Game Reviews

[Cho]

Okay... so most of us here probably play something other than Minecraft ('cept for Ninjawoman, she's strange that way). So... figured I'd start a thread where we can drop our impressions of games we've recently played. And for me, I like seeing feedback from people I know...

so... just something to start it off...

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Arcania - Gothic IV: I like this type of game, quite a bit. Single-player, single-character driven game. Generally, I prefer to deal with one character than having to manage multiple party members.

Genre: RPG

Pros: Looks good on my system, and is very stable, and smooth - no glitches encountered during gameplay.

Cons: Mediocre story quality, and oh lordy - the voice acting is soooo bad. It's beyond bad really. It's made from a european studio, so maybe the non-english version has better voice actors.

Recommendation: If you like this style of game, check out Risen instead. Better story, MUCH better voice acting (they've got John Rhys-Davies!); and it's been out longer, so is cheaper now.

3 out of 5 stars.

[Cho]

WANTED: Review of Dungeons...

[Lord_Mountbatten]

Template thievery for the win!

Games I've been playing recently...

The Longest Journey (not Dreamfall, which is different): Minecraft really keeps me pinned down. I ought to take another break to get through some other games, but I keep coming back. Plus, even leaving these forums for a day fills them up, and I like to stay on top of them. However, when I get back to this, I very much enjoy it. Anyways, this game has an interesting usage of the parallel worlds idea. If you're the type who loves storyline, like me, then you'll enjoy this. Humorous too.

Genre: Point n' click adventure, in a nutshell.

Pros: Great storyline, top-notch voice-acting (I remember reading something about how they did it, which was different to how most studios do it), likeable player character, interesting locales.

Cons: It hasn't aged all that well. The animations can look a little odd because of that. There's a very odd glitch somewhere near the beginning that made me have to redo the game back to that point (I very foolishly keep one safe file which I overwrite as I progress)

Recommendation: Hells yeah, it'll be cheap, and it's an awesome game. It's the type you really ought to play, as it's certainly one of the classics. An approximation you could buy would be other point n' click games (gee, thanks Mountbatten you useless git). Broken Sword maybe?

I won't do any kind of rating system, because I find it very hard to sum up a game with some kind of score.


Fallout: New Vegas: Not much I need to say about this. I suppose quite a few of you have already played this. Fallout 3 but better, is my summation of it.

Genre: RPG

Pros: Excellent writing (especially liked meeting Caesar), iron sights now, less grey than Fallout 3, better quests (in my opinion). It also gave me the feeling only a few RPGs do. That has something to do with important, yet enigmatic characters, and simply meeting them. Setting them up for me to feel like that about finally getting to meet them is skilful to me. Notable examples include Caesar and Mr. House.

Cons: I actually never suffered much from this, but it's a buggy game. Lucky ol' me though never had much trouble with that kind of thing. Also, I feel lost when I find myself in a large world that I can explore. I get used to it, and it's probably just a statement of me being hopeless and enjoying linearity. Apart from this, I didn't actually have that many dislikes.

Recommendation: If you like this, you might like other RPGs. Obsidian is excellent at writing, and it often comes hand in hand with Bioware in a lot of things. I'd recommend the KotOR games (yes, including Sith Lords - this game is written brilliantly, and there's a restored content mod out that's moved it closer to a state you can actually call finished, and they're still working on it), the Mass Effects, Dragon Age, the Baldur's Gates...

[Cho]

Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY Edition

Genre: Action

Who doesn't know about Batman... But I got this during the Christmas Steam Sale event... And just finished it last week.

Pros: Very satisfying combat. Combos aren't based on button-mashing at the exact right moment, but rather on continually hitting bad guys without missing. So if you've got a bunch of guys around you, once you knock down the guy to your left, you can then attack to your right side (by pressing mouse1 and the right direction key) and Bats will seamlessly attack that guy - sometimes making a ground devouring leap to do it. The story and voice acting was very good, though Harley's voice is grating, imo. Great gameplay, except as noted below. Also, a nice 'feature' was that as batman progresses through the game, you start to notice the wear and tear after all the combat. You'll see a few tears in his costume, the edges of the cap will get ragged. Batman looks more beat up as you progress through the game; which is kinda nice as you can't customize the look, or alter his look through his equipment.

Cons: Forced camera perspective changes. Man, I hated this. The first time I think it happens is when you first have to deal with Scarecrow for the first time. Suddenly, your incredible action game experience is shoe horned into a 2d platformer. And your mouse is useless except for mashing buttons 1 & 2. WASD become move up, down, left, right, and moving the mouse does nothing. Seriously?! I know lot of people still love platformer games, but I grew out of them in the 80s, and want nothing to do with them now; so being forced into this was very jarring. They also do this same trick in a couple of the boss battles. This really killed the game for me.

Also... I've never liked it when in order to find all of the secrets (be they trophies, powerups, whatever) they force you to retravel through sections of the game you've done because you've got more advanced abilities. In most games, I'll just skip these altogether. The worst thing about this in Batman was that they included some really interesting Chronicles of Arkham, that I never did find all of them since I hate backtracking.

This isn't really a big drawback - but one thing that did surprise me, since the devs spent so much time with everything else was that there are only five non-boss character models in the game, either:

Clown makeup thug (see, Joker - I really wanna be like you!!)
Skinhead
Weird knobby-headed guy
Red jumpsuit knife guy (can't hurt 'em till you stun 'em)
Stun baton guy (have to attack from behind)

Now, typing this, I start to think five isn't all that bad. But when you look at all the time they put in to differentiate the buildings, the grounds (never did I feel like the hallways of one building looked like another), set dressing from family photos, desk clutter, etc... I just felt odd that the bad guys were so limited.

Bugs: During one Scarecrow nightmare, the screen never came out of the 'fade to black'. Very odd, but on a reload of the save it worked fine. And very strangely, I lost the ability to do takedowns about 7/8ths of the way through the game. Suddenly, it just never became an option. No idea why - could never figure it out. Unfortunately, this bug was also the last straw in backtracking through the game to find Chronicles, as the insane inmates that are left after defeating Joker are undefeatable without the ability to do a takedown.

Recommendation: If you like action games play it. Did I mention that the voice acting is great? I know they are working on a sequel - and if they remove the forced camera perspective/2d element from the game, I'll be buying it before it goes on sale.

4 out of 5 stars

[jagorrax]

I played dead space 1 and enjoyed it. I figured I could wait on Dead Space 2 unless its a MUST HAVE. I've seen good reviews but I just want to know if its one of those games that one can spend many hours playing. So if anyone has it, I'd like to know what they thought and whether this game should be a rental or a buy.

[XDelphi]

Eh, why not, God knows if anyone but me plays it but go on.
Title: Mirror's Edge
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC.
Genre: FP Free runner. (I know, shock horror!)

Pros: Great and extremely innovitave gameplay make this game worth at least playing, and the controls are really quite simple to get used to. Interesting graphics, almost cell-shaded and cartoony, contrasts with gamplay and this juxtaposition between gameplay and graphic is what makes the game extremely playable. This style also helps to point out (Subtly, that is, so as not to make the player feel like a dumb monkey wen racing around a high speeds and falling of rooftops) certain key areas and ledges and such.

Cons: In some areas you are urged, if not forced to use combat, most of which is nice not to. Being in a First-Person display, and not seeing a gun in hand is quite refreshing. Apart from this, I can't really think of anything else, apart from regular checkpoints and maybe a 'Restart from Checkpoint' option.

Bugs: None, so far.

Recommendation: An absolute must-buy, and a delight to play. Been out for a while too, so the price is expectantly quite low.

Rating: 5/5 stars
Cheers for reading this, if you did.

[Blackadder51]

Let me dig out my review of Burnout Paradise from The Escapist.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/ ... t-Paradise

[Cho]

So... Two Worlds II came out. I wasn't familiar with the title, so I checked it out. And decided to play:

Two Worlds

This is an RPG game, that came out around the time of Oblivion - so it got roundly trounced both in comparisons to Oblivion, and in reviews. Which is too bad... because it's NOT a bad game. It's not a great game, but it is a good game.

So Two Worlds is a single-character, fantasy RPG. You are a mercenary, and while you can customize your features, you can't choose to play a female character; and the only race is human. So, after messing with sliders, I came up with my hero - who looked slightly deformed, so I started over and just changed the eye color.

There is an intro movie, which gives you some of the backstory, and you're given a very brief tutorial in the form of a short mission into a 'temple' that you spawn in front of. Run in, kill a few humanoids called Groms, loot a few chests, and then talk to the villager waiting for you. This will give you the basic commands, but it leaves a LOT of questions. So go get the manual download from the Steam store page. Soon after this, it will be obvious that you have to quickstep it down to the nearest village, fighting a few critters on the way, and eventually meeting a guy who gives you the main quest line missions. Seems you've got to work for some guy to get your sister back from him, or dire consequences... There are also side missions that you kinda HAVE to take; as if you try to just tackle the main story missions, you'll find you are no where near high enough level for them eventually. But this isn't a bad thing - this is where you'll get your gear upgrades, and coin. But the game handles this easily enough... all villagers can have a few different icons.

Circle 'faces' - Just color dialogue, nothing important
Diamond - Quest giver
Money bag - Vendor

And one or two others that I see so rarely that I don't recall. I think Trainers use the same diamond as quest givers, but with a different color, and maybe the same for very rare people who can let you respec your character. Basically - diamond, talk to em; circle, you can safely ignore - though it's good to talk to a few in each place just to get a 'feel' for how the village feels about things.

Combat is very difficult on normal based on reviews I read, so I did start on easy difficulty as one reviewer recommended. And once you learn a few tricks, it's not too bad; though some enemies are still capable of one-shotting you even on easy, and still being in places that is normal for your level. Tip: Use Q to jump back from powerful blows that some enemies 'wind up for'. There are active and passive skills - the actives you set to a hotkey to activate. I'm still boosting (as is recommended) the passive skills I have first, so I don't use these often.

Magic - uses a spell card system... it's a separate page on your 'character sheet', so you don't have to dig through inventory to find the cards, and stacking identical cards increases the power of a spell, and there are boosters. I'm going melee style of play, so I'm not as familiar with this side of the game.

The skill system provides numerous skills for you to advance, from archery skills, magic schools, melee skills, and others like lockpicking, swimming, horseback riding, etc. An interesting thing to note, while you get at least one skill point per level, you are sometimes awarded a skill point after defeating a particularly powerful enemy - e.g. I killed a cyclops in one cave system (took about a dozen retries, since he's one of the guys who can one-shot you) and was awarded an extra skill point. You also have a separate bank of attribute points to spread amongst vitality (health), strength (dmg with melee), dex (to hit/archery), and willpower (mana).

And you can ride, and fight, from horseback. Horses are your friends in this game, as they come with a huge set of saddlebags which can be used to store many more items that you could personally carry. Inventory space for your character is based on your strength, and uses weight limits and space limits. So you can possibly not be able to pick something up either because you can't carry more based on weight, or your (invisible) pack is full. Horses have a rudimentary AI, and will alter their speed (only ever downwards) based on terrain, and they can't climb (in either direction) some slopes. They turn to avoid obstacles and slow down (a lot), which can be an issue if you tried to gallop over the fire some bandits left in the middle of the road, and a big ole bear is chasing you.

I'm 11 hours in, and I'm enjoying the game. Enemy difficulty doesn't scale (like oblivion did), so if you're getting beat up badly by 'normal' mobs, go back and do some sidequests, or explore a different area.

Oh... and my favorite thing about the game. The item upgrade system. If you find an identical item of gear, you can drop the duplicate on the existing piece and that item is upgraded. So, say you're using a short sword that does 10-12 dmg, and a mob drops another short sword. Pick it up into your inventory, open up the inventory, drag and drop the duplicate from the inventory side onto the sword on your character 'doll'. Voila, upgraded sword that now does 12-14. Now, this has to be an exactly match. If you wearing "Ornate Heavy Plate Gloves" and you find "Heavy Plate Gloves" they can't upgrade each other. But it's a great system that often allows you to upgrade your equipment in the field. You can also upgrade items that are just sitting in your inventory to reduce space and weight, but if you're looking to maximize your coin, don't do this -- as the single item will net less coin than selling both items would have.

Pros: Voice acting DOESN'T suck - I just got done with Gothic IV not long ago, and still have nightmares from the witch there. Upgradeable items!! Combat system is easy to use - blocking is a skill and is done automatically. World looks okay for a game its age. Alchemy can be used by everyone, it's not tied to being a mage.

Cons: Wonky control system beyond the very basic wasd, left-click, etc. For instance, Alt-F1 is quicksave. You really do need a manual to figure out some commands, and the tutorial is too basic that you'll never figure out the hotbars without the manual. Horses are a bit balky, and touchy when it comes to spots they can't go. A few times, it's been easier to dismount, walk over whatever it causing the horse to spasm, and whistle (H) to get him to come to you. Inventory screen drops all items (except for magic cards) into one big inventory screen; and while there is a 'sort' key, it's only does a middling job, often leaving a few odd blank spots (often in the lower left hand corner). I wish they'd had separate pages for weapons, armor, alchemy ingredients, etc. The alchemy system is a bit of a pita to me - no recipes. Just mix stuff up and see what you get - and THAT creates a recipe, so it's a bit of a crapshoot.

Somewhere in the middle: Lockpicking system is a pure percentage chance based on the type of lock and your skill level. No minigame, which frankly I prefer; others may not. The story is ok - not great, not bad... The big complaint on this game was that it was unpolished, and that is true. There are a lot of items dropped by mobs and in chests you'll loot. You'll be spending a LOT of time in your inventory screen, and if you want to maximize your gold a LOT of time selling items. So many items that it's easy to miss an upgrade.

Recommendation: Worth the 20 bucks I paid for it in the steam store. And as Two Worlds II apparently has a continuation of the story arc, and according to reviews, a much better game... I'm glad I bought it. 11 hours in, and still enjoying it.

EDIT: So I finished TW now. Total time: 59 Hours. Not a bad deal for $20. There are still some glitched quests (no reward in one, a few that won't complete), but I enjoyed it. One site said you could get to level 70 if you did all the sub-quests, well - I did all but less than half a dozen, and I think I hit 56. Which was more than enough to handle the end quests.

Pro-tip: Elemental damage modifiers to weapons - no mobs have immunity or resistance to Spirit. But don't go nuts upgrading weapons until you think you're with what will be your end-game set. There is a max modifier that a weapon can have - though I'm not sure how they figure that out. I actually wound up swapping out from the Katana Gomai I'd been using for the last third of the game, cause an axe I upgraded could take more of a Spirit dmg enhancement.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

The latest Medal of Hono(u)r game. Series hasn't been able to recover its position after getting booted from top spot by the Call of Duty, but as it has been said, this is an attempt to rejuvenate the series. I particularly loved Frontline and Pacific Assault.

Genre: FPS

Pros: Now, whatever you may say about this game, it is not bad. It effectively is a good jump-off point for the Medal of Honor series. As Neitzche has said to me, you can feel the parochial effect here. Here it doesn't feel like a blockbuster world-conquering flight through all sorts of exotic locales like the Call of Duty series. Also, you won't be seeing anything like the ISS getting somehow destroyed by nuclear shockwaves. I quite like that feel. Sure, I love the CoD setpieces too, because it's batshit crazy, but this game effectively gives the feeling you're fighting a war against a guerilla force here. Sure there's still a crazy amount of killing going on here, but it's interesting to see, especially since MoH is used to WWII. Also, for some reason to become Tier 1 you have to have a beard. The badassery of each Tier 1 member seems to increase in correlation to the size of the beard. Obviously this is a major pro. I enjoyed the shooting mechanises, primarily headshots and stabbing. Story isn't much, but then there isn't all that much you can do for this kind of thing. Anyone who can keep up to date with the news will understand what's going on and who you're up against. The game starts off kind of dull, but it improves as things go along. It's fairly realistic as far as things go, at least in comparison to CoD. That isn't to say you should expect anything like Operation Flashpoint, but still, it was nice.

Cons: Textures. The game can't seem to handle them properly - I keep seeing that weird smooth feel to it every so often and it's very off-putting. Also, I still prefer the visceral feel of shooting people in the CoD games. Also, as I said, there is nothing particularly new or impressive in this game - it is thoroughly decent, certainly, but nothing will really make you stand up and feel like God. Sure there are some parts that are tense and exciting enough (playing on Normal difficulty setting here), particularly near the end, but nothing you'd ring up your friend, if you're that kind of creep, to tell them how pant-wettingly intense it was.

Recommendation: Thoroughly decent game. More of a game to rent, since it didn't last me very long, and wasn't anything special.

[michaeld20]

Name:Uncharted 1/2 Double review
Genre: Action adventure
Pros: I will go in order from 1 to 2 and divide them with a slash / same for cons
Story bored me. Had no Pulling force except for the freaking zombie like things the voice acting was GREAT love the wittyness in main characters. Lines it really makes it a little softer tone (as in humor) than most action games/GREAT story great voices great cinematics and pulled me in RIGHT AWAY (Hard to do) the lines were quite witty as last game and it was very enjoyable i had gotten all trophies on it and it had me going until the end.
Cons: Weak story and bad Antagonist/none
Final rate
1:7.8
2:10+
Go buy it if u got a PS3! Its awesome

[Frosty]

Okay, so this one is an relatively old compared to the others on the list, but is still a blast to play.
Title :: Command and Conquer Renegade
Platform :: PC
Genre :: FPS
Summary :: Basically, this game was an attempt to create an FPS out of a strategy game. In multiplayer, there are 2 bases, each with a barracks, vehicle depot, refinery, power plant, and a base defense. Anyone can repair a building until it is destroyed, and if it is destroyed, that team loses a perk that that building provided (E.x. If you lose the barracks, you lose the ability to use advanced infantry, if you lose the power plant your base defenses don't work and everything costs double, if you lose your vehicle depot, you can't produce any more tanks, and so on.)
Pros :: GREAT, team - oriented multiplayer. Basically, if you don't play as a team, you lose.
Cons :: Decent at best campaign, dated graphics, and a low number of people still playing.
Bugs :: Most have been fixed by patches, cannot recall if any still exist.
Recommendation :: I would recommend to anyone who enjoys fast-based, team gameplay.
Overall Score :: 5/5

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