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RAGE (8 GPPs)

Matt Geary
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RAGE (8 GPPs)

RAGE (8 GPPs)
Alex Dewitt
17/10/2011

Straight to the Point:

A rock solid first person shooter with some loose RPG element’s all wrapped up in a visually stunning post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Rage is the long awaited game from developer id software, the father of the FPS genre. At the start of the game you are awoken in an underground ark 100 years or so after a devastating asteroid has struck the earth. You soon find out the world outside is a not so friendly place…

 

Things we like

  • Visuals – First off, Rage is an awesome looking game. From the vast rocky canyons that greet you as you emerge from your ark to the fantastic looking characters that inhabit the world, the apocalypse has never looked so good. Some dodgy texture pop in takes a little sheen off the overall result but not enough to spoil the experience.
  • Gameplay – Forget any major comparisons to Fallout or Borderlands, Rage is a first person shooter at heart, and this is where it’s greatest strength lies. The world may be vast but the majority of the gun battles take place indoors, as you move from room to room dispensing sweet justice. The game controls wonderfully and the guns are satisfying to shoot. There are some nice little RPG elements also such as crafting sentry bots and turret’s from parts you scavenge and being able to upgrade weapons and create multiple ammo types.
  • Weapons – The weapons of Rage are it’s true stars. From the classic headache inducing shotgun to a crossbow that fires mind control darts that allow you to take control of an enemy’s body and then detonate them in a shower of red mist. Then there’s the wingstick. Who doesn‘t enjoy lobbing off a mutants head with a bladed boomerang? The guns and ammo types are varied and the different enemy clans you encounter will require you to switch often.
  • Enemies – Varied enemies also help keep the action from going stale. There are numerous clans that inhabit the wasteland, all of them having different fighting styles and tactics. The ghost clan for instance are rather acrobatic, often leaping up from a ledge to quickly get close to you. Whereas the Gearheads like to send out their own sentry bots and generally shoot from a distance. The AI is impressive with enemies taking cover, flanking and working together for good effect.
  • Vehicles – The addition of vehicles is somewhat the surprise package of the game but when it’s done as well as this it’s hard to criticize. The driving is surprisingly solid and with the ability to add weapons to your ride (which is a must if you are to navigate the wasteland) it is a welcome addition. You can also participate in races in the main towns for the chance to win racing tickets which can be used to upgrade your buggy with different weapons, armour and boosts etc. The vehicle combat is fun although for some it may feel a little tacked on. It has a quirky arcade style that’s like a cross between mad max and Mario karts.

Niggles

  • The overall story doesn’t really grab you and serves more as a way to get you from point A to B in a series of fetch and carry missions. While the character models look great they generally don’t have anything interesting to say and it’s ultimately hard to really care about any of the people you meet. The campaign also sags towards the final third of the game while the less said about the ending the better.
  • While the main campaign will probably take you a meaty 12 hours or so to complete depending on how much you embrace the vehicular side of things, there’s not a lot in the way of side missions, which consists of a few jobs placed on job boards in the main towns but not much else to distract you from the main story. The wasteland is vast but nowhere near as populated as something like Red Dead Redemption and it would have been nice to have a little more to do out there.

Wish List

Multiplayer comes in the way of “Road Rage” and “Legends of the wasteland“. The former being strictly vehicle combat and the latter being an online co-operative mode. While these are both decent in their own right i was disappointed that they never included a competitive FPS mode as I felt that with all the guns, gadgets and cool environments it would have been great fun. Future DLC maybe?

Conclusion

Rage is a really cool game and one that i enjoyed very much. id software have done what they do best and that’s make a great shooter with stunning visuals. The story and the characters are rather weak however but the addition of vehicle combat and some cool RPG aspects make this game a blast to play through.

MINECRAFT (10 GPPs)

Matt Geary
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MINECRAFT (10 GPPs)


Straight to the Point

One of the most addictive games EVER! Seriously you need to have this! (10GPPs)

The story:

You are a man made completely of cubes; trapped in an unknown world (also made of cubes) with nothing but your bare hands and survival skills to keep you alive. With zombies and other nasty creatures stalking the land at night, with no other purpose to their meaningless lives than to kill you (and in some occasions blow up the creations you have made!) survival is the name of the game (well unless you play the creative game then its just about playing around with lego)

Things we like
  • Its Graphics…. First thing that will strike you in Minecraft is the graphics; they are most definitely mid 80s retro; pixilated and cube based. Something you might expect to play on your IPhone, HTC or even your old commodore 64, sitting in the cupboard because you can’t bring yourself to chuck it; not on your brand new, top of the range, £3k rig! Understandably this in itself may put a lot of people whose idea of a good game is a graphical masterpiece, an epic storyline and maybe a bit of game play behind it, off. But if you can get yourself past this then you are in for a treat! The graphical simplicity is the reason this game is so good.. it has nothing to prove, it is what it is.
  • Its Playability and replay ability – The sheer size of this game is breath taking, you literally have your own world in which do as you wish: climb huge mountains (and fall off them); dig down to the magma core of your world (and burn to death); fight monsters (get eaten); swim the seas (make a boat and become a pirate, geyaarrr) and created EPIC fortresses worthy of Tolkien himself! (Look at youtube for minecraft videos and google for pictures, there are some mind-blowing creations) There is literally days, months, even years of fun to be had and so much potential for more content… well worth the paltry £13 price tag.
  • Minecrafting! – Its what the game is all about people… dig a huge hole, get the raw materials and make things with it! Everything in the world can be used for something. From wood and iron for tools and armour; to stone and dirt for fortresses and houses. Just make sure you build yourself a crafting table and it might be an idea to do some research on line for initial useful recipes. Here is a good vid to start you off:

 

  • Everything is destructible! – There are not many, if any games out there who can boast of complete destructible scenery. In Minecraft everything can be moved, blown up and rebuilt, and it is this that is the linchpin to its success.

 

Niggles

  • It crashes some times (can be fixed if you look around the net) but in its defense it is still technically in its beta testing stage.
  • The Creepers keep killing me and blowing up my beautiful buildings! – not really a game flaw, just me getting annoyed because i spent so much time on them.. :o(

 

Wish List

MORE MODS.. MORE TEXTURES, MORE CRAFTABLE ITEMS, MORE, MORE, MORE ! These are all easily obtained for free and even easier to use.

 

Conclusion

This game proves what I have been preaching for years; Gameplay first, Graphics second! This game has no smooth edges, no new graphics engine, no fancy bells and whistles..nothing. It is just what it is: an oldskool game on an epic scale.

You won’t get cool graphics or epic storylines in Minecraft but you will get an addiction and not one of those bad crack addictions I’ve heard so much about. No sir , just a feeling of needing to makea bigger and better castle, to dig a bigger and better hole, to explore as far as you can before getting attacked by zombies or just the urge to farm!

 

Geek Art = Good Art: Halloween Special

Ben Fee
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Geek Art  is Good Art

by Ben Fee 26/10/2011

Ray Villafane and zombie pumpkin

Halloween is almost upon us and, along with glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth and tiny Mars Bars, nothing says All Hallows Eve like a freshly carved pumpkin grin. But while most of us are content with a few hastily hacked triangles over a wonky crescent, some people have a little more…spirit.

This week: Ray Villafane

Food sculptor (it’s a thing!) Ray Villafane has raised pumpkin carving to an art form with his series of awesomely detailed productions. Villafane, who has worked for DC and Marvel Comics carving sculptures for their collectibles division, started turning fruit into art as a hobby back round the turn of the century and has since knocked out some stunning work.

Take a butchers for yourself: Pisses all over my comedy “pumpkin vomiting its own insides” effort. And these are not even Mr Villafane’s crowning achievement. This year the artist got his hands on the world’s largest pumpkin and, in New York’s Botanical Gardens, did the only sensible thing you can do with a giant gourd. He turned it into an epic zombie monsterpiece.

Check out more of Ray’s pumpkin work at his website here:

 

For more about the giant zombie pumpkin and an awesome time-lapse video of it’s creation, click here: http://laughingsquid

Geek Art is Good Art

Ben Fee
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0
Geek Art is Good Art
Geek Art  is Good Art
by Ben Fee
26/10/2011

If you’ve spent more than twenty seconds on the internet you probably already come across geek art (or alt art as it’s more commonly known). We’re talking pictures of Super Mario riding a unicorn while throwing flaming toadstools at a bikini-clad bowser. Darth Vader swooping down as the bass-wielding front man of a Star Wars supergroup with Han on lead and Chewie on drums. Literally thousands of drawings of Power Girl leaning forward for a good view of her décolletage and tomorrow’s laundry. Like everything else on the ‘net there is plenty of dross clogging up the blogs and sites but, every now and again, you can uncover one or two diamonds of pure crystallised awesome. In the next few weeks I’m going to be waggling my spotlight at a few of the more talented individuals who are creating masterpieces from the weird and wild geek
landscape.

First up is:

Dave Perillo
Check out more of his geeked-out fifties-cartoon style awesomeness at his website here:
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