I tried on Thursday with a friend to get tickets for the IMAX premier of Alice in Wonderland – the newest masterpiece-candidate by my very favorite duo Tim Burton – Johnny Depp. Needless to say, I didn`t succeed in this desperate quest mere hours before the 00:01 premier.  We managed to get the last 2 free seats in one corner of the hall last evening though.

I must admit I don`t even recall ever reading Lewis Carroll`s 19th century children book “Alice`s Adventures in Wonderland” (if I have I must have been bored to death). Also, I haven`t seen any of the previous film adaptations about the little blond lunatic. I basically know the whole original plot from somewhere, which is somewhat of a mystery to me, but I`m definitely no fan of the franchise. Actually, my closest approach to this crazy story was in American McGee`s Alice which I think will be getting a sequel next year.

Obviously, I just went to see a Burton movie, not caring much for the plot. That`s exactly what I got and although being far from Tim`s best work, it managed to entertain me quite successfully!

This is a “growing up” movie and it basically tells the story of an older Alice who has lost her “muchness” and has to deal with some crazy shit in Wonderland in order to grow up and figure out her life`s goals. To achieve this she goes through a 1000 changes in body size and always manages somehow to get new clothes of the appropriate size. You`re not missing on anything though since Mia Wasikowska seems to be severely lacking in “muchness” south of her neck… I actually liked her performance in Alice`s role overall and she wasn`t the least bit irritating like I thought she would be. Sadly, Depp`s presence this time serves just to attract more viewers. I didn`t find his character likable at all, unlike Jack Sparrow, Sweeney Todd or even Willy Wonka.

What the hell was that with the Michael Jackson dance or the Scottish accent, Johnny?!

Helena Bonham Carter`s portrayal of the Red Queen definitely steals the crown, being by far the best performance. My favorite character was the Cheshire Cat though and I savored every scene with him in it, which brings me to the visual effects. Some people have complained of Tim Burton`s excessive usage of CGI but that was the only way to achieve the movie`s “Burtonish” visual style, which is what I liked most! The film even manages pull off a somewhat epic climax, which is speaking a lot, if you consider that we are talking about armies of cards and chess figures.

Like it or not, the movie`s marketing and Johnny Depp`s star power alone cannot account for the movie`s mind-blowing $41 Million at the Friday Box Office (Avatar got only $27 Mil).

• If you`re a Burton fan and still haven`t seen it shame on you!
• If you are an Alice fan I guess you`ll see it anyway.
• If you just happen to just like big titted teenage girls though I can`t vouch for your satisfaction…

After two weeks with my girlfriend in Newcastle, England, I`m back home and back to blogging
I will finally stop torturing myself with my crappy notebook`s graphics card and play Mass Effect 2 like it`s supposed to be played on my gaming rig. Surprisingly though, my newest adventure today was neither on Commander Shepard`s Normandy, nor in a Big Daddy suit for a lovely second visit of Rapture, it was in the kitchen instead.

I came back home just in time for the 3rd of March. Today was Bulgaria`s liberation from Turkey in the Russo-Turkish war in 1877/8 so it`s kind of our most important annual celebration. Of course, I couldn`t miss the opportunity to show off with some amazing University-acquired cooking skillz and backed a home made bread in the form of a sun. It`s a very special bread and even has some cheese inside and let`s face it – who needs bluetooth when you`ve got cheese in your bread?! (clicky on the pic for some high-res crushed walnuts) At least, my mom won`t have to worry anymore since even if I don`t become a physicist, I obviously have baking talents Who knew…

By the way, I passed both of my Physics exams and failed Calculus. The conclusion is that a dozen sheets of paper with mathematical Axioms on your toilet`s walls or some similar stupidity won`t do the trick if you lack some basic training. Don`t try it!

Hey, people, I`m back. Did you miss me?

No, I wasn`t abducted by aliens for one of their typical anal-probing tests, although I had to take an “Ana1″ Exam(ination) just two days ago (Ana1 = Analysis 1 = Calculus).

The last two weeks I spent practically living in the library, studying until closing time every evening. In fact, I had to even decorate my bathroom in an interesting way:

Left: "A tiny bit of Calculus theorems while taking a leak"; Right: "Quite a lot of theorems when sitting on the toilet"

So I already took an exam in Experimental Physics 1 and Calculus but Theoretical Physics still awaits me on Friday… So far I`ve been managing to ignore the fact that one of my most anticipated games of the year was released in the mean time, but yesterday as I finally had time to go shopping for groceries I saw IT. Needless to say, I couldn`t resist it!

Of course, I wouldn`t just get myself 50 EUR poorer ($68 for a PC version, can you believe that!!!). So I first finished downloading a pirated version of the game JUST to see if I get good enough framerates on the crappy GeForce 9600M GT of my lappy. After sacrificing the Full HD resolution of which my beautiful 18.4 notebook screen is capable for a crappy 720p it went smoothly enough with ~40FPS. So I rushed back in the supermarket and got an original copy.

Now I just have to wait for my last exam to pass (and the most important day for any girlfriend, of course) in order to dive completely in the Mass Effect universe! I`ve been meaning to write quite a detailed and big piece about this game for some time before its release but I haven`t forgotten it and I`ll get to it and even be able to include my personal impressions when I play through it.

For now, I can just wish lots of fun to all of you, happy owners of an X360 or a PC copy of this amazing title! I will join you very soon.

I have 3 exams in all of my major Physics and Maths courses in 2 weeks which basically means no gaming and a lot of cramming.

I am actually quite good at that while staying in the library but I still remain a very lazy person by nature and you know what lazy people are really good at? Rationalizing their laziness and convincing themselves that not doing particular things will be for the greater good of humanity etc.

So, my bluetooth headphones’ battery died and I convinced myself in no time that having Foo Fighters blast my brains while studying for Calculus is important enough to go home. Of course I didn’t do any real studying the whole evening and decided to go to bed early in order to start fresh next morning. The problem is that I came to this wise decision just after I drinking a big mug of coffee…

The result is obvious – I am laying in bed, bestowing my wisdom on you, dear reader, only via the power of modern mobile technology, namely the iPhone 3GS.

Normally I tend to avoid popular things like the plague and, naturally, I hated the iPhone from its very first day. Just after 3GS was released and I tried to make some quick money by reselling one I got quickly converted and instead got rid of my WinMo SE Xperia X1.

This is one pretty amazing little piece of technology. I’m not going to start on that one because I could talk for hours about gadgets. The point is, I can write a complete post for Wordpress and then reformat it for GT while running Facebook and Skype with the Backgrounder and checking out some stuff in Safari…

So, what’s missing in the picture?

Gaming, of course! I admit, it’s fun to play some Minigore, Ragdoll Blast or the recently ported 80s arcade classic Dragon`s Lair on my iPhone for 10 minutes on the bus but I`m still disappointed in how far mobile gaming has gone since the original Nintendo Game Boy. Hell, the last major advancement for mobile gaming (guess which, abbreviated with 3 letters) came almost 5 years ago!  No offence, Sony, I have tried really hard since then to like your “portable console” but it simply offers an experience too inferior for me to call it “gaming”. I can`t see myself paying more than $5 for the top PSP titles. I`m not even going to start on the Nintendo DS, let`s just say that its sales figures are to me a great mystery not far behind the Events before the Big Bang happened.

But there is hope…

• The revolutionary one-chip-computer APX 2600 by nVidia has finally found its way into an actual device last year – the MS Zune HD!
• Nintendo has, too, made a contract with nVidia about using a simpler version in their next-gen DS which presumably will be announced this year.
• Palm is getting suddenly all enthusiastic about gaming on the webOS and will actually be attending this year`s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this March.

These are some of the most notable titles from the Palm App Catalog and more will be coming by EA, Gameloft, Glu Mobile and Laminar.

* “Need for Speed(TM) Undercover” (EA Mobile)
* “The Sims(TM) 3″ (EA Mobile)
* “MONOPOLY(TM)” (EA Mobile)
* “Asphalt 5: Elite Racing” (Gameloft)
* “Let’s Golf!” (Gameloft)
* “Glyder 2″ (Glu Mobile)
* “X-Plane” (Laminar Research)

Asphalt 5 is available on the iPhone, too, and is definitely one of the best looking titles on any mobile platform!

My take on the future of mobile gaming:

Even if Apple manage to squeeze a quad-core Intel i7 into their next-gen iPhone, and that little bugger would eat the battery of a 3GS in about 5 minutes according to my humble calculations, Gaming on a 3.5 inch screen is pretty pathetic in my opinion.

My personal hope for mobile gaming in the near future is in bigger but still portable machines like netbooks and Tablet PCs. This year`s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) showed a significant increase of interest for Tablet PCs like the HP Slate. Plus Apple`s rumored Tablet is supposed to be announced on 28. January. I guess  that whatever Apple release in a week, even if it cooks and does better blowjobs than your girlfriend, this new device simply doesn`t stand a chance to live up to the hype and tension. I still lay my best bet for mobile gaming on Tablets, Ultraportables and Netbooks! I would really like to get some opinions on that, very important for the whole Universe, matter.

I admit that half-way through I got a little more excited about the topic and I finished my post on my notebook but I really wrote more then a half on my phone. I think I can sleep now, good night.

Maybe “suck” is not the right word here but I still ask myself how come so many sequels don`t quite reach the quality of their predecessors?

I guess we`ve seen the scenario too many times – a company takes the time and effort to make an amazing game, the cash is more than good and in no time they suddenly want to dip their greedy little hands in the Leprechaun`s bag of gold again. The developer is being rushed to create a sequel as fast as possible and they usually take one of the following routes:

• change too little and serve us more of the same “dish” garnished with some uninspired story which the screenwriter made up in about 5 minutes while sitting on the pooper;
• change too much and create something that, if not outright bad, simply isn`t what the players expect from this particular game;

This is, of course, true for books and movies, too, but I would like to focus on the most interactive form of entertainment here.

Some examples from the Industry`s ever growing reserve of garbage:

My first ever encounter with a bad sequel was at the fragile age of 9. An innocent 3rd grader who goes to his friend`s house for some cookies and Nintendo-fun… After my classmate inserted the cartridge and assured me that I will be playing not just any sequel but Super Mario Bros, I still remember my reaction which was the closest thing to “WTF is that piece of crap” a kid is capable of. Well, I know kids are pretty extreme nowadays and I realize how absurdly it sounds when a young person speaks about “the good old times” but times really were different.

Now I know that Nintendo just re-skinned one of their other titles (Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic) and offered it as Mario 2 because they felt the real sequel (Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels) was beyond the skill level of their non-slanted-eyed brothers from the West. Now that seems like a good marketing move from Nintendo but back then you can imagine my disappointment.

Anyway, the most recent major disappointing sequel that I can think of right now is KOTOR II (“Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords”). Not that the game was bad or something like that, it simply did get anywhere near the greatness of its predecessor and that in itself was a disappointment for me. Some of my friends loved the game and coincidentally those guys haven`t played the first one.

I am sure that there are better examples of crappy sequels and new ones join the collection every year but I actually tend to avoid games that are obviously bad so I don`t get too much exposed to “low quality gaming”. Feel free to add as many as you can think of in the comments!

Now, is it so difficult to make a descent successor to your already good game?

I assume some steps in the right direction would be to:

1. research the opinion of the community about your previous game, I mean really take the time to read comments at least in the major gaming forums;
2. analyze the whole gathered data and figure out what elements the gamers LIKED and which were DISLIKED;
3. build your sequel with the focus layed on fixing the problematic areas and only MINOR tweaks of the good elements (“we know you’re creative and have plenty of new ideas but if something isn’t broken don’t fix it, please”);
4. think about what new gameplay mechanics can be added while taking into acount the gamers’ feedback on the old ones;
5. alpha-beta-and-gamma-test the s**t out of your new infant game WITH fans of your previous game as well and not only some middle-age-unemployed men who last time played Super Mario Bros. on the original NES;

What similar games were you disappointed from and what other steps do you think developers can undertake to make better sequels?

Next time I will write about the games that not only nail the sweet spot but surpass their predecessors and I have one particular title in mind. Can you guess which (hint: not yet released!)?

Over a week ago I started jotting down my thoughts and impressions of Call of Duty: MW 2 after completing the game in one frantic, sleepless night. It got a bit out of control though and so I have separated my initial post in 2 parts.

In the first part I explained what components make up a game`s “soul” and what makes some games stand out for me personally. Still I think it would come as a surprise for most people that I was rather disappointed by newest installment in the legendary Call of Duty franchise.

Maybe I should clarify here that I actually haven`t finished the first game, in fact I didn`t get past the 3rd mission. I thought the game was too simple and shallow in terms of features, you basically could run, jump, crouch, aim and shoot. This combined with the linearity of the levels was enough for me to abandon the game. I cannot explain why I felt Call of Duty 4 was supposed to be different, I`m perfectly OK with linear straight forward shooters normally.

Anyway, lets get back to the sequel

I started right away with the idea of playing through the whole campaign in one sitting. The game provided me with the minimal amount of background needed to start shooting at random people and I did it. The undercover mission with the civilian-massacre at the Zakhaev airport in Moscow didn`t make me hate me Makarov and I didn`t like the “good guys” more.

I even thought the story was too naive, in fact joking with the player in a way. So much for the believability of the game with such a moronic plot.

You take the role of Sergeant Gary “Roach” Sanderson from the elite counter-terrorism unit Task Force 141 and Private James Ramirez from the U.S. Army for most of the game. Around the end you get a chance to slip in the dirty pants of Captain “Soap” MacTavish (the main character from Modern Warfare 1).

In terms of action, I had a blast throughout the whole game. Especially the more open areas like in Rio de Janeiro offered amazingly action-packed combat. Although playing merely on “normal” difficulty, I was completely lost a couple of times among the sheds of the ghetto, running for my life with bullets flying all around. Those sections I enjoyed the most. I really liked the diversity of areas but I still think that the game doesn`t get the chance to bore you simply because of its short length.

So why am I disappointed since I had so much fun?

1. Well, I did not care for any of the characters. All I felt when “Roach” gets killed was positive surprise and respect for the development team for the well executed plot twist. The game didn`t get me at all to empathize with the character whose role I was taking. You cannot get a dramatic experience without complete immersion in the game and you can`t immerse yourself when you don`t feel anything for your character, be it love, disgust or at least some respect. Of couse as I`ve written last time, the whole emotional experience of a game depends on a lot of personal factors. For instance, an American might get more emotionally involved when he sees the burning suburbs of northeastern Virginia.

2. The other thing that kind of ruined my experience was that I didn`t feel in control. All too often I felt as if watching a movie or simply being dragged around by a bunch of people who spontaneously get new ideas to do random things without a major idea or a plan. This was the major deal-breaker for me.

Why do I compare CoD with Crysis?

Initially I wanted to bash Crysis, too, when I was thinking about what to write. The thing is, through the act of laying my thoughts down for the post, I have come to realize that what annoyed me the most about Modern Warfare 2 was the lack of sense of control (both of the character and of the events).

Exactly that element was very well executed in Crysis and its stand-alone expansion Crysis: Warhead. You got the ultimate feeling of being in control, you were the hunter in the woods and the dangerous thing hidden in the darkest shadow. The game was hyped with its state of the art visuals and realism but what made it fun for me was tactically combining the powers of the nano suit to defeat your enemies.

Of course, Crysis failed, too, in the other aspect where I criticized Call of Duty: you don`t get to emotionally live out the events with the characters. I didn`t give a rat`s ass about the characters in Crytek`s creation.

Eye candy or deeper meaning?

I think both titles tried to stake too much on “eye candy” and visually pleasing representation. That`s not a bad point at all!

Kudos to Infinity Ward for the HUMONGOUS amounts of detail in the levels of their game. That`s the thing that visually impressed me the most about CoD: MW2. You run through many tight areas and have barely seconds to gaze upon literally mountains of items and junk from the everyday life of people who really inhabit those places. Textures may not have the highest resolution but every single item is carefully “textured into actual existence”.

I don`t think there is anything to comment about Crysis graphics, 2,5 years after its release it still is the closest thing to “photo-realistic” game we have.

Sci Fi Channel is doing a new TV Special on Mass Effect 2 and this mini documentary explores some of the topics about which I`ve written recently when I asked if Games can have souls. You can watch the first part on Gametrailers where they interview not only Bioware representatives but also some random guys from the (US) Sci-Fi scene like Wil Wheaton and Tricia Helfer from “Battlestar Galactica”.

You might get the slight feeling of looking at just another piece of hype-inducing advertisement because, although asking some very interesting and I can say even philosophical questions, the TV Special still focues on exactly this title. This is true but on the other hand think about how many TOP HIT sci-fi titles are coming out this year for example? Can you even get to the f*** you finger on one hand when you count them? Yes, I believe that Mass Effect 2 will not only be T H E sci-fi game of the year but also it has pretty good chances on becoming GOTY.

How do you create the illusion of free will with a fixed ending? How do you create a compeling storyline when the audience controls the narrative?

Quite a bit fatter than what I expected

Ho do you spend lazy Sunday mornings with a slight hang-over (certainly not the type “What? Where am I? Whose house is that… and why do I feel these suspicious pains from behind…”)?

Well for me it`s having breakfast with my HOME-MADE cake and enjoying the Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky that I ordered a few days ago after seeing what a wonderful game 4A Games are “cooking” for us. I would like to elaborate a bit on that one… the game? No, the home-made cake of course! Yes, I really made it myself Well, it might have been from the DIY type where you just add eggs, milk and butter to the substance from the package and shove it in the oven but I still think it`s an important accomplishment for me!

How on earth are they doing it?

What amazed me the most is the condition of the book. I bought it used for 6,60 EUR (it costs 14 new) and it basically looks completely new except for a slightly white corner. I don`t get how Germans read their books and then sell them in almost the same condition. I bought 3 used textbooks in Theoretical Physics and I suspect the guy simply haven`t opened them a single time. They don`t bare the slightest clue of having being read before.

The book itself is very interesting and engulfing from the first page! I haven`t still finished the 1st chapter and I already can highly recommend it. If you happen to be an English reader, the book still isn`t available in English but Amazon says it will be released on 17. February and the game will follow in no more than a month (16. March if we can trust Amazon).

Sadly, I will have to leave the book and already begin with my physics homework and at least lay out some plan of “attack” for the 3 exams that will come in a little over 2 weeks. I wish you a pleasant weekend though!

What`s up with this game? What do you think of it, what attracting do you find about it?

No, these are not rhetorical questions, I`m seriously asking and I would like for someone to explain to me the deal about this game.

When this game firstly got some attention at E3 I thought “Well, ok, some jap has been high again, no big deal”. Then the game was released to us poor souls living outside of  Japan and I decided to give the Xbox 360 demo a try before I get back to Germany. This was a week or so ago and yes, my Xbox is still dead, I played the demo on my brother`s machine, whose DVD I killed some time ago when messing around, basically its only way to obtain games right now is via Xbox LIVE.

The opening scenes were actually kinda cool, I thought that it reminded me a lot of Devil May Cry simply as settings and style, which was a good thing! Well so much for wishful thinking…

Fifteen minutes later my head is aching from the amounts of nonsensical things happening on the screen and my eyes are on the brink of actually popping out or simply melting in their sockets… Well maybe slightly exaggerated but my head did really ache a little.

My father sitting next to me had stopped doing what he was busy with and stood with his jaw hanging, he too couldn`t believe what he was seeing. I actually decided to try some blind-folded button-mashing and it worked pretty well. In fact I succeeded in playing the battles that take place in closed scenes with my back turned. Now, I know that this game has a very complex fighting system, in fact one of the best in the this genre I`ve been reading in reviews. Still, this is not my point. I would not drop 60 euro for a good fighting system and well… to get some of this to the right:

Fight crazy doped angel creatures in style?

I`ve seen plenty reviewers mention that this game is all about style. What style? If we refer to the broadest definition of “style” as something “particular, distinctive, a type” then it certainly has tons of style. I on the other hand think Hideki Kamiya simply got really drunk on Sake mixed with God knows what with his friends some fine evening in 2007 and said “uh, guys, why don`t we make a game an insanely hot heroine doing absolutely amazing shit to the bad guys”. Apparently his drunken blabber was met with approving grunts since we can see the result of the team`s hard work today.

The only part which I really found stylish were some architecture elements. Everything else, the characters, NPCs, the absolutely irritating soundtrack and the heroine of course seem just as a mish mash of random nonsensical things. Speaking of absurdities, please tell me that what I`m seeing on this screenshot is not Bayonetta`s hair in the form of a giant boot (facepalm):

“Suspention of Disbelief”? What? What`s that?

Apparently the designers from Sega haven`t ever heard this term. I thought that video games were simply a medium for telling interactive stories and as a form of ficton the Suspending of Disbelief shoud play a major role. The idea is to make the player/reader of a novel/viewer of a movie believe in the story. Why should you even care about it if it cannot immerse you in a believable world?

I have always thought of japanese games with their flashy colorful particle effects triggered by the player`s every move as quite distasteful, but Bayonetta seems to be bringing this craziness to a whole new level of absurdity. Dante and Nero from DMC 3 and 4 (those are the only ones I`ve played) are actually cool. Their coolness makes me forgive the flashy shits flying around the scene. That`s one thing but since when is it cool to impersonate an infantile chick with big boobs and absolutely insane clothing (not insane as “very hot”, but as “in need of medical attention”)? She`s got guns strapped to her boots for God`s sake!!! How does she even pull the triggers (because I`m sure I`ve seen on some screenshots that they have triggers!)?

“Oh, you are a bad ugly creature, I`m going to shoot some bullets atyou, so stay still and don`t move while I get on the ground… oookay, ouch I broke a naaaail (cries)(picks one leg in order to shoot with its gun while maintaining ballance”

Also correct me if I`m wrong but last time I checked a giant hair in the form a boot as a weapong wasn`t really cool…

I have actually taken more time to write this then that which I spent with the demo of Bayonetta, so my impressions are quite shallow and I really mean the questions at the beginning of the post. Please, can someone explain to me why is this game given such high ratings? It seems to me that you can experience the same overdose of extraordinary events that don`t make sense by simply growing hallucinogen mushrooms and eating some in a sandwich. It would cost much less than 60 bucks I assume!

Stories of dystopian post-apocalyptic worlds have a certain very strong appeal to me. Fact is, Fallout 3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Bioshock are among my most favorite games, while Richard Matheson`s “I am Legend” is a book I deeply adore. Mr. Matheson practically invented the post-apocalyptic genre single-handedly 56 years ago with his masterpiece.

Can you imagine my feelings when I woke up this morning and just by accident saw the new trailer of Metro 2033? My first thought was that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sneaked into Fallout`s bed in the night, impregnated Bethesda`s game and I was seeing their newborn child.

I got so inspired that I completely forgot the humongous amount of Theoretical physics I had to read today and started researching this new title.  It seems that a certain Russian reporter by the name of Dmitry Glukhovsky published his book “Metro 2033″ as a free web project in 2002. The book got very popular with an ever accelerating speed and in 3 years it was already a printed nation-wide best-seller. The guy was very soon approached by the Ukrainian developer 4A Games and the team has been working on the adaptation very closely with the author of the book for 4-5 years. If all goes well the game will be released in Q1 for PC and Xbox 360.

Attention to detail

Actually some of the guys who formed 4A Games have left the developer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 1 year before final release, so they must have experience with this genre. What I`ve seen untill now shows immense amounts of detail to the underground stations where the scattered remains of humanity reside. The world looks absolutely real, populated by real living people and that`s of no wonder. The team has set complete immersion of the player as a main goal from start. When we take control of the main protagonist Artyom (accent on the last syllable) we won`t have any on-screen indications about health, ammo, etc. Even when looking at the map the game doesn`t pause and Artyom has to take out a physical map and look at it with his flash light exposing himself to risk of becoming the dinner of something from the dark.

4A Games use a propriety engine with full support of goodies such as DX10 and Physx.

Being completely immersed by the absence of HUDs and menus what so ever can actually add a very nice touch to the gameplay when implemented successfully like for example in one game that I`m sure not many of you remember: Peter Jackson`s King Kong: The Game.

Focus on the PC version? Yes, please.

What really makes me happy is that the main focus of development was put on the PC version of the game. I am sick and tired of getting half-backed ports after spending a couple of hundred bucks on a video card that can easily top both current gen consoles. Don`t get me wrong, I enjoy gaming on all platforms (other than portable ones that is). I really enjoyed the shit out of my Xbox 360 before it died and I`m thinking about getting a new one + a PS3 some day when I suddenly get rich Well anyway, for the moment I have to do with a notebook and try to fully enjoy every piece of the little “crumbs” that fall from the Big Gaming Table to us, students with laptops sitting on the floor.

March 2010?

What more can I say? I already ordered the book in German because it still isn`t released in English and I don`t have the patience to wait for it getting delivered from my country in my own language. I cannot wait for the game and I`m all the more hyped by the fact that this title looks exactly as atmospheric and just as deeply detailed as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout 3, but a lot more linear! This is a really good point when time is short in university and you can`t afford to spend all day running through an imaginary world.

Let this current map of the famous Moscow subway system speak for itself: