Well, while the trailer doesn't really get me pumped up for a new GTA (maybe I'm jaded) it looks a lot more enjoyable than GTA4.

http://kotaku.com/5855541/grand-theft-auto-vs-first-official-trailer

Seems pretty colorful, similar to Vice City/San Andreas, which I enjoy more than the drab GTA 4. 

Awesome, totally obvious, but still funny, I like the second part. 

I've never finished one of those games, tbh, but they are super fun. Probably my favourite game to borrow from a friend and play when really fucked up. 

That quake video is hilarious :D And all so true. 

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/platoon/2832655241053871886/

if you have the game, apply and I'll accept all you guys :)

Logo is a bit lol, if anyone can come up with something better feel free! 

That quake video is rather sad 

SAS: Secure Tomorrow is the first City Interactive title I've decided to try, having received mixed (but not bad) reviews from Gamespot and IGN. Not sure what game they were playing, but SAS was barely worth the $10 I paid for it.

The game is so short you'll be done in under 3 hours. You start in a prison, followed by a building complex then a snowy base in Greenland. In most games, that would be three levels but City Interactive spreads it out across 10 levels. It's basically just F.E.A.R. inspired room-corridor-room design. Even the outdoor snow levels are just a series of medium sized outdoor areas connected by snowy passageways (corridors). There's no great detail, no setpieces whatsover or even mildly interesting environment backgrounds. Compared to other 2008 games, SAS will be a big let-down, as it looks about as good as games released five years ago. In fact if this was released in 2003/2004 it would have been quite popular, apart from the length.

The engine is a little better than the art, being the Jupiter EX from Lithtech that powered F.E.A.R. and Condemned. But by 2008 this engine is a few years old and hasn't aged well.

Ultimately if you liked the look of F.E.A.R., then SAS is more of the same. Just a little worse.

The gameplay has you fighting terrorists with two comrades. Unfortunately they are a beefy source of frustration, constantly getting in your way. They run into rooms gung hoe because they're invicible, but they're also really bad shots and often will just stand around not shooting and often facing towards you while there's enemies RIGHT BEHIND THEM. Perhaps it's a good thing, otherwise they'd complete the entire game for you.

You get some variety with plenty of weapons, although they're all very similar machine guns, but all fairly fun. The enemies have mixed AI, sometimes retreating to cover. But overall it's quite an easy game. I probably only died a few times on medium difficulty, mostly due to being reckless. Sometimes you need to be careful and lean around corners using cover, while you can also run into a room blasting. It's the kind of gameplay I enjoy.

So overall, below average design and extremely short length, but it's generally kind of fun. If you can find it for under $10 and have absolutely nothing else to play, then it's perhaps worth a few hours of your time.

Rating: 4.5/10 

Nice little stealth platformer, fun music and graphics as well, and free!
http://www.stealthbastard.com/#about 

http://www.electricescape.com/etherealhell/reviews/2011/conflict-deniedops.php

6.0/10.

Now that I'm up to 2008 (saving 2007s Bioshock and COD4 for later) I'm reviewing some more less popular and obscure stuff. Next up will probably be The Precursors. 

Dedicated servers that might as well not exist because you can't gain any exp/unlocks when playing on them (you have to use P2P matchmaking)?

Locked down fov 65? In an FPS? On PC? Is this a joke? 

They probably have a re-hashed version of the COD3 engine still. Which I thought was idTech4, (remember this from when CODBLOPS came out) but apparently it stems from idTech 3 (!).

Get with the now, COD. But yeah, that aside - 65?!?!?! That's like looking at life through a tiny hole in a box that you wear on your head. 

To be fair, the dedicated servers allow you to play how you want. Once you unlock everything, who cares? You can still play with friends or play on a server with regular people like you can in TF2.

And the fov doesn't need to be that wide, the maps are fucking tiny. Especially after playing BF3, in which Caspian Border could probably fit all the MW3 maps inside of it.

Now I'm not trying to defend it, but I don't think those are terribly important issues. 

You keep buying it, they keep making it. 

City Interactive is a budget shooter warehouse of a developer. Their 2008 lineup includes Operation Thunderstorm, SAS: Secure Tomorrow, Battlestrike: Force Of Resistance, Code of Honor 2, Sniper - Art of Victory and The Royal Marines Commando. I've already reviewed SAS and I'll be playing Royal Marines next. The others I'm skipping; the quality is variable.

Operation Thunderstorm started badly. To sum it up in one sentence and punchline, this game would have been good... if it was RELEASED IN THE 1990's! Although as the game progressed (quickly) some of the levels get better than the first couple. But the graphics here aren't great. As crappy as SAS looked with it's 2004 F.E.A.R. engine, this game is actually a little worse, although it's using the same engine. It's cramped, nothing but endless corridors and small winding rooms and at times is quite maze-like, saved only by it's small on-screen map and forward arrow highlight where to go.

But ignoring the bad graphics, I actually had a lot of fun in this game. The enemies are all the same, even the two bosses appear to be just normal enemies with a different skin. They go down quick. Once you get a few good guns and start walking around with your scope out, it's a blast. A great, old skool shooter feel with no story, just picking off enemies over and over.

You can't expect perfection with a game that's only 2gb installed, and it's over in well under three hours. City Interactive should probably just give this game out for free now as a digital download to garner attention for their future titles, but if you can find a copy to download then it's probably more fun than wasting two hours watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster. It's not really worth any money though.

Rating: 4.5/10 

I tried hard to get The Precursors, but all online versions seem to be the same infected install that just brings up a black screen and nothing else. Shame, it looked like it had potential. Anyone got the precusors.exe file? That's the one that seems to be infected. 

Might have been mentioned already. You all know The Humble Bundle, but there's also Indie Royale, another place for cheap indie game bundles that offers a new pack every fortnight. 

No interest in the game but skimmed through this and it seemed vaguely interesting

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2011/nov/10/modern-warfare-3-internet-hatred 

The Indie Royale pack and was underwhelmed. The Ben there Dan that series is good if you hadn't played it and night sky is interesting, but the others kind of meh.

That's the problem with looking out for new games all the time, when these bundles come out you've already played their best games ad infinitum.

Voxatron by the way lacks a game design. Nice engine. 

Gaming press realises people don't like to be fed juicy wholesome chuds?

Whinging about something being terrible is a hobby for many repressed internetters though. 

The comments are more informative than the article... 

I'm initially going to review the first five episodes of this game, ignoring the last episode. I'll get to that later. Legendary was a game I was really looking forward to in 2008 from Spark Unlimited. Then reviews came; IGN a 2.5/10, Gamespot 3.5/10, Eurogamer 2/10. The game was completely rubbished and, as such, barely sold. How could this happen when the graphics and monsters all looked so great in the promo material? Clearly, Spark hadn't paid the top review sites enough for positive reviews because this is the single most under-rated game I've ever played. In fact until the final episode I was looking at scoring it at least a 7/10. Same as what I recently scored STALKER, although I enjoyed Legendary much more.

Legendary isn't revolutionary. It's an old skool shooter, with no unique bells and whistles. You do get type of special ability in your arm (named Animus) that you can use anytime to push enemies away or heal yourself. You charge it up by collecting monsters' souls. And it's a great little idea, but not really enough to get brownie points. Spark needed to give upgrades during the game and have this arm do a bit more. Most of the gameplay is spent with two weapons, mostly machine guns that get more powerful through the game and a shotgun. They're both very effective and great to play with - Spark were spot on with the weapons, and there's tonnes of ammo through the game. Probably too much.

There aren't a lot of monsters in this game, it really could have done with some more, but all those that are used are good. Werewolves and humans are the most common, with werewolves really fun to fight. There are also Minotaurs and Griffins that look fantastic, but aren't in the game enough times sadly. They do take a lot to take down so perhaps Spark considered them more mini-bosses. But I would have had them in the game a little more often with less health.

Their behind the scenes videos of bosses and monsters look amazing, such as Golem, a giant beast as tall as a building completely made up of cars and debris lifted all around you. Or the Kraken, a huge water monster with tentacles sprawling into the sky. And they were both really impressive once you go up against them.

IGN complained that the monsters are all random, although they clearly didn't pay any attention to the story because it's all explained. Besides, Painkiller and Serious Sam had completely random enemies and didn't take themselves too seriously. Legendary does take itself a bit more seriously and features quite an interesting storyline.

The game begins with Pandora's Box being opened and Griffin's attacking New York. You're on foot running through the debris and chaos as people and cars are lifted all around you. Then the giant Golem appears. It's an absolutely epic beginning to a game, one of the best starts I've played. It felt like your latest cgi-rich blockbuster. After mulling around in the underground of Ney York, which was quite creepy, the third episode takes you to an English Cathedral with an old town built around as you join your team-mates in trying to reach a hidden laboratory. Then you return to the British Headquarters as it's under attack from Griffins and Werewolves, before returning to New York. All the levels look great and you can tell it's the Unreal Engine 3 with it's heavy post processing and dirty colours. I've played much worse looking UE3 based games.

85% of the way through this game and I simply cannot understand why this game got panned. The gameplay is fun, the story is interesting, the graphics and settings all look great. The typical problems of no quicksave exist, but this is a console focused game so typical console-crap is to be expected. It does have mouse movement issues, being very jumpy. So jumpy in fact the game gave me motion sickness a while after I turned it off. But nothing major - it's a simple shooter that does nothing new but provides a fun experience.

THEN, you get to episode six and it falls apart. The Kraken boss, right before episode six, I tried so many damn times and was a very frustrating trial and error boss. Cheats are needed. Then right as episode six starts I get constant floods of yellow light and can't see a thing when I use my ability or get struck by a werewolf. I play on with god mode enabled and make damn sure not to get hit by anything. Then the final level has an elevator that you fall through on the PC version. And it's not just a bug some people get - EVERY PC version has this bug. No patch. Game cannot be finished. There is an easy workaround in the config settings, but that's not the point. Clearly Spark didn't bother to do a single playthrough of this game on the PC, and a really simply patch would have fixed it.

Overall, I'd probably give the game 7.5 without the final episode bugs.

Rating: 7.5 without bugs, otherwise 6.0/10 

And a review of The Royal Marines Commando (2008) http://www.electricescape.com/etherealhell/reviews/2011/royal_marines_commando.php

Pretty shit, 4.5/10. 

Your reviews and website are very professional-looking, but if I was to give one piece of constructive criticism, it would be to increase the size of the font you use for your body text. It's soooo tiny!! I had to (OMG) zoom in! ;) 

Oh yep, will do 

Then reviews came; IGN a 2.5/10, Gamespot 3.5/10, Eurogamer 2/10


WOW really? I have to go check myself.
The game must be unplayable ugly buggy turd from an unknown developer from Poland to score anything below 5.