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To be fair I already played this game for quite some time 10 or so years ago so I may have a nostalgic/unbiased opinion on this game. Anyway the key elements of this game are unique and complex mechanics, combat fairness, strangely unique background music and Type-Moon characters/lore. Game's graphics are old and cheap, even if well animated, but that's not why you're buying this game, since that would be mechanics. The game is definitely not user friendly: there's no proper tutorial, the combat system is cryptic and because of its own complexity I cannot recommend this game to casual players (unless you're playing with friends, casual players too). On the other hand if you're willing to study and learn from external resources things like moon stances, bnb (bread'n'butter in fighting game slang) and general attack strings of all characters, frame times, etc you will enjoy the deepness of Melty Blood combat system and the game as a whole. Melty Blood is one of the best fighting games (thinking eSport wise) of the past decade(s) and in my opinion should be on any fighting game enthusiast's library. TL;DR: You're buying this game because of its great/complex combat system and because of Type-Moon, not really targeted to casual players (read above for further explanations)

I didn't like LIMBO and even if this time I'm going to leave a positive review I didn't like the same things in INSIDE too. This time curiosity gave me a reason to "move", solve puzzles, etc, but in the end none of your questions are answered, you just get more and more questions and not a single answer, you can make some educated guess but in the end there are so many explanations (given the fact you don't know the rules of this distopian world) that each possible explanation won't leave you satisfied enough. That said, everything else on this game is a piece of art, from graphics to music and (even more) sound effects, controls are just as simple as perfect for this game and mechanics are intriguing and sometimes a bit mind-blowing. The setting is some kind of distopian world where I felt Orwell's Big Brother surveillance (1984) and Otomo's psychic/human experiments (Akira) as well as Nihei's megastructures and elusive creatures (BLAME!), in the darkest possible mix. As I said before I would have loved some explanation of this world (how did humanity get to this point, who are you as the player, why are they doing this, etc) because in my opinion that would have risen meaningful questions (instead of meaningless ones), questions on our world and how could our society become something like INSIDE's distopia. All in all this journey was a positive experience, still I wouldn't recommend this game to many people because it is extremely dark, there's death in the worst meaning possible, and there's even worse than that, so, well, I guess people who liked the 3 works I identified as sources for this game (Orwell's "1984", Otomo's "Akira" and Nihei's "BLAME!") may enjoy the ride (aside from those unanswered questions...), while everyone else should steer away, nothing to gain for you playing this title.

A good Civilization game, evolved from Civilization V, with great mechanics on a bad implementation. I liked a lot the addition of districts, cards and differentiation of social and science advancement trees. I also welcomed the new religious victory condition (even if it's kinda flawed, will write about it later). On the other hand the new graphic style and the lack of “penalties” for large empires (the game actually forces you to rush creating new cities in your empire, will write about it later) dragged things a bit down for me. So, in detail, the mechanics of this new Civilization game are very good, overall positively evolved from Civilization V, but since the game forces you to rush on city building you get two bad side effects: Capturing cities feels like a joke, for example you may end up capturing 10 to 15 cities in just a few turns with no real side effect on your empire. For the same reason (too many cities) religious victory condition is a mess, you will see 3~4 priests per city battling (yeah… that is lame) for religious supremacy which is beyond annoying. Again for the same reason it's just easier to colonize to get certain resources rather than initiate trading with other empires or trying to acquire influence over state-cities. To get you the idea, totally forget about Civilization V Arrigo Dandolo play style, it's just impossible with the current state of the game. Something I was worried about, because so many people pointed that out, was bad AI, but I have to say that in my 2 games AI was quite good, just a bit too aggressive, in everything (e.g. Teddy building a city in a tile between two of my cities, ending up with a oblong, space crippled city or Hojo declaring war just to move through my territory). Finally I have to say that at the moment leaders offer you a little bit of variance only at the very start of the game, middle and ending phases of the game are more or less the same whichever leader you get to play: huge empires, fought at least two or more wars, fairly high in all compartments (science, culture, etc). Would I recommend this game, yes, no doubt about it, but don't get it right now, wait till a few DLC are out (or even better a GOTY edition “final” pack) because there are both “flaws” and lack of diversity at the moment.

A good XCOM game, probably not the best, somehow poorly optimized and a bit cryptic on its mechanics. I'd like to start off with what I hate (exactly) of this game: stutter and loading times (on an SSD). First things first I'm playing this game on linux and since the game engine makes use of OpenGl and it's based on the old XCOM game (at least I heard that was it) I was expecting a few issues, but not at "medium" detail level on a GTX-1060 with 6GB of VRAM. About the loading times, I spend like a whole minute (or even more) staring at the loading screen before missions, that's a lot of idle time which gets added to already "long" cutscenes, etc. A lot of idle time. Performance aside, as I wrote before this is a very nice XCOM game, but of course it's still an XCOM game, meaning that after a few successful perfect or excellent missions, after you manage to get decorated soldiers and after you feel everything is going great, you miss a point blank 90%+ shot, your whole team is killed and your hardcore game experience ends there. The percentage system is really not my thing, point blank on a flanked enemy you shouldn't need to worry about anything, I don't care if you can get a lucky shot on a 30% enemy, as a tactician I don't even bother trying with percentages below 50. In general the RNG component on this one is quite more present than in XCOM: Enemy Unknown and this often invalidates any possible tactic, they made an harder game by decreasing your chances of actually influencing the course of action. The new introduced mechanics on the other hand are what makes this game worth the trouble. Even if a bit cryptic at first (it's quite more complicated than XCOM: Enemy Unknown on the non-combat phase of the game) every new mechanic fits perfectly and often mitigates the awful/typical XCOM games RNG percentage system. I won't spoil anything because I think part of the fun is to get a grasp on your tools and exploit them for the victory. Last but not least there are several bugs, often gamebreaking (like enemies standing still without attacking or moving), encountered a few after just 10h of gameplay. So in the end for me it's a good turn-based tactical combat games, a worthy successor of the previous XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and "Within"), but definitely not the best turn-based tactical combat game out there, check out "Invisible Inc." if you like the genre, you may enjoy it more than this one.

Simple game, simple mechanics and yet a very solid stealth experience. The main reason why I enjoyed Gunpoint (aside from it being actually a good game) is because it's a game that knows its limits: there's a plot and there's irony on the plot inside the plot itself, mechanics are solid and for just 8000$ you'll trash them all to have some fun... they even made an item just to give some kind of sense to the title of the game. Probably recommended to anyone who got interested after watching the trailer, but I actually think everyone may enjoy a good short game like this.

I don't know about this one... the game is not bad, style and puns are actually not bad either (even if just thrown there without underlying logic) but funky controls and a boring plot drag the whole thing down. It's not a "worst game ever" review but for me the experience it's just not enough to be a positive one. Probably recommended to top-down shooter enthusiasts with few years on their shoulders.

You may think this game could simply be an expensive DLC for Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- and you'd be wrong. Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- brings up new characters, new game mechanics, global lighting, a new lobby system, a new story arc and a lot more goodies (extended gallery, diorama figures, fishing...). Dizzy, Johnny, Jam get back to Guilty Gear along with Raven from Guilty Gear 2: Overture and 2 brand-new characters, no need to say that the amount of detail fits Xrd standards (anime like shadows and moves, now even with global lighting) New mechanics are definitely not that new/exiting but they still add something to the gameplay, the new lobby system on the other hand is amazing: you get your customizable avatar moving around inside a room with actual cabinets (max 4 + 1 for training mode) and you challenge people in line on the room, amazing. Story mode feels actually a lot better than Xrd -SIGN- one because the team focused more on "anime", with better photography and camera angles and the addition of global lighting. Finally goodies section is so huge... a few honorable mentions are: voice actor bonus speech, diorama action figures, usable (during fights) music tracks from all over Guilty Gear history. Of course everything from the paragraph above on top of Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, probably with a better netplay (lv.3 connections grant you a very good match, lv.4 connections allow totally safe reaction play throughout the game, very enjoyable). Right now I cannot recommend any fighting game for PC better than this one and personally I think this is one of the greatest ones I ever played. Strongly recommended for everyone, a must have for anime and/or fighting games enthusiasts.

The real value of this game is the overwhelming feeling of being constantly overpowered by hellish creatures in a dark world. The mechanics are fine too, simple and solid as they should be, but again, this game so good because of fear: fear not to keep up, fear of falling to oblivion, fear of the dark, fear because of the rattling sounds, the monstrous screams, fear of what's coming next... It's amazing how did they manage to create such sensations with just a few pixel. On a technical perspective the game is a solid arcade FPS where you're confined to an arena with no escape (you can fall out of its boundaries) and have to face hordes of enemies killing them by hitting their core with throwing daggers (with gun-like throwing speed) It's both a good game and a good value game taking its tag price in consideration. Totally recommended to almost everyone.

From the hall of fame of adventure games, remastered. One of the very best soundtracks ever made, recorded anew with an entire orchestra; one of the best plots (if not THE best plot) ever written for an adventure game, now with dynamic lighting and hi-res textures. Get this game, you will remember puns, characters and music for ever.

Extra solid turn based strategy, unique art style, procedurally generated levels (for real, far better than XCOM:EU) and if you like challenge I assure you that you can enjoy yourself since there are a lot of different options to make the game insanely hard. I fell in love with this title because of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi theme (some kind of cyberpunk I crave for) and because of the first mission which was damn hard (played only in expert mode because I'm a masochist).

I may start by saying what I didn't like of this game, which was the character design of Kid and the Old Man, simply because everything else was more than good. The game is a gorgeous adventure in a colorful world which thanks to the art style seems to be painiting itself to completion right before your eyes; this world gets also blended with a perfectly fitting soundtack and a narrator who (constantly, probably a bit too much) describes your actions with a charming low tone. About plot, lore or anything related to, you're not playing this game for that. The plot is cryptic (not as much as Transistor's one, but still you'll have a lot of imagination going through) and quite short but still interesting, both moving and melancholic with a somewhat good ending. This game is good, there's no reason not to buy and play this game. Supergiant Collection STRONGLY recommended, because of Transistor and the soundtracks.

From the simplest concept, one of the (casual) games I enjoyed playing the most. As the exact opposite of what the game title reads, this game is about trying to mess with with the higher amount of things possible on the board, reading the hints, deducing the hints, guessing with almost no hints to obtain up to 25 different "unique" endings with lots of Easter eggs and general, simple fun. Art style/realization, music and audio effects are perfectly blended with each other and give the player a very good gaming experience (and the soundtrack is somewhat good, nothing stellar, but definitely good and, again, perfectly fitting with the rest of the art style). There are actually no negative aspects of this game, because if it was "longer" it would have been too long (to complete the game, without the "perfectionist" achievement it takes roughly from 2~3 to 5~7 hours depending on how good you are at reading the hints), if it was fancier you'd probably have lost the unique pixel feeling and a full-price tag of 5€ is just the perfect price for what you get. Again there are no reason not to recommend this game to everyone, play it and enjoy.

Even if I'm writing a review for this game I'm still not entirely sure regarding my opinion on it. There is actually just one big reason to play (and enjoy) this game, because no other game lets you move around in fully 3D surrealistic environments just like being trapped inside a Dalí painting and this game does it very well. Everything else is really a hit and miss, puzzles are either too simple or based on "cluncky" mechanics, the plot is weird (in bad way) and certain sections of the game are clearly visually inferior to others (which for the most part are visually stunning). Finally the audio compartment is kinda bad. In spite of what I wrote in the last paragraph, I'd still like to recommend this game because the feeling you get from being trapped in gorgeous surrealistic anvironments is just so good that everything else is just "some annoyance", and also the price tag is not that high (if this was a 15€ game I most likely would have not recommended it).

Not good but still not bad either. Mostly nice puzzles but everything good ends there. Graphics are overly simplistic (especially the fact the whole game has almost no textures and runs on pure colors instead), soundtrack is kinda missing and the plot is, well, there's some kind of plot. But again, the game it's not bad, it's just a pity it wasn't pushed further, because very nice ideas resulted in a shallow title. Probably recommended to first-person puzzle games lovers, but wait for discounts, it's ages behind Portals or the Talos Principle

Just started to play and what I've seen so far is enough to recommend this game to everyone. Mechanics are rock solid (amazing with every game mode, from 1v1 to 2v2 to free for all) Animations are really well done and backgrounds are just as simple as fitting to create a futuristic (cyberpunk) atmosphere. Music, just a cherry on top, blends perfectly and gives a certain enjoyable rhythm to the matches. It's not a "deep" fighting game, but it is definitely a unique one (no other fighting/brawling games have a dodgeball-like mechanic as far as I know) and even if there are no fancy commands/moves it gets pretty technical with angles/feints/tactics. Again, strongly recommended to everyone.

Very well made expansion, at the same level of "The Conquerors" and actually even better because of the full HD campaign intro/outro support, more assets (units and african-themed landscape) and new background themes. I'm having a lot of genuine fun listening to the narrators and playing through the campaigns (hours of challenging content) and I can only recommend this expansion to everyone who likes Age of Empires II.

I don't get it, you can't ask players to play a (puzzle) platformer if you don't give them a reason to move further and further to their right. Started the game, no "tutorial" (stared at the screen for a whole minute until I actually tried to press random keys), there was no bgm, died multiple times for things I couldn't predict since I've been given no knowledge of the world whatsoever. Speaking of that, my idea when it comes to death in games is that it should be a punishment for not having put to use the knowledge and/or instrument you were given before, you can't "teach" knowledge by killing players. Still, the main concern is still about the reason to move forward, for example if you need to rescue a princess you run and try your best to get to her but in this case you just bore yourself on a greish world solving puzzles (at least at the beginning of the game, where a reason to move forward is the most important thing). Ah, finally, setting jump and up on a single button was a terrible design idea. If any of you can help me appreciate this game, please do in the comments below, I'd really like to (I'm actually quite fond of platformers).

Bored myself growing blocky things, and tried many times to take the star seed onto the spaceship. There's an issue on Linux (at least on my machine that even if not THAT powerful is able to run Bioshock Infinite at 60fps): the game wavers from 60 to even 20 fps and when it's not at 60 fps controls become extremely unreliable/faulty. Usually it's not a huge problem since you can just glider somewhere and be safe, but after you've grown the huge plant and you're asked to take the seed back home, you have to make 2 jumps, failing either results in having to climb the last section of plant, again, grabbing the seed, again, and trying to jump, again, 2 times. Problem is that for no plausible reason, after I grab the seed, the fps go wild from 20 to 40 and controls are extremely unreliable. Again, this on a machine that was able to run Bioshock Infinite at 60 fps, just no. PS: Were those last jumps grabbing a seed really necessary (given the extremely relaxing spirit of the game)? For me it was like a game asking me to walk around and suddenly run and jump over deadly spikes.

Let's start by saying I'm a huge fan of Jules Verne books (and actually Jules Verne itself) and this game grasps the very essence of "Le tour du monde en 80 jours". Everything in there it's like it was in the book, just different every time you attempt the travel. There's almost the same suspense when something unforeseen happens and you have to get out of some nasty situation while still looking for your 80 days goal. The narration is faster than a book but also kinda slow for a video-game, which I guess was the best compromise. Something I didn't like was that most of the graphics in the PC port where upscaled from the iOS version and playing at higher resolution looked kinda bad and that there was no linux port of this game even if it was made in Unity3D with very little graphic elements. With proper high-res graphics and a Linux port this game would have got a 9.

The game is fun, but there are many reasons not to buy the game. Graphically the game doesn't change much from low detail settings to high ones (high detail is not really THAT detailed), most animations are clunky, there are serious graphical glitches, and finding 3 of them on 3h of casual gameplay is quite a lot if you ask me. Now, the players, if you get to play with all players with low ping values (30~60) the game is mostly nice, otherwise people teleport... and if you try to hit an afterimage **** who's actually a few steps further, you leave yourself open for counterattacks and die. No fun about it. Finally, gamemodes, there are a lot (a lot with text glitches which render incomprehensible the actual objective too) and since the community is quite a bad one, the experience, especially in more complex game modes, is really poor/bad. Don't get me wrong, there are also reasons to like and play the game, like medieval warfare, pretty nice sword/axe/spear/bow/... fight, few interesting game modes, but for me they are still not enough to keep me playing this one. Don't get me wrong, this is one of the best casual games out there, but it's totally not worth its price (my reviews always account the price too).

Not good still not bad either. Mechanics are interesting, concept and story are inspired and enjoyable but there are two strong flaws in my opinion: graphics, which are ok but devs could have done much better with very little effort and the difficulty of the game. About this last one, if you make a game entirely story-driven everyone should be able to appreciate the story, even people that just like to relax and watch/listen while moving their characters on the screen. Towards the end I died 3,4 even five time per "puzzle" disrupting completely the flow of the plot. So, well, the game was too hard for a game with this concept; I don't know if it was done to reach the 3h average gameplay time or what (the game lasts from little less than 2h to little more than 3h total), but that in my opinion was a huge mistake, mostly because, again, it disrupted the pace of the story-telling. In the end the game is still nice and aside from the difficulty, everything else is very interesting, especially the (huge) section of cultural descriptions and insights.

Definitely the best city builder/manager ever made until now. Things you "may" not like may be the relaxing recurring background soundtrack and the kinda-diorama style, don't get me wrong, I like both but I think they are the only things that someone may not like about this game, because everything else is pure awesomeness. One of the greatest achievements this game earned is that you can both play this game as a casual: building roads, services and enjoying your city growing, and as micromanagement maniac: setting district policies, modifying budgets, fine-tuning assets and many, many other things. Heck you can even watch the life of your citizens from when they move into your city till they die (possibly old, if you correctly managed pollution and health-care). If I'd like to point out a flaw on this game I may say that performance is not that great (at least on linux) and that anti-aliasing is really bad (barely works), but it doesn't hurt that much I guess. So, well, get this game if you ever thought you may enjoy creating or managing a city (or actually even a village or idk, almost everything with buildings and roads on it) or just get it anyway since it's worth the money it costs. Just one warning: don't look at this title for SimCity-like challenge. This game is far more about fine-tuning, cleaning and beautifying your city than struggling to keep it alive, facing cataclysms and such, and sorry if I repeat myself, Cities Skylines does it extremely well, best city manager so far by a good margin.

I guess I would say "too short" (1h gameplay at most) but I should also include that's a 1 dollar game In the end I found the game worth the price. The puzzles are easy and the whole experience was relaxing, there's nothing to rush to, nothing to achieve, etc, just solving easy electrical-circuit-like puzzles for an hour or so. In the end I liked it but I guess many would not, if you're searching for a short and relaxing game to spend 1h on, this game is ok for you.

Could be much better/varied. Artwork is nice and the whole adventure is kinda "positive" but after finishing the game I don't feel anything for the characters at all, for some reason they didn't impress me (even if the actual plot should be at least heartwarming). So, again, could have been much better than this. Also, as a side note, the linux version of this didn't come with fullscreen support, which means A LOT of out window-border clicks leading in de-focus and general pain...

A very good game and I would say an unique experience if played on "survival" mode. I'm not kidding if I say I found just 4 minor flaws on the entire game (excluding gameplay, style and other subjective things each player may like, love or hate) which are: > quite slow loading times (played on a SSD disk, so can't imagine that on old disks) > surface "levels" have often a lot of "secrets" which would be nice if you didn't have limited time (especially on survival, sneaking around, waiting for openings), not to mention that sometimes you can't say if you're going after a "secret" or the actual end of the level > 3D speech sound is kinda "faulty" (at least it is on linux) to a point you almost can't ear someone talking to you if you're facing the opposite direction > monster spawns are sometimes "triggered", meaning that as soon as you do something a couple of monsters spawns behind you. This... these are the only objective flaws I was able to find on this title, everything else is pure gold. Gorgeous graphics and concept art, good and fitting music, a plot that is just as simple as it is amazing, extremely good work depicting characters personalities with just a few "hints" I would also like to point out that the game has a VERY good graphical engine and not only I was able to get ~20% more avg fps than, for example, Bioshock Infinite (both at maximum settings) but Metro 2033 Redux NEVER stuttered, like never EVER. Finally there's one thing I'd like to write about just because, as funny as it sounds, prevented me to play this title for almost an year; (on linux) if I kept my USB Arcade Stick plugged, Metro fps were locked to 11~13 meaning it was totally unplayable, once I unplugged the stick, I got 70 fps on the benchmark...

Fun, crazy, disturbing, what? and there's some sort of plot too, but you're not a spy enough to get it. Not a masterpiece, not actually even a good game, but I can't say I didn't enjoy playing it and the "WTF?" moments you get from this are truly unique in their own unique way.

Short, awesome soundtrack/artwork blend, interesting mechanics, fair checkpoint system. The game filled its purpose completely and it's strangely pleasing to be played, recommended to everyone.

Nice story-driven FPS with gorgeous graphics, amazing soundtrack and a very bold (in a good way) plot. By "bold" plot I mean exactly what the trailers show you, and it's wonderful. You often find yourself literally amazed by the boldness and badassness of the hypothetical "**** future" and how you (a bold character yourself) and your few comrades will manage to eradicate it piece by piece. Graphics, music and level design are top notch. Graphics are surprisingly light on system resources even if they managed to get amazing visuals, to a point that it feels like the concept art itself, just better because you're "moving" inside it. The amazing background music of this game moves from industrial metal to German rock'n roll and I couldn't think of something better. Just one thing I didn't think was fitting was the ending/credit bgm, you'll decide yourselves when you get there. Now the actual gameplay. There are a lot of cutscenes, always pleasant, there are almost no QTE (thank god) and the game is fairly easy on normal difficulty to enjoy the plot. Actually, about that there is an issue, I think, the game is FAR too easy on start, it's like they're considering you never played a FPS before, but overall, you get to die like 15~30 times throughout the story on the first run and it's never frustrating. About replayability I'm not really sure, I guess you won't beat the game a second time on higher difficulty levels unless this is the only game you own, or at least you're not THAT encouraged to do so (there are a lot of achievements and secrets though). All in all I really enjoyed this game from start to finish and I can only recommend you to get it. Finally, to my linux fellas, even if the game is not for linux, it runs natively on OpenGL and outperforms many linux "ports" I own, not to mention that you get the exact same detail and performance levels you'd get on MS Windows.

My review may be biased by the year I waited craving to play this game that was a console exclusive but I guess it's fine... Anyways, the game is a gem: extremely good mechanics, extremely good graphics, extremely good music, various and interesting "game" modes, unlockables, actually working netplay. Now, in detail. Guilty Gear Xrd mechanics are probably "weaker" than Guilty Gear XX^core+R but still on a top tier level, they gave more freedom on Roman Cancels use and found a good way to make them netplay-viable, most old mechanics like Faultless Defence, Gatling Combos and Instant Kills are still there just like they were on previous titles and overall they feel extremely solid. Game artwork/graphic is amazing. You play full-fledged 3D models and you almost can't tell they actually are 3D models instead of hand-drawn sprites until the camera pans/zooms for special events... amazing. As always character design is flawless, animations are good (anime-styled deformations and such included) and generally speaking, the tech/workflow behind such an amazing result is most likely going to be used as example in the future by developers. Music is good, yep. Ishiwatari Daisuke strikes again. Now, about game modes. You think you're buying a fighting game, but you actually buy a fighting game, an in-game graphic animated visual novel/anime and a nice fighting RPG (M.O.M. mode), not to mention the Bonus Soundtrack (which is not Guilty Gear Xrd Soundtrack, it's a Bonus Sountrack for real). Finally, netcode. I can't say the netcode has no issues, but I was able to play smooth matches with friends I know I ping good against. For fighting games netcodes are almost always "the hard test", mostly because it's the one thing you can't beta test enough and that tends to change a lot moving from different consoles or PC. So, well, it's not that bad, not that good either, definitely playable on a good level if both players have a good ping.

Good game, similar to Portal, but definitely not at the same level. Let's start with what I think were mistakes on this game: - they failed on the Law of Conservation of Energy during the narration (or at least the Italian translation did, badly) and since the whole game is about AI this is really bad IMHO - puzzles are repetitive, to a point that for more than half of the puzzles everything is reduced to the hassle of running around with the pieces (and/or falling/else because you're bored and you don't pay attention anymore) of a puzzle you solved as you entered the room because you've already solved that same puzzle before, with minor differences - narration is slow... actually it's a direct consequence of the exaggerated amount of puzzles needed to beat the game So why isn't my review negative? Because, again, the game is good. The plot, even though it's smeared on almost 20 hours of game-play, is nice and catching with all the reasoning, philosophy and physics. Graphics are top notch (mostly) and anyway always visually rewarding. Same could be said for the soundtrack that was never able to bore me even if I was listening to it for 20 hours straight. Probably something more could have been done on sound effects, sometimes they felt repetitive or missing. I'd like to talk a bit more about those puzzles, because the concept is great, and the realization is great too, when I was given a puzzle I had to think to solve it was fun and rewarding, but then I was given the same puzzle, with minor differences that took me a minute or less to understand and I lost tenth of minutes just running around with puzzle pieces, bored, so bored I'd actually fail falling or being killed because I was rushing to end the thing ASAP, furthermore increasing the boredom adding some frustration. And again, certain puzzles were great and on others I even gave up (more or less 1/3 of the "stars") so challenging they were, I just cannot stand this "same puzzle over and over" thing, sorry. Not to mention that to beat the game you HAVE to complete all the puzzles (except for the "stars"). To conclude, in my opinion this game could have been on the same level of Portal if it had 1/3 of the puzzles it has (or even less), so that the narration would have been a bit more fast paced and catching and every puzzle would have felt a new challenge. NOTE: Italian dub is not that good and Italian translation isn't either, since reading a lot of text on a foreign language is quite demanding I still opted for the Italian translation, but I couldn't really stand the dub too, so I played the game with the original English voice acting and Italian subs/text; if you feel very confident with the English language I'd suggest you to play the whole game (speech, subs and text) in English language.

Gorgeous Artwork, amazing soundtrack, intriguing combat system and good use of isometric perspective, if the game was only about that it would have been a undoubtedly masterpiece. But when it comes to the plot it is far too vague. Don't get me wrong, I like being thrown in medias res and struggling to understand the situation piece by piece but on this game they got a bit too far: you don't know where you are and more importantly which are your world "rules" (more or less like in physics rules). Not knowing the "limits" of your surroundings you can't empathize with the main characters and their story, you don't know who they are and what is their role in the world either (again, because you don't know what is the world you're playing your part in). So, well, with a little bit more knowledge about the world (not the "politics" that you can read on the terminals) I'd have been able to empathize with the main characters and understand the plot completely. I also like to spend a few words on the combat system itself. I don't know if something like that already existed, but, well, the hybrid turn/real-time combat system was amazing. You have to both plan your turn() and the time before the next turn(). Seldom being off-turn is better for strategic reasons and you have to take in considerations that too. Finally, there are no ninja-spawns you cannot react to (hello Valkyria Chronicles and partly XCOM: Enemy Unknown) meaning that you never feel like the game is not fair. So, in my opinion, if you approach this game as a multimedia artbook you will enjoy it from start, far, far more than expecting something from the plot or trying to understand the cyberpunk-art-deco world you're thrown in. Recommended to art-lovers and romantics.

Best served with your favourite radio station. Jokes aside, Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a well made relaxing truck driving game. It's not much a "simulator" in the exact meaning of the word, i'd say it's more a simulator adaptation for everyone to enjoy and not only die hard fans. Playing Euro Truck Simulator you drive all around a stylized Europe, from country roads to highways, mostly pleasurably detailed and with the precision of signs and traffic laws you'd expect from a simulator. What I found a bit annoying were strange intersections (you will never find intersections that take a lane away), not being able to refill in towns (every real town has at least a gas station), lack of content for non-central Europe states (you cannot go to Sicily for example) On the other end I really liked the AI of other cars/vans/trucks, they mostly react like human drivers would to unforeseen events. EDIT: In recent free updates (following the release of the new "Scandinavia" expansion) the whole graphics got a huge rework and since most concerns of my previous review were about the "poor" graphic implementation, they are all gone. The game now looks fabulous with no impact on performance (actually if feels even better). The developers also solved a few issues so that the game is more realistic and even more a pleasure to be played. While before the "Scandinavia" expansion this game for me was a little more than 7/10 now it's definitely 9/10. Good job SCS Software. Recommended to everyone able to use a PC.

A perfect game, on all compartments. Want to play for the story? Then hop on a journey to rescue your crew-mates who got lost in space, the game is extremely fun and with a "normal" difficulty degree if you don't go for trophies. Want more challenge? Then challenge the game and try to get all the discs to unlock more hardcore content. Mad enough? Then get to play one of the most balanced, fair, and difficult arcade platformers ever made (yes there are speedrunners too). Everything I wrote above seasoned with an intense mixture of 8-bit music and graphics that are just perfect, nothing more to add. If you're unsure you may like the game or not (if you don't then probably you don't understand what's good and bad and you don't deserve this game) you can try the first two levels on kongregate, somewhere. Anyway I recommend this game to everyone, even just to understand when you can really say that a game is GOOD and not just fancy or cool like most games nowadays.

While the game itself is quite good: mechanics are definitely good, graphic is what you expect from a non-AAA title (still good and easy on hardware), there are two big mistakes on this title: they tried to fit a story, in but feels more a joke than an actual story (or at least it's very plain and obvious) and the overall game (in normal difficulty) is way too hard. I would have liked more a "short" game with easy (read not-that-hard) missions and a better story, with the possibility to replay those missions in hard/maniac difficulty to get my challenge and my many deaths. So, would I recommend this game? Probably yes, because it's indie, graphics and music are good, there's linux/mac support and overall it's fun, but 20$ is definitely too much, this game at full price should have been 15ish or even less.

The game is definitely good, challenging and with a nice and dark setting, but controls/bugs (only partially fixed with mods) kept me away from this title for a long time. When you release a game for PC, players expect to find 2 things, mostly: graphical options and working controls for mouse/keyboard (and eventually a controller too). This game actually lacks both (non-modded mouse-look makes you puke hard after few minutes of gameplay). After I switched to v2.0-beta, installed DSFix, DSMfix, KB+M icons and hi-res fonts it still isn't good: I can change graphical options and the mouse-look works "better" but it's definitely not enough to make me enjoy this game with KB+M. I know it is clearly stated that an xbox controller is strongly recommended, but again I think that for any PC game, working keyboard + mouse support is mandatory (along with basic graphical quality options). It's a pity we have to get what developers were supposed to do through unofficial mods. So, this PC port is still one of the worst ports I have ever played, but after you manage to get it playable modding/tuning graphic and control settings, I can easily say it's a gem, one of the 10 out of 10 that keep yourself playing hours and hours, amazed by atmosphere, story-telling and gameplay. In the end I'd say I totally recommend this game to hardcore action-rpg lovers but think twice before buying if you don't have a controller. Also, to my linux fellas: the game runs stable with staging wine, no framedrops.

I have no doubts giving this game a 9 out of 10. It's amazing how was I truly surprised and confused, toyed-with and helped by this game. For me this game is pure genius and I had an insane amount of enjoyment playing it. Still I won't recommend it to everyone, because a lot of people may find this game meaningless and boring (If you enjoyed portal, you may like this, even if it's quite more "deep").

A good game that falls short only on longevity/re-playability. While both graphics and music are extremely fitting and well made once you finish the game you have 2 choices to continue playing it: try to "beat" the game (100% complete) or enjoy 3 "simple" (as in not-complex) endless mode maps. So if you're the "achievement" guy who wants everything 100% complete you may have earned yourself a lot more playtime, otherwise you will get bored pretty soon playing the same "simple" endless maps. Procedurally generated levels with themes from the arcade one would have gotten this game 10/10. That said every bit of time I spent on this game was fun and, probably, even the time I'm going to spend on it when I want to relax a bit will be fun just as much. Totally recommended to anyone.

I don't like FPS and mostly I don't like killing people (even if fictional) in general and I think that is the reason why I was able to dive so deep on this title's story. The game itself is pretty easy (there are modes beyond normal difficulty, so probably FPS fans may enjoy better with them), and that's actually a good thing because you can concentrate on story and story fragments since plot is where this game excels (and I mean it). Everything start slow but, progressing, events rush to a point you're disoriented and speechless. Every word added there would be a spoiler, so I'd better keep my mouth shout. Graphics are excellent, one of the best use of Unreal Engine 3 you can ever see and with great performance. Sound compartment is flawless too, both on effects and music. There are only 2 things I didn't like which strip the 10/10 from this title: Elizabeth being too "unrealistic" or doll-like and too much playtime to finish the game, I'd like to have probably a little more than half of the 15h it took for me to complete the story line (I got bored halfway through). For me this game is 9/10 though. To recap, totally recommended to anyone on any OS (run with excellent performance on linux too), this was one of the best game I ever played.

Having played minecraft I can say this game is bad. Probably non-minecraft players may find it interesting, but if you're going to buy it at full price, go buy minecraft anyway instead. What this game lacks the most is modification of the landscape. You cannot build anything outside your base and also you cannot modify the environment around you (digging holes, setting up barriers, etc); since that was mostly the fun part in minecraft, well, this game lacks fun.

Definitely better than the previous entry of the series "Contracts" but not as good as "Hitman 2: Silent Assassin" for sure. The original hitman idea ("Codename 47", "Silent Assassin" and "Contracts") was all about trying not to kill anyone but your targets and as silently as possible while this game, offering you extremely cheap progress solutions involving killing and/or sedating people, encourages you not to go for SA. I'm not saying there is no "silent assassin" in there, because, well, there is and being able to kill with SA grade is usually quite fun but the game discourages to do that. Another thing I missed on my hits was planning. Being able to see blueprints BEFORE starting the mission (as in "Hitman 2: Silent Assassin") you could plan your hits, taking appropriate weapons, checking escape routes and fixing the map on your head being able to move much better during the hit. On "Hitman: Blood Money" you blindly step into your mission without any kind of knowledge (on mission start you can buy hints... another quite dumb thing in my opinion). This "new" 47 can be seen on cutscenes/plot too (killing witnesses and actually having them in the first place, not being 1 step ahead his enemies, etc). Plot then was far better in "Hitman 2: Silent Assassin", far better. On the technical compartment, audio and video are good, surprisingly good actually, I enjoyed both visuals (often stopped during a mission to look at the environment) and audio. Controls are quite good too once you get used to the changes from previous 2 installments (action button split in 3 different action buttons). In the end I'd say this game was definitely fun and well made but not enough to beat the enjoyment that "Hitman 2: Silent Assassin" gave me back then.

Extremely good game mechanics (and totally enjoyable with both mouse and gamepads), perfect bgms, amazing graphics (not always perfectly optimized but never gamebreaking) and what a plot... I was going to write a lot about this title, but in the end any word I could use won't be enough to describe such beauty. Definitely one of the best games I ever played and one of my few 10/10. PS: To my italian readers, stay away from the italian dub, play the game with the english dub with (optionally) italian or english subtitles. It's like day and night.

First let me say that I liked the first Portal, a lot, and so everything that changed from how it was in there is just a regression IMHO. Portal 2 plot is weaker than Portal one, actually far weaker, they stretched the plot to fill in new elements for a richer gameplay (which is good) but it's definitely not as enjoyable as the first Portal because here you feel like what you're doing is totally meaningless. So, to sum things up, Portal 2 is Portal 1 with a richer gameplay, a lot of more hours of gameplay but a weaker plot that kills the enjoyment. Still a good game but not the 10/10 of Portal 1. EDIT: Had a good chance to play coop mode with a bunch of friends and that gave +1 right away to my old "single player" review, not to mention workshop integration that now has got a lot of nice new maps for this game.

First let me introduce this review saying that I'm reviewing "The Elder's Scroll V: Skyrim", not its mods nor the game with mods. Bethesda continued the Elder's Scroll saga keeping the typical extreme role playing features, graphics are extremely nice and overall audio quality is amazing. I have to say though that progressing through the game there have been many things that made me lose interest or even abruptly stop playing the game. The first impact was with the minimalistic UI, for me medieval-themed RPG = parchment. Second impact (that made me quit after 15 min playing until I discovered the mod SkyUI) was with the UI layout/commands. You have a whole keyboard, full of keys, and you are restricted to up, down, left, right and 1-8 hotkeys, with no mouse integration whatsoever (well there's mouse integration that makes you click things you didn't click). After many, many, mods: new UI, mouse clicking bugfix on dialogues, huge bugfixing packs, etc I discovered computer generated quests... that halved my interest on this game just for them being in the game. A mix of all that made me quit after ~80h of playtime, of which I genuinely enjoyed probably only half. So, now comes the hard part, would I recommend this game given the above? Probably yes, because even with its bugs, the utterly bad UI or the uninteresting computer generated quests the game still holds a lot of hours of fun and good roleplaying. What makes you quit this game, even with all the bugfixing-mods installed, is repetitiveness, Oblivion had less content so, even if it was repetitive too, you couldn't get bored much, this game not only has really an extreme amount of content but also features computer generated quests... Ah, and watch out for amethyst rain: every human, animal and plant in skyrim holds at least on amethyst...

I definitely have mixed feelings about this title... Game mechanics themselves are almost flawless, you get to enjoy deep in-field combat tactics and EVERY unit (not only unit types) has its uses on the battlefield. Also, this title is almost entirely plot driven, halfway from a game, a visual novel and an anime itself; and I have to say that the plot is actually quite good (if you like anime-like dramas). Last but not least the graphic engine is awesome, 3D models become amazing pastel-colored line-art sketches with a marked anime style. So why do I have mixed feelings about this game? The port lacks settings customization (there are NO anti-aliasing settings for example) and in-engine cutscenes are pre-rendered in 720p (or even less) and extremely aliased; why pre-rendering cutscenes made with the game engine? and why on that resolution without anti-aliasing? If cutscenes played a marginal role in the game I would have not been disappointed much, but since most of the game time is actually spent watching cutscenes I really can't comprehend the choice, not to mention that this also made the game extremely fat download-wise (~10GiB instead of probably 2~3GiB). Mixed feelings aside I have to say that this game is still really good and extremely enjoyable so I'd like to recommend it to all turn-based combat games enthusiasts and to all romantic/grand-strategy anime fans.

Game is boring and easy, not to mention overpriced. I never played the original superfrog but for sure this remake didn't encourage me to do so. The whole game feels like a flash game you may play for free on your browser but instead it comes at 9€. And by flash game I mean it, the quality is the same of any average flash game. Animations are sluggish and physic, well, there is no physic whatsoever. So, well, again, it's an average flash game sold for 9€, cannot say anything good on it.

While the game is extremely fun to play, it is really bad. Developers made almost no effort to deliver a good product, there are 2 hugely bad things about this game: the piece "fishing" system and the audio (both music and effects) As you can see from preview images, puzzle pieces float on a pond and you have to pick them up while they move/shuffle. In theory this should be good, but with a lot of pieces floating around (level 3+ puzzles) even if you click on the piece you want to pick up, you're offered other pieces instead, countless times. For me this is bad coding, plain and simple, because any tester can notice that and for sure the system is not supposed to work like that. Then there's the audio. Effects and music seems to have been recorded with a cell phone or something similar, I usually play with headphones and the background noise was terribly annoying. Many reviewers pointed out also that this game lacks a mid-puzzle save feature, but I have to say that it took at most one hour to complete puzzles (played 10h to complete 15 puzzles) and even if you're really bad with puzzles I can't see how you could spend more than idk, 2 hours trying to solve any of them, therefore I don't think the save feature is really something that is badly missing. So, again, I fully enjoyed playing this puzzle game, but because of the above I'd probably not recommend it to anyone, just buy a real physical puzzle instead.

Velocibox is a game that comes with one of the simplest ideas you could ever come up with, a cube, sliding through a rectangular tunnel full of obstacles, with 2 ways to avoid obstacles: steering and flipping. The game so far is one of the hardest I ever played, never reached level 4 and probably never will (there are 9 total levels...) but even if you fail countless times, playing still is totally enjoyable and flipping the box makes your brain go crazy with directions: when you flip the box from "floor" to "ceiling", reversing everything, it takes quite some time (and countless fails) to get it accustomed to that. I personally like when things mess with my brain preconceptions. From a technical point of view the game is flawless: no bugs, best graphics they could come up with and perfectly suiting music. Another thing that is perfect is the price: 5€ as base price is what you would expect to pay without discounts for a game like that. So, to recap I'd recommend this game to everyone, not that everyone will ever even go further level 1, but the fact it messes your brain up is so good and interesting that it's worth trying at least for an hour or so. Not to mention that this runs flawlessly on linux too, much appreciated.

From the simple but also great idea of giving the player 2 sets of controls, one for the main character and one for the world, the developers made a little masterpiece. The game has a strong philosophical theme: main character resembling a early ninetieth century German philosopher, the idea of changing the world around you, strong symbolism, etc. This theme blends perfectly with the mechanics of the game, the music and the idea **** drawing graphic. The puzzles are really hard (at least they have been for me) and to solve them you have to discard your idea of gravity, because here everything is relative. I'm not giving this game huge numbers just because it's not much elaborate, even if extremely well made. I'd like to recommend this game only to people who really like to think a lot, because this game makes you do that.

Let me start this review by thanking all the people who completed the game, with the so called Community Patch, from where the original developers left it. This game without the Community Patch was just a game in beta phase with a bunch of objectively wrong decisions, a lot of gamebreaking bugs and crashes. After this needed introduction, I have to say that there's a reason why the community wanted this game to be actually playable and enjoyable: the premises and the general realization was (is) awesome. Gothic 3 is a open-world game that really makes you feel what world means. There are huge snowy mountains, with cliffs and such on the north, there are hills, swamps, lakes, plains up to the mighty desert on south. All this awesomeness filled with a glorious soundtrack and stunning cities. So, what can possibly go wrong? Bugs, crashes, bad UI choices. Of course Gothic 3 is not just a nice world, there's also complete freedom to do whatever you want and become whoever you want. I'd like therefore to recommend this game to RPG fans, not only because of the "historical" importance of this game, but also because even today it's fun to be played. The value you see on this review is intended for the "base" game only, community patch is almost a brand new game.

Tropico 5 made things easier and more straightforward. You don't have to worry about things as much as you had to do in Tropico 3/4. While Tropico die-hard fans may find this unpleasant, I (as mostly a casual player) found Tropico 5 more enjoyable than Tropico 3/4. That aside, campaign was really nice (more or less Cuba throughout history) and as already said, overall gameplay is relaxing. Graphics are nice but I have to say I'd like to have multiple models for (for example) houses and such, having every single house looking the same kills a bit realism. On sound compartment I have to say that things are not as good as graphics. Effects are often not good, not as much as unpleasant, but still not good enough; music feels repetitive after really a short time. Recommended for casual players, die-hard fans may get disappointed, wait for discounts (graphic is still better than Tropico 3/4).