Segundos aportes a GamePC

Portal No-Steam (No necesita Half-Life 2 Episode 2)




Resumen:
Junto con Half Life 2: Episodio 2, VALVe entrega un nuevo juego llamado Portal. Este juego exprime al máximo niveles de lógica y resolución de problemas. Equipado únicamente con un arma que genera agujeros de teletransportación te enfrentas a varios obstáculos y robots enemigos sin siquiera poder disparles una bala. Podrás teletransportarte a cualquier lugar del escenario, disparando la entrada y salida de cada agujero, inclusive puedes caer en un ciclo infinito sin solución:


Imágenes:





Página oficial:
http://www.whatistheorangebox.com/portal.html

Género:
Acción/FPS/Habilidad

Release fuente:
Portal.Standalone-RFG

Idioma:
Inglés (con parche al español)

Ripeado:
Si, pero abajo pongo como desripear.

Tamaño total de descarga:
371 MB.

Requerientos:
Windows XP/Vista
Pentium 4 a 1.7 GHz
512 MB de RAM
Tarjeta gráfica compatible con DirectX 9 de 128 MB

Comentarios:
No necesitas tener instalado el Half Life 2: Episodio 2 para jugar.

INSTALACION:
Una vez descargadas todas las partes, con el WinRAR comenzar extrayendo el archivo que dice PORSTA.part1.rar o PORSTA[1].part1.rar en C:/Archivos de Programa/Portal o donde queramos instalarlo, pero recordá que esa ruta será donde se instalará el game. Automaticamente se extrae ese archivo y todas las partes que le siguen...
Una vez descomprimido vamos a donde lo descomprimimos y ejecutamos el Setup.exe
Se abre una ventana negra con un monton de numeritos, despues esperamos a que aparezca una cara hecha de simbolos letras y numeros y apretamos alguna tecla y se cierra, en esa misma carpeta vamos a ver que tenemos TODOS los archivos del juego, y el Setup.exe se nos ha borrado.
Para jugar ejecuta el Portal.exe o utiliza el ícono del Escritorio, obviamente si ejecutas el archivo hl2.exe te entregará error devido a que sólo estás bajando el Portal, pero no lo elimines!.
Probado en un PC con Windows XP SP2, Athlon 64 X2 4.2, RAM 1 GB y 128 de video y en otra pc con Windows XP SP2, Dual Core +4000, RAM 1 GB y 512 de video (GeForce 8600 FX)

Enlaces de descarga:
http://rapidshare.com/files/64838519/PORSTA.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/64847320/PORSTA.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/64857002/PORSTA.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/64866061/PORSTA.part4.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/64883066/PORSTA.part5.rar


No se asusten por el nombre de los archivos, es para bajar el Portal, la persona que lo subió le puso Porsta para que los de rapidshare no le eliminaran el download.

TRADUCCIÓN BY HL2SPAIN:
Descargar acá: http://www.badongo.com/file/5039980 (mas abajo explicacion de como unir las partes)

Una vez descargado lo instalamos en C:/Archivos de Programa/Portal (si es ahi donde lo tenemos) y después descargamos el archivo de 400 kb que esta mas abajo. Lo descomprimimos y lo pegamos en el directorio del Portal, que seguiramente sea el que mencione unos renglones antes. Ejecutamos el Language.exe y apretamos aceptar, y en esa ventana seleccionamos el cuadradito de Spanish y le damos aceptar y cuando entremos al juego ya lo vamos a tener en castellano.
Cuando entramos al juego vamos a ver una barra de carga que cuando termina ya tenemos los textos y audio pasados al castellano. Y listo!

Este es el patch para seleccionar y activar el parche de lenguaje español
http://rapidshare.com/files/67957299/Language.rar.html



=========================================================
Explicacion para unir el archivo Portal Spanish.exe, bajado de Badongo



como indico en la imagen, pero lo explico por si no se entiende, bajar los dos archivos"Portal Spanish.exe.aa"(97 Mb) y "Portal Spanish.exe.ab"(25 Mb), bajar el archivo de referencia (60 Kb) y el FUSOR, que es un archivo bat para unir las partes, lo que hace es unir y luego de la union borra lo que descargamos, executen ese archivo.
Al ser un BAT, podemos editarlo con cualquier editor de textos.
este es el texto que aparece dentro de este archivo BAT

@echo off
echo Starting Badongo File Merger
echo Merging Files
copy /b Portal_Spanish.exe.aa +Portal_Spanish.exe.ab Portal_Spanish.exe
echo Split completed
echo Removing Temporary files that are no longer needed
del Portal_Spanish.exe.aa
del Portal_Spanish.exe.ab
del Portal_Spanish.exe.bat
echo Press the SPACE BAR TO CLOSE THIS WINDOW
pause

si no deseamos que se borren los archivos "temporarios" (los que descargamos) borramos las siguientes lineas
echo Removing Temporary files that are no longer needed
del Portal_Spanish.exe.aa
del Portal_Spanish.exe.ab
del Portal_Spanish.exe.bat
y el texto interno deberia querdar asi


@echo off
echo Starting Badongo File Merger
echo Merging Files
copy /b Portal_Spanish.exe.aa +Portal_Spanish.exe.ab Portal_Spanish.exe
echo Split completed
echo Press the SPACE BAR TO CLOSE THIS WINDOW
pause
Tambien en vez de descargar el bat puede copiar estas lineas copiarlas a un txt y guardar como "Portal_Spanish.exe.txt" luego editar el nombre de archivo y cambiar la extencion TXT por BAT y quedaria asi "Portal_Spanish.exe.bat"

Fuente; Taringa!

¡¡Steam regala juegos a usuarios de Nvidia!!

Como dice el titulo Steam regala juegos a los que tienen la tarjeta grafica Nvidia.
Steam regala estos juegos:
-Portal: The first Slice (Demo)
-Half Life 2: Deathmatch
-Half Life 2: Lost Coast (prueba grafica)
-Peggle Extreme (Demo)

Lo que necesitas es:
-Steam
-Nvidia
-Clickar aqui para recibir el pack

Si no teneis Nvidia te la compras xD

Harvest Moon Innocent Life CSO Size: 100 MB

Harvest Moon Innocent Life CSO Size: 100 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [1 MB]

The Harvest Moon series of farming games has gradually grown a loyal following over the past decade, beginning with the series' inception on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Ten years and about 20 games later, publisher Natsume has brought its unique brand of life simulation to the PlayStation Portable, albeit with a slight twist. Instead of taking place on a rural farm that demands a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to grow and maintain, Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon takes place on an isolated island in the near future. The basic Harvest Moon formula remains intact, but it has been overly simplified, and as a result Innocent Life lacks much of the depth and character of previous games in the series.

In the future, all the horses will be slaughtered by crazed robots, but fortunately there will still be electric buggies.
Innocent Life begins in the year 2022 on the small Heartflame Island, which is home to a handful of quirky residents and one large, ominous volcano. Legends and rumors have it that the volcano will one day erupt and destroy all life on the island. You play the game as a robot that was created by the sappily named Dr. Hope. As a robot, you can explore areas that are too dangerous for the human inhabitants to explore. It's up to you to investigate the reports of volcanic activity and solve the mystery of Heartflame Island. Also, you can show all the people of the island that good, old-fashioned farm work can produce crops that are every bit as good as the fully automated farms that have become the standard. Apparently having a robot do farm work doesn't count as automation as long as the robot looks like a young boy.
Instead of living on a sprawling farm, you live in crumbling ancient ruins, where you grow your crops and raise livestock. The ruins come equipped with plenty of luxuries you won't find in other Harvest Moon games. Growing and harvesting plants is as easy as tilling soil, planting seeds, watering them once a day, and then picking the fruits and vegetables and placing them in a bin to be whisked away to the market. Early in the game you earn a helper robot that will actually do everything but harvest the produce automatically, so you barely have to do anything at all. Even raising livestock is left to helper robots, so you don't have to do anything but sit back and cash in on the milk, eggs, and wool your animals produce each day. It's nice to have a break from the menial farming tasks that can take up a lot of time, but you'll feel like the game is on autopilot. As a result, much the challenge and basic gameplay of the Harvest Moon series is missing from Innocent Life.
There is a world beyond your farm, though. Heartflame Island is small, but there are caves and wilderness areas to explore in search of magic jewels. These jewels are required to progress the story, because by placing certain colored jewels on pedestals on your farm you break magic seals that block your way to certain areas on the island. Exploring dungeonlike caves is entertaining for a while, but it's not a rewarding experience. By placing jewels on your farm you can unlock new patches of soil so you can plant more crops. However, there's very little need to do that, because by the end of the first season you'll have more money than you could possibly spend. There's no reason to amass such wealth, either, because most of the items available for purchase are completely unnecessary. You can buy seeds, but all that gets you is more useless money. The important items that you actually need in order to progress the story are all either found or given to you for free.
Beyond farming and exploring, there's very little to do in Innocent Life. You can cook, but since you're a robot you don't actually need to eat as a human would. You can fish and harvest wild fruits, but there's little need to since you'll be making more than enough money off your farm anyway. There's also relatively little character interaction in Innocent Life. You can go through much of the game without visiting any of the other inhabitants of the island, and even if you do want to get to know some of your neighbors you'll find that they just aren't very interesting people. Innocent Life also does away with the courtship, marriage, and family elements that were integral to previous Harvest Moon games. The result is a game that lacks almost everything that makes Harvest Moon interesting and challenging.

Looking for something to do? Try wandering around the wilderness harvesting fruit.
At the very least, Innocent Life looks good on the PSP. The interface is kept simple, and you can do just about anything with a press of the triangle button. You don't have to spend an inordinate amount of time shuffling through menus or trying to locate items in your rucksack. The island looks good, with lush vegetation, sparkling rivers, and nice seasonal backdrops. The futuristic elements of the game appear in structures and items around your home and in town. None of it looks interesting or inspired, though, and it mostly consists of a lot of glass domes, conveyor belts, and pneumatic tubes. There's no voice work here, but you'll find the soft music to be easy on the ears.
If you're looking for a deep, complex life simulation for the PlayStation Portable, you'll be disappointed with Innocent Life. It can be satisfying at first to see your hard work bring valuable produce from a dusty patch of earth, but the sense of accomplishment quickly wears off. Some of the simplified processes offer a welcome break from the tedium of farm work, but Innocent Life is watered down to the point that it doesn't feel like much of a game anymore.

Harry Potter and the Order of Phoeniex CSO Size: 553 MB

Harry Potter and the Order of Phoeniex CSO Size: 553 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [99 MB]

Part 4 [99 MB]

Part 5 [99 MB]

Part 6 [58 MB]

The Harry Potter series of books has captured both the minds of children and adults alike. The movies haven't disappointed either and are amongst the highest grossing films of all time. For some reason, the video games that have been released alongside the movies haven't been able to reach the same level of quality that the movies and books have achieved. The latest game, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, continues that trend. There's a faithful re-creation of the Hogwarts campus to explore, but once you've seen the sights, there's not much else to do. Even the most diehard Potter fans will grow tired of seeing the grand staircase as they return from their umpteenth fetch quest.
Order of the Phoenix follows the story of the book and the movie of the same name. After narrowly avoiding expulsion for using magic in front of a muggle, Harry finds that Hogwarts' new defense against the dark arts teacher seems to have it out for him. To make matters worse, Voldemort is threatening to rear his ugly mug again, and Harry fears that the school will be unable to defend itself. With the help of Ron and Hermione, Harry rallies the students together to form Dumbledore's Army in an effort to ready them for a fight against the dark lord. This all makes perfect sense if you've read the book, but the story's exceedingly difficult to follow if you haven't read it because vast segments of the story are told via brief full-motion video cutscenes and newspaper clippings. It's easy to understand how a three-hour movie might have to leave bits and pieces out, but it's puzzling that an eight-hour game can't tell even the most basic aspect of the story.

Who knew that Harry's life was so boring?
Though the game's box says you'll get to play as Sirius Black and Dumbledore, you do so for less than five minutes, so you'll spend nearly the entire game controlling Harry. Ron and Hermione will be by your side the whole time offering hints on where to go or what to do next. You'll also encounter every recognizable character from the Harry Potter universe along your journey. The game starts off with a tutorial where you'll learn basic spells like wingardium leviosa (levitation), reparo (repair an object), accio (pull an object toward you), and depulso (push an object away) by helping people fix broken dishes, pack their suitcases, and move furniture--not exactly riveting stuff. On the PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation, 3, and Xbox 360, you cast spells by pressing a button to point your wand and moving the right analog stick in a specific pattern. Rotating the stick clockwise will cast reparo, pressing down twice will cast accio, and pushing forward twice will cast depulso. You can also use the keyboard and mouse on the PC and this works fine. On the Wii, you'll hold the remote vertically then tilt it forward to cast depulso. To perform wingardium leviosa, you'll raise both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk to lift the object then move the controllers around to maneuver the object. This works surprisingly well, and it makes it feel as if you are actually casting spells, which goes a long way toward making the game more enjoyable. The PS3 does use the Sixaxis' motion controls, but tilting and twisting the controller as you hold it in your lap doesn't add much to the experience.
Later in the game, you'll learn combat spells. These are cast in the same way as noncombat spells and mostly use the same patterns. But there will only be a few instances where you'll need to perform these combat spells because there's hardly any dueling in the game. This is probably a good thing because the combat isn't very good, and it's tough to tell if you're actually hitting someone. Even during the last fight, you just stand there casting the same spell over, waiting for a cutscene to signify the end of the battle.
Once you've learned some basic spells, it's off to Hogwarts, which is faithfully re-created in a game for the first time. The Hogwarts campus is absolutely huge, which is both a blessing and a curse. Fans should really get a kick out of seeing the grand staircase in motion and candles floating above the tables in the great hall, as well as sneaking into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. But traversing back and forth across such a large area quickly becomes tiresome. Once you find the proper passwords, you can use the passages behind paintings as shortcuts, but they don't cut that much time off the journey. Another problem is the in-game navigation system. You're given a map that lists all of the different areas on campus, as well as the location of each person you need to find. Once you've highlighted the person or place you're looking for, footprints will appear on the ground to lead the way. Unfortunately, the footprints are black, so they're difficult to see; they don't appear far enough in front of you, so you're constantly forced to stop to wait for them to appear; and the camera will often switch angle midstride, so you don't know which way you're facing.

Exploring Hogwarts is interesting…for a while.
You've got a huge campus and healthy number of spells at your disposal, so you'll no doubt be doing all sorts of awesome things in incredible, mystical places, right? No. You spend most of the game running around trying to inform everyone as to the whereabouts of the room of requirement. You'll pick a character on the map, follow the footprints, and then tell people about the meeting place. In almost every single case, they'll have a reason for why they can't go. Of course, you've got to help them. This means you'll run all over Hogwarts collecting items, moving benches, fixing things, and helping people with their homework. This is how you spend the entire game. It's literally one fetch quest after another. Being able to pick the quest you want gives the illusion that you've got the freedom to do what you want, but the game is extremely linear in that there's only one way to accomplish any given objective. And sometimes you'll be performing the same exact task over again, such as when you're helping to disable the school's intercom by moving benches then pouring a potion into the speakers. You do this, not once, not twice, but five or six times; each time in a different room.
Performing one menial task after another would be bad enough on its own, but other issues conspire to make it worse. The game does a decent job of showing you where people and places are, but once you've met with someone, you're quite often on your own when it comes to figuring out how to help him or her. For example, at one point in the game, you must help a kid find five talking gargoyles. Now, you've encountered several talking gargoyles to this point, but for some reason, you can't tell the kid this and you must find the gargoyles again. Not only are you doing something you've already done, but the map doesn't show you where these gargoyles are, so you're forced to scour the entire campus in an effort to locate them.
When you're not playing the role of messenger boy, you'll spend much of your time cleaning up Hogwarts by putting statues, paintings, and urns back together. You can also search behind curtains for giant chess pieces, move blocks to find hidden plaques, light torches, and even sweep floors. These tasks are actually pleasant diversions for a short while, and you can unlock extras by performing them. But the tasks speak poorly for the game as a whole when sweeping the floor is a highlight. Another way to pass the time is to play chess, exploding snap, and gobstones. Gobstones (think marbles) and exploding snap (pick out matching pairs of cards) are simple but fun. Chess plays similar to Battle Chess and is actually quite engaging--if you've played chess before. The game will show you the moves that each piece can make, but there's no tutorial mode, which may leave many younger players clueless.

Even though EA scanned the actors' noggins, the characters still look a bit off.
Visually, Order of the Phoenix is all over the place. Many areas of Hogwarts, such as the grand staircase or great hall, look spectacular and are very detailed. However, many of the hallways look the same and are largely empty. Combat spells look really cool when you cast them, but there are so few duels that you'll rarely get to enjoy seeing the spells in action. At first glance, character models look just like their movie counterparts and are quite nice. But once you see them in motion, you'll notice that they all look kind of like zombies. Things are even worse in the cutscenes that utilize the in-game engine. Characters stare blankly off into the distance, they face the wrong way, their mouths often don't move when they talk, and they'll appear then disappear from view for no apparent reason. The PS3, 360, and PC versions look the best. Other than lower quality in-game cutscenes and some nasty aliasing, the PS2 and Wii versions hold their own, though the PS2's frame rate is pretty iffy at times. Having the actors from the films voice their characters in the game goes a long way toward immersing you in the experience, even with the shoddy cutscenes and script. The familiar musical score is here and suits the game perfectly, which kind of makes you wonder why it was used so little.
It's hard to imagine that the video game version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will appeal to anyone. Older fans of Harry Potter will enjoy exploring Hogwarts for a while, but they'll soon be bored to tears by the low level of difficulty and the tedious objectives. The younger set will also get a kick out of seeing the sights and will appreciate the forgiving difficulty, as well as the simplicity of the tasks at hand. But they'll quickly grow tired of using their favorite character to perform a seemingly endless parade of chores. If being the most famous wizard in the world were this boring, there wouldn't have been more than one book.

Great Battles of Rome ISO Size: 935 MB

Great Battles of Rome ISO Size: 935 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [99 MB]

Part 4 [99 MB]

Part 5 [99 MB]

Part 6 [99 MB]

Part 7 [99 MB]

Part 8 [99 MB]

Part 9 [99 MB]

Part 10 [44 MB]

Over the years there have been many strategy games. Most recently the Total War series has set the bar for what strategy games should look like and how they should play.So when I picked up the History Channel approved Great Battles of Rome, I was a little concerned that it may not live up to these other great games.Starting with tutorial, it quickly becomes clear that this is not a game aimed at hardcore strategy gamers. Spilt into 3 phases, you will need to set up your army, position them and set your tactics, then watch the battle unfold.Setting up your army consists of a few things. As you play through the campaigns you earn gold. This enables you to buy more units for your army and also to upgrade your current units. This adds a kind of RPG aspect to the game. For instance, your scouts survive a battle. You then get the option to upgrade an aspect of them. This could be upgrade their fighting ability, add NCOs (Non Commissioned Officers) to improve moral, add more defensive abilities etc. You can also give them better weapons and armour. Over time you begin to become rather attached to your veterans, to the point that you send them into battle a bit late, to make sure they will survive! To add to this attachment you can even name your units. The same is true of the Commander. Keep upgrading him and you will be allowed access to more options in the main battle.Next up you will need to position your units on the map. Before this you will be given some hints on what units will do best in what conditions. So positioning horses in the woods will just hinder them, where foot soldiers will do well in there. During this phase you set up your strategy. This includes the formations your units will start off in, when they should attack and if they are going to flank the enemy, surround them or just charge straight in.
If, like me, you just like to dabble or are interested in getting into the strategy genre, this is a great place to start!Finally the battle. You are given a 3D flyover of the battle field, so you can get a feel for where everything is. Next the troops start their moves. At this stage you can just sit back and watch the battle ensue. However, even the best laid plans can do with some adjustments. You are able to issue new orders, in real time as you see new tactical opportunities arise. Click on a unit and then right click where you want them to move and they will obey. As you upgrade your commander you will even be able to change formations. This real time modification of strategies is great as it allows you to prevent certain greener troops from routing, by holding them back if they are getting a pasting and sending in your veterans to show them how it is done! Although the battle phase is in 3D, it is not a particularly pretty game. The graphics are dated and have a very budget feel to them. This does mean that you can run this on almost any system, but in this photo realistic age it may put some gamers off. However once you get a good number of units, you do get some large and spectacular looking battles! You also get a lot of History Channel footage to set the scene for campaigns. This gives it all a nice authentic feel. It's like a stamp of historical approval.For me this is a perfect strategy game. It is simple, allowing you to concentrate on tactics rather than resource management, like in the Cossacks games. The RPG elements are a nice addition, giving you a reason to protect your units, rather than just letting them charge in and get obliterated. If you are a real strategy game player, then this may be a bit to simplistic for you. If, like me, you just like to dabble or are interested in getting into the strategy genre, this is a great place to start!

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories ISO Size: 452 MB

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories ISO Size: 452 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [99 MB]

Part 4 [99 MB]

Part 5 [56 MB]

Rockstar's juggernaut Grand Theft Auto series debuted on the PlayStation Portable late last year in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, a side-story prequel to the events that took place in Grand Theft Auto III for the PlayStation 2. With Liberty City Stories, Rockstar successfully translated its open-ended world of crime to a handheld system, though not without a few missteps. Enter Vice City Stories, the newly released PSP GTA game that follows a similar side-story formula. Vice City Stories improves upon some of the flaws found in the first game, not the least of which is improved length and direction, as well as a great deal more personality. The story's still pretty subpar, though, and as much as this is very much Grand Theft Auto, certain conventions of the series are starting to feel a bit antiquated. Still, if you want to roam around a large city, shooting up the place and driving like a crazy person, few games on the PSP let you do that as well as this one does.

Return to the soft neon glow of Vice City in GTA: Vice City Stories.
Vice City Stories returns to the pastel- and neon-colored excesses of the 1980s and Vice City. Modeled after '80s-era Miami, GTA: Vice City told a Scarface-inspired tale of Tommy Vercetti, a shunned mobster who found himself sifting through the aftermath of a cocaine deal gone wrong, and subsequently ended up building a major criminal empire throughout the city. It was a bizarre, convoluted, and completely entertaining tale, filled with ridiculous and profane characters, as well as lots of biting satire on the most superficial of decades. Vice City Stories is, again, a prequel, taking place a couple of years prior to the original game. You play as Vic Vance, the brother of central Vice City character Lance Vance. Vic's a strange fellow. When the game begins, he's just joined the army, and he gets off the transport truck at a military base in Vice City. Upon meeting his commanding officer--a borderline psychotic named Jerry Martinez--things start going wrong. We find out that Vic has joined the military to make some money to support his family, specifically his sick brother. But within the first few minutes of the game, you'll find yourself inexplicably picking up drugs for Martinez, killing Mexican gang members, and chauffeuring prostitutes.
Of course, any veteran of this series won't be shocked one bit by missions like these. The trouble here is that the setup for getting Vic into this mess is beyond flimsy. From the get-go, Vic talks about how uncomfortable he is with illegal activities, and yet he does every single illicit thing Martinez asks him to do. If you're someone who doesn't want to do anything illegal, and your boss starts asking you to pick up hookers and hide drugs for him, are you going to just gripe about it and then do it anyway? Not to mention that Vic seems completely willing to run into an apartment complex and start wasting Mexicans without even being ordered specifically to do so. He just says, "I'll go get it" (referring to owed money stashed inside one of the apartments) and goes in guns blazing. GTA heroes are never heroes, exactly, but the trick in the past has been that there's been no attempt to play those characters up as sympathetic. They weren't boy scouts--they were gangsters, killers, and dope dealers. Vice City Stories tries to present Vic as a guy who doesn't want to get into that stuff, yet he freely and frequently does throughout the entire game. He mostly comes off as a hypocritical idiot.
For what it's worth, though, once you get through about the first hour of the game, you'll probably be inclined to stop questioning why Vic is doing what he's doing and just go with it. As time passes, the game settles into the typical progression of GTA missions and oddball characters. While Liberty City Stories was almost devoid of memorable characters, Vice City Stories digs up a few favorites from the original Vice City, and introduces a couple of new ones as well. Vic's mildly crazy brother Lance, the alcoholic gun nut Phil Cassidy, the balls-obsessed Cuban gang leader Umberto Robina, and the foul-mouthed Ricardo Diaz (voiced by Phillip Michael Thomas, Gary Busey, Danny Trejo, and Luis Guzman, respectively) are all back. Lance plays a huge role in the story, but the others aren't quite as prominently featured as they were in the first game. Still, you get a good chunk of time with each of them.
Functionally, Vice City Stories plays very much as Liberty City Stories did. The same basic control adjustments made in the previous game to make up for the lack of a right analog stick on the PSP are made here. When running around and shooting people, you simply press the right trigger to lock onto an enemy. Occasionally the game will lock onto random civilians, as opposed to the guy with the submachine gun blowing a hole in your head, but usually it's pretty good about identifying exactly whom you should be killing. Camera control is mapped to the left trigger, and basically all you can do is whip it behind you if you get too turned around. This will lead to occasional scenarios where you're being shot from behind and have to take a couple of extra seconds to turn your character, and then the camera, to see where to shoot.
Mostly, though, the combat is quite fun. Running around causing mayhem and blasting away at the masses is just as enjoyable as it's ever been, and there's a good variety of guns and other instruments of destruction to play with. The one part that isn't so good, unfortunately, is the melee combat. Basic fisticuffs and blunt-object beatings are merely a bit clunky, but if you try to get yourself into a fight while holding a gun at close range to someone punching you in the face, you'll lose every time, unless you run a good distance away, turn back, and start firing. For some reason, the game just can't deal with aiming mechanics while you're face-to-face with an enemy; you're basically hosed.

It's hard to feel too sympathetic to Vic Vance, since he seems incapable of keeping himself out of trouble, despite the fact that he whines about it at every turn.
Vice City is a sizable open-world environment, and driving around it can be a bit overwhelming at first. Odds are that unless you've had Vice City regularly inserted in your PS2 for the last couple of years, you won't remember too much of the city's layout. But even though it'll take a while to figure out all the roads and side streets, there's plenty of familiar scenery and landmarks that appear just about where you remember them. The game's minimap is about as useful as it's ever been in depicting where you are, and there is a larger map to check on in the pause menu. Still, it feels a bit antiquated, especially considering evolutions we've seen in recent games of this type, where the best possible paths for a mission are highlighted on the map. Heck, even an arrow pointer telling you where to turn would be nice.
Driving in the game is pretty much as it's been for years now. The vehicle physics are perhaps a bit more exaggerated than they were in Liberty City Stories, and that's both a blessing and a curse. It's extremely easy to spin out while taking turns in many of the game's cars, trucks, and motorcycles, but at the same time, some of the jumps and ridiculous crashes you can have make those wacked-out physics worthwhile. You will run into weird physics glitches from time to time, and you'll sometimes get stuck in pieces of the scenery. These issues aren't exactly new to the series, but they're as annoying as ever. In addition to cars and bikes, helicopters make their return in Vice City Stories, and they're among some of the most enjoyable vehicles in the game. The flying controls are surprisingly easy to handle, even with the lack of a right analog stick, and flying around the city is often much quicker than trying to drive it.

Gitaroo Man Lives CSO Size: 703 MB

Gitaroo Man Lives

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [99 MB]

Part 4 [99 MB]

Part 5 [99 MB]

Part 6 [99 MB]

Part 7 [99 MB]

Part 8 [10 MB]

In a grand twist of irony, the people who are likely most excited about the release of Gitaroo Man Lives! on the PSP stand to get the least out of this rhythm game. It's effectively the same game that Koei released on the PlayStation 2 nearly five years ago as simply Gitaroo Man, so if you're one of the very, very few people who bought the original, Gitaroo Man Lives! doesn't offer much except a couple of new songs and some nostalgic value. But if you haven't already experienced this eccentric tale of a timid young boy's destiny and space guitars, you are in for a treat. Even after all these years, Gitaroo Man Lives! proves to be a unique rhythm game with solid gameplay, catchy tunes, and a striking art style. Rhythm games of any quality are in short supply on the PSP, and Gitaroo Man Lives! is a good one.

Gitaroo Man and his inexplicable backup band, relaxing at home.
You're introduced at the start of the story to a put-upon young boy named U-1. He's got no friends, he can't work up the nerve to talk to the girl he likes, and he lets himself get pushed around by the local bully. So when his talking dog, Puma, hands him a strange guitar-shaped instrument that turns him into the legendary Gitaroo Man, he doesn't want the job. Still, with much prodding from Puma, planet Gitaroo's elder, and a pretty young girl named Kirah, U-1 takes on the diabolical Gravillians, an alien race determined to use stolen Gitaroo technology to take over the universe. The "reluctant hero" formula is pretty predictable, but the execution is totally bizarre. Each stage pits you against a different Gravillian warrior, and you'll find yourself in musical showdowns with a Louis Armstrong-inspired trumpet player wearing a bee suit; a giant, mechanical space shark that blares drum-and-bass and dub music; a trio of calypso-loving skeletons; an effete, organ-playing goth rocker; and more. Despite its inherent weirdness, the game treats everything with a certain Japanese sincerity, which can be corny, but it pays off during a particularly touching ballad, as well as in the game's final, genuinely climactic confrontation.
All of the music in Gitaroo Man Lives! was produced by the Japanese group COIL, and it covers a pretty incredible range. It all benefits from the game's context, though some of it is good enough that you might want to listen to it on its own. The game's visuals are also quite striking, and the game more than makes up for its technical simplicity with a strong sense of style. The character designs are bizarre and often kind of boxy, but the game has a uniquely cartoonish quality because it uses brightly colored textures instead of polygons to fill in the details. The game looks roughly as good as it did on the PlayStation 2, though there are some inconsistencies in the texture clarity.
The gameplay remains basically the same throughout and consists of two distinctly different parts. When you're playing your gitaroo, you'll use the PSP's analog stick to move a cone in the center of the screen to follow a line around the screen, and you'll need to tap and hold the circle button in time with commands on the line. When you're dodging the musical attacks of your enemies, button commands will fly toward the center of the screen, and you'll have to hit the corresponding button right as the command reaches the middle. The individual parts can get pretty tough, and things get especially tricky when the game starts alternating between offense and defense in quick succession. Still, with three different difficulty levels, Gitaroo Man Lives! can be as hard or as easy as you need it to be.

The back of the box says 'Big up yourself rude boy in Vs. mode!' We have no idea what that means.
If there's any fault to find in Gitaroo Man Lives!, it's the game's length. The single-player game consists of only seven different levels, and you can burn through it in just a few hours, even on your first time through. It would be even shorter, were it not for the nearly minute-long load times that you have to endure between levels. The gameplay is interesting enough, and the catchy songs and some of the unlockables inspire multiple play-throughs, but there's no denying the game's brevity. There are some two-player options for competitive and cooperative play, and the co-op mode features a couple original songs. It's a good thing you can play the co-op mode alongside a computer-controlled companion in lieu of a real player two, though, since Gitaroo Man Lives! features only local multiplayer support, with no game sharing.
This is a pretty out-of-the-blue release for Koei, which has done nothing with the Gitaroo Man name since the first game's original release. Hopefully this is a prelude to a full-fledged sequel. Gitaroo Man Lives! is still a solid rhythm game for newcomers, but its brevity will ensure that almost everyone, first-timers and longtime fans alike, will be left waiting for the encore.

Ghost Rider CSO Size: 694 MB

Ghost Rider CSO Size: 694 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [99 MB]

Part 4 [99 MB]

Part 5 [99 MB]

Part 6 [99 MB]

Part 7 [99 MB]

Part 8 [1 MB]

Just call it "Devil May Ghost Rider of War." Based ever-so-loosely on the same-named upcoming Nic Cage movie (which, in turn, is based on the popular Marvel comic book), Ghost Rider isn't just inspired by such great action franchises as God of War and Devil May Cry, it practically robs those games blind of every gameplay mechanic it can get its grubby, demonic hands on. And yet, somehow, some way, despite the incredible pedigrees the developers were lifting from, Ghost Rider is completely bereft of the elements that made those games so much fun. It is a hollow, monotonous shell of those games, completely soulless in its execution and devoid of any unique or interesting qualities, much less any fun. Suffice it to say, no matter how much of an affinity you have for the titular hero, this game is not for you.

How in the heck do you make a game about a dude with a flaming skull for a head so incredibly boring?!?
Ghost Rider purportedly features a storyline penned by Marvel writers Garth Ennis and Jimmy Palmiotti, but the story feels less like a fully fleshed-out piece of comic fiction and more like leftover table scraps. The story doesn't even do a good job of tying in to the movie. It's told through some comic-paned cutscenes that feature just-different-enough-to-not- quite-look-like-real-actors drawings of all the major characters from the movie. A soundalike of Sam Elliott (apparently channeling his Big Lebowski character, with a spookier edge) narrates a few opening sequences just to get you up to speed, and eventually you figure out that the demon Mephisto needs Ghost Rider to head up to earth to stop his son, Blackheart, and his army of demons from getting their apocalypse on. It's a middling tale that's disjointed in its delivery and does a weak job of shoving in some familiar Marvel personalities (like Blade) just because it can. It also doesn't help that the audio mix on the cutscenes is so awful that you'll have to turn the volume on your TV way, way up just to hear what's going on, only to be brutally assaulted with the screechy in-game sound effects and soundtrack at much-too-high volume seconds later.
Once you settle into the gameplay, you'll find an unholy combination of God of War's whip-heavy combat and Devil May Cry's ranking system. The game is all about you killing Blackheart's demonic forces with as much style and variety as possible, and to its credit, it does provide a decent number of combos to work with. You start out with almost none, but then, through a direct rip of God of War's upgrade system (right down to the sound effect it uses to fill up your various upgradeable meters), you can use souls you've collected to buy new combos and up your abilities.
The problem, though, is that very few of the combos are actually worth using, and you get the most useful ones very early in the game. In fact, one combo in particular is so powerful, it kills just about any enemy in roughly three hits. All the other combos in the game tend to take much longer to fell any one foe, so there's not much incentive to ever use the other combos--except when the game forces you to. There are a couple of instances where enemies will pop up with shields that can only be broken by reaching a certain ranking on the combo meter. You can't build up your combo meter unless you throw in as much attack variety as possible, so you're arbitrarily forced to use as many different attacks as you can to eventually crack this shield. Trouble is, the meter fully resets any time you're hit, and enemies are just good enough at coming at you from offscreen and nailing you when you're not expecting it to make this whole process intensely frustrating.
Apart from this one particularly stupid element, very little of the remaining components of Ghost Rider are frustrating, mainly because the game's really easy. You fight the same onslaughts of the same generic demons over and over again, and they never change up their attack patterns in the slightest. Not to mention the one-size-fits-all combo that eliminates practically any bad guy in just a few hits. You'll blow through the game in just a few hours, but it'll take some fortitude to not become desperately bored an hour into the whole thing. The combat goes absolutely nowhere, and the enemies are so dull to look at and fight that you can't help but wish the developer had gone the extra mile and just lifted enemies right out of DMC or GOW, since at least they'd put up a more interesting fight. Level designs add to the sense of monotony, not just through their constantly drab and grainy graphics, but also because the game frequently forces you to backtrack through the same territory again and again.
Interspersed between the boring beat-'em-up levels are a number of motorcycle-riding sequences. These are pretty straightforward, sticking you on the Rider's flaming bike and tasking you with making it from point A to point B, all the while shooting away at bad guys that randomly pop up in your path. Periodically you'll need to get all Road Rash on them and swipe at some enemy bikers with your chains, or hop or slide your bike over or under some obstacle, but that's about it. The controls in these sequences are pretty loose, and there's even less variety to them than to the beat-'em-up portions of the game. And just like in the other levels, these sequences force you to backtrack frequently.
Ghost Rider is out for both the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable, and while the core gameplay is identical between the two, other details are quite different. The main story mode is structured differently between the two. You play in a much smaller area in the PSP levels, and each time you clear a section of enemies, you walk into a checkpoint, which then spawns another crop of bad guys. In the PS2 version, you travel from stage to stage, just as you would in a typical action adventure game. The PSP version also has quite a bit more bonus content, including a challenge mode and a multiplayer mode. The challenge mode includes a few different race modes, some of which include rule variations like elimination races and a survival mode, where all the racers have a quickly diminishing life bar and must get to the checkpoints to replenish themselves. Of course, the races suffer from the same bad controls as the story mode driving sequences, and the few weapons you can use to mess with your opponents don't help matters. Still, you can play these same modes in multiplayer, both with multiple copies of the game or with game sharing. Clearly someone went to a lot of trouble to make the PSP version's features more interesting--too bad the underlying gameplay of these features wasn't made better.

The driving sequences would be pathetically easy if it weren't for the bad bike-handling controls.
The PSP and PS2 games look practically identical, too--so much so that you'd actually have to say the PSP version is more impressive looking, just because so little seems to have been lost in translation. Of course, that's less a compliment to the PSP game and more an extreme knock against the PS2 game, as neither could be considered good looking by any stretch of the imagination. The graphics are terribly grainy and the level designs so blurry and ugly that they just become hard to look at after a while. Ghost Rider's been given a few stylish attack animations here and there, but none of it's all that impressive. The enemy designs are particularly lame; these generic bad guys could have been plucked from any bargain-basement action game, and couldn't be any less intimidating looking if they wore white sheets, rattled bike chains, and said "boo" a lot. On top of everything else, the camera and frame rate can't even hold up their end of the bargain. The frame rate chunks up badly in a number of seemingly random spots, and the camera tries to go for the whole God of War, fixed-angle thing, but it frequently kills your ability to properly see where enemies reside. The only control you have over it is to snap it behind you.
Though it's hard to be shocked these days when a movie-licensed game isn't quite up to snuff, Ghost Rider is legitimately surprising in just how poor a game it is. That it goes so far out of its way to usurp qualities from multiple major action adventure franchises, then proceeds to trot out the dullest, blandest beat-'em-up possible with those lifted mechanics is mind-boggling. Fans of the comic will be depressed with how poorly their favorite hero is utilized here, and fans of action adventure games won't be able to shake the feeling that they're playing a bad bootleg of games they've already played before. Indeed, Ghost Rider is ultimately just another flaming corpse to toss on the pile of failed licensed action games.
By Alex Navarro, GameSpot
Posted Feb 15, 2007 6:05 pm PT

Full Auto 2 CSO Size: 223 MB

Full Auto 2 CSO Size: 223 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [25 MB

The original Full Auto debuted on the Xbox 360 and tried to be a thrilling combat racing game but ultimately failed. The explosions were cool, but the handling was bad, the car physics made everything feel weightless, and the weapons weren't much fun to use. Full Auto 2: Battlelines has switched sides and is exclusively available on the PlayStation 3. It makes some changes to how you outfit your vehicle, attempts to add a storyline, and adds a new arena mode that makes it a bit more like the car combat games of old. But it doesn't fix the core problems of the first game, so all the new modes only serve to make the bad handling, questionable physics, and dull weaponry stand out that much more. Whether you're familiar with the previous game or not, this game probably isn't for you.

Full Auto 2 attempts to add a story to the single-player mode, but it's barely there and kind of dumb.
The storyline has you answering to a computer-based authority figure called S.A.G.E. This female-voiced computer summons you because an evil gang is running the streets. The police can't stop them, so it's up to you to enter the gang's car combat events and take them out from the inside. It's a very thin story that doesn't add anything meaningful to the game. The career mode takes you from one series to the next, and each series has a number of different events in it. While there are more events than there are tracks or arenas, the game changes things up by giving you different primary and secondary objectives. Sometimes you'll just need to finish first. At other times, you'll have to gun down a specific vehicle, then finish first. There are also arena levels that take away the racetrack and give you a wide-open level on which to fight. In the arena levels, you'll have to blow up your enemies to succeed, and you're usually on a time limit too. You'll have to hit the primary objectives to move on, and meeting the secondary objectives, helps you to unlock more stuff. But you'll unlock most of what you need just by getting the primaries, so unless you're crazy about getting new paint jobs for your car, you don't need to get every single little thing.
So the main focus of the game is racing around in cars and shooting everything that moves; two things that are cornerstones of the video game industry. But the way Full Auto 2 brings them together isn't very exciting. The driving is brought down by poor car control. The vehicles all very floaty and weightless, and the way they fly through the air after hitting jumps just doesn't feel right. Also, the handling lacks finesse, making it very easy to just bang your way through every corner without really caring that you're hitting walls all over the place. The hand brake lets you slide a bit through turns; but the sliding, too, doesn't feel right at all. In addition to basic driving, you can fire two weapons. You select your weapons individually prior to starting the race and unlock more as you go. So the weak machine gun and smoke screen combo you're limited to at the beginning quickly gives way to a shotgun, grenade launchers, mines, and so on. The fire controls work decently, and you can even aim some of the front weapons with the right stick. But because you need to hit the face buttons pretty frequently to fire your secondary weapon or hit the hand brake, you don't have much time to fiddle around with aiming your front weapon. The other two things at your disposal are a speed boost and "unwreck," which is a button that lets you rewind time when things go wrong and hope that they pan out a bit better the next time. Unlike the first game, your boost and unwreck are linked to the same meter; so if you boost a lot, you'll be unable to unwreck as frequently. But the speed boost almost always seems more useful than the ability to rewind your mistakes, so unwreck feels mostly useless.
In addition to the career mode, you can jump into any race or arena via an arcade mode and just play, but you'll still be limited by what you've unlocked in the career. The multiplayer options let you play two-player games locally or up to eight players online. The online mode has options for ranked and unranked arena battles and races, and you can limit which cars are chosen to help keep things fair, but the weapon selection is always based on what you've unlocked in the career. Of course, there is a catch. It's either a function of the rarity of the PlayStation 3 or a statement about the popularity of Full Auto 2, but it seems like almost no one is playing this game online. Ranked matches require four players to start, and even after sitting in a ranked connection screen with one other racer for more than an hour, no one else joined up to play. Unranked games can go with just two players, but even those seem to be in extremely short supply. To add an extra layer of frustration, there's no way to communicate with other players, so you can't even put on a headset or plug in a keyboard and say "Hey, instead of sitting here for another hour, how about we go try an unranked match instead?" In the few multiplayer games we were able to find, the game ran reasonably well, but there was a noticeable amount of jumpiness and lag to the way the opposing cars move. Of course, your mileage may vary when it comes to online experiences of any kind, but don't expect to find a bustling community to play with online.

The game's multiplayer options are fairly bare, but considering it's tough to even find other players online at the moment, it sort of doesn't matter.
Full Auto 2 runs in 1080p, if you're equipped with a television that can handle it. Even at this high resolution, the game runs at a mostly stable frame rate, but it isn't as smooth as Ridge Racer 7, the other 1080p racing game on the PS3. The game has decent explosions, but the environments are sort of plain, and the game doesn't deliver an especially thrilling sense of speed either. If you're looking for a point of comparison, it does look better and run smoother than its Xbox 360-based predecessor, but the difference never seems huge. The sound is essentially what you'd expect it to be, with plenty of explosions, gun fire, and engine noises. The music is pretty generic electronic music that fits with the action. The more important vehicles in the career mode actually have licensed music associated with them, with the idea that as you get closer, that car's theme song starts getting louder and louder. But the jarring switch from the regular racing music over to the licensed track and then back again if you fall behind, makes this better in concept than it is in practice.
In fact, that's the case for all of Full Auto 2: Battlelines. A high-speed racing game with action-packed weaponry and destructible environments is a solid, if somewhat uninspired, concept. But in practice, not a single aspect of the game comes out feeling right, and what's left is a generic racing shooter that fails to excite from end to end. Unless you're absolutely, positively desperate for something new on the PlayStation 3, you can most definitely stay away from Full Auto 2. ]

Freekout Extreme Freeride CSO Size: 524 MB

Freekout Extreme Freeride CSO Size: 524 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [99 MB]

Part 4 [99 MB]

Part 5 [99 MB]

Part 6 [29 MB]

From EA Big comes the second instalment of Freekstyle, it was first released on the PS2 a couple of months ago, now it's time for GameCube take a high flying ride on the dirty stuff.
Freekstyle isn't the only motor cross game for the GameCube, MX Superfly was released a few months ago and it is a much more authentic motor cross game that simulates the sport instead of offering all out arcade action like Freestyle. The main object of Freekstyle is to go as fast as you can at all times while pulling some wicked air.
Freekstyle has several different modes of play but you will probably have to spend quite a lot of time on the single player circuit mode before you can get any enjoyment out of the other modes. You will have to do this because you will have to unlock new tracks, bikes and bikers over the course of the circuit mode. There are six different venues to race plus three Freekstyle courses. In each one you will race against five other bikers and you will have to ride each course at least three times, or more of you loose. In the finals you must finish first to move on to the next venue. This can take some time because each race consists of three laps, this takes on average about 5-7 minutes and you must race at least three times on one track in order to progress. So each track will take a minimum of 15-17 minutes to complete and that is if you win every race, which is very unlikely after your get passed the first two venues.
This probably will sound like a long time to you and it is, it's not because Freekstyle is a slow game it is because the tracks are so big, they are actually massive at times and the whole game is completely over the top. All eight riders are based on real world riders, if I hadn't have told you that you probably would never have know because for starters they don't look much like their real world doubles and their in game personalities are very stylised.
The trick system on the PS2 version worked very well with the four shoulder buttons in the same way SSX does, on the GameCube the controller will disable you to a certain extent, although the Z button works very well when tweaking tricks for better results. To earn more points rather than tweaking a trick you should attempt to pull more than one trick and try some combos, obviously you wont manage combos on all jumps so that is why the tweak button is there. You should not pull the same trick multiple times as the point awarded for that trick will diminish every time you pull it off. You can also hold a trick longer for extra points. All these tricks aren't just for show or the points, when you pull off a trick your boost meter will increase so when you need that extra bit of power to overtake or catch up to your rival you can quickly accelerate and exceed you maximum speed limit for a short time. You will also find that whole all this is happening you will be slowly filling up your Freekout meter, once full you can execute your rider's signature sick trick and in return you are rewarded with a temporary boost of super freaky speed which involves blurred speed vision and leaving a trail of fire in your path. To keep the Freekout going you must pull off another sick trick before the effect runs out. When you get used to a track you will be able to keep a freakout going for a long time. Should you fall off in the process the effect will stop, if you fall off while building your Freekout meter it will also drop a few notches and so will your boost meter. So falling of is bad, OK?
The tracks in Freekstyle are good, they are not what you would call realistic but they are usually extreme. Most of them are your standard out door looking motor cross tracks with huge jumps but others have an industrial feel to them. All the tracks feature loads on mad jumps, freefalls and glass windows to smash through. There are short cuts in all the courses too but you will find if you get a bit too creative with your shortcuts your will be punished. Invisible barriers are just too common in Freekstyle and rather than experimenting with shortcuts you will generally stick to the track that you know. Another problem is that there are only six tracks, instead of adding more tracks the difficultly level has been ramped up for too high. No matter how hard you ride your opponents will be near by, at the start you shouldn't have any problems but as the game progresses you will realise what you're up against. You can keep your Freekout going for a minute and then when you think you have blown off all the competition the second place man with fly by as is your standing still. You will learn as you progress that the only part of the race that matters is the last lap and even then when you put all your effort in to Freaking out the computer will rob you at the finishing line. Unfortunately when you do win it can be as much down to chance as it is down to skill. Not very good stuff really!!! Unlike SSX, you are unable to punch or kick your competitors of their bikes, this is a real disappointment and even ramming doesn't work it is impossible to knock off your competitors.
Freekstyle's other modes of play are pretty good. There is a free ride mode if you want to try and find some short cuts or just get used to the track. There is also a single race option and a Freestyle option, both of which support two players. The single race option is the best way to get straight to your favourite track. If you play this alone you can play it in the freekstyle mode which requires you to get a certain amount of points rather than just finish first. For two players there is a count down mode which constantly pulling tricks is the only thing that keeps your score quickly dropping to zero. The Freestyle mode challenges you or you and a friend to rack up the greatest number of points in a three minute run. Tag, you have to run into as many coloured blocks as possible and in King of Pain your goal is to smash more glass that you friend.
Freekstyle looks very good, from the characters trick animations to the sprawling track designs. The game moves very fast at 60 frames per second, though it does look virtually identical to the PS2 version, although loading times are quicker. Freekstyle also sounds great with a good sound track and great two stoke engine noise. The game's race announces is ok but he does get very repetitive.
For speed you are probably not going to get a faster racing game on your GameCube than Freekstyle. It will satisfy almost any racing fan with its fantastic courses and trick system with some good multi player options to boot what more could you ask for?
7 out of 10

Final Fantasy - Tactics CSO Size: 212 MB

Final Fantasy - Tactics CSO Size: 212 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [14 MB]

The skeptic may suspect Square of milking its big franchise for all it's worth with Final Fantasy Tactics, a game quite different from the other titles in the popular series. He couldn't be more wrong - Final Fantasy Tactics proudly bears the Final Fantasy name and proves to be yet another astonishing success in Square's PlayStation lineup. This is a work of the highest quality in every respect: From the impressive 3D terrain, to the expertly animated characters, to the gorgeous soundtrack, to the sheer volume of available gameplay options, Final Fantasy Tactics is a masterpiece.
This complex and challenging game is geared toward a more advanced audience than Final Fantasy VII. You play a young noble involved in a worldwide war, and your first duty is to assemble a team from a limited pool of amateurs. The members of your squad gain experience and job points with each successful task in battle (whether it be slashing a sword or tossing a potion to an ailing friend), and those job points can later be used to learn hundreds of new techniques including spells, defenses, and counterattacks. What's more, your troops can change occupation at your command, provided they've attained the experience to take on the new position. Soon enough, your squires and chemists will evolve into archers, monks, sorcerers, knights, and thieves. Later you'll gain access to more advanced classes like summoners, lancers, and samurai. The character classes and their properties are vintage Final Fantasy, and fans will immediately recognize such trademarks as the destructive king dragon Bahamut and the mysterious sombrero-and-blue-cloak garb of the wizard.
Final Fantasy Tactics boasts tremendous replay value for an RPG with its 20 available occupations to pick and choose from, each with dozens of specialized techniques. The alarmingly cute-looking characters belie the serious nature of Final Fantasy Tactics' thoughtful, exciting plot - you'll witness treachery upon treachery, social struggle, lost love, murder, and moral dilemma along the way, and you'll even see your character grow older and wiser over the course of the game. Unfortunately, the English translation of the original Japanese script does its worst to detain you from enjoying Final Fantasy Tactics' storyline with poor grammar and the consistently awkward use of "quotation marks," but thankfully the story itself is retained intact.Combat tends to hamper most Japanese RPGs, which thrust countless boring encounters upon you and your party as a means of padding play life and adding an interactive element to an otherwise linear plot. But in Final Fantasy Tactics, the battles are the meat and potatoes of the game - with so many kinds of characters and so many different locales in which to fight (prairies, swamps, towns, castles, ruins, deserts, and anything else you can think of), the combat in Final Fantasy Tactics just gets better and better. Often even the plot sequences in Tactics unfold as interludes during the warfare. The fights, many of which are very challenging, are presented through beautiful isometric 3D playing fields, and you can rotate the terrain 90 degrees at a time and even tilt the view and zoom out to gain an ideal vantage point on the situation. Each fighter on the battleground can move and perform one action each turn from his primary or secondary occupation. As a general rule, the more powerful attacks take some time to charge up, allowing the opponent an opportunity to either disable the assailant or to get out of his way. The combat in Final Fantasy Tactics requires much more strategy than the typical RPG, both in terms of preparation (which soldiers to send in and in what formation) and in execution (using a fast unit as a decoy, flanking the opponent, and anticipating the counterattack).
Everything fits into place perfectly. The pacing of Final Fantasy Tactics ensures that there's never a dull moment, and building experience is a real treat - whereas doing so is a chore in most other RPGs. Its outstanding symphonic score delivers an epic feel, while the stylized character designs add charm and personality. The challenging nature of this game allows for a much more serious story than most other RPGs, and the ability to customize each soldier to the extreme ensures superior play life. Role-playing games don't get a whole lot better than Final Fantasy Tactics.

Eragon ISO Size: 146 MB

Eragon ISO Size: 146 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [47 MB]

Eragon the video game is based on the movie, which itself is based on the book of the same name. It's a typical fantasy world full of dragons, wizards, and magic, which would seem to lend itself well to a video game adaptation in the vein of the very good series of Lord of the Rings action games that came out alongside those movies. In fact, the Eragon game bears a striking resemblance to those Lord of the Rings games, which only makes sense because the games were all developed by the same company. But while the Lord of the Rings games were well-polished action games, Eragon feels unfinished and lazily thrown together. It's the same basic hack-and-slash principle that's readily accessible to just about any fan of the film, but Eragon feels like a skeleton of a game that's been padded out with some licensed content. There's not nearly enough to make the game interesting or even remotely worth playing, though. The action is mindless and repetitive at best, and buggy and unresponsive at worst. In addition, the presentation ranges from bland to ugly, the game is short, the fixed camera angles are frustrating, and there is no online play. Even for a straightforward action game, Eragon has very little to offer.

Dragons, magic, wizards. How did this go so wrong?
Eragon is a young farm boy in the fantasy world of Alagaesia. One day while out hunting, the boy stumbles upon a glowing blue orb that he thinks is a stone. Come to find out, it's actually a dragon egg. Eventually, a dragon hatches from the egg and Eragon discovers that he shares a magical bond with the creature. Turns out Eragon has been chosen as a legendary dragon rider, which is a warrior with special magic abilities that flies around on dragons and fights the impending evil that's sweeping across the land at the behest of a ruthless tyrant. It's up to Eragon to save the day by hacking through an army of clones in several linear, uninspired, and mercifully short levels.
You control Eragon, and you start out as a relatively feeble farmer. You have a sword and a bow, and you quickly learn to use magic, as well. There are 16 levels in the game, with a couple extra levels if you're playing the Xbox 360 version. You'll spend most of your time on foot, fighting wave after wave of generic enemies. You have a quick strike, a powerful strike, and a block for melee combat. You can string together combos of the two strikes to pull off special moves like grapples or knock downs. But even with those few moves, the action still boils down to mashing buttons until your thumb (or your brain) goes numb.
The enemies are all easy to kill, but they do take quite a few hits. So you can hack away at a foe uninterrupted for several seconds before he finally goes down, only to repeat the process with a dozen more enemies. It doesn't help matters that the hit detection is spotty at best. You'll often find yourself swinging away and watching your blade go right through your foes with no effect whatsoever. You can use a bow in the game to pick off enemies from afar, but since your bow does even less damage than your sword, you'll have to spend a long time slinging arrows at an enemy before it finally dies. There are some platforming sections in each level that require you to shimmy along ledges, climb up buildings or other structures, leap small gaps, and tiptoe across narrow beams. None of it is the least bit interesting or challenging, and it ends up feeling perfunctory and pointless.
As a dragon rider, Eragon is able to use magic, which factors into the combat in the game. The magic does actually make for some enjoyable moments, such as when you light enemies on fire and watch as they run off a cliff in a panic, or when you use magic to pull enemies off a high ledge. But even though you can do some fun things with a couple of the magic spells, it does very little to liven up the combat in the long run. Aside from pushing and pulling enemies and lighting them on fire, you can shoot magic arrows and use your magic to interact with the environment. Certain objects in the environment can be moved or rearranged using your magic. It's not very interesting, though, because you can't choose what you interact with or how you do it. Instead, it's usually along the lines of moving a pile of conveniently placed loose boards to create a makeshift bridge between two platforms.
Being a dragon rider, you do get to fly around on a dragon from time to time, but it's not nearly as fun as it sounds. The few flying levels in the game play like a rail shooter, where you fly around on a predetermined path and shoot enemies with magic arrows or blast them with your dragon's fire breath. The levels are simple loops, so you fly around in circles and kill the same enemies as they respawn endlessly. It's like being on a very tedious treadmill, because you never actually get anywhere. You just kill enemies until you've met the predetermined quota for the level.
You can easily beat Eragon in six hours, and once you've done that there's no reason to go back and play it again. Perhaps the only good news is that if you're playing the Xbox 360 version of the game, you can get some easy achievement points by completing each of the short levels on normal and hard difficulty settings. Other than that, there's not much to do in Eragon. A second player can join in at any moment during the game to play cooperatively, but the co-op suffers because both characters have to move in unison to keep all the action contained within one screen. This means that unless your partner moves with you, you can't go anywhere. It's also frequently possible for one character to get stuck behind an object in the environment if the other character moves too far ahead. One solution for that would be to let you play the game online, where each player has his or her own screen, but that feature is conspicuously absent. It's not a major loss, because this game isn't any more fun cooperatively than it is solo, but it's just one more way in which Eragon comes up short.
Another way that Eragon fails to impress is in its presentation. The game looks best on the Xbox 360, but even then it doesn't look good. The character models are all blocky and undefined, and although it's common in games of this type, the fact that there are only a handful of enemies to face just makes the game look and feel cheap. You'll see the exact same mobs over and over throughout the entire game. The fact that many of the levels look quite similar also makes the game feel repetitive and shallow, as if each level is exactly the same as the one before it. The character animations are no better. The few canned animations look decent, and some of the finishing moves are pretty brutal (and bloody if you're playing the PC or Xbox 360 version), especially for a T-rated game. However, most of the time the animations are stilted and jerky, and you'll often see enemies or ally characters get stuck behind objects and twitch wildly or clip through solid parts of the environment.
Eragon also has an extremely frustrating camera. The game employs fixed camera angles, so you have no control over your perspective on the action. That means that if you're behind an object, you're left to fight blind, which happens much more often than it should. The perspective also sometimes hides the path that you need to take to progress through the level. For instance, you might have to hop up and grab a ledge and pull yourself up to the next area, but with the fixed perspective, you won't even be able to tell that ledge is there.

If you have a friend nearby, you can play cooperatively, but then you might end up with one less friend.
The sound is also disappointing. Some of the music is halfway decent, but the voice acting is stiff and often missing entirely. John Malkovich plays the main enemy in the movie but doesn't have a single speaking line in the game. The actor who plays Eragon provides some voice-over work, but none of it sounds very good, and the dialogue consists almost entirely of terrible one-liners. The sound effects are functional, but there's nothing about the tinny clink of blade against blade to give the combat any weight.
Both as an action adventure game, and a licensed work, Eragon comes across as substandard in just about every way imaginable. It feels like an unfinished game that was rushed through to release in time for the movie to appear in theaters. The combat is repetitive, the presentation is dull and lifeless, and the entire game suffers from an apparent lack of effort.

Dragoneers Aria ISO Size: 252 MB

Dragoneers Aria ISO Size: 252 MB

Part 1 [99 MB]

Part 2 [99 MB]

Part 3 [54 MB]

It's not been a good year for dragons in games. Case in point: Dragoneer's Aria. There are lumbering lizards in it, but the game itself is as dull as a bread knife. And don't expect to find out what arias have to do with anything, either. This turn-based role-playing game tells a nondescript story, features unbearably slow battles, and misses the mark in almost every facet that makes RPGs fun to play. In fact, Dragoneer's Aria is the opposite of fun, and it's a game you'll do best to avoid.

It's OK, Euphe. Someday you'll have a ponytail as beautiful as mine.
You play as Valen, an academy student whose graduation is cut short by the attack of a mean black dragon. Seems the same dragon once hurled the world into chaos centuries before, and now he's back to destroy the friendly dragons that keep the world in balance. So Valen and his ultrafeminine braided pigtail depart from the city of Granadis to save the good dragons, though as is standard for this type of game, he gathers a few friends along the way. The naïve healer Euphe is so sweet she might as well have been dipped in sugar, while Ruslan's sarcastic attitude gives him the typical bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold role. The most interesting character is Mary, a pirate who breathes occasional life into the mundane dialogue but still can't save the plot from mediocrity. Even the twists don't make things interesting, since you can see them coming from a mile away.
Almost every aspect of Dragoneer's Aria, including its title, is pulled from the Standard Book of Japanese RPG Clichés, and then saddled with elements that slow it down to the speed of an adamantoise on downers. Even spell names sound as if developer Hit Maker fed a bunch of violent-sounding nouns and adjectives into a slot machine. Cutting Tornado? Song of Confusion? It doesn't get more generic than this. Then, throw in multiple enemies that share the same ugly character model--except maybe one has green feet and the other has yellow. What else makes them different? Well, in battle, one's called a raven, and one's called an eagle. How does the Granadis Endangered Species Committee tell them apart?
Perhaps they simply take the poor birds into battle. The raven is a weakling compared to the eagle, yet for some reason, the creatures live two feet from each other. As you wander through one drab dungeon after another, you'll bump into enemies that are a cakewalk to beat--one step away from another encounter that will destroy you in no time flat. You can try to escape from battle, but it rarely works. When you are able to escape, the winged eye that represents the encounter will still be floating there, and may very well fly right back into you, forcing you back into the battle you wanted to escape from in the first place. It's insanely imbalanced and forces you to grind, grind, grind until you are sure you can move on without fear of having your foes wipe the floor with you. But as if the standard grind isn't enough, each area features creatures called avatars, and if you earn 10 of them, you can summon the avatar's soul in battle. But avatars only show up every 15 battles or so, so if you want to earn a soul, expect to spend a very, very long time in a single dungeon. The ridiculously low item-drop rate just makes matters worse.
And be sure to grab a book. Battles take forever, because you have to sit through one long, unskippable animation after another. Even the menus take their time, so a single battle might take 10 to 15 minutes, yet requires precious little input. Eventually, you'll be pounding on the X button, wishing you could skip through every plodding animation. But don't bother--trying is as futile as trying to skip past any of the pokey cutscenes. All told, the excruciatingly creeping pace turns what would probably have been a mildly boring 35-hour game into 50 hours of mind-numbing monotony.
There are some decent ideas behind the combat, though even they end up contributing to the imbalanced battles. If you're familiar with Final Fantasy VII's materia system, you'll find it easy to understand Dragoneer's Aria's lusces, which represent spells. Characters can freely switch out lusces, and you can equip as many of them as there are slots in your accessories. Lusces level up separately from characters, so as you use them, you level up the spells associated with them. Then you have the energy bar, which is not a protein-filled snack, but rather a mana gauge that slowly fills as you perform standard attacks. Each spell level uses the equivalent amount of mana, so a level-three spell uses three mana points, which translates to 300 energy. There are also superpowered spells called dragon skills attached to the dragon orbs you collect from the elemental dragons.
These things are fine on their own, but they're not balanced properly, and eventually you'll find that your standard attacks get the job done better than casting spells. If you have a choice between using your sword and doing 1000 damage, and casting a fire spell that does 500 damage and spends a mana point, why would you cast the spell? Furthermore, if a more powerful dragon skill does more damage and costs less mana, why would you use a standard spell? All you can do is level the spell up so that it becomes more effective, which just means more grinding. If you want to balance things out a bit more, you can also earn energy by guarding. Guarding brings up a minigame where you match a spinning icon to blue crystals arranged in a circle. But considering the ridiculous length of the battles, why would you stretch things out even more by guarding, when you can speed things along by attacking? You can try the game's simple crafting system when the battles take their toll on you, but it doesn't help ease the tedium.

Do you think extensions would help?
It also doesn't help that Dragoneer's Aria looks as poor as it plays. The towering cityscapes look impressive, but most of the game simply looks bland, and in some cases, downright ugly. Polygons have noticeable seams between them, textures are flat and unsightly, and the second-rate art direction doesn't help matters. The soundtrack isn't memorable, but it's nice, and the voice acting is uneven, ranging from bad to good, depending on which character is speaking.
The PSP features a number of good RPGs from which to choose, so there's absolutely no reason to waste money on this dud. It certainly can't be saved by its lame ad hoc multiplayer, which earns you some goodies you can't get in the single-player game, but can't make playing it any more enjoyable. In short, save your pennies and spend them on something that you'll get actual pleasure from.
By Kevin VanOrd, GameSpot
Posted Oct 8, 2007 5:49 pm PT