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5 (6) 4 (19) 3 (30) 2 (28) 1 (8) 2.9 starsAverage score of 91 user reviews
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More is Less 0
Note: This is a review of the remastered edition from 2017When the first Turok remaster came out a few years ago, I was pleasantly surprised. I spent 20 years thinking that game was crappy, but ended up having a lot of fun with it thanks to Night Dive's improvements. I was pretty excited to see if Turok 2 would continue the trend and I'd have a new retro FPS to enjoy. Unfortunately, Turok 2 is a pretty irritating and ponderous game.That's not speaking to the the quality of the port, however. Nig...
1 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
An Improvement On Human Revolution 0
Mankind Divded made a horrible first impression. The PC port has a robust featureset (lots of options, FOV adjustment, etc) but it struggles to maintain 60 frames per second even with the high-end features turned off. The load times are long, and the post-processed anti aliasing blurs the screen so much that they had to put in an ugly sharpening filter that makes the game look like a jpeg from 1997. The game crashed on me about 5 times in my 30-hour playtime (possibly because I was using DirectX...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Are You Ready for Pulse-Dropping Slow Action?? Then Hurry Up and Wait with Unreal 2 0
It would be difficult to make a game as boring as Unreal II: The Awakening if you tried. And, good god, I am not putting aside the possibility that they did. Everything is so ungodly slow! There is no run and the walk is more of a trundle-- I kept one finger on the quicksave key at all times, not because the game is hard, but because walking from one side of a room to another is so arduous that it is best not repeated under any circumstance. The game is loaded with cutscenes, most of them unskip...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
What's "the point" 0
At its heart, Spec Ops:The Line is a cover-based shooter. A really crummy one. The mechanics of this game are easily of lower quality than those of even the first Gears of War, which was released five years prior and had laid a clear blueprint. It's incredibly easy to become unstuck to cover, at which point your guy stands straight up like a beacon for all incoming damage. Sometimes he just will not stick to cover after pressing the button to do so. Transitioning from one piece of cover to anoth...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A(n Actually Pretty Fun) Crappy Game 2
Requiem is an FPS from the late 90s that really liked The Crow and possibly John Travolta's Michael. In it you are some kind of fallen angel who arrives on Earth to lay waste to the sinners, namely an oppressive government regime that is being led by the demon Lilith (or so it seems!). After a baffling first level that takes place in a hall of meat you are thrown into what is essentially a Jedi Knight ripoff. You have guns, but you also have angel powers that unlock at specific story beats (usua...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
Irritating 0
People say Dead Space 2 is 'more of a shooter' than the original. I dunno about that; I just finished playing both relatively close to one another and they seem like the exact same thing to me. There is one major difference: I found the original to be okay-ish while I had a pretty lousy time playing the sequel.Enemies feel faster and more aggressive than before, an exaggeration of something I already thought was bad about the first game. The sequel is very eager to spawn dangerous monsters behin...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Doesn't Hold Up 0
I don't know what Dead Space is trying to be. The controls are very slow and clumsy and the camera is jammed in so close it creates a disorientating effect that has to be intentional. This signifies it is meant to be a horror game. But then it keeps throwing fast enemies at you in action setpieces for which the clumsy controls, claustrophobic camera, and tight corridors are not suited at all. The obvious comparison point would be Resident Evil 4. However, while that game's control scheme was con...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Just about adequate 0
Hot Shots Golf Out of Bounds has a lot of weird irritants. The load times are not great and there is no way to get to any of the menus during gameplay. While golfing, the only way to return to the main menu or access any options is to soft-reboot the machine. A lot of the game's attempts to be cute are really obnoxious-- NPCs will wander around the course in front of you and then run out of the way when you hit the ball, which is distracting. Your caddy will talk, or sneeze, or whatever while yo...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Best When Harrowing 0
I had never played an EDF before this, though I had been hoping for a PC version for a while now. Luckily, despite the ultra low-budget and Japanese nature of the game the PC port turned out pretty well. Keyboard and mouse feel just fine and performance is great. The UI is entirely keyboard driven, which is a slight annoyance, but forgivable.It's surprisingly hard to describe the appeal of the game without resorting to useless observations like: "It's just dumb fun!" Personally I lump it in wit...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Additions make it feel more like a real game, but not a good one. 0
I already had the original Hard Reset, but this "remaster" was 80 cents on Steam despite being almost brand new. The graphics aren't really improved, although the game still looks great despite being about five years old. Instead, Hard Reset Redux is both an excuse to release the game on PS4 and as a way to fix the very flawed original. It almost works.In Redux the difficulty and enemy placement is reworked, which is a good thing since the original was often very poor in this respect. I seem to ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A New Classic 0
Instead of creating one 'main' character as in most RPGs, or creating an entire party that is relatively faceless as in Icewind Dale or Legend of Grimrock, you create two main characters. While this is intended to service a multiplayer campaign, it creates an interesting situation for single player. RPG players tend to let such created protagonists act as vague ciphers for themselves, but having two at once inspires some level of contrast between the two. This inspires a bit of actual role-playi...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Keep It Simple, Stupid 0
While I and about 50 other people would have adored a total throwback, DOOM takes the probably wiser approach and reimagines itself as a sort of AAA-budgeted take on what was once the domain of independent and modestly financed European developers: the "throwback shooter". Which is to say that the focus is not so much on capturing what Doom actually was, but instead how the mainstream tends to remember Doom as. The result is a game that is extremely fun and frantic, but loses the technicality of...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Dark Souls 2, Fixer-Upper Edition 0
In short it is a moderately improved version of Dark Souls 2. Of course its flawed core is still the same, and it's not as though they redesigned all the level layouts. So it's still easily the least of the Souls games. However, every part that was outright bad in the original release is either fixed or massaged. One of the most egregious parts of the base game, the run up to Velstadt in the Undead Crypt level, is much improved, for example. Instead of seven fucking guys blocking the door it's t...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Awful Side Activities Bloat the Experience 0
The spark of Clint Hocking's vision for Far Cry 2 exists in Far Cry 4, but it's buried under the weight of about thirty six Assassin's Creed games. The world is still a very emergent sandbox and a soup of different AI behaviors are able to interact in potentially amusing ways, but unfortunately the game deprecates that avenue at any opportunity in favor of filling out checklists. Want to unlock the only silenced sniper rifle in the game? Do four vehicle escort missions using the grenade launcher...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Respectable Mess 0
Cryostasis was considered pretty baffling when it first came out, but I think it makes more sense nowadays. Essentially it's a survival horror FPS sort of in the vein of Doom 3 and mixed with 'walking simulators' like Gone Home and Firewatch. Your time is split between walking through a derelict ship shooting monsters once they've spawn in and slowly uncovering the mystery of your environment and its past. However, instead of recreating an episode of Dawson's Creek you are at least treated to c...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Fun, but with irritating facets 0
I enjoyed this quite a bit, but it definitely has its share of problems. First and foremost, it does a pretty bad job of teaching you how to play it. In fact, it seems to hold your hand and walk you through a playstyle that will inevitably require a mid-game restart and fails to even acknowledge the satellite coverage system which is by far the most important tool for keeping the game over state away and is the only way to increase your funding.There's an odd feeling that the game can't decide w...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Accomplishes What It Sets Out to Do 0
This is a nice, fun little game that I beat to my satisfaction within 3 hours of playing. In it you are a little robot man who is sent to an alien (but relatively familiar-looking) world and tasked with making a giant plant grow high enough to reach your spaceship, which is located at 2,000m above sea level. In order to make the body of the plant grow, you must climb onto the sprouts budding from it and guide them into floating islands filled with energy juice. Along the way are 100 crystals to ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Confusing, Convoluted, and Unwieldy 0
I'm a Sonic apologist. Both Adventure games are guilty pleasures of mine, Sonic Generations was one of my favorite games of 2011, and I have a sick fascination with Sonic 2006 that somehow results in me loving how awful it is. On a sliding number scale I'd say I think it's entirely possible for any new Sonic game to be highly enjoyable, but I also don't want Sonic to make love to me. That's about where I stand, and I think it's important to establish all of this so I have some credibility when I...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
PS3 Buyers Beware! Busted Port! 0
Ratchet: Deadlocked was not part of the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection, but they did end up porting it eventually and throwing it onto PSN as a standalone download. Now, the HD Collection had its problems, but for the most part they were minor aesthetic bugs and you had to know what you were looking for. The HD port of Deadlocked is another story. Within the first twenty minutes you'll see the main villain's gums and teeth clipping through the front of his face. You'll also see a cinematic ca...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Almost a Classic 0
NOTE: THIS IS A REVIEW OF TUROK REMASTERED FROM NIGHT DIVE STUDIOS, NOT THE ORIGINAL RELEASEI had an N64 as a kid, but I never did play the Turok games. I think I rented the first one once or twice, but the controls really threw me and I never got very far. Moving with my right thumb and aiming with my left felt awkward and clumsy, especially with that cheapo joystick. Given the oft-noted flaws of the game and its engine such as the pathetic draw distance, the aforementioned clunky controls, and...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Murdering a bunch of sand people is the path to the light side of the gameplay 0
This game starts with an unusual, but surprisingly fun premise: After Return of the Jedi, instead of Luke Skywalker vanishing to become a chubby old guy who hates 'doing The Joker' he sets up a Jedi School and trains 'padawans' to rebuild the old days where the Jedi were the defenders of the galaxy. As one of these students this amounts to, at least initially, being a Jedi beat cop solving petty crime throughout the cosmos. You even get promotions after each major story mission. Of course, this ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Amazing games; less than amazing port 0
First off, this is a review of the HD collection and not the games themselves. I just want to say upfront that:All three of these games are amazing and worth playing for just about anybody.Currently, none of these games work properly on a freely available PS2 emulator, so there is no way to play your (legal, naturally) PS2 copies in HD.So unless you're happy with a blurry, 480i mess this HD collection is the only choice you've got. And that's a shame, because it's a very disappointing port job ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Lombax's eyes can only see 20fps anyway... 0
After the modern masterpiece that was A Crack in Time the series sort of went to pot with the probably-decent-for-kids co op action puzzler Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, questionable tower defense spin off called Full Frontal Assault, and a mediocre game called FUSE which didn't even have Ratchet OR Clank in it! Into the Nexus was an attempt to correct these mistakes and make another 'real' Ratchet game. It's also a budget-minded mini-adventure in the spirit of Quest for Booty, the download-on...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A great effort let down somewhat by a framework that's too small for it 0
The original Shadowrun Returns was a decent game, but it had many constraints laid upon it that made it somewhat unimpressive. The linear and surprisingly modest chapter-based storyline was more reminiscent of a latter-day Final Fantasy than the classic CRPG revival that was promised, and since every party member was an anonymous hireling there was a feeling of impersonality to the whole affair.Dragonfall seeks to rectify these issues by taking the bones of what the previous game had while switc...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Highly Recommended 0
Okay, so, at the end of Tools of Destruction Clank was taken away by aliens called the Zoni and now Ratchet is looking for him. It turns out that an alien gave Clank a soul because his destiny is to look after a giant space clock that controls time. The alien is... sort of Clank's father in a weird, abstract way? The bad guy from Up Your Arsenal wants to use the clock to do fairly nonspecific bad stuff. On his travels Ratchet meets another space cat who wants to use the clock to go back in time ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Bargain Bin Ratchet & Clank 0
I really, really like Ratchet games. This one stinks. The whole idea, it seems, was to put out a small, download-only Ratchet & Clank game at a budget price. On paper I think this is an excellent idea, as I feel previous games in the series often bloated themselves with unnecessary features and minigames in order to justify their price point. Strip away all the chaff and give me a handful of solid run & gun levels and you'd certainly have something that's worth fifteen bucks.The problem ...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Fantastic RPG That Defies Genre Conventions and Demands Player Investment 0
When Age of Decadence first hit the radar in around 2008 I think most people took it as an independent studio's spin on the classic Fallout formula in the wake of Bethesda's decidedly non-isometric, realtime FPS revival of the series. And given the desert post-apocalyptic setting, the top-down camera, the emphasis on reactivity, the turn based combat, the very GURPS-esque character system, and the near-identical interface, it's excusable to make this mistake. So I want to be clear: Age of Decade...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Mediocre Platformer 0
Here's the thing about platformers: If you can't trust the jump, you don't have a game.Jak & Daxter has terrible jumping for what is meant to be a top-tier 3D mascot platformer. The timing on the double jump is so incredibly specific and odd-feeling that even in the final hours the most basic of jumps were harrowing. Just about every jump in the game is placed to require a double jump, and the execution of this double jump feels arbitrary, leading to many, many deaths when the second jump si...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Not the Best Ratchet, But Still Really Good! 0
The Ratchet games are some of the best shooters you can play on a console. This seems unintuitive since they are half-mascot platformer, but it works because it uses lessons from the 3D platformer genre effectively. Being a mascot platformer, it wants you to do a lot of jumping around. So instead of hiding behind cover and aiming down the sights, the game forces you to dodge and weave around enemy projectiles (there are NO hitscan enemies) with flips and careful coordination. It has health pick...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Weak 0
I have no idea what happens in this game, even though I beat it last night.First off-- the interface is awful. It's not built for a mouse, with its text lists hidden under tabs and buried inside menus. Usually with PC games you can blame bad UI on console-oriented development, but I'd hesitate to use the word 'consolized' here since it's even worse cycling through all of this on a gamepad. Additionally, without keyboard hotkeys at your disposal you're forced to use the pause screen to access you...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The Best Assassin's Creed is Still An Assassin's Creed 0
Black Flag opens with the pirate protagonist washed ashore, shipwrecked on a gorgeous and lovingly detailed Caribbean island. It's an inviting escapist fantasy location with enough incidental detail to suggest a lived-in history and culture. It made me want to canvas the area and search for secrets. Incidentally, every single object of interest is immediately marked on your minimap, meaning I didn't exactly have to do much besides beeline for icons with extreme tunnel-vision. Immediately the lov...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Step Forward From Risen 2, But Not the Return to Form That Was Promised 0
While I'm something of a Risen 2 apologist, I'm not going to sit here and say it was a great game compared to the fantastic first Risen, let alone the brilliant Gothic series. The combat was something of a mess, the factions and politics therein were dumbed down, there were fewer choices overall, magic was dialed way back, the Caribbean pirate theme caused visual variety to suffer, and exploration was hampered by roughly half of the locations being designed like corridors. Personally, I found th...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Minute Improvement Over a Shaky Base 0
The expansion pack for SiN is better than the base game, but not by as much as you'd hope. It still has issues with unfairness in the later half, where suddenly health becomes an incredibly rare commodity and the not-so-quick quickload key gets pressed about as often as the fire button. The boss fights at the end of the game are probably the worst the game has to offer-- dodging their attacks requires luck at best. And, yes, there are still barely functioning stealth missions that are, thankful...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Hot Mess 0
SiN is a hot mess. Stylistically it apes the self-aware stupidity of the mid-90s action movie (think "Escape from LA" instead of "Escape From New York") and draws gameplay inspiration from a mix of Duke Nukem and Goldeneye 007, combining ego shooting and objectives to complete.The action is surprisingly fast, kinetic, and fun. The hero, John Blade, moves at a generally satisfying speed, the most common enemy types do not suffer from the bullet sponge bloat of many other games from the era, and t...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
A Solid Stealth Sandbox Game Not to Be Overlooked Because of Its Subject Matter 0
There are quite a few games based around sniping, and the concept has always sounded terrible to me. But, as it turns out, Sniper Elite III isn't exactly a 'sniping game' as you might expect. Instead it's a stealth action game that pivots on sniping, but includes a pretty wide repertoire of actions to the extent that one could theoretically complete the whole thing and rarely use the rifle at all (though I wouldn't quite recommend it). If I had to compare it to anything, it would be Metal Gear S...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Exhausts All Of Its Ideas Upfront 0
Prey is an interesting game. It's one of the last mainstream FPSes to be made for PC with consoles as an afterthought. It's a 3D Realms game that took over a decade to make, but when it was released wasn't a complete trainwreck. It's a game that was one of the biggest releases of the year when it came out, but is now forgotten and obscure. While it's not exactly rare, it's a hard to get game for something that came out in 2006. It was de-listed from Steam when their serial generator ran out of ...
1 out of 6 found this review helpful. -
The Best Wolfenstein FPS Is Ahead of the Curve But Not Perfect 0
Wolfenstein is a fantastic FPS and in my opinion the best game in the Wolfenstein series, although that might say more about the rest of the series than it does this solidly above-average production. That said, it wears itself thin over time and has some issues that keep it from being as good as it should be. The first thing you'll probably notice if you're playing the PC version is that the port, like many console-to-PC ports in 2009, is sub-par. The FOV is incredibly narrow and the only way t...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Should Only Be Played By Curious Fans of the Series (and even they should beware) 0
This review has spoilers for the first Deus Ex game, if you care.People like to say, "Invisible War is a good game, but a bad Deus Ex game." But they're wrong. 100% wrong, in fact.Invisible War is a pretty good Deus Ex game. And a terrible video game.I say this because the game offers up a reasonable facsimile of the Deus Ex formula you want, but everything is so botched that you no longer want it.Going in, I thought the lack of skills and universal ammo would ruin the game's systems, but it tur...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
An Excellent FPS With Charm and Craft 0
This is a nice little shooter; undoubtedly the best of the Juarez games. Aside from a hiccup here and there caused by some design decisions unwisely plucked from the Call of Duty style of shooter-- namely the tendency to be shot at by hitscanners you can't see. The game seems to recognize its problem with hitscanners since it has a sort of reverse-VATS mode where the game goes into slow motion and you can dodge any killing blow. This system works most of the time, but if enemies manage to get th...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
A Weak Beginning, a Weaker End, and an Adequate Middle 0
The first chapter of Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a partial reboot of the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D. The Old Blood is a reboot of the first chapter of Return to Castle Wolfenstein which was a reboot of the first episode of Wolf3D. The fat nazi lady who turns into a poop golem even returns, except this time she doesn't turn into a poop golem and she has a sad, humanizing back story as told in diary entries scattered around the realm despite showing none of this depth in person.So, I real...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful.
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