2014. nov. 11.

Unfortunately, there are only a few unique games in the front lines offering fun to a family. Among them there are almost the whole LEGO series, and I don’t remember any more at the moment. A lot of people got shaking with nerves when they hear the terms LEGO or Harry Potter, but if you can step over your prejudices, you will have a good chance of having fun. Once upon a time LEGO Star Wars gave pleasant experiences, but today I wouldn’t play with it. I wouldn’t, after the controls were much better in the second part, what’s more, a few games later we could push it on split screen. By the time they put the first four Harry Potter movies into a LEGO video game, Traveller’s Tales programmers could put all the pieces together proficiently. Gameplay is the same here as what infants in nappy used to play with little colorful building cubes: go and smash everything apart. Of course, there are more difficult tasks than this, and sometimes the game puts your dexterity to the test, but on the whole you always move on a smash/collect line. This is not so enticing, is it? However, LEGO stuffs are really not about gameplay. Maybe it sounds strange that the point of a whole video games series is not about what to do and how — but this is surely the point where LEGO series become family entertainments. Littlest ones (I don’t write age, because it’s up to the parents when they let their children watch computer games) get pretty cute figures, and not so little ones can not only roam around in the scenes of one of the most popular movie series, but they can do it with a bro, a sis or a friend. Because LEGO games are basically cooperative. After they here come the twenty years old kids, who don’t necessarily fill their free time with video games, but they doesn’t necessarily count as a targeted audience. Fathers (and in fortunate cases, mothers) replacing them on the game market, because the jokes balance between the “childish” and “adult” categories relatively good. And so we listed three groups which can have...

2014. nov. 11.

GTA IV killed my trust in Rockstar Games, but I gave them another chance with the L. A. Noire. I didn’t regret it. Although I’m still suspicious about the fifth installment of GTA, in the case of Noire very few bad word comes into my mind. It is because Rockstar made a big step and raised its TPS-adventure-driving receipt to a new height; started to mix mediums. Even the title tells a lot: L. A. as Los Angeles, and Noire as that certain film noir from the 40s which means dark crime dramas with moral questions in them. Thus, based on the title it is given that the game world is Los Angeles in the 40s, supposedly, and there is a strong connection with film noir. Let’s add the gameplay well known from the GTA series and a little extra; besides shooting and car chasing you have to find tracks and lead interrogations. This latter two game element perks the almost boring Rockstar-style up in such a measure that forgave the repetitive characteristic easily. Because there is some repetition here too – tell me a game in which there isn’t some. You are a detective, so do the bebop and find some evident, investigate the crime scene, drive here and there, interrogate some people, shoot them and chase their cars. These are the constant elements of the game, only the order changes, and this wouldn’t be enough to make the game more than a monoplane flick. However, with the above mentioned mix of mediums Noire became a game that should be called rather an interactive series of movies than only a game. Computer game is mixed with movie, and not a little. With the triple frame you get more than twenty stories that is told with the instruments a in the environment of film noir; you can even switch the screen to monochrome, if you feel the atmosphere more authentic this way. In the meantime you can find yourself watching cutscenes again and again, and movie intertwines with game and vica versa. But this doesn’t necessary mean a linear story-leading. The brightness of Noire presents itself partly here; although there always is someone being...

2014. nov. 11.

By title a regular Gamedroid-reader can believe that this article will tell about the little pictures with attractive girls on them on the left side of this page. However, I have to tell you that it’s not. In the same time the title is not misleading, because I wanna tell you about games and girls in general. Although, the public of GD and similar sites can be described mainly with masculine attributes, but there are lots of evidence on games can catch girls too. Two ladies wrote articles about a CRPG and an MMORPG to one of our partner sites, the Rejtett Uradalom (Hidden Manor). Personally I got to know three female friends of mine in an MMO. It turned out about another one of my female friends that she is fond of The Path. Furthermore, putting tiny personal experiences aside, don’t forget Bella Online with its unbelievable list of walkthroughs, to tell only one example – it’s unbelievable considering BO is a site for women. It’s unpleasant in many ways but somehow game developers basically rule women out of possible target audience, and if not, they approach the topic a bit idiotically. Unfortunately, it is especially worth attention when a girl game is not full of bugs. No, it’s not about the leaping and dressing of Holly Hobbie and Strawberry Shortcake on java flash but the more serious stuff. One of the popular series, Star Stable offers nicely constructed horse games for young girls. You have to take care of your horse and you can ride races with it. Besides, you can do lesser tasks to help around the stable and for the people in the village nearby. All of these runs in GTA-style and with decent graphics – and with a pile of bugs which sooner or later will teach little girls how to swear. The similarly popular Pet Vet series was fabricated apparently by typical man brains. It contains so heavy elements of building and economical strategy that only a few hours of play was enough for me to ruin the whole African pet hospital. Not to mention that it has a serious limitation of choosing the language of the game:...

2014. nov. 11.

Bethesda took a hard row to hoe by trying to revive a legendary series, the Fallout saga of Black Isle. Ancient Fallout fans of the gamer population – who got into this post-apocalyptic, radio active world in 1997 and 1998, Anno Domini – were making grimaces on the first pictures and videos. Most of them were seeing just a post-apocalyptic Oblivion behind the trailers, and this scared off a lot of players even at the beginning. Somewhere I can understand it because the IV. episode of the legendary Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion was dividing RPG fans seriously. After Morrowind, a classic CRPG, Oblivion from the Spring of 2006 was an action-adventure game full of RPG elements. It was disappointing for a lot, so they had the right to be afraid of an “Oblivion with guns!” – quoted from Todd Howard, leading producer of Bethesda. Todd felt like this, but what we got in the end was much more than a new Oblivion with firearms in a nuclear setting! The story and setting of the Fallout series is based on America in the 50s. This was an era of nuclear arms race, silly songs, cold war producing the antagonistic America Dream, exemplary life in a carefree consumer society which raises and feeds perfectly sterile plastic emotions. However, the creator of the Fallout setting, Tim Cain was dare to go further and changed history. The world of Fallout is like a future imagined in the 50s. The main characteristics are the wanton use of nuclear energy, the advancement of technology to a point where robots are serving a softened puppet society and cars are fueled by fusion power, and finally, the frenzied nuclear arms race. Cold war lasted longer than in real, till in 2077 the fear of a world in flames came true. As a requiem of the long war against China, the whole planet was sprinkled with atom bombs. Of course, the American Dream must have not to dissipate, and a chosen lot escaped to underground shelters built by Vault-Tec. Years passed, generations grew up before the huge airlocks opened again, and people could start a new life on the wasted surface of Earth,...

2014. nov. 11.

I’ve tried it. Really. Several times. Again and again. Finally, I gave it up; this game is a no-go. It has a number of problems in its own, not to mention a comparison to the great predecessor. Mainly that it completely smells like a franchise. I bought it without a thought, because Fallout 3 (FO3) made the bed for it very nicely. What’s more, the setting reaches back to a much older time; the first two episodes were released sometimes in ’97-98, and CRPG fans lost their heart to them immediately. Anyone says anything, in my opinion, FO3 (released in 2008) deserved the Game of the Year title. Besides the complex system of interaction and free roam setting, the consequences of your character’s deeds made it an excellent computer role-playing game. Then they released… this thing known as Fallout: New Vegas (FO:NV). I deliberately waited for it. As I wrote above, I bought it without a thought. Then it was sitting in the computer for a long time, because I simply couldn’t play with it. The Western impact didn’t help the usual Fallout-atmosphere at all. It didn’t became both of them – instead it became something in-between without any clear outline. It isn’t Western enough, not even with all the gamble and the environment, and this unpleasant impression certainly lessens the original post-apocalyptic Fallout-atmosphere too. Characters are raw, or maybe they are just not unique enough. In this moment I can’t remember any figure more illustrious than the others. Another boring element was the radio, and a third was the row of events. The music and the DJs got entrapped in the snare of self-repetition in no time. Just imagine how exciting it is to listen boringly well-known and average hits while you are walking on the bleak plains and hillsides. Yes, I have a problem with the hills too. I understand why I can’t climb a high-pitched mountainside. However, plant life clearly marks if you can pass on a terrain, and it is very annoying to barge into an invisible wall on the middle of a grassy and easily walkable hillside. I felt limited in my freedom of exploration, in a game expected...

2014. nov. 11.

The term “role-playing game” is not about a character sheet. By this fact Fable III shows the fig to all the story-driven action, adventure and/or hack’n’slash games that try to make you believe they have something to do with the CRPG genre, just because they have a character creation and/or development system. Here and now we can tell they have not. Because the lack of character creation one can believe Fable III is more like a JRPG, but the similarity stops here. You don’t have to play through a linearly written story — of course, there is a story, but most of the time you can go forward as you wish, and a lot of things depend on your actions. Let me tell that 30% of the game is story, one fifth of it is combat, and the rest (you count it right: half of it) is partly treasure hunt, partly a free associating social RPG. Unfortunately, the second episode wasn’t released on PC, but in its time the first Fable squarely showed that combat is only a necessary but not basic element of a fantasy game. Opponents could be defeated easily, so combat couldn’t hinder you in exploring the story, which was an essential hero tale. The mere slip of a boy became a powerful hero that cleaned his homeland by weapons and magic. This was a simple but perfect foundation spiced with some fashioning, posing, love (even between the same sexes) and chicken kicking. In Fable common people are not just garnish for the main meal but organic parts of the interaction between the player character and the world. In the third installment this was lifted to such a high level that literally amazed me. Fable III supplied me with everything I felt missing from CRPGs in general: You can be friends, you may run errands, you can love each other, fuck (The Legendary Condom of the Gods +5 — no comment), get married, maybe you get an STD, give birth to a bastard, etc. Or you can go on the other way and build your kingdom on intimidation, sacking and tyranny. Because you will be a king or queen, and that’s...