Archive for October, 2007
Mazy.net: The Phantom Halo Menace?
by Chris on October 28th, 2007 @ 3:32 pm - Tag (Friends, Games) 1 Comment. 220 Views
Mazy has posted a rather interesting comparison between ‘HALO’ and ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’. It’s a bizarre one, but some of the likeness are uncanny…specially the Gungan and Jackal Shields.
You can read the full article here.
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.
HALO 3
by Chris on October 10th, 2007 @ 1:22 am - Tag (Games) No Comments. 140 Views
So, two questions might pop into your head.
1. Why not a review of Halo3?
2. Why so long after the games release?
Let me address number one first. The Halo series is so big now and has such a massive fan base that a review from any site would be pointless. Everyone will have already made there minds up months ago whether or not they would buy the game. Even if it was terrible people would still buy it to see why first hand. So i’m not going to do a review, just some thoughts and opinions.
So why am i bothering to talk about it now so long after the game has been out. I wanted to wait till the hype had died down and people would be a little more open to criticism of one the biggest games of the year. So lets get down to it.
I love Halo and i loved Halo3, the game was great it gave me exactly what i wanted which was more Halo. But…yes i have a but …i do wish Bungie had put more time in to the single player game. While the single player is solid (bar a few parts towards the end) it’s incredibly short. Even on legendary i managed to finish the game in under 7 hours, which by today’s standards is stupidly short. Co-op does expand the on it but sometimes i just want the solo experience. Bungie could of course add more single player game play via xbox live (which is what i was hoping), but as we now know Bungie and Microsoft have kind of gone there separate ways and we’ve all heard the rumours that the film has been canned…again. What does this mean for Halos future?
Bungie might be ready to finish the fight, but i’m willing to bet millions of people who bought the game aren’t.