Reviews by v

Thanks to DrFino for getting this started!
This is a page for reviews by /v/ denizens. Collected by /v/ and also for (and/or by) you. Please enjoy, contribute, and please respond. No Metacritic here, if possible. This is for reviews by you, and not collected scores. The wikia generator wouldn't allow "/v/" in the site title, so, apologies for that. These are presented as they were originally written and posted for the most part (spelling errols, bad grammar, and all). We have no idea who posted what for the most part, so re-editing is kinda iffy, unless, of course, you add a re/v/iew not found at http://pastebin.com/PiecQ1UH. Still, there's not enough need to care who posted what, but if you really want to edit a re/v/iew you made found at the pastebin, feel free to go ahead and do so (We're going by a trust system, so don't be a dick and mess with shit not yours.)
You can sort the games by clicking on those sorting buttons. Mostly only useful for A-Z sorting. Or Z-A.
You may also be interested in other reviews, yes? If so, here are Dejeko's Reviews. As these were made before this page was created, they are on their own pages and other reviewers are welcome to add to them.
* MVI Ape Escape 1
* MVI Dragon Quest (main series)
* MVI Evolution TWoSD
* MVI Final Fantasy (main series)
* MVI_Knytt
* MVI Pocky and Rocky (series)
* MVI Quest (series)
* MVI Rabbids Go Home (Wii)
* MVI Ultima IV
* MVI Wild Arms 1
* MVI Xevious (original)
* MVI Ys 1 and 2
* MVI Zen Pinball (series)
=The Re/v/iews!=
Note: for the sake of space, only the title, and main review points will be present. Genre and typical other categories seen in other tables can be found in respective systems. Or just fucking google it.
Title 	Gameplay 	User Interface 	Visuals 	Audio 	Progression 	Story
9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors 	Jumps back and forth between visual novel and point-and-click adventure parts. The adventure bits work well. Just about every item on screen can be tapped to receive a bit of dialog. Items are easy to see and are far enough away from each other such that you don't accidentally tap the wrong thing. Most puzzles have intuitive controls. 	Functional. Most functions are bound to both a button and a tap-able on-screen icon. Viewing files and items is simple, as is combining them. 	Mostly static and 2D. The environments look convincing, and the character sprites are generally detailed and well-done, albeit low resolution (blame the DS). 	Not much to be said. Sound effects are passable. The music is repetitive but not too annoying. No voice acting. 	The difficulty curve is a bit off; most puzzles are easy to solve, with very intuitive solutions, but there are a handful that are noticeably more obtuse than the rest. The game forces you to play through it multiple times, and it can get a bit tedious solving the same puzzle over and over. 	Phenomenal. Characters have good personality, and your conversations with them are genuinely interesting. The game weaves a traditional "whodunnit" story with paranormal oddities. It will keep you guessing the entire time. The way the different story elements pieced together at the end was mind blowing. This game had me lying awake at night and dreaming about it. Absolutely wonderful.
Ace Attorney - Trials & Tribulations (DS ver.) 	The gameplay is split into two parts (as per usual with the AA games) namely the Courtroom sessions where you have to cross-examine witnesses on the stand, and the Investigation sessions where you click through various scenes to uncover clues, talk with witnesses and the police and so on. 	Nice and clean interface, although the BIG button on the bottom screen is a bit unaesthetic. 	Sprites look superb, considering they're upscaled sprites from the GBA original. Other artwork used in the game(for example the poster of Mask DeMasque etc) look decent as well, although they could be better. 	Top notch music, aside from the usual suspects like cornered ~ pursuit, there are a bunch of new tracks, especially memorable are the themes for Victor Kudo, Godot and Furio Tigre. 	The progression through the game can sometimes be difficult due to player being ahead of the case, or simply because the "right" answer doesn't make sense until you give it and phoenix explains it neatly. 	T&T is easily the strongest of the original Trilogy. I don't want to give to much away to people who didn't play it yet.
Ace Combat 5 	It's hella fun but it can be tricky for newcomers who cannot into 3D motion and aircraft handling. The fact that your missiles tracked enemies like a fat man trying to climb up a mountain was balanced by the fact that you had a lot of them. 	It did the job, I loved the HUD, and the interior cockpit was a nice detail. I don't know how people can play with the exterior camera though. That gives me nausea and confuses the fuck out of me. 	Considering that it was made in 2004, it gave contemporary PC flight sims a decent run for their money. It helps that they only had to store terrain data for relatively small areas, though. The ground vehicles are quite detailed, oddly enough. 	The soundtrack is amazing, as always. The sounds were all pretty awesome, as far as sound effects go. The voice acting was cheesy but decent. Not as cheesy as Ace Combat 6, but it had its good and bad moments. 	You start out as a little shithead know-nothing and end up being the most feared asshole in the war. Shit got real when people started calling you the Razgriz. 	Cheesy as hell, but that's what makes Ace Combat so great. Very involved and long, with around 31 missions (and 5 alt-missions on the side, as well as a 5-mission/20-variation mini-campaign). Even though the statute of limitations is over, I'll avoid going deeper to not spoil those bros who are still discovering this game.
Akalabeth: World of Doom 	Bare-bones and basic as a RPG could ever be. It's enjoyable for the most part. Lizard Man spell is OP as fuck, though so it really breaks the game. Not much else to say, Akalabeth was really just an experimental game by LB. 	Very minimal, nothing to say bad or good about. It's just there. 	(not mentioned in original re/v/iew) 	If repetitive MIDI's are your thing then it's great. The original Akalabeth for Apple II had no audio however. 	Very simple, it hardly exists. There is a total of 4 quests in this game and they're all "go kill x". Once you've done the quests you become a knight after killing Balrog. 	Kill things, the realm is in dire need of a knight because we only allow people to become knights if they can kill balrog's and demon's with your fists. There's seriously no story worth mentioning.FOOD is a bitch in Akalabeth and gremlin's are more powerful than Balrog's and it pisses me off.
Alone in the Dark 	AITD is innovative in every aspect, including gameplay, it meshes survival-horror with sandbox elements, not to mention action-adventure and even some FPS. The controls are a bitch, but it somewhat adds to the whole 'freelancer' experience. 	The HUD is nicely done, everything is tidily placed and pretty straightforward, looks great. The DVD-esque feature is something unique. The inventory system is literally Edward's jacket, you'll ALWAYS be short on supplies. 	For a 2008 game, AITD looks great, the art direction is superb but it doesn't exceed in any technical point except for the fire particles, which are amongst the best in gaming history. The animations could use some work, however. The 'flesh wounds' textures are shit, seriously 	The word to describe the soundtrack is 'atmospheric'. Works exceptionally well. The dialogue is cheesy and will make you cringe. 	Reviewers complain about the challenging, somewhat arbitrary, difficulty, but this game is for hardcore/masochist players. The game feels awkward due to shitty coding, otherwise rewarding moments will be ruined thanks to numerous bugs. 	Edward wakes up to a gun in his face without prior knowledge of who he is. If you're into AITD this chapter feels too oversimplified, otherwise it's a B+ blockbuster mystery.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. 	I have to say, my first playthough, it was amazing. I always liked 4X games, and this was not disappointing. Basically, in the Cid Meier style, Earth becomes a shitstorm of fighting and sadness, and some people decide to leave for Alpha Centauri. They split up into factions, and begin. Gameplay focuses on finding victory, which can be achieved in several ways, from killing your opponents, to reaching enlightenment. Each faction has a strength and a weakness or two, and you have to use these to your advantages. Units are made of parts, so I can configure my units in different ways, so that they are cost effective, or more suited to do a specific task. Much more complex then Civilization. 	I have to say, the user interface is better then most modern games. Everything is there, and you can see a basic version, or an advanced version. Keep in mind, this game was made in 1999. 	This game aged very well, the cutscenes are creative, and of what is considered an "OK" modern quality. The UI graphics are nice and crisp, but the units and terrain, not so much. 	Limited 1999 sounds. Nothing special here. 	Good, multiple difficulties. However, there is one method of winning that makes anything too easy. 	As stated above, the faction leaders seperated from the start. Now, the interesting thing is that you make your own story. Perhaps the story is that you received alien enlightenment (Tech victory) or you took over the Planet (Domination victory).On the downside, it just didn't feel the same as how it did on the first time of gameplay. It felt boring, knowing all the steps. It's glory point was how everything felt new, even if it is 13 years old.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent 	Amnesia is a horror survival game. The twist to it is none of the monsters can be killed, forcing to to run and hide adding a whole new level of fear. While exploring around you'll come across many different puzzles forcing you to think. 	Simple, what else is there to say . A dot in the center of the screen allows you to control what to pick up and whatnot. As for the menu it is also as simple as it gets. It displays all items on a single grid along with other impotent information. 	While the game is located in a dark castle the visuals are not to bad. The atmosphere is well fitting for horror and the level of detail is perfect. 	With sounds coming from around each corner, things smashing in the distance, and screams for help the audio fits the horror perfectly. 	It's a simple survival game, get from point A to B and so on. There is backtracking, but nothing too bad. 	A simple story that is easy to follow. As you explore the castle you receive flash backs of what happened to lead to the current time. Along with flashbacks you also find notes and clues. Overall the story is nothing special, but does its job.
Age of Empires III 	the resource gathering is unblanaced, it takes too much time to get your base up and running, peasants can gather resources without having to return to any storage building, hard counters, some buildings can attack which prevents rushes, buildings have too much HP unbalanced factions. The campaign is length is ok , its a bit easy and most of the scenarios are boring. There are little bugs and units respond correctly 	The layout is OK but you can't see unit details and you can't see the advanced commands. 	For an RTs is pretty good although too much brown and gray. 	6/10 	by the 4th mission you get everything except the last age. all the scenarios are the same, get the same anti infantry then anty cavalry and cannons for buildings. 	they are just random maps mashed together.
Atelier Meruru 	Battle system is simplistic, but the crafting system is the most intricate that I've ever come across in a game. Exploring the land, building your kingdom, crafting items, doing quests, everything comes together to create a great timesink where you'll always have a goal to work towards. The game is set up in a very nonliner way as well, essentially just throwing you into the world and letting you build it and explore it as you see fit. 	The synthesis interface can be intimidating when you first start out because it throws so much information at you, but you'll catch on quick. 	I've seen better cel-shading, but the visuals in this game aren't bad by any means. 	Nothing special, aside from a few great boss tracks. 	Build a kingdom in 5 years by choosing what to develop and where to go. Multiple endings depending on what you develop and what characters you interact with. 	There's no central conflict, meaning some people may dislike what may appear to be a lack of focus. Other than that, exposition is light hearted and fun. You'll need to interact with a lot of the party members and do a lot of development in order to get the most out of the story.
Bastion 	Meant to be played on a gamepadAllows for precise actions, rewarding a skilled playerWeapons/Tonics allow players to choose their playstyle100% flow, rarely any breaks to kill the mood 	Simple menus with direct linksIn-game menus look and feel like gameplay interactions (ie challenge board/tonic shelves)Little to no on screen popups 	Sketchbook art style with vibrant colorsDistinct looks for different areasEverything fits the old timey/steam engine era technology themePleasing to the eye 	Amazing sound track, game would've been much worse without itNarration keeps you playing without cutscenes/dialogue its a black guy 	Wide range of weapons/tonics/shrines/missions to be unlockedChallenge missionsNew game+ 	Different and engaging story, easy to grow attachedTough endgame decisions, left me thinking if i did the right thingGets a little repetitive/lacks mission to mission objectives
Batman: Arkham Asylum 	The game play is kind of a mix between fighting, acroBATics, stealth, and puzzles. There are LOTS of secret places, intricate level designs for sneaking around enemies. Pretty fun gameplay, hoping City will be in the next steam sale 	Eh, standard, nothing too special. There's a lot of Riddler Challenges that make some of the menus lengthy and annoying to navigate, but that being said, really provides a lot of knowledge on the villains from all the comic books. 	Actually pretty good, one of my favorite details they put into the game is watching Batmans suit slowly degenerate as he is pushed through hell, and his cape swooshing is probably what they spent half of their game development time on. 	Listening to the Joker is pretty fun usually, but when you're in an area with 11 armed guards and you're trying not to be detected while picking them all off, he repeats some things... A lot. 	You acquire different gadgets and upgrades as you progress, which is standard, but I did not like having to backtrack through every building in the game after I beat it because some of the items are only reachable with gadgets you get late in the game. 	Really good, definitely a strong point for the game. Especially if you pay attention to the details. Although it's very linear, it's a good enough game that I just don't give a fuck.
Batman Arkham City 	Everything has been improved upon from the first game. Literally everything. Combat flows better than any game ever and the animations make this modern-day beat-em-up one of the most impressive displays in video game history. Catwoman sequences are very very refreshing and I actually ended up liking her playstyle more to be honest. 	Played it on PC. The UI was great and I never felt like it held me back. Actually I wish I could turn the HUD completely off but it never detracts from gameplay. Just my want to take screenshots, which leads into the next category. 	Best visuals of any game ever. Pushes your PC to its limits, but it's very well optimized even with GFWL. Better looking than Witcher 2, Crysis, and Metro despite noone ever bringing it up for whatever reason. 	Holy fuck. Get your dick ready because you will literally have a boner throughout the whole game. One of the best OSTs ever composed. Better than the movies. Don't even get me fucking started on the voice acting. There are no words. 	Boss fights are intense. Mr. Freeze was a godsend. Stealth sequences and brawling are paced very nicely. Great use of the environment and may different ways to approach each situation. This game fits almost all playstyles. Batman's suit rips and tears more as you get into the story which makes you feel like you really are the motherfucking batman. 	Twists and turns all around. Side missions fit in with the main story but aren't essential at all. THe game is jam packed full of content even without all the ripoff DLC. Great ending.
Battlefield 3 	Impressive variation between infantry styles and vehicle combatNetwork issues and minor bugs don't exactly break the gameControls are generally smooth, limited sensitivity options cause issuesFeels smooth and user has lots of controlAmazing attention to detail (ie directional vehicle damage, spray patterns) 	Fucking disgustingPC version designed for a 720p screenNo menus, just BattlelogLoad screens, death cams, loadout menus are incredibly bulky and take up a fraction of the screen (see 720p) 	Stunning, not a single low res texture in sightLandscapes are gorgeousAnimations are the most fluid in any game outColor filters detract from the overall wow factor 	Holy shit am I in a warzone?Guns sound like guns, you feel every shot [spoiler]in your ears[/spoiler]vocals, vehicles, explosions, bullet cracks...all set the tone of the gameGod tier recording 	Average unlock systemUpgrades for every primary weapon and vehicleFull ranking system and challenges called AssignmentsDog tags and skins for your weapons/character 	Surprisingly interesting Tom Clancy style New York Nuke conflictVariations in missions, short campaignCo-op missions aren't terrible, but should've been single player and added to campaign
Blacklight Retribution 	It's your typical ADS focused shooter with a few new features. Built in wallhacks is nice, but I feel like the mechs in this game aren't done right. The resuply stations on the map are great, but pople seem to camp near them. gun mechanics are decent. 	Visually it's great, it matches the artstyle of the game quite nicely. Menus are confusing, unlike the ingame HUD. 	Texure quality is low, bloom everywhere. On lower setting the game doesn't model your character model untill you die. The starter pistol looks like utter shit. 	The ST is bad. Ingame the weapons and people sound really abysmall. 	Lots of weapons, armor, upgrades and sidegrades to unlock. most of it will cost you either real money or lots of ingame currency. 	None.
Borderlands(1) 	No doubt where Borderlands shines. Shooting is extremely satisfying, and even driving can be fun at times, although vehicles are somewhat clunky 	Definitely made for consoles. I never had an issue traversing through it, but it can get tedious to go through each menu just to access different facets of your UI. 	There are very few games that look like Borderlands. That being said, it's not the greatest thing to look at, but definitely suits the style of the game, especially from the perspective of its humor and characters. 	Nothing amazing; nothing terrible either. Music can be somewhat bland. 	Borderlands was definitely made by people who love a game for the journey, not the end destination. Leveling up and replaying is great fun, especially with friends. 	Weak. Extremely weak. However, the characters and voice acting make up for all of the shortcomings from the story.
Borderlands(2) 	Amazingly fun. Guns feel great, and with all the millions of possible guns, you'll always be looking for a better one. The game does pester with a case of way to much DLC and also outdated meme humor. 	Built for a console, no doubt. I've only played it on the Xbox but I've heard the PC port was awful 	The graphics aren't great. They're far from it. But, the art style of the game is really unique and refreshing. Take any screenshot from the game and you'll know instantly it's Borderlands. 	Music is great, if you like the electronics and the wubs. It really fades in, though. You can't hear it half the time with all the bullets flying. 	Pretty much every enemy scales to you, so it's never too easy. Regardless, because of random chests, the difficulty of the game is solely based on the luck of your pickups. 	Terrible. Don't play Borderlands for the story, or you'll be disappointed. It's shallower than a kiddie pool. Seriously, this games a shootapalooza. The dialogue is a lot of fun, but the main story is out the ass TERRIBLE.
Brutal Legend(1) 	At its core, the game is basically a more action-oriented Sacrifice: an RTS-type game but one in which you are an active participant in battle rather than just watching it from the sky. The battle mechanics mesh together very well, and when you're good at it, the battle gameplay is chaotic and extremely fun.While the multiplayer is pure battlan, the single player ramps up to the battles slowly by introducing the mechanics in isolated missions, within the context of an open world. These are fairly simple but a lot of the time, the mechanics don't work well outside of the battle context they were designed for. For example, the basic combat moves are great as a selection of quick, weak moves for picking off small groups of enemies in battle, offset by the more powerful but less convenient troop teamup moves (AKA double teams), but in the open world where you can't rely on troops being nearby, they feel too weak and ineffective. Movement is fine in battle, where you can fly at will, but in the rest of the game, it's easy to get stuck on small ledges and the like since there's no jump or climb function.Other than that, there are a couple of annoyances - picking out the right double team while your troops are all running around is annoying, while summoning your flag is a little more time-consuming than it really needs to be. 	Very minimalistic: stuff appears when you need to know it and disappears when you don't. There's not really much to say here, the UI does its job and looks pretty good. 	The game looks amazing. It's vibrant and colourful and downright beautiful. It does suffer from jaggies from being on a console, and there are a couple of visual issues - noticeable pop-in sometimes, and sucky lip-sync for dialog during gameplay - but overall it's a really nice looking game. 	The game has a huge and excellent music selection, good sound effects for the most part, and great voice acting. On the audio front there's nothing to complain about really. 	Honestly, this game's progression isn't particularly good. Really it feels like it's two different games: on one hand, the open world and a lot of the single player missions are simple, easy challenges that anyone can play and immediately understand. But then the stage battles are these complex, dynamic, player-driven gameplay pieces that are confusing as hell at first and really just not very fun until you know what you're doing in them. The game tries to teach the battle mechanics using one-off missions, but doesn't emphasise enough that they actually ARE vital mechanics, so they come off feeling like one-off gameplay segments rather than pieces of a larger whole. This then has the result of making the battles feel like isolated one-off missions too - leading people to get completely the wrong idea of how to play them.Ultimately I have to question who the single player is for. To people playing it for the first time, it feels very disjointed and awkward, and fails to effectively teach how to play the battles (as is supposedly the purpose of the single player); but to people who do know what they're doing in the battles, the single player is simplistic and the battles are far more fun in the multiplayer anyway. It's still fun, but for a game with a core of complex, dynamic gameplay, it doesn't offer anywhere near enough of that content in the single player for it not to feel short and incomplete.Also, the ending of the game feels very rushed. It's like it's two thirds of a three act game, with the third act cut out completely. 	The lore of the world and the story are both fantastic. The exposition of the story is a bit wonky, with characters sometimes talking about stuff that hasn't been properly introduced. The characters and dialog are fucking amazing though. As well as what you'd generally consider the 'characters', the different troops are all characters too, with unique and well-defined personalities, and line after line of often-hilarious dialog for virtually every situation, from attacking an enemy to having their speed debuffed to seeing their leader die. Story and writing is definitely one of the game's strongest points.
Brutal Legend(2) 	Fun and addictive to a point. Don't care if it was Babby's First RTS, all the combinations of units and counter-strategies the game had was amazing. 	There are some points when the summon and solo menus would have trouble coming up, but overall worked well enough to where it wasn't really much of a problem, unless there's lag of course. 	Double Fine environment. Crazy shit and a great art design. Good shit. 	Best soundtrack of any game I've ever played ever. 	Single player is too short and feels unfinished, but gets you prepped for online play, which is dead now... 	Story: Good story, but again too short and feels unfinished. Still enjoyed it though.Worth the low price that it's been given. If you go into a game store and see it for or pick it up, great underrated game.
Castlevania Circle of the Moon 	Kill enemies, explore Dracula's castle, level up, and collect loot and magic spells. Pretty standard for a CV game, and it's damn good. 	Clunky, but it works. Ingame, the life bar is the only thing that could get in the way, but its pretty barebones. In the game menus, it's a little more convoluted, but it's still very navigable. The worst thing is that buffs to stats are shown in blue and debuffs are shown in red, or vice versa. It's unintuitive. 	Fucking dark, and I don't mean the atmosphere. You either need a backlight or an emulator to play this (originally the GBA was supposed to have a brighter light). What you can see it excellent spritework that looks pretty great in action. Notably, the whip and Mars+Element combos look great. 	Generally frowned upon for having only one really good original track (it plays when you enter the Catacombs... "Awakening"?). The rest of the music is either hit or miss, or is a remix of a favorite CV tune, such as Aquarius and Vampire Killer. The sound is crisp and vibrant as well. 	Kill shit till you level up to make yourself stronger. Bosses don't need grinding if you know their patterns. Drops are random, so you might get cool shit as you play through. Spells are based on a 10x10 card combination system, so you have 100 options. 	Enter castle, kill Dracula.
Chrono Cross 	
Turn-based JRPG with a few twists. The player is given countless opportunities to recruit party members over the course of the game, some being much more useful (and likable) than others. Chrono Cross sidesteps a lot of the conventions that hold back many JRPGs from greatness, random encounters being the most notable absence. Save points are given to the player quite liberally. The battle system is unique but not radically so. If the player is mildly acquainted with the genre, it shouldn't take very long to get a decent grasp of its intricacies. Besides the game's driving feature, the ability to go back and forth between alternate versions of the world, exploration is done in a manner that holds true to form. Weapons, armor, and magic are bought at shops, enemies drop useful loot such as money and items for blacksmithing, towns are full of places to explore and NPCs to talk to, etc. etc. 	
It gets the job done. Allocating the right spells can be a bit of a hassle sometimes but the interface gives you tools like "Organize according to Color" and "Auto-Allocate". Equipping characters isn't confusing as long you don't spread out too far with developing different party members. It won't test an adequately skilled player's patience. 	
The world is beautiful. There's plenty of variety but much of it adheres to a tropical theme and as such the color palette is usually bright and vibrant. Lots of blues, reds, and greens. Players who aren't seduced by the ocean's beauty might be turned off by this but those more susceptible to it will be kept in a perpetual state of awe. Its aesthetic is the polar opposite of the "brown n' bloom" look that is so brutally common these days. The game's look shifts as you travel between worlds, demonstrating how different choices effected the environment. The character models are brought to life by the hand-drawn portraits and detailed battle animations. This being a Squaresoft game, the CG scenes are all jaw-dropping. 	The soundtrack is a work of art on its own. It's the glue keeping Chrono Cross together. The background music is never annoying and the soundtrack pulls through to cement the significance of certain points in the story. This is a must-play if you consider yourself a connoisseur of video game music.here's a litmus test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46RY4PU8a8 	
The boss battles act frequently as wake-up calls, but most of Chrono Cross is smooth sailing.There's little to no grinding. The sidequests and endgame content are all very fulfilling to complete and in some instances provide decent challenges. The overall length of the game is satisfying but far from being as gargantuan as say, Final Fantasy IX or Dragon Quest VIII. However, it's to the game's advantage that Squaresoft decided not to cheapen the experience by loading the game with filler. The plot shifts to overdrive around the end of the first disc and remains captivating until the finale. 	
Convoluted even for a JRPG. CC begins in medias res and only gets more unconventional. But do not be mistaken, this game is full of poetic and cerebral moments. It successfully takes on a multitude of serious philosophical, moral, and environmental themes. Many will rejoice in the story's uniqueness and depth, others might be immediately turned off by its melancholia and ambiguity. Chatting with NPCs is rarely tiresome and many of them have insightful and enduring things to say. I advise people who are fans of Chrono Trigger but new to Chrono Cross to avoid letting Trigger's memory spoil their playthrough of the game. Despite a hefty sprinkling of references and some recurring motifs in the soundtrack, Chrono Cross is a sequel in the least possible sense of the word. Yes, there is a relationship between the two but it's really weird and for the sake of the reader's sanity it's not appropriate to go into much detail here.
Corpse Party -Rebuilt- 	Gameplay is your standard RPG fair except you solve puzzles instead of fighting The group of 5 is split into 1 group of 3 and a group of 2. You control these groups separately and can switch them by using the pentagrams scattered around the school. The puzzles aren’t too complex. They are pretty much "insert Thing into Slot" 	The UI is isn't used much so it's simple and does what you need it to do. 	The visuals do a great job of enforcing the creepy atmosphere of the game. The characters look great and everything else is has a great amount of detail. 	The music does a fantastic job of making the player feel scared, worried and even emotional at times. It wouldn't be the same without it. The sound effects used are also great at making a scary atmosphere 	The game is short. It took me about 2 hours to complete it. So it never feels like it's dragging along or getting boring. There are however, multiple endings. 	The story is good and short. It not too complex or "deep" but does gets really dark and disturbing about half way through the game.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 	Straight forward war theme shooter, though you have a wide array of weapons you will often find yourself switching between four to six weapons through out the main campaign. Enemy A.I. is well composed while ally A.I. falls short of competent especially during open area fights with more than 30+ or so people on screen. 	Self explanatory for the most part, not too out of the way but also not too descriptive with it explanation of the weapons and equipment you use. 	Good visuals, a couple of exotic locals but nothing too unique considering it's genre or setting. 	Good music which serves to enhance the already hollywood-like experience. One or two tunes will standout from this typical soundtrack. Voice work does a bang up job though lip sync is not quite matched at times. 	Nothing too complex for the player, depending on the difficulty set, each mission's play through will take shorter or longer. But nothing content wise is changed with only a few slight tweaks in the urgency and enemy competency made. 	"The only easy day was yesterday" THE GAME
Darius Gaiden 	The Darius series is not for everyone. It has always been known for having a very unforgiving power-up system. When you die your power-ups get dropped a grade and in previous Darius games this grade was the difference between quite a large amount of power-ups, so unfortunately the only way to really enjoy one of these games was to beat them without dying. Gaiden makes all this much more forgiving by grading your shot and rocket power-ups in three’s, allowing you to keep your current rocket power level on death, and introducing heavy-damaging, screen-clearing smart bombs to help you avoid trickier attacks and make learning to dodge things in the game a much nicer experience. However, dying at all (especially at bosses) still manages to be a highly fun-killing experience because your shot is always downgraded to the lowest level in the previous grade, which is always agonizingly weak. 	(not specified in original re/v/iew) 	Darius Gaiden is a 2D eyegasm with tons of great scrolling effects, nicely drawn sprites, boss attacks with a great “wow” factor, and a few prerendered models that you would swear were early cel-shading. 	Composed by Hisayoshi Ogura (OGR) of Zuntata fame, this is the game where he started branching out to highly experimental compositions. Darius Gaiden has a soothing funky techno soundtrack with extensive use of unorthodox sounds. Most people praise its unique sound but some may find certain tracks a bit annoying. 	If you can get past its unforgiving nature, highly recommended to any fan of shoot ‘em ups. Just don't cheat with autofire like many others on the internet seem to love to; it completely breaks the game. Very creative attacks, high replayability due to all the different stage choices you can make in a single game, and a very satisfying game-long power-up system make Darius Gaiden a blast to play over and over again and the crowning achievement among Taito's shooters. 	(not specified in original re/v/iew)
Dark Souls 	Dungeon Crawlan/World exploran.Notorious for its punishments if you die (You lose all exp/"money" you have collected until you revist the exact place you died.Btw all monsters respawn.If you die again these exp are lost forever.) 	The general UI is good but the equipment menus can be Oblivion-like messy if you too much items. 	God-Tier.There are castles,swamps,snowy mountains,sewers,forests etc. Just google "Anor Londo". 	The Soundtrack is also pretty good,especially during boss fights. 	Hard, but fair. You have to learn the patterns of the game in order to survive.It punishes you if you don't pay attention.You can still coop levels if you aren't good enough yourself. 	You won't understand most of it until you research it in the internet.Then you will see that it is actually pretty good.Check more on epicnamebro channel on youtube.Contrary to many casual games you will feel a sense of accomplishment and relief after you defeat a boss/finish a level.The final boss fight is pretty epic too.It is a really cool adventure.
DayZ 1.7.1.5 	Hard to condition to, but effective over timeStill clunky in a lot of areasA lot of bugs associated with this mod are actually bugs that exist within ARMA 2, and they cannot be fixed by the mod developer 	Effective, minimal debug menu with no overpowering aspectsInterface size is customizable in graphics options 	Incredibly impressive for the year of releaseStill perhaps not as optimised as possibleFramerate is heavily dependant on the server you play on and how often that server is restarted 	Great atmospheric noiseVery easy to hear someone before you spot themFantastic gun sounds 	The longer your character is alive, the more attached you become to that character and its gearThe more equipment you have, the more you attempt to sneak in order to avoid combat situations that may result in you losing that gearIncredible demonstration of morality within a post apocalyptic situation (excluding the penalty of permanent death in real life) 	(not specified in original re/v/iew)
Deus Ex: Human Revolution(1) 	The gameplay is pretty tight in this game and the stealth (which is a lot of the game) is done well. The A.I. is programmed where they aren't stupid, but also not super geniuses pointing you out from nowhere. The game is quite a bit more difficult than most modern games at first (which is a good thing), especially on the harder difficulties. 	The interface in this game isn't bad but it isn't really anything to brag about either. It's pretty straightforward, so I guess that is good. 	The in-game visuals are quite beautiful, but the cutscenes were kind of iffy for me. The animation seemed a little off sometimes and almost every scene had either an orange or blue hue to it. It wasn't too much of a problem though. 	I can't really think of any memorable soundtrack pieces to this game, but the guns have a nice sound to them. They feel like they actually have weight to them. 	The progression is what shines in this game in my opinion. You level up for doing assorted things like completing missions or taking down a guard. When you level up you gain access to new abilities and powers. The game did this well because I actually found myself excited to get a new power or ability. Only a selective amount are passive and you choose the order to unlock them. With these powers and abilities you can complete missions in many different ways by being stealthier or through secret passages by hacking or punching a hole in the wall. 	The story was sometimes a little difficult to follow, but once you figured out what's going on it is quite an intriguing story line. I must also mention that the boss fights were mediocre at best and that the ending was quite a letdown in my opinion, but don't let that scare you away from this game.
Deus Ex Human Revolution(2) 	Combat incedibly simplistic and requires no skill at all (on the hardest difficulty) Gameplay is very stealth oriented and you can avoid pretty much any obstacle by lifting up a vending machine and crawling into the air vent behind it. Bosses can be easily killed with a stun gun and exploding barrels. 	The UI isn't bad at all, it doesn't get in the way of gameplay and it's pretty user friendly, for the most part. 	Everything is orange. The shader is kind of pixely and texture quality is bad. Most of the textures were just solid colors with basic details on them. It's not bad... it could have been better. 	Sound quality is great. There is a lot of voice acting in the game which is good. 	Story progression is usually nonlinear, you make decisions. Level design is linear. Objectives are fairly linear. However, gameplay choices are nonlinear; ie: you can crawl in air vents instead of going through the hallway, or you can punch a wall like the kool aid man.) 	The storyline is very interesting. It takes place in the near future where everything is orange and mysterious. It has a lovecraftian feel to it and the story incorporates popular conspiracy theories. You make choices throughout that game which impact the plot and offer a more unique experience, replay value. All in all, the story wasn't half bad, it was pretty good. Not amazing, but pretty good.
Diablo 3 	Top down, felt like a MMO. Which is disappointing because I bought a dungeon crawl RPG.Honestly I found it boring and simply found myself just not returning to play. D3 was not my first dungeon crawler, and I had enjoyed others. Actual combat was kinda fun in the beginning, but quickly became a matter of press a set of buttons in a certain pattern and only think about what to do sometimes, like at a boss battle.Feels too much like a damn mmo, except dumbed down even more. Lag of a overcrowded mmo, bullshit gameplay of an mmo, bullshit auction house of a mmo, controls of an mmo, etc. 	See WoW. Box art was neat but was like all Blizzard box art. Standard box, with little double openy thingy on the front with words and stuff on the inside. Came with a sweet little note pad though. 	Not bad, but I had to keep it on low because of goddamn server lag. 	Forgettable. 	Item Based dungeon crawler, lvling up was somewhat rewarding. Anyone who has played a Dungeon crawler knows what to expect here. 	Meh, it felt like.... forgettable? I'm not sure how to put it but well I did not play the whole game.
Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy 	Its unique in its presentation of battles. Fantastic, over the top action. Larger than life characters fighting wildly is really fun to watch and control. Quite unrealistic as the characters pretty much fly at each other but thats expected and awesome. Controls are pretty tight, and the AI is very challenging later in the game. 	Pretty basic fighter interface: health, strength, other charge bars. Not much is on screen while fighting but the menu for the character is extensive, weapons, summons, assists. Its complex and takes time to learn but its fun once you do. The camera during fights is awful, not all the time, but in tight corners you lose sight of whats going on. 	Great. The models look smooth and detailed and are execellently animated. The stages are somewhat bland but their not what you paying attention to. The multiple cutscenes look great while sometime nothing happens. 	Each of the 20+ characters has a unique professional VA some sound better than others and it works well. The music is usually remixed old FF tunes so it creates some nostalgia and feels like fighting music 	100 lvls for each character, loads of armor, weapons, and accessories to earn/buy. Lots of unlockables in the points store. Varied difficulties and lots of modes of fighting modes. 	The story is a mess, lets take all the FF heros/villians and put in a situation that causes them all to fight. Its pretty much pulled out of thin air, but some of the cutscenes are interesting to watch. All in all it gives the player some incentive to move from point to point. The world map in this game is only in story and is impressive to explore but its basically just eye candy
Devil May Cry 4(1) 	 	 	 	 	 	
Devil May Cry 4(2) 	Nero is pretty fun to play as, especially when you get stronger with the Devil Bringer, but his gameplay is a little slower than Dantes. Dantes is obviously still fantastic. I played it with a PS3 controller on my PC.The exploration and puzzling elements lack the depth of DMC3s and the the levels sometimes just feel like room after room of fights as a result.The bosses are quite interesting however. They're quite entertaining to fight as Nero and Dante. 	Not really applicable. Simple menus. Simple HUDs. whatever. 	The game looks fantastic and runs at 70 fps on my crappy laptop, however some visual effects are kinda disappointing, including the shadows. Not really that big of a deal however. 	Awesome music, awesome SFX, excellent Voice Acting and writing. Perfect in this aspect. 	(not specified in original re/v/iew) 	Short and bland. Quite predictable but still occasionally interesting. I just didn't care about Nero.
Dragon's Dogma(1) 	Dragon's Dogma is a RPG. The gameplay is solid - shooting arrows is fun, andclimbing big enemies is an interesting proposition (If a bit glitchy at times). It's nice that you can go through the game using all classes if you really want to, so - yet again, this game allows for variety. The pawn systems is also -very- interesting. Travelling, however, takes too long. 	What you expect from RPGs. Your screen doesn't get cluttered up while playing. You have a health bar, a stamina gauge, some buttons on the lower right corner, maybe a crosshair if you're using a bow or something, but that's it. It's simple, and doesn't really try anything new with the interface. 	The graphics are "Ok.". Sure - you can get some pretty nice scenarios sometimes, like the fight with the dragon, but that's pretty much it. Art style is nothing special. 	Sound effects are pretty great in general. The OST is "Okay" for the most part, and you won't notice it on most occasions. The music for the Dragon battle in general and the however, is downright amazing. The lowest point of the soundtrack, however - is the main menu song. It's an out of place J-Rock song that starts very nicely, but degrades into shit. Pawns may also annoy you with repeated lines, so that's a minus aswell. 	The game starts off downright -boring-. Some battles just take too long. However, the game picks up after Gran Soren. It's just standard. 	The story is very bland. You're a chosen one selected to fight an ancient evil. For the most part, you won't care for the story. At least The ending is specially well-done and emotional. The story honestly gains extra points JUST for the last fifth of the game.
Dragon's Dogma(2) 	For what it is, it's fairly solid. I like to think of it as an adventure RPG that doesn't take itself too seriously. The gameplay is common action-rpg fare, you assign skills to buttons or just mash in combat, whilst including 9 different class choices to level throughout your adventure. They are the standard Melee/ranged/magic trees.
It feels like sort of like Shadow of the Colossus, especially when fighting large enemies. Some kind of horse would have been nice. 	Meh, could have used work to streamline the menus. I dislike having to push in R3 to run, and really wish they would have assigned a map button to L3 or something. The inability to just access the normal inventory and equip items is a bitch too. 	I think they are nice. Standard PS3 fair, nothing too exciting in game. Excellent cutscene and cgi's though, very impressed. 	Needed a lot of work. Redundant from area to area, maybe a few more combat tunes would have helped. 	Very choose your own pace. The first time through will likely take a long time, as travel is slow before you can really port yourself around, but once you get some money and port crystals, you could probably blow through the game in maybe 4-5 hours. 	I enjoy the simplicity in the beginning. It starts with an awesome classical concept, kill the fucking dragon. Then more gets introduce, like save the damsel, destroy the evil cult. And in the end you become God...fun times.
Dungeon Siege III 	You get to choose between 4 characters, absolutely no customisation for your character.The combat actually felt good, every character had it's own perks going and played differently with skills. Thing is, it's not balanced very well, some skills just deal ridiculous damage very fast while others sound great on paper but suck a thousand dicks.Major fucking problem is the camera and overall design choices, it promotes 4-player Co-op (even 2 local + 2 internet co-op) but playing with anyone else is a fucking bad idea, the camera is terrible at tracking all the players. They could of made it so much better, instead it tries to keep everyone in a tiny screen and PUSHES or TELEPORTS your character to the host if you get too far. Also the fact that nothing stays with you when you co-op; no items, quests, skills, nothing. Co-op is discouraged 	Worked okay, the menu overlooked some simple design laws ie you put a point in a skill by pressing X to select, then X to allocate your point then Square to confirm, if you press Circle it cancels and doesn't go back to the skill list. To go back to the list you must press Square with no point allocated, it's a mess and really isn't intuitive. 	Looked pretty good overall, nice visual effects. With 4 players you easily lose track of your character with all the glowing things everywhere. Had no FPS drops that I remember. Facial animations can be pretty funny 	othing extraordinary about the soundtrack, pretty standard. BGM is so quiet sometimes I had to listen carefully to even distinguish it, there are a few good moments. 	It's an RPG so you get loot fucking everywhere, unfortunately it seemed like uniques were static drops, like hidden in a destructible wall, you'd always get the shitty prefix+equipment of+suffix and very often were lowest quality.I felt like skill progression wasn't very impressive, you only get 3 skills per weapon set and most of the best skills are unlocked early anyway.Gear was also pretty standard, wish I would of seen special attributes on uniques or something else than just comparing hard numbers every time. 	It was alright,it deals 30 years after the events of the earlier games. Fucking everyone is a children of the same King or Legion Master it seems, it got ridiculous. There are also really obvious contradictions between character storylines, like events that aren't even mentioned or people that your character should know about. Most of the game you chase one woman and in the end you fight her, with a few prophecies and myths added in, nothing exciting.Overall it's a pretty short game,around 15 hours/playthrough 5/10 worth used
Dwarf Fortress 	The biggest selling point of the game. You have the ability to control nearly every aspect of a dwarf's life as you carve away a fortress and build industry. It's often said to be difficult because of the steep learning curve associated with learning what workshops/professions/designations do what, but after you get past that curve the game is really quite easy. It lacks a solid "endgame" goal, so you end up with a sandbox to play around in, which is only fun for so long. 	The UI is as basic as possible while still being able to be called a game. What else do you expect from a rogue-like? 	ASCII symbols represent the world around you, so getting used to that can initially be challenging. Users have released graphic packs that improve upon this aspect, but don't quite fix it. If you are new to rogue-likes, prepare to have no idea what's going on. 	Only audio in the game is a folk guitar lick that plays on repeat. It's nice and fits the mood for the first ten minutes or so, but after listening to it for a wihle you just have to turn it off. 	Progression is handled excellently. You start off as a small band of vagrant dwarves, but have the possibilty to create a thriving fortress as you learn to use the resources around you (wood, stone, better stone, metal, better metal, etc). The downside is that the maps are randomly generated, so it's quite possible to end up on a map that is missing an essential mineral. 	Most indepth story of any game ever, yet the most boring. Since the world is created, every historical event is logged and can be read through, which produces hundreds of pages worth of history. Most of the entries consist of "X dwarf was born on Y date", or equally bland topics.
Dynasty Warriors Next 	The combat is as fluid and as fun as DW7 only without the nonsense of sharing weapons. The main negative is all the touch screen controls. They are nice for activating musou modes and controlling certain musous, but the fucking duels are tedious and they always pop up right in the middle of just cutting through a crowd of officers. It messes up the flow of the game. 	The lack of a health bar takes a bit of getting used to. When the screen goes red, you have to run away so your health regenerates, FPS style. Personally, I like a health bar better. You can resize the map with a touch of a finger, which is helpful. 	Surprisingly similar to DW7 on PS3. Of course, you can tell some of the textures are less detailed, but it feels and looks like DW7 on a handheld, which is glorious. There is some lag when a shit load of officers crowd the screen, but that's to be expected. 	Aside from DW's repetitive grunts, the music is great. While some people do get down on the english voice acting, I believe it has gotten better since DW6. 	This game is pretty much a DW Empires game in handheld form. Yes, it's repetitive. Yes, it's monotonous. But it's relaxing in a way that only DW is for me. 	The game should be called "How Sima Yi trolled everyone." If you've played one DW game, you know the story by now. Wei are ambitious, Shu are benevolent, Wu just burns everything to the ground and Sima Yi stole Wei from the Cao family and his goofy son manages not to fuck everything up.In closing, if you have a Vita and love DW, this game is a no brainer. And it's satisfying as hell to run into a group of dudes and mow them all down. Probably one of the best DW games to date, handheld or not. The lack of a true online multiplayer is a negative, but it's easily overlooked.
Etrian Odyssey 	Your standard turn-based JRPG fare. You select your moves, end your turn, and watch your choices playout on screen. Traversing the labyrinth is easy to understand and you learn stuff pretty easily as they come along. The difficulty of the game may be off putting to some, as most battles give you little room for error and the game punishes you harshly for screw-ups. You should have no serious problems as long as you prepare yourself and, as the game itself reminds you often, do not underestimate the labyrinth. The RNG can make or break a battle on rare occasions. Classes are easy to understand and develop, with much deeper tactics lying within the mostly simplistic stat and skill setups. Money is a valuable and easily lost asset. Healing and reviving cost money, and items are NOT cheap. Penny-pinching is a must. A type of enemy, the FOE, wanders visibly around the map, often in patterns, and if you fight a new one when you first see it, you're pretty much guaranteed to get your shit slapped. HARD. It's best to avoid them until you're roughly 5 levels higher, and then try taking them on. 	Extremely simple and easy to understand. The menus are simple and map-making is easy, well-explained, and sometimes even fun. Battles are fast-paced and usually never break flow. The first game is a bit clunky, but it's nothing too bad. 	Very good, but not awe-inspiring. The labyrinth designs are a nice sight and the character art, whether or not you like the admittedly cutesy style, is well-drawn and unique. Monster sprites are well-done, although most aren't too imaginative, and you will see a palette swap here and there. 	One of the high points of the series if you ask me. Yuzo Koshiro, a composer very highly regarded in the industry for his music during the 16-bit days, creates a simple, catchy, and somewhat nostalgic chiptune soundtrack that fits the game's style perfectly. 	You reach a new floor, get raped by whatever new monster or puzzle is there, figure a way around it, and move on to repeat the cycle. Cutscenes are few and far between, and do not take much time. Leveling is just about the same speed across the game, and there are no major difficulty curves to speak of. However, many bosses or weapons will require grinding. And lots of it. Do not bother with this game if you aren't ready to grind some levels or materials here and there. The rewards for grinding are often much worth it, however. Call me casual, but I honestly recommend an experience boosting cheat to remove some of the grind. 	The only story here is that you're a bunch of explorers traversing a dangerous labyrinth. There's a very minor story overlying your exploration, such as the suspicious king of Etria and his motives, or the Forest Folk, in the first game, but it's pretty predictable and nothing really happens until the last two or three stratums. The third game has a slightly more prominent story, but it does little more than set up alternate endings. A few side characters will show up in each game and are little more than tools to move the story forward.Overall, it's a very fun series that's centered around gameplay and it's famous for it's relentless difficulty.
ExciteBots 	Racing game where the goal is to collect the most stars possible. You do this through a variety of wacky actions. This includes doing huge jumps and smashing enemy racers, but also by winning home-run contests and sandwich-making.Controls are very smooth, wiimote only. Tilt to turn, d-pad up/down to boost, 1 to brake, and 2 to accelerate (You will never hit 1). Motion control works better than you'd expect, sometimes iffy but you rarely fail with enough skill. Red bars may give you trouble though, I found them obnoxious. 	Simple and effective. Pumpin' menu music. 	Looks pretty good today, especially for 2009 Wii. Don't play it on a big TV though. 	Weird but cool music. Results screen is sex. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3kShK-16hk 	Game stays largely the same throughout. May bore some after a while. If you love completion, this game will keep you busy esp. on Super Excite. 	?
Fable 2 	Tight Controls and basically alot of button smashing. 	Everything was good... EXCEPT THAT FUCKING MENU! Jesus Christ it is a pain to navigate... 	Pretty good for a 2007 Game. Nice environment and character design. 	Voice Acting was alright (But the Comedy was fucking Ace!) Combat sounds we're a bit bland, but I did like the music. 	Weird XP thing with orbs, to unlock new moves and powers. Learning curve is non-existant except for the few moves you have to learn 	To me, It was pretty solid I liked the character variatons and locations, but that ending was very anti-climatic.
Face of Mankind 	I love it. There are some problems, but all in all works pretty well and I couldn't really think of a much better way to do things. They could mix up a few things to see if it works better, but until they do, its pretty good. 	Could be a lot better. It works, but there is so much room for improvement. 	pretty well. They game is aging, but the visuals still have a bit of style that is rather fitting. 	Could and should be better. But I understand that audio is a reasonably hard thing to do. 	um, FoM is not your standard game, so there is no real way to measure progression. It all matters what you want to do. 	No definite story either, its an MMO where players have quite a bit of freedom to make up their own story, I can't say its perfect, but on the other hand, its one of those games where if you hate somebody, you can really hate somebody and not just forget about it in a minute. The players don't make the best story, but they do make for emotions, and I like that.Apart from that, its a really different game from most, so it takes some getting used to. It certainly will not be for everybody, but if you ever wanted a game that is very much player controlled and open pvp, this game will be the closest you get. Also, its all very social as well, if you go in to play alone, you will not enjoy this game at all.Oh, and maybe best of all, seems some people on 4chan tried to grief raid it, not taking into account that while there are no levels and it is an FPS, the combat still is slightly different from most FPS games and the people in there are both way more skilled and bigger trolls.
Fallout New Vegas 	FPS(or TPS) shooter, honestly, not the best shooting physics, feels slightly clunky and floaty, but the ironsights make up for it. but then again, it IS an RPG game, but i suppose that's not a good enough excuse. game holds your hand waaaay too much though. where you need to go is clearly marked on your compass, making any and every mission a no brainer, really. takes the fun and feeling of success from finding the solutions to missions. really high replay value because of the story, though. 	easy to use, extremely straightforward, does the job. what more do you want? HUD is bare minimum, displaying really only what you need/is important. could show percents or hunger and etc in hardcore mode though, but that is possible with mods. 	to be very honest, the visuals arent really the greatest, lighting looks silly, textures dont really match too, and all people look the same. everything is pretty damn dusty and brown too. 	AMAZING soundtrack. made some people fall in love with the oldschool 50's music, truly one of the best soundtracks out of many games. some OSTs, too. everything sounds like it should, voice acting is decent, guns sound very very nice. laser weapons sound like laser weapons. atmospheric OST, really puts you into the game when you arent jammin to some frank sinatra. 	a perk after every two levels, so you really have to think hard for what you want. you really do feel more powerful after every perk, and there are many, many perks to choose from. 	like any obsidian game, the story in this one really ceases to amaze me. or anyone in that fact. with MANY choices to choose from, and many many different types of endings, this game is truly non linear. since this game was basically made by the same people who were in charge of fallout 1/2 and van buren, this game really puts the story and lore of the fallout series back on track. your decisions really do matter. if you fucking hate a faction, get ready, because they'll hate you back. wanna be lazy and half-ass the job that your boss gave you? get ready to pay up.Things to note: world of a difference on the PC. just get it on the PC. mods make it less buggy, add new things, and raise the replayability even higher. if you find in depth stories boring, then this isnt really the game for you.
FEAR 	One of the best examples of pre-CoDified FPS. Excellent gunplay, character controls and enemy AI. Slo-mo feature is an interesting gimmick, not always necessary and feels slightly overpowered. 	completely unremarkable and not intrusive at all. 	Pre-crysis benchmarking tool. Still looks good, animations are excellent, ragdoll eveywhere. 	Pretty good, music is excellent and fits the game perfectly. 	Feels quite slow due to similarity of level appearance. enemy groupings are balanced quite well, getting better equipped and armed in advantageous positions as you progress. 	Pants-on-head retarded, A battalion of memetically trained genetically engineered clone supersoldiers commanded by a psychic cannibal begins an armed assault on a big bad corporation while unexplained events surrounding a little girl in a red dress that can completely dissolve a human telepathically occur. Your character also has superhuman reaction time so heads up a government organisation specially created for such events.First Encounter Assault Recon, aka Fuck Everything And Run, F.E.A.R.
Fighting Force. 	A 3D beat-em-up for PS1. Both one and two player. Overall it's pretty simple, there are four different characters to chose from; each with unique movesets. You can affect and use the environment to your advantage. For instance, picking up and chuck a box is good; but breaking open the truck of a car for the pistol inside is even better. 	About as simple as it gets. Health and score. 	Haven't aged well and I don't they were ever "good." Fairly standard for PS1 in terms of models. The design itself is done well and the game has a good atmosphere. 	Grunts, thuds, crunches, and smashes. Nothing special. 	There's a good variety of environments and new enemy types are introduced occasionally. Unique bosses break up the standard thug-sluggin' gameplay. There are a number of alternate routes to take through the game, these are great for multiple playthroughs if you so choose. 	HA! There really isn't one. The game only takes maybe 2 or 3 hours to play all the way through. The story isn't anything more than a reason to punch a lot of people. And I mean that as directly as possible.
Final Fantasy 6 	Standard Turn Based RPG. It doesn't come up with anything new or exciting, but it is very familiar and easy to get into. Magic is very nice and pretty, Esper attacks are beautiful. Hidden attacks activate randomly when a character is in trouble, they are super powerful and really cool looking. 	The Gold standard in RPGs. Easy to use, pleasant to look at, The first console game to customize its interface. 	What was once state-of-the-art graphics wouldn't even pass for "retro" these days. During its release, it was the most beautiful looking game, bar Seiken Denestu 3 and Chrono Trigger 	The Soundtrack is a worthy standalone purchase. A personal favorite. 	It starts with A to B, B to C,D, or E. Then it starts spiraling to a plethora of different options. 	A young woman has recently been freed from slavery and learns of her magical powers and decides to challenge the Empire. It has a wide range of varied characters. Kings, brawlers, "adventurers," and Artists fight against a tyrannical dictator and his lust for power.
Final Fantasy VIII 	In this game, the battle system is typical Final Fantasy ATB, but with a twist. First of all, you now have to "Junction" Summons and Magic to your characters. Let me explain: First off, Junctioning a Summon, or GF (Guardian Force), as they call them in this game, allows you to attach magic spells to individual stats, giving you boosts depending on what spells you attach. Unlike the Materia system of VII, and the Espers of VI, however, this system is NOT optional, and if you do not keep up with your Junctions, your character is essentially useless dog turd. This is because this system has completely replaced the attainable stat-altering armors and weapons of old, although you can upgrade your starting weapons. Honestly, this system is quite bloated and overcomplicated, and is especially annoying when you have to change characters in your party, because you have to go through the painstaking process of re-doing your junctions. There is a nice "Junction Exchange" function they put in to make things easier, but it doesn't always work. The second radical change they made to the game is that Magic now exists as an item in your inventory that you can hold only in finite numbers, replacing the old MP system. Magic can only be attained by "Drawing" it from your enemies or from specific spots in the world, although later on you can also convert certain items into spells as well. Finally, the last large change is enemy scaling. Enemies will level up with you, possibly in an attempt to curb grinding. However, in this game, grinding is still a very huge problem because of the way magic works. Since the easiest way to get magic is from enemies, you will spend untold amounts of time simply drawing magic from enemies to stock up. This is a pretty boring system, and although it's nice to see Square experiment, this was not a wise gameplay choice and it makes battles extremely tedious. Otherwise, this game plays pretty much like a Final Fantasy game. 	Typical for the series, which is perfect. There is not much to complain about in this department. Thankfully, you can change all of the controls, which is useful because for some odd reason they decided to change around the control scheme they had used for VI and VII. 	The crowning jewel of this game. These graphics not only put its predecessor to shame, but also many contemporary PSX titles. The seamless FMVs of VII are back, and flashier and prettier than ever. Overall, it's a very pretty game. 	Gorgeous, as is standard for the series. It is not as good as VI or VII, but it it's pretty good, and some themes certainly stand out as fantastic. 	As I said before, enemies scale with you, which really removes any feel of "progression" in the game. In fact, some enemies are much HARDER if your level is too high. This is a bit of an annoyance, but I can't say it completely breaks the game. It plays fine, even though it sort of takes away the character building feeling of past games. You can still sort of get this through the Junctioning system, but it's certainly not the same or as good. The difficulty can be rather sporadic early on, before getting rather easy, and then hard near the end. Overall, it's rather strange, but it works. 	Infamously bad, but it starts off good, actually. You play as Squall, a teenage student at a military institution. Early on, you are promoted to "SeeD," the elite mercenary force of your institution. Your first mission is to aid a group of revolutionaries in the town of Timber, who wish to gain their independence from the powerful Galbadian Empire. Your mission, of course, goes haywire, and eventually you witness as an evil Sorceress named Edea takes over the Empire. After this, the story starts to go a little haywire, as your failed attempt to assassinate the Sorceress lands you in jail, and your breakout lead to the revelation that your ragtag group of strangers actually... Grew up in the same orphanage and... Sorceress Edea was your... Matron? Huh? Well, after a large battle with the Galbadians, you manage to defeat Edea, who comes to her senses and reveals she was being possessed by ANOTHER evil Sorceress (From the future!) who is named Ultimecia. After a ridiculous trek to the... Moon? You accidentally awaken ANOTHER evil Sorceress named Adel, and... Well it loses all semblance of sense by the point I am in. It is not helped by the ridiculously idiotic cast of characters... Squall is your typical angst-ridden teenager, although he is also painfully awkward and stupid to the point where it's almost insulting to be playing in his shoes. Your rag-tag group of heroes includes the equally as dumb love interest, Rinoa, the airheaded manifestation of ADD, Selphie, the generic womanizer of the group, Irvine, the generic sexual object of the group, Quistis, and perhaps the dumbest of them all, the spunky Zell. Finally, the story loses any value it might have had thanks to its shoehorned romance between Squall and Rinoa, which often becomes the center of attention. Are there any hidden underlying meanings of corporate control, environmentalism, income inequality or suicide like there were in VII? Nope, just high school romance, magical girls and space travel.
Final Fantasy 13 	I dont know how to describe the fights, some people say all you have to do is click x to win, on the other side you have to change paradigms to build up your "schock meter" in german and then change again to do massige damage, also you have to change to heal paradigms when needed or to buff paradigms at the start of the (boss)fights. i dont think the fights are as simple as the people describe it, i really had fun fighting in ff13, the boss battles were challenging, too(i remember gettin assraped by bahamut and the first bathandaleus for many times). i liked the sphere grid on ffx more. hell i liked the license grid on ff2 too, but i dont know what to say about 13(the paradigm system feels like sphere system on x) 	nothing too bad, i got used to it very quickly. 	as to be expected the visuals were really good, i loved the cgi cutscenes 	sabers theme still blows me away, but i didnt like the vocals in the other tracks 	too linear for me, but there were thinks to do later,(like monster hunt or whatever it was named) 	not as good as i am used to while playin ff, but the ending makes up for it(at least there were no pointless characters like in 12 YES I AM LOOKING AT YOU VAAN, PENELO)
Ghost Trick : Phantom Detective 	Pretty good. The puzzles are creative, and gives you a nice sense of accomplishment upon completing each one. However, besides that, most of the game is just talking and investigating. 	The usual; Information on the top screen, interaction on the bottom screen. Not much too look at. 	Incredibly unique and charming. Cel-shaded, smooth animation, and will look like it can stand the test of time with its stylized graphics. 	The quality isn't too great. It delivers a great atmosphere though. 	Once you get introduced with the basic controls, it pretty much stays the same except for the manipulation of different objects and its functions. 	Every chapter brings a plot twist. You'll be starving to play the next chapter after each one.
God Hand 	3D Beat-em-up. Gameplay is purely skill and reflex based. The better you play, the higher level you get and enemies get harder, in other words this game has dynamic difficulty, making it available for the hardcore and casual gamers. The fighting moves look good and smooth. The camera can be a total bitch when enemies surround you 	Pretty basic, Health, God Hand power, orbs for special moves, a radar, ...It's good, it does the job 	A bit lacking in the visual department, looks pretty good with upscaling on pcsx2. 	Has some good catchy tunes, enemies like to taunt you after landing a big hit making the game feel really dynamic. Voice acting is extremely cheesy, but if you like CRAZY GAMES, you won't mind the voice acting at all. 	the game has a good difficulty curve, bossfights are just like in "the old days", learning patterns and dodging them. The first playthrough of this game can be a bit hard, expect a bunch of game overs. 	The story is a bit of a mess, the story isn't told chronologically, first time players can be a bit confused at the start of the game. Also note that the storyline is really basic and the voice-acting is cheesy. Then again, do you really play beat-em-ups for the story?
Gran Turismo 5 	The gameplay is great and it can appeal to anyone because the game helps you through the learning curve (almost literally) while still allowing fans of the series to not get dragged down, but gets a bit repetitive over time. Although it never gets bland or boring because there is always something to do. 	Simple and easy to navigate, that's the simplest way to put it. 	Stunning, absolutely stunning. Looks as if it's almost real. 	Pretty good soundtrack and great audio design. Each car sounds great. 	Win races to earn cash and level up. Simple. 	Technically it has no story. Unless you consider the B-Spec events a story.
Grand Theft Auto IV(1) 	open world with plenty of rockstar satire, but not actually much to do in terms of world interaction(buy food/buy guns/steal cars/do story missions/races) 	controls were easy to follow, simple hud was nice 	the city itself was rather brown and bloom, only a few places(the triangle) had lots of pretty lights and colors could have been better 	rockstar delivered with radio, voice acting was decent. meh tier gun sounds 	gameplay was typical rockstar, with locked islands. story missions were the only way to progress into the world. bummer 	Story was alright, It's got some twists but overall felt pretty boxed in. everybody knew everybodythe only thing making this game worth playing still is mods, can't wait for the next release of LCPDFR
Grand Theft Auto IV(2) (PS3 ver.) 	to be honest, not the greatest controls IMO. It took me a long time to get used to driving without swerving all over the place, and I still crash constantly [I find it MUCH easier to drive in real life haha]. Walking/running/shooting was all fine, but the cover system wasn't the greatest. Also, when using auto aim, the cursor would lock on to the most inconvenient enemy (like you would have an enemy right in front of you, and one really far away, and the cursor would lock on the far away one) 	Pretty simple. Health is around the minimap, and that's about all on the screen. Menus were great, I especially loved the in depth statistics of your gameplay. 	I think this is one of the areas this game really shines. Liberty City is HUGE, yet there are very little pop-in problems. The city is amazing, and you feel as if you were really in New York City exploring the streets. Sometimes you just feel like leaving a song on the radio and driving around the town. 	The game doesn't have any music during the cut scenes, and although I usually don't like that, I thought it worked perfectly with this game. In terms of what's on the radio when you drive, there is a really good variety of music for people with a lot of different tastes. The sound effects in this game were also great, with the explosions and car sounds. my only complain is that the bullet sounds were kind of meh. 	This is a long game, so be prepared to put a lot of time into it. Especially if you want to do all of the side quests (which there are plenty of). 	It was a pretty good story. At first you are just doing a bunch of random missions, but it's fun to see how they come together. There are also many plot twists and even some hard decisions you have to make involving choosing who to kill/what to do etc.Besides the controls, this game was REALLY fun. The control problem may sound like a big deal, but the overall game is so good that you will forget that the problems even exist.
Guild Wars 	Game play is Solid and fluid. Dodge mechanic adds to the game and makes you feel like you have more control on the outcome of a fight its a step up from WoW but not as much as some fans will claim. combat can be less forgiving than other MMOs which is a good thing most of the time 	User Interface: Sleek and simple. it doesn't take up much of the screen and most things are adjustable. interface doesnt feel out of place or intrusive and is easy to read. the chat bubbles seem a little out of place but can be easily over looked. 	Looks great. some of the textures on low are not amazing or ground breaking but runs quite well on not great machine and still looks good. on high the game still looks good and isnt an eyesore 	Music is forgettable and ambient. it can help with immersion. game allows for custom sound tracks. voice acting isnt bad but isnt amazing but quite good for an MMO 	Game stays difficult as game goes on. Downscalling can sometimes make you feel like you dont become more powerful but keeps content fresh. gear and skills dont scale so you still feel powerful at higher levels when downscaling but not as much as other MMOs. auto max in spvp kills a sense of needing to level up or building your character. WvW feels nice and still gives benefits to those who level up with it. 	decent story that works with your choices. nice to have with an MMO. Lore is well established and events change around you making the world feel more alive. most of the Story quests are linear and huge differences in what you chose has yet to be seen.
Hotel Dusk Room 215 	Pretty bad. Kind of annoying to touch things and navigate the hotel. For example, almost every door brings you to a window where you either knock on the door or try to open it. This is done even when you would never need to knock on the door in the entire game. It gets annoying. The puzzles themselves range from standard fare to nonsensical, and the game often prevents you from picking up items until you're solving the puzzle its needed for. A lot of the touchscreen minigames are clunky. 	I liked the little memo pad, as it was in fact handy for taking down notes and stuff. Plus it gets some interesting uses with the NPCs. Actually interacting with objects can be a pain, though, and often you'll find yourself interacting with 20 useless objects just because you hope it does something/hope Hyde says something funny. 	The graphical style is pretty interesting. All the characters look like they're drawn in pencil and their animations look hand drawn. 	Decent soundtrack, but nothing amazing. 	The story is actually pretty interesting, and uncovering the mysteries of the people staying there and the hotel itself is pretty much going to be what pulls you along. 	Pretty interesting story, with lots of well-written and believable characters. It kept me pretty entertained, and is really the main reason to play this game; its a crime plot wrapped in some puzzles and navigation. However, considering how long it takes to finally get to the end, there's a good chance you might solve the mystery before its revealed.Advice to anyone who buys the game. These aren't spoilers: Use the fountain pen with the chalk in front of the restaurant, and use your cash with Dunning to get quarters when Angel is complaining to him at the front desk. REMEMBER.
Ico 	Very simplistic. The idea is to simply navigate a castle, solving environmental puzzles to move forward. As well as occasionally fighting a groups of enemies. You must bring an A.I companion with you the whole game. It integrates with puzzles, such as moving blocks and what not so the A.I can advance. Early on, the combat is tedious, because you have to protect the girl (A.I) from being dragged down a hole. The enemies go down easily, but if they hit you, you sit lay there, motionless for around 7 seconds, while they drag her away. Can be annoying. 	Virtually isn't one 	Early PS2 game, so a mediocre polly count. Some textures are reasonable, most are trash. The style is wonderful, very unique, outlandish, lonely feeling. Definitely a plus 	Very bare bones. The characters only mutter during gameplay (when you call for the A.I) cut scenes all in Japanese (not a problem) Great atmospheric sounds, wilderness feels active. birds chirping, leaves brushing, wind wisping, its some peaceful stuff. 	No map. Just move room to room through the castle. Feels very natural, rarely ever gets confusing (when you see the same place for a 4th time, you will have a hard time remembering what to do next). No skills or anything. Only weapon is a stick, eventually get a sword (feels good man, the baddies go down easy) 	Minimal, but intriguing. Starts out a complete mystery, stays that way until last 30 min. Overall, satisfying themes and character dynamics
Journey 	Extremely simple. A moron could play this game. 	There isn't one. 	Stunning and captivating. The submersion/FLOW level is especially memorable. 	Very good. Meshes well with the visuals and the ending track when you die and get reincarnated is excellent. 	With an anon friend it's very satisfying. Short, but satisfying. 	I'm still thinking on that. I'm not sure if you're meant to give it much thought. The experience and feels of playing the game I think is what matters - not the underlying plot.
Just Cause 2(1) 	Magnificent. Completely open world where you can do everything there is to do in the game without needing to unlock anything. There's not a whole lot you CAN do, but just roaming around blowing things up and hijacking aircraft provides endless hours of fun. 	Could be better. Button mapping can be a pain, since setting keys for one mode (i.e. vehicle) can change key mappings for other modes (i.e. weapons). The map and navigation is great. 	Excellent, with the exception of the trees which are made up of 2d objects that don't rotate well when you move around them. All water in the game looks stunning. There isn't a lot of variation between cities, but the tropical surroundings are pretty. 	Dialogue of NPCs can get repetitive. Explosion sounds are nice. There isn't much music in the game, but that doesn't take anything away from the experience. 	You literally unlock story missions by going around blowing stuff up. Thus, most of the game is just exploring and doing non-story missions, which is great. 	Story, what story? Some cutscenes are hilariously over-the-top (good thing), overall plot is rather uninteresting. Game is not story-driven at all.
Just Cause 2(2) 	Well built and heavily laden with fun. Gives the player a strong sense that they are experiencing a classic, cheesy, Arnold-esque action movie. 	Well designed, simple and easy to use. However, the use of a 360 controller is almost absolutely necessary. This fact alone would be only a minor inconvenience, except for the fact that the 360 peripheral option feels last minute, thrown in, and slightly unresponsivce at times. 	Well built, beautiful, and beautiful. Did I already say that? No? Well it's beautiful. And the environments are absolutely MASSIVE, the size of a certain Hawaiian island. 	"Okay" is the only word to describe it. Whilst the music is well designed, the gun foley (?) is uninspired. 	Almost non-existent, which is okay in a game like JC2, where the weapons and vehicles make the character feel strong. (On a side note, the progression of the wanted levels is quite nice, and feels urgent.) 	Crappy, but it works for what it is. The story is just a frame for some great action gameplay, and in that respect, it does a wonderful job.Overall, I highly recommend Just Cause 2 for it's incredible gameplay, stressful action, and overall zany attitude.
King Of Dragon Pass 	It's a choose your own adventure game mixed with strategy and RPG elements. You command a village, you can put 7 members of your village on your clan ring (each of whom can have different skill sets, one person can have very good combat and heroic planting, while another can have heroic combat and very good bargaining), and you are allowed to do things during the seasons.Events come up randomly that can be anything from a group of outlaws requesting money, to a ghost has possessed a townsfolks horse. All choices have unique consequences, and there are certain choices that will chain together for years to come. You can even do quests for the gods. The major flaw of this game is that half the choices are fucking dicerolls that determine what happens, and they usually shit on you pretty hard. 	Easy to understand during events, you pick one of the choices presented and you can even click on your clan ring to get their input on what you should do. The village operating element is a little harder for new people to handle as you assign farmers and herders land, put prayer bonuses on and more. It specifically is awful when you forget about the planting season and attempt to raid someone, you'll starve for the year. 	It's still paintings that look pretty good. However, during some chain events (specifically one Hero Quest called Orlanth and Auroka where the hero in the picture has his weapon and hair change multiple times) 	Good 	Random Events move the game along, you can win by becoming king of a tribe for 10 years in short game, or marrying a certain someone for the hard game 	You create your own story, the lore is fucking hilarious though such as you having the ability to conduct a lawsuit against a ghost and then drive him off if you win the lawsuit.
Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning 	Dodgefest, all weapons end up being the same with different animations. You can make yourself a warhammer mage but the game basically makes you a skill spammer no matter what you do and you'll always be combo'ing the small guys. Fate System clearly was meant to break up the tedium of button mashing but it doesn't work too well. Unless you like fancy slow mo killing. Crafting etc is grindy wowish copypasta of skyrim. 	godawful on PC in every way. I don't even know how they managed to make a bad health bar that manages to be ugly, hard to read, and nigh useless all at the same time. They did a good job with the 'junk' classification but honestly the game doesn't seem to want you to do anything but nitpick your inventory when it comes to that. 	Fantastic, animations are well done and the sheer work put into most of the design is staggering. Big sword syndrome is in full effect though. 	Nothing special really, but not bad either. I think the best way to classify it is background music. 	Reminds me of a WoW zone. You're bombarded by quests that barely link to one another and have you shooting off every which way. God forbid the quest adds anything to the world, and then theres the kill five boars tacked onto that. 	(not specified in original re/v/iew)
Loco Roco 	Playing as the planet you guide Locoroco through your lands to collect fruit and grow while avoiding hazards such as Moyjas. Navigating the levels are a breeze but finding all the fruit may prove to be a challenge. 	Refreshingly and charmingly simplistic. L Bumper tilts the planet left, R bumper to the right holding them down at the same time leaads to a quick bump that launches the creature into the air. Circle is tapped to split Locoroco up while holding it brings them back together. The other buttons are almost entirely unused. 	While by no means on the cutting edge of what technology will allow the bright and vibramt colors are a pleasure to the eye. 	The cornerstone of the game, the Locoroco sing in a werd inhuman language that is unbelievably catchy and mesmerizing. You will be hard pressed to not smile and hum along to the hypnotising tunes. 	To advance in the game one must move ones Locoroco to the goal while trying to grow in size and avoiding Moyja... That's it. The story really doesn't go anywhere nor does the gameplay change. 	When aliens or "Moyjas" invade a peaceful carefree planet where the inhabitants are defenseless the planet takes matters into it's own hands by guiding the creatures through its lands. Very simple yet origial in how it's executed.
League of Legends 	It's pretty good, nothing too special being a moba, but a lot more friendly than DotA2 or HoN.UNFORTUNATELY, there are a lot of balance issues like any other Moba game. Riot needs to work on their servers and bugs and generally needs to make some champions less powerful and others much more.All in all some people love it, some hate it. There are too many god damn BRAZILLIANS in the games so I suggest playing with friends. It's one of those games. 	Once you take away the middle walls it's pretty clean looking, allows various scale adjustments and if you're really autistic you can use custom files. 	Since the Darius Era update, it looks pretty decent and can run a pretty high framerate on even lower end computers like mine if you have shadows off. 	Turn off music, play your own music. 	The leveling system needs work, it puts new players at a pretty big disadvantage compared to vets in regard to the rune and mastery systems. 	Lol no. The league of legends story is an un-needed accessory and Riot should focus more on balancing their champions.
LOTR The Return of the King 	Hack and Slash multiplayer at it's finest. Tons of characters to choose from and varying gameplay styles. 	Completely good. Unneccesary during gameplay for the most part. 	Looks pretty damn nice. Uses scenes from the movie very well. 	Actual voice acting from the actors and scenes from the movie. 	Extremely good progression. Tons of combos to unlock for every character or all characters! 	It's lord of the rings nigga.
Magi-Nation(GBC) 	Takes place in strategic, turn based, "card" battles where Tony summons Dream Creatures to do battle with wild DC or other Magi. Its not very grindy at all, but its unforgiving and the dungeons are long and filled with strong creatures topped off by very difficult fights with Shadow Magi. It can come off as a bit like a JRPG, but it's a unique and interesting battle system. There is also a fairly decent sized overworld to explore, some mini-games, secret areas, extra dungons, etc. 	Very basic, but fluid. The battle menu is pretty much the only menu you'll ever see and its good for what it does, nothing to pretty. Its a turn based game with a simple text interface where you select your actions for the next turn and they all play out. 	By GBC standards, fantastic in the overworld and in towns/dungeons. The battle sprites are a little to basic though, still images that flash and move back and forth whenever they attack or get attacked. Should have put more work into it them considering its the main focus of the game 	Hit or miss, the music is quite good though it's not all that memorable 	Tony levels up separately from his DC gaining energy at every level so that he may summon more DC/use more spells in battle. DC's level up and occasionally learn new abilities, but they are few and far between and could use a little variety.The game itself has a MASSIVE difficulty curve in the very geyser which, if you're not prepared, comes off a bit harsh for the first dungeon of the game. Each Shadow Magi, with the exception of Korg, are quite difficult with some standouts. Zet is fucking ridiculous though and is harder than the final boss despite his limited creature pool 	Is not something even the game takes seriously for the most part, many puns and quick jokes are made and Korg and Zet serve as team rocket. Later on, when you go to the fifth geyser, it takes a much more serious turn and ends with some impressive storytelling.
Max Payne 3 	Extremely solid gunplayControls are simple and intuitiveBullet time give the game personalityQTEs masked as gameplay, much nicer than "Press E to Kill" 	Menus are gorgeous and sound greatToo many layers on main menu, clutterSocial Club is unnecessary, makes the multiplayer experience feel bulky 	Very good looking gameAttention to detail is insaneSome low-res textures here and thereAnimations are next-gen, NPCs are robotic at times 	Great soundtrack, from rainy piano music to favela hiphop holy fuck the airport levelNarration by old Max give the game a lot of purpose and drive 	Multiplayer feels tacked on, but builds upon the key gameplay featuresCOD style unlock system, too much shit with too little significanceGolden gun parts in single playerunlockable dificulties 	Kidnapping/Rescue with some twists, nothing amazingEnding was satisfying but there were no boss fights that stood outDevelopments around Max provided an interesting parallel story, flashbacks were great
Megaman 2 	Absolutely great, but I would like to have ability to slide. 	Works very well. It's simple, like platformer's UI should be. 	Looks great for NES game. 	This has the best soundtrack of all the Megamans. It's just perfect. 	Megaman get's new weapons to fight enemies during the game. Every weapon is different and they work differently for different enemies. 	Dr. Wily and Dr. Light creates robots, but then Wily gets mad and steals those robots and he's planning to conquer the world with them. Dr. Light creates Megaman and now Megaman has to save the world from this evil doctor.
Metroid II Return of Samus<trMore linear than M1, but in way unlike Fusion.-The main part of the map is a giant vertical hall that digs deeper and deeper as certain numbers of Metroids are killed, giving you access to what can be called "levels" of the game.-Despite this, you are given no direction within the "levels" themselves.-Hidden paths/items are not as tediously hidden as they are in M1. With some thinking you should be able to find them.-No bosses. The Metroid family is the end all be all.>	Samus is going to the Metroid homeworld to exterminate them all. Takes place before Super Metroid.</tr> 	 	 	 	 	
Metroid Prime 	first-person shooting with a lock-on system. Samus moves at the speed of a snail and the action mechanics generally revolve around circle strafing enemies after locking on and rolling into ball form wherein the camera switches to 3rd-person for context-sensitive attacks. Metroid Prime has excellent exploration and the trademark Metroid formula where new abilities serve as keys to unlock new areas. However, it has a bit of a problem with backtracking, partly due to its plodding pace, and partly due to the way Retro threw empty corridor rooms throughout the game to make loading times more seamless for the bigger rooms. Unfortunately, all these factors come together to make Prime not a very fun game on replaysm and the trademark Metroid bonus of playing for higher speed is far from compelling for this entry. Trying to beat it fast just isn’t very rewarding. 	Excellent, you can even control the opacity of your visor's various displays. 	Some of the best 3D graphics of the Gamecube generation. Lots of little details enhance immersion. 	Nice ambient techno soundtrack. 	Peashooter to double jumping, clinging to context-sensitive rails, and 4 different beams and visors with various functions.Metroid Prime is a fairly mediocre first-person shooter with not a lot going for it aside from atmosphere. If you're looking for great action, platforming, pacing, or replayability, look to the 2D games in the series. 	Requires you to leave the action to scan various things and read information. Altogether it's pretty lame; there's lots of plot holes and it feels like it was written by a slow but determined child.
Metal Gear Solid(PS1 ver.) 	pretty rad, you sneak around snappin necks and doing deadly puzzles 	i actually really like the item and weapon system 	pretty good for the console. the eye-less faces are a bit odd though. fits the mood i suppose. 	great soundtrack, high quality voicework 	fuckin' rad. backtracking is a bitch though. i didn't like the key trick one bit, and how they often explain puzzles after 5 minutes. 	amazing. really thought-out. i like it. a lot. makes me want to play the second one just to see where it goes.
Minecraft 	3D voxel based sandbox. Comes in two flavors, creative and survival. The original mode, creative, can be compared to E-Legos and is limited only by what your imagination (and free time) allows you to create. The later added survival mode drops you into a near infinite, randomly generated worlds, with no set goals other than to survive. Of course a there will be a lot of mining, and quite a bit of crafting that goes along with the surviving. Survival mode takes a page out of the book of Roguelikes, by making every single item you spent the last 5 hours acquiring drop off you after death. Not a bad touch, but it can be a bit frustrating at times, seeing as there 100s of unfair ways the game ends up killing you that might not even have any control over.Minecraft literally has some of the best and most extensive mods that I've seen in my 15 years of gaming. The community really goes out of its way to make Minecraft playable for the hardcore audience by adding just about anything one can think of to the game. Sure there are shitty mods that just add more shit to the game that you have to go through before you reach the same boring plateau the base game suffers from, but some, in fact most mods add some insane stuff. RPG overhauls, Thaumaturgy and magic, alchemy, industry, and engineering, there are some insanely powerful and fun mods that make Minecraft worth playing. There are even sound packs and Texture packs that allow you to customize the way it looks and sounds! A large collection of such mods can be found by googling The Technic Pack, which is a great starting point for people looking to get a lot more out minecraft.It's definitely worth picking up if you like seeing and using awesome mods, and have the technical savvy to install them, but if you're too casual for that, just pirate it. It's a pretty second rate game unmodded, despite all the hype 	I found the user interface for minecraft quite lacking, the inventory part of it especially. You only get 9 quick slots which are rather blandly thrown down at the bottom of the screen and constantly find yourself going back and forth between the inventory screen and gameplay in order to pick more blocks or tools to use, especially in creative mode where you are given a massive matrix of items and blocks to scroll through without any way to quickly search for what you're looking for. Survival suffers from another problem. Inventory management. You mine and pick up blocks. It is the nature of the game. Unfortunately, minecraft does not have any inventory organization functions, and searching through your inventory for an items you think you might have in there can become a chore and gets boring very quickly. Aside from that, its worth mentioning that you can never get the UI to be the right size. It's either too huge, too tiny, or just an awkward size, and the chat box in multiplayer is simply atrocious and distracting.	Minecraft is a low-fi game. This is a deliberate design decision on the part of the original developer. Thankfully, due to the cube voxels that make up the entirety of the landscape you play on, the low-res graphics actually add to the theme of the game instead of just hurt your eyes. The lighting engine, while thematic and ambient in most cases, can sometimes glitch and ruin any semblance of immersion you have on your deep cave spelunking adventures. 	You'll find the sounds in minecraft to be rather sub par. All the sounds fit in their respective uses. Sheep sound like sheep. Skeletons sound like zombies. Steve (the main character) sounds like Steve, but unfortunately. Every single sheep sounds like the same fucking sheep. Over and over and over and over. If you plan on farming animals for any great amount of time make sure they are out of earshot of your home and mine, or you will be slowly driven mad by the baying of the eldrich abominations and their esoteric cult chants pleading with their elder gods to come and flay their withering souls and consume the fleshy prison they call the body plunging them in to darkness and chaos for all time. And trust me, you will be all too happy to oblige. But aside from the shoddy environmental sounds, Minecraft has a brilliant score composed by artists C418 and Deadmau5 (mostly C418), as well as some pleasant thematic sound that are activated by certain environmental variables, that come together to create an awe inspiring and sometimes downright frightening experience.	Progression in minecraft is much more up to the player than it is the game. You can honestly "max out" your character in 4 hours. That is all diamond gear, and a small little home for you to store your spoils. Sadly this sort of makes the game fall flat on its face, as there is little for the average player to do after that than just get more shit that they ultimately wont be using. Some people like to undertake massive building projects, some people like to play on hardcore mode (one death and you delete your world entirely), but there really isn't much to do -game mechanics wise- after acquiring all of the best gear for your character. There is a "boss" to the game, known as the Ender Dragon, but its a completely optional and superficial boss, there is no reward for killing it except for an "Ender Dragon Egg" which presumably hatches in to an Ender Dragon, however nobody has ever successfully facilitated that. At this point it might not even be possible. 	Minecraft has no story to save its sorry arse, so instead i'll move on to its guardian angel.
Monster World IV 	Nothing fancy, but gives you helpful upward and downward thrusts and your shield pops up fast when you bring it up. Sword is a little short so you have to get up close for combat. Double-tapping to run can get finicky at times. 	Simple, no-nonsense classic setup. Health and money and such on top of the screen with a pause menu to choose items. 	Bright and colorful for the Genesis. Lots of cute designs and plenty of animations for the main character. In fact the main character's super adorable thanks to these little touches. One temple near the end's a little too busy which might lead to confusion of platform sighting. 	A nice main melody that unfortunately is repeated in variation for every section of the game. Sound effects are standard fair for the time. 	Temple -> Town -> Temple -> Town, etc. Temples are lengthy with a few simple puzzles (except for one temple). Ice Pyramid section drags and drags and drags. You might want to look up the solutions anyway for its puzzles. 	By the nubmbers, but not without a little charm. Obvious baddies, but one minor twist or two thrown in. The townsfolk have new things to say after each temple and the translators made sure that it wasn't all bland. Final Boss is just there.
Morrowind 	The gameplay /can/ be described as tedious since it is made up of unseen dice rolls with a cover of real time combat. What you see is your sword, spear, club, arrow, etc., miss and miss and miss and miss and miss and hit and miss and then hit again till a monster or humanoid is dead.That is the experience many are faced with when first getting out into the wilderness of Morrowind after their curt, but diverse character creation, and sadly they may feel frustrated by the system’s “table top” roots. But for those that push through the initial abrasiveness they find unique and fun magic systems full of surprising and fun exploits such as being able to jump completely across the landscape. Melee combat, while not “good,” per se, can still be rather satisfying as a magically augmented hammer (or many other types of weapons, there are a lot to choose from) comes down on a goblin, stealing its soul as its body is engulfed in a fiery, lightning highlighted explosion. What they miss out on is the various choices and ways to play morrowind. You can be a heavy armor wearing wizard, or just a straight up thief, who happens to also be a werewolf that needs to kill an innocent every night to slate his hunger. Or whatever, really. 	The user interface in Morrowind is probably the best ever created for a game of its type. One stroke of key or mouse click brings up four adjustable squares that display your inventory, character information, map, and magic information. All inventory items have clear and distinct icons that are easy to sort and manipulate. Each magic spell you know is listed and fully selectable from the menu. The map operates on a “local” and “world” scale, making it easy to check your surrounding area without losing sight of your final destination or goal. On the character sheet everything is laid out in a simple list. You see your major and minor skills, you can see your level and skill progression, bounty, fame/infamy, bio, current disease if any, and more. There is nothing wrong with this at all. It is it perfect. 	The visuals in Morrowind are dated by today’s standards in some aspects. The character models are stiff and there is some clipping. However faces, armor, clothes, weapons, and all textures are highly detailed. The lush and diverse ecosystem is filled with alien plant life and original architecture in the cities that matches the surrounding areas whether they are barren volcanic deserts or forests of tree sized mushrooms, which adds to Morrowind’s strongest virtue, EMERSION. 	The audio in Morrowind is well done, but clearly wasn’t focused on. As you are exploring a dank, demonic dungeon and a chipper piano riff plays, while fine with for exploring the green and bright wilderness of the Grazelands, it can very mood breaking, which takes away from Morrowind’s emersion. The music itself is good, but grates after a while, as most of the songs are short and there are not many. It would benefit from a dynamic music system that would match tracks to a collating environment. There isn’t much voice acting, but what little there is, is done professionally and is believable, which, considering that some of the voiced characters are immortal beings and a dead devil dreaming himself into existence, is quite a feat. 	Progression in Morrowind is a variable. You could breeze through the main quest in ten hours or you could never touch it, endlessly exploring the vast wastelands looking for legendary artifacts or hunting animals for alchemic ingredients for hours upon. You could play through the 11 faction quest lines or just hunt bandits and vampires for pleasure and business. Personally, I would make characters and play through several quest lines, then make a whole other one. I played the game for an entire year and never got past the second quest in the main story line for most of that year. 	The stories of Morrowind are numerous, but I will talk about a mere part of the Main Questline as an example. The main quest is a deep, thoughtful, exploration of prophesy and the concept of fate with a theme of metaphysics running through. The story is basically about a saint coming back as an outlander and freeing the Dunmer, from their false god kings. But is the main character really the “Nerevarine” incarnate or did he merely just follow directions do what Nerevarine was supposed to do? Was it the protagonist’s fate? There are many ideas and conflicts surrounding that small example. Morrowind does not have just a story. It’s a retinue of adventures and ideas, as big as killing gods and as small as killing rats to save a storehouse of pillows.
Mother 3(1) 	RPG mechanics with the twist that regular attacks can be combo'd if you keep pressing the button in time with the music. Makes it feel more than just strategy and, while a small thing and can be played without, really keeps you doing something. The magic analogue is "PSI," which only two characters have, the rest having generally unuseful special abilities that don't cost any PP. On the overworld you can try and sneak up behind enemies, which gives you an extra turn to attack, which is fulfilling as hell when you can. 	Didn't have any real problems with it, nor was it extremely outstanding. 	The sprites all have highly detailed animations, paired with a nice style that looks flat (not that this is a bad thing.) The littlest things have so much attention to detail that it is pretty amazing. 	The music is really, really, really great. Almost every song is memorable is some way, and there's so much of it that you are never at a loss if you wanna just pick a song and listen. The sound effects are pretty nice too. 	The chapters are a wee bit unbalanced in terms of length, and there are some places that are kinda hard for no real reason, but other than that it flowed pretty fine. 	This game has a really nice, well told, emotional story. Some of the best parts of it are in the subtle things you just kinda notice as you go along. There's kinda a giant plotdump near the end, though, but it done well enough that I don't mind. The themes are worked into the game really well, too. I feel the plot is one of the best parts of this game.
Mother 3(2) 	Mother 3 plays like a typical adventure RPG. You explore an open world and engage in turn based battles, using a level up system to gauge you strength and progress. Rather than using random encounters, the game displays the enemies on the overworld, meaning you can choose whether or not you want to fight them. Battles a viewed in the first person, and you can choose either to attack, use a special skill, or defend in battle. One interesting mechanic in battles is the fact that you can deal extra damage by tapping the A button in rhythm to the battle music. The tempo varies between different enemies, varying from a simple 4/4 rhythm to a ludicrous 15/29. 	There isn't much to say about the UI of Mother 3. While most of the menus are pretty simple to navigate, the items menu lacks any organisation and is somewhat a chore to navigate. 	The visuals are top-notch for a GBA game. The world is very vivid and interesting, but at the same time isn't nauseatingly colourful. The animations are smooth and well made. The only negative thing about the visuals are some of the character sprites. Some of the sprites don't look alot like the characters in the official game art, such as Flint, who looks like a wrinkly geezer rather than a rugged outdoorsman. 	The music of Mother 3 is the most memorable part of the game. Since one of the major themes of the game is music and rhythm, its no surprise that its so good. Mother 3's music is far from generic. The different genres range from jazz to classical to its own personal stlye. 	The game progresses linearly are there is not much in the way of unlockables and side quests. After you finish the main story line, there's nothing else to do but replay the main story. There are a few easter eggs and unique enemies, such as and Negative Man 	The story is where this game truly shines. Its one of the few games that does DARKER AND EDGIER correctly. Despite it's darker story, the game is still incredibly charming and funny. This game's ending also has the power to turn even the most manly unfeeling human into a little crying bitch
Mount and Blade: Warband 	A mix between RPG and strategy within a medieval sandbox world. The goal of the game is to simply gain power, and to do so the player must rise within a feudal hierarchy. The game's combat is physics based with RPG skills influencing it, and it works. The A.I is decent on the battlefield, but when comes to organizing attacks or destroying a rivals economy the A.I is incapable. Because of the poor off field A.I, late game can become tedious.A flawed gem, but one of my favorite games of all time. I must also mention that the game has an amazing modding community. 	Adequate. The combat UI is the bare minimum, and it fits the game well. The world map and the menus could use improvement. 	It is an indie game, so the technical graphics do not compare to most AAA titles. That being said, the art direction itself is very good. The game has a very grimy and dark look to it which fits the setting well. 	The audio is suitable. The music during the world maps effectively adds a medieval flavor. 	The aspect that makes the game so addicting. The player starts out as a lowly mercenary captain, and through either trade or warfare they may gain power. The difficulty in doing so, and the fact that failure can set the player back to square one is what makes the game thrilling. 	Sandbox. There isn't a scripted one, but the fact that the world moves around you makes the game world feel alive. Certain nations will rise and fall, other lords will gain or lose power, and the player will gain and lose power as well.
NetHack 	Very fun and deep gameplay. Of course many things are closely tied to random number generator, but that gives unique experience every time. It has a great replayability, in fact you need to play many times to gain at least 1% of winning. Combat is simple, but very tactical - you need to use surrounding environment and your items to win.Best shop system ever. 	The only issue is that you need to remember all those basic and extended commands and what they do and how do you use them. Some commands could do the same thing - like if you could put accessories and wear items using the same command. 	There are no visuals, because it's a roguelike, but X11 tiles offers a neatly looking tileset for this. It's recommended to use it, or else you will ; or ? at every coloured letter you encounter. 	No audio except a beep sound on your turn availability, which is turned off by default 	About 50 dungeon levels + branches like Gnomish Mines or Sokoban. There is division on early game, mid game and end game. You can find bones of your previous unlucky adventurers (and their killers), with all their loot (3/4 of it is cursed) present, which is very handy. 	Generic DnD story.
Nier(1) 	An ecclectic mix of genres: Action combat similar to God of War, Bullet Hell, Sidescrolling platformer, text adventures.None of them a testament to their genre, but all functional and inoffensive. Severe lack of difficulty later on in the game, a few bosses gave me trouble but for the most part in the second half you are completely unstoppable. 	The HUD is decent, you use items and switch weapons by pausing the game and accessing simple menus. It's odd that your health bar never changes in size when you get more health, it just decreases more slowly. Nothing remarkable, everything is functional and nothing about it annoyed me. 	Sub par, a game clearly made on a budget or in a shorter time than it needed (graphically speaking). The art direction however I found fantastic, truly unique looking characters and bosses. Playing on an SDTV I actually got a few headaches because of the Bloom though, for example in the first field in the game when you walk over a hill It is extremely bright and bothered me. 	Hands down the best music in any video game I have ever played. All the songs were written in made up languages (Emi Evans, the writer of all the lyrics, imagined what languages like Italian, German, Gaelic, etc.. would sound like after a thousand years of drifting). Notable examples include Kaine/Salvation and Grandma. 	The game is split into two parts, with a time lapse seperating them. During each part you go to dungeons and collect things, similar to how a zelda game is structured. There are 4 endings to the game, your first playthrough gives you ending A. Your second playthrough starts after the time lapse that splits the game, and includes new details and story sequences, this leads to ending B. Ending C & D add nothing new until the end, where it gives you a choice. You must collect every weapon in the game to get these endings. To get through to the first ending was about 20 hours for me, ending B added only about 5-6 hours, ending C & D added about 10 hours total because of the time it took to collect all weapons. 	This is where Nier shines. You play Nier, the father (or brother in the japanese ps3 versin of the game) of Yonah. Yonah has an illness known as the black scrawl and your goal is to find a cure. Along the way you meet Kaine, a vulgar and emotionally damaged young woman who, and Emil a young boy who lives in a mansion alone. The story in Nier is heartbreaking and the mysteries surrounding its world and narrative are something I think everyone should experience for themselves. There was also a book released in Japan (and translated on google docs) called Grimoire Nier, which goes into more detail about the world and characters.
Nier(2) 	Standard fare action RPG, while it does many things, none of them are done exceptionally well. Most of the time you'll be fighting shades with weak and strong attacks that vary from weapon to weapon, including one-handed and two-handed swords, as well as spears. You also have magic abilities that you unlock as you play, which can be used with regenerating MP.Select portions of the game include gameplay staples such as sidescrolling, vehicles, bullet hells, and even text adventures. 	The HUD shows all necessary info such as health, mp, and a minimap if you have one for the area. The pause menu has several tabbed pages, and there's ton of info kept therein such as key items, "quest junk", notes and a very detailed quest log. 	Ugly for a next gen game, compares to the best of last gens releases. Too much bloom, but art design and location aesthetics make up for this. Characters are all distinct and very memorable. 	One of the greatest soundtracks this generation. Amazing choir/opera pieces are complemented by hectic frenzied noise, it's hard to explain but it works incredibly well.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms2pPepDh1ohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmc3yji0G84http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZzMyxDgdQ4 	Game is split into two distinct parts, and progresses by quests received from townspeople and the town librarian Popola. The second half of the game allows for the playable character, Nier, to use two-handed swords and spears, and revisits many of the locations discovered in the first half of the game, but with new areas open for exploration. After beating the second half, you can begin a new game plus which starts at the game's split and reveals many new aspects of the story. 	Second only to the game's music, the story of NIER follows Nier, the father of Yonah, a girl suffering a terminal illness known only as the Black Scrawl. Nier will stop at nothing to save his daughter. Meeting other characters, much more messed up than himself, Nier travels the post apocalyptic land in which the human race is slowly dying out. A second playthough of the second half is mandatory to grasp the full gravity of Nier's quest and its implications.This is one of my favorite games of the generation. Don't get bogged down by fetch quests, they aren't necessary. Play twice and revel at this amazing piece of art.
Nights Journey of Dreams 	Pretty simple- you move with the Wii remote or joystick through the air, making a loop to collect objects/deal damage/do anything. The environments are 3D, but you'll be moving along a 2D plane that just has turns and twists. You get some transformations throughout the game, but for the most part your normal form can do anything you need. Levels are sort of predictable and each world consists of the same variety of stages on repeat. There's also a barren and empty hub world that's not really worth exploring. While average stages got boring fast, boss battles were actually pretty creative and interesting. 	There's a little counter for points and time limits and such, but overall not much. 	Its really colorful, but in a weird kinda clashing way. I usually don't mind bright and cheery, but while some levels worked fine with the bright and colorful things going on, others didn't. NiGHTS himself also looks dumb. 	Pretty catchy. Flying around to the good soundtrack was a highlight of the game. 	Each world has a few levels and a boss, each in a predictable format (the level goals tend to repeat.) Then you have a final level and the final boss. There's actually two, completely separate stories here, one for a little boy and one for a little girl, and each is treated almost like a separate game (restarting the plot, having the tutorial again, etc.) Admittedly, I didn't even finish the little girls story. The levels are different, but it feels so incredibly samey I couldn't stand the boredom. 	I don't fucking know. It's a mess. You're a kid who finds an owl in a dream world and he shows you a guy/girl/guy named NiGHTS, and his evil equally flamboyant brother named IfORGET. There's some plottwist in the middle that was boring, and you have to collect the Ideyas of courage, intelligence, and some other shit to beat the final boss, who has a name that sounds like a Jewish guy.It's pretty boring. I wouldn't recommend it.
No More Heroes 	The first game consists of effectively four different 'modes', two of which aren't all that great. The first 'mode' is exploring an open world either on foot or on your scooter thing; there's very little to do except look for trashcans and collectable balls that give rewards. This part of the game can get boring very quickly. The second 'mode' are a bunch of minigames that get you cash, but these become incredibly boring after a while, with there being much quicker ways of making money. The third 'mode' is where it gets interesting, which is where you slice your way through loads of enemies using a variety of beam sword attacks and wrestling moves. This can be incredibly satisfying and fun, with the different weapons and moves you get throughout the game adding to this. It's very easy to just rush your way through the levels slashing everything, but the fun is in the variety of moves you can use to kill. The only issue is that towards the end of the game, it can start to get repetitive due to the enemy AI not being particularly interesting. Now the fourth 'mode' is the real reason to play this game; the boss fights. Each boss is incredibly unique and has its own patterns to learn and tricks to exploit, making some fights almost like puzzles. On harder difficulties, these can be extremely punishing, yet immensely satisfying. Gameplay wise, the sequel improves on everything, removing the boring open world, replacing the lame minigames with fun 8-bit games, improving the variety of enemy AI, with more fluid controls. The sequel also adds two extra characters that you can play as in certain sections, which are hella fun. 	A retro looking health indicator and battery life for your beam katana. The only issue is that the map is a bit of an eye-sore and not very useful. Overall, nothing special, but doesn't detract from the game. 	Incredibly stylish. The use of cel-shaded graphics means that it looks great even on Wii. The animations are fluid and the effects are deliberately retro. It's meant to look over-the-top and unrealistic. 	The music is seriously great, with certain tunes being catchy as hell. The main theme is bound to stay with you long after finishing the game. The sequel's OST is also outstanding, with some big names contributing. And who can forget Margaret Moonlight's theme? "Reaper reaper that's what people call me..." 	The progression of the game is mostly dependent on the player's skill. Especially on harder difficulties, fancy new weapons and health upgrades will do very little to help you. Some of the later boss fights can be incredibly difficult (especially in the sequel), with there being no easy way to beat them. You have to improve your own skill and reflexes. Some of the post game challenges in the sequel are almost impossible. But when you finally do beat some of these challenges, it feels like an achievement like no other. 	Do you like dick jokes and swearing? Well there's plenty of that. The main character Travis is actually awesome. He's this animu nerd who decides to become a hitman after buying a beam katana off the internet. The story is actually a lot of fun and it references countless different films and video games. The bosses in both games have unique and often batshit insane personalities, with part of the fun discovering which boss is next and what sort of fucked up personality they'll have. It doesn't try to be some deep complicated narrative, but instead goes for an over-the-top, balls-to-the-walls story. That isn't to say it won't have its poignant moments, especially the second game, but overall it's just a real crazy ass romp from beginning to end.
Pac-Man World 	Alright, so the game starts off pretty promising, actually. The gameplay isn't very complex, you only have a few moves: jump, dash, and butt bounce. Add in two power-ups and various mechanics that make use of the moves such as ramps and trampolines and switches. The levels are usually 2D-esque, meaning it's like a conventional platformer but you move back and forth. Low difficulty with a bit harder parts for secrets. The game really shows the demographic it was made for (babby-mode). Like the game throws lives at you, it awards a life for every 10,000 points at the end of each level. You'll get 40+ lives quickly.However, bosses are clunky, gimmicky messes (one has the worst kart controls I've ever used) and attempts at difficulty consist of trying to throw stuff at you rather than tricky platforming. Also, fruit is used as keys which requires backtracking to previously locked doors, which is hit or miss, either adding a cool challenge or tedium. Then there's a bonus level if you collect all the levels of P A C M A N, which are okay to zone out on I guess.What the game does worst is being classic Pac-Man, surprisingly. They act as bonus levels and are just awkward. The camera is always zoomed in on you and to add "difficulty" they add timed hazards, which just end up either being annoying wastes of time or something you plow through to take off a part of your health for a few invincibility frames. 	One of the best parts of the game, surprisingly. Everything is laid out nicely, and the HUD hides when not getting items/hit, and tells everything concisely. You can pull it up if you want, too. The only thing that could be better is the hub level. It's boring with doors literally just laid out one after the other. 	Like all cartoony PS1 games, the visuals hold up fairly well. You have the standard selection of worlds, ranging from Pirates to Factory to Space. Enemies are bland, but not awful (oh, skeletons/aliens/clowns). A nice touch is the the Pac-Man ghosts get little additions based on the world, like pirate bandannas or construction worker helmets.However, the FMV cutscenes are fucking awful. Bad framerate and clunky visuals that are poorly paced. 	One of the other best parts of the game. Sound effects are nice and stand out from other games and the music is extremely catchy, at least while playing the levels. It's generic music, but very well composed and it's cool how they'll incorporate the Pac-Man theme song motifs into the songs. 	One of the worst parts of the game. Starts out really fun and casual, but every level is essentially the same with different gimmicks so it drags on. Worse is how they handle difficulty. You don't have to do crazy platforming or handle enemy grouping, the game just throws dumb stuff that end up with you fighting the game mechanics rather than a challenge. Like there's a part with disappearing platforms and moving platforms and enemies between them. Time it wrong, watch Pac-Man slide off the platform's edge. 	Fucking shit. Pac-Man's family and friends get kidnapped by random stuff on the way to his 20th anniversary party by a robot Pac-Man named Toc-Man. Who apparently is dance partying at Ghost Island posing as Pac-Man? Why would ghosts want to meet the guy who eats them? Pac-Man goes to the island, random levels that have your friends hostage, free them, yada yada. Ending: you kick Toc-Man's ass, and a little ghost pops out who was controlling it crying about how no one loves him. So what does Pac-Man do to console him? Pops a power pellet and *fucking eats him.* No words. The end. The fuck, Pac-Man, you are a heartless barbarian.
Phantasy Star Online 	Standard dungeon crawler gameplay, clear an area and move on. It does offer real time combat, but lacks 'total control' over your character. For the most part it is repeating the same attack combo over and over again which can get dull. Areas are fun to explore and offer surprises. 	The menus are simple and easy to navigate through. Quick menus are also offered to keep gameplay smooth. One problem is that you are only able to assign 6 actions at once. While this is enough to get you by, some people prefer to have everything ready to go without having to change between areas. 	The game visuals were standard for any GameCube game. Nothing to special, but was decent. 	As far as soundtracks go it was perfect. Each one matched the area and was well placed. Sound effects though were not the best. Constant weapon sound effects plus hitting sound effects can really add up. 	As you level up the game becomes more enjoyable. New areas, monsters, and quest become available. The one downside to this is you'll be repeating areas over and over again to reach that required level. Maps are different each time you start over while this does offer ease it should be remembered that there is only a limited amount of maps. 	The story is overlooked by most. While it is easy to pick up from simply playing, to get into detail you have to follow the quest line, the game dose not force you to complete them however. You are sent on a mission to find the cause of an explosion on a planet. This explosion caused the natives to become hostile. As you are exploring you discover messages of a missing person who was aboard a previous ship. Without spoiling anything you basically cover each area while finding messages from said person. Overall it's not the best story, but most don't even notice it to begin with.
Phantasy Star Online 2 	Real time combat, and strategy. Dodging and counterattacking along with fluid combat. PSO2 offers glorious combat without 'overdoing it'. 	With simple menus and easy to map keys the user Interface is above average. Menus are easy to navigate through and being able to change which keys do what makes it a plus for high customization. 	While the game does offer some visuals that please the eyes, some textures are lower than they should be. Good use of colors and style. As said before some textures, example floor, are on the low side. 	The sound track is what's to expect from any Phantasy Star game. It is outstanding. While the game does offer new tacks it also has remixes of past tacks. The sound effects on the other hand are also the same as any other Phantasy Star game, obnoxious. Some people might find it hard to enjoy the music or gameplay it self when it's being covered by constant 'hitting' sound effects. 	While it is considered a dungeon crawler, the progression is not the best. Starting out is a bit unbalanced and forces you to repeat missions a few times over and over again. As you level up there is more challenge, but again will force you to repeat a mission over and over again. 	With only a fraction of the story released, I can't give a review. But from what I have seen, it looks promising.
Phantom Dust 	Fun is the perfect buzzword to describe phantom dust. It's like playing a card game, except without all the faggy turn taking and you know, not actually playing a game. You have a starting point, and the enemy has a starting point. You make a "deck" full of different types of attacks/defenses/"mana." What was chosen in the deck appears at the starting point randomly in groups of 3, and you can pick up and assign different things to 4 buttons. The objective is normally to kill the enemy, or make them run out of skills to grab, but sometimes there are conditions in place for you to win. The whole thing was fucking badass and they will never make a sequel because fuck everything. 	Simple, which is perfect for this type of game since other games like these normally have some extremely complicated convoluted interface that serves no purpose and isn't fun to navigate. 	Alright, it really lacked stage design and skyboxes, but that's all made up for with it's destructible environment. 	Okay, the soundtrack is remixed classicals, but it's just okay. 	You get more skills, that's all there is to it. Progression is also made by learning what to put in your deck. 	I personally thought it was good, but other people might find it edgy and 2deep4u. It's a story of mystery and friendship set in a post-apocalyptic world where everyone lives underground to escape the mysterious phantom dust. People can only travel to the surface for a short amount of time before they die.
Planescape Torment 	The gameplay is a bastardized version of Bauldur's Gate gameplay, however the addition here is that the dialog IS part of the gameplay, since you can make your way out of situations by talking, items, interactions with such items and side-quests affects the dialog and story progression, making the gameplay good.(remember gameplay =/= combat) 	See above, pretty much BG's interface pasted over in this game. 	Decent for a 90's WRPG nothing special, however the art direction is fucking amazing as so is the setting, its a good example to shove in the face of weeaboos that always say “all WRPGS have generic settings”, also some magic animations were very Final Fantasy-ish, wich I like. 	The music and VA are amazing, even though some musics feel samey sound effects are good too. 	(not mentioned in original re/v/iew) 	Do I have even to say something about this? Its by far the best plot ever written in a videogame ever, showing that vidya CAN be a good storytelling media if used right (wich is hard but not impossible), amazing characters and world and also all that fucking philosphy in the game made me puke rainbows of how good it was.Godly Game, one of my favorites
Pokemon Black 2 	Your typical Pokemon fare, made better by the fact that weather effects aren't displayed every turn, the fact that Trainers have laid off the stupid Double Team tactic, the fact that Gym Leaders + E4 have stopped using infinite potions and instead have started relying more on held items, the inclusion of Challenge Modo, and more. 	What is there to say? It's simple as fuck and easy to use. Nothing wrong with it. 	By far the best visuals on the DS. No other game on the system can compete. 	Already-awesome tracks from BW remixed as well as the return of former Gym Leader battle music tracks? Yes, when it comes to music, this game has a lot going for it. Also, DENNIS. I just wish some of the Pokemon cries were revamped a bit. 	This game has good pacing overall and appears to be longer than the other games in the series, except for maybe Platinum. There's a good deal of things to do after the E4, too, certainly more than what BW had. 	This is where I was disappointed most. In BW, it was "liberate Pokemon with a twist at the end". In this sequel, it's" take over the Unova region, this time with a more evil division of Team Plasma". Also disappointing was the fact that Corless' character wasn't developed well enough.
Pokemon Conquest 	Pretty much Nobunaga's Ambition spliced with Pokemon, and it mixes well. You have turned based 6 v 6 on battlefields (most with special things about them), and sometimes you'll have to capture flags. You got the obvious stuff like Super Effectives, ground doesn't hit flying, and the not obvious stuff like how certain moves only work from certain distances. Some weak points of the combat is the game is too damn easy. It's so easy you will probably not struggle once the entire game unless you stack all of one type like a fucking idiot or something or until the final couple of levels. Also 6 v 6 for a strategy game is a bit small. 	Really easy, simplistic yet effective. If you can't figure out how to navigate a fucking Pokemon game then by golly 	The game looks like it should've been a 3DS game, and you can tell by the way it both looks and is formatted. You can rotate and zoom in the battlefield (and you'll have two on some certain maps) but most of the time you'll just have it set to default. The game looks really good for a DS game, but would probably look better as a 3DS one. 	Sounds are awesome and the music is great, typical of Pokemon. Nothing to complain about here. 	The game never gets any harder. The only part that even verges on the level of difficult is the very last two battles, and even then you should have minimal trouble or lose maybe once. There is however a GIANT post-game and that is definitely a strong point. 	Little to non-existant. It is only there so that you can get into fights.
Postal 2 	Combat is surprisingly good and satisfying. Repetitive but there's not really anything they can do to make playing kickball with a persons head funner the 500th time. Gore is great and there are a lot of ways to keep yourself entertained that you wouldn't dream of doing in any other game. Fire physics is probably the best I've seen minus Far Cry 2 and you can start the biggest fire that they ever seen with just gasoline and matches. Multiplayer is still being played today with at least 30 people in one server. Which is fucking amazing considering how few copies this game sold. Little bit I played was really fun. Could see why those 30 still play it. 	Ugly like most things in this game. Works but it's pretty shit. Item menu is the worst, having to scroll through various items just so you can smoke a bong or trying to take your shotgun out takes ages depending on how much shit you have. 	As mentioned before everything looks like complete shit. It might be intentional but everything is still really fucking ugly. You get used to it after a while but still. 	Guns sound fine. Characters make funny remarks. There's absolutely no fucking music in the game. It's just listening to background noises. Sorta immersive though. 	You get errands from your wife to do. Game won't move on unless you do them and you can do each of them in any order you want. Each day more and more areas open up and more people come to hate you. Military move in eventually. This all boils over on Friday where everything goes to hell. Cats start falling out of the sky. And there is wide spread chaos and carnage as you try to make your way home. 	Nothing to write home about. Funny is the only thing I can say.Overall it is a hit or miss game. You either slightly like it. Hate it. Or fucking love it to death like me. Childish humor but it just has that charm that makes it near impossible to get tired of. At least for me.
Project Reality 	Extremely harsh, forces you to cooperate with other people if you want to survive for longSome stupid stuff is hardcoded into the BF2 engine, like weapon deviationCommunity can be sort of exclusive, making it difficult for new people to learn the ropes. 	Pretty much non-existent, only HUD element is a compass along the bottom of your screen and a display for the number of magazines remaining.There is a map but it takes a while to pull up to discourage people from using it constantly.Voice program called Mumble allows you to talk to people based on your location, required by many servers and makes gameplay far more fun. 	Manages to be pretty decent looking despite running on a 7 year old game. 	Default audio for the game is alrightThere is a sound mod available that has to be enabled by individual servers, improves the quality of many things tenfold 	Nonexistent apart from your personal skill.Don't expect to be flying choppers or leading squads right away though, you need a pretty good understanding of the game if you don't want to get bitched at. 	The best kind: comes up entirely through player interaction and whatever happens out on the battlefield.
Prototype 2 	Anyone who has played the previous installment, will immediately be acquainted with the controls. Prototype 2 is very reminiscent of any beat em' up/hack-n-slash. I say both of these primarily because it's difficult to classify it. While it has hack-n-slash elements it has the occasional beat em' up spice. Many quick-time events, and varied weaponry (however those that played Prototype 1 may be a little disappointed with the exclusion of certain powers) keeps to player - more or less - on their toes.My only gripe is the lock-on system. Perhaps one of the most frustrating I've ever had to deal with. The lock-on would often fix its sights onto enemies that weren't a present threat, or would focus more on the objective as opposed to something that needed to die (e.g. I would attempt to complete an objective, but a large creature would hinder my progress. So, in an attempt to destroy the impediment, I would try to lock onto said creature; HOWEVER, the game's system would select the objective itself AS OPPOSED TO the creature that is hindering my progress).An additional thing is the difficulty. It was unusually easy. I rarely died, and whenever I DID die, it was due to me fucking around. 	The interface is nice. Not much to be said here. An improvement from the predecessor's menu's, which would occasionally seem clunky. Everything necessary is displayed on the screen, and is easily distinguishable from the environment (which I understand can/has been a problem in some games). 	The visuals look very good for a game of its magnitude. There are few things that could use some work, as the resolution of certain textures seem a bit off, but coming from a design perspective, I have to praise their work. My only problem are the particle effects, which seem pretty mediocre. They're not terrible; however, they could use some work. This is understandable considering the absolute scale of Prototype 2. One again, coming from a design perspective, it makes sense. With a game like Prototype A LOT of explosions are going off VERY FAST and all AT ONE TIME. Why spend so much time on a sprite if it may interfere with frame-rates, or not even be noticed by the player? 	The audio was really good, but I typically pay a lot of attention to a game's musical score; which is where Prototype 2 kind of falls flat. While I recognize that some people would love the arrangements, whereas I wouldn't, I must say the combat music is forgettable, and very rudimentary. No real counter-melodies, and the melody is often overshadowed. But, when it comes to the battle audio (e.g. Explosions, gun shots, etc.) were very good. 	The progression was very slow at first. Clearly catering to those new to the Prototype series, however I never found it too slow, so I didn't mind the pace. But, after the pseudo-tutorial is finished, the game picks-up at an extremely accelerated rate, making it very confusing to pin down the actual climax. But, this really doesn't matter, and isn't a huge deal, as I'll explain in the "story" section. 	The story is ostensibly not the focus, and it was never intended to be. It's a bare-bones story, simply used to facilitate & justify the combat, which is what truly shines in Prototype 2.
Psychonauts 	Tight controls, unique range of abilitiesFluid and unbelievably varied mix of puzzles and combatAiming and camera control can be tough at times, lots of dialogue/cutscenes 	Playable menus throughout the start of the gameCircular in-game inv/skills menus compliment gamepads 	Odd art style, sometimes makes it hard to understand what you're looking atClashes hard at timesVery fitting for the game's story and general theme 	Quirky music always sets the tone of the gameVoice acting is usually varied and humorous 	100 levels with skill upgrades periodicallyHundreds of collectibles/side missions that directly influence your characterNo plateus in unlocks/upgrades 	Everything is themed around the brain/psychologyMain story itself is kinda thin, the journey outclassed the endingUnparalleled insight into certain charaters (literally inside their minds)
Red Faction: Guerrilla 	Fairly divergent, different sections still gel, moving from third person gunplay to getaway driving is a fairly smooth play transition, however the shooting/movement element is fairly clunky, needs polish in that area.Driving is as expected, fairly arcadey and generic. Destruction is the reason this game exists. It was TECHNOLOGY the game at release, and still impresses, the integration into gameplay needs to be replicated in newer games, it adds a lot of depth. 	Suffers from a consolectomy, needs less intrusive GUI, with options.A lot of messages a rendered at the exact perspective zero point, which is plain wrong, blocking your vision at the crucial time to put your explosive truck into a civilian bus. 	Above average for the time, as a GTA style TPS, but has dated, as far as the shaders and texture resolution goes. Polycount is fairly high, and the LOD works well, only glitching occasionally.Art style's quite gritty and post-industrial, fits the game nicely. 	Surround sound is good, but the audio itself is quite lackluster. Generic space epic orchestral soundtrack, not out of place at all, but nothing special. Needs more Bolshevik era classical marches to fit the revolution vibe. 	Bit of a grind, some missions are fun as fuck (Heavy Metal) some are exercises in tedium (Transporter), you need to go out and collect a lot of salvage to keep armed and armoured ahead of the difficulty curve. Reasonably addictive, you may find yourself doing the 'just one more' thing. 	Pretty unique story. Miners revolution on Mars, corrupt Earth government doing its thing, mysterious savages and NANOTECH. Direct continuation of RF1, good thing in my book, but, somehow a bit hollow, character development is at a minimum, and not a lot of truly memorable set pieces or encounters.
Resistance Fall of Man 	Pretty standard FPS, and in that regard pretty mediocre. You pretty much just blow through the 6 or so varieties of Chimera and end with some tough boss monster. You have a nice gun selection, with some creative uses, but they range dramatically in usefulness. Tougher parts of the campaign often devolved into using the Sniper's slow-mo ability because its ridiculously easy to abuse. Vehicle sections are decent, and overall its a solid, if not great, experience. 	Ammo in one corner, health in another. Pretty simple. You have 4 health bars, and only your active one regens. 	Sort of interesting in that it combines WWII era Europe with the futuristic technologies of the Chimera, but in reality it's just sort of "generic WW2 FPS" meets "generic post-apocalyptic FPS." 	Didn't really notice it. Not memorable at all. 	Every once in a while you'll pick up a new gun to add to your arsenal, which is the main way gameplay is spiced up. A lot of the levels, despite being in different locales, feel samey. Also, it does that thing where you fight something as a huge, important boss fight early on, but by the end they're being used fairly regularly. 	Pretty standard "disgusting alien/mutant takes over world" apocalyptic FPS plot. You're the lone hero who has to go through a variety of battles, miraculously survive, and eventually discover a big giant tower, the destruction of which kills all the bad guys. There's some stuff about a secret organization voiced by Steve Blum, but its not touched on until you get captured by them after the credits are over.
Scratches: Director's Cut 	Standard point and click adventure; walking around rubbing different items on different things. Expect to not know what to do and have to resort to a walkthrough multiple times. A couple of bullshit parts like hard to spot pick-upable items that you would have never known were there, or puzzles that don't really make sense. But has some good puzzles where you can actually figure it out on your own. Standard adventure game stuff, this game seems to be on the better side rather than worst though. 	Inventory can be a little getting used to at first. 	Good. Game is not a true 3d space instead consists of pre-rendered images a-la Myst, but looks and feels surprisingly natural and good to move around in. 	Good effects and ambient sounds. Hardly any music except at dramatic points so it has more impact. Voice acting is okay. 	Very good pacing. Does not rely on jump scares to be scary and instead builds tension through atmosphere and storytelling. 	Good lovecraftian story. Hope that's not spoiling too much.I recommend to anyone who would like a slower-paced spooky atmosphere game. It's not as scary as Amnesia so you'd probably have a better chance to play through the whole thing.
Shadow of the Colossus 	Repetitive, Easy, unique but also boring. There's nothing else to do than kill the 16 colossi. The world where you roam is fucking empty. You go from a boss fight to another boss fight while roaming empty world for several minutes. That's pretty much it. 	Not too much stuff on the screen which raises atmosphere. 	Nice art direction. Not the best ps2 has to offer but still pretty good. 	Soundtrack is probably the best part of the game, because it's actually pretty good orchestrated stuff. 	Defeat 16 colossi and that's it. there's also time attack mode and new game + but the game is a chore to play so don't bother with them. Takes about 10 hours to complete. 	It's shit. Only times in the game when something actually happens story wise is at the beginning and at the very end.Pirate this if you want try this. No man should pay anything for a piece of overhyped shit like SotC. I regret buying this.
Silent Hill 	Basic survival horror. Find items, use items to solve puzzles, kill things. Running up and down the streets was a little annoying at the beginning. 	Simple Menu screen. Works. 	Pretty bad framerate and graphics even for the Playstation, but the lighting effects in dark rooms are very nice. 	Meh. Nothing particularly scary. The radio noise for enemies being close was a nice touch and kept me on edge. 	Most of the puzzles were fairly simple, and getting from point A to point B was easy with the maps provided for every area. 	Ranges from good to incomprehensible depending on which end you get. I felt the multiple ending system took away from the story, as it locked the player out of the narrative if they missed a small detail and forced them to waste 6 hours for a terrible ending.
Silent Hill: Downpour 	Interesting puzzles if you're looking for a game to put some thought into. The overall atmosphere is unsettling and adds to the game's appeal. Like all other Silent Hill games, Downpour's combat system is amateur at best. The enemies are overall very interesting and the large, semi-open world is a nice addition to the usually-claustrophobic game series. 	Uhh...nonexistent? There is nothing showing how much health Murphy has, other than the amount of blood covering his clothing. This is set up in a way that leaves you in the dark, not knowing if you're actually okay or on the verge of death. Load screens give you tips, but the tips become annoying to read later in the game. e.g. Monsters become more violent in downpours. 	Overall, the visuals were pretty damn good. If it weren't for the frame rate going apeshit, Downpour would be a very visually pleasing game. Of course, your vision is partially obscured by fog, but that's to add to the atmosphere and creepiness of the game. The monsters seem very well-made as well. 	I have no complaints about the audio. The main character's yells of terror are more believable than the previous games in the series, and the music was extremely well-fitting. 	The story's progression is a clusterfuck of contrasting difficulties depending on which side quests you find and when. There are absolutely no power ups, and the game pretty much just makes the enemies more and more difficult as you proceed. Your only hope is that you figure out the enemies' attack signs and patterns. 	Fairly interesting to watch unfold. The whole town is unexplained, as this is the eighth game in the series and you're expected to have played at least one to understand the town's... "charms". I can honestly say that I did not expect what happens near the end and was left with a satisfying ending (Ending B).
Skyrim 	Skyrim, at its core, is an open-world FPS RPG (with a togglable Third-Person view). The RPG elements within the game are sufficient, but it feels like there should be something more. The lack in Skyrim's RPG depths it attempts to make up for with its combat. The combat is (almost unnecessarily) emphasized as a large facet of gameplay. This is strange, considering the developers stressed the environment and the setting of Skyrim, it, unfortunately, comes up short. While there ARE many areas to explore in Skyrim, what there is to explore isn't exactly optimal. You have a many of Dungeons to venture into, but once you've seen three or four, they all seem relatively the same. Occasionally, a dungeon will differ, the overall theme & motif remains static, and it really takes away from the experience. All the walls look the same, the puzzles aren't really varied,and the enemies within rarely change. However, what IS varied is WHERE you find the answer, which isn't all that entertaining the sixth time.Also, in random caves, the enemies would be unusually difficult. While it's easy to simply turn around, leave, and return when you're far more adroit, it's completely against what was intended. With the setting emphasized so much, and a common theme of exploration the unusual influx of difficulty can deter that very thingMy final gripe is the way the character moves, and the camera. On console, it feels delayed, as if you're swinging something with weight. With a joystick the recoil of the player model can sometimes get agitating, but it's minor and barely noticeable once in gameplay. Interestingly enough, this problem is absent on PC.Something of a curse that seems to haunt Bethesda open-world games, are the myriad of glitches present within & throughout gameplay. Understandably with an immense map some glitches are hard to spot, and even some of the more obvious ones are even missed. From a design stand-point, even the most ostensible of glitches were probably intentionally placed there, and Skyrim isn't the first game to showcase this concept. Sometimes, in order to meet deadlines, liberties will have to be taken, and doing something differently that not only saves time but removes more glitches than are reproduced, is a great thing.	For consoles, the interface is very clunky. It's often annoying to open up some of the menus, and it's tedious; however, once you get the hang of it, the difficulty you had initially seems to kind of fade away. The thing is, the interface feels designed for a PC, and it feels the most natural on PC. 	For the vanilla game of its magnitude, it looks good. It's nothing particularly special. Some textures are sometimes mapped incorrectly, and graphical glitches aren't uncommon, but in terms of the vanilla game, it looks good. 	The music is pretty forgettable. The same few tracks play, and most of it is recycled from previous Elder Scrolls games, but given a make over. As for the combat sounds, they seem spot-on. Everything sounds like it should, it's a nice touch. Recently, however, there have been some audio issues. Some enemies will sound as though they're behind you, but will really be in front of you. This happens with all enemies, and can be very disorienting. 	There isn't much progression, and what progression remains is mediocre. When you join a guild you can become the master of said guild in less than two hours, or by doing a few simple & menial quests. This isn't good progression, and even undermines the guilds themselves. If some newcomer can appear, do a few things, and usurp leadership so swiftly, there is something wrong. Also, the story has decent progression. It's nothing special, and you could probably finish it in 2 hours (once saw an individual that completed it on level 8). The difficulty progression is what I want to talk about. Another aspect of Skyrim that was heavily emphasized aside from the environment, were the battles with dragons. The dragon fights are lackluster at best. Right at the start of the game, you're commissioned to fight a dragon, and the ease at which it were defeated was unsettling. For such a hyped up event it was taken care of surprisingly easily. Throughout the entire game, it's similar to this one event. It was never hard or particularly challenging to defeat a dragon. Even on Master difficulty, the dragons weren't much of a threat. Now, for some reason, Giants & Mammoths were a greater threat than dragons. Arguably, one Giant has a better chance of pursuing a single man/woman, but being able to take a dragon's shout & sustained flame, but be destroyed by a single wing of a Giants club was a little debilitating. 	The story is astonishingly decent. [spoiler]When being transported to Sovngarde I was surprised. It looked good, and when you faced Alduuin for the final battle, it was interesting, but -as stated earlier- the fight itself was kind of lame due to the fights with dragons in general.[/spoiler] In the end, the story is only really there to give you way to beat the game. With most of the spotlight on exploration you will, inherently, not be focusing on the main plot (at least not supposedly).
Sniper Elite V2 	really nice, playing it on pc and doesn't feel gamepad-ey at all. The enemies are not dumb, but sometimes misteriously know you are hiding behind a shady rock 200 m away just by hearing one shot. Maybe the bulletcams can get annoying, but you can disable them or lower the frecuency (nice detail). The maps have different routes to the objectives, but still they have some sort of linear feel. 	Functional. Has everything needed and not more, and if you don't like it you can disable it 	Really nice, better than I expected. The faces are very static and unrealistic, but besides, good overall. 	It ain't no Battlefield 3 but the guns sound nice, the music has a nice transition between comabt and not combat. 	You feel like a badass since the beginning, and never gets boring nor really hard. I didn't play with the toughest enemies though. 	This is not a game to be played by its story. It exists, and it isn't bad, however it isn't very notable either.
Solatorobo: Red the Hunter 	Simply put, the game is easy. Run around enemies, pick them or their projectiles up, and throw. What makes this a bit deeper is how one can customize your stats via a Tetris-style slot-in system where parts that upgrade stats are put into a grid. The grid is upgraded via items found during exploration, and parts are bought with the in-game currency, or "rings." 	Basic. Top screen shows the layout of the area you're in, just in a room-by-room detail, your level and XP required to level up. The lower screen shows the action: your character and the environment, health, and trance bar(used for a special attack form). Non-intrusive, and hides when inactive. 	The game is beautiful. Each world is vibrantly colored and unique, set around a theme of some sort - your first world is probably the most generic of the sort, being the starting town, but then you have the town made of scrap and rusted battleships, the tribal training grounds hanging on the underside of a floating island, and more. Camera work for each of these areas is great, too, from the long views of the port in Airedale to the shots coming from within the electronics shop and cafe in Pharaoh and Shetland.The spritework is hit or miss, however - for non-player and non-mecha characters, they chose to render everyone in a scalable 2-d animated sprite, which clashes with the player model when viewed up close. Dialogue is handled via character portraits with different emotions depending on the situation, and certain cutscenes also have character models. Mecha designs are superb.	It's okay, I guess. Good variety of tunes so you might find something you like. 	The game is, as mentioned, pretty simple throughout. Go to new area, take on main quest, finish side quests, etc. You might get a kick out of min-maxing your mecha, though, especially when exploration is rewarded with points that you can use to unlock more space for upgrades. Considering they actually used grade-schoolers to test the game, it very much tells you where to go, but at least most of the tutorials are skippable. There are a couple of really memorable boss battles, especially running through the second half of the game. 	You play as Red, a Hunter, doer of odd jobs throughout the floating realm of the Shepherd Republic, obtain a cat-boygirl and a medallion that binds to you, of which said cat-person says forces you to help them shut down the giant stone mecha of doom that just woke up. Said mecha is being sought after by the Kurvaz, a guild of Hunters with a boss with good publicity but bad intentions.That's the first part. The second part is where it gets weird, but you have foreshadowing on that in the first, so you don't get too shocked.What shines, however, is the little bits of non-essential information gained as you progress, such as the fashions of the land, the history and the wars that the Republic has taken part in, the culture, and a bunch of other things. The 100(!) commercials released in the advertising for the game also go into it as well, being fairly understandable even if you don't know any Japanese.All in all, basic, but fun, pretty, and surprisingly deep.
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle 	3D Sonic done right. Levels are fast paced and populated well, giving the player plenty of oportunity to go fast while maintaining a challenge and need for constant control. Lots of secrets to be found and the Chao Garden add a huge ammount of replay value. Three different gameplay modes allow something for every player, however both the treasure hunting and Sonic/Shadow levels are based mostly on speed, so players looking for slower paced gameplay might be dissapointed. 	Menu system is easy to use and becomes second hand very quickly. The user interface is a simple score, ring, and life count. The Chao garden's action controls leave something to be desired as you constantly have to flip though commands to get what you like. 	This game is ported from the Dreamcast so the visuals are sub-par for a Gamecube game, to say the least. The lip synching and cutscene character animations are pretty terrible. However, the animations used in the actual levels are fluid, save for the ocasional stutter while gliding as Rouge or Knuckles. The Chao garden itself is a bit underwhelming with its blocky enviroment, but the Chao themselves look very good. 	The soundtrack is orgasmic. The music will get stuck in your head and it fits the levels perfectly. If you are a fan of the Chao garden you will learn to recognize the different sounds that the Chao make based on what they want, such as a want to swim or eat. The voice acting isn't great for some characters, but for the most part everyone sounds about right. 	The progression for Sonic/Shadow was very good up until their last space levels, where they took a large spike in difficulty. However I viewed this as more of a final challenge which I felt added a nice finish to their storylines. Knuckles progression was fine, I don't feel there were any outstanding errors. Rouge, however, suffered a bit with the sudden dificulty of the level Security Hall and the unpredictable space controls of Mad Space. Tails/Eggman were, if anything, on the easier side, as they had a health bar which could be replenished by collecting rings and chaos drives. Not to say they don't have challenging moments, but for the most part theirs aren't the levels that will frustrate players 	The story is pretty cheesy but that should be expected from a game with this target audience. The changes of scenery are a bit abrupt, but its nothing that detriments the game. In fact, I'd say the constant changes of scenery keep it fresh. The story adds elements very abruptly and as such you may end up getting lost in the last half if you don't pay attention. If you were upset that I didn't critisize the voice acting then you can stop holding your breath. The problem wasn't necessarily the voice talent, it was the terrible writing that was attached to it. The characters lines were odd and unatural, and in some cases the voices actually overlapped. Oftentimes you will be left wondering why in the world a character would say something. This combined with the terrible animations and lip synching make for cringe-worty cutscenes. Despite the fact that these cutscenes have bred various jokes, the bottom line is that they are only funny because they are so terrible.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky 	"ATTENTION! THE BANDITS HAVE OVERTAKEN THE GARBAGE!!" 	At high resolutions some icons are really small 	Graphics are DX10.1 awesomeness but damn there's a fatal flaw in the Sun Rays and Volumetric Light that makes you LAG 	The gun sounds when firing aren't really realistic, there's no echo in the game. I hate it when American actors do Russian/Ukrainian voice acting. 	You can't get all the good guns from the beginning if you have the money, you have to complete missions and progress through the story to see tougher NPCs. 	At times, repetitive to Shadow of Chernobyl, but it was made to be a crossover with it, so it's OK.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl 	10/10 would CHEEKI BREEKI again. The gameplay is at times harsh and very unforgiving, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R SoC and the entire series really have fantastic gameplay. If you're autism levels of good you can get overhauls to make it blisteringly hard and as realistic as a mutant filled horrible-engine shooter gets. 	Not really in love with the interface, the main menu feels a bit meh, with loud music not fitting at all with the rest of the game's sounds, which is bad because you save often. 	For a game from 2007, you can make it look pretty fantastic. STALKER 2012 or whatever it's called adds all new HD GRAPHIX even if it's an awful overhaul, but on all high full dynamic lighting it can put some of the newer shooters to shame. 	CHEEKI BREEKI. The audio is fantastic, all the sounds are quite immersive, with russian bandits shouting their silly gibberish while they try to kill you, STALKER bros sitting around the fire sharing vodka and some bitchin' guitar soundtracks, the monster sounds are a bit vague, all sounding similar, but then again they're all mutant hulk-things. 	I've actually never finished Shadow of Chernobyl, but the progression from what I've seen is very nice, with good challenge throughout, EXCEPT THE FIRST FUCKING MISSION, FUCK YOU BANDITS WHY ARE YOU SO HARD? 	It's not really the story of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games that is the point, it's getting there. You should spend more time wandering the zone being a badass than following the main quest, like most sandbox games really. It shines in the sidequests and exploration.
Star Wars Battlefront 	Very fun, and very addicting. The game serves the Star Wars IP great justice with massive, large scale battles, ranging from ground to air, all in one. However, the game feels rushed, and some things eels as if they had a pressing deadline to adhere to. (I believe this was the case with the whole game.) The action is a little clunky, and the galactic conquest is lacking severely. 	Clunky, but it gets the job done. Friend or Foe reticle cloring is absolutley fucked up. 	Lackluster, even for it's time. Even though VGA graphics were invented in the 90's, Battlefront insists on using only green, brown, and white. 	Well done. It does Star Wars justice with good "announcer" voices, convincing in-game voices, and excellent vehicle and gun sounds. 	Non Existent. (Which is okay.) 	Basic instances of memorable Star Wars encounters, minimalThough many parts of this game are lacking, Pandemic managed to put it all together in just such a way that it turned out well. In short, the game is greater than the sum of it's parts.
Steambot Chronicles 	Good controls, but cerainly not nearly as deep as most mech based gamesOn foot is ok, but feels stiffInstruments are fine, but things like the piano and accordian are retarded hard 	Sparse, but allows you to make a significant impact with your choices, however little they affect in the long runNice to see a game where you can be a jerk and not just get everyone on your ass and have to kill them 	Characters and bots looks pretty neat even after all these years, enviroments, not so muchCel-shading could have been done better 	The general music is enjoyable, but the songs are the real meat and potatoes of the gameShamefully reuses a lot of the same sounds for everything, opening a door, a chest, accquiring somethingLike SH2, the acting isn't great, but you can tell some of the VAs really put their hearts into the roles 	(not specified in original re/v/iew) 	(not specified in original re/v/iew)
Super Mario Galaxy 	Controls really well, even with the weird gravityExcept swimming, that shit sucksRather easy although some missions are extremely difficultMajority of galaxies are linear 	Very little HUD2nd player is boring and stupid 	Absolutely gorgeousAtmospheric 	Most of it is sweeping orchestral goodnessSpace sounds are added to some of the soundtrack 	Travel through a bunch of different galaxies, each are unique in some wayYou spend a good amount of time in each galaxySecrets are small in number but well hiddenOptional side story that delves into the sad past of a main character 	Generic princess in distress BUT IN SPACE
Super Meat Boy(PC, XBLA) 	2D platformer, bit of a throwback to an older age of gaming.Amazing physics which make for an extremely fast paced platformer.Difficulty ramps up to ridiculous levels.Shit is fun. 	Not much of a UI due to being a platformer.Basic overworld menus with fastest level times displayed.Basic leaderboards. 	Basic visual style which doesn't revolve around GRAPHICS.Ingame visual theme looks great for its purpose.Cutscenes lack effort, resemble shitty flash shorts. 	BEST MOTHERFUCKING SOUNDTRACK EVER.See above.Also satisfying squishy noises whenever meat boy slaps against surfaces. 	Very well balanced difficulty curve.Game starts off extremely easy, and slowly introduces more and more elements into the game. More saws, difficult jumps etc.Becomes hard as balls by the end of the game, due to there being alternate "dark worlds" with much steeper difficulty levels.Refreshing amount of difficulty for a modern game.Doesn't become as frustrating as you'd imagine, due to extremely short levels and short respawn times. If you die, you instantly respawn and try again. 	Pretty much non-existant. Cube of meat sets out to save a girl made of bandages from a fetus in a suit.Story is pretty unimportant in this genre of game, and it's good that the game is focused on great gameplay rather than being story driven.As a footnote, I fucking loved this game throughout. I tried to nitpick at the things I thought it could do better at, but it's pretty amazing.
Super Smash Bros. Melee 	Absolutely horrible controls.The physics can sometimes feel a bit weighty, and you will notice it.dumbed down controls that allow for button mashing, making it accessible to both casual and retarded players. 	Fucking horrible 	Mediocre, desinged to entertain children 	Rehashed music from other Nintendo games, next to no original music. Hearing characters voice clips over and over can be annoying. 	Unlocking more than half of the characters can feel like a chore. 	The story is pretty much non-existent, essentially, all of the characters you play as are simply trophies come to life, and start beating the crap out of each other. That's pretty much it.
Sword of the Stars 	Nice selection of races and each of them plays incredibly differentlyTech tree randomisation adds replayability and forces you to adaptTurn based management and realtime battles are subjectively more enjoyable than full turn based gameplayRandom ecounters add life to the universe and keep you on your toesRelatively simple to understand but can be daunting for newcomersCamera control is a little wacky and takes some getting used to. I even played with one guy who though the camera was supposed to be fixedLots and lots of customisation, right down to the sections of your ships and what weapons go on them and where they go. 	Incredibly streamlined. You can tell a lot of work has been done to it.Simply put, it works.Information is displayed nicely when you need itQuite a few different menus, my favourite being the free moving tech tree. 	Incredibly uglyGraphics are pretty datedArt design is deviant art tier. Whoever did it should be shotGalaxy map does look nice though as it remains quite simple and isn't overloaded with information 	God awful voice acting that surprisingly grows on you after a whileMusic is forgetable 	Games generally have an early game, mid game and late gameGame is fantastic up until late game where you have either lost already or you stomp enemy planets by the bucket load 	As a 4x game there isn't really any storyThere is lots and lots of lore that can be accessed through various menus or game elementsThe lore is decent and detailed but the races are pretty average as they just seem to be different kinds of animals in space.
Syndicate 	The gameplay is bland. That's really the only word for it -- it does literally nothing exciting. Even the Dart chip falls flat on its face. 	User interfaces? You want a non-cluttered user interface? Good one. 	Visuals are... decent, I guess. Textures could use some work. 	WUB WUB WUB WUB WUUUBBBBB SKRILLEX SO KOOL 	You played Doom? Like that, but not as fun. 	You were with the bad guys all along. Shocker, I know.So glad I didn't pay money for this piece of shit.
Team Fortress 2 	When you have a good team, it's some of the best fun you can have. When you don't, it can be a little taxing. People who don't think the entire game is balanced and perfect as hell are probably just people that got dominated too many times. 	Normal FPS interface in the long run. There's so many custom HUDs though that you can pick and mix with whatever you want. 	Fantastic cartoony graphics that fit the game perfectly. Some of the hats are pretty gaudy and I don't like seeing people wearing them, but if you don't want to see hats, you better start not minding them. 	Everything makes the noises that they should, the characters all have wonderful voices and personalities and are all very funny. 	I wouldn't exactly say that TF2 has progression in the sense that you're going somewhere if you get more points, but I guess you could call the progression as getting better at the game at large and getting the most points on your team and top scoring. 	As the game got bigger, the story became more and more nonsensical. I don't like Saxton Hale, he was created to be a mascot of the cash store and that's all he his.
Temple Run 	Easy and repetitiveHas replay value through grindingPlenty of unlockablesRandom generation causes many unfair deaths 	Not much going onThe textures look ok on the coin meter and gem multiplierNice vines texture that's not too in the way 	I looks like a low budget n64 game and has framerate issues and stuttering all the timeNothing to gorgeous going on anywhereCoins looks like wood 	It's simply thereEverything seems to be stock sound effects 	Level up magnet and hope you get itDecent at the beginning, after most everything is leveled there really is none 	Uh.... run?
Uncharted 2 	> third person action> shooting parts revolve around cover> good to keep moving and use hand to hand combat a lot> game has a lot of great set pieces> amazing dynamic levels like one where you are jumping from car to car or running across a collapsing bridge 	> no health bar> instead there is that bullshit blood on the screen and the game turns gray when you are close to death> fuck that shit, just give me a health bar> left and right d-pad switch between weapons 	> amazing visuals> plentiful amount of vibrant colors> not just gray like you see today 	> nothing special about the audio> solid gun sounds 	> not much progression> just the typical 8 hour play time> nothing to upgrade or anything> treasures you can collect> get bonus characters on second playthough and can load any gun to your character 	> good story> written to be similar to indiana jones film, yes this is a good thing> lots of characters> love triangle is cliche
Vanquish 	Cover based third person shooter that manages to be fast paced. Boosting mechanic and bullet time mechanics make it a pleasure to quickly move from one piece of cover to the next. Boss fights are usually pretty fun, and the QTE's never manage to get on my nerves. Weapon variety is good, although you'll find yourself relying on a standard trio of weapons pretty quickly. 	Good. Only thing I can complain about is that it can be a bit hard to see what kind of grenade you're going to be throwing when you're in the heat of battle. 	I love the art style, and I think that game looks fantastic. The shiny, white environments just look great. 	Decent. The guns sound like guns, and the music didn't really leave an impression on me. Neither good, nor bad. 	Nice difficulty curve. Starts out pretty easy for the most part, and some of the later battles ramp it up a bit. 	Silly and enjoyable. It's the best story ever written, but it's far from the worst.Has some flaws that understandably stop it from being a masterpiece, but it's definitely one of my favourite games from this generation.
Warhammer 40,000 Dawn Of War 	Pretty good, I always wanted a squad-based RTS and I never thought one existed until I played Soulstorm, but this review is'nt about that game, Playing as a Space Marine then playing as a Ork is a refreshing experience even though most factions at its core feel samey, and there is too little factions(I'm aware of the expancions as I mentioned I've played Soulstorm before) and the game was very short(I mean the entire campaign is just 1/4th of warcraft 3's campaign. 	Standart RTS interface nothing special. 	The visuals are great specially since this is a 2001 game, watching guardsmen being multilated by Orks were never so impressive(DoW2 does'nt run on my computer). 	The music is pretty much your usual “epic” orchestra that it is good but sometimes forgetable, since I only remember one music from the entire game and it is only a part of it. 	(not specified in original re/v/iew) 	Decent, not great, not bad, and since the game was too short and ended in a cliffhanger makes me kind of disapointed but with a “I want more” taste in your mouth to see what happens in the end.Overall a good game, if you are a RTS fan or a WH40K fan you should look into it.
Warhammer 40k Space Marine(unfinished re/v/iew) 	>SPESS MAHREENSpace Marine is an ultra-realistic third-person elevator simulator in which you take the role of Captain Titus, of the Ultramarines chapter of the genetically enhanced super soldiers known as the Space Marines! You and your two squad mates Helmet and Old Guy expertly navigate through Ork infested hallways using combinations of left click (for far away enemies) and right click (for sticking those up close orkies like porkies). Seeing as that you are a genetically altered battle tank of a man, nothing really poses much of a threat to you, so you can basically kill things at your leisure, however if something is really slapping your shit for whatever reason, you can just holla at your dead grandpa who will come through with a health and damage boost (and an ice cream cone before dinner). There is no cover system because cover is for the weak, and if there is anything this game is good for, its making you not feel weak. It makes you feel strong. Probably too strong, unless you're playing multiplayer against someone with a Lazcannon, then you feel like you are a naked little boy with a pea shooter. 	Pretty minimal. You get a little aquilla thing with a skull in it. You'll be seeing a lot of skulls by the way. Like a LOT of skulls. In fact, you can tell how serious the hallway you're navigating through is just by the number of skulls that are on the screen at any given time, and you better be paying good fucking attention when a skull talks to you because that is some serious shit. When your Skull thing on your screen is full you can enter skull fuck mode, where things just get even easier to kill. Wont make riding those elevators any easier, though. Don't think for a fucking second that this game gives you any shortcuts around those elevators. 	(not specified in original re/v/iew) 	(not specified in original re/v/iew) 	(not specified in original re/v/iew) 	(not specified in original re/v/iew)
Wario Land: Shake It! 	Overall, pretty fun. Some solid platforming and, if you choose to find optional treasure, puzzle solving. Each level has missions, hidden treasures, and stuff. If you just complete stages, though, the game feels bare, but if you go for every mission and hidden treasure it can be rage inducing, especially considering a lot of the missions are things like "don't take any damage." So you can fuck up once and have to do the whole thing over. Boss fights are pretty creative and fun, although regular enemies are usually completely harmless and serve more to solve puzzles than get in your way. 	Controls kind of bugged me. As the name implies, you do a lot of things by shaking bags of coins or enemies to get stuff. Normally I don't mind Wii motion controls, but when they're this pointless and tedious it really makes it more annoying, especially when you have to replay a level several times. Other things like vehicles that are motion controlled work fine, however. 	Great hand-drawn animations and background. Really liked the style, and pretty minimal in reuse of backgrounds (although enemies get recycled a lot). 	Fucking fantastic. Every stage has nice, catchy music, which is remixed when you escape from the level, and its different for every level. 	The game just lets you "buy" access to the next level, so it eases up on the games linearity by letting you tackle stages out of order. Also, when you beat the game there'll probably be like 10 hidden stages you completely missed. 	Wario wants money. What more do you need?
World of Warcraft 	Here we fucking go. World of Warcraft has the obligatory point and click, hotkeys, and global cooldown style of gameplay, with quest hubs, dungeons, talent points, and all the gear you and your guild mates can possibly fucking fathom. So basically its the same as nearly every other MMO released since EQ2. There is really not much to say here aside from the fact that unlike most other MMOs that use these similar mechanics, they are very well done.All the animations, skills, and cooldowns feel fluid and smooth, and combat can end up being really fast paced and engaging, especially in PVP, even if you are just hitting 1, 2, 3, and occasionally 4. The gameplay has been getting more and more "Dyanamic" over the last few expansions that have been released. Wrath of the Lich King brought the games first "Hero Class" and with it came a complete revolution in how one considered positioning while fighting. Cataclysm, the latest expansion, brought an almost absolute skill overhaul, which added more instant cast skills, and even skills that could be cast while running. There are no more expansions after Cataclysm, so I guess thats where I'll stop talking about gameplay. 	Pretty good. Nothing revolutionary. Functional for its use. There is a main hotbar where you map all your skills to the number keys (or whatever you rebind them to), or if you're a total fucking retard you can click on your skills, just be prepared to get chewed up like the last piece of bubble yum in a 13 year old girls pencil case.Things like buffs and Debuffs are usually hard to keep track of, seeing as all you ever get is a little icon and a short animation in the top left of your sceen, but other than that there are no major issues. The UI is modifiable, and can really turn out quite nice if you know what you're doing. Little addons have the potential to make (or break) the experience of WoW, and more often than not they end up changing the game for the worse.coughgearscorecough 	World of Warcraft is obviously cartoony and lighthearted, which works well with the atmosphere. People who take the game, or just games in general, too seriously might be put off by it, but WoW has actually changed in a big way from its original aesthetic. The last expansion, Wrath of the Lich king was very dark, cold and depressing much like the actual gameplay of aforementioned expansion pack.The current iteration of the game, "Cataclysm", refreshed the old vibrant and magical pallet of the "World" part of the game. while completely eliminating any vibrance or magic the "of Warcraft" part of the game had left. That's it. There are no more expansions after Cataclysm. 	Arguably the best part of the game, the Audio (and the visuals too, I guess) are what really sunk you in to the game.Some songs might cause feelings of intense pleasure or pain depending on who is listening, but they will almost always cause nostalgia. As is the case with most MMOs, there is no voice acting, which makes quests (especially the newer ones) almost painful to follow. Sound effects are average, there could definitely be some improvements selection wise, however the ones that ARE in the game are actually pretty damn good. 	This is it. The big question when it comes to any MMO. Progression! What is the longevity of the game?Well, World of Warcraft really is a complex beast in this regard. The original World of Warcraft had almost infinite replay value. The process of going from some puny Warrior with a rusty sword and busted ass wooden shield to a fulled armored and heavily armed ass munching machine took months, even years, from start to finish.Leveling up was an experience. It required grouping, thought, and visceral response to accomplish, and basically trained you for the awesome and utterly absurd 40 man raid type dungeons when you finally hit level cap. The lower level dungeons had style, substance, and new (at the time) gameplay mechanics that actually made them worth doing outside of getting a few levels and an item that you're going to replace next week.Even if your mage was fully decked out in the finest fittings the game had to offer, you could organize PVP raids against the other faction, go treasure hunting for any of the awesome items (Orb of Transmogrification anyone?) available to you, or just sit around and get E-drunk in your capital city. However with each subsequent expansion Blizzard tried to make the game more "accessible" to a "wider audience", which ultimately lead to them fucking up their own game so hard that it was barely recognizable by its original fan base.Unfortunately, due to the fact that it once was a good game, it was now considered "Geek Chic" and people continued to play it, in spite of it feeling like trying to take an extremely long, heavy, soft, and uneventful shit with nothing to read except for the same 5 panel Archie comic over and over again. Progression in Cataclysm (now) is nothing like how it used to be in Vanilla (then), thankfully, blizzard decided to stop at Cataclysm before they could make it any worse.	It's there... if you want it... Now I can't for the life of me think of a reason why anyone would want to follow the story of World of Warcraft. The bits of lore here and there used to be cool are cool, but after the original WoW Vanilla, the 3 major story archs pretty much boiled down to an angsty elf who can't get his crush to like him is making a mess of a floating space island, then an even angsiter human hipster moves to the north pole and kills himself to become the king of the undead so he could be cool before it was cool, and finally an angry dragon reads the Twilight saga and is completely outraged that Bella ends up with Edward so he forms a cult and rips the entire earth a new one. I guess he goes on to destroy the entire planet because THAT IS WHERE THE WORLD OF WARCRAFT STOPS COMPLETELY AND DOES NOT CONTINUE EVER.World of Warcaft was a good game, and it has a lot of life long fans because of it. However, having played it for years, I can only compare it to watching a childhood best friend slowly grow up to be a drunk, drugged up, douchebag. And you do nothing but sit there and give him a month to finance his little binges. You know its killing him, but you just can't say no to your best bud. Occasionally he'll come over and steal 60 of your dollars in addition to the normal 15, spend on some crazy ass new drug he found out about on the internet until finally, you find him dead in your garage; overdosed on Pandas.
X-COM UFO Defense 	While it rewards careful planning, patience and tactical analysis, it is unfair sometimes. Enemies have blatant mechanical advantages over you, like longer line of sight at night, being already positioned at the start of a mission and having auto-shots for reaction firing, though most of those advantages are there to balance the, while great, not perfect AI.As for the Geoscape, base management and researching is fun, and while the research trees are certainly complex, they are not overwhelming. There's always something new to research, and always a new fun weapon, armor or vehicle for your soldiers to use. 	A bit clusterfucky, sure. Most players will not use half of the buttons in the battlescape UI. As for the Geoscape UI, nothing wrong with it. 	Great art direction. Enemies are well designed and certainly iconic, with the 90's comic art style giving it plenty of charm. Even being 20 years old, there are few people that will dismiss the game as looking 'ugly'. 	Great Geoscape music and memorable sound effects, though it's easy to get tired of the battlescape 'music'. To their defense, it does help with suspense, which is a big part of the game. 	Difficulty curve is inverted, but in a good way. The beginning of the game is brutal, as your technology and weaponry doesn't match the alien's. As you continue to progress, there's a good sense of satisfaction from finally turning the tide of the war, invading their bases and developing new technologies. New types of enemies introduced through the game make sure that it is never easy, and that you can never relax too much. 	'Aliens have invaded, take them out of our planet!'It's simple, but it works with the rest of the game. Alien research and autopsies reveal interesting lore and backstory, suggesting that the developers put a lot of thought into the alien races, but that only players interested in such things need to read ita. I like this way of thinking.
Ys: The Oath In Felghana 	Simple controls and gameplay, but really hardcore. Unlike many ARPGs this is really fast paced and you won't stop moving, hacking n slashing and using magic abilities. The boss fights take the cake here, they require you to stay on your toes and demand 100% of your attention, and since you can't heal during bosses EVERY MISTAKE COUNTS. There are multiple difficulties but even Easy mode can kick your ass. 	Simple, you get a lifebar and numbers to show your health. There's a bar that shows your MP, another that shows your boost, the combo counter and some bars to show the stat bonuses you may have aquired and how much of it remains. 	Being a 2005 game, it's really dated but passable. 2D sprites for characters, 3D models for giant bosses and maps. Fortunately there aren't many issues with depth perception so the graphics do its work just fine. 	No voice acting. The sound effects and music are excellent, really high quality and the OST is just magnificent. 	The difficulty curve may be a bit steep. Since the game expects you to have the latest gear and the right level for each dungeon you may find yourself dying at the start of every dungeon but if you are careful at take care of having the latest gear you may not find this so hard. There is no character customization either so it's a cycle of 'beat boss -> get new gear -> go to dungeon -> find new gear -> repeat'. 	Being a remake of an old ass game, the story is your typical 'monsters are invading and there's an evil force at work, please save us'. However, the dialogue is really well written and flows so naturally that you may find yourself inmersed and there are a couple of plot-twists here and there that might raise your eyebrow
Zelda(, The Legend of): Link's Awakening 	Top down perspective, decent controlsPerfect balance and difficulty of overworld and dungeonLater items rarely get usedInability to warp to certain areas can get annoying 	Having only 2 items can be quite cumbersomeTrying to save on the 3DS version is ridiculously annoyingEasily manageable menu 	Good for a Gameboy (Color) gameDX version gives a welcomed addition of color 	Music is surprisingly good, very catchyNo voice acting but it is not needed 	9 dungeons, bonus dungeon in the DX version, difficulty picks up at the endOnly 1, annoyingly long, sidequest that isn't really a sidequest because you need the last item to get through the last dungeonTons of secrets 	Main story is a little thinMotives behind the villain is told through pre-boss speechesBittersweet endingSuper secret ending if you don't die at all
Category:Reviews