Recent reviews by Gahooligan

Not gonna link my steam to a psn account when ive already been playing for a while.
♥♥♥♥♥♥ move

EDF 2: Insect armegeddon left a really bad tatse in my mouth. Few levels, stupid level-up system. and rail shooter segments made me hate edf 2.
I was very hesitent to buy this game, so i didnt until it was on sale.

Im quite pleased to say it's everything i wanted from the first game. It has Online mulitplayer, multiple classes, no lag because of on-screen activity.(assuming your rig isnt a toaster) It features pleanty of campaign levels. Lotsa guns. different classes that feel like they have utility.
If you like the first EDF on X-box 360, this is a solid game buying secision.

I had no idea it existed until I got a coupon for it, because I own a copy of beamNG.

In the process of making cars to drive in beamNG, I found a good bit of fun in making cars for the purpose of getting around the 'definately-not-top-gear' test track and compare them to real cars. Not only in performance but things like seating, price, gas milage, creature comforts, etc...

I have absolutely no interest in the 'campaign' whatsoever and will likely never touch it even after the developers flesh it out. Im also the kind of person that bought Kerba; Space Program with no intention of touching the campaign there, either. I do realize im missing the point of the game, perhaps. But im having fun.

So, buyer beware.

As a side note id like to add that I would like to see leaderboards for the test tracks Maybe somthing thats updated periodically with randomized new restrictions on either of the tracks. Things like V8s only, RWD showcase, horsepower restrictions, year, body, and frame restrictions. Then at the end of the week the community is like "cool car, friend" and we move on to the next leaderboard update. just a thought, it could easily become a glitch and hack showcase.

I give Kerbal Space Program a tentave reccomendation, not because of the quality of the game but because it's a very niche product that I feel has mostly reached the fame it has, because of youtuber letsplays. Don't get me wrong though, this is an absolutely fantastic game. Kerbal Space Program, or KSP features solid gameplay and is quite polished. What it does, it does well, but it doesnt do everything. It's not very easy to pick up without prior knowlege and even more difficult to master. At the time of this writing it has a mountain of support from the devs, a friendly community, and a copious of easy to install mods that can either tweak your gameplay experience or massively overhaul it.

Using broad strokes, KSP could be described as a NASA simulator. You build rockets and spaceplanes from a library of parts and pilot your craft into orbit and beyond allowing you to travel to, land on, and explore distant astral bodies. The game can be broken down to three game modes. Career, where the player must manage money, collect data or "science" to unlock more parts, and gather positive reputation by succeeding, which gives the player access to more lucrative, and difficult contracts. These contracts are the player's avenue to getting more money and positive reputation. Next, there is Science mode. In science mode, money, contracts, and reputation are removed and the player focuses on collecting "science" to march up the tech tree. Finally there is sandbox mode, which gives gives the player all the parts in the game, removes money, reputation, and contracts allowing them free reign to do as they please. I should point out that these game modes are tweakable to make the game easier or more difficult -- it's up to the player.

Rocket and plane construction feels alot like playing with legos. Parts simply click together at preset points. Alas, no system is perfect and sometimes it just doesn't want to cooperate. At no time will the player feel limited in what they can build, unless theyre going for the absolutely ludicrous. There are tricks to getting your craft to be "just so" that the game offers, giving a high degree of control over the final build. It mostly leaves the player to experiment with different building techniques and part placement for whatever they're trying to accomplish. The meat of the fun that KSP offers comes from the player's sense of exploration, adventure, and willingness to learn. The game does offer a tutorial, though most players will find youtube and community forums to be a greater learning and information resource than anything the game itself offers.

New players are more or less bombarded with technical terms from the get-go that may not make sense to someone unfamiliar with rocketry, physics or even the metric system. It's nothing too advanced, mostly stemming from a wide use of acronyms that discribe certain attributes and functions. Granted, it would be silly to use other less percise wordage to discribe things like ISP(specific impulse). But at least to me, it was a little daunting at first. Players are expected to know things like the significance of center-of-mass reletive to center-of-lift. And whats more is that the vanilla game lacks tools to que players into important concepts like "Delta-V" and thrust-to-weight ratios. Though, I ABSOLUTELY MUST stress that all these issues are VERY EASILY remedied with youtube tutorials and/or a few very simple and easy to use mods. It's not so much a hurdle but I feel it may be slightly intimidating to players looking for a very casual experience --there will be learning involved for most people.

At the time of writing the vanilla build of KSP doesnt feature multiplayer but there are easy to find mods that do. The developer has expressed interest in multiplayer but it's somewhat confounded by some of the game mechanics, namely time warp. I do have faith that they will deliver a multiplayer experience, but even if it doesnt come to fruition the community does already have working multiplayer mods. Even if they seem a little barebones from the perspective of someone who doesnt know much about the programming and execution of such things (me). There are also further optimizations in the works that will make KSP a better game, able to better utilize more advanced computers, leading to better performance overall. Thus far the developer has delivered on thier promises, and I dont feel like theres much reason to be cynnical when they say want to add something to the game or when they tweak stock parts.

KSP is a game about trial and error. Even though it offers quicksave and quickload mechanics, It asks patience of the player first and foremost. The more familiar the player is with the mechanics of the game the more oppertunities open for either great feats of finesse and percision or wacky misadventures. The game itself doesnt do much to pat you on the back when you accomplish something like landing on the moon for the first time, its very unceremonious. The gratification comes from within player. It's ultimately thier willingness to learn, try and retry, scrap once promising ideas, and thier perservierence that drives the game. It's gratification comes from the "I finally did it!" and "It works!" moments plucked from a minefield of moments where everything seems to go wrong at once. It's easy for the gameplay to feel repetitive, but as long as the player keeps pushing for bigger more out of this word objectives whether theyre self imposed or handed to them by the game, the sense of accomplishment never really fades.

I dont think I could recommend this to everyone. But If you have even a passing interest in rocketry or space travel Kerbal Space Program is a game made for the engineer and the astronaut in you.

Left for dead 2 Is a great Team based First Person Shooter. The point of this game is plainly -- Get from point A to point B without dying. But it's not so simple. Your biggest help and biggest burden is usually your team. For this game to be fun you almost NEED a team of like minded players. Wether your just going through one of the campaign "movies" for giggles and guts or youre attempting to play on the hardest difficulty, the expierience falls apart if you get someone who is too serious or not serious enough. Once an arguement breaks out your entire team has lost hope (usually). Thats why I only really play with my friends or computer players. So, if you can get a good team together this game is a blast.

Some campaigns can be a walkthrough, some an be a mile thorugh hell, and others still can have the wackiest stuff happen. With over 10 campaigns that change slighty(drop points, special infected spawns) with each playthrough it is going to be a while before you get bored with this title. The graphics are quite good as well and like with all source games, its heavily optimized and can be played on nearly any machine. Sometimes theres a little slowdown here and there on my laptop but it never drops below 20fps on the lowest settings. Crispy graphics make the blood and gore, and sometimes dismemberment, rather satisfying.

The number of wapons available to create such gore is nice and varied. Theres no two guns that do the exact same thing. You have your tier1 weapons and tier 2 weapons. I believe its at least 10+ guns available and a handful of meele weapons too, including a very shaun-of-the-dead cricket bat.

I must concede though after playing through the campaigns a few times it can get a little boring if you only play on the easiest difficulties. The randomness of friends and drops keeps things fresh for a bit, but between my career on the xbox and steam, I have trouble getting my friends to play L4D2 simply because of lack of campaigns. They do have the steam workshop for new campaigns, and it works 90% of the time, but the process of getting everyone in your party to find,download, and finding a server for the user created campaigns is somewhat daunting if you dont know what youre doing. Some of the Workshop maps are fun and inventive, others are just pandemonium. It really comes down to taste a that point. I prefer the official campaigns.

I Loved l4D2 and I still do. I just have it shelved at the moment because I guess I overplayed it. If you enjoy either FPS games or zombies at all this is a must play. If you like story-driven narritive, this is not for you. The narritive in the campaigns is weak, and not important at all to gameplay. This is good, bloody, mindless, zombie killin' fun.

Dead Space is a Horror/3rd person shooter. I think it should be stated first that this is by no means a survival/horror game. Throughtout the game you are armed to the teeth, even with ammo being limited it just means you have to be strategic with engagements, rather than avoiding encounters as you would in a game like Amnesia: Descent to darkness.
Dead Space takes place in a city-sized space ship where something has gone horribly wrong. The ship has gone dark after sending out a distress signal and our hero Issac Clark along with a small security detail is sent to investigate.
The main focus of this game can be summed up in 3 words "Atmosphere, Atmosphere, Atmosphere". The tone in this game is set wonderfully, and executed masterfully. Distant screams, jumping shadows, and dark hallways give a sense of impending doom throughout the campaign. Dispite my enthusiasm I have to admit this game can only give you proper chills if you allow it to-- it requires you to give it the proper horror game treatment. By that I mean it must be played no earlier than 1am, in a dark room, all alone, headphones on. You kind of have to immerse yourself. But if you let it, this game will wisk you away to a sci-fi world of terror and desperation on par with any other horror juggernaut. Now I'm done heaping praise.
Like I said, since you have plenty of guns the only real urgency you feel stems from ammo and supplies. It reminds me more of games like Resident Evil: Outbreak, where you have to choose to fight or run, rather than Doom 3 where youre supposed to annhilate everything in your way. As you progress, in order to increase difficulty the game kind of shifts it's focus from horror and atmosphere to gunning and being a 3rd person shooter. Though it never forgets the emphasis on atmosphere, it gets put on the backburner near the end.
The Gameply is solid, though takes a little bit of getting used to. This game plays very well on both mouse/keyboard as well as a gamepad. Wether you use an xbox controller or a PS3 controller the game doesnt miss a beat and you get a great control scheme either way. As is customary with any good PC game the layout is completely customizable. Things like hit detection I feel are good but can be sketchy under pressure. There are time where I wasnt sure if it was hit detection or my desperate spray of fire at an encroaching enemy, but i felt like some shots missed that should have hit. It could just mean I'm a terrible shot when im panicking.
As far as performace goes, this game runs wonderfully on my laptop which suprised me, seeing as how my laptop barely meets system requirements. Though, on both my laptop and my PC I opted for using v-sync because of the many flashing lights. And Rather than using the game's v-sync which killed my framerate, I found that if I used v-sync directly though Catalyst(radeon card) my frames stayed locked solid at 30fps.
If you like games where you have to run rather than fight, this game probably isnt for you. If you the kind of game where youre forced to make decisions based on ammo and supplies then this may be right for you.

On the playstation 2 I absolutely loved GTA:Vice city. Before I get into particulars i'll broad-stroke the premise. GTA: Vice city was launched for the PS2. It can best be described as a sandbox adventure game. Youre given various missons and objectives by people and advance the game by completing these missions. Theres not a whole lot of missions aside from the main story but who needs sidequests when you are wreaking havock at every turn?

A large part of this game is the fun you make for yourself. Walking into this I was very excited to relive some old memories with crispy graphics, tiny load times and nearly endless draw distance. What I found was just that, except for a few small details that ended up being big problems. Remember on the good ol' PS2 when you would boot up Vice City and you had the time to walk away, get some snacks, maybe use the bathroom and sit back down and only have to wait a few moments more for the initial load? No more! Load times and load zones are no longer an issue here.


So was pretty stoked. I couldnt wait to see all(or most) of vice city rendered as once in the highest of resolutions. And this game delivered that for me too. It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, that is, until I had to take control of the main character. Unfortunately, the controls dont translate well to mouse and ketboard. At first it wasnt a problem, I used a ps3 controller. There are too many commands that have to be mapped to too many buttons, it wont let you have the same controls that you did on the PS2 version. I tried many different control schemes and ideas but none worked the way I really wanted them to. Eventually I gave up.

There ARE programs and doodads that you can use that should give you a better expierience with the controls. Also, vice city is very playable as is, out-of-the-box. I just couldnt get comforable with any controll schemes I tried. If youre looking for a GTA game you can play on an older computer I'd reccomend GTA:San Andreas. It's slightly more easier to play on mouse and keyboard. If you are looking for a little bit of nostalgia, you would be better off booting up you PS2, and digging out your old copy.

When I say that I'd reccomend this game it's only to a small niche of people. Because I happen to fall in the niche I rather liked Universe Sandbox, though I can see where many people woud not. Universe Sandbox is pretty self explanatory in the title, its a astrophysics sandbox in which you can create and destroy solar systems, galaxys, or even galaxy clusters (if your computer is beefy enough) Many stats and attributes are tracked as you simulate the astral dance of heavenly bodies.

Things like density, spin, velocity, mass, and heat are all tracked and simulated to give you the most realistic expierience possible. Unfortunately, it doesnt get very realistic. My biggest gripe I would suppose is the physics. The game uses Eular math, or if you have a processing power Runge Kata. But eventually stable orbits will do someting completely random, sending a few planets and stars on random vectors straight out if your little "pitri dish". This doesnt bother me too much because it mostly only happens when it comes to simulating galaxies. On the solar system level it does quite well and it has enough options to accomodate nearly any computer's processing power. That is, if you can navigate the menus.

Theres lots of options and statistics for every celestial body and you can edit every fascet. the problem is, this creates a very confusing series of menus, with confusing abbreviations and volcabulary if you're not already familiar with scientific notation and units of measurement. If the menus were a bit more friendly I think it would open up this game to alot more people. The actual simulation field can be a bother to wrangle too. I found it sometimes likes to snap focus to nearly every other celestial body but the one I want to focus on. The "searchbar" at the top ended up being my best friend.

If youre like me, and you can wrangle the menus and put up with the sometimes sketchy simulation, it truely is a universe at your fingertips. This simulator will only take you as far as your imagination (or processor) will take you. Binary systems, rings around Earth -- have you ever wondered what it would look like if the earth had a ring then the moon crashed through it? The possiblities are more or less limitless, given your computer can handle the math. If youre into astronomy, physics or just enjoy space to any degree, this game is worth checking out.

Without an actual objectives or things to accomplish, this game falls short of actually being a game. It would be better described as an app. This one probably isnt right for the masses, but just right for the armchair astronomer in me.

A classic from the Playstation 1 era. This is one of the first RPG games I ever played and has always set the standard of what I expect from an RPG. It features turn based, but active combat, a fun and more-or-less easy to follow story, and decent characters and personalities though some border on the cliche. Finaly Fantasy 7 has a good amount of side quests and minigames that can eat up plenty of time. From snowboarding to breeding and racing chocobos the handful of side quests and metagames can keep you entertained for quite a while.

I found that, as with almost all RPGs I play, one of my favorite things to do is collect all the strongest magics and weapons. There are monsters you can encounter that are even stronger than the last boss at the end of the main story. On top of that there are magic abilities that, if you have the patience to level them up, can make the final boss a walk in the park. Getting these weapons and magics require a great deal of grinding though, which is someting I find to be rather offputting. Squeezing every last ounce of gameplay from this title will probably take you somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 hours if youre the occational gamer like me.

Since it's initial release the game has not really aged well. If youre looking for a top-notch Final Fantsy expierience I would point you to one of the newer titles. It's kind of hard to look at the old graphics in high resolution. To help this they have an "original graphics" mode for people like me. It keeps the display to 480x640, but without the inherit funnyness of a SDtv set you still see plenty of jaggies and protruding polygons. The graphics didnt stop me from playing through one of my old favorites though.

Another gripe I have about the age is the clunky controls when roaming about but it's nothing you cant get used to. The button layout can be a tad confusing on the keyboard. If you happen to have a gamepad it eases this considerably, but you're probably going to have to spend a moment remapping the default controls-- no biggie.

One of my favorite aspects about the steam version is the cloud saving. True: its usless if you dont have an internet connection where you want to play. But I like the ability to play on my PC, go wherever, and pick the game right back up on my laptop. Aside from that there is also a "character booster" if you get stuck...or want to be a badass. I have not used the feature mainly because I forgot my square-enix login stuff moments after i made it.

Its not particularly weak in any areas but isnt as deep in character skill devlopment as I would like sometimes. Rather than molding your character(s) into what you want them to be, you have to play to each character's strengths-- again, no biggie.

Theres no voiceover, which is a huge plus for me. The story is good, characters are likeable, the gameplay is solid, and its good on length. It's probably 20 hours on the game clock on a casual playthough if you ignore endgame badass equipment, skills, and sidequests. All-in-all its worth it if it's on sale, but if you just want a stroll down memory lane you might be better off digging out the old PS1.