Doom (2016) delivers a solid mix of fast action, reassuingly powerful weaponry and enough sercrets and easter eggs to ensure you don't just blow through the whole thing too quickly. It has a perfectly paced campaign with just enough in the way of upgrades to help you shape things around the way you play without going too deep and becoming needlessly RPG-like. It's unfortunate that with Eternal id decided that they had to up the complexity, with more backstory, more platforming elements, more character upgrades etc. They took it too far away from the pace that makes this 2016 edition to the series so vital. Doom 2016 is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a fast paced single player FPS.
Whether or not you'll enjoy Cryostasis will depend on what exactly you're looking for from your first person shooters. If you're looking to play a nameless superhero in a plotless game who can shrug off bullets and shoot with perfect accuracy while sprinting then this is perhaps not the game for you. Cryostasis is essentially more of a survival horror. Your abilities within the game aren't those of a super soldier. You're vulnerable and you actually have to try and aim to hit your target. This is something that makes a great deal of difference to the combat as it requires much more effort to take down enemies than in a game were you barely have to reload. The storyline, which unfolds as you progress is very well told and very... human. Through your character's psychic abilities you get to see the story pan out from multiple perspectives and slowly but surely you manage to change the tragic outcome. The graphics are also worth mentioning. As the environmental effects not only look very pretty, as ice patterns on slowly melt and dribble down walls, but they also depict your chances of survival. In this game warmth is life. It's that simple. You need to keep warm to keep alive. And on board a wrecked ship encased in ice and death there is precious little heat. Water is also, naturally, fairly abundant and very impressively presented in the game. If you've got an Nvidia card then you can see water splash, pour and drip in full 3D, thanks to PhysX. There's even a water cannon so you can collect icicles and take your enemies down in style. Sadly though, the game is not free of technical issues and especially those with ATI graphics cards are likely to be left with a more cut down experience. That said, I played right through the game with only one crash to desktop and no graphical issues. Ultimately, Cryostasis is a highly atmospheric, well written and produced game that shows a lot of other modern FPS up as being too simplistic, backwards and immature.
Chaser certainly has its moments. Near the beginning of the game you see debris flying overhead from the space station you just escaped from impact into the buildings of the city your escape pod crashed into. This is merely the first among a number of set pieces dotted throughout this lengthy game. But it must be said that for all the wheat in Chaser there is much more chaff. You can't really escape the game's failings as they're thrust upon you throughout the course of the game. Showering the ground with debris might seem like nice attention to detail until you realise that you frequently have to jump to be able to move over the uneven terrain. Even that doesn't help sometimes and you just get stuck. To use ladders your character (more or less) sticks to them and uses either their feet or their forehead to ascend and descend respectively. You then have to hope that you're going to reach your destination and not plummet to your death. Apparently hands aren't required. Which is a shame as I am under the impression that these useful limbs would have saved me a few quick loads. In short, had the game been cut down to the better, more purposeful levels and the time saved been spent on polish then it could have been a very good game. As it stands it's not a game that has stood the test of time very well at all. But it's still a good slice of old school FPS action.
Want a game with a ton of different unit types that all serve their own unique purpose? Check. Want to be able to have hundreds of them all attacking at once? Check. Want a wealth of strategic potential, provided not only by your unit types, but the ease of which you can stack multiple orders - turning chaos and destruction into finely planned annihilation? Check. Want all of this to one of the best original orchestral scores ever produced for a game? This game's got you covered there too. Total Annihilation is the RTS for people who find C&C too simplistic but still want some chaotic battles.
If there is any genre that has best captured the spirit of storytelling, it's the point and click adventure. The Longest Journey is certainly no exception. The Longest Journey seems to be aimed at those who grew up playing Lucasarts and Sierra adventures and wanted something a bit more mature. This is reflected in the realistic characters April meets and the uncompromising worlds she visits. The story The Longest Journey tells is of a world divided. Magic and science have proven too incompatible to inhabit the same plane of existence. April has to shift between two Earths that have been separated by The Balance in order to try and help restore that balance... Before it's too late. Great storyline, interesting, well voiced characters, imaginative locations and the its fair share of puzzles all help to make The Longest Journey one of the best, if not the best adventure game ever made. The only detractions are the lack of anti-aliasing and dodgy modelling on a couple of the less important characters. Those minor detractions aside, I have no hesitation in giving this five stars.
Well, maybe not a can, but anyway. On with the review. The mid-Nineties witnessed a tsunami of real time strategy games. The shock waves brought about by genre-defining titles like Warcraft 2 and Command and Conquer spewed forth tidal waves that engulfed the market in largely average clones. One such clone was Earth 2140. The prequel to this fine game. Some amongst the slew of RTS titles helped the genre evolve. But few really broke new ground. There were, of course, exceptions: Shogun Total War, Total Annihilation & Earth 2150, the unassuming sequel to an average title. While Earth 2150 delivers the familiar concepts of base building & tank warfare, it makes clever additions which help make the game stand out. Firstly, you have a main base that is accessible throughout the campaign. This base is never subject to attack and serves numerous roles. This might not sound like much. But it significantly reduces the number of buildings you'd have to otherwise build on the battlefield each and every mission. It also means you can carry units over from one mission to the next. Units gain experience, which means that even when you have bigger, more powerful units they can still hold their own on the battlefield. You can also conduct all your research here. Another, more exciting, innovation is the ability to research various weapons and chassis and combine them to make your own tanks, mechs, aircraft etc. These constructions can be saved and added to your factories' build queues. Add to that the ability to dig trenches, build bridges anywhere you like and the fact that land can be flattened for construction and you can see a wealth of strategic options opening up with each new battle. Earth 2150 also delivers three separate factions. This has been done before, of course. But while these factions may lack the diversity of Starcraft's factions, they're nonetheless about as diverse as three human factions could ever be. - The Eurasian Dynasty rely on technology that looks like a straight evolution of modern military hardware. It does get a bit more advanced later in the campaign, but those tanks still look like tanks, even with huge amounts of lasers stacked on top of them. - The United Civilised States are stereotypically fat and lazy and rely on robots to do all the work. Which includes fighting their battles for them. Naturally this means mechs and plenty of them. Yay! - The Lunar Corporation have a lot of light, fast units but contrast these with some ridiculously powerful base destroying aircraft of death. The premise of the game is simple: the Earth has been knocked off of its axis by one too many nukes and is doomed to plummet into the Sun.You're required by your chosen faction to secure the required resources in order to build a massive fleet of colonial spacecraft to escape the doomed planet before it's too late. If you hang about too long, things really start to heat up and the Earth starts to look like it did a few billion years ago. However, the strengths that the game's scenario provide also provide some weaknesses. The game's focus is on resource collection above all else. This can mean you're still mining a particularly large patch of ore long after the last of your enemies is dead. Once you've wiped out the enemy they won't be reinforced. Packing up and leaving early seems counter-productive. So you're just left there waiting for them to finish. Time to go put the kettle on... Because of this, you may never get through the entire campaign before you've completed it. Your only objective is the resources. Once you have those it's game over. So efficient players may never see the last few missions of their chosen faction. You can hold back resources from your exodus project if you really want to see it all though. Debatably, another weakness is in the complete lack of infantry in the game. Again, the harsh conditions make surviving the elements impossible for even the ED to consider sending them out into battle. To summarise: Pros - Unit experience & carry over - Research & design your own units - Three distinct factions - Good graphics (for its time at least) - Deformable terrain Cons - Heavy focus on resource gathering - Controls and interface could be more streamlined - No infantry Earth 2150 should appeal to any strategy fan who seeks more than strategic and tactical options than games like C&C could dream of offering. There are some nice surprises dotted throughout each campaign and a good variety of missions. But patience is required. Keep that in mind.
