As thoughtprocess has pointed out, Fable II is releasing very soon, about 9 days from now and we here at Plastiksickness are extremely excited about this game for a multitude of reasons that he pointed out previously, but there's also another title releasing on the same day that we haven't talked about too much yet and that's Far Cry 2. 

Being developed by Ubisoft, Far Cry 2 seems to be the underhyped game of the year.  Not receiving the most attention compared to some games such as Gears of War 2, Fable II, and Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 has a lot to prove, and from videos and interviews we've seen so far, it might do just that.  I don't know how many of you have been following this title, but here's a little info.  It's 50 square kilometers and is considered a completely open sand-box style first person shooter.  You're in Africa on the hunt for a man called The Jackal who is creating chaos by selling weapons to both sides of civil war watching them kill each other.  So, during the game, you must make companions found throughout the field and gain information to find The Jackal and take him down.

What Far Cry 2 does differently from what we've seen in the past is that the game is open ended; no more linear levels where there's a start and a finish.  Plus, from the start, you get to choose who you want to be between a selection of 9 different characters.  Although there won't be huge differences between the characters, the people you don't choose will turn up during the game and help you out when you need it or give you different missions to progress the story.  And these NPCs will be helping you on some of the missions and if they die, they're out of the game for good, but if they live, they be with you helping along the way even more with different missions and objectives you're given.  The game will constantly compute who is alive and who has died.  If this works out how they say it will, it will be groundbreaking for the genre and force developers in the future to create more in-depth and detailed games.  Ubisoft is truly pushing the genre into a direction that it needs to compete with the other genres out there.

The idea of having different animations for 'healing' your character is extremely creative, so instead of getting hurt and just running over a health pack to revive your character's hit points, you go through these different animations such as taking a bullet out of your arm with your machete, flipping your arm back into socket from the elbow and also doing the same with your legs if you jumped off to high a perch.  These little detailed distinctions from other games of the same genre really put Far Cry 2 in a class of its own, if the developers can pull it off. 

If you'd like to check out some videos for Far Cry 2, check out these links...

Sometimes it feels like console gaming would be the best choice for gaming overall.  Why you ask?  Well, system requirements for games are constantly going up with each new title, the compatibility of games with your computers, and just the overall patchwork that always needs to be done with computer games constantly. 

I've been a huge supporter of computer gaming for quite a few years, but as of late, it just seems that developers just want to build the next best thing, particularly pertaining to the graphics component of games.  No one can argue that Crysis was just little more than a tech demo used to display Crytek's new engine.  I can hardly believe some of the scores that the game received, but many sites did state that the game was technically (graphically), a work of art, but that the actual gameplay was lacking quite a bit.  That it was more than your average shooter with a new glossy look, and if you do argue that point, you may find yourself with a fanboy sticker on your chest.  What were the minimum specs for that game now..

And if you tried to play the game with those specs, you were be chugging along at a framerate well below 30 even with a lot of graphic features turned all the way down.  Heck, even with a top of the line computer supporting dual top of the line graphic cards, you'd still be seeing some slowdowns here and there.  This game was made for computers of tomorrow, which you're expected to have, but even if you do have a computer to run this game without worry, you still have to worry if something else won't go right.  It is just my thoughts that once a good gaming engine is built, developers should take advantage of it and use it for quite awhile improving each new game release along with it.  Such as the game not being completing compatible with all of your other components in your computer or even your drivers.

Testers for the game can only test the game on so many computers with so many different combinations of specifications, and even so, there could still be something on your computer that's wrecking your game's performance overall.  And this really isn't the fault of the developers, nor the gamers themselves, more so the industry because of how many different combinations that there can be with computers today.  There are multitudes of different components and brand names to choose from with sound card, video cards, processors, motherboards, ram, etc... which really puts the gamer/developer in a sore position when installing any game really.  Once a title comes out, you can easily roam the forum boards of the game and see complaints of gamers having issues with the game whether it crashing to desktop midgame, giving a random error, or now even loading the program.  You're just looking for a needle in a haystack if the game doesn't install and run properly the first time.  But don't smile so widely yet, there could be spots midgame where the game sees a problem with your computer and you're forced to reinstall, go back to a previous save, etc.  There are just too many issues that could be wrong during the course of a title to cause stress.

And someone has to bring up the quality of games that are released on the pc, dealing with issues and bugs that need to be patched after release.  This can be a tiresome inconvenience to any gamer who has to wait after purchasing the game to fully play it because bugs that are restricting the game in some way.  Sometimes patches are used because of issues found in different hardware, which revolves to the previous paragraph, but most times a patch fixes some component of a quest that won't trigger that's vital to the overall plot of the game, or maybe a certain enemy is unkillable, which would understandably be a pain, and you can argue that console games are patched also, but to a much more minimal extent. 

You have to understand, that when developers are making games for a system, such as a Xbox 360, it's a much easier task only needing to test the game on the system itself, not having to worry about different video or sound cards, or even different processors.  This makes their overall job much easier that being compared to a computer developer overall the course of the development of their specific game. 

This is not to say that I've sworn off pc games, hardly, but I now look forward to console games much more than pc games because I know my system can handle it from day one and that there won't be any trouble, but as long as my computer keeps chugging through releases, I'll keep playing them as long as I can, but as far as upgrading my pc, it won't be happening for some time because of not only expense, but lack of trust in developers for future game releases.  Most games are released for all platforms, so I won't be missing out on too much when dealing with the upcoming holiday releases.

Warhammer has been around for quite some time and many games, books, and stories have pulled different ideas from this setting.  And why not?  There's a lot to it, ranging from gun toting dwarves to fire mages with brimming red hair.  There are a host of books set in the Warhammer series, and quite a fw pc games have already been released, ranging from Warhammer 40,000 to the good old fantasy Warhammer and each has achieved what it set out to, so what's left?  Why not create a MMO right?

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning recently came out and is having it's servers filled up by the day.  Is it a World of Warcraft killer?  Let's be honest, the only thing that will take WoW down is WoW, plainly said.  If anyone would like to disagree with that statement, let me know in the comments section down below.  But, I recently got to spend a week in the Warhammer world and I must say that it was an exciting one filled with late nights and countless PvP attempts. 

I know that there have been quite a few reviews out for the game lately, so I'm not here to gve a score or tell you about every feature, but I will tell you what I liked and what didn't interest me too much while I was playing.  Let's start with the beginning.  After installing the game and then patching the game up, I quickly started up the game.  Now I know that I don't have anywhere near a top of the line computer (AMD 64 3000, 2 GB Ram, Nvidia 7600 GT 256 MB), but it runs quite a few games quite well and it is above minimum specs to say the least, but this game didn't run as well as I thought it would.  Not to say that it was completely chopping and stuttering, but I did have to run it at the lowest settings at the lowest resolution for it to play the smoothest.  It didn't look horrible, but I expected the game to run a little better overall when playing.  Yes, I could turn up sme of the specs, but then it began to stutter more with each feature I turned on, especially in more populated areas.

But the game still looked pretty darn good with the settings on the lowest quality, but what was surprising to me was the lack of options to switch on and off in the graphics options.  Normally with computer games, especially MMOs, there are a host of features to turn on and off, if needed, dealing with textures, AA, AF, resolutions, among quite a few others and with each feature, there are a multitude of choices to pick from when using these options.  I remember with LOTRO, there was something like Ultra, Highest, High, Medium, and so on, but with Warhammer, it's Highest Quality, Balanced, and Fastest Framerate.  While, on one hand, this is nice and simple, it also makes you fee like you've either got a great computer or a really crappy one.

But enough with the graphics, lets talk about the gameplay, because in a MMO, that's what's gonna keep bringing you back.  I thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay aspect, whether I was doing some PvE or PvP, both were interesting and kept me logged in for hours.  Where some MMOs can have PvE that gets dull after awhile, Warhammer gives you new reason to enjoy PvE even more with the Public quests everyone talks about.  These community style quests not only give you good experience and integrate you with others on the game, but they also give pretty good rewards depending on the time you spend with it.  Even the regular quests, which are a mixer of go here, and kill this person, are quite fn and challenging.  No more will you have to kill 100 creatures trying to collect one of their specific organs or hides, because all that will be expected of you is to kill a certain number of creatures.  This is nice because it keeps you looking for new quests and not gettign pissed with the inability to find one more hide, especially when gaming wiht groups.

Now PvP, that's just fun from beginning till end.  Not only can you play PvP at anytime, but you can gain renown and rewards from the more PvP you play.   It's extremely nice because you click one button to get queued up to play, and when you're up, it'll ask you if you're ready and then you can hope into it. Once done, it drops you right back into the world where you left, even if you were in the middle of a quest.  That's pretty damn nice if you ask me and convenient. 

One thing I did notice is that you gain levels slower, but that in no way disheartened me towards the overall gameplay, but made me want to play even more to gain ranks (levels), and also gain renown in PvP. 

One last thing I would like to touch upon is the Tome of Knowledge that you can look at at any point in the game.  It carries all the statistics throughout the entire game that you can look up within seconds.  it is extremely easy to navigate through, with whatever you're looking up.  There are a multitude of achievements to gain and keep track of with your travels and this only adds to the addictiveness when you simply can't log off  One nice thing that I did enjoy was the mapping system.  When you get a  new quest, it lights up an area of the map where you need to go for the quest, kind of like a blood stain on the map, but it's extremely helpful and nice and certainly keeps the flow of the game going.  Does it give away information or make things too easy?  No, but it certainly doesn't say go west from this pillar, then north from that tree like some othe MMOs out there right now.

In the end, this is a great game.  I know I didn't explain a fraction of the game to you, but I wanted to come on and let you know that I thoroughly enjoyed this game and when I finally buy a newer computer next year, I will be purchasing this game without doubt.  Because of the ability to solo or group up easily, jump in and out of PvP whereever, and a depth of background really unmatched in most MMOs, Warhammer Online deserves the praise it has been getting as many of the reviews of Warhammer so far have been easilly above 90%

So, now I leave you with your own thoughts on this game.  If you have any questions about the actual gameplay, let me know and I can try to answer it for you.  If you have disagreements, let me know, thoughts, speak them.  Overall, with my time with this game, although it definitely wasn't too long, was a very pleasant one.

There are quite a few websites out there to choose from when trying to find some information out about a game.  There's some of the top sits like Gamespot, Gamespy, G4 - X-Play, and IGN just to name a few, but there's also the smaller sites, just as Worthplaying, Gamedaily, Gamershell, plus many others, but which one do you choose to get your information from?  Which site have you gone back to year after year for your new and entertaining information about the latest games or the games from the days of DOS?

I myself have always been a Gamespot fan.  I don't exacty know how it got started or even when, but I do remember going through some of the major gaming sites and noticing that Gamespot having one of the easiest and explorable user interfaces and offered a lot of options for your own input through Blogs, game lists, forums, etc, and so I had chosen that one and rarely ventured off to the other sites for information, only reading the occasional game review to see how they compared with other sites.  Did I necessaryly trust everything I read off of Gamespot's site or was I particularly happy with everything I read, of course not, but it kept me coming back each day to see what new information was coming back, and the forums were always a decent place to converse with people about all different types of games.

I had gone to other sites at the time, but found them too hectic in the interface department, and pretty much never strayed from Gamespot except to read the occasional review.  It's not that I put the most trust into Gamespot's review over any other site, it's just that it's the site that i used the most.  I could actually care less about their reviews, well, their scores in actuality.  I care more about what people write about in their reviews, than their scores, because to me, the words are what matter.  There are some people out there who take the score and nothing else, who like to look at pictures, and not bother to read anything about the review, and that's their own deal, but I myself rather enjoy seeing how the reviewer took and looked at the game, what they took from it and everything about it.

But lately, in the past few months, I've been slowly going over to Gamespot's site less and less because of the overall content throughout their site.  It's true, they have a nice setup and the changes they make from time to time are fluid and nice overall, but it seems what I enjoy the most, has become somewhat of a let down.  Not only have the forums become a joke, from useless topics either filled with fanboys or complete idiots trying to prove that they're over 12 year olds, to the less than stellar reviews that've been posted recently.  I guess you could say a major reason has to deal with a lot of their staff either getting fired or leaving, and to be honest, they have to admit that the people who left were their better components, but it's been quite a loss to me for the site as well.  Not only are their less and less reviews being posted all the time, but even less video reviews throughout the past few weeks.  Reading reviews is nice and I try to read as many as I can, but the video reviews always give some decent gameplay footage that can't be seen in screenshots.  Even though I enjoy watching the reviews, I still take the time to read the reviews to see what was deemed unnecessary to talk about in the video to once again see how the reviewer truly felt about the game, but even the opinion's of the reviewers have seen to worsen over the past months.

I'm not saying that I never disagree with their opinions and I realize it's only necessary to do so, but I find myself looking at the opinions and valuing them less and less with each time I hear them speak and to be truthful, the incident with the whole Too Human episode was probably my last care for this site.  It's not the only reason that I'm come to dislike the site, but it pretty much sums up my attitude towards their demeanor.  Seeing the backlash across the net for Too Human, Kevin Pereira, a host for Attack of the Show, decides to take a small stand to defend the actual "fun" that can be had from the game overall and calls out the review of the Gamespot which, in my opinion, needed it...

One day closer to the weekend where Mercenaries 2: World in Flames will be released on Sunday and I must say that I'm extremely excited about it.  After enjoying the first installment quite a bit, I've been eagerly awaiting this new installment which pretty much gives the player the option to do anything he/she wants. 

Around 64 square kilometers of area to wreak havoc on alone or with a partner of your choice over Xbox live, there's quite a bit to do whether it's the storyline missions or the different contracts for the many factions in the game.  Just a lot of playtime that could be invested with the overall game and I've been telling myself that's it not too long of wait, the next few days, but seeing some people across the net who already own the game and that are playing it makes it that much harder.  But it is nice to know that those people who are experiencing the game early have nothing but good things to say about the overall gameplay and that's good news.

I know Thoughtprocess1 and DJ IZ are also looking forward to the game and I can't wait to amass some major destruction online with either of those guys for sure.  I think Pandemic, from the looks of all the previews, trailers, interviews, and gameplay footage, have done a great job on the game and what little hype there is for this title is definitely warranted.

So, if you're out this weekend and have been looking for something to play that's just plain fun, pick this up.  It's being released on Sunday, the 31st.  Check it out!