At first, I was worried that it would end up a turkey. Nothing more than a graphical powerhouse and a showcase of technology. I did play the demo, it thoroughly impressed me with its technical accomplishment but the gameplay found in demo was only the tip of the iceberg. I wanted more.

And I got more. A whole lot more. Having completed the demo several times, including on Delta mode (hardest difficulty), I got cocky and thought that I could handle Hard mode throughout the game. Oh boy, I was in for bumpy ride. I got my ass kicked by Korean soldiers and some mean-looking aliens.

Sure you have the awesome Nanosuit which looks uber cool, lets you jump onto rooftops, gives you strength to punch jeeps away, lets you run faster than a speeding bullet (not really), allows you to cloak yourself and stalk people like the Predator and stops bullets with your chest. It sounds all cool. It IS cool.

But when you take into account that the Korean soldiers in the game seem to be able to absorb a few bullets too many before they would bite the dust and that they too have the Nanosuit (albeit the Petaling Street version), your own suit doesn’t seem so cool anymore. Powerful, but definitely not invincible, as I’ve been reminded so many times by the not-so-friendly soldiers. And tanks. And gunship helicopters. And screechy aliens. And freeze-ray-spouting flying-robotic-octopuses.

The flow of the game was amazing. I was constantly on the edge of my seat (sometimes out of frustration from dying too many times) and you just feel like going on and on to find out what’s going to happen next. Gameplay is based on quite standard mechanics but brilliantly executed. Not one scene or task felt repetitive and there’s always just enough of gunfights to keep things exciting, but not too many that it felt like Serious Sam. New weaponry are introduced at appropriate intervals to keep gun battles fresh with something new to try. Enemies are varied enough to not make you think that there’s a cloning farm somewhere.

The technical aspects of the game is nothing short of mind-blowing. That’s where Crysis got all the hype in the first place. Featuring the next-gen CryEngine2 which eats graphics cards and processors for breakfast, it produces almost photo-realistic graphics. If you have a machine Spartan enough to handle it, that is. To date, I suppose no practical consumer-level machines can handle it in its full glory. If you don’t have a garden, the jungle in Crysis is the next best thing you can have.

If you do, however, have a garden please go out and enjoy it once in a while. Catch some caterpillars or something.

All the technical excellence aside, I suppose the next best thing Crysis has to offer is its open-ended gameplay. Often, you’ll come across First-Person Shooters which would tell you precisely what to do, where to go, and how you going about doing it. In Crysis, the storyline remains linear, but the how you achieve the given objectives may vary greatly depending on how you prefer to do it. Asked to disable a GPS Jammer? You can either switch on your cloak mode and sneak into the enemy base, turn off the device, and sneak out. Not a single bullet fired – objective achieved. Or, you could go into with guns ablazing, mowing down everything you see, and then turn it off. Still all good. OR, you could just climb up a hill, hide in the bushes, and fire a laser-guided rocket at the device and be done with it. OR, you could switch to Speedy Gonzales mode, run into the base, hack the device, and run off leaving your enemies dumbfounded. Such a variety of ways to tackle a mission opens up for great replayability as sometimes you wouldn’t mind dying as you get to try different tactics the next time.

Overall, I’d say Crysis has met, and even exceeded all my expectations. A simply remarkable game which has definitely earned its place among the greatest games ever made.

Portal, is a puzzle game specially developed using the Source engine and was recently released as part of The Orange Box (no, I’m not kidding). I usually never bother with puzzle games because I suck at it they’re boring. Portal however, is great fun.

There’s pretty much no storyline in the game. You wake up in some science laboratory, some computer voice tells you what to do, and you run around doing it. The end. Conceptually, things can’t get any more boring. But here, each portion is executed brilliantly. The voice that tells you what to do is hilarious. It constantly lies to you. It does not hesitate to gleefully notify you that hazards in the lab can kill you. Then it taunts while completely making a fool out of itself. When I was trying to escape the lab, it said “Where are you going? You’re not even going the right way. You should have turned left” followed by a long pause, and then it timidly said “Hello?” I was laughing hard at that.

Basically the game involves you making portals. Going into portals. Coming out of portals. Going into more portals. Make even more portals. Yeah, that’s about it. Typically, the portals lets you do really funky stuff, like you know, you go into one portal one come out from the other. Like Stargate, only a lot smaller. And you can’t travel to other planets.

By now, you’d realise my review of this game is useless. I haven’t been saying anything that is worth a dime (that’s 35 sen). If you’d like to see real, professional reviews of this game, try www.gamespot.com or www.ign.com. If you’d like to read about more pointless things from someone who has a sense of humour as dry as the Strawberry Dessert Sahara Desert and makes as much sense as 15 monkeys bashing on a keyboard, try www.tzelun.com. You’ll be amazed.

P/S: I forgot to mention that Portal’s ending song might probably be the best ending song ever. Get it here and don’t miss out the lyrics.

Title: Still Alive
Artist: Ellen McLain
Composer: Jonathan Coulton

This was a triumph.
I’m making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there’s no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.
I’m not even angry.
I’m being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we’re out of beta.
We’re releasing on time.
So I’m GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive.
Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you’ll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE.
HAHA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great.
It’s so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking
when there’s Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I’m not you.
I’ve experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I’m doing Science and I’m still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I’m still alive.
While you’re dying I’ll be still alive.
And when you’re dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE

_{This picture is a very nice depiction of a proper African dance. I’m being too kind.}

I don’t care if they want to do some ritual dance or start hollering like baboons, but do it in the noon or evening, I don’t care. NOT THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING. Maybe they are part-time humans. Human by day, Neanderthal by night. Either way, they greatly lack what it takes to be civilised people. I’m tempted to buy them a “drink” sometimes. Yeah, a Molotov Cocktail.

Enough about that.

Anyway, my holidays have officially started and I’ve been doing nothing but wasting time with stupid stuff playing some Splinter Cell: Double Agent.

The moment I got into the game, I was given a mission in some icy place. And guess what?

_{Doesn’t he need swimming goggles or something? Won’t his eyeballs freeze??}

Enemy guards just looooove to stand at the part where the ice is the thinnest so you can very conveniently break the ice directly under them, pull them below into the icy water, and stab them in the chest. I suppose that’s meant to make Sam (no, not you Sam. Sam Fisher) look good. Because I must admit Sam did look good doing that. Though at the same time it made the enemy totally retarded. He’s got miles and miles of solid ice to stand on but he chose the thinnest part of all. He deserved to die. Hahahaha….

A little more into the game, there was another thing that was true to the Splinter Cell tradition. Enemies are totally oblivious to the 3 bright dots on the mighty high-tech 3-in-1 goggles that Sam always carry.

_{It’s green. It’s bright. Oh, it’s nothing.}

They’re also equally oblivious to the “Threat Indicator” Sam has on his back.

_{Sam feels very secure even with a bright glowing thingy on his back.}

But I must admit there were a few rather stylish parts in the game. Like when Sam was para-dropping into enemy territory. But then at the same time he wasn’t so cool-lah. His parachute got stuck =.=” And I was supposed to ‘help’ him deploy the chute.

_{Look ma! No chute!}

Overall, I think it’s a solid game. But laughable things happen. Enemies wouldn’t notice you even if you were right under their noses because it’s ‘dark enough’…. they like to stand on the thin ice… they like to stand beside the window so you can conveniently pull them down… Sam can withstand a blast of machinegun fire but the enemies will get knocked out with a single punch…

I haven’t been able to play much of it though. It makes me sick. Literally. I get nauseous if I play too long. That happens to me pretty often if the game was in a dark environment. And the constant spinning of the camera doesn’t help.

Gotta run off for badminton.

Dark Crusade

and

WebRatio

The long awaited expansion to the totally awesome Dawn of War RTS series is finally here. And it’s good. Reeeeeaaaal good. Good enough for me whine like a little kid when I got entirely annhilated by the computer AI. That’s when you get the funny feeling of embarassment and awe both at the same time.

Let me attempt to inject some sense of awe into you…

Ok.. I’m guessing that didn’t really work on you. If it didn’t, congrats! You’re not a geek.

If you’re starting to salivate over the pictures already, welcome aboard!

WebRatio on the other hand is pretty awe-inspiring too, but in a rather different manner. I could go on and on and on telling you about the awesomeness of it, but to sum it up – it’s the mother-of-all-imaginable-web-modelling-and-design-and-authoring-and-structuring-and creation-and-modelling-did-i-already-say-modelling-ultra-super-duper tool.

Yup, that’s about it. That wouldn’t make much sense to the general population (I doubt it will make any sense to geeks alike) but words don’t do justice to it.

You gotta feel it to believe it.