One of the worst installments yet. FIFA 11 manages to make everything more complicated while fixing few of the problems that have plagued the series. The AI is still terrible, players have no desire to grab loose balls or make obvious runs. The auto-switch is worse than in FIFA 10, leaving players less control over an already erratic system. Career mode now is clogged with three times as many menu items and still cuts features, such as the ability to sort possible transfers by asking price. Finally, I have already discovered terminal bugs, meaning that EA managed not to realize how much trouble they caused in FIFA 10 by not giving a crap about QA. Also, it's good that they included the ability to mess with sound, because their song selections are horrid again this year. Tips: The game will not run anywhere near well unless you download the game onto a hard drive, the load times are killer, especially in career mode. Also, become good friends with your TV mute button. Minimum screen size to read the tiny text is 28 inches, HD required. Looking forward to dozens of painful experiences before returning the game for a full refund? No, then avoid this game.
The gameplay was nice, polished, and had enough variance to keep me interested. The weapon combo system is fun, although I can think of a lot of combos that they didn't with the weapons they leave around. The downsides have to do with the awkwardness of some of the combat, with things like zombies suddenly changing position in order to meet the game's single animation for each power attack, and the dialogue, which is so generic and terrible as to leave you not believing or embracing the characters. Overall though, I give it an 8. It will keep me busy and happy for a while to come.
What makes this fun is how easily you can mod it. It is a showcase game for the Unreal engine, and as such, you can create your own skins and import them, change settings around to make things interesting (instagib, the one shot KO modified laser rifle mode.) Mind you the game has no plot at all and is repetitive, but its fun, and does what it is supposed to do.
Square Enix, with its unfortunate tenancy to publish almost anything that comes through the door, has lost my respect as a publisher. That being said, they are one of the few publishers that would take the risk of publishing this game, so rich in things that have not been done before, and for that, I am grateful. Innovative, with an excellent plot, with twists I never saw coming. Worth playing, and for me, worth a 10/10.
First off, if you have an hour long dungeon, which in itself is poorly constructed and tedious to navigate, not placing a save point before the boss battle at the end of it, or any save points anywhere in the dungeon itself, is a terrible idea. Wasted at least an hour, and after a series of overused cliches, bad production values, poor controls, and a poor difficulty curve, I decided not to give it another go. Truly a failure. Lasting lesson: Never buy a game developed by Tri-Ace.
Never buy a game from Tri-Ace. Simply put, they produce crap. (Infinite Undiscovery anyone?) That being said, this game was rather good for a while. It had room for improvement, for instance, the could have dropped the cat-girl, poorly done cliche and all. Also, the final boss in the main story made no sense at all. The game also has a large portion of after-game secret levels, which are utter crap, and revisits the Tri-Ace classic problem of not placing save points where they are needed. All and all, it gets a 6/10, although I should go lower.
A wonderful little tower defense game, with enough innovation to distinguish it from a crowded field. The fact that it requires strategy instead of tower spamming makes it a special treat for "hardcore tower defense fans" like myself.
Time to reconsider my previous rating. This game has serious flaws, which become apparent after spending about an hour playing. The boss battles are horrid. Fighting Lu Bu in the flooded city becomes tedious because you can't jump well and you can't swim. Fighting Dong Zhou becomes annoying because of his "friend" who can trap and slowly kill you while you can't do anything about it. Also, the targeting mechanic is heavily flawed. If I lock onto an enemy, and move, it will pick a new target, usually a useless one. This game is not better than DW6, which while flawed, was less annoying. That gives it a 5/10 for me.
These Koei games (the others being the Warriors franchises) cater to a specific audience. I rate this game about 7/10 as an overall game, however it gets a solid 10/10 for this tiny genre. The best of the Warriors style games out there, it has strong RPG style elements, allows for more upgrading, more tactics, more mission control, and more intelligent AI than any other game in the genre. For that reason, I lean towards the higher end of the scores.
I wrote one review for this on the 360 already, but tragicly forgot to mention one of the reasons I love this game so much. The expansion Shivering Isles is the single most enjoyable DLC I have ever played. Period. It's a wonderful, twisted, gripping expansion. I could take or leave Knights of the Nine, but the Shivering Isle was epic.
This is classic Bethesda. Brilliant characters, decent mechanics, an excellent plot. Downsides are the same as in most Bethesda games: things start to look the same quickly. Every Aeylid dungeon uses the same tiny texture palate, every indoors location in a given city looks the same. The outdoors is kept fresh and interesting, a notable difference from Fallout 3, but the textures really bug me, it drags down an otherwise excellent game. Still gets an 8/10, but loses points for textures, odd physics engines, and the infinitely annoying Mage's Guild entry level quest ring.
For five dollars, you get to make Darth Maul like paddle chainsaws, which are awesome and corny at the same time, but mostly awesome. You also get to cleave hundreds of zombies with Broadswords, and smash them with nail covered bats. Not much of a plot, but gets you acquainted with the controls, gives your character a boost in stats, and serves as a great hook. or... For five dollars, you can get a large slice of cheese pizza and a small soda. I choose the zombie killing.
If I were told that my studio was about to be dissolved, I would go out in a blase of glory by doing something that conventional wisdom claimed could not be done. I would make history, even if all that it would achieve would be that college students would mention in passing what a bad decision the dissolution was. This is what Ensemble did with Halo Wars. As they have done in the past, they took a popular IP and made an RTS out of it, but this time they made a perfectly functional RTS on a console. This, up until now, was unheard of. Halo Wars might not have been the first RTS, or the best RTS, but it was the first RTS with a good control scheme for a console as a platform. The game itself wasn't bad either, but I give legendary status to the Ensemble team that, in their dying breath as a company, made this game.
Slightly worse than its predecessor, but still better than DW6. If compared to games outside of this genre, it would get a 5.5/10, in its genre, I give it an 8, while the original got a 9, and Bladestorm got a 9.5. If that doesn't put it into prospective, try this: If you liked Orochi 1, get this used, but not new.
The best installment to date of this genre of game. Now I am not surprised to see so many mediocre ratings, as in all honesty, compared to other games from other genres, this is about a 6/10, but for this genre, the Koei pioneered Asian-With-Giant-Halberd-Hack-And-Slash, its a 9/10.
Enjoyable, with an interesting plot, functional controls, and a challenge (if you ignore the VATS, which I inadvertently did). Like most Bethesda Games, it is lacking in one respect though, they use the same terrain images over and over. Every building has the same skin, with a blood splatter or caged corpse here and there to try and cover it up. Just like every Aeylid ruin in Oblivion looked the same, Fallout 3 just dropped the ball on environmental art.
I am a fan of the series, but I was disturbed by the direction of this game. Part of the allure of the previous installments was that it allowed for a Turn Based Strategy game with a followable plot but none of the emotional depth. Bringing the ethics of war, genocide, and genetic engineering into the game made it more mature, but lost the causal gameplay status, in my opinion.
While fun to play, and keeping with the traditions of the Advance Wars series, I found this to be less than I expected. The GBA Advanced Wars games seemed so much better for their times.
The first time that two members of my party, NPCs, started bickering with each other, I knew I had something special. When one of the NPCs left the party after I told her to stop whining, my jaw dropped. Before Mass Effect, before any of the many other BioWare masterpieces, this game made NPCs interesting. For that I give them a 10/10. Also, the rest of the game was outstanding in almost every way. "Minsc and Boo stand ready. Meep-eep-eep"
I liked the first N3, and I am a fan of the Koei games of the same style, but this game was awful. All the things I like about the Koei games, the responsiveness of the controls, the close up feel, the ease of movement, the partially non-linear play, the tactics, all of these things are gone. In its place, the developer put in more enemies. The genre needs innovation and creativity (Bladestorm, for example, took everything good about the basic hack and slash and gave it a positive overhaul.) Adding more enemies but making them useless is, well, useless. They could have put wooden poles up and the poles would have been more interesting to fight. 1/10, and that's being generous.
Whoever decided to put an 8-bit graphics style game on XBLA is a bit out of touch. Now I'm not saying 8-bit is bad, but let's be honest. This game came out in the same month as LIMBO, a game that managed to look gorgeous with only two colors, and Lara Croft GoL, a combat platformer with very nice graphics. The game was unoriginal, offered a terrible navigation and menu setup, and looked like it was from the 1980s. Not worth the money.
Obedobie is a moron. Plain and simple. This is, for a low-priced WildTangent PC game, an excellent play. Now it's no Bioware or Bethesda game, that's for sure, however it is playable, and for a good period of time, enjoyable. One thing to note. Years before it was paraded before the gaming community in a high end 360 game, Fate implemented the same weapon generating system that Borderlands uses. It has thousands maybe, tens of thousands, of weapons.
A wonderful game, with good mechanics, no glitches that I could find, an excellent story, and good characters. Some of the tribute pieces, such as Verses 1 and 2 of Chapter 14, seem out of place, but the rest of the game makes up for it. The sexuality in the game is so overblown as to be comical rather than insulting, but can still be annoying at times. I easily put 60 hours into the game, and would have put in more time had I not lent it to a friend. Buy this game.
My lowest review to date, not because of the quality of the game, which is about a 5/10, but because of how far short of my expectations this sequel fell. The first MW had a far better plot, characters that drew you in, and a solid selection of jaw dropping moments. This sequel went overboard trying to stun people with jaw droppers, and I ended up feeling like I was watching a straight-to-DVD action flick. Characters were boring, the plot and villain were absurd, and not in a good way, and the game added little, too little, for a good sequel. Then there is multi-player. A crap-fest of noob-tubes and akimbo shotguns that drown out any attempt at skill or tactic. There are also a host of odd glitches, such as the rare but fun infinite grenade launcher glitch or the hyper speed glitch. Sadly, the game fell short, a point emphasized by the somewhat better Battlefield that came on its heels, and had just as bad a plot, but a much, much better multiplayer, and interesting characters.
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Do not buy this game. The entire QA staff should be chased from the industry. Go look up the glitch reports for this game, a long list of seemingly unmissable horrors makes the Manager Mode, the core of the single player game, unplayable. I have no doubt that **** of this level of polish were made by a smaller studio, the studio would not exist today. Here's to hoping that FIFA 11 addresses the 52 documented terminal glitches and numerous other lapses in quality that render the game, well, bad.
The best RPG on the 360, bar none. And I mean that Oblivion, Fallout, FF, Mass Effect, ect. It is the best RPG on the 360, bar none. I only wish I hadn't ruined it for myself by buying the guide.
Solid 7.75 game with an interesting story, decent puzzle/platform elements, and fun game play. What brings it down? For one thing the game I played right after this was Bayonetta, and that highlighted the differences between an 8 and a 10 quite effectively. Buy it used, its worth $35.
Ironicly, this rip-off of Unreal Tournament uses the Unreal engine. However unlike Unreal Tournament, this game offers little in the way of entertainment. Easy and highly repetitive, the game never attracted me, and I must say that I didn't buy it, and the demo didn't last that long on my hard drive.
Was it "OK?" Yes. Was it "good?" Maybe. Was it as good as the magazine reviewers said? Absolutely not. This game might have several hundred thousand weapons, but that's been done before, I can think of Diablo II right off the bat. Mildly creative, but heavily lacking, with little replay value and a poor online component. Funny at times, downright annoying at others, I give this game a solid 5 out of 10.
