By the way in case anyone is interested here's a list of hte rest of my 2011 games to play. Some good stuff in there, especially some epic rpgs I can't wait for (divinity, rage, dragons age 2, witcher 2, deus ex, skyrim... damn). Ordered by metacritic's rating.

Trine 2
The Haunted: Hells Reach - 51%
Brink - 70% [steamworks]
Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga - 72%
Serious Sam 3: BFE - 72% [steamworks]
Hard Reset: Extended Edition - 73%
F.E.A.R. 3 - 74% [steamworks]
Red Faction: Armageddon - 75% [steamworks]
PayDay: The Heist - 76% [steamworks]
Alice: Madness Returns - 76%
Rage - 79% [steamworks]
Section 8: Prejudice - 79%
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - 79% [steamworks]
Assassin's Creed: Revelations - 80%
Dead Island - 81% [steamworks]
Bulletstorm - 82%
Dragon Age II - 82% (rpg) [purchased]
L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition - 84%
Torchlight 2? - 84% [steamworks]
Saints Row: The Third - 85% [steamworks]
Crysis 2 - 86%
Dead Space 2 - 86%
Bastion - 87% [action rpg]
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - 87%
Battlefield 3 - 89%
Deus Ex Human Revolution - 90% [steamworks]
Batman: Arkham City - 91%
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - 94% (rpg) [steamworks]
Portal 2 - 95% [steamworks] 

Alice: Madness Returns - 76%
- terrible consolisation and bad controls, great art style and cool atmosphere
Rage - 79% [steamworks]
- Good game all round, solid gameplay despite driving bits, and some very cool scenes. Ends too abruptly.
Bulletstorm - 82%
- Minorly fun but stupid and juvenile, characters might appeal to pre-teens
Crysis 2 - 86%
- Crysis of Duty, on rails interactive movie but quite stylish.
Dead Space 2 - 86%
- terrible consolisation and bad controls, cool sci-fi style and great atmosphere
Deus Ex Human Revolution - 90% [steamworks]
- Very good, strong style, does exactly what it promises.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - 94% (rpg)
- Excellent. Vast scale, beauty and exploration compensate for any gameplay and balance flaws.

HTH. 

Now go and marry Natural Selection 2... 

When Shambler says Rage ends abruptly, he means "There is a button, and when you press it, you get the achievement for beating the game and a cutscene plays." It is incredibly jarring.

I liked Rage, I also really disliked a lot of it... Just give me 8-10 hours of the Dead City, the vaults, the various hideouts, with guns, ammo, and turrets I can set down. Because I loved the way shooting felt, and how the enemies integrated canned animations with pathfinding.

I guess my Rage review would be shortly "What it does right, it does amazingly. What it doesn't, is mediocre and in the way." 

I just love that RAGE was dripping with the standard id design sense. "Oh, there's a 5 foot drop down here that I can't get back from ... let me guess ... enemy spawn trigger at the bottom?" 

I liked Rage, quite a bit. I just wish it ran decently on my AMD card. I also wish the level tools ran well and came out earlier than they did.

Oh well :( 

Yeah, that was a LONG lag time before the tools appeared. Which I guess contributed to the near zero community involvement with Rage. 

I somehow got the impression that the tool was more of a visualizer that let you modify entities only, not world geometry, or create new spaces. I have no idea as to if that is accurate at all, or where I got said idea.

But still, pulse rounds in the shotgun? Makes those Authority soldiers pirouette as their head disintegrates. No really, they do a little pirouette when decapitated, and the pulse rounds are one-shot kills to the head for them. It has lots of little Very Satisfying Things to it, enough to where I frown all the more at the minigames, the driving, the time killed in the towns - the fact that there are two big towns, neither of which being much more than a distant place you have to travel to. 

Hot steampunk chicks in skimpy clothes and increasingly ridiculous hats. 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/276810/

Looks kinda neat to me. Watch the gameplay video. It seems to work pretty well, it doesn't look too restrictive or clunky. The setting etc all look good too. 

Yeah looks awesome, but if it's a turn-based tactical game, then all the screenshots/videos must be cinematics only right? Pity, it would look awesome as third/first person :D 

Nope watch the videos, it's not exactly cutting edge GFX but they are very respectable and no cinematic bits in the turns. 

http://www.twitch.tv/focushomeinteractive/b/590892631#/focushomeinteractive/b/590892631

Have only skipped through as the buffering is slow as fuck but definitely looks promising. Freedom of movement plus style of city, especially. 

...During the steam sale today. Sure am going to have fun on them. 

Review of Deathwish for Blood by gggmanlives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Fotgr5e3k&feature=youtube_gdata

Played it a few months ago, it really is worth checking out as he says 

I remember the original Blood got a bit long winded and seemed to drag on a bit too much toward the end, but it was still a solid and fun game. 

Blood is my #3 shooter, after Quake and Doom. I hope to give this mod a go, though I'm not big on the Brutal difficulty mentality, and didn't care for how the game adjusted enemy health and damage with the difficulty, along with placement and count. 

Weird Zwiffle Blood is one of the few games I completed right to the end :) 

Decided to go back and play The Witcher and really enjoyed it, about an 8/10. Only things wrong with it were the combat, which is a simplified QTE, and I found it lacked some character building. A good RPG should have lots of different weapons, armor, items, but I was still using the same swords throughout 75% of the game. And there was no armor. Plus the upgrades you get really aren't that flash - the magic system is disappointing, I just concentrated on upgrading the fire attach and none others, but it still sucked by the end of the game. Story was great though.

Serious Sam 3. ugh. what happened. This is just SS1 in an updated engine and some shitty city levels added. I spent the first 20 mins in google trying to find out why the quality and textures were so bad and how to fix it, but realised in the end that there's nothing to fix, it's how it was intended. The first half of the game sucks balls. The second half gets a bit better when it just starts copying SS1, but it still feels like you're just fighting the same limited enemies over and over again. The last level was the worst, with almost 2000 enemies slowly released at you in a line set within basically really large corridors. A slog if there ever was one. Then the boss battle was really easy. Also the underground levels are so badly designed, they feel like a crappy halflife mod. SS2 was a really great game, but Croteam seem to have really slipped in SS3 - both in ambition, design and the engine. The weapons and enemies are pretty cool and powerful, but there needed to be more of both.
6/10 

http://cdn.eidosinteractive.com/mtl/marketing/Community/Blog/DAWN/DAWN_ENGINE_inengine_screen_1.jpg

Interesting, if this is really an ingame screenshot from next Deus Ex screenshot. That really looks like something very much more interesting than the boatload of other "purty" engines around. 

Has a very painterly look to it in places ... I wonder how much of that is bullshot. 

I don't see what in that screenshot can be attributed to engine tech. It just looks like interesting environment art that you could do in any modern engine.

There's a lot of polygons, there's a lot of light sources, though nothing is casting a shadow, and the bloom effect is fairly tight which is good. 

Cool shot, yeah some painterly aspects are nice, hopefully it's an artistic choice on the textures and not bullshot.
None of it looks impossible in any modern engine anyways, I just hope this means they're really working on another Deux Ex! 

In the completely opposite graphic direction, I finally got Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet and it is awesome from the first moment onwards. 

Yeah the style is nice, and it's fun at first, but I felt it got repetitive quite fast, it's no Super Metroid... :D
Still, nice game.