RogueV

The gameplay of this game is pretty amazing and unlike most, I don't really care about how short it is because its fun concept gives it replayability. However, I despise the ""story"" they try to jam down your throat as you play this game. It's not immersive even one tiny bit, it just pulls you out of the gameplay for chunks at a time while you try to find ways to skip as fast as possible until the next proper level. There's no other way to say this: the story is terrible and greatly reduces the quality of the experience. I say that as a video game story buff - I'm not just a gameplay only kind of guy. The story is just obnoxious and thinks it's clever and funny when it is not close to either. The funny part is it would have been a great game if it had no story and just "shoot red guys" but the game literally mocks you for thinking that. Like a college hipster who is too cool for classes, it shoots condescending downward glances at the concept of "just shooting red guys." It shames you for only wanting to do that as if that wasn't the only reason anyone would want to play this game, ever. Newsflash devs: not one soul on Earth is ever gonna go "ooh let's play SUPERHOT I heard it's got a wacky story." Also this sounds trivial but it's really not, the constant SUPERHOT chanting and the SUPERHOT words completely covering the level review at the end is so extremely annoying, it greatly affected the amount of time I chose to play this game. One of the coolest parts of this game should be finishing the level and then watching the replay at the end in real-time without any slowmo, and they manage to utterly destroy this experience by making the replay a background behind huge, useless words and drowning the audio in obnoxious, loud, irritating chants that make you just wanna skip the replay and move on to the next level, even though if the chanting wasn't there, the replay would easily have been the coolest part. This game is still fun but it's just frustrating because it would have been so easy to just omit the parts that bring it down. Why were the devs scared of just giving us a pure gameplay-oriented game? They should have learned from Portal 2 about how to integrate story, good writing and witty comedy seamlessly with gameplay for a well-rounded experience.

When Roger Ebert said video games can never be art, if I could, this would have been the first game I showed him as a counterpoint. This game is absolutely spectacular. I am playing this in 2019 and I can't stress enough just how fun it is, how worthy an experience it remains to date. Sure the mechanics are a tad clunky, the lowest mouse sensitivity setting is still too high for any fps player, and if you're a real stickler, the graphics are one gen behind. But these ways in which the game have aged are nothing, made irrelevant by the timeless power **** narrative and superb storytelling. Spec Ops suffers from one of the most generic, boring game titles I have ever seen. When a friend first showed it to me, I thought it was a CoD knockoff, a typical US army shooting foreigners shebang (with added sand) and I dismissed it immediately. It was only years later after I started playing fps games and saw reviews praising the dark and complex narrative of Spec Ops that I returned to this game. I'm just consistently shocked by how much this game gets right. Everyone always talks about the amazing story and how the story is presented to the player (the perfect way: through gameplay and not through expositionary dialogue), but it's not just the story, the gameplay is hella fun too. The sand mechanics are a treat whenever they come up, and little touches, like when throwing a grenade onto sand creates a smoke screen with the sand, make all the difference. The squad management system is barebones at best but it adds a little bit of freshness to traditional fps gameplay, like when you are being heavily suppressed by a turret you can command your squad to take out the turret while remaining in safety. Playing this game now I'm saddened by how little it seems the game industry has learned from this game in the past 5+ years. It's a challenge to the industry, a challenge to Call of Duty and other mindless, borderline racist fps games, and clearly this challenge has gone unanswered, basically ignored. This game is a Call of Duty killer. It poses a question about the "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality that Call of Duty promotes.

A decent expansion for one of the greatest strategy games of all time. Doesn't completely revolutionize the experience like XCOM 2's War of the Chosen, but anyone who plays XCOM 1 would benefit from owning this.

They could have added 20% more content than this and called it XCOM 3 and I would have heaped praise on it. The fact that an expansion does so much to augment the experience, and does it all so right, I have no words. If you enjoyed XCOM at all you're in for a treat. If you've never played it, this is the right place to hop on, because WOTC really takes XCOM into a place where it can be talked about with the all time greats in gaming like Age of Empires and The Witcher 3.

Before Brave New World Civ 5 felt very unrealistic after the industrial era, because of how civilizations have interacted since then. Brave New World does a lot to deal with this, but its still not enough to make the post-industrial era experience as immersive as the renaissance era and earlier. Good content overall, but not worth at it's full price.

Cute lil game with a neat surprise. Don't read any spoilers on it before playing it, and don't judge it too hard before you're at least about half an hour into it.

I got this for free and didn't expect much, and it's not really the type of game I enjoy. I was impressed with how well-executed the game is and how it covers all it's angles so brilliantly. It is really very realistic and faithful to Rally racing, and it's beautiful as well. Although the game itself is near flawless in what it sets out to do, a slight word of caution for casual players like myself. This isn't a spiritual successor to casual racing games like Need For Speed Most Wanted, it is a very technical game, and it is mostly a race against the clock instead of traditional multi-car races. Although it is a perfect rally car game, it may not be what a very casual player who picks up a racing game is looking for, and I didn't really have fun with it or play it for more than 20 minutes.

What an absolutely spectacular indie game. I am blown away. These are the kind of games I rave about to my friends who don't play games, the kind of games whose sheer creativity push the boundaries of the medium. No praise is fitting for this game unless it is superlative, so in that vein, I'd like to say that Return of the Obra Dinn is the greatest singleplayer PC game of 2018, surpassing the only real competitor Subnautica. Not only does it take detective games to a new level never seen before, in my humble opinion, it takes the entire realm of detective storytelling to a new place, the best breath of fresh air. This is the kind of game where you'll spend ages poring over a notebook, revisiting crime scenes, searching both the depths of the scene and your mind for clues. This is the rare kind of game that really tests your mental acumen and not in an obnoxious way with hard puzzles out of nowhere, it tests it through strength of narrative and as a core part of its fundamental mechanic. I don't want to spoil this game by talking too much about it. Just buy it. Play it. Enjoy it. It's like a dessert at a 5 star restaurant, a treat to savour. And you really should savour it, don't binge it or play more than a couple hours at a time. If I had to make one criticism, i'd say the notebook management is really quite confusing for new players. Once you jump the initial hurdle, the game is smooth sailing from there, with many a satisfying moment.

I expected a little more in the way of modes and variety in targets to shoot. The game feels lacking to its competitors. Also the colour contrasts kind of hurt my eyes. I wouldn't buy it in retrospect. I care about my aim enough to use trainers but this really feels like a chore and the colours are jarring.

Portal 2 is one of the greatest video games of all time. It is equally fun playing for 10 minutes and 10 hours (with the innovative community content). This is the only game I'd show someone who has never played a video game and wants to know what all the hype is about. To me it is the perfect encapsulation of the fun that is gaming. And with Portal 2, it's not just the gameplay. The gameplay is of course amazing with many very innovative additions to Portal 1 (in itself pretty close to a perfect game). But Portal 2 is a more complete game than even its predecessor, and a large part of that is due to how it weaves in the story, the dialogue, with the gameplay so, so well. It's genuinely funny, a true comedy game. There is a sense of narrative progression, but without it getting in the way of the gameplay, the super fun puzzles. And the puzzles themselves are often difficult and require problem-solving and creativity, leaving you feeling very rewarded when you crack them. What more can I say? This game is art, it's a masterpiece. It's video game perfection and a credit to the medium.

Possibly the greatest strategy game of all time. The gameplay is intuitive and an absolute blast to play. It's intense, engaging, and results scale very much with skill. Anybody who likes chess or turn based combat in any form, this game is for you. Even if you have never tried a turn based game and don't have much interest in chess, I still recommend you try out XCOM. For anyone who has played the Civilization series, this game takes that whole model and applies it to a tactical shooter, and it works brilliantly. There is research that takes a certain amount of days just like Civ, and the tile-based movement system in combat is also very familiar. It works brilliantly in this new setting, perhaps even better than in Civ itself. One of my favourite things about this game is how the story is created organically. This is not because of dialogue trees or any effort to make the campaign have branching paths (in fact, the campaign is quite linear). It is because the best parts in this story will be made in gameplay by you, the player. And to me this is the absolute peak of what a video game story can achieve. Your soldiers, who start off as homogenous uninteresting rookies, will quickly win a place in your hearts through their heroic feats and resulting promotions. At any point, you can mess up and a soldier can die, and that's it, they will be gone forever. A soldier who has been with you from the first day the aliens attacked, gone forever all because you were careless and put them in a position where they are exposed. I cannot even describe the anguish it is possible to experience from a moment like that. The emotions and attachment I built with my soldiers in this game surpasses my attachment to basically any other video game story I have experienced. I recommend not reloading old saves when a squad favourite is lost, but to roll with the punches, your experience will be all the richer. There's a lot of thought gone into this game to make this game engaging as a whole and to provide proper support for the innovative core gameplay mechanic. The base building aspects are satisfying and the perfect addition to the campaign, making you feel invested in what's to come as well as properly dealing with progression and time. The world map and councils offer impactful decisionmaking to be possible within the constraints of a fixed plot. Lastly, I should add that if you are a newcomer to the XCOM series, I recommend you first check out XCOM 2 and then XCOM 2's expansion War of the Chosen. This is because XCOM 2 does everything right in making XCOM even better and there's no reason to not start with the best the series has to offer. War of the Chosen is possibly the greatest video game expansion of all time. Anyone who has tried out XCOM 2 and is wondering whether the original is worth it or dated, look no further. Although the graphics are a bit weaker, the gameplay is equally stellar, and for XCOM 2 fans it is easily worth it for the plot alone.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

2019 is a huge leap forward from 2018 because of the new tactics system and beautiful UI. One of the milestones of the franchise.

How can I do justice to a game responsible for some of the most treasured gaming moments in my whole life? The fact of the matter is that XCOM is more than anything you try and describe it with. It's a strategy game, but it's a lot more than that. It's a turn based combat game, but it's so so much more than that. It's a single player campaign, but it's the most unique and fascinating single player campaign I've ever come across. It's more than all of these things put together, it's a complete game polished on all ends and a truly legendary experience. Perhaps the most amazing thing in this game is what I call organic storytelling. What I mean by that is that in your campaign only you, the commander and main character, and the supporting cast are fixed. The true heroes, the soldiers, are randomly generated, and grow an identity through their experiences and through leveling up. So when a soldier is really powerful and a leader of your squad, there is such a feeling of personal involvement and a stake in the matter. You saw them grow from a rookie into what they are. And the best part of this: perma-death. The main soldier who has been with you from the very first mission, the hero of the story, they could die once in a low stakes side mission and that's it. They're gone. There is something so magical about this, it creates so much tension and raises the stakes so high for every single mission. Sure, you can just reload the save from when the soldier was alive, but I advise against that. I don't think I have ever felt as much anguish from a video game as the time I lost my best soldier because of MY error in judgment and positioning, but it is that anguish that makes the experience sweeter and more profound, and what makes this game so special. The gameplay itself is phenomenal and unique. There is some RNG, no denying that, but it stops short of feeling completely unfair, and skill makes a huge difference. Reading the battlefield, the enemies, and making good tactical decisions is a skill very heavily rewarded in gameplay, and lack of good decisionmaking is punished as well. It really is as close to a "shooter chess" as I can imagine. Parallels can also be drawn to to Firaxis other big game: Civilization, with it's tile based gameplay. Here instead of one tile being a region in a country, it's a small piece of the floor where a soldier can stand. There are other similarities to Civ like the research system. I'd go as far as to say the turn-based, tile-based gameplay works even better for XCOM than it does for Civ. My one criticism of the gameplay is that I do not appreciate the turn timer missions because they promote one way of playing very heavily and make the whole thing feel rushed, in a way that doesn't even feel right for the story. Luckily the War of the Chosen expansion resolves all these faults perfectly.

It's fun for a little while but does get old. The idea is cool and it's a good gameplay mechanic, the story is done well. My major gripe with the game is that it's a race against the clock type game and you get paid per person which not only totally goes against the spirit of the game, but it doesn't help the game experience, and it doesn't even make sense. First of all, the dev should understand the mindframe one is in when they wanna play a game like this. I want to have a chill time at my desk and take my time reviewing the passports. I don't wanna rush through and get paid per passport I approve. Anyway that's not at all how it works in real life, no one is paid per passport. They are paid a salary and don't really care how slow they are being or how much they inconvenience those waiting in line. I feel like that is not only more realistic it would go a long way to improving the game in tone and the general feel of being an immigration agent in a bureaucracy. Oh well. It's unique, indie, fresh, and fun for a couple hours. I won't let one major complaint let me rate this negatively because it's still worth getting.

I think this is the greatest 2D platformer of all time, sorry Nintendo. It's pure fun. I experienced pure joy as I played this game. This is what a video game should be. 10/10 A MASTAHPEECE.

I love the FM series, but after the huge success that was FM 19, I was skeptical about FM 20's ability to repeat such a feat so quickly. i needn't have worried. Although the changes may not have been as big as the tactics overhaul of FM 19, they are exactly what the game needed to make the game more engaging. Club vision is such a fantastic addition and it really offers value from the first hours to 250+ hours into the game. FM 19 feels so incomplete now that I have experienced club vision, and I applaud SI for the innovation. The match engine improvements are also very welcome just making the game a more satisfying experience. I will say though, I don't think I will be satisfied if they just roll out one change a year like this, no matter how big the change. The tactics overhaul was enough to justify a new game in FM 19, but saying club vision is worthy of a new full price game is fair, but borderline. I'm waiting with bated breath for the year when SI drop the marginal changes and really push the button with a good overhaul. The best way to do this is turning team talks into an in-depth experience. Right now you just pick from one of a few one-sentence options in team talks, which are mildly dynamic, but repeat themselves over and over and over through the hundreds of matches until they feel like the most tedious chore. Team talks are not only so tedious, they are unfortunately one of the major ways a manager can have a match-day impact. This is what makes it horrible they have 0 depth. Just imagine a totally reworked team talk that is fused with the (currently underwhelming) tactical briefing mechanic. Imagine a team talk where you really walk your team through where they fell short in the last game, first half, or the whole game. Where you can point at individual statistics, identify them as problem areas and things to focus on, or identify as what was impressive and make a source of praise. There is so much potential here. Unfortunately, it would be a very big change, and from what I have seen of SI, they are just not up to making a big change like this. They seem so complacent because in my opinion they are over-satisfied with their base product. I believe this to be the reason why every change we have seen in FM is so marginal and more-of-the-same. That said, I can't give this game a negative review, it is amazing, the best in the category of business/management. FM is made by people who truly understand the football industry as well as their own playerbase and over a decade of experience has gone into shaping this product into a rewarding, complete experience.