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jwheare 
jwheare 
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jwheare Game reviews | Friends | Lists
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Harvest Moon GB This was how you did farming action RPGs before Zynga came along. Every day you wake up, hoe some turf, plant some turnips, milk a few cows, have a giant bread ball for lunch, smash up some rocks, cut some grass, and sprinkle your seeds before going to bed and starting all over again. Immersive, addictive fun. |
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Red Dead Redemption Haven't finished playing this yet but I would already categorically and unequivocally recommend it. So much effort has gone into recreating pretty much every Spaghetti Western fantasy you could imagine in beautiful stylish detail. Very well written too, lots of off beat humour.
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Tomb Raider II A beautiful, challenging and detailed game. Jumping around Venice, shootouts in an opera house, swimming away from a fucking shark (terrifying) and nailing a mother fucking dragon amid a whole bunch of evil jumping puzzles. I'd be interested to see how well this has dated, but I suspect not too much. |
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BioShock Ok so I finally got round to playing it all the way through. The first time I tried it really did nothing for me. It was too dark and I couldn't make out any detail on my crappy TV. The world seemed uninteresting and very slow to give me any gratification for how awesome and deep it was supposed to be, as hammered in by the hype and grandiose teasing intro that I was completely unable to engage with. |
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Peggle I guess maybe if you're really into pachinko or something?
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King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow Classic Sierra adventure game. "Interesting" in that you could die. Very dated though, in control scheme, speed, responsiveness and some of the puzzles are pretty illogical and frustratingly paced. Some pretty whacky art/music though. I only just fully completed it, having failed to years ago, cos the sound card would crash every time the Minotaur appeared. So this is firmly a nostalgia-only review. |
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Gorillas My school tried to lock down all games on their computers but they didn't know about Gorillas! |
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Myst My grandmother had a lodger who kept a Mac LCII with a CD-ROM caddy drive in the attic. My brother and I used to try out all the MacFormat demo CDs there and he also had Myst. I never got very far with it at the time, but it made a huge impression on me. Loved those Bryce 3D-esque landscapes. |
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Full Throttle Amazingly cool LucasArts point and click adventure game about a fugitive biker out to clear his name. Had a minigame that was basically Road Rash, and a destruction derby sequence, and you get to operate a magnetic crane in a junk yard. |
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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare I played MW2 first, so this was more like a prequel expansion pack. Fun set of missions, though some bits were really a bit too tediously hard until you figured out a better way of doing them. Ferris wheel anyone? Some frustrating missed checkpoint bugs too. |
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Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf Awesome isometric helicopter action for the megadrive. Played this at a friend's house along with sonic. Good times blowing up SAM sites on the White House roof. |
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The Secret of Monkey Island Played this after MI2, it showed its age a little, and I never really liked the insult sword fighting. Definitely a game you should play though, full of little gems and pretty much defined the point/click adventure genre. |
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Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 Forgot this was a continuation of the SML series (well in name anyway), of course Wario was the boss in SML2. He's a great character and his insatiable greed was a fun and addictive premise. I *had* to have the largest castle. Need to dig this one out again too. |
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Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins Loved the bosses in this game. Very satisfying to kill once you learnt the trick. Good system of level zones and a save feature! (remember Super Mario Land 1 didn't have one) Might dig this out again soon. |
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Quake III Arena Never liked this as much as UT. Probably cos I didn't play it enough with the right group of people. Just felt a lot less polished too. |
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Fury of the Furries I remember first seeing someone playing this on their laptop on a plane and being mesmerised for the rest of the flight. I *needed* to play this game. Eventually got it on a shareware disk or something and yeah I had some fun, but it could never live up to the hype. |
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Flashback: The Quest for Identity Incredibly stylish and hard sci-fi cinematic platformer with obscure puzzles, somewhat infuriating handling, gorgeous backdrops, rotoscoped prince-of-persia-esque animation and a great feel. Don't think I ever got much further than the first few levels though. |
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Myth II: Soulblighter Again, as with Marathon, Bungie nailed just the right amount of polish for a sequel with Soulblighter. This is probably the game I will always have the fondest memories playing, even though the intense real time tactical micro management takes some serious practice to get good at. Worth the payoff though. Definitely not a casual game, but so worth the investment. Check out this site I made to get the story experience online mythjournals.com |
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Marathon Graphics and feel are definitely dated now, much more so compared to Marathon 2 for example, but this game can still scare the fuck out of you. Love the Alex Seropian music too, even though it's really incongruous. |
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Marathon Infinity Much prefered the linear story of the first two, and you can sort of tell it wasn't developed by Bungie in house. The SMG is fun though, and this is still great for some quick carnage every now and then with a mod or two. |
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Monster Max At times unbelievably frustrating, the isometric alignment fucks with your head somewhat. This game had character, humour and just the right amount of chunkiness for me though. Worth powering through the obscure puzzles at the start before you really get to grips with it. Good memories. |
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Doodle Jump S'alright as far as these things go. Wouldn't enthuse me that much if I was bored enough to play it. |
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Halo Waypoint Not quite sure what they were thinking. Bit of a weird marketing stunt. Ah, franchises. |
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Record Tripping Short but cute little flash game where you "scratch" with your scroll wheel to move time forwards and backwards to solve puzzles. |
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Plok Used to play this on the flight to/from Hong Kong for the holidays. Virgin had a free inflight SNES arcade system that took ages to load. Anyway, never finished this game cos the flight would always end, but I have good memories collecting shells and flags and launching my limbs at things. |
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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Been playing the demo on XBox. Great squad based action along the same lines as 1943. A bit scary starting out on your own but excellent with a party of friends. Very nicely balanced player classes too. |
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StarCraft: Brood War Don't think I ever finished this without cheating because the difficulty pretty much picked up from the end of the original. One of the first games to do the ambiguous Good/Evil/Enigmatic tripod of races things. Well, the ambiguity was far more marked and interesting in Brood War than the original anyway. |
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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 Enjoyed just watching people play this on the PlayStation, sharing in their frustration at failed landings. Great sound effects and achievements system. Satisfyingly crunchy. Also, I played the Game Boy Advance version to death. |
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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell What can I say, I love stealth/gadget games. |
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Deus Ex: Invisible War Terrible. I could only stomach the first segment before giving up in disappointed disgust. |
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The Dig I played this point and click adventurer years after it came out and probably used a Walkthrough but it held up. |
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Duke Nukem 3D Leagues ahead of the competition at the time. Full of character, atmosphere and titties. Just a shame the success went to 3D Realms' heads. |
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Super Mario Land This game was really hard, and then really satisfying when I got good enough at it for it to not be so hard. |
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The Orange Box See individual reviews for the Half Life 2s and Portal. Not played TF2 properly, but the others make this totally worth it. |
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Halo 3: ODST I hear the coop multiplayer vs AI firefight mode is fun but I've never played it cos you're all lame. |
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SimAnt If you haven't played this game, you haven't lived. Battle red ants, spiders, power sockets, lawnmowers and expand your colony. Pheromone trail modelling and everything. |
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Dr. Franken II Classic Game Boy adventure game where you have to escape from your creator's castle and stave off debt. |
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Command & Conquer Good old GDI Humvees. No match for the flame tank and Pillar of Nod though. RTS at its finest. "Unable to comply: Building in progress" |
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Syndicate I loved the the RPG launcher that looked like a flaccid dong. And the cars. This game blew my mind when I first saw it. And hard too. |
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SimTower I think I always cheated to get to the cathedral on the roof. Best part was when you had enough car parks to set up a subway station. |
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The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time Awesome Quicktime VRish time traveling adventure game. You wear a chameleon suit and go round talking to locals in pre-apocalyptic Atlantis, El Dorado and Shangri-La to figure out what went down. |
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The Daedalus Encounter One of the early "interactive movie" adventure games where your brain has been implanted in a drone and you investigate aliens and stuff. Also has Tia Carrere in it. |
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Battlefield 1943 Great multiplayer flag domination fun set in the Pacific. Play as US marines or Japanese in 3 character classes. |
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The Outfoxies Fighting game with interchangeable weapons scattered about the level. Each level was a large and detailed interactive environment that exploded and collapsed and dropped things on you. Badass slap bass sountrack. |
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Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 Addictive 2D shootemup. Brilliant use of sound and music and a fun controller scheme. |
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Left 4 Dead I think I much prefer cooperative games really. Good social fun, well considered mission design. Genuinely frightening AI. |
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Oni One of the best combat models ever. Great music too. Must admit I spent many hours staring at Konoko's arse. |
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Unreal Tournament 2004 Many a good round of Onslaught played on the office LAN. "Your power core is vulnerable" |
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Flight Control Once missed my bus stop cos I was engrossed in this. Good public transport time passer, not played much of late. |
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Braid This is what a true understanding of game mechanics looks like. Beautifully self-aware little game. |
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Myth: The Fallen Lords The game that got me into the web. I cut my teeth making fan sites for Myth. Groundbreaking RTS, 3D camera, great physics, lots of pixelly spritey gore, fantastic music, story, and mood. |
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Batman: Arkham Asylum Great combat model, good stealth, captures the spirit of Batman. |
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World of Goo Ingenious building game, charming characters/music/sfx. Gotta love a good physics game. |
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Marathon 2: Durandal Early FPS for the Mac. Best of the trilogy. Brilliantly designed. Enthralling story told through communications terminals with AI constructs that are sending you around like an eager pawn that's very very good at killing aliens. If I Had a Rocket Launcher... |
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Portal Genius game design. Cheeky dark humour. Particularly enjoyed flinging myself huge distances in the giant hall with the tall ceiling near the end. |
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