The story of Deus Ex, the original from 2000, is a very interesting one. After Ion Storm had received massive backlash for the Daikatana title (which in some ad campaigns stated it would make everyone who played it “John Romero’s bitch”), it was a bit strange that anyone would put faith into the developer. However, perhaps it was only Ion Storm who could properly give Warren Spector the freedom he needed to develop his brainchild. Deus Ex, being as it was, came out at a perfect time. The millennium had just passed, and X-Files and The Matrix was all the rage and cyberpunk was coming back in full form, Deus Ex being a perfect amalgamation of the conspiracy theories in X-Files and the cyberpunk aesthetic of The Matrix. The game was a highly polished seamless action adventure game with elements from both the FPS and RPG genres, and focused more on stealth than on straight forward shooting. Indeed, the game in many aspects endorsed using stealth to achieve mission objectives and it was possible to go thru the entire game not killing anyone but a couple of essential bosses. This made the game stand out heavily from other shooters at the time, which of course mostly carried the id Software tradition of shooting everything in sight (no offense meant against id Software here). Even Half-Life didn’t feel as elegant. So it probably came as no surprise the game won the Game of the Year award that year.

It is probably for the best that Deus Ex Human Revolution does not continue the story from Invisible War that while being a decent game in its own right, never quite lived up to the expectations set by the first game. Instead, Human Revolution is a prequel of sorts, exploring the origins of Deus Ex 1 and where the augmentation tech that was so prominently featured in the first game originated. In that aspect, it definitely succeeds. In Deus Ex 1 the mechs were always referred to as obsolete and seemed to stem from an age where the technology wasn’t as refined. Deus Ex HR takes place in exactly that age where people are starting to become mechs in a way, more or less 20 years before JC Denton’s adventure.

The story in Deus Ex HR is definitely one of the strongest aspects of the game and the main reason you should buy it. You play as the security commander Adam Jensen as he uncovers a web of deceit behind the company he works for after an incident in which he is killed, and also his beloved Megan Reed, his main goal being tracking down the killers. All the characters feel well developed in their execution, and in general you get a strong feeling of conflict between “purists”, that is humans who rescent the augmentation tech and refuse to get the implants and be rebuilt, and the “augs”, who are augmented people, that is people who have gotten these implants and cyberpunky prosthetics and so on. The twist is that it seems that in this early stage of the tech, the human body is rejecting the augmentations and so people have to rely on a drug called Neuropazine that negates the rejection temporarily. It’s a very dark setting with a strong sense of cyberpunk about it, and in a lot of ways the game seems highly reminiscent of the 80′s cyberpunk Paul Verhoeven movie RoboCop, which also happens to take place in Detroit and center on a character who gets brutally murdered and then rebuilt as a cyborg, basically. In fact, a rather hilarious moment occurs in the game where police officer Alex Murphy talks about how he’s not into scifi when a colleague mentions aforementioned movie to him. The cinematics are all absolutely thrilling to watch and at times it felt like watching a movie, and near the end I had several moments that really made my spine tingle and my heart beat fast. The game is extremely well written and the execution is near perfect most of the time.

Aside from the gripping story, the gameplay elements are equally fascinating. While the game brings back delightfully familiar elements it also adds some new things. Mostly the augmentations are a trifle different from the first game in the sense that this time you don’t rely on canisters that contain augs, but rather that you already have all your augs but that some of them has to be unlocked before they can be utilized and some have to be upgraded to reach max potential, an element which is explained within the game’s story. You rely on what they call “praxis points” to unlock and upgrade your augs, and you achieve said points by either achieving experience points or by finding praxis kits within the game’s world. Another familiar element is the same inventory screen from the first game which can be upgraded in size if you find it too limiting.

The game is very well designed in the sense that while stealth is heavily endorsed, you can also rely on combat, which includes taking cover behind things in which the game enters a third person mode or firing your gun in first person mode, all depending on your game style preference. The augs you choose influence which options you have to use during each mission, and what you are good at so choosing the ones that fit your character is obviously a very wise thing to do. Like in Deus Ex 1, you can go through the entire game not killing one person unless you count the mandatory boss fights. The game does have its share of glitches though, but none that detract too much from the overall experience. It does feel a bit unforgiving, and Deus Ex HR can be a very big challenge, even on the easiest setting, as Jensen doesn’t take much damage before he goes down so once you are spotted, unless you have a very strong armor and a few painkillers, you’re pretty much dead.

Graphically the game is a rather gorgeous affair, with a very warm and lush colour scheme that focuses a lot on the colour yellow, in contrast with the rather cold blue tone of Deus Ex 1. The game utilizes DirectX 11 so things like depth of field and soft shadows is used to make the game look very realistic, and tesselation is used to make the smoke look incredibly realistic as well. The characters themselves seem a bit cartoony and not too photorealistic, which I think makes the game look a lot better than if they tried to go for a more realistic approach. The cinematics also look great and are mostly prerendered, which is rather obvious as they are a tad bit darker than the main game. The sound and music both do a very good job, and the music expertly blends the organic and synthetic to fit the cyberpunk theme of the game. The sounds do a good job at keeping you immersed in the world, the voice acting being so good that it outright floored me at times, whereas the voice acting was one of the original game’s weak points to be frank.

With a huge campaign that has enough side quests and challenges to keep you occupied for a good 20 hours, Deus Ex HR is a highly polished and addictive contender for Game of the Year 2011. No matter if you are into RPG’s, stealth games or FPS’s, purchase it. You won’t regret it.

Other games recommended if you like DXHR:
Deus Ex
System Shock 2

- Alyxx

http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2013/01/pc-game-review-deus-ex-human-revolution.html

PC Game Review: Deus Ex – Human Revolution is a post from: Games Review and Tips

http://newandoldpcgames.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-dirt3.html

Review: DiRT3 is a post from: Games Review and Tips

Here’s the list of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games I own:

After Burner II
Aladdin
Alisia Dragoon
Altered Beast
B.O.B.
Bulls versus Blazers and the NBA Playoffs
Castlevania: The New Generation (called Bloodlines in the US)
Dragon’s Fury
Dune II: Battle for Arrakis
Earthworm Jim
FIFA 95 Soccer
Gaiares
Golden Axe
The Immortal
The Lion King
Lotus RECS
Mega Bomberman
Mickey Mania
Moonwalker
Mortal Kombat II
Olympic Gold
PGA Tour Golf III
The Revenge of Shinobi
The Simpsons: Bart vs The Space Mutants
Robocop vs Terminator
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Sonic Compilation (Sonic 1 and 2 + Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine)
Strider
Super Fantasy Zone
Super Thunder Blade
Taz-Mania
Truxton

And Master System games:
Aerial Assault
Asterix
Shinobi

http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-sega-mega-drivegenesis-collection.html

My Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Collection is a post from: Games Review and Tips

Reviewed for PC by Alyxx Thorne

Tomb Raider definitely has a special place in my heart. I grew up with the Tomb Raider games on PC and Lara has always been a bit of an idol for me and an inspiration to follow my dreams and do what I want and not letting anything get in my way. The Tomb Raider games, from 1 to Chronicles, all share the same excellent gameplay that in a great way blended action with adventure and to this day they remain some of my favourite games. And while Angel of Darkness was an indisputable failure, TR Legend and onward all felt like great Tomb Raider games. However, for Lara’s new adventure, she is reborn from scratch, given an entirely new look and personality. Square Enix has taken the chance to make a proper Tomb Raider reboot, giving her an origin story where she transforms from a shy bookworm into the bad ass adventuress that she is known to be. What they did was create probably the best Tomb Raider game yet and something entirely different from what fans of the series have come to expect. So naturally, going into this game with any expectations would not be doing it justice. You’ll simply have to take it for what it is, and what it is, is one of the most gripping origin stories I’ve played recently.

Lara acts and looks a lot more natural than ever in Tomb Raider 2013.

One of Tomb Raider’s strengths is that of storytelling. Trapped on an island with her friends and no way to get away, Lara has to learn to survive in a harsh environment and she is more than often forced into bad situations she has to escape, and you can see these situations all affecting her, toughening her more and more as she goes along. The game’s main focus lies on Lara’s evolution and dynamic transformation and pretty much everything centers around watching her grow and mature, with several subtle details showing it. For one, as she starts out, she’ll act with regret when killing someone and doesn’t seem used to it. However, as the game progresses, she slowly adjusts and even starts to enjoy it near the end. She’ll look increasingly bruised and scratched and her clothes will start to deteriorate from damage and such. One of the most beautiful things about this game is that we discover Lara’s latent abilities and instincts together with her naturally as we play and it builds a very strong empathic connection with her that is unlike most games I’ve played lately, and the game does so without ever putting you directly in Lara’s shoes. The game is constantly third person and Lara will act smart enough to do certain things on her own, such as going into stealth automatically when enemies are nearby or light a torch before a dark area, regardless of whether you do it or not. However, she never does anything that seems counter-intuitive or intrusive and you are still very much in control of her actions.

Afraid of heights? Me too…

The gameplay is very reliant on quick time events and most actions require these to be performed in some manner, and whether this is a flaw or not depends entirely on your taste. The quick time events during certain boss battles did feel very intrusive and not very intuitive at first and ended up stalling the game a bit for me. I often died simply because I didn’t time the events or perform them correctly, or quite simply didn’t react fast enough. However once I got into the game these quick time events became like second nature to me and adjusting to them was easy enough. It’s only a minor annoyance and nothing that broke the game for me, thankfully. Otherwise the game plays mostly like a third person shooter, similar to the old Tomb Raider games, though your weapons often fulfill more functions than just being used for killing, and some tools serve functions beyond what they’re meant for. 

Multiplayer is fun although feels like an afterthought.

Most of the game centers on exploring the island and you get XP rewards for finding salvage, which  you can use to upgrade your weapons, hunting animals and doing challenges. These challenges differ but mostly center around finding a certain number of objects of some kind. Every so often you will level up and gain a skill point, which can be used to teach Lara a new skill. However, the most striking thing about Tomb Raider is that it made me rethink about killing my enemy. At one point, an enemy was crushed under rubble, dying from the wounds. I stood there, holding the machine gun I took from him, aiming at him, but I hesitated. I couldn’t shoot him. I heard him saying “stay with me” and… I felt sorry for him. I lowered my gun and watched him die and after that I actually cried a bit. It was a very intense moment from the game that I will never forget. Later on in the game as Lara kills more enemies, they start talking about her as you listen in on their conversations and some of them even start to fear her. The game is just full of fascinating details like that. There is also a multiplayer mode, a first in the main series, where you can select several characters and compete in team deathmatches and other modes. While I haven’t played the multiplayer extensively, what I played was fun and went smooth without any lag or dropouts. However, a part of me can’t help but wonder who at Square Enix demanded this mode to exist. I mean, most people play Tomb Raider for the single player experience so why the multiplayer? It’s obviously a bit of a tacked on afterthought to extend the game’s life, although like I said, the multiplayer is done well and I have no complaints about it.

Lara’s weapon of choice throughout most of the game is the re-curve bow, which serves several purposes beyond killing.

The graphics in Tomb Raider are simply outstanding and some of the best this generation. On high end PC’s you can even enable TressFX which makes Lara’s hair incredibly lifelike, each hair moving separately. At times the game is breath taking as the sheer scope of the island is enormous and the locations all have their own feel to them. It does feel like the old Tomb Raider games where Lara would go to different locations, however in this game all of them are centered on just one island so there’s still a very unifying feel to them and you can revisit them as many times as you like, even after the main game is over, to complete challenges and such. One flaw is that the graphics are actually so natural and lifelike that you can get lost easily in this game. Unlike previous games, the level design can feel a bit confusing since it’s supposed to look realistic. Of course, I actually kind of like this feeling, and after a while I instinctively began to look for clues in the terrain and ended up not really using the survival instinct key at all which is more or less a “hint key” in this game. The characters are all well designed and feel like they have depth and personality to them. The facial animation definitely holds up well and this game did manage to get a few tears out of me at times.

This is the first game where we see the effect of Lara’s first survival experiences and how she deals with them.

The voice acting is incredible too, especially Lara’s voice actress. In the past, Lara has always been given a very cold voice, but in this game, she shows a much broader spectrum of emotions. The performance left quite an impression on me and is probably one of my favorite game roles of the year. The other voice actors do very well too and overall, the sound in this game is incredible. The music though feels a bit forgettable, especially when held up against the original Tomb Raider music. The game did a nice throwback to the original Tomb Raider theme, though most of it I couldn’t even remember and it felt more like background ambiance. This is just a taste thing though. The music wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t memorable.

Campsites serve as fast travel locations and checkpoints where you can upgrade your skills and gear.

SUMMARY:
GRAPHICS: 10/10
This is possibly one of the best looking games this year, definitely up there with Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite in terms of just featuring breath-taking visuals. The details on Lara’s hair, outfit and the environment is incredible on a medium to high end PC and I strongly recommend playing this game on PC over consoles because of the increased detail.
SOUND: 9/10
An outstanding and unforgettably emotional performance from
Camilla Luddington lends Lara Croft some humanity at last and the sound effects all add to the atmosphere
of the island. The music is good but sadly not that memorable at all. It mostly serves to enhance the mood
rather than create it, which is the only thing I personally dislike about the sound and something I miss
from the older games.
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
The quick time events annoyed me a bit, but otherwise the game feels like a very good modern
action/adventure game, in the same vein as Uncharted. The incredible story kept me going until the end
and I loved every second of it.

FINAL SCORE: 9/10

This is one of the best games I’ve played and the best Tomb Raider game I’ve played. While the
unforgetable music and sometimes annoying quicktime events keep me from giving it a perfect
10/10 score, this game is SO close to perfection for me.
It’s gritty, dark, emotional and feels like a true survival mission. Watching Lara Croft mature into the
legend she is and how she survives the worst odds is a fascinating and unforgettable experience and one I
plan to replay more than once.
If you’re at all interested in action/adventure games, if you’re a Tomb Raider fan or not, get this game. I
strongly recommend it as it is one of the best this year.

- Alyxx

http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2013/04/pc-game-review-tomb-raider-2013.html

PC Game Review: Tomb Raider (2013) is a post from: Games Review and Tips

10. TRON 2.0

While this game sort of branches on being underrated since it’s actually sort of a cult hit, just like the movie it’s inspired by, I feel it doesn’t really receive as much recognition among FPS fans as it should. For one, the graphics, which were incredible back in 2003, are still pretty sweet today and with some fan made mods, you can run this game in full HD glory on your PC and it holds up incredibly well. It also felt like a better sequel to the 1982 movie than TRON Legacy was and in terms of style, keeps more in continuity with it too. As a movie-licensed game, it’s one of the best I’ve played and as a game on its own, the gameplay just feels deeper and better than other FPS’s of the time like Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 which relied far too much on gimmicks like horror and physics, whereas TRON 2.0 feels more like a proper FPS RPG hybrid set in the TRON universe. Multiplayer is also a lot of fun and if you ever dreamt of having a lightcycle match or disc game with your friends, you can do it here. If you’re at all a TRON fan like me, you OWE it to yourself to play this game at least once and it still has a pretty active fan community.

9. Wario’s Woods

When talking about puzzle games, you often mention games like Tetris, Bejeweled or Bust-A-Move. But rarely do I hear people talking about Wario’s Woods on NES/SNES. It’s definitely one of the most addictive puzzlers I’ve played and I remember playing it a lot in my childhood. You play as toad, going from tree to tree in Wario’s Woods and the goal is pretty much to blast away rows of 2+ monsters either vertically, horizontally or diagonally using bombs given to you by Birdo. Birdo has a timer though and once it’s run out, Wario will take over and start spamming more monsters to blast away and knock the tree to make a giant Thwomp at the top to fall down, each knock making it fall further and further down, making the game feel increasingly claustrophobic. It’s a pretty good puzzler and can get quite hectic on later levels. Highly recommended!

8. Conduit 2

When talking about the Nintendo Wii, it’s not often you talk about what First Person Shooters were good on it. Sure, the Call of Duty ports might have been decent if very stripped down and you did have Metroid Prime Trilogy on it which added a good amount of FPS action. But one of the franchises that I think did best on it was Conduit and Conduit 2 is definitely my favourite of the two games. It feels kind of like a mix of Halo and X-Files and does a good job getting the most out of the Wii hardware, even supporting surround sound and running in 480p mode. One of my favourite things about this game and that makes me prefer it over the original is that the protagonist is voiced by John St. John, famous for portraying Duke Nukem himself and he definitely adds a big cool factor to the hero. Conduit 1 and Conduit 2 are must-play games imo if you own a Wii.

7. Gunman Chronicles

When talking about Half-Life, I often feel like the game is kind of overrated. Sure, it did a lot of cool things and it is a good FPS but there is one game I actually feel is kind of superior to Half-Life and also used the exact same game engine. In fact, it started out as a Half-Life mod. Gunman Chronicles does a lot of really cool and actually quite inventive things that in my opinion made it a totally unique game and so much more than just a HL mod. For one, it gave you guns that you could customize, like customizing the spread and amount of shells to fire with your shotgun, or customizing your rocket launcher so you could make it into a grenade launcher if you wanted to, and use your grenades as trip mines if you set them correctly. Also, the setting of literally having cowboys in space makes it even more unique and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game have such unique and diverse levels before with such an interesting cast of characters. It’s a really awesome mix of western and sci-fi and even cyberpunk that I think is incredibly cool. Definitely worth checking out if you can find a copy.

6. Syndicate

 

When you talk about mid 90′s First Person Shooters, a lot of titles come to mind. Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Quake, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone but me remembering Accolade’s Eradicator. I remember playing a demo back in the day and just totally being sucked into it and since then I’ve just watched it fade into obscurity while better known games get all the credit. At the time, Accolade didn’t have a good credit and granted this was probably their last really good game. It didn’t help either that it used the Build engine and came out around the same time as Quake and failed to gather any audience since those who weren’t into Quake were into Duke or Doom. Still it’s a pretty solid FPS with a really good sci-fi atmosphere and worth looking into if you’re into old FPS’s.

4. Starfox Adventures

For some reason, Starfox Adventures is pretty much universally despised by the majority of gamers, especially Starfox fans. And while I guess I could see why since it doesn’t really play like a Starfox game, actually it has more in common with Zelda than Starfox, I definitely don’t agree that it is a BAD game. There is a LOT I love about Adventures, especially the whole atmosphere of adventure it has, that it takes time to set up a compelling universe and that it greatly expands upon the characters and mythology set by Starfox and Starfox 64. I remember reading about this game back in the day and actually being really hyped about it. I wanted to play a different Starfox game and to this day, I would still claim this game is pretty good. So screw the haters, it’s worth at least one shot and you can get it cheap on ebay these days.

3. SiN

Oh… boy… you wanna talk underrated? Talk about fucking SiN. It’s one of those games that I would like to call “Half-Life casualties”, simply because it failed because it came out at the same time as Half-Life. Even though in many ways, SiN was a lot more groundbreaking in ways that Half-Life couldn’t touch. SiN had actual missions where the outcome decided how your next level was gonna be like. You could enter it from another area, you could sometimes even find entirely new levels depending on how your mission went and for the time, this was mindblowing. Another thing that SiN did, WAY before games like Doom 3 made a huge deal out of it, was interactive in-game computers. That’s right, in SiN, you could use computers. You could even go into a cute little DOS prompt and dig through the files to find passwords and hidden easter eggs and again, for the time, this was INCREDIBLE. I cannot even begin to state why I think SiN is probably the most underrated shooter of the 90′s but there are lots of them. It’s only sad that Half-Life stole the glory because I think SiN could really have taken it if it had gotten a bigger fanbase. To this day it remains one of my favourite games and I am still amazed at how much groundbreaking stuff they did back then. It also helps that unlike Gordon Freeman, John R. Blade actually talks and has a wonderful Duke Nukem esque attitude that just makes this game really awesome and in many ways, it feels like a lost Duke Nukem Forever. In fact, rumors has it that it started as a Duke Nukem game but grew into its own thing. Ironically, it got a sequel around the same time as Half-Life 2, using the Source engine. SiN Episodes: Emergence was the first of several planned episodes but sadly Ritual Entertainment got bought out and no further installments are planned in the series. I highly recommend checking SiN out because it’s definitely an underrated classic in so many ways. It’s so good, it’s a sin.

2. Super Mario Bros. 2

SMB2 is often referred to as the black sheep of the original SMB trilogy. And why? Because when people found out that it actually is just a reskinned version of another game, they felt deceived. Thus, SMB2 is considered a bad SMB game. But hang on a sec, just because it’s a reskinned version of another game, why does that automatically make it bad? I want to disagree here. I think it’s actually a pretty good game and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. And for once, it was a game where you could play as several different characters, each with their own abilities and the difference between Mario and Luigi was much further established here and almost completely ignored in further installments were Luigi was reduced to a mere palette swap. It also introduced several other characters that are now canon as well as Birdo, the first transvestite in Mario history. Almost kinda fitting she comes from a game that is considered the freak of the franchise. Definitely an underrated game by all accounts.

1. Daikatana

 

http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2013/01/top-10-underrated-games.html

Top 10: Underrated Games is a post from: Games Review and Tips

A bit about the game and developers.
We all like to daydream about how awesome would it be to rob a bank every now and then. Easy money and not much work to do. Well, Payday The Heist lets you do exactly that.
Payday The Heist is a game published by  Sony Online Entertainment but it was developed by OVERKILL software.

About Gameplay. 
Payday is a game that will look alike Left 4 Dead 2 to every gamer who has ever played it. In Payday you work in a team of 4 people to do your mission. In stead of zombies, your enemies are policemen and swats. There are currently seven different heist, each making you use a different strategy. Sometimes even weapons. In Payday The Heist you level up by completing heists and obtaining money which are actually experience. Leveling up will give you new weapons and modifications. There are three skill trees in Payday, Assault, Support and Sharpshooter. As you gain level, you lever up one of those skills. You may chose which one by pressing tab and then clicking buttons 1, 2 or 3. Assault gives you more ammo, bigger damage and so on and on, while Support gives you shotguns, more crew bonuses and other stuff. I have played 30+ hours of Payday and yet I’ve never leveled up my sharpshooter skill since i think its kind of pointless to have a sniper in this game. But yea, Sharpshooter skill gives you sniper.

In Payday your main enemies are SWATs. They start attacking you when you get spotted, and they always come in waves. Some waves are long, and others are short. On normal difficulty you usually have about 30 seconds between each wave, while on Overkill difficulty wave’s are every 5 or more seconds. So yea, law doesn’t allow you to breath in peace… There are several types of swats, from normal swat to a “bulldozer” which is a heavy-armored and heavy-armed swat. They usually come 1-2 in a pack. On Overkill there can even be up to five of them at the same moment. Three special swats are Buldozer, Taser and a Cloaker. Taser uses electricity  to make you unable to move nor aim. After few seconds you fall on the floor, helpless. Cloaker comes to you quietly and then hits you with an electrified stick. You instantly fall on the floor without being able to shoot. FBI agents aren’t much of a threat, they just jump in between waves to save hostages.

In case that you get downed in Payday, your team-mates have about 30 seconds to rise you back up. While you are downed you can’t move but usually can shoot, so make sure to help your friends by shooting enemy, so they could help you! Though, if you are still being shot at when you are downed, after few bullets you won’t even be able to shoot. In case that your friends don’t “revive” you in those 30 seconds, you are taken into custody. I am not sure how long are you forced to stay there, but I think its about 2 minutes. After 2 minutes you instantly respawn close to your friends. In case that you shoot civilians, you get a penalty which makes your custody last longer. Of course, after a while an NPC named Bain (who is actually a guy who makes a whole heist plan) is able to make a deal with the law forces. So after few seconds (usually about 30 seconds to a minute) you are able to trade a civilian so your friend could instantly respawn back.

Each Heist is different. In one heist you need to rob world’s biggest bank, while on the other mission you need to take a blood example of an infected person. But I’ll talk about that in the Story section bellow.

Graphic and Audio
Payday has wonderful graphic, and yet It isn’t a heavy game to run. In the option menu i get up to 150 FPS, while in the game itself it’s always around 60-70 FPS in the biggest combat. There are great details on pictures, guns, SWATs, your team-mates and anything else. Graphic is really great!  Songs are so freakin addicting that I love to beat heists just to listen to them! As soon as i get few extra € I’m gonna buy the soundtrack DLC hehe.

Story — EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! –
As I’ve said earlier, each Heist in Payday requires its own tactic. Each heist also has its own story. In First World Bank you walk into a bank quietly and then take it over. On Heat Street you have been back stabbed by your own friend, so you have to chase him down, set his van on fire and then take him and the money that he stole from you.

Panic Room is a map where you walk into a drug dealer house and try to make a nice deal. While they are trying to make a deal with you, you start to shoot at them and kill them one by one. Your plan was, from the very beginning, to rob their vault. Large, large vault.

On Green Bridge you have to find a guy by searching swat transport cars. Once you do that you need to take him up to the roof and wait for an airplane (yea, AIRPLANE. Not a helicopter!) to pick him up. In my opinion, that is one of funniest things to see in Payday.

Diamond Heist, on the other hand, can be done in hard or easy way. So far I’ve only managed to do it once in easy way. If you chose hard way, it means that you sneak all over the building to search for alarm boxes. Once you turn three of them down, all you have to do is steal the diamonds. Easy way makes you start the heist and just fight your way to alarm boxes, wait about two to three minutes for them to finish and then take the money.

Slaughter House is a heist on which you make an ambush for SWATs who are driving a money transport with them. You literally push the transportation vehicle into the building, then wait to open the vehicle’s doors and then you carry the gold out of the building. This is one hard, yet easy heist.

And last but not least, No Mercy hospital heist. On this heist you go into the No Mercy hospital from Left 4 Dead. Your objective is to get a positive blood sample from an infected victim. As in Diamond Heist you have easy and hard way to do this. Hard way means that you trigger the heist on beginning, grab a teddy bear, set him on sealed doors and then just wait and kill swats. Once the Teddybear has done his work, you need to decide between three other sealed doors. You need to keep unsealing all three until you find the infected guy.
Easy way, though, is easier but requires more skill. Easy way is the Safe approach in which you make sure that all civilians are tied so they can’t trigger the alarm, then you get into doctor’s clothing and go to the currently unsealed room. There you will be nicely greeted with a sweet Blondie npc who will tell you everything she knows about three unsealed victims. Once you decide which one is the infected, you cut the security line of it so the doors don’t get sealed and then you just get the blood and do your best to find the positive samples as fast as you can. During that, there are countless waves of Swat attacks so you better be prepared! Also, this is my favorite heist since L4D is one of my favorite games, hehe.

Do note that there are a lot of secret levels as well! Though, I have never done any of them so I can’t tell you anything about them.

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Wonderful graphic, yet the game runs incredibly smooth.
- Great audio tracks.
- Various heists that do have random encounters each time you play them.
- Random chance of meeting Bill from L4D in No Mercy hospital.
- Various guns.
- Easy to use skill tree.
- Five different difficulties which make this game even better!
- Fun that keeps on going and going.

Cons:
- I did say that it’s very fun, but after a decent amount of runs through the heists, It kind of gets boring.
- Some head shots do not count so you need to make two or three of them.

Final Grade: 9/10

Extra info: Payday is a great game and I recommend it to everyone! I was thinking of making a gameplay of it done by Syphio, Merkava and me, but I didn’t know if you guys might like it or not, so I’m gonna let you decide if you want to see it or not.

Thank you, all of you for reading!
Wolfie

http://midnightwolfie.blogspot.com/2012/11/game-review-payday-heist.html

Game Review: Payday The Heist is a post from: Games Review and Tips

http://newandoldpcgames.blogspot.com/2012/01/preview-tombraider-2012.html

Preview: Tombraider 2012 is a post from: Games Review and Tips

Here’s a top 10 list of licensed games that I personally consider decent. Feel free to comment and add your own.

The Lion King is one of the proofs that good, even great movie licensed games exist. The animation is stellar in this game and it looks excellent for a 16bit title, even today and the controls feel tight and precise as well. The music is great renditions of the classic soundtrack and there’s a lot of great level design in the game, inspired by the movie. If you like Disney’s The Lion King as much as I do, give this game a try. You won’t regret it. It might be a bit difficult at first (especially the monkeys stage), but once you play it a few times, you get through it.

TellTale Games really know how to make good adventure games and this game, based on the awesome movie trilogy, shows that deriative games don’t have to suck. Featuring excellent voice acting by AJ Locascio (who mimicks Michael J. Fox perfectly here) and the always awesome Christopher “I WAS FROZEN TODAY!” Lloyd, it’s a fun and exciting game that is worth playing at least twice.

Known to us Europeans as Teenage Mutant HERO Turtles (ninja was a bad word apparently), most of the Turtles games were great beat’em-ups that really captured the spirit of the time well and were all fun to play, though the fourth game is definitely my favourite of the bunch as it has some of the best graphics and sound on the SNES and it actually surpasses the arcade game in quality, something few ports manage to do at all. On the Genesis there is a similar game called Hyperstone Heist which is also worth checking out!

While Capcom made a great SNES game based on Aladdin (known to me internally as Super Aladdin), the Genesis game is my personal favourite and one of the best games on the Genesis period. Great music, great graphics (it was animated by the people at Disney themselves) and tight platforming controls makes this a great 16bit gem that reminds me fondly of Prince of Persia, though in this case, it’s the Prince of Agrabah.

While Capcom made a ton of AWESOME Disney licensed games on the NES and SNES, Duck Tales is one of the most memorable. Still fun to play today, this platformer puts you in the shoes of Scrooge McDuck in the search of more money across the world. Great level design, great graphics and excellent music (Moon Theme in particular) makes this a true 8bit classic that, unlike other licensed games on the old toaster oven, doesn’t reek of old shit.

One of the best games on the Genesis, X-Men is worth playing because of the great graphics, tight controls and excellent sound for the system. Clearly worth a shot if you’re into 16bit games and love the X-Men.

Westwood’s game based on the legendary 80′s movie by Ridley Scott comes an entire decade and then some after the movie but it’s still a pretty good title. The game is a real-time adventure game where you have to do detective work like Deckard in the movie, however you play an entirely different character and the game has its own story that takes place in real time as you play the game, something groundbreaking for the time. Another groundbreaking thing was the graphics, they look simply superb with all the cyberpunk environments from the movie recreated as 3D scenery. The only bad thing are the character models which are made of blocky pixels rather than actual 3d models, but I guess for the time this was truly high tech shit. A great game based on a great movie that is highly recommended if you like adventure/detective games ala Gabriel Knight.

Being ported to both the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo (both using their respective lightguns), this little gem is actually one of the best lightgun titles on both systems and it’s pretty fun to play if you like these type of “Operation Wolf” games. The goal is simple: Shoot the terminators, save the humans and gather ammunition. The game can get quite hectic and the 2 player mode is excellent, and it even supports the SNES mouse. A great arcade game all in all.

While it is only loosely based on Star Wars Episode IV, Super Star Wars set a pretty good standard for movie licensed games and it’s one of the best games on the SNES, being a classic 16bit platformer with awesome graphics, great music that does a good job mimicking the original soundtrack’s orchestral quality (something the SNES excelled at) and tight controls that really makes you feel like a Jedi. The only bad thing about it really is the difficulty, which is through the roof and might scare some players away. May the 16-bit force be with you.

It is often dubbed “the only good movie licensed game” and for a good reason. Rare did a splendid job doing a game based on the hit James Bond movie and it has since become one of the most popular games on the Nintendo 64 as a result. Mostly because it not only broke ground for movie-licensed games but also for first person shooters. It follows the movie’s storyline perfectly and also uses characters and dialogue from the movie but makes it feel like a natural part of the game play and it was the first game to really make you feel like Bond. Introducing the concept of actually having to reload your gun as well as 4 player local deathmatch and a ton of cheats and fun stuff added to the game, it’s a must-have on the N64. Although I think Perfect Dark was a better game which used the same engine, Perfect Dark was not movie licensed.

http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2013/01/top-10-licensed-games.html

Top 10: Licensed Games is a post from: Games Review and Tips

http://nimragamescenters.blogspot.com/2013/03/callofdutyblackops2-game-preview.html

Game Review Call of Duty Black Ops 2 (Single Player and Multiplayer) is a post from: Games Review and Tips

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a typical example of a game that you haven’t heard of but has a huge following of fans as well as it’s fair share of people that dislike it. So without further ado let’s dive into this review and see what this game has to offer.

One thing that many people will notice very quickly as they start playing is that it’s very similar to Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario in that all three feature a big overworld that you explore, battles are turn based and you collect equipment over the course of the game to improve the bros attack, defense and grant them special abilities.

Another thing that deserves to be mentioned is that this game is…. well… weird for lack of better words, only the first few minutes takes place in the Mushroom Kingdom, after that you go to the BeanBean Kingdom, a neighboring kingdom where everything is a bean much like how everything in the Mushroom Kingdom is a mushroom.

Graphics

The graphics in this game are pretty solid over all, the characters are well animated and usually entertaining to watch and the backgrounds are generally pleasant to watch as well, while not breathtaking by any means, they do their job and have a kind of charm to them.

Sound

The music in this game is generally alright, some of the tunes are catchy and memorable while others just kind of play in the background setting the mood, I’ll post a few links to some of the tunes so you can judge for yourself if it’s any good.

Gameplay

Now, the gameplay is where most people either love or hate this game, the gameplay is a lot slower then mario games tend to be.
Since it’s a RPG it has a lot of story and dialog, though not nearly as much as the stereotypical RPG’s like Final Fantasy and the dialog tends to be humerus.
In typical RPG fashion you will spend most of the time in this game when you aren’t reading dialog in battle, thankfully the battle system is easy to grasp for fairly deep.

While in battle you have multiple options for what you wish to do, you control both Mario and Luigi at once, Mario with the A-button and Luigi with the B-button and each turn you can choose to take one of several actions which include but aren’t limited to: jumping on the enemy, hitting them with your hammer, using an item, both bros. attacking together in a stronger combo attack or running away.

All attacks in the game, yours and the enemy’s alike, rely on timing to strengthen the attack or avoid damage, and different attacks are more effective against certain enemies for instance enemies with spikes cant be jumped on without hurting the bro, so you need to use your hammer, or a furred enemy can have it’s fur burnt off by fire to make it run away from the fight.

Story

The game starts out with a offering of peace being offered between the BeanBean Kingdom and Mushroom Kingdom, however as the representatives approach Princess Toadstool it turns out this was a trap and the attackers do something to the princess.
After some mischief bringing the bros to the castle it turns out Toadstool’s voice has been stolen and replaced with explosives and you have to go to the BeanBean Kingdom to get it back and find out what they possibly would want with her voice.

To find the answers you will have to play the game for yourself, I hope you enjoyed this review, feedback and comments are welcome.

Summary

Personally I love this game, it’s one of my favorites on the GBA, I highly recommend it if you like RPG’s, Mario games and puns.

–Thad out

http://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2013/01/gba-review-mario-luigi-superstar-saga_7075.html

GBA Review: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is a post from: Games Review and Tips