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! 
Comments
Interesting viewpoints, I really liked Quake Wars. I think they should have included more maps, and should have allowed more AI for single player games, but most of the out of the box content is of superb quality. I thought it was a bit too watered down for a Quake game, though; Quake has never shirked on the gore... why start now?
Yeah, more maps would have helped ET:QW; but I can't complain, each map allows for various tactics and has plenty to discover. I played this for about a week and didn't even get around to play half of the maps. Yeah, it's a bit watered down for a Quake game, gore-wise, but then again it's not quite a Quake game.
Also, I can't believe I forgot to mention it in the blog: Strogg weapons, best looking weapon models in any game! Ever! Period!
I am really looking forward to your review of TWEE since I too have been playing that for a while and find it absolutely horrible. It's the combat that really kills it since it is mainly one big quicktime event i.e. push button when icon turns yellow. I'm in chp 2 and granted perhaps it gets better but I doubt it. So maybe your review will show me what I am missing?
I briefly tried QW on a friends PC and found it rather bland and boring. It's not bad but just so average and with so many other better online shooters outthere like TF2, CS, UT3 and Battlefield 2 I can't find a good reason to suffer through a bland shooter like QW.
Atari are really idiots for not releasing MoW before the two XP since from what I have heard the game really suffers from being designed before MotB and SoZ but released after them. But then again Atari are really morons so there you have it. I recently installed NWN1 and wanted to play WCOC but Atari have removed all premium modules for NWN1 so we can't play them anymore. I wanted to pay for it but apparently Atari don't want to make money.
Anyway good to have you back and take care.
I quite enjoy The Witcher, despite the combat. My main comment about combat is that it's not intrusive. It's very simple (or rather simplistic) but certainly not something that gets in the way in an annoying manner, like say, Gothic 3 combat. Having said that, my review will be mostly positive, I think The Witcher smokes many of the story-driven RPGs released in recent years (including games from more established devs like Bioware and Obsidian).
Quake Wars takes a bit of time to warm up to, that I can tell you for sure. It's not the type of game you can play for 5 minutes and get a good vibe from. It takes a few hours to get into it because initially you feel kind of lost. You need time to figure out map objectives and tactics, see what character type fits your play style best, get the grips with the weapons and vehicles etc. And it gets very entertaining after that. At least that's how I feel about it.
About MoW, it would have benefited from some of the improvements brought by Storm of Zehir (mainly the resting and death system), so if Atari put it on hold for so much time, it could have at least let Ossian implement these improvements. But no, they worked on a super-awesome DRM scheme for a year, which turned out to be the same online activation stuff you see in many titles these days. So yeah, I agree with you, Atari are very 'smart'.
Anyway, see you around man.
I was always interested in playing Monkey Island one day...I had played Ankh which was just like Monkey Island.
Three people reading this aye? I sense more...more...
Now what was I about to say...
Stalker - I bought the limited edition back in 2007 and man this game knows how to move frame rates from 100 down to 10 just by looking at a flaming barrel. I hope this one improves somewhat and besides there's that wicked graphics improvement where some graphic designer dude made this game entering the 22nd century by enhancing everything which comes to...
Witcher - yep a game still sitting on my shelf.
QWET - See above - actually I mucked around with this game playing the stroggs and man it's quite good considering all things.
BTW - try Guild Wars - I'm totally amazed with this game. Totally.
And arise Dragon Age, arise!
I hope I one day get to play MoW but first I have to finish NWN2 OC, MotB, SoZ and then I can move on to MoW. It will take some time - especially since I can't seem to get into RPG's these days (I don't know why). But Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 2 does keep my very busy so I guess that's okay. Take care m8.
Thanks for the recommendation, but I generally don't play MMOs, and Guild Wars is an MMO from what I know. They require too much time.
Cheers mate!
bowlingotter