Recent reviews by Reij

A very solid ARPG that scratches my Diablo itch without succumbing to the wiles of Activision.

My review will remain negative until a final determination has been made regarding the future application of PlayStation Network accounts, and the availability of the game to the 150+ countries that cannot create PSN accounts.

Dead Space looks great for a 10-year old game. I played this on a 2012 Sony Vaio Laptop equipped with Radeon HD 7500M graphics and Core i7 processor on high settings. The directional sound makes headphones or a really good sound system almost a requirement to get the full experience. After about an hour in I started calling it “Third-Person BioShock in Space”. This isn't fair to BioShock, a spiritual successor to the System Shock series which is set in space and does what this game does but far, far better. If you've played BioShock, it will be hard to not draw paralells betweeen the two. If you've played System Shock or System Shock 2, you may feel like you're playing a dumbed-down yet very pretty version of the game.

The poor controls really detracted from my enjoyment of the game. Standard WASD movement in third person coupled with holding down certain keys to channel abilities. I utilized mouse and keyboard. Mouse movement was extremely sluggish. I downloaded a mod that would force the game to use raw mouse input, but still needed to set the sensitivity high. This was fine until you get to the later parts of the game in the more “infested” areas of the ship where the floors cause Issac to walk very slowly on a sticky surface. There are also some portions of the game where you lose movement control of I frequently undershot corners and was sticking on objects. The game is listed has having full controller support and this may be the way to go.

About 10 hours of playtime to complete the campaign. In my opinion the game goes on for 30 minutes to an hour longer than it should (the last chapter should be called “Tower Mover”), but there was no other way to push the game to the final boss. The story starts off very compelling, but about halfway through you'll be faced with many classic horror/suspense tropes. For the motion sensitive types, chapter 9 plays almost entirely with massive screen shake that gave me a headache. There is no option to disable the screen shake and I seriously considered turning the game off at that point.

I did enjoy the customization of the suit and weapons. I only bought one other weapon while in the game and regretted the purchase. The default weapon, when fully upgraded, will do more than a good job of finishing the game for you. Should I play through it again, I'd probably buy more weapons to try them out. I did max out the suit though. Loot everything and sell what you don't need.

The listed MSRP on Steam is $19.99: I don't think I could recommend the game at that price considering the length and and age of the game, but it's a guilt-free purchase in the $5-10 range. So, it's a recommend to play, but not to buy at MSRP.

Classic Rockstar (figuratively and literally). Some may consider this a watered down Grand Theft Auto clone, but the game tells a fun story. There are some truly classic scenes in the game, and the gameplay is fun. I'd call the campaign somewhat short, it would be far shorter if the "School" mechanic was not present in the game. I don't think I "attended class" past Chapter 4.

If you're looking for a somewhat different, open-world-ish game to play over a weekend (I completed it start to finish in about 14 hours with 60% total completion, Bully will treat you well.

Note: I played this on a Windows 7 laptop and did not experience the large amounts of crashes that are attributed to Windows 10 machines. Keep in mind that this is a 10-year old port of a 12-year old PlayStation 2 game. If you have a controller, I'd suggest using it. The keyboard controls are functional however I did find my hand cramping. Most commands require furiously tapping L-ALT, L-SHIFT & W, which can get tiresome.

It's a real shame that one of the better games of 2015 was originally released in 1999 and 2003, respectively.

Homeworld Remastered is beautiful. The music and voice acting is still spot on. I found myself re-living all of the excitement and wonder of the original release.

The only thing missing is the exclusion of Cataclysm (which in my opinion is the better of the three games). Let's hope that Gearbox can find the missing(?) source code for Cataclysm and give us the missing chapter of the saga.

If you like Real-Time Strategy, well crafted stories and truly challenging gameplay (your tank rush will NOT work here for every mission, you're going to have to really think about what you build, capture or destroy), this blast from the past will sate that hunger. I couldn't recommend this game any higher.

I'd consider this to be the spiritual successor to Tribes 2. It's much better than Tribes: Vengeance. If you can get in with a good team, you'll enjoy this immensely.