Double Fine Makes an Adventure Game (Update #1)

Click the link, Schafer won't hurt you, I promise!

One week after the kickstarter donation thing for Double Fines adventure game started, Tim Schafer now posted an update. With the extra money, they are now able to make the game not only on PC, but also on Mac, Linux and on Smartphones. Further, they are now able to have voice acting for the english version, which will be translated in text for the French, German, Italian and Spanish version.

It's great to see this project take form and expanding. I hope for more good updates in the future.

Movies I Just Watched: Surrogates

So this is a new segment I'd like to include to my blog. It's about movies, that I obviously just watched and I just want to make a small review about. Rather than telling you the whole story, I'll just tell you, how I think it was, so you don't get too much information about the movie. Most movies I'll review were propably on TV and I didn't know much about them, which makes it more fun to watch.
What does this have to do with videogames? Nothing! I'd like to expand this blog a little more, rather than just posting video game news, or the Nostalgia Sunday. I hope you enjoy it. Feedback is always appreciated!

The Story In One Sentence (from IMDb):
Set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others' surrogates.

My Opinion:
While not being a Blockbuster, the movie is quite enjoyable. The special effects are well done. The surrogates look like robots, while not looking too unrealistic. The acting by Bruce Willis is as good as always and he pretty much delivers the movie, while the other actors are good too. The ending, for me, and the story were a little confusing. Something was established at the beginning of the movie and at the end, they seemed to forgot it. Or I'm just missing something.

Would I Recommend It?
Yes. It's a good movie for a boring evening, where you don't have anything else to do. I wouldn't buy it though, if it isn't pretty cheap. It's more of a movie, you watch on TV.

Nostalgia Sunday: Lego Racers

Lego Racers

This was such a fun game, back in the day. Racing against other Lego characters with your custom build go-kart. I remember some of the "Boss Races" being incredibly difficult, but that just may be, because I wasn't as good at games as today haha.

The Story:

One of your opponents, Captain Redbeard

Rocket Racer, the best racer in the Lego universe, becomes bored and holds a challenge. He travels through time and space, to find worthy opponents he can race against. You now must defeat all the other bosses on their track, to be able to finally race against the champion, Rocket Racer. It's simple as that.

The Game:

The game is a simple "Fun Racer". You finish several laps on the track, while collecting power-ups, which you can use against other racers, or on your own car, making it faster for a short period of time, for example. There are also short-cuts, which you can drive through, when using a certain power-up. It's possible, and encouraged, to build your own car. At the beginning you only have a small amount of bricks to use on your car, but you get more, by completing the courses and beating the bosses. Aside from the "Story Mode" with Rocket Racer, there's also a time trial mode for every track. You'll race against Rocket Racers friend, Veronica Voltage, who will give you her car, if you beat her on the first three circuits. There's also a multiplayer mode for two racers, in which you race against each other in splitscreen mode. I wish I could tell you more, but that is the game. Even though it doesn't feature much, I still have fond memories of it, so it was a fun game for me.

Prequels and Sequels:

Like the picture above suggests, Lego made a second game out of the Lego Racers franchise, Lego Racers 2. It was for PC, Playstation 2 and Gameboy Advance. I never had it, so I can only tell you, what the Internet told me. It seems like, it's pretty much the same as the first game, with a little more. There are now more racers on the track, with much more unique cars. It is also more of an open world game, where you get missions, aside from the races. The ratings from gametesters were rather good, giving around 7.2 points.

The second game looks fun, but propably nothing I would play at this time. I think both Lego Racers games have aged badly, but that's personal taste.

Double Fine Makes an Adventure Game

Double Fine reached out to its fans two days ago, saying, they will make an adventure game, if they get 400.000$, so it's financially doable. 24 hours later, they already reached that mark and the number's still growing. As I type this, they made 1.265.909$. Pretty impressive and it shows, that people still want adventure games, even though the last years not many have been made...except in Germany haha.
If you want to help Tim Schafer and his crew at Double Fine out, click the link below and back up the project, by donating a few dollars.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

The Super Bowl XLVI and Football in Games

Last sunday I watched football for the first time in my life. As I'm from Germany, football isn't as big here as in America. Our favorite sport is soccer, but I just never got into that. I was watching a movie that was on tv and during a commercial break I saw the Super Bowl logo in the corner and when it would start. I was curious, so after the movie ended, I watched the whole four hours of it and was never bored. I didn't cheer for any team, because I didn't knew anything about them, so every touchdown or good play by any team was fun to watch.

Now what does this have to do with video games?
I really am into some kind of football craze now and am looking for a good football game for the Xbox 360, as there certainly isn't one for the PC. I checked out the demo for Madden NFL 12 and it's really fun.
Is there another football game, or football game series I'm missing out on? I just want to get the best experience for my money. Please tell me in the comments, if you know a good one.

Nostalgia Sunday: Need For Speed II - Special Edition

 Need For Speed II - Special Edition

I got this game way back before the year 2000. It was for sale in a discounter and I got this along with FIFA 98, on which I might do another Nostalgia Sunday. It was a real fun game and my neighbours had it too, so we could play against each other. These were the days, where Need for Speed games were still good.

The Story:

You had three modes to choose from: Single Race, Tournament, or Knockout Race. Single Race is pretty self explanotory. You can race any track and try to get familiar with it. In Tournament mode, you race against several computer driven cars and try to become first. After finishing every track in the tournament and being first, you unlock new tracks, cars and the Knockout mode. In the Knockout mode you race against other cars. Every round, the last car gets eliminated, till there's only one left, who will be the winner. That's your "story". Who would have thought a racing game had a story anyway? Who am I kidding, I'll get to those in the "Sequels and Prequels" part.

The Game:

At first, you can choose between two modes: Arcade and Simulation. They pretty much speak for themselves, as Arcade is more for fun racing and Simulation for a more realistic feel. You then can choose between your cars, which reign from a McLaren F1 to a Ford Indigo concept car. The tracks differ from each other too. They take you into a jungle, into snowy mountains and also in the australian Outback. There's also a multiplayer mode for Splitscreen racing, or through a LAN network. There was a special track only for LAN races, but I never got to see it unfortunatly. After a while we had the game I also found out about cheats from my neighbours. Not those were really fun. You'd enter a code in the main menu and your car would change to another one. There were cars like a VW Beetle, that weren't even available through the normal game. You could even change your car to a giant T-Rex, or a toilet. It was fun experimenting with this, as you could even get a car, that was so fast, you couldn't even control it.

Prequels and Sequels:

Now if you don't know about the Need For Speed series, you have been propably living under a rock for 20 years. From being a more arcady game, it changed to being a simulation several times and back. I didn't play all the games, but some which I really enjoyed. Need For Speed Underground for the PS2, was the first NFS game I got after NFS2. The new style it had, tuning and street races, was a fresh breath in the racing genre. The whole game was fun and NFSU2 even improved on its predecessor. Then was basically again a time, where I didn't play any NFS game till today. After NFSU2, none of the NFS games seemed to appeal to me and many people thought like that too, I think. It was the same game every year, with a stupid story and not much playtime. The newest NFS game, Need For Speed The Run, is the best example. You can play through it in two hours and the long awaited "on foot" segments where just quick time events. Hopefully EA can go back to its roots and make a good NFS game again. I'd buy it.

As the first picture shows, I still have the game. I can't run it though, because it won't work on Windows 7. I have the PSX game for an emulator, but it just doesn't feel right for some way.

Syndicate Demo Impressions

So the demo of the game Syndicate came out a few days ago and I'd like to share my experiences with it.
First of all, I know the first Syndicate was more of a RTS game, while this is a FPS. I never played the original, so I can't draw any similarities or contrasts between the two. This is just about the new Syndicate.

So the first thing I did, obviously, was to download the game. It's about 800MB or something, so that didn't take long. I started the game, watched the intro and all that, and was then finally in the main menu. Till here: All fine. Then you choose to play coop. This menu STILL is ok. It's a little confusing, but still doable. The you use RB to choose your agent and my god I can't read anything. I have a 23 inch Full HD TV and I just can't decipher what's on the screen, until I move up close to the TV.
If you figured all that out, you'll choose your agent, what weapons he has, a server to play on and then the game starts.
You will propably have to wait for the other players, while waiting in a truck first. Everything is fine, but then BAM!

Your screen is cluttered with infos about your health, weapons, abilities, your teammates, your objective, where to find the holy grail and how 9/11 could have been avoided. Jokes aside, after a few minutes, you'll get used to it, but it still isn't really comfortable.
The gameplay itself is pretty much like any other shooter. You run through a level, kill the bad guys and enter new areals. What the game adds though, are the abilities in the lower left corner and the Dart Overlay in the lower right corner, which lets you see through walls and make out enemies for a small period of time. Your health is pretty low and the game mainly focuses on teamplay, so running and gunning like in Call of Duty isn't an option. You'll meet some small bosses in the level, which need your teamplay. They are immune to all projectiles, till someone disables the armour of the boss, by standing next to him and holding LB. The other teammates would have to distract the boss, so one teammate can do that.

Conclusion? I enjoy the demo, for what it is. The gameplay is fun, even though it's nothing new and seems to cash in on the "Call of Duty like shooters". I won't buy it though, till there's something that stands out to me, like a really good story, or more elements, that not every other shooter has.
You should try the demo out for yourself though. It's only 800MB.