I’m not much of a kart racing fan because the games tend to be too simple and easy, but Transformed really knocks it out of the park. The last Sonic Kart Racer was just okay; it had a slow pace, and it just wasn’t designed very well. This game really surprised me with its excellent graphics, track design, and character selection.
The obvious are Sega mascots such as Sonic, Amy, Shadow, Robotnik, Alex Kidd, and various others. While any of these guys outside of Sonic aren’t well known, it is nice to see them here. PC users get exclusive characters such as Football Manager (I know), Team Fortress, and Shogun (I know… Not exactly amazing characters you would want in a kart racer, but oh well. When you start your first race, you will immediately see how much better this game is. The handling is so much more fluid, and the races just flow. What really sells the game are the tracks that change mid-race and are able to transform into flying and nautical vehicles. Each character has three different vehicles, and it just feels great. They all handle things differently, so it makes you stay on your toes. The track design is amazing. There are hazards everywhere, and the weapons are really cool. The tracks are featured in various games, like Sonic’s Green Hill Zone and Samba De Amigo’s crazy LSD track. These levels are fun, but I just wish there were more.
The weapons vary from iceballs, twisters, remote cars that explode, rockets, blowfish, and various other crazy weapons. You pick up the question-mark capsules to find them, but you will find an All-Stars weapon that will make you really powerful and fast. Your car transforms, and it just looks really cool. Along the way, you can pick up coins that are used in other modes’ load screens in a slot machine to acquire boosts and other items. I just found the game to be very pleasing to play, but not with a single player. Easy was too easy, medium was too hard, and hard was impossible. The AI is really bad, but people play kart racing games for multiplayer anyway, which is where all the fun is to be had in this game. Unlike the last game, PC gamers get online multiplayer.
The graphics are really nice, with bright, vibrant colors, great-looking textures, and some really amazing lighting effects. Of course, the PC gets the best treatment, and it looks way better than the last game. As you play the game, you will eventually find tracks that become your favorites and find which character you prefer. The dynamically changing tracks just add that much more fun to the game. Hitting speed boosts, finding weapons, and avoiding track hazards are so much fun, and the sense of speed is incredible.
I just wish there was a bit more, but while there is more content than in the last game, I feel something is just missing. Maybe if the AI wasn’t so bad, the single-player would be more fun, but I found myself getting bored with it. The only reason to constantly come back is multiplayer. There is a licensed feature that allows you to add up to three stickers that you earned, but I felt this was completely useless and something to put in for little kids. However, as it stands, it doesn’t add anything significantly new to the genre or push it forward, which is what it needs. While it may not reinvent the wheel, it just makes it bigger and louder.
So here I am with my first tablet, I swore up and down that, I had no use for one because I have a laptop and a 4″ phone. Why would I need a tablet? Apparently for a lot and this is one of the best devices I have used in a long time. It’s sleek, powerful, and well designed. Why a Nexus 7? Well, the 7″ size is perfect where it isn’t too small or too big. I don’t like 10″ tablets because they just feel big and clunky. You are probably wondering what’s under the hood, why not an iPad Mini, and is the screen nice?
The Nexus 7 is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset which is one of the most powerful on the market. Directly competing with Apple’s A5x chipset in their iPad 3, the Nexus 7 is extremely powerful for a 7″ tablet. This tablet has a whopping 16 cores, a quad-core 1.3Ghz CPU, and a 12-core Geforce ULP GPU. The tablet CPU has a fifth core that is dedicated to running in a power-saving mode during times of low processing needs. That is one powerful tablet. The Tegra 3 chipset allows for some of the most advanced graphics seen on a tablet as well. Games like Dead Trigger, Dark Meadow, Zombie Driver, and a few others optimize their games for the Tegra chipset adding extra effects and higher FPS. The tablet has 1GB of DDR3L RAM rather than DDR2 RAM which is in both the iPad 3 and Mini and it is twice as fast. The Tegra 3 chipset is even more powerful than the iPad Mini and iPad 3 with the Mini having a single-core 1Ghz CPU and the iPad 3 having just a dual-core 1Ghz CPU. Even the ULP graphics chip is more powerful than the iPad 3’s with 416Mhz. If that doesn’t impress you…I don’t know what will.
Asus just stopped producing the 16GB models so only the 32 are available now, but that’s fine. 16GB really isn’t enough space anyway, but there are no expandable storage options. You can use an OTG cable and a USB stick, but most people won’t know to do that. 32GB is plenty for games, movies, music, and books. I have over 30 games on my tablet and still have plenty of room. I found the battery life is pretty decent for such a powerful device. Running high graphic games you get about 3 hours and everything else will last you most of the day, but that’s with Wifi on. With it off it is probably 30% less power-consuming.
The screen is gorgeous. Being better than the iPad Mini with a 1280×800 resolution rather than 1024×768. It also has double the PPI at 216 rather than 163 for the Mini. It also is a 16:10 aspect ratio rather than the Mini’s 4:3 aspect ratio so it is a widescreen tablet. The text is crisp and-and the images are sharp and vibrant. You won’t be disappointed watching high-definition movies or games. I also found the screen to feel very nice to touch and my finger would just glide across. The tablet is also fitted with scratchproof Corning fitted glass, also known as Gorilla Glass to some. The glass is alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass which is the best out there right now. On the back, the device has a bumpy, leathery texture which makes holding the device easier. I love this texture and feels so much nicer than the hard plastic of other tablets with their sharp edges. You also don’t have to worry about setting it down and scratching it up. The whole device just looks so sleek and smooth.
The tablet comes stock with android Jelly Bean 4.1, but as of a week ago the new 4.2.2 update is out. Nothing else to expect software-wise other than a great Google Android OS experience. However, if you’re a gamer check out Nvidia’s TegraZone app to get started on what games were specifically designed for the Tegra chipset. My only complaint is that there is no rear-facing camera. Just a front-facing 1.2MP camera for video chatting. However, most people don’t use their tablets for taking pictures (unless you are one of those iPad people)
Overall, the Nexus 7 is one of the most powerful tablets on the market and the most powerful 7″ tablet you can get your hands on. With the 16-core chipset, bright vivid screen, and sleek design, any hardware fan will want this tablet. For the low price of $250 for 32GB of storage…nothing beats it! Once you pick this up you will realize why it was chosen as 2012’s best tablet.
The Nexus 7 is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset which is one of the most powerful on the market. Directly competing with Apple’s A5x chipset in their iPad 3, the Nexus 7 is extremely powerful for a 7″ tablet. This tablet has a whopping 16 cores, a quad-core 1.3Ghz CPU, and a 12-core Geforce ULP GPU. The tablet CPU has a fifth core that is dedicated to running in a power-saving mode during times of low processing needs. That is one powerful tablet. The Tegra 3 chipset allows for some of the most advanced graphics seen on a tablet as well. Games like Dead Trigger, Dark Meadow, Zombie Driver, and a few others optimize their games for the Tegra chipset adding extra effects and higher FPS. The tablet has 1GB of DDR3L RAM rather than DDR2 RAM which is in both the iPad 3 and Mini and it is twice as fast. The Tegra 3 chipset is even more powerful than the iPad Mini and iPad 3 with the Mini having a single-core 1Ghz CPU and the iPad 3 having just a dual-core 1Ghz CPU. Even the ULP graphics chip is more powerful than the iPad 3’s with 416Mhz. If that doesn’t impress you…I don’t know what will.
Asus just stopped producing the 16GB models so only the 32 are available now, but that’s fine. 16GB really isn’t enough space anyway, but there are no expandable storage options. You can use an OTG cable and a USB stick, but most people won’t know to do that. 32GB is plenty for games, movies, music, and books. I have over 30 games on my tablet and still have plenty of room. I found the battery life is pretty decent for such a powerful device. Running high graphic games you get about 3 hours and everything else will last you most of the day, but that’s with Wifi on. With it off it is probably 30% less power-consuming.
The screen is gorgeous. Being better than the iPad Mini with a 1280×800 resolution rather than 1024×768. It also has double the PPI at 216 rather than 163 for the Mini. It also is a 16:10 aspect ratio rather than the Mini’s 4:3 aspect ratio so it is a widescreen tablet. The text is crisp and-and the images are sharp and vibrant. You won’t be disappointed watching high-definition movies or games. I also found the screen to feel very nice to touch and my finger would just glide across. The tablet is also fitted with scratchproof Corning fitted glass, also known as Gorilla Glass to some. The glass is alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass which is the best out there right now. On the back, the device has a bumpy, leathery texture which makes holding the device easier. I love this texture and feels so much nicer than the hard plastic of other tablets with their sharp edges. You also don’t have to worry about setting it down and scratching it up. The whole device just looks so sleek and smooth.
The tablet comes stock with android Jelly Bean 4.1, but as of a week ago the new 4.2.2 update is out. Nothing else to expect software-wise other than a great Google Android OS experience. However, if you’re a gamer check out Nvidia’s TegraZone app to get started on what games were specifically designed for the Tegra chipset. My only complaint is that there is no rear-facing camera. Just a front-facing 1.2MP camera for video chatting. However, most people don’t use their tablets for taking pictures (unless you are one of those iPad people)
Overall, the Nexus 7 is one of the most powerful tablets on the market and the most powerful 7″ tablet you can get your hands on. With the 16-core chipset, bright vivid screen, and sleek design, any hardware fan will want this tablet. For the low price of $250 for 32GB of storage…nothing beats it! Once you pick this up you will realize why it was chosen as 2012’s best tablet.
I never really heard of Ian Livingstone’s Fighting Fantasy novels. I just ran across this on Google Play one day and was instantly immersed. This is a text-based adventure with some RPG elements thrown in. Think of this as a pick-your-own adventure with dice. Thankfully, the game handles most of the tedious work for you, like keeping track of items, stamina, and other stats. The story is really intriguing because of how mysterious the whole setting is. You play as a man who is captured and taken to a secluded castle. You later find out that people are being turned into zombies to become part of some crazy guy’s personal army. These aren’t just regular zombies and are a bit smart, as you will find out in the story.
When you get to a certain spot, you can choose to go in different directions; however, some have consequences and rewards. I found that going into a bedroom scored me a few medkits, some items, and maybe a weapon. Some paths lead to dead ends, and you have to restart at your last bookmark. This is very exciting, and I couldn’t put the game down. There are a lot of key items in this game, probably too many, and this is one fatal flaw the game has. I didn’t buy a steel pulley at the very beginning of the story, and it was a key item I needed. Near the end, I had to restart the entire book, which was very tedious and frustrating. I even tried other paths, but they all led to this path.
When you run into zombies, you have to fight. You can either use your weapon or a grenade. You roll the dice, and if you don’t like the roll, you can shake the device until you get the role you want. Some may consider this cheating, but if this feature wasn’t here, you would restart constantly. Some fights required a certain number or higher to defeat the enemy, and some scenes require you to roll to determine whether you survive said event. This is also exciting and makes things tense. However, there is one main issue that almost completely ruins the game. You have to kill all the zombies in order to finish the story. I got to the very end, and it said I didn’t kill them all, and my adventure is over. Huge bummer, and I felt like the book was a waste of time. I went back through them again and just couldn’t figure out how to kill them all. This was a huge mistake on the author’s part.
Other than that, the story is great, but I wish there were more characters. The art is excellent, and the dice-rolling gameplay is exciting and can get tense. I did find the music to repeat through the whole book and get annoying. I will check out more Fighting Fantasy novels, and hopefully I won’t run into an issue where I can’t finish it.
Everyone is so used to games with explosions, gore, death, and spoken dialog that we have lost touch with what games are truly designed for. There have been very few games that tell a story as a book or painting would, with no words and nothing but pictures. The only game that I feel comes close to Journey is Shadow of the Colossus. Games have the advantage of adding music and sound that are missing from books and paintings. Music and sound can trigger emotions in humans that no other type of stimuli can. Journey is one such game that uses only visual cues and sound to deliver a sad tale and a magical experience.
This game is like no other; you don’t mess with options, controls, settings, or anything like that. You just start the game, and bam, you’re there. You just wonder; there is no compass, no mini-map, and no annoying narrator to tell you where to go. Just go and trust your instincts and senses. As you wander around the desert, you will naturally go where you see something of interest. This vast desert looks endless, like the Sahara, and feels that way. You only have one ability, and that is to glide, but the length of your scarf determines how long you can jump and glide. This is your only ability. The Wanderer will hop up on small ledges automatically, but during your first level, you will just go. That’s all there is to this game. Just…go. When you do get to the end of the area, you are told a sad story using hieroglyphs. Like a book, you figure out what is happening and going on in this story.
Once you get the hang of everything in the first level, you just keep going. The music in Journey helps deliver the emotions and senses that drive the spiritualism of the game. The music is touching and one of the best-orchestrated game soundtracks I have heard since The Elder Scrolls. The music is magical and just hits home and delivers all the emotion of the game. The best parts of the game are when you are sliding down the sand, having the music kick up to a climax, and letting the visual experience just soak in. Nothing can express this more than watching a magical world come to life in 1080p. This is really one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen.
There are a few gameplay elements, like finding secrets here and there and power-ups, but Journey has been one of the most interesting uses of online play since Demon’s Souls. You will sometimes run into another Wanderer, just like you, but there is no other way to communicate other than the echolocation you use to bring fabric to life in the game. You use this to help each other out, and because of the lack of human interaction, it forces gamers to actually help and experience this touching story with each other. No mics, no text chat; there isn’t even a name above the character; they just appear. If you spot a rare white-cloak player, they will probably help you find all the secrets in the game. My second favorite moment is when you are running away from the giant monster thing that flies in the air and targets you. The dark atmosphere, foreboding sound effects, and care for The Wanderer just add so much tension. I never felt so scared for a character in a game when running from a boss.
The graphics are also technically impressive, pushing the PS3 to its limits. Journey uses a very technically advanced sand displacement technology that no other developer has used. Naughty Dog actually asked that game company for help on how they did the sand displacement for use in Uncharted 3. Naughty Dog needed to use this technology without degrading graphics quality or using up all CPU resources on just the sand. The lighting effects are also amazing and some of the best I have seen on consoles. This game almost looks like a DirectX 11 game on PC with advanced lighting techniques. The game is just gorgeous and has to be played to be understood.
The only issue with Journey is that you can beat it in less than 2 hours. Sure, there is a boss that you run from at the end, and you can die, but the game is just way too short. This, of course, allows you to go back and experience the game again and find the secrets, but I would have loved to see this as a 4+ hour adventure. I have never played a game that drew me into the world as much as Journey, but it wasn’t just the atmosphere. The fact that you are completely disconnected from the world means that you have to use your own imagination to help paint the rest of the picture. I hope that game company has more under its belt for Journey, and if this is it, it will go down in history.
This game was a complete surprise to everyone. An old-school action game with 8-bit graphics that has a very weird story but is still fun and interesting? It can’t be possible! Well, it is because of the genius-level design and over-the-top perspective where special game mechanics were worked in. Enemies can shoot through windows, you can use doors to your advantage, and there are so many different weapons that the fun is endless!
The game is based on cheesy 80’s snuff films where you are a hitman that goes to different spots and just kills everyone in the building. The story is very weird yet entertaining; it doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t need to. That’s how great this game is. You start out by picking an animal mask that you have unlocked, then you go in and try to clear the stages without dying. One hit and you’re dead in this game; let me make that very clear. You get a split-second window to kill someone before they kill you, whether they are facing you or not. If you are behind them, you get an extra split second, but you won’t clear a hallway before they shoot you. Enemies who have melee weapons are easier because they have to come toward you. The strategy is to see where the enemies are placed in each room and clear the stage accordingly.
It starts out simple, but you will see how addictive and fun it is when your character slices open a neck, smashes ahead into a carpet, or blows someone’s brains out. The second genius thing about this game is that you are punished for using guns, which makes the game very easy. Shoot someone, and every enemy on the level comes after you. You are to clear the rooms quickly, not quietly, which is the key here. There are a few different types of enemies, like dogs, which are really fast, and big, fat guys with scarves that can only be killed by gunfire. Save these guys last, so the entire level doesn’t come after you. A good strategy is to step out of a corner, hide again, and just stick out enough so you can whack anyone who walks by. This is another key strategy for winning the game.
The boss fights are really tough and require thinking outside the box to beat them. One enemy has two wild cats that come after you, a female ninja, and then he has two uzis that will pulverize you. You have to eliminate each one in sequence without dying. Remember, one hit, and you’re dead. Trial and error are very rewarding because it just feels good to clear a whole level without alerting anyone. The game is very fast-paced, so a level can be cleared in less than a minute or just seconds. Learning the strategy for each level allows you to get better scores.
You need to use combos to rack up scores, and gunfire is frowned upon in this game. Switch up weapons, use doors to knock enemies down, be bold and lure enemies around corners, and kill several enemies at once; it is all based on skill and not luck. This game just feels so good to play, and I couldn’t put it down. There are 18 chapters in this game, and in the end, I wanted more (hopefully DLC will follow).
There are some major issues that keep this game from scoring higher, though. When the game was released, it was nearly unplayable. Even now, the controller layout stinks; before, there wasn’t even controller support, and the keyboard and mouse controls are terrible. There are game-breaking bugs and glitches that don’t let you progress in the game, and while the music is pretty original, it repeats way too often, and you end up muting your speakers. The game should have just gone through some more testing or a couple more months of development before being released. Even now, there was a bug that kept me from advancing past Chapter 16. I finally tried it one more time, and I passed it—no idea how or why.
Hotline Miami is a fast-paced action game that has a genius-level strategy design. The graphics work very well for the setting, and the mechanics are just extremely solid. I just wish it was more stable and had better controller support. People with Alienware computers will get AlienFX support here, which is unheard of in an indie game. As it stands, this is one of the best games of the year.
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.
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.
Now that we are almost done with this series, I am sad that the next one will be it. Episode 4 sees the gang trying to get on a boat and out of Savannah, Georgia, but things don’t go as planned. There are a bunch of new characters this time around, but most are hard to care for because they make brief appearances. By this point, most or a little of your gang will be with you, but this episode is mainly lacking the suspenseful choices like in the last one. We get bigger areas to explore, a little more action, and finally, a ton of zombies.
The series has been lacking any zombies lately and has just dealt with internal turmoil, but Episode 4 skirts this and brings the gang back to realizing that the zombies are the real threat here. There’s a strange calm before the storm within the group; the conversations are tense and borderline everyone going postal on each other. I found that there was a lack of gameplay here and that it focused more on delivering a story, but that is ok in this series. There is more action with some zombie shooting, action-oriented puzzles, and larger areas to explore. I sat through the whole episode in one go because it was so intense and entertaining. You always want to know what is going to happen next.
The new characters are hard to really like except Molly because of her shady personality. The new guys are brief and seem pretty generic. I really don’t care for Christa or Omid, who we met at the end of the last episode. Christa is selfish, and Omid is boring and just seems useless. What grows even more are the characters you have right now from the original group. Clementine and Lee’s relationship really blossoms here, and their trust will be tested.
This episode is just a mishmash of everything from the past ones: lots of zombies, action, large areas, new characters, and tense conversations, but nothing very serious. What has stayed the same throughout is the constant, intense atmosphere that makes you stay in the game, and you never want to quit until it’s over. This is my favorite adventure series of all time. The game puts you in control just enough to make you feel like you made all the important choices. The game has been built up to the climax, and the cliffhanger ending here is so abrupt and so sudden that you just hang your end, knowing you have to wait another month or two for the last episode. This is just like a good TV series, but better.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…