A look at other games, old and newish, mostly found on steam.
STAR WARS JEDI KNIGHT JEDI ACADEMY. Yes, as old as KOTOR. Voice acting? terrible. Lip sync? Looks to be random. Story? kinda dumb. Gameplay? Fun! What could be more fun then lopping off limbs with a lightsaber? Sure you 'can' use other weapons, in fact, you have to choose a bunch before each mission, the majority of the time you will not use them. It's a 2003 game, which makes me bitter as it seems a lot of focus nowadays is on cover shooters (cover up the shitty game play) and making everybody buy gamepads, as well as downloadable content and signing up for various bloatware services.
ASSASSIN'S CREED 1. Some generic repetition, but fun if you like beating simple ai's. Planning and stalking targets had a good feel to it. I enjoyed it, some good pulse pounding action.
DIVINITY II -DRAGON KNIGHT SAGA. I really enjoyed this one. It becomes a saga if you like scouring the map. This game made me laugh a lot. Again, there is some console like soft aiming. There are a couple of dick move quests.
VAMPIRE - THE MASQUERADE - BLOODLINES. You NEED a community made mod to fix the stupid game. Other then that, I enjoyed it with my melee ninja build. There was one side quest that was broke, maybe the latest community mod fixed it.
JUST CAUSE 2. Stupidly fun. Terrible cutscenes, which I am ok with if the gameplay is fun, which this is. An xbox 360 controller recommended for driving - I tried hooking up a steering wheel using a 360 emulator, but it sucked for most of the vehicles. If you do not have a controller it might still be fun, but I can tell you it is very hard to drive or pilot any vehicle except maybe the fire engine. Of course, it does have that soft aim type of thing for consoles.
BATMAN -ARKAM ASYLUM- GOTY. Another xbox360 controller game, though I played it without one, up until the last fight which I figured was going to take a couple more hours of restarting
. Oh, and as a bonus, you get to create a GFWL account. Actually, there are different challenges that unlock that by themselves are fun, such as beating the shit out of NPC's until they get you. It's cover shooter-ish, but the combat is like a really advanced Lugaru - batman does moves based on the position of the enemy and your timing on the button(s). It is fun.
ASSASSIN'S CREED 2. Apparently they had not heard of 'less is more', as they did put a lot more in this sequel then the first. Sadly, this included more mechanics that were often pointless, more frustration in the form of locking the camera during increasingly tedious jumping sections, more geometry to the roofs which of course meant more loss of control of the camera to avoid clipping these new pointy roofs. Basically more triggers on the map for your character to do something stupid while you try to flee an angry mob of guards. Not that you need to flee, as the only danger you are in is boredom, because if you actually manage to die to an enemy (not say, a fall or glitch) you must need sleep or to sober up. The ability to use smelling salts to heal up to full takes away from Ass Creed 1's urgency in the combat, where you had to run away and regenerate at times (and at the near the end dick move fight - an 'unfair' fight that eventually, you stop button mashing and time everything properly so you can soon finish the game). There is no such urgency in the fighting in ass creed 2.
Smoke bombs in 2 are cool, but only needed to avoid wasting more time on a frustrating fight that you would surely win anyway.
The races are harder , which is a good thing.
Other pointless things are the money mechanics, villa maintenance, probably most of the 'optional' missions, they are simply filler that gets staler as you progress. Sure you can buy weapons, but the higher tier weapons only become unlocked as the game progresses - pretty much like the first one, only now you pretend to be in an rpg and buy it.
Some cool puzzles, and some dirty hard puzzles (google).
Nifty blurbs about the architecture I enjoyed.
The blend in mechanic is an improvement, but of course, not applicable for some assassinations, and mandatory for others.
There are some NPC groups you can hire, though not always an option.
In the first one you probably had to punch some beggars in the face to avoid them getting killed in a melee or they were going to get you killed. This one you will WANT to punch some hapless innocent NPC's in the face, or assassinate them then go remove the wanted posters so you can continue venting.
Tons of little treasure chests, which 'may' be needed at the start but are chicken feed later on.
Many have praised 2 as an improvement; I found myself starting the game filled with anticiaption, enjoying it for a bit, and ending the game hating it. I know I allready mentioned the increasingly tedious jumping sections, but since they took up so much of the focus and contributed the most to my swearing at the monitor I'll mention them again, as they are part of the NON optional missions. For all the choices and options of the new combat system it is ultimately dumbed down by magic health potions and cowardly enemies afraid to get countered.
The 'Action' camera - in the first ass creed, a few times your view would be obscured, but twas not a big deal. In this one, you will be yelling at trees and other obstacles. Also, the views are nowhere near as dynamic or good, and winning a fight is unlikely to produce a 'YA TAKE THAT NPC IN YOUR FACE!' moment, which to me was the best part of the first one.
No doubt I will still get 'Brotherhood' when it goes on sale, and simply shake my head at gamers who demand more without knowing what they are asking.
THE WITCHER. Yes I know, 2 is out. I just could not finish the first one, perhaps I will try and finish it, but after getting "broken quest itis" (fear of somehow breaking the quest chains) I tend to doubt it. Far too much inventory which an inkeeper keeps for you, and you will visit him often. Too many NPC's want something without telling you WHAT they want, like it is some sort of fun not only to do FED EX missions, but to have to run around all over the map trying to find the exact item out of a thousand that they want. Combat involves 'timing' your clicks to get the combos. There's one move where Geralt spins and bends over backwards to strike the opponents - everytime I saw it I cringed. Oh, you can collect bedpost notches by screwing damsels but don't expect any dirty 3D action. Some of the quests are interesting, and some of the 'ambiguous' moral choices, but the 'ambiguous' dialog choices spoil it.
Oh, this was the ENHANCED DIRECTOR'S CUT.
X Beyond the Frontier, X3, etc. Came in a superbox for cheap on steam. Space sim a la Vega Strike, Freebooter, Elite, etc. If you have never ever played a space trading / fighting game with jump gates then perhaps you will enjoy it. Unfortunately, as you rack up kills, in the last installment anyway, the opposition becomes more numerous with better ships, with better technology. So for a game that would seem to have many possibilities to play, essentially the route becomes build empire, take a corvette or capital ship and control fighters as an RTS. Forget about running around in a fighter all the time. As for the first in the series? Who cares, really, they couldn't even be bothered to tell you the controls. I'd rather play X-wing, or the much harder freespace 2.
TORCHLIGHT. Remember Diablo? These guys had a hand in that. You would think a 3D version would be great fun, somehow, something is lost in the translation. There is a mod to improve the camera, so you can enjoy a better look at some nice stylized models. Hey I didn't think D2 was as good as the first either.
GTA IV. Terrible vehicle handling. Plus, you get to play a shitty pet game as you molly coddle your friendly NPC's by taking them on dates, etc. Yet another game that seems to make you need a 360 controller to play. It was silly of me to think I could customize controls and use a steering wheel. Also yet another WTF cover shooter, because we all know having a crouch key is so 90's. There is some amusement here, but it is dissapointing. Oh, and to play multiplayer you will need to make an acount at rockstar games, which seems to be down most of the time, and registering the 'expansions - big gay tony etc.' is nightmarish. Which is ok, because the multiplayer is exciting enough for a couple hours, but not good enough to want to obsess over.
MASS EFFECT 2. Speaking of hype, more cover shooting. Yes, the animations are good, and you can spend quite some time tweaking the look of your character, and you may as well because you will spend HOURS looking at it during the unending dialog scenes and 'moral' choice trees. When it gets down to the actual 'combat' part of the game play, it is truly sub par, but of course, if it is shiny it must be good.
FALLOUT 3. Not new vegas or whatever is newest now, but I've seen enough. I did play a lot, but quickly discovered I would end up growing bored with this. Yay! a KARMA system! And hooray, as always, it is daft! A for instance - you kill the bad guy - if you want to loot his house, you are going to lose karma. I'm sure some of the karmic losses are really attempts to make you reload and get the super power you can get by letting said NPC live, but really, it does make me groan. Combat - forget the idea of this vast map where you can run around sniping things - there seems to be an abundance of ammo of all types except the sniper, and of course, there is item degredation from use (come on). You WILL need to use the VATS system in combat, and let me tell you, by the 300'th time you see this stupid head shot off and rolling around in slow motion, you will be bored.
HALF LIFE 2. It was cheap, and I wanted the SDK that is apparently needed for M&B modding. It was ok.
STAR WARS KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC. NWN in space. Yes it's old. I actually liked the mini games. Quaint NPC baby sitting that for some reason still finds it's way into games to this date. Some fiddling required to get it to not crash in windows 7. meh, click and watch your character attack.
DEAD RISING 2. The clips look amusing, but upon playing your character trots leisurely along, barely outrunning zombies. Once fighting begins, most of the weapons lock you into a swing, meaning you won't be cancelling the attack in order to reposition, you'll be getting ready to do the silly shake off move before you run somewhere to chug oj and heal up. You get faster at higher levels, and you can restart keeping your level, I guess, which you will most likely have to do because some of the random psychos and a boss fight later on are all NPC's that are 5 times as fast as you. Oh, and you need GFWL as well. FFS, anybody remember a turd of a game for the sega called 'Last Battle' or Final Fight or some such shit, where your character crawled pixel by pixel across the screen? Ya, this is like that, but 3D, but it looks like they kept the sega's blood splatters. It was 'on sale' is my excuse. Oh, and for some reason I cannot get the 360 controller to work, but that's ok I am not going to play it anytime soon.
