Recent reviews by Taramoor

Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta is a bad game. The physics are bad, the AI is bad, the combat is terrible, the graphics are mediocre, the first vehicle sequence is probably one of the worst things I've ever tried to play, characters constantly clip into themselves, the story is laughable, the voice-acting is workmanlike, and the camera is jerky and unfriendly.

However, it is a very charming game with some interesting ideas buried under its terribleness. Firstly, any game set in the middle east where you aren't a white guy blowing half of it up is uncommon, and fewer games still feature a badass Muslim woman in a hijab blowing away mummies and evil corporate goons with an AK-47. It's an Uncharted knockoff, and it's terrible, but it seems like it's more a lack of experience and technical expertise that makes it terrible than a lack of passion or effort by the dev team. Yes, it's bad, but they poured their souls into this damnit.

Wow.

How did this game not win all the awards? I would put it high, high, HIGH on my list of GOTY candidates. The only possible weakness in it is that it's too short (About seven hours for me, start to finish). Nilin jumped right up the list of my favorite video game characters, being a weird amalgam of Jade from BG&E and Faith from Mirror's Edge. The story was tight (as in compact and focused) and also sweet (as in awesome), and it managed to subvert many of the tropes I kept expecting. The world was a take on dystopia that I haven't seen. The combat was a little imprecise, and you didn't really get to explore the world much physically even though there was tons of detail crammed into every little nook and cranny, but there was just so much there.

There weren't enough memory remixes, but I file that under the "Too short" category. I loved every second of it and only regret that there isn't much more left to play other than hunting down all the doodads and trying it on hard.