STG's

I just finished Borderlands and so I bought the DLC pack. When fast traveling to Jacob's Cove to access Zombie Island, the loading screen went on and on without disk activity. How do you get it to continue? Well, what happened is that an activation window for the content popped up in the background, where there was no chance of me seeing it. You have to alt-tab to it (and for some reason I couldn't get the mouse to go there, but it works with just the keyboard), and then enter the serial for Zombie Island. After that it will go online to activate the DLC, and after a while it will be able to finish loading. Overall, a horribly implemented idea. All other DLC I ever bought just appeared in the game without further work in my part. AFAIK it is trivial for the program to use the Steam API to do it. No idea why they did it this way in this case... Amazon.com Widgets

The Power of Six - by Pittacus Lore - is the sequel to I am Number Four . It is quite common for sequels to be worse than the original. This one felt a little shorter, but overall it was probably as good as the first - if not better, as the most annoying stuff in story logic and ridiculous battle scenes (with the dark realm) were not present here. The book is a direct sequel, after the big school battle, John and Sam are being chased as terrorists. Another of the garde enter the story and there is a lot of going back and forth between them. On my Kindle book, there was no division between some of these segments, and on the spots where they quickly flipped between the stories that was a bit jarring. There are plenty of battles, and the ending is clearly built-up for suspense for other sequels (which I'll buy right when it is released). The Kindle version I saw had an extended scene (pretty weak), audio messages from Pittacus Lore (supposedly the alien leader, trying to warn ...

Renegade Ops is a very nice looking arcade drive-and-shoot game. The graphics are great, and one of the biggest points in the sales pitches is the number of explosives and destroyable structures. I have to agree, and it looks great. However, I hate the control scheme. It uses WASD as most games, however it uses it to indicate the direction to drive - instead of the W for accelerate, A and D to steer and S for brake and reverse. Seems like a small change, but even after playing for a while I'm constantly bothered by it. I'm not sure I'd enjoy the game with another control scheme, but with this one, I really didn't. Because of this, not recommended at all.

Trine 2 is a platformer that uses the same formula used in Trine, as well as many games over the years ( The Lost Vikings - From 1992 - comes to mind). You control 3 characters magically rolled into one, each with different abilities. You then face puzzles which need you to choose the right ability and the right thing to do with them. Trine 2 is quite beautiful. The music is nice but quite repetitive - I quickly got tired of it. Everything seems pretty much like the first game, so if you liked it, you will probably like this one too. However, I have to say that after half an hour, I started to get annoyed with the fairly similar puzzles, as well as the less-than-stellar combat. I recommend trying the demo before buying.

I've just watched I am Number Four - the movie. While I realize that a lot of people hated it, I really liked it. Sure, I realize that some points of the plot don't make sense, and that the whole story seems forced. But I still enjoyed the fights and the special effects. That is when I decided to read the book. I mean, how frequently have I said that a movie was better than the book? Almost never. Unfortunately, that book was one of those cases. OK, pretending that the author is an alien trying to warn Earth is cute. But the mishmash of SF and fantasy really annoyed me. For example, either they didn't explain it in the movie or I missed it - why are they being killed in sequence? The book explains - it is a charm that makes them invulnerable, unless they get the next one in the sequence. Oh. Also, their superpowers. I would have hoped for the classic SF hand waving - the talents were bio engineered by a long lost tech by their ancestors (I'm thinking of Neal...

Satazius is a REALLY old school arcade shoot'em up. In fact I just went and checked the release date, in case Steam just added a decade old game and I didn't realize. It does look OK for the chosen theme. But the control scheme is incredibly annoying (the menus go back and forth using Z and X?!?! Escape closes the program immediately?!?), and I no longer can handle the annoyance of a single hit blowing you up. I guess they do deserve props for the authenticity of their work, but I didn't enjoy it at all, and don't recommend it.

Prador Moon, by Neal Asher, is another novel of the Polity. This one covers the beginning of the Prador war - right when the the Prador and the Polity had first contact. I particularly enjoyed the extra detailed explanation into Prador armor and augs. The ending is satisfying but while the book pretend to be coy about it, it gives too much away for it to be anything close to a surprise. Recommended for those who are already fans of the Polity books.

The start up movies in Borderlands! are quite annoying. OK, the Nvidia logo with the Claptrap is cute - but not after a few times. You can easily remove them by editing some INI files . Go to "USER NAME\Documents\My Games\Borderlands\WillowGame\Config" and find the file named WillowEngine.ini Comment out (//) all entries on [FullScreenMovie]. Go to this page for more details and tweaks.

Borderlands calls itself a RPS - Role Playing Shooter. They say it as if it was new, but I'd say that it has been done many many times, with varying results. The one thing that is fairly unique about Borderlands is the visual, cartoonish style, which looks great and at the same time seems to bother my eyes after playing for a while. The characters are pretty well made too, with very different looks. The gameplay reminds me of Fallout 3 - you go around and talk to people, get missions and fulfill them, while getting stuff you can find around you and getting attacked by the local monsters and bandits. It also has plenty of different weapons, and seem to go on even more about their uniqueness - they all seem to have different bonus on accuracy, damage or recoil, or special stuff such as explosive, fire or lightning damage. Meanwhile you accumulate experience points. Some guns, shields or class mods require minimum levels, plus you can get improvements to your special action. ...

I've recently tried Star Wars: Force Unleashed II on the XBOX 360, and while I didn't really like it, it reminded me of the fact that I already bought Star Wars: Force Unleashed for PC on a Steam sale a while ago. So I downloaded it - 25GB! and played a bit. It looks pretty great, and I really loved the amount of damageable objects on the opening level. Lots of stuff exploding into pieces. The trees is particular looked pretty nice. The control scheme and gameplay still feels a bit more on the videogame style than a PC FPS, but it is much more tolerable. There is a nice progression system, in which you get extra talents,combos and powers. Overall, I think it is OK - maybe good. If you are a big Star Wars fan, you will probably enjoy it, but I can't help but feel that it could be a lot better.

Rock of Ages is clearly a member of a very old game subgenre - where you roll some round object to an objective, while avoiding falling. Those are the boulders you use to destroy enemies, their structures, defenses and ultimately destroy their gates and kill their leader. However, it adds much more, as there is a tower defense component on both sides - even on single player. You build stuff such as Towers (which just stay there), cows and elephants (which block and damage your boulder) and catapults (which deflect and damage). It looks pretty good and has an unusual art style, specially on the cinematics. I particularly liked how they pulled the theme of the game of the Sisyphus myth - he got tired of rolling that rock up the hill all the time, and decided to use it to broke out of Hades. Pretty funny. It is somewhat interesting, but I'm not sure how fun the gameplay will be after playing more.

Orbus, by Neal Asher, is the third book in the SpatterJay series. It changes the setting quite a bit from the two previous volumes - almost nothing of the story passes on SpatterJay. But ultimately, it is all about SpatterJay. In particular, we get a full explanation of the origin of the SpatterJay virus, its purpose, and why it has almost magical powers. It is hard to go on without dropping lots of spoilers, but I can say that the story of Vrell continues and end in a very satisfying manner, and that Orbus (I mean, duh! It is in the title!), Sniper and Thirteen are back, and that the book ends in the typical heavy battle. Recommended, and I have to say I'm a bit sad to see the end of the series. Thankfully, I've got several books to go with the Polity yet. I just bought Prador Moon and will read it soon enough.

SkyDrift is an old school plane race game, complete with the traditional boosts and weapons, such as cannons, missiles, mines and more. The graphics are very good, and the gameplay is fun while still being challenging. I like it, and I recommend checking out the demo if you like this kind of game.