Reviews

A charming little indie game with nice presentation and art direction. The music is lovely and fits the scene perfectly. The graphics are technically average, but still look great. This game is fairly short, but about the right length for a game of this type. Most of the gameplay is simple puzzle platforming, but the style and atmosphere stops it from getting boring. The puzzles are well designed but fairly casual, so don't expect a challenge. This game would be suitable for young children, although they may not understand the adult message (which is fine).

After enjoying "Brothers – A tale of two sons" (an amazing indie game), I searched for some more indie games that I hoped would be similar, and found this. While Papo & Yo is not as good as Brothers, it is still decent and I recommend it.

Disclaimer: Single-player only. If your a CoD fanboy, this review is not for you, just vote it down without reading, and move on.

I normally play more realistic or story focused shooters, but with most CoD fans saying this is the best one in the series, I thought I'd try it (single-player) with modest expectations. It was still a mild disappointment. Production values were fairly mediocre, not what I was expecting from a highly praised big-budget game.

Graphics are OK, but nothing special, even for 2007 (inferior to Arma1, Stalker1 and Crysis which all came out the same year). Some level environments are quite nice, but most others are fairly bland and a bit too linear. Sound design is also nothing special, and lacks oomph.

The story is OK, but the missions are a very mixed bag. Almost all of them suffer from rinse-and-repeat enemy AI waves. Its all scripted, and seems to be aimed at instant gratification console peasants of below average intelligence. The US infantry missions are just a tedious shooting gallery with a shallow narrative tacked on. No matter what instructions you get from your officer, chances are they are not practical for the situation in front of you. If you deviate from the script even slightly, like attempting to flank where your not supposed to, the mission gets stuck or you get punished. At least there are a few missions with more interesting mechanics (like firing canons from a plane). The only decent conventional mission was "All gullied up" - much more atmospheric and better paced. If only the other missions were as good. You only get to do a (highly scripted) sniper shot once in the game, and only at about 150m. The campaign is quite short at 4-8 hours. The only really good thing was the few jokes your squad make now and then.

Open combat mechanics are not fun - arcade and bland. Almost every time you shoot an enemy a new one spawns right behind him, just around a corner. This creates the ludicrous consideration where you may not want to bother shooting someone to avoid dealing with the near infinite replacement enemy spawns. Weapons look nice and have great reload animations, but lack realistic power. Quite a few times the AI would ignore a bullet to the head or multiple rifle shots in the chest. Certain enemies are immune to damage if they are not "supposed" to die at that time - eg: hit a helicopter with anti-tank RPG and nothing happens. This punishes any player initiative. Enemies move without inertia. This makes aiming at them a pain. The AI will tend to just run at you mindlessly. Enemies throw grenades with machine-like accuracy and occasionally seem to be able to track your movement through walls. during training you are instructed to shoot through weak cover, but I encountered many weak surfaces that seemed to be just as effective as concrete. Friendlies are either invincible bullet sponges or get in your way (example: grenade falls at your feet and AI is blocking the only door exit).

Overall CoD4 is a fairly mediocre game (but not quite "bad"). How this became the No.1 FPS franchise seems to have little to do with merit.

After the fairly decent AssCreed3, and considering the many positive reviews for this game, I made the mistake of having slightly higher expectations than usual. This unsurprisingly led to some disappointment (yes, sadly going against the trend in most other reviews). But once I recalibrated my expectations to "standard AssCreed fare", it was not too bad.

The story is messy and silly. It has some good parts but most of it is mediocre - overall not as good as AssCreed3 in my opinion. I have the suspicion casual or younger gamers may like it more. It sorely lacks atmosphere when compared to games like Dishonored or The Witcher or films like 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. The script is full of plot holes (even more than usual). Half of the game is fairly serious and makes some sense, but the other half is silly and does not make any sense. This inconsistency harms immersion. The main character is decent, but does not quite have the charisma of Ezio or Haytham from previous games.

The missions and gameplay built on the story are very bland and repetitive. Almost any potentially interesting story scenario is reduced to a handful of copy-paste follow/sneak/kill/eavesdrop gameplay designs. It seems like the devs were slightly lazier than usual - AssCreed3 missions were far from perfect, but still seemed slightly more varied and hand-crafted.

The difficulty balance of the gameplay is poor. AI detection feels arcade and inconsistent. Stealth areas are severely overpopulated with guards, meaning you are forced to look at the minimap all the time to have any chance of avoiding detection. If you don't reload checkpoints often, open combat is nearly inevitable, which in turn is far too easy. This makes trying to play stealth frustrating, because the odds feel unfairly stacked against you, and it is always so much easier to just fight and kill everyone. But fighting gets boring quickly - you just spam attacks, then counter when prompted, and repeat that indefinitely.

The sandbox gameplay has been brought to the fore, but like the main missions, it is very arcade, bland, and repetitive. The open world is large, but most places all look the same. Compared to AC3, there seems to be slightly less content overall, though still more than enough. The problem is a lack of quality, not quantity. Still things like naval battles and boarding enemy ships are novel for a while and work fairly reliably, which is more than can be said of naval battles in a Total War game (Shogun II etc). The sea shanties (songs) are a nice touch, and possibly the single best feature in this game.

Graphics are the best yet for an AssCreed game, and the first in my opinion to just about match those of Crysis 1 (released 6 years earlier). The water out at sea looks particularly good. The visual quality does not hold up everywhere though - quite a few ugly meshes and textures here and there. The default settings are poorly optimised - you need to manually tweak the settings to get the best visuals while keeping the FPS high. Ship physics are decent and must feel amazing to the average console peasant, but if you have an eye for realism and have been on a real ship, it still leaves much to be desired. Your 150-ton brig behaves like it has the mass and manoeuvrability of a modern olympic racing yacht combined with the stability of a modern river ferry (complete with bow thrusters). You can sail straight into the wind with no speed loss. Enemy ships also handle like powerboats. In some ways the sailing physics were more realistic in AC3 - you could not sail into the wind, and it felt slightly more natural, though admittedly less reliable (momentarily flying ships etc).

PC controls are as bad as usual. They are not game-breaking, but they do work against you - I messed up a lot of missions because my character would do the wrong thing like randomly climbing a wall. A few times just before successfully capturing a huge enemy ship, I would fall from a mast to my death due to glitched controls. The checkpoint system has its usual annoyances and reloads sometimes caused technical problems like missing quest items (requiring quiting to desktop and reloading). I encountered more bugs and glitches and generally rushed content here than in any previous AssCreed game.

Overall, for me, AC4 is a mediocre AssCreed game that wasted a lot of potential. It is not a "bad" game, but it does not deserve any of the hyped reviews.

A good story with some great characters and humour, but gameplay is a bit mixed - rigid stealth mechanics with an arcade/consolitis feel. Sometimes you get detected for something that you would get away with in real life and vice-versa. Confusingly, enemy eyesight is matched to their torso instead of the direction their face is looking towards. The challenge is annoyingly increased artificially by over-populating levels with guards. To get past them you take things slowly and memorise their pre-defined patrol routes - which can get a bit tedious. The mechanics have a "puzzle game" feel to them. There is little room for improvisation. At least you can always go the guns blazing route if stealth gets too annoying. The gameplay does offer good replayability though, if you want to improve your score for each level and beat the scores of your friends.

Levels are on the small side and too linear, but many have nice detail and feel very alive with huge crowds of AI. Some also have funny things and some great easter-eggs. On a technical level though, the graphics are just average (aimed at xbox360 limitations). levels also take unreasonably long to load.

The control scheme feels a bit cumbersome. Shooting mechanics are acceptable, but melee combat is poor - clumsy and harsh quick time events that break the flow of the action. The screen FOV is low by desktop standards. The lack of frequent checkpoints or a manual save system can be annoying if you slip up and have to start from the beginning of a level. Also, your gear and outfit are not saved between levels. Even worse, if you reload a checkpoint, some enemies are alive that you killed before reaching that checkpoint.

So, gameplay is arguably not quite as good as in Blood Money, but I did find the story in Absolution much more entertaining. Other than some minor issues like very slow loading levels, a few bugs and glitches (an AI spotting me through a floor), the game runs stable.

Overall it is a decent game to get when on sale.

The story and atmosphere are decent but not great. Most of the gameplay is puzzle platforming. This sometimes gets a bit repetitive, but there is enough variation and cutscenes to prevent it from getting too tedious. The balance between platforming and other types of gameplay is better than in TR-Anniversary (which was all platforming) but maybe not quite as engaging for the masses (and me) as the 2013 reboot (which had more action). The platforming difficulty is generally good for most of us, but on the easy side for hardcore gamers. I struggled with some parts, but always got through after a while. Some environments look really nice (Thailand), but others have rather bare and bland level design. The combat is fairly bad, as expected with this series. The checkpoint save system is also annoying, but not too bad.

Though some of the veterans will scoff, I find the optional "field assistance" hints an improvement over the previous games that offered no help at all - now I am less likely to need to look up solutions online when I get stuck. There is still big room for improvement in this area though. At least there are difficulty settings for specific things like enemy health and fall damage.

Lara's controls are a bit mixed. In some ways they are fine, but they also feel a bit nervous and she moves less natural (less inertia and animation flow) than in TR-Anniversary. As usual, sometimes the controls don't do what you want, causing many accidental deaths. Also, the camera behaviour can be disorienting, and the FOV is unpleasantly low. At least there is no mouse acceleration. The HUD is bad - you have to open your PDA to change weapon and see how much ammo you have. None of these flaws are game breaking though.

Tip: To improve the graphics beyond the max ingame settings, i suggest forcing AF to x4 (ingame AF setting does not work) and AA transparency to 4x supersampling in nvidia control panel.

I would say this is a game to get when on sale, and only if you are OK with a lot of puzzle platforming.

In some ways it is a decent game, but as I progressed, it became unplayable for me.

It started off OK, but as the puzzles and boss fights got harder, they got more tedious, and the controls got more frustrating. After a while the puzzles feel repetitive (but this is largely a question of personal taste). 95% of the game is pure puzzle platforming (so you should only play this if you really like that sort of gameplay). My playthrough broke down to frustrating trial and error at times. I found the keyboard/mouse controls difficult and at times inconsistent and unresponsive - Maybe it plays better on a console. I got stuck on some of the platforming and boss fights, so I had to look up the solutions online. I'm not a noob, but better hints and tutorials would have been helpful for me. It is also a pity there is no manual save system, and that the save checkpoints are not very forgiving - they were often far away from the part I struggled with, meaning I had to redo a lot after failing a sequence. Also, you have to manually "save" the checkpoint, otherwise, if you quit/reload, you lose all progress since the beginning of the game. Dare I say it, but this game may be too "hardcore" for me (even though I usually don't like it when games are dumbed down). While the experience was too frustrating for me, this is quite a good game within its specific genre.

If you like difficult platforming and old-school boss fights, you may like this game. Otherwise, there are simply too many flaws, so I sadly cannot recommend it.

I have played this game longer than any other. This is because this game has the best multiplayer if you want the ultimate realistic hardcore FPS experience.

The soundscape is excellent. Weapons sound very realistic, whether near, far, or inside a building. Weapon handling (accuracy etc) are still the best I have ever seen in any game (much better than ARMA series in my opinion). There are some neat gameplay mechanics that simulate suppression, and reward teamwork and discourage camper score-whoring. This is probably the only game that really models suppression. Don't bother with the single-player though, its rubbish and the AI is dumb.

When it was released back in 2011, it was rough around the edges with lots of bugs, but now in 2014, with continuous support from the devs, virtually all the problems have been ironed out, and it now runs very stable.

Being realistic and brutal, this is very unforgiving to noobs (and CoD players). Only 1 rifle bullet is needed to kill. Noobs spawn, run forward, and get killed by enemy artillery, or a tank 300m away, or a sniper 200m away, or a machine gunner 150m away, or a maxed out assault trooper 5m away, and never see it coming. Being realistic, machine guns are almost just as accurate as sniper rifles, but it is slightly harder to spot prone enemies without the scope. I am usually the machine gunner, and by a round's end (20min) I may have killed over 80 of them and only died 5 times. That's how ruthless this game is. This is arguably both the game's biggest strengh, and its biggest problem.

This game uses a leveling and unlock system, but it is still quite fair on new players. While fully levelled guns will help (with slightly reduced weapon sway, recoil, reload time, magazine size etc) it is still only 20% of your effectiveness and the remaining 80% is down to your tactical awareness, teamwork, and most of all, your individual skill. That is the most important thing. If you are naturally good, you will start out quite well and only get better as you level up, but if you are not so good at aiming with a mouse, you might always struggle.

The online community is more mature than in most other shooter games. We still get the occasional 12 year old, but not too often. As of Dec-2014 there are still a good range of servers and a good volume of players online (about 1500 Sunday night, 300 Monday morning). At peak times there are about 5-10 servers with 64 players, and some servers occasionally go over the 64 player limit. The most I have seen is 85, that was epic. In 800 hours of gameplay I have only seen 1 incident of hacking (the artillery hack), and that one was patched out by the devs within days. So, this game has a virtually hack-free environment.

So, this game is too brutal and realistic for many, but if CoD or Battlefield is not cutting it for you, I recommend you try this.

A good and highly original game nearly ruined by unforgiving controls and sparse checkpoints, resulting in frustrating trial and error gameplay.

Graphics are nice, and I liked their ultra clean urban vibe. Environments are well designed and look more realistic than in many other games. The music is minimalist and fits well. The story is fairly short, but well presented and I liked the stylised cutscenes. Most of the story has you running away from a police manhunt, and reminded me of some of the story in HalfLife2. Gun combat is basic, but not bad, and this game is not about combat anyway.

The first person view can make it difficult to keep your bearings, but is fairly well implemented and refreshing in a market saturated with 3rd person views. The controls are a good concept and quite nuanced, but difficult to master, and can feel very inconsistent. You are either someone who quickly "gets it" and then is free to enjoy the game, or like me, you are not quite able to master them. In my case this is also partly because the parkour is inconsistently realistic and arcade at the same time (only someone with a Crysis style Nano-Suit would be able to do those wall running jumps etc). I think many gamers with perfectly normal keyboard/controller talent will still struggle, like I did. I found some segments a bit too difficult and the scripted events were harsh, also resulting in many frustrating re-attempts. The checkpoint save system is a pain if you are struggling with a segment, and in that respect, it renders this game inferior to something like HalfLife2 which has an excellent manual save system. I had so much trouble at times, that I had to look up some youtube walkthroughs for help. It would have helped if there were more advanced training tutorials. Maybe the random loading screen tips could also have helped, but I have a fast SSD, so never got to read them. Parkour controls in Assassin's Creed may be a bit too simple and forgiving, but at least it is a lot less frustrating most of the time.

Annoyingly, there is no way to pause or reload cutscenes, as it is easy to accidentally skip them. This game is a fairly good port to PC, with no mouse accel or lag, and rebindable controls. Fortunately, no Origin account is needed with the steam version.

It is such a pity this game has serious flaws, as it is otherwise quite good and I would have really enjoyed it. I look forward to Mirror's Edge 2, hoping the devs will have ironed out the issues without dumbing the game down.

Conclusion: Whether you will enjoy this game depends entirely on how good you are with your keyboard/controller, and how much trial-and-error gameplay you can tolerate.

SHORT VERSION: Underneath the many small flaws and irritations, SplinterCell:Blacklist is still "OK" in the end, and sometimes even enjoyable. I can recommend it at the sale price.

LONG VERSION: Sorry, but I will have to go against consensus and say this is no better than SplinterCell:Conviction, which was average in my opinion. The intro video is great, but the rest of the game does not hold up quite as well.

As with the last game, the campaign story is decent - very much like a typical Hollywood action movie, and most enjoyable if you don't try to think too hard. Gameplay mechanics are OK - fairly solid and very conventional. There are the typical minor issues and inconsistencies, but nothing too bad. As usual you observe the predefined enemy patrols, and sneak past when a gap inevitably appears. If you follow this rule successfully, you are never forced to improvise (unless its scripted). Level design is still too tight and linear, offering no real freedom in how to approach an objective, but this is normal for mainstream console games. I do miss the greater freedom of movement games like IGI 2, Stalker, and ARMA offer though, when you are infiltrating enemy positions. At least the visual detail in some areas was quite good. There is also the usual over emphasis on cover in the level design. Whether you are sneaking or shooting, you will spend most of your time glued to cover and pressing a key to dash to the next conveniently placed cover object. I can put up with this, but it gets repetitive quickly - the market is already saturated with cover based shooters.

Sam's new voice actor and model are less likable. He used to be mature, calm, witty and cynical, but now he comes across like a smug jerk. And they made him younger and heavier - he looks like a steroid-pumped rip-off Commander Shepherd from Mass Effect. He also looks angry all the time and delivers so many lame pep-talk statements with a cold suave voice. I liked the main villain more! The setup of Sam's new team is less believable - A small group of super elite ex-teens with total freedom, subject to absolutely no bureaucracy, with "license to kill", who report directly to the US president? come on! Also, the depiction of technology is so full of BS, even by SplinterCell standards, that it is immersion breaking. The computer interface the protagonists use looks more like gibberish alien tech from Starwars than something from real life. It seems the devs tried too hard to impress gamers who they assume are just as dull-minded and tech illiterate as them. Most video games lack plausibility to varying extents, but Blacklist is one of the worst offenders.

The control scheme has been changed since last game, and for the worse. Who thought binding "Use", "Open/Smash Door", "Climb/Vault" and "Move to next cover" all to 1 button was a good idea? (you cannot change this). This is not a game breaking flaw, but is it really asking too much to let us use separate buttons for everything on our 100+ key controllers (aka keyboards). Controls feel a bit sluggish and sometimes even unresponsive. The 3rd person camera feels wrong - too much randomly changing perspective and mouse sensitivity. Night vision is near useless, might as well turn up gamma on my monitor. Alt-tab no longer works (at least not for me in Dx11). I did not have many of these problems in SplinterCell:Conviction.

SplinterCell:Blacklist is now obsessed with social networking, "unlockables" and "achievements" - I don't want this rammed down my throat all the time, I just want to play the game. There are ridiculous OTT cyber themed backgrounds in the menu that do nothing but irritate and make it difficult to read what is on screen. Pre-rendered cutscenes permanently have an annoying animated "loading" animation in the foreground. As usual there is a rubbish checkpoint save system: If you reload after getting killed, you may get spawned somewhere you never passed through. Want to load from before a cutscene you missed due to a no-video bug? Nope. Watch it over-compressed on youtube. FOV is often far too low, so if you get motion sick easily, don't play this game. Why did they not add a FOV slider like in FarCry3? And why did they remove the black-and-white screen effect to show you were in the shadows? It was much more intuitive than the silly LED that now lights up on Sam's back. As expected, AI detection is quite arcade or inconsistent - if you scramble (loudly) to the next cover object in plain sight, no one sees or hears you, but if a dog barks at you (while you are hidden), everyone in the area instantly telepathically knows where you are. Like in FarCry3, dogs are much more formidable foes than professional bad guys with assault rifles. Unlike in ChaosTheory, ambient noises are not realistically taken into account when AI hear you. With all these things, its all about thinking (without higher thought) like a console gamer and sticking to the scripted and contrived rules of the game even if they go against common sense. The decent orchestral soundtrack of SplinterCell Conviction has been replaced by some bland electronic bass dross - all noise and no soul, like in FarCry3 - there's no accounting for taste.

As for multiplayer: "The Splinter Cell Blacklist service is not available. Please try again later."

Overall this is by no means a 'bad game'. None of the flaws are game breaking, and if you can live with all the irritations I mentioned, you will probably enjoy it. Otherwise, you should put Ubisoft, Uplay, and this game on your blacklist.

Over 5 years in the making, the spiritual successor of Max Payne 1 is a very cinematic game with good narrative and atmosphere. The tutorial may seem lame, but it gets better. The combat mechanics combining firearms and light work well. The graphics are excellent, if not technically, then certainly artistically. This is an xbox port done right, with minimal consolitis, after using the following tweaks: add "-rigidcamera" (no mouse accel) and "-noblur" to the executable's launch commands, and max the FOV and "direct aiming" in the settings). Be sure to play this at night in a quiet room when there is no one else in the house - anything else does not do it justice.

Rushed and half Broken. Having played SilentHunter3 (a good but very mixed experience), I waited till 2013 to get SH5 for £4, hoping most of the flaws had been ironed out. No luck. I really wanted to like this game, but even with all patches and some mods, its still a mess. It takes forever to load, the interface is bad, the graphics are not as good as the trailers suggest, It is too arcade (no matter the difficulty setting), the music and voice acting is bad, and the Uplay DRM is still horrible (but it does have a half-baked offline mode). It is clear Ubisoft gave the development team too little time and resources, and then closed their studio after the inevitable poor sales. Such a shame. As of May 2013 there is still no decent fix-all super-mod out there.

This is the quintessential 'haunted castle' experience. Scary enough, but in a restrained way, without as much depravity as some other horror games. Pacing is deliberately slow and focuses more on the suspense and what you hear around the corner. No other game manages to make me feel so helpless - you can't fight, you can only hide or run. The controls are refreshingly simple and work very well. The graphics and level design are a bit mediocre, and gameplay may lack a bit of variety, which prevents it from being truly great. Still, I can easily recommend this. The mod scene is one of the best around, with some great single-player custom stories that compete with the base game for quality.

If the CallofDuty & BattleField series leave you hungry for something much more realistic, try ARMA. However, it does have many flaws, including an overly complex difficult interface, advanced but very inconsistent and cheating AI, and a lot of serious bugs. The singleplayer is somewhat broken (if only they would do it like in the original Operation Flashpoint). Multiplayer was once the main appeal, but now few people play online, and it was always very vulnerable to hacking. But there is still nothing quite like ARMA. Graphics are excellent, but you need a very powerful PC for smooth gameplay.

As for the expansion Operation Arrowhead: The only real improvement over the original ARMA2 is that there are slightly less bugs. Otherwise, it still has the same bad or broken mechanics, slow cumbersome interface, bad singleplayer campaign, and inconsistent or cheating AI (my favourite: AI tanks that seem to wall hack you). The only reason to ever play ARMA is because it is more realistic than other series like Battlefield, and it mostly is, but some parts are not realistic at all, which creates a bad bipolar mixture. The DLC campaigns are marginally better but far too short. Sadly, the ARMA series can still feel more like a good tech-demo than a properly polished game. If only ARMA's scale and realism were combined with Battlefield's accessibility and polish, it would be amazing.

An OK game that might have lived up to its predecessor if not for the overly long unskippable cutscenes, terrible checkpoint save system, and nauseatingly overdone 'TV interference' screen effects.

Its not the worst console port, but its still a port. If you load an earlier level, your progress is not saved. The story is decent though, and the various locations looks authentic. The graphics are good (its a huge 31GB download). Some of the set pieces feel like any bland console shooting gallery (on-rails section complete with inaccurate overheating machine gun and unlimited ammo). Flaws aside, Rockstar has made a decent game that still has enough 'Max Payne' in it, but I cant help but think Remedy (who made the first Max Payne games, and the excellent Alan Wake) could have done better.

Worth the steam sale price.

Like with all previous Serious Sam games, you should play the full campaign in co-op mode with friends. Only then does it shine. I played split-screen (2 keyboards, 2 mice, 1 PC) with my bro. Compared to previous games, Sam3 may be too serious (Sam1 had the right balance of absurdity and seriousness, Sam2 was not serious enough). There is still the usual witty adolescent humour though (lame in a good way). I respect Croteam for still patching the game 2 years after release. Sadly, Sam3 feels a bit shorter than previous games. The end boss fight was too difficult and it was not always clear what you were supposed to do. Worth playing if you have some Co-op buddies.

A good game nearly ruined by inconsistent difficulty and frustrating or unreliable mechanics. It has sadly contracted Xbox consolitis (on top of the first game's already mediocre controls). You may have to mash a button 5 times before it registers. Many quests and scripted sequences are convoluted and confusing, leading to excessive trial and error gameplay. Often I had to trawl forums and wikis for help. Combat is more difficult & realistic but some fights seem far too difficult, as if the difficulty setting randomly changes. At least TW1 was consistently too easy. But despite its flaws, this is an atmospheric game set in a detailed believable world, that continues the great story of Geralt of Rivia. Absolutely worth getting in a steam sale, but you may want to play it on 'easy' even if you are an experienced gamer.

About as linear and scripted as it is possible to get, but thats OK. The story is decent, if a bit formulaic and predictable. There is at times too much rambo firefighting and arguably not quite enough tomb raiding. If I wanted firefights, I'd play CoD. When you do get round to tomb raiding, the puzzles lack variety are too similar and a bit easy, almost HL2 easy. Fortunately, this port only has mild consolitis, yes there is the usual horrible checkpoint save system, but there is no mouse lag or acceleration. The graphics are clearly optimised for consoles (low res textures, dx9 etc), comparable to Far Cry 2 (from 2008). The quick time events (mash keyboard to survive) are a bit annoying sometimes. Get it in a Steam sale.

Huge amounts of content and freedom, but more quantity than quality at times. Other than the main quest, most things feel a bit bland, repetitive and uninspired.

Most places feel a bit lifeless, like the taverns, which are nearly empty and where next to nothing happens. Compare that to the taverns in, say, The Witcher games, which are bustling with activity. The terrible interface is built around the limits of consoles and their controllers. Level design is linear & restricted due to console hardware limitations. There is after all only so much you can get out of the Xbox 360's 500mb of system RAM! Most characters are still so 2-dimensional and a lot of voice acting is not convincing. There is also the usual lack of voice actors (kill a villain, then talk to quest giver who has same voice and tone).

If you liked Oblivion, or just about any other Bethesda open world game, you will like this too, but in many ways this game is not a big step up from Oblivion. That is, the devs are resting on their laurels. I hope 2015's The Witcher 3 will be better than Skyrim, as that might kick Bethesda into trying harder to innovate and make the next game even better.

The mod scene is very vibrant and there is a mod to improve on just about every weak aspect of the base game, but sadly, there are no huge seamless total-overhaul mod compilations, and getting lots of small mods to work together seamlessly is time consuming, and can be a total pain.

Don't get me wrong, this is a decent game, and you could easily sink 100s of hours into it even if you don't like it that much, but it is certainly not worthy of most of the hype. While I would recommend buying this in a sale, it is still arguably worth the full price.

Graphics are great, but no better than the first game. Even with the tunnel setting, it is more linear and scripted than I would have liked. Some of the voice acting is mediocre, and there were a lot of recycled voices.

This is not a bad port, but there is still significant consolitis: the usual annoying checkpoint save system, too low FOV, mouse acceleration, unskippable intro video, etc... (some of these can be fixed in a config text file). There is an increased emphasis on action and repetitive stealth, possibly at the expense of survival and exploration elements. The AI is dumbed down with unrealistically poor sight in the dark, laughably poor hearing, and weak search behaviour. This was probably done to make a stealth approach easy enough for the average console gamer. You observe the AI's repeating patrol patterns, sneak past when an opening appears, then, when the path seems blocked, a scripted event or interactive item lets you sneak past again. repeat. repeat. repeat, and so on... While FarCry3 stealth was also unrealistic and repetitive, it was at least much more fluid and dynamic. The DLC is of a lower quality, with more bugs and poorly balanced difficulty.

Despite its flaws and the undeserved hype, this is still a decent game I can recommend quite easily.

FC3 has much the same problems FC2 had. Gameplay may have improved slightly, but its just as dumbed down, arcade and formulaic as last time. The world is still not persistent (which is important in an open world game that has some RPG elements). Corpses and loot vanish within seconds and vehicles just spawn or disappear right next to you, and so on. The usual checkpoint save system does not help here either - it does not save often enough and resets everything. The story is more engaging, but felt too unbelievable and often didn't make sense. I also didn't like the OTT drugs-debauchery-insanity-glorified-violence theme. The side-quests are mostly the FedEx variety, and among the worst I have ever seen. The game world has a bit of a theme park feel - everything is too close together (an enemy camp, friendly camp, and hunting range all in the space of a football field or two). Much of the landscape feels man-made, and no where near as impressive and natural as the island in Crysis 1. The enemy AI, which was one of the few really good things in FC2, seems to have been dumbed down in FC3, probably to make the stealth gameplay more accessible. Graphics, while OK, are clearly limited by the Xbox360 specs. Crysis 1 still looks better despite being 5 years older.

Its not all bad though: the flip side to the flaws is that the game is very accessible to casual gamers. Also, the story's ancient temple exploration segments were just as good as the best parts in 2013's Tomb Raider. A pity there was not more of that. FC3 is also a good PC port, including adjustable FOV and mouse acceleration settings.

I can only recommend this game at Steam's 75% off price.

Excellent cinematic atmosphere, story, soundtrack, and great characters. The interrogation gameplay was interesting, but sometimes also frustrating. At times the correct choices seemed a bit far-fetched or inconsistent, even if you were very careful. Maybe the developer pushed this gameplay mechanic a bit too hard in an attempt to keep the difficulty high enough. This prevented me from enjoying an excellent game as much as I should have. The combat also feels out of place (when gunning down hordes of nameless bad guys like in GTA) in a mature game. Flaws aside, this is still a milestone and an example of video games slowly growing up. The open world city is also amazingly authentic, arguably better (and certainly larger) than Liberty City in GTA 4. Porting from consoles was done acceptably well - you get HD textures and enough options, but there is a console checkpoint save system, 30-fps lock and a little mouse lag. Sadly Rockstar Social Club is mandatory.

I wanted to like this game (with its supposed focus on freedom and interesting characters), but could not.

It felt very dated, and there were too many immersion breaking flaws and bugs. In terms of graphics, level design, and animations, this feels like a game from 2005 (to a lesser extent also true for TES:Oblivion, but it certainly bothered me less there). The main quest offers good freedom of choice, but otherwise quests are mostly quantity over quality – a hallmark of Bethesda. Some of the characters were entertaining though, and voice acting is fairly good. Character leveling and perks are also quite well done.

The interface looks cool but is a total pain to use. There are no keyboard hotkeys, which means switching weapons or healing requires browsing through the full menu each time! Combat feels unbalanced (Oblivion and Skyrim were slightly better here) ranging from OK to frustratingly tedious or difficult. The difficulty of various foes often does not match with the expectations the game lore may give you. Enemies run around without any movement inertia making them frustratingly difficult to aim at. Hitbox detection is not great, and your bullets are often blocked by invisible walls if they pass near geometry. I also had lots of enemies get stuck behind geometry, with only legs clipping through the wall. Worst of all, at one point, my gun would not fire bullets – I would hear and see the gun fire, and the ammo counter would work, but no bullets – I got eaten alive, both ingame and in terms of frustration.

The mod experience was bad: I could not get most mods to work despite following all instructions etc. The mod scene may be vibrant, but it is still a total mess. It lacks curatorial refinement and there are no "1-click install" total-overhaul supermods (like the "complete" mod series for the Stalker games).

Buried underneath all the flaws is a good game, and you might find it, but I gave up after days of digging.

Yes, there is a lot of bland cover based shooting and not enough sneaking, but it did not bother me too much. The single-player story is like a typical action movie - sweeping soundtrack, big scripted set pieces, fancy cinematics, implausible but gripping plot, and a bit too short. It was a bit confusing and difficult to follow, but that's no big deal.

Gameplay is solid but a bit formulaic, with tight linear levels lacking multiple approaches, and dumb AI that would do well to eat more carrots (they can't see in the dark). The stealth mechanics based around shadows and "last known position" work fairly well, but are a bit too arcade for my tastes. Multiplayer matchmaking is dead, which is sad as co-op missions seem like fun.

As for those who keep saying this is much worse than the old games like Chaos theory, I slightly disagree, its not significantly better or worse. I am OK with the slightly more streamlined and faster paced direction they have taken, the difference is not as big as many make it out to be.

As a console port, this is fairly good. There is sadly a checkpoint save system, but it is not as bad as in many other games. Otherwise, there are enough settings, no mouse acceleration and skippable cutscenes. On a geeky side note: the unreal engine used here is excellent as usual (allowing me to sleep my pc while fullscreen and later resume right back into the game in 1 sec).

Worth getting in a sale.

One of the better games in the stealth/action genre. It has excellent design philosophy and quality - close to the standard set by half-life 2. Compared to Metro Last light, this has better gameplay mechanics, especially when stealth is considered. Its a very good port. Controls are very smooth, FOV is adjustable, you can pause any time, cutscenes can be skipped, alt-tab works well, levels load fast, and there is a nice old-fashioned manual save system. It even resumes reliably from S3 sleep. The writing is above average. Although linear, levels are well designed with multiple routes to objectives. Voice acting is good, but American - I would have preferred europeans in this victorian industrial setting. The graphics are technically average, but artistically very nice. All the textures are based on watercolor art instead of photos - it looks lovely.

This game is good, but some things prevent it from being great: The gameplay is solid, but we have seen it all before - it is very mainstream and not "realistic" - guards are as dumb as usual, and if I had to sneak past one, there was always a perfectly placed cover object etc, and I would roll my eyes. The game is also not very "large" - it was probably made on a modest budget by AAA standards. I also do not like the dark magic theme (though I do like the steampunk theme).

Overall, this is a quality game I can easily recommend.

Bound in Blood is a much smaller game than Red Dead Redemption, but it is still one of the best wild west themed shooters.

The Good: -Decent story with good voice acting. -The gameplay mechanics are solid, and not too repetitive. -Graphics: While many things look average, some of the environments are truly beautiful (at times on par with Crysis 1). -This game does not shy away from Christian themes, which fit well with the story. And it does so without seeming unpleasantly pro or anti Christian. -A good manual save system (no annoying checkpoint reloads). -No Ubisoft Uplay account required!

The Bad (mostly minor): -A very low Field-of-View (not fixable) due to being optimized for console TV screens. -The first level (tutorial) has clumsy scripting and mediocre graphics, but it gets better with later levels. -Bodies disappear the moment you look away, due to silly Xbox360/PS3 RAM limits. -AI is mediocre (not a big problem since most things are scripted) -screen vibration effects severely overdone during scripted explosions. -Enemies move like ants (no movement inertia), making aiming a pain sometimes.

The Ugly: -No COOP mode! With the two protagonists working together, this game would have been perfect for co-op, and yet there is no co-op mode! What a missed opportunity!

Overall, I can easily recommend this game, especially in a sale.