AxeJeebs

Survivor Squad's biggest problem is that it's basically Left 4 Dead fan-fiction. Watch out for the Spitter. Don't get caught alone by the Jumper. Survive a horde of zombies while you find controls to disable the alarm. If you really, really like the Left 4 Dead series, that might appeal to you. Or it might upset you that someone has condensed your favorite game down to a short-form Flash format. The game's second biggest problem is that it just generally lacks any real design. All the buildings are out in the middle of the world's largest concrete squares. No attempt is made to make it look like you're in a city, or a forest, or anything other than a giant parking lot. The buildings are randomly generated, but they always have predictably-sized rectangular rooms, so the experience never really changes from building to building, which totally defeats the purpose of being random. Somehow, it still feels like you're just playing the same level over and over. Briefly, I will also note that I can't decide whether the sound design or MS Paint art is worse. If you've played Teleglitch, you know that a game doesn't need music or character portraits to be atmospheric and engaging. Survivor Squad missed that memo. Finally, the game lacks any kind of real challenge. The most effective tactic is usually just parking your squad outside a building and mowing down all the zombies as they execute their single AI routine. After 30 seconds, the zombies that didn't attack you will be highlighted, so you will never be surprised from a dark corner. There is no tension. You can't even run out of ammo. Moreover, while I'm very supportive of small development groups, Survivor Squad suffers without an on-the-ball designer. You can't ask $10 for decent code wrapped in only a few hours of implementation.

Mars takes a few pages out of the KOTOR-era Bioware gamebook. Search the corners, loot conveniently-highlighted piles of rubble, get ambushed at predictable intervals, complete arbitrary collection quest, repeat. The first 3 hours of gameplay hint at a detailed backstory, but there's nowhere to learn about it; the environments aren't expressive enough to offer any clues, and none of the characters are capable of speaking english above a 6th grade proficiency. Look up the opening cutscene on YouTube, and if the very first line of dialogue gives you a headache, avoid this game, because it never gets better. That said, Mars isn't horrible; it just doesn't do anything RPGs weren't already doing in 2002.

The interface is inconvenient, the AI ****, and it's got some of the most abrasive action music I've ever had the displeasure of muting. That said, it has a few features that'll make it worth a spin once you can get it for under $15. This game is built to cater to the X-Com/Fallout 1 & 2 crowd, and it has exactly as much content as that demographic would expect from a top-down tactical strategy game, without any real innovation or clever additions.

A slick, good humored game with a lot of character; this is why we love indie developers. My only real complaint is how fast the difficulty ramps up, and the fact that you have to take a very specific route through the technology tree, which you'll only figure out after re-starting the campaign four or five times.

I feel bad leaving a harsh review for an indie developer, but Red Nation is really sub-par. All the weapon powerups are the same; the starting pistol is just as powerful as the mini-gun, which may actually be slightly inferior to the crowbar. As such, the game lacks any kind of challenge. The use of the word "zombie" is dubious at best; the bad guys use weapons, are not infectious, display the ability to work together in the cutscenes, and don't require head-trauma to die. The enemies could just as easily have been robots, plants, unicorns, or some kind of sapient tumble-weeds, given how fast the flamethrower puts them down. It would be more honest to call this a dirty-people survival game. Speaking of dirty, absolutely everything is brown, the international color-code for mediocrity. Nation Red isn't even close to being as entertaining or slick as Dead-Ops Arcade, the top-down zombie mini-game in COD: Black Ops. I dislike typing that as much as you hate reading it: a game has to be pretty lame to unfavorably compare it to an EA title.

Aside from just being a bad game (see all the other user reviews), Homefront actually starts to feel like some kind of bizarre propaganda tool within the first 5 minutes of the campaign. If some creepy midwestern militia ever published a game, it would look startlingly like this. I'm almost afraid part of the 7 bucks I paid went to some radical fringe organization.

Graphics are beautiful, but the interface is not at all intuitive or convenient. Coupled with the soft-focus light filters, this literally equals a headache. At some point, the number of things you have to pay attention to and incrementally adjust becomes so overwhelming that the game becomes a chore; how long that takes is dependent upon how much patience you have with civilization-building games. The only difference between the two main factions is aesthetic; the buildings look different, and you get yelled at by different talking heads. "Eco-balance" is just another percentage you have to manage, like power supply; the ecological management and green technologies hinted at in the trailers simply don't exist in any measurable amount. It's not a bad game, it just doesn't beat the Civilization series, Sim City 4, or even Fate of the World. In fact, Blue Byte/Ubisoft's other game in this genre, Settlers 7, is vastly superior in every aspect. Wait 'til you can get Anno for under 20 bucks.