Recent reviews by Syntax Error

The second Homefront: the Revolution DLC, "Aftermath", is out and has you back in control of Brady following the events of the main game. Revolutionary hero Walker, who was captured by the KPA in the main story, is still creating Korean propaganda broadcasts and you plan to free him and bring him back into the Resistance -- or eliminate him if he has actually turned traitor to the cause.

Mechanically, there's nothing new to talk about here. The enemies are the same KPA you've always seen, the weapons are the same (with a few shut off such as the mine launcher) and the maps are a linear set of streets and buildings. Though not as obviously restrictive as the subway tunnels in "Voice of Freedom", there is still no open map or new zones as such although buildings such as the radio station are new themselves. There's a wave fight with a small twist but not one that you're in control of.

Like "Voice of Freedom", my "Not Recommended" rating doesn't really reflect the game play (which was fine; more of the same) but rather the value for the asking price. Is an hour long DLC that brings little new to the game worth $6? I don't think so. Is it worth playing if you already own the Season Pass/Freedom edition? Sure. But the devlopers need to step up their game for the final DLC to give it value that makes it worth purchasing on its own merits.

The first DLC to come out for Homefront: the Revolution was a bit of a disappointment. Early reports about the Season Pass DLC indicated that they would include entire new zones to explore and this short, linear tunnel shooter definitely does not meet that definition. Still, my rating isn't based on early promises but rather what the DLC actually is.

Voice of Freedom is, as mentioned, a very short experience: maybe 30-45 minutes long if you include some poking around in corners (you could probably speed run it in about 20). There is very little exploration aside from a few side rooms which puts it entirely at odds with the 'open zone' nature of the base game. Your weapon selection is limited for most of the experience until the very end where you can select from a few additional options for the final fight. Throughout the DLC, prompts pop up telling you how to make a grenade or add weapon attachments, making the entire experience feel like an extended tutorial -- the linear nature adds to that impression.

Is it fun? Eh, it's okay. The story is nothing much and the weapon restrictions take away from the shooting fun. There's pretty much no replay value due to its linearity. The change in play style doesn't really expand on the fun of the base game. If you already own it via the season pass or Freedom Fighter edition then you may as well play it. Otherwise, it's not worth the $5.99

My experience with the first Homefront game was not especially pleasant. Although the setting was well done and interesting (even allowing for the ludicrous plot) the game itself felt like every linear FPS single-player campaign criticism rolled into one. So when Homefront: Revolution was announced, I scoffed and then ignored it until recently when a free weekend had some friends reporting good things and I tried it. Glad I did.

I think most people compare HF:R to an urban Far Cry 3/4 but that's because it's largely true. Enter a region, note your plot objective, then ignore it as you fight your way through buildings, conquering then and flipping the map from red to blue. Actions can increase your standing with the city residents until they are finally inspired to rise up and riot, attacking their Korean occupiers. It's repetitive and, like Far Cry (or games like Mad Max or Shadow of Mordor), by the second strike point you'll probably know if you feel like playing 30 more hours because the game won't change significantly. The story is serviceable even if nothing amazing or thought-provoking. It's an excuse to run around a ruined city and shoot dudes and take over territory. The simple bottom line is that if you enjoy games in the Ubisoft "point control" model, you'll likely enjoy Homefront: Revolution.

Guns were interesting though the system took me a little while to appreciate. You have your Primary/Secondary weapon but each of them can convert into two additional weapons. So your semi-auto pistol can convert into a small SMG and/or a silenced pneumatic pistol depending on your needs. Add in attachments (scopes, silencers, etc) and you get an impressive amount of flexibility and essentially seven weapons at a time (3x Primary, 3x Secondary plus an RPG) though you'll need to plan tactically and find cover to convert your assault rifle into a light machine gun on the fly. Still, it nicely bridges the gap between console-based limited gun slots and becoming a walking arsenal.

Finally, the game includes a co-op system where you and up to three friends can band together for missions and gain experience and money for skill/weapon/gear unlocks. Although there's an air of randomness about it (you buy a crate and hope for a good weapon), it's all self-contained and there's no item store or cash shops. The system is in addition to the single player game rather than the focus and it adds some additional play once you're done.

To be fair, trying Homefront: Revolution well after its initial release meant that I avoided its rocky, buggy launch and got in after the worst of it was ironed out. When I played, it was relatively bug free. No game-breaking issues for me, although once I dropped through the map and once had a physics glitch fatally launch me into the air. Out of 50 hours of play, I can't complain though. It played well on my aging system (i7-860 @ 3.6GHz, R9 290X, 12GB) with a consistent 60fps at 1080p on High settings.

Even allowing for the fact that I knew it'd be bad, Jurassic Survival is ridiculously bad. It's like the dollar store DVD rack with "Dream Monsters Corporation" instead of ARK's "Monsters Inc". A very shallow, cheaply done knock-off that could only appeal to people with a gaming budget of 75¢.

I spawned in a cabin, walked outside, a brontosaurus (?) thing walked towards me, got hung up on me and couldn't move, I stabbed it a few times in the belly and it died without doing any damage to me, its loot bags spawned over its corpse where they were inaccessible to me, I collected some random junk, killed a few raptors (?) got bored and let a tyrannosaurus (?) eat me. All the dinosaur models were poorly made and very floaty; more like dinosaur shaped balloons than multi-ton behemoths. It wasn't even fun in a "bad game" sort of way, just really cheap and dull.

One night, about fifteen years ago, my girlfriend came home with a surprise: she had rented me Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for the N64. She made a good call: a game about hunting dinosaurs would be sure to rock. When I opened it, the cartridge inside was for Pokemon Snap -- a game where you walk a linear path and take photos of Pokemon and the professor grouses at you if they're not framed exactly center. That was pretty disappointing but not as disappointing as it would have been if that cartridge had Dinosaur Hunt on it. Everything about Dinosaur Hunt is terrible. The AI is awful with enemies often standing in place or spinning in circles, the maps are boring, the graphics are bad (especially gun and corpse effects), the guns are boring to fire, the music loop is nearly as grating as the rare voice effects. It stands as a mysterious testament to how you can make a game about shooting dinosaurs not even a little bit fun.

Melody's Escape is another entry into the "Play Your Music" genre, this time as a visually attractive side-scrolling runner where both the track and obstacles are planned based on your song's tempo, rhythm and notes. Melody walks, jogs, runs or flies depending on the relative tempo of the music and you'll tap buttons to the music in order to control her jumps and slides as she collects colored orbs.

The music analyzer and track generator are pretty sharp and Melody will make soaring leaps on upward notes, slide down hills to downward beats and make dramatic slow-motion flips during pauses. As it builds the track, it tells you what it detected musically ranging from a steady 4/4 beat to "Energy Peaks" when it has trouble detecting the song structure (still fun if not as spot-on). Even on "Relaxing" mode, the game keeps you busy with constant movement -- made easier by only needing a single color per movement speed. On higher levels, you'll be expected to work all four colors on your controller constantly and then mix your direction pad into it.

Melody's Escape is a fun way to spend some time, made better by the surprisingly accurate music analyzer. Since you're likely playing songs of ~3-5min length, it's an entertaining way to spend some time without getting too involved. A few minor criticisms may be that it lacks any sort of leaderboard and some people may have musical tastes incompatible with the analyzer depending on how non-traditional your music structure is, leading to less impressive tracks. Still, this has been the best game for "playing my music" I've encountered yet.

Although suffering from a number of quality issues, Gemini: Heroes Reborn has some interesting game play concepts that make it enjoyable for its short play time.

To get the bad out of the way first: The game's graphics looks far more dated than its 2016 release date would imply, the voice acting is nothing much, the plot is pretty dumb and the loading screens are obnoxiously long. Basically, the whole package feels underfunded and/or amateurish.

However, playing the game lets you do some neat stuff with time shifting and telekinesis. Freeze bullets and fling them back, slow time to dodge enemies, mentally throw barrels and desks at bad guys, shift yourself into another time frame to rest up and spy on the guards through a little time rift to plan your return. The game has some cool concepts that could have been better executed but -- for a 4-5hr game -- are still worth taking a spin through.

I'm giving this a "thumbs up" but I couldn't recommend spending the $15 MSRP on it. Pick it up in a bundle or something but it's worth trying once it's in your collection.

There's a fairly easy test here: When playing Tomb Raider 2013, did you think "This is fun but man I hate these obnoxious QTEs and wish there were more/better puzzle tombs"? If yes, you should buy Rise of the Tomb Raider. When playing TR2013, did you think "This was the worst decision I made since I tried to lick that opossum"? If so, don't buy Rise. If you never played TR2013, go buy that instead -- it gets down to like $5 these days on sales.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is an improved take on the 2013 game. As noted, the QTEs that plagued the first hours of TR2013 are gone, the pacing moves better and there's the usual improvements in tricks of the trade. The story is nothing special: Lara has found a lead on an artifact her father ruined his life and career trying to find and so now she plans to redeem his legacy by acquiring the Divine Source. The game is set mainly in Siberia with you traversing numerous forests, caves, lost settlements and abandoned Soviet installations under varying degrees of snow and ice. For the most part, game play is straight forward and you likely won't get stuck on what to do next for long; objects you can interact with are either splashed with white paint or glow when you use your Tomb Raider Spider-sense. Puzzles are better than in TR2013 but still nothing difficult -- I completed all with minimal issue and I'm pretty poor at physics puzzles. Combat in the game usually seems to favor stealth (you'll silently fire your bow a lot) but only in terms of killing enemies. It usually isn't practical or possible to sneak through and you'll be expected to bloody your hands often.

As a rollicking and action-filled archeological adventure, Rise of the Tomb Raider was a fun time. If you're hoping for real puzzlers and mind twisters, you'll likely be disappointed. Nothing about the game demands that you play it right now but (assuming you liked TR2013) you'll likely enjoy it when you get to it.

Life is strange, sure. Also, it's sometimes a bit disappointing no matter how many do-overs you get.

A review of the game really needs to start at the ending. After four episodes (a few hours each) of making choices, seeing consequences and constantly double-guessing yourself the game culminates in a final episode that goes completely off the rails. Setting aside player opinions on the climax and whether or not your choices were meaningful, the ending is bogged down in lengthy cut scenes interspersed with irritating mechanics such as a maze sequence or scenes that try to turn the casual interface into a twitch game. Your "rewind" power gives you infinite attempts to get it right but timing a kick or a trip just didn't feel right. The pacing was off as well -- one moment you're leaning back in your chair doing nothing for five minutes as people on the screen talk, the next it's hustle, hustle. Simply put, I didn't have much fun for the final hours of the game.

Up until that point though, Life is Strange is an interesting enough journey and occasional puzzler revolving around a teenage girl, Max, who learns in a moment of crisis that she has the ability to rewind time, using the power to attempt to solve the mysterious happenings at her school and re-connect with her estranged best friend. With the plot focusing on the teens, the dialogue is sometimes eye-rolling and Max is a bit too precious and twee for anyone's good but the story has moments of genuine pathos and the mysterious story line has its own twists. I may be a bit too removed from my teenage days to get "hit in the feels" (as I understand the kids are saying these days) but the story kept me playing despite this not really being my preferred genre of game.

Game play is usually very simple and casual: You walk around, items of interest get highlighted with a circle, you look at or interact with them in some way. Interlaced with this is your ability to rewind time, allowing you to prevent things from happening or alter the course of a conversation by presenting new information. Many small instances of choice pop up as you play and each chapter ends with a break down of the decisions you made (or failed to make) and how many others did the same. It's interesting to make a seemingly obvious decision and then see that only 35% of the players thought the same way. The art is usually attractive and visually consistent although some parts looked distracting low-res. The mainly acoustic indie soundtrack wasn't my cup of tea but fit the overall feel of the game.

Ultimately, I give the game a somewhat reluctant recommendation despite its unwieldy conclusion. The road to that ending was interesting enough and had enough bright moments to make it worth taking even if ending falls flat.

SUPERHOT is an FPS-turned-puzzle game where time moves only when you do, thus allowing you to react and plan out exactly how to defeat each level of "red dudes". It's a compelling concept and satisfying in several ways, both when you've solved how to react and the ending full speed replay clip of you dodging bullets before throwing a pistol at some dude's face, grabbing the shotgun he dropped in surprise out of mid air and swinging around to unload into two other guys like some sort of FPS savant. There's no single solution to each level but each time you die, you'll find yourself refining your technique based on what went wrong. Graphics are very minimalistic as the screenshots show; everything is white except for the red dudes and interactive items (either a gun, a melee weapon or something you can throw).

The short campaign (some say ~2hrs, but I suck so it was a little longer) has a retro-technology feel with its cut scenes of text chat rooms, DOS style file hierarchies, etc. Your friend has sent to a new cracked game file, stolen from some company and you enter the world of SUPERHOT. As you play the virtual reality shooter, things start to get weird and the game begins consuming more of your time. The twists the story takes are fairly predictable and there's no real surprises but it's an adequate framework to hang the game play on. Some may criticize the campaign's length but I think that, much longer, and the game play itself would have worn out its welcome. There's also an Endless and Challenge mode and supposedly updates on the way. Of some disappointment is its "Killstagram" feature, supposedly allowing you to upload and share videos of your run throughs but currently impossible to navigate and missing most functions.

SUPERHOT was a fun experience and a new take on the FPS game. Whether it's worth the $25 asking price I'll leave to the buyer but the time spent in the game is solid entertainment. If not now, consider buying it on sale, bundled or whatever.