26 public written reviews
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My general opinion of DLC is that it’s overpriced. Still, I enjoyed Deus Ex Human Revolution and wanted more, so when The Missing Link DLG was 66% off for $5 I bought it. I expected $5 to still be overpriced, but there’s actually more here than I expected. My first surprise was that it was treated as its own game. I expected it to modify the main game and insert itself where it fits in the story, which would have…
I got Trine with the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle and was impressed with its amazing graphics and interesting gameplay. When I heard Trine 2 was coming out for only $15 I knew I wanted it. After I got it I quickly finished it on single player. I spent considerably less time in Trine 2 than I did in Trine, largely because the achievements were much easier. I played through the game on hard and got most of the experience…
I got in a lot of time playing Goldeneye on N64 back in the day, and wasn’t sure if a remake for Wii was a good thing or a bad thing. Would they leave it mostly the same and it would feel like buying the same thing again? Would they change things I felt should be left alone? I was worried for the latter when I found out they were using Daniel Craig instead of Pierce Brosnan (this is based on a movie, and the movie…
I played the original Tomb Raider around the time Tomb Raider III came out. After buying Tomb Raider: Legend to see how Lara Croft is getting along these days and then winning Tomb Raider: Anniversary on steamgifts, I decided to start with the one that’s likely to be somewhat familiar. It’s been long enough for me that the first three Tomb Raiders all blend together in my mind, so what I remembered as the beginning…
I was excited when Humble Indie Bundle #3 came out including Humble Indie Bundle #2 as a bonus if you paid more than the average because I hadn’t heard about Humble Indie Bundle #2 until it was over. Machinarium was one of the great-looking games included in the bundle I’d missed. I hadn’t realized until I decided to play it recently that it is from the same developer as the Samorost games, and is another…
Toki Tori looked like a fun puzzle game, and then it was included in the 2011 Steam Summer Camp event where one of its achievements earned a prize ticket, so I grabbed it while on sale. It started out how a fun puzzle game should start out, showing you the basic mechanics and then adding tools one by one. It’s sort of like Lemmings but instead of having a bunch of lemmings walking to their death unless you tell them…
I got Half-Life 2 around when it came out, after having played a lot of the original Half-Life . I also played through it again recently since Valve added Steam achievements to it. I’ll relay what I remember of my initial impressions of Half-Life 2 as well as how it holds up today. The original Half-Life had certainly grabbed my interest in the series, and Half-Life 2 brought it up significantly, such that I am now…
I picked up the two episodes that actually got made from what was meant to be a 4-episode series on a Steam sale because I like Penny Arcade and they looked like the sort of games I’d enjoy. It also didn’t hurt that they were cheap! You start off as your own customizable character, in that you pick your hair, clothes, and name before you start. You are soon joined by Gabe and Tycho who form the three characters of…
Read the full review Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode One
Lugaru HD came my way through the first Humble Indie Bundle . It didn’t really seem like my thing, but since it was part of the bundle and a couple other games (like Penumbra: Overture and Aquaria ) had impressed me with how good they were I wanted to try Lugaru HD as well. Unfortunately, Lugaru HD impressed me with how bad it was. I started out with the tutorial and noticed right away that the HD isn’t really…
I greatly enjoyed Penumbra: Overture , which I obtained through the first Humble Indie Bundle . Recently I got Penumbra: Black Plague Gold Edition (which includes Penumbra: Requiem) through a Steam sale and was excited to continue the adventure. While Black Plague was an excellent addition to the Penumbra series, Requiem was unfortunately a very different game. It still fits in as a Penumbra game, but a lot of the…
Penumbra: Black Plague, being a sequel to Penumbra: Overture , is of course a continuation of the same story with very similar gameplay. Considering how much I enjoyed Overture and that both games are on the short side (I finished this one with 6.3 hours logged in Steam ), that was very much welcome. I got Overture with the first Humble Indie Bundle , and by the time I got around playing it the included offer to get…
As far as I can tell, Shadowgrounds: Survivor tells the much less interesting story of three characters trying to survive the exact same alien attack that occurs in the original Shadowgrounds . I was hoping to at least see more of Jane, the one character with you through almost the entire first game, but instead Shadowgrounds: Survivor includes none of the same characters. It also occurs during roughly the same time…
I got Shadowgrounds with the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle as one of the games I wasn’t really interested in. I recently reached the ending after 14 hours logged through Steam. I found I had more drive to play this game than I expected to, but one specific issue made it more difficult to actually do that: the saving. Despite this game not even being available for consoles, its only save option is autosaving at the end of…
The main problem with playing the Assassin's Creed series on Windows rather than a console is that there isn’t really much effort put into translating to what’s available in that environment. As with previous games in the series controlling Assassin's Creed Brotherhood with a mouse and keyboard works, but still feels designed for a controller. The worst offender was toward the end of the game where the unadjustable…
I got introduced to the Deus Ex universe through promotional information shortly before the original game came out, but didn’t get a chance to play until Invisible War came out. I actually ended up playing Invisible War before the original Deus Ex , so Human Revolution as a prequel continued by trend of going back in time. I was hoping to find my favorite parts from the first two entries in the series present in…
I’ve been buying the Humble Indie Bundle s on principle since I think pay-what-you-want is a great idea that I want to support, and I also want to support the EFF. I picked up Trine with the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, the only humble bundle so far to feature games all from the same developer. I felt it was somewhat of a weak bundle since I wasn’t interested in Shadowgrounds or Shadowgrounds: Survivor , Jack Claw’s…
When Steam announced free to play games I figured I’d check some of them out ― it should be safe because I’m too cheap to pay for whatever’s extra. Spiral Knights looked a little cartoony for my tastes but sounded like it could be entertaining so I installed it. It was moderately enjoyable for a while, but once I got far enough it started to feel like I had to either pay or keep repeating the same parts of the game…
I saw The Cat and the Coup free on Steam and thought it could be interesting, so I downloaded it. Then today I tried it out, and to my surprise I finished it in about 15 minutes. It’s more of a very short documentary than a game, and it excels neither at being a documentary nor a game. I was more interested in it as a game. The game element of The Cat and the Coup is very simple. You can make the cat walk left or…
I was semi aware of BioShock since shortly after it came out, but only picked it up during the Steam summer camp sale in 2011. I had found out a few things about it and it reminded me of a few of the things I liked from the Deus Ex series so I had added BioShock and BioShock 2 to my Steam wish list, then they went on sale. I figured I’d just get the first one and then if I liked it I’d grab the second next time it…
I thought Portal was a great game, but Portal 2 is even better! As you would expect from a sequel, it revisits a lot of the same concepts (even some of the same test chambers), but it also adds a lot more, such as a cooperative mode, longer single-player, and gels that let you bounce, run faster, or place portals where you otherwise couldn’t. Solving the puzzles with a friend (your partner in science) is great fun,…
Samorost 2 is a quirky and interesting relaxed-paced puzzle game written in flash. I’m not sure there's enough there to justify the $5 price tag, especially when you can play the first half free online . I got it as part of the first Humble Indie Bundle , added on at no additional cost after the fact. When it got added to Steam I played through it in an hour or two. While I enjoyed it there’s not much to it, so it’s…
I tend to enjoy clearing out all the enemies and exploring every corner of the map, and Aquaria pretty consistently rewarded me for doing just that! Nearly every end of the map contained something worth collecting, and defeating enemies often caused them to drop ingredients for cooking. High points are graphics, music, exploration, and story. Low points are that you can only save at a save crystal (multiple times I…
Back in the day, I enjoyed the original Duke Nukem , Duke Nukem II , and Duke Nukem 3D . I waited patiently for a while expecting to play Duke Nukem Forever once it came out, but as the years passed since it was announced my sense of urgency dwindled. Still, once it came out and I saw there was a free demo on Steam, I had some curiosity to satiate, so I tried it out. Not only did the demo help with my curiosity of…
I picked this up with the first Humble Indie Bundle . I already owned World of Goo from the bundle but hadn’t heard of any of the others. This one sounded like it might be similar to the Thief series , and it didn’t disappoint! Best played alone at night with the lights off, this game has you exploring a dark, dangerous old mine to find out what happened to your father. This game is highly likely to startle and…
Braid looks like an impressionist painting. You get to warp time in various ways to collect puzzle pieces and find your lost princess. I played through it in under 6 hours with a couple hints on how to collect certain pieces. There are 6 worlds, each with its own method of controlling time. I don't intend to play it again, but it’s worth checking out especially if you can get it for $5 like I did, or if you got it…
Portal is easily the best action puzzle game I’ve ever played . . . until Portal 2 came out. I was just as excited about getting this with The Orange Box as I was about getting Half-Life 2 Episode 2 , even though that’s why I bought The Orange Box . I knew Portal was going to involve puzzles that had you move yourself and other objects around by placing the two endpoints of a portal, but I wasn’t expecting to be…
