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Posted on 05.09.02 by ScottC @ 9:00 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.   Overall: Developed by Raven Software Kyle Katarn is one of the best mercenaries in the New Republic. He used to be a Jedi, but after a too close brush with the Dark Side, he hung up his lightsaber. However, the Force has other plans for him. On a job investigating an Imperial base, he finds an unholy alliance between what's left of the Empire and a powerful Dark Jedi. Now with a multitude of weapons and the powers of the Force, he must fight alien smugglers, Imperial stormtroopers, and evil Force users to stop their nefarious plans of conquest and destruction. It's always fun to take out the stormtroopers and Rodians with your blaster rifle or thermal detonators, but it is with the lightsaber that Jedi Outcast achieves real coolness. The lightsaber combat is vastly improved over the previous game in the series. You can select several stances from defensive to aggressive, perform various attacks depending on your movements, and enjoy assorted body parts being sliced off your opponents. Another change is the game gives you new Force skills and increases their power instead of the player assigning points. This gets rid of the worry that you can't complete a level if you didn't put enough points in Force Jump, for example. And I can't begin to describe the joy of using the Force Grip power and listening to a stormtrooper's neck bones snapping. I can understand why Darth Vader used it so often. Categorized as: Games and Reviews
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Posted on 04.16.02 by Doc @ 4:04 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Overall (not an average): Developer: AM2 With the demise of the Dreamcast, Sega has turned its attention to crafting games for the platforms that have to date survived the Great Console Wars. Having perhaps cornered the market on weirdness with Rez, Sega returned to its roots with Virtua Fighter 4, the third sequel to the game that started it all. The original Virtua Fighter was the first 3-D arcade fighting game ever, and the franchise has created a legion of unwaveringly devoted fans. And this new entry will be no different, in the long run, despite the proliferation of fighting franchises. The first thing one notices when playing is the eye candy. This game looks phenomenal. Incredibly detailed textures, characters composed of 10,000 polygons (compared to XBox fave DOA3, which clocks in around 8500), stunningly rendered backdrops, and environmental effects are all tuned to highest potential. Anyone that wants to argue about whether or not the PS2 can keep up in the graphics race need look no further than this one. I find it particularly amusing that they bested DOA3, who jumped to the Microsoft ship claiming that the graphics they wanted "couldn't be done" on the PS2. Virtua Fighter 4 also provides lots and lots of playing options, with a little something for most any fighting fan. The standard arcade mode, a head-to-head 2-player Versus mode, and the incredibly challenging Kumite mode are the major attractions, with some training options and the unusual A.I. mode (where you train a CPU-controlled fighter to kick ass for you) rounding things out. Of particular note is the Kumite mode, in which you select one of the 13 characters, and proceed through an unending series of opponents, increasing in rank and gaining items and additional costume options for your fighter. This is sort of the default single-player mode, where you can increase and polish your skills, all the while moving up the ranks of the fighting elite. At this point I must confess that I've never been particularly good at fighting games. I was never one of those guys in the arcade fending off challengers on Mortal Kombat or even Karate Champ. I was the sucker that jacked in a quarter and promptly found himself picking virtual teeth out of the virtual mat. But against the machine, I'm decent. I've beaten a couple of games, through all modes and all characters. But I will never enjoy that kind of success with VF4. I've seen a few other review sites that claim the learning curve is approximately 30 minutes. To which I must append "...if you happen to be possessed of the reflexes of a mongoose on several lines of premium Colombian cocaine." This game could take months to master, and even that would be no guarantee of success. This would be great, except that the learning curve isn't a nice, linear kind of progression. Basically, with any character, I found I could ascend through the first ten ranks (kyu) with relative ease. And then suddenly, as soon as I crested into the second tier (dan), pretty much every opponent of equal or greater rank mopped the floor with me. Incredibly frustrating. I'm used to games that get gradually more difficult over the course of levels, but VF4's progression goes from relatively easy to absolutely insane in one rank advancement. Now, other players better at these things might go farther, but I suspect that the same plateau exists at the third and fourth sets of ranks, meaning that sooner or later, everybody finds their level, and promptly gets stuck there for a good long while. In this, the training mode is some help, but not much. Many of the more elaborate moves available require you to be able to time button presses in a set number of animation frames. And I'm just not technically skilled enough to know when I'm three frames into a move versus when I'm five frames in. With VF4, it matters. A lot. If that kind of complexity appeals to you, or if you're a hard-core fight game player, then this is without a doubt your best option. Sega set out to make a real fighter's fighting game, and succeeded in spades, but at the cost of being terribly appealing to the casual or new player. Eye Candy: Categorized as: Games and Reviews
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Posted on 04.10.02 by Doc @ 11:23 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Overall: Developer: Ion Storm While we were all making fun of John Romero for having promised to make us "his bitches" in full-page trade ads, and then delivering a flaming bag of poo instead of the next DooM, Ion Storm's other big-shot game designer, Warren Spector, snuck Deus Ex around to the side door. Mixing first-person shooter elements with a dose of role-playing, and taking some story cues from classic console games like Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex presented a great blend of shooting, stealth, and skill development. This gave the game more depth than Quake, more action than a typical RPG, and better replayability than most games. It was lauded fairly widely, and now it has been released for the Playstation 2. You take on the role of JC Denton, a new breed of nanotech enhanced "super agent" under the employ of a secretive UN-sanctioned anti-terrorist unit. In Denton's dystopian future, the current US president is allowing the UN (and specifically UNATCO) increasing in-roads into American politics, going so far as to turn over Liberty Island for UNATCO HQ. A plague is also sweeping through the world, killing thousands, while the rich and powerful get their monthly dose of vaccines and medication without fail. When a rogue group of terrorists steal a shipment of the valuable vaccine ("Ambrosia"), it falls to Denton and UNATCO to recover it, and put a stop to the terrorists once and for all. Gameplay will be instantly familiar to anybody that has logged a few choice hours playing FPS games. The only real tweaks to gameplay come with the addition of the nanotech augmentations and your skills. As you accomplish the various mission objectives, you receive points to spend on JC's skills, making him better at sneaking, shooting, stealing, swimming, what have you. This flexibility enables you to customize the character to your style of play. Want to blast things? Dump all those points into weapons skills. Like to sneak past the guards, picking locks and disabling security? Lockpick and multitool skills are for you. You can even jack up your computer skills and hack ATM terminals for extra green, just in case you have to haggle with the street dealer for his spare box of 10mm clips. The non-combat facets, however, don't possess the kind of depth that would make them really shine. Lockpicking is as simple as pushing a button, as is hacking, or bypassing electronic security. No attempt was made to put a gameplay mechanism in place that would be interactive or challenging. You either have enough "units" of each tool to get the job done, or you don't. No player involvement. And while the dialogue interactions with various characters are surprisingly deep (you can gain new info from some characters on a sixth or seventh consecutive Interact command), the voice-acting is really hit or miss, and a great deal of the information you can pick up is simply "flavor text," with no immediate bearing on the main plot of the game. It is interesting and well-written, though, and while some have said that Denton's monotone voice got old, I found his delivery pretty amusing in places. The graphics are good, but not great, originally based on the Unreal Tournament engine (now looking a bit dated), and the consistently oppressive and dark backgrounds and textures make many parts of the game look exactly the same. A few levels stand out from the pack, though, including missions in Paris and Hong Kong, so it's not a complete wash. The sound is generally forgettable, but not obtrusive, and the effects (weapons fire, shouts of alarm and pain, etc) are good stuff. As mentioned above, some of the voice-acting is great, and much of it is mediocre, so there's nothing stand-out in that category, either. The story is immense, far-reaching, and shows influence of rabid militia conspiracy theorists, Robert Anton Wilson, Bill Burroughs, and a host of other weirdness. The plot continually turns and twists, leaving the player wondering which side of this conflict is right, which one is wrong, and what team he should be playing for at the end of the day. And the interactions with other characters will reveal that your choices have lasting impact in how others react to you. Go in guns blazing all the time? The battle-weary supply officer will restrict your ammunition allotments to "settle you down," but the old guard cyborg commandos will laud you as a "born and bred killer." It's pretty unsettling when a random person in a Brooklyn tavern knows that you were the one responsible for the deaths of hostages because you got trigger-happy. Even once you've beaten the game, there are multiple endings available depending on your choices and actions throughout the game, so it's worthwhile to go back and try again (though the game clocks in near 30 hours to complete). Considering all the different options you have for customizing your character's skills and nanotech abilities, a few different selections here and there lead to a remarkably different gameplay experience. Eye Candy: Categorized as: Games
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Posted on 01.18.02 by Ripp @ 9:43 am
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own.  Overall: Developer: Red Storm Entertainment The No. 1 complaint I hear about first-person shooter games is that they aren't realistic. People seem to want something that they can relate to more than the worlds portrayed in Doom or Serious Sam. If that's your complaint, then this is your game. Ghost Recon (referred to as GR) is a first-person shooter set in the world of Tom Clancy's novels. As the game opens in the year 2010, we learn that the Russian government has been taken over by a group of hard-line Ultra-nationalists. The Russian war machine is being readied for an invasion, with troop movements and buildups at Russia's western border. Only one force stands between the Russian front line and the former soviet republics: the Special Forces group known as the Ghosts. They've been tasked with running interference against the Russians until the bulk of the NATO force can mobilize. The game puts the Ghosts in your hands, leaving their fate (and the fate of nations) within your grasp. The rules of the GR universe are simple. There are no hit points. There are no bosses. There are no levels. You and your team of riflemen, demolition experts, snipers and heavy weapons "support" specialists are tasked with completing several goals during each mission. How you achieve these goals depends on your playing style as well as the makeup (and experience) of your squad. Game play is divided into two sections: the mission briefing/squad selection stage and the actual mission. In the briefing you are given your objectives for the mission and any relevant information about the enemy presence in the area. During squad selection you have the opportunity to select soldiers based on their specialties and their statistics in key areas of combat, like stealth and weapon use. After you have completed a mission you will also be able to use this screen to allocate more points to these stats, giving the player an incentive to play smart and keep a squad alive. Game play during the mission will be familiar to anyone that has played a FPS game before. Aiming is done with the mouse, while moving and all other functions critical to the mission are done via the keyboard. One particular aspect of gameplay worth noting is the command map function. With this tool you can see a crude map of the mission area and where your fireteams are at the moment. By utilizing a control system on the map itself you can direct your squads to separate waypoints and targets, all while leading one team yourself. Through efficient use of the command map it is possible to attack three targets at the same time, just as a real specops unit would. This gives the game a feel of realism well beyond what GR's competitors have to offer. Also adding to the feel of realism are the dynamics of the game itself. Uniforms get wet when you walk through water, and snow crunches underfoot. Enemies will respond appropriately (and differently) to the sounds of snapping twigs or gunfire. Your squad members will seek cover at all times, and won't fire unless they have a kill shot, or you ordered them to. As you run your weapon becomes harder to control, adding a degree of difficulty to the usual "point and shoot" interface. Where GR really wins is in its replay value. The game itself has several difficulty settings, as well as playing the "quick mission" option where mission objectives and details are changed. Add to this the fact any mission can be played in the multiplayer arena, and you have a game that guarantees hours and hours of additional play. I've logged over 100 hours and the game still doesn't bore me. Ghost Recon promised an accurate and exciting view into the life of a Special Forces unit, and it delivered. You should be able to find it at your local electronics superstore for around $40.00, and it's worth every penny! Minimum System Requirements:
Eye Candy: Categorized as: Games
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Posted on 01.15.02 by ScottC @ 8:26 pm
Comments on this: none yet. Add your own. 
US Release Date: November 14, 2001 On paper, The Sims doesn't sound interesting: you guide the lives of Sims (the people in the game) to furnish their houses, obtain jobs, form relationships, and go to the bathroom. But for a lot of people, it becomes addictive. You can become attached to your Sims, concerned about their well being; financial, physical, and emotional. It also helps that many of the features of The Sims are done in a tongue-in-cheek style, from the funny descriptions of the various objects around the house to the swelling music when two Sims fall in love. The newest addition to this is the Hot Date Expansion Pack. Hot Date focuses on the social aspect of the game. Your Sims have more flexibility in relating to other Sims, from how friendly a greeting can be (a wave, a handshake, a friendly hug, or a "very friendly" hug) to the subjects they can talk about (the 60's, crime, technology, or travel). How you gauge the contacts your Sims have has also changed. Replacing the status bar on the health of a relationship are two status bars, one on how things are going at the moment and another on how the relationship is going as a whole. The biggest improvement that comes with this new expansion is the Sim Downtown. Categorized as: Games and Reviews
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