Friday, April 16, 2004

Syberia Game

Picked up a copy of Syberia this week. Released back towards the end of 2002, it got a lot of good reviews but I didn't notice it until I saw it mentioned a month or two ago on Slashdot. It's a graphical adventure, similar to Grim Fandango, Monkey Isle, or the Myst series about a female lawyer who needs to seal a deal on a buyout of an old toy factory in the backlands of Europe. Artistically, it's a very moody game, much like Grim Fandango has a certain mood.

Note that while it's easy to find reviews, finding the latest game patch was difficult. The official support site is Adventure Company Games and the direct link to Syberia SP3 patch. I did hit a bug not mentioned in the patch notes (getting up to the bell tower the first time), but it wasn't a big deal because it worked after restarting my system.

So far I've played about 5 hours worth and have just finished the first town and have started the second town. The puzzles are okay, although a bit simplistic (no where near the complexity of a Myst puzzle) but woven well into the game. There's only one puzzle in the first twon where I completely missed the clue every time I went past the location. I would've liked to see more complex puzzles in the first town, which is full of automatons, but the inventory system doesn't allow you to combine items and once you've placed an item in it's proper position, you can't remove it. (This makes the puzzles pretty linear and a bit easy to solve since the correct piece in the correct spot is a bit obvious.)

Still, well worth the $20 that I paid for it and it will be interesting to see how good Syberia II is when it's released later this year.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 3:28 PM

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

MoHAA:Breakthrough

Bleh!

How's that for a review?

It's the 2nd expansion pack for the original Medal of Honor: Allied Assault series. The original MoHAA was quite good and the Spearhead expansion was not too bad (although a bit short).

Breakthrough... well... I have yet to find a level that's enjoyable to play. Everything is extremely linear, usually with enemies hiding underneath every rock, and they all know where you are. Zero room for error, you have to have advance knowledge of where the next bad guy is going to pop up from, and there are a few levels where ammo is problematic unless you're Annie Oakley. Not to mention that whenever you're supposed to keep an allied bot alive, they'll do their darnedest to walk into the line of fire, or stand there while a grenade rolls around their feet.

I've even tried playing it through on god-mode and it's still not enjoyable. Probably the closest one to "fun" is sneaking around the aircraft base, disabling planes. Although a handful of grenades would've made things much more enjoyable and the cut-scene after the mission is hillariously horrid as you watch planes take off from a standstill to wheels off the ground in under 30 feet.

Save your cash, buy Call of Duty instead.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 10:50 PM

Taxes

Yeah, they're done... whoopie hurray. Two were moderate refunds and the third is a slight overpayment. The fourth would've been a small refund, but I just rolled the few bucks over to my 2004 taxes.

posted by Wuphon's Reach at 4:39 PM