PC game mini-reviews!
Posted: 2009.06.09 (23:35)
Mini reviews will follow this format:
Name
Brief description/mini review with the games main goal/objective at the end
Score out of ten
Please note I will never give a game a perfect ten lightly, 6 and above is a game worth playing, 4 and below are just bad games and 5 implies a game which in my opinion is a niche game (Like bus simulators). LF EDIT, 2010: WTF bus simulators? What was I on?
Let us begin shall we?
Updates
A mostly solid bit of game design akin to Dungeon Keeper with a few stupid design decisions (Needing to do certain things before leaving the first island with no indication that you need to for example). You are an evil genius who has his(her) own private island, your objective is build it up to a super secret evil base and TAKE OVER THE WORLD! You have multiple tools at your disposal such as setting up hotels as cover, a very nice trap systems which you can set insane chain reactions up with and obviously your own personal army of minions. It's a satisying game and for the prices it goes at these days it should just be something you buy, not too sure I'd have paid full price for this when it came out though
8/10
Two Worlds
I'll be honest I've barely played it, it is way too god damn buggy, there may be a patch out now which makes it work. While a whole helping of bugs, bland voice acting and generic combat it does have some really good design ideas in placed, for example crafting/equipment if you get a double you can combine them together to get an improved version. Your goal? I honestly can't remember, back of the box says something about secrets, some gods tomb and choosing to save the world or destroy it. I can't really recommend just due to how buggy the thing is, if there's a patch out which makes it playable I'd say give it a try though.
4/10 5/10 if there's a patch.
Titan Quest
A brilliant ARPG with a good amount of content, the class system is based on Masteries which are essentially skill trees based on a skill set (e.g. Warfare, Defense, Storm, Dream) and your class is determined by whether you stuck to just the one or switched to using dual masteries and what the combo is (unique class for each one). It's got the pretty standard loot system for games of its ilk (Diablo for example). What really makes the game shine is the settings, you start out in ancient grease, proceed to make your way through Egypt, Asia, Mount Olympus and with the expansion the underworld. They're well designed and each area has it's own set of enemies.
8/10 without Exp. 9/10 with Exp.
Supreme Commander
A spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, very well put together with an albeit very (Extremely) clunky interface but this is fixed in the expansion (which is stand alone and doesn't require SupCom). All the armies seem a bit like they're just the same units reskinned at first but the more you play it the more you notice each factions strengths, attack styles and weaknesses (For example the UEF focus on ballistic weaponry while Cybran tend to use a more lasery variety of death machines). The game can and will take fucking ages but you can thankfully adjust the game speed). The game shines when you get your experimentals, they're huge (to the point where they crush other units), they have a lot of guns and they will ruin someone's day. Also the campaign is pretty bad, skirmish is fun as hell though.
7/10
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
It takes the mostly working formulae of Supreme Commander, refines it, balances it, gives it a good interface. There's a new faction who are the definition of glass cannons (The Seraphim), there's also a decent campaign based around them trying to fuck shit up. Skirmish is still better though. There's also a bunch of new units for each faction etc. Also did I mention it's stand alone and doesn't require SupCom? Developers take note, THIS is how you do expansions. Also as a side note there's a mod (Game has some really good mod support) called Sorian AI which (obviously) adds new AI, the new AI was so good the dev of this mod got hired for the sequels AI coding.
9/10
Unreal Anthology
If you're looking for an amazing deal on some FPS games this should be your number one choice, you get two solid single player games and two of the best multiplayer games that have come out in the past two decades. To make things better both UT2k4 and the original UT are extremely modifyable with small mods in the form of mutators (Low gravity, extra guns, new power ups etc.) to total conversions making the game very different (Killing Floor and Red Orchestra are both total conversions of UT2k4 gone retail). U1 and U2 have their own stories (First involves fighting an alien race and the second you go to different planets doing stuff) and UT and UT2k4 are arena based combat games (With the staple deathmatch, CTF, team deathmatch etc. as well as the more unique (at the time) assault).
10/10
Worms 4: Mayhem
It's a pretty fun game but in my opinion it lacks the charm that made the original 2D games amazing. Your goal is to shoot, blow up, beat up, drowned or otherwise kill the enemy team of worms via turn based artillery gameplay. The physics on the weapons are pretty solid and it does have a fun single player but just feels lacking, the originals are far better. Still worth checking out though.
7/10
Metal Gear Solid
This game was one of those few games which reserve the right to say that they defined a genre, I'm not sure if it created the stealth genre but it damn will popularised it. The game is quite simply amazing (Unless you're a graphics whore, then get the F out) with a good selection of guns and tools in your arsenal (Card board boxes anyone?) with a sweet story which concludes in one of the best boss fights ever. Your goal is to rescue 2 hostages and stop a nuclear strike.
10/10
Metal Gear Solid 2
A sequel to a classic game, it's still pretty awesome but apart from improved graphics not quite as good as the first and the story starts going from manageable to damn confusing with the boss fights still being pretty awesome but lacking what made the last boss in the first game amazing. There are essentially two goals in this game (One for each half) with the first being discovering info on a new metal gear and the second to do with rescuing hostages from a facility. Also you turn in to some effeminte blonde guy in the second half wtf.
8/10
Metal Gear Solid 3
First of all I will mention I never got past the ladder (SNAAAAAAAKKKKKKEEEEEE EEEEEEEAAAAAAAATTTTTTTEEEEEEEERRRRRRR) so I can only review what I've played. Now what I played was amazing with adding a camouflage system and different patterns so you could blend in with the background or just stand out like a sore thumb if you wanted, plus it still keeps the epic boss fights. From what I know of the ending it's still pretty epic and the story is much simpler than the second game. Your objective is to go destroy the shagohad, kill an American defector and stop Volgins faction.
9/10
Metal Gear Solid 4
This is what appears to be the last game in which you play as solid snake, the game play is roughly the same but with the addition of a few things (Active Camouflage, Metal Gear MK2, being able to disguise yourself as one of the PMCs), it has some truly amazing scenes in it but some truly long ones too (Which isn't so much a bad thing but if you're only bothered about playing the game rather than the story (Which wouldn't be surprising at this point) it can be a bad thing). Also this is where they try to wrap up the story and it ends up getting even more complicated, from what I gathered though it is pretty good... I think. Your objective is to terminate liquid snake which culminates in a simply amazing boss fight.
9/10
Prototype
This game is amazing albeit with difficulty curve more ups and downs than a roller coaster. It has a pretty decent, albeit moody, plot about finding out who you are, who did this to you and getting revenge, yadda, yadda, yadda. This game isn't about plot, it's about insane abilities, you can karate kick helicopters, pile drive civilians off the top of sky scrapers, run on anything apart from the sky itself and water, turn you arm in to a bladed whip and slice every civiliain nearby in half, punch a guy so hard he turns in to nothing but blood... the list goes on. This game is about being a total bad ass and does it well.
9/10
Super Meat Boy
A truly amazing piece of game design, the level design is balanced to a point, there's hidden content everywhere (for example A+ a level and unlock a harder version of it) and it makes the constant death rewarding by having the replay be all of your attempts of the level at once which further leads to armies of hundreds of meat boys leaping to their death. It is difficult as hell but never in a way that feels like you died to bad game design, just your own incompetence. All in all a truly amazing which is incredibly frustrating but doesn't make you rage.
10/10
Alpha Protocol
A very under appreciated game, it did badly in reviews due to american reviewers treating it as a shooter and european ones treating it as an RPG (the scores reflect this, it did significantly better in europe). The shooting controls are a bit wonky but nothing game breaking, the gameplay is pretty damn solid with some bad level design smattered about but also some truly great design. The game shows it's worth in the dialogue though, it's amazingly well written and accounts for so much, you can do the middle part of the game in the order you want and there's unique dialogue in each palce accounting for the order in which you did stuff, what you did, the way you talked and treat people, etc. The dialogue systems gimmick is that you choose a stance rather than what your saying, either Suave (James Bond), Aggressive (Jack Bauer) or Professional (Jason Bourne). People are playing through the game at least 3 or 4 times and are still discovering new aspects to the plot each run. Most common phrase I hear about this is "Wait, that can happen?! *replays game*
8/10
Borderlands
It's a FPSRPG commonly alluded to being Diablo with guns due to the loot system, it uses a modular system for weapons where in each gun type has different parts it can be generated with such as an accessory which adds fire, extended magazines etc. In total there are about 13 million different weapon combinations in the vanilla game. It has some pretty damn solid shooting mechanics (Iron Sights yay) and a pretty consistant difficulty curve. Enemies aren't vastly varied, there's bandits, skags (Lizard dog things), Rak (Lizard bird things) and two other enemy types which would be spoiling to tell. The game has a bunch of DLC packs which add new areas, weapons, raise the level cap and some really good end game content in general. Oh also it has 4 player co-operative which takes it from being a good game to being a great one.
9/10
Red Faction Guerilla
Destruction is the name of the game here, the game's main selling point is a new version of the geomod engine which allows you to destroy anything realstically apart from the environment itself (which is a fairly amusing mirror to the first game). There's a good variety of weapons from your good old sledge hammer to the singularity bomb. The pacing in the campaign is pretty well done and the multiplayer is good fun (especially on the smallest map with lots of people). The game doesn't do much outside of destruction and explosions but it does them so well you barely notice it.
8/10
Saints Row 2 - Guest review by AzMiLion
Saints Row 2 is a open-world mayhem simulator akin to GTA4 wrapped up in a shiny gangstah/slapstick styling, with the main exception that SR2 is actually FUN! The game features single player, co-op and competitive multiplayer so let’s have a look at all of those. The campaign features the same protagonist from SR1 who just got out of jail and is looking to take his/her city back, before you can do this though there’s a few other gangs to take out, the story is mostly there to carry the insane action, with every mission throwing some new variable into it. The co-op in this game just adds another player into the mix, which doubles the action, and the explosions. Apart from just the missions there’s character customization, minigames and challenges, all of which are seamlessly integrated into the main game world. The multiplayer is fun, as dead as it may be at the time of writing, there are your standard game-modes and there’s a mode which randomly picks an objective. The character customization in the multiplayer component of the game is the same as in single player so you can have your character just the way you like him/her. All in all Saints Row 2 is a amazing game filled with a lot of unique content which makes it a worthwhile purchase, the only downside is the small amount of bugs and the occasional graphical glitch.
8.5/10
To be added to...
Name
Brief description/mini review with the games main goal/objective at the end
Score out of ten
Please note I will never give a game a perfect ten lightly, 6 and above is a game worth playing, 4 and below are just bad games and 5 implies a game which in my opinion is a niche game (Like bus simulators). LF EDIT, 2010: WTF bus simulators? What was I on?
Let us begin shall we?
Updates
- 28th Dec 2010, rewrote most reviews, added Super Meat Boy and Alpha Protocol
- 29th Dec 2010, added Borderlands, Red Faction Guerilla
- 03rd Jan 2010, added Saints Row 2 guest review
A mostly solid bit of game design akin to Dungeon Keeper with a few stupid design decisions (Needing to do certain things before leaving the first island with no indication that you need to for example). You are an evil genius who has his(her) own private island, your objective is build it up to a super secret evil base and TAKE OVER THE WORLD! You have multiple tools at your disposal such as setting up hotels as cover, a very nice trap systems which you can set insane chain reactions up with and obviously your own personal army of minions. It's a satisying game and for the prices it goes at these days it should just be something you buy, not too sure I'd have paid full price for this when it came out though
8/10
Two Worlds
I'll be honest I've barely played it, it is way too god damn buggy, there may be a patch out now which makes it work. While a whole helping of bugs, bland voice acting and generic combat it does have some really good design ideas in placed, for example crafting/equipment if you get a double you can combine them together to get an improved version. Your goal? I honestly can't remember, back of the box says something about secrets, some gods tomb and choosing to save the world or destroy it. I can't really recommend just due to how buggy the thing is, if there's a patch out which makes it playable I'd say give it a try though.
4/10 5/10 if there's a patch.
Titan Quest
A brilliant ARPG with a good amount of content, the class system is based on Masteries which are essentially skill trees based on a skill set (e.g. Warfare, Defense, Storm, Dream) and your class is determined by whether you stuck to just the one or switched to using dual masteries and what the combo is (unique class for each one). It's got the pretty standard loot system for games of its ilk (Diablo for example). What really makes the game shine is the settings, you start out in ancient grease, proceed to make your way through Egypt, Asia, Mount Olympus and with the expansion the underworld. They're well designed and each area has it's own set of enemies.
8/10 without Exp. 9/10 with Exp.
Supreme Commander
A spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, very well put together with an albeit very (Extremely) clunky interface but this is fixed in the expansion (which is stand alone and doesn't require SupCom). All the armies seem a bit like they're just the same units reskinned at first but the more you play it the more you notice each factions strengths, attack styles and weaknesses (For example the UEF focus on ballistic weaponry while Cybran tend to use a more lasery variety of death machines). The game can and will take fucking ages but you can thankfully adjust the game speed). The game shines when you get your experimentals, they're huge (to the point where they crush other units), they have a lot of guns and they will ruin someone's day. Also the campaign is pretty bad, skirmish is fun as hell though.
7/10
Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance
It takes the mostly working formulae of Supreme Commander, refines it, balances it, gives it a good interface. There's a new faction who are the definition of glass cannons (The Seraphim), there's also a decent campaign based around them trying to fuck shit up. Skirmish is still better though. There's also a bunch of new units for each faction etc. Also did I mention it's stand alone and doesn't require SupCom? Developers take note, THIS is how you do expansions. Also as a side note there's a mod (Game has some really good mod support) called Sorian AI which (obviously) adds new AI, the new AI was so good the dev of this mod got hired for the sequels AI coding.
9/10
Unreal Anthology
If you're looking for an amazing deal on some FPS games this should be your number one choice, you get two solid single player games and two of the best multiplayer games that have come out in the past two decades. To make things better both UT2k4 and the original UT are extremely modifyable with small mods in the form of mutators (Low gravity, extra guns, new power ups etc.) to total conversions making the game very different (Killing Floor and Red Orchestra are both total conversions of UT2k4 gone retail). U1 and U2 have their own stories (First involves fighting an alien race and the second you go to different planets doing stuff) and UT and UT2k4 are arena based combat games (With the staple deathmatch, CTF, team deathmatch etc. as well as the more unique (at the time) assault).
10/10
Worms 4: Mayhem
It's a pretty fun game but in my opinion it lacks the charm that made the original 2D games amazing. Your goal is to shoot, blow up, beat up, drowned or otherwise kill the enemy team of worms via turn based artillery gameplay. The physics on the weapons are pretty solid and it does have a fun single player but just feels lacking, the originals are far better. Still worth checking out though.
7/10
Metal Gear Solid
This game was one of those few games which reserve the right to say that they defined a genre, I'm not sure if it created the stealth genre but it damn will popularised it. The game is quite simply amazing (Unless you're a graphics whore, then get the F out) with a good selection of guns and tools in your arsenal (Card board boxes anyone?) with a sweet story which concludes in one of the best boss fights ever. Your goal is to rescue 2 hostages and stop a nuclear strike.
10/10
Metal Gear Solid 2
A sequel to a classic game, it's still pretty awesome but apart from improved graphics not quite as good as the first and the story starts going from manageable to damn confusing with the boss fights still being pretty awesome but lacking what made the last boss in the first game amazing. There are essentially two goals in this game (One for each half) with the first being discovering info on a new metal gear and the second to do with rescuing hostages from a facility. Also you turn in to some effeminte blonde guy in the second half wtf.
8/10
Metal Gear Solid 3
First of all I will mention I never got past the ladder (SNAAAAAAAKKKKKKEEEEEE EEEEEEEAAAAAAAATTTTTTTEEEEEEEERRRRRRR) so I can only review what I've played. Now what I played was amazing with adding a camouflage system and different patterns so you could blend in with the background or just stand out like a sore thumb if you wanted, plus it still keeps the epic boss fights. From what I know of the ending it's still pretty epic and the story is much simpler than the second game. Your objective is to go destroy the shagohad, kill an American defector and stop Volgins faction.
9/10
Metal Gear Solid 4
This is what appears to be the last game in which you play as solid snake, the game play is roughly the same but with the addition of a few things (Active Camouflage, Metal Gear MK2, being able to disguise yourself as one of the PMCs), it has some truly amazing scenes in it but some truly long ones too (Which isn't so much a bad thing but if you're only bothered about playing the game rather than the story (Which wouldn't be surprising at this point) it can be a bad thing). Also this is where they try to wrap up the story and it ends up getting even more complicated, from what I gathered though it is pretty good... I think. Your objective is to terminate liquid snake which culminates in a simply amazing boss fight.
9/10
Prototype
This game is amazing albeit with difficulty curve more ups and downs than a roller coaster. It has a pretty decent, albeit moody, plot about finding out who you are, who did this to you and getting revenge, yadda, yadda, yadda. This game isn't about plot, it's about insane abilities, you can karate kick helicopters, pile drive civilians off the top of sky scrapers, run on anything apart from the sky itself and water, turn you arm in to a bladed whip and slice every civiliain nearby in half, punch a guy so hard he turns in to nothing but blood... the list goes on. This game is about being a total bad ass and does it well.
9/10
Super Meat Boy
A truly amazing piece of game design, the level design is balanced to a point, there's hidden content everywhere (for example A+ a level and unlock a harder version of it) and it makes the constant death rewarding by having the replay be all of your attempts of the level at once which further leads to armies of hundreds of meat boys leaping to their death. It is difficult as hell but never in a way that feels like you died to bad game design, just your own incompetence. All in all a truly amazing which is incredibly frustrating but doesn't make you rage.
10/10
Alpha Protocol
A very under appreciated game, it did badly in reviews due to american reviewers treating it as a shooter and european ones treating it as an RPG (the scores reflect this, it did significantly better in europe). The shooting controls are a bit wonky but nothing game breaking, the gameplay is pretty damn solid with some bad level design smattered about but also some truly great design. The game shows it's worth in the dialogue though, it's amazingly well written and accounts for so much, you can do the middle part of the game in the order you want and there's unique dialogue in each palce accounting for the order in which you did stuff, what you did, the way you talked and treat people, etc. The dialogue systems gimmick is that you choose a stance rather than what your saying, either Suave (James Bond), Aggressive (Jack Bauer) or Professional (Jason Bourne). People are playing through the game at least 3 or 4 times and are still discovering new aspects to the plot each run. Most common phrase I hear about this is "Wait, that can happen?! *replays game*
8/10
Borderlands
It's a FPSRPG commonly alluded to being Diablo with guns due to the loot system, it uses a modular system for weapons where in each gun type has different parts it can be generated with such as an accessory which adds fire, extended magazines etc. In total there are about 13 million different weapon combinations in the vanilla game. It has some pretty damn solid shooting mechanics (Iron Sights yay) and a pretty consistant difficulty curve. Enemies aren't vastly varied, there's bandits, skags (Lizard dog things), Rak (Lizard bird things) and two other enemy types which would be spoiling to tell. The game has a bunch of DLC packs which add new areas, weapons, raise the level cap and some really good end game content in general. Oh also it has 4 player co-operative which takes it from being a good game to being a great one.
9/10
Red Faction Guerilla
Destruction is the name of the game here, the game's main selling point is a new version of the geomod engine which allows you to destroy anything realstically apart from the environment itself (which is a fairly amusing mirror to the first game). There's a good variety of weapons from your good old sledge hammer to the singularity bomb. The pacing in the campaign is pretty well done and the multiplayer is good fun (especially on the smallest map with lots of people). The game doesn't do much outside of destruction and explosions but it does them so well you barely notice it.
8/10
Saints Row 2 - Guest review by AzMiLion
Saints Row 2 is a open-world mayhem simulator akin to GTA4 wrapped up in a shiny gangstah/slapstick styling, with the main exception that SR2 is actually FUN! The game features single player, co-op and competitive multiplayer so let’s have a look at all of those. The campaign features the same protagonist from SR1 who just got out of jail and is looking to take his/her city back, before you can do this though there’s a few other gangs to take out, the story is mostly there to carry the insane action, with every mission throwing some new variable into it. The co-op in this game just adds another player into the mix, which doubles the action, and the explosions. Apart from just the missions there’s character customization, minigames and challenges, all of which are seamlessly integrated into the main game world. The multiplayer is fun, as dead as it may be at the time of writing, there are your standard game-modes and there’s a mode which randomly picks an objective. The character customization in the multiplayer component of the game is the same as in single player so you can have your character just the way you like him/her. All in all Saints Row 2 is a amazing game filled with a lot of unique content which makes it a worthwhile purchase, the only downside is the small amount of bugs and the occasional graphical glitch.
8.5/10
To be added to...