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Finished Fate:Traitors Soul. Would only recommend for bored dungeon crawl fans. Tons of gamespace, but bugs and lacking features make it a hard sell.
Anomaly Defenders

Just like the rest of the Anomaly series were reversed Tower Defense games (Tower Offense?), Anomaly Defenders is a reversed Anomaly game... which makes it a Tower Defense game... yeah... Whereas you previously led your horribly outnumbered squad around the devastated Earth, trying to survive against the alien menace, here you are in control of said aliens, trying to fend off the retaliating human forces... on floating platforms. That was disappointing, as I expected the previously besieged humans to muster a counterattack against the alien homeworld and the game's description does indicate so, but if the alien homeworld is nothing more than floating platforms, then I say that the developers lost a good opportunity to create an interesting alien world.

As I mentioned above, aside from switching sides, the gameplay is also switched. As a result, Anomaly Defenders is now a typical Tower Defense game where you have to prevent enemies coming from multiple routes, from reaching and destroying the alien launchpad. You do so with an assortment of towers (the same ones you were fighting in Anomaly 2), upgrades and abilities to defend your launchpad (from, mostly, the same units you were controlling in Anomaly 2) and, interestingly enough, a Harvester building to collect resource. Unlike other Tower Defense games (like Kingdom Rush), Anomaly Defenders isn't a particularly difficult game on normal and assuming you have enough resource, you can just spam the enemy's path with towers and pwn him hard. Gone is the tension felt in the original Anomaly games, where you desperately tried to keep your units alive, because losing even one could force you to restart from the checkpoint. Here, losing towers isn't the end of the world. In fact, there is an upgrade that allows you to sacrifice a tower to cause damage to the surrounding enemies. Even if the enemy reaches your launchpad, he must still destroy it, something made harder for him by the fact that the launchpad is quite resilient and damages any enemy unit around it.

Also gone is all the sense of a conclusion. It's supposedly the closing chapter in the Anomaly series, yet it doesn't feel like it. In fact, it feels almost entirely disconnected from the events of the previous games and the ending doesn't quite convince you that everything is really over. The lack of voice acting and dialog this time around, along with the genre switch, points to me that Anomaly Defenders is mostly reminiscent of a spinoff, rather than a main game, and I must say that I don't like it when a series ends with a spinoff.

Updated the list.
Post edited February 06, 2015 by Grargar
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Grargar:
Nice review, thanks. In spite of the conclusion, the Anomaly series is near the top of my backlog and I look forward to checking them out - even this one. :)

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Grargar: Unlike other Tower Defense games (like Kingdom Rush), Anomaly Defenders isn't a particularly difficult game
Oh good, it wasn't just me...
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losms: Dying Light

This game is what Dead Island should have been. Mirror's Edge + Dead Island = Dyng Light.
So the only thing Dead Island needed was parkour? that doesn't sound right...
Post edited February 06, 2015 by Mr.Caine
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Grargar: Anomaly Defenders
I was disappointed too! Anomaly Defenders is just a generic tower defense game and as you've said - it's rather easy whereas Anomaly series is really unique. Shame they decided to end the series in such a bad way...
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PaterAlf: Your post is lacking an important information about the game: Is it possible to kill Uruks??? ;)
I thought so. But then this one that I killed kept coming back with new scars until his head was encased in the equivalent of an iron mask. So maybe. Pretty cathartic.
Fallout: New Vegas: Lonesome Road. Lonesome Road is a DLC for New Vegas, and in a lot of ways it fits New Vegas better than Old World Blues did. Lonesome Road is downright bleak, save for a new companion you get it, it's definitely darker in mood and tone than the base game, but not in a blunt or overbearing way. Guilt and how the events of the past can change a person are the main themes of the story, and each is presented very well. The new characters are few in number but each managed to get reactions out of me, they were all well written and presented in a strong way.

It's also extremely linear, you have a set path and very little exploration is to be had, not that that is a bad thing. The atmosphere is heavy and thick and I was sucked right into it, I basically played right through Lonesome Road in one sitting (save for a short snack break). I really enjoyed Lonesome Road, it was focused, well written and immersive.
I finished Dragon Age: Inquisition yesterday. I'm suprised that there wasn't a big controversy regarding the ending of the game. It was terrible. I couldn't believe it when the gamed ended with one of the lamest final missions and boss fights I have ever experienced. I was already feeling underwhelmed with the game, but the ending just took it to a whole new level. I'm very dissapointed.
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OvaltineJenkins: I finished Dragon Age: Inquisition yesterday. I'm suprised that there wasn't a big controversy regarding the ending of the game. It was terrible. I couldn't believe it when the gamed ended with one of the lamest final missions and boss fights I have ever experienced. I was already feeling underwhelmed with the game, but the ending just took it to a whole new level. I'm very dissapointed.
I guess after Dragon Age 2/Mass Effect 3 people set their expectations so low they're right next to fucking dinosaur bones.That's the only way I can rationalize the praise this game gets.
Post edited February 08, 2015 by Mr.Caine
I just finished Deus Ex for the first playing.
I bought the game 3 years ago at GOG, but hadn't played until now because I'm overwhelmed by the complicated system.
After getting the dragon's tooth sword and the HP regeneration argument, this game became very easy, so I can finish this time and killing the enemy by the sword was fun.
I understand why so many people love this game.

Full list
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yoshino: I just finished Deus Ex for the first playing.
I bought the game 3 years ago at GOG, but hadn't played until now because I'm overwhelmed by the complicated system.
After getting the dragon's tooth sword and the HP regeneration argument, this game became very easy, so I can finish this time and killing the enemy by the sword was fun.
I understand why so many people love this game.

Full list
Well done.
Fallout: New Vegas: Honest Hearts. The third DLC that I've finished for Fallout: New Vegas and another one I enjoyed. It's much more open than Lonesome Road was but in many ways it's just as a linear. The new landmass is interesting visually, with high cliffs and tribal paint all around, and you're free to explore at your leisure. There isn't much in the way of side quests, just a few very quick "go eliminate X" types of side quests. The story is well written with plenty of grey areas, the main themes being the fight for innocence vs losing all you have. I enjoyed the conversations with the new characters and their dueling sides of morality despite being on the same side.


It was kind of short overall, I didn't time myself but I doubt it took me more than two hours to beat Honest Hearts. All in all I enjoyed it less than both Lonesome Road and Old World Blues, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The Chronicles of Riddick (consisting in both a graphically enhanced remake of "Escape from Butcher Bay" and "Assault on Dark Athena")...

...are, surprisingly, quite good games.
I usually avoid videogames derived from movies, as they tend to be just cash-grabs taking advantage of an already existing fan base, yet those two are well-developed pieces of software! :P

In TCoR you take the role of (who would have guessed?) Richard B. Riddick, probably the greatest badass in the whole Galaxy. In the first installment, you'll have to flee from the most secure prison in the sector, while in the second -a direct sequel set immediately after the end of the previous game- you are intercepted and captured by a space pirate ship, rapidly turning from pray to predator.
The two games are almost identical in the mechanics and graphics department, so I'll talk about them as if they were only one.

What I really loved about those games is the atmosphere: the developers made a lot of effort to craft an excellent lighting system and a compelling art style, combined with good textures, poligonal models, a top-notch voice acting (with Vin Diesel himself) and soundtrack result in a masterfully shown dark, gritty, dirty and "metallic" world, very believable in both its physical and psychic oppressiveness.
Every moment in the game makes you feel like you are crossing the line between life and death, always on the edge of an extremely dangerous situation (at least in Hard mode: personally, I found the normal one way too easy to give the same vibe, and please note that my review is based on this).
Just a couple of bullets are more than enough to kill you, so you'll have to be smart and trying to drive each encounter on the way that suits you the most, exploting the environment whenever possible; you will need to often change tactics, and every situation will require a different approach, spanning from pure stealth evasion maneuvers to frontal firefight and everything in-between. I especially liked the most "predatory" segments, where you have to hide in the shadows to silently and quickly assassinate the largest possible amount of enemies before directly engaging the remaining ones -without allowing them to activate the alarm.

The varied and entertaining gameplay has a major downside, though: the encounters seem to work flawlessly because they are heavily scripted. This is done so well that a player going through the game on normal might not even notice it, yet once you get beaten several times in the same room on hard passing the challenge becomes sometimes a matter of trial and error. Luckily this does not happen often, yet noticing it can spoil a bit the experience.
Another criticism I have to make is about checkpoints: in plain console tradition, you cannot decide where and when to save, being forced to restart from precise checkpoints. It is imo only a minor annoyance, though, since they are very frequent and fair.

As everyone will likely know after my continuous ranting on the forums, I don't like linear shooters with emphasis on the "cinematic side". The Chronlicles of Riddick is so well done that definitely deserves to be an exception, though -due in no small part to the hybrid nature of many encounters and to the fact that the "spectacularization" is almost never passive, being something the player can interact with rather than simply shown through a cutscene. I particualrly appreciated the continuous first-person view, interrupted only during dialogues when it switches in third person perspective (in a similar way to the first Deus Ex).

If you want a proof that (despite the vast amount of evidence the AAA garbage industry likes to cover us in each year) "linear FPS" does not mean "bad game", I can certainly recommend you this game.
Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms Book 1
Very good and pretty story-heavy (at least for this genre) hack'n'slash. Like the first game in the series, it provides some unique mechanics, making a soul-eating, puppet-controlling demon the main character was a nice idea, balancing works a bit better than in Inquisition (where it wasn't that hard to become an unstoppable force around the middle of the game).
Pitty there are no news about Book 2 release.
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Enebias: The Chronicles of Riddick (consisting in both a graphically enhanced remake of "Escape from Butcher Bay" and "Assault on Dark Athena")...

...are, surprisingly, quite good games.[...]
If you want a proof that (despite the vast amount of evidence the AAA garbage industry likes to cover us in each year) "linear FPS" does not mean "bad game", I can certainly recommend you this game.
I aggree. Both were quite enjoyable.