Halo 2 looks great on the pc, just don't look at any human characters. Gameplay gets crappy after the first stages, it feels like one old school shooter, there's some huge maps and enemies were thrown into there so you don't just go the whole level walking, admiring how tall the ceilings are. The fun in Halo depends directly on the level design and after the first levels and ever since you start the covenant campaign it is most noticeable. Veihcles are a most welcome addition since you've got to walk so much and well there's nothing much to be said. Another hyped title like many others. At least the gameplay model translates well into multiplayer I guess. Meaning, play level 1 and level 2 until you destroy that huge spider and then that's it

It's copy paste copy paste gameplay with nice graphics and pretty art direction all in all

With so many demos I've played recently i'll only leave some quick impressions so I can feel alright making this kinda diary about my gaming experiences on these last months. Starting with

Jericho - Man does it look awesome. Runs perfectly smooth on my pc (I only got 512ram), the concepts of the game are new and cool, works just fine, the characters are interesting characters to play with (Go Abi GO!), the mood of the sets is superb, what else can I say. Coulda've been scarier I guess, but I think that it is more of a horror theme shooter than it is an horror game.

Stranglehold - WTF? It's one of those games that I could play in this old rig of mine but without any clue you can't change the graphics on the fkin game demo. It crashed lots of times here and I know it wouldn't if i could turn the graphics a little lower. Anyways, it looks good. Real good. Except for the characters that look like caricatures, like they were trying too hard to make em look real. Tequilla at least looks alright. The gameplay is kinda like Max Payne and Serious Sam, and that being of course Gungrave. Seems that with some patience you could play it more cinematically than it was intended cause it isn't cinematic at all getting shot from all directions in slo mo. At least there's cover and all those wacky stylish things you can do with tables and stuff are pretty fun to pull off.

Hellgate london - hm.... if this is any indicative of how it is going to turn out in the end, well, i dunno it's still miles away from your typical mmorpg minus all the bugs like muddy textures on high settings and the abscence of physics and some clipping issues. Enemies could also be tougher. I hope that in the final game all of these problems get solved and that we can have these huge areas full of monsters so we can go all out into some dungeon parties in D2 fps style.

Timeshift - Another game that looks awesome. Runs smooth in this pc which was supposed to only run doom engine games at it's best. There's plenty of cool game ideas it's just that the main shooting... i dunno. It lacks the peek/lean feature that is essencial when fighting those pinpoint accurate aimbots. At least to your advantage you've got the time freezing abilities. It's also kinda hard to spot enemies in this game the areas are too detailed and complicated and the soldier drones blend in with all this crap so expect to get shot sometimes without further notice. Life replenishes too like in halo, so expect a pretty fun game throughout. Lets see if the game doesn't rely too much on these time stopping and slowing gimmicks.

COD4 - Well, it's COD. The feeling that you're in a war has upgraded a few notches up, gameplay is still the same and it isn't a bad thing at all. COD4 looks like it's gonna be a great game.

UTIII - I was almost about to forget this one. It's UT, and it is indeed the best classic DM, CTF, and those popular game modes ever put into a game cause everything is so tweaked and fine tuned. If there was ever a Quake vs UT war, there isn't anymore. Looks like no other game right now, it's unreal engine after all and it runs on low end computers like mine like it was nothing still looking good. What else can i say. A sp mode to it would be nice, but that shouldn't be something that hard to mod with so many characters in the roster.

Well, that's it.

I always thought that the team behind Death Note wasn't exactly competent but what made DN a great anime was it's story and sometimes even if the animation was kinda crappy it had it's moments and some good direction. Now with DMC, i often think why Capcom greenlighted this crap. It's just so lame. it has fan service written all over the place. The main problem with it is, it isn't for DMC fans, it is more akin to ppl who know DMC but don't understand what it is all about or for ppl who never touched the games but know that Dante is the new definition for "kewl".

The animation is bad, and for a anime that should be about demon slaying and ass kicking there's almost no fighting at all. When there is it is just completely show off, thing is it has nothing to show, it's like all you get to see most of the time is Dante finishing off some monster with a single slash and lots of gunfire while some really loud music is playing as if to say "that was supposed to be cool". Even Dante comes across as this really lame character who's full of **** It's kinda like he tries to be some kind of spike speigel with a sword but it only makes him kinda corny and cliché. And he's always ordering "suturoberi sundays". In tmnt they eat pizza, in DMC Dante eats strawberry sundays. Oh wait he's constantly ordering pizzas too. How TM.

It seems like it is trying so hard to be j-rock or goth lolita or something in between. Also there's this really annoying girl who stays at Dante's place who's so loli complex. When he's not eating, he's sleeping cause he's just so cool he just doesn't need to do nothing kinda like the screenwriters dunno what to do with him. In the games the fighting sequences were so awesome and over the top that it's kinda difficult to find fighting sequences that can be as fun and engaging as those of the games in any medium available. In the anime most fights don't even last a minute and there's no thought put what so ever in these sequences.

And the screenplays are just so **** I could make better episodes. If the direction was any good and there was some real fighting you could forget the stories and think of em as excuses to the fighting but these stories take over the most of the episode and in the end it all comes across as fake and forced. Most episodes have the quality of filler episodes and when i thought that all this travesty would end in episode 4 they continued to make more of this ****

Stay away from it if you like DMC.

Yeah it does rock.

Metal Gear Solid is crap. I dunno about the old ones but from what I played this is a series which belongs in the old NES days. I mean, there's this huge fan base and ppl talk about like it is some gaming experience out of any gaming genre they know but having 20 mins codec convos and cutscenes like a movie don't make a game great. Yet alone making a pacman stealth game worthy of an orchestral score. It does look cool and it have a distinct sense of style like any other game, it is immersive and all but what good is it when all i can see is from a above over the head perspective? It makes it impossible to play decently like you're wandering around and then some stupid drone sees you. Only way you got to avoid this kinda **** is hitting the fps button so you can see what's ahead of you. Constantly. It's RETARDED. It's like you're going blind trying to get past all these guys stealthy fashion. To compensate you have this radar but when you need it the most it disappears. And speaking of retarded the AI in this game is incredible. ly dumb. Like sometimes I put the fps view on and they're like 5 meters away from me staring at me and they can't see me. Yet they can spot footprints and walking cardboxes. Yea for a game that takes itself as seriously as having 40 minutes of cutscenes which take me 8 Xs to skip em all you can sneak across enemies by disguising yourself as a cardbox. Did I mention that this game has a military advisor? I wonder what did he thought of that. Make it a bush so it is like a warner cartoon or like sheep dog n wolf. Sometimes I shoot these guys with tranquilizers and it gets some time for em to realize they've been shot. It's like since the game is like stupid lets make all soldier drones even more stupid so you can play it and then all the struggle you must have is with the controls and bad design choices. While looking awesome and sounding awesome and having this really convuluted story which is too complicated for me to understand. I get it that you get a over the field view so it is more like the older games but **** it it is a ps2 game and you could always spot your enemies in the old ones cause it wouldn't pan the screen most of the time it would just be this frame where enemies would just follow their routines back and forth. Now there's all this talk about mgs4, and I ask what about it? ppl are getting crazy just because they started to make things right, it's like now you can sneak and walk while crouched instead of crouch and then sneaking prone on the floor. And everytime you'd want to slide along the wall it was a chore cause snake would do it even when you wouldn't ask for it. Another game that took some "ideas" from splinter cell cause that's what it is. It's like a MGS version of splinter cell which looks almost black and white. It used to look awesome but now it is all dusty and crap. Overall stop the hype like it was some kind of Star Wars of the gaming industry.

Okay, it may look cool and new.

However, what's up with the graphics? I don't think i'm the only one thinking that it looks like a ps2 game, it kinda looks like a wii game with some next gen shaders, I mean, shaders that exist since the Geforce2 came out. Add up some real muddy textures and plain earthy toned copy paste hi res photorealistic textures which remind me of games like HL2 and Stalker and **** and you get the NextGen seal of aproval. Like, stop calling games next gen just because they need more power than they should and just because they came out after 2006 or something. Calling any kind of gameplay next gen is also as stupid. Like in the interview I heard the new next gen gameplay elements were that glove and to switch styles on the fly. How next-gen. Now we too have a context sensitive key. Ninja Gaiden is way more next gen than DMC4 is ever going to be in all aspects of gameplay. Anyways it looks like DMC always made it's way in like improving little things instead of suffering a complete overhaul which is not so bad cause it means that that style of gameplay is prooved-and-tested kinda fun. It's differnt from NG cause it's easier and also heavier, like arcady. Without the plenty-of-gore visceral fun NG has, at least you got a lot of shiny **** going on the screen, tekken like. At the same time I can understand that game designers are kinda getting lackuster in coming up with new gameplay mechanisms and designs, it seems like gameplay is getting pushed back from all the rest, like games today look better than they play. We're getting in that era and age where the Hud hurts the overall aspect of the game. Which reminds me of the graphics like I was talking about.

Is it that dificult to understand that games to look nextgen need to look next gen from afar and not like upclose in little details so you can use HD and say "see this is like a ps2 game with a higher polycount and look his clothes are fully textured in normalmaps"? Is the same as saying that DMC3 for pc is next gen if someone added it some motion blur and higher res textures and stuff. DMC4 looks like Re4 and it doesn't look like it couldn't be a ps2 game. Lost Planet and Dead Rising looked nicer to me. Except that Lost Planet has way too much snow. Even so, look at some of the caves with fireflies in comparsion.

Other than that they say they're trying to "elevate" DMC4 to wider mainstream audience, so they made up a new character who looks like Dante but isn't Dante. I mean what's the problem with Dante? It will push back people who are fans and the others simply won't care. And if those who are going to be interested in this 4th installment of the game are new, like, why didn't they get the previous titles? DMC is DMC and that's final. And if there is anyone who's already a fan and won't play it cause it doesn't have Dante they're **** what difference does it make if the gameplay is good?

I mean that MDK is AWESOME. My gf had it so i asked it for a few days, and right the moment I loaded it up, pixelizated brillianced shined off my tv screen. And what cool soundtrack at some points. Right in the begining of the game when you start running across the first corridor and that somewhat orchestral action movie score pumps you up for the onslaught that is going to ensue. It's one of those games that if I could remake it somehow I'd leave it just as it is, with nicer graphics and a somewhat more dynamic gameplay. For the time it was good enough that the controls are like any fps game on console today.

MDK oozes lots of style, wacky style (the world's smallest nuclear explosion? Dummy decoy?) and makes me think where did all that ren and stimpy attitude that made Shiny games so cool went, after Enter the Matrix. What a **** game. I never played a game so crappy just because of bugs and... square wheels, right. It should be right there with big rigs and advent rising except for that no one cares about bigs rigs and Advent Rising seemed like an awesome game. MDKII was also an awesome game, gameplay wise it was way better but some of the style got lost and it evolved into this even less serious game, which by me is all cool, I remember laughing with that game. Only if they'd do a new one, I know it would kick ass and get people talking about it I'm sure.

Meaning, Dark Sector does look like a cool game worth checking out. Fun thing about survival horror games is how limited they can be while not losing any fun. Silent Hill for example, is a series which doesn't rely much on action or anything, actually when you try to kick some ass you actually can't cause it's pretty much what it is all about, the player being vunerable and defenseless. It's like the game is broken and it is meant to be that way. In Sh4 they even pushed it a bit further by shorting down your choices to all kinds of melee weapons as sewer pipes and golf clubs. I can tell golf clubs are dangerous. Rarely you'll find a firearm and when you do you got like 8 or 12 rounds in it so I guess it took itself a bit seriously in comparsion with Sh3 where you were a girl with submachine guns which were kinda impossible to aim with. Actually I can't remember a survival game i have completed anyways, I've already played some and if I didn't ever finish one is cause i only get addicted to games where there's always something to kill or something really moody and immersive. Like the first Resident Evil for GC. I woulda've finished that one if the console was mine.

All I just wanna say about DarkSector is WOW! you can aim while you dodge **** Isn't that just cool? For almost a decade we have these kinds of games and someone looked at splinter cell or something and said "why not?". It's like the reason why you play games, you can do stuff you couldn't do in real life, it is not meant for you to not be able to do some reasonable things as to not dodge an axe if you coudn't. I mean, it is one of a million reasons why I don't play sport games. Other than not liking any sport. Like in Doom3 not being able to use a flashlight while using a weapon or RE4 where you can't almost move at all even if it is a way greater game than Doom3 ever was. I liked the scenario we were shown some years ago, it was cooler than this pseudo industrial WWII setting it has got now and WWII games there are plenty, like 19 mohaas or whatever. Anyways Dark Sector looks distinct and fun at any rate.

...Or is it Gene? I still haven't played Okami, and I dunno if I will but something has to be said for the themes of Capcom's Clover studios games. Awesomeness. And wackyness. First we got Viewtiful Joe which was just a little cool game about having it's own sense of style while making fun of old gozilla movies and other toei retro classics, **** like ultraman, power rangers, gatchamen, and all sorts of evoluted post astro boy kind of sillyness. And now what I always wanted, a decent Fist of the North Star game. Well it isn't a Hokuto no Ken game but it's a bit like when Doom appeared, it was supposed to be a Aliens game and then Fox made a wrong choice about not giving Id the license, and so they did what they wanted with no limits attached to an intellectual property. **** I'd rather give Id Aliens back in 93 than giving green light on AvP the movie. At least there's Doom now, right?

I don't think God Hand was supposed to be a Hokuto no ken (now Hnk which is the same as Fotns which is the same as Fist of the North Star) game, however the influences are clear. With Viewtiful Joe we had cliche guys in tights and now with God Hand we have something from the same age and era but way more obscure. Late 70's and 80's kung fu exploitation movies and animes about the almost brink extinction of man in a unknown nuclear holocaust. Let's start with the main character Gene. Gene like all the other Capcom poster boys (except for Ryu) is a character who's always full of **** says pretty corny stuff and at the end of the day he has the skills to back it all up. I'd thought heroes should be a little more humble but it's okay. What's curious about Gene is how something happened to him, like having his arm cutoff, and from that incident, something has been gained, something that would give him the means to save the humanity. Kenshiro its the exact same thing, he gets the big dipper carved on his chest and then he goes off to kill some ugly dudes as he was, and had become, the epitomy of what the society had become and of what the society needed. Like a post modern elitist martyr, like an ass kicking Jesus on a rampage for revenge and vegeance.

2nd curious thing about Gene is the logo he has on the back of his jacket, a cracked skull, split in two vertically. An homage to the Splitting Mountains fist or whatever used by Ken. Seeing that just cracked me up. I swear if i'd ever was going to have a tatoo that would be a it. A split in two skull. All the enemies are cliche post apocaliptic MadMaxesque stereotypes, guys with a gay doubtful sense of style and zebra, snake, giraffe, leopard patterns on their clothing. And don't forget the mohawks. Some of them are just flat out gay like the two first bosses you fight who yell "WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN" while punching :D

While the characters themselves look nice with sharp clean textures and details, the locations in this game are kinda awful to look at. Sure, it's a ps2 game but **** these places you fight in are bland. At least they have got some style and sometimes I almost think that it is on purpose that it looks like some sort of n64 game with a higher polycount. At least, the places you most expect in a Hnk game are there and there's plenty of others, surely detracting from the direct influence it started with to become something else way wackier.

Gameplay wise it's a mix between Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 4 and even some other game sidescroller beat-em-up game like Streets of Rage cause for a long time I didn't play a game that beared the concept of a beat-em-up so seriously. You enter an area, you punch, kick, stomp, and spank the **** out of everybody and you punch, kick, stomp, and spank your way out some more. It's an awesome game to let go some steam off even if it's rather difficult.

Review coming soon I guess. :x

Okay.

I recently finished Prey which was an awesome game even without a proper gunplay mechanic, God Hand is awesome even with crappy dated graphics, Resident Evil 4 is thrilling even if it's crappy, Max Payne 2 is fun even if it is too simple, Castelvania games rock my castle and i can't run Stalker or Tmnt the movie. Oh, I'm playing Soul Reaver 2 with a broken keyboard in italian. Makes it sound more arcane and gothic. I just don't understand **** about what they're saying. Games waiting to be critizised soon. Seems like there's plenty to do at home.