Zeno Clash is the debut game from the Chilean developer Ace Team. It is an impressive piece of work that really explores the graphical capabilities of the Unreal engine. The game, while very strange looking, is very beautiful. The team used a very broad range of colors and textures and lights to give a unique feeling for each stage and characters. Don’t expect a very detailed environment, but it will catch your eyeballs nonetheless.

The game is just like a first-person shooter, but without the shooter part. That s because the game is all about brawling. While there are weapons, most combats you will only punch and kick. It’s very fun to focus on close range combat. You do not need to worry about stealth and very precise aim, but timing is required. Get close, avoid being hit and give everything you get. It is hard but much more pleasant that firing with guns: a bit relaxing I dare to say.

If the gameplay is a bit weird the story and theme are really crazy. The world of Zenozoik is populated by strange and ugly creatures. The whole theme is messed on purpose giving the player a  constant itchy feeling of surprise. The dialogs are very cryptic and never reveals the whole story. Several elements of the game, from the characters, places and dialogs all seem to be some sort of reference, like Matrix movies.I personally never found out any  direct reference, but I would bet that there are some link with the Biblic texts. I don’t know.

The game is short, with some repeating stages and mechanics. But I found myself enjoying most of the ride. I know that a sequel is getting cooked and I’m anxious to see the much more experienced team diving again in this universe.

It’s a classic of weirdness and I recommend to take a look. But be aware that is a love or hate product. My tip is: play a demo first. 😉

Gamespot: +Innovative, +Unique , -Shallow , -Weak Story

The traditional Elder Scrolls game is now back with Skyrim. This takes place in northern lands. Snows in a lot of places. But the fire of the dragons might warm the players.

tES 5 is the Bethesda masterpiece. Every single aspect was updated and enhanced. Combat is more fun. The story infinitely much better than Oblivion, while still feels very cliché. It’s an improvement. However, it is still very, very awkward and worse, totally dull sometimes. It is for me the biggest weakness in the Bethesda Softworks team.

The game so big that you can spend days, weeks and even months without exploring the whole map. It adds a lot of value to the final offer. However, I bet that less than 25% of all players will see the end of this game. It’s so huge than at some point you will be tempted to restart and make different choices. Graphically, it is amazing. With all settings at the max, you will definitively be impressed. I was more shocked when Oblivion was released; it was more ground breaking. But Skyrim is beautiful and you will face some situations in which you will catch yourself with your jaw opened.

The same can be said about he bugs. The programming could not foresee he amount of situations that players put the character into. The result is an YouTube full of funny videos. But it is another Elder Scrools tradition: crazy and sometimes irritating buggy situations. It’s almost a positive feature.

Most of the mini-games are now fun. But I still feel that the most of the decisions that we make in the game, in terms of the storytelling aspect, are quite inconsequential. In the gameplay, however, is creates amazing branches based on what gamestyle you prefer.

It is a masterpiece. A bit of the same, if you already played tES game before, but is still amazing. And it have dragons!

Gamespot:

• Better Than the Sum of Its Parts
• Get More Than Your Money’s Worth
• Great Sequel, Great Story
• Outstanding Visual Design
• Sucks You In+ Variety

Jezz, what a great game. I must confess, flat, that it impressed me much less than the first installment. Several features, scenes and the general feeling was already known. Is takes a lot of the buzz and the fun, but what is left is so good that it is still one of the top games I ever played. What impressed me upfront is the level of detail. Batman Arkham City is a product of a gigantic effort and thought. The city is full of small surprises.

The story now is less impressive than the first game. Too many characters, villains in fact, are presented and compound the main story. But to patch all then into a single thread, the rationalization is left aside. The human villains are very plausible, like joker and penguin. But the more bizarre and monster like guys forces the story into a more a too much incredible way. Suddenly Batman stops chasing a psycho mass murderer and stats dealing with an assassin from centuries back, living by a coincidence in the city undergrounds.

Graphically the game is top notch. I would question a bit the excessive amount of colors that populate the city, regardless the argument that a place like that would normally be full of neon colors. The rest is gorgeous. I loved the humor -sometimes a bit dark- of the dialogs. Alfred almost always mocks Batman for being so good so smart so invincible. Joker, probably my favorite bad guy ever, is also a star.

The voice performances are amazing and convincing. In the artistic point of view, there is not much more to say than WOW.

The gameplay is very, very good. Easy enough to not let the flow stops but hard enough to keep you engaged. The plethora of gadgets is a bit confusing, but they make sense in the general situations. Puzzles are rational, challenges are well places and well executed. I tend to buy and play great games due to the fact I do some research before the acquisition. This game is a candidate to be one of the best games I ever played.

PS: Time to time I give my computer a clean installation of everything, formatting the hard drive. Guess what? I lost the saved game coz I forgot to backup this one! jezz, I’m soooo pissed. I was really near ending.

Gamespot:

• Just Right
• Oh Snap!
• Outstanding Gameplay
• Outstanding Visual Design
• Sucks You In
• Superior Animation
• Terrific Voice Acting

Before coming to Rio de Janeiro, I used to have a small and simple cell phone. In fact, I always defended the position that the mobile phone should exactly and only this: a phone. Make and receive calls. Everything else is geekry.

But then I discovered that my old phone wouldn’t work, simply that, in Rio due to a difference of band used in the state. In fact, only São Paulo state uses a different band range and only one provider operates in this range.

So I had to buy another phone. I don’t have a notebook, so I decided to buy a phone with a typical internet functionality. Therefore a smartphone is a reasonable choice. The best phone available at the store was a Motorola Defy. I, my mistake I confess, haven’t made a single research to see which model is good which ones are bad, so I kinda had to accept that phone.

For my surprise, That is a great model. I love it.

The phone is small, light and very fast. The Android version was 2.2, but I soon decided to abandon the product warranty in order to install a newer version from the independent developers called CyanogenMod. This distro is really good, mostly because it doesn’t not have a full selection of bloated apps.

I’m now a bit addicted about cell phones. An entire selection of websites about phones and phone apps, reviews and whatever now catches my attention, even if displayed in a glimpse of second. But even with a very nearest-to-the-hand-possible tool to post stuff, I still don’t enter in the Twitter world nicely. In fact, I’m planning to remove the automatic Twitter posts from the site. Useless since I don’t use it.

There are several design choices that Motorola took that I really like. USB cable that transform into a power cable is one of the most loved ones. It’s practical and reasonable to have only one cable. I don’t use Bluetooth, but it would be nice to use it also.

Now Motorola is owned by Google, I expect to get even better support for Android.

You can read my review about The Witcher. I loved the game, mostly because the huge personality that the whole product. Characters with a unique spirit, non-conventional story, choices that cannot be placed in the simple black-white gradient, adult theme, and the complements go on… For those that agreed with me, great news! The Witcher 2 is all of that, bigger and better.

The polish developers Projeckt CD printed a hollywoodian tone to the game. The storytelling element (both in game and kinematics) is superb. You really care about the characters and their motivations. Some characters that in the first installment were not that relevant in the game (but are in the book series that the games are based on), like Zoltan and Triss, in the second game they are relevant and very likable.

Since Bioware basically imposed the good/evil dynamics, several games were created using the formula. But the Witcher universe is nothing like that. Like in the real world, people are moved by complex motives: religion, politics, economics and even the mundane takes place. that, allied with (spoiler alert) the possibility of multiple endings (in fact, more than 1/3 can be different, depending on your decisions), and you will fill quite tempted to play the game a second time, just to see how things play out if you take other choices.

Graphically the game is nothing but true beauty. The same can be said about the sound and music. And all of them are relevant -so there is no filler stuff- and very well done. Textures, models and visual effects are top-notch. Famous RPGs like Mass Effect, Dragon Age are not even close.

But it’s not perfect. The menus are slow, difficult to select, the game generates hundresds saved games automatically and the turorial… the tutorial … the Trial by Fire, as they call it, was a wrong decision. It seems you are facing a boos as the very first contact with the game. I could also talk about the difficulty, that in the first thrid of the game is really hard.

Have no doubt! The Witcher 2 is problably my favorite RPG game ever. I can go even further? Top 10 games ever. Simply that.