96 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.
In terms of technology, Super Turrican 2 is quite impressive and makes great use of the SNES abilities. In terms of actual fun it is however a major step down from the previous Super Turrican and the equally superior Turrican1&2&3 on the Amiga. The previously large and open level design got replaced here with extremely linear and "cinematic" levels, making the game play much more similar to something like Contra.…
Starting up Tiny Toon Adventures feels quite familiar, many of the enemies, abilities and the general gameplay are heavily inspired by SuperMarioBros3 with a Tiny Toons coat of paint. The resulting game is all around quite solid, but lacking both in creativity and complexity compared to SMB3. Most of the tilesets are really basic, especially in later levels, and don't really give a good sense of setting or progress.…
ZAMN comes with a fun retro-scifi aesthetic and some LucasArts style in-jokes. The core gameplay is fun enough as well and a multiplayer option is welcome to see. However below the charming exterior, the game has numerous deep flaws, chief among them is the completely unforgiving difficulty caused by the item management. At the core, the item management does make some sense, you have numerous enemy types along with…
The game starts out quite promising. The graphic look really nice, featuring a 2D side scroller look that is enriched with tons of zoom, paralax and light effects that make the graphics pop-out without the need to use fully fleded 3D models. Making this easily one of the best looking 2D games around. The sound effects and music establish a creepy and mysterious athomsphere. It feels and looks a bit like a 2D Dead…
Ok, seriously did this game see any testing at all? You start the game and everything seems fine with a gamepad, you can navigate the menus and such, start the game and then go run around and shoot guys. Then a QTE pops up and shows you a mouse button to press. Ok, wrong button labels are nothing new, so you try to press the equivalent trigger on your gamepad. Doesn't work. So you die and try again. Try pressing…
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is best described as a single player coop game. You get two control two brothers on their adventures through a Fable'ish world. What sets this game apart is that it doesn't employ character switching similar puzzle games, like say Lost Vikings, would do, but instead gives you control of both brothers at the same time. One brother is controlled with the left stick, the other with the…
The Cave is a modern puzzle platformer, but unlike the recent wave of puzzle platformer it's not based around some single gameplay mechanic or physics puzzles, but instead follows mostly the traditional point&click adventure model of picking up items, combining and using them. The platforming itself is just a way to navigate the cave, but doesn't provide any challenge by itself. When a character dies he will…
Evochron: Mercenary follows rather directly into Elite's footsteps, you get to play as a mercenary/trader kind of guy flying around with your ship from space station to space station, trading stuff, doing some missions all all that other stuff. On the graphic side of things the game is simplistic, but still nice to look at. What it lacks in pretty textures and model geometry it makes up with having a proper 3D…
This game is weird. You'd think after some 25 years of gaming you have seen it all, but this one is different. This is a game without a game. The whole game literally consists of you dragging stuff from the bottom inventory on the screen into the fire place at the top and then setting them on fire. That's it. There are no points, skill or anything. It's drag&drop to make things burn. Once you have burned a thing,…
World Of Goo is yet another take on the familiar Bridge Builder formular, but it puts a cartoony twist on the whole thing as your building blocks are little creatures made up of goo and the goal is to guide them to the level exist like Lemmings back in the day. The game also shifts the focus from pure static bridge building to building all kinds of contraptions, towers that fall over by design, things that attach to…
[Some mild spoilers might follow] Resonance is a point&click adventure released by Wadjet Eye in 2012. The story follows four characters and their connections with a new powerful new scientific discovery that might be very dangerous in the wrong hands. Like most Wadjet Eye games the graphics suffer a bit from their old-school 320x240 resolution, but looks otherwise quite polished. The game is also voiced and the…
Primordia is a classic point&click adventure game and comes like most Wadjet Eye games in a old school 320x240 look. It however also comes in a 16:9 aspect ratio in a 4:3 frame, which means you might end up with black bars all around the screen. Aside from that limitation however the graphics look very good, the backgrounds are very detailed and atmospheric and all the characters have a unique look to them. Only the…
J.U.L.I.A. is a science fiction adventure game and was released in 2012. The game puts you into the role of scientist Rachel Manners on a research spaceship that as arrived in a new solar system, but as you soon find out something went horribly wrong and you are the only person left on board. Your task is to find out what happened to the rest of the expedition. Mechanically the game isn't structured like the regular…
Project Black Sun feels like if Super Metroid, Metal Slug and Flashback had a baby. The overall map design follows closely into the footsteps of Super Metroid, including a large free roamable map, item collections to unlock new areas and boss fights. Where it diverts from modern Metroid games is in it's core combat mechanics, like in Metal Slug the player character will perform a knife attack when close to an enemy…
Demon's Souls is a fantasy action-RPG released for Playstation 3 and as most have probably already heard it is supposed to be quite hard. The game starts out quite typically by creating a custom character and a bit of tutorial. After beating the first level the game world however opens up and takes a different turn. The game isn't like most typical RPGs set in some giant overworld, but instead it's set in a small…
[Warning: Some spoilers might follow] The Tomb Raider reboot is overall a rather uneven mix. It completely fails to find a consistent tone. It start out like a horror movie. After getting ship wreaked, Lara gets captured and tied up. On her escape the has to wade through dead bodies and past the remains of ritual sacrifies. This portion of the game is heavily driven by cutscenes and quicktime events and in general…
MinerWars 2081 is a 6DOF space shooter heavily inspired by Descent, but quite a bit more ambicious in scale. The game takes place in the remains of our solar system, which after a large scale space accident got reduced into an astroid belt. The large astroids, which have space stations build in and around them, form the levels in the game, but unlike Descent one is not restricted to the inside of those astroids, but…
Damnation is a third person shooter/platform released back in 2009 and set in an alternative history Western/Steampunk universe. The game mixes Tomb Raider like jumping together with third person shooting elements. Newer gameplay gimmicks such as a cover system are missing and use of cover happens like in the old days by just ducking behind a wall. While the levels are linear in structure, they cover an impressive…
Oh boy, lets start with the good stuff. Crysis 2 looks really pretty and runs really well on my not-so-fast computer (Core Duo 1.8Ghz, ATI HD5670) when turning down the details and switching to DirectX10. Especially the way it handles motion and focus blur has a realism to it that I haven't seen in other games. The core gameplay is also still solid and retains the armor and stealth modes of your nano suit that allow…
Warning: This review contains spoilers. First of let me state that I didn't actually mind the core gameplay of Spec Ops: The Line. The shooting, while nothing new, was competently executed and reasonably fun, aside from a few cases where I ended up stuck to cover. My only real problem with it was how cartoony it would get in it's enemy placement and design. The knife wielding crazy guys that would run at you, the…
Depth Hunter is a very basic first person underwater diving simulator. The game is build around three simple core mechanics, shooting fish with your harpoon and then towing them in with a line (Zelda-style), searching for treasures and making pictures. The campaign mode of the game, which is around three hours long, is simply a series of those core mechanics strung together, there is no effort made to construct any…
Read the full review More tech demo then full game, but a very nice one at that
Portal 2 continues where the first game left off without any fundamental changes. The players finds himself back in the testing facility and has to do through a bunch of test chambers again. As an unspecified amount of years has passed since the first game, the facility is no longer in pristine conditions and a bit of vegetation and defects make it look more interesting. GLaDOS makes a return and is joined by…
Let's start with clarifying what kind of game Planescape Torment is and is not. Looking at the screenshots one might think it's just a usual isometric RPG, but in a lot of ways it really is much closer to a multiple-choice interactive fiction title. The core of the game is essentially a scrolling text log on the bottom part of the screen in which you read dialogs and descriptions, just like one would in an…
Alpha Centauri is a sequel to Civilizations II, like it's predecessor it's a round based world building game, but instead of focusing on earth, the game moves the setting to a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, where after an reactor failure and crash landing different competing factions try to colonize the planet. On the technical side the game stays very close to Civilizations II. The game is presented in an…
Deus Ex: Human Revolution makes a good effort at recapturing a lot of the things that made the original great. The levels are filled with alternatives routes you can take, air ducts, doors you have to hack and all that stuff you are familiar with from the original. There is also tons and tons of sneaking around and city hubs where you can walk around and solve plenty of side quests. At around ~25h the game is also…
Amber: Journeys Beyond is a Myst style first person adventure game released back in 1996 in which you take the role of an unnamed college of Dr. Roxanne Westbridge, who has to find out what happened to her after she has gone missing. Mechanically the game follows the Myst formula pretty closely. Graphics are prerendered and presented from first person perspective, clicking on the scenary makes you jump from picture…
Need for Speed: Carbon continues essentially right where Most Wanted left off, with most of the core mechanics staying pretty much the same. The biggest changes in Carbon aren't so much what it adds, but what it removes. The police chases which have been a large part in Most Wanted and were a required part of the game, are now only a random occurence that can be triggered randomly while racing. There is no longer a…
Need for Speed: Most Wanted is an arcade racing game released in 2005 by EA. On the technical side the PC version of the game is a bit of a mixed bag. While the racing graphics themselves still hold up suprisingly well, over five years later, thanks to it's pseudo-HDR and motion blur effects , the game lacks support for widescreen forcing a 4:3 aspect ratio. On the control side the game lacks native Xbox360…
Explodemon is a 2D jump'n run in which the players characters main ability is to explode, similar to Splosionman. If one believes the developers Explode however isn't a clone of the later, but was in development even before Splosionman was announced, so it's an unlucky coincidence caused by a delayed release, rather then evil intend. The exploding aside, Explodemon takes a lot of inspiration from Mega Man in it's…
Read the full review Horrid level design and a lack of variety ruin it
Right after the start up Metro 2033 impresses with a thick atmosphere and interesting setting. After a nuclear war mankind had to go underground and is now living in the tunnel system left over by the now defunct train system. Metro 2033 presents that setting with some great amount of detail, stations are filled with people, including women and children, the scenes are often lit by candlelight and everything feels…
Bastion is an isometric 2D action game, unlike similar games, Bastion doesn't use a dual-stick shooter setup, but instead uses auto-aiming and only a single stick. The rest of the controls are a button for a secondary attack, a button for a special attack, one for blocking, one for dodge rolling and one for healing. Weapons, both melee and ranged, are gathered over the course of the game and can be freely equipped.…
Trine is a physic based 2D platformer developed by Frozenbyte. In the game the player takes control of a mage, a thief and a knight, all merged into a single character. The player can switch between the three character at any moment, so that the whole "merged into one character" becomes a bit meaningless, as it ends up feeling not much different then switching weapons in another game. The thief has a rope to swing…
There are plenty of reasons why I should love Limbo. Another World is my favorite game of all time and Limbo is in a lot of ways a modern revision of the same concept. The presentation is slick and polished with a unique art style. And it has one of the best uses I have seen of a physics engine in a 2D game so far, as it uses the physics engine to simply enhance the jumping and running in the game, not make it the…
The Whispered World is a fantasy 2D point&click adventure released in 2009 and developed by Daedalic Entertainment. In the game the player takes control of the sad clown Sadwick, who after having visionary nightmares of the end of the world, ends up on a journey trying to prevent it. Typically for Daedalic Entertainment the game has a few rough edges on the technical side of things. The game only supports 4:3 at a…
A New Beginning is a time travel science-fiction 2D point&click adventure game from Daedalic Entertainment released in 2010. In the game the player takes control of the retired eco scientist Bent, who was trying to develop a clean energy source and the timetraveler Fay, who is going back in time trying to prevent the climate change from happening, which was destroying her world. Unlike previous titles from Daedalic,…
The Book of Unwritten Tales is a classic 2D point&click adventure game released in 2009. It's the first game of the developer King Art. The games humorist plot is inspired by Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and numerous other fantasy, role playing and adventure game elements. The first thing one notices when launching the game is that it is extremely well executed from a technical point of view. The graphics are a…
Trauma is an first person adventure game. Unlike similar games, Trauma however doesn't try to create a full 3D environment, but instead is based on a series of digital photographs that have been arranged in a 3D space and connected together similar to what Microsoft Photosynth does. Clicking on an object in one photo will move the camera smoothly to a photo of a closeup of that object, without trying to hide the…
Descent 3: Mercenary is a seven level expansion pack to Descent 3, it was released in 1999 six month after the original game. The games story takes place inbetween the end of Descent II and the first few missions of Descent 3. The player controls this time around not the Material Defender, like in other Descent parts, but a mercenary that is involved in attack and sabotage missions, some of those attacks triggering…
Read the full review More Descent 3, including all the problems and frustrations
Descent II was released in 1996 and developed by Parallax Software. The game is the direct sequel to Descent which was released a year earlier and like its predecessor it is a six-degree-of-freedom flight combat game set in underground mines. While on a quick look the game looks almost identical to its predecessor, differences in level design and a few new gadgets change the gameplay and flow a good bit. The first…
Red Faction: Guerrilla developed by Volition, Inc. and was released in 2009. The game is an open world third person shooter with a heavy focus on its destructable buildings physics. The story takes place on Mars and puts the player into the role of Alec Mason, who after the death of his brother, joins the Guerrilla forces to fight against the oppressive Earth Defense Force. The core of Red Faction: Guerrilla is its…
Half Life: Episode Two was released in 2007, almost three years after the original Half Life 2 and marks the thus far last entry into the Half Life series and probably the end of Valves try to move the game into an episodic format. The gameplay is mostly the same as in the two previous entries in the series and continues to follow the route of the linear first person shooter. After a short cutscene, giving an…
Descent was developed by Parallax Software and released in 1995 for MS-DOS. like its sequels Decent II and Descent 3, the game puts the player in control of a little space ship that has to traverse underground mines and free them from their robot infestation. The control scheme allows full six degrees of freedom in the navigation through the 3D labyrinth. The structure of a level is noticeably simpler then in…
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was released in 2011 and developed by Climax Studios, the game is a reimagening of the game in the series, and combines elements form the survival horror and point&click adventure genres. The games story follows Harry Mason has he travels around the town of Silent Hill in search for his daughter who has disappeared after a car crash. Psychiatry, which act as a framing device for the…
Half Life 2: Episode One was developed by Valve and released in 2006, around one and a half year after previous game Half Life 2. It was Valves failed attempt to turn the Half Life franchise into an episodic format, as only another episode would follow before the series went into hiatus in 2007. Episode One is like its predecessor a classic first person shooter, the gameplay is pretty much unchanged, while the…
Garshasp: The Monster Slayer was developed by Dead Mage Inc. and released in 2011. The game is notable for being developed by an Iranian development team using some Free Software such as Ogre or OpenAL. In the game, set in persian mythology, the player takes the role of Garshasp, a warrior who goes on a journey to take revenge for his fallen brother. The gameplay takes some strong influence from the God of War…
Descent 3 was developed by Outrage Entertainment and released in 1999. The game follows the same base gameplay that the previous two games in the series did. The player is in control of a small spacecraft that is used to navigate through underground mines, caves and similar structures. Descent allows full six degrees of freedom controls in those environments, thus flying through a hole in the roof or diving through…
Dead Space is a sci-fi survival horror game developed by Electronic Arts and released in 2008. In the game the player takes control of engineer Isaac Clarke, who battles himself through hordes of mutated creatures on the spaceship USG Ishimura. The setting takes quite some inspiration from movies like Event Horizon, while the gameplay is very similar to that of Resident Evil 4. As far as story is concerned there…
Hydrophobia is an episodic action/adventure developed by Dark Energy Digital, in late 2010 for the Xbox360, with a PC version followed in mid 2011 released on Steam and a PS3 version later that same year. The game is set in the near future and puts you in the role of Kate Wilson, a systems engineer on the city-sized ship 'Queen of the World', who after a terrorist attack has to fight for her survival and stop the…
