I finally got around to buying Prey. I really liked the demo and had been meaning to pick it up once it was in stores. I just never found the time. Here are some screen shots:

The whole portal thing maybe a huge gimmick, but combined with the other gimmick of wall walking. I think these two things make Prey unique enough. Plus it’s another game using the Doom 3 Engine that plays great on my system. Which is always nice. I’m easy that way.

For the last couple of week all I’ve really been doing is play Titan Quest.

Not going into details. But it’s a Diablo clone. A pretty good one. But it lacks something. Possibly the story is lacking. Blizzard had a way of sucking you into the game with their awesome cut scenes. They made you want to play to be able to see the next one. Needless to say if you enjoy these kinds of hack and slash rpg’s be sure to grab Titan Quest.

Filename: tq-me-and-g.avi

Downloads: 186 Size: 126.29 MB Version: 1.0 Updated: May 9, 2007

The Prey demo is out. Do you remember Prey? It’s a game that’s been in development almost as long as Duke Nukem Forever. It’s expected out around July. Here are some screen shots from the demo:

It’s a lot of fun. More fun than I have had with a fps in a long time. Prey has more than a little of that Duke Nukem feel to the game, which is not a bad thing. The use of portals and gravity make this one unique. It was a little weird to see yourself through a portal the first time. It’s been a long time that a demo has influenced my purchases. I’m looking forward to this getting in stores.

Half-Life 2: Episode One came out on the 1st. I bought it finally yesterday. Another 19.95 blown on episodic content. I’m still not certain how I feel about this stuff. I do think that Half-Life and Sin are doing it better than Oblivion.

I’m only maybe into the game ten minutes or so. Right off the bat you notice that the game is a little more polished than Half-Life 2. The characters act better. Or seem more life like. Not sure yet. Features included in this episode:

• An all-new episode for one of the best-selling action games of all time.
• Discover what’s become of City 17, Dr. Breen, and the G-Man.
• Incredibly advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI (Artificial intelligence)).
• Highly detailed environments, featuring High Dynamic Range lighting, provide amazing gameplay settings.
• Digital Actors: The most sophisticated in-game characters ever witnessed.
• Physical Gameplay: Objects obey the laws of gravity, friction, and buoyancy.
• Design Team Commentary Mode.
• Also includes two multiplayer games: Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and Half-Life Deathmatch: SourceTM.
• Half-Life 2 not required to play.

For only being ten minutes into it I think the game is worth it. Which even after finishing Sin Episode 1, I still can’t say that. If you liked Half-Life 2 grab this first in a series of episodes. I wonder though about this episodic delivery of content.

Sin was a game I played back in the old days. It was a fps that reminded me of Duke Nukem. Now there is a sequel of sorts. Using Valve’s Steam to release Sin Episodes. The first episode is called Emergence and it will cost you 19.95. On the plus side you get the original Sin 1 and Sin 1 Multiplayer. The down side is the games length.

Content wise I still haven’t decided if this is worth the 19.95. It was fun. A single male is of course going to enjoy boobs and bullets. Which are in abundance. Other than that the other feature worth mentioning is the games Personal Challenge System:

Driven by one of the most elaborate statistics systems ever created, SiN Episodes will constantly adapt to your playing style and offers a challenge that is custom-tailored to your skill level.

Prior to a patch on May 17th this Personal Challenge System had a habit of raping the hell out of a player that happened to do better than the game thought you should. The patch does fix this. My long term enjoyment of this episodic content will be determined by the cost of the future episodes.

Imagine a good Star Wars rts for a moment. Imagine a rts with 3d accelerated graphics that didn’t have fucked up camera control and many other problems. Push back the bad memories of that other one and pretend that this time it will be different. Star Wars Empire at War will be different. The demo is out right now and you can get it at the usual places.

The game is exactly what you would expect. No tricky camera angles and 360 degrees of freedom in the space battles. Which is not a bad thing at all. This is a real time strategy game that has a pedigree that is hard to over look. Empire at War is being made for LucasArts by a developer called Petroglyph. Take a look at the companies about us page to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

The demo lets you try out the set of tutorials and a sort of skirmish mode. You will want to go through the tutorials just to get used to the games way of doing things. The full game will also come with some sort of campaign when it ships in February. It looks good and plays good. It is quite a beast if you try to run everything on high and you don’t have an up to date system. But it does allow you to tweak quite a bit of the details so you can get the game to run good even on the older systems. The readme.txt has all of the details if your interested in the actual system requirements.

After dealing with such a colossal asshole yesterday morning I was in the mood to kill. So I went and bought Quake 4 to fulfill my thirst for blood. I was even able to score the Special DVD Edition of the game that comes with Quake 2 and both of it’s expansion packs. Since it’s using the Doom 3 engine the first thing I did after installing the game was find myself a good tweak page. I ended up just using the same site that made Doom 3 playable for me. UpsetChaps Quake4 Guide‘s Framerate and Visual Tweaks made the game really run better than I had hoped. And so far I think it’s a great game. Here are some screen shots:

As you can see from these shots it is a dark game. But it is no where near as dark as Doom 3. Quake 4 retains that futuristic metallic look of the second game. It’s a hell of a lot of fun killing Stroggs again. If you enjoyed Quake 2 I would say this is a must have.