Life

“There was a Player that created life and he saw it was good. So he fed the life with… stuff and gave it an electrical butt so that the life could protect itself and kill others. The Player watched the life grow and change. The Player saw the life walk out of the primordial sea into the lands of the world, but he grew tired of the slow evolution so he mutated the shit out of the life and turned it into a demonic, carnivorous cow. The Player taught the cow how to use fire so that it could burn every village but its own and rule the land. But the cow was ungrateful. All but one cow city turned their backs on the Player, and they build cities of gold and silver, and guano. And blasphemy was on their lips, and they started to feast on turnips and marshmallows. So the Player taught the last faithful city of cow to build war machines from plastic and cheese and gave them ray guns and megaphones. The Player spoke to the cows and ordered them to kick the living shit out of the heathens until they return to the Player’s bosom. And there was much rejoicing. And as a reward the Player made a space ship so that the cow could rule the space. And then the Player died of boredom. The end.“

That pretty much sums up the experience Spore offered me. Spore is an odd game to review – I really had fun on my first playthrough, but it was diminishing very quickly on my subsequent approaches to the game. The game is not bad by any means, but has a few very irritating shortcomings that make playing Spore not nearly as entertaining as it could have been.

When all the hype around spore started to arise everyone was talking about it like it was the second coming. It’s not.
The gameplay of Spore is a mix of strategy and RPG, with the last (the space) phase being something of a single player MMO (makes no sense, I know). Since the game was said to be about evolution of your creatures I was expecting that feature to be most pronounced, but I found out it’s not entirely the case. The evolution part ends pretty much at the beginning of the civilization phase (the 4th one), which is about at ¼ of the game. The rest is about conquering the globe and going into space and let me tell you - the space stage is more than half of the game. Sure, you’ll be advancing in the last stage, but it’s more like a strategy game advancement than anything else. It’s done through trade and combat.

The first four stages are very brief – you can get from the cell to the end of the civilization phase in four to five hours and while it’s fun it seems really underdeveloped. Sure, you’ll be utilizing many of the game’s creation tools - you’ll shape your creature, your vehicles, your buildings and some other stuff, but none of it significantly influences how the game plays. Even though you’ll have different stats depending on what parts your plane has the changes are insignificant, especially considering how easy and forgiving the game is.
Will Wright said that the game was designed in such a way because he wanted everybody to be able to play it. I think he went a bit too far.
First of all, the game is really simplistic. I mean really, really simplistic. Even the most complex of the planet stages, the civilization one, utilizes three types of vehicles (land, air and water) and three types of buildings, and that’s it. Oh, sorry… there are turrets as well, silly me.
Second of all, Spore doesn’t pose any challenge. You can die and there is no penalty for that. You can loose a battle and there is no penalty for that either.
That is all until the space stage. In a split of a second you will be swamped with options and mechanics that are disproportional compared with the rest of the game. It’s not hard to learn them all, but it can be overwhelming at first.
And what can I tell you? Even with all the available options I simply found the space stage boring. After six hours I found myself drooling on my mouse-wielding hand with my eyes fixed on my spaceship. In that respect it reminds me of MMOs as well. It’s a grind.
Just one more thing about the difficulty; I’ve played the game on all three settings and I have to say that none of them works very well. Easy is just too easy. You’ll be through all the stages in a matter of eight hours. The game could almost play by itself. Normal is also too easy, but the space stage seems a bit better. And on hard the first four stages are also very easy, but the space stage is ridiculous – I had my colonies constantly attacked and destroyed and found myself starting from scratch time and time again – it was not fun.

And still, maybe excluding the space phase, I found the game to be a blast to play. It just works for some reason. There may be no challenge, but it’s a great game to relax with. Keep in mind however, that it works best in moderation. Play one stage, go to sleep then play the next one on another day. Finish the game on one sitting and you may find that you won’t want to play it again. I blame the space stage – it’s tiresome.
Also, the constant need to create new stuff every time you play a new species gets old rather quickly and can get on your nerves.

There is also one thing that bothers me the most probably. Regardless of the way you play, be it a friendly, aggressive or a middle road, your experience will be pretty much the same.

Technically Spore is great. It may not be a flashy game with photorealistic graphics, but the art design and uses of perspective are excellent. It’s great to look at and it makes it a tad more fun to play. I especially liked that space stage in that regard. The planets are small and it’s really fun to fly around them, look at the catroonish surface textures and the multicoloured atmospheres. The space is charming as well. It’s not EVE Online, but still. A standing ovation should go to the creators for the animation algorithms. You can make an eight-legged creature and each leg could have six joints and it will still move like it could exist in real life. I understand where all that development time went; because it certainly wasn’t spend designing gameplay mechanics.
Not much to say about sound – it’s there, it works, but the alien voices can get a bit irritating.

Some people protested about the “use” of religion in Spore and I kind of see their point now. You see, you conquer a city by using religion in pretty much the same way as you would by using force. You don’t destroy anything, but it’s still an attack in a sense. A bit disturbing.

So there you have it. Spore - another game by Wright that actually manages to convince you that it’s better than it actually is. Just like SimTower. Something should have been a lot more complex than it is, but works well enough for people to blindly buy millions of copies. And I’m ok with that.


For the Record.

The game uses an unbelievably ridiculous DRM. You can install the game a total of three (3) [III] times, because you’re only allowed to activate it three (3) [III] times. It’s just… WOW. EA should have delegates in the Polish parliament; they would fit nicely in there.

But in case of Spore the DRM is not a really big deal, because once you uninstall it, you probably won’t want to install it again.

Penumbra Level Pack

One fine day I went to my local media store to buy some new cartridges my printer had been crying out for and, while I was walking through the PC games aisle, I caught a glimpse of a familiar cover with not so familiar subtitle.
'Penumbra: Requiem?' I asked myself. 'Could this be the third and final part of Penumbra? Hell, they've released it already and I didn't know anything... Damn vacation...'
The fact that the thing was bundled with Black Plague (the second part) was a little suspicious, but oh well... The things we do to maintain the review count...
About an hour later I started the game and about two (okay, so maybe three) hours later I finished it. Seriously, like, what was that all about? Confused like hell, I checked the official website and... Yeah, that's how utterly stupid I am.

All I had to do, was to check the box a little closer and I would have learned that Requiem is not, in fact, the third and final part of Penumbra trilogy, but just a bunch of levels the creators made to test out the game's engine. At some point they decided to try and make so more money out of it, so they released Requiem together with Black Plague, hoping that someone would buy it. Someone did...

There are 9 levels (more or less, depends if you count the cutscenes), all of which are about finding "keys" to open magic gates which teleport you to the next location. There are no enemies this time, but that doesn't mean you can't die - on a contrary, the opportunities to drown, explode, freeze to death, or fall to your doom present themselves. What's also lacking, is the Penumbra's trademark adventure element (pick up some item, examine it, then use it on some other item) - Requiem is more Portal-ish in nature, where you have to rely on running, jumping and limited interaction with the environment (throwing switches, moving around objects, etc.), so adventure game fans, who love spending nights figuring out how to make a jetpack from bubble-gum and some toilet paper* might be a little disappointed. On the other hand, Portal fans who happen to like Penumbra's dark atmosphere will feel right at home.

At this point I was going to write something about the story, but I think I'll give up, because the plot, if there actually is any, remains a mystery to me. According to the developers, Requiem picks up right when Black Plague left off, but sorry, I'm really unable to tell if that's true. The protagonist is on the run, trying to escape from the underground complex and that sort of makes sense, but the rest was just plain madness.

Speaking of madness, remember Clarence? No, he's not back, thank God, but this time, there will be as many as three voices speaking to us from within the protagonist's head. Thankfully, none of them is as terribly aggravating as that Clarence bastard and I must admit, I really got like the female one informing you about your progress with the keys (sounds like a cheap GlaDOS rip-off, but still).

Overall, Requiem is a pretty good game, even though it's a level pack, or a tech-demo, if you prefer. There are no monsters, but the music, the darkness and all that crazy-talking voices have a fairly good chance of keeping you on the edge. The levels are big and varied: caves, corridors, sewers, outdoor area and many more. The puzzles are interesting and, while some of them may get a little tedious, I guess you'll have at least some fun trying to figure them out. The bottom line - if Frictional Games includes some of these ideas into the third Penumbra (and, for heaven's sake - improves the goddamn monsters!!!) we're in for quite a treat.

* About that jetpack: add some antimatter and it will work.

Never Forgive.

Seems that THQ really digs the Warhammer 40k universe – they made a very good strategy game (and are making a sequel), they are making a WH 40K MMO (at least they claim they are), they made the FPS - Fire Warrior (which I didn’t like because Tau suck ;) ) and now they are conjuring an action game.
The game is simply called Warhammer 40000: Space Marine and seems to be a shooter slash brawler.
I can’t really give you much detail about it, because THQ did not provide us with any details.

I can however tell you that there was a video from an early build of the game that showed a lot of promise. Even in that early stage of development the graphics look very good and the art style is grim enough to make a good 3rd person WH 40k game.
The game is fairly brutal and features sweet, slow-motion finishers. The video showed the title Space Marine fighting the forces of Chaos (with very nice Chaos space marines) in an abandoned city under siege by Chaos soldiers. I really hope they will put some Tau in that game so I can gut them with my chainsword. Oh, oh, and Tyranids. Can I please have tyranids? 

It seems that the footage leaked without THQs consent and is being taken offline as soon as someone submits it.

Ah well, seems we’ll just have to wait for something substantial.

Summer's not fun.

The holidays are over and we are back.
During my time off I made a few observations about the summer in gaming context. First of all summer is a lousy time for gamers. Unless you like to reminisce or play old games that you didn’t have a chance to play before summer is the season of boredom because nothing comes out.
I can imagine it has something to do with the fact that people go on vacations and need to have money to buy pointless souvenirs so they are not willing to shell out a few bucks on new games, hence the publishers don’t want to risk lower sales.
I for one would be more than happy if I had a few new titles to play through during the only period in the year when I actually have some free time on my hands.

Second thing I’ve learned is that portable consoles are your friends when it rains and you happen to be away from home. Not only that – they are also your fiancées friends. Nothing like some collective brain storming while playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village (fabulous game by the way).
Another thing that I’ve learned is that the first DS is no good in the sun. If you ever wondered if you should sell your old DS and get the Lite one I encourage you to do it right away. I promise, you’ll be as happy as a clam.

In my infinite boredom I have decided that I will rather make another World of Warcraft character than play through Resident Evil 2 again. After playing a hunter for a while I came to a conclusion that WoW bores me to death and I would rather watch my nails grow.
I’ve been playing this game since open beta – that is about four years. I am pretty sure that the game started to bore me about two years ago. If anyone has an idea why I’ve been playing it since then let me know. I’ll be sure you’ll get a figurative coconut.
I will give WoW one more chance after Wrath of the Lich King is released, but I won’t hold my breath.

Another thing that, as a gamer, I don’t like about holidays is that when they are over there is an avalanche of new games. It’s not good, because I have neither time, nor money to play them all.

Oh well, at least I finally finished Resistance.
And tomorrow, a happy day – Viva Pinata 2 comes out ;) … Some impressions in the next few days.

War can't be THAT fun...

Ladies and gentlemen, Red Alert 3 is almost upon us. Yeah, yeah, the legend among legends, 5 gazillion copies sold, le RTS extraordinaire, whatever... All I can say is - have you seen how damn colorful this thing is?

No, not that colorful like in the screenshot above - but you probably already know this; why, only 5 minutes ago you've been on the official website and followed the Three Steps. (Personally, I've completed two of them long time ago. I bought C&C First Decade.) Putting all the hype aside, I'm not sure if the creators have gone in a good direction with RA. I absolutely loved the first one. It was gray, serious, not totally overwhelmed with freak technology - it felt like war. After that, RA2 felt like a cartoon. Funny (not) characters, Tanya Adams wearing more make-up than ammo, the units being more hi-tech than their Tiberian Sun counterparts (I mean, really, whose idea was it to put two long-range siege cannons on a helicopter??) For me, Red Alert 2 was a damn comedy, not war. I didn't feel like an officer anymore - I felt like an actor playing in a cheap war flick.

What about RA3? The trailer looks promising enough - famous actors, decent CG, it looks like there may even be some actual plot. But then I look at the screenshots and everything goes to hell - wild, big-ass, unbelievable buildings, units likewise, more colors than the series has ever witnessed; sigh... a comedy after all...

Since Electronic Arts insists on making warzone look like Las Vegas at night, there must be many gamers out there who actually enjoy it. Well, yeah. I've heard MTV does this to people sometimes...

PS. No worries. I'll play the game. If only for Peter Stormare.

PS2. We are not dead! Just pretended! You guys are just so gullible...

Rise of the Dragon

One of the most ambitious adventure games of its time. Released as early as 1990, Rise of the Dragon offered a somewhat primitive yet immersing cinematic gaming experience. For me.

The plot is not really that complicated (Legacy of Kain came much later) - the setting is the futuristic Los Angeles, looking awfully similar to the futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner. Here, however, the year is 2053 instead of 2019 - apparently the game's creators came to conclusion that 2019 was much too early for hover cars, video-telephones, etc... Anyway, the city is on the verge of being torn apart by a malevolent underground Chinese mafia planning on taking over the world by selling a powerful, mutagenic drug. You know, a typical Elexis Sinclair syndrome. Or should I say, SINdrome. After the mayor's daughter falls victim to the organization, a veteran cop-turned-private-eye, Blade Hunter (the name sounds familiar) is called to investigate.

Most of the time, you'll watch the ROTD's rotten environments through Blade's own eyes, or so it seems. You get the general overview of the area and the opportunity to click around an interact with objects and characters. The latter are usually very talkative and once a conversation starts, you'll see close-ups of their faces (their expressions change, depending on what mood they are in), along with available dialog options. Needless to say, your performance as a conversationalist will directly affect the relationship between Blade and a given character, so if you piss somebody off, he or she won't be willing to help you later on, and you'll get stuck. The objects are much easier to handle - through the simple inventory.

Rise of the Dragon also features a time limit. You have precisely three days to solve the case and bring the bad guys down, or you'll loose. The game is especially unforgiving with transportation. Traveling from one location to another obviously takes much time, so you cannot just move around freely, like in, let's say - Broken Sword. You have to plan ahead.

There are also some arcade sequences, where Blade finally uses his gun. Two of them are simple side-scrolling shoot'em-ups, with the opportunity to dodge enemies' bullets by ducking or jumping on platforms; and one is an even simpler mouse-aiming shoot'em-up. Fortunately, if you happened to suck at these, the game offered to skip them - very thoughtful of the developers.

A word about conversions. In 1991 the game made its way into Amiga (10 floppy diskettes) and in 1993 into SegaCD, in a very deformed shape. For once, it featured voice acting with Cam "I'm you! I'm your shadow!" Clarke himself voicing Blade Hunter and all of the subtitles got removed. Yet, the consoles of that time were less capable than home computers, so the color palette got narrowed down to 64. Apart from that, Rise of the Dragon was one of countless victims of early nineties video-game-brutality paranoia. Many things, from lap dancers in night clubs to ammo clip innocently lying on Blade's desk, were removed. Strangely enough, you couldn't skip the arcade sequences this time.

If you already know Rise of the Dragon, you might know Heart of China - a very similar adventure game, this time borrowing heavily from Indiana Jones series, released one year later. Both games are very important classic titles, offering a much more sophisticated approach to adventure genre than their predecessors and being an inspiration for many great later titles. For all of you vintage-fans out there - simply must-plays.

Norse Mythology...

To tell you the truth Too Human wasn’t on my „Most Wanted” list. Actually, it wasn’t even on my “Interested in” list. Ok, it wasn’t on any of my lists, because it was one of those games I couldn’t care less about. Even though Silicon Knights is one of my favourite companies (Twin Snakes – yeah!, Legacy of Kain – Yeah!, Eternal Darkness – YEAH!) my initial thoughts about their new game were less than favorable. I don’t like the art design – all the screens and videos look way too colorful for a game of the type (action RPG…or is it a hack’n’slash?) and seem motley. I feel a particular distaste for the main protagonist – Baldur who is probably the worst character since Johnny Cage. Deprive him oh his blue face-tattoos and he could be a random goon in a GTA game. His design is so mediocre and boring the person responsible for it should be dressed in a silly suit, given a fake, red nose and a mustache and hung upside down as an example. When I think that I would have to play through three games (Too Human is almost certain to be a trilogy) with that monkey-man I can’t help to flinch. Also, the HUD is terrible in design. It looks like it was taken from a plastic watch for small kids. It should have a friggin’ Mickey Mouse on top of it.
Fortunately the locations look much better although there are some bland textures here and there (the ground in grassy sections – yuck). I particularly like the lighting that isn’t as over exaggerated like most of the art choices in this game. You can see that the game is made on the Unreal Engine; there is no doubt about it.
Next thing I’m not too sure about are the enemies designs – the main mechanical goblins look like a cross between DOG from Half-Life 2 and the Geth from Mass Effect. Actually, to me they look like a total rip-off, but whatever. In the demo the only other enemy (although there are a few types of the goblins) is some sort of a robot giant. Enough to say it looks silly.
Oh, I have to mention that I really like the sound in this game, especially during combat – swords clashing with metal enemies and energy weapons sound really cool. On the other hand the voice acting is not very impressive – it’s a bit too much a B-movie class which doesn’t fit the game.

Ok, I guess I’m done bashing the design, so I should move to the game mechanics. I must say that this game’s presentation is top notch. There are great camera angles not only during the well directed cut-scenes, but also during exploration and combat. Ok, that wasn’t about mechanics. Now I’ll tell you about mechanics.
From the playstyle point of view this game is a bit of like Diablo. You have a choice of five character classes which are supposed to be different from each other, but during the demo I couldn’t see much difference between them. Keep in mind though that the demo if relatively short so you can’t develop your character enough to see his more advanced skills.
The combat is fairly simple, but deep enough for a hack’n’slash to prevent itself from being boring. A word of warning - you won’t realty appreciate the combat unless you play the demo at least two or three times. At the beginning the combat seems very awkward and somehow “fake” and you’ll be constantly trying to change the camera angle with the right analog stick… which you can’t since the right stick is responsible for attacking. The concept seems strange at first, but once you get used to it you’ll be able to pull off some nice combos. Also, the camera might seem unruly at times, but it’s actually designed to give you more dramatic shots during combat, which it does. And you can always manually re-center it.

The item system is also similar to the one from Diablo. You’ll be collecting various pieces of randomly generated armor (which is nice) and many types of weapons – also randomly generated. There are two types of the latter ones – melee and projectile. The melee weapons include swords, hammers, staves, etc. and the ranged ones include pistols, shotguns, rifles and so on. Some of the projectile weapons even have alternative fore modes, which is great.

The demo itself is about 40 minutes long if you skip all the cut-scenes. You may thing that is a lot of time to get to know a game, but in case of Too Human it’s not. You will barely scratch the surface. I think it would have been better if Silicon Knights made the demo from a later portion of the game, with Baldur at a higher level as it would give more insight into the mechanics and combat.
Still, after checking all the character classes and playing through the demo a total of six times I must say that I am pretty interested how the final product will turn out. I won’t say that Too Human will find a place in my games collection, because I will wait for some reviews before I decide to buy it, but the demo did boost my hopes and interest.

I encourage you to check it out. And do not be discourage with your first few minutes with the demo. This game requires some getting used to. I’m sure this game will the “love or hate” kind, but maybe you will actually be the ones to love it.

Oh, one more thing. Most of the character classes are on a timer, and are currently locked (right now you can play two), but there are ways to play all five. Try to google it and you’ll find it.

Games Make You Say "Ouch"?

Nasty things can happen to you while playing games and I don’t mean destroying something with your Wiimote when you forget to put the “safety strap” on your hand. I mean injuries, sickness even death. Ok, Ok, I know the death part is overly dramatic and that only the Chinese MMO players can get to a point where they die from playing. Still, it happened a few times, so it’s worth noting.

Playing a game is generally a pleasant experience. Sure, some games cam be stressful or frustrating, but even those bring you a bit of happiness in the end. However, there are some games that can bring you pain and suffering. Those epilepsy warnings are there for a reason you know.
I bringing this up because one particularly good game that I have finished recently made me feel really lousy. Condemned 2 is freaking amazing, but I just couldn’t play it more than one hour at a time. Why? The answer is motion sickness. Motion sickness is a particularly nasty side effect of some 3D games. Condemned is in 1st person and features a lot of changing camera angles to represent Ethan’s (the game’s protagonist) view. That includes falling down the stairs, being hit with heavy objects and landing on your back after falling from high places. It all looks realistic and great, but add motion blur to that and some screen filters and you get something that your brain my find too “unpleasant” to process.
Not all people suffer from motion sickness during some games, just like not everyone gets seasick on a ship (which is also motion sickness). Also, not all games of a particular type make you sick.
I’ll make me my example. I get sick while playing Condemned 2, but didn’t playing Condemned 1, Halo 3, Call of Duty (any) or Doom 3. The worst case was with Alien Trilogy. I couldn’t play it for more than 30 minutes. I did finish it, but it was a very painful process. I even had motion sickness with the first Spyro (I know, it’s ridiculous) – I guess it was just too 3D for me back then :D

So, how do you know if you’re getting motion sickness while playing a video game? The first symptoms are heat waves. If you’re getting hot for no apparent reason you can be pretty sure in a few minutes you’ll be feeling dizzy, nauseated and in some cases you gonna get a headache. Ignore those symptoms and after a while somebody will need to hold your hair while you puke out your lungs.

I would really like to play Mirror’s Edge when it comes out, but after my “adventure” with Condemned I’m not sure my organism will tolerate my hobby.

Of course, motion sickness isn’t the only thing that can happen to you during your gaming sessions.
All dancing games are potentially dangerous not only for your health, but for you life as well. If you want to play in cluttered room full of sharp-edged furniture better go out with your dog, because you may be paving your way to ER.
Dancing games are cool, but the mats in most cases are fairly small (which makes confide your movement to a smaller space which can be awkward) and slippery. I myself fell a few times while playing Dance Dance Revolution and many of my friends sprained their ankles on Paranoia. Sure, you can buy a metal platform to lower the risks, but not many of us can afford that kind of commodity. And I can imagine that even fewer would have a place for it.

PC gamers are prone to hand and arm injuries. Let’s just say that the mouse and keyboard may be perfect to kick ass in Unreal Tournament 3, or make that tank rush in Command & Conquer, but you can be sure your wrists like it less that you do. Those kinds of injuries are quite common for pro computer scientists and designers but many gamers tackle with that problem as well. The biggest problem with using a mouse and keyboard is that you don’t see the negative effects of using them right away. It takes a few years to develop and then it’s much harder to fix. Still, having a proper position while playing and a keyboard and a mouse pad that support your wrists lower the probability of any dysfunctions.

This article is not supposed to scare you or discourage you from playing games. I’m not saying that you gonna get a heart attack after a five hour session with Samba de Amigo and I’m not saying that you’ll use your are while playing Wii Sports. All I’m saying that playing games, just like any other activity, should be approached with common sense. Play your games, play them a lot, but don’t do it at a cost of your health of well being.

A side note.
You know how all the hardware and software manuals tell you to make a fifteen minute break every hour? Common sense aside – I would like to see anyone who actually does that. If you do and are reading this, leave a comment. I would like to congratulate you and ask you some uncomfortable questions.