Those Deadly Shadows Are Still Fun

BOREDOM drove me away from online first person shooters to revisit the king of first person sneakers in the form of Thief: Deadly Shadows but is it still worthy of the crown? Read more

Crysis Outstanding Gaming Moment

GOOD GAMES are easy to come by these days, given the growth of the industry, the improvements in production quality and general focus on pushing the envelope again and again to keep pace with technology. Great games however are few and far between, and even when a great game is produced it doesn’t guarantee anything from its audience. Ultimately the success or failure of the game is driven not just by the sales performance but also by the cult status it achieves amongst gamers and the level and intensity of discussions it promotes online. Typically a really excellent game will have an outstanding gaming moment, hidden somewhere within it.

I have just experienced one of those outstanding ‘gaming moments’ in playing Crysis, a moment which – for me – has justified my investment in this game, because up to this point I was beginning to loose the faith and this game was falling into the category of so many other games before it; good, entertaining but nothing “that special“.

Before I tell you about this let me first clarify a few things. For starters, if you have not played this game, or you don’t want to have any information which may spoil your gameplaying experience – then don’t read any further, because in order to explain what happened I’m going to have to get into the details. In other words… SPOILER ALERT!

So what makes an outstanding ‘gaming moment’ for me? Well, it’s those elusive occasions when you’re playing a game and the combination of all elements of that game come together into something – an event, a challenge, a scene – some unique occurance that just causes your jaw to drop. It is generally accompanied by uncontrollable expletives like ‘Fuck me!’ or “You clever, clever bastards“, and it inevitably ends in a huge appreciative grin on behalf of the player for the game designers and developers, for it was their ingenuity and forethought which crafted this moment, this special unique thing within the game in question.

It doesn’t happen very often, so when it does it’s worthy of mention. Read more