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  • USK game boxes - Lost in Translation

    After half a year of not playing Mirror's Edge anymore, today I finally bought it. In spring Mathias let me mess around with it a little bit and I really enjoyed it. But suddenly other things came up and I never finished it. For a few months now I've been thinking again and again about buying the game ... and never actually did it. Why? Because, while I often see the PS3 version in local stores for 20 EUR, all they have is the USK-rated version that says it only offers the German voice tracks.

    Let me make a small detour and tell you something about localized games: While often acceptable, it is only very rarely en par with the original voice work. There are some notable exceptions from this rule like Prince of Persia (the "new" one) but in general if you understand the "original" language a game was developed in, play it in that language. 

    So, back to the main topic: Today I again went into a local electronics store, primarily to get Spirit Tracks, but also saw once again a bunch of Mirror's Edge boxes. Naturally the already mentioned USK-box. So I checked with gameware.at and found, that it actually might also contain the English language pack. I guess I was kind of adventurous today so I just bought it and was really delighted when all the voice work was really in English :-)

    But why is it so hard to just write that onto the box? The same happened with Red Faction and other games and IIRC inFamous even offered the English language pack as a download right after the game's release. It's like someone forgot that oftentimes there is more than just a single language pack on the disc. @Sony: Don't hide, that the English pack is on the disc! Be proud of it and write it on the box :-)

    2009/12/19 at 16:27:47

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  • Red Faction: Guerilla

    Yes, I know, I already wrote about it, but now I'm through (not at 100% but anyway), so I can make this a real review. But since I already wrote about Red Faction: Guerrilla, I will try to make this review a bit shorter since I can mostly stick with my first impression: The game is a really competent 3rd-person shooter with tons of side-missions and some strong story aspects that really motivate you to finish this game. It never gets in the way of the bombing and shooting action but it just adds the right amount of atmosphere to make you please "just 5 more minutes". 

    Read more about "Red Faction: Guerilla" ...

    2009/09/07 at 17:45:56

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  • Finishing Shadow Complex without finishing it

    Yesterday, Shadow Complex for Xbox360 was released and I was really looking forward to spending a couple of days exploring every single room on the map. I just love games were you can explore a lot and benefit from it immensely. And yesterday, that whole concept worked really well. Tonight at 2100 o'clock I had about 70% of the map explored and 50% of the items. Some major add-ons were still missing, though.

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    2009/08/20 at 20:48:22

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  • Another open-world game - Red Faction: Guerrilla

    This summer seems to be besides another Summer of Code and Summer of Arcade also a summer of open-world games. First InFamous and then Prototype and Red Faction: Guerrilla. A few weeks ago a Libro for some reason made Red Faction a budget title and so I got it right the next day thanks to the stories I heard about it on ListenUP a few months ago.

    Now I'm about 6 hours in the game and I have to say that I'm really impressed. First of all: It's really rare for a franchise that started as a FPS to change into something else (or like in this case a GTA-like game), with RF1 and 2 being actually quite competent shooters. But hey, destroying buildings is definitely more fun if you can drive from town to town while doing that ;-) And towns there are a lot of in RF: Guerrilla.

    So far the missions have been really entertaining and it's just pure fun to set some charges on various parts of a building, add some barrels and just watch the whole thing blow up and crumble to pieces. And there are just sooo many different ways to do that :-)

    There also seems to be some strong story aspects going back to the first revolution, but so far I only had one mission in that direction. After the first couple of hours I can really recommend this game, if you aren't already suffering from the open-world-fatigue. Sure, it has some problems (like you using a continue having effects on the world and respawning taking place kilometers from where you've died), but something that broke the atmosphere, yet :-)

    2009/08/09 at 20:24:55

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  • inFAMOUS

    When I first saw some longer gameplay footage of inFamous for the PS3 I thought: "Crackdown + shooting electricity from your hands? I'm in". But inFamous is more than just a simple iteration or only a slight improvement over the two-year-old Xbox360 game. And with its successor still far away, there was nothing holding me back on getting this one.

    Read more about "inFAMOUS" ...

    2009/06/07 at 22:17:00

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  • Release Fail

    It only took nearly 4 month, but today and according to Eurogamer.net we here in Europe are finally going to receive our dosage of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for the PS3. If I remember correctly the Xbox360 version was basically release at the same time in Europe and North America but for some obscure reason the PSN-version never hit the net.

    I'm currently at a point where I don't even care anymore who messed that whole affair up: SCEE or Capcom. There is simply no excuse for ignoring one region (which was more or less a 2nd home-market for Sony during the last console generation, thank you) when it comes to any title where the localization should be pretty limited not to mention games as anticipated by fans like SSF2THDR. If the game had been available even in December or January I would have got it without thinking for more than a minute. But now with SF4 being available this Friday in local stores I hardly find any motivation to spend those 15 EUR.

    2009/02/18 at 23:20:25

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  • Prince of Persia

    Every once in a while, I get a game more or less by chance. Back when I was a kid this happened quite a lot but now I only very rarely get a game without thinking about it for weeks. So happened just a week ago with Prince of Persia for the Playstation 3. Amazon.co.uk had a sale back then I thought it couldn't be not worth EUR 23. It's not like it got bad reviews or something but its developers definitely made some controversial gameplay decisions.

    Read more about "Prince of Persia" ...

    2009/01/25 at 23:08:26

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  • Prince of Persia: The buggy edition?

    Last Thursday I got my copy of Prince of Persia for the PS3 and so far I'm really enjoying it. They story isn't bad at all, I love the characters and the whole jump'n run action is just pure entertainment. But: This is definitely the buggiest "big" game I've played in a very long time. Even the first 30 minutes had one really big issue that someone has to have noticed during QA ...

    Read more about "Prince of Persia: The buggy edition?" ...

    2009/01/21 at 00:36:03

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  • 2008 in Gaming

    2008 was quite an exciting year for me when it came to games. First of all: In March I got my PS3 mostly for Resistance, Uncharted and Super Stardust HD ... and after enjoying them pretty much stopped using it while moving back to the Xbox360. Back then I had no HDTV so I could only play PS3 games in SD which was kind of a bummer. My Xbox360 on the other side was hooked up to my 19" LCD-display on my work-desk, so at least there I had some kind of HD-experience which I shamelessly used as an excuse to get Burnout Paradise for Microsoft's white noisy thingy.

    The summer was pretty much dominated by Burnout Paradise and not even GTA4 could keep me away from it for long. In the end downloadable games like Geometry Wars 2 and Pixeljunk Monsters ended up being more important for me than GTA4 altogether (but perhaps next year). But the latest gangster-simulation was not their only victim: I think I haven't turned on my DS for at least 6 months by now and my PSP only saw a short comeback when I gave the Patapon-demo and echochrome a shot. So perhaps I should replace the "exciting" from up there with "weird" ;-) (More after the break)

    Read more about "2008 in Gaming" ...

    2008/12/30 at 23:12:27

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  • PULSE ... the browser-only show for PSN

    Screenshot from the PSN frontpageSony seems to be trying really hard to get some original content onto their PSN service. Last summer they launched the Qore magazine for paying subscribers and on the 5th a new show on PSN called "PULSE". It's basically a small preview of what's about to get released in the near future combined with some nice charts, so actually not bad for a corporate advertisement show.

    There are some bummers for me, though, as far as I can tell: Not downloadable (just in the browser, I think), no RSS/Atom-feed and not on iTunes. The last one is kind of redundant but the first two really annoy me. I simply don't really enjoy watching shows in a browser but on my iPod on the go or in Quicktime/VLC when on the laptop. So eventually it will probably go the way of Gametrailers for me: Every now and then, but probably not regularly (GT has at least downloadable views but only the smallest versions in the feed).

    2008/12/08 at 20:46:41

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