Alan Wake Review

Platform: xbox360

Genre: thriller, horror survival

The player heard about a new game called Alan wake. It was a game promising a new tweak to the horror-survival gameplay. It also promised a captivating story just like one of Stephen king's novels.

On a rainy day of May the game was released and the player rushed to get it.

...suddenly I awoke on the couch and the game finished installing ... I reached out for the controller and turned off the light. It was late at night and I was struggling to progress. I had my controller and i was runningi low on battery. I reached for a new set. They weren't there ...

... hours passed and all I had was this foggy world where I had to relly on Alan's flashlight and the weapons he had collected. I helped him find the pages he was collecting but I missed a few. The creepiness has faded away because the camera kept showing me when the creeps appeared. But I was amazed of the scenery although it kept following the same pattern ... The forest ...

The story kept the player tied to the screen ... He tried to escape rhe temptation but he failed ... miserably. He couldn't always predict what was going to happen. He will never expect a rockstage all fired up to mix up the monster killing with the glorious power of metal ...

One thing kept ruining the cinematic experience of the player. He kept seeing how the lips wheren't in sync with what he was hearing. But he didn't care that much because the game has delievered. It didn't deliver much but it was a very ok release after all ... The player had it ... He had his driving sections, collectibles and a great deal of story and armosfhere ...

... The reader now notices he ended reading this short review ... He walks away ... Unaware of what is happening in Bright Falls

Baku: Alan Wake was a very refreshing experience in the vortex of bad or boring horror games. Not many games have really managed to get me immersed in the experience as this one did, enough that I finished it in a single session (while COma was next to me trying not to get scared as horror games sometimes have that effect on him) which does not happen very often.
The story was very engrossing for me and it's pacing was spot on. The way you found out what happened in the past from the novel pages you find lying around was great and Alan's struggle to find his wife in a town that seemed to become darker and creepier as time went on was brilliant.
As far as gameplay goes the mechanic of using light to weaken enemies was interesting and the game always gave me just enough resources to keep me tensed up which is just what I was expecting so kudos to the developers.
I didn't follow this game much before launch but I had a very pleasant surprise and all in all it's one of the best horror survival games I've played in a while and frankly I'm just waiting for a sequel to explain more about the dark force that inhabits Bright Falls though some things may be better left unexplained.

Red Dead Redemption Review

Platform: xbox 360
Genre: sandbox

I will start this review with a confession. I always wanted to play a good western game although I cannot say that I'm a big fan of the genre. I didn't see any Clint Eastwood movies or the highly-acclaimed Deadwood. Also, on the gaming side of things, I only played the Call of Juarez series and I tried Gun but it kept crashing to desktop. Other games like Dead man's hand, Red Dead Revolver have passed me by. (Baku: Nothing missed there since Red Dead Revolver is not really much of a game as it's comprised mostly of arenas where you shoot a bunch of people to get revenge for something or other buy some new weapons then go on to the next arena and kill a bunch more people)

Rockstar Games, known for their Grand Theft Auto franchise took their unique gameplay style along with the somewhat mature(Baku:I think it's really mature with just enough humor) mature characters and story to the Old West. What came out of it ... is awesome. They kept the open world formula with lots of distractions from the main plot but they replaced the cars with horses. At least this might be their first game where the means of transportation are fully licensed. The setting is huge and of course some parts of it are closed till a certain point in the story. Some might say that the world is too empty and it might not have easter eggs or funny references at every corner as you may find in some of their other games but it doesn't matter. Personally I had lots of fun riding my horse (with no name) through the desert, killing and skining everything that walked, watching people die of thirst and then vultures coming to eat them, picking flowers, searching for hidden treasures or helping random civilians in need. The list of things to do is enormous ... add the side-missions, mini-games, the achievement to tie a unlucky-female and put her on the train-tracks, capture better horses and so on and you have a huge game with lot's of things to do.

The main plot is awesome, it integrates a lot of stuff related to that period like the mexican revolution and the noble indians. From my point of view the story could be summarized as the end of a era ... the end of the cowboyz and outlaws and the coming of "civilization". I found it a bit sad, but that may be because I really liked the main character ... John Marston. He is a ex-outlaw on his way to redemption. Unlike Grand theft auto where nobody had a problem with hookers, John is a family oriented man. I think from all that Rockstar threw at us, he is my favorite character(Baku:And the rest of the cast isn't too shabby either, they created a lot of intriguing characters)... And without any spoilers I take off my cowboy hat and bow before Rockstar for the awesome ending.

The gameplay is nothing more than you would expect it to. Go to a letter on your map, watch a cutscene, mount your horse, go from point A to point B, shoot something/someone ... mission succesfull. The cool part is that as you advance through the story you can buy newspapers that will have news related to what you did. Also there are some challenges that can keep you distracted and have to be triggered in a way. These vary from collecting plants to killing and skinning some sort of wildlife (there are a lot to choose from, from rabbits to bears) or find a hidden treasure. Of course at higher levels they can have more and more special requirements like shooting 5 birds from a moving train (Baku: which took me about 1 hour to complete... damn birds).

As the shooting goes you can take cover almost behind anything, and (I see it's a trend now) a bullet-time effect ... that slows down time and you can precisely target your opponent. This is widely used in duels against random folk that just have a death-wish or something.
Although you may call it a western-GTA I found it a different game and I had a lot of fun with it. Also it cannot be a GTA because John Marston doesn't have a cellphone and an annoying cousin to invite him to playing poker or darts.

the bad: sometimes riding session can get boring and long, some graphical issues
the good: the story, the characters, the setting

Dead Money (Fallout New Vegas DLC) Review

Platform: PC

Genre: (DLC) RPG

Well, let's give a go to DLC reviews. Although I'm not a big fan of theese and I prefer a old fashioned boxed add-on, some DLC's still shine. Of course, I'm not talking about those that give you a new skin/suit or just a overpowered gun.

So, Dead Money... This and the other DLC's to come are reason I cannot finish New Vegas. I want to play through all of them before I end the game. That, plus the exploring of everything in the game. It is the first one, and in pure Bethesda Style is a masterpiece. You are taken to a abandoned Brotherhood of steel Outpost where you are gased and find yourself in a dark place. It's the Sierra Madre Casino that protects it's riches. Without spoiling much, i can tell you that the characters you will meet are awesome and have very interesting backgrounds. The setting is filled with smoke and creepy-ex-residents of the Sierra Madre which only die if you cripple one of their limbs. Also death cam come from various traps scattered through the scenery or from a collar that you cannot get rid of and will explode near certain emitters. If you want to spend more time in the darkness, appart from a extra snowglobe there are some hidden stashed you can collect.

There's not much to say though without spoiling anything. The story is great, it would've been awesome if there would have been more space or if you could go back to find all the stashes.

Oh yeah ... it also raises the level cap to 35 :D.

The bad: a bit repetitive
The good: awesome characters

Risen Review

Platform: PC
Genre: RPG

After losing the Gothic franchise to JoWood, Pyranha Bytes had to start work on a new project and started making what they know best .. an open world RPG (Baku:exactly like every other RPG they've ever made). And so Risen made it's way to our hard-drives and consoles. Set in a new world, with a new Nameless Hero the story starts on a ship which is under attack from ... something. You play as one of the survivors, washed up on the shores of a near island. From there on it's up to you ... to save the world obviously.

They seem to have used the same engine (a bit more polished, and it runs much smoother) like Gothic 3 only the island is set in a more tropical environment with thick forests you wouldn't go into. The land is run by three factions and you can choose to join one of them each coming with their pros and cons. You will be welcomed by the monastery for some brain-washing (or so they say ... didn't quite play it the monastery way) and some weed-smuggling, by the Town to keep order or by Don Esteban to retake the town for him. It doesn't quite matter which one you help ... cause, apart for some quests the outcome of it is the same. It is a bit funny how these three factions seem copy/pasted from Gothic 2 ... and maybe Gothic 1 (seeing how one of them lives in the swamp). That might be the major flaw with Risen after all ... it feels too much like the Gothic series ... in many ways ...(Baku: maybe too many ways)

The island is much smaller then many of the lands Piranha Bytes has thrown at us ... or at least that's how it felt to me. But despite its size, it's filled with stuff to explore. Caves, ancient structures (some are explorable only after certain quests ...), mountains to climb or levitate from one to another and treasures to dig. About the levitate part I have to mention a big FAIL (not relevant to the review). I went through a cave and reached an exit on the top of a mountain. I could see a heap of gold, a sword and some other things on another mountain. I checked my inventory and saw that I only have 1 levitation spell. I decided to use it to get on the other side see what's there and if it was worth it I'd reload, buy another scroll and come back. Of course the sword was a bit better then mine so I did all mentioned above. Half an hour later with the sword in my hands I levitated back and continued my adventure. Then I realized the painful truth. I could've just teleported from there. Major fail.

Ok, back to the game ... and to the teleporters ... once you get at a certain chapter, some *spoiler* will spawn all over the land and some of them will be carrying teleporter stones. Yes we saw them till now. The thing is .. that there are too many in my opinion. You will get a teleporter stone for almost every road junction there is. Until your first teleport you will have to walk. The view is nice and the things that want to bite your head off are deadly. The fighting system has improved a lot since Gothic 3. At points it might be the same button-mashing ... until your first human opponent. There I learned to block and believe me it is very useful. Also at first you only have a 3-hit max combo (or something of the sort) but if you level up a type of weapon (the one you will use most of the game of course) you will unlock longer combos and special attacks or the ability to wield two-handers with one-hand.

Well, in the end I'll have to say that Risen is a pretty solid RPG that every fan of the genre should play. Although it resembles some of the developers last games in some ways, it still has a unique feeling, great graphics, a awesome atmosphere, some good characters and that feeling of loneliness and fear to go into a forest at night we missed.

Baku: As you can probably guess I'm not really a fan of the Gothic franchise but I did play Risen and while I did finish it I wasn't particularly impressed by any of it.

the bad: few characters to remember, final "boss fight" 
the good: a solid Piranha Bytes RPG, that brings back that Gothic feeling under a new name

*I will post screenshots late ... you can find them all on our Facebook page

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast Review

Platform: PC
Genre: FPS

Here comes a nostalgia one from the time I had somewhere around 10 games I played over and over again and never got bored of. The time when my internet connection had to struggle a few minutes to download a simple picture, long before my first kiss or any other "firsts".

One of those few games I went through a lot of times was Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. At first, the story didn't make much sense because I hadn't played the first game from the series (or even heard about it for that matter) but I kept going. It kept me entralled because it was the first Star Wars game I got my hands on. Soon followed by Rogue Squadron and Jedi Knight III.

So back to Outcast. You start as Kyle Katarn (one of my favorite Star Wars characters) on a "blue milk run" (yeah, I still know a lot of the dialogue from the game) a.k.a. a scouting mission towards a imperial Outpost. After gunning down some imperial troopers, you find some crystals used to induce the Force into living subjects.

As the story develops you find Dessan, a Sith ... Lord I guess and his apprentice who kill your partner to get information about the Valley of the Jedi (something happened there in the first game). From here on the game takes you to many well-known places including Yavin 4 (where you get trained by Luke Skywalker to get in touch with the Force again), Bespin, Nar'Shadaa and many more. You will also meet many of the movies characters like Lando Calrission, R2-D2, C3-PO ... Some will help you in your quest (or you will help them) or others are just there to look pretty (and as reference to the movies I guess). Trust me you will not be dissappointed with the story and the way it evolves. Also you find out why it's not always a good idea to trust "a bartender with bad grammar". Linking the story are cutscenes (which at the time I found to be awesome) usually presenting the Raven Claw (Katarn's ship) leaving or coming or landing...

One of the most awesome levels, in my opinion, is the one where you have to regain your lighsaber (and your force powers). You have to go through a training ground gaining one force power at a time and use it to go to next area. At the end of the course your lightsaber awaits ... in a cage of sorts. I don't know about other people, but that was a moment in which I wished I had three hands. But, after gaining the saber I felt powerful and awesome. From that moment on I usually tried to "role-play" the game. Not having a moral system, I usually tried to feel like the "good guy" by walking slowly through the levels with the sword turned of, trying to mind-trick the enemies and so on.

The Force Powers are pretty neat, you get the ability to pull, push, mindtrick, lightning, run very fast and maybe some others I don't recall right now. From time to time, these upgrade themselves. The only problem with the lightsaber is that after you get it in your possession all the other weapons become obsolete (and you get a lot of new ones from that point on) ... you will use them just to see how they fire or maybe in a few bossfights. But when you start meeting the Reborn (the bad guys with lightsabers) you can pull some cool combos or jumps and stuff (I don't know exactly how many there are or how they work ... cause I remember smashing buttons when I experienced them). Oh, I forgot to mention dismemberments.
All these being said, the game still has some tricks up it's sleeve until the end. At some point you have to go through a stealth-based mission and at another point you get to 'drive" an AT-ST.

The game also offered a pretty nice multiplayer. With the above-mentioned Force Powers (customizable) you could do some pretty sick stuff. I always liked to play on the Bespin level with Force Jump maxed and jump around all over the place like a moron.

the bad: i'll have to think about it
the good: a nice Star Wars title for it's time