soulcoder - Nightlife

I'm a big fan of the Fallout series. I've been playing Fallout 1 & 2 dozens of times and I was so disappointed when Black Isle Studios was shut down in 2003. I was angry back then as they were working on Van Buren game (aka Fallout 3). What to say - this title was on my 'waiting-for' list

In 2007 something big happened - Bethesda, authors of TES series bought IP rights for Fallout from Interplay. As I was playing Oblivion a lot

I immediately thought about new Fallout game on such an engine

- and as a result - Fallout 3 went back to my 'waiting-for' list.

I didn't have to wait long - or rather I had to wait way too long

FO3 was available so I could grab box for myself and start playing.

I loved the game - even though some say too much was changed since FO1/FO2 - I simply loved the new Fallout. It took me approx. 56 hours (damn game counts that

) to complete game, reaching level 19 and completing most of the quests in southern area of game map (apart of the main quest of course).

Soon after - as we live in the age of downloadable content - DLCs started to appear. As I had not enough time (kid & wife

) I didn't bother to get them but instead waited for GOTY edition to be avail at Amazon (strangely - GOTY is still not available in shops in my country :/).

GOTY contains all five official DLCs:

Operation Anchorage
The Pitt
Broken Steel
Point Lookout
Mothership Zeta

I will not write detail reviews of those as it's so easy to find these elsewhere but I will write just this:

Go for it.

Buy GOTY even if you had regular FO3 and finished it. It's really, really worth buying and playing again. Just to mention - I spent 87 hours (usually hours from 1am to 3-4am - hope my wife does not read that

) this time for replaying the game and finishing new content and guess what?

In the time I was playing (end of 2009) - new Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 was released, which I of course bought immediately

, I have installed it, played 2 missions and... yes - I have gone back to Fallout 3

This game rocks!

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Bioshock 2

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 8:51:06 PM

reviews, games

I have played only a little so far (wish days/nights were longer) but I can already confirm that game has improved since version one and that it's not the coincidence it scored high on Metacritic. It's not the level of Mass Effect 2 though

The atmosphere is dark with twist of craziness (so same as previously) - graphics looks better and engine seems very nicely optimized. It's Unreal Engine 3 (same as in Batman: DA, Gears of War etc.) so we can expect nice visuals with steady frame rate and PhysX taking advantage of nVidia toys if you have any... Expectation met

The only not smooth enough element is menu - which seems animated with prerendered animations played with regular movie framerate ~25 fps. The difference on HD screen is more than noticeable if you compare to ingame smooth 60hz...

Regarding game itself - I don't want to make any spoilers - enough to said BS2 starts 10 years after events from Bioshock and Rapture is controlled now by a woman named Sofia Lamb (see screenshot below 'Lamb is Watching').

If you're familiar with Rapture - when you start - you feel like home

But when I think about it - I'm worried about people that want to start their Bioshock adventure with sequel... I think the introduction to Rapture is less thorough than previously and in some cases even lacking - like when you see Vita Chamber you get no information about it (I didn't at least...). Let's hope this will not impact sales as I would be happy to see creators of BS&BS2 to release even more games

For the end I left myself plans for weekend

as one of big additions to the game is Multiplayer Mode lacking previously. Idea of running around with drill and drilling your friends sounds like fun

and I hope to test it over weekend.

But it'll probably be the next one as this one I'm going to spend with my wife offline

7 comments

No light to shun...

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 10:16:17 PM

games

It's rapture it's pain, it's bodies bleeding in the rain
no light to shun
never give in - shut down - set for sin
suffering... suffering... suffering...

DeathStars - No Light to Shun / Synthetic Generation

Hi again! It's been really, really long time since last post appeared on this blog. Sorry for such a long break

Why writing today? Why today is a good day? Because...
It's Rapture again...

and bundled in really cool special edition (that landed today on my desk

). The game was inside a really nice box together with extras like OST, artbook (hardcover) and posters. As for OST - vinyl version will just make you enraptured

but for less geeky people they also included it on regular boring CD

.

You can see how it looks here:

Now you probably know what I'm talking about - it's Rapture again - a sequel to Bioshock that finally got released. Why finally? Here you can read longer story but the gossip is they moved date due to launch of Modern Warfare 2 in the end of 2009...

Anyway good it got released, and it's not that bad it was delayed as there were other interesting titles released last months (just to mention MW2, DA:O, ME2) so it would be crowd and hard choice what to play first...

But going back to our game... This time you're gonna be Big Daddy... But not just any Big Daddy - but - the first one... And you'll be visiting Rapture again (and fighting Big Sister

). As last time - music rocks, graphics rocks and game just asks 'play me'

so forgive me for ending here but I promise I'll write more tommorow

now have some important bussiness to deal with

And just in case you haven't seen that, here's the launch trailer:

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Demo: Call of Juarez Bound in Blood

Thursday, September 24, 2009 7:27:34 PM

tests, demos

This game was on the list of games I was waiting for and - especially that creators of the game are located in same city I live - I was watching development news carefully. However - somehow - when game was released few months ago I decided not to buy it and to wait for demo.

Now - I can share with you my impressions after testing the demo. The conclusion is - still I'm not buying. And that's not because game is bad. On the contrary - game looks well, music/sounds are very good, it's really well optmized and I even enjoyed short mission presented in the demo.

The thing is the game simply does not fit my taste. Revolvers, sawed-off shotguns, wild west... I liked that when I was kid when "Kiddie of the Camp. A Story of the Western Prairies" by Robert Leighton was my favorite book. But that was really ages ago... And since now I'm a little older I will say - no thank you.

I'll wait for Modern Warfare 2.

2 comments

My son's favorite bed-time cartoon

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 10:01:52 PM

Worth seeing

though this time in Polish...

No comments

Updated - Awaited titles

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 7:10:23 PM

Time to update awaited game list. Till last update so many things has changed in the industry - some major titles (e.g. Bioshock 2) were moved in time and will be released later in 2010. Anyway - enough talk - here it is:

Borderlands (Gearbox Software, Oct 2009)
Divinity II: Ego Draconis (Larian Studios, Oct 2009)
Risen (Piranha Bytes, Oct 2009)
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward, Nov 2009)
Colin McRae: DiRT 2 (Codemasters, Dec 2009)
Mass Effect 2 (Bioware, Jan 2010)
Bioshock 2 (2K Games, Feb 2010)
Aliens vs Predator (Rebellion, Feb 2010)
Singularity (Raven Software, Feb 2010)
Rage (id Software, Mar 2010)
Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight (EA Games, 2010)
They (Metropolis, 2010)
Witcher 2 (CD Projekt RED, 2010)
StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void (Blizzard, 2010)

5 comments

Shift

Monday, September 21, 2009 8:09:25 PM

tests, games

Usually I don't play racing games a lot... I so much prefer racing in real world - but unfortunately my wife has different opinion here

and ultimately I have to stick to virtual wheels...

Having that said I can also write that I'm not a newbie when it comes to this genre as I have started long time ago with Pit Stop 2, Outrun or Lotus Esprit 3. I also remember playing first Need for Speed on my shiny P100 with 16MB RAM and S3 Trio 64V+

That was ages ago of course - and even if NFS series has started really good, had even better third part, good Porsche edition, and nicely done Underground version, the rest of 16 (!) NFS editions were simply kind of weak... (at least in my humble opinion). And now we were given Shift. 16th version of the series. A nicely done successor!

This time authors wanted Shift to be more a simulation game than plain arcade - but still they wanted driving to be fun for everyone.

After first race game tries to somehow assess your driving abilities and suggest you adequate driving settings. I saw that kind of solution for the first time here and I have to say it's quite good. I just started game to see how it looks like and ended up in Tier 3 racing with a hundred stars crossed! In other words - game got me for few hours with difficulty level set high enough to make the game challenging for me yet not irritating. I'm impressed.

On the visual side - game is on level similar to G.R.I.D. but has visibly more polygons. Car models are better (and beautiful - just see pictures below) and tracks too. What is bad IMHO is visual side of collisions - here G.R.I.D. was much better. Audio - nothing to comment on. Everything you would expect from NFS.

On the playability side - Shift is less dynamic than G.R.I.D. (even if you could read that, on some - probably sponsored - reviews

) but I don't think it matters most as I easily spent more time on this title than on others...

I could have written more here but I need to test new suspension upgrade to my shiny Lotus and then try to be better at drift. For now I recommend seeing the pictures and then running to grab your own copy of Shift.

(and click 'read more' to see even more pictures)

Arkham Asylum

Sunday, September 20, 2009 12:14:32 PM

games, tests

I remember playing various Batman games on my old C-64. These were good old times

but since then a lot has changed. Just to say - game on C-64 was running in resolution of 160x200 with 16 colors... It's quite tough now to compare that with resolutions above HD

Anyway - we have Arkham Asylum - the new Batman game for PC (and for X360/PS3 but who cares

since PC version is simply better and cheaper...). I was a little sceptical about the game as there were no good Batman games on PC before, but after spending few hours with the title I can say now that - wow - this game rocks!

It's an action game with some added elements from role playing games (experience, leveling) and a twist from detective/adventure genre. Joker is on the loose - basically - you just have to catch him. I'm not sure how plot of the game will evolve further but... it is just what I would expect from Batman title

During our way we need to get rid of dozens (or thousands

) of enemies - and most often we do that with bare hands. Fighting in the game basically rocks. If you thought it was good in Assasin's Creed - then here it's at least twice as good. And how everyone moves on the screen during the fight - is just a poetry... If they used mocap (Motion Capture) I wonder how many people ended up in hospital to record such natural and realistic movement

On the visual side - graphics, effects and animation are also really good. Still game runs like rocket not allowing frame rate to drop below 60 with max resolution and max details. On the audio side - music and fx are just there being a nice fitting addition to what you see. Overall - a masterpiece.

Here are some pictures from the game - as you can see - you will meet not only Joker.

There's Harley Quinn helping Joker at the very beginning - but - during the game you'll meet more friends from Batman's universum just to mention Poison Ivy, Victor Zsasz or Killer Croc...

I recommend the title.

And here - if you don't remember - please see how Batman looked on 8-bit computers:

No comments

Wolfenstein

Sunday, September 13, 2009 1:54:58 PM

tests, games

It's been a while since latest Wolfenstein was released. Anyway I had not enough time to play it so the box with the game had to wait on the shelf... till now...

Game has visible olschool spirit, it reminds you times of first FPS games even though it has some 'next gen' additions. First is - there's no health bar/counter etc. instead like in all modern FPS if you get hit screen becomes red or loses colors, if you get hit too much in a row - you got killed. Well - honestly I like that

Another new (= not oldschool) things are - ability to buy improvements for your weapons and powers, and yes - powers. It is possible to enter 'veil' mode which seems to be alternative world - or rather alternative way of seeing world. Basically screen becomes green, and it is easier to spot enemies, spot secret passages or (in some cases) you can even go through walls. Related to veil are also special powers - like slow-mo mode etc. It has certainly impact on the gameplay and I think it adds another twist in multiplayer mode.

From the technical side - game uses old (by now) engine created for Doom 3. Even if it was slightly enhanced it is visible that graphics is really not up to date. The good think is it's still not that bad and it also affects hardware requirements which seem to be really low. What to say - regardless of what is happening on the screen framerate never dropped below 60 when on max settings with FSAA in 1920x1200.

To summarize - it's really not the best game I ever played. For sure. But still it gives some fun and if you don't have other ideas on what to play on your PC - I do recommend trying it.

11 comments

New Vegas with extended Color Palette

Saturday, September 12, 2009 12:50:26 PM

other

Quoting PwnOrDie

"We had really thought that browns and grays were crucial to capturing the very essence of a post-apocalyptic landscape, but after reading many complaints in Kotaku forums about the limited color palette of Fallout 3, we have realized that we were dead fucking wrong," Bethesda's President of Marketing, Ted Sandill, said.

"We're going to add tons of rainbows, frolicking puppies, playful kittens, and cuddly bunnies to New Vegas. Maybe some majestic unicorns. We will also change the colors of weapons and accessories. Power armor, for example, will now be exclusive mauve. That should really push the color palette to broader horizons and strengthen the impression of total nuclear armageddon," Sandill added.

No comments

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