Now I am thinking with portals!

Yo!

I have now completed Portal 2 and Pokémon Black Version. I've already spoken a bit about PBV, and pretty much what I said earlier still held true throughout the game. The developers of the game have upped the difficulty a few notches from Pearl/Diamond for example, which is a big plus in my book. Instead of just leveling the hell out of your starter pokémon, you now have to have good reserves in your team of other types. Some trainers you meet have pokémon that can use attacks of completely different types, or simply use different pokémon like one fire type, one grass and so on. Still, leveling your starter pokémon a lot works for most fights since it will outclass your opponents because of the higher level, but all in all the game is a lot harder. I also like that they've done away with some of the more unnecessary elements of the game, like baking your pokémon a cake (it's a lie, ECKSS DEE ECKS DEE), planting seeds in order to harvest berries or having to enter it into a beauty contest... This makes the game flow nicer but also makes it a bit less interesting I guess.

As far as the design of the new pokémon goes it's probably the most dissapointing part of the game. It seems as if they are running out of ideas since most of the pokémon are uninspired, bland or plain boring. I mean, who wants to have a pig as their starting pokémon? Nothing rivals the pokémon in the original game, Pearl/Diamond was fine bit a bit too strange and outlandish in general I think. The question is whether we'll see something as good as the first game in this department, time will tell, as long as the franchise keeps selling like butter on a hot day there is still a chance.

I got the original Portal when I bought the Orange Box a while back. I bought that bundle of MODS (because that's what it is), since I wanted to play Team Fortress 2 to see what all the fuss was about. I was severely unimpressed by TF2, and played Portal only since I got it too with the aforementioned hot deal. Portal 1 was a pretty fun and nice puzzle game (I do love me a the Adventures of Lolo), but my major gripe was that it was too short. It's amazing what a following it has gained considering you can easily finish it under four hours and there's just not much in terms of substance, in every level you do the same thing.

Portal 2 is more of a real game, at least that's what it tries to be. It has a different tone, where Portal 1 had a mostly humoristic tone, Portal 2 is more grim and goes for a more post-apocalyptic feeling not different from the one found in Half-Life 1 and 2. The game certainly is longer than its predecessor, but it's still not "long" by any means. I finished it in seven hours which is an eon compared to how long it takes to finish the Call of Duty games' single player modes, but it's just not enough for a full-priced game. There's little to no replay value to be found here unlike the CoD games' multiplayer modes for example. All the major game review sites like Gamespot and IGN have given the game raving reviews and 9+ ratings. This is baffling to me to be honest, and I think this might just be the final nail in the coffin for me to ever trust these bought sites again. There is just so much trust you can give these people and it's used up for me. And that's not even taking into account the inflation in the review scores, for this to get a 9.5 rating on IGN is beyond retarded. There is just no way to justify that score, no matter how much you twist, turn or use portals on it.

What I expected from the game, which I don't think is too much to ask for, is some sort of juicy backstory or tie-in to the Half-Life universe. There is a part - minor spoiler alert I guess - of the game which takes place in the lower levels of Aperture where stuff are from the 1950's and the company's beginnings (clearly heavily inspired by the Bioshock games), but Black Mesa is just very briefly mentioned and that's it. Portal 2 plays just like the first one except it's easier, which is not very good. It has more of an overworld feeling where you get to see how the puzzle rooms look from the outside, a bit like looking at the Cube in the movie with the same name. There are more afterconstructions in this game than in the Star Wars prequels combined, and this feels like one of them. Accompanying you on your trip is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-inspired british robot called Weasley. This is a matter of preferences, but I hated this guy from the beginning and just thought he was very annoying. For me, the game would've been better of without him (like the first game). Glados is a more interesting character, especially as you get to know more about her origin.

The graphics look awesome and epic, they really do. Looking at the neverending expanse of cubes that Aperture sience consists of is something else, but there is still something about the source engine that makes everything look unnatural and plastasene. Now granted that's perfectly fine for a game like Portal 2 considering where it takes place, the graphics just don't look as good as in Resident Evil 5 which is not even that recent of a game, or games like Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Which brings me to my next point. Just like in Portal 1, what the game does more than anything is make you want to play a new Half-Life game. And with that I mean a new game, not a modification like Episode 3. They've pushed the source engine as far as it goes now, the next Half-Life needs a new graphics engine.

That turned out much longer than I intended, but oh well might as well use this space to "review" games I play. I'd rather do it here than at the fascistic censoring bought websites that have one hand in the pocket of the game companies.

Laters!

Gotta catch 'em all!

Hi!

Despite buying all of those other games, including actual 3DS-games, the game I've been playing the most is Pokémon Black. I thought I had had enough of this franchise when I finished Heartgold version without dying once, as I mentioned in the last post. It appears not so much, which really shows how addictive these games are. For some reason this game seems every so sliiightly harder than HG, since I've died twice now, the first one being the initial battle you have with your friend "rival". For variety's sake I chosed the grass pokémon, which I've never done before in a pokémon game since I think it seems bad and those pokémons usually are a bit boring. However I think you early on meet pokémons that are good against grass type, like electricity ones, ground types, psychic, fire and so on. Obviously, at least in my play through, your rival has the type that is bad for you (fire), and the first gym leader adapts so it is that one as well.

In Blue/Red I chosed Charmander (which apparently is the most difficult one) and for Diamond I grabbed the water one which coupled with an electricity type I almost never had to switch to any other for any battle whatsoever. Since I ground out the battles with wild pokémon even though I could've ran instead or used repel more, my water type dude (Empoleon eventually, can't remember the name of its first form) had such a high level it didn't matter if the enemies were a bad matchup. The possible exception was when you fought against some dragons towards the end, but even those I could one-shot once I got the opportunity when their attack missed or whatever. The game said you had to train at least three pokémon of different types equally in order to do well, that sure as hell wasn't the case for me. In Diamond I remember losing one single fight throughout the playthrough, which I wouldn't have done if I had not been too stingy with the potions at that point in the game. Of course, the game's main target audience is children, so this is not that strange, the difficulty is geared towards that target audience and I should move on to hardcore games for mature audiences like Halo and Modern Warfare 2... I played Pokémon Red back in the day and I think it's a genius idea for a game, likely I'll continue to play them so bite me. Pokémon is the only RPG I've really enjoyed, which says a lot. And yes I know some people don't think Pokémon is an RPG at all, but I digress. What is it if not an RPG? Some people would even say that Zelda is an RPG game, something I however don't agree with. It's more of an action/adventure game with RPG elements, but no proper leveling for one.

Oh well, gotta go now and watch MorroW pwn some noobs in the TSL!

Later!

Going Big

Hi!

Today I decided to give in to temptation and buy Nintendo's latest gadget, the 3DS along with Street Fighter IV and Rayman 3D. I also got Marvel vs Capcom 3 for the 360 and Pokémon Black for DS. The 3D effect on the 3DS is actually pretty cool, something I have not really read anything about in the numerous reviews I've checked out. If you've seen a 3D movie at a theater lately, this is pretty much exactly like that except that it's a lot sharper (the movies sometimes get a bit fuzzy especially when there's a lot of movement going on), and of course that you don't need any 3D-glasses to get the effect.

It's also a matter of which game you play. Street Fighter is the one game out of the release titles that has gotten the best reviews, however it's a 2D fighting game so the 3D effect isn't fully utilized. Rayman is I'm sure a very mediocre game, but the way the perspective is used makes it way cooler and more immersive than the aforementioned fighting game. The game itself is as I understand it a port of an old game and plays basically as a low-grade version of Super Mario 64. But that's fine since I got the game cheap with the console itself and it's fine just to showcase the 3D effect.

I haven't had time to play Pokémon Black or MVC3 that much but so far they are promising. Fighting games isn't usually the genre I play the most, but I do enjoy it and I'm trying to get into it more. The only fighting game I've really played a lot before is Super Smash Bros Brawl, and that's mostly for the nostalgia factor. What's more is that a lot of people probably don't even consider that one a "real" fighting game, whatever that is. The last Pokémon game I played - Heartgold version - I finished without even losing one single fight. Which kind of sucked because one of the main things I look for in a game is a challenge. Oh well at least in this one they've tried to change things up a little, and a positive is that I lost the second fight so that's promising at least. More news to come as they unfold and as I venture into the wonderful world of the third dimension.

Peace out!

Limbo

Hi!

I'm subscribed to the comedy group Mega64's channel on YouTube, and a few days ago they posted a new video. In case you aren't familiar with Mega64, they do comedy skits related to various video games, where they take a game and sort of put it into real life in a public place. The guys first started doing this around the time Jackass first came out so that's probably an explanation for the format of the skits. The harrassment that ensues is usually pretty funny as long as you as a viewer is familiar with the game in question. Anyway, the video in question was for a game Limbo that I hadn't played so I looked it up and decided to give it a try.



Old school 2D-games really is my cup of tea, and that's what this game is all about. Two of the games I've written about previously here - Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Meat Boy - both have dark levels where the foreground just is a pitch black outline, and the background very toned down. This seems to be a trend with current platformers as the whole Limbo game uses this graphics style to a very good effect. The game is extremely moody even though it uses little to no music and more ambient sounds, and it's completely in black and white. The character design as well as the animation is spot-on. The gameplay is a mix between platforming and solving puzzles. In many ways it feels like a 2D version of Half-Life or Portal (obviously without the portals and/or guns). My biggest gripe is that the game is very short, some reviews state that it clocks in at around five hours, when I played it through in one sitting yesterday it felt more like three to four hours. Then again it's an independent game that you download, while you certainly don't get as much replay value as Super Meat Boy dishes out, the experience is... less frustrating, I guess? Anyway, it was a welcome game to fill out the time waiting for Duke Nukem Forever (delayed again!) and one that I recommend.

Laters!