Rotating bits, one shift at a time.
Concepts of Law != Concepts of Reality
Originally it was perceived as such: She agree’d to let his likeness appear in the game, so what’s wrong? Is she REALLY that drugged up?
Now there are reports that she’s more or less upset about HOW his likeness was used within the game. This refers to the ability to use Kurt Cobain to sing any song in the library, and apparently one of the biggest offenders is having him sing “You Give Love A Bad Name” by Bon Jovi.
Now, as respectfully as I can, I’m gonna call this whole ordeal from Courtney Love and friends probably the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Oh well, there goes the “respectfully” part.
Moving on, there was a post on Kotaku [link] discussing this, and it brought up another game called The Beatles: Rock Band.
Now if you read the comments of that article, there are many, MANY points being hit on. A lot of them are valid, a few are just dumb idiot trolls, but a lot of them are in fact, valid. There’s a few points I’d like to bring up though.
First, if Courtney’s Lawyer was good enough, this probably wouldn’t have happened in the first place. However there is no saying that Activision may have blurred the lines a bit. I haven’t seen the legalese behind it all, so I can’t say that with any definity. However, my initial point still stands, even if they did, and Courtney’s Lawyer was good enough, and Ms. Love of mind enough, they would have thought to implement a phrase that limits Cobain’s likeness to singing just his kind of songs (if not just his own.)
Secondly, there was a lot of back and forth about how the new Rock Band game for The Beatles serves as justification (or lack thereof) for how Kurt Cobain is used in Guitar Hero. This is utter stupidity to think that one game, developed for a completely different reason, can or would serve as justification for how another game works. The sole exceptions to this, are games that share middle-ware such as Havok or Unreal Technology. There are certain programming functions that can be used to say “Well if it was bad in this game, it can’t be better in this other game.” But I digress. The point here is, regardless of what The Beatles meant to millions and millions of people, Kurt had the same effect on his fair share of fans alike. The thing to take away from that, is TB:RB stands as a testament to The Beatles and their work. GH5, however, does NOT stand as a testament to Kurt Cobain and what he did, and meant, to a lot of people.
Guitar Hero 5, as much as it is a music game, it is a tribute TO the music that you can play, rather than any one band or person, like the latest Rock Band, or previous installments of both games (Aerosmith, Metallica for GH, and AC/DC for RB)
The thing that I’m trying to stress here, is that even if we don’t know the exact terms of agreement between the two parties, there is a style element involved here that people are trying to argue against. You can go ahead and rant about how great Kurt Cobain was, and how disrespectful it is to see him singing a Bon Jovi song, that’s fine. But until you realize that the way Guitar Hero was designed from all the way back at Guitar Hero 1 was to allow stuff like this to happen, you’re not gonna get anywhere, except for down farther and farther in the hole you are digging yourself.
Me? I’m not completely neutral on this point of view, obviously, but as far as I care about stuff like this, I’m just gonna enjoy both games, and be glad that the developers choose to recognize people who made a difference within the music world. Because honestly, since when was that not enough?
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This is well past due…
about 1 year ago - No comments
So, about a week ago today, I got back from a trip up to the great white northern non-us state of Canada. I visited Elsie (innervoices), her family, and a mutual friend of ours who isn’t on this site. As some of you may have seen on my facebook account, I mentioned something about missing them already when I got home. This is for a very simple, and unequivocal meaning: THAT TRIP WAS AWESOME.
Ok, so that may have been an overstatement, but I had a ton of fun none the less. Elsie has 3 brothers living with her, along with her parents, and all of them are funny and awesome. So is her hubby, Mark, and Elsie’s just awesome in general. AND while I was there, our friend Laura was there and tons of fun, along with Elsie’s older brother, his wife, and their three kids. So yeah, packed three story house full of people (14, to be exact, 10 whose name I had to learn) certainly == much fun.
Now within the following week since, I have moved rooms in my house, and as such, had some… gro- er, moving, pains.Everything transferred over just fine with the exception of my internet connection. Since we don’t have any crawl spaces above or below our single floor house, we have to set up all computers outside of the study with wireless. Now, this worked just fine until my pci wireless adapter died. With this sad and untimely death I had to go out and buy a new one. My current wireless router is a wireless-g router, because when our old one died, none of us had any hardware to use wireless-n. So we saved a bit of money and just stuck with a new wireless-g. I now have a new adapter feeding into my usb port, that supports wireless n communication. It, however, works like shit.
With the old adapter, I could use WPA2 encryption on my network, to keep it more secure and have less latency. Apparently, not so with my new adapter. Every time I tried to connect to it with WPA2 turned on, I would get a “202, Unexpected Error, Error.” Which, if you think about it doesn’t that mean that SOMETHING is broken, that they didn’t expect? Hmm.
Anyways. So I kept getting a flash of a page that I determined was the page that had me entering the wireless key before it error’d out, thusly eliminating my chances of connecting with WPA2. So, knowing this, I turned off any and all encryption on my network, and tried again.
This is where I slam my head into my desk.
Yeah, it worked. However it still sucks and if anything is slower than my old adapter could ever try and be even if I tried to force it to be this slow. That and I now have to follow a few… certain rules… to keep myself online and not having the connection go haywire on my at random intervals.
First and foremost (and probably the most shitty) I apparently cannot use Skype. If I do, I get logged on for about 2 minutes, then auto-logged off. It will not auto-relog back on. I have to close skype first, reopen it after waiting somewhere between 30 seconds and 2 minutes (the time interval is random), before I can get connected back in again.
Secondly, if I want some privacy for my web browsing, such as my doing super sekrit things with my thought process and my browser, I can’t. Any time I try and open up an incognito window in Chrome, my ‘net fails.
Oh, and sometimes my Inbox takes 5 minutes to load up all my old messages because it has to download them from the server. Sometimes it only takes five seconds… Hmm.
Anyways, I’m off to dinner. (Keilbasa!) I may post something afterwards, I dunno if I’m done ranting and raving yet.
I’ll catch you on the flip side. (Damn, two movie references in one blog. I’m getting better at this…)
Holy Cow
about 1 year ago - No comments
So a few updates since last March, for sure.
First things first, (read: Gaming Related) I got me some Guitar Hero: Metallica. It’s a fun game if I need to waste some time and listen to some music and NOT be bored out of my skull. Gogo a waste of $100! Well, not really a waste, but you get my idea. I still play it every once in a while.
Oh, btw: Mass Effect 2 plzkthx.
And nextly: The girlfriend and I are going strong. We’ve had our ups and downs of course, but we’re still together so I’m happy about that. We hit our 3 month check point last week, and so we went out to dinner to kinda sorta celebrate. Don’t think I’ll do something super special until we hit the 1 year though. As in “Get her something more than a freaking card.” Which I actually didn’t get her this time because that’d be actually kinda stupid.
And nextly lastly: I’ve been working my ass off on a few things. First thing: I finished the school term. Dear god am I happy I got a 3 point something. Two A’s and a B. Yeah I was taking more, but I withdrew from Dreamweaver because it was a dumb-ass teacher ruining a perfectly good class, and I withdrew from “Introduction to Computers” because I tested out of a class that put “Learning how to use Microsoft Word” as one of it’s key learning points of the class. I prefer Google Docs and Notepad anyhow.
Now, I don’t plan on using Adobe Dreamweaver to build a site, but I do enjoy the prospect of using it to design a basic layout, and that is what I’m using it for. What was that? Oh yes, I do have Dreamweaver. It’s CS3, granted, but it puts out spectacularly clean code, and allows for elastic layouts to be easily and swiftly created. Be it with one big space, or a header and footer, or all three plus a column on either side. It’s stupendous. Oh and I’ve also with that mentioning, made a test layout To 1.) Test out how awesome elastic layouts are, and 2.) Act as a new design for the second part of this expose.
What’s this second part you may ask? Well if you followed the link, you may have seen the title called “Shifted Bits”. Now ShiftedBits is actually something (a CMS) I’ve been working on for a good while now. I’m almost at that stage where I wanna start actually fleshing it out and using it to build modules that use what I’ve written there. Now when I properly release it as version 0.1, I’ll post a blog here with an explanation on where I wanna go with it and thusly invite any developers to work on it. (Hell anyone can join in on it now, but you won’t get very far without me explaining to you what I’m gonna do, and I’m not doing that until I’m damn well ready to.) So yeah. That layout I showed you, is gonna act as a “ShiftedBits Blog layout (with maybe a few changes to the color scheme and all that). Looks kinda like WordPress, I know. But have no fear, I’ll be writing a news module BEFORE I start up that blog.
And then onto the third part: In case you have forgotten I am actually a staff member here at Napalm Riot (the sad part is it’s taking a LONG time for that to sink in for me). And as such, I signed up to be a PHP Engineer. Now what that entails is 1.) Spot telling me what to do. 2.) Me doing what he wants me to do, 3.) … 4.) PROFIT???
I dunno. I still haven’t turned in any time tables for how much I’ve worked and I’m actually pretty cool with that. Considering I won’t get paid until I do. Now I’ve been working on a few things here the last couple of months (more off than on, sadly, because of school and ShiftedBits) and most of what I’ve changed are gonna go into the new version of the site (because, get used to it, we’re ALWAYS gonna be working on this site), so you’ll hear about them in due time when we hit the final crunch stage for cleaning up bugs and pushing this thing out the freaking door. Terry or Spot will make the appropriate announcement concerning the new features and man, all I gotta say is “Fuck.” Gotta love it.
Oh, and Step 5.) Spot yelling at me because I did it wrong… >.>
And lastly, I’ve actually done a few horrid things: I’ve stopped my exercise regimen (kinda lazy), and stopped doing Judo (no longer fun at my current dojo). TKD has caught my interest and I’ve been thinking about entertaining the idea of maybe possibly starting it. That and there’s police training classes at my old dojo on Fridays so I may go in for that for the heck of it, once, to see what it’s like.
That and I’m looking for a cash-paying job. I’ve applied to a good 20 places and have only gotten rejection emails back from two. Yeah. So we’ll see what happens. Hopefully after my summer trip up to Canada I’ll be able to focus more on getting said job and actual monies to pay off my credit card debt etc… And with a job that actually gets me out of the house, I may just end up getting back into an exercise regimen again. I dunno. We’ll see what happens.
Fallout 3 Review
about 1 year ago - No comments
When you first start out you certainly realise that it’s just much much more than a pretty area with crap to do in it. It’s an actual WORLD out there, and that’s what I appreciate about it. Bethesda just makes an INCREDIBLE job of just immersing the player into this game and the harsh realities of doing things. But there’s no real emphasis on doing side quests and exploring for yourself, and instead there’s more Fable/Mass Effect instances where you can go somewhere specific in exploration if you want to, or out of necessity, and perchance pick up a quest. But, say, in Oblivion, when given the option of these side quests, that “Omg, there’s a side quest, and it’s actually remotely interesting.” feeling came over you. In Fallout 3, not so much so that you went off and did them, but you were more annoyed at the fact that you had to fetch something, or go to a certain place. Half of the main story line is doing a wild goose chase. The other half, is a search and seizure type.
The wild goose chase section though, takes you to some magnificent places. There’s happy, there’s scary, there’s light, there’s dark, and everything in between. I had more than a few moments laughing at something in game, and almost the same amount of moments going “HOLY JESUS EXCREMENT!!” in fear. The game engine itself is like a dirty version of Oblivion. Not that it’s worse in any way, but the art style is notably more dirty. Here in Fallout land, there is rarely a shiny thing but a lot of interesting stuff to find. The main story line itself is a very heartfelt one about what happens between a child and a father, and a quest to find said father and finish what he started. It was however, a really short story, lasting maybe a day or two’s worth of play if you didn’t do anything else. Albeit longer than the main oblivion story line, still, I can write adventures that will take longer than that to finish.
The other part of the game that I really didn’t like was that you can’t play the world after the game finishes. As far as the story goes, this is completely fine as it’s really hard to change the world after the end of the main story, however I would have liked to see at least a little bit of effort to try and make a compromise so after you finish, you can go out and do all the other mini stories a la Oblivion, do some exploration, etc.
The V.A.T.S control system I personally think is really cool, even if it is really, really, really, cheap if you work up the correct amount of skill points. By the time I finished the game, I could walk around with a .325 cal hunting rifle (or whatever the calibre was), and call out three shots to the head, and then kill the enemy without having to break a sweat. It got really cheap after a while, but I did enjoy the whole “I’m staying alive and conserving ammo!” part of it. So it’s really a tossup and a lot of personal opinion on what you use.
The voice acting is again incredible, and you’ll hear a lot of familiar voices from Oblivion. Granted that the people comprising the wasteland are basically the more human people from Oblivion used over again. Not exactly unexpected, but I would have liked to see a little bit of variation. The musical score was incredible. It never once got annoying, and it was always doing what it was supposed to at the right moments. The only thing I didn’t like about the sound was the radio. That was the only thing that repeated itself a lot, but you can turn off the radio so it pretty much balances out.
Overall the game play is really fun, following the story is really compulsive and easy to do. I will admit however, that going on a side quest to take care of something, only to be thrown another “Favour for a favour” trek is quite annoying. It’s like Bethesda took all the really interesting story hooks from Oblivion and whittled them down to a ghost of what they used to be. And like in Oblivion, the monsters level as you level, so it doesn’t get easier in general, just easier to do what you train in. This I didn’t mind so much as I trained my character in the art of killing, and it does keep things engaging as far as fighting enemies go. The big guys were really freaking big, the small guys were really freaking small, so it really kept even with itself all along the way. Though since I’ve only played it through once, I’ve yet to get higher than level 12. Though I’m sure if you took your time, did everything else BEFORE doing the main story you could easily get into the 50′s and 60′s I’m sure.
Overall, Fallout 3 is a good game. It has a compelling story, beautiful waste lands (ironic, I know), and some really interesting, albeit kinda sad, characters. This totally has the Coolhand2 seal of approval
(Disclaimer: The CSA (Coolhand2 Seal of Approval) does not take into account any language barriers or moral standards. Please follow the ESRB (or equivalent) ratings in your country and buy what you want to buy…)
Mass Effect Review
about 2 years ago - No comments
When you start up Mass Effect, the first thing you notice is that the character creation scheme has been revamped quite a bit. Still keeping up with the three class, and other combinations and specialties gig, it follows basically the same formula however more in-depth. It actually gives you a story, a background, a way to live, and most importantly of all, interactivity. You then have your normal character choice of male/female. The biggest difference is here. With the upgrade to the 360, you can now design your own character by looks. To put it in relatives, it’s more limited than Oblivion, but more flexible than say, Knights Of the Old Republic (either one). Personally, I like the pre-set female with a custom story line. She’s hot, and can kick some ass.
As soon as your profile is created, you get into your game. The very first thing seeable is that the engine of the game itself has undergone a DRASTIC change, and it’s all for the good. Among the first things that you notice the graphics are just awesome. However not as good as say, Crysis, I was still blown away by how real things look, and I’ve seen real looking graphics before (I’ve MADE them before). Yes there are times when stuff like shadows kind of deters from that realism, but on a High-definition screen using HDMI input, the amount of detail that you can see is more amazing than I have ever seen… Anywhere. However the drawback of this granted HUGE amount of detail is that there’s a SERIOUS material pop-in problem. This is where the basics of a material are rendered, but then all the normal mapping and the rest of the material is rendered, in front of the user. While it does deter from the game play a bit, It’s only really memorable for me in about two instances, and that’s it, otherwise I’ve had really no problem of this type happening.
Then the voices start talking. They talk about your past, who you’ve been and what you are… According to your character creation prelims. There is nothing bad about this, and it only adds a completely new level of interaction with the game. In older BioWare games there was really more of a sense of the main character didn’t have a past, either they had their memory wiped, or were a prodigy from a war, or something like that. Now you can actually have parents, be a hard-ass who grew up on the streets, a loner who lived out in space and your history comes up repeatedly (not as much as I like) as the game goes on.
The story of this game itself is HUGE. Completion of the main story line is still doable in about 15 hours which provides a nice lengthy story arc that one can really get into. Though it not being as long as say Jade Empire (which was 20-25 hours) there’s really not as much build-up for the twist that is SO BioWare’s fashion in stories. Yeah there’s a couple, but none that really hit as hard as the one in Jade Empire, or the BIG twist at the end of KOTOR 1. Despite this it is still an excellent story, and even without the achievements, has excellent replay value. What I find though, is that the bigger the twist, the lesser the replay value. So despite not as big a twist as their previous games had, it’s not a bad thing. The story arc is still very entertaining and very replayable which is really what a game developer should shoot for.
Going along with the story is their brand new speak system. Your character actually talks in this game and like many other things, provides a much more immersible atmosphere for the player to have. This new system is incredibly new and the best that I have ever seen and will probably ever see again. It allows you to pick your choice before the character you’re talking to even finishes, but it doesn’t do it too early so you get the biggest idea of what the person is talking about before you get the prompt. The way the choices are laid out are such that you can access a lot of choices (10 max in total) with just the easy flick of the right thumb stick and pressing the ‘A’ button. This doesn’t interrupt anything and doesn’t wait for the character to finish talking, and it happens so quickly that even if you have to go back and re-pick, you get it done quickly enough so that when the character you’re talking to finishes, your personal character is right there with the vocal equivalent of what you just asked for. This provides for seamless story telling opportunities and along with your character talking instead of standing there staring, adds another level to immerse yourself in.
This brings us to game play. The controls could have used a little bit more work. I constantly found myself accidentally drawing a weapon, or hitting ‘B’ to get back into the menu system. User error? More than likely but the control scheme just doesn’t work for me, and since there’s only one set of commands for the buttons that you cannot change, you kind of have to force yourself to get used to it. The good news is everything else is practically flawless. The new decryption system is very intuitive, but somewhat confusing and demanding at the same time. You’ll find yourself hitting the button just a millimeter of a fraction of a second too late, and you’ll lose the decryption or hack, and then you won’t find yourself with enough Omni-gel to hack back through it. It adds a lot to the game and doesn’t take away a bit. The fighting system has only half changed. There are no more turn-by-turn, stacked attacks, bull crap. It’s now a real-time fighting game where you have to make every shot count, or else you will count. As a statistic.
The last thing left to talk about is music. To which I normally don’t pay attention to that much when it involves a game. It’s more of a subconscious thing that I don’t actively listen to, but am affected by none-the-less. The times that I did just sit down and listen to it, some of it seemed a bit misplaced. For example you’re on the ship just standing there in character, and there’s tense music going on. Very short, high, soft notes from the violins that really belong in a more tense moment. That’s not to mean that they don’t miss their mark everywhere, and when it matters most they get it, but in those lulls where it’s more likely to get your attention, it feels somewhat misplaced. You really don’t expect a really tense feeling if you’re on the ship you love, to be quite honest, it just doesn’t fit.
Overall the game is incredibly good, and despite its short comings there’s more than enough reason to go back and play it again. There’s the chance of being evil instead of good, or trying a new love interest (which actually does come into play towards the end, and why this game got an M rating here in the US). This is definitely a must-get game for the holidays and looks incredibly outstanding on a very nice TV; I must salute BioWare for making another outstanding, incredible game.
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 Review
about 4 years ago - No comments
Hurredly I went off to my local Gamestop and got my copy of it. And in the same manner I came back home and popped it into my Xbox. In the opening scene you’re at Hill 30, under a major german offensive. You fight for a bit, then get knocked out by a German tank shot.
Then you encounter you’re first cutscene. By pure definition, it’s not a cutscene, but more of an interlude. This is where the main character that you play as, Sgt. Matt Baker, tells through his journal, his worries of not being ready to lead his platoon with his newly recieved rank. The times in which you hear Sgt. Baker reciting from his journal entries are extremely powerful, and fit right in with the rest of the story, which is also powerful in its own right by the time you get to the end.
You then start off the game at the proper point. Kinda like Quentin Tarantino in a way.
You find yourself on a plane (with hints at Medal of Honor and Conker: Live and Reloaded with some dude puking). All of this game takes place in the first person view, except for this opening sequence on the plane where it zooms out from the back of the plane to the front, then focusing on your dirty little mug before going into first person mode. By now you’re in the game, just unable to control yourself, because you still have to jump out of the plane. As you’re platoon seargent starts to ready you and the rest of your men to jump, the plane you’re gets hit by Anti-Aircraft flak, and you are forced to jump early. Your squad lands in bits and peices everywhere, with you losing all of your equipment to a tree. You soon find yourself with Mac, the platoon Seargent. He gives you his pistol and you move on from there.
The main problem with this game is that it is way too obvisouly linear. With a few exceptions towards the end, there is usually only one trail for you to get to where you need to go, with little or no yeild.
This, thankfully, is saved by those areas that aren’t linear. These areas increase in quantity the farther along in the game you go, with maybe one exception while looking for support at Hill 30. But that’s just one small area where it doesn’t matter.
The gameplay is quite nice, with impressively detailed guns that each have their plusses and minuses, and controls that are smooth and easy to get used to. The big fall-off point for the gameplay though, is the fact that it’s too overly repetitive. You set one person to cover you, while you personally go in on the flank and kill the enemy, or you set one group to do the cover and another to do the flanking. Though effective it can cause some major troubles when you’re surpressing 9 different men at once and you personally have to go in and kill them all. In most cases this isn’t really a problem because most of the groups are in groups of two and you can easily snipe them off when they stick their heads out to check. Though it does get repetitious, you will find yourself coming up with alternate ways of keeping the enemy occupied right up to the point where you kill them.
The strategy portion comes into play with the flanking though, with you hitting the white button placing you into a birds eye view of the map in it’s current mode, with enemy locations (specific if they are firing at you, or general if you haven’t encountered them). Though helpful in finding ways around the enemy, there are just too few situations where this is true. Because if you go on the flank and pass right by, you either find yourself in the middle of an open road with snipers in the buildings, or facing a tank that you had to get the correct supplies to destroy it with by going through the other resistance point that you just bypassed, meaning you have to go back, kill them with twice the risk to yourself than before, grab the panzerfaust (tank destroyer thing), and risk getting hit again by the tank before destroying it. But again, as you move along you will find other ways of destroying things with the weapons avaliable to you.
Aside from those things, the gameplay is actually kind of bland, with few truly fun moments of where you have to run and gun with the spray and pray mind set. But that’s on the easiest level. As you get higher and higher, you are constantly thinking about where you’re hiding, checking your angles making sure there are no enemies that can get you from behind.
The music of the game is practically non-existant, using the sounds of nature to get ambience for the game itself. The only pHeaces you do hear music is in the loading scenes between levels, which in and of itself is a time-line of what you’re doing, who’s alive, and who’s dead. It’s actually a quite interesting way to load levels.
The multiplayer option is actually quite interesting. Placing you as the leader of either the axis or allies with a fire team of 3 bots, and a base team of 3 bots. The great thing about this is that all the maps are small incredibly centralized causing for quick action that will have you frantically looking for another route to flank your friend on a relatively small number of 11 maps. The amount of maps are no matter though since they each have their areas for doing maneuvers to trick out your friend, and will keep you well occupied into the night.
As probably the most accurate WW II FPS on the Xbox right now, it certainly lives up to it’s title as a historic shooter. A must get for any nostalgic person who likes history and violence. If you’re not one of those, then just get it for the multiplayer.
Overal Score: 8.9/10
Morrowind GOTY Review
about 4 years ago - No comments
Right from the get go, you are released into a city, with nothing but a few gold pieces in your pocket. From then on, the only thing driving you is the man called Caius Casades. But you can kill him anyways, you’ll just (according to the game) have to suffer the wrath you have brought upon the world. Haven’t played that far so I wouldn’t know what that “wrath” is. As soon as you touch land in the game, you can start stealing things and selling it to others (beware you don’t sell it back to the guy, or else he’ll catch you), you can join guilds, become a priest, a rogue, or a thief. Or even a guard for all the matter. It doesn’t matter what you do, you can do it. That is literally how open it is. The first time I played it though, I really didn’t know what to do, where to go, or who to talk to. This is, for some people, the really big downfall of the ElderScrolls series. It all depends on personal taste.
Now, this game is a PC port. Meaning it doesn’t have all that good of a graphics system. But it really doesn’t matter because the point comes across quite spectacularly.
The music, a standard in all RPG’s, is superb. When you’re not battling it’s quiet and light, when you’re traveling from place to place it reflects the mood of the area you’re in, and when you ARE battling, you hear drums and trumpets and all sorts of instruments playing to a raucous melody.
As far as this game goes, and as open ended it is in it’s own right, I would recommend this to anyone who likes to decide what to do for themselves. Not be led around be an obvious leash
Score: 9/10
Area 51 Review
about 4 years ago - No comments
When you first start up the game, you are shown these beautiful pre-rendered graphics that gives an intro to the game itself in a Hollywood-esque fashion. With David Duchovny as the main character, you are placed into HAZ-MAT team Delta. You’re mission: To find HAZ-MAT team Alpha and extract safely.
When the initial graphics end, you are hit by the in game graphics and are thrown out of your seat, stunned, by how bad they are. You soon get over it as you play on, first being challenged to a friendly shoot out to teach you how to aim your gun. You play through the first level with ease, learning about double weapons, and crouching, with some pretty good fighting sequences, and by the end of it you feel pretty good about yourself. The initial shock of bad graphics having worn off, you move on to play the second level.
This is where you roll up into a ball and start the trail of going downhill with the story.
Not to spoil anything for the user who hasn’t played it yet, I will say this much.
The story is enough to keep you entwined in this believable world, and other…things… that happen to you do come in handy by the time you finish the game. Led by a ghost (voice by Marylin Manson) you take a self guided tour around the Area-51 facility discovering new enemies, and government cover-ups. With the required running and gunning.
The place where this game really falls is in it’s incorporation of problem solving. There are no simple clues that show you around, hell, there aren’t any clues at all. Like in Zelda: You are on your own. Just without a map, nor a compass to guide you.
Also, as you progress from level to level, the enemies you encounter get tougher and tougher. Though a nice touch, it does provide for some fierce screaming of words not fit for young’ns.
The sound effects for the weapons themselves are quite nice, and fulfill the experience quite nicely, there really isn’t that much of a sound track except for in the cut-scenes which does take away from it slightly, but usually the sound of the rifles and shot guns that you hear are enough where you soon find yourself not caring.
The Multi-player I haven’t really had a chance to test out (since at our LAN parties we are usually playing Halo 2 (Go figure eh?) and the fact I’m too cheap to get XBL) Yet from what I have seen from it, it looks rather engaging with decent maps, with a really decent map count of 17.
Overall the game starts out great, looses some of it’s shine, but then picks up in the end. With a seemingly solid multi-player option that you can use in XBL, Area-51 is not a must buy, but it’s definitely worth looking into.
Overall Score: 6.7/10