Sarthak's blog

2009-05-04T17:04:00.001-07:00

2009-05-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Some more pics!

2009-04-29T10:11:00.001-07:00

2009-04-26T19:41:00.001-07:00

Some random game pictures taken via fraps demo (sorry about the quality but I can't upload 3 MB pics...loss of quality due to jpeg conversion)

Battlefield 2142 Review

2009-04-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

Been playing Battlefield 2142 since late last year. For some reason the PC gaming community ignored this game, labeling it as a poor cash in attempt and opting to stick with Battlefield 2 instead....Battlefield 2142 is a great addition to the Battlefield franchise. I believe it was built upon what Dice had on the completion of Battlefield 2. They made improvements to the graphics engine, gameplay design, sound, GUI among other things. Now lets go in depth :D

Graphics: Battlefield 2142 is by far the best looking Battlefield game available on PC. Dice made some minor improvements to the engine that go a long way make it look great!! Some of the improvements over BF2 engine include: better foliage, enhanced lighting, better sky boxes, and better particle effects (sparks, smoke etc). Sadly, the game doesn't support multicore CPU's so expect some slowdown when there are 64 players running around in a tight environment during an artillery *cough* orbital strikes :P I played the game on the following rig:

3.0 GHz Dual Core E8400 CPU
ATI 4850 512 MB ver
2 gig DDR2 Ram

Overall the game runs great, but like I said previously do expect some slowdowns, especially when things get intense on 64 player games. Overall the art is great and I feel it was inspired by Killzone for some reason...the guns look very Killzone'ish (which is great since Killzone had great art at the time). Map designs are wonderfull, expect beautifull sky, lovely water and overall a nice atmosphere! Some pics:

Sound: Just like Battlefield 2, the sound effects here are great! From the awesome futuristic laser guns to the authentic radio voice overs. Like I said in my Mirror's Edge review, Dice has a great audio department and they delivered the goods for this game!

Gameplay: Game plays great and in certain areas its better than BF2. Gone are the days of chopper and plane whores, bombing the base over and over. The game is very well blanced and the anti vehicle class has the following weapons: Normal rocket launcher for destroying tanks and cars, a special anti-air missile launcher for destroying airborn threats and a super awesome anti vehicle/anti air sniper gun that fires a large ball of energy towards desired targets (trust me its awesome!). The squad leader has the option to deploy a becon that becomes a spawn point anywhere on the map (even on top of buildings!) Its similar to the tunnel mechanics in Battlefiel Vietnam but better! All APC's and transport ships are equiped with a man cannon which can be used to launch soldiers to the enemy titan or towards cool sniping positions! I highly recommend you guys buy the BF2142 complete edition which includes an add-on called Northern Strike (3 maps, and adds 1 extra weapon for each class - totally worth it)! Overall, BF2142, is really well balanced, runs on a great engine and has tons of great maps. The new titan mode is cool too!

Ovearll 9/10! Great game, totally worth $19.99

Bully Review

2009-04-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote this review back when the PS2 version was released (for gamefaqs). Media outlets like 1up, IGN and others were praising this game a bit too much. I wasn't really impressed...find out why:

I believe the entire premise of the Bully was to leverage some success from the Grand Theft Auto 3's sandbox formula and mix it in a new intellectual property. Sadly, it ends up being a failure.

Graphics

The game looks pretty good on a standard television set. It has some fake depth of field effect going on that slightly blurs the distant environment. The characters are well molded and animate well for a PS2 game. The game suffers from bad frame rate. The frame rate usually hovers around 30 frames per second and occasionally drops below 30 FPS and it is very annoying! It will usually drop when you are riding the bike around town or are just walking or running in an open environment. Overall the graphics are a mixed bag; this ain't no God of War II.

Sound

The voice acting in this game is superb! Honestly this is some of the most genuine and hilarious voice acting in a video game ever!! The cut scenes actually made me laugh out loud! The music is also mixed bag, the tracks are very small (usually last around a 45 seconds on average and loop over and over again.) The music honestly gets irritating after a while. You will probably find yourself turning it down and listening to the ambient sound instead. And the ambient sound itself isn’t very good, I mean it’s PS2 quality stuff at the end of the day (lots of loops)

Gameplay

This is where the game falls short. First of all the map in this game is TOO SMALL!! On a standard television set it’s hard to see where you have to go and you have to constantly press the select button to bring up the larger map. Secondly the missions are fun initially when you start out but quickly become very repetitive and tedious later on. I mean how many times to you have to sneak into the girl’s dorm to collect panties or take pictures of girls showering? (LOL) But seriously some of the missions like: escort, beat person x, bring x item to x person etc become repetitive. Thirdly, the combat system isn’t very good. Locking on to objects is a pain and the frame rate doesn’t help. The combat usually boils down to receptively smashing the square button to submit someone, you can taunt them when they are on low health but the taunts become lame after three or four times. Also, exploring the town is a pain in the butt! The skate board you get is slow and there aren’t that many bikes lying around, so you have to slowly make your way to your objective, however getting back to the school is easy since there are school bus stops scattered around town. Finally, the school part of the game is fun initially. I had a great time playing doge ball the first few times, the button press chemistry class was fun but again as you progress these classes become a chore and you will find yourself skipping them. There are six classes: art, English, gym, photographic, shop, and chemistry. You learn new fighting moves in the gym class, in English you enhance your vocabulary so you learn how to impress girls and charm your way through trouble when you are caught skipping classes or breaking into lockers. In chemistry you learn how to make various weapons like stink bombs, firecrackers etc. Each class has five “exams” that you mass to get through them and they are mostly easy! You can you just look up how to pass each class and finish them in 2 hours.

Story

RocketStar Vancouver has created a great world here! Every single NPC in the world of Bully is unique. They all have different voices, different body shapes and just generally very interesting. The story is told through really well done cut scenes that are well directed and interesting. I actually never skipped a single cut scene in this game because they were so well done! Tons of kudos to R*, great work here!

Controls

Controls are slightly unresponsive this is due to the bad frame rate I guess but this is a minor problem. You won’t find yourself wrestling with the controls or throwing your dual shock at the television due to frustration.

Replay Value.

ZERO! There is no replay value here people. After you get through this game there is no reason to get back to it. The missions are repetitive and tedious and trust me you will NOT want to get through those unless you are some kind of rabid fanboy.

Overall

The game is fun initially, it really captivated me because it had top quality cut scenes and voice acting. However as you progress through the game, the problems become apparent. You will find yourself getting bored of the repetitive missions, you will get tired of the repetitive looping music, and you will start to get annoyed by the frame rate. The story is one positive aspect of this game, the characters are interesting and funny, you will find yourself playing this game just to see the ending however a lot of people might lose interest because of the gameplay problems.

Graphics - 6/10

Sound – 5/10

Gameplay – 5/10

Story – 10/10

Controls 7/10

Replay Value – 2/10

Overall – 6/10

Mirror's Edge Review (PC version)

2009-04-26T15:53:00.001-07:00

Hey guys and gals! This is my first blog post ever, I hope you enjoy it! Recently bought Mirror's Edge (ME) PC from Amazon for $19.99. I had previously heard not to buy this game at full price since it was short and had little replay value. All that is true, this game certainly isn't worth $49.99 or $59.99 since it is very short and has little replay value. I am going to discuss the following aspects of Mirror's Edge: graphics/performance, sound design and gameplay.

First of all, ME runs on Unreal engine 3.0. All UE3 games I have played on my PC (Mass Effect, Unreal Tournament 3, Mirror's Edge and Bioshock) run great! The engine is very optimized and has no problems running at max settings, however the engine doesn't support anti aliasing (it can be forced but on my rig I get a lot of frame drops when I enable it, so it isn't worth it). ME does implement AA but don't expect the game to run at a smooth 60 frames per second if you enable AA, you will most certainly get frame drops. I played on the following rig:

3.0 GHz E8400 Dual Core Intel CPU
2 gigs DDR2 Ram
ATI 4850 512 MB ver.

I played at 1680 x 1080 resolution all settings at highest, anti aliasing off, and PhyX support off (not supported on ATI cards, massive frame drops if enabled). Overall, the game is very pretty, has very good artistic direction and runs great! Aditionaly, like all Dice games, this game has awesome animations!! From sliding to kicking open doors, wall jumping, everything is animated very well. In terms of overall graphical fedelity, ME is no Crysis or Chronicles of Riddick (AoDA) but I think it will continue to impress even 5 years from now due to its art.

Sound: Great sound design, very crisp audio and the main theme is one of the best I have heard! Listen to it here:
Mirror's Edge main theme

The full game comes with the OST (which is great) so you can enjoy it when you are not playing the game :-D. The overall sound design isn't as punchy as Dice's other game Battlefield Bad Company however it still manages to sound great. Dice, in my opinion is has a great audio department, most of their games sound great (Battlefield 2, Battlefield 1942, Bad Company and others)

Gameplay: ME isn't a first person shooter! You will have an option to beat up police offers and steal their guns however it just isn't very fulfilling! You will want to beat the game using melee attacks, all of which look great! At its core ME feels like a racing game! You are a runner and your job is to run across the levels and accomplish your goal (don't worry there is a great variety it terms of mission design, you won't be doing the same thing over and over!) Missions all take place in a very clean and futuristic city and you will find yourself running across: malls, office buildings, roof tops, shipping yards, sewers and other areas.

Overall, ME is a very unique game that must be experienced by everyone! There simply isn't anything like this out there. Don't watch videos of the game, experience it yourself. Trust me, its more exhilarating when you play it compared to watching you tube videos. Overall score 9/10. Not worth $49 or $59 but definitely worth $19.99 :D

Some pics: took using demo version of fraps, converted from bmp to jpg (sorry about loss of quality)