Hi all! Short blog today. Just wanted to let you know that my Mysteries of Westgate review is up. Read, comment, or do whatever else you feel like doing.

The game turned out so much better than I thought it would. In my humble opinion, it ranks as one of the highlights of the RPG genre in recent years. Yeah, I really thought it was that good. It's so well put together and full of great quests, solid writing... ah, just read the review to find out all the details.

Next time I'll hopefully bring you a review of Risen, which is pretty awesome as well. Just my luck, two great RPGs in a row ... this year turned out better than I thought it would. Peace!

Hey everybody! Finally, here it is, my The Witcher: Enhanced Edition review. Read, comment, ask, say what's on your mind. It took a bit longer to finish this as I wanted to test out the two additional adventures packed with the Enhanced Edition. Both were pleasant, and short. I'd say about an hour each.

And right now I'm playing through Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, widely considered the worst of the series. The game's been sitting on a shelf for years, gathering dust. I remember trying it for like 15 minutes back in 2005 or so, I know I ended up uninstalling it because of bad controls. Never touched it again... till yesterday. It's really not a Tomb Raider game, with Lara running around derelict apartment building, Parisian back alleys and sewers, talking to people, following leads and trying to find people; there's really not much tomb raiding going on.

But I'm really surprised. The game would fit rather well in a point-and-click adventure game format. It has an interesting thriller atmosphere going for it. And, surprise surprise, I've even encountered situations where I'm given multiple paths through a quest. I've even learned to live with the difficult controls, which, it turns out, are sufferable as long as you don't use the mouse. Bottom line, I'm enjoying it. Will review, as this one's an interesting case.

Well, that's it for this blog entry. See you next time. Peace!

Hello everyone! And by 'everyone' I mean the two or three people who still read this, admittedly, not very active blog. Today I'll just do some news on some of the games I've tried lately.


Fastpunk Top Tip of the week:

STALKER: Shadows of Chernobyl - this is basically a post-apocalyptic sandbox shooter, set in 2012 Chernobyl. And it manages to do a lot of things right; atmosphere would be first and foremost, an interesting game world with a lot of emergent events that make it feel alive would follow. The game mechanics and NPC A.I. aren't bad either. The problem is it gets old after a while, since the number of side quests is rather limited, and the main quests seem to follow the same pattern (explore underground lab and recover documents/turn off machines). Basically, it could use more work towards making quests and missions more unique. But, overall, it's a solid game that I'd recommend to anyone.




Also try:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - this one's a neat team-based multiplayer shooter which I'm probably going to play every once in a while. Each scenario has a unique set of objectives, and the experience varies quite a bit depending on faction and character type choice. It plays well, it runs well, and it's fun. It's not gonna take home the gold, but it's well worth it.


Now playing:

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to write a review for the two games I mentioned above, we'll see. For now, I really want to finish The Witcher: Enhanced Edition and NWN2: Mysteries of Westgate. I'm in the last chapter of TW and the stuff's getting really interesting. MoW on the other hand, well, I gotta start over. My saved games got corrupted so... yeah. But it's the best RPG I've played this year so I'm gonna pick it up again and finish it this time.

Lastly, I just got The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, which is a remake of the timeless masterpice we've all at least heard of. Gotta say, the hand-drawn 2D graphics are superb, and the voice acting and music are both solid. Can't give you a more in depth opinion yet, since I played it for just a few minutes yesterday. More on that later.




Reviews on the horizon:

Reviews for Mysteries of Westgate and The Witcher EE are in the works, but I need to finish the games before proceeding. Hopefully, I'll review Monkey Island as well. No promises on that though.

Well, that's pretty much everything. Next time I'll hopefully bring a review or two, and I also want to do a 'games I want to play' type blog next time, since some interesting titles have emerged in the last few months. Peace and see you around!