32 public reviews
The views here are this user’s only and are not representative of Giant Bomb's thoughts and opinions on the discussed video game. GB's official reviews reside at giantbomb.com/reviews.
So far, I've logged only 4 hours and made it as far as level 6 before I fail my way out. I picked the game up on a sale, and will definitely be playing it more. To help anyone else who was on the fence about it, I decided to write my review. Road not taken is a procedural puzzle game. In it, you are a ranger trying to save children, and getting them either to their parents or back to the mayor is your job. Getting…
I rather liked HuniePop, and I'd like to see more dating sims like it. I'd like to call out HuniePop for knowing exactly what matters for polish and focusing their effort there. The art is fantastic; the music is solid background music. The excellent voice over really does add substantially to the experience (something I would not have suspected before playing), and the gameplay is solid – that last part being…
I enjoyed Long Live the Queen. The game plays like a choose your own adventure story (i.e. digital novel). The main decision you get to make each turn is how you will spend your time studying, and that can be impacted by your "mood", which gives bonuses or penalties to your classes. I found that managing my mood against where I put my points was fun, and I felt that the story within was compelling enough that I…
Orcs Must Die! is a surprisingly fun game. I picked it up on Steam while it was on sale and played it intensively for days and off and on since (a couple weeks). The premise of the game is that you're a warmage (dude) who sets up traps and/or uses your weapons and magic to defend "the Rifts" from orcs that want to get through them -- fairly standard tower defense fare, but with "traps" instead of "towers". The…
Dungeon Fighter Online is an online version of those games you used to play in the arcade where you'd go around and punch things. This game has stepped up from that in design quite a bit, but it keeps the heritage of the earlier games and delivers similar gameplay. With the release of DFO on Steam, I thought now was a good time to share my experience with the game. You pick one of several different classes, which…
Phantasy Star IV was released as the last of the highly acclaimed "Phantasy Star" series, which is a science fiction and fantasy blend of "roleplaying". The story in this game is the main selling point of this game, and works fine as a stand alone game. While there aren't any branching storylines and player input is low outside of combat, the world is well crafted and I have fond memories of playing it when I was…
Read the full review Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
Rise of the Immortals is a DotA clone like many others. You have a character, go out, kill enemies, collect gold and experience, and ultimately try to tear down your opponent's shrine. So what is distinctive about Rise of the Immortals? Absolutely nothing, and that's my biggest gripe about the game. There was absolutely nothing that stood out to me about the game. Add to that a questionable interface and gameplay…
The Guild 2 is abysmal. There's a great idea for a game in here, so I hope I see someone else take up the torch. You play as a family, starting with your first character, and your goal is to eliminate all other family dynasties in the game. You romance, craft, murder, play politics... it sounds so fun doesn't it? The learning curve is terrible. The game has a lot of material to it, and I feel like I ought to be…
Greed Corp is a fun little game that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do: create a game where you strategically destroy the world you are playing in (often for profit). The game centers around the "make money by destroying land" mechanic, such that playing the game is a fun balance of building enough factories to power your needs early, followed by trying to keep (or steal) enough land later in the game to…
Star Trek Online is pretty bad. Competition for MMOs is stiff, and this game doesn't offer much. I'll confess I "only" spent 3 hours with it, but I decided I'd had enough of it. When I loaded up the game, I hoped that the ship combat would be excellent (it was the most unique element of the game), and that the ground combat would be adequate. The ship controls were pretty abysmal, but the ground combat was actually…
SPAZ is a fun little game. The preview/demo can be frustrating because you are on rails through most of it, but after you get past the first hour of gameplay the galaxy opens up a little bit. Whether you like the next hour or two of gameplay will really decide whether you like the game or not. You control a ship, fly around, and shoot things. This game is really something of a cross between an RPG and a space…
Dino D-Day takes a pretty cool premise and puts together a passingly decent first-person shooter. Nazis resurrect dinosaurs, and then people shoot at them or get eaten. It's an awesome premise, and it is fairly well executed. So why the low rating? Mostly lack of content. There's not just a "focus" on multiplayer, that's the only thing there really is. There's not even a token campaign, and while I'm not completely…
Detour is a game where the goal is to build roads, build trucks, and get from your end of the map to the other end. It's a simple little RTS with some charm. The basic formula is a good plan, and I would take a look at any sequel published. That said, I'd be looking for some major improvements in any sequel. The controls (on PC) are pretty clunky and sometimes unresponsive. I've had to turn my graphics down to min…
I literally cannot stop playing this game. I decided writing a review might help me get away from it for a little while. Terraria is fun, and it does include elements from another game (Minecraft), but it is also has some unique elements of its own. You can build a small town or castle, where people will come to live after you meet certain conditions. The crafting in Terraria is more straightforward than it is in…
Droplitz was a game I quite enjoyed as I played it, although it's not one I spend a lot of time playing. It's a game where you rotate pieces and try to make paths to send your Droplitz from one end to the other. I think the basic, simple gameplay is where this game shines best. It has a sort of Zen appeal to it, and that shows best with the Zendurance challenge mode. I also liked the Classic mode, and the Power Up…
League of Legends is a mix of good ideas and bad implementation. As a DoTA clone, it starts with a fairly solid core gameplay involving mindless units charging toward their doom while you pick them off and gain XP and gold for doing it. Eventually, your tear down your opponent's defensive turrets and destroy their nexus, ending the game. What's good about League is the variety of heroes available, and the fact that…
I was very much a skeptic when I heard about Blizzard's "financial scheme" for StarCraft 2, which involved splitting it up into 3 separate campaigns for each race, which would be sold separately. That sounded very much like buying the same game 3 times to me, and I planned not to get any, but then got Wings of Liberty as a birthday present from family. It turns out that the campaign mode feels pretty solid, and the…
I actually thought Demigod was pretty fun. I've played several Stardock titles, and they're not all great, but this game felt pretty solid. It is an obvious riff on the "Defense of the Ancients" types of strategy games, although it did suffer from a few major flaws. For me, the number one reason I enjoyed this game was because it supported single player. DotA was always frustrating for me because I missed the…
Cogs is a puzzle game that focuses on innovative sliding puzzles. It shines in its clever adaption of this normally frustrating puzzle format to a fun and entertaining game. The goal is always to move the pieces around to "build the machine" by moving the pieces around. The first few levels start off simple, and are simply basic sliding puzzles. The puzzles get more complicated as you advance to later stages, but…
Star Trek D-A-C isn't quite what I was expecting when I picked up a Star Trek game. I was expecting something complicated, overly detailed, and truly awful. Instead, I got something really basic that didn't feel like the Star Trek I know. While STD isn't a truly terrible title, it's not utterly without merit. Clearly released as a tie in to the movie (a movie I have not seen), it does a passable job of standing on…
Crazy Taxi was a fun re-release of an arcade game. It's fast, and it's fun, but I personally did not find it to have a great deal of staying power. I don't mean that it's bad, just that it got old. The game starts out strong, completely deserving of the name "Crazy Taxi". You drive around with a blatant disregard for all laws and personal safety, and the game does have a lot of pick-up-and-play appeal. The general…
Delve Deeper is a strategy title with gameplay roots in board gaming, and it shows, both for good and for ill. In Delve Deeper, the goal is to lead your team of five Dwarves on a mining expedition and return more loot than the other teams. This can be done by mining more efficiently, or by looting the other teams and monsters so that they do most of the work for you. Monsters ranging from goblin fodder to powerful…
M.C. Kids is a licensed game that, surprisingly, doesn't suck. It is a mostly basic platformer, but it has enough charm of its own that it doesn't get completely forgotten by the people who played it. The Hamburglar has stolen all the hamburgers, and it's up to you to get them back. The game starts out slow and easy, in grassy hills, and then runs through interesting (if rather standard) platforming levels, such as…
Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain is the sequel to Pax Imperia. It is a 4X game that has some cool things going for it, but gets bogged down on details that make the experience not always fun. It starts out alright. The tech tree is long and deep, so that technologically inclined races usually can count on still being able to research later, and there are enough options available for advancement that you usually do get to…
Recettear is the story of Recet Lemongrass, who open a shop to pay off her dad's loan and avoid living in a cardboard box. This innocent girl must earn ever increasing amounts of money to make payments to the faerie who guides her, Tear. As an RPG, Recet gains levels as she buys and sells. There is some small bit of haggling with customers, but the real meat is in managing inventory and responding to local demands.…
Osmos is a physics-based game where you control a tiny lifeform. The goal is to suck up the things smaller than you by bumping into them, while avoiding things larger than you. The only way to move around is to shoot off a tiny piece of yourself, pushing you around the level. The game has three main scenarios that provide healthy variety to the game. Depending on your patience, this game could keep you occupied for…
Magic: Battlegrounds appears to be an attempt to translate the paper game Magic into a reasonably fast paced computer game. It succeeds at the translation, and will be entertaining enough to fans of the series that it makes a fine gift. Without the background and nostalgia of already being a fan, it seems unlikely to me that the game holds much promise. The game follows the player, first through the exploration of…
Mount & Blade: Warband is a sandbox RPG that isn't nearly as bad as the screen shots make it look. You take on the role of a leader in a traditional, fictional medieval world. After a brief introductory story, where you determine your lineage and history (i.e. starting stats), you are dropped off into the world. The single player mode is wide open, and it is up to the player to decide what they want to do and how to…
Ecco the Dolphin is an adventure game that follows the epic quest of Ecco to save his pod. After they mysteriously disappear while Ecco is doing flips, Ecco seeks out a way to find them and get them back. This quest takes Ecco through a number of exotic locations and meets a cast of somewhat interesting and memorable characters. The biggest draw of the game is navigating the areas to find the key glyphs that unlock…
Guild Wars: Factions was the second release in the Guild Wars franchise. The game focused on the Cantha region, which draws heavily from eastern and Asian inspired cultures. The biggest selling point for the game competitively was the endless conflict between the Luxons and the Kurzicks, while the story was more about the empire as a whole. The game introduced competitive missions, elite areas, challenge missions,…
Civilization 4 is a turn-based strategy game in the enormous Civilization series. Players take the role of a major world leader guiding their people from their fledgling start through history. The game is pseudo-historical, in that it takes familiar places and people from history but puts them together in a fictional world. I felt that Civ 4 was a pretty solid game, although it was a different experience than Civ 3.…
Yosumin! is a fun take on the "find rectangles" type of puzzle game. The game is pretty, and the gameplay is pretty basic but solid. There is a bare story which justifies some of the goals in the game in a way that doesn't seem completely arbitrary: A stained glass window has been broken and the pieces scattered by somebody bad, and your job is to go find the pieces and bring them back. The Good: The puzzle game has…
