Battlefield 2

I’m in an awkward position – I’m reviewing a highly acclaimed first person shooter 12 years after it was first released.  The trouble here is that there have been dozens of AAA games that have been trying to fill the exact same role every year since then.  It’s a good concept – two teams trying to capture rally points and slowly take over the map.  But genre saturation is a thing, and we’ve passed that point by about a decade.

I say all this because Battlefield 2 is a good game.  But it is far from original, and there are any number of other, better games that will scratch the exact same itch with better graphics and without having to install Punkbuster and GameSpy Comrade (I’ve lost count how often I’ve uninstalled those programs).  Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot to say about Battlefield 2 – it was successful enough that you see the same aspects repeated again and again in every other US Armed Forces FPS since then.  My conclusion is this: when it came out, it was fantastic and it deserves its place in history.  But there isn’t really a reason to play it now (especially since you’ll only be playing on LAN).  To Tier Three it goes.

Rodina

Space is big.  Really big.  That’s a problem for open world, space-based games.  In a book, you can write “and nothing interesting happened for the next three weeks,” and that’s all it takes.  In a game, you still have three weeks ahead of you.  There’s two solutions to this: make the world smaller or travel faster.  Rodina takes the former option.

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Pixel Puzzle Ultimate

 

Why do I–Why–Why do I have this. WHY–why do I have THIS. WHY DO I–WHY DO I HAVE–THIS. THIS! WHY DO I HAVE THIS–

 

YOU. You! It’s your  fault Culling of the Cows? Did you make a deal with Pixel  Puzzle Ultimate? Did you supply them with a picture in a desperate attempt to gain traffic to you game? Did everyone who had a copy of Culling of the Cows get a free copy of Pixel Puzzle Ultimate as part of the deal? Did they? DID THEY?!? Oh, you think you stop me? This is the last game in my Steam library. THE LAST. You want a review? You want a review of this huh? FINE. I’LL GIVE YOU A REVIEW.

 

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Amnesia: Memories

 

If I keep playing these dating sims, I’m  going to wake up with amnesia one day and think that I’m a high school girl. Or… I guess I’m a college girl in this one. Whatever!

 

Ever since I started reading Shojo-beat, I’ve been a sucker for Shojo. Don’t get me wrong, I love Shonen too but I always felt like I identified with the Shojo characters more often. That’s what makes games like Amnesia: Memories so much fun–not only do they give me a front-row pass to a Shojo universe, but they let you drive as well.

 

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Kholat

 

In Soviet Russia, walking simulates you! Ahaha… wait,no,  hang on. In S-soviet Russia, uh… You scare ghosts! Argh, no wait uh… i-in Soviet R-russia…

 

I had no idea what Kholat was when I turned it on. After an opening cinematic that seemed to last forever that went along the lines of “something-something dead bodies are turning up in the USSR,” you are dropped into an abandoned town surrounded by endless snow. At first, I was completely confused. Did I miss something? Did I have an objective? What was I supposed to be doing here? I walked around for about ten minutes before finally getting frustrated and looking at some of the comments on Steam. When I got to one that read “No tutorial […] No direction No guide” I understood that wandering around clueless was exactly what I was supposed to be doing  and once you know that you aren’t supposed to know it’s not a bad game.

 

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Agarest: Generations of War

 

What’s better than a dating sim? FIVE DATING SIMS.

 

Have you ever seen this episode of Futurama? Agarest is kind of like that. Mix in a bit of Fire Emblem setting, sprite-based isometricism and all the young maidens throwing themselves at your feet that you could want and you’ve got Agarest: Generations of War. Plotwise, there’s this guy named Leonhardt who deserts from his army in order to protect an elf-chick. Turns out, Leonhardt sucks and he gets his butt kicked by the Dark Knight (their name, not mine). On the brink of death, some goddess pops up and is all like “Pledge your and every single one of your descendants souls to me if you want to live,” and Leonhardt’s all like “… mmmmk!”

 

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Joe Danger 2: The Movie

 

Ugh. Write enough reviews and you’ll just feel like you’re repeating yourself. Okay, let’s get to…

 

When I put this game into Tier 3, I wasn’t surprised. What surprised me was the genre of the game. Even then, it only took four minutes to figure the game out. Four minutes to identify this as a very pretty but very dumb game. I expected this to be a game where you got to play with hundreds of pieces, where you built your own movie set and tried to hit certain requirements or goals. I imagined it was going to be like “This bomb must explode, but it must do so in midair while being carried by this paper airplane,” and then you had to build the scene or something. And possibly got bonus points if you used 5 ducks in it somehow. No, I was actually disappointed to find that this is just 2D vehicle stunt game; you know, the same kinds you can find a dime-a-million-dozen on Kongregate, Newgrounds and any cell phone game provider’s service.

 

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LiEat

 

Ah, another portmanteau! …I’m just happy I got to use that word again.

LiEat is actually 3 games in one, all featuring Efina, a very mysterious girl. Born only just a little while before the beginning of the first game, she is brought into town by a roaming traveler. While she refers to the traveler as “papa,” she’s not related to him at all. In fact, Efina is a dragon.

 

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Insecticide Part 1

 

Hasn’t anyone learned to never put “part 1 of” anything on their game? I mean, seriously, if you aren’t Star Wars, how many times has that actually helped you make a sequel?

(Part 1 of 2 is up there in that pic. It’s just hard to see.)

 

So what is this first-half of Insecticide? Well, it’s a point-and-click adventure combined with platforming action adventure. Yeah. YEAH. How do those two even begin to mix? You play as Chrys, a rookie detective. She’s spunky, cool and driven to solve the case because she’s the only one who can. It’s not a new story, but then again it’s told in a new way–entirely with bugs. It feels a lot like a Double Fine game like Grimm Fandango or Psychonauts.

 

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Savage Lands

 

Okay, I’m getting a very Skyrim-y feel about all of this…

 

It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for survival crafting games that don’t start with “mine.” Savage Lands is just such a game with an apt savage theme. You are Jim McCave-man, some sort of viking-esque barbarian whose unlcothed butt just washed up on the icy shore of nowhere. You’ll craft all the general basics that you’d expect to find–weapons, tools, clothing, fire and shelter. Really, if that was it, there wouldn’t be anything special about this one. However…

 

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