In my Mafia 2 review...

...I was saying something about L.A Noire. I'm glad I was wrong and it eventually came out on PC as well. I played it and I loved it. (OK, now to get serious, Mafia 2 doesn't really deserve 10/10, maybe a 9/10 at most, but I was in a crazy-fanboy like state at the time and I guess I wrote a one-sided review there). I won't review it, because I played it when it came out and everyone has already said everything about it.
What I can promise, though, is that I'm going to review "Sleeping Dogs" as soon as I finish it (I won't reveal more. All I can say is, it's gonna be something huge, considering what I've done so far).
And about a future Let's Play (seems like a better name)... well... not sure yet, but time will tell.
Check the "Let's Play" page for a Ben Jordan Case 8 Playthrough though.(It's not 100% complete, only 90%, but all that's missing are three alternate endings that I can get done shortly).

Lost: Via Domus rant

Where do I start? The way they butchered the ”Lost” story and characters or the stupid tendency of these series-licensed games not to let you play as one of the characters from the series?!

 First of all.. I said it myself. This is a game based on a great TV series, but even so, it still falls under the ”series/movie licensed crap” category.

GAMEPLAY:

The game features a third person perspective, and you get to control your character via the basic controls for such a game. The only downside here is that you can't jump, which is stupid. In a third person adventure game, jumping is a must-have. (OK, you can jump, but only in two chase sequences and only to avoid obstacles. Plus, you jump by pressing ENTER! What kind of a brainless monkey thought that was a good ideea?!).  You play as some guy called Elliott, whose past you need to uncover during the game, as he has an amnesia after surviving the crash of Oceanic 815. As an adventure game, it doesn't bring anything new or spectacular. All you have to do is move around the island, talk to the characters (I'll come back to this later) and, at some point, hide in some trees to avoid the Black Smoke (Lost fans know what that's all about). There are two short sequnces like this and they're boring as shit. You can run as fast as you want, but once you get near the next trees you can hide into, you'd better not go any further because you'll hear different music and the Smoke will show up. If you don't hide as fast as you can, you're dead.
Gameplay... well, the gameplay is not this game's forte, that's for sure. I liked the idea of taking pictures in order to remember stuff, but otherwise.. nothing new, nothing interesting. 
One more thing. The game is divided in episodes. Every time an episode ends, you have to see a "previously" cutscene, like you didn't play the fucking game before and you don't know what happened. These cutscenes are annoying mostly because you can't skip them. Every game which doesn't have the option to skip cutscenes has a huge minus and the guys who came up with this are a bunch of assholes. Plus, sometimes, the cutscene comes right before a chase scene. If you fail the chase scene, you have to watch the cutscene again too! This is bullshit! I'm ready to beat the chase scene and then I see the cutscene and I get angry and lose my concentration!

STORY: 
Well, I can't really criticise this game story or mark this game based on the story, as it's based on Lost and it combines the story from "Lost" with Elliott's story. The only big plus this game gets from me is the ending. It was one of those "wtf" moments. Seriously, I was expecting a lame ending, like either he lives or he gets killed or something. But no! This game left me staring in my monitor like an idiot with my mouth wide open, shocked. I won't get into detail, because this is the only thing about this game that shouldn't be spoiled. And spoiling the ending will ruin any gameplay experience for anyone.
To sum the story up, the game follows the first and second seasons of Lost. You get to meet both the survivors and the Others and witness the course of events while doing your own work in order to remember who you are and to escape the island.


CHARACTERS:
As you could probably notice from what I said until now, Elliott is not a memorable character. He is just a journalist who lost his memory. Also, in the end, I ended up hating the guy because of a memory you'll see in the final chapter. The other characters are not developed at all. For someone who hasn't seen the show, it will be quite difficult to understand everything. A major complaint I have here is the dialogue. Apart from the cutscenes, where people actually talk, there is actually no dialogue. You choose to talk to the characters. You say a line, they say a line back, and that's all. I guess the voice actors gave them a discount if they didn't have too much to say. Plus, the voice acting sucks. It's like a fucking joke. They try too hard to imitate them and that's why they end up giving laughable performances. 






REPLAY VALUE:

For me, the replay value is zero. Under no circumstances am I going to play this game again. Not since it managed to bore me to death (except for the final two levels - I guess those chase scenes were there to remind you that you're playing a game) and it didn't bring anything new or special.


SOUNDTRACK:
The soundtrack reminds me of the show's soundtrack, which is good. I don't like the fact that they're not using the original song for the beginning of the episodes (God damn it, if you wanted to split the story in episodes, you should have done it properly!). But the song from the main menu is awesome. 

OVERALL:
-Gameplay: 5/10 (the chases and the camera parts save it from a lower score)
-Story: 8/10 (original "Lost" story + Elliott is OK, the ending is fucking A, but not being able to play as one of the characters from the series is a huge minus)
-Characters: 3/10 (not because I don't like the "Lost" characters, but because they're so poorly portrayed here)
-Replay value: 0/10 (nope, won't play again)
-Soundtrack: 8/10 (ok soundtrack, except for the things I mentioned above).

FINAL SCORE: 4.8/10

Random choice

I have an idea for a future playthrough that I intend to do. The only problem is, I don't really know what game should I play.
Therefore, I'll let you, my friends, choose some, and then I'll choose a random game and play it (via random.org). Please leave a comment with your choices.

Big changes

I just took my decision (sleepless night FTW) and there you go! New interface, and soon... sooner than you'd expect it (aka when I finally understand what the fuck is wrong with Cyberlink PowerDirector asking me to register the mpeg feature and stuff), you'll see new stuff here.
Also, some older posts will be removed. The Playthrough page will be cleaned-up (though I will leave a reminder of my work there) and we'll see about other stuff. Right now, I'm thinking of a good logo... anyome? Any help?

Just a promise

Providing that my PC can play that game, I solemnly swear that I'll make a playthrough of "The Testament of Sherlock Holmes" when it comes out. I know I haven't been active (and the former Playthroughs page is still here), but I'll try harder, ok? It's summer, I have some free time, so I'll think about it and do something good for a change.

Shit happened!

A lot of shit happened to me lately. I haven't posted anything this year, literally. But I have my reasons, and I will reveal some of them to you, my still faithful readers. First of all, I lost my former YouTube account after I was stupid enough to upload some videos owned by a local television. They found them immediately and flagged them, so the ass-licking bastards over at YT deleted my account, along with ALL MY VIDEOS! Yup, I basically lost six months' worth of game recordings. I obviously felt like shit afterwards and I completely screwed the site, changing it completely. I will get to work and fix the Playthroughs page, which only confuses people, as none of the videos work anymore. OK, so after losing that YouTube account, I decided to stop posting stuff to The Pirate Reviewer's blog, fearing that I might record things and lose them all over again. In the meantime, I graduated from high school (exams made my postpone my return to this blog) and enrolled into college. I now study Journalism, to be precise. So, I never got to revive this blog. Until now! I logged into Blogger to post something in a Romanian blog that I've got, and somehow I saw something I had been missing for all these months: The Pirate Reviewer's Blog! I already made another YouTube account, named "The Pirate Reviewer", and I also have an account over at hd-share just in case. So, now I'm back! So... what?! Well, I'll start reviewing things again and posting videos again, but first I'm going to make something clear: I'M ONLY POSTING IN MY FREE TIME, SO THE VIDEOS MIGHT NOT BE AS FREQUENT AS YOU WISH THEY'LL BE. Also, I will post my future videos both to YouTube and to HD-Share to make sure they aren't deleted again. Yours faithfully, THE PIRATE REVIEWER! PS: There's a poll below. Please vote what I should do next!

Check this out!

On my wishlist for 2011, along with playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood coming out for PC in February 16th, as some sites say, or 22nd, as other sites say (yeah, I waited THIS long instead of getting an XBOX.. that's how avaricious I am!), I've just added watching "Pirates of the Carribean: On stranger tides!". Of course, that's after I accidentally bumped into the trailer on YouTube (I hadn't searched for it, as I was sure the movie would be stupid and senseless without two main characters). Check it out and regret you haven't earlier! It looks great! At least there's no more Davy Jones in it! Now we have Captain Blackbeard (or Bloodbeard, I couldn't make out exactly what Jack was saying at that part).