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Limbo

Ever wondered what it be like to go through purgatory? The developers at Playdead do a very impressive job at making an eerie black-and-white visual design of what purgatory may very well be like. You play as a young boy, and what a very courageous little boy he is. With absolutely no way to defend yourself within this dreamland-like world, you face many opponents that are there to kill you. With smarts and courage, that little boy can get away without one single scratch. You’ll face hostile natives, an assortment of traps and other deadly creatures.

The developers really suck you into this game. Between the gorgeous 2D side-scrolling black-and-white action, the sound effects, and an amazing sounding musical score, you just can’t put down the game. There are a lot of puzzles, which will also get you real involved in the game. Some puzzles are really simple, but then later in the game you’ll encounter harder and more complex puzzles. Some puzzles you can take your time on, but other are timed and everything must be done perfectly or you’ll have to face the consequences.

Limbo is a well-designed, visually astounding game with amazing sound and a down right impressive musical score. But sadly, however, as you get real into the game, it abruptly ends and all you can say is “I want more!” So hopefully the developers at Playdead hear our plea for another installment for this awesome and involving game.

Call of Duty Black Ops

Call of Duty is the largest and most well-known franchise in the gaming industry. There are a lot of expectations from this series, and Treyarch has once again met those expectations and brought us the new installment of the franchise – Black Ops. Call of Duty Black Ops delivers intense action, glorious visuals, impressive audio, and ingenious multiplayer. Similar to Modern Warfare 2, but with a little more modifications.

The storyline take place mostly during the 1960’s and takes you to Cold War hotspots such as Cuba, Russia, and Vietnam. The protagonist of Black Ops is an elite covert operative named Alex Mason. You start out the game in a room, and find yourself being interrogated. Mason doesn’t remember anything, and throughout the interrogation you play Mason’s memories. Each mission slowly comes together to build a momentum as each interrogation cutscene puts another piece of the puzzle together. The hazy edges of your consciousness conceal information that must eventually come to light, and the erratic visual effects and unnerving audio that encompasses your interrogations sometimes bleed into your mission memories, creating a great tone of uncertainty that plays out in astounding and substantial ways.

Black Ops covers a wide array of geographical landscapes and gameplay. A dramatic breakout from a brutal Soviet prison is one early highlight, and later missions feature frontline conflicts, urban firefights, and mountainous infiltrations. Environments are richly detailed, and though the campaign may have a few technical problems - such as the occasional problematic checkpoint or the odd teleporting ally – these moments aren’t likely to impede your amusement. In addition to the on-foot action, you do use a wide variety of vehicles to achieve success in your missions. Sometimes you’ll be in the gunner’s seat while other times you’ll be behind the wheel, and although the vehicle handling is discreet, the thrill of blowing stuff up and speeding through hostile territory is unquestionable. The core run-and-gun mechanics remains exciting as ever, and the gameplay variety throughout the campaign keeps the action moving at a great pace.

Although the campaign is a adrenaline-fueled good time, it’s not that long. The thing that will most likely keep you coming back to Black Ops for months to come is, predictably, the online competitive multiplayer. At its basic, this is the accustomed top-notch Call of Duty action that gamers have been appreciating for years. You gain experience for doing well in battle, and as you level up, you gain admittance to new and influential ways to customize your loadouts. New weapons and maps freshen things up, and one of the new killstreak awards is an explosive-laden remote-control car which is a pleasantly lethal device. The key new element to the multiplayer is currency. In addition to receiving experience for battlefield performance, you earn Call of Duty points, which can then be spent in a variety of ways. Most perks, weapon attachments, killstreaks, and equipment items are obtainable early on, providing you to bomb out the points to equip them. Customization selections like face paint, player card backgrounds, and the new create-your-own-icon tool are all accessed by spending points. Having the option to pay your way gives you more loadout options at lower required levels than previous Call of Duty games.

The Call of Duty points also permit two awesome new mechanics, the first is contracts. Like many multiplayer challenges that reward you with experience points for completing goals, which contracts you have to pay to complete them. If you do so within the prearranged time period, you receive an organized payout. If you pay 50 points for a contract and succeed in that contract, you’ll earn 11 points for all your trouble. If time expires before you complete that contract, you loose the points. The tougher the contract, the more it’ll cost, however, they have the larger payouts. You can have up to three contracts active at a time across three different categories – Mercenary Contracts, Operations Contracts, and Specialist Contracts. Contracts offer a nicely incentivized version of challenges and gives you something fun to attempt for if you ever get bored.

The other cool new mechanic is wager matches. In these matches, you pay an entrance fee of 10, 1,000, or 10,000 points, depending upon how much points you have, and then you get to play some of the most unique game modes that Black Ops has to offer. One mode gives you increasingly better weapons for each kill you tally, while another gives you a pistol with one bullet and only three lives to live. At the end of the match, the points is split proportionally among the top three finishers while everyone else comes away empty handed.

The rather popular four-player cooperative zombie-killing mode that was first debuted in Call of Duty World at War has returned. The fight to stay alive against wave after wave of zombies is still an intense and strange struggle, and new maps and playable characters take the eccentric humor of the situation to a whole new level. This mode supports four players online or two locally. Two local players can also play split-screen competitive multiplayer online, while four can divide the screen equally among them and set up competitive local matches.

Call of Duty Black Ops is an amazing game with new modes and mechanics that give a jolt of enthusiasm to the game. Though the campaign may be short, but the engrossing storyline gives this game the best thrill a gamer could ask for. Black Ops lives up to the top-notch lineage that the franchise has earned, giving gamers a tremendous new shooter to enjoy.

Happy New Year!

CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS (X360)

As you should probably know, I got Call of Duty Black Ops for Christmas. What an amazing game it is!!! Like always, it seems that Activision and Treyarch do an amazing job with the COD games. I haven't finished it yet, but close to finishing it. The graphics are amazing, the acting is good, the action is intense, the sound is brilliant. I will be hopefully getting back into my game review and preview writing soon. So in a couple days keep an eye out for my Call of Duty Black Ops game review. Hopefully I still got the skills!!

NEED FOR SPEED: HOT PURSUIT (PS3)

Another game I received on Christmas was the new Need for Speed game. EA finally brought back what made Need for Speed so great; the ability to play as the racer or the chaser. They are some really gorgeous cars within the game, like the Lamborghini Murcielago LP 650-4 or the Audi R8 Coupe 5.2 Quattro. In the game you have the option to select a specific car series; which there are 5 selections - Sports, Performance, Super, Exotic and Hyper. In sports you'll find cars like the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. In the performance, Ford Shelby GT500. In the Super, Dodge Viper SRT10. In the Exotic, Bentley Continental Supersports Convertable. I haven't unlocked the hyper series yet. But from what I have played, this game is an amazing racing game. EA has brought back the game that I absolutely loved as a kid with my PS1. This'll be another game that I hope to write a well lengthy review on. I hope to get this review up and posted within a couple weeks.

HALO REACH (X360)

NOBLE MAPS PACK ADD-ON

I recently downloaded the Noble Maps Pack add-on for the Halo Reach game. It has three gorgeous maps - Anchor 9, Tempest, Breakpoint. They are really good maps, well designed, and well met to hype I think. If you're a Halo fan, I suggest you use you 800 Microsoft points and get these maps!

DEAD SPACE 2 DEMO (X360)

I played the demo for Dead Space 2 on my Xbox360 and boy is it good!! The developers of Dead Space 2 wanted to make the game a bit more scarier than the previous game, and I believe they delivered. Instead of having necromorphs appearing everywhere to try to scare you, they have it set up that any random thing may happen. You could be walking down a hall and a pipe suddenly bursts or something falls from the ceiling. Also you discover that your character is going mad, so something might happen in which isn't really happening. There are new enemies like the puker, who vomets all sorts of nasty stuff in your face. There's also a huge new selection of weaponry. I can't remember them all, but they are good. Just from playing the demo, I feel that the gaming will go far for survival horror gamers! Dead Space 2 will be released in January 25, 2011 for PC, Xbox360 and PlayStation 3.

Vengeance is Mine - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit : Wreck a cop

Burnout - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit : Fill the Nitrous bar then use it all in one go without hitting anything

Eye on the Needle - Need for Speed Hot Pursuit : As a racer, drive through an undamaged Road Block without hitting it

Lord Nelson - Call of Duty Black Ops : Destroy all targets and structures while making your way up the river

In the Money - Call of Duty Black Ops : Finish 5 Wager Matches "in the money"

Up Close and Personal - Call of Duty Black Ops : Silently take out 3 VC

Principessa in Another Castello - Assassin's Creed Brotherhood : Complete DNA Sequence 4

Let me tell you a little about my formating. In "Gaming Reviews" section I will tell you a brief yet simple review on games that I recently played. In "Gaming Previews" I will inform you of demos or games that I have been researching on. The achievements and trophies section is all the achievements or trophies I have unlocked in a game. As you can see in this blog, I unlocked seven achievements or trophies. I hope you enjoyed this blog, please inform me on your thoughts of my format of blogging. Do you like it...do you hate it? Let me know!

Heavy Rain Review

Heavy Rain, a PlayStation3 exclusive, is a unique new kind of game developed by Quantic Dream. The game is a powerful interactive drama, with intensely absorbing experiences that precisely conveys the tension, urgency, surprise and tragedy that the characters feel. The ongoing narrative changes to your every action and improving a deeply personal journey that leave everyone who undertakes it with something slightly different.

“How far are you prepared to go to save someone you love?” is the central question within Heavy Rain. The protagonist, Ethan Mars, is compelled to answer that question. After Ethan’s son goes missing and is rumored to be the latest victim of the mysterious Origami Killer. Ethan vows to do whatever it takes to save in son. Besides playing as Ethan, you also play three other characters who are seemingly unrelated to one another but are drawn into the case: Scott Shelby, a private investigator; Norman Jayden, an FBI criminal profiler; and Madison Paige, an insomniac.

Heavy Rain is an immersive interactive drama that will suck you in and not spit you out. As you control each of the four characters, onscreen prompts will have you pressing buttons in sequence, move the right analog stick in the exact directions as shown onscreen, shake the controller, and more to interact with the scenes. Each input is correspondingly difficult to the tasks being performed. When a character is scared or stressed, the floating onscreen prompts will tremble. The exceptional control scheme does a marvelous job at grounding you to the characters and their emotional states. A lot of action is to be found in forms of brutal or violent brawls, heart-pounding chases, and deadly gunfights, but even with such things as brushing your teeth and rocking a baby are rather engaging tasks which strengthens your bond with the characters.

Heavy Rain does not bother keeping track on your progress in terms of success and failure, for there is no right or wrong way to play. No matter what your outcome may be, the game will move forward and adapt to the consequences of your actions. Although the overall narrative framework is firm, your performance throughout the game can have a variety of effects, ranging from subtle changes in how a scene plays out to much bigger problems. Entire events might not even occur due to your actions and choices causing the plot to branch in a new direction. It’s even possible for one of the characters to die, consequently eliminating any subsequent contributions to the story that they might have made.

Heavy Rain is gorgeous looking game. The visual design of the environments is rather outstanding, and weather your visiting a dirty old creepy apartment building or a gorgeous forest utopia, the thorough amount of detailing put into the game in incredibly fascinating. Character models are so realistic, predominately in the way they move and interact. An irregular awkward animation can occur, like a robot-like move up the stairs or your stuck in place for a split second. Overall characters move extremely well.

Music will stir up your emotions in just the right way. When a scene starts to intensify the music becomes rapid paced, indicating that something bad is happening or will happen. When something depressing happens in a scene, the music becomes rather slow and gloomy. The voice acting is amazing, completing the human element to round out the experience.

Heavy Rain is a bold and revolutionary game that should be played by all who look upon its cover. Everything that happens in Heavy Rain will effect your emotions as it engages you into it’s universe. It’s astonishing visuals and outstanding voice overs will have you admiring the game every moment you click a button. The soundtrack will have you sitting at the edge of you seat. Hop on the roller coaster and give Heavy Rain a try!