Bioshock 2

Did you enjoy the first Bioshock? Do you want MORE Rapture and Bioshock goodness-like plasmids, gene tonics, and intelligent enemies-with a less compelling [but still decent] story? Then play Bioshock 2! The shooting feels stiffer than ever when compared to modern silky smooth controls, but honestly this game is just an extension of what made the first game awesome, minus Andrew Ryan.

9/10

But Andrew Ryan is what made the first game awesome. I just couldn't get through the first few hours of Bioshock 2 because of the mediocre story.

Fallout 3

I've been playing this game on and off for 6 years and I finally finished it. Surprisingly, I only registered about 70 hours and didn't hit level 20. Thought it would have been a little longer. The ending wasnt as good as I had hoped but I still loved it, the open area, the whole Enclave vs Brotherhood thing, the different weapons. I'll now try to finish Vegas and Skyrim. By then, maybe we'll have some info on the sequel!

9/10

I'm guessing both Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are easier to beat than Fallout 1 & 2, am I correct?

Yes, in that you could actually fail to beat those games (especially 1) whereas you will eventually beat Fallout 3 if you keep plugging away. I only have those games on 360 but the mods look amazing for both the newer Fallouts.

Well I know I've tried three playthroughs on Fallout 1 and hit dead ends each time where anyone I try to fight or go to I get killed. Haven't played Fallout 2 yet, but I assumed it was similar, but maybe it is easier.

Tomb Raider (2013)

7/10

Played this on the PS3. Overall a fairly enjoyable experience. Story mode is about 8 hours in length, and that included doing all 7 optional tombs, though I didn't 100% the game. Graphics are a big step up from anything we've ever seen from a tomb raider game. Voice acting for Lara is great, everyone else is so-so. Story is actually fairly involving and explains a lot of how Lara became Lara. Basically some strange island off of Japan where the an evil witch is controlling the weather to crash any planes, boats etc... that come near, and the cult that is following the witch. Lara starts off as fairly timid, but after her first kill which is a pretty cool moment, you turn into a typical FPS action star killing thousands of nameless enemies on your way to victory without a moment of hesitation. There's some tongue in cheek moments that will bring a smile to your face, like the first time you are in a tomb and she states "I hate tombs."

The actual gameplay felt more like an easy FPS than a Tomb Raider game. There's the typical climbing and jumping stuff, but it just didn't have the same feel as some of the earlier tomb raiders where the environment was more emphasized. There are 7 optional tombs that all require you to figure out some sort of puzzle, but besides that, there's very little puzzle solving involved which was a bit of a let down. The RPG stuff (upgrading your weapons and combat) I felt was a bit unnecessary, though it did force me to look a bit harder in each area for extra stuff that would give me experience.

I would recommend this game for hard core tomb raider fans, but otherwise, you are getting a watered down version of uncharted.

I still haven't played FO3, but I didn't have much of a problem with beating 1 after the first time when my time ran out. The 2nd one I finished my first time. Both took awhile, but it was never really hard. Just lengthy. But loved the **** out of both.

Cave Story+ | PC (Wii/DSi/3DS/OS X/Linux)

(Here's my positive review to compare with g-bebe's not so)



Cave Story is a bit of a Metroidvania platformer. You play an amnesiac robot who wakes up in a cave next to a village of little rabbit people. Through exploration and talking to NPCs you unlock new areas and equipment and pick up bits of the story, which involves saving the Mimiga rabbit people from an evil doctor. There are a ton of optional secrets that unlock new weapons or upgrades, and allow you to complete a handful of various endings. The game starts out seemingly very cutsey and silly, and never really loses that atmosphere, but the story itself and the various outcomes that happen along the way are fairly grim. There's a lot of replay value in getting all of the endings, though after beating the game and receiving the normal ending, you'll probably need to look at a guide to get the best one.

It's amazing how thoughtful and unique the combat is in this ten year old game after the deluge of platformers we've had in the last 3-4 years, and none that come close to this one in my opinion or have really borrowed much from it. Instead of leveling your stats through experience, each weapon has its own level system ranging from 1-3. If you take damage, your weapon loses experience and becomes less powerful or loses abilities. You regain experience by picking up experience drops from downed enemies. One weapon, the Bubbler, shoots a fairly weak stream of bubbles for the first two levels, but on the third level the bubbles collect around you in a cloud, firing together in a large burst when you release the trigger. There are many situations where you can only avoid taking a lot of damage by having a maxed Bubbler cloud shielding you from swarms of enemies. The machine gun that you pick up later in the game shoots you in to the air when you fire downwards, allowing you to avoid and carpet bomb enemies beneath you or access hidden areas. Combat involves juggling the proper weapons to avoid taking damage and finding the most effective one for each enemy, or cycling weapons to avoid losing a level on the current one.

The difficulty is fairly easy, though a few bosses took me two or three attempts to figure out their patterns and weaknesses. Then you hit the end of the game, and suddenly the difficulty goes from a 3 to 11. It took me a few hours to beat the last four bosses. Nothing bothers me more than games that throw up random difficulty spikes like this, and I almost gave up, even though I enjoy and have beaten difficult platformers like Spelunky and IWBTG. Just be warned that if you aren't a fan of these types of games, the ending will probably turn you away after an enjoyable and leisurely 5-6 hour investment leading up to it.

Other than that, the game is well paced with lots of save checkpoints, a variety of enemies and locations, well made pixel art and a great score. The dialog system can be obnoxious, requiring you to exhaust sometimes lengthy dialogue trees over and over before repeat attempts on boss battles. You can speed through them a bit, so it's not as frustrating as in games like Ocarina of Time, but still has no place in a modern game. Also, juggling between weapons during combat is a pain at times, though you can pause the game and switch through a menu system instead of trying to cycle through 5-6 different weapons while simultaneously trying to avoid damage.

The original was released as freeware on PC in 2004, and was remastered by developer Nicalis with updated graphics and music and ported to various other platforms. You can still play the original for free, and some people still prefer the original to this update. Highly recommend if you aren't turned away by pixel art or platforming.

Cave Story is a really nice little game, kind of ushered in the modern influx of "retro" platformers. I actually beat the last boss on my first try and got the regular ending, but wasn't able to beat it again to get to the real ending and gave up after a few more tries.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - PC

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is a bit hard to describe, maybe a mix of Alan Wake and Dear Esther. You play a detective who appears to have been hired to investigate the disappearance of a little boy, Ethan Carter. The game starts off by dropping you in the middle of a forest. As you wander about you start to find evidence of murders and begin piecing together the story of what happened to Ethan and his family.

Gameplay primarily consists of exploring the world and coming across different "scenes" that need to be solved through investigating each area and piecing together what happened. Each scene has a focal point, be it a body or some out of place object, and after finding all of the clues in the area and perhaps also setting certain items you find back in their original place, you can interact with the focal object and a series of blue lights will spread out around the scene. After interacting with each they will depict various stages in the event that occurred as still scenes of the characters involved. You're then tasked with ordering each event in sequential order and can watch an in-game cutscene that will only progress as long as the clues are in the right order. When you have it right, the whole story will play out and point you in the general direction of where to go next. It's very well done making good use of the camera and lighting to pan around and not draw you out like a prerendered cutscene would.

You never meet any living persons, and the story is conveyed either through the cutscenes mentioned above, or by short bits of monologue the detective will utter on coming to a new area or after solving a certain scene. Notes that you come across can be picked up and read as objects that are actual pieces of scanned paper made to look like real things you can rotate and look at from all sides. Most of them are fictional stories written by Ethan, and typically mark the beginning or end of a story sequence. Everything is fairly understated, and the designers mostly let you take things at your own pace and pay attention to whatever you think is interesting or noteworthy. It's easy to miss clues and a few easter eggs by not exploring everything, and you may end up having to backtrack to solve something by the end of the game. Even though there's no combat, it reminded me a lot of Dark Souls. There's no hand holding, tutorializing or otherwise immersion breaking mechanics. The world is large, a bit open ended and always consistent, and an awesome background ambient sountrack kicks in rarely enough to have an interesting impact and help set a certain mood. One of the main tracks reminds me a lot of the Firelink Shrine music, and likewise helps sets a tone of being in a weird and lonely place. On the other hand, all of the puzzles are pretty easy and I think are employed mostly for some added interactivity and agency than to present a challeng.

The real highlight of the game for me though is the setting and the truly amazing vistas and areas you come across. The game uses the Unreal 3 engine, but it manages to be the best looking game I've come across. They use a process called Photogrammatery whereby they take hundreds of pictures of real world objects and scenery, and the photos are then manipulated through software to render high-poly 3D objects with texturing derived from the real objects. The artists then go back and retopologize the models to reduce the poly count, and reskin the textures UV coordinates to better fit the models. It's hard to describe without playing the game, and the developers wrote an interesting blog on the whole process on their website.

I clocked in at around 4 hours, so it's a very short game, but I highly recommend it! There's nothing quite like it IMO. It has enough interactive gamey elements to make it more interesting than something like Gone Home or Dear Esther, but done in such a way that people that aren't really in to mystery or adventure games can enjoy the experience without being bothered by it. Definitely in the running for my game of the year so far, though it has a lot of strong competition.

Last of Us | PS4

Not really sure why this got all the praise last year. It's an interesting shooter with a fairly mediocre plot that had two well written characters and everyone seems to lose their kinds when a game has decent characterization.

I really liked the combat systems. Physical attacks felt more visceral than any other game I've played, ammo is limited making every encounter tense, and the crafting system makes you choose between different types of equipment. The encounter design gets a little lazy when you get to the end and the stealth combat means you spend a lot of time just slowly harassing the larger groups of enemies by taking out stragglers one by one. Once you figure out the strategy it gets a little repetitive. But overall it was fun.

The story is split into 4 seasons with each season having a unique plot that weaves in with the overall story. At the end though I have to say that this didn't really work out too well. None of the plots really rise above a decent episode of walking dead, and in fact come no where near the first tell tale game. There are a lot of wtf character motivation problems through out and it feels like it was always trying really hard to shock you but ended up just producing confusion before dripping the thread and moving on. Winter was probably the strongest story as it had some very interesting twists.

It's worth playing on the PS4 as the game is absolutely gorgeous. It's just too bad the game is very linear. In the 2013 battle for game of the year I gotta think that bioshock infinite gets my vote even though it doesn't really matter anymore.

7/10

SteamWorld Dig | PC, OSX, Linux, PS4/Vita, Wii U/3DS

This was a fun and short indie. There's not much plot to the game, but you play a robot that has come to help his father mine a claim only to find him destroyed. Being a robot without emotion, you simply carry on digging down further in to the ground mining gems and ores to use for buying fancy mechanical upgrades to help you mine faster and gain new abilities, and uncover the plans and doings of your erstwhile father.

There's a bit of platforming which ends up feeling a little like a 2D Minecraft (or Terraria) in having to think about how you approach certain ores or use dynamite, ladders or special abilities to access hard to reach areas. Occasionally you come across caves that either hold more rare gems or sometimes a suit upgrade. It's not really a Metroidvania since you get upgrades as you need them and don't really need to backtrack. There are enemies in the game, though nothing that takes much thought or skill, and only one boss at the very end of the game that was likewise very easy.

I finished it in about five hours, and though I enjoyed it there were a lot of missed opportunities to make something special out of the game. A few more unique abilities or upgrades and the ability to backtrack to find new areas would have added something, and limiting the resources used in the game such as the oil for your lamp, health drops and water used for your steam powered abilities along with adding more and harder enemies and bosses would have added some challenge that was entirely missing. Feels like a decent but limited freshman effort from a studio with some promise.

I was playing a relatively very easy game with my little one last weekend as the little Mister got interested in buying a football and knowing about it. Hubby and me decided to give him a little bit more info on NFL, and downloaded this great mobile apps on NFL Game Day Heroes, and voila, since then we three are pretty glued to it.

The game has 8 mini games inside, the bonus, and each one of these are designed so well that once started, you would not feel like keeping it aside until you reach a certain level! All of us got pretty worked up about collecting the golden boots and getting more power ups. But honestly, it is not a game to be finished in a day! And so we have decided to give it a try some other day, preferably on weekend again. Overall, a very good experience. The graphic, the ease of scoring, the fun quotient - all are there! I know it may not appear to be a very gamer type review, but this is all you get from a novice mommy-gamer.

Had a ton of adventure games sitting in my backlog to turn to when I get burned out on FPS/RPG/strat type stuff, so...

The Testament of Sherlock Holmes | PC, Xbox 360, PS3

I haven't played any of the other Sherlock Holmes games which always seemed like typical bargain bin shovelware, but this one looked to at least have interesting graphics. I was surprised to find it uses UE3 and there's a controllable camera that lets you switch between first person, third person or a fixed camera overhead point and click view instantaneously. The last one didn't get much use but I found myself switching between first and third person often.

I won't say much about the story, it's the typical Holmesian affair and throws in a lot of references to past cases, characters and settings from the books. It does go a little overboard in terms of the overall scope of the story, and becomes a bit more Hollywood than Sir Arthur ever attempts. You're basically in a race to uncover a global conspiracy that immediately threatens the destruction of London. There's a fairly slow build up to that point in the story though which was appreciated, and it only becomes the culminating focus of the game after several prior investigations you conduct hint at some larger matter at hand.

It follows the usual adventure game conventions with a highlighting system for examining or picking up objects and very few red herrings or non-essential interactions are included. Some of the puzzles can be a bit involved, but the game design helps simply things in a few ways. If something is just adding background information, or will no longer be useful to progress, you will no longer be able to interact with it, which helps to narrow your available options. If you get stuck, there's usually only a handful of things in the scene that you can do anything with. The game also does a decent job of presenting puzzles in a logical fashion, and I didn't find myself randomly clicking items in my inventory in weird combinations or trying to use them to interact with scenery in nonsensical ways.

The game spends about an equal amount of time between controlling Sherlock or Watson, sometimes with the other character following along under competent AI control. There is a ton of spoken dialogue, and the voice actors are excellent across the board as is the quality of writing. Watson and Holmes reminded me a bit of their portrayal by Jeremy Brett and David Burke in the 80s series. I did find myself reading the captions a lot though and skipping the dialogue when I was done. This was a welcome feature as you rarely have to wait around during dialogue heavy scenes.

In a few scenes you split up and can jump between the two. In the first and third person modes you navigate like you would in most 3D engines with WASD and the mouse (or their controller equivalents), and there's even a run button which I rarely used. There are some interesting gameplay systems employed. There are three different cases that require you to use a deduction board. As you uncover clues, the known facts become the roots of a flow chart style deduction graph. Two related facts will allow you to pick between 4-5 possible deductions, and related deductions will continue another one or two levels further once you've made your choices. The case is only solved once all of the clues have been discovered and every deduction made is correct, and usually a cut-scene will follow before leading to the next area of the game.

Case facts will come from conversations with characters in the game, or from examining objects, or by solving puzzles to find new items or clues. The examining mechanic is interesting - for example you might have found some bits of soil, a bit of rope and some earth. Once back at 321B you can use Holmes' chemistry tools and past monographs to try to determine where they came from, or if they match samples from other places. At some points you'll have to use a magnifying class and rotate items around to find clues on objects, or use scissors or a scalpel or some other instrument on objects to find new clues. There are also a fair amount of literal puzzle games that might be tied to opening a vault or chest. An early one requires you to perform both the Knight's and Queen's Tour on a chessboard to proceed, though that was one of the more difficult ones. After some small number of attempts the game offers a skip puzzle button, but none of the puzzles were difficult enough for me to cave in. I found them to all to be well designed except for maybe one, and did a good job of integrating with the game world.

Overall I was very impressed, and this is one of my new favorite adventure games. One of the few I've ever played where I actually found myself looking forward to come home and play it during the day. It also was fairly long, clocking in for me at 12 hours. Highly recommend this one if you're an adventure game fan.

Nice, I picked that up during the summer sale I think. I had considered it several times before. I also picked up the still life games, which are also forensic crime games from like a decade ago.

221B

Thanks Sherlock.

Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

This is the standalone version of the Shadowrun Returns expansion pack. It's unconnected with the original campaign, Dead Man's Switch. It's based on a tabletop RPG with a setting that is a mix between cyberpunk and fantasy. So you've got magic, elves and dwarves but also assault rifles and computer hacking.

Dragonfall is a niche title - an isometric, party-based, turn-based, text-heavy, fairly linear RPG based on a tabletop game that's a lot less well-known than DnD. Put that aside though and enjoy some really good, tactical combat and some of the best writing to feature in an RPG since Planescape: Torment.

The story starts off in a fairly standard way - you and your fellow Shadowrunners are carrying out a routine job in Berlin but get drawn into larger events when things go horribly wrong. But even from the beginning, the quality of the writing sets Dragonfall apart. The NPCs have colourful backgrounds, their own opinions, and plenty to say about their views on the decisions you make or whether you even deserve to be part of the team. Each one also has a personal, optional mission which is well worth pursuing.

The underlying story sets up a "you vs big bad" scenario but is more nuanced as there's a constant sense that more is happening under the surface. The best aspect is that you're constantly faced with ambiguous decisions. Plenty of games claim to have morally complex narratives - Dragonfall is the real deal. Determining what the "right" thing to do is often unclear and could well have negative consequences with no upside for you.

There's not much in the way of traditional RPG sidequests as there is only one hub area, where you can shop and talk to people. Missions take place in specific locations which cannot be revisited but this lack of openness is compensated for by the multiple methods you can pursue to complete the mission. While combat is inevitable at times, there are also opportunities to talk your way out of fights, hack security, use drones, etc. How you've developed your character will often lead to different dialogue options, eg charismatic characters can persuade people to cough up useful information; intelligent protagonists can see through bull**** and obtain special insights.

Combat is another highlight. Think XCOM but with a greater emphasis on teamwork and less punishing. I played on hard difficulty which made for challenging, tactical, intense fights although I suspect the gameplay would be less satisfying on normal. Shooting, magic and melee all have their part to play in combat so there's quite a bit to consider when building your character and devising tactics. The limitations of a small budget do unfortunately rear their head in fights as the animations and sound effects are weak.

There were a few things that irked me more than technical issues. You can't give items that you pick up during a mission to your teammates; instead you can only assign them items at the very beginning of the mission. This was annoying when I was picking up medpacks and grenades that my team could have used, but I had no choice other than to send them to the HQ stash. There is also very little loot - you can't root through the dead bodies of your enemies for weapons. Very occasionally you find weapons/armour in the field but for the most part you buy equipment from merchants in the hub area. NPCs take care of their own equipment and levels although you can choose between special abilities for them at certain points.

Divinity: Original Sin seems like the obviously better game in many ways - it's more open, it's longer, there are more sidequests and loot, and you have total control over NPC level-ups. Yet I've enjoyed Dragonfall more because the story, dialogue and particularly the NPCs are so superior. The tactical combat and classless skill system also provide a solid basis for replays and custom content. Definitely get if you enjoy a good story and traditional RPGs.

8/10.

I still have Wasteland 2 and D:OS sitting here along with Shadowrun Returns, and Pillars of Eternity and Torment: Tides of Numenera coming next year. How do we go ten years without a good CRPG and now we're drowning in them.


Sniper Elite: V2 | PC, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U

Fairly easy to summarize: an awesome mechanic wrapped in a subpar game. It feels, looks and plays a bit like an upgraded WW2 era CoD with the added focus on sniping. I just finished it and I don't even remember what the story was about, you basically just move through each mission area sniping anything that moves.

Most of the time you'll be moving around in a crouch, which keeps your heart rate slowed which is important for several reasons (mentioned later). It uses the typical cover mechanic of pressing a key to enter a fixed cover that you can strafe up and down on. Pressing the secondary mouse button lets you pop out of cover with added protection vs. crouching behind the cover. The secondary mouse button also brings up the scope, and a heart rate indicator shows your BPM and focus. Once your focus is maxed, you can enter a slowed bullet time and get off some tricky shots on moving targets or pop up from cover for a split second to pick people off. If you get hit, or if you run or sprint, your BPM starts spiking making it harder to aim and removing the bullet time feature. It's very well done and adds some strategy to what would otherwise have been a silly and broken mechanic.

Unfortunately, the enemy AI is pretty stupid, and rarely if ever presses forward or attempts to flank you, so you can sit back and pick people off at your hearts content. Typcially they run back and forth between several pieces of cover, randomly stopping to take a pot shot or popping out from behind cover to fire. Aiming is also a bit tricky in that you have to account for bullet drop with every 100m distance dropping down a notch on the crosshair. But it seems like nearly every encounter was designed at around 100-150 meters, so you basically just treat the first notch below center as your target in most cases. The best moments in the game are when you see the glint of an enemy sniper's scope at 200m+ and pop in to bullet time and squeeze off a shot before they do, though at the hardest difficulty you still are never one shot unless already wounded. It would have made things more tense if snipers could one shot you. It's also pretty fun when a bunch of enemies are suppressing you and you're able to pop up from cover and tag them one at a time, usually while they're moving which adds some additional challenge in leading them.

The bullet cam cam is entered when you get a headshot or hit a vital organ, and it's pretty well done. There are a bunch of different camera angles, and fairly detailed and realistic impact depictions on the skeletal outline of your target. It gets a bit old after a while, but you can disable or reduce the frequency of how often it happens. Enemy models and animations/ragdoll physics are pretty good, reminding me a bit of Rage where hitting them in a the foot will cause them to stumble. There are a decent number of spots where you can't get a headshot on someone, but can shoot their feet to get them to drop their head in to sight and get the shot off with bullet time.

The mission areas weren't particularly interesting, the texture work was awful, sound was pretty weak and non-directional, mission design and the overall plot was almost non-existent, but I still enjoyed it. I'm curious to see if V3 improves on those areas.

i had a ton of fun with sniper elite V2, i agree there isn't much to the game in terms of story or variety but it kept me engaged for 20 hours or so. the mini game where you fight waves of guys was fun. i haven't bought V3 yet, waiting for a Steam sale

I was jonesing for a classic JRPG, so when I noticed Lunar: Silver Star Harmony for cheap on PSP/PS Vita, I went for it.

Well.... hmmm. I got what I was looking for, I guess.

The game is certainly beautiful. The graphics I remember impressing me as a kid still hold up in the animated scenes and most of them are clearly done with care.

Unfortunately, it's hard to find much else positive to say about the game. The story and gameplay would have been simple, stale, and cliched even if I had played it when the game was originally released 20 years ago, and today it serves only as a demonstration of how simple RPGs used to be and how much they've grown.

There's essentially no decision making in the game - it's pure grind. The total run time on the game is somewhere around 25 hours, and I was auto-attacking in every combat for the first 20 or so. Every boss fight is identical - the numbers get bigger and the graphics change, but the strategy never deviates. You can always purchase the best weapons and armor available, as you'll be swimming in cash right from the beginning.

Every area has you chasing a newly introduced Macguffin to chase down and give to someone so they'll advance you to the next area, never to be seen again. No deviation in gameplay or story structure.

There are half a dozen times or so that the game asks you "Should we do <this> or <that?>" but in every case it's an obvious choice to the effect of "should we go save the world or run and hide like little babies?" and even if you do choose the blatantly incorrect option, the game simply scolds you and runs you through the dialogue again until you choose correctly.

While some remember it as a "classic" the game is just very bland compared to other similar games in the genre.

What it does it does well, but it doesn't try to do much. Normally I complete an RPG once with no help/spoilers, then go back and complete it again to find all the nooks and crannies, but I'll be skipping the second play through on this one. It's just all flash and no substance.

If you're eight years old and have literally never ever played an RPG: 9/10

If you remember this game being amazing when you were eight, and that nostalgia can carry you through 20-25 hours of gameplay: 8/10

For everyone else: 5/10

The wolf among us

This is my first tell tale game. You play bigby wolf, the sheriff in the fables universe (well the New York portion of the fables universe).

This is primarily a dialog game, with some point and click and some QTEs. The choices sort of entail variations on a theme, as the major events are fixed. Your choices do have impacts, but they are more subtle.

The strength of the game is the writing and narrative style and, to a lesser extent, the visual style and cinematography for lack of a better word. The characters are deep, real feeling characters. There is a lot of grey in the game and to some extent it is a game of minimizing damage according to whatever standards you are rolling with. (For instance you could try to minimize others suffering you minimize your own suffering. ). It's weird, but even though your choices seem to have little impact on the major events, they feel way more important than choices in many games. I guess the whole style of the game and writing is very character immersive.

It's kind of a hard game to describe. I guess the best compliment I can give it is that it makes me want to read the fables comics (or graphic novels or whatever they are). This isn't a game you play to win, it's a game you play to watch and to explore the characters.

I would definitely recommend it. I would not at all have enjoyed playing this before all the chapters were out; it's a page turner and having to wait months for the next installment would have sucked.

The Blackwell Legacy (PC)

"A refreshing change of pace" seems like a good tagline for the review.

This is a point and click adventure game with early '90s-style pixel art. I'm pretty sick of the whole retro-adventure game thing that has been going on for the last decade and a half (basically, a large portion of the adventure gaming community believes the genre should have stopped evolving completely, graphics and all, in 1990), but this one is solid. It takes place in modern-day NYC which is a big factor in it distinguishing itself.

You play as a reporter who gets visited by a mysterious spirit (a dude who feels like he belongs in a 1940 noir film) from the past who will wind up being her companion for the 5 game series (this is game 1). Won't go into too much detail about story, but this game is apparently mostly just setting up the situation. It still works as its own experience.

Voices are good enough, and it avoids the adventure game trap of too much dialogue. The puzzles aren't too hard, although I didn't solve the final one optimally yet (multiple solutions with different outcomes). Steam playing time was 4 hours, another plus in my opinion assuming you're not paying a ton for it.

Worth a play if you're a fan of the genre. Look out for Steam sales...I nailed one for $1.99 for the first 4 games.

7.5/10 I guess.

GTAV - 10.0

I think it's a perfect game. There is nothing I'd take out. Perhaps a few things if like to have seen, but those would be based on stuff they've done in past games. If I could swap though... Nah. It's perfect. Maybe some changes to the radio and song selection, but that's a personal preference.

The characters were awesome, the story was fun and the gameplay was stellar. And I think the franchise will only get better from here.

All of their GTA games have been groundbreaking and have only gotten better. The earlier real eases, taking into consideration the system capabilities:

GTAIII - only issues were the map functions and the limited voice acting.
GTAVC - Those were fixed. The shooting had some flaws, but the rest was incredible.
GTASA - The shooting was improved. The rest... This is an absolutely perfect game otherwise
GTAIV - excellent shooting and driving mechanics. Lots of people didn't like the story but I thought it was great. My issues were the lack of rewards for misc tasks, namely the pigeons. Other issues were minor and didn't really bother me. But they went and fixed those in LaTD and BoGT, and then added some of the cooler things they've done. Mission checkpoints, mission replaying with goals, and more action. Combined, all the GTAIV games added up to pretty much perfect.
GTAV - Just based on making things better, it improved on all of those. Nothing in this game felt like it was for no reason. It was everything I loved about older GTA games, but better. And that's not even mentioning the actual game itself. The stories were all awesome. The graphics are the best I have ever seen in a game. The voice acting was phenomenal. It played smoother and better then any before. And there is still the big DLCs and I've yet to touch the online play yet.

As for GTAVI and beyond, so far Rockstar has taken what worked, made it better while taking out things that didn't. Probably 1 left in this console generation, and I'll bet it tops them all.

Can I give it an 11/10?