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• 8Dec 09

  Give Winston Zeddemore A Chance!

  If you're a fan of Ghostbusters, then I encourage you to check out my blog post about it. If you want to comment but can't do so in my blog, then just do it here.

  • Posted Dec 8, 2009 6:52 pm PT
  • Category: Opinion
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• 29Nov 09

  Arkham Asylum is Amazing

  I finished playing Batman: Arkham Asylum in two days and I love every minute of it. Rocksteady and Eidos did a superb job with this game. It was definitely way better than Dark Tomorrow by a gazillion miles . I'm playing Arkham Asylum on my brand new Toshiba laptop with 4GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce 230M. It's my new pride and joy .

  I will surely write a review about it but for now, I'll just say what's in my head right now. First of all, the presentation of Arkham Asylum is fantastic with its gorgeous derelict asylum and its insane inhabitants. The detailing of the characters, the furniture, the rooms is absolutely phenonemal. I was speechless throughout the entire game. The storyline is also excellent written by Paul Dini, the co-creator of my beloved Batman: The Animated Series. The way the game processes really keeps us anxious and it does a good job of keeping the suspense. The controls work really well and it feels comfortable throughout the end too from the combat sequence and the weaponry manuevers. I freakin' love the explosive gel!

  The best part of Arkham Asylum for me is finding and solving the Riddler's trophies and puzzles. I ended up collecting all of them before I finished the game. Yeah, I was so determined. However, the biggest problem I had is finding the chattering teeth. I was down to only one chattering teeth and it was located in Arkham West. I searched for that miserable thing for two solid hour and I still couldn't find it- until I realized it was hidden somewhere in the junction leading to the Arkham North. Very annoying!

  To me, this is the best comic book game by far. Arkham Asylum is one of the best games I've played this year and I'm definitely gonna play this game again. Of course, every game has its flaws and so does Arkham Asylum. The things I don't like about this game is that there's only a few Batman characters that make an appearance. I didn't expect to have the whole gang in one game but I want to have more. There are some pass mentions of these missing characters as you can see their respective prison cells and Clayface even makes a small cameo but still, it's not enough. I was hoping see Robin, Batgirl, Detective Harvey Bullock, Catwoman and Two-Face but sadly, they didn't make it. All in all, I'm not that disappointed because the game does a good job of having the villains' trademark weapons and tape recordings scattered all over Arkham and it's actually fun to find them.

  The other thing I didn't like is that after you beat the game, it doesn't let you restart the game. You have to use another save slot to do so which I think it's not a good idea. So instead, the game gives you the option to resume your game so that you can finish collecting all the Riddler's trophies and stuff. It's a nice touch but since I've already collected all the goodies before hand, I don't see the point of me just roaming all over Arkham with nothing to sdo.

  Overall, I had a blast and I'm looking forward of finishing the challange mode. If you guys haven't played it yet, I highly recommend it.

  • Posted Nov 29, 2009 6:51 pm PT
  • Category: Games
  • 8 Comments
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• 15Nov 09

  My Homecoming and Dead Space Experience

  This month, I'm playing two games for the very first time; Silent Hill: Homecoming and Dead Space. I had been wanting to play these games back when they were first released but due to my travelling and work, I couldn't. And because of that, I'm playing the PC versions of Homecoming and Dead Space since both of my PS3 and XBOX360 are out of my reach at the moment. On top of that, I could only play these games on the lowest graphical settings because of my graphics card. It's an NVIDIA GeForce 8 series but it can only perform on the minimum requirement settings. What a letdown.

  

  Anyway, let's start by talking about Silent Hill: Homecoming. When I first heard that a western company was going to develop this game, I had doubts about it because I was afraid they were unable to live up to the Silent Hill's name and in the end, I've mixed reactions with Homecoming. On the positive side, Double Helix Games did a pretty good job with the overall presentation of the game, in particular the audio side of things. Previous Silent Hill games had a very mediocre voice acting as they were mostly dry, lifeless and unconvincing. Homecoming changes this trend by making the characters more lively, more convincing and more realistic- just like Origins. When you see characters in Homecoming angry, happy or sad; you really feel their emotions greatly.

  However on the negative side, I was truly disappointed to find that Homecoming isn't scary at all. Silent Hill is always known for its psychological horror where they make the audience delusional and horrified with its disturbing silence, hideous creatures and deranged characters. Homecoming does have all these elements but they weren't conveyed very well. It's kinda like cooking a meal where you have all the necessary ingredients but if you don't follow the right procedure, the meal will taste awful. Silent Hill: Origins had the same problem too. It had the voice acting right but the story and the scare factor were lacking and in fact, it was the most boring Silent Hill I've ever played. Also, they isn't any soundtrack CD for Homecoming. Why not? All the other Silent Hill games (Including Origins) have them, so why not Homecoming?

  

  It's interesting that even though Silent Hill 1, 2, 3 and 4: The Room had not so great voice acting, the games were intensely disturbing which grows on you from time to time. I consider these games to be much more scary than these two new ones. I guess it works like this:

  Konami + Independent = Not so great voice acting but great stories and very scary

  However

  Konami + Western developers = Great voice acting but poor stories and not scary

  

  Shattered Memories is coming out next month and it's got me worried since it's being developed by Climax Studios, the same people who made Origins. Let's just hope they get this one right but if not, please Konami, please don't let other people make anymore Silent Hill games. Just you guys.

  Bottom line, despite my ramblings about the negativity in Homecoming, the game isn't that bad and it has an interesting twist at the end. I'm actually playing the game for the second time. Homecoming may lacked what its predecessor has greatly, the game is still worthy to be called a Silent Hill game. My rating: 8.0.

  

  Next we have Dead Space and this game is freaking awesome. I was surprised. People were talking about how great it was back then but I didn't really pay much attention to it because I didn't want to be overhyped by it. Dead Space is a very interesting game and even though it borrows elements from other games such as Resident Evil 4 and Doom 3 (With it's over-the-shoulder camera angle and futuristic outer space station gone wrong plot), it did a good job of making the game look original and not simply looking like its plagiarizing. With all the madness been cramped in here, I can safely say that Dead Space is in fact more scary than Silent Hill: Homecoming. Period. I'm still playing the game and I can't wait to finish it til the end.

  I really love Isaac Clarke, the main character because he's so cool looking and has all kinds of awesome weapons at his disposal. I'm even considering to buy an Isaac Clarke action figure in eBay with my refunded money that I got from the broken Memory Stick I bought last month.

  That's all I have to say for now. I will be writting some new game reviews here in GameSpot so please do check 'em out when you have the time. Now will you excuse me, I have the USG Ishimura to save.

  -Psykhophear

  • Posted Nov 15, 2009 2:38 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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