[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/finalfantasyxi/cover.jpg[/floatleft]Let me forewarn everyone by saying that the [i]Final Fantasy[/i] series is my favorite series of all time, so I had a lot of expectations coming into this game. Not a single one of them was met. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the game was certainly entertaining, but the tediousness of the game drove me to quit playing and cancel my subscription after about three quarters of a year, and I honestly don’t miss it. However, where [i]Final Fantasy XI[/i] failed to deliver us the charm of its predecessors, it added new charm that made a lasting impression on meA
PC
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/mohpa/cover.jpg[/floatleft][heading]It’s in the story[/heading]
As a WWII enthusiast, I really love to hear different stories from veterans who experienced WWII from every aspect of the war. From the battles of Africa, the seawalls of Normandy, to the sands of the islands of the Pacific, each veteran has a unique and vivid story to tell about their visions of the war. EA Games and the [i]Medal of Honor[/i] have always accurately recounted all the of tours of battles in WWII. [i]Pacific Assault[/i] is no different; [i]MOHPA[/i] captures the story of Tommy Conlin and his Marine squad as they touch the sands of many islands in the war. The story is beautifully written and told with a real solid documentary feel, including voiceovers and actual war footage. Playing this was just an awesome experience as a history buff and an FPS lover.
[floatright]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/mohpa/ss02_thumb.jpg[/floatright]The story opens as you see yourself on a transport heading to storm the beach on the Tarawa Atoll. After being knocked out from an explosion, you start to experience some flashbacks…and so the story begins. You begin at boot camp where you are trained in tactical movement, first aid, weapons, and other helpful hints. Soon after, you are sent to Pearl Harbor. Upon arrival at Pearl Harbor, the empire of Japan begins to invade, and you are thrown into battle. After the invasion, you go on a series of missions from island to island to stop the Empire of Japan from winning the war in the Pacific.
[heading]Vacation Spots[/heading]
The war in the Pacific was a tough war for the U.S. to fight considering there were so many fronts to be fought on. So the war had to be fought one island at a time, inch by bloody inch. My PC uses an ATI 9600 Pro with 512 MB of RAM, and I must say the islands look beautiful when you run them at 1280×960. With lush vegetation and astonishing landscape, [i]MOHPA[/i] brings a whole new game to the [i]MOH[/i] series. With its new havoc physics system, using your environment to help you win the war is an added bonus. Realism is my main focus when I am diving into WWII games such as this one, with new generation graphics and physics. With so many island stops that make you think they almost look the same, each island actually has its unique challenges and features. Looking past the great vacation spots you hit in your tour, the residents of these islands aren’t very pleased to see you. The details on the Japanese soldiers are amazing, especially when they are a foot away, bayoneting you in the face. Enemy AI is very challenging, to say the least. As you maneuver to flank the enemy, they will in turn move tactically to your flank and counter your movements. They will also call for reinforcements by the truckload.
[heading]”They are shooting at us!”…”Shoot back!”[/heading]
MOH is known for going on solo missions and taking on the entire enemy army by yourself. Well, those days are over. Use commands to order your squad to give you covering fire, ask them to gather together, have them advance, or even ask them to retreat. In order for you to effectively defeat the enemy, you must know how to use your squad. Going in with guns blazing is just not very effective anymore. The enemy has become well aware of your L337 ways and will now just call for reinforcements and overwhelm you. And if you’re thinking of having your squad do all the work, you are mistaken. Your squad will need you to lead them; if you don’t, the enemy will take advantage and form a bonsai charge. The war is not won unless you suffer some injuries. When that happens, call your friendly Corpsman to patch you up. Use him wisely, though, as he has others to take care of too. Not to mention you can be a hero and help the wounded by giving them some bandages to hold them over until the medic arrives. These are key features that you want to use throughout your campaign to win the war. Although you will find yourself doing an array of tasks, shooting the enemy will be the main one. I must say, and to be quite honest, this part of the game does get quite redundant. But nevertheless, you have many other objectives to fulfill rather than to just eliminate the enemy. Multiplayer death match has eight different gametypes to choose from, but my favorite multiplayer mode by far is Invader mode.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/mohpa/ss10_thumb.jpg[/floatleft][heading]The new standard[/heading]
With next generation graphics and physics being implemented in future games, this is the new standard by which the gamer will be judging. Breaking into the next generation standard, [i]MOHPA[/i] has done an incredible job by adding more life and body to the [i]MOH[/i] series. This is definitely a must game for you WWII shooter fans. With great gameplay, historical accuracy, great graphics and sound, this game is a keeper. For history buffs, the director’s edition will have more historical content and extra features.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/aquawords/cover.jpg[/floatleft]One word can describe this word puzzle game to anyone who asks – addicting. I lost about three hours of my life in one sitting thanks to the giant water blob man (you’ll see him if you play). That is what makes or breaks a downloadable puzzle game; the addiction factor, not the blob man.
Aqua Words is a word puzzle game put out by Realore Studios. The object of the game is to form words using the letters provided to you in water bubbles, hence aqua words. The letters have to be in bubbles that are touching each other. You can go left to right, right to left, up and down, in a circle, in an inch worm fashion all across the screen. As long as the bubbles touch and it forms a word, it works. The game consists of three modes to play under; time mode, arcade mode, and strategy mode. In time mode you obviously play against the clock forming words before your time runs out. In arcade mode, you play as more letter bubbles drop. You play until, like Tetris the bubbles touch the top of the screen. In strategy mode, you have to carefully choose your words so that certain bubbles (marked by a different color) don’t fall off screen.
The scoring is the same in all three modes. Each word is worth a certain number of points. The longer the word, the more points it is worth. You can use a word as many times as you can find it in the puzzle which is nice. Although, I kept finding the word sin…I wonder if the water blob man is trying to tell me something… Another little trick I noticed is that you can add the letter ‘s’ to a word and make it worth more points. Why just form the word cat when you can make it plural??? Once you get to a certain score you level up and the board resets itself. The levels obviously get trickier to maneuver with the addition of the ‘Qu’ and ‘x’ bubbles. In the time mode, time runs out quicker and in the arcade mode the bubbles drop with more frequency. I also noticed there were fewer vowels present in the higher levels.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/aquawords/ss03_thumb.jpg[/floatleft]There is truly only one “bad” thing I have to say about the game and it is this – there were no freaking directions. I mean, not that it was all that difficult to figure out, but still a little help would have been nice.
If you are looking for something to do at the office when things are slow or just love word puzzle games then I would suggest giving Aqua Words a try. Visit www.realore.com to find it. You can download the free demo version or pay $19.95 for the full version. You may be asking me “Dots, is it worth the $19.95 to play?” My answer is this: if you a true word puzzle fan and will actually play it then yes. If you are looking for an hour of love it then leave it, one night stand, word making fun, then don’t. The nice thing is that they offer a demo for people like you.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/doom3/cover.jpg[/floatleft]Doom 3, being one of the most anticipated PC games of all time, has a lot to live up to. After five years of development, Id has made one of the most gorgeous looking games I’ve ever seen. I can easily say that it has the best graphics out of any video game period. Id of course, has also decided to give the game a spooky atmosphere, and has thrown in a story as well.
In the graphics category, Doom 3 kicks ass. I’d like to start off with congratulating the animators at Id that worked on Doom 3, because the animation is unmatched. The movement of every creature in the game is damn near perfect. Some will crawl out from vents, some will jump at you from an opening door, and some will slowly walk towards you in the most sinister way possible. Everything has a realistic look to it that makes it genuinely scary as hell. The lip syncing is well done, and pretty convincing, as well as the darting eyes and stretching flesh on any creature. The lighting is what makes the game though. The whole visit to Mars City, you’ll encounter rooms with no lights, flickering lights, or red lighted smoke coming from the pits of Hell. The lighting is all real-time and you’ll find yourself staring at a shadow on the floor not quite sure if its owner is a zombie right around a corner or a zombie shaped box right around the corner. Eyes glow in the dark, mirrors reveal things lurking up behind you, sparks bounce along the floor, and railings bend under the weight of a hulking demon. The artists involved in designing the Mars complexes are very good at their work. The whole ‘City’ is depressing, without color, and consists of pipes, grates, vents, and huge machines that power it. There are the textures and bumpmapping, which aren’t new in the gaming industry, but are damn near perfected in this game. Everything lights up realistically with the flashlight, including the pale faces of zombies that want to rip your face off and use your blood as syrup for their zombie pancakes. One feature in the graphics section that I thought was really cool was the computer screens. When you walk near a screen that is usable, your gun lowers and your crosshair turns into mouse cursor, and you can interact with the screen. In the manual, it has little facts. One of these facts is that there are over 500,000 lines of script code written just for these little computer screens and over 25,000 image files generated for them too. That’s an example of the level of detail in this game.
[floatright]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/doom3/07_thumb.jpg[/floatright]The storyline in Doom 3 is quite simple. All Hell breaks loose. You are a marine in a high security complex on Mars. The complex does secret research in power and weapons, but there is one division that works on something entirely different. The calm before the storm is played out beautifully. You walk into this god forsaken complex and go find your station to suit up ala Half-life. Then you go on your mission to find someone and babam! All hell breaks loose. Any explanation as to why or how it happens I won’t say but its hella cool. There is also a great build up to this point. I found myself jumping like the wussy little Canadian I am at a sound in some garage before anything bad had even happened. You use a PDA to listen to audio logs from workers in the complex and you hear about strange things happening and whispers people hear. Eventually you’re just waiting for a zombie to pop out and eat your brains.
The gameplay in Doom 3 is a cross between a shooter and a survival horror game. You’ll be scared witless just moving from room to room. Let me warn you; this game is scary, it’s dark, it’s twisted. You’ll find decapitated bodies on the ground, armless, legless and headless corpses in bathrooms, and living organisms growing on the wall. Things jump out of nowhere, and bodies swing down from the ceiling. I even found myself shooting corpses in the head, like in Night of the Living Dead, just to make sure they didn’t get back up. Part of what makes it so scary is the flashlight. Those clever bastards at Id decided that you couldn’t fire a gun and use the flashlight at the same time, so you find yourself scanning an area with your flashlight, finding a zombie, then turning it out to shoot damn near blindly in the dark. Some people may have a problem with this, but I have no idea why, because it’s an essential part of the gameplay and it really helps make it as scary as it is.
The actual shooting and gameplay is quite fun, though simple. Technically all you’re doing is running from room to room, shooting things, but it’s done in such a scary and immersive way that you don’t often care. What sets it away from other shooters is that you aren’t fighting hordes of enemies. More often than not you’re fighting one or two at one time, right after they lunge at you from some dark corner of course. The weapons are pretty simple, except for the soul cube, which is a cube, but not any ordinary cube. This cube charges up with five kills by the player and unleashes an attack that instantly kills any demon.
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/doom3/11_thumb.jpg[/floatleft]The simple gameplay doesn’t really get dull, because you’ll start getting real pumped up from the action and find yourself saying things like “Don’t lose your head” after decapitating a zombie. Then you will encounter a well lit and empty room and have the lights turn out and have flaming skulls fly at you, or you’ll have to run across a Mars landscape before your oxygen runs out. You may even have to follow a little sentry robot that helps defend you with a mounted machine gun. The A.I. is good on the marine zombies as they take cover and shoot from behind crates etc. On the other hand, the demons are very simple minded and just tend to charge at you. This isn’t exactly a problem as that’s what makes most of the game scary as hell.
The multiplayer is pretty weak in Doom 3 as it’s just simple deathmatch originally made for 1-4 players. People have figured out how to make it work for games with up to 16 players. Given the following of the Doom series, there are sure to be mods for it come out in the near future (Hopefully a co-op mode, because that would kick ass), but right now Doom 3 is pretty much a single player shooter for now. (And a helluva crazy kick ass one too)
So all in all, Doom 3 is a graphical monster with its insane realism and style. On the storyline side, it’s not original, but it’s totally awesome and very well done. The gameplay in Doom 3 is extremely fun and extremely piss-your-pants scary. Yes, Doom 3 was sure as hell worth the wait and the only real negatives I can think up are that it’s very demanding on your system and that has a weak multiplayer. So go get your copy of Doom 3 and prepare to get the shit scared outta you.
[i]Screenshots may have been brightened significantly from their original version because they were far too dark to see any detail.[/i]
[floatleft]http://www.snackbar-games.com/images/reviews/jointops/cover.jpg[/floatleft]EA owns the world of multiplayer FPS with its Battlefield franchise. Although something is missing for the gamer that craves a more tactical approach to the ensuing chaos of war. With Joint Operations the gamer is dropped into a battle with a multitude of gamers much like Battlefield, but unlike Battlefield the multiplayer is massive, as in 150 people massive. The maps span 50 kilometers of vast jungle environments. In essence this game is huge.
Playing online much like most PC games puts you at the whim of most PC gamers, however since the objective of the games is to take points, spawn camping then really becomes the whole point of online play. So feel free to lodge in an area and snipe away when the opposition pops up till that point belongs to your team.
Teams are broken up into Indonesian militia and the Joint Operations of various countries. To say the least both teams have great looking skins to choose from. If you are familiar with the class lists in Battlefield then Joint Operations has more of the same, each class bringing a set of weapons and skills. Unlike Battlefield however, medic classes can revive fallen soldiers making them a must have for any squad.
Games are better served when playing co-operative missions as opposed to the endless battle of point taking against a massive army. One person can not really make a difference minus kill a few soldiers from point A to point B. Co-operative missions pit a strike team vs. the computer Indonesian militia with objectives from secure and protect to seek and destroy. A team leader can set way points and go commands for maximum squad support. When this game is played as a cohesive unit, shines of what Ghost Recon should have been come to mind. Unfortunately the maps are the same again and again, and the A.I. of the militia varies sometimes leading to the enemy running right in front of you in panic never noticing your presence.
Since the game maps are massive, vehicles are positioned to take you from one way point to the next in a hurry. The vehicles control wonderfully, even the helicopters are easy to use to ensure you and the whole squad do not get wiped out because the pilot cannot fly. Boats, ATVs, choppers and various transport vehicles are all fun to use and control.
The game looks great, character models leave little to complain about, and sound of bullets flying by your heads really bring you into the battle. This game is very fun, although for a limited time once you play the co-operative missions over and over. The major online games are almost too big, and you can do little to sway the battle with that many people playing. King of the hill and of course death matches but are much of the same old multiplayer clichA
