That is all.

And that’s the last time I’ll be using the full title.

As much as I’d love to do a full review of the title, I don’t have the time. So I’ll simply talk about it for a bit.

F.E.A.R. 2 is a solid current-gen corridor shooter with a high level of polish, beautiful graphics, and a bit of a convoluted story. That is all.

No, I wouldn’t do that. Let’s start by talking about graphics and aesthetics.

F.E.A.R. was something of an intermediary step in generations. Though it used parallax mapping and real-time effects well, we look on it today as having fairly low-resolution textures, along with aliasing problems and shadows too hard for their own good.

F.E.A.R. 2 is different. It’s a wholly current-gen game. The lighting model is well done, antialiasing works evenly, it runs well on computers of all specs, and the textures are basically all high-res. I do miss the flying concrete dust, and, as many have complained, the bullet holes seem significantly downgraded (in FEAR, they appeared almost 3D–here they fall quite literally flat); but these problems are insignificant to the whole picture of a beautiful game.

That’s the graphics for you. Now, let’s talk about gameplay.

FEAR2 is strictly a corridor shooter. There’s almost no puzzle solving, and a minimal amount of exploration. That being said, it’s a damn fun corridor shooter. I never finished the first FEAR. It never sucked me in. This one has, and I actually finished it. It’s pretty rare that I finish a game.

The guns feel like guns, here, whereas in the original I found them a bit flimsy. There’s also a few key incredible setpieces–like one sequence where you battle Replica forces on tram cars speeding through a miles-long cargo tunnel. If you like the introductory train sequence of games like Half-Life and the second, imagine battling another train car as you ride into Black Mesa. Only the train cars can pivot. It’s been done before, definitely, but here’s it’s done quite well.

The scares here, unfortunately, don’t return. Much like Condemned 2, much of the scare factor from the original game has been removed. Alma no longer scares me. There are a few jumps, but nothing compared to Condemned 1 or a few moments in FEAR (like the Alma-at-the-top-of-your-ladder bit). They try very hard to get a rise out of you, but mostly fall flat.

In brief, Project Origin is damn solid. It’s fun, if a bit heavy-handed, but with incredibly solid gunplay and a spit-shine level of professional polish. It took me about 10.6 hours to complete, from pressing play to the ending credits. I’d recommend it.

Also: about that ending. WT-royal-F. If anyone knows what the hell went on, email me.

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We had our first ever Tri-Annual ShowCast™ yesterday. Had a lot of fun, aside from lag and people acting stupid in the chat. Hopefully we’ll make a regular event of it.

Approximately two hours ago I took the trip to my local EB Games to pick up the hotly anticipated (by me and my Civ-playing friends, at least) Civilization: Revolution on the 360.

Holy crap. That was the worst decision of my Civ career.

I decided a long time ago that I was going to give Revolution (hereby known as CivRev) a chance. Workers are gone? Alright, that’s acceptable, maybe it’ll streamline gameplay. The game I’ve played for years with a keyboard and mouse has been squeezed onto a controller? Okay, fine sir, I’m sure the fine people at Firaxis can make it work.

I decided about thirty minutes ago that giving it a chance was a waste of $60.

First, I tried the multiplayer. I’ve invested many a night in Civ multiplayer with my friends, and I was trying, really trying, to give CivRev a chance. So I figured multiplayer would be the best way to start it off. I invited my friend in, set a few (probably useless) options, put us on a team against (supposedly) two AIs, and started away.

At first, it all went well. Things were going good. Until I discovered Gandhi. Now, you see, Gandhi was a peace loving man. Why, then, did the only option available to me, dialogue-wise, take me to war with him?! A bug, I say! Oh. What’s this? Montezuma has found me (even though neither my ally or I have seen him)? Oh? He’s declared war on me? A bug, I say!

Oh, hello Napoleon. No–wait. There’s only–what the hell?! There was supposed to only be four Civilizations in this game! Yes, it’s true. In my very first multiplayer game I had encountered what I’ll now call a “ghost.” A non-existant leader whom every message he sends gets sent to all players. Yes, Napoleon. I know you’re talking to Montezuma. Why, then, must I read your message, you damn specter?!

Ugh. Okay. After about 45 minutes, my friend and I decide that the multiplayer is a buggy mess. Maybe single-player will be better, we hope, but at this point I’ve already suggested going back to a good ol’ Civ IV: BTS game. He convinces me to give single-player a chance.

Alright, I’ll play this game how it looks like it was intended to be played. I quit out to the main menu and press “Play Now.” I choose ol’ Honest Abe, my personal favorite leader, and jump in. Since I’m trying to give this game a fresh chance, I turn on tutorials. Maybe I’ll get their perspective. I also turn off the god-foresaken “Advisor Simlish” that has for some reason infiltrated this game (it’s not even a damn EA game!).

Everything goes (relatively) well for a while, until rival civilizations start demanding things from me. This is a RARE occurence in the other Civ games, and it happens about every six turns in the early stages of this game. It’s stupid and only serves to fan the flames of war. I like war, but only in the later stages, when I’ve built up my army and researched so many technologies that I can take down anyone. In the beginning, I like a lot of diplomacy, and that just isn’t an option in this game. Maybe that’s more realistic? I don’t know, but it ain’t Civ.

I’m incredibly dissapointed with this bastardization of Civilization that Firaxis has provided us with. It’s mostly a buggy mess, and when it isn’t, it’s just not Civ. However, this is only one editor’s opinion. Look for a full review, by fellow longtime Civver Tyler Hoffman, in the coming days. Personally? I’m taking mine back and buying the Titan Quest expansion at a nice budget price.

(Update: Tyler’s review went up, and I have to say that I agree with it entirely–if you’re a Civver, stay away from this pile.)

I feel that, since I now have a gaming website, I’m obliged to share my opinion of the TOP TEN GAMES of all time. In the future I’m sure I’ll write more top ten lists, specific to various genres, but the following games are my top ten favorite in general. I will include what system I played the game on.

10: Fallout 2 (PC)

Fallout 2 was a dark and creepy imagining of a post-apocalyptic future in which the protagonist finds himself in a race against time to find the mysterious “GECK” (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) and save his village from certain peril! On the way he gains several allies, makes several enemies, and causes some delicious destruction and mayhem. This Western RPG experience is definitely a gem worth keeping polished.

9: The Dig (PC)

The Dig is a lesser-known title from Lucas Arts, directed by none other than Stephen Spielberg. You see, there was a time when Lucas Arts was devoted to creating Adventure games that didn’t completely revolve around Star Wars… but sadly this era has passed. This game comes from that era, and was one of the best in its class. It’s a point and click adventure title that’s full of mysterious plots, twists, and secret alien cults. If you can find this, and enjoy adventure style games, then it’s a must-buy.

8: Earthbound (SNES)

Earthbound (a.k.a., Mother 2) is a quirky, colorful, and playful RPG that features a cool cast of crazy characters. The protagonist, Ness, meets several allies on his journey who he teams up with to help save the world from a nasty alien named Giygas. This odd and interesting game is really fun to play through, due to the charismatic cast and overall trippy nature of the game-world.

7: Myst III: Exile (PC)

Myst 3 was, of course, the third installment in the Myst series, and one of the best in my opinion. This point and click adventure game featured clever and fun puzzles, and awe-inspiring graphics. The story seemed less “Mystish” in this game, and more like a weird Sci-Fi drama, but nonetheless the game was great. It seemed like the easiest Myst game to me, next to the original Myst.

6: Riven (PC)

Riven, the sequel to Myst, was easily the best Myst game in the series. The puzzles in this game were difficult and intriguing, and certainly gave your brain a workout. The mystery and foreboding surrounding the plot augmented the power of the story in this game. The villain, Ghen, was chilling and sinister, and the heroes, Atrus and Catherine, were lovable and realistic… especially if you played the first Myst.

5: Half-Life 2 (Xbox 360)

One of many things that distinguishes Half-Life 2 from other first-person-shooters is that it has character. You care about the people in this game, and you care about what happens to them. You’re willing to do anything you can in your power to protect them. Luckily for you, you have a LOT of power. With one of the best arsenals in any shooter, Half-Life 2 provides you with a lot of creative guns to help you “blow away” the competition. It introduces the Gravity Gun… a device which allows you to manipulate anything not bolted down and use it as a weapon… including, but not limited to, saw-wheels. The gravity gun is probably the second best video game gun ever.

4: Portal (Xbox 360)

Portal is a puzzle game that takes place in the Half-Life universe. It allows you to harness the power of the Portal gun… a device that is capable of shooting two “portals” that will instantly teleport you to your intended destination. The puzzles are clever, and the characters are lovable. The script is hilarious, and the lines are delivered perfectly from the various characters you meet during the game. Portal is a very short game, ranging from 2-4 hours, but it includes a great deal of replayability, and is enjoyable from start to finish.

3: Morrowind (Xbox)

Morrowind is the third game in the Elder Scrolls series, and it is definitely one of the best. It’s a western RPG that features hundreds of hours of content… even more if you play on the PC and can download the user-made mods. This game is fun because it allows you to custom-tailor your character to be exactly what you want it to be, and it lets you do just about whatever you want to do. The downside to this game is that it’s bogged down by framerate issues and insanely long load times, which really hamper the immersion. Other than that, it’s an excellent title.

2: Rock Band (Xbox 360)

Rock Band is a rhythm game that offers you the choice of playing four virtual instruments: Guitar, Bass, Vocals, and Drums. The game is great because it allows you to play all of these instruments in all of the songs, and so just about everyone can enjoy it. The list of songs in the game is not extreme in number, but the amount of downloadable songs is incredible. There’s well over a hundred songs available for download, and so there should be something for everyone.

1: Oblivion (Xbox 360)

Oblivion is the sequel to Morrowind, and it offers just as much content, if not more than Morrowind. With the Downloadable Content available on Xbox Live, this game should last you easily 200 hours or more just to get through everything. The graphics are incredible, and I believe that they are some of the best this generation. Not much could make this game better and, for now, it will remain in my number 1 spot on my top ten games of all time.

I’ve been playing through Final Fantasy XI for the last couple of weeks because I found out that my friends were starting new characters.

For those of you who don’t know, Final Fantasy XI is a MMORPG… otherwise known as a massive, living, breathing world… in which players fight alongside each other to complete quests, kill Notorious Monsters, and to gain precious Experience Points, among other things. I play on the Cerberus server, in case anyone reading plays this game.

This is my character Ninevan on the Airship to Kazham, admiring the beautiful landscape in front of me. This picture should sate your graphical appetite.

About the same time I got my Kazham Keys, I got a Chocobo License, and I immediately proceeded to run about the countryside in glee with my feathered friend. I came across all kinds of weird and interesting creatures, such as this living tree:

After my excitement with the Chocobo ceased, I went about levelling with some friends for a while in hopes that I would reach level 30 and be able to finally access advanced jobs, such as the Dragoon.

After I finally hit 30, I realized that I had to go on a freaking quest to actually become a Dragoon, which kinda pissed me off, but made it more rewarding. The quest is suuuuuuper loooooong, but luckily I had some mates from my LinkShell (a.k.a., Guild) help me out, and so I was able to finish the quest in only one or two hours.

And so my Dragon was born, and I became a happy man. (Special thanks to Thantatos and Pasoheso for help with the quest!)

Welcome to Vidya Now.

What exactly is Vidya Now, you ask?

Well, Vidya Now is the latest gaming blog project from two industry vets—myself, Zac North, and my good friend Josiah Nethery.

Here, we want to offer our opinions on the industry—in the form of reviews, news, and editorial pieces.

Now, let me define what Vidya Now is NOT.

Vidya Now is not the next big gaming blog or gaming news source. We’re just having fun here, getting experience—we’re not competing with the big guys. Although we may, at some point, implement forums or grow more, we are still going to be the little guys for quite a while. That means a small staff, and possibly infrequent updates at times. We won’t be able to deliver news as fast as other sources. But if we see something cool—well—we’ll post about it.

Now, let me quickly run down our allegiances.

I am a diehard PC gamer, but these are trying times for one such as myself. For this reason, I currently own all three consoles and a gaming-capable PC. My allegiances basically lie with the 360 and the PC, but I give all games a chance. Cross-platform ports are almost always bought on the 360 (hey, I want my achievements!).

Josiah owns a 360 and a Mac and, like myself, is basically a 360 fanboy. Not much else to say about him here, except that he is slowly turning into a weeaboo, and he plays FFXI nigh-religiously.

So, there you have it. I believe Josiah has written an excellent piece on the System Wars of 2006, currently available for your perusal. 

Add us with your favorite RSS client if you want our awesomeness conveniently delivered to you.

Section 1: Introduction

Long since before the days of yore… many epics were created and passed down from generation to generation. These epics revolved around the lives of Gods, both good and evil, waging war against each other for dominion over the land. Many millennia have passed since the era of epics, and yet day after day “Gods” of all kinds continue to wage war against each other. Megadeth vs. Metallica… Republicans vs. Democrats… iPods vs. Every other Mp3 player… and, of course, Sony vs. Microsoft. In this article, Sony and Microsoft are going to be boiled down to PlayStation and Xbox, respectively.
As anyone of this generation of gamers should know, the two main “giants” of the day (when it comes to games) are the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Fanboys of all shapes, sizes, and sexual preference engage in intense, visceral and verbal scuffles daily to try and decide which console is the “best” console.

Typical Discussion:

i_luv_snake13: “o hai, I just wanted to say that i playedthat halo game and it sucks and it’s not as good as the Ps3 cuz the graphics are better like mgs4.”
GearsGod007: “if you don’t like halo ur obviously a fag lol and the graphics aren’t better, that game sux, lol!”
gamer_z75: ^^lololol qft!
i_luv_snake13: shut up u guys u just wish that ur stupid grill culd run mgs4! lol! it’d prolly brake! plus it would need like 80 disk lmao. o wait, it’s probably already broken from the rrod! god luk wuth that lol.
GearsGod007: No ur dumb!

Ehem… obviously the public is really conducting some scintillating and productive debate over the matter, but, to me and many others, this simply isn’t enough. I need cold, hard, facts and an unbiased comparison of the consoles to sate my desire to know which console is truly the “best” this generation.

Section 2: Hardware

The three main aspects of a console these days are CPU, GPU, and Memory.

The CPU, or Central Processing Unit, basically controls the processing power of the console. With the introduction of the PS3’s “cell” processor, many Sony Fanboys rejoiced, and many Microsoft Fanboys were scared and intimidated by the alleged might of the device. The cell processor is divided into 7 equal parts, each capable of processing something separately from the other cores. For example, one core could handle particles, on could handle sound, and one could handle animations. And that’s just three of the seven cores! While this is an incredible feat, and seems like it would revolutionize gaming, the fact remains that the “cell” processor lacks something, and the Xbox 360 has what it lacks. The Xbox 360 has three general purpose cores, while the PS3 has one cell processor. This means that, even though the PS3 has one incredibly powerful performance core, it is still worse than the combined might of the Xbox 360’s three. If the Xbox 360 only had one core, then the PS3 would be able to process much more than it, but this is clearly not the case.

Moving on to the GPU, the Graphics Processing Unit, we can see that the Xbox 360 also has an advantage in this area, however slight. The 360 is able to render a bit faster than the PS3, and so the Xbox 360 has the edge when it comes to graphics. This, in conjunction with the fact that the Xbox 360’s memory system bandwidth far outweighs that of the PS3, means that if a game is made for Xbox 360 and PS3, the game will almost certainly look better on the Xbox 360.

Although I already mentioned Memory in the section above… I will use a couple of sentences to clarify why Memory is important. Most importantly, it allows the Xbox 360 to have a greater range of higher-resolution textures. The PS3 has generally lower resolution backgrounds due to the fact that it’s memory is smaller than the Xbox 360’s, and so PS3 games all seem to look a little muddier than Xbox 360 games.

Section 3: Pros and Cons of the Consoles themselves

Some of you reading this likely glazed over the technical mumbo jumbo in the previous section, and I don’t blame you. This next section deals with things that actually matter to most people, and so it could be considering more helpful than the last section. Without further ado, I present the list of the Pros and Cons of the consoles themselves.

System:
The General user interface (GUI) for both systems is fairly intuitive, and easy enough to figure out after a bit of use. The Xbox 360’s GUI is slightly bulkier than the PS3’s, but it isn’t terrible. It just seems that navigating through the items on the PS3 “desktop” is more organized than navigation of the Xbox 360 interface. Once you “figure out” the 360’s system interface, however, it really shines due to the convenience of most of the features. Devices are easily recognized, organized, and titled, and the contents are easy to view/listen to. In my experience with the PS3, when I connected my iPod to the console the contents were titled with random numbers and letters… making it impossible for me to discern one from the other, and making it a pain to shuffle through my music looking for the right song. Maybe I was the only one to have trouble with this. If not, then that certainly is a major flaw.

In-Game Features:
The PS3 cannot hold a candle to the in-game features of the Xbox 360. The 360 can (these are just a few features) play custom music while playing games, start voice/video chats with friends hassle-free at any time, and award achievements for accomplishments in-game. The PS3 cannot do any of this (Although the PS3 may begin to steal/implement an achievement system soon).

Online:
The PS3 offers free online to anyone with a connection, and also allows it’s users to surf the internet through a custom browser. The Xbox 360 offers two kinds of online services: Silver and Gold. Silver accounts are free, and Silver Members can do everything that Gold members can besides access multiplayer. For $0.13 a day, Xbox 360 users can access a Gold account, which allows them to experience Xbox Live in its entirety. Xbox Live is a service, which is why it costs money. It is a system that really makes the online experience on an Xbox 360 convenient, streamlined, and enjoyable. If Sony paid for dedicated servers like Microsoft did, then PS3’s online would cost money too.

Games:
Both consoles supply a large library of good games to be played, and so neither console really has a large advantage over the other in this regard.

Space:
Space is really where the PS3 shines… both in Hard Disk space and in the space available on a Blu-ray Disc. Blu-ray has 50 Gigabytes worth of space, versus the normal 14 Gigabytes worth of space. A game that would take four discs to play on an Xbox 360 would only need one on the PS3. Of course, due to Blu-ray’s sluggard read speed, mandatory installs are required for every PS3 game (which can take from 10-20 minutes). Sometimes multiple installs are required, which really begs the question of whether or not Blu-ray really has an advantage over 20 second disk changes every few hours.

Section 4: Graphics

The pictures provided should give examples of just what to expect from each console, in terms of graphics.

Both scenes are rendered in HD and upscaled (Xbox 360 to 1080p and PS3 to 720p), so they both look fairly nice at first glance. If one studies the pictures, though, they may notice subtle differences between the screens, which may not make one version “better” than the other, but certainly makes them look slightly different.
Both monkeys look pretty good, there’s no doubt about it, but the PS3 monkey’s model is much smoother and more detailed than the Xbox 360 monkey. Typically the PS3 is able to handle character models slightly better than the Xbox 360 can, and so the PS3 monkey reflects this fact. The Xbox 360 monkey has a higher resolution texture, though, and the normal mapping has more depth. Overall, the Xbox 360’s textures are a little higher res than than the PS3’s, which is most noticeable in the banner hanging from the rope.
One last thing you may notice is that the PS3 screenshot is a lot more jaggedy than the Xbox 360 screenshot, and this is because the PS3 usually has a harder time handling Anti-Aliasing than the Xbox 360. While this is not as noticeable in the character model, which you generally focus on the most in a game, it is very prevalent in the backgrounds, which may prove to be distracting at times.

Section 5: Conclusion

Hopefully this evaluation was able to guide you in your decision on which of this generation’s consoles is the “best”. You may come to the conclusion that both consoles are equally valuable, and that one is not better than the other. This is a valid conclusion because we are all, of course, entitled to our own opinion.