Star Wars: The Old Republic review
Editor’s note: This review is based on our impressions from our first 85 hours in the game as an Imperial Agent who reached level 35. Some endgame elements were not ready to be evaluated at the time of this review, but as always, we will follow-up this review with constant and regular updates of our impressions as the game progresses here at www.pcgamer.com and in the magazine. — LD
30 minutes had passed since my insectoid ally had asked me. It was a simple question—did I intend to resist his claim to this land?—made complicated by the previous eight hours of politics, betrayal, espionage, and war. I didn’t know what to do. After consulting five different people (including my wife over the phone), I reluctantly made my choice on the familiar BioWare dialog wheel and betrayed my always-faithful insectoid allies in order to defend the man who’d just slain his own wife to prove his loyalty. I felt used.
Orcs Must Die! review
Orcs Must Die! has done something I’d thought impossible: it’s a tower defense game that actually gets deeper and more rewarding the longer you play it. The joy comes not just from the sadistic delight of watching a wall-trap viciously fillet a crowd of almost lovable cartoon orcs with a series of spinning-blades, but also from the Portal-like cycle of running into a tricky problem, taking a break to ponder it, and then racing back to try a new solution.
Bastion review
Bastion grabbed my heart exactly one minute and 30 seconds after it started, when I found the first weapon, a sledgehammer, and used it to kill a large, bloated Gasfella. Once he was down I went to work smashing every destructible object in the environment – as you typically do in an isometric action-RPG – until the game’s gravelly voiced narrator piped up. “The Kid just rages for a while,” he informed the world.
Voiceover might be an overplayed gimmick in the motion picture industry, but in a game, having an omniscient narrator describe what my character does is different… he’s actually talking about me.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim review
Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil anything here – I’ll steer clear of anything story-related beyond the premise. With another game, that would be tricky. With Skyrim, the stories that come from how the game works are often the best ones.
It’s a frozen nation, just to the north of where the previous game, Oblivion, took place. A pleasantly brief introduction sets up the plot: Skyrim is in the middle of a revolt, you’ve been sentenced to death, and dragons have just shown up. Good luck!
At that point, you emerge from a cave into 40 square kilometres of cold and mountainous country, and that’s it. Everything else is up to you.
Even after spending hundreds of hours in Morrowind and Oblivion, the sense of freedom in Skyrim is dizzying. The vast mountains in every direction make the landscape seem limitless, and even after exploring it for 55 hours, this world feels huge and unknown on a scale neither of the previous two games did.
Hard Stuff: Origin EON15-S review
You know those folks that dress for utility instead of style? The ones that wear flak jackets and ammo belts to dinner parties? The Origin EON15-S is their laptop equivalent.
Hard Stuff: Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 review
I’ll be frank: the GeForce GTX 590 will murder your checking account. At $700, you’re probably wondering—as I was—if it could possibly be worth it.
Hard Stuff: Thermaltake eSPORTS Shock review
Getting a headset that rivals your 2.1 external speakers’ sound is tough to do without dropping $200 (or more). And yet, the Tt eSPORTS Shock manages to do just that, and at a very reasonable $80.
Hard Stuff: Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD review
So you’ve got a sweet 5.1 surround sound speaker setup and an awesome gaming library to support it—but if you’re running those speakers via your motherboard’s onboard audio, you may as well be using $20 speakers from your local drugstore. What you need is a dedicated soundcard, and Creative—the pioneer of soundcards for PC gaming—has released its newest flagship warbler: the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD.
Portal 2 review
I may be the dumbest genius ever. At least, that’s how I feel after playing Portal 2’s fantastic single-player campaign. Many puzzles in the last third of the eight to 10 hours (perhaps less, depending on how clever you are) of its brain-bending puzzle “test chambers” had me convinced at one point or another that they were completely unsolvable, and that some bug or sadist game designer placed the exit just out of reach. I’d let out exasperated sighs as every attempt met with a dead end. I’d grimace in disapproval as I plummeted to my death for the tenth time. I’d consider surrender.
Then, through either sudden revelation, divine inspiration, or total accident, it would come to me: use the orange Propulsion Gel to reach the energy bridge, then catapult across the chasm and shift my blue portal to the inclined surface (in mid-air, mind you) to launch me up to the ledge, grab the refraction cube and redirect the laser beam to wipe out the turrets and activate the switch! It’s so simple, I can’t believe I didn’t see it until now. One half of Portal 2’s brilliance is making me kick myself for not thinking of the impossible; the other is making me feel immensely satisfied with myself when I finally do, again and again.
Note: while we’ve made every effort to avoid spoilers in this review, you cannot review a game without discussing what it does well and what it doesn’t. Be aware that reading any review is going to take some of the surprise out of it.
DCS: A-10C Warthog review
Target acquired! A line of Russian T-72B tanks, teasingly stationary against the spinach-green plain, lights up my A-10C’s HUD. If I was playing almost any other combat flight game, I would likely press a key or two to lock on, then squeeze a joystick button to deposit a 1,000-pound CBU-97 cluster bomb on the enemy.
I’m not playing a “game,” though. I’m playing Eagle Dynamics’ meticulously authentic DCS: A-10C Warthog simulation, and establishing a firing solution on those tanks is serious business. Set the appropriate CBU-97 ordnance on the left multi-function display stores management page with a series of button presses; configure release parameters (ripple settings, time of fall, minimum altitude, eject velocity, escape maneuver) with several more virtual button and switch clicks; cycle master mode control to CCIP (Constantly Computed Impact Point) bombing; enter a shallow dive toward the tanks; and release the bomb when the CCIP pipper in the HUD hits the sweet spot. The kills you work for are the most satisfying.
Crysis 2 review
An alien dropship hums overhead, trailing otherworldly ruby-red fumes from its engines. The patrol craft spits shining metal pods at the earth as it passes. Embedded in the city street asphalt, the pods pop like pressurized eggs; three raptor-legged, inquisitive Ceph soldiers spring out.
They can’t see me, but I’m a mere 20 feet away, invisible, steel feet perched still atop a shipping crate. I’m holding the wrong gun for this—a microwave gun would’ve been ideal—but I don’t care. I love the way my SCARAB assault rifle’s laser sight attachment seems to wander organically, slightly out of sync with my movements, illuminating what I’m about to kill. I center it on the aliens’ weak spot: an exposed patch of pink-goo translucence where tendrils dangle—like Cthulhu’s tentacles—from their back.
Total War: Shogun 2 review
I had to rub my eyes. How could this have happened? Scant turns into Shogun 2’s campaign on the Hard setting, and I’d conquered my first city. My early-game army was already marching toward the next. Then one of the other clans landed a naval transport next to my home city and walked a small army right in. Total War’s AI, it seems, doesn’t have trouble with ships any more.
Thus began my army’s panicked march home to retake its own capital. Dismay, bedwetting, and the thrill of a fateful challenge: a good opener for ten.
Dragon Age 2 review
To make Origins, BioWare dredged up buckets of backstory from the minds of their best writers. A new land was invented, branded with religious intolerance and inherent racism. Then, once the continent of Thedas was concrete, BioWare forgot they’d invented all that engaging stuff and slapped a typical ‘kill the big bad thing’ fantasy plotline on top. For all its size and wonder, Origins didn’t make full use of its fascinating world.
Dragon Age 2 does it right. It’s still an RPG epic, it still takes upwards of 50 hours to finish. It’s still got a deep, complex combat system, and it’s still got a well-defined supporting cast. But it’s also an RPG that wears its mythology proudly, confident in its goal of charting the rise of a complete and utter badass. You.
Bacon, robots and violence on PC — our Monday Night Combat review
A robot has dropped a churro. The tasty Spanish treat tops off my Tank class character’s life bar, and I push deeper into the blue team’s territory, rending more automatons with my railgun as I go. En route, I pass a teammate dumping minigun shells into Monday Night Combat’s adorable mascot, Bullseye—a guy in a plush, smiling suit that dances through the arena and bleeds coins instead of blood.
DC Universe Online Review
Batman relies on lightning-fast reflexes to dodge a Joker bomb, not a lucky dice roll, and he certainly never auto-attacks Bane. So when I leapt onto the streets of Gotham, clad in the tights and gadget-belt of a newly minted villain named Cat’s Pajamas, to study at the feet of the Clown Prince of Crime, I wanted something other than the stodgy combat of a typical MMO. And DC Universe Online doesn’t disappoint—its fast-paced, kinetic combat and story-driven quests are a breath of fresh air in a genre short on innovation.
