Recently I have been searching for games that I used to play before getting into console gaming. I have digged out old copies out some of the games that I have played before and others that are still missing. One of those games is Neverwinter Nights. This game didn't get me into RPG but the game itself got me into playing hours upon hours of this game. It's satisfying to even play this game again, everything from the game-play, cinematic and soundtrack proves to be awesome and epic. These were the days that I always played RPGs like Diablo, Baldur's Gate, Dungeon Siege and such, and I had a better experience than playing Final Fantasy IV, VII and IX. 
 
The reason why I had a better experience with western RPGs is because it doesn't feel restricted or linear and you have the freedom to customize your hero and especially the storyline is better. While playing those Final Fantasy games, I don't feel compelled to play as some teenager or someone that isn't interesting. Furthermore, the storyline doesn't make any sense or is too cliche to even merit a storyline at all. Granted that Final Fantasy IV has some great moments and your character doesn't look gay at the starting. I still don't understand, to this day, the reason why JRPG make so much cliche and stupid storylines plus characters that are all kids that probably endorse pedophilia actions. ... But I digress

Playing Neverwinter Nights again is awesome. First off, customizing your character is fun, its quite in-depth feature. You can first choose your race from either Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Halflings, Dwarf and Orc, picking these races with supplement you for your desired class. Besides choosing your portrait from picking either male or female eariler, you can set your karma level from either good, neutral or evil and each of these contains three options of each perspective karma level. After you get to choose your desired class and manage your stats, then customize your hero and his/her voice. It's quite an awesome feature, customizing your hero and making a back-story for your character. 
 
Like other RPG games like Diablo and Baldur's Gate, the camera remains in a isometric view but in 3-D and you can move the camera to change angles. These camera options are customizable as well, as you can pick whichever camera view that you desired. After switching to the desired camera view in the tutorial room, the games teaches you the combat from melee and range and there is additional rooms that teach you more combat depending on which class you took. The combat is like playing D&D, your attacks are affected by "dice rolls" or calculations from the HUD chat interface, making it some-what tedious but more fun as you level up to higher levels. If you had chosen class that is dependent on stealth, there are chests, doors that you can pick-locks at and other classes have their abilities, like summoning a companion, brewing potions or singing a song to buff you or your allies. 
 
After that, you are greeted by Lady Arbeith about your success on the academy but suddenly it appears that this academy is under attack by unknown invaders. Therefore, you will start a indenture on exiting this academy, with further tutorial lessons on having a companion and the benefits of leveling up. After you had reach the end, you encounter Fenthick and Desether but is too late to receive the cure from the four creatures. And so, you venture off to find these four creatures from either the Peninsula and Docks District, Beggar's Nest and Blacklake District but require a mercenary for your travels. You can acquire a mercenary from the Trade of Blades where you can choose a plethora of companions, depending on your class choose whatever the desired class that will benefit you in your journeys.  
 
In these districts, you will encounter NPCs that will give you quests on receiving or killing someone, sometimes these things will affect your karma level depending on which dialogue tree you had spoken while interacting them. The feature is quite awesome because like other western RPGs, you have the freedom to express the situation not being limited to those actions like JRPGs. Again, I still really hate that aspect from those games. Anyways, each district features different types aspects, especially Docks District, where you are required to infiltrate the Blood Sailors headquarters to receiving a reagent from a creature, this district also had its own currency, the Smugglers' Coins. These can buy you better items featured in the auction or purchase these coins from a merchant. 
 
Eariler on, when you level up there a passive spell that can identify items just like in Diablo II, this spell is quite interesting because its rather tedious to teleport back to the Temple of Tyr with your Stone of Recall and let the merchant idenfity the specific item with additional costs. This and other spells as you progress through other levels are quite beneficitary for not only combat but yourself. When you are purchasing something, you see a interface that is exactly like Diablo and like Diablo II, you can buy a item by dragging the item to your inventory or dragging a item to the merchant to sell it. 
 
Other than that, the voice acting and the soundtrack is amazing. I totally fits to the fantasy and storyline that pertains in this game. I especially love how you interact with characters in this game, it feels more livelier especially when they described their own story to you. It feels more compelling to come back to these games, its addicting and nostalgic, seeing the awesome camera view and game-play aspects. Also the game consists of four chapter, each of them containing their own opening cinematic. What impresses me is the cinematic, the way it is executed is awesome, it simply looks beautiful because it doesn't contain any CG nor FMV of real people cosplaying as Neverwinter Nights' characters. It has an art feeling that I totally adore and wished that other games would have the same merit as these awesome cinematics. 
 
Here is one of cinematics that I wish every game in Neverwinter Nights series have:
 
 
 
 
 As I stated before, there are four acts in this game and each of them is set upon different environments on your quest to completing the game. While these environments doesn't feel great at times, the soundtrack compliments it really well. It is truly awesome to play this game that provides an awesome storyline despite being a lesser D&D role-playing experience. Everything from the game-play to the cinematics is awesome and I would totally play this game again and again. Currently I'm in Act 2 Finale, the enviornments work well in this Act, venturing forth to locations like Neverwinter Woods to the lands near Luskan. Getting introduction to Aarin Gend is also awesome as well, as he provides an awesome voice and in-depth situation on my objective. There are also awesome features that each Chapter specializes in and playing this recent chapter proves to be a thrilling ride.  I personally enjoy this game and confess my love to Aribeith but sadly she loves Fenthick still and.... i shouldn't say that. 
 

 


There are games that suck because of camera issues and bad acting. These I tend to not care about and enjoy the game, such cases are Silent Hill, the original Resident Evil and Fatal Frame. Sure these "fixed" camera angles are intended to make the game feel make scarier with the atmosphere and "jump" scares. But I cannot rest until there is a game that sucks the horror away and compliments more of the obnoxious and bad acting. And the answer is Clock Tower 3. 
 
This game has been off my radar for some time. I heard this series back in my elementary school days and been avoiding it since due to people saying it is scary. Now watching a marathon of someone playing it makes me angry because I have been anticipating this game, thinking that it will scare the living crap out of me and it seriously does the opposite. I have never seen a game that doesn't feel scary at all, literally. There are of course horror games that I don't get scared but it is intended to scare other audiences but still game seriously fucks with you, telling you that this game is literally scary and not intended for the faint of heart. 
 
There are so much stuff wrong with this game, I seriously want to punch every single person who thinks this game is scarier than other horror game. Also I don't see why people would be scared of this game, it copies the classic game of "jump" scares to compensate how bad and terrible this game is. Seriously why did they make this game anyways, its worse than Silent Hill 3's ending and nothing is so totally fucked up with that. 
 
In this game, you are played as Alyssa Hamilton, a 15 year-old girl that was told by her mom that she cannot return home. Not listening to her like the cliche storyline told her so, she return home only to be confronted with a weird man and the horrors that will soon endangered her life.
 
The first thing that didn't scare me is the part when you are being chased by Sledgehammer. Now Sledgehammer is based on real life, as these serial killers are described upon during World War 2 in London. Entering in some sort of Department store/house where May "probably" lives, you can find pieces of information that not only reports of the identity of this serial killer but real information about that period, with the war and the Nazi bombing over London. This proven to be useful but as you venture further into this place, you will get a cut-scene where you see the death of May in the hands of Sledgehammer and after being chased by him.
 
This part is just ridiculous and lame. Sure sometimes you wonder off, thinking that he is gone but moments later when you open a door, he appears and gets a cheap shot on you. This can surely scare you but the way they executed this is probably more cartoonish than scary. But if you are diligent and hide like in Metal Gear Solid, there is a chance that he will apparently warp some-where and you are left confused. Like its predecessors, this game featured a panic meter on which is kinda like the sanity meter in Eternal Darkness. The panic meter only fills up when someone like Sledgehammer hits you or almost hits you, if this meter goes to red, you will soon lose some control and start panicking, sprinting until you try to calm down while the serial killer is right next to you. This part is totally similar to Condemned 2: Bloodshot, where you are being chased by the bear, while that part is more scarier because the bear is more faster and the way they executed that part is way better than this. As you are being chased by the Sledgehammer, he will always yell your name and some other gibberish, but being chased by him is totally lame and frustrates the game-play and the objective. 
 
The only thing to prevent him on chasing you for a short period of time is environmental. And this is where it gets fucked up, when you enter the room where May gets killed, picking up diaries and other pieces of information. Sledgehammer will barged into the room, as you are trapped, assuming that the character would just jump out of the window, suddenly threw a chair and ram him to the wall. That moment, I just was speechless, how could they make a game so cartoonish that it feels like an anime about horror. This game surely is only about cute girls with skirts with a obnoxious and pathetic storyline attached to it. There are other sequences that are proven more ridiculous like throwing a guitar at him, as debris fall on him, resulting with a lame-ass benefit for you to get a head-start. These parts make me question why the developers of this game, feel obliged to call this game, a horror game. It don't see anything scary about it, only stereotypical jump scares and cute girls with skirts like all of Japanese horror games out there. Heck! Resident Evil 3 did a better job making the chase sequence with Nemesis even more scarier than having Sledgehammer yelling your name over and over again. Watching the marathon makes me pissed off and seriously not want to watch or play this game.
 
The other part is the acting and the storyline. Setting upon London, you can surely think that they hired actors that can have an accent and they did but the way they did it plus the animation is just fucked up and horrible. I swear that every character in the game, smokes crack to compensate how bad the game is and lack the funding to have a better voice cast and animation. Besides my rant with the chase sequence with Sledgehammer, you encountered a ghost of May, that doesn't rest until she had won the piano competition and hopes that his father will listen to her while he is drafted into war. Sadly, his father died in the war and never heard his daughter on the radio. Therefore, getting killed by Sledgehammer and her spirit is now practicing until her father arrives, this part, as you enter the auditorium where she plays, trying to perfected the music that plays in her father's pocket-watch is now filled with blooded and crying.  But it was overshadowed by Sledgehammer's return and the horrible chase and hiding sequence plus filling lavender water so you can throw it on Sledgehammer to give you some time to flee. 
 
I also cannot rest until I cleared all memory of this horrible game. After receiving the pocket watch and information about this serial killer, you will encounter the Sledgehammer again but this part makes those other moments more fucked up than possibly imagined. I cannot describe how horrible this part could be. YOU GET TO FIGHT SLEDGEHAMMER!!!!! WTF! ....... OK!.... deep breath.... nice and slow....   Ok..  As you encounter hiM! Knowing about his true identity, you get a tutorial screen about the battle controls? Just WTF! I didn't know what just happen, is this game running with the schizophrenia? Am I in a different game? Where am I? You will get a cut-scene without THOROUGH context of why you suddenly have some sort of bow. It just happens, in a quick moment, making no sense whatsoever like the majority of anime, we have today. As I rant more about this bullshit regarding this being not a horror game but an action game that isn't similar to Resident Evil nor Silent Hill, in a sense that at least they make more sense than this. You and Sledgehammer suddenly gets a life bar and your objective is to kill him with your..... bow and aRROW! This fight is so anti-climatic that it makes anime look like it makes more sense. There is a part, where you can just shot him while he is constrained on some lighting thingy, as you just charged up your bow and kill him. AGAIN! I'm speechless! THis is totally the worst and easiest big fight, I have ever seen. It makes Colonel Autumn in Fallout 3, a worthly contender than this piece of shit. I seriously don't know why they did this, to a game that thinks that its a horror game and it is not!
 
After that bullshit, you return the pocket-watch to May, as his father returns him and she and her dad finally rest in peace. I still cannot say how terrible this scene is. Totally fucked up and totally ridiculous and more ways to come. It's like they didn't give a shit about the series and expected to make this game a total piece of shit, and also insulted the British people with bad acting and a storyline that feels like it has been supposedly, a horror anime that has bad schizophrenia. That and the scene, where she wakes up and it was all a dream, with a character that looks like Ron Weaselly from Harry Potter. Heck, Alyssa looks like Hermine and it totally feels like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: the Game. And that makes me FUCKING crazy because how bad this game is! JUST WHY the fuck did they make this piece of shit. I can swear to you that this is the worst game that I have ever seen in long periods of time and now is killing me because this game was my anticipated game that I wanted to purchase.
 
I seriously do NOT recommend this game, surely you will not buy this game as well. Just play Condemned 2 and Resident Evil 3, those games is more better in terms of the atmosphere and the horror. I beg of you, do not... play this game!

 
 
 

 
Venturing forth to Rivet City seems like a dream to you as this disk-gocky offers you another. It seems like his "voice" isn't able to reach upon all areas of the Capital Wasteland and someone like you might able to help him from pursuing hope for its denizens. Your father once taught you about selflessness and rather pursuing to your own goals, take heath to others. You accepted his offer on recovering an abandoned satellite disk, deep in downtown DC and directed you to rather quiant short-cut. This was an adventure to contributing the whole wasteland, the karma you settled upon will become more indignant to saving this land from pending evil. 
 
Opening the door to the ruins of DC, you could see the malicious evils that walked upon the streets. This could only mean blood-shed but in truth, your arms seems lacking of ammunition. The solution to this is to remain invisible to your enemies and ripped their weapons to use it against them. You were quite nervous yet determined to do so. Sneaking towards a towering super mutant who is looking across as a sentry, you carefully grabbed its rifle with proficiency. Knowing that the super mutant will turn within a mere second, you used all your might and push him off the cliff. Seeing that the possibility of it still breathing, you reloaded the rifle, aimed at the super mutant who is charging to you and shoot him directly at the head, finishing him. 
 
This alarmed to your surprised, ghouls who were stationed below but these aren't the ghoul who you saw in Megaton. These were feral ones, with a deadly proficiency to ripped you into pieces quickly. The deceased Super Mutant left you with crates of ammo and provisions, as you opened the crate and found a grenade. You immediately turn as the feral ghouls were sprinting across the bridge and threw the grenade. Ending up with the destroyed limbs of the ghouls and result of their limbs flying off into the water below, the disturbing image that will soon haunt you in future endeavors. 
 
You feel more combat focus in this scenario, since the wasteland encounters you have faced, you had never faced a scenario of imminent death as your anxiety shows up in a unnecessary moment. This will soon be just experience for the dangers to come, as you walked through the destroyed ruins of DC, envisioning the time before the nuclear explosion. This distant memory will be a memory to have wished upon and it won't come, only the time that was given to you to fascinate the wonderful streets and the amazing architecture of its great buildings and monuments. 
 
Walking across the bridge, you discovered a metro station to your objective. This could only go worse, you had angered yourself because of your father's departure of the vault and his ambition to his goals that impacted you to follow him. You soon walked upon the dark abandoned station infested with feral ghouls and the perils that will soon encountered. 
 
 For the first part of the Post-Apocalyptic Tales can be found here:

• The Post-Apocalyptic (Tales of)
  

 
Straight out of GamesCom, we are already seeing eye-popping trailers and more features for games for the Sony platform. It's quite remarkable to see these trailers trying to mimic movie trailers. This generation works perfectly for making game trailers more like its movie counterpart, besides the graphical stand-point of "realistic" context from characters, interaction with the environment and voice-acting that is contrived with them. With a plethora of  Sony games revealed in GamesCon, there are two exciting trailers that is evidently remarkable and deserve cinematic merit. These two are.....
 

HEEAVVYY RAAAINNNN.

  
  
Heavy Rain really surprised me in this year's E3. The game looks stunning with the innovative "no game-over" screen, in-depth visual features with fitting voice-acting to quick-time events. What surprises me the most is the trailers, the first few trailers revealing different protagonists that you will be in the game looks great and tells a in-depth one too. But this trailer puts the other two down, it feels exactly like some Bourne Identity/block-buster movie. the editing, the effects to the chanting music. It fits perfectly into this game being a interactive one. Many people wondered which is most realistic game to be released and I would definitely say this one. 
 
This also appeared in the following blog

• Afterthoughts..... Final Day!
  

 
 

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

 
 
  
 
 The first Uncharted didn't satisfy me to purchase a PS3 and play it. Now with Uncharted 2, I'm tempted to buy a PS3 because of how awesome Nathan Drake is in each trailer that Naughty Dog created. His characteristic is just awesome and entertaining, the obsoletes that he had taken is even more exciting and feeling more like Indianna Jones meets John MacClane in Die Hard. It's wishing fulling to me and its definitely a purchase with how awesome this trailer can be in Nathan's adventures.

 
 
 

There aren't many World War Two Shooters that centre around realism. Developers tend to send out a game each year with a lack of new features or lies that it feels more "realistic" than you seen before. It is a sort of deceiving people which new game to buy and the consumers feel pressured on buying that game. Well I can't blame everyone who buys WWII Shooters that has the same derivative game-play and the "quality" of realism. I usually buy that game because it somewhat merits quality fun to me despite its flaws.  
 
Even though most WW2 shooters lack the quality in realism, some qualifies on having more and making a living-breathing world. A world of "getting" along with your team, leading your team to victory and etc. This happens in Brothers in Arms, where there is not only the storyline but each character tells their individual story. It's these character development in games that it really is quite fascinating.  
 
EA has been releasing Medal of Honour games with rehashed features to compliment the game-play, having alterations of Medal of Honour games on different platforms that is purely crap on their perceptive. But there is a game that involves realism that I would not expect for a Medal of Honour game, it is called Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault.
 
This game feels like Brothers in Arms and more. It starts off with a "D-Day-esque" invasion on one of the Japanese isles, as you leave the transport, you are fightin vicariously against the Japanese but then you had blackened out. Granted this was a flashback and also the introduction of Brothers in Arms which is directly was in Highlander with Nicholas Cage. This flashback returns to a training camp, which surprises of how realistic it feels despite being a 2004 game. 
 
You start off being yelled at your Drill Sergeant, telling you the orders and the stereotypical ramble. The camera in the cutscene feels like a movie, like Full Metal Jacket, having some tension when you are being yelled at by the Drill Sergeant. Now being a 2004 game and seeing Doom 3, this looks even better in terms of graphics, while Doom 3 has that sort of weird facial on everyone, in this game it feels like you will soon get to know more about your group.  After you are marched out of the room and outside where you are listening to more orders and stereotypical ramble. The stance on your character and the people besides you feels like you are in some sort of boot camp. The people beside you basically, hold their rifles like real soldiers do but sometimes it feels awkward to see them "move out" and changed their stance. 
 
You are resulted to the training course, where you do the same thing like any other shooters but the final course is different. Despite having it in Brothers in Arms. This feature is the command feature which lets you control you to team. You can direct either to suppress fire, fall back, regroup, or heal me these commands will benefit your team. Besides that, healing something is quite interesting, when someone is injured they fall to the ground and you can called out a medic. A medic will come out and heal you but in missions, you can only get a limited amount of heals indicated by their dialogue. The calling for help feature is interesting, in the battlefield when you are calling for help, there can be three options: the medic comes to help you, the Japanese come and finish you off or die immediately without called your medic.
 
This feature has a merit on realism with the limited healing opportunities.  This feature is quite realistic to experience, they encourage you to be more careful in the battlefield and penalizes you for going out guns blazing. Furthermore in the battlefield, when someone is injured, you can pick them up and walk to the nearest medic on patching him up. This frequently occurs in the first mission, Pearl Harbor and it is a good experience on saving people's lives.
 
There are other realistic features like no infinite ammo for MG-stationed guns and other things that sharpen the quality of the game but I can't think of much. Being a game before Brothers in Arms, is remarkable, EA releases a somewhat new IP for this game having interesting features and more cut-scenes than other Medal of Honour games. The first mission in preventing the Japanese on invading Pearl Harbor was a eye-popping experience to see, it starts off with you and your captain on a M3 Scout car, scrolling around Pearl Harbor and seeing your captain talking to various people and a hot medic. The reactions that triggered these people feels quite awesome, especially the three crew-men looking at porn and trying to toss out the porn when the captain sees them to people listening to music and running with their Drill Sergeant.  Ending with the Japanese invasion and everyone in panic. 
 
The impressions I had given out for Pacific Assault is just for the first part. This game is quite interesting but sometimes the gameplay and no-interaction with the characters in your team is feeling like any other Medal of Honour game with command support. But this is quite a shooter that I had fun playing it just for my first impressions with this game.