54 public written 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.
I am a huge fan of all things steampunk, let alone games set in cities inspired by Edinburgh and London. Despite some contrary opinions around the web, Dishonored is the most gorgeous game I had the pleasure of playing to this day and that is saying something. The artwork, world design, immersion, characters are all so incredibly toned and vibrant, it makes you feel like being part of a visual novel. Topped off with…
Dragon Age must be one of the best RPG games around (as far as western RPGs go). The scope of its campaign alone truly makes you feel part of a grand battle of good vs. evil and in this case evil dwells both underground in forms of hordes of grizzly enemies and lurks in the heart of men, driven by pride, ambition and intrigue. The storyline of Dragon Age is a mighty one and depending on which of the six different…
When you look at Remedy's previous games such as Max Payne or their upcoming oeuvre, you cannot help but feel that they are trying to push the boundaries and/or establish the video game's potential for storytelling. Instead of opting for interactivity in choices, something that has been utilised by the likes of BioWare and TellTale Games, this one opts for immersion by creating an experience that resembles a TV…
I am a huge fan of all things Tolkien and LOTR. That being said, I found that this game relates to the source lore on a very minimum level, despite featuring the ring, sauron, gollum, a song about Durin yada yada yada, the general "feel" of the game and world does not - at least to me - any notable resemblance to the books / movies / whatnot. Then again, I still think it is enjoyable for it's own atmosphere and…
The interesting thing about The walking Dead is, if you would force me to sit down and write a review after immediately finishing the game and measuring its sheer and unfiltered emotional impact (atmosphere, story, characters and scares!), I would rate this game much higher than an 8. The characters are interesting, well through through and almost all of them really hard to read, especially when you compare the…
As every other geek on this planet, I am a big fan of the dark knight (even though I thought his last film was not that good despite the hype) and I am thrilled to say that this has been the purest Batman gaming experience I had the pleasure to taste so far. Yes, there are some shortcomings, but all fade away in the bright light of quality that Rocksteady delivered with Arkham Asylum. The visuals, sounds, music and…
Like many others, I am a huge fan of old school Lucasarts (and some Sierra) adventures, the tales of Guybrush Threepwood have been part of my gaming life a long time and the third part in the series (Curse of Monkey Island) is probably my favourite adventure of all time. Hence, I was delighted to hear that there would be a continuation of the series made by none other than former Lucasarts employees and even…
Read the full review Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
I have played all the Elder Scrolls games in the series beginning with Daggerfall and like many I do believe that Skyrim is the best of the bunch, I was not keen on Morrowind, never got into Oblivivion but put many hours into Skyrim. The gameworld is beautiful and gorgeous, both in terms of visuals and design, it is refreshing and invigorating to play a fantasy game set in a universe that resembles medieval realms…
I was more or less immediately sold on this game due to the amazing theme. Yes, it might be an indie game and theme a mere coating on the cake that is the gameplay but I still think this game might be worth picking up for its quirkiness factor alone, that is, if you are a fan of Ed Wood films and green men in garish Technicolour. The game is a Tower Defense game that puts you in charge of all sorts of precious…
I was excited when I heard that Snowblind was working on an 'RPG' game set in the Lord of the Rings universe. My first sentence already contains some of my major criticisms of the game but let's do away with the good stuff first. If you play this game on a high resolution, the world's look pretty neat and actually resemble the Tolkien-esque worlds you might remember from the films. The textures are crisps and so are…
Read the full review The Lord of the Rings: War in the North
I have avoided playing the Mass Effect series due to my aversion to sci-fi and I can proudly say that I think that this very game might have cured me from this very inaptitude to appreciate a ghost space-sage. The game's core claim to fame is its story and great characters and what a valid point it is. Despite a handful of gameplay and GUI issues, I could never stop playing this game for a prolonged period of time…
Where to start on a review of a game that I scored 10 ? Is it the perfect game and will you expect nothing but praise from this review ? Well, rest assured, there is plenty that is wrong or not at its best in LA Noire and while it is far from being the perfect game, it is the perfect game for me. I love the setting of the game and just like with films or books set in the 30s, 40s or 50s, I am immediately interested…
Trine is a perfect example of a game that turns out to be more than the sum of its parts. A puzzle-2D platformer in the vain of Lost Vikings may not sound like much, but Trine delivers an amazing gameplay experience on so many levels that its hard to describe what makes it so great but let's get down to it . . . The most striking feature are the visuals. The game is set in a generic fantasy world, yet is a mixture…
Swords and Soldiers is described as a RTS game, although it does have not a lot in common with the RTS games most gamers will think about when prompted to name a few. The basic principle of the game lies in what most RTS gamers would call rushing or swarming: Quickly establish a gold engine (that's about all there is in terms of economy) and then build units like crazy to remove your enemies units from the face of…
I have been keen to play Half Life 2 for a long time. I enjoyed the first game quiet a lot back in the day and ever since the sequel came out, it was overrolled with praise and claims to be the best game ever made (according to IGN and PC Gamer for starters). As soon as the game starts, you can feel the polish and quality that only a Valve FPS-game could deliver, the controls are very good, the animations realistic…
As someone who is used to playing FPS games commando style, taking on hordes of zombies / nazis / aliens and whatnot with a crowbar and a revolver alone, playing a game like Brothers in Arms was quite the unmerciful change of pace and playing style. The game was made in 2005 and I have played it for the first time now in 2011. The graphics are decent and as good as you might expect from a title that is a couple of…
Clash of Heroes is a rather unusual entry in the Might & Magic series and a definite detour from the usual RPG/strategy fair. The best way to describe it would be a blend of old school top-down scroller (think Zelda) with a healthy blend of Columns, Bejeweled, Tetris or similar sort of create rows of similar colours game. The visuals of this game are gorgeous and both the crisp resolution, background graphics and…
Call of Juarez is an ambitious, albeit flawed game that tells a Wild West story from the perspectives of two men, young Billy Candle, a fugitive on the run and Reverend Ray, his brother, who speaks to the lord and is a mean gunman. The story in this game is pretty decent, there are no surprises there of course, no plot-twists and all follows generic wild west and American mainstream formulas but if you are into…
Out of all the hidden object / puzzle games I have played, both online and offline, Drawn: The Painted Tower is definitely the most gorgeous looking. The player is send on a 'mission' to rescue a young girl from the top of a tower. The young posses magic powers (creating world by drawing pictures to be precise) and is sought after by a bunch of grim and gloomy dudes. On your way to the top, you discover some of the…
I have never been exposed to the world of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K before, apart from seeing the tabletop game being played or knowing about Dawn of War. Yet, I always found the world appealing , more so than many other dystopian worlds, mainly due to the fact that the lore borrows and steals from all corners of mythology, religion, symbolism and so forth. Roman insignia, Greek mythology, the inquisition, it's…
I have to admit I am big fan of all things Zombie, so the general idea behind dead Island immediately appealed to me, deserted on a holiday island that has been hit by a Zombie Virus ? Sign me up ! I have spent almost 200 hours in Left 4 Dead, so I am no stranger to facing hordes of undead. The game looks good, although it could have been released a few years ago, the engine seems outdateded but what it does, it…
The reason why I enjoyed Borderlands is the same reason this game has been praised as industry changer by many, the combination of RPG and FSP. Of course, Borderlands is only a light RPG and more like Diablo with guns than Baldur's gate with guns, the story is almost non-existent and the game lives off his quirky humour and setting more than immersion by means of a storyline. But the fact that the game shares all…
When I first started playing this game, I was quite intrigued, it offers a nice mixture of old school 'Settler' like village-building and time-managment at the same time. You have to plan your city, make sure you houses are not next to the sawmill or the inhabitans will be unhappy and at the same time make sure the people actually go about their business as you intend them to. If a house is ready to pay the rent, a…
A feverish top down vertical scroller about a renegade soldier taking on hordes of gun-wielding enemies. Commando is a rather simple game, weapons are limited to your faithful machine gun and grenades . Avoiding the bullets fired by the enemies makes the game difficult, because there is no energy bar and one hit will force your avatar to surrender with his hands high up in the air. The game has a very steep…
Dominions 3 is one of those unknown games that is praised by many hardcore games for its variety and game design but shunned by many others for its old-school, if not bad, graphics and tons of micromanagement . Similar to Fantasy Empires by SSI , the players take control of a fantasy race and its rules (gods) and tries to conquer the randomly generated 2D maps through military conquests. There are countless races to…
In the legendary Atari 2600 game Asteroids, the player controls a spaceship struggling to shoot asteroids before the collision with the latter can lead to the player's demise. The simple premise translates into an addictive game. Once hit, the asteroids explode into smaller renditions of themselves and it is almost impossible to predict into which direction the scatters of an asteroid will fly and players can never…
How many hours have I spent on various carribean islands thanks to the Monkey Island series. The Curse of Monkey Island is, in my opinion, the best game in the series. The first two games have a very nostalgic appeal to me, due to the old school graphics and dialogue heavy gameplay, as with all classic Lucasarts (and Sierra) games. The Curse of Monkey Island finds the perfect balance between satisfying gameplay and…
Laura Bow is one of my favourite classic B-game adventures. While Sierra is primarily known for its adventure series Space Quest, Larry and Kings Quest. Laura Bow might not be as flashy when it comes to setting or license, but it delivers a full and sophisticated gaming experience. Obviously influenced by Agatha Christie novels, the game takes place in a hosue filled to the brim with relatives and money vultures.…
The aptly titled Carmageddon is a racing game with many twists and quirks, with the latter being the icing on the cake of the gaming experience. Carmgeddon pits the players in racing tracks / worls in an undefined dystopian future world, slightly resembling another game of futuristc vehicle carnage, Quarantine. From the technopolis to a deserted outback, the racing tracks loosely lead through scrapes of land with…
Call of Duty is a very intense experience and while I was playing it I was very impressed how Call of Duty conveyed the claustrophobic and apocalyptic atmosphere the World War II without being unecessary gory or overstylized. The game mixes stealthy passages with larger battles, which include squad action, tanks (fighting them, and driving them). The level design is grim and gritty and playing the game for a few…
I must say, the 2D background of the game are amazing, so is the music. But the 3D character animations are terrible to behold and made me cringe all the time. The story of this game is ludicrously unispired and fails to resemble old school adventures, whose story was the core aspect. The game tries so hard to be witty and funny and give you that Guybrush chuckle that is becomes utterly annoying after a few minutes…
I remember crossing paths with the Diablo franchise for the first time. I was bedridden with the flu and reading a computer games magazine as a young lad. One page featured a tiny ad for Diablo, which pretty much consisted of a screenshot of the monastery entrance. From this moment on until today I have been hooked with Diablo. The flow of the game is unmatched, primarily due to the random loot generation system and…
As a game, Audiosurf is quite neat and reminds me of some classic puzzle games such as Klax. Yet, the crux of the game is the ability to load in your own MP3 (or listen to the in-game radio) and let the game build the levels around the music, by analyzing the waveform structure. Throw in some fancy graphics and effects, colours and sounds and you practically "ride" your music. Obviously, some songs work better than…
The Lovecraftian Horror game series, aptly titled Alone in the Dark had me in a tight grasp during my young adulthood, besides introducing me to HP Lovecraft it kept me at the edge of my seat for hours at a time. The second part sees Edward Carnby's return to the haunted mansion Derceto. This time, the game features more polished controls and a way deeper and utterly more disturbing storyline, featuring an evil…
Read the full review The second and best of the Alone in the Dark series
Blood is part of a bizarre series of games which made the harddisks in the 90ies. FPS games which a theme and/or setting significantly quirky, gorey, surreal and self-ironic. Duke Nukem, Redneck Rampage, Shadow Warrior and Blood are but a few examples of this. With many "realism" shooters around nowadays, the old games become even more obscure and odd, but not a bit more interesting. Blood pits you against raving…
Blade of Darkness (AKA Severance) may be the most underrated game I ever game across. BOD is a third person game, and the reason while I did not say shooter is because BOD is one of those rare games which tried to pull off medieval (fantasy) melee combat in real-time. Many games tried and so far, none has succeded (Die by the Sword, Rune, even Age of Conan). Yet, BOD manages to make melee fighting not only…
I am big fan fan of Blade Runner and Ridley Scott in general. So I was pleased when Blade Runner was released and despite the lack of anything resembling good 'ole Harrison Ford, the game recreated the Blade Runner universe quite well. As a game, Blade Runner is a solid mystery adventure. Tracing suspects, looking for clues and solving the odd puzzles with loads fo dialogue thrown in for good measure. The game had…
Blackthorne is part of the obscure offering of pre-Warcraft Blizzard. Nowadays infamous for the trinity of game franchises, Blizzare had a few solid games under their belts well before that. Blackthorne is no exception, a platformer at its core the game exceeds the common level of average quality by a slick production and great game design. First of, the game's graphics are brilliant and they were breathtaking for…
There are but a few "racing" games around which take the formula of racing and turn it on its head by making the actual "racing" aspect of the game playing second fiddle to some other quirks in the game. Big Red Racing is a racing game but it does not bother to create the most refined controls or license all the fancy cars out there, instead it asks the question, where could who race who with what ? Expect to find…
Read the full review If I can beat you in a car, I can beat you in a chopper !
Battle Bugs is a rather unusual piece of real time strategy. Id rather call it real time tactical game as there is not too much strategy involved. The game lacks any sort of resource managment, building or research facilities. In fact, it purely focusses on tactial, that is, military combat. Yet, instead of taking place in the usual suspect eras of war, the Second World War or Vietnam, the game lets myriads of…
A chess game at its core, this game is the perfect example on how aesthetic production values such as the anmations in this case make or break the game. In this case, they absolutely MAKE the game. Every time one of your tiny chess figures throws one of the opposing team's from the board a neat little animation depicts the fight. the animation is very slick, considered this game saw its birth in the C64 era and had…
Nowadays, with the caped crusader being back en vogue again, thanks to Christopher Nolan and his masterful resurrection of the franchise, some people forget that Batman had already a small era of "prime" back in the 90ies. Tim Burton's depiction of the superhero in Batman Returns did well with the fans, for the first time acknowledging Batman's broody and gloomy nature as part of the whole concept. The SNES game…
I have played through this game a few times with my brother. While it is a solid single-player experience on its own i truly shines as a two player cooperative game. Featuring the usual array of heroes you roam the lands in search of damsels in distress and dragons to be slayed. Well, almost. The game is unfortunately very linear and plays more like an isometric action game han an RPG. The choice of weapons and…
To this day, I must admit I have never seen the movie the game is based on. I somehow missed it when I was a kind and it seems to be quite the obscure title to purchase by today. The game itself is equally unknown and puts you in the role of a critterhunting fat man who stomps and sprays his way to a little village. I have never been able to complete the game but it is still lots of fun. You start out driving around…
How many hours and sleepless nights has this game stolen from my life. I remember me and by best school chum sitting in my darkened room, biting our finger nails and being scared to bits while sneaking through the Lovecraftiion mansion. The game is a nice mix of action / platformer style sequences where you have to fight of various monsters either punching or shooting them to bits (or do other things) and figuring…
Alien Incident is an "old-school" adventure game (think Lucas and Sierra) with a quirky setting and funny storyline. Like in many other adventure games, the protagonist of the game is a somewhat "simple" young man who unwillingly launches into an adventure, a victim of circumstance. This time, you have to discover what is going on around your little village regarding the recent arrival of some (another adventure…
A cute little game that is perfect for the Nintendo DS and it's touchscreen. In the role of a stressed-out tower coordinatior (Air traffic controller) it is your job to ensure the flawless procedures to go on at the airport which consists basically of two things, assigning gates to landing airplanes as well as assigning starting lanes to, well, starting air planes and that is about it. Of course, given the fact that…
I have played the other titles in the series as well. And while the game mechanics and the atmosphere always appealed to me, I deeply missed the opportunity to let the world be randomized. This stand-alone expasion to AOW2 features just that which makes it, IMHO, the best game of the series and the only one which will bring you back, if any. When it comes to exploring a fantasy world with its caves (actually a huge…
