34 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.
Such a disappointing followup to WFC. They took out pretty much all the big epic boss fights from the first game, which were so memorable and fun. The only boss fight you really get is against Bruticus at the end. You think you’ll get to play Megatron and fight Starscream when he proclaims himself the new leader of the Decepticons. But instead you just... fight waves of noname enemies in a giant purple arena. You…
Resident Evil 4 finally comes to the Xbox 360, after starting life on that peculiar little console the Gamecube. I've often heard it called one of the greatest games of all time, by various members of the gaming press and others. This is extremely high praise. Well, never got to play it, seeing as how I never owned a gamecube, though my college roommate did. Watched him play it a couple times before returning it.…
Halo isn't a very good first person shooter. The HUD of Halo is just annoying. Instead of being like other contemporary FPSs, Halo insists on representing all of its ammo onscreen as lots and lots of tiny bullets, instead of simple easy to read numbers. This is lame. There is no need to fill up the top corner of the screen with rows and rows of bullet symbols, just show us a fucking number. Like... if it said 60 in…
I couldn't play through this game. It is unplayable. It is truly broken. This is your brain. This is your brain on COD Black Ops. Any questions?
Just to get it out of the way... no, I never did play the original Section 8. It looked nice, like a mix of old school Tribes, Battlefield, and Unreal Tournament. But uh, just never got around to paying 60 bucks for it, considering that the community for the game would probably be small, and the fact that there was no proper singleplayer campaign. Well, now they're back with Section 8 Prejudice, a 15 dollar Xbox…
First of all, let's talk about the great big elephant in the room. Homefront's story is about North Korea somehow reuniting with South Korea, then taking over Japan and large portions of Southeast Asia, and ultimately invading and conquering most of the continental United States. This situation is farcical and clearly makes no sense at all. Why did they choose to tell such an idiotic story? Well, from what I've…
I don't think the Tomb Raider games have ever been good. Like, ever. They've never looked like the sort of quality game that I could embrace and point to as something appealing. Which is funny, because Naughty Dog basically took the Tomb Raider theme, made a gender change, and put out 2 really great games. That's kinda sad when you think about, that it had to take some pretenders to the throne to actually make good…
Well, given that Portal 2 is a week away, I figured it'd be a fine time to go back and revisit the charming predecessor. The first Portal was a delightful pack-in for The Orange Box, Valve's compilation of Half-Life, the two subsequent Episodes, and Team Fortress 2. While all those games were highly regarded and well worth the money, Portal was singled out in particular for its innovative puzzle design which truly…
I didn't like Baldur's Gate 2 when I played it. The game practically forces you to pause and micromanage all your party members, and that's just not fun for me. If I want that, I'll go and play a turn-based RTS. That's not what I want from an RPG. I want something like, uh... KOTOR. I'm not gonna say I never paused the game at all in KOTOR, but it was generally in a few key spots, like during a tense boss fight. The…
I don't think the Tomb Raider games have ever been good. Like, ever. They've never looked like the sort of quality game that I could embrace and point to as something appealing. Which is funny, because Naughty Dog basically took the Tomb Raider theme, made a gender change, and put out 2 really great games. That's kinda sad when you think about, that it had to take some pretenders to the throne to actually make good…
Oh man this game is hella fun. Really great hack and slash action. It's sorta like... Max Payne but instead of guns you've got adamantium claws. Every once in a while you'll pull off a crazy move like slicing a guy's torso in half or whatnot and it'll go into slow mo while the blood splatters everywhere. Never fails to make me laugh. And it's all optimized really well for a PC port. This was made by Raven, so that's…
Halo ODST was a massive missed opportunity for Bungie. They could've actually crafted a game that broke from their previous efforts. They could've actually shown us what combat was like from a vulnerable human's point of view, instead of from a power armored supersoldier's point of view. Instead of walking around like some sort of shielded tank, maybe we'd be able to go prone and take cover and do interesting stuff.…
As much as Doom was my gateway into computer games and its rich potential, Rainbow Six and its sequel Rogue Spear were my meat and potatoes. Back when I actually had a subscription to a gaming magazine (God, those were the days...) this preview for a game based on a Tom Clancy novel immediately caught my attention. I had gotten plenty bored of Quake 2 and was restless for something different and unique. The…
"For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." -F. Scott Fitzgerald First off, let's just get this out of the way. We all know about Crysis and what it stands for. The graphics look amazing.…
Deus Ex is, in my eyes, one of the most overrated games of all time. The melding of RPG and FPS action elements didn't work, the plot was incomprehensible, and I couldn't hit the side of a barn using the weapons. You tend to get discouraged when the reticle takes 10 seconds to zero in on someone. At that point, I'd never played an RPG in my life. It was disorienting, to say the least. Now, I had played quite a bit…
First of all, there are glaring bugs in the DLC. Audio cuts out part of Shepard's dialogue line. The camera angle goes to a wall when characters are supposed to talking. Then Liara walks through a door like she's a ghost, they didn't even bother to have the door open and close for her to walk through. On the last mission of the DLC, I actually found myself stuck behind cover. Couldn't move, couldn't unstick from the…
"Arise, Tiegerus Prime." "Optimus..." "This is the end of the road, Bayformers! Now... light our darkest hour..." This game... this licensed video game... what is it? I'll tell you what it is. Transformers: War for Cybertron is a near masterpiece, and indubitably this year's Arkham Asylum. People (and I) kept hoping and praying that it would be, that this game might turn out to do for Transformers games what Arkham…
Halo isn't a very good first person shooter. I know, I know. You're a Halo fanboy and you think I'm just a mindless hater. You think I'm just going along with the crowd. That I'm some sort of dude who enjoys hopping on bandwagons. Well, no... that's not really the case. I've thought about this for a long while. I've never liked Halo. Even back when it first came out in 2000, it didn't impress me. I'm not a guy who…
Halo isn't a very good first person shooter. I know, I know. You're a Halo fanboy and you think I'm just a mindless hater. You think I'm just going along with the crowd. That I'm some sort of dude who enjoys hopping on bandwagons. Well, no... that's not really the case. I've thought about this for a long while. I've never liked Halo. Even back when it first came out in 2000, it didn't impress me. I'm not a guy who…
My review: Battlefield Bad Company 2 is kind of a mixed bag for me. I played through the campaign and it was... really a bit of a disappointment. They seemed to really strip out all of the... open worldiness that you would expect in a Battlefield game. I never played the original Bad Company, so I dunno how that campaign was, but BC2's is just... kinda fucking bland and lifeless. Everything's tight and scripted,…
You have to keep in mind, back in the old days I had only dabbled in a bit of C&C red alert and Starcraft as far as RTSs go. They weren't anything special, I was far more involved in FPSs. So then, being a Trekkie... I go and buy Star Trek Armada. Ultimately a fun game, one of the better Star Trek games ever made, but pretty much a disappointment if you expected it to be more then Starcraft with starships. Then…
The very first RPG I ever played. And goddamn, couldn't have started off on a better foot. This is sorta like deciding to watch your very first superhero movie and picking The Dark Knight. Everything that comes after just seems like a letdown. That's kinda how I feel about KOTOR. And you've gotta know this about me, I fucking hate Star Wars. Never been fond of it. But this game... this story just sucked me in and…
From the moment the intro movie with the Clan Wolf Timber Wolf kicks in, you know you're in for an incredible ride. The loud thumping of the mechanical titans' feet, the blasts of azure PPC fire... it just comes together in a wonderful symphony of destruction. The two different factions, Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon really give weight to the narrative of the Refusal War and let you know that you're getting your…
What can I say, I've got a hardon for this particular brand of realistic gameplay. Also why I find Counter-Strike such a disappointing and disgusting phenomenon. Ah well, back to Sam Fisher. Splinter Cell was one of the greats, and Chaos Theory, the third one in the series, just takes everything from Splinter Cell and makes it better. Better weapon mechanics, better graphics, better lighting, better enemy AI, better…
Read the full review Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
A commercial product lovingly crafted with care and detail. A scifi story epic in scope and layered with mysteries. An instant classic with legions of diehard fans in a niche genre. Boy, they don't make em like this anymore. All these sentences describe Volition's much beloved FreeSpace 2. Not to be confused with the partitioning utility software, FS2 is a scifi space simulation which deals with an alien threat to…
This is the one that started it all. Well, not technically, cause id software actually started the First Person Shooter genre with their nearly as good Wolfenstein 3D. But uh, this was the big one. The one that truly changed the landscape and broke the boundaries. Taking the initial gameplay of W3D, id elevated it to a new level, literally, with elevated level design and way more colorful backgrounds. From a ravaged…
This game actually blows ass. I tried it on the hardest difficulty setting and it wasn't bad, until I got to the TV station. WTF? Infinite respawning enemies, who spam grenades at you every 3 seconds. Why should I try and play it realistically when you give me no cover system and infinite enemies magically coming out of a door. The enemies just stream out of that door and never stop coming. I can sit back and snipe…
It's really fun, but pretty short. Overall, this game is more of an expansion pack then a sequel so don't expect too much. My favorite loadout was the gauss rifle/shotgun. Perfect for sniping at long range and then ambushing from cloak mode with the shottie. But when I didn't have the ammo, I'd use the precision rifle/FY-17. The minigun APC is insanely fun, as long as you stay at long range and shower your targets…
This game kicks ass. It's pretty much a combination of Homeworld 2 and any regular 4X space empire game. You could also see it as a space version of Supreme Commander, it's goddamn epic. Like, battles with fleets of over 200 ships. Plus, there's absolutely no DRM, if you know what I mean. While I describe it as Supreme Commander in Space, Sins has a much better UI. Supreme Commander wasn't all that great IMO because…
No prone option, seems pretty weird. Crysis had a prone position, and that game had you as an elite Delta Force guy in an uber nanosuit with a magical armor shield, as opposed to being a malaria patient wearing a hawaiian shirt. This game runs fucking awesome. I have to turn everything to Low to make Crysis playable, whereas here I can run pretty much everything on medium with 2x AA with silky smooth framerates.…
Ok, so I obtained this... it's ok. Not the sort of amazing experience like Company of Heroes or Sins of a Solar Empire. It feels just as wacky as the other Red Alerts, the movie cinematics are definitely the strongest selling point for this game. I couldn't help but feel very cramped and claustrophobic with the camera, I kept trying to scroll my mouse so it would zoom out, but no dice. That's kinda a personal…
Should you buy it? Ehhhhhh.... this is really hard for me to answer. I was one of those who read the reviews and was like, this is just too easy, Ubisoft went too far and this game is basically a quick time event made into 12 hours. At least in Assassin's Creed they let you chose your own missions and fight multiple enemies at once, this game seems more like a movie with minimal input from the player. While I would…
Ya know, this game looked really cool after seeing some previews for it. Then I read giantbomb.com's review of it and they only gave it a 3 out of 5. So that meant ok, but not good or great. Sorta dimmed my enthusiasm a bit. It was like, yea this game might not be some perfect sphere of nirvana like Half-Life 2 or anything, but it's an innovative new game concept that really tried to breathe new life into the FPS…
I played this RTS religiously for about a year before I moved on and found out about Dawn of War. Anybody who likes RTSs at all should try this little-known gem from Atari. To put it simply, Act of War is in my opinion the perfect Command and Conquer game. It takes everything that made Command and Conquer great and dials it up to 11. This is strange because Act of War isn't actually an official Command and Conquer…
