Have you ever wanted to go on an adventure holiday in an exotic country? Perhaps try out bungee jumping or skydiving? Maybe a bit of paragliding or mountain climbing? How about just causing civil unrest by demolishing the country's underdeveloped and fragile infrastructure?
Playing very similarly to Mercenaries, Just Cause 2 seems almost a step backwards from Panademic's sandbox title. The inability to destroy ordinary buildings feels unnatural given your ability to demolish certain government-built structures. This doesn't prevent your role as professional terrorist, ahem, agency operative from being any less fun.
JC2 calls upon the player to 'cause chaos' in the massive virtual playground of Panau. Chaos (denoted by an in game meter) can be achieved by completing missions for the local gang factions, destroying fuel depots and communication masts and generally being a pain in the Panauan President's backside. Having caused the prerequisite amount of criminal damage (don't worry, it's a corrupt regime, sabotage is good!) the next part of the story is fed to you via a new agency mission and the process starts over again. Slowly, as it factions you help gain influence and the government becomes crippled by your antidisestablishtarian exploits, you begin to unravel the secrets surrounding your assignment.
However, I would not suggest playing Just Cause 2 for the story. To be honest, I was pretty underwhelmed by JC2's storytelling, both in terms of narrative and presentation. What I did find was that it was immensely fun to play. The setting first of all is breathtaking. The islands of Panau are absolutely huge and incredibly detailed, With lots of incidental activity buzzing away in the background. You can fly for 10 minutes in any direction and still not reach the end of the map! The second hook to drag you into JC2 is the protagonist's unique weapon: the grappling hook. Acting as multipurpose tool to tether, grapple and pull, the hook can be used in combat (try tethering two soldiers together for instant giggles), for movement and, in conjunction with the new 'reloadable parachute', complex stunts.
While Just Cause 2 may not be the most important game release this month (I'm looking at you, God of War 3), it still is a blast to play. Ramping a sports car off a cliff into an oil refinery, bailing out at the last moment and ziplining to a passing helicopter and hijacking it, then detonating the explosives you set on the car is just as thrilling as it sounds. Why? Just 'cause.
It seems that the more you look around today’s video game charts, the more you see non-involving, emotionally detached games like Call of Duty and FIFA 2010. While they are indeed brilliant games in their own right, their appeal comes from the ability to jump in and play quick bursts with the ability to drop the pad after even as little as 12 minutes. I believe it is the lack of emotional attachment that causes games to develop like this and every once in a while, a game comes along that focuses and engages a gamer deep into a fulfilling and exciting series of events that simply forces the player to stay glued to his screen.
Heavy Rain is indeed that title. While of course there are genre’s specifically designed to engage players for countless hours such as RPG’s, this is a puzzle adventure that boasts variability in story progression, incredible narrative, amazing voice acting and graphics that compare to the likes of Metal Gear Solid 4. Unfortunately there are some hiccups along the way that I will discuss here, but overall, it is an experience that should not be missed.
Heavy Rain’s game play can be described as a variation of timed sequence events ranging from simply pressing buttons on time, to swinging the control from side to side, to button mashing. For something that sounds quite linear it is actually implemented well and varied accordingly to make sure you don’t get bored and are always on your toes. This of course is accompanied by exploration across the different environments that are somewhat enclosed off actually and you will find that for the oddest of reasons, the movement controls in Heavy Rain are far from smooth, in fact they are more trouble than they are worth.
The synopsis to Heavy Rain is a story involving four protagonists, each involved in one way or another, with the mystery behind the Origami Killer murders. As the story progresses, characters interact in different ways depending of course on how your decisions direct the flow of the game.
The main character, Ethan Mars is a successful family man that gets everything taken away from him when his first son dies and the killer captures his second son. Ethan Mars’ story is actually quite a huge rip off of the SAW movies, which I am sure you are familiar with. The killer gets in contact with Ethan through different devices and forces you through tormenting challenges asking ‘’how far you are willing to go to save your son.’’ The challenges are thrilling, including crawling through a dark tunnel filled with shards of glass and driving down the opposite side of the motorway for five miles. The absolute beauty of Heavy Rain and indeed this goes for all four characters, is no matter whether you succeed, or fail, the story progresses. I cannot tell you how wide the grin that developed on my face when I crashed my car on the motorway scene and instead of seeing a ‘FAIL PLEASE TRY AGAIN’ menu, Ethan Mars crawled out of the car and proceeded to escape, continuing the story, that was a great feeling.
The second character introduced is private detective Scott Shelby. This retired police officer is doing his own investigation into the case of the Origami Killer. His story involves quite a lot of physical confrontation and the need to find clues to figure out the mystery behind the killer. Along the way he befriends a single mother who helps him to try and uncover the mystery. A highlight for me with regards to this portion of the story was a small scene that is available on the online demo, where Shelby is required to disable an armed shop robber; while creeping up behind him you accidentally knock over some kitchen roll and if you don’t quickly press the timed sequence to catch it, you alert the robber. Needless to say, I failed horribly as I just didn’t see it coming, but then managed to convince the guy to leave without hurting anyone. Shelby gets involved with some seriously tough individuals and in my opinion, is the most lovable character of the four throughout the game, one that I personally got emotionally attached to the most.
The third character in Heavy Rain is FBI detective Norman Jayden, who is easily the best character in the game. Norman’s story concentrates largely on finding clues across crime scenes using the coolest gadget, ARI. ARI is a pair of virtual glasses accompanied by a special glove that turns anything Norman touches, into data that is analysed by the computer inside his glasses. When you use ARI, clues become available, information can be analysed and lots of other quite interesting things can be done. The most mind blowing sequence with regards to ARI is when Norman enters his new office in the police station, only to find that it is an absolute hole, so he opens his ARI system and transforms the room into a choice of locations including the planet Mars, or a tropical jungle, or the mountains. The game’s graphics are an absolute highlight here and it really put me in a state of awe to experience all of these environments in turn. A much more dramatic segment with Norman occurs in a flat when a religious fanatic is holding your partner at gun point and after persuading him to put his gun down, he reaches for his pocket and you get a quick time event to shoot him or not. I of course blew his head off; only to find out he was reaching for a crucifix. That moment really made me question my judgment and it showed me how well a video game can actually capture my emotions.
Last but not least, a journalist by the name of Madison Paige joins the story as kind of a side character to Ethan, his guardian angel if you will. Madison’s story is essentially used to prove Ethan Mars is innocent once he is accused of being the Origami Killer. Madison’s best scene is when she goes snooping for information and gets drugged by a mad scientist who then proceeds to try and operate on her with a drill. I fortunately got all the timed events correct and came out alive, but its sequences such as this that can change the entire story because if she dies, Ethan never gets in contact with her again and the path you developed changes. I feel it was important to keep Madison alive because Ethan goes through so much hell in Heavy Rain and she falls in love with him, so it is pretty cool that he gets a woman by the end of the game (do you see how much the game got me contemplating? And it is only a game!).
To be honest, the storyline throughout the game flows well, the game does a great job keeping suspense and you WANT to find out what is going on. However, when the conclusion arrives, you will be slightly disappointed, however, the ability to go back and replay chapters to see how the story could have played out pending on different decisions, is a great addition, one that is worth checking out just to see the different endings.
My conclusion summed up is this. The first time you play through Heavy Rain, you play based on decisions you make according to your moral decisions. Due to this, you do, without a doubt, become emotionally attached to the characters, you want them to succeed or fail depending on what stance you take, and you feel as if your good deeds are rewarded and vice versa. However, playing through a second time and forcing yourself to make decisions you normally wouldn’t make, just to see different variations of the story, is not actually as much fun because the emotional attachment disappears when you know the decisions aren’t really your own, just forced for the sake of progression.
Heavy Rain is unlike anything most people will have ever played or seen before. It is worth going through the game, but I simply cannot bring myself to recommend it to keep because there really isn’t much replay value, if at all in fact. If you can get your hands on a loan copy, or borrow it from a friend, do not hesitate, pick it up, play it, love it and it will stay in your memory as a brilliant experience. But if you purchase it, do not be surprised if after the first play through, it will be put on your shelf and stay there as there is really no incentive to play through again unless you are a trophy junkie and need to 100% that.
Atmosphere is an aspect of the video game industry that can mesmerise and forever implant memories of experiences into the hearts and minds of gamers. 2K Games did exactly this just over 2 years ago with their award winning masterpiece, Bioshock. Although the original in the series was based from the ideas of other well established franchises such as System Shock, and it held certain game-play flaws, one word shot it to stardom, atmosphere.
An experience like no other is how I categorised my first play through of Bioshock 1. With the Cinderella tale of a paradise submerging into total destruction, Rapture was an underwater city that I simply could not wait to dwell in once again. Now after playing through the second in the series, I can give my opinion on whether it lives up to its predecessor.
Bioshock 2 is set 10 years after the events of the first game. No longer is the world of Rapture controlled by Andrew Ryan, but rather in his absence your enemy, Doctor Sophia Lamb takes the role of the voice of Rapture. Needing to play the first one is not actually a necessity, whether this is due to the second instalments poor story that can easily be overlooked, or because you make the moral decisions that dictate the story, I am not quite sure, but if you want to know the background and history of Rapture and why things are the way they are, then a history lesson with the first game certainly wouldn’t hurt.
The game finally puts you into the shoes of the lumbering behemoth like Big Daddies. These powerhouses were first introduced in the original and were guardians to the very rare Little Sisters. Those who have played the original will know to take these guys seriously as they pack a mean punch and will do everything in their power to protect their sister. Of course making you this powerful would make the game ridiculously easy, so the introduction of the so called Alpha series of Big Daddies into the story line, allows them to put you into one of the very first Big Daddy suits, one that isn’t quite as powerful as the Elite enemies you come across.
Waking up 10 years later and finding your little sister missing is bound to annoy the hell out of any Big Daddy, so your immediate goal is to try and locate your soul mate. As the story advances you find out that without your sister around you, your connection will sever and you will eventually die, putting urgency on the story, but an urgency that isn’t put to good effect at all throughout the campaign.
As the game progresses, you will find yourself constantly getting more and more powerful. The game’s fighting mechanics range from 2 very different weapon systems, guns and plasmids. Guns are self explanatory, ranging from a grenade launcher, a machine gun, a spear gun, to your trusty melee drill and a few others. Each weapon has a variety of ammos one can acquire, anti armour, anti personnel, explosive and so forth. The rivet gun has one of the more exciting bullets available, trap rivets. These can be used to set up traps for enemies, although unfortunately the use of this ammo really emphasizes the stupidity of the AI who just blunders straight through them time and time again.
The Plasmids on the other hand, are a much more intriguing mode of combat. Rapture’s famous demise occurred due to DNA tampering with a substance called ADAM. This substance can be found throughout the game by either acquiring little sister’s and helping them find it, or harvesting the sister’s and stealing it from them (no prizes which route gets the good ending and which gets the bad). The Adam can be used to buy electricity, fire, a swarm of bees; vortex traps, ice and other really cool elemental upgrades that can be used on the offensive, and on the defensive. These of course can all also be upgraded to make stronger and do lots of neat stuff and allows for quite deep customisation in terms of how you want to go about playing the game and fighting your enemies.
Customisation advances even further with the game’s perks system. You will find different advances in in-game abilities such as being able to run faster, hack machines quicker, heal more, stun when using melee weapons, give off electric shocks when you get hit and countless other neat abilities. These certainly help throughout the game and using the research camera and recording your battles with enemies can only unlock rare abilities. For example, when you max out research on the new and very deadly Big Sister enemy, you get the Drill Vampire Tonic that lets you recover health and EV when you use your drill weapon.
What Bioshock 2 does well, is slowing the process of first person shooting down a little notch, and really emphasizing that there is a big role-playing element here. With diaries to find throughout the game and tonics hidden all over, it is almost impossible to not search through every nook and cranny to try and 100% this game. It is in these searching elements that the designers of 2K Games shine as they pack dark corridors and rooms with lots of spooky surprises and powerful messaging across the walls that really make Rapture come to life in front of you, almost to the point that the environment itself is telling its own story of sadness. That’s not to say the FPS element is not good, in fact a lot of improvements have been made over the original, most importantly the ability to dual-wield guns and plasmids for some intense combat scenes.
Bioshock 2 will offer you approximately 12 hours of campaign game time. I recommend playing the game on hard if you already completed the original because just like its predecessor, the game still carries the ridiculous flaw of death holding no consequence. In the Bioshock world, when you die, you simply re-spawn in a Vita-chamber with half of your health. You lose nothing in this process but all damage done to enemies, remains. So theoretically you can run into a room, melee attack a boss, die and just do it again until they die. I did not understand the logic behind this method the developers took but as a result you are 100% guaranteed to complete the game, which is a good thing, I guess. In those 12 hours you will experiences some excellent set piece battles, many more moral and consequential decisions that change the flow of the game and a huge load of jumps and scares. Rarely will the game get taxing and you will feel that it doesn’t pack the same punch as the original, almost as if they used ALL of their tricks in the first game and left nothing new for this instalment. Regardless, the campaign mode is well worth the play through.
Bioshock 2 continues the plight to keep us glued to the world of Rapture by introducing a multiplayer experience. It is actually, surprisingly fun and a welcome addition when most people will buy this game for the campaign mode alone. It is set during the fall of Rapture, so between the 2 games and puts you in the shoes of Splicers battling it out in all too familiar locations from the first game. There are a variety of traditional game modes with added Bioshock-type twists like the ability to become a Big Daddy, playing capture the flag with the Little Sister and so forth that makes it worth putting in the hours to rank up and unlock better plasmids and weapons for your online character.
Coming to the end of my review, I still find it difficult to find another example of a game that can capture the imagination of an audience so well. Sure if you break the game down, it is a decent shooter and a decent RPG at best. It is the world of Rapture that just blows minds, something that any and every gamer needs to say they have experienced. It truly is a utopia. God bless Rapture!
Will be working mainly with the Marketing, and IT departments for two major products.
Store Point of Sale and other Graphical Merchandising
Working to constantly improved the look, design, feel and culture of our web stores, email templates and our online communities
Good knowledge of HTML and Creative Suite.
Some experience in Flash, and other visual products helpful, as would an education of Media Studies and a capability to draw freehand.
Knowledge of PHP and back end databases would be a treat.
Overall the most important asset is a good eye for the aesthetic, and a rebellious streak in your art. Marriage of both is magic.
Reporting to the Founder, me, to start with, so balls necessary and that also means a large degree of creative freedom which a successful candidate will look at as an major benefit.
I downloaded the Boxee alpha well over a year ago and was unimpressed, to say the absolute least. I failed to see why I would ever use it. Personally, I don't watch much video on my computer. I have a DVR set up to record all the shows I would ever want to watch, cable service with tons of OnDemand options including premium channel content and an Xbox 360 for streaming Netflix all displayed on a beautiful big screen. On top of everything else, the alpha version of the software left much to be desired.
Now that the beta version has been released, the software is much easier on the eyes and a lot more intuitive although still far from perfect. After toying around with it, even though I don't have an extensive video library on my computer(s), I can definitely see tons of potential in this piece of software and soon to be available hardware. With rumors of Apple putting an HDMI out on their next Mac Mini, I can definitely see myself loading one up with a hard drive full of movies and the Boxee software to make a video jukebox.
The full details on the Boxee Box (pictured) haven't been released yet, so it may be better (read: cheaper) to pick one of those up depending on the internal storage space and actual price point.
I'm really interested in hearing how every one else is using/not using Boxee.
Without actually flat out saying so it seems that the Borg of the gaming industry has decided to get rid of all that fusty micro managing and base building. Essentially removing all the strategy from this Real Time Strategy title.
The whole system of building a base and managing units has been scrapped in favour of a one-size-fits-all vehicle that does everything and is virtually indestructible. Don't worry if you're thick and accidentally get blown up, it magically re-spawns at any point on the map you like instantly killing every enemy around! There are a lot of videos on the EA website talking about the new Tiberium harvesting mechanic. Previously, there were vast fields of the stuff, covering the map being both a danger to your troops and the enemies whilst simultaneously encouraging you to build your bases right next to it so to soak it up more quickly. It seems this was a little too strategic for the current generation of gamers so now it's all been reduced to a nice gentlemanly game of capture the flag.
As for the story, well let's just say that it flies in the face of everything that's been established by the franchise so far. To recap, by the end of C&C3 the earth is basically to put it bluntly, screwed. I mean, really screwed. Over 90% of it's surface is infected by Tiberium, an alien mineral that it is quickly established to be more difficult to remove then Saturday night's kebab grease from your favorite shirt. Some places even have crystals so large they form glaciers bigger then cities that even going within a hundred miles of would cause serious harm to if if not properly protected. Like I said, doomed.
In C&C4 on the other hand, set a mere fifteen years later, the whole planet has been given a through spring clean and all that pesky tiberium is now a managed resource. let's think for a moment here, how does the whole earth go from being so destroyed that GDI is seriously considering getting out the hell out of dodge and living on the moon, to being completely hunkey-dorrey with baby deer skipping merrily through glens and fields of butter cups? Tiberium is now a little floating snot glob that looks like the designers had some left over graphics from the Sims that can be picked up simply by brushing past it. No more vast, dangerous fields of the stuff giving the game a much needed sense of danger.
The whole thing seems dumbed down. The original, while great fun to play, did have underlying adult themes of genocide (Tiberium being seeded by an alien race), Terrorism (NOD being essentially a terrorist group, albeit a very charismatic and wealthy one) and questions of class (People living in "yellow zones" having weird mutated kids while GD live in their perfect blue zones). Compared to the previous titles, this seems to have been dumbed down to a level for people who found Halo a little bit difficult to follow.
I remember playing the first C&C with my dad when I was a kid and I really feel like this games going to the guts out of the fanbase and for what? So the game can be ported to console or so it's easier? What happened to hard but enjoyable experiences? To propper planning and long term stratergy? Is this all we can look forwards to now in games, homogonisation where every game feels roughly the same as every other to reach the largest target audience whilst sacrificing what made it great to start with?
I hope not, but this franchise looks lost already. All will be revealed when Command and Conquer 4: Tiberium Twilight launches mid March.
When Google released Buzz to the tens of millions of Gmail users out there in the world, I was away from an actual computer for a few days (blasphemous, I know). My phone usually does a pretty good job as a laptop replacement while I'm away from my desktop but this time a full browser was the only way I would be able to check out what the ruckus was about.
When I finally got back to my 'puter, it seemed like the whole world had jumped on the new social media vehicle. Setting it up was easy enough, I was instantly being followed and following all my gmail contacts in conjunction with being connected to several other friendly sites. At first glance it looked like a Twitter client for Gmail. I figured my Twitter feed would instantly populate my Buzz feed and that would be that. I would get an email when people would comment via Buzz (which got annoying real fast) and I would be able to see if there were new posts in the sidebar of my Gmail.
That's pretty much where I lost interest.
Google Buzz is L A M E. They gave up on Wave, decided to strip it down to a stream of comments then latch it on to your Gmail. I understand that they're trying to leech onto this whole Twitter/Facebook juggernaut, but did they actually think this through? I would suspect that if you're going to jump in to the social media pool, you would take the time to learn how to swim.
Google Buzz is just too little too late. Buzz brings absolutely nothing new to the table. In fact, it's a regression to where Facebook and Twitter first started (as a concept). The interface is clunky and boring and there is really no way to expand your follower base beyond your gmail contacts. The whole purpose behind social media is to be social. Google missed the mark completely. Why would I bother posting something to Buzz if I can already actively chat with my Gmail contacts?
Now Google wants to be an ISP? Sounds good if you're looking to have beta internet for a few years.
