Platform: PC

This game has been sitting in my to-do list for quite some time. I got it as a freebie from Uplay, and to be quite frank, that may have been too expensive for this clunker. I suppose if you really love the parkour mechanics of the other games you’ll be entertained by this, but I am long-since over jumping from towers into bales of hay. With a handful of naval missions, some of the seeds of the vastly superior AC IV are here, but, to mix my metaphors, the mechanics still a bit half-baked (wait you can bake seeds, so maybe that metaphor works… or is it a simile).

The story is so dull and pointless. It feels very constrained and linear. There a many side quests and missions but they aren’t very fun. I skipped all the gambling, hunting, crafting and homestead building; all of which felt like such a boring waste of time. I never upgraded my character and was able to finish the game without any problems. And I hated all the modern day sequences. Again, pointless.

There was some sort of nuclear apocalypse and the citizens of Moscow were forced to live in the city’s subway tunnels. Of course the world is now filled with irradiated monsters. Yet, the humans are still fighting wars with other humans in the tunnels because sci-fi writers can’t comprehend that people might actually co-operate in dire circumstances. For some reason you are tasked with saving your station from impending doom and thus begins you journey down the rails to find help. Your job will be difficult, not because of tough choices and insurmountable odds, rather because everything is brown and hard to see in the dark. Oh, and you need to keep changing you gas mask filters every three minutes.

Metro 2033 is very strongly mediocre as far as first-person shooters go. You are literally on rails for a good portion of the game so exploration is not really an option. There seemed to be only two or three monster types the entire game and they all seemed unaffected by your shots until they aren’t. The guns never felt like they had any power behind them. The best parts of the game are when you need to use a little stealth to get through a region but those were few and far between. I didn’t realize you could recharge your flashlight until about two-thirds the way through the game and, pro-tip: running through the dark sucks.

This is the sequel to Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Like its predecessor, this is an isometric puzzle platform game combined with a twin-stick shooter. It’s fast and fun and pretty casual feeling. I don’t remember if this was a part of the first game, but they are really pushing the multi-player game-play and I have no idea how that would work. This seems perfectly fine as a single-player experience.

I could have sworn I had played this game before, but I wasn’t completely sure. I get this one confused with Tomb Raider: Anniversary. All I knew is that I didn’t own it and, if I had played it, it was probably on Gametap as a freebie. Well, this weekend it went on Steam sale for 97¢ so I grabbed it knowing that if I managed to have an hour of fun with it, it would have been worth the price.

Yup, I’ve played it before. I definitely remember the first level. Things get cloudy after that. These games aren’t quite known for their strong, memorable narratives. The game would seem completely new to me then I’d hit a particularly tricky level and memories would flood back. Most of the reason I write these redundant reviews is to help me remember what I’ve seen or played.

This is the first of the Crystal Dynamics Tomb Raider games and it still holds up rather well. The only areas of the game that haven’t aged as well are the shooting mechanics, an occasional quicktime event, and the too-close camera positioning. Otherwise, the controls are fluid and the tombs offer a medium-level puzzle challenge. There’s no crafting, and object collecting is limited to a half-a-dozen or so statues per level. This is straightforward fun that doesn’t wear out it’s welcome.

Part two of the Tomb Raider reboot doesn’t offer anything really new in terms of game play but that’s okay. The core of the series is 3-D platforming mechanics and it does that very well. This is especially evident in the nine or so “challenge tombs” scattered throughout the world.

The graphics are stunning and most of the environments are fun to explore. The world is zoned off into half-a-dozen regions which are fairly open-world in their layout. Much of my time was spent hunting down the inane collectibles in order to get a 100% complete. I almost got everything before the end, but there is a region in the prelude that you can’t return to until you have beaten the final boss.

The story takes place somewhere in snowy Russia where the people dress like vikings and speak English. As per usual, there isn’t much more narrative beyond a magic object and a group of mercenaries racing to find it before Lara. These games could be perfect if they could just put a little more effort into the plot and characters.

As an aside, I am really getting tired of crafting in games. It’s not too complicated here, but I’d rather not be bothered with having to grab every mushroom or twig I see.

Nex Machina is the (almost) official follow-up to Robotron: 2084 or, as I like to call it, the greatest arcade game ever created. If you watch the credits you will see the Eugene Jarvis was the creative consultant for the game. As far as I’m concerned that means this is Robotron: 2085 (we’ll ignore Smash T.V. … NOT canon!).

It’s just as frantic and twitchy as ever, and the core game play remains the same: shoot everything that moves and save the humans. There is a far greater variety of enemies, boss battles, and the graphic effects are stellar. Improvements include lots of hidden collectibles, a variety of secondary weapons, the ability to dodge, and lots of differing level designs.On higher difficulties the game is tough as nails and requires a bullet-hell level of pattern memorization. I’ve managed to complete the game at the “Rookie” level. My problem is that my OCD kicks in, and I rage quit when I don’t finish a level without grabbing all the extra bonuses.  I still think Geometry Wars is a more pure twin-stick shooter arcade experience but this one is a close second and worth every penny.

Another walking simulator but this time with a horror theme. The whole point of this “game” is to make your way through an old haunted house and get hit with a jump scare every four minutes. At first this is very thrilling. After the fiftieth time, not so much. Technically there are about three puzzles in the game. Mostly you encounter a lock, look around the room, get hit with a jump scare, and then see the combination in the aftermath. On top of this, the story is lame and required too much effort searching around for notes and clues for me to care. Glad I didn’t have to pay for this one.

The Witness is from the same developer who created the superb Braid. It feels like a cross between that game and Myst. Once again the game play centers around puzzle solving, but instead of time manipulation, you are solving mazes. I know what your thinking, “Mazes? Are you kidding me. Ever since the ‘Twisty maze of passages, all alike’ mazes have been the bane of every video gamer’s existence.” At first I thought the same thing. The first dozen puzzles are so easy that I assumed this was just going to be another boring walking simulator with challenges thrown in just to extend the experience a few more minutes. But then you encounter the next set of mazes which sprinkle in a few new rules (which you have to discover on your own) and things start to get more challenging. Get a little further, then you have an epiphany and realize not everything is what it seems. Perspective and your place in the 3-D environment start to matter. At that point I was sold and fully immersed myself in the world (this would make an incredible VR game).The open world structure allows you to try various challenges long before you know how they can be beaten. The island is big and there’s always easier puzzles to work on while you think things through. By the end of the game you will realize that the solution to everything has been right in front of you all along.

There really isn’t a story here but there are several audio and video clips to find that have an arty, philosophical sensibility that are more about mood than narrative. I didn’t manage to find everything. Note that if you are a 100% gamer, if you get to the ending, all the puzzles will be reset. Find everything you can before rushing to the conclusion.

A Story About My Uncle is a game based entirely around a single game mechanic, a grappling beam. Players shoot a beam at a distant surface, they are pulled towards the target, and then they must use inertia and timing to fling themselves towards their goal. That’s about it. We’ve seen this before in just about every Zelda game, so this is nowhere near as revolutionary as the one-mechanic behind the extraordinary Portal.  Still, when it clicks, swinging across a map and carefully timing your shots can be thrilling.

The game has a kid-friendly feel in its bedtime story tone and non-violent game play.  Unfortunately, as a violence craving adult, this meant that the narrative left quite a bit to be desired for me. I enjoyed it for what it was and it ended just when it was starting to become too repetitive. Fine by me.

The original Serious Sam became an unexpected hit when it received the approval of Old Man Murray. While other games were trying to be dark and mature, Serious Sam reveled in pure, goofy run-and-gun action. It was like Duke Nukem if it was made by a backwoods folk artist. This sequel is somewhat of a technological upgrade, but the art design still looks like the work of someone just learning how to use 3-D Studio Max, and that is the game’s charm. The enemies range from run-of-the-mill space marines to exploding clowns to giant cigar smoking mechanical T-rexes.

It takes a while for the game-play to rise to the bonkers level of the first one, but by the final world you will be shooting and running backwards from hundreds and hundreds of (literally) screaming mobs. The shooting mechanics are lacking the visceral feel of the Shadow Warrior reboot, but what it lacks in feel, it makes up for in the sheer numbers of enemies.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Serious Sam 2 is that its cut scenes can be genuinely funny. The story is dumb and the writers know it. So, rather than bore the player with exposition, you can watch Sam rise a surfboard in the sky or get drunk and party with the local primitives.