Well they said it in their trailer.
Minimalism can be good in other media, such as graphic design or art. In games though, you'd have to have fantastic architecture to pull it off. Like Nunuk's Geometry Competition where you can only use 10 textures.

In the case of this game though, there was no architecture, just flat walls and some blocky terrain. I liked the GUI though. 

FPS + RTS can be awesome = BZ2

That looks like ass though. Sub-Minecraft GFX. 

I disagree, you could say Mirror's Edge and Portal go with a minimalist approach to environement art, and those are both great looking games.
Not every game has to be Gears of War. 

Doesn't look so great IMO. Very durgy colours. And flat lighting. 

Usually video games released to coincide with a movie release are very average. However in this case, Peter Jackson's King Kong from 2005 is a fairly good action game.

I say fairly good instead of great due to one major problem in the game - playing as Kong. While most reviewers liked that you could play as King Kong, I cringed everytime I was forced to attempt to control the beast. Playing from third person perspective, the controls for Kong are terrible. Especially in cramped quarters, the camera angle will suddenly jump from behind Kong to in front of him, meaning you have to press the backwards key instead of forwards. On top of this, fighting other giant beasts as Kong is nothing but a chore in mashing the keyboard as fast as you can hoping he'll actually do something. Then when he's grabbed a beast to perform his fatality, you've got to pound on the 'grab' key as fast as you can to kill it. Terrible.

Fortunately, playing as Kong only takes up about 20% of the game. The rest is played as Jack as he repeatedly tries to get his love interest back. But that's not perfect either because you only get one gun at a time and limited amounts of ammo. At times your forced to play with spears that you find. Sure it makes the gameplay frantic and intense, but I'd rather take a leisurely stroll through paradise and admire the scenery without having to spear giant dinosaurs.

The best thing about Peter Jackson's King Kong, and it's saving grace, is the level design. Although the engine looks slightly dated with pixelated 2D vegatation, the actual level design is great. Almost all of the game takes place on the island (apart from two awful city levels at the end) and there is enough variety in the texturing and scenery that it never gets old. The highlight for me was climbing up to the highest peak of the island, where Kong was sleeping. Atmospheric effects such as the lighting and fog look excellent and capture the creepy, mysterious fantasy island from the movie perfectly.

So while the gameplay was slightly held back with some annoying challenges, in particular playing as Kong, the atmosphere and design of the fantasy island made up for it for me.

Add cheats for unlimited ammo and a level skip for every Kong level, and this is a very good game. 

Maybe i'll take a break from action shooters and try a pretty adventure puzzle game.

Anyone played The Whispered World? Looks cute. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfqNyfHUP4 

I had a blast playing as Kong.

Agree with the level design comments though, I remember it beign very good. 

reread my comments from before, I seemed to have the complete opposite take on controls and camera use :) 

Haha I know, I read your comments on it yesterday Nitin. Both IGN and Gamespot didn't seem to have too much of a problem either. One of them said the camera was a bit clunky, the other said they loved playing as Kong and wished there was more. Different strokes I guess... 

I played TWW. It's a nicely drawn adventure game. The English voice of the protagonist is a little annoying, though (compared to the German original). The puzzles are mostly fairly easy and the playing field limited (several levels so to speak), just like many modern adventures. There are some logic puzzles, too. Some of which I found to be quite annoying. I stopped playing when reaching a certain one where I had to rearrange a mosaic by moving the pieces around using the one free spot in-between in order to form a crest.

I'm surprised there aren't more comic-style adventures these days. They seem easy enough to make with the proper artists. MI3 was cool, too. I mean now that the initially interfering OMG 3D! era is over. 

but just got myself Witcher enhanced edition, Crysis, Crysis Warhead and Stalker - Shadow of Cehrnobyl for $AU30.

Bring on christmas holidays. 

Good move. Crysis and Warhead are GREAT games! Regardless of what anyone says, they are a real blast, certainly on the firstruns. STALKER SOC is great too, really gritty and atmospheric.

The witcher - well I didnt play that one (yet), so I cant comment, but I have heard some good comments from other people about it :) 

and worth your time. 'nuff said ;) 

It's an enjoyable game by and large, but I thought it also dragged on quite a bit at times. And I found its semi-linearity unncessary, maybe even a bit of an an immersion killer. You can't revisit previous regions (not an open world), and there are silly console-like barriers in the levels to make them feel larger, like small fences or rocks you can't jump over and are forced to run all the way around them. At what were they thinking when making that totally retarded mouseclick combat system? 

I never had a problem with it myself, at least, it sure feels more involved than simply mashing the attack key until an enemy is down. If you rush the next attack, you'll only break the combo and risk getting yourself hurt. And I liked that aspect since it works great with multiple opponents circled around you. It's not perfect, but it works for me. 

i like the sword combat system in witcher.
it's similar to gothic 2 which, incidentally, i found far superior to gothic 3.

you've got to time your attacks and in the heat of battle, this is what makes it a challenge. i wish more games would do this instead of just favouring button mashing.
also, i like that there are the different styles of attack for different types of monsters. it's not a very deep system, but it does make it a little more interesting.

i never finished this game as i borrowed it off a friend but i've been thinking of picking up the enhanced edition for myself.

my only gripe is that the over the shoulder camera is sometimes a little strange... usually it doesn't bob much but sometimes (randomly?) the camera will start to bob alot which is distracting. i think there's a mod out there that gets rid of that though, which would be great. why would you put view bob on a !3RD! person camera? 0.o 

It's basically like a quick time event: click the mouse at the right moment. In this sense, it's indeed better than Gothic 3 which is just click the mouse as fast or as consistently as possible (or at least hit the enemy before he can). Gothic 2 is different insofar as it allows for some variation (left, right, up) as well as blocking.

The ideal combat mode would require the player to both attack and block the enemy on the right side (dynamically), e.g. strike left when the enemy is blocking to the right, and counter his attacks accordingly. 

Has anyone tried Two Worlds 2, yet? I thought the first one was too flawed in comparison to other RPGs to be enjoyable, but maybe they've fixed the most glaring shortcommings. 

yeah that's what I figured, 4 games for under $AU30 is a steal and I remembered readin positive comments about them too.

Might also finally fit in HL2 plus eps 1 and 2 in the holidays too :) 

Controls can be a bit clumsy, but apart from that I love this game. Good level design, very immersive, magic button which tells you which way to go is useful.

I dunno, the game is meat and potatos. The monsters are quite scary, the graphics are good, there are some good puzzles. The music is good. The guns feel good, and you can upgrade them. If you try hard to explore you find more useful stuff, things like that add to the experience.

For me the game is like Resident Evil but with less bull. 

One thing about STALKER - I would recommend installing the Oblivion Lost mod. You dont need to install it, but it does improve the game a lot, without altering the feel of it too much. There are some things which the dev team removed just before release (which are still in the game data files!) like monsters, and O.L. puts them back in, basically. And it makes the guns more accurate, and whenever there is a "blowout" O.L. makes the effects a l00t cooler ;) 

I just bougt the id super pack on steam, which comes with doom 3. Anyone know of any good mods besides the dark mod and the new hexen mod? 

jt make sure you get the shamblers castle:

http://www.doomwadstation.com/doom3tc/quakemod/ 

noted, will look into it. 

for the first time, and I'm loving it! Absolutely awesome game, almost as good as the second part. I recommend installing the mouselook patch though.