Lord of the Rings: Conquest Review

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I am indeed a fan of Tolkien's work (not the kind of fan that dresses up like Aragorn and totes his replica Narsil sword with him to the grocery store - those kinds of fans need to move out of their mothers' basements and get a life). I've read all of his books and consider every one of them a masterpiece. I saw the movies based on his books and thought they were pretty awesome as well. I've played The Two Towers and The Return of the King video games, and enjoyed them immensely. I've often fantasized about taking long, leisurely horseback rides through Middle Earth, drinking beer and practicing bad hygiene with Gimli the dwarf, and getting completely and utterly lost in the deep, gorgeous blue eyes of Legolas the elf...

Uhhh... I mean killing orcs and... um... stuff.

You can imagine my excitement when I heard about this brand new Lord of the Rings game which promised new playable characters and a more open-ended gameplay than its predecessors. I really really wanted this game to be good. Sadly, however, I was let down.

Conquest does offer players the ability to play one of four different classes (as well as the ability to switch classes at certain points during a mission): Warrior, Mage, Archer, and Scout. The Warrior is perhaps the class most familiar to those that have played the previous Lord of the Rings games from EA. The staple of the Warrior's attacks are melee moves, some of which are similar to those familiar with the other games. Players can execute strong, medium, or heavy attacks, and performing them in rapid succession will sometimes result in a semi-cool combo move. Players can further enhance their attacks by holding down the melee modifier button, which lights your sword on fire and generally causes more damage than regular attacks. In addition to the sword, the Warrior sports a throwing axe/knife (depending on the specific character), which works much in the same way as Gimli's throwing axes in The Two Towers and The Return of the King. The animation for this maneuver has been dumbed down quite a bit, however, resulting in your character performing a move much more akin to Clay Aiken hailing a taxi than a dangerous warrior slaying evil foes.

The tower of Orthanc. You think Saruman has some compensation issues?

The Mage is a slight departure from Gandalf from the previous titles, able to perform ranged magic attacks as well as melee attacks with his staff and/or sword. Mages can cast shields which protect themselves and allies from enemy ranged attacks, and they can heal themselves and allies within a certain distance. The Mage is definitely a support character, though, and if you try to tackle the hordes of Mordor alone with this guy, you'll more than likely get your ass kicked.

Orcs, huh? I dunno... I guess I'll throw some lightning at them... or something...

Archers are even more useless and less fun to play than Mages (that is, of course, my opinion, and you are free to have a different - albeit wrong - opinion of your own [yes, I do watch the Colbert Report]). The shooting mechanics of Conquest are pretty horrible, and probably the least realistic of any game I've played that features archery in combat. When it boils right down to it, Archers have two basic combat moves: kick and shoot. Kicking is fun when you can punt a goblin off a bridge into the abyss below, but is pretty lame on the open battlefield, and shooting gets old after the first five or ten orcs you kill. There are slight variations to shooting, such as zooming in or using poison, fire, or multiple arrows, but it won't take long before these too become repetitive and boring. Again, Archers tend to get their asses kicked a lot, especially when the orcs tap dance right around the front lines, ignoring your numerous foot soldier allies, and run right up to you for some unsolicited attention.

Legolas are ten ninjas. Too bad he'll still get his ass handed to him.

The Scout is perhaps the coolest class in its premise, but ultimately the most useless in its execution. This class's melee skills and durability in battle are severely lacking when compared to the Warrior's, and its "special abilities" really aren't that cool. The Scout is capable of cloaking, which sometimes means you can run around your foes undetected, but mostly means you'll look slightly more transparent than usual when the orcish warriors pummel your skinny ass into the ground. Provided that you are actually able to sneak up behind an orc without being caught and smacked around, you can perform a backstab maneuver, killing the orc in an overly-drawn-out animation sequence which takes a bit longer than simply beating the orc down with your blades. Neither cool nor time effective. Also, as with the Mage and Archer, the Scout tends to get his hindquarters handed to him in a fight, which really only makes him useful for very specific circumstances.

Now you see me, now you don't - oh, you do still see me? Crap.

The graphics in Conquest aren't bad, although they aren't by any means cutting-edge. The game does boast some reflective surfaces, and occasionally attempts to throw in some bloom effects, although these aren't nearly as well-done as most modern games. Almost all of the characters, models, terrain and buildings are in the likeness of the movies, so in most cases they look just fine.

The sound is, for most part, fairly decent. The musical score and battle sounds are similar to the previous games, although a bit more hollow-sounding than before. The voice acting is pretty good, featuring narration by Hugo Weaving (they guy who played Elrond in the movies, as well as Agent Smith in "The Matrix"), which seems to be done rather half-heatedly and with less enthusiasm than I would have liked to hear from this actor. What I found the most irritating, however, was the voice of your commander (or whatever the hell this guy is supposed to be). Throughout the entire human campaign, this guy shrieks orders to you at the top of his lungs, even if he requires something as mundane as retrieving a key. It's absolutely obnoxious, and the game certainly could have done without it.

As I've touched on before, the gameplay is far worse in Conquest than in either of it predecessors. In The Two Towers and The Return of the King, players could actually execute some pretty sweet moves with their button-mashing (my wife was particularly partial to the "Orc Hewer" move), and the balance between melee and ranged weapons was excellent. You actually felt like one of the heroes of Middle Earth, single-handed taking on droves of goblins and looking frickin' cool while doing it. In Conquest, however, none of the classes feels particularly powerful (even when you are given the opportunity to play as a hero such as Aragorn, Gandalf or Isildur), and each character's moves seem half-assed and sloppy. Furthermore, certain parts of the game are hampered by extremely poor camera angles (a problem which rarely plagued the other games), and other parts prove to be frustratingly - and unnecessarily - hard (I recall several instances where I used language that my mother would not approve of, nor would I want my eight-month-old daughter to learn only to repeat to my mother later on, which would almost certainly get me my ass kicked).

Gimli vs. the Witch King: EPIC FAIL.

The bottom line is: Conquest just isn't that fun. It doesn't carry on a shred of the quality that made the other games so great, and is extremely disappointing all around. I didn't even make it to the third level before giving up on it, and I don't plan to go back and attempt to either. Tolkien must be rolling in his grave.

Oh, and if you could do me a solid and not mention that thing about the elf to anyone... that'd be great.

Far Cry 2 Review

Far Cry 2 Review
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Tall, pale grass shimmers and sways in the welcomed breeze as you traverse across the blistering African savannah. The weapons you carry – your tools for survival – now add to your misery as you drag them along, trying make your way through one of the most unforgiving landscapes on the planet. Rough, uncut diamonds (the only currency of value in this god-forsaken country), rattle in your pocket, reminding you of why you are here in the first place, and giving you the motivation to trudge on.

You have been paid – and paid well – to kill a man. A murderer, tyrant and usurper, your target has more than earned the price on his head. The monetary gain of your mission is nice, as it puts food in your stomach and helps to provide you with more of the instruments of destruction that you depend on so much. On this particular mission, however, money is not your primary motivation. When it comes right down to it, the thing that keeps your legs moving long after they have felt like giving out, and what drives you to brave the desolate plains and scorching temperatures is that you simply want to end this villain’s reign of terror over the people of this country. You want to see the bastard die, and you want to be the one to pull the trigger.

I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

After checking your map, you realize that you are approaching the warlord’s encampment. The setting sun casts contrasting red and black shapes over the small, makeshift village as you crest the hill to its northern border. While remaining completely undetected by its inhabitants, you survey the village from a distance with your monocular, noting the patrolling guards, the placement of machinegun turrets, the entrances, exits, and vehicles parked in the road.

Put simply, your plan is to kill the warlord and escape the village without getting a bullet in your head. You intend to sneak into the encampment after dark and eliminate your target silently, making your escape that much easier. As you settle down into the tall grass to wait for darkness, however, you notice a familiar-looking figure exit one of the mud-and-straw huts down in the village. You recognize the figure as the very man you were paid to assassinate, his long, jagged, tell-tale scar running down his face, across his dark flesh. You expect him to immediately enter the shelter of another of the numerous huts, but he lingers in the street, conversing and smoking with one of his bodyguards.

This poor bastard is about to get a lead-induced migraine.

The temptation to forego your plan of stealth and infiltration mounts as the warlord continues to present himself as an easy target. Your patience soon wanes, and you slowly, silently slip your high-powered rifle off your shoulder, steadying it on the ground amongst the dry vegetation. Anxious to end the life of this truly evil man, you raise the scope of your weapon to your eye and affix the crosshairs on the villain’s head. After steadying your breathing and adjusting for the distance, there is no hesitation: you pull hard on the trigger, piercing the African night with the sound of your rifle.
Your target’s head erupts in a cloud of red, as the spinning blot of lead bores its way through flesh and bone. Cries of fear and outrage rise up from the village below as men race to their posts, while others run in vain to the warlord’s aid. Somewhere to your left you hear the roar of an engine as the headlights of a Land Rover punctuate the growing darkness. Dropping the rifle, you unshoulder another of your weapons, loading a rocket-propelled grenade into its muzzle. The dry grass around you is instantly ignited as a bright ball of flame leaves your weapon, heading directly toward the headlights of the oncoming vehicle. The resulting explosion is both blinding and deafening as shattered and torn metal rain down to the ground, and more fires are started by the smoldering remains of the vehicle.

Boom! Headshot!

It is in the ensuing chaos and pandemonium that you make your escape, leaving the mercenaries who survived terrified and bewildered. Your weapons no longer seem to burden you as you tear across the wilderness, your legs soaring over the uneven and treacherous landscape, taking you farther and farther away from danger. After putting a few hundred meters between you and the village, you stop to breathe, and you allow yourself a little smile of satisfaction and a sigh of relief. You’ve rid the country of a terrible tyrant – but your task of liberating this country from such vermin has only begun.

In Far Cry 2, the first-person shooter from Ubisoft, you are a mercenary hired to tip the scales in a war-torn African country, and ultimately kill the Jackal, a notorious arms dealer who has single-handedly fueled the fires of war by arming the rival factions. The scenario described above is a very accurate depiction of some of the possible encounters the player may have in the game, as Far Cry 2 provides hours of immersive and extremely open-ended gameplay.

From the very first scene, players will notice the stunning detail and immense beauty of the game’s graphics. The scenery is just about as realistic as it gets, with tall grass and trees swaying in the breeze, casting dynamic shadows on the ground below. Enormous, craggy mountains line the horizon, which prove to be wonderfully detailed when you observe them up close, and you can almost feel the warmth of the sun as it casts its glow on the earth around you. From the landscapes, to the characters, wildlife, vehicles, and weapons, Far Cry 2’s graphics are simply beautiful to behold.

The landscape in Far Cry 2 is simply beautiful.

The physics of the game compliment the graphics nicely. The earth erupts into columns of dirt from the impact of a bullet; trees and other foliage rock and sway convincingly from explosive shock waves; buildings and vegetation shift, crack and crumble from the onslaught of your weapons, and the explosions are just plain awesome. Also, like most FPS games today, Far Cry 2 uses fairly realistic gravity effects and collision detection, further immersing you in an already immersive game world.

While not the Crown Jewel of Far Cry 2, the sound is still quite good. The ambient sounds of the African wilderness (such as birdsong, monkey chatter, and the braying of zebras) accompanied by African-esque tribal music, aptly set the mood for the game. The voice acting is done well enough, featuring many different characters and a variety of accents. Perhaps the biggest letdown with the voice acting, though, is that the dialogue seems incredibly rushed, as if every pause that the voice actors took between words was edited out - the reason for which one can only speculate. The voice-overs are a rarity found mostly between missions, and the game’s other sound effects more than make up for their shortcomings. The weapons, vehicles, and combat sounds are all excellent and very believable.

Fact: The explosions in Far Cry 2 are extremely frickin' cool.

Far Cry 2’s gameplay is, in a way, both its strongest and its weakest points. For the most part players are given an incredible amount of freedom with which to accomplish their missions. Gun shops provide you with a wide variety of weapons: from rocket and grenade launchers, to submachine guns, light machineguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, pistols, and a flamethrower. You are able to carry one primary weapon (an assault rifle, sniper rifle, flamethrower or some types of submachine guns), a secondary weapon (pistols, submachine guns, or a particular type of grenade launcher), and a special weapon (rocket or grenade launchers, light machineguns, or the tranquilizer rifle). Your arsenal is supplemented by hand grenades, Molotov cocktails, and a machete for close quarters. Such a layout with so many options and combinations make you quite the formidable foe.

The storyline is carried out through a series of missions that seem repetitive in their premise, but prove to be potentially diverse in their execution. You are usually given the job to assassinate or blow up a specific target, which you can perform in a few different ways. Depending on the gear available, you could hammer your enemies from a distance with explosives, and then leisurely rummage through their remains for useful items; snipe the soldiers from afar, then go in for the main kill; silently sneak into the encampment with silenced weapons; or you could do it the old fashioned way and run right in, guns blazing, hoping the bad guys drop dead before you do (or any combination of the above). The many different methods of accomplishing your goals are incredibly entertaining, and almost never get old.

Guess he won't be needing that Jeep anymore... dibs!

There are a few minor downsides to the gameplay, however. In an apparent attempt to create a more realistic shooter experience, the game’s developers threw some curveballs into the combat mechanics. For instance, during a firefight your gun might randomly jam, forcing you to withdraw from the fight to un-jam your weapon. This might seem like a cool and unique feature at first, but after a while it simply becomes an irritating distraction. Likewise, your character’s constant need to find and consume medicine to combat bouts of malaria can be a major downer when the action heats up. Perhaps the most irritating of all, however, is the all-but-broken stealth mechanics.

In similar games (such as Crysis or even the original Far Cry), players are rewarded for stealthily killing their enemies from thick brush, and are able to sneak up on a foe undetected, dispatch them, then move on to the next without alerting their enemies (if done correctly). In Far Cry 2, however, your cover is blown with the first guy you kill. Even using the more stealthy weapons (such as the silenced pistol, silenced MP5, or machete) will alert every single enemy in the area as soon as you kill them, giving the player no real incentive to use stealth at all. Furthermore, it seems as if the enemies are more efficient at using cover than you are, as they tend to pick you off from behind trees, bushes, grass, and even solid walls, whilst remaining completely hidden from your eyes.

Dark, murky swamps like this one should provide an ideal place for stealth combat. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way in Far Cry 2.

One of the most alluring aspects of playing video games is the fact that most give you a super-human feeling, allowing you to get the best of your enemy using your skills of stealth and hand-eye coordination, and it is in this very aspect that Far Cry 2 is fairly disappointing. It is a letdown, no doubt, but the other excellent qualities of the game more than make up for this. FPS fans will walk away with several memorable moments that are truly unique to this game, and if given the chance, Far Cry 2 should prove to be a wildly engrossing, entertaining game that is well worth the price.

About the reviews...

Here's how my reviews work, as I've devised my own reviewing system. Actually, to be honest, it's a complete and total rip-off of the same reviewing system we use over at Planet Half-Life, but with my own personal touch:

A game review is based on five categories: Graphics (how the game looks), Sound (the quality of the game's sounds and voice acting), Gameplay (Is the game fun to play? Is it addicting? Does it tear you away from family, friends, or other worthwhile activities? Etc, etc, etc), Replay Value (after you've beaten the game, would you play it again and how much?), and finally 1337ness (the overall score which averages all of the previous categories).

Like many other review sites, games receive a score out of five possible points. The score will, of course, be given in Chuck Norris heads, since Chuck Norris personifies 1337ness. Don't argue.

Chuck Norris: 1337ness.


For example, a game that I would consider to be perfect (or so damn close it's not even funny) would look like this:

Graphics:

Sound:

Gameplay:

Replay Value:

1337ness:


Obviously, a game that sucked would not get nearly as many Chuck Norris heads, and therefore would not be nearly as 1337 as the game reviewed above. I'm hoping that I'll find a way to make the Chuck Norris heads look a little more uniform in size and location, so it doesn't look so ghetto.

Keep in mind that I only review games that I've played, owned, or am interested in, which are mostly first-person shooters. There's no way in hell you'll find anything like Final Fantasy games or any other kind of Anime/Manga crap, so don't hold your breath. That stuff's for losers anyway - you're better than that.

Thanks again for stopping by!

Cyberpowerpc - at least their moms think they're 1337.

It is my sincerest hope that none of you reading this have ever had the misfortune of doing business with Cyberpower Inc. While some have had tremendous luck with this company (bastards), most - including myself - have developed ulcers and lockjaw from their interactions with Cyberpower. Have a seat, break out the violin, and listen to my sad, sad story.

In November of 2007, our HP Pavilion a418x started to take a turn for the worse. The 2.7 GHz single-core Intel Celeron processor, along with the NVIDIA GeForceFX 5200 PCI video card and 700-something megs of PC2700 RAM just weren't performing to our liking anymore. More specifically, they weren't performing to my liking. Games like Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 looked more like a family vacation slide show (albeit with a tiny bit more guns and blood) rather than the truly epic PC games that they are. I wanted a system that kicked ass. Our system most definitely did not kick ass. At the time, I didn't know nearly as much about computers as I do now, so rebuilding the system to kick ass was not an option (although since then, with the help of my beloved Newegg, I did build it to kick quite a bit more ass than it was previously capable of kicking). My solution: Buy a completely new system that did kick ass.

There was a problem with my solution, though. Just four months prior, my wife and I found out that we were pregnant with our first child. Someone somewhere at some point in my life told me that having kids costs money. Brand-new kick ass computers also cost money. Crap. Time to refine my solution a bit.

I went on the internet and searched for cheap computers that didn't take eighteen years to boot up (which then went on to sound like an angry badger being shut in an oven whilst performing only slightly better than an abacus). In my searches, I found Cyberpowerpc.com. The website appeared to sell some pretty slick machines, and only at a fraction of the price of bigger manufacturers like Dell or HP. There was much rejoicing.

After getting my wife's permission to use the credit card (shut up), I excitedly ordered our brand-new, kick ass system. This new computer was light years ahead of our old computer (I hate that term... but it's so true). I was absolutely ecstatic about it, and couldn't wait to play all of my favorite games on a computer that didn't suck.

It was only after ordering the computer that I found the negative reviews. Ah, crap. I decided to remain optimistic and stick with my order, as I was desperate to have this new system. Silly, silly me. My order was delayed more than four times, and finding out any information on why it was delayed or when I would have it was next to impossible. Cyberpower's customer service representatives, along with leprechauns, unicorns, and other mythical creatures, are very difficult to find. I became very nervous that this company had just screwed me out of $700 worth of kick ass computer.

Finally, on Christmas Eve (over a month after I place my order), I received the new computer. For the first two weeks, it worked flawlessly. Games like Doom 3, Far Cry, Painkiller, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Quake 4, and Oblivion performed wonderfully on high settings. After about two weeks, however, the computer started to freeze up completely. I figured it was a fluke, and rebooted, but then it started happening more and more frequently. Finally, the computer wouldn't run more than five minutes without locking up. Damn.

I tried to contact tech support for Cyberpower. I grew a beard and raised a litter of grizzly bears while on hold. When I finally got a hold of someone, he was actually very nice and helpful. He told me that one of the RAM sticks must be bad, so I should send it back and get a new one. That was pretty painless enough - I sent back the faulty stick, got a new one, and the computer did great... for another two weeks. Then the same ugly problem was happening again. I tried simply switching DIMM slots on the motherboard, which postponed my problem for a while, but eventually it became as persistent as before. After another century on hold for tech support, we decided it was the motherboard that was causing problems, and we needed to replace it.

Again, the exchange process went fairly smoothly. I got the new motherboard installed, and the computer again worked great for a while. Guess what happened then... c'mon, guess... yeah! Once again, it was teh sux0rz! And once again, I was able to thumb through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation while on hold for tech support. And once again, the motherboard was found to be the culprit. When I replaced this one, the damn thing still didn't work right. It was at this point that I said, "Screw you" to tech support and solved the problem on my own using Google and a prayer. Now, over a year after receiving my computer, it has worked without error longer than ever. I'm really happy with the way it performs when it's not FUBAR, but it has been a super huge pain in the ass up until this point (I counted, and I've written "ass" in this post nine - make that ten - times. Sorry...).

Bottom of the line is: Please, please, pretty please, do yourself a favor and stay far, far away from Cyberpowerpc. Horrible customer service combined with a crappy product make this company a friggin' nightmare to do business with, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Most anyone, I should say... you know who you are.

In case anyone's interested, this is the system I now have (I added quite a few things - like the graphics card, extra RAM, hard drive, and power suppply - after I got it from Cyberpower):

Motherboard: GigaByte GA-M57SLI-S4 nForce 570-SLI Chipset
CPU: AMD Athlon™64 X2 5200+ Dual-Core CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology
GPU: XFX PVT88SFDD4 GeForce 8800GS XXX 384MB Superclocked Alpha Dog Edition
HDD: 2 X 250GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 8MB Cache 7200RPM
RAM: 4GB PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory
PSU: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI

Pretty nice, for what I need at least.

Ass. Ha! That's eleven.

Introductions and crap...

Thanks for taking the time to read this - my hope is that I will eventually be able to write reviews for PC games that I own or have played before, as well as post news or interesting events about the games I play. Since this is the first post on this blog, I'll start by telling you a little bit about myself:

By day I'm an elementary school teacher, entertaining and (hopefully) educating third graders. By night (and weekends and holidays) I'm a husband, a father, and a gamer - in that particular order. I absolutely love outdoor activities, such as hunting, fishing, four-wheeling, hiking, etc., but after becoming a father I haven't had much time for these things. Playing video games, however, has proved to be a much more convenient means of entertainment - at least for now.

I started computer gaming around 1995, with the release of MYST on CD-ROM. It wasn't long after that that I got into Doom, Quake, Warcraft II, and eventually the Half-Life series, which has been my favorite so far. I am currently a staff writer for Planet Half-Life, which has been a blast.

Since the days of Quake, I have been playing under the handle Golgotha, a name I chose because of its significance to my religious beliefs. I've had several tags affixed to the ends of my call sign (including the TFC clans =|SCC|=, -=[BBB]=-, and [R-Dk]), but now I have settled with the <0w0|> tag worn by the awesome members of the Half-Life community One World On-Line, of which I have been a member for some years now.

I will, of course, post more information and hopefully get a little creative with things as I learn more about this blogging stuff. If you're interested (or know someone who might be), you can check out my wife's infinitely superior blog, Laughing Through the Chaos.
Thank you again for reading, and I hope you stick around to see what is to come!