Caltrops - Reviews





	[quote name="Jerry Whorebach"]I'll start BioShock (**) Pros: Fixes everything that was wrong with System Shock 2. Cons: The Irish guy has a stupid accent; so does the guy from Brooklyn. Bully () Pros: Doing your best Elvis impression while you speed around in a go-kart dressed as Elvis bumping into peoples' shins. Cons: Any time the designers try to script "hilarious" situations such as the above. Call of Duty 2 () Pros: The shooting is good, even on the "realistic" difficulty. Cons: Sometimes it's not obvious what you have to do (usually involves crossing some invisible line to stop Nazis spawning in offscreen). The Chronicles of Riddick () Score breakdown: four stars for Escape from Butcher Bay, the best space prison movie ever, two or three stars for the first half of Assault on Dark Athena, one star for the rest of Assault on Dark Athena (see <a href="http://caltrops.com/pointy.php?action=viewPost&pid=103650">worm's review</a>). Condemned (*) Pros: The atmosphere is a gameplay element in itself. The guns are worn and the melee weapons are vicious. Cons: Levels 2-4 (subway station/tunnels) are boring, and Level 10 ("outdoors") is just really bad. Condemned 2 () Cons: They totally botched the atmosphere. The guns are generic Tom Clancy tacticool garbage and the melee weapons are jokey bullshit. Pros: I guess it's still fun clobbering hobos with your fists. One level has a real live bear in it. Spoiler: You don't get to fight the bear :( Crackdown (*) Pros: There's a lot of room for creativity in how you solve missions. Collecting agility orbs is fun, like a platformer set in Spider-Man's New York. Cons: Finding those last few agility orbs will drive you nuts. Some of the achievements practically require the paid DLC. Dead Rising () Pros: Deciding who lives and who dies, either because you don't have enough time to save everybody or because you just can't be bothered. More Pros: You get to act like a huge jerk 24/7 without ever once having to choose "I am a huge jerk" from a dialog menu. Earth Defense Force 2017 () Pros: Never in my life have I had so much fun killing bugs. Robots are another story, but it's close. Cons: Some of the harder difficulty levels require grinding or possibly bringing in a co-op partner, neither of which I am willing to do. The Elder Scrolls IV () Pros: Some nice-looking locations - a field of flowers, a well-appointed library, a fetid swamp. Might make a decent hiking sim. Cons: Boring. Dungeons are copy pasta hell, with the Oblivion gates being worst of all. Fallout 3 () Pros: The dungeons (and gameplay in general) are slightly better than they were in Oblivion... Cons: ...but the gameworld is smaller and less visually interesting. Goodbye, hiking sim. Forza Motorsport 2 () Pros: It's Gran Turismo for Xbox. Cons: It's Gran Turismo for Xbox. Grid () Pros: The only racing game I can remember playing where you get an achievement for setting a good time on a tough course with a fast car. Cons: The driving model is less realistic than Forza and less fun than OutRun. The entire experience feels like a compromise. Guitar Hero II () Pros: It's pretty fun. Cons: I'm terrible at it and I have no motivation to improve. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga () Cons: The closest you come to playing with the legos is breaking them open for power-ups. That's not how legos work, that's how crates work. Pros: If this game were really as good as the title suggests, you wouldn't need any others and the whole industry would collapse. Mass Effect () Pros: Useful for calibrating your rating scale. Midnight Club: Los Angeles (*) Pros: OMG so fun. Cons: Aggressive rubberbanding means one mistake and you're fucked. Protip: don't make any mistakes ^_^ The Orange Box () Pros: Portal is brilliant and easily worth full price on its own. Cons: I might be the only person who enjoyed Doom 3 more than Half-Life 2, and it makes me question my taste in games. Project Gotham Racing 3 () Pros: Most racing games these days are pretty solid, even the boring ones. Cons: You'd be hard pressed to find one more boring than this. Project Gotham Racing 4 () Pros: Adds a few more vehicles and some weather effects. Cons: How is riding a motorcycle in the rain any better than driving a Ferrari in the sunshine? It isn't. Ridge Racer 6 () Cons: The AI is dumb as a post but sometimes they give it unlimited nitrous. This means 90% of the races are too easy and the other 10% are too hard. Pros: The small number of tracks are all pretty good and the cars are fun to drive. This immediately puts it ahead of most racers. Virtua Tennis 3 (**) Pros: The perfect game? Cons: You've probably played it before, when it was called <s>Virtua Tennis 2</s> <s>Virtua Tennis 1</s> Pong. Viva Pinata () Literally for babies. So, Caltrops, what have you played and how much did you like it?[/quote]