Rogue Trooper is one of the lesser-known shooters of 2006. Although it was third-person, this is still your typical action shooter. And when your in cramped spaces the camera reverts almost to first-person anyway.

So your setting is nothing new; the galactic other-worlds which look remarkably like earth, as seen in everything from Unreal II to Halo. There are 12 levels which take you from bases, more bases, mountains, cities. There are, unfortunately, two 'rails' levels, but they aren't as bad as some games.

The design and graphics are a little average for 2006. I've seen much better. There's nothing breathtaking here, but having said that it's not poor either. The design is simply adequate. Linear, lacking detail, but enough variety and decent enough to keep you satisfied throughout the game.

The gameplay is a mixed bag. Rebellion tried to do things differently here by giving you a live 'shop' you can purchase from at any time during gameplay. So there's not ammo or health scattered around the levels. Instead your have to find scrap, which somehow is turned into cash which you can use to purchase ammo, health, upgrades to your weapons. It's not exactly realistic, but neither is a pumped blue-skinned trooper with demon eyes as your main character. The problem with this system is that your forced to search for scrap in order to purchase enough ammo and health to stay alive. You can't complete a level, especially in the later stages, without purchasing. It also breaks up the flow of the game when your forced to purchase more health right in the middle of a firefight when your near death. Ultimately, I threw on an unlimited ammo cheat (and stuck to the weaker weapons throughout the game) so I didn't have to bother with the constant 'search for scrap... purchase ammo' rubbish.

Ultimately the gameplay is a good challenge. Enemies are all the same, but weapons are fairly decent and the game never gets frustrating or too easy. Again, just like the design, the game is just getting by at being fun, but nothing memorable. The only problem with gameplay is often you'll be firing at enemies and for whatever odd reason, they just won't die. Not because they're invincible, but because apparently your not in a position where you can shoot them. When you've got an enemy well within sight, your crosshairs go red. But many times you can clearly see you've got them in sight, there are little obstacles, and yet the crosshairs won't go red and therefore you can pile hundreds of bullets into their heads and they won't die. One minor niggle in an otherwise fairly decent game.

Decent because you don't go in expecting greatness with a game based on a 2000AD comic (sorry folks but Judge Dredd is horrid) from a studio that hasn't released anything worth playing since 1999's Aliens vs Predator. 

BTW Daz, here's my list of 2009/2010 games to play. I haven't played any yet (still working on 2005 so it'll be a few years before I even get to these ones). The score is an accumulative score from www.gamerankings.com, so it's fairly accurate. Also note I really only play single player actions/shooters.

2010=========================================================================
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 - ???
Oddbox (pc port unreleased)
Sniper: Ghost Warrior - 54% (by City Interactive)
James Bond 007: Blood Stone - 62%
Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days (3rd person) - 63%
Aliens vs. Predator (2010) - 68%
Lost Planet 2 (3rd person) - 68%
The Ball - 73%
Medal of Honor - 75%
Transformers: War for Cybertron - 75%
Dead Rising 2 - 75% (action/survivor horror)
Mafia II - 76%
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - 78%
Singularity - 78%
Call of Duty: Black Ops - 79%
Metro 2033 - 81%
Darksiders - 82%
Assassin's Creed II - 83%
Just Cause 2 - 85%
Bioshock2 - 87%
Amnesia: The Dark Descent [Puzzle/Survival/Horror] - 88%
Mass Effect 2 - 95% (action rpg)

2009=========================================================================
Code of Honor 3: Desperate Measures (by City Interactive) - ???
Painkiller: Resurrection [Standalone Expansion Pack] - ???
ShellShock 2: Blood Trails - 41%
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition - (3rd person) - 61%
NecroVisioN - 64%
Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason - 69%
Section 8 - 70%
Killing Floor - 72%
Shattered Horizon 73%
Wolfenstein - 74%
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising - 75%
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood - 79%
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin - 79%
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (3rd person) - 79%
Ghostbusters: The Video Game (3rd person) - 80%
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena - 81%
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat - 82%
Borderlands 82%
Red Faction: Guerrilla (3rd person) - 85%
Resident Evil 5 (3rd person) - 86%
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - 87%
Left 4 Dead 2 - 89%
Batman: Arkham Asylum (3rd person) - 93% 

see above, I really enjoyed Witcher.

You may as well get CoD: World at War and Crysis/Warhead too. 

Arkhan Asylum seems to be a good arcade sort of game and I also forgot Bioshock 2. 

How does black ops get a higher score than the ball? Black ops was bleh on the 360, nothing new. At all. Treyarch also royally destroyed mp. At leaat the ball was different. 

Because Call of Duty is a big fanboy franchise like Halo, regardless of whether it's an actually immersive, well designed game. According to reviewers, Call of Duty Modern Warfare is the 2nd best fps of 2009, behind LFD2. I think most of the review sites just copy whatever score the big guns gave it. 

Yay, get SC2, IIRC you were crap at DOW so I could do with more n00bs around me level :D 

That's quite a list. Almost makes it seem like work. 

I already have SC2! I got it from Tesco remember =)

friend me - darren.weekes@gmail.com

I got to low silver league before I stopped playing, but I would be up for some games!

Thanks for that list Kona, I will start working my way through it! 

Oh yeah lol.

It won't let me type in an email address as I've got gaybook disabled. Gimme your name / id instead yo.

Shambler 946 

Bughunt:292 (I think its 292!) 

Just finished the game. Truly epic stuff! I've never played user-generated content of such an incredibly (and consistently) high quality. This could easily be a commercial addon. Sure, there are a few glitches, and the fairly frequent crashes were a bit annoying, but it was bearable after all.

I contanstly wet my pants with all the detailed and well-thought areas, castles, dungeons. Some of them alone already warrant giving this a try. There are not only medieval-themed environments like in Oblivion, but also otherwordly and plainly weird ones.

The story is quite cool once it picks up. Surpringly philosophical. As I've already said earlier, nicely varied quests. I liked how they make proper use of the physics. For instance, in quite a few cases you have to manually drag objects around instead of the usual pickup->autoinsert behavior the game normally has. Or stack crates to reach higher ground and so forth.
It has a few puzzles (none too difficult, which I wasn't unhappy about), stealth moments, timed events. So the developers definitely tried to expand the scope of the original game. And successfully so, for the most part.

I also loved how they put little details here and there, be it corpses or skeletons and corresponding items placed in such a way that the player can imagine what those persons were doing or how they lived/died, or notes and diaries, and other 'personal' stuff. There are many new books like about the story of the world and all, like in Oblivion. I didn't read them, but the effort put into this is admirable

The design of caverns, dungeons and temples make exploration now actually rewarding, as each of them has at least one special item or nice location (vista), or even enemy, to discover; unlike Oblivion that didn't only ues the small number of underground levels a dozen times over, but also had most of them only contain useless junk for loot.

Finally there are many easter eggs and little nods (not only the developers' mugshots on the wanted posters). I discovered Sven's secret electro danceclub, a Cube tribute, and even the SureAI bunker with its Killer-Chicken. :D

Took me a good 50 hours. If one was to explore the map exhaustively for every dungeon and special item, i.e. do the Kinn, it would certainly add another 10 hours of gameplay. So basically like a full game.
Anyway, excellent stuff - one could even go so far as to call it a monumental effort by this small team. Highly recommended if you're into Oblivion. Btw. I'm not being paid for this. ;) 

geez, i feel i should give this another chance. :S it felt really hard when i played it though...

like i had no money and stuff was kicking my ass. :P maybe it was cause i played as a rogue character. if i made a regular fighter it would probably be easier. 

Four thousandth! 

Two things:
a) Make sure that you're in an area that's right for your level--the game gives you a suggested range, and can be tough at times (especially at the beginning), even if you stay within suggested areas.

b) Don't be afraid to turn the difficulty down. I played with it set at 25 for a while, when things got kind of tough, and I think I only have it back up to the 40-ish range now. Like negke said, it's just a fantastic game to explore and enjoy, and you shouldn't let difficulty issues stand in the way of that.

There are many new books like about the story of the world and all, like in Oblivion. I didn't read them, but the effort put into this is admirable

Some of the books I've read have been really, really astonishingly good, considering that this is a fan effort, and that they had to be translated from the German. I'm amazed.

If I can remember, the next time I play I'll see if I can pick out an especially good one and grab a few screenies or something. 

I played on standard difficulty. Never occurred to me I could have just lowered it a little... :S
Yeah, that's what I meant by slow start. I started to enjoy it more once I got reasonably powerful in combat and especially magic.

c) Don't make the same 'mistake' as I did and hoard potions and scrolls thinking they're too valuable and might come in handy later. Use them right away. There are so many of them lying around everywhere. I ended up having a shitload of them in my inventory and only realized they would have made my life much easier when I didn't need them anymore. Magic gems, too. Likewise, I only got to appreciate alchemy towards the end.
Also use the skill trainers early on. The higher your character level, the more expensive each training point becomes. But they can make for more solid start.

I think what helped me a lot was that I found a fairly powerful weapon early on. There's some good stuff in the dungeons.
The headhunter quests are good for money. But I think the real deal is, as usual, collecting all kinds of junk and loot (weapons and armor in particular) and load them off at merchants. 

You guys are really tempting me to play Nehrim earlier than I plan to. I'm trying to hold off though so I can catch up on some neglected games; especially on Steam - what's the use in buying games during previous sales if I don't even play them? ;_; 

Just a quick extra review of the sequel, Earned In Blood. Released just six months later, this really should have been as a cheaper addon pack or downloadable content. There is nothing new, no upgrades to design or gameplay.

Some of the levels are perhaps slightly better looking, but they're still the same bland, horizontal designs from part one. The gameplay, unfortunately, is much harder this time around.

Again with no way to regenerate your health or quicksave, the only way to play this game is meticulously, slowly and reloading from checkpoints a lot. It's very difficult even when you use the flanking idea behind the game because unfortunately your teammates' AI is hopeless a lot of the time. The weapons are all still just as inaccurate as part one, adding to the frustration.

Below average graphics and gameplay that's unbalanced make this a very skippable game. 

Better late than never =)

I've just started chapter 3 (so no spoilers please!) and from what I can tell this is doom 3 in 3rd person, but with a much more engrossing storyline and less corny dialogue.

The environments are pure sci-fi spaceship pornography and look fantastic, and special mention must go to the ambient sounds and general sound effects, just as in doom 3, they are fantastic and really add to the creepy vibe.

Gameplay seems to tick all of the boxes of doom 3 also, and unfortunately that also means monsters spawning out of "closets" and appearing behind you. The idea of shooting off body parts for a faster kill is novel and fairly enjoyable however.

Where it differs from doom 3 is in the quasi-rpg system it employs with your inventory, you have to pick up med kits and ammo are use them sparingly, as well as collect money and new item schematics that you can create and purchase in the various shops strewn about the maps. You can also find items that allow you to upgrade your space suit and weapons.

Controls (for the pc version at least) feel very clunky, special mention goes to the awful mouse look speed, even with it set to max the screen crawls along when you swing the mouse across the pad :P I imagine a gamepad works better but I have not tried it.

Overall though I am enjoying it so far, the sexy as hell environments and creepy atmosphere are keeping me going nicely :) 

Monolith has been responsible for some good underrated games. NOLF and its sequel are two of the most underrated first-person shooters in my opinion. I skipped their previous shooter, Contact J.A.C.K. due to below average reviews, but F.E.A.R. is another great release from the Washington based studio.

F.E.A.R. was met with a fairly positive reception, suprising consider the industries' criticism of games that bring nothing new to the table. And indeed F.E.A.R. really doesn't bring anything new. In fact, for pure single-player focused first-person shooters (which excuses Splinter Cel and Battlefield 2), F.E.A.R. is the top rated of 2005. Ahead of Call Of Duty and even Quake 4. But it's not without it's issues.

The biggest issue is the lack of finesse in the level design. Now the Lithtech engine, developed in-studio by Monolith, is a great engine. In fact the version of the engine (Jupiter EX) used in F.E.A.R. is still being used in shooters in 2011. The problem with F.E.A.R. is that it failed miserably on using the engines potential. Sure, they made good use of lighting as this is a definite strong point in the game. Although not as amazing looking as Doom 3, Quake 4 or Splinter Cell; it's not far off. Where F.E.A.R. lacks is, firstly in the texturing. Textures are plain, drab and dominantly grey throughout the game. Follow this up with abysmal level design. Constantly throughout the game you'll be walking through plain four-brush corridors with a scattering of prefabs such as barrells and pipes. Follow this up with a room, then another corridor or two leading to the next room. All the while looking horribly unfinished in the detailing department. There are no complex angles, no extravagent architecture. This is level design 101, to the point where you could take just about any level in the game, for instance one of the far too many office levels, put some drab brown wood textures in there, and suddenly it's a warehouse complex.

As mentioned each room has a couple of routes to get in and out. The upside is enemies can also use either route to attack, so it's sets up for good gameplay. However it gets repetitive very fast and confusing because it sometimes feels very maze-like.

Where F.E.A.R. excels is in it's gameplay. We deal with human opponents almost exclusively. Some take more damage than others, some have different weapons. But the AI is all the same; and that is fairly good. Not perfect, but good enough to provide a decent and fun challenge. I played the game on medium and it's fairly perfect. I always had plenty of shotgun ammo, plenty of health packs in reserve, which is how I like it. The weapons all felt great. The shotgun and machine gun are your main weapons, with enough space to carry only one other weapon which alternates depending on what you find in each level. It was slightly disappointing that you can only carry three weapons, but that's a minor niggle as the shotgun is great fun.

There could have been a few different enemies. Sure you have turrets, both ceiling-mounted and flying; both of which were very annoying and didn't enhance gameplay at all. Some kind of ghost also makes an appearance occasionally, but these are far too underwhelming. Some sort of challenging ninja enemy, complete with invisibility and very fast manoeuvres makes very few appearances, unfortunately.

The story, which I won't go in to, had a fairly solid premise. Unfortunately there was little storytelling and very few cut scenes throughout the game. Most of the backstory was told through laptops which were too long and boring to sit and listen to throughout the game. Monolith should have put a lot more effort into telling their story.

Overall, F.E.A.R. is a fun romp for around 10 hours, with a successful engine but sadly let down by old skool level design which may have been great for a late-90's/early-2000's game, but in 2005 looks too bland compared to the level of detail of, for instance, Doom 3. 

Phew, finished it without strokes or nightmares. A genuinely creepy game. And that through fairly simple means. Most importantly the lack of weapons. Like I said somewhere else, a game can have the scariest-looking monsters, but it leaves me absolutely unaffected if I have anything to defend myself. So I had quite a few adrenaline rushes here. There aren't too many monster encounters after all (and only a single type), but it's all about the anticipation - and that's most effective here. If you encounter one, you have to run or hide - and hope it doesn't spot you.

Needless to say the darkness plays an important rule, too. A nice touch is that your eyes adapt to the darkness after a moment, but it's imparative to light candles and torches, or use your lantern, in most levels in order to keep your sanity.
The reaction of the player character to prolonged exposure to darkness or scary situations does the rest. I found it really adds to the tension if you hear him shiver and the heart rate go up, and so on. Also what some people might consider cheap scares, like sudden frightful sound effects, or a gush of wind blowing a door open or some candles out.

The puzzles are okay. Mostly adventure-grade stuff of finding and combining items. Nothing to difficult or overly confusing. Nice though because they make for an uneasy feeling as one has to spend more time in such eerie areas.

Story is a bit so-an-so. Does the job, has good elements but also somewhat questionable ones. Classic reverse telling, through scattered diary entries and flashbacks; it felt appropriate at times and not so much at others. There are three endings, though I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't read it somewhere. 

Thief was always a fantastic game for horror. You're already tense and used to hiding due to the stealth mechanics. When they introduce monsters, it ratchets up a notch perfectly. A human is scary, a zombie that you know is immune to half your gear and will only be stunned by the other half is terrifying :p

The Cradle in Thief 3 is mentioned often but it does deserve the acclaim it gets. I usually don't find games scary, in fact most horror games are hilarious (hi resident evil) As a result from what I've seen of Amnesia I'll probably give it a go. 

Yeah The Cradle was one of the scariest parts to a game i've played. A bit repetitive but the going back in time thing was very well done. 

Phew, finished it without strokes or nightmares.

this sentence alone makes me interested. sadly, well done horror games creep me the fuck out and i usually can never get to the end. i barely finished doom3 and that had predictable scares.

yes. i'm a wuss. :P 

with Amnesia then. It is genuinely scary if you play it the way it is supposed to be played (alone, in a dark room, with headphones on). I haven't finished it myself (yet), but what I have played was excellent because it is scary as shit, yet it is not too hard. Usually scary games are also very hard, but Amnesia has a very good balance (for me).