The Trails series has multiple trilogies for this series in Japan. Cold Steel is one of those other trilogies set in the Legend of Heroes world. The company that bought the rights for US releases have been very slow in releasing the games, which sucks.

Blackwell Unbound, the second game in the Blackwell point-and-click adventure game series. It's that retro pixel art style, looks like a game Sierra would have made in 1990. I think I reviewed the first one here.

The first one I liked a lot, this one was eh. Takes place in 1970s or 80s NYC. It took 3 hours to beat (first one took 5) which is fine, but it felt very slight. The whole game takes place in one "night" unlike the first one which is broken down into several "Days" as adventure games sometimes are, and in this case it makes it feel like nothing much happened. There was nothing particularly difficult about it, just wander back and forth between locations making sure you've talked to everybody about everything, some light "puzzle" solving.

Plot by the way is you're a woman basically finding ghosts and helping them move on to the next world with your trusty spirit guide (a guy straight out of a '40s noir).

I'm interested to see whether the creator Dave Gilbert learns from this one in the future games (5 games total, all of them have been released), if it got criticism or if he was able to judge for himself that it wasn't as good as the first.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments | PC, PS3/4, Xbox 360/One

A pretty big letdown compared to The Testament of Sherlock Holmes. Aside from some slightly upgraded visuals, I think everything else was a downgrade. There's no overarching story, it's just a collection of 4-5 separate and self-contained cases. The locations range from serviceable to boring, with no standouts like the abandoned circus in the previous.

The deduction board from the previous game is replaced with a new system where certain clues or conversations will yield textual evidence phrases. Two phrases can be combined if related to yield a clue bubble, and logically related clue bubbles are joined together with blue lines. When enough bubbles relate to one another a deduction can be made. Some of the smaller bubbles can have two possible states, and when a contradictory deduction exists the larger bubble is removed and contradictory bubbles are connected with a red line until you resolve the contradiction. It's serviceable, but I enjoyed the deduction board from Testament more.

The clue and investigation system from the previous game is also more or less the same, though I found the cases to be more simple and linear without much room for guesswork, and in most of the cases you can generally know the conclusion after minimal investigation. You also don't get to control Watson at all, though there are a few occasions where you control Toby to sniff a scent, but it's just a simple short trail following sequence. There aren't really any of the random puzzle games from the previous either aside from a lockpick game that gets way overused. This might be a plus or negative to some, I enjoyed the Knight's and Queen's Tour chess problems in the last one in particular.

On PC, the load times between switching to areas was insanely long and put me off quite a bit, but otherwise I didn't notice any technical problems. Overall it really felt phoned in, and I'd recommend anyone new to these games to play Testament first and only this one if they really enjoyed it.

Rebel Galaxy

This game could be considered the spiritual successor to Privateer – which took place in the Wing Commander universe. An excellent open-ended game, instead of flying missions against the Kilrathi (sp?), you could choose to become a merchant, pirate or bounty-hunter.

While buying moon rocks on Planet X to resell on Planet Y is everybody’s idea of fun, I instead became the galaxy’s most wanted fugitive. After all, if your choices for interstellar alter-ego are the following:



or



Who are you going to emulate? That trucker probably can’t even spell Kessel run.
So 20 years later, we have Rebel Galaxy. It’s an open-world game, where you have been contacted by your Aunt who’s in desperate need of your help. The story-line of the game really doesn’t matter: the missions all boil down to the same thing – fly to coordinate X, destroy the enemy, return to base. Rinse and repeat. As the missions progress, the enemies do get more powerful and numerous – so upgrading your spaceship becomes necessary.

Upgrades cost credits. Credits can be earned by humping moon rocks from station to station, performing missions for the various factions in the galaxy, collecting bounties on pirates or shooting asteroids and selling the resulting minerals. While I’m sure space-trucker or space-miner are noble and necessary positions , no one ever bought a game like this to work a 9 to 5 : the only time my mining laser saw use was when a fighter craft got a little too close.

Your ship can be upgraded – speed, weapons, armor and add-ons. Spend enough time earning credits and you can afford a dreadnought with 20 turrets and enough firepower to turn an enemy armada into scrap. But again, why fly this:



When you can fly:



While space is a 3d environment, this game ignores that. You cannot fly on the Z-axis – so combat is similar to what you’d find in a naval combat game set in the 16th century (complete with broadsides). While this is a little disappointing, the graphics that result from blowing up a capital ship are top-notch. The game’s very pretty – on my mid-range PC, all settings at high/ultra resulted in a good FPS with no stuttering.

Pros:
You can be a space pirate/bounty hunter.
Excellent graphics.

Cons:
Repetitive missions, bit of a grind.
No real interaction with the people you find out there: no matter what you say to a pirate, he’s going to attack you.

Bottom Line:
Anyone who likes space-sims should get this. The game is shallow (both in flight mechanics and missions) but when a game lets you become



you buy it.

I love when this thread gets a bump! Wish more people would post in it...unfortunately I'm not that helpful since I'm mostly catching up on my backlog and not playing anything remotely new, except for Broforce.

Rather than write a whole new review, I'll just add to this one. Played the GOTY edition and did not have a single problem with visual bugs. I also agree with the last part, as I was kind of dawdling on some side quests while working on the main quest only to realize I had reached a point of no return; I ended up going back to finish a couple of side quests but then played the Harley Quinn's revenge DLC and am probably done with the game for the forseeable future.

To me, though, this game is sort of the "perfect" third person action game, which I find to be a polarizing genre (I tend to either love or hate them - loved the new Tomb Raider and Sleeping Dogs but generally hate GTA and similar games). The map is just big enough that you feel like you're in an open world but not so big that you get lost or take forever to get to an objective. There are secrets scattered all over the place so I kept coming across them even if never felt like I was actively looking for them. Movement feels amazing between your grappling hook and gliding abilities; you can get from point A to point B pretty much seamlessly outside of the occasional wonky spot. There are lots of different items to use and the way that the game opens up as you discover them is smart, though I agree not quite as "Metroidvania" as the first one.

The hand-to-hand combat is great and I really love taking on a huge group of enemies, though the camera can sometimes get in the way. It didn't feel quite as smooth as Arkham Asylum for some reason, but on the flip side I found the "predator" sections less frustrating. I'm not hugely into the mythos of comics but the Batman universe in these games is fairly interesting, and you really do feel like Batman while playing. For $10 or whatever these games cost now, it's hard to find a better deal, especially if you want to get into the challenges and DLC.

I haven't actually finished a game in months. Thanks Rocket League.

Yeah one more thing rebel galaxy has going for it is the ability to be played in short increments: Frustrated by your teammates in random ranked 3v3? Fire up RG and blast a few merchants minding their own business...

Broforce PC

Going to cheat a little here because I haven't actually finished the game, but since the mechanics are basically the same throughout and there's not actual storyline to worry about developing and completing, I feel that I can give a pretty solid impression.

I'll start by saying I never even considered glancing at this game when it was in Early Access or once it was finally released because I thought the name was dumb and the gameplay probably was too. For some unbeknownst reason, an acquaintance of mine from school who I chat with about Steam games once in a blue moon gifted me a copy (perhaps he got extra copies as an early supporter? I really have no clue). Since it was in my library and got pretty good reviews, I figured what the heck I would install it and try it out. With all this said, it's turned out to be one of the more pleasant gaming surprises I can remember.

It's a pure platforming/shooting game, I guess similar to something like Metal Slug, though I haven't played one of those games in 10+ years so I don't know how apt the comparison is. The characters you play are all "Bro" versions of 80s-90s action movie heroes or TV stars, like Rambro or RoboBro (RoBro Cop would have been better, IMO). Each has their own characteristic attack and special, and there are lots of little fun touches that give the game extra personality in addition to its tongue-in-cheek bro humor. Stages are bite-sized and can be completed relatively quickly, with one shot killing your character but freeing imprisoned "bros" givies you a extra life and unlocks more characters to play. You start out as a random character in each stage and are switched every time you free someone, so sometimes you lose a better character in exchange for that extra life or vice versa.

The enemies are stupid and not difficult but their placement can make for a challenge, though it sometimes borders on frustrating as the level layouts aren't always the greatest. However, they are also entirely destructible, meaning you can blaze your own path through them or create creative ways to reach different areas, though as far as I can tell there are no secrets to be found by exploring. Despite the wanton destruction occurring on the screen at all times, getting through some of the stages takes surprising consideration as you need avoid environmental hazards in addition to the brainless enemies.

In short, I give this game a surprisingly strong recommendation given my initial expectations. I suspect the main campaign is a little short for a $15 game but there appear to be plenty of user-created campaigns available, and you can create levels if that's your bag. There's also four-player co-op but it sounds like the games can turn into huge clusters with bullets taking out chunks of the stage. It's definitely a game that I'm enjoying playing through and could see myself coming back to in the future just to play a few levels here and there.

Tales of Monkey Island

This is the fifth game in the series (and possibly the last) made in 2009.

There are five tales to this game (separately installed) which take about 5 hours each to complete. I cannot be happier with this one. Very well made puzzles, same funny/lame jokes as always, well voice acted. The story is pretty damn awesome. One thing i did notice is that they made it a little bit easier, probably to accomodate for the impatient youth these days. But the challenge is still there.

All in all, if you are a fan of the series, but was put off by the fourth one, - Escape from Monkey Island - don't be put off. The fourth one was pretty bad but tales has brought back the holy grail of adventure games into the spotlight 8.5/10

Abyss Odyssey

I bought the game during a sale when it was heavily discounted which turned out to be a good thing.

I had added to my wishlist because the artwork looked amazing, like a Greatful Dead album cover, and my naive heuristic was if they out that much work into the art the other parts must be good as well.

Unfortunately that's not really the case. The story line is pretty much non existent, the game mechanics aren't that interesting either. The combat is supposedly like Smash Brothers (I've never played it) but felt really sluggish which meant I really only could get maybe a 3 hit combo down. Another problem is that while the game mechanics aren't interesting they are not very intuitive and it's not really laid out. For instance, you have a mana bar that fills up when you get blue globes. When the bar is full you can release this huge blue ball and whatever enemy it hits, once killed, drops a glowing orb that you can pick up. You can then transform into that enemy and use their special powers and full health bar basically giving you a whole other life. It's never really explained at all though.

The game is pretty short as well. I probably put in 30 hours with half of that just patiently grinding to get to a high enough level to defeat the end guy.

I've been bashing on it but it wasn't a terrible game, just disappointing and an ok game to get and play if it's heavily discounted.

7/10

Beyond Two Souls

Mixed feelings overall with this one. Overall an emotional playing experience, but the gameplay left a lot to be desired.

First for the good. The voice acting and dialogue are top notch. Ellen Page is the main character and Willem Dafoe plays her mentor, and they both put in superb work. Their characters are believable, and that makes the cut scenes have a bit more bite to them. The story centers around a girl with a unique power in that she can channel an inner being to mess with the environment around her. The nice thing is that they really tell us the backstory as the game goes along in little bits to explain why she has this power and what the significance of it is.

The game is split up into multiple points in this girl's life, and it is not played in chronological order. In fact, the first sequence of the game is called prologue, but it's actually almost the last event chronologically in the game. It flips back and forth between when Jodie was a child and learning about her powers and the dangers, her time as an adolescent with some angst and rebellion to her, her training and missions a s a CIA operative, and her fallout with that organization. It was a nice touch to play it out of order, as it helped to dish out the backstory a little a t a time to help build the drama a bit.

Now for the bad. The game play is just short of atrocious. There are basically 2 modes in the game. You controlling Jodie, and you controlling her extra spirit, Aiden. Playing with Aiden felt relatively smooth with a few hiccups here and there. You basically fly around the world in 1st person and interact with the environment to make people or things do what you want them to do. It's easy, there isn't ever any real danger of goofing up, and it's basically trying to lock on to whatever target is available and making it do something to move the story along. Playing Jodie is a nightmare. The interacting with environment sequences are a pain. Her controls felt clunky, her character's movements felt unnatural, and overall it was boring to move a haystack from point A to point B. Most of the action revolved around quick time events (QTEs) that I've always hated in games. The fighting was challenging because sometimes it was difficult to tell what the game wanted you to do, but there wasn't any real consequence to losing a fight because Aiden always bails you out in those cases. Fighting basically consisted of pushing the direction key the right way at the right time to dodge or land a strike, and didn't really do anything for me. The few stealth missions were a bit more fun, but nothing like a Tom Clancy or a Metal Gear game provide.

There were a few chapters that felt a bit too emo, like her taking revenge Carrie style on a group of teenagers who lock her in a closet, or her trying to sneak out one night to go to a party. While it was nice to not play things chronologically from a story telling perspective, a found that the game did not progress from a playing perspective because of this. Towards the end you are still doing chapters from her childhood that require little to no actual thought or skill, and that did take away from the tension a bit.

The tone of the story jumped around a bit too much. There was horror, sci-fi, drama, comedy, rom-com, etc... It would have been more effective to pick a tone and stick with it for most of the game.

As the credits were rolling, I couldn't help but feel like I had just watched an 8 hour movie that I hadn't made a single impact on. It would've been better to watch the 2 hour version of it. If you are going to play this, it will be for Ellen Page's work and nothing else.

6/10

Update!

Kotaku's Jason Schreier named it the best JRPG of the decade so far. http://thebests.kotaku.com/the-best-...far-1743320035 and also named it one of the 20 JRPGs you must play http://kotaku.com/the-20-jrpgs-you-must-play-1222229344.

I am also happy to report that they released the sequel on the PSP and I purchased my copy and am slowly playing it and I must say the sequel improves upon the original gameplay by adding a combo attack element. Other than that, the dialogue is witty and the story is riveting. If you played the first, you MUST get the second.

I finished the first a few months ago and am slowly working my way through SC, but can definitely echo all of this. The first instantly became one of my favorite games ever, and so far SC seems to only have improved on basically everything.

Rayman,legends was really looking forward to playing this as i was told it was better then mario, found it to be quite more faster paced then the mario games and also more hyper, you had to do i lot of timed jumping

graphics were more detailed and some stages were like art work, after the first day playing i was looking forward to just jumping into the game and playing for quick sessions as its a game you don`t have to follow

Next day i finish work i have some free time to play, so open up the case and ? no rayman, legends spend almost a hour looking for it no were to be found?

So think it was misplaced and forget about it, about week later i go round to a old m8s house to put his gas meter on the fiddle (free of charge of course) and see he is playing rayman legends, say in passing conversion i was playing it until i lost my copy, he says to me that he only paid £5 for it of some bird selling it with a xbox pad £10 for them both, so get back i find am missing a xbox pad as well, (she also stole my bookies winning tickets and cashed them in, went to pick up winnings and told some girl had slips and cash them in, swore blind she did not take them) asked her did she take them, she swears she never, i tell her i know who you sold it to and he send the girl he bought it from had same hair and clothes you have, she says he is full of **** and says i need to check the house for them as she ain`t taken ****, to this day i have never met anyone who could lie and keep it up like her, bought another copy of raymans legends and am half way into it, plus m8 was super happy with the meter, so at the end of the day i would give rayman legends up to now a solid 8.5/10.

Now that's how you review a game!

To The Moon

A short pixel art game about two technicians sent into an old man's mind to fulfill his dying wish. Along the way we experience his life. First I'll get the bad out of the way, but there isn't much. The controls are a tad bit clunky. That's it.

The good is that in an age where AAA games with millions of dollars sunk into them have story lines that wouldn't even make it into a straight to DVD movie, this game is all story and it's good. Even though it wasn't even the kind of story I'd necessarily like, and the jokes are a bit amateur, but it's so well done that by the end I did feel those heartstrings get pulled.
9/10

Agreed, he's got a real future in BBV4Life circa 2006.

I need to finish this game; while I admit it elicited an emotional response, it also felt a bit cloying IMO and it was not all that much fun to actually 'play.'

Shadow of Mordor (pretty much all systems but not to be played on PS3 or Xbox 360)

This game got a lot of press so I’m not sure I’m adding much with a review, but if you get all of your video game news from 2p2 then I suppose it will be helpful, and I enjoyed it quite a bit so I feel like writing about it. Here’s the short version if you don’t want to read a lot of text or you want to avoid minor spoilers: great game for fans of third-person action/stealth or for anyone with even a passing interest in Lord of the Rings, even if the mechanics borrow a lot from the Rocksteady Batman games (combat) and Assassin’s Creed series (movement). Not as great if you love open-world gameplay since there's not an awful lot to do outside of missions. Also, I played it on the PS4 and it was excellent but apparently it should be avoided on last-gen systems, especially the PS3.
Story: The game starts with a pleasantly brief tutorial that gives way to your character’s background, in which he and his family are slaughtered by Uruks (large orcs), but he is spared from permanent death after being possessed by the wraith of a long-dead elf lord. From here, you are basically out for revenge while filling in bits about the life of the wraith who is possessing you. This plays into one of the main mechanics of the game, where you are able to die and come back repeatedly without losing progress (more on this below). I’ve read the LOTR books and seen the movies, and I really appreciated how the story of this game filled in some of the history of Middle Earth while greatly respecting the universe built by Tokien, though Tolkien fanatics may be able to find fault/inconsistencies and people totally unfamiliar with the stories may be somewhat lost. On the other hand, the open world is pretty uninteresting, and I often found myself fast traveling rather than bothering to run around it as there wasn’t much to see or find and getting to constant battles is a nuisancel. There are also interesting bits of fully-voiced lore to be found around in the form of collectibles, though these are optional outside of providing a small amount of currency. Overall, the high quality production values and attention to detail really help elevate this game – it looks good, the voice acting is solid, and I didn’t notice any slowdown or screen tearing even with massive numbers of enemies on screen, which brings me to:

Gameplay: One of the main knocks on this game is that it’s repetitive, which I can’t really deny, but at least the repetition is fun and it doesn’t last overly long (took me maybe 30 hours to complete though it could be done in quite a bit less if you focus on the main story). The bulk of the game is spent in combat, usually against large swarms of orcs, or in stealth, attempting to avoid detection as you slink around ruins and strongholds to pick of enemies from the shadows. Combat is extremely similar to the Batman Arkham games in that you use one button each to attack, counter, stun, and dodge with the goal of stringing together combos and unleashing more powerful attacks. At first I had my doubts that the combat was responsive enough (it doesn't flow quite as smoothly as Batman), but before long I was tearing through hordes of enemies like butter, though there is almost always a boss strong enough to kill you no matter how overpowered you seem. Unlocking new skills keeps things from getting stale, as do options that appear later such as riding beasts or branding enemies to fight on your side. There is also a nifty bow weapon, in which time slows down so you can pick enemies off from afar or even in the midst of close-quarters combat to thin the ranks and increase your combo.

The Nemesis System: Alright this is already getting kind of long but I do want to touch on one last item as it's something that I think really makes this game special. The Uruk army hierarchy is made up of unique captains and warchiefs, each with their own title/descriptor, who you eventually need to bring down. They look relatively different from one another and will have their own line of dialogue when they encounter you. What's cool is that the captains change and develop over time; if you kill one, another will be promoted to take his place and others will come to fill in the empty spots. If you're killed by a random orc, he will get promoted to captain and taunt you the next time you meet. While it's probably just a simple bit of clever programming, it works to make the game far more engaging and the world more immersive as you feel like you're part of a dynamic tale. They're not always roaming the world waiting to be encountered, and it breaks the immersion a little bit when you have to go to mission start points to find certain captains, but overall it's pretty neat and I'm excited to see how future games advance from it.

Pony Island $5 impulse buy on Steam. Was a very quick game to finish - no more than four hours.

Can't really describe the game without giving too much away, it's a good game to go into blind. Some puzzles, basic platforming and tongue-in-cheek humour made this a worthwhile $5.

Also just finished Portal 2, 10/10 even if the puzzles stress me out and one time made me late to work (just slightly though).

Dead Island and Dead Island: Riptide

The equivalent of the C grade movie on cable that you watch when nothing else is on and you have time to kill.

It's passable to play but the storyline is only mildly interesting, the physics are a bit wonky, game play works and there is slight variations with the weapons, but it eventually boils down to timing your kick to stop the zombie charging, take a few wacks, kick again to keep the zombie off balance and a few more wacks, rinse and repeat.

The sequel adds some variation with enemy types and weapons that you can get which varies up how you attack. One small fun thing to do is combine a huge heavy weapon with a knock back mod and when the weapon connected the zombie would fly back while expoding into a jumble of zombie parts.

4/10

make sure to try some of the user created levels. There a lot of creative and challenging ones out there

Yeh Portal 2 was sweet. Hope they make a third.

Finished Cognition: Episode 1 recently. Mediocre modern adventure game, you're a detective of some sort etc. I got it in a bundle and played because Jane Jensen of Gabriel Knight fame was a consultant on it. May some day play Episode 2.

I can give you literally 100 better adventure game recommendations if you want.

Have really neglected other game for some years now since getting into LoL, so going to go through some older backlog, mostly some indie titles and just slug through some stuff.