It’s time to move a bit away from common games and review a bit more of an obscure game.
You know you’ve just stumbled upon a game of unparalleled quality when the cashier at a shop asks you if you’re actually sure you want to buy the game; I am telling 100% the honest truth here– this is exactly the exact scenario I faced when I picked the game “Under Siege” off the shelf. The cashier asked me

“Are you sure you really want to buy this game?”

She asked me this while she was visually noting how crappy it looked. Unlike the rest of the games it didn’t have a price tag, she had to look up the price –at around 25 US dollars the game is what you might call cheap. Covered in Arabic text it is difficult to discern exactly what the game is about, however the games outward appearance is professional enough to appease me.

Under Siege (alternatively titled Under Ash 2, as it is a sequel to Under Ash) is a game about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict; The game was released in 2004 and is produced by Afkar Media, a Syrian company that seems to specialise in media relating to the Palestine/Israel conflict.

A good explanation of what a typical Afkar Media game is like follows:

Road Block Buster is our new adventure PC game; it is all about jumping around and doing tricks to soldiers with guns, just avoid to be busted and have fun, follow the steps of ‘Maan’ the boy with thousand way to get over any barrier or road block implanted by Israeli Defense forces without using violence, earn respect by helping surrounded people whom can’t get through the separation walls, get deep into the conflict in Palestine and sense the life of ordinary peoples, whom are trying to survive the burning lands using hope and lots of fun.

Sounds like a barrel of laughter doesn’t it?

A review of sorts has been made of the game previously by The Independent;

Under Siege is another pro-Palestinian first person shooter (FPS) and is the sequel to Under Ashes, a game launched in 2001. Under Siege and Under Ashes were developed by Afkar Media, a Damascus-based software company that claims it creates games to educate as well as eliminate. “We believe we had to share responsibility in telling the story behind this conflict and targeting youngsters who depend on video games and movies -which always tell the counter side – to build their world knowledge.” Under Ashes went on to sell more than 10,000 copies in the Middle East, as well as being downloaded more than 500,000 times from the company’s website.

Politics

Before writing any sort of review about this It is probably a good idea to mention my position on the Palestine/Israel issue; I am not for or against either side, I don’t read about the conflict at all (in fact, after hearing about the conflict for the past 18 years while living in the Middle East on a regular basis I avoid it at all costs) and this is probably my first forey into a piece of media based upon it.

It is important to mention what the creators of the game claim; according to the game’s website:

• “UnderSiege is a video game about the modern history of Palestine, it focuses on the lives of a Palestinian family between 1999-2002 during the second Intifada”
• “All levels are based on true stories and the characters are a pure reflection of the Palestinian society.”
• “level contents are inspired by real stories of Palestinian people, that were documented by United Nation records (1978-2004), west bank and Gaza strip are occupied land according to UN law, and military actions performed by local fighters against occupying forces is considered eligible.”

It is probably better for someone more acquainted with the conflict to comment on the accuracy of the game, I however will not be making such observations during this review. I may throw in a link here or there linking missions to real life scenarios (just for your benefit) I also must state that I can only understand a handful of words in Arabic so a lot of the content within the game is not going to be understood by me. I cannot see why having the game in Arabic makes sense, it would’ve been better in English as Arabic speakers are probably the most acquainted with the conflict. I am probably this game’s ideal demographic, yet sadly I can learn almost nothing through playing the game. According to some interviews I read with the creators, they consider their ideal demographic to be young Arab children that are being taught by American games–this seems a fair argument, however the low cost involved in at least adding english subtitles and menus is a questionable one to avoid*

*=I should note there is a demo (Watercooler games: Under Siege demo) which features English and Arabic (you can choose) however to my knowledge and research the game was never released in full form in English.

Mission runthrough

As no one reading this review will likely exert the effort to locate a copy of the game (or even be able to) I think it is necessary (and also fun) to provide some sort of a runthrough of the games content:
The game’s introduction is an FMV, you can watch it here (YouTube);
Mission one: in the game starts you as an unarmed man in a mosque, there is a man with an uzi shooting from side to side–he doesn’t move, he just stays there in a stationary position and goes from left to right, and back again, and again; he only stops to reload. It is somewhat reminiscent of classic arcade in that his movement is continuously looping. Beating him with your fists is easy and only requires a bit of timing, this level can be finished in 30 seconds or less. It is really a very poorly designed map and provides no platform for thought at all by the player. (this mission is apparently based on Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler who killed 30 around a mosque in 1994)

Mission two: (Through the Narrow street of Hebron) places you as a Palestinian with a gun, your aim seems to be to kill all the Israeli soldiers. Not much to say on this mission really.

Mission three: (titled David and Goliath) sees you as a young teenager (perhaps best described as a boy) who equipped with a slingshot has to kill/maime Israeli soldiers to save the life of someone who has been shot (as best as I can tell, again, I don’t speak Arabic). I’ll be honest here; this mission is impossible, it took me ages to figure out I had to follow the annoying guy at the beginning. So basically you follow this guy and he shouts “run” every now and then and you knock out an Israeli solider.

Now lets stop for a second here; who else better to kill/maim a soldier who is standing guard with an automatic rifle using a slingshot? If you looked through all the possibilities of grown men who seem to be running backwards and forward in this level and then saw the little kid you guessed right!

So you kill/maime the Israeli soldier and the guy who you followed to begin with runs forward and rescues some injured person who is in the line of fire and runs off; much like in mission two the Israeli’s seem to have a particular hatred of you and you alone, no matter how close anyone else gets they only shoot at you. The next objective in the mission is to pick up a smoke grenade and throw it at the tank; yeah, you a small kid picks up a smoke grenade to throw at a tank while a bunch of grown men run backwards and forwards having a relay race with some Israeli soldiers.

Although I can read Arabic I cannot understand it, and as mission objectives are written in Arabic that isn’t copyable, I had to resort to capturing the text as an image and running it through twitter and hoping someone would translate it for me.
via twitter I figure out that I’m actually supposed to pick up the smoke grenades launched by the military jeep and throw it back towards it, and if my aim is perfect the car drives off in probably the most unconvincing sequence I have ever witnessed.

After the jeep drives off a tank takes its place (complete with an israeli flag on the back); I spend a few minutes fiddling around and it turns out you have to go behind the tank and steal the flag (yeah that’ll sure stop it from blowing the shit out of everything) at which point the game cuts to an FMV in which the solider on the tank starts shooting at you (the kid that just stole the flag) and injures you, he jumps down from the tank and tries to finish you off with a pistol (which jams), so he picks up a brick, holds it above his head as if he’s about to smash your head in and the screen goes black. You can watch the FMV on youtube at this link.

I did manage to find a glitch with this mission whereby if I used the volume dial or any media keys on my keyboard (Logitech G15) the 3rd person view of the little kid would switch to a first person view of him holding a grenade–unfortunately the grenade doesn’t work, and instead it’s basically still the slingshot but with a different view. It’s possible the mission originally called for the boy to throw a grenade at the tank but this is merely an assumption based upon this finding.

Mission Four:
Mission four places you as a guy with a gun, you have to be stealthy and avoid some passing Israeli military jeeps, and you basically go and pick up some TNT;

What your average pack of TNT might look like if the creators of Under Siege ruled the earth

Anyway, there is some bridge, you get the TNT and you blow the shit out of the bridge using it. You have to do all this while avoiding the stupid jeeps that keep on passing back and forth on the bridge (think of a similar look to the Israeli military relay race video I placed in mission three) and every time they are about to pass some voiceover comes on and the guy starts whispering about them passing (presumably, again it is in Arabic)

Now in just about every single movie or piece of media I have ever seen, the TNT is placed UNDER the bridge, this is logical incase anyone were to see it. However, in Under Siege you have to place the TNT on top of the bridge. Then you have to go back and shoot the shit out of a bunch of Israeli soliders and then you get an FMV of a tank passing over the bridge as it blows up.

Mission Five:
Mission five starts where mission four left off; the bridge has been blown to shit and now a bunch of Israeli soliders are trying to kill you. Basically the aim of this mission is to kill all the Israeli soldiers and that is pretty much it. Not much to say about it.

Mission Six:
This is where the hilarity really begins; you start the game with a sniper rifle and basically have to cover some guy that goes and presumably rescues some other guy from a truck.
I forgot to mention that the other guy pretty much looks like rambo:

Anyway, the sniper rifle is pretty good. You basically have to just patrol the area while waiting for this other guy; this game is so heavily scripted–however in this mission the scripting really shines, particularly the shitty way the scripting seems to loop (a.k.a. Israeli soldier relay race)
So basically what happens is you see this guy hiding behind the road barrier absolutely noob-cannoning his sniper rifle into the adjacent mountains, you aim, fire and he drops dead. Problem sorted yeah? Except there is something weird about the Israeli army that this game reveals, their military jeeps may look normal but they are in fact clown cars.

The area in this screenshot circled red is where I shot the sniper, however the guy now walking towards the circle is another sniper, who came from the same car. In fact the same thing happens from all 4 corners of this mission:

1. A group of people get out of the car and start shooting
2. You kill them all
3. Rinse, repeat (except that the people are IDENTICAL in both look and actions, there is no variation between the subsequent groups that come out of the clown cars)

It’s like space invaders; just wave after wave of the same shit.
By the end of the mission this is what the ground looks like:

Under that guy; the assortment of guns you see lined up towards him? They’re the remnants of the identical enemies I shot.

Mission Seven:
Mission seven is an alternative viewpoint to mission six; the first thing you see when you start is this:

I guess that is who I was playing as in mission six. So basically you’re rambo this time, and you have the big bad ass para military machine gun and you get to own everyone. Meanwhile this radar in top right corner of your screen starts beeping with the proximity of Israeli soldiers to the hostage (I hestitate to use the term Jewdar as it might be considered racist but I don’t think a more appropriate time for this term will ever be witnessed as I do not believe anyone, has ever before or will ever again creat a radar that beeps according to the distance of Jewish people)

So, you break this guy out (as to whether he is Palestinian or Israeli I am unsure), and you have to follow/guide him back to your car

Needless to say, guiding him around is a pain in the ass.
While you’re rescuing/capturing this guy your wife (again, I guess) is shooting at things. She’s shooting at things like the mountains and basically in random directions. Seeing as she is using an automatic sniper rifle and firing it rapidly you could consider her to be noob-cannoning.

Look at that shit. She shoots at EMPTY MOUNTAINS, then she shoots at YOUR CAR, then she shoots at THE FLOOR, then she shoots AT YOU. Unbelievable.

So you rescue this guy, put him in the car and drive off; you are on top shooting at stuff and the woman that was just emptying clips of ammunition at the ground is driving–I think it goes without saying that she cannot drive for shit.

Obviously when there is a huge car wreck in front of you she just tries to drive straight through it. She eventually drives STRAIGHT into an oncoming hummer, which means I have to start the entire level again as I autosaved just before as I cannot destroy the oncoming hummer quickly enough.

Mission eight:
Obviously your wife does nothing useful and just LITERALLY walks past enemies; she then proceeds to use her sniper rifle against what could be argued as a plain wall or a tank (both of which are stupid things to shoot at with a sniper rifle)

As you might be able to notice from the video’s of this mission–there are a shit load of enemies, and rambo and his wife who cant shoot or drive to save herself are supposed to take down 2 tanks, a helicopter and at least 30 superiourly-armed infantry by yourselves. Does that sound convincing to you? Because it doesn’t sound very convincing to me. Although when you’re on the side that has the Jewdar at your disposal maybe it helps to tip things a bit in your favor.
Yes, the Jewdar^tm makes another appearance this time; whenever enemies come too close to your wife it starts beeping away and if you don’t kill the baddies soon enough you fail the mission.

Then you run outside with little-miss-can’t-drive-for-shit-but-can-shoot-at-the-ground and a helicopter hovers above (yeah, a helicopter) then the helicopter starts using its gattling gun on you, you shoot it down and it crashes.

Then you run for a bit… and then…
You see some Israeli guys hiding behind a van complete with blue skull caps:

and then……
and then what happens you ask?

Then the game crashes… and while trying to navigate the menus I press a button, I read ‘naam’ and ‘la’ in Arabic (Yes and No) I just click any old button and I accidentaly delete my save game profile. So I have to redo all the previous 8 missions or just end my review here. I choose the latter option.

Installation

For a game from 2004 its installation is of poor quality; the game screws up dual monitor setups based upon my experience–as to why the installer wants to run in full screen is beyond me anyway. It takes 5 attempts to finally get the game installed (this in the end requires enabling XP compatibility mode in Vista and also running the program as an admin), the installer appears to ‘work’ but Vista insists it is timing out and I have to quit it and start again each time to get the installer to go further. The menu buttons dont show up and the installer is pretty much a complete failure, I have to guess and press enter to get the installer to work at all. As to why a game that requires a Pentium 3 needs to be Direct X 9 is also beyond me, the game seems to be a bit of a screw up from a technical point of view.

To get the game to run properly I actually have switch to single monitor mode and switch down to 640×480 in the hope that it might work–and it does! It is perhaps the weirdest game in that one of the menu items is to uninstall the game which I have never seen before (perhaps a seperate program to uninstall the game, but on the main page of the game would you really expect an uninstall item?)

As for the actual content the game installed, it is mostly a large file containing levels, a bunch of FMV’s and some music. The actual executables run off the CD, so it is something like a basic installation.

The game runs at 640×480 up through 1024×768. I’m serious. A game in 2004 that can only run at a maximum resolution of 1024×768 is a game that is starting off quite badly in my books.

The audio quality of the game is poor to say the least, during many levels a ‘chanting’ of sorts can be heard throughout, though it sounds as if it was recorded on a cassette rather than anything approaching decent quality. The sound effects are poor also, a select few sound as if they are lifted directly from counter-strike.

The game difficulty I would say is rated somewhere near ‘literally impossible’ in many instances–enemies have ninja reactions and the whole game is spent quicksaving/quickloading and trying to tap around corners without being killed. I’d say that this game is even more challenging that Halo on legendary mode. Once you master the weird difficulty and sloppy design it becomes quite a bit easier. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the game has AI, in my opinion it is more akin to playing against the computer in pong, it just has its scripts, almost everything is scripted in the game, it doesn’t feel as if it is dynamic in any sense.

Graphics and Gameplay

The graphics are decent; I would not criticize them as they do the job. It is merely the game engine that is at fault in much of the game, had stuff like recoil been a bit smoother and stuff like movement been also a bit smoother the game would have been far improved.

There are several major design flaws in the game, notably:

• The hitboxes of the wall (if that’s what you call it) seem to protrude a bit outward and even though the enemy can hit me, I cannot him them effectively despite my crosshair showing their entire body in plain view.
• Even running the game on a GTX 280 with 1 GB of VRAM, the game doesn’t hop above 26 fps at its max resolution. 26 fps is a weird frame rate to cap a game at–motion film (i.e. cinema) runs at 24 frames per second, but although this frame rate has certain aesthetic appeal it does not work in the gaming world, so I cannot see why it has been capped. In my experience, a game of this visual quality should run far above 60 fps at the very least. I even tried forcibly turning anti-aliasing off yet the frame rate stayed at 26 fps.

According to some (PDF warning), the game is a reaction to the Delta Force series of game, which in themselves single player has been a poor element in my opinion (that is mostly in the first title of the series). The creator of Under Siege does deny this link however. It has also been compared to Full Spectrum Warrior.

Conclusion

A conclusion of this game was extremely difficult to make–although it is fun at some parts it is unintentionally fun. It does certainly provide a unique story although perhaps I am unable to appreciate the finer detail due to my lack of knowing the Arabic language.
Although the game is of a poor standard, it does make an imaginative usage of switching between different viewpoints–not only between first-person and third-person but between different people, different situations, and different abilities. In my opinion the major letdown of the game is overall quality and its demographic limitations, the game could have easily been translated into English (just with subtitles, no need to redo audio) and it’s spread may have been further.
The constant killing during the game does make it quite a redundant title; there is little thought required to play.
As for the games faults, they are numerous and large. The save game system in the game is poor; it fails to save automatically when you reach an important event during the mission, so if you only use quicksave/quickload it can sometimes lead to ‘infinite death loops’ (whereby you quicksaved moments before an unavoidable death) and when this happens you have no choice but to start over from the beginning of the mission. The game itself suffers from severe technical problems and it could have done with quite a bit of overall polish.
Another problem with the game is it is so absolutely linear; the difference being between this and other games if you try anything else you will just die and have to start over again.

One thing that is nice about the game is the design of buildings and vehicles and pretty much everything; it is very localized which is a nice thing to see in a game rather than a bunch of template designs just thrown together.

For a game for the Middle East I would consider it a pretty good effort, however from an international stand point I rate it:

4/10

More links:
Afkarmedia webpage for Under Siege
Watercooler games: Under Siege demo

I have played GTA (or Grand Theft Auto as it used to be called) since its earliest incarnations, I have played just about ever iteration of the series. Although I have not completed every single title, I have played them enough to get the grasp of what each one is about.

I initially started playing GTA IV on Xbox 360 and eventually ended up restarting the entire game once it was released on PC. Trust me when I say the PC version is superior in just about every conceivable manner.

I played GTA IV until I had completed approximately 55% of the game (having unlocked all the islands), at this point I grew bored and let the game sit around for some time. I have recently started playing it again and have completed it.

Immersion
One thing the game does right is immersion. Aside from a graphics point of view, the city is built well, it breathes, the people talk, the drivers shout and it is an interesting place to explore. However I do wish it were a little more like the first level of Half Life 2 (where you throw a can at a policeman and get humorously chased), everyone in the GTA world seems to act a bit too seriously in this game.

The range of cars is ok, but the more interesting vehicles of past games are gone (i.e. the tank); the motorcycles are just plain badass and that’s all there really is to say on the subject.

Multiplayer
One of the most anticipated features for me of the game was multiplayer, and it lived up to my expections to a certain point, however, Rockstar was too cheap to get a proper anti-cheat system going and the game was ruined in part due to this.

Multiplayer with a friend is well worth it–randomly wandering the city and performing stupid stunts is something you can do till the early hours of the morning.

Arcade heaven
One thing that is notably absent from GTA IV is the arcade feel of previous titles – specifically GTA 3 – that once provided the player with added bursts of adrenaline, the game has undeniably harsh veneer, and as the first in the series to explore eastern European criminals it is certainly a very different direction.. Power-ups and free guns were stashed randomly across the map, however in GTA IV it is near impossible to find random power-ups scattered, there are some such as health kits and the very rare weapon or two strewn across the entire game world however it is definitely a vast change from previous titles.

The game seems to split from its linear story-line every now and then and provides the player with the option to kill or save someone–this has literally little or no bearing on the rest of the story. In fact the most it can result in is a few extra perks that don’t really do much. One of the deaths during the finale of the game is however decided during one of these ‘decision moments’. They are ineffective in challenging the player and in my case confused me as I’d never encountered the choice before in a GTA game.

To be honest I fired up my steam browser and looked up a walkthrough of the game each time because I was so worried as to how drastically it might affect the game, it is also so unexpected in a GTA game that it is actually a bad decision.

This is probably the weakest point in the game–it is trying to be something that it is not. GTA is supposed to be telling me the story and not trying to get me to help tell the story.

I’m not speaking Chinese here; arcade = fun, GTA IV = serious. I wouldn’t say that the move to ‘serious’ is all bad, the game does have a bit more of a dramatic side, however the audience you’d expect for GTA style games probably wouldn’t even give a crap about this.

Too good
Despite the game’s nonlinear wishes, it is anything but, it punishes you for being imaginative or ‘too good’ (more on that in a second); the main problem is that the missions are too easy, they’re not really challenging–the main challenge lays in you getting highly inappropriate cars, such as the Cognoscenti (Maybach if you want to use proper brand names) to chase a Huntley Sport (Range Rover) in the finale of the game–while you’re busy slipping and sliding around trying desperately to keep up the Huntley is able to weave in and out of traffic with ease, at one point you need to do swerve into the oncoming lane of traffic which is nigh on impossible due to the clumsy handling of the Cognoscenti. In a game where the sole purpose of the game is being able to steal whatever car you desire it is a severe handicap to be forced to use a crappy car.

Rather than the game focusing on being truely innovative it is just ‘sneaky’ in my opinion.

Back to my point about being ‘too good’; there are some instances within the game where you are pursuing a target and you manage to utterly and totally shoot the shit out of them (I’m talking empty clip upon clip dead on target at them) yet the game ignores this damage instead forcing you to chase the suspect for as long as the story requires. If I can shoot better than the game expects me to, why should I be punished, indeed why should I actually even have to shoot the suspect when there is no requirement? Instead the game is just teasing me and wasting my time once again.

Look at this particular example, I shoot the rocket launcher and I HIT the target, yet he magically keeps on going on.

You might ask yourself “well you’re not supposed to know that he’s going to drive off in a boat at that point in the game are you?”, actually I knew the first time, I anticipated this and threw grenade towards him and he flew away in a boat apparently taking no damage. Absolute bullshit.

Not only did I shoot his boat with an RPG, I also successfully shot literally directly at him with an RPG with absolutely no effect (later on I aimed at him as he was escaping in his stupid boat and his health was shown as full)

Despite this, Pegorino was bought down by a mere few bullets in the finale of the game. This was intensely frustrating given how long I spent trying to shoot at him on his stupid boat, and as he also ran away from me on foot. I didn’t even watch the ending sequence I was so convinced that he wouldn’t have actually died. As an ending to the game it was pretty lacklustre and I just didn’t feel it. It’s important to note that I wasn’t actually aware this was the end of the game–though I had heard about this referred to as the ‘mission with that stupid part with the helicopter’ it was never known to me to be the ending.

Tactics such as these (ignoring the player) are definitely cheap in my books; either make it a non-playable sequence or let me be as good as I am going to be.

(I recorded these using the in-game video editor, which is a nice PC only feature)

Dating bullshit
Repeating the mistakes of San Andreas, GTA IV constantly hassles you to take people on dates or other social events. I already have people in real life I’d much rather socialize with, I’m playing GTA to relax and have some fun, instead the game constantly frustrates the player with some stupid Rasta idiot constantly calling you and hassling you to come for dinner, or that stupid bastard Roman hassling you about titties.
I don’t know about what they want to do and quite frankly I don’t care–however if I choose to decline a social invitation I get some kind of negative rap for refusal that is kept tab of in the in-game stats.
Does it matter? No. So who gives a crap. Why is this crap even in the game?
There are a variety of ‘socially’ oriented places in the game such as strip club, snooker, bar, restaurant, comedy club, bowling etc. Yet none of these really offer any real entertainment in my opinion and are mere filler, I would have preferred some more interesting things in the game such as more guns…

Guns and Bullets
The guns in the game aren’t as wide as I was expecting; there are 2 variations of most classes in the game (Pistol, SMG, Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Grenade). The M4A1 has lost most of its power since previous version of GTA and in GTA IV the MP10 SMG is the single most powerful and versatile gun.

As a game GTA IV is much easier on a computer due to the usage of a mouse and most enemies are actually very easily defeated. Sadly the lackluster range of weaponry in GTA IV is a real letdown. Although for most urban battle situations you could conjure up in your mind the weapons would suffice, it would be nice to have some more varied weaponry.

Timing
Time in GTA has always been an important factor in the series, this is heightened even more in GTA IV; however there are some instances where it doesn’t make any sense…
It’s the middle of the night and I get a call from Roman,

“hey Niko come to my wedding tomorrow at 10 AM”

Sure. It’s dark now. So it must be around 10PM.
So I continue getting calls from more annoying characters in the game and eventually I have to go and pick up some Irish woman (Kate) who I really don’t care about, Niko and her get talking in the car and completely out of my control Kate falls in love with Niko or something to that effect.

I drive around and finally get to the church
at 1PM
What was the point in even mentioning the time 10 AM if it had absolutely no bearing on what time I should have arrived at the wedding?

Other times in the game you will be given a specific appointment time which is added to your mobile phone, if you’re too late for the appointment you fail.
It’s like make up your fucking mind, does the time matter in the game or not?
All in all the presence of time in this capacity is really nothing more than an annoyance, in short, it is frustrating to keep track of time in the game.

Sound
Sadly whilst the quality of sound is high it is disappointing that dialogue comes through the center channel on a 5.1 setup, this is more typical of hollywood movies in my opinion and doesn’t belong in games. It’s nice to drive and hear someone shout from behind the car, otherwise the usage of positional sound have limited value within the game.

Overall, this is a very difficult game to rank, whilst the immersion, and gameplay are up there, the storyline, whilst interesting from a content point of view, is held back by its attempt at a more non-linear manner.

I rate this game:

7.8/10

The Net tries to tell us the age old myth that hot women sit around using the internet all day. We all know this is bullshit, in fact most experts agree women did not actually use the internet at all until 2004 (the year facebook was invented).

The likeliest of scenarios.

The opening sequence of the movie features some guy who blows his head off because he (falsely) finds out he has AIDS. It is pretty unconvincing, and even while trying to watch this somewhat seriously I was laughing a bit at it due to just how bad the acting was. Soon we’re introduced to Angela’s mother who has alzheimers and can’t remember who she is–this really isn’t so relevant to the story.

The movie is successful in introducing the concept of identity theft, which at the time wasn’t quite as widespread as it is today. It is a very real problem that the film is somewhat effective in getting across, however there are so many extra characters, floppy disks and bullshit that it is just confusing, Angela (Sandra Bullock) has no constant sidekick, everyone has alzheimers, died in a plane crash or is professionally murdered while they are in a hospital bed, as she doesn’t socialize it is represented that absolutely no one can remember who she is or what her name is, which is somewhat unimaginable. It’s as if there is absolutely no hope or chance of her surviving the situation yet somehow she does, the film is actually kind of dubious in this regard–miraculously there is no paper documentation at all stored anywhere and there is no one that recognizes her.

She also screws the bad guy which is kind of awkward; I suppose it is usually the other way around in this kind of movie.

Probably the most unbelievable scene in the movie is when Angela is using her laptop on the beach and the bad guy (Jack Devlin) starts trying to hit on her. This is 1995. Not only were hot women absolutely not hackers, they also did not sit around in bikinis at the beach playing around on their laptops.

“You must have really great bandwidth”

In fact to see someone using a laptop on the beach in 1995 would be so out of place, to have it be a someone in a bikini absolutely pushes it off the believable scale… The only medium such an unseemly and farfetched situation would be appropriate would be in a porn movie. Even the quote “That’s a nice piece of hardware, I assume you’re in the business” could be misconstrued as some kind of porn industry related banter, however it is said while this shot is on screen:

Now I’m not saying that a woman can’t use a computer or play Wolfenstein, I’m just saying that it really isn’t believable in this situation and in truth it doesn’t really add anything to the story, it just takes away from it.

One thing this movie has too much of is loading screens–there are only so many times you’ve started copying a file and the bad guy is coming after you. It’s kind of redundant in this day and age even though all movies relating to computers or computer crime still manage to fit in a few adrenaline fueled loading screens here and there..

This movie did not have enough loading screens.

That’s basically what your typical good guy/bad guy thriller movie somehow related to technology is about: Files. They have the files and the need to copy them and recover the data from broken floppy disks or send them to people. In this day and age we have something called email so congratulations for being redundant.

The whole film really feels like it was meant for a TV movie, the script just isn’t as developed as it should’ve been; I’m also pretty sure this is the 800^th movie I have seen where the bad guys are called Praetorians.
The film hasn’t aged well at all, the computer sequences are somewhat laughable and make no sense at all, in this day and age I think Angela would’ve just updated her twitter and said “OMG guys my identities have been stolen” and she wouldn’t have had any problem. In general the script could’ve had a bit of polishing and the movie could’ve done with a bit more work overall. Later on, this movie was actually remade as a straight-to-video movie, it fared even worse than the original and scored a paltry 4.8 on iMDB (because iMDB is the final say on what movies are shit and what movies are good)

I rate this film:

5/10

Links:
IMDb: The Net

As a game based in medieval times, the game has taken a risk by choosing FPS as its format, conventionally swords and arrows has been limited to the RTS/strategy genre. In my opinion, the risk was well taken and the game is an unbelievably good one, I actually have to say based upon fun in this game during multiplayer that this is a really great game.

The game is 100% free for download via the steam platform but requires that you own a source game.

This is a very high quality game; the menus are well designed, the models are well designed, the maps are simply bad ass and everything fits in really well. In my opinion the sound quality in particular for a free mod is well done, the battle taunts are great. What makes the game fun is that it has taken a pre-gun/electricity time in history and made it fun, it doesnt bore you with historical crap or taking 20 minutes to position your soldiers, it is just fun.

Skill

The game is undeniably easy to get into but hard to grasp some of the finer points (not relating to complexity of the game, rather the skill required). By this I mean I could give this game to most people and they’d be able to get into it easily, everything is straightforward and I don’t think it’d ever be one of those “whats going on” situations.

Many aspects of the game are based upon traditional gaming styles (i.e. capture the flag)

Spawning is nice and fast, however the walking speed for some classes (like the crossbow) is slow; this is good, this keeps classes balanced and makes the game fun to play.

Rather than give you a class by class analysis of the game i’ll sort it into two categories

• Guys with arrows (longbow, crossbow, javeline)
• Guys with swords and shit

That pretty much sums up the classes; you have your ranged guys (archers all have swords), and then your close combat guys (some of whom have small daggers etc for throwing from medium range).

Class selection screen

The arrows are nice, but it does take a while to figure out the aim; this game doesnt use conventional crosshairs and also arrows don’t travel as fast as a bullet from a .357 magnum. The same thing goes for swords; you dont really connect during combat, so if you swing you have to be constantly aiming at the person and you have to be within range, if that makes any sense.

I have been getting more used to the arrows and swords within the game however I think part of the issue may be that I’m a high ping player (140 or so on EU servers) and the game possibly isnt optimized too well for such a ping.

Castle invaders

Manners
In some maps the gameplay is somewhat like Sven Co-op where one must work together with other players to achieve objectives; players must essentialy display courtesy to other players (‘raise the bucket’ is a good example of this) and overall this is always a great thing to have in a game.

The other display of courtesy and manners is with team killing, many servers have friendly fire on and it you kill someone on your team you are expected to apologize. It is common to kill friendlys as when there is a ruckus it can get quite crowded.

The manners displayed in the game are something that make it what it is: a great game.

Fun
You might ask yourself what is fun about medieval in FPS.
Ask yourself these simple questions:

• Have you ever seen someone bunny hopping or teabagging in chainmail?
• Have you ever had someone say “mason sappin’ ma captives!~”
• Have you ever headshot someone using a crossbow?

The game really has its own special crowd, seeing as the game doesn’t require such a time investment from players (unlike WoW etc) everyone is nice and casual. I am reminded a bit of Rune, however the combat isn’t as tense as in Rune. One of the fun things for me is running away from enemies (you have the ability to sprint using the shift key), usually however they catch up and kill me but sometimes it does lead to funny cat + mouse shenanigans. There is actually a ‘warm up’ before you start playing properly, during which time you are free to roam the map with other players–more often than not this leads to hilarious team killing all around (everyone’s scores are reset by the time the warmup period is finished so it’s all good.) So based upon fun alone, I’ve really grown to enjoy this game. I would go so far as to say it is epic. The game itself is serious, but it is the crowd that makes it fun. I would also say a high proportion of players use microphones.

Technical Shenanigans
Overall the game’s technical side is great however one problem I had initially was constant crashing upon launch; this was most probably due to the intro video. I managed to fix this by using the novid launch option from within steam. The game still crashes quite often when ALT+TABing in and out of the game, in fact I havent managed to do so once without it crashing.

System requirements are a little bit higher than other source engine games, though not that restrictedly high. The game will run fairly well if you are able to run HL2 well. High FPS really isnt that necessary or apparent in this title.

Conclusion
This game is fluid. It all matches well. It is high quality. It is fun. It is entertaining. It is a great game.

I rate this game

9.9/10

You can find more about the game Age of Chivalry at the following links:
http://www.age-of-chivalry.com/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/17510/ (Steam page)

I wouldnt say Im the worlds best photographer or anything but I have a few pointers for people trying to learn a bit more about photography. These tips obviously don’t apply to everyone or to every style of photography but maybe they’ll help you in some way:

Get closer. I’ve found this to be really difficult and it is indeed something I am still getting used to, it takes a lot of confidence–getting closer to your subject does however yield better photographs.Even if you have a long fixed lens, try using a wide focal length and getting in that extra bit closer, interact with your subject. This goes hand in hand with the next subject:
Talk. I’ve found this difficult too, but if you’re going to take photographs of starving people etc then you have to talk to them and understand the situation. I have often wished that in the past I’d been a bit more talkative and had some writing (be it the name of the person in the photograph, or some kind of information about their situation) to present alongside the photographs.
Look around. If you’re at whatever event and you see 20 photographers in the same place as you are that obviously means that 20 photographers are all going to go home with the exact same photographs. You should never be afraid to move around, and this is why I detest using zoom lenses. If you use a prime lens you have to move to get that photo you want instead of being able to infinately zoom in to get what you want.
Delete Photoshop. ‘Ive made my own little rules concerning Photoshop; I will at most nowadays edit the brightness/contrast and crop where possible. If a photograph is blurry or if a photograph isn’t interesting enough then that’s that. You didn’t get in the right place and you didn’t have the camera set up properly to capture the moment and there is no amount of Photoshop that will reverse this. If you really want to learn photography and be a good photographer you must at first be able to produce something that you’d print out and put on your wall with confidence knowing you’d be unable to edit it.
Be critical. Something that is difficult for anyone trying anything is to be critical with the work you produce and photography is no different.
Learn. Although the functions on a modern day digital camera may be intimidating, make no mistake about it, everything has a purpose, at least find out what does what and why and try and use everything at least once.
Get back to basics. The first place I’d advise anyone wanting to start in photography to do is to be able to use the manual mode on the camera and produce 10/10 photographs that have perfect exposure and focus.
Tripod. Go and splurge on a tripod; I’ve only just got back into tripod photography and the results are really something that makes it worth the pain of carrying around a heavy tripod all day. Obviously where you dont have a tripod then you dont have one and you have to make do with handheld, tough.
The rule of thirds. If I counted up every time I’ve heard someone point at a photograph on a projector and make comment about how the photograph doesn’t adhere to the rule of thirds It’d be in the thousands. Screw the rule of thirds. Not every photo everywhere has to have everything on the third lines, it just doesn’t work like that.
Equipment crap. No one cares if you can take photos at 9fps, so stop sitting there wearing out your shutter and go take a good photo and then we might give a shit.
Keep your camera clean. I spent something like 15$ on a giant bottle of Kodak lens cleaner that looks something like this, I also spent something like 10$ on a rubber air blower which looks exactly like this. Even if you sit your camera in your cupboard and think its invulnerable to the rough outdoors there is no reason to not have the 2 things I linked to above and a sensor cleaner. Nothing is more unattractive than seeing someone with a whole bunch of sensor dust all over their photos.
Camera + lens upgrade shenanigans. Here’s the rule that is more vitally important than the rule of thirds: Unless you’re upgrading to a full frame camera then dont even bother upgrading. Im sick of seeing people that upgrade from something like a Canon 450d up to a Canon 50d: IT IS THE SAME CAMERA. If you dont believe me then go buy that 50d and you’ll see your photos look exactly the same because you’re using the same crappy lens. Upgrade your lens. I would say upgrade your lenses before your camera if you can’t upgrade both.
What am I doing wrong? So you have all the equipment you could possibly want but you can’t figure anything out and you’re finding learning really hard; go get a decent 50mm prime lens (that’s a lens that doesn’t zoom) and forget about flash and start taking photos on Av mode and read up as much as you can on photography, start investigating the camera mode-by-mode and feature-by-feature, eventually you’ll get there; set yourself a target to be able to roughly estimate the manual settings required for a given scenario (i.e. taking a photograph outdoors in bright sunlight etc)
Enjoy yourself. You’re at that gig or at your friend’s wedding or somewhere: do yourself a favor and sit back and enjoy what you’ve been invited to instead of sitting in the paid photographers way with your dinky camera phone.