Recent reviews by El Chico Gordo

This game could be fun. And honestly for that price there is not much you can do wrong.
The mechanic itself feels like a Roguelike-Light-Version of Monaco. Run around, try to steal as much as you can and leave.
Unlike Monaco you don't have different characters with special skills. Instead you can invest your money in equipment. This in theory is nice but it doesn't work very nicely since you lose all you have when getting caught.
And this is what somehow spoils the game since you start with nothing. So you have to enter these 12 locations or what again taking all you can, level up and try the heist where you got busted. This makes things so repetitive and sometimes frustrating. Especially since there is some RNG involved. Do you find the loot quickly everything is fine. But if you have bad luck there are so many obstacles in your way that it can be hard to achieve the goal.
I think this game would have been better if instead of a moderately entertaining story between the heists you would feel the progress. The mentioned Monaco does this by adding characters with skills but you could give the story a progress. Say after robbing the bank he has enough money for night vision goggles. And from that moment on you would have these. This would motivate to continue and retry if failed. But I don't like playing 10 heists just to start all over at 0 since I made a wrong step.
Still, I got this game for 69 Cents. This can still be fun. Unlike Monaco you can play only with 2 players max but it can be an entertaining couch coop game if you are in need for that. For anyone else I suggest you give Monaco a try instead.

After Battlefield 3 I swore I would never buy an EA game ever again.
Well... I did it again. But unlike most EA games this is actually not that bad.

Sadly it is not great either leaving me with a very mixed feeling.

The story has some great moments, but then again gets superficial again - especially since every Star Wars game contains the same elements over and over.

What about the actors? Well, some are great, others feel so terrible. They even casted actors like Forest Whitaker just to let him speak 10 half-hearted sentences. Then again some actors are pretty unknown but do pretty good work (and others are really terrible but at least less known actors). So what shall I think of that?

And the game itself? Well it is fine that you unlock your forces. And it is actually neatly staged since you start as a complete beginner but get your Jedi training (mostly in flashbacks) back when you need it. That feels nice and gives the protagonist something to grow.

But then again this leads to such an incredible amount of backtracking that I even wish I would play Dead Space again. Seriously. You run around each planet over and over again. The maps are so terribly built that even the "short cuts" don't really help. And your "quick map" tries to help you but at best leaves you questioning where to go next. Non-linear maps are nice but this is really confusing at times.

The same goes for the mechanics. It is a platformer but at times it can be pretty frustrating when you need to walk on the walls jumping around just in order to fall down at the end of the track. And this is repeating many times - just like many other gameplay mechanics like slipping down a hill when things become a "on rails shooter" at times. But there are fresh moments, too like when you hop into an AT AT even though only for 10 minutes.

So yea, you see the whole game leaves you with some pretty mixed feelings. I guess it comes down to how much you like Star Wars in the first place.
If you enjoy the universe, some light saber fighting, some force use (pulling, pushing people etc.) and you still don't feel bored by "the young apprentice and the old master" or "I was like you but I gave in to the dark side" plots this might be something for you actually. The story is neat, your "companion" robot is actually cool and building up a relationship that still gives a better story than most modern Star Wars movies.

However, if you just want a platformer with some good puzzles, the modern Lara Croft games might be better story/acting as well as better puzzles. So it is up to you what you prefer (or what is cheaper).

I for one got this one in a sale and was moderately entertained for about 15 hours it took to complete it with most extras. So you can give it a try.

Wow, what a game.
This game is truely a more modern version of SWAT 4 back in the old days. Better graphics, modern gameplay, and really great sound design. Also great voice acting. There are no characters really talking to you but you get the 911 phone calls, informants briefing etc. Just listen to these phone calls of students reporting a high school shooting and you can't sleep tonight!
But what makes this game really good is the intense gameplay. Almost each of the missions gave me PTSD - in a good way I guess. So don't play it if you have heart problems.
Don't get me wrong. It is no horror game, no Resident Evil shockers, no monsters... not in the classic understanding at least. But this game is intense.
Fighting religious fanatics, drug cartels, school schootings and bomb threats you will see dead children (and even a dog), torture and political assassination... you have it all and it surely is graphic violence and gloomy setting. So after each mission I needed a therapy - but that makes it so intense. No quick "let's play a mission or two", no "3D Shooter fun play".

Every mission is about 30 minutes (some shorter and always depending on your play style and circumstances - no idle time for bomb threats, you know!). But you might repeat them sometimes - depending on your motivation for finding all evidences or having a good rating.
But this is no casual shooter. Don't expect a Counter Strike. There is no running, no jumping and one shot can kill you (as much as anyone else in the game).

If you want a smooth shooter game don't buy this! This is a tactics game! There were moments when I assumed a finished mission just to get shot in the back on my way out. And not only that, there is a lot that will go wrong. I don't want to spoil things but chances are high you will kill some civilians in one way or another. So if you want to feel good after playing a match in the evening... you won't. But that makes the game so intense. You are really fully focused, hoping to survive.

This gets even better by the nice gunplay and ambiente. A flashbang going off next to you really frightens you - trust me I played many shooters, I'm not easy to scare! The game is focused on immersion. No (big) HUD showing remaining bullets, no health bar. When you are shot it takes time to orient (sometimes this ends deadly for you, too). Also reloading your weapon just swaps the magazine - no bullet reloading like in other games. So the first missions you end up with 5 half empty magazines because you are used to press "R" after each shot. This really tries to immerse you and the great environmental storytelling makes it even better. (No, you don't have to walk around reading notes and emails. This is a SWAT game! But what you see and hear is sometimes really the darkest abyss of humanity!)

There is some meta gaming (bad mission ratings only makes your AI team mates unconcentrated but the cosmetics to "unlock" are not better weapons or so). But this is of no big interest when playing this game. It is no RPG, you have the same equipment, the same weapons to select from start to end and you don't see any weapon stats you can compare.

Regarding the Multiplayer you should know that this can currently be played only without AI. So if you have no (4 other) friends you might want to wait a while (or play with random people). Because having fewer friends to play with just gives a disadvantage since your team is small. This is not necessarily bad but probably not what you have in mind. Still, keep in mind this game is tactics. Even alone without AI you can win this game - just need to focus all the time.
There is no way to fill up the team with AI players like it works in the story campaign. And there is no PvP! You will always fight against an asymmetric AI world. (Not that this would be fun otherwise! This is no Counter Strike!). The AI is not really smart sadly and there are surely some balancing problems when enemies just shoot you in the head while your AI team member just stands next to you doing nothing. But still the AI works out most of the time when you know how to command them. This is done (like in SWAT 4) by the usual commands like "breach the door", "cover this area"...

The singleplayer campain consists of 18 missions. So in about 10 hours you might be finished (unless you are a completionist trying to get maximum score in each mission). This might not sound much but it were the most intense 10 hours in recent time.

So yea, this game is great if you are hard boiled. Give it a try (or wait until they fixed the Multiplayer and the glitches the AI still has). I for sure had the most intense hours in a long time. Worth buying for sure!

This game is sometimes compared as a combination of "Metal Gear Solid" and "Hot Shots". It is true.
Sure this game is not the most beautiful one, but it redeems a lot with the fun gameplay and even better dialogues executed with brilliant voice acting.
This game is played through in about 8-9 hours and I enjoyed every single second of it.
The boss fights can be tricky so if you only want to enjoy the completely ironical persiflage of 80's military movies (from said Hot Shots to Full Metal Jacket) you should play it on easy mode.
Take your time, let guards talk while you explore the levels. This game really shines on this.
If you can live with pixel art and want some entertaining hours, this game will be for you. I would even say it is better than Unepic, which was fun already but not so much of a parody as this one.
Give it a try!

"Wow, that end is really cool!"

So, now that I wrote it and the evil spirit won't kill me, let's come to the review.
This game appears as a "boring" classical jump & run RPG from the 90s. And parts of it are actually pretty close. This however is not it's strength. Instead within this game you have a whole lot of pop culture references. The game tries to shine in this and you have all the things you expect from Star Trek to Star Wars when he pretends to be people from this universe when talking to others. This goes even as far as asking another guy in the dungeon what that metal bar in front of him might be. The character is named admiral Ackbar and ... well you might have an idea what he says.
So within these 15 hours or so you run through a dungeon filled with lots of typical roleplaying characters, pass by Yoda and Dr. Zoidberg from Futurama up to making stupid Chuck Norris jokes. All done with pretty decent voice acting.
But don't get me wrong, the game is no perfect in all aspects. Some chores are pretty exhaustive when you have to find something but you don't know where, running through the whole map. Or when you jump in the water and have leeches sucking your health. The game doesn't tell you to look in your inventory to find them there (and kill em). Instead you just die a few times before you find out. The game is full of these moments since you sometimes just have to find out the best solution. Especially since it gives enough freedom to pick different character classes from the usual sword fighting tank to the mage you have different options to solve the fights (and limited puzzles).
So is this game worth is? Well, not if you expect a full fledged modern RPG. But if you can live with the pixel art, lots of pop culture references and some cheesy jokes, you might enjoy the game.

Neat fun game with lots of backtracking.
It starts a bit like Stardew Valley with pirates when you suddenly strand on a "cursed" island with your friends. And as always it is up to you to make everyone leave the island again.
So you run around, collect items and fight ghost pirates in order to break the curse and leave after around 12-14 hours.
Sadly though, the staging of the game is a little boring where the uninteresting parts are repetitive and the fun ones too short.
On paper it all makes fun but ends up entertaining moderately.
Let me give you an example. You are cooking meals for gaining energy (same as Stardew Valley). However you have to discover the recipes first. But it is not that you add ingredients and see if something matches. Instead you have to pick a slot for recipes and add ingredients. If they don't match, it fails. So it could be the ingredients make up a perfect meal - just that you selected the wrong random recipe. And adding insult to injury, even the wrong order of ingredients fails the recipe. So you end up cooking two or three of the 30+ potential ones and make do with them.
Same repetitive gameplay goes with many things from discovering the island walking back and forth over and over again, planting and watering, chopping trees etc. etc..
The discovery of the island is somewhat entertaining and you even have a limited building mechanic since your friends need homes and furniture which - when built - gives a bonus for you (e.g. the fisherman gives you a bonus on fishing when you build him a hut and a bed. Still, this is pure numerical value. You build something until you find the right thing he wants (the furniture has different styles like resort, industrial, baroque...). Same goes for making gifts to them since they only tell you how they want their furniture when they "like" you enough. So you need to find items on the islands they like.
This again is pure numerical gameplay. So you collect come pearls, interesting seeds or stones etc. then you go to the people and give them something leading to a positive or negative response. But this is completely emotionless looking like: go to farmer, give farmer blue pearl -> rejected. give farmer interesting wood -> rejected. give farmer nice plant -> accepted -> relationship increased.
Do this with 12 people all the time, build their homes and get buffs.
So the whole game feels a bit to technical to me. Still it is fun and entertaining even though the story is not very sophisticated or emotional touching. Nothing new to this game but for someone who wants a few relaxing hours of building and discovering this can be nice for a discount price.

Neat little city builder with a nice oriental touch.
Leaves you a bit unprepared at first but you quickly learn the mechanics.

TL;DR: Unless you did that already or you really hate RoboCop, buy "RoboCop : Rogue City" instead. It's very similar but far better!

---

So what do you get? Critics don't like that game so much and it is obvious why. Though the game does many things right, they are all not excellent in their regard.
The story revolves around you being a resistance soldier playing through the usual elements of a "Fallout + Robots" world. This looks nice, but brings not many new elements to it.
The characters are okay, but look and talk like aforementioned Fallout etc.
The level design is neat and you get some of the well known Terminator vibes including the bunker / base you saw in some Terminator movie flashbacks.
The game itself plays like a shooter with the usual weapons from a shotgun and rifle up to tripmines and the famous plasma gun.
Playtime was around 12 hours for me but you should know that I'm a map maid cleaning everything and doing all the side missions I can.
You also get the usual RPG elements like skill points and crafting...

So yes, the game is not great but if you are like me, remembering the old movies (and this game endorses only the first two, ignoring the period when terminator became a mess). Sadly to me the Terminators quickly became cannon fodder. Where one has respect for the first 1-2 hours one quickly realizes they are shot like in any other shooter which to me destroyed the emotional connection. It's not like the T-800 is the "boss" but something that becomes common at around mid game. They make do with that by adding bigger robots and that is fun at times since you will eventually blow them up. And you better do because this game has no real save functionality as you would want it. So when you die you sometimes have to replay a wile from the last checkpoint. This can feel like a chore but was never reeeally annoying.

So yea, I was entertained. But you should consider buying RoboCop : Rogue City instead. It is by far the better game with better story, graphics and gameplay. All the things you have in this game here are done far better there. The skill tree in Terminator is very basic and mostly numerical (e.g. +10% more damage). RoboCop has new gameplay mechanics there. The characters here are a bit generic. In RoboCop you have the ones from the movie. Plus many gameplay mechanics are just a stub here. The catch and throw mechanic you have in RoboCop (e.g. pick up a gangster and throw him) got added in the later update in Terminator. The list goes on.
So even though I feel RoboCop was one of the best games of 2023, I can only suggest this game here for fans of the franchise or those who finished RoboCop already with the need of "more of the same but a little worse". Still, since I had fun in the end, my "mediocre" rating gets a positive one. You might want to wait for a discount perhaps.

Yes, yes! It's a game from EA. I knew it and I deserve your shame. Save your breath. I know it is all my fault... my terrible, terrible mistake!

But just in case, my dear, my innocent Steam gamer who never bought a game from this company named "Electronic Arts", let an old man tell you some wise words.

You should know, there is a reason for so much hate for them. Not only mine. I mean all the suffering, all the pain and sadness this company has brought us... No miracle it was announced the "Worst Company in America" before.
You may ask what happened? Well... I swore to never buy their games again but look what happened!

I knew it and I still bought Battlefield 3 because I forgot how horrible the EA experience can be. I guess this game is the gamer's equivalent of a nice and painful STD you get and forget about after a while. So all that's left is the memory of a night you finally had some fun.
The next time you are confronted with this you tend to ignore your parent's warning and jump right into it again. So yes, let this be my confession: I got EA ... again! And I regret it.

What I got this time was a game that didn't even want to launch, claiming instead my activation key is invalid.
People suggested some hacks and fishy downloads from the internet without success. The official help is a 500 post long thread on the EA website, basically telling me the Steam version doesn't work any more. (No, they tell it nicely with an interesting taste of "this is all your fault")

So what can I say? Nothing you didn't know already. Don't buy this game. Think of your own (mental) health and don't get into bed with EA. It looks nice when passing by but you don't want to end up with this game tonight! Move along! Don't give it some attention. Don't read the store page, don't let them talk to you. The moment you notice the "hey, look at me, Mister! I'm cheap! Only 99 cents right now"-offer, you are doomed)!

So yea, congratulations, you saved some money. And - most of all - some time. Donate it to charity, buy your friend a beer and have a good time with people you like. Or do what ever moderately entertains you, because what you would get from this purchase would just lead you in the the endless wasteland of EA pain and sorrow. Don't go this path and god bless you, my friend!

Please EA, stop making games! Your company is doomed, and so are your games!

TL;DR:
I almost forgot:
https://consumerist.com/2012/04/congratulations-ea-you-are-the-worst-company-in-america-for-2012.html

Damn this game is hard to review. I should mention I only played the singleplayer campain. Not really interested in the multiplayer game so for you things might be valued differently.

On one hand you have so many great ideas and impressive gameplay. The battles are really terrifying - perhaps as war should be. You see things you haven't seen in many games so far. Intense tank battles, air combat, a mostly destroyable environment, exploding trains and burning air ships. For these things alone I enjoyed the game already - especially in 4K HDR 120fps.

But then there are decisions that are questionable. Most prominent might be the different point of views where you end up in different places, play as different persons. Even though this comes with the advantage of playing different themes (it would be hard to justify a single character fighting in the infantry, tank battles, being a pilot and joining the desert fight along with Lawrence of Arabia) it sadly lowers the immersion. This can be seen already in the "tutorial" mission where you die, playing a different "character" each time you respawn. But also the missions - though beautifully staged - are mediocre in their assignments. You usually run around, blow something up and leave again. So the challenge is less a tactical one but more a stress survival. Instead of picking a good strategy you usually run left and right through the bullet storm and shoot what ever you can.

And here we come to the bad things even. Not only are the missions not really well staged and a little blunt at times, what makes it even worse is the bad AI. On one hand they sometimes magically seem to know exactly where you are even when sniping someone with a silencer from far away) but then again if they cant just bombard you with the artillery they stupidly run directly towards you. So unless you are crushed by countless enemies they are never really hard to fight with.

The stealth mechanics are even worse. Throwing single bullets you distract the enemies just as you know from all the other games with the same boring mechanics (I'm looking at you, Assassins Creed). So you separate one after the other, run at them from behind and press the F button making a "silent kill". Repeat until no enemies are left. Damn, even Far Cry has better stealth mechanics.
You see this game has good and bad moments. Some bugs even (like the first time I start the game my mouse is never recognized) and don't make me talk about using the EA launcher even if you buy it on Steam.

All this makes the review so hard but in the end I still enjoyed the game since I bought it for a discount. If you enjoy multiplayer games you might even have more fun than me. But for the singleplayer campain I would say it feels like watching a Marvel movie in cinema these days. A short but intense experience that moderately entertains most of the time but surprises at times with impressive moments and visuals.