First off, I’m not a tennis fan. I just like playing the occasional game, such as Hot-Shot Tennis. I just like the competition and the strategy behind it. You need to trick the player into going where you want so you can set them up for failure (or, at least, I think that’s how you play tennis). I don’t know! I’m not a pro player! Secondly, Virtua Tennis 4 isn’t the best tennis game I have ever played; it’s very dull and lacks any excitement or flair. It doesn’t need to be a crazy arcade-type game, but give us more than just green, two players, and a ball.
The game is very confusing to start. The career mode is pretty lame, and I didn’t like it. You move around a world map with a piece of paper and markers. You get random move cards instead of dice. Some spots are for training; others are clothing shops, tournaments, face-offs, and various other things. Every time you get into a match, whether it’s for training or not, your condition decreases, and this apparently affects how you perform. I honestly didn’t notice a difference, or the AI was just so bad that it didn’t affect anything. This board game idea is nice, but it’s so dull. The menus look like absolute crap and are flat and lifeless. There’s no tutorial on how to play, and each move pretty much felt the same. The only one that felt different was the lob.
During a match, I felt every player played the same. You serve with a power meter, and I could never figure out where my ball was going. Some sort of reticle on the ground would have been nice. I would smack the ball for 10 minutes, and nothing would happen. It was so hard to trick the AI into doing what you wanted, and it took so long. I wound up losing match after match trying to outbeat the AI; otherwise, I was stuck in an endless volley. The matches themselves, outside of swinging, are boring. There’s no commentary, the characters look horrible, the pros don’t look like their real-life counterparts, and the graphics look about 5–6 years old.
I understand this is supposed to be a tennis sim, but you can still make it fun. Even after playing 10 tournaments, I still didn’t unlock any new clothes; my character was taking forever to level up, and it just felt like the same thing every freaking match. It felt like it would never end. During career mode, the stupid reps and managers would pop up with lifeless dialog that you just didn’t care about. The only real way to go is multiplayer, but no one is playing online at all. I just feel that the game is a huge, boring mess with terrible AI and lifeless characters. The controls respond pretty well, but I didn’t feel a difference between any of the hits. The game could have been so much more. As it stands, this is the worst tennis game I have ever played. Even major tennis fans will be disappointed in this lifeless borefest.
BioWare has to be some of the most talented beings on the face of the planet because these guys can just pull whole new cultures, religions, and universes out of their asses like it was yesterday’s dinner. Mass Effect has a rich, amazing universe attached to it with believable races, characters, religions, and cultures, and it feels like a whole alternate universe that could exist. Mass Effect 2 expands on this for fans of the original (yeah, don’t play it unless you played the first, seriously). Not only is this just a direct sequel, but all your actions from the original game affect the outcome of this one. Mass Effect 2 has Command Shepard being remade as a machine almost after the Normandy gets destroyed by collectors. Cerberus fixes you up for 2 years, and now you have to rebuild your team, find your previous ones, and stop the Collectors from destroying the human race and working with the Reapers.
Mass Effect 2 has so many changes that were much-needed, and the game just feels tighter, more fluent, and action-packed. The action is the keyword here since a lot of the mundane RPG elements were stripped. To get an idea of what was improved, I’ll start with squad management. Instead of finding armor for each type of race and maintaining every stat of that armor and the character, you no longer manage your team’s armor, just yours. You also no longer have to go find armor like the original. Armor can be bought from world markets, and you equip each piece in your cabin on the Normandy 2. You can even change the color and scheme of the armor as well as your casual clothes. This is great, and I love it because micromanaging armor in the first game was a real pain. The same goes for weapons. You no longer have to find and add each element to every weapon, like ammo types and add-ons, because those are now gone as well. Instead, you find weapons during missions or in markets. You can equip them via a loadout, and the same goes for your squad.
Let’s talk about the radial menus here. You get three ammo types: cryo, incinerate, and disruptor. Each can be used for certain enemies. Your powers are activated here too, but you can now map them to buttons. When shooting weapons, you no longer have a “heat gauge” but actual ammo. The weapons draw heat to a “clip,” which is discharged once it gets too hot. If you run out of these clips, your weapons won’t fire, thus solving that annoying heat meter crap from the first game. This helps the game feel like a solid shooter instead of a game that doesn’t know if it’s an action game or a straight RPG.
The shooting and fighting in the game are now really solid, and you just feel so powerful with all these guns at your disposal. You can upgrade everything (including your ship, and this has outcomes during the last mission) by finding research projects while on missions. This solves all the RPG elements from the last game, so it feels like a solid shooter. Don’t get too upset; there are still RPG elements, but they are only for upgrading your teammates and yourself. Instead of upgrading every single element, such as each ammo type and every biotic type, you only have about 4–6 traits to upgrade. This includes your main character’s ability, biotic or ammo types, and any other special skill. Each one can be upgraded up to level 4, and after that, you get a choice between two special bonus perks. This makes the leveling feel more solid, fluid, and resourceful.
Another great improvement is the galaxy map navigation. No longer are you just a cursor floating around the map, but you actually move your ship. When you are outside solar systems traveling in dead space on the map, you use fuel, but the biggest improvement is no more excavating resources via the stupid rover vehicle. In fact, all vehicle control has been stripped from the game. Instead, you use a scanner on unexplored planets, and when the controller vibrates, you will see your meter spike over a certain gauge. This will be one of the five resources used to upgrade things in the game. While it sounds more repetitive, it’s nice to break up the action of the game and get some downtime.
If those don’t sound like enough of an improvement, how about the story? The story is still as epic and emotionally engrossing as the first, if not more so. There are a couple of new races added, such as the vorcha, drell, and batarians. There are new characters that you can recruit, and they are all as loveable and memorable as in the first game. Of course, all your old pals return, but my favorite part about the game, which isn’t in any other, is how your original save carries over.
If you had a relationship with a previous mate, you will see that in the game, saving and killing certain characters from the past will pop up in the sequel, reflecting certain outcomes of missions. If you chose the renegade or paragon path, it will reflect off your character with red scars and reddened eyes if you were a badass. You truly feel like you were dead for two years, and all your choices in the past came back to haunt you. It’s a mind-trip, and it really makes you that much more involved in the story. Every choice you make during dialogs affects what you do, and BioWare is the master of this.
The only reason why this one scores lower than the original is that most of this has been seen in the original and isn’t anything new for fans of Mass Effect. The new additions just keep the score really high but don’t give us that new feeling. With improved graphics and the same amazing voice acting, Mass Effect 2 will keep fans busy for a good 25–30 hours, but watch what you do because it will affect your outcome in Mass Effect 3.
BUYING A NEW COPY: This will grant you access to a free content update that’s normally $15 for free. This includes a new character, Zaeed, and two other missions that involve the crash of Normandy. While this update is not worth $15, buying a new copy makes you feel like you’re truly getting your money’s worth.
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.
90s kids remember Oregon Trail at school on those old, colorful iMacs, right? If you didn’t, then you had a terrible childhood! For those who did, you must play this game. Organ Trail is a zombie take on the Oregon Trail gameplay, but it is much better with a great atmosphere.
You start off by shooting some zombies, but you run out of ammo. Someone comes to help, but he ends up getting bitten, so you put him down. Yes, you can put down people in this game! After you name your characters with names that aren’t real names (you all did it!) You set off in your station wagon to the first town. This is where you decide what kind of supplies you are going to start off with. Ammo, money, tires, batteries, gas, food, and mufflers. Your station wagon is your life. If it breaks down, you aren’t getting to the west coast. In between landmarks, random events will display that will affect your character or car in some way. Sometimes harsh weather may make you drive slower; you might find interesting things on the road, lose things on the road, get ambushed by biker gangs, have to drive through a horde of zombies, etc.
Not all of this is as simple as flipping through menus. When a gang attacks, you have to ram them off the road with your car, or their bullets will cause precious damage to your car. When you see a horde, you have to decide how to approach them. Is the horde docile? Then sneak through at a slow speed. You can blast your way through or hire mercenaries to protect you, but they are very expensive. There are events that you run into where you have to decide whether to help the person, leave, or kill them. This is a game about surviving a zombie apocalypse, and it is very dark and moody. These events make the game feel like a true adventure. Even scavenging at any time can be a risky move due to how many bullets you have and your health. If you don’t survive, you could possibly die by taking too much damage!
Of course, you can rest and heal your group, but this costs food. Using medkits should only be kept for yourself so you can quickly heal after scavenging. When you reach a town, you can either buy upgrades for your car and pay to repair it, or you can use the scrap you find to do it yourself. This costs lots of food and may not be successful if you don’t have enough scrap. Sometimes you can take jobs for people or trade with them for items you desperately need. I have never played a game like this where I had to think about every single decision so much.
My only main issue is that the game can be too hard sometimes, and the shooting mechanic is clumsy. You hold back the gun and let go to shoot, but the three pixels that help you aim aren’t much help. I found the aiming too sensitive and desperately needed a longer guide or larger projectiles. The shooting sections are the hardest in the game because tons of zombies will come after you, so you must constantly be on the move. I found the character’s moves too slow—just barely faster than the zombies. If this issue were fixed, this game would be perfect. A lot of people will be turned off by the Atari 2600-style graphics, but they add to the charm. The atmosphere is surprisingly well done here, despite the ancient-looking graphics.
Overall, the game requires a lot of thinking and careful strategy but throws in enough random events to make it seem almost realistic. The shooting mechanic is finicky, and the character moves too slowly, but I couldn’t put this game down. Even after dying halfway across America, I tried again because the next journey was completely different from the last. I even decided to take more of something else and try again. This is a wonderful game, but it may not be for everyone.
Inversion is a game about gravity manipulation that fails to work. How a single element that an entire game evolves around fails is beyond me. You play as a man named Dennis, trying to find his daughter after an unknown enemy destroys his city. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as this ridiculous game gets. There are massive plot holes, completely broken game mechanics, and some very monotonous shooting segments.
The game gives you a Gravlink that allows you to make objects light or heavy. You can use this on enemies as well, but it doesn’t work as well as you think and feels completely useless most of the time. Why shoot a barrel to make it light, aim at it, pick it up, aim it at the enemy, then toss it when just a few bullets work twice as fast? The only time this is useful is when the game forces you to use it during the many boring boss fights. You can acquire upgrades for it as you go along, like being able to pick up heavier objects, and the heavy gravity isn’t unlocked until much later. This one mechanic just felt completely useless to me except for when I fought larger enemies, and that wasn’t very often. So hats off to Saber for screwing that one simple thing up. They made a major game mechanic uninteresting and useless.
Secondly, there is the inversion of gravity that affects your navigation. This part was fun until you realized how broken the cover mechanic is. One type has you flipping around walls and buildings, which reminded me a lot of Prey, but not as fun. The second type is where you’re in Zero-G and you can float around by moving pieces of debris. Here’s where the mechanics suddenly break down and make the game a living nightmare to play. You can somehow still get injured when behind cover, whether it’s Zero-G or on the ground. I died so many times because a rocket somehow killed me by hitting the object I’m hiding behind. Secondly, if an enemy throws high gravity at you, you can’t land even if you move away from the area. You can try to push yourself around, but sometimes it doesn’t work, and you are left vulnerable for a good 10 seconds. That’s enough time to die. If an enemy uses low gravity, you go through this stupid, long animation of recovering your senses before you can aim your gun and fire while on the ground. After that, you can’t move and are just laying there taking shots, and 99% of the time you will die during this stupid animation.
Why all this wasn’t tested and thought of is the obvious question. On top of all this, you get some guns that aren’t fun to shoot and have no impact or weight to them. You get the same types of guns in standard form and plasma form. The boss fights are even more repetitious and boring because the game throws the same exact boss at you several times. I fought the slave driver five times, and the security bot about four. Each time, you fight them the same way with no changes. All I wanted to do was shoot myself because of this. On top of all this, you’re sitting there wondering why you’re even bothering because the plot has so many damn holes. Why are these guys invading the city? Where are they from? What do they want? None of those questions are answered. You just go along trying to find your daughter, and that’s pretty much it. The game is a seriously huge waste of time, and I can’t recommend it to anyone.
Overall, Inversion’s graphics are pretty good, but the art style is generic and boring. All the gameplay elements and mechanics are either broken or useless, and the game has more plot holes than LA’s streets. What’s the point of playing? Sheer boredom is all I can think of. Do not waste a single penny on this game, but if you have to, just rent it. The multiplayer is incredibly boring as well, so don’t even bother with that either.
I have really given this game some time, and I have tried to forgive it. I rented this on Xbox 360 when it first came out and gave up after the second level. I bought this at a cheap Steam sale about a year ago and have just had it sitting on my HDD since then. I have gone back here and there to try to beat or continue this game. I just can’t do it and have finally given up. After two years of giving this game a chance, I doubt it will become better over time. The paper-thin story, poor stealth mechanics, and technical flaws just bring this promising game down.
You play as a British spy infiltrating Germany during World War II and other occupied territories for…I don’t really know. The story is presented in flashbacks that don’t really explain much other than why Violet is at that current location. You have various goals you have to complete, but there are enemies in between that you have to kill off or avoid. A stealth game has to have great stealth mechanics like sneaking, killing, and gadgets, which Velvet fails in every category. First off, she moves way too slowly when crouching. You can never catch up to enemies who are walking because they just leave her in the dust. This is extremely difficult when you are trying to quickly kill someone before you are spotted. The kill moves are pretty cool, but you have to be in the exact position the game needs you to be before you can trigger them. You also have to be extremely close, which is ridiculous. This isn’t a splinter cell where you can trigger the kill at a reasonable distance.
You get a few items to help you kill these Nazis. You can use morphine shots to become invisible, freeze time, and do an automatic kill. This is useful for a guard that has been spotted, so you can take him down really quick. You get a silenced pistol, but ammo is hard to come by, so use it wisely. Sometimes you can also use a Nazi uniform as a disguise, but if you get too close to enemies, they will recognize you. The game has shadow stealth, which means if you hide in the shadows, you will have a blue aura around you, and enemies won’t see you. This game has some of the dumbest AI enemies I have ever seen. You can whistle to lure a guard into some shadows, but he won’t see you even though you are two feet in front of him. If you are seen and try to hide, the enemies know exactly where you are, and you can’t hide from them. What kind of lame crap is that?
The game looks good and has a nice visual art style, but there are some technical flaws here. Animations are pretty bad, with some terrible sound effects. The footsteps all sound the same, and the animations just seem floaty and canned. I also found some of the guard’s patrols to be very long, and the overall patterns are hard to work around. It’s difficult to figure out how to take out enemies because there are no natural hints or obvious paths most of the time.
Overall, Velvet Assassin was a promising stealth action game set in World War II but has a pointless story, broken stealth mechanics, and some technical flaws. The game looks good, but other than that, there is no reason for you to pick it up. Rent this if you want to play a stealth game with a sexy protagonist; otherwise, look elsewhere.
It was bound to happen. A game where you play a super janitor. Dustforce is a hardcore platformer reminiscent of Super Meat Boy, and almost as hard. The game has tight controls; however, they seem to be a bit overly complicated. The visuals are charming, but the whole package is lacking something.
You can pick one of four janitors with different weapons (a pushbroom, pom-poms, mop, etc.). You are scored based on how much style you use and how much dust you clear in the game. The game relies a lot on wall platforming, so you can stick to the wall and run up, bounce off, slide down, and even stay inside half circles if you keep the character pressed against that wall. As you run along with the levels, you clear dust from the floors and walls, but there are enemies. You can do a jump attack that lets you continue on your run without stopping, but most levels require a lot of trick shots and precise control to master them. You have to think on your toes and know exactly what you want to do ahead of time, or you will get a low score.
If you get an S rank in finesse and cleanliness, you get a key to unlocking more levels. This part I actually didn’t like because it means people who aren’t as good can’t enjoy the rest of the game. Getting an S rank in finesse pretty much means you don’t stop running or mess up. S rank in cleanliness means you pick up about 90% of all the dust. This makes the game even harder because there is no level progression. It starts out hard and gets harder. This is fine and all, but the game requires a ton of trial-and-error, and most people don’t have the patience for that. This is truly a hardcore game, and it shows. The hub area is a bit confusing because you run around areas finding doors to “rooms” to clean, but these hub areas are confusing and you will get lost all the time.
The visuals are charming, with a nice art style that almost looks 16-bit but doesn’t. The controls are super tight, but they just feel overly complicated with too many maneuvers. There also aren’t any extra modes, so once you run through all the levels or master them, you won’t need to come back for anything. I recommend this game to hardcore platformer fans only, but even they may find this game tough. Just don’t forget the multiplayer when you are done with all the levels before you wave this one goodbye.
Adventure, strategy, and RPGs were the pinnacle of PC games back in the mid- to late-90s, and Sanitarium is one of those games. You play Max, who suffers a car accident and is stuck in his own insane delusions, or is he? You explore 12 sick and twisted chapters with excellent voice acting and very interesting characters, but don’t forget those adventure puzzles.
The game isn’t much different from the standard adventure game, where you wander around and click on items to proceed to the next area. Your icon is a magnifying glass, and you hold down the right mouse button to move your character around. This was my first annoyance with the game, being that the characters walk so slowly and there’s no run button. Despite this, clicking on things is actually interesting because most of it doesn’t even pertain to the real world. Your first area is an asylum where guys are bashing their heads against walls, and the people you talk to are completely out of their minds. This gets even worse as the game progresses, but that’s a good thing.
As you collect items, you find ways to use them in interesting ways, and it actually makes sense. However, most of the time, the way to use them is so obvious that you will miss it. This game isn’t exactly easy and just gets harder as the game progresses. You get thrown a couple of puzzles at the beginning, but towards the end, the game gets very puzzle-heavy, and they are not fun or easy. Sure, they are unique to individual worlds, but they aren’t easy. I had to use a walkthrough through most of the game because I just couldn’t figure out what to do most of the time.
My favorite part of the game was wandering around and talking to people and hearing their strange voices or weird stories. The worlds themselves are characters because each one has a big problem to solve, but thankfully each level is small and it’s not easy to get lost. The game is paced well with some CGI cutscenes (of course they look horrible being from 1998), but it’s nice that this game feels high-budget for its time. I always looked forward to the next zany world and the weird characters I would run into. I never got bored and always wanted more. The game is nicely paced at around 5–6 hours, and it had a satisfying ending. The one surprise I had, however, was a couple of boss fights. Most adventure games don’t have these, but these were strange.
Overall, Sanitarium is an excellent adventure game that shows how great the 90s were on the PC. You can pick the game up on GoG.com for only $6, but I did run into one huge problem. The game crashes a lot on the newer operating systems, and GoG never addressed the issue. If you can, get the CD and use it on an older operating system (like Windows 98), but otherwise, you will have to trudge through the constant crashes.
The adventure genre has struggled for years, and rarely are any of them any good. Yesterday is one of those gems because it does everything right and doesn’t do what other adventure games do. The story is the part that’s most interesting here, with you playing John Yesterday, who is a man investigating an occult book called The Order of the Flesh and has something to do with killing homeless people. You get mixed up in a huge mess after waking up with amnesia, so you travel around trying to figure all this stuff out. There are plenty of plot twists, and the game keeps you playing because you want to know more. The problem is that the story is so short that it leaves you wanting more.
The gameplay itself is extremely simple because all you do is find objects and come up with ways to use them. This isn’t new for adventure games, but the constant scene-changing means there’s always new stuff to find. The game completely wipes out tiresome pixel hunting because there is an object-of-interest button that will display things you can click on for a few seconds. Every adventure game needs this, and very few do it. There is also a hint button that is actually useful and gives you hints, so you are never stuck. If you use a hint, you have to click around some to refill the light bulb, so there is some encouragement to figure things out on your own.
Another thing I’m glad this game does is that when you click on something or try to move to different areas, there are no annoying walking animations or door-opening animations. The character warps to that spot, and the item pops up on screen. Thank you, Pendulo Studios, for not putting annoying, useless crap into an already annoying and dead genre. This makes playing the game much easier and makes progress quick. Another complaint would be the lack of puzzles, because there are very few and not very challenging. This is no Myst, but instead, you have to just figure out what item does what. This is kind of fun and keeps the pace up, but brainiacs will contest this and probably get bored with the game.
I feel Yesterday was actually geared more toward hardcore gamers who don’t have the patience for long-drawn-out stories and tiresome puzzles. This is both good and bad, depending on the player. I do detest the lack of challenge, but the fast-paced narrative is nice. Other than this, the animations are terrible, with horrible lip-syncing and some audio glitches along with spotty voice acting. The graphics have a cell-shaded cartoony look, which is nice, but technically, the game doesn’t look that great. One thing I found odd is that the game depicts a sick, twisted torture-type story with murder and killing, yet there’s hardly any blood and violent scenes are almost censored. I found this odd and kind of detracted from the experience, but what can you do?
Overall, Yesterday provides a fine narrative and quickens the pace of most sludgy adventure games, but the lack of puzzles, challenges, and an extremely short story will turn hardcore adventure fans away. Yesterday was a fun weekend play, but other than that, you won’t come back.
Who would have thought winding rope on a wood figure would be fun? The guys at Secret Exit did and this is some simple fun here. While the graphics don’t push anything the wooden figure models are nice and varied, but this is a more challenging puzzle game than you think. As you work your way up a tree you have three goals for each figure by covering 70%, 85%, and 99% of the allotted rope. When you wind the rope it will turn a painted color, but be careful because if you wind the rope tight that’s lifted off the figure you can’t get underneath. The physics are great with rope sliding off corners and falling into place as it should.
Some figures have nails that you can use to redirect the rope, but the art of this is how well you can wind the rope and cover the whole object. Some are easy and some are hard with lots of arms, legs, or pieces that can easily be covered up or roped off on accident. That’s pretty much all there is to the game, but being such a unique puzzle game makes it great. There is nothing out there like this and you will have hours of fun here. There is some nice relaxing background music playing, but overall the game impresses on sheer originality. I highly recommend this to any puzzle fan hardcore or casual.
If I were to complain about this at all it would be the inconsistent difficulty that jumps around, the game lacks any type of mode like time attack, plus you can only play in short bursts because you will get bored after a while. Other than that this is one awesome game that comes at a small price.
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