Glimpses

A Bag of Subtle Surprises Payback surprised me in a lot of ways, especially since it’s so much different from NFS: Rivals, its predecessor and also the last NFS game I played. Rivals was all about racing, and Payback is, too, but Payback offers so much more. First off, the cop – racer rivalry has been lightened up a little to make way for rivalry between the racers themselves. Next, we don’t have action tech like EMPs or shockwaves, just the old-fashioned car knockouts. Most importantly, we have a bunch of characters who actually feel like characters and who help make up a story that is much more fleshed out than Rivals. The story begins with a small racing crew of three – Tyler, Sean and Jess - who are pitted by circumstances against an influential racing faction called The House. This faction fixes races, plays dirty, has deep connections everywhere and believes in rigging the outcome in its favour by hook or by crook. The rest of the game is made up of how Tyler and co. manage t

  Cruising on the Highway Blasting Pursuers Away A Blood Red Beauty at Night Inside a Sieve of Shadows Immediately after buying a Lamborghini Huracan. Got so excited I even forgot to hide the UI. Depths of the Canyon Await! Might as well burn bridges with speed The prized Koenigsegg Regera. Payback lets the player drive it once in a heist mission before locking it away until the end. Outta my way! A serene space in an otherwise noisy city The Beast stirs up some dirt in its wake There's light at the end of the tunnel, just go straight ahead The Huracan takes a tumble Drifting past the casino Another great capture ruined by my excitement Way to crash a Lambo! Where's the fire? Thrusters fired with full capacity An empty road and some sun - perfect day to race Road signs matter little to rebellious racers Killer decals right there Royal blue for a royal ride Waiting for the crane... Another cop car ready for the junkyard I see you on my tail Flying around in the construction yard

What’s going on in their mind? The first Psychonauts released quite a while ago – 2005, to be precise. When I heard of it, I was actually searching for games that had something to do with dreams. Although Psychonauts isn’t based on any such theme, it does involve infiltrating minds and, in some cases, even influencing them. In that sense, much of its story takes place in an imaginary, astral plane; much the same way as dreams. Although, at the time, Psychonauts wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, I was still intrigued by its premise. Hopping inside people’s minds sounded exciting. On numerous occasions, we have met someone who seemed interesting or annoying or maybe even both, and wondered what goes on in their mind. What causes them to act the way they do, think the way they do, what’s the machinery like that is churning out all those witty/annoying things they are saying? Psychonauts offers just that, with each mind constructed as uniquely as the personality of its owner. A ‘M

A pearl of a story inside the usual FPS shell Another game carried over from my potato PC days, I decided to give Halo: Combat Evolved a try when I was a teenager. This was a time when the concept of an exo-suit augmenting one’s natural abilities appealed to me and my PC was much too weak to run Crysis. Much like a bunch of other games at the time, Halo: CE, too, started stuttering somewhere down the line and I had to abandon it. I got a chance to play it again and clear my backlog in the form of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and so I did. There’s not much to say about the gameplay itself. It’s a run-of-the-mill FPS with the usual ingredients – enemies and bosses, guns and rifles. Occasionally the perspective shifts to third-person when you’re driving vehicles, but other than that the view is completely restricted around the visor of your suit with the HUD elements courtesy of the suit’s AI. Although, the outer space shooting levels in a couple of games were those rare, welcome