Author - Ripper71

SteelSeries Spectrum 7XB Gaming Headset Review (XBox)

SteelSeries has been known for years as one of the leaders in premium gaming equipment.  Quite often it may cost a little more than other brands but for good reason, you know that you can expect great quality and versatility. So when I had the opportunity to review their latest Spectrum 7XB Gaming Headset I was more than just excited, I was downright thrilled.  My XBox headset was Microsoft licensed and worked fairly well in it’s one earpiece but my mic was finicky at best.  There had been plenty of night’s gaming where I just passed on the headset which caused me to lose some valuable intel but improved my comfort and placated my frustration with the poor microphone.  So to get my hands on a SteelSeries was a very exciting moment indeed.

I had checked out and compared many brands of headsets at trade shows, conventions and testing for sites and I had a couple brand names that began to stand apart and SteelSeries was one of them.  What surprised me was that the 7XB was actually outperformed most of the SteelSeries I had  checked out over the years.  They had obviously taken even minor customer concerns into consideration and had worked them into the latest release.

Setup:

The setup of the headset is not timely but it is a bit technical and definitely involves reading the directions mainly because of what it can do and the options available. It takes only a moment but you definitely need to read the instructions.

Comfort:

For long gaming sessions comfort can be almost as important as performance because no matter how good it sounds and communicates if it causes you headaches from weight or smashing your glasses then it will not get it’s proper use.  Not only are the 7XB extremely lightweight but they are designed to rest the cups comfortably on the ears while at the same time allowing space for glasses.  Even if part of the cup does press on the glasses they are so amazingly lightweight that they don’t compress the arms of the glasses into your temple so they wind up being some of the most comfortable ones on the market.  One side is slightly heavier due to the AAA batteries required but it is a fairly unnoticeable difference that would practically require you to weigh to even know.  The microphone section actually curls back into the headset to be out of the way if you are not talking on it which adds to the comfort of the headset by having it out of the way but also when it is slid out of storage it is very lightweight and adjustable.  Comfort wise the only slightest improvement I could even imagine would be if they didn’t have to plug into the XBox controller at all and were completely wireless but since the cord is of a comfortable length and adds a very conveniently located mic button at the controller even this issue borders on a feature rather than an issue.

Sound Quality:

Powered by 50mm drivers the sound is encased in nice, comfortable ear cuffs that are an immersive audio experience that doesn’t rattle the house’s windows.  Sounds seem to come from the direction they were intended which though obvious in plenty of games stood out pretty well in Blur, where cars are striking from the sides, your weapons are firing at things in front and you are getting attacked from behind.  So much sound going on and yet determining their direction in a few seconds is really important to survival.  At the same time there is chatter from other players in Blur and other games and this is another interesting place where these headsets shine.  If another player speaks and you have your headset set on the LiveMix setting then when they speak the game volume drops so you can hear team chat then when they finish speaking the game volume came back up.  This made it nice so that you could still enjoy the game volume at higher levels while not having to worry about missing important instructions or tactics.  And if this doesn’t quite give you the mix you want there are separate locations to lower or increase each of the channels to set them just right.

As well as individually adjusting track levels you can also choose equalization to add even greater depth to the game sound.  The equalizer has four setttings: Normal, Performance, Immersion and Entertainment.  Normal is equalization off and normal game sound, Performance amplifies high tones and is perfect for those FPS where you are listening for every gun reload and step on a path at an ambush spot.  Immersion kicks the bass up and you feel the gunshots and explosions rattling through your head (this one takes a little volume fine tuning to keep from causing ear damage) and Entertainment is just what the name implies, if you are using the headset to watch a movie, listen to music or play a game without a high importance on the sound or any team chatter.  When doing the last the feature of tucking to microphone into the ear cup makes it easy to enjoy a streaming movie on console or PC without having to twist the mic out of the way while eating or drinking.

Compatibility:

As just a headset for listening the Spectrum 7XB is compatible with Xbox 360, PC, Mac, Wii and PS3.  There is no team chat with them on the other systems with the PC in particular you may want a separate microphone set up for audio recording or transmission anyways.  The Spectrum 7XB is great because it has such a crisp sound transmission it can just be used as headphones for so many different things but it can be hard to bring yourself from unplugging them from your XBox since they are such a solid addition to it’s gaming system.

Durability:

The headset is reinforced at key points to help with durability since there are certain sections of a headset that tend to take more stress than others.  The cord that travels down to the XBox controller is wrapped in nylon parachute cord to prevent knotting and kinking, additional joints have been placed at areas of stress to allow extra movement and the whole headset is designed to break down into four parts to prevent damage during travel.  Add to this that the microphone tucks safely into the headset and is wrapped in flexible metal and durable plastic casing when it is extracted and this is definitely a headset that if you treat it right will last you a long time.  Besides if you are someone who can’t keep your temper and throws your headset against walls you don’t need to invest in quality headphones, you need to invest in foam and duct tape, maybe some spackle as well.

Style:

Gaming headsets can sometimes have a bit of a lack of style, often looking like they are designed for survivability rather than style.  This headset is designed to look like high end very stylish headphones that happen to have a high quality very stylish microphone slide out of it.  These things are enviable if they were just a wireless headset being used in your living room to listen to music or watch a movie without waking up the roommates (or wife).  Then when you reach down and plug it into your controller and slide out the amazing looking microphone there will be that moment when your buddies look at you and just say “Damn.”  Then when you let them try it they will either be buying them or saving up for them.

Last Call:

SteelSeries is known for their quality products as well as their style and the Spectrum 7XB gaming headset is absolutely no exception.  I took the headset off of my Xbox 360 controller to test it out but it is going right back onto the controller as soon as the review is over and it may never come off there again.  Ok, maybe when I am injured in bed and want to play one of my gaming systems in the bedroom without waking my wife.  Ok and when playing games in the computer room that don’t bother with team speak.  Ok and maybe, well you get the point.

 

F.E.A.R. 3 Review (PC/ OnLive Console)

OnLive has a whole bunch of trailers for just about all of their games and since they don’t have to buffer down and are playing straight off their server I can randomly click on different ones when I have a free moment and feel like picking my next game to plsy.  So I clicked on F.E.A.R. 3 and saw the video featuring Marlyn Manson’s “Four Rusted Horses” and I had to play it.  Part of me had no choice, I just knew that was the next game I was going to play and I played it well into the next couple nights.

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Those who played the first couple games have some idea of the storyline unfolding in the F.E.A.R. series, though probably not that much because it has always been a bit odd.  Those who haven’t I can tell you in a nutshell what you would need to know to play the game.  Point Man, the main character, never talks but is far more brutal than any mime in all of France.  A one man killing machine he has the ability to slow time and in the process do amazing damage to all in his path.  The one who does all the talking for him is his dead brother, who only he can see, that has a nice bullet hole in his forehead courtesy of Point Man.  So the two of them go on a mission together.  I won’t say what but it is kind of unique on its own and I am still not really sure the reasoning on the mission.  But honestly you really don’t need to know what the reason for the mission only that it brings about amazing gameplay.

It isn’t quite the horror fest the preview promised.  Horrible and gory things happen and Paxton Fettel, Point Man’s partner and dead brother, definitely does his share of supernatural and creepy things just as you would expect but it really for the most part is a twisted mess that you walk in on and spend a lot of time cleaning up.  At first the less than living things are disturbing and killing them is almost as much reflex as actual thinking.  Dead should stay dead and if this rule is broken it is reinforced with lots and lots of weapons.  At some point though the battle shifts and becomes more about the evil living than the brain emaciated unliving.  It becomes your job to just kill everything that moves and as they get tougher the weapons get tougher and the carnage and explosions get fun rather than creepy.  I would at times forget that there even is a threat other than enemy soldiers, then after a big pack of undead would show up and I would forget the soldiers for a little while.  Sometimes they will fight each other and you can stand back and watch a moment, even possibly wound one side to help the other only to destroy any that remain.  How you kill and when you kill really becomes your choice for the most part with the exception of bosses which seem insanely hard after a buffet of bloodshed, all you can eat, leading right up to them.  I would fly through a level then hit the boss and get stuck for quite a while, having to figure out strategies and approaches when I was used to just going forward and shooting all that moved.  I’m not complaining about either aspect of the gameplay, they both have merits I like a lot, but I think it might be easier if the enemies ramp up to the bosses a bit rather than slaughter this, slaughter that, what just tore me in half?

You get to use some other vehicles here and there that are a welcome change and, if you are careful with their usage, can last you a while and do massive amounts of destruction to pretty much everything in sight.  They will put things out there that can be the equal to your vehicle so you need to pay attention but I still loved every minute in them.  A part of me didn’t want to give up the vehicle when I had to but after a few uses of the different weapons and attacks I had with Point Man I was back to having fun with interesting combos.

Single player is excellent but multiplayer has some very solid points too.  You are able to attack soldiers in Fettel form where you throw globs of what I guess would be painful protoplasm at them or, more fun, take of their bodies and start tearing through them on the way to the other players.  This is a deathmatch but with a twist because if you are good and quick enough the bodies you occupy may die but you will live on in another.  This dynamic actually reminded me of [The 3rd Birthday] where you were an agent sent back in time to possess soldiers at major moments of battle and the key was always to jump right before death.  Same goes with this multiplayer version.  The co-op multiplayer is actually pretty similar to Uncharted 3’s multiplayer that you can revive other players in your group if you are close enough to them to make the save but whereas Uncharted had a pool of lives to work with if your whole team wipes it’s game over.  Both are a blast to play but I really liked the Fettel form deathmatch which is funny because co-op usually wins out with me.

Last Call:

F.E.A.R. 3 is a great game with good atmosphere which slips a little but excellent gameplay all the way whether you are playing by yourself, co-op or multiplayer.  The single player campaign has a good length and the co-op and multiplayer can go time and time again.  I heard it was a bit choppy at times on some systems, especially the voice chat, but on OnLive on both the PC and the console it was extremely smooth.  If I haven’t convince you to purchase it you can rent it from OnLive for $5.99 for 3 days or $8.99 for 5 days and you never have to return a game since you are playing on their server.  If you are unsure about OnLive that is a good way to check it out anyways, you just sign up, pick your rental and you are playing F.E.A.R. 3 without the fear of late fees.

Homefront Large-Scale Warfare Multiplayer Review (PC/Onlive Game System)

Anger is an energy and I think the anger in the air about four hours after the release of Homefront is still out there across America, just waiting for someone to tap into it.  Twitter and Facebook took a heavy blow as if millions of voices cried out at once and were suddenly silenced.  Ok that is a total exaggeration but for those who lived through those hours they were left with an emptiness, in their game play time and their wallet.  WTF do you mean it is over?  I don’t mean to open old wounds but when mentioning the name Homefront to a gamer there is a very distinct wince associated with it.  Everyone wanted to be out there reliving Red Dawn or at least be a part of this generation’s “Defenders of The Homeland” saga and it was just over too fast.  So when I started talking about the experience of the multiplayer being one of the best out there right now I tend to get skeptical looks.  So here I go explaining why.

First off you get to experience the setting that got you so excited about Homefront in the first place, you get to stand in the shadow of Randy’s Donuts’ iconic giant pastry and blow the enemy right out of boots that shouldn’t be on American soil.  Or you get to move across a ruined neighborhood seeing the damage you have done to these capitalist scum and set up an ambush point inside the local Hooters.  The maps are great in both their realistic settings and their destructive remains of iconic Americana and give a much more engrossing play platform.  The burning debris and fluttering paper which catches your eye as movement and causes you to look one way may cause you to take a hit from another.

When you start the multiplayer you get a beginning set of weapons and skills to work from and, much like other multiplayer games, you are able to unlock customization of standard classes and weapons and get special items to help you with your mission.  There are some particularly fun remote drones available that can really keep the game interesting and snoop out campers though the remotes have a limited battery life.  These special items such as bazookas, drones, enemy sweeps ectc are earned by building up battle points during a match and the battle points are earned by identifying an enemy location, destroying an enemy or destroying an enemy vehicle.  A very fun and interesting aspect of the multiplayer is the Battle Commander who identifies threats and assigns them as objectives to part of your team, increasing the number of players assigned by how many points they are earning.  So let’s say you got a high level hotshot player who is tearing through your team like single-ply toilet paper, The Battle Commander will put a skull over them, mark their general location on the map to a few players and add skulls and information to more of the team until they hit the maximum of five skulls then your whole team knows where they are, they all want to take him out for an extra bounty on his head and to save your team the headache of his destructive path.  At the same time the more skulls that player earns the more bonuses they get to help defend themselves against the growing threat.  Suddenly your whole team is after one Rambo and drones are covering the ground and sky as well as vehicles like tanks and Humvees.  The whole battlefield is hopping.

The game is available across platforms on the PC, Steam, XBLA, and PSN as well as my current system of choice, OnLive.  If you have read some of my recent reviews you may have read how impressed I am with the system and it’s incredible versatility.  Homefront Large-Scale Warfare Multiplayer is available as part of their Playpack Bundle which is designed a lot like Netflix streaming. You get over 60 games to choose from to play as much as you want for $10 a month on the PC, their mobile console, tablets and some smart phones.  Just like with Netflix you can pause a game and pick it back up on another platform.  So with Onlive I had the unique opportunity to see how it plays on a console as well as a PC.  On both it performed flawlessly even with the full 32 players.  Yep you read right, two 16 player teams shooting up maps and one another which is usually pretty rough for a console to handle without tearing or lag spikes but this game handles it great without any loss of detail.  Out of dozens of multiplayer games at my disposal right now (most of which are on the Onlive Playpack) this is the one that keeps drawing me back in.

Last Call:

I have been playing multiplayer since, well since there was multiplayer.  There are some that in their hay day were amazing and I still feel nostalgic for even though compared to today’s they wouldn’t hold a candle to them graphically (BF1942 and all it’s mods).  It was because of their gameplay, the epic scope of the maps and play possibilities.  For now I think I have found a home base of multiplayer operation in Homefront LSW and it will take one heck of a good system to knock it out.  Especially since it is just one part of a $9.99 a month package.

A Brief Taste of Uncharted 3 Multiplayer (PSN/Beta Test)

I logged on to play a little DC Universe Online before heading to bed and… what’s this?  Would I like to play Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Beta?  Yes please!  I sat and stared at the download screen afraid it might stop if I walked away.  Almost there, almost there, bam!  In I dove having never played an Uncharted game. I have to state that because the initial headset chatter had a lot of “what the hell is Ripper doing?” or “So… you are just spraying and not aiming?” in it and I felt they deserve an explanation.  After I figured out the controls though I was hooked and hooked solidly.  This was a beautiful co-op!  I usually like bigger teams for multiplayer but the four or less team intimacy worked great toward reviving each other and really forced players to either work as a team or lose.  If someone always seem to rack up the kills, get all the loot and never do a revive they found themselves fresh out of help when they got surrounded or went down.  Lives are pooled as well so it is in the team’s best interest to get a fallen comrade back on their feet (though they do get points for that too).  There were two basic styles of play, PvP and PvE, so either two teams of four or less or your team versus the world.  PvP was pretty straight forward stuff that we are used to, a scramble across the map to take out enemies.  The maps are very graphically nice and detailed and the weapons are plentiful.  It was the PvE that I fell in love with though, each map had a variance on how it played out dependent on map topography but in the end it came down to one thing: work as a unit or lose.

There were three basic setups for each wave of the PvE battles: transport, defend, or protect.  Transport was a loot transport from a drop location to a chest and the team worked with one or two players trading off as carriers while the rest of the team defended (this was also part of the PvP battle maps, fighting over the loot, but the team closer to drop tended to have a huge advantage).  This was a lot of fun since there were multiple ways to transport and each way had a choke point or sniper spot that you had to be really careful for because even if a player might miss that spot you can bet the game didn’t and there is someone waiting for you.  The game populated with plenty of enemies too so even the smaller map had plenty of baddies as obstacles, maybe even worse from the crossfire possibilities.  The defend is the most free flowing of the waves, basically a certain number of enemies are coming for you and you have to kill them all.  This is where a lesser team player might split off and try to get their own head count but it is also where is shows the teammates you want to friend because you will all huddle in a room together, each on an exit and watching for one of you to fall or start to get choked from an enemy that flanked.   Remember your lives are pooled so it is in your best interest to watch your teammate’s back but it’s when you get teammates who risk themselves getting you back on your feet in a hot spot that shows the players you hope to go into another game with.  This is also shown in the last setup protect too, but to a lesser degree.  In that one your whole team is assigned to stay in a square and if you step out of the square the kills no longer count.  So your team needs to stand in a square, sometimes with very limited cover, as the enemy progresses from all directions.  The square is in a different location each time this wave comes up so once again the team that stays together will get the kills to start counting sooner and increase the chances of clearing the wave faster.  A certain amount of time is awarded for clearing a wave but the time reward is lower each time so teamwork really made the difference between winning and losing.  To win you had to complete a certain number of waves in the allotted time with the waves being all three mixed together.  This kind of play took much longer than the quick PvP rounds, that is if you had a good team that watched each others backs.  If you had a lone wolf then the whole pack would go down fast.  When a team was good you might find yourself playing with them for a few rounds and before you know it hours have past.  Remember how I said I started playing right before I was supposed to go to bed?  Yay for energy drinks the next day!

Last Call:

I mostly just talked about PvE here because there was plenty of that to fill my time and keep me thoroughly entertained.  From what I hear the PvP players were kept just as busy if not more so in those games making me really excited when this ships later this year.  I only got a brief taste of this multiplayer but I was immediately sucked in and would be playing it tonight if it hadn’t already gone dark again.  It may still be in beta but is is already very polished and a must play when it comes out or anytime you see the opportunity to dive in on more testing.  Trust me I will be checking for it later tonight.

Red Faction: Armageddon Review (OnLive/PC)

When I first started playing Red Faction: Armageddon I was a little confused.  Wait I am supposed to take a hammer and smash a wall?  Ok…BOOM goes the wall.  Pretty darn cool.  So for a while I went around all smashy smashy.  Well what do you know, this game rewards you for smashing everything in sight, smashy smashy smashy.  And boy do I wield a mean hammer!  Thor eat your heart out.  Let’s try the other weapons, not bad there either.  Then along came monsters and I got a little nervous.  Heck there I was following a trail of very ugly corpses to get here, this was going to be creepy and nasty.  Only it isn’t really, the beasts, though creepy looking, are all the colors of the rainbow and when I start swinging my hammer the walls and heaven above thunder and quake.  If I miss the beasts I might hit a pillar, then they get crushed by debris.  Nice!  They start attacking in great numbers causing me a harder time but as long as I have a good working concept of cover and don’t try to charge through every fray I move up through the levels fast and fun, though without a lot of fear maybe partially because of the fact that it is a third person shooter.  I think a lot of it has to do with amazing weapons and the plentiful ammo. It just kind of renders the enemies inferior and I feel like a juggernaut as I tear through them over and over again, varying it up, finding what works best for each particular weapon but I just keep moving along, collecting corpses and upgrading attacks.  There is a fun, large variety to choose from but in the end it really comes down to one.  the Magnet Gun.

Once the Magnet Gun came into play I started clearing levels using just it and my hammer. All the other weapons remained on full ammo as I went through and beat everything in the distance with buildings, yes I threw whole buildings at the aliens and watched them smashed against cave walls, then took the aliens corpse and threw it at another alien.  Some may try to compare it to an energy grapple gun in another game but this is both harder to control and much more amazingly destructive.  In that one you had to grab a piece of metal or an enemy’s body part, something small, and hurl it at something else with sometimes with a weapons precision.  With the Magnet Gun however, you pick what to pull and where to anchor it. Say you pick a 4 story metal walkway and pick a single enemy and suddenly a whole walkway is smashing into it.  I even forgot about the hammer at one point and threw various buildings own walls at each other from the inside like an implosion. I would throw the base of the tower into the top of it crushing it like a can. I could also shoot an enemy then shoot a beam high in the caves and cause it to go flying through the air like a rag doll and crush its head on the beam.  When all wreckage was on the floor I would sometimes take the corpses and slam them against a steel wall.  Just because I could and because in a sick way it was kind of funny.

There are a few other vehicles you get to use, such as a mech walker, a spider tank and a compact flyer.  The mech walker and spider tank are pretty dang impressive as long as, once again, you take your time and don’t rush into the middle of situations. They are practically invincible and can do massive amounts of damage and destruction as you move along with them.  Their unlimited ammo also makes them fun for just shooting and blowing up every single scrap in sight.  The flyer is a little different story, the rockets are outstanding but slow to re-power, the gun is a little weak and the armor is downright weak.  I came really close… ok I can swallow my pride and state that I got killed in it a lot.  Most of the game takes place in tunnels or caves which means you just follow the path in front of you, one way in, one way out.  If you try to backtrack it considers it desertion of mission and kills you.  In the case of the flyer you are in an extremely tight tunnel, very much a Matrix-like feel to the tunnel and the flying, and enemies blast the crud out of you with little room for maneuverability.  This was probably the most painful part of the game to work through and unlike your godlike fighting status throughout the rest of the game you feel like a fish getting shot in a barrel.  Even when you are a fish in a barrel you are a graphically great looking fish, the visuals are incredibly crisp, the sound is excellent and the destruction shows amazing detail in every single piece of debris.

Last Call:

This game is an absolute blast.  I guess I was expecting more of a survival horror and this game falls somewhere between Dead Space 2 and Halo, which when you think about it is truly not bad company to be keeping.  The creatures are scarier than Halo but not as creepy as Dead Space 2, the weapon variety is actually better than either and the enemy toughness falls somewhere in between the two.  The key is this game has massive destruction capabilities and provides the perfect weapons to destroy just about everything in sight.  You get your hammer for smashing through walls and even the floor if the doors or the stairs sound boring and they have the Magnet Gun which is almost like a wrecking ball in it’s destructive nature and takes your damage possibilities to the limits only of your imagination.  Honestly this game, partially because of the quirky dialogue and mostly the damage system, doesn’t take itself as serious as the other two and is mostly about giving you big guns, fun targets and letting you destroy the world.  There are even special game modes such as Ruin which it literally just designed to destroy everything in sight and four person co-op multiplayer where you get to see what happens with four Magnet Guns and hammers getting wielded at the same time. Talk about destruction and chaos!  This is the part where I have to decide whether or not I would recommend buying this game.  Is it just a stamp of another that you might already have?  I think you have probably already figured out that I think it is a game of it’s own, designed with fun destruction in mind so that it doesn’t take itself quite as serious as some other games in the genre.  The game has over 10 hours of playthrough just on campaign mode if you play through once, and then there are achievements to be had and different weapon combinations to be tried and that is without even bringing the multiplayer mode into consideration which can be as different as the players who play it. Red Faction: Armageddon is totally worth its price.

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Metro 2033 Review (OnLive/PC)

2033 will not be a good year for human beings if Metro 2033 has captured our future right, but it is a good time for gaming.  Based on the 2003 (get the year?) book of the same title by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033 is set in a bleak underground world beneath a frozen wasteland that was once a thriving city and takes us to the dark edges of survival where every bit of light is welcome and almost everything that goes bump in the dark wants you dead.  Though it mostly takes place in poorly lit tunnels where corpses abound, the game never really seems to repeat the same scenery and for such a bleak environment it is very rich in detail, every section tells a story even if it is not the one you are traveling through.  You may stumble upon the corpse of a apocalypse time soldier and by the destruction around him and the blood smears on the ground you can figure out how he died even though he has become nothing more to you than an ammo bucket.  The game is incredibly rich in such details, visually and audibly, making it quickly immersive especially if you find yourself like I was on an addicted marathon play of it through the night.  The darkness is not just darkness, it is danger and oppressive doom and in every shadow you may find a reward in the form of a cache of weapons or you may have something knocking you on your back and chomping at your neck trying to tear it out.  It has lots of jump factors but doesn’t just rely on them.  The mutants though very canine like will sometimes stand erect on their hind legs and look at you and let out a long woeful wail.  After which mutant beasts descent on you from all directions.

The game isn’t all doom though there isn’t much that doesn’t have gloom. There are sparks in the dark in the form of soldiers, like yourself, and others who still hold out hope for humanity winning.  More often than not you will encounter what you would expect to see in such an environment, the mutants truly aren’t mankind’s only enemy.  There are those who want to rule, warring factions who can’t give up their grudges just because they have a common enemy, those who prey upon others in times of disaster, all the bad elements of mankind that we would expect to rear their ugly heads in our greatest times of need.  This game provides them all, well created and very believably, almost sadly believable and they prove obstacles on your journey as well.  Without giving away the story too much your journey could almost seem a bit simple for what trials you have to endure but they show the character of the character you are playing and proves to be a value of their own.

Resources are very scarce in the game so weapon upgrades and ammo are cherished and sometimes used sparingly.  There were a few times where I found myself relying on my knife rather than my gun in some dangerous battle because I knew something nastier was around the corner and I needed to make every round count.  Ammo is so valuable that it is currency in the game, the pre-apocalyptic military grade ammo is the coin of the land so when you get it you have to decide do you buy a weapon upgrade or more of the inferior mutant day ammo or is your survival in this situation dependent on some well placed shots with some good rounds?  It is a choice you have to make throughout the game and you definitely want to not take it lightly. Use up too much of the better ammo and you could find yourself wishing you had it when some scavenger in one of the few lit and populated train stations, the only bastion of civilization left, offers you a shiny item for the military ammo you have left.  Another tip I learned the hard way, check all the scavengers in these hubs before you purchase, you may be excited to see new weapons to be had, but sometimes you might find something to provide light in the dark of the tunnel.

Since ammo is so valuable and scarce sometimes avoiding the conflict all together is the best way to go, though usually not the only way.  The game is good about giving you options on how to get past situations.  Generally what it does is present you with a situation such as a bunch of guards sitting around listening to their commander speak.  You are watching from the dark and all the choices on how to proceed is up to you.  You can try to cling to the ever present shadows and try to slip down the stairs to one side.  You could try to take up a offensive position and start tearing them apart.  You can take a defensive position and pick them off as they separate after the meeting.  You can try walking past them and hope to get back into the shadows before they see you.  Literally all these options are available to you and there is no wrong choice, some are more difficult than others, but they are all up to you.  This freedom to clear obstacles is one of the most addictive parts of the game and had me playing the same sections over and over just curious how each scenario might play out.  I wasn’t alone in my fascination of it either, the OnLive system has a feature called Arena in which people can spectate on other player’s games to see if they like it or to cheer or jeer them on.  During the hours I played Metro 2033 I don’t think a single minute went by (no exaggeration) where I didn’t have a spectator watching the game and most of the ones that left wound up coming back to watch some more.  The game isn’t just addictive to play it is also addictive to watch.

Few games are absolutely perfect and this one had it’s occasional issues.  Sometimes with the animation you couldn’t tell something was dead already and so wasted a few extra shots of ammo though this might have been intentional.  Melee combat can be awkward with your swipes appearing to land but missing entirely or the enemy walking right through you to suddenly be behind you even if you are in a dead end with no side to side movement room which in a first person game in particular can be frustrating when you find yourself trying to fight something basically underneath you.  For the most part though these issues are very easy to overlook.

Last Call:

Metro 2033 paints a dark future for mankind with little sparks of light traveling through it though not all of them with bright intentions.  The atmosphere is immersive and addictive, the gameplay mechanics and situations are extremely enthralling.  I picked this game for the little bit of talk I had heard about it before it came out and I am extremely glad I did.  It has replayability due to the great number of possibilities in each scenario and each play through will be over 10 hours.  I think this game might be one of the best plays of the year and I know it is probably one of the best stories, heck I plan to order the book now.  Now if they would only make a video game based on World War Z…

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AI War Alien Bundle Review (PC)

Humanity has already fought its war against the machines — and lost. AI death squads stand watch over every planet and every wormhole, the few remaining human settlements are held captive in orbiting bubbles, and the AIs have turned their attention outward, away from the galaxy, to alien threats or opportunities unknown.  This inattention is our only hope: a small resistance, too insignificant even to be noticed by the AI central command, has survived.  These are the forces you will command.  The AI subcommanders will fight you to the death when they see you, but your glimmer of opportunity comes from quietly subduing those subcommanders without alerting central processing to the danger until it’s too late.

You do have a few things going in your favor. Your ships are much faster. You have safe AI routines to automate defenses and mining outposts. You have production techniques that can churn out fully-outfitted unmanned fighters in seconds. There will never be more than a few thousand of your ships versus tens of thousands of theirs, but through careful strategy you must somehow reach and destroy the heavily-guarded AI cores.

Go forth into the galaxy, steal AI technology, recapture those planets you must in order to achieve your ends, and save what remains of humanity. But draw too much attention to yourself, and the full might of the AI overlords will come crashing down.

The Details:

AI War is a strategy game that plays like an RTS but feels like a 4X with tower defense and grand strategy bits, too.  More specifically, this is a game that you can either play solo, or in 2-8 player co-op.  You always play against a pair of AIs, and you can configure an enormous amount of things about the experience. The AI is excellent, the longer you play the better the AI plays.

The only way to play is in procedurally-generated “campaigns.” There are quite literally billions of possibilities, and every campaign has a really different feel to it.  They also last a good while: most between 7 to 13 hours, about the length of time it takes to play through an FPS campaign once. This means your decisions, victories and blunders alike, have really long term, interesting consequences.  You can save and load at any time, even in multiplayer, so you could have one campaign going for weeks or months if you like.  This is foremost a game about cleverly picking your battles, evaluating scout intel for weaknesses and opportunities, and executing really long-term plans despite the monkey wrenches the AI is sure to throw into the works. It’s about thinking on your feet and evaluating each situation, rather than memorizing stats.

Game Play:

So the details above sound like quite a bit of boasting on behalf of the developers but they are really just stating the facts.  This game is like playing a chess game where each expansion they add more chess pieces.  If you are looking for action games where you tear through levels this is not the game for you.  I have played this game for a dozen hour stretch more than once and still not had the campaign completed.  This is a very solid strategy game with a very, very strong AI and if you try to zerg you will die.  This game is in a sense an act of contrition, you have to be willing to stick it out, no matter how long it takes, days, weeks, if you ever expect to win a single campaign.  I have played for hours, gone to dinner with my wife, then come back and picked up for hours.  Taken a couple days off, then gone back and played an hour here and an hour there.  There really is just that much to the campaigns.  And because of randomizing and different building and strategic approaches I know that every time I play it will be different.  You can even choose which, if any, of the expansions are active for your round.  The strategic scope of this game, when at first it seems a simple colonization strategy is pretty staggering.  When I first saw the galaxy map I wasn’t particularly impressed, but once I got down to the actual building and moving I realized this is an exceptionally deep game.

Graphics:

At a wide galactic level the graphics seem simple.  Then when you build ships, and there are so many types of ships to build, you see that there are actually some very nice graphic details. They are all just concentrated on the most important parts of the game.  Once again I want to compare it a bit to chess, the board is often nice but not necessarily special, but the pieces can often be beautifully crafted and detailed.  That is just the way the game works, the galaxy may not be thrilling, the background at the worlds may seem almost like a wallpaper of a planet, but every ship and every aspect of it from what it fires to it’s destruction is all beautifully detailed.  I still find myself occasionally building a ship just because I like how amazingly bad ass it looks, though often its actions don’t disappoint.

A Good Cause:

When you purchase the AI War Alien Bundle, you’re not only getting a great game and three huge expansions, you’re also supporting an important cause.  Arcen Games is a platinum sponsor of the Child’s Play charity, pledging 100% of the profits from sale of Children Of Neinzul (excepting any taxes and distributor fees) to helping sick kids in need.  That works out to 9% of the purchase price of the AI War Alien Bundle.  So since the Bundle is an affordable $29.99 you get a great deal on a game while helping others.

Last Call:

This game is for hardcore strategists only.  This game is extremely time consuming and if you try to rush it you will probably lose.  With that being said if you have the patience for a long game, the strategic nature and desire to step up to a real mental challenge, this is the game for you.  The price is right, the game is great and you even help a good cause.  And there is another expansion in beta at the time of this writing… Science!

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Gatling Gears Review (PSN)

When the Empire begins its reign of destruction in a thirst for natural resources, it’s up to Max Brawley, a retired Gatling Gears pilot, to stop them.  Together with his niece and his trusty Gatling Gear unit he must fight his way to the heart of the Empire and eliminate the destruction at its source.  A top down rail shooter this game is most unique in it’s theme:  a steam punk land from the past.

A Whole New World:

The game is set in the land of Mistbound which is a rich fictional world that was created as a platform for the studio’s multi-format downloadable games and other media.  Greed Corp is the first in a series of games situated in this universe.  Inspired by the industrial revolutions of the 19th century and its subsequent destructive effects on the environment, Mistbound tells stories of a beautiful world once rich in resources and now on the brink of collapse.  Automated industry has brought great material wealth, but relentless harvesting and mining has forever altered the world and its inhabitants. The last unspoiled lands are at stake in new conflicts between four factions, while the stripped and barren earth around them slowly succumbs to a thick mist that creeps ever closer.  The result of all this in Gatling Gears is vehicles that look like DaVinci may have drawn up but never saw the light of day in reality. But due to industrial development the world progressed faster than technology and beautiful and strange vehicles and buildings result which are terrific examples of steam punk.  I look in wonderment when a new steam punk unit arrives, enemy or ally, and it cost me some lives that I still feel were well worth it.  I see this world being a great launching platform for many, many more games, my greatest hope being a strategy game in the vein of Star Craft where you don’t just fight against the units but get to build them as well!

Come Get Some:

Gatling Gears is a twin-stick top-down shooter for Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation Network, and PC.  It is disguised as an open city environment but if you pay attention it really is a game on rails, you can blast the heck out of the world around you and can move at your own pace but you still go where they want you to go.  You don’t mind too much because of all the eye candy between the vehicles and Mistbound and you are kept pretty busy with the tons of enemies and allies all over the screen.  There is a fairly short tutorial at the beginning which gets you started and gets the general idea of how to play but you still better pay close attention to it otherwise you may find yourself going “wait how do I do that again?” or worse “how do I do that with hundreds of missiles flying at me at once?”  Once you get comfortable with the controls you do fall in love with the weapons and vehicles around you and you just want to push on to see the next enemies and the next boss.  Sure you have to be careful in your game play to stay alive, but honestly it simply comes down to it being a two stick shooter set in an amazing world where even your own vehicle is a beauty to watch.

One Is Great, Two Is Better:

This game is great by yourself and fun to play and amazing to look at, but at soon as you get to throw your niece into another war machine that your buddy or a stranger online controls the game play just goes to the next level and it becomes a whooping good time.  It is a great party game because of the eye candy of the land and the craziness of the game play.  Do yourself a favor and invite a friend over to play with you, if you don’t have any then make one on the network of whatever system you pick it up on and play with them.

Take That!  Or Not!:

When things get kinda hectic, aiming your grenades and missiles can be a little difficult to say the least, especially when you are dodging hundreds of missiles all aimed at you.  You find yourself relying heavier on your Gatling which is just fine for the most part and use your special bomb attack on occasion though it is limited use and can leave you blinded for a moment and vulnerable to anything that showed up on the screen conveniently right after the blast.  So you click on your grenade, start moving the targeting spot and notice hundreds of missiles are about to hit you and you just randomly toss the grenade and hope for the best.  I did that a lot and believe it or not that was more effective than you would think simply because of the massive swarms of enemies you fight sometimes so cover the map that you can’t help but hit some.

My Dreams For Mistbound:

As I mentioned earlier in the article I would really, really, heck one more-really, like to see this beautiful steam punk world made into a strategy game.  I want to build the slightly awkward looking helicopter with gun turrets bulging from strange locations.  I want to make the glider from DaVinci’s drawings and have them bomb bulbous enemy tanks as they cross a beautifully rendered meadow.  I want to see the world taken off the rails, and creation for destruction placed in our hands.  Steam Punk Strategy.  I think it’s time has come!

Last Call:

The game is absolutely a whole lot of fun with steam punk eye candy galore.  I love Mistbound and all the strange and yet familiar creations which populate and destroy it.  This game doesn’t try to be a grand adventure, it is a twin-stick top down shooter on rails and it works very nicely in this niche, giving great game play in a great environment.  I highly recommend it for the $15 that the different systems charge, but I dream of the future possibilities this steam punk world holds.

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Wargaming.net And DAVA Sign Deal

Wargaming.net, the developer and publisher behind World of Tanks, Massive Assault series and Order of War along with DAVA Consulting, LLC, a highly-acknowledged developer of mobile games and applications, have announced their strategic partnership and signing of a long-term co-development agreement.  Partnership with DAVA gives Wargaming.net the exclusive opportunity to step into the rapidly-growing market of mobile games and applications.

“Having known the DAVA team for some time, we are thrilled to have them spearhead our efforts in the mobile games and applications development,” said Wargaming.net CEO Victor Kislyi. “We are looking forward to establishing a strong presence on the mobile market and DAVA is the best partner to assist us.”

“We are honored to be working with such a world-renowned developer and publisher,” said Oleksandr Alex Fomenko, Founder of DAVA Consulting, LLC. “The strategic partnership with Wargaming.net is an excellent opportunity for us to develop innovative content on a global scale and we are extremely excited about it.”