Silent Hill 2 Original Soundtracks

Theme of Laura is a simple and casual tune, which is fitting for a simple and casual Silent Hill 2 intro. Compared to Silent Hill from the first game's soundtrack, it seems more peaceful, even lulling. The energy is there, but it is a different kind of energy - gentle and romantic. It doesn't tell a tragic story, it tells a tragic love story. The undisputable highlight of this song is the very last note - a peculiar variation of E-minor chord which fades slowly, opening the door, preparing us for the second Silent Hill experience.

Ah, the unforgettable bathroom scene... White Noiz is what Silent Hill 2 is all about. A dream. Not in a warm bed with our heads resting gently on soft pillows, but in a moist, chilly fog with our minds floating over the pavements, seeing the eerie shapes, not recognizing them. The following tracks play with that concept, each of them altering our eyesight in a slightly different way. They take us to different places: the town, the forest, the lake, but still everything is foggy, out of reach.

One might say, that Silent Hill 2 OST is a much more peaceful soundtrack than the predecessor, featuring much softer, melodic sounds instead of rusty metallic screams. However, it's hard to feel peace while listening to it. It is as if peace never really existed. The mastery of the soundtrack, as I see it, is the ability to erase all of our emotions and replace them with its own, unfamiliar ones. It's hard to feel peaceful during A World of Madness or even Forest, just as it is hard to feel very fightened during Ashes and Ghost. This track has a sense of negative aura, we feel violent things happening around, yet it's not a fear that something may happen to you. It's like a rough river with you, a rag-doll, in the middle. Finally, when the river turns into the deep and dark ocean with giant black shapes moving in the deep (the second part of Ashes and Ghost) you feel empty, a breathless mannequin with the blank expression on your artificial face, seeing the things, unable to do or feel anything.

Some tracks, like Promise (Reprise), Null Moon, Heaven's Night, return generously give us back our souls, and return life to our bodies. They are very much like songs, only sung by a person using telepathy instead of mouth. Sometimes the fog wraps us up again (The Day of Night, Psionic Fairytale), sometimes negative visions appear (The Darkness That Lurks Tn Our Mind, Block Mind, Noone Love You), sometimes a little voice in darkness tries to tell us some great, sad story, but it doesn't know how (Magdalene).

The unfamiliar emotions which the soundtrack gives us in exchange for our own are perfectly visible in track 25. The thing which we might expect to be a grand finale, Betrayal, isn't a great finale at all. Although powerful (sometimes I hear Maria screaming somewhere behind the chains), it's nowhere near as nightmarish as My Heaven and quickly gets devoured by an strange white noise, called Black Fairy.

Theme of Laura (Reprise) introduces us to Overdose Delusion, in my opinion the most powerful actual song of the Silent Hill 2 OST. There are a couple of them throughout the soundtrack most of which serve as outro tunes for different endings. It might as well serve as the credit-roll for the whole experience, but this time we don't just see the credits, we see what we've experienced, the song perfectly summarizes it for us in an understandable language of melody. The actual game outro does the same thing, showing us cutscenes from the game, through the noise and blur. And once again, there's one more message you need to hear, before you wake up from the dream.

Promise is everything. It is love, it is sorrow, it is pain, it is a tragedy, it is hope, it is beauty. And again the perfect Asus2 chord at the end seems to be the most powerful one. Only this time, the dream ends and we are left with a picture of the late Mary Sunderland smiling at us, fading into blackness...

Gamerscoring

Giving the strangeness and extreme subjectivity of what I’m going to write, I think I should start off telling you that I’m Micro-phobic. Well, not a totally incurably hopeless case, but still a Micro-phobic. Thus, when I’ve read an article a couple of years ago about Micro$oft designing their own game console I frankly couldn’t believe my eyes. Okay, I know we live in a free world (or so I’ve heard) and no one should be banned from releasing their own gaming system, but it just didn’t feel right. I’ve had this image of an Alexander-the-Great-of-a-company which, having already conquered the land of PC operating systems, chose to rob even more gold and take even more slaves by invading the neighboring land of consoles. And giving all the B.G.’s cash and the support of Windows game developers, the quest was just a mere formality. So there came the Xbox and, quite frankly, the only green-case game I’ve ever wanted to play was Dino Crisis 3, because I enjoyed the previous parts. To this day I haven’t played Dino Crisis 3.

Oh, but that was then and this is now. Today we have Son¥ struggling (or not) to have people playing their PS3, Micro$oft boasting about Xbox360 which in my opinion is one of the ugliest gaming systems ever released (for some reason it always reminds of a coffee grinder) and finally Ninten-dada with their... “peculiar” approach to gamers. (they did brilliantly with Gamecube only to mess things up completely with Wii – why on earth are they trying so hard to make the console as childish and toyish as possible, is beyond me). And while in Europe the only PS3 model available is 40GB (while in U.S. there’s 80GB) and the European version of No More Heroes supposedly got badly censored, I, a prime Xbox naysayer, had no choice but to close my eyes on the Red Ring of Death issue (which might be a good topic for another post, or, like ten thousand of them) and got myself a coffee... I mean an Xbox360.

Anyway, what I want to talk about are the achievements and gamerscores. I realize that it may be just me and my Micro-you-know-what paranoia, but I’ve always felt rather uncomfortable around them. When I’ve first heard of Micro$oft adding achievements to the x360 games, even when their PS3 counterparts had no such things, I thought there must be something fishy about it. I mean, why bother? Most of the games have already had unlockable content so why add another set of challenges completing which in most cases won’t even unlock anything? All they do is just add some number to your...

Gamerscore. Each of us Xbox360 players has this awful label proclaiming what kind of gamer we are. We can’t do anything with it, we can’t download exclusive content or something like that. It’s just there for others to see. As far as I’m concerned, I would just ignore the damn thing and go on enjoying Dead Rising, not even once thinking about bringing up this subject on low-res textures, but when first I’ve learned how many people actually fall for that, I was positively mesmerized.

Remember that post, where FallingStickman divided gaming society into a couple of groups? Well, I wouldn’t completely agree with that division because the more gamers I meet, the more diverse reasons of playing and game expectations I learn about, yet I feel Micro$oft managed to created one other group. The achievement collectors. The gamerscore whores. People who buy and play their games till their brains turn to mush and their eyes come dangling somewhere below their chins simply because they want to... ahem... “score”.

The point which I’m so desperately trying to make is that gamerscores create artificial and, in my opinion, completely unnecessary competition. We, human beings, happen to possess the competitiveness carved deep into our neocortex – the feature which constantly makes us try to do things better than others or just well enough so we don’t look like total losers. So normally, if the gamers want to compete against each other, they turn on some multiplayer deathmatch and test their skills. But achievements and gamerscores are more than just sitting on your couch for a couple of minutes, pressing buttons. They are about spending countless hours trying to kill that last antlion larva or cross the finish line upside down, on reverse. Worst case scenario would probably involve running to a nearby store buying another game, because that sixteen you own right now won’t give you enough points you need to feel good about.

Did Micro$oft think about these things when designing the achievement system? Did they purposefully invent and introduce that scoring web which alters the “playing games” phenomenon into “playing games better than others” chore? And even if they did, how can I blame them? I mean it’s perfectly natural for every console developer to try and make people play their damn system, isn’t it? They aren’t doing anything unequivocally harmful like brainwashing and reprogramming us to play and then play some more. You can switch it off, set your profile to “invisible”, ignore the others’ scores, or even go offline and then it’s just you and your console, like it should be. But the scores ARE there and looking at how many people are locked in that eternal struggle to be the best among the best players keeps me just a little unnerved.

On top of everything, I’m willing to bet that somewhere on the surface of this planet there is a kid with enough money and free time to buy and play the most of all green-case games. Let’s suppose he did. Let’s suppose he is the most talented, persistent, simply the best Xbox360 gamer ever with his gamerscore approaching eight-digit zone. So what? There are people who would call him a god. There are people who would call him an idiot. Some might call him a total nerd. Others might call him an addict. (As a matter of fact the mostly used name for that kind of person is “Point Whore” or “Gamerscore Whore”.) And in twenty years time, where all of the coffee grinders would probably have long since burned to ashes, no one would as much as buy him a beer for his ultimate achievement. (I seriously doubt anyone would buy him a beer even now). The dead-end cases involve people actually tampering with their saves just to add themselves more score (towards what fucking purpose, may I inquire??) and getting punished by M$ - the account is reset and marked as “cheater”.

If by this time it occurred to you this post is just a crazy talk of an overreacting, Mirco-phobic lunatic, then I guess you’re perfectly alright. But if, God forbid, any of the points I’ve mentioned seems suspiciously familiar, then I think you ought to ask yourself how many posh dinners B.G. and His Happy Gang is able to eat for all the hard-earned money people give them, in exchange receiving some arbitrary numbers without any actual value.

Oh, and one more thing. I fucking hate when my car keeps getting stuck between the rocks just as I wanted to run over that last head-crab zombie, I mean, Jezus-fucking-god, I need just one more, just one more zombie and OH FUCK, NOT AGAIN! C’mon, just one more zombie, you goddamn car....................

EXramp and I had a few conversations about achievements in the past, and even though we fundamentally agreed our opinions are slightly different.

First of all, unlike EXramp I’m am not Micro-phobic, but I do admit that I’m not very fond of Billy and his Happy Gang. I also never had the first Xbox because I regard its games library as diverse as Scottish kilts – they are all chequered, just in different colours. And even when there was a title I was interested in it would soon be converted to PC. So why would I bother?

After Microsoft released its first info about 360 I was positively surprised – the changes to Live, the Dashboard, support from Japanese developers and XBL Arcade, that all made we feel warm an fuzzy inside… I still think it’s a well thought out system, but there is one thing wrong with it – the community.

The thing that comes to my mind when thinking about 360 players is a German teenager shouting “MOTHERFUCKER” with an accent through his head-set right into my ear (but that’s today’s trend among gamers – more about that in another editorial).
The second thing that comes to my mind is achievement whores. I could understand people playing to get “high score” back in the days when I was a regular visitor at the arcades, but in this day and age?
I know a few people who play games on their 360 just for the achievements - to increase their gamer score. And I think that’s very sad. They buy a game, get the 1000GS out of it, and then they either sell it on Allegro/eBay or buy a new one and do the same thing again. I can’t imagine where the basic idea behind games in this; where is the fun.
Second thing that comes from building up you GS in this unhealthy way is the fact that it strangely seems to builds up ego of some people. It’s not a rare thing to meet people on the official Xbox forums who claim to know more about pretty much anything just because they have a higher GS, when in fact they don’t seem to know Jack shit.

Playing for the sake of getting points is like having sex with a prostitute without breasts – there a satisfaction in there somewhere, sure, but it’s not really fun, and the fact that you had to pay for it in the first place seems to undermine the whole idea.
You know, I’m not against it, but I think it’s all very pointless. I could find a rationale for this if the achievements would unlock something – like in Mass Effect, but trying out all the clothes in Dead Raising for 20 points seems to have as much point as rubbing a carrot against a telephone.

Could you imagine that instead of unlocking all the artwork/movies/costumes/modes in Resident Evil: Outbreak after playing your ass off all you would get is a few hundred points added to your Gamer Score? Christ, I would rather eat soap.

To further understand people who play for achievements I have conducted an experiment. I decided to try to get 1000GS from one game and check what’s in it for me.
I took Call of Duty 4, because it’s a fairly short game and doesn’t require any online play to unlock all the achievements. I can tell you this – completing Mile High Club on veteran was the most frustrating experience I had with games. I did get the 1000GS and I believe that was the biggest waste of time in my life - even bigger than painting a Warhammer Chaos army and not playing a single game with it, and believe me… that took over two months to finish.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind achievements, but they seem really pointless to me. It’s just Micro$oft's another way to get more money. And I don’t believe that having a bigger GS makes someone a better gamer, it just proves that they have absolutely nothing to do in their spare time.

By the way, if Son¥ will introduce the “Trophy” system (or whatever it’s called) at least it might unlock models for your “Home” apartment, which would give a bit of a Animal Crossing feel to it and hence a bit more merit. Still, I wouldn’t bother to unlock anything unless it’s a statue of Metal Gear Ray.

Primal Rage

When I was still a kid, during holidays with my parents I could never force myself to lay on the beach and bore myself to death growing skin cancer while I was at it. I would always find my way to a nearby arcade and spend half of the holiday’s budget buying tokens. One year, at least ten years ago I stumbled upon a seasonal arcade that was set up in a large military tent. Remarkable place, with some rare (at least for Polish conditions) machines, including the first Street Fighter (!) and the game I want to write about – Primal Rage.
I need to explain one thing. When I was young I was really into two things – dinosaurs and Mortal Kombat. Finding a game that combined those two things was a dream come true.

Primal Rage is basically that – Mortal Kombat with dinosaurs. It’s a 2D fighter with special moves, combos, lots of blood and brutal finishing moves. Could a small kid want anything more? Guess not, at least at that time I didn’t. This is a game that made me buy, or to be more precise I made my parents buy for me the Sega Mega Drive II (Genesis) gaming system :D
But back to our sheep. You can choose from seven (two apes and 5 dinos) different characters (that with their special moves and fatalities strangely resemble the fighters from MK ;) ) in a quest from global domination. The gameplay is fairly generic only distinguished from other fighters by the special moves system, where you need to hold attack buttons and then perform the required movement instead of doing it the other way around and an additional energy bar that when depleted with quick combos left the fighter defenseless.
Still, it’s great fun to see huge monsters fight against each other with their followers cheering them under their feet. And those followers sometimes come out from the background into the arena and can be either eaten, which will replenish health or tossed around which, with two players, can be turned into a game of volley…man, volleyman :D Great (if mindless) fun I tell you.
The character in the game were created from plasticine and brought to life with a technique more typical for cartoons than games – stop-motion animation. This gives PR a particular and whimsical look, which combined with a high does of brutality makes an odd, yet amusing game.

There were multiple versions - the best being the arcade one, followed closely by the Sega Saturn one, with PC version being displayed in lower resolution and PSOne missing some animations. The versions for earlier generation of gaming gear were scaled down quite a bit, but still fun. There was also a fairly accurate version for GameBoy which I also possess and have to admit that for a GB port was really good.
Primal Rage is also part of the Midway Aracade Treasures 2 compilation for Playstation 2.

If you have a chance give the game a try and I’m sure an evil grin will appear on your face when your enemy’s heart next to his health bar will explode and turn into a bloody pulp.

P.S.
Sorry for the lousy quality of screenshots. I couldn't find anything without a huge "something games" watermark in the middle.

Burndown

It comes as a bit of a shock for me, but Burnout Paradise was actually announced for PC by Criterion (although I smell the stench of EA around this).
Normally I’m all for making PC ports of good console games (and vice versa), but this time I’m all against.
There are some games that just shouldn’t be converted. I think that’s the case with most PC RTSes and a few strictly console titles – like Devil May Cry, or …Burnout.
Those are games that require fluid animation and constant frame rates - something a PC just can’t deliver (for anyone who played DMC3 on PC…Christ).
Even though the guys from Criterion said on their podcast that it’s gonna run smoothly even on old PCs, I really doubt it will be as smooth as on the consoles. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in Criterion’s developers – they are very skilled programmers, but I don’t believe in PC architecture.
You can check the podcast on www.criteriongames.com. Also, there is a video showing BP running on a laptop and some hi-res PC screenshots (the game looks very plastic on them).

I find this to be a travesty and a failed idea (sponsored by EA). Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Go ahead PC fanboys, hate me.

Seriously?

I’m sure every one of you at some point stumbled upon something that was so pointless, stupid or odd that you couldn’t help but scratch your head and ask – “What were they thinking?”

This editorial will be Clarkson-ish. I wanna be like that guy at his age – drive expensive cars, host a TV show about it and write to a newspaper about insignificant stuff and get paid for it. The only difference is that at his age I’m gonna be better dressed.

I’ve bought a battery blister today. It contained two AAA batteries which I needed for my TV remote. Without much thought I ripped the package open and took out the batteries. Only later I’ve noticed that the blister had a perforated section in the back and a small arrow in the front with an “easy to open” sing printed over it. Now, even though it’s nothing special I couldn’t help to think that it’s probably the most pointless thing created after Samsung designing E250. I mean what is the point of creating something like this on a box that will be thrown out two seconds after the batteries are removed. It’s not like you need to open it multiple times and those blisters aren’t really that hard to shred to very small pieces. It’s like writing on a toilet paper that you can use either side, or apologizing Germans for beating them in WWII. I don’t know, maybe it's a factor for some people to buy those particular batteries, but it’s kind of like buying a Prius instead of Enzo because it’s easier to get into.

Of course this is a gaming blog so I can’t be babbling about batteries. All in good time.

After the recent premiere of Grand Theft Auto IV the game attracted criticism from people who can’t tell the difference between a video game and bottle of cheap booze. Amongst those people were members of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). The abbreviation is hilarious itself, but the actual name is no better if you think about it. I’m sure the ladies that belong to this organization are trying to do something good but saying that "drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime... [it] is not a game, and it is not a joke…" in regards to GTAIV doesn’t make much sense. If you haven’t noticed GTA is a game, it’s not real and everything included in the experience it provides should not be taken seriously. If your kids can’t understand that then maybe you’re spending too much time bashing video games and not enough raising your offspring. But then again North America is a land where people have little common sense (not that Europe or Poland in particular are much better), so good luck with your mission…

Ok, now for some things that developers do with consoles and games.
The above mentioned GTA is an awesome game, I can tell you that, but some decisions about gameplay seem odd to say the least. It’s little stuff… that can get on your nerves.
OK, you can meet with people in this game – socialize. All you need to do is call them and choose where you want to go out. It’s all nice but you always have exactly one hour to pick them up, and considering that getting from one part of the town to another can take a lot longer (game time obviously) it’s a fucking physical impossibility to get to the meeting point on time unless you’re conveniently close to the spot. Sure, there are no serious consequences if you’re late, but couldn’t Rockstar implement an option that lets you choose when you wanna meet? That, ot a friggin’ teleport.

Next is Forza Motorspot 2. This game has one excellent soundtrack. It’s too bad you can only listen to it in the menus. I mean, what the hell? What could possibly be a reason enough to exclude the possibility to listen to music while racing? In this day and age! It’s a worse idea than Smith shooting Clerks 2. Seriously, that’s one of the stupidest decisions of the decade when it comes to games. I think only Molyneux who’s making a game where you can buy everything including your wife and kids made a worse one. Very educational Peter.

I have something about gamers as well, although I’m not really sure if those sad bastards deserve to be called that.
I’m sure you’ve seen this on blogs, forums or basically anywhere else where you can comment something that has even a pinch of significance. I think this “phenomenon” is most apparent on World of Warcraft forums. “First!!!!”. What is the fucking point in creating a post, or commenting information with this, just for the sake of letting other pathetic bastards (who write “second”) know you were the first one. Ok, I’ve answered my own question. But seriously, what kind of looser does one need to be to do this?
As my friend commented – “I think there is a certain kind of people who just load Pudelek* and keep hitting F5 until they see something new”. I swear to God this must be true.
This is one of the many signs of the fall of society. When the evolution of human body rushes forward the evolution of our brains seems to be making a 180 degree turn.

One last this that I find baffling to say the least is Micro$oft not letting you rewind your music files on X360. It’s not even funny, it’s stupid. But then again M$ likes to remove basic functions from their products.

What were they thinking?


*Polish website with ridiculous gossip about celebrities.

Silent Hill Original Soundtracks

Welcome to lowrestextures' second series, called Open Your Ears, where FallingStickman and Yours Truly will try to introduce you to a beautiful and rich world of game soundtracks. The painful truth is, no too many people actually care about game music, because "hey, it's just music, right?" No fancy graphics, no Source engine, no antialiasing, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? That's exactly the point. You push play, suddenly the part of your brain which remembers the game turns itself on, and boom! You're there. Only this time there are no problems with too little RAM onboard, the skipping animations or even the stress at having to do things quickly or you'll loose and be forced to start over from your last save. The images are yours to control. You relive the game from your own perspective. At your own pace. And sometimes, when you allow your mind to travel further, some beautiful things might happen. You might experience things which are completely new and astonishing. So let's do just that, shall we? We close our eyes and open our ears. And we push play.

At first there's Silent Hill, which sets us in the right mood and tells us what we are actually about to experience. It works like a title logo at the beginning of a movie. You know it, you've heard it a million times before, as the game starts. But then the strings fall silent and the ride begins.

What comes after, beginning with All, is a constant flow of sensations occasionally broken by simple, yet unnerving melodies like Clawfinger or Fear of the Dark. I've never met a single person who, having listened to the soundtrack, haven't visualized their own dark and fascinating worlds and travelled through them. Whether it was Silent Hill or not, we all touched the rusty fences, moved our fingers along the cold asphalt, smelled the warm copper blood on dirty walls, smelled the dust in the dark corridors. The sounds are mostly metallic - the whole rainbow of them, accompanied by more indefinite ones, sometimes close to blowing wind or obstructed breathing. Yamaoka-san orchestrates this kingdom ever so skillfully, some of the noises sound even a little organic like in Killed by Death which I sometimes call "belching of the metal god".

They grab you and never let go. Some are so incredibly vicious, they almost seem alive and sentient, with their mind set on only one thing - torturing you, tearing you up with their metallic fingers: Until Death, Don't Cry, Ain't Gonna Rain.

There are interludes, moments of catching your breath, moments of looking around and thinking, especially The Wait and Over, while some prepare us (Devil's Lyric 2) for a mad dash where every footstep you desperately make is violently pressed again and again upon your entire body (Dead End). And vice versa, violent songs which seem to rhythmically tear away part of your ears (Die) are followed by ones which allow your bleeding corpse to raise again and keep wandering (Never End, Never End, Never End).

There are also some songs which, like Only You, are honest and truthful, inferring real emotions and reminding us of the more casual soundtracks. But then comes Not Tomorrow and the real fun begins.

Not Tomorrow 1 is a soundtrack to Lisa's death scene - easily the saddest and deepest scene in Silent Hill. Too bad it got cut down - the game features a little longer version of the tune, but still it manages to capture all the essence. The crying body of a woman falling apart and begging for help from behind the door you shut in her face. Its brevity however is a virtue in some sense. It allows for smooth transition to Not Tomorrow 2 which introduces us to something darker and angrier. All the pieces are there; bad, sentient things are waking up and the tension is built for the great finale:

My Heaven is a 3 minutes' worth of pure nightmare. The endless, furious lament together with sharp banging sounds, crushing your temples, dragging you through hell over and over again. There's no ending, the song just gets its throat cut and there's silence which seems to last for centuries, until Tears Of... begins.

All the ending songs are there to wrap the ride up in a nice envelope. The credits roll, we catch our breaths, eat up our popcorn and stand up from the seats. But wait, it's not over yet. There's one last message you need to hear, called Esperandote. The little, gentle song caresses your ears for a while, and if you're still around after the lights go out, there's a bit of a bonus, Silent Hill (Otherside).

At this point I could write something trivial like "I recommend this soundtrack only to people who like heavy industrial sounds and not take the music all too seriously" or that I simply really enjoyed the music and think it's great, but that wouldn't do justice. The truth is Silent Hill OST is not a soundtrack, it's an experience. A profound experience. If you haven't listened to the CD yet, I dare you to go ahead and play it back to back. You'll never be quite the same again.

Alien Breed: Tower Assault

The third major installment in the Alien Breed saga (big word ;-P), the Tower Assault is a perfect example of how old games should have been evolving. What do I mean by evolution? It's really simple - all you have to do, is take every key aspect of the original game and improve it somehow. Here's how it's done:

The gameplay:
As far as scroll-shooters are concerned, it's not just a question of raising the number of levels. Alien Breed 2 had it, featuring 16 level, instead of AB1's 12, but this time Team17 went a couple of steps further, not only doubling the level number (36 main ones, plus additional "linking levels"), but also providing numerous ways of accomplishing them, making Tower Assault one of the first non-linear shooters. According to the box, there are 276 ways of beating the game. I doubt that anyone actually tried to follow every one of them, but it's good to know you can try and take new paths and explore new levels - the phenomena widely known as "replayability value".
Speaking about the levels, it's always good to have a wide variety of tasks, apart from a simple survival. No matter if it's just destroying some power cells, activating a terminal, or finding your way through the maze of hazardous containers, things like that make the game more challenging and entertaining.
Oh, and a new retreat mode was added, enabling you to shoot while backing off.

The graphics:
Tower Assault, much like Alien Breed 2, features indoor levels, as well as outdoor ones. This time, however, the indoor ones have been divided into 7 towers, each of them having its own distinctive atmosphere and graphic style. The civilian levels are mostly brownish with lots of furniture and bloody corpses. The security and military levels are full of hi-tech steel hardware and crawling with lethal droids. The science tower has a white, sterile look, while the engineering sector is rusty-metallic. There's also the spooky stores tower, where all of the lights are down, except for your trusty flashlight, and the floors are cramped with junk. The level design is just brilliant - miles ahead of the predecessors' empty coldness.
As you can see, the quality of graphics isn't everything. In the end, it's the atmosphere that matters most and this is accomplished by paying attention to necessary details and remaining true to the game's concept. This is why the Tower Assault's graphics seem much better than the original Alien Breed's, although upon closer inspection you would notice that, in fact, little has changed.

The background:
Back in the early nineties, if you wanted people to take your game seriously, you should have come up with some background story. Told either by a couple of paragraphs in the manual or by some simple cutscenes, the story always deepens the game's atmosphere, by enabling the most important thing - the player's imagination. Tower Assault features tons of story pockets revealed through the Intex Infobase or by PDA cards lying scattered all over the base. Believe it or not, these things, although cheezy as hell, actually did their job back in 1994. They even made a FMV intro for CD versions of the game (watch it here).

The rules mentioned above are not all that complicated, yet many great game series had to die prematurely, because their creators shamefully neglected them. Even today, many game designers think that all what it takes to make a great sequel is just to add some more levels. The truth is, everything changes: the times, the platforms, the gamers' expectations. Games need to evolve, or else they become extinct. Just play the damn Alien Breed series if you still don't know what I mean.

War - it's fantastic!

War is a horrible thing – it causes suffering, death and profit for the American arms industry. Wars are pointless and unnecessary yet they have existed since humans figured killing one another is a good way to resolve disputes. And something that is so deeply rooted in the human history must be a good topic for video games; although that statement is risky *cough* prostitution *cough*
During the early years of the 21th century (damn, this looks really serious ) a boom for World War 2 (in English everything looks like a movie title) began and many developers wanted a piece of the money pie baked on the success of Medal of Honor.
One of those companies was Infinity Ward that made a PC exclusive FPS set during the WWII – Call of Duty. The game quickly became a great hit thanks to the great graphics and an unparalleled atmosphere of arms conflict.
Infinity Ward was also the creators of Call of Duty 2 which was released on PC and Xbox 360 as one of its launch title. About a year later Treyarch released Call of Duty 3 (both IW and Treyarch work under the banner of Activision). Both games were excellent WWII shooters with the same intense combat introduced in the first title. There were also many spinoffs created for the previous generation of consoles, but none of them was as good as the main series.

A surprise came when Infinity Ward announced Call of Duty 4 – the first game in the franchise to be set in modern days. Many people were disappointed, myself included, but once first screenshots and gameplay movies were revealed all that disappointment transformed into awe.

Let me tell you this. This game is still undoubtedly Call of Duty. It features the same frantic, exhilarating shooting to the evil, gun wielding bastards that want to dominate the world.
The only difference is that now those above mentioned bastards are not Nazis anymore but a Russian/Middle Eastern mix of asshole with an appetite for nuclear weapons. I guess this is the only problem I see with the game. The plot is so predictable it hurts me in the joints.
Still, Call of Duty 4 is same game that makes you feel man enough to chew on explosives and piss out ammunition after beating it on the highest difficulty setting. And it’s the same experience that makes you want to jump from tall buildings after being killed in the same place for the God-only-knows-how-many times.
Fortunately this time around there is a lot more variety in the missions. You’ll get to go on a stealth execution missions (with one including a huge, bad-ass sniper rifle), bomb enemies from a plane or use a copter-mounted cannon. All the levels are memorable with a few being the most atmospheric I’ve seen in any video game.
There is a level in Prypiat, a Ukrainian town outside Chernobyl that after the reactor disaster was deserted by the inhabitants. Calling it a ghost town would be a serious understatement. You follow your commander through the town avoiding the enemies that are stationed there. You both wear ghillie suits and carry silenced weapons. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let me tell you this. If I would have to choose the best moment or mission in video games that would be it.
Most of the missions are still the run, hide and gun types and those also deliver. You’ll get to feel the chaos and deafening cacophony of war – bullets flying millimeters away from your skull, the grenade explosions that squeeze your stomach and roar of fighter jets flying over your head. It’s all there and it’s more realistic and dense than ever.
The incredible feeling is induced by two major (at least for this game) factors – graphics and sound.
This game is a graphical marvel. Textures, lighting and shadows, character models, and foliage are all incredibly well done making the game look nearly photorealistic. This is a game that will poke your eyes out with it’s well-modeled , pointy fingers The character animation is also life-like which only adds to the fantastic look. And if I add that it runs in steady 60fps (on consoles, won’t comment on the PC version, but let me assure you that you need a powerful machine to make it run and look as good as on PS3/X360) … Just can’t find the words.
Sound is top-notch as well. With the right surround system your guts with twist like an electric eel in how oil. You can evict your neighbors with the explosions and you’ll need arrange a visit with your dentists to rebuild your teeth because you’ll grit them listening to the sounds of ricocheting bullets.
The score was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams which we all know and love. You can’ go wrong with that guy when you’ll need music for anything about war.

Call of Duty’s presentation is a league of its own. The cut-scenes before missions are dynamic and well directed and have a unique approach.
CoD series was criticized for being too scripted. This game is no different – the scripted events are frequent and plentiful, but when it comes to this game I really disagree it’s a problem. It might hurt the replay value to some degree, but it’s nothing to really worry about. It’s like with a good movie you know – there won’t be any changes when you watch it a second or a tenth time, but you still enjoy it. When it comes to gameplay there are no major differences between Modern Warfare and previous games excluding one – shooting though objects. Just like in real life the bullets won’t stop on thin or fragile obstacles. You are able to shoot through wooden planks and plaster walls and that adds a whole new gameplay element. Imagine a night mission where you need to eliminate guards silently. There is a shack where some terrorist scumbag watches TV. If you enter the shack the guard will either shoot and make noise or sound the alarm. Either way you’ll get a dozen enemies on your position. But thanks to the great lighting system and the ability to shoot through wood you just look where his shadow is, take aim and shoot though the wall – bang, the guard is dead.

Ok, for the end I want to say a word or two about the multiplayer. I usually don’t play MP in shooters, because I have a very low tolerance for annoying bastards that I play against, but CoD4 is different. I had a chance to play the game during the beta test and fell in love with the MP (the love was short-lived, because I get easily bored, but I still play it from time to time).
First of all I love how the combat work – it takes only a few rounds to actually take somebody down. It’s not that Gears of War bullshit where you can put two full clips of rifle ammo into someone’s head just to get one-shoted with the shotgun. It’s also not Halo where you need to jump like a maniac to actually kill someone. This game is about skill (go ahead Halo and GeoW fanboys, flame). It’s the person who has the best awareness that wins, not the German teenager who happened to get to the rocket launcher first. Second thing I love is the presence of kill-cams. After you die you can get a replay from your killer’s perspective which means camping in this game is heavily penalized. And last, but not least is the ability to create your own class – choose your favorite weapons and perks like fast reloading or bigger bullet damage. This for me it THE fps multiplayer.

War is horrible but Infinity Ward managed to make it really goddamn fun. Even if that fun will be fairly short (you can beat the campaign in less than ten hours on the highest difficulty setting). If you haven’t already you should play this game regardless of which system you have (PC, PS3 or 360 – there is also a DS version that I haven’t played but it looks meh).