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Finally a revive of the stealth genre. With only little imperfections here and there it's an unforgetable ride. No nursing, lots of freedom, outstanding level (or should I say - world) and sound design, solid graphics*. Controls: Smooth, precise, no automation allowing a great deal of freedom of movement. People complaining about it are usually accustomed to Assassin's Creed type of aids or plainly didn't grasp the introductory tutorial of Styx. After few hours I'm looking like a Quasimodo returning from a ballet lessons! Good camera movement BTW. I've never seen a serious clipping or obstruction problems with it. Story/world: Mature fantasy world with interesting, original twists. Again, mature and non-trivial! AI: A little bit short-sighted and quickly dropping the hunt for you if you manage to run away after being detected but aside from it. A solid work. Game mechanics: Like a well-selected orchestra! Initially I thought that some elements I've seen in the trailer are misplaced and that I won't use them. So wrong. Everything has its place and purpose and everything has its limitations, avoiding boredom and making a specific item too commonly used during gameplay. A stealthy run through a guard-crawling level on the highest difficulty level will leave you thinking you're a god :) It's all hard work, patience, planning and execution all put together. Good representation of Styx's limitations. A jump 15 meters down and you're a goner. It's not anime... Audio: One of the biggest selling points of the game. Apart from repetitive dialogues of the guards that is. The soundtrack should be sold separately! Well done and, as with the story and world design, a great deal of originality. * very well optimised! Radeon 6850 allows for perfectly smooth maxed-out gameplay at 1080p.

I played for over 3 hours so far and I don't see it ending during the following hour. If someone is running forward like a fool he has only himself to blame if the game ended 'too soon' for him. I love how the game eased on players after some time (I even started whining that it's not Amnesia-scary anymore) just to go after the player after soon enough. Made me swollow my prior words :) If you like horror and 'outside-the-box' games, buy it! What can I add after finishing the game? Around the half I started getting afraid that it would turn into yet another 'collect 3 puzzles to unlock all 3 passages and off you go' kind of game. Fortunately I was wrong. It eased on that to focus on psyche later on. All in all a great thrill ride! It took me over 5 hours to finish the game (without getting lost). The only cons I've found are poor quality assets from time to time. Sub-par models and textures in the outdoor levels, some missing sounds (from interactive objects) and terribly looped sounds (washing machine). Lack of positional audio (binaural, HRTF etc.) is also a downside. Graphics: 8/10 Audio: 7/10 Overall: 8.5/10

This is truly one of those games that are different, in a good way. ORIGINAL and polished. Let me divide it into two parts: technology and game play as they are both outstanding. GAMEPLAY. First of all it's a TPP. The team/tactical part comes only second so don't worry if you're not really into 'those kind of games'. Second - an extraordinary weapon system. You don't acquire and select weapons. You mutate them on your team members and they growing them on the spot instead of reaching for them. The part of the game, a sort of upgrade system, responsible for this neat feature is the mutator. You really have to try it out to see how good it is. It also introduces some RPG elements as you can choose which way your character will develop (speed, strength or firepower). Though environments and game play may feel repetitive sometimes, the goals in each mission vary and are sometimes good puzzles. The navigation system helps, pointing you to the mission goal and your team members so you don't end up checking valley by valley for hours just to move the game play forward. The soundtrack is great compositing an eerie mood of being unwelcome. The other sounds are solid as well. TECHNOLOGY. The game's demo version has been included in the top of the line model of the first generation DDR TSL GeForce graphics cards Creative Annihilator Pro for a reason. It greatly displayed the technological possibilities of the new generation of hardware. And it showed during game play! Not only the poly count. Also the animation and physics system. You have to survive your first encounter with the mortar spider to appreciate this part of the game. From this point onwards you won't look away. It won't be an exaggeration to say that the technology part looks like a next generation of games. Just fire up some game from circa 2000 and compare it to Evolva.

A military-grade flight simulator available for you! That's not a marketing gimmick. It's a fact! A military grade, historical (important milestone for hardcore simulation genre) flight simulator. As a trivia I'll add that DCS Black Shark allows difficulty and realism settings customization using which user can virtually change it to an arcade game. So what it so special about DCS Black Shark? DCS Black Shark by Eagle Dynamics (ED) is a part of ED's planned policy of developing simulators for military and commercial (private) customers in parallel giving the private customers an opportunity to lay their hands on a product of practically the same quality as military customers. Apart from providing flight modeling, physics/damage modeling, systems modeling and replication of performance of real machines as realistically as it gets it also guarantees that ED's DCS series features only those aircrafts which the company have access to full documentation and people who professionally work around chosen aircrafts. No wild guesses and no aircrafts not actually in service. I do realize the text is not easy to read without formatting but it may be worth it. So, a 'military grade' description should said it all but here's a few additional thoughts about DCS Black Shark: - get to know DCS BS by starting from viewing these features and official site: ****?scr=default&end_pos=950&lang=en video demonstrations: ****/watch?v=xyctBKipmCI ****/watch?v=a3PDnloKbs4 ****/watch?v=1Q_XNf4elAI FAQ: ****?t=33527 - people who don't like helicopters or who flown Falcon 4.0 series exclusively enjoy DCS Black Shark, started tempted by all mentioned above - there are videos, tracks (in-game replays) and articles presenting how some un-cut missions look like and what is to be done - multiplayer missions for DCS Black Shark are often populated by ongoing air battles between human controlled fighter jets due to DCS BS multiplayer compatibility with Lock On Flaming Cliffs 2 - a system with 3.2 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 3 GB of RAM and GF9600GT graphics card allows to play DCS Black Shark with FPS (frames per second) in 35-70 FPS range (!), when properly configured (medium to high settings) - DCS BS runs better on dual core processors under Windows 7 and Vista and also features a special implementation of Vertical synchronization (Vsync) which allows higher frame rates when vsync is enabled - DCS BS supports multi-monitor setups - AI controlled helicopters seem to fly almost like they were human controlled rather than being thrown around the sky by an invisible 'hand' like in most other games Believe me, there's a lot more! I just don't feel like writing essays :) Issues: The most serious one I've found during over a year of playing is wingmen AI. They have to be commanded in a really strict and involving manner to keep them alive with us.