Where WE review our games

Trine

So, yeah, it's out for PC and PS3. 10 bucks now, methinks. Anyway, it's a platforming game. I never know how to write a review, so I'll break it down to categories.

Graphics

They're awesome. To start off, the detail, textures and all the technical stuff are remarkably well done, but that's not what's important. The art style, the scenery and the whole world is just brilliant. You feel like you're in your own fairytale. A good one, though. It's also worth mentioning that the sound is just as good. It's not unforgettable, but it adds to the atmosphere.

Gameplay

Again, simply brilliant. You get a wizard with the ability to create objects. At first, just boxes, and just two at a time. But as you progress, you gain the ability to create two more types of objects and more of each at a time. Then, there's also also a thief, that carries a bow and a grappling hook. At last, as with every medieval-ish game, there's a soldier. Basically, you can alternate between any of them at any given time, unless one of them dies, in which case you'll need to get to the next checkpoint to revive that character. If all of them die, you go back to the last checkpoint. Anyway, it all comes together beautifully, and the puzzles are fun, with lots of ways to go around them.

Lasting Appeal

The campaign is, put simply, quite small. You'll finish it (15 levels) in around 5 hours. Even less if you rush through the entire game. You do get a co-op mode, but it's offline only. That's a bummer, because having three people co-operate to solve the puzzles and fight the enemies is awesome, and should be do-able online. Still, the best thing about this game is that you can go back and re-do any level, in any difficulty, as many times as you want. There are collectibles to add to the mix too. Some little green vials that grant you exp, and some of them are pretty well hidden, and reaching others is a puzzle by itself. And that experience will grant your characters new abilities and the development of current ones. Pretty neat. On top of that, put in two chests with special items (that have special effects) per level, and you'll replay the campaign three or four times to get all the experience and items.

So, in conclusion, it's a remarkable game. It's not absolutely brilliant, it's not a blockbuster, and the campaign is so short it wouldn't be worth something like 40 or 50 bucks. And on top of that, I still don't get why there's no online co-op. You still won't care about any of that. It's a lovely game, that you'll keep coming back to every now and then. I've personally wasted around 12 hours on it, probably, and getting the trophies for the game is also lots of fun. Recommended. : p

Incidentally, Trine is on sale on Steam right now, definitely worth a look as it's a nice game.
 
We really don't need reviews of Civ, I guess maybe Civ 5 when it comes out if some of us actually don't buy it immediately :)

this is the other games section isn't it? why bother with Civ, it is an awesome franchise of course, but it seems kind of pointless to write a review here..
 
Captain2's thoughts on Alan Wake.

I know this thread has been sickly recently so I decided to try and revive it with this review. Firstly I'd like to say that I like what the game is trying to do creatively by playing light and darkness off of one another and that it has a great feel to it that I have yet to find anywhere else, that said however I'd prefer it if a few things had been done differently.

While starting the game out as our fearless hero John Stamos Alan Wake one of the first things you'll notice are pickups in the form of parts of a manuscript that predict events that are going to happen... I can see why it would make sense that Alan would want to know whats going to happen but I found my experience more or less cheapened by it. You find manuscript pages all through the levels and if you bother to read them they spoil most of the coming game for you, for example in one level I find a piece of paper essentially saying that once Wake had escaped the situation I was still slogging through the calm was broken by another attack.... I must thank the game for this because while most horror games (bad ones) will sometimes telegraph the scares 3 or 4 minutes in advance thanks to this game and a fully functioning adult brain I was always able to predict events nearly an hour before they occured because of the bloody spoilers, why would I thank them for that? well I had my puppy sleeping on me while I played and I would have hated to have disturbed her with an accellerated heartbeat.

I also found myself bored with the variety of enemies, they have three guys and just give him a different outfit to match the surroundings: Big guy with axe, small guy with hooks and medium sized guy with ax, sometimes they'll be dressed as firefighters or cops and sometimes even just civilians but its always the same three guys but its not like I can really blame them, when your whole story is people being covered by darkness it would be difficult to put a lot of effort into your models knowing nobody is going to see them.

Also refering back to the manuscripts I find it slightly amusing that everything happening was supposedly written to be in a book, not that the story is bad but moreso when more game-like moments occur to you, for example heres an entry I imagine would be in Alan's book based upon my own experience.

I walked into the darkened house and found my eye drawn to a refrigerator in the corner, it had looked like a cabinet and I was really hoping that I'd find a gun soon. My wife waited outside and had asked me to turn the light on for her as she was afraid of the dark, I flipped the switches and discovered that I needed to turn on the power to the whole house and after a few seconds of pondering a solution I decided to check for a generator in the basement. I pulled on the knob on the basement door only to find that the door would not open, the one beside it had the same problem.... back in New York we had hardly ever run into doors painted onto the wall and already I had found two. Five minutes later after poking around in the attic and not finding a generator I left the house and looked expectantly at my wife for some kind of direction, She was to be of no help.

Another three minutes of wandering in the dark had passed and I began to invoke Cthulu to guide me out of sheer desperation, once again wandering the second floor I found a ghostly apparition but sadly it didn't tell me the way to the generator. I walked over to the fridge I had spotted near the door I had first entered... If only I had a gun.

"Honey, maybe the generator is in that old shed over there" my wife finally said after nearly 9 minutes of silence. If only I had that gun.

I haven't finished the game yet and I'm not sure if I will (Red Dead Redemption will be arriving soon) so my personal recomendation would be simply for people to rent it if they can, I would probably be in a really bad mood if I paid nearly $80 for this.
 
Thanks for the input. I've been meaning to write some too but I have had no game that have made me want to say anything particular recently... Or I haven't played any enough.

I don't have a console but I did hear quite a lot about Alan Wake. It seemed to be quite anticipated. Three types of enemies is okay as long as the game REALLY puts the emphasis on something other than fighting. If they put only three, and you still have to kill hundreds of people in the game but they justify the lack of variety by "darkness", then that's a no.
 
I stopped paying attention after they changed it from "PC and XBOX 360" to XBOX360 and MAYBE PC" to "XBOX 360, who knows about PC".

All I remember is that it was supposed to have really good graphics?
 
Jos, we need a review of Red Dead.
 
I recently got Half-Life 2 on Steam for Mac and my review is a bit mixed. At first I absolutely loved the game. The controls worked great and I didn’t have any troubles with performance. I also thoroughly enjoyed the air boat when I first got it, though this is where I began losing my excitement.

The airboat started out as very entertaining, but I quickly began disliking it. It kept dragging on and on, to the point I couldn’t stand it anymore and wanted to get rid of the airboat. There are several brief stops where you get off the airboat and return to fighting your opponents as normal, but those pauses were brief and the time spent on the airboat was very long. When I finally reached the rebels camp I was glad I was finally rid of the airboat, only to have them fit a weapon on it and tell me to continue on. This really upset me, as I was happy to have finally made it only to realize not only wasn’t I not done, but that more then likely since I had a weapons upgrade, then I still had a long ways to go.

I played for a while and finally made it to a point where I couldn’t figure out how to get through this big open area and I had some helicopter attacking me. At this point I just wanted to quit playing and very quickly, the helicopter killed me.

I decided to go looking for a walkthrough, not to cheat the game, but to figure out when I was getting rid of the airboat. I found it rather hilarious to find out that I died at the point I was fighting the big boss of that level. I didn’t look to see if the next level started without the airboat, but instead loaded the game back up to fight the boss, only to not be able to locate a save close to that point.

I’m one of those people who save often. I save after each “Loading” and several times in between, yet I couldn’t find a save that even had the weapon mounted to the airboat. At this point I was really ticked and frustrated and I haven’t played the game since. I also noticed (and this seems to be with all Steam games) that all saves have the same timestamp, which makes it even more difficult to locate saves by order.

I had considered buying Episode 1 & 2, but at this point, I want nothing to do with the game. I enjoyed the game because of the FPS, but when I spend most of the game on a stupid airboat, its very annoying. I’ve also never been fond of games that railroad me, though in an FPS I don’t mind, because the main reason I’m playing it is just so I can shoot stuff.

The FPS part of the game I really enjoyed. The air boat part, I hated. I’ll probably wait a few weeks and then try again to finish the airboat part, but until then, the game will be ignored.
 
The airboat is a hour or two of gameplay but there is a lot of game left afterwards. The helicopter is pretty close to the end of the airboat iirc.

There is a wheel next to the gate blocking your progress you have to turn to open it, but you have to fight off the helicopter first. Don't remember how sorry.

And they don't use the airboat again so far in the series.
 
The air boat section was a bit long. There's a similar section later with a dune buggy.

I've always been lukewarm on Half Life 2, it's a solid game but overrated. I've never actually gotten all the way to the end of it. The only really good part for me was Ravenholm. The combat was generally pretty bad - fighting monsters or zombies was alright but the enemy troops seemed to have the tactical acumen of the Keystone Cops.
 
I usually hate any sort of driving in FPS games. Half-Life 2 lost me the minute I was in a canal driving a boat of some sort. Screw this. I can tolerate it in multiplayer games, but in single player, no. No horse riding, no buggy riding, no moto riding, none of that. Stop it developers.
 
I usually hate any sort of driving in FPS games. Half-Life 2 lost me the minute I was in a canal driving a boat of some sort. Screw this. I can tolerate it in multiplayer games, but in single player, no. No horse riding, no buggy riding, no moto riding, none of that. Stop it developers.

What if you're a passenger? COD had that old French car that your squad drove in to the HQ ;)

And also a trooptruck or something that your buddy drove to the airport.
 
For some reason while I hated the airboat section (and still do), I didn't mind the car as much, even though it could be even more uncontrollable at times.

What if you're a passenger? COD had that old French car that your squad drove in to the HQ ;)

Heavens, that was even worse. I'm not a fan of the tank levels in CoD either. Any of them.
 
What if you're a passenger? COD had that old French car that your squad drove in to the HQ ;)

And also a trooptruck or something that your buddy drove to the airport.

Yeah I love the feeling of being stuck there and getting shot at constantly wondering where it's coming from, especially in a dark in a shaky camera work. No, screw this I hate it.

Just last week I was playing Call of Juarez 2 and there was this section in a cart pulled by horses and that's it really, you're like a moving target, stuck in the cart, waiting to be shot at.
 
I loved the tank maps on COD :p

Hated the passenger-in-a-vehicle ones though, so freaking hard to aim... and the AI of course has no such problem.
 
BFBC2 - PS3

So I'm a little late to this particular game, although I played the demo extensively (and loved it) and got it the week it came out. Tried it for a few days, but then got bored and went back to MW2. About a week ago I was thinking of trading it in, but figured I'd give it another shot, and now I doubt I will ever trade it in.


Well, this game is 95% about the multiplayer, but I figure I'll review the single player as well:

The plot is shaky, to say the least. The enemy AI is mediocre (although not terrible), and the entire plot can be run through easily even on hardest difficulty in a matter of hours if you have any FPS experience.

On the plus side, what little there is, is good fun. Whilst the gameplay may not be particularly immersive, the graphics are lovely and the characters are fantastic - the redneck, the nerd, the sarge, and you - it's a great mix. So overall, the SP is actually not too bad, considering that it is entirely intended as a sidegrade to the actual centre of attention, the multiplayer.

Multiplayer

For those that don't know, you can play as one of 4 different classes - assault, engineer, medic and recon. One of the best bits about the multiplayer is the contrast between the different classes. They each have their own specialities: assault is fantastic at all except long range, but is almost useless against vehicles. Meanwhile, the engineer class is powerful at close range and extremely neccessary to deal with enemy vehicles, but is hopeless at anything further than 50 metres away. The medic is essential to heal your team, and is very capable at laying down fire support and wreaking havoc at medium to long range, but is weak at close range and vulnerable to vehicle attack. The recon kit, meanwhile is extremely versatile - the main job is spotting for your team, but you can also provide a moveable spawn point, take down tanks or buildings with your C4 or mortar strikes, and disrupt enemy lines by taking out key opponents at long ranges with the sniper rifle.

Aside from the class selection, one of the great things about BFBC2 (that separates it from games like MW2) is the player operated vehicles. Whether it is the UAV helicopter, a full-blown apache, a heavily armored battle tank or even a jet ski, the vehicles add another crucial aspect, helping to break stalemates. They seem more balanced now than they did when the game was first introduced, and provide a really nice way for teams to exploit a defences weakness.

The other unique aspect of BFBC2 is the maps. There are two main game types - Conquest and Rush, both of which play fantastically (especially rush IMO). They are really team orientated, and reward sensible gameplay, not just ability, something that is great to see in games (although ability is still helpful of course). The selection of maps is not particularly large, but that doesn't matter. I have just over a day of gameplay time, but i still feel like many of the maps are full of surprises. They are so large and detailed that it would take many hours to even begin to learn all the defensive and offensive routes that can be taken. One stage on a rush game for example is about the size of an entire large call of duty map (and rush games can have anywhere between 3 and 6 stages).

Overall, this game is definitely one i would strongly recommend. I've played it on the PC, and though the game is quite different, it is still excellent. This is game that significant effort must be applied. You can not hope to be great at the start, but through perserverence, it turns into a fantastic FPS.

90%


EDIT: forgot to mention, and its a small point but very important. The sound on this game is simply incredible. The soundtrack (and by that I mean the gun shots, tank sounds, voice commands etc.) is on a different level to any game I have ever played. Very immersive with surround sound or a headset.
 
BFBC2EDIT: forgot to mention, and its a small point but very important. The sound on this game is simply incredible. The soundtrack (and by that I mean the gun shots, tank sounds, voice commands etc.) is on a different level to any game I have ever played. Very immersive with surround sound or a headset.

True that, the sound of bullets and stuff (i.e. hearing the sniper bullets hit metal around you and a crack of the shot in the distance) is an example of awesome.
 
For some reason while I hated the airboat section (and still do), I didn't mind the car as much, even though it could be even more uncontrollable at times.

Heavens, that was even worse. I'm not a fan of the tank levels in CoD either. Any of them.
Huh, I really don't mind being a gunner and really enjoyed the CoD and UO campaigns.

I usually hate any sort of driving in FPS games. Half-Life 2 lost me the minute I was in a canal driving a boat of some sort. Screw this. I can tolerate it in multiplayer games, but in single player, no. No horse riding, no buggy riding, no moto riding, none of that. Stop it developers.

Again, absolutely no problems with driving, riding a horse or whatever. I really had no problems with the airboat at all, while the cars have been frustrating.

You also have to remember that Half-Life 2 and CoD are not new, nor recent, they are both several years old and show it. And still a lot of games haven't advanced a hell of a lot further beyond the linear shooter campaign.
 
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