Recent reviews by L'Internationale

Only a few hours in, but loving it already. It's everything I hoped for when I first saw the trailers for the game years ago -- a Soviet themed successor to Bioshock. I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and I'm finding it incredibly tense and satisfying to play. Can't wait to see what else the game has in store!

Fever gone but itchy. Today hungry and eat doggie food.

SWAT

This used to be one of my favorite racing games, but thanks to the recent update, I can barely play this game at 30fps on my HTPC -- even after turning all of the graphics settings to minimum and lowering the resolution.

I used to play this game because it ran well (never dipped below 60fps at max settings), it was a lightweight, fast, smooth and fun racer. Now it's unplayable. If I wanted the new Trackmania, I would have bought the new Trackmania -- I kept playing this game because I liked it. Why change it after all these years?

Until the performance issues are fixed or we get an option to revert to the old engine, I would advise staying away from this.

Are you a bad enough dude etc. etc.

Surprisingly good! Although this game predates Amnesia and the trend of notable First-Person horror games, it feels very ahead of its time. The levels feel gross and creepy, the enemy designs are creative and fit the environment wells, and the combat mechanics (although somewhat imprecise and limiting, as you can only do a short block and one kind of attack) do a good job of making the game's violent encounters feel tense and dangerous, due to the methodical, animation-based fights. The investigation mechanic is pretty shallow -- only allowing you to collect a few pieces of evidence per crime scene, without requiring you to piece it together or anything -- but it's not a deal breaker, just don't go in expecting an L.A. Noire style experience.

The visuals haven't aged particularly well, but the muddy textures actually contribute to the grimy and creepy atmophere of the game's locals, so I don't consider it too much of a negative. Some of the enemy encounters are a bit too punishing (the final boss fight, in particular, is pretty bad for a variety of reasons), and the relatively simple combat mechanics don't allow much in the way of strategizing or different play styles. It's a short game (only about 6-8 hours at the most, even being thorough), but this just means it doesn't overstay its welcome.

The story is nonsensical, the writing is pretty poor, and the voice acting performances (minus your over-the-phone partner) are all pretty weak. My biggest complaint is the paranormal element of it all; I think the game's realistic modern locations, brutal combat, and grim tone would be much better served with a narrative that didn't stray so far from the realm of possibility (if you watch Zero Punctuation, you could say this game has a bit of "Indigo Prophecy Syndrome" -- especially towards the end).

All in all, it's an enjoyable experience, as long as you're looking for a tense, atmospheric horror game and don't expect too much from it otherwise.

Don't waste your time here. If you're itching for more Deus Ex: Human Revolution, just play the game again. The controls, menu, dialogue, story/plot, characters, and upgrades are a sad shell of the original. Worst of all, the effort you invested into this game is rewarded with "To Be Continued" after the final cutscene and I serisouly doubt there will be any resolution to the plot they've set up.

JUST PLAY SHADOW OF MORDOR - it was clearly heavily inspired by Asylum and does a much better job of presenting stealth with combat using "streamlined" controls. The two fundamental flaws are Asylum's controls and boss fights. The controls are clunky, slow, and unresponsive. The boss fights are repetative and uncreative. Combine the two and you'll start to hear a little voice in your head begging you to just uninstall the game and save yourself the frustration (pretty soon you'll be committed to Arkham Asylum yourself). The game as a whole is lackluster and sad. I am eager to forget about this game.

Perfect port - it's just like how I remember it except with a better framerate and resolution (also have an HD monitor now, so I can actually read the text -- played the original on an old CRT TV... showing my age there).

Fully remappable keys, good range of settings, "Arcade Aiming" option fixes the weird mouse acceleration in the regular aiming setup, so that's cool, too! All in all, don't have anything bad to say about it. If you liked the original, pick it up!

First off, I'm a huge fan of the Metro games, and I love both Metro: 2033 and Metro: Last Light. My issue here is really with this "Redux" version. I've played the game literally back-to-back with the original version, and, honestly, I don't see how it can be called an improvement -- especially in terms of the graphics. Aside from the frame-rate being more stable and generally higher on equivalent settings, the graphics are either the same or a downgrade in certain areas. The colors and lighting seem less dramatic and vibrant, water seems flat and lifeless compared to the water of the original, and the textures actually look more blurry and lower-resolution than some of the textures in the old game. I don't know if this has to do with the games being designed to play better on consoles or what, but it's just very disappointing to see these shortcomings when I was looking forward to a graphical upgrade (one graphical improvement I really did appreciate, however, is the use of subtle reflections in wallpaint and other glossy surfaces).

What makes it even worse is that the Redux version of 2033 was actually really great! I played that one side by side with the old game and the improvements and changes were obvious and mostly for the better. This game, on the other hand, is basically useless: there is absolutely no reason to get this game if you have the original with all the DLC. However, it is a pretty damn good value to get this on the cheap if you don't have the original, since it does have all the DLC included.