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Fallout 4 attempts to grow beyond the previous titles and so suffers some pains in the process. The milieu is all there: A person thrust into a strange post-apocalyptic world of supermutants, mutated fauna, raiders, settlers trying to scrape by and various collectives bound by competing ideologies across the wasteland; all under Fallout's distinctive retro-future Cold War pastiche of robots, lasers and "Duck & Cover" posters. But Fallout 4 tries to be something more advanced than just another Fallout game set in a new location. The story is more personal, the character now voice acted and some scenes more cinematic, companions more fleshed out, a streamlined stats & perk system but a new settlement and weapon modding systems to learn. It's a different experience and some purists will take offense to trade-offs that were made.

One of the most noticeable and egregious trade-offs is a much more limited dialogue system. Previous games might have offered six or more responses to an NPC but now you are on a strict diet of four responses. Borrowing from games like Mass Effect, you essentially use a conversation wheel of Yes, No, Leave & Sarcastic. It's a very limiting system and can be frustrating to those used to the franchise. The most probable reason for the change is voice acting -- each response has to be recorded now (and by both a male and female voice actor) so limitations were made. Those who blame the change on "console players" should be reminded that FO3 and New Vegas played fine on consoles, not to mention titles such as Skyrim. PC players can find mods easily enough to at least change the single word wheel options to full sentences of what you will say -- a slight improvement but no replacement for the old wealth of choices.

A less frustrating change was the streamlining of the franchise's stat system. The SPECIAL system remains of allocating points to Strength, Intelligence, etc but the skills and perk system have been merged into a single tree, unlocked by your points in a SPECIAL stat and your level. With the game's new emphasis on more first-person shooter style combat, having your ability to shoot straight is no longer based on a numeric score but rather your ability to use a mouse. Associated weapons perks now increase damage and offer other benefits rather than being the basis of whether you hit your target or not. The new system is fairly easy to learn and didn't really feel much different in practice from earlier games.

A spot where the new title shines is companions. A number of people will be available to help you on your quest and they are much more engaging than previous NPCs. Not all of them will be fan favorites but there's enough to find some you like. Companions have their own stories and personal quest lines and, after enough effort, will grant the player additional perks. A nascent romance system exists which won't lead you into any Bioware style love triangles but is attempting more sophistication than Fallout has seen before. Companion combat AI is still flaky but never caused me enough problems to ditch them -- the company was rewarding enough.

As noted, combat is now much more first-person shooter based and VATS has been reworked into a "slow down" system rather than freezing time entirely. I enjoyed the new combat and found it much improved over previous games. The VATS system was a holdout from the isometric days and a clumsy attempt to make a 3D first person experience feel like a turn-based game. The new system flows better and adds more challenge. The range of weapons has been reduced but each weapon now comes with a slew of modifications available to increase damage, accuracy, hip-shot effectiveness, range, etc with the usual trade-offs: a longer barrel will add aimed accuracy but makes the weapon slower to use and less effective at close quarters. The typical array of Fallout weapons remain with miniguns, lasers and mini-nuke launchers found among the rifles and pistols.

Settlements are something new entirely. As you progress, you gain the ability to claim areas of the wasteland as settlements and build housing, defenses, farms, shops, etc and attract settlers to your new towns. The system didn't especially interest me (fortunately, it's not required and easily ignored) and building can be clunky but it's definitely expanding the definition of a Fallout game.

Graphically, the game is still relying on an aging engine, although the NPC/Player models look better than in previous Bethesda titles and the world has finally shed its gray & grey color palette in favor of some reds, blues and greens. As said, the Fallout feel is there although some may chafe under the character who is more defined than in previous games and relies on your interest in your missing baby to drive the plot.

In the end, did I enjoy it? I did. The game is far from perfect but for everything I'd steal from FO3/NV and add to FO4, there's something I wish those titles could take from Fallout 4 as well. The basic Fallout experience remained and poking through blasted grocery stores and subway tunnels remains as enjoyable as ever.

More art piece than game, Deus Ex Machina 2 guides through the stages of life set to a soundtrack that dominates the game. Conception and birth through adolescence into adulthood, old age and death are all represented in the form of "games" that are essentially music videos in which you play a minor role in collecting or avoiding things. Perhaps you are seeking out positive messages as a child or dodging craters and bombs as a soldier or collecting kisses -- but essentially each level is the same thing. Throughout, you have a rating for "Degree of Real Identity" which is affected by how well you play level (or sometimes just seems to tick down regardless) but it's misleading to keep using the terms "game" and "play". These are games in name only. The controls are sparse and sluggish and the effects seem frustratingly random at times. Of course all roads lead to the grave regardless -- I had enough Identity to carry me through to the ending scenes but I don't know if it's possible to actually lose the game.

Deus Ex Machina 2 starts out strong in that the music helps pull you in and the overall complete weirdness of the experience makes you go along for the ride. By the end though, it has largely worn out its welcome. Perhaps that's a metaphor for life or perhaps it's just poor game design but either way it's hard to recommend it. If you ever found yourself with a free copy, it's worth it to play the first half which has more manic weirdness than the increasingly plodding second half. But I couldn't, in good faith, tell anyone to spend money on the experience.

Lara Croft & the Temple of Osiris is an isometric third person action/puzzle game leading Croft and up to three allies through an adventure in Egypt. After Croft and her companion grasp an ancient staff, they awaken the god Set and find themselves marked for death at the maw of a massive crocodile-lion beast. Aided by the deities Isis and Horus (who, trapped in the same network, are essentially human), Lara explores tombs, solves puzzles, beats waves of enemies and tries to restore a statue of Osiris to awaken him and battle Set.

My negative recommendation for this game is almost entirely based on its buggy nature. I played through the entire campaign in co-op with friends and, out of the eight hours of play time, almost two hours was spent fighting glitches such as the game not responding to puzzles being solved, display errors and black screens, disconnects and exiting a level bouncing us back to previous save points. Game play wasn't especially challenging though it was generally entertaining particularly with more interesting enemies and bosses later in the game. The puzzles and levels reward teamwork and cooperation is key to progressing. Unfortunately the final battle left us feeling a bit side-lined, clearing trash enemies as a larger battle raged elsewhere. We were able to solve the puzzles largely unaided although we found ourselves referring to walk throughs several times to confirm that, yes, we did solve it correctly and the game was just glitched and not lowering the gate or raising the bridge we needed.

Had the game worked properly, I would give this a reserved recommendation, citing mainly the short length and weak ending as reasons to buy it on sale. But, in its current state, this game simply shouldn't have been released with its glitches and errors. A puzzle-solving game that doesn't recognize or reward you for solving the puzzle isn't much of a game.

From nearly start to finish I enjoyed my time in the Wastelands with Max. Yes, the missions and tasks were repetitive and, yes, the combat was more of the same from Batman or Shadow of Mordor but the world was immersive enough, attractive enough (in its own wasteland way) and just plain fun enough to keep me returning.

Nearly every "repetitive" aspect managed to find a way to stay interesting. Melee combat felt heavy and brutal and slamming a guy's head into a wall or suplexing him never got old for me. There's a hundred or so locations where you can seek scrap metal or water but they varied from tents to old subway cars to cliffside villages to abandoned restaurants to deep caves. You're tasked with tearing down giant metal "scarecrows" but, to the last, I enjoyed flying past (or through) them, launching a harpoon and collapsing them behind my racing vehicle. You'll do a LOT of driving but the landscape is wonderfully created as you progress from dried ocean bottom to ravaged desert towns and upland desert to the mountains of waste and scrap surrounding Gastown.

Vehicular combat is a special joy and from early on you are armed with a harpoon that can tear off armor, tires or doors or pull a War Boy out of his car or a sniper out of his tower. Further car enhancements allow you to attach grinders to your wheels Ben-Hur style or launch explosive spears to quickly end a fight.

The game certainly isn't perfect. Boss fights are almost all copies of each other, clearing mine fields is tedious busy work and there is a major plot-required race that deviates from all the other driving you'll do in game. The plot is nothing special and this game is definitely more about the journey than the destination. But Mad Max and the Wastelands kept me coming back for more days on end managed to never feel "old".

The Sniper Elite 3 Season Pass adds approximately three to four hours of additional content (depending on difficulty and achievement collecting) which is enjoyable although nothing remarkably special. In one mission, you once again are tasked with killing Hitler much like in the SE V2 DLC. This mission tries to include a mystery element -- is it Hitler or a decoy? -- that doesn't add much and has the downside of less action. There is only one real "action" area before the mission's ending with the rest mostly spend sneaking around. That said, killing Hitler in a variety of ways still remains entertaining at the end.

Better constructed is the Save Churchill mini-campaign, a three mission set that has you uncovering a plot to assassinate the British Prime Minister. These missions play a bit more traditionally although they felt a bit more linear than the base campaign and the maps were more prone to have long twisty "hallways", be they in buildings or canyons. The final mission adds a few new twists such as dodging mortar fire or locating hidden traps although the ending carries on the dubious tradition of the base game of setting up an antagonist just for a rather unsatisfying conclusion. Plot complaints aside (you're not playing this for the plot, are you?) the game play remains pretty solid and enjoyable for fans of the main game.

Also included in the Season Pass is a plethora of new weapons. Arguably, some of these should have been in the base game although you're likely to settle on one or two favorites and leave the rest largely unused. Beyond the new rifles with their different stats and graphic options (camo or non), you get new pistols and SMGs including a variant silenced pistol besides the Welby and a "trench gun" shotgun for your SMG slot. Finally the Season Pass includes some character skins for multi-player use. For people on the fence, you can try all these guns in the base game's firing range letting you decide for yourself how valuable or game changing they'd be to you.

At three or so hours of content, it's impossible to say this pack is worth the $30 asking price but if it can get grabbed on sale for under ten bucks, I think fans of the game will find it satisfying.

A solid entry into the Sniper Elite franchise, Sniper Elite 3 takes the mechanics from Sniper Elite V2 and uses them in better ways. You play the role of a sniper working with the British military in North Africa during the Second World War. Really, you're equal parts sniper and spy as your missions have you single-handedly infiltrating enemy camps and bases as you try to find an infamous German general and piece together a plot involving Nazi superweapons.

Unlike Sniper Elite V2, the maps in SE3 are much more open and this benefits the game immensely. Where, in V2, I often felt as though I spent half the game playing run 'n gun with my submachine gun, in SE3 I probably used my SMG less than five times. Your silenced pistol will still get a firm workout as you move into positions unseen where you can begin to death upon your foes with your rifle. This isn't a modern era setting shooter though with super-scopes and giant silencers to turn your shots into whispers. If you want to avoid a straight up firefight, you'll need to time your shots against background noise from low-flying aircraft or sabotaged generators to prevent the enemy from knowing where you're at. The game manages a good balance by forcing you to be patient as you line up your shots without making the whole ordeal tedious. There are some stealth mechanics as well including sight indicators, the ability to hide in shadows, guards locating you via sound, etc. Much of the game is spent creeping around and avoiding conflict until you're ready to bring swift vengeance from your perch. The famous Sniper Elite X-Ray Kill Cam makes its return, now updated to show your bullet tearing into muscle and severing arteries as well as bone and organs. Curiously, for all the effort into showing me in graphic detail the damage I'm inflicting, every hit in SE3 is a fatal blow. Shooting someone in the foot was as fatal as expertly putting a round through an enemy sniper's scope and into his brain [Edit: Higher levels introduce much more frequent "incapacitating" or wounding shots versus clean kills]. For those feeling squeamish or just bored watching bullet cams, this feature can be easily adjusted or turned off.

I only played through the campaign on the default difficulty [Edit: I've since played through on more difficult settings] which used light ballistics modeling but my understanding is that ballistics on the higher levels remain well done, requiring players to account for bullet drop and wind direction and making rifle characteristics such as scope sway and bullet velocity more important. It is unfortunate that there are only four weapons in each class (pistol, rifle, SMG) included in the base game. A wealth of others are available via DLC which, while something of a cash grab, the game redeems itself slightly by including a firing range where you can test fire all the available guns and see which you like before purchasing a weapons pack.

The story is nothing special and you won't feel invested in the plot or making sure that you succeed. The end in particular felt very weak. However, from a mechanics point of view the game shines and the story is just a contrivance to line up 200m shots and put a bullet through someone's temple as artillery fires in the distance, hiding your presence. If you enjoyed V2 (or disliked it mainly for its enclosed maps) or if you find yourself playing the sniper in shooters, you'll probably enjoy your run through this title.

I wanted to like this game. I'm not sure exactly WHY I wanted to, but I gave it multiple chances, tried to see some of its flaws as charm and just all around did what I could with it. Ultimately though, it just couldn't keep my attention.

Its positives are an interesting array of supernatural beasties drawing from Indonesian lore. The game can be genuinely creepy at time. It does a good job of capturing the horror feeling.

The flaws all lie in execution. The graphics are largely a blurry, low resolution mess. Linda's model is okay although the screen shots on the store page are carefully selected to make the game look its best. In reality, the game looks like a product for the Playstation 2. Your fellow classmates look laughable. The game's pacing feels off and you spend too long just trotting around. But the worst felt like the controls which often had me over steer or snagged me during fights. Some battles require you to quickly move around and it just wasn't reacting well. Compounding this was a death system where each time you die, you have to run back out from limbo, jogging along a blue strip of light. Unfortunately, each time you die that strip grows longer and it's frustrating to not only feel like you died a cheap death but to now be expected to just jog for 90 seconds before you can play again.

Given better controls and a less punitive system for dying, I might have felt like completing this and been able to enjoy it for what it is. But after my last jog back from the underworld, the game just felt like a waste of time.

Faery is an RPG that had some real potential and it showed in some places but ultimately doesn't follow through. It's not a terrible game and I wish I had better than a Yes/No option to rate it but, out of the two, I can't recommend it.

The plot of the game is fairly simple. You are a fairy and have been awoken from stasis where you slept for centuries only to find that the land of the fae has shrunk and changed for the worse. The effects of man, various fairy creatures moving away to new realms and more threaten the lands. So the fairy king sets you off on a mission to explore the remaining accessible fairy worlds and find out what's up. You run a few quests to gain a couple companions and you're off.

For the most part game play is very simple. Each world map is extremely small and so being asked to retrieve an object (90% of the missions are fetch quests) just has you cruising the small map looking for the sparkling object you need. There are few non-essential opponents on the map so once you clear them -- and they guard chests so you'll want to clear them -- there's little barrier between you and your objectives. Some quests may be solved in multiple ways such as a horn that you can either gain as a reward for doing a deed or else steal by creating a distraction. But ultimately all your choices lead you to the same place.

Combat is turn based and uses an action point system. More powerful attacks use more points and, as well, more powerful are of effect style attacks (and your heals) have timers so they can't be used until the second or third turn of combat. In general I found the combat to be extremely simple. Playing on the default setting (I don't remember if there's harder settings) I never once wiped and rarely had even a single companion go unconscious. Supposedly, if you wipe, you all respawn at the mirrors, your entrance from zone to zone, to try again.

As you level up, you gain new abilities and this was one of the sticking points for me: new abilities are tied to physical changes to your character. So a poison strike attack requires you to have a scorpion tail and a power buff requires goat horns. Either you stick with a few abilities and just level those up or else you become a patchwork menagerie of animal parts and tattoos. I opted for the former. As well, you can gain equipment to enhance your elemental powers.

Aside from all this, there's a collection of companions you'll gain along the way which are fairly inventive and each has their own strengths. One companion is a pistol firing pirate, another summons a raccoon to fight for him and another is a young dragon among others. There is something of an approval system for your companions although I never had anyone refuse to travel with me. I did have one fellow pledge his love to me but that didn't seem to go anywhere past the declaration of our affections. Bioware quality companions this was not but perhaps they'd have been fleshed out in the sequels that aren't meant to be.

Ultimately the game just felt shallow and unresolved even allowing for the fact that it was intended to be the first chapter of a trilogy. The worlds are inventive but small and the quests are linear and obvious. The characters are interesting but the approval system feels pointless. Combat was different from today's norm but was also extremely easy and the character customization issues could leave you feeling handicapped. Because the game is fairly brief (even my 12 hour playtime includes a few lengthy breaks from the keyboard) I was able to complete but I only felt just invested enough to keep going but not enough to really care. If you have this in a bundle it may be worth playing just to see if you like it but I can't recommend it as a purchase.

A blurry unplayable mess. Poor controls, sluggish responses, poor player direction, looks as though it was developed by someone with severe cataracts, bad sound direction and an incomprehensible story. It's just a sloppy waste of time from top to bottom. You may think "Well, maybe it's so bad it's good" but it's not -- it's just bad. Not ironically bad, not funny bad, just "wow, this was a waste of my time and money bad".

Adding another 6-8 hours of Nazi killing excitement, The Old Blood trades in character development and much of a storyline for action. It's not a bad choice; although the development in The New Order ran surprisingly deep for an FPS, sidelining character stories in The Old Blood gives you a solid block of game play rather than cut scenes and minor fetch quests. It's a little unfortunate that, like The New Order, this game starts with a too-long quasi-tutorial sequence that wears out its welcome before allowing you to get into the meat of the game. Happily, once you get invested in carrying around an arsenal and filling enemies with lead, you'll largely forget the earlier tedium of avoiding and depowering Nazi mech suits but it's a stumble the franchise has made twice now and I hate having to say "Just stay with it and it'll get better, I promise".

The game play is essentially the same as The New Order albeit with "earlier" technology with a bit of steampunk feel to it. You have your usual silenced pistol, assault rifle, sniping tool, a fun twin-barrel mechanized shotgun and a new pistol that shoots explosive rounds for clearing out groups of grunts or hitting hard targets. An abbreviated perk system allows you to expand your health & healing, armor, weapon ammo capacity and that sort of thing. Often in the game you'll find yourself using a pair of pipes as a melee instrument, prying tool, climbing aid and more which feels a little gimmicky but not aggressively so. Some people have complained that there isn't much of a stealth aspect but if I wanted a linear stealth game with assault rifles, I'd be playing Metro or something similar. This is Wolfenstein and BJ Blazkowicz lives to kill Nazis, not creep around them. Enemy AI is usually pretty sharp with opponents flanking, using grenades liberally to pull you out from cover, sliding and leaning from cover while they chip away at your own with an onslaught of bullets. Later on the AI takes some hits when it throws new enemy types against you and the final boss fight wasn't anything great but, all in all, it was a solid ride.

Do I recommend the game? If you've played The New Order and enjoyed it then I recommend this one without reservation. If you haven't, I'd really recommend waiting for TNO to go on sale and pick that up first. It's a more rounded and longer, more comprehensive game whereas The Old Blood is made for people who ate the TNO main course and wanted dessert.