You know the whole world has gone to hell when zombies start using guns and flash bangs. And when Resident Evil turns to Gears of Evil with too many quicktime events.

I have just completed the single player campaign, clocking in at around 12 hours on normal mode.

Impressions?

Summing it up in one sentense – a game that is not very polished, was rushed out, has a lot of bugs, yet somehow takes you in so deep that you won’t want to go back.

For the first part of the game it seems that Capcom didn’t play any of the other games that mimicked quicktime events — which were pretty much invented by RE4. Then it seems that the producers bought a lot of games, played many of them and applied a lot of different styles into the second part of the game.

The downfall of it all though is that Resident Evil 5 invents nothing new. RE4 invented the camera and quicktime events. Here – nothing new, at all.

The game begins with Chris and what’s-her-name again? girl trying to catch some guy named Irving. Maybe I was too drunk to understand why they were after him or it wasn’t clearly explained. All of a sudden everyone turns into zombies from RE4 and tries to kill you off. So for the first part of the game all of the other military members are killed off and you try to catch Irving, who btw is so poorly written, it was funny because of how bad he was. Does that make sense?

Anyway, you catch the guy and he turns into a huge monster. Most epic boss fight since Resident Evil 4′s “overgrown bolder guy” fight. By that time Chris saw a picture of Jill who is supposedly alive and yada-yada “I WANNA RESCUE JILL” goes on. So he and the hot African chick go into some mysterious caves to find Jill.

Que Tomb Raider. With Zombies. Seriously, I felt like Lara Croft’s sidekick in a zombie infested african temple. Sweet. Although after the puzzles I seriously thought “do they think I’m a fuckin retard?”

There they uncover that Umbrella and -that-other-corporation-from-RE-Degeneration- are working together and that Wesker wants to take over the world, and Chris is in their way. The way this story plays out is written surprisingly badly. There was a moment where Chris beat a huge monster guarding the _prisoners_, and a hot C-cup blonde video chats with him, saying that they should GTFO while they can. And the african chick responds “she must be hiding something!”. WHAT THE FUCK? YES of course she is hiding something, she just sent a huge monster to kill us, duh!

Anyway, a bit later from there Gears of Evil kicks in and it’s all about the gunfights. This is cool, but when you’re in cover you can’t “slide” and your grenade trajectory isn’t shown. This is total fail because most of the time you’re out of bullets and only have couple of grenades. If you waste those, you’re screwed. The game is very imbalanced with the gunfights, especially when guys with those vaginas coming out of their heads start coming in. You have to fight them off as well as the folks shooting at you.

I’m not going to spoil the whole story, but honestly this feels so.. uncomplete.

The gameplay is Gears of War all the way, add zombies and stir. I have to say that I HATE the camera. Yes, it’s sort of over the shoulder. Yet, most of the time you see Chris’ arse and that gives you a claustraphobic feeling. When yuo’re surrounded and can’t see anything — not even the african chicks boobs — it gets really frustrating.

The pacing is also very uneven. Chapter 2-3 was WTF DUDE? It was pretty much like the epic boss fight from RE4 with the huge boulder guy, but you are… in a turret. And that huge guy is trying to come to you. You shoot him, he goes away picks up something tries again, fails, repeat. That was the stupidest boss in boss history. And then the next chapter begins with hordes and hordes of enemies where I was running for my life most of the time.

Did I mention the whole game is co-op based? Yes, you’re never alone. This is good, but totally eliminates the whole horror feeling. This isn’t a horror adventure anymore. It’s a pure action adventure, add more boobies delete Chris and we have ourselves a perfect clone of Lara Croft and Gears of War.

The bot you’re playing with is pretty smart, but on several occasions I fried her (using the burning sun lense trap) because she was a stupid bitch and made me walk through a level several times searching for an item — only to understand that she had to take it, but didn’t.

I imagine Resident Evil 5 will be amazing in co-op though.

I was really hoping to see “What Are You Buyin?” in this game, but oh well. I guess the guy retired. Instead you get a pointless shop menu in between levels that never sells anything useful – unless you need an RPG to take care of the mini-bosses. Speaking of which, I hate them. As I said, the game can be really stupidly retarted easy at time, and ridiculously hard the next moment.

So how does RE5 look?

It’s hard to say. Really, it is.

The Josh model — a black guy — looks AMAZING. I’d say photo realistic. This is due to darker skin not needing a lot of anti aliasing to look good. The rest… could use a lot of AA. Some moments look fantastic, some _really_ bad. Those who wanted a new benchmark in graphics – look elsewhere.

Although I am very pleased with the fact that Resident Evil 5 is NOT grey – gearsofwar – ish. It has this tone to it in each level that really is welcomed by the eye. The environments — for the most part — look amazing. The characters also, but (yes I like bewbs) the boobies could jugle more.

And I have this odd itch that… it’s not 720p. I’d have to leave this to the pixel counting crowd, but the game is 100% NOT 1080p and has some odd pixelation, it might just be the Halo scenario. We’ll see.

So why am I bashing this game?

It had a LOT to live up for. Capcom has set the benchmark with Resident Evil 4 so high, they just couldn’t hit it. Resident Evil 4 had so much innovation, it was amazing. Yet, in Resident Evil 5, they simply borrowed a lot from different games — and not the good parts. They overdid it with quicktime events that are getting really annoying right now. They literally left everything they had — added what they thought was cool from other games andd… yeah, that’s it.

If this wasn’t a Resident Evil game, it would be a definite 9/10 for me.

But being a hardcore RE fan, I have to give it a 7/10.

It is a good game – a great game, but just not Resident Evil material. Capcom obviously is looking toward the casual crowd with this title, and the casuals will eat it up and bash me for this review. Yet, I stay true to hardcore gaming and say that Resident Evil 5 is a semi-fail. I am disappointed with this generation of gaming so far.

Please feel free to ask questions in comments about the game. This review is totally rushed, need to get some sleep, replay through certain portions of the game make a propper video review.

So we all saw the Metal Gear Solid Touch logo. And we were guessing – wtf is it?

I wasn’t hyped or anything. Then Apple announces the iPhone MGS4 port. Big deal, it’s going to be crap anyway.

And today when I was plugging my Xbox 360 in, I found the shocking truth behind the Apple-Microsoft conspiracy.

Look at the picture below. I was like WTF MAN?!

Let’s just think logical here.

Apple and Microsoft aren’t buddies. Mac vs Windows

Sony and Microsoft aren’t buddies. PS3 vs 360

So what the hell is the logo found on Microsoft Xbox 360′s power button doing on a Sony exclusive game that is being ported onto the Apple iPhone?

Can someone explain or I’ll drink myself to death

Is Microsoft buying apple because of MGS4 in order to gain the rights to eventually port it to the 360? (we know MS paid $50 mil just for the crappy DLC of GTAIV, who knows, maybe they went on to buy Apple)

Or is this a global conspiracy to make us fanboys wet our pants?

I come from a gamedev background. Ironically enough most US-based developers outsource most of the work to a messed up post soviet country such as mine. I’m not going to name any – COUGH -eamsoft- COUGH, but it does happen, a lot. Games get rebranded “ok, you develop it, we pay you moneyz and we pretend to have developed the game, that kuulz with you?”.

(apolegiez my kapitalist readers bcuz I’m writing this post reallyyyy high on waterpipe. I thought it was a good idea to use eukalyptus with champagne instead of water)

I was the producer. Or otherwise known as the guy that needs to come up with an idea, document it, propose, execute, lead development and deliver. Think Hideo Kojima, CliffyB etc. Only my name is never on the game.

Oh, and this was 3 years ago – before the crisis hit. So we had to come up with a game for a major client. I had this brilliant idea of a… prepare yourself – a first person prince of persia/parkour game, YAY! Reminds you of anything? Read the rest of this entry »

So here I was, sitting err… working.. on a hungover when all of a sudden a zombie comes in! What The Fuck?!

Okok, this is just a test of my new hardware Tomorrow I’ll get really high and might make a sequel.

Do you know what the problem is when you trust most of your online business and personal needs to a single service?

When it goes down, you’re totally screwed.

That’s the case with Google right now.

For most global users, Gmail is totally down at the moment of this posts publish time. It’s been down for half an hour now.

But that’s not the worst part. About 20 minutes ago, the whole Google Analytics code tracking system went down for my post-soviet country.

Do you know what this means?

If some idiot put the tracking code into the header (like I did with most of my sites), then you cannot load the page. At all.

So basically all of the internet users in my country are screwed right now out of internet.

This reminds me of the Skynet scenario from Terminator. It’s all fun and laughter when you think about it, but let’s be rational here.

Most websites on the web use Google codes within their source. Be it AdSense, Analytics or optimization tools.

This means that Google has access and control (in some way) over these resources. For example, they could reverse-engineer the codes that are up right now into javascripts that call out trojans. These trojans could be used for botnet purposes. And let’s say they infect 100 million internet users. That’s 100 million bots.

100 million bots could easily takedown any small country’s ISP, causing a blackout of the internet.

Then, Google can use the same code strings to simply make the sites NOT load (like the issue right now in my country).

I’m so seriously dumping gmail and analytics codes.

And just when you think that “nah, this will never happen to a kapitalist-based kompaniz”. Sergey Brinn was born and raised in the Soviet Union. He and I think alike. Think about that when you go to sleep.

Many ask me why do I hate Counter-Strike so much. This top 10 list explains it.

Presenting my first attempt at video editing without a video card – Top 10 Most Underrated Multiplayer Shooters.

YouTube version

Alternate video source:

In case you can’t understand my Rengrish, here’s a transcript of the video. Read the rest of this entry »

The attention span of gamers is becoming shorter and shorter. 8-15 years ago it would have taken you days, or even weeks to complete a single game. That was for 2 reasons.

1 – games were longer

2 – game were DAMN HARDER

But now let’s take any AAA game, let’s say, Gears of War 2. Completed in one sitting.

GTA IV? Ok, story completed within 2 sittings (a gaming weekend). This isn’t a good example as sandbox games are arguably very replayablez.

Killzone 2? One sitting.

MGS4? If you skip the movies – 1 sitting. Although I didn’t skip the movies and completed it in a single day.

Fable 2? A damn EVENING.

Bioshock? While replayable, is also an evenings play for an experienced FPS/RPG gamer.

Now, let’s take a look at say.. the first Resident Evil. Perhaps it’s because I was younger, but it took me over 2 weeks of evening sitins to beat it.

Silent Hill? The puzzles and everything kept me occupied for long weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

HOLY KAPITALIST CRAP! Wasn’t that THE BEST EPISODE of Lost since Season 2?

Seriously, I was very skeptical about the previous episodes this season. BUT WOW. JUST WOWWWWWWW!

If you’ve missed it, go to www.abc.com to watch it (if you’re in the US). If you’re outside of the US, use the embed found in the end of this post.

Spoilers start here. Read the rest of this entry »

I hates VULV so much right nows.

They’ve released a new update for the Scout in Team Fortress 2.

It’s a new bat called the Sandman. And it comes with an actual baseball. Players will be able to stun their enemies with the baseball, mock them and then make some cheap damage shots.

Team Fortress Scout Update The Sandman

While I’m not sure if the stun idea won’t imbalance the game, the idea is pretty sweet.

Yet, I can’t help NOT be frustrated by those kapitalist fackers at Valve. Read the rest of this entry »

So I finally downloaded The Lost And Damned on the Xbox 360. While it is a fine game and a very good piece of downloadable content – it’s essentially the same game in almost every aspect. Except of course the improved bike physics (THANK GOD!)

Now here I was playing through the missions and drinking vodka. After about 6 shots and 10 way-too-linear story missions, I decided to pop in the good ol quest of Kolya (Niko=Nikolay=Kolya) Bellick.

And do you know what hit me at that point? (besides the vodka)

Read the rest of this entry »