28 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.
Note- This text refers to the Campaign only. As the Queen of Blades defiantly stands over a besieged Terran city watching her Zerg swarm breach its defenses and tear humanity to shreds, you remember again that the woman once known as Sarah Kerrigan’s thirst for revenge has killed the last bit of it in herself. But for all the great and terrible power she once wielded, Sarah has been confined to a sterile…
For anyone who used to make believe with a box full of Tonka Trucks and action figures, Rare’s Blast Corps is a special kind of game, one that takes you back to the timeless parts of your childhood that don’t fade just because you’re now an adult. It allows you to relive the freedom that comes from the act of playing and the simple joys that come from pretending that you’re taking control of a roughneck crew out to…
The history of the game once known as Metal Gear Solid: Rising is fascinating. When Kojima Productions Raiden-focused MGS spinoff ran into development troubles, it was passed along to Platinum Games to apply their over the top character action specialties. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance fuses both development house’s sensibilities into a whole that only offers hints at their respective strengths while highlighting…
The back of Parasite Eve’s CD case calls itself the ‘The Cinematic RPG’. The claim wasn’t empty- Aya Brea’s adventure was told through beautiful CG cutscenes, rich sound and stylish, well-directed scenes that blended game and film. But Parasite Eve’s production values owed everything to the revolutions made the year before by a little game called Final Fantasy 7, so it’s fitting that as a pivotal entry in the…
The back of Parasite Eve’s CD case calls itself the ‘The Cinematic RPG’. The claim wasn’t empty- Aya Brea’s adventure was told through beautiful CG cutscenes, rich sound and stylish, well-directed scenes that blended game and film. But Parasite Eve’s production values owed everything to the revolutions made the year before by a little game called Final Fantasy 7, so it’s fitting that as a pivotal entry in the…
Mega Man 9 fixed Mega Man by distilling the Blue Bomber’s staid gameplay to its essentials: moving and shooting. By striving to limit itself to the restrictions of twenty year old hardware, Inti Creates game highlights how bogged down with its own design the series core gameplay had become over its evolution. What they made is a long lost NES game. The story immediately sets the tone in sprites full of personality.…
Go immediately left from at the start of Metroid: Zero Mission and you’ll find the Morph Ball upgrade exactly where it was in the original Metroid. The remake modernizes the first adventure of galactic bounty hunter Samus Aran, bringing it to the standards set by one of the greatest games of all time: Super Metroid. The game from there applies the legendary SNES classics structure as Samus navigates the depths of…
The first time we see Wei Shen is through the monitors of a Hong Kong PD drug sting as he tries to conduct a transaction. When the sale goes bad, we take control as he charges through a densely packed fish market chased by a squad of uniforms. Unable to elude arrest, he gets thrown into lock-up and reunites with his childhood friend Jackie, now a low-ranking member of the Sun On Yee, one of the most powerful…
[JOURNAL ENTRY. APRIL 5.] I decided to write down my stories, in case they become the last ones told. My squad was taking a breather after a tough firefight when a giant green behemoth charged through the burnt out husk of a Japanese office building and battered the front door into splinters. I’d never seen this alien before. Several of my soldiers were completely unprepared for another engagement- their magazines…
Post-launch dlc has to be handled very carefully to succeed. Not only does every piece need to identify the strengths and weaknesses of its core game, but needs to be created in relation to the pieces that have already been released. In the two story additions to Mass Effect 3 , we were given missions that were designed for very specific purposes- they expanded the universe fiction. Problem is, even though they do…
Videogames were changed forever when Bungie released Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001. In that seminal release, the world met Spartan II cyborg Master Chief as he is awakened from cryo sleep to fight against the alien Covenant. We also met Cortana , the artificial intelligence that would accompany Chief and become the voice in his ear as he fights. Among many of its revolutionary ideas was its holy trinity of combat…
Hotline Miami wants you to hurt people. With its oversaturated neon colors aesthetic and ambient synth rock, Dennaton Games title wants you to think of violent action flicks such as Scarface and Drive, films rebelling against their own perceived places in the world with blood, guns and brutality. It’s 1989, a time of VHS cassettes and answering machines. When you check yours, you’re given a cryptic message with a…
Mass Effect 2′s post-launch content was among the best examples of the practice this generation. Not only did each flesh out the Mass Effect universe, they allowed custom built levels and their own cohesive story that could accentuate Shepard’s story while still existing outside of its confines. Leviathan is the first such piece of content for Mass Effect 3 but that games controversial ending hangs heavily over this…
The stealth action genre has long been an echo chamber unto itself. While many games have integrated its core ideas, its pure form hasn’t evolved much since Metal Gear 2 on the MSX. It’s a genre that many critics have argued relies too heavily on trial-and-error, exists as puzzle games in action-game skin. Mark of the Ninja shrugs these distinctions off while living inside them. It’s a smart title that promotes a…
Graffiti is art. However, graffiti as an act of vandalism is a crime. Jet Set Radio is very nearly a complete metaphor for freedom. Smilebit accomplished the task by making its game small in scope and using every element of its design to construct a theme: it has a large, overbearing enemy in its fascist Tokyo-to and a graffiti mechanic that is an action-oriented, easily understood core concept that is itself a…
A child’s eyes see a simple world. For centuries, fairy tales have been tools to give those eyes a view on the world they might not see on their own. They are a means of teaching lessons and giving metaphors, to see villainy and sorrow overcome by heroism and bravery. In Bastion , Supergiant Games has crafted a new fairy tale in videogame form, one that allows you to revisit your youth while celebrating the games…
For a decade across the 8- and 16-bit generations, Mega Man had been an action-filled powerhouse, but after some twenty odd games, the rock, paper, scissors gameplay needed a new entry to revitalize the stagnating franchise. Translating the traditional concepts into a 3 dimensional world, Legends adds adventure and RPG elements to its action to create a title that is at once fresh and inventive while maintaining the…
Journey opens with a red-robed figure sitting in the sand, the only immediate task climbing up a nearby dune. Making way is slow, the footing gives way and the walking arduous. The view from the top reveals the mountain peak far in the distance and reaching it is the singular goal of the title thatgamecompany has crafted, one that utilizes every narrative convention afforded by videogames to create your own journey.…
Since Mass Effect was first announced, skepticism about Bioware’s claims that choices made in its space opera would carry over its trilogy have given way to mounting pressure to make them a reality. Mass Effect proper introduced a dense universe of characters and races with real history and threw them into peril against an ancient race of synthetic life forms called Reapers who threatened to eradicate all life. But…
Syndicate’s future world is about divisions; the divisions in the economic and political landscapes, between consumer and outcast where people are interfaced with the Datascape through neural chips that feed them a constant stream of data. That world is run by the mega corporations who plot, steal, manipulate and sabotage for the sake of patents, personnel and profit and each employs its own military and special…
Videogames attempts to marry gameplay to music have long suffered from a case of ‘this’ or ‘that’. Narrative or pure mechanics, simon says memorization or notes on cue. Music rhythm games have been largely forced to pigeonhole themselves into working with a single mechanic with little flexibility. None of those games are Rhythm Heaven. Since Rhythm Tengokou came out at the end of the Game Boy Advance’s lifetime, the…
More than any other medium, videogames possess the ability to immerse people in worlds, of giving them a sense of place, one that can be populated, filled out and come alive before our eyes. But great worlds contain memorable characters with their own personalities- Pokémon has long had one of those worlds. Pokémon Snap is built around this singular idea- it puts would-be photographers on a Safari in a Pokémon…
After he viciously slaughtered his way through the mafia family run by his Uncle Paulie, Jackie Estacado had vowed to never again use The Darkness. The demon had given him great strength, but had manipulated and twisted the young man. When we meet him again as he walks into a family run restaurant at the beginning of the Darkness 2, we see that he has prospered, the family is strong, its members loyal- and then they…
Considering how Other M picks up directly after the events of Super Metroid, it’s easy to assume that it was a true 3D interpretation of that seminal classic. However, the minutes-long opening cinematic’s copious VO that characterizes a Samus Aran deeply affected by the baby metroid’s sacrifice, quickly reveals that Yoshio Sakamoto and Nintendo SPD Group No. 1 are willfully neglecting that influential games…
Halo: Combat Evolved changed the course of videogame history and its name is etched on a list of titles that defined the medium. Before Bungie’s milestone was released in 2001, the gulf separating console and PC development philosophy was considered too large to bridge; there were games on consoles and there were games on the PC. This first-person shooter not only redefined the genre with its vast pool of combat…
Batman: Arkham City is an incredible sequel to a game with some of the most robust mechanics you'll find in anywhere in the medium. Picking up six months after the events of Batman: Arkham Asylum , the inmates of that institution and the violent prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary have been rounded up after events that transpired in a comic series leading up to this game into a prison known as Arkham City at the…
Hard Reset has leap-frogged over the decades worth of design that has evolved the modern FPS. Its about relentless, single-minded gunplay not about varied mixture of combat styles. Flying Wild Hog's first game is a passion project from a developer made up of former employees of People Can Fly and CDProjekt Red. The story is a Cyberpunk adventure where the human streets of New Bezoar are built with cold steel where…
NOTE- This review is for the release day version through patch 1.65. CD Projekt Red has announced version 2.0 with new content and refinements to several of the issues addressed below. RPG designers should study what CD Projekt Red has accomplished with The Witcher 2. In the almost four years since they released the original Witcher, they have built a detective story wrapped in a mature fantasy where choices beget…
