cidgrad01

Lightning Returns takes the crown of "Worst Final Fantasy Game Ever" away from FFXIII, a feat I hadn't thought possible. I had high hopes for this one because, while I certainly loathed FFXIII (despite putting over 100 hours into it and getting all achievements), I enjoyed FFXIII-2 a great deal. Sadly, I feel LR was made simply to troll fans as it combines all the worst elements of the first two games and adds in some new bad stuff, as well. The characters and writing in FFXIII were horrible. They were bland, stupid, the dialogue consisted mainly of them repeating key plot points, and you had to play pretty deep into it to discover WTF was even going on. I feel Lightning herself is a pretty terrible protagonist, and sadly Squeenix decided to ONLY let you play as her in LR. Your only companion in this game is Hope, who does not travel with you but stays at your home base, called the Ark, and constantly bombards you with radio messages. These usually consist of repeating obvious plot information (like reminding you time is precious, saying something you just heard thirty seconds before, or literally: "Try not to die."). So the game is a whole, whole lot of Lightning conversing in her emotionless monotone with Hope at his most annoying. And whenever they have an interesting conversation, it takes them forever to get to the point, and remember: you're running against the countdown clock and generally don't want to stop & listen. Another thing FFXIII was criticized for was being insanely linear. LR opens things up and gives you freedom to choose which quests to pursue, but then bizarrely hamstrings you with a clock which counts down to the end of the world (and game over). So yeah, you can wander around and pick up random quests, but you have to do it all in a limited amount of time. Furthermore, some quests are only available at certain times of day. This means that, to realistically finish the game with a good ending, you will miss a lot on your first playthrough but also keep notes for a second playthrough or follow a guide. You get an ability early on which lets you freeze the clock, but doing so consumes a resource and the only way to recharge it is by fighting random monsters. Which brings me to the combat system: it ****. Worst yet in the FF franchise. I wasn't a huge fan of combat in FFXIII or XIII-2, but it at least made sense. Combat has become truly Byzantine in LR. It revolves around cosplay outfits for Lightning, and you can have three of them active (so it's basically the same as the roles from earlier games, only you have no one else in your party). Each outfit has different abilities & stats and there are also different weapons, shields, and accessories. You can mix & match most abilities and can also synthesize new abilities. Some abilities & items you can only get as random drops from monsters, which **** b/c remember: you are on a countdown clock. And you do not gain any XP from battles, as there are no levels in this game. You only gain stats by completing side quests. And combat basically comes down to how well you can block, which is a glorified quick time event. There is "blocking" and "perfect blocking", the latter of which helps stagger enemies, prevent damage, and get rare item drops. The problem is you have to press the button within 1/6 of a second before the enemy's attack connects. As you might guess, that means a lot of trial & error with learning animations of the various enemies and when their attacks will hit. So they went from combat which essentially played itself but at least looked nice and was cathartic, to combat which is frustrating & requires study of individual enemy weaknesses, constant reshuffling of how you build your outfits & gear (depending on what you're fighting), and expert timing of button presses (you can get "perfect" attacks as well as perfect blocks, but good luck with that). The graphics are pretty bad in LR, as well, another shame since that was previously the biggest thing the series had going for it. Aside from Lightning and her numerous outfits, textures are generally muddy and other characters (especially NPCs) don't look so great. Most of the monsters are, once again, the same character models first seen in FFXIII. As for the music, I wouldn't call it "good", but it at least doesn't grate on your nerves like a lot of tracks in the previous two games. The last straw is the incessant, pointless dialogue which accompanies practically every quest, whether a main story or side quest. I frequently found myself yelling, "JUST SHUT UP!" at the screen. Not to mention some of the completely stupid things you'll be doing in these quests: like talking to Dr. Sheep to help find his missing fuzzy sheep. Why should anyone care about finding their ship a few days before the end of the world? Who knows. Who cares? Side quest! Overall: LR is a gigantic disappointment in every way after the series saw an improvement in FFXIII-2. Got a bad feeling about FFXV..

Considering how awful the Final Fantasy 13 series has been, I was afraid Bravely Default would be yet another disappointment from Square Enix. I am happy to say my fears were unfounded. Bravely Default is an amazing RPG that channels the best of the Final Fantasy series without feeling like it is standing on its shoulders. It’s as if Squeenix drafted a team of long time Final Fantasy fans and let them put whatever they wanted into the game (except the name Final Fantasy in the title). I went in expecting a shallow time-waster that would feel like a FF5 clone. This is not true at all. My biggest surprise is how much I enjoyed the story and grew to like the characters. The overall tone is more lighthearted than, say, FF7 but B.D. still manages to deliver a fun narrative that keeps you playing. This includes surprisingly sharp dialogue and genuinely funny exchanges (such as Edea’s pronunciation of “Mrgrgr!” and her frequent bickering with Ringabel). The narrative is not the only thing that will keep you playing, though. Everything else is great, too, from the voice acting to the music, visuals & gameplay. The whole brave/default system is a brilliant idea which breathes new life into turn-based combat. It goes very well with the large number of jobs you can unlock. I could go on for quite a long time naming all the features I love about this game, but suffice it to say that you will like it if you are an old school Final Fantasy fan or a RPG fan in general. If you already have a 3DS it is a must play and if you don’t have one and like RPGs, you should think long & hard about getting a 3DS. If Squeenix is going to continue sinking the FF series into the toilet, then B.D. is a wonderful start for a new series that can be its successor.

Remember Me very clearly borrows ideas from Assassin’s Creed, Tomb Raider and Batman’s Arkham series, but manages to do so in a fun & creative way. I’d not say it is worth the release price of $60, but I got it cheap during a Steam sale and don’t regret the purchase at all. Combat will initially feel a little too much like the Arkham series. Stick with it, however, and it turns into something unique. As you level up, you gain access to different types of combos and different types of attacks. One type is pure damage, one shortens your special attack cooldown, and one type heals you. It is more than button spamming, as you will have to remember the exact order of strikes to press to carry out the correct type of combo. If you need to do big damage, repeatedly doing a health combo will get you nowhere. The biggest payoffs come the further along you get in a combo, as well, so you will need to be able to fight without getting constantly hit or you’ll have a bad time. Remember Me manages to mix things up just enough, and is just the right length, so the combat doesn’t get too repetitive. There are a few stealth-like areas as well as some puzzles and collectibles to find. The climbing & parkour bits are decent, but best of all are the memory remix sections. This comes when the protagonist has to alter someone else’s memory. It’s highly enjoyable to figure out the correct combination of changes to meet your goal as well as see how changes can alter the memory in ways you didn’t intend. The music, atmosphere and design are all done very well, too. You feel like you are in a dystopian future Paris. As for the drawbacks, I think Remember Me could have used a little more RPG to it. Some skill trees, weapons or something. There are a few enemies that require some of your specific special attacks to defeat and that’s about the only time you will use them. The rest of the time you can skate by with regular combos, and once you get used to the system, fights get pretty easy. Secondly, the story ultimately left me cold. It was pretty good and the concept was intriguing but I never felt invested in any of the characters. I kept waiting for some big twist or reveal and it never quite happens. There is a sort-of twist near the end but nothing I found to be such a big deal. Third, there are quick time events. Not a lot, but they are there and usually pop up during boss fights. I loathe QTEs and want them to go away very badly. Nuff said. Finally, I would have liked to see something more done with the memory remix sections. There are just enough of them to leave you wanting more. Overall, though, Remember Me is a solid single player experience. It is not a must-play title, but if you’re looking for something brief and engaging at a discount price, this is it.

The Swapper has a killer atmosphere and an addictive, gratifying puzzle mechanic thanks to it also being part platformer. In addition to the setting & gameplay, there is also a fun sci-fi story with a twist you gradually uncover as you go along. No in-depth explanation of the puzzle system is required as it is easy to pick up. You will scratch your head at some of the puzzles, but all can be solved logically by considering how to work around your limitations. Playing this felt like brain exercise. Outside of the puzzle rooms, it’s fun to clone & zip yourself around as you traverse the map. No traditional, annoying platform jumping. I cannot praise the slick gameplay design enough. I can’t stand how, in some other games, you’ll know how to solve a puzzle but have to fight through clunky controls to carry it out. No problems like that in the Swapper. It is a joy to play. A slick, polished experience from top to bottom. Only a few minor gripes hold this back from a perfect score: - If you want to see both endings, you will have to replay the entire game. It saves automatically and after you choose an ending, the game will only load the credits if you pick “continue”. And neither one is really worth starting all over for, IMO. Not a huge problem since you are allowed to choose an ending and the devs wrote a story into a puzzle game that makes you want to see the ending. And I’ll admit, there is one morally dubious option I think the vast majority of people choose the first time around. Not being able to reload makes it more permanent. - The achievements (on Steam, at least) are virtually impossible to get without utilizing a guide. You have to find a secret console for each achievement, but since there is no description to go along with them, you probably won’t even know you’re supposed to be looking for the consoles. Even if you do, they are ruthlessly hidden. They usually involve swapping up through some random dead end, then over again in a different direction through the wall. This might not be so bad except you better go looking for them before you beat the game, otherwise you’ll have to start all over if you want to get them. - I would have liked a bit more clarification on certain aspects of the protagonist. I won’t say more to avoid spoilers. - It may be a tad on the short side, depending on how long it takes you to solve the puzzles. I only had big trouble with two rooms. One I took a break from, came back the next day and solved. The other was one of the very last rooms and I admit that I cheated b/c it was late and I wanted to see the ending. These are all minor gripes, though, as I said. It is certainly worth $15 and a must-buy if you ever see it on sale. I am hoping to see more indie games like this and less procedurally generated trash like Spelunky. I appreciate how the team behind the Swapper had to sit down and plot out each puzzle room. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I had a great time playing.

I’ll give this a solid 7 because it’s intended for kids. This is better than the previous game and sounds like much less of a money pit than the latest Skylanders, which is my chief concern. I’d give it a 3 on how well it will keep adults entertained. It’s fun to play with my kids. Gameplay is still pretty ho-hum, but the skill trees are a huge addition. They don’t just give you 3-4 options like in Skylanders, but gigantic trees which require planning and time to level up. There are also good abilities to unlock, like Hawkeye shooting five arrows at once or the Hulk doing super jumps or climbing buildings. Each Marvel character feels like they are doing things their character should be doing. They don’t all feel like copies of each other. When you get tired of the main Avengers playset, the toybox mode is gigantic. It still suffers from memory limits, but there is an insane amount of stuff to unlock. So much that you may need to guide your kids through it. Any adult can spend hours upon hours building things, though, and there is community sharing included. Plus, you have the option to create template toybox worlds, which is very nice for children. You can make a generic city area, for example, and go crazy there with your Marvel figures, Infinity 1.0 figures, and power discs. Speaking of generic, one of the faults of the game is still the graphics. They are bland and not very sharp. The Wii U is capable of better, as Smash Bros and Mariokart 8 prove, so it’s not a system specific problem. The devs simply didn’t put any TLC into them. This is annoying because the load times are inordinately long for what you get, but at least you only have to wait once for the toybox or playset to load. And the Avengers city, at least, doesn’t feel empty. You’ll see pedestrians, cars driving by, and there are also hidden goodies to collect. It’s not as vibrant as a GTA city or even Lego Marvel’s Manhattan, but it could be worse. The collectables are a double-edged sword, though. One type is called “crossover coins”. These allow characters from another playset to be used with the Avengers playset. The problem is this only extends to Rocket Raccoon and Nova. Want to use Groot, Starlord, or Spider Man in the Avengers set? Too bad. I haven’t yet played the other playsets, but I’ll point out that only having one playset included for $75 is pretty lame. Which brings me to what I think is the greatest disappointment with the Infinity series thus far: the restriction of which characters you can use in the playsets. At the very least, they should offer some option that unlocks use for all characters once you’ve beaten a playset or met some other condition. Or make the crossover coins some sort of earnable currency where you can “buy” an unlock to use whichever character you want. Why limit it to two? It’s just asinine. How cool would it be to have Mr. Incredible or Baymax fighting alongside Captain America in Manhattan? We’ll never know, I suppose. The Disney film charcters, and particularly 1.0 figures, feel especially useless. You can play with them in the toy box and that’s it. They have at least incorporated skill trees for the older characters, but they don’t have any special moves like the new ones do. It’s widely speculated that the next version of Infinity will be centered around Star Wars characters. If so, I very much hope they fix this stupid crossover restriction by then as well as improve the graphics. Those two things alone would make the series a lot more enjoyable, even if they don’t do much with the gameplay. Again: if you’re looking for a gift your kids will like and something you can enjoy playing with them, Infinity Marvel will work. If you’re looking something to hold your own interest, however, avoid this.

I am on the fence about this game. On the one hand, it can be pretty tedious and ultimately pointless. On the other, it is a fun, nostalgic trip through the world of Final Fantasy and unlocking new characters, songs & other items is addictive. It seems that for every good thing about the game, there is a mitigating, negative factor. A perfect example of what I mean is with the graphics & scenery during levels. It is fun to spot well-known villains from the series during battles as well as to see the many inside references to areas during the “field music” stages, where one character will be walking past lots of stuff scrolling in the background. Like spotting two moons in the FFIV sky, the airship from FFVI, the City of the Ancients in FFVII, etc. Unfortunately, you are going to be far too busy watching the action icons to pay much attention to any of this, especially on harder difficulties. Also, none of these touches will mean anything to you for the FF games you’ve never played or didn’t care for. The good news is that it’s fun to play. If you have fond memories of a lot of this music like I do, you will enjoy playing these levels combined with the RPG elements thrown in. The bad news is that you need to pace yourself because it is easy for burnout & boredom to set in. While there are a plethora of things to unlock, you probably aren’t going to care about unlocking most of them and the ones you’ll want to unlock the most (extra characters & challenge songs) are the biggest pain to get. One mode of play is called the “Chaos Shrine” and it consists of playing through levels called Dark Notes which consist of one field music & one battle stage. Depending on fast your character goes through the field stage & how well you do during the battle, you will fight one of three bosses who are the only enemies that drop crystal shards, which are used to unlock characters. The problem is that if you find one boss who drops, say, black shards, you will need to keep playing that same Dark Note over & over again and hoping he drops the shard you want, b/c each boss has three different item drops. And each character takes 8 shards to unlock, which is a lot. Unlocking special songs to play in Challenge Mode is a nice touch and the trading cards you get are kind of neat to flip through. The unlockable movies and listening-only songs are strange, though. The movies are montages that play during a certain point in the Series Mode of play and while they are fine for that, I would not care about simply watching them by themselves. Likewise, I already have all the FF music I like on MP3. I don’t see myself ever firing this up on 3DS just to listen to unlocked tracks on the game’s music player. Two final points: you will have to be a real Final Fantasy junkie to appreciate this game, and even so I would not recommend paying more than $30 for it. If you are a FF junkie, you are going to spend at least $10 on DLC tracks b/c you’ll find the supplied tracks to be rather thin. The first 13 games are represented (minus FFX-2) but that is a double-edged sword. I’d gladly cut out everything from XI, XII and most especially XIII if it meant we could have more music from IV, VI, VII, VIII, & X. Also, I would not recommend buying a 3DS just to play this game no matter how big of a FF fan you are. If you already own one, though, then go ahead & pick it up.

I’m happy to report everything positive from the first Theatrhythm game was enhanced in Curtain Call and many shortcomings were improved upon (read my review of the first game for more info). First off: only buy this game if you are a huge fan of Final Fantasy or music games in general. Second off: if you are a huge FF junkie, should you buy a 3DS just to play this? Not by itself, but if there are other 3DS games out there you’ve wanted to play, Curtain Call could be the final nudge you need. Third, here are some points on what was and wasn’t improved upon: - Repetition is still there, but not nearly as bad as it was. The “dark note” system received an overhaul and is now “quest mode”. Previously you would grind the same two songs repeatedly for either XP or a certain color of crystal shard. Quest mode gives you more songs and better rewards. Plus you always get a new quest when you beat one. - Less crystal shards required to unlock characters. In the first game, every character took 8 shards to unlock and you’d never get more than one shard at a time. In Curtain Call, some require as few as 4 shards to unlock and you can choose between 4-5 different characters per shard color! You also often get several shards at a time for quest and rhythmia collection rewards. - Deep cuts. There are tons of songs and characters before you think about DLC. Even FF Mystic Quest and Advent Children are included! There are a huge amount of tracks for the game to insert into the quests which, again, reduces the repetition. - More freedom with how to play. You can choose most tracks right off the bat and can play them one at a time rather than having to play three in a row from a certain game. - There are different input methods. I don’t remember this being an option in the first game. Instead of having to use the stylus for everything, you can also incorporate buttons, the circle pad, or even use a one-handed mode. Good stuff. - No cut-off tracks. A few songs from the first game skipped cool intro parts, like FFX’s Battle With Seymour or FFVI’s Dancing Mad. Not the case in the sequel. The full songs are here for your enjoyment, or at least I have not encountered any cut offs yet. - Online play is killer. Yes, you can play people head-to-head through the internets, not just locally via wifi. This is a really cool option. Even if you get your butt handed to you by some dude in Japan who has maxed all his characters and can play each song with his eyes closed, you still exchange the streetpass profi-cards which are great because you can attach quest maps to them. If you have a particularly good map, you can share it with others. The only problem you may have is finding someone online at the same time as you who wants to play. It may require some waiting. - More uses for the collecta cards. They can now be used to improve your character stats. Still haven’t played with this much, but it’s neat. - There is DLC available, but you don't feel like Squeenix cut corners on main game content in order to bilk you. The first game kinda felt like that as it left out some awesome tracks. Bottom line is this is that Curtain Call is a must-play game for Final Fantasy fans. You can safely skip the first game.

I know I am treading well-worn ground, here, but Half Life 2 is one of the few games I’ve played that has lived up to the hype surrounding it. I felt like I had to tip my hat, because it is perfect in every appreciable way. Even though HL2 is a decade old, I only recently got around to playing it thanks to a Steam sale. Absolutely fantastic. I love everything about this game. Still looks gorgeous, not at all dated like the first Half Life game. Voice acting is spot-on. Mechanics are good. Nice selection of weapons without having TOO many. Gravity gun is a blast. Music is used very well: long stretches of silence with appropriately creepy or intense electronic tunes depending on what’s happening. What pushes this over the top for me, though, is the story. It was barely there in Half Life 1. You still have no idea what’s happening in HL2 but you discover bits & pieces as you play. At one of the resistance HQs, for example, there is a bulletin board full of newspaper clippings about the alien invasion which took place while Gordon was…elsewhere. It’s a nice payoff which helps everything else happening in the game make sense. Aside from that, you may only hear certain plot points once or twice from NPC banter. Even if the banter doesn’t contain any story information, though, it’s all scripted well and fun to listen to. HL2 also appeals to gamers who only play shooters for the pew pew and don’t care about story. The maps may be linear (which I don’t mind in a shooter) but you have a lot of freedom and fun ways to go about solving them. There is also a nice mix of gameplay elements which keep things fresh, from turret defense moments (literally) to vehicle driving. You’re not always marching through hallways so it’s very difficult to get bored. The only complaint I have is that there’s no Half Life 3! Of course, I’d rather have an excellent series which rarely releases games than a series that releases a title every year and beats everything we liked about it into the ground until we can’t stand it any longer (*cough*Assassin’s Creed*ahem*). Half Life 2 is one of those amazing gems that is still as good today as it was on the day it was released. Definitely a game which everyone who considers themselves a gamer should play.

I only got this game b/c it came with my badass-golden-Triforce-painted 3DS XL, which is the version I bought. Only just now got around to playing it and am incredibly surprised by how much I like it. I should start by saying I have never been a Zelda fan. In fact, I have yet to complete any Zelda game I have ever started. LBW could be the first, though. It is very accessible, easy to navigate and addictive. So many times I have been about to turn it off but will think, “Just one more dungeon…” The last game I tried to get through was the 3DS version of Ocarina of time. While that is a fine game, I much prefer LBW’s top-down SNES-like view for a handheld system. And while dismissed as a mere gimmick by some, the pop in & out of a drawing ability is unique and adds an extra layer to puzzles. Plus it is animated in a very cool way. I also like how pretty much all of the items are available to rent right off the bat (and can later be purchased at a much higher price). This limits the amount of backtracking you’ll have to do and also gives you an extra incentive to not die: you can choose to continue rather than reload the last save, but will have to give back all rented items & pay for them again. Story is, as usual, the weakest part. Nothing too special going on which you haven’t seen in a previous Zelda title. Also, the 3D effects are under-utilized. Most times it only adds depth and you’ll notice very little difference when switching the 3D mode off. What can I say? I’m a **** for stuff popping out of the screen. Overall, this is a solid title that will appeal to any 3DS owner. It’s a must-play title for the system.

Okay, I will give Skyrim the obligatory recommendation. What’s there to say? Another sprawling Bethesda epic. The only somewhat legitimate criticism I’ve seen about Skyrim is regarding how Bethesda tends to release games full of bugs thinking that users will come up with mod fixes. I don’t know about that as I can’t say I’ve ever played a Bethesda title I considered broken. What I will say is that users in the Steam Workshop have come up with some truly incredible mods. Deducting a point from Bethesda is one way to look at it but I say giving people the freedom to use Steam Workshop gives them a point right back. The fact that it is a game so many people feel compelled to create so many mods for speaks volumes. Bethesda must be doing something right. One of these days I need to actually go back and finish it…

Deus Ex: HR is a fantastic game. I liked it much more than I thought I would. The story is pretty good except that they don’t do a good enough of selling the main conflict. I don’t see the big deal about being a cyborg. It certainly beats being dead, which is what the main character would be w/out augment technology. Also, all of the multiple endings fell flat for me. They are basically FMV stock footage with narration about what happened. Everything else is spot on, though: graphics, music, voice acting, and especially gameplay. Some people criticize Deus Ex: HR b/c they think there are too many upgrades available and you can max out too many stats. I say those people need to get over themselves. If they’re so hardcore they can either not collect the upgrades (many of which are optional) or simply not apply them. Games like this make me wonder how & why people are still playing Metal Gear Solid. This has actual, real stealth-based gameplay and figuring out ways to knock out or kill people and hide their bodies is part of the fun. Controls are tight and movement is fluid, unlike in MGS games. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone having a bad time playing this game.

I don’t get all the hatred that’s been directed at this game. I picked it up for $2 during a sale, and some professional game reviewers were warning to not even buy it at that price. Naturally, I had to see what all the fuss was about and…well…Alpha Protocol is really not a bad game. Not terribly original (a cross between Splinter Cell & Mass Effect in the CIA) and the story isn’t particularly memorable but the gameplay is solid & enjoyable. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever played but it is most certainly not the worst, either. That is, it’s strange to me when professional media praises total garbage like Dragon Age 2 yet trashes Alpha Protocol. I’ve seen other reviewers complain about the AI in Alpha Protocol and various other glitches. Never had any problem with either of those things. Graphics were nice, music and voice acting were both acceptable. The story is nothing groundbreaking and a bit predictable given the way espionage stories go these days (America is the REAL enemy! Dun dun dunnn!) but it’s still fun to engage in the different relationships and choices you can make which have a real impact on the plot. And the gameplay is the glue that holds everything together; not revolutionary but good enough. The only drawback to Alpha Protocol is that it’s rather forgettable and you won’t have any reason to replay it unless you want to witness some of the multiple story paths. You can expect to spend somewhere around 20 hours and will have a good time during that, though. It’s a shame that this first entry got savaged because it really could have turned into a good series. Instead we have Assassin’s Creed Part 8 and Final Fantasy 13 Part 3. Oh well.

Aside from the strongly anti-religious commentary found in FFX (which may offend or delight you), I will say that its narrative is quite excellent from a pure storytelling aspect. Hands-down the best in the series with several well-paced, shocking reveals that you don’t see coming and don’t feel contrived. If you play through it twice, you’ll notice a lot you missed the first time around and the ending will stay with you. Gameplay wise, it’s fantastic. It feels like they took the best parts of each previous game and combined them. Some reviews say it feels outdated compared to modern RPGs. I disagree. It takes strategy and more than simple button mashing to beat. The sphere grid system: wow. Unique among RPGs. It gives you total control over how you develop each character and takes planning to prevent having to do a lot of backtracking. Endgame leveling is an unparalleled experience and more than simply finding the enemy who drops the most XP and fighting it repeatedly. Additionally, each character has a role they follow for most of the game and you can switch them out at any given time during battle. This gives so much life to each character. It’s not like FF6 where you get your four favorites and leave everyone else on the airship or FF4 where the game dictates who is in your party every step of the way. It’s also the first in the series to have any sort of endgame content, especially with all the International Version additions. You can really open things up thanks to the unique sphere grid leveling system, which FF12 and 13 both sort of copied but did not equal. The drawbacks: they ruined most of the music in the HD version by including some updated soundtrack instead of the OST. Many NPCs don’t hold up graphically, either. People like Cid & Shelinda look terrible. Some of the voice acting, too, is simply awful. FFX is also a much more linear game compared to the more open-world feel of earlier titles. I didn’t mind it b/c it’s not as bad as FF13. There are TONS of secrets to discover and I don’t mind “warping” to a destination in the airship versus having to manually fly it all over the map. As for FFX-2…ugh. I have never cared for it. They took the very serious & solemn tone of FFX and turned it into some sort of J-pop, girl power, Disney Channel exhibition. The gameplay is pretty solid but man, getting through the story is incredibly annoying. Some scenes make me clench my teeth and shut my eyes until they’re over. The music has its moments but is largely a step back from FFX. There aren’t many memorable tracks and this game, IMO, started the musical decline of the series which accelerated in 12 & 13. You will, however, notice large graphical improvements right off the bat. There are still areas not up to modern standards yet nothing that’s worse than what you see in FFX. X-2’s gameplay, however, I can’t find much fault with. It can be jarring coming straight from FFX since it brings back the ATB meter but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The whole “dress sphere” thing is basically a cross between the job system from earlier games and the role-changing system from FF13. It is superior to both of these IMO, though. X-2 also had quite a bit more added to its International version that FFX did. There is a whole new sub-game of monster capturing (similar to FF13-2) that allows creatures to fight in your party and you can even ultimately unlock cast members from the first game. There is even the extra “X-2: Last Mission” standalone game, which is affected by which ending you got from the main game. I haven’t touched that yet but from what I understand, it offers a kind of epilogue to the series. Taken together these games easier offer between 200-400 hours of total play time, maybe more, depending on how deep you want to go. And all for $40? It’s more than worth it. If you’re not already a turn-based, JRPG fan this may not be your cup of tea. If you’re a Final Fantasy fan or already a fan of these games from the PS2 days, then you’ll be very satisfied despite a few blemishes.

I’m going to recommend Half Life: Source to modern gamers but just barely. I never played it nor Half Life 2 back in the day, so I am completely unbiased by nostalgia. Both games have intrigued me for years, though, and I saw them together in a Steam sale bundle so decided to pick them up and finally play through them. Though a flawed release, HL: Source still shines thanks to its brilliant & pioneering design. Yes, it was state of the art when it came out and a truly groundbreaking game for its time. But should people spend money & time to play it today? Despite the Source engine update, Half Life looks quite dated and is missing many modern FPS creature comforts we have come to take for granted. When I first fired the game up my initial thought was, “I can’t do this. It’s too old.” The polygon models are harsh. People’s hands look sharp enough to poke your eye out. The sound is downright terrible in some places. Environments are often sparse with low-res textures. It can also be difficult to tell whether or not you are damaging certain enemies. So I took a break and came back to it. I’m happy to say I got hooked shortly afterward. Half Life is made so well, I was able to overlook its technical shortcomings and get immersed in Gordon’s flight from Black Mesa. The pace is frenetic, rarely giving you the chance to catch your breath. It’s a very intelligent shooter, also. There are many hidden areas, multiple paths, clever puzzles, and neat surprise moments along the way. You keep moving almost continuously to the very mysterious ending. Which brings me to why I almost gave the title a thumbs down. The ending is deeply unsatisfying. After everything that happened I still only had the vaguest idea of what was going on. I think there was an accident in the lab that led to an alien invasion, with either the gov’t or privately contracted troops trying to destroy the entire facility to cover it up. And then, dude in suit with briefcase in the interdimensional train car. The end. I have started Half Life 2 and while I love it so far, in terms of story it adds even more confusion to the narrative. Gordon Freeman is one of the most incurious people in the universe, never once pausing to ask anybody, “Hey, WTF is happening!?!?” I’m hoping more light gets shed on the plot as I progress through the sequel. You can only tease people for so long before they get bored. From a pure gameplay standpoint, though, Half Life: Source will not disappoint. If you have never played it and can deal with outdated graphics & sound, go ahead & pick it up. If not, you can skip straight to Half Life 2 without missing much in the way of story. In other words, you’ll be just as confused at the beginning of HL2 whether you played through the first game or not.

I really thought I wouldn’t like Euro Truck Simulator 2. I thought it was in the same vein as Farming Simulator, Street Sweeper Simulator, Snow Cat Simulator, etc. It’s not. This is a quality game with effort put into its design and I actually do enjoy it. ETS2’s biggest positive is that it’s very relaxing to play. If I have a free hour and want to chill out, I will fire this up and do a quick trucking job or two. It also does a fair job in presenting you with different landscapes and varied scenery. The downside is that the landscapes are not quite varied enough. The devs made a decent effort but after playing for a while, you will recognize all the reused set pieces such as highway interchanges, exit ramps, maintenance garages, and branches of companies where you accept jobs. And aside from driving on the left hand side of the street in England and some different background scenery, the experience on every highway and inside each city is virtually the same. Driving in Stuttgart is the same as driving in Paris is the same as driving in Rome. You won’t see the Eiffel Tower or Coliseum in the background nor any other famous streets, bridges or landmarks from any particular city. Likewise, every toll booth and rest stop are exactly the same, whether in Austria, the Netherlands or the Czech Republic. It’s also missing visual damage to vehicles. Your truck can get damaged by accidents but none of it will show on the outside. Neither will it show up on any car you hit. Every once in a while I like to cause chaos by getting up a head of steam & swerving into oncoming traffic. It’s very unsatisfying when nothing much happens aside from traffic stopping. I know that sort of thing is more reserved for a title like GTA or Saints Row, but still. The option of playing your own MP3s over the truck’s “radio” while driving was a great idea. Unfortunately, I found this to be a buggy feature. The game won’t play many of my MP3 files and I don’t know why. To make up for these shortcomings, there is a very engaging career mode. The more deliveries you complete, the more experience you earn. This allows you to gain levels which in turn allows you to build up your driving skills to make more money, unlock new types of delivery jobs and unlock new options & upgrades you can buy for your truck. Speaking of buying trucks, there are a lot to choose from, based on real life models from manufacturers like Volvo and DAF. They are expensive, but you can take out a loan from the bank if you want to get things rolling early on. You can also buy & upgrade various garages around Europe, buy more trucks, hire drivers to drive them, and all of this will end up earning you even more money. I’m still in the early stages of the game as I only have the one truck of my own and am working on repaying a loan, but I’m looking forward to continuing to play this. It’s more of something I will progress in gradually rather than sitting down and trying to grind away at. It’s a very nice change of pace.

Heavy Rain is a pretentious bore. Gameplay consists of quick time events, cutscenes, wandering around unsure of what to press the X button at, and interactive sequences about getting your kid a snack. Heavy Rain is not a game. It’s a mediocre video that occasionally prompts you to press buttons. There are a few mildly interesting parts and the graphics are quite nice, but being more video than game means the whole thing needs to be carried by its story. Unfortunately, the story is lame and has a big reveal at the end that is just stupid. If Heavy Rain were an actual movie, it would be a forgettable box office bomb. There are several possible endings, but getting them entails going through the whole thing several times with a guide close at hand because unlocking some endings depends on stupid, hidden tasks like making your kid that snack within a certain amount of time. If that sounds like fun, knock yourself out.

Superbrothers is to gaming what Adventure Time is to TV: something I just don’t get. Or maybe something you can only "get" if you're high. Controls are bad, graphics are junk, music is forgettable, story is…well, I’m not sure there is a story aside from references to other games like Zelda. I thought this would be an amusing diversion for an evening but instead it put me to sleep. Literally. I struggled to finish the first part because I kept dozing off. Shocked at how many people are praising the visuals. It’s nothing but blocky pixels everywhere, allegedly arranged in “poetic” fashion. Whatever. Superbrothers is sort of like Another World: there are action-type areas with puzzles mixed in. Except Another World is much better in every way, even the graphics, so you might as well play that instead. In fact, do anything else instead. If you have no other video game to play, read a book, surf the internet, eat a sandwich, exercise, anything. Your time will be better spent.

I haven’t finished Giana Sisters: TD yet but got through the first boss. I am pleasantly surprised. Other reviewers have already covered the basics: it’s a mix of old and new school platforming that does a lot of things right. I’d say it’s comparable to Super Meat Boy but GS:TD is a smarter platformer which much better graphics. There is more you can do in this game thanks to the ability switching and thus the levels are more engaging to play through with more secret areas to discover. The first few are laughably easy but before you know it the difficulty skyrockets. This is fine, though, because of responsive controls and a generous checkpoint system. You have infinite lives, too, but dying decreases your score. The music is nice and the changing scenery when switching between sisters looks beautiful. It's also very cheap. You get a whole lot for your money. The only downside I can think of is that there isn’t anything in GS:TD that keeps me glued to my PC. It’s fun but after beating a couple of levels I am usually ready to do something else, and I don’t see myself shooting for perfect scores or trying hard or uber hard mode (but those things exist if you are so inclined). GS:TD is a title I will keep coming back to and playing in gradual doses rather than something I will devour right away b/c I can’t get enough of it. Still, it’s a high quality, well-made game coming from Greenlight/Kickstarter. Much higher caliber than other indie offerings I have played.

I held off buying Strike Suit Zero for a long time because I figured there was no way it would be as cool as it looks. Seeing it on sale at Steam was the final nudge I needed to pull the trigger and I can now say it is actually cooler than it looks. I’m sorry I waited so long to pick up this title. SSZ will appeal to anyone who was a fan of games like Rogue Squadron or Colony Wars on the PS One. It’s not quite up to level of depth that X-Wing or Wing Commander had since this is more arcade shooter than simulation. If you liked those games, though, I’d still recommend SSZ since the whole space dogfighting genre seems dead and you won’t find better nowadays. SSZ has fluid and intense gameplay with great graphics & music. Voice acting is spotty but not bad. The controls may take a little getting used to but once you master them you’ll feel like a boss in the titular Strike Suit. Spamming your swam missiles has a very Robotech/Macross feel and never gets old. I played this with a Xbox 360 controller for PC and found the controls very tight & responsive. No idea what happened to some other reviewers who say the controls are clunky. They may be trying to play with keyboard & mouse but I learned long ago rule #1 of space shooter games is to bring a joystick or gamepad. The missions have a nice variety and are thrilling to play through. The narrative is pretty solid, too, and keeps you interested in moving along. You get scored on each sortie and can also unlock a particular upgrade if certain optional goals are met. Once you beat a mission, you can replay it using any new fighter craft or weapons you’ve unlocked. Some people complain the missions get repetitive and are impossibly hard. I didn’t find them repetitive and they may be too hard if you don’t get any ship upgrades. I’ll admit I went back & switched the difficulty to easy mode to pick up a few, which is an option for anyone who thinks it’s too hard. Best of all, there are checkpoints inserted into the sometimes lengthy missions. This is a welcome feature since you don’t have to keep replaying the same thirty minutes of a mission over & over again when only the last five minutes are giving you trouble. Checkpoints are frequently placed right at those optional parts required to unlock upgrades which again is very nice since, if you miss the optional goal, you do not have to start the entire mission again from the beginning. SSZ isn’t a perfect game but some reviewers are going overboard on their criticism of it. This space & sci-fi combat genre is one I miss a lot and I’ve had a blast playing this game. If you are a fan of any of the titles I mentioned above, you should definitely pick it up. It feels like a blast from the past & a new experience at the same time.

I picked up LLTQ for $2.50 or $5 during a sale and am essentially done with it after about 5 hours’ worth of play. It’s surprisingly enjoyable but I can’t recommend it because it’s too short and weighed down by an overly complex skill system that will only appeal to a very niche market. First of all, I give it extra points for the amount of effort that went into all the different story options & skill choices. Critics say it’s too linear but that’s not entirely true. Having the same events occur at the same point in the story allows you to strategically plan how to overcome challenges. If random events were procedurally generated each time you played, you would only be able to survive by dumb luck. Also, you can unlock extra dialogue choices, outfits and hidden events depending on which skills you develop and actions you take. It is fun to fail at a skill check, possibly die, then replay and build your character differently and overcome a story obstacle. However, the further into the story an event occurs, the further you need to backwards plan for it. This gets complicated due to the labyrinthine way the story events snake together with learning skills & plotting mood adjustments (different moods give bonuses & penalties to learning different skills) and the only way to get around it is to write down some notes about which events occur at which times. While I appreciate all of the multiple endings and achievements available, unlocking those would require way more effort than most people would be willing to spend. The game does give you an option to export a text log of story events, but it doesn’t include any information about skill checks so it’s not nearly as useful as it could be. I was still having a pretty good time despite the flaws because I liked the story, but just when I felt like things were getting interesting, it ended. You only need to survive through 40 turns or so to win, and those turns go by blazingly fast when you already know which choices you’re going to make. LLTQ gets an A for effort but I simply can’t advise anyone to buy it unless the thought of manually charting out every story event, skill point expenditure & mood adjustment through trial & error appeals to you. It will keep you amused for a few hours and you’ll have no need to ever go back to it.

While this is a very good game, don’t let all the fanboys fool you into thinking it is the greatest video game of all time. If you played this back on the N64 and have fond, nostalgic memories it will inflate your opinion. If this is your first time playing it, like it was mine, you will find it fun, but lacking a bit. Despite that, it is still one of the best Zelda games ever and one of the best games out for the 3DS. First of all, the 3D graphics blew me away. They are used to great effect, whether adding depth or giving the “pop-out” illusion. Aside from that, however, the graphics are dated even though they have been sharpened a bit from the N64 version. Environments are often bland & unremarkable and some character models, like the great fairies, have not aged well. I’m not sure if the great fairies are supposed to be attractive, but between their creepy faces, pointy elbows and razor-sharp nipples jutting out of the screen, they certainly don’t do it for me. Other models, like Link & Epona, look perfectly fine, though. Combat is another mixed bag. The lock on feature is nice but won’t always activate as consistently as you’d like. Sometimes I’d be right next to an enemy and the lock on wouldn’t work. Other times I’d be a good bit away from them and it would. The lack of a right analog stick can also causes some annoying camera issues. Luckily, Link responds very well to the controls and is easy to move around. At first it’s a little off-putting that there is no jump button, but this feature grew on me as I played b/c it takes all the guess work out of when to press the button during the 3D platform jumping (Kingdom Hearts, anyone?). It’s also nice how the game integrates various alternate weapons and gadgets into battle, like the hookshot. You can shoot these using the lock on instead of having to switch to first person perspective every time. Speaking of first person perspective, the way the 3DS responds to you physically moving the unit while aiming is really cool. That is, if you’re lining up a tough arrow shot you can move the DS itself instead of nudging the analog stick and the game camera will adjust itself. Makes life much easier in some of the archery challenges. Only problem with it is that you will probably have to switch off the 3D mode to avoid seeing double while moving the 3DS around. The story is something I’ve seen hyped up a lot but I was underwhelmed by it. It’s the typical, generic Nintendo story you’ve come to expect: Gannondorf bad, Link good, Link fight Gannondorf. Not terrible, but not special, either. I found the story in Windwaker to be more interesting. I was not overly impressed by the Ocarina of Time itself, either. It has its uses but I felt like they could have done more with it. 90% of the time you will be playing Zelda’s Lullaby, and that’s not a whole lot different than flipping a switch. Figuring out different areas to use the Scarecrow song is pretty neat, and I wish they’d added more elements like that. There is certainly a good amount of stuff to do, though, from collecting pieces of heart to getting the gold skulltulas. There are a lot of nooks & crannies in Link’s world to explore, especially with the cool time travel option. Certain areas will be open to young Link that adult Link can’t get into and vice versa. The game also gives you a ton of different gear to help you solve puzzles and access secret areas. If you played OoT back on the N64, you probably bought the game long before I wrote this review. If you have never played it and you own a 3DS, you will enjoy playing through it.

This was the biggest gaming surprise I’ve had in a while. I expected a lame rehash from a stale franchise. Instead, I’m happy to announce that Tomb Raider is an incredibly fun and intense experience that has resurrected Lara Croft. I played the original years ago and while it was fun at the time the formula got old quickly and I could not get interested in the sequels. It was roughly 90% intricate, drawn-out puzzles & platforming with 10% miserable combat sprinkled in. What they’ve done is rebalance the game mechanics so it focuses much more on combat (which is oh-so-fluid) and the puzzles & platforming are more of a side dish. I think this works because it keeps the game moving along. For example, there are optional tombs you can raid, but they are very small areas with only one puzzle that won’t take you more than 10 minutes to solve. This is a little disappointing, I’ll admit. I would like to have a little more meat to the puzzles, but I will take the short ones over getting bogged down in a 45-minute labyrinth. RPG elements have been introduced, as well. There is a lot of optional stuff you can do in this game which will yield experience to make Lara stronger through special skills as well as finding “salvage” which is used to improve your weapons in certain ways (more damage, less recoil, etc). Special journals can be found, too, which help to unravel the mystery of the island you’re on. Another brilliant touch is how they’ve tweaked exploration. Each area has several sets of secrets to uncover but you don’t have to find them all before you move on (some will require items you don’t have yet, anyway). You discover campsites as you play and can fast travel between them. This lets you focus on having fun instead of feeling obligated to gut an area’s secrets right away to avoid a lengthy backtrack to an earlier area. It makes things so nice. The game is gorgeous, too. Environments are beautiful & smartly designed so they feel very open with lots of nooks & crannies to peek in and usually multiple paths to traverse around obstacles. As I mentioned earlier, combat is fluid and thrilling, the exact opposite of how it was in the original game. Head shots with fire arrows never get old, and the AI is smart. Ranged opponents will throw fire bombs to flush you out of cover or shoot guns at you while melee opponents will zip line in to close on you. And there are so many gratifying ways to kill them. Stick an arrow shaft through their neck with your hand at close range, dig your climbing axe into their back for a stealth kill, hit a guy right as he’s about to throw dynamite resulting in a friendly fire explosion, etc. The story is very good, too. Games rarely make me want to play to find out what happens next anymore. Usually the story is something bland & serviceable to keep me level grinding. I really like the narrative in TR, though. Quite unrealistic, of course, but still enjoyable. And if you’re concerned, keyboard & mouse controls work just fine. This is not one of those sloppy console ports that is unplayable w/out a gamepad. The only knock I have against this game is the use of quick time events. QTEs are something I want to see go away and never come back. I am tired of the “press E to awesome” gameplay mechanic. However, Tomb Raider doesn’t rely too heavily on them and they are at least presented in a very dramatic way, so don’t listen to any commenters saying the game is nothing but cutscenes & QTEs. The beginning is admittedly slow and has a lot of them, but that’s because you haven’t gotten your weapons yet. Once you get armed, you encounter them a lot less. The QTEs don’t ruin the game and only end up being a very minor annoyance. There is also the obligatory multiplayer mode that all video games are apparently required by law now to include. I don’t know anything about it and I will probably never play it. It’s an extra thing if you want it, but know that the single player campaign is not lacking at all. If you like action games, you should definitely pick this one up. Tomb Raider had lost several steps over the years but is now running like a more polished version of Playstation’s Uncharted series, with better combat & storytelling. A very nice surprise that is worth your attention.

SW: TOR is ultimately a disappointment. It’s not going to satisfy the hardcore MMO player and single player gamers are not going to want to continually pay the sub or microtransaction fees the game requires to progress. It was a good attempt at making a hybrid genre RPG but suffers from a few critical failures. I’ll admit that I have enjoyed playing this game a great deal and have sunk more hours into it than I care to admit. I played through the stories of five different classes to reach max level and enjoyed them all. If you plan out your characters’ crafting trees, you can have some fun with making your own gear and keep your weapons & armor stocked with strong mods, which makes leveling much less ****. As someone who mainly prefers single player games, I liked the mix of the MMO elements. I never felt required to group up with other players, but you can reap rewards in tougher areas if you do. I liked the companions, dialogue choices and side missions, as well. If you love Star Wars and the original Old Republic games, you’ll love the narratives for these characters, made all the more interesting by being able to pick light or dark side choices as you play. My Sith Sorcerer, for example, was actually kind of a nice guy. PvP was an absolute blast in this game, too. When it first released and they had way too many servers and not enough people, it quickly got terrible due to unbalanced population pools. Once they consolidated the servers, though, it came back better than ever. PvP is where I’d typically gain the bulk of my leveling XP to avoid having to do the same PvE sidequests I’d already done on one or two other characters. I’m surprised to say that it never got old. It was always fun to force leap & stun someone in Huttball right as they were crossing the last fire pit to the goal :) Unfortunately, the poorly implemented MMO side catches up before long. For me it is the totally lifeless environments. They are so big and many look nice, yet there is almost nothing to do in them. For example, there is a gigantic casino in one world whose only purpose is for you to visit briefly for a cutscene if your chosen class story requires it. Why not have some sort of gambling system in place to let players win (or lose) in-game currency? Why not have some adaptation of Pazaak, the card game from earlier KOTOR games? And there is no social hub to speak of. There are cantinas and things but again, nothing to do there, so nobody is ever around. What happens is that most people end up congregating around the PvP area in the faction HQ and wandering around in circles or AFKing, waiting for the queue to pop. Then there’s the ruthless implementation of the F2P model, which crushed everything I liked about the game. I get that they have to make money but my problem is that if you were an original customer who bought the game and paid sub fees for several months, you get no reward for that. You still have to purchase “cartel coins” to buy an unlock (or pay more sub fees) simply to show your head gear or have more than one quickbar to use, the same as any schlub who DL’d the game for free yesterday. That stings. There is a fun game lurking inside SW: TOR, but you have to claw through several layers of frustration & hidden fees to find it. And if you want a "real" MMO, you won't find it here. I have some good memories of time spent playing this game and I would like to play through the remaining stories I didn’t experience yet, but I’m done spending money on it. There are too many other games out there with one-time fees I can play.

I wanted to like this game but it is killed by the same crappy control scheme that the original NES version was infamous for. Back in those NES glory days, we kids never questioned why a bionic commando would be unable to jump or climb over an obstacle. Now, though, it’s stupid and frustrating. Many positive reviews celebrate this as being a “hard” game, but all of its difficulty stems from the crappy controls. It shouldn’t be rewarded for bad design. I could get over not being able to jump or climb if the grappling mechanics were smooth and responsive, but they aren’t. They’re clunky & counter intuitive. And this in a game full of instant death areas that oh by the way gives you a certain number of lives to get through each level. I stopped this after about an hour, once I reached a level with a secret area I could not get into after dying & starting all the way over five times. I knew exactly what I had to do and it wasn’t very complicated, but the controls are so unresponsive it became impossibly hard. Then I thought about how, if I did manage to make it into the secret area, I would have to navigate back out the way I came and survive through the rest of the level and the boss fight. If I ran out of lives before that, I’d have to do the entire level all over again. Who thinks that’s fun? This game could have been great if they had retooled the grappling system and the level designs. Instead they essentially lifted everything straight from the NES original aside from the graphics. If they weren’t going to update the controls, they should have at least given infinite lives & checkpoints inside levels since the gameplay boils down to tons of trial, error & luck. I bought this during a Steam sale and I regret the purchase. My advice is to get an emulated version of the original NES version. It will give you almost the same experience.

I don’t usually enjoy these types of games, but I liked this one. It’s sort of like an interactive mystery novel with pictures (be prepared for a lot of reading). The reason I liked it is because the story is, shockingly, pretty interesting. It also introduces enough game elements to prevent it from being nothing more than a pure text adventure and the length is just right. You play the part of a salvager who is trying to uncover what happened on a derelict generation ship, which is one of the theorized ways humans might be able to explore the galaxy. The way this story goes is how I think such an attempt would end in real life, too (I’ll stop here before revealing any spoilers). There are different levels of depth to be discovered to the story as well as multiple endings. What you uncover depends on what questions you ask and how deep you dig. The game is also timed, in a way, so that after a certain point certain endings become impossible depending on what you’ve done so far. Thankfully, the game’s length is paced excellently so right around the time you are getting tired of reading the text, you’ll find yourself near the end. You’re also able to speed through much of the text on subsequent playthroughs to see different endings, which is nice. I liked the music a lot, too. It sets a very appropriate mood throughout the story. I played this with headphones on and I’d recommend that. It greatly increases the immersive feel as this game is best enjoyed with a couple of hours blocked out and no distractions to take you away from it, not unlike reading a book. Is it worth $10, though? That’s a tough call and will depend on just how much you like this sort of thing. It will only take you 2-3 hours to get through this and considerably less to view the alternate endings, if you even care about doing that. And once you beat it, there is little reason to play through it again. I bought it during a Steam sale, though, and am content with what I paid for it. I will say that the music and writing are above average and the artwork is well done. This is essentially an adventure game that removes all of the pointing & clicking and walking around aimlessly through the same maps. To me, that is a good thing.

I’m a bit biased since I don’t like adventure games. The stories are often juvenile, puzzle solutions defy logic and the games themselves don’t have much adventure. The best I can do is say that Gemini Rue isn’t terrible but too many people here are going way overboard on their praise of this game. The main reason to play adventure games (I think) is for the story. GR’s is a cut above most of what you’ll find in the adventure genre but it’s still not what I’d call “good”. It’s simply okay. Nothing particularly memorable, though there are at least a few twists thrown in. Likewise, I loathe navigating through the UIs in these games because they often turn simple tasks into complex ones because of poor design. GR has several moments like this, too, where you’ll know what has to be done but have to figure out the exact way the game prefers you do it. I will give it some points for puzzles at least having rational solutions instead of falling into the trap of “adventure game logic”. When you have to reach a ledge, for example, you’ll pull over a crate to stand on instead of throwing a rubber chicken at a cat who will get a dog to chase it who will knock over a vase which will startle a mule into kicking you up to the ledge. Again, though, it’s so annoying to have to point and click around to figure out the exact right combination of menu instructions to get up on the crate & climb up to the ledge. I’d much rather have a jump or climb button and be playing a different game. The gunfight minigame is a nice diversion from all the pointing and clicking but is inferior to any action game. It was a fun challenge, at least, to get the Steam achievement for not getting hit once during them. The graphics are retro, which means they are not so great and are around mid-1990s standards. Considering this, they at least do a good job of conveying the “dirty future” atmosphere the game is going for and set an appropriate mood. So if you like adventure games, I’d say you will enjoy GR. If you aren’t crazy about the genre, though, you won’t find anything here to change your mind.

Let me start by saying that FF13 was pure crap and the worst Final Fantasy game ever made, so no one was more surprised than me by how much fun I had playing 13-2. It is not perfect but a vast improvement over its predecessor & definitely worth getting, especially since used copies currently run about $13 at Gamestop. Squeenix fixed a lot of what was wrong with FF13, which gives me some hope for the future of the company. The story, dialogue & main characters are much better, the maps are not brutally linear and actually contain secrets & treasure to hunt down, and there is a ton of optional content. In 13-2 you play as Serah, the sister of no-personality Lightning from 13, and Noel, a time traveler from 700 years in the future. These two are your two main party members for the entire game and this is actually a good thing. They are better characters the entire rest of the cast from 13 combined and are superbly voice acted, as well. The plot of 13-2 is essentially FF: Doctor Who, which again isn’t really a bad thing. Noel picks up his companion, Serah, and they go gallivanting through time & space together. Where things get interesting is that your actions change future locations & create parallel realities. You can freely visit any area you’ve unlocked and can also “reset” each one to play through story events in a different way to pick up missed items. The narrative stays remarkably cohesive despite all the jumping around in time. I only regret that no romance develops between Noel & Serah b/c they have much better chemistry than Serah does with her fiancée Snow from FF13, who is a giant tool box. While the game’s proper ending is, unfortunately, little more than a cliffhanger designed to get you to buy the upcoming FF13-3, there are a bunch of alternate endings you can unlock after beating the game and they are done in a clever way. Instead of creating confusion about which one is the “real” ending, these are all parallel reality endings that generally don’t go so well, showing that the “real” ending is probably the best one. Mog the moogle makes a return to the series, too. He’s mostly included for comic relief (as well as inexplicably turning into Serah’s weapon during battle) but feels like part of the group thanks to some good writing. He even has an invaluable and funny use during field exploration where you throw him around to find treasure amidst protesting squeals of “Kupo!” A bit on the cutesy side, but any FF series veteran will appreciate his inclusion. The third member to round out your battle party is a monster of your choice, which you can capture and train up with special materials that can be bought or won from battle. Think of this as FF: Pokemon. Not a terribly original idea, but one that Squeenix executes very well. Almost every monster in the game is capable of being captured, which is incredibly cool, and the growth system is quite deep. There is even a Gold Saucer-esque area where you can gamble and race chocobos. The system is not as in-depth as the breeding found in FF7, but you can race chocobos you tame in the wild and they will perform better if you level them up the right way. I found the racing to get repetitive, but luckily you don’t have to do it that long to get the best rewards from it. There are also a ton of “fragments” to be collected through defeating special bosses, completing quests or simply finding them like treasure in certain areas. Collecting them serves a variety of purposes such as powering up a set of weapons and unlocking special skills. The battle system is still one of the game’s negatives, however. It’s built on FF13’s combat engine, which is not a good thing. It’s admittedly better and sports a few improvements but you still feel like more of a spectator than anything else b/c the game feels like it’s playing itself. The music is another sticking point. It is terrible almost all the way through; even worse than the music in FF13, which is saying a lot. It swings between wildly inappropriate and teeth-grindingly annoying. To end on a high note, the graphics in 13-2 are even more stunning than those in 13. This is a beautiful game. So much so that there are only two FMV scenes and you’ll hardly notice. Everything else is rendered in-game. I bought a couple of the DLC outfits and was blown away by them. They aren’t merely palate swaps on the same skins but totally new & different outfits. I routinely forgot they were wearing the DLC clothes since they are seamlessly integrated into the in-game cutscenes, so it’s a shame that all the new weapons you get during the game are only palate swaps. There are even some extra DLC packages and a battle coliseum to play around with, but this review has gone on long enough. Bottom line is that if you hated FF13 like I did but you like Final Fantasy, you will enjoy 13-2. Pick up a used copy and you won’t regret it. Here’s hoping they don’t break the series again when 13-3 is released!

A masterful game in every sense that will go down as one of the greatest Western RPGs ever made. Fantastic story & setting, grown-up dialogue, incredible interaction with characters, stirring music, immersive gameplay. If you like RPGs, pick this up and play it. What I love about the story: Bioware takes long-running fantasy races like elves & dwarves and puts their own stamp on them. Nothing about the world of Ferelden feels generic or lifted straight from another story. The intricately detailed backstory for virtually every group you run across is just fascinating. I read every codex entry I found, surprised at how deep the writing was. I could go on but it would be hard to do without getting into spoilers. Combat on the PC takes a very strategic bent and I recommend it over console ports. Graphics are also better. It is not easy but not overly difficult, either. It requires you to pay attention to what you’re doing and plan out attacks rather than sit there & button mash repeatedly, which is very nice. Boss battles are appropriately difficult, often requiring several tries and special strategies but not to the point where you will be breaking the keyboard in frustration. There’s nothing I can fault this game with. All of the origin stories were fun to play through and resulted in me connecting with all six possible character types. The multiple endings were neat to explore, as well. It was an amazing experience and a joy to play. Such a shame that Bioware is in decline and butchered the sequel because Dragon Age had unlimited potential to be a long-running RPG franchise. Even so, DAO will always hold a special place in my heart.

This game is not only one of the most disappointing sequels ever made but a terrible RPG overall, to boot. It feels like a rush job EA ordered Bioware to put on the market to fill the void in their schedule before Mass Effect 3 came out. If you did not play the first Dragon Age game, you might think this is okay, at best. If you loved the first game, however, you’ll most likely find Dragon Age 2 an abomination worthy of being hunted down by Templars. There is no continuation of any loose threads from the DA: Origins story other than a few characters making lame cameo appearances. This despite a cliffhanger ending where Morrigan (and possibly your Warden character, with her) disappear through a mirror portal to an unknown location. Instead of bothering with any of that stuff, Bioware thought you might enjoy playing the life of Hawke, a refugee who ends up in the city of Kirkwall and stays as far away from the plot of DAO as possible. So what does he do? Well…nothing, really. Just wanders around Kirkwall & its environs. To give you something to compare this to, imagine that the second Lord of the Rings movie decided to take a break from all that heavy stuff about Frodo, the One Ring, Sauron, etc and instead followed the life **** in the village of Bree. That’s what Dragon Age 2 is like. This is doubly disappointing since the story & characters in DA2 are completely uninteresting and silly. It’s like reading fan fiction. There are a few returning, minor characters from the first game who were pretty cool there but are ruined by Dragon Age 2’s dull-witted dialogue & stupid plot choices that cannot be changed no matter what. Oh and pretty much everybody but Hawke’s sister and the dwarf guy are bisexual, which again, is silly and seems designed by a 10-year old boy: “I want male or female Hawke to be able to have sex with everybody!” The game tries to pretend like your choices make a difference but they ultimately don’t. The first game explored a very complex relationship between Templars & mages. DA2 turns everything DAO spent telling you about this relationship on its head. DA2 wants to paint a portrait of Templars just being jerks while mages are poor victims who should be set free. Except that every time you side with a mage over a Templar, the mage decides to turn into an evil demon to gain more power. This includes the head enchanter during the final part of the game. To me, that seems pretty conclusive proof that maybe the Templars are right. There isn’t anyone to root for and you end up killing pretty much everybody. The atrocity doesn’t stop at the story & characters, unfortunately. Gameplay is broken as all you need to do is talent up the dwarf’s crossbow damage. I literally ended up running around & spamming the attack button in every fight, including bosses. I barely even needed to heal myself except during a few fights. A huge letdown from DAO’s combat system that was very strategic and required you to pay attention to what you were doing to beat many groups of enemies. The most unforgivable sin this game makes, though, is that of its reused environments. It’s bad enough the story takes place over several decades, giving Bioware an excuse to drudge up the same old environment maps after a “10 year later” subtitle. However, they also reuse the exact same maps for supposedly different areas. One, in particular, is the “cave map” that appears whenever you go inside a cave dungeon. It’s not supposed to be the same cave every time, but IT IS the same cave. They don’t even do palette swaps or rearrange any items. The most they do will be to block off section of the map or start you from the opposite end to try and make it feel fresh. Ditto for the “mansion map” and “underground map”. It’s the laziest thing I’ve ever seen in a game, especially for a AAA budget game. To recap: uninteresting gameplay, terrible story, stupid characters, and walking again & again through literally the same maps for 30+ hours. If that sounds like fun, have at it. As far as I’m concerned, though, the Dragon Age franchise is dead well before its time.

This and Dragon Age: Origins will probably go down as the last, great Bioware RPGs. While I liked Mass Effect 2 & 3, this one was the best and the sequels fell short of what I had hoped for. I liked everything best in this game: story, dialogue, characters, gameplay, exploration, etc. Even its flaws, like the eternal elevator rides, have given us nostalgic humor to refer back to. And Mako driving, while admittedly tedious during subsequent playthroughs, was fun the first time around. I liked how they built it into story missions and exploring new planets with it, never knowing what you’d find, was enjoyable. The vehicle sections in the sequels were okay but felt contrived. Some have knocked the combat & leveling system in this game, but I thought it was superior to those found in parts 2 & 3. The graphics were not as nice since it was an earlier game, but combat was the most fun here despite some of the rather, um, feminine-looking armors for Shepherd. There isn’t much else I can say about it that hasn’t already been said elsewhere a thousand times. It’s a classic piece of video game history and one that may never be duplicated.

I’m pretty burnt out on the whole indie retro fad but I enjoyed this game. Where I think a lot of these retro games go wrong is when they implement shoddy controls like the NES games of yore. That makes it not fun to play. I’m pleased to say that Cave Story has excellent controls, though, and is a lot of fun to play. This reminded me of old NES games such as Metroid but felt like an improvement because it controls so well. The final boss fight was a challenge to beat, but not because it was cheap or frustrating. It was merely difficult and required some skill to get through. I wish more retro games would stick to Cave Story’s formula and go with fun over frustration as a game mechanic.

This is the only Kinect game that I and my kids have actually enjoyed. They have a blast with it and there are some truly neat effects as well as a wide variety of game types. You will find yourself laughing along with some of the crazy stuff that occurs in this game and it also takes pictures frequently which you can save or share online. The most fun thing to do is put it in shuffle mode, where it keeps rotating to a different game every few minutes. It is one of the few games that works with three people, too, which is nice, and you don’t feel penalized if the family dog walks through the game. Ours does this sometimes but it results in often humorous consequences instead of a frustrating loss of control, as with other Kinect games. Kinect Party is not worth buying a Kinect for, but if you already own one, you should definitely get it. If more Kinect games worked this well, that sensor might be worthwhile instead of a piece of junk.

Bought this for a Christmas present for my kids b/c it was on sale, thinking they would love it based on the description. It spent about 30 minutes in the system before my kids turned it off in frustration, and we spent 20 of those minutes simply trying to set up in-game avatars for them. This game is terrible because the Kinect is terrible. I am so sick of the Kinect. It ****. It’s a failure. I should have learned my lesson with the atrocious Kinect Star Wars, but no. My fault. The biggest problem with Kinect is that 99% of its games are designed for kids but it requires the patience & precision of an adult to use. If you are old enough to get around all of its annoying quirks, you are not going to be interested in playing the kiddie Kinect games. If, like my kids, you are age appropriate for the games, the Kinect will be a frustrating obstacle to gameplay and you’ll be switching back to a controller-operated game after a few minutes. Anyway, this specific game is for up to two players, and is supposed to scan them into the Pixar world with the Kinect camera. It vaguely does that. The avatar it made for one of my kids looked a little bit like him but not really. You can change some of the avatar’s features manually, but the Kinect menu interfaces are so frustrating to use we skipped that. The Kinect flat out refused to scan in my other son. At one point you have to stand up straight with your arms & legs spread out, inside a green outline. My son did that, several times but the Kinect refused to register his knees or elbows. It only gives you a few seconds to complete this scan before popping up an error message and forcing you to start the process all the way over again from the beginning. We spent most of our time slogging through this process and I wanted to snap the Kinect in half. Then we got to the actual game, which wasn’t much better than navigating the menus. Kids tend to jump around as they try to have fun with the game, but the Kinect penalizes you for that. My kids would get too far forward or too far right or left, and they had a lot of trouble with the controls. The gameplay is also repetitive and confusing. You run your avatar around with characters from various Pixar movies and are presented with puzzles, sometimes given with no hints. That would be all right for an adult, but it’s not fun for a 5-year old. One puzzle involved having to jump up on a little raised platform, and the controls are so awful my kids were not able to do it. They’d either jump past it, over it, or they’d jump and the Kinect wouldn’t recognize they were jumping. If you want a fun Kinect game for your kids, get Kinect Party. Even if you manage to get through the avatar creation menus in Kinect Rush, there is no reward waiting for you in playing the actual game. Hopefully I can get a dollar or two for this junk on trade in.

I actually played this on Android, but the only mobile platform listed here is iOS. Both versions are ports of the DS remake, so the review is still valid. The one flaw (on Android) this game has is that is crashed frequently while playing on my ASUS Transformer tablet. That being said, they instituted an excellent auto-save feature so I didn’t mind it so much. The game saves after every battle and every time you walk into a new area. If not for that, it would have been too frustrating to play through the frequent crashes. Anyway, this game has always held a special place in my heart ever since I played in on the SNES. This remake is pure bliss. Ignore what user “MasterOfMetroid” said about this being a “dumbed down” version b/c he has no clue what he’s talking about. The SNES version, known as Final Fantasy II in the US, was dumbed down as it was thought the original Japanese release would be too difficult for American gamers. Therefore this version has tons of content that was never available in the original US release, not to mention the much improved graphics & brilliant cutscenes with voice acting. There is even an option when you start a new game to increase the difficulty or make it easier. Only two things stop me from giving this a perfect score: there is no cloud saving (on Android, anyway) and you can only get one Limit Break augment. In the DS version you could get two. There has been no reason given by Squeenix for this, so it’s most likely some bug they have never bothered to fix. Just about every strategy for defeating Proto-Babil requires two limit breaks, so that’s very disappointing. Everything else, though, is excellent. Music, story, gameplay, etc. If you’re an RPG fan, you owe it to yourself to play this game.

I do not understand all the rave reviews this game has received. I bought it during a Steam sale and I wish I could get my money back. This is an overhyped, mediocre platformer that gives you no incentive to keep playing. It bills itself as part platformer, part exploration game, but fails at both. It is way more frustration than fun. The core issue with Spelunky is the randomly generated levels. It may sound good on paper: always a new experience! Never the same thing twice! But let’s be honest: Spelunky is actually the same thing EVERY time. All that changes is where things are placed. Instead of running into two bats in the first part of the level, you’ll run into a snake…but the level is still made up of the same bats & snakes. And anyway, playing the same level twice, thrice, or a hundred times doesn’t matter if it is a fun, well-made level. The whole random level generation is a dodge for the developers b/c the burden has been taken off of them to create clever, fun environments. Instead they’ve made a few basic gameplay mechanics that all get tossed into a blender every time you play. Good luck, hope something enjoyable comes out of the mix. And the levels still manage to be quite repetitive, despite the randomization. This, combined with the “rougelike” elements (the latest indie game fad) poisons the exploration aspect. Not only is the game riddled with cheap deaths and difficulty due to poor controls, but there’s also an invisible timer for each level. If you take too long to finish, a big ghost comes that instantly kills you, meaning you have to start all over but from a new, randomly generated level. And there’s no way to tell how much time is left, so you’ll want to hurry to the exit & keep exploration to a minimum. Where is the fun in that? The PC version features a daily challenge, which is one level randomly created each day that is accessible & the same for everyone but you can only play through once. Defenders of Spelunky talk like this is an amazing feature but I say who cares? The whole point of leaderboards & online competition is to see who has the most skill. Classic platformers have legendary levels that all its players know through shared experience (Battletoads, anyone?). Even someone who casually plays through the game once could see the top score & shake their head in amazement. No one will remember Spelunky’s levels, though. Who sits back and talks about, “Man, remember the daily challenge from April 5, 2013? My, that was a classic.” Ultimately, there is no point to playing Spelunky beyond saying you did. You may stumble upon a level that is a joy to play, but it’ll be gone forever as soon as you die or find the exit. More likely you’ll stumble repeatedly into tedious levels that look alike and are merely arranged differently. Then you’ll die from touching something you didn’t know was harmful or from taking fall damage, even though the fall didn’t look too steep. Then you’ll have to start the whole thing over from the beginning. Wheeeee.

Jim Sterling from Destructoid called this game a “pompous and **** affair, creating seemingly to promote the developer’s ego first, and the player’s enjoyment second”. Speaking as someone who has been a rabid fan of the series since the very first one on the NES, I’ll say two things: Jim is exactly right, and playing this game broke my heart. The one and only positive I can give FF13 is that it has gorgeous visuals. That’s what the 2-score in my review is for. It fails in every other category so badly that it feels like some other company trying to make a knock-off FF game (think Sony’s Legend of Dragoon for PS1) rather than an officially sactioned entry into the series. It doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as classics like IV, VI, VII, or X. It’s unbelievable that Squeenix is granting an unprecedented two sequels to this game while utterly ignoring, for years on end, pleas from their fans to do a modern-day remake of 7, 6 or even 5. Why is it so bad? Let me count the ways. First of all, the story is weird & stupid. I stopped caring about it early on and didn’t like any of the characters. Secondly, there is practically no exploration. Almost the entire game is a brutally linear affair, and I mean that quite literally as areas tend to shuffle you through a completely straight path. No exploring towns, no buying weapons from the weapon shop, no hidden dungeon areas with secret chests, etc. Things finally open up at one point, but not for 30 or 40 hours or so and even then, it’s a relatively small environment that is boring to travel through. The music, usually a dependable staple of the series, is terrible as well. I mean, they put words in the chocobo song. Good grief, why? There isn’t a single memorable track. Gameplay is terrible, as well. There’s not a whole lot of thinking involved and it almost plays itself. The summoning system is truly bizarre (I did a facepalm when I saw the Shiva motorcycle; seriously, WTF is that about?) and the worst the series has ever seen. I played this game for a good, long while, about 75% through, before giving up on it in disgust. To give you some idea of how bad this game is, I didn’t care much at all for the story of FF12, either, but I still had fun with it. FF13 never gave me a moment of enjoyment. The entire package is dull & uninspired and I’m sorry to have wasted money on it.

This is everything a video game is supposed to be. Gorgeous visuals, beautiful music, compelling story, immersive atmosphere, tight controls, & unique gameplay. If you enjoy ARPGs this is a must-play. The only knock against this game I can think of (and I’m reaching, here) is that the camera frequently shifts into “close up” view automatically. Most of the time I prefer to have it set to “distance” view as it makes navigation & combat easier, but certain things will shift it back into close up mode which means I’m constantly having to shift it back. A very minor gripe, though, as they at least have another option to switch to (something Kingdom Hearts, for example, would have benefited from). This is a long game & a deep game that is chock full of secrets. Best of all, there is no level grinding. Instead of gaining levels in a traditional way, you improve various stats by earning “praise” from completing tasks or performing certain actions. You get to choose what to upgrade and when, which is nice. In addition, there are different weapons to find, gold dust items that upgrade each weapon, and also special abilities that can be learned from dojos. On top of all these are the brush techniques, which can be used for combat, exploration, altering the environment, and triggering plot events. Combat often requires a combination of regular weapon attacks & brush techniques to win, especially some of the epic boss fights. And every fight, even with the lowliest enemy, gives you a score based on how fast you finished & how much damage you took and will give you a cash reward accordingly. And instead of farming certain enemies for certain rare item drops, every enemy can be forced to drop the same item which is used as a special currency to buy rare items from a special vendor. The HD version is one that is much deserved for a game that looked beautiful even on PS2. It looks stunning on PS3. The addition of trophies is a nice touch, too. If you’re looking for something fun, unique & engaging to play, I can’t recommend this one enough. Be prepared to sink some time into it, though!

I played the remastered version included with the recent 1.5 HD Remix release. I love Kingdom Hearts: FM, but I’ve found Re:CoM so bad that I felt the need to give it its own review. It is still applicable since it’s the same game from the PS2 release only with sharper graphics. Re:CoM is miserable and tedious. I had thought the switch to a card battling system meant that battles would be turn-based and strategic. Instead gameplay is half action RPG like the original KH and half card battler. It fails at both. Coming straight from KH you will feel the urge to attack like normal since it seems the same engine has been used for combat. The difference now, though, is that you have to pay attention to what card from your deck is active (displayed in the lower-left) when you hit the attack button as well as if the enemies are playing any cards (displayed lower-middle). Whoever’s card is higher carries out the attack, though everything still occurs in real time and with the same drawbacks found in KH’s combat system, like bad camera angles & hitting people with magic often being a pain. The key to success is choosing lots of “CP” when you level up, which allows you to carry more cards. That in turn, though, makes your deck more difficult to navigate through during battles. This means you will want to arrange your card deck in a way that keeps shuffling through it during battle to a minimum, but since you’re constantly getting new cards & more CP to expand your deck, that means you spend an inordinate amount of time editing your deck. Even then, you may have an excellent deck and plenty of cards to stop that attack the boss is about to launch, but you’re only going to have a second or two to sift through your cards and find it. You also have to worry about your inventory of special map cards, which are used in moving from room to room in the environment. The map cards have different properties that will be reflected in the rooms you create. It’s another thing that sounds intriguing but ends up being another level of tedium. The vast majority of map cards do nothing but present you with different layouts for grinding levels. And all but two of the worlds are the exact same areas you already went through during KH (Aladdin, Little Mermaid, etc), with the exact same music, so there’s no sense of exploration but repetition, instead. Many of the boss fights are even the same, like Guard Armor & Jafar Genie. The world areas are so redundant, in fact, that I skipped all of their text-only cutscenes after the first area b/c they add nothing to the overall plot of the game. Re: CoM’s only saving grace is its introduction of new characters and some pretty interesting, fully voice-acted story material. I originally went straight to KH2 from the first game back in the day and felt lost, so it was nice to finally get those gaps filled in. The problem is that you only get to see this new stuff between worlds, so to see it you need to slog through the 90% part of the game that ****. I beat Sora’s story & am now having a fierce internal debate as to whether or not to play through Riku’s. I want to see what happened with him, but holy crap, I really, really don’t want to play this terrible game anymore, especially if I can’t build a Sonic Blade deck and carve through bosses with my eyes closed. Ugh.

There are quite a lot of butthurt original X-Com fanbois on here slamming this game and giving it 0 to 3-score reviews, which is utterly ridiculous. It’s like bashing a modern platformer b/c it doesn’t force you to get through 100 levels on 3 lives. XC: EU isn’t perfect but it’s still a lot of fun and doesn’t deserve to be trashed. It may not be as complex as the original game but it is still very tactical and turn-based, despite many claims here to the contrary. Not sure how some reviewers can compare this to Call of Duty or Mass Effect. Idiotic. There are still difficult decisions to make, as in do you dig open another level of your base, buy another plane, buy another satellite, or research better weapons? Should you investigate that UFO you just shot down or wait b/c your medic & sniper are still recovering from wounds and you’d have to take too many rookies into battle? If you don’t plan & pay attention to what you’re doing, you will have to start all over. You also end up getting attached to your squad members even though they never speak and it’s hard to resist the urge to reload when they die (or when you get faced with a very inconvenient random event between missions one game hour before finishing research on that new armor). Some here are even complaining about the “cutscenes” during missions which are actually cinematic visuals of your characters doing what you tell them to do. Sorry, I never got tired of the camera zooming in on one of my guys rounding a corner & shotgunning a baddie at point blank range, or my sniper coolly raising up his rifle & blasting another before they could attack a vulnerable squad mate in the next turn. These are a very cool touch. Where I will knock the game is that battles do feel a bit skewed in the AI’s favor. Whenever you stumble upon the enemy, they always see you and essentially get a free movement turn to shuffle around. So if the last guy you move in a turn happens to be the one the aliens see, they immediately get a free move and then will move right away again since their movement turn just started, which most likely means they will swarm whichever squad member is closest. This makes most levels take a long time unless you reload after finding out where the baddies are, as you don’t want to move around the map too quickly. And the battles do end up becoming a bit tiresome by the time you reach the end of the game. No way around that after sinking hours & hours into the game. Overall, though, it’s an excellent game. Regardless of whether or not the original X-Com is better, XC: EU stands on its own as a great experience.

This is a fun, neatly-made little ARPG with combat that requires more than repeatedly hitting the attack button. Use **** is preferred. I picked it up during a Steam Sale and am very satisfied with the purchase. It’s a dungeon crawler (or in this case: climber) that manages to keep things fresh enough so that it doesn’t get boring. It also has some very entertaining boss fights. The graphics will remind you of a few old SNES games, but despite that are very sharp and hi-res. Environments & visual effects are also very nice and there are a few anime cutscenes thrown in for good measure. The weakest part is the story, which is a bit blah. Not as bad as other JRPGs I’ve played, but still has that overall unserious feel (e.g. demons are taking over the world and only the axe-wielding, 12 year old girl with the oven mitts can save us) as well as the sometimes spotty dialogue. Additionally, you can play through the game as three different characters, but your experience will be pretty much the same each time aside from different attack methods, so there isn’t much reason to. From a pure gaming standpoint, though, this one’s worth at least one playthrough.

I enjoyed this but not as much as Fallout 3. It’s fun, immersive, interesting story, and very well made overall but if you’ve played Fallout 3 it feels like more of the same so it’s missing that “new” factor. Also, I do not like how they nerfed the VATS system. Killing baddies with VATS in F3 never got old for me and I miss all the gratuitous slo-mo deaths. You have to treat New Vegas a lot more like a standard FPS since there is no perk to instantly refill your AP after making a kill and VATS is generally much less useful besides. Aside from those two points, though, excellent game.

This game is boring. It’s Grand Theft Auto in the Old West, which may sound intriguing until you actually play it for a while and discover that something as simple as moving your “vehicle” in reverse has become a tedious pain in the butt. Not to mention that riding a horse is flat out nowhere near as fun as driving a car and removes most of the things that make the GTA sandbox fun (different types of vehicles, stunt jumps, etc). Everything down to the gameplay structure & unnecessarily long cutscenes during missions is the same as GTA4. You unlock mission givers and have to travel to them from your save point, then to the mission objective, then back to the save point, over & over again. Except, as I mentioned, you’re on a horse instead of in a car. The graphics on PS3 are also disappointing, just like GTA4. There is allegedly some incredible story buried in this game, but good luck finding it. I played for about 20 hours and never encountered it (also a lot like GTA4). I completely lost interest in whatever was going on after doing my umpteenth random task for whats-her-name the cattle rancher. The sidequests are even worse. I can’t imagine how mind-numbing it would be to try and reach 100% completion on this game. If you have a serious hard-on for the Old West, horses, and moving slowly over mostly empty & bleak terrain, this game is your huckleberry. Otherwise, steer clear.

This game is very well made and better than the original in all respects, but it’s only fun up to a point. The story is basically non-existent (like most games in this genre) so once the loot collecting & pointing and clicking get tedious, you’ll struggle for a reason to continue. The graphics at least stay fresh and give every area its own identity, but even though you feel like you’re exploring different places, you’re always doing the exact same thing in those places, which is clicking to kill monsters. A whole lot of monsters. Over & over again. One huge plus is the devs opening the game up to the Steam Workshop. That has allowed people to make some incredible mods that add depth and fun to the game not included with the original version. That combined with the low price move this one up from a 7 to an 8 for me. I might force myself to sit through a couple more hours of clicking so I can click all the way through to the end, just to say I did, but I’ll certainly never go back and start a new game over. If these types of games are your cup of tea, though, you’ll like it a lot and should pick it up.

I would have rated this higher if the price was at least $10 cheaper. For me, $40 was worth it. I haven’t played KH since the original came out about 11 years ago, I’ve never played the Final Mix version, never played Chain of Memories of the other game included, and I have small kids who loved watching me play. Others may find the asking price a bit steep considering they mostly sharpened the graphics of a couple of games that were already released. Still, I enjoyed the Final Mix version of the first Kingdom Hearts a great deal. I like the tweaks to the gameplay, I like the changes to the synthesis shop and I like the new villains they added to each world that give you rare drops and require some strategy to beat. Farming for items to use in synthesis did not feel like an unbearable chore and I did things in this version that I never did in the original, like make the Ultima Weapon and beat Phantom. And the Sephiroth fight is still one of the most memorable boss fights ever, IMO. He’s tougher here than he was in FF7. That being said, I’m not a fan of Re: Chain of Memories. The gameplay is confusing and lame. I read it was card-based and thought that meant some sort of turn-based or strategic system, but you still have to run Sora around a 3-D plane as in the first game and hit the attack button, only now you also have to pay attention to what card in your deck is selected. So your basic keyblade attacks are now cards and have different values that have to be higher than the enemy’s attack card, and there are also tons of other cards you keep getting, which requires you to manage your card deck since you can only take a limited of cards into battle, etc. It’s tedious and makes you wish you were playing the first game. Still, some people will like it and it’s a whole extra game included with the package, so I won’t fault Square for it being there. Likewise with the third game, which isn’t actually a game but essentially a cutscene viewer of movies from the third game in the series. From what I hear, the third game was not very good and we’re not missing much by it not being included. I still haven’t watched the movies b/c at some point I plan of forcing myself to finish Chain of Memories, but hey, it’s an extra provided in the package. Bottom line is, if you were a fan of the first game and have never played Final Mix, you should get this. If you’re new to the series, you should probably rent, get a used copy or wait for a sale. KH:FM is not a perfect game by any means, but overall it is a lot of fun and something I think any ARPG fan can enjoy if they can get past the Disney characters.

First & most important: play this game with a gamepad. Do not try to play with a keyboard. You will make yourself miserable. That being said, this is what you want from a sequel: a game that improves upon the original in every way. I haven’t yet finished this one but I’m about halfway through and it has already exceeded my expectations. I’ll start with the only negative point I have right now: the Reverse Merman’s ball sack. He’s a character with the upper body of a fish, the lower body of a man, and testicles that hang down to his knees. I’m not a prude, but I think it’s needlessly disgusting in an otherwise lighthearted & fun game. If you have kids, you probably don’t want them seeing that. I’m an adult and I don’t want to see that. At least he is an optional character so you don’t have to unlock him, and if you unlock him you don’t have to use him. Aside from that blemish, this is an incredibly polished & enjoyable platformer for both casual gamers and hardcore, leaderboard chasers alike. The way they designed the point system is ingenious because while they added checkpoints into each level, if you don’t use them you will get a point boost and a challenge boost since your experience will be a lot like the first game where you start all over from the beginning of the level each time you die. If you don’t care about your score, though, you can take full advantage of the checkpoints. They make trying to collect the gold bars scattered throughout each level a lot more fun. Ditto for the secrets and unlockables, of which the first game had none. Speaking of unlockables, there are quite a bit in this game from extra characters to extra outfits and even more of the Atari-style, ultra retro challenges featured in the first game. Levels also routinely feature multiple paths, one of which will be more difficult (but could contain a treasure or secret) or will lead to a secret level exit. The graphics are much nicer than the original and are 3-D while still keeping the original’s retro, 2-D feel. It makes the game look much sharper and gives more life to the characters you can play as they have more than bare bones animations this time around (the cheeseburger guy is especially fun in this respect). Oh and if the optional checkpoint challenge isn’t enough, there is also a new “dance” button that causes your character to dance for a split second during the level. You get points each time you dance, but your guy can’t do anything else while dancing, so you’re taking a risk when you do it. Also, getting a perfect run with all the gold bars gets your guy put in a cannon at the end where you have to try and hit a bullseye for maximum bonus points. The addition of these factors plus the checkpoint boost will keep a lot of leaderboard fiends busy for quite a while, I’m sure. I got this for 50% off at recent Steam sale but I’d say it would also be worth full price, especially if you enjoy competing on the leaderboards. Can’t wait to finish it.

First & most important: play this game with a gamepad. Do not try to play with a keyboard. You will make yourself miserable. That being said, this is a solid platforming experience for any retro fan, especially for anyone who loves competing on leaderboards. It manages to stay consistently fun b/c while it’s difficult in some places, it never becomes impossible. Some complain about the difficulty but, and I can’t stress this enough: the game’s difficulty doesn’t come from crappy controls or poor design but rather from genuine challenge. The controls are very responsive and when you die it feels like it’s your fault, not the game’s fault. Also, it’s only a few dollars. Some people on here are cheap **** who are complaining about this game like it’s a $60, AAA title. It’s very well made and fun considering the price. If you’re a casual gamer and just want to get through it to say you did, you can set this to easy mode and breeze through the vast majority of the game. However, you are still going to struggle with the last 3 levels no matter what. 3-11 gave me an extremely hard time, in particular, but it’s been a long time since I got that much enjoyment out of finally beating any part ****. If you find most of the game too boring, you can increase the difficulty, which adds gold bars across each level that can be collected to boost your score. Collect them all and you get a special bonus level full of more gold bars, made up in an old-school, Atari Pitfall visual style. The more difficult levels will give masochist leaderboard nuts hours & hours of entertainment, trying to top everyone else’s scores. On the downside, the overall game is a bit short (only 3 worlds) and only the last 2 or 3 levels of a world will be any serious challenge. Also, I am not a leaderboard fiend, so there is no incentive for me to play the game on anything but easy mode. I could go back & torture myself by replaying levels & trying to collect the gold bars, but why would I? It won’t unlock anything or make any difference. The sequel that was released a few months ago addresses these types of issues. You’ll be happy with this one if you pick it up in a bundle or on sale like I did. For a few dollars I had a fun, challenging time spread out over a few days and you can’t ask for much more than that.

I played the original two Fallout games back in the day on PC, and I will always love Fallout 3. One of the greatest games I’ve ever played, hands-down. I’d say, however, that you need to understand what type **** you’re getting into. It’s a technical RPG, very open world, and will require lots & lots of exploring. This is not a simple first-person-shooter. Anyone expecting a FPS will end up quite frustrated, as will anyone who jumps into the game without planning how to level their character. Taking all that in mind, Fallout 3 was an immersive experience of gaming bliss I do not expect to be equaled any time soon. Possibly not ever. There was something about walking out of the vault into the unknown wasteland with nothing but a pistol, baseball bat & a few rounds of ammo in my pocket that was great fun. I also loved how, in the middle of traveling to one destination, I could easily find myself sidetracked for days at a time with random waypoint markers that led to other events & new quests. The design of the game is beautiful, as well. One of my favorite areas is looking across at the aircraft carrier at night, because you can see holes in the walls where light is shining through from the people living there, as well as gazing at other details like the wrecked part of the front ship or the giant trenches dug all around the Mall near the Washington Monument. Some of the environments do get a bit repetitive, but as long as you are leveling you have a reason to explore. And whatever area you’re in, whether a cave or abandoned warehouse, usually has some sort of story to go along with it that can be found by hacking into computers & reading some information. It’s not necessary but adds some depth & life to world you’re playing in. As I said, it makes for a very immersive experience. The difficulty also scales satisfactorily. In the beginning, you’ll be happy to get a junky machine pistol and survive a handful of raiders. Near the end (with proper builds), you’ll be able to decimate an entire band of raiders with VATS sniper rifle headshots, watching them explode in slo-mo as you do so. The only real disappointment I had was once I reached maxed level, but that was only because Fallout 3 makes leveling feel like quite an event, even playing a special musical theme to mark the occasion. However, it will take you a good while to hit max level and you’ll have done a great deal of exploration by then.

I picked this up very cheap during a Steam Sale and couldn’t believe how much fun it was. Following my bitter disappointment with the pile of garbage that is GTA4, I figured this genre was dead, but SR3 has found a way to breathe new life into it. The GTA series is still following the exact same cookie-cutter format from GTA3 way back on the PS2, but Saints Row has found a way to rebrand itself into something fresh. While GTA is still making you comb the city for one car you might like to hang on to and can only save it by precariously parking it in parallel spaces outside your apartment, Saints Row lets you fully customize just about any car you can find with colors, wheel spikes, nitro, etc, and can also have it delivered to you in the middle of the street with a simple cell phone call. Yes, this is a feature whose time has come since now you can actually use vehicles you like on missions instead of being scared to death your tank or FBI car will get blown up or fall off a bridge if you ever take it out for a ride. VTOL aircraft? Jet bike? With lasers? Yep, those are there, too. Controls are very tight, even for the aircraft, the on-foot combat is far superior to what is still, over a decade later, a clunky & broken system in GTA, and the PC version has full controller support. An actual reason to explore the city and complete side missions & challenges? Yes, the wealth of unlockable options available, from health upgrades to infinite ammo, to extra costumes for you & your followers, there are tons. It’s also refreshing that Saints Row refuses to take itself too seriously. Half **** game nowadays is listening to endless dialogue & cutscenes, usually with some political bunk the devs think is very profound. But I’d rather have fun and play a game instead of get propagandized to when I’m paying for the experience. Maybe that’s just me. If you felt the same way about GTA4 that I did but still enjoy these types of games, SR3 won’t steer you wrong. Go for it. If you’re one of the GTA zombie fanboys slavishly giving that tripe 10 out 10 reviews, then don’t worry, GTAV will be out soon enough to give you more of the same.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this gem ****, which I picked up during a Steam sale but would easily say it’s worth full price. I wasn’t too blown away with the story, but this is not the type where the story makes or breaks the experience. What story there is was okay, and I liked the narration effect. There are lots of weapons to choose from, fun challenges to take on, and power-ups to get. The soundtrack is also very good, which is another bonus. It may be a bit on the short side, but the asking price is right and they did not skimp in the quality department. If you like these types of games, you will have fun with this one. I used keyboard & mouse control with no issues, but it does have full controller support, which may work better depending on one’s preference.

Rockstar has been making the exact same game ever since GTA3 came out on PS2. Why are people acting like GTA4 is something different? It’s not, except for two things: it’s on a new generation of consoles and is actually worse than GTA3. First off: anyone praising the graphics is blind or has never played a video game before this one. Textures are muddled, colors are drab, environments are bland, all of which combines to make it difficult to see where you are and where you’re going. Second: they jacked up the driving physics of the game so now it feels like everything is moving underwater. Turns that used to be simple now send you sliding into walls, which gets frustrating given the large number of slow, crappy cars you seem to be forced to drive in this game. Third: the stale mission-structured gameplay is exactly the same as it was over 10 years ago. It’s so tedious now. You get a mission giver, you have to drive across town to start the mission, then you have to drive to your mission destination, then back to your house if you want to keep your car. Fail the mission and you have to start the commute again. They have even added in “features” like toll booths now, which create traffic on bridges that honestly make you feel like you are commuting to work because if you charge through them you get an automatic wanted rating. Oh, and did I mention something about keeping a car you want available? Well, in this game they decided to do away with garages for some reason. You know: the places you used to be able to store vehicles. Now your various pads with have one or two parallel parking spaces out in the middle of the AI-trafficked street and if you park a car there *perfectly* it will be saved. However, if it’s a big car or if the AI traffic knocks it slightly out of place, it will be gone when you reload. Possibly the most annoying new “feature” of this series is the dating mini-games. You can hang out with certain people to increase their affection toward you, which reaps you certain benefits, but then ALL of them CONSTANTLY call you to hang out, even if you’re in the middle of a mission getting chased by the cops, or in the middle of commuting to do your next mission, or commuting home from your last mission. Whatever. And if you tell them no, even if it’s your own cousin asking you to go bowling again, though you just went bowling with him two days ago, he will get upset and you’ll lose affection. You can’t tell them no. Also, Liberty City is big but incredibly empty. You will not be rewarded for exploring b/c there is simply not much out there. Instead of secret packages to collect, this time around you have to kill special pigeons, which are very frustrating to find even with the help ****. I got to about 20 or so before I asked myself why the hell I was doing it, because I wasn’t having any fun. Finally, the “story” I keep seeing so many positive reviews refer to is stupid & nonsensical. You’re an illegal alien who begins a career as a professional criminal as soon as you step off the boat. Not much different from any other GTA protagonist aside from not already being a US citizen, right? Except now you’re Borat. AMAZING! There IS NO story! You’re a criminal who makes friends with other criminals throughout the game and then commits criminal acts. *spoiler* Furthermore, while there may well be 20 hours’ worth of cutscenes (which tend to go on forever) & dialogue (which also never ends during your mission commutes with NPCs), it seems like it was all written by a 10-year old boy. **** & fart jokes, characters needlessly dropping f-bombs twice a sentence to be “edgy” (I guess), and all-around lame humor in general that makes you roll your eyes and want to skip through every cutscene you come across. Unless you are a 10-year old boy, in which case I guess you’d be in heaven. Maybe that’s the targeted demographic now? But Rockstar will keep making the same game as long as sheep keep buying it. Anyone who wants to see what an improvement in this genre looks like, I’d direct you toward Saints Row the Third. Not the best game ever, but one that is actually, you know, “fun” to play. Something Rockstar left out of GTA4.