It was expected really, there was nothing unordinary about this piece of news - what with the “To Be Continued…” left right at the first game. But in all fairness, there really shouldn’t have been left room for a sequel. Why?

BECAUSE THE GAME’S FUCKING SHIT.

Atleast, that’s the most bluntest way of putting it.

I guess the best way of making any rant-ish blog post good is to atleast let the reader honestly know why you think it’s shit.

THE GAME IS FUCKING SHIT.

I joke, but I really do wish I could finish off this blog post with that single line. Anyway, lets start with the first game shall we?

Right, so first of all.. it’s easy to consider this as a sleazy console port, but looking back at the previous RS games, they haven’t necessarily been so widespread over different consoles. Granted, the way older ones hit Playstation & Xbox - But ever since that generation of consoles it definitely seems like the dev’s at Ubisoft are trying to plaster this piece of shit over every single platform. Including the handhelds.

Remove the first layer of shit, we eventually get to the inner bit of shit. Which is the shit that really counts; gameplay.

It’s a universally accepted principle that if the gameplay of the game is so good, then the person playing that game won’t be leaving his gaming platform til 3AM the next day. Granted - RSV had this element for about 2 hours of game play then it hit me, almost like shit to a fan.

Comparing RSV to the older RS games such as Raven Shield, it’s nice to know that the dev’s have finally tidied up the commands available to give to your team mates. And it’s even better that you no longer have to do hours worth of “level planning” just for one short-fucking-mission.

This is actually one aspect that kept me happy, just because it left you to have so much creativity as to how you entered > busted > cleared the room or building. Noticeably, this wasn’t at all what bothered me - especially with what cool new “duck ‘n’ cover” & “back to the wall” manouevres that were available to the player.

Artificial Intelligence - I would guess that this is one hell of a nightmare for game developers world-wide, just purely because it’s such a challenging task to create system for the machine to operate by that is almost human-like. But with RSV, from a sincere point of view - the devs must have been on atleast a pounds worth of cannabis while coding this part of the game.

First off, i’ve noticed that your team mates sometimes don’t wish to obey your orders. For example, you enter the next level… you got a great idea as to where you want to take cover. So you spam the space bar at the location that you have aimed at and as soon as you’re under fire your team mates find it logical to run like bad-asses at the terrorists. What makes it worse than snorting camel’s diahorrea shit is that you then have to go save their asses by “healing them” (in which you actually just stick a needle in their ass… no really) in order to continue the god damn game.

I guess it’s cute you being there for them, but who said I wanted Barbie’s Fucking Pony Adventures? Maybe if they want to be such jack-offs, the game devs could have made a shovel their secondary weapon so they could dig their own fucking graves and jump in it before I have to take a turn around to shoot off the terrorists that massacrated them.

What’s even more worse is, when you go down; thats it. Game over.

You can’t be healed by your own team mates but the stupidity of it is that you can heal them?

I’ll give you another example of how truly idiotic the AI is.

I have my team follow me into a room, and as soon as i’m being fired at by terrorists, the chinese bloke says (repetitively) “GET OUTS OF TEHH LINES OF FYYY-AHHH!”. At this point of the game, for once you can tell the developers actually understood what us gamers wanted.

Chinese special ops personell telling me to play the game better. Fuck.

Amusing. And yeah, it really did make me laugh.

I’ll give the poor guys at Ubisoft some credit though, as the two guys that follow you around are incredibly good as cannon fodder. That’s right. Line those retarded pieces of code against a wall, tell them to bust - wait for about 5 seconds… and as soon as both of them go down - go around, take another entrance - and wallah! Room cleared. Play ass lovers for about a minute with 5 inch needles (and this revives them?), then carry on with the game.

The next point that i’m coming to is the enemy. Suprisingly, it seems that Ubisoft had spent more time into the AI of the enemy rather than the AI of the two key people who are going to keep you alive in the game. Seriously, they should have just easter egged Death, with a scythe & and a black cloak into the game somewhere… it’s that unbalanced.

Example - I don’t advise you to play with “Realistic” or “Normal” mode, because with every room that you run into - you’re fucking dead. It’s almost like running into some kind of camouflaged grave. And that’s me truthfully speaking; these terrorists only unload one bullet on you, and you’re dead. Absoulutely out of here.

Which doesn’t make sense, because even with the most highly damaging weapon in the game - it still takes about 3 shots to take a single terrorist down.

There’s so much more to say about this game, but the real reason why i’m dreading it’s sequel is that it’s got real big shoes to fill if it’s going to come out any better than the first one. And I mean that, especially with the appauling PC multiplayer functionality - atleast online was fun with the Xbox 360, even if it did look worse.

PS: If you have a fairly low end machine, I thoroughly recommend for you not to get this game. Not only is it shite, it’s going to eat your systems resources like a fat kid in McDonalds.

I need sleep.

Trailer Link: YouTube

- LoveDuckie^

Well, for those of you who do not know, Tim Schafer, is currently working on a new game called Brutal Legend. While this is not new information, I am extremely excited about it. The fact is, we as gamers don’t get to experience games that actually make us laugh on purpose that often. Or games that are even artistically innovative. Not that I am saying this game will blow every other game out of the water, but speculating from Tim Schafer’s other titles (including Grim Fandango and Psychonauts among others), this is sure to be an interesting title.

A little bit about the game (if you have read this far, I know reading’s no fun but stick with me). Well, the main character is a roadie known as Eddie Riggs, who will be voiced by none other than Jack Black (Master Exploder!). Eddie happens to be wearing a belt, which has a cursed buckle. Eddie is injured and some of his blood is caught in the mouth of the belt buckle. The buckle then comes alive and takes Eddie back in time to a world where demons rule. The things in the world that Eddie has been thrown into is nothing of the norm, it is the world of Rock and Roll legends. Great metal titans once ruled, however, they were so amazing that they ascended beyond Earth. So everything left behind is something related to Metal. Kinda confusing eh?

Well if you really want a better picture (and I mean 10 pages worth) please check out this months issue of Game Informer magazine.

Okay, so that wasn’t so bad was it? First blog post from me, and I think it turned out pretty awesome.

Keep up the Pwnage.

- Assimilator

So the most anticipated PC game of the year is almost upon us. To say I’ve been feverishly anticipating this game would be an understatement, and with the recent release of the single player demo a little review of the demo seems in order.

The demo begins with a fairly slick opening cinematic showing off the different powers your nanosuit grants you. This futuristic military armour grants you enhanced strength and speed, cloaking and damage absorption, and although it seems difficult at first to quickly switch between suit modes, by the end of the demo you’ll be nimbly switching between the four modes in the middle of a firefight. After that there’s another opening cinematic where you and the rest of your team all kit up and drop out of an aircraft. However, old friend plot device strikes you on the way down so you crash land separated from the rest of your ethnically diverse team, and it’s your job to meet up with them again. So far, the plot seems very paint-by-numbers; nothing jumps out at you that tells you this is going to be the next Shakespeare. But that’s okay in this instance, as you’ll soon discover when you take over and can freely move about; this game isn’t about the story, it’s about the gameplay. The first thing you’re likely to notice (assuming you have a nice PC) is that the game looks utterly fantastic. The second thing you’ll probably notice is that you can pick up a turtle which is happily lazing around on the beach. I repeat; YOU CAN PICK UP A TURTLE AND THROW IT AROUND. If this isn’t enough to make you rush down to your latest game store and preorder Crysis then I’m not sure this game will be you.

In fact it seems you can pick up almost everything in this game. Shoot the hat off an enemy and you can pick it up; catch one of the little birds running around and you can use it as a weapon or just to satisfy your sadistic needs. The physics in this game are absolutely incredible; Half-Life 2 Episode Two may have wowed us with its Striders demolishing complete houses, but that was all scripted. Demolition of houses in Crysis is completely physics-based; Grab a Korean by the throat and throw him into the side of a wall and it will collapse the wall, taking the rest of the building with it. Take out the supports of a small shanty building and watch as the rest gives way. This all looks and feels absolutely incredible and real. But it’s not all good; while the graphics and physics are phenomenal you will need a monster rig to get the best out of this game, and there’s lots of little bugs and things missing that need to fixed before the finished version hits the shelves. The gun and weapon sounds really need to be tuned up as well; weapons generally don’t sound very powerful, and someone tell me why an enemy can bring down a highly trained high-tech soldier with just one whip of his rifle?

Still, these are minor things that I’m sure will be fixed by the time the actual game is released. The single player is going to be amazing, but don’t write off the multiplayer; I’ve played a lot of it in the beta so far and it’s an absolutely unique experience; I can’t say anything else without giving away too much but multiplayer is going to have a lot of people hooked for ages, the unique mode Power Struggle is so good it simply cannot be missed. Mark November 16^th on your calendars; Crysis is coming.

Check out some amazing videos of Crysis in action:

http://www.gametrailers.com/game/2509.html

 - KillaCon

If you set the Splinter Cell series during the 1100’s, took out the crappy crosshairs, got rid of the nasty silenced weapons (that really did no damage unless you popped a headshot), made it less boringly slow paced, got rid of the ability to toss corpses about & lost the CPU whoring graphics *massive deep breath* you probably would get pretty close to Assassin’s Creed.
Quite frankily after checking out the pre-release vids on GameSpot & FilePlanet it definitely did make a bit of a party in my pants (metaphorically of course). They call it “next-gen gaming” with the greater freedom of being able to run around maps or terrains without being limited to the functionality of “entities” or “objects”, conclusively allowing you to creatively use the level to your own desired extent. I think it’s reasonable to say that the long awaited Crysis goes along the same lines of gameplay in terms of “nothing scripted - it’s all physics baby.”

So it’d be completely unfair to make a comparison between AC and Splinter Cell but you can see what I’m getting at. In far more simplistic terms, in AC, pick a tower and you most likely will be able to climb it like spider-man.

Its new freedom of gameplay is probably so good that you could take a freefall off a 100 ft building, finish reading every Lord of the Rings novel written, take a nap, then eventually slash your targets head off, dance to the Village People, whilst softly landing in hay stack.

(Complete exaggeration but the free fall into a hay stack really wasn’t…)

In summary, if you wanted to ask me what I thought of the game, then my reaction would purely be GET IT.

Although I originally thought that this was going to be a more updated cheap rip of the old game “Thief” I was pleasantly stunned by it’s new approach to gameplay. In fact, the main character’s movement animations are probably so elegant that it would want to make me do Parkour on every house in my village.

PS: There is really more to it than silly free falls and ninja manouvres, so check out the links

FilePlanet vids search: http://www.fileplanet.com/search.aspx?searchtype=2&q=Assassin%27s+Creed

GameSpot page: http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/assassinscreed/index.html?tag=result;title;2