Nylige anmeldelser av Dennis Reynolds

The controls take some getting used to and it can be a little clunky, but there are hundreds if not thousands of wrestlers to download and, once everything clicks, the game is a lot of fun. The tutorial could use some work, as it tells you to use light, medium, and heavy attacks but fails to tell you which button is which for those attacks, leaving you to figure things out through trial and error.

Having recently finished the original Darksiders, I decided to dive into the second game as well. I found it to be a general improvement on the first game in some aspects, although it also suffers from many of the same issues that plagued the first and made it not quite as good as it could have been.

Pros:
+ The world in Darksiders II is much more visually diverse and interesting. You'll travel to several different worlds that look wildly different.
+ The graphics are good for their time. The art design is great.
+ The platforming is generally solid with only occasional hiccups due to a poor camera angle.
+ I liked the switch to a random loot drop system, as it made managing your character more involving.
+ The boss battles tended to be both challenging and fun.
+ The story, while not amazing, is solid, much like in the first game. It's easy to follow, even if it doesn't make a ton of sense at times.
+ I liked Death as a protagonist much more than War. Death tends to be more sarcastic and fun, poking fun at the ridiculousness of the various fetch quests he's sent on, whereas War was just kind of stoic and boring.
+ There is a TON of content here. That will show up in the cons as well, ironically. But still, you can stretch this game out for well beyond the hours I put in if you try to 100% it.
+ The puzzles are a lot of fun, and there are a ton of them. Unfortunately, I felt the game utilizes some of its abilities worse than the first game. For example, you get the portal gun, but you only really use it for one short stretch of the late game. It felt like a missed opportunity.

Cons:
- The combat, much like in the first game, has a major tendency to wear out its welcome. Early on this wasn't an issue, and I had hoped that they learned their lesson from the first title, but unfortunately midway through the game it pops up again and never goes away. Fights just last way, way too long.
- The game tries to be both Zelda and God of War, but never quite matches either.
- As to the God of War comparisons, the combat here just isn't as fun or fluid as in the God of War series, which is a problem given how much combat there is. The fighting is a bit too stiff, and dodging has a tendency to be a little iffy.
- There are occasional platforming segments that are an exercise in frustration due to the camera. This isn't a large-scale issue, but there are a few times when you get a timed segment with a fixed camera and you'll die a couple of times because of it.
- This game is a classic case of more not always equating to better. There is so much content here, but a lot of it just feels like busy work. I originally planned to 100% the game, but I just couldn't do it. I lost interest. I couldn't even bring myself to finish the three additional campaigns included in this version of the game because I got burnt out.
- There is a segment in the game where you get a gun and it's tedious as all hell. The game literally throws wave after wave after wave after wave after wave after wave of enemies at you. Every time you found a corner, forty enemies rush at you and are easily killed. It's the worst part of the entire game because you could tell they were just padding the run time. Like, what's the point? I almost quit playing the game during that overly long segment.
- Literally every dungeon amounts to the same thing. You need to find or activate three things, at which point you fight a boss. It starts to feel lazy toward the end.
- Every quest is essentially a fetch quest. Again, this amounts to some lazy writing.

All in all, I would recommend the game. It's fun enough, especially if you pick it up on sale like I did. The art design is awesome, the voice acting is good, and the gameplay is fun, although the fighting is very repetitive. I'd recommend just skipping some of the fetchier quests in the game and focusing on getting through the main story. I can't comment on the DLC campaigns (included in this version), as I just lost interest before finishing them.

This was my third attempt at finally getting around to beating Darksiders, and this time I stuck with it to the end. That's not really an indictment of the game, though. I don't finish most games that I start. I actually strated this one originally on the 360. This game seemed right in my wheelhouse as a big Zelda fan, but the main reason I think that I lost interest initially is that the game is equal parts God of War, only with combat that's not as fun or fluid as God of War.

That's not to say the combat is bad. It's not. It's fine. It's just a little slow and clunky compared to a game like God of War. This wouldn't be a problem, really, except there are some parts of the game with some ungodly long combat segments. These start to wear on you after a while. I think the game would have benefited from a more conservative approach to combat like the Zelda series rather than just throwing wave after wave of enemies at you. The combat also isn't particularly difficult. Enemies hit really hard (at least until you get the better armor) and take huge chunks of your life bar(s), but green health chests abound to fully restore your health and you can carry multiple health power-ups too.

Anyway, on to the good. Considering the game is from the last console generation, it looks pretty good. I'm honestly not sure how much of that is the remaster, but I didn't really have a problem with the visuals. It's not on par with modern releases, but you wouldn't expect it to be. The art design is particularly impressive, and I liked the game's idea of taking a destroyed human civilization that is now a century later home to angels and demons.

The story is decent as well. It gets a little obsessed with proper nouns at times, though, just throwing around names and terms that don't really mean a whole lot to the player. It's never anything you can't follow, but sometimes the writing just feels a bit silly. The voice acting complements the writing well. Mark Hamill puts in a great performance, as do many of the supporting actors. War himself is boring and mostly lifeless, however. You'd think a guy named after war would be a little more exciting.

When you're not murdering hordes of angles and demons, you'll probably be solving puzzles, and this is where the Zelda inspiration shines through. Basically every dungeon is composed much like a Zelda level. You acquire a new item. You use that item to get through the dungeon. That item then becomes useful at finding or unlocking new/secret sections in other areas. The game is entirely linear, though, so unlike some Zelda games you never have a choice of which dungeon to go to next.

All in all, I liked Darksiders. It's not an amazing game, but it was fun.

Play this game high. It's amazing. That is all.

A decent enough first-person platformer that's occasionally frustrating. The frustration mostly stems from the first-person perspective, which often makes it difficult to gauge distances. This will likely be the cause of a lot of your failures in the game.

For the most part, the game does a good job of showing you where you need to go next, although a few of the areas have parts where it's tough to tell where your next destination is. The gameplay itself is simple but solid. There's no combat. You have your grapple glove, which slowly allows more grapples per jump as the game progresses (starting with one and ending with three), and a few new gameplay mechanics are introduced later in the game such as rocket boots and crystals that can recharge your glove while in mid-air.

The story was just kind of there. It's not awful, but not really memorable either. The voice acting isn't great. Not offensively bad or anything, but like the story it's just kind of there. Visually it's fine. Character models look pretty terrible but the backgrounds, while not incredible, look fine and have a unique kind of pseudo-fantasy art design. Given that this is obviously not a high-budget game, though, the graphical issues are forgiveable.

The game is also short (I beat it in just under three bucks), although if you want all the achievements you're probably in for a rough ride and it will probably take multiple playthroughs and a considerably longer span of time. I personally didn't bother.

Should you buy it? At thirteen bucks (the current non-sale price as of the writing of this review), I'd probably pass unless you're in desperate need of a puzzle/platformer. Grab it on a Steam sale.

A solid point and click adventure game. The puzzles seem to range from easy to medium difficulty. Nothing every prevented my progress for long. A few of them are a bit more complex than they let on at the start. There were a couple of instances where I had the basic solution down but was missing a step. Nothing was ever frustrating. I probably could have lived with a slight ramp up in difficulty, but overall the challenge level was fine bordering on a little too easy.

The story is solid as well. It's well-written and, while the voice acting isn't great, it isn't awful either. There are some funny item interactions too, which is par for the course for the medium. Overall the game isn't a comedy like many of the genre's classics. It tells a serious story with comedic relief.

No point in getting into the story much, as that's basically the entire reason to play the game. It involves time travel and a janitor named Joe. The ending wasn't the best, but overall I enjoyed the story that the game told as Joe tries to piece together what is happening and ultimately do something about it.

Would I recommend the game? Yes, if it's on sale. It's only three hours long and, unless you miss an achievement or two (it is possible to miss at least one per chapter I believe) there's really no reason to replay it. For ten bucks it's probably not the greatest value, but for 50% off or more I'd go for it.

I really can't recommend this game enough. It's not perfect, but it tells a damn good story, has a lot of fun but generally not frustrating puzzles, and looks fantastic. It also has one of the best endings of any game I've played.

Honestly, my only complaints are that the driving segments were a little too frustrating and the game occasionally got a bit too cartoony given its generally weighty subject matter. This was particularly true early in the game during various showdowns with a German Baron that played more like a parody than the rather dark material that the game covers during most other segments.

I really loved how the game included actual facts about the war into the menu system for each level. It gives a sense of perspective to the events that occur, while also providing framework for what the characters are doing. There is very little dialogue in the game, only during the occasional cut-scene, and so these tidbits really provide depth to the experience. You can also find collectibles in each level that give additional little facts about the war, the people who fought in it, and the items they left behind. Finally, the various playable characters (and one who isn't playable but is central to the narrative) have diary entries that you can read as you go through the story that add a bit more to their characterization. It's nothing too deep, but it's a fine added touch.

And again, the ending is absolutely fantastic.

First, let me just start by saying that I would not recommend buying this game at the list price. However, it's a solid choice for a Steam sale. The game is around five to six hours long on the initial playthrough and, unless you want to find all the collectibles, there isn't really any replay value.

That said, it was enjoyable enough and didn't overstay its welcome. The game is gorgeous, which I guess is to be expected from what was the Xbox One's flagship launch exclusive. Everything from the armor to the enviroments to the lighting effects looks great, and there is quite a bit of variety to the levels as well, ranging from bright forests filled with aqueducts to the streets of Rome to dark, spooky woods and mountains at the edge of the world, and more besides.

The story was better than I expected as well. It's a relatively simple and predictable tale of revenge. Marius, a Roman soldier, witnesses the murder of his family and then travels to Brittania to seek vengeance on the barbarians that killed them. As expected, there is more to the story, and while I won't spoil it here you can basically predict exactly where the game is going from the moment it begins. We've seen this tale before. But again, it was enjoyably told, and the voice acting was generally pretty good. The Roman gods play a role as well, which adds a bit of uniqueness to an otherwise pretty run-of-the-mill story.

The cut-scenes, of which there are few early on and quite a few more as the game progresses, are all well-directed and stylish. The words I would use to describe Ryse are "set-piece gaming." It's a game where you move from one set-piece to another, almost more spectator than player at times. However, when the game looks as good as Ryse does, you almost don't mind sometimes. There are plenty of memorable set-pieces too, from the Saving Private Ryan-esque beach assault early in the game to the massive battle with war elephants and a horde of barbarians toward the end.

The main weakness to Ryse, unfortunately, is the gameplay itself. It's sort of similar to the Arkham games and Shadow of Mordor with its combat style, although not nearly as deep or fun. It's simplification personified. You have an attack button, a shield bash that knocks back enemies, a counter, and a roll. Unlike the Arkham games, though, this one doesn't give you a notification when enemies are about to attack you, which makes the combat clunkier than it probably should be at times. Some enemies also have heavy attacks where they glow red for a brief moment, but often they don't glow red soon enough for you to counter it, especially in the midst of a crowded fight. It's just not great game design, really. There are times when everything clicks and the combat is fun for a time, but for the most part you're just going through the motions and using the same moves to kill the same few enemies over and over and over again.

The only saving grace to the combat is that it looks awesome. Even when the gameplay itself is uninspired, you can't help but enjoy watching the combat unfold. The finishers, which are glorified quicktime events (although there's no real punishment for failing them), show Marius absolutely decimating his foes in a variety of incredibly over-the-top and gory ways. You do end up seeing the same handful over and over again for the most part, and the health regen finishers are by far the most practical later in the game, but it never stops being pretty.

And that's kind of Ryse in a nutshell. It's a very pretty game without a lot of depth to back up the visuals. Would I recommend it for sixty bucks? Hell no. Would I recommend it for twenty? Eh...not really. But if you see it on sale for five or ten bucks and want a pretty, mostly mindless six hour thrill ride? Sure, why not.

Let me start by saying that I gave this game a thumbs down, but if you can pick it up for like fifteen bucks or less and you're in desperate need of a stealth game, you could do worse. It's not an awful game. There are parts of it that I really enjoyed, but so much of the main story is just godawful.

And that's really the main problem with Thief, the reboot/revival of the classic Thief franchise. The story is just terrible. It's Mass Effect 3 ending bad, but the entire main plot is like that.

It starts out innocently enough. You and your friend/mentee Erin are tasked with breaking into the manor of Baron Northcrest and stealing something. The game isn't terribly specific, and it doesn't matter as things quickly go horribly wrong. Erin is presumably dead and Garrett shortly finds out that he was away for a year. This is the first sign that the writing in the game is both lazy and terrible. Garrett finds out that he was gone for a year and doesn't even act remotely surprised. He just kind of shrugs off what, in a well-written game, would be a major revelation. I'm also fairly certain I saw a newspaper that said the Northcrest manor breakin was a day earlier, which might mean that certain elements of the story were changed later and they were just too lazy to re-record dialogue. Who knows?

Regardless, the first few missions in the game are perfectly adequate, at least for the most part. Being a Thief game, what I want is to stealthily infiltrate places and loot them. The early missions generally provide you with an item you need to steal and a place to steal it from, and that's fine. Some of the side missions are actually really good. The highlight was a task to break into the home of a clockmaker who went crazy and turned his house into a giant puzzle. More of that, please. Perhaps ironically, the best level in the game was the DLC bank heist. That, my friends, is what a Thief game should be. Here's a heavily fortified building filled with swag. Loot the hell out of it. Why the game didn't feature more levels like that is just baffling.

Back to the story...it sucks. Not only does it suck, but it's totally nonsensical. The ending is godawful as well. As long as this game is and as much as it stresses its (awful) story, the final cut-scene is about ten seconds long and gives absolutely no sense of conclusion. It felt like they ran out of money and just didn't have time to do the final cut-scene. Had the game focused less on story, that would have been fine. But it doesn't.

The gameplay, though, is generally okay. It's not amazing, but it works well enough. You have an icon that tells you when you're visible or when you're exposed and there's another icon that appears over the heads of guards that lets you know when you're about to be seen. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's functional. There are occasional frustrations with the AI (basically every time you try to distract a guard with a bottle a different guard goes to investigate it, which given that you can only hold one bottle a time is annoying as all hell), but overall the gameplay is fine. It's no Dishonored, but still fun enough at times.

Visually, the game has a nice atmosphere. Certain levels show it off better than others, but the game looks good for when it was released. The character models suck, though, and the animations don't do much for me either. Still, you spend most of your time hiding in the shadows and watching enemies from a distance, so the atmosphere tends to win out over the crappy models.

I was actually thinking about giving this the thumbs up after the fifth mission, but the sixth mission is about forty-three hours long and wears the hell out of its welcome, and the final two missions are just generally terrible, mostly because they are so intertwined with the story. For that, it gets the thumbs down. It's a game with some all right mecanics but just godawful writing and a nonsensical, lazy story.

Pros:
* Solid writing and decent if unspectacular voice acting.
* Good classic point and click adventure gameplay.
* Puzzles that generally make sense. They make you think from time to time, but they're not deliberately obtuse like many adventure games of old.
* An enjoyable lead character.
* An intriguing mystery that you want to solve.

Cons:
* While the mystery is intriguing, the ultimate resolution is just unsatisfying.
* I didn't care for the direction the story took in the last act.
* Occasional wooden dialogue that stands out amidst the generally good writing.
* Many of the side characters are just lazy caricatures.
* Attempts at humor mostly fall flat.

I'm giving Kathy Rain a recommendation mostly because I think it's a perfectly competent adventure game with several posititve attributes. I thought the game really fell apart at the end, and the resolution kind of leaves more questions than answers, but the series itself definitely has potential going forward. I do wish they'd settle on a tone. Much of the game is serious and fairly dark, as the mystery centered around why Kathy's grandpa went into a state of catatonic shock years earlier and what happened to a girl who drowned around the same time period, so the bad attempts at humor really stand out. The further problem for me is that the game hints at a mystery that is much more intriguing than where the story actually goes.

All in all, if you like old school, point and click adventure games, this is a decent Steam sale buy. Hopefully the developers can find a more solid footing in any potential sequels.