Bedlam Deck

This is one of the decks i've been gathering cards for in the last few months.  I've always had an interest in Bedlam.  Innistrad's vampires reignited the concept (even if they later were cut).  Like the Shadow Deck, I can't block (if things are working) and I have lots of defenses.  Unlike the Shadow Deck, it's two colors, my creatures can get bigger, and no one can block (if things are working at all).

this list is tentative, as I haven't played it.  i foresee it being a mid-to-late-game winner.

Bedlam Deck
60 Card Format

Red, White

4 Bedlam

4 Order/Chaos

3 Curse of Stalked Prey

4 Blinding Angel

4 Windborn Muse

2 Falkenrath Marauder

2 Slith Ascendant

4 Magus of the Moat

3 Worship

2 Enlightened Tutor

2 Argivian Find

2 Tithe

2 Armillary Sphere

4 Traveler's Amulet

LANDS

2 Ice Floe

2 Maze of Ith

1 Kor Haven

Mountains

Plains

Multicolor Lands

RAGE Review

Game:  RAGE
Year (s):  2011
Company:  dev.  id Software
            pub.  Bethesda Studios
Engine:  id Tech 5
Type:  First-Person Shooter (with some RPG elements), Racing

Price (as of December 24, 2011)

Regular price on Steam:  $29.99
Lowest Buy-It-Now on eBay (new, with shipping):  $24

Game Time (first time, on normal): 33 hours

Obligatory Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtycv3h-4GA



Plot

In 2004 observations indicated that the asteroid Apophis had a small chance of hitting Earth.  RAGE begins with the asteroid hitting.  Selected people were put in underground Arks, kept in suspended animation by "nanotrites".  You, one of the Ark survivors, wake up about one hundred years after impact.  It's a phenomenal beginning, with great cinematics, music, and dialogue.

The rest of the game has almost no plot.  Shoot stuff that shoots at you.  A novel and a set of three comic books flesh out the plot, but these don't come with the game.  Many people have been understandably unhappy with the lack of story.


id Tech 5

I ran the game on nearly the lowest settings, and it looked as good as anything else that I've seen in the last five years.  I'm sure on the highest specs it's a bombshell.  A noticeable aspect of this engine is very short load times. 

Some complain that the engine is buggy, but they're idiots.  The game never crashed.  Occasionally graphical errors occurred on an area load, but re-loading the last save (typically the auto save that occurred on entering the new area) fixed it easily.  I had no other problems. 


Voice Talent/Audio

Most notably, we have John Goodman.  Several other voices are ones that you will recognize from other games, but probably won't know the name of the actors offhand.

The score is done by a guy named Abernathy, and really shines during cinematic cutscenes.  Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age) did a song that plays during the end credits. 


Combat and Gameplay

This is my favorite part of the game.  Like old shooters, you have lots of weapons and infinite inventory.  Except for two guns, all have multiple ammo types.  Ammo can electrocute, explode, or mind-control an enemy to turn them in to a suicide bomber. 

All weapons can zoom and be used in melee.  RAGE adds quick-use items (bound to Q and changed by the F keys ) ranging from medkits and grenades, to boomerangs, sentry bots, turrets, and RC bomb cars.  Using these in conjuction with your standard weaponry is a blast.

Quick-use items and some ammo types can be built by the player, from parts found or purchased.  This engineering system is simpler and more accesible than that in New Vegas or BioShock. 

Life regeneration is featured, albeit unlike other games, there's a sci-fi explanation for it.  The "nanotrites" that kept you in suspended animation now repair your body!  This also accounts for a limited come-back-to-life mechanic.


Driving

Two races are part of the main quest, and you'll be driving between locations as soon as you have a vehicle.  Lots of additional races are purely optional.  The parts upgrade system for cars is very simple, and weapons (many with parallels in Mario Kart) can be purchased.  All the racing together isn't as long as an actual driving game, but it's an enormous contrast to the shooter genre's typically limited use of vehicles. 


Game Time

I tried (and failed) to do everything in one play through.  This included side quests, racing, vehicle jumps, a handful of mini-games, optional areas, and achievements.  This made the gametime 2-3 times as long as most modern shooters, or a fraction as long as the big modern RPG shooters.  This amount of content is another complaint made by players.  However, RAGE doesn't have all the similar (repetetive) quests to do.  Different groups of enemies in RAGE have different AI and tactics.  Lastly, RAGE is already 21 gigs, with the promise of additional content in DLC form. 


Easter Eggs

The player can find Pinkies, which have a description like Twinkies but make a distinctive growl upon picking them up.  Vault-Tec bobbleheads can be found, so can a guy with a Doom 3 t-shirt, a few id logos, signs for Doom 3's Mixom company, a Half-Life 2 nod, and probably several other references that I didn't notice or didn't find.  


Expansions / DLC / Sequels

id plans to create DLC, but there is no information yet.


Final Thoughts

What we have here is a beautifully rendered, good-length shooter with top-notch voice acting and audio.  The game makes a huge advance in combining shooters and racing.  While there's no plot, I have a hard time remembering the last time I had this much fun with a combat system.  RAGE is pretty sweet.

Aliens vs. Predator Review

Game:  Aliens vs. Predator
Year (s):  2010
Company:  dev.  Rebellion Developments
            pub.  Sega
Engine:  Asura
Type:  First-Person Shooter

Price (as of December 5, 2011 )

Regular price on Steam:  19.99
Lowest Buy-It-Now on eBay (new, with shipping):  13.95

Game Time:  13 hours, first time on normal

Obligatory Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NtpnNjh3jI


Plot

Humans, Aliens, and Predators each have their own single-player campaign.  Events in these occur at the same time, at the same facility.  The Weiland-Yutani Corporation, with their androids and machinations, play a role in each campaign. 

As a human, your squad of marines drop down to help the distressed colony.  The Alien infestation is overwhelming, and your mission quickly becomes a rush to rescue your CO and escape.

As an Alien, you bust out of a laboratory and establish Alien domination.  The Queen gives you orders telepathically.

As a Predator, you are responding to a distress call from an Elite Predator.  The Predator battles to regain artifacts looted by Weiland-Yutani, detonate the area, and kill the alien/predator hybrid. 


Graphics

The Asura engine looks much like anything else I've played in the last five years.  I sometimes had lagging problems, which could be due to the engine, to Steam, or just be a sign that my computer needs an upgrade. 

Asura uses DirectX 11, and is Rebellion's in-house engine.  There is little information online about it, and a great deal of speculation without citation (mostly on forums).  The bottom line: it looks good, but is more system-intensive than most games.


Gameplay

Each race has a different set of weapons, abilities, HUD, view of the world, etc.  Each one is unique and therefore requires a different approach to the same situations.  This is most interesting in areas shared by each campaign.

Human gameplay is pretty standard.  There's a handful of weapons, but you can only carry a few.  Flares, a flashlight, a short sprint, and up to three stimpacks on-hand.  Nothing new here.

Aliens can climb on every surface (I love the concept, but it's quite disorienting).  They can see in the dark, and rely on stealth to kill targets one at a time.  No ranged attacks.

Predators are somewhat of a middle ground, with both ranged and melee attacks, and the ability to be invisible to humans.  They can jump great distances, making them the middle for maneuverability too.  At the end of their campaign, when I had all of the Predator's weapons, they seemed to be the most powerful.


Audio and The Movies

Voice actors from the movies are featured (most recognizably Lance Henriksen), as well as some of the same sound effects.

Motivations of the corporation remain true to the movies.  Aliens and Predators behave just like in the movies, with the same methods of attack.  The human's motion-sensing radar is featured, straight out of the movies, and the plot seems to fit with what has been established before.  Rebellion stayed true to the franchise enough to satisfy strict fans. 


Expansions / DLC / Sequels

There are currently two DLC map packs that add new content to multiplayer only.

Aliens vs. Predator held sales records in the UK, on Steam, and on the PC charts.  Rebellion's CEO has stated he is in discussion with Sega in regards to a sequel, but there have been no announcements yet.


Final Thoughts

I like the Alien and Predator movies well enough.  This game is much like playing a movie.  The graphics are great, but the game itself is rather average.  So much potential yielded no fear factor, and zero firefights that really fulfilled me.  Overall:  if you like the franchise, it's alright.  Otherwise, don't bother with this one.

Far Cry Review

Game:  Far Cry
Year (s):  2004
Company:  dev.  Crytek
            pub.  Ubisoft
Engine:  CryEngine
Type:  First-Person Shooter

Price (as of 11-28-2011 )

Regular price on Steam:  9.99
Lowest Buy-It-Now on eBay (new, with shipping):  6.99

Game Time:  31 hours, first time, default difficulty

Obligatory Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pnKAljANsU


Plot

Former special forces soldier Jack Carver is hired by Valerie Constantine to sail her to a remote island.  While approaching, a missile destroys the boat.  Val is captured by a mercenary force.  Jack washes ashore and sets to rescue her.  While in the process of murdering mercenaries and making merry mayhem, Jack disrupts the island's operations enough so that the hyper-aggressive experimental creatures break loose.  The tropical paradise becomes a warzone.

The plot, in general, works.  There were a couple QUITE anti-climactic spots that annoyed me though.  A nuclear bomb blows up... exactly one building!  The island's volcano, we are told, has been kept from erupting by the bad guys.  After you defeat the bad guys... it continues to not erupt.  The game ends on a fizzle that easily allowed for a sequel.


Hi, We are Crytek

This was the first game by Crytek, so I'm willing to cut it some slack.  It had features not seen in other games, and was a success.  Wikipedia tells me that 730,000 units were sold within the first four months of release.

Far Cry runs on their fancy CryEngine, which was quite competetive at the time of release.  Far Cry grew out of technology demo made to showcase the capabilities of NVIDIA GeForce 3 video graphics accelerator.  Graphically, it had higher system requirements than other offerings.  I don't notice a big difference visually over the other top engines of the year (id Tech 4, Source, Unreal Engine 2/2.5) but for one thing: scope.  Areas between load points are relatively enormous. 

But the engine has major problems.  This game crashed every time I exit it.  I then have to have Steam verify file integrity and download some files.  Launching the game after that, I have to re-spec graphics options and key bindings.  Every time.  Additionally, the game sometimes crashed on launch, restarting the computer.  I had worse problems with Painkiller, but these issues are good motivation to not play the game.


Unique

This was one of the early open-world games.  You have some (limited) options for approaching firefights, so players might proceed a little differently.  Cover is a big deal, and there is a meter on the HUD to show how alert the enemies are to your presence.  It's hard to find (and evade) targets with the underbrush, but you have some tricks.  You can throw rocks to distract enemies, you have binoculars that give a rough location of enemies and put them on your radar, and you have limited use of infrared. 


Combat

This was the biggest inconsistency of the game.  Sometimes, I'd play for two hours and enjoy an intense, challenging experience.  Other times, I'd play for an hour on the same damn firefight.  I played on default (difficulty 2 of 5).  On a singular basis, enemies were easy to take out.  In groups, they will flank you, provide covering fire, throw grenades, and use cover.  Solid AI, that increases with difficulty.  The parts I got stuck on I eventually beat (after 10-30 attempts) after memorizing each enemy position and scoring headshots.  That's far too methodical (and frustrating) for me.  The last fighting segment was impossible and I watched the ending of the game on YouTube.


Expansions / DLC / Sequels

Far Cry 2, developed by Ubisoft alone, came out in 2008.  Far Cry 3 (also just Ubisoft) was announced at E3 2011 with no set release date.

A film based the game was released in Germany in 2008.


Final Thoughts

We have here a game that was very, very interesting at the time of release.  If there was a patch to address the bugs and allow quicksaves, I'd be a lot happier.  As it is, this is a bipolar game.  Fantastic for the first offering of a new company with a new engine, but a far cry from the phenomenally fun second offering, Crysis.  Skip this one. 

Games I LIked 2011

These games might not have come out in 2011, but I've played them in the last year and they stood out from a lot of others.  I'd recommend them (I had a similar list in September 2010).  In no particular order: 


Crysis
Good story telling, fast pace, and intense combat.  Character's Nanosuit powers allow for multiple different combat strategies in any situation.

Fear 2: Project Origin
Intense, satisfying firefights and a creepy-as-shit atmosphere, combined with a dark, twisted plot.

Unreal Tournament 3
Good for multiplayer.  Good for single player.  Campaign has more story than all other Unreal games combined, along with some humor, branching options, and some challenging maps.  Also, a great engine with lots of fan-made maps and use by other developers.

Dead Space
Quality survival-horror.  Freaky monsters, creepy atmosphere and story.  Constantly being low on everything makes gameplay frantic, and forces you to use more than just your favorite gun.

Max Payne
Surprisingly challenging combat and ridiculously over-done dialogue make this one a lot of fun, even if it's old.

BioShock
Yet another game with some horror appeal.  BioShock also has beautiful water effects and myriad approaches to building your character, leading players to pick it up again.  The story is solid and has some great twists.

Borderlands
It's not as intense as Fallout 3 (or a sandbox game) but it has just as much game time, if not more.  This more laid-back approach is amusing, and the variety of character options give cause to play it multiple times.

Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues
I really, really wish this could be a stand-alone game.  Old World Blues has the familiar gameplay of Fallout 3/New Vegas, but goes after everything with a great sense of humor.  I laughed out loud several times playing this DLC.  It's really good (Note: I do NOT recommend New Vegas... just this DLC for it).


There you go.  Right in time for the holidays.

Deus Ex Review

Game: Deus Ex
Year (s):  2000
Company:  dev.  Ion Storm Inc.
            pub.  Eidos Interactive
Engine:  Unreal Engine (modified)
Type:  FPS RPG

Price (as of 11/15/2011)

Regular price on Steam:  $9.99
Lowest Buy-It-Now on eBay (new, with shipping):  $13

Game Time:  30 hours

Obligatory Trailer:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpEoLH0cUSw


Plot

You are among the first prototypes for a nanite-enhanced special agent of UNATCO (UN Anti-Terrorist Coalition).  A plague is threatening humanity, and terrorists have stolen a shipment of the vaccine.  You have to recover it.  Along the course of events, the plot evolves into a secret organization's vast conspiracy to take over the world.  Game is set in 2052.

Secondary objectives and other options throughout the game allow for some deviation from linear gameplay, and three different endings. 


Then and Now

I actually had a blog entry about this game before.  When I first played this game in college, my definition of a shooter game was defined by Doom, Quake, Half-Life, and a few other similar games.  Deus Ex is not like those.  Taken from the original (now deleted) post, "I got this game from someone that didn't care for it, for free.  I didn't enjoy it and gave it to my brother.  He didn't care for it and gave it to a friend, who didn't care for it and threw it away, or possibly set it on fire."

I just replayed this game and thought it deserved a better review.  I enjoyed it this time around.  There were a lot of elements that had not been used in shooters before (at least from what I've played), which made this a great game from the creative stand point. 


Modified Unreal Engine and New Stuff

Graphics are as can be expected.  The immediately noticeable result of engine modification is the amount to which the player can interact with the environment.  Break boxes, talk to people, read notes, enter codes, pick up items, a GUI inventory, hack computers, pick locks...  Most of these ideas went on to be embraced by other games.  This game also introduced me to sneaking around, which I generally don't have the patience for.


Skills and Augmentations

Lockpicking, weapon classes, swimming, and various other skills can be leveled up by spending experience points.  Experience is gained by progressing through the game and by exploring.  At master level for Rifles, the sniper rifle has no bob and 100% accuracy.  At the untrained level for Rifles, your sniper rifle bobs all over and can miss point blank.  There is not enough experience to level everything all the way, not even close.  Deciding what to spend the points on allows different ways to play through the game.

Augmentations are nanite super powers.  The energy to activate these is independent of ammunition.  Each augmentation allows only one of two choices.  For example, you can have an ability that increases your resistance to toxins, or an ability that increases lung capacity.  Once you pick one, you can't get the other.  Further, augmentation upgrades are occasionally found.  Again, there are not enough to max out everything, so this, too, allows different ways to play the game.


Combat

Each weapon has its own class.  Some weapons are silent, which is good if you want to sneak around.  Ammo scarcity forces players to use more than one weapon, while the inventory system only allows so many items/weapons to be carried at a time.  Furthermore, modifications can be added to increase a weapon's range, recoil, accuracy, clip size, or to add a silencer (these stack).  Many weapons have more than one type of ammunition, another first for me.


Expansions / DLC / Sequels

A sequel titled Deus Ex: Invisible War released in 2003.  Deus Ex: Human Revolution, was released in 2011.


Final Thoughts

I didn't like this in college because I refused to sneak around and didn't like problems that couldn't be solved with bullets.  Now I have more appreciation for the varied ways to complete objectives and progress throughout the game.  Still not my favorite PC game of all time (though it consistently ranks extremely high in publication lists for that), but there really are a lot of innovative gameplay elements considering when it came out.  This game is cheap with long game time and reasons to play it more than once.  If you don't mind dated graphics, this is considered by critics to be a benchmark of the genre. 

An article about the company, Ion Storm and some of its employees, will be forthcoming.

Duke Nukem Forever Review

Game:  Duke Nukem Forever
Year (s):  2011
Company:  dev.  3D Realms, Triptych Games, Gearbox Software, Piranha Games
            pub.  2K Games, Aspyr Media
Engine:  Unreal Engine 3
Type:  First-Person Shooter

Price (as of 11/7/11 )

Regular price on Steam:  19.99
Lowest Buy-It-Now on eBay (new, with shipping):  17.99

Game Time:  12 hours

Obligatory Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVuuyRGB_BA

Plot
12 years after Duke Nukem saved the world, he's living it up as a celebrity.  Then, the aliens strike again, destroying stuff, killing people, and, worst of all, stealing our women.  Looks like Duke will have to save the day again.


Nudity and Humor

DKF has less boobs than the original.  Two consecutive areas have topless women, the rest of the game just has an occassional calendar on the wall or magazine on a desk. 

The sexual references though, are all over the place.  The humor is the same as the original.  I've outgrown a lot of the juvenile humor, but there's still something to smirk about here and there.


The Long Development


This game was in developed for fifteen years,  The engine was changed several times, the publishing rights were tossed around, and the original company went under.  Four developing studios worked on this game.  Taking that clusterfuck in to consideration, I'm pretty satisfied with how the game turned out.  After beating the game, you unlock concept art, screenshots, trailers, and a timeline spanning the years of development. 

Gameplay and Critics

I last played the original Duke maybe ten years ago.  All of the weapons and enemies I remember return.  The game adds vehicles, some platforming parts, and areas where you have been shrunk.  Different parts of the game look to be from other titles: physics puzzles a la Half Life 2, the "I can see my arms and legs!" from FEAR, and so on.  A regenerating health bar requires finding cover.  You can carry 2-4 weapons, and you have to reload.  This is definitely a sequel, but it is not a throwback shooter.  Anyone that says it is hasn't played Serious Sam or Painkiller.

Critics hated this game, and it has a horrible metascore.  Fuck that.  This is a fun, sometimes silly game.  Given the messy development process, anyone that expected some ground-breaking game was an idiot.  If you liked the first you'll like this.  It should have a metascore of around 80, if everyone got their heads out of their asses and played the game to enjoy it instead of playing the game to bitch about it.

That being said, the AI is basic, the combat easy, and the levels pretty linear.


Final Thoughts

This is not a great game, but this is an alright game.  It's better than a lot of the 12 hour forgettable crap that gets churned out lately.  Is it worth twenty bucks?  Well, it's short, so I'd wait until it goes on sale.  On the other hand, twenty bucks for a new game is dirt cheap.  To each their own.