Overall i wouldn't recommend this game. The free running itself is fairly limited and often the "flow" of the game is very much broken by both sequences of enemy encounters and just downright confusing level design. Often I would find myself at a complete loss where to go next, weird geometries and sometimes outright poor design making it hard to identify where you need to be going up to. There is a feature where you hold alt Faith will look towards the goal but sometimes it's more misleading then helpful since you can't directly go to the goal. The enemy sections are also really annoying, you will frequently be dumped in a room with no idea how to exit and people shooting at you. IN the end the freerunning parts weren't fast enough or satisfying enough and the combat parts were extremely annoying. If you want platforming get a real platformer, if you want free running try Dying light, if you want combat get a real FPS, if you want puzzles get Portal if you want fast try a sonic game, If you want a mess get this game.
Sanitarium is a moderately interesting point and click adventure. most of the game is going around collecting the items that allow you to proceed, usuallyb y talking to a bunch of people. The good : The voice acting is generally good, the story is weird and will take to to many twisted and bizarre places. The bad: movement is slow and clumsy. some levels require an "action" sequence with can be difficult do to the aforementioned controls. Sometimes you know exactly what you want but are missing a small detail that you hadn't clicked thus getting stuck. The Ugly: Crash , Crash, Crash. I came very close to not being able to finish due to a consistent crash. (running "sntrm.exe -w" from an admin command prompt got me past the spot) for me it was mostly transitions to new areas that would crash it. Buyer beware, the game is not very stable.
I don't hand out 5 stars often but for me at least this game deserves it. Beautiful graphics, great soundtrack, solid controls and gameplay, all with a half decent story line to follow. It's a bit short but not in a bad way, it doesn't linger too long and get dull and it's short enough to occasionally just replay it without needing 100 hours of free time. There's multiple weapons and upgrades so you can choose your style and a new game + mode . all in all its a really solid little package. It's frequently on sale and you can't ask for much more bang for your buck.
Despite all the good reviews i wasn't really able to get into this game. I like strategy games to have pauses , chances for strategy, to know the units, to plan an attack. This is not that kind of game. maybe the later levels change but the first few are non-stop action and goal oriented play. basically go to spot A shoot enemies hold position b no go to spot c and kill more. every few minutes the camera is flying around and commanders are barking orders and it's onto the next objective. no reprieve, no chance to think about your troops or what to do just go-go-go and with very specific directives all the time i rarely felt that I was actually in control, just grunt following orders. Combined with the constant chaos of explosions and allied units and the similarity between the units I'm controlling everything is just a messy blur. For some this seems fresh and interesting and they will enjoy the constant action but it's just not my style of "Strategy" , for me I like something more deep.
It's OK, the first few hours are pretty fun as you sail around the Caribbean and explore but soon the game shows its true colors and overall the gameplay is pretty shallow and has a variety of problems. - the game forces you to "reset progress" periodically. your crew will eventually loose moral and you are forced to split up your loot and pay them. This causes you to loose all crew, all but a small percetage of any money you earned and all your fleet except your flagship. This is pretty annoying if you had some nice ships and a sizable crew. This also kills trade, travel can be very slow and without fighting your morale goes down faster it's not very profitable to be a trader, capturing ships is faster, easier and earns way more money. - the ballroom minigame starts out pretty tedious. but at least at the lower levels the game gives you key highlights so you just plug along based on the queues. After the first captain rank-up you loose the highlights so the game goes from boring but easy to insanely difficult. - you really don't need cannons on your ship. Naval battles can be won by either sinking the ship or capturing it. Obviously capturing gets you more loot and you often get more crew and the ship itself. But if you shoot up the ship you earn less. so very quickly you learn to never fire a shot and just dodge incoming fire until you ram the ship and start the captain battle (swordfighting). the sword fights are fast and easy, after upgrading you can usually win just mashing one key and you get goodies and a ship with 0% damage you can keep or sell. After figuring that out I pretty much never fired a shot afterwards and could capture any ship with ease. If you can get it cheap it's good for a couple hours but pans out to be very dull.
This game is very much like Hitman, you need to sneak around to achieve an objective, often by incapacitating enemies and wearing their cloths as a disguise. The controls are very similar and has that kind of feel. The game has some nice features, enemies will recognize items you carry to identify you. Example if you steal a german soldiers cloths but still have that russian rifle slung over your shoulder they will be alerted. It also treats disguises and actions a bit more liberally than Hitman. You can run, walk by and even bump into enemies that are "green" on the map (those that are "fooled by your outfit". While sometimes some enemies are always "red" (higher ranking officers etc) that will see through your current disguise. The bad part is the game is very linear. Very rarely do you feel rally free to accomplish a goal and there aren't very many choices or unique opportunities or scripted type events (like say turning off a generator or planting a bomb for a distraction). The story seems pretty weak and the voice acting and lip sync in the cunt scenes is pretty bad.
Can't vouch for the gameplay as i cannot get the game to play properly. On windows 7 I get like 3-5 FPS, seems others have had the problem but no real solution.
UrU is a weird little chapter in the Myst series. It lacks the immersion of the originals (since you have a clumsy avatar) but overall it's an OK adventure game. It does have it's moments, the environments are pretty cool and the sountrack is great. It has some environmental puzzles and light platforming type stuff which kinda suck. overall If you liked the original games the main UrU game is good for a lark, especially at sale price. I think if you weren't into Myst at all It would not be as interesting as a stand-alone game. DLC note: "To D'ni" really just has some story stuff, no true content. mostly shows off the hub area the MMO would have had. Path to the shell has what I feel is probably THE WORST puzzle I have ever encountered in an adventure game. It's abysmal. So much so I'll spoil it in this review if you wish to save some headache: SPOILER ALERT: to beat path of the shell you must.... stand in one spot for ~13 minutes. No joke. that DLC culminates in finding an egg timer on a shelf, from which you must construe a unit of time. which happens to be like 12+ minutes.. The solution to the grand puzzle is standing on a button for 12 minutes without moving.
this game came completely out of left field for me. At the time I first played it i was lamenting that the latest Wii mario game was pretty lack-luster. same enemies, uninspired soundtrack, boring graphics. Rayman was a breath of fresh air. Solid platforming, fun and creative levels, wonderful soundtrack and all with an amazing art style. highly recommended if you like platformers also plays well multiplayer.
I never really took to SimCity 4. I had been playing SimCity games since the first one and enjoyed them a lot and remember being very excited about 4 but the game never really panned out. The good: They did improve many of the smaller mechanics and managing your city is challenging and fun, the graphics are way better. The bad: Regions. Regions Regions and why I hate this game. In the old SimCity you were given one big block of space and you built a city on it. you could connect to AI neighbors for power and garbage etc but your whole focus is your city. In 4 you get a region with lots of little plots (even the biggest ones are small) and you build 'kind of' cities on them. to really reach full potential you have to manage lots of tiny little pieces of cities not a whole city. This always left me feeling disconnected from my overall vision and the individual sections are too small to build traditional city (you will max out quickly) for example you might start one little city and jut put farms and some police stations. nothing else. you are mayor of farm and police. then you go next door to another section (as another mayor) and build a downtown, then you go to another section (again as another mayor) and build some suburbs and link them all up for jobs. This all works but time really only flows in the section you are in so you constantly hop around little segments to build the whole region. So while on one hand you could fill a whole region with a "City" that was bigger than ever I never really got the hang of the mechanic, all I wanted was one big square like SC 2000/3000
