July 5, 2009 9:13:17 PM
Now that's just plain dishonest.I'm talking of course about Tom's picture. Time to update that thing, because no way was this review not written by an old man who's decided he's too old for video games and has settled down with his model trains instead.The game is basically Grand Theft Auto set during the zombie apocalypse, the wanted meter is always maxed, and you play as a cross between the Hulk, Clayface, and (John Carpenter's) The Thing.So that objectively makes Prototype awesome. It just had the misfortune of coming across Tom right in the middle of yelling at kids to get off his lawn.
May 25, 2009 9:51:11 PM
Desktop Tower Defense remains the best entry simply because it's so clear cut. Everything is laid out for you: the map, the spacing, and the exact stats.Compare this to Defense Grid. Super polished, but too much so for its own good. You get bars instead of numbers. Are the bars exact proportions? How can I tell if it's worth upgrading a tower to level 3? And finally you have an isometric view of a multi-level map that you cannot see all at once, which really kills your chance to sit back and plan things out.Immortal Defense: interesting plot, great music, trippy colors, absolutely horrid game. Again, feedback comes into it. There may be some super deep strategy to it, but hell if I could figure it out with the complete lack of visual feedback. They were more concerned with making flashy disco lights than they were with letting you see what was going on. You can only see the enemies and path about 1/3rd of the time. As far as I could tell, the only real strategy was to put all your money into one of those ultimate towers and just keep firing charged up cursor shots (then just turn on the cheats for the bonus levels because they are mathematically impossible).
April 2, 2009 12:19:39 AM
I thought one of the great things about RE4 was that you DIDN'T have to worry about conserving ammo.Anyone remember The Suffering? Great horror game, and it showed that plentiful ass kicking weapons and horror didn't have to be mutually exclusive.
February 21, 2009 12:03:20 PM
Relic is probably the only RTS company that actually BREAKS their games with each new patch. Every new patch in DoW1 broke 2 things for every 1 it fixed, Space Marines and orbital bombardment kept getting more and more buffs, the ridiculous allied anti-tank gun in Company of Heroes kept getting stronger.Same it seems with DoW2. The initial beta had a couple niggling issues, but it was by far the most varied and balanced of the three current versions. They weakened basic ranged infantry damage and banshee melee to the point that the majority of Eldar units are largely useless now. Tyranid ripper swarms capture your points with impunity despite repeated outcries (even from Tyranid players) to removing their capture ability. Tactical marines were never worth buying before, but now they are ridiculous shooting AND melee machines.It just goes on and on. It's a shame because it had such potential and the initial beta release was nearly perfect. I'd recommend holding off and seeing where the patches go.(there's also the bizarre decision to require going through Steam for authentication, but Windows Live for multiplayer matchmaking. If they were already using Steam, why not stick with it given that it's a hundred times better than Windows Live?)
November 14, 2008 11:05:52 PM
To this day I still have no clue how Kohan got so much praise from reviewers. It was one of the most ugly, bland, boring, shallow (yet still managed to be unintuitive) RTS games I've ever played, and I've played a lot of stinkers. It was a lot like Seven Kingdoms, another ugly bland boring unintuitive RTS that reviewers (including Tom) loved. I think Tom cares more about "does it shift the paradigm?" than if the game is actually fun.
November 14, 2008 10:57:46 PM
and the thing you have to remember about Tom is that he's one of those Total Annihilation RTS players: people who are deathly allergic to unit tactics and prefer RTSs where the whole game is more about running a macro economy and flinging units at each other than it is trying to come up with clever unit tactics. He also loved Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, which was one of the worst RTSs in years (you guessed it: zero unit tactics, 100% economy).
November 14, 2008 10:52:17 PM
I have no clue what game Tom played, but Command &Conquer 3 was the most paper-thin tactical RTS in years. No option to rush, whoever built more harvesters straight off and spammed more tanks won (or if you were really good, just tower crawl). If you were Scrin, just take over a building with your commando and summon a mothership. I wasn't the biggest fan of Red Alert 3, but it was objectively better balanced than C&C3 (or really any C&C title to date).
Bwuh hasn't rated any games yet. Have you? Find some.
Wow, people win every day in the Chicken Out contest! Sign up and win.
Join the Discussion! Log In orSign Up Now
The games we're pulling together in this feature won't appear on any of those best-of lists and get confused looks when you mention them in conversation. Just because time has forgotten these titles, though, doesn't mean you should forget them, too. » Read On
You'll also be able to add your Facebook friends to Crispy Gamer and post your Crispy Gamer activity in your Facebook feed.
