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It's always disappointing when a game has so much promise and possibility yet fails so horribly. In the case of Far Cry 5, it's because the developers just didn't care. This is a game that almost couldn't miss and yet, somehow, Ubisoft threw a nearly perfect gutter ball. To be fair, there are a few things the game did right. The world is vast and beautiful, with varied terrain and some clever design. Character models are substantially improved over previous versions, looking far more lifelike than nearly any other title I can think of offhand. Unfortunately, that's where the praise ends. Because the truth of the matter is that Ubisoft phoned this one in and it shows. Sound design is variable, with the ambient sounds of the forest sounding marvelous, while the sounds of vehicles are irritating to listen to as they're essentially just speed-swept samples without variations. AI is, as per the Ubisoft usual, defective: when NPCs aren't experiencing one of the few moments of actual lucidity, they're running around completely ineffectually and showing the survival instincts of a yam. Where prior entries in the series allowed reasonable progression at a sensible pace, FC5 instead doles out money with an eyedropper and skill points only a little less miserly. This forces players into one of two paths. Either you can go indulge Ubisoft's impulse to put MICROTRANSACTIONS into a Far Cry game and pay them MORE money, or you can earn money by...fishing. You're often forced to stop playing the game so you can play a fishing simulator, made compulsory by bad game design. Far Cry is a game about survival and combat; Cabela's makes fishing games. And yet, you'll find yourself fighting fish rather than enemies just so you can afford a gun that is more powerful than the average spitball. Crafting of equipment upgrades is gone, requiring the spending of more money, which requires more time in the crappy Cabela's ripoff part of the game. Most disappointingly, however, is the plain fact that the writers gave not a single damn - or the company didn't. For a series that gave us memorable and amazing characters like Vaas Montenegro and Pagan Min, FC5 is nothing but cardboard-cutout generic "Bad Guys" direct from the cliche cookbook. The game interrupts the open world regularly with unavoidable "kidnappings" of the player character, forcing you to sit through some of the most trite, insipid, and outright boring cutscenes ever put into a game. The writers gave absolutely no thought to creating believable villains, instead going for "hey, we'll just write something everyone can hate without thinking." Every interaction with them, every radio message, every cutscene just underlines the fact that nobody cared about the story at all. In a game where story needs to drive the player's actions, that's a pretty serious screwup. The game's four primary villains are such utterly forgettable caricatures that they don't rate individual review; it would involve more effort than went into their creation. It's not just enemies, either: most of your allies are just tropes pasted into the game, handed the most insipid lines, and delivered without interest. There are a few notable exceptions: Luisa d'Oliveira, Steve Byers, and Mayko Nguyen were extremely believable and had depth, and the town priest was well-acted if not terribly well-written. The rest, however, are an embarrassment. It's a level of plot and character writing that would be at home in an Uwe Boll movie, and maybe not even rising to that level. In part, it's because the developers chose a very controversial frame for their game, then ran away from it. Rather than confronting something uncomfortable head-on as they did in previous installments the developers took one look at how much fire they'd draw from various groups and ran like rabbits from it, abandoning the game's entire premise except for the thinnest of veneers. When you get right down to it, Ubisoft blew three out of four key areas of game design: the story was pitiful, the gameplay was unbalanced and poorly implemented, and there's clearly no respect for the players with the introduction of a naked cash-grab in the form of microtransactions. (Apparently, Ubisoft was blissfully unaware of the backlash surrounding their implementation in Star Wars: Battlefront II.) The game clearly lacked content and the developers knew it, so they padded the time by slowing player progression and forcing diverts into minigames like fishing. Microtransactions are practically forced on the player as a result, and the extortionate way they're handled and priced is a bald-faced insult. At the end of the day, there is no way this game is worth release pricing, or indeed any price tag over about $10. If you're looking for an enjoyable shooter, this is most definitely not it. Get a reduced price copy of Far Cry 3 or 4 and play that instead; either one is ten times the game that this disorganized, confused mess is.

For those who were around back in the good old days of monochrome graphics (yeah, there was something worse than 8-bit), you almost certainly know The Oregon Trail. A bunch of dolts pile into a wagon and go trundling off to Oregon, breaking the wagon, hunting for food, and getting dysentery. Ah, the good old days. Well, they're back with a twist: The Organ Trail has opened. The zombie apocalypse has lurched onto the scene. You and four others pile into a classic station wagon in search of a safe zone. You're not hunting food now; you're scavenging and trying to stop from being food for roaming zombies. Survivor colonies are there for trading, work, and upgrading your car. And, yep, watch out for dysentery and typhoid. It's a game with great throwback graphics, a cool premise, good implementation, and overall a lot of fun in a small package. Back when I first reviewed Organ Trail, I saddled it with a six. But since then, the egregious bugs that forced me to downgrade it have been repaired, and new features have been added. I can now give it the score it should've had from the start because it's now earning it. A thoroughly-enjoyable nine for this memory lane riff.

Big Pharma is one of those games that is difficult to describe, tricky to understand, and an absolute gem when you give it a proper chance. This is one of those games that seems to garner bad reviews largely because people failed to read the description and understand what the game was setting out to do. "It's a business sim!" "It's a factory game!" "It's _______!" where the blank is just about anything that it seems at first glance it might be. And then people get mad because they didn't get their assumption. Okay, great, so what *is* it? Well, Big Pharma is a mid-detail business sim welded to a very clever process puzzle game. These aren't puzzles in the sense of someone set up a mess for you to untangle, not at all. If there's a mess, it's pretty much your fault, and therein lies the fun. Your job is to produce medications to cure diseases and illnesses. From things like cold symptoms and acne to true calamities like Alzheimer's and cancer, you have the opportunity to cure - or at a minimum successfully treat - all of them. All medications start off as ingredients. Each ingredient has a set of attributes: cures, side effects, and boosters. You then run these ingredients through processing machinery to alter concentration, transform an ingredient to cure a different disease, eliminate side effects, and optimize effectiveness. The tricky bit, though, is that while you can change the orientation of machines, their input and output ports won't always be convenient for what you're doing at that time (the machines don't change, but your situation will), meaning you're going to need to be both creative and smart in how you run conveyor belts and fit your machines together. In this game, efficiency of space and distance are your goals, and **** it a good teacher. This probably sounds complex and dry, which isn't fair. Yes, the game is complex - very, at times - but it's not dry or dull. If you're the sort of gamer who wants or needs to be told what the objectives are, there's a lengthy list of missions for you to sink your teeth into. For the freestylers (like me), there's a full sandbox mode. You might not expect it, but it really is satisfying to figure out how to make a production line fit into as small a space as possible, or build a fully efficient line that wastes no time. There are parts of the game that are very complicated, and not all machines lend themselves to easy understanding. Documentation in game is pretty thin, although there is a pretty robust, re-runnable tutorial. For a manual, though, you'll be turning to the wiki to learn how to make those machines dance, and that can be a bit of a pain. As a bonus, though, the developer remains very active on Steam's forums and the forum itself sees good traffic, so if you loft a question, it's sure to be answered pretty quickly. So, yes, bit of a learning curve. You can and will master the mechanics of running a successful factory, along with the fun (and pain) of managing the business side: patenting your new drugs, marketing them...maybe engaging in a little subterfuge to snag more market share. Hey, all's fair in love and pharmaceuticals. Not being a business sim (I still can't believe one critic compared it to CapII), it doesn't offer full depth of business models and massive market dynamics, but what it does have is more than adequate to the game's purpose. So, in short, ignore the complaining "professional" critics. "It's not Theme Hospital?" No, ****, it isn't; the title you're looking for is Theme Hospital. Big Pharma is its own creature, and when you go into it knowing what the game is about, you'll find that it delivers handsomely on its promise.

As a longtime player of the Far Cry series, and one who was quite pleased with the direction the third installment took, I'll admit that I was looking forward to Far Cry 4 with great anticipation. My first play-through felt like a letdown. I recently picked the game up again, and I can say with absolute certainty: Ubisoft really needs to do better with the upcoming #5. There are a number of positive things to say, of course. The game world is enormous, graphics are detailed (actual, decent-looking fur even on a console? Yes, that's pretty good.), and missions are varied. The added gameplay mechanic of a branching storyline - while by no means new - is well implemented and adds depth to the game. Much of the voice acting is spot-on, with Naveen Andrews and Janina Gavankar turning in outstanding performances, not to mention the outstanding work of Troy Baker as the game's primary antagonist, Pagan Min. (Much has been said of FC3's Vaas, voiced by Michael Mando. Make no mistake: Baker's work is every bit as good. They're two entirely different characters, each requiring a specific approach. In the case of Vaas, that meant over-the-top, out-of-his-skull crazy, which Mando delivered. Pagan requires something a little more...frayed-nerves, looking at the world through a very warped lens. Baker nailed it to the exact same level as Mando.) The variety of vehicles is a nice addition, with the new Buzzer microlight helicopter a particularly welcome - if disturbingly unbalancing - addition. And, of course, the wide world of Far Cry weapons and their attachments, which worked so well in FC3, is back and just as good. A substantial improvement over FC3 is the inclusion of Takedown skills earlier in the game. By allowing players access to nearly the entire skill tree from the start - albeit with prerequisites, of course - players can hone their hand-to-hand skills early enough to be more than the relative gimmick they were in FC3. So why the trashing on the score? Well, to put it bluntly, nobody balanced this game. It's...absurd, really. In all situations and at all difficulty levels, the enemy AI is capable of zeroing in on the player almost instantly (even in "blizzard conditions" where "the enemy will have difficulty locating you" and using silenced weapons, they're on you almost right away). That wouldn't be so bad if only the damage system were square, but it's not; you'll get pummeled quickly, while enemies just soak up damage. (Show me one human being that can take two rounds of 7.62 to center mass with only a parka for cover and keep fighting without pause, and I'll show you that it's the frickin' Hulk.) Since the entire game is built around combat, it's a glaring oversight. Ladle on top of that the fact that you're the only one in fighting this war that seems to be able to do anything, and the frustration level skyrockets. Despite being surrounded by "allies," their ability to hit a target, hold an objective, or basically do anything but fire randomly is pretty much nil. What they can do is fire rounds into the air like the imbeciles they are as they celebrate a victory they had nothing to do with. Once you're that annoyed, things like incessant eagle attacks (against which you can't defend efficiently) and the ridiculously short in-game voice script just serve to irk you even more. (Note for would-be developers: if you're going to go with the "quirky radio personality that talks about in-game events and the world," *give them more than nine lines to say.* Fallout 3 did fine with Three-Dog because he had stuff to say. Rabi Ray Rana in FC4 is just an annoying short tape loop. No fault to the actor; fault to Ubisoft for giving the writing short shrift. The same goes for the announcer in Shanath Arena, who sounds like a cheap rip-off of Edwin Hodgeman's Dr. Dealgood from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Sitting through the same 20-second pointless intro listening to the same [bleeping] lines just drives up the old blood pressure.) In short, it's a game with a great setting, concept, and build, crippled by a developer's choice to shortchange writing AGAIN and refusal to balance the game properly before release. So why review it now, three years after release? Because FC5 is coming up, and these days Ubisoft tends to double down on mistakes they've made in the past. Hopefully they'll up their game (no pun). Just be aware before you plonk down your preorder money.

Space Agency is a reimagining of games like Kerbal Space Program (though, admittedly, there aren't many games like KSP!) designed to place the ability to run your own space program within the reach of people who don't know or care to know huge amounts of physics. Essentially, Space Agency has two modes: a mission-based mode that gives the player several objectives to complete within set budgetary and/or time limits; and a sandbox mode that lets the player do as he or she likes. On the positive side, Space Agency takes the freeform space program game and puts it in the hands of the general public. For all of its outstanding qualities, Kerbal Space Program requires a fair bit of investment by players to learn the physics of spacecraft, orbital, and transfer dynamics. That's daunting to a lot of people. Space Agency solved this problem by simplifying the whole situation: you operate in a 2D environment rather than a 3D one, and all of the nitty-gritty of delta-V and orbital physics have been smoothed out into simpler bar-graph style variables that are far more accessible to the general public. Just like KSP, players design their own spacecraft, but without many of the wide-sky options of KSP: Space Agency uses snap-together ship designs that offer limited design options, but the game tells you when things won't work. Now, to be fair, Space Agency has faults: physics are very simple, as are vehicle mechanics, so don't expect to pull off any fancy maneuvering (forget things like Hohmann Transfers, folks!), and yes, lateral thrust is considered "fancy." The physics model has some errors, some minor and some pretty grievous: a small vehicle contacting a large orbital structure shouldn't put it in substantial motion, but it can (and the case of "when" seems to be somewhat variable). Some missions are extremely difficult due to time constraints, so some extra play-balancing and testing probably would've been a good idea. Overall, though, if you want to build space stations and explore planets without having to learn a ton of physics, then Space Agency is an ideal game!

Godus unfortunately falls into the category of games with so much potential, but forfeit that on bad business model choices. First, the good news. Godus is a true god-game, where you, the player, have the power to reshape the world (well, bit by bit), and your followers look to you for guidance and help. If you enjoy nurturing little followers and making their little lives better, then the game design of Godus is tailor-made for you. Graphics are weak but passable (barely), sound is nothing noteworthy. However, the bad elements of the game totally wreck it, and I mean thoroughly. First of all, the developers make no mention of it, but you need to be online at all times. Why? It's not an MMO game, so why the online requirement? Because you need to use 22cans' ridiculous social service to continue play once the tutorial is over. This is an arbitrary decision that takes what could be a very pleasant commuter or lunch break game and turns it into something unplayable. Even laying that aside, Godus is beset with some serious faults, not the least of which is a highly erratic control scheme. Rather than the finger-paint controls that are the most common for sweeping adjustments to the game world, Godus uses a radial model that sets the initial touch as a focal point and the subsequent drags as action. The result is a highly unreliable control design that often undoes work just completed because the game decided that's what you were trying to do. Finally, while graphics are "passable," that should not be construed as "good." The graphics of Godus are reminiscent of a childish version of Kingdom of Keflings: very cartoonish and extremely primitive. Overall, it's a game with an outstanding concept, but crippled by poor execution, bad decisions by the distributor (and the inexplicable agreement of gamemaking titan Peter Molyneux with those decisions), and a lack of polish take what could've been the Next Big Thing and make it Yet Another Example of Game Developers Caring Only About Secondary Income. Such a total disappointment.

The freemium model, now the darling of mobile platform developers, has churned out another builder-semi-RPG: CastleVille legends. It's not special, it's not much to look at, and it practically demands real cash to play. You can leave it right there, but here are the details for those who are interested. On the positive side, it has (slightly) better than average graphics, decent sound, and a solid implementation of the realtime-process building game model, where tasks are carried out in realtime, forcing the gamer to either keep playing or check in from time to time. There are varied buildings, "heroes," and "quests" (both in quotes because mainly the differences are cosmetic and the amount of in-game money you need to kick in). All in all, while these features are nothing special, they're certainly no worse than most App Store fare. The failure lies with the game's reliance on its premium cash (called "crowns"). The first time you build any structure, it's paid for with in-game cash. After that, it's crowns only, and with the game giving those out in ones and twos (and buildings costing 20 and up), your only real option is to buy crowns with real money, and those prices are STEEP. Additionally, a beginning of game "premium hero" costs 750 crowns to recruit...which will cost you more than $30 in real money. In summation, it could have been at least a decent game, but outright greed made it a cash-hog freemium where very little is free.

Much of the iOS gaming community looked at the App Store deployment of XCOM with jaded eyes: tipping the scales at $20, it's expensive, and it is a port from a console. Justifiably, many looked at it as another attempt to wring some more cash out of gamer, and sure it is; that's the games industry. But the iOS release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a rarity: a port that actually surpasses its source material. With only a few exceptions, this tablet version of XCOM is better than the console or PC versions. Let's take a look at it. First of all, nearly all of the console features are present, yes PRESENT, in the tablet release. Usually, we can bank on large pieces going missing when anything is ported to lesser hardware, but with the exception of a bunch of largely-unnecessary cutscenes, everything has been faithfully preserved and included in the iOS version. Second, the hardware's reliance upon touchscreen control actually yields a (mostly) superior experience to either preceding version; control interface is fluid, intuitive, and marks a high-water mark in the attempt to create a user interface that provides seamless transition from intent to command. (That's usually...more on that in a second.) Graphics are solid if somewhat lower-caliber than other versions, although they look great on an iPad retina display, and sound is outstanding even on the 'Pad's built-in speaker. 2K also retained the procedurally-generated map feature, ensuring that you don't run through the exact same map on every mission; there's variability in most maps. The experience isn't perfect, though, and there are some issues that many gamers may find less than endearing. First, expect XCOM to drain your Pad's battery in a hurry. A 100% battery will drain itself dry in 4-5 hours of play at most; even plugged in to an AC adapter, the game still draws so much that the battery will be discharging slightly. There will be framerate problems, particularly on large maps involving a lot of animation (especially fires), so Battleship maps will drag terribly from time to time. And, while the touch interface is a vast improvement over any gamepad or mouse-and-keyboard setup, it's going to misinterpret your intentions regularly. As unit movement and camera movement share gestures, it's not uncommon for the system to assume you want to move a trooper rather than the camera. The system also misinterprets which level of a multi-level map you want as a destination for a trooper, so what should be intuitive tap control instead requires the use of manual level-adjust buttons (also touch controls, but shouldn't be as necessary as they are). Finally, just like the other versions of the game, you're going to be pressed for money and firepower early in the game, and that can be very frustrating, but that's just a tough game curve, not a flaw. So, overall, the iOS release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is in many ways vastly superior to the versions that preceded it. If you like the notion of XCOM, have a higher-end iPad, and have $20 burning a hole in your App Store account, then by all means go for it. It's a better game than its brothers, and quite a jump beyond most of what you'll find on the App Store.

Back during the heyday of PC gaming, there was one that ran under the radar but deserved more credit. In later years, it became more of a hit, primarily because it broke the mold. That game was Evil Genius, which put you in the position of being a megalomaniac Bond-type villain scheming to take over the world through henchmen and a combination of base building and broader strategy. Double Fine's Middle Manager of Justice (henceforth MMoJ) follows in similar spirit, if not complexity. Let's have a look. To start with, MMoJ is all about, yep, management. Except, unlike Smooth Operators, you're not staffing some dull office building with a bunch of corporate drones. No, your job is to fight crime with a staff of crack superheroes. Decide who to hire, equip them with better equipment, train them in more advanced skills, and decide who to send on which missions. Most missions give you an option to be either hands-on or hands-off. Micromanagement generally means that your heroes have a better chance of getting through a fight intact, but it's your option. There are several mechanics at work in MMoJ: A base-building component that allows you to outfit and upgrade your base; a management component that makes you responsible for the hiring, training, and improvement of your heroes; and a quasi-turn strategy combat system, half-automatic (attack every turn) and half-manual (when to use special abilities and items). Like many iOS games, there is a premium currency, but it's easy to come by and doesn't leave the player feeling obligated to buy through IAP. For a free game, that's not only uncommon, but delightfully refreshing. The length of gameplay is outstanding; ignore the fact that it's a free app, and the game has a lot of distance to it. Soundtrack is catchy (repetitive, but you generally won't notice and can turn it off). Sound and graphics are spot-on for the intent: a digital living comic book, and all aspects of the game's design follow that feel perfectly (some may call the graphics simplistic, but they're supposed to be). On the downside, missions do end up getting a little repetitive, giving the game a grindy sort of feel after a little while, but you can still stay involved. (This also allows the player to tune up lower-level heroes and try new strategies, as well as providing a fairly steady cash flow for improvements.) It also lacks complexity; unlike, for example, Evil Genius, base building is very much scripted and rigid. In the end, though Middle Manager of Justice is a very good game on its own merits, and is worth many hours of entertainment. Add in the fact that it's also a free app and you have a slam-dunk app. Not perfect (but so few are), but an excellent way to while away some time. A well-earned 8 out of 10 for Middle Manager of Justice, a delightfully different twist on the management genre.

Another zombie game? Really? Yep. This one, from aptly-named dev Undead Labs, promised to be a different kind of zombie game. Yeah, it's going to be chock full of everybody's favorite brain-obsessed creepies, but lots of games have that. Case in point, the perennial winner of zombie memories, Left 4 Dead. So is this Microsoft Arcade-only (and pricey to boot) release anything special? Is it worth 1700 Microsoft points? Yes and yes. Let's look at State of Decay, the new breed of zombie apocalypse. First of all, this is not like the vast majority of zombie games: it is an open world, you-get-one-shot, game that requires you to, brace yourselves here, think about what you're doing. You cannot blunder into situations and expect to reliably get out of it. Everything you do, just like in reality, makes noise. Noise attracts zombies. So you need to plan ahead, recon your intended area of operations, and keep your eyes open for uninvited guests. The world is varied, well-made, and the entire thing is part of your game. It's not a lot of set dressing buildings like in Fallout 3: every building can be entered, every building can be searched. You are in a constant need, and thus constant search for supplies of varying descriptions. From weapons and ammo to building and medical supplies, food, and a whole host of inventory items, you need it all to survive and thrive. Every building has the potential to house something valuable, and most buildings contain several searchable containers. (This feeds back into the previous gameplay mechanic genius: you can search slowly and methodically, which takes time, or search quickly, which makes an incredible racket and draws zombies.) The entire map, which is huge, is built for you to explore. The AI is plenty clever, with a very good predator/prey algorithm implementation; zombies are both solo and pack hunters, and react predictably to given simuli. The AI is also smart enough to be stupid, a mark of the well-built AI: it will fall for decoys and tricks, not see through them and cheat because the game knows everything (hey, Need for Speed...lookin' at you). Missions are randomly created and, although a little limited in the number of types, still keeps the game from getting stale. Combat is neither overly complex nor too simplified, and breaks down into melee and firearm, with melee divided into weight classes and weapon types. And, much like Ubisoft's I Am Alive, you must concern yourself with not only health but stamina; overexert yourself and you may find yourself completely winded, surrounded by zombies, unable to fight or flee. But best of all, it's up to you to fortify and improve your base of operations, decide when and where to move, and set up safe houses. You're not stuck with what the game gives you; it's up to you to choose everything. You're given a menu of options for things to build at your base, all of which require a given amount of various supplies. As long as you can cover the cost, you can have what you want, but it's up to you to choose, and choose wisely. Moreso than any game in easy memory, State of Decay puts you in a world that's unbelievably open and gives you so much freedom that if you can see it, you can get there. With all this glowing praise, are there downsides? Yes, there are. Most seriously, the game's interface is somewhat unpolished. It's based on the common journal-as-user-interface frame (with a pleasant Tropico 4 graphical motif), but the player's understanding of the tools and options is left more to trial and error than anything else. Instructions are available, to a degree, but are not very complete and cannot be recalled at will; miss it the first time, and it's gone. On the heels of that is a lack in firearms controls; aiming is arduous, without any sort of aim assist, and against rapidly bobbing and weaving zombies, lining up a shot is downright frustrating. Controls are fixed, so you cannot customize your controller. Vehicle physics are a little too floaty, and the vehicles themselves are severely lacking in durability (probably to avoid balancing problems). You'll receive warnings that fellow survivors may be in trouble, but no solid indication of where they are, leaving you feeling a little helpless from time to time. You cannot recruit other survivors as backup, which means you're usually on solo. This wouldn't be so bad, except that any time any character dies, that's it; it's character permadeath every time. This is a pain as you can spend hours tuning up your "primary" character only to have him chewed up and lost because of bad luck or some unfortunate timing. (Some gamers may enjoy this, as it does add a major sense of urgency!) Some have complained about graphics quality, but it's really not bad at all. So, all told, State of Decay is an excellent game with a few teething troubles. Despite its high cost on XBLA marketplace, it's well worth it for would be World War Z'ers. A solid 8 to State of Decay. Go and enjoy.

While we've seen who knows how many games based on movies, Metro 2033 is special in that it's based on a novel. True deal: this is a game adaptation of a novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky. Metro is about the aftermath of the apocalypse. Survivors in Moscow inhabit the city's metro, the subway, and each station has become effectively its own nation-state. Predictably, this sort of nationalism coupled with desperately short supplies means conflict. So let's take a tour of Metro 2033. First and foremost, this game does exactly what it sets out to do: to create a tense, atmospheric environment where combat with humans and mutants is a constant threat, the environment itself is your enemy, and you're never quite sure who your friends are. There's plenty of creativity on the part of the devs, which leads to some interesting situations for you as a player: in a society where bullets are currency, do you use your preciously-hoarded ammunition to buy or blast? You can't have both. Graphics are generally very good, and environments are beautifully **** when you can say ruins are beautiful, then you know the graphics team got it right. And storytelling is extremely well done, providing a solid driving force...something of a rarity in a shooter like this. But a 6? Yes, and here's why. First, the voice acting is uneven; while most of the game is well done, there are instances where the suspension of disbelief is broken by either scriptwriting or performance. Music is fair, nothing special, but it doesn't do much to add to the game. But the worst mistake on the part of Metro 2033 is its total failure to capture the obvious and low-hanging fruit that would've made this game great: it should have been open-world. The entire design of the game's world lent itself toward being a sandbox game, and really most gamers would probably be itching at an opportunity to just walk this world, but you're never given the chance. Metro is a rail shooter, point blank and period, and that is its single greatest failing. Rail shooters were fine back when that was all the tech could handle. But just like the more-recent Aliens: Colonial Marines, this just does not cut it any more. A rail shooter needs to be something truly spectacular, borderline otherworldly in its concept and execution to be good today. When shown a world that has so much potential and then be told, no, you can't go explore and experience, then that's a failure. This is, hands down, the single greatest fault in the game. If you're looking for a diversion that puts you in a well-made postapocalyptic hellhole, then Metro 2033 is a good choice. Just don't expect to be given the keys to the city. A 6 for Metro 2033, a game with lots of potential it inexplicably (and unforgivably) decided to ignore.

It seems as though Mass Effect: Citadel might have started something. For those who didn't take a look at that one, it was a lighthearted, essentially just-for-fun romp full of laughs and moments to remember just for the sheer hilarity. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was made apparently for the same reasons. So let's take a look at it. Summarizing the game is relatively easy: take every single 1980s action movie between grades A+ and D-, pull all of the one-liners, dialogue tropes, and situation comedy, and blend them together while mixing in the Far Cry 3 engine and design, then retro it back to 80's video game design norms and you get...Blood Dragon. If this sounds critical, it's not meant to: the game is meant to just be plain fun, and it lives up to it. If you were a fan of movies like Robocop, Outland, and a whole slew of movies too bad to remember (mainly because they were bad movies, not in spite of it), then Blood Dragon was made for you: it'll take you on a trip down that memory lane and keep you in stitches every step of the way. The game developers also deserve congratulations because they didn't go too far, and it would've been so easy. While the cinematics harken back to 1980s game animations, the game itself uses the graphics engine and mechanics of Far Cry 3, so all of that polished smoothness doesn't go to waste. It's not perfect, though. First, the game's color palette gets tiring fast; everything is in a red overcast, just like innumerable 80's postapocalyptic films, but for a game designed to last several hours, you're likely to end up with retina fatigue. The other hitch for Blood Dragon is uneven pacing and difficulty. The difficulty pendulum swings rapidly and often without warning, which can saddle players with a situation harder than expected. But given the superhero mechanics at work in the game, this is usually only a temporary setback. Overall, Blood Dragon is everything you remember and love about 80s sci-fi action films: over the top everything, a wisecracking hero, implausible technologies, way too much neon, and plots that don't get a lot of **** don't really need it anyway. A well-enjoyed 8 to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, a trip down memory lane...with **** dinosaurs.

One of the perennial problems with Tropico was the fact that it remained static. The game time has clicked it way up to 2015, but everybody is still driving around in '56 Fords. (Not implausible, given how they're built, but it gets stale.) And that was the problem: the game just got stale. Thus, the entire objective of Modern Times was to address this and fix it. So how does it do? In short: well. Modern Times is a genuine expansion pack, adding something to every aspect of the game: there are new edicts to issue, new scenarios, and new buildings...LOTS of new buildings. This is the best part of the pack: rather than your island being a static creation, it now evolves with the times. New buildings become available as technology progresses, and old buildings can be renovated and updated. You're given the opportunity to improve the lives of your people with new building **** wouldn't be happier in the tropics with some nice new A/C? But it's the progression of buildings that's really the prize; it effectively makes Tropico 4 a new game. Would-be dictators won't get much out of this pack, but the civil leaders will appreciate the ability to build new, more efficient, and almost universally extremely well-rendered buildings. (Most of them really are works of art, too.) The only point knock-off for this review is that the console version really suffers for being on the console: an Xbox clearly does not have the processing and memory chops to do the job right, so the gameplay begins to suffer as the island expands. Worse, game saving becomes unreliable once the game progresses for decades. Even so, Modern Times is well worth any Tropico-lover's time and money. A well-earned 9 for some long overdue Modern Times.

Hey, another word game for iOS! Considering that there are almost as many word games in the App Store as there are words in the English language (including the warhorse called "Scrabble"), it's easy to think that there's no more room. You might be right. But, thankfully, there was enough room for PopWords!, a basic wordbuilding game from Megafauna Software. How good is PopWords!? Good enough to earn my third-ever 10. Let's look at why. First off, PW uses a very simple, minimalist interface. You're given a 5x6 grid of letters (that's 30 letters). Your job is to connect adjacent letters (horizontal, vertical, and diagonal or any combination ****'re not limited to straight-line combinations) into words of at least 3 letters. The longer the word, the more it's worth. Unlike irritating word-find games, though, you're not limited by a list of "find these" words. Better yet, the grid keeps changing; when you use a letter, it's removed from the board, the remaining letters slide down, and the short columns are refilled with more random letters. In the real game mode, you're fighting the timer, with longer words adding more time back into the constantly-running countdown timer. Ah, but in the "Practice" mode, there's no timer. It's the ultimate relaxation word game. You don't have to worry about being stuck with a rotten rail of tiles like solitaire Scrabble, because the grid is always changing. There are no timers, and your only limitation is your brain's dictionary and creativity. Best yet, this is a pick-up-put-down game. You can minimize it and come back later, even close the app and restart later, and your progress will still be there until you manually reset it. Some people complain about the lack of graphical finesse. Who cares? This game isn't meant to be eye-candy, it's supposed to be a word game. Truly, if they'd gone with flash-dazzle graphics, it would've taken something away (not to mention maybe knocking a point off this perfect 10). So I'm gladly giving one of those very rare 10s to PopWords! This, folks, is how word games are done.

Survival games are, admittedly, a dime a dozen (except on the app store, where they're generally 99 cents a pop), and Stranded (or SWAP as it goes by), is a familiar scene: a space guy ends up stranded on a desert island in the middle of some ocean. Does SWAP stand out? Well, on the plus side, the game does have good graphics, an impressive collection of items that can be crafted, and it's very much a sandbox game (complete with the sand). While there's an overall objective, rescue, it's up to you to set your own priorities and handle staying hydrated, fed, and not dead. Unfortunately, that's it for the plus list. The biggest problem, the real problem, with SWAP is that it's not finished. While you can craft a huge menu of different survival tools, most of them don't do anything. You can build a shelter, but it does nothing. You can build a water catcher, but you can't get water from it. With the exception of a campfire a hunting tools, nothing you build has an **** that's really all that needs to be said. It's a 5 to Stranded Without a Phone, which realistically should be renamed "Stranded in an Unfinished Game."

Fundamentally, XOR's 9 Colonies is a fairly thin riff on the 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) genre of games. Unfortunately, the end result is more misses than hits. So let's take a look. On the positive side, there's an acceptable level of backstory narrative, a good tech tree to work your way up, and the turn-based approach used creates a game that actually benefits from not being a real-time strategy. Instead, it's more like "space chess," where it's not a matter of building better ships so much as picking your time and thinking ahead. With only nine possible colony worlds, it makes for a confined gamespace and, thus, puts a greater emphasis on strategy. Unfortunately, the game mechanics hamstring what could be a great bit of entertainment. Most glaringly, there are no differences among the colonies, and if all players are absolutely equal, then you've eliminated any play style strategies; rather than having better researchers, better warriors, and so forth, you've smeared it all into one even layer. In a game like that, it's almost always going to devolve into a **** the tech tree, building ships, **** becomes less about strategy and more about just grinding through the turns. Combat mechanics are flimsy at best, and any technical advantage you may have gained through research emphasis has little effect; the winner of any given battle is almost always the side that fires first, and with only a few exceptions, that's determined randomly. Furthermore, since combat is resolved on a very simple series of equations, unless you send a truly massive fleet, any numerical advantage is nearly worthless. If you lose the initiative coin toss, you lose the battle and all ships involved. So unless it's 30-against-1, you're just burning through ships. Finally, graphics are badly, badly lagging. The game was designed for an iPhone but is marketed as a universal app. Unlike many iPhone universal apps, the UI and other graphics generally don't scale up well, leaving almost everything looking pixelated and jaggy. (The devs did source their planet graphics from none other than JPL, so those look great at any zoom level.) In the final analysis, 9 Colonies is kinda like golf; if you get a good lie, it's a fun game, but if you get stuck with a bad lie, the whole game is just going to annoy you. (The typical run is that out of 9 colonies, of which you have one, the rest ultimately battle down to a single AI-run faction that then dogpiles you.) All of this might only be worth a couple points down, but it's three points off because this is NOT a free game. In fact, 9 Colonies is actually pretty expensive as these games go. A free or 99cent game could get away with these shortcomings, but a $3 game simply cannot get away with this. So, it's going to be a 7 for 9 Colonies, a game that could've been a good turn-based 4X, but ultimately just turned into a coin toss game with a better looking front end.

Star Traders is a good attempt to fuse RPG and strategy elements with business management, resource management, and human intuition...with a splash of 4X elements for color. It's a game with a massive scope and with a lot of possibilities for the player. Let's tree it down. On the positive side, there's a lot to talk about. ST:E allows you, the player, to make a lot of decisions about what sort of game you want to play; you can choose from a wide variety of "careers," ships, and allegiances to the various factions in the game world. There's a lot of customization options to your ship in a mechanical sense (artistic types, sorry, no paint shop). So, whether you prefer military life, exploration, trading...whatever floats your starship, you can go for it. The game world is very large, particularly for a single-player iOS game. Gameplay is a pseudo-turn base, so it's a pick-up-put-down style of game. All of these are great things. So why not a 10? Two reasons. The minor reason, really minor, is somewhat weak graphics, but I couldn't really care less about that. Graphics aren't really a necessity. But what really chops into Star Traders' score is the fact that with so many options and gameplay paths, the game really just throws you into the deep end without so much as a packing peanut to keep you afloat. The game just...starts. The "tutorial" isn't really any help whatsoever, so it's left to you to try to figure out what to do, how all the tools work, and how to work in the game world. While too much hand-holding is annoying, none at all just leaves you feeling lost and frustrated. Once you can figure out what's going on, Star Traders has a lot to offer. It's just getting there that can drive you nuts. So, a 7 to Star Traders, a huge world with options and **** no manual.

Star Command is a game whose story is actually bigger than itself. The product of a Kickstarter campaign, SC is a game that languished in development hell for two years before exploding onto the iOS scene amid fanfare and viral PR. The long and the short of it is that SC puts you in command over your very own Star Trek-style ship, rendered in obviously-lovingly-wrought pixel art. Equip your ship, hire crew, fly to other planets, shoot at enemies. A great premise. On the plus side, the graphics are second to none, provided you like pixel art. It's clear that the developers spent a lot of time on artwork; it's all high quality and very carefully and lovingly made. Audio is quite good, although the orchestrated arrangements for the background music don't exactly match the graphic motif (Pixel People did better with its chiptune soundtrack), nor the 8/16-bit style sound **** those sound effects fit right in and work well. The game also forces the player to split attention between ship-to-ship combat and defending one's own ship from boarding parties. So you're simultaneously handling ship weapons and steering your security crew around to handle unwanted guests. Unfortunately, the game doesn't follow the slick polish of the graphics and front end UI. Problem 1: everything is hostile. There's no exploration, and certainly no diplomacy; you're given a new place to go which, no surprise, contains a new ship that wants you dead. There's no other approach, nothing new to see; it's just a matter of what the new aliens who want to kill us look like. Dead dull. Problem 2: basic game mechanics are a nearly epic-level fail. Not only do your ship's weapons and equipment need to charge, but you need to generate a "token" to use most of them. Consequently, you need two time-consuming charge-ups to use your best gear, which is just bad mechanics. Weapon charges, fire weapon. Don't go requiring a second thing, particularly when it takes two minutes to make a token whether you're in combat or peacetime; you will be waiting. Problem 3: you're cramped. There's no really effective way to improve your ship because there's just no room. There are bigger ships, but they're locked with no clear answers on how to unlock them. And Problem 4: the combat curve is sharp. Your ability to defend yourself is rapidly outstripped by your enemies' ability to beat the snot out of you. You will quickly end up being beaten senseless by antiship weapons while your ship is swarmed by boarding parties. On top of that, a lucky shot by an enemy can kill several crew, meaning that battles can become hopeless quickly. Ultimately, I'm hoping that some additional thinking and reworking to game mechanics will correct the most glaring problems, and that some additional development will give you more alien interaction options than "which first? Lasers or torpedoes?" In the meantime, the end result is good graphics and sound, but points off for bad game mechanics, lack of variety, poor balance and pacing, and a lack of play endurance (with so little to see, the game gets old fast). So 5 out of 10 for an unfinished would-be masterpiece called Star Command.

The market is flooded with Minecraft clones and knockoffs, most of which not worth the battery power needed to show them on screen. Junk Jack is surprisingly and refreshingly different, even if it doesn't quite have the accessibility of the original Minecraft. Let's look at it. First off, JJ is an example of fine old 8-bit pixel art. The game world is very reminiscent of the graphical style of the original NES or Sega Genesis (actually, quite Sonic the Hedgehog in its own way). The game concept really is Minecraft clone, but with a considerably greater number of resources to gather and items to craft. This leads to its biggest problem: with so many craftable items relying on the same parts, early-game construction is frequently stalled because you don't have the ability to efficiently gather the resources to make those parts or find the parts themselves. Of course, once you've amassed enough supplies, that changes rapidly, allowing you to take advantage of the massive menu of craftable items (about ten times the number in Minecraft standard, forget Minecraft Mobile). Of course, some would argue that having so many built-in bits of furniture discourages the extreme use of creativity in making furniture like in Minecraft (did you know that you can make an entertainment center in Minecraft? You can.), but it's important to remember that this is a different game. It's similar, not a total clone. And, in that way, it does an admirable job. Really, one of the two points knocked off happened because of poor early-game balancing; in hostile-creature mode, survival is difficult for days as you cannot make a proper shelter quickly, and even if not, acquisition of resources in the early game feels unnecessarily grindy. The second point came off because you need to collect recipes for **** buy them through IAP. Since the game already costs $3, that's a little galling. Ultimately, if you're looking for an enjoyable builder, Junk Jack is a good one. It's just not a free one.

For those looking to enjoy their old arcade favorites, anything that promises to let you play those old greats again sounds good...nearly irresistible. Defender, APB, Spy Hunter and many more, most tied to great memories of time in an arcade. That's why I went and downloaded Midway Arcade, and why I bought one of the expansion packs. Unfortunately, the game falls far short of the promise. Let's run it. On the plus side, these are faithful recreations of old games, with graphics just like the arcade-edition originals, sound that is genuine, and gameplay that, for better and worse, is spot on to the originals. It's just like having a copy of the original arcade editions, albeit with a smaller screen. But there are downsides. For reasons that are completely alien to me, WB decided to go with gyroscopic steering control, which on a top-down game make no sense whatsoever and, with sensitivity and precision as poorly implemented as they are, they wreck great games. Attempting to control games like Spy Hunter is difficult to the point of wanting to give up. A five out of ten is very fair, particularly that these games are not free and are poorly implemented. I doubt an update is going to come out to change the control scheme, but who knows? Stranger things have happened. Until then, though, it's five out of ten: games faithfully recreated, but nearly unplayable.

Realtime action games for mobile platforms generally have to sacrifice somewhere. The graphics suffer, the control system is wonky, the animation jaggy, or something else is wrong. Amazingly, for everything it tries to do, EPOCH actually does a very admirable job in creating a not just passable, but very entertaining and well-playing game. You play as, no joke, an amnesiac robot that wakes up after the cybernetic revolt robot apocalypse. What's clear is that everything has been blown apart. What's not clear is why, or where the princess you were originally tasked with protecting is now. Yep, it sounds a little weak (protecting a princess? What am I, Robo-Mario?), but it isn't. So, let's run it down. First, gameplay is simplistic but engaging: maneuvering is done by finger swipes, and the simple swipes translate to effective maneuvers; targeting enemies is done with a tap. Your robot fires automatically whenever not under cover, so you don't need to double-thumb anything. Graphics are surprisingly good, the atmosphere of the wrecked city in which the game takes place grim and heavy, but without putting a damper on the game. (It's rare that the environment in a twitch game actually helps tell the story, but they do in EPOCH.) Sound is good, although effects are reused fairly regularly; music is simple but fits well with the game. Best yet, there is a large menu of customization options for your bot, allowing you to improve weapons, armor, and utilities to match the tactical situation and personal play style. Difficulty progression is smooth and reasonable. Perhaps most surprising, however, is the writing: through "log entries" of various entities, the story of the robot apocalypse is told, and quite effectively. So, what are the negatives? Well, the game isn't particularly long; there are only about a dozen levels, and each difficulty level runs the same levels again, just with tougher enemies. Gaps between affording one level of upgrades and the next get downright huge, which means a lot of grinding to accumulate the cash. And sadly, the storytelling seems to either have a bug or a serious stall, because the logs stop coming close to the end (only about five more entries to go) and didn't return, so that leaves the conclusion of the narrative up in the air. (Oh, one more "stealth positive" about EPOCH: for a game with 3D graphics and the features this one packs, it sips battery power. It is NOT a power hog.) So we're talking a well-earned 9 for EPOCH, a game well worth your time if you want a good action game that doesn't require a lot of investment (financial or otherwise).

I generally don't give out 10s to games. There are very few that have ever been worth a 10 in my book, mainly because no game is as near-perfect as that score implies. To date, the only game that has earned a 10 from me has been Rebuild on iOS. Pixel People was the second addition to the 10 list. What is it, exactly? Hard to nail down in a phrase, so let's really look at it. PP is a combination game. It's part builder, where you put together a city, deciding which buildings go where and how heavily they're staffed. That's nothing new. But the really cool and innovative part is the other half of the game. Reminiscent of alchemy games, you're given the task of "splicing" your new inhabitants. Each new resident is a blank clone template to which you must give form by splicing together two existing professions. You start with two, Mayor and Mechanic, and from that build dozens. The combinations range from literal to more esoteric, but they all make sense. In creating new professions, you unlock new buildings. All buildings need at least one profession, most requiring two to five. The better staffed the building, the more profit it turns. Many buildings have special functions which provide more gameplay options or bonuses. So the gameplay is very innovative and creative, but what of the rest? Well, if you're familiar with (and a fan of) pixel art, then this game was made for you; all buildings and people are fantastic examples of pixel ****, best of all, interactive. The soundtrack is limited to two tracks, but the music is so bright and peppy that it doesn't get tiring. Sound effects are simplistic, true to the 8-bit feel of the game (but have no fear; the graphics are much better than 8-bit color). This is a freemium game, which means that there is a real-cash for virtual premium cash IAP system. The rates are reasonable, but it's nice to point out that it's not entirely necessary to buy Utopium (the premium cash), because you will earn it in the game. You can earn a maximum of about 25u every day if you're willing to put the time into it. With each land increase costing about 40u, that means that you can expand regularly without it costing you anything. Best yet, even though the game was only released three months prior to this writing, it has already seen two updates, with more promised. Unfortunately, it was the most recent update that robbed the game of its 10. For no discernible reason, the developers decided to introduce elements that had to be bought with Utopium. Now, again, this is theoretically possible without paying cash, but it slows the game to a crawl. With new buildings taking a day or so to build, newly-created occupations clog the system and prevent you from creating new splices unless you hurry construction...with Utopium. Further, the time discount system, based on "city spirit" has become a scaled thing; each time you expand, the relative value of the spirit decor you have decreases. Thus, for every 10-square land increase, you'll need to spend up to half of it to get back to maximum **** those items are only buyable with Utopium. Missions to unlock new genes, which I assume is a means of pacing the game down to a slightly slower unlock rate (which is good; it draws out the new content) require "finding" certain animals, but the drop tables are definitely off you'll have twenty of an animal you don't need, but not one of a type you do. Of course, with 100 Utopium, you can buy your way out of the mission. And then there are "premium genes" which can only be bought with 100 Utopium. With so many developers making grabs for cash, it's painful to see a game that rightfully deserved a 10-point rating throw it away because they wanted more money. So, knocking two points off the score for messing up the game's pace and **** strongly slanting it toward IAP cash purchase. My score dropped to an 8 until the "Easter Eggs" update, which although not eliminating the nearly-compulsory pay-to-play, it did reduce the need to spend actual cash through added game dynamics, particularly the newfound ability to boost city production temporarily while simultaneously creating a use for the "spirit hearts" you keep collecting. So I'm gladly adding a point back, and I remain hopeful that they'll continue retreating from being a money grab. Nine out of ten, and hopeful it might battle back up to 10.

Few games totally upended genres as effectively as the original Bioshock. The weird amalgamation of shooter and sorcery-style gameplay, the settings, the story **** of it was fresh, original, and thoroughly unexpected at every turn. Bioshock 2 tried to keep up with that legacy, although didn't quite have the steam (seriously, no pun). So how did Infinite do in keeping up the Bioshock mantle? In short, it did pretty well. Make no mistake: Infinite is a radical departure from the games that have come before. For a change, you are not in the decaying and (mostly, not quite enough) abandoned city of Rapture, but rather the vibrant and very much **** flying, did they mention the flying part?...city of Columbia. Columbia is sort of the mirror-universe evil twin of the America we know and love: it's a place of racial segregation, theocracy, and mindless fervor based on a cult of personality built around a "prophet" whose bolts aren't just loose, they're missing. The other quirk the game design has, and this one is unique among all the games I've seen, is that nearly the entire game is an escort mission, but escorting someone fully capable of handling problems. That someone is Elizabeth, a character so well-designed and well-written that the folks on Irrational's "Liz Squad," the tiger team put together to make sure she was a good addition to the game, clearly all deserve major congratulations and probably a raise. (Read some of the development information to learn more about them.) Let me say this: I hate, capital HATE, escort missions. They annoy me. It's constantly trying to save a brainless AI from itself. I almost decided against Infinite because of Elizabeth, but got it anyway. Glad I did, because Elizabeth isn't your usual escortee. She's tough, very helpful, and never a hindrance. Environments are well-built, thematic, and engaging, not to mention unbelievably creative. So that's a lot of **** a 7? A few reasons. One, where environmental graphics are good, the people inhabiting this world are not well rendered; they all have a china doll appearance which is very unsettling. Texture resolutions are generally good, but some of the level decor does suffer from decreased resolution. Interactivity with the world is variable and, while occasionally quite good, does sometimes leave the player wondering why something has no interactions. But perhaps most frustrating is the total lack of directional input on character development. You are locked into the script as it was developed by writers and have no opportunity to make ****, frankly, the player's character is really rather a jerk, and that didn't resonate with me at all. Finally, Infinite does follow the Bioshock 2 approach of segmented world progression, meaning that when you leave a sector, there's typically no returning. That's a departure that started with Bioshock 2 and one of my least favorite things about the game. So, points off for poor NPC graphics resolution, the inability to change your character's insufferably-bad attitude, and lack of open worldness (or even its emulation). Still, don't misunderstand: 7 is a good score, and Infinite is well worth your time. It is a true piece of originality in an ocean of the mundane and the ONLY heavy-hitter release in the last three months that didn't leave me severely disappointed (I'm looking at YOU, Colonial Marines). A good and well-earned 7 for Bioshock Infinite, the year's first actual "you really should play this" game.

So, it took a while for someone to license WarGames and convert it into a game. DEFCON already took a riff on WarGames' combat visualizations, so what's left? Well, we can convert it into a match-3, right? As someone who generally can't stand match-3 games, I was hesitant to even download the free trial, but I figured, well, the film was good, so it'll get a shot. I'm quite glad that I did. WG:WOPR isn't the typical match-3 (thankfully); it actually allows you to employ quite a bit of tactical cunning. On the foundation, WG:WOPR is a match-3+, where your objective is to collect three (or more) matching tiles to make an effect. First wrinkle: the tiles you match have an effect on the overall game, which boils down to reducing your opponent's health to zero before he does the same to you. You can deal damage, heal yourself, earn cash, or earn specials through the tiles you collect. Ah, but why cash? That brings us to wrinkle two: You can buy modifiers that change how the game plays, often in mid-round. You can, through the application of a couple of these "specials" turn a game that was on the edge into an absolute rout. In this way, it's much more than a basic matcher game; you can employ some tactics and strategy and radically change the game while it's in progress. (Plus, there are some cool sound bites from the films.) Could it have been any theme other than WarGames? Sure, easily; there's nothing about the game that is inseparably linked to the film. But the important part is that the game itself is well-conceived and well-executed, with the WarGames content painted on to give it a recognizable face. At the very least, if you're a fan of matchers (or even if not), it's worth checking the lite version; you're likely to be pleasantly surprised. A well-deserved 9 to WarGames:WOPR, the first matcher since PuzzleCraft that I could actually stand for more than 20 seconds.

So, the sixth Halo game. I've been through Halo 1-3, ODST, and Reach. I've done my tours of duty with the UNSC, from the low-end low-budget beginning through the slick and polished latest. But this is different; Bungie has slipped its reins off the Halo horse, and MGS has taken over. How did they do? Very well, better than I expected. Let's take a look. Graphics are outstanding, with well-built levels that benefit from good artwork. Enemies (and allies) are correspondingly high-res, meaning that even on console, you won't have your immersion in the game wrecked by something on-camera that looks like a digital camera threw up on screen (we've all seen **** you listening, Jurassic Park?). Weapon design has undergone a major overhaul, and one for the positive. I've previously had an intense dislike for non-human weapons in Halo, but this installment is different; Forerunner weapons are pretty sweet. Gameplay is well above average. Two missteps mar the game, though. First, the campaign is short. As in "we got it done on Legendary in six hours" short. Second, the storytelling, while not bad, is much thinner than previous Halo games. It's clear that Microsoft Game Studios wasn't as interested in telling an epic story as their predecessors. Even so, it's an enjoyable game that really is a must-play for Halo fans. Everybody else, it's a good shooter with challenge and finesse...just not a lot of single-player mileage in the tank. A fair 7 to Halo 4, and a "good job" to the folks at MGS responsible for it.

The risk with any tie-in is that of a misfire. When a game is introduced into an existing franchise, it runs the same risks as a film made from a game. And, like so many films made from a game, this suffers the reverse curse: the game does not live up to the film. Or the book. Or someone talking about a friend who watched the film. Truth told, "Jurassic Park: The Game" would be more accurately titled "Jurassic Park: The Minigames." Why? Because that's all this "game" is: a series of button-mashing minigames. There's no content to be had. Okay, so let's do this by the numbers. Graphics are poor, with only moderate-resolution 3D models skinned with moderate resolution textures. Environments are a little better, but not much, and mobile objects (dinos and people) look cartoonish. Settings are generally adequate and it's amusing to wander around the various locales seen in the film. Well, sort of. Another problem is that the game gives you practically no unscripted control, meaning that you're beholden to what's been written for you, no deviations allowed. Writing is some of the worst hack dialogue you're likely to hear any time soon. And the gameplay, oh the gameplay. There's no walking around, no taking your own lead. It's all a series of on-screen button and stick prompts. The whole game is one big minigame, and that's truly pathetic. (On the plus side, we've finally found a game that if it were converted into film, Uwe Boll could actually improve; it's as bad as it can get already, so even he couldn't cause any more damage.) It's no surprise that the original film cast declined to be part of this project; they were protecting their careers. Look, even in the bargain bin, this turkey is overpriced. You can get the same experience by buying yourself a Simon; push the buttons in order and it's just like playing this game. The only thing keeping **** of the zero out of ten category is the relatively faithful reproduction of props and scenes from the film. But everything else? Zero. So it's a VERY generous two out of ten for a minigame stretched to an excruciatingly-long full game. But don't buy it.

I've been a fan of Tropico since the first one came out many years ago for the PC. Tropico 2, with its pirate kitsch, was an annoying distraction, but Tropico 3 made up for it. Tropico 4...? The best way to describe this installment is as "Tropico 3 with a lot of extra features." Is it an entirely new game? Not really, but how could it be and still be Tropico? The new features are universally good; there are none I was forced to look at and think "Why did you do this to my game?" Smooth controls, which are surprising for a console builder game, and a reasonably smart menu system make the game easy to play for hours. And hours. And hours and hours until your boss calls and asks where you are. Kalypso has also been good enough to port the expansion packs that have been released, which add considerable content to the game. New buildings, edicts, and all kinds of amusing stuff which fit seamlessly into the Tropico mold. Overall, this is an amazingly good builder on its own; add in the fact that it's this good on a console, and it's outstanding. There is one serious downside, though, and it's this flaw alone that dings my rating. I've had serious problems with corrupted saves once an island has been running for a significant length of time (about 30 years). Perhaps one day a patch will come out to cure this, but I'm not optimistic; the same problem plagues Tropico 3 on the Xbox. Still, tons of fun to play! (Just cross your fingers while saving!)

It's really rather a shame that this is to be the last ME3 DLC; they've finally managed to hit their stride. Leviathan was an example of great storytelling. Omega, high creativity. Citadel isn't fantastic storytelling but it is creative. But, more than that, it's a cheeseburger for Mass Effect 3: not highly nutritious or haute cuisine, but delicious and enjoyable. Make no mistake, Citadel isn't about epic storytelling or redefining genres. Citadel is about fun, pure and simple. For a few glorious hours, Mass Effect 3 sheds its cloak of gloom and galactic doom to just kick back and have fun. For the first time ever, you don't fight with the two squaddies of your choice, you get the whole team. Military discipline is right out the window as your team bickers, one-liners, and plows through the opposition. The writing is bang on, such that the chatter of your team, which could easily become annoying, is fresh, fun, and reminiscent of the best buddy films and military comedies. The new enemies of the DLC are engaging and well-balanced. The plot is, yes, a little hackneyed, but it's forgivable and gives a new slant on ME enemies all around (after all, haven't you had your fill of splinter groups yet?). Plus, you might see Wrex in a tux...what Mass Effect fan wouldn't look forward to that? Much like the Pinnacle Station DLC in the original ME, Citadel installs an infinite trainer that lets you practice, field-test weapon and armor configurations, and see how hard you can push yourself. Best of all, though, for the first time ever you can enjoy some downtime with your team. Have a party, enjoy some time off. Hey, you've earned it; you're out there saving the galaxy and all, so surely you've racked up some vacation time. There are some shortcomings in this pack, primarily its length. The entire "campaign" can be wrapped in about five hours, but there's easily another few hours' worth of content that's introduced alongside the campaign. If you're unwilling to suspend the ambiance of the game and just plunge into some pointless fun, you'll be unhappy with this pack; get this only if you want to have some lighthearted fun in the Mass Effect universe. But for those who want to have a lot of laughs with the Normandy crew, this is the way to go, no question. You will laugh yourself sick. A solid nine out of ten for the funloving comedy that is the final Mass Effect 3 DLC.

Rage is one of this games that could have, should have, been really great. One of those games that not only game with a lot of promise, but started in such a way that you think, "this is gonna be awesome!"...inky to smash those hopes on the rocks a few too many times. The premise: Earth was clobbered by the Apophis asteroid (real rock, look it up for more info). Select survivors (including you) were buried in stasis in subterranean "arks," while the majority were left to enjoy a huge asteroid whacking the planet from the front-row seats. Nevertheless, there were survivors on the surface amid the destruction, and this is the world into which you emerge: blasted rubble, hardscrabble existence, and no shortage of conflict. So, great premise. Graphics are unbelievable, particularly the environments, vehicles, and especially the first-person weapon renders. Audio is great (SFX are top-notch). Writing is good (enough), voice acting very good. The crafting system for creating ammunition, tools, and weapons was clever and, amazingly, not tedious. So what went wrong? Well, in a word: id. Yeah, the old warhorse of FPS gaming, id Software (remember Doom? Them.) totally wrecked an otherwise grand game. Short story is that Rage suffers from ego poisoning. It's impossible to play for more than a few minutes before you run into another self-serving self-refence to another id game, be it Doom, Wolfenstein, or whatever. Look, I have no problem with easter-egg appearances. When I saw the space marine bobblehead on a dashboard within the first five minutes of gameplay, I thought "cool dev nod, nice." But after dozens of references, half of which were absolutely ridiculous, I spent more time rolling my eyes and getting mad at id than I did enjoying the game. (Seriously, there was a Doom hell prince as the texture for a COFFEE POT. Someone deserved to be slapped for that.) id's ego was out of control and disproportionally so; Bethesda Softworks snuck in one easter egg, a vaultboy bobblehead from Fallout, which was cool because it actually appeared in the original game, unlike the Doom hell prince which I don't think ever took up residence in small kitchen appliances. That aside, the game felt unfinished. Missions were clever and varied until the end, whereuoon the game took on an attitude of "we ran out of ideas, so here's some leftover 1990's style monster box gameplay and then we're gonna roll credits." Devs, take note, because this is what really screwed up Fallout 2: too many pop culture references. Game worlds, like film, are about suspension of disbelief. Keep bombarding the audiene with references and you blow that. Lose it and the experience suffers and the faults become far apparent. It's worth noting that I bought this game on the faith and belief in Bethesda's commitment to quality; by my experience, they'd never made a dud, and I had no reason to think they were going to start. One $60 mistake later and that trust was vapor. Six out of ten is very generous for this ego hodgepodge blended unevenly with an actual **** generous. Make it five.

Rage is one of this games that could have, should have, been really great. One of those games that not only game with a lot of promise, but started in such a way that you think, "this is gonna be awesome!"...inky to smash those hopes on the rocks a few too many times. The premise: Earth was clobbered by the Apophis asteroid (real rock, look it up for more info). Select survivors (including you) were buried in stasis in subterranean "arks," while the majority were left to enjoy a huge asteroid whacking the planet from the front-row seats. Nevertheless, there were survivors on the surface amid the destruction, and this is the world into which you emerge: blasted rubble, hardscrabble existence, and no shortage of conflict. So, great premise. Graphics are unbelievable, particularly the environments, vehicles, and especially the first-person weapon renders. Audio is great (SFX are top-notch). Writing is good (enough), voice acting very good. The crafting system for creating ammunition, tools, and weapons was clever and, amazingly, not tedious. So what went wrong? Well, in a word: id. Yeah, the old warhorse of FPS gaming, id Software (remember Doom? Them.) totally wrecked an otherwise grand game. Short story is that Rage suffers from ego poisoning. It's impossible to play for more than a few minutes before you run into another self-serving self-refence to another id game, be it Doom, Wolfenstein, or whatever. Look, I have no problem with easter-egg appearances. When I saw the space marine bobblehead on a dashboard within the first five minutes of gameplay, I thought "cool dev nod, nice." But after dozens of references, half of which were absolutely ridiculous, I spent more time rolling my eyes and getting mad at id than I did enjoying the game. (Seriously, there was a Doom hell prince as the texture for a COFFEE POT. Someone deserved to be slapped for that.) id's ego was out of control and disproportionally so; Bethesda Softworks snuck in one easter egg, a vaultboy bobblehead from Fallout, which was cool because it actually appeared in the original game, unlike the Doom hell prince which I don't think ever took up residence in small kitchen appliances. That aside, the game felt unfinished. Missions were clever and varied until the end, whereuoon the game took on an attitude of "we ran out of ideas, so here's some leftover 1990's style monster box gameplay and then we're gonna roll credits." Devs, take note, because this is what really screwed up Fallout 2: too many pop culture references. Game worlds, like film, are about suspension of disbelief. Keep bombarding the audiene with references and you blow that. Lose it and the experience suffers and the faults become far apparent. It's worth noting that I bought this game on the faith and belief in Bethesda's commitment to quality; by my experience, they'd never made a dud, and I had no reason to think they were going to start. One $60 mistake later and that trust was vapor. Six out of ten is very generous for this ego hodgepodge blended unevenly with an actual **** generous. Make it five.

It'll probably go down in the game design lexicon as the ME3 Curse: potential without follow-through, results without conclusion. It was the bane of the release reception of ME3 overall, DLCs, and, yep, now Omega. Veterans of Mass Effect 2 remember Omega, the Mass Effect Mos Eisley, the seedy underbelly of the universe run by an asari crimelord. (Yep, that's Mos Eisley!) Unlike many of the locations from Mass Effect, Omega fell off the radar on Mass Effect 3 and sat on the sidelines as a mere mention until the DLC came out, this DLC. So let's take a look at it. First, you get to see a lot more of Omega this time, and the people responsible for level design deserve accolades as they've built levels that are engaging, convey the sense of depth and rundown nature of the place, and do not feel like they were copied and pasted from other levels in the game. There's a lot of originality to be seen. Scriptwriting is bang on, and Carrie-Ann Moss does a very good job with it. A new character is introduced, one which will grab your attention. New foes are encountered, including a new villain (when do you have a DLC without one?) that should at least get a nod for being a well-written and very well-acted villain in the gameplay pantheon. You'll run into some old...well, not friends, but people you knew on Omega. All these are very positive elements. The main problem with Omega (the DLC, not the station) is that it's so short. We're talking about maybe six hours of gameplay, and that's if you're taking the time to sniff every rose. My first playthrough clocked just shy of four. The new fighting enemy is somewhat lame, unfortunately; a good villain deserves good cannon fodder. It's also a problem that you do not get to make any choices. The possibilities exist for the player to have drastic input on the trajectory of the plot, but it's not implemented. (Hey, it's the ME3 Curse! Three possible endings, but no differences allowed! Cheap shot, but true.) Truth told, the only thing knocking points off my rating, though, is the lack of gameplay for price charged. For what they're billing for this DLC, it's too short by at least half. Even so, a well-earned 7 for a good, but short, addition to Mass Effect 3.

Many people have criticized Game Insight of using their games as a money-grabbing business model. This game is why. Unlike many of their other titles, My Country cannot be actually completed without spending actual cash. The purpose of a freemium game, for all those unfamiliar with the term, is a game that is free to play, but there are optional extras that cost cash. The key element is OPTIONAL. If you do not buy the in-game "Country Bucks" you will be cut off from building about a third of the structures in the game, will be unable to complete some missions, and will not be able to progress at anything approaching a reasonable pace. So, with that said, the review (yep, just starting now). On the positive side, graphics are good and the music pleasant. It's a decent enough SimCity clone, but that's really all it is. Actually, it's kinda like SimCity's evil cousin. Whereas in SimCity you could build whatever as long as you had the money in the treasury to cover it, My Country requires you to hire employees for new structures. Not so bad, except that in order to do so (ominous music begins) you need to collect three different items (and varying quantities of each) for each employee. This is true to form with GameInsight's design, which always puts heavy emphasis on collecting stuff. The problem is that, like their other titles, collecting takes far too long, encouraging you to buy those items with, you guessed it, premium cash. Or you could buy the building with premium cash and sidestep the employees. Either way, the direction is clear: use premium cash. And if you want the nice, high return buildings, the only way to get them is premium cash. You can also hurry building contracts with, yep, premium cash, but since the button to do so pops up right under your finger when you tap the building and there's no confirmation step, accidentally double-tapping a building will blow between 10 and 20 CountryBucks. This game says one thing: we want your money. Everything else is secondary, which is a shame since this COULD be a good city builder. If you are getting this game from the app store, either have a lot of disposable cash or good willpower. If you're getting this game so your kids can play it, either have a very good IAP password or disable IAP altogether or your account is going to suffer. While all of GameInsight's freemium titles have been slanted toward encouraging the IAP buying of premium cash, this one is a naked money grab, plain and simple. One shamefaced point for this greedy money rake posing as SimCity.

A game that looked so good at its E3 demos, that was so heavily anticipated, and, let's face it, that is rooted so well in a legendary piece of sci-fi almost couldn't fail. And yet, somehow, Gearbox managed to pull off a total misfire with Colonial Marines. While it'd be easy to turn this entire review into a complaint festival, there are some admirable things about the game, so we'll start with those. It's clear that someone paid attention to the tech manual when they put the weapons and equipment together; it's consistent with the Colonial Marines Technical Manual released years ago with the blessing of those involved. Sound in all its aspects, foley and mixing alike, is a grand slam home run. The score is absolutely outstanding, something that should make Horner proud in how his film score was lovingly adapted to a game score. The levels that overlap the films are consistent and show continuity with events in the film. The weapons are generally faithful to the films, with the Smartgun particularly well implemented. The weapon modification/customization system is thin, but adequate and makes a difference. There are enough little toss-ins to make you feel like you're in the film. That is, until you add in gameplay, graphics, and programming. Then it's wrecked. For a game that was supposed to be a squad-based tactical shooter, A:CM is instead a generic rail shooter dressed up in Aliens clothes. There's no tactical anything in here; your allies are under AI control at all times, and won't even take a suggestion from you (not that there's a way for you to suggest squat). Graphics are horribly disappointing...more like abysmal. This is a console that handles high-power graphics Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Far Cry 3, and Enslaved so there's no excuse. Textures are unbelievably low-res; monitors are unreadable, props are blurry and pixelated. Lighting is good, but implementation of volumetrics appears to have been left off the to-do list. Voice acting is good, but the script, by and large, is the pits, chock full of macho-military cliches and stereotypes. The checkpoint save system was developed by a sadist; there are no checkpoints immediately prior to boss fights and checkpoints are spread far apart, meaning you will have to redo significant sections (and hear the same bloody audio) again and again. The AI is outright defective; it's a good thing that your squadmates are immortal, because an alien will be chewing on their helmets and they won't open fire. Expect no help from them. Overall, Aliens: Colonial Marines is valuable only to those who are diehard fans of the film. As a game, a 4 is a generous rating, earned more or less entirely by the audio department and a pity point. This game fell so far short of expectations and promise that it's just sad. It is worth playing if you're a fan, but not worth the $60 release price. Wait until it descends to the $20 range (which shouldn't take long), then go for it. I'm not mad about the game, just disappointed. It could have, should have, been much more.

So, the highly-anticipated landmark graphics machine called Crysis 3 has arrived. This is what we were waiting for, right? So does it stack up? Well, it depends on what you want. Graphically, yes, Crysis 3 deserves its crown; the visuals are extremely impressive overall (although someone really should've taken some time to render more alternate props; am I really to believe that every train car would decay in exactly the same way?). Weapon rendering is exceptional, and everybody from friendly soldiers, to CELL operators, to aliens is reach-out-and-touch-'em detailed. (Some relatively minor graphic glitches occur, but that's inevitable in a game of this scope.) The game's signature weapon, the bow, is also deserving of praise; it adds a new dimension to the game and is well-implemented. AI is realistically smart, reacting in such a close simulacrum of human behavior that it reminds you of the quantum leap that FEAR was back in the day; Crysis 3's AI is another massive leap forward. The problems, really, lie in two chief areas. One, C3 was set up to be the final showdown between Prophet/Alcatraz and CELL, but apart from the tutorial level and the very early game, you spend more time going up against spoiler-type alien foes who sneak up and bite you in the back. The other problem is that the game has a very slow start. You go from a very engaging opener to a deadly-dull introduction to the game world. Tough it out and the game picks up, but I couldn't help but think how much better Crysis 2 did with pacing. (It's also worth noting that within the first 20 minutes of gameplay, I ended up stuck in the level geometry after a jump, forcing a reload from checkpoint. Minor glitch.) Make no mistake, though: Crysis 3 has earned much of its hype. If you've been with the series since at least installment two, then Crysis 3 is worth owning. Even if you're only a fan of good FPS games, then Crysis 3 should be on your shopping list. It is a polished, well-built, and well-executed game; it just needed a little more tweaking to make it the optimal game. Originally, I rated this game a 7, but later had to downgrade to a 6; the disruption of plot and lack of any real resolution to the CELL situation definitely dings it by a point. (The big showdown is one mission long? Really?) If you're looking for a major battle brawl with CELL, disappointment reigns. So we're down to a somewhat-disappointed 6 to Crysis 3.

Far Cry 3 is one of those games that nearly defies description. Most of the time, when a game tries to reach this wide, it ends up trying too hard and failing at some part of it. The gameplay suffers, the engine lags, the AI is brain-dead, or something else is, if not wrong, just not right. Amazingly FC3 reached for the **** caught one. The game revolves around a main character who isn't a hero; he's a spoiled chump who, caught in extraordinary circumstances, metamorphoses into a killing machine dedicated to saving his friends and family from a group of psychotic pirates. So, let's look at some components. Graphics are among the best you'll find on a console, with lush jungles complete with real-time shadows (which are subject to a bit of a dithering problem, but not too awful) and detailed props. Textures are high enough resolution that it never breaks the illusion. The AI is generally intelligent, and adequately inventive to keep you on your toes in a tactical situation. Skills are varied and powerful, making a real impact on the game. Perhaps one of the best components of the game is the weapon modification system, enabling you to tune just about every weapon to your play style. The icing on the cake is a dynamic fire system pirates taking cover in tall grass are no problem, just start a fire and let it flush them out. Controls are solid, both on foot and in vehicles, without any of the annoying twitchiness that can wreck a game. Best yet, the control schema is ergonomic and trying to get something done doesn't interfere with playing the game (who wants to do the inventory hunt under fire?). Missions are varied, interesting, and generally well written. But FC3 really stands out in its writing. This game has one of video gaming's best-ever villains in a psychotic pirate named Vaas. Michael Mando brings vocal life to the insane pirate warlord, creating a character that is, without doubt, one of the best, most engaging villains that has ever appeared in a video game. The entire game is tailored as a major mind-bender, and Vaas rounds out the disconcerting world with his incredibly bent view of the world a view he shares frequently with the player. The writing also extends into philosophical grounds, as the main character's friends react to his transformation from party-hard Beverly Hills to a flint-edged warrior. One would expect, then, the sandbox world implementation to suffer, but it doesn't; there are random events aplenty, and crafting will keep you busy for hours. So why not a 10? Crafting improvements to your gear is effectively over less than halfway through the game, leaving the second half a little too static. Skills top out by the time you're two-thirds of the way through the game, so the only thing left is buying better weapons, but that runs out soon thereafter. The game has the gas to go the distance; it just doesn't quite have the tools and toys to keep itself fresh for the entire time. But don't misunderstand; Far Cry 3 is one of the absolute top-shelf best FPS/RPG hybrids ever made. Game designers and publishers should nail a copy of this to their walls so that they remember what they should be aiming for. Recommended without hesitation, it's a well-earned 9 for Far Cry 3.

Ascendancy represents what is generally perceived as an impossibility: a thorough 4X game native to the iPad and, more amazing yet, built recently. This is a game that harkens back to the golden days of 4X gaming, giving the player huge amounts of control over exploring a galaxy, exploiting its resources, expanding your sphere of influence, and, when necessary, beating the tar out of your enemies...maybe (more on that in a tick). Ascendancy does give the full 4X gaming experience in a tablet-friendly tappable interface. There's more than enough detail and customizability in this game to make the most irascible gamer happy and give you hours of gameplay. If you're even passingly-happy with 4X games and need a way to kill time, look no further. Add to that the benefit of its turn-based nature and you have a game that's fun, engaging, and can be put down and picked up at will. So what are the downsides? The interface suffers from some documentation problems (as in a lack of it), but 4X gamers will not be deterred; exploring our own interface is part of the fun. The learning curve is sharp but survivable. Enemies are tenacious and, unfortunately, better at using the interface than you are (benefit of living inside the computer), making combat a little dicey. It's difficult to maintain the peace, so your options are difficult peace or difficult combat. But the game is playable, enjoyable, and reasonably priced even at $6, mainly because it avoids so many of the pitfalls of iOS games -- for example, you can (sit down before reading on) have more than ONE savegame! Yes, you get multiple spots AND control over when you save, plus an autosave! Truth told, Ascendancy does 4X right, properly honoring its roots (it's actually a remake of a very old game). If you're a 4X fan, get thee to the App Store and get downloading; Ascendancy does it right.

A relatively run-of-the-mill hidden object game, Dream Inn generally comes off as a low-budget remake of Gardenscapes HD. The hidden-object mechanic is relatively unpolished and clunky, graphics are passable but generally weak, and the UI (user interface) works but is not particularly friendly. All of these things point to a decent game, so why the 5? Several reasons: 1. The dialogue and voice acting are HORRENDOUS. It is so bad that I turned my iPad volume off. It's repetitive, far too cutesy-sweet to be from a human, and practically insulting to actual Britons. 2. The rendering of your assistant makes her look like less a human and more one of those mutant-looking androids that calls the Uncanny Valley home. (An interesting thing to look up.) Quite unsettling. 3. The restoration theme which was borrowed from Gardenscapes was poorly executed; you're expected to make a decision based on a small preview segment, then there's no changing your mind later -- two things that Gardenscapes didn't do and benefited from. Frankly, Dream Inn isn't much of a dream; it's a thin rehash of a successful game, done with much potential but, sadly, little skill in execution. Were it a $0.99 game, it would rate more highly, but at $3, it's middling at best.

Now available from the bargain bin, HAWX is one of those "games of yesteryear" that definitely merits your attention -- provided you're a big fan of combat flight sims. HAWX is designed for a specific market segment: frustrated pilots who will only ever fly warbirds on a screen, but know their details and want as much control as possible. HAWX delivers on that promise...maybe a little too much so. But let's start out with the positives: the missions are varied and interesting, challenge your abilities in multiple ways, and draw you through all of them with an interesting plot line. The added benefit of voice commands to the AI, while limited, is useful and engaging (plus frees up your fingers, which is very important in this game). Some missions will become your favorites, others not, which is cool because you can revisit any mission once you've completed it, yet still earn credit for completing it again. Some of the graphics, particularly anything that's not a target, look a little weak (ground textures are not high-res), but who cares? The planes and vehicles look great, and that's all you're really going to care about anyway. **** downsides. One, you need to be an octopus to play this game well. This is one of those games that makes you second-finger the triggers because you will need the bumper buttons all the time; they're your rudder controls. Sure, you can get by without, but not nearly as well. Difficulty seesaws all over the place: you will go from simple-and-easy missions to ridiculously difficult in one jump. Saves are done by checkpoint and mission completion, but are fairly widely spaced, so failure at some point will result in some backtracking and redoing. Finally, though, this is a short game. There's some replay value, particularly because you will continue earning new equipment, but the campaign is a short one. But, given its price at nearly four years old, it's well worth it.

While the market is flooded with a horde of zombie survival games (yes, pun intended), Zombie HQ manages to stand out from the rest. It does so in a few ways: a unique take on the "cozy catastrophe" brand of apocalyptica, a good third-person shooter against the raging undead (well, maybe "raging" is too much), and superior graphics and audio, particularly for a tablet game. The game offers a wide variety of customization options, both for your player character and your headquarters, a variety of missions to undertake, and a fairly generous reward table for achieving goals. It's also worth noting that unlike most freemium games, Zombie HQ can be played completely without the use of purchased add-ins. (The reviewer who called the app less a game and more a "business model" wasn't paying attention; the IAPs are necessary only for the terminally impatient.) Frankly, of the various freemiums I've played, this is the one that makes the least of trying to encourage the player to buy. Even the in-game "super-currency" can be earned through play, unlike the gems of crystals of other games, putting every in-game item within reach without spending a dime. With the number of upgrades to weapons, equipment, combatwear, and headquarters, this is a game that doesn't really get old. The only shortcoming, and the fault that took a point off the score, is the inclusion of the deservedly-reviled energy system. Each mission requires a certain amount of energy to undertake, and insufficient energy means waiting. It naturally recharges one point every five minutes, but with the smallest mission costing three, players wanting to just play and enjoy will end up frustrated. Even so, this game is well-worth your time if you're big on the zombie **** even just passingly enjoy it.

Hearthfire is relatively up front about what it intends to do and how it intends to do it. Point blank and period, it's about giving the player the chance to put together a home of his or her own, customized to match individual preference. On the positive side, it does enable one to create a home that feels more your own than any other you can buy in the game. You are given options on how the house is to be built and what is to go inside. And, if you are so inclined, you can build your house largely without expense; it's possible to gather and make the necessary components yourself (more on that in a tick). Now, on the flip side, the negatives. First, there are a lot of glitches. Little bugs that should be squished during the next update, but it's a little unnerving that Bethesda QA let so many errors slip through. One such bug prevents expense-free construction, even if you do everything right, which is frustrating to self-sufficient game styles. But bigger than that is the mutual-exclusion construction model -- if you want this room, then you can't have these two no matter what. Frankly, for the size house you're putting together, being limited to three wings without any possible compromise seems like an artificial limit. Realistically, I can see limiting buildings to three wings and two towers. There are also precious few options beyond "do you want this or not?" You get no say in what furniture is installed or where, just whether you want to use the offerings hard-coded into the system, there are no aesthetic options, either interior or exterior. In short, there's very little flexibility. Options are the key in add-ons like this, and Hearthfire has enough to make it worth buying, but not nearly enough to make it a 10. Add in the bugs, and 7-8 is a reasonable (possibly slightly generous) score.

First of all, this review is only about the Leviathan DLC, and does not address how the main game does or does not make use of its content. That said, Leviathan marks the return to fine plot construction, storytelling, and intrigue that were hallmarks of the Mass Effect series. The storyline is engaging and compelling, action well-designed. But perhaps the best part of the pack is that it ties off one of the major loose ends of the entire series, one that we, its fans, were waiting to hear in ME3 and were so disappointed didn't happen. Leviathan explains the origins -- the cycles, the Reapers, all of it. That's all I'll say on the matter (and that's already in the trade publications), but I will say that the writing and creative content of this installment are fully worthy of the Mass Effect mantle. And, combined with the Extended Cut DLC, it does help provide better closure and a more complete story. No matter which way you slice it, Leviathan is quite possibly one of the best Mass Effect DLCs in a long, long time.

Very few times in gaming history has a title received so much controversy, so much vitriol, and been the subject of the undiluted ire of so many gamers. The source of the fury? The ending to a five-year, three-game story arc that had, by that point, drawn in so many gamers that it had transformed from game series into **** had literally undergone the Halo Effect, where an under-the-radar game ends up being such a huge franchise and dynamo of its own that it begins eclipsing itself. But the difference lies in the games: where Halo is a shooter with a lot of story laid into it, Mass Effect is fundamentally a story with a game built through it. Halo would have to try hard to screw up; as long as it provides the action and the intensity, it wins. Mass Effect never had it so easy. But that doesn't forgive what happened with the finale. Mass Effect 3 is, and may well end up being the textbook example of, a game that was set up to be great, only to be destroyed by the marketing department. The original ME laid the groundwork of a story where the player's actions MADE the story, DECIDED the plot, and were the end-all and be-all of the game. There were so many directions for the plot to go, all decided by the player. ME3 was the original ME's evil twin: a game that started off with hundreds of possible threads, only to ultimately file down to a single possible outcome, a game where all of the player's decisions, past and present, were rendered irrelevant. A great game was sacrificed on the altar of Marketing, as they tried to turn Mass Effect into something it wasn't: a mass-appeal shooter. The mutation began in the second installment, as shooter elements began overtaking role-playing elements. We gamers took this in stride, accepting the changes as some streamlining and minor changes (and, truthfully, some of the elements removed or changed were never our favorites). But something else happened: the storytelling began to be streamlined and dumbed-down as well. ME3 just finished ME2's trajectory -- straight into the dirt. In the quest for money (by trying to appeal to the largest audience), they converted Mass Effect into a nearly-brainless shooter, one which was loosely tied together with story in the game, and required story-seekers to look outside the game for real content -- they turned it into Halo: a game with a massive backstory that is only visible in the game if you know to look for it. Of course, all of this was prior to the Extended Cut DLC -- the amazing concession the gaming industry made to the Voice of the Gamers...which, really, was just placating enough to keep the masses of gamers from taking their beloved money elsewhere. EA knew it was in danger of alienating millions of money dispensers, and sought to make enough amends to avoid losing that cash. Overall, however, after all the changes the game has undergone, while it's still not particularly worthy of the Mass Effect mantle, ME3 is no longer the total pariah it had been. Decisions are back to having some value, and the previously-mandatory mobile game's value has been decreased, bringing fate back into the hands of the game...mostly. I held off on writing a review of this game when the Extended Cut was announced, otherwise it would've been another "boycott EA" pitchforks-and-torches rant. Now, while I'm still not pleased with the game's conclusion, it's not horrible, either, and at least does enough of a job to warrant a mediocre rating. Taken on its own, perhaps it would be considered a better game. But that's not possible. ME3 is part of a series, and a heavily connected series at that. If one of the Halo games had been a dud, it wouldn't significantly impact the others or the series as a whole; they just fix it next time, and judging it against its peers is unnecessary. But ME3 has to be held against the standards set by its **** it doesn't. Compared to the games that came before, ME3 just doesn't have what it takes to stand alongside. No matter what changes they made to the ending, it will always be a step behind. Thanks, Marketing department. Next time, stay out of the development process.

Once again, Firaxis deserves a major pat on the back. As with the rest of the X-Com loving world, we looked at 2K Marin's upcoming FPS with horror and disgust; they were going to take a good franchise and turn it into idiot chow. Then in comes Firaxis and rescues it. For those who were either not yet gamers in the 1990s or just didn't play X-COM, you ran a team of international military experts tasked with saving the world from alien invasion. It took tactical genius, strategic foresight, preparedness, and a sort of cunning on your part to excel. Given the limitations of today's gaming crowd who, let's be honest here, are more twitch gamers than long-term players (which is why 4X, civilization and city builders are on the endangered species list), Firaxis did a great job adapting the grand old warhorse of X-COM to today. The features that were trimmed off weren't too critical (building out multiple bases on multiple continents was a pain, admit it), and what remains is not only a faithful reproduction of the game, but also highly polished and sporting a refined and efficient control mechanic. It's easy to say that a turn-based tactical squad game couldn't survive on a console, and in 99% of cases, you'd be right. X-COM is the exception to the rule; the control interface is powerful yet simple, intuitive, flexible, and provides the player with all of the tools necessary to run a tactical squad through a controller. I'd never believed that it was possible to run a tactical game without a mouse, but Firaxis' X-COM proved me wrong. Gameplay is engaging, missions varied and, with their random-generation mechanic, never repetitive. Soldiers are customizable (mostly), and options for outfitting your squad are powerful enough to allow for great tactical flexibility. This is not a perfect game, though; so the hero-worship ends here and the griping begins. One, the limited squad size in the beginning of the game creates some difficult situations, even on easy difficulty. Two, making money is extremely difficult in the game, which will slow your expansion and improvement of capabilities. And three, there is an aspect of grinding in the game as you just plow through days hoping for either a payday or some magical breakthrough. (Griping ends now.) Overall, I'm quite pleased with X-COM and whether you're an old fan of the franchise or are just thirsting for a game that requires a little more brainpower than aim-and-fire, go ahead and get yourself a copy of X-COM: Enemy Unknown; you should enjoy it.

Townsmen is an average village-builder game that requires you to decide what to build, where, when, and how to manage it once it's built. Unlock additional buildings and keep improving your settlement's abilities to progress through the game. The game has a sandbox mode, which is a definite plus. Graphics and soundtrack are good (certainly plenty for a mobile device). Mainly, though, what brings its score down to a 7 from me is that there's really nothing special. It's all plain-vanilla, like Age of Empires without the combat elements. If you're looking for a Sim City clone set in the medieval period, Townsmen is just the thing. I enjoy the game in that respect. There's just so little excitement in the game. Maybe if, in future updates, some more gameplay elements were added it would be a little more engaging. As it is, it's a little too easy to put down.

Puzzle Craft is a great relaxation game with an enjoyable builder mechanic. It's really a match-three game at its heart, but with some significant improvements and added features. You build a village up from nothing to a robust town by gathering resources, building structures, and hiring workers. Each building and person makes resource gathering easier and more efficient. So the game will start relatively slowly, but will accelerate from there. Puzzle Craft isn't meant to be a mind-warping experience; it's a pleasant way to spend some time and and enjoyable way to have fun that doesn't require a lot of time investment or too much thought. That may sound bad, but never underestimate the value of some minimal-mindfulness entertainment. Graphics are good, interface is easy, accessible, and well-designed, and the village-builder mechanic is a lot of fun. I've never played Dungeon Raid but don't much care; this is a relaxing game that is worthy of praise on its own merits. As an added bonus, it's a game that doesn't go ballistic if you set it aside for a few minutes, a few hours, or days on end; it'll wait, even if you were in the middle of resource gathering. Flat out, Puzzle Craft is a great way to relax, burn some time, and get a nice little town out of it. The ONLY reason I couldn't give it a 10 is its relative lack of replayability; once you've played through it once, you've seen it all. Sure, doing it again is skill enjoyable, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. Even so, I've played through it three times. Great way to unwind after the day. I'm looking forward to the next version.

It's so rare to find a game this well-conceived, well-designed, and well-built; usually, a game misfires at one of those stages. Rebuild is one of those rare exceptions. This game combines an outstanding game mechanic design with a solid and usable interface, overlaid on a great premise. The game has appeared on sites like Kongregate as well as the iOS release; the release for iOS has additional features. At its heart, Rebuild is about putting the player into the tried-and-true zombie movie setup: it's the zompocalypse, and you -- along with a few other survivors -- have managed to secure a few blocks of the city from the rampaging undead horde. Now it's up to you. Rather than relying simply on the fight-a-zillion-zombies gunnery games out there, Rebuild eliminates the first-person fighting controls in favor of a more intelligent game platform. Much better than a simple twitch mouse shooter, this game put you into the position of command. You don't perform the missions yourself; you have your loyal followers for that. Scavenging for supplies, recruiting other survivors, reclaiming more blocks of the city, managing equipment, and even researching a few survival techs -- it's all on you to decide what gets priority and who is being sent to get the jobs done. At the same time, you need to keep your fort secure; humans and zombies alike will try to take it all away. The gameplay is solid turn-based-strategy at its best. It doesn't make the compromise that so many others have made (such as "The Last Stand" -- a good enough Flash game, but not something I'd pay to play), namely putting the player in the position of having to fend off attacks through frantic click-fest minigames. It's a poor decision in most cases simply because the UI (user interface, folks) just isn't up to translating the player's actions into game effect efficiently enough to avoid frustrating the player to death (which is why I gave up on The Last Stand, actually). Ergo, Rebuild takes that real-time stuff away and replaces it with far more in-depth gameplay. Scavenging nets food (of course), but also the occasional tool or weapon which can be used to "boost" a survivor's stats, of which there are several: tactical, scavenging, science, building, and leadership. Survivors also improve skills through completing missions and/or dedicated training. As a turn-based strategy game, it has no real equal. There are enough administrative duties to keep you busy without overwhelming, and plenty of special events with which to contend -- ranging from wild dogs to crazy people to pro-zombie activists (really!). The iOS release has seen regular updates, so far without a dud. The latest, version 3.0, added another layer of difficulty (optional) and took care of the last lingering UI lagginess. The level of customization available also adds a lot. You name your city, can rename your survivors (bring your friends into the zombie apocalypse!) like we all did in Oregon Trail, decide whether to replace buildings you've reclaimed and with what, how to outfit your survivors and who to assign to a particular mission. There are few limits imposed by the game structure; if you feel better sending 10 people on the same zombie hunt mission, do it. Sure, it's overkill and the UI tells you so, but it doesn't stop you from doing it. Likewise, if you really want fifty bars in your town, as long as you have eligible plots for them, fine. With a lot of games, tech research is a meaningless feature that is so poorly implemented that it's annoying, not rewarding. Pleasantly, Rebuild is not that way. There isn't a huge tech tree to research your way through; really only about six or seven techs currently exist. But those that exist do so for a reason, and make a considerable impact on your game. They're purely optional in that you *can* win without them, but they will make your life a lot easier. Perhaps the best feature, though, is the fact that, as a turn-based game, you can pick it up and put it down whenever you want. There's no pause button to have to remember, no save points or checkpoints. You can pick the game up and put it down at any time without any repercussions, making it perfect for a game for your commute (not while driving), break time at work, or whenever. If you are even a passing fan of the turn-based strategy genre and always thought you could outdo the losers in the zombie movies, here's your chance. Conveniently, it's also a great game.

DX:IW is a chronological sequel to the original Deus **** that's where it ends. Where the original game was an exhibit of outstandingly balanced gameplay, ingenious mechanics, and exemplary writing, DX:IW nearly completely lost sight of all of it. Writing was thin and with a minimally-engaging plot and stilted dialog, made worse by generally mediocre voice acting. Graphics, despite mechanically improved over the original, are poor; while the original DX suffered from old technology and limited polygon counts, it nevertheless created a visually arresting gameworld through creative use of what it did have to work with. DX:IW had access to better technology and while textures looked better and objects smoother, the overall effect seemed weaker than the original. The blame from this can be laid at the feet of parallel development -- the simultaneous design requiring the system be technologically dumbed-down to survive on a console killed it. Worlds are small, load screens are frequent, and scene-setting -- the placement of elements in the world that one would expect to see and, thus, improve the realism and feel of the game world -- nearly nonexistent. The console development impetus also resulted in an inexcusable compromise of the game's core design: choice. The option to go stealth, combat, or anywhere in between was largely eliminated, turning DX:IW into a more ineffective run-and-gun requiring (and allowing) little finesse. Players of the original Deus Ex frequently complained bitterly that the game had been dumbed down and rightly so; compared to the original, DX:IW is a weak, watered-down, unfulfilling game that seems to exist only to keep the name flag flying. But, taken on its own, DX:IW isn't an awful game. On its own merits, DX:IW does allow for some creativity in planning and flexibility in strategy -- not as much as its predecessor and definitely not as much as is successor -- but enough to distinguish it from a basic run-and-gun. In short, worth a pick-up from the bargain bin (where it can still occasionally be seen) or from eBay.

One of the better DLC packs I've ever played, Old World Blues an also an exemplary addition to the Fallout world. There's an unfortunate tendency to create a DLC for the sake of profit and ignore how (or if) it fits into the game world. OWB is not such a DLC -- in fact, the way the plot is written and executed, the way the world is created, and the features added all feel like seamless additions to the Fallout world and actually add to it in a substantive and meaningful way. I will grant that some of the characters are a little oddly written, but that can be forgiven. The only real complaint I have is that even with a relatively high-level character, the enemies in the DLC area are extremely tough and can really give the player a run for his or her money. I must take a moment specifically to praise the game world; the level of detail, intricacy, and creativity are among the best I've seen in any game. Those level designers should be proud. Since this pack has been released as part of a new all-inclusive disk, players new to New Vegas should end up with this DLC by default, but for those who own the original buy-it-in-pieces version like I do should definitely step right past the Dead Money DLC and invest in Old World Blues without hesitation.

I went into Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DX3) with low expectations. After Deus Ex: Invisible war, which was the embodiment of how consolization of an existing game dynamic can completely ruin things, I had no reason to expect that DX3 would be anything but a graphical upgrade of the thin gameplay, world construction, and storyline of DX:IW. After playing through the first quarter of the game, I gave up on it and set it aside for six months or so. Upon picking it back up, though, my mistake in my earlier play became apparent: I was still thinking in terms of DX:IW. DX3 was true to the original Deus Ex: a game that not just requires but *demands* that the player approach every mission, every task with planning and forethought. This is not the run-and-gun game of DX2; you'll be mowed down in no time. DX3 is capable of giving the player a challenge at any level of difficulty, depending on how you choose to play. Better yet, the original DX dynamic of lethal-vs-nonlethal combat was kept completely intact, each with its attendant advantages and disadvantages -- over and above the moral and ethical element that the player brings into the equation. The nonlethal aspect of the game gives the player more choices and opens up avenues of strategy and tactics that would otherwise be closed. (This, by itself, is significantly praiseworthy: the player can, with the exception of four instances, complete the entire game without a single lethal act. You decide what level of force is warranted and when. When confronted with someone who is dangerous but insane, do you shoot? Or do you knock them out? Nonlethal combat is generally more difficult, but it gives the player the option of bringing his or her morals and ethics into the play world unlike any other game that comes to mind.) Writing is outstanding, and the grasp of science shown is considerable; it's clear that the writers actually bothered to research their subject rather than resorting to technobabble. Even the nonexistent tech is the result of a logical extrapolation and uses proper terminology. DX3 relies more on "conversation combat" more than its predecessors, allowing the player the opportunity to talk his or her way through a situation that might otherwise end up in combat. The system isn't perfect and requires a learning curve, but is another layer of depth that most games don't even bother to try. Though scripted, the new takedown system (which is optionally lethal or nonlethal at the player's discretion) adds an aspect of finesse and having the feeling of being the ultimate superagent. Improvements to the combat system, particularly adding a cover mechanic, turn combat into either jack-in-the-box blazefests or cat-and-mouse hunts -- at the player's choice. Even the hacking minigame used for stealth strategies isn't arduous, which is a rarity. There are a few criticisms, however, enough to knock two points off the game's rating. First, pacing is uneven staggering between blazing tactical situations and dragging run-around-miniquesting, so run-and-gun gamers will be disappointed in large stretches of the game. The combat system is tilted toward difficult, so most tank strategies won't work well; your DX3 protagonist is not and cannot be a bullet sponge -- DX3 practically demands a light touch and a good deal of finesse. The autosave system is adequate and generally gives a checkpoint before moments where the player is likely to be in mortal peril. The most serious problem, though, comes from the early-game weakness common in all character progression games. Early in the game, when you have few augmentations online, your character is extremely fragile and for all his mechanical appearances, cannot take or do much. By mid-game, however, the fun level picks up, and by the late game, you're feeling like the superaugmented agent you are supposed to be. In short, DX3 is a great game that just takes some time to get itself up to speed -- but once there, it's fun to drive.

Allow me to preface my comments by saying that I never had the opportunity to play the original Fable, but found Fable II to be one of the best RPGs I've ever played. With that in mind, I'm going to respectfully disagree with many of the reviewers here and say that I found Fable III to be an excellent piece of work and quite worthy of the Fable series name. It was an enjoyable storyline and had adequate RPG elements to it. While I'd like to break the analysis down to clear pros and cons, it's impossible; the two are inextricably linked. For example: the inventory system has been extremely simplified and streamlined. In a way, this is handy in that it keeps you out of the annoying shuffling-through-lists inventory management and hunting through your virtual pack for the whatsit you want, but at the same time, limits your options. You are limited in carrying only one food items, severely limiting flexibility and planning. On the flipside, the replacement of the extremely clunky inventory list of F-II with the Sanctuary system in F-III was ingenious and a vast improvement. It replaced a menu that made you curse with a segmented character management zone with a cool character voiced by John Cleese as a bonus. Voice acting was, in my estimation, very good. Writing was adequate, though the plot could have used more polish, particularly after the midpoint. Frankly, the second half of the game did feel a little thin, and the only excuse for that is lack of either time or inclination on the part of the developer; if you're the king (which even according to the game jacket is your goal), then you should have more than a half dozen or so decisions to make -- which would've been a major improvement. Yes, the combat and experience system was simplified, but I'll count that as a bonus; by replacing the segmented strength/skill/will system of F-II with the buy-your-bonuses system presented by F-III's Road to Rule character progression system, it allows the player to use a more flexible play style, switching from one combat style during the early-game weak phase to a more combined arms strategy after progressing. Overall, I rank Fable III among my most favorite games without reservation and, particularly now that the price has fallen, is worth any RPG'ers time and shelf space. Enjoy it!