BeatYourHeadIn

FTL is a unique blend. It's action. It's strategy. It's roguelike. It's casual. However, none of those over-arching titles actually capture FTL's vibe. Perhaps "Jean-Luc Picard Flees the Borg Simulator" best gets the point across. The strength of this seemingly simple game is its surprising level of depth. As a playthrough progresses, you have full control over the customization of the ship's various systems and upgrades. You're not likely to max out every category (or even a couple, for that matter), so you'll have to customize the ship around your play-style and your play-style around the RNGesus loot generator in order to see success. Diplomacy is non-existent. Talking one's way out of a dispute rarely an option, so arm the photon torpedoes and report to battle stations! FTL does cater to different play-styles: one could focus on offensive abilities or defensive abilities. Thankfully, the game is deep in terms of customization, resulting in branching upgrade paths for both offence and defense. For example, one may choose to focus on dodge instead of shielding, or boarding parties instead of heavy weaponry. The choice is yours... sort-of. Allow me to elaborate. First, acknowledge that it is unwise to start a new game of FTL with a certain strategy in mind, and then command your ship with upgrade tunnel vision. The game is based around entirely random encounters; adaptation is a virtue. To all those who like to plan ahead, this game flips you the bird! Sure you can have an overall goal in mind, but the game is random: you get what you get. Work with what you can scrounge up and/or to die trying! Commanding the crew RTS-style works great! Crew members gain proficiencies in various ship-stations and tasks over time. Different alien species bring different bonuses as crew, which adds a layer of depth to starship customization. Crew mortality serves to heighten the level of tension in battles, and even post-battle in some cases. You could win a battle, but if your life support systems were knocked out, you could lose crew members if you can't repair the O2 generator in time. It can feel like a heartbreaking loss when you lose say a Tier 2 Weapons Specialist. A few quirks and negative points are to be found in FTL. Crew members seem like "crew statues": they aren't affected by ferocious blasts or **** hull breaches. No... no one can get **** into space in this game, not even enemy boarding parties. Disappointing, I know, for all you Among Us fans out there! Also, enemy ships with higher levels of shielding can be VERY difficult to defeat without shield piercing weapons or boarding parties. Losing is FUN, or so I'm told... Ultimately, despite the procedural generation of every new start, replay-ability in FTL is fairly limited. It is a casual game, and it is best to play it in casual doses. Great if you have a little time to kill: 20 minutes here, half hour there. However, I found my interest in FTL easily burns out during hour long or longer sessions. The game's unscripted charm is the main draw. You tell your own stories, the game just makes sure the endings are abrupt and filled with explosions. Experience your own journeys, filled with adversity, strife, sorrow, and success... mainly adversity, strife and sorrow. It is these player-driven stories that will keep you coming back for more Jean-Luc Picard-ing around. Make it so, Number 1!

I like it when games dare to be different. I liked Penumbra, and I liked Amnesia even more; those games struck a nice balance with atmosphere and gameplay while being different from almost everything I had played before. Dear Esther, however, offers no such balance since it abandoned any semblance of gameplay altogether. It's been said here by other reviewers and I'll say it again, just to reinforce the notion: there is no interactivity to speak of and no real gameplay whatsoever. There are no meaningful choices to make, no consequences, no inventory to manage, no characters to interact with, no enemies to defeat or evade, no objectives to complete; you can't even control when your flashlight turns on and off (this feature is automanaged for you as you enter and leave unlit areas). It is a game that dared to be so different that it actually stopped being a game. I know what you're thinking: "BeatYourHeadIn, what do you expect from a title that hails from the 'games as art' genre? Certainly you weren't hoping a shotgun was a necessary plot element?" Good point readers, and fair enough, I have certainly been conditioned enough by multiple decades of shooters that I feel an... emptiness... when I can't simply apply liberal amounts of buckshot shampoo to *ahem* clean the obstructions from my first person journies. What I do expect from a game is a little bit of gameplay; just a teensy weensy bit. No? Nothing??? Sheesh, we should probably rename the "games as art" genre to "art as games" since that simple rearrangement says volumes more about what it's actually like to experience Dear Esther. Dear Esther is not really a game after all, rather more of a landscape simulator that is best enjoyed by plugging your video output into a digital picture frame hung on your living room wall. Moving on, I don't want to obsess over what Dear Esther IS NOT this whole review, so I will talk about what it IS. As others here have pointed out, it is simply a different way of telling a story... a visual metaphor, if you will. In my opinion, it is an unsuccessful way of telling a story, and I wont be paying for any other "games" that may appear in this "genre". As a game, story, movie, Bob Ross painting, whatever, it was dull and un-entertaining. Un-fun, that's a good word; Dear Esther is un-fun. There are just enough good points to squeak a single positive sentence into this review of Dear Esther: the soundtrack is quite good, and the visuals are nice to look at (especially in the caves chapter); I will award a couple points for those qualities, even though I want to give it a flat zero. I'll award one more point to the fact that the developers had the balls think outside of the box... in fact, they stepped right out of the box, picked it up, folded it, put it in the recycle bin, went to the nearest Blockbuster Video and rented What Dreams May Come. So that's it, a generous 3 out of 10.

Every Chad out there needs to drop the CoD and join the SQUAD, ASAP! Y, Beat!? Glad you asked, dear readers! SQ (if I may) ranks among the top 5 milsims of all time. Earning a place among the greats, it can stand with square chin thrusting alongside thick-necked America’s Army and powerhouse ARMA. It feels like the true successor to AA, being everything the languid America’s Army: Proving Grounds should have been. Wha’dis game ‘bout, Beat? A lack of lore provides limited context, but it’s safe to say it’s about World War 3. U sure, Beat? Canada is a playable faction. Readers, you know World Peace got flushed down the p-trap when even Canadians pick up rifles to pick off Americans. But there’s plenty SQaction to get excited about. First, a word from Drill SGT HeadIn: All you new recruits, listen up! When you first launch SQ, you will not browse servers! Instead, haul your cherry-new behind to Basic where your will WILL be broken! You will be SHOT AT in the live-fire obstacle course! You will be SHOT in the live-fire obstacle course! You will bandage your own gunshot wounds from the live-fire obstacle course! You will no longer be flummoxed by the phrase “killed in a training exercise!” Then, since a jarhead is most serene while shooting, you will be calmly coached at the rifle range. Then! Since a jarhead is most annoyed when bullets are in boxes and not in bodies, you will be harangued while hauling ammo during Logistics Training! You will shoot-n-scoot against 6 Guantanamo guests flown in especially for your educational benefit! If you’re still alive after they’re dead, you will deploy C4 that will both destroy their base and install the mass grave needed for cleaning up! Get that shovel to work! Dismissed, Sergeant! Readers, JAG is willing to ignore that little killing spree, Genevashmemeva; just sign your soul away on the dotted line. Congrats, all ur life r belong to SQ now. But fear not: SQlife is good! SQ is rooted in a Battlefield mod, Project Reality, and deposits in the design room dustbin the standard BF formula that has been copypasta ad nauseam into shooters innumerable. There is a fresh take on many aspects of SQ’s structure. The Nice List starts with pacing. The flow of that tutorial, from intense to slow then redlining at genocidal, is a microcosm of SQ’s typical pace: a frantic rush to build forward bases yielding to a lull, until enemy contact climaxes in an orgy of faithfully simulated gun-violence—a horrific chopper crash or three thrown in for good measure—cycling through it all again for the next objective. These vacillations are the result of large 50v50 teams creeping forward from one victory to the next on maps whose sizes average an order of magnitude larger than the thiccest Battlefield maps. This flow is maintained by the server if the population drops too low to support sensible play on full-size maps: the game-mode (aka Layer) for the next map in rotation changes to Skirmish, a layer that offers a slice of SQlife and features BF-sized cutouts of maps and adjusted rules. This server-side magic tends encourage the remaining players to stick around and not simply bail in search of bloodier bloodbaths. The innovation continues with Fog of War. Special love given to FoW results in interesting effects on multiple systems: 1) Foggy Tickets: the BF-birthed Tickets are here, with a distinction: FoW prevents you from knowing how many the enemy team has left. This ignorance kicks the endgame ferocity up to utterly insane levels of tension. You don’t GG or qq on 3 tickets; you fight to the last man! For all you know, 3 tickets is the margin of victory. Sit back on your 100 Ticket laurels? OPFOR might be leading by twice that amount. Objective captures provide morale-boosting batches of bonus tickets typically needed after costly offensives. BlackHawkDown-esque preciousness is bestowed on blue lives and adds a strategic imperative to the medic class, who prevent ticket decay by reviving fallen mates while preaching salvation for lost souls in voicechat like an Army Ranger in Mogadishu. Thus do SQ’s faithful healers embody the sacred medic motto: Smoke Grenades and Semper Fidelis. 2) Foggy Flags: several Layers feature randomized OBJ hidden from one or both teams. In Destruction and Invasion, only the defenders know the layout of the OBJs—information the attackers have to pry from cold dead hands—and have bonus time before the match to prepare defenses accordingly. In Random Advance and Secure (RAAS) the flag lattice... (link removed per site policy)

This game is a triumph. However, it is not a game for children or pre-teens; parents you've been warned. It is a seething, brooding, merciless, shameless descent into a rich sci-fi backdrop of dark agendas and disastrous consequences. Imagery ranges from beautiful panoramic vistas of a sprawling outer-solar system pressurized metropolitan habitat, to grotesquely violent and spattering deaths of enemies, NPCs, and players alike. It's actually fun to die in this game just to see the gory results. This game does a good job of inventing futuristic ways to kill your character; if you can stomach the gore, the satisfyingly painful, squishy death scenes can help take some of the frustration out of having to replay an encounter. The graphics may not present many groundbreaking advanced render techniques, but they do the job well and help to create deeply immersing environments. Audio production is top notch; ambiance is moody and atmospheric, and monster noises are visceral and unnerving. The musical score is done right, and enhances the tension and thrills. While the audio environment significantly aids the game's ability to create these thrills, I found the visual appearance of the monsters themselves to be not all that scary. Maybe a lifetime of desensitization by exposure to modern horror movies containing disfigured mutants and copious amounts blood-spilling and dismemberment explains my lack of fear, and as a result I am no longer able to be scared by monsters on both the silver screen and the computer screen. Don't get me wrong, the monsters look good, and the dismemberment mechanic employed as the way to dispatch them never gets old (blowing them to pieces sure is fun), but whenever I encountered a new variety of enemy, my "just kill it" mentality over-rid my "cower in fear" reaction in a nano-second. That applies to all enemies except one... end mini-boss whom you can't kill and can only slow by shooting his limbs off and running before his legs regenerate. He is visually intimidating in a spine-tingling kind of way, and and as I watched him rise like the phoenix after I thought I had killed him, he created the first and only true "f*** me! RUN!" moment of the game that I experienced... which was awesome! Also very good is the level design. The environments are, yes, entirely linear, but are varied and interesting while managing to avoid repetitiveness. They range from frantic chases and extreme escapes, to claustrophobic and plodding corridor crawls, to monster-closet arena defenses. All of them fit the thematic elements of the game. They just make sense. Actually, there is nothing that doesn't make sense about this game... except the DRM (3 installs then I have to beg EA for more? That's pathetic customer service). I didn't delve into multiplayer much, but it is there and it is similar to Left 4 Dead's versus mode, which all I can say about it. The game length is just right; not to short, not too long. I finished it in about 15 hours exploring as much as I could and, importantly, I wasn't begging for it to end like I was in other games, such as the new Deus Ex (that game seemed like it would never end). However, like all story-driven singleplayer adventures, the replayability is VERY limited. All in all, it is a very well produced and gripping single player experience, and continues laying the groundwork for a lush sci-fi universe kicked off by the original. Solid 7/10.

Im fearful of real stinker games. I dont buy ANY game at full price, but I was tempted when I saw Nuclear Dawn on a Steam daily deal for $7, a deal almost too good to pass up. I still read reviews even before buying cheap games; some the negative comments I found here almost stopped me from buying it, but I thought "on the otherhand, its so cheap, the risk of it **** royally is not an issue." I caved and bought it. Indeed, I have been plesantly surprised by the game; I wont say its the best game of the year, but I will say it is a solid FPS/RTS hybrid. I want to address some of the criticisms that almost stopped me from buying the game in the first place; I have found them to be only half true or completely false. Someone said something negative about the accuracy of the guns. I find the accuracy quite acceptable: every gun fires accurately during short controlled bursts but start to spread during full-auto, exactly how guns really behave. I don't know about you, but I like that accuracy model; it means you can still get long range head shots with a lowly SMG or pistol if you take the time to aim thru the ironsights, firing in short bursts. I just wanted to clarify that because when I read that comment about the accuracy, it gave me the impression the accuracy of the guns were like that f-ing assault rifle from Halo 1, where the first bullet in a short burst NEVER went down the middle of the crosshairs. Its not like that at all people :D I promise! There are no realistic ballistics tho: every bullet is fast as a laser and doesnt drop due to gravity. Another criticism was not being able to adjust your class until you die. Its true that you cannot open the class selection screen while alive UNTIL your commander builds an armoury (since it's a pretty important building, it wont be long until he does build it). You can then go into the armoury and use it to open the class selection screen and change your class instantly WITHOUT HAVING TO SUICIDE like in other games *cough* Battlefield *cough*. Sometimes, if your commander isnt clever enough to build an armoury near the frontlines, it means you may have to trek back to the HQ base to change classes, and you may just say f-that and suicide anyway, but I think I made my point and countered that half-true statement mentioned earlier. Someone else criticised the balance of the game, where one team can reach critical mass and completely stomps the other in a killfest slaughterhouse. It is true that this happens, but I want to make an analogy to another game to highlight that this is not a balance issue as it was suggested by that reveiwer. The game is an RTS hybrid, meaning that control of resources is crucial to winning. The analogy: consider Starcraft... say a player manages to expand to 5 bases and keeps his opponent on only 2 bases by out manouvering him and generally out playing him; that match would probably descend into a killfest slaughter of every remaining asset the 2 base player had until he surrended or died completely. I ask you: is such a killfest a balance issue!? I dont think so, Id say the other guy just got outplayed. The same logic applies to this game, and even to Battlefield or every other FPS game that revolves around controlling strategic map locations: the team that controls most of the map is more than likely to win the match. Its not a balance issue, its a legitimite game mechanic. Anyway, with proper countering tactics it is still possible to beat back a superior enemy knocking at the front door of your main base in Nuclear Dawn; not likely, granted, but it is possible. About the bugs: I did find the odd user interface bug such as the perk (or gizmo as its called in Nuclear Dawn) selection menu not closing properly sometimes, but none of that is a show-stopper in my opinion, as I encoutered similar UI bugs in both Modern Warefare and Bad Company. As for the game being full of bugs, I don't see it that way. Maybe some of you guys could post specific problems instead of a vague comment that clarifies nothing and doesnt even seem true now that Ive played the game myself. Now that Ive preached about the game enough, I want to talk about a bug that did piss me off. The bug happens when I shoot from behind certain objects: the empty air at the edge the object will stop my bullets even though my crosshairs are clear of any obstacle! It is infuriating when it happens, as I usually get killed immediately after for giving away my position without killing my target. Another complaint of mine is not being able to go prone or lean, which are basic FPS control movements that should be available in EVERY first person game. I mean, Im essentially a person in the game world, why cant I move like a person actually would? A person doesn't simply crouch when shot at... he hits the f-ing deck man! Developers please get with the program and include lean and prone control in your f-ing games Its 2012 ffs! Score: all in all, a sturdy 6 points out of 10