Mini-Reviews...

[faet]

H&D2 is a FPS or 3rd person war game. You’re a recruit for the British SAS. The game is very realistic and rather challenging. You are briefed then get to pick out your weapons/ammo for the mission. It has many game types Solo. Which is just one character in 1st person or 3rd person view. It took a while to tweak and re-tweak the controls. The other mode is campaign. Where you have a group of people and control there movement in a similar fashion to Rainbow Six (squad based tactical) type games. After you beat a few campaign missions you can chose to play them with out a party. And another mode lets you explore more in the campaign level. The graphics are very well done. And the characters you choose from are balanced. Even though you are aiming, the actual accuracy is controlled by your characters accuracy percentage. So if you want better accuracy you might have to sacrifice skills in lock picking or healing (healing yourself on the battle field is unique and pretty cool). You choose from about 25 characters. You don’t get to pick the skill points yourself. The AI is very well done. In the first solo mission you have to meet with a guide. As I first passed a shack the 2 guards inside came rushing out because they heard my footsteps. Damage is realistic too. From a distance with a pistol you take fairly little. But up close with a getting shot with a Thompson takes almost half your health. A lot of the objects in the game are interactive. I think every fence can be cut (if you remember your wire cutters). One downside is the speed. You can jog for about 30seconds or run for about 4 seconds. But I guess with 6 clips of colt ammo, a colt, Springfield with 6clips, 2 health kits, binoculars, a camera, and some 'nades you'd get tired fast too. I've not been able to set play multiplayer yet. But overall if you’re into realistic war type games; try the demo. http://www.gamershell.com/download_5073.shtml


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[Livinginpain]

Zero Wing

"We get message... All your base are belong to us....Somebody set us up the bomb!!!" is it really necessary for a review?

[TexasGtar]

My three favorite computer games of all time are UT1999 (duh)

Alpha Centauri by sid Meiers- Basically you and six other factions land on a planet and each faction builds a world and trys to defend it against the other six factions by either creating allies or sheer firepower and by improving the area around your citys and designing and improving weapons and defense on land air and sea. There are sooooo many variable to tweak you can play over and over and it is way addicting.Watch out for the indiginious lifeforrm.(The mind boil worms)Try to ascend into the new human form. There are so many similarities to what we are developing now in our real world it is even a little educational. Super string theories/superconductors/mind-machine interface. Anyway I really enjoyed it.


and StarFlight-This game is so old I even have a copy of it on one of them (actually 4)gigantic floppys. Remember those???? They were really floppy too.

Anyway . You start out with just enough money to buy a cruddy spaceship and train slightly a navigator and a you can leave spaceport and start to explore the galaxy. There are about 800 stars with differing numbers of planets with or without moons to explore. Gain money by raping these worlds of their precious metals and if you are lucky enough to find one with life forms..Capture them for sale back at space dock...if you can. More money means a bigger ship, bigger cargo holds, and a better trained crew. Continue to explore and recieve news about strange happenings in certain quadrants of the galaxy. Investigate if you dare.

Eventually you will discover several lifeforms capable of space travel each with their own language and their own attitudes.. Hope you trained your communications officer well or you won't understand a word. Try to make friends or run away. Eventually you will discover there is a plot as it is slowly unfolded and it is of course up to you to save the galaxy.
I really enjoyed the landing on the different planets and taking out the rover to collect minerals or lifeforms. Scanning the planets for stuff and checking to make sure the gravity wouldn't crush you or the weather wouldn't kill you after 5 seconds on the surface. The most fun was talking to the aliens. They were so well done with their own attitudes. If they liked you and you collected a species they really liked ...you could really clean up financially but you had to bargain with them and sometimes you would go to far. Trying to cut this short....Basically it is a trading game where the better your trade routes are the faster you can gain wealth. Ton and Tons to explore and took a long time to get to the interesting ending. I really enjoyed it.

[BIG-MICK]

The chronicles of riddick developer's cut for pc


only two things to say!

IT'S FRIGGING AWESOME

And buy this sucker NOW!

[Superchaz]

Go here for my review of Star Wars: Battlefront. Its truly one of the best 1st person shooters ive ever played, and prolly one of the best star wars games ever, next to star wars: knights of the old republic.

LINK:
http://www.unrealplayground.com/foru...ad.php?t=29230

[overrandom]

CRIMSON SKIES
High Road To Revenge
XBOX

(I don't think this is quite new, but I just got it and hey, its a pretty cool game)
A superb sequal to a game I almost completely forgot about it.

I'll just use the first level (and cinematic) as a basis.

Graphics
At the very beginning of the campaign, there is a intro cinematic. Here is where you first see how cool these movies will be (assuming you might have skipped the game intro).
You hop in your plane and go to catch this bad guy.
Your interface is quite simple. Off the top of my head, all you need is the little status box on the top left of the screen (Boost power on the bottom, missles in the middle and health on the top).
When you learn how to boost, you'll see a nice heat effect on the back of your plane (it distorts the back of your plane, kind of like looking right above fire).
There is fire when you get hit alot, looks nice.
The main problem with plane damage is...no matter how many times you smash your wing onto a rock, you can still fly, but with the other stuff and XBox live, you won't really care about smashing your beautiful wing off.

Here is the best part of Crimson Skies.

Game Play
On the first level, you learn how to manuever your plane and shoot to make sure "your weapons aren't jammed".
Then "to make sure your flaps aren't jammed", you do a very cool manuevere. I don't remember the name of it, but its very clever how you do it.

To perform a manuvere, you simply tap the right stick button, and move the two sticks in different directions. For example, pushing up on the left and down on the right makes you do a U-turn (the manuevere you first learn, but this is not the right name). Theres quite a few manuevers. Some of them are Barrell Roll, Some spinning thing, Fake stall, an upside down uturn, and some more. These help you to dodge those very mean bullets flying at you.

The one thing I noticed is I didn't seem to follow the story.
Either it not a flowing story or I just wasn't listening because of the cool graphics.
I saw jumping around, like for some reason we are looking for some titanium mine, then you go to some indian like territory, then your in chicago. Then from there you know what you're doing (you're like, just over half of the game)



Since I just randomly posted here, I didn't really score this, sooo

In conclusion, if you like air battling with nice gameplay features and good graphics, then this game is for you.
However, if you're in a place where XBox Live is not available, you'll probably get this, beat it (and then understand it), maybe system link or split screen...then you may be done. But this game is a very good game on XBox live (says the front of the box...)

Try this.

[n3m35i5]

hmm... i'll do halo 1. why? cause im lazy, that's why!

good stuff:
great graphics. not gourgeous, but i challenge anyone to have a problem with them

awsome gameplay!!! the campain gets old the third or fourth time around, but multiplayer keeps it going for a loooooooooong time. get it for the PC, bacause then you A get multiplayer, as halo 1 isn't on XB live, and B you get two new weapons, two new vehicles (okay, okay, so the banshee isn't really new) and four or six, i forget, new maps.
bad stuff:

very few admin perks. a special edition must be downloaded for a dedicated server, which has goodies such as banning and map rotation, which you should have anyway.

no cooperative in SP for the PC!!! this is a dealbreaker for many joint XBox/PC users.

anyway, the good far outways the bad, but halo 2 came out, so i guess you all missed the bus... damn microsoft. there is no halo 2 for the PC. i smell evil.

[overrandom]

No official game has Co-operative story mode on the PC.
Why? The answer is simple...you really don't wanna melt your processor. Or if you're playing Online, the game would get horribly off-sync. You would notice these things with UnrealED, I think. Thats why you don't have static mesh emitters like planes in UT maps because the two computers could have something completely different. Right now, UT and UT2004 Assault is as close to SP Co-Op on PC you can get.

[n3m35i5]

Originally Posted by overrandom

No official game has Co-operative story mode on the PC.
Why? The answer is simple...you really don't wanna melt your processor. Or if you're playing Online, the game would get horribly off-sync. You would notice these things with UnrealED, I think. Thats why you don't have static mesh emitters like planes in UT maps because the two computers could have something completely different. Right now, UT and UT2004 Assault is as close to SP Co-Op on PC you can get.

i have practically no knowledge of what you are talking about, but i get the part about the proccessor. thanks for the explanation

[Dorkorama]

DooM had SP Co-op, though it was one person per computer and finding a server was up to you. (No central / master server.) Newer versions of the engine for various operating systems support same-system (i.e. split-screen) multiplayer modes.

Serious Sam is the only PC game I know that does it all. Competitve and co-op, both online and offline, and even supports multiple mice and keyboards. Unfortunately, it does get a bit old, after a while, as there is no easy way to create a new campaign, never mind host it.

[Superchaz]

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004

Good game. If you actually like to fly, and not just crash into stuff, and kill stuff, you should enjoy this a lot. The planes and jets are incredibly real. They put a lot of effort into the detail of the environment as well.

There is over 11,000 airports to take off from. From Antarctica to Norway, you name it, it has it.

If you get bored of the planes, then download new ones online! OR, if you really feel like trying out something nuts, try the helicopters.

Another thing, weather. You can do so much with the weather its not even funny. Anything from a little bit of fluffy snow, to a hurricane, you name it. And lemme tell ya, taking off in a hurricane in a jumbo jet is pretty nuts. You can fly above the clouds, etc. OR, you can use realistic weather. There is an option to link up to a program that keeps tabs on the current weather world-wide. Sooo, say its a semi-cloudy, warm day at 3:00pm in tokyo, you'll know it if you fly there. Even though the weather is delayed from 5-15 minutes, its pretty much the same weather. Overall, the weather is one of the most impressive things in this game.

When you put it on realistic mode.... Trust me, its HARD to fly. Try flying and perfectly landing a jumbo jet.. It aint easy.

Lastly, the views rule. There are a few views. One where youre looking straight forward. One where you are in the cockpit and can look around, and hit the buttons and levers you need. And one that resembles a chase view, where you can pivot the camera around your aircraft.

I made the settings semi realistic and tried making a flight from Chicago to NYC, but lemme tell ya, its the hardest thing you'll ever do.

If you like flying, buy this, .. You'll enjoy it. =)

Picture: A shot of an oil rig from the inside of a helicopter. Pretty neat, huh?

[MortalPlague]

Originally Posted by BIG-MICK

The chronicles of riddick developer's cut for pc

Phenomenal game. Great gameplay, excellent graphics, and some very well done animation and voices. I haven't seen a better melee combat system in a first person game before. Not only that, but it's cheap nowadays, so it shouldn't cost you more than $40... and that's in Canadian!

Check out these screenshots...

[Superchaz]

Following up my review of Star Wars: Battlefront, here is a picture of me as a clone trooper storming a frozen harbor loaded with trade federation droids!

Texture detail is set to high, the LOD distance and view distance are at 50%, and this is what it looks like.

Personally, i think SW:B is one of the most un-sung games of 2004. Such a good game, yet nobody plays it. =(

If you like Battlefield 1942, and like star wars, .... get this!

[freshie]

Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich

You have the option of leading up to four polygonally assembled objects (PAO) around a map. You pummel things with one of their attacks, until thing's health bar goes to zero. Then you move on to find another thing. If one of your PAO's get it's health bar to low, you keep them in the back for awhile, until you can find some object that will increase their health bar.

Every so often, some super-cheesy voice-over, will pop in with a new objective: usually some other point on the map you have to go to, but sometimes some super object you need to pummel. When you are done with the map, a new screen will pop up, and you'll get to increase your character's powers, or select new ones.

The best part of this game, is that a new random, colorfully titled PAO, will show up, and the game will play this really cheesy origin story movie about them. That's great stuff.

The rest of it is rather... meh.

[overrandom]

Act Of War : Direct Action
Slightly New RTS for the PC

Quick Pros and Cons

PROS
Superior Multiplayer Action
Great Graphics
Intresting way of getting resources


CONS
Single Player is a "don't bother" (forgettable maybe)
Very VERY few places online to play (no official dedicated servers)
Inserting the CD immediatly starts Act Of War.
Heavily optimized for ATi

I find Act Of War to be my main RTS now, but thats mainly because I don't play Single Player on a lot of games.

Lets start up Act Of War. First thing you realize is "Hey! This game is optimized for ATi" since the 2nd movie intro is an ATi logo.
The menu is just normal with an ongoing movie in the background.

Most people wanna go and start up the Campaign. *Sigh* Allriiight.
The very first thing you do is...you're in a desert and you control Task Force Talon (yeah thats the name of the team also). You have to capture some terrorist guy. Its an extremely short level and not that much to it. Just run in kill a few people then get the terrorist. Mission over.
Next, there is some meeting, but theres also many people swarming on the roads with signs, and this happens to be your droppoint for this mission. Here its a bit interesting. You have to push through them and just get to the waypoint. Then you keep going till you get to the defend spot, where the meeting is. Then ofcourse you'd say "Oh my god. Obvious now whats going to happen". For a very VERY strange reason, this mission OUT OF NO WHERE (not really) becomes extremely obvious. Yes. Terrorists. I stopped playing after the third mission.
Yeah, Single player is ho-hum.

But wait! Don't hit quit yet. Why, you haven't even tried "Engagement"!
Engagement is Act Of War's "Instant Action".
We begin by the classic select your side, map, team, color, creed, brocolie (actually I'm getting carried away).
Click LAUNCH, man!
It seems like a normal RTS. we collect oil we have a nice constructor there.

No no wait, you're going for the exit button, stop!

Lets make some troops and put 'em on the roof and in a few other buildings!

Make troops! lets pile em into this building. Act of War is mainly urban so there are so many ambush points! put some Ak-74 guys into the buildings but give 'em better protection at the next intersection by putting some rocket launcher people onto the roof!

In other kinds of RTS, you upgrade your headquaters. If your U.S., you go to Defcon 3, 2, or 1...Consortium (terrorist) go from Hidden to Revealed...and Task Force Talon goes from default to S.H.I.E.L.D. and to Drone.

You like that don't cha, really nice ambush spots. If theres bushs, tell your troops to go into that bush and hide using the "ambush" command.

Allright. LETS GET RESOURCE!

Of course the classic oil is there, but you have 3 others

You soon find (if the selected map has it) a civilian bank. Acts like that same buildng you put your AK-74s into, but you're also doing a credit transfer. Yeah, while you have your units in that building, you get the bank money. Very VERY fun to defend, since theres money involved.

Lets say your enemy DOES attack that bank with you in it. Lets hurt 'em, but for a ogod reason, dont kill em.
Good, you shot em. But wait someone is kneeling on the ground with very low health. Yep you guessed it. Bring you main infantry and lock him up! Now you get $50 every second ( i think) for that prisoner. You can have 10 prisoners per field prison camp.

What about that helicopter you sent in? Was it shot down. Hey my pilot is still alive! Alright then! Bring him back to your headquaters and get around $200, just once.

One of your soldiers is hurt very badly eh? Well! Your hostpital (or prison camp) has a Medevac vehicle! GET THAT VEHICLE OVER THERE! Bring your wounded back and get another $200, just once.

There you've gotton $450 from that fight and you're still collecting from the bank and oil.

Phew. This gameplay is done in Engagement or Online. Online can get more fun. Capture a guys infantry but make a deal. You can make a trade, reveal a spot on the map and you give back the infantry. I dont know if the enemy gets any special deals, but you also loose your ability to get POW money.

Allright, there is my AoW mini review (not really mini)

Its worth ya money, just becareful to nVidias. I played this on a friends nVidia machine with 256 Mb and it was much slower than on another ATi computer.

Good game, trust me.