List items
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Completed January 4th 2012
The second Gabriel Knight adventure game, this time using FMV! Surprisingly, it is actually a pretty good game that tells a great story with well written and delivered lines. I think it's all around a better game than the original Gabriel Knight.
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Completed January 8th 2012
A "cinematic" adventure game where most action sequences are extended quick time events that bare a little resemblance to what is going on during the scene. It does have a really good sense of atmosphere to it and the few characters do grow on you a bit. But the plot goes completely insane, some may say for better, others for worse.
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Completed January 11th 2012
A fun 2D platformer with a bit of Metroid style exploration mixed in with some Mega Man style shooting and level design. The graphics and music are also modeled after the 8/16bit era.
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Completed January 12th 2012
SHIFT 2 strikes a good balance between simulation track racing and arcade racing. On the "Elite" mode (no assists) with a proper wheel setup (Logitech G25) and in the cockpit view (one of the best ever) the feel of racing the cars is awesome. The AI drivers while still not up to par with Codemasters driving AI, they are still fun to race against and don't try to kill you as often as Shift 1. The career progression is improved, but not as good as Forza, or Codemasters GRID or DIRT series. I wish someone could take the visceral racing of SHIFT2 and the fun career progression of Forza and combine them into one.
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Completed January 15th 2012
Rage is a linear FPS at it's core, but is built around a small "open-world" and vehicle combat. The plot doesn't really start to exist until about 5 hours in, which is the beginning of the finale. Up until then you are just kinda lending a helping hand around town because you're such a nice guy. The vehicle combat is very arcadey and forgettable. If it went in the Interstate '76 direction of simulation it could have been tons of fun. Thankfully, if you want to skip the vehicle stuff then there is only a couple required races and the travel time to your linear FPS missions is minimal. The graphics and art direction at first will blow you away, then you will take a few steps closer and see the textures from 1999 that it's made out of (hoping for a high resolution texture pack). The game is a decent amount of fun when you are doing the main FPS missions.
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Completed January 17th 2012 The Last Express is an interesting adventure game that takes place in real time. It's an interesting concept, but it ends up meaning you are constantly running around the train trying to make sure you don't miss anything important which could cause your game to end. Moving around the train in a first person view is very awkward. It takes place only on a small train, so there is no real "adventuring". The art style is nice and looks great on the few scenes where it is fully animated, but most of it is less than one frame a second. Fans of adventure games should check it out for what it attempted to do.
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Completed January 25th 2012 You are just chillin' out in Paris on vacation and almost get blown up at a cafe. You take it upon yourself to find out who and why. An adventure game with a nice art style, good pacing, and the type of adventure game puzzles that I enjoy (ones that make sense in the context of the world). Not much for stand out characters other than your player character George and his assistant/possible love interest Nico.
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Completed January 27th 2012
Mega Man X is my favourite of the Mega Man series, so I figured I would give X2 a try. It shares the same gameplay style of X, but something just doesn't click. The music isn't as awesome, the levels feel shorter and boring, the bosses are lame (a moth and a snail??) and the weapons are also pretty lame as well (bubble splash? really? we are going to sting peoples eyes?).
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Completed January 28th 2012
A platformer that takes a bit of Super Meat Boy and a bit of Sonic (16bit era) and mixes them together with... dusting. The Sonic comparison comes from the fast flow of the levels when you are nailing all your jumps. The Super Meat Boy aspect is the challenge level. It's easy to finish a level in Dustforce, but to S rank a level is very difficult. Unfortunately to unlock all the levels you are REQUIRED to S rank everything. Unlike Super Meat Boy which constantly teaches you it's mechanics and slowly ramps up the difficulty until you are platforming god, Dustforce quickly expects you to be able to S rank everything and you are stuck on the same handful of levels until you do. I enjoyed all the levels I could finish, I'm hoping a patch or something will lower the rank requirement so I can see the rest.
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Completed January 29th 2012 (again)
Mass Effect is set in a Sci-Fi setting that is actually really interesting. A great combination of shooter-based combat with RPG elements. The main draw of course is the story and character interaction which is done brilliantly. The branching story and multiple decisions to be made encourage multiple playthroughs. Unfortunately the side-quests aren't the same level of quality as the rest of the game and I encourage everyone to avoid them, unless you enjoy storming the exact same building (but on different coloured planets) again and again to flip a switch at the end of it.
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Completed (again) February 11th 2012
What can I say about one of the best games ever? It's Super Mario Bros. 3!
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Completed (again) February 12th 2012
TMNT2 is the NES version of the arcade game. It's a fun beat-em-up game that is much better than the original TMNT sidescroller for the NES. Still, TMNT4 for the SNES is better in every way.
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Completed (again) February 12th 2012
My Mega Man game of choice. The original series is great, but the extra upgrades and added mobility in X takes it to the next level. The soundtrack is just great and one of my favourite of the era.
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Completed December 21st 2010 (Completed again February 18th 2012)
While the main story arc of recruiting a team and fighting a big bad dude is pretty basic compared to Mass Effect 1. The subplots and missions of each recruit is more entertaining and fleshed out than anything the first game had to offer. Not to mention the better visuals, combat, inventory system, side quests and removal of boring vehicle sections!
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Completed February 20th 2012 (again 2/24/2013)
An awesome platformer that feels like the NES Castlevania but faster paced with great graphics for it's time and awesome soundtrack. Two big problems are the enemies that constantly respawn at the edge of the screen and the unforgiving and near impossible final boss fight (unless you cheat with save states, but I'm playing on the actual cartridge). Maybe one day I will fully complete this series, or go insane trying.
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Completed February 26th 2012
Yoshi Island is much slower paced than a normal Mario game, but it still an excellent game. Baby Mario sure cries a lot.
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Completed The Signal and The Writer DLC January 17th 2011 (Completed again February 27th 2012)
A well done 3rd person shooter by Remedy. The shooting mechanics with the gun/light is so well done it almost overcomes the repetitiveness of only a couple enemy types. Good story and characters even though I'm still not sure of what is going on. The DLC went batshit crazy and I'm glad they went that route.
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Completed March 4th 2012
Super Mario World...it's all around great and is one of the best Mario games ever.
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Completed March 12th 2012
A good end to a great trilogy of games. Not nearly as good as ME2. No new races or characters of interest are introduced and instead the enjoyment comes from revisiting old friends. The citadel also returns as the main (and only) hub world, and is very overused. The endings were also a bit disappointing.
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Completed March 20th 2012
The second RPG based Mario game, but the first Paper Mario. It's an enjoyable game that builds on and (unfortunately) simplifies the Super Mario RPG combat system. The paper aspect of the game is mainly a visual style, unlike the sequel that fleshes out the paper idea into an integral part of gameplay. Overall a great stepping stone for the series.
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Completed March 23rd 2012
The first Darkness game seemed like it would have been a fun game if the "semi-open-world" wasn't just barren streets and an empty subway system... and if the controls weren't complete shit. Here is The Darkness II, first thing gone is the poorly executed "semi-open-world", second thing gone is the poorly executed "get through the gate" type puzzles and because it's on PC the controls aren't complete shit. The style of the graphics, pacing, and the feel of the combat are all pretty good. The streamlined darkness powers add a really nice feel to the combat which is nicely book-ended by interesting dream sequences.
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Completed March 30th 2012
Being set in an alternate 1940s where the monsters from the horror films are real and trying to be seen as equals instead of monsters without any rights, the setting had potential that is unfortunately wasted. The art in this adventure game is very nice, but only really has a few locales. It also only has a small number of characters to interact with, and they are only there to facilitate the next simple puzzle to solve. Overall it's a short, forgettable, but pretty looking adventure game set in what could have been an interesting world filled with classic horror monsters.
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Completed April 2nd 2012
An enjoyable puzzle driven adventure game. I usually don't care for this type of adventure game, but the Fargo/Twin Peaks type setting and characters are great.
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Completed April 4th 2012
Yesterday is a decent and very brief adventure game about serial killers and satanic cults. The puzzles usually make sense, and if you are stuck you can get away with randomly combining items together. The visual style has a nice look to it, but barely anything is animated fluidly and is cheaply told through comic panels.
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Completed April 5th 2012
Dear Esther can barely be called a game, but it is still enjoyable. You pretty much just walk around a beautifully crafted island, inside amazing caverns and up an ocean side mountain while you listen to letters being read. The plot is interesting, but is open to interpretation.
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Completed April 18th 2012
I unexpectedly enjoyed this game. You are tasked with starting a hospital from the ground up. Once you reach certain goals you are promoted to another hospital and do it all over again, but with more challenges to tackle. It's a good combination of addictive gameplay and humor that will cause you to lose hours of your time before you know it. I still have a few "levels" to complete, but it's generally more of the same after a certain point.
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Completed April 26th 2012
A very very weird but charming adventure game. I can't really comment much more on this, it is just so odd and funny that you have to see it for yourself.
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Completed April 26th 2012
Order of Ecclesia takes place after Symphony of the Night and returns to the awesome gothic visual style instead of the anime style of the previous DS games. The music is also really well done. Instead of one huge castle to explore, there are smaller more varied areas. Unfortunately the difficulty becomes frustrating at many points forcing you to grind levels and retry boss fights many many times.
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Completed April 28th 2012
The Tales series continues to have the best combat system of any JRPG. The fact that after 60 hours of gameplay I'm still going out of my way to battle enemies shows that it's doing something right. While the story doesn't escape the cliche of grow strong and save the world from evil, it is still very engaging. The set of characters are all memorable and endearing. Asbel may not be the strongest lead character, but the six other main party characters make up for it. Thankfully the graphics stick with the style of TOS and TOV which I think looks great despite this being a port of a Wii game to PS3.
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Completed May 2nd 2012
Shank hasn't changed much since the first game, it's essentially more of the same. It's a decent,stylized, side-scrolling, and very violent beat-em-up. This is lacking the proper 2 player story co-op of the original game and instead has some instantly forgettable horde/survival mode. It's a good attempt at reviving the once popular genre of the mid 90's.
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Completed May 9th 2012
After playing a couple hours of Microids other popular adventure game (Syberia) and finding it boring and soulless, my expectations were low for this one. Fortunately it's a competent adventure game with enough of a plot to keep you interested. You are essentially an FBI agent tracking down a serial killer. The background art feels a little more alive than the bland backgrounds of Syberia, but still has the same heavy JPEG compression. The puzzles are usually pretty poor. They mainly rely on switch pulling and sliding puzzles instead of relying on detective work based puzzles... because you know how often an FBI agent would need to solve sliding puzzles in real life cases...
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Completed (again) May 15th 2012
One of my all time favourite games. It combines solid bullet-time induced gunplay, a gritty NYC story of a man with nothing to lose, neo-noir setting and graphic novels to tell the story.
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Completed May 18th 2012
Diablo III makes clicking on stuff until cool loot pops out lots of fun. It's like continuously smashing open pinata's at a birthday party. The story is forgettable and consists of going some place, killing dudes, grabbing some type of needed artifact and continuing on killing. Lot's of fun, but I wish the graphical style was more gritty/brutal and less on the cartoony side. While it has a high replay value since they expect you to essentially finish the game four times, I wish they had a couple more unique looking areas.
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Completed May 23rd 2012
A text-heavy adventure game set inside a courtroom. The first of the series to be specifically for the DS and not a GBA port. I was hoping that the archaic interface and bare bones approach to the visuals would get a refresh. Unfortunately nothing has been changed. Despite this, it still tells an interesting story with interesting characters.
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Completed (again) May 23rd 2012
Another one of my favourites. I prefer the darker, Norse mythology, and conspiracy theory filled revenge story of the original, but the gameplay enhancements of Max Payne 2 greatly make up for it.
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Completed May 26th 2012
A fun 2D platformer that uses really great 2D art. It has a good level variety and difficulty curve. The story is...well it doesn't really have one, but it's still fun. It also has a 2-4 player option that actually works pretty well, unlike other recent platformers that end up being impossible once you drop in more players.
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Completed May 30th 2012
Saints Row: The Third aims for the complete absurd and does it very well. The story missions in the middle leave much to be desired but the beginning and finale were pretty fun. As usual for this type of game there are lots of extra side missions to do, but most aren't very interesting. The lack of proper radio hosts is disappointing, as well as some missions feeling like they are hacked together and missing cutscenes. Still fun and a nice alternative to the seriousness of Grand Theft Auto 4.
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Completed June 3rd 2012 (again 4/18/2013)
As a Max Payne game it lacks what made Remedy's Max Payne special and not just a cool third person shooter. But, when you get over that it's a character resembling Max Payne dropped into Rockstar's GTA4-esque world, it really is a great game. It tells a story that keeps you interested, and action that is top-notch.
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Completed June 5th 2012
An NES game that is a mix between Mega Man and Contra, but not as good as either of them. It is still a good bit of fun with a few stages having some really great music. If you can get through the final stage without smashing something, giving up or using GameGenie codes like I did, good job.
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Completed June 15th 2012
Obviously there is no real beginning, middle or end to Minecraft, but I've spent a decent amount of time with it. If you loved building stuff out of legos as a child, this game is for you. If you aren't the creative type and choose to explore instead of building, then you will get bored pretty quick. I fall into the latter and prefer Terraria.
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Completed June 20th 2012
Another compelling indie adventure game co-developed by Wadjet Eye Games (Blackwell Series & Gemini Rue). It has a fresh take on the conventional inventory and dialog trees. You take control of four main characters as you sleuth your way through solving the mystery of the Resonance project. The setting, style, characters and puzzles were all enjoyable, but Resonance has very few characters to interact with outside of your group (which is generally my favourite part of adventure games).
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Completed July 1st 2012
A very fun top down shooter with 4 player co-op. The variety of ships is nice and the soundtrack is great. Unfortunately it doesn't have many levels and instead it encourages you to replay the levels at higher difficulties.
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Completed July 3rd 2012
George and Nico manage to get themselves mixed up in another globe trotting adventure tracking down Mayan artifacts before some crazy dude gets his hands on them. Like the original it has a nice visual style and a good sense of humor, even poking fun at it's sometimes abstract puzzle solutions.
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Completed July 4th 2012
Another Ace Attorney game following the same Ace Attorney format. They have changed the way you navigate around, now using character sprites instead of a menu system. Unfortunately, even though this game focuses on investigations they have cut out the more interactive parts that used the stylus (luminol tests and evidence reconstruction, etc). Like all other Ace Attorney games it still tells an interesting story with crazy characters.
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Completed July 17th 2012
An interesting, but disappointing adventure game that revolves around a private investigator solving a string of murders on the very bizarre "discworld". The graphics unfortunately are very poor, with very stiff/non existent animations on the characters and muddy looking backgrounds (specially when you consider this is a year after the still amazing looking Grim Fandango was released). Most puzzles revolve around asking the right people about the right subject in your notepad. The discworld itself seems interesting, but much about it isn't explained in the game, I guess they presumed you read the series of books it's based on.
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Completed (kinda) July 21st 2012
Nothing is as intense as nailing that perfect launch at the start of the race and slamming it into second gear at the exact right moment... oh wait...all the races are rolling starts and manual transmission isn't an option. Well, nothing is as satisfying as laying down a spike strip puncturing the suspects tire then continuing to try and pull him over while rubber and sparks fly all over... oh wait... it just takes away from his health bar and you ram him a little bit? At least it's a simple arcade race game that I can play split screen when my buddies come over...FOR FUCK SAKES... no split screen support? Instead you expect us to compare track times on a speed wall in a game where track times are pointless? FUUUUUUUUUUU
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Completed (mostly) July 21st 2012
The combination of Dead Rising 2's sand box and weapon crafting, Left 4 Dead's co-op, and Diablo loot system sounds like it should be awesome. But they have gone above and beyond to make it boring as hell. The sand box aspect fails because not much in the world can actually be interacted with. The weapon crafting requires tedious material collection, and when you do build a weapon it just breaks after a few uses and wasn't that creative to begin with. The L4D co-op fails because nothing requires you to actually work together, and if someone misses a quest then they can't gain XP for completing the following quests. The loot system fails because the inventory system is terrible and not much is different in the weapons other than the colour of the name. The quests themselves are all consisting of going to collect something really uninteresting, or going to kill something uninteresting for very uninteresting reasons.
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Completed July 22nd 2012 An enjoyable expansion/spin-off to Alan Wake. The combat has been improved and you have a greater variety of weapons including a kick-ass crossbow. Unfortunately it is a lot more combat focused than the original game, but is still a good follow up.
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Completed July 27th 2012
Time Hollow is a very linear and straight forward adventure game. It tells an interesting story about time paradoxes and alternative realities. It's a good game, but lacks any type of puzzle solving and mainly consists of going to the correct area and talking to the correct people to progress the story along.
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Completed July 27th 2012
The pioneer of the first person stealth genre. The detail and emphasis on sound/noise is impressive for its time. The missions that involve scoping out a place, getting in, stealing stuff, and getting out is really where the game shines. Unfortunately about half the missions involve running around in sewers, catacombs and labyrinths trying to find your way around.
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Completed July 28th 2012
A first person puzzle game that is obviously heavily influenced by Portal...except it doesn't have portals, it has blocks. The puzzles are fun to solve and the game does a good job of steadily increasing the difficulty without it becoming frustrating. It sticks to being just a puzzle game instead of unexpectedly turning into something so much more like Portal did.
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Completed July 29th 2012
An indie game modeled after tough as nails NES action platformer such as Ninja Gaiden, Contra and Vice: Project Doom. You have 3 lives and when you die, you go back to the start of the level. Like Ninja Gaiden it requires absolute perfection in order to complete a level because there is no use getting to the boss with anything but full health and power-ups. After you die many many times you will be cursing non-stop, but once you beat that level you will be cursing while cheering over your accomplishment.
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Completed August 1st 2012
The last of the proper Splinter Cell games and luckily the best one too. With the addition of instant melee kills (or stuns) the frustration of close range kills of the previous games has been eliminated. All the missions were very fun to play and lots of bonus objectives to do. It felt a bit easy in places with guards conveniently glued to computer terminals waiting to be taken out, and some of the gadgets like the thermal vision felt underused compared to previous games. Overall though the missions are fun, the stealth works well and the graphics hold up surprisingly well.
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Completed August 6th 2012
A good entry into the Castlevania series with linear levels instead of the "Metroidvania" style of the later games. You are now able to whip in all directions, but the jumping and moving is still stiff as ever. It's also much easier than the NES games because of your added abilities.
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Completed August 7th 2012
The story in this game is as generic as the title, but this top down dual-stick shooter is good fun. The graphics are impressive for this type of game, the levels are large, the same screen/split screen works well, and the numerous types of upgraded vehicles gives it some variety.
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Completed August 10th 2012
I don't have much interest in the fantasy genre and this game hasn't changed my mind about it. It's occasionally slightly humorous and entertaining. It lacks any type of direction or goal other than to ultimately save the princess from inside the castle causing you to stumble around solving puzzles you didn't know needed solving. Once my inventory racked up over 25 items and got to the dreadfully long and boring cliff side puzzle sequence that doubled as an anti-piracy measure by having you riffling through your game manual, I gave up trying to solve the puzzles on my own. The quality and amount of voice work is impressive for it's age.
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Completed August 16th 2012
German made adventure games are usually very soulless, boring, and focus on horrendous switch pulling or block sliding puzzles with awful characters reading poorly translated lines telling a bland story. The German made Book Of Unwritten Tales avoids all of those problems and is one of the best adventure games in a long time. It is visually stunning to look at, the characters are charming and funny, the translation is excellent, and the puzzles make sense within the context of the game. I usually do not like the fantasy setting, but it lampoons the genre and is full of funny pop-culture references. Even after around 14 hours of gameplay (which is long for an adventure game) I instantly wanted to go on more adventures with Wilbur and the gang, or at least have a bit more closure at the end.
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Completed August 19th 2012
As a big fan of the Hong Kong action movies in which Sleeping Dogs is influenced by, I think it does a very good job with adapting those movies into a great open world game. Hong Kong itself looks amazing (PC Version), feels alive and makes you feel the need to explore and appreciate the many different areas of the island. The focus is on melee combat instead of guns, which feels like a brutally violent version of the Batman Arkham Asylum combat system. The driving is fun and leans towards the arcade side for handling and movie inspired crashes (where a tire blow out means a spectacular end over end crash). It's not as gigantic or as fleshed out in all areas as GTA IV is, but where they have focused their attention is very well executed.
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Completed August 29th 2012
This is more of an interactive novel than an adventure game that has you investigating what happened aboard this now lifeless Korean space ship. The "gameplay" consists of reading through text logs with the help of the ship A.I. program. It's a really creative way for this interesting story to be told.
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Completed September 2nd 2012
Darksiders II is the combination of Zelda puzzle based dungeons, God Of War button mashing combat, Prince of Persia platforming, and Diablo style loot. The graphics themselves while technically unimpressive, still manages to look great with its dark visual style. The story is just enough to get you to your next objective, but there is not much else to it besides that. It manages to pull off all of those gameplay elements well, but doesn't improve on any of them enough to really make this anything but a slightly above average game.
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Completed September 3rd 2012
A short, but somewhat entertaining adventure game about a kidnapped pro wrestler and his teammates quest to get him back. The art is very simple, and looks like it could have been made in MS Paint, but it gets the job done. It occasionally delivers a line that is chuckle worthy, and the puzzles are decent enough, but mostly it's a pretty forgettable game.
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Completed September 7th 2012
In the third installment of the Broken Sword series they have decided to change from the traditional 2d adventure game into a 3D platformer. The graphics, while good for there time, don't hold up against the previous games 2D art. The platforming section themselves are boring, not challenging and are just something to sludge through to get to the normal adventure game stuff. Nico seems to get the proper adventure game puzzles, while George is forced to push an uncountable amount of crates and blocks around in his lame Tomb Raider-esque sections. I'm not sure if the good outweighs the bad on this one.
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Completed September 9th 2012
A very small game about a spy, and... it's just odd.
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Completed September 9th 2012
A "First-Person short story" about a heist. It's interesting, but not much else to it beyond that.
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Completed September 13th 2012 (again)
One of the best adventure games ever and one of my favourites. A dog and rabbity thing track down a bigfoot who has been broken out of his ice block. This involves you trekking across some of America's greatest tourist traps. Even to this day the visual style and voice acting hold up well.
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Completed September 16th 2012 (kinda)
This indie game has you trying to safely get your ship across the galaxy to warn the federation of the incoming rebel invasion. It mostly revolves around ship combat, which involves re-routing your limited power to shields, weapons, engines, life support and other sub-systems. You also deal with enemies that can teleport directly onto your ship, repairing systems and dealing with fires. There is also numerous ship types and upgrades. It's an entertaining game that you can get to the "end" of within an hour or two, but because it's randomly generated and has lots of stuff to unlock, you could potentially spend many many hours trying to fully see everything it has to offer.
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Completed September 18th 2012
Thief II essentially took what was good from the original and kept it pretty much the same. The major changes are the removal of the missions that involved the boring mazes that were filled with zombies and monsters. Instead focusing on missions that involve sneaking around villages, churches, banks, and keeps. I found myself getting a bit bored with it near the end, but overall it's still a great game.
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Completed September 26th 2012
Beyond Good & Evil is a flawed, but enjoyable and creative game. It has a colourful visual style and a few memorable characters. It's mostly an action-platformer-puzzle solver, but also includes a hub world that links the missions together, photography, various vehicles, and stealth elements. It's weakest point is with the forced stealth missions where there is only one exact way to progress and if you stray just a bit from the planned path, you are instantly killed by a laser beam. Overall it's a good game and I can see why it has a bit of a cult following.
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Completed July 6th 2011 (Completed again and again 9/30/2012)
What can I say about my most favorite game? The characters, the story, the style, the music, the beginning, middle and end... all perfect. The only nitpick I can mention is the controls can be a bit odd at first, but grab a gamepad and your problem is solved.
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Completed October 4th 2012
Diablo with guns is what Borderlands boils down to. It's greatly lacking any real story and it only serves the purpose of pushing you forward to a new area so you can collect/kill 10 more things for some other people. The gun's themselves mostly have a good feel to them and visually the game looks great. The menu system is awful for keyboard/mouse and becomes tolerable when using a gamepad, but it still lacks basic concepts like tracking multiple missions at once. The humor is a mixed bag, ranging from chuckle worthy to so terribly unfunny that you will cringe. It's a decent game if you go in expecting to mindlessly kill things for a couple hours here and there, but you will be greatly disappointed if you expect anything more from it.
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Completed October 6th 2012
A rail shooter where you ride a dragon and shoot things. There aren't very many good rail shooters similar to Star fox or Star Fox 64, so I tracked this one down in hopes of finding another good one. Unfortunately it's not good, not good at all. The movement is so restrictive that you can barely move out of the center of the screen. The "normal" difficulty is frustratingly hard due a terrible checkpoint system, not starting with full health, boss fights that go on dreadfully long due too excessive health, and enemies picking away huge amounts of health because of them getting stuck between your camera angles. If you switch it down to easy, it becomes a snorefest that requires little attention to breeze through it. Having the option to switch between three types of dragons with different abilities is nice, but you have to inconveniently cycle through them instead of pressing a button that brings you to a specific one. It also only have ten stages, which several of them just being boring boss fights. Just play Star Fox.
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Completed (again) October 7th 2012
Day of the Tentacle is a classic adventure game for many reasons, but for me it's mainly due to it actually being a humorous game, wacky characters, and an art style that has stood the test of time. A tentacle drinks from toxic sludge and grows arms, which of course makes him want to take over the world. It also involves time travelling using porta-jons two-hundred years into the past, present and future with three different main characters. The only problem with the game is with the large number of items and puzzles going on all at once. At one point you can have thirty-five or more exchangeable items split between your characters. Even though I've finished this game a few times, I still had to take a look at a walkthrough a couple times to continue. Not recommended for people new to the genre, but it should be played.
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Completed October 11th 2012 (again 10/17/2012 & 10/21/2012, DLC completed 4/16/2013)
A brilliant combination of Deus Ex's freedom of choice, Thief's stealth and steampunk setting, and Hitman: Blood Money's creative assassinations. I can't summarize all the things that make this great without going on for several paragraphs. Every aspect of the game just feels, plays and looks great. I wish it was longer, but creating such open-ended missions with countless ways to tackle them must be very time consuming. On the other hand, the replayability is very high because of the numerous ways to go about everything.
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Completed October 18th 2012 (again on iron-man mode)
There is not many big budget tactical turn-based isometric strategy games these days. Thankfully XCOM does a great job of remaking the 20 year old original game for new and old fans. It has a nice split between combat, research, troop and base management. The maps themselves have a good variety to them, but most of the mission objectives are essentially "kill all the aliens". It's a good game that has lots of options and random events that could warrant multiple playthroughs.
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Completed October 21st 2012
A pretty good 2D stealth platformer. When the game isn't complete darkness it has some decent art for the backgrounds, but the style of characters doesn't do much for me. At certain times the stealth feels very forced and plays more like a puzzle/platformer as you decipher how the level designer wants you to get through an area in a very specific way instead of leaving it more open ended. It's still fun despite some frustrating parts, and the new game plus mode may have me come back for more.
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Completed October 21st 2010 (again 10/22/2012)
A fun Halloween themed game where you go in search of your kidnapped sister and fight monsters that are stealing all of the candy using your awesome Halloween costumes. It's a great concept, filled with funny dialog and a decent turn based RPG battle system. The battle system is simple, mainly revolving around timed button presses and unique special moves for each of the costumes. It's a must play every Halloween season.
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Completed October 26th 2012 (again 4/21/2013)
A brutally violent top-down action game set in the 80s, DeLorean and all. At first glance it looks like a fast paced skill-less murder-fest, but each move must be perfectly planned and executed in order to progress. It's fun, very weird at times and has an awesome soundtrack throughout.
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Completed November 4th 2012 (again)
NOLF is a fun first person shooter that blends action, stealth, espionage, witty humour and retro/futuristic 60s stylings. It also stars Cate Archer, one of the few good female characters in games. This is all around an amazing game, but for me it's the memorable characters that stand out and the locales like the space station that is outfitted with shag carpeting and every other stereotypical amenities a 60s bachelor pad would have.
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Completed November 7th 2012 (again)
NOLF2 improves the core gameplay of the original with a better stealth system, ability to move bodies, lean, more natural movement speed, looting bodies, searching file cabinets and a simplistic skill tree. It also sadly cuts down on the mission briefing/debriefings, and throttles back on the zany 60s style. It also isn't as clever or funny as the original, but it's still a very enjoyable game that once again successfully mixes action and stealth with a good variety of fun locales.
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Completed November 10th 2012
At it's core, it a standard third person cover based modern military shooter. The shooting works well, the cover system is limited and broken at times, and it's all very linear. What is does differently is a story that attempts to guilt trip you, making you question killing all those people just because that's what you generally do in these type of games. Taking place in a sandstorm ruined Dubai also helps set it apart from other military shooters. Overall, it's a short, semi-entertaining shooter that attempts to leave you with your own post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Completed April 25th 2012 - November 23rd 2012
Telltale Games has done a great job of encompassing almost everything that defines the walking dead comics into a episodic adventure game. The action scenes have been refined from the mess that was Jurassic Park and the comic book visual style is great. Every episode is top notch, successfully telling a story that puts you through every human emotion. Lee and Clementine are characters that you will not soon forget.
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Completed November 24th 2012
Hitman: Absolution is not Hitman: Blood Money. While that makes me disappointed, Absolution is still a good Hitman game. It still has a hand full of Blood Money sandbox type missions, which stand out as the best parts of the game. The rest of the game is made up of smaller, more linear stealth dependent missions. The checkpoint system can get very frustrating in certain missions due to people seeing through your disguise a mile away, or accidentally putting your foot over an invisible line into a restricted zone causing guards to freak out without warning, or the entire mission not having a checkpoint at all. The graphics are noteworthy (on the PC) with some really impressive crowds in many areas. Overall, it's a good stealth game with some creative sandbox murder missions whose biggest flaw is not sticking to the Hitman: Blood Money formula more.
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Completed November 29th 2012 (DLC completed 4/13/2013)
Assassin's Creed III starts out pretty slow, but once you you are let off your introductory leash there is a good amount of fun to be had. While I prefer the settings of the previous games, the American frontier is a nice change of pace and considerably changes the feel of the game. Instead of free-running on rooftops you are free-running through trees or on horseback. They seemed to have lost focus seeing there isn't much assassination going on in this Assassin's Creed. I think I assassinated more innocent beavers than I did human targets. While some of the new mission types don't work well or just aren't fun, there are several that are fun, like the naval missions which are surprisingly well implemented.
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Completed December 10th 2012
Primordia is an adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic world where the machines we left behind are scrounging for power and resources to stay alive. While I usually like the 90s adventure game retro graphics, they are a bit bland and a little too pixelated here. The main story revolves around you and your floating robot sidekick (who annoyingly calls you "boss" all the time) retrieving a stolen power core. The more interesting part is the back-story of how the current governing robots came into power. It's a rather short game, with a small number of locales and characters to interact with. The puzzles themselves range from easy to not very fun number crunching/code breaking that will have you alt-tabbing to a walkthrough. Overall, it's a decent adventure game with a good back-story, not very fun puzzles and a visual style that leaves something to be desired.
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Completed December 12th 2012
Monolith Productions was not involved with this sequel and it shows in every aspect of this game. The atmosphere, story, level design, pacing, combat, AI, and graphics are sub-par, specially when compared to the previous entries to the series. Playing the co-op mode with a friend will give you about 4 hours of decent run and gun fun, but that's about it.
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Completed December 17th 2012
A prequel to The Book of Unwritten Tales that mainly focuses on a thief named Nate meeting his muppet-like sidekick named Critter. The visuals are once again top-notch but there isn't as much variety of locales since it's a much shorter game than the original. The puzzles are decent and the few available characters to interact with are entertaining. Overall, it's a decent adventure game but not as good as the original Book of Unwritten Tales.
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