thanks for the list. i knew some of these from when i was looking for other games. will try to get them later, as they are quite cheap on amazon [through people that sell on amazon that is], at least the ones that are on sale.

you are empty looks like a game from 2004 or maybe 2002. it looks good to me, so i don't mind it. though some of the enemies are quite ridiculous looking.

then there are a few moments like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9Gsna9zlVE

the voice is not in sync, but it doesnt bother me though. yet the more the dude talks, the more weird it gets. its all just gibberish! :D

the levels have a lot of little details and are nicely made too. no shaders or anything, so if the dudes wanted a bump on the walls, then it was done by hand.

the movement is slow, running only adds like 10% more speed to the movement. and if you fall from the second floor to the first floor, you die.

the physics sometimes can behave in weird ways. i remember bumping into a table and the objects slowly flew into the ceiling never to be seen again [something similar happened on the demo of chernobyl terrorist attack, but with dead bodies but it ended with the game crashing]

the game is linear as hell, but i found it fun to play through. and the levels are varied so its not so repetetive i think. and it feels like you are actually going from one place to another.

maybe i'm being too nice to it. one thing though, the game has some weird graphical bugs when i tried to play it again on my new pc. i played it on my old one and it played without issues, but on win7 64bit the floors & ceilings are displayed as black glitchy textures and sometimes objects blink like crazy. i dont know if its the ati drivers or maybe windows itself. i wish my notebook could handle it though, but it runs it at 2fps :(

when i played the game on my old pc though, the game felt solid without any weirdness. the aiming was weird as its expected on these games, but nothing really bad i thought. i had no slowdowns or crashes. except for the floating objects thing, no glitches that i remember, well except trying to play it now :(

some others games i found that i dont know if you heard of. never tried these, and i have never seen them anywhere to buy online, except for gamersgate.com:

they're alive!

xenus 2: white gold [sequel to boiling point, looks to be much better than the first one. open world action rpg madness].

the precursors [weird, funky sci-fi game, similar to xenus in a way i guess]


chernobyl terrorist attack [its from january this year, but the demo gave was enough to say no to it]. only seen it on amazon's downloadable game service for $19usd. but there is a demo and that was all i needed.

instinct [uses the same engine used on you are empty, so it might have the same issues on win7 or with a ati card, whichever is causing the problems]. sellers through amazon sell it very cheap, and the local supermakerket had it for like $8usd. i never saw it again.

its funny how the supermarket has lots of rare pc games, and a massive shelf for them, yet the big electronic stores have a small stand with lots of popcap styled games crap.

since this is becoming too big of a reply i'll stop. 

...the gameplay on you are empty is as basic as it gets. shoot dudes, get key, open door, do some simple platforming [walking on catwalks type of stuff] kill dudes, enter room, listen dude talk, kill more dudes, etc.

but i'm really interested in getting a gamersgate account and buying xenus2, precursors & they're alive. if i had the money to spend & they were cheap, i would go for it! :) 

Actually hadn't heard of They're Alive, Instinct or Chernobyl Terrorist Attack. Apparently they're all garbage, but Chernobyl MIGHT be okay. I'm adding it to my list anyway. Speaking of which, here's my list of games to play, most of which i'll eventually review as well :D

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealhell/gamestoget.php

Despite it's size, it's not exhaustive. There's still stuff missing, in particular probably some good hack n slash and rpg's. It's almost all 3rd or 1st person action games on this list, order set by gamerankings.com's aggregate scores for each game. 2011 definitely isn't complete - I've just put on the big popular releases so far. I'm still working on playing through my 2007 list - which i've almost finished hence why I left 2007 off. Reviews are all on my site anyway for the 2007 games. Playing Stalker now which i'll probably finish today and review. 

reading your reviews and that list made me realize... i'm not really considered a gamer any more.
makes me a little sad. :( 

http://onemorelevel.com/game/cat_astro_phi

Grid movement, the lot. 

and here we got a bot probing different hotlink mechanisms, interesting 

oh wow, it rapidly noticed what scheme works and whammo! 

Here's my review of Stalker:SOC: http://www.electricescape.com/etherealhell/reviews/2011/stalker.php

It's quite long so I won't post it here, but some of you may be interested in reading it. Don't read if you loved Stalker though, because I clearly didn't. In fact it fucked me off more than any other game I can think of, even more than Tomb Raider. Could of been great, but too many things needed fixing, even after the patches and Stalker Complete 2009. 

There certainly are many bugs and shortcomings, but beneath that it's still a unique game.
Your review sounds to me like you were playing it somewhat wrong and you also based your verdict on some aspects introduced by the Complete mod (e.g. darker night, food, possibly gun/enemy accuracy and weight). I mean wrong in terms of maybe not patiently enough - "stalking" enemies pays off here, or even sneaking past them, a perfectly valid tactic in this game, which you criticized however; skipping sidequests where you could have gotten money or valuable items.

There are very good weapons to be found or bought, so there's really no need to use the weak ones until the end. I'm actually surprised you seemed to have missed them entirely, or if not, at least failed to get deal with the ammo situation. In the beginning the game is fairly hard with the poor pistols and shotguns, but as soon as one gets a rifle dropping enemies is much more bearable. All the Monolith soldiers have badass ones and some of zombified stalkers you meet in the bunkers, too.

Does the Complete mod remove the timelimit/blowout in the outide NPP level? Because that one sure was annoying in the original game.

The weight limit is proper RPG/realism element. Clearly annoying if you have to drop stuff, but there's still plenty of room for a few good guns. Though I think your not having found the right ones possibly added to your frustration with the limit space (due to the need to carry more weak ones).

Finally, while the game is certainly sandboxy, I don't really agree to the term "true sandbox", because not only is the game world made up of seperate (albeit interconnected) levels, it's also, as you wrote yourself, linearized by the fact that certain areas/levels are not accessible right away. Debatable, I guess.

Go play Oblivion! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewwtznVkSxA&feature=player_embedded

Looks like Deus Ex-ish mixed with Fear style melee combat. 

That could be you!

The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle
Pay whatever you want and get Frozen Synapse, a intense orgy of tactics and shooting dudes. I was completely convinced by the video review by TotalBiscuit, which is weird as he's a ginormous nonce. Pay over the average (around $4) and you get the Frozenbyte Bundle included free also, which contains Trine and some other shit.
http://www.humblebundle.com/

The Binding of Isaac
A neat roguelike-like by one of the Super Meat Boy dudes.
Here is a review: Rock Paper Shotgun
Here it is on an online game purchasing service: Steam
How much does it cost? A wallet-blumpkining $5 (or �3.59 ) 

The text is really, really small :(

Still your website looks great, loads of pics etc, but that text is really, really small.. Thank god for zoom ;) 

I didn't find the stealth or sneaking past people really worked. Enemies would randomly spot me, and even at night in pitch dark with the flashlight off they'd see me, although maybe Complete 2009 mod had something to do with that. But I didn't really treat it like a survival/horror, which is what it's supposed to be. What exactly does that mean in Stalker though anyway - really slow, meticulous combat?

The timelimit on the NPP level was still there. Although I just sprinted through it and only killed several enemies, and got there in half the time. I did take a dozen quickloads though, and a couple feeds as I kept running out of energy as I hadn't eaten.

I'm yet to play a proper RPG, but the RPG elements, in theory, were finein Stalker so maybe I can play some now. Might go back to Oblivion, but it might be getting a bit dated, but Fallout 3 is a definite play. 

just got done playing oblivion yet again. as long as you can pick up a mod that replaces the absolutely terrible npc faces that come with the original game, it still looks quite good, considering it's age.
i've played it maybe 6 or 7 times now (not always completing it) and i still find new dungeons, which is what call bang for your buck. o.0
i wonder if skyrim can cram as much content as oblivion... 

I think they said they had like 300 hours of gameplay in there, give or take a 100. After a while, they just lost count. But something like 100 unique dungeons to explore, on top of the overworld (or underneath I guess.) So my guess is probably. 

oh wow, that sounds great. honestly, i haven't been paying all that much attention to it other than what i read here, so i guess i wasn't expecting much.
but yeah, that sounds like it'll be a lot of fun, and something you can come back to later. 

I saw this the other day, and am buying it right now because of this line:

The only problem I have with The Binding Of Isaac right now is that I�m still discovering things and I don�t want that to end. 

Is pretty nice, very weird, and hard. Soundtrack is great. 

http://imgur.com/r/gaming/SgZkf 

Looks totally awesome. 

I wish I could do art like that.