Zen-Zinxe

Nioh is a beautiful take on a well worn formula. I've played nearly every soulslike game for hundreds of hours each and I must say I was pleasantly surprised by Nioh. I thought it would be a hard sell because of the limited weapon selection and all the armor is Japanese lore/samurai inspired and that's not really my thing. However Nioh proved that even without a graphics style/setting that resonates with me, a game can be enjoyable just through the expression of how it is played. Nioh is so much fun to play, the game is full of huge combo trees you can unlock for weapons, tons of guardian spirits to collect which give different bonuses. There is high, middle, and low stance for every weapon which produces a different move-set and combat style affecting how your character moves significantly. Switching stances on the fly and reacting perfectly to whatever you are fighting is incredibly satisfying, and although it is not expressly necessary, it lets you play with as much or as little complexity as you feel like. Despite the fact that Japanese lore and samurai armor don't stand out to me at all, Nioh has managed to make it stand out through brilliant combat mechanics, high impact effects and animations and a uniquely told story. On top of it all I love the soundtrack, the first time I heard the boss music in the Warrior of the West's fight was intense. Slicing up a horned demon into 20 pieces couldn't be more satisfying. If you have a ps4 and like action focused games you would be absolutely stupid not to pick this up.

Timeless game restricted by advancing technology. To truly enjoy the full extent of this game you need a pretty good CD collection, not DVD's, they have to be Compact Disc format. If you know where to look this kind of thing isn't hard to find or expensive, but it's a minor inconvenience to enjoy a game with such a perfect foundation. If monster rancher was remade with the exact same game mechanics (but with the ability to scan dvds along with blue ray and the original compact cds), and graphics that rivaled modern AAA titles, I would buy that without hesitation. As it stands now nothing has ever really captured the original monster rancher's formula since this game's release. Pokemon never had the amount of content and interesting animations monster rancher had. and Digimon has never managed to make a game series that stuck. Even compared with games today, this game is still a blast to play.

Dark Souls 3 is without a doubt the pinnacle of the Dark Souls series. Dark Souls 3 removes a lot of the pointless extraneous stuff from 2, streamlines a lot of features and takes some inspiration from Bloodborne. The game feels like a combination of every game in the souls series. Weapons arts are a new thing in Dark Souls 3, each weapon including bows and shields have a weapon skill. While the weapon movesets are more interesting because of this, it's not as in depth as bloodborne. A lot of weapons come as a dual wielded set, eliminating the need to not only find another weapon to dual wield but also not having to farm the supplies to upgrade a second weapon. Armor no longer needs to be upgraded, adaptability was removed and the stats are more like dark souls 1 again. There is a lot of fanservice in this game, lots of references to dark souls 1, the lore still is a jumbled mess that takes more work to put together than to play the game, but I expected as much. Honestly Dark Souls 3 doesn't feel like something new, it feels more like they took all the good stuff from their other games, and made a Dark Souls finale with it. It's a competent and near perfect rendition of Dark Souls, and after beating the game I gotta say I'm looking forward to seeing what else comes from FromSoftware because as much as I love Dark Souls, it is definitely time to hang it up and make something new.

Bloodborne is a nightmare that never ends. It's very different from Dark Souls, the spiritual predecessor. In Dark Souls there's a large focus on loot and character builds. In Bloodborne your success depends not quite so much on your build, but more upon your skill. It plays like Dark Souls, basically the same formula, except it's almost more pure. What I mean by that is that the game focuses on the basics of hack n slash combat and making that have more depth. While Dark Souls 2 in particular had a ton of content and weapons and spells, weapons follow an archetype moveset and there aren't that many truly 'unique' weapons. Bloodborne is the opposite. It is a fairly short game with some of the content that is easily overlooked if you are casually playing through. In Bloodborne there are no weapons that aren't unique. There are some that are similar, but every weapon you can use has its own unique moveset that has more complexity than Dark Souls ever had. Bloodborne has way less magic than Dark Souls and it does not work the same, the game wants you to make a build centered around a weapon and a firearm/secondary weapon. Magic is a supplementary after thought to make things more interesting, not the focus of a characters build. In a certain sense Bloodborne feels more limited in almost every way than it's predecessor at a glance, but there is a truly impressive depth to the weapons in the game which shifts the focus away from loot, and more on your skill with the weapons. While it is difficult at first, it becomes much less unforgiving when you begin to understand the nature of the game and how everything works. Bloodborne is a journey into madness, a dark beastly nightmare, a test of patience and skill. Behold, a Paleblood sky! Make Contact.

So I picked this up almost entirely due to nostalgia, digimon pretty much characterizes my entire childhood and that love never really went away, despite the fact this game cost me 80 freakin dollars. (THANKS CANADA, and people wonder why I rarely buy new releases, let alone own a console) So now borrowing my friends PS4 I'm able to play one of the few digimon games that seemed like it could be really good. Surprisingly enough, it is. The translations are generally well written, there's a few really goofy lines of dialogue that look like the localization team took quite some liberties with, but as someone who knows absolutely zero Japanese, the writing is easy to understand and the english versions of digimon attacks/lore is very faithful which surprised me because usually the attack names/lore is really inconsistent between different digimon games due to translation. From my perspective I think my enjoyment of this game hinges entirely on two things: 1. I have an OCD like desire to unlock every single digimon's page in the field guide 2. I have an obsession with designing a team of my most favorite digimon The story is fairly interesting, and I definitely want to see where it goes, but as it stands now I find myself thinking "just a few more battles until I can digivolve this guy", "just a few more cases until I have enough party memory to digivolve him to ultimate", "just a few more digimon for the field guide before I sleep". It's been easy for me to kill time with this game and have a lot of fun doing it. But it's because of my love for digimon. If you like digimon in general I would call this game a must have. It could have been better, there's no english voice overs, but that is typical for a digimon game. The digimon models are top notch and as far as games in general go, I would say it's a pretty fun and challenging (I'm playing on the hard setting), you can't just breeze through the game using any type of digimon you happen to have, you generally need a decent balanced team to survive boss encounters and smart use of guarding and items to protect your disadvantaged digimon. Definitely would have given this a 9/10 if there was effort made to have english voice overs as well, but what can ya do, I doubt digimon will ever be popular enough in NA to justify spending that kind of money.

The Witcher 3, this game is a testament to how far games have come. I actually feel sorry for any game that tries to do open world RPG after this. It's painfully obvious that CDPR has blown everyone out of the water. Here's why: The game is open world, and has better graphics than most linear games, even DESPITE the graphics downgrade (which DID happen). The game looks and feels like a handcrafted world, the entire game world is beyond beautiful, like nothing I have ever seen before. I thought the witcher 2 was amazing, the witcher 2 was definitely great looking, but it did not have the scope that TW3 has. TW3 has a world that feels completely real and alive. That feeling of "copy pasted" areas is just not there. The npcs. People will call out to you when you ride/walk by if they want your help, the faces in the witcher are many and varied. Even after doing nearly every quest I came across I never felt like I was talking to the same person with a different outfit. Everyone in the game already has their own thing to do, and their own agenda. Nobody is really just standing around waiting for YOU. The story. This isn't something you want to play while barely paying attention. The time investment needed to finish this game is massive. I started my playthrough on the hardest difficulty, and it took me about 150 hours to beat the game, while skipping many contracts and a vast majority of markers on the maps. Whenever I sat down to play the game, I wanted to make sure I had no other distractions. This game takes work to beat, and it's largely due to the fact that I didn't want to miss a thing while I was playing, finding the time to commit to this game was not easy, but well worth it. The game is not perfect. It suffers from the typical open world game issues (clipping, weird camera angles sometimes, a slightly misplaced object or two), for example I found a tree floating a few feet above the ground in the first area, however that was the ONLY example I found of that. Even with these little issues, as far as open world games go, nothing has the fidelity that I have witnessed in the Witcher 3. The controls are a bit clunky, I felt as though the Witcher 2 was more responsive, but the Witcher 3's clunkyness appears to be the result of an attempt to make realistic movement/combat animations that flow together, not the result of bad controls. I have to say, once you get used to the pace of combat and the style of movement, I found myself enjoying the realistic style of responsiveness. This is a story driven game, if you cannot get into the story you will probably not enjoy the game that much. I feel like I have barely even touched the surface as to why this game is so good. I feel like I can't appropriately describe it. I will say this though, that this is what gaming needs, a game that pushes the boundaries of what we've seen before. I can say with certainty that I have never seen a world so vast and believable, so alive and vibrant. I've never had a game make me feel so small and insignificant. Playing the witcher 3 was like having a second life for 5 months. There was so much going on in the world of the witcher 3, and I didn't even manage to see all of it. As of right now, december of 2015, this game has no equal within the genre of open world RPG's. That is what I think.

One of the best looking games I have ever played. Crysis tier graphics combined with gameplay that is far more engaging than the first witcher game make this one of the best games I've played in recent years. The story takes a moment to get going but once it does it never slows down. True to the first game in the series you can still bang hookers, get drunk and gamble your money away. But unlike the first game, the combat is far more complex. In combat it is similar to dark souls in the sense that you have a light attack, strong attack, and can roll to dodge attacks. There are more difficulty levels and there is actual coordination involved instead of just knowing potions/stances to use at a certain time. On top of the swordplay there are bombs and traps you can craft and purchase, traps being sort of a niche item that I ended up not using much. All in all the combat is a lot of fun and far less tedious than the first game. The only thing about this game I didn't care for was you are unable to drink potions in the midst of combat. A lot of old friends show up in the second game, there is a definite sense of continuity, largely because the end of the first game carries right over into the major conflict of the second. Once again Geralt carefully trying to stay on the edge of politics, yet someone is always dragging him into it. This game takes almost everything that the Witcher had and makes it better. While some people may be turned off by the lack of a character creator, the story this game has to tell of Geralt the Witcher is far more interesting than the nameless self-insert the RPG industry is usually prone to these days. Near perfect with lots of different ways to play and level, plus a combat arena mini game if you want to just fight waves of monsters over and over.

A really nice game. The combat is dated and fairly easy to grasp. Despite being a sword wielding witcher, combat revolves around using the right potions/stance for the job and clicking every once in a while at the right time. This is true for the entirety of the game. While it is not very engaging in combat, the story is VERY engaging. From courting every talkative female you come across to fistfighting drunks in every bar you enter, there is a world for you to conquer. The actions you take have a dramatic impact on the characters you come across, and you'll never quite be able to decide if someone is "good" or "evil", because nobody is a shallow stereotype in this world. People who seem like sleazebags often turn out to be kind at heart, and others who seem like valuable allies force you to make decisions you don't want to, turning them into enemies. When I beat the game I was compelled to look back at all the people I interacted with and how their lives turned out. Despite doing my best I couldn't avoid killing people I had once been trying to protect, and in the end I felt like a pawn in a game that I didn't understand, yet somehow I had still come out the end a hero who had done all he could to keep peace and order. If you have the patience to deal with combat that isn't very engaging, and a lust for good storytelling, you should without a doubt play this especially if you have any interest in playing the other Witcher games.

It's an unusual sight to see a new RTS these days. Starcraft 2 has basically been the only option in what some people call a dying genre. Grey Goo is a completely solid RTS that plays a lot differently than Starcraft. There are no unit abilities so micromanagement is limited to positioning and targeting. Basically the game shows you a unit, tells you how it attacks and what it is good for, then you get to use it and move on to the next one. Its simplicity might turn off some people, but for someone like me who loved Tiberian Sun, this was nice to see again. The units are fairly tame save for the epic units, each unit ties in very closely to the theme of the faction it is from, which makes a lot of the units from each faction look very similar. But they are different enough that you'll be able to tell which unit is which when you play. The game shines in the campaign cutscenes and story which do an awesome job of investing you in the story and making you interested. The gameplay is well polished and the graphics look great. My only real gripe is that while I was playing I felt like all the maps used the same tileset. Which coincidentally Tiberian Sun suffered from the same thing. Despite entering different biomes on the campaign map, every map felt dark and dusty. The only performance issues I came across were the in the menus of the game. The main menu took a while to load and the cinematic leading up to it was really choppy which made me worried, but after I got into a game and I got 60fps gameplay I don't know what to think about that. So it's a good game. It's somewhat simplistic, but the concept is great and the story alone is a high selling point for me. It doesn't do anything crazy but it sticks to what makes an RTS fun. It's a good polished game.

While the graphics and sounds are really nice. The game itself is charming and has a lot of potential, it is held back by being essentially a simplistic Terraria where you can visit different planets. It's been ages since a "stable" update was released so for those who can't be bothered to beta test the game for them won't see any changes for months at a time. A big update just rolled out for the game and it's finally starting to take shape, however I would definitely not recommend until they officially claim the game is in a 'finished' state. Which may be a lot longer than any one is willing to wait. Hold on to your money for now.

This game's attention to detail is insane. I hesitated for a long time to buy this for fear it would be another colonial marines joke. But this game is a true aliens game. The story is great, the voice acting is very well done, the gameplay itself is terrifying and unforgiving, the graphics and design choices are next to perfect. Now if only we could get a predator game with as much love, then I'd truly be satisfied. If you like aliens, and you like the survival horror genre, this game is about as good as you will ever get.

I have more hours in this game than I ever thought was possible. I played minecraft before I played this game, and I was convinced I would feel bored by terraria because I had played minecraft. However Terraria is different enough and polished enough to feel like a completely different experience. Yes, you can build in terraria, yes there are circuits and you spend a lot of time digging for ore just like minecraft, that's where the similarities end. Terraria has a vast amount of weaponry to use, unique and difficult boss fights, graphics that look more natural and are far more interesting to look at than minecraft's default textures. Minecraft is more of a sandbox builder while terraria is more of an actual 2D action RPG game. Despite what I thought before I played Terraria, it's clear now that this game is a unique masterpiece.

I like this game. Not as much as I liked Bastion, but I enjoyed this quite a bit. I didn't even particularly like the setting or story. The music and art style is very nice, but if anything the story was lackluster, and felt like it tried way too **** hard to appeal to "artsy" **** I still don't quite understand what was happening in this game, despite being almost at the end on my second play through. When someone other than the "sword" speaks it is typically a boring monotone speech. It's almost emotionless, I haven't been so bored by voice acting in a while. On the plus side, the narrater "sword" voice is far more interesting and pretty much saves the whole story. The antagonists are boring emotionless **** while the enemies are colorless drones, but fortunately the major speaking character has emotion, there's something to get invested in. However like I said, I don't care much about the story. I enjoyed this game for the combat. This game gives you the ability to pause time and plan out a set of actions (this is called a ()turn), then when you unpause you get to watch your plan unfold. The way the soundtrack syncs up with the ()turn as you plan everything out then watch it unfold is awesome. This is one of the first games where I've felt I could control time. For that alone I can say I've never played anything like this. I wish there was a bit more to do in the game, but I enjoyed it for what it was.

There are a lot of good things about this DLC, but overall I believe it was a bad idea to do DLC like this. Good things about this dlc include the voice acting as always, the writing is sometimes cliche as it tries too hard to be philosophical. The gameplay is alright but really easy. This DLC will take you about 5 hours if you take your time to look at things and find audio logs, but in reality it is probably shorter than the first episode. The problem with this episode is that in a worthwhile effort to tie everything together there is a lot of dialogue and cinematic cutscenes without gameplay. So this DLC is essentially a fairly easy stealth game played during a short movie. So yes, the DLC is good regardless. The story is interesting and I have never felt so uncomfortable during one of the cutscenes, which I will not spoil. I'm legitimately impressed with the DLC for that alone. Truly a suspenseful and genuinely tense experience there. As good as the DLC is though, it's a bad way to use DLC. Using DLC to flesh out a games story is like saying, "If people want to understand the whole thing they'll have to pay us 70-80$." I don't respect this decision at all as a consumer, but from a business standpoint I'll admit it's brilliant. People are going to feel like they missed out on something if they don't get the DLC for this game. I imagine nearly every person with this game will have the DLC because they'll feel like their experience is incomplete without it. So it's good. This was a good place to stop the series, and I hope nobody ever touches the franchise again. Would I have been happier if the other 2 dlc were more gameplay focused like clash in the clouds? Yes. It wouldn't have been a **** you" to everyone who bought the base game expecting to get the whole story. This DLC is not about the combat. The combat is a joke to anyone who doesn't **** horribly at the game. This DLC is about wrapping up the story, and it does its job.

This game genuinely made me feel like I was wasting my life. I actually felt suicidal while playing, wishing I could somehow cause the game to end entirely by having my character kill himself. Going through this game is tedious and somewhat torturous. I wasn't entirely bored by it, it was interesting enough and amusing enough to keep me playing for a few hours. But make no mistake, this is a legitimate walking simulator with less gameplay functions than the new Amnesia. It's a game for people with limited perspective. If you're impressed by psuedo-intellectual ramblings you'll enjoy this far more than me. This was nothing new, nothing groundbreaking, nothing smart, nothing innovative. It was none of these things to me. If I had to describe it in one sentence it would be this: It's like portal except there's no challenge and you wonder when your character will fall down and expire so you can move on with your life. Also the broom closet ending was f**king cash.

The first time I saw this game advertised I thought it could be amazing. But then I heard about the subscription and decided I should stick with WoW, as I already knew what to expect. Then they moved to a pay once model with cosmetic microtransactions, and one of my friends sent me the game as a gift on steam. When I first played the game, I wanted to apologize to the developers for not giving the game a chance and playing when they had the subscriptions. It was that good. I was convinced that this was the best MMO I had ever played, it was like nothing I had ever played before, with a style that I absolutely loved. I was almost certain that this game would end up taking up more time than WoW ever did for me. But I was wrong. There's not much wrong with the game at first, in fact there are so many things right it's almost shocking. Playing through the missions for your first time is a euphoric experience. There are some minor bugs I remember coming across, but nothing that broke the game. So why didn't this end up being the end all be all MMO for me? It's all because of the endgame. When you start the game you're presented with a glorious wheel of abilities that you can choose from. Ultimately you can reach a level so high that you will have learned every skill for every weapon in the game, everyone can. The thing about this game is levelling up and doing missions is more fun than the endgame by far. The anticipation of getting another skill to try out in your set, of getting the outfits associated with certain builds, adds a lot to the levelling experience. The thing is, I spent nearly 400 hours on this game. A bargain considering it costs 30$. But what I found out was that you are pidgeonholed in your abilities at the end of the game depending on what you want to do. Once you reach the level of gear required to do nightmare mode dungeons, you'll realize that if you're not a ranged dps, you're probably gonna have a **** time trying to find a group. When I first started the game I was excited for the endgame because I figured I could use almost any of the weapons any way I wanted. But the fact is, a melee dps just isn't as viable as a ranged. Even though fist weapon abilities can either be offensive or used for healing, it doesn't mean you can make a dps build for dungeons using claws as your primary weapon. There's no benefit to taking a melee dps over ranged. In a nightmare dungeon you are more likely to be killed being melee, you are also less likely to do as much damage because you're constantly running away from AOE. While ranged people can attack at range, obviously. It's not that you can't do a dungeon as a melee dps, I found a few groups willing to put up with me and we successfully did the dungeon. But it's a headache, half the groups won't pick me up and to the ones that do I'm basically completely optional because almost anyone could do my job better, no matter how good I was at staying alive during boss fights, you just don't get the time to dps that ranged characters do. If we ended up having trouble with a boss fight, I was almost always the first one to be kicked, and justifiably so. So with that huge rant, this game still deserves an 8/10. 400 hours, 30 dollars, nearly 2 months of playing this game religiously, I didn't even finish every single mission. But I finished the main story mission, and when I did I realized the endgame had nothing that I wanted. Worth every penny that my friend spent. The PVP is ok.

Having played all the previous FEAR games I found this to be quite a switch. If the previous FEAR games never existed and this game was released it might have done slightly better, but in the end I think it would still have been considered mediocre. Is it mediocre? I think so in a lot of ways. But first I want to talk about the graphics, because I'm not entirely sure what to think about them. In some ways the graphics are really impressive, and the game is very cool to look at. But on close inspection a lot of things seem outdated. Examples would be looking out the windows in the suburbs levels, there is a flat picture texture behind the window, this is also used for landmarks very far away. The resolution on these textures isn't high enough that it looks good, because I think it CAN look good. If you're just passing through sure it looks fine, but I like to look at every little thing in a game and a lot of the time I end up looking at these flat backdrops and just think "a game from 2011 decided to do this." Another example is the mountains in the slums area. These backdrop textures stuck out to me the most. The graphics aren't bad but they're nothing to have a party over. One thing about the graphics style I really liked in particular was the BLOOD. It is by far the single most impressive thing about FEAR 3, and I don't mean the static blood that just happens to be thrown around a level, I'm talking about when you shoot a guy in the face as he's standing against a wall. The blood in this game flows down walls and slopes. It's not a perfect flow ALA real life mechanics, but it's still visually impressive and immerses you in the violence. Overall though, I wasn't blown away by much in the game other than that tiny blood detail. It was fun to play but it wasn't scary at all. Which was disappointing considering I was hoping for more scares akin to the previous games. The game has potential but it basically Command and Conquer 4'd itself. It changed the original formula TOO much (the second game changed a lot of the combat style, but the tone was still the same) and then wanted to be a multiplayer shooter in an already saturated shooter market. It was almost as if it was trying to be call of duty with the no health kits - and if you're looking to play a game like call of duty, wouldn't you buy call of duty instead of risking your money on a franchise that was supposed to be nothing like COD? I give it a 6 because a lot of the multiplayer CO-OP modes, like contractions, are genuinely fun. Single player is ok, but the writing is corny to the point where you can hardly take it seriously and the game itself isn't that scary, and let's be honest, that's what everyone was expecting from a FEAR game.

If you expect this game to teach you how to play it, you're gonna have a bad time. It takes a significant amount of effort to get into and understand because the leveling system and game world are left unexplained, and both are perplexing by nature. While the game doesn't have the smoothness of combat you would find in a modern game, this game has some good potential for co-op play. The game world itself is unique, dark and cryptic. The whole game itself kind of feels like a dream, or more fittingly, a nightmare. When you finally reach the end, IF you ever figure out how, you realize just how tragic the whole struggle is. The atmosphere sold this game to me. The FPS mechanics may not be top notch, the game definitely feels "clunky" as someone else said. But this game has a certain strange charm that for some reason impresses the hell out of me.

I never played the original Amnesia so I can't compare this game to the first. But I can say that this game isn't horrible. I thought the setting and sounds were really very well done. I thought the creatures could have been perhaps a little scarier or at least more persistent. This game is basically a visual book. The interactivity with objects is very limited and becomes almost non existent later in the game. Which I couldn't complain about because tediously opening drawers on a single desk in hopes of finding a note wasn't terribly rewarding. This type of genre would thrive off of increased interactivity. If you could throw objects in front of enemies chasing you and slide desks to block off doors or even just brace against a door while you try to think of a plan to escape. But this game doesn't take hold of the potential that is there. In a game with no guns to use or bullets and explosion physics to figure out I would hope the developers would take the time to actually make a world that is highly interactive. The only things I recall being able to interact with in the game are doors, some windows, chairs, and puzzle specific objects. Including levers, wheels, and fuses/canisters. As much as I like the atmosphere, it was difficult to figure out what was going on or what happened. Sometimes something is explained in a note you found or a voice you remember but generally, especially near the end of the game, inexplicable things start happening that just made me think "what is going on? Why is that there?" Was Mandus hallucinating? I don't know. I feel like I bought an expensive book. I wish the game were longer, the enemies were smarter, and that I could interact with and move almost anything around in the game that isn't bolted to the floor. On another note I wish you could see your characters hands and body as well when you looked down and did stuff. I decided to pick amnesia: A Machine for Pigs over Outlast, due to how popular the first amnesia seemed to be, but I'm fairly disappointed with the result.

Bastion is one of the few games I've played in recent years that has actually had a thoughtful and intelligently designed story. The soundtrack is amazing, I loved the art style, and some people don't seem to like the combat system, I don't know why they don't honestly. I personally loved it. Perhaps they've already seen too much of that combat system. But it basically plays like a diablo hack and slash with some customization and upgrade options. But really this game isn't about the gameplay, it's about the story. And this game does what it's supposed to do VERY well.

It's a nice game with a beautiful soundtrack, that just happens to be surprisingly addictive. It's a difficult game, very difficult in fact I haven't been able to beat it on easy ONCE. I'm just not that persistent, and you can't save in the middle of your journey. It's pretty hardcore for a game that seems like such a peaceful quaint little game until you experience your first jump next to an active sun, or get boarded by a bunch of aliens that disable your oxygen and overpower any crewmembers you try to send in to fix it. It takes a few tries to get the hang of it, and even then you'll have a hard time just safely reaching the final sector. If you want an addictive and fun challenge, buy this.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I'm giving this a 2 because I actually got enjoyment out of it. But as far as games go I feel like I wasted my 50$. This game will likely be 5$ on a steam sale in a year for sure. I got **** in as a die hard aliens fan. Before this game even got released I had a feeling it was going to be bad. Not because of something we were shown, but because of what we WEREN'T shown. A day before release and I'm sitting there paying for the preorder through steam, thinking to myself "isn't it odd that there isn't a single actual gameplay video for this game? No teaser no nothing that is relevant to the release candidate?". Well I learned my lesson we can say that. I am not going to sum up everything I thought was wrong about this game, but I think I was one of the few that actually didn't mind the graphics. The worst part was the gameplay itself. It's an aliens game that is actually more difficult during the parts where you fight humans. Which happens roughly 50-60% of the game, or at least feels like it because it's harder. There are WAY too WY soldiers to fight in this game. The aliens in this game are laughably bad at what they do, so much so that it's not even scary to fight the aliens, not even difficult to say the least. They either run straight at you, or are a "spitter" alien (dreamt up by someone who theorized it would make a good game element in multiplayer probably) with a glowing head that you can see from a mile away. The multiplayer while it is somewhat fun, is basically just a back and forth with aliens and marines in a small call of duty arena style battle. Good luck getting into any other game modes beyond team deathmatch because everyone has already moved on from the game. If this game ended up going the multiplayer route of natural selection 2, this game could have actually been awesome. Even if all the other gaping flaws still existed, the natural selection 2 multiplayer model with an aliens theme would have been so so sick. The worst part about this game is without a doubt the alien melee "pistol" finishers. I have never seen such a waste of animation in my entire goddamn life. Let me put it this way. In an aliens game, if you put your entire hand and pistol in an aliens mouth (and alien with molecular acid blood) and pull the trigger, you better be either pulling a half melted pistol out of it's mouth or be screaming while the bones fall off your hand for me to even START believing the character just did that. But no, your character will jam his pistol and hand into the aliens mouth, pull the trigger, and pull it out completely unscathed. I'm SHOCKED I haven't seen more complains about this, because this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. The lack of realistic consequences in this game absolutely kills any potential of fear.

A very solid MOBA game, though difficult to get into (and difficult to return to) due to its high learning curve and unfriendly player base. This game has a stylish feel to it and each of the heroes have a very unique personality. Definitely worth trying out now that it is free too play.

I figure I should review this simply because I believe I should have a LONG time ago. I basically was waiting for this and excited for this because I played AVP2 regularly and I loved the whole franchise, first of all I want to say that if you're coming from AVP2 you will most certainly not encounter a similar type of game. The strong points of this game are basically solid graphics, decent AI, and the 3 races. There really isn't a whole lot to praise with this game in terms of gameplay, but I will say that this game was reliable, I pre-ordered for PC and got the game a few days after release (backed up shipment or something stupid), and immediately there we no problems with the game, I never experienced any crashing, glitching, sound distortion or cutting out, nothing like that. Rebellion was smart enough to patch in a dedicated servers feature as well fairly soon after release. But that's about where the good points end. The singleplayer, it's a decent experience to be honest, but the story is easily forgettable, plus the addition of the collectible objects which really add nothing to the game beyond steam achievements, or a little bit of storyline from the marine recordings(which are annoying to try and listen to because they don't autoplay), are basically there to waste time. Too be honest, the greatest single player feature in the game is the survival game, where you are a marine fighting waves of aliens that get tougher the more you kill, at least that is the best feature in my eyes, I've spent more time in that than I do in multiplayer pvp matches. But even still, it is hindered by the lack of survival maps (only 2 without DLC) and like I said, there's only a survivor mode for marines, there's no other added single player feature to play aliens or predators. The multiplayer, basically what I was waiting for, turned out to be pretty disappointing, marines are honestly the most fun to play, for the simple reason that you can't run around executing people, predators and aliens can simply run around pressing E to execute people, sure you can play without doing that, but it's basically crippling yourself if you refuse to execute people because it's just a one button press. The upside? Executing people is satisfying to watch, the gore is so ruthlessly violent that it's almost hilarious to disembowel a marine. But it's lack of variety and intrigue in gameplay can be ENTIRELY contributed to the root problem of the whole game, and that root problem is console porting. This game is so clearly made for consoles when you play it, yes it works fine for PC and has no problems, but the gameplay feels so limited, and it just FEELS like a console game, it feels like it is being restricted by a controller when you play the PC version. The lack of weapon variety, the lack of universal crouching and jumping, it's all a product **** that was designed for consoles. This game is certainly not AVP2, but I will make a comparison, in AVP2 the predators and marines had so many weapons that it would be impossible to play on a console because you often need to switch between weapons instantly, and having to cycle through them using a controller would just be frustrating, never mind the ammo types and alternate firing methods. This is a game clearly influenced by the desire to have it available for console systems, and as such is a pretty mediocre PC game, albeit with dedicated servers, which is becoming rare these days. I'm giving this game a 5 because of its console value, it really is an alright console game in my opinion, but it's a very obvious one, I would certainly advise anyone not to pick this up for the PC especially if you're a PC gamer. Summary: The lack of weapon variety, boring multiplayer meta game, and generally bland gameplay lead this to be an alright console game and not much more, the graphics are quite pleasing and the dedicated servers are nice, but it doesn't matter when the gameplay just doesn't hold your attention. I played multiplayer for literally 1 maybe 2 days before I got bored of it basically entirely, there must be a serious lack of players in the game by now, if you're an AVP fan you'll probably marginally enjoy it like I did, but if you're a dedicated PC gamer, you'd be better off going for a different game, or better yet, just getting AVP2, even the single player is worth it in that game. At any rate, I regret paying full price for this, it's essentially just eye candy.

After trying every aspect of this game, I want to try to give a fair review. Story: If you liked the first game because of the story, you probably will enjoy this one too. As far as I'm concerned, everything related to the story was quite interesting, and kept me basically glued to the game until the end. The ending made me a bit disappointed but, that's just me, I don't care much for cliffhanger endings, though I should have expected as much considering the ending to the first. Basically, the story is solid, the scares and atmosphere in this one are improved, partially due to graphics. Graphics: This game has exceptional graphics, I knew I was in for something impressive when the download size of this game from steam (including the DLC) was nearly 15 gigabytes, a definite improvement over the original. This is one of those linear shooters where it does well to hide the linear aspect due to graphics. F.E.A.R. 1 did this fairly well with level designs, but it was still limited due to the technological capabilities of the time. F.E.A.R. 2 is just solid bad-assery in the graphics department. If you're computer can handle it on higher graphics settings, you will love it, even for a game released a few years ago, the graphics are top notch in my opinion. Another thing to note is the world detail, all the little things around the world that make it feel real, this game is so real it's almost disturbing, the interactions of the characters, the lighting, the props, it's all great. Gameplay: Well, you can't lean anymore, and I don't mind that it's gone, leaning was just another finger on my keyboard that I couldn't use, does it feel like a console port because they made the interface a little bit simpler? Not at all, the game is a solid PC pickup. It walks a fine line between dumbed down console port and decent PC shooter, the best of both worlds, simple, but not in any way boring. The AI is not worse than in the first, it's basically about the same difficulty, I assume I'm playing on Hard difficulty post-patch, cause everyone is complaining about the difficulty being too easy, yet I had a rough time on a lot of the levels. Sometimes you really gotta keep your eyes moving, and on hard, you really need to abuse the slow-mo to make it out clean (or at all, I doubt I could have beaten it without it). Multiplayer: The multiplayer component is well done it seems, I find the use of gamespy annoying, but that's just me, the maps are cool, I really like the pinball machine map, and the customizable loadouts are a nice touch to keep things fairly fresh and balanced. In fact, the only thing that hinders the multiplayer experience for the PC is the lack of players, from what I saw in my short time after buying this game there were less than 5 player hosted (no dedicated servers it appears) games going on, and the first one I joined happened to be in Russia, I'm in Canada, so my ping was awful, but I ended up joining a game where I had decent ping with the host, and it was fun! If there were more than 3 people in that match, it would have been even MORE fun. But I took what I could get, and had a great time, it almost reminded me of the good ol' AVP2 days. Technical aspects: The technical parts of the game are ok, gamespy run ranked matches I don't care for, but nobody plays ranked from what I saw, the game feels reliable, though some of my tool tips telling me what keys do what in the menus appeared to turn into french? I'm not sure, but "escape" key sure didn't say escape in the tool tip. Other than that, the only technical options this game could use is the option to quick-save (though I understand why you can't), and dedicated servers. But here's the summary, this game is enjoyable; solid graphics (often breathtaking), addictive multiplayer (but a lack of players), fantastic story, very well done, the whole direction of the game is great. The AI is challenging on hard, but certainly beatable. I got this for 10 bucks on steam, USD, and keep in mind the Canadian dollar is higher right now, and I gotta say, it's a better steal than the F.E.A.R. ultimate shooter edition for 10 bucks (FEAR plus the 2 expansions), because those didn't come with multiplayer, but THIS did. 10 or 20$ to romp around in a mech that can shred foot soldiers to pools of blood in seconds is beyond worth it alone, everything else aside. It's not perfect, but it is in no way mediocre.

This is certainly a game you buy for the single player experience, the story isn't amazing, but it's good enough to keep you interested while you're in it, and the graphics are just ridiculous. I never thought I'd have a game that looked this good run so well. I really have to hand it to the graphics designers, they know what they are doing. One of the things I found odd was the detail in the guns is exquisite, even though guns are a very minor part of this game. I was impressed by the little things, like firing a machine gun in a parkade, you hear an extremely realistic echo, the physX support is great too if you have it. The only downside to this game is general lack of replayability, still a fun experience, and well worth the 20$ to buy it on Steam. Overall, this game is a PUZZLE game and NOT a shooter, if you buy this expecting a FPS shooter, you will hate it.

I didn't really buy this for the story, but it's not bad, either way, the added features to the game iteslf, the units and factions, are just pure win. Absolutely great, the only reason I give this only a 7 is because all the added faction units make it nearly impossible to balance. But I don't really mind, I stopped playing CnC3 online a while ago. Balanced or not, still a fun game, and if you're a fan of CnC, you should really get this.

Technically reviewing a game that is still in its beta stages. Although the graphics aren't amazing, it doesn't really matter, you could just get a texture mod. Everything about this game simply promotes creativity, that's basically what minecraft is about, creating things. Now it's not like it's easy to do so, you have to mine and gather materials all the while there are zombies and other things trying to kill you during the night, one of the best features of this game are the redstone circuits. Basically it's an ore you can mine that can be used to make electronic circuits in minecraft, with a ridiculous amount of possibility. Why is this game worth buying? Custom skins, and not only that, but the patches just keep on coming, the game is ALREADY fantastic, and they're only going to add more to it. To be honest, the reason I didn't try this game at first was the graphics, but seriously if you like creating things, you will eventually love this game, ancient graphics or not.

By far one of the funnest shooters I have ever played on the PC. The simplicity and the cover system seem like they would hinder the experience, you'd think that this was a detriment, but really once you get into it, they provide a skill cap that is ridiculously high, pressing a single button to take cover and leave cover seems like a waste, but it takes a ridiculous amount of skill to master this in multiplayer. This was one of those few games that had so much potential for a competitive shooter scene, multiplayer was fantastic, out of the few people who played the PC version online, I was certainly a name you would see frequently, and high on the scores at that. The reason I stopped playing this game is two fold, both problems stemming from poor PC support, first off, the game causes my graphics card to glitch out and crashes my display drivers, so I uninstalled it, and lastly, the game itself has unbelievably poor PC support. You have to do some ridiculous things to simply download the patches for the game so you can play multiplayer, getting the game to work properly is just finicky as hell. This game would most certainly still be installed on my computer and I'd still be playing it, if Epic games would have taken their time to properly support their PC version so it is reliable. It's a shame I have to give a great game a 6 for this, but it is just touch and go, and the people who play this game online are dwindling because of it.

This game deserves a lot more credit than people give it. The way the game is built is fantastic, the nanosuit mode mechanic is great because it's simple to learn, but difficult to be effective with, and in the end THAT is the heart of all great games, a simple to learn concept with a high skill cap. Never mind the amazing graphics that basically blew up my old graphics card, but when I got a new graphics card, that's when I could really appreciate this games single player. Honestly the only reason I'm not giving this game a 10 is the multiplayer, it is only mildly balanced, instant action is great, but the conquest type map play would be a lot better if a strong player couldn't buy a V-TOL and just bomb everyone from the sky, sure everyone else can too, but if you just joined a server that has been in a game for a long time, you'll basically be screwed. Besides this fact, it's a great multiplayer experience, and setting up kits for yourself is always fun.

First off, I'm giving this game a 10 because it is a single player game that not only pulls it off wonderfully, but manages to throw in a decent multiplayer component at the same time. Multiplayer could seriously use some dedicated servers though, I've played games where 1 person would literally be almost impossible to hit because their connection was so bad that they warped when they tried to strafe around me. But overall it's fun and rewarding to play multiplayer. Single player, there really isn't much to say, it's just fantastic, a lot of people who were fans of Bioshock 1 may not like this one, simply because there's not really a whole lot that is new, you've been to Rapture before, you've seen the citizens before, you know about all the denizens of rapture already, why this new single player is so good is because of the story. A lot of people criticize bioshock 2's story as being worse than the first, I respectfully disagree, I think this one is so much better. Back when I was following the bioshock 2 forums I remember someone trying to argue about the characters and moral decisions to be more intense in bioshock 1, I really did not think this was true, BIOSHOCK 1 SPOILER AHEAD when Sander Cohen appeared in person in the first game, I always killed him, why? It wasn't because I thought he was crazy, it wasn't because I had extra ammo and just didn't care, it was because I thought I had to. He looked like a splicer, he sounded insane and I simply assumed I couldn't progress unless I killed him, to me it was just another kill in the walk through rapture, SPOILER END. Bioshock 2 keeps me emotionally invested in the characters, so the moral choices are actually there, and I don't instantly kill someone because I thought I had to, there's no confusion. Bioshock 2 may have had a shaky launch (lots of crashing/graphics issues) but it's a solid game, it doesn't FEEL like a terrible console port, best of all, and it is for someone who wants more of Rapture, not just some new gimmick. It's another story in the Rapture world, not necessarily a sequel. Just a great game.

This game is one of the old gems that never really caught a massive following, likely due to the fact that it was based off some movie franchises and a lot of people (including myself) tend to avoid ANY game that is based off movies, but it just so happens that I was quite the aliens/predator fan. This game was fantastic, I would probably still play it if there were people online! Server support was cut a few years back I believe and you have to do something funky during startup to play online, but you still can. Either way, the single player experience, tons of fun, the marine campaign just inspires a sense of dread, you're always wondering when something will appear, and you frequently have to run like hell, even after beating the marine campaign multiple times, I never really get bored of it. The multiplayer is where this game is just top notch though, even though it was often plagued by hackers, the variety in weapons prompted people to always pick overpowered weapons, most of these things were solved by dedicated servers with good admins, and not only that but it was always fun, had tons of features, like, an unbelievable amount. All 3 races were highly enjoyable to play. The only reason I'm giving this a 9 instead of 10 is basically because of the complete and utter lack of balancing, easily overshadowed by how fun it is to simply play on a well maintained dedicated server, it only seldom caused frustration.