Is Tomb Raider Legends any good? just found it in a random pile of games left behind by an ex-housemate :p 

its insanely awesome. the game is a straight console port. no mouse pointer on menus, so you either use the wads keys or the arrows to move and choose the options.

steam has a demo, so i say try it. before playing though, there is an option to configure controls & settings. going there is a must because otherwise you'll get xbox controller icons for inputs instead of keyboard ones. you can also get change fov and the keys themselves and etc etc.

the game itself is a third person cover shooter, and its done pretty well. what i really liked is that, while it has those concrete barriers most third person cover games have, this one doesn't have them on every single fucking level. levels are linear, but fun and done well.

i thought the shooting itself felt really good. controls just like gears, spacebar to run & take cover. sometimes its used as a "action" key, though F is more of the use key but whatever. console games are weird as shit.

you can issue commands to your team mates, but its not a must. there are times when they'll comment on something or ask you a question and you'll have to answer and their friendship level will rise or lower depending on how you answered them. if they hate you, giving them the command to give you cover will be ignore and such.

the story is very good. i really liked it. some people say its b-movie good, but i find that kind of a bad comparison. its just a good game. very japanese [made by sega], and its crazy as fuck, and funny, and serious. its one of those games that doesn't take itself too seriously [unlike most western made shooters] so its fun and crazy.

wont go into details about the story because i am too shit to explain it, but watch the trailers and you'll get an idea. i think knowing the basics will be enough. i did that and i found myself getting into it more.

think of it as a a mix of blade runner & battlestar galactica [robots being human like & so on].

there are insane set pieces, and really fun boss fights. while they are the usual "shoot glowing part" i didn't it find it annoying or boring.

there are a few "turret" scenes, not really in a turret, but in a moving car shooting dudes out the window during a chase. even these parts i had fun, usually i hate them or i just want them to be over soon.

i had no issues with it technically, except for a fps drops when i killed a boss and particles everywhere slowed it down to like 5fps, but lasted like 3/5 seconds.

right now its $9.99usd on amazon.com. maybe wait for the steam summer sale to grab it if you live outside the us.

took me around 12 hours to finish it. the length felt just right. not too long, not too short.

i saw this trailer a few months ago - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPakeDy5mKc - and i got interested, then tried the demo and i was sold.

i drank three large 32oz coffees so i am hyper as hell right now, hopefully it wont make the text too annoying. 

Also, it's too long. 

scarcely QA-tested console turd

I notice testers tend to get a lot of flak for problems still present in games, whether its a bad console port or bugs. What if these people are doing their job, yet the ones in charge are simply not fixing them for whatever reason? (Time/Cost)

Just something that has been on my mind recently. 

Obviously the complaint is about the overall combination of the testing, the attention paid to testing feedback, and the fixes made on the basis of that feedback - or lack of any of those aspects.

In this case I presume the PC port wasn't tested at all. 

I wasn't pointing fingers at you specifically, it's just a thing I've noticed all over the web and that quote was an excuse to post my thoughts :p 

It is a fair point. Who knows where the fault lies, all we can do is make a general point and hope those responsible are wracked with guilt and shame. 

Read a few articles about how a lot of QA departments in studios are treated like complete shit, ie not considered 'proper' employees, kept in seperate buildings and stuff. 

and that is: whoever gets blamed for a game's shortcomings, will always pass that blame onto someone else.

Internally, the blame will be energetically punted up and down the chain of command, and sideways into other departments - until it ultimately runs out of momentum and rolls quietly towards the direction of the publishers.

The devs - now with their hands washed of it - get to their feet, pat each other on the backs, and happily start the next project - where they proceed to either make the same mistakes all over again, or a bunch of entirely new mistakes. Often both.

(Whatever the case, it's never QA's fault though). 

New trailer at Blues, much less of the futuristic stuff, much more explosions and nonsense. 

Reviewed Darkest Of Days from 2009.
6.5/10, definitely under-rated with a 51% on metacritic.

http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/reviews/2012/darkest_of_days.php 

Was really looking forward to it, but it turned out to be shit. Seriously, fuck that game. Glad I didn't buy it full price - seems almost everything on Steam gets a 50% discount after 2-3 months on sale, and I'm sick of buying full price. Managed to beat it, but it was a real trial to get through for the following reasons:

Rockstar thought they were making a fucking film. Rockstar are usually pretty good at putting a good story into their games whilst keeping the player in control most of the time. Here I was in control about 30% of the time if you ignore all the time I spent replaying the same sections because I died. Far too many cutscenes, far too many times when the controls are removed from you just to show a little fucking animation when it could have easily been part of the gameplay, and to make matters worse, you can't skip cutscenes half the time, or at least it seems rather inconsistent.

The gameplay is worse than Max Payne 2. I loved Max Payne 2, which felt to me like Remedy had taken the things people didn't like about the first game, and improved them no end, whilst adding layers of polish to everything else too. Rockstar clearly knew the source material well, as the gameplay doesn't stray far from the original, aside from the addition of cover (not very well implemented, however), but the things they removed, such as molotovs and grenades, spoil the game somewhat.

It's the most on-rails game I've played in ages. There is almost no freedom whatsoever. There are locked doors everywhere, and those that aren't usually get locked by some kind of mischievous door locking goblin after you pass through them in a fairly non-subtle way. Other scenes just kill you or your partner the instant you go to some area rockstar didn't want you to go to, which makes the game feel like they put up invisible walls everywhere.

Maybe I'm just super shit, but it's really frustrating. Enemies are constantly popping out from corners you don't expect and chipping away at your health, and death comes quickly even if you are turtling. Dying is annoying because there is almost always some little cutscene at the checkpoint that you must watch before you can get back into the action. If you die a lot, the game restarts you with more painkillers and ammo, which is nice. I wouldn't have finished it if it didn't.

Sometimes enemies die really easily, sometimes they just keep getting up. They definitely go down sooner if you shoot them in the head, but sometimes it seems like they are wearing layered helmets, because they just don't stay down. It feels shit when that happens. Again, could be that I'm just shit.

The game keeps auto selecting the pistol. The pistol is a really useful weapon, but you don't want to use it ALL the time. Usually when you come out of a cutscene, even a small one, the game has switched your weapon to the pistol. If you haven't noticed it can be really bloody annoying. Why they did this I don't know, but it seems like a shit design choice.

Bullet time isn't really any fun any more. Just feels slow and shit. There are some scripted events using bullet time that are kind of cool, but I think I would have been happy just playing normal speed. Bullet time does make the game easier though, so I used it a fair bit in the sections where I was dying a lot.

There is some kind of shitty full screen visual effect going on throughout the entire game that you can't disable. It's a kind of colour shift thing that I guess is meant to emphasise Max's whisky and pain killer addled world. It gets annoying pretty damn quick. The camera work in the cutscenes is often really over the top too.

It seems a bit buggy. Sometimes you can't easily pick up weapons, sometimes shit floats in the air, sometimes bad guys spaz out and sometimes the camera sucks and you can't see where you are aiming because Max blocks the crosshair. It's not too bad I guess, but there were a few things that spoiled my "enjoyment" somewhat.

I already wasted over 10 hours of my life playing the game, so I will stop wasting more on it and wrap up my little mini rant with don't bother unless you are a big Max Payne fan and want to follow the story. 

http://i.imgur.com/owkkQ.gif 

I AM a big Max Payne fan and I simply don't consider this related to "my" Max Payne at all. 

Sounds like a lot of issues that are oh-too-familiar with modern gaming. Lots of really fucking bloody obvious issues that would have been so easy to fix/avoid/not bloody put in in the first place, but games devs seems to have a habit of deliberately fucking things up when it would actually be easier not to do so.

Autosave points just before lengthy cutscenes = games devs should be ground down into dog food. 

Autosave points just before lengthy cutscenes

I'm astounded that this still gets done. I mean, people have complained about this kind of thing since the dawn of cutscenes. 

"Autosave points just before lengthy cutscenes"

This is usually done for several reasons :-
* The cinematic devteam want to have a save / spawnpoint close to where the cinematic is for testing and tweaking.
* Often the skip function for cinematic's is never added (or very late in development) because (often) the director wants the players to watch every cinematic. Think about the devs for a minute, they have to watch these things as well, except 100s of times!
* Cinematics cost a lot of time and resources to create and some people feel the players should see them all! Crazy attitude ... 

That is a list of why cutscenes should NOT be added to a game imo :)

If players want to skip the cinematics, then the cinematics are either boring or the game has failed to make the player care for the story in any way.

Funny that (imo) some of the best games with the best stories had no cutscenes. Half-Life series etc. 

Funny that (imo) some of the best games with the best stories had no cutscenes. Half-Life series etc.

Which makes me wonder: if they are so good, why are not most games like this? 

I get annoyed when, after sitting through all the loading logos, I then get the game logo with a "press any key" to get to the menu. WTF is the point of this? I know what game I'm playing, just put the logo on the menu! Which it usually is as well anyway. Then if I want to quit the game I get taken back to "press any key" to get to the menu so I can quit!

It's like turning on your television and you get a "press any button" before you're allowed to watch anything. No one would buy that tv. 

I then get the game logo with a "press any key" to get to the menu. WTF is the point of this?

Yup, another head scratcher for me. It's just one more extra click for nothing.

There are a lot of bizarre common practice things in games these days. I just don't understand what they accomplish other than mild annoyance. 

This is a technical requirement from both microsoft and sony. They won't let a game pass certification without it.
Why they want it like that I don't know.

Also; Christ, that is the most insignificant fucking pointless detail ever to whine about. 

I think that's why it's so annoying. I mean, there's no purpose for it at all and yet it's there. 

Haha yeah but it's just so pointless. At least with a save before a cutscene it's there so they can jam their cutscenes down your throat. It's done for a reason.

Anyway, review of Devil May Cry 4 (which was pretty bad at it's "press any key" and menu design, and overuse of cutscenes). But I enjoyed it 7/10.

http://www.etherealhell.com/etherealhell/reviews/2012/devil_may_cry4.php 

I bet there's a really subtle reason behind that. Like it confirms that the player actually does have a controller connected or something, on account of user testing having shown that this was something people did on a surprisingly frequent basis.

But for crying out loud remove it from the PC version of a game.