STG's

Vuvuzela monsters attacking, 6 guns stacked Serious Sam Double D is a 2D plataform shooter, based on the old Serious Sam franchise. Personally, I've never been a fan of the series, but this little shooter title is fun. The coolest feature on the game is the gun stacking system. You collect guns while you play, and also special connectors. Then you can stack up to 6 guns. It is a silly proposition (and looks bizarre in action), but it is fun to shoot the whole bunch of guns at once. And it is also very useful, because the bizarre enemies sure do teleport in large numbers. A interesting twist is that as those enemies die, their bodies collect on the floor. And the massive numbers can be used to cross spike pits or reach higher places. The graphics and music are acceptable, but definitely not nice. My only real complaint is unfortunately common - the mouse cursor isn't locked to the screen, which means that you can easily click out of the game if you have multipl...

 The Polynomial is a very abstract looking 3D space shooter. The game is quite beautiful, and the lines you can see in the screenshots shift with the music in very spectacular ways. It uses mostly the basic space shooter mechanics - shoot at enemies, get power-ups, with weird options for repairs (ghosts?!?!). The gameplay does not compare to the looks, and I didn't find it to be fun at all. Not recommended, but if you like this kind of shooter you should try out the demo.

Very funny. And I don't think we have to worry about the singularity or Skynet for a while yet...

I was a big fan of Deus Ex - the original 2000 game. It had a great cyberpunk theme and story, and specially great choices on how you could approach an objective. You could use stealth, non-lethal weapons or just go in guns blazing - your choice. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is very much like it in this sense. In addition, they got RPG style quests. The graphics are beautiful and the sound is good. The gameplay is a bit different from the original, with heavy use of cover and a food based energy system. There is also a mini-game when hacking, which is somewhat original and actually fun. You have plenty of options on your Augmentations, such as improved hacking, armor, cloaking, and much more. You can receive Augmentation points through XP, buy them or just find them lying around. The latter shows part of the exploration mindset in the game - it can be very rewarding to go around looking for goodies. You might have to - it is amazing how stingy the ammo is. Clearly you are n...

Very cool Portal video. Starts pretty slow, but the ending is nice.

Tidalis is an interesting puzzle game, with aspects that vaguely remind me of match-3. Basically, you have a bunch of colored arrows. Clicking on one of them starts a stream. The stream continues if it hits an arrow of the same color, and on the direction of the arrow. If a stream hits 3 or more blocks, those blocks are removed. The blocks above them fall, and streams are started for each. You can change the direction of all arrows. This allow for huge and very complex sequences of streams from a single start, and plenty of strategy. But is it any fun? Frankly, I didn't like it, although I do like several variations of match-3. You might want to try their demo before buying.

Bastion is a action RPG game. The game's description says that they redefine storytelling in the game. I guess that is fair, as the narrator reacts to what you do. As far as I can see, that mostly changes the timing and simple branching on the action, however. Still, I can't remember anyone doing this before. Graphics are beautiful - hand painted, and it really shows - and the music is quite pleasant. Visuals are quite unusual, as objects keep coming up or down from the sky, and walkaways appear as you go into a direction. The gameplay itself is not very different from the average action RPG - you go around smashing your enemies and conquering objectives. The RPG part so far is pretty minimal - basically you pick tonics that enhances your character, such as more health, extra critical chance, etc. You also choose between a few weapons and special skills. Very much worth taking a look at the demo, if you like RPGs at all. 4/5 Stars.

Wikiworld is a very nice, clever story about a world where everything is coordinated through wikis - not strictly on the current sense, but more in the sense of a collaborative framework. Paul Di Filippo is an awesome author, and known for quirky and unusual stories. Wikiworld is no exception. There are plenty of wonderful made-up technologies - but that look like they could be reality soon. That includes an internet system based on aerostats, with augmented reality (which seems to be everywhere these days), subcutaneous RFID, and a wiki based democracy - including a Wikitusion in place of a constitution. Very much recommended.

Black Swan is an interesting parallel universe story - a classic SF theme. I really like Bruce Sterling's work in general, but I can't say this story is particularly memorable. Still, it is entertaining given the time and money investment.

Alien Hallway is a nice little strategy game. This type of game is very common on Flash games - basically, you make units that meet your enemy on the other side of the game field, usually with the goal of destroying some sort of structure on the other side (castles, fortresses, etc). In this case, it is the alien teleporter. The graphics and sound are adequate (although even after just a few minutes the music was starting to get annoying). There are plenty of upgrades, but I didn't really notice much of a strategy angle - usually in this kind of game you use certain units to counter specific enemy units. The game is somewhat fun, but looks like it would get boring fast. I recommend checking out the demo first  if you are interested.

The Network is a conceptual retro style shooter. The graphics aren't bad for the retro style, but both the gameplay and the long, annoying pauses in the start and after a few levels really make it awful. Really not recommended.

Really Big Sky is an old school shooter, with a few twists. The biggest twist is that you can flip your ship into a drill. The drill is used to go through meteors and planets. You also get plenty of upgrades options. That is good, because it is very easy to die with the regular ship. The graphics are very good (specially the backgrounds and clouds), and the gameplay is fast and furious. My only complaint is that it takes away more than necessary to restart the game after going to the store.

From Dust is a new game from Ubisoft. Lately they are mostly known from incredibly annoying DRM that requires a permanent link, making pirating their programs much more attractive for paying customers. Not only do they make me activate my game and create an account (which should be trivially easy for them using Steam's API, but they wouldn't get my e-mail this way), they also patch the game I just downloaded. No progress bar, just a message and an animated icon. Nice. When it finally runs, all I get is a Connection Lost message: Had I realized it was an Ubisoft game, I probably wouldn't have bought it. And they also managed to post in their forum that it would not require you to be online - see this article for comments on this, on the supposedly bad port, and on how to get a refund from Steam. It started working. Another "perk"  from Ubisoft DRM is the huge amount of time it takes to save a game after you exit (which of course is completely unnecessary an...

Path to War  is a DLC add-on for  Red Faction: Armageddon  . It takes place just before the start of the game. Path to War consists of 4 new levels. In the first you use a flyer - as one of the cultists - to destroy the Red Faction base in preparation to the attack on the terraformer. Mostly boring and annoying. The second mission takes place entirely on a tank, and is pretty much as bad as the first. The third mission is, thankfully, on foot as Darius Mason again. It introduces the shard gun, which grabs pieces of stuff around you and throws them at your enemies. Trust me, that sounds much better than it actually is. On the fourth mission you hunt down and kill the cultist you played as on the first mission. It is by far the best, and very near the regular game. You also get a new weapon, the sharpshooter, which shoots metal spikes that can impale your enemies. Overall, I couldn't possibly recommend this. It is very very weak and also very short - which I'm n...

Burn Zombie Burn is a top-view, arcade run and gun game. As usual in the run and gun game genre, you run around while shooting at some type of enemy. In this game, as you probably guessed, it is zombies. The graphics are pretty good and in a comical style, and you get a few guns, as well as several different types of explosives. The bats are pretty fun, too. The game gets its name from the fact that you have a torch that you can use to light zombies. They are afraid of the torch, unless they are already burning. Burning zombies drop different items. I liked the game overall, but it has a problem of not capturing the mouse cursor, thus making it impossible to play on a multi-monitor configuration - you just click outside the game and it loses focus. Cut-scene are annoyingly repetitives, and I found the fact that there are no key references on tutorials a bit annoying. The tutorials are a bit slow, too. I'd probably recommend this game more if it wasn't for the proble...

This a very quick review. I got the game as a pre-release, and started playing on the first day. I never got around to writing the review, because I got annoyed at a certain part and stopped playing. This is one of the reasons why now I start writing the review after my first game session, and just update it. Overall, Crysis 2 is pretty good, and I particularly like being able to select "Powers" with fixed buttons. But what I really hated is that they pretty much killed the wonderful open world feel of Crysis, as well as the first Far Cry, and substituted it with a cookie-cutter "follow the obvious path" design. At best you get a couple of options on how to proceed. I still liked it, but that really made it a much lesser game than its predecessors.

Seamen for Sirens Mission Sea Action Land Tactical Sections Pirates of Black Cove is a strategic pirate game. There are sea and land action sequences. The Sea sequences are OK. You begin with cannons and (weirdly enough) homing missiles. These are used to destroy other ships or, in an early mission (pictured to the right), destroying moving concentric gates while avoiding musical notes from the sires. The land sections are incredibly annoying. It takes forever to get anywhere, and the action is mostly silly when you do. Graphics are pretty good - specially at sea - and the music is tolerable, although very repetitive. As mentioned before, I did not enjoy the gameplay at all. If it sounds like something you could like, I recommend you try the demo before you buy.

Edge is a retro style platformer. The basic game is really old school - move a basic shape through platforms, picking stuff up and not falling. I remember playing one of these in my ZX Spectrum back in the 80's. There is a neat use of puzzles on special blocks, including sections that fall off after you pass, move around, bump you through several positions, and switches to change other sections. The graphics are good for the theme, and sound and music are adequate. I'm not a big fan of this kind of games, so I didn't particularly enjoy the gameplay. If you specifically liked others like it, you might want to check out the demo before buying.

Limbo is a platformer with beautiful art and clever (although sometimes annoying) puzzles. The art is quite spectacular, but sound is pretty sparse. I recommend that you get the demo and see if you like it first, but be aware that the full game is pretty short.

Rule 34  by  Charles Stross, is another good near future SF book. Rule 34 says that anything that can be conceived, there is already porn about it on the net. How that relates to the story? It doesn't. In the story it was just a mild joke about the computer crime department. I think it was more of a gimmick by Stross to make the book seem a little more colorful. The main story is about a series of very unusual murders, mostly from the perspective of detectives in Scotland. The technology of most of the book is very near future, as in many of his other books. And just like them, there were a few funny comments on his blog about actual news that seemed taken from the book. Some of the tech on this book is augmented reality glasses being heavily used by everyone, 3D printers as a source of pirated materials and use of drones everywhere. The last two are already starting, and quite likely to get here soon enough (just read a news story about The News Corps use of drones.....

Red Faction: Armageddon continues the story of Red Faction: Guerrilla , but in a very different tone. Taking down a tower The beginning of the game is wonderful. You get pretty much the game stuff as Guerrilla - great destruction with the hammer, explosives everywhere and much more. And plenty of choices on how to kill your enemies. The graphics feel improved and everything looks great. Destroying building seem to be a little bit better, too. One of the first surprises is the nano forge. While you could use the nano rifle on Guerrilla to kill and destroy, this version of it magically restores man-made structures - such as stairs and floors. That is a big help for the level designers, as fully destructible levels can easily end up as levels that you cannot complete - something that happened quite a bit on Guerrilla when I damaged a building a little more than I intended. You have plenty of extra weapons too, such as shockwave (stuns and damages nearby enemies), im...

Steel Storm is an old-style, top view shooter. The graphics and sounds are adequate - and there are plenty of destructible objects in the environment whose sole purpose seems to be exploding. The gameplay is OK for a few minutes, but I found wondering around shooting baddies while dodging their fire gets boring fast. The levels don't seem to help - looks like it takes a while to get anywhere. And the game hits on one of my pet peeves - teleporting enemies on scripted moments. The weapons seem to be completely generic, with no strategy involved. Overall, really not recommended.