2014. nov. 13.

Did you ever think about what a virtual reality would be today, at your home, in a form realizable and available on any day? Hereby I mean no virtual reality in general but in a specialized form of virtual world that is not separable easily from the real one. I mean it is a virtual environment that can be considered as another world, but it mixes with our current environment. Well, I was thinking about this a lot years ago, and I believe that good (and sometimes bad) ideas can emerge in more than one head worldwide, and in the same time, of course. (For skeptics: Having no scientific explanation for something doesn’t mean that the given thing cannot exist, does it?) This real virtuality idea could be such a thing because Funcom made it and released it summertime, this year – however, the idea had the come up for this years ago, maybe in that time when I was thinking about it too. I can’t remember when had an MMO such an impressive effect on me. Anno the ad of The Secret World was considered special; besides the usual e-mail newsletters they started a Facebook application titled Secret War, in which you had to use your social network to get points and win ingame items, and a closed beta keycode if you reached the maximum. After this I was waiting for the game with the usual mix of disinterest + mild curiosity. I was watching only a few of the trailers, and I paid attention to the big words of advertising only with one eye. Then I got a beta key and started it. Perhaps the first hours will show you no novelty. Seasoned MMO-players can go forward by watching only the quality, which is good enough, 4/5 in the MMO category. So, you start in a city environment with a tutorial, then you make a jump into the Agartha, which is something like a fugue dimension with much shorter distances between locations. The first such location is the town of Kingsmouth, full of zombies. Zombies again, yes? If you can live with this gnawed bone, you may dive into the details that...

The result is mixed somehow. The scale mostly tilts toward the better side, but the flaws are so general that makes them easy and worth to spot and eliminate. The game Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) passed the exam with good grades, but it is far from being perfect. On December 15th, 2011 they switched the servers of Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) off, but we didn’t have to wait too long, because after some days the successor, SWTOR was released. If you bought it pre-purchased, you could start your adventures sooner. Anyway, this switch-off wasn’t a real problem, because SWG was too complex, empty, unbalanced and annoyingly bugged in the same time. Related to this, the newcomer is much simpler, full of quests, and if you want, you can swing your lightsaber right from the first moments. Does it sound good? Unfortunately, this has its own price too, for example some conventionalism and inconsistency. In the character creation you can choose from four types on each side, be it the Republic or the Empire; this means two Force-user and two more ordinary characters in both case. The developers tried to make them identical by their own main story, which you need to fight through all the way alone. For example, on the Republic’s side the story of the Jedi Consuler is about a strange plague that attacks only Jedis – and it is probably spread by a mighty Sith. On level 10 you can choose an advanced class. Each character has two such options. The system is sufficiently complex to make you think about your choice, even if there are not much unique opportunities, because the characters walk on skill paths set preliminary. In any case, it’s worth to read some skill descriptions, advices and suggestions written by other players on the forums. It seems like we cannot step out of the conception that in any circumstances only the combat can be the foundation of good MMOs. Of course, one can refer to the success of WoW, but I would like to ask: Do we really need a cloned WoW titled Star Wars? Of course, this would be devoid of any sense, and...

2014. nov. 13.

Although I could be totally heroic for free in the microtransaction model of Champions Online, I chose Spider-Man as le mien actuelle superbe. The cause is simple: He follows my life since I was a little piglet, and though today I don’t collect his adventures anymore, but my adoration didn’t lessened a bit. This is a silent adoration sitting deep in my heart, and it is highly selective, so sometimes I judge some products unentertaining. But this is another topic, I intend to write another article about them in the future. This latest version was released in December 2010, and was made amusing. The story is embarrassing a little for me, because generally Spidey doesn’t used to meddle into world-saving quests — the comic book stories are mostly revolving around Peter Parker‘s common man characteristics, even during his super-encounters he mainly rather gets into a supporting role than being a tank of the team. In fact, in this game his teammates are he, he and himself. Well, the fundamentals: One of the returning enemies of Spider-Man, Mysterio emerges again to get a powerful, magic stone tablet from the museum (’cause there is always a stupid director of the museum who tends to exhibit some brutal artifact with minimal safety). I don’t wanna go into deeper analysis, but the above mentioned “common man characteristic” of Spider-Man are emphasized further by some of his adversaries, who are not necessary superbeings. For example, here is Mysterio, a well-learned but power-hungry prestidigitator, hypnotist and expert of special effects, without any superhuman abilities. Spidey simply jumps through his illusions, then knocks him out by a well-aimed move. The usual neglectfulness of Spider-Man causes the trouble again: This well-aimed move goes through the problematic stone tablet, which scatters in the world. To be more exact, it scatters in four worlds, and the great adventure begins. Shattered Dimensions takes the world of the Amazing Spider-Man as a starting point, and introduces three other ones. All of them were presented in various comic book series, so you get nothing new, except the unimaginably novel serving. The four settings (Amazing, Ultimate, Noir, 2099) and the characters belonging to them are offering four different...

2014. nov. 13.

The world of Warhammer 40.000 was made up of incredibly hard, cold and factual elements. Creators of Space Marine got this well, and they spiced the stuff with the marine heroism you can see on numberless pictures painted for the tabletop game. The result is among those very few games to which I tend to give maximal droidscore. Maybe, till now there was no such game in GD’s history. WH40K setting is extremely gothic, cosmic and apocalyptic, desperately dark, fantastic and hopeless in the same time, so in short: it’s not simple. Sometimes it called dystopian science fantasy, and this shows well that it’s not classifiable, so a distinct category was made. The name is telling: We are in the 41st millennium, when humans already populated the galaxy. During doing this it met some things, for example the Ork race spreading like a plague, or the Eldars living on their so-called Craftworlds after they left their home planets which (literally) became the embodiment of the race’s most chaotic nightmare. Anyway, they are not the real problem here, but the warping forces of Chaos and the swarm-like Tyranids are. There are other races too, and every one of them would fill a whole book, so I stick to the basics here. As in countless other settings, human is the average race here. They have high level technology but only some weaker psi abilities, and in spite of maintaining a strict order they always lie under the lure of Chaos. The Emperor’s Children Legion is a fine example here: They was so addicted to the sensations of battle and victory that they fell to Slaanesh, the Chaos god of perverse pleasures. Humankind is a so-called “collector-race” by every means: It mixes Orkish ferocity, Eldar technology and the unpredictability of Chaos. Orks are green-skinned, violent neo-barbarians. They live by wolfish laws and believe war can solve every problem. Although they are in constant war with other races, there are frequent skirmishes even between the allied clans, be it a simple bar brawl, a battle for an area or even a holy war. They practically have no fear of death, and we can hear about artfully wrought ork...

2014. nov. 13.

This fantasy hack & slash was released in 2001, and it became a classic by today. In those days the game’s top graphics held a lot of players spellbound. As I see it today, there are only a few products which are able to give such mood and experience as Severance did. This short article was written in 2005 (and this is why it’s so short) when I bought the game in a “Bestsellers” pack with Colin McRae 2 and Insane. As a big fan of speed I was just flipped at the pictures from Severance on the cover, but I said: “Why not? There is enough room on the shelves and I bought the pack for the racing games.” Soon I thought otherwise. I let the game take a chance on me, and Mr Colin stayed on the shelf till the end of that summer, because I wanted to complete Severance. A lot of people says that don’t be alone when you are playing a horror-fantasy FPS, because you will regret it. And they were true: Thanks to the sound and visual effects sometimes I really kicked the legs of the computer desk, or walking in the damp crypts I found myself squeezing the mouse with sweating hand. But don’t run forward so much! Severance: Blade of Darkness had a big red circle with 18+ inscribed when it get to the shops, marking aggression, violence and scaring content. This rating is correct, although today its old graphics is decreasing its scariness greatly. This is a fantasy action game with FPS or TPS (you can change it) point of view, in which you have to fight yourself through several levels, a heap of opponents and some traps to reach the main villain and save the world, as it is fitting to a good hero. It has a standard story and appearance, but the world and its mood can charm the player easily. You can choose between four characters. There are a dwarf warrior, a barbarian, a knight and an elf-like amazon. Evidently, they are from different races and classes, so they are skilled in different fighting styles, they use different weapons. They are advancing...

2014. nov. 13.

Some Pen and Paper RPG worlds are adopted to video games time and time again, thanks not to the never ceasing worship of fans but to these worlds itself for being such great hits. For example, there are innumerous Forgotten Realms games, and the newest is the much awaited Neverwinter MMO from the software-welders of Cryptic. The situation is more or less the same with The Dark Eye adaptations; after the recent Drakensang Online, the Chains of Satinav was released in 2012, and it exceeded my expectations. I already wrote about and glorified the world of the German The Dark Eye on GameDroid, in a review of Drakensang: The River of Time, so I don’t enter into details too much. In essence, it is a more than 30 years old role-playing game of German characteristics like precision and complexity, but it has a mostly average world setting. No wonder it was called German D&D once. More than one reasons made me glad to see this game in the shops. On the one hand I am a quiet fan of The Dark Eye, and I like to roam in the world of Drakensang. For me it seems more collected than its American parallels. I don’t really know why, but I have a feeling that in spite of being an average fantasy world, Drakensang is different somehow. On the other hand I am a quiet fan of the point and click style too. I don’t collect pnc games, but I readily appreciate this interactive kind of storytelling is, and I like to test my logic on the challenges. Syberia is one of my all time favs, and Machinarium also gave several pleasant game hours. It is just reasonable that I picked up on the meeting of my two favorites. And they didn’t made me disappointed. In my memories, the story was like reading a book, and the game was sometimes hard but always logical in the given situations. Geron, the aide of the local bird-catcher has a really bad reputation. Of course, the breaking fragile things around him don’t help a bit, and partly because of this, partly because of a bonfired Seer‘s last divination the...

Sisyphos had grown bored of it, had an idea and flung his rock at Hades. Broadly, this is the story in the First Chapter of the alternative history book of Rock of Ages. Even this basic idea is a flash of genius, and I still didn’t told you about the grotesque gameplay sparing no one and nothing. Even Leonardo da Vinci would enjoy it, not to mention the three hundred Spartans. Nowadays, I substantially set indie games before the AAA categorized products from the conveyor belts of an industry investing and getting millions of dollars into and from lifeless games with zero innovation and value. The good indie developers must accomplish to satisfy the income-hungry publishers, so they have to show all their boldness in their games. ACE Team is an excellent example for this direction: In 2009 its Zeno Clash overshot the mark, and I mean it in the good meaning. And it didn’t changed a bit in the case of this rock-rolling madness, which somehow got the category of action-strategy. I already told you about the foundation of the story, and I hope I don’t have to explain names like Sisyphos or what we call a Sisyphean task. Let’s take a look at the gameplay instead, which is entertaining in itself. In the beginning of every level a short animation lets you know about the century, in which you have to roll that big rock. You get to know your enemy too: They can be anyone from Hades through Leonardo da Vinci to Napoleon. And of course, they try to roll another rock onto your half of the pitch. This videos are funny and grotesque. Nothing is sacred for the developers, not even Leonidas, “This is Sparta” for nothing. The rock is controlled by you. Left, right, brake and jump. The goal is to roll downhill, avoid harm and cause a lot of damage to the enemy’s objects, then in the end you need to smash the enemy gates and simply squeeze him to death. The rolling race has some spice, of course; the enemy has his rock too, so also your gate is in danger. To avoid defeat, you can build...

There are games that worth their prices. Well, the mascot of Frictional Games, the second episode of the Penumbra series, the Black Plague just belongs to this category. And this is quite true if you buy a localized version, which means that nor just the menu and the hub, but the dub will be localized too ― at least Hungarian version is worth the money, thanks to CD Projekt. The first episode of Penumbra was also good, if I wanna pen it with mild terms, and it had a relatively big success in spite of its unhyped release. The reception was fishy a little, but commendatory voices were predominant. The second installment goes uber on almost every aspect of the first episode. I try to examine this game to see what it brings up, and what the developers didn’t manage to improve… We Don’t (?) Go Step by Step Characteristically, the game has exceptionally lifelike physics, acceptable graphics and lots of hard puzzles. In the first episode we might get to know the physics, or I can say: We could see how professional the 4 swede undergrad guys were regarding the simulation of physics. Every object was falling, breaking, exploding, etc. just as in real life. Well, Black Plague shows it no otherwise, so the engine ― I can say ― became a trademark of the game and the series. Unfortunately, it seems that short playtime became a trademark too. Another thing we can raise objection against is graphics, which is nowhere to Crysis. What’s more, it could be an eyesore at first that the game is not fine even on 1280×1024, but I think and found it not a big setback on long terms, because after a time I neglected it entirely. What made me cry again was the bad appearance and animation of characters. Sadly and inexplicably they didn’t improve these, and some monsters raise rather a smile than fear ― it’s not typical, but it can occur. OK, after hurting the game a little I list its good characteristics, because there are a lot of them. Let’s Go Through the Door… But How? After the end of the first episode it was...