Guys, listen. Real talk here. I'm a game designer by hobby and trade. I respect and value video games for many reasons, but chief among them is their design. People sometimes think it's this haphazard magical thing which just happens sometimes, and while its not an exact science, it's far from random. And I'm here to tell you that Mark of the Ninja is probably in the Top 3 best designed games I've ever experienced. It's slick. It's sexy. It's mind blowing. It gives you an unprecedented feeling of control, while being harsh, but always VERY fair. It is a marvel to play. And it's got awesome aesthetics to boot - visuals and music both. Add to that an atmospheric storyline, and there you have it - my best game of 2013, and easily among the best titles I've ever played in my 20+ years of gaming. Get it. Just get it. Learn to play it. Experience it. Feel your mastery of it grow with each level. Then complete it, and play it again. This time experiment with the different gadgets and playstyles. Explore and exploit what this game offers. And finally, nod your head in appreciation, and give this game a 5/5 score. Go.
How far the mighty has fallen... Count me among the few people who actually enjoyed the third Broken Sword. I was hoping this one would be at least as good, but unfortunately it's pretty much a mess from the getgo. With a pretty terrible plot and initial puzzles, it fails to draw you in and doesn't feel at all like a proper adventure game.
As other people already noted, this game is a completely useless waste of time on the PC. Nausea inducing visuals don't help either, but the bottom line is that playing this game as anything else than a time waster on a mobile device is pretty much... well, a waste of your time. Even then, this game offers very little outside of frustration and a headache after you're done. Pointless piece of software.
Rune has it all - good art design, tons of theme to go around, awesome gameplay, a good soundtrack... It's challenging, but accessible at the same time, and is a lot of fun to play. I wholeheartedly recommend this game.
Darkstar One is enjoyable, has a good soundtrack, has good graphics, some competent voiceacting and generally gets the job done. However, unfortunately it falls short in almost every other field: 1) weapon customisation almost feels like getting linear upgrades 2) ship upgrades are linear and boring at that, so are the Plasma Cannon upgrades going alongside those 3) every system is, mechanically, the same. You get 300 copy-paste systems, only varying with small aesthetic details, to visit, where 30 well-defined ones would've been much better. 4) the plot isn't especially riveting, and isn't very well structured 5) side missions tend to be very same-y 6) the game doesn't really support any other style of playing than a gun-totting mercenary. Trade is a chore and the game doesn't give you enough info on it to make it worthwhile. So yeah, if you've got no other game to try out, you might want to grab this when its on sale. But generally nothing to write home about, and too much of it to boot. The game's shortcomings could've been forgivable if it was 10 hours long, but its probably at least twice that long.
I seem to remember that the campaign in this first game is very frustrating and unfun. The mechanics stayed pretty much the same in the second game, but that one I actually finished, so there.
I don't say this often, but TLJ is a very good example of how a good story, characters and dialogues (overall writing) is not enough to carry a game - or at least not a game this long. I quit after playing around 1/3 of it, and was bored around half of that time. This game offers next to nothing when it comes to interesting puzzle design and gameplay solutions. There's a lot of lengthy dialogue which only serves as exposition or infodumping - the fact that it's reasonably amusing and quite well written most of the time doesn't help much. In the end, I think that the fact this game is highly regarded stems from it being influential at the moment of release. Now, fourteen years later, this game is probably one of the worst aged titles I am aware of. Only playable if you want an interactive book - and not a very interesting book at that.
This is an extremely enjoyable little gem of a game. Despite not having too many mechanics (it's just jumping and shooting, with occasional different shooting and different jumping), it manages to be very fun to play nonetheless. The nostalgia factor is very strong with this one, but even people who play it for the first time should find something of interest here.
Unfortunately this is a pretty terrible follow-up to the awesome Total Annihilation. The graphics almost don't work at all, the factions don't feel balanced, and the game itself doesn't feel fun. Still, once this is dirt cheap at a sale, I recommend getting it if only for the soundtrack, which is pretty cool.
