Gothic 3 - Fast pace action...one click at a time

Hey guys,

It's a beautiful monday morning here in corporate slave land and I would love to share with you my first impressions of a game I was playing a little of this weekend....... Gothic 3.

The game itself is very well made. It takes a while to get used to the combat but once you get the hang of it your swashbuckling like a mad man. The game starts out with you and your band arriving on the shores of a fantasy-esq land. You seem to walk in on a band of orcs ransacking a town. The boss orc (the albino one) takes one look at you and then BOOM your in combat with people sword fight all around you. It was a good idea to throw you right into the action. After you defeat all the orcs you then begin to literally finish what the orcs had started by pillaging the town yourself. At this point though the town elder doesn't seem to care. So after your done taking grabbing everything that isn't nailed down you follow one of you chums to the rebel camp. The story then goes into this pseudo-Star Wars-ish storyline with rebels, an evil necromancer Xardas (sith lord), Evil orcs (stormtroopers), mercenaries (Bounty Hunters), and bandits. Right now I'm helping the rebels but I noticed that you can gain reputation with numerous factions so the game isn't linear. Yes, your first quest is going to "see the rebel base" but after that is finished you can be friends with whoever you please.

The Good - The game is beautiful - graphics and detail are superb, the music is epic, the character modification (equipment / skill) is easy to learn, and the quests just keep on coming. There is TONS to do in this game.

The Bad - With the exception of using bows and arrows and magic the combat system is very primitive. You can either click rapidly to do fast attacks or you can hold down one of the mouse buttons and release for a more powerful attack. The right mouse button is the parry / quick attack while the left mouse button provides a heavier attack. Also you can hold down the left mouse button to do a devastating blow or hold the right mouse button and the left button to do a thrusting attack which stuns the enemy for a second or two. The biggest problem that I have with it is that some AI are so dumb that you can just do quick attacks on them until they die. That doesn't mean combat is easy. Sometimes they will gang up on you and knock your ass down so fast it will surprise you. It works but its a very odd system.

Edit:

With the newest patch you can change the difficulty level and have alternate AI which makes the game substantially harder.

The Ugly - You NEED a high end machine to play this game. Yes, the game came out in 2006 but that doesn't mean your PC system is going to run it like nothing. Your going to need a good video card to play this. Even with my system as it is plus Gamebooster the game still hiccups a bit. At certain loading areas the game will freeze for a few seconds leaving you crossing your fingers hoping the dam thing didn't crash. Speaking of crashing the game is technically sound. It only crashed once on me and I have no idea what happened.

If you have a good PC and love RPG games.....I would definitely suggest you playing it. You can find the 3-Pack RPG bundle for around $20 dollars. Just this game and Loki alone are worth that much but you get Dungeon lords with the deal as well so it's an incredible buy.

Comments? Questions?

Obama Broken Promises....wake up to WallStreet Puppets....

Hello, I am TheCoolinator.....I'm a registered Democrat and a life long enemy of the Republican party. Please do not accuse me of being a right winger. To me, Reality is more important than any political party. Shake off your LEFT vs RIGHT bias and see that both sides are controlled by Wall Street Corporate elites.

Obama racks up list of broken promises

1. 'Sunlight Before Signing'

"When there is a bill that ends up on my desk as the president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what's in it before I sign it,"

2. Capital gains tax elimination

3. New American jobs tax credit

4. Hiatus on 401(k) penalties

5. 'No jobs for lobbyists'

6. Earmark reform

7. Bring troops home in 16 months

8. Sign 'Freedom of Choice Act'

9. $4,000 college credit

10. Transparency

WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

Obamacrimes.com - Attorney Philip Berg

11. Executive signing statements

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=91286#

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/promise-broken/

LOKI - The forgotten Diablo Clone!

Hey! Hey!

So starts a new week of corporate slavery and one of my most favorite things to do on Monday mornings is give you all a detailed summary of what PC games I bought this weekend.

Before I begin however, let me give you a little back story. A few weekends ago my friend and I visited our local Best Buy to see if there were any new movies or games we could pick up. As I was perusing through the PC game aisle I saw a 3-Pack RPG set which contained Dungeon Lord, Gothic 3, and LOKI. Now I must admit that I'm a big Dreamcatcher fan. They are a wonderful developer of action and adventure titles. I did quite a bit of research on these games in the past and I finally had the chance to pick all of them up at one time. I do think the price was a little high for them however. $20 dollars. I would have been sold at $14.99 but whatever.

When I got home I installed them all but Gothic 3 and Dungeon Lord seem to be very in depth games so I focused my attention solely on LOKI. Now for all you Diablo fans LOKI is literally a Diablo clone. If Blizzard Entertainment would have came out with Diablo 3 a few years back it would have looked exactly like LOKI. That doesn't mean it’s bad, it's actually very well made, the graphics, animation, sound, and voice acting are superb. The game itself (LOKI) like Diablo is pretty straight forward. Pick a hero, move around, talk to quest givers, and bash heads.

The only real problem I have with the game as of yet is the choice of heroes. You get 4 choices, 2 Women and 2 Men and I have to be honest here I really don't care for any of them except the Norse Warrior. The Amazon Shaman girl shows some promise but they just all fall under the "Blah" category in terms of interest. I understand why they did this to make it balanced but they needed to include at least one more Male character just to give it an extra little boost. They seem to be equipped with a multiplayer option but I haven't had the chance to play online with any of them yet. If I could get into the groove of LOKI this could be the Diablo-ish game to get me all warmed up for the soon to be released Diablo 3 game.

Have you guys ever heard of LOKI or the other games? And if so what do you think?

The RetroGen!!!!

Retrogen Review:

Hi guys,

My RETROGEN arrived in the mail yesterday and the minute I put my hands on it I started plugging in cartridges to give it a test drive. All of them seem to work fine EXCEPT Castlevania: Bloodlines. Which makes me very sad . The device itself is incredibly light and well made. The screen is a good size, it's not as big as it appears on the box or in pictures, but its a solid 2.8". The buttons are nice. It takes a little while to get used to them because they are set at an angle but they get the job done. I haven't tried TV out yet but I'm sure it works well. The music that comes out of it is slightly off. It's not a big deal really, I actually find it kind of funny.

The only thing that isn't too good about it is the D-Pad which surprised the hell out of me because the D-Pad on the Retrogen "looked" a whole lot better then the GenMobiles one. The D-pad is a big solid silver disc on the left hand side. It works well with platformers and shooter games but is almost impossible to use during a fighting game like Street Fighter II or Samurai showdown. There is also a bit of slowdown that effects certain games. An example of this would be that I get a little slow down in Contra Hardcorps and quite a bit of slowdown in Earthworm Jim. You can barely notice it though so it won't hurt your experience.

Final Words:

The Achilles heel of this portable is the D-pad. Everything else is done very well. The screen is a perfect size and the graphics are clear, the buttons are responsive and spring-y, and the music is OK. If you could overlook the crappy D-pad then I would say pick it up. If not just wait for the GenMobile.

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To Purchcase:

http://www.gsubooks.com/

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For further information about the new retro Sega systems and hand helds please click on the link below.

http://the-coolinator-lounge.blogspot.com/2009/08/whats-deal-with-retro-gaming-part-2.html

Thanks for reading and comments are always appreciated!

Wikipedia Shills for Water Fluoridation

Today Wikipedia's Featured Article shills for water Fluoridation.

CAUTION LIES AHEAD!

“Water fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay. Fluoridated water has fluoride at a level that is effective for preventing cavities; this can occur naturally or by adding fluoride. Fluoridated water operates on tooth surfaces: in the mouth it creates low levels of fluoride in saliva, which reduces the rate at which tooth enamel demineralizes and increases the rate at which it remineralizes in the early stages of cavities. Typically a fluoridated compound is added to drinking water, a process that in the U.S. costs an average of about $0.92 per person-year. Defluoridation is needed when the naturally occurring fluoride level exceeds recommended limits. A 1994 World Health Organization expert committee suggested a level of fluoride from 0.5 to 1.0 mg/L (milligrams per liter), depending on climate. Dental cavities remain a major public health concern in most industrialized countries, affecting 60–90% of schoolchildren and the vast majority of adults, and costing society more to treat than any other disease. Water fluoridation prevents cavities in both children and adults, with studies estimating an 18–40% reduction in cavities when water fluoridation is used by children who already have access to toothpaste and other sources of fluoride. There is no clear evidence of other adverse effects. It is controversial, and opposition to it has been based on ethical, legal, safety, and efficacy grounds."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation

REALITY OF THE SITUATION

Sodium Fluoride is considered under the Department of Transportation to be a 6.1 Poison. Like Mercury it causes Neurological harm, nervous system disruption, and organ failure. One of Sodium Fluorides signature traits is causing bone cancer. The effects of Sodium Fluoride on the mind have shown to make animals less active. Lab Rats fed Sodium fluoride did not protect their territory and were less aggressive.

Sodium Fluoride was first used in Soviet Prisoner camps as well as Nazi Germany concentration camps to create a docile atmosphere among the inmates.

I have switched to a Non-Sodium Fluoride brand and I suggest you all do too. Some non-fluoride brands can be found at Mothernature.com by using their search engine.

Non-Fluoride Brands

Tom's of Main

Desert essence

Painkiller and the NEW Painkiller Resurrection

In my opinion Painkiller was the closest thing we gamers got to an old school shooter in the last decade. If IDSoftware remade Doom correctly then it would have turned out similar to Painkiller.

Painkiller was an FPS that didn't need a storyline. It had the balls, it had the action, it had the atmosphere. The story was just extra. What was really important was to see how many monsters you could cut to pieces with the whirling blade thing or how many bad guys you could stick to the wall with your steak gun.

The boss battles were perfect. Giant monsters that took up the whole screen in a large arena...Perfect. The challenges were not annoying to complete at all, and the upgrades were awesome....Slowing down time and rapid fire were my favorite.

What don't present day game developers get about making a good FPS game? They need to re-play DOOM, Hexen, or DukeNukem3D as soon as possible and realize what they are missing.

Now, I'm not just making this blog to praise Painkiller. We should all do that in private. I'm creating this blog to show people that a NEW Painkiller game is coming out soon.

http://www.dreamcatchergames.com/dci/painkiller_ressurrection

http://pc.ign.com/articles/971/971617p1.html#

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painkiller:_Resurrection


Click the links and Discuss!

Bioshock review! With Spoilers!

Bioshock is probably the most well thought out First Person Shooter I have ever come in contact with. The storyline is epic and the ideology of Ryan (the creator of Rapture) is a very nice portrait of how elites think and how their ideas drip down to the lower masses and infect them as well. You hear Ryan speaking of "Parasites" AKA poor and then when you fight the citizens of Rapture they have fallen victim to his crass elitism. The game mechanics are truly remarkable and filled with an almost endless amount of variety

. Weapons can be upgraded, Plasmids (Super Powers) can be upgraded, ammo can be invented, things can be hacked, and so on and so forth.

Flashbacks are common and it gives the player an uneasy feeling that they aren't being told something. There are hints within the NPC dialogues that something isn't what it seems and as the story unfolds twists and turns arise that can only be found in some kind of 1940's radio broadcast.

Now the graphics are wonderful. Problem is that because my game has no CD/DVD to read off of there is a lot of frame rate loss in the loading areas. Most of which are at doors when the frame rate drops significantly. The atmosphere of the game is remarkable and you really need a super charged computer to work this game properly. So if you have a PS3 or XBOX360 I would advise you to buy the console version because it doesn't run too well on PC.

The game has this early 1900 feel to it. Neon lights, retro futuristic architecture, even peoples accents come from the early 1900's. Except instead of playing a noir detective in New York your playing a stranger in an underwater city filled with insane people.

Disclaimer!! Spoilers!!!

So I have to admit that after Andrew Ryan died the games story took a nose dive. I don't know what it was really; maybe the voice actor of Andrew Ryan was so good that the other guy "Atlas" Frank Fontaine couldn't really match his performance. All in all, I have to hand it to them, it was a good twist in the storyline though but it just lost a lot of momentum. Andrew Ryan's elitist voice going on and on about parasites and the tyrannical hand of government really filled the game with his insane ideology and I like how all the people of Rapture were conditioned over the time they spent there to think just like him. I think towards the end of the game Frank Fontaine said it the best. "Everyone who came to Rapture thought they were going to be captains of industry but they forgot that there is always someone who has to scrub the toilets" Andrew Ryan catered to the elitist class and Fontaine catered to the poorer classes. They both used their social class to fight one another and in doing so, destroyed each other, the city, and were all driven mad while doing so..