Recent reviews by Gabrieltn

Orion Prelude itself is not a very good game. A lot of it feels like borrowed concepts, such as the final stand ripped straight from Borderlands. The shooting is functional but not interesting, it's a hassle to get upgrades half the time, the dinosaurs and their textures are okay but the animations are really bad and the HUD is just aesthetically awful.

However, for $1, it's a good laugh with a few mates (which can be said for just about any game but this one's cheap so it's fine). Even after what I said, it's fun. Pick it up.

Borderlands 2 gets a lot right and simultaneously a lot wrong.

If you love to horde loot and you somehow don't already own this game, pick it up. Loot is its bread and butter. And, just like bread and butter in real life, it gets old fast when you have too much of it. So many of the guns look and feel identical, even if they aren't. This is because of the way that Gearbox generated the loot, where none of the non-mission guns really stand out as anything special. The gun system is a cool gimmick at first, but I'd rather see a selection of awesome, hand-crafted guns instead of a mish-mash of random parts.

Borderlands 2, like its predecessor, is designed to be played in co-op. There are no puzzles in the game that have any requirement for co-op, nor any bosses, but it's very clear that it was meant for more than one person. I've played through the story twice - once with a new character, once with the same character in the game's version of New Game +, Vault Hunter Mode. No matter how hard you train, the enemies seem to be always one or two levels higher than you, and a large portion of them have surprisingly large amounts of health. This makes the game a lot harder than you'd expect, and, if you're like me, playing mostly solo, you'll be spending a lot of time hiding behind cover, reloading whatever subpar gun you're currently using as the grunt level bad guys two shot you. In short, it's tedious.

The art style is fantastic. It really nails the comic book aesthetic while still staying original. The textures themselves are nothing special but the game runs well so no complaints. The PhysX effects, while sometimes taxing, definitely add to the atmosphere - shame they only work on Nvidia cards. The characters look interesting and fine... until they speak. Their heads become locked onto you and they almost bend at weird angles. I'm fairly sure I never saw a character change their facial expression for the entirety of the game, which looks terrifyingly unnatural. Also, none of the dialogue or cutscenes are skippable, which is frustrating when you're playing the game for the second time and don't care about hearing the story again. The enemies look cool for the most part and the effects are good too.

The story is fine, better than the first game but nothing special. Voice acting is very good but the jokes can be weak at times (especially when they reference memes, which is just downright irritating). The music was unmemorable but I remember thinking it was fine. Some characters can get really annoying, like Claptrap, but they have their moments so you look past it. There's an incredibly large amount of DLC, but most of it is just costumes which don't matter. Either way, try and pick up the GOTY version, which gives you access to all the main story DLC and the two new characters.

Last but not least, gameplay. Each character has special abilities and skill trees which are fine. Some of the skills are really fun, like when the Gunzerker goes to dual-wielding any of his guns. But the most important part is the gunplay itself, as that's what you will be focusing on for the majority of the game. Just about every gun feels different, which is super cool. What isn't cool are some of the minor things, like how every gun seems to have bullets that are slower than arthritic snails. It's a real pain sometimes, as enemies like to dodge a lot but your bullets don't move at real bullet speeds so they can't reach the enemies in time. Some people like this, but I really don't.

In conclusion, despite all the negative opinions I've brought to light, I'd still recommend this game. It's a lot of fun, even if it can get tedious at times. Do I personally want to play it again? No, but I feel that I've most definitely gotten my money's worth, which was about $20USD in a sale.

If you own Just Cause 2 already then there's no harm in grabbing this. It's a lot of fun to go around the island with other people and cause havoc.

However, the game is so empty. None of the NPCs remain in the game so the only adversaries are the other players, which there are so few of. The devs don't update the mod anymore and it's still in the earlier stages so a lot of ground was left to cover. For example, you couldn't change the controls in the multiplayer client, only in the original game. The performance is worse than the original game and doesn't give Nvidia users the alternate, much faster CSAA/CQSAA that could reach 32x with a much lower performance hit.

If you can find a server with people, it's worth playing. But, at this point, it's definitely not worth buying the base game for. The actual base game may be, but this isn't.

Despite being known as one of the most terrible games on the Steam store (and I can really understand why), Bad Rats is surprisingly fun. By no means is it fantastic - the game is stuck in 4:3 with no windowed option, the sound design (both narration and effects) is terrible, the graphics are disgusting and the physics are just off - the ball can leave the 2D plane, rendering it useless. But, in all honesty, it's a lot of good fun. I have no idea why, but it can be very fun just setting up the rats in a position to... slaughter the cat in a poorly animated way. Everything says I should be hating this disasterpiece, but I find it an amazing game to play whilst downloading other games and actually have fun. Just turn off the sound, pop open some videos in another window or on another device (I personally prefer to put on some Nostaliga Critic) and you might find that you're actually having fun. Do NOT pay full price for this, but whenever it goes on sale it is usually 50c and totally worth it.

This game is awesome. It's not perfect, for sure - the voice acting is laughable for many characters and there's no lip syncing when characters are talking but not in a cutscene. However, it's just fun. You can go anywhere (after the first two missions) and do almost everything. The mods you can find online are fantastic and can make this even more sandbox-y. The map is huge and looks really nice. The graphics are good, especially for 2010. Overall, it's easily worth $20, but it goes on sale all the time so you're better off just waiting.

Take some of the basic building elements from Minecraft, improve on them for the 2D environment and add some really cool RPG-esque elements and fighting and you've got Terraria. While the devs don't update the game often, the times they do pretty much always double the game's content. It's very fun either by yourself or with friends. There's lots to explore, bosses to fight and a robust sense of freedom. Well worth the asking price.

Garry's Mod is fantastic. There's really no other way to put it. The game and its community provide so much to do - from building epic structures in Sandbox, to finding the traitor in a round of TTT, to shooting a man disguised as a can in Prop Hunt, to leading a crack-pot (but usually garbage) police squad in DarkRP and even watching a movie with people you've never met before in Cinema.

If you don't already own it by now, you really should. Hell, I've bought games just so I could have their props in GMod, like Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life: Source (which I ended up playing and loving). This is the game that I've spent the most time on out of all of my 350+ games. It's the reason that I made a Steam account in the first place, and it still holds up to this very day.