14 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 have not completed Tomb Raider: Underworld. I grew too frustrated with it. I was not having a good time. Moreover, there was one major glitch I encountered that broke the game for me. Naturally, this experience has colored any opinion I have about the game. If you do not think it is right for someone to write about or review a game they have not completed, then you should not read the following. Underworld…
I did not finish V.I.P. It’s on the Game Boy Advance. It’s a very bad game. It’s slow, it has terrible control, and, quite frankly, it’s not worth my time. Take from that what you will, dear reader, because I know that some do not like it when a person talks critically about games that he has not completed. For what it’s worth, though, I think I’ve experienced enough in order to be able to talk informatively about…
Read the full review This is one of the worst games I have ever played in my life
There is a subset of video games that are rarely played and ignored one or two years after their release. These games have no notable story, and are frequently iterated upon. Sports games and racing games lead this subset. Few would ignore the release of Gran Turismo 5, favoring to go back and play Gran Turismo 2. There’s no notable reason to do so, after all: Polyphony Digital is essentially remaking the same game…
I finished Black in just under four hours. All in all, this does not serve as a fair commentary on the game’s length. What I feel I must admit is that I have previously cleared Black many, many times -- not so many as to be uncountable, but enough times to where I’ve stopped bothering counting. I know enemy patterns and I know all the surprises. You can glean from this that I am not the most impartial person that…
I cannot criticize old games in a vacuum. That is, I cannot play a game from five, ten, fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five years ago without looking at it from a modern perspective. When writing a summary of my thoughts on any given game, then, I am judging the game from a modern standpoint: how does this game hold up today, and is it playable today? Has it aged terribly, or has it aged well? I have played through…
There are some games that are just bad. There are some games that are offensive. There are some games that should have been good, but disappoint because something went terribly, terribly wrong during the proceedings. Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice is all of those three things. You shouldn’t buy Extreme Justice and you shouldn’t play Extreme Justice, because it’s a waste of your time and it’s a waste of your money.…
Having reached the end of my Half-Life 2 experience, pending now only the release of Episode Three, I can authoritatively say this: I enjoyed everything that I played, especially Half-Life 2, but I am surprising myself (though perhaps not you, dear reader) when I say that I enjoyed Half-Life 2: Episode Two the most of the three games. The reason why I find that surprising is that, in the lens through which I…
When playing through Half-Life 2: Episode One in the past I had always perceived it as a game that is mostly an extension of Half-Life 2. That’s not to say that it’s bad and that’s not to say that it’s good; rather, instead of a shift up or a shift down, it’s a shift sideways. After playing through it once more I feel justified in holding that view. Episode One is in a very strange realm for me. I don’t know quite…
I am not the first to perceive a major risk in revisiting beloved old video games. Like many other media, like films and books, video games are subject to the attrition caused by the temporal forces of our world. Time goes on; consumers evolve as do tastes and theories of design. Upon release media remains static, a snapshot of time, a snapshot of that era’s design philosophy. There is always the concern, then, that…
Important disclosures prior to the review: I strongly advise that any prospective players turn off the SIXAXIS controls via the options menu before beginning the game. The controls will cause problems throughout the campaign due to lack of sensitivity and poor registering of actions. Having the tilt controls on will make the game a great deal more frustrating and difficult. Marvel Ultimate Alliance has a lot of…
I had a lot of fun playing Resistance 2, and when it comes to games, that’s by far the most important thing for me. It is essential that I have fun when playing a game. I can ignore graphics and I can ignore gameplay flaws and I can ignore terrible voice acting as long as I’m having fun. But Resistance 2 doesn’t need to worry about any of that. It’s got great graphics, and it sounds good, and the gameplay works, and…
It's currently 2010, and one might be forgiven for thinking that it’s a peculiar time to still be playing Resistance: Fall of Man. Resistance was a launch title for the PlayStation 3 in 2006 and it shows, which is a nice way of putting it. But chief of my concerns is whether or not a game is fun and enjoyable, and whether or not a game facilitates fun through its aesthetic and its gameplay. Despite Resistance’s age,…
Retrospectively, writing in April of 2010, Killzone 2 is a game which was not help by the hype it received before the game’s release. It was a level of hype that was unavoidable, irregardless of where you want to point to: the famous E3 trailer, the poor showing of the original game, the amount of money and time Sony put behind the project. My concern lies with the fact that none of this could have helped the game’s…
The Darkness is an interesting game. In The Darkness I find a quandary - it's a game that's well produced in some areas but desperately lacking in others. It's a mafia tale with a science fiction twist. Ultimately it's a unique experience that we might not get again for a long time. The Darkness sees you play as Jackie Estacado, a mafia associate who gets betrayed by the Godfather, his "Uncle" Paulie. A gene running…
