Последние обзоры -$ilver-

I wish I could discuss this in the forums, but there is none, so I shall speak of it here. Be aware I am only recommending it because it is free and it is playable. But I really do not like the game and I feel others who do like this sort of concept would not like it either due to it's easiness or awkwardness.

You make sound from walking, but even creeping around it sounds like you are walking on crinkly Autumn leaves all the time. If an enemy can not hear that, they must be deaf, unless it is a cue to you on your sound levels, but it really sounds too high. And running sounds like you are running like a bull through a china shop, yet does not mean they will hear you either unless you are right up on them.

I knew something was wrong when I encountered the first security guard. He noticed me before I did him, even though I could hear him very well. I am not concerned with that part. But since I was discovered with a ! over his head and not simply alerted him to "something" he begins to chase me and then as I duck for cover he gets confused and goes back into his office like it is another day at work. I know the game must go on, but if he knew there was an intruder he should of called for back up. There was none.

And so I try again and again I some how alert him, but he has a ? over his head meaning he thinks someone or something is out there and goes out to check. So I go creeping out to him from the side that any person with peripheral vision would of seen blatantly and swing around to his back and take him down. I understand it's dark due to it is night, but seriously, there were lights there and he has what I assume is night vision on his eyes.

Then it gets worse as we go alone, guards are just too stupid, too easily lost when they search for you and never call for additional back up or wonder why so and so did not check in over the radio or be seen again in his usual spot. Maybe this was the first mission so maybe it is the easiest and thus they wont do that here, as I believe the background story said there were only so many guards at the event. And even the civilians walking around act the same way, minus they run from you, but do not go looking for another guard or to call someone to ask for help. They just keep looking around if they are not scared and then go back to normal like nothing ever happened.

It's a pretty game, I enjoyed looking at it, but playing it, no. It also has a nice story and I may go back just as a tourist, I believe was the level of difficulty just to walk around, but play it again as it was intended... I am also not the biggest stealth fan either, although the original Hit Man 2 was great and Deus Ex, but I just don't think it would sit well with anyone really due to what was shown here. But again I am recommending it because this was the only way to state my opinion and it does have potential and it's free, the demo at least anyway.

I had put this game off for quite a while and I was really surprised by how fun the game really was. For the money, this and the other game in the series is worth every penny. To find it on sale is almost criminal. There are times when it will frustrate you to no end and you will want to pull your hair out, but it will always have you come back for more. I have spent way too much time on it when I could of been doing more important or not so important things, but always striving to get just enough money and resources to unlock the next powerful item or artifact and then decide to stick around a little longer to get the next and so on and so forth. It gets to the point that I will sacrifice sleep over it. O_o Yet if you have the will power, a game session can be played in relatively short time, only that it is so addicting that it keeps dragging you back in! ^_^!

I am still not used to the sliding mechanism of the game which is it's hallmark. I cut my teeth on both Tetris and Bejeweled, but that is not necessarily a bad thing however. You just have to know how to manipulate the board more than anything else and to use what items you have collected along the way and when, as you can only hold so many and must get rid of what you perceive to be useless now, for something more practical. Although you will find more often than not that what you just got rid of what would of helped you greatly in your next encounter or two.

There is luck involved as well, which I am not the fondest of in games, but as you upgrade your weapons and begin to gain powerful artifacts, lady luck will eventually begin to be by your side more often and you will have a much easier time exploring the dungeons and getting further and further as time goes by. You learn the games in's and out's and you get that one real awesome run where it seems everything was set up by angels and you are unbeatable. ^_^ Of course going up in rank will have you being slapped around like a rookie all over again, but as you gain more experience, so to do you go forth conquering the dungeons.

A little sad by the time you reach the 10 mil mark that there is not much more to do, although a few harder quests you really have to work at to start and complete them, (Read more about them in one of the guides for the game.) but the dungeon in and of itself is always open so you can try to rack up even more points to see how well you can do. So in the end there is no real end to it, the game just keeps on going on forever, only no more upgrading.

If you like puzzle games and RPGs you will most probably love this. Just be aware it is more puzzle than RPG and there is no true exploration, but it sure is a heck of a lot of fun. Try it on sale if nothing else. ^_^ Soon you will find yourself wanting to play the next game in the series as well, You Must Build a Boat and conquering the high seas!

Take the "20 minute adventures" to heart. It is only a twenty minute game. Don't go into this thinking other wise. I had missed reading it until I booted the game and was both surprised and saddened that the first chapter ended so quickly. But at the price point of only being $1 and on the sale I caught it at for only seventy cents, it makes that pill a bit easier to swallow.

That really is the only negative thing I have to say about it, is it's shortness. The rest are all positives and there are many. The graphics are cute and bright. Everything is easy to see. The parser is easy and intuitive to use. Half the time one word like Look or Push will get things going. Sometimes even just one letter is all you need to type for any number of things as it already has list of I assume either most important or most frequently used words. You can use your mouse for somethings and just pressing a single key on the key board will start the typing process. The music is decent, the auto save feature is great and does it quite often on it's own and the reloading from deaths is quick and easy. The puzzles at least in this one mostly make sense in one form or another and there is great humor to be had. And it is about Star Trek or at least science fiction so another bonus and a very unused cast of characters, snails. ^_^

As previously stated it is rather short, but it's price point is very cheap as well and there are a few other games in the series that continues the story and you will want to buy them all to see what happens to these characters. I would truly recommend this to anyone who is either just starting out in point and click adventures/text adventures/parser games in general and for those who like them, but get frustrated easily by them, as this is pretty intuitive and has a feel of holding your hand, but not coddling you. For any vets you may just want to play it to see how easy and intuitive they really can be and with great graphics, story and music to boot.

This is hard to rate. It takes a certain sadistic person who likes punishing gameplay and many replays in order to feel they accomplished something. This is also no ordinary space game. Battlevoid: Harbinger is a rogue-like type game, just set in outer space. No two games are a like, yet they will also quickly feel the same. The amount of ships you start with are few, but as you gain experience you begin to unlock newer ships. The problem is the newer ships are not always better than the older ones, at least not in every conceivable way possible which one would assume. You may sacrifice quite a bit of hull plating, shielding and even speed for an extra gun turret or launch bay for example. I do not really call that an upgrade. So you may stay a few ships back even after gaining newer ones until you finally unlock the ship that you actually want to upgrade to.

Also most of the beginning ships are completely useless because they are so weak, with some basically being rubber rafts fighting behemoth steel battlecruisers. “Might makes right” in this game. There is very little finessing which is a real shame. I also am not seeing any cut scenes in the game as I would assume there would be from the game trailer, unless there is an ending movie that I have not got to yet.

There are plenty of weapons to purchase through the use of scrape metal and by finding, but unless you pay ridiculously in the high tier (Impossible from the start.) which only has a few weapons anyway or find them on the fourth and final map, they basically all feel and do the same thing which is kill, just to varying degrees. Also you can upgrade your weapons, but you do that by spending upgrade points that are kind of rare. You can accumulate them fairly quickly, but each time you upgrade a weapon in any number of it's categories, the amount needed for the next upgrade, regardless of which category you are putting it in, grows exponentially which is annoying and in my opinion unfair.

In fact the game is based on unfairness. Even just starting a new game you are presented with either a decent start, a mediocre one or perhaps even simply a bad lot in life with how many upgrade points and scrap metal you receive which is completely random. It purposely drags out the game time by slow ships, slow resource gathering, slow upgrading, just slow progress period. And if you get the bad start you might as well reroll your character over again because that climb until it gets decently paced will be a while or maybe never because you will be destroyed. I kept wondering why even on easy difficulty and even with a so called better ship, I was taking much longer to get to that plateau of comfortableness, meaning not worrying if every turn will be your last.

Don't even bother playing this on normal and especially not hard until you have gotten the feel for the game, which after thirteen hours and probably as many restarts and deaths I have a grasp of it, but still things happen out of your control that will completely ruin your day. Be prepared for many a cheap death as even with the strongest available fleet currently at your disposal with many weapons, equipment and upgrades and with virtually every available slot with extra shields to full capacity you still die in a few or just even one or two hits. And to be quite honest I am not even sure there is more exp given on a harder difficulty. I truly think it was designed simply to make the game harder with no monetary reward what so ever. I could be wrong though if someone could correct me please.

But with only the aforementioned four maps I can see why the game is designed the way it is. If it was not so slow the game would be over rather quickly. Instead you are playing, dying, playing, dying rinse and repeat. Some times you may even purposely kill yourself (But do not do a forced restart mid game as that will give you no exp.) simply because you were so close to gaining the next level in experience and can upgrade to the next ship which may or may not be better... They really should allow you to gain exp along the way, not just after death.

But in saying all that the game is still good and I would still recommend it for some people. There are many ships, weapons and upgrades. You can form a small fleet of three. However I wish it could have been four or five as there is room on the character positioning screen for it. Once you start going it can actually be great fun watching these space battles with all these missiles, rockets, smaller projectiles and energy beams going all over the place and your smaller fighters ganging up on an enemy capital ship like a hornet's nest. There is fun in trying different strategies, even if that strategy is still only the strong survive. The game could of just been much better with more juicer plot lines instead of basically one liners, actual real missions and quests besides the simple ones we have now and the ability to easily mod the game. Modding alone could raise this game from being alright to a worth while purchase as new content could be added and the problems fixed. This kind of game engine would be perfect for a Babylon 5 or Wing Commander mod.

So yes it is designed to make you fail, to curse the developers and if nothing else to give them the middle finger as you refuse defeat and try try again. I know I am still playing. ^_^ At $10 this kind of frustration is hard to swallow. But for $2 as in a major sale like I got it, that pill has a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Also on a side note, apparently the Google App Store has the same game, as far as I am aware, for only 99 cents and this kind of gameplay may very well suit better to a mobile gaming platform where you can pull your phone out and sweep a few sectors while waiting in line at the grocery store or while on a lunch break. It said it is Cloud enabled for the Steam version so I assume that means the data can be transferred back and forth between platforms.

Bottom line, if you hate rogue-like games you probably wont fair well with this regardless of the price.

Edit: The more I play this the more I begin to hate the game even more and getting closer not to recommending it. When you get new ships or even trying to find out about the older ones, besides seeing the actual hard points for the main weapons which are represented in red, you see nothing of the smaller ones in blue and of the hanger bays in green, although if you know what to look for you can still see the hanger bays IF they are on the left side of the ship. You actually have to start a new game with each ship which takes time just to know it's full configuration. Only the hull, shielding and the like are shown from the ship selection screen. That is a horrible decision to make the player go through.

For one reason or another I never actually sat down to play this game. Much like the original HL, Blue Shift and this, I simply never got around to it. I guess I was too busy playing all the great mods that came out because of HL. Regardless this is a pretty good game. A dated game mind you, but still pretty good. If you enjoyed the original game you should enjoy this as well. Decent length for an add on, which was about twice as long as Blue Shift, but that still pales in comparison to the original game. Those not wanting to have to sit through all of HL again, may enjoy a quicker romp through Black Mesa and on the way see side stories that add to the HL universe.

This time around, instead of being Dr. Freeman or the security guard Barney (Original or Blue Shift), you are US Marine Cpl. Shephard in route to Black Mesa. Your transport is shot down before the standing orders are given to everyone however... So you are basically left to your own devices in trying to escape the facility. You meet up with fellow squad mates from time to time, which you can use to advance, security guards and even jittery scientists. You also have new weapons at your disposal and a slew of new enemies to compliment the old ones, some brain teasers that will have you scratching your head for a solution and you will of course see new areas of Black Mesa.

However the game is not without it's flaws. Again by now the graphics are outdated. There is just no way around it. If you are spoiled on the latest or even decade old graphics, this may not be your bag. Also they claim you can control your team and give orders. Sadly this was no different than when you could control the scientists from the original game. You just use the USE key, they follow and use a blow torch to cut through a door. That is it. Maybe you can ask a medic to heal you, but there are so many health packs laying around you really didn't need him. I was expecting strategy and team work with my fellow soldiers, but there was none of that. And they die too quickly in a fire fight anyway, even with a medic present. In fact I am not even sure the medic can heal himself or others if not scripted in the story. If they could of done better with that expect, I would of praised it much higher.

Also coming from a military background I was a little annoyed at certain weapons having characteristics that they should not have, as well as the night vision goggles that was designed to act as the flashlight in the other games, but it is a game so what ever. ^_^ Due to the nature of the game being an add on and so dated, I would get it on sale for a dollar. Nothing to complain about at that price. And it is that price now as of this writing. Either that or wait for another Summer or Winter Sale.

The game was short, but sweet. It definitely had it's flaws, but it had it's merits too. The graphics for a game like this was decent. The enemy placement was alright. The story however, what there was anyway, was contrived. If this was before the events of Half Life, why are all the established creatures already here? It should have been called Half Life: After or After Half Life to be more precise.

But here are the break down of the negatives I witnessed.

The 50. cal in the helicopter is not at a very good angle for the player. The small window obstructs much of the view and crouching while firing feels much less accurate and you have to walk in your shots.

I quick saved the game on the main deck, before I made a haphazard jump that may of landed me over board. I did a quick reload and magically got transported into the cabin of the ship... mind you it was my first time playing. Hence I had never been there before and should of never loaded into that room. O_o

I failed the mission on the bridge because I killed the three enemy soldiers, but ran from the snarks and partially down the ladder and the mission ended. Admittedly I had fell half way down by a miss step, but caught the ladder well before I hit the ground. It just said “Mission Failed” or “Mission Failure” which was odd to me. I was practically at full health and had tried purposely to recreate that error afterwards, but it never occurred again and I survived every fall not even bothering to grab hold of the ladder in the fall.

Also the game crashed twice. I would say it is my system, but no other mods have done that. Also the boss battle was pretty weak. The whole set up of just jumping into the dark and nothing to stop your fall irked me. Also you not having your weapons already equipped when the boss fight starts and the fact that you can hear NPCs firing their guns at enemies is also odd, since there should have been no one left near you in this fight. I mean it sounds like there was suppose to be something going on at one point in development and some how it was left in by mistake or one map or section bled into the other some how.

I am not sure this was worth a green light in it's current state. The game could have been longer, much longer. Yet it was still enjoyable and we do need more mods to play, so we should not bash the developer for trying. Over all the quality was good in some areas and not so good in others. I have tried my hand at mapping, so I know it is not easy. But I think this could have been a better map for Sven Co-op than an actual stand alone, simply due to the nature of this game.

Still though I will recommend it to others. I can not knock you for a good effort. Hopefully we get some more, albeit more refined games from you.

I was surprised how much I actually liked Blue Shift. To be honest I liked it better than it's parent game, but I think that may have been the more human element to it. You do not get a shiny new HEV suit to make you super human, you are just a security guard with some body armor and a side arm or two. Of course the game does not put you in such extreme situations that Gordon Freeman was put in, that needed such a suit either, for the most part.

Regardless, I think what I liked the most about the game was the extra areas that you could not see in the original. Basically the inner workings of Black Mesa. Also the length, at least for me, was pretty short, only a fraction of the original. Some may complain about it's briefness, but it keeps the pace and flows nicely, with some brain teasers and extra side stories that made HL1 better to understand. There were not many times I was wishing the darn thing would end, as it's parent game had, which seemed to drag on and on at times...

Also when originally released in disc format, I believe it added better looking textures. This of course does not do anything now in the digital age, as everything is updated automatically, but I am sure it was a big deal back then, since it updated the textures for the original HL1 and I believe at least also in Opposing Force as well.

I highly recommend this for any HL1 fan who may have missed it, either never installing the disc back in the day or bought the original on Steam without thinking of giving this a try. Me being rather cheap, I do recommend buying it on a Summer Sale (as it is now at the time of this writing) or a Winter one, due to it's quick play time. For 99 cents you can not go wrong regardless of the length. In fact I am about to go into hard mode and see just how fast I can actually beat it! ^_^

I HIGHLY recommend this game to anyone who enjoys FPSs or a western and a match made in heaven for both. 5 out of 5 tin stars! This game is one of the best free multiplayer games out there, even worth to be sold. The amount of play styles, weapons and game modes is impressive. The graphics are decent and the game is updated regularly. I am not really sure what all the belly aching is about. I think a few people are getting all bent out of shape because they whined about a simple and minor change in the game play to the developer constantly and repeatedly, where every thread they made seemed to repeat themselves on that one topic and after a while the dev just told them to knock it off because the change only made the game better. Now they are posting bad reviews. No one is going to take the crap the developer has taken and not say something back. Nor is “everyone” crying and having a fit about the updates, only a select few. Do not let the recent amount of red negatives fool you. As you can clearly see by digging a little deeper, there is an overwhelming amount of blue positives for the game. Try the game yourself and find out. It is free after all! Happy hunting!

Minerva: Metastasis

Something has to be said for a game, especially a free one, that has me playing and beating it more than once on different difficulty settings. It has to be something that is able to both catch and hold my attention, with an interesting story and great game play. Few free single player mods capture this as much as Minerva does.

From start to finish it is a very well thought out and planed mod. It is hard to believe a single person made all this, with the exception of the music I believe. I do not want to spoil too much, but this island and it's beautiful beaches is certainly not a vacation hot spot in the tropics and there are dark secrets buried beneath all that pristine white sand... From the moment you are dropped in you have to be on your guard and take down the nasty Combine and their Overwatch fiends. Along the way you get coded messages sent to you by your employer and she (?) seems not too fond of you either. After all, you are a traitor to both humanity and the Overwatch alike, being one of their own bio-engineered soldiers gone rogue.

There really is not much to complain about, maybe only suggest. The computer voice in your head would of been much better done had it used a real voice, preferably a female's. Surely the moder could have had a sister, a friend or another female they knew lend their voice for the role. If not that, at least allow us to pause the game to read the text that pops up or allow us to view them later at our leisure. In a lot of the examples you are in an intense fire fight and do not have time to seek cover and reload, much less to read the messages fully. Then you will have to reload the last save to try and read it all again and fight the same battle you just fought. And the little tidbits of information is worth it.

Also perhaps a co-op mode would have been the shinning jewel already on the golden crown, but perhaps that is asking for too much from one man. Besides that though, there really is not cause to complain except perhaps you have to have HL2 Ep1 to play it. Not every one in the community went out and bought that extra content. (Although you should for it's own merits and Ep2 while you are at it!) However with out it, it would not of looked as good as it did either. I can see why Valve picked this person up to be on their team. Do yourself a favor and pick this up!