Sunday, November 30
Game Review: Mass Effect
Mass Effect is ultimately a giant sandbox that's somewhat different from KOTR, only with none of the cachet of Star Wars. The main plot line, the one in which you save the universe, is a lot of fun and makes for an interesting game. But you'll have to sit through a lot of elevators to get there. [MORE]
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8:27 PM
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Monday, May 26
Game Review: The Darkness
Despite the age-old Mafia tropes, The Darkness takes the themes explored in The Crow and Spawn and amps them up to eleven, without ever losing focus on sacrifice, violence, and even love. I wasn't entirely convinced that saving Jackie's soul was feasible (I earned the anti-hero rating from the game), but the very notion of redemption being possible is a breath of fresh air to the first-person shooter genre. [MORE]
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6:20 PM
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Sunday, February 24
Game Review: Blacksite: Area 51
In the era of Bioshock, Halo 3, and Gears of War, Blacksite is proof that graphics alone are not enough to make a great game. The developers should be ashamed of themselves, but I can't tell you who they are because while I was forced to watch the end credits...the game crashed. [MORE]
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Sunday, February 17
Game Review: Crackdown
If you're a fan of Robocop, Judge Dredd, or the Tick, get Crackdown. You'll be shouting "SPOOOONNN!", hurling chimneys, and leaping across rooftops in no time. Unless you're not a fan of the Tick, in which case you'll appreciate laying down the law the old fashioned way: with a rocket launcher. [MORE]
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Wednesday, January 2
Game Review: BioShock
I didn't really want BioShock. The name didn't exactly thrill me, and the concept was a little hazy. Some guy underwater in the 50s being attacked by weird monsters in diving suits? What the heck was that all about? But my brother talked the game up so much that I put it on my wish list. I got it for my birthday and was instantly hooked. [MORE]
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Friday, December 7
Game Review: Halo 3
There's been so many reviews about Halo 3 that there's little new I can contribute here. The campaign is serviceable, but takes itself a little too seriously. Viewing the web site for Halo 3 is unintentionally hilarious, treating the game like a World War II memorial, as if it has that much emotional gravitas. It doesn't; the hinted-at relationship between Master Chief (Steven Downes) and Cortana (Jen Taylor) gets a little silly at times, the stalwart allies die heroically, bad guys become allies and then betray you later, and aliens natter on about setting off the Halo rings and destroying the universe. The talking plant known as the Gravemind (Dee Bradley Baker) doesn't make an appearance, but his voice is ever present. In fact, the game uses the awful method of flashbacks, both from Cortana and Gravemind, to interrupt game play and force the plot down your throat. It gets old fast. The game reaches a rollicking conclusion with a crazy Warthog chase across collapsing platforms that recaptures some of the fun of Halo 2. The ending is predictable but well earned. [MORE]
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Friday, November 23
Game Geeks #35 Delta Green: Eyes Only by Pagan Publishing
I got mine on order, hope it arrives here soon!Labels: game reviews
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Friday, September 21
Game Review: Overlord
When I found out that Overlord was a cross between Dungeon Keeper (where you get to play the bad guy in a fantasy world) and Pikmin (where you get to control different colored carrot people in quests), I was sold. [MORE]
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Friday, August 17
Book Review: Tales of Freeport
Overall, Tales of Freeport is full of good ideas but has a somewhat unpolished execution. The book could easily have been twice the size and dealt with some of the interesting plots in more detail, while at the same time excising recycled content from old adventures to make space. [MORE]
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Thursday, August 16
Book Review: Crisis in Freeport
Overall, CIF is a deadly serious action adventure with a plot that moves briskly. From a riot to a hostage crisis, an assassination attempt to a crime boss raid, a midnight retaliation to plenty of politics, CIF provides enough fodder to wrap up a Freeport game. It's probably impossible to please every DM with the conclusion, but CIF does an adequate job of providing a definitive ending to a story arc. I just wish it were a little less squicky. [MORE]
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12:21 PM
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Book Review: Black Sails Over Freeport
I can't be too hard on this adventure. It's like that player you have in your game who doesn't know how to play D&D but has big ideas; he's big on theatrics and sketchy on details, cracks a lot of jokes, drinks all your soda, and is basically just there to have fun. For all its stogie-smoking zombies, card-playing gorillas, and flying giant skulls, BSOF is about having a good time and damn the consequences. DMs should consider carefully if their campaign and players can handle it. Mine did just fine. [MORE]
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12:19 PM
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Friday, August 10
Game Review: Earth Defense Force 2017
You have to be a certain kind of person to appreciate EDF. If you've ever enjoyed THEM!, Tarantula, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Godzilla, Starship Troopers, Aliens, Independence Day, War of the Worlds, or if you just happen to like blowing things up but suck at games like Gears of War and Halo...then grab your rocket launcher, soldier, because the EDF needs you! [MORE]
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11:25 PM
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Saturday, June 16
Game Review: Lost Planet - Extreme Condition
But Lost Planet is addicting. I played it on hard and all of the boss battles were very close. Two of the boss fights ended with Wayne going through two mecha, a handful of grenades and a missile launcher. Now THAT'S a fun game! [MORE]
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7:24 PM
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Sunday, April 1
RPG Review: Tatters of the King
TOK is an excellent series of adventures, marred occasionally by the usual Cthulhu foils: assuming investigators will be naive or helpless (these days, most investigators carry guns and in my D&D game, they carry really heavy firepower in the form of spells), spending way too much time on overland travel, and an overemphasis on how PCs can avoid going insane by closing their eyes…a decidedly unheroic thing to do that shouldn't work anyway.
But when TOK hits its mark, it really makes for memorable sessions. The moral quandaries that the PCs regularly faced made for exciting play, and the fever pitch of the Dark Young showdown is magnificent…unfortunately it has very little to do with the main plot (it's essentially internecine squabbling with a completely unrelated cult).
There are plenty of notes and props, all of them useful. Especially intriguing are the nightmares that the PCs experience and the means of conveying the King in Yellow's telepathy (it involves cue cards). All of this made for evocative scenes that kept my PCs guessing.
Best of all, TOK plays for keeps. While the sacrifice of two PCs was a serious blow, it FELT like the conclusion to a series. And given the grand tour of Hastur and his ilk, we all appreciated the ending. [MORE]
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Tuesday, March 27
Game Review: FEAR
FEAR is bloody, violent, and foul-mouthed. Sometimes the cursing seems a little egregious; sometimes it makes you wonder who taught the clones these potty words. But the blood, especially in slow-mo mode, is glorious to behold, especially when a shotgun blast at point blank range tears through a clone soldier and the bookshelf behind him.
FEAR has its flaws. The collision detection isn't always right, snagging your character on strange parts of the board. Bad guys fall all over in rag doll fashion thanks to the Havok engine, but they also sometimes fall in weird poses (on several occasions, a clone soldier fell and hung in mid-air). And the voice acting is so-so.
But FEAR does one thing right, and that was enough to make me play it obsessively until I beat it. You WILL learn the meaning of FEAR. [MORE]
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Sunday, March 4
Game Review: Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Everything that makes the Marvel comics universe great is here in obsessive levels of detail. I enjoyed the game so much that I played it to completion and then some. I can only hope that the next game will allow you to carry over your saved characters. It's enough to make a Marvel fanboy weep with joy. [MORE]
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Wednesday, February 7
Game Review: Gears of War
Graphics aside, GOW is a fully realized universe. You can stop bad guys from spawning by throwing a grenade into a "Grub Hole." And to complicate matters, grenades are connected to chains that you bounce off of things (and even people), so one does not merely throw a grenade at a target. Gone are the Hail Mary sticky bomb kills that made Halo frustrating. The other weapons are equally innovative, especially the chainsaw bayonet, which allows you to churn up your enemies, Evil Dead style. Locust duck and weave, use cover, slowly advance forward and then retreat when they're in trouble. And oh yeah...NO JUMPING. Halo characters hopped around like frogs, such that a Spartan armed with a rocket launcher could become a moving target on an otherwise featureless terrain. No such luck here...if you're standing out in the middle of nowhere, you'll go down and go down hard. [MORE]
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10:51 PM
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Friday, September 29
Game Review: Darkwatch
Darkwatch doesn't break any new ground as a first-person shooter, but it definitely adds style and panache to a genre that's been shot to death. Playing on hard, I felt I got my money's worth. [MORE]
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6:37 PM
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Game Review: Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows
It's ironic that Seven Sorrows is probably most like the original Gauntlet game. That's not a compliment though; in a crowded market of Gauntlet-clones, Seven Sorrows doesn't sufficiently distinguish itself from all the other sword-swinging, axe-hurling, bow-shooting, magic-blasting games out there. [MORE]
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6:33 PM
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Thursday, September 14
Game Review: Halo 2
Play alternates between Master Chief and the alien elite known as the Arbiter. This gives the player both sides of the story, which is interesting…to a point. Eventually, the plot converges enough so that the two characters should really end up fighting each other. That would have been something, if the AI made you play through both battles from opposite sides by creating an enemy that uses your own moves.
But instead, about midway through the battle for the universe, a giant plant that looks like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors shows up. This planet, speaking in Jabba-esque guttural tones, rams the plot down our throats by grabbing the Arbiter and Master Chief and shoving them into opposite plot lines: the Arbiter ends up working with the humans, Master Chief ends up doing the alien dirty work. [MORE]
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Sunday, June 4
Game Review: Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo is drenched with testosterone, a product so perfectly targeted to adolescent boys that I actually created Master Chief as a comic book (that I published, incidentally) long before the Xbox even existed. That's right, Brenkin Kree wore a featureless helmet, carried a rocket launcher on his shoulder, and had a wristwatch computer named Babe who bossed him around. Just like Master Chief, he was bred specifically for war.
Did Halo rip me off? As much as my ego would like to think otherwise, I sincerely doubt it. Halo is merely the distilled perfection of every boy's dream; the biggest badass in town, thrust into an Aliens flick and armed with all the military might of the future. [MORE]
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4:08 PM
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Tuesday, March 28
Game Review: Champions of Norrath: Call to Arms
If you've played any of the Baldur's Gate series (I've beaten them all) or the previous installment of the EverQuest game for PS2, then you're now familiar with Snowblind Studios' game engine. So familiar, in fact, that you probably can't tell you're playing a different game.
We had already beaten Champions of Norrath and, hungry to use all the neat new powers and weapons we gained in the first game, purchased its sequel, Call to Arms. This time I played Quintus, a cleric, while my wife played Ilmare, an archer. We were back at it again, hacking and slashing our way to fame and fortune. But it all seemed so familiar…
That's because this is the same friggin' game! [MORE]
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11:30 PM
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Thursday, March 16
RPG Review: Madness in Freeport
This adventure has an interesting mix of heavy role-playing, pure dungeoneering, and then a reverse dungeon (going up the lighthouse instead of down into the Temple of Yig). It makes effective use of the environment (sunken caverns) and forces the PCs outside of their comfort zone (adventurers…at a formal ball). As a DM, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge, and my PCs rose to the occasion even when I thought the adventure was being a bit unfair. It brought out the best in them. As a bookend to the trilogy, it makes for an excellent denouement. If you want to shake up Freeport and your players, Madness in Freeport will get the job done. [MORE]
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Wednesday, March 15
RPG Review: Terror in Freeport
TIF has some good ideas, but unlike DIF, it railroads like nobody's business. It also glosses over important plot points, leads PCs into traps which are extremely difficult to escape, and expects them to go peacefully with supposed officers of the law all so that they can have a one-on-one conversation with Verlaine.
Well, my PCs SHOT Verlaine's Captain of the Guard in the FACE. Apparently, good old Reikert Lloyd is a favorite NPC, because a whole page is devoted to him when he has no real role in the game (and, incidentally, dies anyway in the assassination at Verlaine's house). Similarly, my PCs saw through every disguise without any rolls, because plot-wise it just didn't make any sense. DIF feels like the middle of two great adventures, tiding you over to give the PCs the big bad guy to fight.
DIF is worth getting if you're playing the trilogy, but it certainly can't be played as a one-off. And given that it stretches believability in some cases (especially that trap), you might find that the PCs surprise you with good old-fashioned common sense and a flintlock pistol to your favorite NPC's face. [MORE]
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11:41 PM
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Tuesday, October 18
Game Review: Hunter: The Reckoning - Redeemer
By far the best part of Redeemer is that it's one of the rare four player games for the Xbox. The controls are customized for blasting away at opponents, including a very cool strafing maneuver. It's all about killing zombies, vampires, and other weird things.
And that's not a bad thing. Redeemer makes no pretense about what it is: a straight up shoot-em-up for four. If you can stand the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink premise and don't mind your Hunters showing a little leg, Redeemer is for you. [MORE]
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Sunday, August 7
Review: Death in Freeport
What's interesting about Freeport is that although it's nominally presented as a pirate setting (with an 18th-century feel to it), the adventure has almost nothing to do with the setting.
Basically, an alien being on an exploratory mission possesses a librarian of the Temple of Knowledge (Lucius) in Freeport. Lucius promptly leaves the Temple and disappears for several years, only to return with no memory of his past. He tries to put it all behind him, but eventually his dark past catches up with him.
No wait, that's not entirely true. We have no idea what Lucius experiences. We only know that a secret cult of serpent people and human cultists are attempting to bring back their dark god, the god of the Yellow Sign. And that the leader of the cult suspects that Lucius might have some tie to their dark god. So they capture and torture Lucius, ultimately leading the adventurers on a path to retrieve him.
Not much in the way of pirates, huh? [MORE]
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3:18 PM
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Friday, August 5
Review: Lord of The Rings: The Third Age
Check out my brother-in-law Eric's review of Lord of The Rings: The Third Age:It sounds like a great idea at first. The "Lord of the Rings" books are about a group of heroes that save Middle Earth. But they could not do it single-handed. So let's make a game that follows a group of lesser known heroes through the adventure behind the adventure. Sure, SOUNDS like a good idea.
It Isn't. [MORE]
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3:19 PM
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Wednesday, August 3
PDF Review: Construct Mechanus
Construct Mechanus is the first in a series of books about magical robot characters in a fantasy setting (*COUGH* Warforged *COUGH). Actually, I think Construct Mechanus beat Warforged to the punch. But in any case, the Ronin Arts combination of Philip Reed and Christopher Shy band together to present all the mecha goodness you could ever want for a fantasy game, including two new races (Stilt and Abombinus), two new classes (tanker and mystic defender), mechanus-specific feats, and rules on firearms.
The modular design of the mechanus means there’s a lot of variety. And then there’s the guns, which lets them blow stuff up real good. This is a daring product that isn’t afraid to take risks and go places with the d20 system. [MORE]
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7:53 AM
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Saturday, July 30
PDF Review: Construct Mechanus
Construct Mechanus is the first in a series of books about magical robot characters in a fantasy setting (*COUGH* Warforged *COUGH). Actually, I think Construct Mechanus beat Warforged to the punch. But in any case, the Ronin Arts combination of Philip Reed and Christopher Shy band together to present all the mecha goodness you could ever want for a fantasy game, including two new races (Stilt and Abombinus), two new classes (tanker and mystic defender), mechanus-specific feats, and rules on firearms. [MORE]
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8:23 AM
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Thursday, July 28
PDF Review: Modern Day Maps
Unlike fantasy settings, where you can be pretty confident that an inn is an inn is an inn, modern maps are a lot more challenging because you actually have to know what some of these places look like. From above. Or else someone (and there’s always someone, we all have this guy) points out how unrealistic the map is.
Modern Day Maps to the rescue! [MORE]
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5:02 PM
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Thursday, April 14
Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters
GDAM got me so excited about giant monsters bashing that I put Destroy All Monsters on my wish list. That's the highest compliment I can give a game I played over and over until I beat it. [ MORE ]Labels: game reviews
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