The Game Of The Decade Is Here!

The original Witcher was a great game, whereas the sequel was even better, bigger and more beautiful in every aspect. Following on this trend of building upon and improving their achievements, CD PROJEKT RED, the small Polish developer that has humbled gaming behemoths for years, released their best game yet. And what a game THE WITCHER III: WILD HUNT is!

THE BEST VIRTUAL WORLD I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED

Yes, the world of The Witcher III is huge, far larger than Skyrim. Far more importantly though, it feels more real and it is full of life.

The game throws you in a world of unparalleled beauty with details that keep unfolding the closer you observe it. Every spade of grass and every pebble looks real and obeys the laws of physics as set by the new REDengine. From the night and day and weather cycles to gear that gets damaged and needs to be repaired by blacksmiths and from growing facial hair to NPCs with real lives, the world of The Witcher absorbs you in and never, ever lets you go. The flames of Igni feel absolutely real as do bodies of water. Beasts and humans will do the unexpected whereas the skies sheltering your travels are absolutely mesmerizing. One can easily spend hours in the game simply observing the gorgeous world around him.

There are some concessions to absolute realism one can take advantage off (quick traveling and in-battle repairs for example); however, purists can ignore them and sink in the extra hours to go old school. 

Now, all these come at a price. A couple of weeks ago, I made sure to upgrade to a nVidia 960 (pouring with a brand new 352.86 driver) and 12GB of RAM just for this game (at some point, CD PROJEKT has to ask ASUS for dividends!) and the game runs smoothly at Ultra. 

(Also, no save-files crashes this time around. So far).

AN EPIC SCORE FOR AN EPIC STORY
Once more, the music is an essential part of both the atmosphere and the gaming experience. The composers are different than those of the previous games and this translates into a novel approach to the world of Geralt of Rivia. You will recognize a number of variations on themes from the previous games and it feels like meeting old friends, matured yet still dear to you; however, I found the music more subtle and effective and not less powerful.

CHOOSE YOUR WEAPONS OF DESTRUCTION WISELY
Remember the days form the very first Witcher when you basically finished the game with the same sword and kept saving every last oren to buy the 5,000O leather jacket? Well, Geralt not only yields an extra crossbow but he also enjoys an ever growing choice of armor and weapons. Combine this with a huge library of books and an endless supply of potion and bombs ingredients and you will soon find your hero to be overburdened. And then you realize that there is no storage chest! Not to worry, the game now employes Roach's saddlebag (buy it as soon as possible and enlarged it). This way your storage is always close by. And, take my advice, do not sell anything! From ingredients to older swords, you will need them for crafting. And even find loot is abundant, it always feel great to gather all the ingredients to finally forge a sword or a piece of armor whose schematics you had been carrying for some time.

IT'S ALL ABOUT CONTROLLING THE WORLD AROUND YOU
Some people have been complaining about the PC controls and, up to a point, I can understand why. As with all games, I remap almost everything so that I am able to use only the right end of the keyboard (arrows for movement are default here but I use the Num-keys 1-5 to select my Sign, Num-0 to use it, / for the steel sword, * for the silver one, and so on). The game is enjoyable when set at the highest difficulty one can survive at so having quickly accessible controls are essential. That is why I hope to see a key-rebinding option Menu soon and not have to dive in the input.settings file.


The Expansion Pass will cover the Expansion (as per CD PROJEKT RED's practices, all DLCs are to be free). And if they are known for anything is offering a more than fair value for the released products.

WITH MY HIGHEST RECOMMENDATIONS!

How Many Pockets Can A Dinosaur Possibly Have?

This is what you get when you allow greed to run unchecked. And 2K GAMES is an insistent and repeat offender of such abhorable tactics.

Evolve is not a game. It is DLC-pushing scheme that will not end before the complete game (which one should expect be getting after sliding over $60!) ends up costing between $350-400. And that too much for any game - let alone a game that brings no innovation in either gameplay or visuals and gets old too soon. Just head over at Metacritic and see for yourself.

Day-one DLCs? Check. (TWELVE of them - totaling $80-extra!)

Endless microtransactions? Check.

Severely limited content? Check.

Single-Player slapped on as an afterthought? Check.

Console-limited graphics? Check.

The ...success of Brink revisited? You bet!

When someone made the mistake of paying $60 for a shell of a game, been asked to pay $15 for each extra monster and $10 for each extra character is not greed: it is information highway robbery!

A product to ignore. Even when the entire bundle will be available on STEAM Sale for less than $10, it will still be an overpriced boring game.

Bound for Extinction.

Gaming As An ArtForm. And This Is A Masterpiece!

If there ever was any doubt that gaming is an art-form, the Shaddow Warrior shreds it to pieces.

The game offers traditional Japanese settings (from the temples and the castles to the mythology and the paintings), rich late 80's environments (from shipyards and inner courtyards to caves and snowy mountains) and a great collection of interesting guns. It may be only 9 in total yet I got more excited when I got the shotgun or the rocket launcher than I ever was finding any one of the bazzilion guns in Borderlands 2.

Each type of enemy has different strengths and different weaknesses so you will have to try to figure out the best and quickest way to put them down. Each gun comes with three purchasable upgrades and augmentations. No sniper rifle because this game wants you to be up close and personal.

The music is sublime, the dialog witty, the atmosphere mesmerizing, the hidden secrets will keep you exploring every nook and cranny (and try again and again to find your way to that impossible to reach bonus statue) and the story unfolds in twists and turns and double-crosses. And the ending will make you misty.

I know it is not fair to this epic game but it does bring to mind the game Daikatana should had been. See, Mr Romero, if you fail to get it right, someone else eventually will. Now, I usually refuse full marks to games that come with an obligatory online digital distribution platform such as STEAM (required here); however, this game is so good I decided to make a rare exception.

Highly Recommended!

It's A Brand New PostApocalyptic Dawn

I am old enough to have played the original game when it first came out in 1997. I was a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: Fallout 3  is a dream come true.

It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with Oblivion. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove - whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.

The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife-2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, Fallout 3  does not require an...übercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.

Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.

The main storyline is there to be followed but Fallout 3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal - but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in Fallout 3  I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.

Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals - and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Levelling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Since levelling

up is capped at Level-20, the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. On the other hand, it also means that your character will never realize its full potential (in case you are wondering why I withheld a star from fun, that's the second half of it).

The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language - but it is tradeoff with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.

What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember the movie Swordfish?).

After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the LimitedInstallation-defective EA releases), this seems like a postapocalyptic dawn indeed! Bethesda decided to listen to the gaming community and did not cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.

The publishers of Fallout 3  understand that there is a fine balance between "protecting the product" and..."insulting your own customers". And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is - and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.

Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.

In The Valley Of Colours And Kings

After Zuma's success, a number of clones appeared - but the Luxor series is the one that actually improved on some aspects of the concept. As the series progressed, Luxor games became more and more self-reliant. With Luxor 4: Quest for the Afterlife the franchise flexes its own muscles.

A series of coloured balls (with the number of different colours increasing every few levels) gets pushed and you have to match them in sets of three or more in order to remove them - and prevent them from reaching the end zone. Instead of having the "shooter" in the centre, it is located at the bottom and it slides left and right. This makes for some quite difficult shots (especially when obstructed by the advancing row of balls) and raises the difficulty of the game.

On the other hand, the power-ups are more powerful, at the end of every round a number of coins and gems drop and "catching" them add lives to your paddle. It seems pretty straight-forward yet it can become highly...addictive!

Compared to the previous instalment of the series, Luxor 4 is graphically even more impressive, enriched as to the dropping bonuses (and...penalties) - yet it will seem somewhat easier to seasoned players of the series; nevertheless, it will fulfill the fans craving for more pharaohnic fun!

This is an example of what has come to be known as Casual Gaming: small, resource-light games that are fun for the whole family.

It would be a good idea to download the 60-min trial version from a casual games site, such as Reflexive and decide for yourself whether this is indeed your cup of tea. It wouldn't hurt to wait for the price to drop either: most casual games sell for no more than $10.

Of All The Lairs In The World...

Evil Genius is a game that stays for you for a very long time - and is bound to find its way to your hard drive every time there is a new Bond film hype. After the deluge of the latest DRM-ruined games, I went looking through my gaming library for older gems to play. This is definitely one of them!

In a classic Ian Flemming's setting, you start in a desert tropical island where you are to design and build your secret lair. In a Sims tradition you do not control your minions directly, instead you control the Evil Mastermind behind everything that is brilliantly nefarious: a stocky Bloomfield-lookalike in a gray Mao/Nehru jacket and an insatiable mood to take over the world (the other choices are the heavy-accented seductress Alexis and efficient Shen Yu - but we all know how chauvinistic the world of self-indulgent espionage can be).

Besides the Evil Genius, you can (partially) control a couple of major Evil Henchmen/women. I said partially because once given an order they will take their sweet time to execute it - if ever. No wonder Bond always won in the end: the Evil nemesis had to do everything himself!

Including making ends meet. Yes, even the most evil of geniuses apparently cannot print money. Hence, the need to built hotel and vacation resorts - not only to hide but also to finance the plans to take over the world. From hotelier to World Dictator - everyone not born with a silver spoon in his mouth has to pay his dues I guess...

Nevertheless, the real fun of the game is designing your lair and setting up the traps! Since there seems to be an endless number of possible combinations this alone multiples the replayability of the game.

Plan carefully ahead and watch the invading Secret Agents be thrown helplessly from one trap directly to the next - and finally out of your lair (or into a body-freezer room). Until the Super Agents that is.

The Super Agents make the game almost impossible to win. Again, in a true Ian Flemming fashion, good should prevail - and should do so easily (funny that concept never seemed to caught on in real life...). Nevertheless, the game is not unbeatable - it just needs a lot of practice. (I needed more than half a dozen tries - and they were all fun!)

In these Middle-Age days of PC gaming, when the industry decided to go to the dark side, it is a good idea to unwind with a brilliant classic.

Because What Everyone Really Wants To Do Is Direct

During the months of boycotting most new PC games releases (for harbouring vicious DRM schemes and Limited installations), I found the time to replay a number of older games that truly are much better in many ways. Most importantly, innovation.

The Movies is a cross-genre hybrid, beautifully combining a Sims game with a business-RTS one and a highly creative movie suit. Not only do you get to step into the shoes of a Hollywood mogul, but you get a shot in "realizing" that film you always had in you.

The game starts with the design and building of your Studio (using up the allocated funds), complete with Script stables, Sound stages, Production offices and, well, casting-couches? (not so surprisingly that part of Hollywood was not included). Casting is pretty straight forward, plucking some lucky characters from the waiting line and turning them into stars. Or script writers. Or directors. Or janitors. Yes, life is a bitch.

What I liked about this game was its historic accuracy, simplified efficiency and clear-cut design. Not only are most stages in making a movie readily available and the means to achieve this evolve as time progresses, but everything has a familiar feel and self-evident practicality as well.

Stars throwing tantrums and directors relaxing too much with the sauce; ageing stars in need for nip/tacks - and always keeping an eye out for whoever has the bigger trailer!

What I loved about this game was the opportunity to plan out the script in a detailed story-board and then shoot my own movies. The bad news is that if your visions are long and complicated your studio will be... bankrupt in no time, as it will release fewer and more expensive movies. But that is besides the point, is it not? What is a bankrupt studio in the wake of a iconoclastic new director towards his vision?

In the end, although very entertaining in many ways, the strong suit of this game is not its Movie-Business Management Simulation but rather its Movie Creating editor. Simply, there is no other game like it.

Westwood Went Out With A Bang!

The Spice Must Flow! I loved the original story (even though not the endless franchised series been constantly ghost-written as you are reading this). However, one needs not be a Dune fan to enjoy this wonderful game!

In Emperor: Battle for Dune the graphics may be quite dated today, almost at par with C&C:Generals. On the bright side, they will truly shine even on currently low-end machines or tablets. The units are well designed and clearly visible in any zoom-level - something surprisingly rare even in new games (such as Supreme Commander) in which one can either zoom-in or play. Plus, the battlefield view is rotatable, another feature I miss in many new RTS games. I especially enjoy the way the buildings come up and the targeting-lasers of the snipers as they move around.

If this is not the the best strategy game, it is definitely well within the Top-5 all-time RTS! Well balanced gameplay (if you liked C&C: Tiberium Wars, you will love Emperor: Battle for Dune). A Solid story-line, interesting videos and random environmental events (sand-storms, worm-attacks) to keep the field level in the name of Shai-Hulud.

Sad but true, greedy lawyers and bean-counters have taken over the gaming business. True game-designers, the likes of Westwood Studios, are pushed around - if not entirely out of the picture.

I bought the game some years back but still take it out once in a while. They just don't make them like this anymore...

Get it for the nostalgia. Experience it for its polished gameplay

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Sure, Rimms, Flash & Bling-Bling. But What Is Really At Work Under The Hood?

Need for Speed: Undercover is yet another EA release which, gameplay and graphics problems aside, suffers from the bundled DRM scheme: SecuROM with Limited Installations.

This is a well known scheme based on a custom-made augmented version of SecuROM 7+, used for over a year now (from BioShock to Mass Effect, Dead Space and Red Alert 3) and it has been proven to offer overall...zero protection from piracy. But, of course, fighting piracy was never amongst its aims.

SecuROM is not a Digital Rights Management system but rather a spyware subroutine that unavoidably comes bundled with most major game releases. It borrows into the Root of our systems, masking itself from the System Manager and refuses to be removed - even after one completely uninstalls the game it came with. SecuROM is indeed used as a cloaked dataminer, gathering information on the system and its user's activities and sending them to its mothership. It is the metho

d the industry's behemoths chose to pave the way for their coveted Pay-per-Play future.

Turning our own PCs into their...insatiable coiners is what the gaming executives are having wet dreams about. Games that we will have to keep paying for again and again.

And that is where the idea of Limited Activations comes ins: not only it nullifies the value of a game once bought, killing the second-hand market overnight, but it also familiarizes gamers to the idea of having to buy the same game over and over in order to keep playing it.

Need for Speed was a series I loved in the past and would love to keep playing in the future once the DRM idiocies get resolved. But not at this price.

Some people are indifferent to these issues - and I respect that. In a free market voting with one's wallet is the most effective expression of opinion - and everyone is free to cast his vote in whichever direction he seems fit. My experience though taught me that most gamers would like, at least, to make well informed decisions.

And who would not want its customers well informed?

Keeps Gooing & Gooing

This is a small game only in cost: it has offered me endless hours of fun!
If I were to describe this game as simply "building bridges made out of, well, elastic goo", I would do it no justice. I could never imagine how entertaining balancing goo-tension and gravity could be!

The graphics are clear and do not have high hardware requirements. The music is well chosen and appropriate. And the gameplay you will find yourself longing for after some hours away from the game.

World of Goo is a game that can be enjoyed by the whole family - and it comes free from any draconian DRM schemes.

Nothing Is Sacred Anymore...

The original Sacred was a great game that, although not exactly groundbreaking, it offered many hours of action-cRPG fun. What is more, its publisher had the good sense to price it reasonably from the start and thus fight piracy in the most effective way.

Sacred II, although enjoys more demanding environmental graphics and spell effects, is just another victim of clueless gaming industry executives. Instead of learning from the history of their own game, they'd rather idiotically jump on the "SecuROM/Limited Activations" bandwagon. After all, if they can hide behind the "everyone is doing it" excuse, who can blame them when the game does poorly?

They are obviously under the illusion that selling at full price a game that is actually rented will fail to be...noticed! Respect is a two way street - and underestimating gamers' intelligence is not a good start.

It is a shame that Sacred II got shot in the foot by its own publisher. Now, instead of being another success, it will simply be another game sacrificed on the alter of corporate Greed and marketing incompetency.

Avoid.

Deus Manifestare

During this ongoing Dark Age for PC gaming, when corporate Greed has coupled with pseudo-DRM schemes to stifle any original idea or creative process, I found myself, again and again, reaching for the classics. And Deus Ex is definitely a classic masterpiece.

Set in the near future, infused with equal doses of cyberpunk mentality and noir atmosphere, playing like an FPS with strong RPG elements (inventory, character development, modifiable equipment, secondary quests) - and yet one is better off avoiding shooting more often than not!. Whoever played Deus Ex can attest that this game will stay with you. Forever. And rightly so.

This is a game infused with life. The characters act natural. The script is brilliantly paranoid. And the whole setting will immerse you into this twisted world of technological possibilities and power.

In a perfect world, David Lynch would have realized William Gibson's Neuromancer. Short of that, we have been offered Deus Ex.

Sure the graphics may look dated. But I promise you that you will find no lip-synced modern game more appealing than Deus Ex  Even 5+ years old PCs will be able to render its full potential (although the game's strengths are hardly limited to its appearance) - and it is DRM-free.

A True Prince Amongst Thieves

There was an extra reason for gamers to rejoice Holiday season of 2008: draconian DRM schemes appeared to be on their way out. First Bethesda striped SecuROM to the bare minimum for FALLOUT 3; then DRM-free World of Goo (an indie game!) outperforms Spore - a 45-million flop; and, finally, UbiSoft decides to walk the narrow yet honest path towards customer loyalty, by releasing a DRM-free game. Yes, Prince of Persia is DRM-Free!

This was either a very decent and brave decision (after all, only a month ago, Far Cry 2 came with a fully activated SecuROM 7.xx and Limited Installations) or it was an experiment: the executives wanted to see whether games do indeed sell good either with or without intrusive DRM.

Either way, UbiSoft deserved to be congratulated.

I was one of the first to chastise their decisions to ruin good games with heavy-handed DRM schemes. It is only fair to be one of the first to congratulate them on a customer-first decision. And because talk is cheap, I bought my copy the moment it was released. I would advise anyone who would care to listen to vote with his or her wallet and support such a gutsy decision. Because it sure takes guts to go against the current and brake ranks with the other greedy game publishers. And, this time, the Canadians at UbiSoft (Montreal) proved they have brass ones.

The game itself is simplified fun. The graphics are clear and fresh in a comic-book/retro way (known as cel-shaded) and the gameplay enjoys (or suffers, depending on your point of view) a number of assists that make it easier and flowing. Probably, too easy. You will not get the frustrations of repeated deaths but neither the satisfaction of finally making it through a hard boss.

The game does give off a platform feeling (combos on a PC game always give me an awkward feeling as they are much easier with a gamepad - but that again, this is an action game, it is to be expected). 

All in all, a good game that still deserves our support.

Gaming Is Still Crossing The Dark Mines of Moira

"One ring to rule them all, 

one ring to find them, 

one ring to bring them all 

and in the darkness bind them."

Well, it sure is more honest than the vapid..."Challenge Everything!"

Darkness still spreads on the land of gaming. The number of games that get ruined by the bundled DRM schemes keeps growing. Lord of the Rings:Conquest is just another edition. Burdened with SecuROM 7++, OnLine Activation requirement and Limited Installations it is bound to follow in the steps of Red Alert 3 and Spore: yet another expensive EA flop.

In the spirit of the Tolkien epic, EA is the Dark Lord Sauron that tries to watch everything from its tower of power. Greed in the heart, contempt in the nostrils, arrogance in the eye. Unfortunately for such entities (and contrary to board-meeting projections) not every gamer is either an Orc or a Troll. Some of us decided to take a stand. And fight back. And our numbers are growing.

No matter how many Nazguls EA releases this time around, in the end, the Ring of DRM rule will be cast in the burning heart of Mount Doom.

And the land of Gaming shall be free to dream again.

A Turn-Based Strategist's Heaven!

The Galactic Civilizations Series in effect has kept the classic Turn-based Strategy genre alive. When the Civilization Series was going to the dogs (released in an endless stream of DLCs, all flashy animations and dummied-down options instead of evolving) and the Master of Orion Series was committing seppuku (unable to live with the shame of its Master of Orion III), GC reminded us how much fun space colonization can be!

Galactic Civilizations II (Ultimate edition) is the one to have. Starting off with a planet in a customizable Universe (size, resource abundance, scarcity of habitable planets etc), one begins his journey of exploration, colonization and conquest. With the exception of roving pirates who can be destructive if encountered early on (but whose annoyance can be deselected), the factions are well balanced and interesting.

The graphics are clear (with full zoom capability), whereas the interface is easy to master and friendly to use.

However, what makes GC so much more fun than any other space colonization game is its ship design options. From freighters and colonist-ships to planet defenders and frigates, there are no limits in what one can build in your dockyard. Want something that looks like Star Trek's Enterprise, Star Wars' Millennium Falcon or Battlestar Galactica's Colonial Vipers? Easily done - the sky is the limit.

Research will not only keep you solvent and your people happy but it will also make it possible to better equip your ships. Stronger engines, more effective armor, more destructive weapons.

And, on top of all that, this being a Stardock release, it comes free of any intrusive DRM scheme. These days, that alone deserves gamers' support. How much more so that Galactic Civilizations II is a great game. Its new patching method is neither convenient nor reliable and I hope the Stardock people will see to that promptly. Besides this shortcoming, highly recommended.

When We Were Afterburning Towards A DRM-Free Future

After Prince of Persia and EndWar, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. was the third major UbiSoft retail release to come out protected not by any intrusive yet ineffective DRM scheme but simply by gamers' honor. And, on top of that, it was a very good game.

There had not been a similar game released for some time: simplified arcade-like action with easy controls, breath-taking cinematics and impressive graphics - that will run in full even in low-to-mid-range PC systems. My advice: as with any flight combat game, using a joystick will make things so much more enjoyable and intuitive.

If you are more of an authenticity buff (and still have tons of free time to spare) I would advise going with a combat AddOn for Flight Simulator or a good old Jane's title. You will find no realistic cockpit and detailed controls in H.A.W.X. So, is this flight combat game dummied down? Well, yes. But I promise you: you will have fun like never before!

Hammerheading over cityscapes and coming in from the Sun over the desert has never been more easy to master. The electronic aids and bare-minimum controls will let you enjoy the fights and start mastering them early on.

This is a 4star game but I decided to give it full marks just because the Canadians at UbiSoft kept walking the narrow path towards a DRM-free future. It cannot had been easy to take such bold decisions during a bear economy. They deserved our support. Too bad they did not appreciate it

A Gutsy Move

If truth be told, WWII had been done to death. Ever since the original Castle Wolfenstein: 3D, every war theater, every offensive, every front, every defense line, every battle has been redone again and again. True, some more than others and, yes, a number of great games was produced. Yet, some game developers seem unable to stop whipping a very tired horse..

ActiVision proved it had the guts to break with the mold it had made its Call of Duty franchise a huge success. Call of Duty IV: Modern Warfare is set in a (fictional) present in which American and British agents are called upon to stop a Russian plutocrat with Soviet-nostalgia and terrorist aspirations.

The weapons are new, the gameplay is inventive, the graphics are realistic, the settings are beautiful - a great game all together! And the GOTY edition comes prepatched, loaded with numerous new maps and runs like a dream even on mid-range PCs.

The Darker, The Better

Dark Sector is a beautifully made and well thought out game that should not go by unnoticed. It is what you get if you cross Resident Evil with Max Payne (minus the bullet time): a fast Third-Person Shooter with an immersive story, imaginative weapons and cool moves. Finishing off zombies has never been more fun!

The graphics are detailed yet monochromatically biased: greys, blue and yellow sectors alternate. At first I found this unrealistic (which it is) but it sure fights the well known F/TPS repetitiveness feeling of running in the same corridors for ever.

Since the game enjoys (or suffers) a quick recovery cycle, you are almost never in danger of immediate death - but this hardly impends the flow of epinephrine through your body. Moreover, once our hero (Hayden) gets infected and acquires the glaive, a whole new ball-game opens up: although of limited effectiveness as a melee weapon, this cycle-edged discus will deal devastating arcs of gore and destruction to his enemies!

Oh yes, this is quite a gory game, mind you (I think it was banned in Australia for that). So, unless intended for young children, recommended.

The Day Gaming Cried

Some time ago UbisSoft had to settle a huge class-action suit brought against the company for bundling (the notoriously harmful) StarFORCE DRM with its released games. So what the geniuses at the helm do next? They decide to make the same mistake yet again - by choosing the same DRM scheme that made BioShock, Mass Effect and Spore infamous: SecuROM 7.xx with Limited Activations!

Mass Effect (a great game in all other aspects) can be fouSpore not only undersold miserably but also made history as the boiling point of gamers lashing back, fed up with idiotic DRM schemes. And the clueless MBAs that run an art-form as any other commodity business decided that, "hey, why not jump into that mud-pond ourselves?"

nd in clearance bins only months after its release;

The original Far Cry was such a monumental game that any sequel of it would have to fight an uphill battle to surpass it (especially without its original developing team). Now imagine shooting this sequel on the foot with a well known, much hated and totally useless DRM scheme that turns it into another Rent-A-Game no one wants. Were I a UbiSoft stock-holder I would be ordering my broker to "Sell-Sell!-SELL!!" instead of posting this...

Ever since its 7.xx version, SecuROM has nothing to do with..."fighting piracy". All it does in this direction (blocking certain optical and virtual drives) is a very old, lame and already bypassed attempt that serves as a thin smoke-screen. SecuROM is, in fact, an intruding and silent Data-Miner and Root-Hijacker that is delivered by means of popular games.

That is why even the STEAM versions as well as the (free) Demos of such games are infected with it. SecuROM will borrow deep into our PC systems and will refuse to be removed completely even after uninstalling the game it came with. It will retain backdoor access and will keep reporting to its mothership.

Lately, these security concerns have been accentuated as known Trojans seem to be exploiting SecuROM's backdoor access for their own purposes. In effect, installing a SecuROM-infected game in our computer will be placing your hardware and data at risk long after having uninstalled the game.

And the latest vehicle to deliver this hazardous snoopware is Far Cry 2 - a game crippled by Limited Installations! No, thanks. I think I 'll pass this one too.

The only people who do not care about SecuROM are, in fact,...pirates! Because cracking games "protected" by this contraption apparently is very easy. Every single game that was supposedly "protected" by SecuROM was cracked hours withing its release!

To everyone else though, SecuROM (or StarFORCE or any other hazardous DRM scheme) is a core issue that needs to be resolved before PC gaming can evolve any further. And the best way to resolve such issues is market correction.

That is why it is important for gamers to keep voting with their wallets. And as with any vote, well informed decisions are paramount in making the right choice. 

Wanted? Honestly?

In one of the most memorable scenes of the movie, the hero (Gibson) smacks his double crossing "best friend" with a standard keyboard: certain keys come loose spelling, well "F.U.C.K.Y.O.U." in the air. In the opening sequence of the game they spell instead..."U.N.I.V.E.R.S.A.L". Freudian tangents aside, the game goes downhill from there.

The graphics of Wanted: Weapons of Fate are up to date, with realistic shadows and shiny surfaces. Moreover, I liked to be able, once more, to use bullet-time (of Max Payne fame). It is called "assassin time" here, but who are we kidding, right? Paired with a more or less working and visually impressive "curving the bullet", these are the highlights of the game.

Besides being short, Wanted suffers from both awkward and counter-intuitive controls and fickle commands. Crouching and moving from one cover the next gets old fast - especially since it is not always easy to go where you intend in one step. If I were to guess, I would bet on the PC version being a hasty port. I suspect that it would be more enjoyable with a gamepad but I refuse to use a gamepad for a PC game.

Overall, this is a game that will appeal mostly to fans of the movie. I myself bought it to experience ...curving the bullet first hand. That it delivered. But hardly anything more.

To be fair, when was the last time a based-on-a-movie game was above par?