Glimpses

So, What's New? Every time a game or franchise is remade, rebooted or remastered, there's a general sense of wonderment and curiosity about the novelties it may bring along. This sense was even more heightened for Spider-Man since he has been around for a long time, even before some of us were born. So that element of nostalgia for this superhero piques our curiosity even further when we hear about anything new that he has to offer. I grew up watching the Sam Raimi movies, even begging my uncle to take me to watch Spiderman 3 since it featured a whole new suit, and Spider-Man (released for Windows in 2001) was one of my first ever PC games. I remember pressing 9 on the numpad to get Spidey to swing to the next building. In that game, web swinging was limited to a maximum of 2 web lines being shot. If Spidey didn't get to the rooftop by then, he'd fall to his death. The reason I'm talking about this specific mechanism is that it's the best thing about the 2022 ve

If Monkey King had Stockholm Syndrome Enslaved – Odyssey to the West is an action-adventure game that involves two slaves of the land - Monkey and Trip – who escape from captivity and journey across the country to get Trip to her family. Obstructing their path are Mechs, intelligent robots working for Pyramid, a supposedly evil organization that is making slaves out of whatever humans it can find. It’s a post-apocalyptic take on the Chinese legend of Monkey King, aka Journey to the West, hence the game’s subtitle ‘Odyssey to the West’. Inspired by a legend While playing the game, I didn’t realize that it was based on the Chinese folk tale. Only when I visited the Extras section, did I find out that there’s an unlockable costume for Monkey that combines the original red and gold colours worn by the Monkey King in his legend. The in-game description of this costume mentions as much, and through further research, I came to know that the theme and characters of Enslaved have quite a few pa

Reminiscent of an old gem For people who have played Shadow of the Colossus, Praey for the Gods is an obvious inspiration/homage. I won’t go so far as to term it a clone, much in the same way as Sleeping Dogs isn’t a clone of GTA, but it clearly borrows a lot from Shadow of the Colossus.  Clever bit of designing in the title logo – the ‘e’ in Prey is made to look like a praying figure, hence the name Praey for the Gods. Not sure how it fits into the theme of the game; maybe it’s subtly saying that the player might look like a prey on the surface, fighting giant demons all by themselves, but actually they are praying for the Gods by ridding the world of evil. Maybe the demons have the Gods trapped somewhere. Whatever. Climb and survive Praey for the Gods is a boss-climbing game with some survival elements thrown in. There are these giant, hulking creatures strewn around a foreign, deserted island and the player has to negotiate the cold and unforgiving terrain and slay these beasts. M

Look where you jump! Straight off the bat, Brotherhood has the worst parkour mechanics of the first 3 entries in the franchise. Considering that this was the first thing I had to say about it sums up my experience of this game. It was frustrating, to be kind. The character seemed to have a mind of its own, he just wouldn’t listen to me. On numerous occasions he jumped in an entirely different direction than intended and messed up my efforts of running away from the guards or reaching a difficult spot. Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is just an expansion of the previous game. Playing it, one realizes why it wasn’t just named Assassin’s Creed III. There are some new additions this time around, and much of the action takes place in Rome now. Everything else is the same as the last part. Come out and play The story is picked up right where it was left in AC II, and carries forward the conflict between the Templars and the Assassins, and the role Ezio played in Rome. The enemy that he left al

Is that you, Rockstar?  A couple hours into this game and I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, this game is exactly like GTA if it were set in Hong Kong.” And then I realized how much monopoly the GTA series enjoys in the open-world market. For the rest of the game, I had to make a conscious effort not to keep comparing Sleeping Dogs to GTA, and I still couldn’t help it. Perhaps one reason for this was the way violence is showcased in Sleeping Dogs. Most of us have seen violence like that only in the GTA games. Moreover, when you have a gritty story involving mafia gangs, drugs, prostitution and other vices of the world, you can’t help but draw parallels with GTA. The psyche of Wei Shen Anyhow, these similarities don’t, and shouldn’t, affect how good the game is, how well-developed its characters are and how well the plot is presented to the player. You play as Wei Shen, an undercover cop in Hong Kong, with a mission to infiltrate the triads and help in the capture of their most prominen

“Hey, you’re finally awake.” - Ralof. The power of hearsay This game released way back when I was in school, and since then I have been hearing about how it was the ultimate RPG experience, how you could be anything and do anything, almost like having a second life. I was never much into RPGs; used to think it was too much of an effort to grind my way up from nothing. Having complete control of my character also brought with it the weight of deciding every little detail – from appearance to skill upgradation. Nevertheless, I decided to give Skyrim a try based on sheer hearsay. I can’t say that I was absolutely blown away, but it didn’t disappoint either. It was as I had expected it to be – typical RPG where you get to choose your player and build their skill tree up from the very basic level. The story wasn’t anything extraordinary either. Once it is revealed that you are the fabled Dragonborn (which seemingly doesn’t qualify for a spoiler anymore since it’s all over the internet now;

A Bag of Subtle Surprises Payback surprised me in a lot of ways, especially since it’s so much different from NFS: Rivals, its predecessor and also the last NFS game I played. Rivals was all about racing, and Payback is, too, but Payback offers so much more. First off, the cop – racer rivalry has been lightened up a little to make way for rivalry between the racers themselves. Next, we don’t have action tech like EMPs or shockwaves, just the old-fashioned car knockouts. Most importantly, we have a bunch of characters who actually feel like characters and who help make up a story that is much more fleshed out than Rivals. The story begins with a small racing crew of three – Tyler, Sean and Jess - who are pitted by circumstances against an influential racing faction called The House. This faction fixes races, plays dirty, has deep connections everywhere and believes in rigging the outcome in its favour by hook or by crook. The rest of the game is made up of how Tyler and co. manage t