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Finally had a chance to play the second chapter (or episode as that’s how they called it in the game). The game started with intro cut scene where chapter 1 left off. Again I won’t go into the details of the story. As mentioned from chapter 1 review, chapter 2 is basically from the demo where you are Sam Monroe(the guy with glasses) PLUS for the first half of this chapter, you are again controlling the highschool kid Howard Wright. It feels like this chapter, as well as the first, are meant to be “tutorials” where you get to learn the basics of the game, a special skill is also introduced called “Sight Jacking”, basically you see the surrounding through another character who is also introduced in this chapter.

Overall, this chapter is still dark and creepy. Unlike Resident Evil or any first/third person shooter, you cannot always go head on with the shibitos, yes I finally found out the name of those “dead” people I’ve been mentioning. This chapter again, makes you sneak up on them and surprise attack them (feels like Metal Gear Solid to me lol).

Later in the game, you are given a gun with unlimited ammo. It is fun but then you lose that sense of “survival” feel but then again there aren’t a swamp of them to take care of. The shibitos are no threat to you when you have a gun, they just run blindly towards you and die before they can even lay one hit on you. On the other hand, if you have a melee weapon, you really have to fight smart like sneaking up on them and perform a heavy attack.

This chapter is a bit longer than the first but definitely a good game play.

I should have chapter 3 review up by tomorrow so stay tuned!

Incoming search terms:

• siren blood curse infinite ammo
• siren blood curse unlimited ammo

Once I have it installed and I started the game right away. First impression, at least on the music, CREEPY. I started the chapter right away, my character was a high school guy for some reason in this maze looking forest somewhere in Japan. From the first cut scene, he was trying to save a girl from being killed by the dead people, or possessed people and ended up running for his own life. Ok I think I should not spoil the whole story.

Onto the game play.

The control is somewhat easy to get used to like any third person shooter. After another short cut scene from the first, I was controlling the high school kid and running for my life right off the bat. I picked up a “sake” (sake is Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice) bottle, I was exited that I found a weapon and I jumped onto the dead person right away. Bad move, since he had a gun, I was dead after a few shots. The environment was really dark actually, I should have turned up the brightness a bit but I didn’t expect to be this dark. So after dying a few times trying to run away from the dead, I managed to find the escape path by fluke.

Dead nurses from Japanese horror games/movies are still sexy, even if they kill.

The chapter was rather short, I would say 15 minutes or even less if you could manage to find the path right away. Therefore I cannot comment much about this chapter. The next chapter is actually from the demo where you get to use the man with glasses and I expect it to be longer.

Stay tuned!

Incoming search terms:

• siren blood curse nurse

And I thought August doesn’t have any games that will amuse me. I was half right, nothing on the shelf can but there’s one game on Playstation Store can, and that’s Siren: Blood Curse. I love Japanese horror style games so much I don’t think its right to miss this game.

Say tuned for reviews on all 12 episodes. Not all at once! But as I progress on each episode.

And by the way, if you are planning to buy the series, I strongly recommand buying all 12 at once for $39.99 to save some money (each 4 chapter set is $14.99).

Incoming search terms:

• siren tech ps3

I was reading news on The Windsor Star and found out research has shown there is no link between TV, games and nightmares for kids between the age of nine to thirteen. Instead there is a correlation between reading and nightmares but the number of affected children were too small to make it conclusive.

It would be funny if instead of parents saying “Stop watching so much TV” to their kids, they start saying “Stop reading too much!” or “Why don’t you watch more TV than reading a book all day?”.
Just a funny thought.

I haven’t heard anything new about Fatal Frame 4 until recently when an E3 trailer was introduced on GameTrailers.com. Forn those who don’t know Fatal Frame, its a Japanese style survival horror game. Unlike Resident Evil, it does not try and scare players with blood and gore. Instead it uses dark atmosphere, freaky noise and ghosts (your enemies) to make players sweat (I used to have cold sweat when I played FF1 through 3). And by the way, the game is best played at night with no lights for maximum horror feeling. Players are not presented with guns but an old camera called the Camera Obscura to “capture” or “damage” the ghosts. There are different types of films and the camera is upgradable with points collected from taking pictures of ghosts, taking clear pictures yield more points!

Back to the topic, the question why the fourth installment comes out only for Wii troubles me.The series has always been with the Playstation and XBox, why abandon them now? My gut feeling tells me it will be out for the two consoles soon after, it just doesn’t make sense to not port the game over. I can imagine the fun factor in playing the game on a Wii but not everyone has a Wii and some people prefer to play the game using normal controllers.

And by the way, I think Fatal Frame 2 was the best out of the 3.

If you have any updates, please feel free to post them here.

 

It might be too late for most of the gamers out there to read this, I bet everyone bought a copy of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots by now. But I still want to give my “two cent” after completing the game twice.

Notice I completed the game twice?

That’s an immediate PLUS for the game in terms of replay value. When you start a new game, after going through a few cut scenes you get your weapons and Drebin points that you collected from your previous game. For those who do not have the game yet, Drebin points are points for upgrading/buying weapons and Drebin is one of the characters in the game. Since you get to use whatever you have collected from before, the game play can be different the second time you play. I was using the silenced sniper rifle from the start instead of using the AK. That brought down the alert occurances by a lot and yes I am not good at being stealthy

Having the weapons also makes the game less challenging, at least on the normal difficulty level. I will soon try out the big boss difficulty, my friend told me he couldn’t even get past the scene where you have to meet up with your robot sidekick MK 2.

I played the first MGS on the original Playstation and did not find it too enjoyable and so I skipped MGS 2 and 3. It was a good game, but its just not my style at that time. Guess I have grown to appreciate MGS series finally, I’m pretty sure its not just the graphics that makes it so enjoyable. The story is amazing as well, the movie-like cut scenes are nicely done but some are too long which you will find yourself skipping 90% of them during replay. I think the length of all cut scenes combined (including the ending) is longer than the actual game play which is one of the biggest complains I got from my friends.

As for the actual game play, its mostly third person but you can quickly switch to first person during gun fights. It works pretty much just like any first/third person shooter, you can run, crouch and crawl on the floor. But, you can now hug onto walls, floors etc, and your suit will change textures and blend in with whatever you are hugging onto to increase your stealthiness. And that’s not all, most of the game is played as Snake (the character you control) alone, but there are stages where the game play is different. One example is near the end of the game, you get to control a metal gear, the game play is similar to Mech Warriors (ahh the old times ). Its another PLUS for offering different types of game play. Another new and FUN feature to the game is you can take photos (after obtaining the camera of course) of the 4 bosses called BNB (beauty and the beast) and you can save them to your hd.

This are from my personal collection:

I’m sure I have not covered all about this game but I hope you find this interesting helpful. I will definately play the game again for the third time but on a harder difficulty and try out the online game as well. There are games that you can wait until they are half the price, but I think this game is worth the $59.99(+tax). If you haven’t got a copy and you are into this type of game, please get a copy now!

Let me know what you think of the game too.

I have been playing a virtual game called Second Life for almost two years and about once in two months a new joiner will post in forums asking “How come no one is buying my item” or “Why am I not making money”. The truth is, there is a lot more invovled than just creating an item or provide a service. You cannot just expect anyone to “walk in” and buy whatever you have to offer, most consumers in Second Life are smart, they shop for the best and paid for the least amount.

So you have created an item or think of what service to provide, GREAT! But that’s not all, next steps will be to market your item/service either by posting in forums or purchase classified ads within the game. The latter will cost you so you might want to stick to posting your new items/service in forums for now. There are two main forums, one within Second Life website and one at SLExchange. SLExchange also provides item hosting for you to put up your items for sale for free(takes a very small commission for every sale). As people around the virual world knows more about you, you will be able to create a “brand” for yourself.

As you can see, there are much more to do to be successful, I’ve only mentioned a small bits of it. But my final words are – “Build for passion and not for the sake of getting rich quick”. Earning money is a good thing, I mean who doesn’t want more money? But if you don’t invest time and even money, you will not make money.