Setup

Worms Reloaded, developed by Team17 for PC, is essentially an attempt to rejuvenate the classic 2D Worms game that upon its debut struck a chord in the hearts of gamers and spawned countless sequels and spinoffs. After the series had undergone a serious overhaul with the unfavourable implementation of 3D gameplay in recent sequels (which had arguably convoluted the game experience into a murky feeling of angles and fractions and all that math stuff), the highly revered traditional turn-based strategy game has shaken off its pink worm juice (or whatever the hell worms bleed) and is back; the epitome of animal-fuelled chaotic madness continues another chapter, back on traditional ground.

Transform your holy relic, into a wily hand grenade!

Gameplay

In a typical Worms match, you control a team of trigger-happy worms equating the sacred and convenient number of equilibrium in gaming, by which I mean four, and are pitted against a team of equal monstrosity save for any discrepancies in cosmetic appearance. In a turn-based manner, worms on either side exchange 2D blows by utilizing various diabolical weapons to eventually reduce the entire landscape, and hopefully all the bad worms with it, into a shredded pulp.

Numbers were bled.

The campaign portion features various scenarios that are typically consistent with the well-refined concept of “kill bad guy because I said so”, dotted with some occasional twists and elaborate puzzle challenges.

You call that a sport? THIS is a sport!

The most important aspects of the chaos are the worms themselves. In addition to the typical array of military weapons such as the bazooka and shotgun, our fervent annelid friends have indoctrinated some rather bizarre tactics. Worms are so deeply devout on annihilating other worms which have different coloured text above them that they’ll domesticate lesser beings such as bomb-strapped sheep to aid in their cause. In other words, Worms is an allegory to modern day politics.

In short, worms really badly want to blow the pink matter out of each other, in the most inhumane ways possible.

As expected of the series, multiplayer is fully supported, allowing up to four teams of four worms to shoot, bludgeon, sear, chop, and otherwise desensitize each other on any landscape imaginable. In addition to a random level generator, there is a level editor featuring many options for customizability. New vertical landscapes certainly challenge your fear of falling, especially considering the amount of weapons specifically designed to take advantage of worms deliberately situated on soft slopes.

There's nothing like a (Pepper) good whack from a baseball bat to get you swimming.

Presentation

While Worms Reloaded revisits the world of the platyhelminthes (in other words, the two-dimensional), it is stylishly rendered in high definition that makes full use of today’s monitors. Highlights of the graphics are dazzling explosion and fire effects which serve merely as eye candy, but are damn tasty indeed. The cartoon-like appearance definitely emphasizes the silliness and wackiness of the game, which is further emblazoned by a host of voices that sound as if they were induced by inhaling absurd quantities of helium while mimicking pop culture stereotypes.

A bunch of crazed worms adorned with funny hats on a construction site? I like where this is going.

The Good

Worms Reloaded accentuates the nature of the timelessly classic formula with many goodies and addons, all accessible in both the multiplayer and campaign modes. The robust randomness and adjustable preferences make the game incredibly fun and replayable, often provoking unanticipated and comical events all throughout gameplay. Hilarity definitely ensues when a worm is propelled over 100 feet in the air, only to activate a land mine, causing a chain reaction that eventually turns a small tactical scheme into a mini-apocalypse. With an assortment of ridiculous and tactical weapons complimented by some nifty additions like the Sentry Gun and Bunker Buster, there are countless ways for you to whittle your opponent to a bullet-riddled fluff in fully pixelated HD goodness.

It's a bird, it's a plane, wait a sec, it's a flying sheep?! How adorable I do say, wait, what are you doing... OH GOD!

The Bad

Right off the bat, there is the clunky and obtrusive interface that just screams console port when you can hardly see half the screen when the menu opens. In keeping with the tradition of previous Worms games, there is absolutely no story here. Saying there is a story in Worms is like saying there is originality in cars these days, but at least Worms recognizes the fact and doesn’t make a shameful attempt to bring narrative into a place where it doesn’t belong. When first getting the ropes of the gameplay, the learning curve can be quite unforgiving. Especially with all sorts of wacky weapons whose names simply add to the perplexing purpose they may serve, you may find yourself testing out an unknown weapon hoping you didn’t just summon the harbinger of confined destruction beneath your feet. Playing against the CPU can be quite frustrating, as it often displays the uncanny ability to surgically curve a rocket up the butt crack of an unsuspecting pink fellow from anywhere on the battlefield. Ergo, it would be nice if there were more middle-of-the-road CPU difficulties and variance to give my shoddy and often misguided attempts an equal fight.

It would be nice to see where I'm shooting before I pick what to shoot I mean - hold on - is that a ferret?

Summary

Worms is what you make of it. It surely does not take itself seriously, and neither should you, or else you’ll become susceptible to raging fits akin to a tourrettes guy episode. Nonetheless, aside from a few minor technical issues, Worms Reloaded successfully brings back a fresh stock of 2D worms to send to their perilous doom, accompanied by a slow painful death cohesive interface with loads of room for customizability. This prominent series has ultimately given us an idea of what the world might look like if humans were not the dominant species. As it turns out, not much differs.

Online Price

US 19.99 on Steam

Disclaimer: this review does not feature any screenshots.

The Premise
DeathSpank is a game about a cartoon hero named DeathSpank (most creative parents of the year award) and his quest to find an artifact called “The Artifact” (least creative name of the year). His path is paved in blood, and steel, and bacon. You play through the game mashing any of four buttons to smash, cut, cleave, shoot, slash, and blow up whatever cartoony animals and monsters stand between you and your goal. On your quest, you’ll encounter plenty of Non-Player Characters (NPCs) with all sorts of wacky accents and mannerisms who give you all sorts of silly quests to do that have very little relevance to anything (which makes them all the more fun). It’s clear from even before you start playing that DeathSpank is not a serious game by a long shot; any game in which someone claiming to be a “Vanquisher of Evil” is willing to do odd jobs for a guy working on a golf course clearly isn’t taking itself seriously at all.

The Gameplay
Deathspank is a hack ‘n’ slash game in which your A, B, X, and Y buttons are all assigned different weapons (If you’re playing on the PS3, these are obviously X, Circle, Square, and Triangle) and, through an inventory system, you choose what weapon to put in what slot (DeathSpank seems to be able to quickly switch through 4 different weapons despite owning roughly the average number of arms). Along your quest, you’ll find lots of new weapons, armor, and potions which fill up your inventory fairly quickly (thankfully, you can grind down anything you find into money, which doesn’t take up any space at all. Ever. Even if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cartoony, large, cumbersome gold coins.)

The Good
DeathSpank is fun to play and has a lot of ridiculous, cartoony humour in it. The voice acting is also very well-done, and the whole game has a very psychadelic look and feel to it, like a Tim Burton cartoon if watched while inhaling lethal amounts of laughing gas holding a gamepad. The button-mashy gameplay is fun, but there are bonuses for those who master it (“Justice” weapons perform strong finishing moves, and alternating weapons makes your Justice meter fill faster, for instance). There’s a lot of loot in this game, which means anything you kill could potentially be holding a shiny gift for you (I suppose spiders eat entire suits of armor, or have really, really big pockets.) There are lots of side-quests to do which give you new equipment and hefty chunks of experience, but they’re really just there to provide you with more hilarious dialogue.

The Bad
It does get a little repetitive, there are lots of quests and it’s hard to remember them all (thankfully you have a quest log, but it’s still easy to feel overwhelmed). Almost every weapon is exactly the same, with a slightly different graphic; the RPG element isn’t as deep as it could have been. The humour can feel forced at times, and DeathSpank talks almost agonizingly slowly (at least in my opinion.)

The Price
1200 MSP (roughly 15$ USD) (XBLA)
$14.99 (PSN)

The Verdict
DeathSpank is a fun, little game to tide you over for a weekend or so; it’s not particularly amazing, but it’s a lot of fun to play and very reminiscent a time when waking up early on a Saturday morning was worth the cartoons they showed.

So there’s this one series I like that most other people I question have never heard of.  It has gone through localization drama between its fan base and the Sonic humping SEGA again and again ever since its first instalment tanked like a freighter anywhere outside its own setting.  It was misconceived to be a GTA clone from Japan by some, and conceived as the more curb stomping heavy yet vague successor to Shenmue by others.  It drives its story with a cutscene heavy approach that rivals even Metal Gear Solid, and contains about as much exposition.  Speaking of exposition, I should probably get mine done with for the sake of not incurring Jacob’s wrath, or drowning those other guys’ posts below me.  Keep em’ coming guys!

Oh, and here’s something that gets pretty awesome at the 0:20 mark:

Story:

So the story in the Yakuza-verse takes place in Japan surprisingly enough, but more specifically in a fictional Tokyo district called Kamuro-cho, and also more specifically in a fictional Osaka district named Sotenbori (in Yakuza 2).  You, as the control freak you are, get to command the manifestation of brawling awesomeness known as Kiryu Kazuma, an ex-rising star within the Tokyo based Tojo Clan Yakuza group thing.  After the series of events that took place in the first Yakuza, Kazuma now tries to lead a normal life away from all the Yakuza, Shmuza, business that has hampered him thus far.  However the directors obviously thought that allowing poor Kazuma to rest for once would not make for great ad campaigns, and thus at the beginning of the game, Kazuma is thrown again into the mob fray.

Also for those interested in getting cought up to speed with what happened in Yakuza 1 without playing said rare gem, there’s an optional yet detailed cutscene compilation that covers the whole $9.99 bundle of awesome you’re skipping, ya cheap/lazy/indifferent yet nice person.

The conflict this time centers around an approaching all out battle between the Osaka based Omi Clan and Kazuma’s old Tojo Clan.  As tensions between the two clans rise, so does Kazuma, as he becomes somewhat targeted by the Omi Clan’s new “leader”, and various other elaborate conspiracy shenanigans that were set in motion before anybody really cared to remember.

Although most people nowadays expect the stories that come out of Japan to be riddled with angst, teens, and gravity defying dos, that’s certainly not the direction Yakuza 2 takes with its storytelling.  Kazuma is a manly man at 37 (or 40+ according to the Japanese version) years who has gone through quite a bit in his life, yet doesn’t brood over it every single moment possible, and instead uses it as motivation to keep beating through hordes of fate tempting goons who think they can take on one of the biggest main character shields to date.

The story itself is more akin to a police drama than a cutesy/angsty anime, though I still don’t quite see the point as to why some people need that distinction being made clear.  That said however, the story still doesn’t care about bum slapping any notion of realism when plot convenience or random awesomeness calls for it, which might be appalling after Yakuza 2 spends so much time building up a rather believable crime ring atmosphere, but it isn’t as bad as to make you drop the controller whilst calling BS, and for your snotty room service.

At the end of it all however, Yakuza 2 still uses little else other than lengthy cutscenes, and/or text based exposition dialogue to move its story along.  In other words, if you’re looking for a game that seamlessly integrates its story into its gameplay, Yakuza 2, probably won’t fill that jagged trough of yours.

Gameplay:

For those who are starting to get cold feet about whether or not Yakuza has enough game to cover the story, than worry not because this gameplay column is going to turn out quite lengthy.

Yakuza takes full advantage of its urban jungle setting.  The two and a half districts you’ll be visiting as the story progresses are not merely geographical surrogates that connect you from one punch out encounter to the next, but are fully realized and functional cities.

You’ll spend the majority of the game traversing through these commercial centers trying to head to the next spot the big red arrow on your map tells you to go, or getting completely sidetracked and forgetting the main story even existed.

Aside from the main story, there are about a good ninety or so side missions that you can find, or vice versa.  These missions are not only usually hilarious/awkward compared to the main story, but also allow you to gain experience,  new moves that cannot be learned by leveling up, a new weapon to club more willing heads in with, or just simply more dough.  Along with these side gigs are a numerous amount of mini-games that you can engage Kazuma’s easily distracted little mind with.  These can include playing ball in the batting cages, losing your university savings over Black Jack, or talking up a hostess girl with what you have left of it in order to show the ladies just how socially savvy a basement dweller like you can be.  Each of these distractions also have side-missions that tie into them for completion whores to get their tissue paper wet over.

You may laugh, but the 100 will laugh right back at ya.

Most missions (or just simply wandering through the streets) end up with you having to throw down at some point, and throwing is exactly what you’ll do.  Fights can take place practically anywhere in the game.  If it looks like it went through a heavy development cycle, you can be sure you’ll be bashing a thug’s head over it.

Kazuma’s fighting style is relatively easy to pick up, and the fighting in Yakuza 2 takes the form of brawls rather than one on one fights.  You can perform a string of fast punches and kicks simply by repeatedly smashing the square button, and you can end them off with a heavy strike using the triangle button (with the heavy hit having a different effect depending on when during the string of attacks you perform it).  This mean of offence is translated directly from the first Yakuza, but has been improved upon.  A big problem with the first game’s fighting system was its inability to let Kazuma change the direction of his attack while he was already at it.  Attacking enemies freehand also felt really sluggish, which forced you to use the game’s “lock-on” R1 button in order to snap towards an enemy and to make sure that you were actually attacking something, and not just forcing Kazuma to smell his own manly armpits before the manly tears scene is shown.  This problem is mostly fixed in Yakuza 2, as Kazuma can now move more freely during his attacks so that you don’t have to keep locking on to enemies one by one just to hit them.  This is also supplemented by Kazuma having the ability to switch from attacking enemies at the front to enemies at his back seamlessly mid combo.  These tweaks allow you to feel better suited for dealing with crowds of lackeys rather than having them get in line in order to retrieve their health insurance claim.

Other returning fighting elements from the first Yakuza also include the ability to utilize improvised and not so improvised weapons (read: guns) to deal with cronies faster, and the ever so loved Heat Gauge.  The Heat Gauge still functions the same good ol’ way, filling up when you hit enemies, and draining when they tell you how they feel about it.  The Heat Gauge allows Kazuma, much like in the original Yakuza, to start getting creative with his skull bashing by throwing his enemies at walls and other hazards, or by simply stomping on their head when all other options are exhausted.  Yakuza 2 liberally peppers Kazuma with a lot more Heat actions, and some that don’t even require walls or fires to throw enemies at, such as the ability to counter oncoming attacks with seamless counter actions, or throwing one enemy a top another, and letting gravity do Kazuma’s work for him.

When Kazuma wants you to tell the tree you're sorry...

Completing fights allow for Kazuma to gain most of his experience, which can be spent on three different categories including his sexy body, his messed up mind, and the techniques he learned last game and forgot due to sheer retardation or something.  Increasing these stats reward Kazuma with a bigger health bar, or a short lasting one for enemies.  Some of the moves you’ll smack over Kazuma’s little head during side missions also require that you level these stats to a certain degree, so it pays to not neglect the three puppies.  You also don’t really have to worry about not being able to fill all of them, as the game supplies you with more than enough experience to max Kazuma out completely by the end.

...you gon' tell the tree you're sorry.

All of the fighting, side questing, mini-gaming, and cut scene watching found in Yakuza 2 will amount most players with a first play through that is well over 70 hours long, and I’m saying first play through, because Yakuza 2 is the kind of game that actually deserves more than one.  With the ability to carry over your money and fully buffed up Kazuma to a second hard mode play through, and with certain side missions only being available during certain points in the story, Yakuza 2 is one of the very few single player games that actually make me want to play it again just to catch all the thugs I missed beating on, or just to beat on the same old ones again.

Graphics:

Yakuza 2 is a rather late PS2 era game, so its looks defiantly benefit from dev experience.  You can still easily differentiate important characters to not so important characters by their polygon count, however and all of these other pricks seem to cast Kazuma’s shadow.  Posers.

The game’s true graphical power lies in the presentation of its fully realized cities.  You’ll be seeing dozens upon dozens of relatively distinct pedestrians on screen at once, all of which are walking, hanging out or talking about hangovers.   The streets are also filled with many distinct, fully lit neon signs and store fronts to give you the impression that you are actually in a busy Japanese commercial district (huzzah for accurate capitalism?).

All of this is quite unfortunately experienced from a fixed camera angle most of the time, which means you can’t truly examine the impressively crafted setting from every angle, unless you’re in a fight, and are too busy using it to mutilate your foes to notice the fine details.

This is your PS2 trying to be awesome.

Audio:

Yakuza 2 offers quite a bit of kick ass music to kick ass to, and some pretty good fight sounds and screams.  Each setting is given its own “time to kick ass” theme for the most part, as do different boss fights and other encounters that don’t involve Kazuma easily face planting some generic thugs to death unconsciousness.

All of the original Japanese dialogue is intact for this release with no English dub to annoy us picky dub haters, and is supplemented by some pretty solid subtitles that still convey the dialogue without feeling too much like a parroted translation.  Of course, if you are one of those with a special case of the “OMG It’s Japanese!!!” Syndrome than you should avoid this product at all costs as it might evoke strange symptoms such as, but not limited to killing fluffy animals for fun and more fun.  And profit.

Overall (for those who are too lazy to read):

Good Thingies:

• Great replay value for your Elizabeth II/Andrew Jackson (yeah, I did have to go Wiki that).
• Numerous side missions and activities help keep the game varied.
• Solid and easy to pick up fighting system to bash heads in with.
• Fully realized setting that help give the game a sense of place.

Not so Good Thingies:

• Main story is decent but is heavy on exposition and cutscenes.
• Beating mooks up gets pathetically easy after a while, but never loses its charm.
• Yakuza 2 can be kind of hard to track down due to being a limited release.  Yakuza 1 might be easier to find.
• You don’t own this game yet.

Can be found on: the PS2 (also works with backwards compatible PS3s if you’re gifted like that, but might have problems running on older PS2s due to the game being on a DVD9, correct me if I’m wrong, internet).

Price:

• Yakuza:  $9.99 (almost just as good, for half the price, cheap-o)
• Yakuza 2:  $17.99

The same developers that made Killing Floor (If you look at my previous review of it), also made another game that started them into game developing. Originally a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004, Tripwire Interactive made “Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45″. Red Orchestra is a World War II shooter (Very original setting) set at the Eastern front, where Russia and Germany were fighting (If you didn’t know this already). It puts emphasis on realism and tactics, unlike most modern shooters today such as Call of Duty or the Battlefield series. This means that it is virtually impossible for any one player to dominate the entire enemy team by himself and you will have to rely on your team and tactics to win a round. Red Orchestra is mainly a multiplayer game, and while you can play practice game with bots, there is no single-player aspect to it, which means if you’re not the type of person that really enjoys multiplayer, I suggest you stop reading. If you’re willing to give WWII another go, then I suggest you keep on reading.

According to a popular game developer that made a very popular shooter that went from WWII to Modern day, leaning is not balanced for gameplay. Red Orchestra would beg to differ.

Gameplay:

Unlike most modern shooters, Red Orchestra focuses mainly on realism on infantry combat. This means that you will not able to regenerate health, unlike most mainstream shooters, instead you are given a set amount of health as well as a diagram of the player’s body that represents the condition of each body part shown. Depending on where you shot, it will have a different effect on the player, such as shots in arm will cause you to drop your gun or shots in the legs will cause you walk slower or limp if the conditions are severe. Given that it is a realism-oriented game, there is also no crosshair in the game, which forces you to aim down the sights in order to get an accurate shot. Hip-firing is very inaccurate and it is only effective at close range. Bullet-drop and flight-time also plays an important role in Red Orchestra, and while it doesn’t really make much of a difference in close quarters maps, in maps that involve longer distances, you will need to compensate for the bullet-drop by aiming differently. There is also no bullet count, and you are only given the amount of magazines/clips that you currently have for your gun, which forces you to count mentally on the amount of bullets you’ve used since your last reload. If you reload any unfinished magazines, the rounds in it are discarded, which means you will need to decide on whether it is a good idea to reload and to have more shots to fire, or to save up those rounds but possibly risk reloading in a firefight.

Each class in Red Orchestra has a different role in a team, such as sub-machine gunners or tank drivers.

There are two teams in Red Orchestra, obviously being the Russians (Allies) and the Germans (Axis). Both factions have different weapons and loadouts that make them somewhat distinct from one another. The Russians uses weapons that has a greater rate-of-fire over firepower, such as the PPSh-41 SMG, or the Mosin-Nagant, which has a faster bolt time. The Germans on the other hand, uses weapons that have better firepower at the risk of rate-of-fire, such as the MP-40 or the Kar98k. Each team has separate classes that has an important role in each team, such as machine-gunners for support fire, or snipers for long-distance shots. Depend on the map, different classes will or will not make an appearance, such as tank drivers, which is the only class that is allowed to use the tanks in-game.

Vehicles play a minor, but important role in Red Orchestra. They are used mainly to support the infantry on the team. Tanks can usually hold up to three people, which all of them need to be using the “tank driver” class in order to operate any part of it (Driver, Commander, and Gunner). This means that unlike something like the Battlefield series, the three members in the tank will need to communicate each other in order to maximize the vehicle’s efficiency, this means that it is impossible to operate a tank properly with only one person.

You can choose between this view of the tank in the driver's seat or.....

...or this view where you have a better view but more prone to getting shot since you're in the open.

Pros:

Provided that you are patient enough to learn the mechanics and the controls to Red Orchestra, the game can be quite fun once you know what to do. The tactical gameplay can reach to a level where few modern shooters can reach,and it can be quite satisfying to be part of a  There are enough maps in the game to cater to most types of gameplay, such as smaller numbers of players with more emphasis on close quarters or larger maps with more players and more vehicles to portray a more “Battlefield”-like experience. Also, similar to Killing Floor, Red Orchestra also has its variety of custom maps to play on, which adds more to the playtime you could possibly spend on Red Orchestra. The presentation of Red Orchestra varies quite a bit, while the graphics are rather dated since it runs on Unreal Engine 2.5, it also looks better than most games running on the same engine, the visuals themselves portray how war would generally look like and that just adds to the experience.

Because walking in a single-file line will NOT get you mowed down by a machine gun.....

Cons:

While realism is also a positive aspect to Red Orchestra, it can be a hindrance if realism is not what you want in a shooter. I highly suggest not trying this game out if you do not want to spend time learning the controls because you will be spending the first few hours of your playtime trying to grasp every single aspect of Red Orchestra that is important to playing it. It can be overwhelming to anyone that hasn’t played anything like this before and it can be a major turn-off. The audio in Red Orchestra also is a mixed bag in this regard, while the gun sounds are decent, other sounds such as sprinting or explosions are mediocre at best and can lead you to wonder why they couldn’t have gotten better sounds. While the game does run on Unreal Engine 2.5, it can get laggy in terms of FPS (Frames Per Second), even on newer computers since the optimization isn’t that great.  If you are expecting a game that has the same production values as any other mainstream game, you will be disappointed in what Red Orchestra has to offer overall.

Why yes, standing in front of a doorway during a battle is a great idea and will not getting you killed.

In conclusion….: If you don’t like the kind of realism that Red Orchestra has to offer, then I do not suggest trying this game out since learning the controls will be very frustrating to you. If you are willing to tolerate and give this game a chance, I assure you that Red Orchestra will be very enjoyable with its gameplay mechanics. The game itself isn’t very expensive (Seeing as this site reviews games under $20) and it is worth the amount of money you will spend on it.

System Requirements:

Minimum:

CPU: 1.2 GHZ or Equivalent, 512 MB RAM

Video Card: 64 MB DX9 Compliant

HDD: 2 GB free hard drive space

Sound Card: DX 8.1 Compatible Audio

Operating System: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7

Recommended:

CPU: 2.4 GHZ or higher

Video Card: 128 MB DX9 Compliant with PS 2.0 support

Sound Card: Eax Compatible

Operating System: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7

HDD: 2 GB free hard drive space

Price: $9.99, on Steam. ($4.99 at the time of this review)

Release Date: March 14 2006

Platform: PC

There are a lot of FPS games out there, but it’s fun when you play an FPS game online. The most popular ones are CS 1.6 and CS: Source. Sudden Attack just like Counter Strike, BUT it’s free.

No. It's not a bullet sticking out of the guy's ear. It's a cursor.

The best feature in the game (in my opinion) is, unlike CS, you have a timer that tells you when you will be respawned. So, you don’t have to wait for the other players to die. It makes the game more interesting because you don’t have to stare at your screen and see how other players play. Another feature is ranking. As you play you earn points or experience. The more experience you gain, the higher your rank is. All ranks are here. The third thing I like about the game is that on some of the maps you have a goal. A team goal, that you have to achieve in order to win. Unlike Counter Strike, you just simply shoot at each other. There’s no goal (except planting/defusing the bomb).

Well.. Ya. I got killed. But look at the blood!!!

If you read my World in Conflict review, you would notice that I love games that have sick graphics. I’d say S.A. (Sudden Attack) doesn’t have really good graphics, but the effects are just awesome. Look at the screenshot above. Yes, the character doesn’t really look good (the character’s appearance in the game, not its sexyness ) but the blood on the wall is really good drawn. Whenever you kill someone, there’s blood all over the place.

Another thing I like is that the sight of a gun is extremely small, what makes it easier to aim. But of course whenever you shoot the sight because larger and larger – just like in real world.

Honestly, there’s no something I really don’t like. The graphics are decent, but could be better. The small sight of a gun makes it easier to shoot, but again does not look realistic. All sights (of different guns) are the same size, unlike CS where all sights are different size, what makes it more realistic. When  you play an FPS game, you want it to be as realistic as possible, right?

The game looks a bit cartoonish, so it’s noticeable that all characters are drawn. Not real. I would say this is the only thing this game sucks at. But hey! It’s FREE!

Skills..

Conclusion – is the place where you got tired of thinking: So, in conclusion, if you are noobie at FPS games, I’d say Sudden Attack is the best game to start off. First of all it’s free. Second, it’s really easy to aim due to small size of the sight. If you’re a pro at Counter Strike or other FPS games, I’d still recommend this game because it really shows you the basics of FPS games.

If you finally decided to play this game, go here and register. I’d make my tutorial explaining you how to install the game and join a server, but everything is already explained here.

If you have any questions about the game, leave a comment and I will answer as soon as possible.

Hasta la vista, baby.

If killing zombies via personal garden defense system isn’t your style, then Killing Floor might be the right game for you. Killing Floor is your typical survival horror, set in London, where a biotechnology company’s experiments have gone terribly wrong and resulted in the experiments becoming increasingly hostile and eventually breaking out into the surface to devour citizens. You (and whoever you are playing with) take the role of a surviving British soldier, where you are fighting for your own survival. In a sense, it’s your typical zombie shooter, and the game doesn’t really dive into the story at all in the game, but do you really need an excuse to not shoot at zombies? I’m sure I wouldn’t…..

For some reason, the British army can't afford to send you out with anything but a pistol....

Tips to Surviving against zombies (Gameplay):

If you didn’t know already, the description for Killing Floor is basically “Co-op survival horror”, this means a total of up to 6 players can be in same game as well. There are several difficulty settings, ranging from obviously, beginner to expert, but it typically better to adjust the difficulty in accordance to how many players you have. Going lone wolf would get you massacred at anything above the medium difficulty setting while anything below “hard” would be extremely easy for more than 3 players. Besides different settings for the difficulty, there are a variety of maps, ranging from close quarters to urban settings.

The game itself has a certain amount of customization to it, early on, you can choose which “perk” you have in game, such as the “Commando” perk, in which you are given a strength in assault rifles, shorter reloading time and improved effectiveness in automatic weapons. As you play, these perks will level up, increasing their effectiveness. A game typically begins with each player only having a pistol and a knife to start with. Depending on the difficulty, there are a set amount of waves of zombies that you are required to survive. As you survive each wave, a shop is opened at a random part of the map where you can buy better weapons and equipment with the money that you earn from killing zombies. The shop can be opened at any location, even at the other side of the map, this promotes players to move around as opposed to fortifying a single location on the map. There are a variety of weapons and equipment you can buy, ranging from shotguns to assault rifles to armour to flamethrowers, it all depends on what you have since each weapon weighs a certain amount and you can only carry so much. After surviving all of the waves of zombies, a final boss zombie is spawned, in which he has more health and does more damage than any other that are spawned before.

Overall, the gameplay to Killing Floor is as simple as it can be, survive all the waves of zombies and kill the final boss. How you choose to do so is up to you and your team.

Why killing zombies is awesome:

To Killing Floor’s credit, the execution of the gameplay is done fairly well, it delivers some great looking maps, where the lighting looks like your typical survival horror and there is enough variety from urban cities to close quarters to last you a while. The gameplay is as simple as it gets, and there isn’t any unnecessary for you to do outside of “survive, kill zombies, buy guns, rinse and repeat”, which cuts anything that might be unneeded and gives exactly what you would come to expect. The co-op aspect to Killing Floor also adds to the longevity of the game and while the co-op aspects aren’t exactly as integrated the gameplay as other zombie shooters, it is practically a requirement for the harder difficulties. The weapons that you can use also adds to the variety as well as the perks. Whether you’re the main assault rifle guy or the support of the team, you can always find a weapon that suits your playstyle. For the price of $19.99, you will certainly get your money’s worth off of Killing Floor, and some more if you decide to buy the DLC (Exceeding$20 however…)

Why would a gundealer have a shop in the middle of a lab full of zombies, I have no idea....

Why killing zombies is not awesome:

While Killing Floor does cut the unnecessary stuff, it only has the bare minimum of a zombie shooter game. It really doesn’t do anything to hook you in, no “team of four against wave of zombies”, no special types of zombies that are impossible to take on yourself. The gameplay, while it has its pros, can be seen as nothing more than run-and-gun, which is quite common these days. Co-op is quite entertaining but it doesn’t quite add anything extra besides having additional players.  Overall, after a few games of each map, the gameplay will start to get repetitive and you will find yourself doing the same things over and over. While the game itself does cost under $20, if you want additional content, you will have to pay for them, although it isn’t necessary.

Kill it with fire!

Price of the game:

Killing Floor: $19.99 (On Steam only)

Platform: PC

In conclusion….:

While there are games that are better than Killing Floor, for the price of $19.99, you will certainly get your money’s worth from it. Sadly, the game will start to get repetitive, but it is always fun to play with friends or even with random friendly strangers if you can find them. If online play is not your style, then you can probably have a good time playing solo anyways, better if you turn the lights off at night and turn up the volume.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/1250/

Torchlight is an Action-RPG/dungeon crawler/spiritual successor to Diablo – made by Runic Games, a company consisting of many of the team that worked on Mythos, Hellgate: London, and a few people from Diablo II. Torchlight Runic’s first game, and a free-to-play Torchlight MMORPG sequel-o-matic is in the works. Torchlight is probably the best game to have been released in the past several years, so the safest move for you would probably be to stop reading this right now and buy several copies. I’m tempted to just leave the review now, but I like to think I’m a little more professional than that so let’s get rolling.

You wouldn't want your roasted spider to get cold.

The Premise
The premise behind Torchlight is that it’s the best game ever about a little mining town called Torchlight, residing right on top of an Ember mine. Ember is vaguely defined as some form of rock that’s expensive, has magical powers, and also tends to drive plot-centric people insane.
The Ember mine is also very adept at attracting and/or spawning hordes of monsters which you will be fighting throughout the course of the game. In fact, the entire game takes place either in the town of Torchlight, or in the depths below it. (It didn’t seem to phase Torchlight’s founders at all that their town was built on top of an underground hive of monsters.) You’ll travel through all sorts of environments, such as mines, castles, sunken temples, other castles, and more castles. All of which are underground. And built on top of each other. Which conveniently happen to be right below a flourishing little mining town. Don’t ask me how that happened – the video games industry seems to thrive off uncanny coincidences.
Monsters are, as with any other RPG, more than willing to provide you with the weapons and armor you’ll need to continue murdering them.

With a name like "Speedy Roomcleaner," it's got to be good.

You choose a character – either a Destroyer, which is a medieval Ahnold Schwarzenegger whose muscle mass roughly equates to that of about a house made of bodybuilders, a goggled, steam-punk looking mage character called the Alchemist, and the trio of generic fantasy heroes is rounded out by the rogue/ranger woman called the Vanquisher, though how she accomplishes being a rogue is beyond me since it seems a slim young woman in a bright red corset would draw exponentially more attention than a sneaky spy of any sort.

Pictured: Women in the workplace, Torchlight edition.

You also get to choose a dog or a cat as a pet, though the only real difference between the two is appearance. You can find fish throughout your adventures – either on the ground in hidden treasure caches, or in fishing holes (the old-fashioned way), and these transform your pet into a friendly (to you) version of some of the monsters you fight throughout the game – such as elementals, goblinhounds, or mimics (treasure chests that eat you.) There have been multiple hilarious occasions in which my pet mimic has engaged in a mandible-clashing battle to the death with an inferior enemy mimic.

I don't know which one is mine, but I hope he's winning.

The Good.
Everything. I consider this game to be an incredibly well-polished masterpiece. Smashing monsters using a variety of skills and weapons is about as intuitive and fun as action-RPGS are going to get (at least until the release of Diablo III). In fact, it seems the developers did everything they could to keep you in the mines below torchlight, smashing monsters and getting loot – potions drop frequently enough for the skilled player never to have to buy them, and your pet can hold items and sell them for you, so a lack of inventory space is never an issue. In fact, if you ignore the side-quests, you can pretty much spend the entire game without ever returning to town at all, because of how conveniently the monsters provide you with provisions that happen to suit you perfectly. The visual style is light-hearted without being too childish or cartoony, and everything is stylized, vivid, and well-animated. There is a huge variety of items, with all sorts of unique visual appearances and effects. Each character class is well-rounded and some experimentation is obviously encouraged, because every class has roughly the same basic passive skills, meaning they can be adept with any set of weapons. The monsters are all visually appealing and well-animated, and there’s a pretty good variety of them for you to shoot, stab, slash, smash, burn, freeze, shock, crush, explode, poison, or pummel to death (or any diabolical combination thereof.)

As an added bonus, Torchlight has provided me with the means to vent my arachnophobic frustration.

The maps are randomized arrangements of level “chunks,” and, while you may see the same chunk a few times, the levels all generally feel new, if a little familiar. This adds to the replay value immensely. For the truly hardcore, you can, upon creating a character, designate it as “hardcore” – meaning that, once the character dies, it’s gone forever. There is a good variety of difficulties, ranging from Easy (for people new to video games), Medium (for people new to Action-RPGS), Hard (For people who have played Action-RPGs before and don’t want the monsters to be quite as laughably squishy) and Very Hard (which should be self-explanatory).
There are also a few easter eggs in the game, including an achievement about a horse (it has nothing to do with Old Spice commercials) and a very strange weapon called the “Sword of Adam.” (with magical properties such as “18 jauntiness,” “42 futuristicness,” “5 socks,” and “2 noodle arms.”)
The Modding support for this game is astounding. The modding tool – TorchED (you see what they did there?) is very versatile and there are countless mods and additions of all sorts made by the community at http://forums.runicgames.com/ , including skins, weapons, armor, skills, level packs, and full-fledged character classes.

The Bad
Lack of multiplayer is very apparent, and there is nothing I would enjoy more than to collectively loot and pillage the mines below Torchlight with a group of friends. Loading times can be a little frustrating, but they’re much better than they were when Torchlight was released. Some people may not like the cartoony style of Torchlight, though these people are probably the same people that are complaining that Diablo III has colours that aren’t in their palette of contemporary emo self-portraits.

The Price:
Torchlight is $19.95 and available as a digital download in a huge variety of places, most of which are on the Internet.

http://www.torchlightgame.com/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/41500/
http://torchlight.perfectworld.com/
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-TL/torchlight
http://www.encoreusa.com/
http://www2.gameware.at/info/space/Torchlight
http://www.wildtangent.com/
http://www.direct2drive.com/
http://www.gamestop.com/

A boxed copy is available in retail stores (if you can find any that carry it.) and you can also order it online.

The Verdict
Are you still reading this? Go out and buy several copies of the game already, because they’ll only grow in value and eventually become the official currency after the nuclear apocalypse.

We’ve all considered the envisioning of an all-out zombie apocalypse. Some have taken the possibility more passionately than others, but everyone at least has some basic plan of defending what they have left, and their humanity for that matter. Battle plans range from simply boarding up one’s home and hiding in a depressed corner twiddling their thumbs, or stocking up every last metal pipe and pump shotgun to go on an all-out killing spree (while chewing bubble gum, of course). But has anyone ever looked at the constituents of the average Joe’s garden as a pinnacle of refuge? Well, the developers at PopCap certainly have.

Setup

Plants vs. Zombies is a fully-fledged tower defense game, which is sure to please most of us who spend countless hours blasting aliens into outer space (at ludicrous speeds entailing equally ludicrous results) with patented lasers powered by science within the safety and comfort of Flash Player.

Now allow me to clarify: in Plants vs. Zombies, your loadout does not resemble a military-grade special ops tactical warfare kit at all, but rather, consists of a plethora of steroid-injected and psychotically deranged hell-spawns that somehow constitute as everyday plants you’d find in your garden. All of this diabolical genetic tinkering is the inner working of the omnipresent and incomprehensible mastermind known as Crazy Dave. Now, it doesn’t take much consideration to question such an entitlement to a basement dweller who wears a stove pot on his head, but that’s beside the point; Crazy Dave will be your best friend throughout this twisted zombie onslaught, and he’s here to provide you with the latest cutting-edge technology in garden warfare.

This here is Crazy Dave. Be sure not to make eye contact; he's a rather sensitive individual.

Gameplay

As previously mentioned, Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game, which means that you, the commander, general, or skilled gardener in this case must fend off wave after wave of ever-so-persistent baddies that come knocking at your door (literally). To do this, you construct various towers, each with their own unique ability or role. For instance, the basic plant tower is the Sunflower, which generates sun to fuel the rest of your plant defense. Other cleverly named towers include Peashooters, Wall-nuts, and Cherry Bombs which in combination can be effectively used to decimate the slowly creeping zombies in each level. Throughout the game, you’ll earn credits which can be used to purchase various upgrades from Crazy Dave that range from an assortment of roles, including bonuses to bolster your current plants and extra seed slots to bring out more firepower on future levels.

At the core of any garden worth its salt are sunflowers, the basic resource provider for your frontlines.

Unlike most tower defense games where you’re either shaping the enemies path with towers or placing them alongside a path, in Plants vs Zombies, there are 5 rows of lawn between your juicy, delectable brain and the zombies. The key here is to balance your defense among these rows while ensuring you have enough sun resources to maintain your position.

A balanced defense entails an intact brain.

Aside from the variety in the available plants you can unlock, there is a vast collection of unique zombie types, with successive ones coming into play later in the game being the most tough to defeat. There is your standard Zombie, which, as you may have guessed, shambles along toward your front line. Others aren’t so simple. Take the Pole Vaulting Zombie for example, which runs at a fast speed towards your line until bumping into a plant, after which pole vaults over to the next grid spot. With any zombie combination on a given level, you have to rethink your strategy and carefully plan the plants you select. On top of these core essentials is the rapidly changing environment in which you’re holding out on. Levels may be either daytime or nighttime, which dramatically affects your plant options, and may or may not contain strips of pool tiles that make situations very dynamic. Essentially this allows for a fresh and fluid gameplay experience that rarely becomes dull.

On the left there is the plant selection panel. On the right there is a preview of the upcoming zombie horde. Taking both into consideration prior to commencing a level is crucial to your success.

The campaign portion of the game is enough to warrant the price, but, characteristic of PopCap, there are a variety of additional minigames, puzzles, and even a survival mode after completion. All revolve around the basic premise behind Plants vs. Zombies, but each offer their own unique flavor that really helps to enhance replayability. Modes range from bowling Wall-nuts at hordes of zombies, to playing as the commander of the zombies themselves against the plants. There’s even a Zen Garden mode where you can store your acquired plants as prizes, very reminiscent to the Virtual Tank mode of the classic Insaniquarium.

Waging vengeful war on cardboard cut-outs isn’t exactly what I had in mind, Dave.

Presentation

Visually, Plants vs Zombies is rendered in a vibrant 2D style which breathes life into both the plants and, ironically, the zombies. The graphical style is spot on here, which makes simply sitting back and relaxing as your happy carnivorous plants bounce about, while raining terror on the grey office workers slowly inching their way towards your frontline all the more satisfying. Each plant and zombie has a distinct personality, which vastly contributes to the light-hearted and elegant atmosphere PopCap has delivered.

A tower matrix composed of various catapult plants is very effective on the roof levels.

The Good

Plants vs. Zombies presents itself as a special gem among games that clearly stands out when solely considering the title. The gameplay itself is as every bit awesome as implied, being a highly customizable tower defense game complemented by an assortment of entertaining puzzles, minigames, and other related extras. The presentation gives a lasting impression that does not sacrifice gameplay in any conceivable way, but rather, immensely nourishes it. Much fun during playtime was attained by sitting back and letting chaos unfold on the screen as green-thumb advocates battled undead adversaries endlessly. There’s something special about watching a zombie attempt to pole vault over a Tall-nut, fail, and then be quickly decapitated by flaming peas while a Spikeweed is simultaneously grinding his arse to shreds.

As plant and zombie choices increase in complexity so does your strategy.

The Bad

Although there is great diversity in the strategy of levels, selectable plants, and zombies, seasoned tower-defense veterans might not find a worthy challenge in Plants vs. Zombies. From my experience, the learning curve took a few gameplay sessions too long to advance once I had gotten the gist of things, and I rarely ever lost to the walking dead (though was amused by such occurrences). Also, the beginning session of every standard level is pretty repetitive and occasionally tedious: plant sunflower, wait for resources, plant sunflower, wait, etc. however some will appreciate the downtime to fully formulate their strategy for the remainder of the level. Casual gamers are clearly the target audience, which comes as no surprise. Those looking for a compelling story to companion the gameplay are searching in the wrong place. This is essentially a coffee-break game, with a setup that is pretty well described by the lyrics of the Plants vs. Zombies Music Video by PopCap, which gives an accurate and very amusing picture of the game’s mood.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N1_0SUGlDQ

This should serve as a general synopsis for the game.

Summary

Now let’s face it, upon seeing a bopping sunflower singing in front of a disco of partying zombies, I immediately fell in love with this game. With game mechanics saturated in diversity, elegance, and options for replayability, Plants vs. Zombies succeeds at appeasing almost any type of gamer, with the exception of those without a soul who don’t enjoy masterfully-executed fun. Plant on.

Online price

PC:

Steam – US 9.99

PopCap – US 19.95

Gamestop – US 19.95

iPhone, iPod touch, iPad:

iTunes – US 2.99

I’ll be doing Battlefield:  Bad Company for my first review, to hopefully offset the negative blimey that I might/might not have to say about any games I’ll have to talk write about in the future with one of the few games I would actually fanboy over this generation.  I find that in the wake of BF: BC2 not a lot of credit is being given to the game’s predecessor, and some are even surprised it had a fleshed out single player experience.

So here’s a review thing:

Story:

You get to play as generic U.S. Army soldier Preston Marlowe.  After an “unfortunate” accident involving joyriding in an Apache helicopter, an Army officer’s limousine exploding, and Marlowe all in the same place at the same time, our precious private is shipped out into the field, and up the Army’s bum crack, otherwise known as the 222^nd Army Battalion A.K.A. B-Company.  This is where the game’s manual ends and the software pick up.  Marlowe, fresh off a helicopter, is quickly introduced to his future squad/comedy act to be, consisting of order barking Sarge (or Redford), geek/straight man Sweetwater, and oddball/nice smelling explosives expert, Haggard.

With the Frostbite physics engine, Sarge can be sure that his fist will have no hit detection problems (Also pictured: Haggard around the middle left, Sweetwater on the far left, and Preston on the far far far right where nobody can see him)

The four are quickly shipped out to the front lines of Somewhere in Russia Land, but soon realize that there’s a shady bunch mixed in with the guys they are suppose to serve as cannon fodder for. These fellas are none other than a heavily accented private army under the command of the low on dialogue Legionnaire, a man who is so deep in dough that he can afford to pay off his groupies with pure gold bars.  This catches our four man act’s attention and causes them to abandon the oh so patriotic norms of shooting through waves of Russians for the Army, in order to do the same for some golden nuggets, and a Truck-a-Sores Rex.  This places the guys on a cross continental trek in which they must fight off mercs, Russians, Middle Eastern Coalition soldiers, and even the U.S. Army itself, although rather indirectly.  All with the hope of finding the Legionnaire’s gold stash, or a nice court martial.

Although BC’s story might seem like the other extreme of the shooter story spectrum bearing more on Serious Sam like storytelling, it manages to deliver its light hearted take on testosterone filled military themed warfare without becoming pretentious or forced.  The Bad Company guys are simply that.  The guys.  It’s almost as if you’re out on poker night with a bunch of semi rowdy friends, except the cards are replaced with bullets, the dealer with a machine gun nest, the chips with gold bars, and you all woke up in Russia all uniformed up, and with a bunch of dead bodies on the floor without anybody wanting to explain why.  In an era where a lot of shooters were (and still are) trying to show off their wang size over any trace of coherence or fun, Bad Company was and still is one of the best breaths of fresh air the genre could have hoped for as far as story telling tone goes.  Also, Haggard runs like a girl.

Gameplay:

So now that we established that Bad Company is a novel approach to shooter story telling worthy of your children, born or not, let’s talk about how you’ll be using your controller sticks to experience it.

As veterans of the franchise might expect, Battlefield focuses on all out direct warfare involving infantry combat and vehicles tearing up the former with a nice new crack.  This key formula to the franchise translates really well into the game’s single player campaign, and retains its intensity during online combat (which surprisingly enough is still quite well populated even with the release of BC2).

Much like in previous iterations of the series, infantry combat is broken up into five classes even in the campaign, including the Leroy Jenkins assault class, the vehicle raping engineer, the “take it easy with explosives” specialist class, the sniper class, and the “oh crap I’m pretty awesome against the sniper class” class (a.k.a. the support class).  Each class comes with an assault rifle, shotgun, silenced gun thing, sniper rifle or light yet relatively heavy to run with machine gun, in that order.  They also all come with their own secondary equipment online, but the single player is, by contrast, a pretty cool guy about it and lets you mix and match the classes with any gadget you find, although you cannot switch out the secondary weapon associated with your class.

Vehicles are all driveable and take form in the shape of infantry transports, light/less than light tanks, boats, helicopters, and the ever so reliable golf cart, each getting a fair amount of screen time and seat time during the course of the single player campaign although the sections in which they do appear kind of forces you to use them.  The controls for the most part are simple enough, and the handling on big tanks and light attack vehicles alike are responsive enough to traverse through any terrain the game may offer with relative ease.  The helicopters, as per usual Battlefield practice, are the hardest to control (since there are no planes for us inferior console peasants outside of Battlefield 1943), but aspiring joy riders can expect a full tutorial level (aboard a pimped out golden Hind no less) explaining the workings of these flying beasts.

Walls are all destructible and take form in the shape of intact surfaces, less than intact surfaces, and non-intact surfaces.  This new introduction into the Battlefield franchise allows for more dynamic battles both offline and on, and although it may seem like an annoying way to encourage players away from taking cover, there’s always enough bare bone structural support to allow for you not to see if you are indeed smarter than bullet.  And besides, aiding global warming with the elimination of a few forests and corner campers can’t go wrong, right?

Usually I'd have to aim, but with this thing...

A few things might catch new players off guard when trying the game’s controls on for the first time, however.  For once aiming and moving can feel pretty stiff, and encourages you to turn the sensitivity up quite a bit.  Then there’s the fact that you have to keep the right analog stick pressed down in order to keep sprinting, which can get tiring on your thumb (although you can sprint infinitely, without having your guy run out of breath).  Going into a sprint mid reload also causes the reload animation to stop once you go out of sprint which looks really awkward, although your gun is still technically “reloading”.

A couple of other interesting notes is that grenade launchers and rockets don’t have much of an area of affect in BC compared to most other games online, which requires ya to aim really close to an enemy for a kill (most grenade launchers sometimes don’t even kill right off the bat).  This makes ranged explosives less over powered, but it seems kind of off that grenade which can take down a good 1/9 of a house can’t quite nudge us fleshy humans.  Apart from that, most enemies require quite a few bullets to kill which is offset by the fact that assault rifles come with about fifty bullets per magazine for some inexplicable and unquestioned reason.  You also never quite “die” per se in the single player campaign, as you just end up being seamlessly respawned at the last checkpoint (no loading screens), with all of the enemies and buildings you’ve mutilated still erased from memory.  However, some missions (the helicopter mission in particular) oddly still divert from this feature by having you load a checkpoint anyways.

Overall however, the experience of having buildings crumble around you as you blaze at the muzzle and take out legions of troops and tanks while Haggard talks about how he dated his cousin are intense enough to keep ya’ll glued to the seat for this fifteen hour campaign, and during the countless hours you might spend getting it up the bum online (with 12 year old kids replacing Haggard’s cousin talk).

Graphics:

Audio:

Guns actually sound like guns, you get to listen to 60’s beach rock on the radio while zipping across mortar zones.  Battlefield theme/

Overall:

Good Thingies:

• A great balance between vehicle based combat and infantry trucking.
• Walls go boom.
• Guns actually sound like they are going boom
• Fresh take on the uber testosterone military storyline.
• Golf course level.
• Pimped out Hind

Not so Good Thingies:

• Stiff controls and odd damage mechanics are a bit of a throw off.
• Online community is still kicking, but most of the guys are veterans, which makes jumping in troublesome.

Can be found on: Xbox 360 and the PS3

Price: $19.99  (Gold Edition goes for about $22.99, and doesn’t include much other than behind the scenes content, so don’t be fooled)

Garry’s Mod, quite a plain name, don’t ya think? Despite the obvious indication that it (was) a modification for certain game, namely Half Life 2, Garry’s Mod is much more than just your typical modification. Classifying Garry’s Mod is not as simple as one might think it is, most would call it a “physics sandbox”, but that’s only scratching the surface of what it really is. You can’t really call it a sandbox or anything because in Garry’s Mod, you can make practically anything, provided you have needed skills (No, not in the RPG sense).

Jet fighter under construction. Building "contraptions" like this is just one of the many things you can do in Garry's Mod.

Jet fighter completed, took about 20 minutes. That's just the model though, you have to do many other things to get it to fly, and more things to get it to fly PROPERLY.

Gameplay:

The gameplay of Garry’s Mod varies A LOT depending on what server you play at. There are many gamemodes that are made exclusively by the players themselves and there are many addons to the game itself (Yes, a mod of a mod). The addons to Garry’s Mod can vary from weapon addons (Known as “SWEPs”) to custom maps to entire gamemodes that changes the entire game and of course, this is all made by the players and all free for your use. The primary gamemode to Garry’s Mod is “sandbox”, where you are given the freedom to do whatever you want, from building contraptions out of “props” (Objects found in Half Life 2, such as garbage cans or custom props that you can download) to spawning a bunch of NPCs and having them duke it out. You can either play by yourself in the single player mode, or go to a server where you can do the same with other players. Besides the sandbox gamemode, there are many popular gamemodes that change the rules to the game, from minor changes such as the spacebuild gamemode (Build spaceships, all complete with life support and weapons) to entire changes such as the “Trouble in Terrorist Town” gamemode (Spotting a traitor in your team, while the traitor has to murder everyone else).  There is just so many addons to this game and the constant flow of new content will keep you hooked to this game for a long time, as well as the large amount of established communities to this game.

Bet you can't guess what this is based off of....

Graphics:

Seeing that this is a modification of Half Life 2, that would mean that the graphics of Garry’s Mod is exactly the same as Half Life 2. This is partially true, since the core models and materials of the game are entirely made from Half Life 2. This doesn’t mean that you’ll be running Garry’s Mod exactly the same as Half Life 2 however, since the custom content will tend to take up more of your system resources and therefore would lower your FPS (Frames Per Second). If you plan on playing Garry’s Mod to its full potential, I highly suggest that you are able to run Half Life 2 on the highest settings with at least 60 FPS. Due to the unrestricted nature of Garry’s Mod, you will still get FPS lag though, but it isn’t very extreme unless you go out of your way to do so.

METAL GEAR!

Pros:

What hasn’t been said that is good about Garry’s mod? There is just so much to do that you will hardly get bored of the game. The sheer amount of user-generated content and the communities that are established on this one game is more than enough to last you a long time. Maps, custom weapons, custom tools and much more, all available for download and all free of charge. Whether you are a destructive (Mingebag) or a creative builder, Garry’s Mod will be able to satisfy your needs.

(Custom content is usually found in the site: http://www.garrysmod.org )

Cons:

For anyone that are looking for high-end graphics will have to look elsewhere. While Source Engine is great, it looks very aged in comparison to most modern games. Another problem with Garry’s Mod is the custom content, it is a good thing to it, but the sheer amount of it means you’ll be spending a lot of time downloading and installing these addons and getting them to work properly, and while entering a server with addons you don’t have will attempt to download the addons for you from the server, there are times where you will have to search elsewhere to find them. It can be frustrating to search for an addon and sometimes, you may never even find it. There is also this issue regarding a need for other source games to be installed with Garry’s Mod, such as Half Life 2: Episode 2 in order for certain mods to be used, which can be frustrating if you don’t have those games.

Contrary to popular belief, turning yourself into a pistol, is not that bad.

In conclusion….:

For a small price of $10, Garry’s Mod is practically a steal with the amount of stuff you can do. Unfortunately, there is no demo that you can try out in order to see how it is, but you can install Garry’s Mod 9 (Current Garry’s Mod is commonly referred to as “Garry’s Mod 11) to get a taste of what you are able to do in Garry’s Mod 11. If you are not fully convinced, I highly suggest searching videos up on Garry’s Mod and just see how much you can do in the core gamemode as well as the custom content.

Price of the game:

Garry’s Mod: $9.99 (On Steam)

Cheapest source game (Required to play Garry’s Mod): $7.99 (Half Life 2: Episode one or Episode two)

Total: Approximately $18.