Xbox 360 Game Review: Bodycount
In this review, I will talk about Bodycount, a first person shooter for Xbox 360.
Bodycount is one of those games which mean serious business, by this I mean that the game itself doesn’t tell an epic tale, instead it puts weapons in your hand and allows you to kill everything and anything in your hand. Bodycount normally offers a shooting experience that is normally fun, but some drawbacks keep it from becoming a great game. Bodycount is all about shooting, so anyone who is looking for a game that offers a little bit of narrative should not look for one in here. To find out more, read our review.
To start off my review, I will talk about the features of the game.
Bodycount is developed by the long running company Codemasters. The developers have succeeded in creating a game that offers you infinite mayhem. Almost everything in the environment can be broken (remember Red Faction?). Here is an example of what I mean, if you see a door and sense there is an enemy behind it, you can literally shoot the door and your bullets will tear through the wood to kill anyone behind it. One of the greatest things about the game is that this mechanic of the game is also available in the multiplayer offerings.
Moving further down the review, the aiming system of the game may annoy new players to the game, but once you start playing the game, you will completely get used to its weird aiming system. One of the most annoying aspects of the game however, lies in the mechanics used behind the grenade throwing. Most of the time, the grenades you throw at your enemy will get stuck around the environment, which can get incredibly frustrating. However the same cannot be said for the A.I, because from what it seemed, they perfectly through grenades at me without giving me a chance to react.
To finish off my review, Bodycount is an average shooter game, if you can learn to master its aiming and the annoying grenade throwing mechanic, than you are sure to enjoy it, however if you are the sensitive kind, you should stay well away from it.
Trauma PC games reviews
From the psycho-sexual phantasmagoria of the Silent Hill series to the nightmarescapes of Sanitarium to countless amnesiac protagonists unraveling the riddles of identity, videogames have a long tradition of creating compelling narratives out of psychological damage and healing. It is a shame that Trauma is not part of that storied (ahem) institution.
A Flash-based point and click adventure game from independent German developer Krystian Majewski, Trauma is ostensibly the story of a woman recovering from a car crash (the crash itself, the game’s opening cinematic, is an artful memory of an accident and is Trauma’s very best moment). The story is concerned with a therapist navigating the woman’s recurring dreams to suss out details of her past and her identity, but why these aspects of her personal history are important to her recovery from something as random as a car wreck is never explained.
Much of Trauma hangs on the ambiguity of its dream stuff. The atmosphere is thick and surreal, underscored by a minimal but moody soundtrack. You wander around a city plaza, a deserted road, an abandoned building and an overgrown hillside, clicking through a shadowy world made of subtly altered photographs. In this, the game feels very much like a borderland of reality.
The action of the game is played out through four very light puzzles, each tied to a specific gesture mechanic – lifting boulders, clearing drains, cutting hedges and capturing ghosts. An additional element involves finding Polaroids hidden around the environment, some of which provide a glimpse of insight into the mystery, but most simply illustrating new gestures for navigating the world.
The gesture commands are a novel interface for a point and click adventure. You simply click and drag the simple symbols across the scene, leaving behind a glowing streak like a flashlight in a long exposure photograph. It works particularly well when interacting with the main story, but fell a bit flat when moving through environments (clicking the mouse the old school way always felt much more expedient).
There is no real challenge to the puzzles, though, the focus being more on experience and interpretation. The experience, however rich it may be, is regrettably short — the main game can be completed, with keen clicking, in less than an hour. Secondary objectives for each of the four scenarios nearly double the play time.
Meanwhile, interpreting the dreams is no easy feat. Trauma’s imagery, while intriguing, seems unmoored from traditional visual symbolism, making intuitive leaps difficult. Connections between the woman’s observations and the artifacts of her past are obscure at best and often non-existent.
Stringing together a cohesive narrative from the puzzle pieces presented by the game is nigh-impossible. Majewski was no doubt striving to create something open to a wide variety of interpretations, but what was meant to be ambiguous winds up simply being meaningless.
Trauma is a curiosity — a bauble, at first beautiful and beguiling, that quickly loses its lustre. As a story it is thin, with the player knowing no more at the end of the game then they did at the beginning. As a game it is simplistic, leaving the player untested.
And sadly, as art, it is an empty vessel. Trauma strives to be profound while saying nothing.
PC Game Review: Atom Zombie Smasher
Atom Zombie Smasher is another game for those people who love blowing Zombie’s into bits and pieces. The game is plain weird, that’s because it has been created by none other than Blendo Games, who are now known to out the weirdest possible ideas. Fortunately enough, weird it might be, but Blendo Games really know how to put the fun in their ideas and Atom Zombie Smasher is no exception. You are tasked with saving the population from the living dead, and your weaponry includes bombs and guns. To find out more, read our review.
To start my review, I will talk about the design and features of the game.
Atom Zombie Smasher boasts a very unique and simplistic design. You won’t see actual zombies or citizens in this game; instead you are presented with a table top view of the infested city, with purple squares representing the zombies and yellow squares representing the people running for their life. The yellow and purple squares run around the city and your task is to place weaponry at key points in order to stop the zombies. The game at first sounds amazingly simple, but as soon as you start progressing, the zombies start becoming clever, and one mistake can cause you to lose your objective.
Moving further down the review, the mission begins in daylight, and you must save all the survivors before the night arrives. Once it’s dark, it’s nearly impossible to stop the zombies and you will most likely fail if that happens. The concept becomes even more interesting when you find out that zombies can turn your people against you, so if a purple square comes in contact with a group of yellow squares, all those people will convert to purple squares. Blendo has included a number of weapons in your disposal that you will unlock and use throughout the game.
To finish off my review, Blendo Games has once again succeeded in making a weird but fun game, if you love to play and try something unique; Atom Zombie Smasher offers enough fun and uniqueness that will quench your thirst.
PC Game Review: Crysis 2
In this review, I will talk about Crysis 2, the sequel to Crysis on PC.
Crysis 2 is the sequel to the hugely popular Crysis game from Crytek. When Crytek first announced Crysis 2 for the PC and consoles, fan of the series were worried that it would not live up to their expectations. The reason for this was simple; Crysis was a game that pushed system hardware to the next level, something that normal next generation consoles still can’t handle. Crytek promised the fans that it would release the game with all its glory, and for consoles, the developer also promised that it would be one of the best looking game on the next gen machines. Thankfully, Crytek has fulfilled its promise. Read on the review to find out more.
To start my review, I will talk about the features of the game.
Crysis 2 will put you in the feet of a U.S marine who finds prophet, the protagonist from the first game. Prophet gives the marine nano suit powers. The nano suit provides incredible powers that boost your strength, speed, vision and gives you invisibility. The controls of the game have been improved here, now you can activate the suit powers with a press of a key, release it and the power is gone. You are tasked with to find out why the aliens have invaded our world.
Moving further down the review, the story contains a lot twists and turns and should be able to keep you interested in the game for quite long. Other than that, Crysis 2 also features a multiplayer mode where you can compete against other players from across the world. You suit powers are available in the multiplayer as well, making this quite a unique experience. As far as the graphics go, the game does not support direct x 11 on its release, but the developers have already released a patch that lets you experience the game in Direct X 11 on the PC.
To finish off my review, Crysis 2 redefines the first person shooter genre; fans of this genre should not miss this game.
