pommegenozide

What's a 'reversed' tower defence game? Anomaly: Warzone Earth basically is a tower destroy game, and a very addictive one at that too. You plan your route, destroy enemies' structures while keep on upgrading units in order to stay alive and complete the objective. The fresh gameplay mechanics and presentations of this game worth way more than it's initial 10$ price tag. Nice SFX and great (but lack variety) soundtracks

A fun co-op horde shooter which does a good job not to take itself too seriously. It's a different type of game than L4D series and that is a good thing about Killing Floor, it gives players a nice opportunity to escape from the gray-ish tone of L4D world. The heavy-metal BGMs keep up with the exciting battles (less depressing musics = more fun). I don't understand people who said this game is ugly while it's actually pretty good looking game, especially nice player models and nice use of lighting effects. Gameplay is fun, the in-game shopping is good and it's not easy which means 'good'. In my opinion it's as 'repetitive' as any other online horde games (L4D, Zombie mode in CoD).

A simple but fun game indeed. For a 10$ game (it's on sale on Steam by the time of this review) Recettear is worth your money than many downloadable XBLA or PSN with the same price point. If you like Japanese text adventure games (not the same as western text rpgs) this game is good for you. Sure, the mechanic is simple, you run an item shop, do trading, raid dungeon to find some rare loots while trying to make enough profit to pay back the debt and seeing some interesting story unfold... but that is the purpose of this kind of games anyway (to get involved in the story like reading manga or watching anime... if you want complex game mechanic you should go for WoW or something of that extent). The dialogs are cute and funny and have a lot of references to Japanese pop cultures (it made me laugh so hard when I saw the game made a homage to one most loved Japanese character) and the voices are nice. The only complain I have with the game is that the dungeon-crawling session of the game could have a little more actions players could perform such as jumping or blocking, now the limitation makes it feels like a really toned down version of Izuna or Shiren's... but overall this is one nice, cheap and interesting game to play.

Nier isn't a best looking game alright. But if you can forgive the look of this game and get through the somewhat slow story-telling (and tedious quests) through a third of the story... you'll find yourself one great game of 2010. The story is interesting and never given anything out before the right time, you'll be adventuring in the shoes of the hero and his companions trying to save his daughter and his village without the clear knowledge of what's is happening in this cursed world, the truth will unfold itself slowly but interestingly and that's the beauty of this game. The gameplay mechanic is fine (standard control scheme for action/adventure game. the buttons layout is right and working fine) There are some jumpy and stiff animations and stuffs but the overall experience of the combat system is quite fluid and somewhat challenging when you face bosses or the more complicated enemies later in the story. There are some dumb platforming sections which are not really challenging but kind of annoying because you have to perform the jump and run in right spots and yes, you will fail. (but good thing is that the game doesn't have enough of them to make you quit) Art direction is the gem here. In some parts of the game when you entered building or structures, instead of a normal behind-the-character view... the camera will switch to fixed position (or fixed distance) while showing the interior from a cross-sectional view. This might look weird for gamers who grew up with FPS or TPS style of camera. But I found that it is a very nice decision and attempt to give players something fresh and different (but old-school RPG gamers will recognize this camera use is similar to old school Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest games) Nice voice casts and it has one of the most interesting set of characters too. The musics in Nier define one of the best scores in 2010 video games. The mixture between traditional JRPG style musics with somewhat New Age-esque tunes with touches of tribal vocals will draw you deeper into the world of this game (of course if you are the kind of gamers who think music is an important part of story-telling). Although this is not gonna happen but I strongly think that musics of Nier should put the game up as one of the candidates for 'Best Original Sound Track of 2010', that's how good the musics in this game are. If you're always on the look for hidden gems, Nier is one of them.

On the technical side, the controls are responsive and the actions in the game are really fluid and intense. The platforming (climbing and stuffs) sections are 'okay', they worked but I'd imagine them being more fluid like of those in Assassin Creed, Prince of Persia or Saboteur games. It's not a hack and slash game where you can pound through hordes of enemies by constantly pressing the attack button, there are many puzzles in the game (with unlockable hints which would prevent you from receiving EXP for clearing them) and the difficulties of the puzzles are moderate and reasonable. And there are a lot of moments which you face non-stop enemy respawning unless you clear the puzzles which intensified your gameplay experiences. The enemies are interesting to fight with because they all had different behaviors and fighting patterns as well as methods to kill them, boss fight are epic and difficult but not cheap at all. Hidden items and collectibles are easy to miss, but usually visible if you're careful enough, they were never placed in some crazy secret caves like some other games that forced you to go use walkthroughs or go nut. There are quicktime events, but not quite 'quicktime-esque' because instead of matching the colors which appeared on-screen with the correct face buttons on your controller, you will have to match the timing with any action button which I personally think are more challenging and they work better than the regular quicktime events in any other games. If you failed, you would know that it was your mistake and can't blame it on excitement, the intensity of the battle and adrenaline-rush for making you press the wrong button. Quite a smart move on the developer side. Replay value is high because you can try to finish all stages playing hardest difficult and try to clear them 110% (just like how you love the recent Castlevania games to be) and each stage also has its own trial challenge which you will have to clear it under a specific condition which I think is really fun. The graphics are nice but definitely not topnotch and the game has bugs here and there but from my experience, I haven't faced any problem that prevented me from advancing and finishing the game. The usual bugs which happened to my experience were getting stuck in free fall animation when land on breakable objects after a double-jump (the object will break eventually and you will land safely after), clipping to the ground (which can fix by just jumping out of it) and sometimes I was able to get behind wall or boundary which led to a free-fall death (most annoying but happened only twice since I started playing the game for almost a month already). There are some frame-rate dropping moment but not too often. On the art side, this game is one hell **** pot. The first things I need to mention are musics and voices. It has one of the grandest and most beautiful music I've heard from games this past few years. It's really difficult to describe, you just have to hear for yourself to believe. The voice actings are awesome, especially the story was narrated by Patrick Steward and his voice was full of emotions which helped connecting players with Gabriel and his adventure. The story and script are epic, there are parts you can guess the twists but you wouldn't know there are twists within twists and those, my friends, will make you scream. The game has really nice animations and character designs (although some secondary characters' models should definitely receive more love) but the best part of the animation aspect is in the combo tutorial pages where the previews of your moves were hand-drawn animations and they looked beautifully gorgeous! I can just keep switching pages and enjoy looking at them for really long time (I'm an animator after all :D). One thing (western) critics and gamers complained a lot is the fixed camera angles but because they are fixed you've got to see great compositions that you would never have seen with behind-the-character cameras. And the cinematic qualities are topnotch! I was able to buy the boss fights storyboards from the 'extra' menu but I would love for Konami to release official art book with all hi-res concepts and detailed storyboards! The ending cinematic was just WOW! It hinted for a possible of a sequel but not in a cheesy way because if the sequel actually follows the ending movie of this game, it would definitely be one really interesting Castlevania game!