23. May 2008 by Costas Taliadoros.

I must be getting old. The length of the game, according to video game sites, is between 2 to 4 hours. I finished the game in 4 hours and 2 mins. But i have two excuses for this. One of a more personal issue while the other an issue i had with the game.

Firstly, i hate bosses. I know, you know but once again there i found one in a game. It is an easy boss but initially i could not see the pattern and what was i supposed to do due to my frustration in seeing one. So, what should have been a five minute fight at the most turned into 30 mins of me asking myself “What is the point of bosses!?” and “I can’t see it. I can’t see the pattern”. But i admit it. It’s not the game it’s me.

But i am not guilty for the second issue leading to an extended play time. It is the developers’ fault. The game has no map and you can get lost easily trying to find the way to places you have not explored yet. I had a major issue with the memory chest in Wither Falls. I had completely forgotten where the location was and kept looking for it in all the wrong places (i.e. I thought it was the name of the village!). That had me wasting around an hour of trying to figure that out.

Now that these are out of the way let me say this again. The game is fantastic. A peaceful, charming and mechanically excellent 2d platform game. Well worth the 1000 points you will spend on it. As per eurogamer’s excellent review of the game,

“Frontier has created a mini-masterpiece at the first attempt. From here, we can fully expect to see a lot more of Toku and Enril, and hopefully a slew of similarly innovative and fresh new ideas on Nintendo’s proving ground from other like-minded developers ready to break free from the shackles of modern development cycles. “

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8. February 2008 by Costas Taliadoros.

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25. January 2008 by Costas Taliadoros.

Who doesn’t miss point and click adventures? Whether it was Monkey Island, Indiana Jones, King’s Quest or Future Wars we just couldn’t get enough of them. And then they were gone.

Fortunately there are some freeware adventures that can take us back even for just a while. Yesterday i managed to play the first two episodes of such a game. Cover Front is a freeware episodic spy thriller. It is more of a puzzle, escape from room/situation with attention needed to find that crucial pixel. I loved it. Great atmosphere and artwork and the story which is set in the early 1900s is engaging.

Point and click here for episode 1
Point and click here for episode 2

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17. January 2008 by Costas Taliadoros.

Zero Punctuation has released the video review of Crysis on the PC and it is a positive one! Well almost.

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17. January 2008 by Costas Taliadoros.

I played the game on co-op with a friend and managed to finish it two nights ago. We both loved it. I was going to write a review about it but then read the only positive review i managed to find of the game on Shacknews. The reviewer loved the game as well and since i would never match his eloquence i’ve decided to link his review instead.

Shacknews review by Steve Gaynor

You haven’t heard the last of me regarding this game. Stay tuned.

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4. January 2008 by Costas Taliadoros.

Hehe. This is really funny. It really hits the nail regarding how truly “original” Nintendo’s flagship franchises have been lately. After the take on Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on the DS, Zero Punctuation takes on Mario. Enjoy this.

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26. November 2007 by Costas Taliadoros.

Usually when I am playing a game I write down my first impressions and then later on a mini review once I have completed it. With Portal however it all happened in one day.

I was at a friend’s place yesterday when I decided to have a go at Portal to see what the fuss was all about. The gaming world had been buzzing lately about this surprise hit, one of the 5 games found in Valve’s Orange box.

The game starts you off with the female computer voice making the introductions and giving you a rundown of what you have to do. You are given a portal gun with which you can place portals on surfaces be they walls, ceilings, floors. When you go inside one portal you exit the other. Place boxes on switches to open doors, go through portals to get to non accessible areas and so on. It is a FPS puzzle game which plays a lot with the 3 dimensional environments.

The game does a great job of easing you into it although I did find that it leaves the best part of it until near end of the game. It only really starts to be challenging and mind blowing from the 16^th-17^th level onwards, out of a total of a total 19.

What I really loved about this game is that it basically has only a handful of variables to consider when tackling a situation but it still manages to challenge you to find the way to solve it. It is a not a trial and error puzzle game. Everything you do is logical and once you get into how the game works, figuring it out becomes second nature but it never loses its magic and thrill when you are solving a specific puzzle.

It has a story to tell but it is more abstract than actual and is loosely set in Half Life’s world. It is a preview on how this portal gun and puzzles will be implemented in Valve’s later games.

The game will take you around 5 hours to complete and it will never frustrate you. I got stuck in one particular situation for around 30 to 45 minutes only because I failed to “read the instructions”. Completely my fault.

Much has been said about the humour of the female computer voice but to be honest I did not pay any attention to it (except for the last level) as I was too engrossed in the puzzles so I cannot give an opinion on that.

It is a short but charming game which comes truly alive in the later stages. I don’t think I have ever played a game on a console before where I would just pause and just walk up down “calculating” in my head the solution to a puzzle. A refreshing game that plays tricks with your mind. You will never see a room the same way again.

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19. November 2007 by Costas Taliadoros.

The first Metroid i have actually completed. My previous experience was with Metroid Prime on the Gamecube which i gave up after spending 20hours on mostly trying to find where i was supposed to go and what i was supposed to do. But still loved it.

In MP3 things have changed. There is still a great deal of exploration and backtraking but nowhere near the level of the previous games. It has now turned into more FPS like and with cutscenes, dialogues and showing Samus outside the armorsuit a lot. This game’s primary purpose is to showcase Wii’s controls and it does a great job at that. It’s not perfect by any means (ref: kept losing the lock on enemies and the position of the - and + buttons on the control made accessing the visors and going into hypermode difficult) but it is very close to being perfect. The movement and shooting system is simply fantastic. When i went back to play on the 360 the two thumbsticks just felt fake. Also the grappling device feels nice when you are not in battle. In battle it frustrated me as i failed to do the right movement because i was in a hurry. All in all the controls of the game are superb and it just demonstrates the potential as this is still the first year of the system.

As a game though i was disappointed. Not because MP3 is a bad game. On the contrary it is very good. But it definitely is the inferior one of the trilogy. One of the things i loved on Metroid Prime was that i was completely alone in an almost lifeless planet and it felt that way. It was part of the charm. Exploring a world which was once full of life and you learned how it collapsed along the way. I wanted to learn more about what had happened. This time around it was just your usual Star Wars fight against a dark evil threat with continuous linkup with your fleet. I no longer felt i was in control of what i was doing. I was no bounty hounter. I was just a regular soldier being given orders.

If you own a Wii this is definitely a must play title for the year 2007. It does a great job of promoting the console’s control system. Unfortunately along the way to succeed in that, the game’ s unique identity is lost. A great game that could and should have been a lot more.

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29. October 2007 by Costas Taliadoros.

Last Saturday morning I woke up at around 08:30-09:00, made myself some hot coffee and surfed the internet for around an hour or so.

Then I went over to the living room and disconnected my PSP from the charger, took a comfortable horizontal position on my sofa and switched it on. The familiar music was once again ringing in my ears while I was accessing my saved games. The final boss battle was about to begin.

The above ritual has been taking place for the last 2 weeks or so now. Ever since Jeanne D’Arc, by Level 5, came into my life and brought the PSP back from the abyss with it. I had never played a strategy RPG before Jeanne ‘Arc and was a bit worried that I would be over my head. In the first 2-3 stages that was in fact the case. I kept losing while I was still trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. But after that things started clicking. Admittedly the game is somewhat easy, although you do need to think about some sort of strategy. But Jeanne D’Arc manages to keep things simple all the way through. It’s a very user friendly game.

The game is at no time frustrating (unless you really hate 2 stage bosses) and keeps your interest until the very end. When a game manages to keep you hooked and loyal for as long as Jeanne D’Arc does, some considerable credit is due.

It has an interesting story to tell, with unexpected twists, and together with some great characters it always makes you anxious to find out what will happen next. The cut scenes, although not enough of them in the game, are fantastic as well.

A minor issue I had was with the layout of the stages where you can not know whether or not you completed a free or bonus stage until you actually get into that area.

One last thing about the game. It will not released in Europe so you will need to get a US copy. I got mine on Ebay for CYP15 only. I highly recommend Jeanne D’Arc not just to anyone interested in RPGs but to any PSP owner out there. It is the kind of game which gives you a nice, warm feeling inside.

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