Big Rigs: Over the road racing is a game released in 2003. This game was made by Stellar Stone LLC. Some other companies involved with this marvelous game are TS Group Entertainment and the publisher GameMill Inc. In a year when games like Deus Ex 2, Halo and Generals were released, this game had a big challenge competing with them, but this absolute gem of a game just simply destroyed them in every way.

The graphics are simply awesome, the buildings are just a piece of art, the scales extremely realistic. You really have the feeling that you're driving around, sometimes it's hard to separate reality from the virtual reality.

This game is simply ground-breaking when it comes to racing realism. In the average racing game you just drive slowly, but in Big Rigs you simply put your truck in reverse and go for it. And why would you risk losing on a different game, when your victory is guaranteed in Big Rigs. And getting penalties for taking shortcuts and cheating is simply ridiculous, it's your game and you should be able to do anything, and Big Rigs agrees. It sucks being secluded to only the race track, in Big Rigs you can drive wherever you want without being hassled with signs of going the wrong way or being put back on the racetrack. And why would you be limited to earthly possibilities when you can make a game which defies all laws of nature. We all know that we want to travel faster than light-speed, Big Rigs allows us to.

The level-design is where the game really shines. The creators were really kind and made the game accessible for even the worst gamers in the world, since you don't have to be afraid to bump into something and have your track-record fall to pieces, in Big Rigs you simply drive through anything, like it's supposed to. And realistic surroundings are just boring, and Big Rigs agrees, with their beautiful purple lampposts and Dwarven houses. In case you're in a hurry, be sure to drive over a mountain, many truckers do this daily, which enhances the realism in this game.

Don't you just hate those blaring songs in your ear all time whilst playing a game? Big Rigs agrees again, giving you absolute silence to listen to, which is great for the tranquility. The peaceful silence is just awesome in this game, really giving you the opportunity to relax, which is the main focus of this game.

This game really brings up your minimalistic nature, why would you need a dozen of tracks and many vehicles? Big Rigs agrees again, giving you four awesome vehicles to choose from, some of which give you instant victory! The game also gives you five tracks to choose from, some of which are too awesome to be handled by any computer.

In most games your controls feel smooth and responsive, but Big Rigs gives you a challenge here. In almost every game the challenge comes from playing the game, in Big Rigs it's controlling the game, making this awesome game unique and original in every way. It will blow your mind.

You have to buy this game! Even if you have to take a second mortgage on your house, or sell one of your kids. Because if you don't, you'll never know what pure joy is. We simply can't understand all these negative reviews about this game, chances are that they're pure noobs who can't tell an magnificent game when they see one.

This is sarcasm, in case you're a moron.

The song's called The Truck Got Stuck.

Generals was released in 2003 on Windows and in 2004 a Mac OS version was released. The expansion pack Zero Hour was released in 2003 for Windows and 2 years later it found its way onto the Mac OS platform as well. This game's made by EA Games, known for many titles such as Need For Speed, the Battlefield series and many more. If you play games on a regular basis you've probably already heard of them. Generals is a RTS just like most games in the C&C series, except Renegade, which is a shooter.

In this game you're able to play as three factions: The U.S.A, China and the Global Liberation Army. Each faction has its own unique characteristics and abilities and superweapon. Various units can be constructed and trained, such as infantry, armored units and aircraft (except the GLA, which don't has aircraft units). More advanced units can be constructed by building a high tech facility. When you killed enough enemy units, your level will increase, granting you some powers, like advanced tanks, repairing your units or throwing a bomb at your enemies. Individual units can grow stronger too, by killing enemy units. That process is quickened by killing a stronger unit than your unit, for example an infantry unit destroying a tank. Another way to get stronger is capturing enemy buildings, like oil derricks. Oil derricks will provide you with an additional amount of money every once in a while.

The U.S.A has the strongest ground and air units of the game, but they're very expensive, and the U.S.A has the slowest resource gatherers. They're able to use a particle cannon every once in a while (when built, of course). China has strong tanks, and relie on firepower, but their airforce isn't that strong. They only have one plane, the MiG. Chinese troops are stronger when fighting in groups, and with extensive use of propaganda. Their superweapon is a nuclear missile. The GLA has no airforce, and their verhicles are weak, but they're cheap and very fast. The GLA focuses on infantry units and has more types of infantry than the other factions, like Terrorists and Angry Mobs. The GLA has scud storms at their disposal.

This game has nice graphics, explosions, and sound for its time, as you can see and hear in the video below. That's also why I like this game so much, plus it has multiplayer too. You're also able to make your own maps, and play them online against other people. Some players are very good at making maps and they've created compstomp maps (Team up with other players and defend a waypoint or something else against incoming enemies. The enemy comes in waves with a massive amount of troops) and some cheating maps, in which you always lose (except when you're the host, of course, and you know the map).

However, there are a couple of things people complain about, for example the lack of ingame videos. The other games in the C&C series have ingame videos, but Generals hasn't. Instead, there is a loading screen and a voice that explains you what to do. Another thing is that the campaigns are very short, they all have five missions and that's it. At least the creators have put in some custom maps that you can play against one or more enemies. When it's too easy for you, you can crank up the difficulty. it's obvious that this game is made for the multiplayer.

You're still able to purchase this game for a cheap price, or you can buy it together with the previous games in the series, such as Red Alert 1 and 2 and Tiberium Sun (expansion packs included). If you love RTS's you should definitely get this title. If you don't like RTS's you should buy it too, since it's very cheap, and you won't be dissapointed about it.

Nitro Family is a game created by the studios of ValuSoft and Delphieye(a company based in Korea). It was released on 1 May 2004. Nitro Family can be classified as a first person shooter, with some minor RPG elements. The game is built on the Serious Sam-engine.

You start the game with an intro cutscene, showing how a baby is taken away by a car. As a father you have to free your child from his abductors, but I wouldn't pay much attention to the storyline since the developers tried to tap in on the success of games like Postal 1/2 and Serious Sam. And those games don't really have a storyline and are pretty much based around absolute bullshit, same as Nitro Family. But at least the aforementioned games are fun, Nitro Family isn't.

The gameplay of this game is a simple shooter, you just kill the hordes of enemies thrown at you, which all have an AI dumber than the God Warrior. They pretty much run straight towards you, attacking you in the process even if they can't hit you, for example they'll shoot a wall between you and them. There are a few differences between a standard shooter and this game, one of them is that the game tracks the times you manage to keep an enemy floating in the air by continually shooting him/her. The game also has a highscore system which doesn't really have any purpose, since it's not like anyone cares enough about this game in order to write them down/compare them with friends. As you progress in this game, you'll amass money which you can use to upgrade your weapons, making this game even easier than it already is. In case I haven't made myself clear enough, the challenge in this game is pretty much non-existent. It's also possible for the player to collect enough cards in order to gain a "special" prize from a lady, but nobody cares enough or has the patience to ever get that far.

The levels in this game are unoriginal and boring, even though the game sometimes puts in a few platforming areas. You spend most of the time running through long grey corridors or in big open flat terrains, most of the time between huge walls or buildings. The game throws increasingly more enemies at you, but the game never gets challenging. The levels are empty for the most part, aside from the enemies and a couple of cars every once in a while, these cars can be destroyed for powerups, healthpacks(food) and armor. The enemies are ridiculous in this game, but not in a good way. Nitro Family is just filled with racially insensitive stereotypes, I wouldn't really care about it if they were funny, but they aren't. You have Mexican farmers throwing chickens at you, fat waitress looking girls shooting with rocketlaunchers at you, pigriders and so on.

The graphics are horrible and outdated. From the aforementioned levels and enemies to the animations everything looks bad, uninspired and pretty much slapped together in order to produce a cheap game. In a year where Halo 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, GTA: San Andreas, Half-Life 2 and WoW ruled the charts, you'd think that ValuSoft would've made sure that the game itself was somewhat decent in order to still get a piece of the cake.

Last and least, the sound and music, this is where the game reveals its true face, that of a cheap half-assed game. The game has one song and one song only, and it keeps on looping and looping, in the menu, in the game, pretty much everywhere. It's some rock song with dumb lyrics, some guy blaring out "Where did I go wrong?!?!?" and some muttering about how he is wondering about what watch he'll get and that it doesn't matter because he can't tell the time. You might be asking yourself, what's the relevance of this information? Well, you'll be hearing this song so many times that it'll damage your sanity. Besides the headache provoking song, the rest of the game is pretty standard.

My conclusion is that you shouldn't even think about buying this game, since it'll surely lead to a disappointment, after an hour you'll be so sick of this game that you'll throw it in the bin or your cabinet and never look back. There are way better titles out there that you could buy instead of this one, and I highly encourage you that you do. Nitro Family can best be described as an unoriginal lazy knock-off attempt at tapping into Serious Sam's popularity and success.

This game is made by Red Storm Entertainment and is a squad-based FPS, just like Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (one shot, one kill/death) The game has been released in the year 2004 for the PS2. The version I have also includes Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, so I bought two games in one for a decent price (I think it was €20). The most remarkable thing about the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon games is that they all take place in the future (at release date!). Island Thunder and Jungle Storm both take place in the year 2010 and the game location is Cuba.

Island Thunder: ‘In 2010, Cuba is free, or at least it is supposed to be. Since Fidel Castro’s death in 2006 (Oh, I can still remember that) , the island of Cuba is wary of the communist rule it had been under for nearly 50 years. It is time for the first free and open elections since Carlos Prio Socarras, who was overthrown by Fulgencio Batista in the early 1950s. The FDP (El Frente Democratico del Pueblo or People's Democratic Front) has fronted a man named Priego as their candidate. The FDP are an outspoken anti-American political faction that wishes to return the Cuban working class to power and end capitalist inequalities, or so they claim. Although the FDP publicly denies utilizing violence as a means of coercion, the reality is quite the contrary, as the Ghosts quickly discover the FDP violently attacking election stations. In reality the FDP are a puppet organization run by Colombian drug cartels who wish to take over Cuba to use as a vast drug depot. Its up to the Ghosts to make sure the elections occur and protect the Cuban civilians from the cartel's puppets.’

Jungle Storm: ‘Taking place just after Island Thunder in Bogotá, Colombia, the drug cartel that had aided and financed the FDP in their efforts in Cuba has initiated a number of terrorist attacks against the Colombian government who have allied themselves with the U.S.A. After Colombia's call for help following an attack on a U.S. Embassy, America responds by deploying the Ghosts to restore order and put the cartel out of business.’

In these two games you command five men divided in two or three squads. Squad A always follows you and you’re able to command the other squad to, for example, flank a group of enemies while you suppress those enemies. You can also order them to be offensive, neutral or defensive. On offensive they’ll shoot an enemy on sight and take him out as fast as possible, giving away their location. On neutral they’ll be less aggressive. On defensive they’ll only shoot an enemy when they’re attacked by one.When you die, you’ll take control of one of your remaining men.

You’re also able to play on split-screen. You can play different modes, like mission mode (campaign mode, single-mission), Firefight (kill all the bad guys on the map, density relies of the difficulty you’ve chosen), Defend (the same as Firefight, but you also have to defend a spot marked by smoke), Recon (you have to get from point A to point B) and some competitive modes, Last Man Standing and Sharpshooter (just kill your friend as much as possible, the stupid thing is that you’ll lose no points when you kill yourself, so that means that you’ll choose the rocket launcher as weapon and fire some shots at your friend before you kill yourself).You can play Online too, but when I did that I experienced that a lot of players were cheating (I don’t know how, it was playing on a PS2). But that was a couple of years ago and it’s possible that nobody plays the game any more.

The graphics of this game aren’t that good, especially when you compare the game with other titles released in the same year, like Star Wars: Battlefront, you’ll notice that the PS2 can take better graphics than those of Jungle Storm.

The AI is quite stupid, sometimes they run like roadrunner towards your location before getting shot. But luckily your enemies are aggressive, so that makes up for it.

Despite the complaints I had some fun with this game for a couple of years, playing on my own or with friends. The graphics are very outdated, but the gameplay is ok. You could try this game out when you see it, but you don’t have to, it isn’t that good. Just remember that you’ll get two games for almost nothing!

Video footage is from Island Thunder.

Now the second review of Star Wars Battlefront.

The same developers have worked together again to make this game happen. It's available for PC, PS2 and Xbox. This time, a version for the PSP was released.

This time, a good campaign was put together. In the campaign you play as a soldier of the 501st Legion. This was an elite unit of clone troopers. These troopers were one the most well-known and feared Legions in the Star Wars galaxy. This Legion was also the part of operation Knightfall where they've helped Darth Vader taking down the Jedi’s. From that moment on the 501st was under control by Darth Vader. And with this Legion you play'll from the beginning of the Clone Wars to the end of the Galactic Civil War.

The difference between SW B and SW BII is that you are given commands during the missions and a limited amount of reinforcements and/or time, where in SW B you only had to survive and annihilate the opposition.

They added a number of features to SW BII, and one of these are space battles. In this mode you begin on your mothership where you can choose your character and space ships that are stationed in the hangar. You're able to choose between the marine and the pilot. Marines are used to board ships and carry a missle launcher. The pilot is able to drop supplies, repair and has the ability to auto-repair a spaceship while flying in mid-space.
The all famous X-Wing and Tie Fighter are once again available to you. Next to fighters, you can also fly scout-fighters. These starships are real fighter and bomber killers if used correctly, because their armor is very weak and can't withstand more then two shots. And finally the developers have added assault ships. Thes bulky ships are the strongest in space but they lack the speed to be very effective in space fights/dogfights. The primary purpose of the ships is to board the enemy mothership. When the ship has landed in the enemy’s hangar, it serves as a forward command post. The AI plays a downside when boarding the enemy’s ship, because only a few troops spawn at the assault ship and they almost die immediately. So most units you'll have on your side when boarding, are the units you've commanded to enter your ship.
This new feature of space fights uses no longer reinforcement points but assault points. To earn these points you and your team have to take down the enemy’s starships, the enemy frigates (these ships accompany the mothership and depending on the map you have one or two frigates) and hardpoints on the enemy’s mothership. You can destroy four hardpoints from the outside which are the engines, life support, the communications array and the bridge. But before destroying those hardpoints ,you'll have to take down the mothership’s shields and that can take a while. Destroying those things from the outside is one way to do it, you can also board the ship and there you can destroy the shield generator, the engines and life support (bridge and communications array must be destroyed from the outside). This sounds easy but the mothership has some defences of its own and isn’t totally depended of fighters to defend itself. On the ship’s hull there are some auto-turrets and turrets that you can control. And when entering the ship’s core, you better watch out, two auto-turrets will await you and every enemy soldier spawns there. In the ship’s core there’s a mainframe that you can destroy, that controls the auto-turrets on the ship’s outside.
The only things that are repairable, are the shield generator and the auto-turret mainframe.

New special units have been added to SW BII and all units and vehicles have been redone. But to unlock these new units you first have to earn a number of points. These points can be earned by killing enemy soldiers and capturing command points. The Republic has next to the Jettrooper, the Clone Commander. The CIS has the Magna Guard. The Empire has the Imperial Commander. The rebels has next to the Wookiee Warrior, the Bothan Spy. I'd like to make a comment on this class: This has to be the most annoying class of them all. These units can cloak themselves and suddenly appear in front of you with their incinerator. This weapon blinds you in a grey cloud of damage.
But when you play as the spy and run around cloaked, the cloak doesn’t seem to have any effect. The AI soldiers know that you are there, and even worse, they know the exact spot where you are standing.

But back to the review, now your units can run and roll to all directions. And when a grenade lands beside you, you wont roll the other end of the map. The command units in SW BII give bonuses that for example strengthens the defence of other units. But to balance the power in the game, they’ve put a unit limit for the special units.

The Galactic Conquest mode has been redone. This time you have to fly from planet to planet with a carrier, which has to be done in a galactic overview. At first you can only choose the normal soldier. The other classes are bought with credits that every planet that you own produces at the beginning of every turn. So you fly from planet to planet to defeat the enemy. Before starting the battle you can choose a bonus that you can buy the same way as the different soldier classes. However, you can only use bonuses once and there is a limit in how much bonuses you can have at any given point, three points to be exact. There are two planets in Galactic Conquest that'll give you a big credit boost, but only once. These planets are the faction's home planets. So keeping them out of enemy hands prevents them getting a big cash bonus. But you don’t lose the war when you lose your homeplanet, unlike in SW B. At the start of Galactic Conquest you'll have to choose the starting location of your first fleet. And why am I saying first fleet? That’s because when you earned enough credts, you can buy a second fleet or even a third. There are two different kinds of battles, space battles and land battles.
Space battles occur when a fleet is already positioned at a spot in the galaxy and another fleet moves to the same spot. When the battle is on an empty spot in space then the losing fleet will be destroyed. But when this happens over a planet and the defending teams loses the space battles, then the attacker can immediately attack the planet below.
Land battles speak for them selves. When the attacking team loses a landbattle, then it's fleet is fleet is destroyed.

New maps have been introduced to SW BII, like Dagobah and Felucia. Tatooine and Naboo haven’t changed much, only the graphics of the maps are better. And finally the homeplanets of the factions have been redone. Kamino, Endor and Hoth are now bigger and the CIS homeplanet Geonisis has a completely new map.

Have you ever wanted to be Luke Skywalker or the mercenary Boba Fett? Now’s your chance. A new feature is the hero assault mode. In this mode you can choose the dark or the light side. But in this mode you don’t work with reinforcement points, instead you'll work with assault points, similar to the points you earn in the spacebattles.

When you have killed enough enemies with a certain weapon or in general, you will get a bonus, such as an improved rifle or damage bonus. When you get a certain amount of points in one life, you will be granted the option to play as a hero.

In the end a lot of improvements have been made to SW BII. The only bad thing I have to say about SW BII is that the AI has pretty much remained the same, its still pretty stupid but still can ruin your day. But good graphics, good gameplay, new maps, new features etc. out weight the bad thing. So I would really recommend this game.

This game is developed by Ascaron Entertainment and was released on PC in 2008 and on Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2009. Unfortunately for Ascaron, they already have gone bankrupt. Sacred 2 can be best compared with the classics Diablo and Titan Quest.

The storyline: A mysterious force called T-Energy is the source of all life and magic in Ancaria. It was originally solely under the control of the ancient race of Seraphim, however over time as they lost interest in the world they gave some of their control to the High Elves. With this power, the High Elves quickly became the dominant race of Ancaria. A power struggle is raging between two factions within the High Elves. The nobility and clergy are each trying to gain control over the T-Energy. Other races take advantage of the distraction the conflict provides and try to gain control of the T-Energy themselves, so they can become the dominant and most powerful race. As these events unfold, the T-Energy goes increasingly out of control and changes into a destructive force that mutates creatures, destroys cities, and renders entire regions uninhabitable. The campaign selection you make will determine whether your story involves healing the land, or intensifying the chaos.

You’re able to choose from six different characters: Seraphim, the Shadow Warrior, the Inquisitor, the High Elf, the Temple Guardian and the Dryad. Each of these characters have their own abilities, Tech Trees and class quests. At the beginning of the campaign you can choose whether you join the dark side or the light side. However, you can’t choose a side if you’re Seraphim (light) or the Inquisitor (dark). Unfortunately you can’t change your karma by doing certain quests. But at least there are many, many side-quests (500). The first time I played this I was trying to beat all the side-quests, but I wasn't able to find them all. Of course, it’s recommended that you play these side-quests, because there aren’t many main quests so the playtime will be reduced by at least 25 hours (and they’ll give you enough experience for the final boss-battle).

In this game there are multiple difficulties: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Niob. You can only unlock the Gold difficulty by completing a Silver campaign and so on. It’s recommended to immediately start playing at the Silver difficulty, because most players spend the most time on their first playthrough. When you start with Bronze (like I did) your enemies are weaker than you are. So when you’re level 20 your enemies are level 15, and thus you'll get little experience points. Each time you level up you can spend some skillpoints on your attributes. You can also collect runes, which you can use in your Tech Tree. In the Tech Tree you can learn your character various spells, abilities and various improvements.

In this game you can also mount horses, which makes you stronger and faster. Each character has its own unique mount that you can unlock by completing the unique mounts quest. It’s not hard to find this quest so I’m not giving away a spoiler with this.

Ancaria is a huge world, you can play for 20 hours and most likely you'll only have discovered 25% of the map. And that’s why it’s almost impossible to find all the side-quests. In this time-period you’ll find many weapons and armor.

The graphics of this game are great. The reflections in windows, the shimmering water, footprints that are left in the sand all contribute to a more immersive environment with great detail. It certainly looks a million times better than Runescape. Off-topic, but there are tons of RPG’s that are way better than Runescape, so why are there still so many people playing that? When you’re playing for free you'll have to play with shitty graphics, you can only do a few quests and you’re maximum level is limited due to certain skills you can't train.That's something that's really bugging me, that people aren't willing to slap down 60 dollars or less for a game that can be played free forever, but instead choose to pay for a membership which only allows them to play for a month.

I've experienced some flaws in this game: The game’s characters all have these very annoying voices. I can’t really express how bad, but to say the least: Most of the time while playing I turned down the voice volume, because I was getting a terrible headache. Another thing is that when you’re in battle with multiple enemies your character automatically determines which enemy he attacks. So if you want to attack another (stronger) enemy instead it’s almost impossible to focus your character on that enemy.

The game itself is rather good, but like any other RPG it gets tedious over time. Mainly due to the fact that you'll end up fighting the same enemies over and over again. If you're a real fan of the oldschool RPG's such as the Diablo series and games with similar concepts when it comes to gameplay, this game might be a good purchase for you.

Desert Rats is a game made by the wonderful company of ValuSoft. The game was released in 2002, on March 17th. Other games that were released this year were Battlefield 1942, Metroid Prime, GTA III and Morrowind.

It's a shooter in which you fire from a truck and you steer at the same time. The camera is focused from behind the truck so it's third-person. During the course of the game you have to complete various objectives. In the levels you play, you pick up various ammunition crates which contain both useful and non-useful items such as spoiled Wienerschnitzel and Nazi comics.

All of the levels take place in the deserts in Northern Africa where you'll try to push back the Nazi forces which are trying to get a hold of the continent. Unlike you see depicted in most films concerning this subject, the troops in this area are scarce on the Nazi-side and even more-so on the Allied side. Since they only send one truck with two guys in it to push back an entire Nazi regime. Another thing that's weird is that you have a superior that doesn't even accompany you when you go out on these missions. He only sits in the office and meets you at the end of a level. It seems as the superior has seen a lot of hardships in battle since he moves as smooth as a mannequin.

In this game most objectives you do are the same, simply seek and destroy missions and seeing as most enemy soldiers aren't really that difficult to deal with, mostly due to a lack of AI. This means that you'll only get stuck when the game is unclear about your objectives. Throughout the game, you'll receive different weapons as a reward.

The graphics aren't as horrible as most ValuSoft games and to be honest this game, for its time, looks rather well. If it only wouldn't have been butchered by the bad animation and lighting effects. For example the superior I just mentioned moves very stiff and in the third level you'll have to sneak past guard posts and the light they shed on the streets looks like it's been made by glass, or in other words, it's simply an object that you can drive through. The death animations or the lack of in some cases is what makes this game simply laughable. Enemy infantry only has three types of death animations in which they'll sometimes skip frames. Enemy tanks and armoured vehicles simply have no animation. They'll just catch fire and reduce to a heap of scrap metal.

The music in this game is pretty much only present at the menu screens, whilst playing the game you'll have no music at all so you'll be listening to the humming of your Jeep, which gets annoying. The sounds in this game also seem to be stock as there are no different sounds between bullets, the same sound gets repeated over and over again.

The cut-scenes in this game are the most horrible I've ever seen. You'd think that editing a scene would be less hard than doing the entire animation of this game. Yet they still manage to fuck it up.

All in all, this game isn't that bad and some people seem to like it, although I've seen some ridiculous reviews giving this game way too much credit. It might be fun for a few hours, playing with a friend makes it more bearable as one player can shoot whilst the other one drives. You might consider buying this game if you're really bored, but I would only get it at bargain prices.
(The video footage has been shot by both Doofey and Gurt while they were playing together)