I have a soft spot for the FEAR series and it doesn't get better than the original game and the Extraction Point expansion. If you've never experienced this franchise, this pack is a great way to get into it. You will like the combat, and the amosphere, and probably love the scares for at least a few hours. The game never feels like it marries the action with the horror well enough, but even playing it as two separate, intertwined games is satisfying and fun. Recommended.
There's not a bad bone in its body. Great artstyle, great soundtrack, very cool weapon selection which caters to many styles, awesome theme and a well realized story with a lot of nuance. Plus it's very replayable thanks to a NewGame+ mode and several ancillary add-ons which increase the fun when you want to shake things up a bit. HIGHLY recommended.
Personally I think that it's the best use of the AoE2 mechanics, at least that I encountered. Though little more than a mod (if you can call a complete graphical and faction overhaul that), it can be a lot of fun, especially when playing the Empire and Trade Federation. So why only three stars? Because, compared to other RTS games, it's just not all that good - but in my opinion, neither was Age of Empires 2. Not back in the day, and especially not in today's day and age. I still recommend this game, but just don't expect the best strategic experience of your life or anything. It's probably a must-buy for SW fans anyway.
Ok, real talk now. Everything Bioware did after KOTOR was, in one way or another, derivative of KOTOR. Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age were all made using the same mold that Bioware PERFECTED with KOTOR. Knights of the Old Republic isn't very nuanced. It's not a complex story. It doesn't have as many emotional moments as later Bioware titles - and that's not a bad thing. This game's list of stuff to do wasn't something that happened in a board room, but it IS the game that set the stage for many things that went on such lists in its wake. The list of things to do was "Make a perfect Star Wars RPG" and that's what they did. All their games after KOTOR were like "Ok, let's try to recapture the perfect game we made last time, but in a different setting." In my opinion, they failed each and every time. This is the definitive Bioware experience.
In InFlux you play as a ball, which came from space. One of the Space Balls, if you will (zing!). You land on a place, and you proceed to roll around and gather blue firefly things to access greenhouse-like building in which you solve puzzles in order to make them project a beam of light into the sky. A beacon, maybe, to call your friends? I don't know, anyone's guess. There are two main problems with the game. The first one is that it's just boring. There are two components to it - exploration and, once you enter a building, puzzle solving. Problem is, you roll around environments which don't really reward exploration. Outside of a few additional firefly-thingies you never find ANYTHING. The other component is solving puzzles, and those aren't very good either. They're fun for a while (you rotate the entire space around, so the floor becomes a wall etc.) and later on in the game they vary it up a bit by adding jumping mechanics, but that's not enough. The featureless interiors of the buildings are boring to interact with, and most puzzles feel like busywork rather than something you engage with intelectually. Looking at the environments and gameplay, it's clear to me that the devs didn't have a firm grasp on what they wanted this game to be. The locations have a weird tribal-like vibe to them, which doesn't actually *mean* anything - it's like they went for the jungle because that's the sort of assets they felt comfortable using, but there's virtually no theme to the game and nothing working in the background to keep you going. No goal, no story, no driving force, no defining aesthetic or some sort of vision behind it that would be apparent. InFlux is a game about rolling a ball through environments and solving puzzles. And it's nothing more than that. If that's enough to keep your attention for the 2-3 hours of its supposed playtime, then try it out - if nothing more, it is reasonably relaxing. It wasn't enough for me though.
