This is not a game that waited very long to play. Having picked it up on the Steam Summer sale, I had expected to put it aside for a lot longer. But instead thanks to another weekend game to show off for Extra Life, it jumped the line and I finished it in a single sitting. It's not a long game, but it was a long stream... I just couldn't let it go as I absolutely had a blast the entire time.
"Mah? MAH! Can we order some Doom?" "No, Dearie, we have Doom at home." When I played my last session of this game on twitch, I basically called the stream this.. and with good reason. If you have anything of quality, I would choose that over what is effectively a knockoff of the genre... and every bit as generic as that sounds.
When I open up a game to play on Steam, I have a habit of looking over the list of games recommended to me first before I play. Sometimes a game will be added to my wishlist (in gog if possible), or if it's a free game, it might get added right there to the backlog list. This would be one of those times as the trailer simply looked awesome. The stars aligned, and when I got to play it, I can truly call this a hidden gem of a game.
When this game came out, everyone simply loved it, no matter what they played it on. For me, however, I honestly got the impression from the trailers that it was trying to be “Dark Half-Life” or something, and while I was interested in playing it, I knew it wasn’t a game I had to play right away. As a result it wound up something I picked up in a sale and then landed in the dark void known as the “steam backlog.” (And every PC gamer who reads this is now nodding their heads knowing EXACTLY what I mean.) Fast forward to now and I found myself expecting to be playing nothing but the newest titles in my “must play” list. However, that was not to be due to delays and in one case, the demo of a game being so underwhelming it dropped away. So, with some time to visit that void, I pulled this title out of it… and, I should not have ignored it for so long.
And here we have it, the single biggest hyped game of 2014, and for my brothers, it was the reason they both bought Xbox Ones. I promised them I would play with them, starting with this game, so of course reserved and picked it up myself. And now I’ve finally put my controller down as I have finished playing. So what did I think? Well, to be quite honest had I known what this game was going to be like, we would likely not all have Xbox Ones yet. This was simply not worth it.
Wow, this franchise and I go way back. I remember playing it in high school on my 486 I had just gotten my hands on prior to becoming a freshman. It held a special place for me, as I honestly preferred it’s pure and simple flat layout to the levels offered by the shareware version of Doom (I didn’t get that full masterpiece till much later) or the still good but not as good Doom II.
As a result, I have taken the time to get and play each game of the franchise, though this is the first one I actually planned to get my hands on and started playing the week it launched. And now, I put it down, I am both pleased, and rather annoyed at the same time. The game for the most part was very good, if not a masterpiece, but that ending has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Please, come inside and we will talk.
I heard all the warnings. I read the Steam forums as this game was getting ready to launch. Everyone warned me and anyone else who would spend the time reading not to buy this game and that it would be terrible. And yet I couldn’t help but think their reasoning was flawed. It seemed that everyone had shot the game down because it was a port from iPad, rather then even look at the game itself. I suspect most people complaining had never even played the game in any form before they started bitching.
With this in mind, I took the plunge with the intention to play, review, and report to you all if the game actually is any good. And as I finish it, I find myself disappointed. It was not the doom and gloom that the always complaining Steam forums made it out to be, but it definitely wasn’t good either.
Once again, we play a game I have a history with. I actually bought it at launch, excited to see how one of my favorite series would end, but ultimately, had to shelve it for a while. You see, when I bought it, I did so expecting a friend of mine to do the same and the two of us would tear through this game in co-op mode. My friend held back, however, as his computer basically melted down the week before. And the moral of the story is don’t ignore your computer acting wrong because you know it’s probably just the roughly 60 viruses you got on it surfing porn. It never turns out well, and to the best of my knowledge he left PC space after that.
As for me, this game then sat on my shelf for the next 2 years, till Max joined up with this site. We both had the game and decided we would tag-team it for some October fun. And while we thought better of that, well… I’ll talk about that in the review. Come on in.
When I saw this game, I knew I had to have it. It wasn’t a question of if, it was when and how. Back in the day, I was a big fan of the Descent series of games, and finally a new game in the same style was making it’s way out to market. This game could have sold me on anything, but after finishing playing it, I think putting it on PC was indeed the best choice they could have made. Sadly, the reason for this is not a happy one, but a matter of brute strength.
Still, all this is of little important compared the all important question of how was it. And all I can do is smile at the question and say “come on in and see.”
This simply looked amazing. The trailers had my attention and with it being free, I knew I was going to play this game from the first day I saw it. It also wasted no time in showing me why this was a great choice to play. But that is not to say that everything was great here. In fact, this game held a very dark secret which I must now warn you about. A great game released broken, is still a broken game, and for this reason, I must warn people about Cry of Fear before they take it up.
A lot of you probably looked at the title of this game and rolled your eyes as yet another First Person Shooter comes forward. And yet another “end of a trilogy” title to boot. I can’t blame you for this. There have been a lot of games that want to follow this format as of late, and frankly, I am rather tired of it too. But at the same time, I’ve been excited for this specific one. After all, I have been a fan since the original hit PC back in 2007. So now we have finally finished the story that started about 6 years ago… and how does it hold up? Well, why don’t you step inside and have a read…
Now this is a game I’ve been excited to play. I knew it was in the works 2 years ago, and was already biting at the bit. Something to compare to Portal, but with even less concern about physics instead focusing exclusively on the logic? Yes! Sign me up! The day the game came out, I bought it, but it would be a while till I could play since I was still in the middle of Xenoblade Chronicles. And now, after making my way through that massively long game, I cleared this one in literally about 5 hours…. So was it worth the wait? Well… yes… yes it was.
You GOTTA love GOG sometimes… and lately, they’ve been giving me a lot to love nostalgically. A few weeks ago, System Shock 2 hit their service… now, they have released 2 more from the days of old, even if they are likely not as well known. But these are games, that for two VERY different reasons, really should be tried out by everyone.
This game and I have a small history. Back during the summer sale this year, I was interested, but not sure I should put my money into it… and then my brother opened up the demo on the 360. I believe he was trying to show me how bad the game was, but what he showed me is an amazing turn of events where I was jumping between flying furniture, dodging lasers and having a blast with it all. I bought the game that afternoon. Now, having just finished it, I am not sure I should have been as excited as I was. Overall it was great but there were issues along the way had I known they existed, I probably would have bought it with a little more “this will be fun” and a little less “HELL YES!” Let’s go over it, shall we?
