bobbythebrown

The sad thing is, there's a decent game hiding underneath all the in-app purchases. But in order to unlock other levels, you have to spend in-game currency that you can either spend hours playing for or simply buy. Either way, the game forgets that you've accumulated any and resets your currency to nothing. It's insulting, sloppy, and borderline theft. It **** all the fun out of the game. Gameloft keeps getting worse and worse.

Disgusting. Pay-to-play app that charges up front. This is a terrible trend in mobile gaming: half-baked tie-ins to gaming/tv/movie franchises that are simply made to gouge fans. I feel sorry for the devs whose work is ruined by this kind of short-sighted greed.

Terrible excuse for a game. It makes the single-player quest impossible to complete without spending massive amounts of real money. Fights are repetitive and strategy counts for nothing, compared to the amount of money spent upgrading characters. It quickly reaches a point where spending hundreds of dollars is the only way to progress. Freemium games are fine, but in this case, the game is crippled from the start in order to gouge people.

Mediocre. The gameplay is little more than button-mashing, removing any semblance of the tactics that were integral to previous games of the series. This isn't terrible (except in situations where a party member dies due to an AI glitch), but it makes for an extremely repetitive game. Overall, the plot was a letdown, only occasionally taking a break from being nonsensical or boring. Only a few scenes are particularly memorable. Character development is almost nonexistent, as is verbal interaction between party members. Graphics are decent, but not exceptional. Enemy variety is somewhat lacking (painfully obvious when assaulted by a group of bandit quintuplets with identical weapons and clothing). A locked isometric perspective may have been acceptable in older games, but here, it induces claustrophobia and hampers any sense of depth or scale. Looking upwards, or even level to the ground, is impossible. Sky is visible exactly twice during the entire game, and only during in-game cutscenes. Voice acting is very hit-and-miss, and extremely poor for a couple of key characters (one of whom talks quite a bit). This can be an enjoyable game, at times, but it's definitely not worth its current asking price.

I wanted this game to be fun. I wasn't expecting a miracle, but this is actually painful to play. The load times are terrible. Given the shoddy and simplistic graphics, clunky and inaccurate animations, as well as the smallness of the levels, such long loading times can only be blamed on poor programming, which is evident throughout the game. Gameplay is straight out of a 90's shooter, which doesn't cut it whatsoever in 2011. Platforming/puzzle segments are terribly implemented, and make an already bad game even worse. I loved Duke Nukem 3D, in its day, but this is barely an improvement. Its decade and a half of development have obviously not been well-spent. Nostalgia evoked by this game wears off after about 10 minutes, and is replaced by the sinking realization that this experience - alternating between boredom and frustration - is a miserable way to spend time and money. It should never have been released, and definitely should not cost almost $50.

This is a brilliant return to form. For over a decade, Mortal Kombat games have struggled to stay relevant after transitioning from 2D to 3D, which included several abysmally bad action-adventure platformers alongside mediocre fighting games that lacked a real identity. Now, with franchises like Tekken and Dead or Alive becoming stagnant, and 2D fighting re-emerging via Street Fighter IV and Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat has returned to its roots. No more useless sidestepping. No more gimmicky multilevel stages. No new characters awkwardly shoehorned into the storyline. Instead, the graphics and fighting system have been beautifully polished, and the game has been packed with content. The story mode alone puts its competitors to shame. It's in the style of that found in Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, but has a more natural flow and is more engagingly cinematic. There's no shortage of nostalgia for old fans of the series. The gameplay is familiar but fresh, with well-executed tag and combo systems. The simplified inputs for Fatalities and "X-Ray" supers make the game's fun more accessible without sacrificing its depth. The game isn't flawless, but the flaws seem subjective. A larger character roster would have been nice, but the present one is adequate and well-balanced. The gameplay isn't radically different from the first few games in the series, which may seem like a throwback for people used to the mechanics of other fighting games. Yet, the best thing about the game is that it finally, unrepentantly, has its own uncompromised identity. Overall, this is a fantastic package that exceeds expectations, and is definitely worth checking out.

Dragon Age: Origins was a groundbreaking RPG with an engrossing plot within an intricate fantasy world, with well-written characters and good replay value. Dragon Age 2, by comparison, is a lazy, cynical slap in the face. The visuals are the most obvious flaw. Somewhat dated graphics can be forgiven, but the art direction seems almost nonexistent. Kirkwall, the main setting of the game, looks like something out of a 1990's first-person shooter; it's comprised of large, sparsely-populated open areas with drab walls that essentially form long corridors with only 90 degree turns. The "bazaars" are a handful of people standing next to chests under otherwise empty tents. Assassin's Creed-level detail isn't necessary, but to actually have *less* graphical intricacy than the first game - and substantially so - is baffling. Outdoor levels fare slightly better, but are still inferior to the first game. Of course, this could be somewhat forgiven if the core story and gameplay were decent, but they both paid a similar lack of attention. The story fluctuates between being completely uninteresting and being simply generically mediocre, spending most of the time closer to the former due to a plethora of mindless and unengaging side quests, not to mention leaving things wide open for future DLCs. The branching dungeons and outdoor areas of the first game have been replaced by linear paths that would be navigable by a decapitated chicken. The inventory system has been similarly simplified. The tactical gameplay remains, thankfully, mostly intact, with a welcome action-oriented twist, but with so many other flawed elements, the game simply loses its appeal, becoming an arduous grind rather than an addictive adventure. This is easily the biggest disappointment of the year, and it's shameful that so many gaming "publications" (aka EA mouthpieces) are giving it stellar reviews.

Lukewarm mechanics all around, linear and mostly uninspiring level design, last-gen graphics, broken AI, painful-to-watch cutscenes, and a limp plot make a promising-sounding game come out feeling half-baked. Getting through the game felt like a chore, and there was no payoff, in the end.

This is an awful, disgraceful game. While the graphics are great and the control of the action is refined compared to its predecessor, the story is merely passable, and the game itself quickly devolves into repetition before ending abruptly. It's defeat enemy X with strategy Y, and after watching the same QTE a dozen times in a row, the experience starts to hollow. In fact, there was a sense of disconnect from the Star Wars universe throughout the game. The enemies are a good example. Robots abound, with designs that seem lazy (i.e. they look stupid) and lack in number and variety, and attacks that often feel cheap. The sense of wonder from exploring different planets in the first game is replaced by a feeling of constriction from the limited set of environments in this one. Hint to developers: big metal rooms connected by big metal hallways are NOT interesting. Meanwhile, the inclusion of major characters in cutscenes that never make an appearance in the gameplay, combined with the brevity of the game itself with its seemingly amputated plot, leads to suspicion that a DLC is forthcoming, to awkwardly fill in the gap while cynically milking gamers for more money. Beyond that, bugs were encountered during the final fight that either prevented the game from progressing or managed to kill the player. Such sloppy testing for such a short game is unacceptable. The first game had its faults, but it's a masterpiece compared to this sorry excuse for a sequel, which barely merits a rental.