Guild Wars 2: The Guildening

An MMO focused around guilds and grouping players together, Guild Wars was a smash hit mostly due to the fact that it did not require a subscription. You bought the game and that was it, you owned it and could play it whenever you liked. It claimed to require skill in the game itself instead of just grinding levels until you were the most powerful. The skills and abilities you could unlock were many and all served a different purpose.

Guild Wars 2 follows the same line of thought, instead focusing on small microtransactions that can make things easier without breaking the game difficulty over its knee. This isn't a game where you can pay to win, or get to max level with a wave of your magic credit card. Most purchases seem to be simply cosmetic as the only thing I've seen so far that isn't strictly your characters appearance is the ability to swap servers. Being able to swap servers seems kind of unneeded unless you've somehow managed to piss off an entire server's worth of people, and if you've managed to do that maybe multiplayer games aren't your thing. ArenaNet is intending to add functionality into a 'guesting' system allowing you to temporarily load into another server to play with your friends, and making the server swapping seem even more useless.

The controls are very tight allowing you to evade attacks with just the quick double tap of one of the WASD keys or triggering a skill simply by hitting the quick key. The only complaint I have so far is that half your skills are based on your current weapon, but you soon get the ability to swap between two sets of weapon loadouts at will.

                                                                       
                                           A monstrosity from the underworld rears its ugly head.

The stories feel suitably epic, although the human stories are generally against bandits plaguing your  hometown. Also, each of your characters is going to be a great hero. There are no 'evil' side quests nor any real ability to try and ruin things for fun or profit. Lack of evil options aside, the stories do their job well in bringing the world alive and the characters are well written and fleshed out.

                                                         The creation of a Necromancer. 

Character creation is easy and you can create just about any character type imaginable. They do have a tendency to lean towards the 'bishonen' character types if male, but you can easily fine tune your character to your hearts desire. In the human creation alone you choose a backstory based on your station in life and what your characters biggest regret is. Unfortunately there are only three choices in both options; Noble, commoner, or street rat for your station. For your biggest regrets; Don't know your real parents, never recovered your sister's body, or turned down a chance to perform at the circus. These two set up your main story missions and continue throughout the game, giving you epic missions of bravery and skill wherever your daring do takes you.

                                                                              
                                      A Sylvari Mesmer, exploring the gorgeous world around her.

Side quests are run a bit differently than most MMOs, you find an area where someone needs help and do simple jobs for them. This can be from watering crops and feeding cows, to killing giant worms that burrow through the ground. Each person in the area contributes to the quest. if one person does something to help around the area, everybody gets closer to completing the quest. One of my favorite things to do is actually just exploring as you gain XP upon finding grand sweeping vistas or places of interest. Completionists are even rewarded, as once you finish all possible quests, find all places of interest, and find and mark each vista, you recieve a bonus chest filled with special items that are not easily found.

I have not yet been able to play enough to see any endgame content so this is still just a first impressions, but I think its a very good first impression. I love the game and how it all fits together and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.

E-Tank

Slender 0.9: HE JUST STANDS THERE MENACINGLY

Slender 0.9 is a beta indie horror game based around the meme/creepy pasta known as the Slender Man. Sadly while the creators say it is in beta, it seems to be more in alpha. The game itself has a lot of potential that just isn't being used, and it needs a lot more polish. The skeleton of a great game is here somewhere, it just needs to be fleshed out more.

You find yourself entering a dark forest, hopping a fence and wandering around the dark and silent woods. your viewpoint is through a camcorder with a flashlight, aiming to find the pieces to someone's journal. Eight pages in total, and each one covered in the mad scribbling of someone being stalked by the Slender man.

There is no music until you find your first journal page, instead the forest is filled with the sounds one might hear in a dark forest in the middle of the night. Crickets chirping, birds tweeting, and your footsteps as you move through the underbrush of the forest. Once you pick up a journal page however you suddenly hear a soft dull drumming sound. Almost as if its your heart pounding in your ears as you keep having that strange feeling of being watched.

The Slender Man is an unearthly being who's presence distorts and twists reality, which is mostly shown in the various stories and blogs as static and problems with electronic devices. Keeping true to the stories your camcorder will emit static whenever the Slender Man is nearby, warning you to get to safety. He can and will kill you if you don't run away. His teleportation skills are clearly on display, as he only stands still as long as you're looking at him. Look at him too long however, and he'll simply grab you and that's all she wrote.

Your one goal is to find eight journal pages. You're never told what led you here, or why you need to find the pages. I'm hoping the story will be expanded upon when the game is fully released, and will be fleshed out properly. The mechanics serve their purpose, although the sprinting mechanic needs a bit more work. Instead of letting you sprint for a short while and then having to wait until you can run again, you can sprint for much longer but every time you sprint you lower your maximum stamina bar. Meaning if you run now, you won't be able to run away quite as far or fast next time. I can see where they were going with it but with the game having no way to recuperate your stamina bar, it gets annoying. You see the Slender Man, and wonder if you should run. If you run now, you might not be able to get away later once you've gotten further into the game. If you don't run now though, will he get you?

Now then, having said all the cold hard logic of it, I have to say I love this game. As a fan of the Slender blogs, of all the stories, all the creepy pastas, I love this game. They've taken some creepy places from some of the more famous slender blogs/ARGs and rebuilt them in the game. This ends up making you creep through them while hoping you won't turn around and find Mister Slim about to give you the wedgie of a life time. The game I'm seeing in my mind could be so much more than a 'find eight objects in the dark spooky forest' simulation with a bit of eldritch abomination thrown in to spice things up. I'm thinking about a video game written like a slender blog, maybe some ARG style puzzles with codes, hidden clips, and anyone could be an indoctrinated spy.

As it is now the game can be startling, even scary. The atmosphere is perfect, and the lack of a HUD, pause button, or even a main menu is very immersive. I myself haven't been able to complete the game because its scared the hell out of me. I was walking along a small building, looked like an abandoned bathroom. I saw the Slender Man peeking at me from around a wall, so I ducked inside. I finally peeked back out, trying to see if he was still there. I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw he was gone...I wandered through the bathrooms, looking for a piece of the journal inside...Finding nothing, I turned and headed towards the exit. I turned a corner, only to find myself face to face with HIM! I literally screamed and in a panic tried to pause the game using the ESC button, which only shuts the game down.

The game itself can just be so much more, I only hope that the developers will take the time to flesh it out even more.

Slender can currently be downloaded for free from here.

Now excuse me, there's this strange tall man next to me. He won't shut up about the look on my face when he did that.

~E-Tank

Mass Effect 2: The quest for more DLC

 Released on January 26th, 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PC, and for the PS3 on January 18th, 2011, Mass Effect 2 was released to critical acclaim despite many changes to the formula. A much bigger focus on DLC, a much more streamlined and toned down RPG aspect, and a bigger feel of it being a third person shooter.

Mechanically, the game takes everything Mass Effect 1 had, and throws it out the window. Gone is the unique overheating system, gone are the myriad of weapons, gone is your inventory, and gone are the weapon modifications. Its no longer an RPG with shooter elements, its a shooter with RPG elements. This does not particularly have to be a bad thing, but to those coming off of Mass Effect 1's system it can be a bit of a kick in the pants.

Mind you, some things did need to be streamlined. As stated in the previous review, the skill system of Mass Effect 1 was absolutely insane. I believe they took it a bit too far though. Now Shepard can have a maximum of six different skills that you can level up and if you're a soldier, two of those at least are going to be weapon modification skills. Which are useless half of the time depending on what you are fighting.

Instead of a heat meter, now you 'reload'. Though still following the lore that states you don't so much use ammunition as a large block of lead that has tiny fragments sheared off to be used as bullets, its not 'ammo' being reloaded. You're instead 'ejecting the thermal clip' to instantly cool the weapon down, and putting a new one in. So yes you are reloading, just not any of that old 'bullet' nonsense.

Combat feels a bit more visceral and has a much greater focus on cover based shooting. While you could take cover in the first mass effect it was not always necessary, indeed there were several fights where taking cover would have gotten you killed. In Mass Effect 2 your gun is horribly inaccurate unless you're jammed against a wall or barrier of some sort and you will get torn to pieces in seconds from enemy fire unless you have a nice big strong manly wall between you and whatever you're trying to kill.

Weapons have been cut down to almost nothing, there are other weapons available, but they are DLC exclusive, and require five to ten dollars to have access to. There are decent weapons without DLC and you'll be able to see the end of the game fairly easily, but you'll probably be stuck with the same weapon for the majority of the game. Armor suffers from this as well. You find parts to armor, and can mix and match. Pity a lot of the armor pieces are downloadable content only, and generally break the game's difficulty over its knee. Again, you'll be able to find some armor pieces in the game itself, but be prepared to see the same armor on your Shepard for the majority of the game. Though I do appreciate the ability to customize the color of your armor.

The planet exploration segments in Mass Effect 1 have been cut out altogether. Now in order to find items you scan the planet in what could be argued as the most mindnumbing mini-game on the face of the earth. You look at a planet with a constantly repeating texture, holding down the mouse button or gamepad button, waiting for the scanner to detect a quantity of resources. Then you launch a probe, get the resources, rinse and repeat until the planet is depleted. If you want to research any upgrades to your stats, items, and equipment, better start scanning.

These are all small things that can be overlooked, however. nitpicks on a wonderful game for strictly one reason: The characters. Mass Effect 2, has the best ensemble and writing for their characters that I have ever seen. The dialogue is well written, the characters are wonderful, and Bioware's technique for making you love and care an imaginary character is on display. I fell in love with each and every character, even those that I disliked on a personal level. The characters were never just 2D cardboard cutouts, which would be somewhat understandable with so many recruitable characters. Instead each character has hidden depths. Learning about them, earning their trust, and seeing those depths is the highlight of this game.

The combat is passable, even exciting sometimes. The story is a tad cliche, but in all the good ways. The weapons and armor are slimmed down because EA wants your money, but whats left is functional, and fun to play with. All of these things pale strictly to the character and dialogue. Is it worth your time and money? Hell yes it is.

(Thanks to Sean "Chocolate Donuts" Davis for help with editing and feedback)

Mass Effect 1: Blue Alien Space Babes.

Since we're all reeling from the monumental disappointment that is ME3's ending, I decided to perform a bit of a Mass Effect retrospective. The first Mass Effect was released in 2007 to great acclaim and fanfare, leaving the fans waiting impatiently for the next part in the epic trilogy. Chronicaling the adventures of Commander Shepard, an alliance soldier who will soon be making choices that affect the entire galaxy, and his choices will have consequences.

The character creation is incredibly complex, and while it comes with several pre-sets to work off of, it usually makes your character much more 'yours' to customize your Shepard from the ground up. Is he an older gentleman with wrinkles starting to crease his brow? Should he be torn up from his various fights with scars crisscrossing over his face? A fresh young soldier, his hair still cut in the military style and a youthful look? The choice is yours and the choices are many.

The classes are pretty well defined, most of the differences coming down to how much the class dips into each of the three kinds of skills. Such as Biotics, the 'mage' of the setting. These skills will heavily influence how you fight, but generally you'll always have at least one weapon skill, even if its just a pistol.

The leveling system is incredibly confusing, demanding you choose between a multitude of bars that aren't very well defined. There are even three skills that ultimately do the exact same thing. Namely the hacking, electronics, and decrypting skills. Each skill allows you to open chests and devices that are locked, but each container requires a different of the three skills. So if you want to keep finding better equipment, either you need to take one of the classes that have all three of the skills, or make sure your party members have them.

The inventory system can also be a bit confusing, as you have a maximum number of items at one hundred and fifty. You fill this up faster than you'd think, as it covers every little piece of equipment. If you fill up on items and open a container with more stuff, you're forced to destroy it without knowing what exactly what you're destroying. It could be that super awesome rare item that can blow anything away in one shot! Too bad you have to destroy it because your inventory is full.

The story is well written, an epic space opera that follows the three chapter rule magnificently. The characters are well written and you get a real feeling for each character's hopes and dreams. From the quarian space Gypsy (or romani) Tali, to the brash rebellious turian Garrus Vakarian, to the brutish yet shockingly intelligent krogan Wrex. I'd only call the other human squadmates bland due to comparison. I'm sure they'd be interesting characters on their own, but when they have to be compared to the other companions there is no contest.

The mechanics are well done, having a unique overheating system in regards to gunfire. Through the lore, you basically have no need to ever reload, but as you fire, the gun will start to overheat. So you either fire in bursts, or blow through the entire heat meter, and stay in cover until it cools off. Generally burst fire works better, as you can still fire up until the heat meter maxes, but once its hit the red you have to wait for it to cool all the way down, but it makes for an interesting system beyond the generic reloading system.

Overall, Mass Effect is a wonderful game, taking chances and experimenting to try and mix things up. The story is nice, and fully contained, while allowing for expansions on the overall universe. For all the things I've complained about its a great trip to another universe, even if its in the same old Milky Way.

~ E-Tank

Mass Effect 3: A marvelous gourmet meal, until you reach the dessert.

The final part in the trilogy of Mass Effect, ME3 has been long awaited and speculated about. Bioware, being the coy little strumpet it is, has been very tight lipped about the story. Only dropping the occasional hint at a grand amazing finale that will be customized to every Shepard and every story.


“There are many different endings. We wouldn’t do it any other way. How
could you go through all three campaigns playing as your Shepard and
then be forced into a bespoke ending that everyone gets? But I can’t
say any more than that…” ~ Mike Gamble, Associate Producer.

"At this point we’re taking into account so many
decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that
stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,
where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got
ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and
variety in them.” ~ Casey Hudson, Director.


Mechanically, the game is wonderful. They found that magical sweet spot between Mass Effect one and two that brings both of the game's strengths together. You are able to customize your characters equipment in wonderfully diverse ways that also gives you a reason for exploring beyond looking at the beautiful set pieces. Finding upgrades that can be attached to your weapons is great fun, and adds a great bit of strategy. For example: A pistol melee stunner that is essentially a tazer duct taped to the underside of your pistol, makes it a much better close quarters weapon. Instead however you may opt to add the armor piercing modification, allowing your weapon to penetrate cover and do more damage to heavily armored enemies.

Each weapon has its own brand of potential upgrades, and each weapon is distinctive in its capabilities. Giving each weapon a personality all its own, and no weapon ever becomes truly obsolete. This is much harder than it sounds, as you feel the need to continually give the player bigger and better weapon as the game continues, but no weapon truly becomes useless as you play. It all comes down to what your style is. From the original generic Avenger rifle, dedicated solely to spewing lead at relativistic speeds in the general direction of the bad guys. To the Mattock, a semi-automatic rifle that vaguely resembles a P90 and is a mixture of a sniper rifle and an assault rifle. Finally to the Talon, a pistol that functions as a shotgun instead of a highly accurate single shot. Each gun has its balances, its pros and its cons and experimentation is very much a part of the game, even going so far as to give you a shooting gallery to test out combinations.


The RPG elements are back adding in a bit more choice than in Mass Effect 2 in regards to what you want your character to be able to do. As well as not overwhelming the player with so many choices that ultimately boil down to having three different ways to do the exact same thing as in the first Mass Effect. Some would argue it is dumbed down, I would more suggest that its been streamlined. In the original Mass Effect 1 the skills aren't very distinct and many of them are redundant. Streamlining allows you to better understand what you can do and makes it much easier to understand.

The story is well written, even though it occasionally dips into cheesy moments. The characters here are very consistent with what has been established prior, giving you the feel that this is much more than just a character in a video game. Making you feel that they are a real person with wants, dreams, and needs. The story is a grand epic of a tale that will suck you in and toy with your emotions like a toddler that enjoys throwing his things across the walls to see what kind of noises they make when they break.

When I heard about the addition of Multiplayer, I feared that it would be like many games where Multiplayer is thrown in. Basically taking attention away from the single player to appease people who want all games to be like Halo, whereas I buy games for their single player first and their multi-player aspects being a minor concern. Thankfully my fears were unjustified, as they did an amazing job. All multi-player games are co-op, using up to four players to fend off attackers and perform missions such as capturing targets, killing key enemies, or defending a certain area while data is uploaded. Its great fun, very well done, and I'd argue one of the best multiplayer games out there. Its a wonderful game, I'd wager its the best game I've played in a long time.

EXCEPT FOR THAT FREAKING STUPID IDIOTIC ENDING.

The writing takes a nose dive within the final five minutes of the game, the ending is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life. It doesn't manage to entirely taint the rest of the game, but the ending can't even really be called an ending. It just stops short of actually accomplishing anything. Even then, remember the quotes up above in this review? I'll direct you to one in particular, and bold the part that is a complete and utter lie.

"At this point we’re taking into account so many
decisions that you’ve made as a player and reflecting a lot of that
stuff. It’s not even in any way like the traditional game endings,
where you can say how many endings there are or whether you got
ending A, B, or C.....The endings have a lot more sophistication and
variety in them.” ~ Casey Hudson, Director.

There are essentially three endings. I won't spoil them, but I will say this. You have no feeling of accomplishment, what is answered is answered in a manner that will make you wonder what happened to the writers at the last minute. Was it that they just lost intrest? Was it that they didn't give a crap? Or was it more likely that they wanted to sell DLC?

Considering after you watch the writing equivillant to a soiled diaper the first thing you see is a "BUY OUR DLC" message, I'd wager its the last one. The ending has no substance, it might as well just be a generic 'You win' text scroll straight out of the NES days for all it accomplishes or how much of an impact it makes on you. Supposedly it is meant to cause 'speculation', which is among the worst ideas that Bioware could have had, considering how the only things the playerbase can use to fuel said speculation say that everything that Shepard did, everything you accomplished over three games and over a hundred hours of gameplay, is essentially undone.

I'm not going to bother writing an article explaining it as there are already countless articles debating it and explaining why everyone is so pissed off. I can only say that I personally prefer Angry Joe's list of reasons why the ending pisses everybody off. (Massive spoilers.)

There has been announced recently that EA will be releasing the 'Directors Cut' of ME3, possibly altering the 'Ending' so its an actual ending and not something spawned from the fevered dreams of a madman. Amazingly and potentially a sign that the apocalypse is nigh, it will be free. Hopefully this will repair the damage done to this game, and make it much better. I somewhat doubt it, as Bioware seems to have said that this ending is what they intended, and is even upset that the players didn't like it. My pessimism aside, we'll just have to wait and see.

UFO: Aftermath. This is a bug hunt! Game over man, Game over!

UFO: Aftermath.

The most famous tactical turn based squad game series has to be the UFO/X-Com series of games. Unfortunately the last released game of the franchise, X-Com Apocalypse, was not the financial success that
Microprose needed. Ultimately the company went under, and took the genre with it. For six years, we were without squad based tactical combat against aliens, until in 2003 when the game "UFO: Aftermath" was released.

Developed by ALTAR interactive and published by Cenega/Tri Synergy, the game is a spiritual successor to the UFO/X-com games. Taking charge of the defense of the planet you must guide humanity out of an apocalyptic scenario leading to the near extinction of all life on the planet. Defending Earth and its remaining human population from the alien invasion and whatever their sinister intentions may be.

The game starts with a soldier making his way to a nearby abandoned Army base, which serves as a tutorial to teach the basiscs of combat and issuing orders. There are some distinct changes from UFO/X-com, no longer strictly turn based, it functions on a 'planning' system. You can pause the game at any time, allowing you to give your soldiers orders. Once orders have been issued, unpausing sends them off to do as ordered to the best of their ability. The various tactical decisions are easy to grasp and have a distinct impact on the mechanics of the game. This allows you to react to different situations quickly and intuitively. Crouching increases accuracy but slows you down, running makes you go faster but is loud, and burst fire does more damage but is not as accurate as aimed fire.

Unlike UFO/X-Com where your soldiers stats increased depending on what actions you took in combat, Aftermath's soldiers gain experience and level up. Every level you increase one of your soldier's attributes; Strength, agility, dexterity, willpower, intelligence, and perception. Which effects various skills. Having high perception would increase your marksmanship with long range weapons such as sniper rifles. While having high intelligence allows you to make more efficient use of your medkits. Better strength allows you to carry more, and agility lets you better handle a pistol or SMG. Skills can also be upgraded by training if your soldier meets the physical requirements. Training as a medic for example requires intelligence and dexterity, while a scout requires perception and agility.

You generally have fewer soldiers than in UFO/X-com, as you are only the commander of Pheonix squad, the spearhead squad who gets the most dangerous assignments, and are generally the first ones on the ground. You can delegate missions away to other squads, but in general it is less likely that they will succeed. Useful for when its a little mission that won't make much difference, not so useful when assaulting an enemy base or crashed UFO.

Like UFO/X-com you should expect to rack up deaths quickly, especially in the early game where battle sometimes comes down to spotting the enemy before they spot you. Proper use of resources will make it a bit easier to keep your soldiers alive and in the fight. Managing and balancing the amount of resources spent on military bases, research, and engineering factors heavily into the game, and each choice matters. Do you choose to begin an alien autopsy, to better understand these strange creatures attacking us? Do you begin researching the alien weapons and artifacts in the hope to better your squad's equipment? Or do you start building what you already have access to, to ensure every one of your squad members has the best equipment you currently posess? The choice is yours, and the fate of the world is in your hands. No pressure.

A wonderful strategic and tactial game, it can currently be purchased for six dollars off of Good Old Games, and I really couldn't think of a better price. The graphics are a bit dated, but are still pleasing to the eye. The music and sound effects are well done, even if the voices of your soldiers can be a bit cheesy and grating at times. Overall, its a marvelous game that'll have you planning out assaults, counter assaults, and infiltration missions for weeks.

E-Tank

P.s.
I highly recommend the Combo Mod. It tweaks items a bit, adds new enemies, new euipment, and so many new guns. Sooooo many guns.

The Binding of Isaac: Sweat, Blood, and Tears.

The Binding of Isaac.

From the company behind Super Meat Boy, the Binding of Isaac is a simple yet complicated game. It can be best described as a bizarre mixture of roguelike, legend of Zelda dungeon diving, religious iconography, bullet hell games, and so many twisted visuals I felt like my eyeballs had been thrown into a taffy machine.

The game starts off with a cutscene detailing the story so far. Isaac is a normal little boy living with his mother, spending his time solely on having fun and living his life. His mother however is a hardcore fundamentalist, spending all day watching religious TV shows and ignoring her son. Until one day, when she begins to hear voices in her head. Believing it to be the voice of God, she listens and obeys every command. The voice claims that her son is being corrupted by evil, and the only way to save him is to take away everything he enjoys. She does so, even going so far as to strip him bare naked and leave him that way. The next time the voice speaks, it says that she must lock him away, so that nobody can see him. She does as she is told, dutifully locking her son away in his bedroom. The final commandment? She must kill her son to purify him.

Isaac, overhearing her talking to herself about her plans, quickly runs and hides in the basement. Where he encounters nightmarish creations from the fevered dreams of madmen, and must fight his way to safety. Unarmed and still buck naked, he has only one thing he can defend himself with. Curiously high pressured crying, launching tears at his enemies to fend them off.

The controls are very simple to grasp, allowing you to walk in any direction, but limiting you to firing only in four directions. This is not as irritating as it could be due to the ability to sling most of your attacks by using your momentum, but it can still be incredibly infuriating and will lead to a multitude of deaths. Which wouldn't be as much of a problem if not for the little fact that each death is permanent. That's right, if you die, you must start the whole game over again. This adds much more to the tension, and requires you to carefully gauge and consider each resource you have at your disposal. However, like other roguelikes, Isaac's content is procedurally generated. That room you're about to walk in may hold the key to survival, or it could lead into the lair of a horrific monstrosity that shouldn't exist, that wants to suck the marrow from your bones.

Also like many roguelikes, the items you find in the various mazes are different each time, running the gamut from useful to useless and even harmful. Just about every item has a visual effect on Isaac's body, sometimes making you look just as, or even more monstrous than the monsters you face. He who fights monsters etc. etc. As a few examples, finding a stone lodges it in Isaac's forehead, and turns his tears grey. Finding a coat hanger increases the rate of fire of your tears, but jams a coat hanger through Isaac's head. Finding a wooden spoon increases Isaac's speed, but causes red marks all over Isaac's face as if he was beaten with a wooden spoon. Meaning each play through will lead to different appearances, and different ways of having to fight.

The visuals are amazingly well done. Smooth and consistent in all their disgusting glory. From a simple child crying bloody tears, to a headless body gushing blood from its stump, to a giant floating bag of flesh coughing out attack flies. Every creature seems to be more disturbing than the last, and each is dangerous in its own right. You can only cry tears so fast, and you are usually swarmed by enemies seeking to tear you apart.

Usually you are given a fair shake, a special item always available per level, but sometimes the random numbers god will decide to screw you over beyond belief. If you're skilled enough at dodging you can beat almost anything with the base stats, but that doesn't mean you won't have some deaths that utterly infuriate you. Many of them regarding being swarmed with attacks and personal space invaders overwhelming you. Causing Isaac to explode into a small cloud of blood and revealing his will, where he gives all the items he has discovered to his pet cat.

While infuriating at times, the game has that perfect mixture of hair tearing difficulty, yet making it incredibly fun in the process. The powers and abilities you unlock and find are creative and have a dark humor about them, the enemies are unique and varied, and the controls are tight if a bit limiting, and the music fits the haunting mood perfectly.

Its a marvelous game, truly more than worth the price on Steam. At five dollars it is a steal, and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. Semper Fi.

Jagged Alliance, one of the best squad based strategy games out there, able to rub shoulders with games such as the X-Com series, has been sadly ignored for the past 13 years. The previous installment being Jagged Alliance 2, where a mercenary and his hired band of thugs, murderers, and psychopaths aid in the revolution of the fictional country of Alruco. You are able to purchase weapons, pay for insurance policies on your mercs, and even send flowers to the queen of Alruco. If only to watch her bitch-slap her hapless servant.

Fortunately, the Jagged Alliance series has returned with the latest title, Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. This latest title brings back the fun of ordering around a mob of bloodthirsty mercenaries in the attempt to save the people of Alruco. The developers have worked to try to capture the same spirit of the original, and I feel they have succeeded. The mercenaries are varied and you'll have fun reading their background information and dossiers. Many of them have bonuses and penalties based around their psyche, for instance a model turned mercenary has a huge morale boost when fighting naked.

The types of weapons are varied including but not limited to pistols, SMGs, shotguns, rocket launchers, rifles, etc. Each character has his or her own skillset, mechanics can pick locks and repair guns, medics can inject morphine and use medkits, demo men can use C4 to blow open weakened walls to gain entrance. All can generally point a gun at something and pull the trigger until whatever is on the wrong end of it is dead, just tends to miss a lot more than the dedicated soldiers.

The interface is intuitive, the buttons often having a very clear definition of what they do, and if you have a question the game offers tooltips. The mechanics are very well put together, giving you all the information you need in a firefight, such as line of sight and a general idea where your merc will be shooting to help avoid friendly fire. My one complaint is that your mercs can't peek around a corner in order to fire from cover, but you can find the usual waist high barricades to duck behind in a pinch.

The graphics are beautiful, showing great detail that usually would not be needed in a strategy game like this. Gunfire shatters concrete, digs holes in ground, and of course puts holes in your enemies. Each bullet clearly shows an impact with effects depending on the terrain hit, helping you see how close, or how far away the shooter is to their target.

What will probably be the most controversial, especially to people who grew up playing the original Jagged Alliance 2 is the change from pure turn based strategy to a mixture of real time and turn based. The 'Plan and go' system allows you to pause the action, selecting mercs individually to tell them where to go, set way points, and tell them when to fire. You can set options to let it pause automatically, such as when spotting, or being spotted by an enemy. This lets you give orders without having to rely on your reflexes when your team is under fire.

I personally feel its a good thing because when you are simply rehashing the same game over and over again it quickly leads to stagnation. The developers held onto that original feeling and spirit of the Jagged Alliance games, and used new ideas and mechanics to give the players the best control they could give over their team.

I have not yet completed the game, as it only just came out. (I'm not /that/ good.) From what I have seen however, it is very much the remake that the original deserves and so much more.

The ultimate question, is it worth it? Yes, very much so. You can while away the hours with tactical planning, training militia, and selecting your weapons. The destruction and mayhem you can create is amazingly cathartic, and in the end you're leading a band of psychopaths across a country, cutting a bloody swathe through enemy soldiers.

Lock and load; it's time to overthrow a dictatorship.

E-Tank

(Edited by Nathan 'Miles' Davis)

Skyrim: You Rat Dragon Bastard.

Skyrim!

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, The latest entry in Bethesda Studios' award-winning Elder Scrolls series, is a freeform RPG with many of the pros and cons of Bethesda's games. Such as their genuinely beautiful worlds, their mediocre at best writing skills, or their belief that everyone has to be able to become the leader of every guild ever made. You explore, gain skills, adventure, dungeon crawl, do quests, meet interesting people and creatures, and kill them for profit.

The combat system is a major step up from their prior entry, Oblivion, Losing the floatiness and lack of impact from each blow, and gaining the ability to dual wield While you can use axes, swords, daggers, maces, and even spells in this way, you lose the protective ability to block. Additionally, weapon balance is better than ever, each type having slightly different damage and speed to give players an incentive to try new things.

The skills have been streamlined massively. All the weapons have now been condensed into archery, one handed, and two handed. Armorer has been changed into the more nebulous Smithing, and Mysticism as a category has been rolled somewhat into Conjuration.

Some of these perks include:
Get the key to a lock you have picked.
Never break a lock pick.
Able to bribe guards.
Decapitate enemies.
Zoom in and slow down time while aiming a bow.
Do 15x sneak attack damage with a dagger.
And many many more.

Another change is the removal of the Armorer skill in exchange for the new Smithing skill, which allows you to upgrade and craft new equipment, and even jewelry. The system is surprisingly fun, giving a real feeling of accomplishment for finding a rare ore out in the middle of nowhere.

Also new are the Shouts, an ancient draconic language capable of magical effects. From throwing a burst of force at them, to breathing fire or frost, or even calling down lightning on all who stand against you. You unlock them by killing a dragon and absorbing its soul, usually after a knock down drag out fight. My one complaint with these fights is they are more geared towards heavy armor and weapons users once the dragon is on the ground, while thieves and assassins are left to try and pepper the dragon with arrows while ducking in and out of cover.

Bethesda still hasn't yet gotten this writing thing down, as it is the weakest point of this game. The majority of missions, especially guild missions, are stuck within three potential answers.

"I'm doing this for the guild or my own personal honor."
"I'm doing this because I'm an asshole, or I'm doing it in spite of the fact that I'm an asshole."
"I'm doing this because I want to get paid."

Generally the responses are the same general non-commital "eh", meaning you can basically be nothing but an asshole to everyone in the guild and yet they'll treat you generally the same. Though I must stress, it is much better than Oblivion, where you weren't even the main character, or Fallout 3.

Now, rambling aside. Time to rate how much it is worth, in my opinion.


Currently on steam, you can purchase Skyrim for $60.00

I personally enjoy this game quite a lot, and with the modding community attached to it, it is easily worth sixty dollars. Though if you can't afford it, wait for a sale or the Game of the year edition.

~
E-Tank

First review: Terraria!

Released by indie game developer Re-Logic, Terraria as a game took a lot of inspiration from Minecraft, which in turn took its inspiration from Infiniminer. However, it is arguably deeper than Minecraft. Giving you goals to reach beyond simply just throwing you in a sandbox and saying "Build to your heart's content." I will admit, when I first was given it by a friend of mine (Thank you Chocolate Donuts), I expected it to be just that. A Minecraft ripoff in 2D. I was very very wrong.

It has a rather novel way of allowing you to visit other worlds. Each character is its own save, and you are able to enter any world you like with said character. This means you could bring your brand new created character into the world of someone who has been playing a long time. Or you can bring your older character with all his overpowered goodies to your friend's world to give him a helping hand.

After choosing the appearance and color of your hair, shirt, and pants. You are dropped into a randomly generated world of varying size. You can choose small, medium, and large. The smallest worlds are very compact, and while you can grow in strength quickly, you're also forced to confront more enemies and monsters in a shorter amount of time. You also pick your difficulty. Softcore, where you drop half of the money you're carrying at the time. Mediumcore, you drop everything you are carrying at the time. As well as Hardcore, if you die once, you are dead forever. The character is deleted, and s/he drops everything s/he had.

I will do my best to outline generally what you can expect from the game without spoiling anything. If I don't speak on something, assume I'm trying not to spoil.

Your character begins with two tools, a pickax and an ax. As well as one weapon, a short sword. These are more useful than you would imagine. The first few upgrades do little more than increase the speed at which the tool works, and how much damage the weapon does.

There is also an element of chance, as the majority of your crafted equipment will have a title assigned to it. This can run from very bad to very good. The worst being to my knowledge 'broken' and the best being 'legendary' or 'godlike'.

Even though the game is 2D, against Minecraft's 3D approach, the game itself offers a lot more crafting options. Unlike Minecraft however, you are given a guide who helps you learn how to survive, and how to build what you need. By speaking to him and placing ingredients into his hands, he'll tell you what can be made from it, and what else you require in the recipe.

                                 (The guide showing us what we can build with lumber)


Yes, there are other people in this world, and they offer varying skills, including a merchant, nurse, demolitions expert, and more. Attracting them requires two things. First, certain pre-requisites must be met. The merchant for instance requires you to have saved up at least fifty silver coins. After all if you don't have the money to spend, why should he come to you? They also require their own living space. Living spaces comprise of a building with walls, ceiling, and a floor. As well as furniture to liven the place up. You need a chair, table, light source, and door for it to be considered a proper residence. There are some items that do double duty as a table and as chairs, but they are harder to make, due to having rarer ingredients. If you want NPCs early, you're going to have to settle for sticking to generic wooden chairs and tables. At first, at least.

The NPC's have their own personalities which color their occupations. Many of them offer items for sale, and all will buy items from you, at a discount of course. Even if you are the only thing standing between them and a horrific demise, you get No Hero Discount. Oh yes, you have to buy, sell, and hunt down enemies. Fortunately the majority of them have the old RPG staple of somehow carrying money in their stomachs.

The monsters are much more varied than Minecraft. The starting enemies will be the slimes, a valuable source of flammable ooze to make torches, and make several normal objects into sticky variants. Such as sticky bombs and sticky glowsticks to make impromptu lights while deep underground. As night falls, zombies will rise from their graves with a hunger for the living. Floating eyeballs, optic nerves and blood vessels trailing behind them, swarm through the air. What a horrible night to have a curse. There are even boss creatures, that upon their death, drop rare items and ores all over the place. Be cautious however as these creatures are more dangerous than they usually appear.

Multiplayer is just marvelous, better built than Minecraft's. It functions on IPs, and doesn't have a server browser, but considering you generally are only going to play with 2-4 people on one server, this can be excused. There is very little lag, which makes this a wonderful game to play with friends.

For this review, I am going to rate the game based on the price point it is currently retailing at of this writing. The prices are in US($) Dollars.

As of this writing, the game can be purchased and downloaded in roughly 5-10 minutes off of steam, for $9.99. This includes all future patches, as there are no plans to my knowledge of any DLC with a price tag.

Honestly, for what you get, this price is a bit low. Knowing about it, and knowing how much fun I've had with it, I'd gladly pay up to fifteen dollars for this enjoyment. Twenty would be stretching it, but depending on how much you like playing with your friends, it'd easily be worth it.

~
E-Tank

What is it worth? What do you pay for it?

Greetings and salutations, internet. I'm E-Tank, a wanna be game reviewer. I'm not particularly that good yet, though I hope to be good enough to perhaps become a runaway success like so many out there. *coughzeropunctuationcough*

I'll try various styles, reviewing old, and new games. My budget is limited however, and I might not be able to review games just as they come out all the time. I'll also try and focus on older games that are not well known, and nigh criminal that they are not considered classics.

I try and play through every game I review, but some of them are a bit large and I might miss a few things, here and there. Remember please, this is opinion based.

Happy Gaming!