Moody Gamer

Yes, I finally managed to get around and complete the single player portion of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3. All I can say is that it is a well done campaign with lots of variety in it. Each side boosts nine missions each can take you from as little as 20 minutes and as long as one and half hour, depending on both how you play and the mission it self.

The variety is quite nice as well, even though you have your destroy the other side in between the lines, it has been designed in a way that it really isn’t at the fore front and not direct at all. The units are also introduced quite nicely as you play along the missions and the variety is quite big that I often end up not using some of them. Not because they are useless, but rather because you can pretty much use any kind of combination of units. The secondary modes for each make the decisions even broader and less restricted.

The cut scenes are not bad, but I honestly expected alot more from a Red Alert franchise. I also hate the fact that CG cutscenes are very few. Bring back the win and lose CG cutscenes from the original Red Alert and C&C games (During Westwood days). Those made me want to win and lose each mission just to watch them.

Anyway, the game is still sitting on my desktop just because I still want to explore the MP side of the game which I really see some great fun to be had there, thanks to the very different factions and the fun units you control. Add in the fact that combat can be on land, air or sea makes it even more engaging.

On another Note, I started playing the new Prince of Persia and until now, I am liking it. I managed to manually configure my Rumblepad 2 on it but still can’t manage to get vibrations to work. That was lousy work from Ubisoft to be honest. More impressions to come soon.

Wow, it has been about 2-3 months since I last written a post in here. As usual, I have been busy with life and the same stuff I mention before are keeping me from blogging.

Anyway, so lets kick off from where I stopped. Games wise, I managed to finish the epic gory/thriller game Dead Space and I must say, if you can get your hand on it, do so. The game is full of amazing scares and horrors that are just well done. It has also a nice ending chapter with an epic finale. The game will take you around 10+ hours to complete and even though it is repetitive at some places, such situations are far and few. The graphics are both great and have a nice tone to it and includes some nice space-sort of effects when it comes to going in and out of the space ship. It also runs very well and so you can probably crank the graphics fidelity all the way to the max with hardly any performance drop. One annoying aspect is lack of proper Anti-Aliasing support but with the dark environment, sometimes it is hard to notice except on the main character’s armor suit which, to be honest, is cool but blocky. It also gets uglier as you upgrade it. The monsters themselves are the stars of the show since they behave as such and can cause you a lot of pain. The variety is nice if not extensive but the way the come to you on each encounter is fresh. What you will really love about the game is “oh no, am in trouble” situations that you get in that usually end with your character becoming food for someone else and hence you need to be swift with using your weapons and movement AND you need to be sure you be conservative with some of the more powerful weapons since ammo for those aren’t that abundant. In the end, you will feel that you have really gone into that messed up space station and got involved with lots of scary horrors and end up trying to get out of it by doing lots of missions that involve you going into the scariest parts of the station to fix, get, replace items that will help you in leaving such place.

After that, I managed to get Red Alert 3 (normal edition) and started with the Campaign. Finished the Soviet side story and am going through the Allies side. What can I say, corny story, cheesy dialogue and accents and the shortage of clothes on the females during a world war era. Then again, Red Alert 3 was never meant to be serious. The missions themselves are fun as long as you crank the difficulty to Hard since medium with a Co-Commander is quite easy. Switching to hard makes it even hard for your Co-Commander as well (Human or AI). Oh and if you have been wondering what i mean by Co-Commander, it is the other team that is helping you get through the campaign. It can be a human player or the AI based on what you select before you start the mission.

The main Red Alert 3 game is fun both in single player and multiplayer modes. Though the recently released expansion, Red Alert 3 Uprising, is lacking at best since it only includes single player missions and nothing new added to the multiplayer. Based on various reviews, I decided to skip it.

I think I have written enough for now but be sure that I will be do more follow ups more frequently so stay tuned.

Well, for a while there wasn’t. Been so busy with lots of stuff; study, work, family, leave, WoW!… and other stuff that pop up when you least expect them.
Well, lets kick off with some news related to WoW. Patch 3.0.8 has kicked in with lots of bugs and issues. An emergency maintenance has been made and hope to sort things out.

As for other games, well, I still have to finish Dead Space which is until now the scariest game I ever played. I suggest you try it out too. It is available on PC, Xbox360 and PS3. Hanging on the shelve are Fall Out 3, Prince of Persia (4!), Far Cry 2 and GTA4. I still need to go out and grab Red Alert 3 (An expansion has been announced already!). They are all not only great games, but very very good ones that will get you hooked. Though with so many great games coming out very soon, you can’t imagine but ask yourself how will you find the time to play them all.

Oh and regarding the cable cut, it seems it has been restored to about 80% of its previous performance. Expect full recovery with time. Some of you won’t notice it and will start saying that it has fully recovered, which it didn’t.

Last but not least, I picked up some nice post and articles for your enjoyment:

• PC 2009 Preview: What can we expect in 2009. Weird that there is no mention of Duke Nukem Forever!
• 4870 X2 Price Cut: Yay! Though I am still skeptical about to GPUs running on one board in some sort of SLi/Xfire mode.
• Street Fighter 4 Hands On: The fighting game that the world is waiting for.
• Weak Economy = Cheap Games? Read on and see if it is possible.

Well folks, I am on leave and thought to put something for you to read on until it is over. Will try to update more frequently whenever I can.

For those waiting for Activision Blizzard’s big hit RTS StarCraft II, a recent announcement hinted that the game won’t make it in 2008 and might end up being released in 2009 even though they are sticking with “when it’s done”. Knowing from Blizzard’s past, 2009 seems a more realistic release date than 2008 since they are pretty much famous for very long delays just to polish their games.

Another news tidbit that relates to StarCraft II is a possible fourth race to be included in the expansion. Since we all know by now that popular games do get expansions. Activision Blizzard noted that it was time consuming and difficult to include a fourth race in the base game. With races like humans, high tech aliens and brood monsterous aliens what kind of fourth race can we expect? Robots or bionics? One thing for sure, we won’t know before StarCraft II is released.

Check out the details regarding the release date at StarCraftWire.net and the fourth race tidbit at ShackNews.

Am sure by now you have noticed how much of a fan of Red Alert series I am. Why not when the game really focuses on fun factor a lot. Keep in mind I play almost every popular RTS out there too! Anyway, fan or not, EA are giving away the first Red Alert for FREE. Yep, no strings attached, no registration required, just a direct link to the compressed ISO images which you can load on a virtual CD or burn on a blank CD and get started playing the first Red Alert and second C&C game.

Scroll down at this EA link to get the download files.

In addition, if you pre-order Red Alert 3, you will instantly get Red Alert 2 with it for free. It isn’t really necessary to play the previous installements but it is great fun to pass time if you are waiting for Red Alert 3 to be released or just want to explore the old versions.

You read it right. Fileplanet are giving away limited number of Red Alert 3 Beta keys. Just head over to Fileplanet and register to get your key. Registration is free and takes a few seconds. As soon as you receive your beta key, just download the beta client (the game) version 1.03, install it, make an EA account when the game asks you to and you are set to join.

The Red Alert 3 Beta client will allow you to play as the Allies, Soviets or the new Empire of the Rising Sun (another name for Japan) and get to battle other players online on four maps: two 1v1 and two 2v2. Since the game is in beta, expect crashes and lots of bugs but rest assured with the help of many beta testers and you, things will get sorted out for the official release in October.

I will be writing a full blown Red Alert 3 Beta impressions soon at MEGamers so stay tuned for that.

Update: The Impressions is up at MEGamers, check it out.

Am sure many are very familiar with this Warcraft 3 mod map. Choose your hero, start at the opposite side of your enemy’s base, help your creeps by killing the others and cooperate with your friends to beat the other team by destroying their base. Simple idea, nice balance between the heroes and fun for quick games.

So why would I hate such a mod? Why are there even a lot of people who also hate it? Below I list some very strong reasons why I hate this very mod:

• It is the same map layout over and over again. Where is the diversity?
• Yeah lots of heroes, but controlling one character from a top view isn’t really strategic.
• New people get hooked to it so much that any other complete (read not a mod) game isn’t cool.
• A huge number of players play it yet never heard of Warcraft 3!!!
• Matches almost always take a very long time to complete, easily above 30 minutes and I estimate 1 hour on average for a single match.
• For crying out loud, you are just controlling a Warcraft 3 hero unit!
• Level up above the others and you are invincible!
• It is fun for a week or three months (I am even going too far with that) but years are too much, even WoW players don’t get that hooked.
• The PC has no other game except DotA?

Around here, the biggest contributors to DotA’s success are the LAN gaming centers. Why should they go and buy “expensive” 8800 GTs or 4850s to play modern and cool multiplayer games when DotA requires PCs which you can buy on wholesale or cheap (50$ PC anyone) that have year 2000 or up to 2003 specs. There are players who play DotA, who tell their friends how cool this “game” is and that it is available in your average Internet Cafe too! Get the picture?

It is indeed a great mod, but taking it too far like that is really sad, honestly.

Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath is the expansion pack for the successful Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. This is the first foray into 3D for the Tiberium Universe of the C&C series which started the RTS genre as we know it. Kane’s Wrath adds more units, sub factions, more multiplayer maps, a global conquest mode and 13 new single player missions to the core Tiberium Wars game.

The single player portion of the expansion focuses entirely on the NOD faction and Kane’s survival after the second Tiberium war, what led to the third Tiberium war and what happened next at the end. So through all the 13 new missions, you play as NOD only. The cut scenes do answer some questions about what happened between the second and third Tiberium wars from NODs perspective and explains some of the events happened during the third war in addition to the end. You will feel some disjoint sometimes if you aren’t familiar with the Tiberium universe story. The missions themselves are nothing special yet are fun for one or two days play, since they are easy and pretty much require destruction of your enemy’s base. Nothing ground breaking there.

The new global conquest mode is nothing new as well. It is very similar to the Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth 2 War of the Ring mode. The idea is you have the whole map at display and you get to try taking as much territory to win or either by achieving curtain goals for each faction. The game plays in a turn based way. You make your moves and go for the next turn. Conflicts then can be resolved either by real time game play or via auto resolve which lets the computer determine who will win by comparing the two forces’ strengths. Personally, the global conquest mode doesn’t feel right and you really need to be good to win since making one or two mistakes can end the game easily.

Kane’s Wrath adds a lot of cool new units that change the balance of each faction yet still enhance the overall balance during conflicts. In addition, each faction has it’s own Epic unit. These are huge and powerful units that can seriously turn the tide of battle if properly used. Though they are left at the very end of the tech tree and are seriously expensive to build.

The new units are either shared or split throughout the six sub factions, two from each main faction. These sub factions are a more specialized version of their parent faction in a certain area. For example, the Black Hand NOD sub faction focuses on infantry and flame and has no stealth or air technology. The factions are marginally much more balanced when compare to C&C Generals Zero Hour sub factions.

Kane’s Wrath main feature is really the multiplayer section of the game. The layout is still the same of Tiberium Wars multiplayer where you can either ask for an auto match or go check the lobbies for matches that you want to participate in. With all these new units, maps and sub factions, Kane’s Wrath is really a lot of fun online. Add to that the dedication EA is giving to the C&C series, that new patches are more and more common these days with balance changes which are always important when dealing with online exploits. This is no Starcraft polish, but it is good enough to have a fair and fun online experience.

Nothing spectacular in terms of the graphics since it is really the old SAGE engine used in C&C General’s years ago with more shaders. So the game is smooth and will run on a wide selection of PC configurations. The music is mostly untouched and is the same from Tiberium Wars bar one track which is a remixed version of the NOD faction from the previous Tiberium game.

Kane’s Wrath is more of a fans’ expansion pack than for the general audience, yet if you are into online multiplayer RTS games, I strongly recommend you try this since it is fast and fun to play.

Yep, after I got my copy of Kane’s Wrath, looking for the Red Alert 3 Beta went in vain. EA have given Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath buyer the change to participate in Red Alert 3 Beta testing by providing Beta keys in the game box. To my surprise, I found nothing in my copy of C&C3 expansion pack, kane’s Wrath. I went to Red Alert 3 website and started looking up why. It seems EA didn’t put the Beta keys in all the regions. Was so eager to join the beta especially after how much fun is Kane’s Wrath. EA seem to have gone a long mile with their balancing and patching. It is enough to say that Out of Sync issues that plagued C&C Generals are none existent in C&C3. Still nowhere near Starcraft polish but good enough to have an enjoyable time playing online. With Red Alert 3 coming, even more attention is given to the multiplayer side of the game and from current impressions from the Beta, people are having a blast.

Hope next time EA gives our region a better chance with such opportunities and offers. There is still the possibility that EA might open Red Alert 3 Beta to the public at a later stage but no word on that at the moment, here is hoping though.

Digital Chumps has a nice comprehensive impression on Red Alert 3 Beta that you might want to check out here.

First impressions of this game were “Just another well made RTS” (Real Time Strategy) but after going through the tutorial (Which is plain easy and straight forward if you are an RTS player) and a few minutes in the first mission you begin to feel that this is not your normal cup of RTS.

First the graphics are the best in the genre and watching it in motion is far far better than what you see in the images. The free roaming camera is so easy to use and really adds a new way to playing RTS compared to the the Top-Down view or the isometric view. Thing is, as soon as you start the mission, you are in action. No need to gather resources or build an economy. Add to that some amazing air support reinforcements (coupled with AWESOME special effects) and you got a game which is fast, frantic and fun. Hell, I dare say that the pace can be as fast as an FPS (First Person Shooter). This game is an answer to those who say RTS games are slow and time consuming. If you like RTS games, you must have this game since it is a unique experience that you won’t find in any other RTS.

Also, if you ever played Ground Control 2, then you are right at home. Since it has the same game mechanics and from the same developers.

Note: You need atleast a DirectX9 graphics card to play this game smoothly and appreciate the GFX.