Topic: Rate The Last Game You Played

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

Sam & Max: Season Two - Beyond Time & Space (PC) - 8/10
Game developers often comment on how difficult it is to write humour, and those that try to do so often resort to crude humour because that's considerably easier to make. A round of applause for Telltale Games then: they sure know how to produce a humorous script in their games. Sam & Max: Season Two raised quite a few laughs amongst myself and the two friends who watched me play it for a while. Some jokes feel a bit forced, but the satire and slapstick is, for the most part, written to a high standard. The comic timing and character chemistry is instrumental in the humour as well - David Nowlin and William Kasten are excellent as the titular duo, though that is not to discredit the rest of the voice cast, who also do an bang-up job.

On to the game itself. Mechanically, it functions similarly to Season One. For those uninitiated, Sam and Max is a point-and-click adventure spread across five episodes, in the fashion of a cartoon series, in which you manipulate things with items in your inventory and move through dialogue trees to progress. Each episode has its own plot, but there is an overarching story linking them all together. In fact, the interconnectivity is really impressive; as the subtitle implies, there is some messing with the space-time continuum, allowing many wacky scenarios, as well as a number of interesting callbacks to episodes in both seasons (and foreshadowing to future ones in certain cases). The puzzles themselves within the episodes are really satisfying to solve, excepting a few instances of oddball logic. It is difficult to discuss these aspects of Sam and Max without spoiling anything.

In terms of improvements over the first season, Beyond Time and Space has a handful of notable tweaks. As a whole, the structure of the episodes is much more unpredictable. From a gameplay standpoint, you will find several action-based minigames across the season, most of them necessary to advance, including frequent challenges that involve Sam's DeSoto car. This was perfunctory before, but this time, it is featured regularly and the addition of arrow key control for these segments is extremely welcome. The only annoyance which was not fixed, something that plagues every Telltale project, is the on-and-off nature of the clicking to move the character. Basically, ensure that the mouse cursor is on the ground before clicking! If you did not click somewhere on the ground, the game seems to decide for itself where you meant for the character to go, which is usually not where you meant. Whether it's a programming issue they can work around is beside the point: it is a problem.

After this, I am now psyched to play Season Three a.k.a The Devil's Playhouse, which I snatched up during the 40% price cut last month. The verdict appears to be that it adds a bunch of pretty cool ideas into the mix.

[KDR_11k]

All the games Telltale made after S&M S2 used keyboard or virtual analog controls for movement instead of clicking. While we gamers like that I know it confused the hell out of my mother when she tried playing Grim Fandango back in the day.

[Gameboy Freak]

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance

3.5/5

I don't know why people give this game so much crap. I actually think it is alot of fun, more so than Circle of the Moon was.

[FZeroBoyo]

Trauma Team - 9/10


Played the game recently and had a lot of fun, so it'll be a contender for my top 10 games of the year. Have to give props to its length; took me over 25 hours from start to finish. =D

[KDR_11k]

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance

3.5/5

I don't know why people give this game so much crap. I actually think it is alot of fun, more so than Circle of the Moon was.

Oh, Dissonance. For a moment I thought you said Despair. Yeah, Dissonance is a nice game. It doesn't stand out that much but it's still a lot of fun.

[Ymeegod]

Metal Gear: Peace Walker (PSP)

Pros: 
it's still a good action game even if nothing's new
the plot was pretty decent and the voice acting was solid
the soundtrack was great even though it was taken for pervious MGS games
lots of extras which added quite a bit of replay value
Cons: 
Controls, while it does bettter than other 3d games on the PSP there's still issues--aiming for one, ok sense there's no second analog stick you'll be aiming with the four face buttons similar to an N64 setup.  It really wouldn't be much of an issue but for some reason the game's auto aim isn't all that helpful.  You couldn't lock on to one point and fire, it keep switching points on what's closest which can lead to your death in the bigger mech boss fights
Inventory:
You can't pause the game while trying to get an certain item out and there's no real workable quickswitch.  For some reason I couldn't get it to bind Rations for Faulton Recovery System to the left directional pad which annoyed the hell out of me.  Not sure if this has been patched but it simply defaulted back to "no item" whenever I clicked left.  Same for the right, it defaulted back to the taser instead of the last weapon I used.

Small maps,  damn maps were tiny so there's plenty of loading going on

Overall score 8/10

[broodwars]

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - 9 "What is a Man"s / 10 "But a Miserable Pile of Secrets"s - Long story short, this game is awesome and a much-needed new direction for the series after Konami beat the Metroidvania formula to death with Symphony of the Night clones.  The music is outstanding, the art direction is gorgeous, the combat is satisfying, the puzzles are generally well-done if a bit bizarre at times, the game is generally well-paced and lengthy, and the story is fairly well-told even if it isn't particularly creative.  The developers even managed to sneak a fair bit of exploration and traversal into the game, encouraging you to replay previous stages  with new abilities as you search for upgrades you couldn't get your first time through.  There are also a great deal of little details to the presentation that give the game a certain polish that are too numerous to name.  Probably my only issues with the game are the steep learning curve only on; a certain amount of bugginess; some frustrating sections late in the game (frickin' Chupacabras!); and a fair amount of hamminess from Patrick Stewart.  I also found it perplexing how Patrick Stewart's observations about Gabriel Belmont's supposedly "increasingly-bloodthirsty" demeanor directly conflict with how we see Gabriel act in-game.  I guess Writer A didn't keep Character Animator B and Voice Actor C in the loop as to what they wanted to do.
 
My biggest problem with this game, though, is the way that the gaming community and reviewers have reacted to it.  Reading reviews and opinions, I keep seeing the game reviewed for what it's NOT rather than for what it IS.  Yes, this isn't a Metroidvania, and thank God for that because it was getting incredibly stale (especially since Nintendo revived Metroid).  That does mean that the exploration elements are de-emphasized, but there's still a fair amount of it, and anyone who has played God of War could tell you that this game is a fair bit more sophisticated and layered.  I'm also seeing a lot of complaints about the game "not being original", which is hilarious coming from people and sites who highly regarded such games as God of War 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, games that are practically carbon copies of their predecessors.  Yes, Castlevania grabs elements from such games as God of War; Shadow of the Colossus; and Uncharted/Prince of Persia.  So long as the experience is still fun, though, does that really matter?
 
And while we're at it, anyone who complains that this game isn't "Castlevania" either hasn't played beyond the first Lord of Shadow, which is coincidentally Chapter 3 of Twelve, or what they really mean is that game isn't "Metroid".  Shortly thereafter, you start entering very gothic and horror-based environments fighting vampires; ghouls; reapers; etc.  The game just uses its opening 1/4 or so of Lord of the Rings-esque environments and whatnot to lead up to that, and that was fine by me.
 
Overall, Lords of Shadow is a much-needed new direction for the franchise (and, mind you, Konami is still welcome to keep the cloning vats at the ready for 2D handheld installments, just as they have for the past decade), and I highly recommend it.  "THIS IS NOT GOD OF WAR WITH A WHIP!  IT'S MUCH MORE SOPHISTICATED!  I KNOW It's NOT '2D'!"
 
And, yes, a grand total of 2 people will probably get that reference. 

[vudu]

Bit.Trip Runner

9/10

I love this game.  Parts of it are as hard as balls, but it put a huge smile on my face.  Highly recommended for anyone who likes rhythm games or old-school NES games.

[broodwars]

Bit.Trip Runner

9/10

I love this game.  Parts of it are as hard as balls, but it put a huge smile on my face.  Highly recommended for anyone who likes rhythm games or old-school NES games.

I don't think I'd rate the game that high (there are just too many absurdly and unfairly-difficult levels where you can repeatedly fail without understanding what you did wrong), but that is a fun game.  I wish there were more level varieties, though.  I got pretty sick of the 3 level backdrops by the end of the game, especially with how often I'd have to repeat stages from the beginning.

[vudu]

There were only two stages towards the end that I was stuck on--both for well over an hour!  But even when the game was frustrating, it was incredibly fun.

Also, I forgot to mention it before, but the bosses of worlds 1 and 2 are phenomenal!  They mix things up enough to feel like unique challenges without breaking the basic game play.  Sadly, the boss of world 3 isn't nearly as entertaining--it's pretty much just a normal level (which isn't a bad thing, but after the first two boss encounters I was hoping for another totally unique stage).

[broodwars]

Alan Wake - DLC ("The Signal" and "The Writer") - 8/10 - Alan Wake was one of the main deciding factors in my decision to purchase a 360 (along with Tales of Vesperia and Mass Effect) back in June.  Several months later, I find myself finishing the second and last piece of DLC that means it's time to put the game to rest.  Looking back over the DLC, I have to say this is one of the better uses of the format I've seen in a game, certainly outside of the RPG genre, and it stands in stark contrast to the blatant abuse of the format by most companies on the HD consoles.  The DLC consists of a lot of re-used assets, but those assets are used in new and interesting ways and it doesn't feel like you're just playing more Alan Wake.  The use of "words" as opposed to relying entirely on your flashlight and guns (as you do in the main game) completely changes the experience, and there's a great deal of satisfaction in taking out 4-5 taken in one shot because you lured them to a single "boom" word.  Both DLC are the length of your typical Alan Wake "Chapter" in the main game (about 1 1/2 hours or so), one even came for free, and both give the main game a much more satisfying/hopeful ending.  Both DLC have pretty good production values as well, with all returning characters sporting their original voice actors and some decent FMV.

So where does this DLC go wrong?  Well, despite re-using assets in clever and interesting ways, it still doesn't completely hide that you've seen all of this before somewhere.  There are no new weapons (outside of "your words", of course), and what few new enemies there are aren't any different from previous foes.  The story, while interesting, also doesn't really add anything other than an interesting coda to the main game's ending.  The situation Alan finds himself in at the end of the main game has not changed, just that he's somewhat more sane now.  It's also worth mentioning that The Signal is just sadistically difficult and its gameplay runs completely counter to how the player is trained to react by the main game (where you can always take out hordes of enemies with careful crowd and inventory management).  The hordes in The Signal just don't stop coming, and it can be very frustrating to continually die because you play the game how the game has taught you to play it.  The Writer, on the other hand, is much more relaxed and simpler.  The mechanics are the same, but it's paced like the main game and much more enjoyable.

Alan Wake wasn't much of a hit (considering the hopes Microsoft placed on it and its development costs) at only roughly 600,000+ units sold since its launch, but hopefully we will see a sequel because I want to see where this story goes.

[broodwars]

Dead Space Ignition - 2/10 - Do not buy this game.  I know it's tempting considering it's only $5 and you get a bonus suit for Dead Space 2.  I get that.  That's what I bought it.  But to quote Han Solo: "No reward is worth this!"  The artwork is bad, the animation (what little there is) is bad, the writing is bad, the voice actors are disinterested, the controls are bad and 2 of the 3 mini-games (especially the frustrating first type, where you awkwardly try to race a glowing line through an obstacle course while everything else is trying to kill you AND outrace you) are awful.  The only reasons I gave this game a score at all is that it never crashed (and the suit does unlock after your first playthough) and the third mini-game (where you place a series of mirrors on a board to redirect light beams to specific markers on the board) is actually kind of cool.  This "game" is just not enjoyable.  If you must get it, get it as a free trinket for pre-ordering Dead Space 2.

[broodwars]

Medal of Honor (Singleplayer) - 7/10 - Let's get the big issue out of the way first: this is not as good of a game as Modern Warfare 2.  It doesn't look anywhere near as good, there's significantly less variety in objectives/environments/weapons, and there's a lot less to do when the main story is completed.  That doesn't mean this is a bad game, however.  I liked the game's campaign (which is a LOT more comprehensible with the subtitles turned on), but it doesn't really gel until about halfway through the campaign and is heavily reliant on scripting that works most of the time, but is frustrating when it glitches up and doesn't.  The good news is that once the campaign settles into a groove (around the mission where the Army Rangers get thrown into the mix), it's quite enjoyable and the first half is pretty decent as well.  It's at the halfway point, though, where the various characters you've been using up to that point start crossing paths with one another and it works pretty well.  There's a heavy emphasis on stealth; sniping; and quick squad-based action (as opposed to Modern Warfare 2's emphasis on large-scale battles), which appeals to me.  The few vehicle sections in the game are fairly well-done as well.
 
EA made a big deal with this game about attention to realism and respect for the troops (the controversy over the Taliban in the multiplayer nonwithstanding), and overall I think they succeeded (though probably too well).  The plot is significantly less goofy than Modern Warfare 2's (though, to be fair, less interesting), and there's a certain amount of believability to it and it doesn't come off as exploitation (at least, nowhere near as much as MW2).  The problem is that while it is kind of cool to see a view of the war in Afghanistan closer to reality than usual, it's problematic as a game.  There aren't a lot of set-piece moments, though the ones there are work pretty well.  I also thought the game ended pretty well, especially since when you think about it the final mission in the game was pretty much a near-total failure.  Although they rescued the 2 Army SEALS, they lost a SEAL, 2 troop carriers, and probably dozens of Army Rangers in the proccess.  That was an interesting way to end a game that praises the glory of the US armed forces, and in fact ends with a lengthy couple of text screens praising their sacrifice.
 
Where the game falls really flat is that the campaign is really short, around 6 hours.  That was ok with me since I didn't pay $60 for it, but I would not recommend this game as a SP experience for full price in any way, shape, or form.  Unfortunately, once you complete the campaign, you only have the choice of either replaying the campaign in the uber-hard "Tier 1" mode (where you try to complete missions under a time limit on Hard with auto-aim turned off and no checkpoints) or going online.  On the upside, the PS3 version of the game currently comes with a PS3 upscaled port of the PS2/Xbox/GCN Medal of Honor: Frontlines, which is a pretty decent (if pretty hard) game that makes up for the short campaign of its HD successor.

[broodwars]

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Singleplayer) - 8/10 - Now THIS game's campaign is more like Modern Warfare 2's, and is actually better in some ways if not as spectacular.  The setpieces are filled with firefights where you get picked off by guys 100 miles away with pinpoint accuracy with a rocket launcher (incidentally, there are WAY too many goons packing RPGs in this game), the story (which is surprisingly cohesive) is an epic quest to stop a big bad Russian dude from destroying the United States with a super weapon, and there are numerous comedic moments.  The ability to level cover or even entire buildings with explosive weapons is cool, though it's a mechanic that barely gets used in the campaign.  My biggest problem with the game is that it's...well..forgettable.  Aside from some inventive moments in the singleplayer (like a level where you have to kill enemy troops as you run from shelter to shelter in a blizzard to avoid freezing to death), the experience is fun while it lasts (and I loved the banter between your squad members) but I feel no particular compulsion to play it again.  This is also somewhat odd to say, but the game feels too long given that there are several late-game missions that just aren't fun and just drag on.  The multiplayer may also be awesome, but that's really not my thing.  Rent it if you have an interest in these sorts of games, but otherwise you aren't missing much.

[broodwars]

Terminator: Salvation - 1.5/10 - This game ended up in a stack of games I asked to borrow from a co-worker, and now I find myself contemplating what form of revenge to take on him because this game is awful.  Think of a longstanding problem with movie-based games, and you'll find it here: bad visuals, bad voice-acting, bad combat, bad animation, bad scripting, bad writing, bad coding (the game frequently crashes), bad loading, etc.  The only saving grace to this game is that there is still a certain amount of bad assedness to killing terminators in a cover-based shooter while the kickass theme song from Terminator 2 blares in the background.  The only saving grace (besides apparently being a PS3 trophy gold mine, with all trophies being Gold or Platinum) is that I don't need to tell you not to buy this, because no one did.  This and Bionic Commando put GRIN out of business, and if this game is any indication the industry is better for it.
 
X-Men Origins: Wolverine - 5/10 - I was actually really looking forward to this game since I really enjoyed the original demo and had heard that the game was pretty much nothing like the movie it was named for.  Playing the game, though, the first section of the game is pretty much as good as it gets, and soon after repetition sets in.  This reminds me a lot of the issues I had with this company's previous X-Men Legends games, in that reptition just kills the experience despite how much variety the game seems to have early on.  The game is just too long and dull for how little content there is in it, and the story is a total snore.  Plus, while the M-rated gameplay may be dramatically different from the PG-rated movie, there are still plenty of signs of horrible writing from the movie in play here (behold, the Adamantium bullet!).  The story is nebulous and hard to follow, character (especially bosses) and plot threads just flit in and out of the game with no setup or development, and after a couple of missions it was just impossible to care.  There are some truly-funny moments early on, but they're few and far between.  Boss battles also frequently devolve into dull wars of attrition with you just hammering away at an impossibly long health bar trading blows with the boss until one of you falls.  Compared to Terminator Salvation, this is practically a work of art and it's fun in small doses, but I really don't see why this game had such a positive reception when it launched.

[Ymeegod]

Modnation Racers PSP

I was really excited to see a Mario Kart clone with an editor but in the end Modnation for the PSP simply disappoints.  Lets start with the positives, first off the track editor works rather well, it's easy to create and download/upload them.  The game looks great and runs at a nice steady framerate.  It was a story mode where you can spend hours unlocking all the goodies.  Races have certain secondary objections to carry out (like slideswipes enemy bosses) in exchange for special unlockables.
The bad, first off you have to deal with the controls.  There's only two options for controls (you can't customize it your way at all) and neither of them work all that well.  Drifting is a pain because the key is bound to your hop function as well.  Also your slideswipe and stomp moves are a bit hard to pull off at the right time.  I had a hell of a time with stomp, could never get it to go off when I waited too and I kept slideswiping when I didn't even hit the key which could have been a glitches.  Speaking of that, there's another issues with the game, it has bugs--plenty of them.

Clipping annoyed me.  Nothing beats losing at the last second because you kart ended up clipping the bottom of the track. 

Overall, this game really didn't have much going for it other than a track editor.  You can modified your cart and character as well but that didn't effect your stats one bit so I didn't bother much with these.  You'll better off waiting for the next Mario Kart then playing this game.

5/10 

[broodwars]

I've finished a couple of games lately, one of which I've been putting off talking about for a while and that is Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.  Honestly, the more I've waited to talk about this game, the less I have to say about it.  Suffice to say, this is an average game with decent storytelling but unlikeable characters.  Monkey doesn't come off well at first, but over time as he warms up to Trip and the audience it gradually dawned on me that Monkey is hilarious.  He's moderately heroic, snidely sarcastic, and easy to empathize with.  Trip, on the other hand, is a cold-heated; narcicistic; mass-murdering; horrible person, despite how hard the game tries to make the audience sympathize with her.  Everything she does is in the service of her own self-interest, and the one "good" thing she does the entire game she only does out of guilt that she didn't do it earlier.  And playing the game, it becomes increasingly obvious that she gets off on "using" people, such as how she allows Monkey and Pigsey to essentially fight over her (which nearly kills Monkey several times). 
 
As for the story, it's good in the first half of the game where Trip and Monkey are just wandering around the ruins of New York City getting to know one another, but the storytelling takes a major plunge once they leave the city and it never really recovers (especially with a nonsensical ending that just comes out of nowhere, as well as showing that Trip is still a fundamentally evil person).  I still think the game is worth checking out, but it's nowhere near as good as the critics have made it out to be.
 
I've also recently completed the new GoldenEye on Wii.  As I stated in the game's thread, it's astonishingly good considering it was financed by the most fundamentally evil company in the business (Activision).  My only complaints were that Daniel Craig really doesn't do anything for me as Bond, I don't think some of the "reimagined" sections of the game work as well as the developers think they did (such as the chapter in the Nightclub), and I don't care for how most of the objectives basically come down to pointing your cellphone at things.  Otherwise, the game is excellent and highly recommended.  If more Wii 3rd parties put as much effort and money into their games as this developer and Activision did with GoldenEye, the Wii 3rd party lineup would be an entirely different situation than it currently is.

[ymeegod]

Valkyria Chronicles 2 PSP

One of the best reasons to owning a PSP IMO even though the game isn't as great as the orginal.  My biggest gripe has to deal with main story which is pretty damn weak.  The layout on paper sounds great, 2 years has past and a rebel army is trying to overthrow the Queen who if you played the first game is a Darcsen--a race that's hated for the past centries.  That part makes total sense but when the main character story's thrown in then whole thing falls flat on it's face.  Good thing the secondary party members have interesting story points, some of them are silly but I enjoyed those bits of humor.

As for the gameplay, much of it is the same as the orginal.  They added a melee class which ended up being a major kicker IMO.  They improved the leveling up for classes as well.  You have four basic classes which can be upgraded with various options like a scout can become a sniper or an advance scout.  Each upgrade has it's plus and minuses and it's works really well.  The engineer class could have been a bit better, they can fix your one tank units, heal, or boost stats but I found that I really didn't use the tank at all this time around (in the orginal the tank was a monster--this time around the tank is rather weak) and you can heal squad mates faster by having them retreat.  You can retreat squadmates and re-deploy them at 100 health the next turn--and you'll have to in order to win. 

Pro's:  Great gameplay, good cast of secondary characters, silly humor events, long--plenty to do over 30+hours just to beat it once, another 15 just to beat all the secondary character missions, the game looks and sounds great

The Ugly:  main story's a mess, reused maps alot (think I replayed the same field over 10 times), weak AI, can't find anybody to play against on MP.

Overall 8.5/10

[broodwars]

I've been playing a lot of games lately and have even manged to finish a few so I'll try to cover them quickly:
 
Call of Duty Black Ops (Singleplayer) - 8.5/10 - Not as spectacle-filled as Modern Warfare 2's Singleplayer, but also not as spectacle-focused.  There is a pretty good story told here, and the storytelling is pretty decent as well once you turn the subtitles on so you can understand what people are saying.  Aside from a bit of an underwhelming start with the mission in Cuba and some issues with particular levels (such as the legendary hill where you have to run up and kick some explosive barrels down a hill to stop an endless wave of NVA, yet the game never makes it clear what you're supposed to do), I really enjoyed the campaign.  My big issue with it (besides the overly-cryptic story early on) is that the campaign is a bit schizophrenic: the campaign will throw out an excellent idea (such as switching between commanding a squad from the air RTS-style to fighting as that squad on the ground), use it for 5 minutes, and then quickly dash back to familiar Call of Duty territory.  As a result, the campaign's not as fresh as it should have been.  It's interesting that Treyarch gets dumped on so much for being "the inferior studio" making Call of Duty, because I enjoyed this game a lot more than I did Modern Warfare 2.  Pity that Zombies can't quite make up for the loss of Spec Ops.
 
Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den DLC - 9/10 - Awesome DLC that should have been released near launch when people still owned Bioshock 2.  It's well-paced, fun, and you get a very nice array of weapons, plasmids, and places to use them.  The way the DLC ends is a fitting way to end Rapture's story, though I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't truly the end.  Unfortunately, the Bioshock engine is looking pretty dated by now, and the art design at times has trouble making up for the technical deficiencies.
 
The Sly Collection - 9.5/10 - A great collection of 3 of the best platformers of the previous generation.  All 3 games look gorgeous with that art style in HD, all 3 games have trophy support (though Sly 3 requires that you complete the Master Thief challenges to Platinum...bah.), and aside from some annoying audio bugs (like the "sneak" sound effect constantly playing in Sly 1 and massive audio issues after finishing a mission in Sly 2 that are only fixed by rebooting the game) the presentation is pretty flawless.  I haven't reached Sly 3 yet in my playthrough (I'm nearing the end of Sly 2), but I can't see there being any major issues in that one.  Best of all, the collection revealed that we have a new Sly 4 coming on PS3 sometime in the future, which makes me very happy.
 
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2 - 9/10 - This one I haven't finished yet, but as I'm 2 chapters from the end I think I've played enough to judge it.  Simply put, this game fixes almost every issue I had with the first game.  The game is more focused, the storytelling is much better now that the game doesn't kick you back to the village every time you complete a portion of a story quest, and there's more appearances of fights that use Quick-Time Events to showcase truly spectacular fight choreography that is incredibly cinematic.  My two big issues with the game are that the "Ultimate Ninjutsus" are much less spectacular than in the first game, and there's still too much fussing around with collecting junk in the overworld so repetition can set in quickly.  Overall, awesome game and a shining example that you can make a good anime-based game.

[KDR_11k]

Titan Attacks! (PC)
TA starts out being like Space Invaders but as the game slowly evolves you realize it has suddenly turned into Galaga, then Centipede. You upgrade your "ship" (I think it's actually a tank but the game calls it a ship) and fight off wave after wave. The downside to the game is that despite its arcade nature it takes very long to play. I got up to level 68 last time, yet it's a game where running out of shields means game over, no continues. That makes it a bit awkward to play.

I got the game as part of the Puppygames pack, that's really worth getting (though the regular price is waaaaaay too high for what's being offered).

[oohhboy]

I like the concepts that puppy games have, but all their games have some annoying flaw and always grossly over priced.

[NWR_insanolord]

VVVVVV Demo - 8.5

I was looking through the list of available Steam games for Mac, and came across this little gem. I just played through the demo, and I loved it. It's an old-school platformer, with the twist being that your character can't jump, and you maneuver around obstacles by reversing the gravity of the stage. It's very hard, but you get unlimited lives and checkpoints are very frequent. It gave me a Super Meat Boy vibe, though I think I may have liked this even more if I weren't in the middle of playing that game, since this one isn't quite as polished. Still, I'm definitely going to buy the full version (only $5!), and I advise anyone reading this to give it a shot if you're a fan of platformers.

[KDR_11k]

I bought the Steam pack that included VVVVVV, you should have done the same. Also Captain Veridian is going into Super Meat boy PC.

[EasyCure]

Mario Galaxy 2 (100% complete play-through) 10/10 I'll elaborate in a moment.

Mario Galaxy (Second Playthrough Luigi run 8/10

Now originally, I'm sure I would have rated the first Mario Galaxy 10/10 because it was a phenomenal game, but after doing a straight 100% play-through of MG2 followed by immediately returning to MG1 to get 100%, it's clear that MG2 is the superior game. The overhaul of the world map is a much more welcome change when you actually go back and replay MG. It's not to say a free-roaming overword isn't a bad thing, because we've seen it can be done well, it just wasn't executed very well in MG and it has to due with the restraints of the Rosetta's odd star-ship.

The level designs and the goals, hell everything in MG2 just seem so much better/funner and surprisingly more polished than those of MG1. You can really tell the gang was pouring their heart into this one. Yeah, a lot of effort and heart was put into MG1 and making it the bet Wii game by the time it launched, but with MG2 you can just feel that the devs were having a blast throwing around ideas that they couldn't implement originally due to time restraints.

I wish I could glow about MG2's soundtrack, but honestly I didn't listen to it much while playing, so I couldn't distinguish it from the frst game's (which is great, albeit over-rated IMO) but overall, I definitely call MG2 the better game.

Also recently completed The Beatles Rock Band. It's hard to rate a game like this, but I'm going to try anyway.

Overall experience was probably an 7/10. The game isn't perfect, no game is. With a minimal set-list (obviously expanded by DLC which I don't really plan on purchasing) it did the best it could with the songs available, which were all great tracks, a lot of which I consider favorites of mine by the band. The gameplay was the same ol' same ol' at first, then we picked up a second mic to try our hand at harmonies, which while not technically adding much to the game, did add to the fun factor. By that I mean, the score's don't matter much but it was definitely fun to see "x2 FAB!" for the first time, but also - there were some pretty funny/hectic moments when say Yours Truly would take up backing vocals (and bass) and realize I wasn't the proper range for that song, and having to have my cousin switch mics quickly so I could take over lead vocals, because they were out of his range too.

In the end, while a short experience (the story mode that is) and an easy one, it was still enjoyable and totally worth the $15 I spent on it In other words, sooooo glad I didn't ever pay full price for this.

Next review:

Fragile Dreams ~Farewell Ruins of the Moon~

Here's a teaser: The controls are as wonky as people say, but so far they're not THAT bad. Also, while the voice acting has some rough spots, it's surprisingly good! The actors do a good job at conveying emotion and pulling you into their desolate setting, they just needed to work on some of those awkward pauses between words.. haha.

[Halbred]

Darksiders: 9/10

Loved every second of it. Gotta go back and find all the Abyssal Armor pieces.