Review: Far Cry

Format: PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Producer: Crytek
Genre: FPS
Price: £30 new, £10 – £18 second hand (July 2005), £5 – £20 ebay (July 2005)
Origin: US
Reviewer: Stealth Chimp

The Good: Lets just get it out the way now shall we? Far Cry is bloody beautiful, in terms of sheer looks it blows away Doom 3’s plasticy world of shinyness and even out does Half Life 2’s grimy city streets (and all its other locations). The first time you step in to the open ans look around Far Cry’s sweeping coastline it really blows you away, it’s just. Wow. Also good: far Cry isn’t as demanding on your pc as you might expect, my rig isn’t exactly the newest around, radeon 9600 and all that, yet I run far cry on medium spec with no lag. FC also appeals to me on “realism” grounds, yeah its not realistic in a Rainbow Six way, but like Counter-Strike before it, It’s got the balance of realism/Gameplay/Fun pefect. Yeah you can’t take as much lead as you can in other shooters, but your weapons can dish out some hefty damage, and a headshot is usually an instant kill. The physics are all present and correct which is nice, and watching mercinaries flop around never really losses its comedy value. Weapons also bop and sway around pleasingly, which makes long distance firefights over the beach a bit more tactical with lots of running from cover to cover until you can lay into the enemies from up close. Plus you can just go off, swimming is great fun and you can happily swim around the islands for ages (at least, until a PT boat finds you). Swimming is also handy for sneaking up undetected then knifing your enem ies before they can ever land a shot.

Pimpage

I have just finnished my first counter strike video, feel free to download it from

http://files.filefront.com/Chimp/;3961728;;/fileinfo.html

Review – Yoshi’s Touch & Go (DS)

Format: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Nintendo
Producer: In-House
Genre: Platform
Price: £30 new, £17 – 25 second hand (May 2005), £10 – £25 ebay (May 2005)
Origin: Japan
Reviewer: Sideath

Yoshi’s Touch & Go does for the DS what Mario64 did for the N64 and so insatisfactorily for the DS itself – it builds on Nintendo’s heritage with invention and imagination and tailors a new kind of play and around a new kind of control – it’s the DS’ true launch game.

Review – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GC)

Format: Nintendo GameCube
Publisher: Nintendo
Producer: In-House
Genre: Role Playing
Origin: Japan
Reviewer: Sideath

Ah… Zelda. Nintendo now seem to now make two new, major Zelda games for each of its consoles, one at each console’s birth, and one close to its death. Be it Zelda and Zelda II for the NES, or Ocarina of time and Majorca’s Mask for the N64, this seems to be the case for every single console (apart from the GBC and SNES).

Reading gamers’ minds

The following article is originally written for http://www.gamespot.com
The original article can be found at: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/01/news_6128476.html
Republished with permission of Gamespot.

Game developers play psychologist to get players moving in the right direction.

You think you’re playing the game, but maybe it’s playing you.

Review – Pac Pix (DS)

Format: Nintendo DS
Publisher: Namco
Producer: In-house
Genre: Oddball
Origin: Japan
Reviewer: Sideath

I’ll be frank. I only bought this game because there really aren’t many not abysmal games for the Nintendo DS. Super Mario 64 DS and WarioWare were both defeated, and Yoshi Touch and Go was losing some of its shine. It seemed fun to draw Pac Men (is that just one word?) and see them scuttle across your DS – for around four hours.