Stupid girl gets a girlfriend…..

It might seem nonplussing more than funny, or Lesbian than straight, but it’s just a ‘not so practical’ joke I am using almost everywhere. Thanks to 'Friends', which I am watching more and more these days.

This phrase wasn’t in the same form in there as it is here, it was rather this- ‘Stupid guy on my phone’, which must be seen to be realized how funny it is. And even I don’t use it in the same form everywhere. What actually happened that I was stuck in a ‘Red-light’ stop when I saw a guy with his girlfriend (pardon me friend if she was your sister) on bike and as I am all alone these days, I just recalled the Friends phrase and said instinctively- ‘Stupid guy gets a girlfriend’ and somehow, without any apparent reason, I liked it a lot. So I was saying it whenever I saw a couple. But how its lesbian counterpart came along is a quite different story. It happened when I was coming back from a ‘new kind of experience’ (which I am going to talk about later), when I saw a really hot girl with some guy on bike, but it turned out later that it wasn’t a guy she was with, but it was another girl, and so the titled phrase slipped out of my tongue.

OK, getting back on more regular topics. I am watching a lot of ‘Friends’ these days, as I don’t really have many a things to do. And by a lot, I mean it literally. The only dilemma I face while watching it is that whenever a ‘sexually explicit’ scene comes along and my family members are there, it becomes weird to watch. I finished ‘Rainbow six- Vegas II’ as expected and also finished ‘Chronicles of Riddick- escape from the Butcher bay’. But what was unexpected, was that I finished –F.E.A.R. - Perseus mandate’ too. I will come honest, I didn’t like it much, and I just finished it because of three reasons-

1. If I finished this, I would have finished all games of F.E.A.R. series.

2. It would have added another name in my ‘Games completed’ list.

3. I didn’t have many more games to play.

I am not sure if I want to do a review of Perseus mandate, but I would write a few things about it. It is the same thing all along which was F.E.A.R. The gameplay isn’t much different, except that what seemed great and innovative in F.E.A.R. has turned into mediocre. It doesn’t scare anymore, and the game only gave me one creep all along, so Doom3 pees over it in this area. The story doesn’t progresses much, more in the fashion revolving here and there and actually goes nowhere. And pardon me if it did progress a bit (I did hear the word ‘Project Origin’ here and there, which is the name of the upcoming true sequel of F.E.A.R.) because I just wasn’t into it. The graphics have no upgrades whatsoever (guess this way, in the stress test, my card had 133FPS average, at 1280*1024 and 4xAA, 16xAF with all settings high and all soft shadows and everything like that turned on. And BTW, even the test is the same as it was in F.E.A.R.). So all in all, it’s a game if you want to play more F.E.A.R., that’s it.

But the last statement puts me in a perplexing position; cause isn’t the same statement true for ‘Rainbow six- Vegas II’? I mean, after all, it is the same game, just the story progressing. But there are little differences here and there, like the addition of support for Anti Aliasing, and some little more upgrades to the graphics engine. And then again, the story does progresses much more than let’s say….in the contender above, and the arc ends, although the story wasn’t that great. So I can give much more credit to Rainbow six: Vegas II than Perseus mandate.

Chronicles of Riddick was much better game than anyone would expect from a movie game but it’s too old to be reviewed. Still I would say that if you haven’t played it, go play.

The game I really want to review as of now is- ‘The Witcher’. Yes I have finished it and the good news is this that it is really really good. Then again, I want to give it as much credit as it deserves, so I would be reviewing it in a whole new entry entirely dedicated to it.

And now to the ‘new kind of experience’ I was talking about. It started this way that some MLA got a heart-attack and some MP came to meet him in Udaipur. That MP was somehow related to us and so I had to go there with my mom to meet him. To be honest, the highest authority I have ever met will probably be the head of DUGC committee in IIT. So meeting a MP was kind of a big deal. But that isn’t the ‘new kind of experience’ I was talking about. What I was talking about was the experience of seeing how things go on when there are a bunch of politicians. As soon as we entered the hospital premise, we encountered police vehicles everywhere, policemen were everywhere and for the first time I saw that it was taken care of that who parks his/her vehicle where. Inside the premise was no different, except the fact that there were many many more people there. As far as I could guess, there was only one family which really had someone dear in ICU, other than the MLA of course. The family was relegated to a corner of stairs (not to ruin the mood, but one of the two girls in the family was really hot) and some high profile people were talking in very amiable way to each other, going over the top most of the time. Some were introducing lower profile persons to their high profile ones, which most of the time was to get something done (most of the public was there to get something done anyway). Handshakes, hugs, smiles and compliments were flying everywhere and there was a lot to wonder on the question that if those good people were so bad-mouthed politicians actually, how come they are perceived so badly?

In the end, after a long wait, we did meet the MP we came to meet, and it was a meeting that lasted less than a minute, in which I was not even introduced! I didn’t want to go in the first place, but mom kept forcing me, citing that it would be nice to get introduced to some ‘high profile’ people and that how can it be bad, if not good? I probably did fall for those, but thank God I didn’t fall for her suggestion that I should touch feet of that MP for benediction when we meet him. In a place where everyone was getting his/her job done in any way possible, it is not hard to guess that such action would have been perceived as great flattery.

Finally, I returned home at 11:30 in night, exhausted and irritated, but what I earned was this ‘new kind of experience’ and that was probably the only good thing about that (except checking out that hot girl of course!)

Review- Rainbow six-Vegas

It is always strange, and we couldn’t stop wondering what Ubisoft saw in the writings of Tom clancy that clicked as potential, ground breaking, video game franchises. Splinter cell, rainbow six, ghost recon. All of these are franchises that rocketed ubisoft on top place of game in industry. The newest game of one of these franchise, Rainbow six:vegas is a game which can’t be counted as degrading the overall quality assurance image of these franchises. In fact, it increases it in some cases.

You play as Logan keller in this game, the leader of the counter terrorist team who is called to operate against terrorists in Mexico (true, the game isn’t only in Vegas and also the beginning is not vegas). What happens after that and how we reach Vegas is the story element and we won’t spoil it for you.

Two most basic things of a game are graphics and gameplay, and this game is excellent on both of these fronts.

The graphics are realistic, very realistic. The flying dust, stunning lightning and shadow effects and great textures create sights to behold.

This game uses UT 3 engine, the same used in Gears of war. But to be true, although it goes down as one of the best looking games out there on PC, it is not as good looking as gears. This may be contributed to the fact that it was Epic themselves who made Gears and to another fact that on PC, there is always a bottom line that if you’re making a PC game, it should run on as many as PCs as you can allow it to. Ubisoft is already getting criticized for using Shader model 3.0 for this game, which makes many Graphics cards unable to play it.

Gameplay, although varying quite much from last Rainbow six, is very satisfying. It is probably the only game which gives you real feeling of being a commando. The animations of taking cover and shooting while hiding, or popping out suddenly and then firing, are just like a trained commando will do.

You can also shoot without coming out, but they will not be accurate. It is just like real life, you don’t where exactly the enemy is , so all you do is to get an idea of his position by his voice and fire blindly. This effect is crafted very nicely, although you won’t be using it pretty much cause of the inaccuracy.

This game do not has any medikit to pick or anything like that. The health replenishes itself after a while, slowly. So there is no need to go mad to find a medipack if you are low on health. This certainly decreases frustration in intense combats. Another effect is that whenever you get hit, the vision gets blurred for a while. So you need to wait until it goes OK to come back in action.

Just like Gears, anything that is between you and enemy is your friend here. You can take cover behind almost anything. And the controls for this are so easy. Just hold the right click and you are covered. Sit down or hide against it, and then use your ammo the way you like.

You won’t be playing alone. You have two buddies with you in almost every level. Everytime anything about AI buddies come and we start to suspect that they will be dumb and won’t be on par. But this times, this is not the case. They are pretty smart in almost everything. They navigate complex paths seamlessly and follow your orders without any double pressing.

Giving them order is one of the easiest things you can do in this ame. Point where you want them to be, and press space bar, they will be there. They take pretty good covers automatically, so don’t worry about there health that much.

There are many other things in the game worth mentioning. Like rope climbing or decending, choosing priority killing for enemies and of course, the weapon modification.

The Multiplayer allows cooperative mode, up to four players. So that creates good fun, and also compensates a bit for short single player part. You can also replay the game in realistic mode, which is much harder than normal.

Then there is normal multiplayer, up to 16 players. Containing almost every type of game. Whether capture the flag or time mode. You can also customize yourself by unlocking new weapons, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

The game features almost every type of real life gun. And you can further customize it, by adding silencer, laser or anything that is available.

And the last thing, but surely one of the best things, is the background score of the game. It is strange in fact. Really dark in earlier ages of the game, and the funky later on. Since you are in casinos, music will be, most of the times, what is being played in casino. Really good score, not if you want to listen alone, but really fits great in setting of game.

With so many plus points, is there anything that goes wrong with this game? Well…nothing is perfect. The biggest flaw of this game is that it requires a very Godly machine if you want to play it in full glory. Ubisoft said that there was no possibility of same experience as of Xbox360 if they didn’t include Shader model 3.0, so we can consider that. But still, there are others who want to play the game, without upgrading to a Rs.15000 ($375) graphic card. Now it is all up to you to think about what was right. To degrade the graphics, and hence experience of game, or to allow some more people to play this game.

Another minus points comes from the fact that you can’t save the game anywhere you want. There are several checkpoints where it will get automatically saved. So, if you die a bit too far away from previous check point, get ready to be frustrated cause now you have to do it all over again.

The final words are- if you have the hardware to run it, go get it. Even if you didn’t like earlier Rainbow six games, give it a shot. And if you liked, we don’t need to say buy it, do we?