KingMob4313

A game that is 1/2 murder mystery, 1/4 Myst and 1/4 horror all done in a CGA/Monochome Mac demake style with a rich and complex tale behind it. It is an absolute steal at 20 dollars, with shocking twists and turns as the story of this cursed ship slowly reveals itself. Highest Possible Recommendation.

The very best white genocide simulator since The Sims. Gorgeous, Violent, cathartic and an excellent litmus test to find **** sympathizers amongst your social circle. On a serious note, this game is much more emotional, meditative and thoughtful than I would have ever expected. The most relevant game in years.

A rare sequel to a near stellar game. This time, the script is flipped: you are the ones ambushing the now-native forces, covering off some of the absurdity of fighting an global alien invasion with a squad level team. Now you are a mobile resistance force, fighting on the run, trying to strike a devastating blow and evict the occupying force before their secret project ~redacted~. The gameplay much improved over the original. The stealth and ambush mechanics heighten the tension in an already high stakes game and story is so much tighter than the rather generic invasion story in the first game. There are constant nice touches, from between the returning 'Central' to the new head scientist and engineer. There are even a few touches in the story as shoutouts to the fandom. The graphics and sound are greatly improved and run well on the PC. I have an okay system (GTX 970, I5) and it runs on full detail with no framerate drops. The difficulty is also steep, but fair. You might read many complaints on here of the mission and 'doom' timer, but the answer to that is 'GET GUD'. The customization of the game is deep and with added mod support, the game is one that can be played for years. Even better, the FIRAXIS team partnered with the god-like mod-team behind 'The Long War' to produce mods for the game and the disgustingly rich The Long War 2. Highest possible recommendation.

A beyond solid beat-em-up experience with an attention to detail and humor fitting of this legendary series, and this is coming from a superfan of the series (I wrote multiple rom hacks for the original NES game)

Yet another console to PC conversion that misses the mark: No FOV settings, horrible controls, grotesquely bad graphics and simply no way to play it keyboard and mouse. I would have persisted through this game, since I've played much worse games, but nothing in the gameplay, story or progression is compelling enough to continue. First the story: the characters are boring, quests grinding and story lacks direction or focus. Character interaction is a neverending parade of inane characters and plastic-flat conversations. The gameplay is also clumsy and frustrating, with most battles consisting of constant roll-spamming and button mashing -- Batman game this is not. Strategy in the game amounts to simply save scumming so that you have prescient understanding of the next encounter that will happen in the game. I simply cannot understand how this game is this highly rated. It is worse than Alpha Protocol. Maybe everyone is distracted by the hilariously bad polygon breasts and awkward sex scenes? Note: I haven't got to those scenes, nor will I, since I stopped playing this game. I've only seen them on youtube and they are childish.

Another incomplete release from Electronic Arts. Five months later and the game is still unplayable. First start with constant driver interaction issues that hit around 60% of the player base and cause crash-to-desktop at best and hard locks of the OS at worst. Then, when the game works, players are dealing with bewildering hit box issues, lag and lag compensation absurdity where players suddenly rubberband and sling about the map, and crippling balance issues all culminated to make this game unplayable from day one and still hound the game to this day. Absolutely embarrassing release for DICE and EA.

I was so looking forward to this game. While the gameplay is energetic, the controls tight and art style crunchy, the entertainment value does not hold up very long. It has about as much depth as a good flash game over at Kongregate, which is quite disappointing. Wait for a sale, this game is more suitable as a $4-6 USD game, not a $10-15. I expected so much more.

Pretty much everything I wanted from the canceled XCom Alliance game that we never got. Yes, it apes Mass Effect, in more than a few ways. It has the third person cover-based shooting and pause-and-command system of Mass Effect, along with the mechanic of storyline choice steering your experience. While it lacks the overwhelming scope of the Mass Effect games, it does offer a deeper tactical system than found in Bioware's games. The story is fun, even if you need to stretch your 'suspension of disbelief' a bit. Honestly, considering that you had to do the same for the previous X-com games, it's not a surprise. In the second half of the game, the stakes get raised and the plot twists in some interesting and unexpected ways. The voice acting is pretty solid and the overall flavor of setting it in that weird time period of the space race, yet before the hippie cultural revolution was a jolting and interesting choice. It is 3rd best X-com game, past the first and the recent tactical remake. The game is not without it's flaws, of course. The lip syncing and actor motion capture lacks polish. Also, the graphics are stylized and simplistic, yet run horribly on the highest graphic settings. It's also rather brief, with very little in the way of fleshing out and side missions. Also, it lacks the research, production, interception and base management of the previous games, so if that is what defines an Xcom game to you, you may be disappointed. This game with has convinced me that this will be cult classic game, like Vampire: Bloodlines or Alpha Protocol (though not as broken as either of those) and that not everyone is meant to 'get it'.

This game is simply disappointing. With abysmal combat, a disjointed setting, horrific graphics for it's era, it gives you very little to compel you to continue playing and with its absolutely insulting ending, it rewards you with a slap in the face. This game is a deformed scion of the much more superior System Shock 2. What is the use of presenting different avenues of gameplay when a majority of the gameplay is crushingly boring? The only positives about the game is how it drew attention to it's spiritual predecessor, it's evocative music and that it's around 30-40 hours to beat. Very rarely have I played a game, then heard people raving about it later and wondered 'what do they see that I don't?'

Possibly the best successor to Master of Orion 2, even better than Galactic Civilization 1. ...If it didn't completely fall apart in the last half of the game. The game is very easy to master and best even on the highest difficulties. The game is in serious need of balancing (Favors expansion far too much) and the tech tree provides too little bang for your buck. Still, if you're looking for your x4 fix and you've completely exhausted MOO2 and you find the humor makes Galactic Civ 1 feel too lightweight for you, this might be your game.

An early 360 game, it looks more like a dreamcast game and some of the control choices make me wonder if it was originally intended for that platform. The voice acting is catastrophically bad and the story makes little sense. The controls are a baffling when it comes to the vehicles and the weapons and unlocks are just on this side of random. And the amount of belief you need to suspend? Let's just say that there are points where your single guy in body armor is being hit by a hail of shots from a dozen 50 foot robots with plasma cannons while you are shooting at them with a shotgun. The maps are bland and reused repeatedly, the creatures and enemies have an AI that belongs in Galaga... ....And the game is entirely more fun than it deserves to be. There is a reason why this game can be found used for $60 in some areas. It is seriously fun, in every way. Some of the best moments are having to sprint backwards while you are throwing nuclear hand grenades that will kill you if you weren't sprinting backwards.

One of my all time favorites. Great gameplay, great story, beautiful music and game depth like Jupiter's gravity well. One I come back to play once every year (with mods, I am too old to grind). The only negative against the game is some minor balance issues, it being excessively grind-y (even for the era it was from) and that the clumsy translation muddies your understanding a story that is unbelievably complex.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Incredible presentation, an interesting commentary on a the nature of US politics and American exceptionalism with gorgeous visuals, tight voice acting and an compelling plot... ...That is completely ruined by actually PLAYING the game. Having gameplay that hasn't improved much since the days of System Shock 2 is simply not acceptable nearly 15 years later. The combat is boring, clumsy and mind numbingly easy. This lack of responsiveness and the horrific violence in the game makes it more seem one step up from a quicktime event style execution game. It also feels more like filler in an already brief game. It is inferior to the previous two Bioshock in the manner of it being a game. If the game wasn't so stellar in every other way, it wouldn't be much higher than a 4 and you'd be better served catching the highlights on youtube.

Tremendous graphics, a deep customization system, an incredible variety of fighting moves and a compelling story, Def Jam: Fight for NY is one of the top games of the previous generation. Just being able to beat up, then team up later with Ice-T is worth the price of admission.

Delivered precisely what I wanted from them. Is it short? Yes. Are the tactical options somewhat limited? Yes. Is the tactical iso combat frustrating and unintuitive at points? Absolute. But did it capture the essential flavor of the original SNES and Genesis game? Yes! Is it a decent tactical turn based squad game? Yes. Is the story better than 90% of games out there? Very much so.

A metroivania game with tight controls to rival the best of the 16 bit age, an awesome soundtrack and a story that hits you in surprising ways, I cannot recommend this game enough. Truly stellar.

A flawed, truncated but engrossing game, carrying hints of the greatness of later FPSRPGs like Fallout and Mass Effect. But ultimately disappointing, even with massive mod support from the community.

While no where as deep as the originals, the gameplay has been stripped down to it's essential elements and refined to match the gameplay innovations made since its first release in the mid-90s. Is it perfect? Far from it. The simplicity of the game leaves much to be desired, but even with all of that said, it --is-- Xcom and a better product than even Xcom Apocalypse. However, I must rate it one point lower for absolutely no mod support, which is critical for these sorts of games.

Much like the first Deus Ex, this game feels quite flawed and incomplete. Much about he game also leaves you feeling disconnected: the voice acting, the character's behaviors, the truncated settings, the clumsy combat and nonsensical storyline. If you want a game like this, I'd suggest just playing through Vampire the Masquarade Bloodlines again. But if you've already gone through all the clans and combat styles, then maybe check this game out.

Born from a sullied and worthless lineage: the completely forgettable True Crime series, Sleeping dogs is yet another Sandbox GTA clone. But with clever writing, a memorable locale of Hong Kong, vibrant and terrifying characters and a soundtrack that may be the best in the GTA style games since the very first 3d GTA... Sleeping Dogs is greater than the sum of all it's parts. Be wary of the DLC, but most of the mission packs are worth it, especially the brief but awesome 'Zodiac Island'. While it is a little buggy, lacks the depth of some of the other sandbox games (when it's over, it's over), I still give it my Highest Possible Recommendation.

A Subversive, disturbing, addictive game and packaged with an unrivaled soundtrack that produces a not-entirely-stable altered state in my brain. It's 180 proof distillation of 80's Miami Vice nostalgia, pseudo 12bit gaming, gore-a-fied violence, and corset tight gameplay combined with neurosis inducing difficulty. It also digs into the narrative and psychology of wearing masks (do you wear the mask, or does it wear you?) and on whether questions need to be answered to provide a compelling story. And the music? My god. From wild spaced out country-influenced-dub, to psychotic driving electro and exposed-nerve disco. The music will be slithering around in your brain long after your eyes lose their bloodshot state you gained from playing the game. Even in a year with some incredible releases like Mass Effect 3 and Walking Dead, this is my Game of the Year for 2012. ...It makes me want to buy a mask.