The first two episodes are funny, crude, and engaging. It really showcases how much Telltale has learned over the years. The animation, for example, is so fluid it makes The Walking Dead look like a Powerpoint presentation. Then you get to episode three and the deja vu sets in. It's like the writers panicked that there wasn't enough Telltale signature melodrama and decided to make The Walking Dead in space. The jokes have some serious drop off: not just in quantity but also quality. The "hard" moral choices start coming. The first two episodes they were a "choose your own gag" selection, and it worked like a beauty. The choices in the last three episodes feel like an excuse to get the NPCs to call you a jerk for picking the other bad choice than they wanted. It's usually contrived. Motivations that were crystal clear become muddled just to build tension. Even the animations start to suffer --the last chapter blatantly stops and starts animations during dialogue. Those first two episodes were phenomenal though. I wish Telltale would proofread their writing more and release the game when it was actually done. Get it on sale.
Widely considered the worst S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game for good reason. There's now a ham-fisted story, uninspired boss fights, and linear corridor shooting with monster closets. And the new additions? Well, there's like 3 new areas, but they aren't very impressive (or used for anything other than set dressing for the linear endgame). There's also a faction war mechanic, where you lead a faction to domination. The problem is that it's really on a per-map basis --it's far from a full-scale conflict. And in reality, you just choose between two sides three times. Or you can be like me and skip it and suffer no consequences. Other than that, it's pretty much just Shadow of Chernobyl. If you've never played a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game and you plan on playing the whole series, this one might be the best to start with. Why? Well, it only gets better from here.
One of the best shooters the build engine has to offer. The raunchy, one-note humor might not be your cup of tea, but the level design is just amazing. It's pretty much Duke 3.5D. They really don't make shooters like this anymore. Weapons sound great, music is forgettable. The cutscenes are funny for the wrong reasons. The expansions are worth your time but are certainly a step down from the main game. You can buy the Redux edition for a few bucks if you don't want to screw around with mods, but this version can be just as good.
It's like if Tommy Wiseau tried to make a Deus Ex/Alfred Hitchcock hybrid game. With a splash of Day After Tomorrow. And The Matrix. If this sounds all over the place, it's because it is. The story is 'so bad it's good' --if you want an emotional story with sick action scenes and excellent voice acting... Go somewhere else. This game is best enjoyed laughing the whole way through. That said, one thing chiefly ruins Fahrenheit: the gameplay. It's one of those Quick Time Event only games. I normally enjoy them, but this is the worst execution I've ever seen. The colors make it look like Simon Says (which is what I thought it was at first) but it's not. Then you think "Oh, it's the Xbox colors," but it's not that either: they're in the WRONG ORDER. What nutcase designed this? Seriously, blank arrows would have been a better choice. That's not all though. Because the whole game is QTEs, there's no way to say, make boss fights hard, so they just make you perform FULL MINUTES of QTEs with no break. Sometimes it's so ridiculous it makes you laugh, but most of the time I was rolling my eyes and begging for it to finish. It also runs like a fat kid with no legs. You'll probably have to download 3rd party software just to get the right analog stick to work on your 360 gamepads. Woe is you if you're using a different gamepad. Don't even think about using your keyboard. No widescreen support. FPS locked to... 100? I'm more confused than mad about that.
If Beamdog isn't going to let customers purchase (or review) the original version, then I don't see a problem posting this review for the original version on the Enhanced Edition page. Is Baldur's Gate 1 worth playing if you didn't grow up with it? Definitely yes. It might not be totally 100% the greatest game ever made forever and always, but you really should play it if you like isometric RPGs. One of the biggest hurdles for new players (like me) was just how open the game really is. Baldur's Gate is borderline a sandbox RPG. It expects you to visit side locations on the map regularly, especially in the beginning. If you really want a story to lead you around, the game is going to be hard to get into at first (but it will get more prominent). Speaking of the story: it's definitely not poor or lacking, but it is barebones. In the beginning, it's almost non-existent. There's a nice twist at the end too, if you haven't played BG2 yet. The world is pretty bland, to be frank. It's your average Forgotten Realms setting -think of every high fantasy trope you can and it's here (yes, Drizzt is in the game). The characters are surprisingly shallow and not very interesting. You really would lose nothing of value if you started your first game in multiplayer and made your whole team of custom characters. If you have the patience for a very slow and unforgiving isometric RPG, you can do a million times worse than BG1. Most people will prefer BG2, and I can understand why, but to be honest there really aren't many games even from the same studios that have you exploring the wide open wilderness like BG1. Slap on the widescreen mod and some bug fixes and have at it. Even with the ripoff Beamdog 'package deal' BS, you could do a whole lot worse for the price.
Initially, I thought Quake 2 was just another throwaway Sci-Fi shooter. It may not be as unique as The Offering, but that doesn't mean that what we got isn't superb in its own right. You know the drill: run, jump, and shoot your way through some of the best-designed levels in shooter history. What's Quake 2 got to offer that the competition doesn't? The AI was the first to grab my attention. Sure, half of them shoot from afar and the other half run at you with hacksaws, but it's the details that matter. Like a soldier picking up their sidearm and taking a few pot shots at you before kicking the bucket, or blasting off a Strogg's head so they shoot wildly into their former allies. The levels are a standard id Software affair (i.e., great) and even though I miss the Cthulu horrors from The Offering, I gotta say a lot of the Strogg look great. Plus the engine is leaps and bounds more impressive (and stable) than the last iteration. The expansions are more of the same. As good as the base game is, both The Reckoning and Ground Zero feel gratuitous. There's a lot of reskins and overlapping weapons/powerups. The level design is blatantly amateurish compared to vanilla. If you're going to get the base game (and you should), you might as well give the expansions a try. Don't expect anything mindblowing.
Didn't back this on Kickstarter. Business practices aside, the game is really good. The highlights are definitely the world building and the Numenera skill check mechanics. Finally, an RPG that puts just as much focus on dialogue and skill checks as combat! There are MASSIVE walls of text, so if you're not big into reading this is definitely going to be a grueling experience. The sound design is fine. The graphics and art direction are a huge leap forward from Wasteland 2. What of the flaws? The big one is pacing. A common criticism is that there's just too much writing. This is puzzling because people who say this usually agree that the writing is mostly good. This means that the crux of the issues, in my mind, are the hours-long stretches of reading flowery prose without a break and not the volume of writing itself. The first 10 hours or so are a slog and a perfect example of this: there are about five or six sections, each can take up to an hour to talk to everyone, and then you have to factor in running back and forth completing quests which are themselves mostly talking. I think I participated in 3 fights within that time. It doesn't exactly get your heart pumping, and I found my mind wandering if I played for long stretches of time. The next big issue is the performance and let's face it: it's not going to get any better. The last patch was months ago but I'd estimate that 50%(!) of all combat I experienced in this game had at least one critical bug. Many of these were full-on crashes or the engine hangings. This is just insane for a dev to leave the game like this. Performance all around is complete trash. FPS went as high as 144 and as low as 22. What's going on here?? If you can handle these issues, the game itself is interesting and unique. Certainly not a classic, but definitely worth your time.
