Скорошни рецензии на Billy_Brightside

I just watched Brenden Greene brag about the 3 million PC players who bought into the EA version of PlayerUknown's Battlegrounds (weirdest PC game title of 2017) on the E3 (very console friendly as always) 2017 Twitch. Color me jaded, but I find the game severely unoptimized, and despite the regular updates, nothing seems to be done about the real things that need to be fixed. And at $29.95 this is the most expensive EA game I've bought into to date. I regularly join with 4 friends {which make up a squad) and at least 1 out of 3 times, one of us will mysteriously drop from the game. The blue ball of death is an interesting and effective mechanic which admittedly forces the ultimate outcome of the game, but even that randomly either becomes grossly unfair or not, depending upon the speed that it decides to move across the map.

As I aforementioned, Greene's presentation offered up as an XB1 "exclusive" (even though it's been on PC for months) revealed graphics three times better than what we have on PC. I just don't get it. The PC crowd made this guy rich, and yet he's showing the love to the console crowd. I'm done with it.

The woods at my grandparents’ farm when I was a kid. A one time Australian girlfriend. Alfred Hitchcock films in brilliant Technicolor. These are things that made indelible fingerprints on my past. And almost eerily Campbo Santo Games has brought these things together in a small minimalist game that despite its lack of a ten million dollar budget hooked me right in like I’m sure Doom 2016 will. The game starts subtle enough, you are Henry, a man escaping a bad episode (or two) in his life by taking a summer job as one of those guys who man a firetower and watch for forest fires. The woods are breezy, picturesque, calm, and inviting.

Through the first quarter of the game a mystery begins unfolding and the woods turn sinister. The excellent sound design made me swear I could hear twigs cracking not far behind me and I found myself constantly turning around thinking someone was watching me. The only real foothold I had, the anchor which prevented panic mode was the voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie I had with me. That voice belonged to Delilah, my boss, a chick residing in another fire tower six miles away. Ah, Delilah, truly one of the most compelling characters I’ve ever encountered in over twenty years of PC gaming.

A part of me wanted the game to rush to its ending just to see my relationship with Delilah come to its fruition. Playing this hit me though, reminding me just like in real life it’s the journey not the destination. I think this is a realization shared by many who played this game and criticized the Henry/Delilah relationship aspect of it. When I finally made my way to Delilah’s firetower and my perceptions of her came face to face with her humble abode where she had often communicated with me on the radio, I found it strangely overwhelming.

The mystery itself, slightly underwhelming. It reminded me of something out of a Lifetime movie. It was nothing grandiose popping out bigger than life, just a simple plausible unsettling event that any one of us could potentially find ourselves enmeshed in.

I don’t often replay games, the ones I have I can count on one hand; I probably will replay this one someday. Its beautiful art style prompted a screenshot. I rarely post screenshots since I consider them spoilers, and seriously, if I go back and play Crysis again, do I really need to pollute your Steam activity feed with screenies of a 2007 game? You already know what the game looks like. But I couldn’t help myself. The art style was redolent of those woods on my grandparents’ farm I mentioned earlier. That part of the game was truly a venture into my past.

The game was really short, but adequate. I completed it in just under five hours, and that’s probably longer than most. There is one consolation, stay the course and the achievements are free gimmies. It’s one of the easiest 100% achievement games I’ve played. The sour point was how the ending seemed somewhat rushed. It was if some corporate bean counter was cracking the whip to get it completed and out the door. It begs the question, is the game worth it for the asking price? I enjoyed it immensely. Don’t let it pass you by, especially during a summer or winter sale.

Several years ago I lived in a big house with a great number of people. I worked nights and the bustle and noise of so many people under one roof made sleeping during the day difficult. I remember coming home in predawn hours however, and brewing a cup of tea. I would take a fine leather bound volume of Jules Verne stories from the bookshelf on the mantle, and sit down to lose myself in strange places and wondrous adventures. I would quite often disappear from the phenomenal world and regain my footing in sublime places.

Playing inkle.Ltd’s spectacular 80 Days has taken me back to those days. The game mechanically is a grandiose, “choose your own adventure” tale of a man becoming a man of the world. Though minimal in execution, the game’s presentation is perfect for what it is. My first playthrough was a 3 hour time flash which, I swear, only lasted 30 minutes.

In these days of jagged and blocky 8 bit dark silhouette characters jumping around in pixelated indie games with nary a storyline at all, it’s refreshing to find a game replete with such an incredible amount of imagination put into it.

Playing Phileas Fogg’s ever loyal servant plucked right from the pages of Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in Eighty Days, I got us both kidnapped by cultists in Calcutta. I delivered a baby in the South Pacific while sailing to Manila, and in Manila I contracted cholera. I flattened myself against an alley wall in Dallas, Texas as hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan walked past me, torches in hand. And in New Orleans, Death sat at my table in a bar, bought me a drink and kissed my hand.

No. I didn’t win the race, nor did I complete my world tour in 80 days. But I had (mis)adventures of a lifetime that made winning an around the world race (and the wager involved) pale dim. When the roads freeze and the wintry snow buries your front door, fix a mug of hot chocolate, indulge yourself in this wonderful game filled with beautifully crafted prose. You’re welcome.

This review is for Train Simulator's Colton & Northern Add- On.

A lot of heart went into the creation of this Add-On. The map layout is fantastic. It is as if you were suddenly transported from the real world into a living, breathing N scale train set. The towns depicted in this scenario will seem familiar to anybody who grew up or lives in the Midwest. The ambiance with its rivers, bridges, and ridges will make you glad you own Train Simulator, but much of it seems half baked. There are too many buildings that are simply cut and paste clones. It's like watching an old The Flinstones episode and watching Fred and Barney drive by the same backdrop.

The scenarios are interesting, but two of them are just broken. I tried them multiple times, no joy. The fact that I'm an OCD completionist bothers me, but alas, it doesn't involve Steam achievements.

The scenarios that do work, however, are remarkable. You'll feel as if you accomplished a day's work. I'm recommending this, especially if you can find it for el cheapo via a Steam summer/winter sale.

What does Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons have in common with Unreal Tournament, Killing Floor, America’s Army, and Brothers in Arms :Road to Hill 30? Good question being all of the latter are blood filled death fueled first person shooters. Answer :They all use Epic’s Unreal engine. And this threw me for a loop. Being used to playing violent shooters, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons grasped me like any game in recent memory rarely has and captivated me for all of its four and a half hour story. It was like coming from a crash diet of Bawlz or Mountain Dew Amp, and switching to herbal tea.

The game concerns a simple story of two sons attempting to find a magic serum to heal their dying father. They meet with misadventure along the way, but never fail to stay the course. Told entirely through exposition (there is no discernable dialogue in the game whatsover) the player uses a gaming controller to control the actions of the two boys. One stick represents the taller and stronger brother who is able to assist his younger smaller brother into high places, and the other stick represents the smaller brother who is able to squeeze into tighter spaces to press levers, open gates, etc. to allow his older brother entry. A charming little tutorial starts the show and gently eases the player into the game mechanics. Don’t worry, it’s far easier than it sounds.

I never had to access a walk through, and I only got stuck one time. I took a breath and reapproached the problem and then it came to me. I did die twenty-two times, but not once did I feel the game cheated. Death was usually a lesson learned.

And strangely even though I died several times it was a relatively easy game to get through. The story is definitely the thing. Speaking of story, it unfurled before me and captivated me like watching Labyrinth, or The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, or the obscure, The Company of Wolves. These are wonderful fantasy movies I saw in theaters years ago and remember never wanting them to end. This game isn’t a deep game, which isn’t a surprise considering its short playtime. It does, however, exude a wonderful ambience which is augmented by a beautiful soundtrack. If you’re a fan of Stars of the Lid or Sigur Ros you’ll find the soundtrack as splended as I did. At the story’s end I found myself a victim of my own emotions. I find it great that a computer game can make me feel that way. I want to revisit this place especially since it left me painfully pining for more background, lore and history of the wonderful place that could only exist in literature or art. This game is truly a testament to the old maxim, less is more.

Air Conflicts: Secret Wars is a mixed bag of things, but mostly an arcade sim with a decent (though hyperbolic) story wrapped around it. You play a female protagonist named DeeDee who, being a pilot smuggler gets caught up into World War II. And she serves with a man who personally flew and fought with her father in World War One. As the missions progress, the story unfolds through static cut scenes that have a pleasant cell shaded hand drawn look. Missions vary from stealthy strike missions to all out balls to the wall multi-plane dogfights. If you’re looking to play an IL-2 Sturmovik imitation, look elsewhere; this is strictly for the arcade fans. Difficulty can be toggled, but some missions are more difficult than they have any right to be. One particular mission toward the end involved destroying fleeing vehicles through the city of Berlin. Tall buildings made it difficult to get decent bombing runs or rocket attacks, and it took me over 50 tries to get it. (But at this point, being so close to the end I had to finish it!)

Graphics are okay, serving the purpose. They look console-ish, and the voice acting is pretty much done by three people. One guy doing four different men’s voices with different accents is cheesy to the point of being hilarious. The music score, on the other hand, is polished and grandiose. It’s on par with a Stephen Spielberg Hollywood feature. I even looked during the end credits to find out who the composer was. Sadly, he was not credited.
The game offers multiplayer, but servers were pretty scant. I did find one each time I logged on, and this is probably a testament to the game’s age. It was fun, but mostly consisted of aerial jousts with rockets being launched at each other. A lot of my kills were dumb luck.

I won’t be in a hurry to play the original Air Conflicts or Air Conflicts: Vietnam, but if you have a few bucks left in your Steam Wallet during a Summer or Winter Steam sale, you could do worse.

In a cliched world of action RPGs involving medieval/fantasy type settings, it’s refreshing to discover Neocore’s 19th century steampunk gothic-noir type game, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing. The game’s ambience of nighttime villages and murky swamps accompanied by a greatly appropriate soundtrack will keep you playing until your index finger gets numb.

Character class and selection is so varied the game will probably warrant more than a single playthrough to flesh out all of its possibilities. Upon seeing the blank skill tree when first starting out it’s almost mind blowing to wonder where you’re going to put all of the skills, perks and auras the game allows you to. It’s not quite the endless skill tree as Path of Exile, but it’s deep enough you’ll feel your character grow as you play. Enemies come in waves, overwhelmingly so. I played a range character and being able to kite the enemies helped somewhat. If you decide to play as a melee class I think you’ll have your work cut out for you.

Neocore is a small publisher out of Hungary, and big publishers could take some lessons from these guys. I’ve never had the desire to play an RPG through more than once until I played this. Despite the trappings, however, all is not perfect. There was no game manual included in the download, and for the developers to instruct players to read online forums and watch online videos to learn simple instructions about the game bears little in the way of professionalism. Once I learned how “rage” (the energy required to do super attacks, acquired through killing NPCs) worked I was able to accomplish much more. Some creatures in the game had an attribute called Abomination. I never did find out exactly what that was. And the final boss fight involved a lot of lag for me. I died many times because I simply lagged out. Definitely not a deal breaker, but it made that final fight more difficult than it had any right to be. This may or may not be an issue affecting anybody else. I have a state of the art rig, and I was surprised the lag even occured.

Still, I’m glad I found this game. I look forward to playing through it again, experimenting with another class. And then I’ll look forward to tackling Neocore’s sophomore effort, The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing II.

It all began when I read Swiss Family Robinson as a kid and watched Gilligan's Island reruns on television. It probably continued while watching Fantasy Island, (and Herve Villichaize in the belltower shouting "de plane! de plane!") during a harsh Indiana winter. I'm referring to my love for the South Pacific Ocean. My love for that place was finally requited when I spent two and a half years there in the US Navy on a forward deployed Fast Frigate. I left the Navy, and those cherished waters never to return again save for my dreams and memories. And that's the sucky part about aging. Each passing year makes the details a little more fuzzy, a little more distant. Sometimes I feel as if they're the memories of an entirely different person.

And then I played Far Cry 3. Guam, Diego Garcia, The Indian Ocean. It was all there for me, revisited on my computer screen. It was like an odd sense of coming home. Not only did the game's protagonist, Jason Brody, share the same adventurous locales as I did at his age, we also went through a deflowering of innocence all men take the path of, albeit mine occurred over years. Poor Brody's innocence was shattered the moment his brother and friends were accosted by the villians, Vaas and Hoyt, drug and slave traders who inhabit the gameworld like monsters.

As I lead Brody through a dark passage of rites in rescuing his friends and a preciptious push into manhood I've gotten to know the island like my own backyard. I've not been affected by a game like this in ages. When I haven't been playing I've been listening to the game soundtrack so efficiently and appropriately helmed by Brian Tyler (e.g. Constantine, Iron Man 3.) Driving down the Indiana countryside looking up at these gray autumn skies and listening to this music, it just makes me yearn so much to go back to the island. It's a desire only fulfilled when I can sit in front of my computer again and lose myself entirely in the gameworld.

The game will soon end for me. I'm on the last long downhill leg of the roller coaster. And it's been an ecstatic ride. Watching the end credits will be bittersweet, I'm sure, because I'm going to be reacquainted with that old feeling of leaving home once again.

Sid Meier is the Willy Wonka of PC game designers. And he's turned us all into gluttonous brats named Augustus Gloop. His games all exude a simple charm that has the tendency to steal hours from a person's life and become evidence "exhibit A" in about every other divorce court in the country. None of his games are exempt, from his Railroad Tycoon games to his maddeningly "just one more turn" addictive Civilization games. I remember playing his Sid Meier's Gettysburg! in 1998 and thinking it was the best civil war strategy game to ever grace the PC. I stumbled upon my old Gettysburg! disk the other day, but unfortunately, the game has aged terribly. Father Time has watered down and diluted Meier's twinkling charm. Oh, Father Time, you great and terrible killjoy!

Enter Ultimate General:Gettysburg. Created by a modder named Darth who specializes in Creative Assembly's venerable Total War series, Darth has pretty much recrafted Sid's wonderful software toy and fashioned it into a trip down memory lane, only better! The graphics are updated, the AI is a force to be reckoned with, and the game even has its own ambient flare, reverse zoom and you see the fancy wooden trim of the dining room table you are in fact playing a living board game on. Covering the Battle of Gettysburg in its four day entirety, the game bleeds history, and branches of alternate history depending upon the decisions you make regarding your generals. The gameplay mechanics are not quite grognard level, but they're well beyond Facebook Farmville antics. Mouse lassoing of units, and point and click movement orders, troop movements dictated by drag and drop strategy lines, it's all here. I loaded the game up just to check it out, and I spent a weekend playing through the whole campaign on both sides. It's not often a game gets its hooks in me like that, but I love when it does. It's these times I'm truly honored to be a PC gamer.

The cartoonlike artstyle of the board, and the soldiers which are actually sprites, (and do admittedly leave a longing for the ability to zoom down one more notch for a closer look) are crafted as lovingly as even the bold sinewy text of the location names. In another reference to the wonderful Roald Dahl, remember the sign in the school in Matilda's class that Ms. Trunchbull had erected, "If you're having fun, then you're not learning!"? Well, this game proves that notion a simple fallacy because UGG not only proves that you can learn history by playing a computer game, but also that you can have a grandiose good time while doing so.

Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon was the third game I ever purchased back in the 1800's, no, I'm kidding (Though it feels like it at times.) I actually purchased it in 1990 not long after acquiring my first desktop PC. I have played the series religiously since. I have roughly 100 hours in this game in the original 2006 disc retail box version. It certainly isn't a successor to the venerable Railroad Tycoon III, but it's still quite enjoyable if you realize this going in. The game is more of a "beer & pretzels" type real time strategy game with an emphasis on attracting more casual type gamers. The game has a charming art style more akin to an HO or N scale model train layout than the ostensible real world look of the previous Railroad Tycoon games.

Industry acquisitions and playing the stock market against other AI railroad barons seem to have become more important in this title with train consists and railroad track signaling unfortunately taking a back seat. Being able to build your own train consists is possible (and necessary), but the importance seems to have been watered down compared to previous titles. Manual signaling has been removed altogether. The scenarios and their variety are adequate, but pale dim in comparison to Railroad Tycoon III. Firaxis encouraged fans to build maps and scenarios to add to the scenarios available. These additional scenarios can still be found on fansites. The game originally included multiplayer. Be advised, this feature has been truncated from the game entirely. The Steam version of Sid Meier's Railroads! has no multiplayer feature whatsover.

My boxed version would not run on Windows Vista without crashing to the desktop continually. It runs on my current iteration of Windows 7 64-bit, but there is a known bug concerning multi-core processors the game doesn't like. I noticed specifically when building long stretches of track I would get crashes to the desktop. I've played the Steam version for over two dozen hours as of this writing, and I rarely get a desktop crash anymore.

I miss the previous versions of Sid Meier's wonderful railroad games, but oddly, this one has become my favorite of the series. Despite its lack of seriousness, it's still challenging. The game exudes Sid Meier's influence in every pixel. It's colorful art style blooms beautifully, and the sound design which has been lovingly crafted really adds to the ambience. Music from each time period sets the tone and changes along with the times. Zooming in to view the busy animations of each industry and city building is the icing on the cake.