Archive for the ‘PC’ Category


Point Review: Unmechanical (PC)

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

Developer: Teotl Studios
Publisher: Talawa Games
Genre: Side-scrolling puzzle adventure
Players: 1
Console: PC (also coming to iOS)
Hours Played: ~3-4
Progress: Completed the game and saw both possible endings.

Teotl Studios, makers of the popular Unreal Tournament III mod The Ball, recently released their latest unique puzzler, Unmechanical.  With the world of indie games ever-expanding, it’s becoming hard to “separate the wheat from the chaff” as it were, and the line between great indie releases and those not worth the bytes they’re made of is growing increasingly thin.  Does Unmechanical reach the pinnacle of indie creativity bringing a fresh perspective that is unlikely to come from larger studios, or does it fall by the wayside with the all too numerous indie releases that never really amount to anything?  Read on to hear what we thought of our time hovering around and bumping into things in Unmechanical.

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Point Review: Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD (360, PS3, PC)

Friday, July 27th, 2012

Developer: Robomodo
Publisher: Activision
Genre: Extreme Sports
Players: 1 (2-4 online)
Console: Xbox 360 (XBLA), PS3 (PSN), PC
ESRB Rating: T (Teen)
Hours Played: ~6
Progress: Unlocked 6/7 levels in Career mode, tried all other modes including a few online matches

The Tony Hawk Pro Skater (THPS) series has a long and sordid history.  Entries in the THPS series have earned everywhere from a 98 to a 44 average score on Metacritic, and it’s no secret to anyone that their scores have been steadily trending downwards over the years.  Taking elements including levels, music, and move-sets from the first two great entries in the THPS series and mixing in modern graphics and music as well, you’d think that an HD “best of” collection would hearken back to the series’ hey-day and remind us all why we fell in love with it in the first place.  Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you?!?!? Read on to see where the downloadable THPS HD belongs in the wide spectrum of Tony Hawk game scores.

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Opinion: Your Game is Boring

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Fable III has been included as a pack-in title with many versions of the Xbox 360 console for a long time, so for a lot of newcomers to this console generation Fable III may have been their first Xbox 360 experience.  For anyone out there curious about this game, be forewarned!  Let me save you the trouble, because this game is about as exciting as doing the laundry.  I’d even go so far as to say that it’s the most boring current generation title that I have ever had the misfortune of playing.

Let me start by offering a brief disclaimer that this article is simply the rant of a single frustrated gamer and this is not the official Game Usagi Fable III review (which happened to be favourable).  A few years ago I had great fun playing through Fable II, which is why I was so eager to dive into the next title in the series ? big mistake.  My busy life (also known as a day job) does not afford me much opportunity to kick back and play video games, so when I do find an hour of free time here and there, the game had better darn well be amazing.  I get supremely insulted when I feel like an awful game is recklessly wasting my precious time, so why does Fable III get my bloomers in a knot?  Read on…

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Planetside 2 Beta Giveaway [UPDATE 2]

Friday, June 15th, 2012

[UPDATE 1: The first 10 first-come-first-served beta keys have been claimed.  We will still be accepting entries into the draw for the last five until midnight (CST) on Monday, June 18th. No late entries will be accepted.]

[UPDATE 2: The contest is now closed, thanks to everyone for participating and we hope that if you started a Game Usagi account for this contest that you enjoy levelling up your account by earning GP.  The five people who won the final draw should receive their beta keys via email shortly.]

Hey, everyone.  There were a lot of codes flying around at E3 for various betas, apps, etc. and with three of us there, we usually obtained more than we could use.  With PlanetSide 2, the promising upcoming free-to-play MMOFPS, we were lucky enough to get our hands on 15 beta invitations that we are going to share with you!  The first 10 will be given away to the first 10 people to complete the giveaway requirements, and the last 5 will be distributed at random between the remaining entrants.  Would you like to be one of the first to try out this exciting new game?  This is what you need to do for your chance to get a beta key:

1. Create (or already have) a Game Usagi account by signing-up using either a social network account or just making a username/password using the links at the top of our sidebar.  We don’t send out newsletters or list/use your email in any way that would ever send you spam, it’s basically only asked for in case you forget your password.

2. Email admin@gameusagi.com with your Game Usagi username in the body and the subject “Planetside 2 Giveaway”.

3. Profit.

If you are one of the ones to “win” a beta key, it will be emailed to you along with instructions on how to redeem it. 

Quantum Conundrum Impressions

Thursday, June 14th, 2012

Before we even arrived at E3, Quantum Conundrum was the game (for systems that are already out) that I wanted to play the most.  When we started our rounds of the Square Enix booth, out first stop was a presentation from the two-person art team of Quantum Conundrum (QC).  The brain-child of Portal lead Kim Swift and the 16-person elite dev team of Airtight Games, QC promises to once again revolutionize the first-person action puzzle genre. 

During my hands-on time with the PC version of what will eventually be the demo for the game, I first noted that the mouse/keyboard controls were a bit different from what I am used to.  Since there is no shooting in the game, the item carrying and interaction button as been delegated to the left mouse button and the two main dimension shifting keys are assigned to “Q” and “E”.  Standard Valve game controls have me used to using “E” to pick-up and drop things, so I had a pretty considerably difficult time wrapping my mind around “shooting” to pick things up/interact with levers and switching dimensions with my usual interaction key.  For games like Half-Life 2 and Portal I have always preferred the keyboard/mouse control combination to using a game controller, but I think that even though I have Quantum Conundrum preordered on Steam, I’m probably going to do most of my dimension-swapping using an Xbox 360 controller instead.  Since there are fewer buttons on the Xbox 360 controller, I’ve played games that have made different uses out of most of the buttons and even though the main dimension swapping buttons were LT and RT, it still felt a lot better than the keyboard controls in their demo configuration.

The E3 demo of Quantum Conundrum is apparently at some point going to be an actual demo available on the various systems that its releasing on, as at a couple points during my playthrough little messages popped up saying that I could have unlocked achievements, etc. had I not been playing the demo.  In the part of the demo that I played I was introduced to the Fluffy and Heavy dimensions through various simple puzzles as seen in most of the game’s trailers like throwing a safe in the fluffy dimension, then shifting to normal to break certain windows and alternating between the Normal and Heavy dimensions as a laser passed over four stacks of crates to make sure only certain ones were destroyed to form a line of ascending height so that they could be climbed.  In spite of my control issues using the PC controls as they were set-up on the showfloor, playing Quantum Conundrum was a blast and I’m very much looking forward to playing it in full when it comes out on June 21st.

The game’s two art directors were also holding presentations every half hour at the Square Enix booth to show off more in-depth features of Quantum Conundrum.  A level about three quarters of the way through the game was shown where all of the dimensions were used in tandem to solve really complex puzzles and it looked superb.  One interesting thing that they pointed out is that there is a method to cross gaps that made its way into the game through “emergent gameplay”, meaning that it hadn’t been part of the game’s original design, but came up incidentally during play tests and was so good that they worked it into the game proper.  This method involves using the fluffy dimention to throw a safe (or other object) in one direction, and then riding it across gaps by making it “porpoise” (moving up and down in a sine-like wave) by switching back and forth between the normal and reverse gravity dimensions.  Seeing all of the wonderful things that will be possible once the basics of the game are covered made me even more excited for the game’s release and I think that this is definitely a title that most gamers should have their eyes on.

PlanetSide 2 Impressions

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

SOE was nice enough to get us into a presentation about PlanetSide 2 as well as give us some quality time with the game running on a nice PC gaming rig.  It’s been nearly a decade since the world’s first MMOFPS PlanetSide was released in 2003 and what its sequel intends to do is update the concept of the three warring factions with modern FPS sensibilities and graphics.

In our admittedly fairly brief hands-on time with PlanetSide 2, I have to say that it played both played and looked better than I was expecting it to.  The game’s graphics have naturally seen a huge boost since 2003 and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all of the other standard FPS games to have come out in the last couple of years.  There were some animation hiccups and foliage pop-in in the alpha footage we were shown before actually playing the game and I’m happy to say that none of the issues I observed in the trailer reel are currently present in the working build of the game.  Each time you respawn you are given the option of playing as one of six different classes of the standard FPS archetypes like snipers, medics, and heavy soldiers.  These classes all feel quite different from one another and seem to be balanced pretty well.  Vehicle operation required more finesse than we were prepared for and our stints in aircraft and tanks were almost always short-lived.  There were people zooming around, though, that seemed to have reasonable control of their vehicles, so I guess we’re just particularly bad drivers.

As a free-to-play MMOFPS, there’s really not a lot bad to say about PlanetSide 2.  It looks and plays as well as any full-priced FPS title on the market as is set to offer CoD Elite-levels of online stat/clan tracking and sharing (including iOS apps and an API for sharing stats in other ways).  SOE is planning to make money from this game through the sales of item “side-grades” and a plethora of visual customization options (including much touted zebra-/leopard-print camos, and tank spoilers).

We received more beta invite cards than we are planning to use from the SOE booth, so we’ll host a give-away contest in the coming week to give you a chance to join us in the beta for this very playable and promising MMOFPS.

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two Impressions

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

We were able to have a decently long playtime with Epic Mickey 2 on the PS3 at E3 yesterday, and what we saw was fairly promising.  Using the Move controller, I ventured to tackle a boss battle in which I had to paint or thinner-ize various parts of a large robotic dragon while trying to avoid its fire-breathing and circular-saw covered tail.  As is to be expected, the jump from Wii controls to Move controls was indeed a smooth one as the game handled in much the same way as its predecessor.  It was certainly not the easiest boss battle I’ve ever tackled and I’ll even admit to having died once or twice.

As with any game running on the PS3, Epic Mickey 2 wasn’t without some aliasing, but I’m sure most people will take “some” aliasing on their HDTV instead of the giant aliased mess that is the Wii on modern TVs any day.  Aliasing aside, Epic Mickey 2 has graphically benefited from the jump to the HD consoles with higher resolution textures, Havok physics, and cleaner character models.  The gameplay, from what I saw, still involves 3D “hub” worlds connected by 2D platforming levels based on animated shorts and the like from Disney’s rich history.  The improved graphics help these platforming sections look even more like the segments on which they are based, but they may not be able to entirely help out the otherwise fairly average puzzle platforming mechanics.  I was not able to experience the co-op play offered in the game, which may be its saving grace, so you might want to hold out on passing judgement on the game completely until some co-op impressions come out too.

While the time that I had with Epic Mickey 2 was indeed fun, I have still yet to see anything that would bump this game up into the upper echelons of the various games coming out this fall.  Epic Mickey 2, unless some interesting aspects of the game are still kept secret, seems right now to be set to repeat the moderate success of its predecessor and become another slightly above average puzzle platformer appealing mostly to tweens and die-hard Disney fans.

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