Dead Space 3 Review (PC)

Dead Space is a series I’ve grown quite fond of in recent months, as I finally got the chance to play through the first two games in their entirety not long ago. What I love about those games is that they understand survival horror; they realize that what makes a video game scary is the sense of dread caused when your character feels underpowered. In an era where gaming is constantly evolving to make players feel more and more powerful, Dead Space brought us back to a time when scavenging every dark corner and constantly counting and recounting your bullets actually meant something. And I will always love that. So, having played through Dead Space 3, can I honestly say that it preserves that special horror sauce I crave? Well, the short answer is not really.

DEVIL MAY CRY 5

Capcom’s trying to sell the game in part based on Limbo’s malleability. The city’s essentially a living entity here, out to kill you. But that sounds cooler than what it actually is: a chance for Ninja Theory to show off some admittedly awe-inspiring, world-warping tech. This is the platforming part of DmC, except it’s just not that interesting as platformers go. You can jump, long jump or grapple through levels that menace and posture, but with the exception of a few “whoops, there goes the floor” Temple Run moments, they never pose an actual threat. The challenge improves when you replay these levels later, working to unearth keys, secret doors and lost souls to pad your leaderboard scores, but the levels are small enough and the puzzles so elementary that you’ll run out of rope, interest-wise, quickly.

Thank goodness Ninja Theory got the fighting right (after you ramp up the difficulty, anyway). DmC hews to classic beat-em-up tropes — you fight incrementally challenging enemies and mix-em-up mobs area by area — and still doles out a grade rating for combos where you’re trying to chain nonconsecutive moves. But your new hybrid abilities, which include an axe, gauntlets, scythe and pair of Krull-style glaives, double as tactical keys: Defeating angelic or demonic enemies requires you tap the corresponding weapon, for instance, while countering demonic or angelic moves and navigating color-coded platforms is a matter of timing trigger-pulls carefully.

Things finally get interesting when DmC starts throwing a little of everything at you simultaneously. Style grades were the original games’ way of punishing button-mashing, and that’s still the case here, but adding enemies and environmental challenges keyed to specific powers ups the ante without overcomplicating things. Upgrading abilities you can re-spec at special waypoints unlocks alternative tap patterns to power up a move or pull off special variations, but you don’t need most of these to win (think of them as style-related flourishes, plus they’re incredibly cool to watch). And after you’ve played through DmC once or twice to unlock stronger enemies and remixed enemy waves — call it a mainstreaming levy on core-players and series loyalists — the challenge compounds in a way that starts to feel like the Devil May Cry you used to know, only better.

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2013/01/14/dmc-devil-may-cry-review-not-so-divine-dramedy/#ixzz2K5kIfpF4

Dead Island Review (PC)

GAMES – Dead Island Review (PC)

On a small island off the coast of Papua New Guinea, the dead walk. The story didn't set my hair on fire, but everything else makes up for it. When you sit down to play, you'll choose one of four characters and for the next 20 to 30-some hours roam massive maps, take on interesting side quests, and chop the heads off hundreds of ghouls.

But Dead Island doesn't succeed because of its gore (though I liked the dismemberment). Dead Island's strength is in the world it creates. I crept into and through each environment I came to, from beaches to sewers to jail cells. I listened for the screams of the infected or the roar of a damage sponge known as a "Thug." From that perspective, I was on the island; not my character. In the beginning, I'd slaughter every zombie I saw, but by the time I got to the city and found tight alleyways overrun with monsters, I began to just run from objective to objective. No longer was I playing a game -- I was focusing on survival as if I were the one running from Point A to Point B.

Objectively speaking -- like, right now from my keyboard and not playing the actual game -- that's a stupid thing to say. Dead Island doesn't really punish you for dying. If you croak, you wait five seconds and respawn with less money. Any damage you inflicted before heading to the great beyond remains. But I say that using hindsight. When I sprinted away from a zombie and heard its growls directly behind me, my heart pounded in my chest. I didn't think "Oh, I'll just let him get me and restart back there."

You rarely feel safe in Dead Island, and that's how a zombie game should be. You have a limited stamina bar, so you can't run or swing your weapon forever. Med kits were few and far between in my experience, so scavenging for energy drinks and fruit -- which have to be used at that moment and can't be stored -- became part of the experience. Weapons degrade as you use them, so finding a "legendary" weapon was exciting, but not as exciting as finding a workbench to keep weapons in tip-top shape.

Dead Island made me my character. I chose the weapons, the enemies to attack, and the side quests to take. When I leveled up, I chose in which skill tree to invest my new point in -- so even if you joined my game as the same knives expert I play as, we wouldn't necessarily have the same abilities.

Special zombies make you switch up strategies.

Thankfully, joining games is easy. When you're playing, a pop-up message will notify you if a player is close to you and joinable. If I see you sign on, I can invite you in. Of course, experience levels play into this. Players can only join the games of people who are equal or lesser levels. I can't be level 31 and about to win the game and have a level 1 player join me. It might sound depressing, but there are tons of character slots, so having a character for different sessions shouldn't be too tough. Plus, you can always switch your game to single-player if you just want to be left alone. Sadly, there is no local co-op.

Is Dead Island perfect? No. Far from it. As much as I lauded it, Dead Island is rough around the edges and that's sure to turn a lot of people off. First-person melee combat doesn't feel natural right away. Sometimes textures take their time loading in, I'd describe every cutscene as "stiff," and the visual flaws like hands going through doors and weird mini-game meters made me laugh. Still, presentation doesn't make a game, experiences do. And they are packed into Dead Island. 

The Verdict

Dead Island probably won't win any game of the year awards. It's got visual bugs, the controls take a bit to feel normal, and the presentation in general isn't up to snuff. But the game gets a lot right. There is a huge world to explore, thousands of zombies to kill, and tons of side quests to take. Here on the other side of a 25-hour playthrough -- where I skipped a lot of side quests after Act 1 -- I'm anxious to get back into Dead Island, and despite the game's flaws, that's not something I say often.

Taken From : www.ign.com/articles/2011/09/04/dead-island-review