Modern PC Gaming

Resident Evil 4

The thing not only plays but looks decidedly shite and doesn’t even bother to provide a way to exit the game without going for the ol’ ctrl-alt-del trick.The graphics themselves are a travesty, which could a) have been easily avoided b) really wouldn’t be so important if they hadn’t removed daylight, night and fog effects in a brilliant attempt to strip away any sense of atmosphere. Then again, instantly disappearing characters have been added, thus succesfuly adding to the hilarity of the whole affair.

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

DiRT 3

Replayability will mainly come in the form of Multiplayer. I have a feeling that eventually if you want to keep playing and having fun you will need to start buying some of the DLC, especially new tracks and cars. The game comes with what I consider to be a very limited selection of tracks. Sure, the reverse of the tracks is available but even DiRT 2 had more tracks. I really don’t like any DLC especially since this game pretty much just came out and they’re already trying to get your money. To me that’s like releasing an incomplete game and then charging people for patches and updates. Replayability gets a score of 7 out of 10.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

The Lord of the Rings Online Shadows of Angmar

Truth is, I could go on and ramble about a thousand other little things, you know, if only to come up with the mother of all blog-based reviews, and I wouldn’t have even managed to scratch the surface of what a magnificent beast LotRO is. Things like the recent Solstice Festival, the raising difficulty of quest as one progresses eastward, destiny points, the amazingly detailed beginner’s quests (instanced) & areas, the sheer number of available emotes, the immensely helpful community are all there for you to discover, but -as expected- not all is perfect. LotRO is still very young by MMORPG terms.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Sensible Soccer: 2006

Sensi 2006 is played in the traditional 16bit bird’s eye view, just like its revered daddy, only slightly zoomed in, a bit angled and with a quite more dynamic camera. In case you were wondering, that’s totally unlike the FIFA/PES viewpoints and definitely a good thing, as the player can see a much greater part of the field, thus having a chance to get imaginative with his passing, pull through smart long balls, deep crosses, or even score a 40 metre goal.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Lula 3D

Being of course cheap isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lula 3D does have a certain charm, in the way Plan 9 from Outer Space, Dungeons and Dragons the Movie and Jesus Christ Vampire Slayer do. It’s so unbelievably bad it is almost interesting and enjoyable. Mind you, it’s not funny per se. The funny thing is that people decided to sell this kind of crap and I decided to buy it. And there is no such thing as a Bouncing Boobs technology.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Telltale Texas Hold’ Em

Telltale Texas Hold’Em is not on TV, it’s on the PC instead. It was actually the first game released by the (hopefully) adventure maestros of Telltale, and has been around for quite some time. It is apparently a poker game. Of the Texas Hold’Em variety. This of course is neither a serious gambler’s tutoring software instructor, nor a hardcore/ultra-powerful simulation. Even though Telltale Texas Hold’em does play a decent and varied poker game, its great appeal is the atmosphere and the characters. Characters and atmosphere in a poker game I hear you say?

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Medieval II: Total War

And now for the more impressive feat of Medieval II Total War: the graphics. Well, they are bloody amazing, and unfortunately to fully appreciate them you might need a slightly up-to-date PC. The game, you see, builds heavily on Rome’s engine, updating the strategic level’s visuals and making sure the 3D RTS parts are jaw-dropping, by adding tons of special effects, shadows and quite a few thousands of polygons. The greatest improvement though, is that each unit on the battlefield is no longer a stiffly animated group of clones, but more of a proper unit consisting of individual -thus quite different to each other- soldiers, fighting in an animated way that puts Dawn of War to shame. Yes, it’s that good, really.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None

Other problems include a constantly repeating and quite annoying musical theme, the inability to skip dialog (and there are tons of it), horrible 3d character models and a few glitches/bugs. On the other hand And Then There Were None is quite enjoyable and atmospheric (for the duration of the 10 to 15 hours you’ll spend beating it). Environmental graphics are okay and with some decent weather effects, the original material is excellent, the voice-overs almost perfect and if you buy the game in the U.S. you will also get the original book as a gift (or so I hear). The manual is also a nice addition, with its decent oldskool booky feel, and you might also appreciate the multiple endings, which also include the original.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Star Wars Battlefront II

SWBFII is such an improvement over its predecessor it totally surprised me and reminded me how fond of Star Wars games (TIE Fighter is what I am actually referring to) I once used to be. There are lots of excellent maps, vastly improved game mechanics, four different factions, many weapons and classes to choose from, playable characters (Darth Vader and co.) that can be used in multiplayer battles, a decent single player campaign, driveable vehicles and even a small but interesting strategic mode called Galactic Conquest (unfortunately only for the single player mode). By far though, the most interesting new feature is the inclusion of space battles. X-Wings, B-Wings, Y-Wings, TIE Fighters and the rest are all there in a highly enjoyable space flight sim in the style of X-Wing versus TIE Fighter.

Modern PC Gaming

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Civilization IV

Beside the three (3) aforementioned weirdos, the rest of the world should be happy to know that moving on to Civ 4 is definitely worth it. This seems to be the best Civ ever, even though no one can be absolutely sure unless two or three more years pass. Civ 4 sports a brand new 3d engine that can run decently on almost any modern PC or Notebook. It also features a new simpler but more tactical combat system, a never seen before government system, new religions that actually play a role (monasteries, prophets and missionaries are included), a faster game engine, decent (playable) multiplayer, new Wonders, Great People (something like wonders… but… ahem… in the guise of people)

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

Tron Evolution

Tron Evolution takes place in between the first Tron movie and the upcoming Tron Legacy. You take the role of a program written by Flynn to help manage and investigate the activities that have been going on in The Grid (the name of the Tron world). Basically, the regular programs are now known as Basics and a new kind of program life form that started being generated by The Grid called ISOs, which are I guess a trend towards self-generating AIs and a natural phenomenon in computing. Simply put, there is racial tension growing between the Basics and the ISOs with terrorist acts, activism, and the now recurrence of a virus that converts programs to mindless killers (although I found them to be particularly weak).

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

Alpha Protocol

The game uses the UT3 engine but I found the performance laggy at times. Most of the time the performance is fine but when it lag-spikes, it’s really god-awful and that sometimes ends up getting you killed. I found this happens a lot when there is some crazy action about to happen and then some character talks to you especially one over the headset (such as the mission handler). The graphics look nice and they get a score of 7 out of 10. Not the best but not too bad either. There were parts that you could see a character that was trying to walk through a door, like in Thief: The Dark Project.

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

Mafia 2

The graphics looked really nice, especially the character models. I was surprised by one of the hookers that had actual real looking breasts rather than cookie-cutter breasts like a character in a super-hero comic book. Kudos for that realism. Graphics I give a score of 8 out of 10. As far as performance goes, with my typical 1024×768 on my 2007 Windows XP gaming PC the game ran fine except when I needed it to, which was when I was trying to drive fast or complete some fast maneuvers in a car (like when they are chasing you drilling you with tommy guns). I guess I can’t expect my PC to last forever but I have played other new games on higher settings that run faster. I give performance a score of 6 out of 10.

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

The Saboteur

There are main story missions and side-missions. When you complete a key objective, such as blowing up a special Nazi weapon or killing a key Nazi, that specific section of the city gets liberated from the Nazi oppression. The advantage of doing that is that it makes it easier for you to escape the Nazis when they are after you. Without spoiling the storyline, unless the game is too hard for you, you can just ignore those side-missions but completing them can sometimes liberate a part of the city, making it easier to escape the Nazis.

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

Machinarium

Like I mentioned before, the game takes place in a cyberpunk setting although it’s extremely “cute”, which might seem strange to some. Although it is cute, the setting does remind you well of the urban sprawl, especially since every kind of robot in this society fulfills a specific kind of role. There’s poor neighborhoods filled with artists. A special detail is a church with schedules for specific robots to go pray and complete specific functions until the end of time. With it being a clever graphic adventure game, it tells the story through a comic like style of having characters talk in comic balloon dialogue popups drawn in a style that look as if a kid had drawn them but using symbols so that anybody in any country can understand what’s being said.

Modern PC Gaming

Obsolete Press

Machinarium review en espanol

Leandro habla de lo bueno que es el juego Machinarium.

Modern PC Gaming

Honorabili

Unreal Tournament 3

You can play the single player campaign, which is like the training tutorial for the real game: competing online against other players. The game uses Gamespy to connect with other players, which to me is not the best system for connectivity, but one has to live with it. A really annoying thing I found with the UT3 Gamespy component is that if you forget your password, you’re pretty much screwed. When you reset your password at the Gamespy website, it only resets your password for entering that website, which has nothing to do with the password you setup for your UT3 account. So my warning is that you write that password down somewhere and never ever lose it, or you will have to buy another copy of the game, like I did.