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5 (81) 4 (84) 3 (2) 2 (1) 1 (0) 4.5 starsAverage score of 168 user reviews
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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 0
With San Andreas, Rockstar full subscribed to the idea that bigger is better. The world is massive. It covers an entire state, containing not only three cities, each bigger than the ones in previous games, but also quite a lot of real estate in between, including forests, a desert, and many small towns. The soundtrack isn't as good as Vice City's, but still included a large variety of enjoyable music. They also improved the streaming technology, allowing you to go from anywhere outside to anywhe...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 0
After 3, some wondered where the series would go from there. Not many expected it to go back in time. 3 was basically contemporary, but you didn't get that much of a feel for the setting or main character. That was probably Vice City's biggest contribution to the series. Instead of a nameless, voiceless criminal, you played Tommy Vercetti, a person with goals and opinions. It was refreshing to play someone who could think for himself and often took matters into his own hands instead of just taki...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Grand Theft Auto III 0
Around the Christmas of 2001, there was a bit of a rivalry brewing between the PS2 and the new Xbox. Both systems had a high-profile game coming out. The PS2 had Metal Gear Solid 2, and the Xbox had Halo. But a lesser known game came out of nowhere to far more commercial success than either, a 3D sequel to a kitschy top-down driving series. It was GTA3, and it was a lot of fun. I remember playing it for the first time and being amazed by what I could do. It was the first true open-world game of ...
3 out of 3 found this review helpful. -
MLB 08: The Show 0
I don't play many sports games at all, but I like baseball so I thought I'd try a new one. Most people preferred The Show to the 2K series this year, so I got that one. It's a pretty fun and accurate simulation of the sport. The last baseball game I played was All-Star Baseball '99 for the Nintendo 64, with Larry Walker on the cover, so it's been a while. In that time, pitching has gotten more involved and hitting has gotten harder. In that old game, you only had to pick a pitch and location and...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Rock Band 0
Last year, when the Rock Band/Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock battle was warming up, I was in the Guitar Hero camp. Despite the original developer making Rock band, I already liked Guitar Hero, I liked some of the announced songs more, and I didn't like the idea of paying that huge amount for the whole instrument set. Issues like that tend to go away though when the new Guitar Hero developer makes some bad decisions, you have a ton of downloadable songs to improve the library, and someone else ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock 0
As the developer and publisher of the first two games (and the 80's expansion) were split and gobbled up by different companies, a new team gained control of creating the enjoyable rhythm series, and the results aren't quite what you'd hope for. There's nothing about the third installment changed so much as to hurt the core gameplay, it just seems every single new decision Neversoft made was a bad one. The graphics received an overhaul, with new, shinier character models and notes on the fretboa...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Team Fortress 2 0
Compared to some other shooters, Team Fortress 2 a bit simple at first glance, with only a handful of maps and modes of play. The nine different classes have a few weapons, which seems like it might not give them that much to do. But the depth of design you discover once you actually start playing is impressive. The wildly different character designs make it easy to know exactly what you're dealing with, which gives the game a more strategic feel than it might otherwise have with such a fast pac...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Deus Ex: Invisible War 0
Judged next to the original Deus Ex, the sequel can be considered a disappointment. People loved the first game, and most of the similarities the games share are top-level concepts and not the execution of those concepts. If it was its own thing, I think it would have been better received, but as a sequel, it definitely feels simplified for a broader audience, alienating the fans the series already had. It's still about playing a person trained and cybernetically modified to be the perfect soldi...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Deus Ex 0
I got this and the sequel on Steam last summer, although it took me a while to really get into the game. It was difficult at first, because the game was released back in 2000 and now looks and plays pretty archaically. But if you can get past that, the design shows through as one of the most innovative and important first person shooters there are. Deus Ex was fusing action and role-play elements before it was cool. Choice is the essence of the game. There are so many ways you can go about each ...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles 0
Last year I called Oblivion my favorite game of 2006, and that opinion sticks. Good points can be made about the generic fantasy setting, reduced depth compared to Morrowind, and some promises less than completely fulfilled, like the new AI which had some silly problems. But I still enjoyed the hell out of it for a long time, and continued to do so long after I wrote that. Pretty recently I added a whole bunch of content, including most of the add-ons, the enjoyable Knights of the Nine quest lin...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Halo 3 0
Halo: still pretty good. The third installment continues the series tradition of good shooting, incremental gameplay improvements, and an interesting story for a shooter. Unfortunately, it also keeps alive some of its faults, like some repetitive tasks and environments, minor steps backward in some areas and the continued inclusion of the highly uninteresting Flood. I get the desire to mix things up so you're not fighting Covenant the whole time, but seriously, the Flood is boring. I like the st...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 0
Infinity Ward returns to the franchise they created and brings it into the present with its best entry yet. The gameplay is a little tweaked and improved, but it isn't any leap forward there that makes it easily my favorite in the series, it's all about the presentation. Previous games were more or less historically based since they took place during World War II, so there was little room for them to surprise you in any meaningful way. But this one has its own storyline, one that manages to be m...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune 0
Uncharted is a great showcase of what the PS3 hardware can do and the beginning of a potentially great franchise. As is common with Naughty Dog's games, the difficulty can be a bit uneven, but it's still a really fun game. There are two main aspects to Uncharted's gameplay, the shooting and the platforming. The shooting plays a lot like Gears of War, with the perspective over the shoulder while aiming and a very similar cover system. You're a little more helpless though, being a basically normal...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Halo 2 0
Halo 2 is basically a repeat of the first game; a fun, solid, but probably a little overrated shooter, which fixes some of the original's problems but has some of its own. It seems like there's a step backward for every step forward. You now have the ability to dual wield certain weapons, but doing so prevents you from using melee attacks without dropping the second gun or grenades or grenades at all, limiting your diversity in combat. Dual wielding allows for some interesting new strategies and...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Halo 0
Yeah, the first game. In the past I've played and enjoyed bits of the campaign and some multi-player, but I'd never sat down and played it through. I worked through it on a friend's Xbox, and I'm glad I did. I think the series' fans are a little overboard, it's really not that much better than a lot of console shooters. But it's really quite revolutionary and commendable for what it does right. Before Halo, every FPS had a large, unruly inventory of weaponry and a health bar. After Halo, almost ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Assassin's Creed 0
A spiritual sequel to the Prince of Persia games of the last generation of consoles, Creed has a familiar feel but replaces the linearity with an open world, wall running and time control powers with an awesome free-running system, the fantasy setting with a science fiction one, and the mediocre combat with slightly different mediocre combat. Many have complained about the repetitive mission structure, and they're justified in doing so. There are only about half a dozen types of activities you c...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Bioshock 0
As a pure first-person shooter, Bioshock isn't that great. The variety of weapons isn't bad, and the plasmid and tonic super-powers that give you an edge are fun to play with. There's a lot of enjoyment to be had from sending swarms of bees after your enemies or launching them into the air with a small whirlwind. But the shooting controls are a little off compared to more dedicated games, and it can get tiring fighting the same stupid enemies over and over again. Even Big Daddies, one of the mos...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction 1
The PS3 is in desperate need of good games, but help is coming, and has already arrived in the form of the next chapter in the Ratchet and Clank series. There have been two installments since 2004's Up Your Arsenal, but one focused on shooting and multiplayer and the other was on the PSP, so this feels like the first real game in a few years. I'd been looking forward to it, and while it doesn't really take the franchise to new and exciting places, it's still a very satisfying addition. Obviously...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Half-Life 2: Episode Two 0
Episode Two continues the story from the previous games, pushing the narrative forward in ways it hasn't been before. For it's time, the original game was pretty impressive in its immersion but now is very limited and a bit simple. The sequel took huge steps forward in presentation and upped the ante quite a bit with consistent characters, but was still a little basic. The first episodic expansion really raised the bar with its development of Alyx as a believable and likable character, and she's...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Tomb Raider: Legend 0
I played a few demos in the past, but I never really sat down and played a Tomb Raider game before because I didn't have a PS1 and the first one on PS2 was terrible. But I got a demo disc a while ago with this on it, and found I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It had some nice Prince of Persia-style platforming and puzzle solving (minus the ability to rewind and slow down time), with some decent shooting, and seemed pretty cool. I didn't end up getting the whole game until recently, but it was ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
The Darkness 0
The Darkness is based on a comic by Top Cow Productions, although it seems significantly different in visual style. Starbreeze Studios reworked the concept to work better in a first person shooter, and spent more time with the mafia aspect and World War I setting than the more supernatural stuff. The Darkness comes off of Starbreeze's previous hit, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, a prequel to the Vin Diesel movies.The Darkness is a fun game, although the shooting action itsel...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories 0
This is the fifth GTA game I've played on the PS2 using the same engine, and I have to admit I'm pretty glad to admit it's the last. A new GTA game used to be an event, and the new games were always impressive in their scope and what they added to the series. But the gameplay has gotten tiring, and these ports of PSP titles don't do much to stay fresh. A lot of the allure of the "Stories" PSP games is that you get to play GTA on a portable system. When you put the same game on PS2, that allure i...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
God of War II 0
The first God of War was exciting and ambitious, but flawed. Its sequel doesn't fix all of its problems, but it is still an improvement on the formula and in most ways the better game. A lot of people will always like the original more because it was new, it was fresh, and all that. But I appreciate it when a sequel builds on the predecessor, refining what makes it great and dropping what didn't work, while making sure to keep it interesting and maybe taking it to the next level. They certainly ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
The Longest Journey 1
I'm annoyed whenever I spend more on stuff than it turns out I have to. It happens sometimes with games. I bought Shadow of the Colossus at full price, and before I got around to playing it, it was re-released as a Greatest Hits title, so I essentially paid $20 for non-hideous packaging. Does anyone think that red color looks good? What happened with the Longest Journey games wasn't as bad but it was still annoying. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was put on Steam for $30 and I jumped on a 10% ...
4 out of 4 found this review helpful. -
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne 0
Maybe it's because it was already four years old somehow when I played it, but Max Payne 2 didn't impress me as much as the first game. The core gameplay is basically the same, and there's nothing wrong with it, it's just not as fresh. Bullet Time works a little differently, as Max moves at almost the same speed as he does normally while everyone else is stuck in slow motion, and it's an interesting dynamic. It almost changes Bullet Time to more of a Win Button than a helpful assist, but I didn'...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 6: Bright Side of the Moon 0
Telltale wraps up the first season of Sam and Max in fine order. It keeps the trend going with funny writing and simple, clever puzzles. The new locations are the most interesting we've seen, and while it lacks in new characters, it does a good job of bringing back a lot of the better ones. The story is more interesting than previous chapters, which all seemed self-contained and unrelated. Bright Side of the Moon ties everything together and gives it a suitable climax. The humor is still there, ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 5: Reality 2.0 0
This chapter is seriously lacking in new locations, but it still feels fresh because of interesting visual changes and new jokes for things you've seen before instead of the same repeats. The whole game has a dualism, as you jump between the normal world and Reality 2.0, a new computer simulation that's better than real life, to solve puzzles. The look is very interesting, and the RPG and internet jokes are funny for nerds like me. The puzzle sequences are the best yet in my opinion, and the sur...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 4: Abe Lincoln Must Die! 0
Probably the most amusing episode yet, starting with a caricature of a certain dimwitted president who ends up being a puppet and moving on to a giant, marble reincarnation of Lincoln, who's still a good guy but is being controlled by nefarious characters. The humor is good, and the final couple sequences are clever and a lot of fun to unravel. It ends with Max being the new president of the United States, which has vast humor potential that is explored in this and continues to be tapped in the ...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 3: The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball 0
The part of this episode is the humor. The new location is a Chuck E. Cheese's-esque restaurant owned by mobsters who go out of their way to convince you they aren't. With the guns and gambling it's a tough sell. It's also the first of three straight episodes with a musical number, which is interesting, I guess. The puzzles are pretty decent, although a little less intuitive than I'd like sometimes. The final one took a bit of the old annoying technique of trying to use your items on everything ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories 0
A new GTA game for 20 dollars new sounds like a great deal, and it is if you keep expectations in check knowing that the location is a rehash and it's a port from the PSP. It doesn't have the oomph of a normal new GTA game, since you already know the city, few gameplay innovations are present, and the story and missions are slightly dumbed down for a portable system. It's still a lot of fun though just to be in Liberty City again. The storyline missions aren't as meaty as we're used to, but it's...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Call of Duty 2 0
The best change to the formula from the first full sequel was switching to a heal-over-time approach instead of littering health packs everywhere. It's just as unrealistic (and even seems a bit more plausible if you don't think about it too much), and works better for the kind of gameplay they're going for, where you have to stay in cover, make your shots, and then move on. If you charge the enemy, you're probably going to die, although it's fun to try.The level design is also a little different...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Call of Duty: United Offensive 0
The expansion to the first game doesn't really add much to the experience and seems a bit weak because of it. They added the ability to cook grenades, which is nice but doesn't seem necessary. They added the worst sprint in the history of video games, which takes you out of the realism because of its implementation. The speed boost is only slight, but worse is that it only lasts for about a second before you have to slow down again and let the meter charge back up. One second seems like a reason...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 2: Situation: Comedy 0
Where Valve and Ritual have failed, Telltale Games has succeeded... not in making a good game, but in getting episodic gaming right. Like the first, this chapter of Sam & Max's new adventures is only a couple hours in length, but it hasn't been that long since I played the last one, so the memory is still fairly fresh in my mind, and the desired effect is achieved... a somewhat continuous gaming experience. It's still a little too easy, and some of the celebrity humor is lacking, but it's a ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way 0
It didn't take me long after beating the first to get right on the second, which continues in the spirit of the first pretty well. The graphics are remarkably better considering the game was released only two years later, although it's mostly cosmetic enhancements to a now-seriously dated engine, especially looking at the gravity and other physics.The game itself is mostly solid, with fun, stealthy shooting, but there are a few gripes I have. They added respawning enemies that make it annoying w...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Guitar Hero II 0
Guitar Hero is still just as addicting as ever, as you find yourself continually saying "just one more song". It's still great fun to rock out and play some good tunes, although the setlist isn't nearly as good as the first game's. I hardly recognized any of the song names when I first read the list, although I still heard the majority of them before and just didn't know the name. The songs are all still fun to play and usually catchy, but it's just harder to get into a song and really feel cool...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Okami 0
If you have a PS2 and don't play Okami, you're a bad person. It's simply a fantastic game. The graphics are stunning - I don't care about the GE Force 8800 or the new current generation of high definition systems, Okami is the best looking game I've seen, thanks to the great art style and amazing cel-shading technology that makes it look like a living watercolor painting. This is an opinion of course, if you'd rather look at super high-def ruins in Gears of War, that's just fine. The game also h...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence 0
I wasn't sure about this one for a lot of the time I was playing it. Most of the new gameplay features add depth but detract from the fun, in my opinion. Limited inventory space, having to use camoflage, feed yourself, and mend your wounds and breaks sounds cool and realistic, but it just adds a ton of menu navigation to the normal gameplay experience. I don't think it really enhanced my experience needing to change my uniform when I move from the jungle to the inside of a building or click on a...
1 out of 1 found this review helpful. -
Gears of War 0
I still say Okami has the best graphics artistically of any game I've seen, but Gears of War easily takes the cake from a technical perspective. Seriously, it looks amazing. I have the good fortune to have a roommate this quarter who has a widescreen HDTV around 40 inches in size, and the game is really a sight to behold. It sounds pretty good too, with solid voices and sound effects.It wouldn't be a good game without gameplay of course, and Gears succeeds there as well. I'm really not that big ...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock 0
Being the first of six parts of a "season" of new content, and costing only 9 dollars, Culture Shock is allowed to be short. And it is short. Even if you make sure to click on everything and see every last snippet of dialog, it will only take you a couple hours to see all there is to see. The jokes are a bit hit and miss, but they mostly hit. Some of the puzzles are a little annoying or take some cajoling to get working, but it's pretty satisfying when you figure out what you need to do. This is...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful. -
No One Lives Forever 0
I got the first No One Lives Forever game when it came out in late 2000, but thanks to a frustrating series of events, I didn't complete it until six years later. The game ran poorly on my Windows 98 POS computer, and stuttered its way through outdoor environments even at the lowest settings. I didn't advance far before the computer crapped out and I lost my save, and lost my interest for a while. Later we got a new machine, and the game ran perfectly. I got much farther in the game before the h...
0 out of 1 found this review helpful.
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