Brutal Legend

8/10

The best and most original game I played in a long time now. This metal themed sandbox/ RTS/Brawler is amazing but hard to describe. There's a big campaign , in a somewhat open world where you beat all kind of metal inspired things and fight in epic battles "concerts" which play more like a RTS game. The art style is amazing, the music is amazing, story is great.

Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death

6.5/10

I bought the game a long time ago, at time when I could not resist buying games below 5 dollar on Steam. I never played the game for a long time: I checked the reviews soon after, they were very bad. Its been more than 10 years since the game was release now. How was it? I think its good.

Its a first person shooter(FPS) with a linear campaigns, challenges, and coop/versus multiplayer. I think it compare quite well to other games released in the same period(But reviewers at the time did not seem to agree). If you can enjoy simple first person shooters I think you can enjoy this game.

My complains are: On PC the jump button does not seem to work all the time, the game is short and the bosses are sometimes stupid.

Battle Heart Legacy

6.5/10

Battle Heart Legacy is a fun little action RPG game. The game has basic 3d graphics but the art style is good for a mobile device. You control your character by taping on the screen, which works fine *most* of the times. The game has random encounter which are insignificant most of the time.

The game has an interesting stats and class system where you can unlock the abilities of the different classes by allocating stats (Strength, Dex, ...) on the character sheet. However you still need a trainer to learn the skill, some trainers can die in the story if you don't help them. I suggest you avoid Bard and Paladin because charisma sucks. It might be worth it if you want to play a very long time however as the bard has a passive skill which lowers the requirements for learning skills from the other classes.

Also, even if I had a rather thought paladin/fighter character, the final boss had a melee aeo attack which would one-shot me. Because of the controls and path finding my character would sometimes not be able get out in time. This was quite frustrating, as the final boss has a rather long monologue which is replayed every-time you want to figth him. It would be *GREAT* if you could just restart the boss fight after dying.

The quests in the game are simple and fun, but I found that I would get under leveled and had to grind. I think it would have been better to either put more content in the game or ease the level progression. Its a basic hack and slash so the grinding phases are not very amazing.

Overall I would recommend it you know you are going to be bored on a plane with your Ipad. At least it worked for me. The game does not require an online connection unless you want to save your character to the cloud.

Mass Effect

7.5/10

This is an other review from 2010 that was rotting on my harddrive.
MassEffect is a science-fiction single player RPG. Early in the game there was a lot of dialogs. It really is an RPG in the sense that you what your are going to say to NPCs is going to affect the outcome of your game. The voice acting is good for a video game. The game really starts after a few hours of gameplay when you finally get your ship.

Doing my first secondary objectives in open space at the beginning was very nostalgic. When you drop on an unknown planet, you explore it with a tank and it can take several minutes before you detect enemies. Then you engage in long range combat. Sometimes you find places to explore on foot or it is part of one of your secondary objective. These mechanics made me think of some older games where exploration was an important aspect of the game. However those secondary objectives are repetitive, the maps are always the sames and you get little action for your time.
The gap of quality between secondary objectives and main quests is huge. In the main quests you get a lot of action, cut-scenes and dialog and the maps are big and unique.

The interface for managing items is bad. The game floods you with items, you can get as much as 150 in a mission and when you get to sell them, you only get a huge unsorted list.

There are a few mini games, one of them you will need complete 10000 times if you plan to finish the game, every time you open a chest, hack a computer, a door, what-ever, even rocks, you will have to play. You need to have one of your character with the matching level of encryption to play so you might want to max this ability ASAP since there are loots requiring high level of encryption right at the beginning.

Combats are Ok. There is only one zoom on the sniper rifles. Sometimes your characters sticks himself to a wall when you don't want to. There is a delay when you use an ability or change weapon where you can't shoot. You can run in combat but when all enemies are down you can't run anymore :-S. WTF I have to walk all the way back!? Sometimes tried to tell my team mates to take cover near a door and I would need push them into place so that they were covered correctly.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

7/10

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is a 2d platformer with guns, grenades,jetpacks, crates and elevators. It is very cinematic and gives good vibes akin to those of old action movies.

The gameplay goes from very easy to hard. The easy parts are enjoyable and the hard parts make you feel lucky. Sometimes the levels are like small puzzles.

Maybe there are a little too many crate pushing and elevator elavating for my taste however. I remember falling of an elevator by accident and having to go way back via mind control grenades to activate the switch that brings this elevator down.

Bioshock

Note: this is a review from 2010 that was is lying around on my computer (I have a few of these).

6.5/10

Bioshock is an "horror" FPS. You get to play with gunz and powers. You get upgrades and more guns/powers as the game progresses.

The gameplay is fun in the beginning but it gets repetitive. The story and setting are very good. When you die you respawn and I think its humiliating, I would rather reload and find a way to win. Overated. I will not try the sequel.

Note: The second game in the series seems too similar to the first one and seems a waste of my time, but I might try Bioshock Infinite some time

Torchlight and Torchlight 2

Torchlight and Torchlight 2 are action rpg / hack and slash games. There are many similarities between these games and the first two first Diablo games. More this later.

Torchlight Review

7/10

Torchlight is a single player game. There is one town, one main dungeon to explore and you can also open portals to some other areas. Most of the dungeons and areas are generated randomly. These dungeons and areas are packed with monsters. Sometimes  they, will come out of the scenery in great numbers.

You get flooded with items very fast, but there is a solution for this: your pet can carry items to town and sell them for you.

The graphics of the game are simple yet the art in general feels very polished. The music also fits the game very well. The game supports and has tools for modding.

The game is very polished in general, in its own style at least. The main complain is that the game is a bit repetitive. Go down, kill monster, do quests, swap gear again and again and again ... Also the different classes and skills are somewhat unbalanced.

There is a free demo of the game if you want to try: http://www.torchlightgame.com/

Torchlight 2

6.5/10

Torchlight 2 is basically Torchlight, with different classes, multiplayer, open areas, new area types and monsters and multiple towns..

The multiplayer aspect might be the most important improvement compared to its predecessor. However, even if it feels as if there has been just as much effort put in making the game, I felt more disconnected while playing. I was just going from an area to the next, cleaning everything, swapping gear, saying ok, ok, ok to what ever npc, rinse and repeat ...

Torchlight Vs Diablo

There are too many similarities between to two series to name them all. In Diablo/Torchlight you play a grunt/ranged lady/mageguy who goes deeper and deeper in a maddening dungeon from a single town to fight whatever evil thing is at the bottom. In the sequels (spoiler!!!!!!!!!!!!), you go after the main character of the first game who's gone mad because of whatever evil (spoiler end!!!!!!!!!!) All similarities must be intentional. Some of the minds behind the first two Diablo games have been trying to repeat their success while making Torchlight, to the pleasure of some of the fans of the genre.

So Torchlight is a reboot of Diablo made in 2009 with some gameplay innovations a new skin and style. Torchlight 2 also takes a lot of cues from Diablo 2.

So what about it? Well some of the small gameplay innovations are pretty nice but, at their core the torchlight games are copy cats done years later, they can never be as ground breaking as the Diablo games were in their day. Diablo was a master piece and revolutionary for many of us. You cannot repeat this feat just by copying, you must come up with something new, fun, and involving which has its own soul.

Eats Munchies

5/10

Physics based puzzle game. Its not bad but there must be some better puzzle games out there. The game is very short (2-4 hours) depending if you try to complete everything. Most of the time when you can't fully complete a level, its because you don't know how different objects can interact.

There is support for the steam work shop so maybe people have been making better puzzles however.

When I clicked on the steam workshop it opened a browser and not the steam client, I'm not sure if this is normal.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Campaing

5.5/10

Linear war themed FPS.They try to change the gameplay a little once in while, but its always very short. There was an open map, once (but it was divided in three linear sections). There was some freezing to death, once. There was some racing, once. You get drive and/or shoot from a vehicle once in while.

The story makes no sense if you think about it more than 20 seconds.Sometimes I'm shooting and an ally will jump in front of me.

There are many games like this nowadays so I can't recommend you to buy this one over an other one. The gameplay is a bit simpler than other similar games: you can't be prone and scopes only have one zoom. The destructibility of the environment is amazing however.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Uprising

5.5/10

Command & Conquer is probably the longest running Real-Time strategy (RTS) franchise.

So somehow I managed to buy the expansion without the main game on steam. I thought for sure that I bought complete pack. But yes you can play the expansion as a stand-alone game.

The expansion does not contain many missions but at least you get all the units in the game.

The Good

There are great videos with actors between missions.The music is ok and the graphics are good.

The Bad

The path finding is bad. Sometimes a unit will bump into the unit in front of it and decide to separate from the group and take a big detour. Also friendly fire happens all the time in the most stupid ways. The maps are interesting but the missions are not so good. Also they try to much to make special missions. What we expect is build a base, build an army and fight. I remember a few mission where you must NOT kill an enemy unit. The game is super fast and there is no way to slow it down. But it is somewhat easy so it does not matter so much.

Sometime the game feels polished, sometimes not at all. Why the bad path finding? Why not fix it before the release of the game? Why is it still there in the expansion? 

Dungeon Of The Endless

7/10

Dungeon of the endless is a mix between a tower defense game and a rogue like game. On each level, your team start in a room with your crystal. You must protect the crystal and bring it to an elevator. You explore the level one room at a time. Monters can spawn in dark rooms or rooms you enter for the first time. Many many monsters will spawn when you try to bring the crystal. To help yourself you can power some rooms and build towers in them. Your characters can level up, use skills and wear equipment. Oh and when you lose, you can't reload or anything, you must restart a new game (which will be random and completely different).

The ambiance of the game is amazing. If it was not of the games quirks, I may rate it much higher.

The Good

There are no other games like this one that I know. The ambiance, music and style are very good. The game has a lot of re-playability because of the randomly generated levels, and many characters. It also has many game modes that completely change the rules of the game.

The Bad

The game is complex and not very good at teaching things. Sometimes it does not let you do exactly what you want to do ... unless you kown a trick. For example, you can only order characters to go in rooms, but you can't tell them where to stand or which monsters to attack, but if you tell a character to back off in a other room, and click again in the room where he is standing there is a chance he will stop where you want him to stand. The problems is that there are many tricks like that and in my experience they make the difference between finishing the game or loosing. So go learn some tricks online from other players if you want to play seriously.

 

Awesomenauts

6.5/10

This game is a 2D Moba game. It is very accessible. It is funny and sci-fi themed. The music is awesome.
I played casually with friends and strangers. It was fun. I was not hooked but I enjoyed every session. It seems they have expanded the game a lot over the years. I did not follow or cared about this progression, I just got familiar with a few "nauts" and jumped into games and had fun.

Card City Night

7.5/10

What happens when you mix pokemon plot devices with collectible card games, and lots of other crazy ideas? The result is surprisingly good in Card City Night! This is a single player collectible card game (or CCG) with original mechanics. The game makes you collect cards and face many opponents in order to .... collect more cards and face stronger opponents.

The game was fun while it lasted, 10 to 20 hours I would say, depending on your desire to collect the cards and attempts to make original decks. 

I would say its easy to make good decks just by using offensive cards that go well together. There are many ways to win a game, and some of the opponents in the game have very interesting decks based on specific cards. However I think it would be very difficult for a player to make one of these very interesting decks because:

• Cards are given randomly to the player.
• Those special cards that allow interesting special strategy are rare or expansive.

I think the game would have been a lot more fun if the player could make interesting decks like the ones the AI opponents have. But it was was fun playing against these decks anyways.

An other thing that could be improved is the user interface used to create new decks. Its possible to sort the cards differently but there are no filtering options.

I can't recommend this game to everyone, but if you like puzzles or CCG and are looking something different, this game might be a great addition to your collection.

Bastion

6.5/10

Maybe I had too much expectations for this game? Things were looking very good at first. The narration, is amazing, the art and ambiance are great. I got bored somewhere in the middle, and it felt like it was good again at the end.

Again, my old joystick did not work with this game. I played with keyboard and mouse, the controls were not bad. In some circumstances my progress was not saved which was annoying. There is some replay value, but I'm not interessed.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

7/10

I'm not a Batman fan, but I think Batman: Arkham Asylum is a solid title. Many games based on movies or comic book intellectual property are rushed and of poor quality, this is not the case here. 

My only critics are the following:

• The game did not work with my old joystick, and control were a bit awkward on keyboard, mainly the is no "always run" feature. I went to buy a Xbox 360 compatible controller which worked on PC.
•  Somethings don't make sense. Ok, maybe its a batman video game ...
• There are "riddles" in the games, most of them are not really riddles.
• One boss fight in the middle of the game is at least 15 minutes long, and its barely a fight as you can only run away until the final cut scene. It was actually much longer than that for me as I died multiple times.
• The game often has some un-intuitive game mechanics. Both for bosses and some small time criminals. For examples, even some thugs, which look identical to the 99999 other thugs you beat at this point in the game can block indefinitely. The only way to beat them is to jump over them or stun them with the bat claw.
• Likewise, bosses often have un-intuitive rules or mechanics. It often is a guessing game the first time you face the boss. At least when you die once, a splash screen tells you how you can defeat the boss. 

Otherwise I had a lot of fun playing this game.

Final Fantasy XIII

4/10

So I was all exited to play a JRPG again. I read some reviews about FFXIII, which were somewhat bad, some people complain about the dumb battle system or other mechanics ... But I told myself lets just play this, lets just relax and enjoy the show, I don't care about those things...

I started playing, and at first everything was good... I enjoyed the pretty graphics and let the story draw me into the game ...

But the more I played the more it became annoying to play ... and now I guess I'm somewhere in the middle and can't muster the will to play this game again. The lack of control is one of the major source of frustration in combat ... Sometime the game really seems randomly, unexpectedly unfair, and the rest of the time its boring and easy.

Now I don't feel like playing a JRPG ever again. Stay away. You've been warned.