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5 (81) 4 (84) 3 (2) 2 (1) 1 (0) 4.5 starsAverage score of 168 user reviews
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Lost Planet: Extreme Condition 1
Lost Planet seemed to have a lot of potential when I first started. To begin, I got it in a five dollar deal on Steam, so it wasn't going to be a big waste of money no matter how the game was. The entire game taking place on a freezing, snow-covered planet was a unique and non-terrible idea. The grappling hook is a neat little device for getting around. The large insect-like Akrid make for a somewhat interesting foe. The "Vital Suit" mechs are a cool way to mix up the standard run and gun s...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Hitman: Blood Money 0
I wasn't a big fan the last time I tried a Hitman game, and this one took me two attempts to get into it, but once I did I enjoyed it quite a bit. The game's not without any flaws, and its sense of design is aging rapidly. Still, the series has a unique style of play that's really interesting if you have the patience to get into it.If you've never tried it before, it's a stealth action game, but instead of lurking in shadows and around corners to infiltrate secret bases, you're ambushing guards ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures: Muzzled! 0
Telltale keeps rolling along with the third part of the Wallace & Gromit series. Whatever you think of the games, you can't say they're not consistent in anything they do. This one didn't do as much for me as the first two for some reason, though I still mostly enjoyed its charm while it lasted. It just didn't seem as substantial, like something was cut out for some reason - previous games had you bouncing back and forth between playing Wallace and Gromit, while this time you only control Wa...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic 0
I remember when the original Rag Doll Kung Fu was released on Steam a few years ago, and it seemed like a neat physics experiment if not much of a game. The version put on the Playstation Network seems to use the same system with simplified controls, and it apparently has done so poorly that it ended up being more profitable to let users download it for free in a promotion sponsored by Sprint, which is how I got to play it. I screwed around with it for a couple hours, not cursing the time I wast...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Call of Duty: World at War 0
It's interesting to play World at War right after Far Cry 2, because they represent very different approaches to the same basic idea. The latter is all about providing you with an environment in which any number of things can happen based on what you do inside it, while the former is a series of planned events hand crafted to give every player the same experience. This is Treyarch's third stab at the Call of Duty franchise, and if the first two are like this, then they've proven themselves very ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Far Cry 2 0
Crytek, the developer of the first game in the series, went on from that to make Crysis, while the rights to the series stayed with publisher Ubisoft, who gave the sequel to one of their internal teams. Thanks to this, Far Cry 2 doesn't have a lot in common with the original besides shooting people in a jungle environment. I only played a bit of the first game, but basically you were a guy named Jack shooting his way through a linear story, albeit with some freedom in how you went about doing th...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures: The Last Resort 0
The Last Resort wasn't quite as fun as the first episode, but it was still a very enjoyable continuation of the series. It starts out with Wallace and Gromit turning their basement into a beach resort to help the people in town escape the poor English weather, but takes a turn for the more interesting when a newly introduced Scottish douche of a character gets knocked on the head and a whodunit begins. I probably would have preferred it if there was an actual mystery to the culprit and you had ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Jade Empire 0
Jade Empire is a fun, solid RPG by Bioware that's hampered slightly by a few small issues. The PC exclusive "Special Edition" comes with some new content, however in general it's not a very good port. Mouse support isn't great, there are some weird control screw ups, and a few dumb glitches here and there. Along with some weird presentation issues, the game feels outdated technically even for a game originally released four years ago. The story segments are a weird mishmash of nice-looking C...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: 8-Bit Is Enough 0
In 8-Bit Is Enough, video games collide with real life, and tons of meta humor and pop culture references ensue. Telltale has covered this ground before with Sam and Max: Reality 2.0, but they do enough differently this time that it doesn't feel like a retread and it still has the feel of the Homestar Runner universe going for it. I'm not sure if it's just me, but to me the game felt like it was easily the most elaborate and involved of the episodes design-wise, as tasks and goals were layered ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
SBCG4AP: Baddest of the Bands 0
Humor-wise, the third Strong Bad episode was about as strong as any other, but it felt like a small dip in the gameplay department. I found myself stuck more often than I thought I should have in a game that only takes a couple hours. Some adventure games thrive on keeping the player stuck for a long time, but Telltale's work seems best when stuff comes more or less naturally and you're keeping it moving to the next joke. Also, I like the extra games they insert here and there, and the only one ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
SBCG4AP: Strong Badia the Free 0
I enjoyed this episode more than the first, because like the still-superior fourth, it has a strong theme that ties the design in with the story. It's not that the first didn't work, but having an idea like each character declaring themselves ruler of their own little nation and making a world-conquering game out of it was enjoyable, and grabbed me more than my merely casual appreciation for the characters. I again ran into a problem where I was supposed to check something more than once to adva...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Homestar Ruiner 0
What finally convinced me to buy the rest of the episodes were a couple of deals that together got me them for a mere $13, an offer I really couldn't refuse. The first episode isn't as clever as the fourth that I already played, but I enjoyed it for the couple hours it lasted. It's a bit strange to keep the differences between the two episodes in context, because this is the one that introduces the play style and all the environments, while the fourth puts a twist on the whole thing, dressing ev...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Silent Hill 2 0
I've seen a lot of this game in the past, though I've never really played it myself. This changed when a friend and I agreed to both play a game we had only watched before, Silent Hill 2 for me, and Shadow of the Colossus for him. If you're not a fan of survival horror, this game has some of the genre's typical problems in places, but overall it's a very strong, creepy experience, and ahead of its time in some ways. It definitely holds up better than I might have expected.I'm not a huge fan of t...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures: Fright of the Bumblebees 0
Fright of the Bumblebees continues to evolve Telltale Games' formula for small doses of funny adventure gaming, and is my favorite production by them yet. Part of it is my preexisting affection for the Wallace and Gromit characters themselves, which isn't quite as true for Strong Bad or Sam and Max (although I've come to be a big fan of the latter). The world is just so charming, from Wallace's innocent buffoonery despite his technical genius to the way Gromit silently puts up with everything. ...
2 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: Dangeresque 3 0
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People was the next series of episodic adventures from Telltale Games, the people who made the Sam and Max ones. Not being enough of a fan of Homestar Runner to plop down my hard-earned money for it when it came out, but enough of a Wallace and Gromit fan to preorder their first season of games, I got my hands on the fourth Strong Bad episode as a bonus. It didn't quite convince me to pony up for the rest of them necessarily, but it was a reasonably enjoyab...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Noby Noby Boy 0
Noby Noby Boy is the next crazy vision from the director of Katamari Damacy, a PS2 game that I was surprised by the reaction to but was really pretty fun to play. Boy has a similar sort of feel but amps up the insanity quite a bit. Very basically, you control boy by moving the two control sticks to walk around with his head and butt. You eat things with the head and can poop them out with the butt. Eating lets you gain mass and stretch out farther, and you can fly around, wrap yourself around ob...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Persona 3 FES 0
I'm really not someone who plays a lot of Japanese RPGs, as I've written about in the past. But based on the constant praise and discussion of Persona 3 I saw on my favorite message board, I decided to give its special edition FES a try, and 82 hours later have finally finished what is easily my most enjoyable experience with the genre ever. It's an interesting take on some of the conventions. Instead of new areas and plot points becoming available as you go to different places, everything advan...
10 out of 10 found this review helpful. -
Flower 0
Flower is yet another download-only game that shows that some of the most innovative and unique work this generation isn't to be found in the latest big-budget blockbuster. It's the next project from the developer of flOw, and like that game, Flower is controlled mostly with the PS3 controller's motion sensor; is pretty relaxing to play, at least at first; and you can't lose, you just keep playing until it ends or you stop. Unlike it's predecessor, there's more to the game than meets the eye a...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
LittleBigPlanet 0
LittleBigPlanet isn't quite the savior of the Playstation 3 that some hoped it would be, but it's still a fun and completely charming game that will theoretically never run out of new content. You know the game is going for a different audience than the Gears of War crowd when you first start it up and are greeted and told how to play with pleasant, humorous narration from Stephen Fry, who happily teaches you throughout the game. The graphics are very good technically as well as design-wise, and...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Prince of Persia 0
Prince of Persia isn't as good as the better parts of the trilogy from the previous generation, but it's a solid beginning to another chapter in the franchise's history. The only thing I can really say it does definitively better is the visuals, and the game really does look amazing. It's not just the technical proficiency of the same engine that did Assassin's Creed, with a consistent frame rate despite massive draw distances. The art style, which the developers call "illustrative", is just gor...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Braid 0
Braid is a time-bending puzzle game disguised as a simple platformer like Super Mario Bros., and has enough self awareness to make several references to that fact. Beneath the basic gameplay controls and pleasant, hand-drawn appearance though, there is an incredible amount of depth and inventiveness to every aspect of the game's design, from the time manipulation mechanics to the devious puzzles to the great story. Basically, there are five normal worlds you can run through. The goal is to get a...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Fallout 3 0
I haven't played any of the other Fallout games, but from what I can tell, Bethesda's first stab at the series takes the skill system and trademark sense of humor and transplants them effectively into Oblivion's engine. Coming out two and a half years later Fallout 3 isn't the big step forward I was hoping for, but it's still a great game when you play it. It still has some of Oblivion's glitches and awkward moments, but it does do a fair amount of things better. Characters look better, and ther...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Left 4 Dead 0
A slight lack of content and a few connection issues are the only things holding back one of the most enjoyable shooting experiences I've had in years. The normal gameplay isn't particularly deep; there are only a few weapons and a few types of enemies. They're not particularly smart. There's only four "movies" to play, none lasting even two hours on normal difficulty. But none of that matters. Holding off a ravenous horde of zombies with a few friends, desperately huddled together and waiting f...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl 0
STALKER is an interesting if flawed first person shooter that's greatest strength is its atmosphere. It spent a long time to development, leading some to think it would never be released, and it definitely shows its age in some areas. The shooting gameplay itself doesn't really handle the way you'd hope it would in a modern game, leading some combat encounters to be more frustrating than they probably should be. Especially early on, the handguns and hunting shotguns you find simply aren't very e...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Jak 3 0
It sure took me a while to get around to playing this one. I don't have anything against the series really, I think it's a solid platformer. I just can not understand, for the life of me, the numerous people who prefer it to Ratchet and Clank. It's literally incomprehensible to me. The only think Jak has over Ratchet is animation, and storyline I guess. His games are more frustrating, control worse, and just less... good.Jak II was a radical departure from the first game, misguidedly turning Jak...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Tomb Raider: Anniversary 0
I might have appreciated it more if I had played the original, but Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a solid remake that updates the game to a more modern style with grace. It plays very similarly to Tomb Raider: Legend, the first game in the series by Crystal Dynamics after they took it over, with the same combat and platforming mechanics with a few updates, but the focus is much different. Legend felt a lot like an action movie, with car chases, large gun fights, with lots of characters and cinemati...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames 0
If I had to use one word to describe why Mercenaries 2 isn't great, it would be "rough". The game is most definitely rough. You'd think it shouldn't be after the delays it experienced, but the game still feels like a PS2 port with prettier explosions and a bunch of glitches. None of the technical problems really hurt the game though, and the game itself is so cool that it's hard to dislike it. It certainly has issues, but they can all be overcome if you're looking for an enjoyable, less than ful...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Bionic Commando: Rearmed 0
Rearmed is a remake of a game for the original Nintendo, but if I didn't know that I couldn't have guessed. It's probably the most fun I've ever had with a game played in two dimensions, and the fact that something this forward thinking in its design and uniquely fun mechanically was made all those years ago makes me surprised it's not hailed as more of a classic. Admittedly I don't have much expertise on the time period, but Bionic Commando had an overworld map that gave you some choice about w...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 205: What's New, Beelzebub? 0
Beelzebub wraps up season two in a thoroughly satisfying way, connecting all the dots in the story and going so far as to bring back many familiar faces, loved or hated, especially in the credits sequence. It has some of the better self-referential humor in the series, and definitely feels like how a finale should, at least better than the first one did. The puzzles weren't as clever as last time, but they made good enough sense to be enjoyable anyway. I thought the reveal of the real villain wa...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 204: Chariots of the Dogs 0
Chariots of the Dogs may be the best episode of Sam and Max yet. The adventure elements were clever and more intuitive, and the story was solidly good. Introducing time travel always runs the risk of making a plot fall apart or just become too confusing, but they handled it pretty darn well. One moment raises huge causality questions that weren't resolved for me in a satisfying way, but it doesn't have an effect on the story they're currently telling and is more of a joke than anything else. ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 203: Night of the Raving Dead 0
Night of the Raving Dead tells another successful, funny part of the season two story, although the puzzles took a step backwards for me. It's unclear to me whether that's just my continued failure to grasp certain things, or if they were just more poorly designed. While I did need more help than I would have liked to get through it, it was still solidly fun. I wasn't a big fan of the villain, whose personality comes from being obnoxious instead interesting, but there's plenty going on around hi...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 202: Moai Better Blues 0
The second episode of the season continues to tweak the formula slightly, and you really start seeing the seeds of Telltale building a story that connects it all together. Season one was built around a mind control plot, but the episodes generally stood on their own without much reference to the others. Season two shows more continuity and teases what's coming next after the credits. The second episodes features some Bermuda Triangle teleporters, an island to explore, and baby versions of variou...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 201: Ice Station Santa 0
Telltale went forward with the second season of their successful take on the Sam and Max characters earlier this year, although I didn't buy it until recently. The first episode picks up quickly on the same foot as last time, now featuring an introductory puzzle before the stylish opening credits. The new location is the North Pole, where Santa seems to have been possessed and done some destructive things, like sending a giant robot equipped with high school level philosophy and 80's pop music...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion 0
I named Oblivion my favorite game of 2006 over a year ago, but I never got around to writing a full review, as that's something I didn't start doing until after I had been into it for a while and I wasn't sure at what point I should do so. Now's as good a time as any, as I've probably come as close as I ever will to seeing all there is to see, and I'm about to start playing the prequel, which I'm going to make a new blog for.Oblivion really isn't like other games for me. I usually play focused s...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Prey 0
Prey did portals before Portal. It didn't do them as well, but it's still a very creative, enjoyable shooter. Earlier this year, it was offered on Steam for the cheap price of five bucks, and I couldn't pass that up. It's not a great game, but it's fun, and easily worth that price at least. There aren't that many weapons in the game, but all the firearms are pretty interesting visually, being made of either advanced technology or small aliens, and have multiple uses. Most enemies are pretty...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 0
I'm not sure how well it works playing by yourself, but it's definitely a fun party game. Playing with three friends, working together, using your powers to help each other out, and ganging up on helpless enemies can be a blast. I got pretty far in the game on the Xbox, but we ended up never finishing that game, and I didn't see the end until I played it with a mostly different group on the PS3. It was just as fun, and looked better (besides the always horrid in-engine cutscenes), but the added ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Portal 0
One third of the new content in the Orange Box, Portal is too short to be worth the price by itself, but it's one of the most inventive and enjoyable games in a long time for the few hours it lasts. It has a simple setup; you're a test subject being evaluated as you solve puzzles using an experimental weapon that can create a portal between two different places. At first you can only create one end of the link, but before long you can set both locations as you use them to redirect energy balls, ...
1 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots 0
I've been enjoying my Playstation 3 since I got it, but some people insist MGS4 is the only game possibly worth getting the system for. It is one of the reasons I made the purchasing decision I did, and I'm glad I was finally able to play it.Over the years, the Metal Gear Solid story has grown and twisted itself out of control, and one of the main concerns going into this game was that Hideo Kojima and crew would be unable to wrap everything up in a satisfying way by the time it was over. There ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
F.E.A.R. 0
F.E.A.R. is the second franchise-creating first-person shooter developed by Monolith that took me longer to complete than it should have due to technical issues. Just like it was years before I finished No One Lives Forever, FEAR came out late in 2005 but I just beat it recently, after encountering numerous glitches and an issue with getting the game to reinstall. It didn't really sully my experience though, as once I started really playing it I ended up enjoying it quite a lot.FEAR's central, f...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Grand Theft Auto IV 0
Rockstar has succeeded again in creating one of the biggest, most ambitious games ever, and managing to keep it fun in the meantime. With making the leap to the current generation of hardware, they had to step up the technology, as by now the PS2 games look ancient. They did so in a big way. There's slowdown in the more chaotic moments and some texture popping when you're driving quickly, but it's overall a good-looking, polished game. Faces sometimes look a bit weird, but the overall presentati...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful.
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