Hackattaque

I am a big fan of the old Telltale games like Walking Dead/Tales of Borderlands and after the first chapter of Dispatch wrapped up I was fully invested and excited to see what’s next. However, by the end credits I was a little disappointed. The visuals are fantastic, the character designs are great and the concept is an original take on the superhero genre. But the dialogue and humor I found unbelievably cringe (99% Borderlands 3 level scatology) and the choices just didn’t feel high stakes enough. The dual gameplay was also a cool idea similar to 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim but the execution felt a little too random and simplistic. I hope we get more of these types of games but I really wanted more from the story and characters.

Fantastic adventure game that has no business being this good. The brief seems to have been “the thinking man’s Uncharted”: You spend most of your time stealthily taking out enemies, solving puzzles and exploring a variety of exotic locations from Thailand to Egypt. The first person view makes it really immersive and the level design is top notch: At one point I felt I was playing Far Cry as I found several ways to infiltrate an enemy base and steal **** loot. The tone of the game is pitch-perfect, with just the right mix of humor and apocalyptic portent. I’ve seen a few complaints about the pacing and design of the final parts of the game, which are a bit of a step down from the early chapter set in the Vatican, but I still enjoyed them. My gripes were very minor — the map isn’t very user friendly and I wasn’t a fan of the fighting. But overall a really enjoyable cinematic epic.

This game’s story is really the draw here. It’s an epic tale of two Yakuza outcasts who find themselves defending a small patch of lucrative real estate from an endless supply of gangsters and criminal masterminds. The protagonists are fine but it’s the bad guys who are just fantastic: brilliantly drawn, animated and voiced power-hungry creeps who are begging to have their heads knocked together. The gameplay is a fun grab-bag of beat em up, mini games and RPG side quests but I found myself so immersed in the story that I just couldn’t get interested in the 1001 distractions. there are some frustrating gameplay issues like repetitive combat and janky navigation — nothing fatal though. Overall this is a well told story with a sharp sense of humor; great fun

What is there left to say? An incredible achievement. I didn’t think they could top divinity original sin 2 but they have. The storytelling, characters, art design and world-building are somehow all better. The explicit die rolls and the more limited spell slots initially feel a little creaky but after an hour you see them as part of the adventure. One aspect I don’t see mentioned much: just when you expect BG3 to wind down for the finale it opens the doors to a new city so expansive, alive and stuffed with things to do that it feels like a whole new game. It’s almost too much goodness — I wish some of it had been sprinkled throughout the earlier parts — but look, regardless, this is a real classic, a new high watermark in gaming and reason to feel hope for the future.

What more is there to say about this game? It’s already been widely hailed by critics. It’s been cheered by streamers, YouTubers and game forums. The parody videos are out in force. It only came out a couple months ago but it feels like trying to review Squid Game. I guess there are two things I’d say beyond the stuff you already know (great game, great story, great characters, great music, yada yada.) The first is that the criticisms I’ve seen about the combat being timing-based and not turn-based should be ignored. The game has multiple difficulty settings and a very generous dodge mechanic that allowed a parrying n00b like me to enjoy the game right through to the end credits. The second is that — and this is as non-spoilery as I can muster — the story takes risks in ways I didn’t expect. This is not a criticism, but some may wonder why this game doesn’t end with a final showdown against a god-like demon in a bid to save the planet. The epilogue will divide players; I am still torn on what to make of it but I loved it all the same. So this is a 9/10 game for me — with the hope that the next game in the series will be a 10.

Like Chained Echoes, Sea of Stars is a beautifully crafted throwback to the 90s RPG era, complete with all the quality of life improvements that we’d expect in the 2020s. No more random battles, painful level grinding and scattered save points; and as for the old-school ways of turn-based combat, it’s been given some clever twists, including a puzzle-lock system that gives you a chance to stop your opponent’s attack with the right spells. Where Chained Echoes goes for a very elaborate and epic story full of plot twists, though, Sea of Stars goes for a more intimate and cozy tale of friendship and loyalty between three childhood friends who have a clear enemy to defeat. And whereas Chained Echoes had some fairly sprawling level environments, Sea of Stars has a more compact approach to dungeons, with tight puzzles to solve and pretty varied themes. I would say overall I preferred Sea of Stars for its moment-to-moment gameplay and Chained Echoes for its story. Both have pacing issues and neither quite manages to reach classic status; still, I enjoyed both a lot and hope their developers will put out even better follow-ups.

So, look. Yes, the initial 2020 launch was disastrous, and yes, this game — even all patched up — doesn’t quite match the promise of a ‘true’ go-anywhere do-anything RPG experience. But it’s become one of my favourite games of all time nonetheless. The story, characters and missions are immensely satisfying. The gameplay loop is addictive, with a balance of gunplay, stealth and loot that captures the best bits of Deus Ex and Borderlands. And Night City is a joy to uncover, somewhere between Neo Tokyo and Vice City. The branching paths could be branchier, and the end-game kind of just ends. But this game had me coming back to it again and again. Even with all its flaws it’s a cyber-classic.

Chained Echoes is an RPG that busts all the cliches of indie retro games by being as good if not better than the ‘90s material that inspired it. A tale of gods, monsters, kings and magic, it deftly weaves together an epic overarching plot with a grounded bunch of characters who have a sense of humour and real personality. The overdrive meter in combat makes fights way more fun, and the lack of random battles and focus on collection/exploration is wise. Oh and all the quality of life improvements you’d want are here (characters move at a rapid clip, there are multiple ways to fast travel, very little grinding). There are a few issues— some of the exploration can feel like walking through the same sparse territory, and the narrative gets a little over complicated at times. But the bottom line is that this is a game that could have wiped the floor with top titles back in ‘the day’, and needs to be experienced. The fact that a one-man team did all this is the cherry on top— pray that he has the energy left to develop a sequel.

Tears of the Kingdom is an excellent if imperfect game that doubles down on the Breath of the Wild formula instead of reinventing it. It pushes and expands it as far as it can go on the Switch, stuffing open world Hyrule with a Lego universe of movable and buildable objects, adding a new dimension of sky islands and underground labyrinths, and creating more complex bosses and temples than BotW. When the game fires on all cylinders, it really fires: Some of the set-piece boss encounters, especially the epic finale with Ganondorf, are superb. And the new building powers are tastefully handled, coaxing you into using them at your leisure rather than forcing you into anything (apart from one pretty painful robot mission). But overall there are fewer moments of wonder and more busywork than in BotW. And there was less reason to hang around up in the sky or explore the depths than I’d hoped. More of the same is no bad thing when it’s Zelda, and overall this is a worthy sequel. But when the credits rolled I felt ready to move on from this chapter of Hyrule.

On paper, this game looks…messy. Not two or three or four characters but 13, whose story is told in itty-bitty jumbled-up chunks. A high-schoolers-in-mech-suits premise that checks off every bonkers anime trope from talking cats to corporate conspiracies. Three entirely separate game ‘modes’: Visual novel, real-time strategy and dense lore. And a tutorial that lasts 4 hours. Yet as headache-inducing as the game’s opening may be, I kept coming back for more. The core of the game is the visual novel section, with gorgeously painted environments and story beats that are entertaining and mysterious in equal measure. Unlike other games in the genre (eg AI: Somnium Files), the bite-size sections actually help the pacing: You’re never stuck for too long in one place, and there’s always an ominous threat keeping you on your toes. Even as the story jumps the shark and starts to crumble under the weight of its time loops and melodrama, the actual moment-to-moment plot stays fun. The rest of the game is less special. The RTS battles are visually threadbare, and clearly an afterthought; more effort went into the jiggly boob physics of the main adventure’s school nurse than any of the battle levels. I didn’t get much out of the dense lore analysis sections either. With a less insane story and a more developed battle mechanic, this game could have been a timeless classic. As it is, it’s more an admirable and original experiment that delivers — most of the time. 8/10

This is a really under-rated gem. Inspired by PlayStation 1 era classic strategy RPGs like FF Tactics or Vandal Hearts, it tells a tale of intrigue and conspiracy in a fantasy/supernatural setting. There are no cliched orcs or goblins or knights on horseback; it’s very grounded and dark, with great character designs. The really nice touch is the sheer variety of classes you can pick from, mixing and matching skills and abilities from each. And unlike recent games like Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Mario + Rabbids 2, you can tell there’s been an incredible amount of effort put into making each of the 40-50 campaign encounters feel unique and fun to play. Not to mention secret levels, multiple endings, and customisable difficulty options… it’s a must-play in my view.

As a big fan of the first game I found this sequel lacked a lot of its predecessor’s magic. Visually it’s a step backwards, using a space setting with some ugly-looking planets that have none of the charm of the Mushroom Kingdom. The story also robs us of the chaos and wit of the original, which used Rabbids to gently poke fun at their Mario counterparts. Instead we get a dull quest to rid the universe of evil, and a new hero called Edge who isn’t very interesting. Thankfully the core gameplay is still as entertaining as ever, with a decently long campaign and one or two challenging boss fights. Still, for every quality of life improvement (such as turning the old movement grids into more natural circular zones) there are some new mechanics that I didn’t enjoy, such as the huge array of power-ups and a focus on Spark abilities that make fights less strategic. And the less said about the puzzles in between the better. A fair effort, but could have been more.

I loved the first game, and this is more of it. That is going to be enough for most. The lush visuals, smooth platforming and tough set-piece obstacle courses are all there and still very well-crafted, as is the urge to explore every nook and cranny. But there’s also nothing really new either. The new combat options feel awkwardly shoehorned into a different game, and the storyline here is somehow even more threadbare than the first one. When I reached the end I felt stuffed rather than sad, and i definitely don’t think I could handle a 3rd. 7.5/10

Dread…? more like Metroid kitchen sink. It’s not easy updating a franchise that’s decades old and hit 2D perfection before Gen Z was even born, especially now that so many Indie metroidvanias exist. This game gets a lot right but ultimately can’t decide what it should be and tries to do everything at once. The overall arc remains the same as Super Metroid, but so much is thrown at the wall: the new EMMI sections are repetitive and gimmicky like the Batmobile in Arkham Knight, the parry-based combat tries to ape Dark Souls but slows the exploration to a crawl, and the map is so complex and bitty that power-ups unlock inches rather than miles. It’s not a bad game and there are some great moments, especially some of the bosses. But finicky controls and quick-time parries make this a frustrating, flawed experience.

November 2022 Review. As all the brutal user scores can attest, the Switch is not the best way to experience Pillars of Eternity. The visuals are a little muddy, the load times can get annoying and I got about three or four hard crashes during my 50-hour play-through. That said, if you can pick it up on sale and look beyond the bugs, there's a very good RPG here that falls just short of classic. It's got a big world to explore (though broken up into small chunks), a refreshing lack of fantasy cliches, and a good story mixing macabre magic and political backstabbing. The combat system and AI are not as good as Divinity: Original Sin 2's, which is the superior game. But PoE is a close second and worth your time.

I did not expect to love this game. The critical consensus seemed to view it as the easy and predictable equivalent of a pair of cozy slippers. But after the comfortable opening section, the game really ramps up in terms of imagination, visuals and challenging — yes, challenging — bosses. The level design is perfect, crafting a post apocalyptic world that goes beyond the regular ice-lava-sky-sea platformer settings. Hidden collectibles aren’t just there for completionists but to upgrade your Kirby powers RPG-style. And while the inclusion of dodge and guard mechanics seems superfluous when faced with cuddly and harmless enemies, they’re essential for getting past late-game bosses that do not mess around. This is an excellent game, maybe a little on the short side at 10-11 hours minimum, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome and is fun from start to finish.

I had fun playing Return to Monkey Island, but overall would rank it 7.5/10 overall, similar to other recent games by the old LucasArts veterans like Broken Age and Thimbleweed Park. The interface is excellent, the visuals are great and the writing sharp. And, at 10 hours in length, the game is good value for money. I was left wanting more, though. Some old faces felt either underused or underdeveloped (especially the return of 'Plunder Bunny'), some puzzles were a little light, and the ending was an anti-climax. I hope there'll be more additions to the series and I enjoyed this, but it falls short of classic.

A very underrated and overlooked RPG that really holds up in 2022. The component parts — isometric dungeon-crawling, turn-based combat, overworld exploration — all offer fresh twists on the ‘90s mechanics that inspired them. The battle system is fine-tuned and tactical, forcing you to attack quickly and aggressively in order to build up your magic meter for later. The dungeons encourage repeat visits with remixed rooms and new puzzles. The fantasy-meets-steampunk story, while fairly simple, is brought to life by glorious comic-book visuals. The difficulty is above-average in a good way (not the Dark Souls kind). All in all a very good, solid, 8/10 adventure game.

New to the anime-style ‘visual novel’ genre? This game really might not be for you. Watch some Let’s Plays or wait for a sale to try it out. The universal acclaim does not tell the whole story. The premise for AI is intriguing: You play as a futuristic cop with an artificial intelligence in his eye socket who is called in to investigate a murder. But this is a ‘visual novel’ game, meaning the story isn’t told from A to B — you have to run through it several times to view all the endings. This would be fine if the story were entertaining and the puzzles strong, like in ‘999’. But here, there are no puzzles — just a few QTEs and a handful of trial and error dream sequences. Which leaves the story. And in my view it’s an utter mess. Instead of sticking with the murder, the game jumps off into all sorts of confusing non sequiturs and plot distractions: parallel universes, double and triple crosses, secrets and hidden pasts and a stream of boring characters. At no point do you actually solve a crime: Instead of finding clues you run from location to location and exhaust dialogue options. The dialogue is crushingly dull and the anime tropes so tiresome: High school girls are there to stir adult male loins, erotic mags are thrown to distract gangsters, etc. Instead of wanting to find every ending to uncover the full truth behind all these bizarre deaths, resurrections and conspiracies, my first run through left me bored and frustrated. If you aren’t sure what you’re in for, I would steer clear.

Okami is a solid adventure game with a lot of original ideas but whose PS2 roots are really showing. The game world is lush and beautiful but chopped up into small sections. Getting into fights means stopping the action and shifting to a small cramped arena. Using the brush means halting proceedings to draw shapes that quickly become repetitive. I enjoyed many individual moments of the game but together it can feel slow and a chore to play. This would be the perfect candidate for a next-gen remake: with voice-acting, a proper open world and better integration of the brush the core game would really shine.

The reviews of this game have hyped it way too much. I was hoping for something as good as the very first Ace Attorney, but this is actually a very uneven double-feature. The first half feels like a kind of experiment trying out a bunch of new features but forgetting to craft good mysteries to solve. The constant references to Sherlock Holmes stories don’t help, as these ‘twists’ on classic tales are vastly inferior. The second half is MUCH, much better: There are actual dead bodies and crime scenes to investigate, and an incredible middle chapter that is steeped in sci-fi and futurism. But then in that classic AA style, it ends with a ridiculously convoluted mix of soap opera and conspiracy theory, whereby you somehow end up ignoring the actual crime in front of you for complete conjecture on long-forgotten events. For the diehard AA fans this will probably be more than enough, but I was left feeling disappointed. A 7/10 game, one to pick up on sale.

I was apprehensive going in. I had only played 2 previous Dragon Quests before this, and never really ‘clicked’ with the stop-start momentum of heavy grinding between towns & quests. But DQ11 blew me away. No random encounters, generous auto saves and flexible difficulty settings mean you can concentrate on the rich characters, the fantastic story and fun combat with gorgeously animated enemies. Not grinding. The story at first seems standard fantasy fare. But the moment you step out from your village the world comes alive. Whereas Final Fantasy feels like high opera, this is more an epic Odyssey combined with touches of the Brothers Grimm and Disney. (But always with an adult edge.) The detailed and lively towns you visit are filled with interesting NPCs & hilarious dialogue, in keeping with past games. Castles and caves are a joy to fight in and explore. You learn to know and love every member of your party. The art by Akira Toriyama gives it a Dragonball-ish feeling, with each new location bringing a new mini adventure. The game has some tiny flaws but nothing big. The pacing of the game slows down a bit towards the end, as in most RPGs, when you prepare for the final battle by assembling artifacts. (what else?) The post-game section is a neat idea but drags at times — and, for once, requires grinding. Bottom line: this is one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played at a time when I thought I’d exhausted my options (BOTW, Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, Divinity: Original Sin, Witcher) and after a slightly disappointing experience with Persona 5 and Final Fantasy VII Remake (both overly long with pacing issues imo). I highly recommend it.

A very good, very solid turn-based strategy game, that only suffers from a hot anime mess of a plot line (which after a great start gets bogged down in endless exposition) and a lack of surprises after the halfway point (there are only a couple of fun maps with unique mechanics like warp points). The idea of playing through the game again twice doesn’t appeal — in hindsight I wish the game had fewer play throughs and one single kick ass consolidated story . But still a v v good game

I got this game on sale for a very low price ($3 equivalent) so I feel bad for complaining… but even the price of an espresso can’t excuse the amount of game breaking problems with this port. Several times the game got stuck on an infinite loading screen, forcing me to restart the game and redo long missions with no checkpoints. At one point at the end of another very long mission with no checkpoints the game hard crashed. It’s a shame as the game itself is very good, well written and a fun mash-up of GTA/The Matrix/Mass Effect and more. But it’s unplayable in this condition.

P5R is a good game. A very good game, most of the time. But there's so much of it -- too much of it. It took me over 100 hours to get to the final boss, and by that time I had stopped caring. No doubt die-hard fans will claim this is my fault, or that I don't 'understand' Persona, but I think it's a valid problem. The basic overworld-underworld setup is well-executed and fun, once you get past the early tutorials. The teenagers v adults conspiracy story is a bit predictable, but elevated by the RPG tasks of improving your characters at school so they can fight demons in the parallel universe. You have a limited amount of time to study, hang out, side-hustle and build relationships, and it's here that the game really comes alive. There are lots of NPCs and activities to engage with, and they **** you in. It's in the dungeon worlds that things become progressively less interesting, though. The idea of battling villains in their own egomaniacal mental palaces is great, but in practice too repetitive. It involves jumping from hiding place to hiding place, working your way up to the boss and collecting 'Personas' along the way (a mix of Pokemon and Final Fantasy Summons). There are a few stand-out palaces -- Madarame's, or the casino -- but many others are bland, like the bank vault or spaceship. And that's not even counting the grindfest that is the eternally winding Mementos dungeon. A chore. I don't want to dwell on the negatives here, because so much of the main game is enjoyable -- well-designed, well-animated, with a lot to do. The game for me is a solid 8/10. But in my view, a game that's more than 100 hours has to really justify it, and I think at least 20 hours could have been cut with zero downside. This isn't a masterpiece, nor a classic in my view, but a very very good JRPG.

7/10 game for me. Remaking and rebooting FF7 at the same time is a cool concept, and when everything clicks it really clicks. The train graveyard, the Corneo confrontation with Leslie, and the endgame section are real highlights. But the execution falls short. I was simply bored for half this game’s run time. The side quests are mind-numbing and a lot of the dungeons are shamelessly padded with far too many back and forth lever switching and trolley riding. I also think Sephiroth as a villain has lost a lot of his mystique and menace. He gets far too many close ups and flashbacks with no explanation as to who he is or what horrors he’s committed. I am intrigued for what comes next though …

(Please note: I haven't completed the first game in the trilogy, so won't be commenting on it) SECRET OF MANA: The best-known, and probably the best, of the series, still looks and sounds great today. The bright pastel tones and the gorgeous music give a huge boost to the simple yet effective gameplay, which has you beat up a series of fantastical creatures and bosses with weapons and magic. The only drawbacks are a pretty basic story and a lack of puzzles, though this is offset by pure atmosphere and creepy set-pieces (like the hypnotized temple villagers). Some of the boss battles near the end also get a little tiresome, especially when they're re-skins of earlier ones. But a solid 8/10 game. TRIALS OF MANA: Everyone seems to say this is a better game than its predecessor, but I disagree. The game definitely delivers 'more': Six characters instead of three, branching story paths, class changes for each character at two different points in the game, tons of collectibles, and beautiful visuals. But sometimes, more is less. The story is convoluted and confusing and the huge array of sub-plots means they're often rushed and resolved in unsatisfactory ways. The character selection can give you a totally different (and in some cases worse) gaming experience. The basic gameplay is somehow less fluid than Secret of Mana and even has a button you can hold to make everyone auto-fight (perhaps an admission of defeat from the developers). And the GRINDING... I almost gave up out of frustration when I found out that to upgrade your class a second time you had to collect loot-box-type seeds, which are rare drops, and which give you a random class you may not even want. 'Trials of Mana' is right...Maybe even 'Chores of Mana' would be more accurate. Maybe just me but not a fan. 6/10

Final Fantasy V is a bit of a step back from FFIV in terms of plot and story arc, but it makes up for it in terms of gameplay. The jobs system is a great touch and creates a genuine bond with the characters as you try different skills and learn new abilities. You’ll quickly ignore the collect-the-crystals, save-the-universe stuff and focus on the funny jokes, inventive enemies and brightly-colored landscapes as you fight your way to the final showdown against Exdeath. Overall, it’s a 7/10 for me: It’s an entertaining adventure that’s obviously good value for money at 35-40 hours, but lacks the memorable story, characters and drama of other instalments in the franchise. Go for FFIV and FFVI first. in my view is

Clash of Heroes is a turn-based strategy game with a very clever, puzzle-based design, layered with a great story, beautiful art, fun characters and excellent dialogue. This game was brilliant when it came out back in 2013 for iOS, and it's just as brilliant today. It starts with a simple mechanic -- line up three soldiers vertically to start an attack, or line them up horizontally to build a wall -- and then gradually ratchets up the difficulty with new combinations, new units, timed levels, one-move challenges, and boss fights. It's strategically deep yet simple to pick up. The story has five chapters, each of which will take you a good ten hours to complete, and offers a solid spin on the good-versus-evil fantasy genre. Yes, there are elves and knights, but also a skeleton-packed Underworld, a rock 'n' roll version of Hell and a palace in the sky. The script steers a perfect middle ground between light-hearted humor and serious set-pieces, and crucially always focuses on individual character arcs rather than a faceless army of unknown creatures. What makes this game so precious in 2018 is that it does not have a single iota of money-grabbing free-to-play/loot-crate/DLC content. For the price of a cup of coffee, you get the whole game. I can't think of many other mobile games of this size and quality that do that. The flaws are mainly technical. Playing on the iPhone takes a bit of getting used to because the screen gets cramped with units; tap recognition generally is hit-and-miss outside of battle scenes. None of this is enough to dampen the experience. Those who got the chance to play it on Nintendo DS or home consoles obviously don't need to worry about this version. But for those who didn't, this game is an excellent purchase.

Dark Souls is what you might get if you crossed Shadow of the Colossus with the very first 8-bit Legend of Zelda. It's a wilfully obscure, challenging game that explains nothing and throws you into a hostile adventure world populated with memorable bosses, unforgiving enemies and kooky allies. It's hard to really capture how crazy this approach seemed in 2011, even after predecessor Demon's Souls. This game basically made it acceptable for big-budget titles to punish, alienate and confuse players. Once you get over the initial difficulty hump, Dark Souls gets two big things absolutely spot-on: Its world and its combat. The environments ooze with atmosphere, from medieval castles and churches to forests and swamps, and they all connect through clever shortcuts, ladders and secret passages. The combat is meaty, slow and highly strategic, forcing the player to make every sword swipe count and to carefully study the enemy's moves. This is not an open world game where you roam free with few consequences. It's terrifying. Where Dark Souls is less successful is pacing. With very little story or character interaction, it can be sometimes frustrating and boring to run through the same areas several times to level up or to try and beat a troublesome enemy. Some parts will feel exciting and challenging, others tedious and cheap. The final act of the game is a real low point, with the designers peppering overly big, sparse areas with duplicated enemies and bosses. The 75-hour campaign could have been easily cut to 50. it's the boss battles that ultimately steal the show. You'll fight giant gargoyles on the roof of a church; a sword-wielding wolf guarding a moonlit tomb; ghostly kings in a pitch-black abyss with no floor. When you finally beat such screen-filling baddies after several attempts, it's an intoxicating feeling. The peak of the whole game is the fight at the sumptuous and deadly sky palace of Anor Londo, which pits you against a giant hammer-wielding executioner and his lightning-quick companion. Nothing after that comes close. Dark Souls is a unique and unforgettable experience. It should be played. But it's not perfect. There are lows with the highs, so be prepared before you step into the fog.

This game starts off SO promisingly: Great production values, great soundtrack, great graphics and great setting. So far, so Rockstar. But once you're about a third into the game, the flaws start to really reveal themselves. Despite the varied environments the game throws at you (nightclub, favela, dockyards) the basic gameplay just gets very repetitive very quickly. Cover, aim, shoot -- over and over again. Worse, even if you try and shake things up by shoot-dodging and running from cover to cover, the game will sometimes punish you with an instant death -- so you'll have no incentive to use the game's most interesting mechanics. Yes, there are some great occasional set-pieces (the office block siege!) but the levels are often dragged out way longer than necessary. The game's weird obsession with forcing you to use a pistol a lot of the time doesn't help. None of this would matter if the story and script were top-notch but to be honest the plot is way too convoluted and the characters so unlikeable that you never feel much emotional connection with what's going on. It all feels like a character arc from GTA V -- minus the driving and sense of humor. Fun for a bit but no classic.

Having played through Bioshock 2 straight after completing the original (rather than waiting 2 years!), I have to say that I'm really disappointed. I think the Metacritic scores are just a bit too high and may reflect the fact the game just hasn't aged that well. Perhaps it scratched an itch to dive back into Rapture when it was released? The consensus view seems to be that Bioshock 2 delivers on gameplay and combat but falls short on story -- sort of in the same way that the movie "Aliens" served as a more action-packed yet less atmospheric sequel to "Alien". I'd argue it falls short on the lot. Despite the promise of playing as a Big Daddy, the changes are mostly cosmetic: You're still wielding plasmids and weapons, you're still fighting the same enemy types and you're still doing the same kind of search and fetch quests. It's not terrible by any means and there's definitely more action and combat involved than in the first game, but I felt like I'd seen everything by the third or fourth hour. Basically, so much of the experience feels like a bad re-tread of the original Bioshock. The level design is okay but basically like a less inspired versions of those you saw in the first game. The characters you meet are okay but again feel like weak stand-ins for the original's. Sofia Lamb is much less convincing a villain than Andrew Ryan, while Sinclair just never feels as helpful or important an ally as Atlas did. The supporting cast of weirdos has nobody as memorable as Steinman or Cohen. The only surprise I felt was when the game attempted some forced comedy, confronting me with a chatty egomaniacal flying robot and putting me in a mock game-show -- which came across as just plain dumb. It just all feels like a weak expansion pack, not a sequel. In addition to being shallow, it's quite a short game -- at least it is if you exclude the time-consuming chore that is rescuing the Little Sisters. I can't help but feel that Bioshock 2 overhauled the rescue system just as a padding measure to fill time. To rescue a Little Sister you now have to kill a Big Daddy, walk the girl over to a dead body, protect her from a horde of enemies, walk her to a second dead body, protect her from another horde of enemies -- and then, if you're really unlucky, a Big Sister will jump out and fight you. It's boring and not fun. The original's morality system may not have been perfect but at least there was some incentive to being 'good'. Here, I was able to either ignore the Little Sisters or kill them without feeling any twinge of guilt. And yes, I do have to admit that the Big Sisters are creepy and well-designed. You never quite know when they're going to pop out -- that first warning scream you hear is the closest thing you'll get to re-living that nervous moment when you had to take out a Big Daddy in the first game. But in the end, like a lot of this game, they are probably over-used and fighting them never seems quite as exciting as it should be. All in all, a pretty average game that for me slightly tarnishes the Bioshock legacy. Bioshock Infinite is a truer sequel, even if it has its flaws. I think this game served its purpose maybe in 2010 but just hasn't aged well.

I skipped Twilight Princess so can't compare but this game is not worth the money or the hype in my view. Odd design choices like a run meter and dodgy motion controls (just unsheathing your sword is ridiculous) make combat and exploration a chore, while the story is just not very interesting. I'm glad they are trying new things but ultimately they tinkered too much with core play mechanics and not enough with story, character and the way the game unfolds.

there seems to be a lot of hate out there for this port (and the game as well) but I have to say I am really enjoying this on iOS. No the controls aren't perfect but it's the same story for other iOS ports of classics like chrono trigger, secret of mana and other FFs - they're worth the hassle to enjoy the game on the go. I also think people are forgetting how clunky the original game was. Picking out your way as a tiny polygonal blob through pre rendered backgrounds was never easy in the first place. Oh and frankly the option to max out your stats and turn off random encounters is a godsend for people who really do want to play it casually. Obviously it's not as pure an experience but a lot of people buying this will want to relive the experience without sinking months into it.

Bottom line, after 25 hours of play and more than halfway into the game, is that I'm very disappointed. I picked this game up a decade after it was released, so was prepared for it to show its age, but actually the presentation, graphics and cut-scenes are the best things about it. I can't even complain about the supposedly 'controversial' changes to the battle system - doing away with random battles and going for a more action-y spin on the turn-based combat are great ideas in my view and help bring to life the slightly bland environments. No, the real reason I'm close to giving up is the complete lack of interesting story or characters. Now, I get that at the time the big boy in town was World of Warcraft and that with FFXII the developers were trying to approach the feel of MMORPGs after going full-blown online with FFXI. But that's no excuse for front-loading the game with an incredible set of Star Wars-esque battle scenes only to dump you years into the future with a completely unrelated (well, not completely, but always one step removed) set of characters and a totally undefined vague set of political objectives. I'm assuming that the developers thought that if they kept the universe and characters just vague enough players would feel more drive to go and explore or hunt monsters instead of driving the plot forward. But at every turn my attempts to explore the game were thwarted by bizarre design choices that seemed to block rather than encourage exploration. A few spring to mind: 1) fast travel requires specific fast-travel stones that are only dropped by enemies or bought in certain locations, 2) as a result, grinding takes way too long and too much effort for too few rewards, 3) you have to have a 'license' for every piece of equipment or spell, so grinding time is dragged out even more, 4) the environments are so bland and the enemies so repetitive that there is little to entertain you after a while. And as I mentioned earlier, the story and characters just don't help. Now maybe you don't always need to have a hero or villain to have a good story, but in a game so sprawling in both time and geography it would really help to know who or what we're fighting for or against. The voice actors do a great job and the cut-scenes look great but even now I still have no idea why I should care about helping a small territory in an Empire that frankly looks pretty benign. Star Wars had Darth Vader, the Emperor and a completely clear sense of what they were capable of; this game hinges around the signing of a treaty and local politics and later brings in hints of the mystical with a stone called a "nethicite" (which again is not explained well at all). So, yeah. Maybe the game suddenly gets great in the second half but I'm not sure I want to keep sinking my life into it. Best to try before you buy.

A fun little game but I am knocking off 3 points for the free-to-play mechanics that ruin this PAID game app. All the cliches are here: grinding levels on repeat to squeeze out micro experience points, literally waiting hours (or days!) for your stupid virtual currency pot to fill up so you can buy new moves and a difficulty level that rewards miracle items instead of skill. It's a huge shame because the presentation is excellent and the artwork is great but playing the game is a chore instead of a pleasure.