With IAmMalex moving on to college, and myself writing on a new site, Ready Set Restart is officially dead. It was a labor of love that probably won’t be missed by any but myself, but I thought I’d let my few readers know what was going on, in any case.
I do hope that you’ll join me at my new location, Gamers Leak, where myself and a few others are trying to get it off the ground and turn it into something big. I’m the current PC editor, if you will, and I hope to see you all in the future.
I love Bioware. I use every opportunity known to man to sing their praises from the heavens. Despite this, learning that any near-deity has flaws can be somewhat painful to one’s view of the universe. Jade Empire is such a cold shower to the psyche. Is it flat-out bad? No. Is it perfect? Well….
You’ve probably seen Shattered Horizon lurking around Steam. You’ve probably heard it’s name whispered in awed tones in certain forums. You also probably took one look at it, decided that it was too insane for your computer and went back to playing something else. You were right. Shattered Horizon was developed by Futuremark studios, a company that previously focused on creating high-end benchmarks for people who spend all their expendable income on new computer parts. But does it do anything to stand out from the crowd and make it worth the high system requirements?
I have waited earnestly for the E3 convention, as I do every year. This event is a sneak peek into the future of game-related products. So, what did I think of the E3 2011?
Duke Nukem is a fairly common icon of the manliest men in gaming. This is strange, as he hasn’t actually appeared in many titles. The game that rocketed him to such superstar status was Duke Nukem 3D, one of the earlier FPS titles ever made. It was excellent, with over-the-top humor, tons of easter eggs, and genuinely fun gameplay. Financial problems have kept the official sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, from appearing before now. While the game itself won’t be out for a little while yet, the demo was launched a few days ago. How does it fair?
This is the only Duke Nukem Forever associated photo that wasn't trying to show off the fact that the full game has naked women in it. So, no official screenshots. And I'm not playing the demo again to take them myself. The reasons for which will become apparent below.
Time travel is an iffy subject. Even assuming that it is possible, the act of time traveling can often be messed up by simple logic. For instance, what happens if you go back to change something and you actually do? When you get back to the present, your present self will have lived in said changed world and will have had no need to go back and fix things whenever you ended up leaving. What happens then? While the entire idea of time travel is a fascinatingly complicated issue, it’s one that Singularity only really skirts around. The story is a what-if of the USSR finding a large deposit of a mineral called E99 on a small, non-descriptive island. You are sent in as part of a small strike force investigating a disturbance in the Force satellite imaging. But is what happens next mind-blowing or just plain silly?
Corny title joke aside, I’m finally able to bring you one of the reviews I’ve been working on for some time. L.A. Noire will be soon.
When I first heard of the development of Brink, I immediately assumed (which one should never do with video games) that it would be presented in a Call of Duty meets Halo meets typical RPG game fashion. In some manner, I was correct. When playing the game, you can see some similarities between the aforementioned games and Brink. But what sets Brink apart from these best-sellers?
Note: Minor spoilers ensue
Looking at older games is always a challenge. If you don’t praise older titles right out of the gate, you immediately piss off loads of people that played said game in their childhood and consider it to be better than life itself due to several excellent features that are never truly aped in newer titles. On the other hand, newer games often include systems and design choices that fix the issues of older titles. This is why I’m calling this a retrospective, not a review. Anything I say about Knights of the Old Republic is colored by nostalgia, though I’ll try to be as objective as I can.
The Witcher 2 is one of the most highly hyped games of mid 2011. As those who have read my blog for a while may have noticed, I sort-of disliked hated loathed the first one. It was an absolute mess that didn’t qualify as a good action game or a good RPG. It was sort-of saved by a fantastic story, but I still never summoned the courage to make my way through the rest of the game. So, does the second game in this franchise beat the odds and live up to the hype?
Since I’m not some savant who can land copies of games before they actually release, I’m constrained to finishing a game as quickly as possible after release. So, I’ll just summarize my thoughts on the game so far.
Ready, Set, Restart. 