Archive for 'Game Review'
Orange Box
by Chris on October 15th, 2007 @ 5:43 pm - Tag (Game Review) No Comments. 185 Views
The long awaited Orange Box by valve is finally here and to be honest…it’s rather good. So what exactly is the Orange Box? Well inside this so called box of orangeness you will find, Half-Life 2 with Episode 1&2, Portals and Team Fortress 2. So effectively that’s 3 full games and 2 addons. Pretty damn sweet, but the best part is you get all this for the same price as a single game.
Warning! If you haven’t played Half-Life 2 or Episode 1 i suggest you don’t read on. This review may also contain hints to game play and storyline
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
As you’d expect Episode 2 starts where Episode 1 finished. You find your self waking up in the wreckage of the train just outside of City17, your goals remain the same. You need to reestablish contact with the resistance and get the data you stole from the citadel to Dr. Kleiner in order to close the super portal.
The game play style is the same, run and gun with a few physic puzzles throw in for good measure. I did find the underground tunnels very frustrating where you’re being chased down by an ant lion…I’m not a fan of cat and mouse game play. I still have no idea why i couldn’t kill the ant lion before i got the larval extract. One notable part towards the end of the underground tunnels has you defending some Vorts. You have a couple of turrets a few AI and four tunnels that ant lions spawn from. It’s all very pretty and dramatic with a nifty warning light system, but i do feel this was a lot of work for nothing. It would have been more fun to build up barricades with the gravity gun and create choke points (like the corridor scene from Aliens). I think valve dropped the ball there.
Once you leave the underground tunnels your greeted with massive of open space, i almost had to check it was still the source engine as i didn’t think it was possible. Gorden has also dumped his dune buggy for a sexy hot rod and finally we get to see the big showdown between Dog and a Strider 
best scene in the game nuff said. Were also introduced to a new enemy “The Hunter”. These things are fucking annoying, they eat away at your ammo so fast. At one point i even dropped the difficulty down to easy because i was so frustrated. I think the game could have done without these and stuck with the combine soldiers. We also get to see advisers in action…think the brain bug in Starship Troopers but smaller and flying, these also didn’t make to much sense in the game. They are incredibly powerful and from what we see undefeatable and apparently very smart…yet always manage to miss you in that bright orange HEV suite. oh well.
Episode 2 ends fairly dramatically, but doesn’t leave you feeling cheated just wanting more and hints of portals appearing in the Half-Life universe. I’m defiantly looking forward to Episode 3.
Be sure to check out Garrys review.
Portals
Portals is a nice little extra bit of fun. While some people will say it’s been done before in games like prey they never gave you full control over them as Portals does. The idea behind portals is simple, you have a device that lets you fire 2 portals that connect each other. For instance i could place one on the floor and one on the wall at the far end of the room. You then jump into the one on the floor and pop out over the other side of the room. This creates a lot of interesting game play ideas. I’m willing to bet the super cool freaky stuff will come from the community.
Valve walk you through a 19 stage tutorial/he’s what the fuck portals can do, before dropping you into a mini game to round things off. While Valves effort is good it lacks any real imagination, you get cute little one liners from turrets and a demented computer to break the silence from what i consider rather easy puzzles. Some people will argue with me on this one but i absolutely hate the voices in Portals, i think they are just horrible and sound like a stock sound filter someone dusted off. But on the whole Portals is a great puzzle game to kill 10 minutes with, but as i said before the great game play and creative content for Portals will come from the community.
Check out Garrys review
Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress Classic was one of those games i literally lost sleep over and after years and years of waiting a sequel has finally be released. The game has to be played to appreciate the true greatness of it as I’m just to damn giddy to put into words how it makes me feel.
While i may not like the art style and lack of grenades, the game play is solid and that’s what counts. Valve have put a lot of effort into making the classes feel very individual and unique. Each class now has a proper roll to play and will dominate in that area…if played well of course :). At the end of the day it’s an updated version of TFC that’s been polished till you can see your face in it. TF2 is worth the price of the Orange Box alone. I highly recommend you sit down for a couple of hours with this game.
Bioshock - A great place to take the kids
by Chris on August 29th, 2007 @ 11:43 pm - Tag (Game Review) No Comments. 43 Views
An underwater city, seamen, big daddy’s, small girls…it wouldn’t be hard to make a 101 jokes about pedophilia in this review, but i shell not stoop so low. No siree. Lets start with the obvious, Bioshock is BEAU-TIF-UL. There is absolutely no denying the artists and level designer’s have put a lot of work into every part of this game. It’s not hard to find your focus shifted to the surrounding environment instead of the splicer that’s running down your ass.
But enough about the graphics, how does the fucker play. To start of with is plays like a lot of other shooters, nothing really to special. But not before long the game offers you the chance to use the environment to your advantage. While you can go through the game with a normal point and shoot style the real fun comes in when you catch a splicer running down the hall towards you. You might notice a patch of water that must be crossed or some a can spilt fuel. Choose the right plasmid and they will go down in some truly horrific ways. I might just be a cruel bastard but i took great pleasure in first setting a splicer on fire and as they ran for water to put the flames out, whipping out my electricity plasmid to fry them as they hit the water…then sometimes (just for fun) freezing them and shattering them with my wrench.
It’s hard to say anything about the story of Bioshock without giving away some pretty cool (if not slightly predictable) plot twists. You’re thrown into the game without really any back story to your character and no more then 2-3 mins into the game you’ve already made a friend and slamming needles into your wrist. It got the initial reaction to the lack of an explanation as to why i was doing this was a sigh *grin*.
The game doesn’t have stage or level bosses as such, going around each level you will come across the little sisters and there guardians the Big Daddy’s. I was a little upset at the lack of diversity of the Big Daddy’s considering the concept art and video we’d seen in it’s early development, but hey-ho. The Big Daddy’s roam the level protecting the little sisters as they collect ADAM from the dead. Bioshock lets you choose wither or not to take on these goliaths. If you do and manage to take one down you are left with a moral decision…the little sister. Do you save her or take her life and grow stronger. Personally…rape the little bitch, she did after all try to kill you (yes, true i shoot first…but i felt threatened ).
Bioshock last about 20 hours, not the longest but it felt about right…after 15 hours or so i did start to get a bit tired of taking down giant pedophiles. But a small side step in the story helped freshen up the gameplay before a great end game. All in all i think Bioshock lived up to it’s hype, it’s a fantastic game and a strong contender for game of the year. If you own a 360 i suggest adding this to your collection. Equally if your PC owner get it, but just make sure you can run the game on it’s high settings. This game deserves to be shown in all it’s glory.