Wednesday, August 29, 2007

This is why I can't have nice things!

Or blogs....

Ok, this blog is not dead, I swear to you.

But really, I am total scatter brain. I find one thing to do, do it, drop it, find something else to do. I wish I could be more focused, it's something I have worked on for years.

But, suffice to say, I have BioShock now which is destroying all my time, as well as WoW and the Call of Duty 4 beta which I just got into.

Now, where does GameTap fit in to all of this, AND college? I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that I truly and honestly want to finish this project, as daunting as it seems to me even now.

That is my oath, to this blog, to me, and to any readers.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

College Life

Yup. Back at college for my Sophomore year. So if updates get erratic or few and far between, this is the reason.

Once I settle into life here once again, and learn the ins and outs of my classes, things should run smoother.

Thanks!

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Buster is Right


I love Overlord. I really do. Who wouldn't love a game that is a mix of Dungeon Keeper, Pikmin and with a dash of Fable's sense of style and humor?

First off it is something I have always wanted, a twisted Tolkien-esque world. It takes things so very Tolkien, such as Hobbits (called Half-lings exclusively in this game) and turns them into the greedy self serving creatures of the world whom reign terror over the humans. Did I also mention there is a town called Spree? Yeah. Totally a twisted version the loved Middle-Earth. And, as I said, I love it.

The game's plot revolves around you, the newly instated Overlord of a Dark Tower (Stephen King?) after its previous owner was killed by a legion of seven heroes. The Majordomo of the tower revives you from what appears to be a hibernation. He quickly walks you through the fairly simple controls (even simpler if you have a 360 controller, which automatically formats it to the 360 version's controls, which is super convenient). After that, it's off to the races.

The game from then out, as far as I've gotten at least, is mostly a series of hack and slash dungeon crawlers, all revolving around the redemption of your good (bad?) name and to kill off the Seven Heroes one by one. Over the course, you slowly rebuild your Dark Tower to its once grand standards, return powerful spells, find a dark queen fitting of you, new and super spiffy armor and weapons, and just all over reign of the land.

All in all, I'm supremely happy that Overlord is on GameTap and this game, one of many games that come out that the general population never pick up and try. The fact of the matter is, that is why I loved GameTap. It's like a foster home for lost games, where ones whose quality shone brightly but were overlooked for even shinier games. My advice, go out and adopt an Overlord of your own, for the good of us all!

GameTap says 9.4, I say 9.

28 out of 976 games complete.

So very kept.

Go download now!

Over..loard?

Ok, Overlord is out today and I have been anticipating this moment ever since I heard it was coming to the Tap. First off, I played Overlord for the 360 as a downloadable demo and loved every second of it. I am, however, a poor college kid. So, my dreams of owning it were dashed.

HOWEVER! It is now in my grasp, and my next post WILL, and mark my words here, BE a review of Overlord.

It may be a while... I really wanna get sucked into this game.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

My Mistake Readers

Well, thanks to some friendly commenter's, I have realized I completely mis wrote my intentions in the last post.

As said in last post, I would not review any more large games.... which is not what I meant to say, you see. My fault! My fault, I know. What I meant to say was during busy days, such as weekdays and such during school, I would forgo any large games, and save them for the weekend or a day off. What it seemed was me backing down from large games at all, which I will say now, I have no intention of doing. I really can't wait to review some of the large games there, some I have been playing for a long while now, such as Planescape: Torment and URU.

So! I would like to thank you guys again for pointing that out to me, my promise and goal remains to review every single game on this wonderful service and I still believe that I can and will do so.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Big Games = No Beuno

Ok, suffice to what I said in the previous post, I will not continue the review on Freespace 2. It was because of this game that I decided I would forgo any large titles that I come across, as it is not really conductive to updating my blog as often as I want to.

SO! I will conclude here that Freespace 2 is really good, though the controls are a bit to obtuse, even to change. As such, I give it an 8 out of 10. Gametap says 9.3 out of 10.

Deleted cause I wish to save space.

25 out of now 975 games complete.

So, I will now give you more reviews of smaller games.

The Wheel givith!

SimPark

First off, I am, as most people are, a big fan of everything Maxis and more importantly, Will Wright. But, the sad thing is, after Maxis was bought by EA, the once might name of Sim had begun to be whored out to every extent. Some of them, admittedly, were decent, such as SimTower, or to a lesser extent, SimAnt, but the majority of them were pretty bad. SimPark is one of those bad ones.

I was offset from the very beginning when I was greeted with one of those horrible PC animations from the mid 90's, where the characters seem to move awkwardly and just very unnaturally.


If that wasn't bad enough, the darn game crashed the first three times trying to start a new park. After finally getting in, I found the game to be somewhat fun, if not just a sparse version of SimCity, which makes sense, considering it is made under the Maxis Kids brand name. So you start off with a certain set of cash, and go on to create a good equilibr
ium within the park. All the same concepts seen in the big hitter, but just watered down to a fairly un-enenjoyable version. Give it a whirl if you have a kid, as usual.

Gametap says 5.5, I say 4.
Deleted.
26 out of 975 games complete.

I must say, the Wheel likes me today, this is just funny.

Pong

I really found this funny. The game is 0.000 MBs large by Gametap's count. I basically pressed the download button, and it was down.

I thought I would take a screenshot just for humour reasons. I mean, who doesn't know Pong?

I promised myself I wouldn't do this with a review, but really, do I have a choice? It's Pong, and noting more.

Go play it with someone, it's still fun.

Gametap says 7.0, I also say 7.0. And I won't delete it. I mean come on. 0.000 MBs.

27 out of 975 games complete.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Space, Now More Free Than Ever Before!

Growing up, I was never to lucky on the computer side, which is what lead me to be mainly a console guy. My family household was relegated to owning a DOS ran PC for well into the lifespan of Windows 95. When we finally did get a decent computer, I was already fully dedicated to consoles than I ever would be with PCs. Not to say I didn't enjoy a good deal of PC only titles, such as Warcraft and a good deal other RTS's. But I digress, what I mean to say is, I missed out on a grat deal of amazing games, and thanks to Gametap, for a meager fee, I get to relive the glory days of the platform.

Freespace 2

First off, I have heard about this series for a long time. I was always a fan of the space fighter genre since I was hooked on the X-wing series, most notably X-Wing vs TIE Fighter. From the word go, I am in love with the aesthetics of this game. It treats the subject of space travel and spaceship dog fights very "realistically," bringing in a very militaristic style to the briefing and debriefing.
And really, when a game as already grabbed me this well before I have even started playing, I know I'm in for a good time.

So, first off, the controls are bit obtuse. Buttons from all over the keyboard, from the numpad all the way to the left side. It is a bit frustrating already, and I'm only in the training. But, once the controls are fairly learned, the game is as fun as I knew it would be. Hopefully I can switch to mouse control later.

So, this is probably gonna end up being a super long post, so what I'm gonna do is cut this post into two.
So, look forward for part two, of what is ostensibly my first boss battle!

Wheel Spin Impending

Busy busy busy. Had a house guest over for the past week and had almost no time, between him and looking for a job, to get any reviews done. BUT, that time has passed, so, I thank you all for still commenting and reminding me people DO read this thing.

And yes, I admit, the Arthur Living Book wasn't that bad... I used to LOVE living books as a kid. Was just taking frustrations out on the game. Hehe.