Finished Braid

By: QUIK

Not a proper review. I was just curious, at what point did we have to turn 2D side scrolling platformers into artsy fartsy, sad little art games? Honestly, when I want art I go to a gallery. In my side scrolling platformers I want fun, craziness and challenge. I said it before and I’ll say it again, don’t try to reinvent the wheel people, instead make more games like Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario Land. Why? BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO GREW UP WITH THOSE GAMES WANT MORE GAMES JUST LIKE THEM!!! I don’t want some BS story in the back of my platformer about some dude being too controlling with his girlfriend or how an atomic bomb is bad. Seriously… wtf? Fun game, good game mechanics, more of a puzzle game then a platformer but all this BS inserted in there just annoyed me at the end. I had to look up an explanation to get wtf kind of ending was that… and no I shouldn’t have gotten it on my own. If I want to spend an evening pondering the nature of my existance I do not put on a freaking video game. I finished Super Mario Land on 100%. I was rewarded with a good feeling about defeating Bowzer and saving Princess Peach. When I beat Donkey Kong Country I went into my banana cave and they were all back in there and Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong clapped for me and all was well and good in the world again. It was magical, fun and innocent. I want a side scrolling platformer like that again. I guess the only way for a gamer to get a fix of games like that is to buy Nintendo hardware to get games like Paper Mario and New Donkey Kong Country but it’s still sad that that genre of games is not available commercially anywhere else. Most of the time I have to settle for often very crappy Xbox Live Arcade titles (that most Nes and SNes games put to shame) or just roll out my emulators and beat my good old classic titles again. Ugh… I’m really annoyed right now, I think I’ll play some DKC to chill out before bed.

Legendary

Honest review by: QUIK

It’s been a long time since I have played a FPS game that I hated as much as I hated Legendary. I usually will finish a FPS game no matter how bad it is because I’ll either enjoy the story, or the combat system … or something … ANYTHING. This game I found unplayable.

Let me begin with graphics. This game looks horrible for a game released in the last quarter of 2008. The characters, enemies, environment and objects look fake and just plain fugly. The soundtrack sounded like someone pushed a random key on a music synthesizer and then pressed another one hoping they would go together. The way npc’s and enemies move feels like this game was designed pre 2000. The way you control your character is also quite horrible. Movement and interaction with your environment feels worse then something ancient like Deus Ex. When I stand on my toes I feel that I’ve moved up higher then the protagonist of Legendary can jump. I still have a bad taste in my mouth after playing this crap.

I finally decided to quit this horrible game in a following level. I was in a warehouse looking area, I had to get from point A to point B to open some door to move to another area. There were containers all over the place with planks conveniently connecting them. Every minute or so a random warewolf would spawn that I would kill and I would have to jump down to cut his head off with an axe (they regenerate and come back to life otherwise). I would then have to climb back up on a container and hope I could get far enough before another random werewolf spawned. When I finally made it to the end of this very annoying maze I pushed some button and containers began to move around hanging from this rail system on the ceiling. I assume I was supposed to jump on them from one to another to get to yet another stupid button. I decided to quit at this point. Let me be honest with you Spark Unlimited (creators of this piece of crap game), if I wanted to play a game in which I had to jump form one moving platform to another in order to get somewhere I would have played Super Mario Bros not your dumb game. When I play a modern FPS game I expect the following criteria to be met:
1) The game has to look nice. I don’t have a nice powerful pc to play crappy looking games. I have old school classics for that and they play better then this crap. So this game fails in this category.
2) I expect either fast paced combat experience (examples: Black / Halo / Bad Company 2) or a nice, moody, ambient exploration (F.E.A.R. , Singularity, Deus Ex). Legendary is neither, the combat seems forced, enemies seem generic, unchallenging and boring. Fail.
3) Don’t try to be clever, FPSs are about having fun not standing there for ten minutes trying to figure out what you should do or where to go. Most games nowadays either make sure the level design clearly indicates where you should go or you can press a key to receive a hint which way you should head (Singularity and Dead Space are perfect examples of that even though Dead Space is not really a FPS game.) You both fail and disappoint here too.

I could continue to list the faults of this stupid game and if I decided to continue playing it I’m sure I would only have more bad things to say about it. I didn’t continue playing however. I’d rather install some old game then play this crap. I would not recommend this game (in case you couldn’t tell) and I don’t intend to finish it. Two thumbs down from Quik.

On a positive note, stay tuned for my Singularity review which perhaps not a commercial hit, I found very enjoyable and I can’t wait to review it.

Harry Potter part 2

by: QUIK

I think the last two movies are the only instance in which movie (or movies in this instance) was better then the book. I am really excited about this trailer to the final chapter in the Harry Potter movies.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows–Part 2 Trailer

The result of browsing random Janese websites…

by: QUIK

So I’m browsing Japanese websites. Every once and again I like to watch something which creates artificial bridge between Japanese and western culture. Examples of this can be Japan-o-rama with Jonathan Ross or watching an episode of Akibatteru with wonderful Hiroko (youtube: Akibatteru). So for an example when watching Hiroko talk about a massage / relaxation therapy studio in Akihabara (and shows a website for it) I type that into my browser and see what’s what. My google Chrome settings indicate that I want all Japanese websites to be automatically translated into English so I got to check out the girls working at the studio, I got to check out their Twitter feeds (also translated automatically via Google Chrome) so I can follow the links they find interesting, I discovered some weird random website through this method ( see the website I am talking about by clicking here). It asked me to type in my name (through Google Translate: rarely summerized in one word of your existance). I typed in Piotr which is my name in Polish. My result was: “Piotrの存在を一言にまとめると「変態の神様」です。” which apparently (according to Google Translate) means: “To summarize the existence of Piotr shout "God of Transformation" is”. It may sound weird and boring to you but I feel like a tourist traveling alone without a guide in Japan except I do it through their internet domains =D

Trust me, if you’re bored and you wanna have a fun internet adventure try something like this. You dream of traveling to Africa, try to find a website that bridges the gap between your culture and the local coltare of the country you want to visit (like a forum or irc chat) and just go nuts going to all the local business websites, fun websites (games, entertainment reviews etc) anything local with decent amount of hits so you can see the internet through the eyes of a person living there. It’s kind of hard to explain really, but internet tourism is fun and educational. Worst comes to worst, you got google translate, wikipedia, youtube, google itself so many websites and services to assist you that will make this experience super fun (you will feel a little like Indiana Jones following clues), services not often available (or just not as good like google translate) couple of years ago.

Just something I wanted to share with you all and have fun internet surfing foreign waters ^_^

Returning to Middle-Earth

By: QUIK

This just made my day =)

The Hobbit =)

Chose well =)

I would be so proud if this was my daughter.

Girl joins the dark side and kneels before Darth Vader without even blinking =D

Rhytm Zone

 

Honest review by: QUIK

I have a love / hate relationship with rhytm games. They do seem fun to play from time to time but who wants to spend tons of money on plastic instrument looking controllers? On top of that the music selection is usually hit and miss with miss being preeminent.

Rhytm Zone is an indie game made by Sonic Boom Inc. At first glance the gameplay and the “feel” of the game bring to mind the Guitar Hero game series yet it is quite different. First of all you do not need to own an expensive controller. The game is simple to control and I honestly don’t think even a PC gamepad would make this game any easier to play. I use the “asdf” keyboard keys for the four channels where the beat points come at you. Rhytm Zone comes with a bunch of indie music you can download but here is the best part: you can add your own music. Whether your music is on a cd, it’s in your mp3 library or a purchased iTunes track you can add that song to the game and play it almost immediately. The game searches the last.fm database to make sure the tags in the track are correct and you can compete on the leaderboards to any and all of your songs! I had a blast today when I added the song by Jason Steele of the FilmCow studios (Charlie the Unicorn fame) called “Put a Banana in Your Ear”. The points where you have to press the rhytm buttons seemed perfectly matched, even parts where the music “extends” for lack of a better word where nicely matched to the points where you have to press the button longer for bonus points. I even made the top 10 scoring second place! <bows graciously>

The best part is the game costs only 7,99€ on Steam and you can add any music you can possibly think of for free! If you enjoy rhytm games I think you will enjoy this indie title. The game plays great and looks very beautiful in 1080p.