• 3Oct 06

  Those were the days

  Every
  gamer with at least 15 years old will recognize the next game, and most
  of them I'm sure will tell you it's one of the best games ever.
  
  
  
  Might & Magic VII: For Blood & Honor
  
  
  
  First of all I already know that it was M&M VI the one that made
  this amazing saga Reborn, it marked the end of the old M&M, and the
  beginnning of the new M&M saga, but I decided to point M&M 7 as
  the best in series because it took everything M&M 6 had and
  improved it.
  
  To tell you how great this game was I would only have to say that it
  was with this game that I broke my record of straight hours playing a
  single game, you may not believe it but I played it for 18 straight hours!!
  I kid you not, I ate while playing, and only stopped to go to the
  bathroom, needless to say I fell unconciouss when done playing.
  
  
  
  Anyone remember this??:
  
  
  
  
  
  or this??:
  
  
  
  
  
  meteor shower over the undead, that's what I call roleplaying
  
  
  
  
  
  M&M 7 was huge, it had a vast world to explore, over a hundred
  quests, and a good story, that depending on your actions turned into
  diferent directions.
  
  It had all the hack & slash, and dungeon crawl you could ever want
  on a pc rpg, blended with lots of puzzles (good ones, that demanded
  thinking) unlike most other games out there.
  
  Sadly after that the saga began dying, with an uninspired M&M 8
  that went out to the market looking and feeling old, repetitive and
  often frustrating, but that was not the end, the coup de grace came 2
  years later when 3DO finally released M&M 9, a game that every
  M&M fanboy was waiting, it was meant to be a revolution, just like
  M&M 6, it was going to revitalize the series, but instead it killed
  it.
  
  Next we heard 3DO went out of business, a dinasty had ended, and in top
  of that last year when I heard that UBISOFT (one of the major Gaming
  companies today) was buying the M&M license, I thought "well this
  could be good", but instead they just took the name and made a medieval
  FPS that tries to be a poor example of an RPG.
  
  
  
  For all of this reasons I say that those were the days, the day of M&M VII, a must in every gamer collection.
  
  • Posted Oct 3, 2006 12:47 pm GMT
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 2Sep 06

  Hardcore Gamer Reviews.

  My review of American McGee's Alice, if you would like to recomend it please do, here's the link.
  A bit straightforward but check out those environments!! And the music!! that's what I call an immersive game.
  
  First the upsides of the game:
  
  - Great lookings, the graphics are outstanding for a game from 2000, the environments are spectacular, the imaginative artwork really does an impressive job at inmersing you into "Gothic" Wonderland, it's just a shame that I didn't got the game 'till it was a litlle outdated so the looks didn't had the same impact that they would've caused on me back when it was released.
  But just as said by Erik Wolpaw on his review of the game: "It seems that the designers' inspiration dissipated a little by the later levels" maybe it's because the first sorroundings were too impressive that the later ones couldn't make the same effect, but sadly as it is the best feature of the game slightly vanishes by the end of the game (keyword: slightly).
  - The sound, along with the graphics the other outstanding feature of the game, my congratulations to Chris Vrenna for an excellent soundtrack, that really sets the mood of Alice own "Gothic Wonderland".
  
  
  
  The Grey Spots:
  
  - Gameplay, it's ok, easy controls that while being more complex than the ones of other plataformers, just doesn't get to the point of most action games.
  - Puzzles and level exploration, though there are puzzles on almost every level, they're just too simple, to the point that it doesn't even require mental effort to solve them. As for level exploration, that's a feature that developers worked really well, because at first you'll get the impression that the levels are huge, but that's just an illusion, product of the smart use of the environments, such as multiple corridors that lead to the same place, dozens of door of wich only a few open, but in the end the illussion fades and you realize that the levels are all kinda short and greatly straightforward, so it balance itself to stay as a "grey spot".
  
  
  
  The Downsides:
  
  - Combat, by no means fast paced nor immersive, it gets xtremely repetitive, and allows almost no strategy, except for the fact that you'll find a few weapons to be more effective against some foes, but probably you'll just use the same weapon 'till you get one better.
  - Just way too straighforward, no open ended, you don't get to choose the outcome of the history, while the story it's really interesting, the game just railroadyou through it, and the story itself it's at the same time interesting enough and xtremely linear, there's no backsteps on it, there's no deception, no deadends, no surprises. It's a shame the developers didn't emphazice on this aspect of the game, for they would've got Classic on their shoulders.
  
  The Veredict:
  A fun straighforward plataformer, with impressive graphics, outstanding background music & sound, and an interesting premise that didn't reach it's potential. So if you don't mind the lack of open ending on the story, the unappealing combat system, nor the simple puzzles, then you'll love American McGee's Alice.
  So my veredict is: "Worth playing".
  • Posted Sep 2, 2006 11:00 pm GMT
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg
• 31Aug 06

  Watch out Oblivion!!

  Neverwinter Nights 2 is set for release on October 17th, and it looks
  like it's going to be "the" contender of The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
  
  It's being developed by Californian Studio Obsidian Entertainment, the
  Studio responsable for last year great Rpg success Star Wars Knights of
  the Old Republic 2: Sith Lords, so that's encouraging, though sadly I
  would've love that Bioware continued with the excellent work they did
  with Neverwinter Nights, but Bioware has projects of their own, wich by
  the way look great so far (I'll talk about them later).
  
  But retorning to the main issue of the post, just take a look at the INSANE requirements of Neverwinter 2:
  
  CPU Speed: 2 GHz
  
  RAM: 512mb
  
  Video Card 128MB Direct3D compatible video card with DirectX 9.0c compatible driver (NVIDIA GeForce FX 5500+ / ATI Radeon 9500+)
  
  Remember this are the MINIMUM requirements for the game, that means
  that if you got a Rig like this you'll only get to play it in the
  lowest quality setting, so if you want to REALLY play Neverwinter 2
  this is what I think you'll need:
  
  CPU Speed 3 GHZ
  
  RAM 1 GB to 2 GB
  
  Video Card ATI X800 series, Nvidia GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card.
  
  My guess is that definetly NW2 will be outstanding, let's hope I'm not wrong
  
  So watch out Oblivion 'cause there it comes Neverwinter 2.
  • Posted Aug 31, 2006 10:13 am GMT
  • Tag
  • Print
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Digg

See Previous Blog Posts »