Nedávné recenze uživatele A Tomato

FTL: Faster Than Light is a top down, real time strategy spaceship and crew management simulation roguelite game, released following a wildly successful 2012 Kickstarter campaign by Subset Games.

FTL is quite a looker, but not necessarily by the horsepower of its visuals. It employs a consistent, clean, yet rather sharp* 16 bit aesthetic. The aesthetic is overall minimal, which is where it draws its beauty as there are no post processing effects, save for a subtle reddening of the background as your situation gets more dire. Honestly, there's not much to fault here save for scant few inconsistencies with the looks and sprites of some elements like weapons.

Equally impressive in simplicity is the sound design. The music, to start with, is excellent, and sets the mood of the situation perfectly - each track that plays during a run has a calm variation for exploration, events, and general non-combat business, but it seamlessly transitions to a more intense variation of the same song when you're fighting enemies. Lasers pew, beam weapons bwee, missiles thunk and boom - sound effects are equally satisfying despite their simplicity. It helps that there's always subtle variation, so no two weapons or even attacks share the same sound. There is no voice acting, but dying player crew are given a noticeable unique sound effect to warn of the situation.

Gameplay is divided into several segments. When instructing to jump, the player is shown a map of the sector they're on, containing beacons to which they can travel to. Each jump taken, and the events that transpire at the destination, advance to varying degrees an unstoppable Rebel fleet, which overtakes sectors caught in their path and acts as a turn-based timer mechanic to discourage loitering in the sector. Decisions must be made with regards to what beacon and which path after that beacon to take, as not every place is accessible at any given moment, and trouble arises if the player is either stranded from lack of resources (namely FTL drive fuel) or miscalculating their route in some manner. The sector map design can sometimes straddle the line towards unfair or, in exceedingly rare circumstances, be generated as unwinnable due to no connection to the exit beacon needed to progress, but this is an actual million-to-one chance and the generation is solid, meaning the player has to plan their route carefully and expect the worst.

Arrivals at beacons are then greeted with a text box, from where events can transpire. From research stations failing to contain a fire, to space stations with unresponsive automated defenses, to stranded ships needing fuel in return for a reward, anything can happen. Player decisions at these events will, obviously, influence their outcome, but what's unique is, save for specific options, there's not always a guarantee for a desired result. Sending your crew to deal with the infamous giant alien spiders on a space station is just as likely to have you come back with one less crew and otherwise empty handed, as it is to reward you with some tasty resources. Of course, almost every event has more optimal choices that are dependent on your specific crew racial composition or your ship's equipment and systems, such that the same giant alien spiders event can be bested with using either anti-personnel drones, boarding drones or an anti-bio beam. There's no spectacle to these events other than the descriptive text shown to the player. Now, this isn't quite a perfect implementation, as the game doesn't take into consideration every possible equipment and crew variation, or sometimes forgets it, such that the telepathic slugs can sense the lifeforms on a disabled ship, but can't see inside an escape pod that could harbor trouble.

Imbetween or after event segments, the player then often has to confront either a hostile ship, hostile crew, or both, which leads us to the real time strategy and resource management aspect of the game. Crew can be distributed at any time to various rooms on the ship, several of which house systems which may be manned for improved effectiveness: someone in a weapons room can charge weapons up faster, for instance, and only gets faster the more the player fires weapons with that crew member at the weapon controls. The goal of every encounter is to obviously defeat the enemy, with several ways of doing so. The most straightforward is blowing up their ship with weapons capable of inflicting damage. What's interesting is that both the player's and the enemy's systems can be damaged, leading to diminished efficiency from that system and which can further make that side more vulnerable to damage, so be mindful of your shields! In addition, much like your crew isn't protected by plot armor, neither is the enemy's, and another way of dispatching them is by killing the enemy crew. Bombarding a room housing four people scrambling to repair it, igniting every space on the ship, asphyxiating them from a blown out life support system, or plain old teleporting boarders - all's fair game for that purpose.

Each race has specific advantages and disadvantages, so that the Mantis is an excellent boarder and defender but very poor at repairing, while the Zoltan provides free power in the system they're located at the expense of being very squishy. Crew can also be recruited or hired with additional, randomly generated leveled up skills that may make them better fit for a task than normal. Each ship has specific quirks and features that make them more suited to different goals, or just provide a softer difficulty curve than the explicit Easy/Normal/Hard choice at the start of a run. Any ship can use any equipment or systems they find or wish to use, limited by the player's resources but also the system and armament capacity of the ships themselves. Weapons are balanced around each other, so that laser weapons are all-purpose damage dealers that are blocked by shield layers whilst also taking them down, beam weapons are weak against shields but very powerful when they're down, bombs evade defense systems in exchange for only ever dealing crew and/or system damage, ions disable systems they hit without actually damaging them, and missiles... are worse bombs that can be shot down but at least deal hull damage. The balancing between weapons is also a little iffy, such that the "slightly improved" Burst Laser Mk II is a highly sought after piece of kit owing to its highly efficient and relatively quick charging volley of three projectiles for two reactor power, while something like a Heavy Ion cannon is nearly always a poor choice due to its very slow charging speed for underwhelming performance.

No matter the difficulty, the ship or the crew you use, you're most likely gonna have to pay attention and use the Pause button as often as possible. It's a very fast game in spite of its appearance, where split second timing and ordering of weapons fire, power management and crew movement can be the difference between a decisive victory, or a pyrrhic one - if not having one last explosion mark your fate as your ship falls apart. It's a difficult game especially for newcomers to the title, but it's balanced out (on paper, anyway) by the highly rewarding results of strategic, well timed play, not to mention how good it feels to win in spite of the odds stacked against you.

An impressive roster of some 10 ships total and with (functional!) variations that increase the number to effectively 28, all unlockable through specific feats and achievements including victory, and the randomized nature of the game means that you'll be playing it for a very, very long time. It's a daunting prospect, and it's far from perfect in function, but for $10 you may just get an extremely fun title that'll hold your interest for a long, long time.

2004's Street Racing Syndicate is one of several early-mid 2000s racing titles to cash in on the "Fast & Furious" import tuner craze, and can be thought of as a budget alternative to the wildly successful Need for Speed franchise, particularly the Underground series. Indeed, like many reviewers, I've played this several times in the past, too.

The interface and visual quality may have been passable at launch, what with PAL standards and 4:3 CRT screens limiting fidelity, but for 15 years later it doesn't quite cut it. UI elements are pixelated or lacking definition, it doesn't natively support widescreen resolutions so you'll need a patch of some sort that further breaks the interface sometimes, and the actual graphics portion is... okay. For 2004. Everything noticeably lacks flair versus other titles of the era, including the obvious "inspiration" for this game, from car reflections, detailing and modelling to the lighting, post-processing and textures. It's not eye-bleeding, but it's not a looker either. Interestingly, I can praise the "girlfriend" ingame models somewhat - their mouth animation is pretty okay, though the rest looks lackluster, and there's indeed more to talk about them soon..

When it comes to audio, Street Racing Syndicate is very underwhelming. The soundtrack contains less than 20 tracks in total, which doesn't seem too bad until you hear the same mediocre songs over and over. The SFX library is particularly hurting; the cars themselves have mediocre engine sounds, which never change regardless of the upgrades installed, there is only ONE turbo blow-off and gear change sound respectively (both rather jarringly loud, too), crash impacts have around THREE sounds so you can't say there's no variety there sarcasm, and curiously the interface sounds include one which resembles, if not is identical to Steam's notification sound! Talk about confusing, though I doubt it's intentional 👀

Of course, all said and done, it's the gameplay that's the meat of the game, and surely it's better here, right? Well, when starting Street Mode, you're thrown into a race of sorts versus opposition that stands no chance against your rented Skyline GT-R, and after finishing it (apparently position doesn't even matter), you're left some change to buy a starter car, maybe upgrade it, and then take it to a race meet. You're never clearly explained exactly what your end goal is, the only thing approaching a tutorial is a set of one-time messages given by this "Eddie" guy you meet in precisely two cutscenes, about jumping to destinations. Respect could be considered a measure of your progress, since the higher this stat, the more race meets, Girlfriends and cars you can unlock.

What you indeed do to complete Street Mode's campaign, if not 100% it according to the Progress page in the Pause menu, is to win the last series of the Nitro X-Treme race meet, which requires no less than 77.000 Respect points. Consider that the maximum you can get from each Series is 3.000 for finishing in first and doing enough stunts to get the maximum bonus per race, and some races are essentially sprints or drags down a single stretch of road (making it near impossible to max out respect on those), and there being 8 race meets of 3 race Series each in addition to the Respect Challenges earning a bit for completing once, and you have to actually go out of your way to retry previous series to get those lousy last points and qualify for the ultimate race Series... which I'll go ahead and spoil anyway because why not: it's pretty much the same as all others, no extra flair, no nothing.

For a game touting three different cities in which you can drive through, yes I will say they feel different to drive in, but still are way too similar to each other because they're boring. Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles - none of them really resemble the real deal (so you can excuse the racing action as being hampered by authenticity), nor are sufficiently arcade-y to get creative, or at least interesting with the road layouts. When an overwhelming majority of the races you'll do are mind numbing circuits of flat road and more or less 90 degree corners, you can't be faulted for nearly falling asleep. Even the star of the show, Los Angeles, bears way too little similarity to the real life city, and you'd be excused for thinking it's a made-up entity, were it not for the grand total of about 3 landmarks or recognizable features dotted around.

The cars feel bad. Few ever mention why, but it's this "stability control", that white SC rectangle that pulses green sometimes when you go sliding, that really kills any consistency and predictability of handling. Presumably, the devs added that to help people from spinning out all over the place, but it not only slows you down more than necessary, it physically straightens your wheels once it activates in drifting, rendering it moot since it would realistically spin you further out of control. The upgrading is shallow, lacks any progression because all the parts are available from the start, and its layout is perplexing - if you want to upgrade your engine, you have to cycle manufacturers to install a certain part, instead of categorizing each part and then maybe offering manufacturer specific parts. Lots of stats aren't tracked, such as handling or drivetrain layout, which leads some newcomers or novices to car games into confusion wondering which car can actually drift. There's a dynamometer stand, but it's pretty useless since you always see the relevant stats when upgrading, and there's zero tuning you can do anyway - which is a BIG letdown when you go upgrade a bunch of cars and half of them don't break an arbitrary speed.

Free roaming is rendered moot because you can jump to any destination the moment it's made available. The only reason for cruising (not the Free Ride mode which is even more pointless) is to drive your car, race roaming drivers sometimes, and get in trouble with the cops, who are moderately competent but no real match to fast cars.

Girlfriends are a hilariously tasteless feature, and I don't say this to cash in on SJW fads. After gaining Respect, you'll unlock Respect Challenges. An animated lady human thing will challenge you to beat their boyfriend's record for drift, misc. stunting, checkpoint hunting etc. Basically, drive like a muppet and you have a new girlfriend. Who is then sent to the warehouse. Where you can swap between them at any time. You can also view terrible dance videos of these girlfriends, and can unlock up to 3 for winning series with them. I guess this was a half-hearted effort to get kids and teens hard on seeing these girls in the first place?

Outside of Street Mode, there's a defunct (rip Gamespy) multiplayer mode, and Arcade, from where you can do single races, time trials, checkpoint runs through any of the cities, or a series of 3/6/12 races one after another. The checkpoint run for LA and each Iron Man series unlocks cars in Street Mode, both from the showroom and, for free, in your warehouse! They're also rather strong contenders, so, yknow, if you really want to win the game, it's worth doing more... boring and drawn out races to get a few decent cars.

Right now, you can get this title for pretty cheap, as even off-sale it's about $3. There are however many girlfriends to collect and some 60 cars (read: about 20 with an average of 3 trims each) in its inventory. It's not terrible by any means, but the package is decidedly mediocre for the year it came out in, let alone today.

Grand Theft Auto III is the more or less revolutionary, third major entry into the open-ended criminal sandbox game series, spanning from 1997's original top down entry. You play as an unnamed man in this game - later games give him the name of Claude - who seeks revenge from their former partner in crime after they betrayed and left them for dead during a job gone wrong.

By today's standards the game looks positively... poor, but for a 2001 title in an industry still reluctantly stepping into full-fledged 3D graphics, it was astonishing. Nevertheless, character models are pretty obviously composed of separated segments that are animated as need be, often wonkily and even in cutscenes, and while the draw distance is impressive for a game of its age, props and entities still obviously spawn just a short distance ahead of where you look. Small details litter the game world and help in grounding you into its satirical yet dreary and hostile-feeling atmosphere, but it does little when the big picture itself looks dated.

Audio is notably low quality, especially for voice acting, but there is good variety in sound effects, from weapons to vehicles. The radio feature remains a (relatively speaking, anyway) unspoken-of piece of brilliance: 9 radio stations, featuring a wide range of musical genres, and one hilarious talk radio show, to be listened to from any civilian vehicle. Unlike future entries, the humour in dialogue is toned down during mission cutscenes, and mostly relegated either to the radio or to random passerbys spouting nonsense on the streets.

Gameplay is understandably the meat of the game. As a transition from the top-down gameplay to full 3D, some quirks remain to tide over players of the original games, including an optional top-down camera view not seen in any future mainline games, gaining money for fender benders and exploding cars, and the protagonist actually being mute and only partaking in one-way conversations with people, generally to receive mission objectives. The missions have fair variety in delivery of a narrow set of objectives, but quickly become annoying. Future GTA games are graced with things like a map screen, waypoints, more detailed and clear objectives and locations, autosaves, journey skips and mid-mission checkpoints. This game has none of that bar a useful but really restricted minimap in the corner, which doesn't even have a good coloring scheme to distinguish water from roads or tunnels.

Missions are also made that much more annoying by being given no indication of which missions permanently disable performing others until you fulfill them or consult a walkthrough.. nor that, as the storyline progresses, gangs become permanently hostile with you, including a mafia wielding very dangerous weapons that can blow your car up or knock you out to the hospital in a few seconds. You also have a (barebones, by modern GTA standards) list of side activities to perform that reward you with in-game money and additional perks, ranging from being a taxi driver, ambulance driver or "vigilante" officer (providing a souped-up cab, health pickups and wanted level clearing bribes, respectively), to entering certain vehicles parked in specific locations that trigger minigames, and the usual assortment of "hidden package" collectibles that grant an ever expanding armory at your safehouses, which is a godsend when seemingly every other mission wants to screw you over in a flaming wreck, or just end you from onslaughts of enemies who can stun you out of shooting a tiny bit (a lot if shotgun) when you get hit.

For smaller things that can throw off even established players of newer GTA games, a big one is the car handling. They have a much wider range of variation in stats (who'd have thought a lowly looking estate can turn so quickly?) but most end up feeling like they can tip over from just taking a corner at moderate velocity. There's also NO MID-AIR CAR CONTROL, which screws you over 9 times out of 10 if you take a jump or fall badly. Land on your roof? You better crawl out of there fast. You also cannot dive out of a moving car, so you have to come to a stop - again, even as it's about to blow up. All vehicles have much more vague damage indication: while body panels come off with the slightest touch and isn't too unusual for GTA games of its era, vehicles will get some puffs of white smoke coming from the engine after unspecified and seemingly random amounts of damage... then at some point finally go "oh it's fire now, better run", with no further warning of a vehicle's damage state. Weapons have a progression system which amounts to: the pistol is useless the moment you get an Uzi, which is almost useless the moment you get an AK, which is thoroughly useless the moment you get an M16, which is only a notch below the Bazooka, and the shotgun is a poor man's Bazooka for up to 15ft (and also Claude's kryptonite).

Oh yeah, and you can't swim. The action takes place in and around two islands and one mainland segment, and boats are finnicky enough to line up to jetties and hop off as it is, so there's that.

There is easily content for dozens of hours of play in one go, and possibly hundreds more if you're bent on completing the coveted 100% Completion checklist, but this game is not for the faint of heart. Even having played newer titles in the series, III is a monster of its own. Its scale is much smaller and its delivery confusing/confused, but you'll be flipping walkthrough pages the most for this game. okay, the most right after San Andreas Enter this then amazing, now bizarre gem of gaming, and those who can stomach it will have a pretty good time.

Totally Accurate Battlegrounds is a first person Battle Royale game, where over 50 people duke it out on an expansive map, to be the last man/team standing. This game spawned as an April Fools concept from developer Landfall Games' upcoming "Totally Accurate Battle Simulator" - using the googly eyed, pseudo-ragdoll characters as humorous ingame avatars.

The game employs a simple, stylised art design. Props, landscapes and characters are drawn low poly for an overall consistent theme. Animations are basic and minimal, which is immediately excused by the physical presence of your character reacting to movement and the environment.

There's one overly dramatic and intense battle music for the main menu, and one track from Landfall's previous major game release Clustertruck, and that's it for music. Ground sound effects for walking and jumping are limited and not entirely accurate, but almost all guns sound punchy and satisfying, together with reload animations - when they match, anyway. No real voice acting (unless you can call the simple catchphrases voice acting), though sending chat messages has the character humorously gibberish, often for longer than the message itself may be.

Compared to other, more popular BR games, this one focuses on shorter overall matches. For starters, you're not parachuting out of the trucks, you're flung face first at high speed, and have to land in the desired location quickly, to hopefully score a weapon and some kills before the playing field is evened out. There are a great variety of expected firearms across the range, from mundane, to cool, to bizarre special weapons, and the same can be said for the myriad of melee weapons and grenades. All of them see a point and a tactical use for nearly any situation, lending for surprisingly deep strategy in equipment management and use. Recoil and accuracy is a greater concern in TABG than other shooters, because every movement, attack and impact offsets your aim, so a steady hand and cool head matter that little bit more. Lastly, an expansive library of "Blessings" further shakes up each encounter, as you may be introduced to players quadruple jumping over you with near-endless magazines.

Unlike other such games, the match progression is somewhat different. The walls move faster and with shorter breaks between phases, but going outside of the play arena isn't penalized until the walls smash down and quickly close in - if you're stuck outside, your run's over. When you die from other players, you get another chance at returning to the field in a minigame: fly past obstacles and closing walls, and the longer you go the more benefits you get. Final showdowns are also characterized by a tiny arena with ground structures rising, together with lava. A neat selection of vehicles keep the zany theme while providing convenient rapid travel to desired locations.

The release of the Free-to-Play update has given the game the breath of fresh air it needed so badly after the fantastic launch. At least when playing on EU servers, you're guaranteed to be in a match within a minute. Meta-progress is dictated by a cosmetic level: it lets you change your name color (that no one can really see anyway), and gives you a handful of coins to spend on the cosmetics shop, if you so wish to deck your character out even more silly than a googly-eyed noodle person may be.

It's free, it's fun, and it's hilarious. Totally Accurate Battlegrounds is totally worth playing.

Tomb Raider Legend is the seventh entry in the long running Tomb Raider series, and the first reboot, following the handing of franchise rights from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics. The story follows a witty, sarcastic and highly capable Lara Croft, on her search for ancient mystical artifacts, potentially linked to her tragic past, and eventually racing against a long-lost friend to get what she desires.

For a 2006 title, you get some rather impressive visuals. Detailed models and textures bring the mildly stylized characters to life, together with the rather nice animation quality. With a then-fresh batch of powerful consoles to work with, they've added some extra eye candy, via a sprinkling of dynamic shadows, destructible setpiece environments, physics-based puzzles, and a hilarious attempt at "Next Gen Graphics" that goes one step forwards and a dozen steps back - featuring ample visual and even gameplay bugs, and overall degrading the art style of the game if left on. Thankfully, this option is completely optional, and you probably would favour the default look of the game anyway.

The voice acting game is pretty much on point, though some may find the assisting characters taking away from the challenge of figuring out puzzles. This is, apparently, the first Tomb Raider game to make extensive use of background music, whereas previous titles employed it during pivotal moments only - not that I find this a bad thing, because it adds to the experience, and is plain and simply good music. Punchy and crunchy sound effects, for when you need to shoot, grapple, climb and generally parkour around the place.

While the basic gameplay isn't dissimilar to past entries, a new physics engine and creative interpretation of character development and story make for both a much more fluid and responsive, though not necessarily accurate, movement system, and a much more action oriented experience overall. Lara demonstrates both her agility and her combat prowess, often simultaneously. While the levels are rather linear, traversal involves all of Lara's skillset - climbing, shimmying, grappling and swinging around and over pits, clearing and using obstacles with her grappling hook/trademark pair of handguns/own two hands/a solid boot. To this end, it feels fun to control the character, though there are times when she doesn't grab onto an obvious ledge or beam, and often plumetting to her doom. Thankfully, checkpoints are frequent, and recovering progress isn't too annoying.

Combat is basic third person shooting, with a lock-on system. Lara has to be in range of her enemies, otherwise she won't be accurate against them when firing, nor can she use her close quarters abilities, which include slide kicks, jump kicks, standing kicks, grabbing and pulling enemies closer with the hook, and a slow motion leap off an enemy, which deals extra damage while in the air. To avoid enemy attacks, Lara can also jump or combat roll away - a necessity on higher difficulty levels, where taking damage is a bigger deal. While overall unremarkable compared to other games, it's still a solid system and gets the job done.

Between the platforming, (simple) puzzle solving and combat, there are some oddballs thrown in as well, with a more mixed reception. Legend is the first title of the series to use Quick Time Events, wherein the player has to press the coresponding movement command, lest Lara suffer a tragic often chuckle-worthy death. Thankfully, the controls are the same for any retries, so you shouldn't be stuck at them too long. A slightly better received variation thereof is an Indy Sequence, where the player remains in full control, and has to quickly move out of the way of an iminent threat to her life her ability to avoid ragdolling.

Twice throughout the story, you'll also go through a Bike Chase sequence - Lara has to drive through a linear landscape, dispatching enemies and avoiding obstacles, to reach a given goal. Especially on "Tomb Raider" difficulty, damage is very hard to avoid, and may take several retries to progress past.

What Tomb Raider Legend offers is a 6-8 hour long story, with each level containing scattered collectibles that unlock character bios, concept art, objects to inspect from the menus and pistol upgrades. Additionally, official cheats can be acquired by beating respective level time trials. Lastly, the Croft Manor is a sprawling, semi-open ended level with a hint of Metroidvania, where Lara navigates her own home the way she does best, finding collectibles and reacquiring her gear at the same time.

It was a good experience over a decade ago, and has passed the test of time pretty successfully, despite some experimental features tossed in. Well worth a gander.

Mark of the Ninja is a 2D stealth action game, with parkour and platforming elements. You play as the titular ninja, who is bestowed upon the Mark - a tattoo created from a poisonous plant, which grants superhuman abilities, and must use it to its full extent to save your clan.

Lovely stylized visuals with clearly defined interactable elements, walls, grapple points, places of interest and hiding spots. I especially like the visuals of characters in the dark, appearing black with white outlines - and in the Ninja's case, red tattoos. For such simple animation phases, the characters move very fluidly too. It's not exactly winning for pure graphics horsepower, but artistically it's a very fine treat.

Audio design is another element that adds a lot to the experience. Directional audio muffled by doors and walls is nothing new, but it's done very nicely either way. Even the footsteps sound satisfying, both from the Ninja and from enemies. Voice acting is great too, and there's especially a decent variety of voice lines from the guards reacting to you or the environment. Music is thematically appropriate, and really kicks in with percussions and extra instruments layered on when you're in combat or otherwise in a tense situation.

Gameplay blends the audiovisual elements together brilliantly. Enemies display a good level of competence without seeming unfair - in most cases, they require a clear line of sight to a lit object (corpse, Ninja...) or to be very close before they can react to it. Their lines of sight are displayed as small cones, and light shining on something is clearly defined with beams, so you know how to approach any given situation. Patrolling, chatting, attacking, screaming or barking enemies leave soundwaves even through walls or when your Ninja can't see them directly, informing you of their position - but this can also work for or against you, since running, interacting with certain objects, or throwing darts at things can attract or distract enemies into investigating. Obviously, leaving a corpse under normal circumstances, or especially yourself to be seen, will raise the alarm and make all enemies in the area more alert, in addition to sapping your sweet score.

There are a great variety of traversal methods through the level, roughly divided into non-lethal and lethal. The Ninja is, as per the case in most stealth games, not too well suited for fighting enemies head on, but can sneak behind/from beneath/above/beside a doorway/from a hiding spot and assassinate an unsuspecting enemy. Alternatively, one can employ from a selection of items to get the job done: darts thrown at objects to sound a noise and distract guards, at lights to create darkness, or at the enemies themselves to piss them off and send them running towards where you threw it; distraction items, including a firecracker, a blinding light, a smoke screen and the ubiquitous cardboard box; and attack items, such as a spike trap, caltrops to stun enemies and poison darts, not to kill, but to terrorize. Performing challenges and certain feats in the levels unlock Seals, which can be used to unlock new movement and assassination options for the Assassin, or upgrade his equipment, such as letting the box be used to hide an enemy, or making the spike trap completely silent when thrown. Progressing through the game and completing these challenges will unlock alternate "Paths" or playstyles, including one focused on combat survivability at the expense of focus no longer stopping time, or a completely silent suit that forbids use of a sword or attack items.

These altogether combine to create a comprehensive and highly replayable experience, particularly with score leaderboards. One can make use of any combination of items and paths to great effect. The interactions the player makes with enemies throughout the levels are all satisfying, whether lethal or not, but special mention goes to the Terror mechanic - a terrorized guard will attack any sound, cause friendly fire mayhem, never sound the alarm, and generally ensures that these slow-moving, afflicted enemies will remain the last ones standing in the room... until the Ninja decides they're of no use anymore, at least.

The story clocks in at about 6-8 hours, with another one or two for the Special Edition expansion, which also unlocks an interesting hybrid path, as well as developer commentaries scattered throughout the levels, where they explain the challenges in designing and developing the game. This is a solid purchase for anyone, but especially those favouring stealth gameplay and/or a large variety of gameplay choices.

One of the most influential, if not the most influential first person shooter ever, Half Life 2 continues the story of physicist Gordon Freeman, who is awoken by the mysterious G-Man, from extended stasis, into the Combine-ruled crapsack world.

The game features high fidelity textures, models and animations, especially on character faces. While dated in most regards, the actual art style and atmosphere certainly holds up even today, and upon release it was unanimously praised for its attention to detail and overall graphics quality. In fact, Valve's facial animation system has been used, to great effect, in all of their future games to bring life and emotion to characters.

It's great in the sound department, too. Voice acting is certainly on point. While most, if not all gun sounds are rather underwhelming, Half Life 2 employs an otherwise impressive library of environmental and entity sound effects. The music is very sparse, only playing at appropriate moments throughout the game, but whether it's mournful, haunting or blood pumping, it's 100% awesome.

For a first person shooter, its conventional shooting mechanics are unremarkable at best. All enemies seem to take more punishment than would be expected, especially from headshots, and while ragdoll physics were used to better effect by the game's setpieces and gimmicks, they don't usually enhance the experience when just clobbering or shooting them in the face. I'm more inclined to label it a first person action game, because it does several things throughout its length: airboat and offroad buggy sections, rudimentary but refreshing physics puzzles, an entire level of survival horror, several tower defense setpieces, and squad tactics (which are so basic as to be pointless, really). Against all odds, it integrates these gameplay changes very elegantly. It honestly felt like natural transitions, which could be because you're given breathers to prepare or to be given more exposition.

Its brilliant gimmick is with the Gravity Gun, turning what would be a neat but novelty physics engine into a powerful tool and toy. Objects of reasonable size and mass can be grabbed from a distance, and then punted with great force. Heavier objects can still be pushed. The final level has the Gravity Gun supercharged and let you pick up and punt enemies directly. It's an awesome tool with abundant, even reusable ammunition, and great effectiveness on enemies up to medium ranges. This can really go into the pantheon of "Best Video Game Weapons", for its unique design and functionality.

The game's biggest sin, by far, is being so revolutionary that, playing it for the first time today, after experiencing dozens of other shooters and action games released since 2004, makes it feel cliche and unremarkable outside of the Gravity Gun. It's set the standards for storytelling, atmosphere and visuals, sound design and engaging gameplay - standards that, even today, aren't reached sometimes. It's a testament to the longevity of Half Life 2 when games continue to build upon its singular aspects.

The storyline for Half Life 2 is great for about 8 to 12 hours, depending on how much you hunt for secrets and achievements. For its current price point of $10, you have a pretty good deal on your hands, and for $5 it's absolutely a must buy. Everyone should eventually play it, if not to see how far we've come!

SUPERHOT is a low poly, minimalistic first person shooter-puzzle hybrid. Having started as a proof-of-concept game pitch for a 7 Day FPS challenge in 2013, SUPERHOT has taken the media by surprise with its stylish, no-nonsense presentation and outstanding execution - which has been largely carried over in the final release on Steam.

There is plot. It's the rather cliche theme of "you're not in control, your fourth wall won't protect you" deal.

The main menu is stylised as an old school terminal; the intermission loading sequences, "cutscenes" and supplementary menu content and minigames are done in ASCII art style; and the actual gameplay is simple, low poly black and red models, blasting spectacularly apart in plain white and grey environments. This simplicity is, in my opinion, excessive, because the premise of the game could work in its favor by allowing detailed firearm animations.

Speaking of animations, despite their Kickstarter goal of better animators, it's all fairly crude. Little variation in animation, whether you fire a gun, swing a melee weapon, or a red guy stops to shoot - sometimes they fire gangsta style and that's it.

The most music you'll get is in the credits - a rather catchy Polish rock theme. The rest of the game has a droning ambience, which only tends to get noticeable in important story sections. Very crunchy and satisfying sound effects, especially for the shotgun, but not for the pistol and machine gun, which sound the same and bothers me somewhat.

What you see is what you get: time moves only when you move. Looking around, moving, jumping and attacking cause time to accelerate by varying amounts, which the enemies, flying objects, debris and bullets react to. This gameplay is the closest we'll get to a proper Matrix game. It is absolutely superb, it 100% delivers on the gameplay premise.

What it doesn't deliver on, however, is the amount of content. In less than three hours, you finish the campaign. Go have fun in Endless mode and its 5 levels with 4 variations on scoring, and replay story levels in Challenge mode, with added twists like only using a katana, or time standing fully still when motionless but you only get one shot with each weapon.

For me, this isn't $25 worth of content, even if I admit to the gameplay being so tight I come back every once in a while. The amount of unique gameplay is a hot contention point among players, but I assure you personally: you won't regret the time you spent on this game, only that you could spend more on it.

F1 2016 is, uh, that year's officially sponsored Formula 1 game, if that didn't come across.

Starting the career mode, you can make your own in-game driver avatar from pre-set models and helmet designs, then give them a name and a shorthand nickname. From past Codemasters games I miss the option to be called by a set nickname, personally, but that's a negligible downside.

The career itself is super long, it spans 10 seasons of some 21 tracks, and on 25% race length you're looking at some 2 hours per circuit if you don't mess up too much - that's three 30 minute-long Practice sessions, one 20 minute long Qualifying run, and one 20 minute long race on average. There's a rivalry feature, which tracks and compares your accomplishments across the Qualifying and Race stages of the weekend, and if you do well you get bumped to a greater rival. Practice sessions have a point beyond mere track memorization, as you can opt to complete practice programmes to get you acclimatized to the track, manage your tyres and set qualifying runs, in order to get research points that will be used to gradually perfect your car over the career.

Visually, not much to complain about here, except for the facial animations not quite looking right. Other animations are rather basic but you really have to look hard to find flaws. Great level of detail even on low graphical settings, and Ultra looks damn good.

Car sounds are pretty good, and especially from the cockpit cams you get the full symphony of turbo whistle and high-revving V6 notes for the whole time spent on the track. The rest of the sound effects are done nicely too. Music only plays in the Main Menu, career lounge, while fast-forwarding in the pit garage, and on results screens - and it's rather good as well! No complaints about the voice acting either, it does the job to both immerse you into the race event (with the presenters) and to communicate your status (with your engineers).

I probably won't stand a chance at driving F1 cars anytime soon, but they feel pretty close to what I think are the real deal. On a gamepad you need careful throttle, brake and steering management to keep the beast in check, and then further management to ease up tyre wear, heat and fuel consumption. A huge host of assistance and difficulty levels let you tailor your experience just the way you want it - from the shortest possible races with full assists and limited wear and tear, to 60 minute long, gruelling races where one wrong move can ruin your day (if you don't rewind, that is). Safety cars step in whenever things get rougher than wanted on the track, and the AI seems to put up a good challenge on Hard and above. I'm pretty sure it follows the rules, regulations, track and driver lists of the actual 2016 F1 Championship, which is neat.

For F1 nuts I think this is a good package, and for racing game enthusiasts it is an equally attractive choice for its current asking price. Others may find it more palatable on a discount. This is Codemasters level of quality, detail and fun.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the 2012 reboot of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown and X-COM: UFO Defense games, in which the player commands a task force of humanity's elite soldiers, in order to stop an alien invasion from consuming the world.

Compared to the originals, the interface is much more streamlined, and a lot of the obscure mechanics have been trimmed out. The base management system is centered on one XCOM institution, squad sizes are smaller but each individual soldier is a heavier loss.

Its art style half resembles a cartoon, thanks to the exaggerated proportions of characters and equipment, which gives it its own charm and identity. The technical side isn't shabby either - while you will mainly view the fight from a bird's eye view, the camera frequently lowers itself into a cinematic perspective closer to the ground, and there's a healthy amount of detail in the maps, even if they tend to look rather similar after a while.

Guns pack a punch, and sound like it. Not a lot of variety in footstep noise. Music is good, you'll have a few earworms playing this game. Voice acting is sometimes inconsistent but it gets the job done.

There's two layers of gameplay in XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The real-time strategy consists of scanning the Geoscape, for extraterrestrial threats and advancing time to complete projects. The base can be upgraded with improved interceptors, power facilities, satellite connections, labs and workshops, combat training, and more interesting rooms. The 16 nations that have joined the XCOM project will provide funding, if the player can provide surveillance and protection for them. Events that are not responded to can lead to increasing panic within the countries - if the country is at maximum panic, it risks leaving the XCOM project and withdrawing its funding permanently. Losing 8 countries is a game over.

The weakest gameplay link is arguably the UFO Interception. A minimalistic screen shows an artist's depiction of your aircraft attempting to shoot down the UFO, but is almost entirely reliant on RNG and the only input the player has on the outcome of the fight is by either consuming modules to boost their aircraft's capabilities, or to pull out prematurely to avoid an expensive loss. It feels at odds with the rest of the gameplay.

The second gameplay layer is the turn-based combat taking place on ground level. Up to 6 soldiers, specialised into a certain weapon class and skillset, have to complete an objective that usually amounts to blowing the crap out of the ayyys. Sometimes they do something else, but normally should be kicking alien butt left and right. They may not get the chance, though, because combat is fast (for a turn based game anyway) and punishing. Bad positioning, overextending, bunching up or spreading out can spell doom for your favourite soldier, or even the entire squad. Line of sight is a major gameplay mechanic that influences who can attack who, and whether they're unprotected from the side of the attack - granting a large critical hit boost against most targets, and maximum hit chance.

The infamous RNG will strike at least once, especially on higher difficulties, leading to 99% to-hit attacks missing, only to result in your colonel to be turned into paste. That's XCOM, baby!

The standard campaign will take you a little while to complete. Being made by Firaxis, just one more turn is in full effect here. The ideal way to play the game is apparently on "Classic" (which is still fair, if a bigger challenge, unlike the original games), Ironman difficulty(only one autosave instead of up to 3, making all actions permanent).

The base game alone provides dozens of hours of gameplay, but the Complete Edition is definitely worth the extra $10. In addition to extra soldier customisation and a small plot thread, Enemy Within is a major standalone expansion, which brings forth an alien resistance group amongst humanity, as well as soldier augmentations. Recommended for everyone, must buy for strategy fans.