as the announcer for both teams).</i><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Looking back:</i><br />
<br />
<i>(30th Nov 2012) You Monster remains a good value DLC offering a lot of gameplay time for tower defenders, especially for the perfectionists. Don't buy this if you thought Defense Grid was lacklustre, You Monster will add some stuff forcing you to get creative, but in the end it's still Defense Grid. If that doesn't sound too bad, though? GET IT. The rest of the DLC's are still good buys if you want more Defense Grid, but you need to be in the mood for more levels (challenging ones!) of what you've already been doing so far. As an incentive, every penny thrown at the devs helps them piece together the upcoming Defense Grid 2 / Defense Grid Expansion. I for one can't see either of them happening soon enough!</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-69868291187838439202012-04-01T21:19:00.003+02:002012-04-01T23:23:07.350+02:00Review: Defense Grid: The Awakening<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja7ceOIT9ean6gWHiLvSBn8w4WznN4tQThkAKaR1ioqK3NTdc-ho4pkgNepgv2qd6NUDlHRg02vbxXfcz9jwiSCoS6UQifoWcWVAXJg9mqubpNJs4_Qkr74i72me_mpdxOkZuKjfaL00o/s1600/DG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja7ceOIT9ean6gWHiLvSBn8w4WznN4tQThkAKaR1ioqK3NTdc-ho4pkgNepgv2qd6NUDlHRg02vbxXfcz9jwiSCoS6UQifoWcWVAXJg9mqubpNJs4_Qkr74i72me_mpdxOkZuKjfaL00o/s400/DG.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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Brought to us by Hidden Path Entertainment, Defense Grid: The Awakening was released for PC December 2008, Xbox Live Arcade September 2009 and also ported to Mac OS X in July 2010 by a different developer. There have been a few DLC's released for it since then, and it wasn't until the Steam christmas sales 2011 I was even aware of the game when the complete pack with all DLC released was offered at a heavy discount.<br />
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Defense Grid: The Awakening is a traditional tower defense type of game, where the player is tasked with placing defensive towers to block and destroy big waves of invading alien enemies. While nothing new is brought to the genre, the game is unique in its high production value presented by detailed 3D levels and enemies courtesy of the powerful gamebryo engine, perhaps better known for its use in games such as the Elder Scrolls III and IV, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, Warhammer Online and Civilization IV.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tower assisted alien genocide simulator Defense Grid: The Awakening</td></tr>
</tbody></table>...Was unique in this respect I should perhaps say instead, since the more recent and highly polished releases Dungeon Defenders and Orcs Must Die. However, Defense Grid is different enough than those to be of interest still.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Story-telling doesn't play a huge role exactly in Defense Grid which doesn't bother me the slightest. It's a tower defense game, there's no need for cut-scenes, quests and whatnot. There are some bits of it though, largely presented by the player's AI companion that accompanies you at all times while you play, and usually in small doses at the start of each mission. The AI can be quite interesting to listen to thanks to quality voice acting, but it can drag out and become a tad annoying once you start replaying levels over and over to try different game modes and improve your score. Thankfully there are options for muting him and removing the subtitles once you get to that point. Unless you're playing the You Monster DLC in which case you should absolutely leave the voices on, the exchanges between the AI and GLaDOS (Yep, the one from Portal 1+2) are very humorous!</div><div><br />
</div><div>But before talking about DLC I should probably go over the core gameplay. The player typically starts each level with rather scarce resources, enough to plonk a couple towers down. Defeating the invading aliens earn more resources to spend in preparation for the next waves, but you also earn interest on whatever resources you have on hand, encouraging you to not spend more than absolutely needed to defeat each wave to ensure you earn as much as you can. To further boost your income there are also command towers which increase resources awarded for all aliens destroyed in its vicinity. End scores for each level is also determined by remaining resources, so penny saving and tactical placement of command towers are crucial to achieving good scores.<br />
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</div><div>There are 10 types of towers of various effectiveness against the different types of aliens. Some towers do area damage for dealing with large clusters of enemies, others do heat damage which continue to damage them for a while after they have passed the tower's reach which is essential for dealing with the faster moving aliens. There's also towers that are especially effective against shielded aliens, and a missile tower for dealing with air threats. Finally there are temporal towers which slow down aliens's speed, and the aforementioned command towers that increase income but is also essential for scanning stealthed aliens. Towers can also be upgraded to increase their damage, range and other effects.<br />
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The number of tower types available feel about right to me, although I wouldn't have complained about having a few more choices. Since you don't have a character to run around and assist defending with in this game in contrast to for example Dungeon Defenders, a somewhat wider tower selection could've been good since this is all you're going to be concentrating on. The good thing is, there's no overlapping between the tower types in their roles, and it's usually fairly easy to get an idea what types of defenses you need to be building to fend off the oncoming waves of invaders. You will also often find you need to utilize all the different towers on some levels to be the most effective, as the game does a good job throwing varied waves of aliens to defeat.<br />
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As for these aliens then, they come in all shapes and sizes too. There's the regular walkers of various strengths that have no particular abilities. There's swarmers which attack in great numbers making some form of area damage towers necessary. There's small but lightning fast aliens that will usually need some source of heat damage to bring damage since they spend very little time within tower attack range. You've also got aliens with shields which make heat towers virtually useless, and stealth aliens that can only be fired on when passing directly next to a tower, unless you've placed down command towers for detection. There's slightly tougher aliens that continually spawn smaller aliens until they're destroyed, and transports that unload a number of aliens when brought down. Then there's the flying aliens which can only be hit by gun, cannon and missile towers. Not surprisingly there are also boss aliens of all of these types as well. Figuring out a good defense grid to defend each level properly can be quite the challenge!<br />
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The levels themselves typically come in one of two varieties. In particular early on in the game, the aliens will have roads to walk on where you can normally only place towers beside the roads or nearby. These levels are in my opinion the least interesting, at least when you compare them to the more common type of maps where you can place towers more or less where you want, letting you shape paths for the aliens to walk. These levels can get pretty darn entertaining when you're allowed to get creative and carve out the longest possible mazes for the aliens to get through. Many of the maps are biiiig, too, with a lot of options for where you want to block the aliens, and it can take quite some time learning the most effective ways to play them, example below.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">Most of the levels can be played in a variety of game modes, in addition to the original campaign mode. As if getting gold medals on the original maps aren't hard enough, you can play all maps in a campaign challenge mode with tougher aliens, but there's also Grinder and Shredder modes which drastically change the level into marathon sessions of up to 99 waves of aliens to beat. While tedious sometimes they can be tons of fun to master. There's reverse campaign mode where the entrance and exit points are .. you guessed it, reversed. This little change totally changes how the levels play out as well.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There's also poison and frozen Core modes, poison core has only one core in the housing, but if its released and the alien carrying it killed, the core will destroy all aliens it comes in contact with on its way back to the housing. The downside is, you don't get resources for the aliens killed by the core, so its important (and hard!) to not fall behind by letting the core kill aliens.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Frozen cores mode is also a good challenge, as the cores dropped by aliens stay right where they're dropped which can quickly get out of hand one they get those cores moving.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Another tough cookie is the green towers only mode, which limits you to level one towers only. This mode can be darned tough, but it also teaches you forcibly how to use your towers most efficiently.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Finally you've got the tower limit modes which won't let you build more than a set number of towers. Nothing like the feeling of silliness you feel when you eventually beat the level you previously mazed aliens on with 30+ towers, this time with say.. 10 towers.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">I'd say the real strength of this game lies in the number of modes each map can be played in, especially if you have any completionist genes running in your blood. Getting all the achievements and gold medalling all the modes on all the maps is a biiig project that will keep you coming back for many, many, many hours. Add online ranked boards to this list of maps and modes and Defense Grid: The Awakening turns into a remarkably competitive single player game that still has players doing weekly challenges on the Steam forum.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">To use my own statistics as an example, I've spent 135 hours on Defense Grid so far, and I'm still not done with it. I've cleared all the Awakening gold medals, and am working my way through the DLC medals. About half way done on the "You Monster" DLC now, and I'll be done. If I'll have the mental strength to try topping ranked leaderboards after that remains to be seen. Anyway, better players than me will probably have cleared it in half my time invested but I think my point still stands, there's an immense amount of hours of entertainment packed into this title.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Summing things up:</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Defense Grid: The Awakening + DLC is a high quality tower defense game. If you like tower defense, you can't go wrong with this title. If you don't know what tower defense is all about, try some flash based tower defense games and if those are even moderately entertaining, you're almost guaranteed to like Defense Grid. And if you don't like tower defense games why did you waste the last 10 minutes reading this far? ;)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Defense Grid is challenging, has a lot of content that will keep players busy for a long time and having fun doing so.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Steam has a demo which you should be able to download by clicking <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/app/18500/" target="_blank">here</a>, or just looking it up on Steam store.<br />
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For my reviews on the Defense Grid: The Awakening DLC's, click <a href="http://ragebar.blogspot.com/2012/04/review-defense-grid-awakening-dlcs.html" target="_blank">here</a>!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Final verdict: <b><u>8 / 10</u></b><br />
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<i>As always, I'd love to hear your comments about my reviews! It doesn't matter if you thought it was a fantastic read, or it made your face pop with rage, let me hear about it! :)</i></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-40072114962696231102012-03-24T03:02:00.000+01:002012-03-24T03:02:27.184+01:00Ridge Racer Unbounded Track Editors!I don't know about you, but for me this game went from completely not interesting to potentially completely bad ass in about 1 minute and 43 seconds! Its extra funny because this very video is causing an uproar of Ridge Racer fans damning the game to oblivion for its rather different approach than the classic Ridge Racer titles. Come to think of it, they do have a point, there's not exactly a lot left of the awesome that was the first few Ridge Racer games on the PS1. But.. dat advanced editor!<br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-39307843803969036162012-03-24T02:22:00.005+01:002012-03-30T00:39:02.694+02:00Aion's Free to play model, and something for former Aion players.<div><b>What's Aion, then ?</b></div><div><br />
</div>As you may or may not know, NCSoft's <a href="http://www.aionfreetoplay.com/website/" target="_blank">Aion</a> is in the process of switching from the regular MMO monthly subscription form to a free to play model. The reasons for this are of course the game not drawing enough subscribers to compete with the bigger MMORPG's out there, despite the game recieving massive praise near its launch as a potential "WoW-killer".<br />
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</div><div><div><b>Okay, and why are you ranting about it now ?</b></div><div><br />
</div><div>I played it for a few months when it was a fresh release, and it was overall a very enjoyable experience. Gameplay wise it was apparently a mix of Lineage II (A game I admittedly never played), World of Warcraft, but also with the added unique feature of aerial combat once your character developed enough to get their wings. It was also a stunningly beautiful game, looking FAR better than even today's WoW and just-released SWTOR. Why did the game fail to grab and hold subscribers, then ? I don't know. Personally I was playing Aion side by side with World of Warcraft, and while I definitely enjoyed Aion I had to pick one of them eventually and the choice fell on going back to WoW full time. They were both very grind-intensive games, so one of them had to go.</div></div><div><br />
</div><div><b>You mentioned Free to play ? That's never a good thing is it? Why should I care?</b></div><div><br />
</div><div>Yes, Aion is as mentioned going Free to play. It is already F2P in Europe as of late february 2012, and it will be available F2P 'soon' in the US, that is probably march or april. The interesting thing here, is that the basic free-player model is remarkably open, and that there are three types of Aion accounts, Starter (new player), Veteran (former subscribers) and Gold (€9,99 per month).</div><div><br />
</div><div>All classes, quests, zones, gear and instances/raids are all available without spending anything. The limitations of the free to players is first and foremost chat restrictions. Starter accounts need to reach level 10 before they can send /whispers, and world chat channels are disabled for them. Starter accounts are also a bit limited in how much ore/gas (for crafting purposes) they can extract per day. There are also increased cooldowns for unlocking most of the dungeon and raid instances. Aside from that, most everything is open and unrestricted, if the Free to play <a href="http://www.aionfreetoplay.com/website/featuresdetails/" target="_blank">feature list</a> is correct.</div><div><br />
</div><div>With the Gold accounts everything is unrestricted and players also recieve a 20% bonus to Abyss points and PVP medal gain.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The most interesting thing here though is that if you are a former Aion player, you can reactivate and have your old account promoted to Veteran. Veteran players have unrestricted chat and harvesting for professions and can also set up player shops like the Gold accounts. It is basically the full game for nothing, except you still have increased instance cooldowns. As long as that is something you can live with, its a pretty sweet deal ! If you haven't played Aion before the game is probably worth a look regardless of the Starter account restrictions, but former players? It's very hard to resist giving Aion another try, isn't it ! I'm certainly going to dive back in, now that I'm not currently playing any monthly fee MMO's and see how the game is now! :)<br />
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<b>How to upgrade from Starter to Veteran account:</b><br />
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If you're a former European Aion player who came here wondering how to get your Veteran account up and running, <a href="http://www.aionfreetoplay.com/website/faq/item/account_01" target="_blank">look here</a>! Basically, you will need to log in at NCSoft's site, and transfer your Aion account, active or otherwise, to Gameforge, the new Aion hosts. Once that's done and you've done the usual email verification your F2P Aion account is automatically upgraded to Veteran. I assume US players will have a similar process when US F2P launches, but I don't know if the link and adresses needed are the same.</div><div><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>And if you somehow have no idea what Aion looks like, here's the F2P launch trailer!</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/KNC3yv4lubc?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1946240683969630358.post-9810521457531698322012-02-29T20:29:00.019+01:002012-04-01T23:24:29.048+02:00Review: Trackmania 2: Canyon<b>A different kind of racing game</b><br />
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Trackmania 2: Canyon is developed by Nadeo and published by Ubisoft in september 2011. Like the previous Trackmania titles, this game behaves quite a bit different than the kind of racing games most gamers might be used to. <br />
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Where Need For Speed might bedazzle (that a word even?) the player with beautifully rendered authentic exotics, Trackmania 2 gives you <u>one</u> car. Granted, there are many different car skins you can use for it, and there's a fairly decent paint shop for designing your own look, but all the cars you will drive and race against are 100% identical in terms of performance.<br />
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Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport and the like will let you drive faithful recreations of real life race tracks. In Trackmania 2 you drive on strange and usually 100% unrealistic tracks in the middle of the desert that are put together LEGO-style in the included track editor.<br />
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And finally, Burnout will have you giggling with spectacular car crashes that affect your ego as well as car physics and visuals. Trackmania 2 doesn't even have collision detection against the other cars. In fact, when you race on your own the opponents you drive against are actually replays, just there to give you a pointer on how well you are doing time-wise.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In TrackMania 2: Canyon, cars like fresh air a lot</td></tr>
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<b>That sounds weird! What's so fun about it then ?</b><br />
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So.. Understandably, some initially will be thrown off completely by this game. Put Trackmania 2: Canyon side by side with for example Gran Turismo 5 and it becomes debatable if they should even be considered the same genre of games.<br />
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Here's what the game offers: Millimetre precision driving at mental speeds on short but often infuriatingly difficult tracks, and the constant challenge of getting from start to finish in the fastest time humanly possible. There's long jumps, short jumps, jumps that require to be hit at very specific speeds, or angles, or amount of sliding to get across. Turbo pads that boost the already crazy speeds the TM2 car is capable of. Loops and wall rides. The game ships with 65 official tracks spread across five difficulty levels, but go into any on line race and you'll be racing hundreds more thanks to the track editor that comes with the game.<br />
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You can play TM2 alone, but even then your best times get measured up to against the online leaderboards, and if you choose to drive an official race your replay will be available to the world to view, or race against. Just like you can at any time can download the top replays from any singleplayer track and race against their times and ghost car as well. Its single player, but pseudo-multi player still. Another word on the official times, though. While its fun to try and place high with the added nerves from knowing your time and replay will be up, there is for some reason a five minute time-out between each attempt. This is done differently than in Trackmania 1, where racing for official times costs you an amount of ingame currency instead. At least you could race again immediately if you messed a run up (and that WILL happen, more often than not) instead of being put in the penalty box for five pointless minutes. The whole official time concept confuses me a bit and I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just be rid of it, and just make the best time achieved count by default instead.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They also like to powerslide, regular turning is for sissies says TM2 car. Also, corner cut any closer, anyone ?</td></tr>
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Whether you are racing alone or online though, the sole focus of the game is finishing each track at the best times possible. There will be many moments of frustrations each time the player messes their run up by just the tiniest miscalculation in speed and cornering, but even greater still is the sense of accomplishment, every step of the way. After each crash or jump way off the track I'm learning something and can try something else on the next run. The developers actually captured this mentality beautifully, when at the end of each race I'm asked if I want to 'Improve' instead of 'Try again', and indeed each time I manage to improve my lap time ever so slightly there is a big sense of satisfaction. Being placed on leaderboards both solo and online further fuel the drive to improve, and you are constantly shown your position on the rankings both in your nation and world wide. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but personally I love it and I can't help but feel darned proud of the few really good official times I've managed.<br />
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Playing TM2 online is where the game shines the brightest. There is a very dedicated trackmaking community for it, and there are dozens upon dozens of very good tracks to race on. Depending on what server you have joined, there may be just a handful of players on, or over a hundred players racing all at once, at all levels of skill. Again the focus is squeezing out those record times, and its just plain fun to see how competitive this can get especially on those servers where there are many evenly matched players, and it is quite common to see the top 10-15 placements after a race separated by less than 0.1 seconds. Most servers will also run extra modules that display and update world ranked times on the go. When racing online you will see the other drivers (unless you wish to hide their cars in the options) which can look crazy on the especially high population servers, but like in the single player races there is no collision detection, thank goodness. The downside to this is that it is, well, unrealistic. Which is fair and good, but I dare say those complaining about that are playing the completely wrong game for them. The good sides of the lack of collision detection is of course that the time trial'ish nature of the game is even possible, imagine trying to beat any kind of near perfect lap time when you risk collisions with 100 other cars trying to do the same thing. Also, and this is a big one. Online latency issues are non-existent! There's no downside at all playing TM2 on even the most speed restricted internet connections, other than perhaps waiting 10 seconds longer than the rest on track changes to tracks that feature custom soundtracks and textures. If you are playing on a really slow connection, the most noticeable impact it has on the game is that other players racing with custom car paints will most likely look like they are just driving white coat painted cars most of the time. A bit dull perhaps but at least it doesn't affect the gameplay in any way. As mentioned before your ranking is also continually updated as you play online, whether you are on for 20 minutes to kill some time or have the whole evening set aside for serious racing-stuffs. I suffer a bit from what the strategy gamers call the "one more turn..." syndrome, I always want to do just one more race. All in all I am very impressed with the online play on TM2, comes heartily recommended!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaiI0386tFY-SCLEx_IaYCw4__pztX29Z-wOv65CLrFj2Sf1raLbVblOWnDXWm8XxutxBv-riq_xTYmVWwN67u4XVcJzgJCxWAmHsZYVm6Q3376Pc2Y7kU_hhyphenhyphenWJEEH-EqU5j56putPuI/s1600/Rare+footage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaiI0386tFY-SCLEx_IaYCw4__pztX29Z-wOv65CLrFj2Sf1raLbVblOWnDXWm8XxutxBv-riq_xTYmVWwN67u4XVcJzgJCxWAmHsZYVm6Q3376Pc2Y7kU_hhyphenhyphenWJEEH-EqU5j56putPuI/s400/Rare+footage.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rare footage of inert TM2 car. They usually fly or slide around, but sometimes they just want to chill out and strike a pose.</td></tr>
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The game has both car, track and replay editors readily available, providing an excellent outlet for the creatively gifted among us (myself excluded!). These are all fairly powerful and let you do a lot of things, but can be a bit difficult to understand initially. It doesn't help that there is no manual for these things to be found anywhere, either. There was a wiki page thrown up for the editors at some point after release, but the information there is sparse and doesn't do a very good job at explaining how to use the tools available. I've thrown together some basic stuff in the editors, but personally I run out of patience before a lot of time has been spent tinkering. I have a lot of respect for the community map and car makers out there who produce the things they do!<br />
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I should touch on the game's graphics as well, I suppose. TM2 is a drastic step up in visual splendour from the last release Trackmania United, which is to be expected. What you would not expect is how low the system requirements are for it. Those with good graphic cards can crank up all the shaders, shadows, lens flares and other goodness and have a very, very impressive looking game on their hands, but even at its lowest settings, TM2 looks great and will happily run on even a laptop with very modest non-gaming GPU's. I've tried this myself on my mom's cheap laptop and it plays shockingly smooth. It was said somewhere by Nadeo that Trackmania 2: Canyon actually has equal or lower system requirements than Trackmania United, and that is pretty impressive given the massive facelift TM2 has recieved.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRX6vSijCs9Ffia95cgDy1N1PLtbDbKRIjluPLHX1iTKsCKQiQo03W66joPJlpZDbSFEDjzRf3NZzM5EuCjreEIgZly-d5UQs-AMSa8Hs8TqEwKZGcRxDyv8jLjX-Hv1SV_0zs6SdU4L0/s1600/Ghosts+replay.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRX6vSijCs9Ffia95cgDy1N1PLtbDbKRIjluPLHX1iTKsCKQiQo03W66joPJlpZDbSFEDjzRf3NZzM5EuCjreEIgZly-d5UQs-AMSa8Hs8TqEwKZGcRxDyv8jLjX-Hv1SV_0zs6SdU4L0/s400/Ghosts+replay.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amateur replay editing by yours truly. Merged 15 or so of my replays from a track into one to, well, show you at least 8 wrong ways to handle a nasty set of corners.. :)</td></tr>
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<b>In conclusion then:</b><br />
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I am mostly enthusiastic about Trackmania 2: Canyon. The game plays really well, both in terms of the feeling of the car and the feel of the racing. It looks great, and performs good even on computers not normally strong enough to play games on.<br />
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TM2's gameplay style is quite different than most current racing games and it really stands out from the rest because of it. Those with at least a basic competitive nature will get good kicks out of trying to perfect their race times, improving themselves and beating others. The rest will still have an arcade racing game with reckless stunts to enjoy in whatever doses they feel for.<br />
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The editors are good, but lack documentation so they can be a bit overwhelming to learn. Those persistent enough to learn them on their own are richly rewarded by the tracks, cars and cinematic replays they can create.<br />
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On the downside, the game didn't feel at all complete on release, more like a racing game framework for the modders and track editors to expand on. 6 months later it still doesn't feel 100% finished. I know the community editors have been begging for more building blocks and tools to use in the track editor but so far nothing has been added, and based on the tracks played on line now its starting to look like the options for making good tracks with the tools available are just about spent.<br />
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Then there's the in game currency, "Planets", which no one still really knows what to do with. You earn these for increasing your rank on line, and can spend them on unlocking new car paints you've downloaded, or the planets can be donated to server admins to help them pay their server fees. It sort of feels like Nadeo had intended for Planets to do much more, but then forgot all about it halfway through implementation.<br />
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The game is to the best of my knowledge still only available through Nadeo's web store with no representation in the other larger distribution platforms such as Steam, Desura or Origin, nor can you buy a physical copy. This has had a glaring impact on TM2, it has a TINY community when measured up against its predecessor. Lack of distribution venues added with virtually no advertising means a lot of people don't even know about this game.<br />
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Another thing is that I still see complaints from users who have their legit credit card info refused on the only place to buy it. When I bought the game on release day nothing really worked, nor did the installer I downloaded. And re-downloaded. And re-downloaded. I had to fight for days to get the game working. In the end the solution was to download a leaked TM2 beta setup file that would download the rest of the game files for me, it was the only way to get it installed properly. To get this installer I had to register on the maniaplanet forum and request the alternate installer from a forum admin. This is the most ridiculous form of customer service I have encounter so far. I still only have the beta install, as Nadeo through some insane logic has decided to charge you aforementioned planets if you want to re-download the game client. Screw that! Seriously !? I have to PAY to download the client to play the game that I have already paid for ? FUCK YOU, Nadeo.<br />
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That's not all, though. My final biggest complaint about TM2 however is that Nadeo has all but abandoned it in terms of maintenance and updates. They're a small studio, and right after TM2 release they shifted all their focus towards pushing out their next two products called Shootmania and Maniaplanet 2.0. All forms of feedback and suggestions posted regarding TrackMania 2: Canyon are met with praise of how much we're going to like these next two releases that I have no interest in. I was very disappointed to see this especially considering the amount of polish the game needs still.<br />
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<b>And so, my final verdict for TrackMania 2: Canyon lands at around 5 / 10.</b><br />
This game sates my cravings in the somewhat small niche of genres that is the "arcade-like-stunt-online-racing" game and does most things right as far as the actual game goes. Nadeo and Ubisoft have done almost everything else that you can think of outside the actual races WRONG, though. I can't help but wonder what a global phenomenon TM2 could have been though with proper maintenance, advertising and release platforms availability, and of course a minimal amount of customer service.<br />
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And again, no. Telling me I have to pay up to download my game that I've forked out RL dough for is no way to treat a customer. Heck, its not even a way to treat a potential customer, if anything its a way to make sure potential customers go nowhere near TrackMania 2: Canyon, except this hidden fee is of course not warned about in any way when you purchase the game!<br />
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If you're desperate enough for a stunt racing game to look past the difficulties you'll have to manage dealing with Nadeo and Ubisoft in order to buy and install the game however, there's a great racing game hidden behind all the initial BS!<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Bonus: TrackMania 2 get hype PAX 2011 Trailer:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/nsnkqJpDmNg?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;">720p and sound on o/<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><i>As always, I'd love to hear your comments about my reviews! It doesn't matter if you thought it was a fantastic read, or it made your face pop with rage, let me hear about it! :)</i> </div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2