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Mass Effect 2 is here…

Cosmo — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:25:50 +0000

And as usual, we’re treated with Bioware RPG goodness. I don’t really have enough time these days to play as much as i’d want, but i think i can definitely spare a few nights for ME2. The first thing you see about it is that it went a lot more action and a bit less RPG…I’m not talking about dialogue or choices, but about the removal of the inventory system and upgrades per se as we were treated to in ME1. While i do agree it’s a nice change from micromanaging the inventory, i think it went a bit too far. You can still upgrade weapons, in a permanent-stat-boost kinda way, and you do have a bit different armor pieces to choose from now, but still. Another small nitpick, is the fact that you can customize your look now. I thought this was a pretty nice feature but they mucked it up a bit later on when you actually find armor pieces upgrades that you actually have to have on you. So now my Neon Saida is wearing some ugly funky “10% more damage from headshots” headset and some nasty-ass leggings.

Another nice addition are the heavy weapons. They actually seem to fit as a “pull it out when you REALLY need it” kind of thing, since ammo is a bit scarce and upgrading them is expensive. As such, i use it only when i need it, which so far, was never, aside from the tutorial. I’m playing on Veteran and i can’t say i’m having too hard of a time with it. Hope it picks up more later on.

Also, in the vein of more action, we get reloads back, gave away the concept of overheating, and introduced ammo. Which.. i am not exactly that fond of. If you remove inventory clogging, why put in ammo clogging? I mean, if i use ammo from 3 guns, i have to pick up ammo from the group with each of the guns in my hand, to make the clip i pick up go into that gun’s reserve. A bit of a shot in the foot but i can live with that. (Ignore that, ammo is given to all weapons when you pick it up, which promotes using more then one gun).. though i do miss my limitless ammo.

One of the best features is the improved star map. You can now actually move around with your ship, scan planets, drop probes manually and so on and so forth. Mix this with a diversity of hacking minigames and you end up with a lot less ’same old same old’ that you got in the first game.

As for level designs, while unique so far.. so far.. i am baffled that i don’t have access to a map while in ‘dungeon’ areas. Just in towns. What? Why? Especially since you now have 2-3 doors to go through and you often end up backtracking simply because you went the ‘right’ way and you wanted to explore some more.

Wow.. i’m making this a review again.. anyhows, i’ll end it saying i like the dialogues, i like the animations, i like the way the story is played along, Collectors aside.. and i think this will be a fun weekend.

News Roundup 16/10/09 – Aliens vs. Predator trailer reveals … ALIENS!

Blog – So i’ve played quite a lot of Mechwarrior: Living Legends lately…

Cosmo — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:37:00 +0000

I’ll start this up by saying this, “MechWarrior: Living Legends is to the Mechwarrior franchise what Black Mesa Source is to Half Life.”

I don’t really know if this is nostalgia or actual fact, but i am having a blast in Living Legends. This is a game, since i think it would be a bit insulting calling it ‘just a mod’, that even though it’s in Beta, it has exceeded my expectations. I’m not talking content-wise, but about the core of the game. The words ‘heart of gold’ keep popping up in my head in relation to this. It’s clear the developers really put heart and soul into this experience and it shows. Leaving aside minor crashes, bugs and what have you, the amount of sheer awesome that i was exposed to in the game was world-shattering. It’s hard to explain, but everything just seems right. Everything is just done and feels so congruent that it’s hard to miss.

Given a few months down the pipe i’m sure this mod will be a beacon for all fellow Mechwarriors out there to gather around. Mechwarrior 5, the official game made by the initial developers of the Mechwarrior franchise, is still a ways off, and i’m sure it will be awesome on its own, but i’d love for them to peek inside Living Legends and if not correlate with the devs, or atleast ’steal’ a few ideas for the multiplayer component.

I’ll end this little praise-work here, but really, spread the word, this mod deserves it.

FlashNews – Mechwarrior: Living Legends Beta LAUNCHES!

Cosmo — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:29:33 +0000

After years in development, the Crysis mod that brings a new Mechwarrior game into fold of current-age gaming, Mechwarrior: Living Legends, launches. It’s a beta, but sweet holy mother of mech Jesus… This trailer video below made me giggle like a little girl. If you wanna jump right in, click here the torrent file for the beta.

Just epic.

Editorial – Top Ten PC Games of 2009

Cosmo — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:58:42 +0000

2009 was a full year, and we’ve had quite a few nice games. What gaming ‘blagh’ would this be without a top ten list of gaming’s brightest stars of 2009? So by popular demand, i present to you, “The List”. Keep in mind Cosmo’s Reviews is a PC-centric gaming site, and as such, this list will be just of games launched this year on PC.

#10 – F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origins

FEAR 2 was a game that we can call a true successor. It relied on the same tried and proven awesome scares that got our juiced pumping in the first FEAR and ofcourse the same level of slow-motion-bullet-spraying-headshot-making-kick-to-the-face action that we grew to love. Sadly the scares were a bit few and far between, and the cliffhanger was a major turnoff… literally. Still, compared to the rest of the games launched this year, it deserves tenth place.

#9 – Killling Floor

Killing Floor initially started as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, but quickly made its way full-sized and commercially available on Steam. Saying this is a mod is like saying Counter Strike is “just” a mod. Killing Floor is a game on its own, featuring great survival action and co-op gameplay that really focuses on being co-op and dynamic. Having to run half the map away to the next trader/safehouse while monsters are nabbing at your feet can be quite nerve-wracking. While a great achievement from a small team, it could use some polish and maybe some updated graphics to put the punch back in the game. Killing Floor receives a well-deserved ninth place.

#8 – Cryostasis

This is a title you might not have heard of. It’s a russian FPS featuring a very novelesque storyline that really rewards the player for thinking through it, and not just spraying bullets randomly. Most russian games have a unique strenght and crippling flaw.. they have great ideas but poor application of them. Oddly, Cryostasis pushes away the crippling flaw and delivers a very polished gameplay experience, with great visuals and an intriguing storyline to boot. Sadly, the story is so deep and complex, that it may be possible for you to finish the game and then wonder what the hell just happened since while it does a great job of telling the story, sometimes it just feels like it’s outside the player’s grasp. Eighth place goes to Cryostasis.

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Blog – Gems are hidden in the wierdest of places

Cosmo — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:45:53 +0000

A good story or a good atmosphere in a game can make up for a lot. Bugs, bad gameplay, bad design decisions and so on and so forth. You usually expect to find good stories in adventure games in role playing games… but today i’ve play a game, a tower defense game no less, which had me hooked for 9 hours straight. Not because of nice 2D graphics or entertaining gameplay, no my friends, but for the story. I present you, Immortal Defence. So what makes it so special?

As said, the game is a tower defense-game to the core. You have 100 levels in which you have to stop baddies from reaching the end by carefully placing towers or points as they are called in the game. The gameplay is entertaining enough, but we are here to talk about the real reason why this 40-something megabyte game managed to impress me.

When you enter the game and before each mission, you have a few rows of text with a character explaining why you are defending the path or maybe just offering insight. In Immortal Defence you play as a human that had his consciousness lifted from his body into Pathspace in order to defend his homeworld against a hostile race. Ships use these Paths in order to cross vast regions of space, ala hypderdrive/warpdrive/whatever. I liked it from the start that it gave me a good reason to play the game and put it into context.

Although it seems generic, it’s amazing what it manages to achieve later on. While in Pathspace, our hero is immortal and the game capitalizes on that in the telling of the story. I could go into detail, but i’ll probably spoil something.. I’ll limit myself to saying that the game manages to touch on some themes which are quite interesting.. the relation of an immortal being with mortals, whether human concepts actually matter if you were a ‘god’, the misconceptions of history, both as the victorious writing it and the natural degradation of information and so much more if you were actually looking for it. This is the kind of game that even the accidental last level that was a “test level” in the 1.0 version, that was not ment to be played, but came in after the last “official” level, managed to inspire some kind of meaning in the overall plot.

And this game is a tower defense game. Which has the story presented in a few rows of text before each mission. This is competing with the multimedia games nowadays utilizing millions of line of spoken text, gigantic cutscenes featuring full motion video and high definition media.

And it does a better job.

I find myself at a loss again, at how independent game makers manage to get such amazing quality in their games, and huge companies with millions of dollars in capital can’t pull out more then “aliens invade, big muscle hero kills them, optionally rescues female romantic-interest”.

I’m mindblown.

I really, really, really recommend you try out the game.. At the moment they have a “pay what you think it is worth” offer until January 1st and they accept Paypal, so you’d be a fool to pass it up. Just be sure to pay more then 0.31$ since that’s how much Paypal charges for donations. Initially i payed 1.31$. After i finished it, i threw another 15$ just out of respect for the developers. That’s how much i liked it.

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Blog – Champions Online trial is a demo of a trial.

Cosmo — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:40:17 +0000

So after browsing the Steam Store tonight, i saw a free trial for Champions Online. Not later then 10 minutes, i was already in the menu of the game. About four hours later, i logged out and was posting the fallowing on the official forums. Enough said, i was not impressed by the quality of the trial.

I’ve just alt-tabbed out of the game at level 6 and after the “buy the game” pop up when wanting to do Desert Crisis.

First off, Unlimited Free Trial is too much said. It’s not unlimited in any way, it’s not a trial (try-all), but yes, it is free.

I was in the game for 4 hours. 2 hours i made my awesome Bounty-Hunter-Former-Mercenary-Chick with cybernetic implants, the rest was the tutorial. Here are my impressions step by step.

Got in, set the settings a bit higher since i’m certain my rig can run it nicely, made char. Got ingame, tried to add a friend or whisper to a mate of mine which was doing the same thing. No chance, can’t do it on a trial account. I ‘wtf’d’ then moved on. After the first couple of seconds, i had to restart the game to lower the settings since it seemed i overestimated my rig. I can run Crysis at max highres, but unfortunetly CO is a tad more demanding, while offering a lot less in terms of graphical bonuses.

So i started shooting Qullar in the face a bit. Messy targetting, lag. Worked with it. Noticed my character was running.. oddly, tried to go to the coustome selector to change my stance, no go. Continued shooting Qullar in the face and doing missions. Not extremely challenging or hard. Level up, oh, powers trainer? Awesome, gonna wait for that. Oh travel powers? Awesomer, i wanna get some jetpack/jetboots action in here. Shoot more Qullar in the face.

Get to the Open Mission, have a bit of fun, got first, got bonuses. Nice. Still too many enemies, did not feel ‘epic’ enough. Moving on, get into the Champions Building. Got in, shot some bots in the face, moved on. Bossfight, killed, activated beacons. Ok, now can i get to a trainer? Please? Ok, get out, talk to one of the heroes, ok so i go to this Desert location and there i can find a trainer and start leveling up and stuff? AWESOME. Finally.

Click helicopter. Pop-up “Click here to buy the full game”.

I alt-tabed.

I’ve read this thread and i’ve seen my oppinions already stated but i have to underline. “What the hell is this?”
I mean i did not play anything in my “trial” that whould make me buy the game. Anything. And what use is level 15 if i can’t upgrade my powers/stats?

I mean, i thought they would atleast let us try out some powers or allow us to use our travel powers to atleast get a nice “WHEE” feeling that we might pay for to continue. But this? I’m sorry but pushing 2-2-2-1 is not fun, and if i were b it more less mmo-savvy, i’d think this is about all that there is to do in the game.

I’m sorry but the trial is not a trial, it’s a demo, there is a difference, and furthermore, the demo atleast has to make you want more, make you want for the fun to continue. I’m sorry but the “Buy the game” pop up left me utterly cold.

As in writing, the motto is “Show, Don’t Tell”. Don’t tell us that we’ll have awesome fun with the powers and enjoy the game AFTER we buy it, show us that it’s fun and we will consider it. As said, there was nothing, besides the character creator to make me wanna buy the game. The only real reason i might is to be able to play my awesome bounty-hunter chick more, but come on, i need more then that to spend my money on. If atleast i could have talked to my mate, and enjoy the limited trial together, we might have stuck for a month to alteast try it out more, but as it stands, i did not even have a chance to enjoy the game with him. To add to that the fact that the game looked a bit unpolished and unoptimized.. it feels like Cryptic really tries to not take my money.

TL; DR version: Trial did not show enough, i’m not gonna subscribe.

That was my experience. Don’t get me wrong, the game might be nice, but i won’t buy it on something that the demo/trial/whatever should have presented to me. Sure, i could estimate this as just ‘buying the game’ normally, but if i wasent so inclined when it launched, i won’t really do it now, and the trial did not help sway my oppinion.

Ah well.. there’s plenty of MMO’s in the sea.

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Blog – Yet another game i can’t review

Cosmo — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:23:00 +0000

As readers might know by now, i have a strict reviewing policy. One of the key points of that policy is that i never review games i don’t finish/complete. This doesn’t mean i don’t finish games that suck, and only review good games. This means that i don’t finish games that literally stop me from continuing or make me hate every moment i’m playing.

One of such games of late is Saboteur. Aside from titties and witty barely-irish commentary, the game is a trainwreck, and as far as i’ve seen the PC version is the king of trainwrecks. Incredibly bad graphics and control, bad animations, idiotic sequences and annoying as hell gameplay. This all sums up to a frustrating experience beyond belief. Usually when i meet one of these games i half-expect to have a level or a sequence somewhere that is impassable. And in that regard, Saboteur delivers whole-heartedly. I won’t go further then that, for spoiler’s sake, but the game literally put me in an impossible to pass situation.

As such, i decided to go “Hell no!” and just not continue tormenting myself. Stay away from Saboteur!

Blog – Been busy…

Cosmo — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:51:50 +0000

As you can see, the site is lacking regular updates, and reviews are coming up slowly aswell, both from my end and because of some technical problems on the site’s behalf. The Dragon Age review is written, a whole 4000 words, but as said, technical problems are preventing me from formatting and setting it up for your viewing pleasure. Not going to make any excuses, but i am going to rag on something atleast gaming related.

Been playing just a tad of King’s Bounty: Armored Princess lately, barely half-way into the game if that, but i’m a bit pissed at how hard the game is. It’s obvious they have learned from some techniques people have been exploiting in the original King’s Bounty, but as it stands, the first few parts of the game range from hard to impossibile. This effect is even greater when playing a mage, simply from the fact that armies are now a lot smaller, and you don’t have a +stats screen on level up, letting Intellect/leadership increase solely on what skills you put points in and items. Thus mages are severly gimped till late-game. Also, for harder difficulties, it’s become imperative that you kite/steal stuff you wouln’d have access to if played ‘normally’ just to be able to play without losses and as such, without loosing funds.

Still, with all that in mind, the game is still interesting, but the storyline is a lot worse then the original King’s Bounty. I won’t divulge too much, leaving that up to the actual review, but just saying that the only reason for me to keep trying to fight lethal/impossibile mobs is just to advance the playthrough, and that’s becoming not enough for me.

Blog – And so it ended…

Cosmo — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:43:41 +0000

After 115 hours of Dragon Age: Origins, i have finally finished it, and i have to say, this has got to be the best RPG i’ve seen in years. The finale also presents what became of your exploits, what happened to the people and what became of your actions, in still-shots reminiscent of Fallout. I really loved that they did that since in the end, it’s not just your story, it’s a wide-spanning legend, touching the lives of entire empires. Also, the fact that it ended and they closed up the knots means that if they make a sequel it will most likely only be referenced, the action happening on another land, and not a direct sequel. They did a lot of work on the game-world, and i’ll be happy to see a different side of it in a possibile Dragon Age 2.

Could the game have been improved in certain areas? Sure, but in the end, we all know we pick on the little things only when the game fails to be so good that it drowns out all the problems. Dragon Age: Origins, does a great job and is a great game. I have spoken!

Blog – I won’t argue about short games anymore…

Cosmo — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:39:25 +0000

So i’ve been playing a bit of Dragon Age: Origins lately. Ok, if we were to define “a bit” as 30 hours, then most likely i’ve been playing “a tad”. Now if “a tad” would be 50 hours, then i think i’ve played a tad and a half a bit. Yeah, been playing Dragon Age: Origins for about 68 hours now and i’m barely 30% in the main story, as the game quaintly says on my ‘Heroic Achievements’ page. Sweet Jesus, i don’t think i’ve played a game this long since Morrowind, and Morrowind was pretty much a summer affair of playing 24/7 for three months. Though, as Morrowind, i’m liking Dragon Age.

Quite a lot actually. Even though initially i was very put off by the ‘multi-party’ system, and a lot of flashbacks to Baldur’s Gate 2, i’ve managed to get a handle on it, and while initially the game was mindbendingly hard, seems i’ve now tamed the beast and find the battles to be between normal and challanging. While the game really does span a long way and has a lot to do in it, i would have appreciated if they would have split that over multiple areas, in a larger map. Initially when i saw the map i was already imagining going to the Free Marches or south in the Wildlands, and even beyond. Sadly, our adventures take place just in our little ’county’ of Ferelden (i hope i got that right, since i totally suck with remebering names).

I won’t say much here since i’ll prolly devolve and start making a review.. on a game i have not even finished. And that’d be unprofessional. :p The review will be up when it will be up, and as for the rest of the list.. The Void, Modern Warfare 2, Torchlight and all the other games that will come out between now and when i finish it, they will have to wait in line like good little games.

Anyhows, i got monsters to kill, loot to plunder and men to shag!

… Yes, i’m playing a female char.