Left 4 Dead demo Thursday!

For those who have pre-ordered, Left 4 Dead's demo will be available a week before anyone else. This MIGHT be able to pull me away from Fallout 3 for a night.

Maybe.

- V

Star Wars fans! Watch NOW!

I had to steal this from Jeff Green's blog.

This guy rocks.

-Van

Fallout 3

All free time is now given to Fallout 3.

11 hours into the game and I feel as if I've only scratched the surface.

That's it.

Van out.

Fallout 3, believe the hype.

I started playing Clive Barker's Undying on Saturday morning. Alone in the Dark didn't work out, and I was itching for a scary game. My first impressions of the game are good. The graphics are obviously dated and the controls are a bit different, but the game's story is intriguing and has already provided me some scary moments.

Fallout 3 wasn't scheduled to come until Nov 6th per Amazon's website. I planned to have Undying finished in time to dive right into post-apocalyptic mayhem. So much for plans, Fallout 3 Collector's Edition showed up on my door step Saturday afternoon. I tried to resist, but not really hard...Undying will just have to wait. So, will Resident Evil. Oh, and Advance Wars too. I thought, "Oh, I'll just install it and check out the introduction. Make sure it works well on my system and finish up the games I already started first. Yeah, right.

Fallout 3 has it's talons in me, and I don't want it to let go. I'll give a proper post about my thoughts on the game. Later. I have to go kill some mutant ants now.

Van out.

Doubly Disappointed

After coming off my "gaming-high" with Call of Duty 4, I felt like playing something a bit different. It being Halloween yesterday, I decided on a scary game. I recently picked up Alone in the Dark on PC cheap from GoGamer.com so I thought I would give it a go (would rather play Dead Space, but I'm 4th in line on Goozex). I installed it during Halloween day, preparing to play it Halloween night (as is only proper).

The production values for this game are excellent. I play at a 1680x1050 widescreen resolution and was very impressed by the visuals and effects. Unfortunately, playing with a mouse and keyboard is not optimal. Wait a second, did I say it wasn't optimal? What I meant was unplayable. I understand now why it was $9.90. Surely they are patching it though, right? Wrong. A quick search turns up that the PS3 version will have many of the problems in the PC and 360 versions corrected, even reports of a patch for the 360 to fix these problems...but nothing on a PC patch. The platform made for patching looks to be left out in the cold. Unacceptable. What sucks, is I WANT to play this game so badly. It looks so great on my PC. Oh well, I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for my scare-fix while I wait in line at Goozex for Dead Space.

/UNINSTALL

I logged into Steam last night, looking for a game to play before retiring to bed. I came across a new game called Samantha Swift and the Hidden Rose of Athena. Sounds gay, right? Yeah, it does. Undaunted by assumed gayness I took a look anyway. It looks like a fun little point and click adventure game and it has a free demo, so I thought, "why not?" I downloaded the demo to give it a try. I ended up not trying Sam Swift until this morning, instead trying once more to play the aforementioned unplayable Alone in the Dark last night.

Loading up the game, a splash screen pops up telling me I have 60 minutes available in my demo. That's fine by me, I can't imagine playing a demo for more than an hour anyway. I click on 'PLAY'...the 60 minute timer magically changes to '0' and I'm informed I have ran out of demo time. Sorry Samantha, you had your chance.

/UNINSTALL

Van out.

Just finished:

Why did I wait so long to play this game? Half-Life 2 Episode 2 was my ultimate single-player experience. It held the title for about a year. Shame on me for not playing COD4 sooner. The game does a good job of giving you an incredible amount of variety. I was always doing something new. Whether it be carrying a wounded pilot back to my chopper amid a hale of enemy gunfire, pinpoint bombing human targets from a mile up in a AC-130 Spectre gunship, or crawling between enemy infantry and armor while camouflaged in a sniper ghillie suit, the tasks never seemed repetitive or dull.

The story does not disappoint either. The game jumps between campaigns with the British SAS and United States Marines. The two stories converged fairly quickly and towards the endgame joint operations area carried out between the two forces. You play with the same assortment of troops and the game does a fair job of making me care about the characters I battled alongside. Your comrades are invincible, they can't die from enemy fire (or friendly fire). For me at least, it didn't make them any less my comrade. I still hustled to help any of them out when they called for aid. I honestly teared up twice during the course of playing. That has never happened to me before in a game.

COD4 was a blast to play from start to finish. I never once felt like the game was padded or that I was doing anything that would constitute 'filler'. I completed the game quickly, between 6-7 hours of playtime. Some people might gripe about that, but I would rather be entertained like this for a shorter time than having to drudge through more levels created soley to increase playtime (I'm looking at you Timeshift and Prey). An excellent effort by the developer who has managed to (in my eyes at least) raise the bar on what a single-player FPS experience can be.

I'll be sending this one back to Goozex for trading now, while the point value is still high. However, I have every intention of picking it up again once it comes down in value. This game will have a permanent place in my collection.

p.s. BTW, for those who may be curious about my thoughts on multiplayer...I've heard it's a great online shooter. I just don't have room in my life for another online FPS. Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike Source occupy enough of my gaming hours without adding another to the mix. While I type this, I'm looking at the copy of Quake Wars I bought at launch and never played.


Van out.

And now for something completely different

I made the decision to change the focus of my blog. I had intended for this to be a place for me to blog about my forays into game design. I have been rather uninspired to do much level design or construction lately. Like most other hobbies throughout my life, I tend to be cyclical with what I am doing at any given time. I have no doubt that game design will swing back into my current interests, I just have no intention to force the issue right now.

As you can see by looking to your right, I am currently enamored with playing games instead of making them. Call of Duty 4 is taking up most of my PC gaming time. It has the distinction of being the only game to ever bring me to a point where I actually 'teared up' (read: almost cried). I won't spoil the plot, just suffice that COD4 is the bar by which I will judge future FPS experiences.

I'm enjoying Advance Wars: Dual Strike and Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga for my handheld kicks. AW has been a long time coming to completion, I played through a large portion of the game earlier in the year and am just now coming back to it. I've been a fan of turn based strategy starting with Final Fantasy Tactics on the Playstation. AW goes a long way towards scratching that itch. The game is obviously written with the younger crowd in mind, but the gameplay is solid. I just started SS last night before bed, so I don't have much of an opinion at this point. It plays very similar to Mario RPG on the SNES. That's a good thing.

I spent a good portion of this evening jumping into the Resident Evil remake on Gamecube. The RE series is one which I have struggled to like for a long time. The archaic save system, the limited inventory, all adds up to a lot of frustration for this gamer. Last year I made it a significant distance into the original Playstation RE only to reach a point where I didn't have enough first aid/ammo to make it any further. The GC remakes are much easier on the eyes and have a few changes in place that make it an easier affair to navigate. If only I didn't have to navigate like a tank. So far so good though. If this attempt ends up going bad though, this will be my last effort to play through the series. I'll just jump straight to the better control scheme of RE4 and wash my hands of RE1-3.

Ok, I have a little boy in need of a bath.

V out.