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This user has reviewed 24 games. Awesome! You can edit your reviews directly on game pages.
Second Sight

OK game with an good plot, bad camera

This is a game from that very brief period in the mid-2000s when psychic powers were popular - think this, Psychonauts, Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, and to a lesser extent Advent Rising and F.E.A.R. First the good things - the plot is surprisingly good, with interesting twists and decent writing! The graphics are stylized and hold up pretty well too! Also GoG (or someone at least) did a good job cleaning this old game up a bit - it now has proper widescreen support (apart from cutscenes, which are stretched), and controller support - they even updated the bindings. Though even this game was firstly developed as a console title, the aiming is much easier with a mouse. The only technical issue I encountered is that the game is locked at 60fps despite me choosing 144hz in the settings. The bad parts are basically down to the save system and the way this game (and especially its camera) controls. This is a console port and you cannot save the game yourself, you only have checkpoints, which can be spaced out more than is comfortable. That said, this is a relatively easy game, you have plenty of health, and you can heal whenever you want as long as you have enough "mana", so it's not really an issue in this sense, but it's still annoying (for example if you want to quit the game). A much bigger problem is this game's camera, which is about as bad as most of the console ports from that era. It's slow, hard to control, and it keeps getting caught on objects and bouncing around whenever you are trying to look up or down. Playing this game for about 1.5 hours made me feel sick and I had to take a break. If you play this game I strongly suggest you rely on stealth as much as possible so as to minimize the reliance on the game's aiming system (which is pretty good for aiming at long distances, but not much else). All in all, it's a very decent game, and I would still recommend it, just as long as you are mindful of the issues I outlined above.

31 gamers found this review helpful
METAL GEAR SOLID

Second best way to play Metal Gear Solid

Tl;dr: this is a more polished version of Metal Gear Solid: Integral that works on modern machines without fan-made patches and WITH WORKING FMVs DURING CUTSCENES. It is identical in most respects to the original PS1 version, apart from the addition of a first person mode (double tap the First Person button), a Very Easy difficulty with an MP5 with infinite ammo, and the addition of 300 VR missions (originally released as a separate title for the PS1). Because of the limitations of PC (the absence of vibration and memory cards) some dialogues and gameplay segments have been cut or altered (e.g. parts of the Psycho Mantis cutscene and his boss fight). These are minor things, not really detracting from the overall experience, but worth noting. On the bright side you no longer have to return to main menu to load the game (and you can save without having to call Mei Ling, so it's a bit faster). It runs at higher resolutions, up to 1024x768 (no native widescreen support), with an option to use the software renderer with up to 800x600 resolution. As the resolution of textures remains the same as it was, the game doesn't really benefit from higher resolutions, although they are achievable with the use of third-party mods and emulation. I prefer the low-res look that the original relied on, so it's not an issue for me. There is a 30fps lock. The game may exhibit slowdowns when captions appear during gameplay (can be avoided by simply disabling them). There is controller support through DirectInput and Xinput, but if you're using something with triggers (e.g. Xbox 360 pad) you might not be able to bind them properly. What GOG done is basically made it work on modern machines out of the box (you used to have to install fan-made patches before) and fixed FMVs during cutscenes (the only version where they work properly AFAIK on newer Windows). Overall, I still prefer the emulated version, but this is an excellent way to experience Metal Gear Solid all the same!

1737 gamers found this review helpful
Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior

A mediocre FPS for Warhammer 40k fans

At the time of release this game was billed as a sort of "Halo-killer." Well, the fact that Halo is on its sixth main-series game at the moment while there hasn't been another Warhammer 40k FPS after this one should tell something about how successful this game was. It's a pretty by-the-book FPS with really nothing but the setting to set it apart. Unlike Halo it lacks any real sort of variety or scale, both in terms of gameplay and level design. There are no vehicle sections apart from an occasional turret. The storyline is very straightforward with the protagonist utterly devoid of any character or initiative of his own. Some of the gameplay quirks seem to have been implemented in Halo's wake - for example the regenerating shield system and the 2-weapon carry limit (though the latter is actually a lot more frustrating than in Halo because for some reason you MUST carry at least one Tau weapon at all times, which leads to some frustration as you are less likely to find ammo for it). Because of the setting the levels are rather bland and are all finished in a very similar brownish/orange-ish colour palette. Unlike Halo this is largely a corridor shooter, so you won't be seeing much in the way of wide-open spaces. First levels feel like a lot more like Medal of Honor, with fighting in the trenches, but soon dissolve into similar-looking spaceship and base interior corridors with various colour-coded keys and corresponding doors. One of the game's biggest failings are its weapons. You get a very standard selection of machine-gun/shotgun/sniper/rocket-launcher/rail-gun with minor variations, but none really feel good to use in the way Halo's guns did. Coupled with a weird console-oriented aiming system where your rounds never quite go where you want them to it all makes the shooting mechanics somewhat unsatisfying. It's not a bad game but it was deservedly drowned out by clearly superior competition back in the day and only really holds sentimental value.

13 gamers found this review helpful