Our friendly neighborhood, wall-crawling webhead is back for another spin in Ultimate Spider-Man. Activision and Treyarch, the developers of the movie-based games, have turned their attention to Marvel’s Ultimate universe written by Brian Michael Bendis.

Game Chronicles (94)

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Team Xbox (87)

IGN (84)

GameSpy (80)

GameSpot (71)

1UP (80)

Video Game Movies have started sucking harder. As if Uwe Boll is not enough, we get Paul WS Anderson transgressing on our beloved video game franchises.

I don’t watch these movies to judge them, say that they are abysmal, and generally feel masochistic. I watch movies like RE:A for the one plus hour of campy action they promise. Same reason I watched Blade:Trinity. Same reason I watch any of the mindless action movies that come out every year.

This one failed to deliver even that. Not scary, not funny. A few action sequences were well done though. Not enough masala to qualify for a time pass status. But Milla Jovovich is tasty. Sienna Guillory is yum too!

Sure there’s Jill Valentine in it, as well as Nemesis, but dumbed down, Hollywood ishtyle. Resident Evil Nemesis was bever a great game, in fact easily the bottom one in the series, but this movie worsens it up.

Strictly for DVD rental/borrowing.

3 outta 10

Let’s call this the story of the untroubled times. Let’s imagine a boy, late teens, just out of school, fresh into college. For the sake of anonymity lets just call him S, hm? He is living the good life, enjoying every bit of college and the myriad possibilities of fun and intoxication it promises. Exploring life, and as yet unspoilt by the harsh realities of having to work for a living.

This boy, then, one beautiful August morning sees this girl. Unassuming, confident, slightly aloof. And beautiful. Hmm, he is intrigued. Distracted even. He has the next party to plan, video games to play, books to read, friends to meet, and study if need be; in short, no time for frivolities and yet… he is drawn to the girl. Yes, he is most definitely intrigued. He tries to strike a conversation but our boy is kind of shy too. I say ‘kind of’, because he does manage to speak to her. It takes a few days but speak to her, he does. They strike up an easy friendship.

The girl – fun loving, charming, intelligent, sometimes careful to the point of extremely cautionary, and yet at other times playful and teasing soon opens up to him. With emotional attraction comes physical attraction and more often than not, vice versa. Come September and he is in love. The big ‘L’.
The boy thought he knew everything about girls and relationships. She proved him wrong. There were more surprises in a day with her than an entire month with most people. She showed him things he didn’t think were possible. The passion they shared was at a height unparalleled hence, and unmatched since.

Yet, one day the relationship ended as abruptly as it had started. For years he pines for the same emotional and physical torrent he went through – stumbling from one relationship to another, sometimes surprised, but mostly disappointed. Other relationships and priorities took his time and attention now. Yet he knew that one day she will come back, something will bring you people back together.

It happened. There were a few hiccups in the beginning, and slight moments of embarrassment, but slowly it happened. The passion is unbelievable, the emotional storm even greater. This is what he was missing for so many days! Such long years had he waited for this to happen! The conversations, the long drives, the frantic moments of passion and the quiet, tender moments of love – everything is so much better this time. But without so much as a preamble, this time too comes at an end. He is not as heartbroken as the first time round, but the abruptness of it all does leave a slight sour taste in his mouth. Yet he knows that he will look back at these times as one of the best he has ever had.

That is my summary of Half Life 2.

Really. It’s that good. And steam is that bad.

This may be the longest introduction for a game review I have written yet, which is thoroughly ironical considering the game starts without so much as a ‘Hi, this is the story’. You wake up in a train, the G-Man tells you to ‘…wake up Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell alalalala … what the ROCK is COOKIN!’
Heh, the last part is entirely real in my head.

Screenies at Gametab

So yeah, its vague, yet stylish. The future is here, my friend, and dang, it looks good. The aforementioned train ride is Atmospheric with a capital A, as is the rest of the game, and serves to suspend your disbelief for a solid 15 hours(or more). If there is one thing that Half Life 2 does, it puts into sharp focus how much is possible in games now. For people who thought the Source engine will not be able to be as good as it’s colleagues, I have one thing to say: you were wrong, you jabroni ass.
The environments look real, the physics is a constant source of jaw dropping moments, and the game is understated, stylish, interactive and real all at the same time. The engine is well optimized too – so much so that mid range systems run the game pretty well too. In your FACE, Doom III. This was personally to me one of the best business decisions by Valve – they have managed to hold on to a larger consumer base. But making the game sometimes unplayable because your content system is underdeveloped is, as the they say, teh suxx0rz. Also suxx0rz is the packaging of the box, which is cheap.

But that is not what I want to discuss. The boy didn’t care what clothes the girl wore or what bus she caught to come meet him. No-siree.

The game, when it runs, is ‘fried gold’ (to borrow a phrase from another Year’s best). This is fat free entertainment at it’s best.

Half Life was one of the first games to be unapologetically first person. You WERE Gordon Freeman. No cutscenes, no sounds for the protagonist, even no dramatic death animations in third person. Lots of games since, including the excellent MoH:AA and Call Of Duty have used that technique to convince you that you are the protagonist and immerse you completely. HL2 does so unashamedly. Where such a technique is very useful in games like CoD, where the story is basically non existent to the extent of being relegated to text on the loading screen, in Half Life 2, it tends to confuse you a bit.

You have no idea what you are doing in City 17, what happened in the 15 or so years between Black Mesa and now, or who are those taser welding mamus after your ass. But that is perfect because Gordon is feeling the same. YOU, Dr. Freeman, don’t know what the hell is going on. You slowly figure out the 1984-esque setting of the city and the general feeling of oppression is well conveyed through the actors and the scripted sequences. (if you still have no idea what’s happenin, you might wanna see this:http://fragfiles.org/~hlstory//)

Despite the mute protagonist, the game delivers a knock out dose of emotional involvement, mostly thanks to some extremely well done scripted sequences and dialog sequences. The story is not told at the back of the box like most shooters, either. The events and characters unfold as one big adventure, and the story you get out of the game is a superset of all your experiences in the game. Levels and environments serve to move the story and the adventure forward, and as such may seem disappointing to people used to doing things in more than one way, a la Deus Ex. But that is not Half Life 2’s strength. Its strength lies in it’s ability to consistently and repeatedly create richly diverse and believable environments that encapsulate the game play brilliantly and succinctly and give us not a sand box in terms of gameplay but a rollercoaster ride. And what a ride. Escape, rescue, friendship, betrayal, revenge, redemption, triumph, salvation – all these are the milestones in the narrative of the game, and it is all good.

The story is not unique, and most of the times, not even apparent. But all of the story elements are also drawn to excellence by brilliant character models and fluid animations. Complementing the rest of the game, the characters are gorgeous to look at and – this is becoming the operative word in describing HL2’s graphics – real. Valve are the masters of Level Design, and they have proved that with HL2. The progression is logical, well paced, and of course, always well constructed. The whole thing just looks spectacular, and feels even more so, considering the physics that are integrated in a seamless manner to the environment and the gameplay.
Your experience is constructed so much around the real physics that they have even incorporated a Gravity Gun, and made it almost a central piece of the adventure, considering so much depends on it. It gives you the incredibly useful ability to pick up and throw inanimate objects like barrels, blades, crates etc., thereby using it as a weapon as well as a puzzle solving device. As a side note for the FPS aficionados, the puzzles are fairly simple, yet diverse and satisfying in the payoff, and serve to further the adventure feel of the game.

Focus, rightfully, is on the combat and the ‘Shooter’ part of FPS. The enemy AI is usually adequate, and the scripted sequences and coordinated attacks are fun and challenging enough. The alien nasties scare the heebie jeebies outta you, and the soldiers are a source of constant frustration as the attacks are varied and the AI unforgiving. Yet, there are some times you curse the AI. Especially when you get a few team mates to fight with you later on. Bizarre situations where you are stuck with 4-5 guys in a narrow corridor make you think: why?

I mean, let’s try this: grow several bugs that are over three feet tall, wear a hazard suit, get in a corridor and order the critters to attack someone at the other end of the corridor. Problems. See? The path finding is actually pretty good, but the design decisions some time bring a few problems to the forefront. So it’s no Rainbow Six.

Nevertheless, the nasties give you quite a few scares, and while you may think they could be smarter, it doesn’t take too much away from the game. In particular, there’s a certain alien crab thing that jumps on you, shags your head, and releases it’s… er, stuff, on your face. Not only is that totally gross and mostly false, your health drops to 001, and starts regenerating slowly as the hazard suit releases antidotes. This guy and the returning ‘rope-alien-thing-on-the-roof-that-sucks-you-to-it’s-mouth-and-eats-you-slowly’ are my two worst enemies. EVER. I hate them in a good way though. A good villain will always inspire dread, and I fear them. A lot.

Apart from the stuttering bug that Valve fixed some time back, sound quality is generally superb too. The environmental sounds are truly wondrous and ambient, the voice acting is quite good (not as good as the first one, though, methinks), and the surrounding sounds of machinery, radio chatter etc. are incredibly atmospheric.

All in all, I’d say this is pretty close to the perfect FPS. Some bugs and a strictly OK AI may take away some points, but the fact remains that this the most fun you can have with your PC (apart from pr0n). Some people may nitpick, as is usual with games with such hype, but sum of Half Life 2’s parts is very very solid. It’s a rare game that can survive its own hype. Half Life 2, even with it’s burgeoning mass of hype, does so with enough panache to spare.

These, then, are my favorite games from 2004:

10. Unreal Tournament 2004
9. Tribes: Vengeance
8. Pro Evolution Soccer 4
7. Katamari Damacy
6. Sly 2: Band of Thieves
5. Rome: Total War
4. Burnout 3: Takedown
3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
2. Half-Life 2
1. Sid Meier’s Pirates!

Even though it bears the classic Leisure Suit Larry moniker, Magna Cum Laude is not really a Leisure Suit Larry game. Whereas the first few LSL titles were witty, fun, and interesting PC adventures, Magna Cum Laude is somewhat going down a different track. We are certain that if teenagers around the country were forced to deal with Magna Cum Laude’s insane loading times and awful gameplay, the mere mention of words such as “Weiner,” and “Double Anal” would send them into fits of boredom and irritability.

Magna Cum Laude has three major problem areas: gameplay, design, and delivery. The story falls somewhere within the domains of design and delivery, although there’s little use in being discerning as the plot is terrible either way. You play Larry Lovage, nephew of the hilarious Larry Laffer, star of the old LSL games. You’ve just gone to college and you’re trying to get on a dating show called Swingles. After introducing yourself to the foul-mouthed host of the show, you learn that in order to compete in the Swingles competition you have to present mementos of sexual conquests to the show’s crew, thereby proving your playa status. Huh-huh, dude, in order to score, you’ve got to, like, score.

Larry needs two main resources to complete his…ahem, quests. They are money and confidence, once he has them he’s ready to talk to some girls. This always involves a mini-game where you guide a sperm down a gauntlet of symbols. If you hit a green happy face, Larry will say something funny. If you hit a gas-cloud, Larry will fart. If you hit a penis, Larry will make some non-sequitorial remark about penises, and if you hit a beer-jug Larry will get slightly drunker…even if he’s not drinking anything. For every girl you hit on, you’ll play this game approximately three times. So by the time you’ve marked six girls, you will have played this same crappy mini-game about eighteen times.

When you’ve finally talked a girl’s ear off, it’s time to get her drunk. This occasionally involves a rousing game of Whack-a-Mole (where you have to press a button before it disappears), and always means a game of quarters. To bounce a quarter, you pull the right stick (or mouse) back and then push it forward. That’s it. Quarters gets the girls drunk, and then you wind up getting it on with them in some form or another.

Clearly, the ability to get it on with bare-chested, digital renderings of the opposite sex is Magna Cum Laude’s most enticing feature. If you manage to drag yourself through an entire courtship process, you will be treated to about fifteen seconds of something you’ve never seen before in a video game, like a slutty, rendered girl getting banged by a Teddy bear wearing a strap-on, or a nude band geek getting pleasured by a guy dressed as a flaming bundle of twigs. On the other hand, in several cases nothing happens, because Larry mysteriously loses his nerve and leaps out the window.

Which is exactly what you’ll want to do after staring at Magna Cum Laude’s smorgasbord of loading screens. Apparently, the developers at High Voltage had never heard of streaming, because every time you move from one of the game’s small environments to another, you’re treated with a Herculean load time. If you finish a mini-game, expect to wait a minute and a half. If you leave your dorm room, it takes a minute. If you go from your dorm room to the Plaid-mart, you can expect at least five minutes of pure loading.

This is bad enough when you know where you’re going, but when you need to find something and are not sure where to look, the loading times become a total nightmare. No matter what bizarre sexual twists await once you’ve found whatever item you’re looking for, it is impossible to search for anything in this game. You do not want to explore, because it takes hours, and this is supposed to be an adventure game. Aside from how tasteless everything is and how bad the mini-games are, the loading times make Magna Cum Laude nigh unplayable. Your average teenage boy could masturbate himself into a coma in the amount of time it would take Larry to search through three screens.

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude is disappointing one in the long series. As much as we’d like to see more sexual content in games, we’re afraid Magna Cum Laude will do for Mature games what Showgirls did for NC-17 rated movies. The only reason it’s not a complete bore is because it does have quite a few boobs, and we like those a lot. Conversely, the game is a dissapointment. Although it’s hard to ignore the siren call of digital boobery, please, cover your ears and swear an oath of gaming celibacy. You’ll thank us in the morning.

San Andreas is loosely based on California in the nineties, which was ugly, nasty, and mean way back then. There was a wave of African American gangsterism, and some really good hip-hop music. GTA:SA, then, is the most ugly, violent and nasty of all GTAs and has some cool grooves to do your nasty stuff in. It is not surprising they chose this setting, because, really, what more natural environment is there for constant violence and gangsterism than the gang culture of the west coast of the United States?

So San Andreas. One of my biggest faults as a GTA fan has been the lack of motivation to follow the story beyond a certain point. I just have too much fun moving around the city and doing random illegal activities, rather than follow the missions, however well designed they may be. San Andreas literally begs to be abused like so. No, the missions are not insipid. Hell they are inspired, and varied, and some of the coolest moments in gaming history will be remembered via the eyes of a SA player. What I meant to say was, the state of San Andreas is ALIVE. Just stand in a random street and watch people flit with each other, gangstas accosting a rival, people waiting at a red light, and some impatient ones blaring their horn, or children playing, women going in a shop and coming out with a lot of bags…. its just ALIVE!

Each of the three cities – Los Santos, San Fiero and Las Venturas – is detailed and unique. And the countryside, offers miles and miles of gravel roads and farmland. Just riding around the state is a thrill and will keep you busy for a long time. And there is so much to do apart from villainy. Driving, yes, but also, going to the gym, eating food, getting a hair cut, getting a tattoo, working as help in shops, and also the older favorites, driving a taxi, vigilante missions, the whole run.

The story is a well written, and well acted one. You play the role of Carl Johnson – CJ – a tough nut who returned to the city of Los Santos after his mother died. He runs into a corrupt officer, Tenpenny(Samuel L Jackson in an inspired and wicked performance), who is out to screw CJ every chance he gets. I won’t divulge more, but it get pretty violent, and you have to kill a lot of people as the story moves forward, But then, who ever played GTA without wanting to kill, huh?

There are statistics too, as I mentioned last post. A distinct RPG flavor emanates from them, and it smells right. You have to eat to stay alive, ride BMXes, shoot and fight regularly to gain proficiency, and work out or run to build muscle and burn fat. The clothes you wear and what you do affects your sex appeal. And your missions help you gain respect. As always, the radios are excellently acted and the shows, the RJs and the commercials are side splittingly funny, yet never unbelievable. The songs may seem a bit less, considering the huge amounts of driving required, but are good nevertheless.

GTA: San Andreas is Rockstar’s formula perfected. There are a few minor quibbles, but I think they may be mostly be personal. You will want to see the end. The freedom is exciting, and there is more things to do than you can imagine. What are you waiting for, then? Go, PLAY, mothaf**ka!

Now, let me elucidate. GTA San Andreas is the newest from Rockstar and as always they do an excellent job of it. The production quality, the graphics(in so far as a PS2 can handle and draw), the sounds, voice acting, music and all radio channels are top notch.

Rockstar wasn’t kidding when they said it was a big game. It is huge, it is a woolly mammoth and I am crushed under the sheer magnitude of time I can spend, things I can do, and people I can kill. Hell, you find a dildo somewhere in the middle of the game, and you can use that as a melee weapon.
If that doesn’t tll you how balls out Rockstar has gone n making this very very do everything, I don’t know what can. Maybe I do.
The sheer magnitude of the game is so overwhelming I will end up writing a hojillion pge review amd still ot be done. So I will tell you this, young skywalker:
The previous GTAs were based in one city, the one in Vice a bit bigger. San Andreas is a STATE. You can now swim, thank God, and drive cars, trains, planes, choppers, hang gliders, bicycles, motorcycles, everything. You can get a haircut, a tattoo, and wear clothes you like.
You have to eat food to survive, if you don’t you get e\weak and eventually die. If you eat too much you actually grow fat. There’s a gym across the ‘hood where you can pump up and build muscles. All these help your character stats. Yes, you heard me right. RPG-esque elements are present now. Others include sex appeal, respect and strength.

So now that the cooler features are told, how exactly is the game? Is it fun? The narrative is engrossing, the characters are well-acted. And there’s so much else to do beyond the the single-player story missions, which are in itself mammoth. It’s the biggest, most extraordinary gaming extravaganza, development wise, that this industry has ever seen. Buy it, you owe yourself this much. I have played this so much and so much more still remains.

If you don’t own a PS2, go in to depression, slowly spiraling nto madness and then end up in the gutters of Bihar. Or buy a PS2. You’ll gnaw at your hands waiting for the PC version.
images courtesy http://www.gametab.com

–
Here I must digress(as usual) and tell you about this crazy co worker of mine. He is a nice enough fellow, and is slowly approaching 1337-ness in his programming skillz. What makes him interesting for YOU is that he says crazy things like, “OMG! THIS GAME WILL OPEN YOUR HORSES!” if he happens to like it. He claims every movie and/or game he likes is “Ultimate”. He says it with such conviction that you are hard pressed not to believe that Paycheck, that awful, awful movie that must not have Philip K Dick’s name on it, was in fact the last one you ever need to see, since it IS the “ultimate” movie. Apart from having little grasp of superlative words, he is a mean CTF player(though still not better than me, much less ultimate). If there is anything better than Ultimate, it will OPEN YOUR HORSES!

So this sayer of crazy things that don’t even make sense and me were discussing video games in general over lunch, and he said the stupidest, and some how the most thought provoking thing he has ever said. He said that, “Single player games are like masturbating. Multiplayer games are like sex”. My argument was that TWO player games should be like sex; true multiplayer must be an orgy, and in more cases than not, a big, gay, orgy. But that didn’t swerve his stand a bit.
And I’m not saying he was totally wrong. He was onto something, but the sex analogy was a bit long drawn.
–

And that, in a metaphorical way entirely, is what I have been missing – masturbation. An overwhelming single player experience that makes me climax with gaming pleasure. A good, well made, single player game. It’s been a long time since I ever got my hands on one, though.

ENTER DOOM III
- – - -
The kind of reviews that most good games get truly confuse an average gamer, since seeing text like, “The single player game is insipid, and the AI is lackluster” next to a score of 8.5 is crazy. One way around this predicament is to actually play the game and find out. But like most techies, I have a job that tries to f*c* me in the ass whenever I am not looking(enough with the sexual analogies!)
So an easier way out that that I devised, and that works in most cases is this:(I thought of patenting it too)
Games with a score of 9.0+/10 are actually quite good. They may not deserve a 9.0 in you opinion, but they are good games, and give you a good time by all measures. Game with a score of 7.0-8.0 are actually fun to play, only the publisher didn’t feed enough money to the websites and magazine to get a better score. Sure, its a fan only or a hardcore only game, and may have a few things that you don’t like, but its still fun. Games with 8.0 to 9.0 are where the real shit lies. These games are awful, and the reviewers had a hard time suppressing their disappointments after the big hype. These are the games that pay their way to good scores.
This system worked in most cases, and I was pretty happy with it, even with the exceptions. I hate repeating myself, but

ENTER DOOM III

Ominous as the capitals and bold face looks, the game has much less to offer. The game had a huge hype behind it, and awesome looking screen shots and videos. Everybody hailed it as the next best shooter, the game that would save PC gaming. The reviewers went crazy in trying to one up on the praise of the game. 98%, screamed the reviews. Then came the actual player complaints. As sophisticated as the technology in 2035 is, nobody has heard of duct tape. You play a highly trained space marine, but your guns don’t have light attachments. The flashlight has to be turned on at the expense of your gun. You can either see what you’re shooting, or actually shoot it. The levels are all samey, the same pipes, doors, crates, everything. And the game play is generic.

This is all before I got to play it. Like I said, I am always late.

So this is the late Doom III review. Everything you heard about the game: the good, and the bad, is true. First thing you notice is that the Mars complex is extrermely dark, even before the shit has hit the fan. How they get any work done is beyond us mortals. Then, (cliche alert!) all hell literally breaks loose(God, I hate that phrase). And you get your gun in action. Its still dark. Neither man nor satan like light on Mars. Hell, once you see the pseudo outdoors, even Mars doesn’t like light on Mars. So you switch between the flashlight and your gun like a street hobo trying a juggling trick, and fight your way through an horde of, well, TENS of enemies. Heh, I know that was a cheap shot.
Technologically the game is a question mark. It looks more beautiful than Nicole Kidman in Far and Away, and God knows I wanted to kill Tom when I saw that movie. It is even more beautiful than Rita Hayworth, man. You unpack the textures lib, and you see a normal map, a bump map, a planar map, for every texture. It is so cool, you actually think there is geometry where there is only textures. This is in direct opposition to UT2004 where every single thing, IS, in fact, geometry. So if the goemetry is minimized by cool technology, why does the frame rate drop like the sensex during the congress victory? I know not.

This is not to say that it is all textures. There are some very cool machinery and pipes (always pipes) that make the levels look gorgeous. And the damn game is scary. The sound of the game, one thing nobody hyped, is so well done that I give it my award NOW, f*c* the rest. It scares the crap out of you if you use headphones, which of course, is the only way. The enemy models are lovingly rendered, and they truly inspire dread. The problem is that it gets old after a while. One major design flaw is that the most enemies spawn as soon as you pick up health, ammo, or armor. If you don’t touch a single ammo cache, armor shard or health pack, the whole game gets over real fast. You get so used to the whole thing, that the scares get less scary after some substantial time in to the game. And what lacks is big fights with lots of monsters. Its like Doom married Resident Evil and a had a baby.

I guess what I am trying to say is that it isn’t as good as the “100%!” crowd would like us to believe; it is no saviour of gaming culture. But is no as bad as the later complains that you see on so-called “honest” reviews. Its a good game, with kick ass sound, Trent Reznor music, great looks, and adequate AI. It has some mean monsters, and a good survival horror paced gameplay. Only thing wrong with the game is its Level Designers. They have concentrated more on the looks, and have gone wild with the punishment/reward gameplay. They are dangerous people who should be sent west.

They have forgotten the face of their fathers.

If Deadly Shadows’ graphics could be considered uninspired, then the good news arrives in its gameplay. If you’ve enjoyed previous versions of Thief, you’ll be happy to hear that all of the stealth/action gameplay made the transition from the late, lamented Looking Glass to Ion Storm quite intact. Creeping around other people’s houses, forbidden libraries, Hammerite strongholds and dank, murky caverns is as fun as it ever was. The few additions to the gameplay don’t really add or detract much to the experience. The climbing gloves that replaced the old rope arrows are fine, and much improved mantling makes climbing walls a much less painful experience than in Thief 2. Third-person mode, while inadequate for playing the whole game, is enormously useful for navigating narrow spaces or maneuvering around furniture. It’s also a good makeshift substitute for the “spy globes” that didn’t make it into the game. Shifting into third-person with its free-floating camera lets the player peek around corners without the danger of exposure.