Counter-Strike:Source(PC) review

Today i'm gonna review on yet another FPS game developed and published by Valve Corporation,named Counter-Strike:Source(CS:S).

This game was released worldwide on October 7,2004.
It is a complete remake of the popular Counter-Strike.
It uses the Source Engine just like Team Fortress 2.

Just like the original Counter-Strike,this game pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of round.

The main objective of both teams is to reach the round score limit before the opposing team.

Round score can be achieved through many ways.
Such as defusing a bomb, planting a bomb and preventing it from being defused by the other team, rescuing all the hostages on a map, preventing the hostages from being rescued, and defeat all the members of the opposing team.

When playing on a server without modification,players do not respawn once they are dead,till the next round.

The main improvement of CS:S from CS 1.6 is its more realistic and awesome graphics.
As compared in the following screenshots.

CS:S


CS 1.6

You can see clearly the difference in the textures,guns and map structures.
Which i personally like it very much,as CS 1.6 turns me off with its shitty graphics.

To be continued...

Team Fortress 2(PC) Review

What's better than fragging together with your friends,
just like a band of brothers in war,everyone couldn't make it through without each other's help.

That's basically what this game,Team Fortress 2, is about.


Team Fortress 2 is a team-based first-person shooter multiplayer video game developed by Valve Corporation.

It's a sequel to the very famous Team Fortress Classics by Valve Corporation as well.



This game was announced is 1998,
and was launched officially on 10 Oct 2007.
Nearly a decade after it was announced.

Due to the lack of information and progress report on the game's development,it was labeled as a vaporware.

To everyone's surprise,it was eventually released,receiving several awards and critical acclaim.

Team Fortress 2 is well known for its graphics,balanced gameplay,its use of full character personalities in a dedicated multiplayer game,and more importantly,its comedic value which would assure you a great laugh while playing.

This game took a step away from other common FPS games,using a cartoonist style visuals powered by Source Engine. Just like the game,Counter-Strike Source and Day Of Defeat source etc.

You wouldn't want to be humiliated by this Engineer.

That's all for the introduction,and the review starts from here.

Firstly,i would like to introduce the teams.
Basically there are only 2 teams available,either the RED or the BLU.

RED stands for Reliable Excavation & Demolition team.

BLU stands for Builders League United.

Differentiating enemies from friendly team mates couldn't be easier with this 2 colors.


Secondly,i would like to introduce the classes.

There are a total of 9 classes,which is divided into 3 different section,namely 'Offensive','Defensive' and 'Support'.
Each class would at least have 3 weapons,namely Primary Weapon,Secondary Weapon and Melee Weapon.

The Classes Categories

On the 'Offensive' side,we got the

Scout

A fast, agile character armed with a scattergun and capable of performing double jump and capturing points twice as fast as other classes.
The only down point is that low health of his.

Soldier(My Personal Favourite Class)

He wields a powerful Rocket Launcher that's effective at any range(Provided you fire accurately)
He's slow in speed but have more health compared to the Scout.
Reloading speed and magazine capacity are being a b**** to him though.

Pyro

As you can pretty much guess it,the Pyro wields a Flamethrower capable of setting its targets on fire and burn them to death.

Next,on the Defensive side. We have the

Demoman

Armed with a grenade launcher and a sticky bomb launcher,the demoman is capable of providing indirect fire to the enemies.
Not to mention blowing up the enemies' body into thousand pieces.

Heavy

As you can see, the heavy is a pretty fat ass.
What can such ass do?
Tanking damages with his huge amount of health and of course,with his minigun caused painful damages to the enemies.
Definitely,due to his size and his minigun,he's being slowed down and is the slowest class of the 9.

Engineer

As the name stated,the Engineer leaves his work to his beloved Sentry Gun,Dispenser and Teleporters as seen below.

Try getting close to this and see what happened to you

This thing over here is just like your mum,

taking care of your needs and all(Health and ammo)

This teleport you from one place to another.

And finally,on the Support category,we have the

Medic

The role of the medic is to keep teammates alive.
He wields a medigun which heals teammates and is able to deploy Ubercharge,which allow both the medic and his teammate to be invulnerable for a period of time, or enhance the firepower of the teammate he's healing.
Ubercharge would be up after the medigun has been for a brief time.
The presence of a medic is often the key point to victory.

Invulnerable UberCharge

Sniper

He,who wields a laser-sighter sniper rifle,picks out targets from far and able to put a strong fight in close combat with his submachine gun.

Spy

He have the abilities to cloak,sap engineers' structures,disguise as one of the enemies.
In addition to his revolver and deadly butterfly knife.


As you can see,each character is unique to their own ways.
The origin of each characters varies. Etc The scout is portrayed as a fast-talking baseball fan from Boston,Massachusetts.
There are also different strengths and weaknesses of each characters.
Therefore reliance on other classes in order to be efficient is a must for victory,this forces the balanced gameplay into more strategic thinking and an increased utilization of teamwork.

The player doesn't really need a 1337-owning skills to play this game.
You could choose to be a engineer,heavy, pyro or medic.
Which requires less aiming skills and thinking than the other classes,such as the Soldier,Scout and more.

Since this is a team-based game,there ain't any game mode for players to fight for their own frags and glory,such as the Deathmatch mode.

The modes were designed in a way that teams are required to work together in order to win.
There are 3 of such modes,namely

Capture The Flag - Where players must grab a briefcase intelligence from the opposing team's base back all the way to their own base.

Control Point - Teams fight to capture all the points on the map.

Payload - BLU team required to push a cart all the way to the last point of the map,whereas RED team have to defend against the BLU.

As you can see from the above mentioned modes,the game requires proper coordination and teamwork.
You just can't have your whole team rushing to the next point while leaving your point vulnerable with no defence,nor you can have your whole team defending the point and not moving forward.

Though this game was released about one and a half year ago,Valve is still working on this game,to make it a even better experiences for all the players.

Several add-ons and improvements on the game can be seen throughout the year.
Such examples are the new weapons for each and every classes,new maps,new modes and more.

Alright it seems tempting now,go ahead and get your copy of Team Fortress 2.
Support what Valve had done in making this game almost perfect.

For those who's interested in getting fragged by me,do add me on Steam,justawonderkid.

Personal score for Team Fortress 2 : 9/10

Thanks for your time reading this review and i hope you enjoyed it.
Cheers.

Regards,
Li Zheming

Call Of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare(PC) Review

Call Of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare
(COD4:MW)

First of all,allow me to present to you a short introduction on this game.

Call Of Duty 4 : Modern Warfare is a first-person shooter(FPS) video game,developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision as shown in the above image.

It's the 4th installment of the Call Of Duty(COD) video game series

Unlike any other FPS games,including its own COD series,the game is set in modern times instead of the usual World War II.

It's a wise choice taken by Infinity Ward to produce modern FPS,as there are far much more WWII FPS than modern ones.

I'm one of the many gamers out there,who fancy modern FPS more than anything else.

Enough of the introduction,and let's get to the actual review.

First of all,i would start off with the good and the bad of the game.

The Good - Realistic,intense and exciting single-player campaign.
- Attention-grabbing storyline.
- Non-stop thrilling action,in both campaign and online mode.
- Fantastic graphics and natural audio/voice.

The Bad - Short campaign mode,as compared to other FPS.
- No online ranking system.
- Availability of more weapons would be better.


The single-player campaign put you into the shoes and action of various roles of the good side,which consists of the US and Britain armies.
What could be better than killing the baddie and turn their life miserable,and ended up being a hero?

Killing the baddie wouldn't be as fun as this.

Though the campaign is short in quantity,but the game makes up for it with its quality.
The realistic graphics makes it like a real life experience of war.
You can feel as if you are fighting on the battlefield itself,with a bunch of squads with you,helping you and giving you commands.
Running past gunfires for cover,dodging grenades and returning fire.
Whatever that could happen in a war,and that's what you will all see in the game itself.

As it is,a picture speaks a thousand words.
This is how realistic and fantastic the graphics is.

All the modern weapons,
MP5,M4 Carbine,G36C etc,
even the everyone-hates-that-noobtubes aka Grenade Launcher would be found in the campaign as well,together with the attachments like red dot sight and silencer.

And the weapons definitely looks as real as it could be.
Thumbs up,and it's definitely not a paper gun.

M4 of CS1.6

M4 of COD4:MW

The best mission of the campaign would have to be the sniper ones.
Where you play as a disciple of this sniper master,who will lead you the way to assassinate the boss of the baddie,named Imran Zakhaev.
I mean,just how many FPS games at least focus on the sniper area as part of the campaign.
Everyone loves being a sniper,and with that,COD4 have just settled our desire.

In-Game Screenshots


Camouflaging and hiding in the big grass field to avoid being owned by a big group of the baddie.


The gigantic and amazing .50 Caliber Sniper Rifle in action.

Now onto the multiplayer action of COD4.

There are a total of 5 multiplayer modes - Free for all,Team Deathmatch,Domination,Search And Destroy and Sabotage.

In Free For All mode,everyone else on the battlefield is your enemy,show no mercy and hunt them down.

In Team Deathmatch,players would be divided into 2 teams.
Either Opfor and Marines/Spetsnaz and SAS.
Objective for each team is to take down the enemy as many times as possible.
The winner is determined by either when one of the teams reached the score limit or when time limit is over,the team with the most points wins.

An example of Team Deathmatch.

In domination,players would be again divided into 2 teams.
This time round,the objective is to secure the flags on the map.
Namely Point A,B and C.
Both teams would fight for the flags and the team with the most points generated from the flags wins.
Again,winner is decided when either the time limit is over or when the score limit is reached.

Example of a flag in domination

In Search and Destroy,just like CS 1.6.
The players are divided into Attacking and Defending teams.
Objective for both teams is to eliminate all the enemy or destroying the bombsites by planting bomb and eliminate all the enemy or prevent the enemy from destroying the bombsites,respectively.
There would be 2 bombsites per map.
Players who died in the round would not be able to respawn till the round is over,unlike any other modes.

Example of a player planting a bomb in SND mode

In Sabotage,it's somewhat the same as Search and Destroy,just that the players would be able to respawn everytime after they died until one of the bombsite is being destroyed.

Players can choose between different modes and therefore being given the freedom to play what they like.

The following picture shows how you can create your own class of your choice of gun,pistol,perks,special grenade and attachments. You can also name the class you created.



There are 5 classes of weapons available,each of which accompanied by a pistol and 3 different perks.
1)Assault Rifles
2)SubMachine Guns
3)LightMachine Guns
4)Shotguns
5)Sniper Rifles

As you first started playing,you would start as a recruit,and the default weapons of each class would be provided for you.


You would then have to earn points through killing,clearing objectives to earn your way to higher ranks,and unlocking new weapons and perks.

Before i forget,perks are actually somewhat like 'abilities' that your character would be equipped with.

For example,the following perk named 'Stopping Power',which increase your weapon damages.



You are allowed to equip 3 perks of different slots.
Every slot of perks consists of different perks of different categories.

There are also achievements you can pursue listed in the game.

Thus COD4 provides a action-packed and non-stop progress multiplayer experience.
One of the many reasons why it was named 'The Game Of The Year'.


In conclusion,you might think that i'm bullshiting,but just get a copy of the game and experience the perfection yourself .
By then you would have the same opinion and view as me.


Personal score for Call Of Duty 4 : Modern Warefare - 9/10
A Must-Play for all FPS players.
Throw your CS1.6,CSS,Medal Of Honors aside,
and start playing this.

For those interested in playing with me,add me on xfire - megaunited.
Cheers and frag you soon.

Regards,
Li Zheming.