First-Person Shooter

Are You Ready For The Rad-ness? The typical kind of DLC gamers expect now is pretty pedestrian; some new skins for characters or weapons, or if you’re really lucky, a new, bite sized adventure that carries on the shenanigans of the core game that was originally purchased. Ubisoft however, have done something unusual; the latest add-on, downloadable content to last year’s Far Cry 3 has absolutely nothing...

Poking The Beehive When Bioshock first landed on consoles many console veterans didn’t know what to expect. PC gamers, on the other hand, expected a dark, moody, atmospheric game that breathed life into its characters via audio recordings, and put players through a gaming experience by turns filled with unique mechanics and occasionally even threw out some scares. What no one expected was the level of uncompromising...

One of the prettiest shooter franchises in modern memory is back for another high jumping, car kicking, cloaking good time. Crysis 3 again has players nano-suiting it up as series protagonist "Prophet" returns to New York City 23 years after the events of Crysis 2. It's the city so nice the series has visited twice. This time around the bright lights of the city that never sleeps have been...

Is This Gonna’ Be A Stand Up Fight, Or A Bug Hunt? Few films have burned themselves into the delicate, collective pop culture consciousness of the 80s generation the way Aliens did. A blend of teasing, seductive science fiction, primal horror, and the kind of gun blazing action that only an 80s director would find plausible, it became the high watermark that every other SF/Action film would...

Into The Swamp It’s hard to believe that we’re already on the third substantial piece of downloadable content for Borderlands 2. The game is a definite winner in the Value For Money category, and this new piece of content just adds to the value. This time out, the game brings back Sir Hammerlock and throws players into big, wild, untamed swamps and jungles to do a little...

Another One Already? Gearbox continues their insane release schedule with their second bit of DLC to drop for Borderlands 2. Our first round of Borderlands 2 DLC put us in a region of Pandora that was half Tatooine, half Pirates of the Caribbean. This new expansion takes us to a world that normally belongs to THQ; the “badass crater of badassitude” and the testosterone soap opera of...

Nothing To Lose In one sense, it’s pointless to write a review of Planetside 2 because there’s one school of thought that says reviews offer guidance to readers as to whether this product is worth your hard earned cash. Planetside 2 is free to play, so there is no cash involved. What becomes important then, is the question “Is this game worth your time?” And the answer...

A Far Cry Like most people, I found Far Cry 2 to be a bit of a let down. Before the game's release I was incredibly hyped for what promised to be an amazing open world adventure with a story that was supposed to be comparable to Joseph Conrad's Hearts of Darkness. Unfortunately, what I got was an open world that didn't feel organic and a story...

Enough Testosterone To Kill A House Pet Well, it’s here with the inevitability of a flood of money, engulfing everything in its way with the sweet, sweet smell of profit. Call of Duty: Black Ops II is the apotheosis of a Critic Proof Game. No matter what anyone says, it’s already broken sales records and will keep Activision in safely, distantly in the black for another year....

The Inevitable Collection The Killzone Trilogy was really just a matter of time. With Sony putting out HD reissues of all their other marquee properties, there was no question their flagship FPS was going to get similar treatment. Unlike most of the HD reissues which consist largely of PS2 games brought back to this generation, the Killzone Trilogy already contains two of the better looking PS3 games,...

What's Doom 3 And Where Are The First Two? Before I started writing this review, I thought everyone (who played videogames) knew what Doom 3 was. Even if they hadn't played it, I was sure they the title had come up in conversation. This is why I was perplexed when I asked some friends if they wanted to play Doom 3, and they had never heard of...

Gearbox Loves You What madness is this? Borderlands 2 is barely a month out on store shelves and in that short amount of time, we’ve gotten an extra character class and now some full on downloadable content. And it’s not just your typical “new weapons and costumes” DLC either, this is Borderlands DLC, which means that for the price you’re paying (About $7.50 for those with a...

A good game will carry the player through a story, presenting moments of enjoyment and leaving behind a fun experience. A great game will present you with a story that not only is engaging but changes the way you want to interact with the game world. Dishonored from Arkane Studios is a great game, and throughout the story it presents a world that was deep, well thought-out, and corrupted...

Pandora Goes Green Borderlands was one of the most pleasant surprises of 2009. It was a game that, on many levels, should have failed. It wasn’t contemporary, or military, it didn’t have a competitive multiplayer mode, it tried to incorporate action-RPG/Diablo mechanics into a shooter and, most dangerous of all, it was “sent off to die” as Michael Pachter put it, by going up against Call of...

The Tribes series has been around for many years, the first iteration dating back to 1998. Now, 14 years later the developer may have changed (along with the business model), but I'm happy to say that Tribes is back! This latest iteration, titled Tribes: Ascend, is developed by Hi-Rez Studios, is completely free to play and is poised to breathe new life into a series that fans thought might...

The name of the game has a double meaning. A hard reset is shutting something down completely before turning it back on. In the game the player is essentially doing the same to the various robotic enemies they encounter. Of course, it’s also the reaction some people might have to the challenge this game presents. Shutting off the game in frustration to try again later. The dark...

Feel the Darkness, be the Darkness. The Darkness II's story picks up a few years after the events of the first game that had the protagonist Jackie Estacado discovering that he could wield dark powers as old as life itself. This power appropriately named the Darkness is a malevolent force with a taste for blood, violence and suffering. Jackie tries to control the Darkness as...

Meet the impostorsWith Batman gone or otherwise out of commission, who will rise up to defend Gotham City from the forces of chaos? How about a ragtag group of wannabe bat men and women? These “heroes” are the only thing that stands between order and a city overrun by psychotic clowns. This is the set up for Gotham City Impostors, the latest FPS from Monolith Productions, a developer most...

The cyberpunk genre is ripe with opportunities to tell stories of a dystopian future overrun by technological innovation; Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner explored what separates a machine from humankind, the Deus Ex series touched on the moral issues of augmenting human abilities. Now, Starbreeze’s reboot to the Syndicate series, besides being the first FPS of the year, tries to follow suit only and finds itself with a mixed but...

Ten years ago, Halo: Combat Evolved was the toast of college dorm rooms all over North America. Not only would gamers punish themselves by trying to best Bungie's campaign on every difficulty setting, but if you had the cables and a little bit of brains you could link up a few Xbox consoles and voilà, LAN party! Back in 2001, Halo was one of the finest games available and...