My review of Ninja Gaiden II just went live on IOLTechnology.
Excellent game, really enjoyed playing it.
Aug
01
Ninja Gaiden II review live
Jul
25
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (XBox 360) – Review
What’s more exciting than playing an objectives-based FPS game with good guys and aliens, big guns and a dozen types of vehicles? Playing that same game online with your friends of course! Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a multi-player (offline single player mode against AI bots is available) that builds on from the huge success of the free-to-play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory game for the PC, improves on the gameplay and graphics, and mixes in the hugely successful Quake franchise into it all.
The result of this mix and match of two great franchises is an exciting team-based multi-player game that makes you want to play more, and more often.
The story behind ET:QW is relatively simple, mostly inconsequential, and ultimately superfluous. The alien Strogg are invading earth and attempting to destroy humanity, and the human Global Defence Force (GDF) are trying to prevent humanity from being destroyed.
Watch the game trailer
Players play as one of five unique classes outfitted with either the GDF’s army arsenal, or the futuristic Strogg weapons. The adrenaline flows as each class, in their own unique way, help the teams meet the objectives for each map in question. Objectives vary from preventing the opposing team from capturing a strategic point in the map (or, in case of the other team, actually capturing that strategic point), to blowing up key installations, and escorting vehicles from one point of the map to another point, and even using the Covert Ops class to hack into a shield barrier to drop it, to be able to escort the vehicle further on the map.
Each class has specialist weapons and items, Medics can heal, Field Ops can provide ammo, Engineers can build buildings and turrets, and all the classes can hop into any of the numerous vehicles that spawn at the team spawn points. Vehicles range from Quad bikes to Jetpacks to Tanks and even Troop Transports.
The key to playing this game, is clever team-based play. Each team can have up to 8 player, and each team must work together, with the right mix of players in different classes, to be able to outsmart and outgun the opposing team, and meet the objectives set for the map. The Xbox 360′s headset allows players to speak to your team mates, to stay in contact and discuss tactics and strategy.
Watch gameplay footage
The graphics on ET:QW are fantastic, typical next-gen console graphics: Great attention to detail, and varied sceneries making for great variety while playing. In a game like ET:QW, attention to detail often gets lost on the naked eye, as you are most often too busy ducking and diving and driving and shooting to notice the individual leaves on each tree, or the well-rendered smoke coming from the vehicle you just abandoned.
The sound in the game is above average. There are many, many unique sounds across the levels, each gun, vehicle and turret sounds different to the next, and with practice and many hours of gameplay, it would be possible to identify the weapon just by hearing its sound. The exciting music in the game stops when the action starts, allowing you to play your own soundtrack using the Xbox’s dashboard.
ET:QW is a shining example of how small-scale team-based play can provide short bursts of fun, and yet allow serious gamers to have intense battles for hours on end.
A couple of things prevent the game from being great though. One of these things is the really rubbish matching system for online games, which doesn’t allow you to choose from a list of servers to join, but instead tries to join an ongoing game with other players of similar skill to you, making it incredibly difficult to play online with your friends. Another thing is the requirement to play online, and hence the requirement for a Gold Xbox Live account, to unlock a majority of the achievements in the game, not to mention the rather unrealistic requirements for unlocking the achievements. Rest assured, it will takes weeks, if not months, to unlock *all* of those achievement points.
These relatively small flaws aside, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a fairly good game, with great potential and lots of replay value, features two of my favourite franchises being mashed up together into this great example of what team-based gaming can be.
ET:QW gets a well-deserved 8 out of 10.
This game was sponsored by www.leno.co.za
Jul
19
Skitch alternative, and for Windows too!
Ever since I no longer have a Mac at work, I’ve been seriously missing several functions that certain apps gave me on OSX. Skitch is one of those apps that gave me superior screenshot ability, to be able to take a partial screenshot, annotate right then and there with text and arrows, and then just drag the image into an email or onto the desktop or wherever.
Last night, a friend mentioned he’s been using Jing on OSX, and that there’s a Windows version available. pity there’s no Linux support.
Speaking only of the Windows version here, Jing is not quite as feature-rich as Skitch is on OSX, but it there are certain things it does better, such as selecting a window to capture, instead of, like in Skitch, having to precision-select a box around the window.
Other really useful functions, however, Jing has, where the last version of Skitch I used, didn’t. It has auto-uploads to Flickr, or to Jing’s own screencast.com. Jing can also record video in the specified selected area on-screen, so you can do screencasts and upload them wherever, including capturing of the microphone.
Jing is a magic little app, and even though it’s not something I do every day, it’s a nice addition to an arsenal of little apps that just improve every day (and not so everyday) life on your Mac or Windows PC.
And yes, Jing is free.
Jun
28
Diablo 3 officially announced
Diablo 3 was officially announced on Blizzard’s website.
Oh this is just the bestest of bestest news I’ve come across for a long time.
Blizzard, the awesome creators of *very* successful franchises of games such as Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft and World of Warcraft, were teasing all gamers out there with a new splash screen on their website each day for the past few days. There were some sites out there that analysed and followed, and very likely, reloaded the splash screen every 5 seconds to spot a new one, all trying to decipher the cryptic clues the clever Blizzardites left, and some LOST numbers red herrings too.
And now, today, I go to Blizzard’s site, and what do I find? A beautiful splash screen announcing and linking to the new Diablo 3 site. The game was officially announced and unvailed at their World Wide Invitational event in Paris just last night.
Why is this such a big deal? Well, it’s really very simple. Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 were such successful games, that ever since Diablo 2 became so popular, I’ve personally been looking for more Diablo-2-clones to play, and even though there was Dungeon Siege and a whole host of other clones, they never really got close to Diablo 2. And now Diablo 3 is here. Oh man I can’t wait.
Jun
07
Lost Odyssey review is up
I just noticed that my review of Lost Odyssey for the Xox 360 is up on IOLTechnology.co.za. The game’s been out for a while, and I really tried to give it it’s fair chance, but it ended up being a pretty much run-of-the-mill JRPG. Nothing to sneeze at, and nothing much revolutionary either. Except perhaps for the fact that the amount of cinematics in the game pushes it to four full DVDs. Definitely worth playing if you’re craving tons (and I mean that…) of hours of random battles and story and cinematics and awesome graphics. Go on, go read the review. 