Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox One)

Played as part of the Rare Replay collection which is a great collection, though PD Zero itself is only average. I really enjoyed the remake of the original Perfect Dark, but PD Zero (which is meant to be a prequel) messes a few things up.

When the game keeps things simple, such as the solo missions, then it can be a reasonable shooter. But far too many missions involve escort and protection missions...and who really likes those? It's made worse by the fact that the people on your own side are surely some of the dumbest mutha fuckers you will come across in a video game. I lost count of the number of times that a supposedly "elite" agent that i'm working with, would just wander right in front of me and get shot in the back of the head when i'm firing. Over the course of my play through it actually became something of a laugh to watch these idiots at work. But the game's not meant to be a comedy.

The original Perfect Dark is something of a classic, Perfect Dark Zero is not- but still not a completely bad game. It's just the remake of the original runs smoother, looks better, has better levels and game play and is more fun (as well as cheaper). So just play the original then.

Those fuckers are so annoying when they come back as ghosts.

Stasis

This is a full-fledged point & click adventure game with a strong focus on item-based puzzle solving and discovering a sinister story via exploration, data logs and radio communications.

Stasis tells a rather standard sci-fi horror story but with its many references to fan-favorite movies and games of the genre, you won’t be complaining. Like most horror stories, Stasis starts out slowly and becomes increasingly disturbing as you discover more. There are a few jump scares but due to the isometric perspective, they aren’t particularly scary.
Within the first half hour of the game, I already found two satisfyingly brutal ways to die and by the end of the game, I had experienced at least 10 different gruesome deaths – half of which were self inflicted out of curiosity. The game has an automatic quick save so you don’t need to worry about saving at every corner.

At a leisurely pace, the game took 9 hours to complete. Pixel hunting and timed puzzles are rare and manageable, backtracking is limited to 3-4 screens at the most. Overall difficulty is very humane due to the puzzles being based on science and being properly clued for the most part. Outside knowledge is rarely required, if you know what liquid nitrogen can do you’ll be fine.

Performance was flawlessly smooth even on a low end system (2.2 GHz Dual Core, 4 GB RAM, Intel HD graphics). Aside from adjusting the brightness and volume, there are no options to adjust. Resolution etc are fixed.
My only complaint about the game is the tiny font size which can’t be enlarged and makes the copious amounts of text a bit hard to read.

At $20, the price is not cheap for an indie adventure but Stasis is so finely polished and well designed that you would guess it’s an AAA production. Highly detailed backgrounds, advanced lighting effects, smooth animations, even the voice acting is on a professional level.
During my playthrough I encountered practically zero glitches or bugs and not a single one that affected gameplay.


Additional notes that didn’t fit into the very constraining 2000 character limit of the store page:

Game length: 9 hours is if you read every single data log, the text is so small that I had to read everything at a snail’s pace and occasionally twice plus I was playing this late at night so don’t shoot me if you only get 8 hours or less out of the game. I advice against rushing through the game, enjoy the scenery and let the atmosphere sink in, that way you're getting more value for your money.

Design: I stood around a lot to just marvel at the details of the environment design which is exquisite, definitely the game’s strongest point.The detail is so high that it can be hard to spot things immediately, fortunately all the datapads have a glow to them and objects are in general logically placed. Not like stuff in Runaway and other wacky adventures. Stasis is sci-fi but relatively convincing in its science, except for the data storage device maybe which is a “magic gauntlet” kinda deal. The inventory of adventures games is always that one thing that breaks the 4th wall even if other things don’t. But don’t worry, you won’t be carrying around an entire roasted pork inside a leather jacket, Stasis pays attention to keeping things comparatively reasonable.

Difficulty: Getting stuck is unlikely but the lack of tough challenge is mainly a result of fair design. It’s not an insultingly easy game and has some decent and satisfying puzzles even if there aren't any seriously tough nuts to crack. Legendary tough puzzles of adventure gaming history are often not well designed puzzles but the insidiously unfair ones or the ones using trollol anti-logic (Sierra adventures...). Stasis doesn’t pull any sucker punches so that’s a plus in my book.

Linearity: As far as I could tell there are no multiple solutions or endings so it seems like 100% linearity with little to no replay value. This is not a downside to me though because Stasis delivers consistently tight design and quality from beginning to end.
The ending wasn't entirely predictable but not surprising, either. Not a very original ending imho and somewhat abrupt, as you would expect from a typical sci-fi horror movie including most of the classics.

Summary: I'd say the $20 were worth it, it's not a game for everyone as some people don't like reading through lengthy datalogs and would prefer more action and combat. Stasis is a traditional point & click adventure, if you want combat get Crusader: No Remorse, System Shock 1 & 2 or Bioforge. Not going to count the awkward "combat" in Sanitarium...
At first sight, Stasis looks like "Sanitarium in Space" but I found a lot of similarities with Bioforge as well. That feeling of being in a hostile sci-fi environment and having to escape by navigating your way around problems and lethal threats and slowly figuring out the story via datalogs, Bioforge has plenty of that. Stasis focuses on classic point & click puzzles which sets it apart from practically all the other "all alone on badly lit spaceship" games out there. I'd say that even if Stasis doesn't offer a hardcore challenge, it fills its niche perfectly fine. A very finely made game, hats off to the developers.


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Good review, should post it on the store page. It certainly beats the usual "I played this 20 yrs ago and it was the bestest thing ever!" :)

I agree. I was actually expecting awalterj's review for this particular game, since he always explains everything in detail and supports his opinions with neutral facts, so that even after reading his points of view everyone could still have a different perception of the matter; his reviews are much more useful to give an idea of the game than many professional ones and, most of all, those under the store pages.
Half of them are simply ridiculous ("I played this in 1492 in co-op with Columbus while traveling to India", "I have the Steam version" - who cares, I'm inquiring about THIS one, not the original or those sold elsewhere!- "I like it, it has cats", "Good. 5 stars, would play again"), and the other half has to be excessively short due to characters limitation. I wish GOG allowed to post longer reviews.

Couldn't of said it better. Actually, I would of just said fuck em! :P

Final Fantasy Adventure, aka Seiken Densetsu, the first game in the Mana series. I was feeling a bit bogged down in some of the other games I've been playing so I decided to start on this one, figuring it might give me something I could play as an occasional alternative, but instead it got its hooks deep in me and I ended up beating it in a couple of binges over the weekend.

It's an action-adventure in the style of the third Zelda game. I say third because unlike the original Zelda, which was completely open from the start and quite mysterious, this one has a fairly detailed storyline and characters you meet will always give pretty good directions on where you should be heading next. Usually that means going to a town, talking to someone, finding out you need to go to a dungeon and kill a scary monster and/or get an important item that will allow you to make it to the next place you have to be. It's all pretty easy to figure out EXCEPT for a couple of puzzles that are pretty obscure (it doesn't help that the game's text is so limited, so the "clues" can be very slight).

The controls are good - only rarely did my character do something I didn't intend - and although you have experience points and levels to gain, I never felt like I was grinding. If you're good at not getting hit, you can zoom up in experience very quickly if you're somehow running behind but that's really not a problem. It's a very well-paced game.

Graphics and music/sounds are good. Not amazing but they're about as good as you could get on the 8-bit Gameboy.

Damn, I gave up on this game because fighting was extremely tedious and I died too often. :/
I always loved Seiken Densetsu 2 and especcially 3 (which was never released in Europe) though.

Well, if you didn't like it, you didn't like it. Nothing wrong with that :)

Good review, thanks.

I`m curious though, what resolution is Stasis fixed at? Can it be played windowed/borderless too? If so, using BorderlessGaming could help with that.

Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead expansion

"I've learnt one of the most important things you can do in war is, not get killed."

-bad_fur_day

That's totally like, my Sun Tzu Art of War piece of zen wisdom I made up from playing Arma too much.

Skyrim.

Fun and frustrating. They really deviated from the any-way-you-want-to-level approach from past games. If you level up via sneaking, lock-picking, persuasion, pick pocketing, restoration magic, etc... you will spend more time reloading from getting one-shot by mud crabs than you will playing the game.

Aside from the forced combat focus and the locking down of skills to prevent you from leveling a character in a way they don't want you to, its still a lot of fun to play. Quests, visuals, voicing, and content are all very well done.

I've yet to find a mod that satisfactorily solves the way Bethesda forces leveling upon you. But if you can finally just decide to ignore that (or I used a perk 'cheat' to allow to me round my character with skills I earned as in previous ES games) its a great fun game.

You don't really "win" in ES games, but after 200+ hours and 100% achievements, I'm uninstalling so I can actually play some other games.

<span class="bold">Saints Row: The Third</span>

If there was a prize for the maddest game ever, this one would be a more than worthy contestant.
Saints Row the Third puts you into the role of “the Boss”, leader of the 3rd Street Saints gang. Rising from simple thugs to a commercial empire, the group has now targeted the city of Steelport as their expansion goal... and decided that the best way to start the “takeover” was to rob a bank located on top of a skyscraper by blowing out the vault while disguised as themselves and then ride it after hooking it to an helicopter, shooting down all the aerial and grounded resistance while on flight.
Too bad they will soon discover to have stomped the foot of the international crime syndicate currently ruling the city, and they will be forced to restart their entire criminal activity from scratch after being captured and subsequently escaping their flying prison by jumping away, avoiding debris and planes trying to ram them; next goal? Rearm their people by robbing an maximum security U.S. Military deposit. Yes, those are literally the first ten minutes of gameplay. They should give you an idea of the average level of frenetic delirium.

During your quest to reforge your fortune and take away the city from three different affiliated gangs, Saints Row will submerge you with countless missions and activities (the game contains EVERYTHING you could ever imagine and more, alas minus a Mecha Suit- problem solved by the sequel, it seems), from your usual trafficking, shops acquiring, assassinations, car “acquisitions” and modifications to weirdest tasks like gratuitously assaulting gang controlled areas with an hijacked tank or helicopter, participating in an extremely violent Japanese prize-shows based on murdering cute mascots, theft and electrocutions (remember though: murder time, fun time, but shooting pandas in unethical!) and escorting a tiger on your sport car or running races though the streets over a flaming motorbike before it explodes to improve your control and self-confidence.
The character customization further increase the overall stupidity, allowing you to choose from a wide amount of gadgets... elegant suits, priest robes, tuts, S&M toys, superhero and hotdog costumes included.

Each successfully concluded activity will improve your control over a district of the freely explorable city, entirely accessible form the start; there, all inhabitants and factions carry on with their own routines, just waiting to be demolished by the mayhem you cause.
The game plays pretty much like the insane cousin of GTA: you can buy (or steal, obviously) and customize your arsenal, abilities and vehicles, upgrading them with the money coming from the shops you own and the incomes from the areas you conquered, then roam Steelport in search of new challenges or choose to follow one of the main quests; causing trouble will rise your level of awareness with gangs or the public forces, throwing against you progressively tougher hordes of enemies until you enter one of your safe houses or the heat dissipates.

Unlike many console-centric games, SR3 works perfectly with mouse and keyboard regardless of the situation and allows you to modify and rebind all of them; also, the game is almost devoid of bugs and runs flawlessly and smoothly as any respectable product (which unfortunately does not contain AAA games very often) should.

The strongest point is surely the narrative department, though: never even thinking to have a slightly serious approach, the game openly mocks blockbuster movies, AAA games and American “pop” and “gangsta” culture with irreverent, exaggerated parodies and a cast of awesome characters with extreme personalities.
It is not very easy to squeeze a smile out of me, but SR3 made me laugh out loud several times, shouting phrases like “how did they even think about that”? Or “I can't believe they really did something like this”! In the “weird science” arc of missions I was nearly in tears from the absurdity of the concept!
The parodies are also enhanced by the soundtrack; while most of it consists in real tracks you likely already know, broadcasted by local radios and covering almost every genre, the main missions are often accompanied by mimics of famous themes coming straight from Hollywood, making everything even more hilarious.

The only negative I can think of is the lack of a real challenge (especially after buying the strongest upgrades, making you literally invincible) or a very solid physics system, but in a title revolving on a “big budget movie-like” hero that cares absolutely nothing about realism, this is definitely not a problem. On contrary, it is probably better this way.

Summarizing: Saints Row: The Third (and probably the entire series, which I will definitely recover in its entirety at some point) was clearly aimed to be a parody, yet it is so well made and convincing to gain a dignity of its own and stand out of the crowd. It is a game with strong merits and guaranteeing plenty of fun, and I cannot hesitate to recommend it to every lover of absurdity, exaggeration and free roaming open world games.
I can award it with a well deserved Seal of Approval.

Yes. I think the general perception, which I agree with, is that Saints Row is basically GTA for people who wish GTA had stayed silly and fun instead of going for respectability.