My two cents on Splinter Cell: Conviction

I've finished playing through Sam Fishers fall into chaos through his newest game and here are my thoughts on it.

Firstly: THIS IS NOT SPLINTER CELL.

Splinter cell is perhaps the epitome of sneaking games, giving you, not only, a large arsenal of weapons and gadgets with which to slip past your foes, but also challenging you to try and find other methods of liquidation besides plainly shooting. Besides the crappy Double Agent (which I haven't even been able to play) the sneaking has always been priority, failure to swear to the shadows would result in sharp reprimands from your commander and possibly a nuclear war.

This changed in Conviction where you do not even have the possibility of hiding bodies of your (very chatty and very ugly by the way) enemies and your arsenal of ranged combat weaponry is limited to bullets, thereby removing the whole non-lethal part of the game. yes, there is sneaking but it is very hard to do since the developers have jumped on the train of this fashion that is having no GUI, something I really do not understand the taboo of having, which means no real sneak meter (other than the screen turning black and white when you seem to be in shadows although you are in plain sight to the player) and no health bar.

But what this game is, is an incredibly satisfying shooter. Yes, this game is fun, make no mistake of that. Besides becoming more a deliver-your-brain-at-the-entrance shooter this game has not lost all charm and hope. The developers have undoubtedly tried to implement some graphical changes and they are in fact not completely lost on me. It is beautiful, yes, with many of the levels being colourful and with civilians for a change. the effect when you go into hiding does seem slick, especially since some objects, including blood, is still coloured and seem to amplify the atmosphere. your objectives are now displayed via text projected on objects throughout the game which also seem to be the best way to do so instead of outright displaying an objectives screen. Actually, except the blatant changes from the "original formula of Splinter Cell", my only complaint is the new sonar vision gear which seems completely useless compared to our original vision gear (it's even become the friggin' logo of the game people!) and the auto-save system where there is usually too far between checkpoints and a strange way of implementing extra difficulty into a game (I got frustrated having to do the same task over and over because the game didn't feel like saving).

In conclusion: besides changing a fucking perfect game (here I still mean the first three (or at least the first and chaos theory) and not the crappy double agent) this game is still a fun, albeit a bit short, shooting game with beautiful visuals that really is a nice break from the gritty and grey games we see everywhere right now.

/Skt_Thomas

Addendum: I forgot the most awesome thing in the game: YOU SMASH A MANS FACE INTO AN URINAL!

Iron Man 2 motherfuckers!

I watched Iron Man 2 yesterday (well.. actually the day before yesterday now) and it was plainly said awesome (as the title may suggest)

That film confirms my belief that this is how super hero movies should be: movies about SUPER people, people who are above us normal humans. That is why I loathed movies like the Spiderman series, I hate heroes that do nothing but bitch and moan throughout the entire movie, pushing away what we came to see, action and suspense, not some teen-angst chick flick.

Now don't get me wrong, I like super hero movies with good characters, this is why The Dark Knight still stands as one of my favourite movies, Heath Ledger (an actor I never watched before) delivers a performance so great that he holds up the entire movie, even with Christian Bales idiotic voice ruining Batman. But the Iron Man movies are so bad-ass and filled with awe-inspiring effects along with an enjoyable performance by Robert Downey Jr. that I couldn't help leaving the cinema in a better mood, humming that awful Iron Maiden tune.

I know this little place...

Okay, quick post this time as I am sitting in the train.

When I watched an anime one time (I think it was Azumanga Daioh) they mentioned the japanese dish called Bento, basically (or at least the way I understand it) it is their equivalent of our packed lunches, except these looks positively stunning.

Therefore I searched for it on the Internet to gain a bit of info on them, but instead of the expected Wiki page as the first result on Google, I got a danish restaurant called Bento, situated in the area called Vesterbro in the central city. I got courious and went for a visit, expecting at least to soak in the exotic atmosphere available in this part of CPH. But what I got was far beyond that. Being welcomed by smiling staff in a traditional yet stylish environment was just the start.

An even better part of it all was, of course, the food. I was daring and tried their ramen with seafood salad, something I would never dare, or want, to eat in a normal restaurant. Purely friggin' genius it was. and cheap too, 85 dkk (a little more than 10 euro) for a dish too large for me to eat, including a pot of japanese tea.

Conclusively, if you are ever in the vicinity of that restaurant (I will post the adress later) or even just in Copenhagen, go and try it, they really deserve it.

/Skt_Thomas

Get five indie games for the price of... almost nothing!

Check this out!

no, litteraly. I want YOU to go check this out before anything else!

Have you checked it out? huh? okay then..

Let me first say that I LOVE indie games, they do not neccesarily have to be artsy or free, I just like to support anyone so passionate about making games that they do all the work themselves instead of relying on hordes of coders to do the work for them. I will try to bring you the indie games I enjoy the most later but for now, enjoy this extraordinary offer of some of the most famous indie games available.

I cannot describe any of them but I will hopefully be purchasing the games later today, for a nondisclosed price. the price itself is a matter of thought should you choose to act on these offers since they have not given you the chance of paying a fixed price for them. any kind of number between (according to the 1up indie blog) 0,01 dollars and up to the BNP of a minor country. This method of sale has also been used by radiohead for some record I don't know about and they apparently earned quite a bit of dough. So I urge you, for the sake of the developers (what a cliché eh?), to pitch in and dig out your pockets and enjoy these pearls of independent development.

/Skt_Thomas

What i do not understand: Achievements

Since the birth of such gaming leviathans as The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, a new phenomenon has been born and gained renown across the entire gaming (I hate that word) universe.

I am, for those of you not looking at the title, of course talking about achievements/trophies, little objectives which gives you a score that does...: Absolutely nothing.

And that is what i do not understand, Every computer game platform (both consoles and PC game hubs such as steam) has them, WoW has them, not even City Of Heroes (a game that i cherish highly) can see itself dodging this verbal attack. You get these small, shining, yet unfilling, trophies by completing certain objectives such as killing a certain number of enemies, feats that you normally would do anyways and such render them completely redundant. Others are ridiculous in nature, sometimes requiring you to kill a billion foes, fall from incredible heigths or recite all numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. feats you most likely consider too boring/hard or just a waste of your time, thus rendering these (you guessed it): completely redundant.

But why do people do this? Why do games continuously advertise these achievements as important features in a game? I have no answer to these questions, yet I fear that those who play games across all consoles have been reduced to simple creatures, willing to fullfill any tasks, however droning they may be, just to recieve a little treat in the form of a small picture and a witty text. The industries behind have then gazed upon the skies of the gaming universe and discovered, in the distance, small *pling* noises of hours being spent in vain, just so you can get a neat little background for your gamer tag in Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2.