Recent reviews by LINC

I can't believe this is free.

A puzzle game worth playing that I believe it should be worth more than a dollar honestly. I enjoyed playing this as a relaxation method to destress. Very Quirky. Works on Linux too.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Plot Summary: Non-Spoiler)
Bureaucratic-led organizations are now circling the globe with red tape and have the government and military forces to back them. Mass civil unrest is growing at at an alarming rate that things are getting to be pretty heated. Civilians are sick and dying of a virus. Rumors are going around that there is a cure but politicians are given first-priority. They are desperate for a better life. Some join terrorist groups in an effort to coerce the government to give them what they want. Some roll over and accept this new way of life. Some want to join in on the action, abadoning their nobilities and idealogies. Social-order chaos is in the highest brink due to large gap of the wealthy and the not so luckily-born. However, born out of a lab. A bio-engineered human will experience the same Earth that we live in through his own neutral being. Unlike the average person, a clean slate for him but possibly for a clean slate for humanity. This person is JC Denton.

After the terror attack on Statue of Liberty, the government calls UNATCO, an anti-terrorist organization to counter the threat of humanity dismantling order. You, the player, in your first assignment are sent in to interrogate a leader of the NSF about a stolen shipment cargo. JC Denton is in the driver seat of unraveling the biggest conspiracy of them all.

(Gameplay: RPG/FPS)

The plot aspect of the world seems not drawn on what goes on the environment but what revolves around characters and news. Conversations between people reveal an insight of the world they live in and while this may not sound interesting to you, the plot development uses this to advance the storyline of the game. The storyline grabs the player in an effort to understand the events that revolve around the player which can help the player find secrets or get himself killed in the process. Every choice you has pros and cons. When you make these choices, the events change and affect JC Denton on his progress. You reap what you sow.

The combat itself is not the selling point of the game. The skill two-system however, is what drives the player into making choices depending on the players' need. Are you a non-lethal/close-combat type? Maybe you'd like to keep it long-distance between your targets. These choices are not the only ones you make. You are given hacking skills that allows the player to access places they may find it difficult to get to if they didn't have a certain level of hacking. Swimming skills keep you breathing underwater longer and have you either dog-paddling through or swimming like a dolphin. Weapon skills allows you to use master the weaponry you choose to use it on. Lock-picking skills gives you access to areas that you cannot get into. This integrated mechanic of the game are what makes it harder or easier depending on your playing style and it shows that the developers had put much work into tying this together with another part of this skill-system.

Augmentations. You will find small containers around the places you explore that will give JC Denton an implemented tech that will breathe new life on how you play. More resistance to bullets? Partial invisibility? Better accuracy? Want to be more faster? More quieter? More resistant to environmental hazards? Well, stop and explore the world of Deus Ex and you'll find these "augmentations"! Careful. You might just drain your batteries if you overuse your augmentations!
What I find is that this partial skill-system has a lesser impact than upgrading your basic skills. However, they can be beneficial in helping you making the game easier if you're clever. The game can be finished without using much augmentations. A limited set of augmentations are enough to get the player by the game. Sure you can but you end up longing for a different change of pace using the same boring old upgrades.

Time are achangin'. You, JC Denton, just like anyone, are given choices that affect the outcome of the new age. What seperates you and any ordinary citizen is that you have government-backing and augmentations. The same choices as them but you impact humanity with it. What's it going to be? Continue this system to maintain order and technology, destroy the powers that be and disallow anyone hold this magnitude of corruption, or see to it yourself that you can do it better than the big wigs in White House. The choice is yours. The world is rich with ideas and philosophies petaining politics. Ethics. Freedom. Commerce. Poltics. Here are they keys. Enjoy your stay.

Welcome to the Von Braun where the high art of a psychological shooter meets science-fiction. The voice acting is phenomenal and rich with emotion, save for the main characters's voice, is also a strong selling point and mechnical aspect in this game which works flawlessly in moving the storyline in conjuction with audio logs which I will soon refer to. In-game upgrades called "augmentations" help the player choose his own pathway of creating multiple playing styles which I will also refer to later in this review. The soundtrack is mostly ambient but I found it very distracting at times when trying to hear what was in the surrounding environment so you might have to lower it significantly. Audio logs move the story for this game but it is not in the same drudging mechanic that Doom 3 suffered from. No. Terrifying and intriguing are the only words I can emote with after my experience with the logs left behind by my fellow crew members.

The RPG system is built on repairing, upgrading, and maintaining weapons. This method executes mutually benefical for this type of game because of how the mechanics of it are made. You are forced to make wise decisions whether to fight or hide while your weapons degrade in quality and have only a few rounds and maintenance tools left...wait...
*door slides open*
"We are. We are. We are. We are".
Please no...

The player will find itself, of course, backtracking a bit as this still plays of the old-style of shooters where himself or herself must explore the Von Braun and finish the objectives. This, however, does not interfere or hinder the player from actually playing and the reason is that much of this world within the Von Braun is rich with items, upgrades, and other curiosities. After finishing, you ponder if you would have done things differently and the game rewards whichever playing style from that of you were previously accustomed to playing, which needful to say, if you're good at it of course.

Researching weapons, hiding from mutants, beefed-up augmentations, and on-the-edge audio logs. Who do you trust when everything is trying to kill you? What do you have to lose? This is System Shock 2.