Hey people! Been a while since I've blogged. But I'm here to bring you two new reviews, and some first impressions. So let's get going:

NEED FOR SPEED UNDERGROUND review:

This is a game I played a long time ago (about when it came out) but recently played again. I had a lot of fun with it, so I decided to write down some thoughts on it. To my surprise, the game held up very well over the years. So go HERE and read all about it.

RISEN review:

A long time in the making, I know. But I just had to play around some more with the game to see how different character builds play. Overall, Risen is an excellent game which I suggest you try. But not before reading the REVIEW. :P

ALPHA PROTOCOL impressions:

Been playing this a bit every day, so I'll break it down in bullet point form:

• The story and characters are very good.
• The dialogue system exhibits the same vagueness as the Mass Effect dialogue wheel, the time limit is not a problem after you adjust to it.
• The game has a rigid structure: you're either in your safehouse (answering to e-mails, customizing gear, buying intel), or you're on the mission; there's no walking around cities, talking to quest-givers and so on.
• The choices and consequences are pretty damn extensive, affecting relations with characters, gear and intel, mission objectives, and sometimes even mission structure.
• The game indeed accomodates multiple approaches to missions (guns blazing, stealth, tech junkie), but the game cannot be completed without killing anyone because of scripted boss fights.
• So far, I've been able to go for stealth 90% of the time.
• Boss fights suck
• Mechanically, the game is very similar to Deus Ex, specially the gunplay; these two games are very much alike even in terms of A.I. quality.
• Minigames suck. Ok, maybe they are not that bad, but I hate the concept of minigames, so they suck.
• Graphics look better than screenshots would lead you to believe, but they're not that top of the line for sure.
• Sound is good, the voice work is very good, the music is generic spy themed stuff.
• AP is still rough around the edges, it needs a patch to fix some camera issues (there are workaround for that though, PM me and I'll point you in the right direction), and a few bugs where scrips do not trigger properly after a game reload.
• No crashes to desktop or gamestopping issues thus far.

To conclude, I'll say that I'm enjoying Alpha Protocol, but objectively speaking, this is about a 7.5 - 8.0 game thus far. It's not a 6.0 game however. Many reviewrs are hypocrites, criticizing the game for issues that games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 also had. But I guess pro game journalists were too busy gushing out 9s and 10s to notice those issues.

Well, that's about everything for today. Next time it's Dragon Age, and maybe Mass Effect 2. Peace!