Recent reviews by FrogTSB

This sequel is definitely a more well rounded and welcoming game for everyone. Runner 2 is not plagued by the uneven and harsh splike in difficulty that upset so many in the first iteration. It has much more content than the original, it has three different difficulty levels to accomidate a player's skill set, and it also now has checkpoints. For those who relished the challenge of the first game...don't worry, the hard difficulty setting will give you everything you ask for, and you have the option to skip checkpoints for bonus points. The graphical style of this game is much different and does look quite a lot better...however I think I still have a preference for the way the first game looked. The game is also narrated by Charles Martinet who is best known for doing the voicework for Mario. I imagine this will be a plus for some and an annoyance to others. As with the first game, in my opinioin the music is also very good in Runner 2 and helps to keep pushing the player through those difficult spots. The biggest issue I have with the game is how some of the achievements are tied in with the bullseye minigame event that takes place at the end of each level (assuming you have collected all the gold pieces). I think the achievements should have been related to whether you chose to skip the optional checkpoint or not, and the minigame at the end should only have served as a mechanism to increase the player's score. At the end of the day it is a very good game that will give you about five to six hours on just a normal playthrough and probably twenty plus hours if you try to 100 percent the game.

This is a pretty fun physics puzzle game that will provide you with about 11 hours of content if you choose to complete everything. The later levels can require some very precise timing and quick reactions, so keep that in mind if that's not something you wan't to put up with. The ambient music does a fairly good job of setting the mood, but it does become repetitive. All in all definitely worth it, especially at a sale price.

Dead Space is an enjoyable 3rd person shooter and worth a buy at a sale price. If you like a challenge, play above the normal difficulty level. There is an oversupply of ammo and you will probably never come close to death except for some of the 1 hit kill situations. Unfortunately, there are several bugs, some of which are borderline showstoppers. Vsync runs at half the monitors refresh rate, twice I fell to my death through randomly disappearing floors, when jumping from platform to platform in zero gravity you can insta die due to a glitch, there are problems with mouse acceleration and Win7, and the game crashed constantly on the last level when moving the marker from room to room. If you are interested in DS but don't want to put up with the bugs, read or watch the backstory for DS1 and then play DS2. I did not run into any serious bugs playing through DS2.

My recommendation for The Longest Journey comes from the perspective of someone who has never played through a point and click adventure game. This game is considered to be a classic in the adventure genre, and I'm sure many would consider it to be an all time great . The aspects of this game that I loved were the art, story, dialogue, voice acting, humor, and music. Be aware that, as I'm guessing is the case with most point and click adventure games, this game is dialogue heavy and focuses on the story. The Longest Journey first came out in 1999 so some graphical aspects of the game are dated, like the 3D characters (which move around on a 2D background). You cannot die in this game and you cannot become permanently stuck, but it can definitely be challenging. I had no hesitation in looking at a walkthrough to help me out when I was stuck. Most of the puzzle challenges are workable if you are persistent. The final item I would reiterated is that the story is very deep and well written