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[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Post any reviews you've ever written for video games here pls. Can be either written or in video form, either is good. Posting a basic AoE II HD review and will post moar in the future.

Spoiler

The sequel to the Bronze/Iron Age based Age of Empires, Age of Empires II takes place in what's broadly termed the Middle Ages. Like the first game, it doesn't adhere to strict historical accuracy, but what game does? It offers a variety of different races and civilisations for the player, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, available technologies and finally unique unit(s) (something the first game didn't have) to encourage diverse gameplay.

These roughly correlate with what we know or a reputation of a certain civilisation in history. e.g The Britons Longbowmen Unique Unit and various advantages for foot archers and Archery Ranges.

The gameplay isn't necessarily symmetrical, but it is finely balanced. Each civilisation has a niche that can be useful and conductive to particular strategies. While you will find that some races struggle in some situations whereas others excel (Viking Longboats are deadly on sea maps), there are suitable counters to just about everything and you never feel like one race is obscenely over powered in any given situation. It encourages players to be smart and find the most effective strategies for their chosen civilisation.

Being decisive and offensive (within reason) seems to work well regardless of civilisation though. Turtling is only effective to a degree, and becomes less effective over time. The Imperial Age endgame brings a lot of powerful, long ranged gunpowder units into the fray, which will knock down walls, towers and castles with impunity.

The campaigns are interesting, varied and fun. There's several arcs that follow important historical figures (Joan of Arc, Saladin, etc) as they encounter key moments and battles in their lives in chronological order as part of a story. You take control of them and their men, and are rewarded with historical "Cliff Notes" and paragraphs of your actions and their consequences in each scenario. It's not anything special, but the connection they make to real historical events and chronicling the lives of the characters you play as, is sure to warm the hearts of history buffs everywhere.

The standard game modes are what you'd expect from most RTS games. Several ways to win in the ordinary random map mode, including Conquest, Time Limit/Score Count, Wonder Victory, Relic Victory, etc. Then other modes such as Death Match with ample resources where victory through Conquest is the only way to win. Regicide, King of the Hill and Wonder Races make up most of the other types of game modes and they all encourage different approaches to victory. But you will still spend most your time destroying your enemies to win the game, irrespective of how specific victory conditions are satisfied.

Graphics are beautiful, buildings have a great aesthetic look. They differ based on the region of civilisation you play (East/West of the Rhine, Asia, Central America, Middle East), yet they retain enough similarities to be instantly identifiable by players. So in this sense, they're both appealing and practical. The 2.5d aspect to it really caps it off. It attempts (and succeeds) to have the beauty of 2d, while appearing to have the functionality of 3d. Unit sprites are nice, they have limited animations but they have enough so movement/actions don't look weird, they are pleasant to look at and they too are easily identifiable.

Sound is fairly good, the dialog of units (especially villagers) as you order them around is charming as they are (roughly) accurate in the language of your chosen race, the soundtrack is solid, showcasing different instruments and styles (correlating to different races). I would've liked more race-specific tracks that only play when you are using that civilisation, but it is still good. Sound effects are pretty good, though not as striking as the Age of Empires 1 sounds. However the death cries of units are oddly laugh inducing, though I may just be a psychopath. The attack horn could do with some improvement, I understand it's purpose and why it blares when it does, but when you are attacked from multiple fronts, it can get over the top.

The stability of the game is one thing that I do criticise about this release. With stability and performance issues for both Single and Multiplayer, it is no surprise that the game has it's fair share of detractors considering that all of the content (that isn't the Forgotten expansion) is simply the original game. Single Player often has freezing issues and hiccups, while the Multiplayer will often desync, or chug along at such a slow frame rate, it is impossible to continue playing. The annoying thing is that these issues are widespread, and while there are solutions that may help (Unchecking Render 3d Water in Options), there is nothing to eradicate problems completely, especially when playing MP.

Still, it's Age of Empires 2, and Age of Empires 2 as I remember it. This is both good and bad. It has a few new features to justify it's price tag (Steamworks Integration, some new textures, HD resolutions, Higher Population Cap) but by and large, it's hard to recommend this to someone who already owns the original game and is pleased with what they currently have. This is where the developers really shot themselves in the foot. It's biggest potential positive in a revitalised Multiplayer is almost rendered pointless because it's still so unstable 2 years after release.

Purchase at your own discretion. The base game is a classic and worth buying, but it's not a must-buy product, depending on your circumstances.

Inb4 barrage of joke Steam reviews.

[Garryydde]

Here's my review of Borderlands 2, ripped straight from Steam

Spoiler

I hate this game more than I hate stance culture and ISIS. There is nothing this game does well or that something else does better. "B-b-b-but it's fun with friends!" Watching paint dry is fun with friends as well, that doesn't make it good.

The gunplay is typical modern FPS with a mixture of hitscan and projectile weaponry that rely on the use of iron sights to be effective, however the gunplay itself is only mediocre. It is not what makes Borderlands 2 the irredeemable turd that it is.

The visuals are awful, they use a cheap, ugly cel shading trick in an attempt to hide the hideous textures and low poly environments. Speaking of which, all the environments are just empty areas with no thought or care put into their design and traversing them is a boring chore.

The 'gorillion' guns in Borderlands 2 are just a few assets for each manufacturer randomly generated together with marginal stat differences. There is no respect for how guns actually work and are wholly impractical and ridiculous in design.


The menus take the form over function approach and are annoying to navigate and difficult to read at times because they're stylised way too much.

The RPG elements of the game are terrible as well. There is horrendous HP bloat especially at higher levels where the damage and health levels keep rising to ridiculous levels which has the knock on effect of making that gun that you really love worthless after a while and you have to throw it away and get something else not as good just to do damage to enemies. There are different classes in the game in an attempt to diversify gameplay which boils down to every few minutes getting to use their special ability for a few seconds and then it's back to the same old repetive monotony that is this game. Of course it also has the obligatory skill tree which allows you to upgrade arbitrary abilities unique to each character that have minimal effect on the gameplay.

Then there's the writing. Oh, God the writing. Everything is wrong here. Most of the lines and dialogue stem from the "LOL SO RANDUMB XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD LE REDDIT MEMES BADASS SO BADASS XDDDDDDDDD" school of thought with a bit of the trademark Anthony ">tfw no Wii U" Burch forced social justice agenda in there as well. The dialogue and voice acting is always loud, obnoxious and in your face but it isn't funny, it's just annoying and comes off as trying way too hard. Also, the word 'Badass' is so overused it makes 5 year old ♥♥♥♥♥ memes seem fresh in comparison.

Borderlands 2 is worthless garbage and you should never play it. I didn't pay for this and I still regret it.

[Dio Demon]

Here's my review of Borderlands 2, ripped straight from Steam

Spoiler

I hate this game more than I hate stance culture and ISIS. There is nothing this game does well or that something else does better. "B-b-b-but it's fun with friends!" Watching paint dry is fun with friends as well, that doesn't make it good.

The gunplay is typical modern FPS with a mixture of hitscan and projectile weaponry that rely on the use of iron sights to be effective, however the gunplay itself is only mediocre. It is not what makes Borderlands 2 the irredeemable turd that it is.

The visuals are awful, they use a cheap, ugly cel shading trick in an attempt to hide the hideous textures and low poly environments. Speaking of which, all the environments are just empty areas with no thought or care put into their design and traversing them is a boring chore.

The 'gorillion' guns in Borderlands 2 are just a few assets for each manufacturer randomly generated together with marginal stat differences. There is no respect for how guns actually work and are wholly impractical and ridiculous in design.


The menus take the form over function approach and are annoying to navigate and difficult to read at times because they're stylised way too much.

The RPG elements of the game are terrible as well. There is horrendous HP bloat especially at higher levels where the damage and health levels keep rising to ridiculous levels which has the knock on effect of making that gun that you really love worthless after a while and you have to throw it away and get something else not as good just to do damage to enemies. There are different classes in the game in an attempt to diversify gameplay which boils down to every few minutes getting to use their special ability for a few seconds and then it's back to the same old repetive monotony that is this game. Of course it also has the obligatory skill tree which allows you to upgrade arbitrary abilities unique to each character that have minimal effect on the gameplay.

Then there's the writing. Oh, God the writing. Everything is wrong here. Most of the lines and dialogue stem from the "LOL SO RANDUMB XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD LE REDDIT MEMES BADASS SO BADASS XDDDDDDDDD" school of thought with a bit of the trademark Anthony ">tfw no Wii U" Burch forced social justice agenda in there as well. The dialogue and voice acting is always loud, obnoxious and in your face but it isn't funny, it's just annoying and comes off as trying way too hard. Also, the word 'Badass' is so overused it makes 5 year old ♥♥♥♥♥ memes seem fresh in comparison.

Borderlands 2 is worthless garbage and you should never play it. I didn't pay for this and I still regret it.

Got more enjoyment from that than Borderlands 2

[Garryydde]

Gonna reserve this spot fora full review once I finish it but I've been playing Alice: Madness Returns recently and here are some initial impressions.

Overall the game is really good, the artstyle strikes the right balance between twisted and cartoony, the writing is good enough for what it's trying to accomplish although it really lacks in the subtlety department. I like how you can triple jump and float as it adds a good deal of agility although this does lead to most of the platforms being really far apart, I'm also a fan of the invisible platforms that are only visible when you are small Alice. It should also be noted that this is the only game I've played to do decent hair physics.

The combat has a good feel to it and can actually get fairly frantic at times with quite a lot of dodging and fast attacks and small combos. However the combat leads to my biggest complaint with the game which is the Z-targeting that it uses to lock onto enemies. This letterboxes the screen hampering your vision and also limits your mobility as you can't jump when targeting something, which makes encounters more difficult because you've got to constantly switch the camera and predict where enemies are because you can't see them. This game needs a Devil May Cry style soft lock system like MovieBob needs a gym membership.

Also, having a PC game with a locked framerate, especially at 30fps should not be acceptable although thankfully you can unlock it by editing a config file with no impact on the game (apart from a higher framerate, obviously).

[Terca]

Smash Bros 4 under the Cut

 

Spoiler

 

What a weird feckin' game.

 

See, it's not quite brawl, and it is most definitely not Melee. It finds a somewhat comfortable middle ground which is both quite satisfying, and a bit disappointing.

 

Movement:

 

A big question in Smash games after Melee was whether or not movement would be the same. Can you still wavedash (Spoiler: No), how is edge guarding, has there been any change to the meta or macrogame (still no) in terms of being.

 

To be fair, wavedashing isn't coming back. And it certainly isn't here. In terms of aerial dodging, it is similar to Brawl in that the dodge doesn't actually move you in any direction. You maintain your momentum in a particular direction as the aerial dodge happens. This is useful for characters with a lot of momentum off of their moves, but is quite uncontrollable. You're committing to everything but fall speed.  You can of course do a fast-fall when you're dodging in the air, but that's it. You can dodge in mid-air so long as you have time to. For example, you can dodge in the air so long as there is time to, meaning that someone like kirby can air-dodge quite a bit, whereas someone like Ganon will be able to dodge only once or twice.

 

So? Well, it seems like it is trying to help out with the fact that the edge-guard game was nerfed heavily. Sakurai apparently really hates edge-guarding and is looking for as many ways as possible to deal with it. Having two aerial dodges means that you can't be so easily quick-killed by Ganon or Cap.

 

Speaking of which, I can barely remember Brawl. But I think that the main difference they made to recovery was that you could grab the ledge regardless of whether or not the character was facing to, or away from, the ledge. You could still neutral-B get-up in order to block out someone's recovery, but it was still easy to recover as some chars. Now, they have made recoveries even easier. Magnet hands are now in Smash4, as you can grab a ledge from about a meter away, quite a bit further than I remember. That, and if someone is invulnerable on that ledge, they get bounced off if you need to grab it.

 

Now, if you're playing against a character which has particularly strong ways of dunking, this doesn't change much. You get stomped, you're stomped, but, this means that characters which rely on getting you far enough off the edge that you can't recover fully, and then slowly getting up to seal the deal are nerfed. The metagame gets shifted even more towards straight KO-ing people or dunking them. I play a lot of Ganon and Cap so that fits me well, but it means that some characters like Zero-Suit Samus (despite being really strong) have to invest significant time to deal with a stock. 140% seems like the necessary damage profile, when before it was lower for people like Pit or Mario which lacked really good ways of dunking.

 

Also, you don't slip randomly anymore. A+ Sakurai.

 

Maps:

 

Eh. Some of these are really cool, but they have transitions which make neutral gameplay hard. The Super Mario map has some decent back-and-forth play on a width like Final Destination with transitions which vary up battle. But at the same time, random icicles falling from the sky can throw you way off. Same with Nabbit showing up out of nowhere and removing someone's stock.

 

Walk-offs (the ones that you can walk to a destruction, or edgeless maps) are abundant here (15 of them to be exact) and ones with some weirdness which can throw off a match are also common (NPCs messing with you or somesuch). Thing is, some of these maps have good platform placement and aren't too big, but the fact that you could get chain-grabbed off the side or KO'd too easily by a heavy character means they aren't good. Some of the good neutrals from before return like Battlefield and Kongo Jungle 64. They are still pretty good, and offer great play, but the fact that there are only a few of them is a bit 'meh'. I wish Sakurai would give out a DLC pack which removed some of the nonsense from the other stages so they could be played a bit more nicely.

 

Now that said, if you don't care about some interrupting from Ridley or whoever, these maps have some of the best gimmick-play. Throwing someone into a Mech, having them get shot by some Arwings or hit by some mud-dude in a Megaman stage, these things are fun. They aren't very serious, but at the same time this is a game with kids in mind

 

Characters:

 

Bah, they're good. Nothing comes to mind which is appalling. Aside from the Cloning of Pit I don't really care. The new characters are quite fun, even if I don't play them much. There are a few things to note, however.

 

Zero-Suit-Samus is insane, she has some really good new smash attacks and her specials combo quite well. She is top tier (Kappa) but struggles with actually KOing people. Super-fast, hits for high damage, but she doesn't hit people very hard. Worth mastering, probably one of the most fun chars to play as.

 

Doc Mario is a boss. He has a dark suit which you can wear. He is a Mob-Doc, and he is worth respecting. *Smacks fist against left shoulder*.

 

Nerf Mac 2k15

 

Random Bits:

 

Is it Brawl? Definitely not. All the random little weirdness is gone (thank god) so we have a solid game that is quite predictable. The ability to convert any map to a final destination-style stage is quite well. I would have liked it better if it only added edges and removed random elements like the icicles in Mushroom Kingdom U. That would have been great, and now... Meh. It's still good.

 

Metaknight is not OP anymore. Really, he isn't. I think. Nobody plays as him anymore which is why I'm guessing that's the case. Neutral B was too strong.

 

 

Reserving the bits below this in case I need to add/edit something.

[Dominus]

Mass Effect 2:

Spoiler

Barkley Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden

Spoiler

The Book So Far, via Felipepepe.

[Jorji Costava]

Hotline Miami 2

 

This is long and boring, so I put it in spoiler tags.

 

Spoiler

Quick summary: The Hotline Miami games are essentially top-down twin stick shooters set in an alternate history Miami of the late 80s through the early 90s; in this alternate history, the Cold War turned hot, San Fran got nuked, the Russian mob moved to Miami en masse, and a bunch of other s--t happened which has to be pieced together after the fact thanks to the game's deliberately patchwork and out-of-order storytelling. Hotline Miami 1 dealt with the exploits of a character popularly known as "Jacket," who goes from address to address wiping out Russian mobsters on the basis of cryptic phone calls he received. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number has you take the reins of 13 different characters over the course of its story, dealing with the leadup to and the aftermath of Jacket's bloodbath in the first game.

Hotline Miami 2 can best be described as a game fundamentally at war with itself; this tension existed already in the original, with its simultaneous celebration and condemnation of pixelated violence, but in Hotline Miami 2, it finds its way even into the gameplay itself. The mechanics of the series are designed to facilitate fast play through relatively small spaces. You die in one hit, and can restart on whatever floor you die on an infinite number of times. Because death is so frequent and the costs are minimal, aggressive, high-risk styles of play are favored.

In Hotline Miami 2, the mechanics haven't changed at all, but the level design has. The levels are set up more as realistic locations than as pretexts for combat, and so as a consequence, they are much larger, with many more open spaces (and way more windows). This means you will often be killed by offscreen enemies, and that you lose much more progress when you die. Because the costs of death have increased, the level design encourages a more cautious style of play, but the mechanics have not changed to accommodate this. The result is a much higher level of frustration, and a much slower style of play: Hotline Miami 2 often turns into a game of peakaboo, where you step out from cover for a brief moment so that dumb (and often glitched) enemies will chase after you, and then you kill them when they follow you into a closed location. If you're not using guns, no other strategy is viable.

I'm not so hot on Hotline Miami 2's story either. Whereas the story of the previous game was minimal and constantly played with the appearance/reality distinction, the story of Hotline Miami 2 often seems boringly literal and lore-heavy. Giving me extensive backstory for these characters just seems to miss the point. The ending of the game is jarring, but in retrospect might be one of the few things in keeping with the overall theme and tone of this series.

At its best, Hotline Miami 2 still offers many of the pleasures of the previous game, whether it's the neon-soaked pixelated visuals, the pulsing music, or the satisfaction of completing an especially difficult level. But whereas I returned to the original again and again to improve my score on each level, I find myself less enthusiastic about the prospect of doing the same in Hotline Miami 2. With the long levels, each playthrough requires a great deal of investment in terms of time, effort and concentration, and I'm seldom in a mood where I'm willing to commit these things to the game. By no stretch of imagination do I consider it a bad game, but it falls pretty short in comparison to the original.

A final note: Some sequels are designed for players who have never played the original installment; Hotline Miami 2 is emphatically not one of those games. The difficulty curve picks up from the first game, so that an average level of Hotline Miami 2 is equivalent to the very most difficult levels of Hotline Miami 1. Even in terms of the story, Hotline Miami 2 makes no concessions to newcomers. The story makes a lot of references to events from the previous game that you're simply expected to understand; if you haven't played the first game, the story will probably not mean anything to you at all.