The Best Music award goes to a game that delivers emotion, atmosphere, and tension through the game’s soundtrack. Whether it be orchestral, licensed, or anything else it must feel just right. There weren’t many games with great soundtracks this year, but there were a few. These were the best, but only one comes out on top.
Journey comes out on top because of how rich and powerful the score is. It reminds me a lot of Skyrim, and hey, it was up for a Grammy! Journey is not only a very unique game, but the soundtrack pulls you in and provides feelings and emotions on top of the visual experience. Mass Effect 3 was very close, but the epic space battle music doesn’t compare to this masterpiece.
Liberation is probably one of the most anticipated games for Vita, right next to Uncharted and Mortal Kombat. Like both of those games, it doesn’t live up to their console counterparts or everyone’s expectations. Liberation is probably the most disappointing of the three, but it is still a solid game. The problem with Liberation is that it is sloppy and felt slightly rushed to meet the Assassin’s Creed III console release. Aveline is an excellent protagonist and a very interesting character, but the narrative is very confusing and just feels slapped together. It only makes sense, or gets interesting, towards the last two sequences of the game.
Like all the other portable AC games, Desmond Miles doesn’t make an appearance in this game. You just started out as Aveline in New Orleans before the American Revolution started. New Orleans is occupied by the French, and the Spanish are busy selling slaves from Africa and trying to take control of New Orleans. Aveline, being a slave herself, is now freed by her stepmother but joins the Assassin Brotherhood by a leader who lives in the Bayou to free these slaves. This sounds very interesting, and it is, but it lacks the expansiveness of AC3. The story is very short, and it doesn’t allow enough time to tell a rich story. The side characters are forgettable, and Aveline barely gets enough time to really show her personality. I was highly disappointed with this, but the disappointments don’t end there.
The game is mostly like AC3, in terms of combat, animations, the control scheme, and whatnot. There are some Vita-specific features, but they fall flat. You pickpocket by zooming in on the character and running your finger down the rear touchpad; this makes it very cumbersome. You can open letters by pinching the top of the screen and sliding it, but it doesn’t work as it should. There’s even a weird puzzle thing that uses the Vita’s camera by holding it up to the light at a certain angle and turning a dial on the touchscreen. This also doesn’t work like it should and is confusing.
Combat is the same as AC3 and thankfully that hasn’t been broken. The combat system is very fluid and just feels so good. However, your assassin recruiting abilities are now gone. You have to use them in the world by interacting with an NPC and starting that ability. I really didn’t like this. Aveline has a couple new weapons, like the sugar cane machete and whip she can use to swing around some ledges. She has a pistol, as well as a blowpipe and parasol gun! The weapons are really neat and work well within the setting. Aveline can also use three different personas, which are an assassin, a lady, and a slave. The lady can’t climb around anywhere, but it is good for bribing certain soldiers to get into areas you need and blending in with certain crowds. The slave persona can blend in with slave workers, but the assassin has all weapons available but always has a minimum notoriety of level 1. The problem is that these personas are only useful during the main missions, but each one has a certain collectible that only that persona can get. Other than that, these personas feel useless. great idea, but not fully fleshed out.
Another issue is the world you’re exploring. The Bayou isn’t a fun place to be because you wind up swimming 70% of the area or being forced to climb around trees up top. Hunting was completely removed from the game, and the only animals that attack you are alligators. The game just feels very small in comparison to AC3. Let’s talk multiplayer. Don’t expect the addictive and excellent multiplayer from AC3. Instead, we get a cop-out of a strategy board game that is extremely boring. It requires 5% user input, and the game does the rest. You choose a faction (Abstergo or Assassin), pick your closest location on the map, then tap the icons of the opposite factions. You send off NPCs to fight a roll of the dice. Very boring and will keep you interested for all of 5 minutes. This is just like the assassin recruit missions in AC3, but used for multiplayer. There is nearly zero interaction with other players.
As it stands, Liberation is disappointing with its sloppy design. The story is confusing and not very interesting until the very end. The story is very short, the side missions aren’t very interesting, and the multiplayer is an absolute bore. The game is a fun weekend rental, but nothing more. I hope to see Aveline again, but the developers need to take more time. At least the game looks fantastic and is a huge technical feat for all portable games. It looks very close to the console games in terms of quality, but I know the Vita can do better still.
Doom may be the father of first-person shooters, but like the eldest man, you can’t teach it new tricks (or were those old dogs?). I was really excited about this compilation because I expect a nice HD upgrade to Doom 3 and a lot of cool extras, but nothing like that exists. Instead, we get all three Dooms just thrown together, with 3D capabilities for Doom 3. What a waste of money and time. This is pretty much for people who have never touched Doom before, but if you have played them all, just skip this. I will talk about each Doom game separately, so here we go!
Doom 3
I didn’t have a high-end PC when this was released, so I got stuck with the Xbox version. It wasn’t all that great then, and it still isn’t. The game is very straightforward, linear, and lacks the fast pace of older Dooms. There’s barely a story holding all this together, and one of the biggest issues with the last two games plagues this one: confusing levels. I can’t tell you how many times I got lost in this game because every hallway looks the same. The guns are boring to shoot, and the graphics today look terrible with really low-resolution textures, bad lighting effects, and cheap scares. The game doesn’t even capture the sick and twisted satanic cult stuff from previous games. There’s a lot of keycard finding and door opening like in the last game, so is it even worth playing? Sure, the first time through is a bit fun, but if you played this once, don’t bother again. BFG includes the Resurrection of Evil expansion, which is just more of the same, but at least the environments are a bit different. There’s also no one playing online, so you can pretty much forget that feature.
Doom
I had more fun with the older Dooms than I did with the younger ones, mainly because I had never played them before. The pace is really fast, and it just looks more interesting and is more fun to play. New gamers may be put off by the 2D graphics or the fact that you don’t aim up and down; just point at the character and shoot. The biggest issue with this series is the stupid keycard finding and switch finding. The levels are laid out so poorly that you always get lost for longer than you should. The best levels were the ones that didn’t have switches or keycards. There is also a very small enemy variety, which makes shooting boring after a while, and Doom has three expansions to play through. Each expansion looks different but is utterly the same, with nothing new added. This is a classic game, though, and should be played by every FPS fan out there.
Doom II
Not much has changed from the original except for a couple new enemies and different levels. Doom II was shorter-lived than the first game, with only one expansion, but contained 21 levels. Doom II is still worth a playthrough because it is mindless shooting that is fast-paced and just entertaining. These games are meant to be played in short bursts, not hours at a time, or you will get bored.
As it stands, BFG Edition is really disappointing, with no upgrades or extras. I at least expected Doom 3 to be upgraded to HD with a cleanup job, but none of that exists. Why id was so lazy with this is beyond me, but they have been pretty lazy lately (the terrible Quake 4 and Rage are examples). I do not recommend buying this if you have played any Doom before. This is for people who have never touched a Doom game and are interested. For the low price point, it is a good bargain, but fans will be sorely disappointed.
Scribblenauts is one of those games that is just fun, no matter what age you are. Solving puzzles by using your imagination just spells fun for anyone. Unlimited tries to throw in an open-world feel, which doesn’t feel so open and has almost every item you can imagine in there. The problem with Unlimited is that it is literally unchanged with no new features, and that is a huge letdown. Still worth a playthrough, though.
There is a bit of a story about Maxwell and his sister, who have parents who have a magic journal and pen. You can create anything with this, but one day Max uses it for bad on an old man. He puts a curse on his sister to turn her to stone unless he does good for people and collects Starites to free her. It’s a bit touching at the end and pretty cute, but nothing will wow you. The story is fine and works for the game. Once you are set free, you use your special vision to find people at each level who need help. They will appear gold, and the main puzzles will have blue stars above them.
The people outside the main puzzles just require items to solve their dilemmas. You will read your clue at the bottom of the screen and try to solve it. Most logical things work like a ghost that doesn’t feel scary enough. Click on him and write in the adjective box “scary,” and you solve the puzzles. It seems pretty simple, but there’s such a variety (over 100 in all) that it is just plain fun. I spent 2-3 hours in one sitting just flying through the puzzles, but then you get the snafus, which kind of ruins it all. Some puzzles won’t accept logical solutions, or you get a bad hint. The secondary puzzles don’t get additional hints like the main puzzles. The best thing is to get other people to help you who have a fresh thought process on it.
Overthinking puzzles will probably make you the most frustrated in the game, so it is a good idea to come back. Most main puzzles are pretty wacky and fairly simple and easy. For example, one area has you making dishes for certain people. A gamer comes in and wants pizza, so you add three ingredients. Easy. Another comes in and wants to eat a phoenix. Pretty weird, but ok. Add feathers, a beak, and wings, and you’re done. The last one wanted to eat a motorcycle, so I added a tire, gas tank, and engine. It was very strange, but very simple, and it was fun coming up with all this stuff. There are a few that are challenging and require some minor platforming and timing, but there aren’t many. You can finish the story in just a few hours, but getting 100% is fun.
Scribblenauts still has colorful graphics with paper cutout-style visuals, and it looks nice. The physics have been improved, but overall, the game is just pure fun. Sure, it may be really easy, but there are those puzzles where you just won’t get it or won’t take logical solutions. The biggest issue is that there is literally nothing unchanged from past games. The UI may have changed for PCs, but that’s about it. I wanted to see some mini-games or an actual adventure where you have to think about objects to get you from one end of the level to the next using objects. What’s here is fun, but maybe not for $30.
This is such a strange game, and to this day, I never got it. I tried out the original game for PS1, and it wasn’t very good. The whole game is about sprinting around really fast, shooting things, and jumping. The problem is that the gameplay feels so old and outdated that it isn’t worth playing even today. The HD graphics look nice, but there are areas that look like the developers just stretched the textures out.
I won’t even begin to explain the story other than Kurt is sent off to Canada to find a remaining mine crawler and is captured by an evil guy named Schwing Schwing. Yeah, I know; I won’t even bother. The game does have some good dialog and humor wrapped in it, but you have to get through the dated gameplay first. Kurt can run at about 50 MPH, and he is shooting everything on the site. He has his trusty parachute to glide and his sniper mask/face, which has different types of bullets. These range from grenades, bullets, and lock balls, which control doors as well as others. That isn’t the issue. The problem is that the entire game feels the same. Running around with floaty physics, lobbing grenades into small holes that are a pain to hit, and killing tons of enemies while scooting around. It gets boring after the first level.
You can play Max and Dr. Hawkins this time, but Max is even more mundane than Kurt. He has four arms, so you get to use four guns, but it isn’t much different. Dr. Hawkins has a complicated weapon-making system you can use for him, so maybe his levels are the most interesting. I honestly couldn’t stand more than a few levels of this game. I was really hoping MDK 2 was much different from the past game, but it is nearly the same.
The HD graphics look better, as do the new character models. Most of the textures look like they are just stretched out and weren’t redone like the character models. This isn’t the remake I was hoping for because the physics are still really floaty, and you feel like you’re skating on ice. The game just really feels 12 years old, and it shows in the gameplay. It doesn’t help that there is no native gamepad recognition like most PC games these days have. You have to map the controls yourself, which is a serious pain and takes a lot of tweaking. The resolution also stinks because it isn’t on widescreen. This was a lazy port, or it looks like they only went halfway and released it.
Is there any reason to play this game? If you like old-school shooters and platformers, then go ahead, but this game is pretty dull. I really tried to like it, but the only thing going for it is the humor and wacky story. The floaty platforming, poor HD upgrade, and gamepad mapping just made me give up on the game. I hope there is an MDK 3 and everything gets updated, but until then, don’t bother unless you love old school.
The Mark of Kri is a curse passed down from generation to generation, and each firstborn child bears the mark on their skin. There are six at all times, but some crazy guy wants to kill off the curse or something like that. The story isn’t explained very well and is not very interesting. The Mark of Kri’s strong points are its stealth, but it has sluggish combat and camera issues galore. It may have been pretty good ten years ago, but not today.
The game is very linear, with usually only one pathway to follow. You have a bird that is your companion that you can send off to certain points to scout ahead for you. This is mandatory; otherwise, you will be fighting off tons of guys all the time and dying. Once you use Kuzu to scout ahead, you can plan an attack. Use stealth by sneaking up, buckling against walls, or dropping down on enemies. You use the right analog stick to sweep a beam around that assigns a face button to an enemy; that’s their attack button. You can stealth kill two enemies by starting the attack on one and then pressing the buttons shown above the second enemy. Sometimes you need to distract guards by shooting bells with your arrow, scaring animals, and other things. This is pretty fun, and finding the right path through enemies can be fun. It is the actual combat that is sluggish and troublesome.
The right analog stick should have been used for camera control in this game because it gets lost all the time. It never focuses on enemies like it should, and it takes forever to sweep around. The combat is okay when there are just a few enemies, but later on, in the game, 15+ enemies will surround you. You get better weapons like the axe that can lock on up to nine enemies, but this whole lock-on business just doesn’t work. I would rather control the camera and have a more fluid combat system that way. The reason why I died so much was that Rau would stop and rub his head, trip constantly, bang his weapon off of stone walls, and get it stuck in wood, and this was frustrating. In the meantime, you are being hit and dying while all the unnecessary animations are playing out. Once you get surrounded or trapped, you’re dead. Backing out is impossible because once you unblock, you get bombarded by attacks.
If that isn’t enough, the save system is annoying. There are no save points, just save scrolls. You have to find these, and they don’t carry over to the next level. The same goes for max health upgrades. You will end up using your save scrolls or squandering them because you want to save a hard part. Another issue was using the bow. Aiming at enemies takes forever because you have to wander around the enemy until you get a lock on, and if the enemy is too high up, you have to fiddle with it until you hit the enemy. Not fun.
The graphics are just average, even for back then. The game is only 6 levels long and can be beaten in about 4–5 hours. The story is underdeveloped due to its short length, and you won’t care about any of the characters. The combat has sluggish controls, and the whole sweeping lock-on system is a terrible idea and doesn’t work right. The camera has a lot of issues, and the list goes on. For just a couple of dollars, this is a decent stealth game, but be wary of all the problems.
Man, where do I start? From a movie directed by the anti-Christ of video game movies to a game series that just refuses to improve on itself (whether on purpose or not is a mystery), Postal is just one terrible game series. Why Running With Scissors keeps making these stupid games with no improvements is beyond my comprehension.
Postal tries to shoehorn in raunchy and potty mouth humor but does it in a way that’s not funny. How that is possible is a mystery as well. From using porn actor Ron Jeremy’s likeness to dumb ideas like rampaging social justice soccer moms crashing porn shops, porn star signings, and other conventions with the lead mom looking like Sarah Palin, These ideas are dumb and should never exist. It doesn’t help that Postal III tries to poorly copy Quintin Tarantino’s art style. If playing as a guy named Dude and running around trying to help people but constantly failing because he ends up killing everyone sounds fun, this game makes it unplayable.
At first, it didn’t seem so bad during the tutorial until you realized the game has poor hit detection. When my reticle is over something and bullets don’t go anywhere near it, that is a serious issue and lazy game design. I honestly doubt RWS even play-tested a smidgen of this game. On top of all this, they used an outdated source engine, so the game looks over 5 years old. There are even sounds and effects pulled directly from Half-Life 2! Movement isn’t right either, like it’s still in alpha. Not to mention, some of the weapons in this game are just dumb. A vacuum that sucks up garbage and launches it? This isn’t Ratchet & Clank. Throwing feral cats? Using your own pee as a weapon? Not only are these stupid ideas, but they aren’t even done right!
The biggest issue is that everything is so mundane. Each “level” consists of the same thing over and over. Just run around killing these people. Nothing ever changes, and it doesn’t help that the game is really hard and enemies respawn until you complete the goal. How a developer can screw up this bad is just unheard of. It feels like Uwe Boll himself made this game, despite the developers making fun of him in the game. Postal is a homeless person living in the streets of the game world, and some people stop to talk to it but realize that it is just a foul-mouthed, unfunny piece of crap. Absolutely no thought or effort was put into this game.
There’s not much else to say, but don’t play this, or you will regret it. I wasted a whole hour trying to like this game, but I just couldn’t. Do yourself a favor and play any other game but this one. Even if you get this for free, it isn’t worth your time or hard drive space. Just ignore this piece of crap.
Zombie games are abundant now, but they are getting smarter and more atmospheric. Deadlight brings the unique 2D side-scrolling platforming of Shadow Complex and adds zombies. You play as Randall Wayne, trying to find his family in the Safe Zone while uncovering why The New Law is trying to round up survivors. The problem with the story is that it is so short that it doesn’t give it much time to develop. You won’t care about anyone in the game, just the action. Deadlight’s strongest feat is its atmosphere, but this one has a few issues.
The game is all about platforming and running from zombies. There are some puzzles thrown in, but they are basic and not very hard to figure out. Push this button to raise this platform-type stuff. You can run and bust open doors, but the run feature is mainly used to run from zombies in open areas. Jump to avoid obstacles in your way because you don’t want to take down all these zombies. You carry an axe most of the time, but they don’t go down easily and take several swings to take down. Once you get caught up in a zombie group, you’re pretty much dead, which is frustrating. It’s best to just jump over them and get to the next area. In some sections, you get a pistol or a shotgun, which comes in handy, and then you don’t have to run from zombies. All the action and platforming are really fun, but the game is troubled with some awkward mechanics. You can’t jump or grab onto objects directly above you if you are pressing left or right at all. Randall with a leap forward, and this can lead to cheap deaths. Climbing up and down things is annoying because you have to press a button to go up and down. Instead of just pressing up to go up and down to go down, you have a button for each action that breaks the game’s momentum. The same goes for aiming. You can’t just whip out your gun and blast enemies away; you have to stop, aim (which takes a second for the gun to be drawn), and then fire. This is ridiculous and annoying.
Besides that, the game has many locales you go through, and it is just a lot of fun. I played the whole game in one sitting because of the atmosphere. Seeing zombies in the background, having to run, and taking them down is just plain fun, which Deadlight does a good job of providing. There were a lot of cheap deaths due to awkward controls and glitches, but most glitches have been addressed now. The game just has a great pace that constantly keeps you on the move, but there are other issues that persist.
The voice acting is spotty where it is good sometimes and terrible other times. The graphics are amazing for this type of game, and they really draw you into this desolate world. I just wish there was a great story to go along with this game. Being so short, I felt they could have done so much more. There’s no reason to go back, and finding collectibles doesn’t give you jack, so one quick play-through and you’re done. This is just an evening play-through and isn’t really worth the price. This feels more like a long demo than anything else. Deadlight has a lot of potential, but hopefully, a sequel will provide more.
The Walking Dead has been a gripping and highly entertaining adventure game thus far, so now that the season finale is here we can see how every choice you made stacks up. Thankfully choices have impacted things throughout the series instead of stacking them up for the end. A few from each episode will affect this episode, but I have to say that this episode is extremely heart-wrenching and the most shocking of them all, not to mention the shortest.
Lee and your surviving gang are on their way to save Clem from a mysterious man who snatched her up. They leave their boat behind for a bit to go find her, but things go completely downhill because the zombies are in the thousands and not to mention all the shocking moments that lead up to the end. Something happens every 20 minutes or so that will make you set your controller down and take a breather and say, “How did that happen?!” That’s how great this series is. Each character is memorable and you will either love them or hate them depending on your choices. The system Telltale set up is so organic and smooth that you don’t really notice your choice caused this until you really think. That is excellent game design, but I will take some time to address issues that I have held off until now.
Firstly, the graphics are pretty dated which I mentioned in the first episode. The art style looks like the comics, but the graphics are about 7 years old. There are hitches and stuttering often which never got addressed. Each episode is extremely short, but this one clocks in at just a measly hour. Why this is a stand-alone episode is beyond me, they could have just made this series four episodes. The pacing is also all over the place. Episode 2 was probably the most disappointing of them all, and Episode 4 was lacking in the shocking moment department. There’s also no challenge in the game with this just being an interactive experience. This is one of my favorite adventure games of all time, but I would like to see some serious upgrades in Season 2.
With all that said Episode 5 ends on a cliffhanger and who knows when we will find out what’s happened next. After seeing how successful this series is I’m sure Season 2 will start pouring out through next year starting in spring. Episode 5 is very touching and after you finish the game you will realize that Season 2 will start with a whole new cast of characters. As it stands Episode 5 delivers a great ending and you really feel satisfied with your journey through Savannah and will sit back and wait for Season 2.
XCOM was a popular turn-based strategy game back in the ’90s, and everyone was surprised by how well this game turned out. Enemy Unknown keeps the series vibe and atmosphere updated to today’s standards. Enemy Unknown is one of this year’s best strategy games, but there is one reason why most people will never complete this game: It is too damn hard. Not the fun and challenging type of hard, but the kind that makes it impossible to move on no matter how well equipped your soldiers are.
The game does a very good job of introducing new things to you as you move on. The UI is very simple and uncomplicated, but pretty deep. You get to see a cut-a-way of a military base, and you can click on each department. Research is where everything starts. By gathering all intact materials from missions, you can research new things like weapons, armor, satellites, and various other things. Engineering is where it is all made and upgraded, as well as keeping track of other buildings. Workshops, laboratories, generators, hangars—all these things determine how fast you can upgrade and how you become more powerful. The barracks are where you can equip your squad’s loadout, upgrade soldiers, hire new ones, etc. Finally, there are the situation room and the command center. Here you can advance the days until you run into missions, trade alien parts on the black market, and view how in distress the world is. It is all very simple and almost revolutionary in design because most strategy games are Excel sheet-based and are pretty complicated and hard to navigate.
Once you assign things to engineers and do research, you can advance the days until you run into something, such as a UFO sighting. When this happens, you scramble your jets, and depending on how good the equipment you gave them is, they’ll take it down. Most of the time, you will run into abduction scenarios where you eliminate all hostiles or have to rescue someone. When this happens, you get a choice as to what country to help. Each one gives you a reward, such as money, scientists, engineers, or other items. Usually, you pick the one that’s in distress the most because if you don’t, they will remove themselves from the XCOM operation, and if they all withdraw, it’s game over. Once you go into battle, this is where you see how hard this game gets.
Each soldier gets two moves. The area around them is blue, which means that’s one move, and yellow, which means it takes both moves to get there. Performing an action takes one move, and that is usually shooting alien scum. All soldiers start out as regulars with assault rifles until after their first mission and they rank up. The class is chosen randomly, which I really hate because you can be stuck with five snipers and just one assault guy. When you are ready to shoot, you will see how accurate your shot is. Once all turns are taken, it’s the alien’s turn. This back and forth is normal for strategy games, but the objectives you are given, or the difficulty of aliens, are absurd and completely unfair. You will shoot down some small grays and get through a few thin men. Maybe you will lose 2 or 3 guys in the process, and then four freaking Mutons will show up and wipe the rest of you out in one turn. Or don’t forget the damn spider things that can turn your squadmate into a zombie in one hit. This gets frustrating because every mission is like this. I rarely got through any unless it was on an easy-difficulty mission.
This would be ok if it were during main missions, and you could go back and grind a bit to get better equipment, but you have to do that with every single mission. You fail almost more than you succeed, such as by losing so many soldiers. Once a soldier dies, they are dead forever and won’t come back. Once you lose a fully ranked soldier, you have to start from scratch again with a new guy. It is completely unfair in a game this difficult. In most missions, you will be lucky if you get out with 2 or 3 guys, but you are probably thinking that’s because I stink at the game. I would restart and try all different strategies, and nothing would work. The whole point of the game is to take cover and never be out in the open. Once you advance and are just standing there, you’re dead. The fog of war doesn’t help when you run around the map trying to figure out where all the enemies are. Forget a rescue mission where you have to save a certain amount. Saving 5/25 people is a lot harder than it sounds. All 20 will die before you get to your third guy. This game is just a nightmare, and not in a fun way.
That doesn’t make the game bad, though. There are a lot of great research projects that have a huge impact on everything you do. You have to decide carefully about what you want, or you’re screwed. You get a very limited amount of money every month, and you have to stretch it. I found this a bit unfair as well, because there’s no compromise. Even if just one element was easier, it could make this game more tolerable. As it stands, I had this game for over a month and barely got 25% through the game before I gave up. Spending 45 minutes on a mission and then dying at the end is just ridiculous. Reloading quick saves doesn’t always work, either because you realize you forgot to equip someone with a medkit or because you need to be more accurate on certain missions and forgot to equip scopes. This game is just a pain.
The production values are at least nice, with great-looking aliens and some decent voice acting, but overall, this game requires extreme patience more than skill or brainpower. The game is well done with intense battles, but maps repeat often, the camera is screwy where it zooms out of buildings, and the graphics are a bit underwhelming. The main thing is the extreme difficulty, which practically ruins the game. I have never played such a hard strategy game before, but there’s someone out there who will like this.
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Try multiplayer. A lot of fun !