I haven't been playing many games lately, but because a friend recommended Bulletstorm, and partially because I loved Painkiller, I decided to buy it on Steam.

First of all, I felt like smashing my fist through my pc screen after discovering that despite being a game I bought on Steam, it requires the awful Games For Windows Live to run. Why on earth EA or Valve think it's acceptable to use two different services just to play the single player portion of one game is beyond me, but I was so pissed off I ended up firing off an email to Gabe Newell (which I doubt he will reply to, but it felt good to take action!)

The game itself was, in short, a little dissapointing. Whilst it has great graphics and extremely extravagant set pieces, the weapons and action didn't really feel quite as good as I had expected. It seemed that despite progression being generally quite easy, I was doing a lot of killing with a machine gun from long range, which was not really all that much fun. Later on in the game, I was rewarded with a few nice weapons, such as the awesome drill gun, but aside from a few of the secondary charge shot modes, the other weapons didn't really feel as meaty as I remember the guns in Painkiller feeling. It really seemed like I had to pummel most enemies for quite a while before they went down, unless I knocked them into some dangerous environmental trap - which generally rewarded me with the satisfaction of instant death and desctruction I so expected of this game.

However, For the last third of the game, there are a lot of mutants running around that can only be killed by shooting glowing red parts on their body. When you kill them this way, they instantly gib into a big red cloud of gore, leaving a huge splatter on the environment. This was fun. These guys were also extremely easy to kill using the drill gun that appears on one of the later missions. In fact, any occasion where making an enemy explode, melt, evaporate or become impaled was a ton of fun, but somehow it seemed that I spent a lot of time walking around very pretty (but empty) environments or trying to snipe enemies with a machine gun because it was the best weapon for the job if I wanted to stay alive.

The game's skill shot system was a cool idea, but I didn't really have much fun with it, and I didn't like how all the skill shots seemed to be set in stone - you can't really create your own combinations that the game will recognise. Every skill shot you get is like a micro achievement; Although you get it every time you kill any enemy in a prescribed manner, not just the first time. Using points you get from performing skill shots, you can buy ammo and weapon upgrades from pods scattered around the environment. It was kind of weird to be able to go to what is basically a shop and buy ammo during a battle, but this aspect of the system was ok in practice, and I didn't feel it was getting in the way.

One thing I noticed about the levels is that there are a huge number of massive, extremely cool looking and detailed areas that are basically unused for gameplay purposes. There is a lot of story in the game, and many areas where you just walk around listening to the (admittedly entertaining) banter between your character and the other three main characters who accompany you through the game. I was quite surprised by this because I had expected little to no story. Although the story is very simple, it worked to immerse me more into the world and connect me to the main characters, because by the end of the game, I hated the main villain, General Serrano, about as much as he did.

SPOILER ALERT!

This is where the game lost me though. The ending is hugely fucking annoying. You want so badly to kill this piece of shit general and the game nearly gives you the chance, but then something EXTREMELY irritating and predictable happens in a cutscene where you have no control, whilst you are left screaming at the main character, telling him to do the job properly and kill the motherfucker by firing 50 bullets into his face, only to have him ignore your requests and later regret his lack of thoroughness on the next level and in the final cutscene. Sequel? Fuck you. I'm not paying another $50 just to do what I should have been able to do at the end of the first game.

END SPOILER

I still haven't played the challenge mode or multiplayer, but the single payer was decent but somewhat lacking in the level of destruction I was hoping for. The ending was bullshit. 

Or did the bots who accompany you kill absolutely nothing the entire game? That's what it felt like for me. I dontwremember them killing a single damn mutant. 

Is that Littleton on the south side over the Port Hills? 

Yep Sham 

Released for consoles in 2005 and for the PC in 2006, Condemned: Criminal Origins is the next game from Monolith following F.E.A.R. Now Monolith has made some good games; Blood was good for it's time, No One Lives Forever and the sequel were underrated classics. But unfortunately it seems their designers are still stuck in the old skool style of level design. The problem that hindered F.E.A.R.; it's bland boxy level design, returns with Condemned. In fact, the level design in both games could quite easily swap places and you wouldn't know the difference. F.E.A.R. had slightly more open levels to account for fast shooting enemies, while Condemned's is more condensed and cramped. However it's still the same room with two corridors connecting to the next room. It's maze-like, repetitive and is almost a series of box rooms littered with debris. It certainly doesn't feature the kind of detail you'd get from Doom 3.

There's really nothing in this game that stands out as looking great. Perhaps the final level taking place in a decayed apple orchard at night was a highlight, but it still lacked detail and was extremely linear. It sounds better than it was.

Basically Monolith followed the same pattern as F.E.A.R. in creating a game with supernatural flashbacks throughout; the scares are all the same. In fact, you could almost say this is the same game just with a different story and melee combat instead of guns.

So while F.E.A.R. lost brownie points in the design section, it made them up with it's fun gameplay. The same can not be said for Condemned, which is melee based combat using random weapons such as crowbars, 2x4's, axes. Now I've played good melee based games; Heretic II and Rune got it right. Condemned swings but misses, because it's too basic. The game comes down to a block-swing-step back process, or if you're taser is charged, which almost always is, then it's taser-swing-run back to wait for taser to recharge. It's just not that fun. There should have been some combos or powerhits of some kind. I complained about the combos in Dark Messiah, but at least it had them. Their drawback was the awkward key presses in trying to perform them. Condemned's gameplay is just too simple and becomes repetitive very fast.

Which leaves the storyline; which is flawed just like the rest of the game. The main premise is cliched but acceptable; a serial killer takes your gun and kills some cops which you are blamed for so on the run you go to capture him. As it turns out, he's been killing other serial killers. But then some whole supernatural plot comes into it with civillians turning insane, birds brains exploding, odd flashbacks and mysterious creatures popping in and out of existence (one of which you fight at the end). By the end of the game NONE of this is explained! Admittedly it does all get explained in the sequel but it just leaves the first game confusing.

If you loved F.E.A.R., not minding the average level design and love survival horror games then Condemned: Criminal Origins is worth playing the once. Otherwise, it's a skippable title. 

Here's a handy little config ui to edit your gfx settings in the Crysis 2 demo, it's only really useful for editing the fov.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1776333 

Bioware released a high-resolution texture pack for the pc version of DA2, which is released, err in a matter of hours I guess :)

http://social.bioware.com/page/da2-patches

Seen a few screenshots and the jump in environment texture quality is very noticeable, well worth it! But they recommend a gfx card with 1gb of memory on it. 

Tried to play Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter1. Gosh Grin just dont' have a fkn clue do they. It's a great looking game, but no quicksave and rare checkpoints in what is already quite a hard game, even on easy, means it is completely unplayable unless your absolutely desperate for a FPS. I quit after 1 level.

It's no wonder they declared bankruptcy. Next. 

Enjoyable. An average degree of consolization, but about on par with The Witcher. The positive thing is that unlike Witcher, the 'levels' are larger and often more open. Some nicely designed environments (especially the island in chapter 2 is awesome, with medieval Chinese temples/buildings in the jungle and a dark twisted canyon like the Barrens from Morrowind). Others are more average, but overall the game looks good.

Controls are somewhat dodgy in parts. Still okay. Horse controls are shit though.
The looting system is a bit ambiguous as you can only pick up everything the enemy had. This means you can run over a fallen group and quickly tab space to get it, which is nice, but on the other had it will also clutter your inventory with all kinds of useless items like weak weapons which you then have to disassemble or put down individually (or sell).

Too much action (too many monsters) in parts which got tedious after a while - especially the swamps which reminded me strongly of their counterparts in Witcher = shitloads of zombies spawning all the time.

Combat is mostly button mashing and using special attacks. At least that's what I found to be most effective. It's also possible to block and do effective counterattacks.
I'm a bit ashamed to admit I didn't understand the magic system so I played the game as an oldschool warrior. It's not so hard in theory - one has to create spells by stacking cards of several classes and effects, and it's possible to experiment with the combinations in order to create the best spell for each situation. But I somehow didn't get the hang of it immediately and then lost interest as my other skills became more developed.

While not required, one can approach each battle in the optimal way by varying weapons and spells according to the enemies. Many of them have certain weaknesses to some attacks and are resistant to others (e.g. blades vs blunt weapons).

Progression is linear insofar as the parts of the world only unlock when the player reaches a new chapter in the main quest line. Basically a bunch of islands that become accessible by teleporters. Exploration is somewhat limited but possible, at least in the first two chapters of five. Some smaller sections of the islands become accessible with some of the side quests of which there are fairly many in relation to the main quest and suitably varied. Some side quests also introduce new enemies.

It's easy to get lost in the side quests at first and kind of forget what the story or the purpose of your main mission was. It picks up after a while. Or maybe because I just refrained from taking more side quests from the bullentin boards.

At one point I bought a boat and sailed to one of the remote islands around the main ones only to find what looked to me like a tribe of nasty canibal-like people (regular enemies in a later section) which chased me off again and I had to leave my boat behind, heh. Later found out there's nothing there to be found, except XP if you kill them. But still a nice detail.

Bottom line: I'd say if you liked the Witcher (for this game seems to be most apt for comparison), you'll likely enjoy this one too.
It feels like it does the compromise between console and PC better than most of the other games in this genre. Playtime: 20-23 hours, up to 30 with full exploration/100%ing. 

new teaser for Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l--b8kA7y1c

Gameplay video coming tomorrow. 

http://www.hawkengame.com/blog/media 

Yeah that looks pretty good. Hope it controls like an FPS not like a Mech game. 

Looks friggin awesome, giant robots jumping around shooting rockets! woooo! :D 

Looks very stylish indeed. Would be interested to see how the gameplay / content pans out. Not so keen on the restricted cockpit view though. 

Nice find. Seriously check out the graphics of Hawken for real:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm7gEDhrPfk&feature=player_embedded#at=16

Fuck me those grpahics are awesome (spooged all over Hawken's bosom) 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2863-Bulletstorm 

Loving the environments for sure. 

I'm sure it will only work with the Steel Batallion controller: http://operatorchan.org/vg/arch/src/vg22196_sb%20complete%202.jpg 

Remarkable. Yahtzee's opinion is exactly what I concluded from playing the demo :E

An oldschool shooter forced through a mangle of modern shooters and being at least partially compromised because of it. 

interesting environment art... the consistently random construction of all the buildings makes me wonder if they auto-generated the buildings from a bunch of prefab parts. Either way it's an cool style. 

It's an AWESOME style ;) 

just started this, why is this even the same franchise? completely different game. to early to tell if its good. 

Decent Zelda-like dungeon game from the Eye Maze guy. Some clever puzzles.

http://jayisgames.com/games/dwarf-complete/ 

AFAIK, devs and pubs split, pubs got franchise name and tried to milk it as best they could. 

Again. From Wiki:

Far Cry 2 has been officially released by Ubisoft, although it was not developed by Crytek, but by Ubisoft's Montreal studio

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as FC2) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, however the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay...

Various factions and vehicles are featured; enemies include human mercenaries, but sci-fi creatures such as the Trigens from Far Cry are not featured.[12] Furthermore, the player's feral abilities introduced in Far Cry Instincts and its expansions do not return in Far Cry 2.

Far Cry 2 abandons the science fiction aspects of its predecessor in favor of a more realistic setting.

The protagonist of previous Far Cry games, Jack Carver, is not featured in this game.

Ubisoft has developed a new engine specifically for Far Cry 2, called Dunia...

The Dunia engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2 by Ubisoft Montreal development team.
Only 2 or 3 percent of the original CryEngine code is re-used, according to Michiel Verheijdt, Senior Product Manager for Ubisoft Netherlands.


So, as is blindingly obvious, it has slightly less than FUCK ALL to do with Far Cry, and just makes Ubisoft look like a bunch of dicks for trying to cash in on the franchise, whilst Crytek go ahead and make the true FC2 and do a much better job of it.