somethingguy912

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

It might be a bit late for me to make a review on a game this old, but I had just completed the game's story just a few weeks ago, and do understand the appeal of this game, although, even with that in mind, it does have some flaws. Now, this game is largely herald for it's absolutely insane difficulty curve and it's seamless environment, and half of that is true. Now, the game is difficult, but it's difficulty is largely based on the fact that the game does not give you any pointers in terms of plot or combat other than the basic controls of the game. There's one thing to hand hold the players, and it's a whole other thing to not even give your players the correct means to progress through the game. Most if not all of your credentials are going to rely on looking up the wiki, which much like with Minecraft, completely takes the user off from the initial experience when you get ganked on and the game does not explain certain aspects. Did you know that you could talk to the daughter of chaos? You wouldn't unless you looked up the wiki. Did you know that Lautrec would kill the Fireseeker in Firelink Shrine, and that you have to go to a specific part in Anor Londo to get the soul back? Only with the wiki. The only story details the game tells you is the basic main story of lighting the two flames via ringing the two bells and retrieving four lord souls, and despite my expectations for some narrative twists - the only one is the fact that Gwyndolin has made an illusion of sunlight in Anor Londo - there is none. It's as straightforward as it comes: link the flame to continue the age of fire, or keep it selfishly to yourself. It's about as black and white as it gets. As a result of this forced piecemealing of the story, it does lose points. As for the environment and the gameplay, it is very solid, once you get the hang of it. Once again, the difficulty comes from the lack of explaining core details, the game still can be hard if you just come in rushing, unless you are overleveled against weaker foes. Blocking and timing attacks are key, and keeping your health and stamina pools is necessary for your success. You will in fact, die a lot, but dying is only a part of the learning experience of the game, as it does not give you any wiggle room on it's part. The world is built very well, as you can seamlessly travel through Firelink Shrine and bend towards New Londo, and make a backroad to the Valley of the Drakes and head towards Blighttown, and so on and so on. Even areas that aren't tied together, like Demon Ruins and Tomb of the Giants, still give you an opportunity to see these areas from a distance. But be careful about travelling to said areas, like with other open world areas, some places will be harder than others. Weapon variety is very well done, with a number of weapons that tie to certain builds, but be certain that your builds are the ones you want, as you cannot ReSpec in this game. Not to mention, miracles and sorceries, basically spells, can only be restored through bonfires and by no other means, so be careful with using them. Multiplayer is a bit flawed, as connectivity is sometimes inconsistent and lags horribly via Coop or even PvP matches, which is still well done since it is still based on the combat. So overall, Dark Souls is a well done game on exploration, observation, survival, and combat, but as for a story driven narrative, a lot of it is overly reliant on the items you find and the wiki you'll look up to realize you need to go to Scrumly the Crow and give him a Sunlight Maggot in order to get the Old Witch's Ring to talk to the Daughter of Chaos, which is completely irrelevant to anything.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

metro 2033 is that weird kind of FPS where it derives from a russian science fiction book while simultaneously diverging from it, dropped onto our laps like a curious gem of oddities, essentially being Russia's answer to Fallout 3 (like as if there was anyone necessarily clamoring for it). Anyhow, as for my experience with Metro 2033, it was for the most part satisfactory and enjoyable, albeit clunky, annoying, and downright frustrating at times, and probably for the wrong reasons. You being your quest as Artyom, a Russian equivalent of the 'downcast gritty protagonist' but add a silent protagonist vibe AND A inner monologue between loading screens and he becomes downright insufferable. I know what you are thinking: I don't hate silent protagonists, but It certainly bothers me when a silent protagonist DOES talk but refuses not to just to make conversations with the NPCS awkward. Not that it would matter since all or most of the NPCs sound exactly the same (sorry Russia for being racist apparently) making conversations even more confusing as I try to figure who is talking to who. While the voice acting is solid and technical, most of the sound in the rest of the game is either way too loud, way too weird, or borrowed straight from the Half Life 2 sounds (when you brake cardboard is the most prominent borrow of that soundbyte). Sometimes when I enter areas weird ass sounds will ring for no apparent reason and no clue as to how they came about, which also makes trying to sneak around enemies all the more difficult. Sure, the game certainly TRIES to ehance stealth by making you aware of light sources and 'noisemakers' as well as traps and shards of glass, but of course once you get caught by one dude ALL other dudes will automatically know your position and it is, of course, impossible to invade them, especially when they have pitch perfect aiming even if they are shooting you in the dark from a mile away. As for the guns, well, they work for the most part, even if the damage is for no discernible reason incosistent when killing certain enemies (often it can take either 1 shell or a whole clip to kill the SAME enemy from the SAME distance in the SAME EXACT spots), and I do like how you have to have some foresight as to what armaments you will carry onto the next area, whether to be sneaky (like that'll work anyway) or to go run in gun everything. Enemies both human and monster are varied but the monsters are by far more enjoyable to kill as they aren't as cheap as enemies, although at the same time human enemies will have loads of ammo to keep you from having to be precise with shots. As for the theme, story and setting, theme and setting are all extremely strong, showcasing a desolate Moscow that looks much more nigh inhabitable and more seamless than Fallout 3's world (even for a linear shooter no less) with the metro also being beautifully detailed and looking like as if you could explore the entire metro (which is misleading given the map that you see throughout each loading screen). Story upon the first half is unsubstantial as you are merely sending a message to some guy about some other guy dying, for whatever reason as to help your 'station' from the Dark Ones, and I won't spoil anything about them but the ending is a moral choice which is very well ambiguous and gray in nature, as it should be what with most of the choices you make (other than the 'am I ready or not' ones). So while I get somewhat annoyed with the questionable choice of sounds, the indistinguishable NPCs and the nonsensical damage output, what really gets my git is the **** checkpoints. I had one segment where I had a checkpoint that landed me essentially in a deathzone, having to redo that segment 8 times before I could finally triumph and manage the game to give me a more safe chekcpoint. While on one hand I can appreciate the need to have checkpoints, checkpoints come randomly and don't consider your current situation, so you may end up eating bullets on a checkpoint forcing you to start the entire campaign again. Luckily that never happened for me. Adding more onto my critique of the guns, some of the guns have weird mechanics, the double barreled shotgun having each of it's barrels tied to the bumper sticks, the auto shotty not having an ironsight but instead an awkward melee attack, and I didn't even bother with the pneumatic weapons as it seems as though those would be innefective. Anyhow, I've rattled on this game enough. While it does sport a lot of depth, creativity and love to the original source material, sound, stealth mechanics, gunplay and choice of voicework need improvement. tune in later for my review of Last Light.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Gears of War: Judgment is a prime example of changing way too many aspects of the game to make it more appealing even if the original aspects were fine on their own. "Star" bonuses that you get if you play the game in a certain way during the campaign which get amplified if you accept 'declassified' objectives that tie in exactly to enemy encounters, the absolute castration of the hammerburst, the exploitation of using the boomshield with every weapon, 'customization crates', and many other different things that will taste sour in the mouths of many fans of this somewhat obscure title. Now this is essentially the Gears of War version of halo: reach, taking place before the events of Gears of War 1 despite all the weapons included in GoW 3 still available and then some, but unlike Halo: Reach where you actually get to experience what the big deal Halo:Reach Was, Judgment takes a sort of ODST route where your 'squad' get a faux testimony to answer for what they did just prior to being absolutely inconsequential to the rest of the GoW story. Lightmass Missile? Karn? Halvo Bay? Who cares? None of this amounts to the fate of Sera or the success of the Cogs in anyway but just a notable anecdote of Cole and Baird's adventures. Throughout the Campaign you will occasionally get some more info fluff about the two new characters, Paduk (essentially Russian Stereotype) and Sofia (the easy to look at one) that try to show personality but aren't able to explain much more of their backstory before another onslaught of more samey Locust appear. The only new enemy introduced are Ragers which are essentially Mini-Zerkers from GoW3, and as for weapons, as I said, a lot of weapons have been changed for better and for ill. You can shoot two shots with the Sawed Off now, the Hammerburst is now Sem-Auto with huge recoil and no Ironsights aiming from GoW3, and the Boomshield can now be used for any weapon which essentially makes it overpowered considering that you can only carry two weapons now, also making the d-pad useless other than for Tacc Comms. Again, all of these different elements that may had been good on paper but otherwise was not necessary. Also, the campaign battles are glaringly repetitive even for a Gears game considering how the enemy encounters are directly tied to the Declassified appearances rather than the declassified being a side note, but otherwise declassified adds a bit of flavor to the repetition but it is only there to make more people gain those stupid 'stars' that makes the game more arcadey than improved from earlier. As a matter of fact, the Aftermath storyline is the best part of Judgment as it takes place around GoW3 as Cole and Baird were trying to find 'reinforcements', and also doesn't include annoying star gains or declassified bonuses as per with the GOW3 lore (even though all the weapons are still as they are and you can still find the 4 new weapons introduced). As for new weapons, the Marzka and Breechshot are welcome additions to the rifles of GoW, as the Marzka is a more semi-automatic high clip rifle and the Breechshot is a much more powerful, lower clip locust variant of it. As for the Booshka, it's a Boomshot with weaker grenades and grenades with a fuse timer that usually is kind of weaksauce even up close. The Tripwire Crossbow is only used to hold positions and not for combat, which I may also add there is a lot of 'turret defense' segments of the campaign as well that I honestly don't care about. Multiplayer is also severely crippled with the effective horde being a barebones Survival mode, and overrun being the only gamemode to versus locust and cog together (for some reason). But to summarize, this was not really needed as a new title. A story that isn't so lame but is absolutely inconsequential to the main story of GoW, weapons that either got too overpowered or got sodomized, a whole new system that makes the game more 'gamey' rather than good, and just generally changes that weren't needed. That's my judgment of this.

This was a off the radar kind of sendoff for the AC series from the PS3 consoles. Not that the game itself didn't have marketing for it's release, but the fact that this game was released side-by-side with the PS4 Unity is extremely remarkable development time for Ubisoft, especially considering how Assassin's Creed: Rogue is a fully functioning game from it. Anyway, This is indeed going to be the final game within the AC lore on the PS3 port, and most people will ask if it's worth it? And I'll say, kinda, but what you'll get out of this game you'll probably make a lot of callbacks to Black Flag, which you know is a game that I humbly enjoy primarily with the ship combat, which is also apparent in Rogue. So consider this 'Black Flag 2', but what with all the extra stuff that this game adds to keep the game refreshing should be noted, so noted that I couldn't give it a lower score from Black Flag. Some variations of ship combat that have changed is that the Chain Shot has been replaced with the Fire Cannon, which is invariably more powerful than the Chain Shot. Normal Cannons for the boarding battles have been replaced with Puckle Guns, not only firing faster and having more ammo, but usually help to brake the eventual monotomy of boarding enemy ships. One big improvement of the ship combat is the increased usefulness of the ram and the dynamic of the fleet, which is now an offline or online resource rather than forced-online in Black Flag, but in terms of the ram, the charge ability is now much easier to gain apart from defeating a Legendary ship, and you can also use it to brake ice caps around sea level, which is also another thing about Ship combat. More dynamics of mother nature have been added, icebergs and freezing water can either be used to your benefit or your detriment, to sink enemy ships or crash your own. Wind currents are drastically increased, and apart from the lack of huge waves within the carribean, the North Atlantic is just as if not more dangerous than the Gulf Coast and Carribean of Piracy. Now, because this game is set in 1753 after the golden age of piracy, you yourself are not a rogue pirate and thus will cause a lot of momentum during the 7 years war against British and French, and as the title of the game suggests, you switch sides. But honestly at this point, the Templar Vs Assassin's story has gone on so long that I think they are both repugnant authoritarians with different means but the same ends of controlling humanity anyway. As for the protagonist, While they try their best to flesh out Shay Cormac, he does become less individualized throughout the segment, as I joked that he was "Ex-Assassin Templar British Irish Scottish French Viking Pirate Cowboy Cormac", considering the many callbacks to Black Flag as well as the variety of customization items, which is duly noted. Also Shay's face model reminds me of the generic face models of quite a few of the British Officers from Black Flag, weirdly enough when he starts to show 'age'. As with Black Flag you immediately follow up the silent, insignificant protagonist working at Abstergo, albeit somewhat under distress and now being praddled around like a **** by a unlikable Violet (more like Violent) who can't stop calling you "Numskull", the hacking system simplified to a orb like thing with rings which are usually more tedious than difficult. As with Black Flag, these are the weaker parts of the game, as you just want to jump back into the simulation as most would. As for Plot, while it is nice to see some perspective that the Assassin's aren't always right in their good intentions, i can't help but wonder if this is confirmation bias for the Templars to 'influence' the silent protagonist on THEIR side, when they can easily manipulate the DNA they've extracted from Desmond Miles. But as for anything within the context of the game, it's more of the 'we need to find some superficial artifact thingy that does something because reasons' just like with Black Flag and just like with every AC game thus far, which makes me wonder how the Unity story will breach this in someway, unless they'll STILL use the stupid silent protagonist bullocks anyway? finally, unto just miscellaneous items. Most of the sea shanties from Black Flag has returned, including a bunch of new ones, a 'grenade launcher' made by Benjamin Franklin which is really fun to use, and Firecracker Darts that can add a new element to the stealth segments of the game, which are still too exploitative. And the general combat is still exploitative as well, as long as you have stealth bombs you will ALWAYS be able to win any kind of fight EVEN if you are surrounded, and the combat isn't any more refreshing as mash square until you need to press circle or occasionally x. So to conclude, while this game does realize that it doesn't need to reinvent the wheel, this game does feel like a sequel to black flag in almost every regard. But that's not a problem for me.

I'm going to save my opinion on the whole 'necessity' to have a fourth installment of the Halo Franchise for a different time, as it is concurrently different from the opinion of the game in it's own context. Anyhow, before people start flagging my review down before their own sensibilities will bereft them from any kind of review that isn't a 9 or 10, I get why you guys like this game: It's got all this awesome lore to behold that any person with a pencil in hand will draw out soldier stories from the UNSC, I'm glad that you like all these visual graphics that have a huge scope on 'epic', but it's nothing to me. The graphics are just eye candy to hide all the uglier things about the game away. And the lore is only as important as you put your head into it, and if lore requires you to go into different mediums in order to understand anything, than you've failed at making a game worth of narrative, as is what this game does somewhat. Anyhow, as for the story, Master Chief and Cortana, after without any thought decided to go on into interstellar stasis for four years, come across an 'unknown' forerunner planet harvested by a new breed of alien to be feared (OOGA OOGA BOOGA) as the Promethians, which apart from their little surveyor drones and lights affixed like christmas ornaments around their body, work in AI almost the same way as the Covenant forces, meaning, bad. Enemies still go out in the daylight to greet your bullet barrel, which I would understand by the nature of the grunts, but the Elites? The Elites have been not only dumbed down but also lost a lot of their resilience to bullets, often being killable after their short-handed shields get depleted. Brutes are not present, for some reason, and the Promethein forces are not that variable, with nothing but "Knights", Surveyors and what I've been calling hell hounds, the little dog things that drop an infinite load of boltshots if you kill them, which usually takes one hit. Anyhow, for the weapons. A lot of the weapons from Reach and Halo 3 have returned in Halo 4, as you can now equip a DMR and Battle Rifle at the same time, including a touch of new weapons from all three forces, such as the Rail Gun, SAW, Storm Rifle and the famous Promethein weapons. The Promethein weapons are by far the best with the most stopping power and a neat little particle effect when you kill them (they distintegrate!). But other than the dialogue of the characters, which has seen a definite marked improvement, this game is colluded with a lot of confusing buzz words (composer, didact, forerunner, yadda yadda yah) and is not difficult in the slightest. Most of the time my friend and I got killed out of our own stupidity rather than by the difficulty curve (also, yet another QTE kill of the main boss). One small improvement is that the chief can now sprint (rather than being a 'pickable' ability), and some of the new abilities are much more helpful, such as a mobile drop shield and mini surveyor bot. And as I said, the graphic are pretty, but only serve to get you caught up in it so that they can mask away the aforementioned grievances above. I had my doubts about 343, but at least they didn't absolutely disgrace me with a pile of dog crap. They just gave me a rote, by the numbers game that attempts to pump more into it just to keep this aging franchise stagnant rather than dead.

While Borderlands 1 from Borderlands 2 felt like the difference between night and day, Borderlands 2 to the Pre Sequel feels like the difference between High Noon and 1PM. Sure, it has quite a few gimmicky features to try to squeeze new life into the matra of fighting on the **** moon, but it all in all still feels like you are paying for a overpriced DLC of Borderlands 2. The main hype of this new game was the low gravity, oxygen survival, cryo, and more intimate class character responses related to the quest that they were doing. It does offer all of those things, with some pretty hilarious responses from many of the new classes in regards to their mission, but oxygen ultimately fails at being a prior necessity nor being substantial towards your survival experience, as there are way too many cycle pools, oxygen pits and enemies with oxygen tanks (not that I wouldn't expect that) to actually warrant your concerns for oxygen. As for the story, we get to see the more sympathetic and potentially hero-eclipsing side of "Jack" become the known snarky, sadistic dictator from the Borderlands sequel we all loved to hate, with some surprising amount of subtlety to how Jack became so engrossed in killing the vault hunters as well as how the power got the better of his good intentions. As for the creativity of the classes, this time the classes actually feel like they are in a act of their own, rather than being just major improvements from the previous classes. Nisha's "showdown" action skill will probably be most useful as you can deal massive amounts of damage quite quickly, accurately and with force, but Athena's "Aspis" ability is also useful if you understand the aspects. Wilhelm's dual surveyor bots are helpful, but somewhat echo towards Roland's or Axton's turret like action skills, but Claptrap will no doubt be the most played because of how inexplicably unpredictable his action skill is, as he assumes the role of all other vault hunters up to this point based on the situation around him, which is sometimes not always the good route (I cooped with my friend who got the Psycho die of the action skill when we were primarily shooting at enemies from a distance). Raid Bosses and most enemies seem significantly easier to kill (but still challenging), so if you want to try to go kill some mysterious raid boss it won't be absolutely impossible without a full team to do it and some selective skill point managing. Lazer Weapons are by far going to also be the most used weapon type, as they deal a lot more damage more significantly, especially with how Cryo can render most of your opponents sticks in the mud with sufficient damage. Enemy types are extremely variant, apart from the occasional Stalker and Thresher fights, with even better emphasis on new enemy types than the Big Game Hunt DLC for the previous installment. While I can't say that I didn't get a lot of fun and mileage out of this game, I am definitely aware that the 'new' engine for Borderlands 2 is already starting to show it's age despite only having two installments inheriting it. But perhaps my biggest concern with this game is the noticable attitude of social structures and how most of the characters are blatantly diverse in their sexual orientation. I thought of this as noble in the previous borderlands, but now it's starting to get pretentious in this light. Sure, the game is just poking fun at it because the game is supposed to be silly, but if you make your characters be transsexual or lesbian because you want to give yourself a morality autofellatio because you didn't include any straightforward heterosexual characters, that is undeniably pretentious and the good intentions fly out of the window, much like with Jack's rise to power. not that I don't mind having characters with a rainbow of sexual orientations, but when it's done to the point that they want attention from it, it does become vain and vapid. Apart from that, while I did certainly enjoy the Pre-Sequel of Borderlands, it does have a noticable itch of "still borderlands 2" rather than being a new game in it's own right.

Finally getting my grubby hands on the "third" installment to the Bioshock franchise, Infinite indefinitely, almost undeniably is yet another wonderful success of the "flawed utopia falling into utter chaos by almost romantic, religious idealisms" perspectives that worked so well for Bioshock but not so much for Bioshock 2. While some aspects of the gameplay are recycled, and others somewhat questionable, such as having shields and only being able to equip 2 weapons any time, Bioshock Infinite still nevertheless is a relic of gaming at it's most highest peaks. With a protagonist that can be cynical but isn't "everything is gray and dull, bleh" kind of personality, but of one with earnest introspection of the things around him apart from Jack Ryan's usually silent, dismissive perspective of everything. Maybe I will have a discussion about silent protagonists in detail, but having a silent protagonist for the sake of the player getting more into the game doesn't always intertwine neatly, as I felt more intertwined to Booker DeWitt moreso than Jack Ryan, because of his previous exploits and how my own choices could change the course of the future. Although perhaps the biggest complaint with this game is how the choices actually don't result in different endings, as the "Tear" and "Space-Time Continuum" concepts opened up a plethora of possibilities. Vigors and Salts essentially name-swap Plasmids and EVE, with only 8 particular 'vigors' to use, possibility simplified to make each one much more effective, which they are. As for weapons, you can fortunately scrounge for ammo for weapons you don't currently have, so if you pick up a new Carbine, it won't just have the clip that was currently in it. As for difficulty, well, it wasn't difficult at all at Normal. I didn't die once, and only came close to dying Twice, and dying is just as inconsequential as in Bioshock since Elizabeth, your companion throughout most of this game will revive you at the small cost of some money. As for Elizabeth, Elizabeth will go down as one of the most positive female role models in gaming history since that one woman from Beyond Good and Evil and more recently of Bayonetta, even despite her gaudy and energetic attitudes. Elizabeth will be extremely helpful and shows that a escort gameplay can actually work without frustrating the player, as Elizabeth will never be directly attacked by enemies (even though you would think so considering how important she is to Columbia), but often her giving of items to you also subverts alot of the difficulty already, as most grunts can be taken down with the Carbine, essentially the most effective weapon that I used throughout. Not to mention her giving of items can be exploited if you decide to "vend" items at a shop without buying anything, but nevertheless, her sponge like absorption of the environment and her dialogues with Booker are endearing and thought provoking, adding more to how alive and realized Columbia is, even considering that the culmination of Vigors doesn't play as much precedence as Plasmids did, since Vigors apparently don't have degenerative side effects even though they work exactly the same AS Plasmids. Also, the Lutece theory of being able to have Columbia float in the air is sort of rushed, as well as the inconsistencies with how Comstock was able to afford all the Masonry and technical work in order for the City to be realized. And while Comstock is a adverse foe in absolute religious indoctrination and racial stereotypes, he isn't as biting as Andrew Ryan, who was actually more human with his rise and fall. As for combat, it is fluid and more fulfilling than Rapture, as Rapture would have you occasionally kill a few splicers here and there, but because of Elizabeth's "deus ex machina" grabs of health, the shield system, and the fact that most grunts can be downed with headshots, the combat can get a little tedious unless you force to play with different weapons and vigors. Vaxophones work sort of like Audio Logs in the same vein, cut down a bit in quantity from Rapture, which would be the reason how certain elements of Columbia's rise are not mentioned. But what this game will definitely get big points for is the ending, as it is heart wrenching, thought provoking, and will be on your mind for quite a while. It still is for me. I never thought that a game from the surface would convince me to buy parts of the DLC without actually advertising it, but how much of a blast this game was, and the concept of "Tears" opens up a cornucopia of possibilities, I'm looking very forward into the future of this idea. This is a treasure to behold for many a year to come.

It seems my original hopes for GTO (no pontiac here) to be a fun, exciting, engaging social experience was all dwindled and sodomized by my rapt 8 hour experience with this frustrating torture. Initially, the game had promise; even your descent into Los Santos is interesting from the concept of a new kid in town with Lamar from the main game being your 'game man' sort of fella, although conversations are awkward considering that you the player are a silent protagonist (kind of like someone talking to a brick wall). Anyhow, after the laces were cut on the starting run for this game (i.e the tutorial section), I had a welcome relief of people indiscriminately killing me on sight, and then consistently killed after spawning, my car stolen, driven, shot up, crashed (though not totalled), and being the loser of every single racing game because my racing skill was not high enough. I mean, wow, I never would had thought that a online game would just give newbies the middle finger even though they just started playing the game. Not to mention that I spoiled my signature car on something I just happened to need to drive and couldn't restore, and that the payoff of missions that were extremely difficult to profit on never is worth it, not to mention the missions repeat after 8 or so times. That's the funny thing too: I spent hours just robbing convenience stores of all things just so I could get a profit of money, I rank up to 12 just by that motion alone and I STILL can't even afford a garage. I live in my car, essentially. And the worst thing is is that the game never seems to show you any means to make yourself better, or that they decide to make the progression in the game just so awful and monotomous, as well as anti-social considering how seasoned veterans will ALWAYS WIN at any kind of gamemode and that every player tries to kill you on sight even if you are just minding your own business. This game was just getting autonomous, which really surprised me for a game that's all mmo with zero character progression, just as offensive as LOL was to what fair and sufficient level progression was. It was really hard to like this game, and as a matter of fact, stealing the convenience stores, something you could do in GTAV anyway, was the most fun I had with this online mode. Unless someone can tell me how you can properly progress WITHOUT GRINDING (no kind of like 'if you play final fantasy XIII for 13 hours it actually starts to get good kind of grinding') this game was a downer for me apart from the stylization and proper mechanics.

My previous review of this game, in my own words, was immature, juvenile, and selfish. While I can't factor out the fact that this game retreads the same typical stereotypes of Russians being evil (even if it uses an appropriate time frame to justify it), has bounds of DLC that charge so much for so little, pyrotechnics that either kill you through buildings that otherwise aren't flammable or just be invisible overall and kill you randomly, I can't entirely discredit the game for at least being functionally bland. I can't, however, give it a perfect score, but I will try to be more reasonable with the current reception of this game, and others in the future. While I am no fan of the continuing dismay of trading different filters of gameplay and trying to sell it off as new, at least the gameplay itself does work for the most part. Weapon damage and aim is consistent and substantial, noobtubes, while a crutch to any person's enjoyment, are still present, they aren't as overused as beforehand. And the only bit of credibility that I can give to Treyarch is that they do have a greater tendency to be more about the game than the graphics, unlike InfinityWard. Modern Warfare 2 pissed me the hell off because of that unexciting, jarring motion of getting killed from 8 different places if you looked at someone the wrong way, at least when I play Treyarch's renditions of the COD franchise, I can feel at least somewhat capable and compitent in battle. I might be a tad bit of a rage gamer, since even playing TF2 can get me into a downward spiral of anger that I want to brake my laptop in half. Spawn positions still ****, the bots that you can play against either locally or in the "combat training" still are dysfunctional to how real players play and are unrealistic, often being able to knife 2 seconds before you were even about to, have impeccable timing with the usage of grenades, and literally have no recoil to any of the guns they fire so they will never miss, unless you go out of their line of sight which they won't be smart enough to pursue you anyway. While this game is in no stretch of the word enticing, original, or even fun at some occassions, it is a mite game that you can spend at the most 2 hours tops playing and get some fun out of it, primarily with the Zombies mode (which should have had more content available, since most of the DLC maps are from Modern Warfare 1,which shows the poor demonstration of them trying to be bigger and better). Kind of like with Battlefield 3, I don't get pissed off over how bad the gameplay is, i just get pissed off of how exploitative the DLC and supposed excuse for originality that the game pretends it has. It doesn't, and you know it. You only serve as a bland, castrated bowl of potato chips. Do they feed you? Sure, but you won't get anything pleasant out of them from doing it.

As I said in my AC3 review, I would eventually come to my senses to make a review on AC4. While I am unfortunate not to catch the series right from the start, I will say that any game that requires the player to play the previous games to grasp the story might as well just give up trying to do so. What does that say for AC4? Well, surprisingly enough in the span of sequelitis, AC4 actually fares much better than AC3, not only in gameplay aspects or HUD gimmicks but also trying to get more newcomers invested in the story of before, as being out of the animus I got a more thematic glimpse of the late Desmond Miles (although he won't be missed) in a way that made me feel more compelled to play the previous games. Now, pushing that aside apart from the awkward First-Person animation and the 'silent protagonist gutting' they decided to do apart from the usual 3rd person perspective, the true fun and experience is inside the animus itself. The pirate life shines fully in this so to say 'simulation', as you get to feel the aesthetic, the glory, the triumph, and even the failures of the golden age of piracy. You get to meet many of the infamous pirates such as Edward Teach, Calico Jack, Black Bart, and a load more whom have such invigorating personality that they have you hugged into the pirate life. The naval exploration has vastly improved from it's predecessor, and while the previous alone was great, they made that aspect even greater. Sea Shanties, sunken ships, intense naval battles and boarding ships, and even fighting mother nature itself all prove to satisfy the excitement and luster of that romanticized pirate age. Not only that, but ship customization has been expanded greatly, now much more visual and more indepth, with what I have to say is some of the finer qualities of water physics out there apart from others. Unfortunately, all this pirate theming has greatly taken away the aspect of the Templars and the Assassin's, in a way sort of taking a backseat to all the pirate booty and treasure. Besides that, visuals have greatly improved, even the parkor tree climbing is now much more dynamic than it's predecessor with few repeat ferns. The HUD is also a lot less confusing, and while I have to complain why they always have to change the HUD every bloody time they make a game, I still find this one a lot less teeth-grinding than in AC3. Gameplay, well hasn't really changed all that much, although now bushes can be more greatly used to keep yourself hidden. The few new weapons that you can use are the sleep darts and berserk darts, which help since now enemies have individual stealth indicators ala Far Cry 3, which also makes the game less of a chore. Also, crafting in the game is also a lot less confusing from it's predecessor as well, taking inspiration from Far Cry 3 (as a matter of fact, a lotof different aspects from here take what worked well in FC3). But most importantly of all improvements is the story and characters, with Edward Kenway being a much more capable and charismatic figure rather than the lifeless Connor (or his native american name, which I won't even try to spell). The characters around him also spur a variety of colors, rather than blending into one another per scene. You even get to see a relatively accurate portrayal of the exploits of those aforementioned pirate captains, such as Teach's bombardment of camps for medicine, or Mary Read's crossdressing (that was the most disturbing part of this game for me), and they all do it with enough spirit that I could tell that the actors were having a lot of fun voicing these characters, ESPECIALLY Blackbeard, who is the best out of all of them. The story also improves the idea of the First Civilization and of what happened after Desmond's ultimate fate, as I said before making me more interested in the AC Lore than I was before. I will end this review with saying that typically, sequels only get worse from their original or predecessor and only few times do they get better, but I have to say that Assassin's Creed Four actually manages to do the impossible and be better than AC3 and possibly as good as AC2 (I wouldn't know, since I haven't played it) While I can't give it a perfect rating, since there is still some gameplay exploits not fixed in AC3 and still quite a few stealth syntax errors, AC4 puts the AC franchise back in with the big guns.

The Assassin's Creed Franchise has never been one that I've been interested in, mainly because I'm not one for stealth games and prefer some more direct, straightforward combat. Some of that may be the reason why it was such a pain in the ass to enjoy this game, but it's not like that I know nothing of the basic fundamentals of sneak. See, the real issue here with "ASS GREED FREE" (as I like to call it sometimes) is that the main player character, throughout most of the AC franchise has never had the ability to crouch while sneaking, often being quite out in the open when he's not. I know that may not seem conspicuous when in towns, but when you involve yourself in the NorthEast Americas trudging through the wilderness, you kind of hope to sneak whilst having every enemy notice you. Anyhow, let's start with the story. I played fragments of this game here and there (despite beating it whole), but I'm pretty sure that even if I got to play the game without missing out on particular story elements, it wouldn't help with my overall disinterest in it. Not to mention that a game that is set during the peak of the American Revolution may scream "Interesting", but somehow, it doesn't. WE get a pretty stale template of a main character both in and out of the Animus, the inner being the still snarky and whiny Desmond Miles, and the outer being Connor Kenway, a American-Indian who seems to hold a pretty dismissive opinion about pretty much everything going on around him, about his Father's plea to make truce with the Templars, the stakes of the American Revolution, about his own villages misfortune of being pushed aside for the war, all of it just seems to nod off his shoulder as "meh". The combat and HUD is confused and convoluted, often do you have to go through the entire motion of killing the same guy if you happen to need to counter another or get hit, and some enemies are near impossible to counter at all unless you just exploit Smoke Bombs or Rope Darts, and since the enemies share a universal stealth detection, once one notices you, they all do. The ability to climb trees apart from buildings assumes that the spaceity of the wilderness is more varied, but it merely comes down to copy and pasted trees that are usually force-made to be parkoured across from. The lack of hiding places apart from their always signature hay stacks is also quite abhorrent, not to mention sort of messing with the context of a particular area too. Crafting and Supplies is also confusing, as to how you are able to find the workers you need or the correct side quests to start such, evidently winding down to getting more "Pounds" to upgrade your ship and arm yourself and pretty much nothing more. The only silver lining behind this small disaster is the Ship sections themselves, as you are excitingly pitted against ships as you can almost feel like a pirate (but that, my friends, will be left for the AC 4 Review). Also, why is it that you have to find some secret chest in order to get silver ingots which pretty much are essential for the one thing that is essential? Anyhow, overall this game is a frustrating little mess to get through, with the convoluted combat mechanics to the directionless navigation to the boring narrative structure.

Grand Theft Auto V, on all fronts, has finally met it's true potential as a rpg/shooter, finally blending the joys of both in tangent. With a more vibrant colorful boost up from GTA IV, more diversity of weapons and cheats, weapon customizations and the return of vehicle customizations that have been amped from the San Andreas predecessor, GTA V is a game for anyone willing to either go on a rampage or just soak in how alive the city feels, not only by the development of the buildings but also by the interactions of people that are just if not more dynamic than the interactions in Skyrim. Sure, GTAV faulted on it's GTA Online concept, but I'm glad that, despite that it was still a flop at launch, Rockstar actually had their head on a swivel enough to try to patch it as best as they could without expecting any sort of problems to be expected. For my experiences on the PS3 and in terms of Single Player, the Single Player has a lot to offer, with a 3-protagonist web that never interferes with the joys of gameplays, as each character get their own personal properties and garages to stack their items. The new introduction of the Heists is the highest selling point of this game, a new aspect that allow you to attack and diverge an operation in any sort of way you see fit, mostly in the prospect of benefiting the biggest payout to your main protagonists. The protagonists themselves also have their own situations and issues, being 3 diverse characters with their own prospects and woes. Points are slightly taken away for some of the disturbing imagery that comes about in the story mode, not to mention how the story mode loses a lot of gravity at the end and ends on a short note. The cheat system has returned to the combo mashing, which was somewhat of a pain since GTAIV had the phone dial up that made activating cheats easier, but I could see why they did return: You can make yourself invincible for 5 minutes. No fall damage, no bullet damage, no melee, explosion or fire damage. If one was able to just simply press the cheat at the end time, a person could make themselves invincible indefinitely. But anyhow, Cheat diversity has largely increased, with a lot more exciting cheats rather than the stock cheats. Weapons also have returned with a more satisfying arsenal, with stun guns, machine pistols, light machine guns and my favorite, the minigun. Also, these weapons can have modifications and tints to diversity your need for stopping power. Vehicles have increased in diversity, with even more exotic vehicles to test your limits. IN terms of the general area, Los Santos has a lot of callbacks to it's San Andreas counterpart, increased in size and moved some prominent areas, such as the Stadium and Grove Street. The river layout has become muchmore real and diverse, and Blaine County, serving as the secondary area, also is incredibly diverse with the first introduction of animal life in a GTA GAme since. (if you cant flying rats in GTAIV). This game, alone, is a fun ride that takes you on a new, grandiose tale through the american wastes of capitalism and egotism.

It's been a "wang" time since FPS' didn't try to take theirselves too seriously, were difficult, and most of all, fun. Duke Nukem Forever, for many, was a disappointment in that many hoped that it would stay the course of what FPS used to entail: gratuitous, unapologetic, fast paced gore and action. But for the new reboot of Shadow Warrior, being the more "eastern" cousin of Duke Nukem truly shines in that it redeems what makes FPS great with all the credentials of it being made in 2013. The graphics are completely stunning, not only for the purpose of the aesthetic but even beautifully done with the gore and action too. Melee combat, for FPS, usually always tied into being used as a last ditch effort. But not here. The Katana will probably be the most handy weapon out there, and it's the first one you get! There are a lot of combinations to the weapon that can apply heavy damage and kills, but the combos are frustratingly set on the movement keys and require some wonky movement in order to use them. Second, while the firepower can, at times work for the most part, seem quite underpowered when compared to the Katana. But even then, every gun you use has a satisfying punch to it, and the shotgun is especially of that case when you can unload every shell point blank into quivering demons. As many of the professional critics state, level design is somewhat weak as it usually involved complex corridors followed by arena-sized areas, rinse and repeat. Sometimes the level design can shine between both context and combat orientation, like "You Should See the Other Guy", or generally the chapters involving the shipyard. The Demons, or the general enemies are at the most times competent but usually suffer from clipping errors with items around them, so they can often try to chase you from a corner. In terms of what they can do is another story, as they can evolve and be enraged to greater bring strain to the player. The story is fairly decent and potent for a game that involves gratuitous violence, with a likable chemistry between the main character, Lo Wang, and his demon pal, Hoji, webbing the downfall of the shadow realm and how the sword and Hoji are tied to it. Also, for a FPS, we also get to see a lot of character building too with Lo Wang, from being a sneery, egotistic japanese 'american', to being a full blown, sympathetic professional with the wisdom and charisma of a true master. I didn't really set my sights on Flying Wild Hog before, but with their continued devotion to bring the S back in FPS really makes me feel they are the Id or 3DRealms of our generation. Overall, this game will melt your brain with fun, being fun loving and never tiring to blow demons back to kingdom come, keeping the tradition of secrets and shadow warrior's quotable one-liners, but best of all, making what is FPS, FPS!

I know that I had previously downrated hot pursuit badly, but as this being one of the first games that I got for the Xbox 360, In contrast to Hot Pursuit, I actually had some joy with playing this game, as it still maintained the option of purchasing particular vehicles for any such event, as well as a full variety of customization types. However, the customization names get way too technical in this series, almost as technical as the types of rims you'd like to buy. Anyhow, the decal and vinyl customization is much more peaked and varied from previous addons, as you can change rotation, size and position of any such decal, adding much more diversity to your own imagination. Cars are suited in "ranks", meaning that 4 would be a pretty low-performance car, as in 1 is the baddest of the bad, the fastest of the fast. Anyhow, the story itself is not original, compelling, or coherent to "undercover". Most Wanted had more of a undercover setting than this. The story makes you feel as though you have a choice, but really, you don't. You are told what to do through a linear playthrough that only becomes free roam when those quests involve races, which in itself are neat too. The area you get to play in is flagrantly beautiful, involved in the tri-states area close to where I live (if Oregon and Washington are close, they're practically the same state), however the vehicle traffic and populace feels completely empty for a metropolitan area such as that, whether by the courtesy of the dev's to make the driving experience easier or just plain lack of notation. Like in Most Wanted, most of the races are difficulty dependent on the cars you drive, but have particular races that are much more difficult than others, requiring more sporty cars and more driving determination. Vehicle damage is nigh absent, with little more than scratches and windows despite the highway runs formulating a "wrecked" motion when you run into cars. The highway runs is the new special challenge, like drifting in Carbon, as you go 1vs1 against highway traffic (again, the traffic is minimal for a metropolitian area). There are special skill boosts that allow you to gain decreased costs for particular parts, or increase other areas of your pique depending on how you perform on races, which does give you the drive to beat out each race. Also, you can perform the same races with the help of the gps, that has particular categories for any such of race, such as sprints or circuits, quest races, special races and races you have already done and new races. Despite these benefits, most of the game seems bored of itself, feeling too calm and steady for intense driving. At least this still brings the Need for Speed racing experience that we should expect, other than some future developments. It might be hard to garnish an interest in this game, but once you do, you won't feel regret buying it.

Point Lookout is a aesthetically pleasing, rich and sometimes disturbing DLC that gains my interest from the environment alone, completely unique and absent from the Capital Wasteland but still nourishing the sense of post acopalyptia. I only played Operation: Anchorage on the Xbox 360, so before people think that i'm attempting to bring the rating up, I also have this for the pc, which is my preferred style of playing any game, period, just so as long as my pc can handle it. Anyhow, the missions themselves are wrestled uniquely, the main quest being somewhat indifferent from the environment, however, in a way throwing me back to the faction-based quests of Skyrim's civil war and so on. That particular quest confused me a bit, not by the narrative of the work, but of how a battle between two great minds were in the setting of redneck county and of the marshlands of Maryland. The experience is compelling nonetheless, seeing the beauty of the mechanics finally unfold, webbed with environments blooming with interaction and a sense of awe. The rednecks themselves are also interesting, but also quite disturbing too, having to fight the most downtrodden of the inbred, with a noticable hint of radiation trailing off their autonomy. Of all the DLC's I have played from FO3: Point Lookout, like New Vegas' Mothership Zeta, will be one of the few that I will be willing to come back to play again.

It seems that the Need for Speed franchise is a dying franchise, weined from the interest's of EA's profit margins, so why should they need to give a damn about making the one game that everybody should had been anticipated for. For all the commentary about 4-player local coop and 8-player system link, customization tools and the returned joy of being the pursuee, HOT Pursuit is a very bad excuse in the shadow of the original. There is no customization whatsoever, you can't even choose which car you want to drive for particular events, choosen randomly with a very limited set of colors. I know the original Hot Pursuit had this, but this game came out in 2010! We know of the varied customization abilities tried and true in the Original Most Wanted and Underground series, so why exclude it from here? It seems the overall affect of this game's success was the neat little graphics, but how do graphics keep a person's interest if they can't bother to play the game for 2 hours to try some sliver of fun, besides the wreck of online play that they jam into your ear for the very first 20 minutes of starting the game. There is also no need to freeroam either, as you can't really enjoy driving the car you want to, especially since all the cars handle like a tank trying to hit a 180 at 400 miles per hour: meaning, horribly. Also, the stats of each cars are contextually inept, mentioning torque and weight for some unknown reason, rather than giving the simplified stats that most gamers could understand: Speed, Acceleration and Handling. So I hope that EA thinks that any kind of game that would limit their profit margins even by a half of a percent is too much of a risk to them, because this was the game that made me hate EA and stop buying their crap from here on out. They told me what they thought of the customers, so I fought back.

As being misunderstood by the many who claim this game to be the first downfall for the GTA franchise, I would like to concur on many of the dissenting opinions towards this game. Some are deserved, while others just seem childish. Sure, the driving mechanics are a bit hard to handle, even with the most luxurious of cars, and the use of gratuitous game cheats to give you a whole new level of gameplay have been removed for the simply stock versions, none of these makes the aesthetic and feel of Liberty City or the game itself in any shape or form deserving of a 2 or a 1. As this being Rockstar's first leap into the clear cut 3D proven successful by PS3 and XBOX, it is really refreshing to actually notice the details and contours of the city, and the people who live in it. The Problem with the previous GTA's was that the graphics, while acceptable enough, made many of the towns feel vain and empty of depth, where in this "new" installment, we get to see a city that is constantly sprawling at every move you make, and I have to give credit to Rockstar to making a world that is adaptive to your actions as well as reactive in a fluent way. Although, with the inclusion of better 3D graphics, there was a sudden shock of grayness and "realism" to the environment, as well as the protagonist you play in. But, in favor of making a character more out of just wanting to live in peace and solidarity with his vicious past against the usual stock GTA character, "Out to make money" and "ruling the world, Tony Montana style", it is quite refreshing to see a character that we can feel with who has a more legitimate reason for trying to get money in a town full of people, lost from the excesses of the American Dream. And with his Cousin, Roman, conflicting against him with his drive and desire to be rich and own the city (an ode to previous GTA protagonists), you get to see more 3rd dimensional characters within the 3rd dimensional world. YOu get to hang out with them, spend time with them, and get to know them, unlike in previous installments where it was job after job without much context inbetween. The cheats have been improved, not by variations, but how you can use them. NOw, you can "dial" the cheats, and once doing so, are implemented permanently on your "cell phone", which can be activated instantly, a much more faster and efficient method than learning a combo move in other installments. And with your phone, you have access to much more implementations around the world, such as calling the cops, taking "pictures", or even delving in the curiosity of your friends phone messages. Combat has greatly improved, with much better cover systems, aiming, and fluency between combat situations. There are no more awkward first person shooting galleries, which helps especially when dealing with a massive crowd. The weapon variation has diminished greatly, however, with only 2 sets of weapons and one special weapon (rpg). Ragdoll physics upon car impacts are greatly improved as well, although running into multiple targets causes major bog with the FPS, both on console and pc (much greater on console, and haven't played the PC, so this is why I am reviewing through Xbox 360). Car damage is much more detailed and exciting, rather than from simplistic skirt and hood tears, the detail being so great that it could contend with Burnout games. Overall, GTA IV was a major improvement on some of the tripes of the originals, and while the fun of the game may had weined in or just substituted for it's massive and varied multiplayer system, it surely hadn't died away. And who knows? GTA V might bring both the fun, over-amped excitement of the originals, while maintaining the fluent and 3rd dimensional characterization and combat from this new installment.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The Claptrap Revolution DLC is the last but not exactly the best out of the Borderlands DLC line. It cannot compare to the awesomeness of General Knoxx, but it does fare far better than Zombie Island ever could. Anyhow, perhaps the two most satisfying things you can get out of this dlc is 1. Another level cap (8 for some strange reason), and 2. the opportunity to kill claptraps. While both of these are quite piqued to my tastes, there are the small nuisances of Borderlands 1 that we don't see in BL2, like the limited fast travel networks and how this DLC is a on-foot DLC only, rather than trying to mix things up. Tartarus Station is a very nice albeit buggy town to venture forth, and in some light I could say that Gearbox had found what they needed to spruce up BL1 with BL2 with this DLC alongside General Knoxx, but overall I could say that every DLC was more or less a test to see how they could improve the RPG realm of Bordlerlands to include more RPG elements in the future. Anyhow, the negatives. Actually, I just practically gone through all of them, but to add to one more detail is yet another unremarkably high difficulty level even for those who have exceeded the recommended level, as the "claptrapped" enemies prove to be far more dangerous than once noted, and the actual claptraps themselves aren't so tough either (except for kamikazes, if you don't have both eyes open). The whole premise on trying to claptrap everybody so that the Vault Hunter would be more bothered seems counter intuitive since most creeps they meet attack anyway, with only the "citizens" of Tartarus being that exception. The environments are interesting but somewhat taxing on big sprawling areas to which you can't drive and are forced to walk over, so that's all I have to say for it. It isn't the best DLC that Bordlerlands has to offer, but if you like to have your dying wishes of killing a bunch of annoying robots and just another 8 more skill points, this will be the DLC for you. once again, still better than The Underdome or Zombie Island.

The Armory of General Knoxx is the third and panultimate DLC in the first Borderlands collection, not only being the satisfying and most sustenant of the DLC's so far but also being the most worthwhile, with an additional 11-level cap, loot area (that can be glitched to do over and over again), many new vehicles and more unique enemies. I firmly believe that this DLC alone allowed Gearbox to capture what they could in the forthcoming Borderlands 2, as you can see with the much more fleshed out Lance Cavalry. Although there is the unfortunate exclusion of multiple fast travel networks in the DLC (which only having one), and the story not mainly focusing on a Vault-specific but loot-oriented ending, this still can plenty enough of your time and focus to forgive these. General Knoxx himself is quite humorous at times, being a more sympathetic villain towards you despite his permission for you to kill himself so he can get off this planet. With the new pearlescent weapons and perhaps the biggest loot area of any Borderlands DLC (1 or 2), you will constantly want to keep coming back to this DLC, and replayability is a big deal in my eyes towards DLC content. IF you want to keep playing back to this DLC, no matter how many of the main quests you completed or how high of a level you are, no matter it's faults it is damn well worth the try.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

For this standing on the panultimate stand of DLC releases (sharing it with BL1's General Knoxx's Armory), compared to the most exuberant General Knoxx DLC this is a pretty trifling disappointment. Don't get me wrong, on it's own it still stands well enough to play through, what with the usualness of BL2's comedy, gravity of gameplay and environments, with this one tuning to a more murkier, mysterious wasteland with plenty of high arching cliffs and jagged forestry. The gameplay itself has stepped up a notch not exactly in diversity but more in difficulty, and actually, quite a lot so. The witch doctor is perhaps one of the most frustrating common enemies you'll come across, as they are immune to headshots, have a gargantuan sized health bar, deal massive damage almost instantaneously, not to mention they're spells allow them to regenerate health, cripple you, upgrade fellow savages up to ultimate badass and can't be phaselocked nearly as long as most creeps, worst of all having at least one show up in a midst of a savage group. The savages themselves aren't too hard, more of your typical bandit clones but fitted to look more, as you say "savage" and communicate in what seems like intentional jarbles. The new creatures are perhaps the best deal you can get with unique enemies, with a return of the Drifters (although I don't get why they seem to left only for DLC content, as they ironically did this with General Knoxx as well) as well as a whole new barrel of interesting creeps to fight. Although the dlc title does fit more than half of the quests you'll do (killing big game), most of the game you fight surprisingly are less difficult than most commons you fight, perhaps because of their frequency rather than individual difficulty. Not to mention the witch doctors are defiantly are going to be the most difficult because of both frequency and how to deal to with them individually. One of the main problems with this particular DLC is that this time the DLC isn't mainly focused around a secret vault with a supposedly inexplicable way of opening it, rather, the treasure is just there after dealing with the eccentric Nakayama, who I do congratulate Gearbox for making him intentionally a bad guy, and not that kind of "bad". The narrative pacing is slow, as the main nemesis is literally asking you to be archenemesi's with you anyway, which unfortunately you must comply, and overall the length of playing isn't that long to begin with. There is only 4 location in this entire "continent" of Aegrus, despite that on the actual map the continent doesn't look anymore than the size of Rhode Island! Anyway, there is a strange "offering furnace", scattered around Aegrus where you can spend Eridium for some unknown reward, which hasn't been specified or even known yet. IF i do find out, I could get an opinion on it, but more or less it's just a place to waste unecessary Eridium. I have heard of more seraph gear available in this DLC, but the means to get so is still difficult at best, like the witch doctors. This also got docked a few points mainly for my disappointment of no new level caps (although now I omit this because of adding those to the season pass), and for this being the one DLC Gearbox needed to do right, not only with the pacing, but with the gameplay balance and partially towards humor, they seemed to mill it out for unknown reason. The only real thing that may make you seeking to go back is for another "treasure run", or to attempt to get those seraph items. Still, it serves it's place not to bee too horrible, but pray that the fourth DLC will be their "save the best for last"

Dead Money was the last, but not best expansion that I played out of this group. First and foremost the difficulty curve was a huge slap in my face, even considering the "recommended level' i needed to play this game and the level I was. I was over it 3 fold. And yet I still had trouble, particularly that this DLC begins by stripping everything you had and leaving you with a slow to fire, hard to handle Pump Action Energy weapon with A SCOPE of all things. did I forget to mention low ammo? What else that makes this game a chore to play through it's extremely hard playthrough is the constant poisonous clouds, radio frequency meters and the ghost dwellers that make the deathclaws look like a box of kittens when dealing with these matters all at once. But, it does provide a lot of tension, maybe too much for one to take, but it does it well. The story itself is solid and coherent, as you try to get your group of somebodies, each with a unique story to tell and each that play in part to your role to break into the casino and their relation with the former BOS elder gone mad. Still, would it be enough trouble for Obsidian just to make this DLC a little easier? There were really only 4 weapons that were of any real use to me, one of which in the original game, and for this being the longest game I had to play through, it was the hardest for me to enjoy because of it's difficulty curve. But, I score it slightly higher than Lonesome Road because this one actually manages to have a story that I can follow and provides a good deal of side quests, dynamic action and actual open world exploration, even if the exploration is all around the villa of this long forgotten casino.

So, I got to play this DLC out of Honest Hearts and Old World Blues, and since that Lonesome Road was supposedly the epic climax to all that we should know about the courier, I was immediately brought in to take the divide by storm. Unfortunately, it became more furiating than I thought so. Now, I finally got the whole post-apocalyptic feel that I missed from Fallout 3 out of this particular DLC, but maybe too much this time. There is almost literally nothing left, full of death and toil and ruins all across a wasteland with "marked men" flooding it. And those marked men, god damn are they a handful. I wouldn't be so bothered with having more creeps ever so willingly try to dismantle me, but these guys really takes the cake for being otherwise too hard to deal with. Also, the Deathclaw's, while not being anything more unique, now do more damage and have more health packed in for some incomprehensible reason other than to be some unecessary obstacle to the good parts. While the whole mythology of making choices and finding yourself does seem to entail the courier, as indeed you feel like you are spanning a long journey to 'find' yourself, or just kill ulysses, I'm not sure which, but while Ulysses is a complex men with a lot on his mind and nothing to hold back, I never feel that everything about who the courier is is explained here. Perhaps it was because half of the dialogue planned for him was cut as well as him from the original game, or maybe because of his slow and casually melancholy tone. I did feel appreciated for the style of it's environments, but this DLC only has one mission at hand and only one path to go. Sound's like more of a linear shooter now, does it? And that's what really kicked the shins for me on this DLC. The Answer I was hoping for did not get solved, my reasoning for doing this in the first place not wholly explained, and my attempts to ever go back to this DLC gone out of the window. For it being the ultimate climax, I would highly suggest that this is the worst DLC out of all 4 of them. Try it if you like, but remember that this DLC is not a RPG of any sort.

Honest Hearts was the second DLC that I played after Old World Blues, and being satisfied by the experiences I had playing the first one, I was willing to keep going with Honest Hearts. Unfortunately, I didn't quite feel so excited. Now, the environment in this game is quite wonderful, almost unique in it's own right to the landscape of the mojave wasteland. Unfortunately, the story pushes you into it's main quest so hard that you won't have enough time to smell the roses and look at the eerie canyon levels in the Navarro. And the story I couldn't quite follow either, thinking about it now it all became just thin air for me. While the context of it does follow towards old ways being fought in modern traditions, i.e. native americans using fully automatic assault rifles to defend their villages, and while it is quite interesting to see this change even after the destruction of pre-war society as a whole ,it gets annoying real quick to annihilate these **** that seem to just pop out of the woodwork. Which also made me more inclined just to get this story done rather than suffer through all their consistent attacks and my consistent inability to sell all of the loot that I got because there is literally only one trader in this entire DLC. The Burned Man is interesting, having been mentioned only briefly in the original game, it was nice to actually meet him face to face. Despite his former duties as legate for the legionaires, I could see a new person in him, someone who'd rather build than destroy from now on. I just wish I could get more out of this game that I would believe could have offered me. AFter destroying the cliched villain (i forgot who he was as well), I suddenly came across the biggest bomb that you could do to make this game even less replayable. I found myself transported straight to the exit, with a chest full of all of the unique loot that either was equipped to unique characters or found on the map. WOW. that was too easy! I mean, I still wanted to give this game a chance, but I guess it decided it'd be better just to get the good stuff and go home. Yet, I still like Honest Hearts for at least being "Honest" about attempting to show us to a new world, but it didn't quite have the "Heart" for me to keep going on.

This particular DLC is my first played and still my most thouroughly enjoyable in the line of fallout series. With a interesting locale fixated upon the discovery of how certain monsters found in the mojave came to be, as well as a shockingly good amount of humor and throwback to the '50s retrofuturistic idealisms, Old World Blues to me feels like the part of New Vegas that went missing from it originally. While it still doesn't amount to the whole stress of being in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, rather, fighting in a very well developed science facility, I still found a lot of joy to come for this game. Not only are there a lot of available perks, weapons, side quests and locales to find, I still manage to keep myself coming back to this splendid place even after completing it's main quest, and the only that I've yet to down so far. The whole focus of "evolved science" really plays key to the intentionally cartoonish villains and henchman, to the artifacts you find to the creeps you must kill, to the outlandishness of the sink's AI, which also will become your main hub for just about anything you need. While I for one didn't quite make a solid decision on whether or not to continue the drastic pursuits of science or leave it in it's place, and while there is a lot of dialogue to go through in this game to get the pacing going, overall Old World Blues is consistently enjoyable to play and explore before and after.

While I was hesitant at first to try the third installation in a franchise that I've yet to know or care, after carefully inspecting professional and honest reviews on this game, the hype of this game being "skyrim-with-guns" made me want to put my feet into the unknown territory of Far Cry 3. I couldn't have made a better choice in my life. Let's start from when you start the game. I am quite piqued at the conceptualism of Duality and Insanity voiced through the visuals of the main screen even, and also works beneficially for accessing your menu with ease. But, the one thing that did annoy me the most about this game was not necessarily about the content itself but Ubisoft's constant plea for it's almost unnecessary online pass. While you could play multiplayer without installing this pass up to Level 15, the whole reward on your hand for doing so isn't that significant. Likely, all you'll ever get is 4 achievement challenges which if completed will give you so to say "points" that you can use to download only 4 unlockables, almost all of which could've been in the final game to begin with. Nevertheless, at least it didn't necessarily force you to keep paying with real money, rather than just your dedication to the game itself. But overall, this Uplay is just another hub to bring more uneccessary adverts and lock the customer in a very unfriendly commitment to a company which seems to lie more than what their customer would. Anyhow, back to the game. The singleplayer as a whole is quite astounding, with real and round character development, combined with an engaging environment and tons of activities to do in this game. while you play as a seemingly spoiled college frat boy, you actually almost immediately get past his stereotypes and see the real human in him, and you can see him slowly develop from a person who only knew the life of luxury to a hard-boiled survivalist, something that a lot of games have trouble these days topping off. Jason Brody has morals, and is not a airhead as I thought I'd come to expect. The gameplay itself is also nice, where you can constantly have yourself engaging in a lot of dynamic battles between pirates, hostile animals and maybe even your friends. I do have to say right out the bat that in the singleplayer mode this game provides one of the best pyrotechnics I have ever seen (you can even hear the trees crackle as they burn and the fire spread!). There are a whole assortment of weapons and traps to choose from, varying between out in the open to overall stealthy, and the stealth mode in this game also has a big improvement, with individual enemy indicators rather than universal ones found in Skyrim or Fallout. Skinning animals actually comes to use, as you can use the skins to increase the capacity of ammo, how many weapons you can hold, or aid of the matter. There are internet challenges you can engage in around the singleplayer world, where you can compete with your friends to have your name stamped on a bright red rock as the champion of said challenge. Skills not only diversified but having these skills adds tattoos to your arm, and you can see how detailed your arm will become after amassing a large amount of skills. You can also gain signature weapons from completing other challenges, like collecting relics or lost letters, and there is also a radio tower part of gameplay that works not unlike the Assassin's Creed towers, where you can reveal the map and have certain guns be free for purchase (not the attachments, however). Now, I would say that the singleplayer on it's own would be enough to get this game immediately, but this game is so much more give than take. There is a co-op mode (although it's more of a big shooting gallery with pyrotechnics), a multiplayer mode (with loadouts that you can use in co-op as well) and even a map editor, which allows for much more replayability with the multiplayer even after reaching the highest rank (and you will get there fast, believe me.) There is a decoding system that allows you to get certain camoflauge that also serve to provide some certain attributes to your weapons, and urges you to keep playing as theses decoders are "decoding". Other than the blatant ad spam that is the Uplay system, with a facebook like dashboard that puts a status of you every time you either get top score on a match or complete a challenge, to which people can "like" them. I don't really see the point of this at all as it doesn't serve any purpose to popularize yourself or having any control over what status' should be shown, much less even make your own. But, apart from that, This game is wholly wonderful and you will spend oodles of hours playing player made maps, or making your own, and especially getting some singleplayer in. Hear that, Battlefield 3? This is how you make multiplayer AND singleplayer just as good.

From stepping into unknown territory with Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas makes a stronger foundation for the fallout franchise and improves upon the technical issues with Fallout 3. You can now aim down the sights of most weapons (some unique energy guns you can't), you can repair weapons to 100% without needing a 100 repair skill, but repair now comes into play with breaking down and creating your own ammunition and arms. The Workshop table now has a more intricate tablet of items to create, compared to the simple icons from Fallout 3. HardCore mode provides more RPG elements to the whole fallout experience, making water, food and sleep much more necessary than optional at best. Unfortunately, now you can only get a perk point every other level, but the cap has been increased to 30 and each DLC provides level caps of 5 rather than the 1 in Fallout 3. the environment in the Mojave "Wasteland" is still interesting, with it's own blend of colorful characters and landscapes. The Story of this game is also strong, but doesn't really put much enthusiasm to the whole "Fallout" feel. Even with the Hardcore mode enabled, I feel i have a much easier walk in the park playing through this game than Fallout 3 normally, and that didn't have hardcore mode in the first place. I know that coincidentally Mr. House was able to salvage most of the Mojave Desert through his means of defense, but that doesn't build upon the whole idealism of a Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland if there is a organized government developing through most of the area. It just feels like Oblivion if I was thrown into a desert. Although, with it's weaknesses there comes strengths. You get to traverse through the strip, gambling, having sex with hookers, and helping Mr. House enforce his rule around the Mojave. Plants of plenty will grow around in the wasteland, allowing you to scavenge for them to keep yourself healthy from dehydration or starvation. New Vegas provides more choices with what factions you work with, depending on if you want to help Mr. House, Yes Man, the NCR or the Legion. How you feel this new wiped country should be governed depends on you. While on a combat scale, it has improved, with improved skill sets, and more to choose from, Fallout: New Vegas doesn't quite compliment a whole "Fallout" feel, it does improve much upon from the original game, at least, original on a new console.

I'm not going to try to compare this game with the previous Fallout expansions, considering that converting from a isometric view to a full on First Person Shooter completely falters the arguments between each two. In an open-world setting, Fallout 3 is quite like Skyrim or Oblivion in a lot of ways, since Bethesda knows how to make an RPG setting, with interesting locations, dynamic settings (at some points), and curious characters. Apart from Skyrim and Oblivion's leveling system, you gain experience based on finding locations, completing quests, or just killing creatures. At leveling up you can spend your points freely on any skill set, and you can choose a perk based on your level and your skill set. This is a great quality that Skyrim borrows from, and in a good way at that. Although, you will have to face having to talk to NPC's by directly staring at you to death from Oblivion, but dialogue options are more enhanced from just making a sentence from one word. Onto the negatives. the biggest annoyance I've had with this game was that you can't aim down the sight of any gun other than the ones with a scope. All that happens is that you zoom in while awkwardly shooting creeps from the hip. A lot of the weapons you'll find regularly break down (except for the Hunting Rifle, which will be your best friend for a while) and are hard to repair, because you can only repair a weapon's quality equivalent to your skill set, so if you have 30 repair you can only repair a weapon up to 30% quality, which is annoying as hell and makes you want to get repair to 100 immediately. Most unique weapons you find have the same model as the normal gun, like a Terrible Shotgun to a Combat Shotgun. When night falls, it can be especially painful to traverse around the wasteland as the graphic feel for the game is also quite choppy too, making everything blend, and your Pip-Boy light won't do much else to improve upon that. The combat itself is quite static, with the guns feeling often glued onto you, and the movement impaired and the VATS becoming a little tired and repitive with your motions. On a Story level, though, the game is interesting, and how you begin the game is quite clever and thematic as well. It doesn't overburden you with everything at hand, and manages to introduce to you the lore of the game in a realistic settting. Also, exploring the wasteland does make you feel like you are exploring a wasteland, with so many ruined buildings of old, crawling through the many interlayers of metro stations. But, the metro station also causes a lot of issues with using markers or waypoints, as they will needlessly through theirselves all over the map to get to a location that would be much easier to get to directly on foot. Rad will become a constant issue to you if you are not wary, and many hostile creatures and mutants shall try anything they can to destroy you. This franchise had to take a big step from simple PC computersto more complex systems, with a new development team and all to make sure that everything about the lore from the original was kept sacred, and for the most part, it has. It has some choppy motions and awkward combat situations, but Fallout 3 will be interesting to partake in the story behind it all.

After playing through the main storyline as well as taking my precious time between side missions and challenges, I can gladly say that this game is the best "Grand Theft Auto"-esque game produced by Rockstar. Environments are unique, interesting and consistently enjoyable to play around in, characters that you come across and encounter are well-rounded and interesting in their own way, and the whole traditional feel of a western game really does shine through this fine example of one. You can hunt for animals that are sprinkled all across the three areas that you can traverse through, there will be countless amounts of dynamic encounters like saving a treasure hunter from pilfering bandits or engaging in a good old-fashioned duel to test the agility and grit of our lone ranging. The Dead Eye Meter as well as regenerative health, while making the game seem like an easy ride the way through, actually distribute a lot of the difficulties from other Grand Theft Auto-inspired games and allow the player to play the game challenged but not completely overwhelmed. There are also tons of other minigames as well, such as arm wrestling, poker, horseshoes, and even little propaganda movies. The lore and the history shown through this game is also captivating as well, and you can feel quite nostalgic from reading old-timey newspapers that are unapologetically misogynistic and retro in their own feel. I was worried that the diversity of the weapons in this game would be few and far in between, but in actuality, there is an arsenal of weapons to find, choose from, and use in the game, if several guns are categorized in the same field, such as sniper rifles, repeaters, shotguns, miscellary, and pistols. the only few gripes I have with this game is that Horse controls can be a little shoddy, and I still haven't quite found a way to stop a horse from moving at all (unless I kill it), and the fact that the main storyline kind of ended on a disappointing note. It wasn't as dramatic as I hoped it would be. Still, this game will definitely be worth your money if you want to engage yourself in a top-notch competitor for other western-themed games to come.

From transitioning from One Era to another in the story (and for us, metaphorically), Skyrim does a great job of cleaning a lot of frustrations and putting every perspective that we love from RPG's: Dynamic Settings, Beautiful Enivornments, and Epic Combat. The Combat doesn't feel so static anymore, like as if your hitting a fence post with a nerf sword, first person combat can see you bob up and down from running, sprinting, attacking, and blocking. The Status bars are also a plus as well, having them Symmetrically placed across the bottom of your screen, to minimalize HUD flogging when you want to get to the heart of this game: Environments. The Fog system in this game is by far the best I have ever seen from any game, that from looking at it it is almost pantomime to me. The Water system has improved a tad, but sometimes I tend to be swimming in invisible water due to glitches. Enchanting weapons is now a skill set, rather than those cores you'd retrieve from closing oblviion gates. Weaponry Combat is now divided between One-Handed and Two-Handed, rather than Maces and Swords, and while either one can be argued over which is better, I would prefer One-Handed. Although, trying to get re-acquainted with certain magic skill sets is a little trifling, considering that Mysticism no longer is a magic skill set and we are left with Illusion, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration and Conjuration. Mysticism's spells have been divided among each other skill set, which can make finding the particular spells difficult if you are not familiar with The Elder Scrolls. But most importantly, Skill Sets are a big improvement to this game. Leveling Up is now more diversified; if you leveled up just using Marksmanship, you can put a Perk into Enchanting if you feel like it, where in Oblivion it had you forced to increase skills based on what skill you used most. Also, Magicka, Stamina and Health also have their own perk points, where each time you can level up, you can add 10 points to either one. The Story, well, it has some strengths, but also weaknesses. IN terms of communication, Now all communication is in real-time, so when you communicate to one person, not everyone else will just freeze in place. Also, you won't have to stare at the NPC you are talking to face to face. In fact, you can actually move your first-person view while conversing, providing a more thematic and realistic ideal to communication. But to the story. Now, the Dragonborn Quest was epic, especially at the end when you finally face Alduin once and for all, but the other main quest, The Civil War Quest, was kind of shallow. Now, you can never win a civil war with one person, that never happens. Throughout the whole time you are doing this quest, you never actually feel any tension from your foe, either being the imperials or the stormcloaks. And when you do enter Enemy territory, you aren't even threatened from there. Even after thwarting Stormcloak Evasions, capturing cities and ransacking forts, all that the leaders ever do is just curse your name and talk passive-agressively towards you, not even once bothering to mention that In that case you'd be a High Profile Target for Assassination. I was glad to be done with it, considering that their idea of a civil war wasn't ideally the one I was hoping for. However, the other side quests are all interesting, and indeed, Every Dungeon, Crevice or area you find has their own story to tell. Books are still existant in this region, even some of the easter eggs from the earlier elder scrolls (the lusty argonian :P). It's even interesting to read books detailing events that happened during "The Oblivion Crisis", as they call it. The Relationships between each races is also very apparent, with circulating criticism's and racisms between lower class races (Argonian's, Khajiit, Dark Elves), and it allowed me to analyze the situation that was burgeoning all over Skyrim and possibly all of Tamriel. It allowed me to develop my character in a way that I thought I would never be able to do with games that would rather just kill first and ask questions later, I could actually have a character with real context and self-awareness of the problems that propel the lore forward. However, on a technical level, there are a lot of issues with this game that bother me. I can't see my oxygen level when going under water (although maybe this was for the tension), I can't see the weight limit for any companions (er, pack mules), before me, companions will constantly get in your way and act ****, and most importantly, auto saving. While I originally embraced this idea of autosaving, I constantly get annoyed with trying to access my inventory while autosave saves when I don't need to and doesn't when I do need it to. Ultimately, this game shall be worth your money which I could say more for some of their DLC content.

Once again, Gearbox's consistency with the improvements of both the original game and the dlc's return in favor for this new installment. The Dialogue is still hilarious (especially with Mister Torgue), the areas are dynamic and unique, and the new Torgue Vending Machines, Currency, and Slot Machines add even more depth to this particular installment. Although I did wish you could use the bikes you had to fight through the Catch-A-Ride System, the new currency is a nice touch to player progression and towards loot whoring. All torgue vending machines only sell torgue weaponry (obviously), and every weapon of the day is a legendary torgue weapon. The vending machines also sell valuable customization items for your classes, whether it be head or color patterns. Also, the new Battle Tiers also provides plenty of motivation to rack up enough torgue points to grab a legendary weapon. However, where in Pirate's Booty it's weakness was the cleverness from BL2, Torgue suffers from the player uniqueness. They aren't too especial from the pirates, considering they all function just like any other generic bandit. The Bike Riders and Suicide Bikers are really the only new unique touch to the game, and all other different enemies (Torgue Engineers, Torgue Loaders) are just simply reskinned with no new bearing on voice acting. Still, Gearbox has chosen wisely to make sure that This campaign is just as substantial as the first dlc, which brings up to the best point from these dlc's. IN the First Borderlands, None of the DLC's actually had you focused on a Vault, which was practically the epitome for the Vault Hunter's quest. I just felt that these earlier Vault Hunters had been retired of their job because they were hidden upon the guise that that particular vault was the ONLY vault on Pandora, or the universe. Fortunately, BL2's DLC's manages to keep the Vault Hunter prowess alive, With Each DLC mainly focusing on finding another Vault for endless loot and swag, and Mister Torgue's Campaign of Carnage manages to take a different role on the method of opening their vault compared to Pirate's Booty and so on. I can see that Gearbox shall continue making each DLC relevant to the idea of the 4 (or 5) mercenaries vault hunting. But Gearbox BETTER put a Level cap on the next dlc!

Well, I have to say I was excited to see a Bioshock sequel coming around the corner, considering how much I loved the story, environment and combat of Bioshock. Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed. I was glad that they decided to allow you to use Plasmids AND Guns at the same time, rather than having to switch between each one manually. Also, they did do a great job of making you feel as if you are a Big Daddy, with the big submarine helmet, your bigfoot movement and the damage you took. I'm glad they added melee attacks to guns as well (since you might not want to have to switch to your drill). Hacking is now done in real-time, which seems like an improvement, but now the hacking system is even easier than the previous hacking system. And the guns, well, aren't much to brag about. They are practically the same as the previous game, just with a different name, ammo type and outlook. The only 'new' item is the hack tool, which is particularly good considering that now you can hack remotely from a distance. The "Protect the Sister" parts on the singleplayer are a nice touch, and I'm glad that 2K took attention to realize that you are a Big Daddy that needs to protect their little sisters as they are recovering adam for you. And you will need it. the secret improve-your-gun stations are more rare and now you will have to strategically choose which upgrades you want on your gun, because you won't get them all. However, I was disappointed they completely cut the ammo creation station, which made the game feel much shorter from the previous game. Also, I don't like how you have to use your Health Kits using one button on the D-pad, yet you can only take your plasmids when you are COMPLETELY out of EVE at the time. Iron Sights have been added for all guns now, and you can put on true ironsights if you want (even for the hack tool). But, the story was the real kick in the shins for me. Now, it was interesting, initially, with the whole Big Sister concept and how you were slowly dying and losing your mind from being torn apart from your little sister, but the tyrant, Sofia Lamb, was a lot less interesting than Andrew Ryan and more annoying so. Sofia just seems to keep talking to you as if she's trying to analyze something, and compared to her methods from Andrew Ryan, she's taken a more collective and socialistic method rather than him. The graphics seem downgraded somehow from the previous game, with graphics constantly being blurred out that haven't loaded right, as well as very smooth and choppy NPC's. Also, the ending was most possibly the most anti-climactic boss fight I have seen yet. In the fight to retain your little sister back and to get revenge on sofia lamb, you COMPLETE THE GAME BY DESTROYING TWO PIPES! TWO PIPES?! WOW! that must have been hard, considering that vigilante Big Daddy's and Brute Splicers will keep spawning on you if you don't destroy them. But, the most annoying thing that I think 2K thought they had to do to make the game popular was the multiplayer. I have heard so many bad things about it, and playing it, all of them were true. Most graphic pop-ups won't load, player movement is always choppy, and gameplay can become seriously unbalanced considerably. But, other than Black Ops, it was actually funny for me to see all of this happen as I was playing, and I just played to see how bad or good it really was. Bioshock doesn't need multiplayer, the first one was fine on it's own on the singleplayer because it was engaging and awesome at the same time. I guess when 2K decided to make Bioshock 2's singleplayer kind of recycled from the first game, they decided to make multiplayer to compensate for it. It didn't work. Hopefully, Bioshock: Infinite should be worthwhile considering that is free from the original bioshock universe. Still, this game should be worth your time, considering many of it's improvements, but it is seriously lacking in a decent multiplayer experience and far more an engaging and unfamiliar story arc.

Compared to the DLC's from Borderands 1, this particular DLC is a fine improvement from not only the improvements over the gripes from Borderlands 1 but also the gripes of it's DLC's. Particularly, my biggest complaint with the BL1 dlc's is that they only had 1 FAST TRAVEL SYSTEM in the DLC, so you were forced to keep backtracking from where you started off, especially with the Armory of General Knoxx. Also, a smaller complaint I had with these particular BL1 DLC's is that each DLC either focused on All Vehicle travel or all Foot Travel, which is a pain considering that a lot of the DLC's from BL1 were also a development test to bring out BL2 with that kind of innovation. Thankfully, this first BL2 DLC suffers from neither of those issues. Now there are multiple Fast Travel Networks in this DLC (so far), so you won't have to backtrack, A New Vehicle (which in a way is pretty decent once you get used to it) and most importantly, this DLC balances both Vehicle and On-Foot Combat spetacularly. Also, I enjoy the new familiar and added enemies in this DLC, as well as the fact that they have been completely re-skinned and voiced over to represent the whole idea of "Pirate's Booty". The new guns also stack up to the whole pirate mythology, with 'Cursed" guns (although I didn't tend to notice these negatives as much), and overall this DLC altogether has a lot more effort put into the content that they give. Although, the story aspect for me is kind of a return from the BL1 DLC content, but the dialogue is still funny and a riot to listen to. Fortunately, this DLC doesn't suffer too hard from the spontaneous dialogue leakage that either interrupts or overlaps other ECHO logs you were currently listening to. I would wholeheartedly suggest not only getting this DLC but the season pack, as I can tell this attention to detail by Gearbox will keep coming with later DLC's.

the black mesa production team has done a wonderful job of revisiting Half-Life into the Half Life 2 engine in not only the source engine but also of the time and effort they took to remodeling all the NPCs, improving the dialogue quality while providing new voice actors, and providing much more attention to detail with the environment of the black mesa research facility. I was glad that they did get rid of parts of the game that seemed to go on for decades (going through ventilation shafts for an eternity, that is), and they also put more complexity and more realism to the facility area, like the crate smashing room (in Half Life it almost seemed like they deliberately made it for you to jump that way). Also, I was quite surprised at how they added a new feature to the game: gore on your weapons. It's a nice emphatic touch to the ventures that Freeman must go through to reach to the Lambda core. The AI also has been improved as well, especially with the soldiers (although, sometimes the enemies will just stand there if they can't reach you from range, and this is frequent with the Slaves, e.g. vortigaunts). Also, there are some subtly hilarious parts in the game that you will encounter (like when you acquire the hive-hand, and Freeman reluctantly sticks his hand into what appears to be it's ass, or when the scientists foolishly go inside a ventilation shaft filled with monsters and the scientist who tries to get him out brakes his neck from falling from under the ladder). Everything that made the first half-life great can still be found in the effortless commitment that the black mesa production team had put into revamping the game, and seriously, all of this for free? You can't get a better deal than that! If you've been painfully impatient about the release of half life 3 (or episode 3), this game will give you the same feeling of nostalgia from both Half Life releases for a very long time!

With all the improvements of the game that solved all of the issues I had with Borderlands 1, and considering that this game is not certaintly a recycled copy of the previous title unlike most other titles (*cough* MW3 *cough*), so I was initially pleased that this game was a more give than take kind of game, and It truly is: More skills are more unique to each class (and more beneficial), the badass rank pertains to EACH USER, and not each player, which is worthwhile for any class you make, as well as the challenges you get. The minimap is a lot more helpful in locating your waypoint, enemies and shops, and more rpg elements have been added to the limited RPG element of this RPS game from the previous title. This is one of the few Sequels that actually pertains to making it worthwhile in almost every aspect, almost, that is. There are some issues I have with this game, pertaining to the new graphics engine introduced in the game. While they have solved the issue with the pickup of items crowding the space on your field of view, the whole graphics engine feels quite too clumped with even more enemies, effects and objects. Although, this is a good and bad thing, and can be resolved if your eyesight can manage the over-the-top violence. But, the new menu system is an improvement from borderlands 1 especially with the split-screen play, but the gun stats will constantly get in the way of how much ammo you have, so you have to constantly screen your eyesight quickly enough to get a gist of the ammo you have. And, the ammo. Not to say this a problem, it is an improvement over how much you can get and how much is available, but I still have a problem with identfiying what ammo pack resolves to which. the ammunition in Borderlands 1 was much easier to identify, but nonetheless it isn't much of a big issue. The big new addition to borderlands is the favorites/trash option, which allows you to easily identify which guns you can use, and which guns you don't want. also, you can sell all items that you've identified as trash, which is really innovative considering the time it would take to sell each item individually. Eridium is a cool innovation, and has improved how easy it would take for you to allocate all the Ammo SDU's/Backpack SDU's, and is also important for the storyline. Borderlands 2 also takes some cues from their previous expansion packs, which also brakes away from the tedium that is Borderlands 1. Also, waypoints to locations you need to go will also show on the fast travel network, which is also a plus. Skill COMS will show additions to skills you need, rather than having to remember from scrolling between inventory and skill set in Borderlands 1. Money has been toned down to become more necessary and not as infinite as in Borderlands 1, and you pick up money and ammo automatically when dropped from creeps. You can find personal customization items for your character and your vehicles, as well as plenty of them being available at the start of the game (also, you can get a custom item from having played borderlands 1!). Most importantly, the open-world has been more opened from borderlands 1, with more vibrant, unique and dynamic landscapes with some more worthwhile bossfights and storylines, not to mention the easter eggs. This really helps, considering the side missions in borderlands 1 were like the generic cliche MMORPG-esque missions and the world was more like a snake trail with huge bulges in between. Overall, Borderlands 2 has some few issues that can be easily ignored by all the improvements and the greatly overall better effort produced by Gearbox, and I'm proud to say that this game was worth the money I got, considering I got a lot of bonus coupons off on it!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I was fortunate enough to get this game as a gift rather than paying for the $60 that this is game is not actually worth. I didn't have to bother with the excuse that is Battlelog or Origin, because I was fortunate enough to use the console versions, which for one of the few times is an improvement from the PC. Initially, I really enjoyed the game, from the balanced guns to the awesome destruction physics and how Battlefield 3 really does incorporate team play. But after a while, the game has become almost as infuriating to me as playing Black Ops or MW2. The constant glitches with non-working glitches, the horrible hit detection from the net code, the horrible collision impact between proning halfway between walls and explosions not doing enough or too much damage, and most importantly, how the graphics completely betray your line of sight. I don't get why a "realistic shooter" thinks that "realism" is that every panel, wall and character needs to be sprayed with the colors Brown, Tan, Gray and BLUE! seriously, those are literally the only colors they have in that game! it is literally impossible for me to get my bearings on what I'm looking at, who my teammates are, who my enemies are, or what control points I'm on. The FPS on that game isn't too much of a bother to me as to others, but the blatantly poor SinglePlayer and the not worthwhile Co-Op really does hinder the value of this game. This game doesn't deserve a 0, due to some technical appeal that the game does have, but it doesn't deserve a 10 because it is FAR FROM PERFECT. They had to rush this in, without giving any thought to consumer criticism and only thought of trying to beat MW2 in the economic arms race of "realistic shooters". Battlefield 3 is such a disappointment because, once again, EA overhypes the game and believes in that "minimalist" value that they have been provoking lately. BF3 could've been a more impressive game, with all the **** smoothened out, with a better promising Origin without your privacy ruined, and with DICE's promise of "all dlc's will be free!", I would rate this game at a 8 out of 10. My last suggestion to you is, DONT BUY BF4. please.

with endless amount of replay value, cartoonishly vibrant '60s themed outfits and map development, hilarious character classes that are all unique and finely balanced on scale, loads of new updates to improve the game, and now that the game is FREE, for life, makes this game even more worthwhile to play. There are plenty maps to choose from, plenty of game modes to play on, so many options to choose from a always free game, Team Fortress 2 defines how a FPS shooter can be loads of fun as well as entertaining.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a particularly worthwhile sequel for one with a few new innovations added to the series. Still, at least Valve DID add innovation to the game, like new guns, new zombies, new maps (well, duh), new items. Some people may think that the campaign is short and shallow, but what really pulls me into the game is the replay value. Sure, the chapter's wont last you more than a hour, however, each time I play them, the events that will unfold in your quest for survival is unpredictable. You won't ALWAYS get a defib at the very start of some chapter, or a jockey won't always come out from a door. There is always a new way to play the chapter, where all your friends are dead and you have to survive with 15 health with only a shotgun with very little ammo and 1 bottle of pills, or just blaze through with all of your friends blasting through hordes of zombies without braking a sweat or taking a scratch. playing as the zombies is a blast, and I always love the enjoyment of being afraid of those blasted jockeys or those insufferable witches. still, buying for the extra maps is a little bogus (despite that these Maps are free on the PC version), but at least you don't have to pay $15 for one map from Black Ops. Valve sure did put a lot more effort in a sequel like this than other developers would.