Where WE review our games

Rub'Rum said:

I'm still meticulously updating the Original Post with every new review.

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we thank you for your dedication! Pretty awesome for a thread this old.

No review for Deus Ex? That needs to be rectified.


Put on a trenchcoat
And fight some conspiracies
The story of Deus Ex revolves around J.C. Denton, an agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO), as he explores a world mired in chaos and where every conspiracy theory is true (Well, most conspiracies. Nothing about lizard people or Jewish cabals.). This journey takes him through a wide variety of interesting environments from the streets of Hong Kong to the catacombs of Paris, even to a laboratory under the sea. He will also meet quite a few interesting characters. It should be no surprise that Deus Ex's story is praised effusively.

Get experience
And level up abilities
Deus Ex is one of the most prominent examples of a first-person shooter role-playing game (FPS RPG). There is a veritable arsenal of weapons to take out enemies in interesting ways, such as knocking them unconscious with a collapsible baton all the way to gibbing them with guided explosive rockets. There are also various modifications for these weapons, ranging from stat upgrades to various optics. As with RPGs, there are many items and inventory management (Tetris, in this case. And who doesn't love Tetris?). Experience points gained from various actions (even simple exploration) allow the agent to put points in different abilities.

Will you pick Rifles
Or Computers
Don't pick Swimming because
It's fairly useless
Aside from the skills involved in using weapons, there are various non-combat skills. These involve picking locks, treating injuries, hacking computers, and others. Your agent is augmented, and the various modifications present a multitude of options. One of the greatest draws of this game is the number of ways to solve a problem.

Take a massive mech in your way, for instance. A straight-forward option is to fire a rocket at it. Or an EMP grenade can be used. A resourceful agent might find an explosive crate, park it in the robot's patrol route, and destroy the robot with one pistol shot. One might also find a computer terminal to shut down the robot. Or simply avoid the robot or, with more skill, stay close and unseen by using blind spots. This might even allow the agent to use the robot to hide from other enemies. The use of augmentations allows even more options. Cloaking to hide or even just plain outrunning the robot are options on the table. A particularly brazen agent might even engage in head-to-head combat with the mech, with augmentations that shoot down the mech's rockets, regenerate combat injuries, and enhance targeting powered up and in play.

There is, of course, the issue of certain items or skills being of little value. More on that later.

It's a shooter
And a roleplaying game
The game achieves a nice balance between the two. Action and exposition are doled out in the right amounts and at the right times. Backstory and information on the setting is doled out in optional reading materials scattered around the world The number of options available allow one to act out a certain persona, with the two extremes of the stealthy humanitarian who uses non-lethal force in every situation and the in-your-face action hero who murders everything in sight, and everything in between. It should be noted that the game prefers a deliberate and thoughtful approach to playing it. Even on lower difficulties, enemies are adept at aiming at your head and punishing you for recklessness.


The levels are ugly
And everyone looks the same
No game is perfect. Deus Ex is not an exception to this. Aside from outdated graphics, character models are often egregiously similar between very different people. The voice acting also leaves much to be desired, with some truly horrific accents for certain non-American characters. Faults with the gameplay include the aforementioned problems with certain items, skills, and augs being useless. For example, Swimming really is quite useless, as the number of ways to utilize water is limited. Another major problem is dumb AI. Enemies don't even react to freshly killed/knocked out enemies. They also don't mind if you practically fondle them before taking them out from behind. They are also a little eager to roll back alerts quickly. A bunch of enemies who rigged up a subway station to explode at the slightest glance of law enforcement didn't mind me shooting tranquilizer darts every minute or so at their heads until everyone was incapacitated.

Despite these faults, the game is extremely fun and replayable. I didn't expect to be so captivated by a 14-year old game. With the game quite cheap and being on sale every now and then, I'm surprised there are still FPS and RPG players who haven't played this 9/10 game.

SS-18 ICBM said:

Spoiler :

No review for Deus Ex? That needs to be rectified.


Put on a trenchcoat
And fight some conspiracies
The story of Deus Ex revolves around J.C. Denton, an agent of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO), as he explores a world mired in chaos and where every conspiracy theory is true (Well, most conspiracies. Nothing about lizard people or Jewish cabals.). This journey takes him through a wide variety of interesting environments from the streets of Hong Kong to the catacombs of Paris, even to a laboratory under the sea. He will also meet quite a few interesting characters. It should be no surprise that Deus Ex's story is praised effusively.

Get experience
And level up abilities
Deus Ex is one of the most prominent examples of a first-person shooter role-playing game (FPS RPG). There is a veritable arsenal of weapons to take out enemies in interesting ways, such as knocking them unconscious with a collapsible baton all the way to gibbing them with guided explosive rockets. There are also various modifications for these weapons, ranging from stat upgrades to various optics. As with RPGs, there are many items and inventory management (Tetris, in this case. And who doesn't love Tetris?). Experience points gained from various actions (even simple exploration) allow the agent to put points in different abilities.

Will you pick Rifles
Or Computers
Don't pick Swimming because
It's fairly useless
Aside from the skills involved in using weapons, there are various non-combat skills. These involve picking locks, treating injuries, hacking computers, and others. Your agent is augmented, and the various modifications present a multitude of options. One of the greatest draws of this game is the number of ways to solve a problem.

Take a massive mech in your way, for instance. A straight-forward option is to fire a rocket at it. Or an EMP grenade can be used. A resourceful agent might find an explosive crate, park it in the robot's patrol route, and destroy the robot with one pistol shot. One might also find a computer terminal to shut down the robot. Or simply avoid the robot or, with more skill, stay close and unseen by using blind spots. This might even allow the agent to use the robot to hide from other enemies. The use of augmentations allows even more options. Cloaking to hide or even just plain outrunning the robot are options on the table. A particularly brazen agent might even engage in head-to-head combat with the mech, with augmentations that shoot down the mech's rockets, regenerate combat injuries, and enhance targeting powered up and in play.

There is, of course, the issue of certain items or skills being of little value. More on that later.

It's a shooter
And a roleplaying game
The game achieves a nice balance between the two. Action and exposition are doled out in the right amounts and at the right times. Backstory and information on the setting is doled out in optional reading materials scattered around the world The number of options available allow one to act out a certain persona, with the two extremes of the stealthy humanitarian who uses non-lethal force in every situation and the in-your-face action hero who murders everything in sight, and everything in between. It should be noted that the game prefers a deliberate and thoughtful approach to playing it. Even on lower difficulties, enemies are adept at aiming at your head and punishing you for recklessness.


The levels are ugly
And everyone looks the same
No game is perfect. Deus Ex is not an exception to this. Aside from outdated graphics, character models are often egregiously similar between very different people. The voice acting also leaves much to be desired, with some truly horrific accents for certain non-American characters. Faults with the gameplay include the aforementioned problems with certain items, skills, and augs being useless. For example, Swimming really is quite useless, as the number of ways to utilize water is limited. Another major problem is dumb AI. Enemies don't even react to freshly killed/knocked out enemies. They also don't mind if you practically fondle them before taking them out from behind. They are also a little eager to roll back alerts quickly. A bunch of enemies who rigged up a subway station to explode at the slightest glance of law enforcement didn't mind me shooting tranquilizer darts every minute or so at their heads until everyone was incapacitated.

Despite these faults, the game is extremely fun and replayable. I didn't expect to be so captivated by a 14-year old game. With the game quite cheap and being on sale every now and then, I'm surprised there are still FPS and RPG players who haven't played this 9/10 game.

Click to expand...

Oddly enough I literally just played Deus Ex for the first time recently (I finished it on Tuesday). I broadly agree with this review, you mentioned all the things I liked about the game, particularly the part about the number of ways to solve problems.

However I do feel the need to mention other things. The game is old, and you can feel it. Movement feels a bit awkward, especially jumping. I didn't mind the graphics themselves so much; there are HD texture mods which improve it a bit though the models are still the same. One of the first things I noticed is that the default controls are pretty bad but the keys can all be rebound and once I did so I had no problems with them.

Locational damage can be a bit wonky as well, with a baton attack to the lower back rendering immediate unconsciousness while a whack to the head will just do regular damage. The tranquilizer crossbow would be a lot more useless if the AI wasn't so quick to drop the alert, because to render an enemy unconscious with it requires either multiple bolts or a decent amount of time because the tranquilizer is not particularly fast, often giving them time to alert others or sound an alarm unless you fire multiple bolts.

I also hated cameras. When a camera spots you, it instantly locks onto you, its light turns red and it starts beeping. If you stay in its vision for too long it will sound an alarm. The beeping is rather annoying. It will continue in that mode for several seconds, then it will stop beeping, turn green again, and continue on its sweeping. If the camera is in a recessed position you won't really be able to check when the coast is clear, since the camera spots you immediately if you're in its field of vision. At times it spotted me when leaning out before I could even see the camera. That being said, ultimately the cameras are more an annoyance than a real danger and they can be disabled by either hacking a security system (but there's usually a few on any given level before you can really get to said system) or by expending multitools.

I have to reiterate that the AI really is not very good, and that enemies really pay zero attention to dead or unconscious comrades. Their cone of view is also narrower than you might initially suspect. You can be right in front of them and they won't notice if you're off to the side slightly.

If I had to give it a number rating I'd probably give it an 8/10.

The combat has aged very poorly, especially anything to do with ranged weapons. It is a very weird and poor aiming system with the way the crosshair and recoil act. It does force you to be quite deliberate though.

Amazing game aside from the combat and movement though.

Capsized

Capsized is a 2d platformer. You play a stranded astronaut on an alien world trying to get back home. The gameplay is physics based, your guy can jump up walls and all over the place and he has a kinetic grappling hook to get around with. You can basically use it like spider man and swing all over the place. You also use it to throw and pull objects around. There's also an array of weapons at your disposal should you find ammo for them. They are pretty varied. There's a machine gun type that has a secondary fire mode like a shot gun, there's a mortar that will blow you up if you aren't careful, and there's seeking missile like things called nano bots to name a few. The weapons are pretty cool.

In campaign mode you basically go through short levels trying to complete some objective, shooting up creatures and aliens along the way. It's definitely not ground breaking or anything, but the physics engine keeps it interesting. I mean you can jetpack all the way tot the top of a level and then grappling your way down blasting as you go. Pretty awesome. But it's very short lived. Levels are about 12 minutes and there's 12 of them. You do the math. I guess there's an arcade mode and co-op but I haven't tried them. I generally play games for single player only.

The graphics are all hand drawn and I found them appealing stylistically though I can't say they're really advanced. The music is really awesome, kind of space dramatic techno music. In all it's a fun game, but way too short. The first few levels I thought this is going to get old and repetitive really quickly, then finally the last few opened up and got way cooler and then the game was over, just as I felt it was hitting its stride. It's $10 on steam and gog. With the way games are discounted today and the options you have at that price I can't recommend it. If you get it for 75% off though, that's a decent buy. I think I got it as part of a humble bundle.

I do want to say I find it quite amazing that it was made by a team of 3 or 4 people. I think one guy drew all the graphics, one guy programmed the entire thing and one guy did music. It's like a 3-person garage band lol. Pretty impressive to me.

Gameplay: 6 - solid gameplay in theory but the level design left me wanting more
Music: 8 - I really liked the sound and music, personal preference maybe
Graphics: 7 - Really awesome but the environments are a bit ubiquitous
Overall: 65/100 - just not long enough, I really wanted to like this game and it has great potential, just needs more.

I kind of agree with your complaints, mainly that the game needed to be longer and have a bit more complex levels towards the ending. But the atmosphere and music really brought that game up. I would have given it a higher score myself.

The Wolf Among Us - Season 1

It's a point-and-click adventure game in the same vein as Telltale's earlier The Walking Dead series. Story-driven with quick-time events, dialogue choices and some old-school search-and-find for interaction. The choices you make influence the characters and the outcome of the game to some degree, but since I've only played it through once, I can't say for sure how much.
The whole first season is now done. 5 episodes released a few months apart, with each episode ranging between 1 to 2 hours to finish. In total 7 hours for me.
The story takes place in a world where fairy-tale creatures, fables, live among 'the mundies' - ordinary people. It's based on an American comic I didn't know existed, but I found the setting interesting and liked it more than The Walking Dead. You're the sheriff Bigby, the Big Bad Wolf, and there's a murdercase that needs to be solved. That's where it starts.
I got the game on sale for under 8€ on sale and I'm very much pleased with the game. It's not long, but it's pretty much all story and suitable interactive moments. The gameplay is as good as it get's in these kind of games. What makes this game great is the overall quality - in dialogue, graphics and sound. 7 hours of this quality is worth 23€ imo.

I recommend getting season 1 on sale.

Score at current Steam price 23€: 8.5/10

I'm back to review Deus Ex.

Didn't you do that already?

No, the other one.

Invisible War?

No, the other other one.


Before you say anything, I know its almost three years old at this point and most people have probably already bought it. Hell, I bought it as part of the Square Enix bundle like a year and a half ago. But due to backlogs that never see any progress and the fact my computer at the time was a toaster, I never really got around to playing it until recently.

So if you somehow haven't purchased it or you have, haven't played it, and are wondering whether its worth your time, well, this review is for you. Is it worth your time? Short answer: sure.

Long answer:

Much modernized. Some complaints I had with the original addressed by DEHR:

• Guards will actually react to unconscious and dead bodies.
• The tranquilizer gun isn't useless anymore.
• Cameras are less annoying to deal with.
• Guards' field of view is more in-line with what you would expect.

So that's great. Though at this point having them not dealt with would be more surprising than doing so. The game implemented a cover mechanic. While in cover, the camera switches to the third person. This is a quite significant change. It lets you look around cover or corners, without having to actually expose yourself. This makes it easier to check where patrolling guards are, or to see where cameras are looking. This makes stealthing it much easier. Another thing that makes it easier is the fact that the tranquilizer rifle is very effective. A well placed shot will drop an enemy almost immediately.

This makes it sound like stealthy runs are easier and more encouraged. And they are, for the most part. The tranquilizer rifle works great, though I don't know how effective the Stun Gun is. However, there is no longer any knockout melee weapon like the baton in the first game (the stun gun needs cartridges). Instead, you can perform lethal or non-lethal takedowns, which either knock out or kill an enemy after a short cut-scene (you will likely see these a lot). However, this fully consumes an energy cell. Fully depleted energy cells don't regenerate, unless its your last one. Depending on what augmentations you have, you will have between two and five energy cells. Fully depeleted energy cells will only regenerate by eating candy you find throughout levels (you cannot, sadly, purchase them from the abundant vending machines). This makes it a bit more difficult to run through a level, bashing people into unconsciousness as you go. There's a bit of downtime if they're too close together. Which is fine, as candy is relatively plentiful.

The big issue is that, unlike the original Deus Ex, you can no longer avoid boss fights. In the original, you could avoid them by various means; maybe you eliminate them in an earlier mission, maybe you learn some secret about them that skips the fight. Not so in Human Revolution. You have to straight up shoot them. So make sure you carry around a lethal weapon and ammo, because you will need it at points.

However, you also have regenerating health (which was a relatively energy-intensive augmentation in the first game). Locational damage on the player was removed as well; for example, a long fall will no longer break your legs and leave you crawling around. Instead you just take damage.

Continuing the flaws, I also don't much like how Human Revolution changed the augments and experience system. In the original, your augmentations were things you would find throughout the game, whether as rewards for missions, or by finding them through exploration. Medibots would then install them for you. Meanwhile, you'd get skill points (for exploration or achieving objectives) to spend on your skills, such as weapon and hacking/lockpicking proficiencies. In Human Revolution, these two are merged into one. You get experience, and for every 5000 experience points, you get a praxis point to spend (you will also get them as rewards or through exploration as well) unlocking or improving augmentations. Weapon proficiencies and lockpicking have been done away with entirely. Hacking is still present (and improved, its now an actual minigame rather than just watching a number tick down), but now its an upgradable augmentation. A lot of the augmentations are of dubious usefulness (though to be fair the same could be said about the ones in the first game). But while the original game pushed me to specialize, Human Revolution was all about being a generalist.

For the most part (mostly excepting the aforementioned boss fights), there are still different ways to achieve an objective. Go in guns blazing, sneak around security and checkpoints, hack security systems and go in that way, or something inbetween. Though since Adam Jensen has a ton of points to spend on augmentations, and is perfectly proficient with all firearms, it becomes less about finding a path that fits *you*, and more about finding the simplest way and then double-checking the other paths for things of value.



There's a gold filter over everything. At one point there was a section with what I presume was a small graphical glitch; stepping on one side of the doorway removed the filter briefly. And it was extremely noticeable. Other than that I don't have much problem with it. But I'm not really a big graphics guy. Even less of an audio guy.



So that's all well and good, you may say. But it it Deus Ex? And to a degree, I'd say it lives up to the legacy of the first. But it does have some big flaws. Some are gameplay problems (like the fact Adam Jensen feels like a generalist while JC Denton was a specialist). Others are story problems. I'll try to keep this spoiler-free, of course.

Simply put, the story isn't as engaging as the original's was. While the original had a wide array of groups, both fictional and "real", each operating, on some level, for or against each other. Human Revolution... doesn't have that. Human Revolution deals with one conspiracy. The vast majority of groups involved are entirely fictional. A good chunk of the game is more about corporate espionage than shadowy conspiracies fighting each other. You aren't jumping around dealing with different groups against a common foe. For the vast majority of the game, you work for the same people.

There are a couple plot twists, but for the most part I either saw them coming a ways away, or they ultimately had no real relevance.

Also some of you may have heard the ending is bad. It rather is. The whole last level doesn't really fit very well, and the four game endings are basically "push button, receive narration". The ending voice-overs don't explain anything, and there's no real closure to it. Even though the original was also lacking a bit in "what happens after", choosing an ending was at least more involved.

Long story short: I liked it. Mechanically its pretty solid. Story-wise its lacking.

Note that, again, I didn't play Director's Cut. Apparently it fixed at least one of the issues; the forced-lethal boss fights. But I haven't bought it (I did play Missing Link, which is integrated into the story in DC) and probably won't. It also apparently removes the gold filter and messes with the graphics, which some like and some don't. Either way the good outweighs the bad for the most part, and it is a fairly solid game.

Overall I'd give it a 7/10 according to ye olde scale laid out by Maniacal all those years ago.

Good review, I generally agree. I'll do a quick pro/cons list (I did not play the Director's Cut version or any DLC, and I finished the game back in December 2013):

PROS
+ Superb dialogue system. Basically, you try to manipulate people based on their personality. It also does a dialogue wheel thing, but if you hover your mouse over each option it shows you the full text of what Adam will say. It's near-perfect.
+ Good stealth mechanics. mech already covered this well.
+ Good graphically, nice UI.

CONS
- Boss fights were atrocious. I almost stopped playing because they were so bad.
- Story and characters were dull, plus the ending was lame.

Verdict: 7/10 - Good, but not great.

For the most part (mostly excepting the aforementioned boss fights), there are still different ways to achieve an objective. Go in guns blazing, sneak around security and checkpoints, hack security systems and go in that way, or something inbetween.

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I disagree, and think that the game pretty much forces you to go the stealth route (I don't think hacking is really distinct enough for its own category). If you go in guns blazing, you will die in five seconds.

Zack said:

I disagree, and think that the game pretty much forces you to go the stealth route (I don't think hacking is really distinct enough for its own category). If you go in guns blazing, you will die in five seconds.

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Well, I went in mostly stealthing it but every now and again I'd save and just sort of run through, shooting everything. While you do take a fair bit of damage, it regenerates on its own, and healing items are somewhat common. So while I agree its not really optimal, I do think it can work, though probably with a bit of downtime after each firefight for healing.

EDIT: That being said, you get more XP for neutralizing an enemy using non-lethal methods, and a bonus for not being seen during a mission. However, most augmentations won't be as useful if you're not going for stealth or subtlety, so you probably wouldn't really need the extra points.

Re: hacking and stealth, I meant in the "hack a locked door vs finding a way around it (i.e. vents)" way.

Might as well review some other games I completed recently.

-----

Alpha Protocol

Genre: RPG, Spy/Stealth
Release: 2010
Price: $15, but I bought it for something like $3
Length: ~17 hours



Tomb Raider

Genre: Action/Adventure, Uncharted clone
Release: 2013
Price: $20, but I bought it for $5
Length: ~11 hours



Spec Ops: The Line

Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Release: 2012
Price: $30, but I got it in the recent 2K Humble Bundle
Length: ~5/6 hours

Umm ... Uncharted is a Tomb Raider clone ...

Tomb Raider 1 was an amazing game at the time and I had great fun playing the refreshed "Anniversary" edition that upgraded graphics and level design a bit. But the other games following that one were all pretty much inferior to Tomb Raider 2013. Zack's a bit harsh on Tomb Raider 2013... It was a pretty good game, but it was a lot blander than it could have been... Like you say Cata, Uncharted was heavily inspired by Tomb Raider, but it included some of the elements of later Tomb Raider games in it. Then Tomb Raider 2013 goes and sort of copies its blander incarnations by copying the style of Uncharted... Newer Tomb Raider games might want to go back to what made the original game great: exploration of large mythical ruins, you felt really lonely and far in the depths of long forgotten places. Later Tomb Raider games were like "lol here have some human enemies and fight through their camp"... What? No!

The advice to play Spec Ops the Line on Easy is a good one. Combat was super bland and mostly an annoyance when trying to get to the meat of the game: the story. I should have played it on easy. As for Alpha Protocol, one of the most underrated games of the past decade. It sucks on many levels, yet you just keep coming back.

I guess I was just really underwhelmed with Tomb Raider after it got such rave reviews everywhere, so that might have negatively affected my enjoyment of the game. I don't regret purchasing or playing it, but I was pretty disappointed.

Zack said:

Spec Ops: The Line

Genre: Third-Person Shooter
Release: 2012
Price: $30, but I got it in the recent 2K Humble Bundle
Length: ~5/6 hours

Click to expand...

Spec Ops: The Line is a very tricky case. Simply put, this game is not fun. The game is not nice. But it is engaging as hell - probably one of the most gripping games I have ever played. The only thing that comes close to it in that regard is Shadow of the Colossus.

I could go on here, but Extra Credits has devoted two videos for this game alone - and they make the points much better than I could ever do it.
YouTube link to the first (story spoiler free) episode

I consider it to be the best "game" of 2012. A stellar achievement that shows that games can be more than just "fun". Is it worth 30$? Well... It depends. It is short and has not much replay value (although your knowledge from the first playthrough will let you see many things differently). If you are looking for a "game" that is different, you should certainly invest the money. But if you ever see it on sale, there is no reason NOT to get this game.

It's definitely not worth $30 when it goes on sale every steam seasonal sale for $7.50. Just wait on it.

Shadowrun Returns is an isometric RPG with tactical combat, set in the world of Shadowrun, a pen and paper RPG. You don't need to know a whole lot about it going in; I certainly didn't, though I've looked into it a lot more since.

The basics are that its the year 2054 and magic returned to the world. Along with magic are the standard fantasy races and such; there are elves, dwarves, orks, and trolls. These "metahumans", as they are called, live alongside regular humans in a cyberpunk dystopia. Several megacorporations have gained extraterritoriality, and in many places the corporation has replaced the state as the enactors of law and society.

You are a shadowrunner. In essence, a kind of mercenary who conducts various operations either for or against the corporations, as well as some other things.

Its an isometric RPG. You have your main character, and you will generally have 1-3 other shadowrunners working with you. Some are plot NPCs that will work with you for free, while others are professionals that require payment up front before going with you on a mission. There are a wide variety of shadowrunners for hire, of different classes and specialties, with some that are more better equipped or more potentially versatile commanding a higher price. It is therefore relatively easy to get teammates that complement your particular player character. While you can give them consumable items, you can't change any of their equipment; they're professionals, and their gear is theirs.

Character creation is not terribly detailed. You choose your gender and race, which determines what sort of portraits you'll have available. There are about twenty or so portraits per race/gender combination, though they usually come in "groups" of two or three. The ones in these groups are very similar and generally have a few different features, like tattoos, a different hairstyle, or some augmentation. This also sets the default appearance of your character model, though you are free to change your skin color, hair style, and hair color if you so choose. After that, you can choose your class, which determines where most of your starting points go; you will also recieve a few extra to invest as you wish. The options are Street Samurai, Mage, Decker, Shaman, Rigger, and Adept. However, any class can learn any ability, so the starting classes are really just pre-built characters; you can also choose to make a custom class, which starts everything at zero and gives you the points that all the other classes had pre-invested.

Most of the game revolves around a central hub (a bar), from which you get sent to various places to do your shadowrunning. Its not open-world, but there are plenty of NPCs that just sit there and make the world feel bigger than it really is. Background characters with their own motives and problems that exist solely to give the setting more depth.

Combat is tactical, on an isometric grid like the rest of the game. Its somewhat like XCOM's combat: you have two "action points", which you can spend to move around, use items, or attack. There's a much wider variety of weapons available though. There are several tiers of pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, SMGs, and melee weapons, as well as consumables like grenades. In addition, there are also spells, both offensive and defensive. There's a cover system much like XCOM's, though at times what qualifies as cover is a bit odd. There isn't a ton of combat in the early game, but it gets more common as you go.

There is a downside though. Not all skills and weapons are equally useful. "Decking", the ability to jack into and fight in the cyberspace realm called the Matrix, is not terribly useful. There are a handful of points where it unlocks a little bit of extra dialogue, but there aren't very many opportunities to jack in. There is a point in the story where you do need to, but if you lack the ability to, another character will go in and you'll control him. There's another point later on as well, but a decker is provided for you at a very low price. Most of the time they'll end up being fairly useless in your party. Melee weapons are also in general fairly terrible. Don't bring a knife to a gun and/or magic fight.

I'd also suggest turning the difficulty up. Particularly late game, you'll have gained so many points that you'll destroy enemies.


The environments are really nice and the character portraits are quite well-drawn. In addition, the music is actually pretty solid. Dunno what else I can note here.


Shadowrun Returns is a bit different from the standard game in the story aspect. In effect, when you buy Shadowrun Returns, you are buying a platform for a campaign. There is a campaign included, Dead Man's Switch, but the game supports the modding and design of your own campaigns, which can be distributed on the Steam Workshop. The Dragonfall DLC is an entirely separate campaign.

Dead Man's Switch is about a dozen hours long and is fairly solid. It is quite well written, with interesting characters and many flavorful dialogue options. It is, however, extremely linear. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but something to note if that's important to you. Though there's generally several different dialogue options in any interaction, they will all ultimately have the same effect. You're on a railroad, just one that gives you some opportunity to flesh out your character's personality through dialogue. There also aren't a whole lot of real sidequests; besides a few "pick up item X during story mission Y for money Z", there's also one real, optional sidequest later on.

The plot itself is relatively straightforward: an old friend of yours has died. Before that happened, he set up a contingency that would send you a message in the event of his death (a dead man's switch). In this message, he offers you a large sum of money in exchange for dealing with his killer, whether via lethal methods or through getting them thrown in jail. As you are currently very much down on your luck, you go on a mission to find those responsible and bring them to justice (whether street or legal). Its nothing really special, and rather predictable.

However, I stress that the dialogue is actually really well written, with relatively interesting characters, and its certainly an enjoyable experience. The world is full of minor NPCs that don't really do anything but make the world feel bigger than it is. Its not something that you really need to know much about the source material for, but I can't help but feel there were several references, particularly near the end, that I missed because of my lack of knowledge about the setting.

There's a DLC campaign, Dragonfall, which is supposed to be even better than Dead Man's Switch. I will likely be purchasing it when it drops in price during a sale. In addition, there's also several major campaigns available on the Workshop, some of which are also really well written and very highly recieved. I'm currently trying out some and am enjoying them.


In short, Shadowrun Returns is solidly written, has a nice artstyle, good but flawed combat mechanics, and hours and hours of additional content available freely. It may not be very long, but its not very expensive (particularly on sale), and all the workshop campaigns more than make up for it. Being a fan of the setting will likely make you enjoy it even more, but it is by no means a requirement.


Overall I'd give it a 7.5/10.

GAGA Extrem said:

Spec Ops: The Line is a very tricky case. Simply put, this game is not fun. The game is not nice. But it is engaging as hell - probably one of the most gripping games I have ever played. The only thing that comes close to it in that regard is Shadow of the Colossus.

I could go on here, but Extra Credits has devoted two videos for this game alone - and they make the points much better than I could ever do it.
YouTube link to the first (story spoiler free) episode

Click to expand...

Who ever said games have to be fun?

They don't, but it helps.

Revenge of the Titans

Revenge of the Titans is a retro style tower defense game. You build refineries to extract money from crystal deposits and use this money to play gun towers and other types that kill waves of titans- aliens intent on destroying Earth. Levels are small and concise, taking about 3 minutes to complete. The game is further divided up into stages on different planets, about 10 missions per planet, at the end of which is a pretty tough boss. At the end of each level you get a research point to spend on a gigantic tech tree, unlocking more weapon towers and enhancements for your existing towers.

Pretty simple stuff and it doesn't really bring anything new or unique to the tower defense genre. What is a little different about this game though is your money and research persists through the entire game on completed missions (failed missions you just replay). So if you finish mission 2 and mine $5000 more than you spend on towers that will help you immensely in the missions to come. The problem is missions in the beginning are extremely easy, while later ones suck. You don't realize oh hey this easy missions I need to build the bare minimum of towers to win or this one ten missions later will be too hard.

Also there isn't enough info on the research paths available. I guess you can wiki it online but in game help would be much better or just far more extensive tooltips. Like I can tell that this alien psychology is a prerequisite to some special weapon types but it also gives all my guns +1 dmg vs titans, which I had no idea until I researched it. Also some enemies can't be hurt by certain gun types cus they aren't strong enough to penetrate their armor or able to lock on to them or whatever but you only get warning of this like one mission ahead of time and the gun you need to damage them might be four research points away, basically making completing the mission impossible. You can respec but it costs one research point to do so so that's a waste cus you desperately need them all. In the end you will probably end up going back and replaying certain missions to get to the place you need to be in the tech tree.

The retro graphics are cool but the titan's all look too similar. It's very hard to tell which ones do what cus they're all black blobs. It would've been nice if they were in color or had more detail. Otherwise I really like the "cutscenes" between missions where you general and scientist dudes talk to you. In all it has a good flavor but isn't 100% practical.

Also I found the tower types to be bland. There isn't that much rock-paper-scissors going on like usual tower defense, there just isn't that much variety to the towers. There maybe could have been but your towers have limited ammo and must reload and they auto fire at nearest enemies. It would've been really great to put a huge gun at the back of your towers and have it wait for a big enemy to fire on them but instead it always wastes all its ammo on little guys, then is busy reloading when big dude shows up. So in the end it seems better just to build a bunch of smaller guns. Also there's a rocket launcher gun which is amazing but causes collateral damage to your own guns so it's impossible to use. It will shoot titans right next to your buildings and blow everything up. A shame. In the end you won't use that many tower types.

Overall the game is hard. And I am fine with that except I don't feel the game gives you the tools to rise to the challenge. Not enough info on the research, limited tower design and you kind of have to snowball early success here to win. I guess that's fine if you want to go back and replay levels but I got bored doing so.

It's not a long game, probably takes about 4 hours, and not worth the full $9.99 it usually costs but I got it on sale in a package with 3 other Puppy games so I think it was worth it. Metacritic has it at 79, I think that's a bit too high.

68/100 for me, enjoyable but not great.

Summary:
Pros- cool style, easy to pickup, good genre that's well executed
Cons- not enough variety in everything, towers, levels, enemies, one mistake on early missions will screw up your whole campaign