amnesia: the dark descent retroview.

as a gamer, i personaly play for a lot of reason like releasing some inner beast, being a psychophat, or simply to feel some great experience. its an addictive form of art to me, whether its visually or emotionally. there's just a game that just suck you in like a desperate 2$ hot prostitute, i can't just deny the fun on it. most of the game this day will be great and fun if you want to play more and more until you die in an addiction with a mouth full of foam (example: WOW or COD). but there's a game that somehow break that rule, a game that you dont wanna play but it keeps dragging and challenges you to finish it.

enter amnesia: the dark descent, an adventure survival horror game created by an indie developer called frictional games whose only previous title is a cult favorite, penumbra series. both of this game will scare you like a cockroach in front of pesticide can, yet it will challenge your manhood (or girlhood if you are one brave girl) to keep playing it so you know you are not a coward.

the game is about Daniel, a man who woke up in a creepy dark castle alone and he had, well you guessed it, amnesia and can't remember things or two about his past. yeah, yeah, i know amnesia is as common as sunrise in video game plot line but its quite working here so just enjoy it. he wanders around the castle and find a notes from himself in the past that told him to kill a man called Alexander Brennenburg. the note told him that he prefer to forget about what happens so he could go on without a burden to finish his goal. from this point you wander and wander then solve some basic puzzle before getting butchered by "what the F is that" things that hunt you down in the castle.

the story is actually quite interesting and makes you wonder about why he choose to forget about what happened, why did alexander had to be killed, or simply what the hell just chase me back there. there's no cut scene to tell you what happened in the game. maybe its due to the developer limitation so all the story in the game is told by either an audio flashback or a note in game. it had similar feeling like the first time i played resident evil in the psx when you find out about the horror that happens, limited but still get the job done to surprise you.

horror game in this day this, say deadspace or fatal frame, is quite scary but because you had a number of weapons in your pocket you will always feel quite safe, for most part of course . while in amnesia, they stay true to what survival is, being hopeles in the search to survive, that was real survival just like humanity now. the hopelessness of your character will drive your instinct to do whatever you need to survive, even if it was a realy stupid idea that get you killed. you had to run or hide whenever you meet with the monster, there's now way you could kill the monster and that was just downright scary.

one thing that makes this game unique is the inclusion of the sanity meter. the sanity meter will keep dropping if you witness anything scary or stay too long in the dark and makes your day even worse in the castle. you need a source of light from the candle and lantern to keep your sanity in check but the light will make the monster easier to spot you and make you one of his dessert for the dinner. it force you to make a choice whether going crazy in the dark or getting slain by the monster. the lower your sanity is, the harder the game became. daniel will be harder to control and he will see halucination and hear strange voice. as unique as it sounds like, for me it doesn't changes much of the game. most of the changes caused by the sanity meter going low is just a cosmetic like a confusing camera effect and it doesn't affect much of the survival factor.

the star of this game is absolutely the atmosphere of the castle where you will always be scared even if theres nothing to scare you. the atmophere did a great job in making you always be in fear even the sound of your cellphone ring will scare the living soul out of you when you played this game (this happen to me). there's just something uneasy about the stone castle combined with darkness and unexplained voice that came from nowhere.

in conclusion, this game had a great moment and its a very memorable experience, one scary great memorable experience to be precise. there's a moment that will makes you scared to put your foot in the water ever again, there's a disturbing voice and imagery that will haunt your dream, and of course the overall experience will haunt you for a long time. you should play this game in the dark with a headphone to fell the maximum experienc. oh, and dont forgot to stock some pants because you will Sh*t your pants for sure.

Counter strike online review

I always like anything that is strange and out of the box (no friendo, I am not a fan of bondage and tentacle fetish even if they are out of the box and strange) And I also loves a game that just dare to be unique. One developer that I think always deliver its uniqueness very well is valve, the one that bring us the most loveable mute badass nerd ever, Gordon Freeman from half life series and so does games like left 4 dead 1 and 2, portal 2 and the undying counter strike series.

Valve might be well known for their half life series, but the first time I heard their name was in the counter strike. I first played counter strike when I am 12 or 14 years old and oh boy, that game is almost as addictive as heroin because I spent a lot of money playing it in internet café all day. Luckily, I didn’t go as far as prostituting myself to get the money to play it. The games fast, hard, challenging and very punishing for the man who sucks at gaming. But if you are a masochist who likes a challenge to master a game like I do, this game is a gem. After like 10 years, the series still go on with the new counter strike global offensive on its way and it’s proving that people’s still love this games.

 So I am now going to talk about a counter strike game that most people didn’t know exist, especially if you’re not living in the awesome region of Asia like I do. This version of counter strike only playable for the Asians region like Japan, south Korea, China, Malaysia, Singapore, and the country where I lived, Indonesia. The games called counter strike online (CSO), and no I am not stupid. I know that counter strike can be played via online connection but that’s how they really named it. Yeah, It’s kinda retard  to name it that way but who am I to complaint.

So far, the Indonesian CSO is still an infant game in the market. Not many peoples knew about the game and play it. But I think the game had a good prospect in the future and with an intensive update every week the game will expand more and it will be huge.

  CSO itself is a free MMOFPS version of counter strike developed by the south Korean company called Nexon under the surveillance of valve. It had the original gameplay mechanic where you shoot till your enemies death and occasionally plant a bomb or saves hostages. But the game is given with extra tweak like new weapons, new maps, more characters where now you can play as a woman in counter strike (yay for feminism) and more mode like death match, team death match, zombie mode and scenario mode. Some items is locked by default so you will need a virtual cash that you can buy with real money or purchasing it with the game points that you can get by playing the games. The game is filled with contents and they were all great to play.

The new mode like The death match and team death match mode is pretty much a  standard fps mode where all you need to do is kill enemies as much as you can to win and you can respawn right after you were killed. But the new one that is quite addictive to play is the zombie mode. The zombie mode is a polished version of the old counter strike fan made zombie mod where in every round some player will be chosen as the host zombie. The host zombie must spread the infection by attacking the human and turn them into zombie while the rest of the player must kill or survived from the zombie infection. I personally love this mode because it needs a tactic, practice and skill to master this mode. Sure, you can always do the sit, wait and shoot the zombie whenever it is in sight and you will still do quite well with that but if you wanna be the god of zombie mode there’s a lot of tactic and possibility that you may uncover to play in this mode like using melee weapon (which is the most dangerous yet satisfying way to kill zombie), mono y’ mono fight against zombies or hit and run tactic. And finally there is the zombie scenario mode where you must survive against wave of unlimited zombies as long as you can. Some of this scenario mode contains a boss battle again huge zombie that is very hard to kill. This mode is quite hard for the beginner because you will not succeed in your first try. You will be dead, a lot. This mode really emphasizes you to use teamwork, tactic and experience since there’s zero percentage to finish this all by yourself If you wanna be the lone hero. But after you go past the learning phase, you will find this mode really fun if you had a great team to play with. But if all you got is a bunch of A class social A-hole you might consider to buy a new monitor because I’m sure you will throw your monitor after playing the scenario mode with that kind of team.

The game isn’t perfect, sometime there could be a bug problem that could annoy you when you are playing. People flying in the air, guns had no sounds, a zombie that you can’t shoot or people going through the wall like a ghost thingy. But the strange thing is, sometime the bug can be used for your advantage and made the overall experience better. I’m not sure if the developer did that intentionally as a strangely deformed easter egg but as long as it makes the game fun I’ll go with it.

CSO isn’t a gentle game for beginner. The original counter strike itself is known for the unforgiving ‘noobs’ slayer game and I think the developer of CSO continues that tradition in their game. There’s a lot of thing that the newcomer must learnt and know before they can squish the fun out of the game or they might just give up and stop playing. Also, some of the game information might not be in the game. As example, how could I know that some knife can deal a deadly damage against zombie while other didn’t or how could I know that some guns can deal extra damage against zombie? Sure, you can still learn it from the internet but a beginner would find that annoying and confusing.

In conclusion, If you love counter strike and craving for more, this game is for you because it is the good ol’ counter strike that we knew and love with extra steroid injection to make it better. The hardcore fan of counter strike will feels right at home while the newcomer might find a lot of things to do and learn before they find the G-spot of this game.