Games: Rate and Discuss

Prey: 8/10

Great game and I now know why people said it was the precursor to Portal. Heck, even the portals in Prey had the same blue and yellow colours as those in Portal. Very crafty use of the Doom3 engine and tbh, it's the game Doom3 wanted to be. Too bad it was so easy thanks to the default god mode as dying had no consequence, so there was little incentive to put forth much effort into actually trying.

Story was decent and the alien spaceship 'Sphere' was awesome. Good soundtrack too. Blue Oyster Cult's 'Don't Fear the Reaper' kicks ass, but I only wish the soundtrack was more accessible and not just in parts of the game.

Minus a few points for the disappointing end-boss fight though and the cliffhanger ending.
 
BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM 9/10

Fun gameplay, and a good but not excellent storyline. I had tons of fun in the campaign and the challenge mode. This is one of the games that actually surprised me. But I've got a question about the ending.

In the ending, at first I got Bane's hand reaching for the Titan case. On the second playthrough it was Killer Croc. What does it mean ?
 
It's a random selection of 3 characters, you get either bane, killer croc or scarecrow. I got killer croc twice so I wasn't even aware of this until recently.
 
Batman Arkham Asylum > Good storyline (?) > Cocky eyebrow raise
 
?ynast? said:
Modern Warfare 2...aka Modern Warfare 2 Online - 7/10

I hated the hype. GOTY for the multiplayer? WoW wouldve won GOTY over and over for that.

Singleplayer is...far too short, wasnt linked well enough and didnt feel as good as MW. Although I liked the new weapons.

Multiplayer is the same as MW with new perks...weapons and...maps..so its a big patch. And there are too many hackers, expoliters and people so good at the game seeing as they have no lives and play nothing but, so I cant be arsed to go online anymore.

Spec Ops is good though, very addictive.

This game is basically ALL about Spec Ops multiplayer...and multiplayer. For that, I cant like it as much as everyone else. It might as well just be a multiplayer game, they wasted time doing the singleplayer. You'll play it once, then never again. There arent any missions that made me think 'I want to play that again so badly'..ala Pripyat in MW.

.
Click to expand...

I'd say this is a fair review. I enjoyed the single player a lot, but as you said there is hardly any replay value in it. Multiplayer is fun but I am already starting to get bored with it, I think this is mainly due to the maps being appalling compared to MW. I haven't tried the spec ops.
 
Batman: Arkham Asylum - 8/10

Whereas I thought it started off really slow, I felt it just kept getting better and better as it went on. Decent plot line counter balanced by some impressive action sequences (once you know what you are doing).

Riddler challenges and finding trophies is a lot of fun. Voice acting for the Joker was great but thought Batman's was awful, and I felt the lip syncing was rather sloppy at times. I felt most of the villains were very well done, I loved the Scarecrow bits. I absolutely loved that Batman gets more and more battered as the game goes on, noticing more scratches over his suit, and even growing stubble around his mouth, very cool touch.

Also I disagree with comments of people who said its too easy, I felt the difficulty factor was well balanced, I was dreading with a game like this, that it would have tear your hair out moments, but because the boss fights were achievable, then it would only take a few goes to nail it. I hate the games where it takes about 20 tries just to do one section.

Overall, I had a great time playing it and can't really pick out any major flaws in it all. Good show.
 
There was only one thing that annoyed me about Batman Arkham Asylum.

Getting that perfectly flowing combo where you use every move in the game is an absolute ***ch to get!

If you hesitate even for a micro second to think about what moves youve already done in the challenge room so far, you lose the combo. You need to be a zen master or have someone ticking off and shouting out what move youve done and what you need to do next.

But then thats me being a bit of an achievement whore.

The fact that theyre making a sequel is great, they can do nothing but improve on an already great game.

It SHOULD be epic.
 
I agree, and yeh I am also planning on raking in the achievements, its an unhealthy obsession of mine lol.
 
Modern Warfare 2 Online - 3/10

WOW. This game is complete ****ing ass. Bullshit circle jerk describes this perfectly. Maps are so poorly designed, too many rooms, corners, chokepoints, camping spots that it's impossible to check them all, then you get killed 90% of the time by something you didn't see and had no chance to fight back against. Weapon balance is dogshit and contributes to the bullshit circle jerk. This is one big "who sees who first" game of tag. I'm glad I found this dirt cheap because $60 would have been throwing your money away.
 
Yeah I'm pretty bored of MW2 now mainly because the maps are just rubbish.

Dirt 2 - 8/10

Excellent driving mechanics, beautiful graphics and speed that can be shattering at times, especially in the cockpit view. The driving can be VERY competitive and difficult at times, especially on the higher difficulties. There is a nice, chunky single player with a good variety racing styles as well as a nice collection of cars. The menu system is one of the best I have seen on a game, and the game soundtrack is very cool.

I did find a minor flaw, but could just be me, but I found that driving all the cars, I couldn't really find much differences in many, only hints at maybe a bit faster, or higher acceleration, like I said could just be me.

However onto the MASSIVE flaw of the game, unfortunately, its the multiplayer. Unless you are doing the timed rally racing singlular, then its a complete waste of time. Doesn't matter how good your driving is, there is ALWAYS someone there who is a master of it and just shoots off ahead, while the rest of you are trying to merely turn a corner without crashing into each other. Everything just goes out of the window, you are merely brushed by another car and you just fly off into a spin, or you try and brake to hit a corner and another car slams into your behind sending you tippling over. The bloody GTA 4 multiplayer racing was more doable than this, and at least on that if you did spin off you could just go backwards along the track and try and make other drivers crash (especially hilarious when on bikes).

So yeh an amazing single player let down by a pointless multiplayer, its not the games fault, just the drivers. You can drive like a lunatic in single player and still get away with it most of the time, but when you throwing all of them in one race then its just mayhem and it doesn't become a race anymore. Shame.
 
Space Shuttle Mission 2007: 8/10
SSM07 is a game with a bit of a learning curve, but a lot of fun. Graphics were good, but they could have been better. It requires a fairly powerful computer to run, but recent patches make sure the game runs at real time, regardless of the FPS. It started off with about 10 missions included, but they have added many more in patches. I admire how they made the operations and procedures as accurate and realistic as possible, with only minor errors that the average Joe won't even notice. The sound set is good, only thing I don't like is the voices. To reduce the number of sound files an dsave disk space, they record snippets of various lines and assemble them in game, creating somewhat robotic voices.
All in all, a good game.
http://www.space-shuttle-mission.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNkqOhGuXM
 
Wait, Flight Sim for a space shuttle?! \= Sounds a little too....boring...lol
 
Well it was decent, which in my dictionary isn't good, it was just acceptable, I mean its not Batman Begins or Dark Knight.
 
But better than Hush. I read that on the recomendation of a Batman obsessed friend and was shocked at how comically poor it was!

Batman are stories are hit and miss - at least with AA we got kick ass superhero combat.
 
I thought B:AA was a very polished game, however I found the Boss fights to be fairly frustrating at times and a bit repetitive (yay another titan fight....:| ), and also mutant Joker was pretty shit.
 
The titan fights were pretty awesome I found, as long you knew how to make it awesome, by connecting all your combos and just bouncing between at the enemies, and then jumping on the titans back to continue the combo, I think I maxed about a combo mixture of 51 on one of the combat challenges. Probably one of the best hand to hand combat mechanics I have encountered in recent years, its so bad ass and satisfying.
 
CyberPitz said:
Wait, Flight Sim for a space shuttle?! \= Sounds a little too....boring...lol
Click to expand...

Not really. WHen you consider that everything they do in the game has been done in real life by real people, it's kinda cool.
 
Borderlands:

more like boringlands amirite :p

*dodges thrown tomatoes*

ok i promise i won't do that again :|

seriously though IMO this game is just simply a boring, dull, repetitive grind. I've only played a few hours so far but I don't want to play anymore, it's just boring!

-It's too simple an fps to be a good fps
-It's too simple of an rpg to be a good rpg
-There is NO story AT ALL. To be fair I though at first the characters made up for this cos they are quite humourous and claptrap is adorable in a strange tongue-in-cheek wall-e kind of way. But that didn't hold much water when I realised that every character repeats their lines or jokes very often. Again I didn't play it that long remember and its already repeating jokes >_>
-All the missions seem to be the same. All of the missions have consisted of:

talk to person
kill x number of things/collect x number of items/kill 1 specific enemy/pull switch/buy something
return to person for reward and next mission

Why do I need to return to them? I don't need to do that crap in a game like GTA to collect my cash for finishing a level so why should I do it here? Also if the missions simply ran on from one another then its possible that the exposition would at least involve more than simple text boxes and COULD actually lead to (shock horror) a ****ING STORY!! It all gets very dull and monotonous very quickly with nothing shaking up the foundations of whats involved.

I then got to a point where when close to giving up I was told that both missions available to me where recommended for level 10+ but I was lvl 7. After all that guff I am not sitting round arbitrarily levelling up 3 more levels just to continue more grind :hmph:

*ejects disc and puts on ebay*

Some of my complaints may seem typical behaviour of many rpgs in general however I'm sure but this is why I don't like RPGs much :p I'm going to play dragon age at least I've been enjoying that one so far >_> Also I have heard this game is better in co-op but I am not a big MP guy in general and so don't really want to play a mode I dont typically enjoy to maybe slightly improve a game I don't want to play :|
 
Beyond Good and Evil 9/10

There are so few games that do something this well, it's really breathtaking when you find one that does. It's similar to Uncharted in that it takes virtually element of third person adventure games in history and puts them into one game, but it's different in that it doesn't feel forced and clumsy. Gameplay elements naturally evolve into each other and it never feels like it's forcing you to do everything at once or one thing all the time. The characters are simple and likeable but still manage to keep your interest throughout a game with ulitmately, a very simple plot. Which is the other awesome thing, a plot in which records of corruption and journalism inspire a revolution, rather than a small cast of characters taking the entire conflict into their hands. At times the open-ness can be frustrating, because it does tend to leave you out there without many hints. I spent several hours searching for pearls to buy a piece of an engine that was right next to my ship. Yeah, I should've looked, but come on, ****ing tell me. The game looks fantastic, and the world and style are remarkably unique and gorgeous. Really can't recommend this enough.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 3.5/10

I really don't know what to say. This is possibly the most polished game I've ever played, but there's nothing underneath that polish. A bunch of missions that are barely connected with GETTING THAT BAD GUY or something, all around the world. It's funny that people buy this because it's a "realistic simulation of warfare bro", but it's essentially a first person perspective Micheal Bay movie. The enormous scale of the events make your efforts seem pathetic and trivial, the random globe hopping makes it seem disconnected and random. The gameplay remains what it always has been, run to cover, shoot, run to cover, call in an airstrike or some shit, with gimmicky shit thrown in. It's sad, because though CoD 4 was still mediocre as shit, it had something to it. There was a strong atmosphere to a lot of the levels, a gritty and dark background, but there's none of that here. Sprinting through American suburbs from pink house to green I feel more like I'm in Bad Boys than a war. Call of Duty needs to turn back to what made the original so great, a strong and believable portrayal of one man's time spent at war.

And the MP sucks.
 
I have started it but only played a little so far. It started off quite slow and nothing much has happened yet so I decided to just continue with dragon age for now.
 
Condemned:

Borrowed this from my bro couple of days ago just to try it out but I'm a little disappointed. I only played alittle but strangely both a combination of bricking myself and meh feelings left me abit in the cold with this one. I will say this game is really quite unnerving, it REALLY is. I'm just not sure if it's for the right reasons :|

The fundamental reasoning behind this being a successfully scary game is its ambience: you move slowly, its very quiet and you always get slight glimpses of your enemies before they run away; effectively taunting you. The enemies especially made this quite scary for me but this is because of the games faults for me: they are way too powerful.

The combat is quite clunky and the controls quite delayed. Mastering melee means mastering blocking which more of a timing thing rather than holding in a button; if you hold in the block button you only lift your weapon once and then drop it back down. Enemies frequently pop out of nowhere in a doom 3 style manner (but actually surprising you) and then half your health is gone. If you confront more than one enemy at a time then pray. The other big problem I had really was its very easy to get lost because everything looks the same. Again this made the game quite unnerving but for the wrong reasons.

I had similar problems with silent hill games (but I do still need to play sh2 after all everyone says thats amazing) but I feel like I'm stuck in a difficult position: it's nearly the same as criticising ninja gaiden for being hard partly because of the camera when ninja gaiden is supposed to be hard :|

PS: is it just me or do the characters look kinda freaky? the proportions of their bodies look a bit odd. Plus

the FBI seem awfully quick to want to get rid of your ass and that old guy knows way too much aswell o_O
 
That new Silent Hill Game:


1. Extremely short, disappointingly so. Shorter than Portal, even. I think this game is wider than it is long.

2. Good story, fairly impressive twists and turns, reminded me of an M.Night Shalyman film.

3. Good puzzles, some were a bit too hard and random, others way too easy. Reminded me of Myst.

4. Poor action, difficult to control in these sequences, all the sequences are the same, and pretty boring.

So overall I'll give it maybe a 6.5/10
 
AHA-Lambda said:
. Mastering melee means mastering blocking which more of a timing thing rather than holding in a button; if you hold in the block button you only lift your weapon once and then drop it back down.
Click to expand...

That's a good thing. Otherwise you'd just walk around holding the block button all the time if it was a constant blocking stance. That wouldn't be much fun now. Never found Condemned that hard at all. Use your tazer if you suck.
 
I do understand that but its much harder I found because I felt the controls were noticeably delayed
 
theotherguy said:
That new Silent Hill Game:


1. Extremely short, disappointingly so. Shorter than Portal, even. I think this game is wider than it is long.

2. Good story, fairly impressive twists and turns, reminded me of an M.Night Shalyman film.

3. Good puzzles, some were a bit too hard and random, others way too easy. Reminded me of Myst.

4. Poor action, difficult to control in these sequences, all the sequences are the same, and pretty boring.

So overall I'll give it maybe a 6.5/10
Click to expand...

Is this the Wii game?
 
Rome: Total War

Just got this on Steam earlier this week. Yes, I realize how old this game is.

This is one of those games where I'll probably need to read the manual. Right now, I don't quite understand the city management. A couple of my cities are at negative revenue and I have absolutely no idea how to remedy it. Also, within the first 10 or 15 turns, I've somehow managed to become the most hated leader in Rome, even though all of my towns are currently at the highest possible happiness level.

Battles are also pretty iffy and frustrating at this point. I have trouble controlling large numbers of troops since there's no way to really keep multiple groups in formation (or at least I haven't figured it out yet). I actually tend to do better when I have fewer people to control which is kinda crazy. Right now the only "strategy" I have is to split off small sections of the enemy army, then move my guys around to surround them and rush at them from all sides, which tends to make the enemy panic. It's pretty retarded. I also get frustrated that battles take 40 to 50 minutes to finish, and it's impossible to save your game mid-battle. I don't have that much time!

[edit] Just now downloaded the manual for this game via Steam. It's 80 pages long. Crap.
 
theotherguy said:
Yes.

Actually, its much more enjoyable than I first imagined. Every playthrough is different. Like, different characters and everything.
Click to expand...

That's good to hear, I'd been looking forward to it and I value HL2.net's opinion.
 
Theme Hospital - 8/10

Found it for 4 quid so picked it up. Its a hell of a lot of fun, and considering its a game made in 1997 its very cleverly made, and miles better than a lot of games around today. However like most of the 'Theme..' based games, the novelty does wear off after bit, once you get around to 5th hospital. Not to mention, I hate the fact that you are at the Hall of Fame list, but for some reason you still loose, and then it doesn't even tell you why you had lost, so you have no idea what you were doing wrong. Its a great game to play just to waste a bit of time here and there, but playing it full on all the way through, it does get a little boring and annoying after a while.

Civilization 4 (plus add ons) - 6/10

I used to love Civilisation when it first came out, remember playing the first one on the Playstation for hours on end. I think I may have gone off it, either that, or the game is just average. For a start, diplomacy rarely seems to work, you ask an ally to declare war on someone, they agree, and then they don't do anything.

Plus if someone declares war on you, most of the time you are completely ****ed, because, especially with the add ons, the enemy blocks about a million different units into one and just throws them at your city, I just fail to see how they could create so many units in that amount of time.

Also I seem to start a game and within about an hour we are already approaching the medievil era, and thats with the time limits thing set to as high as it can go, which is meant to 'perceive' that you are playing for longer, which it doesn't. I do however, love the micromanagement, and the research aspects, but the combat just lets it down, you have to spend about an hour just build a sizable army to do any damage to anyone because every other bugger seems to have about 2x more people in their cities than you do, I'd rather be able to build up a sizable army with around 10 minutes max. And then after all the building, all you get is the same animations, and its just one huge anti-climax.

Now I do think its because I just don't like this type of game anymore, I prefer more control over what I'm doing, I mean if you can stay at peace with everyone (which basically never happens) then it could be good, because the research and then going for the Space Race win is pretty cool, but then apart of you wants to fight people, but I just know how bloody tedious it is, so I just don't bother. The lack of actual mission based sceneries means that all you really are doing is just skirmishes on different maps, which at the end of the day look the same anyway.

Overall it just really doesn't work for me at all.
 
I've been playing a lot of Civ IV again recently since I just bought Beyond the Sword, and I would rate it much higher. I really like the addition of corporations as I am a mostly peaceful player (love me my cultural wins), and there's some cool new leaders and units too.

Frankly, it sounds like you just don't like it because you're terrible. :p Some of those comments don't even make sense. Of course people are going to attack you if they see you're weak... they didn't just build those units after they declared war; they already had them. Still, it is possible to create a large army really fast by rushing your production with slavery and universal suffrage (or just by focusing your cities on hammers).
 
Yes I agree it may because I'm rubbish at it, but come on, I've been attacked by blocks of about 20 different units, only for another block to arrive two turns after that one, I mean I would at least a chance to defend my cities lol.

Does it mean I have to dedicate about half my time in making a MASSIVE military presence because if one of my nearby civilizations get a bit stroppy with me? And its never because they think I'm weak, its because I open trade negotiations with everyone and then some of them go to war with each other and then demand that i cease contact with one of them, which in turn angers the other so that end up declaring war on me too. There is just no escaping it sometimes.

I am honestly determined for it to be good, but I think it will be as a cultural and peaceful player like yourself. But the time limit criticism does make sense, I feel the game progresses too quickly, I mean the rate I play I'd probably be reaching 2050 within two hours of play :/
 
Batman Arkham Asylum 9/10

Bam! Pow! Shazam! this game has it all. stealth, combat, puzzles, action, awesome cut-scenes, Harley Quinn and of course Joker starred by Mark Hamil and other awesome voice overs. I really liked how much variety there was in the game and can also say as many others have pointed out that this was the best super hero game i have ever played. the sound effects were great, the atmosphere was good, and all around fun time. I really haven't had this much fun with an action game in ages.

can't wait for the sequel
 
AHA-Lambda said:
I do understand that but its much harder I found because I felt the controls were noticeably delayed
Click to expand...

Don't know why you say that, it's instant. There's a delay to block if you haven't finished your attack move, or if your body is recoiling from being struck, which obviously makes a lot of sense.

You can probably turn the ambient sound down if you find it unnerving.

Also, you can often get the enemies to fight each other. If one swings at you and hits the other enemy, they will get into it.
 
VirusType2 said:
Don't know why you say that, it's instant. There's a delay to block if you haven't finished your attack move, or if your body is recoiling from being struck, which obviously makes a lot of sense.

You can probably turn the ambient sound down if you find it unnerving.

Also, you can often get the enemies to fight each other. If one swings at you and hits the other enemy, they will get into it.
Click to expand...

Oh....now that you've said those 3 things I met have to try it again now :|
 
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