PC Game Review: Saints Row IV

SAINTS ROW IV
Platform: PC (Steam)
Released: 2013
Genre: Third Person Shooter
Developer: Deep Silver Volition
Publisher: Deep Silver
Buy on Steam

While a lot of people nowadays are talking about, and no doubt playing the new Grand Theft Auto game, I am simply unable to due to two major reasons. One, I don't own a PS3 or XBox 360. Two, I am not exactly any GTA fan so my interest in the game isn't all that high. But still, on PC we have a different sandbox game that has recently hit the streets, and it's called Saints Row IV, the anticipated sequel to Saints Row The Third. Before I start my review I will have to point out that this is entirely from the perspective of someone who has never played any of the earlier Saints Row games so don't expect me to be able to compare this to the earlier games as I simply haven't played them (yet). But is the game any good, you may ask? Read on to find out.

The game differs from the previous games in the franchise in one major way. Instead of being in the real world, the game takes place almost entirely inside a simulated reality. Earth is invaded and eventually destroyed by an alien race called the Zin, lead by a megalomaniac and cultural snob named Zinyak. Zinyak is by far one of the most enjoyable villains I've seen in a video game and is definitely up there with Handsome Jack in how well written he is. Zinyak isn't just evil, he loves being evil and revels in it every single day and you can tell he enjoys what he's doing. So of course, you being the president of the United States, he has a special plan for you. Instead of killing you or your friends, he puts all of you in a simulated Matrix reality where you are forced to live out your worst fears for all eternity and this is pretty much how the game is set up. You have to break free from the simulation, take control of it, and free your friends so you can take on Zinyak and get back at him for destroying Earth and enslaving humanity. It's a silly concept that straight up parodies The Matrix, and it is glorious.

The simulated reality is pretty much the open world city you'd expect and there are tons of little details here and there to point out you're in a simulation. Things glitch out now and then, and there are signs all over the place that parodies They Live (maybe pointing out the fact you are special and can see the simulation for what it really is). One of the cool things about this game is all the means you have of travelling. In addition to straight up walking, you also have a huge amount of cars to steal and with a single button press, you can scan these cars and add them to your own personal collection and with your phone you can easily summon any car you have scanned to you at any given time. You earn money (cache) by doing activities and there are a ton of them to do here, all of them being a lot of fun to do and the amount of challenges is gonna keep you occupied for quite a while.

And of course, you also get superpowers as you progress through the game, giving you the ability to run really fast and jump really high, in addition to more offensive powers like blasting and stomping. These powers are increasingly upgraded, making you insanely overpowered near the end of the game and it feels awesome to just go around like some kind of demigod, wreaking havoc on everything. Of course, a lot of people have said that when you get these powers, the vehicles you can collect end up feeling kind of useless and superfluous, but in my opinion, they are there to add variety to the gameplay and give you more options to how you want to travel. Constantly using superpowers can get boring and so if you wanna race around in a car, you can do that instead. The game simply offers different things to do and in my opinion, that just adds to the fun of it. I know that driving a car isn't as awesome as flying but hell, if you want to, it's there, you can do it.

The customization is definitely one of the reasons I love SR4. You get a ton of character customization options and honestly one of the most fun character creators I've played around with. It does lack some options for fine tuning but all in all it is on par with the one from Mass Effect and I would say in some ways even surpasses it. Shopping in this game is a ton of fun and there are about 3 different shop brands, each offering different catalogues so finding them all is a lot of fun. Nearly everything can be customized or repainted, including guns and customizing the vehicles you scan can nearly be a timeconsuming hobby in of itself. And good god there are a lot of crazy guns in this game. From a fucking huge dildo to a dubstep gun (an actual gun that shoots waves of wubwub), the arsenal is just as crazy, overpowered and whacked out as the game itself and it fits the game perfectly. I've never had more fun playing around with weapons in a game than this.

The game features a lot of licensed music and you get a huge variety of styles with each radio station offering a unique set of songs. Even better is that you can listen to the radio outside vehicles and switch between them at any given moment. You can even make your own mixtape from selected songs from each station though what I really think this game lacks is the option to use your own songs from your hard drive, like GTA did where you could put music files in a folder and have the game treating them like its own radio station. The game does a wonderful job utilizing the licensed music during the story missions though and it's really one of the games where I've seen them really using licensed music in a good way to punctuate the action and not just being there for no reason. If flying through an alien ship listening to What Is Love doesn't make you grin like an idiot and bump your head like Jim Carrey in the legendary SNL sketch, this game is probably not for you. Hell Zinyak even has his own radio station playing classical music and Zinyak reading Shakespeare and other classical literature. It is priceless and adds so much personality to the game.

Now all of this is fun in of itself and playing alone, the game is definitely one of the most fun experiences I've had. but the game truly comes alive when playing it co-op. There are extra activities you can do and having a partner who is just as overpowered as you are is probably one of the most fun things you can do in this game. I highly recommend playing it co-op as it really makes the game feel more alive and just so you can share all this insanity with someone.
The only negative things I can think about is that while the game plays very well and is a lot of fun, it was very taxing on my hardware and even with all the settings on low, the game did have some framerate issues on 1080p so keep that in mind if you wanna invest in the PC version. I definitely recommend playing the game in 720p if you don't have a particular high end computer. I also ran into a few glitches here and there, such as menus getting stuck which forced me to restart the game and getting stuck at a few missions though usually it was as simple as restarting the mission. It was a bit annoying but nothing that really broke the game for me. Personally I would say I still had a lot of fun and really enjoyed the game. I also wish the sidequests was more than just redoing activities over and over as it did get a bit tedious no matter how fun the activities were and only the loyalty missions really did anything much story-wise.

Score:
Story: 10/10
One of the most fun stories I've had in a while with a villain you'll absolutely fall in love with.
Graphics: 9/10
Even on low settings (which I had to run the game at because of how taxing it was on my PC), the game looks really good and has a very cool style about it that a lot of games lack. Tons of small details like glitches and such are also really impressive. The only bad thing though is that the game requires a lot of hardware even on low settings and the framerate was all over the place.
Music: 9/10
Amazing use of licensed music with tons of variety, and the original soundtrack is also really good and doesn't feel out of place. Still wish there was an ability to use custom music though.
Gameplay: 8/10
Aside from a few annoying glitches and a lack of more story missions that kept it from getting a perfect score, the gameplay is crazy fun and probably the most fun I've had in a long time. It's gonna rub some people the wrong way no doubt but personally I loved it.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

All in all, Saints Row IV is a hell of an experience and a game that not for a second dares to take itself too seriously. It makes fun of game clichés left and right and is one of the few games that really makes you feel free and not restrained, but overpowered as hell and it's an awesome feeling that really makes this game quite unique to me. The music, the characters, the story and not to mention the gameplay makes this a game that I consider mandatory for any gamer that loves to just have fun once in a while. Because in the end, Saints Row IV is all about fun.

- Alyxx

Duke Nukem and Misogynism

I consider myself a woman and there is something that has been bothering me ever since the release of Duke Nukem Forever. Is Duke Nukem a misogynist? And also, could Duke Nukem Forever and Duke Nukem 3D and other Duke games be considered misogynistic in nature? A lot of people have been talking about this and so I thought, being the massive Duke Nukem fan I am, that I would throw in my two cents. I'm not trying to defend Duke here or taking any side, just look at the facts and debunk these myths a bit to see if there is actual ground to them and be as objective as I can about it, despite my obvious bias. Hell, I think at a forum someone went as far as to say I was "falling victim to the machosism of male dominance" or something but let's not get into that.

First of all, let's talk about the question whether Duke is a misogynist or not. Now, I am under the firm belief that while Duke is a hedonist and a bit of a chauvinist, I do not consider him necessarily a misogynist. A misogynist is speficially someone who has a disrespect and even hatred and disgust towards women, but Duke does not strike me that way. From what I've seen in his games he loves women and while the games obviously objectify women to some degree, I have never encountered any point in the games where Duke outright mistreated women. Hell, I don't remember him even using any deregatory slurs for women, the closest he ever gets is calling them "babe" but even that is more of an affectionate term.
He runs a strip club obviously but as far as I can tell from Duke Nukem Forever, none of the females there are forced to work there, all of them work there out of their own free will, often just because Duke runs the place. He enforces fair rules about no drugs allowed, they are to always use condoms to prevent STD's and unwanted pregnancy, and to always clean up if they make a mess. So I do not find that as any sufficient evidence that Duke is treating women in a misogynistic way.
True, he does slap a woman to make her stay still in multiplayer but it is not a hateful slap and more just a playful thing as he carries her through the map to keep her from obscuring his view, and it never struck me as misogynistic or hateful towards the woman. Consider it this way, there's a difference between playfully nibbling someone's ear and tearing it off with your teeth. It's just all in good fun.
Other characters however in the games ARE misogynistic. In both Duke Nukem 3D and Forever, the aliens are definitely the ones who treat women as mere objects, kidnapping them to use them as nothing more than breeding hosts for their young, and inspired by the Alien movies, the women die a horrible death upon giving birth to these creatures. We'll get more into that later.
In the DLC "The Doctor Who Cloned Me" you come to a brothel where there are some customers who try to force the women to do things against their will, and this is clearly misogynistic as well, even if it's done in a humorous fashion, and so Duke punches them to teach them a lesson, actually standing up for the women. He also outright refuses to play an arcade game called Pimp Slap, where the goal, quite blatantly, is to slap women.
At some point in the Forever campaign he even lets a woman be his boss willingly and does a mission for her, for which in return she gives him a reward. True, this is all a dream to him, but just the fact it is might even enforce the fact that Duke DOES respect and love women and it is NOT his fault that basically he's a sex symbol to women in his games because, let's face it, Duke is just as objectified as the women are, if not even more, and he's meant to be the ideal man in every way.
In the multiplayer "My Digz" level, you have women as unlockable decorations but they do have voices, they do talk to you and have at least more personality to them than just being decorations, even if they are obviously very shallow and defined by their fetishes more than anything. But to me, that's just something you have to expect in this game. And like I said, Duke never mistreats them, he oogles them sure, gives them compliments, sure, but these women are willingly doing this and are meant to be parodies so if you think too deeply about them, you're missing the point.

Now let's discuss whether the games can be considered misogynistic. As I mentioned earlier, both in Duke Nukem 3D and Forever, the aliens are the ones who act as the antagonists and use women as breeding tools. Now, a lot of people have said as a criticism that Duke does not save these women or hell, that these women are not defending themselves and merely reduced to plot points. So let's look at it this way, not only are the women already impregnated when he finds them and therefore unsalvagable because he can't just punch them in the stomach or tear the aliens out of them without hurting them seriously in the process, and therefore it is just too late to save them, the aliens have advanced technology, are superior in strength and numbers, and have giant space ships. The women are mostly civilians, none of them have ever received weapon or military training, and in fact, a lot of the guys in both games are dead because the aliens just outright kill them. So I think women aren't necessarily depicted as particurarily weak, just as weak as anyone would be in the face of an alien threat. I mean, if you're a woman who's more focused on what to wear and what makeup to put on than how you can kill someone, then OBVIOUSLY you're an easy target.
Now, there was meant to be a strong female character called Bombshell who would be a female equivalent of Duke but she was actually cut from the game. Just the fact she was even conceptualized kinda makes me think they intented the game to be playable with a female partner and to me, that's proof enough that they didn't make the game with misogynistic intent.



Let's face it, while the games are obviously a bit perverted, they are not meant to be taken seriously. The thing about Duke Nukem is that the games are meant to parody real life, not portray it. The women are basically airheads with little to no personality because that is how a lot of women are portrayed in media, and Duke Nukem Forever simply takes this to the next level and making a parody of it, mixing it with parodies of other pop culture things. It is all just meant as good fun, and if you take any of the games seriously, you're missing the point entirely. I could go on and on analyzing the games to look for clues that they are misogynistic or that Duke is but truth to be told, I would just be wasting my time. If I was in Duke's game, sure, I would love to work for him, because I know Duke would always treat me with respect, always appreciate me and give me compliments, and to me, that is how every man should be and he proves that a real man CAN be a hedonist without abusing women for it. Come on, Duke Nukem himself is a parody, an objectified image of the perfect man, and not realistic in any sense of the word. He slaps walltits and shoots three-boobed alien queens, he exists in his own universe, his own reality, his games are not portraying reality. If they were, sure, these things WOULD be out of place slightly but that's the thing, they are not. If you take these games seriously, then you are indeed missing the point and more concerned with your own agenda than simply having a good time.

Hey, at least he's not Gordon Freeman who never has the courtesy to speak to Alyx and when she loses her father all he does is stand there and coldly watch her... But that's a topic for another day.

- Alyxx

Top 20 Favourite Games (10-1)

Link to the first 20-11 games: http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.no/2013/08/top-20-favourite-games-20-11.html

So yeah, after counting down the 20-11 parts of my Favourite Games list, here is the cream of the crop, the absolute favourite games of all time for me. Are you ready? Let's hit it off!


10 Bejeweled 3

The Bejeweled games to me are like a drug to me. You don't really need them but once in a while you get a craving for them and you just have to play it. I really love Bejeweled for the relaxing nature of it and just for the arcady feel of trying to beat your high score or get higher in the leaderboards. It really is a really well made puzzle game and easily my favourite of all time for a lot of reasons. Any game can last from 10 minutes to an hour and really depends on your luck and skill. One of the most satisfying things in the game is getting huge chain reactions and it's ALWAYS satisfying to mix two hypercubes together.
While the other Bejeweled games are fine in their own right I find Bejeweled 3 to be my fav, whether I play it on PC or Nintendo DS, because of the features and because it has something for everyone and for every mood I'm in. If I wanna relax I play Zen mode, if I want the classic experience I play classic mode. If I want something more tactical I play the Poker mode and the Quest mode is for when I'm feeling masochistic and really wanna challenge myself. Either way I highly recommend playing this game if you're into puzzle games although I must warn you, getting addicted is way too easy... ;)

09 SiN

There are some games that came out in the 90's that kinda fell under the shadow of bigger hits. A great example is SiN versus Half-Life. Personally I prefer SiN, and for a lot of reasons. The main reason is that while Half-Life IS a great game, I think SiN had a lot more personality to it. SiN takes cues from Duke Nukem 3D and in a lot of ways probably gave people a Duke Nukem Forever long before it came out. The hero is a macho beefcake who spends most of the game quipping one-liners and chatting with a sidekick on his ear and the banter between them is really believable and gives the whole game a buddy cop feeling and I really dug that back in the day as not many games did that, at least not in the FPS genre. It also did something that was pretty groundbreaking back then, you could actually use in-game computers and even hack into them DOS-style which was really cool back then and this was YEARS before Doom 3 did the interactive computer thing and not even to the same degree.
The game pits you against the beautiful but deadly Elexis Sinclaire who has created a drug called Vanity which turns people into horrible mutants, her plan being to take over the world (OF COURSE!) with these mutants and create a new world in which the strongest survive. Being the badass futurecop you are, you're sent to take this crazy lady down and kick some ass on the way, fighting your way not only through the grunts that follow her but also the deadly creations from her biolabs. The expansion pack Wages of SiN also even added the ability to dual-wield pistols and added a ton of great features and new content to the game, including a flashlight, and gave you a brand new story to play where you're sent to take down a mob boss and has little to do with the story from the first game, only losely tied to it. An episodic sequel, cleverly titled SiN Episodes was to be released around 2002-2003 but only one episode, Emergence was released before Ritual Entertainment was bought by a game company that specializes in casual games... Yeah, you can imagine it was a death sentence to the SiN games so sadly, we're not likely to see any new SiN games any time soon.
That being said,  SiN is just an awesome shooter which sadly fell under the shadow of Half-Life when it came out and to me, it's just a better game. You can find it easily on Steam these days so finding it is not that hard and boxed copies are also easy to find on eBay. That being said the expansion Wages of SiN is NOT available on Steam and nor is it compatible with the Steam version so I highly recommend picking this up on eBay if you can.

08 Fallout 2

There was a reason I skipped classes for several weeks back in junior high school and that reason was Fallout 2. At that point I hadn't really played a game that was this hard to put down. This is arguably one of my favourite RPG's of all time and whenever I play it, it's very easy to see why. While Fallout 1 was a pretty good RPG that was unique when it came out, Fallout 2 just improves on everything and becomes a much more memorable game. It also has a lot of adult content and dark humor which I really dug and it really makes Fallout 3 seem like such a tame and not to mention disappointing sequel in comparison as while I enjoyed the first person view of Fallout 3, it just didn't offer the same experience. There was just so many references, so much to do and so much random stuff in Fallout 2 that I felt was missing in Fallout 3. Not even the guns felt as good in Fallout 3 and I really do prefer the turnbased combat over the real-time combat in FO3.
The game is a direct sequel to the first Fallout and you play as the descendant of the hero from the first game. Your mission is to find a G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) to save your village which isn't doing too well. Needless to say, being an enormous vast RPG, you have a lot to explore, tons of sidequests to do and can choose not to do the main quest at all, and the amount of freedom you have in this game is just amazing for the time. There is also a crazy amount of mods for this game to find online, just like with the sequels, and they do a lot of stuff from simply adding weapons, enhancing the graphics or even adding entirely new quests to do!
Needless to say with Fallout 2 you get a LOT for the money, and a completely unique experience, and a true classic in RPG history. I've spent god knows how many hours playing Fallout 2 and will probably spend more in the future, it really is an awesome RPG. You can easily find it too on both Steam and GOG.com and I originally played a copy that was bundled with a game magazine.

07 MDK

MDK is one of those games that really impressed the hell out of me back in the day. You play as an androgynous hero in a tight ass "coil" suit with several neat tricks, such as a deployable parachute and a revolutionairy sniper helmet, and it pretty much was the first shooter that I know of that implemented a sniper rifle or at least made it a popular weapon in shooters. Your mission is to destroy alien city-sized "minecrawlers" that are pretty much running over the planet and crushing anything in their path and consuming resources, especially potatoes for some odd reason. You get some help of course from a slightly mad scientist who invented your weapons and a six-legged robot dog named Bones (though he prefers the name Max).
It's just overall a really cool game and it does a really good job mixing humor and seriousness and it has a really dark and gothic look that I just dig the hell out of and it works really well with the limited 3D they had back then and it's aged really well. Not only did it look amazing for the time, it also has one of the best game soundtracks I've heard, done by the awesome Tommy Tallarico. It feels a lot like a third person Doom and that's just a great thing to me, though the controls do change a bit sometimes which can be a bit of an annoyance.
You can find it easily on Steam and GOG.com and I've even made a patch for the Steam version to make it more Steam compatible and bring back some missing content.

06 Duke Nukem 3D

If I had to say which game is my favourite from the 90's it would easily be Duke Nukem 3D, and while it is not my favourite game or my favourite Duke Nukem game even, it really is a great game and one I've played a lot and still play a lot. The fact that it has a ton of mods available and is even very easy to mod yourself gives it a really extended life and it really is an awesome shooter that really put Duke on the map and gave him the personality he has today thanks to Jon St Jon. Aside from that, it just has memorable boss fights, really good level design and while the graphics weren't that good for the time (Quake came out the same year), the amount of passion put into the game and just the personality of it makes it one of my favourite games easily, and I definitely prefer it to Doom or Quake.
The game is basically about the allaround badass Duke Nukem who has to save the world's women after an alien invasion that has killed off most of Earth's men and left the women to become enslaved by the aliens and used as incubators for their invasion. Needless to say this pisses Duke off and he goes off to kill the aliens once and for all.
The game is really easy to find, both on eBay, Steam and GOG.com and costs next to nothing these days so you really get a great game for the money. And just the amount of interactivity it has was groundbreaking back then.

05 Deus Ex

You know how when someone mentions Deus Ex, someone reinstalls it? That's not just something they say, that's true. And I am guilty of reinstalling it multiple times. And there's a good reason for it, this game is just really good and really fun to play and one of the games that got me interested in RPG's back in the day. It blends elements from adventure games, RPG's and first person shooters, and mixing elements of cyberpunk and conspiracy theories in order to create something really fresh and memorable and the gameplay elements makes this game really fun to just mess around with and play over and over because every time I play the game I discover something new and not a lot of games can say that.
Really great game, easy to find on Steam and GOG.com and not gonna set you back much. A true classic by every sense of the word.

04 Mass Effect Trilogy

It's really hard to say which of the Mass Effect games are my favourite so I'm just gonna say all 3 of them as I tend to see all of them as one game since they are meant to be played in succession and in my opinion, the games sort of compliment each other really well. The first game is more of a roleplaying experience and with a lot of inventory management, and honestly has the best story of the 3 games, the second game is more of an action/adventure experience and really plays more like a third person shooter. The third game feels like a mix between the first two games and also has a pretty decent multiplayer mode.
The games circle around Commander Shepard and his/her journey to save the galaxy from an ancient race of machines who are basically strong as gods and is in my opinion one of the most solid game trilogies out there, although not entirely without its flaws, and the ending to the third game continues to polarize critics and gamers alike. Still I've put so many hours into these games and really lived myself into them so much that I have to put them here on the list.

03 Unreal Tournament

What can you say about Unreal Tournament, it's just one of the best arena FPS's out there and has been since it came out. Just the amount of game modes, characters, guns and all around fun is huge in this game and while there is basically no story in the game, the focus isn't on the story, it's on the gameplay and to me, that's how all great games should be. Basically the game is a shooter in which the goal is to get the most kills and least deaths. Dead simple. Though there might always be additional goals depending on the game mode you choose. Team Deathmatch pits two opposing teams against each other, Capture The Flag does the same but each team guards a flag and the goal is to capture the opposing team's flag enough times to win the match. There are also more objective driven modes such as Assault where one team attacks the base while the other team defends it. The offensive team has to find a set amount of smaller objectives and complete them before the base can be overrun.
While Unreal Tournament 2004 and UT3 both are great sequels, you still can't beat the original imo, with its outstanding visuals that still hold up today and its awesome mod soundtrack composed by Alex Brandon who also worked on Deus Ex and Jazz Jackrabbit 2. One of my favourite things about UT is that it's highly modable and you can easily download additional characters and maps online to expand your experience and add a lot of additional custom content to it, and it's one of my staples in every LAN party I have as it runs really well on modern computers and whether played on PC or my Dreamcast, it is always a fun time and always a great party game.

02 Duke Nukem Forever

Yeah, I include both this, Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem 3D in the same list. I'm a huge Duke fan, so sue me! ;) I honestly don't get the hate and criticism people give this game. While I understand SOME of it, especially directed towards the console ports, I honestly don't understand most of it. I think the main problem people have with Duke Nukem Forever is that they take it way too seriously and honestly, that's sort of missing the point entirely. Both Duke Nukem 3D and Duke Nukem Forever are games that aren't meant to be taken seriously, pretty much the entire game is just made for fun and this goes through the entire design and gameplay.
That being said, this IS and always will be one of the most fun games I've played and I love every second of it. I still play it today and even recently completed it on the highest difficulty, and it's one of the few games I've done that on just because I am that dedicated to it. Duke Nukem Forever basically takes everything that made Duke Nukem 3D so great, the interactivity, the humor, the personality, the gameplay variety, pop culture references, and just amps it up to the nth degree.
I absolutely love the gameplay, the story, the graphics, the sound, everything is just solid. While there are some flaws about the game, especially the fact that the alien weapons just don't feel that satisfying and that there's a considerable lack of secrets, those are just really minor flaws and overall I love this game. There's just so much to do, so much detail and the humor is SPOT ON for Duke Nukem. Yeah it's immature and sometimes raunchy and makes you feel kinda dirty, but that's just the point of Duke Nukem. It's bad taste and revels in it and in result is one of the most unique shooters out there. I've never played anything like it and probably never will. I also have to mention that this game has something awesome that surprisingly few games have nowadays, at least on PC, a cheat mode! That's right, beat the game once and you can play around with various cheats such as infinite ammo, god mode, the original Duke 3D freezeray (bouncing projectiles instead of a constant stream), changing head sizes (basically the ol' bighead cheat) and playing the game mirrored or in black and white. Really, this is some of my favourite features of the game, just being able to dick around with the cheats to make the game even more fun to play when you just want to play for fun!
Strongly suggest you at least check out the free demo on Steam and decide for yourself what side of the fence you're on. I actually have a bit of a problem as whenever I see someone bashing the game I tend to get very defensive because I honestly love this game and think a LOT of people take it WAY too seriously and simply put, they just don't get it. It is by far one of my favourite games of all time and WOULD be my favourite game if it wasn't for the next game on my list...

01 Borderlands 2

I honestly don't know where to begin when it comes to Borderlands 2. I am a HUGE fan of the first game and it really was an awesome shooter that blended RPG elements with first person shooting to create a truly unique experience that was basically Diablo with guns. But it was so much more, it had humor, cartoony comic-book style graphics that was a huge contrast to the more realistic shooters of the time, it had memorable music and a Mad Max influenced vibe that I couldn't help but fall in love with. Then Borderlands 2 came out and boy, this is the PERFECT example of how you make a sequel. It takes EVERYTHING that made the first game great, taking the crazy gun combinations, the characters, the graphical style, the shoot'n'loot gameplay and just adding more story, more characters, the most memorable villain of all time for me with Handsome Jack, more guns, more loot and just making it a bigger and better game overall.
Borderlands 2 is a game that I just never get tired of. While the first game I easily get tired of and bored with, the second game I can play any time, any day, and never feel bored. There's constantly something there to draw me back, whether it's a new DLC, a new character to play, more rare guns to hunt for or just to live myself into that universe again and meet those crazy characters, laugh at the awesome dialogue, and just overall have a good fucking time. Borderlands 2 is a game that to me is flawless because no matter what flaws the game has, the reasons I find it awesome outweigh those flaws with such an amount that this is one of the few games that I feel deserves a true 10/10 score. I'm probably going to review it some day but I've been holding off because I find it hard to give this game a fair review since I am totally biased and consider this my favourite game of all time.
I keep playing it, I keep loving it, and probably will for years to come. It is simply an amazing game, and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who love shooters. You owe it to yourself to play this game at least once in your lifetime. The characters give options for ANY playstyle there is, whether you wanna be a sniper, an elemental DOT expert or a tank. It is also the perfect game to play with a party of close friends and to me, there's nothing better than a game you can play with friends and that even is BETTER in multiplayer!
Should also be noted that Borderlands 2 is one of the few, if not the ONLY sequel I know that retroactively makes the first game even more fun to play as it expands on the characters from the first game and gives them way more character development and also makes the story from the first game more interesting since it builds on it. I just don't know any game sequel at the top of my head who does this as well as Borderlands 2 does. So yeah, that's why Borderlands 2 is my favourite game of all time.
At this point it is the game on my list that I have put the most amount of hours into on Steam with a staggering 442 hours and counting and that should indicate just how much I adore this game. I'm not gonna spoil too much of the game but let me just say that it is amazing and the story is one of the best I've seen in a game. It is dead simple but that's why it's so awesome. And the fact they keep releasing more and more content for the game is just amazing as I really love the stuff they keep giving us and keeping us playing the game.
It combines everything I love in games. Guns, roleplaying, sci-fi elements, humor, good music and atmosphere and characters you just can't help but fall in love with and that are so memorable they become part of your life. And honestly, to me that is what makes this game perfect in my eyes and why I keep playing it. What more can you ask for?
I can see myself playing this game for years to come which is not something I say easily about games these days but any game on this list are games I have played for a long time and will continue playing into the future, no matter what games come out. ;)

- Alyxx

Top 20 Favourite Games (20-11)

I did a top 20 "best games of all time" list and I felt the title was a bit misleading. I am in no way stating which games are the best of all time, just what games I personally love the most. The following list contains games that are personal favourites to me and I had to stick to 20 because I really do play way too many games for a top 10 and there has been SO many favourites over the years that I just cannot overstate how much I love.

But first off I wanna give some honorable mentions to games that barely made the list:

Half-Life



I really love Half-Life and I've played it a lot back in 2001 and 2002, one of the games that really made me feel immersed and made me feel like I was going through one big world and not just levels and cutscenes. It was a groundbreaking game in the terms that it constantly kept you in first person and felt very cinematic but in a different sense than games like Metal Gear Solid. Though it hasn't aged that well and I find it really hard to play through these days unlike the games on the list so I just can't include it for that reason. I just don't play it anymore.

The Longest Journey and Pinchcliffe Grand Prix

Pinchcliffe Grand Prix

I've played these games a lot, TLJ mostly due to the great dialogue and lengthy expositions done by the excellent voice actors and it's easily one of the best Norwegian games I've played, next to the Pinchcliffe Grand Prix game, which I also really played a lot back in the day but I just don't play it anymore at all so I find it hard to include. Pinchcliffe Grand Prix is basically a collection of arcady minigames that you play in order to win car parts to build the legendary Il Tempo Gigante car from the movie and race in a Death Rally esque racing game. It's a really solid game, not very impressive graphically but it does the job well and runs on pretty much every computer since 1998 and the graphics were really good for the time in terms of CGI animation and you can really tell a lot of passion was put into it to make it as close ot the movie as possible, even getting some of the same voice actors even if it's been over 20 years since the movie came out. There IS a Nintendo DS version of this game but I have yet to try it out and I hear it's kinda meh so... I might just stick to the PC version. The entire game is in Norwegian since the movie is a Norwegian cult classic, but I'm pretty sure there is an English version too, just saying. The game received a prestigious EMMA award in 2001 so that counts for something. One of my favourite aspects about the game is that it's entirely without violence and still manages to be a lot of fun and is a great introduction for younger players into gaming and especially simple arcade games. I don't play it that much anymore but I can see it as a game I might play with my children one day.

The Longest Journey

TLJ is an adventure game about April Ryan who turns out to be having the power to travel at will between two parallell dimensions, one is in the science-focused Stark while the other is in the magic-focused Arcadia. It's a really solid point-and-click game with a huge story and universe and great voice acting and it's only ruined by the terrible sequel Dreamfall which I honestly consider one of the worst games I have ever played in my life. But TLJ is a great classic by all means. Either way, both of these games I have played a lot and I really loved them but I just don't find myself having the will to revisit them.

So that's it for the honorable mentions, let's move on to the 10 first games on my top 20 list.

20 Duke Nukem

Duke Nukem was the first game that I remember playing at all. My father was a computer enthusiast and so naturally I got a lot of experience around computers growing up and Duke Nukem was a really popular shareware title when I grew up and it got a lot of gameplay from me. My dad probably can't count all the times he woke up at 5 in the morning from the PC speaker sounds. The game is a fairly decent platformer that sported some nice graphics for the time and paralax scrolling on PC was a bit of an achievement back then as PC platformers were starting to take off. It might not have aged that well as it sports EGA graphics and mere PC speaker sounds, but for me the nostalgia is really strong and to this day I still play this game a lot and it's arguably one of my favourite platformers ever. The basic goal of the game is to get to the exit of the level but with as many points and as much health as possible, since it's a very arcady game and it's all about getting the highest score. You're armed with a ray gun to kill off enemies which can be upgraded as you play to fire more rapidly. It's divided into 3 episodes, and the goal of each episode is usually the same, kick the ass of Dr Proton and his Techbots to hell, though the setting and level design varies between each episode, a theme that would be revisited in future games.
Just like most Duke Nukem games to follow, it wasn't terribly original or even that good, but it was incredibly unique in the terms of style. Of course, I would come to grow up with Duke and his later games and they are some of the games I have played the most in my life and it was all thanks to this initial game. Though I'm placing it lowest on the list due to it having some issues such as the levels getting pretty repetitive after a while and some of them are even pretty badly designed and can be a chore to get through, but overall this game is as solid classic DOS gaming as it gets. The game can easily be found online as you can get it at GOG.com and even on Steam as well, though since the game originally was released through mail order by Apogee, finding a boxed copy can be next to impossible, so if you do find one, consider yourself lucky.

19 BlackThorne

I'm not sure what really draws me to this game, whether it is the awesome 16bit graphics, the music, or just the sheer style of the game and the uber-sexy macho hero who reminds me of Duke Nukem for some reason. All I know is that I played it a LOT as a kid, almost as much as the first Duke Nukem, and also play it a lot today in DOSBox. It's just an overall solid action/adventure game in the vein of Prince of Persia, except you get a shotgun and the ability to hide in the shadows, not to mention you can fire behind your shoulder without looking (which would be IMPOSSIBLE but it works in a 2D space just fine). The main goal of the game is to fight an evil overlord who has enslaved your people and you have to go through 3-4 different stages to get there, each stage split into sections that you travel through in Prince of Persia style. Some might find the controls a bit sluggish but if you've played PoP before, they should feel like second nature. It's just a really cool game and I always keep it installed for some reason. Pretty difficult to find nowadays, especially a boxed copy.
Really wish it would be released on GOG.com or Steam as Blizzard do own the rights to this game since they developed it. A GBA port was released more recently though which might be easier to find though I really recommend tracking down the DOS version since every other version I've played was very censored and the blood was recoloured green while in the original DOS version the violence was more graphic, giving it a more adult feel.

18 Terraria

There are few games I can just play for days and never get tired of. When I first played Terraria I think I must've played it for an entire day almost, it's a game that I'm almost afraid of playing since I know I won't be able to play anything else for several hours or even an entire day if I get into it. A lot of people compare it to Minecraft but that's almost an unfair comparison as Terraria is so much more than what it appears to be. I've also had some people not wanting to play it due to the 2D graphics but to me that's one of the reasons I love it. It reminds me so much of the old 2D DOS games I played as a kid and I completely adore the style of it. While you can craft in the game and a lot of the game centers around crafting and building, you also have tons of enemies to fight and even bosses, and there's a lot of really good RPG elements in play that make it a very diverse experience. It's just a game I never get tired of and I can see myself playing it way into the future. The game can be found on Steam for next to nothing these days so I strongly recommend checking it out if you have any interest in Minecraft-like games, though like I said, it's a lot different from Minecraft.

17 Metroid Fusion

Out of all the Metroid games I strangely find Fusion to be my favourite. I've played it over and over more times than I can count and while I don't play it that much anymore it is the game in the series that I find the scariest, with the best story, the best controls and also the best gameplay. It is easily the best 2D Metroid and while the music isn't as memorable as Metroid 1 or Super Metroid, it definitely does set a good tone and adds a lot to the atmosphere in the game. The sound effects are really good for the GBA and I also really enjoy the fact that the game is pretty linear so you never get lost which for me was a common problem in other 2D Metroids and even the 3D ones. It is much easier to get through the game in Metroid Fusion and that's always a plus for me. Of course I have nothing against the more free exploration in other Metroids, I just simply prefer a more linear path and I am very happy that Fusion offered that. I also find the X parasites a really cool enemy and I think the SA-X is the most memorable enemy in the entire franchise, only possibly rivaled by Dark Samus in the Prime games. I only have one thing left to say, this game can bring chills down my spine and it's on a handheld platform. To me that counts for a lot.

16 Quake

Aww, he just wants to hug you!

Of course, to me I wouldn't be able to make a favourite games list without throwing in at least one id Software game and to me, Quake will always be their crowning achievement. The Lovecraftian tone coupled with the Nine Inch Nails sound design and the classic FPS gameplay that popularized a lot of things such as rocket jumping and online multiplayer even more than Doom did, makes Quake a solid 90's classic game that people are still modding it and creating new content, and with engines like Darkplaces you can even install high resolution textures that really make the game feel a lot more modern. The game is basically another Doom, except with less of a It really is their best game in my opinion and although it often falls under the shadow of Doom and Wolfenstein 3d, to me Quake just combines everything they had done at that point and perfected it. It was also a groundbreaking title in that it used polygon models instead of sprites, something that was really cutting edge back in 1996, especially since the game ran pretty well on most PC's, although it definitely benefited from hardware acceleration.

15 Grim Fandango

Of course I had to squeeze in an adventure game here and while I really love other games like Monkey Island and The Longest Journey, Grim Fandango is really my favourite adventure game of all time. I've played it so much that I know the entire game, every character, every line, every scene by heart and I must've played it more than any other adventure game I can think of. It's just a really charming game, chock full of humor and a bit of dark undertones too and the world was one of the first that I felt was believable and I could explore and get lost in. The art design also feels really fresh as it mixes 40's art deco with Mexican folk lore, something no other game has done to my knowledge, at least not in the same way and that well. The game is about Manny Calavera, who might appear to be the grim reaper but he's nothing more than a salesman who sells trips to the Ninth Underworld, the place of eternal rest, while spending his time trying to work off his time so he can get there himself. Of course he discovers that there is some heavy corruption going on and uncovers a web of deceit that leads him to an underground resistance and so on, though his quest soon becomes more about finding a woman who he feels responsible for, Mercedes Colomar, after not being able to give her a good trip despite her flawless attributes. It really is a gripping story and one I don't mind replaying now and then, like a good book or good movie, you can watch it again and discover something new.

14 Star Fox

The only console that I've actually spent a considerable amount of time gaming on was the SNES and among the games we had for the system, one of them was a little game called Star Fox, or Starwing here in Europe. The game is fairly unique in that it was one of the few games for the SNES that utilized real time 3D graphics. It achieved this by actually having a 3D processor chip included on the cart itself, which did all the math for the polygons and stuff, leaving the rest of the functions such as sprite scaling and sound to the SNES. This made for some really graphically impressive games for the SNES, Star Fox being probably the most popular and it's easy to see why. Star Fox is so much more than just a tech demo for the Super FX chip, it's actually really fun to play. It's basically an on-rails arcade shooter where you play through a set course of levels out of a possible 3, each of varying difficulty, attempting to get the highest score possible. Everything about Star Fox makes it an insanely memorable game for me and I even got so much into the game that I put on a headset and pretended to be actually flying the arwing. Easily one of my favourite SNES games and one I can pick up and play any day. There's even a slight animals vs humans theme going on which I find really intriguing.

13 Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

Now this is one that I just wanna include because it has become one of my favourite games lately. It's a PC platformer that is essentially a sort of modern remake of the old Giana Sisters game for Commodore 64. Though Twisted Dreams is actually more than the original game was. While the original Giana Sisters alot of the time felt like a mere Mario ripoff, Twisted Dreams has a much more unique feel to it and a lot of really cool gameplay elements that I just haven't seen in other platformers that much. It takes some clues from the new Super Mario games on Wii but adds its own style and flavour to it. The music is done by Chris Hülsbeck and Machinae Supremacy and they've done a stellar job re-imagining the old chiptunes from the original into pretty epic rock songs that still maintain the addictive melodies and update them with more modern production, giving them more of an edge. An interesting thing about this game is the focus it has and the focus is on parallell dimensions and almost everything in the game, graphics, sound AND gameplay work together towards this focus. You can change between the Giana Sisters at any time you want, both of them being in different dimensions that work as opposites of each other and the levels are designed to take advantage of this game mechanic so you're constantly having to change between characters. It's similar to the dark world mechanic in Zelda Link to the Past in that each dimension has slightly different elements and you have to use both to complete the game. An interesting mechanic is that the graphics and music change on the fly as you change between dimensions and the music in Punk Giana's dimension is a lot more rocked up by Machinae Supremacy and the music in Cute Giana's dimension is more mellow and synthesized to give it a less rocked feel. To me that's just ingenious game design and shows that strong focus can really help give a game a unique feel. I strongly recommend checking the game out and there's even a free demo of it available on Steam, though you can get it DRM-free at GOG.com as well.

12 Super Mario World

Super Mario World was a game that I played almost ridicilously much growing up. Simply because it was easy to play but hard to master, and a ton of fun. Coming home from school, I would often do my homework and then just spend the rest of the afternoon playing Super Mario World. And growing up the game remained one of my most played console games and to this day it's probably my favourite Mario game and the only one I ever really got into. Other Mario games I've always had a bit of a problem getting into since I am primarily a PC gamer and only have a pretty marginal interest in console games, but World definitely is the Mario game that I love the most. I would say it's pretty much the perfect Mario game to me and I think a lot of Mario fans can agree.

11 Balls of Steel

Balls of Steel is pretty much to me the most fun pinball game I've played. Inspired by the pinball cabinet displayed in Duke Nukem 3D, it was released by 3D Realms under their Pinball Wizards label and lets you actually play a pinball table based on Duke Nukem 3D. I play it mostly for the Duke Nukem table but the other tables are just as fun and I always keep it installed for some quick and dirty pinball fun whenever I need it. I've tried a lot of other pinball games over the years but none of them really felt as satisfying and fun as Balls of Steel and I just simply love the game to death. It's a shame it was the only pinball game ever released under 3D Realms/Apogee's Pinball Wizards label but it's also one of the best pinball games out there so... at least it has that going for it. You can get it at GOG.com these days and that's the version I recommend getting, although a boxed copy is pretty easy to find on eBay if you give it a few searches. Highly recommended if you want a fun pinball game that doesn't take a whole lot to get into. It might not be very accurate in terms of realism or simulation but you know what, it's fun as hell and that's what matters to me.

So that's it for now. Stay tuned for my follow up list which will contain my top 10 favourite games of all time! Feel free to leave comments below!

- Alyxx

Review: Bleed (PC)

BLEED
Platform: PC (Steam)
Released: 2013
Genre: Platformer
Developer/Publisher: Ian Campbell
Buy on Steam

The strangely titled retro platformer Bleed from Bootdisk Revolution was released recently on Steam but has been available DRM free and on XBox Live since 2012. Featuring a cool pixelated purple-haired heroine dual-wielding pistols, you can make sure this game got my attention and getting it for my birthday from a friend, I had to try it out. Is it worth buying or is this indie game just another retro platformer in the sea of retro platformers? Let's find out.

The story in Bleed isn't exactly complicated stuff. You're basically sent out to kill some ex-heroes who have turned into villains somehow over time in order to become the new ultimate hero. The game does have its own unique humor though and contains several references to oldschool platformers and clichés. I particurarily love the level and boss descriptions and the main character has a ton of personality as every time you die, she will utter a comment about how she died, often pertaining to the level or enemy you fought. The story is pretty basic but sufficiently quirky to make it a bit unique although the gameplay is obviously the focus of the game.

The game plays a lot like the old classic Megaman games although with its own spin on things. The basic goal of each level, which can be played alone or co-op with a friend, is to make it through to the end and killing everything in your path, using your abilities to survive the hazards and enemies that come your way. The controls are gonna take some getting used to, especially the jumping mechanics (which confused me a bit at first as your double jump is controlled by aiming it). You're given two weapon slots and start out with dual pistols and a rocket launcher (two of my favourite weapons in any game) although as you complete each level you earn money you can use to buy new weapons and upgrades and you can change your weapon loadout at any time during the level, which expands your inventory slightly. You're also given a slowmo ability which comes in handy during certain areas and boss fights and it can be upgraded to last longer by giving you more energy, and a health bar which can be upgraded and you have infinite lives so losing is not that big of a deal, respawning you in the room you died. This is a godsend because this game is really challenging, even on the Easy difficulty. I really recommend not playing on anything but Easy when first playing this game as even that mode seriously kicked my ass on several occasions, especially since the controls feel a bit awkward at first and take some getting used to.

Once you have beat the game's 7 levels with the last one basically being a boss run, you can play through those again on higher difficulties or attempt some harder modes such as the Arcade mode (playing through the game on one life) or Challenge mode where you fight 3 bosses simultaneously on one screen. You can also unlock other characters by completing the game on other difficulties so the game does have some replay value although for me the game felt a bit too short and with not enough differences to warrant repeated playthroughs. I would've loved the ability to play more than just 7 levels personally.

The graphics are pretty decent, sporting the retro pixelated style you can expect from a retro platformer so there's not much to say about it. It feels deliciously 80's though with a lot of purple and pink used and a pretty broad colour palette. The game has a pretty good soundtrack although it just didn't stick that well with me for some reason. The main theme is pretty much the only memorable theme from the game in my opinion which is a shame. I just didn't feel the soundtrack stood out that well for me.

So overall, how good is Bleed? For me, the game is pretty average and kind of gets lost in the sea of retro indie platformers these days. Although I enjoy the style, especially the dual pistols and just the fact the game has a badass heroine and a quirky story, I found it way too short and way too difficult to really get into. The controls take some getting used to and even then I just can't find much replay value. It might be something I have the odd craving for now and then but I can't see myself playing this much.


SUMMARY:
STORY: 5/10
Largely forgetable and just there to serve the gameplay, although a bit quirky.
GRAPHICS: 7/10
Colourful retro graphics, but nothing you haven't seen a million times before in other retro platformers. If you like this style, this game is probably for you but for me it just feels a bit above average.
GAMEPLAY: 5/10
Difficult controls take a bit getting used to giving the game a bit of an unfair difficulty level for beginners and it will take a while to get into. It's a decent platformer though and the gunplay is fun. I will have to say it's a very short game though, the only replay value is there if you somehow feel the need to play through the same levels over and over.
SOUND: 6/10
It's classic 8bit style sound all the way but just doesn't stand out enough for me. I've seen this done a million times already in other indie platformers and this game just doesn't do anything unique in the sound department. It's decent and definitely fits the game, but just not memorable enough to be anything but average.

FINAL SCORE: 6/10

Top 10 Free To Play Games

We all love free stuff. I mean, it's free, you don't pay for it. Though in some cases with today's list you might end up paying for it in the end but this is a list of games that will literally cost you nothing to play. Take into consideration I am not counting demos or shareware here, only free games, and which offer the best gameplay and value for your airbucks. These are not in any way the top 10 "be all end all" of free games but they are simply my favourites among the free stuff out there

10.

Since Wolfenstein 3D became 20 years old last year, an online in-browser version of the game has been available to play, absolutely for free. It contains all of the levels from the full version and literally only costs you the time you spend online. Check it out now!

9.

Tetris is a legendary title among gamers. Known for its addictive nature and sweet music, Tetris is still going strong on pretty much any computer and device known to man that has a screen on it. Nowdays you can easily play it for free in your browser.
http://www.freetetris.org/

 8.

Want the multiplayer of Call of Duty without paying 60 bucks for it? Then Blacklight Retribution is the game for you. Offering a free-to-play model of the Call of Duty style multiplayer, set in a cyberpunk setting with some nifty unique features like mech suits and a vision that lets you easily spot campers, BLR sets itself apart as a superior experience to Call of Duty in many aspects. My favourite thing about it is the customization options and the ability to play as a female soldier. It has sweet visuals and very good audio to match them. Soon coming to PS4 but for now you can grab it for PC on Steam.

7.

Offering sleek visuals and an incredibly cool futuristic sci-fi style, Warframe is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter where you control cool looking robots, performing dangerous battles and missions on space stations and such. It's a very good game if you're into third person shooters and with a lot of customization options. Definitely worth checking out.

6.

While it costs you a bit to get a pro subscription, Quake Live is still a great game and basically a free version of Quake 3. Setting up an account and playing takes you seconds as all you need to do is install a plugin and you can play it in your browser. A lot of fun in short bursts if you're an oldschool Quake fan! You can play it at www.quakelive.com!

5.

Shadow Warrior is without a doubt one of the best Build games out there from the 90's, and if you're a fan of Duke Nukem 3D, Redneck Rampage, Blood and other Build games, Shadow Warrior is a must-play. It's not as good or memorable as Duke but definitely very fun to play and has a lot of delicious over-the-top violence and the graphics are an improvement on Duke 3D. You can play it for free on Steam!

4.

Black Mesa is pretty much a re-imagining of the original Half-Life with updated graphics and levels and much better voice acting that ties it more to Half-Life 2. It has a different feel to it though and really does stand on its own. Suffice to say, you haven't played Half-Life until you've played Black Mesa as it really does feel like a better Source version of Half-Life than HL:Source. All you need is Steam and the Source SDK and you can play it! Get it now at http://www.blackmesasource.com/

3.

Tribes Ascend is one of the games that tries to classify itself as a virtual sport rather than a game and it's easy to see why. Tribes is really one of those games that is easy to play but takes a long time and effort to master and get good at as it has a very unique playstyle. It is a lot of fun though to be skiing at high speed and use the jet pack to fly high and bomb the poor mofos under you with a grenade launcher. Definitely worth trying out and it's free!

2.

Technically Dota 2 is in closed beta but with so many codes floating around, Valve are practically giving the game away for free. It's definitely a very fun experience though and very addictive once you start playing it. It's basically a team vs team game where two teams start on opposite ends of a map and duke it out, trying to destroy each other's bases and you basically control a hero character, and the game's addictive nature lies in how many heroes there are, their abilities and which one you choose as your favourite. While it may take a few forum requests to get it, it's easy to get a free copy if you have Steam.

1.

Let it be said, I am a MASSIVE shmup fan. It is by far my favourite genre from the 8bit and 16bit eras of gaming and Tyrian 2000 is definitely up there among the best and the best part is, it's 100% free! On gog.com you get the game pretty much when you sign up for an account and it's totally worth getting an account over. Not only is it a fun arcady shmup but it also has customization options and great music! Head over to www.gog.com now and grab yourself a free copy!


So yeah, those were my top 10 free to play games. Which are your favourites? Leave a comment!

- Alyxx

PC Game Review: BioShock Infinite

BIOSHOCK INFINITE
Platform: PC (Steam)
Released: 2013
Genre: First Person Shooter
Developer: Irrational Games
Publisher: 2K Games
Buy on Steam

Before I start talking about the game, I just want to say that this is the first BioShock game I've played. I actually never played BioShock 1 or 2 and bought this game for the sole reason that it seemed intriguing and got a lot of great reviews from both people and critics. A lot of people seem to really love this game and most people have already compared it to Half-Life 2 in terms of how good it is. So I thought that now that I've finally finished this game (on Hard difficulty mind you), I'd share my two cents on what my thoughts are about BioShock Infinite.

The first thing that really caught my attention about BioShock Infinite was the graphics. This game oozes atmosphere and pure raw STYLE from the moment you start it up. It's basically set in a sort of steampunk fictionalized 1920's, and stuff like religion and not to mention a good deal of racism is alive and well. You'll even find a lot of advertisements for cigarettes marketed to children. The graphics do a wonderful job setting you in the right mood and making the environment feel alive and vibrant and this is by far one of the best looking games this year. You'll probably benefit from buying this game on PC, seeing as it's far superior to consoles in terms of graphics, if you really care about that sort of thing, but it probably looks great on consoles too since it's more reliant on style rather than photorealism, something I tend to prefer in most cases. If you look at something like Deus Ex Human Revolution compared to Call of Duty Ghosts, in my opinion, Human Revolution wins out.

Vigors are an essential part of the gameplay and helps add some needed flair to it, though the weapons feel uninspired.

Another thing I noticed was how well paced it was. Being a sequel (spiritually anyway) I expected this game to more or less throw you right into the action and just toss everything at you at once. Instead the game gradually eases you into its concepts and introduces everything pretty smoothly. When you reach Elizabeth, who is in many ways the second protagonist in the game in addition to Booker, that's when the game really begins and you get introduced to the more heavy story elements. Before that the game spends a considerable amount of time just letting you wander around, soaking in the environment and getting familiar with the setting before it throws you into the action. Up until the point where you meet Elizabeth, you've already had the time to get familiar with the combat and basic weaponry and the game does a wonderful job easing you into more and more concepts, building them gradually like Lego blocks. It's this kind of game progression I enjoy in most games as it can be rather overwhelming when everything is thrown at you at once. It doesn't hurt that the story is really good and will definitely keep you playing for a long time. I won't really go into any big spoiler territory here but the game is long and has several great twists, especially one at the end and it does involve time travel and multiple dimensions and stuff and it's really good fuel for thought, which I'll admit is a rarity in most of today's games.

But no matter how good the story might be, the gameplay elements though tend to feel rather... uninspired. It's hard to put into words precisely but the game does feel like it's lacking a lot of things and I'll explain why. The first thing is the weaponry. You're given this skyhook thing, which you can also use to travel on skylines, which by the way is as fun as it looks, I'll give it that, and you use the skyhook as a melee weapon. However, unlike when the weapon is first demonstrated, you can't really do any finishing moves or executions using the skyhook. Most you can do is thwack people with it repeatedly until they die and it's not really that satisfying to use as a weapon and in most cases it's only usable to finish people off after stripping most of their health away with your other guns. In of itself it's a rather disappointingly weak weapon. The other weapons also feel almost dull and you're never really given anything that stands out particurarily or feels particurarily satisfying to use. I mostly stuck to the Carbine or Revolver since the two only automatic weapons, the machine gun and the crank gun (basically a minigun with a crank), feel rather underpowered and especially on Hard waste a lot of ammo and aren't that useful. I really wish you could have something like an assault rifle that felt really satisfying to use. You also have a rocket launcher and a grenade launcher, but all of the weapons feel rather standardized and boring to use and nothing really struck me as feeling radically satisfying.

Meet Elizabeth, one of the most expressive and interesting sidekicks since Half-Life 2.

Another thing that really struck me was that death has no real consequence in this game. Sure, it takes some money away but you don't really get any penalty for dying. You either just step back out of an office (which is a pretty cool idea I'll admit) or Elizabeth revives you. Either way, it's kinda like in Borderlands where death feels entirely inconsequential. I just wish there was more of a penalty so that you didn't get this "eh, I'll just get back into the fight" feeling since enemies don't even regenerate health while you are gone. I mean, it's kinda unfair on the enemies too and I really wish this game stuck to quicksaves instead of basically giving you infinite lives. I guess it makes the game feel smoother but it also makes death feel entirely without consequence and it kinda bothers me when I think about it. I know that Spoony touched upon this issue in his review and I definitely agree with him on it. By the way that's a review I'm gonna have to do one day, Borderlands, seeing as the infinite respawns make NO sense in story context and are purely there as a way to keep players interested since a lot of modern gamers probably just turn off the game when they die even once (no offense intended here, I've been guilty of it myself).

The enemies behaved rather well, though a lot of them suffered from "running into you without any regard for self-preservation" syndrome. I mean, we're in 2013 and we still haven't figured out to make AI that doesn't do stupid shit like this? None of them felt really memorable aside from some of the higher level enemies like the Patriots and the Handymen (which are TERRIFYING by the way since they don't give you time to react at ALL). I also liked some enemies in one level of the game which essentially are living flashlights that can see you and warn everyone else, those kinda creeped me out. The game also notably had a lack of boss fights. Other than fighting Lady Comstock (and you don't really fight her as much as you fight her minions), I can't really remember any memorable boss fights in this game, which is a bit of a bummer for me. Hell, the final fight is really just an airship battle with no real boss to speak of.

The Skyhook is one of the coolest aspects about Infinite, especially when you can strike someone from a skyline.

That being said the game does have some cool gameplay elements. The biggest draw of the game are of course the Vigors that give you several different powers and they can be upgraded via vending machines that sell everything from weapons and ammo to different Vigor upgrades. I definitely preferred some Vigors over others and you'll probably quickly find your favourite among them as it's kinda like a case of finding one you like and sticking to it since switching Vigors mid-combat is a bit of a chore, especially if you're playing this game on anything but PC (on PC you can hotkey to any Vigor you want). 

The game relies pretty heavily on looting as well and it gets almost absurd how much money and stuff you find in trash cans and just lying around and sooner than later, it kinda strikes me that I felt a bit like a kleptomaniac playing this game, not to mention a glutton. I mean, even with full health, I'd stick my hands into a trash can and fish out some food and eat it and it's nothing gamebreaking but it does kinda make you a bit grossed out when you think about the fact this guy even later on stuffs his face with all kinds of nasty shit, even rotten fruit and such. I mean, it even says rotten fruit and the guy still eats it. What a pig! XD

Don't let the silly design fool you, these guys can make you shit bricks...

A lot of people have mentioned that Elizabeth is one of the best companions in a game ever, and while I can see where people come from in the sense the game is kind of an escort mission but never feels like one, she doesn't really do a whole lot other than throwing you some ammo and stuff once in a while. She's basically immune to damage and it's kind of hilarious to see her running among the enemies and them not really giving a shit about her and I can't really say it makes her an active sidekick, but it does keep her from getting annoying and she is genuinely charming and has a lot of expression and emotion to her. I just disagree that Elizabeth is really that good of a sidekick since she doesn't really do anything other than opening doors for you (which makes her basically an extended lockpick and you need to gather lockpicks ANYWAY to use her) and tossing you ammo mid-combat, which I'll admit comes in handy but again, it doesn't really make her that useful.

So yeah, the music and voice acting is also top notch, I can't really find anything bad to say about that. All in all this game isn't GREAT or PERFECT by any stretch but it's good, really good. The story however is rather linear, there are no multiple paths (even if it's hinted at) and once you've played the game once, there's not really much reason to replay it, unless you really like playing around with different Booker builds and Vigors and stuff. I don't really feel like replaying it though since the ending kinda makes the entire game feel a bit inconsequential, which is one of my biggest pet peeves with some stories, when it kinda opts for that pussy out ending of "this never happened", which I won't go into any spoilers about but you'll know what I mean if you've played this game.

The Vigor effects tend to take centerstage at times.

Summary:
Gameplay: 7/10
Nothing really groundbreaking, you'll either love it or just not find it that special. I belong to the latter group on this.
Story:8/10
A great story but the ending for me kinda ruined any replay value and it felt very linear.
Graphics: 10/10
An absolutely breathtaking game. One of the few times a game has me awed at the sheer style and smoothness of the graphics. It really takes you into a whole other world.
Sounds: 7/10
It's pretty average. The music is largely forgetable, though the voice acting is great. The weapon sounds could definitely have been a bit better.

Average Score: 8/10

- Alyxx

PC Game Review: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

FAR CRY 3: BLOOD DRAGON
Platform: PC (UPlay)
Released: 2013
Genre: First Person Shooter
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Buy on Steam


How can you go wrong with a version of Far Cry 3 featuring a cyborg Michael Biehn fighting a horde of giant neon-glowing Blood Dragons spewing lazers out of their eyes and an army of cyborgs who all sound like Microsoft SAM on crack while wielding futuristic-looking weapons and a flamethrower in a landscape filled with neon colours to the thumping awesome beat of one of the best retro 80's soundtracks ever heard in a video game?
Short answer: You can't. Long answer: Look below.

From what I understand, Blood Dragon started out as somewhat of an April fools joke. Far Cry 3 done as a retro-futuristic shooter influenced by 80's sci-fi thrillers and action movies. However, at some point, somebody probably thought this idea was way too good to waste on an April fools so they went ahead and made it. The game was thought to be a DLC for Far Cry 3 but instead was made into a standalone game that does not require Far Cry 3 to install and run, which is a good thing as in many aspects, I vastly prefer Blood Dragon to Far Cry 3, even if the latter has a longer campaign and multiplayer. The game features the voice talent of famous action star Michael Biehn (Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Navy Seals) who does his best Snake Plissken voice, of course sounding endlessly badass. It really feels like he was always meant to be in a video game and this is further proof for it, and hopefully he will be more remembered for this role than his reprised role as Hicks in Aliens: Colonial Marines.

In an 80's dystopian version of 2007, where the world is suffering from the aftermath of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia,  Biehn portrays sergeant Rex Power Colt, a Mark IV cyber commando sent on a mission to investigate an island where colonel Sloan, an elite agent, has gone rogue. Confronting the colonel, it turns out that Sloan wants to take over the world (of COURSE) using the lazer-firing blood dragons as his weapons, from which he has taken blood and injected himself with it, giving him extraordinary cyber powers.
The story is pretty straight forward and never gets in the way of the gameplay, and is quite enjoyably cheesy, with all kinds of 80's clichés, such as a training montage and the cutscenes are portrayed in a wonderfully done 16bit style, similar to games you'd see in arcades or on the Sega Mega Drive back in the late 80's/early 90's.

IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOOOOR!

Gameplay wise, Blood Dragon is near identical to Far Cry 3, but with its own twist on the game. Instead of choosing which powers you want to unlock, they are pretty much unlocked for you every time you level up, giving you time to focus on the game and making it a more streamlined experience. Tutorials are always popping up (to Rex' annoyance) to give you information about your skills and weapons, with the occasional PSA popping up to humorous effect. Also, due to Rex Colt being a cyber commando, he has no limited sprint and there is virtually no falling damage at all (which is used to great effect in a memorable scene in the game). This makes Blood Dragon a much more fun and enjoyable experience than the original Far Cry 3 in a lot of respects, since it's faster paced and you only need to worry about dying from getting your stupid ass shot instead of falling off a cliff. The controls are also identical to Far Cry 3 and if you've played pretty much any first person shooter or something like Crysis before, you'll most likely slip right into them.

The world map is notably smaller than in Far Cry 3, and Blood Dragon is indeed a much more bite-sized experience, and the gameplay elements remain mostly the same. You'll spend the majority of the game liberating Garrisons, slaying enemies and animals for XP and other bonuses, and doing side missions to unlock new weapon upgrades. There are however some interesting twists to Blood Dragon as the eponymous blood dragons are some of the most terrifying enemies I've ever faced in a game as they can kill you easily with their lazer blasts. Thankfully, they are near blind and moving slowly near them you can often avoid them, and they have an affinity for the hearts you rip out of the enemy cyborgs, so throwing them to distract them often works well. There are other minor additions but I'm sure you'll find those out on your own. The campaign itself is rather short and solves itself quickly. I played through the game in less than 2-3 days while I can usually spend a week or so on a game, though if you do every side mission and try to max yourself out, it will take a while for you.

Takin' down da choppa!

The graphics are gorgeous in Blood Dragon, everything is more or less oozing (sometimes literally) with a neon retro futuristic 80's influenced style that doesn't really remind me of anything from the 80's but still has that style to it. There's a lot of glowing lights used and it's really a feast for the eyes. Textures are pretty good and I especially like the details on Rex' arm. The music and sounds match the visuals perfectly as the soundtrack, composed by Power Glove, is a retro synthfest that perfectly captures the dystopian sci-fi 80's cyberpunk feel of the game. The main theme is extremely catchy and I found myself humming it long after playing the game. Thankfully the version I bought came with a soundtrack CD and I've already put the music on my mp3 player as I just can't get enough of it. It really is one of my favourite soundtracks this year, if not THE favourite soundtrack!

Those dam puns...

So all in all, is Blood Dragon worth the money? Gods yes, this is by far my favourite game this year. It has an amazing style that a lot of people have compared to Duke Nukem Forever and I have to agree, it's probably why the game appeals so much to me. There's just nothing like playing a character like Rex Colt that really makes you feel like a superhuman and gives you the ability to just have fun with a game instead of limiting you like a lot of modern games tend to do. The game also never takes itself too seriously, there's a loose humorous tone to it and I'm sure anyone who grew up in the 90's and 80's are going to love this game. It's a shame the game feels way too short and there is no multiplayer as I would've loved to play this co-op with a friend and it seems like there would be opportunities for it at times. I also had slight performance issues on my PC though that could just be my PC. Otherwise, this game is a must-have for fans of shooters and 80's retro futurism, and I highly recommend it!

SUMMARY
Gameplay: 8/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 10/10

Average Score: 9/10

- Alyxx