Recent reviews by sketch_zeppelin_ag

I like the concept of this game, run around a ruined London that's overrun with zombies trying to collect weapons and items to survive. But the game combat just feels too clunky, the items aren't very interesting and break too fast and the main story by the 4 hour mark just left me too bored to continue playing. It feels like a bad left 4 dead clone was combined with a really bad crafting survival game.

The games only kinda neat idea is that when you die you re-spawn at your base as a new character and if you want your old items back you have to head to where you died and fight the zombie corpse of your former character. Its a cool idea in theory but in practice it just means you have to slowly make your way back without any good gear and hope you didn't die in water or near a cliff otherwise the zombie may not spawn and that purple tier battle ax and your sniper rifle are gone for good.

If combat was better and the levels and story more interesting, this could have been a fun game. But it just feels slow and ponderous.

I've played through Borderlands one and two and liked them well enough but The Pre-Sequel just feels like a lazy half hearted attempt.

The game takes place between the events of Borderlands one and two. You play as a vault hunter hired by a pre-disfigured Jack to help retake a Hyperium station from some militant group trying to use its laser to blow open the vault on pandoras moon.

The game plays very much like the other two games. Kill enemies, loot the area, comapre loot, take a few steps and do it again. Every now and then fight a boss.

The only new mechanic besides the vault hunters is that most of the game takes place in the vaccum of the moon. So now your moving around in low gravity and you have a limited air supply that has to be rechared. I can't say i like the new mechanics. The low gravity means the enemies are always flying around making them hard to hit and the loot they drop tends to scatter all over the place, often off cliffs. Your 02 tank is a new equipment slot and comes with various ablities but that doesn't make up for the fact that tanks only hold like between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes of air. Its easy enough to find pockets of air and enemies will sometimes drop air tanks but its just not a very fun addition to the gameplay.

The new hunters are nothing special either. Most of there ablites are variations on things we've seen before. Gunslinger, Sniper, heavy gunner. The only one that kind of stands out is the clap trap class who gets randomized powers when he activates his ablities. (great more RNG). There more talkative in this game but that doesn't help when most of them are also really annoying.

Lastly the game is alot shorter than the other games and the story feels lackluster. You do get to find out how Jack became Handsom Jack but if your looking for some kind of deep and tragic story SPOILERS: It turns out Jack was always a horrible person and it never even goes into the story about his daughter. I don't think she is even mentioned.

This game also has some really weak sauce DLC. You get one arena area with pretty much no story. Combine that with the low gravity and limited air and this is easily my least favorite area in the series. And you get a Story focused DLC where you go into the mind of clap trap. This one was actually okay. Its on par with the other borderlands expansions and i actually enjoyed it more than most of the base game. But thats it. Compare this to the all the content you get for the Game of the year versions of either game and its a joke Gearbox is charging full price for this game.

If you really can't get enough of Borderlands then this is more of the same but between the short campaign, crappy characters, moon mechanics and lack of DLC all at full price, I just can't recommend this one. Gearbox has made some really carp decisions in recent years and i think this game may have been a sign of what was to come.

I don't have much expericne with the original castle of illusion game (I mostly played the sequle world of illusion) but this isn't a bad little game.

You play as mickey trying to save minne from a witch and platform your way through diffrent themed worlds like a toy world, forest, candy world ect. Nothing ground breaking but the presentation is well done. Each level has its own charm, the graphics are nice and chrisp and the voice acting is solid enough.

The mechanics are pretty basic. You jump and throw objects to defeat enemies and get around. There are lots of little collectables you can grab that you'll need to help unlock later levels. Again nothing ground breaking but everything is executed well.

This is a nice little platformer for kids, Mickey fans, or just someone who wants a colorful platformer that doesn't get too tough.

An Amazing and scary as hell game...most of the time.

Alien: Isolation is the best Alien game I've played and one of the better survival horror games out there.

The attention to detail of the enviroments is incredible. Everything has the look and feel of a future dreamed up by people from the late 70's and brought to life in a way that is believable.

The Alien is terrifying, agressive, and worst of all is smart. It can pop up almost anywhere and will stalk you relentlessly through out the game and is unkillable. You will spend most of the game crawling around with your motion tracker glued to your HUD, whimpering over every blip and beep it makes. It's so amazingly tense and I love it!

Even when the alien isn't around, the game will find other threats to throw at you. These can be dealt with using a very limited supply of crafted gizmos, or, if all else fails, a bullet. Just be careful, the alien is attracted to noise.

The Story ends up being kind of a let down. You play Ripley's now adult daughter. You head to a soon to be decomisioned space station because they uncovered the flight recorder to your mother's ship and your hoping it has the answers of what has become of her. You discover it fairly early in the game, but it has been corrupted and is usless. So, the rest of the game is spent trying to figure out how to deal with the alien. The story has a few twists and betrayls, but it's mostly just an excuse to place you into more danger.

Also, the last third of the game gets a little less tense when you're given a flamthrower that can automatically scare the alien away for a few seconds. It also contains a dumb as nails plot twist that will make your eyes roll but it's not bad enough to keep the gameplay from suffering too much.

If you like survival horror or Alien, then you'll love this game.

Man i want to recommend this game but theres just too much wrong with it.

Lets start with the good.

The game looks and sounds amazing. It has great atmosphere, an intresting premise and does a fine throwing you into things. Your trappped in a literal backwoods village run by cultists and are trying to find your kidnapped wife and escape. The game controls fine for the most part and it has some truely terrifying characters and amazing moments in the story. The game is always tense and you never feel completly safe. I also really like how the game organicly jumps from the present to a sort of waking nightmare from your childhood involving a girl you knew in school.

Now for the bad

My main complaints are level design, enemy AI, and the story.

Unlike the first game, Outlast II takes place mostly outdoors in the dark and its often really difficult to figure out where you can and can't go, especially when you're being chased. You will die over and over becuase you didn't know if the cluster of bushes to your right are the kind you can hide in or an invisible wall. There are also a few times where I spent 20 mins wandering around the same area trying to figure out where to go only to eventually discover a dark out of the way corner containing a ledge that I needed to climb to contiune on.

Then there is the enemy AI, most of the enemies in this seem like they automatically know where you are. In the first game, you could use crawl spaces and hallways to circle around your foes. But in this game, most areas are wide open and enemies always seem to wander towards you, wether they've seen you or not. Now, they won't auto detect on you when your hiding, but it still makes sneaking around them a pain. It got so bad that, eventually, I gave up on stealth and just ran past every enemy hoping to tank their hits and praying I was running in the right direction.

Then there's the story, whew boy, the story. I will try to keep things vauge, but I do have to spoil one major thing about the end; be warned. I loved the story in the begining, but there are large chunks of the game where there is no plot. It's just you running and sneaking. The last third of the game goes bonkers, but then the end is very abrupt and makes no sense. I did some research and found out *MAJOR SPOILER* every seemingly supernatural thing was actually a hallucination brought on by a signal being broadcast by the company from the first game. So, not only was the end pointless, you had to find all the hidden documents to even know it. And, heres the real rub, at various points in the game you will play out memories from your childhood. I kept thinking there was a connection between your past and the cult, but nope it has nothing to do with the present, other than kind of explaining your character's mindset. And the worst part, is the flash backs were, to me, the best part of the game. Maybe it's because you're a child, but the events are much harder hitting and scarier during those scense. I kind of wish the the game had been about your past and learning to deal with it.

This game is probably worth getting on sale, but at full price, it's mechanics are just too clunky and it's story is too up it's own ass to be worth it. I really hope the 3rd game is better.

Better than the first in almost every way.

Hotline Miami 2 continues the fast pace pixel gore fest but does so with a much more involved in and intresting story and more refined gameplay.

Instead of playing as one guy with a growing collection of masks you now play as several characters each with there own ablities. rather than having all the masks for all the levels your only given acess to several at a time to chose from. this allows for levels that are built around specific play styles and makes for a better game over all.

The game is still hella weird with the story jumping in time from before, during and after the events of the first game. It will likely take a couple of play throughs to get whats going on.

The graphis are still acid trip and pixles and oh god the SOUNDTRACK is better than ever. seriously go get the soundtrack for this game.

My only gripe is that enviroments are much bigger than the frist game which leads to sitiuations where you get blown away by enemies off screen alot and there are some levels (the boat level or the rat guy levels) that are too hard and start to get frustrating. But i'd say that 90% of the game is rock solid and despite the few frustrating levels i think i like this one more than the first.

I wan't to like this game. It has a novel concpet and fun art design but it just doesn't have enough insentive for me to keep doing runs. Usaly in rouge-lite the reason you keep replaying is because you unlock new things that will help you in future runs and with Gungeon it just doesn't feel like im don't that. Getting new guns is slow and the game still feels insainly hard even with them. I ended up getting bored with the game after only a couple of hours.

Stick with Binding of Issac

Oh thank god Yes!!!

I've been wanting this for decades. I never owned an NES as a kid but all my friends did so i ended up playing a bunch of classics games including capcoms excellent Disney games. Duck Tails was actually the first NES game i ever beat.

Over the years i've replayed these old gems through emulation but i've always wanted some kind of official rerelease that i could own and its finally here and its great.

This collection includes Duck Tails 1 and 2, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers 1 and 2, Darkwing Duck, and Tail Spin. Each game has been optimized to run on modern systems, given several ratio and pixle smoothing options and include a a few extra features like boss rush and time attack modes and the ablity to rewind the game on the fly for easy practice. The presentation is nice and i love the chip tune remake of the Disney Afternoon theme that plays on the main menu.

This is a flawless re-release of some of the best games to come out of NES libary...and hey Tail Spin isn't too bad either.

Bigger, Dumber, but still a whole lot of fun.

Dead Space 2 picks up a few years after the events of the first game with us once again playing as Issac Clark and almost immediatly things go to hell and were once again cutting off the limbs of the necromorphs. The first Dead Space did a decent job of balancing its action horror elements. Dead Space 2 seems to lean way more on action. But its still alot of fun. Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are like Alien and Aliens. The first one is much more sublte and scary while the sequal has way more action but still manges to be suspenful and a bit creepy.

The game looks and plays better than ever and gives you several new weapons to play with and upgrade as well as the classics. You also get access to new suits with there own stats. And now Issac talks. Alot of people give this desicion crap but i kinda like Issac with a voice rather than a mute protagonist. Makes me care a bit more about him. Actually most of the characters are well done in this game which is good because the story isn't nearly as strong as the first game. Its mostly just thinly vailed excuses to move you from one rollercoaster even to the next and thats okay. The first game had a stronger story but i think this one has stronger gameplay so its a fair trade off.

A great action horror game for fans of Event horizion.

This is an oldey but a goldey. You play an enginer in the future sent to investigate and repair a mining vessal. Almost immediatly things go horribly wrong and you have to fight your way out of a sci-fi nightmare.

This game plays very similarly to Resident Evil 4 but with slightly better handling. You get a nice variety of weapons to play with, each with an alt form of attack and all can be upgraded along with your armor and other gadgets. What i like most about the game play is that your an enginere and you actually spend a decent amount of time putting those skills to use. Repairing parts of the ship to advance the plot or simply not die. It makes for a nice spin on the genre. There are even some solid boss fights which was kinda rare for the time.

The graphics, atmosphere and sound are rock solid and the enemies are creative and horrific. I just wish the game didn't beat you over the head with the weakness (cutting off there limbs) rather than letting you figure it out more organically.

The story is well told and has some intresting twists which i won't spoil. If you have alot of experince with horror you'll proably be able to guess where the story is going but its still a fun ride and there is alot of attention to detail hidden in the game like finding a sypher on one of the walls that lets you translate the alien text drawn all over the ship.

There are a couple of frustrating parts but all and all the game holds up really well today and is worth playing.