Back Talk With Kurorahk

Fallout New Vegas Honest Hearts Review

2012-04-14T00:25:00.000-07:00

Today we lighten our load and head out with the Happy Trails Caravan Company to Zion!

Zion National Park

Honest Hearts starts out with picking up a radio from Jed of the Happy Trials Caravan Company requesting someone with a Pip-Boy to help with a expedition to make contact with the New Canaanites who have been out of contact for a while. And this expedition is the last ditch effort of the Happy Trails Caravan Company to stay alive while the Crimson Caravan dominates trade in the Mojave Wasteland.

As we walk into Zion National Park our guide tells us to follow him, and then they all get blown to hell with grenade launchers and machine guns. We must fight back against these attackers and their heavy weapons. However, we are ill equipped due to the maximum weight limit we had for going with the caravan. Though that is now gone, just like the caravan. Quickly we pick up what ammo and equipment we can and start firing back and running like hell to escape the ambush. As we clean up the enemies we are greeted by a local who is surprised someone lived though that ambush by the White Legs, he then says to follow him and go meet one of the leaders of the more open tribes in Zion National Park. From here we head out and help the tribe with some problems they are having to then meet the legendary Burned Man.

He then asks us to aid the more civilized and peaceful tribes in Zion which are now just two. The other group has Joshua Graham leading them as he is one of the few remaining New Canaanites after the white legs sacked the town. After this he asks you to go and grab supplies from around the canyon to fight the White Legs.

Okay I have to be honest. I do not like this DLC it felt dull and well pointless. I am sorry if I missed the point but the burned man was disappointing. The whole build up to see the place that he and Caesar where from was not there. It was about tribal warfare and a small hint at the horror of the Legion.

This DLC is good for one play. And at the end you are done. Period. It dragged on far to long for what it was once you knew your goal. Well no, more of the quests just ended up not going that in-depth. It didn't build anything up. It was much like the climax of Iron Man 2. It just didn't deliver.

As always screenshots are up here.

God this DLC derailed me for so long.

Back Talk With Kurorahk: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine

2011-09-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Grim-Dark future where there is only war!

A Ork Nob obsessed with everything that goes boom.

In the far flung future created by the British tabletop game company Games Workshop there is only war. In this universe humanity is a massive cruel regime in which trillions live across the breath and width of the galaxy. But there are those who stand much taller above the rift raft of humanity. They are the Space Marines, 2-3 meter tall with cybernetic and genetic augmentations clad in armor that makes modern tank armor look antiquated. And today we step into the shoes of a captain among these men in the Ultramarines chapter, poster boys for Games Workshop themselves.

The Ultramarines are said to be the most loyal and the most popular type of space marine holding 60% of all successor chapters to all space marine Legions as their own. Now then enough propping up the ultrasmurfs, they are alright, but yeah not a fan of them. However I am a fan of the game play of Space Marine, now then I also will say this game was for me and two of my friends ridiculously hard in the later stages. Myself I played it on Normal all the way though, my other friend who beat it did so on Hard. Now with saying this, Normal feels like Legendary from Halo Reach, where you die a lot or almost die a lot and the checkpoints feel like they are against you not with you. As for my friend who did it on Hard... Yeah I will get into that once we talk about the story.

A Warlord Titan, third largest class of Imperial Titans.

The game begins with a establishing shot of a Forge World, a planet that exists only to produce whatever the Imperium of Mankind needs, and one such facility on this planet produces some of the most fearsome weapons known to the races of Warhammer 40,000 Titans. These massive mechas that throw back to Macross and Battletech (mostly Battletech due to the blocky style) carry weapons that can vaporize entire companies of infantry and slag dozens of vehicles in seconds. As the intro continues we find that this planet is under siege by the Orks who seek to loot the various weapons factories of this planet and turn such devices against the galaxy with reckless abandon. Thus the someone, most likely the Inquisition orders the deployment of Adeptus Astartes also known as Space Marines. As such we cut to a Thunderhawk dropship with at least three Ultramarines, one of which is out main character Captain Titus. As the dropship gets hit with heavy AA fire he grabs a jump pack and dives out the front door flying through ships destroyed and in free-fall before landing on the offending Ork ship and proceeds to destroy it with it's own weapons. From here he takes the ship down to the surface and walks away without a scratch and heads to meet back up with his allies.

From here we fight our way through Orks, reunite with the other two marines from earlier then together come to the aid of the Imperial Guard, the common fighter for mankind. We are tasked with taking out a massive fortress which houses a cannon capable of taking out any aircraft that get near and probably space craft as well. As such we wade through Orks to the facility to where we sabotage a round which then is set off collapsing the whole building as we run out. From here we head to a facility that houses warlord Titans we also hear about a Inquisitor in need and is at the Titan facility as well so we head out to save his ass. As we arrive we are still wading through orks but now have a power axe which makes Orks much more manageable when in close combat as well as popping their heads off with bolter or stalker pattern bolter at range. As you can tell by now, we cut through them and find the Inquisitor and clear the titan facility well enough to hold it. From here we aid the Inquisitor with getting his experimental weapon against the Orks ready, and then head to his secret facility.

The Inquisitor's secret weapon.

At this point I am going to stop because this is where the story gets good and I know some people do not want this spoiled. As such I am going to jump into the gameplay.

Now a lot of people have said Space Marine rips off of Gears of War in both looks and play style. Now really if anything Gears of War rips off the weapons and Grim-Dark of 40K, but that is a whole debate I can't touch due to never playing a single Gears of War game. Now then from what I do know Space Marine feel a lot like Darksiders with a bit better health system in some ways since you get a regenerating shield but worse in that you don't get health except in close combat from executions instead of randomly from just killing enemies. Now this would not be a issue except the over the top executions are a few second long scripted event which you can die during which makes doing one while tied up in combat or being shot at with low heath a gamble, a very cruel gamble. This cruelness is evident later on in the game, in effectively the second half. To be honest I pre-ordered this game and was very excited about getting it, and to be honest it was fun for a majority of it. Then I started hitting a rock wall, with my face. The game hits a certain point where Chaos starts to be a enemy, which initially is not to bad on Normal, but well... I will explain about some of the things that make their sections worse than they should be.

The first problem is that the saves can be far and few between when in a lot of action that takes a long time to get though. Worst is in wave fights where it would be easy to toss one in and hold the wave off for a second and a half. This would make things a lot easier by eliminating the game itself fighting you as well as hoards of enemies. This gets very evident later in the game. Now then the second problem are enemies that are bigger than normal foes and thus are harder to take down and even more so have a short, very short, quick time event battle for executions which is just pounding mouse 1 on computer. Now this is not to bad, until later in the game when you start facing more than the occasional Nob that you can take down with this and regain all your health by executing. Now when chaos rolls around we get bogged down with chaos marines. These guys are just like Titus with the shield and everything, thus making it a lot harder to take down, but also can take your shield down very quickly so you have to make use of cover. Oh and by the way, there is no cover system so you have to just stand behind the cover and learn how to walk against it to get in a good position to get shots off. Until you get bombarded with Grenades and Plasma Cannons. At this point the game gets hard, painfully hard, however, you can still walk through it pretty easily if you are aware of your surroundings.

Thunder Hammer, Plasma Pistol, and Jump Pack is a fun combo.

Now then, there comes a part where someone dies and you are stuck waiting for a dropship to pick you up and get you out of there. This part is where the game really gets mean. It is a wave fight, where there are two enemies that sap your shields if you in the open and also continuously summon more enemies to replace the ones you drop. Now this is not to bad since they are traitor guard which you can just hit 'E' or whatever you have execute set to and auto kill them for health, but there are also chaos marines with plasma cannons which are the bane of every players existence. Now here either the AI will get really weird and completely ignore you for your invulnerable ally or they will only shoot at you and your ally will stand out in the open with his back to the foe. This is where my friend and I got stuck for a while to the point of rage induced cursing and quitting. The worst part is after you take out the two Chaos Cultists who summon enemies, more Chaos Marines show up, two aspiring champions with power mauls. These guys are no push over and at this point your probably out of ammo for everything besides the plasma pistol or bolt pistol which have, thankfully, unlimited ammo. These guys are cruel and if you die here, well yeah you have to go through the whole wave battle again which close combat for most of it is not a viable option.

Now at this point there are not more Orks to take out our rage at so we just fight traitor Guardsmen and Chaos Marines, with daemons of Khorne and Nurgle. Now then Khorne daemons are not that bad, generally on Normal you can shoot them and let them come to you then smash them dead in close combat. Now here I really have to praise something, the switch between close combat melee attacks and ranged combat is smooth, as in so smooth it is freaking perfect. The only hang ups are when you are shooting and then start to reload automatically, which oddly will not happen for some reason at times, or are having to dodge roll away. Both cases is due to a longer animation going on that can't be interrupted by starting something else. This gets bad to the point of dying, but it is more on the players side, except the inconsistent reload issue, that just feels more of a coding issue for when to initiate reload without player hitting r to reload.

Now then, the last fight of the game high lights this issue greatly. It is four waves of enemies, first is Bloodletters which are the basic lesser daemon of Khorne, which on their own are just fine. The next wave happens about five seconds later with three chaos marines and six to eight traitor guardsmen. This would not be a problem, except the chaos marines and guardsmen drop your shields and health fast as soon as you pop out of cover or try to take one of them out in close combat. They also love to throw grenades. Now normally it would be a challenging fight, except there was no save between waves. This is where it gets painful, the next wave, again with no save, is two waves of six Bloodletters and two Chaos Cultists which exist only to sap your shields, oh and yeah they also have their own shields which takes a las-cannon shot to just drop, if you can hit them while dealing with close combat daemons. So yeah you kill these guys and then... boom two Aspiring Champions with Power Mauls again, at this point I myself had only ammo for my plasma pistol and ended up dodge rolling around the outside ring of the area tell I dropped one to the point I could execute him then popped him off and focused on the other. This fight was the hardest for me in the whole game, harder than the Warboss of the Orks and the final boss... is a push over.

The big bad daemon prince, is the easiest fight in the game.

Now to give Relic credit they had the game flow very nicely and besides a few hiccups with the difficulty making a five minute long room into a forty five minute head bashing chore, Space Marine is a fun game. I say it is worth a bit less than retail, but that is not including the free dlc that adds a firefight like mode to the game, this I feel brings it back up to full retail price if it is done well. We will see come October when the co-op dlc comes out because at the moment Multiplayer is so bland that after a couple hours of it you have seen everything in it, there are to few levels and far to few game types.


Also sequel bait at the end, with also showing how dickish the standard Ultramarine is.

So with my return we clear Warhammer 40K's most recent attempt at becoming mainstream, and thanks to the free demo that was put out a few weeks prior to launch the game went gold very quickly and we will get a sequel after Dawn of War 3 which is set to come out next year some time from current quotes.

Until next time may the Emperor watch over you in your fights against all the foes that beset mankind on all sides. Or if your chaos, may your dark gods grant you gifts and you don't turn into chaos spawn!

As always here is a link to all screenshots taken from Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, I do not own or pretend to own the copyright for any of the source material as it belongs to Relic, THQ, and Games Workshop, I simply expressed my opinion on this game.

Crysis 2

2011-04-28T18:12:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to the review of Crysis 2, where New York City is under attack by a familiar alien force and a horrifying disease. Today we ship out to New York City to help save the world from the Ceph.

Prophet

Today we are a marine named Alcatraz and we are on a submarine heading into New York City. Our missions is to aid a specialist by the name of Prophet and a civilian Dr. Gould. It seems odd to send in a armed squad of marines via submarine insertion for a strictly humanitarian crisis and the team mentions this before we get a short briefing. After we are briefed we start heading out to get ready to leave the sub and start our mission.
Then it all goes to hell. Something hits the sub and it starts to sink, the captain orders abandon ship and your squad rushes to get out. After a few seconds of intense action and a swim out of the sub that feels like it takes forever you are out and floating on the surface of the upper bay with a view of Lady Liberty.

She has seen better days.

She has sadly taken damage from some sort of attack, showing quickly that the sub sinking was not a accident and that New York City is under attack by something. Then it is revealed the Ceph are here, returning from Crysis to fight and take Earth from humanity with no surrender possible, total annihilation of one race or the other is the only out come. From here on out things are going to be bad if not out right lethal with aliens running around the city plus a virus that takes out anyone not in a full environmental suit to protect them from it. As the gunship comes around to finish us off someone comes in and draws its fire before shooting it down. And to be honest this is a amazing entrance for both Prophet and for the Nanosuit 2.

Saved by Prophet he finds out we are all that is left of the strike team sent in to extract him and Gould from New York City. At this point he gets frustrated, but then tells us that we are his last hope, and also everyone's last hope of driving back the Ceph. We wake up to see the man named Prophet dead laying on the ground and a pistol on the floor. We then get a flash back explaining why we are now in the suit, why he had to kill himself, and that we must get to Gould. As such we head through one of the CDC's facilities for figuring out what the Manhattan Virus is and having to dispose of the sick and dead, we hear some logs talking about C.E.L.L.'s brutality towards the survivors, the infected, and the CDC staff, it ends with the CDC workers being executed. Here we start getting some basic functions set in the suit such as binoculars, strength, speed and jump. Later while going through a CDC camp we get the ability to stealth and have to sneak through the lightly guarded facility and can either choose to directly assault the C.E.L.L. members or to sneak around them. To be honest stealth is faster and more fun.

Once through the camp we hit the streets which are eerily quiet and abandoned, we also see a Ceph ship fly through the buildings gliding eerily quietly as well and being truly alien in this environment. Slowly we move our way through sewers, over roofs, and evading blockades on highways towards Nathan Gould. As we head along we hear more about what has been going on in the past few hours and also what is needed to hopefully find a cure. Eventually we make it past the C.E.L.L. Private Military forces and a ambush or two by the Ceph we get to a major road block set up just for us. Now either running or careful shooting will get though these guys, but it is a long walk and a hard fight. But, C.E.L.L. is a bit stupid and kept a Infantry Fighting Vehicle or Armored Personal Carrier with the keys in, and as such you steal it and go on a high way joy ride. Once done you break into a Crytek laboratory and destroyed the location of Gould's safe house. Now we meet this man and we, well the suit AI comes clean about Prophet's death and our replacement of him. From here things pick up and it is running through the deserted streets and subways of New York City against aliens and C.E.L.L. Eventually things change drastically and this is as far as I take the story as any more would spoil past the first hour of this surprisingly long and challenging first person shooter.

I give the story of Crysis 2 a solid thumbs up, it is good and surprisingly so for a first person shooter. You rarely have the problem of exposition theater. This is good and the story never pulls anything out of it's ass and it keeps with a consistent ability and things that for in universe make sense and are logical directions for things to go. However there is one point later in the game that just boggled my mind with the implications. I will let you all find it yourselves, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Anyways, yeah I would say that given the other games released in the past year I would put Crysis 2 above all other first person shooters. This was a bit surprising, but considering the other shooters that I got that came out in the past year being Halo: Reach and CoD: Black Ops not so much, though Reach did have a very close second.

Game Play:

Crysis 2 uses a streamlined nanosuit which is nice, as now many functions are just a key press and not having to use a menu. However it is noticeable that there is no more going prone nor can you lean any more. This is sad as it is clearly a console port which makes it weaker on the PC. It is sad, but, I can understand why they went for a port and not a full separate game in terms of mechanics of gameplay. Basically I am saying the controls where simplified to far to the point of loosing things that where nice in Crysis. Like I said going prone and leaning are what I miss. However I will say between consoles and PC Crysis 2 looks amazing and plays smoothly for the level of graphics, surprisingly smooth. To give you a idea of this I am on a Nvidia 8600GT and I was getting between 16-35 FPS, and the only time it dipped was when levels where loading. This is a amazing level of optimization graphics wise and I commend Crytek on this stunning achievement with the Cryengine, my hat goes off to you guys and gals. And before I forget it is a standard affair in terms of controls, any more I really can just say "Same controls as the run of the mill FPS game on computers" and hopefully people will know what this means. If not well it is quick to pick up and is in the manual.

Balance:

A tall order, but you are Post Human Warrior

From my time playing of the campaign twice I will say it is a constant challenge with new environments and challenges every level, it never is repetitive except for two points just due to having to repeat a action a few times, but, after fighting in different scenarios and locations. I feel that the campaign besides one point is well done. This one point is where I had a lot of problems as I am a PC gamer and use a keyboard and mouse and this part was not optimized for PC players. This point is the last minute and thirty seconds of the game and for me it was the hardest due to the minute and a half quick time event that sent me into a rage due to I could not do it tell I went and just moved so I could smash the 'W' key like a mad man with my index finger. It was painful, stressful, and blatantly not designed with PC players in mind, you can tell it was meant more for pressing 'A' on a 360 controller or 'X' on a PS3's controller.

AI:

The AI in Crysis 2 is superb, to the point that really it is some of the best AI out there for first person games. You rarely see the AI go and run though a open field to get to cover when they have some nearer or are under fire and have some cover by them. However, I did notice when Crysis 2 released there where a few points where AI's could not understand knee high walls and would repeatedly smash into the barrier not understanding they could not go through them. This could only be corrected with killing them. Though I will say Crytek did a good job at removing the bug after the first patch on PC.

Replay Value:

Crysis 2 had hidden memento's through out it that unlock side story and concept art which gives people who love getting 100% in games a nice challenge. The story is good and integrate enough that it is not annoying the second time through. Crysis 2 also allows for going through many different tactics and you can approach situations in many different ways. I truly believe that Crysis 2 has some of the most replay value of a FPS game that I have played to date, more so than Crysis.

Final Verdict:

If you have a PS3, Xbox 360, or a computer that can run it I would recommend snatching up Crysis 2, though I may disagree with the $60 USD price tag, however, it is well worth it. I sadly cannot comment on the multiplayer as I have yet to have the time to get into it in any depth but it looks different which is neutral for me, but could be fun. The story and single player is solid and enjoyable. However, it misses Nomad and Psycho which is sad, but, it make sense in terms of story why they are not in here. Though I am hoping for a Crysis: Warhead like expansion with them in it and with co-op would be amazing. Then again I am a sucker for co-op games and the more together in a campaign a true long campaign the better.

As always screenshots for my review and any other art is found here.

Crysis

2011-04-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

This week I tackle a game renown for graphics. But, is it just graphics or is there more in Crysis? Well lets dive right on in!

We start off by getting a cut scene setting up the situation on this pacific island and hints at there is more going on than anyone knows. As such we then cut to a few days later and a transport plane flying towards the fictional Lingshan islands. Here the North Korean's have evacuated all the civilians from the island after massive seismic activity. Now the whole place is under lock down and the US Government is worried about what is going on and sends in a team to find out what is going on.

At this point Nomad, the player, finishes being briefed by Prophet, the squad leader. Once briefed the pilot of the military transport plane gives the green light for the jump and the team runs and jumps out and heads down to the ground. But not all goes well on the drop. Something comes out of no where and attacks Nomad taking out his parachute. At this point if you caught a glimpse of it earlier you know already that it is not something man made. Once on the ground you regroup with your squad though one is killed right off the bat. At this point you are told to keep moving forward and get to the archeological team that was working on the island before the North Korean's take over. As things go on more of your team disappear or are killed and the island starts to shake apart. Eventually revealing what is behind what has been going on and a massive threat.

A early Glimpse of what is going on at this remote island.

It turns out that there are some sort of life on this island that predates humanity. At this point the US Military steps in and starts a out right invasion of the island to recover what data and technology from the aliens before they awaken. Sadly it is to late and the North Koreans have already awoken them and now they stalk the island learning all they can before readying themselves for a outright war with humanity. At this point you are directed to save the daughter of the researcher who uncovered these aliens and is the second most knowledgeable about them on the planet at this point. Here you, backed by the US Military, fight through North Korean defenses to a Quarry where the archeological team uncovered something big. At this point the seismic activity causes the central mountain to fall apart and reveal that is is actually some kind alien structure, and the uncovered object in the quarry is in fact part of it. Now it is time to save the girl and kill the leader of the North Korean military. Once done you help Dr. Rosenthal's daughter out of the cave but becoming stranded yourself. Then the door opens into the alien structure and is the only way that might lead out. Once in it becomes clear how dangerous these things are and that they are not related to humans at all. After this it is a run from the aliens to the US Carrier now off the coast of the island and to the final climatic fight.

The final Boss, which is hard for me to take serious due to the face.

Game play:

Crysis is a standard a fair due to relying on WSAD like most first person games nowadays. With how things are set up you can also lean left or right and can be in three states for stance. This is normal for when it came out with Call of Duty 4. However the true unique part is the Nanosuit, allowing for extra armor, speed, strength, and also going invisible. As well as having the ability to customize your weapon on the fly to react to various situations. This makes the game feel quite a lot more personalized and enjoyable.

Example of customization allowed in Crysis.

Balance:

Crysis is rather well balanced, to the point combat comes down to tactics more than weapons. In multiplayer, for the short bit I played it, I died a lot, a lot of times from people just sneaking up then super punching me. To be honest Crysis was rather run in multiplayer but over all the level of skill of other players made it hard for me to play. I will say campaign is nice and balanced always tricky and encouraging the player to plan then strike and not just run out into the open and start shooting.

AI:

The AI in Crysis is smart at times unnervingly so, but thankfully it is more of you cause a sound in one place they will check it out and actually comb the area. Problem comes at one part where you are escaping a lab and the AI has a thick ring of troops which each time you take one out either with a silencer or something else the net closes in on you tell more troops drop in or you get killed. The stealth parts of the game are good and those are actually a lot of parts due to you get the option for stealth quite often.

Replay Value:

Not a huge amount of replay value unless you wish to try different tactics, not terribly memorable tell the latter half of the game. Really I have played it through three times, twice back to back for this review. I enjoyed it but you get into a pattern and it is no longer as fun.

Final Verdict:

I say Crysis is a decent game, better than average, which is not saying much as average is Call of Duty Black Ops. I would recommend picking this up if you have a good computer and a Nvidia card as it is optimized for it. The multiplayer mostly moved to Crysis Wars which is bundled with Crysis Warhead a stand alone expansion of Crysis. Now you can get a bundle of Crysis, Crysis Warhead, and Crysis Wars for cheap and I recommend picking them up.

Until next time!

Screen shots for this review are found here.

Fallout New Vegas Review

2011-03-20T01:15:00.000-07:00

War never changes, but games do, so lets jump into Fallout: New Vegas!

Taking place in the year 2281, four years after Fallout 3, and in the Mojave Desert near Las Vegas, or as it is now known New Vegas. New Vegas starts off with a nice pre-rendered cut scene and then going into a intro video to explain the region and the back story. This is typical by now for Fallout games and is a good way to start things off. Though the pre-rendered cut scene could give false impressions of how the game actually looks. After the exposition we get to see that the seen near the end of the pre-rendered cut scene is where we are and things are not looking up for us. As such we get shot in the head and left for dead in a shallow grave.

After the intro cinematics we begin the game in the town who’s cemetery we where buried in, and thus begins the character creation. The options are much better than in Fallout 3 in terms of age and physical looks, but the eyes are still dull but better, and the hair styles are still lacking in verity.

The man who tried to kill you and took what you where to deliver to New Vegas.

But still the textures and normal maps are better than they where in Fallout 3, and seeing as this is on the same engine as Fallout 3 and Oblivion I will cut it some slack but I do feel that it could be done much better. (To be frank I know about Skyrim and how much better the character models are, but I also know and have many mods that improve the looks of characters, and they date back to Oblivion.) After you set your race and face, we get to setup our S.P.E.C.I.A.L., which is our stats, with the Vito-Meter which is strait forward and fast. Personally I love the streamlined character creation. After this and a basic psych test we are given a weapon, some cloths, and our stuff from before we got shot. This is when we learn we where a Courier for the Mojave Express and have lost our package. Now it is time to head out into the town of Good Springs. At this point Obsidian made the right choice and allows for the player to just skip the tutorial and head on out to either the distant city of New Vegas that wets our appetite off to the north or go south and east. Of course going strait to the main course is not a good idea due to well, the signs say it all.

As we travel the Mojave desert we learn of what has happened in the past few weeks or months as well as NCR politics and Legion terror tactics. We begin to side ourselves via the reputation system with various factions in the Mojave, and slowly will come to siding ourselves with one of the greater powers. Along the way you meet a few people who need help or ask you to aid their post or town. This slow build up for the Main Quest is nice as you follow Benny the man in the checkered suit in the introduction back to New Vegas. You get the feeling of your actions do effect the lives of the people in these small and mostly isolated communities. You also can feel the actions of the other larger factions in the surrounding area. Here is where I found the voice acting superb, you hear NPC’s enter dialog about your recent actions and due to the wide variety of voice actors in New Vegas you generally never hear what amounts to the same person talking to themselves. There is the problem of from time to time you will get a NPC who has a specific voice for dialog with the player, but that only comes up when you walk up and interact with them and going into the dialog menu. This can be quite strange but nothing as bad as Oblivion. As the game progresses you start working with either the New California Republic, a new government based on old world ideals of freedom and capitalism, or Caesar’s Legion a mass of enslaved tribal’s run by a power crazed leader. But also the mysterious Mr. House who runs New Vegas with his Securatrons and the NCR's Military Police. And a forth option pops up, take if all for yourself.

What this whole war is over.

Game-play:

The game play for New Vegas is pretty strait forward, WASD is your movement by default, left click is bring up weapon or fires it, right click is block/aim, scroll wheel is used for the camera. E you use for interacting with objects or people, space for jumping, left control for crouch and alt for aim as well. Very basic controls to the point that I say if you played a First Person Shooter in the past two years on PC you know the controls. The user interface is quite basic and out of the way, staying in the bottom and corners, with the exception of the messages that show up in the top left and the cross hair in the middle of the screen. Basically it is the Fallout 3 user interface.

Added into New Vegas is a second mode that changes how the game plays slightly, it is called Hardcore where ammo has weight and you have to eat, sleep, and drink, and if you don’t regulate them like radiation in FO3 you will drop dead. Now for me H2O was easy due to having the Classic pack for the canteen, but when I played without it yeah, hardcore just makes you rely on food and water instead of stimpaks for healing. Sleep is kind of just there, it does not start penelizing you tell you have been awake for more than 24 hours from my experiance. Stimpaks and sleep don't do anything other than heal you and also stimpaks don't instantly heal, they heal over time. Limbs don't regenerate unless a cybernetic is used or drugs or the doctors bag.

The reputation system is a nice simple way of setting things up so you can be a really good person but still be hated by one group or another. And it also makes it so you can do bad things and not be hated by everyone. Like how I play where NCR and the Strip love me but Legion hates me, and I have amazingly good karma. In theory I bet you can end with having everyone except Legion hating you but still having good karma. Makes a nice system instead of like in Fallout 3 where any evil you did was instantly known to everyone, no matter how disjointed and distant the events are.

Some bugs are just odd, but it ends up being mostly one type, the clipping through terrain due to what I suspect is bad spawn placement or a glitch in the engine itself.

Balance:

The game has of course set difficulty settings in the options, and personally I never felt like changing them from default as I found it a good challenge. Now as the game goes on you find yourself either hard pressed or decently challenged throughout the whole game. There are exceptions to this and they are the Deathclaws and the Cazador’s both are creatures of immense strength and will tear though all but the most prepared and well armed players. These are more or less ways to just keep prizes out of the players hand or to keep low level players from sequence breaking. However, with this said you can still run strait to New Vegas through a nest of Deathclaws and live at level one. I did this, just you are going to die, a lot. Quests are always challenging either through combat, skill, or resources which is nice as not all quests are go there and kill something then come back. Quite nice and balanced over all even when on Hardcore.

AI:

The AI in New Vegas is very good, you never see NPC’s go into areas that don’t make sense, they feel alive with their dialog with each other and movement patterns. You get some that cower or fall back and regroup and you get some that blindly rush in. And from what I have seen the AI varies on how it acts based on your reputation and based on what faction they belong to. Quite amazing and good. Also they do not have Far Cry syndrome, which is where they can hear a silenced pistol go off a mile away and shoot you with a machine gun with pin point accuracy just after you fire. Your companions are much better and generally smarter than in Fallout 3 which is very nice for anyone who would rather not travel the Mojave Wasteland alone, though they suffer from not falling back when using ranged weapons against melee fighters. They also tend to go rushing in with ranged weapons to get a ‘better’ shot at the enemy which results against some things them dieing within seconds, or being knocked unconscious when not in Hardcore. They also have some problems with following, mainly the lack of the ability to jump but most games NPC’s can’t jump anyways so it is to be expected. Companions are easier to take care of with the intuitive and very useful companion wheel which Obsidian rightfully kept showing off whenever they could during development.

Replay Value:

The replay value is immense, you will find that the story is quite enjoyable. There are many different options on how you deal with events in the main quest and every time you play again you will find new side quests. And as time goes on new DLC will be released adding more fun in. On a sad note when you finish the main quest you cannot continue, however the game warns you ahead of time and makes a save for you before the end so you can just reload and have fun.

Mr. House's Gambit for New Vegas.

Final Verdict:

Fallout: New Vegas is a stunning game, beautiful vistas, amazing game play, and a very fun story. It has both light and dark humor in it, and over all has a little bit of everything so everyone has something they can enjoy more than the core game play. It is amazing the fact that it is easy to put in a hundred seventy hours into a game within the month of it’s release. Now then I will say this, it is mostly a shooter game for combat. V.A.T.S. is still around but you will find yourself playing the game like a FPS or over the shoulder shooter. A lot of points though you will find that if you invest skill points into things besides weapon skills, and some times weapon skills too, you get extra dialog which gives experience and instant success. This gives the option of peaceful solutions. One last note, I would suggest that anyone who can get New Vegas on PC do so and solely for the huge mod community, it will keep bringing new and exciting things to the table well after the last DLC is released.

Me at Hoover dam keeping New Vegas free for all. As you can see you can even get Warhammer 40,000 into New Vegas. As always here is my archive of screen shots from the game which will get more added to it from time to time.

Fallout New Vegas Dead Money Review

2011-03-08T15:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the review of Fallout: New Vegas' first DLC, Dead Money!

In the age of dull and short DLC this is a refreshing and wonderful change of pace. Obsidian once again has made a wonderful story for a massive universe that is Fallout. The DLC beings when you you pick up a transmission from the Sierra Madre, a pre-war casino that never opened. Things look odd when you get to the source of the signal in the Mojave Desert and it is a abandoned Brotherhood of Steel bunker. When you step in you are greeted with graffiti on the walls about the Sierra Madre and a beheaded body.

This for me sent a feeling of wrongness all over. As you head down the stairs there is just a radio, which is on, and illuminated by a single light in a otherwise fairly barren room. And as you walk towards it... you get knocked out while hearing about beginning again at the Sierra Madre. When you come to you are presented with a view of the Sierra Madre engulfed in a blood red cloud looking promising but cruel, evil, and decrepit. Then you get contacted by Father Elijah, who has captured you and attached a explosive collar to your neck and tells you to do as he says or die. Thus begins the surprisingly difficult and scary adventure, fight, and running away from things that will not stay dead!

It starts here...

Gameplay:

It follows the basic set up of Fallout New Vegas with how everything works, which makes sense as it is DLC. Now one thing this DLC adds is something that is rather frightening. You start out with just the Holorifle which is a strong Energy Weapon but the ammo is rather rare tell later in the DLC. You are tasked with assembling a team and set out to find and release 'Dog' this is where you encounter the citizens of The Cloud. Not only do the citizens of the Villa want you dead but the place itself tries to kill you with The Cloud, which is denoted by a blood red mist. As soon as you enter it your health will start to drop, stimpaks help slow or stop the loose of health but only for a time. The Cloud will be the method of denial to areas in this DLC, no invisible walls only The Cloud and Father Elijah. You will quickly find that on Hardcore it is going to be a cruel mission to go through this place, it will tack on a few hours and only twice is there a point where you can rest.

Most other needs are taken care of and can easily be dealt with. As you progress through this new location you quickly find that you can't just head shot everything, you need to use your head and move quickly. Worst of all are The Ghost People, they come in three types, the Trapper with a bear claw fist, the Seekers who have Gas Bombs and Knife Spears, then lastly the Harvesters who have Throwing Knife Spears and Knife Spears. The ghost people are not hard to knock down, but quickly you realize just dropping them to zero health will do nothing other than stun them, you must dismember them. I would suggest the cosmetic knife in any of its forms because it is fast and hard hitting. There are vending machines all around that run off of the Sierra Madre Casino chips, which means through out the time you are there you will be gathering as many as you can, as a bonus since they are currency they weigh nothing.

The Sierra Madre.

As the game goes on you quickly find yourself falling into a pattern in how to take down The Ghost People and how to get past traps and holograms. Yes holograms are here and they will mess you up if you turn them red. Surprisingly lenient and helpful as the holograms are they will kill you if you are spotted heading into a restricted area. The best way to take them out is finding the blue holo-projector and destroying it. Another helpful thing is that you can tell what they are doing by their color, blue is safe and passive, yellow is caution, and red is ready to repel offenders.

At this point we get to break down the DLC into parts on what you are doing, there are three parts, first is the gathering of the team which is pretty easy and lets you get used to dealing with Ghost People and the tactics you need to survive. Second part is moving each team member to a location designated by Father Elijah, this part you learn more about the Villa and its problems, and the pasts of your new companions. The last part forces the player to go to a bell tower and kick off the Gala Event which was to be the grand opening ceremony for the Sierra Madra but was stopped by the Great War. At this point Ghost People all get up and start hunting the player, and they must get back to the entrance of the Villa and head up to the Sierra Madra. Once into the Sierra the player must go and 'deal' with each of the companions taking care of their past connections to Elijah or the Sierra itself. In the end the player unlocks the vault for Elijah and the final fight for escape begins as the Sierra Madre does not like to let go.

Balance:

Very balanced and a very nice difficulty curve, but it is recommended in game and by me to do this at a high level (level 25+) any lower and you will die from the cloud quickly and not have the needed skills for many points in the quests. Exploration is hard but very rewarding, keep your eye out for anything you can pick up.

AI:

I feel that the AI and the animations for the enemies are amazing. While playing you get the feeling that you are fighting something that only resembles humanity thanks to the suit it wears. The way they move about and act is just unnerving and inhuman. They walk and move like shambling corpses at time and then will suddenly start moving quickly and hoping about like a monkey. As a matter of fact the Ghost People will actually die, then get back up unless dismembered, which is quite disturbing.

Protected by ancient HAZMAT suits the Ghost people can survive the cloud, and a lot of punishment.

Replayablity:

I feel that it is replayable, but, large amounts of time must be between playthroughs as it is very memorable and rather linear. However it is still very good on its own right.

Final Verdict:

For ten dollars you are getting about ten hours of new content and a good story. Lots of decent bits of lore are in this DLC and it is a nice refreshing change of pace from wondering the beautiful and deadly Mojave desert. The motif has been said to horror and I feel they hit it quite nicely, it gives a resident evil feel, classic resident evil that is. (I have only played RE2 and RE3.) Also what is nice is that the DLC gets its own little slide presentation ending like New Vegas, and it actually feels like a complete and whole tale all on its own. A very good start to DLC for Fallout New Vegas and I hope that Obsidian can keep up with making this level of story and game play for the rest.

Begin again or die trying.

As always go to the album on my Photobucket account for more screenshots.

Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising Review

2011-03-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the grim darkness that is the far future where there is only war! Welcome to Dawn of War 2's first expansion/standalone Chaos Rising.

Picking up after Dawn of War 2's campaign, which left the sector devastated but recovering from a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan. A warp storm appears and births the planet Aurelia. At this point a signal, a Blood Raven signal, starts transmitting from the surface drawing the Force Commander from Dawn of War 2 to investigate.

As soon as the marines hit planet side things go bad. Traitor Guard start firing upon the Marines. Thus starts the campaign against traitors and unveiling a dark plot corrupting the Blood Raven's themselves. As the campaign progresses it seems that there is a traitor amiss the Blood Raven's themselves who is working with the Black Legion to protect themselves and sacrifice the sector to the dark gods. As things begin to look grim as a rebellion begins on Meridian. It is reviled that the Governor of Meridian is the leader of the traitor Guard.

This is the sector Aurelia that you must protect.

Game Play:

Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising has very familiar controls, game play, and user interface. This is nice but also contains updates to the controls and user interface. The battlefield is very familiar to those who have played Dawn of War. The controls are standard for modern real time strategy games. Basically right click is god. Personally wish more developers allowed you to switch left and right click bindings in strategy games, whatever it works and I can live with it. The cover system is very intuitive, there are dots where your guys are going to stand, yellow is half cover which is better than no cover. Next is the green dots which is great cover, and then there is the option to garrison buildings which is very good cover. The multiplayer has great AI, for those who are like me and are frightened of playing online. Last stand, thanks to a friend, I got to play, quite fun and actually a good challenge. Personally I also enjoyed the inclusion of army painter, one of the things that Dawn of War spoiled me with was the option of making a very customized paint job for my multiplayer units.

Lots of variety in the army painter, but there could be more.

I would have enjoyed it more if in the multiplayer you where able to go and focus more on the chaos gods. Because you have three of the four and personally I feel that you should choose which god your army is worshiping and that effect your units early on. Surprisingly the campaign kept a nice difficulty curve through out it, only a few times it spiked, and it was a negative spike with the space hulk sections, still a decent campaign and good story.

One of the best features is the custom load out in campaign and that in this we are given another squad member for our fight against the enemies of the Imperium of Man.

Balance:

Surprisingly well balanced for a real time strategy game with five different races. Well to be fair Chaos Space Marines and Space Marines are pretty similar, heretics instead of scouts, summon able demons, and towers of Tzeetch instead of turrets. The five races you get to play as are the Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, the Eldar, the Orks, and the Tyranids. They all play and feel different which is surprising as most games barely can manage three unique armies. Though there are differences from the tabletop game as there are units left out, but this in my honest opinion is it is a good thing. However, not including some of the units it makes it easier to balance and have less options bogging down those not familiar with tabletop units. Though the units left in are some of the most iconic units, and given the battlefields you see them in it makes sense that you don't see vindicators, or defilers, or any super heavy's or aircraft.

AI:

The computer in this game is good, very good. If you are not the best at strategy games easy computer is pretty good challenge. I have played against Easy and Medium and Medium was tricky to fight and it was a hard fight, easy was a good challenge after the campaign. The strategies employed by the AI is pretty simple, but in the campaign most of the time you attack the enemy they don't really move around, however that is taken care of in later missions where they are actively patrolling and hunting. You get the feeling you are in a actual battlefield where there are routines and what not for the enemy.

Replayability:

The campaign sadly is not very replayable unless you want to get the three or so other endings for various levels of corruption. Unlike Dawn of War 2 you can easily do every mission, and most of the wargear is worthless. You get something strong and you can run with it for quite a long time in the campaign. I feel it is a pretty good and memorable campaign but too memorable so it will take a long time before I feel that I have forgotten enough of the campaign to enjoy it fully again.

Final Verdict:

DOW2: Chaos Rising is a decent RTS and trumps Supreme Commander 2 in RTS of the year in 2010. Personally I say if you enjoyed DOW2 or any of the Dawn of War games before Chaos Rising pick up Chaos Rising. It is a decent game, rather fun, but predictable story. At times it can be mean in the missions, though this is par for the course with DOW2 campaign missions. Thankfully there are less time dependent missions and now also Space Hulk which was quite fun, to the point I hope in Retribution they add Space Hulk as a additional mod like Last Stand was. I do quite enjoy the bosses and the characterization of the enemies and allies throughout the game. If you have not gotten Dawn of War 2 already I would recrommend getting that before picking up Chaos Rising, there is a lot of plot and it too is very fun, along with your level and traits carry over from the last campaign.

The Planet Aurelia falling apart due to Chaos.

More screen shots of Dawn of War 2 are in my Photobucket.com album for this review here.

Introduction

2011-03-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

Hello, I am Kurorahk. The first few who see this will be friends and family. Those who do not know me, I am a fan of real time strategy games as well as role playing games and first person shooters. I have tried other genres of games and have a few favorites. Though my true home in gaming is with the strategy games.

My first RTS game was Command and Conquer on the Playstation One, I enjoyed it and beat it, then got Red Alert and did the same. A few years later I picked up Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun and fell in love with it. I spent more hours in C&C TS than almost any other game, I started modding and making custom units within it along with custom maps. Early on it was all over powered stuff that was unoriginal but eventually I graduated into making more unique and balanced units. Then there was a low point in my life and I was mostly on consoles playing Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1 and 2 on the Gamecube.

After high school I started getting back into gaming and was introduced to That Guy With The Glasses by my brother, I enjoyed it, and when Blistered Thumbs came out I was happy to see a gaming site from TGWTG. I was inspired by people like Linkara, Lord Kat, Spoony, Doug, and Angry Joe to start reviewing on my own. And so Back Talk With Kurorahk was born.