Rainbow Six Review

So I became so immersed in ZPC that I was checking my living room for enemies the other night, so I figured I should take a break from it and play another game. Since I was almost done with it I decided to play Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. This game is definitely a classic and has an intense story that is so possible it's almost frightening. The story is that an environmental-terrorist group is planning to unleash a deadly virus (I won't tell you which one because it'll spoil everything) upon the world and it's up to you to stop them. There are many plot twists to keep you going and the ending is not necessarily a reward. The ending isn't bad, it's good, but what the villain says in the end makes me very uneasy. Anyways, the gameplay.... you go through every aspect of preparing for a mission: yoou select your team, select their gear, put them in teams, devise a plan, and then select which team you want to play as. You aren't left to just this team though, you can switch between teams constantly throughout the mission and if your team dies you are sent into another team. Every mission begins with a dossier read to you by your leader John Clarke who judging by the voice acting belongs there. The action is quick and intense. Every gun battle lasts about a second or two depending on whether one has cover or not. AI is also very sharp in this game. My allies tend to react quicker to an enemy walking through a door than I did, wow. The missions aren't all run and gun either. Some missions are stealth, which forbid you from killing anyone or being spotted, if you do it's game over. The soundtrack also sets a creepy pants wetting tone and whenever I got shot with this music going on in the background I jumped. There is multiplayer support, though at this day in age I'd be surprised if anyone was playing this online right now. Overall, I HIGHLY recommend this game to ANYONE unless you want to be all run and gun and regenerating health.

I give Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six a 10 out of 10!

The Swining/Red, Raw, & Sore Review

Since Iron Storm was a "first impression" I figure I should repay you with a FULL review.
So in my big order I had to get some music because being a musician I have to have my boat load of music to keep me company. So I had to order The Swining/Red Raw & Sore because it's classic PIG music and I love PIG. If you are unfamiliar with PIG I don't know what I could suggest you to listen to to help you get some ground on what to expect in this CD. I guess I should tell you that PIG's music tends to be on the disturbing side of things. Anyways the CD is a compilation of the albums The Swining and Red Raw & Sore. This compilation is phenominal! Every track is different. Some of it is metal, some is jazz, some is salsa (yes you heard me right, salsa), one track is spoken word. The best track on the album is Seven Veils. It opens with this very suttle symphonic fluttery thing and then kicks into kind of suspense music followed by rock. I can't really describe it, it's pretty awesome. Another track entitled Ojo por Ojo (Eye for Eye) is an incredibly creepy spoken word track. This song seems like something you'd hear deep within the bowels of hell. If there's one thing I don't like on the CD it's the song Rope. Every version contains this girl panting and moaning and I hate when that is in music, it bugs me. Aside from Rope I love this CD to death! I highly recommend it to anyone in the industrial or rock scene.
I give The Swining/Red Raw & Sore by PIG a 9 out of 10.

Iron Storm First Impressions

So in addition to ZPC I got Iron Storm so I could have some more games to play. Iron Storm takes place in an alternate universe of the 60s where World War I never ended. The story was the selling point for me and seeing screenshots of running around in trenches seemed pretty cool to me because I've always looked for a World War I game to play. I also felt that I'd enjoy this because IGN gave it an 8 out of 10. Now when I got the game it came with a bunch of advertisements (of for Painkiller which I found really odd) and a fake newspaper from the era of the game, which is pretty cool. It seems almost like this newspaper could exist, it gives sports news of the era and all that stuff. So I eagerly installed the game and forced myself away from ZPC to play it. The opening cinematic has bad voice acting. I heard it and thought someone was playing line through Microsoft Sam, I let it fly though. So it has bad voice acting, I thought, I can manage! The menu sound FX are so annoying and repetitive. The programmers apparently get a stiffy to the sound of a silenced pistol shooting. Every time you move your cursor over a button you get a silenced pistol sound effect. Every time you click on a button you get an explosion. The first level you have to take out enemy snipers and then infiltrate enemy lines by getting into a church, it's very confusing. It seems like it's attempting to be Medal of Honor or something. The enemies' guns have magic power that does more damage to you than your guns do to them. While staying on the topic of enemies and guns, whenever you are shot you move back. So when two enemy soldiers are unloading on you you are being forced back six feet every two seconds, it's so annoying. Anyways, the reason I call this a "First Impression" is because I couldn't finish the first level to save my life, this game sucks something feirce. I wish I had bought Deus Ex or something I know I would've liked. What are the positives of this game? Well... it's a game... you can play it.

Score: sucks something fierce out of 10.

"Take out those snipers with your rifle!"
(REALLY!?!?!? WITH MY RIFLE!?!?!?!? I was gonna use a rock, but that works!)

Update

Okay, so things have been kind of hectic lately. I just released my single, which is cool. I just got the game ZPC so I'll review that for you guys on Thursday or Friday (when I have a day off). I also got "The Swining/Red, Raw, & Sore" by PIG and "Catalogue 1987-1995" by BUCK-TICK so I'll review both of those for you guys over the weekend as well.

Military Games

So I think I've finally decided on a good military game series to go with. There's a problem though. I got two series to choose from. I've played one game in both series, one is more in-depth than the other with vehicles and taking command of your squad, while the other has AI that almost does the work for you. So the two games are Delta Force 10th Anniversary Collection and Operation Flashpoint (with Resistance). I've been very happy with both games and so is IGN, so... I'm split here... which way should I go?

P.S. More posts on the way and maybe one relaying info from the Auto Show here in Chicago.

Arturia Analog Factory Review

So I recently decided to install Arturia Analog Factory (it came with my synthesizer). Simply put it's a software that combines old school Moog voices as well as some others. You can change the pitch and modulation and mess with the voices all you want. It is amazing. It comes with some awesome sequences and EFX that get me all giddy and want to record whatever comes to mind, but that's the thing. You CAN'T record off this software. It makes no sense to me. It is a computer based synthesizer shouldn't you be able to record off it? I thought a way to solve the problem would be to open Audacity (my usual recording program) and see if I can fix that. Nope. That didn't help no matter how I messed with the recording preferences. Another flaw that seemed to just start happening today is that Analog Factory seems to freeze every minute or two. Last night it was working just fine and today... during the day... it's freezing and dying. The software must be a vampire because I am getting a lot of sun in my room. Overall Analog Factory is... good. It has some amazing voices and my synthesizer (when hooked up to the PC via USB) can control the voices as well, which is obvious, but cool. What brings the software down a lot is that I can't record and it's vampyric so I have to run it at night so that it doesn't die.

I give Arturia Analog Factory a 4 out of 10.

Duke Nukem Never

So I just realized not only did I need to put up a new post, but that 3d Realms has still not released Duke Nukem Forever, or as I like to call it Duke Nukem Never. The trailer was released in December of 2007. Normally when a video game trailer is released that means the game isn't to far off from release. Well here we are in the year 2009 and still no sign of pre-orders. If the game is taking this long to make, this had better be the best game I have ever played in my life! Though to their credit late last year they started to post new screenshots and wallpapers, which mean we might get something soon. But 3d Realms said:

The release date of this game is "When it's done". Anything else, and we
mean anything else is someone's speculation. There is no date. We
don't know any date. If you have a friend who claims they have "inside
info", or there's some game news site, or some computer store at the mall who
claims they know - they do not. They are making it up. There is no
date. Period.
And yes, we know the game has taken a long time.
There's no possible joke you could make about the game's development time that
we haven't already heard. :)