Gamer Gaming 最近的评测

HL2 is a long-jump forward from its prequel in most aspects. Once again VALVe deliver a rollercoaster of tense exploration, interesting environmental puzzles and frenetic combat, and in the downtime, the wildly-increased graphical detail is great to gawp at. Following his workplace's destruction, your favourite mute merc is dropped into City 17, where rebellion is brewing against the alien Combine force. The series' forte is environmental design, and sure enough, the change of setting has effected HL2's biggest improvements and drawbacks.

The early game sees Gordon reunite with some old friends from HL1. This doesn't spark nostalgia, or even recognition - in HL1 there were about 5 models to go around, so each NPC could have been one of 50 identical copies, and as far as I remember only one name was ever revealed in-game, in the uninspired Blue Shift. There's also no explanation for how these clearly American people have wound up in a Russia-adjacent dystopia - but they're friendly and engaging enough. Not that you'll see much of them - they tend to only pop up during - well, not cutscenes, but "expositional sections" in which you can wander around while they chat to you. These are necessary to convey the more ambitious story, but HL2 still commits to that immersive unbroken first-person perspective.

In general gameplay, you're mostly left to your own devices. And there aren't so many devices - you have 10 weapons you can use at any time, down from HL1's 16. In close combat, there's one clear weapon that will do the job and it's almost always the pulse rifle or crowbar. Your targets are mainly Combine soldiers so it sadly wouldn't make sense to have all those intriguing alien weapons from the first games. This is redeemed by that signature Gravity Gun - few things are as gratifying as harnessing gravity to smash oncoming soldiers into ragdolls. Basically, environmental combat has replaced diverse-weaponry-based combat, but when you conquer a "think fast" situation you get the same "I'm a genius" thrill as when a plan came together in HL1. VALVe were very keen to show off the physics engine behind the Gravity Gun, so many situations rely on it (some dissonance here - Gordon Freeman is a Theoretical Physics PhD, but the physics puzzles mostly boil down to "objects have weight"). Source is miles better than HL1's often genuinely annoying GoldSrc. It can't crack the Ladder Problem though: climbing up and down is much safer, but getting off is an arcane art that may prompt some reloads.

Another lack of variety comes from enemies. You'll face four soldier types throughout HL2 and your alien foes are just different kinds of headcrab zombie. As fun as these are to fight, it would have been good to see new species in the game (admittedly, some of them are terrifying). Leaving Black Mesa means it wouldn't make sense to pull off sci-fi environment kills like the rocket launch: boss fights are usually a desperate hunt for the crate full of RPGs. Fights are made a bit more dynamic and believable by the return of squad gameplay, though your squad exists to die - they barely respond to your limited commands, constantly block your path and cheerfully wander into the line of fire. On the other hand, difficulty has been rebalanced well. Gordon is more durable and unfair deaths are kept to a minimum. I'm bad at FPSs so started on the Easy difficulty, but at one point (on the way to the lighthouse) I realised I was taking down enemies almost instantly. I switched to Normal and felt appropriately challenged for the rest of the game, barring a couple of beastly difficulty spikes.

The true diversity is of course in level design. VALVe wisely keep you on Earth now, but HL2's claustrophobic apartment blocks, wide open driving spaces, gloomy sewers, urban assault courses and more - supported by a fuller, more memorable soundtrack - make gameplay consistently fresh and fun, and you won't miss Black Mesa, and especially not Xen In Easy mode these places blur past, and are worth going back to to discover hidden details or alternative puzzle solutions. VALVe still insist on relying purely on level design and your brain to guide you to puzzle solutions, and this works even better than in HL1. Sometimes an NPC's guidance isn't enough to convey exactly where you need to go, but you rarely don't know what to do.

The finale was fun throughout and orders of magnitude less infuriating than the Nihilanth. While a solid gameplay improvement, the story ended really abruptly. I have heard that the story continues in the HL2 Episodes, which I haven't played at time of writing. So far, I'm still waiting for a really impressive narrative moment. It's only when you hear from some of the apparently psychic NPCs, or the enigmatic "G-Man", that the story becomes genuinely intriguing, but those moments are rare. The series has spent a lot of time setting up, and I hope that in my lifetime we'll see a finale that justifies all that.

I appreciated the high dynamic range and more detailed lightmaps in Update. However even I noticed some graphical oversights in Our Benefactors: old lightmaps; some soldiers holding invisible weapons; holding cells not following their rails. Apart from that the standard of graphics was consistently great; the game gives you everything you would expect from the trailer. It's a shame the achievements don't sync to the original game, but maybe Steam doesn't make that possible.

Drinkbox Studios have delivered another Metroidvania masterclass with the return of Lucha-themed brawler Guacamelee. It falls short in some departments but in terms of core, minute-to-minute gameplay this is absolutely a worthy successor.

Before getting to the gameplay, the most striking thing about this sequel is the art and music. The music is super-distinctive and for some reason much more memorable than before. While wondering across the richly-detailed landscapes it's hard to resist having a little groove in your seat. The sequel has all the gorgeous visual style of the original and plenty more. Its incredibly stylish, dense backgrounds are a step up from anything in the first game. Drinkbox appear to have dialled down their stylistic redraws of old memes (they include a "response" to critics of that aspect of the prequel, which is a comedic highlight for which I forgive them everything). Most mooks from the original game have been redrawn in a decent way but I think I preferred the originals - not that it matters much when you're smashing them to pieces...

The core gameplay of the first game was by no means broke, so in the sequel they've wisely decided not to fix it. All the moves from the prequel are back, and while this may sound like "more of the same", the level design is not. Your human form only acquires two new movement mechanics, but as you'd expect they're combined with your original moveset in all the ways you can imagine and more. No mechanic feels wasted (though the "Proving Grounds" challenge levels reveal that their ideas go much further. Sadly new concepts aren't developed beyond single minigames with not much replay value). The chicken form was somewhat underdeveloped in the original but acquires some spectacular upgrades - as well as a power level rivalling a human luchador you get some interesting platforming mechanics which are tested in absolutely fiendish chicken-only challenge gauntlets. Drinkbox have ditched the "Intenso mode" from STCE, which mostly felt like an excuse to throw enemies at you, and introduced an engaging upgrade system. Unfortunately by the time you've purchased every upgrade you still need to collect a lot more coins for 100% completion, but have nothing to spend them on. It would have been good to spend coins to unlock Steam Workshop content for example - sadly there are no fanmade costumes this time and many costumes no longer have bonus effects.

Difficulty-wise Guacamelee 2 is absolutely a sequel to Guacamelee - play the first one if only to be ready for the gameplay of the second, which feels like a direct continuation, especially in terms of the platforming. The starting challenges are indeed tricky; great for veterans of the original Guacamelee who might be worried they can't be challenged any more. New types of enemy are provided to counter the combat methods you learned in the first game. Combat difficulty mostly grows alongside your abilities and those closed-off wrestling matches are just as exciting as they used to be, but for some reason this doesn't apply to the bosses. They mostly focus on environmental awareness more than the original ones, but even though I played Normal Mode it felt like Drinkbox didn't believe in their mechanics enough to really challenge me. I defeated all bosses on my first or second try - not that I felt like spending much time with them, as they felt much less fun and memorable, and don't suit the art style that well either. In fact Guacamelee 2 spends less time developing existing characters (even gallantly giving your love interest a name this time), and more time introducing new, forgettable characters. The final boss was really disappointing - I went for 100% in both games; Carlos Calaca took me several attempts with all upgrades, but this boss was quickly stomped first try. I would rather have just fought all the bosses from the prequel at the same time. The game knows how to challenge you outside of bosses, but what should have been exciting set pieces mostly fell flat. One DLC lets you dress as bosses, though I don't know why you'd want to.

It was good to see Guacamelee 2 flesh out its worlds a bit more, with a story that takes you through all-new areas while spending some time calling back to highlights from the prequel. The story loops back to the start of the map when you're almost finished, so backtracking is kept to a minimum, which anyone upset by the limited fast-travel ability will be grateful for. Guacamelee 2's narrative is more inventive than the prequel's save-the-princess storyline, but so densely loaded with references that I started to wonder if any of their writing has ever been original, or just another reference. I found the game genuinely funny but if references aren't funny to you, you might struggle a bit.

What's not a joke is that if you loved the prequel you should play this too. Despite some disappointments, this is a strong sequel in the aspects that really matter.

(No spoilers)

This game may well go down in history as a groundbreaker - a success story of an eccentric Japanese auteur saving a development studio from the brink, by bringing narrative and emotional depth usually only seen in the greatest of indie games, supercharging it with a AA budget and proving that the industry has nothing to fear from setting out to make art first and money second. Yoko Taro has never enjoyed huge critical success from his past games, but possibly by ceding a little ground to mainstream player sensibilities, has found a formula that works incredibly well and is beloved by its fans. As mostly a player of indies I don't know what impact this is having on the mainstream gaming industry, but I'm sure this will have inspired many to put their own crazy ideas forward, and I can't wait to see the results of that down the line. Another interesting result will be its effect on the upcoming remake of its prequel (not necessary to play the game) - hopefully applying some lessons learned here can let the original NieR enjoy this level of success too.

Over a few playthroughs (the first playthrough almost qualifies as an extended trailer for the full depth of the game), skilfully revealed details and utterly left-field plot twists force you to re-evaluate your view of the whole game world, investing you further and further into the game. This is just in time for the game to end and you to get stuck into the supplementary material (spanning multiple types of media including blu-ray, unfortunately), which reinforce certain themes, character details etc. ... but mostly the emotions you feel by the end. This is an emotional and often cruel game which successfully put a lasting damper on my generally happy-go-lucky, contented mood - maybe have two boxes of tissues nearby for this one.

It does this despite a tendency to push a little too heavily on the emotional scales - many sidequests end in such abject despair that by the fifth miserable denouement you feel your eyes beginning to roll, and meanwhile, the idealism of one ending threatened to undermine everything that came before it. Going just a bit too far might be one of the themes of the game - it has a tendency to make you wander around its large (but very beautiful) open environments, withholding a fast travel option longer than necessary, until they come close to outstaying their welcome. Taro is keen to tell you the Western philosophical concepts that inspired the story - but by the time a character called Pascal is quoting Nietzche practically to camera, you might wonder if that could have been done as subtly and smartly as the main story was.

Graphically the game is for the most part stunning. Character and object designs are cleverly thought out and complement their environments perfectly. The first time I encountered each bizarre set piece will stick with me for a long time. Each area has a strong, distinctive identity. This is let down by the awkward quality of the PC port; noticeable clipping can be seen and huge buildings can pop in and out for no particular reason. Just to get your resolution past 1080p you'll need a third-party mod known as FAR - which has its own problems - and if you don't like jarring 30fps cutscenes mixed with otherwise smooth gameplay you have even more work to do. Before buying on Steam, consider getting the console version instead.

The orchestral soundtrack is outstanding, with a multi-layered track for each environment sung in a reconstituted, untranslatable conlang - a very smart move that delivers a haunting, otherworldly atmosphere without discernible lyrics to distract you or get annoying. Each track suits its area or scene down to the ground the same way that the visual aspects of the environment fit together so cohesively.

Core gameplay is practically flawless. Movement and platforming abilities are serviceable enough but the close-range combat is a joy, turning my mundane button mashing into an expert-level balletic display - fittingly enough considering the protagonist's dress sense. There are four types of weapon which combine in all kinds of ways, each with its own effects, plus different ranged combat options, *plus* a bevy of powerful cooldown abilities, **plus** an inventory of passive abilities, for you to create any combat style you can think up. You later gain access to an alternate combat style which is unfortunately so powerful that you feel silly for not using it, and could have used more variation in the everyday gameplay. Enemies level up in ways that induce panic at first, but the game knows how to challenge you in a way that brings out your best.

To sum up, this is an excellent game with a powerful main storyline, detailed, immersive world, plenty of recommended reading, strong graphics and sound and even stronger gameplay. If you don't play this, and then keep playing it, you are missing out on some gaming history in the making.

Gearbox's first Half-Life expansion pack is a very, very worthy companion to the main game. As far as I've read, this was the first expansion pack to win a Game of the Year award - if you're still not sold I'll be giving you some reasons why below.

Gearbox let their imagination run wild in a way that they didn't do with Blue Shift - in fact, this game is so much better than Blue Shift I now think Blue Shift is actually worse than I did before, for unlearning so much of what made this game exciting. Opposing Force treats you to a wealth of new content, including sound and music on par with the original, fearsome new aliens which you witness setting up colonies in the facility, and intriguing new weapons (including a kind of grappling hook which is sadly underutilised). The reasonably long and well-paced story takes you through original areas which you could completely believe exist in Black Mesa, while occasionally weaving you back into the path Freeman originally took for some quick fan service. There's also a hilarious reworking of the boring old Training Room, which deserves a 90% rating on its own. On top of that Gearbox serves up some very bold choices such as rope physics and squad gameplay - your team mates aren't shy about accidentally shooting you, and the rope swings are painfully juddery, but these generally don't impede your gameplay and are used sparingly enough to feel novel throughout the game. Points for ambition!

As in Blue Shift Gearbox demonstrate that they are excellent at making the game feel like Half-Life when they want to, but Opposing Force veers into other genres too. The squad sections can feel like a quick round of Counter-Strike, and Gearbox imitate Half-Life's survival horror style segments reasonably well without removing your weapons, by giving you big, tough, powerful monsters in a pitch black tunnel to level the playing field (and you).

The game suffers a bit with its final boss - you can sit behind a corner and heal infinitely and it won't be able to attack you, so you can beat the boss at your own pace. After a large explosion it fades away, and then you leave too. It doesn't feel like a great payoff, but then neither did Half-Life's final boss. Opposing Force sometimes matches the quality of Half-Life too well... but for the novelty the rest of the game introduces, while not treading on the original story, if you enjoyed Half-Life you'd be mad not to play this too.

Half-Life earns its reputation as one of the best, most influential first person shooters of all time. Despite releasing 22 years ago now, it's incredibly easy to get immersed in one of the most acclaimed, sequel-deprived stories ever made. Its sound and visuals are extremely dated now (something you can avoid by playing the utterly stunning remaster Black Mesa instead), but still appropriately immersive and even capable of delivering quality jump scares.

This is not a mindless jump-in-and-kill-everything shooter. You have a variety of things to kill, but the game is a little more interested in your ability to move around the environment and solve problems. Half-Life is best experienced as a stealthy first person puzzler... with guns. Throughout the game you collect and carry 14 different weapons, but the inventory is more like a toolbox to help you solve the problems you encounter. If your play style is to go in guns blazing, you might have to recalibrate. The game lets you restock your health and ammo often, but ultimately your protagonist is quite squishy, even on Easy mode - stealth is rewarded.

The story of this game is not one that does anything especially new, but it sets up an engaging world and the events of the ending are an excellent hook. It dares to throw as many as three factions against the protagonist, and it's often nice to play them off against each other. The story is told almost entirely "live"; barely any cutscenes and no audio logs (not even any GUIs except for the pause menu and HUD) mean you are absorbed in the action at all times (unlike for example BioShock) so the game flows uninterrupted the whole time. There aren't even any collectibles or achievements to distract you, and I found that quite refreshing.

The game ends on one of the most devastatingly rough end credits sequences I've ever seen; the HUD doesn't go away, the music is dull and it leaves you staring at a black screen rather than taking you to the main menu. It reminded me of the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If you press space, you can hear yourself jump - you're still in the world. While waiting around in the dark I cast my mind back to the main weak point of the game: a lot of work must have gone into the movement, to the point where they have a separate training course outside of the main game, but the protagonist's movement is too erratic where it counts. When you can only choose between very slowly crouching or running fast enough to easily slip off a surface, this sucks a lot of fun out of jumping puzzles or running across narrow platforms. The physics were needlessly tricky; the unreliability of ladder climbing, jump pads and block pushing made certain points more painful than they needed to be. Looking at the physics and credits sequences of Portal VALVe clearly learned a lot from Half-Life, so hopefully movement won't be so tricky in Half-Life 2. Finally a word of warning - the "Elapsed Time" column of the save menu doesn't track how long you have been playing so I don't know how long my playthrough took.

The original, iconic Half-Life holds up brilliantly, but less patient players might find it hard to enjoy. The physics were sometimes annoying but the Source engine remakes like Half-Life: Source or Black Mesa probably don't have any of those issues. In any of those forms, this is a must-play.

Blue Shift is a solid short companion story to Half-Life. You play as one of the security guards Gordon encounters in the original Half-Life game. His moveset and weapons are more limited and the reduced scale of the story can be a little comical, but if not the power fantasy, Blue Shift manages to preserve the main strengths of the original: fun, suspenseful gameplay that encourages problem solving. The story is almost entirely separated from the events of the original, which is hard to believe, but Gearbox did take some notes and its best moments are at least equal in quality to some of Half-Life's. In fact, the credits are better than the original's as they are polite enough to take you back to the main menu at the end. Despite all its original assets the game has a strong aura of a fan game (it basically is), but it's a capably made one - Valve included it in their Complete Pack, if you need a second opinion on its quality.

I'm privileged to be able to have lived long enough to play this game, even though everyone I know played it about 8 years before me. It's the first RPG I've ever had enough patience to complete, and it's the nuts. I can't wait to dive back in with a tonne of mods - but I might never return, so I'll take a break with some other (shorter) games before then. We might never see the Elder Scrolls VI, but I wouldn't even mind. This is a great game; with mods, it's a perfect one.

I chose to play standard Special Edition with absolutely no mods, warts and all, so that's how I'm reviewing it. And boy there were a lot of warts, but much like Nanny McPhee, under those warts is something really beautiful. A particular highlight is the gorgeous Scandinavian-inspired scenery which is so much fun to just get out into and explore, even in the most miserable weather. This is boosted by excellent ambient music which is stuck in the heads of a certain generation of gamers for good reason. The voice acting is fine on the whole and appropriately hammy when necessary (listen out for any characters who appear mad; they are worth the price of admission by themselves) but certain actors really shine, particularly Charles Martinet (!) as a key dragon, and I defy you to mute Dwight Schulz's Neloth. The story is a classic power fantasy but original and exciting, supported by the kind of dense worldbuilding you might expect from the fifth instalment of a series that began in 1994. The dungeons seem carefully hand-crafted and one dungeon rarely feels the same as another. Bethesda lavish a wide assortment of spells, armour, weapons, accessories, Dragon Shouts, potions, enchantments and Powers that help you fine-tune exactly who you want to be - though I felt a distinct bias towards magic over might, which struck me as unfair as the Dragonborn in the marketing is almost always a big strapping warrior.

One tip: keep an eye on your difficulty setting. The game is perfectly playable for anyone on the default Adept difficulty, but around level 40 the scales tip quite rapidly and the game is suddenly extremely easy. Crank it up to Master or Expert to keep yourself on your toes.

Onto the warts. The biggest and ugliest for me was the carry weight system. I'm sure more than 30% of my game time was spent either managing my inventory or walking around very slowly rather than lose any loot. Take care to avoid this non-gameplay even if it means losing that cool enchanted axe - another one will come along, and you have scenery to explore. Another frustrating aspect of the gameplay was the way certain quests will impose themselves on you - you can find yourself led into doing things your character would never do, with no way out. And if you so much as hear about a possible quest to complete, that quest is stuck in your journal forever, getting in your way. Bethesda sidestep these issues, and the copious bugs listed below, with a very spammable quicksave system that lets you escape whatever messes they couldn't clean up before release.

Finally, this game is riddled with bugs, and might well be the definition of the term "rough diamond" (maybe coming second to its predecessor Oblivion). I encountered fairly few bugs compared to the YouTube compilations (the most spectacular was when my good friend the town drunk keeled over and died instantly, for no reason, as I was leaving my house. He left me 100 gold in his will, which I found quite moving), but there is an overwhelming list of bugs on the wiki or the notes for the community patch mod. Some of these will prevent you completing certain quest lines, and many will seem avoidable and make you wonder what went wrong during development. As far as I know this game stretched Bethesda's aging engine to the very limit, so what they did produce is no mean feat.

What I'm trying to say is, this is a sprawling gem of a role playing game which is well worth your time, but without mods it's hampered by bugs and strange gameplay decisions which are no doubt the result of a lack of development time. The true strength of this game is the community it inspired, and their incredible mods, but even without them this game is well worth . Your first playthrough of this game should be with the main patch mod and the mod that restores content that was hidden from the release; this will bring you much closer to Bethesda's true vision of the game. Then grab a load of community content mods, and feel like you've died and gone to Sovngarde itself.

I'm new to FPSs except TF2 so I can't confirm the prevailing opinion that this game "aged badly", but I can tell you what I know. Being quite a noob I chose the Easy mode - and while I died a few times it really is quite easy; in fact the final boss was disappointingly weak. I suggest even players new to FPSs go straight to Normal difficulty. Not that it matters; the BioShock fans aren't there for the difficulty. The strengths are in the atmosphere, combat system and story.

The dilapidated capitalist hellscape of Rapture looks and sounds gorgeous. It is very very clear from the outset where BioShock is taking influence from, and as you continue you can tell what games were influenced by it. The game may be considered old now but its architecture is really something and I sometimes ended up dropping whatever I was meant to be doing just to stare out of the barnacle-encrusted windows for a while, as old classics crooned on distant gramophones.

When I wasn't interrupting myself I often noticed what is in my opinion BioShock's main flaw; that the game seems to interrupt itself. They threw some mechanics into this game that didn't really need to be there - an encouraged strategy in high-pressure scenarios is to first snap a picture of your enemy with a camera, then wait for the photograph to develop, then go to a machine and play a hacking minigame in 2D (incidentally even on easy mode these minigames are frequently, frustratingly unfair). For me, repeatedly taking myself out of the world where all the action is happening just defused the tension the game had been building up. If they had found a way to streamline these sections without putting you in a GUI I would have found it a lot more exciting; maybe this is the "aging" aspect the other fans talk about. Another gripe is that voice lines talk all over each other and dialogue is not balanced very well with the music and SFX; if you want to hear an audio log you have to find a quiet corner away from those noisy splicers and sit still while you listen, disrupting the pace again.

The combat system gives you a great buffet of weapons, upgrades, ammunition, plasmids (superpowers) and buffs to mix and match, so there is a gigantic range of ways to build your character and kill things creatively. If you die you restart immediately so even tricky moments are never frustrating (this might have been ahead of its time; older games I've played had long, punishing game-over screens which might be my least favourite thing in video games). Sadly this isn't complemented by a wide range of enemies, but the ones you do get are engaging, and when they're not interrupting each other their voice lines are convincing.

Apart from its spine-tingling environmental storytelling a lot of the story is told through audio logs, and is riveting when you can hear it. The core of it is one great big twist around half way through which knocked my socks off - though unfortunately it starts to peter out after that, and culminates in a fairly uninspired final boss and one of two didactic cutscenes depending on the morality of your gameplay.

Either way, the reputation of the game precedes it. It's earned its legion of fans - though I think they often talk about it with rose-tinted glasses on - and though it can't sustain its brilliance the whole way through, the first half alone justifies you playing it.

This game has cemented the type-'em-up as one of my favourite genres. It takes place in a gorgeous papercraft-style isometric world and is closer to a Metroidvania than a rail shooter like Typing of the Dead. Collectibles are fairly easy to find even without the upgrades that tell you where they all are. Typing is one word at a time and you don't necessarily type all words on screen, which might disappoint those who like typing long phrases, but this is replaced with a strategic element where you switch between elemental magic types that affect enemies differently. The story is fairly unoriginal but it doesn't matter; the game looks great, sound great and plays brilliantly. I played the adaptive difficulty and found myself decently challenged throughout. I noticed some awkward visual glitches and the vocabulary could have benefited from a few more words for standard enemies, but while not fully polished this is really a must-play for anyone who likes typing.