darkmana

In order to give a non-biased review, a friend and I did a full D2 playthrough before buying D3, and I honestly don't see why everyone is so butthurt. D2 was a great game, one of my all time favorite and although D3 doesn't quite live up to that legend, it's still a pretty damn good game. The gameplay is solid, the physics on the enemies, the variety of ways each one dies and the "impact" of each attack really makes the combat fun and engaging. As far as server issues go, as a late buyer I've managed to avoid all the connection errors and lag that many pre-order players experienced. I've currently half way through nightmare, and the game has had no bugs, connection issues or other problems of that sort. Many welcome changes have been added to make the game less cumbersome. Many of you have referred to this as "dumbed down", but I for one am glad to see that the game is more user-friendly. Do i miss being able to spend points on my character to make them unique? No not really, because any player who is making a serious build will generally get the str and dex required for their gear and then dump the rest into vitality anyways. As far as skills go, being able to through points into each skill is nice, it's also quite fun to have access to every build without having to commit the entire character to one or another. The runes that modify the skills add a great amount of depth, allowing you to customize your skills to suit your playstyle. Obviously however, I do have some complaints about the game. First of which, Normal mode is way too easy. I know inferno mode makes up for this (though it has issues as well), I felt like Normal mode was "here casual players, this is the storyline: have fun". It was so easy that I got a touch bored as I one shot entire groups of mobs with ease, never losing any health. Even Diablo himself was a pushover. Nerfs to certain classes and builds is also pretty annoying. Having built your character into a behemoth of destruction, only to have the core of your build nerfed into the ground is a real fun killer. The games storyline (outside of the awesome cutscenes) is rather bland, though I honestly wasn't too engaged in the D2 storyline either. Overall I think the game was well worth my money, and anyone giving this game anything under a 6 really had their hopes set too high. The game had bugs on release and some large nerfs went by, but any gamer worth a damn knows that a game of this scale is going to have some issues.

Really enjoying this game so far, I love the changes they've made throughout this series. Though I haven't played the previous WO games, I really enjoy the battle system where I can switch constantly unleashing hell. Many of the things that bothered me about these games, such as archers/rifleman being broken as hell, have been fixed and the new way they've handled weapons (you can fuse your old ones into your new ones) makes it so you don't just toss away the weapon you worked so hard to upgrade. Overall I gave the game a 9 (more an 8.5), because although the game is a blast it does have some things that bring it down. First of all would be that some of the enemy officers can do an obscene amount of damage with their musou attacks, often killing your character during it's duration as you're stun-locked the whole time. The other being what other people generally gripe about is that although they have refined many aspects of the game, it still feels very much like every other game in the series, which means if you have recently played other games of the genre, you may lose interest in this game rather quickly.

So to start off, this game is amazing. It took me a very long time (about 3 months after i bought it) to get into Demon's Souls but once I got into it I REALLY got into it. There were a few flaws though that made me dislike the game, and there is where Dark Souls comes in. Dark Souls takes the issues that I had with Demon's Souls (the tutorial, general early-game flow, magic OP as balls, difficulty gaining human form early on) is all fixed in Dark Souls. The gameplay is solid and refined since Demon's Souls. The boss fights are a lot of fun and generally less frustrating due to it being more straightforward as to how to defeat them. The bonfires mean that you generally aren't set as far back when you die and the covenants add a whole new level of additional depth to the game (such as revenge invasions, killing invaders of the forest and so on). But the one reason this game is not getting anywhere above an 8 is: the online. In Demon's Souls if you wanted to play with a friend all you had to do was put down a mark and then tell them where it is. In Dark Souls since the players are divided up into smaller servers it is near impossible to play with someone you know. The other issue that comes with this smaller servers is that sometimes you just end up on a near empty server. This can lead to no one responding to your summon sign or not being able to find anyone to summon for help. This can become very frustrating when you want to help people with a boss, or want help on one yourself. Overall the game is great, I really enjoy how the game all flows together (back to the Firelink Shrine) so it really feels like everything is linked. Some people may complain about random things killing them, but anyone who played Demon's Souls will know most of the tricks. Not to mention, if you know everything the game is going to try and kill you with, where's the fun in that? It's hilarious when I open a chest and it turns into a mimic that devours me XD. A must have for any hardcore gamer!

Great combat, millions of combination for your teams and some real variety in gameplay this game pretty much consumed my gamecube. Sure there were other games such as zelda and such but I beat this game 10 times to unlock the hidden characters. The storyline was garbage but the gameplay made up for it so well that it really didn't matter. Not only did it have some fun co-op but it have 4 player split screen versus which amused my friends and I for hours on end. If you ever find this in the used bin, pick it up, you won't regret it.

I was actually really hyped for this game and although it didn't disappoint I got bored of it pretty quickly. The lack of local multiplayer was a big hit for me since inviting my friends over to smash the crap out of each others cars would have been a blast but instead they would have to fork out $70 just to play with me. What did game did right though was that you do feel really fast and when you hit someone it's really satisfying. Playing as a cop or racer is fun, though the cop's generally seem to have the edge. I just wish there was a bit more depth to the game but i guess that's asking a but much of a racing game.

With GTA i generally just screwed around, ran people over and really didn't play the game's storyline at all and thus got bored very fast. With RDR however the storyline enticed me time and time again to stop exploring and pushing hookers down stairs to continue the storyline. The ability to slow down time and blow our a man's knee-caps or shoot a man in 10 different places before he hits the ground was all kinds of fun. The ending to this game be beautiful, heart warming and really enjoyable to play. The biggest issue I have with the game though is that after i beat it I lost all interest in playing it. They do allow you to keep going of course, but only the side quests remain and i beat the bulk of those as i went.

Though Master quest really didn't change all that much from the original, what did change was often made the game more challenging and entertaining. The biggest thing for this game though is the fact that it's on the gamecube. I really never liked the shape and feel like the n64 controller and also traded in the system and all my games for it (horrible idea!) quite a few years back so being able to pop it in and play it so many years later is really refreshing. I would give this a 10, but even this game isn't perfect.