Lucien21 Gaming Journal 2012
 

January

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Jurassic Park

Bought this just before Xmas in the Steam sale. 50% off which is just as well.

Was Telltale's first foray into the action genre worth the wait?

Unfortunately it is a resounding NO. There are too many issues with this game to call it anything but a massive disappointment.

The film is set sround the events of the original movie. Revolving round the canister of embryos lost by Nedry as he tried to flee the island.

You control a variety of characters from a father/daughter team (fun fact: the character has another daughter Sarah who appears in the 2nd movie) to a couple of Mercs and a female scientist. Unfortunately because you are flip flopping between all these characters you rarely get any sense of connection to any of them and as they die every other second you rarely care. In fact part way through the game it became more enjoyable to see how I could kill them in new an novel ways.

The graphics are laggy and dated on the PC highlighting that the Telltale engine is not built for this type of game and is seriously in need of an upgrade. The dinosaurs are well done, but the human characters are sloppily animated with guns and hands clipping through their bodies and the animation looking creepily off for most of the game.

The story is decent enough and moves at a reasonable pace, there are some very nice set pieces that get the blood pumping and are exciting to watch.

Ultimately though it is hampered by the "gameplay". Although this game has been compared to Heavy Rain that comparison is deeply flawed. This game has more in common with Dragon's Lair. You have no control over any of the characters and instead pan around a static location clicking on the couple of hotspots before flipping the camera to another location and doing the same.

The game then utilises Quick Time Events for the meat of the "game". However they are deeply broken, unresponsive to input and the nested multiple input (double or triple ringed prompts) usual require superhuman reflexes to complete.

You will die multiple times in this game. Fortunately that is the best part of this game are there are a multitude of death scenes in this game and they are always fun to watch (at least the first time).

I was really disappointed in this game. It is a barely interactive experience that might have been fine if the quality of the story was higher or if the control system was now dreadful.

A game that requires 65 million years more development.

2/5

Time to complete (6 hours)

Need for Speed: The Run

Racing games are not normally my cup of tea. Just never been into them.

However the premise of this game has always tugged at me. It's basically the "Cannonball Run", a cross country race across America. Genius premise that I can't believe they have never tried before.

I wasn't willing to splash out on it on release so I picked it up cheap in the post Xmas sales.

The game basically gives you access to a lot of fast expensive cars and puts you on the varied terrain in the states between California and New York, via Las Vegas and Chicago.

Races come in a variety of types that include:

* Race against other racers to gain places
* Race against time
* Knockout battle against opponents (Overtake and keep in front for a small time to knock them out of the race)
* Battle against specific individuals in the race

Can you get from 100th to 1st before you get to New York to win the race and settle your debt with the mob?

Unfortunately it is a great premise, poorly executed.

The graphics are fantastic and utilised the Frostbite 2 engine meaning that the draw distance is massive, the weather effects and scenery is georgous and the cars look amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvQi2LzUouY

The game itself is incredibly short in the main race. My overall race time was 2hrs 22 mins. Of course that is race time and doesn't take into account the times you had to redo the races you failed. There are challenge stages and a multiplayer section that I havn't tried yet.

Racing although fun doesn't feel all that realistic and can be incredibly frustrating because at times you can take shortcuts etc, but leaving the road by a few feet resets the race. You can plow into barriers at 200 mph and bounce off then hit a small stump and the car gets written off.

The AI of the cars can be a blessing and a curse. They rubber band meaning that if you make a mistake you can still catch up, but also if you get in front they will always catch you up just before the end of the race.

Overall it was a fun ride, but not as fun as I pictured it could be. I was hoping for something less linear, less rigid in format and more like the Cannonball Run.

3/5

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Grim Fandango

I've been a bit off on adventure games for a while. Havn't really played one in a while other than the big console games like LA Noire.

So New year, new leaf and a desire to remind myself why I love these games.

So I cranked out the box for this classic and busted it out.

In total it took about 6 hours to play it through, but it is 6 hours of superb fun. Glottis is one of the best characters in video game history and the setting reeks of atmosphere and laughs.

It's not a perfect game, the controls are a problem, and the game never regains the heights that year 2 provides, but overall I would probably put this in the top 5 adventure games of all time and probably in my all time top 10 games of any genre.

Vive La Revolution.

5/5

I bet you recited the moon poem word by word along with good ol Velasco :7.

It shone pale as bone...

I've said it before -- but I really hope that there is an afterlife that is exactly like year 2 of Grim Fandango.

You know it's funny, I never considered this game an "action" game until now, but it absolutely is. "Push these buttons quickly in this order to perform this action." As soon as it was released Adventure Gamers reviewed it, and that was 100% because it was a Telltale game. If it wasn't Telltale, it wouldn't have been looked at by any adventuring site.

Maybe that's why it got such a low score, as an adventure it sucked but as an action game I thought it was decent fun.

Ah, a bit of a relief then that it's not just me. I've been failing at events when I thought I was hitting keys in time, and was having to press keys multiple times to get a response in other places. I was beginning to think it was a combination of an old keyboard and my atrophied twitch skills. Guess not. Not an impressive effort by Telltale at all.

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The Longest Journey

It's Friday the 13th and I have just spent 13 hours this week controlling April Ryan through 13 chapters in an epic adventure to find the 13th guardian of the balance.

That's a lot of 13. :shifty:

Anywhoo My great adventure game resurrection continues with the 2nd greatest adventure game of all time (according to some website or other).

Longest Journey is a talky bitch, but fortunately the story has depth, excitement, adventure and talking birds to keep you enthralled and entertained for it's long conversations. A Story that treats you like an adult (and not just because of the few swear words) and rewards your exploration of the locations and the diary function with insight into the characters and the worlds as well as hints for what to do next.

It's no slouch in the puzzle department either with a few of those testing the memory and the brain cells. It's been a fair few years since I played through this and some of the scenes and locations were fuzzy in the old grey matter.

I was glad I played it and had a great time putting in a couple of hours a night re introducing me to those characters and that world.

The only downside is that the animations and graphics are really showing their age esp when blown up to my monitor size and I had a few technical issues with 64 bit Win 7 crashing the programme at the most inconvenient times. However a good regime of regular saving saved the frustrations and isn't a fault of the original game, but in the progress of technology.

Makes me want more (Dreamfall is No 52 on the list).

Fantastic.

5/5

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Gabriel Knight 2 - The Beast Within

IMO FMV games of the 90's were generally not that great. The acting was stilted and stiff because the "actors" have to return to a neutral spot between actions. It limits the actions the main characters can take to cut down on filming all the possible actions and the video was usually horrible compressed to fit on the CD's.

Gabriel Knight 2 suffers from most of these problems. It also simplified the interface from GK1 to a single click does everything action.

It didn't ,thankfully, affect the main reason for playing this series of games. The story and script are top drawer, the characters vivid and the history and locations compelling.

This time around Gabriel is in Germany researching his new book when he gets drawn into the mystery of Werewolves and a charismatic man called Van Glower.

In alternating chapters we control Gabriel and Grace.

Gabriel investigates a series of murders and gets closer to the members of a local hunting club run by Van Glower.

Grace researches the history of the region and Werewolves, visiting museums and castles in the region looking into the past of Ludwig II and Wagner.

Personally I found the Grace chapters to be the more interesting with the in depth history being fascinating. Unfortunately those chapters also highlighted the most frustrating problem with the game interface. To progress in any of the chapters you have to click on every possible hotspot to trigger actions in the correct order otherwise you end up wandering around not sure what you have missed. This is especially apparent in chapter 4 in which you had to click on absolutely everything in the museums and castle otherwise the chapter wont end. Some of those thing were waay too easy to miss.

I still think GK1 is a better game and Tim Curry a better Gabe than the floppy haired Erikson, but overall this is still a fantastic game and one I would play again in the future.

5/5

Are we seeing a blog in the making or what?

Isn't that a large amount of criticism to still be handing out a 5/5?

Are you planning to do the full 100? Because that would be awesome while at the same time also insane... :D

I don't own all 100, but I do have most of the top 20.

Probably won't have time to do that many of them.

It would be fun though......

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Shadows of the Damned

Another game I picked up on the cheap just after Xmas.

This is a 3rd person action horror game by Suda51 and Shinji Mikami. As you would expect from the people that brought you Killer 7 and No More Heroes, this is a game that was well respected but nobody bought.

You are Garcia "Fu*king" Hotspur, Demon Hunter. After finding you girlfriend (Paula) dead in your apartment her soul is trapped by Fleming (Pervert Lord of the Demons) and taken to hell.

You jump in after her and must fight your way through 5 levels of hell fighting some strange ass demons on the way with only a disembodied British skull (Johnson) for company.

Johnson also acts as your weapons in the game as he shifts into "The Boner" (upgradable to the Hot Boner and "BIG BONER", "The Skullfest 9000 and various other guns during the course of the game.

As you might have guessed from the character names this game is VERY into penis jokes and with a large helping of innuendo and nakedness thrown in with you horror tropes. :D:D

There is a very strange relationship between Garcia and Johnson that more or less makes this game as good as it is. Without their hilarious banter and the absurd situations you find yourself in (fighting giant horse bosses who fart out bubbles of darkness at you , with the appropriate *Phuuurp* noses :devil:) this game would have been half the fun it was.

The shooting mechanics are fairly standard fair for these type of game, It's not the most inventive action in the world, but it is suitable bloody and effective for it's setting. However the game structure is pretty retro with mini bosses and end of level bosses like some of the games of yore.The graphics are suitable for the setting but the camera is completely pants and you will end up getting swiped by enemies you didn't see coming.

The music and sound work really pulls up the level of the design if the game. The little ditties on the loading screens, the sound effects and soundtrack are all fantastic.

So overall it is a slightly retro action game with a bonkers plot and a lot of innuendo that is great fun to play if you like that sort of thing.

I loved it.

4/5

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Broken Sword - The Shadow of the Templars (Directors Cut)

I got this free on GOG a while ago and hadn't played it so on my quest to play some of the Top 100 adventure games, it was next on the list.

When they released the Directors Cut they added about 2 hours of content to it and changed some of the graphics and audio of the game.

The original game had a classic opening sequence that is ruined in this directors cut of the game. Instead of starting with a birds eye flight over Paris and meeting George we start the game controlling Nico on a investigation of a murder by Mime.

Although it is nice getting more of a back story on Nico, it kinda ruins the flow of the story for me. Nico was a mysterious sassy journalist that you slowly get to know in the first game, building up the relationship between her and George. The story that starts this game ends up going nowhere and fizzles out as the game switches to the original George controlled game. It seems like a pointless exercise that doesn't add a lot to the plot.

It would probably have been better if they had included it at the end of the game as a DLC flashback Nico centric adventure rather than try unsuccessfully to integrate it into the main game.

That aside the new graphics and audio are reasonably well done and the original game is still a cracking story with decent characters in it and some challenging puzzles.

4/5

I think that sums up my view of the directors cut pretty exactly.

The opening to the original was essentially perfect [/subjective opinion] and even the version of it they have after the tacked on Nico business does not properly reflect it.

I really don't think the Nico part adds anything to the story and I agree that it splutters and conks out. After this, George at the Cafe feels like the beginning of another game (which it is!) and we lose the slowly getting to know Nico part.

Having said that, the Nico bit is interesting enough to play through if you have already played the original, however, I think it takes away from the original if you are on a first playthrough.

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Resistance 3

Insomniac's WWII Alien Invasion story comes to an end with the best game in the series.

After the misstep that was Resistance 2 it's good to see that Insomniac went back to the drawing board.

This time around it is a more personal story of Joseph, he and his family are living underground, barely surviving in a chimerian controlled world.

Their survival is interrupted by a scientist looking for Joseph to help him win the war and stop the chimera once and for all. Reluctant to help, he is forced to when the enemy attack the town forcing everyone to run.

Sending his wife and child to safety you have to escort the scientist to New York to shut down the tower that is generating a wormhole to the alien home planet. Along the way you will fight a wide variety of aliens as well as a bunch or Rednecks in a Prison.

Fabulous lighting and graphic models show of the post apocalyptic America as you work you way towards the big apple.

However the mainstay of every Insomniac game has always been the weapons and you will not be disappointed here. There are 12 weapons from a Sledgehammer to a Rocket Launcher, the obligatory shotgun and machine guns and the unique Auger (shoots through walls) and mutation gun.

All the weapons are upgradable based on usage and have secondary fire modes. It's a complete blast learning which guns are best for which situation.

The pacing of the game is pretty much spot on from all out action sequences to more quiet and emotional story telling parts, by the end you want Joseph to survive and get back to his family. Surviving in this world is made harder by the need to find health packs, foregoing the usual health regeneration of most other shooters to make you think about shooting it out on the battlefield on one health slither or hunkering down.

Overall it was a decent story (although too much of it is told on "notes" found in the game world), great graphics and fantastic weapons and gameplay.

Insomniac retired from this series on a high.

4/5

Game Time: 7:13:05

I desperately want to replay this, too!

Should really ban myself from reading this thread. ;)

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Riven

It's no secret I was never the biggest fan of Myst. However tell people that you hate Myst is normally interpreted as a hatred for all first person puzzles games of that type.

That's not true I just never got into the whole D'Ni history and the worlds were always far too barren for my liking.

Riven being the sequel to Myst isn't a game I've played twice. Until now that is.

Getting the game to run on my PC was an adventure all on it's own. The 5 disc version I have isn't windows 7 friendly. I ended up having to install it on the Virtual PC set up that I have and then manually copying the CD files to the hard drive so that I didn't have to swaps discs when you go to another island.

Anyway, the game itself.......:frusty:

The world itself is or at least was in it's day, beautifully rendered with a nice variety of locations between the islands. Moving between them treats you to a fun roller coaster ride on rails or mine cart. The screens are far too static though. Apart from the occasional insect or a couple of times you see some wildlife or native there is precious little happening on screen.

Moving around is clunky flip screen movement but is fine for that type of game. Although it was frustrating that the turn radius changed all the time and sometimes you turned 90 degrees and sometimes 180 which lead to a couple of occasions getting confused and going in circles on the forest island while trying to find a particular location.

The atmosphere is nice and there is something to be said about exploration in a stranger in a strange land scenario. Slowly having to learn everything about a totally new environment would be fun. In this it is mainly reserved to learning the numbering system or some animals and their noises.

I yearned for more information on the background to the islands, the plants and animals, the machinery, the characters etc etc There is precious little in the way of story except for the 3 or 4 journals that you read in the game.

Puzzles were harder than Myst and a couple of them are very obscure (blooming placing marbles on a 25x25 grid comes to mind). It did remind me of the good old days of playing adventure games with a pad of paper and a pen and scribbling down a lot of useless information in the hope it solves a puzzle.

A lot of the time it was a case of randomly pulling levers in the hopes that something would happen.

Overall I can see how people revere this game as highly as they do. It has a peaceful charm, it is challenging and it looks very good. I had some fun playing it.

However it just ain't my thing. It's too empty and not enough of a plot to be any where near my top 5.

3.5/5

One of Riven's flaws is that it's so tightly connected to The Book of Atrus. I've always wondered how different the experience was for people who hadn't read the novel beforehand. Clearly it doesn't work as well.

I read "The Book of Atrus" after playing "Riven", and now it makes a lot more sense, and brings a lot of depth to it. I also foubnd a website called "Riven Illuminated", or something along those lines, that described the scenery and what was going on in the background, I found it made the game have a lot more depth for me. By itself, yeah there wasn't much story, but I love all of the supplemental reading...it really made the game a favorite for me.

I had a look at that website it was informative and interesting. I also watched a Riven playthrough on youtube (after I finished the game) where the girl was describing stuff as she went along.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax5rX...eature=related

Still wish the extra research wasn't needed and that the game had more books to read that gave you the option in the game to get more of this information.

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Portal 2

Replayed one of the best games of last year (No.10 in the Top 100).

Portal 2 takes the premise of being trapped in a facility with a insane AI called GlaDOS and fleshes out the characters and back history of Aperture Science testing.

This time you have a few new companions along the way from the hilarious Wheatly to Cave Johnson in the old historical parts of the facility.

There is a lot more variety in the puzzles with new element like Gels and light bridges etc to be used to solve puzzles.

The 2nd Playthrough has the same issues as replaying most adventure games. Once you know how the puzzles are solved it is pretty easy to breeze through the game reasonably fast.

So sans difficulty what are you left with....

3 Fantastic characters in Glados, Wheatly and Cave Johnson.
A hilarious script
The puzzles are still fun.
A bonkers mad ending ......

Spoiler:

SPACE

Still a superb game.

5/5

I have only had time to play the first five minutes or so, and found the beginning so hilarious I have repeated it several times. I could be me, of course, my children do not find it so funny.

I just ordered this game and I'm really looking forward to playing!

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Day of the Tentacle

A travesty that this game wasn't in the top 5 :crazy:

IMO it is by far the best adventure game ever and "More fun than a jumpsuit full of weasels".

It has a unique premise that works so well that it's amazing that nobody has tried to emulate it over the years. Set in three distinct time periods and controlling three different characters it very early on sets out the rules for interactions.

Small inanimate items can be passed from character to character either directly or through the passage of time to solve some ingenious 4th dimensional puzzling.

The time frame setting really brings out the depth of creativity in the puzzles. You are constantly trying to think where and in what time frame are the items relevant.

It's a brightly coloured world with a skewed art style that is perfect for the host of hilarious and kooky characters in the game. Including some great US historical figures and Mr Ed :D

Overall it's a game that tickled the funny bone like no game before it or since, stretches the brain matter with some lateral thinking and has some of the funniest sound effects in video gaming.

Adventure gaming Nirvana.

5/5

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The Last Express

A $5million game that famously flopped on it's initial release. Mainly due to bad timing and a company going bust.

The game takes place on the Orient Express on the eve of WWI. You jump on the train to meet a friend and find him dead. Taking his place on the train you have to investigate his death.

This game has a unique gameplay feature that is one of the games biggest strenghs and one it it's weaknesses. The game takes place in an accelerated real time world. Characters move about independantly of your actions, important events happen at certain times whether you are there or not.

So you walk around and evesdrop on conversations, pick up items, talk to people or sneak into their cabins when they are otherwise engaged.

There is a wealth of story and background to be found by being in the right place. The characters are rich and varied, from the overweight letcherous German to the beautiful musician, the lesbian couple or the African royal. They all have secrets to unfold.

It certainly lends a lot of replayability to the game however it also makes the game hard to know what to do next. Do I sit here and listen to Sophie dominate and manipulate poor Rebecca, do I watch Madame B complain about the Dog for the 10th time or do I try and sneak into the young Russians room and find out what he is up to?

Choices, choices.

It this leads to multiple endings and a branching storyline that makes each play through slightly different. Make a mistake and you will have to rewind time and try again.

Mechanically the game is a 1st person flip style game with some great graphics. The characters are all animated in a rotoscope fashion with the real actors being fillmed and then animated. It make for some decent if choppy as hell animations. Most of the puzzles are situational and require you to be in the right place at the right time and hear the next clue or talk to the right person, but there are occassional inventory puzzles.

There are also some action fights in the game that require you to do some basic QTE type button mashing to win. These are extremly frustrating and could probably have been left out of the game.

Overall, This is a game with a fantastic story and a superb set of realistic characters (the game is not afraid to have them all speak their native language). It is slightly held back by the dodgy fight sequences, the choppy graphics and a weird ending that I never thought fit with the rest of the game.

4.5/5

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Stacking

This is a Double Fine game I downloaded a while ago on PSN and never really played.

You play as Charlie the smallest member of the Blackmore family. They are a family of chimney sweeps during the American industrial revolution. The family is tricked by an evil moustache twirling Baron into slavery to pay off their debts and it's left to you to rescue the family one by one.

The game has a very cartoony 30's asthetic and is portrayed as a silent movie. The characters are all based around Russian matryoshka dolls that stack on into each other in sets.

As the smallest matryoshka doll in your family set you can wander the world, but ultimately can't do a lot. So you can "stack" into the next size doll and upwards until you are a large character of 6 dolls. Using which ever doll is the largest you can use it's skills to solve the puzzles within the game.

All of the puzzles have multiple solutions making for great replayability. Need to clear out a room you could use a character to fart in a vent, or seduce the guard and sneak in and slap the beejesus out of the waiter.

Gamplay video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWh2o...eature=related

I loved it. It did feel a bit drawn out towards the end, but it was a lot of fun.

4/5

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Syndicate

Rebooting an old franchise is always tricky especially when you are changing the fundamental gameplay that made the originals great.

Foregoing the 3rd person strategy game in favour of First Person Shooter was a controversal decision that upset a lot of people.(including myself)

However the studio (Starbreeze) have a very good track record in this genre so I gave it a go.

I loved it. It's a lot of fun if a bit of a throwback to older sensibilities.

People expecting this to ape the recent Deus Ex reboot will also be disappointed. Syndicate is a straight forward corridor shooter with none of the freedom and choices that Dues Ex has.

You play an "Agent" of EuroCorp one of the almight Syndicate corporations that control the world. Implanted with a data chip that allows you direct access to the datanet.

This allows you to have a floating interface in your head that highlights objects with descriptions, grants you access to "Dart" mode which slows down time and highlights enemies that you have already spotted (even through walls) and most importantly gives you access to the Breaching procedures.

Breaching is like hacking it allows you to manipulate machines in the environment and also allows you to breach the enemy heads with some skills. These are "Backfire" which makes enemy guns explode, "Suicide" which make the enemies blow themselves up and "Persuade" which turns one of the enemy to your side and he fires on his comrades before eating his gun.

I found the game to be pretty challenging with strategic use of all the weapons (the standard pistol, shotgun, machine guns, rocket launcer line up) along with the Dart overlay and breaching skills, essential to continued survival. Later enemies need to have their armour hacked before they can be shot. The boss battles can be a pain in the ass until you learn the strict patterns required to defeat them.

The story is ok, standard Cyberpunk fare written by Richard Morgan, but I expected more from the man who wrote Altered Carbon (one of the best Cyberpunk novels of recent years). The voice work is great from Brian COx and Rosario Dawson, but it's pretty obvious from the start of the game who the end baddie is going to be.

Overall I had a lot of fun with the single player. A couple of the boss battles were frustrating as hell and the 2nd last level was a grindfest of just non stop enemies, but the old school difficulty and design was a refreshing challenge.

4/5

Now to try some 4 player co-op. and listen to the Dubstep remake of the Syndicate theme.

http://www.giantbomb.com/syndicate-d...ailer/17-4972/

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The Secret of Monkey Island SE

I loved the remake of the classic Lucasfilm game on the iPad.

The new graphics were cool, the new full voice work for every character was fitting and the touch screen interface that is really easy to use. The Scumm icons are along the bottom and tapping the screen interacts with the world.

All of the original goodness is still there, including the "Ask me about LOOM" dialogue. Swiping the screen switches instantly back to the original graphics and interface.

It is a fascinating journey helping Guybrush Threepwood on his quest to become a Pirate. From Insult Sword fighting to the funniest behind a wall robbery ever there are many classic moments to be had.

So after eight hilarious hours I became a pirate, found Monkey Island, saved the girl from the Ghost Pirate LeChuck and learned a life lesson ("Never pay more than $20 for a video game" :D)

Classic

5/5

Been a couple of weeks since I finished a game. Mostly because the two games I have been playing a huge time commitments.

Anyway I finished one of them.

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Mass Effect 3

Male Shepard
Playtime: 39hrs
Romance: Liara (Blue Alien loving :kiss:)
Effective Military Strengh: 4200
Ending:

Spoiler:

Synth

This was an epic game that is 5 years in the making. The first game was released in 2007 and since then this Galaxy spanning story has gripped me from the start.

Sure it has had it's bumps along the way. The moon buggy controls in 1, the tedious scanning in 2 and the blatant selling out in 3.

In terms of the 3rd game i'm going to seperate out the actual game from the business nonsense that clouds the issue.

Business Stuff : Ok so they decided that they need more Mass Effect players and want to go after the Call of Duty market. However it has been shoddily handled. From the day one DLC, the real money purchase of packs in the multiplayer to the multiple pre order nonsense to the way the story ends with an advert for DLC. It's all blatent BS by EA to fleech money out of the consumer.

That Said....

The Game: It was soooo good to be my shepard again. Importing my character from ME2 the same way I imported the ME1 character into 2 meant that choices that I made in the last two games are reflected in the new game. That is a fantastic touch that allows everyone to have a slightly different game with their own personal character. Who lived, who died, did you save the genophage data, did you destroy the collector base and loads of other small decisions that have a effect on Mass Effect 3.

It starts with a bang.. Earth is under attack and it's up to you to pull together all the races to launch a massive fight back. Travel the universe solving centuaries old predjucies and finding artifacts and other war resources to add to the fight.

The game is familiar to anyone who played the last game. They have tightened up the shooter controls again and simplified the scanning mechanics to a make it quicker. There are still the RPG trapping of the previous games, you do side missions for randoms you some across in the citadel and various places (although the stalker vibe of getting these missions by eavesdropping is a tad creepy), you buy and find upgrades to your weapons and biotic powers and talk to a hell of a lot of people making hard decisions on the lives and deaths of those around you.

Technically it is pretty much Mass Effect 2.5. The environments are varied and pretty, the character models are a bit dodgy (esp the reporter gal who just looks wrong...), but the voice work and music is top drawer.

I had a lot of fun playing this game and I LOVED the ending that I chose. Yes there are a couple of oddities like

Spoiler:

Liara appearing at the end when she was in my party that stormed the beam

, but I was happy with the outcome that I chose. It was a fitting ending for my journey through this universe.

That said there was a couple of mechanical thing wrong with the way you had to make the choice at the end.

Spoiler:

It basically forced you to choose a Renegade option even though I was playing Paragon. I missed let them slide and ended up with Anderson and myself getting shot.

That and the fact that if you want the full access to all the choices you are forced to play the multiplayer (which is a lot of fun by the way so I didn't mind)

So overall there are a few technical and issues with the game (just like the last two), but the story and gameplay were fantastic and I loved it.

5/5

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Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Dreamfall killed my PC. To be fair it was more like Starforce killed my PC. When I reinstalled this to play a few weeks ago it installed the copy protection that came with the limited edition. Windows 7 had a hissy fit and wouldn't reboot past a blue screen of death. I ended up having to restore my PC to factory default and reinstall everything.

:pan:

Anyway after reinstalling it and cracking the software protection I finally got to play it again.

Dreamfall is the sequal to The Longest Journey. Something is strange in the twin worlds of Stark and Arcadia once again.

This time you are Zoe Castillo a young woman in Casablanca, a college drop out with no direction. Used to lazing about with her friends and genreally not having a clue when she starts seeing strange visions of a creepy house and a young girl asking her to find and save April Ryan.

Spurned into action after her reporter friend Reza disappears she sets out to find out what happened to her friend and how it is linked to her strange visions.

During the game you will visit some old locations in both Stark and Arcadia, meet some old friends and make some new ones. You switch control of characters at certain times in the game but will mostly control Zoe Later in the game you will also control April Ryan and new guy Kian Alvane (Religious warrior who is chasing April).

In a major change from the first game the game is presented in 3D and directly controlled with the keyboard or gamepad (I chose this one). I liked this method of control and was soon running about looking for hotspots with ease. Unfortunatly they felt that they needed to add some stealth and fight sequences into the game. Luckily they are few and far between because the fighting mechanics are hilariously bad.

Graphics are pretty good for it's day, but look a bit old now. The areas to run around in a very small before hitting a load screen, but luckily the loads are fairly fast. Voice acting and music is superb for the most part (I still hate the stilted voice of the yellow skinned woman who follows Ryan).

Puzzles are mostly inventory based and are pretty straight forward. There are a few hacking mini games which are fun for the few times you have to do them.

The story is up to the same standard as it's predecessor, the story is deep and intertwines the two worlds and various characters in a mostly satisfying way however my biggest complaint about this game is it is far too openended. The Longest Journey worked as it was a self contained storyline, but this was designed as a multiple game story that so far has not been completed.

Overall I had alot of fun with this game, but now i'm frustrated that six years leater i'm still waiting to what fate lies for April, Zoe et al.

4/5

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Uncharted: Golden Abyss

Nathan Drake, Dude Raider, is back this time you can carry him in your pocket. The latest Uncharted Game on the new Playstation Vita is a throwback to the first game in the PS3 series.

The PSVita is a powerhouse of a handheld console with front and back touchscreens, cameras, tilt motion sensors, dual analogue sticks and a georgous screen. However it is not good enought to compete with the giant set pieces and graphical power of the 2nd and 3rd PS3 games.

Golden Abyss brings new tricks to the table. It goes out of it's way to include ALL the new features of the new console. The touch screens are used to clean items, do charcoal rubbings, row boats, cut bamboo, reload your gun, punch dudes etc etc etc.

You move Drake around with the two analogue sticks and aim and shoot with the shoulder buttons, although you can move the PSVita around to aim the sniper rifle or take pictures of the scenery and solve puzzles.

The plot revolves around Drake and a couple of new characters trying to locate a fabled city of gold in Panama, hampered at all turns by the local corrupt military leader.

Gameplay is a mixture of exploration and combat. Nathan clambers up and down with ease using either the traditional sticks and buttons or by tapping out a route on the touchscreen. Combat is a cover based system with the left shoulder popping out to aim and the right button shooting.

Graphically the game is fantastic, on par with early PS3 games it looks bright and clear on the OLED screen, moves at a decent pace and has some stunning visual backgrounds.

The voice work is exemplary, with the voice talent from the main series reprising their roles.

Overall I loved the game. Vita is a powerful handheld and this launch game is a perfect demonstration of that power.

4/5

Wing Commander Saga

Ahh Wing Commander. Memories of the days when it was released and you had to amend your Config and Autoexec files to get the thing to run. The days when DLC didn't exist and you had to buy mission discs and sound packs in seperate boxes. When Origin were the king of developers and not just a Steam service rip off, when each sequal meant you had to upgrade you PC.

Ahhh Nostalgia.

Well the good folks at http://www.wcsaga.com/ have spent the last 10 years dreaming of those days and recreating them using the Freespace open Engine.

It is a free fan based game in the Wing Commander universe. Based around the familiar mission structure of the classic games you will launch your fighter/bomber against the Kilrathi with 55 new Wing Commander missions set around the time of WC3.

Everything is pretty authentic to the original games from the menu to the enemy taunts, the ship designs and the sounds. The script seems fairly decent and the voice work is surprising not hideous for a fan project.
You really feel like you are playing playing one of the old games.

The graphics are ok in the space parts, most of the ships look fine. The animation briefings and map screens are authentic and even if they look a bit amateurish they do the job.

Unfortunatly it is missing a couple of items that made the WC games so much fun. The game is pretty much one mission breifing after another. There is no walking around you ship talking to the other pilots etc and the classic running to you ship animation is missing :frown:

It is a fun and competant space shooter which suffers from a little slowdown here and there and has a stiff learning curve (i.e it's a 90's game).

Pretty decent fo £0.00.

3.5/5

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Still Life

A mature adventure game. One that doesn't shy away from the brutal murders carried out by a Jack the Ripper type killer. One that dabbles in the seedy side of Chicago sex trade. (well it does a little bit). One that isn't afraid to swear.

It was a fresh breath of air when it was originally released and replaying it was just as enjoyable and frustrating as the first time.

On the plus side the games atmosphere and setting is great. The gritty, cold modern day Chicago is mirrored in the brighter old world flashbacks to Prague. Two sets of murders connected by family and killer.

The graphics and cut scenes are great, the character models decent for their time (unfortunalty the goofy run animations are hilarious).

The story is captivating and grips you from start to finish with only the odd misstep along the way (Stopping to make daddy Cookies for instance:pan:)

Puzzles are generally of a very high standard with codes, lockpicking (fecking frustrating but logical puzzle), sliders and other puzzles keeping me entertained for most of the game. There are a couple of infamous puzzles like the aformentioned cookie puzzle and the timed spider maze late in the game that are the low points of the game but nothing game stopping.

On the negative side there are unfortunatly a few issues with the game.

The conversation system may as well be a cut scene as you are not given much of a choice of topics and just left of right click the mouse at regular intervals to advance the story.

The prague story progresses well with a decent conclusion, but unfortunatly the modern day Chicago story is unfinished and left open ended. You never find out the identity of the killer and even the obvious suspect (

Spoiler:

The boyfriend

) is given such little screen time that you know nothing about them.

The game was rushed towards the end with Microids financial problems at the time and it shows in the frustrating and unsatisfactory ending to what is for the most part a superb adventure game.

4/5

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Still Life 2

Once again you take control of Vic McPherson in the hunt for a serial killer. This time dubbed the "East Coast Killer". He abduct, tortures and kills his victims without leaving much in the way of evidence.

When a reporter following the case (Paloma Hernandez) is kidnapped it leads to a desperate hunt for leads and a desperate battle for survival.

You control both Vic and Paloma at various stages in the game. Vic's segments are mostly investigation stages where you swab, scan, spray and analyse about a million blood stains and finger prints in every room in the house. (The one and only location in the game).

Paloma's sections are inspired by the movie "Saw" as you are trapped by the killer and have to jump through various traps and puzzles in the vain hope of finding your way out.

Tension in the Paloma sections is higher and more fast paced than the Vic sections and unfortunatly include some pretty annoying timed sections. (You can die in this game).

While the Vic sections are more laid back this flips around towards the end of the game when the various plots all come together into a frenzied ending.

Graphically the game is rough. Animations are stilted, the 3D models basic and the mouth movements rarely approximate the speech. I prefered the 2.5D style of the first games. The 3D environments lack the atmosphere of the previous game, looking very sparse in comparison.

The puzzles are ok, but I felt there seemed to be far too many of the collection and analysing tasks that didn't seem to go anywhere. I was collecting a lot of fingerprints and blood samples of the various victims, but there wasn't much of a pay off. Especially as you already know where Paloma's fingerprints etc would have been as you played that part already. On the Paloma side there was more of a puzzly nature to the tasks. Unfortunatly it decided that Resident Evil was a model inventory system :shifty: and included a finite slot system and chest/closets to store items. This causes a fair bit of backtracking and swapping of items.:crazy:

Plot wise the game is aiming for a Se7en meets Saw kind of vibe and for the most part the story is pretty decent. It's not as deep as the historical based previous game and is more modern/mainstream in it's approach. However it keeps the tension and plot twists going for most of the game. My biggest issue with the game is that unlike the previous game which felt unfinished, this game has one too many twists in the tail and over stays it's welcome by a good hour. As Paloma says at one point "OMG will this never end".

It also decides to weave into this new killer story some flashbacks to wrap up the loose ends from the previous game. It seems out of place and uses a tenuous method to trigger the flashback.

Finally the most annoying thing about the game is the over powering music which drowns out the speech at times in the game.

Overall it has it's moments with it's intersting take on the serial killer genre, but looks rough and overstays it's welcome.

2.5/5

I've always heard how bad Still Life 2 is, but from reading your plot, it sounds interesting, at the very least.

And I know it was about 10 posts back, but The Last Express. I own it and really want to play it, but the sheer amount of choices overwhelms me. I'm the type who likes to go through all dialogue, know everything, etc. So that something can happen when I'm not there kind of freaks me out. I want to be everywhere! I'll try and give it a go another time, and just let it happen, I guess.

Ouch, Ouch ..OUCH!!!
1st i love your journal .. good job
but man in this world when you talk about adventure games or some one ask you about or an advice, the answer is like this ..."There are Adventure games and there is Riven"

I know how you feel. Wanting to experience everything a game has to offer takes away a big part of my enjoyment of RPGs, because I often nearly always play them with a walkthrough by my side, just so I'm sure that I'm not overlooking a location or a hidden item.

I KNOW! I was playing through The Witcher by myself, and when I looked online and found out I had missed a sex scene and there was no way I could go back, I got really upset! :P

It ruins the story to see what choices you have to make in a walkthrough, but at least it's thorough in finding and getting *everything*!