speed + rain = crash

I had a car accident yesterday. Fuck... There I was, peacefully stopping for a red light, when this mothafucker ran into my car, pushing me against the car in front of me, so my ride got fucked at both ends. Fuck! I love my car so much, I'm always careful with it, didn't even had a fucking scratch on it, and this fucking piece of shit does this to me! Fuck dammit! At least I'm alright. Well, sort of, my neck is killing me... I hope it's nothing, it's probably just sored because of the impact... Well, anyway, that's it, nothing else to talk about now. Gonna have a Portuguese exam tomorrow, whish me luck (I suck at grammar)

Gears of WOW!

So, I decided to delete the previous post because this game is just too awesome and I think it deservers better. When it comes out in little more than a week expect a full-fledged review worthy of this game. Till then ;)

There's only one way out of hell...

...and that's throught it! Or so they said in some Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway trailers. Now, I'm a huge BiA fan, because not only the franchise brought something new to the done to death WWII shooter genre, it was also one of the most realistic shooters I've ever seen, probably only surpassed by the so-real-it-hurts Operation Flashpoint (epic game!).


It also had quite a great story to it, specially the second game, so I couldn't wait to lay my hands on the next-gen sequel. Also, the first trailers were nothing short of awesome, which contributed a lot to make my enthusiasm grow even higher. So, now that I've finished it, was it that awesome? Hmm...it was a great game, no doubt about that, but I'm afraid to say they didn't exactly deliver everything they promised.

About the changes, there are a couple of new things in this game. The story, for example, is much more present than in the previous games. This game has so many cut-scenes that sometimes it seems like a MGS game or something, but they're pretty well done, so no complaints there. Also, our character suffered a pretty interesting change, from the tough, always right and secure of himself, tough guy from the first game to a pretty damaged soldier. Legget's death, in particularly, affected him way more than we thought in the previous games, and it goes to the point of him allucinating and speaking to Legget's "ghost". Interesting stuff, no doubt about that.


Gameplaywise, now we have an additional team, besides our assault and "covering fire" teams. It's the bazooka guys, and they rock! Those guys can kill an entire platoon of german soldiers with just one well placed shot, not to mention that they can blow up solid cover like sandbags (don't expect them to blow up buildings, tough). They're an invaluable asset, too bad they sometimes get too confused to navigate the map properly and end up killed...

About the cover, now more fragile things like wooden fences, barrels, etc can be destroyed by your shoots, which is always nice, but unfortunately the same amount of interaction didn't go to all the other things that should react to bullets, like the objects inside the houses for example. The last big change to the gameplay is the cover system. Now you can hide behind cover Gears of War style, and the camera changes to the third person, switching your iron sights to a pretty damn accurate white cross. Now, it's not like I'm complaining or something, but this makes the game almost too easy, and makes veteran players feel cheated since we had to endure the whole previous games with just the fucking iron sights, with which you would empty a whole fucking magazine just to kill a guy. And that was in case you got lucky...


Anyway, the tanks are back, but instead of giving it orders, now you directly control it, Call of Duty-style. Too bad the controls suck and these stages feel somewhat unfinished, but they're a pretty cool addition nonetheless and provide for a nice change of pace.

I know I've been mainly saying good things about the game, and indeed it is a good game, but the early trailers showed more. For example, in a trailer you would see a dutch citizen warning you through a window to the nazi guy hidden behing some drying blankets, after which your character shoots the guy and he falls over. That looked AWESOME! In the final game there's nothing like it. Another example, in another trailer you could explore your base, watching your soldiers relax and doing something to pass the time. According to the producers this would allow you to interact with them and feel more connected to them by seeing their "human" side, when not killing germans. In the final game there's only gameplay, action levels and cut-scenes, and nothing like that. Fuck, I kind of feel ripped off...



Still, I would recommend this game for anyone not yet bored with WWII shooters who's looking for a different take on the genre. It gets the NebachadnezzaR's seal of approval. Now, Gearbox, do better next time, will ya? (I got a feeling from the final cut-scene that there's going to be another sequel somewhere in the snow, my guess is that it will be about the battle of the bulge)

epic sounds

Sorry for the lack of updates. Yeah, I know I said this a lot in the past already, but lately I've been really busy with college and it's tough to keep this place updated, although I love my blog more than ever now that I passed the first year mark. Thank you guys for all the kind words in the previous post, I love you all :)

Now, I thought of getting back into action with something a little different. Yes, it's another music post, but this time it's not exactly my usual stuff. Lately, as a sort of source of inspiration for my book (380 pages already, btw), I've been delving in the realms of Power Metal. I was already a fan of the genre, with Blind Guardian, Sonata Arctica and a couple of other bands as my top references, but I decided to explore more of this type of music and lately I've been completely addicted to two bands in particular, Rhapsody and Stratovarius.



Starting with Rhapsody, they're actually now called Rhapsody of Fire because some legal bullshit with their last name, but for me they're just Rhapsody and that's it. This is truly epic stuff that would fit right in with a LotR movie for example. Full of classical instruments, powerful vocals with epic choirs, and lyrics full of awesome stories, it's really something like I've never seen before. Speaking of the lyrics, they're not just isolated stories. They actually tell epic stories worthy of a novel throughout their various albums, which is nothing short of amazing. Here's another example:



Now, Stratovarius, they're pretty different. Although in the same genre, their lirical themes have nothing to do with the usual fantasy stuff. The music is also pretty different from Rhapsody, which might out of place if you've just finished listening to the songs above, but still they make some pretty damn good songs. The voice of the vocalist, particularly, is pretty unique and gives a special feeling to their music. Here's what I think is the best song by them that I've listened so far:



Hope you liked it :)

Happy birthday!

I have to begin this post with a shameful fact: I forgot about this blog's birthday. OMFG, what a terrible blogger I am! It's like forgetting the birthday of your children, or something! Well, on the other hand, maybe I just had such a good time here that I never thought, even for a second, that one full year might have already passed, so it came as quite a shock when I saw that my first post was written on the 30th of August, 2007.


(unrelated, just something that made me lol)

One year, it's quite a long time on the internets, isn't it? In a world where new sites and blogs appear everyday just to disappear the next day, I feel kind of proud to have created a placed that endured almost 13 months now and shows no sign of stopping. And I won't stop, as long as I have things to say and people to read them.


Which leads me to the awesome readers I have here. I know this may sound lame, but without you this place wouldn't exist, and I'm serious, because I had another blog, a few years ago, that I stopped working on because I barely had any readers. Fortunately that is not the case with NebachadnezzaR's Place of Awesomeness, thanks to my "blog buddies" Father Krishna, Gnome, Deitrix, Junlee, Funnyman and Blondjon; my friends from PTGamers who ocasionally come by, TGenial, Blackhole69, German and Simbyotic; my heavy metal mate dxvolt and the only visitor who's also a friend in real life, my main man Fredy.

Thanks, guys :)

Now, let's fucking party! The beer's on the house, and so are the cigars and the champagne, so feel free to consume whatever makes you happy :P

Unleash the force

Sorry for the lack of activity on this blog. Like Father K, gnome and other "blogging friends" of mine, and of ours since we have this sort of blogging community going on here, I've been in a sort of blogging hiatus as of late. It was mostly due to lack of time, now with me entering college and all that, but I have to admit I've been a bit lazy as well. Well, anyway, just some days ago I played and beat Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and I fucking loved it.


Now, I have to admit, I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. In fact I hardly have any interest in it, and although I've played a lot of SW games it was always for the gameplay alone, because I couldn't care less for the story. Not that there's anything wrong with it, sci-fi just isn't my style, and all that moral bullshit between dark and light sides surely didn't help me like it more. But I digress.

Despite not being a SW geek, pardon me, SW fan, I still had a blast with this game, because it fucking rocks! The story, surprinsingly, is appealing to pretty much everyone since it narrates a sort of self-contained chapter in the SW canon. Of course it has connections to previous and future events in the movies (it's set between episodes III and IV), but it's pretty damn enjoyable just by itself. This is due to a damn great main character. Starkiller is just a fucking cool protagonist and really felt like I could relate to him. The other supporting characters are also interesting, specially Starkiller's droid, Proxy, who's programmed to routinely try to kill him.


Gameplay wise, the game is called force unleashed for a reason. You've never had so much control over that misterious energy. Force lighting is...shocking (lol), force push lets you push enemy soldiers out of your way (into oblivion, if you happen to be on a bridge) and force grip is just...wow. You can pick up almost everything that's on the levels (Tie Fighters included) and trow it into the air or, of course, at enemy soldiers. You can also pick those up and just play around with them, which is pretty entertaining in a sadistic kind of way.

Talking about force grip, I have to mention the technical "holy trinity" of this game: Havok for the physics, Euphoria for the character's animations and finally Digital Molecular Matter for the physical properties of the objects. When you combine the three of them, the result is something to be seen. The soldiers you pick up try to grab on to something (and they get much harder to handle if they succeed), the objects you throw react to the enviromnent and everything you break, breaks in a realistic way, calculated in real-time. Just see some videos to get the full picture, because I could never translate it into words.


Unfortunately I have two major gripes with the techincal aspect of the game. The first is the fact that the debris of the things you destroy disappear after just a few seconds, right in front of your eyes. WTF... Yeah, I know it would demand a hell of a lot of processing power if they stayed there forever, but couldn't they wait til you leave the room to vanish? The second is the bugs. This game feels so unfinished... Why couldn't they push back the release date for one or two months? As it is, sometimes objects react in an erratic way, there's clipping issues and worse, sometimes even your character gets stuck. Once I actually had to restart the game because Starkiller got completely stuck while trying to jump down a hole. Oh, and there's also the loading screens. Ca you believe there is loading screens even when you're just navigating through the menus? How fucked up is that...



Still, in the end this game was just fucking awesome. Essential to every SW fan and definitely recommend for action fans, whether they like George Lucas' work or not. The gameplay is fun and addictive, the story is superb, the music is good (and the voice acting is ace! better than a lot of movies I've seen, actually) and overall it's just a pretty entertaining, if short, game.

Contra Retrospective

So, less than a week ago I decided to play every Contra game released to date (not every port of every game, although I did play more than 1 version of some games) and today I can proudly say that I successfully accomplished this. Yeay! So, if you're curious about this series but don't have the time/patience/interest to do the same yourself, here's a summary of what I think about every game for your information (note that after each title I only indicate the version(s) I played, not every single version made):

Contra (NES)


The original game, this is what most people remember when they think of Contra. I bet it was a great game back in the day, but unfortunately I never played it back then and nowadays I can honestly say it sucks! Yes, I said it! Hit me, Contra fanboys! Ok, seriously now, that's indeed my opinion about it. The graphics suck, the gameplay is competent but not that great, the "3D" areas suck, the game is hard as hell and after you lose there's not many reasons to come back.


Super C (NES)


The follow up to the original game, it's even more difficult and although there's a couple innovations, for the most time it feels just like Contra all over again but, for some reason, slightly worse.



Contra Force (NES)


Well, if the previous games sucked, this one sucks 100x more! Why? Because it wasn't even supposed to be a fucking Contra game! Like Silent Hill 4 or Pirates of the Caribbean, CF was going to be an original game, but instead they decided to give it the name of a famous license. The result? A game that barely has anything to do with the other games in the series. It's slow, the gameplay is not that much fun and overall it just plain sucks.


(note that the slowdown is not from the video or the emulator, the game is really that slow)

Operation C (Gameboy)


Now, this is a good game for a change! The graphics are what you can expect from a gameboy, with that unique design in black and white. Unlike the previous games, the controls seem fluid and natural, and for a portable game, this one kicked ass.



Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES, Gameboy Advance)


Some people consider this the best Contra game ever. I wouldn't got that far, but it's definitely in my top 4 (what? I couldn't just pick 3 games...). The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is refined and addictive, the weapons are awesome and overall it's just an awesome game. One thing I didn't like though, and that was the over-head stages, where you have to manually rotate the camera around the character, because not only are those sections slow-paced and boring, that camera thing makes me dizzy.

The GBA port is pretty much the same with 2 big diferences: the graphics were toned down (although still pretty good for a GBA) and the over-head stages were replaced with levels from Contra: Hard Corps, which is good in my opinion, but many people didn't like that.



Contra: Hard Corps (Mega Drive)


For me this one is even better than C3. The graphics pushed the limits of the system and the gameplay was pretty evolved compared to the previous games. For the first time you had 4 characters to choose from, each with their own set of weapons, you could carry 4 weapons at the same time and there were multiple paths you could take, leading to different levels and diferent endings. There were 6 endings, and the game was so addicitve that I ended up watching them all, and they were worth it.



The only bad thing about this game is the difficulty, or so I hear. It's regarded as the hardest Contra ever, but I can't really say. Why? Because I'm a fucking cheater, that's why! Yeah, I know this isn't something pretty to say, but even the easiest C games are too damn hard for me, so, in order to prevent me from going insane, I played every game using life or invincibility cheats. Shamefull, I know, but it was the only way for me to have fun with the games, and that's what matters for me.

Contra: Legacy of War (Saturn, PSX)


If you're really interested you can read my full review over at the Saturn Junkyard. On the other hand , if you're just looking for a quick summary, here it is. This game sucks! Hard! By attempting to bring the game to 3D they decided to make everything in a overhead view and they sucked at it. This game is just not fun.



C: The Contra Adventure (PSX)


The title is right because, after the flop fo the previous game, they decided to take a new approach. A return to the origins? No, although it seems like it at first, with the first level being a side-scrolling one just like in the old games. Unfortunately eventually the "adventure" levels come, in a 3rd person Tomb Raider-like style. Yeah, I know, back in the days everyone was looking for that kind of games to show off the PSX's capabilities, but as expected, in the end the game sucked. Not so much as the previous one, but still.



Contra: Shattered Soldier (PS2)


Now this is a 3D Contra game! Probably my favourite (and the one who gave me more problems to get it running, like every old PS2 mine doesn't like CD's that much so any CD-based game gives me a headache), it's basically what one can expect from it. A side-scrolling Contra game with fast paced action, great graphics and huge (and fucking ugly) bosses. Probably the hardest game after Hard Corps, it was still beatable after some serious level memorization. Anyway, it was a blast to play.



Neo Contra (PS2)


Why? After getting it right with Shattered Soldier, why did they have to fuck things up again? Although not as bad as the 32 bit games, Neo Contra is still a bit on the sucky side of things. With an overhead instead of sidecrolling perspective, this could've worked, if only it had a control system like Geometry Wars, to give a recent example, where you control the character with one stick and shoot with the other. As it is, it's just too damn hard to hit enemies, and that takes some of the fun of the game. At least it's somewhat easy when compared to the other games.



Contra 4 (Nintendo DS)


Actually the last game of the series was the first one I played to the end, sometime ago when it was first released. Great game, in a 2D style similar to the first ones, and making use of the 2 screens to bring back the experience of the first game's Arcade version, which featured a vertical screen. There's also a lot to this game other than the main adventure. There's a series of challenges that seriously challenge you and if you're skilled enough you can unlock full versions of Contra and Super C for the NES, among other neat extras. Definitely a mandatory purchase for fans of the series.



So, in the end, what were my favourites? Definitely Shattered Soldier, Hard Corps, C3 and 4, and if you're thinking about getting into Contra I recommend you play those ones first. The worse were the original NES ones, which, nostalgia aside, didn't stood up to the test of time, and the 32 bits games, which were already bad when they first came out, but in the end I have to admit there's a "clone" of this series than I enjoy even more than any Contra game


Metal Slug! Now that's a good series with hardly any bad game (although MS X, 4 and 5 did suck a little), that elevated the gameplay first introduced by Contra to whole new levels. Contra may be the original but for me Metal Slug is the pinnacle of the run 'n gun style of action games, so I recommend everyone, and I mean everyone, to check those games out.