[MoriartyL]

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (DX version)

Glorious. In my opinion, this is a better game than A Link to the Past, its immediate predecessor. And it always amazes me to see how much Nintendo was able to pull off with the primitive Game Boy hardware. I mean, this isn't an imitation like Capcom's later Game Boy Zeldas. This is the real deal. The dungeons are inspired, though I'm partial to the themed dungeons of the later games. The Eagle's Tower especially was brilliant. The world of Koholint Island grew on me a lot, and the story is fairy-tale charming in ways that reminded me of Miyazaki. (Though to Westerners like myself, doesn't everything good that's Japanese remind us of Miyazaki?)

Only playing this after all the 3D Zelda games, it came as a big shock to me to see just how many things I loved about the 3D games were here first! I mean, there were a bunch of boss battles in Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker which I thought were oh-so-clever, and yet here they are in a 1993 game, exactly the same! Shame on them. Plus the idea of picking songs for the Ocarina and the story-significance of music, though that was all done better later. And a whole bunch of other things which I can't think of now, but which bothered me a little bit back when I ran into them. That isn't a knock against this game at all, though. All I'm saying is, they really ought to design this stuff from scratch each time, rather than repeating what they've already done.

Anyway... The platforming was great fun, and I only wished there were more of it. They did a nice job integrating that with the conventional Zelda action and puzzles by inventing Roc's Feather. Some of the puzzles went right over my head and I had to bust out the walkthroughs, but in hindsight they were quite fair, with one or two exceptions.

Crossing the Super Mario universe over with Zelda was just... weird. But given the setting of the game, I can't complain.

If I have a gripe, it's that I don't like the additions they made to this 1998 re-release. They feel tacked-on and gimmicky. The photo side-quest doesn't fit in too well and feels like it's just there to sell Game Boy Printers. And the hidden color-themed dungeon is of a much lower quality in practically every way than the rest of the game. The colorization of the rest of the game is nicely done, though.

The music isn't much of an achievement, especially when compared with the other Zelda games. The only significant original composition -Ballad of the Wind Fish- is awkward and is never given a particularly good arrangement. Much more entertaining are the endless variations on the original Zelda theme. The dungeon music can grate a little on the ears, but it's not too bad. What is bad is the music for the defense and attack power-ups. I actively tried to avoid those, just so I wouldn't have to hear that terrible music.

The game isn't working on all the levels its successor, Ocarina of Time, would. On its own terms, however, it's a wonderful little classical metalude, light in concept but superb in execution.

5/5

[Isak]

Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny (PS2) - 7/10

[Endosanity]

Conquered:

Daikatana - PC - Glad that's over... uninstall and NEXT!

[stepurhan]

Lego Island 2

This has marred my faith in the Lego gaming franchise. I enjoyed Lego Island and Lego Star Wars 2 but this game suffered from illogical minigames and cranky control systems. Even outside the minigames I found myself getting hung up on the scenery in weird ways.

[Chaosphere]

BioShock - 10/10
Conquests of Camelot - 7,5/10

[MoP]

A Tale of Two Kingdoms - my first playthrough. Really cool, a game I sure would pay for.

The detailed descriptions and hidden references really make just exploring very entertaining. For a non-native English speaker it was a little difficult getting used to the language, and a dictionary was a necessity (it's a great way of broadening my vocabulary tho' ).
One hot-spot was really hard to spot, but overall most of the puzzles are logical. I'm not a fan of timed puzzles, but they did make sense as well, and added some dynamics.

An interesting and satisfying experience. The non-linearity and various ways of solving puzzles mean it's not a one-timer as well - I'm definitely getting back to this game. 4 more endings await :thumbsup:

[Sinilind]

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 8.5/10

I liked The longest Journey a bit more..

[insane_cobra]

Halo, this time on Heroic. I appreciated it even more than the last time. There were no nasty surprises anymore (The Library, ugh) so I was able to just concentrate on what Halo does best - combat. On the Heroic difficulty Elites are even more fun to fight.

[vonpookie]

Finished on Sunday: Phantasmagoria 2.

Rather glad I didn't pay for it.

[Sinilind]

Still Life, few minutes ago.
I really liked it. Great puzzles.
8/10

[MdaG]

Shadow of the Colossus (9/10)
Extremely enjoyable game which I can recommend to anyone who likes boss battles. The story is weak, but the ending makes up for it by far (WOW!).

Spoiler:

Is the baby with horns ICO?

My only annoyance with this game is that hard mode is unlocked when you finish it for the first time instead of being available from the start.

[Giligan]

Halo 2

It's hard for me to say, because I don't like Halo and don't really want to like Halo, but this game was pretty good. Kudos to Bungie for making aliens believable, at the least. The story and presentation was good-not the best-but close enough to be acceptably well done. I wouldn't say any of the plots elements are particularly original or ground-breaking, but the developers managed to fit them together in a good way. It's not what you write, it's how you write it, or so the proverbial "they" say. And a game's story is in the end what makes or breaks it.

The graphics were also pretty good. Character models of the Humans were exceptionally sharp, almost what I'd expect from an early 360 game. The enemy models weren't quite as good, but excellent nontheless. the environments were actually poor looking, which fans will defensively attribute to the maps' sheer sizes. The environments are so utterly gigantic, I'm surprised Xbox consoles didn't simple disappear in a cloud of smoke when players first put the Halo 2 disks in the tray.

The best part of the game is the vehicular combat. It was a dream come true to a vehicle fan like me. Bungie did vehicles right. They really did.

4/5

[maladroid]

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones

An enjoyable conclusion to the series, featuring an interesting attempt by the designers to include both the fairy-tale elements that gave Sands of Time its charm and the aggressive attitude which defined Warrior Within. The later is still my favourite one of the trilogy, though, I found its storyline the most intriguing and I think the fact that your greatest enemy is, in fact, "time" incarnate was rather fitting for the game.

3.5/5

On a sidenote, I also thought Two Thrones ended a bit too abruptly, 'cause I had previously seen the trailer featured on Play.com and it came as a surprise that almost none of the footage seen there is included in the final game. Does anyone know what's up with that? Is it possible to unlock these videos in the menu by completing the game on a Hard setting or after collecting all aditional life power-ups (similar to the alternative ending of Warrior Within)? I did neither of those things (had it set to Normal) but still, the trailer appears to be practically telling a different story.. Seems more like an early version of the game with the prince's outfit looking similar to the one he was wearing during Warrior Within, but that's just me speculating. I also noticed his voice sounds a bit different in that trailer - maybe the same with Warrior Within?

[dwarfmoriah]

I finished yesterday the Star Trek Elite Force 2, very cool game. It is the sequel of Star Trek Voyager Elite Force.

[MoP]

Fahrenheit. Riveting would be the word. I pretty much agree with the AG review, so I'll be short to avoid repetition.

If not for the terrible, low-res, blur-fest textures, technically it would be fantastic - the music, voice over, motion-capture, all top-notch.

The hyped non-linearity might have been over-hyped, but it still blew me away. Even if consequences for players choices usually are a bit superficial, I can't wait to replay the game to experience every possible path, sequence, dialogue line. And that's because the story really worked for me - it does get messed up later on, but it's still so rich, involving and interesting to make me want to "unlock" it's every detail.

Concerning the action sequences... I can see why they're there, they provide a change of pace, add dynamics, probably needed to preserve the "cinematic" feel. And they didn't bother me that much at the beginning. But they're really overused, about half of them could be replaced by some (practically nonexistent) logical puzzles. I actually liked the use of them in dialogues, revealing some additional info, I thought it was a neat idea. The main flaw was the detracting from the actual scenes and sequences. It's frustrating to only record vague images of what just happened while you were mashin' dem buttons...

Well, the game sure worked for me. Has it's flaws, but it's such a fresh concept that I didn't even pay attention to them. And without a doubt I'll be replaying it regularly, waiting for Omikron 2. (I think I'm turning into a QuanticDream fanboy ... or... maybe it's...)

[Lucien21]

Bioshock

My favourite game of the year without a doubt.

My only reservation is that the regeneration tanks make it far too easy and death meaningless within the game. I'm sure if you did't mind regenerating a billion times it's perfectly possible to complete the game using just the wrench (Except for maybe the end sequence when you can't regenerate)

SS2 is one of my all time favourite games so the fact that this is a carbon copy doen't detract from it's compelling narrative. The big shock twist that comes 3/4 of the way through is sublime in making you look back at your previous actions in the game.

All that is left is to restore the save game from just before the end and go hunting for the Xbox achievement points that i've missed (Mostly research and audio log completness to do).

9/10

[MdaG]

Okami (10/10)

Easily the best game I've played on the PS2. The game took me 48h to complete and managed to feel fresh, original and entertaining throughout that time. The graphics are among the prettiest I've experienced in a computer game. Music is also top notch. I can't recommend this enough to everyone who likes adventure games with a little fighting, lots of story and easy puzzles. The game wasn't particularly hard, but it didn't matter. I still had a blast!

[MdaG]

Metal Gear Solid - Twin Snakes (8/10)

Just as good as the second game (which I realize now would have been even better had I played this game before it). The story is top notch and even though it's relatively short (took me less than 10h to finish) it's contents are good enough that I can be forgive it. Apart from the short game length I find the controls frustrating and I would've liked if the stealth parts had been more like that in Splinter Cell. Now it's a little too "arcadey". Anyway, I'm considering replaying the second game (before moving on to the third) or just read up on its' story online instead. .

[Mayboy]

Lovely little game called What Makes You Tick. Very enjoyable game, i hope more are made.

[Endosanity]

Conquered:

Resident Evil Zero - GC - It's a gorgeous game but kind of short I thought. And the last boss was like... well... let's just say when I defeated him I was like "Whoa, wait... that was it?"