Zimbardo

Basically: Layers of Fear capitalizes on a great looking engine, some innovative visual effects, and would likely be 10x better on an Oculus Rift. It lacks engaging gameplay and only has about 1 layer of fear that wears off 20 minutes into the game. Pros: This is a beautiful game that really showcases and uses Unity in really cool ways. Cons: All sense of tension is broken when I realize that I can't die in a horror game (or if the chances of dying are pitifully low). Layers of Fear is more like Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. It's a walking simulator. The game is crazy repetitive. Your walking through the different variations of the same rooms over and over, from jump scare to jump scare. Even the timing of the jump scares becomes repetitive. PT could get away with it because it was a DEMO. The story is better than FNAF but it's no Soma.

In Pony Island you're trying to escape from an evil videogame by completing puzzles (really just variations of one puzzle). Although the game had the premise and potential to go off the rails and be awesome... it kinda just points to the 4th wall and pokes it... and keeps poking it in case you didn't get it the first time. In fact if you've seen the trailer on its Steam page then you've pretty much experienced 80% of this game. At the time of my review this game is getting critical praise and I have no idea why. The idea of playing with the 4th wall has been done before in gaming, and one of the most interesting things that occurs in the game hearkens back to 1998's Metal Gear Solid (see Psycho Mantis). I guess videogame critics love games that they can complete and review in a 2 hour period while pretending that they've engaged in something "intelligent". In fact look at me I'm writing a critique of the critics (that's "unexpected!") and by acknowledging this I've broken the 4th wall (how "intelligent"!). I'm giving it a 6 because it isn't bad... but don't believe the hype.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

A post-modern analysis of masculinity which not only had me revisit but also rethink the formative years of my life. This interactive experience has allowed me to be a better father to myself.

This just ended up being Dear Esther with a better engine and worse music. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter does a good job of showcasing the Unreal Engine 4 and that's about it (I had no frame-rate issues). The opening message of "This game will not hold your hand" makes it seem like you're in for either a game-play or puzzle challenge but in reality all you end up doing is pacing the environments until you're triggered every event. The promotional materials that I saw for this game made it out to be Lovecraftian or at least spooky and (without spoiling anything major) it most certainly is not. Wait until it's $5.

A decent Metroid clone but GOD DAMN there's so much running back and forth every-time you get a new item. This is a cheap way to extend game-play and it's a complete failure to include map markers when you're playing as a space gofer. The first 1/2 of the game was enjoyable but it got old fast.

I bought and loved Dark Souls 2 when it first came out for PS3. After beating and loving Bloodborne I decided to get Scholar of the First Sin to continue feeding my souls cravings. That was a complete mistake. 1) The graphics are improved but still butt ugly. Despite releasing DS2 on a more powerful console From decided to withhold the graphic quality they were advertising in the original PS3 trailers. 2) The controls are sloppy and the game-play is dated. Bloodborne moved the bar. Fanboys will say that DS gameplay is "tactical"... that just means they like to strafe-block-punish. 3) The new enemy placement is just stupid. Dark Souls 1 is challenging in a good way... most of the time. The Anor Londo archers were challenging in a bad frustrating way. Dark Souls 2 vanilla was the right amount of good challenge. Scholar of the First Sin is a lot more Anor Londo archer nonsense. 4) The creation of a different DS2 client splits the player baser even further, hampering online play. 5) DIRTY BUSINESS PRACTICES. Fromsoft initially announced they they weren't going to release DLCs from DS2. They released a game with lose ends and then sold 3 DLCs to tie them up. Then after you bought the game and the 3 DLCs they sell the completed version of the game not as a patch or DLC BUT AS AN ENTIRELY OTHER GAME 1 YEAR AFTER THE INITIAL RELEASE. You're Dirty From. You're so dirty. You took a near perfect PS3 game and made a steaming turd for PS4.

Pros: Solid fighter. Cons: Short story which doesn't include a bulk of the character roster, grinding for gold (or paying to unlock), & more m-m-m-micro transactions!

I really enjoy playing Heroes because it's a MOBA that went through an actual development process with the goal of making something enjoyable to play. Good on Blizzard for breaking away from the clunky and cumbersome design of a decade old Warcraft 3 mod.

This is a solid platformer and I think the devs did an amazing job for what they set out to make. But I guess that old school platformers just aren't that fun anymore. This was like taking a time machine back to my youth only to realize that the games that i was so nostalgic about weren't really that great.

Telltale has a reputation of excellent story telling and the majority of reviewers seem to feel that Iron From Ice captures the rich atmosphere found in the Game of Thrones universe. Lets take a look together as this rich narrative unfolds between one of the protagonists and the Forrester Maester (aka keeper of knowledge and family history)... Gared - "Why do the Whitehills hate the Forresters"? Maester - "I don't doubt someone killed someone, which led to more killings of somesones and then, well... here we are." Oh wow. So story, much deep. Anyways, Iron From Ice is a fanfic based on a Song of Ice and Fire. Like all Telltale games your decisions don't matter, and this fact is magnified given that the game is a non-cannon installment featuring high profile characters from the series. "Ouuu, I wonder what will happen to Ramsey Bolton?" Nothing. Why? Because he needs to show up in the books. The port to PC is bad. I gotta force quit to get back to my desktop because exiting the game wasn't a feature included in my menu settings. I can see environments and characters transition between scenes at the base of my screen. The game seems rushed and sloppy. I just wish Winds of Winter would finally come out. After playing Iron From Ice I feel like a smoker searching for cigarette butts on the ground in a desperate attempt for a fix.

As a major fan of the original Binding of Isaac I was psyched to hear that there was more in the works. In the end I feel that Rebirth didn't really need to be made after-all since first Binding of Isaac continues to be a great on its own. TBoI: Reskin doesn't feel different enough to warrant paying for the same game again (especially for nearly double the price of the first). The good: Game performance has improved by moving the game's engine off of Flash. There's more items and monsters. That's about it. The bad: Much of the fun of the Binding of Isaac was the novelty of exploration, which can't be recaptured by playing the same game again and recollecting the same items. I actually dislike the look of the new graphics. Although the new soundtrack is good I find it to be a huge step down from the original's. If your an Isaac addict Rebirth is for you. I bought this in hopes of chasing the high I got from the original but the novelty is gone. McMillen is an amazing artist and I look forward to his next (new) masterpiece.

I wasn't expecting anything of the caliber of the Souls series and LotF was STILL a major let down. Without comparing it to a Souls game, and basing LotF on it's own merit here is a partial list of why it fails: The amount of bugs and crashes for a console game is unacceptable. A blind play-through where I explored as much as I could should have taken more than 13 hours. There are only ~12 types of enemies in the entire game. All the bosses are pretty much the same. All the zones pretty much look the same. There is a startling lack of viable weapons/armor for a game of this type. I was hoping for things to improve in NG+ but it just feels like more of the same. A week after beating this game I haven't touched it. This was not worth the money.

It's just like the first but seems to crash more. Same visuals, towers, monsters, etc. Feels more like a buggy expansion than a sequel. I suggest buying Defender's Quest instead of this.

I really didn't expect much from this game but it's turned out to be one of my favorite tower defense games of all times. It's been over a year since I've bought Defender's Quest and I keep coming back to it. I have definitely gotten my money's worth on this and I hope they make a sequel. Solid.

If you want a horror game or a sequel to Dark Descent, this is not it. Use your $20 on Outlast. If you want a darker version of Dear Esther, then A Machine for Pigs is pretty entertaining but get it when it's on sale for $5. When Frictional games had set out to make Dark Descent they used their experience with the Penumbra series to make gold. They built on what worked in the 3 Penumbra games and dropped what didn't. It was like a lab for creating the perfect monster. The problem with A Machine for Pigs is that the devs at the Chinese Room did not have this experience and it shows, hard. This game has some jumps but you will not feel fear while playing it. If you see someone really scared while playing this on youtube, they are hamming it up for the camera to get ad revenue. The game tried to evoke disgust, not fear. The Chinese Room also dropped many of the mechanics that make Dark Descent so good, which is probably one of biggest and most confusing mistakes imaginable. Everything was in place, why drop what worked? For example... 1) The insanity meter is gone. In Dark Descent this meter helped ensure that you couldn't look directly at the monsters and this kept them scary throughout the game. The pigs here will not scare you after you get a good look at them. 2) Puzzles are gone. Puzzles are challenging and rewarding when you solve them. A Machine for Pigs is not challenging in the slightest. A Machine for Pigs is also highly scripted and as on the rails as you can get (a la Dear Esther). There's little in the way of exploration, you are essentially moving forward on a linear path turning wheels and hitting switches as you bump into them. In Dark Descent you had to have some idea of why you were doing these things, not here. 3) Your torch lasts forever. Having to limit your use of the lantern in Dark Descent game the game a sense of urgency and impending doom (aka if I run out of light I am dead). The things that made this game enjoyable are also what made Dear Esther kinda fun. Good voice acting and music. Excellent visuals (albeit on a dated engine) and visually distinct areas made for nice variety. The story is also cool. So it's a nicely packaged visual story but don't expect anything remotely related to your experience during Dark Descent.

Really good game, it's worth the $20. If you like horror games you need to pick it up. The pros: It's fun to play, has great environments/atmosphere, and has high quality production. I was also happy that there wasn't an overuse of jump-scares. I loved using the camera to explore, I thought that this was a great (but over used) mechanic. The cons are: A loss of immersion after the first 1/2 an hour of play. I played in the dark with headphones and set my gamma low enough to ensure stuff would be getting the jump on me. But even with this the unoriginal story, the amount of time spend so close to the enemies (they lose their scariness), and overuse of the night-vision on the video camera killed the immersion for me. I feel that if the player only got glimpses of the enemies and used the night-vision 20% of the time (rather than 90%) would have made this a perfect game. Regardless of the fact that I just used more characters to type about the game's flaws it is easily one of the best horror games I've played and I whole heartily recommend it.

I bought the game on launch and still have NOT ONCE been able to log onto a N.A. server. I've played a host of MMOs through their launches and I have never encountered anything this bad. I expected there to be issues on launch, but the lack of a queue system and insufficient server capacity have left me with a game that I can not play. If you have a lifestyle that permits you to sit at your keyboard and routinely refresh servers every 3 minutes (they implemented a cap on how often you can check) then apparently Final Fantasy A Realm Reborn is a magical experience. If you have a job, school, or other commitments outside of Eorzea you are looking at a log-in simulator. I am rating this game based on the version I have had access to.