Author - Judgeman

We Preview Age of Wushu (PC)

2012/11/26
Judgeman
News, Windows PC News, Windows PC Preview

Chinese game developer, Snail Games, let us in on the closed beta for their upcoming, free to play MMORPG, Age of Wushu.  Age of Wushu is set during the time of the Ming Dynasty in fifteenth century China at the height of the feudal empire.  The Age of Wushu borrows heavily from the Wuxia genre of literature, which follows a hero of low birth that sets out onto an adventure, with superhuman martial arts capabilities.  Movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Kung Fu Panda are excellent examples of the art of Wuxia in film form.  Kung Fu Panda has been seen by the Chinese as the only Western film to accurately portray the art of Wuxia.  This is the aesthetic that the Age of Wushu is based on, which really interested me prior to the Closed Beta.  How did the rest of the game measure up?  Let’s take a look.

Story:

Age of Wushu’s story line is set during the Ming Dynasty in fifteenth century China.  The feudal empire is at it’s height and the Yongle Emperor  Zhu Di, is in power.  Snail Games does an outstanding job of setting the world that the character will play through based on actual events during the Yongle Emperor’s reign in China.  This story acts as the background for the player, as he or she follows their own destiny through the Age of Wushu, which is chosen at character creation.

When the player creates his or her character, the player must also select a Drama.  The Drama selected becomes the character’s personal story line to follow through the Age of Wushu game play.  You can choose between seeking vengeance for a slain family, seeking knowledge and adventure, finding a sacred sword, or choosing to protect the remainder of your family from an unknown enemy.  Each Drama will start you off in a different city to begin your adventure, and as you follow the story line, you will get to explore the vast world in the Age of Wushu.

While the mechanic of the Dramas works out perfectly and gives the players much more control over the type of story that their characters will be involved in, the actual writing of these Dramas and character conversations needs a good editor.  Spelling and grammar mistakes are abound during conversations, enough to confound the player as to what the story is actually trying to tell them.  Since the Age of Wushu is still in beta, I would imagine most of this is still on the “to fix” board at Snail Games, and while bad spelling and grammar is seemingly a trifle when it comes to a game, it is enough to take a player out of the story and question quality control of the game.

Overall, the Age of Wushu does an excellent job in setting up a vast and interesting setting for their game.  Allowing the player to choose their own story line makes the player become more invested in his or her character and care more about what is going on.  Age of Wushu portrayed the world of the Ming Dynasty as interesting and full of adventure and, though full of grammar and spelling mistakes, was interesting and fun to play in.

Gameplay:

Snail Games has developed the Age of Wushu to be a free to play MMORPG, which is still seen as the “kiss of death” among the gaming culture.   If you do not play Age of Wushu just because it’s a free to play game, then you are doing yourself a huge injustice.  Free to play is the future of the MMORPG genre, with micro transactions becoming the bulk of the income for developers after the initial sale of the game.  While we are still looking at Age of Wushu in closed beta, I feel that Snail Games understands this and has done a fantastic job so far in developing their game.

Age of Wushu has many different traits that is unique to a select few games in this genre, if not wholly unique to Age of Wushu.  First, there are no classes nor levels in Age of Wushu.  You develop your skills by using them in the real world or by training with a master.  This gives the Age of Wushu a more realistic feeling then other games.  Just like real life, your character can have different jobs or talent sets throughout their lives in China, never just stuck in one path or skill set.  A certain martial art not working for you?  Quite the school and do another one.  The only penalty you earn is having to start over with that new school and having to learn their ways.  There are eight schools of martial arts in Age of Wushu, four belonging to a good school, two neutral, and two evil.  The good schools are Wudang, Shaolin, Emei, and Begger, the neutral schools are Tangmen and Scholars, while the evil schools are Royal Guard and Wanderer’s Valley.

Another unique game play feature to the Age of Wushu is their offline player development mechanic.  Before you log off, you choose a role for your character to play in the world while you are away.  These roles can be beggar, guard, or merchant.  You can gain offline experience and items during this time, and your character stays in game as a non player character, able to be interacted with or even kidnapped.  When you log back on, you will get a menu, itemizing your experience gains or any other items gained from your job.  If the world is too full of logged out player characters for your liking, you can always choose to hide them by pressing F9.

Movement is similar to other games of this genre, and you have a couple of choices at the beginning as to how you want to move your player around the world.  The most unique aspect of Age of Wushu in regards to movement is the auto-pathing system.  Instead of asking an NPC where a certain person is, you simply click on their name and the game will take control of your character and move you towards that person.  This works fairly well most of the time. However, the auto-pathing would sometimes get stuck on obstacles in the way. Also, the AI does not take the most efficient route to your destination.  Despite this, l like how this movement model works. That being said, don’t walk away from your PC thinking you are safe while auto-pathing, because Age of Wushu is a player versus player game.

Age of Wushu is built solely around a player versus player world.  You can be attacked or attack anyone during anytime you spend in the game.  This makes the world feel like a dangerous place, but not without law or consequence.  If a player is murdering other players, they can become wanted criminals with a bounty placed on them, can spend time in jail, or even be executed in the city square.  Other players can break you out of jail to save your neck, so make sure you have enough friends to save you from the chopping block.

Since there are no levels in this game, combat efficiency is based on your training in your chosen martial art, just like it is in the real world.  A person who has trained for a longer period of time in their chosen martial art, will be harder to beat then someone who just logged in with the basic knowledge of fighting.  Combat is based on the Wuxia version of hand to hand combat, meaning that it can become aerial and very interesting to watch.  I got to watch two individuals fly all over the city square, fighting with dual swords until one finally dropped out of the sky and didn’t get up.  The actual mechanic of combat is similar to any other mmorpg that you may have played, you are given a set of moves with certain damage or power sets, and either click them or assign them to hot keys during combat.  Players have a health bar, a chi bar, and a flying energy bar that represents your ability to complete moves in combat.  These can be added to depending on your chosen martial art.  Combat is also based on a paper, rock, scissors model, which effects the efficiency of certain moves.  If a player is blocking, then the normal attacks will do no damage, so the attacking player must use a power attack to break the block, but these power attacks will be canceled out if the defending player uses a normal attack.  During combat, this makes the selection of your next move important and based on what your enemy is doing, just like real combat.

The game play for Age of Wushu is deep, very deep.  Be prepared to do a lot of reading in learning how to maximize your character.  With no classes, no levels, and no skill trees to be found, Age of Wushu sets up a world that both feels and plays like the real world.  Age of Wushu tries to make things easier to understand for the player, but due to the issues in spelling and grammar, sometimes the ideas are not conveyed in the clearest ways.  This leaves the player to have to read into exactly what each skill does, and even that does not make things perfectly clear.  I spent a lot of my time in trial and error mode to find out exactly which skills were most effective in a given circumstance.  Hopefully, before release, Snail Games will work on making these things more clearer to the players, because everything else felt very natural and fluid in regards to game play for the Age of Wushu.

Age of Wushu will not win any technical awards for the best graphics in a video game, but its aesthetic design does a great job with bringing the world of Ming Dynasty China to life.  I loved riding my horse through the world and seeing the sites as I traveled between towns.  The design of Age of Wushu truly makes it feel unique and, for the lack of a better word, Chinese.  The developers recreated a beautiful world that every sense feels like you are in China during the fifteenth century.The world of Age of Wushu feels alive and vibrant, with the use of offline characters as NPCs. You never feel like the world is dead or unfilled, while this may be created by the previous fact that offline characters are still seen, makes it no less alive.

The music is very nice, though repetitive at some points. The music is obviously Chinese in nature, to fit the world that the story is set in and is well done. However, certain parts of the game uses the same bit of music over and over again, so some of the pieces became very repetitive to the point of becoming annoying. This is not a game breaker, but when it is noticeable, then it needs to be looked at. Other then that criticism, the music works well to bring the world of Age of Wushu to life.

One last bit of information on the aesthetics of Age of Wushu is that there is no voice acting at all. None of the characters are voiced, and all communication is through text conversations. In this day and age, this made the Age of Wushu feel a little dated. While developers don’t have to go the route of fully voiced conversations like Bioware did, some voice acting gives the game a better, higher quality feel. Even just by adding voiced greetings to start a conversation, especially in Chinese, would make the world that much more alive to me. I understand the development decision not to do voice overs, but I also miss that interaction.

Final Thoughts:

There are a lot of good things going on over at Snail Games, and Age of Wushu is one of them. Age of Wushu brings the drama and adventure of the Ming Dynasty and Wuxia genre to the MMORPG world, with very few faults or criticisms. My two biggest worries currently, since the game is still in development and these can get fixed, is the grammar of the conversations and the explanations of how the gameplay mechanics works for certain aspects of the game. I feel that Snail Games did not do a very good job in explaining many of these aspects, which led me to have to test things on my own to find out how the system works. For me, an experienced gamer, this wasn’t a big deal, but Snail Games could lose the average person who might be interested in this game and that could be costly.

Age of Wushu has so much more going for it currently, that if you are willing to overlook these small errors, you will be rewarded with a vast and interesting world to become a hero in. The idea of no classes or levels has been seen in other games before, but feels completely right in the Age of Wushu, who’s design from the beginning was to make it feel like a real world. Combat is satisfying and beautiful to watch, not just two character trading blows. Characters can jump, fly through the air, and destroy their enemies with style and grace of a Wuxia hero. With four Dramas and eight schools of martial arts, players have a lot of content here to explore and find something that fits their play style. I am going to be keeping a close eye on this project as it gets through the beta phase and closer to release. Age of Wushu is definitely worth a close look once it is released.

Natural Selection 2 – Review (PC)

2012/11/20
Judgeman
News, Reviews, Windows PC Review

Unknown Worlds Entertainment has finally released their sequel to their Half Life mod, Natural Selection, that was released way back in 2002.  Announced in 2006, Natural Selection has taken six years to get to us, and boy was it worth the wait.  Combining first person shooter game play mechanics with that of real time strategy games, Natural Selection 2 pits a group of marines against an alien race known as the Kharaa.  In a similar vein to Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike, Natural Selection 2 has no single player mode, just online multiplayer, making it perfect for those of you that want to test your mettle against live opponents, but not ideal at all for those that do not have a good internet connection or hate mulitplayer games.  Natural Selection 2 stands out as a very solid aliens versus marines game, that adds in very interesting game play mechanics.

Story:

Well, let’s be honest, the entire story line for Natural Selection 2 is seen through game play mechanics and through whatever the player assumes through looking at his or her surroundings.  Unknown Worlds Entertainment stayed away from any type of constructed story line for this game, aside from setting up two opposing forces within a small confined space.  Essentially, Natural Selection 2 is set in the future of the human race, where we are fighting for survival against an alien species named the Kharaa.  Everything else in regards to the story is left up to the player.  For me, as a fan of good writing in video games, this always seems to be a risk for developers.  However, when one of the most popular video games in history has absolutely no narrative driving it, I’m looking at you Counter-Strike, then we can understand that a game can be good without giving the player a constructed story line to follow.  Simply put, don’t expect an epic story line, just hours and hours of marine versus alien combat.

Before I move onto the game play for Natural Selection, let’s address the large elephant in the room in regards to Natural Selection 2.  Yes, Natural Selection 2 resembles Aliens in more ways then I can count.  Unknown Worlds was obviously trying to replicate the feel of the second movie, even right down to how the weapons feel as you fire them.  Most of the time, I would be a more then a little upset with someone taking liberties with a franchise that I so love, however, Unknown Worlds does it right.  This game is a better Aliens game then any other game out there, even the ones that were marketed as Aliens games.  The upcoming Colonial Marines game better be at least this good, or the Aliens franchise better move on over to Unknown Worlds for further development.

Game Play:

Without any narrative to make the game shine, Natural Selection 2 solely relies on its game play, and it is well done.  As I said earlier, Natural Selection 2 combines first person shooter elements with those of a real time strategy game.  Players start off in a lobby, where they get to select their side; either Marine or Alien.  Once in game, one player from each side will be allowed to take the role of leader.  This leader sees the battlefield differently then the rest of the troops, because it is the leader that will issue orders, place destination markers, research upgrades, or drop in equipment.  The leader’s game play for Natural Selection 2 plays like a real time strategy game then a first person shooter.  It is your job to command your troops or aliens to capture strong points and to make sure that they are well supplied.

For the rest of the team, game play differs greatly depending on which side you are playing.  For the Marines, you start the game with some basic equipment, like a pulse rifle and a flash light.  As the game progresses, you can receive other equipment from your leader, like shot guns, sentry turrets, or battle suits with twin machine guns.  Your job is to maintain the power to the areas you have under your control, while trying to expand your territory into the alien’s controlled zones.  This sets up some interesting game play mechanics, as you have to play as both defender and attacker in order to win.  The aliens will target your power supply, which will knock out the lights, and any automated defenses you have in that area.  This means that you have to switch over to your flash light, just to see the aliens.  I absolutely loved this!  It set up some really intense gunfights in the dark, with just your flashlight and the muzzle flash from your rifle to light up your enemies.

The Kharaa core game play mechanic is the same as the marines, you simultaneously attack and defend in order to spread your alien influence over the entire map.  However, the aliens can evolve into different types during the game, each with different abilities.  The base form attacks with jaws and is quite agile, while others have stronger attacks, can fly, or even run on the ceiling.  The agility of the alien species really makes it hard for the marines to target them, especially if they come at you in a group of two or three.  Just like the marines, you have your own automated defenses and upgrades that can be dropped to you from the leader, and you have to be able to defend and attack on the fly.

Natural Selection 2 feels completely balanced to me.  I never once felt that I had either an advantage or disadvantage over my enemy that was based on an unbalanced mechanic.  Sure, if you are saving up to run in 3 large battle suits, and have marines willing to use welders to heal them, then the aliens are going to get completely over run, but that can happen in any game.  I had some issues with stability in the beginning during game play, with crashes that would shut down the entire game, but these were few and far between.  I have yet to determine whether these crashes were due to my hardware, or Unknown Worlds, but just beware that you may or may not experience this in your game play.

Aesthetics:

The look of Natural Selection 2 is fantastic!  From darkened corridors to alien infested caves, everything in the game just adds to the ambiance and experience for the player.  I love the way the developers added in little touches to make the experience that much more fun, like having the lights go out in a section when the aliens cut the power.  This causes the emergency lighting to come on or, in some cases, completely sends you into utter darkness.  This really added to the tension that you already feel by playing a close combat first person shooter.  The overall look of the game fits its design and is looks good as you are playing.  The sound of Natural Selection 2 also fits the design well.  The sound of the pulse rifle is reminiscent of Aliens, without infringing on copyright issues.  The soundtrack is absolutely forgettable, though most of you won’t play this game for the music.

Final Thoughts:

Natural Selection 2 is good, very good.  The game play is varied and well executed, without ever feeling out of balance.  Combining both first person shooter and real time strategy elements scared me at first, but Unknown Worlds did a fantastic job in meshing these two elements, giving players the sense that they are involved in something larger.  With the leader giving orders to capture objectives or to build resource gatherers, the other players can either following along, or do there own thing.  This can cause some frustration, especially for the player in the leader role, but in most games  the sides played together well and worked together to obtain their goals.  Natural Selection 2 is the best Aliens game out there, without actually being an Aliens game.  Unknown Worlds understood what made Aliens a great movie, and delivered to us a game that replicates that experience, without the actual copyrighted material.  Natural Selection isn’t without it’s flaws, with just six maps at launch and a step learning curve for those that are new to the game, but if you are willing to put up with these you will have a fantastic gaming experience ahead of you.

Screenshots

Edna and Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes – A Review (PC)

2012/11/08
Judgeman
News, Reviews, Windows PC News, Windows PC Review

Daedelic Entertainment has brought us the unofficial sequel to their point-and-click adventure game, Edna and Harvey, this time around named Harvey’s New Eyes.  Those of you that played the first Edna and Harvey need to know that, despite the title of this game, you don’t play as Edna or Harvey.  Instead, you play as Lilli, a quiet child that is living in convent run by a tyrannical Mother Superior.  While the game is a vast improvement over Daedelic Entertainment’s first foray, it still has it’s issues.  However, Harvey’s New Eyes has enough shinning moments that fans of the point-and-click adventure genre that is in need of a fix will find it fun.

Story:

Edna and Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes is the second game out from Daedelic Entertainment of this franchise of point-and-click adventure games.  Harvey’s New Eyes stars Lilli, a very quiet and seemingly non-threatening girl that is living in a convent, which is run by Mother Superior, a tyrant who has it out for Lilli and the other children under her care, including Edna from the previous game.  The plot begins with Mother Superior tasking Lilli to do some simple chores around the convent, like rake some leaves or dig up the flower bed.  However, Lilli is an accidental mass murderer, meaning that her actions always seems to end in the grisly death of another person near her.  What makes this funny, is that Lilli just either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care.  She just goes on with her life as if it hadn’t happened.  The appearance of small creatures that paint over these deaths may give us a clue as to what Lilli sees, but are never explained or explored further by the game.

The plot of Harvey’s New Eyes gets kicked into gear when Mother Superior announces that the mysterious Dr. Marcel is coming to take care of the children once and for all.  Edna has heard very bad things about Dr. Marcel, and has asked Lilli to help her escape, tying this game with the first Edna and Harvey game.  Lilli spends the rest of the game solving puzzles to help Edna, while inadvertently killing off the other characters of the game.

The story of Harvey’s New Eyes works well enough.  The humor made me smile more then once through the game play, but no one joke or plot twist made me outright laugh. Lilli’s killing spree is done fairly well also, but the characters she ends up causing the deaths of are never made to be that interesting, so the deaths don’t really come through as either tragic, or funny.  The actual plot of the game makes sense, but just feels incomplete or like it’s missing a key component.  The story just feels passable to me, it is a better told story then the first Edna and Harvey, but pales in comparison to the top notch games of this genre.  What Harvey’s New Eyes shows me is the promise and ability that Daedelic Entertainment has with this franchise, if they can nail down a few intangibles with the story lines.

Gameplay:

Edna and Harvey:  Harvey’s New Eyes is a point-and-click adventure game in the oldest sense of the words.  You simple point your cursor over where you want to want or what item you want to interact with, and click it.  If the character can use it at that time, then they will.  Otherwise, you will need to solve a puzzle or collect other items before the game will continue.  The only other two mechanics that Harvey’s New Eyes has is an inventory screen, which is simple enough to navigate and holds all of the items that Lilli has found for future use, and a user interface that allows the player to click a button to see everything that he or she can interact with on that screen.  This will make it easier to see what you can interact with, instead of just roaming your cursor around the scene, but I found that I didn’t have to use it much because the objects were fairly obvious to see.

Every point-and-click adventure game lives or dies by two important details; the story and the puzzles.  We have already discussed the story, so let’s talk about the puzzles in Harvey’s New Eyes.  Puzzles in these types of games are hard to create.  The developer has to make them challenging enough to extend the game play, but make them logical enough that the player will eventually figure it out if they just think about it.  Many developers make the mistake by making these puzzles illogical to figure out, but Harvey’s New Eyes never had that feeling to me.  Each puzzle that I solved felt like it made sense, from filling a well to retrieve a boy holding a key, to using honey to lure away termites, the solutions felt feasible.

Aesthetics:

The aesthetics of Edna and Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes worked for me.  I felt that the art design of the game was interesting to look at and gave the game a unique feel.  The characters had a great design, reminding me of old Edward Gorey characters, especially Lilli.  The backgrounds have a nice cartoon look to them also, and fit right in with the character design.  While technically not as impressive as other modern games, I feel that the design and the look of Harvey’s New Eyes works for me.

The music, however, did not work as well.  There was some great pieces of music that, when first heard, sounded fantastic.  The issue is that you will hear that same piece of music over and over and over again, to the point that you will no longer want to hear it.  It feels like Daedelic Entertainment went the cheap route with the music, paid for one good loop, then used it ad nauseum.

Lastly, we have the voice overs for Harvey’s New Eyes, which landed firmly in the “decent, not great” category of voice acting.  The character’s voices brings more dimension to the game, especially Lilli whose meek voice just adds to the seemingly weak nature of the character.  The acting is neither over-the-top nor is it unfitting for the game itself, but it also isn’t memorable or fantastic.  The best thing I can say about it, is that it gets the job done solidly, which worked for me.

Final Thoughts:

Edna and Harvey:  Harvey’s New Eyes is a point-and-click adventure game that lands firmly into the realm of “good, not great”.  The story was good, with interesting characters and decent voice acting to bring it to life.  I did like the visual aesthetics of the world that was created for this game by Daedelic Entertainment, but was distracted by the constant looping of the same piece of music throughout the game.  The game play mechanics work well and follow a logical line of thought for the most part, and never reach the difficulty that some of it’s contemporaries reach.  When it comes right down to it, Edna and Harvey:  Harvey’s New Eyes is a solid point-and-click adventure game that shows the potential that Daedelic Entertainment has for eventually creating a true masterpiece.  If you are a fan of this genre, I would say pick it up and give it a try, it’s not like there are a ton of other point-and-click adventure games vying for your attention currently.

Avernum 6 HD – A Review (iPad)

2012/10/16
Judgeman
News, Reviews

Jeff Vogel and Spiderweb Software has brought their latest version of Avernum 6 to the iPad.  Avernum 6 HD is built using Spiderweb Software’s tried and true methods of creating games, focusing on story line and mechanics rather then developing up to date visuals.  What comes out in the end, is a very solid game that feels like a classic role playing game that I played as a kid.  Avernum 6 HD ends up having a great story line that will suck you in and keep you riveted until the very end, but is presented using visuals and sounds that feel outdated, plain, and just down right ugly with little or no animation on the screen.  Despite the lackluster graphics, Avernum 6 HD emerges as the best option for an rpg on the iPad, and as a very solid game choice overall.

Story

Avernum 6 HD has a story line that starts off in humble beginnings, but ends in epic battles for the fate of the entire land.  The land of Avernum began as a prison colony for the worst offenders, since Avernum is located entirely underground and the only way in or out is through a magical portal.  Since then, the land of Avernum has become a wild frontier with adventurers and pioneers looking for fame and fortune in a harsh land.  Recently, life in Avernum has become that much harsher as the mushrooms, Avernum’s only source of grown food, has suffered from a blight.  Sensing weakness from the residents of Avernum, the reptilian Slithzerikai invaded from the south, destroying everything in their path.  Faced with a blight and an invading army, the inhabitants of Avernum began to evacuate through the portal in massive waves.

You begin the story as a group of four adventurers that joined the Avernum military for an extra share of the food.  While other members of your squad has been sent off to fight the invading Slithzerikai horde, you have been stuck with guard duty in a city that is shrinking in population.  Your story starts with humble beginnings, dealing with a rat infestation in the cellar, then you get to move up to goblin issues to the south of the city.  Your role in Avernum’s future becomes more important with each successful quest line, ultimately ending with the entire fate of Avernum on your shoulders.

The story for Avernum 6 HD is solid, thought it lacks a polish needed to truly make it great.  I love how the story draws you into a world that has been completely built underground and makes you feel part of the overall picture from the beginning, but your characters will always feel flat and uninspired themselves.  No video game lives in a void, so it is hard to play games like Avernum 6 HD and not compare them to games from Bioware or Bethesda, companies that are experts in making you feel like you are part of an epic story and makes each character meaningful to you.  Avernum 6 HD has a fantastic story that is presented very well, but your party and its members are never truly fleshed out and made interesting.  Overall, though, the story shines above this particular issue and makes you want to keep playing, just to find out what the next part of the story is in Avernum 6 HD.

Gameplay

The mechanics of Avernum 6 HD are as old as it’s graphics, but work really well on the iPad.  The point-and-click method of moving and issuing combat orders is made easier when all you have to do is touch the screen once or twice.  Movement is solely done by just touching where you want to go, then your party will shuffle off to that point.  Combat requires a few more button presses, but feels just as intuitive.  You can just touch the enemy once, and your member will charge up and swing their weapon or shoot off an arrow, depending on what is equipped.  Spell casting is just an extra push of the screen, that brings up the spell selection menu.  You press the spell you would like to cast, then press the unfortunate recipient to finish the spell.

The user interface feels just like an old rpg interface from twenty years ago.  Your party is listed to the right of the screen by using their portraits with their health and mana bars.  In the upper right hand side of the screen is your mini map, an absolute necessity in any rpg, while at the bottom is your text bar that shows messages and has a few combat buttons attached to it.  Most dialogue boxes will pop up over the main map, and will give you choices as to how you want to address certain situations.  If you don’t know what an item is or what a spell does, you can just hold down over the icon for a second and a interface box will pop up explaining what that item or spell does.

The mechanics for Avernum 6 HD made the transition over to the iPad very nicely with only slight issues in precision targeting, but I attribute that to my huge fingers and not Spiderweb’s design flaws.  Spiderweb understood this issue and made sure to add confirmation button clicks for important items, such as leveling up statistics.  Once you have selected the stats you want to raise, you have to press a confirmation button, which helps cut down on any errors in reading where your finger is for a particular stat.  Avernum 6 HD feels very natural on the iPad and made the transition from mouse and keyboard to touch screen extremely well.

Aesthetics

OK, let’s talk about the huge, stinky elephant in the room: Avernum 6 HD’s visuals and sound.  Spiderweb Software has been making games since 1995 and the only thing that has changed since then is the story.  The graphics and sounds look almost exactly like they did almost fifteen years ago, which is a bad thing.  I understand a lot of people say that a good story will beat bad graphics every time, and as much as I hate too, I have to disagree with that.  Video games are a visual media, they use visuals and sound to tell the story of the game.  Without a strong story, good visuals and sound will fall flat.  However, the opposite is just as true.  Without good visual and sound, the story isn’t reaching the player as well as it could.  The player will always look at the graphics and listen to the sound and be taken out of the experience, because they will always see outdated graphics and listen to bad sound effects.

There are little to no animation in Avernum 6 HD, which is quite unsettling.  It’s almost comical to see your entire party shuffle to the next location, almost like they came right out of an episode of South Park.  Characters will swing their arms to attack, and you will see projectiles in the game, but beyond that there isn’t much else to see.  Avernum 6 HD is listed as an high definition game, at least that’s what I assume the HD means in the title because I don’t see anything high definition about this game.  The actual visual designs of Avernum 6 HD are quite nice, the world is interesting and the creatures that inhabit them are designed well, just poorly executed in terms of actual visuals.

These visuals and sound, in no way, kill the overall experience of Avernum 6 HD, but do hinder it tremendously.  With solid graphics and sound, Avernum 6 HD could have been a contender for game of the year in the realm of the rpg.  However, with video games being a visual medium, Avernum 6 HD is handicapped by it’s graphics and sound to only be a good game, not great.

Final Thoughts

Avernum 6 HD is a game that would have won many industry awards about fifteen years ago, but in today’s market will be overlooked by many people.  Avernum 6 HD has a great, epic story line that pits a small band of heroes against both an invading horde of monsters and a blight of the only crop that is available to the people of Avernum.  Avernum 6 made the transition from the PC and Macintosh to the iPad very well in terms of mechanics.  I only had slight precision issues, which is forgivable and didn’t break the game play for me at all.  The true downside to Avernum 6 HD is it’s presentation in terms of graphics and sound.  Avernum 6 HD just looks way to outdated in terms of visuals and sounds just as bad in today’s market.  While the story does a great job in compensating for the ugly visuals, the visuals and sound still takes its toll on Avernum 6 HD, making this a good game instead of a great one.  Avernum 6 HD is available now for the Apple iPad, iPad 2, and iPad 3.

 

Review of Anna (PC)

2012/10/02
Judgeman
Halloween, News, Reviews

It is the Halloween Season, and we here at GamingShogun.com love nothing more than a good scare, whether it is from a movie, theme park, or video game.  So, I was truly excited when the editor asked me to take care of Anna, a first person puzzle horror game from Kalypso Media.  Anna is set in the lovely region of Valle d’Aosta in Italy and follows your investigation through an abandoned saw mill.  You must investigate the grounds and solve riddles by using context clues and items to find out about what had happened here.  So, does Anna deliver the goods as well as the scares, or is this one to avoid?  Let’s take a closer look with my full review of Anna from Kalypso Media.

Story:

You begin the story out in front of an old saw mill in Italy, starting a small monologue about how you keep seeing this mill in your dreams.  So, like any other sane individual that wanders into a horror story, you seek out said saw mill to discover the meaning of your dreams.  The game then just leaves you alone, locked out of the saw mill, for you to solve the puzzles and discover the secret.  Once inside the mill, the story starts to get deeper, but not any clearer.

The story in Anna is confusing at the best of times.  I had some major issues following anything at all in the story or what the significance of clues were that I had found.  The horror feeling comes mostly from the atmosphere of the setting, and not from any type of story plot point or character drama.  Anna also has three possible endings, one of which can be completed in about fifteen minutes of starting the game.  Without spoiling the game, none of the endings really gives the player a definitive story as to what really Anna is about.

For horror stories to be successful, the player must feel a connection to the story line, and for Anna that just didn’t happen for me.  I feel like there is a lot of potential here for Anna to be truly scary, but because of my disconnect with the story, I was never drawn into the game enough to be nailed with a great scare.

Gameplay:

Anna’s core game mechanic is that of a first person adventure game which utilizes puzzles to move the story along.  The puzzles themselves range from the simple to discover to the insanely complicated, all within a few moments of each other.  Items can be discovered, examined, and picked up for use later, and it is up to you to discover the uses for any item or note that you encounter.  Anna uses a click and drag mechanic to explore your world for some items.  Boards, doors or drawers can be grabbed by the player and manipulated by moving the mouse.  This does give the game a nice tactile feeling, but I feel it is underused.

Anna relies heavily on the trial and error method of puzzle solving, which works most of the time when the game does not bug out and ends all hope of progression.  I had solved a puzzle and entered a new room, collected some items, then started looking for clues.  After about forty minutes of finding nothing new, I finally went online and looked at the walkthrough, only to discover that a painting that was supposed to spawn didn’t, thus preventing me to actually progress through the game.  Wrestling with frustrating puzzles is bad enough, but having the game glitch out on you so that you must restart is even worse.

The user interface is simple, consisting of only your pointer and an inventory screen.  I felt that interfacing with the inventory screen was clunky at best, between clicking the item, then having to click ‘use’ in order to pick it up.  You have no health in Anna, because you cannot die.  Regardless of what you run into, what secrets you discover, you will not die.  When I discovered this little bit of information, all fear that I felt while playing Anna went right out the door.  How can you have fear when you are not in danger?  Fear is the body’s reaction to a possible perilous situation, and when knowledge sets in that there is no consequences, then fear will no longer have a place.

Anna’s mechanics felt just way too clunky for me and not very user friendly.  Even with the mouse speed turned down, I had a hard time controlling my mouse between inventory and play screens.  Anna is so close to being a good game, but in the end, the mechanics just get in the way of a bad story.

Aesthetics:

Ok, here is where Anna truly shines: Aesthetics.  The game is just plain neat to look at, and the lighting is fantastic – especially once you get into the saw mill.  The fear that players feel in the beginning of the story, is contributed solely to the aesthetics of Anna and nothing else.  The sound just adds to the feeling of uneasiness that Anna is capable of presenting to the player.  This is where the people at Kalypso hit a homerun, to bad it can’t save a game that is already faltering.

The graphics and settings of Anna are well thought out and are designed to increase the unsettling feeling of the game.  Each area you progress through is small and dimly lit, adding to the feeling of being in an enclosed tight spot.  Shadows move across the walls with intent, giving you the feeling that there is something in the room with you, but by the time you turn to look, it is gone.  Shades will walk through the game and appear around corners, giving you a good start if you are not expecting a pair of eyes to be there.  However, once you realize that these shades are nothing more than atmosphere and are not dangerous, they no longer radiate fear.

I love the sound effects of Anna as well.  From the whispers that speak to you from the shadows, to the creaking of footsteps or other noises you hear that go unexplained, Anna uses sound to truly deepen the experience.  Music is artfully done as well to add to the atmosphere of Anna, but again, to have true fear and scares in a game, there has to be the possibility of demise, and Anna just can’t deliver that.

Final Thoughts:

Anna is one of those games that I truly tried to like.  I kept going back to it in hopes that something had changed since I had logged off that would have magically fixed all of Anna’s problems, but that never happened.  Anna scores full marks for aesthetics, with a great creepy local and fantastic sound effects to deepen the mood, but fails horribly with mechanics and story line.  Even after finishing two of the three endings in Anna, I still don’t fully have a clue as to what is going on in this saw mill.  Is Anna scary?  It can be, but that fear doesn’t last long when you realize that nothing you run into can actually hurt or even kill you.  If the developers were going for a more mental journey into fear, then the story line needed to be a lot more clear and easier to relate to.  In the end, Anna comes off as having much more potential than it actually delivers.  If you are hard up for a new horror game, you can give Anna a shot, but there are far better games out there that have been released within the last year or two that I would recommend more.

Jet Set Radio – A Review (XBLA)

2012/09/24
Judgeman
News, Reviews

The Sega Dreamcast was a beloved machine by many people back in 1999.  Having only survived the vicious video game market for three years, the Dreamcast was home to some of the most memorable video games in history.  Games like Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5, Rez, Shenmue, and Phantasy Star Online all made the Dreamcast a blast to play, but in the end, could not save it from cancellation.  This led many people to look back at the life of the Dreamcast and wish that they still had copies of these games.  Thanks to Microsoft and Sega, these old Dreamcast games are beginning to be resurrected on the Xbox Live Arcade.  The newest release is my all time favorite Sega game, Jet Set Radio.

Story:

Jet Set Radio, or Jet Grind Radio as it was called on the Dreamcast, is set in futuristic Tokyo-to, Japan and focuses on small groups of “rudies”, or juvenile criminals that want nothing more then to hang out, skate their turf, and tag graffiti on anything that will stand still for a minute.  The story focuses on the GG’s, a group of rudies from the Shibuya-cho district, who is defending their turf from the other rival groups in the area, the Poison Jam from Benten-cho and the Noise Tanks from Kogane-Cho.  You begin the game as Beat, a 17 year old male who has run away from home and has decided to start his own group of rudies by first recruiting Tab and Gum.  After you gather your group together, you set off to make sure the world knows that Shibuya-cho belongs to the GGs and defend your turf from the other invading groups.  That is, after you have completely taken Shibuya-cho from the Love Shockers, a group of girls who have been spurned by love.

Tokyo-to has their own graffiti task force that is dedicated to stopping these groups of rudies and their turf wars and send in these troops whenever they can.  This task force is lead by Captain Onishima and can be a tenacious group that does not hesitant to open fire on a bunch of kids armed with spray cans.  The last character in Jet Set Radio to make any impact on the story is Professor K, the DJ of a local pirate radio station that acts as both narrator and soundtrack for the entire game.

The story for Jet Set Radio is simplistic at best, but for this type of game it is exactly what I would both want and expect.  You play as a kid that is hanging out on the streets with only one goal, to protect his turf while expanding it into other territories.  What is fantastic about Jet Set Radio is the way that Sega choose to portray this life, without violence on the part of the gang members.  The only ones that use weapons of any kind are the police that show up to try to capture you, or kill you as in the case when Captain Onishima shows up with his .357 Magnum.  The gangs of Tokyo-to solve their territorial disputes with graffiti and skating tricks.  All to one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard in a game.

With many games that I played as a younger man, I was 26 when the original came out, I began playing the XBLA version with some trepidation.  Did I love Jet Grind Radio because of nostalgia?  How will this reproduction hold up to my memories of the original on the Dreamcast?  It held up amazingly well.  I couldn’t help but to smile as I was playing Jet Set Radio, like I was hanging out with an old friend I hadn’t seen in twelve years.

Game Play:

Jet Set Radio’s game play  is pretty much the same throughout the whole thing.  You select your character, and your character list grows and your gang gets more reputation and more people join, then head off to the level to complete a number of tasks.  As you are trying to tag all of the areas in the level that you need to tag, you have to keep an eye out for the police, who will try to capture you, and the rival gangs of the area, who are tagging over your marks.  Once you have tagged all of the markers in the level, you move back to your hideout and then off to the next area.

Each section has a time limit that you must complete the level in, just like most Sega games of that era.  This can get frustrating when you are trying to tag that last, hard to reach marker and have no idea how to get up there to hit it.  The level is also filled with spray cans, yellow cans which refill your paint level to allow you to tag and red cans which refill your health meter.  These are scattered throughout the level and are collected mostly by grinding the various rails and edges placed around the city.  You spend most of your time avoiding combat, but when you do have to put someone in their place, it takes the form of a chase scene, where you skate after the boss and tag him until he gives up.

The game controls for Jet Set Radio are simple and handle the game quite well enough.  You pretty much just have a jump button, tag button, and a boost button to worry about, with the sticks controlling direction.  The only issues I had with this game were the same ones I remember having at it’s original launch, and that was perception and camera controls.  I have a hard time seeing where exactly to land to hit a rail and start a trick chain, or what angle I need to hit the wall for a wall ride.  The other issue with Jet Set Radio is that it is damn near impossible to efficiently see your surroundings.  I find myself being surprised and grabbed by they police, simply because I could not see them coming.  Jet Set Radio does give you the classic “Sega Arrow” to help direct you to the nearest threat, but you never know just how close they are until they snag your skates. Besides these two small gripes, the game play mechanics for Jet Set Radio work well enough to get the job done, without being memorable in either a positive or a negative way.

You can unlock more music by finding the music icons throughout the game.  You can also unlock different tags as you progress too, or use the graffiti creator to create your own mark.  You have three marks in game, small, medium, and large.  The game allows you to truly get into the spirit by giving you a fairly robust graffiti creator so that you can personalize all three of your tags.

Aesthetics:

Jet Grind Radio, and therefore Jet Set Radio, is a cell shaded video game.  Cell shading is the aesthetic of creating a video game to make it look like a playable cartoon.  Bright colors and heavy black outlines help project this effect for the player and was a massive hit as the video game industry entered the 2000s.  Jet Grind Radio is, arguably, the very first game to be released using the cell shading technique and it looks fantastic to this day.  This reintroduction with Jet Set Radio means that the graphics have been tightened up and released in full high definition, so the game looks even better then it did in 2000.  Cell shading was a big hit for a while, just like the idea of bullet time, until it started to get very overused.  Many games would use cell shading just to cash in on the popularity of certain hit games.  However, with Jet Grind Radio being one of the first to use this method, it fits perfectly into the design aesthetic and really creates a unique world to skate through and graffiti.

Voice acting in Jet Set Radio is very minimal, with most characters doing nothing more then grunts or single word shouts.  The only person that is fully voice acted is Professor K, who just continues to bring a unique aesthetic to the game.  Acting as narrator, Professor K adds to the aesthetics of Jet Set Radio with his pirate radio persona, giving you the feel that he is the driving force in the youth rebellion in Tokyo-to.  He also is the DJ and soundtrack for Jet Set Radio, which features both original and licensed music from around the world.  The music comes from many different genres, including Trip-Hop, J-Pop, Metal, Dance, and Funk.  The exact soundtrack differed depending on the location of the release for Jet Set Radio, and Sega has been able to work in all of the licensed music from the original into this re-release.  To some of you out there that aren’t familiar with the music scene twelve years ago, some of this may sound out of date.  But for me, who’s taste in music tends to avoid today’s artists, this soundtrack is nothing less then the perfect soundtrack for this game.  Every song in this game works well for me, and brings the world of Jet Set Radio to life.

Final Thoughts:

Jet Set Radio is proof that not everything we liked in the past is only good because of our sense of nostalgia.  While the game play mechanics just merely work for me and get the job done, it is the aesthetics of Jet Set Radio that truly found a place in my heart and made this update and re-release absolutely necessary for me.  This game is art.  It looks different then any other game did in 2000, when it originally was released, and speaks volumes of the idea of a youth revolution against what is perceived as the oppressive adult culture of this society.  Jet Set Radio truly explores the idea of the evolution of what art is, both in the idea of urban street art through graffiti, and the idea of the video game as art by creating a whole new look that was revolutionary for it’s time.  Looking at this game today versus other more current games, I can see that the mechanics feel aged and outdated, but the game itself feels just as relevant and new as it did twelve years ago.  Jet Set Radio is a must have for anyone that is interested in seeing a piece of video game art that might have been missed by many who was not lucky enough to own a Dreamcast twelve years ago.  Jet Set Radio is available now for the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 Microsoft Points ($9.99).

Skyrim: Hearthfire DLC – A Review (Xbox 360)

2012/09/14
Judgeman
News, Reviews

Bethesda hit a massive home run with last year’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which hit many critics top ten lists, if not made game of the year.  For this year, Bethesda has already given us a full expansion pack for Skyrim in Dawnguard, and now has released this add on, named Hearthfire.  Hearthfire is not an expansion pack in the terms that Dawnguard is, it adds some game play mechanics to the core game of Skyrim that the developers felt were missing when the original game was launched.  Hearthfire is centered around your home, in that you can build and customize the house that your character lives in.  If taken seriously, building a three wing house will take you a few hours, mostly in gathering the materials that you need.  Hearthfire isn’t going to hit everyone’s sweet spot, but for those of you that are interested, here’s what you get with the newest add on.

Customizing  Your Home

Hearthfire’s core mechanic is the new ability to buy one of three land plots and building a custom home for your character that you can quick travel to quite easily.  You must first get in good with the Jarl of one of three towns, either Dawnstar, Morthal, or Falkreath.  Once you have done enough quests for the jarl, he or she will offter to seel you land in their region for 5,000 gold.  This will set you on the new quest line to build and customize your new home.

Arriving at your new home’s location, you will see a blacksmith’s anvil, chest, carpenter’s table, and home plans.  The first part of the home is very basic and easy to build by just using the items found in the chest.  Once the home is built, you can go inside and design the interior of the home by building the furniture and other necessities that your character will need to live there.  Unfortunately, you have no say on where you are able to put things and have no ability to decide colors for any of your furnishings.  Once this small house has been completed, you then have the option to upgrade to the three wing house by adding in the main hall.

The large home expansion will now truly allow you to customize your house to fit your needs and desires.  You get to choose what goes into each wing of the large house.  Depending on how you built your character, you can choose to put in a library, alchemy lab, wizard’s tower, trophy room, or armory.  I was pleased with the amount of choices that I could build, but each wing has a specific set of types of rooms you can build.  I could not build a greenhouse and a wizard’s tower onto the same house, since they both required to be the west wing of the home.  For my first house, I went with the trophy room, armory and wizard’s tower.

Once each wing is built, you get to add in the furniture, just like you did in the small home.  Each wing will have  a set list of items that you are allowed to build within that wing.  For instance, the wizard’s tower focused on the building of an enchanting table, with some weapon racks and a mannequin, while the trophy room focused solely on building statues of creatures that can be found throughout Skyrim.  There is a lot of choices to be had here, and tons of storage for your items that you had gathered up to this point.  I was able to consolidate items from all three of my homes that I lived in prior to Hearthfire, all into my new custom home overlooking the lake.

Materials is going to be your grind for Hearthfire.  Clay and quarried stone can be found on your land very easily, and logs can be purchased from the closest saw mill to your home’s location.  Other materials, such as iron for nails, straw, glass, and goat’s horns, can be purchased from vendors within most towns.  If  you had been neglecting your blacksmithing skills, you will have them leveled up in no time making the necessary nails, fittings and locks for your new home.  Depending on what type of wing you decide to build, the other materials will become a little more exotic and may need some extra time to procure, such as an ancient Nordic bow for that Drugr display in my trophy room.

Adoption

The other small part of Hearthfire is the new ability to adopt one of the orphans in the Riften Orphanage.  Once the add on has been loaded up, you will receive a message from a courier that the children are now available for adopting.  Before you go running of to Riften to add a small child to your household, you must have space in your new home available for the new rugrat.  This means you either must purchase the furniture from a steward for your existing home for 3,000 gold, or make sure your new home has the extra bedroom completed with bed and dressers.  The matron will not allow you to adopt if these conditions are not met.

One you have adopted your child, she will act in a similar style to your spouse, meaning that she will wander around your new home independently of what you do and occasionally interact with you.  Your child will sometimes ask for an allowance, a gift such as some new clothes or a doll, or want to play a game of tag with you.  Your child will even give you a small gift of a gem that she or he found while exploring their new home.

Final Thoughts

For 400 Microsoft Points ($5), you get what you pay for with Hearthfire.  If you tackle your one home seriously and adopt a child, there is maybe 3 to 4 hours of extra content here, and that is just in gathering materials to build your new home with.  If you build all three homes, then you can stretch that out to about then hours of game play, again mostly in just gathering the materials needed.  The ability to adopt a child is a nice touch, but adds nothing to the game play of the overall game.  While Dawnguard is a must buy for any Skyrim fan, Hearthfire is only a must buy for those of you that are die hard enough to want to build your own custom house and don’t want any new quests or actual content.  This is one of those add on packs that you will buy if what is above sounds interesting to you.  If it doesn’t then you won’t be missing out on anything crucial for Skyrim.

 

Razer Tiamat 2.2 Headset – A Review

2012/09/10
Judgeman
News, Reviews

The new Razer Tiamat 2.2 Headset is here and this week I put it through some rigorous testing to see if it’s worth your hard earned money.  When directly compared to the Tiamat 7.1 headset, the Razer Tiamat 2.2 may seem like a downgrade since it only has the four speakers instead of the massive eight that the 7.1 has, but in truth, I believe that you will get a much more richer and overall better quality sound with the 2.2 then with the 7.1 if you use your headset for other things like music or movies.  With the Tiamat 2.2, I really focused on three things for my review:  construction, comfort, and performance for games, music and movies.  Let’s see how the headset held up to a week’s worth of testing.

Construction and Specs:

My initial thoughts on the Razer Tiamat 2.2 Headset was that it was built well and built to last.  The headset just has a feel of durability once you lift it out of the typically slick Razer packaging.  The Tiamat 2.2 is a suspension headset, so the top plastic arch never touches your head which prevents the feeling of pressure that can build over hours of use.  The cords for the headset are braided so that you never have to worry about then tangling, and it is harder for smaller animals to chew through them, which in my house is a constant worry.  The microphone for the Tiamat 2.2 is retractable, which is a nice feature, and feels just as durable as the rest of the headset.  The Tiamat 2.2 just does not feel like a cheap plastic headset that will break in normal use.

Here are the specs directly from Razer’s website:

TECH SPECS

  • Optimized positional audio for immersive gameplay
  • Dual bass drivers for deep, thumping bass
  • Comfortable, snug fit for extended play
  • Precise, noise-filtering unidirectional mic
  • Slim, easy-to-use inline remote
  • Replaceable soft-touch leatherette ear cushions
  • Braided fibre cable

Headphones

  • Drivers: 4 x 40mm Neodymium Magnets with Titanium Coated Diaphragm
  • Frequency Response: 20 – 20,000Hz
  • Impedance : 32Ω
  • Sensitivity @ 1kHz : 109 ± 3dB
  • Input Power: 60mW

Microphone

  • Frequency Response: 50 – 16,000 Hz
  • Sensitivity @1kHz: -36 dB ± 2dB
  • Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 50 dB
  • Pick-up Pattern: Unidirectional

In-Line Volume Control

  • Headphone Dial
  • Microphone Mute Switch
System Requirements
  • PC with built-in 3.5mm audio jacks
Comfort:
The Razer Tiamat 2.2 Headset is very comfortable over long periods of time with only a few minor complaints from me.  The Tiamat 2.2 is a suspension headset, which means that the hard plastic ridge that goes over your head is suspended off of your cranium.  What actually touches your head is a very nice, padded piece that helps to keep the pressure of the headset off of your head.  The entire headset only weights about three quarters of a pound, with most of the weight on your ears and not on your head.
The ear cups are made of a memory foam substance that feels very comfortable on your ears, however, the cups are covered in a leatherette material.  At first, this doesn’t seem like much of a negative, and if you are only using the headset for a few hours you are absolutely right.  The discomfort comes in when you start playing for longer periods of time, and you realize that the leatherette material does not let your ears breath very well.  You will get sweaty ear over longer play periods, that is a fact.  I would have loved to have a cloth ear cup replacement to help with this issue.  Other then the ability to allow my ears to breath, the Tiamat 2.2 Headset is a very comfortable experience when it is put on your head.
The only other issue I had with the Tiamat 2.2 Headset is the length of the cord that they give you to hook it into your system.  Razer is incredibly generous with their cord, giving us a full ten feet of it, so if you plan on connecting this to the back of your PC, you have plenty of cord to do so.  I, on the other hand, use the jacks in by Black Widow Ultimate keyboard, so I was constantly covered in about ten feet of cord when truly, all I needed was about three feet.  May not be a comfort issue for most of you out there, but if you plan on hooking the Tiamat 2.2 up close to you, be prepared to deal with excess cord that really has no place to go.
With the exception of the two small issues I had above, the Razer Tiamat 2.2 is the most comfortable headset I have ever worn.  The light weight of the headset and the suspension design makes sure that it is not heavy on the top of your head and the over the ear cup design makes sure that it isn’t tight in that region either.  The Tiamat 2.2 is extremely well made when it comes to comfort, even over the long haul with a marathon gaming session.
Performance:
When it comes to headsets, I don’t like to focus on just how it sounds for the gaming session.  I also like to listen to music and watch movies on my PC, so the headset has to perform well in those areas too.  I always look at how the headset performs during general use, not just with games.  The Tiamat 2.2 performed excellently during all three tests and has come out as the best sounding headset I have ever owned or used.
What makes the Tiamat 2.2 different then most of it’s counterparts on the market is that it is a 2.2 system, meaning that it contains four 40mm speakers with two of these speakers being sub-woofers.  What that means in the end, is that you get epic bass with whatever you are doing.  The solid thud of an explosion, the deep gravely voice of a demon, or the hard hitting bass line in your favorite song all sounds that much better by using the Tiamat 2.2.
I put the headset through my typical weekly choice of movies, games and music and found that the Tiamat 2.2 performed above my expectations for all three uses.  I watched Hellboy, Captain America, and a couple of episodes of Farscape and Top Gear through the headset and enjoyed every minute of it.  I tested the headset on both the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack for Hellboy and the DTS 7.1 sound in Captain America and they both sounded fantastic.  Sure, your not getting the surround sound quality you would with the 7.1 headset, but I have a home theater system set up for that, and this sounded just fine to me.  I also tested the headset with games like Team Fortress 2, Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3, which the Tiamat 2.2 headset handled beautifully.  The ear cups also do an outstanding job in noise canceling the outside world.  This really increases the sound quality of the headset, when the other sounds that you don’t want mixed in are completely canceled out.
The microphone worked like a charm also during my gaming tests.  Using Ventrillo, I was able to be heard by my friends loud and clear with no issues what so ever.  The recording quality of the headset still makes it sound like you are talking through a headset, so if you plan on using the Tiamat 2.2 for podcasting or other recording sessions, the microphone may not give you the quality you are looking for.  For gamers out there that are using it for Teamspeak or Ventrillo, the microphone is just fine and can retract whenever you don’t need it.
Final Thoughts:
The Razer Tiamat 2.2 Headset is not perfect by any means, it could use a shorter cord and the use of the leatherette on the ear cups will make your ears sweat over time.  However, these little gripes are trivial when it comes to the overall performance of the Tiamat 2.2 in general use.  The Tiamat 2.2 may not have the eight speakers that the Tiamat 7.1 has, but I will argue that this makes the Tiamat 2.2 better suited for music then the 7.1.  The Tiamat 2.2 speakers are larger then the 7.1 speakers and are geared more for stereo sound.  The two sub-woofers in the Tiamat 2.2 makes the games that I played just rumble through my skull, which was very cool for me.  I liked the deep bass sounds as they came through the Tiamat 2.2 during game play for Diablo 3 and Battlefield 3.
When it comes down to it, the Razer Tiamat 2.2 analog headset is a must buy for anyone looking for a general purpose headset to use with gaming, music and movies.  The Razer Tiamat 2.2 Headset is available now for $99.99.

Modern Warfare 3 DLC Collection 3 Review (XBLA)

2012/08/29
Judgeman
News, Reviews

Infinity Ward has released the third downloadable collection pack for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.  This pack includes 4 Special Ops maps, 3 Face Off maps, and the brand new Chaos Mode for players to check out.  For fans of the Modern Warfare franchise, most of you will already have gotten this map pack.  For anyone else, this pack truly shines for those that love to do the Special Ops maps and like the tighter, smaller fights that can be found in the face off maps.  If  you are looking for any larger maps for team deathmatch, then unfortunately, this pack isn’t for you.

Special Ops:

For this pack, its the Special Ops mode that truly comes out the winner with new content.  With four new maps, Special Ops has the most content then any other mode in the Chaos Pack.  The pack includes Arctic Recon, Light ‘Em Up, Vertigo, and Special Delivery.  Vertigo is the weakest of the four maps because it essentially is a survival map.  You are on top of the hotel in Dubai found at the end of the game, surviving wave after wave of enemies while taking down helicopters with the launchers that are available to you.  In Arctic Strike, you have been tasked with disabling a Russian ship via charges that you will plant at strategic points.  Special Delivery involves the player trying to save a fallen comrade that is being held in a secure position, while the other player provides cover from the air in an Osprey.  The last one, Light ‘Em Up, is my favorite of the four.  You are infiltrating Makarov’s castle hide out, and must secure intel before proceeding, while the other player lights targets up from the helicopter that is flying high above.  The use of light in this map made it for me.

Overall, this is a fairly mediocre map pack, with one great map, one weak map, and two mediocre ones.  Light ‘Em Up shines through for me as the star of these Special Ops maps, while Vertigo is the weakest due to the lack of objectives for the map.  If you like the Special Ops maps, then this will be good for you, but if you are more focused on the multiplayer maps, then check out the next section.

Multiplayer Maps:

With the Chaos Pack, there are three new multiplayer maps available, and all of them are Face Off maps.  We get Vortex, U-turn, and Intersection.  Vortex is the clear winner for me in this pack, because I loved the ambient environment.  Vortex is set on a farm during a tornado, which can be seen heading towards the area.  The actual map, like all Face Off maps, is small and straight forward, with a few buildings and a field of crops for cover.  Intersection is a solid urban map with many stores and nooks to hide in.  Intersection is, like the names references, an intersection in New York City.  This is the map for some close combat style game play, while running between buildings and trying to stay out of the streets.  Lastly is U-Turn, the weakest of the three.  U-turn is a strip of highway in Iraq that is littered with various vehicles that have been destroyed.  It is very linear in its game play with very little in the way of strategy for the players.

Face Off maps have been touch and go for me since the beginning.  I like the smaller feel of them, but I never play in smaller games with my friends.  When I play online, it’s always in the larger six versus six team games, which are horrible for such small maps.  If you and your friends are looking for some tight three versus three action, then these maps will work, but if you are looking for the large scale maps then I would completely skip this pack.

Chaos Mode:

Chaos Mode is a new arcade style mode that pits you and your company of friends against wave after wave of enemies.  Chaos Mode only offers  Resistance, Village, Underground and Dome as maps that can be used, so your choices of environments are limited.  You will earn special perks for chaining kills together and can pick up new weapons by watching for weapon spawns on the map as you progress through.  Each kill will need to be confirmed by picking up the dog tags and each player will have multiple lives which helps to extend the game play of the Chaos Mode.

Firefight, Horde Mode, Chaos Mode.  Whatever a developer calls it, this mode is essentially the same type of survival mode that you have played in other games before, but with the Modern Warfare 3 spin on it.  Chaos Mode is strong and works well, if you are desiring such a mode.  Truly, for me, I could have lived without this mode and would love nothing more then having a couple of extra larger scale maps for multiplayer to replace it.

Final Thoughts:

The Chaos Pack for Modern Warfare 3 is going to be the first pack, I believe, that players will truly ask themselves “Do I really want this pack?”.  With four Special Ops maps and the new Chaos Mode, the Chaos Pack is heavy in the single player or smaller group game play.  The three Face Off maps do nothing to persuade me otherwise, since these maps are made for no more then six people at a time.  If you like the smaller maps and felt that you needed more Special Ops in your life, then the Chaos Pack was specifically made for you in mind.  If you are like me, and want some more maps for the larger scale mulitplayer games, then unfortunately the Chaos Pack has nothing to offer you.  The Chaos Pack is available now for download and runs $14.99 through Xbox Live.

Trailer:

Darksiders II (PC) – A Review

2012/08/28
Judgeman
News, Reviews

Vigil Games and THQ has brought us the sequel to 2010’s Darksiders, aptly named Darksiders II.  Darksiders II follows the plot lines from the original game, with War being imprisoned by the Charred Council for his part during the premature End War.  Darksiders II follows Death, War’s sibling, as he investigates the War’s part in the End War.  The game play mechanics for Darksiders II, unfortunately, has been taken from other games of the same genre.  Combat feels like God of War, the wall walking mechanics are taken from Prince of Persia, and the exploration aspects feels like The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.  While Darksiders II borrows heavily from other games, this in no way diminishes the fact that Darksiders II is just plain fun to play.  So, let’s take a more detailed look into what made Darksiders II a great game.

Story:

Darksiders II picks up during the 100 year imprisonment, by the Charred Council, that War is serving for his part during the End War that occurred in Darksiders.  This time around, you will play as War’s brother, Death.  Death is convinced that War was tricked into his role and is innocent of the charges brought against him.  Death then seeks out Crowfather to persuade him to give up his secrets on the End War.  The Crowfather refuses, leading to a battle with Death, that ends with Death being sent to hunt for the Tree of Life.  Death believes that the Tree of Life can restore humanity to existence, thus helping to clear War’s name and have him released from his imprisonment.  He appears in the Nether Realm to find the Tree of Life, only to discover that the world that the Tree inhabits is being killed by Corruption.  Death now has to defeat Corruption, in order to save both the Tree of Life and any chance that he has to restore humanity and War.

I felt that the story for Darksiders II worked well for the game and did a great job in giving the player a sense of purpose and intrigue overall.  I loved how Vigil Games tapped Death to become the protagonist in the sequel, seeing as how War is serving a jail sentence, though Death seems like the least likely horseman to care about the eradication of humanity.  My only complaint with the story of Darksiders II would be the pacing of it.  You get a lot of story in the beginning, giving you a nice background to what is going on in case you did not play through Darksiders, but the actual plot doesn’t pick up again until you have almost freed the Tree of Life from Corruption.

Everything in between those two events, is you helping out the denizens of the Nether Realm in their quests just to reach the Tree of Life.  The main story just feels like it gets put on hold for a few hours while you do these other quests for the Makers.  Giving the player smaller hints to the plot and circumstance behind War’s imprisonment during these quests would have made the player feel like they were making more progress to their overall goal, then just completing quests for others just to reach a waypoint.  Even with this minor complaint, I felt that the story for Darksiders II works and is quite interesting and really worked for me as a whole.

Game Play:

If there is a negative to Darksiders II, it is in the area of game play.  Even then, the only negative that I can mention is that the game play for Darksiders II feels like it was taken from other games of the genre and does not bring anything new or unique to the game.  The combat system feels just like the system from God of War, you are given two weapons that you can use during combat with a set of moves that you can perform depending on the different button sequences you press.  Foes come at you in groups, or in singles if you are fighting more powerful enemies.  The boss battles in Darksiders II are suitably epic and large in scale.  During combat you can dodge attacks and use other abilities that you have gained through the leveling system in Darksiders II.

Darksiders II does play like an action RPG, in which you gain levels and abilities while finding new weapons and armor along the way that change your base stats.  As you level up, you get to pick one tree that you can put points into in order to received those abilities.  The two trees are split into a direct combat tree and a minion summoning tree.  Abilities that you gain will appear on your ability wheel, which felt difficult at times to access.  When I was fighting a huge mob, hitting the ability wheel felt hard to do.  I was playing the game with the default keyboard and mouse controls, so if you have a game pad on your PC, you will not face this at all.  The items that you find along the way will fit into certain item slots and can be of varying degrees of power.  When you run over the item in question, all the stats are flashed up on your screen, with arrows showing you whether or not the item is an upgrade for you.  You can also find possessed items, that can be upgraded by sacrificing other items in your inventory.  While, again, this isn’t a unique game play mechanic by any means, Darksiders II makes it work well and the mechanic fits in with everything else.

The world of Darksiders II is very large and just screams out to be explored.  The world also feels epic in stature, with large monuments dotting the landscape and huge fortresses that just look fantastic as you ride up to them.  However, while the world feels large and epic, it is barren.  There isn’t a lot of creatures filling up this vast world, so you never get the feeling that the world is quite lived in.  This could have been a design decision, because the Nether Realm is dying, but for me I was hoping for more life to interact with during my trips around the landscape.  I just felt that there was way too much open space.

The dungeons in Darksiders II have that large feel to them and scream out to be explored also, but these dungeons are suitable inhabited by enemies.  The game play mechanics for the dungeons have been taken right out of any of the Legend of Zelda games, right down to finding the dungeon map in a chest as you progress towards your goal.  While this isn’t necessarily a negative, because of how well it is done in Darksiders II, it just does not give you a feeling of something new to play with.

Overall, the game play mechanics of Darksiders II are solid and fun, even if we have played them time and time again.  I ran into no bugs or graphical errors through my play through, which is fantastic for a PC release these days.  Combat worked very well, even on a keyboard/mouse set up and will work even better if you have a game pad.  I liked the leveling up system and the choices that you get to make along the way, because the abilities are so vastly different you could play this game a couple of times with completely new talents.  Darksiders II is proof positive that, if a mechanic isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

Aesthetics:

The world of Darksiders II is well designed and looks great.  I loved the design of the characters and environment that Death encounters on his journey, especially the large and epic monuments that you see as you ride through the Nether Realm.  The actual graphics of Darksiders II are good, not great.  This game will not push your machine graphically speaking and won’t make you call over anyone to check out the stunning visuals.  Dungeons are interesting to look at too, though have a very similar feel to each other.  The design of Darksiders II gives you the feeling of being transported to a different world that is large in scale and fantastic in nature, without being too taxing on most machines on the market.

The voice overs are decent for Darksiders II, but not great.  The Crowfather feels over the top, but it works for that character.  The issue I had with the voice overs was the accents given to the Makers.  So, this group of forgers that helped build the universe as we know it are Scottish?  I understand that the designers needed an accent that would work, but why is everyone utilizing the Scottish accent?  We have a world of almost 7 billion people, we can use another accent, we really can.  At least the Scottish accent in Darksiders II is actually well done, and not the horrible parody that I have heard in other games.

Final Thoughts:

Darksiders II is a great game that utilizes tried and true game play methods, while bringing an intriguing story line with good characterization.  While Darksiders II does not do anything new or exciting, it does what it does well.  Combat occurs naturally and flows nicely, without any significant frame rate issues, even with the bigger fights.  The world is vast and interesting to look at, though it is sparsely populated.  The story is well written and decently acted out while the graphics and aesthetics brings another world to your desktop that is good to look at without being too taxing 0n your system.  Darksiders II is a great sequel to a solid game and is well worth the look to anyone looking for a solid action RPG game for the PC, even if you never played the first game.  Darksiders II is available now for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.