Recent reviews by batch

A continuation of the great Rogue City, with refinement and even more action!

"Come with me or there will be... trouble."

"Dead or alive, you're coming with me."

I enjoyed playing this game. It has great attention to detail from the movies, a story that fits into the time between the second and third movies, and is a game that is a lot of fun to play.

It has got Zanzibar, Valhalla and Rat's Nest!

Update, November 21, 2023:
The game is still fun. It's been improving with the new leadership.

Perhaps the best single player game that I have ever played. Meticulously detailed.

Speaking as someone who played a lot of the first Evil Genius, I think this is a good update. In a lot of ways, Evil Genius 2 is very similar to the original but with modernized graphics and updated systems. The developers have been responsive toward player feedback and have greatly improved the pace of the game with patch 1.3. Hopefully future updates will allow us to run more than one side mission at a time, and bring the things I mention as being missed, below, into this game.

EG2 does lack some of the things the first game had, such as the blueprint mode for pre-planning expansions to your base, without actually committing to them until a later time. This was a great feature of EG1. Also miss the biofreak minions and the disguised & regular sentry guns. At the same time, I do not miss the freezers & racks, briefcases, or Mariana Mamba.

Overall, I would recommend this game. It is a worthy sequel.

The XCOM games kick butt. Although the final mission in the vanilla X2 is a pain in the butt. The addition of modding with Steam Workshop in X2 enables the addition of fantastic changes to the game.

Play XCOM: Enemy Within first- the sequel is much more difficult until you get the hang of it.

Good luck, Commander.

Murdered: Soul Suspect is an interesting witch tale set in modern times.

The game itself is a very linear experience. It is semi-open world, otherwise I'd call it a movie-on-rails. Salem, the town the game is based in and which is the main hub, can be explored at will and travel from there to the various other destinations as they become available. Everyplace can be returned to later as you see fit. Unfortunately there is no map and that can be a little frustrating when intentionally exploring rather than progressing the story forward. There is a digital collectibles map, I'm aware of, but because this game came with my video card, I did not receive access to that map.

This game is easy. The only enemies, Demons, are token representatives of resistance which only serve to draw out the amount of time you spend in a few areas rather than actually representing a challenge to be overcome. They are simply annoying obstacles. The game would have been better without them, in my opinion, as they just slowed down the story, which was frustrating at times.

Investigations are the main action the player goes through to progress the story forward at each juncture. They are similar to those in LA Noire, although they are far simpler to investigate. You will search the scene for clues and then pick the most important clues. Several times clues seemed much too obvious and I overthought them, choosing wrong, believing something much more subtle was going on. But don’t worry; your rating on investigation outcomes is meaningless. The most obvious answers are, unfortunately, the correct answers. This game is not subtle in the least. So don’t come looking for a challenge in either enemies or story puzzle elements.

There is a great deal of collectible items. If the game narrative is one half of the game, the collectibles are the other half- they make up a significant proportion of the story, in the form of supplemental background information and well written ghost story videos. These are not difficult to locate, most can be found without any effort at all. Good news for those who are practically OCD about collectibles or achievement ♥♥♥♥♥♥, as there are plenty of achievements for collecting.

In summary, it’s a good story to experience one but is not really worth replaying. If you like easy, single player games with modern day fantasy stories, this game may be for you. I definitely recommend buying this game if it is on sale, you really can’t go wrong. It is bug free and complete out of the box, no need to worry about patches or the possibility of DLC. This game is pretty much a console port, so it worked with, and felt designed for, my Xbox 360 controller.

Really enjoyed this game. Haven't played any previous Tomb Raider in any significant amount to compare. Strongly recommend purchase of this game for anyone who enjoys the adventure, third person genre of games.

Story is good, well paced. Has sci fi and fantasy elements, very much an adventure. Needs ~20 hours to complete. Lots of collectibles to find which supplement the parts of the story you cannot miss.

Gameplay is not dissimilar to Assassin's Creed games, except that Lara cannot do any assassination kills to easily dispatch people in melee combat. Lots of ranged weapon combat. Not as much time spent constantly scaling walls, either.

Great visuals. Particularly noteworthy are the TressFX hair graphics. Sounds silly but really made a big difference in helping me stay immersed in the game. FYI- the TressFX visuals are individually modeled strands of hair that react to movement by Lara or respond with movement in wind. If that feature is turned off, you get a static ponytail that sticks out of her head, stiffly.

Can't comment on multiplayer; have not tried it.

DLC Tomb of the Lost Adventurer is NOT worth purchasing unless on sale. The tombs in this game are quick and simple affairs lasting mere minutes from start to finish. If bought it is the very first optional tomb you will find and it does give a nice head start to XP and scrap, for character and weapon upgrades. (These tombs, for those who have played Assassin's Creed, are the antithesis of AC's tombs: instead of being long, tedious and annoying, they are short, simple and easily completed in less than 10 minutes.)