Batman: Arkham Asylum: great, 9/10. I guess everyones already played this anyway.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II: 6.5/10. Combat can be fun, everything else is dog shit. Lucasarts should be ashamed.

Metro 2033: 8.5/10. Most dark-atmospheric game I've played, great.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: 7.5/10. Great looking levels, good combat, but some real annoying shit like fixed cameras, invisible walls, platforming/puzzles and terrible movement/keboard lag. Probably would have been 8.5/10 without that stuff. Might be 8/10 on consoles since that's really what it's designed for.

Looks like Tron Evolution is next on my list, which is really gonna suck, then Bioshock 2. 

As best as I remember, Batman pretty much sucked due to its stupid control scheme. It was probably fine for those playing on consoles or with a controller, but terrible for mouse and keyboard. I only paid like $4 for it, so I didn't feel that bad about deleting it.

I thought Metro 2033 was very good. Some parts (like the ending) were a bit weak, but overall it was fun to play.

I was watching a play through of the new Wolfenstein on youtube and I doubt those people will be getting much of my money. Maybe when it's under $10 on Steam. At least it's not a 3rd person game. 

Yes, use a controller for Batman.

And yes, the Batman games are fucking EXCELLENT. 

I thought the controls played just fine once you got used to them.

And yes, the Batman games are fucking EXCELLENT. 

The problem was that many "moves" required pressing a button in addition to a direction and couldn't be remapped to a single key press.

This is probably fine on a controller where you have a bunch of buttons in a small area which are easily found by feel. It didn't work so well for me on a regular keyboard when I also had to use one hand to aim with the mouse.

I gave it a fair try, but eventually just gave up since, some "boss" fights were nearly impossible. Without the "boss" fights it would have been doable, but then without them there's not much there.

"Boss" fights are a game mechanic that should have been left in the 90s anyway. Unfortunately it seems that "cut scenes" are becoming the new thing. 

Reading [Kona]'s review of Castlevania made me think of what frustrated me so much in Prince of Persia - Sands of Time. I don't understand why character movement has to be relative to camera position. It would make more sense that character movement is referenced to the player model's torso (right, left, forward, back, etc.) That way you can maintain precise movement which is so important in these movement focused games and even if the camera is whipping around, you still know that the prince will move to his left and not the camera's left when you hit the move-left key. Simple eh? Mathematically, it should be easy to program this.

Just my beef. Without the camera fighting the player as they attempt a tricky move to avoid instant death, these types of games would become a lot more fun and fun sells. 

["Boss" fights are a game mechanic that should have been left in the 90s]

dafuq? 

I played this game a while back called "Dishonored". I thought it was pretty good. I think it may have won a couple of awards. I don't recall any "boss" fights. So it appears it can be done.

There is also Deus Ex: Human Revolution, while it did have a few "boss" fights, it had this awesome "boss" fight ender weapon called the Typhoon. Two or three shots and the annoying "boss" fight was over and done with and you could get on with playing the game. 

Yeah Batman wasn't too bad, but Prince of Persia and Castlevania - those are two games whose controls did not translate to PC at all well. POP just has too many keys for the left hand to press at once, which is okay on a controller with much smaller buttons. 

I have played all the PoP games and the 2 of the Batman ones on PC, number of times I got frustrated with controls wasnt too bad. Number of times I got frustrated with crappy camera was much more. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDtjOV4hFWk

http://www.gog.com/

It's a Portalike. 

I just got my hands on Fez... Haha. The game reboot is gobsmacking.

Anyway, i dont know if this news means much

Fez studio Polytron is back from the brink 

Nothing about the guy from all the here say.

But from seeing his game design he needs a partner to make him more angry at the "player" and less at the commentators.

Or just to wake the fuck up. 

God that weird 2.5d platforming is doing my head in 

Fez is one of the best games released in the last few years. I would judge the man by his work rather than shit journalists write about him. 

It kind of pisses me off how little effort goes into retro games on steam. Some games get really great treatment, like Duke 3d and Shadow Warrior, and some games are crappy dosbox affairs like Heretic and Hexen.

Also why does Doom on Xbox live support 4 player splitscreen co-op but the PC version doesn't?

Le sigh. 

Touching and somewhat unique. Recommended for people who also liked Dear Esther. Not recommend for average dumbass Steam imbeciles. 

Sucked. 

I thought it was nice. I think he could have used a better engine and done a lot more with it. I can only imagine how much haggling and head-to-desk slamming was required to get that content into and working nicely with Source. 

Dude was actually working on porting it to Unity: http://www.littlelostpoly.co.uk/

i'm not sure if any release will ever come of that though. 

I get anal when Gone Home is classified as a video game (it's not a video game) and especially when it gets comparisons with Myst. Other than that it's okay. 

The controls. They were too precise and games orientated for what he was trying to present. They should have been much more fluid and simple as opposed to the basic HL2 controls.

Also, it just wasn't engaging enough for me. If you're going to tell an interactive story then use the strengths of the medium to your advantage, and I feel they failed at that.

Walking around to hear the next piece of exposition felt like a chore. Not that it should have been ungamified completely, but it could have been done a lot better than what was basically a buggy interactive postcard. 

"This is the engine, what can I do with it?"

Should have been:

"This is what I want to do, let's make the engine fit" 

ijed

Consider that it was one dude working on a passion project. I think he accomplished a lot.