Thursday, August 18, 2011

Bioshock 2, I know, late to the party again...

So, Bioshock 2 isnt exactly new, but I just finally got around to playing it after a long summer in D.C.

This game brings back all the fun story line you know from the original game, the plasmids, tonics, but this time your armory is expanded with some interesting new weaponry. Since you are a Big Daddy now, you get the fun attachments on your arm, and they are by no means light armament. You start the game with just your Drill, but soon you come into possession of a Rivet gun, and different types of Ammo. A Heavy Rivet to the face is enough to kill most of the more common enemies (known in the game as Splicers), and if they are wearing a mask you get the added effect of seeing the mask fly across the room as their head pops like a balloon.

Along with the fun of the Rivet gun I greatly enjoyed another of the new weapons, the Spear gun. The Spear gun had 2 types of Ammo that I had fun with. First off was the regular Spear ammo. Nailing one of the common Splicers in the head will send them reeling back, and on to the ground, or if they are near a wall, it literally nails them to the wall by the spear straight through their cranium. I had tons of gorey and gruesome fun pegging Splicers to the walls throughout the game. The second ammo type for the Spear gun is the Rocket Spear. This ammo attaches itself into an enemy, and after 3 seconds explodes, the explosion is enough to remove all 4 limbs from a Splicer, and fun to watch.

Another thing that caught my attention was the change to the look of the Little Sisters. In Bioshock 2 they dont look like sad little zombies anymore, they look more childlike with happier eyes. I was glad to see the children look less creepy, but still creepy enough to belong with the atmosphere. Along with this change, there is a fun addition to the game near the end. You actually get to play, and see through the eyes of a Little Sister. It's very interesting to me because I always wondered why the Little Sisters dont see how terrible things look, or how the place is falling apart. What you dont realize, if you dont think too deeply, is that the children have been mentally conditioned in combination with the ADAM, and the whole of Rapture looks like a shiny Ball to them. Not the round bouncy kind, but the kind of Ball where people are dressed in nice tuxedos and elegant evening dresses. And the "Angels" as they call them do actually look like angels to them. It was interesting to see the world of Rapture through the eyes of a Little Sister.



Over all, the game had some fun new features, new weaponry, and stayed true to the story and atmosphere of the first game. I'd have to give this one a 4/5 on the Brawlking scale. Pick it up if you enjoy good old fashioned FPS games with puzzles, yeah, I forgot to mention that there were some fun puzzles in the game too.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Duke Nukem Forever!

Alright, after 12 years this mythical beast of a vaporware game was finally finished, and I loved it! The amount of pop culture references, and even poking fun at himself, and the game's history make this game instant gold to anyone with a sense of humor. It also packs a good action punch, and drops in some old fashioned FPS style puzzles into the game for good measure. While the game doesnt really feature anything ground breakingly new, it does the original Duke Nukem 3D proud, and brings furious, mind numbing action back in crude style to the masses.

After such a long development (12 years), countless engine changes, and going between 4 or 5 different game studios Duke Nukem Forever has come out on top. This game gets a 5/5 on the Brawlking scale. Sheer hilarity, and action give this game all it needs to stand up to the legacy laid before it.






Friday, August 5, 2011

Age of Conan Unleashed and Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising

Tonight I started a couple monstrous downloads. One, Age of Conan Unleashed, it's been a while since I've played this MMO from one of my favorite game companies, Funcom. I want to take a look, see if the F2P version is different from the P2P version, and what the limitations are, etc.

Next, I am downloading a 3 day trial of Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising. I haven't heard much hype about this game, I've been watching its development for a long time, and it had some interesting concepts. Now I'd like to see if they were implemented well, or at all.

Expect a new post soon!

Friday, July 22, 2011

Almost time...

Alright, so I got back home a little earlier than I had intended, and in a different way than I had intended, but I'm about to settle back in for another year of school at home. After some stupid problems with my summer room mates, I return home to find that the sound card on my computer stopped working, completely randomly, it worked before I left for the summer. So one more time I've had to send my MoBo back to Asus, a couple weeks more until I can get back to playing games at an acceptable level of graphical performance. 


I have had some time to watch some movies recently. First, Insidious. A lot of people said the movie was scary, I didn't find it to be. Half way through the movie the plot starts to parallel parts of Poltergeist. I was disappointed after that. The end did set it up for a sequel though, I liked that. Second, Drive Angry. Another Nicholas Cage movie where his character doesn't need to do much acting, but just runs around and blows things up, and doesn't die. Not a deep movie, but a good straight action flick.


Insidious - 3/5 on the Brawlking Scale
Drive Angry - 3.5/5 on the Brawlking Scale

Friday, June 17, 2011

Bridesmaids... Wasn't so bad!

Now before you take the title of this post to mean that the movie was great, well, I wouldn't go that far. But it definitely wasn't bad.


When I saw previews for the movie, and heard the word of mouth, it was made to sound like a female version of The Hangover. It was far from that level of crazyness, but it had it's moments. There was plenty of hilarity in the movie, a lot of dirty girl jokes, and a couple cute girls kissing. Yes, cute girls kissing. One reason I felt like my balls were still attached while watching. Not to say that I felt like I had a vagina at any other point in the movie, but it didnt have the manly antics of The Hangover. Yes, I keep comparing it to The Hangover. The movie I would say is more of a Romantic Comedy, than a true comedy. It has a love story, a main character that learns a life lesson from someone you'd never expect, and plenty of funny plot twists.


Bottom line, guys if you're going to see this, see it with your gf/wife/or a pretty lady, dont see it by yourself. Ladies, this might be a good girls night out movie... I wouldn't know, I dont have the equipment to grant clemency to such claims.


Over all this movie gets a 3.5/5 on the Brawlking scale. Definitely a funny one if you like dirty humor, if not, wait for the DVD.

Monday, June 13, 2011

X-Men: First Class and Super8

So over the last week I saw quite a few movies, the two I am going to talk about, as the title says, are X-Men: First Class and Super8. 


First, X-Men: First Class, I was a fan of all of the previous X-Men movies, but this one pretty much blew them all out of the water. Seeing the X-Men in their younger years, and to see a lot of the back story, and origins of a lot of the characters that we have loved since our younger years. Saturday cartoons have come to life, and this movie gets a 5/5 on the Brawlking scale.


Next up, Super8. This was also a good movie, when I saw the trailers I thought of Cloverfield. To me what I thought of the movie was a version of Cloverfield, with younger people, a much less shakier camera, and lots more lens flares. That said, the movie had some humorous moments, and some great memorable characters. There are a few surprising parts, but nothing exactly scary, and it's rated PG-13, something you could probably even take your children to see. A movie good for the whole family.


Short and sweet, two good movies. One a little more violent than the other, but both good for older and younger people. Go see them if you can!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Been A While... Might Be A Little Longer...

So since my last post a lot of things have happened. I started going back to college in January, shortly after my last post a lot of things were going to get that under way, and I was working quite a bit in November and December. Since then I havent had any time to review any games, or do much of anything else computer related, besides check Facebook and random weekend bouts of World of Warcraft. Last weekend being a long weekend off of work I had some free time, and played a bit of WoW.


There are a few things I'm kind of excited about that are coming down the pike. First, Duke Nukem Forever, one of the longest awaited pieces of vaporware is about to coalesce into an actual playable game. Thats not to say it will be any good, but for the sake of just saying I bought it, and it's real, I'm pre-ordering it this weekend, and I will be doing a review on that. Also coming will be a review on Crysis 2, and Brink, some other new FPS type games that I've been looking forward to giving a shot. At this moment I've only got my old laptop here, I moved down closer to DC for the summer to save myself time commuting to work, and I had to leave my newly built desktop back at home, well, my other home. Its a pretty nice rig, 8GB of some nice RAM, a Quad core Phenom which I cant recall exactly which model, a middle of the road graphics card which will be upgraded later, and 2TB SATA6 drive, to list the major parts. Cant wait to get these games installed and see what they are like. Also, I know it's a little old, but I will be doing Bioshock 2, it's already installed, I just havent had time to play it through.


So, until next time!