Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on November 18th, 2009
Some of you may remember that the last two Grand Theft Auto games I reviewed were the Playstation 2 ports of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. Most people probably thought that when GTA IV came out, I would have ran to my local game shop and picked up a copy. Truth is, I didn’t. The desire was there but I never really got around to it. So then Rockstar announced they would put their two DLC episodes on disc. Strangely, I was compelled to go buy it. First, I fully support retail releases of stand-alone content that was previously only downloadable and second I had missed Liberty City. I mostly missed the violence and wanton destruction.
Grand Theft Auto has never had amazing graphics. It usually sticks around average. It’s the same in this game. Liberty City will never be confused with the prettiest city in the US, but many times I wondered if it did have to see that many shades of grey. Besides the color drabness, graphic detail was not one of the game’s strong suits. There are a few things one can do to make the video a little more tolerable which involve playing with Brightness/Contrast and turning off the Radio effect (especially if you have an HD tv).
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on November 9th, 2009
The last time I had played a WWE wrestling game was way back in 2007. Triple H was on the cover looking more menacing than usual and I had played the game for a few solid months. But to be honest, I was burnt out and frustrated with the grappling system and spent the last few years messing with older wrestling titles and Fire Pro Wrestling Returns for the Playstation 2. Fast forward to late 2009 and I suddenly find myself excited for a WWE wrestling game once again. Hopefully clever marketing wasn’t the only reason.
It’s true. No matter how many times I play a WWE game, the first thing I always notice is the graphics. All of the characters here look great for the most part including John Cena, Randy Orton and even lesser talents like Chavo Guerrero who are realistic to their real life counterparts. Rey Mysterio gets particular praise for the designer’s attention to the detail in his mask.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on September 1st, 2009
People rarely look for depth when it comes to games released on Xbox Live Arcade. This method of gaming mostly sees games that are puzzlers, recreations of once forgotten gems and the occasional sports diversion. A better word for these type of games: time wasters. However, most players wanted something more than a dumping ground for the newest falling block game, they wanted an awesome game in a small package at a thrifty price. Little do they know then that the people at Chair Entertainment have responded to that call and provided us with a game called Shadow Complex.
This could be one of the very few kinks in the armor. Since Shadow Complex is modeled after games like Super Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, it is also made to look like those games but with HD rendering and some fancy paint. The game on a whole looks very good. However, certain areas are so dark (even with a flashlight), that sometimes you have no idea what is going on.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on August 1st, 2009
To say I’m not a country music fan is a bit of an overstatement. I’m not even sure what exactly possessed me to go to NewEgg.com and order a copy of Rock Band Country Track Pack. Oh yes, now I remember it was my fiancée and future wife, Sarah who thought I should be a little more diversified in my music. Apparently, 80’s hair rock was only popular in the late 80’s. I must have missed the memo. But surely, I have heard this thing called country before. I mean I attended more karaoke clubs in Texas during the mid to late 90’s than I care to think about. Once they were done throwing tomatoes at me after I finished my rendition of “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake, they usually threw on an old Garth Brooks or Clint Black tune.
The graphics are the same here as any other Rock Band game. My thinking is that they make the graphics look so generic that they almost want you to export them into your Rock Band or Rock Band 2 setup so you can actually customize things like your character. The “cowboy” graphics you see on the back of the cover are nowhere to be found in the actual track pack unless they come up in some random generator. Your best bet is to import this into Rock Band and then pick your attire accordingly. There isn’t even any country and western intro video or anything besides a static title screen.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on June 15th, 2009
It was the summer of 1993, this little review writer was on his way to college for the first time. Among the many things I took to college with me, one of them was a computer. The computer was top of the line at the time; a 486-33mhz processor chip and an 170 meg hard drive. I said meg. Windows 3.1/Dos 6.22 was the OS combination and it had one game on it besides Solitaire. A shareware copy of Wolfenstein 3d. The game had actually been already out for a year but it was a popular game and on my pc as included software. Upon entering college, I played that game for hours and the hours turned into days. I would eventually buy the full copy of the game along with level editors and various mods. Thru the years, I have revisited the game on consoles and again on PC. Xbox Live Arcade out of the blue decided to release a port of the PC game and encourage me to play the adventures of BJ Blazkowicz once again. I’m glad they did.
It’s hard to believe that these graphics are over 15 years old for the most part. Sure, they redid parts of the title menu to make it Xbox Live friendly and added a few minor details, but it’s the same PC port brought over for the Xbox 360. Colors do seem a bit dated and there is that familiar clipping every so often, but it’s fairly easy to tell what is going on and they actually seem to move a lot cleaner and precise than on my 486. One could hope for an HD remake (or a port over of the 3do version), but this is one of the times I’m glad they didn’t.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on June 13th, 2009
The original Cellfactor was actually a technical demo published back in 2006 by Immersion Games. It was made for the Ageia Physx series of cards which later became a part of NVidia. This demo showed off things we in the first person shooter community took for granted, barrels and boxes. Barrels and boxes have long been staples in games for doing absolutely nothing but existing (occasionally a barrel might explode but that’s it). Thru this demo, your character could use his psychic powers to throw the items and watch as they interact with the environment. Then with help from Timeline Interactive, a PC game was produced in May 2007, available free to people who would visit their website. A couple of years later, they decided to make a Live Arcade game for the Xbox 360 using similar technology. Thus we have Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars. Eight hundred points later, it was worth the wait & the Live currency.
As mentioned in the above paragraph, the actual engine for this game has been around for a long time. This was a technical demo that was made to show off the graphics power for a series of PC cards. Then they went and got published with UBISoft (very well known for Unreal Tournament) and turned it into a heck of a graphical experience. Your character will fly around and the scenery compensates very well. There are minor graphical issues but nothing I felt that could be described as distracting. The seven maps included are fairly diverse and each show a wide array of color choices and palettes.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on April 20th, 2009
Puberty for me was an odd thing like many teenage boys. My dad threw a medical book into my lap when I turned thirteen and said if I had any questions to let him know. This was followed by more literature being thrown into my lap such as Playboy when I wasn’t any older than fifteen or sixteen years old. In addition to magazine publications, I was also allowed to buy some objectionable games and music. One of these games was the Leisure Suit Larry series. The original PC games had great (and dirty) humor, fun puzzles and some of the best basic game play you could fit into several floppy discs. Times change and the racy appeal of Leisure Suit Larry has made the Xbox 360 console. *sigh* I’m so sorry it did.
One of the appeals to the Leisure Suit Larry series is usually the graphics. Most of the games (especially once they got to VGA graphics) featured women that were pretty easy on the eyes. They weren’t real of course, but sometimes we hoped they were. In Box Office Bust, something isn’t right. The characters look reasonably drawn, especially when it comes to the males. But the females feel all wrong.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on March 6th, 2009
There haven’t been many compilation discs out for the 360 yet. There were the Orange Box and a few Xbox Live Arcade compilation discs. There was also Namco Museum Virtual Arcade which despite the plethora of titles wasn’t much more than a bunch of Xbox Live Arcade games and some retro titles thrown in for the nostalgia factor. Most of us retro purists were waiting for a compilation title that put together not only classic games but blended it with the new technology into an invigorating harmony. Our time has come in the form of Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection. There are forty plus games from the Sega Genesis and a sprinkling of Arcade & Sega Master games with HD technology and Achievements. We are pleased.
Since most of these games were made in the late eighties to the early nineties, most of us would not expect for these games to stand out graphically. However, Backbone Entertainment has gone to the trouble to recreate every game in 16:9 quality. This does wonders for some games like the Sonics and the Streets of Rage series. However, in a few of the older games like Bonanza Bros or Gain Ground, the stretching is more evident and the quality doesn’t feel as strong. There is also the option to play these games in their original ratio and have a static background behind it.
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on December 12th, 2008
The World of Warcraft is home to over eleven million people. Think about that figure for a moment. That's the size of an Ohio or Michigan or even more astounding parallel to the number of people inside Tokyo, Japan. A bunch of people playing gnomes, trolls, orcs, night elves and more. For four years, players have battled through the original World of Warcraft and the adjoining expansion pack: The Burning Crusade which allowed characters to play in Outland and bring their character to 70 levels of pain, sacrifice and dedication. Now they have a new task. The Scourge has come to take over Azeroth and bring an end to all life. They are lead by the Lich King Arthas and nothing will stop them until their mission is completed. This opens up players to a whole new area called Northrend as well as bringing us a new class: the Death Knight. But is it enough to stop the forwarding advance of the Scourge Army and Arthas' quest for blood?
(Please note, this article could not have been done without the cooperation of my girlfriend, Sarah. Her characters including her druid and her death knight were the instruments by which this review was created. I merely became a medium for the crafting of this article. I hope you the reader enjoys this interview and review of Lich King. Thank you.)
Posted in: Game Reviews by Michael Durr on November 24th, 2008
The original Fallout 3 was held in the firm hands of Interplay Entertainment under the working title of Van Buren. Developed by Black Isle Studios, that title never saw the light of the day when Interplay Entertainment went bankrupt and laid off the entire PC development team in late 2003. In 2007, Interplay sold the rights to the Fallout franchise to Bethesda who had developed the popular Elder Scrolls series. Bethesda scrapped the original code and worked on the project from scratch. It paid homage to many Fallout concepts and Fallout 3 saw gold in 2008. It was a long five years between the layoff of the original creators and the company who ultimately got the right to release the game. Was it worth the wait?
Graphics
The first thing that might strike you in the graphics department when you play Fallout 3 is that one never realized there are so many different shades of bleak. Shades of grey, black, brown & white are very prevalent here. But the good news is that the graphics are extremely detailed. People are easily seen and the darkness can sometimes be your best friend. The animation on a clean head shot and having the head roll down the hallway is one of the most satisfying pieces of graphic footage I’ve seen in a long time. My only real complaint is that once you get into the vast wasteland, the graphics while great tend to blend together into one continuous rock quarry.
![Shadow Complex [Online Game Code] dvd cover art](https://upcomingdiscs.com/ecs_covers/shadow-complex-online-game-code-large.jpg)
