Posts Tagged ‘game review’
Friday, May 13th, 2011
I recently got Majesyt 2 on steam. And to sum it up in 1 sentence: “Majesty 2 sucks!”
Majesty 2 is a RTS game which calls itself a “kingdom simulator” with RPG elements. You build structures, but never control the units directly. The units live their own lives, level up, buy gear at the blacksmith and generally just go around like little tiny virtual idiots.
The graphics are charming and gives the game a nice fantasy atmosphere, building is fun, researching techs are pleasant and the RPG features of the heroes you recruit seems really good. Also the concept of not controlling units directly but by placing out flags (putting bounties on enemy structures or creatures, or putting up exploration flags) does seem pretty interesting.
However there are three major issues that are just bad game design and ruins what could have been a pretty enjoyable game:
1) Sewer entrace spawn points
The first thing I noticed that I knew instantly was going to grid my gears for the entire game was one or two spawn points that always pop up in your town. These frequently release various rats that will kill your peasants, damage your buildings and just be a constant source of annoyance the entire mission, for ALL missions. Don’t get me wrong, sewers is a classic RPG setting, and if done correctly it could have been very entertaining, but it ends up being a steady stream of annoyance without any reward or fun. Imagine 3 zerg popping up in your base in Starcraft EVERY fucking minute, worst idea ever.
2) AI
Another annoying factor is the AI. It’s piss poor… You have ranged/melee dps and a healer class, but watching them trying to do anything is like watching the worst PUG of noobs trying to down a boss in WOW.. It’s just ends up being a painful display of ineptitude. And the cloth users seems to have a particularly strong death wish, and constantly go in for some melee dps.
The enemy AI is even worse than your own heroes. I saw 3 skeletons chase a wounded ranger across the map while their home was being destroyed by a warrior.
3) Borders + combat
Let’s get one thing straight, you will not be able to have any clearly defined zones of combat, fronts or build a good defense for your town like you can in for example Starcraft, Warcraft, Age of Empires or basically any RTS game. The enemies will be many, they will be spread out all over the map, new enemies will spawn pretty much constantly even when their spawn points are taken out. The enemies are stupid as hell and just consists of groups of enemies that attack in waves without any form of strategy.
4) Voice acting
Not as big a problem as the 3 above, but it’s still a bit funny 
It seems they have hired a single voice actor to do the game, he will tell you your quest objectives and talk during all cut scenes, intros, etc.. Now this would not be a problem, except they got a goddamn Sean Connery sound-alike who does an excessive Scottish accent. He sounds like “Sean Connery” from the Saturday Night Live sketch, and it get’s really hard to take anything he says seriously.. I keep expecting him to say something like “The minotaurs has destroyed the village, Suck it Trebek!”
Rating: 3.7 / 10
Tags: blacksmith, game design, game review, gaming, kingdom, Majesty, majesty 2, review, RPG, rts, rts game, Sean Connery, sewers, skeletons, Starcraft, steam, strategy, Trebek, Warcraft, zerg
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Wednesday, July 15th, 2009
The latest Monkey Island game called “Tales of Monkey Island” came out about a week ago. The game is divided up into 5 episodes, and one episode will be released monthly by telltale games.
I am a HUGE Monkey Island fan, and have played all the game several times, but I was somewhat skeptical of this new game. I had previously tried the Wallace & Gromit and the Sam’n'Max game from Telltale games and I hated them (both were the demos on steam).. Did not like them.. The controls were awkward and I did not like the game engine at all. The stories also did not seem very good.
Luckily after playing for 10 minutes I was glad to know that the first episode of the game “Launch of the screaming narwhal” was nothing like this.
The gameplay was fun, but maybe a bit to easy (used a little under 4 hours on it) compared to the other games. I like the environment, the atmosphere and the gameplay. It really feels like a Monkey Island game and is definitely worthy of the Monkey Island name
update: May 10th 2011
So, I just finished chapter 5 (last one).. I must say that Telltale did a really good job on all of the chapters and stayed true to the Monkey Island feeling. The story was great right up until the very end. Also I might also have a crush on Morgan LeFlay now
Tags: game, game review, monkey island, monkey island game, narwhal, steam, telltale games, wallace & gromit
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Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
I’ve been playing lots of Fallout 3 lately (sorry Far Cry 2), and it’s one of the best goddamn games I’ve ever laid my greasy little fingers on.
The graphics are great, the locations and atmosphere are brilliant, the stories are excellent, humor and gameplay are both godly, and the music is the best video game music ever (right up there with eve online).
The game itself takes place in a post apocalyptic Washington DC, where you survived in a underground vault before finally going outside on a epic quest with your pockets full of weapons and ant meat.
Troubles in paradise
I had some problems with the game crashing to desktop quite often, and it grew worse the more I played. I tried a suggested remedy in making some codecs (fddshow I think it was) ignore the game. This only made it worse as it turned the “crash to desktop” into “crash the graphics driver and require a hard reboot”.
I turned off AA (Antialiasing) and HDR (cant say I noticed much difference really:)) and now it seems to be working fine.. Hope there will be a patch to fix it soon, as the 1.0.15 patch did not do much about this problem.
Rating: 10 / 10
Tags: antialiasing, crash, fallout 3, fps, game, game review, gaming, hdr, Music, patch, review
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Monday, November 3rd, 2008
I’ve recently been playing mod for Half Life 2 called Zombie Panic. It’s a GREAT mod and the gameplay is really fun and gives that special zombie feeling.
The game starts with for example 20 players.. 1 is a very tough zombie and the others are 19 scarcely armed humans. Each time a zombie kills a human, that human starts playing as zombie.
Zombies have unlimited respawns, and humans either have an objective to do (escape in chopper for example) or they have to barricade and wait for a set number of minutes.
If you have a Source engine (Half-life2, Portal, Counter Strike or Team Fortress 2) you can get this mod for free via Steam.
Now I have something to pass the time, while waiting for Left4Dead 
Rating: 8 / 10
Tags: game, game review, gaming, half life 2, left4dead, mod, multiplayer, review, steam, zombie, zombie panic
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Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
I recently tried out Warhammer online, and played a Bright Wizard to lvl12.
But I’ve decided not to start the subscription when my 1 month is up. I like the pvp part, and the pvp “battlegrounds” where fun, but not Altarac Valley fun. The fact that you can level up by doing pvp was pretty cool, but the quests and stuff didn’t really do it for me like World of Warcraft did.
It’s also a matter of time, I’m currently playing Ufo AI (a free game based on the old X-com games) and tomorrow I’m getting my Far Cry 2 copy.
I also recently downloaded the demo for a game called World of Goo which is really awesome and addictive.
Tags: demo, far cry 2, game, game review, pvp, review, ufo ai, warhammer, warhammer online, wizard, world of goo, world of warcraft, x-com
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Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
I picked up Assassin’s Creed about a week ago, and have been playing it for a while.
As a recovering wow-addict I think it’s all the jumping on rooftops that really does it for me.. brings me back to the good old days on top of the bank in Orgrimmar. Haven’t gotten that far yet, I’m on my third kill, in Jerusalem.
Either way, the game is pretty fun, but there are some annoying issues.
- A guy in a strange white cloak rides trough an enemy camp, which naturally causes guards to attack. But, if you ride very slowly right past them, they don’t think twice about it.
- You can do lots of fancy martial arts move and stuff while you kill people. But basically the fight is controlled with two buttons, which is a bit boring.
- Saving was a bit confusing at first, I’m not a big fan of checkpoint based saving
- Exiting the game takes 4 step and it annoys the hell out of me. 1) Hit esc in game and click exit.. 2) you wake up in a machine, you press exit to exit the machine, 3) you are out of the machine, you hit esc, and then hit exit again. 4) you are now at the title menu, where you need to go into your profile and click exit one more time.
- It gets kinda repetitive.
- The graphics are a bit disappointing, especially the characters. They are really stiff and details like hands are really poor.
Conclusion: It’s pretty fun to pick up from time to time, the concept is good, but the game is lacking a certain edge
Rating: 7.5 / 10
Tags: assassins creed, game, game review
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Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
I bought a very interesting game for the Wii a couple of weeks ago.
Boom Blox is basically a physics engine where you do various things involving blocks that will either fall, stand or get blown around. The story mode has 4 stories where each has a different type of gameplay, from knocking down blocks, pulling out blocks without tipping the entire structure, bouncing a ball against as many blocks as possible, etc.. The game is perfect for the Wii controller, and the graphics is very nice and cartoony.
The story mode is very entertaining, but I have yet to try the multiplayer / party mode.
The game is made by EA and Steven Spielberg. I’m not much of a Spielberg fan, in fact, I think most of what he has made is rubbish. However this game positively surprised and is up there with Jaws and Back to the Future
Rating: 8.5 / 10
Tags: boom blox, game, game review, review, steven spielberg, wii
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Sunday, January 6th, 2008
Some while ago I got my new computer, and I bought some FPS (First Person Shooter) games, and now I’ve finally played enough to make up an opinion about them:
Crysis
Well, first of all I had very high expectations to this game, as Far Cry was my favorite FPS game ever, and all the graphics hype also rose the expectations. I bought this game together with COD4 and HL2, and played it first right up until you go from fighting Koreans to aliens. Then I tried out some HL2, and then I forgot all about Crysis.
I still have not completed the game, as I kind of lost interest after getting to the part with the aliens. The graphics is superb, and the first part when you are on the Island fighting Koreans is great (basically just Far Cry with a fancy suit on), but after this the levels get boring. Will probably play the first part again, while I wait for Far Cry 2
Rating: 7.5 / 10
Call of duty 4
I played this for a night when I thought there was something wrong with my Crysis disc (but it installed fine with antivirus disabled). However HL2 completely dominated my game time pretty long, then I got back to this game.. It is by far the most enjoyable Call of Duty game so far even tough it does not let you attack Normandy 
The game is very short, but has several enjoying missions like shooting at people miles away from the gunship only Thermal video, the sniper mission, shooting at people from a moving car, etc.. The graphics and sound is great and the missions are fun, but the game is to short 
I don’t care much for the endless waves of enemies popping up, forcing you to constantly push forward, but it actually worked pretty well in this game.
Rating: 8 / 10
The orange box
- Half-Life 2
I played trough this game in 17 hours, and was not even tempted to start up crysis once 
The story is very good and the game is way better than the original Half-Life ever was. It might have been a bit short, but defiantly one of the best FPS games I’ve ever played, up there with Far Cry.
- Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast
Well, this was 20 minutes of moderate fun, nothing special, but it was “free” so I cant really complain. Not worth playing
- Half-Life 2: Episode one
This starts up right after Half-Life 2 end. I’m really glad there is a episode 1 and 2, as both the original Half-Life 2 and episode 1 ends rather abruptly. The episode was a bit short, and only lasted around 5 hours.
- Half-Life 2: Episode two
Again, this picks up where Episode one left off, But I think the maps of episode2 are better, and the story is great.. It does not end as suddenly as episode 1 or HL2, but I will be buying episode 3 as soon as it is available on steam or in the store. This episode took 6 and a half hour to play trough.
- Portal
This was the first game from the Orange box that I tried, and the gameplay is pure genius, I’ve already written a whole post dedicated to portal, but to sum it up: Extremely fun, really refreshing and cool gameplay, funny humor, but much to short
- Team Fortress 2
Pure multiplayer, but pretty fun.. Very cartoony and a bit silly.. I think the playable classes are very well balanced and fun to play, the maps and game modes are also very entertaining.
rating: 10/10
Conclusions
Now the original Far Cry is the second best FPS game I’ve ever played
Half Life 2 completely blows Crysis out of the water, sure Crysis looks fantastic, but when it comes to the story Crysis basically has “special ops kill Koreans, stop aliens” while the Half Life universe has a brilliant story and lovable characters. I am really looking forward to Episode 3 which is said to end the HL2 story arc. Also Since a cargo/research ship owned by Aperture Science will be the main focus, one can only hope for a Portal gun
Tags: call of duty, crysis, far cry, fps, game, game review, gaming, half life 2, portal, review, team fortress 2, the orange box
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Thursday, November 22nd, 2007
I managed to drag myself away from Crysis and play Portal which came with the Orange box, and DAMN.. that was one of the best games I’ve played in years.
The level designs are very funny and clever, and using the portal gun was the most fun I think I’ve ever had in a game. The humor is also very good, and the levels.. Did I mention the levels?
Anyway the game has a small downside, it is WAY to short and the last levels where not very challenging, I am however looking forward to playing the 6 advanced bonus levels. The main story only took 3.2 hours to complete (thank you Steam), and I feel it should have been at least twice as long. I can however see myself playing this game over and over again, especially to get the “achievements” in the game (make very long jumps, make a loop and fall 30’000 feet, etc..). I think this is one of the games with the best replay value I’ve seen this year.
Rating 9 / 10
Tags: achievements, crysis, game, game review, gaming, gun, half life 2, orange box, portal, puzzle, steam
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Saturday, February 17th, 2007
Being done with Far Cry I thought I might try out another FPS, and I found Halo for PC, and figured I might give it a go just to see what all the fuzz is about.
I only played the game for 3 hours or so, and I must say I’m pretty disappointed.
- Can only carry 2 weapons at a time.
- The main weapon is (even at close range) extremely imprecise
- The enemies are totally ridiculous
- The AI sucks
- The levels sucks (well, the fact that it takes place on a Ring World is pretty cool), but the levels are very fixed.
- And the worst problem (which is probably enhanced by the fact I’ve been playing a lot of Far Cry lately), the game itself is very Arcade-FPS, and I HATE that..
FPS should be like Far Cry or Operation Flashpoint.. not running around in a game made by the level designers of Pac-Man, firing the worlds most imprecise weapon at enemies that seems like they come from a low quality cartoon for 8-year olds..
Rating: 3 / 10
Tags: far cry, fps, game, game review, gaming, halo, review
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