Castle Crashers is racist

Based on a true story.

REVIEW: Full Throttle

October 10, 2006

Time for an old school review! I played Full Throttle a long time ago, but never beat it. To be honest, I never got past the first area before I got side tracked. So I thought rather than letting it sit there, I was gonna load it up and play it. I am glad I played through it again. Not only is it a great game, but it let me re-live what the days of when LucasArts made some truly ass kicking games (rather than the mostly Star Wars bullshit they bring out year after year.) I guess the only really bad thing I have to say about the game is how damn short the game is. It was over before I even knew it.

Lets start off with the graphics. Like most of LucasArt's games back in the day, Full Throttle uses the SCUMM engine. So if you have played a game like Monkey Island, you should already know what to expect. This is not a bad thing by any means. To be honest, I really wish LucasArts would continue to use it. It just gives it that hand crafted look that you miss so much in many of the games you see today. There is nothing like it, and I just wish there was even more of it... oh well.

Next, sound. Great job all around. The voice acting is fantastic with and makes it even more enjoyable to play through. There are some noticeable people you may of heard of that do alot of the games voice work. Mark Hamill being one of them. Roy Conrad (RIP) who does the voice for Ben has to be my favorite though. That bassy, gravelly sounding voice is just perfect. Even though this game has a serious side to it, the voice acting just gives the humorous parts that extra punch. Its kind of hard to explain... you really just need to play it. Great music too!

And for the last part in this short review is the gameplay. Again, if you have played any type of LucasArts game before, you really know how to play already, only this is a little different. Rather than having that bar where you could choose certain options like "Pick up" or "Talk to" etc. In Full Throttle, you use a "verb coin" system (Curse of Monkey Island uses a system like this if you are looking for an example) You would hover over a certain item, and hold down the left mouse button, and a "coin" will pop up where you can choose what you want to do. Really easy to use.

Also just like SCUMM engine games, this is pretty much a puzzle game. If you aren't good at all with puzzles, you may have a really hard time trying to get through Full Throttle. That being said though, I found the puzzles in Full Throttle to be very easy. Maybe I am just used to the type of puzzles in a game like Monkey Island where you need to think outside the box a little bit, but the puzzles in Full Throttle were pretty much common sense when you where thinking about it. Not a bad thing by any means, but maybe thats why I was able to beat the game so fast. I guess if I could get through them, you can too! :)

If some how by reading this review you felt you needed to go out and just play this game, there are a few things to remember. One, your best bet is to look for it on eBay. You won't find it in stores anymore, and its getting harder and harder to find it on eBay. And two, it won't run on XP. No need to worry though. There is a great little program called ScummVM that will run the game just fine. You just NEED to have a copy of the game. :) So what are you waiting for? Play it already!

REVIEW: Company of Heroes

October 7, 2006

So I finished up Company of Heroes last night. Very good game. I went into the game really knowing nothing about it, and if it wasn't for grayscale talking about it every 5 seconds, I wouldn't of even looked in to it. Well I am glad I did!

If you don't know too much about about Company of Heroes, I like to call it the Battlefield 1942 RTS. The way it is set up is pretty close to how Battlefield works. See, to gather resources, you need to capture and hold certain points on the map. There are three types of resources. Fuel, Munitions, and Manpower. So each of those has their own point on the map, or what I like to call "flags." You just need to make sure you hold the flags and to make sure those zone are linked together. I heard it is a similar system like in Dawn of War, but seeing as how I have never played Dawn of War, I can't really say. Rather than bore you with all the details, lets just get to what I thought about the game.

First off the graphics. Like I said, at first I didn't know a whole lot about Company of Heroes and everytime I saw a trailer of it, it looked like just another WWII FPS. When I found out that is wasn't an FPS and really an RTS, I was blown away. Company of Heroes has some of the best graphics I have ever seen for an RTS. The detail that Relic's engine give is insane. When you see the cutscenes and you get up close to the action while you are playing, it looks just like what you would see if you were playing Call of Duty. If you would of told me that it was an FPS, I would of believed you. This is some crazy, crazy stuff.

With that being said, you need a pretty beefy system in order to enjoy it in all that glory.... which I don't have. I mean, I have a pretty decent system, and I can run it at max settings, but if I want to play it, I need to turn a lot of the shit down. Still looks very good even with all the settings down, but no where near what it could look like.

Moving on to sound, again, another great job. The voice acting is top notch and the music is just like you would expect to hear in a game like Call of Duty. The sound does a fantastic job of giving really action packed battles. The explosions, the gun shots, your units cussing like sailors every time you give them an order, which I thought was just hilarious with some of the things that would say. I also loved how each unit/tank/etc. had their own sound and you could tell which was which. For example, if you heard a Tiger tank coming, but you couldn't see it yet, now would of been the best time to run the OTHER way. :)

Next is gameplay. Really, if you have played an RTS before, you really know how to play already. Not a bad thing in any means, its great really because it so easy to pick up and play. (At least for me it was.) What I really loved though, that I haven't seen in an RTS before is that moving your units on the battlefield has a huge impact of if you won or lost. Cover plays a huge roll in this game. If you have your units out in the open and the enemy is garrisoned in a house or behind some heavy cover, you will get your ass kicked. I have seen battles won by an outnumbered squad because they took their surroundings to their advantage. The AI in the game is smart enough to know where the best cover is, and to take it without any help from you. While you can tell them what to do and tell them where to go in the middle of a fight, the AI does a pretty good job by them selves.

Lastly, I will talk about the multiplayer. The way it is set up is very much like Battle.net. You have your ladders, and your quick play matches. You can also set up custom matches so you can just play with your friends. Pretty much your standard multiplayer like in an RTS. A good thing really. :) However if there was one thing that is a nagging issue is that there are only two sides (Allies and Axis, duh) and you can't really pick which side you want to play. Well, you can... sorta, but it ALWAYS has to be Allies vs. Axis. You can't have Allies vs. Allies, or Axis vs. Axis. I guess it makes sense in a way, but then you start to run into problems, at least for me, is that you find you are WAY better with one side than you are with the other. I guess this is one game where you just have to practice and be good with both sides. Maybe this will change in a patch in the future, but for now, I guess it really isn't much of a problem.

With all of that being said, if you are a fan of WWII games, or are a fan or RTSes, this is a great game that shouldn't be missed. Throw in a great single player game, and some ass kicking multiplayer, and you have a game that you can enjoy for a good long while. Catch me Xfire and maybe we can get a game going. :)

CliffyB: The Supermodel

Oh CliffyB… what will you think of next?