Recent reviews by Telos <VOLK>

Pros:
- The retro CRT TV filter is great. It may be a little overmuch at first, but the effect is totally cusomizable, or you can just turn it off entirely.
- The story (although rather buried) is interesting. Not groundbreaking or absolutely stunning, but interesting...which is more than I can say for a lot of recent games.
- There are a lot of "borrowed assests" in this game. While I'd normally take umbrage to swiping sprites from older, better games, they're here as homage, and are used with minor changes that make them more than xerox copies.
- Secrets. False walls, floors, and hidden areas on the world map are fun to find, accidentally or not. The NPCs will point you in the direction of a lot of them, but hopefully you'll find some on your own, too.

Cons:
- The music is short loops that restart every time you enter a new area (which is frequently). I love chiptunes, but I had to turn it down to keep my head from exploding.
- There's nothing to it. I'm now just shy of 2 hours into the game. I have seen the entire world map, cleared all the major dungeons, and have collected 3 of the 5 pieces of the King's Heart (i.e. "The Big End Item"). I'm already tired of backtracking...
- It's not "open world". Although you're immediately free to roam anywhere on the world map, you can't do anything (save talk to a few cryptic NPCs) until you get some items. The items must be acquired in a specific order, too. It's a bummer walking to the ends of the Earth just to have to walk all the way back because you can't double jump yet.
- No fighting allowed. This game is strictly a platformer. You walk, you jump, you listen to villagers. You don't fight, you don't cast magic, and you dodge anything that looks like it might bite you. Not very fun.
- It's expensive. Even with the 10% discount, this game just doesn't have that meaty cash-to-fun ratio I love as a PC gamer. Twelve bucks got me maybe 3-4 hours of game, and that's just not a very good value.

All in all, if I had to compare this game to something, it'd be a piece of Fruit Stripe gum. A blast from the past that isn't bad but doesn't quite taste right, and gets stale far too soon.

Although I own Payday: The Heist, I never did play it. One of those Steam deals that I just couldn't pass up, even though I knew deep down inside that it just wasn't my type of game. So when I started looking into Payday 2, I certainly wasn't expecting to be wooed into another purchase. Yet, I did buy it, and I haven't regretted it at all.

Best played with friends (or friendly strangers), Payday 2 is a crazy blend of shooter, co-op, RPG, and GTA. It rewards those who like to plan ahead and play for the team, and utterly destroys those who think that CoD twitch shooting and lone wolf mentality will see them through. It is best played cautiously, but that doesn't mean that it will bore you with pacing or lack of depth. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It's not perfect. There are only a dozen or so "heists" available to play; and even though they offer a good amount of randomness to try to keep things fresh, there's only so many ways to eat a Reese's. Also, once you hit level 60 or so, each additional level becomes a more and more tedious grind, as required XP amounts skyrocket from "fairly attainable" to "constantly out of reach". Yet, regardless of its faults, I'd highly recommend you try it out, especially if you have a few friends who are best described as your "partners in crime".

Strange and certainly difficult, I've found myself enjoying The Binding of Isaac more than any other "rougelike" I've played in the recent past. TONS of items, varied enimies, and numerous brushes with death make it a wildly different game every time you play. If there's one thing I like most of all, it's that even when the game is at its hardest, you can still power through if you have the skills.... luck is only half the equation.

Good ol' fashioned arcade action. Giant bugs, aliens, robots, missiles, explosions, craziness... what's not to love?