The DaVinci Code Videogame

The DaVinci code was a money-making novel, written by Dan Brown, who for some reason likes getting The Church angry by his work.
In the DaVinci code, professor Robert Langdon (if you don't know who that is, it means you live in a cave!) reveals that The Holy Grail is actually Mary Magdalene who was Jesus Christ's wife. And the fact that Jesus had a child. And the heirline went on until the present. I don't know if there's any base in all the stuff I mentioned or it's all pure theory, but anyway, the point is the novel ended up being exploited by money-hungry amator film makers (Ron Howard's movie is at least mediocre despite it has Tom Hanks in it) and game makers. Yeah, The DaVinci code videogame was released in 2006 by 2K Games.
The game featured the good ol' Slayer Engine, developed by The Collective and used in other famous games such as Indiana Jones and The Emperor's Tomb (the last Lucas Arts game I ever praised them for) or Mark Echo's Getting Up: Content under pressure, a game published by Atari, in which you control a guy that draws graffiti everywhere.
Anyway, back to The DaVinci code. The graphics are average. Hitman Blood Money was released in 2006 and it had way better graphics than this.
The storyline is, of course, that of the movie. Except now there are a lot more clues to find and apparently there are 3 cryptexes (hope I wrote it right) instead of one.
After the first few minutes of gameplay I was disappointed. First of all, I noticed that left clicking makes the character punch. Then I thought "hey, that's cool, it means I get to kick some ass!", but no. The fighting is a piece of shit and I hope NOBODY EVER INTEGRATES THAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IN ANY UPCOMING VIDEOGAME! It's ridiculous! Instead of actually fighting you get to press buttons?! BUTTONS? Like for defend, you have a sequence of 3 to 5 buttons to press. WHAT?! It would have been even better without those fucking attacks, they're only making the player waste his time, there's no entertainment in pressing buttons and then pressing buttons again. Seriously, this game loses 2 points for the lame fighting.
You can control either Robert Langdon or Sophie Neveau, in turns. The perspective is third person, and, surprisingly, the game is in widescreen. Weird choice.
The first time I played this game I encountered a weird bug. Every time I finished a level, the cutscene played and after the cutscene ended the game would just crash. Then I had to start the game again and load my savegame which took me to the next level. Weird. The second time I finished the game (that is a few days ago, for this damn review), I didn't have that problem.
The soundtrack is great, despite all the negative feelings I have towards this game.
Oh, and I almost forgot, I hate the controls. I mean, was it really that hard to use the mouse for more activities than the stupid fighting?! Like some inventory? No, we have Q for that. Really convenient, right near W which is for moving forward. Also, the gameplay doesn't feature jumping or any other stuff. The invetigation parts, where you actually use the mouse are stupid because your mouse crosshair stays at the middle of the screen and you have to slide it around to find and get what you need. JEEZ WAS IT REALLY THAT HARD TO COME UP WITH BETTER CONTROLS?! DID THEY DO A POINT AND CLICK GAME AND AT THE LAST TIME THEY DECIDED IT WOULD BE BETTER TO MAKE A REAL ADVENTURE?! FUCK THIS GAME AND FUCK 2K GAMES FOR PUBLISHING IT!

OK, I really don't want to get all mad and rant at 2K Games anymore, because they're releasing you know what in less than a month and that's going to be the real kick-ass game of 2010! That is until November when Assassin's Creed 3 will be released. So, the final judgement of this game:

STORY: 8.5/10
GAMEPLAY: 5/10 (you know why!!!)
SOUNDTRACK: 9/10
GRAPHICS: 7/10
FINAL RATING: 7.3/10 (That's TOO HIGH!!!) Wait, we gotta deduce the 2 points for the fighting system! So that's a 5.3/10.

Sam and Max Playtrough

For blog space issues and the fact that I am too damn lazy to insert a flash player that supports playlists, I'll just post links to the videos here:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAGikRF4DDY
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMBZ6RdjgcI&feature=related
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzhLfHT9b1w
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IYWiWaY5SY&feature=related
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vU01dvFTSo
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coViG1hDFuk
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDySqlW8_g8
Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D-42g9qfUM
Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB0_AlxUugk
Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szdq6lHuHMc
Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsz33v9h53k
Part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6s01j6W2ig
Part 13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_S_NIIFmDA
Part 14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFlRpCLKbtk (this is the final part!)
THANKS FOR WATCHING! My next gameplay will be of a demo that gets released August 10th. I'll let you figure out what I mean.

My thoughts on the Prince of Persia Saga

We all know the good ol' 1989 original Prince of Persia, in which you had 60 minutes to get to the Princess' room or vizier Jaffar would marry her. That game was originally released for Apple II and then it was ported to consoles like NES, Sega CD and the old PC which at the time used DOS as the operating system. Of course, many of us younger people played it on a Win95 Pentium I and a lot of people got to play it on 486 as well. This original game had a sequel, called "Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame". It was released in 1993 and it was ported to various consoles, which include the Playstation 2 (but only in 2003).
In 1997, Red Orb released Prince of Persia 3D (yeah, we're talking of the beginning of the 3D gaming era, so it's not surprising the title contains 3D in it. This game was only released for PC and Sega Dreamcast.
In 2003, Ubisoft picked up the series and boy they did a great thing! They released Sands of Time, an awesome game, where we, gamers met a new Prince of Persia, that could, amongst other cool things, wall-run or rewind time. Oh, the awesomeness! This was released on PS2, XBOX, PC and a few handheld consoles.
Ubisoft continued the Sands of Time series with a new game, released in 2004, "Warrior Within". A lot of gamers say the Prince is EMO in this game, and I did notice the controls kinda sucked, mainly because the camera can't be controlled at your own will and sometimes there are weird positions.
The best game of the series so far (even better than Forgotten Sands, despite all the new powers The Prince has in that one) is The Two Thrones, the finale of the series, released in 2005. This game ended the series properly, tied in every storyline there was and gave the Prince his happy ending. A multiplayer mod for this game was released in 2007, and it kicked ass! There were a lot of handheld PoP games released by various producers (including Ubisoft) during the last few years, but the next big project is the 2008 Prince of Persia. Oh, God! They fucked up the whole series with this one. I personally think a 1/10 is a mark too big for this game. First of all, you can't die at all. Then, the battles suck and are not challenging at all. Then the Prince is changed. Yeah, you play as a different Prince. THIRD OF ALL, IT SUCKS ASS!!! Anyway, it had a few console ports itself, but they're not worthy of talking about.
Last, but not least, the 2010 prequel (yeah, I told you, they had already wrapped up the story in The Two Thrones) to Warrior Within , "The Forgotten Sands", in which The Prince (yeah, he returns) has a lot of new powers. I won't get into details because I already spoke of this one before (boy it was buggy!)
Overall, the Prince of Persia series was a great gaming experience, and I liked it very much. I'd always replay any of the games (except for the 2008 PoP which I won't play again because I don't feel like replacing my monitor again). The best of the series remains "The Two Thrones", because it's the most elaborate game in the series, and it wraps up everything, you kill The Vizier and that's all. The Forgotten Sands just lacks essence, despite all it's cool stuff.
That's all folks, next time I will talk about something on the next list :D.

Mafia 2 Preview

I CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS GAME!!! IN FACT, I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR IT EVER SINCE THE FIRST MAFIA GAME ENDED BACK IN 2003! In the meanwhile, I got fed up with the stupid EA series - The Godfather, which SUCKS (not the actual Godfather story, but the game[s] made by EA) - so it's gonna be great going back to the fifties and doing jobs for the Don. I like what I've seen in E3 footage, so I expect the game to be good. Release date: August 24th. Demo will be available in August. GREAT! CAN'T WAIT FOR AUGUST!!!
Here's some YouTube gameplay (guess this is some promotional gameplay they released):

Next list

-> Dr Who adventure games + BBC Rant (seriously, I'm not dropping this)
-> Batman: Arkham Asylum (best super hero game ever - probably it will be a while until I get to do this review, as I have to finish the game first and I just started playing)
-> The DaVinci Code Game (probably my next review - and be prepared for a BIG RANT against 2K Games for some reason)

And I gotta stop here, 'cause if I add to much to the list I'll end up not doing anything at all.

A few words on The Bucket List

The Bucket List is the story of two old men (portrayed by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman), of differen social statuses. Edward Cole (Nicholson) is a rich businessman, while Carter Chambers (Freeman) is a mechanic. The two guys meet in hospital. At some point, Chambers writes a "bucket list", of things he wants to do before he dies (both men have cancer), and Cole sees him and comes up with a great ideea: what if they actually DO those things for real?! So they end up doing extreme sports and visiting the world, thus knowing each other better. When Chambers takes Cole on a surprise visit to his daughter whom he hasn't visited for years, he gets angry and yells at Carter, thus ending their friendship and tearing "The Bucket List" apart.
Later in the movie, Chambers dies of cancer and Cole goes to his funeral and holds a speech in his memory. The final scenes show the urns that contain both men's ashes being placed on top of the Himalaya along with the restored Bucket List.
Overall, director Rob Reiner made a great comedy/drama movie that can be watched by anyone. It's a great movie, worth a 9.5/10 in the least, and I reccomend it to you.

Call of Juarez 2: Bound in Blood Review

Call of Juarez Bound in Blood is a prequel to the first CoJ game. This one was released in 2009, three years after the original came out. Since the producers already finished any possible plot hole, they needed to come up with something else. A game with totally different characters?! No, that would suck. Instead, they made a prequel. Yeah, it's not like everything past-related was explained at the end of the first game, right?
This game literaly doesn't have suspence at all. Seriously, I already knew everything that was gonna happen even before it did. Well.. not exactly everything, but 90% of the story is already revealed in the first game.
Anyway, this game features great graphics, as the previous one did, it features an interesting main menu in which you get to creat a password-based account (well I shouldn't complain, all new Ubisoft games have that). I think the password is optional, but I added one anyway (wouldn't want my little brother to start playing and fuck up my savegames). You can also play on the UPlay servers provided you own an original copy of the game.
One letdown is there are no more cheats, since there's no console, and thus I'm supposed to use a trainer if I get stuck. And the trainer usually makes the game crash. So... I tried my best not to use a trainer and I succeeded, at least until the final two or three chapters.
The characters in this game are the Mc Call Brothers. You can either play as Thomas (jumping and using a lasso to get to high places) or Ray (gunslinger bad-ass, still unable to climb anything without help). There are also a few levels where the game forces you to use a certain character, but mainly it's your choice.
What I didn't really like about this game, though, are the duels! I FUCKING HATE THOSE DAMN DUELS!!! You need to move around easily to have your enemy in sight (otherwise the screen gets blurry and when the gong sounds you're fucked) and to move your hand (by dragging the mouse) until near the gun. Only near the gun, because if you get it too close, your character will refuse to take the gun. Yeah, you can only take out your gun and shoot after the gong is heard. And the enemy is always faster than you! Jeez!
Back to the story, there's also a third brother, called William, who is some sort of a preacher. He befriends an Apache who came to make a deal with Juarez. He dies in the end, as Ray says at the end of CoJ 1.
It's good to note that, as bad-ass as he is, Ray isn't actually loved by women. Apparently Thomas "steals" a woman Ray likes and thus Ray threatens him not to do that again or else. Of course, when they meet Marisa (the future mom of Billy and wife of Thomas, duh!) they fight over her again, but then they calm down, finding out she's Juarez's wife.
Note that I don't even try not to spoil the story. That's because if you play the first CoJ before the second one, it will be spoiled anyway.
Finally, this game is no longer an "Adventure/Shooter" game. It turns out it's plain shooter. But it's a good game anyway.
IT'S DEFINETLY HUNDREDS OF TIMES BETTER THAN CS 1.6 AS A FPS! I CAN'T UNDERSTAND HOW PEOPLE CAN STILL PLAY THAT POS FULL OF GLITCHES AND WITH STONE-AGE GRAPHICS INSTEAD OF THE NEW, COOL FPS'S ON THE MARKET. AT LEAST TRY CS: SOURCE. JEEZ!
Ok, now I'm ranting about something completely different. This means I should end my review now, before is too late.


GAMEPLAY: 9/10
STORY: 7/10
GRAPHICS: 9.5/10
SOUNDTRACK: 9/10
OVERALL: 8.6/10

Call of Juarez Review

Call of Juarez is another one of Ubisoft's masterpieces. It's a first person western adventure/shooter game set in the late 19th century. This game was released back in 2006, but it features graphics worhty of a 2008/2009 game. The great graphics and the first person posture makes you feel like in the actual Wild West. Another cool innovation is that you play as the good guy, and respectively the bad guy.
The story revolves around Billy Candle, who left to search for the Gold of Juarez but came back home empty-handed. He got called "candle" after his mother, Marisa, gave him a medallion with a candle on it.
Once Billy returns to his hometown, he gets into a lot of trouble when he tries to get to Suzy, a childhood friend of his now turned prostitute, in order to "say hi". After escaping the citizens, who apparently lack pussies so much that would kill for half an hour of sex with Suzy, Billy gets to his parents' (Thomas and Marisa) farm. Thomas is actually Billy's stepfather, but that's another story. Once he gets there, he finds both of them dead and runs away. Meanwhile, Reverend Ray, an old gunslinger turned preacher, angered on the ignorance of people burns down a saloon and rescues the city that has been taken over by miners. Afterwards, he is called at Thomas and Marisa's farm and sees Billy run away from the two corpses. This is where the main plot of the game starts, as Ray will follow Billy, thinking that he killed Thomas and Marisa (Thomas being Ray's brother).
Both playable charaters have their unique features. Billy can jump around and use his whip to get to high places, while Ray is a bad-ass gunman who shoots every bandit in sight.
So, back to the story, Billy runs away from Ray and gets to a farm where he previously worked at, and from where he got kicked out for falling in love with the boss' daughter. On his way to the farm, Ray is approached by some fake deputies and convinced to take over the farm. After this, the deputies, actually bandits, kidnap the girl and run away with Ray following close-by. Ray and Billy encounter eventually and the kid gets shot and falls in the river.
That's all the story I can talk about right now, because otherwise I'd spoil everything (not that I haven't spoiled stuff already) and you wouldn't have any reason to play the game anymore. Well... unless you own an original copy and can play in multiplayer mode.
Bottom line, a lot of stuff that happened before is explained and the story is properly concluded in the end.
There are also a few cheat codes that you can type in the console (press ~ to reveal console). I'll just write them down so you wouldn't say I'm an asshole for keeping them to myself (not that there's no Google to search for them anyway):

Cheat.God(1) - Enable God Mode
Cheat.God(0) - Disable God Mode
Cheat.MagicAmmo(1) - Enable Infinite Ammo
Cheat.MagicAmmo(2) - Disable Infinite Ammo
Cheat.GiveRifle() - Give Rifle (duh)

And a few more cheats that you can find on the web, but these are the only ones I used. Yeah, I did, and I'm not afraid to admit it.
The soundtrack is awesome, it completes the wild west image of the game.


Graphics: 10/10
Gameplay: 8.5/10 (for the fact the first person climbing is not the best ideea)
Story: 10/10
Soundtrack: 9.5/10
Overall: 9.5/10 (aka AWESOME)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Preview

3D? Seriously? OH SHIT NOT THIS ONE TOO!!!
First of all, this is a trailer for both parts 1 and two of ”The big one”. It's OK, I guess they don't want to spoil the moment the story is split at, though my guess still stands up: part 1 will end when Xenophilius Lovegood tells Harry, Ron and Hermione about the Deathly Hallows. It's only a guess, but I'm 80% sure I'm right.
Before talking about the movie at hand, I'd like to adress a big fuck you to Summit Entertainment for releasing Twilight: Eclipse this summer and therefore making the Harry Potter release date set to November. I mean, what kind of a sick producer pushes his actors to such intense work? Twilight: New Moon was released back in November and... what the fuck eight months later a new movie is out? BULLSHIT! It takes at least a year to complete a movie like that! I'm telling you, Summit forced the team to work their assess hard and finish this piece of shit that fast!
Anyway, back to Harry Potter now. I hope The Deathly Hallows will be better made, since it's in two parts. I mean, The Half Blood Price was fair, but it lacked a lot of important movies. Like why the fuck aren't we shown ALL THE DAMN memories?! What about the Gaunts? No need to talk about them, just skip to little Tom Riddle at the orphanage?! That's bullshit! Sorry, but HBP is not getting a rating better than 7.5/10 from me. So let us see The Deathly Hallows! God, please make sure this movie is better than the others! I really don't want to get my shotgun and go all the way to England to shoot David Yates if it'll suck.

Next list:

The Bucket List Movie Review
Dr Who Adventure Games (and BBC rant)

(order pending)

Prince of Persia: The forgotten sands (PC)

This is another one of Ubisoft's masterpieces, following a great series of four... no three great Prince of Persia games. Why only three? BECAUSE PRINCE OF PERSIA 2008 IS A PIECE OF SHIT AND WILL NOT BE COUNTED BY ME AS A POP GAME!
First of all, the first Prince returns in this game. Apparently this game is a prequel to Warrior Within and The Two Thrones and it's story happens right after The Sands of Time.
So far so good, I won't talk about the story too much, because that would mean spoiling it and I don't want that to happen. The plot revolves around The Price who goes to visit his brother Malik. When he gets there he finds Malik's palace invaded. Malik then decides to free King Solomon's Army, an army formed of sand creatures, to repel the invasion. Unfortunately,the army turns against Malik and now The Prince has to save his brother and the kingdom. In order to do that, he is aided by the Djinn, who gives him four powers at different points in the game. These powers are amazing, yet by the end of the game you need piano skills in order to be able to switch between the powers as fast as it's needed.
The first power is the rewind. No need to describe it. It's The Prince's good ol' time rewind, just that this time he doesn't need The Dagger of Time to do it.
The second power you gain is freezing water. Yeah, you heard me right. You can solidify water for a few secons, so you can use it to swing across a gap or something like that (I hate the waterfalls at The Last Climb!!!).
Then there's that power whose name I keep forgetting. The point is you jump and then press CTRL to charge at an enemy that is on a platform further than you could normally jump to. This gets crazy when vultures come in, but I won't get into details that much.
Last but not least you can "remember" parts of the castle that are destroyed but were there in the past. This means pressing a key to fix a broken pathway, wall or something like that. It's not a piece of cake, trust me.
The final battle is completely crazy. You're in a middle of a sandstorm and you need to fight Ratash, the leader of the Sand Army. He is ginormous and has a seal on his chest that's the only vulnerable point you can hit, while making sure he doesn't hit you with his hands or the other enemies that appear on the screen don't kill you.
You can also buy upgrades, like magic powers - whirlwind, stone armor, fire trair and water trail, or lenghten your life bar, get extra energy orbs, etc.
The soundtrack also feels like Prince of Persia. It completes the game.
So... I guess it gets a well deserved 10/10 like AC 2?
Well... NO! Because it's full of fuckin' bugs! Doors are not opening. When I climb a column so I'd be able to face the other column I need to jump to, the game crashes and I get a screen that makes no sense and that you can only escape if you waste an energy slot to rewind!
So, the final judgement (without the picture, sorry):

Graphics: 9/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Story: 9/10
Soundtrack: 9.5/10
OVERALL: 8.8
BUT! Because the beta testers are a bunch of motherfuckin' bastards, I deduce one point from the overall.
OVERALL OVERALL: 7.8/10

Call of Ctulthu (I think that's how you spell it) Mobile

Yeah, well.. I'm reviewing a mobile game for the first time in my life. Of course since it's a mobile game I should have started my review with "THIS GAME SUCKS!". But it's not the case here. This game screams "Lucas Arts" from the bottom of its lungs. And I mean the OLD ADVENTURE GAME Lucas Arts not the current LEGO BULLSHIT and INFINITE STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES THAT DOESN'T COME TO PC Lucas Arts. Yeah, the game looks just like the good ol' Lucas Arts point and click adventure games from the 1990's. And it's played like one. All it lacks are the buttons at the bottom of the screen, labeled USE TALK TO and stuff like that.
Here's a little trailer:


Overall, the game was good, I enjoyed it, yet I got stuck a lot of times and needed to take a look at a walkthrough I found online. Eventually I.. um... finished it (or not?) and I got some sort of a To Be Continued thing. Well.. here's where every good thing about this game goes to an end. Why? Because a sequel was never released even though the first game is out since 2007. WHY? I don't know, the producer's site is down for some reason.
Anyway, the game has it's good sides, like an awesome story that keeps you hooked up, great character designs (Lucas Arts!!!) but it also has bad sides, like a bug that appears at some cell phones only (including the PC emulator LOL) or maybe at some versions of the game, anyway. You need to talk to a guy at the store. And when you do that, the game crashes. It happened to me every time I tried to get over that part on my old cell. Luckily, it worked well on Alcatel OT 800 and on a good ol' Nokia, so I managed to beat the game.
Anyway, I'd give this game a 9/10. It deserves it, at least for the courage to make a cell phone point and click adventure game.

Percy Jackson and The Olympians Quick Review

Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The lightning thief is a movie based on a novel, the first one of the Percy Jackson series, written by Rick Riordan.
The first thing I noticed is the movie starts with an argument between Zeus and Poseidon (played by Kevin McKidd, aka Vorenus from ”Rome”). Zeus states that Poseidon's son stole his Lightning, the most powerful weapon that exists and that he has a 14 days deadline to return it or there will be war.
In the book there's a little suspance, since it starts describing Percy who is god damn 12 not fucking 18 like in the movie, and how weird things happen to him.
I don't blame Chris Columbus for spoiling something that could have been kept a secret for at least 15 - 20 minutes of film, but for changing the characters' ages. And why the hell did he cut out Mr. D, the camp director? He was an interesting character.
Anyway, I suppose it's not fair criticising the movie because the director had a different vision, so let's see what can we make of this movie.
As a fantasy movie it's not bad at all. As a movie, in general, it's good to watch when you don't have anything better to do. This is one of those movies you could watch with your family in a Sunday evening with the popcorn and soda/beer ready. Me, I liked this movie, despite all the negative critics it gets because of the changes Columbus made to the story. I'd gave it a 8.5/10 without exagerating. I guess the 5.8 (LOL) it got on IMDB is based on the fact I overlooked, so I guess I gave it an extra point because Alexandra Daddario is so hot!!!