deuteros

This game has been referred to as a "work of art" by many, and I don't disagree at all with this. The setting is incredibly imaginative, the (outdoor) graphics are gorgeous, the plot is semi-brave, mostly fleshed-out and very suspenseful. I adored the plot, I adored Elizabeth, and I adored the sky city of Columbia. So why do I have no choice but to give this a highly negative review...? The game is an interactive movie more than it is, well, a game. Every single-player campaign and story released today cannot truly qualify as a game. Everybody who picked up this game would have been grossly unimpressed by the shoddy and thin "core" gameplay elements here, had this game been released in the era of real games (80's to the 00's). Given the outstanding reviews, I expected either a retro game experience or a revolutionary one, and got something that would probably be best described as a diluted version of Call of Duty's gameplay. Now, don't bite my head off for that one. It's clear that all FPS games today borrow from the core formula used in "modern warfare"-type shooters, like the ability to carry only 2 guns, the recoil physics, the *very* specific ammo types, the realistic iron-sights, cover-and-heal mechanics, 'hit' indication on your reticule, checkpoint saves, etc. etc. Newer gamers take these for granted they are really just annoying little copy-cat additions all the latest FPS games have. The point is, the actual gameplay borrows from a modern shooter and yet feels as clunky and unsatisfying as a previous-generation shooter, failing entirely to be either one. The guns are *extremely* unimaginative and generic (shotgun, burst-gun, sniper rifle, non-sniper rifle...), and some of them are completely useless. This is a highly redundant and annoying system. For example, since you lack alternate firing modes, you literally have to switch to a burst-gun and use exclusive burst-gun ammo instead of using an SMG and switching it to burst fire, saving you one ammo type to collect. There are plasmids in this game, now relabeled as "vigors" for some reason. You get several types, each with a very amusing short tutorial video, silent-film style. Unfortunately, though useful and somewhat creative, they are often ineffective and expensive to use. Item collection is erratic as hell. You will find 'vigor ammo' ("salts") all over non-combat scenes but extremely sparsely placed over areas of prolonged combat. For this reason, you usually find yourself maxing out your relatively small "salts gauge" and unable to collect additional salts for half the game, while being unable to use any vigors for the other half of the game because you have no salts left! The same thing applies to ammo, which is made even worse because you can hold very little ammo of any type, and there are far too many types in the game due to the inflated number of generic guns available. Thankfully, however, a very pleasant-looking NPC supplies you with a bit of health, salts and ammo during battle to compensate for the awful item placement. She will give it to you in the nick of time, but if you run out again, you're screwed you have to wait a very long time to get anything else from her. It works to balance out the poor level design, but it is just a patch on an ugly gameplay wort. For a game with such an enormous graphics budget, some of the characters look very cartoonish while others look human. There are also *very* few face models in this game. Columbia is populated almost entirely with Generic Male NPC #1 and Generic Female NPC #1. I understand the need for face model recycling, but when you have three clones of the same woman in front of you with different voices, it gets ridiculous. There are also many invisible walls, which become apparent when you try to shoot around obstacles or jump on crates. And for the love of The Prophet, don't look at background details too closely! The bag of apples is literally a JPEG of a pile of apples stretched over a bag and what's worse, the designers put full-3D apples on top of them for the player to collect. The graphics are *very* far from being fleshed-out in any way here. The best weapon is a melee hand-held slicing thingy, kind of like the painkiller (if you can even remember that game...) You use it to bash enemies' heads in, and you can perform overly gruesome finishing moves with it. There is *no* reason to use these moves, unless you like seeing heads explode, and the little indicator that tells you when to activate them is not easy to find in a pinch. Also, every time you melee, the camera gets fixed in the attacking direction, meaning if you melee multiple times, your character is thrown between enemies and you're essentially just button mashing at that point, because you can't see what's going on. The number of enemy types is also slim and uninteresting. In short, play this game for the story. It's a pretty good one, but if you were expecting a fun game, look elsewhere!!

Crysis was the subject of seemingly unending hype a few years ago, and the cover art was plastered in every game store everywhere. Expecting a mediocre run-and-gun FPS like Battlefield: Call of Honor, I waited for the price to drop... and it only took 4 years! For starters, the game wouldn't run because of incompatibility with Windows 8. This is apparently a copy protection issue but I (eventually) found a workaround. The game starts out as a Korean killing simulator with generic-as-hell weapons such as the "precision rifle" and the "shotgun". Some weapons have different firing modes and you can swap attachments for guns (e.g. scopes, silencers) after you take them off guns you find. Fortunately, the game spices things up with a "nano suit", which is a very poorly-designed super-duper-ninja suit in that it only has enough battery to power one 'ability' at a time, and only for a very short duration. Luckily, it charges quickly as well, so the skilled player must switch modes and find cover frequently to survive. The game at first looks like a non-linear exploration type game like Far Cry (even has a huge Jungle map to boot) but it becomes clear that you get very few optional objectives, and they're almost always along the way to your primary objective. The driving mechanics are a bit odd and vehicles generally have fewer hit points than I expected from playing the Battlefield series. On a number of occasions, hitting a small obstacle at low speed made my jeeps and trucks explode like a nuclear bomb on wheels. The choice of vehicles is limited and generic but they all have nitro boosters for some reason. They are not nearly as fun to drive like in other FPS games like Arma or, of course, Battlefield because they're just not flexible enough. The worst part of this entire game, though, is the fact that every scene absolutely-positively-and-with-no-argument MUST be completed in the precise way the level designers made it. For example, new paths open only after going to specific dead ends or killing a certain number of enemies. There are certain parts of the game in which you have absolutely no indication of where to go, making the latter even worse. If you have any intuition as a gamer, scrap it. The things a gamer expects to work to get to the next passage never do, and often cause you to die. And if you die after the direction is revealed, after loading you STILL have to go back to those dead ends and wait for the same scripted events to happen for the path to be open. The worst was when you knew which parts of the final boss to target and destroyed them before the scripted dialogue -- only to have them regenerate for you to destroy again when the scripted event is over. In short, this game is overly scripted and you get virtually no choice. During "team combat" scenes, it's clear that only some enemies are supposed to be killed by you, and the rest by the AI. In other cases, enemies spawn infinitely, making most of the game an exercise in running past enemies or cloaking while they're shooting at you (which hilariously confuses them.) The graphics are pretty nice (especially later on) but the engine is horrendously inefficient, and you will lose frames massively despite this game being 4 years old already, even on medium settings. After spending most of the time dying for FOOLISHLY playing as though you had any freedom, and not did exactly what the level designers want, the game is actually pretty short. It's a shame, too, since they obviously worked very hard on designing the graphics for the later stages. There's absolutely no incentive to explore, except to get a bit of ammo -- and in many missions you lose the previous guns you had worked so hard to find only to start with a pistol. Overall, I'd give this game a 3/5 because it's obviously more creative and interesting than the same crappy recycled Call of Honor campaigns we've suffered through for half a decade, but at the same time, you have to do a lot of boring and frustrating experimentation to see how particular parts are SUPPOSED to be finished, not how they COULD HAVE been finished had the level designers not been so narrow-minded.

With so many modes and diverse rewards to uncover in [Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing], it almost feels like 2.5 games in one package. Plus, the fact that the online component works so incredibly, and we still can

If Jazz Jackrabbit had a tumor, the extracted and dissected lump would look a bit like this game. It basically takes one or two elements of the JJ franchise, grinds them up and spits them back at anybody who grew up with it. Jazz is now a cynical, retired bum who is working for the military now for some reason. All of the charm and lighthearted fun of JJ was buried in a desert somewhere in New Mexico after being burned to ashes. WTF happened, Jazz? Did you get fixed? Honestly, I have no idea who this game is supposed to appeal to, since the only thing this game accomplished was to turn JJ into a generic action platform hero, a ripoff duke nukem in the badly aged body of a childhood hero. The level design is horrendous and cheap and the game just seems to drag on forever. If I could choose between JJ dying with a dignified funeral or surviving to become this new sack of **** character, I'd poison his carrots myself. What an insult.

I bought this game on sale, since I remembered the original game from a few years back. It came bundled with Deus Ex so I expected a great time. Unfortunately I can't say much has changed since the first Thief. The enemy AI is laughable and the hit detection isn't much better. You get a choice of different arrows and items, but their functions often overlap -- and the "moss arrow" was probably the worst idea of them all. Guards and citizens spawn infinitely in city stages, making it great fun to knock them out or outright murder them (it doesn't seem to make a difference) just out of boredom. As you'd expect **** called "Thief", every quest is a fetch quest, but some of them are just gratuitous, making you go to far away parts of town and back just to speak to someone. The level design is completely linear, meaning unlike in an RPG, you can't complete other quests along the way -- you're stuck to your objectives. Luckily, they're clearly and briefly stated, as are the important notes you pick up along the way. Lockpicking in this game is a monotonous and pointless task, that involves searching for the 'right spot' and clicking. Rinse and repeat several times for the "gold" locks. The voiceovers, aside from the very husky and manly Garrett, are plainly hideous. This is the company that brought you Deus Ex and Tomb Raider -- and this was the third game in the series! Eidos was not some Indie developer without a budget. I played through it just to get my money's worth, and fortunately there was some fun to be had, and I especially liked the cinematic style, though the non-cartoon cutscenes are horribly compressed and look even more dated than the in-game graphics. Finding your way around is a chore, since your position is not indicated on the maps you steal, and the maps are nearly useless, one of them I recall showing two rooms adjacent as if they were on the same floor when they were on different floors completely. It should also be noted that the graphics are more dated than I originally expected, and all available resolutions are 4:3. The game is also incredibly buggy; I fell through the wall to my death several times, just for turning the camera the wrong way. The whole game is excruciating if you want to play as a legitimate thief, i.e., sneaking and stealing. The wait is just not worth it, and it's more fun to kill stupid AI drones than it is to wait around, pretending there's any feasibility at all built in. The loading screens are horrendous, even on a modern computer -- and you're kicked out of the application temporarily every time you load because of the resolution change (unless you have a 4:3 monitor, which nobody does anymore.) This makes fetch-quests across town even more torturous. I may just be unobservant, but I spent most of the time (tens of hours) in this game just searching for that one piece of loot that I missed -- a real pain since it's not always clear what you can steal and what you can't, since the only indication is a sparkling animation that's not always present and that's not always easy to see, on items that are identical to non-stealable ones. I was masochistic enough to play on "expert" difficulty, which simply means you need to steal more, because the enemy AI doesn't improve and everyone is still extremely easy to kill. There is absolutely NO REASON for the rating to be this high, as it is with a lot of nostalgia titles, even after they become stale and outdated.

I've been a DMC fan since Dante's Awakening on the PS2, and I suffered through DMC4's Nero and complete BS backtracking like everyone else. This "reboot" features elements from both while at the same time providing something new. Most of the downvote bombs are from DMC fanboys who can't bear to see their precious setting and characters under a new developer, especially not a Western one. They complain about nitpicky details that no real gamer would ever give a **** about, like the color of the main character's hair. This is seriously a contentious issue with them, that you have to play though the game to get Dante's hair to be white. The combat system is similar, but with some changes; fanboys accuse it of being "dumbed down" -- it's actually just more efficient and I will explain it. What they did was remove the lock-on feature and automate it based on the Dante's direction on the screen. It makes the combat more fluid, you can effectively attack large numbers of enemies at once, and you don't have to constantly click and press the lock-on button for every enemy if you want to use the effective moves. In essence, it's much easier to pay attention to all of the enemies when your camera and your weapons aren't trained on one, which would force you to toggle between them. On the other hand, you do often instead have to hold one of the triggers to switch between angelic/demonic weapons. I think it's a question of taste at that point, since the alternative would be to toggle between them, making it cumbersome to resume using the Rebellion/Guns. Like many other action games, you now dodge with the R and L instead of the jump button. This allows you to dodge attacks from non-locked on enemies with ease, and you never accidentally jump away from an enemy (instead of rolling away). Complaining that this system is "dumbed down" is like saying Windows 7 is a dumbed down version of Windows 8 because you have to click fewer times to get the same things done. Efficiency isn't evil. The game is also "more accessible" in that the DEFAULT difficulty levels are easier than the DEFAULT difficulty levels of previous titles. "Hardcore" gamers and masochists are very welcome to play the one-hit-and-you-die difficulties, but even at Son of Sparda the difficulty is massively cranked up, with more combat scenes added. The Ninja Theory team isn't stupid -- and Capcom held their hand the entire way. It's extremely easy to make a game harder -- just take more damage and place more enemies -- so there's no reason for people to assume that because it's a different developer they weren't capable of doing it. As for the story, it has elements of the original DMC games but with a contemporary twist. The story is essentially 'They Live' with a visit to Fox News and the Slurm factory, which is as ridiculous and over-the-top as any other DMC title, except it's a little more coherent. I have never heard a DMC player tell me honestly that they ever liked, or cared about, the storyline of DMC. DMC3 centered around some tower, a concept clearly just pulled out of someone's ass, and DMC4 was about a powerful religious leader who turned out to be -- hold onto your shorts -- EVIL, and a 20-something half-demon kid who just didn't give a **** until maddam **** gets involved. In short, the stories are equally compelling or non-compelling. I even heard complaints about fan service in this game, because of Kat's (the female foil's) short shorts and constant bending over. Oh really? And what about DMC3's Lady? She had a practically invisible skirt. And Trish? She was as **** as always. And DMC4? What about Nero's love interest with the massive bazookas? And the new Lady's ass and cleavage in the cutscenes? The reboot is RIDICULOUSLY tame in the fan service department compared to those games. It's a Japanese TRADITION nowadays to have some level of fan service, and I'd say Ninja Theory largely missed the boat on that opportunity by providing a love interest with plausible proportions. And who cares in the end? Hot women in games are like ducks in a pond. Anyone who complains about fan service is a ****. The one major complaint I DO have about the reboot is the platforming elements and the number of cutscenes. There are way too many platforming stages, especially near the end. HOWEVER, you can cut much of the platforming if you know where you're going, and higher difficulties add more combat scenes to break it up. The remaining platforming is a speed trial for which you're rewarded with a completion time bonus. You also don't have to collect all the orbs more than once! Finally I'd like to note that, aside from DMC4, this is the ONLY DECENT PC PORT OF A CONSOLE ACTION GAME IN EXISTENCE. PC gamers don't have Bayonetta or Ninja Gaiden, etc. -- just DMC4 and this reboot. The porting is outstanding, and in sharp contrast to the disaster of DMC3: Special Edition. PS3 gamers can compare this to other games, we can't. This is the best so far.