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