Title is self-explanatory. Feel free to just "rate" if you don't want to review.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (PS3) - 9.5/10

I already wrote about this in one of the AC threads, but I was really surprised at how much I liked the game. AC2 bored the hell out of me after about 15 hours and took me 25 total with DLC (which there is no way to skip since I had the complete edition). Brotherhood took me exactly 15 hours and then I spent an extra 6 doing more stuff, so it trimmed things up nicely.

I fired up AC2 briefly last night to make sure I wasn't giving it a bad rap. I wasn't. I galloped around on a horse a bit and got chased by guards, and climbing on roofs was incredibly annoying for the same reason. Brotherhood makes incremental improvements on these elements - it reduces guard annoyance, makes it possible for you to greatly reduce guard presence in general and gives you fellow assassins to call for help if you get into trouble.

battlefield 3. I actually liked battlefield 2 better

Bioshock II (Mac) = 7/10

Not as good as the 1st one, only because the creepy factor didn't really exist this time around. I wasn't a big fan of the major changes, like how you gathered Adam and and the need for fuel for the melee weapon, which was slow (I missed the wrench). But I did like some of the other changes.

The story was basically the same, and it did seem like monster's lines were just the same things repeated, but it's really fun up to the point that you realize that. Then you just finish up the game and that's it. Graphically, I think it was exactly the same as well. Like they just switched around the map and switched up the V.O. and there you have it.

Overall, it's still a damn fun game. Most FPS's are fun no matter what, it's just a matter of how long before it gets boring.

Looking forward to BSIII.

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
(SNES)

Fairly poor graphics for 2012, the emulator froze frequently which made me lose progress all over the place, but still a wonderful dungeon crawler with a wide variety of enemies, a great story, plenty of side quests, and many perks, tricks, and various ways to make the game quite exciting.

Definitely worth a play if you can stand the dated graphics.

Have you played Minerva's Den, the DLC? It seems to be a must play from what I've heard, possibly better than BS2 itself. Self-contained story.

I can't be sure until I get home and see what games are laying around my console, but I think the last game I finished might have been...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - 8.8/10

For those not familiar with the series, it's kind of a FPS/RPG hybrid that typically presents multiple ways to approach a level (guns blazing, stealth, hacking stuff) and lets you choose among several different ability upgrades as you progress through the game. It's super fun and the different play style choices available to you keep the gameplay pretty refreshing all the way through. Loses points for...
- boss fights that don't fit in at all with the tone/gameplay of the rest of the game and are therefore anticlimactic
- being pretty generous with the upgrades available to the player, meaning you can become uber-powerful rather than having to make tough decisions about how you want to play
- a story w/ multiple endings that don't actually have anything to do with the choices you make during the first 95% of the game, rendering them somewhat meaningless

But, those nitpicks aside, definitely one of the best games of 2011.

Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword (Wii) 7.5/10

Motion controls work well for the most part. The story's pretty strong for a Zelda. Good dungeons and some nice mini dungeon like locations linking them. Shame it didn't have a couple more unique boss battles. The NPC interaction and side quests where a bit weak. Way too much hand holding by Fi and too little faith in the gamer by Nintendo. The whole flying mechanic was waisted except for two mini games. Saw the cut scene for finding an item way more then I wanted to.

Assassins Creed Revelations: 7.5/10

As usual, story line is solid. Ezio's run in the series is brought imaginatively to an end and we experience the usual AC themes of treachery, corruption, lust and lawlessness, this time set to the backdrop of 15th century Constantinople. We also get to play as Altair through the various stages of his life, and find out about his adventures post AC1. We don't see anything of Desmond in the 'real world' during the game but we do thoroughly explore his back-story through unlockable Portal-esque mini games outside the main plot.

To AC veterans the game presents nothing groundbreaking. There are a few new moves and items (most notably the use of bombs-which for me was fairly hit and miss). But like they say, if it isn't broke don't fix it! AC: Revelations has some very entertaining missions, actions sequences, and the usual glossy visuals. The ending is somewhat confusing to say the least, but what it does do is leave the player with the impression that something very epic is about to unfold!

NO! I had no idea it existed. Thanks for the heads up.

I'm going to post about the game that I finished before the game I finished that I posted about.

Saints Row The Third: 9.25/10

I had to go through a sh*tton to finally (couple months ago) be able to play this. I had to partition my Mac and install Windows, and I had an issue that kind of took me out of commission for 2 days. Finally got everything situated, and my first task was this game.

I loved it. I dug a lot of the minor changes and I can't think of too much that I missed from the first 2. Really like that I didn't have to spray paint or anything like that. I like that 1 and 2 had the 3 other gangs split up more in the story stuff, so that was a little bit missed. It was almost the same, but it never felt like I beat the gang like I did in the 2nd one. A few missions where you had unlimited ammo and really didn't have to do too much aside from just getting to the end was a bit annoying but not that big of a deal.

The only things I didn't like were that the activities started with missions from the NPC's. They should've just been new missions with the activity being their own little sh*tty side stories. They don't need to treat every release like no one has ever played one of them before so everything is a lesson the first time. Much appreciated that you didn't lose out on any perks with the activities though. I still despise the Snatch and Trail Blazing activities so much that I didn't even bother with medium. Also, the new approach to the vehicle thefts kind of pissed me off. I loved how after doing that in GTA, as soon as I'd start the game, I'd stash every car that I think might be wanted by the dealers as I progressed through the game. Turns out that they didn't allow that this time accept for the first couple. I hated that about GTAIV as well.

The game was an absolute blast overall. I'll probably play it again soon. I started out wanting to complete every single side mission and activity and challenge, but by the end (along with the game not counting every challenge completion) I just wanted to play the story out.

Last game I finished was Mass Effect 3 so I'm not gonna review it because plenty has been said. So I'll go for Dark Souls instead.

9.5/10. A superb game that should have won GotY for 2011. It's not like anything else out there. The rock-hard difficulty meant that I got such a feeling of accomplishment when I got through an area or killed a tough boss. The brilliant aspect of the challenge is that it almost never feels unfair - when I died, I knew it's because I'd screwed up. That kept me motivated to keep coming back more despite repeated deaths. The combat's slow-paced but really fun because of the challenge. And it's great how I can develop my character in so many different ways - pure mage, heavily armoured warrior, battlemage, cleric etc are all viable.

The world design is one of the most impressive things I've seen in a video game. The way the areas in the game connect through shortcuts - so that a single area is linked to two or three others - is brilliant. It kinda irritates me that people go on about how huge the Elder Scroll's game worlds are. I admit, I haven't and never will play Skyrim. But I played Morrowind and Oblivion and was utterly unimpressed by their worlds. So what if they're big; they're mostly empty! And what stuff there is to do isn't very interesting as the combat's utter rubbish and the storyline's dreadful. There's an intelligence to the world design in Dark Souls that's totally missing from the "quantity = quality" thinking in TES games.

xbox360 "Dead Island" 8.9/10

One of the best games i played in the last years. (I must admit, i really enjoy zombie games)

+ Graphics!
+ Athmosphere!
+ Colorsystem for Weapons like in Diabolo!
+ Crafting System
+ Online Coop
+ Analog fighting system
+ Openworld/Exploring the island, many eastereggs (Jason ;-), etc...
+ varying surroundings (Resort, Hotel, City, Jungle, Lab, Prison)
+ Gory as hell
+ Sound (Zombie screams are so creepy)

Story and missions are not great but decent/good

- Zombies respawn to quick
- firearms suck (melee ftw anyway)
- driving-mechanics sucks
- compass/map/missionsystem sucks
- skilltree sucks

But overall a great game imo...
If u can get it cheap, i should dev. buy it!

VVVVVV

9/10

2D side-scrolling game where Hero has to avoid spikes and enemies while not jumping, but reversing the gravity within the game, causing ceiling and floor to reverse. There are varying degrees of difficulty within, with some of the 'trinkets' (essentially like stars in mario) extremely difficult to attain. There are also additional game modes (finish within a certain time/0 deaths/all the trinkets) which increase the replayability.

I've already spent 20 hours getting through the game, getting all the trinkets and playing all the additional modes to attain superiority in 8-bit gaming.

I can't recommend this game enough if you're into the side-scroller genre.

i still cant understand why ppl like this game, i mustve played it over 15+ hours and i hate it soooo much. Its basically run from A to B for no reason. I was even at the point where i wouldnt even fight zombies no more but run past them since doing otherwise would be a waste of ammo/money. Its extremely repetitive. The locations are went from good (hotel) to worse (city and jungle).

I truly wanted to like it, since i kinda dig the whole zombie thing.

persionally i think it's a very flawed game... however it didn't stop me loving every second of it!

imo dead island is glitchy, but entertaining. it has just enough variation to make you wan't to upgrade everything and become a zombie killing machine!

God of War - PS3 - HD version.

It's the PS2 game with updated graphics but still very fun! The story is interesting. I really like how basically no-one is a good guy, including the main character. The levels are varied and interesting, the puzzles intergrate well into the story and don't feel too forced, and the boss battles feel suitably momentous.

There are some awkward control issues, it's not always clear where to go, and it would have been nice if they had updated the cutscenes as well, but if you haven't played it you'll probably like it!

I bought the double pack which comes with GOD II as well, which I'll get to soon.

...yeah, i mean, all mission-based games are like that, go from A to B and pick up something or so. Can u tell me one game that did a good job in that area? But i think that dead island did a above average job in that area.
Atleast the missions made some sense in the context of the game.

What i used to do was pick up all missions at once, and then start roaming around, so i t felt like a openworld game to me. I could see all the missionmarks on the compass and when ever i was close to one, i completed it. When i was done exploring the level, i turned them all in at once...

Repetitive? Yes sometimes. But shooters are also about shooting all the the time, so it did not bother me that much. BTW did u try the analog fighting system? Also looking for chests and uprgrading your weapons allways kept me entertained.
But overall the presentation was so, so good, i just liked that game...

Metroid (NES) played on Wii VC

I have had this game for multiple years, and always picked it up and got through some, then got stuck and quit. This repeated multiple times, with each new trial seemingly getting me less far than the previous time before I got stuck. It was usually a year+ between the trials. So last month I got fed up and said I'm gonna beat it. So I used an online map to know which rooms connected where, and the game was a breeze. Night and day the difficulty of not knowing where you are going versus knowing exactly where to go. Kinda boring actually, and no sense of accomplishment. Pretty sure this was the first time I used a 'guide' from start to finish to beat a game. Didn't look up how to beat the bosses or anything, but was able to easily get max missles due to this.

So I really don't want to give a rating. If I had this game back when I was young and the NES was the newest system out, I would have hand drawn a map and beaten it that way for sure, just like I used the blue flame on every bush in the original Zelda. But I don't have that kind of time to sink into a game and I own more games now, so that is the route I went, and maybe now that I know some of the secrets, I can play though in another year without a map and have it more difficult than using a map but easier than not knowing anything at all.

I did the exact same thing in 2004 with a copy played on the original NES. I played Metroid 2 for Gameboy in the last year or two and did well on my own, but now that I haven't played it I'm going to be lost. Probably should do the walkthrough thing so I can move on to Super Metroid, Prime, etc. I can't play those before I play 2.

The last game I completed was Rayman Origins. At the moment, I've just started Uncharted 3 but unsure whether I should finish it or not. I wonder if I should finish it?!

Rayman Origins... 10/10

The true heart and character of this game lives in it's artwork. No game ever produced comes close to the visuals achieved in Rayman Origins. It's like playing a Disney film where every detail and animation has been carefully produced. Every level was dripping with vivid colour and lively animations.

The gameplay is casual, but if you want to achieve 100% then the gameply is very challenging. There are levels that become addictive because they rely on rhythm and timing which are exquisitly realised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__TXVftbHMA

The music and the soundscape are as good as the artwork, I don't know of a game which comes close to this. I think it's one of the most underhyped games of all time. If Nintendo had produced it and called it New Super Mario Origins, it would be regarded as one of the best game ever.

Bastion 10/10

Good art that holds together nicely, along with great music and a rich narrative that keeps you engaged.

Gameplay is solid, intuitive but complex if you want to go there. The RPG elements don't detract from the adventure approach. Character progression, story progression, and dungeon progression happen at about the same rate and are seamless.

The story is simple but philosophical with imagination and style to spare.

The downside is typical of a low-budget indie game: I would have liked to see more content. I didn't let that affect my rating because I honestly don't know how they could have done more with the resources they had.

[ ] review

And it's already being sold brand new for $19.99.

And it isn't a Wii only problem for once, since it is multi platform.

It was never published as a full price title anyways. The soundtrack is unbelievable. A solid 8,5/10 game for me.

+1

10/10 is pretty much right... could not actually find fault with the game. phenomenal fast paced game play and beautiful hand drawn scenery. adored this game.

my only gripe is the longevity of the game, even when going for 100% unlocks; i feel that it was over too soon! if there was more levels my review would go from a 9 to possibly a 10.