It has been almost 2 years since I bought, at the release date, The Witcher 2. I played it furiously for a whole week. Maybe 40 hours. But one day I went to a 4 day travel and I totally lost the momentum.

I must confess that the review I wrote by 2011 I had not yet finished the game, but very much close to the ending.

Lately, news about the third installment emerge every day. I was caught by a nostalgia and shame. I recommended the game to all people that I talked to. I love the series. I found an inner strength to re-enter it’s universe. Loading a more-than-a-year-ago saved game, I was able to finally finish the game. I originally bought from gog.com, the CD Projekt distributing company. I don’t even remember why I got it again from Valve’s Steam, but there it was.

Now I revisit my original review with new insights.

How superb are the visuals!  A totally unknown polish company manage to create a top 5 best looking game of all history, imo. The lights and color palette are amazing. The details presented in their 3D models are also incredible. Geralt of Rivia is very richly designed, with nice clothing. The same for the other characters and the scenes. Castles, dungeons, forests. Everything seems to be designed with care.

The story is for adults: strong on politics, sexual interests, loads of anti hero characters. It makes the game stand out among others, but it is not for everyone. However, the story is also very confusing. My perception it happens because the game is based in an established book universe. The authors know the geography and history, but the players do not. When they vomit geography details as part of the main plot, I felt like listening mandarin.

Once thing I disliked quite much in the game’s design: auto saving just before cut scenes. Generally, after important cut scenes, there is a battle. But if you lose, guess what: you have to see again the cut scene! Holly cow! How many times, especially at the end, I died but I had to see the whole dialogue all over again. Also worth noticing that, but the ending of the game, the among of dialogues sky rocketed. Based on your choices on the dialogues, you will face one of the 16 endings. Almost all of them decided by the very last hour or two.

Re reading this, I feel like I hated the game, judging by the amount of complaining. Do not think this. It is like complaining about your son or girlfriend: it is because you liked them very much that you point the weak points. This Polish company gained my heart. I loved their work. I liked the first one very much. But this one shows how much effort were put into the game. 2 years later, it still seems as fresh as a new release. I feel sorry that I wont play it again for a second ending, but the third game is coming… I cannot wait!

Buying impulse can be a disease. There are several ill people that cannot control their own reasoning and buy everything they see. Until they got empty pockets.

The gaming industry is now living a transformation (well, it already operates in large scale in this nee model), the distribution channels can be now totally digital. So if you see an ad, in matter of minutes you can buy and start the download. And if your internet connection is fast enough, the time difference between wanting and buying can be really short. Virtually immediate.

I’m not saying that impulses is wrong. And sometimes we have special items and tastes. We love stuff and when there are more to buy, we get excited.

I consider myself an economic guy. Hardly I go with impulses when we are talking about spending my own money. But other day I came with the question: the games that I bought worth? I played? Liked them?

Inspired by the indie developer Cliff, from Positech, I did some math in order to find what games was a bang of the buck.

The math is funding out how much time I played the game and divide by the price I payed. Thanks to Steam, I can see how much time I was with a game opened in my screen. Also, I can check my credit card to see how much. So all data I need is available.

There is one consideration: I’ve played several pirated games in my life and bought then recently for the sake of peace of mind. I did not count them also because I could not measure the amount of time I spent on them. Surely Mass Effect, Deus Ex 1, Morrowind and Oblivion, SimCity would be high on the list otherwise.

Considering that I can wait a bit for a game, I get many of them in a year of two after the release. These games tend to present a better ROI (Return of Investment). Buying at the release date is generally a bad decision, so unless is a long and good game, it will present a worse ratio.

The absolute king is… Team Fortress 2! Of course, it was free. But it is the game played most in recent years. More than 99 hours.

Then it comes smaller games that I bought very cheaply: Zeno Clash, Amnesia and GRID. All of them I played a lot, so the metrics favour them.

Then It comes some best-sellers that I played a big price, but I got me into them for a very long time: LA Noire I played 26 hours (and yet not finished), Witcher 2, Batman Arckham City and Skyrim, (other that I bought in the same day they launched the game and I still -shame- did not finish it).

Some of them I’m still playing, so there are some that would go even further up in the list. I can see Mark of the Ninja going this way… but I will write about it later…

Zeno Clash is the debut game from the Chilean developer Ace Team. It is an impressive piece of work that really explores the graphical capabilities of the Unreal engine. The game, while very strange looking, is very beautiful. The team used a very broad range of colors and textures and lights to give a unique feeling for each stage and characters. Don’t expect a very detailed environment, but it will catch your eyeballs nonetheless.

The game is just like a first-person shooter, but without the shooter part. That s because the game is all about brawling. While there are weapons, most combats you will only punch and kick. It’s very fun to focus on close range combat. You do not need to worry about stealth and very precise aim, but timing is required. Get close, avoid being hit and give everything you get. It is hard but much more pleasant that firing with guns: a bit relaxing I dare to say.

If the gameplay is a bit weird the story and theme are really crazy. The world of Zenozoik is populated by strange and ugly creatures. The whole theme is messed on purpose giving the player a  constant itchy feeling of surprise. The dialogs are very cryptic and never reveals the whole story. Several elements of the game, from the characters, places and dialogs all seem to be some sort of reference, like Matrix movies.I personally never found out any  direct reference, but I would bet that there are some link with the Biblic texts. I don’t know.

The game is short, with some repeating stages and mechanics. But I found myself enjoying most of the ride. I know that a sequel is getting cooked and I’m anxious to see the much more experienced team diving again in this universe.

It’s a classic of weirdness and I recommend to take a look. But be aware that is a love or hate product. My tip is: play a demo first. 😉

Gamespot: +Innovative, +Unique , -Shallow , -Weak Story

More and more rumours emerge about the videogame console from Valve. Famous about their online game store Steam, Valve is a some time investing in emerging technologies and ideas. But is a new videogame console needed? There are already three players now with major investments in hardware and the dispute is famous for being very, very hard. Sega, Panasonic and even Apple tried and can tell you more about it.

Valve has being preparing it’s terrain for some time now. It recently launched (which means that they were already working internally long before) the Bigpicture feature. It transforms the classical Steam interface in a more Television fashion. It is also designed to be controlled via a remote control. But they have never satisfactorily answered the question: who would put a giant PC case in the living room, right next to the TV, just to be able to play?

According to these news, the machine will feature a Linux. It is aligned with recent declarations of the Valve president, Gabe Newell, saying bad things about the new Microsoft Windows. Linux is free and flexible and recently is gaining an unprecedented track with Android phones. Also, Gabe knows that Microsoft plans to launch a service very similar to his Steam, selling software in a centralized way. Survival measures.

Valve has also working with Linux. They recently announced that Steam itself will work on Linux and accept Linux games. A beta is in progress. But except for indies, there are no relevant games for the system. Valve must itself to port some own games (Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, Half Life and DOTA franchises) to show the path and prove the market viability. Once they do this, many other developers might be encouraged to follow. But it will take a while though. Unlike Windows and closed console systems, Linux on a broadly used machine is yet a niche.

Game engines and middlewares must be prepared also. Valve probably is working on porting it’s Source engine to Linux. Rumours say that a second version of their famous middleware is being cooked. Another demonstration of commitment of this strategy. Epic’s Unreal engine, Unity, Id and other middleware players are announcing compatibility with Linux. They noticed the movement, lead by Valve’s Steam but not exclusively attached to it.

But how a traditional software company will enter in the computer market? Well, Microsoft already followed this path creating a whole hardware division to actually manufacture Xbox. It is a very risky and difficult movement. Electronic manufacturers like Samsung or Nvidia have much more expertise and would have much more success doing this path. Rather, I predict that Valve would follow a similar strategy adopted by Google and its Nexus brand: designed done in house but the actual machine is done by third parties. Valve would just set partnerships with pc manufacturers to create stylish mini PCs with top notch pieces like graphic card and processor. We would see several versions of Steambox shipped in waves, like smartphones and tablets, experimenting new features on each iteration.

PC should finally be considered a first class console.

Starting today, the blog will be now maintained using Google Blogger service.

It was 4 years using Drupal for my personal site. I still like it very much, but for a such small and simple mission, there is absolutely no reason to maintain the whole infrastructure for this site. Installing updates, maintaining versions and fighting for the correct configuration is no easy task.

I already struggle to write new posts. while I write a personal (really personal, only for myself) log quite regularly, writing for other people is a totally different endeavor The text requires a much more logical and careful writing

The final and decisive blow was the problems I was having with Bluehost that was not possible to use the Clean URL feature in Drupal. All the pages needed a weird “?q=” in order to function. I was not able to correct it properly. So I decided to change.

For the next few weeks I hope to be able to move everything to this new place. The theme will be changed as well. A lot of experimentation will be done.