| Image | Vid | Gamespot | Date Played | Quick Review | Ratings |
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Hellgate London | 7.0 | Mar08 | This is a 3D version of Diablo but that gives it too much credit. What was once novel is now tiring. I played it until then end, just to finish it, but it really wasn't fun. Too many items, none mattered more than another. Too many baddies, all pretty much the same. The game looked wonderful and the cut-scenes were incredible but I can't recommend this game. It's just not very good. | 5.5 |
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Crysis | 9.5 | Dec07 | Other than the bugs, which were potentially fatal, the game was quite fun. Wasn't supremely innovative but I enjoyed myself, except for the bugs. Did I say that already? More > | 8 |
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Bioshock | 9.0 | Nov07 | Simply the best game I've played in a long time. Not since my early Quake days did I enjoy a videogame this much. More > | 9.5 |
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Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl | 8.5 | Sep07 | I heard some good things about the game and waiting for the price drop then scooped it up. There's a lot to like about Stalker. First has to be the realistic maps. Sure there are radiation anomalies everywhere, but the buildings, trees and creatures were very well-crafted. Can't carry too much gear. That's realistic. Most of the time friends acted like friends and enemies didn't, which is good. There were some pesky bugs that crashed the game, which almost had me stop before I completed it. The enemy A.I. was much improved over other games of its kind. But when you get to the end, ready for the final conflict? The game tries to be some morality play and I still don't know what happened to Strelok. Really like the Russian audio--gave the game it's own flavor. | 7.5 |
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Neverwinter Nights 2 | 8.6 | July07 | Really this game isn't any better than its predecessor. Updated graphics, updated gameply, blah, blah blah. It still has the same problems most RPG games have. Not to say it wasn't fun, but shouldn't there be progress now? I was seriously underwhelmed. | 6 |
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Prey | 7.5 | May07 | Waited for the price to drop because reviews weren't that good. Still, this game had it's moments. I love action games, so that part is good, but it all seemed so "been there, done that" until the end. When the baddies took my girlfriend and mutated her into a beast, that was a little surprising. Then, when I thought I was fighting the final boss, The Keeper, to learn that there were TONS of keepers and the final boss was The Mother, that was totally cool. Loved how the game kept me guessing. On the downside: when you die, then go to the spirit world to fill back up on health/spirit, that's lame and makes the game far too easy. It's already too easy and this just worsens it. Still, the environments were creatively done and the whole walking on walls and ceilings was a new twist. | 7 |
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Titan Quest | 7.6 | Feb07 | Hadn't played many games, due to lack of expendable income so I went to the bargain bin to find Titan Quest for $10. Not a bad game. Similar to Diablo in that you move around and demolish everything you come across. Foes are far too easy, except that final bad Titan who required a bit of the "take down your health meter, run away and stock up on health potions, rinse and repeat" method of gaming. Decent game but far from good. | 5.0 |
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Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault | 8.3 | Nov06 | Another solid FPS. The AI is getting better and better as enemy troops will run from grenades unless it's in a group then one of them will fall on it to save his friends. Wow. I played it on HARD difficulty and it was extremely tough; needed many reloads. Can't imagine what REALISTIC setting would be like. | 6.5 |
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Quake 4 | 8.0 | Oct06 | This game was actually better than I thought it would be. Sure, it was the fast-and-furious action we've come to expect from id shooters but this time the story was much improved. (To be fair, past games hardly had stories, so any story is better than that.) Gameplay was essential the same, with all the completely unrealistic features like carrying 1,500 pounds of gear with no extra effort, switching between guns in 1.2 seconds, etc. But the game had some fun, spooky features as well, and the maps were well-designed and detailed. Overall, pretty fun, while not innovative, stuff for the FPS fan. | 7.5 |
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Pirates | 9.2 | Sep06 | Fun, but not quite fun enough. The wind would act strangely from time-to-time and searching for treasure on land was a bore. I expected a lot more. | 5.5 |
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Far Cry | 9.2 | Jul06 | I know I'm a bit behind playing a two-year-old game like Far Cry now, but the reviews weren't all that great at the time and I had other things to do. Then I saw I could download and play the game for $9.99, I said, "The time is right!" Distributed by Ubisoft, the game was actually made by the Cerli brothers (Cevat, Avni and Faruk) who run Crytek in Germany. You can feel the foreign flavor in the script but otherwise it's top-notch. From the graphics, to the gameplay and even to the story it's a solid game. Sure the whole "mad scientist mixing monkeys, humans with mutating DNA concoctions in order to rule-the-world scheme" is a bit contribed, but at least there is a story. Now onto a major problem. To set the stage, I've been playing FPS games since Wolfenstein 3D so I'm able to play them on a high difficulty setting. For this game, I choose Veteran because out of the 5 choices, it was one away from Realistic, which is apparently impossible. It was tough and there's no in-game saving so you have to make it to certain markers for the game to autosave, but I could handle the job. That is, until the final level. I had to move the difficulty down 2 settings just to finish it. It was brutal! Otherwise, I would have given this game high marks. Even still, it's a solid game for fans of the genre. The sequel is getting stellar reviews, but it appears to be only for consoles. It's a bit confusing. But apparently there's another game coming from Crytek called Crysis that's due 4Q. We shall see what the reviewers think of that one. |
8 |
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F.E.A.R. | 9.1 | Jul06 | We're getting closer! As the best in the business understand, the story is the thing. In F.E.A.R., which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon, not only is the story engaging, it's a bit surprising, which is not being done this side of M. Night Shyamalan. In F.E.A.R., your team (which is 99.9% of the time is you) is sent in to figure out what the heck is going on at this intensely grotesque crime scene. Be warned, this game is not for the squeemish, thus the "M" rating. As the story unfolds, you chase down an elusive villian with semi-supernatural powers all the while fighting off his mind-controlled soldiers, in an attempt to learn why this whole thing took place. It actually could have been much better, had the powers-that-be focused less on the fighting/action (leave that to the WWI and Quake games) and more on the strange, a la the X-Files. Sure it's new ground, and more difficult, but such is the price for greatness. |
9 |
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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion | 9.3 | Jun06 | When I first played Morrowind, I was blown away. I expected Oblivion to build on that, and in some ways it did, but not nearly enough. It was more of the same, which isn't terrible, but was definitely an opportunity wasted. | 8 |
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Indigo Prophecy | 8.4 | Mar06 | Really remarkable cinematography but the controls totally disrupted that added realism. Interesting story, even if it was a rip-off of The Matrix. | 6.5 |
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Dungeon Siege 2 | 7.9 | Feb06 | More great adventuring joy but ultimately "more of the same." These kind of games could really be improved if they adopted more of the tennants of the Lifelike Adventure Manifesto. | 7 |
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Star Wars: Battlefront 2 | 7.8 | Dec05 | Crashed on my brand new machine a couple of times already. Don't know if I can even evaluate it. | ?? |
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Sacred | 7.6 | Nov05 | So-so time filler. Strange issue with balance as no matter how well you are doing, the number of enemies continually grows so that at times the game may be impossible. | 5.5 |
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Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind | 8.7 | Oct05 | This game comes very close to the first-person, realistic experience set in a fantasy world. A few enhancements and more authentic quest lines could really make this game groundbreaking. | 9 |
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Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 | 8.5 | Aug05 | Almost too realistic at times, I started to think that I should be depressed, being in war and all. Some very tough sequences at my Hard difficulty setting. | 8 |
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Freedom Force Vs. The Third Reich | 8.5 | Jun05 | For great comic strategy. Nothing new, in fact, the story wasn't nearly as novel now. But an awesome game for the kids! | 6.5 |
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Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II | 8.5 | Apr05 | Still a great game, but nothing really new compared to the previous game. Became a little tedious at times. | 8 |
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City of Heroes | 8.4 | Jan05 | Installed it but never played because we couldn't get the site to accept our monthly code. | n/a |