Mirrors Edge

Hello one more time, as it Is H4ZM4T. My final post of the day, and of January, is that of Mirrors Edge.

The story is about a girl named Faith, who is a "Runner" In a futuristic city where the government sucks, Red clothes are cool, and Facial Tattoos are hot. (Guess much hasn't changed)

So, as usual, I'll state the bad first. The story is ridiculously short. I beat it in less then 8 hours. On top of that, The story doesn't really catch, the guns suck, and the Dialogue is Cheesy and Terrible. I feel like I was playing a Triple X: State of the Union game.


Until I actually started moving as the character. Your HUD is just a dot. A dot in the middle of the screen, to prevent motion sickness. The movement as your character is fluid, the graphics are amazing, and you feel incredibly powerful after playing this game (I almost killed myself trying to run on the wall at my school. Thanks Mirrors Edge.)

Also, something that doesn't hurt, is that the Main Character is Smokin. There is nothing wrong with a little asian chick with a tattoo on her face, running around doing kung fu and beating the crap out of the government. Thank god.

Finally, the game is all in all Original. It's really fun and a breath of fresh air onto the dull world of constant FPS's and Exhausting strategy games.


Besides the fact that it's short and the story is terrible, I've got to let it slide. This Incredibly addicting, original, and noteworthy game is highly recommended. I say a 8/10

Silent Hill: Homecoming

Hey There! H4ZM4T Again, with another review! Two in one day? Looks like the rookie isn't slackin.

So Now I've got Silent Hill: Homecoming, another installment to the wonderfully horrific Silent Hill Series. In this game, you play Alex Sheppard, A soldier who was wounded in battle who is coming home because he has been having disturbing dreams about his brother, Josh.

Now the game starts off with you in Alchemilla Hospital, an infamous area to the silent hill series. The first thing I noticed is that this game is basically a Resident Evil 4 Rip off. It has the same over the shoulder style, with the gun style combat, and the same basic graphics. The saddening things is that Yes, the graphics are pretty much just like Resident Evil 4.

Also, when you do get out of the hospital, you'll notice you're not in Silent Hill, But in Sheppard's Glen, a town quite near Silent Hill. You'll find the area is practically Silent Hill without a Hospital, school, and ridculously scary guy with a giant sword walking around.

Aside from the Graphics problem, the game is extremely buggy. I've gotten into so many glitches that I'm extremely happy I Saved a lot. I've gotten to points in the game where enemies won't die, You fall through the level, you get stuck behind an invisible wall, texture failures, etc.


Now don't get me wrong. I had a lot of fun playing this game. The puzzles are fun and challenging, and not too repetitive, The Combat isn't that bad, even though it feels like you've done it before, The story is enticing, and I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty damn creepy. You don't get the feeling of helplessness like you do from the other silent hill games, but that's because the combat has been designed so you can ACTUALLY KILL in this game.


Overall, I give this a 6/10. If it isn't for you, it isn't for you, and The glitches and pre-gen graphics really killed the vibe.

Left 4 Dead Review

Ok. So this is my first review for the spork, and it's for one of the most highly anticipated multiplayer games ever: Left 4 Dead.


In Left 4 Dead, You play one of the few survivors of "The Infection." The Infected include your basic, 28 days later type zombies, as well as Valves originals, which include the Smoker, Hunter, Boomer, Tank, and the scariest thing ever, the Witch.


So for Starters, I'll go into the story mode. The simple fact is, there really isn't one. An Infection Happens, and that's it. You're one of the few survivors and all you do is kill and live. Kill, Live, Kill, Live, Kill.... That's about it. The characters really don't have any remote backstory, just a little detail, Like "Bill survived 3 wars." That's it. If your looking for a game with depth, this is not it.

Also, the one other bad thing about this game is that versus mode only allows you to access 2 of the 4 maps available to regular campaign. Now I'm not one to really complain about limiting certain things for good reasons, but it seems like Valve really tried to rush this game.


Now don't let what I said get you down. This game is the BEST Multiplayer game around, Hands down. It has the Ridiculously satisfying teamwork in campaign, as well as fun weapons, items, and simple gameplay. My Girlfriend, whom shops at Abercrombie and Fitch, Listens to Jesse McCartney, and Has bright blue walls in her room, absolutely adores this game. It's for everyone, hands down. It's easy to get into, and hard to put down.

The graphics aren't much to ask for, but then again, they aren't too important in a game that is based around slaughtering massive amounts of zombies and getting to the nearest safe room, which when you finally do, you're gasping for air after your screaming at your friends to keep up, not alert the witch, kill the nearest boomer, etc. I dunno about you, but I don't stop and smell the roses when a vicious zombie is gnawing on the back of my head.


All in all, I would give this game a 9/10. Very Fun, Easy to pick up, and Great for Parties or introducing people to Gaming

The Spork adds: Its very difficult to find a good co-op game these days. Most of them are single player games with a clone of the main character awkwardly tacked on. But Left 4 Dead, you have four dinstinct characters, all of whom are required to work together. If someone runs off on their own, they WILL die. It's a fact of the game.

And on top of that, this game actually feels like a Zombie game, rather than an action game that happens to have zombies.

Neverwinter Nights 2

So... another post. I should try to figure out some kind of schedule for these things. Or not. Whatever.

Anyway, another video game, because I love video games.

Neverwinter Nights 2, the sequel to Neverwinter Nights.

The game begins with absolutely no relation to the hero of Neverwinter from Neverwinter Nights, nor to Deekin's friend, the hero of the expansion packs of Neverwinter Nights. Wierd.

So anyway, the game begins with you getting some instructions from your cold Elven foster father, telling you to do something he could quite easily do himself on his way to where he's going. But you have to do it anyway. He doesn't want to carry the furs or something. Well, not a minute into the game, and you have a mission already.

Go outside and meet your friends, and it won't be long at all until you get another mission. Alright! So now you have to sell some furs, buy a bow for Dad, and compete in the Harvest Cup. The Harvest Cup consists of four events, and if you win three, you win the cup. Supposedly, nobody has won all four since Cormick, whoever that was. However, unless you're a dolt, you should be able to win all four without too much trouble. For your efforts, you get a cup and a cape that makes you look good, but will be replaced by something better shortly afterwards. Your happiness is quickly crushed, however, when a bunch of evil critters come and slaughter half your town. So then you are given the task of gathering the half assed militia to fight wave after wave of the aforementioned evil critters. For farmers living in a swamp, they do surprisingly well, but still appreciate the help when Dad shows up with some archers.

After the carnage, Dad explains to you that it might kinda sorta be his fault that they came. So he sends you and your surviving friend into the dangerous swamp to take a shiny thing away from the lizardmen. Great parenting, right there. Most players will probably end up killing all the lizardmen, but if you're good, you can convince them to be friendly. So after you get that, Dad tells you to take it to his half brother in Neverwinter.

Well at least now we know why it's called Neverwinter Nights. The expansions to the first Neverwinter Nights didn't even involve the city of Neverwinter at all! Why were they expansions anyway? They didn't feature the city, they had new protagonists, they had unrelated plots...

But back to the game I'm actually reviewing. Neverwinter Nights 2 runs on the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Ruleset, an update from Neverwinter Nights, which ran on 3.0. Some of the feats and skills have changed slightly, but if you were familiar with how the system worked in NWN, you should be able to figure it out without much trouble.

There are new classes and races as well. The only new core class is Warlock, an arcane spellcaster who focuses more on blowing stuff up and less on actual spells, but is otherwise similar to a sorcerer. There are seven new prestige classes, two of which have prerequisites tied to story events.

New races include various subraces, such as Duergar and Drow, which are "dark" variants of Dwarves and Elves, respectively. You can also be a Tiefling or Aasimar, a human with hints of fiendish or celestial ancestry. Oddly enough, even if you play a tiefling with blatantly obvious horns, a tail, and yellow eyes, people will interact with you as if you were a perfectly normal person. However, a certain tiefling NPC you meet early in the game is constantly harassed and molested due to her fiendish ancestry. What the crap?

Several of your companions will frustrate you to no end, especially a certain Elven Druid who has a tendancy to shift into large animals and block doorways during fights.

As with previous installations of the series, the details of the game vary greatly depending on a multitude of choices made by the player, but the overall goal of the game generally remains the same most of the way through. I won't spoil the ending for ya, though.

The Bottom Line: If you like RPGs, Neverwinter Nights is an excellent series, well worth your time, and Neverwinter Nights 2 continues that tradition of excellence. Rock on Bioware.

The Princess Bride

Well, here's my first movie review, and it's an old favorite of mine. Guess you already know this is going to be a positive review, then. Well NYAA to you.

Moving along.

Don't let the title of this movie fool you. Hearing the title without knowing the movie brings to mind the kind of cheesy, poorly acted love story that only girls under the age of ten can enjoy. However, it more along the lines of things that are so hilarious, most of it will go right over the heads of those very same girls under the age of ten.

Cary Elwes stars as Westley, a servant boy who seems a bit too eager to do whatever the heck Buttercup (Robin Wright Penn) tells him to do. In addition, he seems to have an extremely limited vocabulary. Then Westley and Buttercup fall in love, so he decides to leave. Makes sense to me.

So then he leaves, and promptly gets capured by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who never leaves prisoners alive. Well now! This is certainly no children's story! Murder already? Jeez. The narrator's grandson seems to think this is just great, however. Man, children were violent back in the 80s.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Then the movie skips ahead like five years or something, and some more stuff happens, culminating in everyone who watches it spouting the word "inconcievable" uncontrollably for up to a week afterwards.

But the movie supplies many other excellent lines as well, many of which can be used in everyday life, provided you are either quick witted or downright nuts.

Such lines as:

"Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

"I am not left handed."

"NOT TO FIFTY!"

and

"Well, he's been mostly dead all day."

Well now. It seems that reviewing a movie in a humorous manner without spoiling it is quite difficult. I shall have to expend more effort next time.

The Bottom Line: If you do not own this movie and are not a humorless dick (in which case I doubt you'd still be reading this nonsense), then do yourself a favor and go buy a DVD of this film. And then go watch it. At least once a month. Forever.

Eve Online

My Rating: 4/10

Why such a low rating you ask? Well, you need to know how to play a game to play it and (In my and Randall's case) rate it, right? Well, it took me 4 goddamned days to figure out what the fuck everything does. Press one wrong button and you end up in some fucked up state or in some different place. WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT ANYMORE MAN?!

Well, to move on, the tutorial just confused the fuck out of me even more, so I said screw it and just randomly started playing. I figured how to mine and warp, and let me tell you, mining after 5 hours straight gets pretty damn boring.

Then I decided to attempt to kill some pirates, and guess what? I bought a new ship that I could not even equip a goddamn gun to because I required some stupid skill. So after getting blasted to pieces, I warped away to the nearest station. I nearly threw my desktop through my monitor when I saw all the fucking options. KEEP IT SIMPLE PEEPS!

If you figure out how to work this shit, plllleeeeeeeeaaaaassssseeeeee teach me so I can do an actual review on it.

Peggle

Hey, whats up readers?

Not much? Yeah same here. Which is why I'm making another post. Another video game this time.

What game you ask? Did you not read the title? Peggle. Specifically, two of the three incarnations of Peggle I am aware of.

First up we have Peggle Extreme, which was formerly available free through Steam to buyers of the Orange Box for PC, and is now available to any schmuck with a Steam Account (which is free).

Peggle Extreme is essentially a demo of Peggle, but with unique levels, each level themed after one or more of the games included in the Orange Box (Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal). The object of this game is to launch a ball from the top of the screen at a bunch of "pegs" and "bricks" (read: circles and rectangles) on the screen. There's also a moving bucket at the bottom that you should try to hit if possible. You start each level with ten balls, and get a replacement balls by meeting certain conditions, such as a certain score in one turn, or getting a ball in the bucket. The level ends in failure if you run out of balls, and in success if you get rid of all the orange pegs and bricks.

Meanwhile, you are aided by a Scandinavian Unicorn who makes it easier to aim, but only if you hit a green peg (or brick) the turn before. Later levels make you flip your shit by including portals that send your balls flying all over the place.

HOLY CRAP, IT'S AFTER MIDNIGHT ALREADY?

Sorry about that. Moving on, we have Peggle Deluxe, which is basically the full version of Peggle. As far as I know, there is no plain ol' Peggle, so you have to wonder why they added the word Deluxe.

Peggle Deluxe gives you a much wider selection of levels than Peggle Extreme did, and additional masters, other than the aforementioned Scandinavian Unicorn, each of whom does something different. Among them, a gopher who seems to be a surfer dude from the valley, an Egyptian cat, a manic rabbit magician, and a one eyed dragon. Some of them are more useful than others.

And after you finish the "campaign," (the reward for which is a picture of a trophy), you can continue the game by playing the challenges, which consist of various levels with different goals than the normal levels. The differences vary from a few extra orange pegs to starting with only one ball, to having to get a certain score on the level.

There is also another Peggle called Peggle Nights, which comes in a darker box, and presumably features new levels, possibly darker ones.

Oh, I almost forgot. At the end of every level, it plays the Ode to Joy. That's worth a few bonus points, right?

The Bottom Line: Peggle is a highly addictive game that's worth a try, especially since anyone with an internet connection can download Peggle Extreme for free. And quite frankly, I'm assuming you have an internet connection, since you're reading this. At least, I'm assuming you're reading this.

Windows Vista

My rating: 5/10

The reason I gave it 5/10 and not higher or lower is because it works perfectly for me, except when I connect my wireless N adapter to it, then it BSOD's me, but Vista can't take full blame for it.

Microsoft f*cked up when they released Vista. Back then, I wasn't a genius in pc's, so my father picked up a Vista (The one I'm currently on, however I modded it.) It was a Gateway GT5404. It was pretty damn fast for back then, 1gb of RAM, Pentium D 2.80Ghz,pc. 250gb sata harddrive, dvd writer, Intel 945G (Coreyville). It ran Vista with no problems, but Vista had a lot of problems.

First problem: My dad bought a Nvidia card (whom suck with Vista), and used it's cd drivers. Which were probably from 2006 (I had a 7300GS), and it crashed on me like heck when I played a game until I downloaded the new Vista 'safe' drivers.

Second Problem: Half of my programs didn't even run on Vista, which made me very angry. I had to download mods to make Microsoft Office 2000 run(I hate office 2007), and all my photo editing software wouldn't work. Bummer

Third problem: JESUS CHRIST VISTA IS A RAM WH*RE. Vista used 900mb of my 1gb for just doing the simplest things, and when it was doing nothing, it used about 700mb of it.

Well, the RAM problem was fixed when I got 4gb of it, but then my copy was 32bit, so I screwed the hell up there. And any gamers out there had to upgrade to Vista if they wanted to play using DX10.

Now, you're probably wondering why I gave it a 5/10. That's being generous also, but the reason I gave it a 5/10 is because it worked, and it ran games without much crashing much after Nvidia released some drivers that were actually compatible with Vista. Well, this is my first review, and if it seems unfinished, it's probably because I'm sick.

Spork adds: In my humble opinion, Chaplian was overly generous, but I'll forgive him, because he doesn't have a lot in the way of better Operating Systems to compare it to.

Windows 2000 and XP were the best two Windows so far. Vista ranks just above ME, which is the worst Windows ever.

Heres to hoping Windows 7 is to Vista what 2000 was to ME.

Crysis

My Rating: 3/10

Crysis must be one of the hardest and most mediocre games I have ever played. But before you play this game, here are the recommended system specs:
8 core 7.80Ghz Intel Core i70
44gb of DDR8 Ram
Nvidia GTX 595 SLI
DX17

You get my point right? If you don't, I'm implying Crysis will make your computer want to kill itself. It will, I swear to god.

If you however got your hands on a damned system that will run Crysis, I say give it a shot. I was running Crysis on my current and only pc, whose specs are the following:
4gb DDR2 800 RAM
Pentium D 2.80Ghz
XFX 9600GSO oc'ed to hell

My pc is not the best pc out their, but it gets me around 40fps in about almost every game out there. But you see here, I played Crysis on all High at 1024x768, and guess what, I only got 14 god damned fps. I cranked it down to all medium, got around 19 fps. So I warn you, you better have invested in a system that will run Crysis before you attempt to play it.

Crysis is mostly for graphics, really. The gameplay is okay, not really the addicting type, it's basically a benchmarking game for people who have $5000 pc's. I'm not really going to talk about the campaign because I only downloaded the demo, so wait for a full review for when I get a pc that will actually run it.

Spork adds: Crysis was one of few games I stopped playing midway through, because it sucked that hard.

During calmer moments of the game, I was able to drag about 10fps out of the game on max settings at a resolution of 1680x1050, but had to tone it down to medium to play reasonably, and it still lagged when I was getting Zerg rushed by Koreans.

The game is unfairly difficult, even after I got fed up and turned on Godmode. There are several neat gimmicks, but they fail to redeem the crummy gameplay.

On max graphics, I was willing to believe that it was actually a live action movie, albeit one where everyone spoke in slow motion, but looking amazing is not the same thing as having a good game.

Anyway, Crysis actually made Legendary look like a good game, so the bottom line is: avoid at all costs.

Call of Duty 2

My Rating: 8/10

Now, some of you might call Call of Duty 2 old, (Get it? call *Call* of Duty 2. Bah, forget you.) it might be old, but it is one of the most fun and most addicting games I have ever played.

Now, Call of Duty 2 is not demanding in pc specs or hardware, but if you want 40fps that won't fluctuate, you still have to have a good pc.

Well, when I first started playing this, I though it would be some crap game like most others, but I was wrong. Oh so wrong....This game got me playing for 8 hours straight with no breakfast or lunch. Yes, that's how addicted I got to it.

Well, to move on from me being addicted to this game like a baby to a shiny thing, the campaign is fun, unlike Crysis who's all about some damn scenery and you kicking some Korean ass with the whole US Government behind you while they make do with AK 47s. For those people who loves a challenge, you're gonna love this game. But for those easy goers, you're gonna have to stick with easy on this one. The thing that keeps you playing this game the most if that you die(in the game). No matter how good you are at shooters, you're gonna die at least once a campaign. And when you die, you get aggravated and want to beat the living potatoes out of the Nazi who killed you.

Though, if you keep dying at a certain point, you get angry to the point where you quit playing right? Well, leave it alone for a good 6 hours or a day, and then play ti again, and watch, you'll beat this part easy. How? Magic. Well, the bottom line is, if you have $20, and you somehow have nothing to spend it on, GET THIS GAME.

Spork adds: Call of Duty is an excellent series all the way through, with 5 main installments and 2 or 3 spin offs.

Call of Duty 2 remains the best one. I must have played through the campaign 30 times.

Fallout 3

Hey again, whoever reads this.

Today, we will be discussing a video game. Fallout 3, to be specific.

For starters, Fallout 3 is available on PC, Xbox360, and PlayStation3. I played the PC version, so you'll have to excuse me if I miss anything console specific.

The game begins with you realizing that the whole game is obviously going to be fucking epic, as you are born, being delivered by Liam Fucking Neeson. CLEARLY THIS IS AMAZING. Then it gets more amazing when you find out not only is Liam Neeson your doctor, he's also your dad. even though he's a doctor, he has to ask you if you're a boy or a girl, which kinda confused me for a minute, then he asks you your name, which caused me to seriously question him, then he drags a computer down and makes you decide what you're going to look like when you grow up. Excuse me, but isn't that a lot to ask of a newborn baby? Shortly after you decide what you want to look like as an adult, your mother goes into cardiac arrest or some such shit, and you get rolled out of there in a flash of bright light.

Gameplay resumes one year later, when Liam Neeson tricks you and locks you into a playpen, not realizing that as soon as he leaves you will open the playpen as easily as a gamer presses the E key. Wandering out, you are given the opportunity to play with some toys, and then read a book. HEY WAIT A MINUTE! Aren't you still only a year old at this point? How can you read? I didn't learn to read until I was... five, I think. Maybe four. Anyway, I was more than a year old. So not only do you read a book, it magically lets you distribute your stats. Once you finish that, Liam Neeson comes back and depresses you with stories about your dead mother, and there's another flash of light.

BAM! Now you're ten, and you get some gizmo that goes on your wrist and never comes off. And you get a BB Gun. Awesome. Someone takes a picture, and guess what? The flash of light propels you forward in time again. Now you're 16, and playing sick to avoid taking a test. But Liam Neeson is a doctor, remember. So you have to take the test anyway. But the test itself is mildly hilarious, so no worries.

A point I almost forgot to mention is that all of this takes place locked inside a "Vault," a hardcore bunker designed to withstand the Nuclear War, which as I understand it, occurred about two hundred years prior. Makes you wonder why the door is still locked. Two hundred years of living in cramped spaces has got to make the place smell.

So after another flash of light, you wake up and find out that the shit has officially hit the fan. Liam Neeson left, his friend Jonas got beaten to death by the Security Force, and they're all out to get you. Oh yeah, and there are some giant fucking cockroaches all over the place. So you have to run around and kick ass for a while before escaping, at which point, a window pops up asking if you want to change your character. What? Why? No! I just want to find out where Liam Neeson went!

Now to get into the actual gameplay. There are really a lot of different ways you can kit out your character, and as long as you make sure to put some focus into at least one of the weapon skills (Unarmed, Melee, Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons), you should be ok. The rest just change what kind of stuff you can do. If you crank sneak, you can surprise attack people or steal all their shit. If you crank speech, you can convince people to give you their stuff, or farm experience (every successful speech check nets you some experience points) by having redundant conversations with people.

The biggest issue I had with the game was perspective. The game was designed to play in first person. First person is for faced paced shooters, people. Not for RPGs. You can play the game in third person, but its so clunky you might as well stick to first person. Blarg. When you consider that was my biggest issue, its pretty damn good.

Onward. The game world is expansive, and just running around and exploring is actually quite fun, up until you get blocked by huge piles of rubble and flip your shit. Word of advice: when that happens, try using the subway tunnels. Fascinating places to visit in the game include the following:

Megaton: a town built in the crater created by a nuclear bomb. Best part? The bomb didn't explode! It's sitting in the middle of town, still live. (You can get a free house if you disarm it for the idiots.)

Republic of Dave: a small farm populated by President Dave, his two wives, and his children. Technically a sovereign nation. Also technically led by a crazy man.

Rivet City: An old battleship, and the biggest city in the Capitol Wasteland. You'll be visiting more than once.

Oh, I do seem to be rambling on. Let me leave you with one last issue I had, almost as big as the perspective problem. When you finish the game, whether you live or die, it doesn't let you keep playing and exploring. What the balls, Bethesda? You let us keep playing in Oblivion!

The Bottom Line: Interplay and Black Isle might not have made it, but it's still Fallout damnit, and it still rocks. Could have benefited from more Liam Neeson, but hey. Go buy it. Steel be with you.

Photoshop CS3 and CS4

Why hello there. I basically made this blog on a whim, to show someone I could do it better than he could. :P

Anyway, our first review is for Photoshop CS3, the first photoshop I have used in a long time. And to be honest, I love it.  My earliest Photoshop experience was with Photoshop Elements 2.0, a castrated version of Photoshop 6.0. I quickly grew quite adept with that, mostly with making things go from one background to another and scribbling effects together to make awesomeness. Or sometimes to see if I could induce nausea in internet users. (Hey, I was 13, what else was I supposed to do?)

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yes, after that, I had only brief experience with Photoshop 7.0 before I was plunged into a Photoshop drought, during which time I was limited to MSPaint, Paint.net, and GIMP. Hurk.

So when I got a chance to use Photoshop CS3, my initial reaction was something along the lines of "What the balls does CS3 mean? What happened to normal numbers?"

But my secondary reaction was more along the lines of "What an excellent and streamlined program!" Photoshop CS3 is by far the best graphics editing program I have used so far. I highly recommend it to anyone who has interest in such things.

And onward to CS4. Photoshop CS4 is the exact same thing as Photoshop CS3, with two major differences.

Difference 1: CS4 has the added ability to import a 3d model to use as a point of reference or some such shit. Beats me. Thats what I've been told. I'll probably never use that feature.

Difference 2: CS4 sucks so much resouces, that if you have less than 6 gigs of RAM and a fairly beefy video card, every time you paste something, it'll take several seconds to appear. Good shooping is done rapidly and fluidly. Lag prevents that.

The Bottom Line: Now that CS4 is out, the price of Photoshop CS3 is undoubedly drastically reduced. If you would use it, there is really no reason NOT to buy yourself a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3, unless you're pinching pennies for the food budget or something. And if you are, get the fuck off the computer and go find a job or something.