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Black and White (PC)
by Donnabroom
Black and White:
I was recently browsing through my game collection searching for something to dull my boredom and I stumbled upon Black and White. In it's day it was one of my favourite games and so I wondered how much I would enjoy it now after all this time.
Back in 2001 it was hard to avoid the praise and hype being ... lauded on Black and White and I have to admit I caved into the advertising and bought it. I spent a while playing it until I got bored and moved to something else.
Black and White is a "God Game" where the player (you) plays the part of the deity of a small village of people in the early stages of civilisation. The game begins with you being to prayed to by a distraught mother who wants you to save her child from drowning. You save the child and are led to the village by the grateful woman and the game begins properly.
You control a cursor in the shape of a hand which allows you to interact with the village and inhabitants in a range of ways such as moving things, throwing things around, (including people which is fun for at least a couple of minutes), waking people up, performing miracles, controlling your avatar etc.
Throughout the game you are given objectives to complete (gold which advance the main story line and silver which are side quests), you get an avatar to train and you get to make moral choices which determine whether you are good/evil and if your believers worship you out of love or fear.
The game was produced by Lionhead Studios (who also produced Fable and were a break away from Bull Frog who were famous for God Games such as Power Monger and Populous) and was published by EA and Feral Interactive. There was an expansion for Black and White called "Creature Isles" and a sequel called (you guessed it) Black and White 2.
I enjoyed the game immensely but I do remember that it had it's faults. Some of the quests were overly difficult and the quest information was lacking which was frustrating at times. Thankfully you could always look things up online but it took some of the fun away.
By today's standards the 3D graphics are fairly basic, (they were incredible at the time), and the same can be said for the sound effects and music but it was always about the game play and the unusual theme that made the game so enthralling and it has lost none of it's impact after all this time.
You can buy Black and White for the PC for £1.71 on Amazon which is amazing value for a game that is still enjoyable.
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Shift 2 - Unleashed (PC)
by trundley
I have to say, this is the best driving game i have ever played. Truly. The engines roar and spit fire from the exhaust. Your ears are close to bleeding with the noise!
Installation:
No bother, disc in, install, play. Although, a side note here, you can install EA's Origin and get some DLC for free! New cars and ... tracks!
Graphics:
Stunning. Crisp and fluid. People have cried over poor performance on the PC but i seem to get 40fps solid with the "high" graphics settings. Make sure in your graphics card control panel you forcce V-Sync to OFF. This gives back a lot of frames. Try turning off Triple Buffering too. This is not a guide by the way, just a suggestion.
Gameplay:
Same old, same old, but addictive. You race, you win (maybe) and you get cash. Rinse, repeat. Buy better car or upgrade your own. If you upgrade it enough your car goes through a class system (D, C, B and A (i think)) and you can only use that class car in the respective class tournament/races. If you upgrade your car enough you have the option to do the "Work Conversion" which makes your car look like a proper racing car, it's actually pretty awesome.
There are several different gamemodes in shift 2 consisting of; Race, Elimination, Drag Race (DLC), Drift and timetrial. I don't know whether there are more, but those alone are more than enough.
Handling:
This is a nerve for some of the players who complained about input lag from the xbox controller to the game itself. To fix this get the latest patch for the game. Restart computer and play. Fixed. A lot of players complained about the handling of cars, myself included, but i soon realised i can change the tire pressure on the car and the amount of downforce to give better handling in corners at the price of the cars top speed and/or acceleration. This is close to being a proper racing simulator.
The AI:
The AI in the game is excellent! It actually retaliates to your driving. If you steal their racing line when going around a corner they will purposely drift to the edge of the track to push you into the gravel, although they wont actually attempt to hit you, more persuade you to drop back. If you overtake the car in front, they will try doubly hard to get their place back by going faster around corners and braking later into them which can, and has, produced some fantastic spectacles.
To summarise:
The game is great, it truly is, but with all the broken bits when it was released it get very bad press which is an immense shame and this is why it sits at £10 on Amazon. With a few tweaks to the game via patches and your graphics card settings you will be laughing around the course, or in the tirewall.
7/10 - knocked 1 point off for all the farting around i had to do.
Summary: It shouldn't have been released as it had, but after you play around for a bit, its the best!
NOTE: I did originally place this review in the wrong section by accident, so don't worry if you see 2 of the same from here and the PS3 version.
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Sim City 3000 UK Edition (PC)
by Graham1984
Sim city 3000 was another follow up game for the franchise that consists of starting from absolutely nothing and trying to work your way to building an absolute goliath of a city. When you start you have to consider every single item you do to make your city expand on its own from adequate jobs and housing available,water and electricity ... for all your building and transport for your sims.
The main concept of the game is build three types of building such as housing for your sims, Commercial for shops and jobs and finally the industrial sector that can range from motor industries all the way to rural farming. The zones you build are either in size and density of light,medium or dense and depending on what one you chose and the allocated grid tiles you amend will effect what type of building grows their. Many things effect this game such as do your buildings and sims have water, Is there pollution in the air or from traffic, Is there an ease of public transport such as rail,road and busses ect. When all of these are covered along with the value of the land the buildings will grow and change either slowly or rapidly depending on the game speed.
Each area has a knock on effect to it's neighbouring buildings so you have to have careful thought in placing your buildings as if you have a dense residential area and no police coverage then fires and riots can break out instantly so place them fire stations carefully too. The sims will moan about anything from trash collections to taxes,police oppression if your police budget is too high to a lawless city if too low. For every positive effect their will be a flipside too, Too many high tech jobs and complaints of not enough farms, Too much money invested in roads to them falling apart. Until you play a game like this and experience it for yourself you will not understand as there are so many variables you couldn't even imagine, Who would of thought a simple park for your sims may prevent a riot!
You must always keep your sims happy if possible and keep a close eye on structures such as your water piping and the ages of certain buildings such as power plants that lose capacity with age and blow up and your water pumping stations as these are vital to your cities basic needs.
The graphics on the game are nothing major from a game released around 2000 but the strange thing about it is the level of addiction the game gives although at time it can be tedious. For a city building sim or fans of games like theme park ect this maybe of some interest to you guys but don't expect a masterpiece either.
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