25 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.
I originally wrote this for my Amazon review. Quake 64 is a really weird port. It's missing some of the best levels from the base game. There's no Grisly Grotto, specifically, which means there's no secret exit to the Well of Wishes, which means the Dopefish secret is straight up gone. The difficulty and episode selection hub that is somewhat synonymous with the game is also gone. You pick your difficulty from a…
This was originally used as my review on Amazon. A perfectly competent port of MK4. The default controls are absolutely atrocious, so you will need a controller pak available. I suggest putting your attacks on the C buttons, movement on the pad, run and block on L and R, and side steps on A and B. Without a controller pak, you'll be redoing these settings every time you play. For real, they are BAD. Block is on Z…
I originally used this review for my Amazon account. Made as the console answer to Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena, Turok Rage Wars is a game near and dear to my heart. If this was me telling you my personal score, it'd be a solid 5. However, I can say that Rage Wars has some glaring issues that you should know about. The core progression in Rage Wars is done via "Trials". You pick a character from a fighting…
A common problem that afflicts many games these days is that they simply try to do too much, to attract as many possible players as they can. Of all the developers to attempt so, Ubisoft has easily seen a largely negative response, and acceptable but less than expected sales. It's only fitting then, that after almost burying the series with Conviction, Blacklist comes along and does it right. Blacklist feels good.…
One of the reasons Far Cry 3 was so damn good was it didn't just hand you the toys and expect you to do the rest of the work for it. The island was carefully constructed to guide you towards forts, encampments, and so on, constantly giving you opportunities to play with those toys. Killzone Shadow Fall doesn't really understand that to get the most out of a unique tool, you have to be put in a world where you can…
Duke Nukem Forever excels at one specific thing: Making the act of alien genocide fun as hell. All of the weapons have a great feel to them, and even the starting pistol packs a punch. Unfortunately, Duke Nukem Forever really wants you to do things other than shoot aliens, and that's it's biggest downfall. 12 years after the events of Duke Nukem 3D, Duke is now a mega-celebrity. Girls want him, guys want to be him.…
Free to play games are a good idea in theory. Small, not a lot of content, but fun and entertaining gameplay for nothing at all is a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, almost every single time these experiences are ruined by badly implemented cash shops. I understand that developers need to make money somehow, but giving players willing to part with their money greatly overpowered weapons and gear is a fantastic way…
Impossible to play without having a big grin on your face, Portal was revered for being a creative experience with some genuinely funny dialogue. This time around, they've taken what made Portal great and amplified it astronomically. Not only is Portal 2 a ridiculously fun game, it's also overflowing with charm. While you will never see another human being in your time at Aperture Science, you will still meet a few…
Brink manages to deliver an enjoyable experience that rewards teamwork more than your own K/D ratio, and I really appreciate that. What I don't appreciate are the myriad of technical issues that prevent this game from being the great title it should be. Two factions are on the "brink" of civil war, one fighting to protect the utopia known as the Ark, and the other to escape it. Unfortunately, that's as far as the…
Doom 2 isn't a bad game by any means. The fact that it's still fun to play more than 10 years after it was first released is testament to that. What you probably don't remember is that Doom 2 also had a lot of painfully bad levels. Hell is invading Earth, and it's up to Doomguy to save the day. Using the original stable of weapons, along with a new toy, the super shotgun, you'll do exactly what you'd expect from a…
Most people would agree that bad checkpoints in a Contra style game is unforgivable. It is. What's even worse is when the developers seem to realize they made a big mistake, and take the easy way out. Arc System Works took the easy way out. Hard Corps Uprising is Contra. You'll run and jump through levels absolutely swarming with bad guys, fight giant bosses, and use a spread gun. Somewhere among the 3 boss fights…
FPS games have been growing stale. For the most part, the market is flooded with military shooters, and many of them satisfy the exact same itch. Crysis 2 finds itself potentially overlooked as a result of this, and that's a shame, because it revitalized my interest in the FPS genre. What sets Crysis 2 apart from the rest is the Nanosuit. With the touch of a button, you can turn partially invisible, become much more…
I've spent a lot of time with fighting games, and although I've never been above average at them, I rarely have trouble learning the ropes. Marvel Vs Capcom 3 kicked my ass, and it still does from time to time. While there is certainly tons of fun fast paced fighting to be had, actually getting any of that fun is a challenge. Sure, there's a training mode to practice in, and mission mode supposedly teaches you some…
Read the full review Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
You Don't Know Jack manages to take something as bland as trivia and make it engaging and funny as hell. It's great to see this beloved series return as strongly as it does. For 30 bucks, YDKJ offers 73 "episodes" of 10 questions each. The questions are specific to each episode, so once you've completed an episode there's not much to be gained by playing that same episode again. Considering there is 73 of them,…
The original Dead Space was soaked in frightening visuals, superb sound, and phenomenal gunplay. Dead Space 2 is pressure washed in those qualities. Issac Clarke's continued adventures take him to some absolutely stunning environments, and most of them are filled with the brutal combat that you expect from the series. The few of these beautiful vistas that don't involve you cutting limbs off of necromorphs quickly…
As the last Halo title that developer Bungie plans to develop for the foreseeable future, Halo Reach had a lot of hype to live up too. It not only lives up to that hype, but it exceeds what was expected. The game offers an absolute plethora of content, giving players something to do at all times. At the time of this writing, I am at the highest possible rank for now, but the allure of the daily challenges keeps…
Fallout New Vegas is an expansion pack in disguise. It reuses countless assets from Fallout 3, and offers only a handful of geniunely new things. Somehow, this manages to be okay with me. Maybe it's because it uses those recycled assets skillfully enough to create an experience that feels worthwhile and somewhat new. The story of Fallout New Vegas starts off simply enough. As a courier for the Mojave Express, you…
This, the latest attempt to bring Transformers to the video game realm, is finally the one that gets it right. It does everything that you could want in a game with the Transformers name on it. You can transform at any time, you can play as about 14 different Autobots and Decepticons, and Starscream is still a tool. Gameplay boils down to old-school behind the back shooting, with no cover system to be found. It…
As a child of the 90s, I grew up playing SNES and Pokemon. The core "Water beats Fire, Fire beats Grass, Grass beats Water" combat dynamic in the early games in that series are ingrained into my brain. As a result, any sort of "Damage Triangle" is immediately apparent to me. Do you enjoy Rock Paper Scissors? The reason I ask is because this game has a lot of it. The two titular species share a melee system that…
Army Of Two: The 40th Day suffers from the same problems many co-op focused games do. Primarily, it just isn't that fun without a second player. My solo experience with the game can be summarized as telling the AI to stay behind cover while I do everything. I'd like to have the AI help me out, but it doesn't seem to understand what I want it to do, ever. More often than not it would misunderstand my "Hold Position"…
The latest DLC for Borderlands, The Underdome Riot of Mad Moxxi, does not include any new quests. What it DOES include, is a whole shitton of bad guys for you to kill. As someone who has spent 75 hours on my berserker alone, this was both dissapointing and a breath of fresh air. It's almost sublime to just enter one of the arenas included in the underdome, unholster your gun, and kill until you can't kill anymore. I…
Ubisoft is a company I have a love-hate relationship with. For the most part, I adore their Tom Clancy games, and Assassin's Creed 1, while dissapointing, was still something I found to be a lot of fun. On the other hand, they shoehorn the rabbids into anything they can, and they also release a lot of garbage products under their "Imagine" label that I honestly don't believe anyone enjoys. This is one of the games…
Let's get the basics out of the way right now. This is not a complicated game. If you are capable of moving your character and firing a weapon at the same time, you can enjoy Serious Sam. That's not a slam on the game, if anything it's praise. It's refreshing to go back to straight shoot em up gameplay after so long. The game breaks down to going into an area, shooting all the bad guys, moving to the next area, and…
Infinity Ward has proven that they know exactly what they are doing when it comes to first person shooters. Modern Warfare 2 has an intense single player, an addicting multiplayer, and a satisfying co-op. All three are good enough to stand on their own, but together on one disc this becomes a fantastic product. The single player runs about 5 to 8 hours long on the regular difficulty level, depending on your skill.…
I've been following Borderlands since it's unveil back in September 2007. Since then, it's been clear from the start what kind of game this was going to be. Sure, the art style changed, but Gearbox has delievered a product that does exactly what they said it would. In Borderlands, the player chooses one of 4 characters. There is a Siren, a Berserker, a Hunter, and a Soldier character. All 4 characters have a unique…
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