Review the last game you played.

[Arjahn]

Here's a joke review I did for Rouge Legacy when my friend asked me what I thought of the game. Just so you know, I actually love the game.

Rouge Legacy is a game about a guy name rouge and his legacy. The goal of the game is to get a bunch of money, then die, just like real life. This game is hard to describe, but I'll do my best. Rouge Legacy is like Binding of Issac, Super Metroid, Castlevania, Duck Tales and my ex girlfriend Cindy all got together and had massive orgy, even after I told Cindy that she better not sleep around AGAIN AFTER F*CKING MY BEST FRIEND STEVEN AND STEALING MY REFRIGERATOR.

No really, Rouge Legacy is the greatest castle building simulator of 2013, it deserves a solid 8/10 from IGN.

The enemies are some of the most original I've seen in years, including a Skeleton, a knight, a knight with a big ax, and giant eyeballs.

The gameplay consists of intense boss fight FUCK! --

The gameplay consist of intense boss fights of giant eyeballs and shit.

After you die seventeen times, you asexually reproduce children with horifying birth defects.
Then these children get all of your crap, including your giant castle, and they decide to kill themselves during their midlife crisis and die stabbing some floating eyeballs.

You also run into many colofull characters in your adventures, like this guy who makes stuff, this lady who magicks stuff, and this asshole you're never going to use.

You can also run into this offensive dark-elf stereotype who scams you out of your hard earned coins like the filthy drow he is.
If you find the lens of truth, this boss fight becomes absurdly easy though, so don't worry.

If you're a masochist, then Rouge Legacy gets Arjahn's approved cardboard box out of four.

But if you have any sense of human decency, then this game gets a diet coke can with a shriveled up dead rat inside out of my definition of monogamy DAMMIT CINDY YOU F*CKING WHORE!

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This is a review I've posted on another forum that I decided to bring here.

Well, I can sum it up like this. Nintendo, if you wanted to make a Mario platformer for consoles, make one. Don't put it in a spin off that has a different focus.

Nailed it right on the head, nice review.

[VNRob]

Sounds like fun. (I do apologize if this is too long. I got started typing and kind of couldn't stop.)

Dark Souls

I'll go ahead and state right off the bat I love this game to death. What started as kind of an uncertain purchase very quickly became one of my favorite games of all time. And for good reason, Dark Souls offers a very interesting and unique game play experience I haven't encountered in other RPG's before or since. This is a game that has the rare trait of being subtle, and I do mean that. It's very easy and likely you'll miss 90% of the intricacies of this game at first and maybe even on a second playthrough. But enough gushing, let me explain myself a bit.

Let's start off nice and easy: Gameplay. Gameplay in Dark Souls is simple, adopting a slow but tight control scheme that allows you all the basics of any RPG. You have your fast attack, your slow but strong attack, your dodge, your interact button, your item button, your block button, all the basic moves of any 3D RPG. Though while other games like say Dynasty Warriors or Kingdom Hearts uses all these to make you the single most over-powered being to ever exist ever Dark Souls opts for the more realistic approach. For all intents and purposes your character controls like a regular human, not counting the stuff he fights of course. It's not lightning fast and places a lot more emphasis on reading your enemies and reacting strategically rather than jumping in headfirst. The controls are tight enough that when something bad happens to you it's not the game's fault, it's your fault. I can tell you from personal experience almost every enemy in the game can be handled if you pay attention, be careful, and most importantly, be patient. Dark Souls is very methodical, if you try to go through things at your own fast pace you'll get killed hundreds of times before the first boss.

The game also features several different meters. There's the standard health meter, durability for your equipment is important to keep note of. There's a humanity counter in the corner (Humanity's an item, just role with it). And most importantly, a stamina bar. Stamina is exactly what it sounds like, every time you do something other than casually run it uses stamina. Stamina management is a crucial part of this game otherwise you'll be too weak to block an attack and that'll be the end of that.

The game also has a unique player interaction system: The Summoning system. Essentially you can summon NPC's or Players to help you with whatever you need in the world if they want to be summoned. This can make a lot of the most challenging parts of the game a breeze if you're lucky. But be careful, because there's also PvP. PvP in Dark Souls is pretty good though it's got a lot of flaws. I've run into many hacked players on Xbox who maxed their stats, plenty of cheap players, and even on a couple occasion "Twinks". Whom are players who've beat the game low-level so they can use end-game equipment at their low level to slaughter actual low-levels in PvP. Lot of flaws but also a lot of fun.

Another interesting gameplay mechanic is the jumping. There isn't a traditional jump button in Dark Souls. What you have is a run button, and should you release it while running you'll do a jump. I'll get more into why this is interesting when I mention the environments. But for now let's talk sound.

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I say Sound instead of music for a reason as Sound plays a pretty big role in the game whether or not you realize it. I've already said you have to be careful in Dark Souls and not run into danger head first and listening will often be as rewarding as looking before you leap. Some enemies have sounds they make or sound cues during attacks that'll help prepare you so you won't be surprised. And should an enemy ever be following you and you don't know it (It'll happen) sound will be your only savior from a backstab.

Then there's the music; now, you can be forgiven if you honestly don't realize that there's music in Dark Souls at all. The music in most areas is very low and subtle, more atmospheric than traditional video game music. And when you're in a situation where loud music is playing there's a good chance you aren't paying any mind to it because a boss is smashing your face in. The game's soundtrack does a great job of blending in seamlessly into the world, helping immerse the player into whatever setting they're in at that moment, and the tense tracks of the different bosses help give you the suspense and tension that makes this game so addictive. Special mention goes to the Final Boss theme though, which perfectly captures (In my opinion) The entire feeling of the game in a very simple, but sad song.

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So the music is all good but what about the actual environments you visit? Well glad to say these are pretty great too. Dark Souls does something fairly unique in that all the areas of the game are connected. You go up into the Undead Burg and ascend to Sen's Fortress or descend into the Lower Undead Burg and proceed to the Sewers and ultimately to Blighttown. A feature I very much enjoyed was how whenever you progressed to a new area you could open a shortcut that connected it to a previous area (Often times Firelink Shrine) and provides easy access for future visits. Another subtler touch I loved was how if you ever just stopped to look around you can often see other areas of the game from where you were. Go to the top of the Undead Parish Church and look down to see all the Undead Burg you crossed to reach there. Or maybe peer deep, down the cliffs to see the Darkroot Basin or turn your head to see Sen's Fortress or even peer up and see Anor Londo looming overhead. It helps make the world feel very grand and connected, help but the lack of loading times I might add (Seriously, none unless you teleport).

The actual designs of the environments are something nice to behold to. This game isn't any Crysis or super-high graphic ultra-mega game but it more than gets the job done. The environments look great and look like stuff pulled straight out of fantasy...Which I'm pretty sure is the point. I'll just link this picture of Anor Londo to demonstrate what I mean when I say the settings look incredible.

http://static.squarespace.com/static/500...ondo_2.jpg


I want to stress that's not a cutscene, that's all In-Game.

Something I've seen unique to the Soul's Franchise though is the non-linear platforming. What I mean by that is generally games have taught us most of the environments are just glorified backdrops to the very clearly defined platforms or paths laid out for us but not in Dark Souls. There are areas all over the game only accessible but using the jump to your advantage and the places are designed so that if you aren't used to thinking like this then you'll just skip right over them. Even five playthroughs later I find new areas I can jump to and new items to obtain.

I can't just mention the good without the bad though and there are some less-than spectacular areas depending on how you want to look at it. Lost Izalith for example is a great sight to behold and all, but all the lava gives a hard-to-look-at orange sheen to everything and makes it hard to see at times. Then there's Blighttown where everything is laggy and there's a putrid green hue to everything that makes it hard to see. Though thankfully these bad cases are far and few between.

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But what's environments and music without baddies? Let's talk enemies. Thankfully the enemies of Dark Souls got as much design work as the levels. You still have the standards, skeletons, zombie-knights, actual knights, minotaurs, Dragons, the works. Though the unique designs of the game are a true sight to behold, being strong and unique in design.

One problem though, the AI in Dark Souls is kind of dumb. And by that I mean it is very easily exploitable. The AI in Dark Souls goes about as far as hit the thing closest to it, and if you're far away either close the distance or use a ranged attack. If you ever use the game's summon feature to summon another player you can exploit just about any enemy with ease. Or hell, you can just exploit them yourself. Most enemies tend to leave themselves wide open for back stabs or get stuck in a loop by a player manipulating them (Sadly the Final Boss is probably one of the most guilty of this). Though should you take on the enemies "Fairly" without exploiting the AI then you're in for the challenge the game is known for.

...Most of the time that challenge is fair but the game can be kind of a dick at times. Specifically three bosses come to mind. The Capra Demon is the first, unless you know what's coming this boss will kill you at least once. After that no problem. Then there's the other two...The Four Kings and Bed of Chaos. The Four Kings boss battle has always been a personal trouble spot but many players agree it's a boss where unless you tank damage you're going to have a hard time. And Bed of Chaos...No one likes Bed of Chaos, not even the developers. Let's leave it at that shall we? Moving on!

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And now characters...This is actually kind of hard to talk about without spoiling much. At a glance characters in Dark Souls are incredibly simple and even may come off as bland. This is intentional. It's all about subtext here, you got to pay attention to the details if you want to know all there is about these characters. And when you do that you view all of them in a totally different light. A character who seems like a sociopathic murderer may in-fact turn out to be an unknowing victim of a cruel Goddess' temptations. A man who seems good and holy may in fact be a cowards out for his own. Nothing is as it seems in Lordran.

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And that brings me to the Story. I saved this for last because honestly I consider this to be the best element of Dark Souls. From Software have a unique method of storytelling I've never seen anywhere else and when I found out about it it elevated this game from good to great. There are almost no cutscenes in Dark Souls, you get one in the beginning that pretty much tells you the plot of the game. There are some bosses who have intro cutscenes. And you have ending cutscenes. That's it. And no expositional dialogue either. The best you'll have on a blind run of Dark Souls is a vague idea of what you're doing most of the time. Again, this is intentional.

It's meant to make you dig deeper into the world and discover the body of lore held within. And if you do...Ho-Boy. The game can be appreciated at a surface value, but if you decide to look deeper you'll find out a lot of things about everything in the game you never would have imagined. I won't spoil it but let me put it like this. There isn't a single thing in this game, hostile or not, that doesn't have some tragic element to them. There are certain bosses I gleefully fought at first but now I cringe because I know. This is a very sad game, a very very sad game. Not sad in the sense you'll break down and cry, just...sad. I couldn't explain it and do the game justice.

Of course not everyone is going to investigate item descriptions or stop to think about what they're doing or look up Lore videos (Which is the fastest method) so this factor is kind of moot. It's a huge plus for the game but it's easy to miss.

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That's actually a very good way to summarize a lot of this game. It is enjoyable on a surface level, but should you look part it it becomes something else entirely. I was scared at first when I got this game two years ago because I thought it would be too hard or an unfair kind of hard, thankfully that's not the case. It's difficult to be sure but this game is very well designed and I highly recommend it.

So there's my review of Dark Souls. I apologize for the length I kind of really love this game.

[gamemaster1991]

A few weeks ago, I bought 3 games to add to my growing colection. These games were Duke Nukem Forever, Rock Band 2 and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands for Wii. Since this is Review the last game you played, I'll focus on the prince.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

So, if you know me, you would know that I'm a pretty big PoP fan and a new one at that, so I'm getting the feeling of the series down pat. So I can say that this feels like a PoP game, but It's a little bit easier than the rest as well. I have been playing this off and on for the past week and I probably could have beaten it in a good siting if I had nothing to do that day.
What made me have to put it down was the fact that some of the Heroic Challenges are frustrating to get. Ubisoft found a way to include acivments in a Wii game by adding these rewards for doing things, like not getting hit or find all the retro potions. As of writing I have yet to get them all since I really don't want to beat the game in 7 hours or less. At lest I have my Dark Prince skin which is just his Two Thrones outfit, those liers and the Sand Dagger, so that's cool.
I have to say, getting Yuri Lowenthal to voice the prince again is pretty cool. I'm really glad they didn't cast "Dastan" in his place. The story is a bit blah, but I have to complement them coming up with a new story for the different versions. I'm not sure if it was my copy of the game, but I did have a few bugs happen to me. Some of them had me restart the level to fix it (a block not moving or a lift not...... lifting).
All in all it's not a bad game, but I would have to recommended it only to the fans who liked Sands of Time and would like more of that but a bit less. You really don't have to play the other games to enjoy it, but it would help.

I give this game: a 7 out of 10. Now it's time for me to hunt down a PSP and DS on Amazon/Ebay, so I can play the versions on those systems. By the way, are they the same game? I can not find any information on the DS game.

[gamemaster1991]

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
So, can I ask why this is a much better game than the last one.
Better map? OK.
Faster pase? OK.
Story and Character? ........... That is debatable.

Edward Kenway. A return to form for the sires, as Connor was a boring, by the book character that nobody but me liked. Ed is a pirate that left his wife to make it rich and get money and Fame. He goes on an adventure to....... zzzzzzzzzzzz... I don't care. He's a great character when he's enteracting with people and doing Assassin/pirate things, but I just don't care about him or his backstory. To me (having not played Liberation yet), Edward is the next to worse main character since he does not really change (the worse being AC1 version of Altair, who got better with Revelations). For most of the game he's all about himself, Money, and doing as he pleases, which he states by saying "Everything is permitted? I like the sound of that." He only changes after the death of a main character in the next to last chapter, and still he sounds like he barely learned anything after losing everything. I prefer the sailing and the Abstergo parts.

The story. I could careless. Why are we looking for the Observatory? Gold? fair enough but why is the artifact so important? I played the whole game and all I can say is that it reads peoples minds, I think. Why are we killing Templares? Ed is not an assassin (he stole his outfit from Duncan Walpole, a real assassin, and NEVER earns the right to wear them) and only goes after them because they found out he was lying to them. Even Roberts, who I count as the big bad of the game, is so boring that I could careless. It really is not a good sign when you keep a toll of people you want to die, and two of those characters are the first ones you meet

With all my bitching out of the way, it is a good game. Everything looks great. The AC games have always (except for the first) have given me someone to look up and learn more about. This one was Mary Read, who is very interesting to read about. (By the way don't look up Mary Read until you finish either Sequence 5 or the game). Blackbeard is also a great character, who I wish was in more of the game, since the game is so short that you kinda miss his presence in the game. The world is really big that it makes it easier to find things, that it made it easy to get all the collectables. The player character is loads of fun to be (though that could just be be).

With all that said, a good game that looks good, but with a main character and story that I could careless about, along with a game that feels shorter than it really is, deserves a 6/10. I can't wait for next year for the next part of the Abstergo researcher story.

Spoiler

No really real spoiler!

Spoiler

If you can not tell the real identity of John was a reincarnated Bartholomew Roberts/Aita/"Sage", you are not paying attention to the story. Also Giving James Kidd a female voice actor does not help that she is meant to be like, what, 30 and in disguise as a man.

[Milesthumbs]

Ascend: Hand of Kul

Ascend is a Free to Play, Hack 'n slash, Action RPG, on the Xbox 360. You play as a Kaos, which is a vessel to carry out the work of the "New Gods" as they are called. That work, however, is quite simple; convert the world to follow your god. It sounds simple, but in reality, it's anything but, but I'll get onto that later.

Gameplay

Now, Ascend, plays silmilarly to any other hack n slash, you go around, kill enimies, and get loot. However, the game does more than that. At the start of the game, you select your alliance, you have a choice of 3; you have the Darkness, which is slow, but hits like a champ. You have the Light, which is more spell based, with powerfull spells, but doesn't hit a hard. And lastly, you have the Void, which is a balance between physical strength and magical strength. Each alliance had different spells, and some alliance specific dungeons, but each one shares the same basic plot.

You aren't stuck with that alliance you chose at the start, however. Because every 5 levels you gain, you can ascend. When you ascend, you lose all of your equipment, but you can pay to keep equipment with souls, the games only currency. When you ascend, you get to essentially remake your character from the start, giving it a name, a look, and equipment(and this is where you can add your items you chose to keep, if you so wish.). Afterwards, you chose your alliance for this life, which will give you different gifts depending who's winning in the crusades. Once you choose, you go back out into the world, with your level bumped back a little.(But enimies scale with you, so you won't be too weak).

The Crusades

The crusades are essentially the major chunk of multiplayer of the game. Your ascended champions now fight for whatever faction you chose when you made them, and will invade the worlds of other players under the control of an AI, and will take villiages and shrines that you control. You can prevent this, however, by going to the shrine/villiage that they're taking, and kill them.(The game will give you the option to teleport directly to them.) And you will gain XP for this. Every so often, depending on how many territories you have, you will be given a bounus of souls for your work in the crusades.

You also have Crusade spells, which, you can send to other players near you. You can only see a "spirit" of that player, and what they are doing, however. Crusade spells come in 2 forms, you have Curses, and Blessings. Curses send enimies to other players, with their element depending on your alliance. Blessings on the other hand, give other players buffs for 30 minutes of play time. These buffs come in the forms of either Magic cooldown boosts, Attack boosts, and XP boosts.

Souls

Souls are your currency for the game, and are used for nearly anything. Buying gear, repairing and upgrading equipment, and purchasing spells and buffs. You can get souls in 2 ways, you can either buy them, or you can earn them. Unlike most games like this, you will never truly NEED to buy souls if you can manage your equipment correctly.

Plot

The plot, while simple on the surface, is actually a very deep(?) one. You play as a Kaos, which is a Vessel of the New Gods, who all want one thing, WORLD DOMINATION. So how do you do this, you may ask. It's pretty simple actually, you have to go from villiage to villiage, converting them to follow your god. But, you have 3 other problems with this, however. You have the other gods, you have the trolls, which are the main enimies of this game. Lastly, you have the main target of the game, The titan, the old god, and the hunter, who goes by the name of Kul. Kul, is a mindless titan, who had been turned this way by the mortal world. But the people worship him as a god, and there is only one way to kill him, you must kill his 5 Apex's. His Apex's, who wish to revive him, were his hunting wolves in life, have been converted into his guardians, and the only way to kill him is to kill them. All of them.

Dominion

While Dominion is essentially a part of the crusades, I put it here because it has many effects outside of the crusades. When you take a villiage, you convert the nearby area to follow your god. When you do this, you will gain a damage and defense boost while within this territory. You also get the support of the humans in the area, which you can use in 3 different ways. You can call them, and have them climb up onto you, and they will fire arrows at any enimies you will be fighting. You can also eat them, which will restore a bit of health, and will give you 4xp.(along with killing any human enemy.) Or, you can have them climb on enemies if they are on the ground, and will deal damage over time to them. However, if a villiage gets taken from you, and you try to take it back, the human villiagers will try and kill you. The same goes for a villiage that hasn't been converted yet.

Final Verdict

Ascend is a fun game, but after you beat the main campaign, all you have left to do is take back any territories that you don't have(Which is still pretty fun), and do the endless dungeon. Also, one last thing before I give the score, I haven't covered the Spells or Buffs, and I have no plan on doing so, but if you want to know about them, you can get the game yourself. So until the game gets PvP, Co-op, and the second continent added(All which have been announced as Coming Soon in game).This game gets an:

8.5/10

[Hexadecimal*]

It was 2009. I was watching TV when this commercial came on:



...I didn't care. I didn't care for quite awhile until I noticed that it was made by Double Fine, who had made a very deep impression on me due to how awesome Psychonauts was. It was for this single reason alone that I bought the game, but only finished it recently.

From the moment Brutal Legend starts, it's kick ass. You play as Eddie Riggs, the world's best roadie to a band that claims to play "metal" music. Their opening song is so terrible Eddie morns what's become of the genre before one of the idiot band members climbs an unstable stage prop and finds himself in trouble. At this point you are prompted to either keep the game's M rating pure, or turn it into a T game by turning off gore and/or expletives.

Eddie rescues the band member, but the damage has been done and the prop breaks, seeming to fatally injure Eddie. Eddie's blood drips onto his belt buckle which awakens an ancient creature and transports him to the past where Metal is the lifeblood of the war torn world. From here you meet Ophelia and your journey to liberate the world from the grasp of demons begins!

The world of Brutal Legend is vast and fun to explore. There is always something cool to look at. To make the trek easier you're given a car to explore the land that can be summoned anywhere with a guitar solo. The can can be a pain to steer, but you'll get the hang of it. If you choose to explore the land on foot you'll be met with some frustration since Eddie cannot jump, so you WILL get stuck in the environment from time to time.

Eddie's attacks are easy to use and fun. You can use either your guitar or ax to pummel enemies and buy power ups for both of these as well as your car from the Guardian of Metal, whom you should all recognize:



Unfortunately, Double Fine decided to make an odd game play decision that displeased EA so much they tried desperately to keep it hidden before release. When you're ready to face General Lionwhyte the game suddenly tosses aside the fighting you've been used to up to this point and turns it into real time strategy.

A massive problem with this is that the player is not given enough tutorials to fully understand how to play. It's such a big issue Double Fine even released instructions for it on their website to help players. Here's a pro tip for easy or normal mode: Just brute force it.

Secure your Fan Geysers, wrack up enough fans for the heavy hitting troops, and plow your way through your enemies.

I didn't mind them, but some players didn't like the escort missions either. When needing to move to new areas you are responsible for keeping the Tour Bus safe.

Another negative point is that the game went through development hell and then was rushed by EA. So much of the game had to be scrapped and fused together that the pacing is out of whack. If you ignore exploration and side quests, you will be done with this game in a single day. Not kidding.

Some side quests are really fun, but unfortunately most are just simple ambushes where you need to keep your troupes alive or mow down enemies with a machine gun.

The final boss fight is also a complete joke and will be over with in a minute. This is also because what was meant to occur after was cut out of the game.

In the end, Brutal Legend is a very awesome and very flawed game. Since it's been out for five years for consoles, you can get it dirt cheap, and it's more than worth the under $20 price tag.

[gamerofgames]

Pokemon Y:
Praise The Game.