» 2008 » October

After playing and review the demo for Mirror’s Edge. I immediately installed Tom Clancy’s EndWar soon after. And what do you know? This game is pretty good as well! This is my first strategy game that I’ve ever played on a console. And you can’t really go wrong with any Tom Clancy’s games, this game feels like Ghost Recon + Command and Conquer.

The demo has one single player mission which takes roughly 10-15 minutes to complete. You are given a few groups of units initially, you can then call for more support using the CP (command points), the single player mission only allows you to control 3 different groups, and that’s pretty much all you need for the short mission as this is more of a training / tutorial type of mission. In this mission you can select all your forces and attack. But you really have to learn that tanks beat transport vehicles beat helicopters, and helicopters in turn beat tanks (think of them linking together in a circle).

  

The skirmish is where the demo lasts longer which uses the same map as the single player mission and you have the option to play as single player or with someone online. I chose to play by myself simply because I haven’t mastered the controls yet. The skirmish is pretty much securing buildings and that in turn will allow you to upgrade different technologies like air strikes, force recon etc as well as calling for more forces. You can choose from infantries, rocket infantries, command vehicle, artilleries, tanks, transport vehicles and helicopters. You will want to have a few groups of either infantries or rocket infantries to secure buildings faster. Unfortunately I did not play this using voice command so I had some difficulties controlling every single group of forces because you have to basically micro manage your forces but fortunately I got a hang of it after a while. And I really like the fact that after finishing each mission, you will need to press continue before leaving the stage, this is the perfect time to fly around and appreciate the beautiful graphics.

  

  

I couldn’t find any flaw while playing the demo except the fact that you can only zoom in and out so much sometimes its hard to see the surrounding, and the only way to see further is to select a different group.

The graphics are stunning as well and capable of running in full HD 1080p. The buildings, infantries and vehicles are very detailed. And the intro movies are even more impressive. The level of detail on the space station is just jaw dropping and I am not exaggerating.

  

Again if you haven’t downloaded this demo, go give it a shot and see if you like it or not. And finally I would like to apologize for the shaky screenshots.

First I got the news from EBGames that the Mirror’s Edge demo will be available on November 6th, I guess its been pushed forward by 1 week and is released today. Its always a good thing! Unlike Little Big Planet, I am still waiting for it to be shipped from Futureshop, it said “Shipped” but I have yet to see it in my mailbox.

Anyway onto the demo.

Oh-My-God, that was literally what I said to myself when I was playing this game, I have never had so much thrill for a long time! Even though the demo lasted 20-25 minutes max (unless you keep dying). The game is similar to The Bourne Conspiracy where you have to act quickly otherwise you will be captured/killed. Compare to Bourne, I think Mirror’s Edge is the better one.

  

Faith, your character tells you the story in comic style during loading which is plus, its always better to be looking at something moving rather than the old boring “loading” text. The first part of the demo starts you off with a few tutorials of how to move around, jump, slide underneath objects, climb up. Aside from the basics, you will learn to disarm from behind or from the front, shoot or throw away the weapon. That’s not all! You will also learn to do crazy acrobatics like running horizontally on a wall then spin around and jump onto the opposite side (sorry I tried my best to describe). Its basically pressing 3 buttons but you need to really time your presses. So you can chain your moves and perform something crazy. One thing I absolutely love about the controls is that most of the actions are performed using just the L1.

  

The second part is the real deal where you have to jump/move/climb around to deliver a package to the other runner Celeste. In between you have to run away from hostiles and/or fight your way through. Let me tell you, the second part was a THRILL to play!

  

  

Graphics are AMAZING and able to run in full HD 1080p. I particularly like the way the lighting is done. The whole city looks very realistic. I couldn’t stop taking pictures while playing the game and graphics are that good. Definitely eye candy.

Can’t really comment much on the music there’s only one track and a good one of course. Kind of feel like the Metal Gear Solid opening music.

If you haven’t downloaded the demo, please do so! You don’t know what you are missing!

  

I really appreciate game companies releasing game demos because they allow us gamers to try out the games before purchasing them, instead of doing all the guessing and then taking the risk of buying something we don’t enjoy playing. Reading reviews and watching trailers from Gamespot and Gametrailers help a bit but you can never be sure until you have played the games YOURSELF.

The game will be released on November 11th.

Stay tuned for yet another hyped up game demo review – Tom Clancy’s End War.

I actually found out about this through Digg but the actual article is from MailOnline. This has to be one of the most touching news I have heard in the past 6 months or possibly more. How would you feel if you had a old daugther who was born brain damaged said to you “I Love You” for the first time in 6 years?

With the help of modern technology, a £17,000 MyTobii Smartbox machine from Sweden, which tracks the eye movement of the person, in this case little 6 year old Elke Wisbey’s, detects which icon she is looking at and speaks out the word or phrase for her. Her first word, or phrase rather, is “I Love You”. At first her parents thought the system was “stuck” but when her father asked her if she said “I Love You” to them, she answered “Yes”.

I’m very happy for her and her family now that their local newspaper helped raise the money to buy the machine for them. Though this girl has severe brain damage but she quickly learned to use the machine to play games and even surf the internet with it.

I hope that this technology will become more affordable for even the less fortunate people with brain damage. It makes a huge difference because this will help bridge the communication gap between these people and their relatives.

Its been a while since I found anything interesting news regarding OLED or organic light emitting diode technology which consumes less energy than traditional LCD panels. Mostly small size displays and mobile devices. Samsung blew my mind by its demostration of its 40 inch OLED panel. The panel displays in full HD of 1920×1080 (1080p) with a 1 million to 1 contrast ratio. From the two images, the quality seems really bright and sharp, that’s all I can say by just looking at the images. But what I am really impressed by it is that its only 8.9mm thick! But unfortunately this is not mass production ready yet and even if it was, you wouldn’t want to know how much it would cost for a 40 inch OLED panel based on what Sony’s 11 inch OLED display for well over $1,000 USD anyway.

Now I would like to see Sony coming up with its own 40+ inch OLED panel sometime soon.

By the way, I really love that “Please don’t touch it” sign at the bottom.

And you think that’s all Samsung has to showoff? Think again.

It is also showing of a translucent OLED panel with a transmittance of 30% and resolution of 840 ×504, though the panel is actually a combination of 4 smaller 12.1 inch panels. Although its not in full HD I can see this being applied for different places such as having a TV while you shower, or having Christmas themed pictures displaying through the “window” panels or anywhere there are translucent objects.

Sources from Tech-On!:
40 inch OLED Panel
Transparent OLED Panel

I know Secret of the Solstice isn’t exactly a new game, it was released January of this year. But I just found out about it, believe me, there is no way to know every single online game out there with so many Massively multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG in short games with a lot of them being free. And I’m don’t regret registering for my free account, downloading the 1.22gb of install file and getting hooked onto this game. Just like any other MMORPGs that I played, be it free or with monthly fee. And when there is a worthy game, I want to share it with everyone.

The game also has its own blog and stay up to date on this game as well as other games that Outspark Games offer.

 

Now onto the actuall game review. First impression, the game reminds me of Ragnarok Online or RO which is another MMORPG, this game has been out since 2002 and remains popular even after it turned from free to monthly paid subscription and now back to free. The two game are very similar with your usual anime style 2D Spirte with 3D-ish environments. And if you want to get your hands on special items, you will have to actually pay for them, with real money and not game money.

 

After a bunch of patches, I fired up the game and again similar to RO, you are to get familiar with the game and where different buildings are such as general item store, blacksmith, hotel etc. The first few levels are easily obtained by performing simple quests from the Solstice Guide NPC. One thing I like about this is the fact that all the walking is done for you for these tutorial type quests. While I am running around to different places, I notice the running animation is also better than that of RO, then again RO has been out for a lot longer. So I’m not bashing RO but just that its nice to see some improvements from another game. The clothing also looks more detailed and has more varieties which could just be because I am new to this game though.

 

In terms of game play, I haven’t found any major lag, not even noticeable ones which is always good. I remember back then RO would get so laggy and resulted in me logging out and not play the game. People are friendly in general, always willing to help out the newbies. I have decided to become an acolyte after getting up to level 16. Weapons, armors and other support items are relatively expensive in my standards. The targeting system als works like a charm, specially for magic castors, all you have to do is left click on an enemy or a player, and you can cast magics on them without retargetting them and avoid potential miss target. Enemies have colors range from white to red as white means the easiest and red means hardest (most likely impossible to kill).

 

Music is pretty pleasant most of the time, but it gets really repetitive with the techno music when you are in some of the dungeons.

As any other MMO games, its always more fun and enjoyable partying up with others, Secret of the Solstice is no exception. It can get very dull and boring hunting on your own, even though sometimes you have to.

If you want to further customize your character, you can also purchase unique clothing to personalize your character(s) but that will cost you money, and we are talking about real money.

After a few days of playing this game, I think Secret of the Solstice is definitely a good game for those who likes anime, level grinding or just casual play. I mean the game is free so there is nothing to lose but just your time. And if you hate the game you won’t waste time and keep playing it anyway.

Give it a shot and sign up!

7.5/10

  

I saw the trailer about a month ago and was really impressed, then again, its only a trailer and probably not the PSP version. I took some time to play around with the PSP version of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and I was not impressed. Another disappointment. Again for the PSP version and does not necessary imply the PS3 and the XBox360 versions are just as bad.

You start off at the top of some building, typical. You will basically be swinging around from left to right or right to left, occasionally you will get inside some buildings, you have your basic punch combos and kick combos by repeatedly pressing square for punch and triangle for kick. You shoot out your web by pressing x, as well as holding a direction and press R to perform web swinging. You can also walk on walls and I had experience a buggy situation where Spidy was literally flying up instead of walking up vertically along the wall.

  

Overall the graphics are…well…pass, I think Lego Batman has better graphics than this game. So far I have only seen 3 to 4 variations of enemies PLUS Venom, which is the boss for first level. Oh yea after defeating Venom, you also get infected by the black matter and you can now turn toggle between original Spidy and black spidy with different abilities / attacks by pressing select. And basically you are just moving vertically and horizontally.

  

After the first level is complete, you can purchase new skills by spending you good Spidy points and bad spidy points, you can’t purchase good Spidy skills using bad Spidy and vice versa. Now how do you get Spidy points? When you interact with people, you get to choose good answer or bad answer, obviously good answer will give you good Spidy points and bad answer will give you bad Spidy points. You will get more by accepting quests from people that you encounter as well to gain more Spidy points.

  

So far that’s all I have discovered after playing Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, it was too linear and down right boring after a while that I’ve decided to turn off my PSP. Oh yea did I mention the voice acting is bad as well? I suggest sticking to the PS3 and/or the XBox360 versions. Or better yet, rent to see if you like it or not.

5/10

For those that are interested in Mirror’s Edge, based on information from EBGames there will be a demo released on November 6th. Pre-order of the full game starts shipping on November 11th.

As a side note, my Spider-Man: Web of Shadows for the PSP will be up later today!

And I’m STILL waiting for my Little Big Planet, hopefully I will finally get it tomorrow.

I just checked out two trailers from Gametrailers and I must say I am disappointed at the game play and graphics of the co-op and head to head trailers. It just doesn’t feel as intense and fun as Call of Duty: World at War, not even Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare to be honest. If I had to choose between the two, I would most likely pick Call of Duty: World at War over Resistance 2. I don’t care if R2 is exclusive, speaking of exclusive, this is just sad for the PS3 if this turns out not too positive. Gears of War 2 on the other hand looks promising for both single and multiplayer campaigns, no I’m not an xbox360 fanboy, as a matter of fact I don’t even own an xbox, only a PS3, but I am sharing with you guys with my honest opinions. And I didn’t like these two trailers that much, they were nothing more than machine gun spamming 80% of the time.

But if I remember correctly, the single player campaign looked good though. As a side note, I SHOULD be getting my copy of Little Big Planet anytime soon now. Stay tuned for my review!

This is from the single player campaign posted a while ago: