[TimovieMan]

The Secret of Monkey Island - 4.5 / 5 (replay)*

* Not really a "replay" since I played the original game first (back in the mid-90s) and I played the Special Edition this time around. Since they only upgraded the visuals and the sound (and the verb-and-inventory system), but left everything else exactly the same, I'll count it as the same game and thus a replay.

Hilariously awesome game, and hearing Dominic Armato this time around is a great plus! It was nice to see some upgraded visuals, too, but to be honest, I must have pressed F10 at just about every screen (at least when no-one was speaking, otherwise I'd lose the voice-over - something they fixed for the sequel). There's something charming about those dated visuals.
Insult sword-fighting was once again a blast (luckily I'd forgotten most of them) and the nonsense in this was just as fun as it was the first time around (Deadly Piranha Poodles and their "No animals were harmed"-disclaimer ).

I've even taken the time to do something I failed to do all those years ago: have Guybrush drown! And apparently, I had missed a few good jokes by "going too fast". Not only do you get an entire conversation between two guys who are going to ditch a sword right above your location - a sword you could use - only to have them reconsider, but the best joke comes when Guybrush dies (the only time he can die). Guybrush starts bobbing in the water, with a very unhealthy *green* skin colour.
The joke comes in the form of altered verbs: instead of Open / Close / Use / Pull / Push etc. you can now Bob / Float / Bloat / Rot / Stink and above all: Order Hintbook!
That nearly made me spray the Ice Tea I was drinking...

Lots of fun was had, so now: onto the next one - LeChuck's Revenge!

[TiAgUh]

Originally Posted by TimovieMan

L.A. Noire - 3.5 / 5

The amount of motion capturing they did is just insane, and the game is by far the best-looking game I've ever played. It is simply beautiful!

I remember trying the game and seeing all that beauty and then thinking if they were trying to make it look like the real thing why didn't they simply filmed it?. After that thought my interest in it went downhill. It was a "can't unseen it now" moment galore after that. And reading those and others' criticisms, beauty is almost the main reason to play it.

[unkarted]

Bioshock - 4/5

Though I didn't get the OMG BEST FPS EVER vibe, it was still a really really good game. Amazing setting, great use of the RPG elements. I'd definitely recommend this

[Manhunter71]

Originally Posted by TimovieMan

L.A. Noire - 3.5 / 5

My opinion about the gameplay hasn't changed much since my last post about the game (when I was still on the traffic desk). Not only is there too much action (half the cases have a shootout, and a couple of cases have a small war going on - hence my body count of over 200, and EVERY case has at least one chase sequence whether that be on foot or by car) but that action is handled badly. The driving is difficult unless you're just tapping the gas instead of flooring it, but in a chase sequence, you kinda HAVE to floor it - even though they're using that unrealistic 'Rubber Band AI' where the guy you're chasing slows down if you're too far behind. When you're not in a chase, driving is just tedious, so it's best to let your partner drive as much as possible. That way, you miss out on street crime, but the street crime is nonsensical anyway. They basically have you driving to the other side of town for a random shootout (that should have been handled by ANY police car that was actually NEAR that location), and it ALWAYS ends with the coroner pushing a body in his truck and you looking on. I basically stopped caring for street crime after about 8 of them.
Similarly, the fighting in the game is overly simplistic. When you get used to 'grappling', you can end any fight in about five seconds: grapple and throw your opponent to the floor, then finish him while he's down. Very repetitive.
The same goes for the interviewing mechanism: it's far too limited. While the motion capturing allows for some subtle facial tells, it's just too easy. Responses are too simple as well. If you think they're telling the truth, you respond like a wimp. If you think they're lying, you're playing it suave and show evidence that exposes the lie, and if you don't have proof you go into an ALL CAPS RAGE! Cole Phelps even does this when it's really inappropriate - going off against a 15-year old that just got raped for instance.
In terms of gameplay, L.A. Noire leaves much to be desired...

Storywise it's not without its flaws either. The game takes forever to go somewhere - you're already at the end of the vice desk before the actual story behind it starts picking up. Until then you're just solving case after case without real meaning. While some of these cases are quite good, it all feels a bit unnecessary. They're supposed to be for character development, I guess, but the development is far too slow and - like the plot - only picks up near the end of the game.
In the meantime you're solving mediocre traffic cases where the only plus side is being teamed up with a great partner (yes, I'm a Stephan Bukowski fan). And just when the cases start to become more interesting, you're promoted to homicide, where both your captain and your partner are nothing but annoying, and where you're solving all cases with inconclusive evidence that left me really dissatisfied.
During all this, all glimpses of the backstory come either from newspapers that show cutscenes featuring the worst character in this game (Dr. Harlan Fontaine, whose overenunciating only grates on my nerves) or from war flashbacks inbetween chapters.
The game slowly picks up the pace when you get promoted to vice (after a real bitter pill at the end of the last homicide case - possibly the noirest (most noir?) moment in the game). Not that the cases get a lot better, but the corruption becomes more and more visible. That's rather easy when you're partnered with the slickest dude in the game, the guy you'll love to hate.

The thing is, near the end of the game, halfway through the arson desk, the game takes an unexpected turn: you're suddenly playing as another character. While I get this decision in terms of the story, they might have included the occasional Jack Kelso-case earlier in the game. This just felt too abrupt and weird after some 15-odd hours of playing as Cole Phelps. Fortunately, the game's really going full-speed by now, so you quickly get over your initial shock.

The conclusion of the game is a bit underwhelming but at least it's reasonably satisfying. It's all a little low on actual 'noire', though. I don't know, for some reason, the entire game never felt all that noir to me - even when playing in black-and-white. For a game that uses that as its title, it missed its purpose a little. Disworld Noir pulled the noir-part off a whole lot better. Heck, Grim Fandango did a better job at it than L.A. Noire...

Despite all this criticism, though, the game is better than the sum of its parts, and if you spread out the cases a bit (i.e. not rushing through the game), it's actually quite enjoyable. It definitely *feels* like you're in L.A. at the end of the '40s and the sheer vastness of the city is impressive to say the least. The amount of motion capturing they did is just insane, and the game is by far the best-looking game I've ever played. It is simply beautiful!

Crunchy in milk said it best:

I have to agree with everything that was said here. I had been waiting fo r this game for ages, but when I finally got it - very disappointing - storyline, gameplay, noir theme.......
The only thing is, I bought it for PS3, which was very expensive in my neck of the woods (Indonesia) so i am determined to finish it, not matter how long it takes

[Harleyhog]

Just finishd Still Life, now playing Still life 2 & Rhiannon.

[ozzie]

Originally Posted by TiAgUh

I remember trying the game and seeing all that beauty and then thinking if they were trying to make it look like the real thing why didn't they simply filmed it?. After that thought my interest in it went downhill. It was a "can't unseen it now" moment galore after that. And reading those and others' criticisms, beauty is almost the main reason to play it.

Well, it wouldn't be 3D if they simply filmed, would it?

[TiAgUh]

I was talking about the cutscenes my dear boy.

[TimovieMan]

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge - Special Edition (replay) - 4.5 / 5

A replay since I had played Monkey 2 before, but not a full replay because this is my first time playing through the Special Edition.
They've changed some things for the better when compared to the Special Edition of Monkey 1: object highlighting eliminates pixel hunting, the added "director's commentary" by Ron Gilbert, Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman is a nice touch (and not too intrusive when playing), the voice acting remains when switching back to the old graphics, but most of all: the newly implemented control system is pure brilliance! In contrast to the previous Special Edition, this time around it's a lot more intuitive, it uses only the mouse, and having access to the inventory via the middle mouse button is a magnificent stroke of point-and-click development genius! This is only the first game I've played where they handled the inventory this way, but damn, me likey!
On the other hand, graphics are - just like in the previous SE - a bit lackluster. It looks good but it lacks the charm of the old graphics. Because of the magnificent control system, though, I couldn't just keep using the old graphics, or I'd lose all the benefits of the new controls.
Director's commentary was a slight letdown, too. Not enough banter between the three, and it's obvious that they didn't prepare anything beforehand which makes it less informative than it could (and should) have been.

The game itself is great, of course. And it was a lot longer than I remembered. The second part is also one of the best crafted bits of adventure gaming ever: multiple objectives across three islands (and plenty of locations per island) - it's almost as good as the second year of Grim Fandango! The main difference here is that it's rather difficult at times - some puzzles are pretty illogical (I'll keep frowning at the "monkey wrench" puzzle) and the inventory is massive (which makes *using everything on everything* a hassle when stuck). But the game is still as hilarious as ever, making it one of the most fun adventure games of all time!
Because of the voice acting, they even nail their Star Wars references a lot better. Not only is the entire "I -- am you father!"-scene (well, "I -- am your brother!" in this case) the exact same text-wise, but they've acted it out exactly like in the movie too (with a "NOOOOOOOOoooooooo!" in two parts - just like the edit in The Empire Strikes Back). I admit that I nearly wet myself laughing...
And then the ending...
What an ending...
I still don't really know what to think of it. I can't even say that I like the ending. They've just slapped you on the head with several ridiculous plot twists, and then they go all-out with an even bigger (and totally incomprehensable) plot twist. I'm not even sure Ron Gilbert himself knew what he was doing there...
It definitely counts as one of the most "WTF?"-moments in adventure gaming history. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

To conclude, I'll just say that "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge" still stands as one of the best adventure games of all-time!



Oh, and I encountered a bug in the Special Edition of the game. At the point where Guybrush is dropped in the acid pit (and Elaine consequently confronts him for lying), you get another escape attempt. My cursor had disappeared at that point, though, so I couldn't do anything at all. I had to reload an earlier save (because the autosave had the same problem) and solve the puzzle on the first try to be able to continue...
Not game-breaking (especially because I had saved at the beginning of Part III, making me lose only ten minutes), but annoying to say the least...



And is it just me, or are my reviews becoming longer again? Please stop me if they're becoming too long, I have a tendency to write without brakes on...

[Siddhi]

Finished the first Blackwell game (Blackwell Legacy).

Fun little game, but very very short. If I played it standalone then I might have been annoyed at the length. Since I have the second as well, it doesn't affect me so much. I guess I need to treat like as an episodic series with each of the games as one episode. With that mindset its a great little game.

The notebook gameplay mechanic was very innovative. Hope other games pick this up as well - I much prefer it to overly branching dialog trees where you have to click every possible branch. Talking of dialog trees, the game only allows you to choose the type of response (eg: "make a sarcastic comment", "ignore insult" etc) without exactly showing what you would say. This would be good, except that it doesnt matter what you pick -- after the first response, you always end up doing the same dialog path.

The story was interesting, but due to the short length, most of the background was left hanging with lots of open questions. I'm assuming that it gets expanded on in the other installments of the series.

The inventory is a little odd, in the sense that you cannot use items on objects. That had me a bit baffled when I tried using items and it wouldn't work, and only after googling online did I learn that its not a bug. And then later you have to combine two items, but since item usage didn't work I assumed (wrongly) that you couldn't combine items either.

The graphics are really nice. Kind of retro, but very beautifully done. Voice acting is also nice, but some parts were a bit weird like the Indian lady having a strong American accent (I'm from India).

Overall, get this game, but get the whole series together as a pack.

[Crunchy in milk]

Finished my first time through Mass Effect 3. I liked some of the decision imports from ME2, some great emotional scenes as a result. While I liked the thought behind the game's 'ending', its application was really suspicious.

The ultimate reason for the reapers is satisfying and worth the play time. Some of the internet screaming over the ending is right on the money though.

Mild, suggestive but non specific spoilers follow, with modest vilification of EA:

Hints by developers on twitter and the amazing lengths EA have gone to, to monetize Mass Effect 3 really do suggest...

Spoiler:

That the game shipped without a 'real' ending... can you fucking believe it? At the penultimate rush for the Citadel 'beam' Shepard passes out.

The 'finale' resembles in both action and visuals the dream sequences Shepard experienced three times throughout the game, not limited to the child avatar but also the post processing visual effects and slow motion. Not to mention squad mates who supposedly died right behind Shepard in the last ditch push, safely exiting the crash landed Normandy.

So what does that mean? Paying for an ending, its more likely than you think!

[zane]

just finished devil survivor 2 on the ds. Being a certified Shin Megami Tensei nut, i couldnt wait to play through this faster than you can say beelzebub. It largely plays like the first devil survivor: its grid-based strategy where each unit has 2 demons in their "group" and when a group attacks another unit it goes to another screen where a round of turn-based combat ensues. Theres also a time sim element where you spend blocks of time to strengthen friendships and prevent story deaths. This game adds a new mechanic where increasing your friendship level with characters gives them bonuses in combat (such as resistance to elements). They've also nearly doubled the amount of demons there is available to create and play with (around 220 total), and added all kinds of new race skills (some powers can now be upgraded, such as the power that increases your grid movement to 7, can eventually evolve into a power that increases by 8 and also adds to your initiative). Overall theres a significant increase of difficulty in this game, and might not be the best place to start for someone unfamiliar with strategy games. A first playthrough is likely to take between 30-40 hours, and after you've completed the game theres a point buy system where you purchase upgrades and specials to unlock on your next playthrough. Its a great game and i'd expect nothing less from the SMT series. I'd rate it 9/10

[TiAgUh]

^ Since that one isn't a huge departure from the 1st game then why not also warn about cardboard characters and sometimes excruciating dialogue, when most of those 30-40hours are spent reading? Not everyone's into anime tropes.

[zane]

^so which dialogues did you find excruciating? Or are you just stereotyping it without having played? While the writing and story isnt perfect, it easily surpasses peers in the genre.

[TiAgUh]

Originally Posted by zane

Or are you just stereotyping it without having played?

Originally Posted by TiAgUh

^ Since that one isn't a huge departure from the 1st game (...)

Am I not implying something here?

Originally Posted by zane

While the writing and story isnt perfect, it easily surpasses peers in the genre.

Oh I see, it surpasses them high standards of tactical JRPGs.

[zane]

^i was questioning whether you had played the first game very much, or any smt for that matter. Nowhere did i preach that the game had a novel quality story. So you couldv just said "people shouldnt like this game because i think the genre sucks"

[TiAgUh]

Originally Posted by zane

Nowhere did i preach that the game had a novel quality story.

Exactly, you've said nothing about it when almost half of what you do in the game is endure the damn thing. But now I see that you didn't mind it, so I'm backing off or else regurgitation is a guarantee.

[SamandMax]

Mass Effect 3

If you've played the first two games in the series, have grown to know and invest in the universe and the characters within it, have made tough decisions and witnessed the deaths of some of your closest comrades, then Mass Effect 3 is going to be one of the most satisfying experiences you've ever had playing a game. This isn't so much a sequel as it is the conclusion to one massive epic story that's taken three games to tell and it's as wonderful an ending as you could hope.

10/10

[TimovieMan]

I take it you got the best ending?

Did you have to play a lot of multiplayer to get your Effective Military Strength (or whatever it's called) high enough?

I'm currently finishing up my Paragon Mass Effect 2 playthrough with all the DLC I hadn't done yet, so I'd have a FULL ME1+2 save to transfer into ME3.
I don't relish the prospect of having to play multiplayer, though. Reeks of DRM and should have absolutely NO impact on the single player campaign, imo. Biggest gripe I have so far, since the reviews started popping up...

[SamandMax]

Originally Posted by TimovieMan

I take it you got the best ending?

Did you have to play a lot of multiplayer to get your Effective Military Strength (or whatever it's called) high enough?

I don't think there's such a thing as a best or worst ending, BioWare have a pretty definitive finale for the series that everyone is going to see and from what I can tell there's only a minimal amount of change that can happen to it. Some people seem to have a problem with this - there's been a petition for BioWare to use DLC to change it, which is absolutely ridiculous - but I think it ends the series on a very satisfying note of finality. If you've invested 60+ hours into this trilogy, you want something conclusive, and I think that's definitely what you get.

As for playing multiplayer to boost up your military strength, I can see how that might be perceived as a bit cheap but I think it's a genuine attempt on BioWare's part to make multiplayer actually mean something. It doesn't seem to make that much of a difference as I went into the final battle with only 76% readiness and I thought everything was fine but it's a nice little addition that actually gives you an incentive to at least try out a few multiplayer matches. The entire game is about the preparations for the war to end all wars so it makes sense that they'd have to tie the multiplayer into that theme as well.

[TimovieMan]

I don't mind if the ending won't be what I expect of it, but I agree that it's cheap to force EVERYONE to play the multiplayer part. Especially since doing so basically voids their entire "story mode" concept for the more non-action adventure gamers out there...

Btw, I just bought it today. The second I've made my ME2 save "complete" with all DLC done, I'm starting this.
Better find a way to fall ill for a few days to give me some extra gaming time...