Kona has a few underrated games on his site, Like Timeshift and Ubersoldier.

And Kona, you should keep doing the reviews on your site instead of here. 

Timeshift was pretty cool. As was Singularity. I don't mind reading Kona's stuff, this was the first game I haven't heard of that I tried, tho.... 

Decide the D3 demo was pretty nice after all. Bought a full copy of the game, cleared my stash, deleted my old character, started a new character on next skill up. Did all the demo level stuff again, kept going, all good fun, until...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6CPIXYxxsl4/VoAIUOkGWSI/AAAAAAAAAfA/UhCMuHMQ_T4/s1600/kinnbrokeit.jpg

FFS. 

 

Oh yeah you've got to overlook all those things about it Sham, haha. It's got all the modern game trademarks that you mentioned. I meant more just the furiosity of the combat and these tough fast enemies coming at you felt like 90s combat. It's sort of cover based, you can't run around at full speed. But also it's not full cover based, you don't press a button to cling to cover and peak up with the aim key, like Gears of War. So not a full cover-shooter. Also, you've usually got to backtrack as your fighting, you can't stay in one cover for long or they'll reach you. 

Yhe1 I stopped doing the reviews for 2 reasons:

1. nobody reads reviews anymore, especially ones on my little site. People go to youtube and watch reviews (I'm guilty of that myself) or use metacritic.

2. there are way too many games being released each year now. When I started to review games about 2002, I only had 2 actions games for the entire year to review. Even 2005 only had 14 actions games. Nowadays, there's anywhere between 50-100 games per year I could review. I barely have time to play them all, let alone write reviews.

Everyone has a different opinion on what they like, and I realise the type of game I like might be different to the masses. Everyones different so one players opinion doesn't mean a whole lot. Also, I'm no writer. 

Also just got playing 2013's star trek game. Appears to have been diarrhea'd all over because one of the developers put up a fake review, so all the childish gamers gave it 0's.

Average 3rd person coop shooter, linear, annoying minigames (but are mostly skipable), 5-yr old engine. Only worth playing if you're a trekkie, which I am, as it feels a bit like a big scale episode where Spock and Kirk version 2 single-handedly save the galaxy from giant lizards (seriously).

6/10. 

The actual combat was fairly decent in it's style, and you're right a good challenge.

As for catching up on released games, just play the good ones! Having said that it is quite useful having someone to bring hidden gems to our attention... 

What I find by playing every action game that has a single player mode, is the poorer games are often better than expected, while the good ones are often not as good as what they're made out to be. 

Damn, what a missed opportunity. I was reading an interview on Eurogamer I think it was with Randy and they were trying to get out of him what went wrong. All he could talk about is that he loves the game (and also loves DNF), makes excuses about the media being wrong, and that he wouldn't take back the 10-15mill in losses developing the game because he got to meet Syd Mead (apparently designed some Aliens stuff) and got to personally play with some of the original props. God, what a tool. He wouldn't admit a single thing wrong with the game and when the interviewer tried to bring it up, claims he can't remember that part.

Apparently Sega wanted it to be just like COD but in the Aliens universe, but they didn't do that. Who knows, it might have been better if they did. At least COD has some pretty epic scenes in most of their games.

Anyway, I give it about a 7/10, which is a lot better than the 4.5/10 on Metacritic. I think most users were just expecting too much, they went in with huge hopes because of Borderlands 2 being an amazing game.

How awesome would it have been if we had a game with the scope of Borderlands 2, but in the Aliens universe? That's more like how I would have made the game, except without all the damn looting. Then bring in some stealth bits, like Deus-Ex, make fewer enemies in the game, slower pace, more horror like (Metro 2033, Stalker, Dead Space).

Make it a proper open world game, with a size like Kingdoms Of Amalur but you just can't travel everywhere straight away because it's too dangerous. I'm not sure how you'd handle different enemies; you can't have a 30-50 hour action RPG with just 2 or 3 Xeno's. Are there other species or races in Aliens ? Perhaps it could take place over multiple worlds like Mass Effect.

Anyway, the game itself was a standard, linear FPS. The developers assumed you just got done watching the movies, because a lot of the story didn't make much sense to me since I haven't watched Alien/Aliens in decades. The weapons were average until I read halfway through the game you can actually open a menu and change your arsenal, and once upgraded quite fun near the end. It started to feel more like Borderlands weapons with the long range accuracy and scopes.

The game starts off not really that good, inside the spaceship. I wonder how many players quit too soon. Once on the planet the visuals get interesting, but I think the big alien ship was a missed opportunity full of corridors.

The graphics didn't seem that great to me, Gearbox obviously didn't make the engine as pretty as CI did with Alien Rage, but they didn't have some nice outdoor areas.

Later in the game you end up playing three levels you'd already gone through, which was really cheap. Limited budget or something? With the amount of content they made for B2 with the DLC's as well, I mean fuck the final DLC was almost as big as this game.

Oh and one big failure in the game was checkpoints, they were just put in the silliest of places, and often far apart.

Really just one big missed opportunity and Randy can't admit that. Rebellion's AVP wasn't any better though.

Also played Risen 2. I might post about that tomorrow, what a total fuckup that was. 

Late to the party, I know, I don't care.

Obviously I'm still correct that the GFX are technically inferior to Path Of Exile, textures, lighting, zoom level etc. And Bal is right that POE does ARPG uber-geeking gameplay better.

BUT. Actually D3 is really nice. Although the style is a bit more cartoony and low-res, it does a hell of a lot with the atmosphere, backgrounds, and setting, it actually feels more like a proper place than a game place, and some of the areas are just damn cool. The expansion pack might be my favourite so far:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zm31z1oGKOc/VoZV1bY9efI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/w9Iknnm2nRk/s1600/diablo3kindapretty.jpg

As people said above, gameplay in the main game is supercasual, even without using gems and shields there doesn't seem to be a way to get an actual challenge in the main game, however it is quite nice being just to waltz through it using just mouse and leaving other hand for wanking to cow scat pron.

Story is terrible and generic but at least it is comprehensible compared to POE.

Destructible items in environment are cool. I spend more time exploding crates carts and altars than actual enemy.

So, errr, yeah. 

Forgot to mention, it reminds me most of Guild Wars. Which is good enough. 

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yfEhj0P7tXw/Voa2jVK1FEI/AAAAAAAAAfg/uqOU7mZqooM/s1600/diablo3kindafirey.jpg 

I enjoyed diablo 3 quite a bit 

Blizzard found no shortage of opportunities to make the world feel big and sweeping despite having the camera pointed down at the ground the whole time.

You do find yourself on the edge of quite a lot of chasms and valleys though. 

http://luniney.neocities.org/SuperMarioReMaker/

It's pretty damned impressive, I have the Wii-u version and this does decent job of recreating the experience. It's not as polished but it's worth having a go of. 

I like how that site says "All copyrighted material is � Nintendo" at the bottom.

You know, except Strong Bad from Homestar Runner, various Undertale characters, The Kid from I Want to be The Guy, or Quote from Cave Story... but I guess all their creators aren't big enough to worry about them suing, so their copyrights don't matter.

Motherfucker should've just run with 'you can make 2d platformer levels and there are a bunch of toys for you to play with'... no theft of graphics and IP needed. Hopefully Nintendo is quick with their cease and desist so this idiot can scrub the junk out, and then persist in making something that would genuinely be cool. 

Read a good review of it on the Codex. It's an isometric CRPG with pretty kickass art (the good kind of pixel art) and a cool story. Played for an hour and so far I like it. I died horribly to some wolves and goblins.

Only downside is that combat is in real time (with pause on specific actions) which I think doesn't really work too well unless your game is Diablo. I would've preferred turn based but eh, to each their own. 

Skacky, it's pretty and pixelated, but I don't think it's pixel art:

http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

I like this kind of art anyway. 

When I say "the good kind of pixel art" I mean not your usual lazy indie game ""pixel art"". 

This might interest a few here.

Coop arcadey claustrophobic marines vs aliens roguelike fps (yes, random levels). Got a decent bit of space hulk vibe.

Its pretty simple, effective and fun. Could just as well be a top down arcade game but the FPS perspective suits the vibe well.

Currently being developed, there is a demo on the website but I hear pretty outdated as to current Early Access version.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/357330/ 

Well worth it. Boss fights are boring as fuck, rest of it is great. A few neat tweaks and some really nice settings (possibly the most "someone make that in Quake FFS" ones), everything a mission pack should be (boss difficulty spikes aside). 

Just put the nagelring on

*boom* boss be ded 

Complete Spack Hulk clone done in a 1998 engine with no level design set in the pitch black?? SOLD!

The idea might be decent but it doesn't look at all inspiring.