Yes, the ending was so fcked up, it was funny.

I will probably stop playing the Wii because I just bought a PS3 that was bundled with Uncharted 3 (and I bought BF3 too).

I have to say that I was having a lot of fun playing UC3. Lot's of cuts to videos to move the story along, but it worked for me. Being the first Uncharted game I have ever played, I was impressed by the graphics. The controls were also new to me, obviously. I liked the fighting controls, but I liked the shooting game play best. Sometimes navigation seemed a little strange due to the perspective. The puzzles were pretty easy, but were still fun. I see that some say UC2 is the best one. Will play through the older UC games when I get a chance.

8.7/10

Uncharted 2 is about 4 times better than uncharted 3. Uncharted 2 seems like the newer game aswell.

Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

This is a game I got for x-mas 12 years ago that I never finished. I decided to pick it up again about a week ago while randomly watching a speed run. It's different from other Zeldas - although it has the same gameplay as Ocarina of Time - it's quite a dark and emotional game. The reason I didn't like it at first was the infamous "3 day system". You have 3 days, in-game time of less than an hour to save the world. While this appeared stressful to me back then, it's merely an illusion. You can make time pass slower playing songs and all of the important stuff gets saved when you travel back to the first day (you lose things such as ammo and money, people don't remember you, yet you can bank the money)

It's harder to get into than the average Zelda. Being 28 now, I was really struck by the complexity of this game. This game has a ton of side quests. Unlike most Zeldas, heart pieces aren't just put in a hard-to-reach location. You have to do a bunch of stuff to really earn that heart piece.
Everything in the game has its (sometimes not obvious) purpose. There are a lot of masks you can get, and they all have their use. Whether for the main story or the side quests. To 100% this game, you need a lot of time and lots of logical thinking as well as planning.
A particular side quest in this game is mind blowing. The way the story is told is unlike anything I've seen and it's the kind of thing that can make grown men cry.

The game doesn't have as many dungeons as most LoZ titles and therefore the main story might be a bit short if you stick only to the compulsory stuff. This is a very non-linear game and although there's constantly a sense of hurry, you really have to take your time to enjoy this game and figure everything out.


This game's not friendly for the casual gamer and it's a bit sad that there is so much great stuff packed into a game so relatively inaccessible as this. You needed a custom memory expansion to play it at the time and the game does have some controversy with the limited save system.
They clearly didn't go the commercial way with this game and for that I love it. Even the ending might leave you pissed off and unsatisfied. The game isn't meant to be all joy, happiness and fairy tales with happy endings, and that is perhaps what I liked most about it - the originality.

Plays very well on a laptop with DualShock 3 btw

9.2

How does Majoras Mask end again? I haven't played it since it first came out.

please put it in spoilers if answered!

Majora's Mask is great. Nice review.


A Link to the Past is still my favorite Zelda game ever.

I'm making my way through UC3 now too and I've played the first two. I'm really mixed on these games. On the one hand the graphics are great, the acting and dialogue are fantastic and there are plenty of scenes that I look at and think "that was well done". I think my problem with these games is that I never quite feel immersed in it. It just gives me the feeling of watching the events rather than participating in them myself.

That said - the games are all worth playing.

MM is my fav zelda.

dat anju/kafei sidequest ending

Binding of Isaac 9.42/10. Buy it, play it, enjoy it.

Trine 2
Excellent puzzle platforming game. Available for very cheap too. 8/10

Infamous 1 and 2. (PS3). Very fun open world games. There's some repetition in the missions as with all open world games but the games do a good job of varying the enemies as you go along. There's some replay value as you can play as good or bad and there are some missions exclusive to each track (though most of the missions are common to both). Voice acting is pretty good as well and the story is silly at times but fun.

You basically play as a super-hero with electrical-based powers.

Infamous 1: 8.5
Infamous 2: 9

FanApathy, wow. You really reminded me how much I loved Majora's Mask. I might star saying it's my favorite Zelda now. That should be controversial.

I recently finished Infamous 2 as well. I didn't like it as much as you did. It seemed inferior to the first game, but it's possible that my gaming tastes just have changed since then. Navigation felt sloppy, and I discovered a possible reason why.

Apparently, the slow running speed was an issue gamers complained about with the first game. So they made Cole run faster in part 2, but for some reason they did not appropriately adjust his jumping speed. The jumps actually seem slower than running is.

I also played this immediately after Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, where the climbing controls and flow are superior.

It did get better once you get to Floodtown...the first couple of areas were uninteresting, but Floodtown was cool. As I've said before, location is key in open-world games.

I'd give it around an 8/10.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Nintendo DS)

Finished this a couple of months ago and never got around to writing about it. Internet gaming culture basically worships this game, but I did not think it was very good.

I can certainly see what people like about it. It's sometimes legitimately funny. Er...I guess that's pretty much it. People talk about how "well-written" it is but that's just silly, and to be frank in most cases people praising video game stories are people who simply don't have much exposure to other mediums with actual good storytelling. More of a problem than the actual story though is the way it's delivered. The text is written out so. ****ing. slow. They're basically trying to time the text to make it more dramatic, scrolling it quickly if someone is excited, or pausing for a punchline or shocking moment. In my opinion that's a huge mistake. In a game with as much ****ing reading as this, you need to let fast readers get on with it. I mean at least give the OPTION to display the text immediately rather than wait for the scrolling to catch up.

Let me back track a bit - in the game you play as a new attorney. The gameplay consists of talking to people, some investigation similar to standard adventure games, and then going to actual court and winning the trial. You do this by objecting at the proper times, presenting evidence that confirms or contradicts what a witness is saying, etc. It's not nearly as engaging as it sounds, and you only have to actually "do" a handful of things each trial. It's mostly just reading. Often the solutions aren't particularly intuitive and you're just randomly guessing what the game wants from you. You have a limited number of "mistakes" you can make before you lose the trial and have to start over again from the beginning of it. This can be a substantial amount of time - there are ways around it, but it's still a crappy gameplay mechanic.

Even with all these problems, I might have greatly enjoyed the game if it was shorter, say 5-10 hours. I don't know how long the whole thing actually took me, but it seemed REALLY long, like 40 hours. It's too much for a handheld title. You could read like every Cormac McCarthy novel or you could read through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in a similar amount of time. What a waste.

5/10

game:
shadows of the damned

review:
My name is Garcia "****ing" Hotspur, hunter of demons and slayer of pendejos like you!

score:
9/10

don't take it personally, babe, it just ain't your story (PC - Freeware)

This is another "visual novel" similar to a bunch of DS games, but this one is available for free on the PC. It's a couple of hours long. There are a few choices to be made throughout the game but it's largely just reading. There is also side interaction with social networking sites in the year 2027, including some pretty funny send-ups of internet message board culture.

You play as a new teacher who gets all involved with his students' personal lives thanks to social networking. There's a crush to deal with, gay and straight relationships, etc. It has some moderately interesting things to say about privacy and the nature of the internet/social networking. Available here for free:

http://scoutshonour.com/donttakeitpe...aintyourstory/

7/10

I preferred the author, Christine Love's, first game called Digital: A Love Story (she calls "don't take it personally..." a spiritual sequel). Digital is more of a real "game", with the action taking place entirely on a late '80s-early '90s computer screen. You're basically exploring old school BBS'es and eventually have to do some "hacking" etc. It's quite good. If you have any interest at all in that era of computer culture, "warez" culture, old AOL, anything like that you should probably check it out.

9/10

http://scoutshonour.com/digital/

Not that I have any time for more games, but I love adding free games to my backlog. Thanks for the links.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (PC) - 6/10

This is a recent "indie darling". It's kinda like a mini Zelda game with highly pixellated early-'90s graphics, with a lot of meta elements including the ability to tweet during gameplay. Took me about 4 hours according to Steam.

The music and sound are the best part. Gameplay is eh, and walking gets a little bit too tedious (unless you're willing to either cheat or wait a month to finish the game - you'll see what I mean). This was originally for iPad etc. and probably plays better on those - it doesn't translate that well to PC controls.

There are some Twin Peaks references, including one scene that's all-out creepy Lynchian.

Halo Reach the campaign

First halo I've played since giving the original just long enough to find out I could zoom with a pistol but not with a rifle and turning it off. When I tried Reach and found myself starting with a long range pistol and a short range rifle I put it away for a year.

At its best a really fun well balanced shooter which can be played by either taking your time and going for head shoots or running in with all guns blazing. At worst a series of FPS clichés strung together all of which have been done better before. Its best bits are the relatively open levels where your given a good choice of guns and a bit of freedom about how you clear the level. The worst bits are all in vehicles that are slow and so nearly invulnerable that success is almost assured. The story's nothing to get excited about but at least the cut scenes look nice and aren't too long or too frequent.

Overall it was fun great fun at times but lacked invention in level design.
7.5 / 10

Assaassins Creed 1: 8.3 / 10

Enjoyable, fun, but SUPER linear, I actually enjoyed it a bunch cause I just did 1 'mission/kill' per night basically, so it took 30 min - 1 hour each night and was fun to play through, but sitting down and playing for a bunch of hours at a time would be miserbale. Story was really cool though, going to play through them all in prep. for AC3, and I heard they get much better from AC2 on.


Dante's Inferno:

8.6 / 10

Played it a while back but felt like this game never got the credit it deserved, yes it's SUPER similar to God of War series but it does some stuff REALLY well and if your like me and only play games on the hardest difficulty it's @)$*!ing hard. My friend gave me some bet where like... he pays me $600, but I pay him $5 every time I die... and I lost money (120 deaths) and I usually crush games like that, died super few times through all 3 God of Wars. It was just a good game, and well done all around, no idea how IGN and other sites gave it like a 7-7.5. Would like to hear thoughts on anyone else who played through it though

How do you guys come up with these super accurate ratings like 8.3/10?

Journey PS3 store download 9

Extremely relaxing game. Graphics/Sounds are beautiful. No talk or storyline in it, it is just you spawning in the desert and your journey towards a mountain. Best is the multiplayer, where you cant talk or see the other players name, but only make a certain "call". Amazingly you automatically help others. Has some good replay value. Finished the game 4 times already.

Estimate

Stacking (PSN) - 7.5/10

Stacking was made by Double Fine and the internet's golden boy Tim Schafer. It's somewhat odd that he's so beloved and yet AFAIK his games don't sell. Like how many of you have even heard of this?

Anyway it's a full 3D adventure game (full 3D in adventure games is extremely rare). You know those Russian stacking dolls? You play as one of those, the cute small one. The gameplay consists of solving puzzles by stacking yourself into progressively bigger dolls with different abilities. It's a great concept. For me the execution is hurt by a few things.

The game world is a little bit too "busy". It takes place in bustling train stations and steamships and such, so there are a ton of "people" (dolls) walking around. It can get annoying and confusing to try to pick out the dolls whose abilities you need. Most of the dolls have multiple copies of themselves around. I feel like the concept could work better with fewer, but more unique dolls.

Another "problem" for me is that there's too much to do. Every puzzle has multiple solutions. This is often seen as a good thing, but in this case if you solve a puzzle one way and then move on you feel as if you're not playing the game properly. My preference is for more complex puzzles with fewer solutions, and I really don't like the meta game of finding all solutions. It brings attention to the fact that it's a game rather than an experience. There are several other easter egg hunt type challenges as well. That's fine in say a GTA game, where finding all pigeons is clearly an optional side thing. In this case though, if you go through the main game without doing a lot of the extra stuff, the experience feels bare.

I appreciate the innovation here, as adventure games have barely innovated (and have arguably regressed) since 1990. It falls a little bit short of super solidness though.

*As an aside, the hotly anticipated Kickstarter adventure game Double Fine is doing looks like it's going to be a regression to 2D 1990 style.

Wii - Metroid the other M. 6.5 out of 10

+Fairly solid graphics for the system
+Some fun boss fights
+Fairly smooth controls/switching from gun to missles

-Very minimal use of some popular items like the power bomb which you don't get until very late in the game, grappling hook etc
-Using your wii to find pixels that are different in some story parts of the game is a waste of time and sometimes annoying trying to point in the exact spot if you can even see it.
-She talks wayyyy too much in the story line that you cannot skip.

Overall it was a decent game, as I have always been a fan of the series. It just seems lacking in some areas that the older games stuck out like Super Metroid for the SNES. Still if you are a fan of the series worth a rental, I just would not buy it.