Resistance: Retribution on my PSP

As you may have read around or experienced, Resistance: Retribution is awesome, incredibly fucking awesome.

Resistance: Retribution is a third person shooter released in 2009 for the PSP. Set between Resistance: Fall of man and Resistance 2, the story revolves around the British Royal Marine Lieutenant James Grayson in a one man army battle against the Chimera looking for vengueance over his brothers fate; During battle, Grayson discovers a Chimera conversion center and there he finds his brother Jhonny who has been partially transformed into the Chimera; as protocol demands, he is forced to kill his brother but this sets him on a Chimera killing frenzy, as he abandons his troops and goes on a solo mission destroying every Chimera conversion facility he finds. He destroys plenty of this places and becomes a war hero, but the British don't take desertion so lightly, as Grayson is placed on trial and condemned to death. While awaiting the gallows, Grayson is offered a reprive by Lieutenant Raine Bouchard from the "Maquis" European resistance movement in exchange for his help on delivering a serum that will counteract the Chimera virus; Grayson agrees and the game is on.

Grayson's character is one of the best game characters I've ever played, his role in the game is so well stablished since the beginning of the game and many of his comments as the game progresses make the gaming more intense or interesting; the overall history is great too, beautifuly paced by Parker's voice on the chapter transitions, the ingame secuences and the cinematics, tell the story well enough to keep you interested; the game graphics don't stay behind either, a Modified Logans Shadow engine -From Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow- makes R:R's world a great sight, with pretty characters and astonishing enemies.

The game is a third person shooter, one of the most amazing things of this game is the combat; it's great, it's fluid, it's fast and it's satisfactory. While facing an enemy, Graysons crosshair will automatically choose an enemy and direct the bullets to it; the aiming is helped by 4 yellow markers, if you center you enemy on the yellow markers, the crosshair will automatically go to it; this is a great help when fighting, because R:R will throw at you hundreds of enemies at once, all of them shooting crap at you from all directions, allowing you to keep the shooting fluid and accurate on your side while dodging and looking for cover without having to tilt you crosshair awkardly on your enemies with the face buttons -this option can be cancelled on the menu if it's not hardcore enough for you- ah! the cover system, the cover system kicks hairy ass all the way to Chimera invaded Paris; While facing enemies, Grayson will automatically lock onto a nearby object that can be used for cover and... cover there; and while taking cover, you can make him attack by just pressing the fire button, and as you release the button, he will automatically go back to cover safety, swift and smooth. And the music score, it's just great, from beginning to end.

The weapons are great too, what is a shooter without amazing guns? You have your standard bullets rifle, a Chimera rifle resembling the Bullseye, sniper rifle, chaingun, grenades, rocket launcher, the Auger, and some other unlockable guns. I have not to much to say on multiplayer because I'm not so into online multiplayer, and I have no friends to play with on ad hoc -my fiends just play FIFA games and shit-. R:R has an amazing characteristic too, if you connect it to a PS3 while Resistance 2 is loaded, it unlocks some amazing stuff on your R:R like new outfit, guns, gameplay characteristics, new intel and the main story changes -tho I've heard that no so much, I haven't played it myself- making the replay value climb the fuck up. In my country, the UMD is about 40 US dollars, so, all this characteristics make the 40 bucks worth it a lot.

But that's enought of ass licking, the game has it's flaws -no game is perfect- and I don't mean to be rude on it, but there's just some things that fucked my gaming at times.

First of all: the dificulty. This was one of the things that brought my piss to a boil more than one time; the hardest game is not the best and an easy game is just shit as well, but there were times that R:R was just being an asshole about it; having swarms and legions of Chimera coming at you with rifles and augers and chainguns and flying craps, and barely killing all those shits just to find out that giving two steps ahead spawned another legion of Chimera while having no health and no ammunition close was fucking frustrating as shit, those where times when I would just turn the PSP off and do some other shit. Sometimes the difficulty was not the hundreds of enemies, but enemies coming right in front of your face giving you a quarter of a fucking second to react and avoid getting hit -there's no regenerative health- or killing a lot of enemies just to get three flying turrets with machinguns right in your face. Whenever you die, you backtrack to the last checkpoint, and while some checkpoints are conveniently placed, some are placed fucking far one from another, and sometimes theres like a fucking thousand swarms of Chimera and big enemies between one checkpoint and the next; and that was fucking frustrating as well. Yes, choosing the right gun will help you go through with ease, but sometimes it just takes a lot of trial and error.

Another problem, well, for me, was that it was repetitive, yes, I know, it may sound stupid being this game a shooter, but considering the length of the game -I'm not sure how many hours my first playthough took me... a lot- the gameplay wears out on you by the last part of the game; it's like: walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, shoot, walk, Chimera swarm, press button, Chimera swarm... it just grows weary on you by the end. sure, it has some parts where you drive a Hammer and are fucking awesome, but the game can be brought down to shoot, walk, shoot, walk -and considering that you will die a lot in some parts, and you'll backtrack a lot, it's just makes you get tired of gaming and leave it for another day-

Well, this was a short opinion, not a book, so, to wrap things up, despite a couple of things that personally bothered me, Resistance: Restibution is an amazing game and I really enjoyed playing it, of course, this already you knew, but there are some people out there who haven't played it -well, I know some "gamer" friends who haven't played or don't know about some great games like BioShock or Fallout or games like that, they only play FIFA and Call of duty-. In my opinion, it was a great game, sometimes hard and unfair and frustrating, but amazing overall. If you haven't played it, play it, it's definitively worth your money and time.

If I had to put a number... 8.5 out of 10. Thanks for reading, see you next time.

Reservoir Dogs on my PC!

Reservoir dogs has got to be one of the most satisfying games I've played lately; tho repetitive and short and all that, it's still a nice and enjoyable experience. I had stopped myself from getting it because reviews were actually bad, specially some IGNorant review around the web that qualifies it as 3.0 "Bad"; but once again, critics show they don't know shit.

Well, Reservoir dogs is a 2006 game by Volatile games and Eidos, based on Quentin Tarantino's movie of the same name, which is an awesome movie, and that was the reason I was wondering why was it such a bad game if it was based on an awesome movie -History has showed us that when movies are turned into games or visceversa, shit is gonna come out, but still I wanted to play this-, the game is a third person shooter with some driving stages. It focuses more on the aftermath of the heist, how everyone got out and the stuff that we didn't see during the film; you are able of playing the five characters from the heist and nice guy eddie and actually the game remains very faithful to the movie -that's gotta be worth a couple of points because that usually never happens-

Well, the game, as I said before, focuses on getting the hell out of the jewel store; the game is separated into 16 chapters where you alternate between on foot third person action and driving as fast as you can without getting you car exploded; there are only two difficulty settings Normal and easy, what the hell is that?! the game's graphics, I must admit, could have been better, I mean, it was 2006, there were nice graphics out there already, but still, it's not ugly either; the characters don't actually look that much like the movie´s charaters, except from Mr Blonde, everyone looks alike, but you know they are not the characters; but I must say something... This is a FUCKING GAME! if you're gonna bitch and moan about how everything does not look like the movie, then go ahead and watch the fucking movie! -or design the game yourself-. The enemies are lazy, besides a couple different ones, they all look the same! you have four non playable characters, first the civilians, there are times you'll see the same guy standing in two different places of the same location -I guess everyone has a twin in this town-; second, the shitty cops, dressed in brown, they are worthless; Third:, the regular cops, dressed in blue, they are a little bother, I could see about five different, so you'll be killing the same guy over and over and over... and fourth, the SWATS, this are a real bother, but killable, they all look the same.

The gameplay is very repetitive, it's just run and gun everyone -the ending you get depends on how cold blooded or professional are you-, you get to the place, you kill everything, you survive a lot of enemies, you get out, rinse, repeat -pretty much like Halo- and the whole game is repetitive too, you do one or two missions on foot, you do a driving mission, then you are on foot again, then you drive, foot, drive, foot, drive... the scenarios are something repepitive too and many people complains about that... but I have an opinion; They are escaping from the same place, how the fuck is the landscape gonna change if they are supossed to come from the same place?! the first missions are the ones I found this problem, but I guess that was the reason, the latter missions are different -a little... I wonder why no one complains about Halo's repetitive levels-

The game is very linear, you don't have much places to go than forward, and that I didn't like, but still, many third person shooters are like that, American McGee's Alice for example, and that game is awesome! During foot missions, you control one of the guys making his way out of the place, the controlls are nice, standard, I couldn't find a problem there, perhaps some moments when you're shooting someone in the head and they don't die, or the locking that is really worthless and you end up not using it and better using the precise shooting that is just a zoom, but besides that, it's ok. You order people around so they open locks, safes or avoid them to touch alarms; you can take them hostages and disarm cops; the blue shits -I mean... cops- don't surrender untill they see you hit the civilian, the SWAT don't surrender untill you have a cop hostage.

You have this adrenaline meter that allows you to do special moves, one is like a bullet time, you move really slow and mark where you're gonna shoot the guy in front of you -Reminds you of a more recent game?...- the second is when you have a hostage, you hit the hostage a lot of times and lit out a cigarrette in one if his eyes, this way you can disarm everyone on location.; you can shoot hostages in the head too. The driving scenes are just that... driving, and surviving. They are not that hard, the controlls are fine -people complained about the controls here, but I thought they were ok, only the brake is a little bad, but besides that, it's ok- the adrenaline bar allows you to speed up and resist car crashes for a while.

You can play the game as you like, you can be a professional and do a nice clean job, or you can -as I did xD- just kill every person on the level. One complain I read too was that crowd control can be hard because you move people around with the mouse look and sometimes that lets you open to be shot by a cop out of sight... but i must say... isn't that what happens in real life? I guess that if I was a criminal with a hostage with a bunch of cops pointing at me and I'm trying to get someone to do what I say, I guess the last thing I'd do is let the cops out of my sight or on my back -IGNorant idiot fuck- also, the complain is that when you neutralize someone and let his out of your sight for a while, the person escapes, and my opinion is the same as before.

Some stuff that does not work well are: First, the Adrenaline system: and don't get me wrong, it's awesome, and the slow motion dying cop covered in blood makes it more awesome, but there are times when you shoot a wave of bullets and if the cop moves a little, the bullets can miss him. Second: Some respawning cops, specially when you've cleared an area and one kills you from the back or when you've disarmed everyone and again, one kills you from the back. Third: some cops taking a full clip to die. Fourth: The lenght -it's very short, I got it in two nights, about six, seven hours- and the fact that it's repetitive -Even with this, you get to enjoy playing it, well, at least I did- Fifth: The characters not being alike -but as i said, this can be obviated later in the game-

Well, to stop boring you, Reservoir dogs is not the most awesome game there is, it's not the revolution of games, it's not the best game out there, but also, it's not a bad game! It's a really enjoyable experience and I assure you you'll have fun while playing it and that will not let you see that flaws. Play it if you can, I really recommend it, besides, it's not that expensive, around ten bucks I guess. My score: 7.0. not awesome, just enjoyable.

Area 51 on my PC

I was told of this game by a friend, as soon as he mentioned Area 51 I said I had already played it, I remembered my arcade games, and Area 51 is one of the games I used to spend all my allowance on, but when I started talking about my experience, he said that that was not the game he was talking about, that it was a regular FPS and not an arcade game, so, I decided to investigate.

Frankly, I must say, I hated this game, I couldn't bear playing it 20 minutes and had to close it, as a matter of fact I did not finish it... but still don't dismiss my review, I played enough to have something to say xD

Well, according to my "investigation" xD, Area 51 is a 2005 survival horror FPS developed by Midway (Bio F.R.E.A.K.S., The Cruis'n saga, Gauntlet, Rush, Smash TV, more known Mortal Kombat and less nice games like Robotron) and it's available for PS2, XBox and PC, being itself loosely based on the Arcade game I knew called Area 51. I found very interesting that Marilyn Manson and David Duchovny did some of the voices and that called my attention to the game even more.

Well, as I said before, it's a regular FPS, the controls are ok, everything is just ok, not awesome, just ok, ok graphics, ok sounds, ok ok ok... You play as Ethan Cole (David Duchovny), a Hazmat soldier who is sent into Area 51 to control the outbreak of some deadly virus that is killing everyone all over the place, too late they find out that the virus turns everyone into horrible monsters (tan tan taaan!) and everyone killed by the monsters turns into a monster (Show surprise now), eventually, Ethan's group is killed and he is left alone to save his own sorry ass. As you progress, you find other soldiers, my guess is that they are or some kind of black ops or alien soldiers, I don't know and don't care at all, but they are trying to kill you; also you find soldiers of your own group that help you or secure areas (most of the time the plot kills them).

Later on, you are bitten by a monster, and you start becoming a monster, luckily, some Dr. Cray contacts you and tells you that he has a cure but you have to save him; you go through a lot of repetitive killing until you reach his lab, and when he is going to cure you, something goes terribly wrong and you now have the hability to switch between monster mode and soldier mode; in monster, you can run a little faster and jump a little longer, also you shoot parasites at your enemies, cool. Eventually, another entity contacts you, Gray (Marilyn Manson), an alien entity I guess, that talks in metaphors and I guess he's trying to lead your way, he updates you on some history of the game and stuff, I must say he's a nice character, and Manson's voice makes him even more awesome, great job there game!

I went a lot of stages ahead till I got fed of it, but why? The first thing, I felt it was too repetitive, all the stages were like you get there, you survive a raid of monsters, you reach the end, rinse, repeat; a lot of games are like that, but someway I felt this was more bothersome than any other game I had played. Second, the physics in the game are bad; I have no complains usually, but this were ugly indeed -not 007 nightfire ugly, but ugly- I mean, I don't know if you, but I do hate it when you kill someone and he bounces in your direction, really slowly and lands like ten meters away, that made the game look ugly, specially when you use an explosive, all the bodies slowly fly away to the roof. Third, the savepoints are way to spaced between one and the next, and usually there's a million avalanches of monsters between them, so you end up playing the same parts over and over till you get frustrated.

The main reason why I disliked it was the graphics, not that they are ugly, they are very very nice actually, pretty to see, nice ambients and levels; I don't usually care about the game's graphics -Deus Ex is an example of not nice graphics with awesome game- but in this case, what makes them ugly is that they are way too bright, I couldn't play 20 minutes without it burning my eyes, and I changed the gamma and all that -when I could, sometimes when you change the gamma, the game crashes- but still the game just burned my fucking eyes! and it's even worst when you turn into a monster, the brightness goes up like a hundred times, so much that the backgrounds look white, and the enemies take this bright brown color, and you just end up turning back because you can't see anything.

I couldn't stand the game, the gameplay wasn't bad, but these things made me not want to play it anymore, perhaps someone has played it and can tell me what they think, for me, I won't be installing and playing this game anymore.

This has gone too long now, so, to wrap things up, Area 51 is an ok game if you can stand your eyes burning like eggs on a frying pan, play it if you want, it's not bad, there are worst game out there and this is not a horrible game, it's playable, but I thought it was unbearable.

PD: sorry for the images, the game is no longer installed on my pc.

007 Nightfire on my PC!

While not entirely crappy, 007 Nightfire is a game I'll never play again. I will try not to praise GoldenEye all the way, first because I know and you know that one's a freaking awesome game and second, because this is not GoldenEye, this is Nightfire.

Ported by Gearbox in 2002 -the same that gave us the Half-life expansions and Halo (I guess)- Nightfire is your standard FPS bringing you Pierce Brosnan as James Bond! -I think that's pretty cool- I don't know much about the Bond books, only the movies, but it appears that this one is not taken from any of them, it's like a made up plot from both the books and the movies. The intro of the game is just awesome -and in my opinion better than many of the openings from the movies-, The song is "Nearly civilized" by Esthero by the way, it's a collage of all the cheesy images we like from the movies, very pretty.

A nice thing is that the graphics are really good, and the modeling of the characters is just perfect -2002 perfect for the stupid kids that dislike old games because of the 'Shitty graphics'-, the faces look nice and the environments are well done too, visually, I have nothing to say. The music is nice and the sounds too -despite some that i'll talk about later- but overall it's ok; the controls are fine too, tight and responsive; weapons and gadgets are nicely made and all, nothing to say there either...

One thing that I must admit is that, even if the plot is well made, It felt rushed and I always felt like I was left out of it, even to the point that I didn't get it right at all, I don't know, it was like getting someone to resume me Moby Dick, you can get to know what happens, but it's not like you actually read it.

One of the shittier aspects of the game is AI, they are plain dumbasses! I don't know how to explain myself, but they are simply dumb, sometimes you shoot one from a distance and he turns around and runs the other way while the soldier besides him is just standing like nothing happened, or he runs and shoots the hell out of a wall or runs straight at you while you shoot him, or shoots a rocket to you while standing just in front of you, I mean, they feel dumb and odd. One thing I just hated is that sometimes you shoot the shit out of them and they keep on shooting you -pretty much like the soldiers from Half-life, but at least those where smart- or you shoot them in the head and they don't die -the inverse is totally likable, sometimes you shoot them in the arm and they die instantly :D-, also they scream things, but all of them say the same thing, like "Identify yourself" -while you're shooting him- or some things in japanese that sound really stupid, at first it seems ok, then you get bored of it.

Sometimes I felt that there was a lot of unfair challenge, I know this is some kind of stealth game and you have to avoid enemies and all that, but there are times you are walking and just killed a bunch of dudes when the door behind you opens and a guy with a rocket launcher blows the shit out of you! Come on! I don't have an eye inside my butt hole!

While playing I felt that there was no technique or tactics or anything, yeah, you can go past by some guards and all that, but I preferred to run and gun everyone because there are times that you are going stealth fine and a dude like a kilometer away spots you and alerts the 50 guards you just left behind and they shoot the shit out of you -Pretty much like the mercenaries from Far Cry-

Your partners are crap too, there's this mission where Allura -I guess it's her- joins you and she is carrying a sniper rifle, but damn she's so dumb! she never shots that shit! sometimes the guards are in front of her shooting you and she just stands there watching! sometimes when you reload, she respawns in front of a guard and neither of them does a damn thing xD

The game is really buggy at times, sometimes you try to open a door, but you have to be standing at a very specific spot to get it open, also, there is a part near the end of the game that a camera spots you and alerts the guards, but I’ve never been able of finding where the hell that camera is placed! On that same spot, there’s a security room, you can’t open the door, the guards come out and you’re set, but sometimes they don’t open the door and try to shoot you through the door, and this is a game stopper, I stood there like ten minutes trying to get them to open the door and eventually had to reload the game. Sometimes the corpses fly away when they die xD

A special mention goes for the ninjas near the end of the game, they are just fucking shit! You can’t shoot them because they run around and they take like a million bullets to go down while they can bring you down in no time -I mean, it’s James Bond, not Chuck Norris-

Even walking in the game is odd, you feel like you’re floating or something; and the guns feel odd, I don’t know how to explain it, but they are odd, they don’t feel like when you play other games and you feel the shots, remember playing Return to castle Wolfenstein? Remember how it felt shooting Nazis with a Luger? Remember how it felt shooting vortigaunts with a shotgun, like a real shot? Well, that doesn’t happen here, it’s an odd feeling that makes it even more bothersome and crappy to kill the dumb soldiers, even the sounds of the shots sound odd, and that makes your experience even crappier.

Well, this has gone too long right? To wrap things up, 007 Nightfire is a good game but fails in many many aspects and that is what does not let this game become a great game –or get close to Goldeneye-, I enjoyed playing this game, but sometimes I hated it and wondered why the hell was I playing this shit. Play it if you can have it borrowed or something so you don’t waste your money in it –Or if you can get it for a console, try it there, I’ve heard it’s better there-

PD: At least, boobs look nice :D

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the NES!!

Hello! I was playing some NES games on this web page where you can play with no need to download today and stumbled across this one game: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; At first, I remembered the AVGN's review on this game, it's hard to forget when you see on someone's face the fear and hatred they feel about something, and, if I don't remember wrong, he didn't show a lot of gameplay on his video review, so I said "Well, could this game be as shitty as the AVGN said? let's find out n_n

Well, at first the game seems fine to me, the music is not that bad, it's like a creepy MIDI organ, but it sounds good. The start is a little odd, you have the credits as any other NES game and then the phrase "A strange case of Dr. Jekyll"... what is that for?... anyway. The start screen, I gotta admit it, I like it as cheesy as it might seem, the title is on big letters and a green blueish hand creeps from the bottom of the screen and you use it to select start or continue if you were playing and died. If you don't do anything you can see Dr. Jekyll working on his lab or something.

As the game starts you see Dr. Jekyll walking out out of his house, the music is fine, the graphics are pretty to see, 8 bit splendor xD, as soon as you get out of the house a woman apears behind you and hits you... what the hell?!... anyway, the game is a side scroller, and basically you have to walk forward avoiding the townspeople that wants to kill you; What's wrong with these people?!! Dr. Jekyll is youst walking happily and everyone wants to kill him, I mean, did he kill someone or steal or what?!! There are people that walk by and hit you, there are women that run to you and hit you, there are kids that shoot you, birds that shit on your head, dogs, cats, gravediggers throwing dirt and the most hedious and horrible ones, some purple wearing dudes that leave bombs to your side, those are the ones to hate! and when you get hit, you get thrown all the back way to the other side of the screen;
you jump with A and with B you use a cane like thing, but it doesn't do ANYTHING!! why would someone put a weapon on a game with no use!! it means that some idiot programmers said:
-Hey, let's give him a weapon, like a cane.
-Ok, so he will be able to hit people.
-Nope, this weapon will do nothing! awesome right?!!
-Yeah!

Trying to succed on this game is really hard; you have a life meter that measures... you life, and you have a "meter" meter... it's like an "angry" bar that depletes as you receive damage from people, when it depletes completely, you transform into Hyde, the world becomes all horrible and monsters appear, and you have to kill as many as you can to transform back. The first time you will do what you see on the AVGN video, you start walking, soon you are so beaten by the people that you transform into Hyde and a lightning strikes you and you're dead... fun right?...

Playing for a while, I got used to the game, my biggest problems where the purple guys, they are a real pain in the ass, but to bypass them, you have to wait until the sound of the bomb stops and jump, that way, the bomb doesn't reach you; The dogs are horrible too, they attack three times, they run to you, come back and attack you and turn around and attack you again! you have to jump over them to avoid them, but the jumps are slower than the dog, so most of the times, the dog will hit you on his second attack; besides those guys, there is not much of a challenge on the first level. Ah! and the l ightning thing, it seems that when you transform to hyde, he starts from the beginning of the level, and if he reaches Jekyll's position, then the lightning strikes and you die, don't ask why...

I managed to get to the second level or screen, and here it becomes a little harder; there are this stupid birds that fly across the screen and crap on you, also, the dogs and purple guys appear more often, you can get your ass kicked real quick, and worst, th e position of enemies on screen is random, so learning when one comes is not really that useless, but neither that useful.

I couldn't get past this level, if I had tried more I would have kicked my computer; This game is really frustrating, it looks good and all, but the gameplay is just awful! So, now you know how fucking awful this game is... don't play it, I have emotional wounds that will be hard to heal... :(

Well, back to playing Gun on my pc :D

Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the earth on my pc.

Call of Cthulhu is one of the hardest, scariest and greatest games I've played lately. Developed by the now late Headfirst productions and published by Bethesda softworks in 2005 for the Xbox and 2006 for the PC, it's a Lovecraft inspired stealth and survival horror FPS -is that well written?- taken out, mostly, from the story "A shadow over Innsmouth" by that author.

The game is mostly known for it's numerous glitches, some of them are specially bothersome because the actually refrain you from continuing the game. What is less known, is that the game is actually fun and challenging -really, really fucking challenging-, and the story is really well made and sucks you in as you play.

You are Jack Walters, a police detective who is one of the best at solving hard cases, who is internated into Arkham asylum -no, we don't get to see The Joker :(- after a raid at the house of some strange cultists. After that, he turns into a private detective with amnesia of what happened at that house and sporadic fits of schizophrenia. Jack is contacted to take the case of a missing person in Innsmouth, and, as he goes there, he finds that the town is not so friendly with outsiders and that there might be more than there seems to be about the case, as he is followed by some entity that watches him from afar.

The game is more "stealthing" than shooting; actually, trying to shoot your way out of places in this game is not such a bright idea, and that's what makes this game awesome and fucking hard, because you have to think and take your time to do what you must, and when you do, you have to be real careful not to get caught or you are fucked.

There are some places, like the one when you get chased out of your hotel room by the fishermen, that are really really really hard, everything is timed really tight and if you lose one second, you get caught; actually, that part is the best, the hardest and the most exciting chase scene I've ever played in a game -there's is a let's play of this game on youtube, watch the attack of the fishermen part, it's just awesome!-; It took me a million times to get past it, but when you get through that, you feel Godlike. There are also some other hard parts, like the scape in the back of the car, and hard games don't mean awesome games, but this game managed to blend being difficult with entertaining -as fucked up as that sounds like- and did it great.

The graphics are good, perhaps not awesome, but they are good; it has this grainy look that makes it feel like an old movie and it looks awesome. Sometimes the graphics seem a little lazy, especially when in caves, everything looks alike and you don't know where the fuck to go, and sometimes you don't even see it because it is too dark -yeah, I was forgetting that, this game is really dark, it's one of those "I can't see shit" games- or because the wall blends with other wall and the path seems hidden; Besides that, the game is pretty to see.

The gameplay is great, the controls are good, your standard FPS controls, responsive, nothing about them. Something I hated was that... COULD JACK WALTERS BE ANY SLOWER?!! I mean, he walks real slow! yeah, you have to take your time and think and take it easy and all that, but when ugly half man half fish creatures are trying to eat the living shit out of you, you must be able to run!! you can only go slow or slower -slower is to get past enemies and dont get noticed, like holding your breath and walking on your toes-.

A great thing is that there is no HUD or anything on the screen, you only see the ambient and your gun, there is nothing on screen, no crosshair, no health bar, no ammo, no nothing, just you and the game; some people find this shitty, I find it awesome, more thrilling. But now comes this, how do you see your health? and that's just awesome, your health can be seen in the menu as an EKG, pretty much like Resident evil, but that's not what I find awesome, this is: during gameplay, as you get wounded you check your health by Jack's responses, as he is dying you can feel him having a hard time walking or shooting, moaning, his heart beating and his breath getting rougher, also, the color of the screen starts draining to the point of being almost black and white when you are about to die; also, if Jack is wounded on the leg and breaks it, you limp as you walk, and he moans in pain and the leg makes this awful breaking sound; if you get wounded on the arm, aiming is difficult.

The healing system is also great, you pick this med kits that have bandages, splints, sutures and antidotes and you use them depending on the wound; if you have a scratch use a bandage, if you have a cut use a suture, if you have a broken limb use a splint; I find this better than that system where you lay back and regain your health; that's just stupid, I wish that actually happened, if I was ran over by a car I'd just wait for my legs to regenerate.

The shooting is also great. As you have no cross hair, you are forced to aim with the small irons of the gun itself; just as if you were holding the gun. The plot is great at well made, the story is fluid and draws you in as you play; the farther you get, the more you want to know about what is happening; this is in my opinion one of the few scary games that are actually scary.

And this is what everybody knows, the glitches. I'm not gonna lie, the bugs and glitches are a real pain in the ass!, I know the game was rushed out and, as Headfirst died, there was no one to actually take care of them, but fuck they are a pain in the ass! The first one -of the two I ran into-. is the saving, if the PC's clock is not on 24 hours format, the game does not save shit, not even autosaves; it's not such a thing, but it's bothersome.

The second, and the most shitty one, the one that almost made me send this game to shit was the Shooting with the cannon to the island one; here, you are amid a storm on a boat, your objective is to get to the cannon and shoot some wizards on the reef; well, I got into the cannon and saw the reef, but when I zoomed in, I couldn't see shit! All that happened was that the numbers went away, but the reef wasn't zoomed in! And this one is a game stopper, you can't advance if you get this glitch, I tried everything, restarting the level, starting from a previous save -never save on top of the previous save-, shooting blind, every fucking thing and there's no way out. How did I solve it?... I had to download a save state after that point, yes, seems like almost everybody gets this glitch, so, someone who is a great person and God owes him heaven, uploaded a save state right after the cannon thing, so that everyone could bypass the cannon and continue the game. Awesome right?...

The game is great, despite the glitches and game stoppers and all that crap, the game is awesome; good plot, good graphics, great gameplay and some interesting aproaches on the method of doing an FPS -I always say, if it's not broken, don't touch it, but the ideas from this game are good actually- It's a game that I really recommend, play it and see for yourself.

One thing before I finish... The ending... don't get me wrong, the ending cinema is awesome; I mean the very last part of the game. You are in an underwater cave and just defeated the last boss, when suddenly the army attacks the caves and everything starts falling on your head, so, you have to RUN away... that wouldn't be hard if, one, JACK COULD RUN!, and two, if this part wasn't timed, and I tell you, timed by the milisecond, you lose time and you are fucked and everything falls on you and you fucking die... Just so you have an idea on how hard this is, I reached the ending of this game a couple of months ago -I play other things too and sometimes I study... sometimes XD- but I have never, ever been able to finish it, I get to a rock corridor, and when I "run" into it, the ceiling collapses completely and I die... so, for me, that's the ending of the game, Jack dies. End of story.

PD: Thanks for reading and sorry for the lack of images and using images from other places and not from my game, but when I tried to capture the images, the game just crashed, or the image was way too dark; if someone knows how to take good game stills, I'd be glad if you told me how.

Nosferatu: The wrath of Malachi on my PC

I'm a big fan of Survival horror games, I mean, who isn't?! they are just awesome! Games like Alone in the dark, Darkseed, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, F.E.A.R, Doom -Fits here in my opinion- and more and more and more; Games with awesome action ridden horror secuences, horrible things lurking around to eat the flesh out of your bones, great ambients that chill your bones, and the amazing feeling of not knowing what the fuck to do, you know what I mean, simply awesome! Now, I want to talk about this one game: Nosferatu: The wrath of Malachi.

Nosferatu is a survival horror first person shooter videogame for the PC, developed by Idol FX and released in 2003 by iGames; after a little research, I haven't found any other games by Idol FX, I just keep finding this one and some other called "Drake", but I don't know what that one is about or anything so I can't say anything more there, but perhaps someone might inform me. It's loosely based on Bram (NOT BRAN) Stoker's "Dracula", or perhaps a little more on F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" -By a little I mean just the title and the vampire's character, because the game has little to do with any-

The game begins with you as James Patterson as you arrive late to an old creepy castle on top of a cliff, where your sister Rebbeca is going to get married with the son of some rich Transilvanian Count... by night... I mean, could it be more obvious that something is not fucking right?! anyway, James arrives late and as he gets there, he finds out that something's gone totally wrong when he finds that the luggage of his family is at the entrance and that the main door has been covered with crosses; out of a sudden, he realizes that the Count is a vampire and he must save his family and friends from the dark forces of evil -How did he learn this I have no fucking clue...-

This is your standard FPS, the main idea is to save your family from being vampire's dinner in a two hour time limit, there are three buildings where you can look for them, tho, the game is very lineal in a way, because the access is really limited to the first building, and you can't get into another if you haven't finished the first and so on; also, you have a time limit to find each of your friends or they get eaten -when one of them dies, you get a movie with some odd images and a voice telling you the pain and suffering that person dealt with due to your incapability of rescueing that person, people might find it cheesy, for me it's pretty cool- You have your standard combat weapons, a sword -swords tend to look shitty on FPS games in my opinion- a revolver, a flintlock gun -the best one, slow tho-, a cross, wooden stakes, holy water, machine gun etc. The whole game has a movie like style which makes it really beautiful to see, you have old tape like lines going across the screen all the time and a grainy appearance, making it look like an old scary movie.

This game adapted something that sounds real cool but fucks things up in the end: The castle is completely random, the rooms and everything aren't the same everytime you start a new game. At first I thought "hey, that sounds good" and thought that it might add up a lot for replay value; and it does, don't get me wrong, but sometimes, the rooms are so random that you don't know where you are or where to go; I have not such a problem with that, but what I hate, is that the random thing, sometimes puts people too far away or in places that are hard to reach and they end up dying just because it was too fucking far!! and when you find a person, you must return to the entrance because that's the safe spot and they give you stuff like garlic or guns, so you don't have too much time to waste running on rooms that look almost the same of to far away places!! Another thing I hate is that the monsters respawn, and when you go back to rescue a person, you find yourself in a room that you had already cleaned, but packed with monsters! and I'm not sure, but the monsters attack your friends and they die!! Something really funny, is that characters jump to avoid things, and they can jump like three or four times their own size and land all stiff.

The graphics are not so great but not that bad either, the characters seem a little square and choppy, but that's ok; there are little combat animations, perhaps to give the feeling of enemies being real fast, but it makes them seem really shitty and the path recognition is really bad, so they find themselves getting stuck on things in the room -you get used to this and don't notice it farther ahead-; still, they are not to be taken lightly because two or three monsters can get you by the balls in no time. You have a stamina -or perhaps a fear- bar, that goes up as you fight monsters; when it's really up, James has a hard time walking, his breathing goes all rough and shoots with a shaky hand. The whole lay out of the castle -tho repetitive- is really pretty and massively gothic, and, having times when action is completely paused and you are not fighting any monster, you can check the surroundings and appreciatte the pretty images.

What is really great and what makes the atmosphere of the game is the music, old fashioned movie like strings ambient music going all over the game makes it more creepy, the upbeats when a monster appears are bone chilling that you find yourself jumping out of your seat or looking all over the place to find that nothing is following you -some people find this bad, I find it good, you end up walking on your toes-. Also, some things that pump up the creepines are the dark voices you hear at times, the scary laughs, the odd sounds and things like that, specially when you use the cross, it is accompanied by some odd multiple voiced prayer that is just fucking creepy.

The ending of the game is pretty, but is a little downbeat, and Nosferatu and later Malachi aren't that of the hard bosses you'd expect; The normal vampires you find creeping out of coffins are more of a fight than the last bosses -and who is Malachi? the prophet from the Bible? did he turn against God? or that creepy kid from Children of the corn?-

To wrap things up, Nosferatu is a rookie, low-budgeted game with some flaws, still, the game is good enough to bypass all those flaws and give out a great gaming experience and a good couple of scares (people, stop fucking focusing on the bad things of games! there are games with glitches for example, Call of Cthulhu: Dark corners of the earth, but they are fucking awesome games! and shouldn't be qualified as bad just because of some thing.) In my actual experience, I had a great time playing Nosferatu and enjoyed every single bit of it; a very recomendable game if you like creepy stuff and old scary movies. Not the best horror game out there, but a great horror game.