The Darkness 2 - The Shining Light of Over-the-top shooters?

It's time for another guest post. This time coming in from Dani, who has jutted down his thoughts on the latest entry in the "FPS with crazy snake/eel arms" genre (it's a pretty narrow genre, I'll admit).
Take it away, Dani:

The first Darkness game was an enjoyable over-the-top shooter with a strong focus on gameplay as opposed to an engrossing plot or realistic graphics. It told the story of Jackie Estacado, a young mafia hitman involved in an attempted assassination, hiding in a cemetery when an ancient demonic force called the Darkness contacts him and kills his assailants.

The game then becomes a fairly standard first person shooter with the added powers of The Darkness, which form tendrils at your side. Throughout the course of the game, Jackie also visits the otherworld to further develop the plot and sees his powers grow. One of the strongest gameplay features allow for dual-wielding of weapons whilst also using the Darkness powers, in a mechanic unofficially called ‘quad-wielding’.

Despite favourable reviews hovering around the 7.5-8 region, The Darkness was never deemed that much of a hit; however has sold a million copies and warranted enough demand for a sequel.

The Darkness 2, one of the latest game releases, continues the story of Jackie Estacado who has risen to the top rank of the mafia and now wants rid of the Darkness. I won’t explain the full details of the plot; however it is safe to say that they have really upped the stakes in the storytelling department.

Featuring an updatable ability tree that can be progressed with by collecting the hearts of the victims, as well as a stronger focus on the Darkness, particularly the Darkling. This feature allows Jackie to kill enemies from greater distances, interact with environments and access otherwise unreachable areas and paths.

A clear improvement over the original, the Darkness 2 has really found its feet and established it’s placed in the shooter genre; however unfortunately still suffers from a relatively short single-player campaign and continued issues in multiplayer (which was also one of the biggest complaints of the original).

Suspend your beliefs, crank up the sound system and immerse yourself in the comic-book world of Jackie Estacado – however, if you’re after another Modern Warfare or Battlefield-style playstation 3 games, you’re looking in the wrong place. For one of the best gameplay experiences of the year, as well as a ludicrous yet enjoyable story, packaged in an unconventional yet satisfying game, you can’t go far wrong with the Darkness 2.

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"Jagged Alliance - Back in Action" Demo Impressions - Casuals need not apply

Hey, remember back in the days when video games were cruel and unforgiving bastards that would happily destroy your pre-pubescent face with a sadistic level of difficulty?
The days where we got stuff like the "kicking-sand-in-your-eyes"-hard X-COM, which can still kick my ass and crush my spirit to this day.

Would you like to relive those times of "real challenges" and once again spend your time with a game that wants nothing more than to break your will to live? Well, then you're in for a treat with "Jagged Alliance - Back in Action"!

"I will devour your soul and make you cry tears of blood!"

Back in Action follows in the footsteps of the original "Jagged Alliance" from 1994 and the sequel from 2004.
You control a team of mercenaries through a series of missions in your attempt to overthrow the ruthless dictator of the made up country "Arulco".
Missions play out from an isometric 3D overhead view, where you can give orders to your men in real time.
Back in Action also allows you to pause the game and set up a chain of orders for your men to execute, kind of like Dragon Age only more advanced.

Controlling your men with the utmost of military precision is key in Back in Action demo, as the enemies in the demo mission are absolutely lethal and will also summon their equally lethal friends as soon as they catch sight of your merc mug.
I say "military precision", but perhaps it would be more accurate to say it requires completely anal attention to detail.
Now granted, I am not the most hardcore of tactical game players, but I've spent my fair share of time with stuff like the old X-COM games and the "Commandos", which are not exactly a walk in the park. But I found myself being constantly blown to small mercenary giblets in this demo, even when I tried very hard to be smart about my positioning and took down my targets carefully.

More than 50.000 Hyperspace travelers serviced!

It seems like only yesterday that I set all engines to ludicrous speed and launched Light Speed Gaming, but it's actually been almost five months.

Today I'm happy to be able to say that the blog has now been viewed more than 50.000 thousand times, or about 10.000 views per month on average!
When I initially started up Light Speed Gaming I had absolutely zero blogging experience and really had no idea if I would be able to get anyone at all to spend time reading my inane ramblings. I'm pretty blown away by how many people actually took time to stop by and waste a bit of their day here.

A big thank you to everyone that has read my posts! I hope that you're enjoying your time here and, as always, I'll be more than happy to receive any feedback you have regarding the site.

Here are a few fun facts about Light Speed Gaming after the first five months:


-The average time spent on the site by a reader is 59 seconds 


-Returning visitors make up about 10% of the traffic

-The most popular post, 5 Things I can't wait to see in Mass Effect 3, has had almost 2.600 views

Since the start of the blog I've had to ease off a bit on my ambition to deliver a new post every single day, and I've "cheated" a bit on some days and just posted a trailer that caught my eye.

I've also noted that writing about your hobby is a lot more hard work than you might think, and you got to be careful about it unless you want to ruin the enjoyment of spending time with it!

I can see that the daily traffic numbers are slowly increasing, so I'm sure that the 100k views mark will be reached a lot faster than 50k. Not that more traffic in itself means all that much, but it's nice to know that the stuff you spend many hours a week on creating actually gets viewed by an audience.

After all, I have a blog because I want people to see and respond to my work, otherwise I would have started a diary!

If I can make a small request to you as readers, it would be two things:

1) If you spend a minute here reading my posts, I would be incredibly grateful if you would use an extra 10 seconds to leave a comment. Comments are the best way for me to know if you like and/or are finding my writings useful. As a writer there is nothing better than reader feedback.Somewhat more commercial in nature. 

2) You may have noticed that I'm running a few ads on the site. 

Light Speed Gaming is not intended in any way to be a big income source for me, but I do spend a lot of time on the site every day, either creating posts or simply promoting the site or working behind the scene. I have also had a couple of giveaways that have come out of my own pocket, so it would be nice if the site could at least pay for itself. 

Therefore it would be much appreciated if you used the ads, whenever they seem interesting to you. I'm not asking you to just click away on every ad you see, but if you're in the market for a gaming mouse and you just happen to see an ad for one here on the sight, then why not take a second and check it out?

Again, I'd like to offer a big and sincere "Thank you" to everyone that has dropped by Light Speed Gaming.

Rest assured that I will work continuously on improving the site! 

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Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Review Round Up

A little while back I played through the Demo of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning both on Xbox and on the PC. I was somewhat disappointed by the experience, but not enough to completely destroy my anticipation.
Therefore I have been eagerly awaiting the reviews of the full game to try to get an impression of how the full game holds up.

"It gives a great review score or it gets the club again."

The reviews are starting to flow in now and it looks like my lukewarm reaction to the demo is more or less echoed in the reviewers articles:

Gamespot Review: 7.5 / 10

Giant Bomb Review: 4 / 5

IGN Review: 9 / 10

Edge Review: 6 / 10

The general impression seems to be that there are some very great and enjoyable elements in Reckoning, most notably the free flowing combat system and the ability to spec out your character however you want to play the game, but there are also some serious flaws with the game, like an over abundance of uninteresting quests and lack of a strong narrative.

I'm still waiting to get my hands on a retail copy of Reckoning, but from the reviews that I've seen so far it will probably be a game that manages to keep me entertained until the release of Mass Effect 3, but without leaving a lasting impression.



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Feeling Frustrated From Franchise Fatigue

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing when it comes to your favorite games? With great games such as Assassin's Creed or Uncharted, should we as gamers not simply be overjoyed that developers are cranking out new installments of a consistently high level at regular intervals?

Well no, for me at least I've reached the point of "Franchise Fatigue". I'm getting tired of watching the same old circus horse being paraded around the ring, even if the horse gets a new fancy headdress every time, and even if it *is* very impressive for a horse to be able to jump backwards through a flaming metal ring while reciting Edgar Allan Poe.

"No no, this is completely different from Brotherhood.
Look, you have a *hook* in this one! Madness!"

I think the realization struck me a few days ago as I was starting up Assassin's Creed: Revelations.
Assassin's Creed 2 was probably one of my favorite games of 2009 and I also liked Brotherhood a whole lot. But after just a few hours of Revelations I was just not enjoying the game at all. The story didn't grab me and the gameplay felt decidedly stale.
I realized that it was not really the game itself that was at fault. Assassin's Creed: Revelations is a high quality game that, at least in my opinion, is as good of a game as its two predecessors.
The problem is that I've already played this game twice before. Sure, I'll get to visit a new city and I'll get to add a couple of new gadgets to my already terribly overburdened Assassin, but it's very much the same game that I played last year.

I had a similar feeling with Uncharted 3 and Batman: Arkham City. I recognize that both of these games are, objectively speaking, very well put together and represent some of the highest quality gaming experiences of 2011. But in both cases I felt a horrible sense of deja-vu when I played them, to the point that I lost interest and gave up on finishing either one of them.

Light Speed Gaming Week in Review: January 30

People of Earth, do not be afraid! Though your planet has now concluded another seven complete rotations on its own axis in its continued impression of a cosmological dog chasing its own non-existent tail, be assured that these aforementioned rotational movements have not been wasted by yours truly.

Or to put it in another way; Another week has gone by and it's time to check out what went down here on Light Speed Gaming.

Last week was a bit slow, game releases are a rare beast in the early weeks of the year, and I've been spending some time on non sci-fi and gaming related activities (heresy, I know).

"Disappointed in SWTOR? I find your lack of faith...disturbing"

Nevertheless I did take some time and sit down to write the closest thing I'll be doing to a full review of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Rather than trying to do a full review of SWTOR I decided to write about what I feel are my most important point about the game. The title of the post, "Why Star Wars: The Old Republic is ultimately a disappointment", will probably clue you on to guessing that I'm not altogether impressed by the game that BioWare has put together for us.

Aside from incurring the wrath of Star Wars fanboys I also dared to potentially upset another community of equal devotion, by writing up a review of "Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012".
But unlike my scribbles about SWTOR, this is a much more happy outcome for all involved parties, as I quite enjoyed my time as a card battling Gandalf.

Finally the week was capped off by me staying up too late into the night and subjecting you all to a bit of spontaneous fiction writing in a short bit of writing that I call; The Perils of Space Travel and You.

That's all from me for now. Though the sudden onset of winter is threatening to freeze off several of my favorite body extremities, be assured that more posts will continue to make their way onto the site this week!



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The Perils of Space Travel and You

Translation into realspace is always a somewhat jarring experience at the best of times, but this particular instance makes Jack sick to his stomach despite his many years of space travel.

It's not so much the fact that the mass of your body is being pushed and pulled in ways that make you feel like a human accordion that gets to Jack. Nor is it the acute sense of vertigo, like you are being tossed out from the highest mountain peak imaginable.
These are feelings that Jack know and handles as easily as any normal person might handle a slight breeze in their face or an inconveniently timed rain shower.

No, the sickness in Jack's stomach is a result of this particular jump into the normal realm of physics having missed the contents of Jack's stomach.

The phenomenon of temporary, local space-time distortion, or "the jumpies" as it is commonly known, when returning to slower-than-light travel, is well known to a veteran space traveler like Jack, of course. Small pockets that continue to travel at faster-than-light speed for just a fraction of a second longer than the space around them.
Jack once saw the captains Great Dane caught in such a pocket. That case had ended with the big dog being launched across the bridge of the ship, smashing into a command console with such force that the bridge crew was still finding lumps of fur in their controls to this day.

Fortunately for Jack, this case of the jumpies is a lot more benign than the incident that ended the life of poor "Snuggles".

For a moment Jack is even convinced that he'll be able to fight it off.

A buzz at the door announces a visitor and as the door slides away Jack sees the familiar face of his colleague, Eric. Smiling, Eric takes a step into Jack's quarters and looks at his friend, who is looking unusually concentrated.
"That was a nice smooth jump, eh Jackie boy?", Eric announces.

It is then that Jack makes a critical error of judgement, as he decides to answer Eric. Parting his lips seems to be just the opportunity his stomach had been waiting for. In his mind Jack hears himself saying "Well, I dunno about that, mate.", but all that his ears hear is "W..BWWWAURRGGHHGA!", as a jet of vomit spews from his mouth at a speed so fast that he swears there's a supersonic boom ringing throughout the small room.

The spray hits the opposite wall, narrowly missing Eric's head by mere inches but hitting him all across the face with the force of the recoil.
Eric blinks sheepishly, his mouth opening and closing like a surprised fish that's just been thrown onto the deck of a boat. After a couple of seconds he regains enough cognitive capability to form a single sentence; "I'll...I'll come back later, shall I?".

Jack wipes his mouth with the back of a trembling hand, a passing dry heave making his shoulders convulse.
"...Yeah...A little later, Eric...", Jack manages to gasp. "Fucking space travel...I just hope these folks appreciate the pepperoni pizza..."



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