• 3Feb 10

  Call of Pripyat, Bioshock 2, ME2 and BC2

  

  Call of Pripyat is the best STALKER game so far, it has barely any bugs, it has great open levels to explore, the quests are good and the A-Life system makes revisting areas pretty interesting. Just roaming about the landscape has never been this good, Even if the story presentation is mixed the game is a MUST for stalker fans. It's fantastic. I completed the game a few days back and finished a review of it over at New Game Network.

  Some screenshots!

  

  You can probably tell by my avatar that I'm a big S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fan, so I was thrilled when I got to chance to try the game before it even came out. (it comes out 25th Feb in Australia) How did that happen? Well no I didn't get the pirated Russian version. I got the North American version from the distributor (viva media).

  New Game Network have been in contact with a few publishers and we have been trying to get into the press side of things so they replied back and allowed us to download via FTP a digital copy of the game. We actually managed to get the copy early last week so I've been playing ever since. In any case it's interesting to see the "other side" of game press from our little corner of the internet. Of course I can't take the credit, my buddy The_PC_Gamer put in the hard yards with PR guys and it finally paid off.

  Interestingly our website is now over a year old and has been doing pretty well. In the past month we've had over 20,000 visits and that continues to grow each week so things are going well in that respect

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  Bioshock 2 comes out in a few days and I went ahead and preordered the Rapture Edition for PC a week back. I certainly can't wait to go back to the underwater city and see how things have changed. Early reviews have been positive so hopefully it comes close to matching the original which I enjoyed

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  I finally finished downloading Mass Effect 2 on Steam - 12.7GB worth certainly eats into my monthly download quorta. I managed to play some of it last night and was pretty impressed by the intro and I'm glad to have my old face back into the game. The seemless integration of the saved games from a prequel is something I would like to see more of in RPG games. Although granted I did forget a few things

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  I also tried the Battlefield Bad Company 2 Beta on PC. Can't say my first impressions were too good to be honest. I was a big BF2 and 2142 player back in the day (over 500 hours between them) so I can't help but compare the gameplay with those games I love. To me it's a little too "directed" to fit nicely in the Battlefield franchise, hopefully it grows on me as I've only just started.

  LOST season 6 has also started so I'm looking forward to seeing the end season of that series. Hopefully with some conclusion to all that has gone on

  • Posted Feb 3, 2010 2:22 am PT
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• 5Jan 10

  My Top games of 2009

  2009 was a slightly rough year gaming wise, especially for PC. Most of this was because many games simply got delayed into 2010. However I still managed to gets some enjoyment out of familiar titles so without further ado here are my top games of 2009.

  1. Uncharted 2

  A PS3 game gets my number one slot due to exceptional presentation and flow. The pacing rivals Valve games, the action is great, the dialogue is superb and the whole game is really well executed. You have a likeable hero in Nathan Drake and it improves in almost all areas over the original. I completed the game twice and all it did was show me how smooth the overall game was with only a few hiccups. The multiplayer is also great fun, mostly in co-op as I didn't really enjoy the competitive mp much.

  2. Batman AA

  A game I had low expectations for came through as a smash hit for me. Again I loved the dialogue in this game, the Joker and Harley Quinn in particular. The stealth setup as Batman was close to perfectly executed and aside from a little repetition it was great fun. Throwing in things like the dream sequences with scarecrow, the generically enhanced foes and the enjoyable fist combat helped greatly.

  3. Dragon Age Origins

  I only got to play this game in the last few weeks of 2009. But I'm glad I did. I was very impressed by the detailed side stories of the members of your team. I liked the hard moral choices that all seemed valid. I felt strongly attached to many the characters in the game. The game took be about 40 hours to completed and I didn't do all the side quests – the ones I did were mostly good. And I didn't work hard at getting all my companions to 100% like. A little bit of grind and some of the combat and was overly difficult in places (boss battles) even on Easy for me then again I haven't played any tactical RPGs before.

  4. Trine

  Such a simple game that for me has the best art sty-le of 2009. It's such a polished experience and works so well just with the Trine device being able to change your character between different allies mid combat and for simple puzzles. I think they could even step it up a notch for clever action and puzzles if they decide to continue the game.

  5. DiRT 2

  A great racer, the car handling is really good and you feel the traction on the road. Love the long rally tracks and the graphics are amazing in dx11. The multiplayer racing is pretty good too although it has a little bit of waiting.

  Other games I enjoyed this year that just missed out on my top 5.

  Cryostasis – superb atmosphere and story

  Machinarium – charming with great puzzles

  Red Faction: Guerrilla – killer destruction and open landscapes

  Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood – interesting story, solid shooting elements, great voice work

  Modern Warfare 2 MP – the best competitive mp of the year for me, fast and smooth pity about the lack of dedicated servers making me pull my hair out on occasion. (e.g. host rage quits)

  Prototype – lots of action with some cool devastator attacks

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  List of 2009 games I've played:

  Mirror's Edge, Fallout 3 Operation Anchorage, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, Flower, Killzone 2, Cryostasis, Burnout Paradise, Fallout 3 The Pitt, Dark Sector, Zeno Clash, Prototype, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Trine, Wolfenstein, Red Faction Guerrilla, Batman AA, Resident Evil 5, Risen, Uncharted 2, Machinarium, Torchlight, Borderlands, Dragon Age Origins, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, DiRT 2

  Action this year looks to start early with Mass Effect 2, Call of Pripyat, Bioshock 2, Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Aliens vs Predator, Metro 2033, Bad Company 2, Supreme Commander 2 and C& C 4. And that's all before the end of March 2010! That line up looks more like a Q4 release list to me. That's what you get when games get delayed from their previously expected Q4 release. On the upside this means the first half of the year won't be a dead zone where very little games are released.

  Hope you guys are doing well in 2010

  • Posted Jan 5, 2010 6:36 pm PT
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• 22Dec 09

  Finally a break.

  FREEDOM

  

  Work has finished for me this year. hooray!

  I now have 3 weeks off and will go back on January 18th. It's been a pretty good year but it has moved very fast, doesn't seem that long ago that it was March really. My plans for the holidays much like last year include playing games! Not going anywhere this year either. My Christmas will be with family and will be very low key this year. Only two days left.

  ---

  

  I got a DiRT 2 coupon with my ATI card when I upgraded, downloaded it on Steam and have been playing it for a few weeks. The graphics and driving in that game are really good, very impressed. I did work my way through it at a fairly brisk pace, and played some online. So I have completed a review for it over at New Game Network if you are interested.

  dx11 Screenshots!

  ;

  

  Killzone 2 also pleasantly suprised me, I haven't played many shooters on consoles but the game was actually pretty good. Actually considering the general lack of shooters on PC it was pretty close match for Bound in Blood for first person shooter of the year. Of course I'd like mouse and keyboard but exclusives are exclusive. Once again I gave it a good work out and finished up a review for it on NGN.

  

  I've started Dragon Age and I'm pleased with the overall look of the game, the lip syncing itself is really well done considering the amount of dialogue in the game. I'm not really enjoying the combat much yet however. It seems very clunkly and not too friendly. I hope it grows on me especially by the time they let me off the leash.

  

  I actually picked up Machinarium last week for $10 on the official site and completed it in a few days. The sale is stil valid until the 25th of December. I recommend the game. It's a crafty adventure game and lucky for me it included a walkthrough because I thought some of the puzzles were a little far fetched even though I suck at puzzle games. In any case it's pretty good value for $10.

  ---

  

  I saw Avatar 3D last night, the cinema was packed and I thought the movie was pretty good. Yes it had its fair share of cringe worthy dialogue and I thought some of the 3D was gimmicky. However it never got boring and in fact they skipped passed sections I would have liked to have seen more of (eg training). Overall its a solid 8/10 from me, not quite topping James Cameron's "Aliens" but it had quite a unique feeling throughout.

  ---

  Ill probably post up my top 10 games for 2009 in my next blog. You can be sure that Uncharted 2, Trine and Batman will feature very highly on that list. Probably 1, 2 and 3. So far I'd say that 2009 has been a little disappointing in terms of really good games. I'd be really struggling without my PS3 with Uncharted 2. The fact that we have had so many delays at the end of the year, making early next year about 11 on the crazy game scale is a little bit of a let down.

  Since I probably won't blog on Christmas Day

  MERRY CHRISTMAS (Agent 47 sty.le)

  

  • Posted Dec 22, 2009 10:13 pm PT
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