The xmas holidays have been and gone pretty much, now I'm back in Leicester to do some needed hardcore work!
So the previous 2 weeks back home I've been busy doing not very much work, I know it's VERY bad, and been mostly playing games on me laptop.
I was given the new Prince of Persia, well I chose it beforehand, by my brother as a nice christmas pressie and tested it out on my pc and it runs very well - the gameplay is pretty free-flowing, you run, jump, climb, run along walls, along ceilings and it's just a really satisfying pure smooth path of gaming.
The only gripe is the fact that you can't actually die, yes you have a female sidekick with magical powers and who aids you in long distance jumping, combating plus always there to handily float you out onto safe ground from a mistakened death-defying leap into the abyss.
Apart from that it's a great game.
Gave PoP a break because my bro gave me crysis to play and I finished that in about a week.
Crysis positives/negatives:
- Uber awesome graphics, with directx10 it did look nice but my comp isn't quite capable for high-end settings that Crysis needs to be able to play smoothly; stuck with directx9 and medium settings giving me a respectable 20-25 fps, overall it still looked pretty decent and great effects on your HUD screen e.g. water droplets, bits of snow etc.
- Standard first-person really, but with some nice nano-tech abilities on-hand that allow you to have max. strength, speed, armor, or invisibility cloak (extremely handy to get out of fire-fights)
- Enjoyable gameplay albeit some slightly dodgy enemy and friendly AI sometimes which kinda suck mainly on your own team who don't really seem to help at all so you have to do all the goddamn work and then the enemy AI usually just stands there and not always go into cover
- The game can become really frenzied at times where you can get stuck right in the middle of a firefight, which is good if you're a hardcore shooter fan but for the tame player it can be quite bewildering and frustrating and you really need to keep your wits and tactics about you. Even on medium difficulty it's fairly difficult later on once you get to the "tank stages".
- Had a really weird glitch on the end boss where suddenly it would disappear completely but still shoot you and I'd have to run to certain sections to see it, that was the only major glitch of the game and typically right at the end! Thought the game didn't want me to complete it!
Score Rating: 8.5/10
And finally been playing Bioshock this past week and at last have completed this RPG/shooter! Just finished today and my god I thought I was nearing the end at one point but no many many hours later that would be true. Had this game since the summer I think and left it stewing for a while then came back to it deciding and wanting to finish it.
Bioshock positives/negatives:
- I really like the art style of the game. The period 60's settings art deco style is great, the colours, lighting and directx10 shader effects are really awesomely done as well. My laptop could easily handle this on highest settings and ran very smoothly throughout without any glitches or hiccups. The various locations in this largely underground "utopian city" vary from many aspects of hot, cold, light, green, and dark atmospheres. Overall the mood setting is quite eeri at times even with the bright vivid textures and environment. A* for massive effort on this part!
- I found the gameplay a little awkward at first. It's not like any FPS games as it is partly RPG as well, enabling the player to have special powers ("plasmids") to defeat their enemies ("splicers" and also the big diving suit guys "Big Daddies") ranging from electricity, fire, ice, cyclone, telekinesis etc. and these as you progress can be leveled up, plus you have other abilities which give you certain attributes that can help with certain things e.g. "hack" bots, safes, machines more easily or even turn your foes against each other!
The game isn't a standard RPG though where you have to spend hours grafting leveling up, basically you go round and collect money, or "ADAM" which is a type of energy/credit for powering up for more power slots or ability slots etc. and then you find different machines to purchase a wide array of things. The game is supposed to be like a "steampunked" version of "Systemshock 2" but I've never really properly played the game so wouldn't know. Anyways, this also is a thumbs-up!
- The storyline is pretty awesome.
You're basically this guy who's crashed landed from a plane into the sea and the only survivor. You see this shadowy lighthouse in the distant and swim towards it, little do you know what you get yourself into once you find a "bathysphere", a type of spherical transport leading you down into the city of "Rapture" which lies underwater. The main bad guy you find at this point is to be "Andrew Ryan" who constructed this grand city only for people who he deemed were the best in humanity e.g. politicians, scientists etc.
Years of genetic engineering allowed people to give themselves abilities using newly found stem cells called ADAM. Most of these people have eventually overdosed on ADAM and thus mutating them and these are the "splicers", the enemies you see in the game.
So basically, Ryan has been mind-controlling these splicers, you find this out when you enter for the first time and a man named "Atlas" tells you all about Rapture through a service radio in the bathysphere. Atlas tells Jack, your character, how Ryan has his family hostage so that's why he needs your help to get to Ryan. Ryan believes Jack is a government spy which is why he mind-controls these splicers to attack you.
And the story goes on from there.
The dialogue and voice acting is great, plus also you get to find many radio messages scattered around the whole game which are interesting but also usually important to progressing through the game. There are a whole bunch!
- The only major gripe I had with this game is the ending. I found throughout playing the game I was really enjoying it and the story was going well until the end where it all just kinda died down and seemed to lack any real depth to it. If you play it you will understand but it seemed like I went through a WHOLE lotta effort and time to get this suckish ending. There's 3 endings depending on you saving or "harvesting" the young girls throughout the game, called "Little Sisters", and they have been possessed by ADAM so it's up to you on what you do that will affect the ending. I decided being a goody-two shoes as usual and got the good ending.
They're all pretty short (seen the others on youtube), and all really seemed to be a little anticlimatic. Kinda "half-arsed" I guess would be the words. Also, the final boss is pretty damn easy, you don't even need your "Plasmids" (shock!). But apart from the ending the whole game was pretty sweet. Can't wait for Bioshock 2.
Score rating: 9/10
