Recent reviews by Allus

While Episode 1 was an intriguing and enjoyable romp through pre-Bioshock Rapture with the dynamic duo, Episode 2 takes a more stealth-based route, with only Elizabeth to keep you company. The constant stealth starts getting old about halfway through, and by the last scene, I was just sprinting as fast as possible to the objective, no matter how long the splicer conga line behind me got. In the end, worth playing, if only to see how Infinite's story ties in to the original Bioshock.

Having beat this game, beat Saints Row the Third, beat this game again, and having stopped playing Saints Row IV part of the way through, I can confidently say that the second is best game in the series (with the possible exception of the original, which I have not played). The PC port isn't the greatest, but that's easy to overlook given the great narrative and fascinating characters this game has on offer. Can currently be had on Steam for a tenner, and definitely worth your money and time.

As everyone else has already mentioned, this is the game that Sim City 5 should have been. So far, it's been great fun, and I'll update this review as I continue playing.

• Clear indications of how far away from the road things will build
  
• A traffic simulation that actually makes sense (this is by the people who made Cities in Motion and its sequel, so it had better)
  
• Large, expandable building area (and you're not even limited to a simple rectangle)
  
• You can build highways, along with whatever crazy interchanges you can come up with.

• REQUIRES A 64-BIT OPERATING SYSTEM (I ended up dual-booting 64-bit Windows 7 just to play this game)
  
• It's a bit too easy to accidentally bankrupt yourself even before you're permitted to take out your first loan. One small loan should be available from the start.
  
• No day/night cycle
  
• A two-way road can't be upgraded to a one-way road (which you could easily do in Sim City 4). You have no choice but to rip and replace. There's a mod for that!
  
• No snapping at the far end when placing one-way anything from the opposite direction. I'd love to see something akin to Sim City 5's snap lines to solve this.

Evoland is a trip through some of the worst features of games past, and reminds you why developers have since moved on to better mechanics. Here are a few of them that the game indulges:

1. One-hit game overs - You're in this mode at the beginning of the game. Add to it that you're on a grid and so are the randomly-moving enemies, and it's a recipe for disaster. I died at least 3 or 4 times, starting the whole game over every time, before I could reach the first save point.

2. Really annoying low-health sounds - I get it that we're supposed to be careful, but come on. It sounds like the alarm clock from hell, and I had to actually shut off the sound when it came on. Don't believe me? Search for it on YouTube and listen for yourself.

3. Backtracking - Notice that chest that seems impossible to get to? That's right, if you want to get 100% completion, you're going to have to backtrack a LOT. You only get certain skills later in the game, and will have to head back to earlier areas to use them to get all the collectables. The game world isn't massive, but the random encounters will be fighting you every step of the way.

4. Loading screens - Yeah, yeah, reading data from disks on the PS1 was a tad slow, I get it. But don't give us artificial loading screens at every one of the four area transitions in a town, and especially not in a town with...

5. Multi-layered fetch quests - We need bombs! That guy probably has some! "Well I used to, but not anymore. Go talk to that gal." ...and you finally get the bombs FIVE PEOPLE (and even more loading screens) later.

6. A lack of mid-boss checkpoints - Figure out the boss's first stage, only to get stomped flat on the second? Too bad! You get to fight the entire thing all over again. (I normally wouldn't complain, but the second stage is essentially random and requires a lot more luck than skill.)

While interesting at least in concept, it doesn't stand up in practice. Aside from the interesting time travel puzzle and the surprisingly functional Diablo section, it's all incredibly boring and tedious. You're much better off playing the games it borrows from (2D Zeldas, Final Fantasy VII, Diablo), than this mess.

Note: This review originally appeared in Volume 36, Issue 6 of Konshuu, a weekly publication of Cal Animage Alpha, UC Berkeley’s anime club. The version you see here contains minor edits from the original publication.

In my quest to find a good game to play and spend some quality time on, I’ve gone through several which just haven’t made the cut. I have talked about two of those games (FFXIV and Battlefield: Bad Company 2) and their problems in my past articles in Konshuu. However, I am happy to report that I have finally found a game that I can enjoy and really sink some time into. This game is not, as you may think, one of the visually stunning, HD-rendered masterpieces of the modern era (though Driver: San Francisco is pretty good), but instead, is a PC title from the year 2000—a game where you could probably count the polygons in the characters’ faces. This game that I speak of is none other than Deus Ex.

The first thing I noticed when I started playing Deus Ex was how the game played depended heavily on the choices I made. Before the gameplay even started, I was asked to select skills from an array of possible specializations, from lockpicking and hacking to light and heavy arms. Much to my delight, I discovered as I progressed through the game that most objectives could be completed in many different ways, and I was never required to have a certain proficiency in any one skill in order to continue. You could specialize any way you want, and still be able to play the whole game (unless you specialize in Swimming and Environmental Resistance; that’s just dumb).

Deus Ex’s gameplay varies based on how you specialize, so how I experienced it (as a hacking-, lockpicking-, and generally non-confrontationally-specialized player) may differ from how you experience it. I spent most of my time picking locked doors, circumventing security systems, and skirting around guards, rather than running and gunning. When I was forced to disable an enemy, I either took them out from afar (either with a rifle or tranq dart), or knocked them out with a riot prod. However, I spent as much, if not more, time observing the movements of guards or security bots, in order to avoid such confrontations as much as possible.

Another aspect of Deus Ex that I was very happy about was its plot. In this game, the plot is integral to the gameplay—any objective the player is given is directly involved in driving the plot forward. Many times, I found myself thinking, “Even if the game didn’t name that as my next objective, I would probably still be doing it.” This allows the game’s story to take a linear path, even though the game’s environments are generally open. Also, in conjunction with the ability to complete missions in various ways, different characters will treat you differently based on how you play. Certain characters will like you if you take a more covert approach, whereas others might share your fondness of busting in the front door with guns blazing.

Finally, for those of you who plan on playing this game after hearing what I’ve had to say, I’ll just say a few words about the game’s difficulty settings, so you don’t have to scratch your head at them for too long. This game features the three standard difficulty settings, plus a “Realistic” mode. “Realistic” means that the enemies have the same amount of health as you do, and they take the same kind of damage you do (armor and augmentations notwithstanding). This mode works great for stealth players, as you can quickly take out a stray guard if they spot you, but majorly botch an intrusion attempt, and the consequences will be, well, realistic (major injury at best, death most of the time). Players who wish to employ the breaking-down-the-front-door approach will probably find that either Medium or Hard difficulty is necessary in order to provide enough of a challenge.

Overall, Deus Ex is probably the best game I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing (and I don’t say that lightly). If you need a break from the generic, brown FPS console games of late (or if you just want to play a good PC game), give Deus Ex a try.