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Wot no...

...movie reviews?

Nope - not yet - more to come in a few days.

I've been editing a story I wrote for Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) and trying to get feedback.

Please take a look here, and if you get the time please leave me some constructive critisism.

Thanks

All change at personalopinionator

OK so not a huge change, but I will be moving all my Games reviews to a different blog soon so that this becomes a Movie dedicated site.

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The Witcher

Over the years I’ve probably played 100s of computer RPGs ranging from freeware and shareware games, to top of the range, multi-million dollar budget games. Yet, despite playing these games, none have ever captured me for more than a few weeks, and with some of the longer games I didn’t even finish them (without resorting to some kind of cheat). However, for once, a game has come along that combines the hack and slash of some of the more simplistic games, with the atmosphere and character building of the often too complex AD&D games.

Introduction

From the very first moment, with the opening movie, which is stunning, you are immersed in a dark dank world full of danger and dripping with atmosphere. This initial movie, that is several minutes long, really sets the scene on what you are about to experience.

This game is not your normal AD&D hack and slash type of gaming, but is an immersive, adult and dark game that is more about the storyline, rather than manipulation of statistics, armor class and Thac0 – you know all that geekish stuff (Before I offend the geeks, I am a self professed geek – and this game does have those elements – leveling up etc, but I found that they are not as important as many other games).

What really attracted me and kept me coming back was the ‘feel’ of the game, the immersive world that is distinctly medieval and for a game of this type is pretty realistic.

Quests

I was also attracted by the way the quests didn’t simply offer you a good or bad option – there were some pretty deep moralistic scenarios, touching on child abuse, racism etc. The plot is essentially adaptive, and as you make your choices you are driven down a different road – this adds to the longevity of the game as you can take a different route each time. One particular route I took involved defending a bunch of dwarf’s and elves – they were rioting and causing mischief, and the authorities were trying to stop them – mostly in violent clashes. I decided to join the cause of the dwarves and elves, and in doing so alienated a couple of Non Playing Characters I had met earlier – had I chosen differently, and decided law and order was more important, I wouldn’t have interacting with some of the elves and instead would have built a relationship with some of the ‘alienated’ characters.

Engine

The game itself is built on the engine of Neverwinter Nights (NN). While I enjoyed NN I found it very linear, and basically cheated to get to the next section. While the graphics in NN were good and atmospheric at times, I never really felt that I was in an immersive world. I felt I was in a modular world with distinctly different areas – the updated version of the engine seems to allow for a more seemless transition (one thing I note – the early version of the game was very slow to load between areas – this was improved in a later version – you may have to download the update though).

Downside

One downside to the game perhaps – although after playing for a while I feel that it was important for the game – is that you don’t have a choice of character type, class or even name. You are simply presented with Geralt of Rivia – as you progress through the game you can concentrate on certain aspects of his character and essentially form your own class as you go along, but initially I felt this was very restrictive. However as I moved forward, I realize that this initial restriction was important, as the storyline really needed a central character that was solid and not a creation of someone who didn’t know the story.

Story

The story itself overall is an atypical story – good v evil, save the world type thing – this is a central theme, and the battle against the bad guys (salamanders) doesn’t change overall – however, the ability to make moral choices along the way, that adapt the way the story is told is exceptional. One thing that is very interesting is that the good v evil isn’t very distinct. While you join one faction or the other, you notice that each faction has its own idiosyncrasies.

Monsters

Like most RPGs there are plenty of monsters, ranging from vampires to wargs – however perhaps the biggest factor of the game is that these are really secondary enemies – the plot(s) mostly involve dealing with human enemies and their failings. One thing I liked (a little spoiler ahead) is that the ‘end of scenario’ bad guy never got killed, he always managed to get away – this added a nice edge to the game!

The Hero

The other point that should be made is that Geralt isn’t your typical hero – he is an outcast himself, who also seems to have lost his memory – some of the people he meets know him, but he has no recollection – it was also interesting that the interaction of your friends also changed – there were jealousies etc, and that often kept things interesting. Geralt isn’t particularly out to save the world, or indeed help anyone – most quests he takes on are for personal gain, or for information – part of the central plot is a quest to find out his past. This selfish feel to the game is unique.

Mature content

One thing to note is that this game is intended for a mature audience – there are elements of swearing as well as much ‘sex’ – while it’s not graphic in the US version, it is very suggestive and a lot of the women seem a little too eager – this aspect of the game really didn’t add much, and perhaps is aimed at teenage males to gain more sales. It seems that the reward for a lot of the quests are some ‘semi-nude’ cards – hmmm are us geeks really that shallow!

The game

As for the game itself – the mechanics are fairly standard. The combat is different than most PC games, but is a little reminiscent of some of the better Playstation games. Essentially, based on your skill level – you have varying moves your character can make – as you start combat by clicking, clicking at various ‘timed’ times moves you to the next move in the sequence – fail in the timing and your back to step one. Using this method you can eventually come up with some pretty deadly sequences.

When using the Witcher’s silver sword you also get to choose between three different modes – one is used for single combat, one is used for multiple opponents and the last is used for tricky single opponents who are quicker than most – one downfall of this is that all the additional multitude of weapons you can get become meaningless as these modes are only available when using the Witcher’s sword. One other trick is that there are two types of Witcher’s sword – a silver one and an iron one – one is more useful against monsters, while the other more useful against humans.

As you level up, you can improve the effectiveness of these modes by using talent points. The points can effectively be used to upgrade all elements of your character ranging from fighting abilities, magical abilities to improving general attributes such as strength etc. The system was a little convoluted for me, and to get the best out of it – read the manual!!!

Magic

Magic is included in the game, but I found it to be secondary and in fact the first time I finished the game I barely used magic – aside from a few difficult enemies, I found magic to be a pain. However, the game does provide a fairly extensive alchemy system – this has its good side and its bad side.

Potions

There are hundreds of potions that you can make – but each potion needs a recipe and an abundance of ingredients. To get the most out of the system you essentially have to roam around looking for the ingredients (you have to read about the separate herb lores prior to doing this). This became very cumbersome at times, and even though the potions were powerful and diverse I again didn’t concentrate on this aspect of the game (although if you play on difficult you really need to do this!).

The interesting part of potions is that while taking them, they have a detrimental effect on you – the more you take the more they effect you – some make you blinded, others seem to make you effectively drunk. For me, this was a distraction.


The Inventory

The biggest problem with this system is the inventory – it quite simply is a mess – it’s impossinle to find anything in the inventory and I just ended up selling every..this is supposedly going to be improved in a free update soon!

Summary

Having said that, while the mechanics aren’t that different from other games, that doesn’t really matter. It’s the feel and sound of the world that makes the mechanics secondary – giving you the feel that you are not in a game, but are in a story.

So overall this great is excellent – Atari have gone out of the way to make a very immersive game, with a decent plot that keeps you involved and negates the boredom of repetitive and nonsense quests. There are a few rough edges, but if this is the future of RPGs then I am a happy man

Legend: Hand of God

I’ve played many computer RPGs in my time, some are combat based (such as Diablo) and some are detailed turn based epics that concentrate more on the roleplaying and adventure than the combat. There are a couple that stride the two formats ( Witcher being my favorite).

The Plot

OK, so the plot isn’t too detailed; you are a young warrior in the Order of Flame, who happens to be away being ‘initiated’ when an evil force kills all your colleagues in the order. Quite rightly, you’re not too happy and therefore you seek out revenge and the reason behind the attack.

Thus begins an epic quest to find the truth, involving a huge array of nasty monsters and evil humans to bash, kill and maim. Legend, is a hack and slash game, a bit like Diablo but with far more detailed graphics. Controls are very simple, click on an enemy, and hit him; click on an enemy and fire off a fireball at him.

Some Gripes

*gripe 1* - I found the combat to be troublesome at best. Quite often I found myself running around in a circle trying to click on the elusive monster – I almost expected some ‘Benny Hill’ music to be playing.

*gripe 2* - the manual is poor. It took me several hours to work out how to assign different spells to certain ‘mouse’ keys – it was good that I could use the ‘middle’ wheel key – but the manual should have been far more explicit on how to use the keys.

*gripe 3* - the game is challenging, and quite often you are overwhelmed with enemies – however, I found that all you had to do was kill a few – get killed yourself and then go back and finish off the bad guys (there’s no penalty for being killed) – when killed you are transported to a monolith with your Hit Points returned to max – there is no downside to being killed, aside from being moved!

Character Class

When you first start the game, you get to pick two out of five ‘schools’ in which to gain experience. This essentially gives you 10 different classes to chose. My advice, make sure you have a class with healing – there are not many ‘healing potions’ to be found, and as the game is predominately about killing a multitude of monsters, you’re going to need to be healed.

Movement

Like in Diablo, movement is achieved by pointing and clicking. This is fairly intuitive, however, the camera is severely limited, allowing you basically to zoom in and out – it really is very restrictive and makes movement, finding enemies and ‘caves’ etc very difficult at times. You do get used to it after a while, but in this day and age it is simply not good enough.

Fighting

Fighting is achieved by use of the mouse – essentially, for each style of fighting – ranged, hack or magic, you simply click on the target with the appropriate mouse button and voila!! It is simple, but perhaps a little bit too simple.

The game highlights the fact that each monster is unique and has it’s own fighting style, however this is very superficial as your character adapts automatically, and aside from some different animations, the end effect is the same. You really don’t choose what to do, or how to do it – aside from some of the special moves. It is impressive to look at, but that is about all.

Items and potions

Guess what – as you kill some bad guys they drop weapons and potions and armor. Most of this is better than yours, so pick it up and use it – or sell it. There are also some hidden stashes and some barrels treasure chests etc.

Ok so here’s the illogical bit – why would a bad guy stash some weapons that are likely to help in killing other bad guys? Surely they’d destroy them.

Merchants

As you move through the game you find several people to sell or buy items from. Generally this is easy, but if you want to by more than one of a particular item (such as a healing potion) it becomes a pain as you have to drag and drop one at a time!

Graphics

The graphics are generally good, although even with a dual core PC, with a 512MB graphics card, I found I had to reduce all the graphics options to get the game to run slowly – even in this mode, the game slows down when there are a lot of bad guys on the screen.

There are some nice touches, such as flying birds etc, but this simply adds to the atmosphere and doesn’t really add to the game play. I found it hard to find ‘exits’ occasionally, and was surprised there were not options to change the brightness etc of the game.

Sounds

The sound is generally good, although the voice acting is a little wooden. Ummm…not really much to say here about the sound…

Experience and leveling

Like many of these games, you gain experience as you go – you have limited things you can do when you level up. You can increase your stats, and also learn new spells and skills (or improve the spells and skills you already have). Very basic stuff really.

Summary

Overall, the game is adequate. The story does get better, but there is a lot of hacking and slaying between ‘quest’ parts. There are some sub-quests that add a little variety, but these are mainly a case of ‘fetching’ and item, or ‘saving’ someone. The makers seemed to want to give you some RPG elements, but not too much – they really got stuck in between and thus the game suffered.

My advice, if you want a hack and slash game with substance, then try ‘Witcher’. If you really must buy this one, then wait until it’s on discount.

Rock Band

Yet again I find myself blaming my daughter. She had got addicted to playing Guitar Hero 2 for the PS2 and saw an upcoming game by the same company, but also in conjunction with MTV. Having read a few articles on the game, and also having attempted to play the GH2 game a couple of times, I decided it was an ideal Christmas present. So my quest to get the game started – I was lucky enough to be online looking at Circuit City’s website when the game became available – within seconds I had ordered it, and a minute later it was out of stock! Luckily it arrived in time for Christmas!

Guitar Hero is one of a bunch of games that is propelling Video Games into the next generation – together with the Wii, this game that is far more interactive and real world, appeals to a wider audience as it requires no real knowledge of pre-existing video games, and is amazingly fun.

The idea of Guitar Hero was for a ‘guitarist’ to follow a moving ‘list’ of notes, and duplicate the notes on a ‘Guitar’ that also has the same colored ‘notes’ or buttons to press. The game took the concept of Dance Dance Revolution in a different direction, making it appeal to a lot more than those fitness freaks you see at the local arcade. The elements of hearing yourself play a recognizable song, while also playing a video game made the game excellent fun. The only downside to the game was that you only had the ability to play guitar or bass – and in multiplayer mode you were unable to play in career mode. Thus it was inevitable that a ‘Rock Band’ that allows you not only to play Guitar, but also play Bass, Vocals and/or drums would come along – it also was obvious that this game is aimed more at groups as the name implies.

Ok, so the game arrived and it was duly placed under the Christmas Tree. After surviving the screams, and the hugs we finally (ummm…my daughter finally) opened the present and found the humongous box.

Perhaps one thing to note straight away is that this isn’t the type of game you can simply place in your XBOX 360 and play within seconds – there is a fair bit of setup (You can play the solo guitar game pretty quickly, but as there were four of us waiting to play, then it took a while).

After a few minutes unpacking, and finally assembling all the parts – basically this is the drum kit – a fairly bad diagram demonstrates how to set it up – and setting up the ‘USB’ hub Note- this requires it’s own power outlet – so it took me a few minutes to re-organize the 700 power supplies I already had plugged in, we began to get a little excited.

Now I mentioned that there were four of us waiting to play – it should be noted that the kit comes with a drum set, a microphone and one guitar – if you want all four to play then you need to buy another guitar for the bass.

I was surprised at how sturdy everything was, and even though occasionally the legs of the drums fall off when I am moving them, the quality was a little higher than I expected for the price I paid. Anyway, after about 20 minutes of assembly, a few minutes rewiring the house and ten seconds looking at the instructions we finally turned on the game.

Luckily, everything was set up correctly and we were able to play the game in earnest. As my daughter had played Guitar Hero extensively, the initial setup was pretty easy. Choosing to start a band, we went though various setup screens and finally ended up with three decent looking punk characters ready to play.
Like Guitar Hero, you essentially are embarking on a quest for stardom. Along the way you are able to buy various items such as new guitars etc, but you are also able to buy items like Band Buses that allow you to go on extended tours, and essentially open up different areas of the country providing you with new songs to play.

The most important element to building your career is the number of fans you have. The better you play, the more fans you will get and the more money you will get….the harder the song, and the higher level you are the more you are unable to gain – there are some songs that only get unlocked on harder levels – so whilst you may want to play the game on easy mode, you’re not going to get all the songs unlocked.

Some do not like this as it really means the more skillful players will get to see more of the game – I am not bad, but anything above hard level is beyond me – luckily, if you search the web you can find cheat codes to unlock all the songs – we didn’t need that as my daughter is great at these games!

OK, so enough of that – how do I play the game? Well there are three distinct styles.

Guitarist and Bassist –

these are essentially identical. A ‘fret’ board is shown, with colored notes that move down the board. The colors go from left to right – and these match buttons on your guitar – so if a red note appears – you hit the red button.

Initially you only have to hit one button at a time, but as the difficulty increases you will find yourself hitting two or three notes simultaneously. In addition, you sometimes have to hold the note down for a few seconds – this is indicated by a solid line after the note.

There are a couple of different sections that you may encounter as you play – there is a solo section – there is a separate ‘solo’ set of buttons, but you don’t have to use these – I guess it’s just to allow those people who like to show off, prove that they are mega people! You also have a ‘free’ section where you can basically hit your own notes to try and gain bonuses.

You also have a wammy bar that allows you to distort the sound.

Drum –

you get a similar ‘screen’ display – but this time instead of hitting the button, you get to pound one of four drum pads with real drum sticks. There is also a bass drum pedal – while the notes are moving down, you will also see a solid white line – this corresponds to the bass pedal.

I was quite surprised how real the drumming felt – you actually are following a pretty decent beat in most cases and this involves using both hands and a foot. It’s difficult yet very rewarding.

Vocals - well even bad singers can succeed on this game. You essentially have a horizontal line moving across showing you notes - the note ‘level’ corresponds to how high you should be singing. Thus even if you don’t know the song, you are able to somehow follow along simply by trying to sing based on the ‘level’ - you are able to see where you voice is compared to the real note and adjust accordingly. The ‘board’ also has the words of the song, so you don’t have to memorize every song on the game.

I note that I only knew about 5 or 6 songs from the entire game, so I had to follow the ‘board’ – in most cases I passed, but only just – it’s far better if you actually know the song you are singing.

Bonuses etc - with all of the above you are able to gain bonuses. As you progress without making a mistake, you a multiplier increases (up to a maximum of 4) – this allows for you to attain very high scores. At the end of the song each individual performance is ranked and you are given some basic stats on how you performed – (total number of consecutive notes etc.). The higher the overall rating, the more fans you gain and the more songs you unlock.

The game is designed in such a way to show the progress of a local band into a national band. Initially you only have local venues to play in, but eventually you travel the country. This is a neat way of keeping interest in the game.

OK so that’s how you play it – but is it fun?

Yes, Yes and YES! This game is great in a group or solo. My favorite mode is as a group, because even if you fail, some superlative playing by your other members will save you and allow you to continue – in solo mode, once you fail you have to restart.

Not only is it a great feeling when you finish a song together, but it is incredibly fun. Quite often my band members would laugh at my vocals – that was until Tom Sawyer came on – I truly rocked then!

I probably had less fun than my children as I only knew about 6 or 7 songs – a lot of newer songs were on the game so I got a little lost when playing them!

Each of the different instruments (including vocals) is fun – they each have their own skill set and thus more players will be able to play the game. It’s interesting that you actually don’t need any musical skills at all to play the game – even the tone death would be able to win the game.

Perhaps the biggest bonus of the game is the online element. Not only can you buy additional songs (note this can get expensive) but you can also play with (or against) different players from all around the world. Watching my daughter thrash some Australian dude has it’s own perverse joy! The adrenalin that builds while playing online seems a little higher than playing as a group – although this is still pretty high!

Now this may sound like a perfect game to some, and in fact with the different skills required and the online elements it is one of the better games I’ve come across. However, there are elements of repetition, and some of the songs seem nearly impossible to complete.

One other side effect with me is that the game can be pretty annoying if you’re not playing, but are trying to watch a movie in a different room – the incessant tap tap tap of the drums can be very annoying!!!

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this game – it is immensely fun and manages to bring the family together. Due to the different levels and the number of songs, it will keep you busy for several weeks – although you’ll be tired of playing some of the songs by the end of it!

The variety of songs is good, ranging from some good old toe tapping songs, to your very fast rock and roll or punk songs. There were no Country songs, or rap songs so if you’re not a rock fan then you’ll probably not like this game!

The price is steep, coming in at $170 but you do get some pretty decent ‘equipment’ – some people have complained of poor quality guitars, but so far I’ve been lucky!

One final note - some may ask why should I get the game for the XBOX 360 and not the PS2 - the graphics aren't that much better, and don't really add much to the game. Well if you're into 'online' gaming then that is one reason - the other is the ability to purchase other songs - the PS2 does not allow this.

To view more of my opinions click here.

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Freedom Writers

I am changing my style a little - I will write short reviews (less than 200 words) on my blog, then provide a link to a longer review on Epinions.com (once I have written it). Let me know if you feel I should go back to publishing the full review on my blog?

Hilary Swank as Ellen Gruwell, is a novice High School teacher who refuses to ignore low achievers while concentrating on high achievers. As she builds trust within her racially diverse classroom, we begin to see the different cultures, the difficulties and yet the similarities each race faces. With use of history, and cultures who have suffered through time, she is able to form a bond with her class, despite the misgivings of ‘higher’ teachers.

Despite the story getting a little bogged down, and at times skimming over some important issues, the movie is emotive and powerful. With the use of flash-backs to tell the stories of some of the students, the movie attempts to let you inside the head of the characters, demonstrating what moves them and what shapes them in life. Swank is very good as the teacher caught in the middle, and this together with a staunch performance from Imelda Staunton, the movie is quite convincing.

Overall I liked Freedom Writers; it is sentimental and at times tough to watch, but it is very good. (Rating: 4/5)

For more of my opinions click here.