The Witcher

Here is gameplay footage from The Witcher, which was released today in America.



Personally, it looks way too cluttered to me. I was pretty excited about this game, and it's not to say I'm not anymore, but between the clumpy UI and the apparently overly linear gameplay let's just say I'm having doubts.
That aside, The Witcher is still a very promising game that won't hold back on violence, sex, and very real world themes.

An Ode...

To a system I'll never play.

Crysis Demo

My hunger for Crysis has not in the littlest been quenched from the thrilling demo I've played through multiple times this weekend. In fact, I'm wanting this game so much more. Crysis presents innovative gameplay in an expansive open world. It can be played as fast paced and action packed, or as slow and stealthy, as you so choose. Personally, I mix the two to suit my style.

If there is anything to be be spoken badly of in Crysis thus far it is the high demand on graphics, and that's only bad if your rig is bad. The world is beautiful, highly detailed, and pushes the limits of the very best video cards. I myself am running on dual 8800 gts and struggling with very high setting all around. The game takes place in the near future on a lush, tropical island, but videos of later parts of Crysis show snowy areas. The developers really captured not only the look but the feel as well of these different climates, and you may find yourself feeling like you really are creeping through the jungle or trodding through snow at times. This game is beautiful.

As Crysis starts there is a short cutscene foreshadowing what's to come, followed by a black screen with the words Seven Days Later... Thats where you come in. You, and four other members of your elite and and top secret squad. The leader is a man named Prophet, and your three other teammates are Aztec, Psycho, and Jester. You go by Nomad. Prophet quickly briefs you all on the mission, which is to find the person who set off a distress beacon on an island occupied by the Korean military. You then jump out of the plane deploying you over the island, and that's when the first of many things goes wrong...

Your chute is missing. Prophet tells you not to freak out because you're over water and your suit will absorb most of the impact. Luckily he's right. You land roughly and your suit gets out of whack, and this is where you learn about all its neat features. Prophet quickly updates your suit somehow, restoring all of its features, and gets the location of all the team members: you're all scattered. From there you get to fool around with the neat tricks and modes of you suit, which include a defensive mode, hyper speed, super strength, and cloaking. The learning curb is extremely short and simple, yet the varieties of gameplay offered from the different modes is very encompassing.

After getting the hang of the suit, which is done partly by taking out your first three Korean soldiers, of KBA, or by avoiding them all together, you meat up with Jester and together you go look for Aztec, who got stuck in a tree. Unfortunately for him you two arrived just seconds too late, only to find him and four KBA mauled, bloodied, and dead. This was not the work of humans.

As the game proceeds you and Jester split up, and Prophet tells you where to go and what your objectives are. Although you arrived in the dead of night dawn raises shortly and adds nicely to the scenery. You'll likely spend at least an hour doing several sequintal main and secondary objectives at this point, as well as exploring the combat options, vehicles, swimming, killing crabs, shooting down trees, blowing up cars, picking up and throwing random items, and trying to climb on rocks. At least that's what I did. But either way you'll eventually meet back up with the remainder of the crew, which is everyone except Aztec, at an icy boat stranded no where near the ocean. Psycho and Jester start arguing with Prophet, who clearly knows something the rest of us don't, but is cut short with a large mettallic looking squid like alien bursts through the ship and grabs one of your partners...

And that's where it ends. To recap, Crysis has first and foremost BEAUTIFUL graphics and scenery. It's not just the texture on the rock, it's the way the sun reflects on the ripples trailing behind a KBA piloted boat. The combat offers new and very exciting ways to play that suit the style of just about everyone. The story is also interesting with cut scenes that effectively draw you in. All together, Crysis is a beautifully put together game that is only contending with Assassin's Creed for number one on my Christmas list. It's going to be a must have.

Crysis Official Page

Manhunt 2 Leak

In september an early PS2 build for Rockstar's upcoming game Manhunt 2 was leaked to the internet. If you played Manhunt 1, you know that it can be gruesomely graphic. In fact, Manhunt 2 had to tone down the visuals enough to avoid the nearly inevitable AO rating, which means no releasing it for the Wii or PS3. This leaked version of Manhunt provides a glimpse of what the game should have been, were it not for Sony and Nintendo and their firm restriction of AO games.

Manhunt 2 was leaked by a former member of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) who had access to the code. Obviously, he was fired. This is where the debate comes in. There are a thousand places one could take this, but I want to stay strictly withing the arguement of freedom of speech, and was this guy in the wrong. Nintendo and Sony are hampering with Rockstars freedom of speech by not allowing AO games, and they can legally do that. But should they be able to? And what of the fired employee, who let the freedom leak over the internet? Should he still be fired?

Personally, console companies shouldn't be able to limit what goes into their systems. It is not that way with computers, and games are judged more harshly by the ESRB than movies are. And as for the employee, yes, he should be fired. Whether he did the right or wrong thing, he disobeyed his company and Rockstar by doing so, and should not get off scots-free.

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