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With the Quakecon sale kicking off on Friday, I was a bit surprised to see that there was a Quake 4! Sure, I got away from PC gaming for awhile and it had been a REALLY long time since I was heavy into Doom and Quake, but I felt a little funny that I didn't know this existed! With a cheap price I figured it was a must play for nostalgia's sake at the very least. I didn't expect a whole lot out of it, which is good because it turns it's okay. Not great, but okay.

I run a couple of movie podcasts, so I watch a lot of flicks. The state of the modern shooter in comparison to classic style shooters compares pretty well to the world of movies. Most of the time, you like to watch a movie that's well put together, highly polished, engaging and engrossing. This translates to your modern shooters in the game world. Games such as Bioshock Infinite or even Deadspace are a different beast than the shooters we all cut our teeth on. They're deep, they have branching stories, they're well put together. It's a production...an experience.

Jumping back to your movie world. you have another class of movie which boils down to your dumb action or horror movies, stuff put out by the likes of Syfy Channel or Asylum. These movies are cheesy with no depth whatsoever. They're there simply to treat you to explosions and special effects, nothing more than the spectacle. Quake 4 fits in perfectly with this type of movie; there' s no depth to it whatsoever, it's there simply for you to run around and shoot aliens. And that's it.

Much like watching the movies though, sometimes we simply don't feel like wrapping our head around something deep. We want to munch popcorn and watch stuff explode. Video games are the same way, and Quake 4 is a pretty perfect fit for those moods. It's a solid through back to the good old days where you're only concern was checkpoints and finding your way to the rail gun. The story is a nice aside but really doesn't do anything to suck you into the game. You're sticking around for the fun of shooting Stroggs and seeing what the weapons do.

There's some sections in Quake 4 that are annoying. The vehicle sections are slow and clunky which makes them frustrating when you're trying to dodge. Some of them feel like you're on a rail shooter without a whole lot to shoot at. The game is way too long for what you're there for too.

In the end though, things blow up pretty well and it play smoothly while showing it's age. It's worth $5 and a Sunday afternoon.

I like the idea of being a space trucker as much as the next guy. Hell, I even like the idea of flinging heavy crates around with a gravity gun. Sounds pretty fun! In Rochard however, the whole thing just felt a bit flat for me. Sure, the puzzle platformer idea is good one and Rochard plays with the idea pretty well early on. It didn't take too long to come across some jumping puzzles that were just way to frustrating. Though the game looked good and the physics seemed solid, I just didn't anything about it urging me to push on past the frustration.

I may go back to it some day; the game wasn't horrible by anymeans. With a giant summer sale back log though, there's other things to play.

I tried Dishonored back when it first came back on the 360 and while I thought it looked cool and sounded cooler; it just didn't grab me. It kept nagging at me though because I thought it was definitely a game I should like. I gave in during the summer sale and and I’ll be honest; I hit a point at the very beginning where it still didn't grab me. This time, I pushed through my frustration and it turns out, I love this game!

I was totally caught up in the story and I really dug Korvo. I was even caught a bit by surprise by the twists and turns that happen. Hell, I even fell in love with the world of Dunwall and the side stories you find in all the books that you collect along the way. The Outsiders powers are fun though I really only used Blink and The Ash powers, but they fit well with the combat they've built into the game.

Early on, it was the fact that they give you wide open maps and leave it up to you to figure out how to get get through them that overwhelmed me. Once I figured out that the key to playing Dishonored is to explore and make your own way, the game really opened up for me and turned into something special.

Did you find yourself watching Danny Trejo in that movie "Bad Ass" and think to yourself, "This would make a great video game!" If you did, you should be ashamed of yourself. That movie was god awful and nobody deserves to play a game about that. Did you find yourself thinking you'd want to play a game based on Mr. Trejo after you left "Machete"? Well, that's a bit more understandable. Plus, that's a lot what Shank is like!"

When I say Shank is like "Machete", I mean it's violent and involves machetes. The comparison's pretty direct. In the movie, we get a few attempts at plot and drama sprinkled in a whole lot of action scenes. Shank's laid out the same way! You cruise through a Mexican villa occupied by your former crime lord boss and his goons, in search of revenge. The game itself is pure beat-em-up in the mechanics department, which leads to straight forward game play that may run a little stale by the end of the game. It's still competent enough to make for some fun in small bursts.

I picked up Shank on a Humble Bundle for a measley $1; this game is well worth that. I'd even say it's worth paying a good $5 for. You get an okay story and plenty of action, though you'll get frustrated a bit when they start to spam you with the harder bad guys. In small groups these goons are tough but managable, but when they through too many at you, they can break the flow of your combo's you've been pulling off for awhile. Frustarting, but not game breaking. Just be prepared to swear at your monitor a bit.

I like puzzle games quite a bit, so on the surface Dungeon Hearts looks like it would fit pretty well for me in that Candy Crush/Bejeweled corner of my game library. Heck, even the anime characters don't even phase me that much. They're pretty harmless and fairly low key as far as such characters go. The thing that landed Dungeon Hearts is the game play.

The puzzle style of Dungeon Hearts is not hard to figure out. In theory, it's actually a pretty decent puzzle system. Match 3 or more colors to clear gems off the moving game board, each color representing a different character who then does damage to your enemy. Combine gems of different colors on different levels, double your attack score! My frustrations come mostly from my self; I just don't feel fast enough to be any good at the game.

The learning curve starts out simple enough, but it doesn't take long before you're in the full mix of battle and for me, I started to fumble my gems very quickly. This led to frustration, which led to resentment towards a game I wanted to be casual and ultimately lead to it's being removed from the hard drive.

I'ts not a bad game by any means, it's just not for me.

Oddly enough, Terraria was the first game I'd bought on Steam. I had been away from PC gaming for a fair amount of time and a good friend had discovered the game on SA and started pestering me to play. The buy in was dirt cheap and it looked mighty weird with it's retro chic graphics, but I figured if said friend was so fired up about it, I might as well give it ago. All of the praise I could find at the time compared it to Minecraft, so I was a bit leary. I'd watched my kid play hours of Minecraft and it just wasn't my bag. I'm glad I was able to push that stigma aside, because I ended up finding a gem of a game that pulled me away from my fancy consoles for a good chunk of time.

We've all been kids; kids love to explore. Exploration is the foundation of Terraria. You start out with nothing more than a pick axe and a large map, then you're left with simply trying to figure out what's there. Start to dig, maybe build a house and you're off and running.

There's something mentally satisfying about being able to click away at the soft earth, digging a path ever deeper. It may seem pointless, but as you tunnel down, maybe you take a jog to your right and all of a sudden a hidden cave opens up before you. Dig some more, perhaps you find an underground lake. Maybe after a few hours of digging, you find something far more sinister. Then, you spice things up by spinning up a server and letting your friends join you, and now you're working in conjunction, worming your way through the contryside with a misdrected sense of manifest destiny, coupled with the thrill of shouting 'ooh, look what I found!' and getting them to come see.

Terraria's not flashy, but it doesn't need to be. It's a relaxing good time and it'll bring you a wee bit of the childhood joy of exploring.

Waking Mars is an interesting 'game' and a cool concept. It's very chill and the sense of exploration and experimentation in an alien environment make for a good time. Adding in a decent soundtrack and a light but okay narrative to it helps to create a nice dreamy atmosphere as well. The problem is...it's just not very exciting after awhile. While it's made well known that this isnt your typical action packed game going in, and I'm fine with that; there's just not enough here to keep me pushign on to the end when there are other games to play.

That said, Waking Mars is usually found for very cheap in various bundles, so it's worth checking out just for the experience. While I have no intentions of solidering through it at the moment, I can certainly see times in the future where the mood is right for something more relaxing and thought provoking, and Waking Mars will definitely scratch that itch.

It’s 1619, you’re a guy named Raleigh who’s been busted for your nefarious ways and sentenced to death by the King of England. You’re not ready to go out like that though; you still have a lot of life in you. So, you set out for the colonies to make a name for yourself by doing something heroic to put yourself back in the king’s favor. You set your sights on the lost colony of Roanoke where surely you can become a hero in the war against the Spanish and nab yourself a reprieve on that execution thing. Except…the colonies, they’re on Mars. And the Spanish, they fight alongside the Martian Overlords. And you, you’re going to take them all on with your retro-futuristic wooden sky jet-ski armed with lasers!

I know, it sounds nutty right? It certainly is. The story plays directly to fans of science fiction though, especially if you’re a fan of things such as “John Carter of Mars”. Thankfully, this shoot-em-up packs in plenty of action to spice things up and screens full of bullet hell that will keep you on your toes. The controls are tight enough to make these moments of on screen chaos manageable. There are times where Jamestown feels like it might be a bit of an easy mode for the classic shmup fan; Raleigh’s hitbox is very tiny and you’ll find yourself getting away with moves that you know shouldn’t be able to. The game still manages to be a great time though and the story is so far out there, it feels worth pushing through the levels just to find out where they’re going with Sir Raleigh of Mars.

Starting out with as much promise as Tawny Kitaen atop David Coverdale's car, Hell Yeah seems like it would be the perfect package. Solid platformer gameplay, good graphics, toilet humor and violence. It holds up to that promise for a good while too. Much like most of anything involved with Whitesnake, it really doesn't hold up in the long run though. Perhaps it's the coke and booze, but I'd guess it's more from a bad case of repetitiveness and tedious boss fights that start to get frustrating the further you make it through the map. Still, if you can find a copy for cheap, it's a good way to while away some hours, especially if you like platformers and hair metal aesthetic. And satanic rabbits.

HEY GUYS! I'm just like Stephen King and Dean Koontz! I mean, I write scary stories, I like to live in small quirky towns in the middle of BFE North East, and creepy ♥♥♥♥ happens to me all the time! See, just like Stephen King and Dean Koontz!

Don't get me wrong, Alan Wake's all right. He's just a little heavy on the reference dropping. If you can get past that, you can get your self a Stephen Koontz esque story that's a bit creepy and overall pretty interesting. There's nothing too exciting here mechanics wise (KINDA LIKE A DEAN KOONTZ NOVEL AMIRITE?) but let's face it; you're really just here for the story and movie like experience.

In small doses, the 'haha, i'm a troubled writer' schtick doesn't get too thick. Thankfully, it's laid out in a episodic format which means it's in nice digestible chunks. Something that Stephen King's novels could use sometimes. Play this one episode at a time, with your lights off, and it'll be more satisfying than how the Dark Tower played out!