MIKE PARSH'S PC GAME REVIEW PAGE
HI AND WELCOME TO MIKEY P.'S WEBPAGE OF GAMING GALORE. IT IS DEDICATED TO ALL OF THOSE AMAZING PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO HAVE THE BEST AND MOST ADDICTIVE "PROBLEM" IN THE WORLD. IM A STRICLY PC KINDA GUY, SO IF YOUR A CONSOLE GAMER, PLEASE, FOR YOUR OWN SAKE, DO NOT VEIW THIS PAGE. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS PLEASE E-MAIL ME AT JAGUARMP@VERIZON.NET
(IM A RADEON VIDEO CARD FAN< SO NO QUESTIONS ABOUT NVIDIA PLEASE)
NOW FOR THE GAME REVIEWS of 2003.(the year is at a close, so you might see some 2004 games, there might also be some older games that I just thought needed to be displayed. The dates will be given)
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BATTLEFIELD 1942: SECRET WEAPONS OF WWII (2003)
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- >Opening notes, quotes or reccomendations< Everyone who has anything to do with PC gaming should own or have played at least one of the games in this amazing franchise.
SYSTEM SPECS:500 MB Hard drive
Direct X 8.1 Sound and video card.
Video card 32 MB or more. Lowest-Radeon 7500 Recommended anything from 8500-9800. Ive got a 9600 Pro-works like a charm-
Sound card- seriously anything made in the last 2 years. My sound blaster audigy gamer is a major overkill with this game and I bought it for the awsome price of $120 at best buy.
New weapons-
REMINGTON AUTO 5 SHOTGUN
MAUSER K98 GRENADE RIFLE
THROWING KNIFE
BREN LIGHT MACHINE GUN
GEWEHR 43
STEN MK2
FALLSCHIMIRMJAGER GEWEHR
New Vehicals
ROCKET PACK
GOBLIN
NATTER ROCKET PLANE
ARMSTRONG WHITWORTH AW-52
HORTON HO 229
HARLEY DAVIDSON W/MACHINEGUN SIDE CAR
BMW W/MACHINEGUN MOUNTED SIDE CAR
LVT-2 WATER BUFFALO
C-47 CARGO PLANE(FLYING SPAWN PT)
SHEMAN TANK W/ T-34 CALLIOPE
FLAKPANZER
SUPER HEAVY TAKE W/ NAVAL BATTERY
STURMTIGER
COMMANDO RAFT
SCHWIMMWAGEN
This is the second expansion in the Battlefield 1942 games. The latest installment centers around adding weapons to your already plentiful arsenal that have either been rumored to exist, in production or were just a cool idea at the time. Also adding a new objectives-based-mode for a Medal of Honor-esque game play, this is a game hard to skip. The game contains 8 new maps, with six of them featuring the new objective based mode.
The first map will have you running around an abandoned airfield in Kbely, Germany. It sounds tacky but it is a well rounded and well thought up map full of bunckers and hangars. (Pently of new armorment is headed toward the Allies way in this map, including the half tank half naval shore battery.)The tank is EXTREAMLY hard to find good luck with it. This i think is the map i spent the most time on. If you play Axis, your all out defensive, if you play Allies its all out offensive. As Axis, me and my mates spent most of the time shooting down the British as they were trying to storm the bridge.( the best thing to do as Axis is take a British assault rifle. Its a new one and is strong enough to take down the annoying lanes the Allies send at you.)
The second map is located in Telmark, Sweeden. This one one helluva beautiful map, tell you me. Set in a snowy landscape, my puny RADEON 9600 depicts this map as a jaw dropping landscape. The brisk sunlight basking off the crips white snow, your men running to take cover, tank shells and enemy fire flying in every countable direction, Ahh.... This level puts the irvana in nirvana. Trust me you'll have fun with this one. The only downset I had in this level is that when playing the axis team, the first base you spawn at has two missle silos next to it, being the newbie of the game I thought it was my long awaited Wasserfall rockets. No such luck Charley. Thats in a different map.
The third map your stationed at is Mimoyecques. This map contains an island and a penninsula, youll be mostly exchanging fire on the penninsula. The allies start on the small island, so if you end up fighting any axis here, you're pretty much SOL.
The place on the penninsula is basically a dirt airfield, one of the best multiplayer maps but if your playing solo, its easy to get lost because of the size. I had some chuckles about the AI in this map, something went wrong in scripting (so im told) and the Axis play and fight like theyre nazis from the original Wolfenstien 3D.
The fourth map, The Gothinc Line, has the coolest name ive ever seen for the BF1942 games. The map itself lives up to its name It give even more meaning to the cliche "war is hell". Located in Italy, you'll be doing what you do best. To get into battle, the allies must cross a bridge and head into a small town where many are downed my sniper fire and the rest by machine guns. Its a nice place due to the amazing building textures and the abundancy of city streets and alley ways.
Map numero five. Hellendoorn. another snowy land scape, if Hoth was previously populated, then this place would be it. Good game play lots to hide behind. I found some great plase just to wait and lob grenades at oncoming baddies. If you eyes are good enough, you might come across a Wasserfall silo...
Map six. Essen, huge place. I love it though. Lots of great battles here, anouther good one for multiplay. E-mail me and correct me if im wrong, but this is the place where the axis have SUPREME advantage. They are stationed on a cliff with a runway and about 4 planes. Two artillery cannons, a crap load of gun emplacements and more bunkers than you can shake a stick at. this allies helpless ly assault a small ravene toward the axis base. An unprotected and tiny bridge is the only way to get to and from the allies bases. I found it fun to wait at an artillery cannon and fire at allies cresting the bridge. This level is easily won because of the many places to just camp out and fire.
MAP 7: The Eagles nest. This is the smallest map in the entire line of BF games. the only way to have th game not bogg down is to have a 3.0 gig processor. Itll help to turn down ound quality and ticket number but it still lags. Dont get me worng it is still a fun map. Allies start in a small fillage with the center point being the flag. They have to assault thier way up a hill that will probably be swarming with axis tanks. Once you get passed there, you go passed a bridge onto a snow covered mountain. good luck here because the is most likely every axis bearing down on you. A hard grueling but awsome map.
Map 8 last one (boo hoo). Peenemuende. Dispicably hard for allies. This level makes you question why the allies could ever win a war. any way the allies start in a fairly large city, and have to crest a pretty big bridge which is directly infront of the axis compound. Allies are just bombarded with gnfire and tank shells. Playing axis is a little more fun but gets boring if the allies dont take the base. (sorry i forgot to mention this is a level where anyone can take any flag.
PARSH'S FINAL GRADE: 97%
HIGHS: Beautiful graphics, awsome new guns/vehicles.
Kickin new maps and objectives mode.
Keeps you goingthrough the midnight hours,
LOWS: Can be laggy even on high end systems, but not really a
complaint due to the awsome nature of the game. LETS SEE
SOME GORE ANIMATION EA (but not too much)
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FREELANCER (2003)
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<-Opening quotes,notes or recommendations->When this game was released it was a bit of a surprise to everybody. A bad suprise it was not. EVE Online and Earth and Beyond have an uncanny reseblence to eachother and this game, word for the wise: youve played one of these three, youve played them all.
SYSTEM SPECS:
900MB hard drive- pretty big game, but weve all seen bigger
16 MB video card- Lowest end- Radeon 7000- workes great with 8000 and above, obviously the higher the better.
600 Mhz processor- recommend a gig or more.
I’m going to start off by saying that, despite the talk and reviews from other people, Freelancer is NOT the space sim to end all space sims. Don’t get me wrong, however, Freelancer is still a great game. Lets start with the basics. Right off the bat the instruction manual, yes the little book stuffed into the box that nobody reads, is one of the best out-of-game tutorials I’ve seen in a long time. Just reading the first few pages gives you a huge grip on the game play. The best part about the manual is that when it describes something, it doesn’t just describe it in supreme detail, it gives you a small screen shot, to show you, if you’re confused, what they’re even talking about.
Ok enough about the bathroom reading material. When you first start off the game, you are introduced to the people who you’ll deal with throughout the entire single player game. There’s a decently long cutscene that puts you into place to begin your adventure as a freelancing pilot. The game IS somewhat linear however, you will be assigned missions from some Chinese diplomat who you’ll follow on these missions and do her dirty work, such as escorting her some place, wiping out some threat here, some bandits there and eventually coming across a “connecting mission” as I like to call them. Connecting missions are missions that once you complete them; you will be given the opportunity to freelance. The freelancing portion of the game is the best part. You can travel to a planets surface, go to a bar and collect a mission job or contract. You can either choose a job from the message board, or talk to someone with a suitcase icon above their heads. Doing this will bring up a job accept screen, if and when you accept, you will have to travel some place and kill some bandits or something, once you complete, you will receive pay and eventually go up a level, allowing you to continue with the game story.
Fighting your space battles is another awesome part of this game. If, and hopefully you do, buy a new ship other than the one you start with, you’ll be able to turn some harder bad guys into space dust. I dig the lack of joystick for some reason. You press and hold the left mouse button as you direct the ship to its desired location. Using the right mouse button to fire your main lasers. When you encounter and enemy a hull and shield display is, well, displayed as they enemy ship comes into view. As you fire at the enemy ship, its shield bar will quickly decrease until it is depleted and then the hull will start to go down. The ship explosions take acceptable advantage of my RADEON 9600 PRO as flames spew out of a pirates craft, my lasers pouring out of my ship impacting on the enemy’s hull, and in my moment of triumph, my speakers light up with booming sounds of sizzling metal in the cold vacuum of space. Then I realize its just a game.
The main game itself takes about 11 hours to complete. After you complete the main single player game, you are now completely and totally a freelancer. I found traveling the trade lanes and warping here to there great fun, especially in search of a new and more powerful ship. Your personal leveling up maxes out at about 33 so that’s not really a big goal to accomplish once you have all this free time on your hands. Eventually you’ll become fed up with the outrageous repetitive jobs that you receive via bars. Every single mission is either go here blow up someone, go here blow up someone and tractor in their escape pod, or go here and bring this thing there. The missions eventually become so overwhelmingly similar that it will force me to continue onto the multiplayer section of this review.
Multiplayer. Beautifully scripted and well done. The multiplayer aspect of the game is what really takes the cake about this 2003 space shooter. I have to individually commemorate Microsoft’s lan/internet hosting support due to the fact that the lagginess when playing is basically unseen. I have recently converted from dial-up and my condolences to those who still have it. Through my experience, I have encountered little to no lag when playing with my DSL connection. The online portion of the game is virtually impossible to play with a 56k modem. Having the ability to trade and team up with different people playing on the same server is awesome but is basically the only new addition when playing multiplayer. And that’s all it needs. Like I said in my intro, Freelancer is almost identical to both EVE online and Earth and Beyond. But we all know no one likes to pay monthly service fee. So if you like either of these games or are looking to purchase one of the three, my suggestion is to go with Freelancer. You get the same and maybe better gameplay with single and multiplayer w/o having to pay annoying service charges.
PARSH"S FINAL GRADE: 89%
HIGHS: Awesome gameplay/flight control.
Huge variety of weapons and ships.
Good explosion/damage models
LOWS: Jobs VERY repetitive.
Not enough NPC interaction.
Decent graphics-could be much better however.
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Divine Divinity (2002)
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SYSTEM SPECS:
CPU: 450 MHz
RAM: 128
VIDEO CARD: 8 MB
HARD DRIVE: 2.5 GB FREE
PARSH’S RECOMMENDATION
CPU: 600
RAM: 256
VIDEO CARD: 32 MB
HARD DRIVE: ANYTHING HIGHER
OPENING QUOTES, NOTES OR RECCOMENDATIONS: When starting this game, we all know in CRPGs fighters are the best, this is no exception. Mage is always the hardest but the coolest and the thief class is just annoying. Being the fighter not only starts you off as the strongest, but gives you the ability to gradually become whatever you want. Due to the well thought up skill system, you can become which ever class you want and still choose a different starting one.
With the over done and simple character creation of that found in Diablo, you choose your starting character from 6 different people. With only 3 different classes, you are able to choose from either a male or female for each. The story of this game is strait up amazing. Sorry no spoilers so I’m not going to tell you ANYTHING about it. You start up the game in a small town and make your way from there, solving various quests obtained by talking to people and a few in game cinematic triggers. Take Diablo give it a better story and better graphics, you have yourself Divine Divinity. You will spend most of your time crawling through dungeons across the world, slaughtering hundreds of different monsters and demons.
One killer aspect of this CRPG is that there are weapons aplenty. From bows to swords to axes you will have absolutely no problem figuring out your WOC (weapon of choice). At the beginning of the game you will want to focus on finding and buying weapons that have the highest power and spe
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