User Reviews & Ratings
- 10 (3)
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- 5 (2)
- 4 (0)
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- 1 (0)
Mass Effect 2: Overlord
Excellent mission pack in some of the creepiest gaming locations since Rapture.
Bioware really sets a new standard for story-based DLC with Overlord. This is a brief campaign, maybe a few hours on your first playthrough -- but the experience certainly feels much larger. Overlord takes you to what ap... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Mass Effect 2
Bioware sets the standard for a new era of RPGs. Again.
Back in the late '90s, Bioware developed what became the definitive formula for epic computer RPGs. Thanks to franchises like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment, the Infinity Engine basically defined com... Read Full Review
4 of 5 users found the following review helpful
Dead Space (2008)
Flawless game design, despite the familiar sci-fi storyline and obvious twists.
It says a lot for Dead Space that -- despite the derivative "alien outbreak" sci-fi storyline and cardboard characters -- it's still an incredible achievement. When the game design is this good, and so flawlessly execute... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
MLB 09: The Show
The best video game baseball game to date, but some weirdness still creeps in.
Starting with 2006's re-branding (and re-invention) of Sony's baseball series as "The Show", developer San Diego Studios has steadily evolved a rock-solid core gameplay model to the stupidly high level of excellence it's... Read Full Review
0 of 1 users found the following review helpful
flOw
Relaxed, beautiful, simple. Great fun with 2 players.
I picked up Flow as part of PSN's half-price sale on downloadable games. Four dollars is totally reasonable for something as simple and fun like Flow. A friend and I played through the game in a few hours. I think we ... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade
Even better than the original.
The biggest achievement Blizzard pulled off here is taking what was already one of the most well-crafted MMOs ever created and upstaging themselves with an even better product. And as much as people love to complain abou... Read Full Review
0 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Non-stop adrenaline rush, amazing level designs, and best-in-class multiplayer to round it off.
If Crysis is the thinking-man's shooter and Bioshock is the story-driven shooter, Call of Duty 4 is the the most pure blow-the-crap-out-of-everything-and-hope-you-survive shooter I've seen in a long time. This is a game ... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Borderlands
Way more addictive than it has any right to be.
It's a bit unfair reviewing the core Borderlands game by itself these days, considering the well-received DLC and the Game of the Year edition that now exist. Taken as a whole, Borderlands GOTY is a tremendous package, e... Read Full Review
7 of 7 users found the following review helpful
Resistance: Fall of Man
Mediocre story, but solid AI and enemy design makes Resistance a fun challenge throughout.
Looks can be deceiving when it comes to the PS3's launch "killer app." At first glance, Resistance looks like a fairly run-of-the-mill space marine shooter with lackluster graphics and a forgettable story. But what emerg... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
flower
Artful, understated brilliance.
All games, to some degree, are designed to tease emotions out of you -- excitement, fear, joy, intrigue. What's so incredible about Flower is the emotions it brings out in such a compact, beautiful and simple game design... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Halo 3: ODST
If this mediocre shooter didn't have the name "Halo" in the title, no one would care about this game.
A lot of Halo 3: ODST apologists say you can't really criticise this game because it was "never intended to be a full-fledged sequel." Well, if Microsoft released ODST as a $20 downloadable add-on for Halo 3, that statem... Read Full Review
7 of 13 users found the following review helpful
Fallout 3
Bethesda's most polished RPG to date, but the Fallout world loses a little magic in the process.
Bethesda has refined their open-world RPG formula down to a science. Fallout 3 is certainly the studio's most well-crafted game to date, giving you a much tighter, more focused and faster-paced experience than anything w... Read Full Review
4 of 4 users found the following review helpful
Heavy Rain
A flawed gem -- extremely hard to put down the controller, despite some glaring disappointments.
As one of the most hyped and well-received cinematic games of 2010, it's easy to expect nothing short of a Stanley-Kubrick-quality tour de force from Heavy Rain. It's admittedly unfair to expect Quantic Dream to release ... Read Full Review
1 of 2 users found the following review helpful
Crysis
Action-packed, creative, beautiful levels but paper-thin characters and bland story hold an otherwise great shooter back
Pros: * Wonderful level designs that i'm dying to see in full DX 10 on max settings someday. Was able to play with high frame rates on a 1920x1200 LCD, Windows XP, 8800 GTS (640), and 2.4 Core2 Duo, with everything on... Read Full Review
0 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Assassin's Creed II
AC II definitely improves on its predecessor, but gameplay still feels a bit underwhelming.
Of all the genres that have benefitted from ever-more powerful hardware, the action-stealth-platformer has reached perhaps the most dizzying new heights this generation. Led by standard-setters like Uncharted 2, Batman: ... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Ratchet & Clank Future 2
An incredible ride from start to finish. Addictive gameplay, great platforming, and a memorable story. Bravo, Insomniac.
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time isn't a game that monopolized message boards or critics year-end awards lists in 2009. It was released amid a bunch of more high-profile action blockbusters so inevitably got a bit... Read Full Review
1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
The best Half-Life experience yet.
Just finished Episode 2. What a great f-ing game. The overall Half-Life 2 story moves incrementally and slowly ... which is why it's easy to lose interest on plot alone. But it's also deliberate. You can tell Valve wants... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City
The Ballad of Gay Tony is GTA at its best, while The Lost & The Damned offers a decent throw-in adventure.
If you play this double DLC pack in chronological order, that means you'll be taking on The Lost & The Damned first. Which is unfortunate because the first DLC add-on is a bit of a chore to get through. The well-worn GTA... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Red Dead Redemption
A stunning Western epic -- Rockstar's best release to date.
After all the accolades this year, it's easy to forget that Red Dead Redemption was originally rumored to be in pretty bad shape. Allegedly, Rockstar San Diego had to scrap much of what they had built late in the product... Read Full Review
1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Short but sweet. Excellent level design and puzzles.
The downside is -- this looks a lot like Half Life 2 and it's not entirely exciting to go back into the Citadel as soon as you spent the entire first game blasting your way through corridor after corridor. The upside ... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Dragon Age: Origins (Collector's Edition)
Bioware redeems itself to PC gamers with their best RPG since the Infinity Engine era.
Like more than a few PC RPG fans, I spent a long time refusing to believe Dragon Age could be any good. I'm of a certain cranky generation who believe Bioware lost its "magic touch" long ago, after the Golden Age of ... Read Full Review
1 of 4 users found the following review helpful
Half-Life 2
Only took me 3 years, but I finally finished Half Life 2.
As I was wrapping up the final level, it's easy to forget this game is so old. The environments and characters still look fantastic after all this time, and the action is just as fun as anything I've played in Crysis or ... Read Full Review
0 of 1 users found the following review helpful
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Among the best RPGs of all time -- quest design, storyline, characters, combat all hit high marks.
I could write a book about all the merits inside Oblivion when it comes to RPG design, but one of the most impressive accomplishments is the quest design. There's actual character development between you and key NPCs in ... Read Full Review
1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
MLB 07: The Show
Best baseball sim on market; fixes all PS2 bugs
I previously reviewed the PS2 version, so the common highlights are copied below. If you're currently playing the PS2 version and haven't jumped to the PS3 yet (or picked up the PS3 version of the game), here's what you ... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Gears of War 2
The best of the meathead space marine shooters.
In many ways, meathead space marine shooters have come to define video gaming for a large portion of the developed world. I've played through many of the biggies -- the Halos and Gears and Killzones and whatever else -- ... Read Full Review
1 of 2 users found the following review helpful
Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta
Reasonably fun alien encounter worth playing through in the GOTY edition, but not worth a separate download.
Let's get the bad news out of the way first -- there's no walking on the surface of the Moon in Mothership Zeta. That's really all I was hoping for when I first heard Bethesda was releasing a space-themed DLC add-on. Unf... Read Full Review
1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Halo 3
While its fiction can be a little uninspired, Halo 3 shows off some of the best level design and gameplay anywhere.
When the original Halo first debuted on Xbox in 2001, one of the most frequent compliments you heard was, "OMG THESE LEVELS ARE HUGE!" At the time, many shooters were confined to the claustrophobic spaceship corridors se... Read Full Review
0 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Halo 2
Abysmal single-player. Multiplayer was the main attraction, but it's no longer alive.
Having finally picked up an Xbox 360 and catching up on the platform's exclusives, I'm a good six years too late to Halo 2. While the first Halo still stands out as an excellent single-player FPS well-worth playing throu... Read Full Review
3 of 11 users found the following review helpful
Halo (Xbox Collection)
Nine years later, still a knockout and masterwork in FPS design.
When Halo originally came out in 2001, I had no intention of buying an Xbox, so I only played bits and pieces at friend's houses. It seemed like a competant shooter but nothing worth going gah-gah over, especially consid... Read Full Review
3 of 4 users found the following review helpful
BioShock 2
A welcome trip back to Rapture.
When I first heard 2K was developing a sequel to Bioshock, it sounded like a sad, unnecessary money grab. Even worse, the original development lead, Ken Levine, wasn't involved with the project. All signs pointed to a de... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles
Great characters, imaginative landscapes and creative questlines bring back some of Morrowind's magic.
As good as Oblivion was, it really took Shivering Isles for Bethesda to show off how truly great that world was. As soon as you enter the realm and meet Sheogorath's right-hand man, Haskill, you know you're in for someth... Read Full Review
1 of 2 users found the following review helpful
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth
Brilliantly bizarre. Impressively turns the JRPG genre on its head with novel story and gameplay.
Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth is a remake of an obscure PS1 JRPG cult classic, Valkyrie Profile. The original PS1 game is incredibly hard to find (and ridiculously priced, if you do find a copy) -- so credit to Square-Enix f... Read Full Review
1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Mega Hits!)
If you like watching video games instead of playing them, by all means, give MGS2 a whirl.
As a kid, I was a huge fan of the original Metal Gear on the NES. It was one of the first video games I ever played that took itself seriously, presented a storyline straight out of a sci-fi/action film, and treated the ... Read Full Review
3 of 16 users found the following review helpful
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (PCCW The Best)
Worth playing once -- and only once -- if you're at all a Baldur's Gate or Dungeon Siege fan.
I always heard Icewind Dale described as “Baldur’s Gate lite” but that expression is far better served to describe Dark Alliance instead of BG’s frosty RPG brother on the PC. BG:DA is worth playing through once -- and on... Read Full Review
0 of 0 users found the following review helpful
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Uncharted 2 is so good, it feels like a game from the *next* next-generation of consoles.
The original Uncharted took many gamers by surprise simply because developer Naughty Dog had never done anything close to a sophisticated mature adventure game before. Known primarliy for the kid-friendly Jak and Crash B... Read Full Review
1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Cryostasis
Provocative, story-driven FPS adventure in the spirit of Bioshock, STALKER and Dead Space.
As a thirtysomething gamer, it gets tougher and tougher to find story-driven games that actually tell a worthwhile story. Too often standards are lowered for video games, and mediocre plots are praised as "cinema-like" w... Read Full Review
3 of 3 users found the following review helpfulIcewind Dale (DVD)
Not at all the Baldur's Gate Lite I had heard it described as.
I was really pleasantly surprised by how good Icewind Dale was. I was a huge Baldur's Gate I and II fan, but left IWD sitting on my shelf for years b/c I had assumed it was nothing but a hack 'n' slash version of my belo... Read Full Review
1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
MLB 10: The Show
Underrated refinements bring MLB 10's gameplay and franchise options to their highest level yet.
I'm mainly a franchise player when it comes to sports games. I do love the excitement and drama of on-field action, but the real addiction to these games, for me, is playing armchair GM and sculpting my favorite teams in... Read Full Review
6 of 7 users found the following review helpful
Mass Effect
A missed opportunity.
Let's just take this step-by-step. 1.) The much-heralded "new" dialogue system. The conversation system in Mass Effect was hyped to be this total re-invention of RPG dialogue systems. By giving the player multiple abb... Read Full Review
6 of 7 users found the following review helpful
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