Recent reviews by Disinmas

Before we get into the nitty gritty, heres a nice little synopsis. Is this game worth the asking price? Yes, if you're a fan of this style game it most certainly is, though I would still say wait for a sale like the most recent 50% off one. You may move on now if you so wish.

The Nitty Gritty: I have a very basic set of rules to determine if I think a game is worth recommending to other people, or even not feeling ripped off by my purchase. Is the game fun, and do I get a decent amount of gameplay per dollar.

Is the game fun: As is likely obvious by the recommendation and me saying it is worth the asking price, the game is very fun. The mechanics are smooth, the controls are fluid, and I have yet to see a complaint about the actual gameplay of the game.

Gameplay per Dollar: Heres a big one that so many modern games fail. I believe a game should give me at least 1 hour of gameplay for each dollar I spent before I feel ripped off. If I buy it on sale it has to at least hit the sale price. I spent 43 dollars on Hitman The Complete First Season, as I'm writing this I currently have 53.8 hours of gametime. I am nowhere near done as I still have Colorado and Hokkaido to finish, and a mountain of challenges and escalations across every stage still to do. I'll easily break 100 hours before I am done with this game without including the forthcoming Season 2 and before I reach the player-made Contracts.

There has been complaints about this game and I thought I'd address those as well to give my opinion on them. The most obvious complaint I've seen across the negative reviews has been its Always Online feature. I see a lot of "This game is so much fun, but you have to always be online so negative review" usually by people with 60+ Hours in the game. This is an issue I agree but not a deal breaker and the developers have taken steps to ease the pain when they released The Chef Elusive Target. Now you retain all your upgrades you've gained from online play when you play the game in offline mode. I haven't seen any mention of it going the opposite way so likely you won't be able to unlock anything new from a offline run of a mission. Despite that I have had a single connection issue in my time playing the game and that was likely caused by my PoS router going out so I can't hold the "outages" many have brought up. Sadly, Always Online is the way games are going and I just hope for further steps to make the eventual death of the servers easier on those of us who will continue playing it single player.

The only other major complaint I've seen with this game has been its episodic nature. Honestly I don't see the complaint, noone has been able to truly articulate to me why the episodic nature is bad. What is the cost of a full price game Triple A game: $60. What is the cost of Hitman: The Complete First Season if bought as a bundle: $60. What is the cost if you buy it piecemail: $65. If I hadn't bought it on sale I'd be paying the same amount for this game as the guy down the street would be paying for the latest Call of Duty. That and theres benefits to an episodic release schedule. It gives the developers more time to hash out each stage, as well as fix errors they didn't find in their playtesting. On top of this it lowers the price-point for "I'm not sure"s. I don't know if I'll like Hitman, its a type of game I usually don't play, so I pick up Episode 1. 15 bucks gives me the prologue and the first mission, plenty of content for someone to wet their toes and determine if its their type of game. They love it they can then upgrade to the full season, if they hate it they're only out 15 bucks.

As this review is getting obnoxiously long I'll end it here. Final opinion stated again: Yes, its worth your money.

I'm going to put this out there from the beginning: I adore the original Thief games, and the first two easily rank as two of my favorite games of all time. I find myself going back to them repeatedly over the years, starting from the easiest difficulty my first run when I was a kid, to beating it on expert multiple times. Each game had its own atmosphere, its own story, each fleshed out and gripping while retaining what made Thief, well Thief.

You feel like Garrett, you feel like a Master Thief knowing that if you screw up and get seen, you're a dead man. That never changed between the games, a constant that grounded each game to eachother "You Are Garrett, Master Thief". Yet each game had a setting an atmosphere all its own, be it the mechanizations of the Woodsy Lord, or the unfeeling metal monstrosities of Father Karras. Even Thief Deadly Shadows, up until this point the weakest in the series, had scenes and levels that pulled me in and wouldn't let go Shalebridge Cradle in particular.

With all of that I pre-ordered this game, I could be Garrett again, I could be the Master Thief. I was wrong. This character isn't Garrett. Hes an idiotic wannabe ninja who apparently broke his legs repeatedly, hes clunky, can't jump, and his "parkour" feels even worse than Brinks, his voice actor change is the least of this remakes worries. On top of that is poorly made level design, and game mechanics that were changed specifically to limit your actions and make this game they tout as "Multiple paths, find your own way" feel almost as linear as Call of Duty. One of the finest examples of this limitation is the Rope Arrow, originally you could shoot this into any wooden surface granting great freedom in where you used it and how you used it to get around. Now you can only shoot it into pre-designed areas littered throughout the area denoted by a wooden board wrapped with rope, limiting your movements to where the developers want you to go.

To keep this review from going on for even longer, heres my conclusion. This game is uncreative, limiting, and above all lazy. Its like they didn't even try to make this a Thief game. Take this as a recommendation for the original 2 Thief games, and while weaker, the third. If you play those and want another game. Just go play Dishonoured as a full stealth character, its not quite the same but its a lot closer than this abomination.

This game, is at best, a mediocre time waster that doesn't fill either of the shoes its awkwardly tried to put on. It tries to claim its a fighting game, and it tries to claim that its a arena style pvp game. Theres a semblence of both here, but they both fall horrendously short so we'll hit the easiest to explain first.

As a PVP game, ala Unreal Tournament 2004, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, TF2, etc. This game just can't hold up, its horrendously balanced with incredibly small rooms (the largest I saw was 10 people), and no semblence of match making. It was rare I saw a room that wasn't either full, or completely empty, with most rooms being the latter and in truth I found myself spending more time looking for a room to play in than the length of the games themselves.

As a Fighting Game...this game is just attrocious. Again we return to the fact that this game is horrendously balanced, and while most games can't be truly balanced, this game is ridiculously bad when it comes to that. The already rather small amount of characters falls into two categories and nothing but: Absolutely Worthless and Utterly Amazing.

A fast moving character can completely wreck a slower character by just moving around them and punching them into oblivion.To put this into perspective, I am a relatively poor fighting game player, I can win online matches in games like Persona 4 in Mayonaka Arena and Blaz Blue only by choosing a single character and practicing that character ad nauseam until I have every combo in their repetoire down pat. In Arche Blade, I was able to crush any slower character in one on one combat, and sometimes in two on one combat, with little to no issue my very first game. It wasn't a challenge, and I'm not bragging, its the sheer fact that these slower characters just can not keep up with a faster character like Renny.

The second major part of a fighting game, the character selection, is abysmally poor in this game. The collection of available fighters is incredibly small, with one character (Renny) repeated with only a slight change to her kit between the two. On top of this fact, some of these characters are obviously lifted from far superior games. I'll point out the two I noticed, and I'm sure theres others. The first one was the already mentioned Renny, a character who uses her fists and teleports around... huh that sounds oddly familiar to Makoto Nanaya from Blazblue. Oh well, I'll try Elika out.....wait shes spinning around firing two guns and blasting in every direction so she fills the area around her with bullets.... why am I playing a mediocre version of Noel. Her muzzle blast colors are even the same color as Noels.

Then finally, the thing that makes this game NOT a fighting game....everything collapses down to two buttons right and left mouse button. And every single combo, all 10 of them, is fulfilled by mashing down on those two buttons. You know how I said each character has 10 combos? Its the same 10 combos for every character, just with a different outcome. Theres no change in what buttons you push to do various moves, theres no special combos for each character, everything just falls down to mashing two buttons and hoping for the best while ocassionally pressing shift to use your "special movement" such as teleporting, flying, sprinting (yes only one character can sprint), and jumping backwards. You can't have a fighting game without special moves, without combos, and without any semblance of mastery.

Theres a feeling of elation for me in a fighting game when, after getting my butt kicked by every player who comes my way for the first week, start turning it around and winning matches and holding my own in the ones I lose. Theres a feeling of accomplishment, that makes me want to keep playing and get better...theres none of that here. I finished in the top 3 of my first match, I don't feel accomplished, all I did was run around with Renny and mash my left mouse button while ocassionally pressing shift and my right mouse button. In any GOOD fighting game, in any GOOD pvp game I should have been the bottom of my scoreboard with my character weeping in the corner if all I did was run around and mash a button with no thought to what I was doing. Just avoid this game, if you want a fighting game go get Blazblue, or Injustice, or Persona 4 in Mayonaka Arena, or anything....spend your money on that so you dont waste your time on this.

A rather simple, yet enjoyable, little game about a young girl forced into the Item Shop business by her missing fathers rather ludicrous amount of debt. Over the span of 5 weeks she must make ever increasing weekly payments to pay off this debt by stocking her item shop and hoping to make enough money through the sales.
While the base of this game is the management of the item shop in an attempt to make money, how you get stock is left up to the player. While they originally allow you to buy stock from the Merchant Guild, this will quickly fall away and you'll begin to dungeon delve with one of the various adventurers (starting with Louie the Swordsman) in an attempt to get large amounts of high priced items to sell.
This game is a balancing act, attempting to balance the amount of cash your selling things for in an attempt to pay your debt while also not overcharging for items and losing customers. On top of that equipment sold to your adventuring friends makes their gear within the dungeon better, so do you sell Louie that sword for 130% or do you charge him a mere 110% to ensure he buys it and gets a better weapon next time you enter the dungeon.
While not by any means a HARD game, its still fun and a good use of your time.

This game was one of the most pleasant surprises of recent gaming history for me. As someone who played the original X Com series (from the original Enemy Unknown through Enforcer), I wasn't expecting much from this title, especially after the original teaser that painted it as an FPS instead of a strategy game. After getting it as a pre-order bonus after avoiding it like a plague for far too long, I sat down to play it and became engrossed in seconds.... This was X Com....this was actually X Com.
Theres obvious differences between this and the original Enemy Unknown from almost 2 decades ago, but what made that game good is there. The strategy is there, the squad based tactics are there, if playing on the higher difficulties even the difficulty that made me tear my hair out as a child is there. Yet everything is polished, combat is smoother, squad tactics are more easily defined and utiized, and combat feels faster than it did playing the classic Microprose game.
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Now to talk about this game on its own merits instead of comparing it to the old DOS game from 94: This is a game for those of you out there that prefers their strategy on a more limited scale. This isn't an all out war, your not controlling tanks rolling across the field, your not commanding 100 soldiers into a town. Your not a general commanding vast armies to bring death to the alien menace, your a commander and your squad is a highly trained (at least once they hit Corporal) black ops team sent in to take out these aliens before that becomes necessary. You act as the stop gap between the aliens and total annihilation knowing that if full out war were to decend upon the world humanity is doomed.
You start the game with a squad of 4 soldiers with about a dozen in reserve, with upgrades available to allow you to take 6 into combat with 4 classes randomly assigned to each soldier once they reach Squaddie: The Sniper, the Assault, the Support, and the Heavy. Each class has their own unique purpose on the battlefield, and with a squad of 6 youll find yourself further refining that as time goes on, even more so with the addition of MEC Soldiers and Genetic Modification in Enemy Within.
Since this game is based entirely around this single squad, tactics feel more important than they do on the far more massive RTS scale, a single out of place soldier can mean losing them. Should you leave your sniper at the back utilizing squad sight by themselves, or should you leave a Assault next to them in case a seeker pops out of stealth and begins to strangle them. And if your anything like me, if your not playing on Iron Man mode you'll find yourself so attached to your one squad that you're reloading stages from the beginning hoping to keep them alive when you see one fall in combat.
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In conclusion, this doesn't replace the original Enemy Unknown (X COM UFO Defense here on steam) but its one of the strongest members of the series up there with the original and Terror from the Deep. For any who liked the original game, or are just into this type of strategy game I would recommend picking it up, I wish I did sooner.

An interesting take on the World of Darkness Tabletop RPGS (Vampire, Werewolf, Wizard, and Changeling). This game sticks as close to the source meterial as it can, using the same leveling system and stat system as the base game. Its a dark game, and has many adult themes making it unsuitable for children but for those who like dark stories its perfect. It has its share of glitches, but for the story they're well worth overlooking.

A very good game, that sadly did not get the recognition it deserved from the videogame buying public. Those who have seen my LP of this game will most likely know where this review is going.
Starting with the bad, many aspects of this game are flawed. The game is incredibly short, and near the end the combat gets infuriatingly difficult, especially if you decide to do a "Test of Faith/No Gun" run.
Now the good, the aesthetics of this game are brilliant. The world is stark, white, and viewed from on high. Any color is bright primary colors, with faiths "runners eye" making anything you can grab onto, traverse, climb or jump off of a bright bright red.
The parkour is possibly the best parkour system I have ever played with. You have complete and utter control of everything faith does, giving you the untainted feeling of freedom needed for this game. Theres kinks in the system that could be ironed out, but compared to any other game this game does it best. Its well worth the purchase.

Infuriatingly difficult at times, but with a great sense of accomplishment when you finally beat a level where you've died...repeatedly...for the last hour. This game is in all senses a Hardcore Platformer for those of us who grew up on 8 and 16-bit consoles.
Anyone who has fond memories of playing the same game for months, repeating the same early levels over and over again in an attempt to make it just a wee bit farther to see what happens next. This game is for you. This is one of the bastions of kick-your-ass hard in a sea of game where the "Hard Difficulty" just isn't hard enough anymore.

I recommend this game with a single stipulation to the recommendation. Do not buy this game if you don't have someone else to play it with. Dead Island IS and will forever be a Co-Op game, and is not designed around playing it alone. One other person is enough to fully enjoy this game, but I assume having a full compliment of 4 members would be amazing.
This game is as advertised a Zombie Survival game with Melee combat being the main focus. Guns don't start to appear in any numbers until you reach Act II, and even then ammunition is rare until you finally find the recipes to make ammo later on, so its best to save these for emergency situations.
When it comes to the co-op you need to make sure you have a group that are willing to divide weapons as needed, as there is no "drop protection" as it were. If one player opens a chest, everyone has access to it. Make sure each player gets first pick on their characters strong weapon, to make life easier on everyone.

Commander Keen, oh the days of fun you have afforded me.
This game holds a special place for me, a nostalgic place that takes me back to the child who used to own games on Floppy Discs. Commander Keen was probably the second platformer I ever played, only being pre-dated by Jump Man.
At the time I only owned the first of these games (all 5 or so are included on this), but I must have played it all the way through at least a dozen times. You're a young boy, who's space ship crash landed on an alien planet, and you go around looking for spaceship parts, collecting pizza slices, and shooting aliens. Simple, but incredibly enjoyable.
Oddly enough this kid friendly, no blood or guts, game was created by Id software. Better known as the guys who made DOOM, one of the, if not the, earliest violent FPS games in existance.