Duderoth

I've tried and tried to get interested in Diablo and Diablo II after hearing so much about them for so much of my life, but I've picked up each about 5 times and both has simply failed to hook me. The thing about Diablo and Diablo-styled games is that they are grindy and tedious. You spend the entirety of the games wandering around drab levels slaughtering wave after wave of enemy (i.e. spamming your mouse buttons) with egregiously sparse story interlaced. I'm sorry, but it's just not enough to hold my interest for more than a dozen hours.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Oh God, am I actually writing a review for this game? I would never be able to do it justice, unfortunately. This is undoubtedly one of the coolest game of all time. Of. All. Time. One of the best qualities this game has it shares with Half-Life 2. That is, the fact that the entirety of the game is an adrenaline rush. From beginning to end (if you play on the hardest difficulty :D) you are filled with either exhilaration or vertigo. I would never have conceived of doing a parkour platformer in first person, yet here we are. (Although everybody else was already here since, once again, I am years late in my review :) ) And EA Dice did an incredible job at it. The graphical style is clean, colorful, and easy to navigate visually. The control mechanics are fluid on PC (something that never seems to be true with a console port). And the story is good, while the voice acting is top notch. ( I also loved the cutscenes with their slight anime/graphic novel style). Every month or so I keep coming back to this game, remembering and reliving it with delight.

I'm sorry I just don't get it. I don't understand how anybody could like this game better than ME1. I guess the visual style was sleeker? People thought the controls and fighting mechanics were better? Here's what I've come to realize. Mass Effect was a great RPG, with some action/3PS (3rd person shooter?) elements mixed in. Mass Effect 2, was an action game at heart, with some pretty shoddy RPG elements. Gone are the multiple tiers and classes of armor, with corresponding types and tiers of upgrades. Gone is any tactical setup of your squad for combat. Just spam all of the abilities you can at the enemy. Gone is a much more detailed and better implemented leveling point system. And gone is planetary exploring, which I think would have been cooler if they fleshed it out instead of getting rid of it entirely. People say the combat in ME2 was better. Not to me. I read all the codex. What they had implemented in 1 made sense with the lore. Didn't like overheating? Too bad, get a *better weapon* or *better upgrades*. Jesus it's called customizability. That's what an RPG is all about. There were some *really* cool things they implemented in 2, however. So here is the good part of the review. Just the plain fact that you could actually continue a character on from 1 was amazing to me. However, I thought ME2's characters were better than 1's anyway, so I'm glad you got to work with an almost entirely new cast. (Although they kept my favorite Quarian :D.) Planet scanning was also way better than that side quest to find minerals from ME1, and I appreciated that you could actually integrate resources you find into your ship and customizing your character. Although once again, I would appreciate more options. Finally, there were things I thought were better and worse about the story. I really liked the loyalty missions, but I think it would have been better to have a central questline instead of making the loyalty missions the central component of the game. The problem here was that the story lacked focus, as there was literally no plot up until the end when you finally did the suicide mission (which was awesome!!!) ME1, by comparison, had an extremely focused central questline, but lacked in detailing the side characters perhaps a little bit more. So that's pretty much it for this review. Overall, I think what really got to me was that they took what was supposed to be an RPG series and kinda did away with all that. I didn't appreciate that very much. But since I am all about story, I will say that Mass Effect continues to have a strong story and character design, just perhaps not at the same time. I am still looking forward to ME3.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

If you compared Skyrim to any game, you could label it as fantastic. If you compared it to its predecessor, Oblivion, you might as well label it the be-all-to-end-all. I've been playing for months now and I just can't stop coming back. The quests, graphics, gameplay, and character gen are so much improved over Oblivion it still makes me a bit giddy when I step back and take it all in. Now that I've mentioned character gen, here is one thing I cannot stand. I cannot stand people who say this game is generic and classless!!! That is completely unfair. Skyrim has probably the best class creation system I have ever seen in a game. The way it functions? Your class is created as you play, instead of predetermining a class at the beginning of the game. Simple. Elegant. Genius. In fact it's so much so that the way previous TES games did class creation seems ridiculous to me now (although I still enjoy the crap out of Morrowind). If you read my Oblivion review, you'd know another one of my gripes with that game was how bland the world proper was. Not so in Skyrim. Back again is the feeling Morrowind had where every dungeon was carefully considered and designed, and the locale themes are fluid, sensible and beautiful. Continuing on with dungeons, I have never seen a world map so utterly packed with dungeons and locales to visit. There is an insane amount of dungeons and I have enjoyed every one I stepped in (I think about 100 at this point.) Bethesda has also continued their tradition (except for Oblivion's main quest) of outstanding quest writing. Although the faction quests in Skyrim are quite short, as is the main quest, they are all very interesting, and very cool, and add a lot to TES lore. They added some really subtle details here and there that really contributed to the immersion of the faction quests as well. So if this game is so perfect, why a 9? Well the UI for PC isn't as good as it could have been. It's definitely manageable and I have grown accustomed to it, but it could have been better. I'm also taking off a little for some of the questlines being a *bit* too short and some very weird texture bugs I have run across. Overall, however, this is a stunning and gorgeous game with fun, fun, fun gameplay, great characters and an epic story to be had. Well done, Bethesda, well done. (Especially after that **** Oblivion, sorry but I just can't let it go.)

This game has its share of disappointments, but overall I think Star Wars: The Old Republic is an extraordinarily strong foundation to be built upon. After taking a 3-week break for midterm exams, I finally finished my Bounty Hunter's story line, and I feel I have experienced enough of the game to write a realistic review (although I can't really discuss PVP if that's what you're into, since my computer isn't good enough to handle it). That point actually brings my to my first gripe in that I think Bioware hyped the low graphics requirements, as compared to WoW, a little too much. This game barely works on my computer. I can do flashpoints but that's about the extent to which I can go. Other than that there are fairly frequent graphics bugs to be encountered, as well as some gameplay glitches that are in a very speedy ironing-out process at the moment. That at least is appreciated. Now that I've got my bigger gripes out of the way, let me just state this point-blank. I love this game. It is fantastic. Looking past the bugs, if you are a gamer who appreciates good story, good character development, and a fleshed-out world, this game delivers like no other ever has. It scratched both my open-world Bethesda and my MMO itches simultaneously. How did it do this? This game, if you are into PVE stuff, is essentially 8 single-player games with streamlined and infused multiplayer functionality. You can go through all you adventures solo easily if you want to, and have a great time doing it. Or at any point you can group up with people for questing, flashpoints, PvP, you name it. Bioware has also taken a lot of the grind out of the MMO experience. I felt like I was playing for the story, and that I actually cared about the questing between the beginning and level cap, instead of racing to get to 85 as I have done so often in WoW. Crafting is also much more fun, and much faster than WoW's. Again, very much appreciated. Once you do finish the main questline, however, there isn't yet a whole lot to do, but Bioware is working on that and what they do have in terms of endgame PVE material is at least solid. Overall, what I just can't get over is how much more mature the stories feel in this game compared to, in fact, *any* of the Star Wars movies. So that said, if you are interested in a incredibly well fleshed-out Star Wars adventure and story experience with MMO integration, than I cannot recommend this game highly enough. For those of you who are just interested in PvPing and racing your way to the end, perhaps not so much. I do feel this game is better than the 5.8 it currently has however, it just might not be for everybody.

WoW: Cataclysm is hard to rate, and really it should be divided into two separate games. One is the new 1-60 content, and the other is the end-game. I would give 1-60 an 8 and the endgame a 4 so they average to 6. Now obviously, if we make comparisons, since all reviews are a form of comparison, the closest thing we can compare Cataclysm to is Wrath of the Lich King, which I thought was a tremendous expansion and I gave an 8. I know WotLK's content endgame was pretty easy (well, very easy), but that wasn't why I like it. WotLK's endgame dungeons had some very interesting environments, dungeons and lore. Lore. That is what is really missing with Cataclysm. You feel with endgame that you are simply going through the motions. There's nothing really unique or significant with design, architecture, or anything else. The gameplay is almost exactly the same as the previous expansion, with the exception that they put crowd control back in, and has been essentially the same throughout the series, so how do I rate the game on that aspect? It really is the world-building, the quests, and what you're hero accomplishes in his adventures against the Lich King, the Old Gods, and the Burning Legion that makes WoW entertaining, and I feel that Cataclysm ultimately failed to deliver the sense that you're character's actions have any sort of impact with endgame so far. There's just no depth to it. That said, I would spend all my time with Cata leveling from 1 to 60, because the new quest areas for new characters *were* developed with a sense of impact and interest, and some of the quests you just cannot miss (Badlands). So there's my summation. I don't know how helpful it will be if at all.

Morrowind is such a strange, backwards experience. Most games start out flashy, and then after a while you realize how boring it really is. Morrowind is sort of the opposite. You start in the ugliest, dingiest town in the game, and it builds its way up from there. You don't really know what you're supposed to be doing when you start out--the main quest isn't even really revealed til later--so the game motivates you to try different things and go exploring. But boy when that main quest line starts revealing itself, it is one epic tale, and it would have made as great a novel as it does a game. The sheer attention to detail in this is mind-blowing. Every area of the game feels hand-crafted, with hidden areas to explore; items, weapons and armor to collect; all sorts of enemies to test your power against; a story full of religion, politics, and conflict; and an extremely complex and rich society. It doesn't hurt that you can explore every region of the map at any point (you just might not live through the encounters you face) and uncover some very strange and exotic locales. And on that note, it's hard to have strong diversity in a game and still keep it feeling like a uniform and unique region all on its own. Once again this game succeeds, with desolation, swamp, coastline, open pastures and the like. The only criticism I have for this game is the combat. I personally do not mind the by-the-numbers real-time combat, where a low skill means you might miss, but I think transitions between melee/ranged and magic could have been better. I also would have appreciated a reason not to simply click the "best attack" button on options, and in this respect I think Daggerfall had better combat. Overall however, Morrowind is classic. Anybody who has the patience for reading a great novel would love this game, as it winds up being a game of epic proportions.

In my opinion, Overlord is one of the funniest games out there to this day. The controls are a bit wonky at first, but it doesn't take long to get used to them, and that is the only complaint I can think of off the top of my head. On top of that, this game has superb writing and an excellent plot, which takes your character through each of the seven deadly sins. Each of the environments you play through is greatly unique, with its own additional unique set of characters. What's really odd about this game, is that it is a complete satire on the stereotypical fantasy game, and as such uses about as many stereotypes for its various characters as possible. But in the end, Overlord stands out as an extremely unique game, and a superbly unique fantasy. It is amazing how it can do both at the same time. Overall, I greatly enjoyed this game, and it was well worth the $20.00 I bought it with from steam a couple years back. (It's probably much cheaper now.) To this day, it's still greatly enjoyable.

Myst III is a wonderful game, and extremely true to the series' puzzle game mechanic. As usual, fairly descent acting from Rand Miller as Atrus, and a surprise in Brad Dourif (who played Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings) as the exile. I won't get into too much detail, since whatever in this game isn't story is plot, but you will once again find yourself solving all sorts of puzzles involving light, kinematics, power and energy, and a paradise. The only real complaint I have is that the 360 degree camera is a little disconcerting at first, especially after the immobile camera of Myst and Riven: The Sequel to Myst. But you get used to it pretty fast and I soon appreciated the full range of motion it gives. By the way, I think the entire Myst series is very underrated and extremely under-played. I would definitely recommend the entire series to any casual puzzle gamer.

It's a shame to see so many reviewers up in arms about a cosmetic addition to the game. But to be honest, I think it's equally shameful for many reviewers to just throw out a "This game was perfect," even for the purpose of counterracting the negative reviews. Let's be realistic. Alright yes, there was DLC on day 1, but some of it is unlockable in-game anyway, and the saved game message might not have been patched due to release issues with Sony and Microsoft. I can easily overlook these, but the game was not perfect by any means either. There are some definite gripes to be had, but I think everybody, both yea- and nay-sayers just needs to calm down and look at this for its qualities as a game. The campaign was pretty short; I believe I clocked in at about 5-6 hours. The co-op campaign, which I have not finished yet but am a decent way through, adds a significant amount of time to this. An 8-10 hour game (including co-op) is perfectly reasonable, in my opinion. The single-player is more about the characters and the story, while the co-op focuses on some pretty intuitive puzzle solving, and in the end I think it balances well. I think my biggest personal complaint, though, was the sheer amount of loading screens. I think I saw about 50-60 loading screens in the game. It seriously cuts down on game immersion if every 3 minutes you have to stare at black screen and wait for the next section of game to pop up, and it gets very tedious. But, to be honest, I can easily overlook that issue too, because there were several things this game did absolutely wonderfully. First off, all the dialogue was exceptional, as was the voice acting. All of the robotic characters were perfectly believable, and JK Simmons' work as Cave Johnson was phenomenal. The off-kilter humor from the first Portal was still there as well, though it seems that some people didn't particularly care for that, either this time around. To me, that morbid sense of humor is what makes Portal Portal. Another plus but also another gripe, I did enjoy all the new gameplay mechanics, but I think they could have fleshed them out a little bit more, through more puzzles. And they left out the pneumatic diversity vents, which I thought was disappointing. Overall, this game was not perfect, but I don't think it really deserves such a strong negative reception. Some of the gripes were legitimate, like the single-player being a bit too short, or perhaps some of the puzzles being too easy. But complaints about the DLC and loading screens are just petty. Look at this game for the qualities of the actual game. I personally think Portal 2 definitely lived up to the precedent set by the first one. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I just hope that others will still be able to as well.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I just replayed Half-Life 2 again about a month ago. Even in 2011, seven years after its initial release, I am still reminded why Half-Life 2 is one of the greatest first-person shooters of all time. Not the greatest, but definitely one of them. I think the greatest strength in Half-Life 2 (gameplay-wise) is the level design. Over the course of I believe 14 levels, you see an incredible variation in locale, level structure, lighting, and gameplay. This is complimented by such a flux in mood, intensity, and immersion that you can't help but to just be enthralled by it. For instance, the entire first 3 chapters of the game is a slow build-up to an intense climax. You start as a fugitive, running across the rooftops of City 17 to escape the Combine Overwatch. You are allowed to take a short, 10-minute breather in a safe-haven, then thrust back into the bowels of the city's sewer system, and finally driving your own airboat through the canals. It's such a gradual build you hardly notice it, until you reach the end of the climax, discover you've been holding your breath for the past 30 seconds, and that you've been maintaining a white-knuckled grip on your mouse this whole time. And that's the first 3 chapters. After this you are treated to some incredibly creepy locations, and some more intense escapes/shootouts. All the atmosphere is enhanced with some pretty incredible performances both animation- and voice-acting-wise, even if you consider that this is 2011. And wow, the voice acting. These are some of the most incredible video game characters to this date. Immensely believable, highly emotional, subtly expressive, the characters help **** you right into the story and world that Valve created, and you could almost be fooled into thinking they are actually talking to you... Oh and that reminds me, the story. Okay, so it's not laid out for you word-for-word what's going on, or what relevance all these characters have in terms of the story from the instance you set foot into the game. I have read a lot of reviews and seen a lot of complaints. Yes, Valve did not flesh it out in its entirety in the first chapter. No, you pretty much don't have a clue what kind of influence the combine and the G-Man are right from the word go. But to be honest, I don't care. When it comes to story-telling, I personally enjoy the opportunity to discover the story for myself, and not just have it told to me if I were a five-year-old. There are some pretty subtle hints laying around concerning backstory, main storyline, and intertwining character plots. If you look for them, you'll find that this is actually some interesting sci-fi, more driven by characters (which it should be) than by what's necessary to pluck a plot twist out of your ass. So overall, the story ended up being a plus in my opinion. Other than that, the graphics are still good, though a bit dated, physics are awesome, and the gravity gun continues to be the best weapon in the history of gaming, Go Valve! Now I just can't wait until my Portal 2 pre-load finishes...

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]