Game review

Completed various games I received for Christmas :

Red Faction:Armageddon
Much better than the previous version - there is no slowdown when you start destroying buildings in this now.
According to Steam, it took me a total of 12 hours to complete the game (including a quick break to play the Infection mode).
Graphics are rather good

It was also the most unstable game in this lists, crashing to the desktop around 5 times - all on the later levels too...

Bionic Commando
Pretend to be Spiderman without paying out hefty royalties to Marvel Comics! Graphics are good too.
Gameplay is again, linear with little room for exploration. What is annoying about this is the checkpoints are some distance between each other, so if you fail you generally have to do a complete section again - from the start.

I completed this on the 29th December...

Oh, and it crashed once. I also haven't bothered trying the multiplayer mode.

TimeShift
A rather good FPS featuring the ability to muck around with time (although Paradoxes aren't allowed)...
Considering the age, the graphics are very good if a little boxy and shiney.
Some of the time related puzzles are a little obscure but fortunately there aren't too many of them (not a fan of puzzles in FPS anyway).

Had to use compatibility mode in Windows 7 to get this to run.

Was the most stable of the games, not crashing once. Again, I completed this on the 29th.

Edited by deleted (Fri 30-Dec-11 13:51:24)

Crysis 2
Just completed this game a few minutes before typing this
The graphics were lovely and it was certainly challenging in a few parts. The story made no real sense...

Bioshock (PC w/ Xbox 360 controller, difficulty Hard)
Rather enjoyed this retro looking and well stylised corridor shooter with rpg elements game. Good story to lead you along with plenty of background provided for exploring. (with hindsight, 2011 has been absolute carp for games, I can't even drum up enough motivation to fire up Skyrim, just seems rather dull)

Bioshock 2 (PC w/ kb+m, difficulty Hard)
Don't bother with this cheap cash in, game crashed on me after 2 hours of not saving, game had already turned into a chore and I quickly swapped the difficulty down to easy. Finished and can see why it got a lot of stick. Why does it even have a MP for?

Yes, 2011 was poor, and 2012 isn't much better with Max Payne 3 being the only interesting game...

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

Yes, 2011 was poor, and 2012 isn't much better with Max Payne 3 being the only interesting game...

Seriously?!

GTA V, Hitman, plus I've heard a new Fallout rumour.

Max Payne isnt the only thing coming out of 2012!

Yes, but nothing else interests me - GTA V will be the same as IV and III... Never played a Hitman game and dont intend to start now...

There will be plenty of decent games coming in 2012 and the Last Guardian been one on my hit list along with the new Max Payne and Bioshock.........Then we start all over again and get another Cod game end of the year.

Dont be surprised to see a new Playstation and Xbox because there is no way both Sony and Microsoft are going to give Nintendo a lead with there new announced console shipping later this year

The hitman game I played was good (maybe codename 47). You should look into them.

And GTA V being an update on IV/San Andreas etc is no bad thing

It is if the previous versions aren't that good... The vehicle controls in IV are poor (worse that in III), but the whole genre is rather bland and boring...

StarCraft II
Certainly a great game, and for the most part was exceedingly tricky (some levels took a day to complete). Completed it today...

Lovely graphics too

Edited by deleted (Sun 08-Jan-12 00:04:22)

Did you go for all the achievements too? I can't help it, if I spot a ridiculous achievement, I still try for it on the first go.

No, don't usually bother with Achievements...

I enjoy em, adds to the excitement like the level where you have to mine the terazine, and the achievement is to play on hard without letting the protoss seal the gas.

I got quite a few of the achievements but some of them were taking the [censored]. Or perhaps I am just not very good

Yea I agree, I am all about the achievements, although I love gaming anyway achievements just make me go out my way to play differently / better etc. and it's a bit of competition with the mates

In game achievements are great they give you something to try and an excuse to take the mickey out of your mates but the ranking systems are BS they only show how long you've been playing the game. Any idiot can become prestige if they play for long enough. :/

Yea, I know in BF2 the higher ranks had things like plane kills requirements as well as points earned which made it harder (think you could get to Lt.Col before it became and issue).

Rank in BF3 does to a certain extent indicate time played but SPM obviously impacts on that - there are people in my clan who have played more and are a lower rank than me. But then SPM can vary not just through ability but through game modes - TDM players should have a higher SPM really etc. etc. I do keep an eye on my own stats but I don't pay too much attention to leaderboards of any description.

I never used to care about ranks at all until my mate decided to try and beat me and then it became a race
I'm now prestige 1 and 177,000 away from 2 where as he has only just got to prestige. And my SPM is higher than his hehe
But now the race is won I don't have to look at scores any more and just play more for fun

I feel that achievements are an unwanted and unneeded console addition to PC gaming. Do they grant any extra weapons or any other extra ? Usually no - all you get is a fancy bit of text...

It's just bragging rights really, some achievements are pointless like playing for so many hours etc. but the tougher achievements if you have them and your friends don't it's great. Maybe it is a bit pointless on the PC, I remember getting Mile High Club on Call of Duty on the Xbox and it took me a fair while and was the first of my friends to get it.

I wouldn't know what came first. Games like BF2 had medals and ribbons I would guess pre 360/ps3 being released and they are basically achievements. I can understand why people don't like them but then they can be ignored - I know plenty of people who love them and will go to great lengths to get them.

Now completed Dead Island...

That was a great game, with three annoying problems : The Lab bug, the 7 second re-start timer and cooperatve play - didn't like that at all...

And the last one for q while :

Metro 2033

This is a weird game in many ways. First it's based on a Russian book, and whilst I like "survival horror" post-apocalyptic fantasy FPS games as much as the next, this doesn't really make much of former, and the latter is quite standard, with the only difference being the acute shortage of ammo (which also makes buy any upgraded weapons a bit tricky too).

All baddies/enemies takes many, many rounds to kill (according to game's story its due to the lack of military grade ammo), which does get annoying - for the really tough monster I just avoided them...

The ending is good - finally a FPS with no need for a end-of-game showdown.

The game itself is clearly a console port - you do need to use a joystick for a lot of actions, even though the standard PC control fare is mouse and keyboard - you can't even get to the main menu without needing to press a joystick button. This process lets the game down pretty badly.

The "horror" part is totally under-used - you occasionally meet some "anomalies" and killer shadows (why they can kill you isn't explained), which is quite unsettling, but nothing is really made of it...

You should look into Metro: Last Light. Should be good I reckon

Couldn't really be worse

Just completed R.U.S.E

That was one tough game (just as hard on multi-player, but that is verging on "unauthorised"). The last few missions I had to re-start numerous times...

Graphics are pretty good, although the game can crash with, whilst not regularity, it does happen more than once...

Yea, I enjoyed RUSE. The last couple of missions were indeed hard. I enjoyed playing 4v4 skirmish maps when it came out but the problem is that the strategies used get so refined that after a while only the best players can play online. My top tip for playing any strategy game online is to get it on release and get playing whilst the good bad and ugly players are still there!

Actually, since playing it again, it has grown more on me... The Last Light train battle looks good.

Whilst I didn't receive it for Christmas, I did get Star Wars : The Force Unleased II for my birthday.

Haven't played a Star Wars game since Jedi Academy, I had heard rather unflattering reviews about this, but I found it great.

It does have performance issues - at least until I disabled anti-aliasing settings in the nVidia control panel and reset the machine (changing values in the game didn't work - at one point I even tried 800x600, and just changing control panel values didn't work).

There are a few silly platforming sections (especially near the end), and with a large distance between save points, if you make a mistake it can get annoying...

The game also expects you to use a control pad - although there are keyboard/mouse controls, it wouldn't accept that (unless, I presume the joypad was unplugged).

The ending was a slight anti-climax - Darth Vader (or Darthy as he is known down at the local Working Man's Sith Club), just really parries your attacks and very rather attacks himself. I was expecting a grandiose light-sabre battle myself, but there you go...

Finished the penultimate Christmas game now (Command And Conquer 4). It was okay - it was nice having no need to gather resources, however the low population caps was rather annoying, especially as you need to play online to increase it).

Graphics are good. It is quite hard though on Medium, so I downgraded to Easy...

And the last Christmas game ([u[Red Alert 3[/u]) has now been completed.(whilst I haven't mentioned StreetFighter 4, that is more of a casual game).

Red Alert 3 was probably a lot hard than Starcraft 2 - taking hours to get past a section of a level...

Lovely graphics, good music and featuring scantly clad women in the cut-scenes...

[insert balance issue argument here]

Really? I found Red Alert 3 easier (from memory) than SC2. Movies were ok, started wearing thin though half way through. Wasn't a scratch on RA2 though.

Yea I can't remember anything too hard from RA3 but as you say RA2 was better.

I tend to go for quite difficult settings on these games anyway but I seem to remember that on my first play through of SC2 I had to drop the difficulty about half way through but then on 2nd play through kept it going.

I'm trying to do it in Brutal, soo tough, need to keep high apm and build order must be perfect.

Never played Red Alert 2 - the first C&C game I played was Generals...

A now comppleted the final game Star Wars : Force Unleased I

I got this as I received the second one for my birthday and enjoyed it so much I decided to get the first one. Its not as good as the sequel (camera-itis is all too prevelent), and the cut scene animation could be better, but its not bad at all.

Fighting against Obi-Wan and Luke Skywalker was good. They were nothing against my powers though!

Edited by deleted (Fri 10-Feb-12 19:54:49)