GosuStore: Games in Cape Town, Western Cape

This post is just to let any of you guys who have been following the GosuStore blog know that you can alternatively find out the happenings on the latest video games and game reviews in the GosuStore blog via the GosuStore twitter page http://twitter.com/GosuStore. We'll likely also soon have a Facebook page up soon and hope to hear from you guys :)

This was just meant to be a short and sweet post so I'll leave it at that. Happy Gaming to all :)

This post will be slightly different to my usual posts but I'm really fascinated to know what video games you guys have grown up with and what games you would consider favorites? I guess I just want to list 3 games that I feel have really sort of evoked a feeling of immersion within me and have truly stuck out for me throughout my gaming years so without further ado I shall begin by listing the my 3rd favorite to this day first and of course my favorite game (or franchise) first.

3rd - Legacy Of Kain series

I know this game never really generated a huge fan base as far as I know, but I found the storyline, voice acting and lore in the game to be absolutely superb and I thoroughly enjoyed the LoK series. I found the Blood Omen games to be slightly lacking in comparison to the Soul Reaver games maybe with the exception of Legacy Of Kain - Defiance which essentially let you play as both Raziel and Kain which is just pure awesome. In any regard I definitely feel that the LoK series deserves a place amongst my top 3. It's literally impossible though to narrow down my favorite game in the series as they all have something interesting to add to the story and are all immersive in their own way.

 2nd - Diablo

This comes 2nd because I remember way back when I was a wee lad I was too scared to play the single player for fear of dying to the butcher countless times. But one day I went to a friends house and basically felt a little braver with a comrade there ;D (we were 10 or so) and I actually got past the butcher and progressed quite far into the game and I thoroughly enjoyed it and thus my love for the Diablo and it's expansions and sequels began. Engaging storyline, awesome replayability and just pure fun as I'm sure most of you know :)

1st - Baldurs Gate 1 + 2

This game when I bought it way back, came on 6 cd's and I was so damn excited to play it after watching the trailers which back then were really quite a spectacle in terms of RPG's. I've always liked the variation of spells in the game. The absolutely immense level of detail that went into the story and I love how everything in the Forgotten Realms is so well connect (ie. Neverwinter, Ice Wind Dale etc.) So just because of my love of awesome dialogue in games and how you sort of have free roam when it comes to formulating relationships with so many different people in any forgotten Realms game I had to list Baldurs Gate as my all time favorite game. Sarevok is an awesome antagonist and is only topped by Jon Irenicus (Baldurs Gate 2) in my opinion. Also the voice acting in the game is absolutely mind blowing.

This review I decided would be on the relatively new Warhammer game. Warhammer 40K Space Marine. I've always been a pretty big fan of the Warhammer franchise and I had high hopes for this game after I'd caught up on the hype about the pretty fast paced multiplayer aspect of the game, and of course the storyline of the singleplayer which for the most part is pretty epic in any Warhammer video game. So I finally got my paws on this game and I will unleash a flurry of opinions based on my gaming experience.

First of all I found the loading screen of the game to be pretty awesome. Essentially Captain Titus who is the protagonist and player character of the game, killing orks so that was immediately a plus. So of course soon after I entered the menu I proceeded to start the campaign and here is my breakdown of the gameplay and facets of this game through my perception. Space Marine more or less pits you against hordes of orcs for the most part of the campaign, deviating slightly by adding chaos enemies later on of course. As far as your arsenal goes, you get to choose a melee weapon and you also get to swap out ranged weapons for a suitable one depending on the need of the situation. Essentially each level is more or less pretty linear with the occasional event of finding a jump pack and being able to fly up and rain hell on your enemies by crashing down onto them with your power hammer. You also have the ability to execute your foes after stunning them which returns a bit of health to you.I found that the level design was mediocre at best, nothing truly spectacular and I felt that any true effort put into the single player was not really apparent. The game can easily be finished within a few hours, and if you're looking for in depth storyline Space Marine is probably not the best in terms of that. I was also quite dissapointed at the lack of boss fights in the campaign mode, I think there were maybe 3 boss fights at most and they were pretty easy to defeat. But putting all that aside the game truly shines in it's multiplayer component and it's pretty apparent that it is what Space Marine was made for.

I thoroughly enjoyed the multiplayer aspect of Space Marine and it's a nice touch that they allow you to customise your armor to a very fine level of detail. You get to choose to either appear as an ultra marine or a chaos marine although in my opinion both look pretty badass. You get all of the weapons from the Single Player campaign and I found it very satisfying killing my friends with heavy bolters and plasma guns ;DTo sum it all up, Space Marine is a good game and although the single player doesn't exactly shine, it more than makes it up in it's multiplayer. Anyone who likes fast paced intense 3rd person games like Darksiders, God of War etc. will probably like Space Marine with the exception of the vast difference in storyline quality. I don't want to let out too many spoilers so check out the game for yourselves and more specifically pick it up from our store when we open up shop ;)

So I decided to take it upon myself to give a brief review on Dues Ex - The Human Revolution. I recall a time long ago when I was a lot younger probably about 13 or 14 when I played the very first Dues Ex game and I guess at that age it was difficult to fully appreciate the complexity of an FPS/RPG of that type at the time (with all the augmentations and the like) yet somehow it still appealed to me. So naturally I was particularly excited when I heard about the newest installment of Dues Ex.

I will start by saying that I went ahead and purchased the Augmented edition of the game which basically features bonus content, the soundtrack and some pretty cool comics based on the Dues Ex world, I reckon it was a fairly good investment based on the amount of bonus content it provided. The game is set in the year 2027 and essentially you begin your journey as Adam Jensen who is basically assigned the role of security chief to one of the most prestigious augmentation research companies, Sarif industries. He is a normal human without any augmentations but due to certain events it was necessary for him to be equipped and rebuilt with said augmentations. As far as protagonists Adam Jensen seems like a proverbial badass with the shades but does the job of standing up for justice quite effectively.In Dues Ex you get an inventory system where you can pick up various items to help make you more effective against your enemies. One thing to note however is that it is generally a very bad idea to run out guns blazing which leads me to categorize this with games such as Hitman and Splinter Cell. I personally was not such a big fan of the latter but that boils down to personal choice and whether you enjoy stealth based games. However in Dues Ex's case I felt it was a refreshing experience as I am a big fan of RPG's and I guess the leveling up skills aspect was a nice touch. You require praxis kits to level up your skills and essentially make you more of a nightmare for your foes, I found that one area that I guess could have been improved was the amount of energy you have and how quickly it gets used up. I suppose people might critisize that and say that it would be much too imbalanced to have it drain more slowly but you really have to think on your toes and plan what you're going to do before for instance activating stealth although I suppose that is where the challenge lies :)

I found the weapons to be quite diverse although still following a sort of linear trend with a lot of FPS games these days. You are able to obtain a shotgun, 10mm pistol, revolvers, sniper rifles and various other guns. I found myself using my 10mm for the majority of the time as I had upgraded it with various weapon upgrade kits that I had found and essentially it became pretty formidable even against some of the more armored foes. Something I really liked about Dues Ex was the cool hacking system that they added into the game. I tried my best to hack into every in game pc I could find as some of the emails were quite humorous and it made me feel pretty immersed in the game.

There was one particular moment that I felt really awesome about when I played and I had to basically bolt for a door because there really were no alternatives, as the room was swarming with enemies and there were no stealthy escapes save a vent a couple of meters away from the the exit point. So basically what I did was I used stealth and at that time I hadn't upgraded my energy cell quantity so it ran out very quickly, they spotted me and bullets were flying overhead yet I managed to dodge every one of them but essentially it made me feel very heroic and I give the game even more credit for evoking that emotion in me haha ;P 

Dues Ex actually surprised me in how long it was and I guarantee you'll enjoy the amount of playtime you get especially if you do a lot of the side quests which I found quite entertaining. Of course if you're looking for an RPG where your choices regarding dialogue involve serious consequences for your characters moral alignment or the game world and where you get to experience how people perceive you because of it, Dues Ex will likely not be for you. However there is one choice which I will not disclose here due to it being a massive spoiler that determines a specific outcome in the game.