TrackMania rules. Must-have title for Lans, imo.
Halo: Reach 9/10
The only negative things I could say about the game are
a) it's nothing groundbreakingly new. It's just more Halo
b) the DLC prices are insulting. I'm just reviewing the game here, but if I were to include this it'd cost points...
c) the constant over-use of military jargon in the singleplayer campaign borders on being funny... Seriously, if you had to drink a shot every time someone said "be advised" you'd be drunk by the end of the first mission.
The campaign has great gameplay though, mostly thanks to the great, dynamic AI and the maps that offer enough tactical freedom for you and the AI to do your thing, so fights are interesting, tense and it's all a matter of your skill.
Compared to earlier Halo campaigns a lot of things have improved too:
- no more Jackal snipers that can one-hit kill you in a split-second when you're unlucky (and when you face them you face them in groups, which is just an exercise in frustration). The alien sniper is now a beam rifle that is still deadly, but it shoots constant beams (like the link gun secondary fire, but with more range and damage) now it takes a second or two of sustained fire to kill you so you don't get insta-zapped anymore.
- elites are the elites again. They got better armor this time so they're generally more dangerous than in previous Halo games, and what's more important, they aren't outshone by the Brutes anymore, who are now actually brutes. I.e. they are angry, not as smart or tactical as the elites, their armor is much weaker, etc. They are now brutes and the elites are elites. Didn't make much sense for these races to be named as such in Halo 3, for example.
- no flood. I've grown accustomed to the flood eventually and I didn't mind fighting them but I didn't particularly miss them in Reach and I'm sure many of those who hated them in earlier Halos are glad they're gone (or rather, not yet discovered, as it's a prequel).
One more thing that was introduced in Halo: Reach are the armor abilities. You can only have one at a time and they include things like a jetpack, sprinting and my personal favorite: A hologram version of yourself that you can send around to fool people.
Something interesting about a story where you know from the start it's heading for doom too.
Multiplayer is rock-solid as well. You can play the campaign in coop with up to four players (2 player splitscreen). There is also a "firefight" mode, which is basically like Invasion in UT2004 or Horde in Gears of War 2. Certainly not the strong point of the game, imo, but it's alright.
Competitive multiplayer is a blast. The balance is tight and things work like they should. You can play online with friends in "guest accounts" in splitscreen.
Probably worth mentioning too is that the game comes with a limited stick-stuff-together map editor where you can use different building parts to build your own structures in a pre-made "forge world". Either Bungie makes new maps with that tool too or the best community maps are voted into matchmaking play-lists. I don't know where they're coming from, but there are a lot of good ones in the playlists.
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tl;dr version: Singleplayer could be the best in the series, aside from
maybe Halo 1, but it'd be close.
Multiplayer isn't necessarily better than Halo 3's, because that was already brilliant, but it's not worse either.
Balance is tight, everything works as it should, the game is
very customizable...
Easy to recommend.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl
Not sure about a rating yet. The atmosphere is certainly brilliant. Very depressing vibe.
Firefights are also very tense and interesting because they take a while, thanks to the ridiculously inaccurate weapons, and enemies are fairly deadly if you're not careful. It's not a game of tactical brilliance though. Enemies don't seem to be very bright and aside from making sure to expose as little as possible of your body it doesn't seem like you have to play very tactically either.
It's another one of those questionable cases of RPG-shooter-hybrids where you do have to play with a certain amount of skill, but it's mostly your equipment (or in games where you have stats, your stats) that wins you battles.
I'm not sure yet how this balances out over the course of the game. The beginning, when all I had was the horrible pistol, was pretty hard. Now I have an assault rifle and a better suit and I'm wasting fools left and right.
They're stepping up their game too though. In the areas where I am now, my opponents have assault rifles too.
Well, it seems like the gameplay is tense but crude, but the world is really interesting and the atmosphere is top-notch. Packs of mutant dogs in the wilderness, weird and unfriendly factions reigning over heaps of junks, anomalies and radiation ravaging the land, the only bit of solitude in the game are the people playing guitar at night at campfires...
Pretty cool stuff.
Diablo 2 LoD with the Reign of Shadows mod 8/10
All in all it's like Diablo 2, except the skills are changed or at least tweaked, there are new items, new enemies... Just keeping things fresh while keeping them the same, more or less.
The only big change I don't like is that they took out the jungle parts of act 3 and replaced them with a linear sewer-type dungeon with openings to tiny forest parts where you can find the spider's cavern, the gidbin and that other dungeon and from there you get to Kurast and then it's business as usual. I, like many others, didn't particularly like the confusing jungle parts of the 3rd act, but I liked them better than that new, boring dungeon.
Other than that, great mod.
