The game is fun, the music is great, and I dig the art style. However the design of the cultists really made me feel uncomfortable, especially with some of them having bombs strapped to them. It seems a little in poor taste just with what's been happening in the world currently.

It could just be some bad timing with the release of this, though. Judging by their social media posts, and other games released it's hard to see it as the developer making a grand political statement. It's the gambit you run across with these very very obscure games. Who knows, I could be supporting someone actually awful and be completely unaware.

Maybe it's just because I've played through the full version 4 times, but I felt that the chibi artstyle detracted from some of the more emotional moments in the story. I think the artstyle could work fine if their mouths moved or eyes emoted at all, but as it is, it's tough to get fully invested in these little guys.

It's still a perfectly fine way to play the game if you want to cut out all the open world guff, but come the last third it sort of just becomes a slightly shorter, but still similar experience to the main game.

The fact this game on Xbox 360 just cuts off halfway through, promises Episode 2 content, and it just doesn't exist baffles me. There's no way they're getting me to play the first half of the game again on PC because this was such an unfun experience.

Samey level design, incredibly cheap enemy AI that can corner you into dying, bosses that need to be exploited to be beaten, somewhat unforgiving checkpoints, and underwater gameplay that isn't very exciting, this game really earned that 4/10 score. Add on top of all that, the story isn't anything exciting and the main character is unbearably snarky and flirts with his handler like he wishes he was Leon S Kennedy.

Really the only saving grace is that dying has funny ragdoll physics and when that happens underwater it's humorous to see your character spin around, and that the game didn't have any bugs. Nice job 505 on publishing this, I hope you earned that cash money.

I had to play through most of this game twice since I accidentally deleted my save file when trying to load it. I feel like that's more times than most people in the world have played this game.

Aiming is a bit sensitive, level design is repetitive, and the story is very weak. I especially didn't like the parts of levels that made you scrape your face against walls until you found the hidden scan points to unlock doors, some being arenas with respawning enemies that keep nipping at you.

I did like the secret rooms you could find by solving circle puzzles that gave you OP guns, but most of them had such low ammo that I'd end up holding onto them and ending up only having 1 weapon to use. I also liked the alien guns a lot more than the human guns.

To be fair to The Conduit though, I didn't hate playing the game, but I definitely wasn't really paying attention to it while I played it. I'm glad to have it in my Wii library, but 1 and 7/9ths of a playthrough is enough for me for a while.

Note: I played this obvious co-op focused game by myself in single player so take that into account when I start complaining about things.

As a fan of 2 out of 3 of the JJ Abrams produced Star Trek films, I had at least a few expectations going into this. I already knew about the bad review scores it received on launch, but I always try to stay open minded when playing something for myself. There's a good amount of fleshing out of the world found in this game, with bringing the Gorn back, sneaking a hidden Tribble into each level, and in a few levels sprinkling audio logs from your crewmates around that give a bit of insight into what they think of Kirk, the current situation, or vague events from the first movie.

Bad news though, this game was pretty unbearable to get through. While it's nice hearing the entire cast from the films return, you can tell some of them are trying more than others with their performances, notably Anton Yelchin, Karl Urbans, and for the most part Chris Pine (though he certainly has a fair bit of flat delivery here and there.)

The combat was not enjoyable at all. I knew I was in trouble when the first boss of the game puts you in a tight room with an enemy who can stun lock you into death with 2 hits, and a brain dead AI who just stands there and takes the hit right at the start of the fight. At a certain point after I saved up enough experience, of which they give you very little at the start, I was able to unlock a stun upgrade that took out just about every enemy in one shot just so I could get around really engaging with the combat, and making stealth sections immensely easier. None of the guns felt very good outside of the main phaser with the necessary upgrades of rapid fire and less heat consumption.

There were a few set pieces that had me impressed, mostly because of the reused OST from the films elevating moments, especially the gliding, falling, and flying sequences. There's also a single section where you do space combat and when it isn't being confusing because projectiles spawn in really close to you, it's pretty cool.

My biggest problem with the game is how buggy it is though. I mentioned that my partner AI was brain dead, but so are a lot of just NPCs. The amount of times progression was halted because someone was stuck walking in circles and I had to reset to fix them, or I'd be downed from enemy fire and Spock just wouldn't come to me because his pathing broke or an enemy was in the way. Even the flying sections weren't free of bugs, with a good number of objects just killing me instantly despite looking like I'm fully evading them. Replaying those moments definitely ruined some of the "epic" feel they were supposed to give off.

I did not enjoy this one. Not one bit.

I'm calling it now, Binary Domain is the best shooter I've played, period. Whether that speaks volume to my own personal tastes, or the game itself is up to you to decide, but I'll try my best to explain. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios added something really special to this game, from the writing being both corny and endearing, to the slower non-shooting segments of the game where you walk down some pretty densely detailed environments filled with NPC's to listen to and teammate conversations to participate in. There's a lot in this that reminds me of the best parts of Final Fantasy XIII right down to the neofuturistic world design, font choice for subtitles, menu ui, and the upgrade stations being little shopping kiosks sprinkled throughout the linear level designs. While the story wasn't all that original, it really leans into the tropes of the genre with complete sincerity. This is all carried by the characters. It really struck me during the opening mission that Dan and Bo have such a natural way of speaking to each other. Dan himself is just very charismatic which is such a breath of fresh air for one of these military man type-main characters. I think Charlie and Rachel were the only 2 characters I didn't care too much for only, especially come the last couple chapters where everything gets a lot more serious and predictable in-fighting starts happening.

Speaking of talking, this game has voice commands that work some of the time. There's a huge plethora of voice lines that you can shout out mid-combat to varying degrees of success and functionality. While I did ultimately turn it off part-way through, it did provide a lot of entertainment when screensharing the game with friends. It's completely unnecessary since turning them off still allows you to communicate with your teammates with the 4 most vital combat commands, showing just how irrelevant pretty much all of the others are.

Something about the combat that felt really good was the almost Resident Evil 4-like interaction you can have with enemies. Shooting different parts of them can lead to different interactions, like if you take out their legs they'll start crawling toward you, taking our their arms makes them run up to you to melee instead of shoot, and popping their heads makes them turn into a very temporary ally. By the end I was pretty much always aiming for headshots, but it was nice knowing if someone or a group was too far away I could spray and pray my way through most combat scenarios.

The bosses were pretty much all great too, I loved their designs especially the huge ones. They really make you use your primary gun's blast attack since it provides a temporary stunned state to the boss, most of which have very aggressive melee attacks that can knock you down in one to two hits so getting those stuns as windows to move away or have your squad riddle it with bullets is essential.

The only things I didn't really like were the Mad Max / Gears of War outfits that you have on the entire game. They are just a bit too generic looking for my liking, especially after the really cool sci-fi scubagear wet suits Dan and Bo had on in the first chapter. Also like I mentioned earlier, a lot of the charm in the writing is lost toward the end of the game.

I liked this one a lot. I might even say that I loved it.

In F.E.A.R. 2 you could see modern shooter trends seeping into the gameplay, but F.E.A.R. 3 has fully made the conversion to Call of Duty. Gone are the armor and health pickups, instead replaced with cover based shooting and regenerating health. No longer do you scour corners of the maps for health and slow-mo upgrades, instead they're handed to you for just playing the game.

Enemies are as brain dead as a brick. To test their intelligence I closed a door to see if they'd open it but no, they just clipped their arms through the wall, desperate to get to me. This is not the evolution to the series I think WB hoped it would have been, and it just made me kind of sad playing it.

BUT, it did have my favorite gun from the first 2 games in it, albeit it only appeared in one area in the second to last chapter, and honestly the story went in an interesting and somewhat logical direction from the ending of 2. The second half of the game also started to have environments that actually made me feel like I was back in the same world as the previous games; dark city streets with corporate towers looming over you, dark underground tunnels with derailed trains. I won't go as far as to say the game got "better" as it went on, but it did get more bearable, especially with how many mech segments there are, a very welcome return from F.E.A.R. 2.

Still, I gotta agree with the fan consensus, this was the lowest point of the series, and is an unfortunate end to what started out as a very good tactical shooter, but quickly over 6 years devolved into being just another generic military shooter of the 7th generation. Truly tragic.

My initial optimism going into F.E.A.R. 2 was quickly deflated when I realized just how different it was from the first game and Extraction Point. In its own little vacuum it's pretty good, there's a lot more locale variation than the first game, and I found the story to be slightly more interesting too. My problem was that I had thought it would still be like the first game, just with HD models and while some of that is true, there's a lot more of an emphasis on high octane action, the kind of action I'm sure I would have really enjoyed more had I not gone in with high expectations after 2 very solid shooters.

Health and armor pickups litter the maps meaning you can play a lot more loosely than you could before, both helped and hurt by the inclusion of stimpacks that serve as instant health recovery. There were a lot of moments I had a full inventory of health kits because I just never needed to use them. To be fair though, the limit is only 3 so you reach that cap very quickly.

To give the game a bit of credit though, there are 2 instances of turret sections, and 2 instances of mech piloting. This goes back to what I said about the emphasis being placed on action rather than slower methodical combat moments. I thought these moments were great and I sort of wish they'd have done more of them to really differentiate it from 1. I also really enjoyed seeing props from the first game make a reappearance, as well as higher detailed versions of enemy designs. It helped ground this in the series and make it still feel like a follow-up even if the gameplay was altered.

This is definitely the 6/10 kind of game I'm looking for in my 7th gen shooters, it's just a shame it's a follow-up to a completely different and much better shooter.

I'll keep this review short since everything I felt about F.E.A.R. applies to this as well. I'll say it felt like a diet version of the base game, being half the length, half the set pieces, but still managing to cram in all the same beats as the main game.

I enjoyed the new heavy artillery enemy types, along with the machine guns you could pick up from them, not as much the new mechs since they were just tankier versions of the regular mechs. I also got a lot of use out of the laser beam rifle.

It also felt like because the game was so compact, the scares were a lot more prevalent. Partially because the story had escalated to the point where they could be used more, but also because Alma is a constant presence throughout, sometimes frightening you and sometimes saving you. However I didn't feel like this expansion really progressed the story any further, if anything is sort of regressed some of what happened in base game. It mostly feels like this existed to just reiterate some elements that were open to interpretation, sort of like the KH3: ReMind DLC.

Pretty good, but I might hold off on playing F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate for a bit so I don't get completely burnt out before 2.

F.E.A.R. made me afraid. Not of the scary ghosts, but of every combat encounter. I would say I played most of this game incorrectly since I have a certain way of going through shooters. Run and gun, blast up the ass fast action. While you can get away with doing that to an extent, you can't do it forever as you'll soon feel yourself hurting for medkits and armor very quickly.

It's been said before, but the enemy AI really is the number one reason to play this game. They'll split up to flank you, run forward when they have you cornered, liberally throw grenades to flush you out, and overall just making each encounter a very dynamic experience. It's not fast paced at all, which is something I had to adjust to after playing Vanquish. There isn't even a single boss, which isn't a problem, it's just something to keep in mind going into this.

The story felt very "part one" though, seeming more like a setup for potential sequels. It's delivered well enough, but the big bad guy is tossed aside during the last chapter in favor of establishing a new threat that, judging by the cover of each game going forward, will be causing problems here on out.

I like this one though, it left me wanting to see where the series goes. I might even try out those DLC campaigns while I'm at it. (Also I lied, the scary ghosts scared me as well.)

Vanquish is absolutely wild. The amount of bullets flying in all directions at any given time is insane. Playing the game as intended by sliding around from cover to cover and using your slowmo ability by dodging, sliding or meleeing enemies will inevitably lead to damage being taken and even a few (or a lot of in my case) lives lost.

I wish the health system was a little more clear since sometimes I'd have full boost meter and still die instantly to an explosion, and other times it'd just put me in a critical state. Also another small problem I had was the walking bits for dialogue exposition. The story is crazy and fast paced, but it isn't THAT deep. Trying to give the player these slower moments in a very arcadey style shooter is a bit disjoined.

I also didn't end up sticking with any of the more gimmicky guns like the saw blade shooter, aerial lock on bow, or energy ball blaster. An assault rifle, heavy machine gun, and rocket launcher worked great, especially with the upgrade system where picking up duplicates and upgrade cubes would increase their power, ammo pool, or other attributes to the weapons.

Overall though, very fun shooter that flashes that Platinum level flair in its cutscenes and pure spectacle during gameplay.