llamayarmybar

I'm not sure if their is a game on this planet as infamous as Dark Souls, that actually makes you feel as though you've cheated throughout its entirety as soon as the ending credits begin to roll. I always considered myself a casual player in regards to the series, having mainly spent several hundreds of hours playing through multiple builds, with different weapons, different armor combinations and different approaches to more or less the same thing, over and over again. However, when I did finally finish it, I felt as if I had stumbled upon a glitch. Early on I had come into possession of the "Black Knight Halberd," a weapon that has a certain random number generator factor in terms of how often it drops in the game. Most people would prefer not to use this weapon, or it typically doesn't spawn often enough, whichever the reason, I took it all the way to the end. I spent all my souls and items to upgrade it as high as it could go, I wore armor that was far too heavy, but provided all the protection I'd ever need, I found a "Stone armor" shield and used that for the majority of major battles. I believe all I ever upgraded was "Strength" statistics in regards to my own character. I felt impervious, really the only times I didn't were sections of the game that purposefully slow you down, put you in terrible positions, or squares you off against two bosses at the same time. Otherwise, I felt like my victories were undeserved and while this was going on, I also felt as though the game was missing something. Huge vantage points showed a massive world built for giants! Enormous structures lay about almost everywhere, but it was so spread out that the rest of the world seemed almost dead, almost silent. Many might argue that it created a more foreboding atmosphere, but I would argue that developers who designed such large open spaces, had neglected to place anything in them. While I don't believe Dark Souls is a bad game, I believe it is an acquired taste in the genre, to be fair their isn't much out there like it, but it lacks a kind of polish, it lacks a dimension of real proper design. I admit, I'm am just a casual fan, but even after spending hundreds of hours playing, even as the hollowed figure rose up from his imprisonment, after those credits had rolled for the first time, after everything had been defeated, even I had to set the controller down and walk away. Dark Souls possesses a kind of charm, that we don't see in many things anymore, and I do believe it is special, but it seems a shame that its uniqueness doesn't quite cover up its many glaring flaws. I think to this day it was one of the few games that had me utterly transfixed on its own pointlessness by the end of it.

Years ago I played Metro 2033, and in earnest I never finished it. It is now 2017, so i guess I've run out of excuses to not finish it. All in all, I still might not finish it at the end of the day, which is ironic considering I played through Last Light and moderately enjoyed it. Their is something missing from these games that's difficult to point out, almost as though their is a combination of elements that should work in conjunction with each other, but mostly don't. First off is the actual visuals, which are no doubt still very good looking to this day, even when compared to the Redux's redone graphical fidelity, I would say the original has a certain style to it that the Redux lacks. Sound is up next and wouldn't you know it? The game sounds pretty great, lots of underground echoes and odd noises, the sounds of monsters roaring or growling all around you, its all really well done. I did run into some glitches from time to time, but I think that varies from setup to setup. I found it used sound very well, but what was understated was the music. Often times I couldn't even tell if their was music playing and it didn't always fit the scene or the mood or the tone. Kind of turned out sounding generic as far as music goes. Last Light I'm aware has more of an action music tone, which is fine, but I couldn't pick out anything memorable from either game music-wise. Now the game play can be split between stealth, and full on firefights. Most players on normal difficulty can actually get through most firefights with a bit of good aim and just getting the jump on the unfortunately non-challenging artificial intelligence most enemies have. Which isn't really a surprise, in most situations they just overwhelm you with firepower or numbers, not actual tactics. They don't use tactics to fight you, not even the monsters use much in the way of strategy to kill you. The humans fights are probably the best fights in the game because you know at least they will drop ammo for your guns and are terribly stupid. The monsters on the other hand, do stupid amounts of damage to the player to make up for how poor their AI is. This presents an issue when playing with any kind of "stealth." Sure its totally feasible to get through some sections using throwing knives, but its incredibly boring and I'm not sure where the incentive is to do so. Some areas are even designed for a stealth sorta "route," but it just doesn't work when the AI acts like a hive-mind should they hear you, instantly knowing where you are and where to start shooting. I'm not even sure if the monster fights are worth skipping since you'll find the level design in most areas somewhat perplexing and frustrating to navigate. Its almost as though they knew how linear the game was when they were developing it and decided to throw in a lot of confusing segments to create more of a challenge. In all honesty, this makes navigating more stressful than necessary, especially when you're getting caught on scenery during a tense fight with a couple of mutated beasts. Take for instance an early segment that was very confusing to get through for a first time player, the bridge covered with ****. This level alone is incredibly frustrating due to the fact that if one of the enemies across the bridge sights you, then you'll end up fighting all of them from one side. Of course the main issue I had was the fact that it was incredibly confusing as to where to go. You come up the tunnel, pass the bridge, go down the stairs, go to other side of another bridge, go through a door, go down the stairs, find another passage and then from memory I believe that's the end of that level. So how long did it take to get through this very linear area? A whole hour. A whole hour of attempting stealth kills, sneaking past enemies, and in the end it was easier to just plow through and kill every enemy in the area. Metro 2033 is very good at artificially wasting your time, some levels are very short, but they place certain enemies, or make paths difficult to get through on purpose it would seem, to elongate game play time. I can't really comment on the story since videogames are not books and vice versa. I'm sure the plot is fine, but I wasn't drawn in by anything in particular. I never really cared about coming the stories conclusion, I didn't really care about the plight of your station, nor did I have much concern for characters I didn't know dying here or there throughout. Metro 2033 remains a poor mans first person shooter, with lovely visuals, excellent atmosphere, sound and some creepy monster designs, but those elements aside, its presentation is weak, and it comes of as a bit of an amateur effort. Metro 2033 is solid, but struggles to set itself apart from more memorable games like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series which though flawed are much better games.

Combat is brisk, fluid, gun play and gameplay overall is highly entertaining, fresh concepts with modifiable weapons help to further player customization. Level design is decent, but you will essentially see many of the same large sprawling maps over and over again as you revisit them to complete both story or optional quests. Their isn't much incentive to actually do side-quests and the singleplayer story is criminally short due to this. The loot system is certainly interesting, but the game is far too easy even on regular difficulties to actual make use of revisiting locations, chests and fighting different combinations of enemies just to find a few gems to alter a few of your favorite weapons. The music is decent, very generic for the most part, the sound effects are great, very visceral and hilarious. The voice acting is also pretty decent. The writing however, is fairly poor, featuring a load of what should or could be funny quip's from Wang, but end up sounding forced or sometimes obnoxious. Surely Wang isn't the epitome of "Duke Nukem," not entirely anyway. Plot is pretty dull, something about rescuing a girls soul, which is trapped inside of Wang for the majority of the game. These two character interactions could've been more fun and its slightly frustrating that they couldn't really write or create good chemistry between them. After playing through the campaign, I didn't really have any desire to go back through it as the game is quite repetitive once you've seen most of the enemies and handled most of the guns. Graphically, the environments look stunning, often eye-catching-ly beautiful, but both character model designs and enemies are mediocre looking. The actual gun designs are fantastic though, definitely a highlight. I recall playing the original game and losing interest very quickly, but I think this game pretty much improves upon all the weaknesses found in the prequel.

I haven't actually played Far Cry 2 beyond the first 40 minutes, Far Cry 3 was kind of boring from the first hour on and I haven't been interested enough to even try Far Cry 4 yet, with that all said, I've actually been enjoying Far Cry Primal quite a bit since I picked it up a few weeks ago. So far, the aesthetic, the world, the gameplay and the B.C. early Homosapien theme to the whole thing have really hooked me in. I'm finding that just exploring, fighting off wild beasts, hunting, gathering, and in general just playing the GAME has been highly rewarding. One of the few caveats would be that the crafting system works like a magical fence that keeps the player from actually accessing different components or utilities early on, but I don't find it particularly tedious. This is mostly because they've done a good job with the setting in which the game takes place, it's very arcade-like for a first person shooter obviously, and the more I play it the more it reminds me of the original Far Cry, without the majority of that game's often balance breaking issues or Artificial intelligence blunders. Sure, you can say that it's cheap, lazy and genuinely uncreative of the developers to basically recycle the same map from another Far Cry game, but I think of Primal as more of modification or conversion and on paper it may have sounded silly, but in action it works quite well. Far Cry Primal isn't realistic, you tame beasts with the press of a button, you use a fairly sophisticated bow for the late Mesolithic era, and it does leave you wanting a little bit more to play around with as far as weapons go, but for lack of a better word, this "primitive" scope that you work with makes the game very engrossing. I often find myself running, crawling, and trekking across different parts of the map. The fast travel is fine, since you have frequent campfires you can utilize as well. It's not a simulation to begin with so having to travel this whole map on foot from point A to B and back would get fairly tedious. I thought the speech specialists did a wonderful job of bringing the world to life, and making it highly enjoyable to hear dialogue from that time and place. I feel somewhat biased with this game, this is a portion of human history that I find very interesting. Africa with guns is marginally less interesting at the end of the day and Far Cry Primal isn't the best game ever made, but it's very enjoyable for what it is and the experience it seeks to give the player.

Parasite Eve, a tedious, early quasi-three-dimensional cinematic, action-rpg from what some might say was the year that the original Playstation peaked and its time was coming to an end. So why so many positive reviews one might wonder. Nostalgia? "John Carpenter's Thing" fans? Or are their actually people that found a shallow roleplaying game with a few bizarre animated CGI clips enjoyable? Whatever the reasons are, you can bet that rose tinted glasses are worn by most people giving this game such high praise. First off, the plot is dull science fiction nonsense. It comes off like a bad B horror film with some elements of science fiction thrown in to keep people preoccupied with how awful everything else is. The dialogue is a total joke, to the point where I wasn't sure if I was reading text that was so poorly translated that it just came off as terrible, or if the Japanese actually wrote lines like that. Like the kind that sound utterly ridiculous. I understand this was "loosely" and "based" on a real book about a really far fetched, as well as impossible scientific theory based around mitochondria in human cells. However, it just doesn't translate well here. Gameplay is centered around turn based combat and set pieces. The kind of early ugly stilted level design or "set pieces," that look like background tapestry, or a garbage covered matte painting. The kind of set pieces that are so ghastly to look at that you forget that the developers have also added actual ITEMS that you have to find throughout them, items that you can easily miss because of how awful everything looks on screen. Making annoyance number two on the list of things this game gets wrong- item hunting. You can literally go one chapter, find say four new guns, then get to the next chapter and find one gun that's better than all of those guns, but the thing is, you didn't know that before you upgraded one of those other four guns. That's because the game expects you to be a total freaking genius and be able to tell the future at the same time. The inventory system is woeful. Twenty slots? Twenty slots fills up fast when your "Parasite Eve" magic skills don't do jack diddly and you have to rely on bottles of "Medicine 1" and "Medicine 2" or how about the infamous "Medicine 3?" The inventory system is one that you'll constantly be managing, not because you have to worry about ammo or healing items, but because you will constantly run out of room picking up ten new items that you'll never use ever ever. Did I mention the combat yet? Oh boy. So you can wait, then shoot, then you wait again, but after awhile, its okay- cause you can shoot again. Riveting stuff obviously. I don't really see the point of running around in such a muddy looking pre-rendered room with what are essentially revolting "3D" objects bumping into each other. Its arguably unnecessary and any classic turn based system would've sufficed, but that's just my opinion. The stilted animations already looked dated in 1998, so you can imagine what they look like now. Where I seem to have the least problems with Parasite Eve however, is the soundtrack. The soundtrack is great, even though ninety percent of it is basically reused in every chapter, but whatever, its really good. Its very low-key, its got a good ambient sort of electronica sound to it, its never overbearing, or obnoxious, and though some of the loops are super short, its very difficult to find it actually repetitive. It typically fits the mood they were going for. The sound effects are pretty minimal however, you'll hear the main character's lady shoes clopping all over the place. That's what she gets for wearing high heels everywhere she goes I guess. Gun shots sounded muted and cartoonish, but this was the Playstation 1 we're talking about. The one thing that really drives me nuts and I think has a great deal to do with WHY people have such a hard on for this game, is the cutscenes. The cutscenes are very well directed, they are absolutely great looking and probably drove a lot of people to buying Parasite Eve to begin with. However, that isn't what I remember the game for, sure I recall the first time I saw the rat transformation, the melting crowd, the museum boss fight, and those were all memorable. No the one thing I remember the most however was how boring the game was, it was tedious, the upgrade system still doesn't really make sense to me, the plot was blah, the characters were uninteresting and to top it all off, the game looked terrible for 1998. Trust me, Square could've made a much better looking game. Final Fantasy VIII came out in 1999 and that looks loads better than Parasite Eve, so something tells me that they had a smaller budget for this project. Overrall, its an average rpg with a few memorable moments, but the praise this game gets is unjust considering all of its flaws.

Its funny how a sequel can really change your mind about a first installment. In this case for instance, it can remind you of how much more compelling a relatively sleeper hit like the first Dead Space actually was. It featured a unique, though not particularly original, eerie spaceship to explore, an excellent lighting engine and some pretty good monster designs, as well as a whole host of "mining" tools you could use to defend yourself from the ghastly things on board the Ishimura. A lot of it seemed practical, barring the "kinesis" and "stasis" modules. A lot of the weaponry seemed practical for a ship in space harvesting whole planets for rare metals and materials. However, the chief focus of the original was what exactly? It wasn't really scary, it wasn't really well written, featuring some pretty poor dialogue from all parties involved throughout the story line it would seem and aside from borrowed mechanics from other similar games, Dead Space didn't have a whole lot it could call its own. It did have three things though, a story that didn't usually get in the way of very solid, satisfying gameplay, and a very good atmosphere accompanied by probably some of the best sound design in a science fiction horror game. I really enjoyed the first game for primarily these reasons, but this is where the sequel slips up. First off, the story is repugnant, its not interesting, its not fleshed out, I have no reason to care about Isaac anymore now than I did before, the characters are dull, the level design is much worse than the first games, and the sound design just doesn't have the charm of its predecessor. Their is so much wrong with playing through the first twenty minutes of the game that I suddenly remembered why I nearly quit playing on multiple occasions. First off, our protagonist talks now, no explanation for it really. He just talks now and unfortunately, he's had some pretty bad and utterly bizarre dialogue written for him as well. Secondly, Ashley is now a psychotic ghost that can physically manifest itself to give Isaac empty threats, reminders of the "past" events, and to generally annoy him by causing infuriating quick time events and pausing the entire pacing of the game just to tell the player something to remind Isaac how bad he should feel for some reason. I have a hard time understanding why, who, and for what reason this was placed into the game. Seems to me theirs already plenty of conflict with rampaging aliens murdering everything in site, why on earth did the main character need to have this internal conflict with his very dead girlfriend? Oh wait, that's right, because "the marker." The marker is boring guys, it was left vague and unexplained in the first game for a reason. All of sudden all these games are about some totally ambiguous and uninteresting alien artifact that humans have reversed engineered somehow. Who even cares? I can't think of one reason why this had to be in the plot. Could've just been your standard fair, "Everything is screwed up and we have to get out of here," plots, but I guess they've done that one already. Thirdly, love interest. I get it, Isaac has to have some woman involved with him on every nightmarish space engineering adventure he goes on. However, this ones pretty unnecessary and silly. The first game accomplished a sense of isolation that permeated throughout your play through. Sure Hammond and the "traitorous wench" were on board the Ishimura too, but you were always in different parts of the ship. No one in Dead Space 1 meets face to face aside from two or three occasions. This kinda added to the atmosphere. Everyone else was gone, it was literally just the three of you alive on the ship. In Dead Space 2, they attempt to do this with the involvement of someone who is obviously very crazy and a female interest named Ellie. Theirs a fourth character involved, but is essentially only there to cause conflict for Isaac and his group. The real problem is, every time I've played through this game, I can't even really remember a single portion I enjoyed, it all just sort of blends together with really the only highlight being a brief section when you're back on board the Ishimura. The cut scenes are numerous and kill the flow of the game, the Ashley subplot should've been axed by someone in the writing department before they threw it haphazardly into the game and Isaac should never have been given a voice. What little plot their even is, it doesn't feel like you're motivated by much of anything. So much so that after the first hour it starts to feel like a slog from "A-corridor to B corridor." Their was a lot of potential here to make a longer, more atmospheric and more interesting game, but they took too many elements they "thought" people liked from the first one and focused on them and them only. Dead Space 2 remains a solid, but ultimately very disappointing sequel at the end of the day.

I've heard it compared a lot to Limbo, but really its just because their are so few titles that are comparable to it from the last ten years. "Out of this world" and "Heart of Darkness" are more apt comparisons honestly. They were classics, they were truly ahead of their time. However, in 2016, "INSIDE" feels more like a little bit of this and a little bit of that as far as an actual videogame goes- it feels like it doesn't have its own identity whatsoever. It has very simple mechanics, the puzzles are not difficult and the plot is barely there. Something about a boy running, or sneaking into some type of facility and some nonsensical science fiction vignettes ensue. You might even go as far as to say that the entire GAME is a series of vignettes. One long way from point "A" to point "B." Its not a rewarding final destination though, it may be in fact the only thing that makes "Inside" totally UN-re-playable. Its a three hour experience, with lots of vague unexplained "things" that happen or that you'll see, only to end with no explanation and a very dissatisfying credit roll that might even make you sit there thinking: "Is that really it?" I have a very hard time giving this a good score, as it was twenty dollars for a three hour single player 2.5D walking simulator that I couldn't even justify playing through again. I was however, riveted on my first playthrough (at least until the terrible ending). I believe that if a larger studio or developer had worked on something of this caliber, artistically speaking, they would have no doubt invested more time into fleshing out plot ideas and elements into a cohesive story- rather than a cluttered idea soup that it unfortunately came out to be. That is not to say that their aren't very good ideas here, quite simply there are, but since they lack structure they aren't being conveyed to the player correctly. The games presentation suffers immensely from these poorly constructed ideas that are not even capable of telling a proper story. Their are so many unrelated, baffling, and pointless things in "Inside" that its a little disconcerting to see people praising it as much as they are. Its not unwarranted praise though, but its certainly not immune to having its flaws pointed out either. I hope to see better projects from this studio in the future, however until they offer more to the experience, (beyond a nice visual style, solid atmosphere and a few scattered emotional high points) I wouldn't spend another penny on one of their products.

I went in with no expectations on this one. I had recently been replaying Doom 3 and you wouldn't believe what a refreshing game THIS doom is compared to the previous entry in the series. Combat has a very good flow to it, with melee finishers, gunplay and various mixtures of enemies all coming together to create quite a rewarding experience. Its very frantic on the higher difficulties and its where the game seems to feel the most satisfying. The music, aside from the absolutely terrible opening Doom themesong remix, is fine and is certainly a welcome addition to the ambient droning background noise that embodied Doom 3's soundtrack. These are techno pumping tunes that almost made me feel like I had just put the original Quake II cd into my cd-rom drive. Perhaps not quite that level of quality, but once again, its a nice change of pace. Pace is a keyword here, I've been playing for around an hour and have not felt too bored by any particular sequence, the elimination "rooms" as I refer to them are loads of fun and I wouldn't necessarily call them repetitive. If you want to call them repetitive, than I suppose Turok 2's enemy filled portal rooms were repetitive too, however I think in this case its a respectful nod to the Turok series, whether the developers realized it or not. The visuals are fine and are definitely add a more refined look to the classic enemies from the older games, though I am a little upset that some of the enemy designs from Doom 3 didn't (or have yet to) show up to the rehearsal. I would advise everyone with two eyes and a brain to turn off some of the visual features that add nothing to the experience, i.e. depth of field, motion blur, chromatic aberration,.. these are all useless features and don't particularly enhance the game stylistically speaking. The campaigns story is a bit derivative, since thus far its been a (mostly) retread of the Doom 3's plot, which is not so much disappointing as it is, well, "troubling." I'm annoyed that they couldn't be bothered to be a little more original with a franchise that has literally not even bothered to have much of a plot since the third game tried its hand at creating one. All this aside, Doom 4 is an action game, it allows for a lot more mobility than any of the previous games, isn't concerned about making itself spooky, and doesn't have monster closets and those are all positives for me. Sure the level design and environments are more open, but you have to remember that the reasons they designed the original Doom games the way they did is because it was not feasible to even have the kind of open environments and level design you see in 2016's iteration. I'm not intimidated by a first person shooter moving away from cramped corridors and feeling more like Quake 3 and neither should you. Besides, in my opinion the third Doom game was only as claustrophobic as it was for mainly one reason, they didn't know what else to do with the level design. So they played it safe. This game is far better than RAGE and at least three or four (maybe even five) times better than the third Doom game, but is it better than the originals? My answer will always be no, because of the amount of respect I have for the original games and the changes they brought to videogames (historically speaking of course). However, I cannot say or will not say that Doom 4 misses the point of the originals or is anything near average, its most assuredly above average. So if you were one of the ones that played the multiplayer BETA and were not entertained by it, check out the game at least for the single player, it will hopefully change your perspective on the whole game.

Does F.E.A.R. have a great storyline? No, not particularly amazing. Do some of its psychic spooks give players the jitters? No, its not terribly scary whatsoever, though you may find a jump scare or two. I think what the game does very well is atmosphere. Besides the sound design being absolutely killer, (taking full advantage of environmental audio and surround sound set ups) F.E.A.R. has a way of isolating the player completely. It does this by pitting you against a backdrop of psychic clone super soldiers, ghostly phenomena, cramped office complexes, and of course the games antagonist "Paxton Fettel." It establishes fairly early on that you are the "point man" which means your automatically the silent protagonist throughout the entire game, so of course you'll be hearing most of the supporting characters progressing the story along either via headset or answering machine messages. This isn't exactly original and most of the information you get is really just there to keep the plot from getting dull. Of course its all rather pointless in the end because quite simply, the best parts of the game are going to be, hands down, the gameplay itself. The combat is immensely enjoyable, though not brutal unless you have selected "extreme" difficulty when starting a new game, and is the reason that First Encounter Assault whatever even lodged its way into our collective memories. Its just such a freaking joy to have gunplay that works, a "bullet time" mechanic (borrowed from Max Payne of course), a decent selection of weapons to utilize (though late game weapons are a little over powered) and linear, but well crafted levels to do it all in. Some of the highest points in the game are fairly early on, but the Armacham office complex is easily the best portion of the game. It starts slow, but it builds tension really well by going from silent office cubicles, meeting rooms, dark hallways, to all out ballistic battles, cloaked assailants, surprise attacks and finally a parking garage shootout before the level ends. This is sadly right before the game trips over something in the dark. Suddenly everything becomes very sloppy. It drops all its earlier accomplishments and instead trades those wonderful intense gunfights with the occasional splash of mysterious intrigue, for a drawn out last level that will have you wishing the game had ended 45 minutes earlier. It just never really gets back on its feet and instead decides to culminate everything into a bizarre psychic ghost "fight" that isn't challenging or even fun. The whole thing feels like they didn't quite have an idea of how they wanted to end the game. Instead it just feels like forced exposition from characters we don't even know or care about. The strongest elements I feel are definitely the early levels and their respective themes, the few claustrophobic areas are where everything really works (mechanically speaking), and it doesn't hurt the pacing of the game to toss in the occasional spooky sequence. Of course their are in fact far too many attempts at jump scares, some of which are quite difficult to spot. If the player isn't paying attention or is looking the wrong direction you will miss tons of them. These are just sequences where something semi-scary is happening near you, but like I said- most people will miss them inadvertently. The first 50 percent of F.E.A.R. is loads of fun, but the title as a whole? Not that great. Its much better than your average first person shooter, it looks great (even in 2016), it plays great (especially important in 2016), its aged quite well and its fairly short too. The horror doesn't really work in my opinion because it can't decide if its a science fiction or a horror film, the characters are bland and not even remotely interesting. The enemies are lifeless spawns that shoot everything you shoot, the weapons are fairly generic until late game, the jump scares are cheap, and the slow motion bullet time is far too exploitative- a.k.a. it ruins the challenge. All in all, its got some great parts, but once again they don't all fit together as well as they could.

You'd think in an age where action role playing titles are flourishing, a nifty open-world title like Dragon's Dogma would gain some ground for the genre, but its faults are just as abrasive as any typical RPG on the market presently. First off, it "is" an RPG, its not trying to hide it from you, its also not trying to inform you that when it comes down to it- its all about random number generation and stats. I'd played through about 30 hours and it finally dawned on me that I wanted to start my character building process over. Why? Well to put it lightly, I felt like I had screwed things up, configured my vocation poorly, or that my supportive skills outweighed my offensive ones or that I was playing a class incorrectly. This uncertainty plagues the whole game, since you can't just have a "magic" character or a "soldier" or an "archer," no! The game says: "You can have them all! Even if skills you spent hours to obtain are totally made pointless by changing to and from other vocations!" The Vocations are an intricate and very well designed part of the game. Had they not been there I'm sure many people would've become unbelievably bored with the hum-drum repetitiveness of grinding for levels and skill purchases. Their complicated even further by having to manage your "pawn's" abilities and class as well. Did I mention you have a little supportive buddy you create to come along with you on your journey in Dragon's Dogma? No? Well it doesn't matter that much since they hardly have the intelligence necessary to count them as "actual" teammates and end up being glass cannons or cannon fodder 75 percent of the time regardless of what skills or vocations you've leveled them up into. Pawn's are an interesting idea executed particularly poorly, especially when you realize that the game was originally out on the Playstation 3 several years. So that being said, this game looks like a Playstation 3 game from several years ago. Its not necessarily ugly, but its not a pretty game. Some might argue that its general aesthetic, design, and style give it an ageless quality, but they're probably just Capcom fans in earnest. I can't see any Skyrim or Witcher fan going bonkers over Dragon's Dogma. Its just not that special. However, it is quite fun. Its a unique way of handling an action role playing title, but between optimizing armor, collecting the untold amounts of materials necessary to upgrade your gear, wandering around the landscape looking for things to do besides fighting monsters and picking up everything in sight, it slowly turns into a grind unlike any grind you've ever known or played before. Perhaps its what keeps people so enthralled in the whole thing, but for myself personally it was very hard to "get into" the main story line. The optional quests were mostly escorts or monster hunts. The rewards were utterly pointless and trivial amounts of money or random items or experience. All of which can be gathered anywhere else in the game. The night and day mechanic was well done, but once again the game pumps up the aspect of how dangerous nighttime adventuring is supposed to be. Really the only difference are a few tougher enemies wandering around or one or two items you don't usually find. I can't call it disappointing as a title, but its very much overrated in terms of its gameplay. The whole thing can really really, really- and I mean really- become a chore. That's not something I think anyone would want in a game like this. Lack of fluidity, no real story structure, poor pacing, the linear quest line bars off areas it shouldn't and totally ruins the thrill of reaching a location only to realize you can't explore any further until you talk to some character half way across the map. The vocation system is a total mess and reminded me of the hours of my life I spent attempting to play through Final fantasy tactics, only to sit back and wonder what I was doing with my life. The Pawns are incredibly stupid, the commands you give them don't make any real sense, the online is stifling and it feels awkward to "rent" other players pawns just to take down bigger monsters faster than usual. The armor and item system is impenetrably dense requiring a player to essentially buy everything and upgrade it just to get a fair comparison on what provides what you need per enemy encounter. On the other hand, the music is quite good. The voice acting is alright and I mean at least its not "Skyrim." At least in this one you're the "Arisen" not the "Dragonborn." At least in this game you're not just fighting a dragon- oh wait.

Its a gorgeous game, the soundtrack is very good, Ori has some wonderful animation and the characters designs are outstanding. However, at the end of the day its just a pretty bunch of fluff. Save the magic forest with your magic soul powers and bring harmony to all its creatures! Ori and the Blind Forest is not only a great platformer, its a stand-out title in the genre right now, but you all know what's coming next. Is it the next Super Metroid? Well the answer is with a great heavy sigh: "No." No its not the next Super Metroid, its just the latest copy-cat, a great copy-cat, but nonetheless- a copy-cat of many other games. Remember Aquaria? Oh wait, no, no one does because they didn't have Microsoft Studios backing them up when Bit Blot subsequently released their own spin on the platformer genre to little fanfare several years before. A lot of the mechanics are seemingly pulled right out of Metroid games, older 2-D platformers, etc.. I'd reckon that most of the brilliant concepts in Ori lie in its visually pleasing story telling and setting- not the gameplay. However, that's not entirely fair, there were several techniques that made the game quite unique, but then again those learned techniques late-game allowed the level designers to absolutely go nuts making wildly difficult segments of the game for the player to sort out on their own. These were challenging portions for sure, but a few dozen tries later most people will get through them just fine. Leaving very little "exploration" for the player was also not particularly thrilling to see here as well, since you ultimately find enough energy ta- I mean "health containers" and ability points to see you through the entire game. Even worse the actual game is criminally short. Between two days, I managed to beat it in about five hours, which is unbelievably criminal as well if you were planning on getting any replay value from it. Which "Ori" has none of. No one wants to go back through the escape segments again, unless you're speedrunning or doing something ridiculous like a "no death" speedrun or something equally as crazy. Ori is also plagued by some **** issues with control schemes such as being forced to utilize an Xbox gamepad in order for all the controls to register properly (since they won't with any other controller or anything like x360ce for instance). The keyboard controls got me through the game just fine, but I always felt like it would've been more intuitive had I had a controller that was compatible. The story felt rather rushed, it felt like they were setting up something really interesting and then about half-way through it just totally dropped the ball. I wanted it to just kind of be over with and I constantly found myself skipping over looking for "stuff" to find or abilities to upgrade because I was ready to finish the game by that point. The abilities themselves were helpful, but you never seem to need all of them, nor do they make the game better or worse. I think it could have easily done just fine without them. Trapped inside the development team of Ori and the Blind Forest is a really good game, but its just not here yet, and I'm shocked that so many people bought this game over something like Rayman Origins or Aquaria, since as far as platformers go, you couldn't go wrong with either of those. Its a puzzling thing to see so much warmth and positivity over something really quite good, but ultimately coming off as a little full of itself- kind of like the fans of the game throwing it 9's and 10's when its really not much better than its older competition. However, it has no competition this year, at least not yet anyway. I enjoyed Ori, it was a solid title, but it left me feeling like it could have been much longer, a little bigger, a little darker, and a little less pretentious with its story telling.

The one thing, the ONE thing that Rayman Legends can at least take credit for is being a much more focused platformer than Origins. Origins had a very messy difficulty curve, some repeating sections due to quirky level design in some areas, and it had a hard time finding its own style as well. Luckily Legends fixes most of the things that were wrong, but its still a pretty average to almost-great platforming experience for some of the same reasons. The levels unlock as you free more captives in each, bonus areas unlock as well as new characters to play as, and the whole thing has a much better sense of progression as you play. It makes it perfect for someone with perhaps not a huge motivation to get through it all in one sitting. A.k.a. you can take your time or even take a break and come back to different (read as harder) levels later when you feel up for it. The soundtrack is not quite as good this time (far less adventurous genre-wise), but (and it may just be me) I'm also rather upset that the same visual designs are being used as well. I know they changed up the enemy designs, but Rayman and his crew aside from some newer characters all look about the same. I adored Rayman 1 and Rayman 2's characters designs. They were wholly unique for those two games respectively, however the team behind these games really need to find a new art style. It was clear from playing through Rayman Origins that they weren't sure what to go with aside from some references to enemy designs dating as far back as 1995, but here its obvious in Legends that they need to come up with something new. To be frank, the game looks like a very well made Flash game. Now that isn't particularly appealing to me, and I tolerated it, but I know that they are capable of coming up with a better looking game.

It features some pretty awe-inspiring Gameboy ADVANCE sprite work and though the music is tolerable at times, it doesn't really seem to hook me like other games in the same vein. Aquaria for instance has a much more memorable soundtrack, as well as Warioland IV and Monster World IV. Oh wow. I think I just found out why people thought this game was so well worth the wait! Yeah, its a mash-up of other 2D platformers, which is pretty hard not to do these days. Shantae has a variety of moves, but considering how far the original gameboy color game came in its overall complexity, this "successor" feels half-finished in many ways. For one the character portraits are appallingly ugly, its just not a very good art style whatsoever. Like I mentioned before, sprite quality is pretty good, but not much better than say a gameboy advance title which is rather disappointing. I'm getting pretty tired of people being handed money to make games that look like they could have come out almost 15 years ago (or worse 30 years ago). Its a cute game, a little on the short side and it basically just reminded me of Monster World IV, which is a much game to begin with.

To be blunt, Alien "Isolation" is a pretty boring experience. Creative Assembly could've released anything, but as long as it functioned (to some extent and didn't deeply anger players) it was already miles ahead of the infamous "Colonial Marines" fiasco. This is troubling since for one, not one person that claims to adore the game, seems to want to mention how terribly paced it is, or how the dialogue is awkwardly written or how the cinematic sequences are deeply underwhelming. Even worse than that, they fail to mention how unbelievably silly of a notion it was to place Ellen Ripley's daughter in as the main character and give her an equally silly motivation such as: "My Mother has been missing for 15 years, guess its time to fly out on the same looking ship, meet a bunch of generic characters in space on another ship and ultimately get nowhere in the search for my own Mother." This is that entire plot, excluding the Alien, and of course the other humans on board this theoretical "Station," who will stop at nothing just to kill you and only you (unless they spot the Alien of course or by proxy are spotted by it). You can dress up the ugliest little girl in the whole wide world, teach her how to play the Violin like a grandmaster, and at the end of the day someone is still going to call her only "passable" on of those abilities. That's what this whole game feels like, they borrowed the look, the sound, the music (which I'll give them a pass on since it actually involved some of the composers from the film itself) and of course the actual Alien just to smack it all together to form a boring re-envisioning of the first film. Its not even shocking how lazily this was thrown together, but looking back at the seminal Aliens versus Predator 2, a game that embodied the second Aliens film amongst other things, wrestled three intertwining story lines, three races with individual player campaigns and managed to make the whole thing immensely original to boot- its easy to see just how terribly unoriginal Alien: Isolation is at its heart. It mimics a time and a place that some people feel is where the series began and ended. However, their is a balance that other titles in this sub-genre have managed to lock down to some degree, whereas Isolation seems to be focused on some rather poor stealth sections in stiff, metallic, dark, dull environments that unbelievably DON'T provide you with any cover from the laser beam eyes of the humans and Alien alike. Amnesia gave you a stealth system that made sense, it even slapped you on the wrist if you hung around the shadows for too long by winding up your insanity meter, you got into a room, you analyzed what the objective in said room was, you completed it as quickly as manageable and stayed out of the sight of the wandering monstrosities. It was tense, it was interesting and you were unarmed throughout. Which is why the "crafting" in Isolation seems like a chore. Most of the times the Human artificial intelligence is lacking to a degree that would make the rent-a-guards from the Thief series blush. They sometimes see you and then sometimes... they just don't. Doesn't even matter how close you are to them in some situations. The Alien itself is equally as stupid. Either that or its a "clever girl" super genius that will sniff out your location in a millisecond and kill you. I found this garbage stealth system to be a failure, the crafting to be ultimately pointless in many situations and on the whole the game itself is deeply in need of a patch to address these issues. What they implemented only works correctly something like 75% of the time and that's not good enough. I understand that they wanted to play it safe, especially with the brilliantly stupid casting decision of "Amanda Ripley" as our protagonist, but it stands out and speaks volumes about the team behind all of it. Its like reading fan fiction, Alien fan fiction and that's been done to death (thanks comic books). What I would've really liked to have seen here was a stealth and A.I. system that actually worked, but mostly what I really wanted to play was less rip-off material incorporated from such games as Dead Space, System Shock, Amnesia, and Bioshock. However it ultimately doesn't matter what I think about the game, its getting loads of positive feedback from most sites just from its "atmosphere" alone, but I still think it needs a patch as soon as possible.

Unbelievable. I'm fifteen minutes in and just had to put down the controller. What is this supposed to be? Dark Souls had a specific flow to it, it had a way of pointing you in the direction you needed to go, but here? The first area of the game before you even REACH the main hub is so poorly laid out that I got lost near the introduction of the game. The controls and gameplay are more or less intact, but their is some kind of a clunky nature to it now that just doesn't feel right. The visuals are atrocious as well and it was hard to take it all in. In the PC release it seems this time they fixed half of what they forget to even add in the last Dark Souls game, but visually it fairs far worse. I think this Dark Souls fad is finally dying out. I remember having very mixed feelings after finishing the first game, but with Dark Souls 2 for me at least their is just no motivation to play these types of games any longer.

I have seen more rule 34 on this game than I have convincing arguments as to why its this unprecedented evolutionary horror game that is breaking the mold all of a sudden. The supernatural angle and the "lore" of this game are absolutely silly. It comes off like a bad R.L. Stine novella. The limited animations, the ridiculous creature designs and the fact that every major Lets player on the planet is cashing in on its "spook" factor is starting to smack of irrationality. Its also a very short game that the developer is making far too much money from when in all likelihood you will drop it after about an hour. Much like "Slender" and other low budget "horror" games, Five Nights at Freddy's has a very short life-expectancy in terms of legitimate enjoyment to be gained from playing it. Its unclear as to why its become such an enigma, but I'm certain its just another flavor-of-the-month in a pool of mediocrity.

The amount of attention a game like Mount and Blade has received has been both positive and negative, but strangely, even years after its release, its still positive. Having barely attempted the Multiplayer aspect or many of the overhaul gameplay mods available, I strictly turn my attention over to "vanilla" Mount & Blade: Warband and its singleplayer campaign- if you can honestly call it that. You are dumped in a world known as "Calradia", and after a rather brief role playing game configuration character screen, you'll pick skills that will effect how you'll play, how you'll fight, or how you'll manipulate the economy or control your band of would-be-rent-a-warriors throughout the experience. Trouble is, their is only but so much you actually need to get through Warband as far as the actual "game" is concerned. Strictly speaking, you should either be a melee character i.e. swords and shields, an archer i.e. crossbows or bows, or an intelligent merciless mercenary i.e. medic skills or being (at times hard to believe) immensely influential over various NPC's- which is apparently a skill a person can "level up" as well. First things first, if you don't trade, build enterprises or loot, you will be fighting all manner of bandits till the end of time. Nord bandits make the most money, hand out the most experience, and ultimately produce the most valuable loot to sell off to various city markets. You can easily a quire ten or so Knights from any faction (aside from the Nords and Rhodoks) and commence this endless harvest of Denars, (the games term for "gold" or money) experience and some of the best armor and weapons in what I'd like the call "the mid-game" period. After this, you simply become a mercenary for a faction, help out here and there and "poof" you can join up and become a semi-permanent addition to a kingdom. This is where the game crawls to a halt. If you're not at war, you will be scavenging for money and loot, if you are at war you will be scavenging for villages to plunder and enemy lords to battle. If you're not doing any of those things, than it means you were trying to protect the many fiefs, Castles or cities that have suddenly been given to by your King for likely being such an awesome person or maybe he just thinks your a swell guy/ gal for having more renown and honor than any other lord in his cabinet. Politics aside, Mount & Blade is fun. Its "simulation" fun, its "babysit army" fun, its tedious battle fun, but it has a combat system not seen since "Dark Souls" and it does having a learning curve. That's more than a lot of titles can claim these days. However, once you've effectively broken the game, this skill ceiling literally collapses under the weight of an antiquated engine, terrible artificial intelligence, and a random sequence of events that can suddenly cause two even three kingdoms to declare war on yours and wreck everything you've been working towards in a matter of weeks. To "break" this game, all you need are all the major medic skills and your intelligence up to 30, once this is complete, you can commence leveling up your Charisma and begin to drag around hundreds of men to do whatever you need at that point. After this, battles become a breeze (even your armies configuration hardly matters) and near one hundred Swadian Knights, for instance, suddenly become your best friends in all the world. This strategy also works with Rhodoks infamous "Sharpshooter" crossbow infantry. Who, as long as they have a hill to perch upon or any elevation whatsoever, are practically invincible and tear apart armies double yours. The true failing of the game, is that after awhile, money stops mattering, skills you once thought about investing in become pointless as you already have enough men to fight without you ever being involved. It eventually does become "babysitting" and no their isn't a better way of putting it. Their is supposedly an automated battle system that is very poorly programmed and tends to output miserable losses on your side, so it best not ever be used unless you have no choice obviously. However this brings up an even worse problem for when you have the ability to heal your army in a matter of half a day the NPC lords are suddenly not particularly scary. Even if you "lose" and "leave" a battle, but take no losses of your own you can march right back up that same enemy army and annihilate them as they've been unable to recover from their losses as quickly as you've been able to. This works for Castle sieges, 2-1 battles, and even looting villages. I understand the game is old, but the developers need to consider putting more effort into a singleplayer experience that is actually fun, not tedious or repetitive and ultimately easily abused. Its a shame, as most of the game is quite well designed even for not having an actual goal to work towards or a story to follow. The more you play the sooner things begin to stagnate.

Its 2014 and I struggle to understand what exactly this game offered, even at the time when it was released. I see a painfully slow, awkward, restrictive military simulation that is not only uninteresting (outside of the historical context of course), but also immensely lacking as an actual "game." Perhaps time has not been so kind to this stand-alone title, but even I remember "Shogun" being fun to play and less performance annihilating as well. I play on a relatively decent rig and for the life of me I cannot understand why this game has so many performance issues outside of the confirmed fact that it was a fairly CPU intensive game to begin with. Which makes me doubt anyone's ability to have actually played it with a decent framerate in either 2004 or even 2005 and beyond. I'm not claiming that a multi-core processor like the Phenom's are going to be up to the task, but would it have been out of the question (even at the time) to update the game to take advantage of more than one processor? Its embarrassing really. The franchise itself has had better offerings, aside from the "Rome: Total War 2" and even more alarmingly not soon after this game. I understand its a simulation of sorts, a realistic battlefield, taking into account troop movement, troop moral, troop tiredness and other realistic mechanics, but its just feels uninvolved to me. Send army there, they fight, send army here, they fight, and its really not particularly fascinating outside of a siege or some of the larger battles. Those are at least more involved, and planning them out or creating a strategy actually makes sense. If this is essentially a benchmark for single core CPU performance, I get it, but as far as a game that has stood the test of time? I would have to say: "No." Not only no, but it literally hurts a games appeal over time when it is incapable of taking advantage of future technology to some extent. Farcry was built to stand the test of time and though it isn't really anything more than a benchmark itself (as well as including a terrible story and by the numbers first person shooter experience) its still works as intended. As in people can take their rigs now, pump up all the graphical eye-candy (at the time) and still enjoy the game. Rome Total War is incapable of being anymore than a well polished military simulation, but its Achilles heel was the developer not even considering future-proofing to some degree whatsoever.

One word: "Botched." Could've been great just from judging the opening and its overall presentation. That is until it introduces its primary gameplay: "Pick up stuff and drop it over onto other stuff!" Un-freaking-believable, an entire game designed around an activity like playing in a sandbox, scooping up sand in one hand and then dropping your handful over onto another patch of sand somewhere else in your sandbox. Its disappointing to say the least, but not only that, its poorly implemented and frustrating. When controls should be responsive, they're barely responsive (keep in mind this was all designed with the Xbox controller in mind). Missions start off simple enough, guiding a small band of native proto-human "things" to different objectives by changing the geographical surface or shifting elements that would normally block most anythings progression i.e. huge bodies of water or mountains or lava. Then we start getting into some ticking-timer missions that are just unbelievably infuriating and this is when you'll realize just how stupid the actual AI system is for the little natives. They complain about everything or will outright refuse to go somewhere because: A. You didn't quite manage to pick up and move enough water, mud, sand, rocks or whatever for them to walk to where they want to go. B. They legitimately still complain even when everything is totally fine and their route is completely clear to fulfill some level objective. Finally I arrived at a level where a Tsunami was supposedly coming to wipe out everything and I had to essentially get people to leave one spot to get to safety. I'm guessing this is about the point where people just give up on the game because of how poorly the mechanics were executed. 15 minutes later I was treated to a hilarious in-game cinematic explosion of water wiping out a coastal tribe-town and I even felt a little bad about it, but also at how shockingly bad the game was till this point. Beautiful design, aesthetics, concept, and visuals, but it fails in every other way mechanically and functionally as a "game." Which is kind of a big selling point these days.

Take away the bloom, Physx(tm), the motion blur, the terrible cardboard character story sequences, the random collectables, the framerate locked by default at 30 frames per second and you'll still have an artistically gorgeous, but unbelievably bland game. Its almost hilarious how inconsistent the game is, you have entire chapters that seem to flow well, while others are very poorly paced and feature gratuitous amounts of either lopsided combat or platforming sections. Alice: Madness Returns only features something like four major weapons (poor girl) and once they're introduced and upgraded a few times, old strategies for enemies start becoming obsolete as weapons like the teapot cannon can annihilate even newer "more challenging" enemies (rather quickly I should add). The combat goes from just "fine" to terrible at a moments notice, usually involving a bad camera angle or from not being able to see enemies telegraphing an attack (which the game conveniently PAUSES in order for the player to react to). This would be forgive-able if their was much of any variation in the combat or at least actual combo's, but alas, their isn't much of either. Alice herself has a finicky jumping mechanic that allows her to triple jump, but unfortunately their are sections that expect you to make very large gaps utilizing it and other points where the game decides that you just weren't supposed to make it that far- Meaning of course that you missed (yet again) another invisible platform somewhere between where you started jumping and wherever you need to jump to. Which I could also forgive if this mechanic wasn't endlessly repeated to the point where you really aren't sure if you're even accomplishing anything until you run into a scripted sequence or puzzle. Their is hardly any "flow" to the level design, often you'll get stuck (though not for very long) simply because you missed something like a switch, or a platform or perhaps things got monotonous and you totally forget who you were or what you were doing. Alice herself seems to be hardly engaging as a character which makes moments like bumping into minor characters very trivial and legitametely boring. A lot of the dialogue is flowery and nonsensical (which fans might claim is part of the "charm" of the game and similar to the actual dialogue found in the book). In this case however, the dialogue simply causes the game to come off as an impenetrable mess of writing which sounded lazy, and deliberately eschews decent plot or story for pointless snippets of moronic disconnected gibberish. The only thing that will drag most players in is the general aesthetics, themes, and interesting locations explored in each chapter of the game. Alice: Madness Returns also has some fairly tight controls at times, but its hardly perfect. Its well made enough to get you through it, but many things will get tiresome the longer you play. Physx(tm) additions were hardly interesting, as Alice's clothing and hair physics were already programmed into the games OWN physics engine. This means that the only things effected by the addition of Physx(tm) technology are liquids and various debris. These hardly add anything to the actual experience and serve only to show just how useless Physx(tm) is and how generally leaving it on decreases game performance substantially with hardly any visual benefits. Bloom and a combination of high quality bloom lighting generally covers up areas of the game with horrid texture quality which wouldn't be a terrible problem, but even the re-released copy of the first Alice game, which is included with this game, feature higher quality textures on surfaces than some areas in "Madness Returns." Generally speaking the sound quality is fantastic and the actual music in the game is wonderfully ambient. At times it was the strongest element in a chapter and meshed well with combat sequences. It had a way of lulling you into a false sense of security and fit the art direction very well. The mechanics that don't work as well i.e. platforming, combat, tedious puzzles- serve only to slow down player progression, frustrate and ultimately (though they function) I wouldn't ever call them well executed or fun. They were simply ways to elongate gameplay at the end of the day. It is doubtful, but if these mechanics were put together in a better way, with more focus on tighter level design and with the same art direction- you could make a very good sequel to this game. Something with a bit more polish than this title would be revolutionary.

This is and will be (for a bit longer at least) the worst port known to mankind (again currently). It features a completely bare bones options menu with a couple of selectable resolutions and gamma settings alongside a volume control menu. If you actually want to customize anything visually speaking, you'll have to direct your attention to an .ini file in your computers "My Games" folder. Not that I'm complaining that its "difficult" to do any of this or that I "hate" not having complete control over my graphics options, but honestly who are we kidding here- the game should've had a graphics menu BUILT IN not hidden completely in ****. After disabling all of the ridiculous blur, bloom, fake hdr bloom, and some other useless features that only serve to hide just how old the games engine actually is (as well as looks) I was ready to play the actual game. Now this is the surprising bit- its good. Its a good game. I wanted to finish it, it was compelling, it seemed like it was setting up something kind of complex for its ending, but of course I kept reminding myself that they'd probably screw it up, so obviously I kept my standards low. Our two main characters Trip and Monkey have interesting chemistry, but I'd say that the characters don't all balance out until the introduction of "Pigsy" a short fat man with a mechanical grappling arm and ironically a total pig in every sense of the word. Monkey on the other hand is your generic mysterious past beef cake with a heart of gold who doesn't have as much of an arc as I thought he would. Which overall is still better than "Trip" and her fairly boring, yet stunningly animated (at times) character. She goes between overly excited and extremely mournful without warning though which chucked a wrench in the narrative at times. Level design was "alright," puzzles weren't particularly challenging ever however its really the combat that shines through. Off course it would've helped if the camera actually acted appropriately during most of the fights with your robotic enemies, since as of my first playthrough I'm wondering if I really want to go through that frustration again just to play through the story on "hard." You're looking at a fairly short game, that should be decent for the money, but it will let you down for many a reason. Collision detection is a nightmare at times, seeking out platforms can be irksome (even if they do flash for you), Trip can get stuck in the level (happened a couple of times early on), "Mek" combat is fun for awhile until they start throwing in the shielded enemies and then its like the obnoxious factor ramps up to 20 for no reason. Final thoughts: Some of the early sections with the "Dog" fights (heh) were incredibly enjoyable and I liked the sense of teamwork with Trip- it did help the characters bond a bit as well. The aesthetics were great in many places, the levels were at least interesting to look at (though not terribly complex). The visuals were fine, but the additions of bloom and motion blur were not well implemented at all. The voice acting was stellar throughout the game and the games narrative benefited well from the more than adequate writing. However, the convoluted nature of some sections of the game, the ridiculous amount of literal handholding even after completing similar sequences many times over was not entertaining (it was more insulting actually). The pacing was also very poor with short cutscenes breaking up the action for no reason other than to introduce the same puzzle solution or to "scan the area with the dragonfly" schtick mechanics. The ending was a complete wash. Absolutely dreadful that that was all they could do with it. No real resolution vague endings are garbage and tell me one thing only- "our budget ran out." Final final thoughts: Andy Sirkis was a strange addition to this game (even stranger was his actual appearance).

Its kind of amazing that 13 years ago approximately, we saw a game like Undying even out on the PC. After all it was the end of the golden late 90's era of videogames, ridiculously good (and sometimes bad) titles were coming out left and right. However, Clive Barker's Undying could've had any box art or title it wanted, it was just one of those examples of how well an actual videogame can look, play, sound and "be". Even compared to the seminal Medal of Honor Allied Assault, which though equally brilliant and great when compared to Undying, it wasn't exactly as original. So surprisingly original is Undying that its a little hard to believe more people don't talk about it, especially those that took the mechanics from it, ripped them like appendages off a lifeless corpse, then sewed them together into their games and pretended it never happened. Well it did. Bioshock wouldn't have been the game it was without Undying, same as anything else that "borrows" similar gameplay mechanics as well, but I'm getting a little off topic here. In the game you play as a real Irish-man Patrick, a man who has unfortunately been drawn into occult rituals, is able to use often spooky magical abilities without much explanation at all, and holds his pistol in his left hand- Single-handedly pissing off right handed players everywhere. Now Patrick has decided to take his sweet time getting back to an old pal of his, (and if I were him I think I'd know why) but he owes him a favor from many years ago as we are informed during the introduction- whilst Patrick takes a boat over to a rather large island where Jeremiah's mansion is located. Upon entering the mansion that is only a smaller portion of Jeremiah's estate, its fairly obvious some bad juju is afoot and you are there to find out why. Throughout the island you will fight all sorts of strange beasts, ghosts, demon's and accursed creatures. You'll also have a lot of fun killing them with the wonderful assortment of weapons, spells and items you'll be finding as well. I don't remember the last time a game had such a fun arsenal, not since Half life 1 at least. You will gain new spells, unlock secrets, gain amplifiers to "level up" spells even and locate journals that expand upon whats going on as their isn't really much of a narrative after the beginning of the game. In fact, it is highly recommended that you actually read what's going on, since its immensely well written for one, and for two- its going to make the story flow a lot better as you get close to the end. Undying does just about everything right, from its level design, to its weapon design, enemy design, sound design and general aesthetics. Its very hard to this day to find a game that possesses the kind of ambiance, tension and revolutionary game play all wrapped together with a great story and impressive dialogue. It still bugs me that hardly anyone has played the damn game though.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

My T-34, upon first time playing, on the first mission, lasted a grand total of 4 minutes before being blown to hell by German anti-tank grenades and possibly rocket launchers. So of course it goes without saying it gets my patented "Men of War" series seal of approval. This game was made long before Assault Squad began to really stretch the games engine, so of course it actually runs very well in comparison to the later games in the series. 1C has always had issues adapting, but this engine in their first few games is absolutely fantastic and very fitting. Skirmishes are immensely detailed, and with direct control mode you can change the course of tactics completely in any fight. Of course vehicle combat is still incredibly terrifying, but here its obvious where you made the mistake, i.e. drove into an ambush, were within range of another tank or AT weapon. Scouting out a position, executing your strategy, and adjusting to the flow of combat is what these games are all about, but here its much more focused.

It seems that a minority still want to view this game as "greater" than the sum of its parts, but never seem to address the problems that individually tear this game to pieces. Obviously when you shoe horn in a lot unfinished mechanics with a decent storyline, a unique visual design of characters within said plot, and nice setting to have it all take place in, you're hedging your bets that the positives outweigh the negatives. In this instance however, their is a constant subtle effect of negative outweighing the positive throughout. From the horrid camera controls, fixed camera angles, woefully terrible combat, woefully goofy artificial intelligence, the utterly boring races, the collect-athon photography mini-game, (that I should remind everyone has no bearing on the plot after the first "Domz" attack) the bizarre characters that grew obnoxious even after the first twelve times they uttered dialogue and the main character herself feeling more fleshed out than any other half-baked concepts in the game. Playing through the game so long after release allows players now to isolate the "bad" and see if its possible to push through till the end of the game hoping that all they've put up with will be rewarded. Which never happens. The game ends with a whimper and a completely unnecessary cliff hanger. Given the time of its release, I can see why many would sympathize with the title having received "less then" the right amount of attention or respect, but the painful truth is that it "didn't" revolutionize any mechanics. It borrowed more from older mechanics, half-assed those, and was then laden with a mystical sort of reputation as "the game that didn't sell well." I think after all this time it'd be a bit obvious why of course. Their were things in this game that didn't work. Stealth sections were embarrassingly dull and simple. Drawn out to the point of tedium, lacking any real complexity most times. The player faced no serious peril or repercussions from dying at any point in the game and merely had to sit around for about ten seconds after Jades slow-motion, cinematic, and ultimately pointlessly received "death-blow." The minor characters are barely made relevant as well since the plot is immediately thrown on top of you after the first "mission" of the game. It draws you in a bit and then it just goes nowhere. Nowhere but clear cut, no choice, linear pathways through the rest of the game and story. The dialogue is rough as well, featuring fairly inconsistent performances in a game all about characterizing the main characters and even Jade fails to sound committed or merely concerned about anything going on. She doesn't ask questions, she's just like "Rebels good, Empire bad." Its a tired, old, mangy, dead horse of a concept and their is no build-up aside from the introduction, the brief fight at the beginning so that players could familiarize themselves with the simplistic combat system, and a very light explanation for all of it one to two hours into the story. Their is no excuse for the barrage of silly side quests that merely slowed down the main quest and it destroyed any feeling of urgency when a supposed side-character is in trouble, only for Jade to be out hunting "pearls" to fix up a Hovercraft for optional racing side-quests. Everything in this game aside from the world, setting and visual style seems to have received more effort than anything else. Why is Jade a cardboard cut-out? Why do other characters seem utterly pointless upon first meeting and subsequent meetings afterwards? Why are we thrust into these linear and boring areas of the game when the initial starting points seem so large and varied? Alpha Section must be paying quite a bit on their electric bill to keep all these lasers going, I mean I haven't seen this many lasers shoved into level design since Rayman 2. Which isn't even a slam on Rayman 2. That game had brilliant level design and is in many ways very similar to Beyond Good & Evil. The problem here was these tiny boxes of levels that Jade was shoved into, only for the player to realize after they were over: "Wow, without all those switches, stealth sections, forced fighting sections, photo-sessions, and brief cinematics, that wouldn't have taken very much time at all." Which is the point, everything done to frustrate the player, through "so simple you feel like an idiot" puzzle solutions, to the cramped level design, you start to get the feeling that this was all just a vehicle to tell the story. Which is a terrible feeling. As cinematic "experiences" games fall flat in almost every regard. Its not what their about. Beyond Good & Evil tried to balance the two and failed. Its eleven years later and it has completely failed to grab me or immerse me into its world through its broken mechanics, poor design, and lackluster characters. I can't believe people still call this game "underrated."

Call of Pripyat is a labor of love. It shows the devotion that the original team had along with their ability to narrow down and remove all the things that didn't work quite as well in the first two titles. Areas are varied, sprawling, free roaming large maps that forgo the back and forth to different loading areas like we saw in the original and this overall helped keep the progression much more focused. The combat is much more fluid and I would even say "less" cumbersome than ever before. Most if not all guns are a real treat to both utilize and simply look at on screen. However I do get the feeling that asset-wise its not too far removed from its predecessors visually and most by now would admit that the engine was beginning to look a bit dated. This is remedied by Tesselation and some new shaders accompanied by Directx11 capabilities. Its all very subtle, but along with the God rays and equally subtle SSAO effects the game looks quite lovely. I expect its visuals will age much slower than most videogames from the same era as time goes on too. The mechanics have been overhauled a bit, mixing the things that worked well in its predecessors in exchange for leaving out all the failed mechanics we only saw in those first two titles and its a nice controlled blending of old and new that really bring out how unique the final installment was. The atmosphere is positively "alive." Wild animals are far more dangerous as well as fellow mercenaries, stalkers, and bandits. The AI is much more proficient making them actually quite challenging to fight in most scenarios. However, with all the good comes the many, many, glitches, game halting quirks, oddities, and **** annoyances. Your opponents have a very hard time doing anything about you, an assault rifle, a scope, and possessing the knowledge to be several hundreds of meters away before pulling the trigger. Meaning you can essentially exploit the AI to a hilarious degree. Certain gunfights can be completely ruined if you have the right gear and its not until a rather long tedious escort mission sometime later in the game, that I would actually call Call of Pripyat "challenging." Even on master difficulty, taking out enemies is not ridiculously hard whatsoever and it seems as though a lot of reviews from certain professional review sites claim the "X-ray vision" of AI opponents which I've yet to ever experience. Glitch wise, their is still a lot of them and I'm surprised that the engine of the game itself wasn't brought up as the worst glitch of all. Call Of Pripyat is permanently gimped by its own performance. Noticeably so- you can turn off the wonderful glittery graphics in the game and still end up with a stuttering mess as the engine attempts to load sections of the level you're in. Something that wouldn't have ever happened if the game had used an entirely different engine by this point, which I understand, is not something this developer would've ever done. Its noticeably bad on some of larger areas later in the game, but its not "game-breaking" its just "immersion-breaking." Other claims about Directx11 and Directx10 being near equal in terms of visuals is mostly true. We are talking about one lacking thing in DX10: Tesselation. Something that even I have a difficult time spotting the differences in visually speaking. All in all its a great game with a good follow up to the story, great combat, varied missions and only one really difficult section about 3/4ths of the way through. If you're a STALKER fan or enjoyed Metro 2033, you'll likely enjoy Call of Pripyat.

Empire Earth drew its influence from many different games in the RTS genre and sought to expand the ideas and concepts of pseudo-micro-historical periods, which games like Age of Empires focused primarily on. However, where Age of Empires inspired Empire Earth, "Empires" seems to be inspired by the latter to a fatalistic degree. Instead of the amazing epochs that extended into a futuristic setting, we see the middle ages evolve to post world war 2 era technologies and themes. A grave mistake perhaps when compared to the ambitious Empire Earth. Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, is focused primarily on making the same sort of mistakes and even restoring the tedium that plagued Empire Earth. Overall being less engaging, less interesting and more bogged down by a resource system that was intolerably slow to begin with. So in other words, its a near direct take on what Empire Earth could've been without the experimentation and many technological ages that made Empire Earth unique and actually fun. The races have been stripped down to a mere three major ones with several different "possible" civilization changes as you begrudgingly move to the more modern ages. You have a choice at one point to become the Americans, the British, the Germans etc.. Its actually quite jarring for any faction to suddenly transform into a completely different Country and culture, but perhaps this was featured in the game for pseudo-historical reasons. As for the units, they are quite vast, but never particularly useful, and military skirmishes break out into weird scattered skirmishes- making it quite impossible to keep track of everything or what those units may be doing. The ability to build all over the map leads to the strangest patterns of AI players scattering their buildings in every direction, meaning you could have destroyed everything, aside from the one last standing hovel somewhere and you still haven't defeated the computer player. I often call this manner of AI building: "Total Annihilation Syndrome" and it is not only hilarious, but immensely distracting when an AI opponent has built things essentially right on the outskirts of your base simply to gather a resource near your starting position. Which brings me to the resource gathering- the gold mining is one of the absolute worst things I've ever seen in a game since the original Empire Earth. Its painfully slow to gather this one resource outside all others, it is one particular resource you will constantly spend and it is necessary for basically every upgrade you need or want. Meanwhile food, wood and stone gathering rates are at least decent and benefit from upgrades. Most matches you'll be moving from one gold pile to the next in an attempt to keep gold constantly streaming in. Its literally the achilles heel of the game and it is wholly not surprising that later games like Rise of Nations found better ways to deal with resource gathering in general- particularly with "gold." The combat is quite boring, it usually involves building as much as you can and sending wave after wave of units to wherever your opponent may be. The units are soulless and utter silly dialogue as you send them here and there and for some reason never seem to get upset at the rate at which they fall over and die. This is often, since the AI builds guard towers everywhere, guard towers that kill any unit very quickly. It is in fact one of "those" buildings, much like the original towers in Age of Empires, that brings me severe emotional grief upon remembering them and one wonders why they have to be built everywhere, near every resource, or wherever the AI is doing something. The game speed can be "adjusted" though. So you "Empire" mode and "Skirmish" mode which alters how many villagers can gather at one resource and makes the gathering rate much, much, much faster for everything. However, this gimps the game too, as in units have now even LESS health and die even faster in skirmish mode. Whereas in Empire mode, buildings have more hitpoints and so do most units. Where is the middle ground? Age of Empires got it right, Warcraft 2 got it right and Rise of Nations got it right. You'd think after several games Steel Studios would learn from their mistakes and figure out why Empires is devastatingly boring to play. Its not only boring, but its clearly not fun either. Rise and Fall was a better game and barely altered the formula, it just made resource gathering less of its focus. Not even 2 year later, Dawn of War came out and removed most of the resource management, allowing more of a concentration on military units and battles. Homeworld 2 came out the same YEAR and featured a better resource system with more of a focus on fleet formations and space battles. The point I'm trying to make is: "Their games are average and boring." Its no surprise at all why Steel Studios fell apart, their best game aped Age of Empires, but was swiftly knocked out by Age of Empires 2.

PRO's: Gorgeous visuals with a competent game engine. A gorgeous soundtrack and brilliant sound design. A massive modding community that is still making original content for a game close to 8 years since its release. Varied factions that all play in remarkably different ways. Hundreds of strategies, different methods of play, a still active multiplayer community. The sequel drew back in old players after everyone realized how mediocre it was. Its Warhammer 40K on steroids and who doesn't like Warhammer? CON's: Their have been some pretty mind numbingly stupid patches made for the expansion. The expansions were not very good compared to the original. Some things are mostly fixed, but a lot is still broken since the attempt years ago was made to balance all the factions pretty much at once. Its starting to look a little long in the tooth visually. The multiplayer community is full of some pretty huge ego maniacal fellas that don't play nice with newer players. The automatches can be a dangerous breeding ground for contempt amongst those who are new to the game. The modding communities are always heading for different camps, with the intent of making the game more "realistic" or more "balanced," but they never really settle on more "fun." Some of the concepts are so far removed from reality that some people might prefer entirely different games such as the "Men of War" games. Multiple scathing and somewhat stupid historical inaccuracies that should've never been in the game. Tank battles are more arcade-like than any tank battles from actual reality. If you were content enough with Warhammer 40K and those expansions- you may have already played this game for the most part- only without the World War II aesthetic or theme.

The shocking truth that so many people would never really want to consider here, is that Cataclysm is not only a fantastic sequel, but hands down- the best game in the series. What we can immediately pull away from the amazing presentation is the knowledge that a very intelligent developer named "Barking Dog Studios" saw the potential for the series and worked very hard to make it a better experience all around. If anyone hasn't played Homeworld in a while, you'll remember that it had a fantastically executed story held back just a smidge by occasionally buggy fleet A.I., a killer difficulty curve after the 3rd mission, an almost unfair amount of frustration at times, and of course some cumbersome interface quirks. This has really all been cleared up by Barking Dog, since not only have they patched and filled some of the irksome frustrations of the interface, but they've completely cleaned up the issue with unit balance as well. Incorporating a unit cap was an incredibly good idea, it adds quite a bit more strategy in when you choose to build your units. Though this was frowned upon as an overall game-changing mechanic, I thought it made unit preservation that much more important. And with how much faster paced Cataclysm is compared to its predecessor- it makes a good deal of sense to implement that feature. Without getting too much into the story, the actual flow of combat is what really drove me to enjoy this game over and over again. The back and forth of the main factions in game are nothing short of nerve-racking. Slowly preparing a fleet to do battle with a foe that can reverse your technology and assimilates your ships is terrifying and incredibly interesting. Working out the balance of your fleet, researching new ways to counter your borg-like foe are all part of the campaign as well as the skirmish modes. To mention briefly the sound design is nothing short of brilliant, its much more engaging than the original game, though some of the voice work does sound a little goofy initially, overall its very well implemented as well. The atmospheric soundtrack is back, and though it doesn't feature anything that standouts as well as the first game, it is still very good. The games engine itself was starting to see some gray hairs unfortunately, so of course it was polished as well as it could be for 2000. Between the much more involved story line, the pacing of various space battle, the more efficient research and harvesting system- the game easily outdoes 1999's origin tale. If not by design alone, it certainly features a much more engaging plot that really goes all out in conveying the urgency of stopping your mistake that was born from foolish ignorance. If you have always wondered what the best "sequel" was, this is it, this is the actual "Homeworld 2" and their is really nothing like it inside the real time strategy genre.

If it isn't already obvious, this game has aged well for Playstation 2 era hardware and not only that, but provides some insight into the workings of famous developer "FROM SOFTWARE." The game is perfectly paced, features one grandiose location and a mystery worthy of any player to solve. The visuals are gorgeous, the attention to detail on the character models are exemplary given the age of the game, and the animation cycle of the Kimono demon-ass-kicking Japanese ladies is quite lovely. Much like Fatal Frame, players will be battling ghosts, demons and other Japanese lore oddities. The standards controls and timing take some getting used to, but overall they are really well done and make you feel like you could easily be in danger from every perilous ghost or Gaki that wanders this Feudal Japanese manor house. With a really simple spell card magic system, that works a lot like most survival horror games, you will want to conserve your spells and do most damage with your basic sword or fan weapon. This puts an interesting twist on the fight-or-flee mechanics as well since you could roast some Gaki alive with a flame spell card or make a mad dash for the next room after a few quick slices from your basic weapon to stun it. Though appearing to be a slow combat based third person horror title, people often forget that even the Fatal Frame series was built on tension and delivered it very well by building up encounters between yourself and the spooky ghosts. Puzzles all have a relatively decent learning curve and I never found anything too difficult. They made sense within the context of the world of the game and were pretty darn interesting and creepy. Here its obvious things went terribly wrong, theirs a curse running amok wherever you go, and the grisly nightmarish noises of something far more sinister waiting for you. I am utterly confused by the reception to this game though, and even if it isn't as popular as Fatal Frame or Silent Hill, its equally worthy of being played and enjoyed as a solid enjoyable feudal-Japanese take on the horror game genre as a whole.

Rise of Legends is everything the psuedo sequel to Rise of Nations needed to be. It was sharper, the visuals were better, the soundtrack was better, the art design is still gorgeous to this day and it trimmed the fat of the bloated resource system that bogged down its predecessor. The hero units were really implemented and the entire game is so startling different that I'm amazed at the number of people who haven't heard of it. It was a rough year for Big Huge Games, as I expect they had trouble presenting it as any sort of "sequel" to Rise of Nations. Take one look at the box for the original PC release and you'll see the problem, "Rise Of Nations: Rise of Legends." Why on earth they featured this bizarre half-attempt at connecting it to their novice first title I still don't know. It doomed the game effectively, as I'm sure many who bought it were not clear how different the game was structured compared to the ridiculously popular "Rise of Nations" and "Rise of Nations: Patriots and thrones." The three factions in the game are all beautifully designed, though equally similar in terms of how they play. Their are only two resources now, which works out just perfectly for a such a fast paced real time strategy game of this kind. This is a game where matches can last just twenty minutes, so I'm sure the change-up from the lengthy Rise of Nations confused many new players. The Cuotl, the Vinci, and the Alin are all so enormously realized, that many should give it kudos for taking something entirely new and fresh for once. The combat system is much tighter this time around, the hero abilities and powers are the chief focus in most battles, which takes a lot of heat off the player constantly activating unit abilities alongside. Yet, what happened? The game had everything to offer to new players and still fell short. Who knows really. It was a bad year for Big Huge Games, but its been many great years since of falling in love with this wonderful world they've created set apart from the scourge of their beginnings. If you haven't played this game, you really aren't a fan of RTS games I'm afraid. It still has so much to offer and though lacking in a solid single player campaign, the skirmish mode is incredibly fun and their is no doubt in my mind- you will have a great time with this game should you play it.

I'm starting to get the feeling that this is the new trend in horror games. Take every weapon away from the player and let them attempt to guide their character through dark linear buildings with just the faintest suggestion that violence may ensue. Games like Amnesia have not necessarily set the new "mold" for this genre, rather games like, Condemned: Criminal Origins, have shown us that we can still be terrified by conflict centered around some unsettling environments and settings. Sure, Castle Brennenburg was a grisly and unnerving place, but the scares are predictable, the enemies can be entirely avoided as well. In 2013's "Outlast," we are aided by a video camera that runs on two auspicious batteries that pop up all over the place to allow the player to utilize a night vision screen filter. The problem here is, it isn't unsettling or terrifying not being able to see in the dark. Its tedious. Yes it was tedious in Amnesia and its tedious here as well. In Condemned you couldn't avoid combat, often times you were shoved into it to get further through each area, which was a good way of connecting with a player: "You could constantly be in danger." In Amnesia its, "Hide here till the spooky spooks walk away and then proceed down the dark corridor." Which makes Outlast look even worse as it clearly complies with this logic. There are many reasons why Outlast "phones home" when it comes to its intentions, but its still a very well crafted game. It may even turn the genre around, but lets hope they don't all start building games around player-characters that are unable to combat anything around them. Waiting for some twisted in-mate to wander off from me in Outlast was about as boring as Amnesia's predictable grab-item triggered spooks and I hope someone sees that this is not necessarily the way to go in the first person horror domain. Condemned remains as the one the finest moments in that genre and remains to this day as having the most visceral combat system ever- coupled with real scares that were deeply unsettling.

I'm glad the game is finally getting the real reviews it actually deserves, since behind its sharp presentation lies an overwhelming mess ****. From the woeful tutorial sections at the beginning of the game, to the intuitive design choices, Black and White seems more like a title designed to frustrate the player than to actual teach them anything. If anyone recalls the much better game, Populous 3, which came out some years before this, exceeds in teaching the player fairly basic mechanics and structure without attaching a one ton weight that is the atrocious AI of Black And White's infamous "creatures." You start the game off helping some folks being GOD and whatnot, you aren't opposed to helping (or harming) people once in awhile. After you're bored with that its time to listen to a tutorial for an hour rather than to introduce things slowly to the player without patronizing them or belittling their technical abilities to understand how a very basic game actually works. Their is no "management" of your throng of villagers, the gaggles of them will just literally do whatever you need them to do. Should you wish, you could essentially sit around and do nothing for them, but unfortunately nothing would ever get done. Unsurprisingly these villagers are pretty slow compared to you, GOD, who can essentially do their work for them much faster. After a few buildings are finished you will get to pick from three adorably polygonal monstrous creatures: A cow, a lion or an Orangutan. In what can only be described as, "tedious to a degree not since seen in any other game ever" you are now forced into what can only be described as a pet simulation till the end of single player game. None of the creatures were particularly better than you, GOD, and the effort needed to train these beasts from murdering citizens or gaining their trust before picking one up all of a sudden and eating them was mentally draining. I certainly don't remember this portion of the game being intuitive either. In fact I found it revolting how easily you could accidentally train your monster something entirely wrong and not know the consequences until it was too late. I never even bothered to finished the incredibly long winded Single player portion, as I was just too frustrated by the creature AI mechanics to possibly stomach the rest of the game. Though it was met with exceedingly amazed reviewers at its time of release, since then it has been confirmed for one of the most overrated and over hyped pieces of software to come out in some time. Is it fun to pick up villagers and throw all of them into the ocean one by one in an effort to bring some peace from the chaos? Yes of course. But you'll never get anything done that way.

One sentence: "Way to miss the point." You know Empire Earth as a whole was a great game and Steel Studios progressed far beyond it, even simplifying their games as they went along. Whoever was behind the pseudo sequel went all out, they nauseated players with a barbaric and ancient bloated resource system that did not make things simpler, it did not make things more fun and along with a brutally unfair or completely stupid AI, the game is hardly playable. First off, its visuals are very good, even considering its age, second off, this has nothing to do with the core gameplay mechanics being a chore, even for RTS genre standards. It gets nothing right in the economic aspects, it tacks on several new resources that absolutely HAVE to be used to construct different units. It does away with a simple Epoch upgrade system as well. Instead you must now send villagers into a building to gather "tech points" to upgrade different facets of your civilization before actually progressing to the next age. I've never even bothered trying to play that long, you know, the end game when you've tech'd all the way up? Nope. Not even gonna bother. The game moves at a snails pace, half the time you are simply waiting to have the resources to do something. Did I mention the wood gathering? Do I really need thirty villagers gathering wood? Why would you choose to emulate such a tedious thing from the original game developer? Why? The combat is horrid, even goofy, you can build up an army, but somehow the AI knows what you're up to and usually out builds whatever force you've been desperately trying to build up. Combat is not the focus here, its resource management and micro resource management and it is a chore. The whole game is a chore. Who cares if it rains or snows? Those weather cycles are simply eye-candy, icing on the games engine and they don't cover up the terrifyingly bad dialogue or sound effects. The music isn't memorable, the ambiance is just what it is, "ambient" and has no bearing on anything your doing. Even I liked the background music in Empire Earth. I guess between the really weird ideas, like building "roads" or "pathways" to facilitate faster unit movement, the naval combat is kind of lax as well, and how about the territories? Oh yeah, those are just great. Be the first one to build a settlement there and its yours. Guess what the AI does in most matches? If you're answer was A. Make muffins and twiddle their thumbs while you enjoy their delicious sugary treat you were unfortunately wrong. It was B. Out build your sorry ass and take territories faster than you could even get your piddly "economy" going. The game has niche appeal in the worst way, it travels to the lands of "slow paced" RTS genre, it takes the boring things from Empire Earth and just tosses them back in to be made even more tedious. Not one thing has ever made it out of this game and into another RTS title since. The miniature camera, you know the one that took up way too much of the interface, which was also a goddamn mess of a UI, has never been seen outside of this game. It lacks scope, it claims to have it in spades, but who wants to sit around waiting for a war? When I think of games like Age of Empires, though it has aged a bit, I recall never having to wait for too long before a skirmish would break out. Either over a gold mine, or a forage patch and yet, in Empire Earth II, you are literally waiting forever just to assemble some kind of an army. And even though their are some great features in the actual game, they add NOTHING to it. Walls in my territories? Pretty cool. Oh they just get knocked down pretty quick and are kind of useless. Citizen manager? Oh hey that's not really that useful as their is still a mini map and its pretty easy to figure out what's going on even on some of the larger maps. But that user interface should get the most flack out of any "feature" here. Its just a mess, an utter incoherent and tedious mess. Their is not that much to worry about here, this is an RTS, not a grand strategy game. Last time I checked, this wasn't Crusader Kings, or Port Royale, or Rome Total War. It does a lousy job of letting you know what you can do, it merely hints that it must have some higher purpose somewhere far from your keyboard and mouse. What surprises me the most, is that even "Empires: Dawn of the Modern World," is an improvement over this game and most aspects of its predecessor. What's even worse is that games like Steel Studios swan song, Rise and Fall, a game that they WENT OUT OF BUSINESS WHILE MAKING and was handed over to Midway for completion, turned out better than this game.

Its actually solid, patch the game up to 1.15 beta and it proves that midway or perhaps ex-steel studios employees clearly wanted to attempt to fix the initial release issues. In fact, with just how simple the economy system is, you get a lot of time to experiment with unit mixes, formations and literally leading massive armies against eachother. Its even thrilling at times, aside from the occasional glitches, the sound design is great. Hearing my Cavalry dash towards the unsuspecting group of Swordsmen is actually exciting, and the actual combat works as intended as well. Units do counter units, you can't just build archers and beat the A.I.- they'll get pummeled by everything else on the battlefield. The last minute, HEROES are not as obnoxious as some reviewers tend to make them out to be and really they get killed off quite easily so their not a constant. Its all about balancing your army and their have been moments where I've been locked in enormous stalemates with other players holding their own. Like a giant clash of hundreds of units all slowly killing eachother. At times its brilliantly designed and other times things just don't work. Its a pity steel studios is gone now, as this was their swansong and a nice mix between several of their old titles. Its really a very simple game with a solid combat system with a few **** mechanics that just never worked. Still- it plays very well, the engine is pretty solid, the physics are great, and the whole thing makes you feel like you're really in a massive battle at all times.

Its insultingly stupid, even the children its meant to entertain would be insulted by it. The levels are far too short with absolutely no challenge throughout. The narrator makes me feel like I'm being read a bedtime story or playing King's Quest at the age of 30. Mickey's animation is ugly, his design poor, and their is no variation to the control scheme. Its essentially Klonoa, without the charm or quality and fantastic level design. Tomba is still more enjoyable than this game and that came out long before this (and long after the original Castle of Illusion). The original is better, even the sega master system version is better and in terms of actual fun? No this remake is not fun, its by the numbers, its generic and its sad to see that this is the way new players get to see what was once a fun series of games.

Its insultingly stupid, even the children its meant to entertain would be insulted by it. The levels are far too short with absolutely no challenge throughout. The narrator makes me feel like I'm being read a bedtime story or playing King's Quest at the age of 30. Mickey's animation is ugly, his design poor, and their is no variation to the control scheme. Its essentially Klonoa, without the charm or quality and fantastic level design. Tomba is still more enjoyable than this game and that came out long before this (and long after the original Castle of Illusion). The original is better, even the sega master system version is better and in terms of actual fun? No this remake is not fun, its by the numbers, its generic and its sad to see that this is the way new players get to see what was once a fun series of games.

Another brave soul finally made mention of the sadistically slow gameplay. That and lack of a proper difficulty curve on the single player missions, a soundtrack inferior to the first, a user interface that has seen better times, a terribly graphics engine that has literally made the game unplayable in more recent years, supported Windows ME, etc..

Pretty terrible, consol-itis, uneven gameplay, levels are pretty bland due to console release, boring story, single player experience is lacking, and sound effect are nauseatingly bad. Its like they said: "Hey! Call of Duty came out and that was great! I know- lets try to make that except dumb it down, make it more broken, introduce squad-combat even though the enemies will still only fire at you, broken A.I., and terrible graphics! Seriously even the Xbox port looked terrible. The PC part looks barely better than the Xbox one and the Playstation 2 kept it safe with some okay textures and a low resolution so it ran the game properly in most situations. Its really the best out of the series which is just a shame.

Controlling you're character and getting that camera to work just how you want it are in fact more nightmarish than the game itself. Yes it is plagued by Resident Evil syndrome wherein you have predesignated camera angles in rooms that add frustration to the clunky movement of you're character. Thank god the game is incredibly easy and I mean its really just running around-bump into ghost (or wall)-simple attack pattern-click-flash-fatal frame-dead-dead ghost. Thats the game outside of some pretty average puzzles and tracking down keys along finding some cryptic clues have yet to explain many things in full about the ultimate plot. I'm guessing thats not the focus here though. The camera is an excellent concept, the upgrading is cool and customization is fantastic. It is however, overpowered and dispatches those pesky ghosts pretty quickly especially when you find the more powerful film soon after the beginning. The unsettling details of terrible deaths and even "replayed" said terrible deaths are more intense then the combat alone though. You will quickly start asking yourself: "why are the rooms up until the ghosts creepier than my fights with ghosts?" Its also not very scary, but the atmosphere is quite good and enjoyable if you like that sort of theme in you're horror genre. Another thing that I found odd was- exactly how are you killed by a ghost? I mean when a ghost touches my ankle how exactly do I take damage from that? When a ghost gives me a hug- how exactly did that detract from my health? It also doesn't establish why some ghosts are just neutral. Like the many apparitions you take snapshots of or clues that require you to "exercise" a ghostly spirit for some reason they aren't harmful? Oh, but restless ghostly spirits are though! Right. It kind of just makes up these pre-established rules, but its not a huge deal. Its still great if you enjoy this series. It does a lot of things right and its fun too. The village is quite linear though and the game is a bit on the short side although over-all its a great experience.

Almost unplayable, but such a majestic way to go out right IREM? Lack of consumer interest in the series in Japan aside, IREM have put together a nice little parting gift to likely their niche of fans here in the West and mostly in the East. Its suitable given that R-Type Delta came out so long ago its like chewing on year old potato chips in terms of game play innovations. Its the same game with a few minor exceptions and many would also argue that the better game is in fact the former. I would argue simply- this game was not made for this hardware. The Playstation 2 was a beast back in 2000 and it tore through to the finish line by being modestly more powerful than the Dreamcast (although this was never seen after SEGA pulled the plug). However, that doesn't mean that every game that was made for it ran well on the hardware. Shadow of Colossus chugged, God of War chugged, and R-type final nearly died right out of the gate. When I started the first level and bumped into an astonishingly large robotic crab I though their was something wrong with my Playstation, but it turns out that the game was just trying to look too awesome apparently. Its practically unplayable and although slowdown was an issue periodically in the R-type series it was never meant to still be an issue this far in. Even more disappointing is the lack of care by even hardcore fans when it came to the issue at hand. Even they would claim it made large fire fights easier to get through and they practically welcome the lurching frame rate right into their game play experience. Its unacceptable, though many put up with it God of war II, a title that admittedly pushed the hardware to the extreme end of its capabilities possibly even slightly less that Shadow Of the Colossus did, and we're supposed to be excited when a horizontal space shooter can't keep up that 60 frames per second? That reason that was arguable the bread and butter of the argument as to why the Playstation 2 was quote "better" than the Dreamcast hardware. It could output those frames per second at a nice consistency that looked so fluid to the human eye. R-type final boasts a meandering 60 FPS while dropping to below 30 FPS in very "busy" sections. Its frustrating because it ruins the experience of the game when you're eye keeps detecting that motion is no longer smooth anymore on you're TV. Even worse the sudden speed ups can get you killed very easily. What an upsetting finale for such a great series.

Style? Yes. Music? Yes. Gameplay? Daunting, confusing, scattered, tedious, ridiculous and lastly full of itself. Okay so its a bit on the overrated side, its got some cool concepts, good action and a fun way to dispatch enemies- cool. Yet, I don't think I've ever been more turned off by gameplay choices in my life. Sure its got loads of comedic (though strange) bits, plenty of funny enemies to beat to a pulp and lots of intricate moves to pull of, but it throws so much in that it lacks focus. Their are so many ways to defeat enemies that the game becomes a bit unbalanced for that very reason. The boss fights are also very challenging from what I recall and I even more so it seemed the lack of (actual) story kind of made me just not give a **** about what I was doing. It seems to have given up cognitive story and balanced game play for stylistic choices and making regular fights look "awesome."

This isn't Gradius.. this isn't Gradius at all. However, what it is- is in fact a much better, much improved, and much better looking Gradius than any other installment in the series. Even though at times Treasures influence is incredibly obvious, seeing as they had everything to do with making this title, you'll still see some glimpses of original Gradius concepts from older games and maybe even old bosses or enemies. Its been re tweaked for awesome throughout, has a pretty cinematic quality to it and it even quite challenging in a relentless sort of way. However, the power-up system overhaul has left the room for error less-so than in the older games, seeing as you can do quite well with a fully powered ship in each stage. That doesn't mean you won't get you're ass murdered by level layouts or strategically placed enemy patterns of fire or otherwise. You may in fact enjoy this game or hate it for being nearly completely different the the other games.

Supremely underrated. Forget the pointless storyline, just the atmosphere alone, the main character, the puzzles and the mind **** are enough to vouch this game as being the all-around best in the series. It murders Silent Hill 2 and its lonely unsettling environments with a roller coaster of terrifyingly well executed weirdness and a showdown inside of a carnival ride that is so off the wall bonkers that it should be given an award for those latter portions of the game alone. It contains so many shocks, maze like levels, dark stretches, instant death traps, and many other random insertions of horror. The difficulty can be traced more to the controls, which although superior to the first two silent hill games, is still admittedly clunky in most regards. The camera can also be a pain, but thats quite rare. The weapons are satisfying to use and I love Heather's curb stomp as it has a very testosterone inducing bone crunching noise. All in all this game is so unsettling that its been a year or two since my last play through, but my memory of the experience lives on and hopefully, for those that have not yet played it, it will soon be a part of you're memory one day.

Its freaking SOUL CALIBUR II and its out on EVERYTHING. Its really more of the same and thats not a bad thing at all. However, with an extended character list comes problems- cloned moves, unbalanced characters and repetitive combat. Outside of that its so chalk full of "STUFF" to do its hard to believe. The storyline is bonkers, but who cares? We didn't get Soul Calibur to talk about its meaningful characters and its rich nuances layered between its deeply woven storyline or complex characters. We got it so we can be a guy with a stick thats 80 feet long and can hit you from half the stage away. We got it so we could be a dude who is nearly 8 feet tall in BDSM gear with scissors on his hands who does goofy gymnastic moves all around his enemies. Either way its solid and although the extra characters included on all the consoles were a bit pointless (I'm looking at you Link) it managed to upset its origins and proudly age very gracefully. Even by todays standards it beats its mutated deranged step son Soul Calibur IV pretty hard in the actual "game" not "crap" department.

At the least- a very uneven game. At the worst? A decent game accompanied by a terrible fan-base full of weird Disney-anime obsessed pasty white tweens that either like the game because it has flashy colors in it- or attempt to justify it as a "deep action rpg with meaningful dialog between a child with gravity defying hair and micky mouse." It has its merits and it also has its boring segments that shouldn't even be in the game. Goofy and Donald duck are an odd duo here and anybody will admit that the melding is a bit strange. The enormous amount of licensed Disney characters included- as well as the lack of original or even "sound-alike" voice actors tells me that this wasn't really a big deal to Disney. They probably knew they could market the crap out this game without even trying: "Final fantasy and disney characters? Kids will eat that **** up!" Thusly Kingdom Hearts was born. Then their was that **** (but we all loved it) trailer on TV with that catchy 10 seconds of some Japanese song that had been dubbed for the commercial and everyone was suddenly entranced. Its kind of like Pokemon in a way.. even though we get older and stop playing it (most of the sane ones anyway) they keep making them for nostalgic factor. Thats why this game succeeded. No shame in hiding that truth.

Its so fun- but its so damn hard. This game is immensely difficult. Maybe its the control scheme or maybe its just my inability to carry on against un-winnable boss fights. The levels are easy and even if you're not very good with the characters that apparently built their vehicles out of tissue paper, its still not impossible... but then you get to the first boss. Its of course around the second that you start to wonder why you can't seem to progress through the game very easily. These boss fights are ridiculous and unless its magically easier with 2 players instead of one- I'm still guessing they would be a bit frustrating. Also the control scheme is garbage if you're not used to it. In fact I blame a lot the inherent difficulty in just maneuvering you're vehicle on the control scheme. Its un-suited for a car combat game and I've been playing these since the original playstation. Yet, the music rocks, the characters are awesome, the cars are great, the weapons are great, the levels are varied, and it just does what it does so well. Its hart to hate what you love, but even Twisted Metal has its shortcomings. They just don't kill the games appeal though.

More repetitive than watching the tour de France. Serious collision detection issues, boring enemies, cheap attacks, no ability to buy items until portions of the village have been set down, no interesting characters, no continuity, poor camera, useless item breaking system, tedious town re-building, and many other things. You know that feeling when you've just leveled up that bad-ass sword forever and it suddenly breaks in combat? That is essentially what describes the reaction I have to most of this game. Its bland, the environments are repetitive, the combat is boring and it uses those methods to elongate a game that has essentially no story line. I thought things would change up when I was about half-way though the game- but they stayed exactly the same. Although the one positive thing that happened- they made a sequel that fixed a lot of these problems that I still haven't picked up, but I will. Since what I liked in this game I did actually like a lot- its just disappointing that they made so many mistakes the first time.