PC PC GAMES

We have played them all! Farcry, Crysis, and now Crysis 2. If you were relying on Crytek to stress your new AMD or NVIDIA GPUs, well, you will likely have to wait another 4 years, or never probably. Crysis 2 graphics suck. Yes the graphics suck and you all know why. Crytek sold us out for a bunch of pussy 360 gamers. Gameplay is about as exciting and motivating as pulling a scab off your dog’s scrotum. Open gameplay? Yeah right. Challenging? Not in the least. Crysis 2 goes into the “Never Finished” game bin with Daikatana. Come to think of it, Daikatana had better multi-player.

I don’t often gripe about game devs selling out, but Crytek sure did. Crytek is not about innovative gameplay and astounding graphics any more. Crytek is about ripping me off for $60. I think Crytek would have gotten better press if it had not of even released its water-downed and anemic PC version of this “game.” I hope Cevat Yerli chokes on this giant flaccid floppy penis of a game, while he is pulling out his overstuffed-wallet. Yeah, I just said that, and I meant it.

At least my 10 year old son thinks it is awesome. Wish he would give me the $60 back. Crysis 2 will be a great buy….when it hits the $2.99 price point on Steam.

For everyone awaiting this game, it seems deus ex hr is being developed by Netherlands-based developer Nixxes Software, not the company making the console versions. Take this news as you may about the focus and quality of the new deus ex. This was revealed by game director Jean-François Dugas in an interview with Shacknews saying:

“All the design and changes to the design has been done in Montreal and sent to [Nixxes]. We review the builds. We review and then give comments about what works and what doesn’t. It’s the same process. It’s the exact same process, except that the programmers aren’t in the same office.”

While I know I owe everyone another Jedi’s Beer Cooler commentary (had one written on Taboo Games but forums had covered the subject well) – I had noticed that there are some pretty impressive Sales happening right now:
Gamers Gate:

• Bad Company 2 – $9.98
• Ruse – $14.98
• Lead and Gold – $4.98

GoGamer.com

• Original Warhammer – $0.90 (yes, less then a dollar)
• Crysis 2 – $49.98
• Shift 2 – $40.90
• Darkspore – $40.90
• Dungeons – $29.90 (though in a few months I see this becoming a $15 on Steam)
• Total War: Shogun 2 for 33.90 a 33% off sale (You forgot this one beer!)

Introducing IGN Prime -

This is a current beta program that IGN has put out.  Those of us who subscribe to Fileplanet will already will find that we’ve been added to the program and apparently our subscriptions are actually going to decrease (woot).  The nice thing is, as Prime members, we automatically get 15% off all Direct2Drive purchases.  That includes pre-orders and I have yet to test to see if you can combine that with special promotions.  It looks like IGN is going to focus on competing with Steam a bit more.

Prime also consists of communities, achievements for your accounts, etc.  I will post more as more information becomes available.

For all you steamers who voice chat through steam, good news, valve is adopting the SILK codec which is used on skype so expect skype quality voice chatting through steam

FYI: PC gamer says about 8 hour of singleplayer Gameplay. While I like the FX and the way the story looks, eight hours even with Multiplayer are not worth $59!

Introduction

After Biowares brilliant games, Dragon Age Origins and its expansion Dragon Age Awakenings, they decided to carry on the Dragon age game and to make a second one, which is simply named Dragon Age 2. Now from the start we heard that the game was new in many ways including the combat, which worried some, but regardless of the changes we all went out to buy it anyways. This is the story of that purchase.

About

Dragon Age 2 is by Bioware whom are also the owners of the very famous Mass Effect franchise, they are also currently working on a star wars MMOPRG. Dragon Age 2 was released march 8th in the US and march 11th in the EU to a standard full retail price.

Gameplay

The gameplay has not changed much from the first Dragon Age however a lot of distinct changes can be felt, a major difference, fx, on the consoles is the fact that auto attack had been removed so that the game was a button masher, however we on the PC were lucky to avoid that so it is still a standard auto attack for us. For everyone whom does not know what the first Dragon Age’s combat system was like you can go play any RPG out there and then come back to this review as it is exactly the same, click to auto attack and then deal out spells from your toolbar, and that’s fine, don’t fix what isn’t broke. However my gripes with the game begin to emerge around this part as it is quickly evident how over powered some classes are.

The game holds three main classes, warrior, rogue and mage. Warrior is your typical tank that can also specialize as a DPS ( Damage per second, a term for a class that is there for giving damage ), rogue is DPS or ranged DPS and mage just makes wooshy noises and then things die/explode. However the warrior is greatly underpowered in this game as it is almost useless as a DPS and can only really be used for crowd control simply because the rogue and the mage are able to dish out some much damage from almost the very start of the game that a DPS warrior becomes completely useless, that really hurts for players, like me, whom prefer to play warriors for awesome killing via sword.

However combat quickly becomes even more repetitive than in the first one, there is a very normal rhythm to every fight and it goes – Take your mage, cast cone of cold on massive mob of people, cast other area of effect spells on stunned enemies till they die, rinse and repeat –, the game quickly becomes less of having exciting battles and more of just trying to slog your way through boring fights to get to the next part of the story.

Another huge part of Dragon Age has always been the interaction with your companions whom would give you bonuses and help you in the story if you became friends with them. This is still true in Dragon Age 2 and Bioware once again provides some of the best voice acting aswell as some of the most awesome/witty dialogue in gaming. You truly attach yourself to these characters and you soon begin to actually give a damn what happens to them, a hallmark that the game really knows how to pull you in.

The quests in DA2 are also very nicely done and often gives you the feeling that you cannot just leave a quest behind or not do it, however another weak point of the game is that the locations are very limited, several times in the game you will see dungeons be reused over and over even though you are supposed to be a completely different place than you were last time, this really drags on the quest effects because you never really feel you go anywhere new after having been in the same cave 25 times.

Another change is that the wide arrays of answers to a questions from Dragon age 1 has now been turned into the chat wheel from Mass Effect. Instead of having a lot of different answers you know choose between a good responds, a neutral ( often time just straight out ***hole responds ) or a bad/aggressive responds. The game feels a lot weaker with this implemented as everything just seems generic when all you can answer is “ Ofcourse I will help you! “ or “ Help you? Don’t you have someone else to help you or am I just your main guy for jobs now? “ or “ I AM NOT GOING TO HELP YOU I HATE EVERYTHING “, this just causes Hawke to become too stereotypical for the games own good.

Story

The story starts our hero, Hawke, on a flight from his hometown in Ferelden ( The area the first game was centered around ) as he feels to Kirkwall, a city in the Free Marches. The game then follows Hawke as he rises to become the Champion of Kirkwall. The game does this very well actually, following his ascent into riches and glory, it does this mainly through skipping some years where he is off doing something and then the story resumes to see how far he had gotten. This works rather well as it skips years of boring combat and “ go kill so and so “ quests, which is actually rather innovative as the game just pushes away from the parts it know would be boring and just draw out the game.

However as the story progressed I quickly found myself hoping for the game to be over as the game pulls out more and more storylines that just seem to drag out the game. While I won’t spoil anything I found the ending to be very disappointing and indeed the very last chapter of the game very disappointing, it left a very bad taste in my mouth.
As previously mentioned though the game successfully attaches you to your companions and I can only commend it for that.

Multiplayer

None, and that’s perfectly alright with me.

Summary

To sum it up, the game certainly scores points by having an engaging story, good characters and a exciting local, but it suffers in the department of combat, dungeons and the last chapter of the story.

I therefore cannot recommend Dragon Age 2 to anyone whom was not a hardcore fan of Dragon Age one and I have to say this is the first time I have been so disappointed with a Bioware game. I am afraid that for this game I have to give it the abyssal score of 7/10.

This may cause a lot of rage from the fans and the haters but I just can’t give it any higher, it simply doesn’t rank as high as Dragon Age 1 or the Mass Effect series.

This game is ONLY recommended for hardcore fans

Summary information:

Publisher: EA

Developer: Bioware

Website: http://dragonage.bioware.com/

Forum: http://social.bioware.com/home.php?

Demo is on Steam

Price: 49,99€ ( Prices may vary on American Steam )

You want fart in a jar on saints row 3? All you have to do is reply to the SaintsRow Twitter account, registering your interest in the gaseous grenade and making sure to use the #fartinajar tag.

I am so excited for this game (i like weird things)

Volition: “Let’s make a game that’s worth stealing, and then we’ll worry about making sure they don’t”

Treyarch: OMG, BATTLEFIELD 3 LOOKS AMAZING

Bethesda: If you say graphics don’t matter, you are lying

Valve: Steam guard officially launches

Bethesda: Horse armor still sells…who is still buying this thing?

THQ: Homefront sold 375000 copies first day… WHY ARE THE STOCKS STILL GOING DOWN

EA: Who here loves Hans Zimmer? because you are gonna be hearing alot of him on crysis 2

Blizzard: Here are the newest WoW fixes

Finally some official pc gameplay from singleplayer

http://www.hawkengame.com/blog/

This game looks interesting. For something a very small group of indie developers are doing, its look nice. I like the atmosphere of the game and the environments… not so big on the design of the mechs though. I am more Robotech/Full Metal Panic type. But still this is another interesting looking game.

Over the last couple weeks things have been pretty quiet on the new podcast front and I figured I fill you guys in. You know this is a podcast by average Joe’s like you and the guy next to you. Not a job, not something to make money with but something that is supposed to be fun and entertaining. In some ways at some points it has felt a little like a job for me at times and that is the reason why the podcast was a little late here or there. Simple fact is I don’t want it to be a job, I want it to be fun. I love the guys that you had the pleasure of hearing on the podcast and I love the fact that we made many new friends over the last year. Right now I/we are trying to figure out how to make this fun for you and for us and it might be that it will get silent for a little while until we figure this out or just keep playing and rely on the PC Gamer podcast… (You so can tell that they do it for the money).

Another issue is that even the Inidi devs, that stress how important the Indi status is don’t seem to see the value of talking with little guys like us. Other than Cliff I have been trying to get quite a few other people on the podcast and it does not happen because we are not a PC Gamer, or Kodaku. It’s too bad, because I see real value in this way reaching out to your target audience and the couple k downloads of our podcast each week proof that there is real interest.

So, right now, it’s up in the air of what we will do. You miss us?

So with Simon swamped with Soccer and Kommie completely distracted with WarHammer 40k take two (hundred and something), I’ve decided to snag the Game Night controls.  So Sat – March 12th, we’re going into the Field and playing a little Bad Company 2.  I’m a fan of FPS as a good game night distraction, so we can all pull ourselves away from League of Legends, WoW, 40k and Civ for a couple of hours and hash it out on the battlefield.

It will begin Later then normal – 10PM on Saturday night (this should give my familytime to go to sleep).  We’ll pick a fairly empty server and start filling it up.  Plan to frag the hell out of each other, talk about favorite beer (or non alcoholic drink – we can debate the new Dew flavors!!) and well, make fun of Kommie.

So to recap – Bad Company 2 – 10PM ESTD - Sat. March 12th. Hosted by me.  (Just wish I had an admin to a server where I could turn off gravity)

EDIT ALERT!! : Great Find by Sever26 – Looks Like BC2 is onsale over on Impulse for $10.  If you don’t have it, perfect time for to pick it up.  Check it out: http://www.impulsedriven.com/bfbc2

The next phase of the debate is pretty straight forward: while the games initial purchase price continues to rise for AAA titles, are we getting our monies worth of content? 20+ years ago, a game at full price off the store shelves contained game manuals worth reading (Wizardy had some funny comics and commentaries throug out), trinkets and “toys” that helped you in playing games (cloth maps or Anks found in Ultima games). But the industry hit a major obstacle in the early 90s when boxing became so out of control trying to garner the attention ofwould be buyers that the brick and mortar stores forced a change to the industry by demanding standardized sizing in game packages.

By Late 90s early 2000s, game manuals became the next victim in cutting costs for developers to produce for standard game releases. While not fully extinct, by today’s standards, there are rarely any existing manuals. Great example of philosophy changes: in 2005, Civ 4 standard game box included tech tree posters, game manuals detailing Each Civ, Unit and Building in the game, etc., but in 2010, Civ 5 had a simple tech tree fold out. As Game prices slowly climbed, what we got was dwindling.
In the early 2000s, the earliest trends of special edition game packages began hitting the shelves, a trend that really took advantage of the growing MMO game verticals. Galaxies was the first big “special” edition I personally purchased, but I also snagged special editions of WoW releases. These games cost up to $100 for bare minimum in extras (best extra was sleeping panda cub in WoW) and on occasion very cool toys, like MW2’s Night Vision Googles. Now every game has some special limited edition that gives the player something different or edgy, while the basic copy just gives you the game. (continue reading…)

Deus Ex: Human Revolution has been given a release date, with an Australian retailer shooting early and revealing that Square Enix’s impressive looking RPG will be out on August 25.

RockPaperShotgun spotted that Electronic Boutique’s Australian arm has gone live with the date – a Thursday – that would point to an August 23 release in the US. Game UK has since gone live with a date of August 26.