Guns....lots of guns

Spec Ops: The Line
Hadn't heard much about this game. It grabbed my attention immediately when the main character had to fight with renegade US soldiers. That isn't too common in games. Most games don't make you think about the consequences about violence. It's a core theme in Spec Ops. As the violence escalates in the game, the characters are drawn more and more into a bloody hell. War crimes are committed and the characters have to face the moral consequences of their actions.

Technically, the game looks great with it's dust storms and semi-destructible environments. However, artistically, it was somewhat bland. All of the action takes place in the desert and the game is mostly shades of brown. The controls were a little awkward for getting into and out of cover, but nothing too bad.

With a title like Spec Ops, I was expecting a shooter. What I got was a shooter with a conscience. It was a very pleasant surprise. 8.5/10


Alpha Protocol
When ever a game advertises itself as an "espionage" game, it means stealth with very little killing. Alpha Protocol gives the option of stealth, but also lots and lots of killing. I'm not a big fan of sneaking around. For me, the action is the juice.

Things the game did well:
 - RPG elements. Lots of choices, lots of consequences.
 - voice acting. Each character sounded authentic.
 - character customization. Tons of gun & armour mods. Could've used a few more character options.
 - map design. even though this wasn't a completely open world game, the maps felt spacious with many options to move around.

Things the game did not do well:
 - camera movement. This PC port seemed like an after thought. The camera controls were clunky and sometimes, there would be long pauses while panning around. It was extremely annoying.
 - pistols are broken. Chain shot is completely OP. Boss fights are trivial with this ability. I ended the Sis fight in 1 second.

Overall, I enjoyed Alpha Protocol. The game ended with the possibility of a sequel. I'm looking forward to it. 8/10

Welcome to Earf!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
I know Will Smith actually says the line correctly, but it's standard greeting for aliens coming to earth. In this case, the aliens are from the X-Com franchise dating back to the mid 90s. First of all, I must preface this review by saying I was a HUGE fan of the original (not so much the sequel). And after playing this game, I think the developers were fans too. There were a ton of homages and nods to the original. What they did was take the original game, beef up the graphics, streamlined the gameplay a lot and delivered one of the most satisfying and original games I've played in a while. Original may be a strange choice of words considering it is a sequel in a franchise with lots of entries. I say original because the gameplay is so unique. I don't think I've played another game with the same mechanics. The first X-Com comes closest, but that was released almost 20 years ago.

When I first started playing , I encountered a serious bug. Occasionally, the game would crash during a specific cutscene. This happened even if I exited the game and reloaded my previous saved game. This essentially corrupted my save game file. I had to restart all over again twice! I finally figured out the Steam cache was getting corrupted. After refreshing it, the game was fine.

Aside from that bug, the game was a fantastic experience. Lots of fun, strategy and satisfying alien murder. The bug keeps this from being a perfect 10. 9/10.