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.