SpongyTwinkies

This game brought me back to the franchise. I played the original Doom in '93. That game and others like XCom had kept me as a PC player for years. But I eventually grew tired of Doom's repetition and overly straightforward gameplay. It was only after Halo first appeared is when I bought my first console since the original NES. And Demon's Souls and Souls games kept me sticking around with the PlayStation soon after. These games offered more than just a run-and-gun experience and I had little motivation to play another Doom game. But what intrigued me enough to buy Doom: The Dark Ages are the new mechanics with the shield and its ability to parry. The same can be said for the evade mechanic. After taking a chance on a preorder, I popped the disc in and began playing. And I keep playing. I've been enjoying the story and the cast of characters, each with their own motivations that may also be at odds with one another. Yes, at heart, this is still Doom run-and-gun. But each weapon that I eventually discover distinguishes itself from the others. And as mentioned, there are new combat mechanics that add to the experience and also help you to get about the map and uncover secrets. The soundtrack is fantastic. And when you jump into a giant Mech Suit to smash it out with Titan demons, it feels so heavy metal. This game really needed these additions to compete in a modern video game arena. So glad to be back, Doom!

After playing Wo Long for several hours, I can understand the negative reviews. There are way too many working parts in the combat system. And most of the melee techniques aren't needed. The same can be said for the magic system. Boss fights can be finished with one or two melee moves, then wash and repeat. Add a single ranged weapon for smaller mobs and call it a day. Yes, the game looks good. Movement and combat response are good. Unfortunately, exploration begins to feel repetitive. And so many of the mechanics feel unnecessary or tend to be confusing, even overlapping themselves with slight mechanical differences to offer more unneeded variety, Gameplay would have been far better by simplifying combat mechanics and limiting options, allowing for experimentation using different build types during later playthroughs. After beating the third boss, I grew fatigued with having to think about so many things going on with my character and so little of it having any impact on my play. This is meant to be a fast-moving action game, but the mechanics keep getting in the way. Wo Long wants to immediately indulge the player with a full feast, giving you access to all build styles pretty much right from the start. Unfortunately, it's mostly empty calories.

This game is an interesting one and surprised me. At first, I thought I made a mistake. Even though it was on sale. But I have it a 60 minute playthrough before fully deciding if I should delete and forget. It wasn't too long before it pulled me in. Dungeon Encounters borrows from older games, using grid-based movement and turn-based combat. It then adds a rouge-lite element and a slightly different take on combat and party building. So, you move around a grid on each floor and accumulate ability points (ab.) Once you walk over a grid, you can no longer gain an ability point for that entire run. But you can still go back over that square, which you may do often. You use these accumulated ap's for global abilities that affect the entire party and the map. Placed randomly around a floor map are encounters represented by numbers. These numbers could be a merchant, treasure or a healing fountain or even a monster encounter. Things like monster encounters respawn if you go to another floor and come back. And encounters such as a healing fountain appear to be unlimited usage. By the way, monster encounters take place on a battle screen using avatars for both the monsters and your party members. Combat is deceptively easy, at first. As your characters earn experience points, they level up as well as earn proficiency points (pp.) PP can be spent on defensive gear, offensive weapons, magic items and buffing charms. There is a great deal of flexibility with this system, allowing the player to configure each character into a single role or something more hybrid. The game is a slow burn. And you will have to grind to build up your characters' experience levels. And that often means backtracking through floors. But at what I thought was a shallow experience turned out to have much more depth the more I played it. The combat became more interesting the more I began to understand how to build a party with gear and pp to survive a dungeon run. This came through trial and error. In two runs, I ran out of recruits from the Academy and had to start over (that's the rouge-lite aspect.) But I was eager to try, again. While initially this title appears to be a too simple and too boring of an experience, 30 minutes later I found myself pulled in by a deceptively more complex system than how it first appears. So, if you're looking for an action rpg, this title won't interest you. But if you're looking for something different in a turn-based rpg, this game is worth a try.

My interest in the game was only mildly sparked by an occasional unusual setting or character. But nothing connects well. And poorly written prose, choppy game events, terrible character animations, and buggy game play make this a title to avoid.

It's bad enough that SJWs bully and abuse others with slanderous words and unsubstantiated accusations. Now, they expect you to pay money for it. Do you like being called a troll? Do you enjoy being labeled a monster? The developers think you do. Such twisted logic is used by theocrats and dictators.

I've learned my lesson - give little merit to professional game reviews. I'm so glad I went with my interest and gut feel and picked up this game because it's a lot of fun! The negative critiques and faults the reviewers found in Natural Doctrine, overly difficult or confusing game play, are unwarranted. The game is challenging but far from impossible. Yes, if a character dies it's game over but you may usually continue from a checkpoint that is interspersed appropriately to the current battle. Even so, if you plan out your moves correctly and take advantage of the really neat linking system, deaths are much less likely to happen. (In fact, you might end up dominating the battlefield; just think before you move.) All the game ever asks of you is to learn from your mistakes and plan out your moves. Almost all games do this to a lesser or greater degree. That brings me to the point of this game being confusing. I found the interface quite helpful and easy to grasp, from the initial user interface to the scrolling announcements on the world map. Just by following the tutorials and playing the game for about an hour, I grasped an understanding of everything and found it all to be appropriate. Even the linking system makes sense once you get that hang of it, and it's a really neat play feature integrated into a tactical turn based strategy game. The linking system is quite flexible and the in-game play interface shows you how you might take advantage of it. I also like a number of other things: the graphics make the game world look like detailed table top miniatures (very appropriate!), flexible and well designed skill trees for characters, opportunities for risk/reward trade-offs during battles (sometimes battle chests are scattered on the map that allow the player to go after some goodies if you're willing to chance it), and resource management. It all comes together very well. My only mild dislike is that the story is typical silly anime plotting and characterizing. The story will not be remembered but it does move the game along. So, I cannot understand such low scores by the professional reviewers. They've overstated a few perceived faults with this title and immediately jumped to low scores to justify their decision. Bizarre, because this game is quite enjoyable if you like turn-based tactical games. Did something in the story line offend the reviewers? Who knows. Perhaps, you should make your own decision and try this game out. I did and it's been a wonderful experience.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

My initial expectations of this game being shaped by reviews on some of the bigger game review sites, this game is far better than I had expected. There is nothing new to this game that you haven't seen in other horror survival games. Alien Isolation borrows play mechanics from other titles such as the Last of Us, Dead Space, and Bioshock, and sets those playable elements in the Alien(s) story. That's fine, because it works in this game, too. Just don't go into this game expecting original gameplay; instead, just enjoy this game. But even though the gameplay isn't groundbreaking, the game is woven well enough into the character's plot and most things make sense. And while I've read some complaints about the Average Joe synthetics, I did not find them to be surprising or a disconnecting story issue. They are introduced appropriately and gameplay isn't jarred by them. What I really like is that the game doesn't try to hold your hand all the way through the experience. There are times when a character will provide guidance but you can usually explore the station somewhat freely and not follow any objectives in order. You can also quickly get yourself in trouble. Oh, and the developers presented the Aliens setting extremely well. I had also expected the Alien to constantly hound me through the game but that's not exactly true. (Maybe that was my incorrect impression of the game based on reviews.) While there are trigger events that bring the Alien into gameplay, the game plays out a story that involves other NPCs and threats, such as the Average Joes (synthetics). You are not left flat with just a cat and mouse game with the Alien. So despite the somewhat overdone gameplay, I am having fun playing Alien Isolation. I bought this title wanting to have an enjoyable Alien experience. I believe I've finally found a game that does this.

I decided to revise my review of Crown of the Sunken King after playing it through. Dark Souls 2 had really disappointed me. I played it through to completion and one NG+, but too many problems and bad design choices turned me off from a game series that I really enjoy. The DLC is better but still plagued by problems. The maps are better layed out, the creatures populating the area better help characterize the world and mood, tying into a background story, and are mostly fun to battle, and there are some secrets and items worth taking some risks for. It's challenging, but not always just for the sake of being difficult. But there are still problems with the DLC. Mostly useless bonfires are hidden around the map (but at least they are more difficult to get to instead of appearing too often and too soon). The enemy AI can be - well - weird; it might decide to target someone in a party that could be in the back of the room while more immediate threats are ignored. And the controls don't always behave, especially when you need them to be responsive or respond correctly. Also, the story is a bit lackluster, most likely because the base games story wasn't well developed to begin with. What bothers me most is when the story and design lack, the game compensates by sometimes throwing spastic enemies with nearly hyper-aggro, unreasonable attack behaviors, or they gank. The enemies don't always play by the same rules the gamer is held to, either, such as when a Razorback Nightcrawler does no damage to a charging foe but deals plenty out to you. Or an enemy seems to have nearly endless stamina. That's cheap and a cover for poor or lazy high-level design. Crown of the Sunken King is better than the base game, Dark Souls II, which the game really needed. But the game still doesn't deliver a solid experience like the previous two titles.

There is nothing memorable about this title. The worlds and characters that intrigued me in the first two games, Demon's and Dark Souls, are flat and uninteresting in Dark Souls 2. While some fans are still saying "Praise the sun!," a reference to Solaire of Astora from the previous Souls title, you probably won't hear anything being repeated for characters in this title. This game plays more like devolved fan fiction, rather than trying to stand on it's own as an interesting new world. There are plenty of other problems with this title: Lazy level design, illogical item progression, boring bosses (some that are nearly cut and paste from the previous Souls game), a story that really can't stand on it's own, and many other issues. The game is okay for a short while, but after three builds and one NG+, I called it quits with Dark Souls 2. I'm back to playing the first two games.

I have a problem with this game - it is constantly reminding me that it is a game. Throughout play, the game 'evolves' the technical and play mechanics. It is this persistent reminder, and the jokes the game makes at its own expense, that irk me, jar me out of the experience and sometimes confuse the issue of what the goals are during play. Am I seeking the next chest to unlock a new mechanic? Because it was reminding me it's a game, I continued noting the evolution of play and spoting inconsistencies as things updated. The game can't help but do this. And after awhile, I began to miss playing Zelda because Evoland might as well have said, "Hey, I'm not Zelda, but this is sort of how that game works and we are imitating something already created." In fact, I stopped playing and turned on that great NES classic. Buy this if you're curious but wait for it to go on sale. Evoland is not a game that seems to want to stand on its own merit except for novelty.

This game is a disappointment. The developers have forgotten that they were creating a game for their customers; a game is more interactive than this walk-through, which only has a few boring puzzles. Instead, what they have dumped on the customer is their attempt at writing a poorly told short story and expecting you to pay for something they consider 'art'. This is not art and it's not a good story. If a book editor were to review the text, so much of the material would have been deleted because it doesn't add anything to this amateurish effort. Certainly, no editor would have published this as a novel or novella, so the game publishers would have to resort to self-publishing. And the game developers did just that. They have self-published some bad fiction and disregarded good game development. I'm not exaggerating when I say this story is bad. It can be summed up in a few sentences: "Oh God, I'm so tormented," "Oh God, I'm so tormented," restate background information with different prose, throw in enigmatic monologue and information and have the main character think about the same information, again and again. Most of this story is just static word pictures and it's often told in flashback (zzzzzzzzz). You, the gamer, and Mandus, the main character, never really do anything. So now, I'm having a bad flashback, recalling the moment when I had purchased and played this boring game. I wail, gnash my teeth and pull my hair. Falling to my knees, I pray this bad game might get better. With tears and hope in my eyes, I look at the monitor but there is no change; Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is still a terrible game and a boring story. Oh God, I'm so tormented!