Recent reviews by TheIronicTea

I have played this game for 2000+ hours since 2006 in the total conversion mod, Moviebattles II. One of the greatest gaming experiences of my life. Nothing beats the movement, saber dueling systems, and overall frantic and authentic Star Wars feeling. MB2 is a mixture of CS and TF2 in third and first person cameras with epic setpieces straight from the movies.

https://www.moviebattles.org/

In this mini-review I'll be mostly discussing the positive and negative sides of the REMASTERED version.

Grim Fandango: Remastered edition is mostly fantastic. Especially Peter McConnell's re-recorded musical score is reason enough to purchase the game, since it is without a doubt one of the best original soundtracks ever featured in a video game. For the first time all of the music has been recorded with a live-orchestra, and it shows.

The improved models are a nice touch, and there's a remarkable change in the look of the game. However, the pre-rendered painted backgrounds have not been changed, but they still hold up today surprisingly well, though the game is locked in 4:3 aspect ratio. There's a 16:9 streched option available, but it doesn't look good. You can change the look of the game to the original with the simple press of the backspace button, which is an excellent feature.

Developer Commentary is also included within the game, toggleable in the "special features" submenu. In game, a film roll is present in the top-left corner of the game when a developer commentary is available. It is a very handy feature, and doesn't pull you out of the game, since you can decide so easily when to listen to them or not. Unfortunately the audio cuts off quite easily when interracting with the environment, so patience is usually required when listening to these, but they're only a few minutes long. The commentary consists of former Lucas Arts employees discussing about the game, and it's great fun listening to all of the details. Tim Schafer and Peter McConnell feature in it.

One of the things that was one of the most commercialized aspects in this re-release was the improved lighting. Unfortunately it doesn't work very well, and the original shadows surpass the new shadows occasionally. For example, when walking towards a lighthouse no shadow is casted behind the models in the remastered mode, but in the original there is. The new models are also always very lit even in dark areas, in which the original version again looks much better. Most of the time this is not a problem however, and the game does look remarkably better with the improved textures.

The most annoying problem in the remastered version is the occasional bug. I had to restart my game during my playthrough about 10 times, because the game softlocked after I tried to get an item out of my inventory. Double Fine is apparently working on a patch to fix this presumably, and it's not a game breaking deal if you just remember to save often.

The price is cheap. I would recommend buying this after Double Fine fixes the annoying softlocks. It's still quite playable though, and the game still holds up today very nicely, but the puzzles are very dated in my opinion. Grim Fandango is still a classic game, and one of the best adventure games of all time.

The adrenaline rush you get when you realise you have no ammo for the next boss, your gasmask is cracked and seaping poisonous air into your lungs and you have no health packs or filters left... There is no other choice but to man up and fight the boss thrice your size with throwing knives and courage. This is Metro.

Metro: Last Light is a very immersive, superb linear first-person shooter that has good stealth elements mixed in the sauce. The AI is pretty stupid though, and even one step you take without crouching makes them question the sound even though they have a dozen friends running around already. Another thing that really annoys me is changing between your throwable weapons, you have to move your mouse while in-game in a very idiotic way that I really cannot even describe. Also, when you're making a stealth kill, both you and the enemy stand up without any animation - it's looks very clunky, and your character doesn't go automatically back to the sneaking position, which is why I was spotted numerous times.

The Redux version of Last Light does not differ from the original at all, if you don't count some fixed lighting. It also includes all the DLC, which seems to consist of pretty decent side-missions. The graphics are fantastic. Play in Hardcore Ranger-mode for a good time!

Metro: Last Light is a superb game with fantastic gameplay and immersion. 9/10

I always liked to say that Uncharted by Naughty Dog on the Sony Playstation is what Tomb Raider should've been. Crystal Dynamics decided to take that route with their version of Tomb Raider. It is a great third-person shooter, which contains climbing and puzzle solving as main gameplay elements, just like in Uncharted. Naughty Dog tried to make Uncharted like Tomb Raider, and now Crystal Dynamics tried to make Tomb Raider like Uncharted. Quite ironic. And it works, in many ways better than Uncharted.

The game has a fairly large "open-world" (if you can say that) with tons of collectables and side-tombs that you can raid (no pun intended), whereas Uncharted was a very linear game. Tomb Raider also has skill system and crafting, but there's only a few weapons available in the game. The lack of weapons works with the survival aspect of the game, but the overload of ammo doesn't. There's ammo around every corner more than you can carry. It takes away from the experience, and even in harder difficulties this major problem isn't fixed. Another thing I found quite irritating were the quicktime events, which takes away from the immersion of the game. Every time you find a collectable you are forced to punch a button repeatedly. I didn't mind it too much however. The overload of enemies is also pretty damn stupid, but it makes for good gameplay, and the AI isn't very smart either. Anyways, the game is superb, and with the cheap price of the -75% sale makes it well worth your time and dosh.

8/10