Category Archives: Game

SonoQuest: updates on the backlog

Posted on May 9, 2012
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Yes....just three more titles to go...*sigh*

I’ve been going through the backlog of games, that I have said at the start of this year that I would go through, finding that, really, I like all of them a lot. So much, in fact, that I think these games that I’ll go back again and again because they’re really fun to play. I remember when I used to have a Hewlett Packard Pavilion PC that I would often use to play Half-Life, DeusEx, Quake III Arena, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter and even Soldier of Fortune (thanks GUNGHO917! I have not forgotten!). And the common thread about the games is that they were all really fun and brought you to their world despite the genre (first person shooters that were not really known to give story very well at that time).

A recap of wasted time

So far I’ve managed to finish the following games which I’ve included a small two-bit review on:

Alice: The Madness Returns – This game is said to be like the first where it visuals are great despite the flaws found in the camera, controls and weaponry. The leveling design and the overall atmosphere of the game is undeniably good as it really sucks you in to the world that won’t let you stop looking at and admiring it. The story continues off from the last game where Alice, after a series of unfortunate events, comes back to end up at the care of a psychiatrist who can be described as nothing more than a mere psychological groomer and laxative of children that are to be sold to pedophiles. Violence, macabre, and black humor are to be expected in this title as it does not disappoint in delivering.

L.A. Noire – A game about a man that goes through a seemingly okay transition from being a World War II veteran to one of the Los Angeles Police Department’s finest, only to have the twist and turns that make him into a pariah while going after the largest scam that hits all facets of the ruling and executing classes of Los Angeles’s emerging and booming society of the late 1940′s.

Star Craft II – A space cowboy opera, complete with just about every Southern stereotype that you can imagine thrown in for good measure. Whether you identify yourself as the archtypical “good ole’ boy” or not, this real time strategy title is definitely for you. That or a person that happens to love real time strategy games; a genre not exactly up my alley – Myth: The Total Codex anyone?.

Tomb Raider Legend – This just might end up being among the last of the linear 3D action adventure platformers because no one is making games like this one anymore. The game takes you on the role of Lara Croft, the “healthy” looking British archaeologist who, in this installment in the series, is going out to pursue Valhalla by investigating the artifacts that open to the gates to Valhalla and try to find her mother. The game is kind of bland…but in a good familiar way that was understandable given that, when this game was made, the game development industry still were competing for who had the best graphics in their game for the most part and not innovative gameplay per se.

Bastion – This game is the only indie game that I can gives complete approval, but also recommend from a soft spot of my innards (your cue to say “ewww”). The RPG elements incorporated into this isometric platformer is just great. The animation and art style that is almost that of the manga/anime character designs but with more attitude and flare that is quite unique. I would highly recommend playing this game along with your favorite beverage because this game makes drinks of whatever kind interesting enough for you to want to have one while playing this game.

Batman: Arkham City – If you have ever played Batman:Arkham Asylum, then you know that it is one of the best Batman video games ever as it made up for years and years of very bad Batman video games. And you would also know, those among you that are Batman comic buffs, that the story behind both Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City are made up of a a few comic story lines that parallel to the official current Batman timeline. Which means I ended up playing a game that revolved around a story plot that pretty much came from the writers at Detective Comics which is quite exciting and is the biggest selling point for me to tell anyone when recommending this game.

Currently on “SonoQuest: wasting away on gaming”

Currently I’m tackling on Deus Ex: Human Revolution which, in a nutshell, feels and acts like the very first Deus Ex game of the series. I really do like the aesthetics and the cyberpunk action that really reminds me of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence . Despite the story not being as intricate as the very first Deus Ex game with the multiple party backstabbing and whatnot, but this game really sets forth the linchpins that would later on result the circumstances found in the first Deus Ex game story. Update (5/9/12): I finished this game and I might write a quick review on it to give my impressions of the game in the near future.

“Next time on SonoQeust”

After this I have only three games in the backlog: Witcher I, II and finally Fallout 3: Game Of The Year Edition. So how long will it be before I’m completely and utterly done with the games that I have currently? I give around 5 to 8 months really. But all in due time…all in due time.

A word about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Posted on February 22, 2012
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Many of the games of theThe Elder Scrolls series, at least the main numbered titled installments of the series and not the spin-off titles (such as Battlespire and Redgarud), have all been about open-world RPG gaming with the emphasis in immersion and believeability – something that is a big deal given how Bethesda, the game developers of The Elder Scrolls game series, go about achieving this with each series installment. And out of all the possible examples to go pick to demonstrate this, I’m going to be talking about the second most recent installment – which I just finished recently – of the series, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Released in 2006 and quickly being the darling of the PC and console gaming world for it’s incredibly large gaming environment, vast story arcs, customizability, and large questlines. The game, at the time during release, was not making promise or offering anything that was starting to become “standard feature” in PC games such as multiplayer or co-op gaming. It was nothing more than your standard, offline, single-player video role paying game but what it did promise was improvements from it’s predecessor, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, such as an intuitively designed menu and quest navigation system that allowed the player to be able to manage quests and go through the world of which your character plays in (this time in the Tamerialic province of Cyrodill for Oblivion) without losing direction or hair and/or mind (in that order).

Of course there was the expected graphics improvement and shifting from the old Gamebyro game engine to the new Gamebyro Lightspeed game engine – the latter featuring some milestone technological advances that allowed for even further modularity and extensability for game developers and designers which means that the world of Oblivion was guaranteed to larger, have more depth, and would surely kill hours of your free time.

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When it’s back again – And yet another look at RPG gaming

Posted on January 16, 2012
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Alright, I admit, I have gone back to playing Oblivion. Even with the last updates that I added in the last post talking about how I would have finally wanted to stop playing Oblivion, I’ve come to end up playing it yet again. After MikeOn314, along with a few other people that I know that have played Oblivion when it came out along with the subsequent DLCs, I’ve come to understand now that it’s all about constantly questing while peppering your quests wayside travels. This involves getting lost in some areas to end up finding shrines of some deities of questionable morals and ethics, making potions out of herbs that you find at random around your environment, raising your acrobatics, athletics, and what have you while getting into fights all the time and looting.

There is so much more to add to that list but it’s definitely constantly about going around and meeting objectives that allows you to really feel that the pacing of the game is accelerating to a particular direction and manner where you don’t feel like you’re just mining through a game needlessly or mindlessly. The sense of purpose is the drive of the game along with exploration. So what then of the main quest of the game? Well it turns out from what many tell me is that the main quest is….not very interesting. And given the descriptions of how many have played the game before me, the best way to play oblivion – and Skyrim if you happen to be playing that game as well – is to allow detours to “happen” along the way. It’s sort of like doing what happenes in Lord of the Rings, where you have your starting party and you think that the story is going to continue in the particular pace and direction when suddenly something happens or a decision is made where your character ends up following a great detour or a set or two of detours. And all of this may seem, when observed in detail, as isolated obstructions, but then allow you to witness the building of the character(s). Which then all comes together once you come back to the “main course”, if you will, and you then realize that all the trails and detours really helped put a zest to the main quest overall – from start to finish.
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Updates – Games among other things

Posted on January 2, 2012
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So after checking all the games that I bought during the Valve’s Steam Winter Sale along with the games that I have accumulated from Humble Indie Bundle sales, I’ve realized that I’ve got more than enough gaming content to last me for two to three and half years worth of accumulated time. And that’s a conservative estimate to the amount of time it would take to get through every single one of these title’s entire content. So…just for kicks here’s the list of the games I’ll have to get through (somehow) within this year. The order is in the matter of whatever I think is supposed to be finished first.

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Akira Yamaoka – Claw Finger (Silent Hill)

Posted on January 1, 2012
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You can’t talk about Silent Hill without mentioning about Akira Yamaoka. Yamaoka’s work has been integral to the series as his signature brand of compositions to the series, especially in the first three games of the series, to tell the story of Silent Hill in more abstract manners. You have to remember that Silent Hill was thought initially as being nothing more than a knock-off the whole survival-horror heavyweight at the time of release of the first installment back in 1999 to the Resident Evil series (which had just seen the release of it’s second installment at the time). But what many people have come to find is that the game is an entirely different monster that, although it does not have the obvious horrors such as that of zombies and mutated creatures from experiments gone wrong, you have instead a heavy dose of the supernatural being involved instead. So whenever the horror of a game deals with a source that can be generally classified as “supernatural”, “paranormal”, or “other worldly” in origin, then you can safely bet that the scares are going to be very much cerebral and/or one that wrecks the nerves by the very fibers.

And so it is with, not necessarily the visuals, as it is the music accompanying the visuals. Many gamers, especially today – like movie-goers – forget the power of a good composition to accompany a scene or scenario. If you have the right composition to accompany in the background story telling, you can easily amplify and frequent even more the intensity of the situation depicted in the media that’s telling the story.

And so it is so true in Silent Hill with Yamaoka’s work.

A few words on F.E.A.R…

Posted on December 23, 2011
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After finishing F.E.A.R 3, which presumably ends the entire story of the Point Man’s quest to end the horror that his two other family relatives, his mother Alma and his brother Paxton Fettle, have brought upon the people of the city and district of Auburn, I can’t help but get the impression that this series has had a progression with each installment in the following manner: Good, Bad, and Worse.

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If we go back to 2005, when the first F.E.A.R game came out, you have essentially a game that had some very memorable moments and really focused on making sure that your experience as the main character of the story was as seamless as possible. The point of the designers and developers of the first F.E.A.R game was to have the player be the action star of a movie. So instead of being the passive watcher of the action and dialog when progression in most first person shooters, you’re the active participant. It’s simple as that and it’s for that logos that drove many that developed the first F.E.A.R to make sure that the story, the controls, the music, the sound effects, and graphical environment, to be as top notch to make the experience be, again, as seamless as possible. Today it’s considered to being one of the best first person shooters as many comment that the game really makes very good focus at first person shooter game play that is convincingly challenging and immersive.

But unfortunately, after some business related troubles, Monolith had to delay the development of the second game. The original development team was not around by the time that the second game was ready for development and what resulted was a game that, although feeling familiar with the first game, really did not seem to have that atmospheric quality of the first game. The controls seemed familiar but a little off, the graphics, although great, really were a major design departure from the first one, and with certain game inclusions such as mecha-armor battles, it really made F.E.A.R no longer so much a first person shooter as it was more of a first person action game. So it was a major departure from many aspects of the first game but it still did not manage to completely alienate the fans of the first game…

…Until F.E.A.R 3. When Monolith decided to have the developer that helped port the first F.E.A.R game to the consoles, Day 1 Studios, what resulted was the complete abandonment of many things that made the firs two, especially the first one, a major success. For one, you have no longer the use of Monolith’s Lithitech Jupiter Engine used and instead you have Day 1 Studio’s Despair Engine. This caused many things such as the controls, the graphics (this includes the methods of lighting, texturing, and graphical detailing), the character modeling to change and take very radical departure from the first game’s design. Also the manner that weapons worked in this game also changed: for every weapon you had collected has maximum limit of how much ammunition you can collect. This, along with some very tough and dirty playing enemies with achievement pop-ups for almost every little thing you do in the game, and you have a first person shooter with arcade level difficulty and design. The bottom line is that you get essentially a console game with all the frills of most modern shooters such as in-game achievements, a score tally, individual mission objectives, and finally regenerating health (good bye med-packs and Hello Call of Duty style health regeneration).

The story, with each game installment, escalates from a small and relatively contained situation to a full scale disaster scenario that, although the origins deal with the supernatural and the fantastic, starts to feel more like an action game splashed with cliched horror. Thus arresting the tension and mood that the first F.E.A.R game manage to bring upon the player as they were going through the game (and with almost little to no surprise scares). And because of it, it really leaves many fans preferring either the first game or the first two games produced by Monolith but never the third.

Speaking for myself, the first F.E.A.R game will be the definitive, and really, the only game that is worth playing in the entire F.E.A.R series.

So for anyone that is thinking about buying F.E.A.R 3 and has not yet checked out the first game, I would definitely reconsider and stick with the first F.E.A.R game.

Alien Breed Trilogy: action-casual gaming.

Posted on October 5, 2011


There are a few times where I look at casual game titles so as to take a break from the typical AAA title that I put most of my focus, and money, on. They tend to offer a very novel experience that, although they don’t really amount to much, but allow you to pass the time and focus on certain particular forms of skill in gameplay where you would otherwise overlook when playing something in a AAA title. It’s small things really: perception, focus on the surroundings of your character of which you play as, simple strategy, and so on. It’s as if these casual games pick an area of which to test you on and go from there as the basis of the game.

In Alien Breed, it was being able to maneuver through hazardous environments with the least amount of ammunition and equipment. The thing about this is that you have to do this throughout the entire time. The good thinking of conservation of ammunition and equipment goes a long way in allowing you to beat the final boss of each milestone of the game. And this can be very much appreciated gameplay when you couple it with graphics provided by the Unreal Tournament 3 engine (pretty sweet).

Of course there are moments where monotony sets in, remember this is a casual action title and casual games are going to, after a while, going to start to be monotonous. This can be brought on when you find yourself reaching a particular stage and you start hearing the often-too-repeated background music that indicates that there will be enemies approaching or that there will be a complete swarm of enemies going up against you in that very instant it starts playing. After around five or six times of this in too frequent intervals you’ll start wanting to save and stop the game.

Another thing that was somewhat of a turn off was the very expensive ammunition and weapons upgrades, health and secondary weapon items, as well as your armor purchases. These often really made the experience of the game a bit frustrating. Although you were able to find sufficient ammunition and money to later on afford the weapons upgrades, it sometimes felt as if there was an intentional game design where you would be forced to play again if you wanted to enjoy all the upgrades for weapons and items. Making the high prices be a supposed “incentive” to have people to play the game again in order to try out all the possible manners of going through the game.

If there were one thing that I would have loved to have seen as a feature, it would be the ability for people that have installed in their computers all three games, to have all the save data, if played in sequential order, carry over to the following installment of the three part series. So if you were to start off in Alien Breed: Impact and finish, all your data (the weapons, items, and credits accumulated) woud then be carried out to the next chronological game, Alien Breed: Assault, and then once that game finished you’d continue off with playing Alien Breed: Descent with all that you’ve managed to get from the first and second game. It would make the game too easy but given the already difficult situations and instances of swarm attacks, I think that having that feature would have made for a good overall experience.

I would recommend this game for it’s good graphics and it’s general gameplay. But don’t expect this game, even with it’s good graphics, to really get you motivated to play through this tree part series all through at once. It’s best to take it as another casual action title.

A word on Quake 4

Posted on September 21, 2011

It’s unfortunate that the idtech 4 engine never caught on in popularity among game developers when it was first introduced in the market along with Doom 3. Doom 3 was a poor debut for the idtech 4 engine and it caused for many to go instead with the Source engine, Lithitech, or the Unreal Tournament 3 engine. Wolfenstein, Doom 3, Prey, and Brink have all been intellectual properties that have used the idtech 4 engine and out of that group, only Prey was really the most successful franchise so far.

Not to say that that it’s the only idtech 4 based game that was good, there was another: the forgotten fourth installment of the Quake series. Now this may come as a bogus claim as to referring Quake 4 as a “forgotten” installment but when you look at the reviews, the consumer responses, and number of players that joined multiplayer servers (which were very low), you can entertain the good idea that Quake 4 was essentially tossed off as something that would probably play and look like Doom 3.

But it actually does not feel like Doom 3 at all. From the start you don’t get pitch black environments to combat in and you even get a flashlight in your gun and standard issue rifle. You also get some gradual perks to some of the more advanced weapons of the game which could be brushed off as lame but it helps in giving you a small sense of making progress in the game.

The graphics were slightly better than those in Doom 3 as far as the usages of texture. All the creatures and fellow NCPs looked better and the modeling were improved than what you got in your standard idtech 4 fare in Doom 3.

The gameplay was balanced as well and the weaponry actually gets to tickle enemies for once (although some could say that some of the weapons are overpowered but I leave that for you to decide). Another addition that made the whole game nice: a happy ending (a cliffhanger ending but a happy one no less).

Sanae Shintani – White Eve & Miracle Moon

Posted on September 15, 2011

Sanae Shintani, popularly known as simply “Sana”, is a singer that did mostly work on Konami’s music oriented arcade game Beatmania, which enjoyed much fanfare and popularity during the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. Because of the popularity of her songs for Beatmania, Sanae was able to enjoy some exposure as a singer and was able to release two pop-albums and subsequent albums that featured all the songs she did for Beatmania with some original pop songs. She continues to release albums from time to time and all recent albums feature your standard Japanese pop fare which sometimes dapple in bossa-nova influences. But nonetheless, although not as well appreciated like J-pop heavy weights such as Shinna Ringo, Ayumi Hamasaki, and Utada Hikaru, she still is a favorite among those that were exposed to her stuff back during her Beatmania days.