I really do; it's fun, it's gory, it has a sense of actual inane humour running through it and it has huge mechs with huge guns. The combat is well paced, the robot control sections are great fun for anyone who's a fan of the AC series, and the choice of weapons is fun-tastic. The humour is such that, at one point, in the middle of firefight, I paused to look at a sign. It spoke of Traditional Amish Death Metal. I laughed and laughed until I got headshotted, and still kept grinning afterwards for a while, too mirthful to be annoyed that it happened while I was behind cover. There are signs like that littered through out the game, as well as inane one liners, which have caused me to break out in fits of giggles. But those are 3, not 4 or 5 stars up there. Sadly, this game is held back by certain aspects in my eyes. The AI during the human control sectors seems to be on a seesaw; one minute it's pausing at the bottom of a flight of stairs while I open the door at the top, the next it's shooting me in the face with a shotgun BEFORE I round the corner. This is a bit of a deal breaker at times, especially as it has a habit of happening right after a lenghty cut-away to futher the rather insane plot. The graphics in the human section have also aged horribly whenevery they do a cut away to your character, or show any character that isn't decked out to the rafters in military hardware...they look like some mean-spirited soul took thier nose and collapsed their face inwards a bit. This may sound like a minour quibble, but it was pretty major for me; an important aspect of the game is the immersion, the feel of the game. It's hard to feel for a main character who seems to be in dire need of an olfactory sense. But again, that's a 3, nothing lower. Though in reality (in my mind), this sits at the "classic" 7 rating for me; if the details pique your interest, this is will be one of your favourite games. If they don't, you can go elsewhere, it won't mind. So where does it bring itself up? The robotic fight sections. These are a brilliant romp through city-scapes, underground bases and deserted plains, where your aim is true and your guns are massive. There are some weapons in your arsenal that take serveral awesome cakes though; the quad-erratic-missile launcher; perfect for narrow spaces with a few enemies in them; the inanely explosive juggernaut weaponry; and my personal favorite; the machine-sniper-rifle-gun, with it's stupidly fast rate of fire and it's consta-headshot policy. Which also leads onto the fun battle mechanics; the game likes you to be stylish; it rewards you for so-called "critical-hits", to the head or...other regions of note. While in human mode, it gives you 25% health to each critial, a huge boon, and the only thing that keeps the human section from being a case of needing to bind quick-save and quick-load to mouse buttons 1 and 2. As a robot, it adds slightly more energy, but that doesn't matter as you find armour and energy all over the place, which paces the action nicely, allowing you to run in all guns blazing 90% of the time and not have to pay dearly for it. Oh, and the story really really really REALLY wants to be an anime. Take from that what you will, but even the voice actors (who are pretty good, by the way) seems to know this too, and ham it up here and there, in the spirit of things. To close; this IS a fun game. You just have to love giant robots and not mind sometimes re-doingt he same thing over and over and over agian about 4 times in the human sections. The game is worth a look if you're a fan of the current AC series, and if you're into anime or if you just like a nice explosive shooter with little brains but quite a bit of polish for its time. At the current price though, it could be worth a look if you're on the fence, or have some cash floating about. Don't judge it soley based on the stars, it IS a good game. It just hasn't aged too gracefully, and annoyances like wall-hacking AI can be a pain that really sets a game back. All in all, I'll repeat what I said to open this review; I like the game.
Freespace 2. Leaving behind the legacy of the claustraphobic Descent series which inspired it, this game leaves you really in the agoraphobia wastes of space, with floating jetsam, flotsam, and pulsing ion clouds. It also rears it head back with a good few years of control fine tuning and brilliant game mechanics already under its rather sizeable belt. The campaign mode is epicly long and more than enough to keep someone happy for a ages at a time (not to mention numerous fan-made campaigns; shorter but oh-so-good), the missions are difficult in places, but it's a rewarding difficulty; sure, you'll fail the bombing runs about five times near the end of the game, but that one time you get it right, you'll see a three kilometer flagship go up in billions of amazingly rendered particles of debris and smoke (And for a pre-2000 game, the graphics looks astonishingly tasty). And the scaling is awesome too; the three kilometer long flagships really ARE that huge. I could recount tales of weaving through a flagship's flak fire, beam turrent blasts and sizeable missile armaments, all in the pursuit of a single fighter craft, in a desperate dogfight, but it's really something that one has to experience for themselves. As I mentioned in the title, this games yearns for a joystick's control; for the most part, everything that can be done by the keyboard (weapon swapping, shield dispersment, and counter measure launching) is all easy to do and easily becomes second nature very quickly. With a mouse, the game is playable, but to truely play the game, a joystick with as many buttons as you can manage will make the experience that much more enjoyable. It's one thing to push the after button on the keyboard and shift the mouse upwards; it's another entirely to hit the trusters on you stick and slam it backwars in a desperate attempt to dodge the screaming missiles behind you. The range of ships for most of the missions might irk some (usually only 2 or 3 are available) but this is explained by the story; usually you won't be able to access the highest level weaponry, simply because it isn't there, and there's no way it could get there. As payment for this, there is an amazing amount of weapons and ships available throughout the game, and paying attention to the breifing and selecting the right weapons will make all the difference. Taking that extra load of fire-and-forget mass warheads might make it easier to deal with the fighters, but taking along a "spotter" for your captial class ship will make the mission overall a lot easier...and more fun (there is NOTHING quite like telling a cannon three times the size of your ship to blast an enemy warship to tiny bits of space fluff, in my opinion). To close, this is an amazing game; before playing this, I never was all that into flight-simulators, or even flight combat games. After playing this, I feel in love with it. This is a game you need to own, especially at this price. If you haven't already done so, scroll back up there and hit buy. Do it. This is a classic game that does almost everything right, and deserves to be played.
