Peggle

Let me start by saying that lately, I haven’t exactly been in a “let’s play video games!” mood. No sir.

I noticed this a while ago, and attempted to rekindle my love of gaming with something casual. Something small and addictive, that I was recommended to by the Internet. That game was Peggle.

Damn, it’s good.

Not only will it keep you playing for hours (roughly 1-2 a day, before it got boring for the day, in my case), but it looks and feels smooth, and it’s actually quite intricate. Decimal-point differences in shots can make or break your chances of winning.

Unreal Tournament 3

Unreal Tournament is a great series, and surprisingly, the games did not suffer drastically when sequels were made. The best ones are the first and last, last being UT3. The game’s story is actually different from the other ones, but not by much. In UT3, you are hired into service by a large military company, headed by none other than Malcolm. You have to do a variety of missions for the company, in order to get more important missions, so you can eventually take out the monsters that destroyed your town. It’s basically the same ladder climbing system, but with a different reason.

The gameplay is phenomenal, and is great for lengthy play and quick gore-fests alike. You can turn down the gore, but why would you want to? To me, there nothing better than seeing your foe’s brains splattered all over the screen by an impact hammer. Anyway, there are 3 different mode to choose from: campaign, quick play, and multiplayer. Campaign is what I previously described in the plot section. Quick play lets you choose between a bunch of different modes, all of which are ridiculously fun. Deathmatch is your basic blow the hell out of everyone, UT killfest I’ve come to expect. Capture the flag is just capture the flag. Grab the flag, bring it back to your base. Team deathmatch is just the same as deathmatch, but with teams. Vehicle capture the flag is one of the three new modes in the game, and lets you control tons of cool vehicle, from tripods to tanks, in order to get the other team’s flag. In this mode, I have to assume the flag is made of diamonds, seeing as you die a lot for one flag.

Warfare is the best new mode, and lasts longest. You can use vehicles, your hoverboard, or just walk in order to blow up the enemies “nodes”, which are like the shield generator on Endor. They protect the “death star” as I call it. Its actually a spherical generator. Blow it up, you win. Finally, there’s duel. You just have to kill one other guy, and he switches out with another guy, and whoever has the highest score wins.

Guitar Hero (series)

My cohort doesn’t exactly have the highest opinion of Guitar Hero. So, in order to give you another viewpoint, I will provide my own opinion of the series.

With the exclusion of the expansion pack, Rock the 80s, I have played every Guitar Hero game. I can play Easy, Medium, Hard, and I can attempt Expert. I’ve put in around 12 hours, which is very decent for someone who doesn’t own any of them. I feel that even with my relatively minor amount of time put into playing it, I can provide a good summary of the game.

In Guitar Hero, you play the part of one of around eight characters who attempt to become a rock star. They do this by playing guitar in a supposed band, although you don’t get to play any other instrument (excluding instruments similar to the guitar, such as bass).

As the story continues, you play song after song, each one getting progressively harder. At the end, supposedly you get the whole shebang-booze, chicks, and drugs.

How do you play a song, anyhow? Each game is packaged with a guitar peripheral for the console you buy it for. It’s plastic and small, but it gets the job done. The peripheral has five coloured buttons at the top of the “neck”. There’s also a “strum” button you push up or down. On-screen, circles of colours fly down the “road”, and you press the coloured button it correlates to and press the strum button at the same time it flies over a part of the screen.

Guitar Hero (series)

Guitar Hero is basically worshipped by most people, and has five or so games in the series. I have played 2 and 3, desperately trying to like these games, seeing as everyone bows down before it and sacrifices baby lambs in its name. I figured it had to be good. I was dead wrong. I can probably tell you the entirety of the game in one sentence. Let me try. In Guitar Hero, you have to press colourful buttons, and strum on a toggle thing at the bottom of the guitar, and time your strumming to the notes on-screen. See? I told you. Anyway, onto why Guitar Hero is so bad.

Apart from the fact that it is sickeningly simple, especially for a console game, it has almost no difference between the games. The only thing I saw added between games were new songs, and different characters. The object of the career mode is exactly the same. The controls are exactly the same. The games shouldn’t even be separated by numbers! They should just be expansion packs, with different songs! There are only two things ever done to make the game any different. In Guitar Hero 3, boss battles were added, where you play guitar, and somehow develop magical abilities to break parts of the other guy’s equipment by playing a certain note. The other new thing is the fact that you can use different instruments, such as drums, with the newest game, Rock Band.

Portal

 

 

Spoiler Warning! Don’t keep reading unless you want the game spoiled for you.

I wanted to do a review of a bad game today, but I couldn’t get Portal out of my head, because I replayed it recently. So, here’s my review of Portal.Many, many people love Portal, and I am one of them. I bought it the day after The Orange Box came out, because Gio wouldn’t shut up about it. I had previously planned to go to Gio’s house, but was a little late because I had gotten The Orange Box. I got to his house, and installed it on my laptop. I decided to play Team Fortress 2 first, but that’s not what I’m reviewing. When I finished that, I began my wonderful adventure with Portal.

When I started, I instantly knew that the antagonist would be GLaDoS. I could just feel the evil coming off her.

Anyway, I proceeded to play the game, and found it to be very entertaining, if a little easy at first. It got harder. Eventually, I got stuck on a level which included making a laser ball hit a catcher thing. I didn’t give up, seeing as it was just too fun. I eventually got it by moving one of the portals slightly to the left. I went on with the game, through crazy jumps, pools of greenish goop, and creepy turrets who kept asking, “Are you still there?” in a childish voice.