Recent reviews by AngryBoz68

A standalone expansion for SR IV, Gat out of Hell lets you make the Devil's playground your own. Satan has kidnapped the President and the player as Johnny Gat or Kinzie Kensington are going to hell to get him back. What is Gat's plan to get the boss back? -- Simple! Shoot the Devil in the face!

If you enjoyed Saints Row IV then you should enjoy this game. Gat out of Hell is a trimmed-down version of SR IV with a hellish theme. You get a new city with New Hades that weighs-in approximately half the size of the Steelport map. Super powers make a return but have different elements to reflect the new setting. A new flight mechanic is introduced and it feels real good. Many existing weapons also make a comeback, but new weapons reflecting the 7 deadly sins are introduced, which are very amusing and fun to use.

Mission structure is somewhat different than previous games. There are no scripted story missions. You are introduced to 4 allies which you gain favor by completing side activities. Finishing all of the activities for an ally will usually grant a new weapon. The completion of side activities will also leave a trail of destruction that will gain the attention of the big red man himself. A progress meter will fill as the player completes more activities, and once the meter is full, Satan himself will finally show-up and confront the player. There are some good cutscenes as the player is introduced to allies and completes their tasks. Story specific cutscenes also play at certain points as the progress meter fills which includes an amazing musical score. So the game mainly plays as an open world sandbox where the story ends after completing a certain amount of side activities. Surprisingly enough, once the game ends the player gets a choice of 5 different endings. This is merely a choice that results in a cutscene and none of the actions during the game will influence the outcome.

There is a lot to do as I spent about 20 hours completing the game to 100%, but one can actually complete the main story in 5 to 10 hours. Additional time can be spent attempting to complete all of the numerous challenges in the game so the $20 price tag seems fair. The numerous side activities are a lot like those from SR IV but with a twist to fit the theme. A few new activities are also introduced to mix things up a little.

There are a few downsides that may disappoint fans of the series though...

You get to play as Gat or Kinzie, which is fantastic, but there is no customization for these characters at all. There is also no weapon skin customization (though you can thankfully still upgrade weapons and powers). In fact the only customization that you get in this game is the ability to import your unique "boss" from SR IV, but you only get to see the boss in a select few cutscenes.

There is no licensed soundtrack like in the other games. There is also no special celebrity guest appearance this time. I guess the $20 price point made these features prohibitive but it would have been awesome to see something like Ozzy Osbourne show up in hell as one of the four allies and some heavy metal from Black Sabbath blaring in the background.

Other features cut are vehicle upgrades and garages. The player can still hijack vehicles, but the variety of those are few, and vehicles cannot be stored for retrieval or upgrade later. I suppose these were lesser used features anyway since the super powers rendered them mostly useless.

Another minor quibble is that there is little difference between playing Gat or Kinzie other than mainly appearance. The player may easily switch between either at the Ultor building and there is no separate upgrade path. So the choice is mainly a cosmetic one. Although both Gat and Kinzie has their own set of 30 audio collectibles and the player has to be playing as the respective character to find those collectibles.

I found the game to be rather entertaining as a SR IV expansion. Definitely worth a look if you are a fan of Saints Row IV and want a little more of that kind of craziness.

Developed by 2K Australia in cooperation with Gearbox, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! fills the gap between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 by taking the player to Pandora's moon Elpis and telling the story of Handsome Jack's rise from lowly software developer to CEO of Hyperion and his transformation from being a somewhat likeable jerk trying to save Pandora's moon into a complete jerkwad.

Players of Borderlands 2 will feel right at home as the Pre-Sequel uses the same engine and interface as Borderlands 2. This can give an impression that the game is more of the same and those impressions would not be entirely incorrect. The Pre-Sequel does a lot of things safely and does not attempt to stray too far from the traditional Borderlands formula of rediculous humor, face-shooting action and lots of loot. Along with a shortened experience, this makes the impression of a very long expansion pack for Borderlands 2.

Even with the similarities, the game does offer quite a bit of new content and features to the Borderlands experience:

We get a new story which details the events between Borderlands and Borderlands 2 and get to see Jack transform from a fairly likeable guy to a complete jerk by the end. The story plays on moral ambiguity and veterans of the franchise may find themselves actually having a liking of the "villains" and a despising of the "heroes" from the other games. The story definitely plays on matters of morality and perspective that can have the players questioning who are the true heroes of the series. Voicing for many of the moon's inhabitants is done from an Australian perspective which makes the environment feel like a "Land Up Over" Pandora. There is a lot of Australian humor embedded in the game, especially in the various side-quests which can be a plus or minus depending on whether one "gets" the jokes. The ending of the main story was a tad perplexing but was a clear setup for the events coming in Borderlands 3.

There are 4 new vault hunters in the Pre-Sequel and they are all characters which fans of the franchise will recognize. Claptrap is finally a playable character and his skill tree is very unpredictable and fun in a Claptrap sort of way! Wilhelm the Enforcer has a pair of drones named Wolf and Saint which provide a balance of offensive and defensive capabilities. Wilhelm also has a cybernetic tree which actually changes the character's appearance and voice based on the selected abilities. Athena the Gladiator is a bit of a tankish class with a shield that can absorb attacks and be thrown at enemies. Nisha the Lawbringer has a gunslinging capability that works much like an aimbot and grants a lot of weapon buffs. In addition, the player characters are now fully voiced and have a part in regular conversation with NPCs outside of combat which is a very nice change.

New weapon types have also made it into the game. Cryo weapons replace slag from Borderlands 2 and you can now freeze (and shatter) your opponents. Laser weapons are also included and are a replacement for e-tech weapons from Borderlands 2. Lasers come in different elements and varieties like bolts, beams and continuous beams. I found the continuous beams to be especially powerful effects and favored those weapons. Lasers generally come with an incidiary elemental type, but could also less-frequently take the form of other elements. In addition to the new weapon types, an upgrade system in the form of a grinder permits the player to discard 3 weapons in an effort to get a single weapon of better quality or attributes. This grinder requires some experimentation to determine which recipe of discarded weapons are required for a desired outcome and will probably appeal to those who like to experiment and tinker in-game.

The low-gravity environment on the moon is perhaps the biggest feature change to make it into the game. The low-gravity environment extends jumping greatly and gives the game a more vertical combat mechanic. Artifacts are now replaced with O2 kits which supply the characters with oxygen on the moon's surface. This adds an O2 management feature to the game where the player needs to be mindful of O2 levels to avoid suffocation, but some of that O2 can be sacrificed to allow for extended double-jumps and the ability to do a ground slam attack which will damage enemies in a radius. Overall this feature felt pretty good and oxygen management was not too much of a burden as there were plenty of places to refresh the player's oxygen supplies before they ran out. Players who do not want to worry about suffocation can play as Claptrap, who does not need to breath, but can still equip an O2 kit for the advantages of double-jumps and ground slam attacks.

There are some interesting changes that appear to have made it into the game at the requests of fans. The enemies appear to scale more gradually than they did in Borderlands 2 which helps with difficulty spikes between playthroughs of the game. Another benefit is that vending machines now finally scale to the player's level! More frequent legendary drops and legendary gear in the vendors should be a welcome change for many. Also, the appearance of more legendary gear in the vendors has a side benefit of actually making money important again. Many of these changes harks back to the days of the original borderlands and reverts back some of the less popular changes that made it into Borderlands 2.

There are a few annoying items that I experienced while playing the game:

Veterans of Borderlands 2 will notice the lack of a couple of features in the Pre-Sequel, most notably the ability to do a reset of mission progress as well as the ability to reset challenge progress. I personally find these omissions confusing since they were already part of Borderlands 2 and the inclusion of those features do much to extend replayability of the game. I only hope that these features will be added into the game via a future patch.

Another annoyance is that the raid boss is an upscaled version of the same boss that was encountered at the end of the main story. This feels like a pretty lazy raid encounter and I am hoping that more creative raid content will be included with future updates.

I did find a few bugs during my first playthrough of the game. I had a crash to desktop at character creation of all things, though I could not reproduce that crash and did not experience any others during the course of the game. There are some small graphical issues like clipping and some of the laser effects remaining on the screen when they should have long dissapeared. There was a door to the first boss that would not open for me since it was waiting for other players, but I was running solo at that time. I was able to get the door to open by simply backing away and reapproaching the door, so there appears to be a slight glitch with that as well. Other than the single crash I did not experience
anything completely game-breaking.

Overall the game is a competent, although brief, entry in the Borderlands franchise. Fans of the series may have a feeling that the Pre-Sequel is much-of-the-same and does not offer enough to warrant the $60 price of entry. DLC and content patches may help fill in the gaps where the game is lacking, but I am not one that approves of the practice of using post-release DLC to fix issues with the release version of a game. The game is definitely worth a look for existing fans of the franchise, though I would recommend getting it during a sale if possible.

I have not played Painkiller since it first came out in 2004 and thought I would give this remake a try. It seems that Painkiller really has not changed all that much since I last remember playing it.

Hell & Damnation keeps the spirit of the original gameplay and adds some new features, such as an upgrade to Unreal 3, new story line, and Steamworks integration. Unfortunately it also seems to have a bit of a downgrade in the amount of campaign content. I remember Painkiller having twice as many levels as Hell & Damnation. What has happened is that half of the original levels were chosen to be included into the campaign and then the remainder were added-in via DLC. This really takes a lot of the value out of the game as the original was twice as long and less expensive.

The game has stuck to it's original formula with little change. The epic boss fights are still there. Guns still feel great and the alt-fire modes give plenty of ways to dispatch hell's minions and the heavy metal soundtrack is as heavy hitting as the weapons. The levels appear mostly the same as they were before and little has changed other than a few minor things here-and-there.

I have also noticed a change in the voicing of Daniel Garner in this game. It appears that John St. John (of Duke Nukem fame) does the voice acting for Daniel in Hell & Damnation. I kept expecting to hear Duke one-liners every time I heard him talk!

Overall the game was fun to play though I am dissapointed with the decision to remove half of the original content and repackage it as DLC. I was fortunate to get Hell & Damnation as part of a bundle deal and purchased the DLC during a Steam sale at 80% off. I would recommend Hell & Damnation if you can get it on sale. Otherwise if you don't mind missing the visual upgrade to the Unreal 3 engine and the Steamworks bits, then Painkiller Black Edition is a better deal since it contains all of the original Painkiller content at less than the H&D price.

I have never played a game from the legendary writer Suda51 before but I can definitely say that this was an interesting and unique experience based on the time I have spent so far.

You play the role as Mondo Zappa and take assignments from an agency tasked with executing dangerous supernatural individuals around the world. Mondo primarily fights with a katana but also has a cybernetic left arm that can be utilized as a number of weapons.

Killer is Dead displays an orgy of style and attitude that I have not seen in any game that I have played. The visuals are of an amazing cell-shaded design. The combat is simple but satisfying. The story is both rediculous and bizarre. For some reason all of this comes together and mostly works.

For the most part the story appeared to be without direction. I executed seemingly random targets and had a small feeling that the writers wanted to get to the point with the story, but it was just not developing. Not until the last few chapters do things finally start coming together and then the story gets very predictable and cliche.

Combat relied mostly with katana attacks and block/dodge combos. Mondo does have a cybernetic left arm that has various combat utility such as ranged attacks and other functions to mix things up a little. Combat was very smooth flowing and relied a lot on use of the blocking and dodging to maintain combos.

The one part of this game that really shined were the boss battles. These were some of the best that I have seen in any game that I have ever played. Bosses had a lot of personality and they were varied and fun to fight. Especially the final boss encounter which is probably one of the better final bosses I have fought in a game. I would have to say the bosses were the highlight of the game and everything else in between was simply filler material to make you wait for the next boss.

The game also had a lot of side activities that could be played to mix things up a little and obtain some needed upgrades to help out with the main story. These had a lot of variety and were mostly good and were fun distractions. However the thing that irked me the most were the gigolo side missions. The gigolo missions were simply a mini-game were Mondo would have to ogle female targets with the goal of them not noticing and scoring a date with them. Playing these missions were very uncomfortable when the goal of the game is to peer at the lady bits without the lady noticing. These missions are optional but some of the coolest upgrades for Mondo's cybernetic arm are gated behind these gigolo missions. The gigolo missions could have been designed so much better, and the idea had a lot of potential, but unfortunately KiD caters to the lowest common denominator with their depiction of women with this feature.

Overall I had some decent fun with this game. Aside from the horrible gigolo missions and the somewhat bland story, the game was quite entertaining. The boss fights were worth the price of admission alone and if you enjoy action games with really weird and stylistic narratives then I would recommend giving this one a try.

Shadow Warrior is a retro-inspired reboot of the original Shadow Warrior classic from 1997.

Story is pretty well-written for a game of this type. The humor is light-hearted and witty and avoids being overly immature. The banter between Lo Wang and Hoji is excellent and the game has enough great "Wang" jokes to fill a book.

The game has a lot of content. There are 17 large, but linear levels with a good amount of secrets and easter eggs to discover. The campaign took me roughly 20 hours to complete on normal difficulty. Once you get through the campaign there are options that open up for an EX playthrough where you get to playthrough again and keep all of your upgrades as well as an Expert playthrough where you start from scratch and get no savepoints mid-level. There was also a free Survival Mode added in by the developers post-release so there is definitely a lot of value here for the money.

Combat flowed very smooth and was nicely varied. Shadow Warrior follows a Serious Sam style gameplay where enemies can come in large groups and cover is largely irrelevant. You get a good number of weapons added to your arsenal as you progress through the game and can carry all of them with you. The combat also has a fantastic melee element with the katana that you start the game with. I found the katana to be the main weapon of choice throughout the game, as it seemed a bit overpowered compared to the guns, and the "Kill Bill" style dismemberments and decapitations were very satisfying.

There is also a nice progression and upgrade system that adds even more to the combat system. You can train skills and obtain KI powers that allow Lo Wang to move faster, heal himself better and gain special combat abilities and special combos. You can also upgrade each of the games weapons to make them even more effective.

Overall I was surprised at how good this game was. It managed to sufficiently modernize the classic Shadow Warrior while keeping true to the old-school FPS style gameplay. In this regard Shadow Warrior was able to accomplish what Duke Nukem Forever was not able to. If you are a fan of old-school, fast paced FPS action with a satirical sense of humor then I highly recommend this game.

This is definitely a game that is made for South Park fans. Even though the game is rather short, has little variety in the player classes and is light on RPG mechanics, these shortcomings are more than made-up with the very well-written story, excellent voice acting, well-timed satire and faithfulness to the TV series. I would have to say this game is among the best license adaptations I have ever seen.

If you are not a South Park fan, easily disgusted or offended, or are looking for a deep RPG experience then you may want to wait for a sale or pass on this one. If you are a fan of the series this is a must-have experience that cannot be missed.

On a final note, this game is also the definitive Fart Simulator. Be ready to FART. ON. EVERYTHING.

As my first entry into the Tomb Raider franchise, I found this reboot a very well-crafted game. It was very apparent to me that a lot of time and care was put into the making of this excellent game.

The visual effects were stunning. Cutscenes were directed very well and provided for a lot of great screen shot moments. Character animations were realistic and played smoothly.

The writing was done pretty well for an Origin story. The plot mostly takes a survivor story spin with a small amount of adventure thrown in. The story is linear, though once you get access to fast travel, you can go back and get collectibles you may have missed earlier. The game took me roughly 20 hours to complete on normal difficulty settings. Voice acting was also very good. I really enjoyed seeing Lara starting out so green and inexperienced and then grow into the seasoned adventurer that she eventually becomes. The game is very tough on the young Lara and I could not help but feel bad for the character as she gets battered and bruised repeatedly throughout the story.

Combat takes a cover shooter approach. The game does provide some small amount of stealth activities to take out enemies silently but few options exist to stealth past encounters entirely. There is a simple progression system that allows Lara to aquire skills that improves combat and survival. There is also a system that allows upgrading and improvements to weapons that Lara acquires throughout the game. I found the progression to be extremely well-paced throughout the linear plotline, much like the Arkham series of games. In addition to the shooting, there were a good number of well-placed QTE activities that mixed things up a little. The maps were very nicely done and made full use of all dimensions to provide for lots of platforming opportunities. The game auto-saved progress regularly and had very generous checkpointing so that you will not have to redo much at all after a death.

I only had a couple of issues with the game overall...

There were a few crashes as I played through the game. Especially if I ALT-TAB frequently. My system is well above the recommended specs but found that reducing settings helped a little with the sudden crashes. The game still ran very smooth when my settings were maxed-out but those occasional crashes did get annoying.

For an action/adventure type game, it was a bit heavy on the action and a little light on the adventure. Not quite what I would normally expect from a genre that is heavily inspired by Indiana Jones. Shooters are one of my favorite types of games but this one felt a little too "shooty" for my tastes. I was not keeping a tally, but Lara would have claimed a body count the size of a small army by the time I completed the game. Boss encounters were also very lacking. I would have liked to have seen more tombs that had something to do other than simple physics-based puzzles to complete and ways to complete more sections of the game through stealthy non-lethal means.

One other minor complaint are the death animations. I already had a hard time seeing Lara put through some of the tortures of this adventure, but a few of the death animations were a little over-the-top. Not sure if getting impaled through the face was really necessary after failing an action event.

Overall I was very surprised and pleased by this game. I am hoping that we will see further adventures for this rebooted series with the same attention to quality.

A very good video game representation of the G1 Transformers. The single player campaign has a strong plot which plays out a bitter war between the Autobots and Decepticons during the final moments of the planet Cybertron.

Game primarily playes like a 3rd person corridor shooter. Game was executed very well so the weapon and movement controls feel really good. Animations were well done and the robot to vehicle transitions look really good. The single player campaign will take roughly 10 hours or so on regular difficulty and consists of 15 chapters. The player does not get to choose which Transformer character they play through the game with the campaign regularly featuring a different character between chapters. Characters will switch between Autobot and Decepticon depending on which part of the story the player is currently playing and the game appears to feature equal time between the two factions. Difficulty on normal settings was neither too easy or difficult, but there were times that were a good challenge. Fortunately the checkpoint system was done well enough that you will not have to redo too much after defeats.

Many of the fan favorite characters are featured as playable or ally, and the inclusion of others like Metroplex, the Combaticons, Insecticons and the Dinobots were very welcome. Both the voice acting and the soundtrack were extremely well done. This helped create a good feeling of chemistry between the characters and sets the tone of the game.

The game does have a multiplayer feature which I have tried only briefly. It is cool to create a customized Transformer to do battle against or with other players. I understand that cheating does happen quite regularly but I am hopeful that this will not hurt the experience too badly. I will review this feature further as I play it more.

I had a lot of fun with this game and highly recommend it to those who are G1 Transformer fans.

At first I was a bit hesitant to play this game because I don't typically like fantasy RPG themed games. I do like games that have deep and mature narratives. I also like games with complex combat mechanics. I heard that this game was very good at these things, so I decided to give it a try.

The story is very good. It is also very complex so it is important to pay attention to the dialog. Player choices definitely have an impact on the game world and many choices are morally ambiguous which tie-in well to the mature theme of the story. What impressed me the most was how much impact player choice dynamically altered the game world and the direction of the story. The game has 8 different endings based on the player's decisions. This is also the only game that I have ever played that completely alters the main quest line depending on these choices. This means that you will not see every main story quest, characters and locations unless you play the game through multiple times. Many games that change the world based on choices usually do so using trickery that gives you the "illusion" of choice. The developers of this game actually took the time to create all of the extra story content instead of using tricks and this gives the Witcher 2 a ton of replayability.

The combat system in this game is also very deep and challenging. You will carry a steel sword to take care of humanoid opponents and you will carry a silver sword to deal with monsters. Knowing when to switch is important to dealing proper damage to your target. Combat also requires proper preparation so the player will need to know how and when to use magical signs, place traps, drink potions, oil swords and use bombs and other Witcher tricks to get the job done. Simply wading into the combat only slashing away with a sword will often times get you killed. Combat can take some time to get used to and is definitely a refreshing departure from simply auto targeting and mashing a single button.

Visuals are very impressive and it is very apparent that the developers took a lot of time in creating the environments for the game. Music is outstanding and the score sets the tone appropriately.

One of the few downsides that I can think of is the disparity of the difficulty levels. Normal difficulty can be daunting with the complex combat mechanics and is a bit harder than the normal difficulty level of similar games. Easy is a nod to RPG beginners, but is so easy that you can ignore most of the combat mechanics and simply survive every encounter by using only the swords. The only other downside that I had with the game was related to map design. I found navigation on some of the maps to be overly complicated and I spent a lot of time simply wandering about trying to find a way to get to certain points on the map. Other than these two small quibbles I found the game design to be very solid and entertaining.

Lots of content in this game. My playthrough took about 40 hours doing most of the side activities, and I mostly took my time without rushing things. Additional playthroughs would be required to see the other 7 endings and to play the other story paths leading up to those endings. You can easily get hundreds of hours out of this game if you wanted to explore all of these options so lots of replay value as I mentioned earlier.

I highly recommend this game. I understand that the Witcher 3 is supposed to expand to a much more open world environment and have even more non-linear story options. After playing Witcher 2 I am looking forward to playing the upcoming sequel when it comes out.

The Walking Dead Season 2 continues a short time after the events of Season 1, but this time, you play the role of Clementine instead of Lee.

Season 2 continues with the same cell-shaded art style and narrative-driven formula that Telltale has used with Walking Dead Season 1. There were some minor interface changes that improved the experience and felt very good once getting used to them. Also Season 2 did appear to make it a point to get right into the action with a little less focus on the down time. The tone of the game remained very much like that of Season 1. Even though you are playing as the 11 year old Clementine, Telltale did not hold any punches in the story and many of the situations that you are placed in can be very unsettling. I could definitely see the difference in the character, and how she has grown as a survivor, with all of the innocence of a normal child her age long gone. Just like in Season 1 you just don't know whether the living or the dead are the bigger threat to you, and there are a couple of really heartbreaking moments right out of the gate.

Decisions from Season 1 and the 400 Days DLC are imported if you choose and the events of Season 2 will be altered based on those prior choices. While Season 2 can be started without playing the prior season, I highly recommend doing Season 1 first so that you have a better understanding of what is happening and to have your choices imported rather than being randomly selected for you.

And like Season 1, if you are an achievement hunter, it seems that the achievements will come simply by playing through the game, so it is very easy to get 100%.

The music sets the mood for the game appropriately. And dang, that song "In the Water" that is played during the end credits...

Anxiously looking forward to the upcoming episodes for this season.