The_Nametag

I didn't purchase this game (it's free to play anyway), but I DID purchase the original Overwatch. The original Overwatch does not exist anymore, and has been replaced with this - inferior - version. Rather than making a new game, Blizzard has decided replace a game with a lesser version. Again. They did this once before with War Craft III: Reforged actually replacing the original War Craft III (meaning that War Craft III was patched to the Reforged engine, including stripping it of several features it used to have, whether you bought Reforged or not). This is a business practice that needs to be stopped. This is, effectively, a long con bait-and-switch, having people who buy one game and then several years down the line you just wipe that game out and replace it with one that's missing features and content. This FORCES people into the new version, even if the older version is better. On top of this, Activision/Blizzard are now violating sales laws in certain countries with their store, the same technique that Bethesda was busted for doing in Fallout 76. And when you are starting to emulate THAT game, you know you're in trouble.

A surprisingly fun game filled with content for its low price. Not quite what you'd initially expect from it. Weapons are all automatic, all you do is move around, and choose the upgrades when you level up. The game starts fairly difficult, but once you've obtained some powerups, it snowballs easier and easier until it becomes effectively a "checklist game", one where you're just going through and doing the various requirements to unlock everything. However, it is a lot of fun seeing what all those unlocks are, and just how deep the rabbit hole goes in this game. Finding the best combinations, all the little secrets, figuring out what characters work best for you. It's a pretty solid game to kill some time on, about 45-60 minutes for 'full run'.

Three classic games in an absolutely shameful collection. This product doesn't come anywhere close to living up to Nintendo's usual standard. The games are all the original games playing in emulators - flawed emulators. Enhanced graphics are done by having the emulator swap out textures with higher resolution ones on the fly. Sure, that's something that's been done before, and since. But the emulators themselves are buggy as well. There's a lot of popping of models. There's graphics glitches. There's a lack of widescreen support. What the world was expecting was to see the games remade with better graphics, like the original Super Mario All-Stars. What the world received was one of the laziest compilation jobs out there. At the very least, the collection did include some side content, mostly in a music player. But that doesn't redeem that the games themselves, already limited to three with several other titles that people were looking for absent, were presented this badly.

Giana Sisters 2D is the most soulless of cash grab shovelware I have ever seen. Made even more impressive by the fact that this game was designed to capitalize on the notoriety of the original, which was itself a soulless cash grab Super Mario Bros. clone. And this game is a cheap copy of that - and a bad port of that copy no less! A clone of a clone with absolutely awful level design, no thought put into anything, cheap enemies, the graphics on this version are intentionally stretched from their original aspect ratio so that it'd fit on a 16:9 display without having to change anything else (at least that's sure as hell how they appear - the original version of this was on DS and it includes "retro levels" from the first game). The game is also riddled with bugs. It can't even do basic numbers right. Sometimes a level will simply duplicate, play twice in a row instead of one of the intended levels. When you select a level from the map there's no guarantee that you'll go to the level you selected - in world 3 when I was still caring about collecting the red crystals to get the bonus levels (that did not last long) I went back to get a crystal I missed but instead of going to the proper level it sent me to the bonus stage anyway. It CLAIMED it was the right stage, but it was the bonus level. Even the retro levels have this problem. Some of the retro levels are in the main game as well, just duplicated, but I honestly cannot tell you if that's intentional or just this "it picked the wrong level" bug. Even when going through the retro level it wouldn't display what level I was on properly. It also for some reason started you with an absurdly large score out of nowhere, instead of starting at 0. This game is incompetent at every level, and is a cheap knock-off of a cheap knock-off. Avoid it at all costs. Nobody should spend money on this game - ANY amount of money - but nobody should pirate it either because it's not worth your TIME.

There are some un"Doom-like" things in it. The previous game gave the player the ability to jump w/ double jump later, and climbing ledges (quickly, at that). I think that was the right amount of movement for Doomguy. This one adds a dash that can be used twice including in the air, "monkey bars" which let the player jump again off then, a hook-shot on your super shotgun, and wall climbing - very quickly at that, and you can jump off the walls. I don't really like these. Especially when the game becomes very platformy, and it's not always good at that. Sometimes it's not clear where you're supposed to go next (even with this game continuing the previous game's "go green" color cues). And sometimes you just don't make the jumps regardless. For example, you are supposed to use your melee on the climbable walls to latch on. I cannot tell you how many times Doomguy punched the climbable wall and then fell down it. Sigh. There's also a fair bit of fantasy-inspired lore in the game. Some parts of the game feel more like Quake than Doom (and I'm not the biggest fan of Quake). Whereas the previous game, your character did not care about plot, this game is rich with it. Oh they set some of the stuff for this game up last time, and now they were delivering as if they had to pack the plot left from the previous game into this as well. And, of course, there are bugs. There's at least one soft lock I found, and several other things that just don't work right. None of that is to say this game isn't entertaining. It's extremely fun to play. Overall, I am very happy with it. I just wanted to get the negatives out of the way first. There's plenty of positives. They really did a good job tying the previous games in, and not just in spirit. Yes, you have the classic outfit you can unlock. There's a reason for that. Your character, "Doomguy" as he is also referred to in the game, really is the marine that was sent to the moons of Mars to deal with UAC's portal mess. And he really did lose his god damned mind and go back INTO Hell to kill every last demon he could find. And then he was adopted by an ancient order to continue the work, only going so far that even they couldn't really control what they had unleashed. It's great, it fits perfectly. They've thrown a lot of things for the fans, including calling him "Doomguy" at several times, and even having a painting of the slayer holding Daisy - his pet rabbit that was seen at the end of the first Doom, and the expanded version. A lot of the collectibles come in the form of music tracks from the series (all the way back to Commander Keen. The game also has cheat codes that you can use when replaying levels, and the best part is those cheat codes don't actually turn off the progression for the levels, so you can find the missing items etc. in them (except for the challenge gates). They added a fast travel system when you're almost done with a level, just in case you don't want to replay it to go back and pick up what you missed. There's master levels as well, remixed versions that are designed to be more challenging. The boss fights are a mixed bag. Some are more annoying than not, but some were a lot of fun to go through. Just as the first game, the first boss comes back as a common enemy throughout. The boss fight where you have to use your hook-shot to punch the flying boss was a real treat, not just for that aspect but the arena as a whole was a lot of fun to play in. The Marauder, that becomes a normal enemy as well, less so. This is an enemy that keeps a shield up and forces you to wait and counter his attacks. Something that doesn't seem to fit at all in the series that has focused on just keep shooting since the beginning. Another let-down is enemies no longer drop ammo unless you chainsaw them (which does at least refill automatically - at least to one pip). This means you will find yourself running out and being forced to switch weapons frequently. Fortunately, I really like most of the weapons in this one. Most. We have a poor substitute to the over-powered Siege Cannon this time out. I've not done the multiplayer yet, but it's the "two demons vs one Doomslayer" game mode, that's it. I am fully planning on giving that a shot. The game did come with the ability to unlock and play the first two games in game (now that they added the .wad files for it... whoops), but they used the more draconian BFG censorship - and without even the bonus levels. Yea, I really, REALLY liked this game. I'm glad I have it. I just hope they fix some of the bugs.

This game is a perfect representation of everything that went wrong with the FPS genre in the late 2000's into the 2010s. Brown, shaky cam, blurry, enemies blending into the background, a half-assed story filled with cliches, and absolutely awful mechanics that make it a nightmare to play. The game isn't fun. Almost no part of it feels good to play. The game is cobbled together out of set pieces because "other games have this, therefore we need it too." Both in game mechanic term - such as having turret sections and on-rails sections, and in story terms - such as having a section of fighting off an enemy army in a war effectively single-handed. None of the choices the characters make come from a place of logic, just "we need to do this to have an excuse to shoot more things." They reuse set pieces and entire levels from the first game (which makes sense to a degree but when the finale is a lifted wholesale from the first game it's an extreme let down). Though I think the worst mechanic is having the AI companion who gets in your way more often than not, like any other AI companion does. The entire game is lazy. No thought was put into it. No "why is this happening", no designing levels logically around events. Everything is there "because video game". It's not art, it's soulless product. Avoid it.

I cannot give this game enough praise. It's the first of the Yakuza games I played, and it certainly will not be the last. Holy crap. Yea, it's a prequel, so there were several references and the like that went over my head, lots of fan service - especially end game stuff - that meant nothing to me, but I thought it'd be fun to start at the very beginning. I also know that the early games have far less in them overall. That this one was likely riding a high for the series, coming off their highest rated game, really shows as they went all out for it. To the point where if I had any complaints about the game, it would be that there is simply too much to do. The game can get a bit checklisty. And I didn't really find all the minigames to be very fun. In fact, I still haven't completed several. That said, this game absolutely blew me away. The story was engaging, with plenty of twists and turns. The performances in the voice acting (and motion capture) were second to none - though as a note it only has Japanese voices in the game, no English. The gameplay is fantastic. Don't think of this as being Grand Theft Auto: Japan, as it's far closer to "Shenmue done right". The influences there are stark. One thing that I think truly helps this game is that it keeps the play area fairly small. Your maps are only a few neighborhoods, but they are absolutely crammed with things to do. It makes the setting feel far more alive. If you have a chance to play this game, get ready for a lengthy investment. But it is absolutely worth it.

This game was far better than I expected it to be. The first game is not the worst I've ever played, but it's my most hated. i loathed it, entirely. This one's a significant improvement. I didn't expect it to be open world, I thought that didn't start until 3, but nope. Here we are. Of course, that comes with its own host of problems. It's still not quite like the others, it hasn't fully gone "Ubisoft Open World" yet, they were feeling it out. But it suffers from checklist syndrome. Lots of busy work with no real point. And no real point sums this game up nicely. The plot is basically nonexistent. You're a mercenary in a war torn African country. The two factions are indistinguishable from each other. You do missions for both because you just have to do all the missions. The missions mean nothing, just go do general mercenary things. Until ultimately everything goes to **** anyway. You have no real impact on any of it despite being at the center of all of it. And none of it matters. The AI is also **** awful. They'll shoot at you through walls, they all see you when one sees you, they'll do things like stand around doing nothing, or spinning around pointlessly, they fire when they aren't pointed at you because their AI has triggered the "spotted him!" from a different AI so it just shoots. It's bad. It's really, really bad, but not as bad as the first game's. There's some cool stuff though. Like there are road signs pointing to various locations, and they will be highlighted for your mission destinations if you have a mission. The map is something you have to actually hold, not just pause and go to a menu. Though the game was clearly meant for consoles with the save system, it was NOT designed to save anywhere like you can on PC. In fact, the quick save **** things up really badly as every time it just makes a new save file, rather than using its own or a rotating selection. Still... I do recommend it. It feels good to play. That's what matters. I wouldn't say "go hunt this down and try it!" But it's not an "avoid at all costs" like the original.

A low-res Metroidvania with some very clear Metroid influence in it, don't let this game fool you. It may look somewhat simplistic, but the game is deep with many layers to discover, secrets scattered everywhere. I do have some issue with it. It felt like it was dropping some inputs now and then (and I confirmed that when scrolling the map, it would just ignore some inputs there). There's some issues with the risk/reward balance, such as diminishing returns on health tanks - no matter what order you pick them up in. Some of the end game items, however, are exceptionally powerful, but can be a real challenge to get. There's some multi-form bosses that are more tedious than challenging, because they can't be too difficult if you're expected to do so many phases on one life bar. And, despite the low-res graphics, the screens can be really busy where it's difficult to tell what's foreground, what's background, and what's an enemy. It may sound like I didn't like the game, but quite the opposite. The flaws are flaws, but the game as a whole is a fantastic experience that i highly recommend any metroidvania lover play. It's not a perfect game, but it's a worthy addition to any collection.

I do want to recommend this game. Well, this story. There's no actual game here. The choices are largely irrelevant and have no impact on the actual outcome other than who shows up where - and even then, only sometimes. Some of the humor is pretty good, and the characters are likable enough for what is effectively a harem anime. But this game just feels a bit lazy overall. It has a strange theme that makes people curious, screenshots of a few of the jokes, it's enough to make some people (myself included) decide to buy it - on sale - and see what it's really like. And it delivers, to a degree. There are some references to the actual tanks the girls are named after. Some of their personality traits can be assigned due to their country of origin. But the personalities have about as much depth as a saucer of milk. And the writing, unfortunately, contains several plot points that get immediately dropped that COULD have actually gone somewhere. That and some things in the game really should be explained. It's short, it's sloppy, it goes nowhere, and it ends rather abruptly. And, while it contains a "skip" feature, using it will likely crash the game as it can try to forward faster than the engine can actually handle. Also, the jokes in the screen shots? Not actually in the game. There are similar jokes told by other characters, but never the ones you see like that. The world doesn't make sense - which at least your invisible protagonist self points out a few times - and the characters largely don't behave in any reasonable way. Which is a shame, because you see hints **** idea here and there, something that COULD be explored in depth. Instead, they just hope you know about Kancolle and think this is similar enough to pay for. It's not. Sorry. Put some more time in the writing, make decisions MATTER, give some logic and actually follow up on the plot threads you keep leaving around and there could be something unique and special here. As it stands, this is the "visual novel" equivalent of Buzzfeed clickbait. "Top 15 tanks turned into high-school girls, you won't believe number 7!" It occurs to me that there IS another game out there, with an equally silly theme, that shows that good writing is still possible. Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;birth 1. Don't let a silly theme make you shy away from telling a good story.

A true classic. System Shock 2 sets the survival atmosphere well, throwing you alone with a voice in your ear to survive on a ship where something has gone wrong. The story is pieced together as you play, learning more and more about what happened, how it happened, and who else is alive on the ship with you. The game starts with limited resources, trying to balance them as you eek out your survival. In this way, it encourages plenty of exploring. The more you explore, the more resources you find that will help you late in the game. Ultimately, what this really does is limit more than open. Nearly everything in the game is locked behind some kind of skill barrier. That armor you picked up? If you're not strong enough, you can't use it. That weapon? Are you proficient in the right skills? Can you repair it if it breaks, maintain it so it won't break as often? Hacking is essential, as it can - literally - open doors for you that are otherwise out of your reach. The game is not perfect. The engine feels fairly clunky today, and it can be very difficult to heal or swap some skills on the fly, particularly when trying to dodge enemies. It suffers from the same ending-going-off-the-rails as Half-Life. And it can be brutally difficult at times, particularly in areas where very powerful enemies like to respawn, and keep respawning. But even now, more than fifteen years later, this game can keep you invested. As an added bonus, the Steam version comes with the Multiplayer mod, allowing you to take a friend with you so that you aren't all alone. This does make the game considerably easier as, even though you are sharing resources, you get to specialize and utilize far more tools between the players, since everyone get the same amount of upgrades. There are also lots of community mods and patches to help the game look better, in some cases run better, fix bugs, etc. Don't hesitate to use them if that's your thing. Give this game a try and find out WHY it's spoken of so highly by those who've seen it through.

This game looks quite gorgeous. The graphics have had a real step up, there's some really good paint options available, reflections look amazing. This would be a great game as long as all you ever do is look at it. As soon as you start to actually play it, that is where the game begins to fall apart. The key to GRID 2 is simple: Drift. The first tier of cars you obtain in career mode, every single car in season one - even with DLC - is a Drift car. And there's a reason for this. Once you finally do work your way up the ladder, you do tart unlocking other cars. But even with other control schemes, "balance", "grip", there is only one way to take corners with any speed: Drifting. And even this wouldn't be as bad if it had the same more realistic drifting controls as the previous game. But this game doesn't. Not by a long shot. While it may be better than the infamously bad Ridge Racer series, Codemasters has decided to throw away all pretense of a "racing simulator" and give us crappy arcade drifting physics. Every car will under-steer unless you hit the breaks to throw the back end out. Every. Single. Car. Every track is made for drifting around sharp bends. Every race expect you to drift if you want any sort of reasonable time. Simply put, if you aren't drifting, you aren't winning. On top of that, the career tournament, sponsor, money/reputation system of the previous game is gone. Replaced with a "social media" story, complete with ESPN interludes (who've proven they will do anything for a pay check whether it has any sense of reality or not). You win races to earn "fans" (reputation). Cars are just given to you, you choose between usually two - which are either virtually identical in stats or one will be a clear advantage - and you can unlock the other in a time trial. The goal of the game is to impress drivers from other racing circuits to join your racing circuit by beating them in races. Let me put that another way: The goal is to impress enough fans that your brand new, all-styles racing circuit is totally for realsies by attracting drivers that you, personally, have bested in their own circuits, on their own tracks, against their own specialties. And now you want to race them off type, off class, and against each other to give credibility for your fantasy league. Yea, this is so much better than just, you know, trying to earn trophies from existing events. Worse, the AI has taken a huge step back from the previous game. Whereas in previous game, drivers had skill sets, they had favorite types, and - most importantly - they made mistakes, here we are back to AI that was laughable twenty years ago. They follow their racing line. They drive a little slower if they're out front, so that you can catch up, and a little faster if they're behind you (rubber band AI). They don't care if they hit a wall, they don't care if you're in the way, they don't care if you try to spin them. They will stick to their racing line like glue. But wait, there's more. In their infinite wisdom, Codemasters has added a few new race types, and of course removed some old favorites. One of the new events, Live Routes, is a race track that is dynamically altered as you race. In other words, you have to picture that there are people who, once a few cars go buy, run out and reset the direction of the track. Constantly. In a game filled with unrealistic, idiotic choices, this one takes the cake. Edit: There is also the dreaded, obsolete, should not be seen in any video game post 2000 checkpoint racing. This was a mechanic invented for arcade machines back when you had to continually put quarters in them every 90 seconds in order for them to earn money. You have a time limit, and each checkpoint adds a little bit to it - not enough to get to the next point on its own, so that you will eventually run out. It has absolutely no place in home games. This mechanic needs to die. Even though it is used here slightly differently than in the old arcade games, here it's set up as an actual competition - which is probably the best use you can make out of it - checkpoint racing has left such a dirty taste in my mouth from so many games that I just cannot respect any racing game that includes it anymore. This isn't the only thing either. Elimination, the way they have the "5 second rule" to Togue. This game has completely forgone "simulation" for "arcade". While some players may like that, having race styles that can only really be done IN a video game... After the first GRID game, this is not at all what I wanted to see in the sequel. I have no problem if that's the game that they wanted to make... but it should not be titled GRID 2. There are better racing games out there. The cars there feel good, the game looks good, the races make sense, the AI is competitive, and most importantly, that game is far more FUN. But hey, at least you can have pearlescent paint if you buy this one - though you can never remove your sponsors.

This is a phenomenal game. I truly enjoyed playing through it, more than I have most other racing games that I've played. The controls felt really smooth, the cars handle well - and differently from each other. There were some that would stay stable and take some abuse, and others that would completely lose control if one of your opponents so much as looked at you funny. But overall, as long as you weren't running into everything you saw, the game handled just fine. The graphics are also quite good, if it has the old "reality is brown!" trope to it. The cars can take damage, and get banged up and dirty (or, rather, **** up). They can flip, though the undersides aren't detailed. There's a decent selection of cars, tracks seem more limited. The single player game mode plays fairly well. Sets of tournaments, need to earn reputation to unlock higher events. You earn a bulk of your money through sponsors, that ask for certain conditions to be met. Take note that "no damage" means no mechanical damage, none of your components damaged. You can bang up your body work and they don't care. You'll even be able to unlock a second driver for you as you work up the races, though they will be driving a duplicate car of your own (so you don't need to buy extras for them). As for the AI, that might be my favorite part of this game. Instead of simply following racing lines, they are actual AI. They WANT to stay on the racing lines, obviously, and will occasionally knock you out of the way if they want to be where you are, but they can also make mistakes. Every now and then you'll see one miss a turn and hit a barrier, or spin out. They also have varying skill levels, with one particular driving team being massively ahead of everyone else. That team will push you, challenge you, frustrate you, but they can be beaten. Once you've completed all the events in one section, you'll get a special head to head with the aforementioned rival team. These usually offer some very good pay outs. The game is also a bit forgiving. You have a set number of "flashbacks", where you can rewind time a little bit if you've made a mistake. You can also restart the race if necessary. However, these can both be disabled by playing in "Pro" mode, so the game will offer the level of challenge that you want to face. None of the races are particularly long. Even the frequent Le Mans 24 hour race is condensed into 12 minutes. All in all, I truly enjoyed this game, and highly recommend it to anyone that likes racing games, particularly given the price.

The game is rude, crude, vile, and has some of the dumbest story you'll ever see. All while being brilliant. I am not even a fan of the show, but I really enjoyed this game. It's a JRPG style game, though with some input and timing during the commands so that it's not all passive (similar to Legend of Dragoon). There's lots of side areas to explore, items to collect, quests to accomplish, etc. It isn't the longest game ever, I beat it in under 15 hours, and that was with doing a hefty chunk of side options. It's also not the most balanced, with the DOT abilities being over-powered to the point of necessity against some enemies. All in all, yea, it was a fun game. I would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of the show, or is a fan of RPGs and doesn't mind a bit, no, a lot of blue humor.

This game is frequently hailed as one of the only truly scary FPS games made. A game rich in atmosphere, and setting, that drives you to keep playing it. I just don't see it. I have tried to get into this game. I want to like it. But I just can't. I can't now, and I couldn't ten years ago when it first came out, the first time I tried to play it. Nothing in the game, nothing in the story, makes me want to keep playing. That is not to say the game doesn't have its strong points. The AI in this game is top notch, and holds up well even today. The enemies will try to flank you, surround you, they react to being seen, being shot at. They'll throw grenades, they'll fire from cover. They really are some of the best AI I have ever seen. And the game should be played if just for this alone. (Edit: This only applies to the first enemy type you see, the soldiers. When you start getting to the invisible robot ninjas (I am not kidding), the good AI goes right out the window. I witnessed two of them performing a Scooby-Doo routine of running back and forth randomly between the rooms in a hallway, simply because I had my gun pointing down the hallway so they wouldn't come at me. It was hilariously pathetic.) But there are also problems. There's no on-screen indication when you take a hit. Your life goes down, and that's it. So you could be in a fire fight, shooting from cover, and thinking you're doing well, only to find yourself on the edge of death. Because you didn't know that the enemy was hitting more shots than not. Or didn't realize that someone had gotten to your side, and was free to open up on you. That severely hurts this game. (Edit: There actually IS a visual indicator. But it is on the very edge of the screen, and flashes by so quickly that I literally did not notice it for more than three hours of gameplay.) They also made a bizarre choice with the weapon and ammo mechanic. In an effort to make you switch weapons often (you can only carry three at a time), when picking up a new weapon it comes with a full magazine loaded, and enough ammo for a second. However, if you already have a weapon of that type, when you pick the new one up for more ammo, you get roughly a third of a magazine. Of course, you can game this system by first tossing your weapon on the ground, picking up the new one (which is now reloaded for you), and then picking up your old one with all the ammo you had before. You'll start to do this very rapidly once you find a weapon you like. Also, despite being only ten years old, the game does not run well on modern systems. Disabling "HID-Compliant Device", and in my case "HID-Compliant Vendor-Defined Device" is required to make the game run at anything higher than 6-7 FPS. So don't expect your gaming keyboards and mouse to function when you play this game, and be prepared to reenable those when you have finished. There are other problems. The game forces "Letterboxing" when it does cinematics. Even if you're using a wide-screen monitor and resolution. So expect to see black bars and the top and bottom of an already wide-screen image. And the FMV cut-scenes are letterboxes as well, but set in 4:3 ratio, so they'll be displayed with a box with black bars on all sides. So what about the story? Well, this was before the "scary little girl" trope was completely overplayed. But even so, nothing in this seems to work. There's a few pseudo jump-scares, and some places where the graphics will change on you into another, "spooky" scene. But both Max Payne and even Postal 2 of all things had done this years before. (Quick edit: The Postal 2 expansion that featured this was released the same year as F.E.A.R., but five months before.) And to a better effect. In fact, that might be one of the problems I had with this game ten years ago. It so desperately wants to play like Max Payne, but with a horror twist ("Bullet Time" - the slow motion effect - was featured in Max Payne as well). But this game just didn't seem to push hard enough. There's a level of interactivity... but it's so painfully limited that you notice more when you CAN'T do something than when you can. You can only do anything with phones if they're already flashing with a voice mail message. You walk by a radio and can't turn it on yourself, but some will spout something directly from the Exposition News Network, letting you know a plot update... and then promptly fall silent again. There are blocked doors, sometimes you can figure out a way to open them, but frequently they can't be. And, again, to put in perspective as to the environment when this game came out, System Shock 2 and Deus Ex had both been out for half a decade before this game was released. The game shows its age now. But it wasn't fresh and exciting when it came out. F.E.A.R. - First Encounter Assault Recon (which, BTW, Assault and Recon are kinda mutually exclusive, but they had to fit that name in somehow) was a game that was trying to just exist.

This game is amazing. On its own, the combat is fantastic, the graphics and scenery can be gorgeous at points, and the story is highly engaging. There's a lot of hectic action, good pacing, and a pretty decent length (took me around fifteen hours to beat). Beyond that, this game was made by fans of the original. That you can tell. There are secret areas patterned off the first game, this game includes several pop-culture references, including some in hidden areas. The multitude of enemies and fast pace gameplay is more reminiscent of FPS games before the jump to 3D, when they could actually have more things on the screen at once. There's some callbacks as well (the rabbits, for example), and it does give us the story as to why Zilla is so upset with Lo Wang in the first game. The game is not without fault though. My biggest complaint would be some of the very repetitive level design. You'll see some of the same building designs in the early and late game. Mind you, it does make a bit of sense that areas designed by the same person (in game person, Zilla), would have a similar look and feel. Plus, those building designs are actually taken from the original game. So I can forgive it, but that doesn't make it any less redundant. The boss fights are also the typical hunt the weak spot grindfests. Though there is some interesting bits here and there in them. Also, none of the weapons truly stood out in my mind. Other than the weapons taken from the original, they seemed to be basic shooter fare. And some weapons I pretty much never bothered using. Mostly, I stuck to the sword early game, and then had to mix it up a bit more later on. In the end though, even with the complaints, I had more fun with this game than I've had in a while. So I highly recommend it.

It sounds like such a simple question. "Do you recommend this game?" But every now and then a game comes along that makes you really have to think about that. This is one of those games. It is a budget title. A game that is massively flawed, but functional. There are bugs, ranging from invisible walls in the middle of the map, floating grass, options such as reversing your mouse’s y-axis not saving when you exit the game, to the game not exiting properly, crashing, and not working on Windows 7 or higher without some tweaking. There are bugs. You will encounter them. The game, originally Russian, has some problems in the translation. Voice acting for the main character is flat. He calls out things like “The roof is on fire!” when he spots enemies. There are several more non-sequiturs in the game. The story is fairly generic, limited. However, it does branch out, letting you choose different factions to support during the game. The game is not polished. Your vehicle can climb mountains with ease, physics are described as ‘bouncy’. To explain why all the characters’ faces don’t move, the creators decreed that all the characters wear masks (and, yes, the graphics reflect that). But the gameplay is there. You can drive around. You can enter combat, with a variety of weapons. Vehicles are done in a fairly strict upgrade process. One chassis is better than another, one cab is better in nearly all stats and slots than another, same with beds. Even with combat, some weapons are clearly better than nearly anything else in their slot (shotguns, particularly the medium shotgun, are fairly over powered compared to other available weapons). You can raid, you can trade, haul cargo, complete quests. You can finish the game. It is not without flaws, but it is not without charm. There are problems with AI spawn rates, where enemies will attack in rapid succession outside of a town, leading you into a loop of defending yourself, looting the scraps, returning to sell and repair, and then being attacks again right away. Other times, you will not see an enemy for several maps if you run through them. Yet the game also contains some clever fights (and some generic ones). The first map perfectly introduces you to how to play. The next string of maps seems to follow the trope of “they get worse as you go on, because fewer and fewer people will see them”, but began to improve again in time. You do eventually see different environments from what most of the early game looks like. This is a game that doesn’t feel done, but does feel like the devs had a clear idea of what they were trying to achieve. And, gameplay wise, it is solid. And it is fun, if that’s what you want. So, in the end, do I recommend this game? Yes, I think I do, if that is the kind of game you’re looking for, and if you can look past its many flaws. But this game won’t appeal to everyone.

How can a game be so bad that it can negatively impact people who haven't even bought it? It shouldn't be possible, right? I mean, you can usually avoid a bad game simply by not buying it. Makes sense. But this is an extremely rare case where even that isn't really possible, thanks to Activision/Blizzard. You see, the changes made to the engine in this remastered release were forcibly applied to the original game as well. Features were removed, the TOS was updated with extremely draconian language, content was taken away, and people are forced to download 26 additional gigabytes of data that they can't even access unless they've paid for what is, at this point, literally just an update patch to the original game. Activision/Blizzard is actively destroying their own legacy with releases like this. They are destroying their own history. They aren't satisfied letting you have the games you already own and enjoy, unless you continue to pay up for new releases. And even if you don't, they will gut your favorite games and render them unplayable messes.