5paces To Death

The first Dead Space was a Third-Person Horror Shooter with lots of atmosphere and tons of (idiosyncratic!) character. It surely reinvigorated, if not redefined, the horror-TPS genre and failed to become a classic solely because of its awkward (and non-remappable!) controls and the draconian DRM scheme it came bundled with.Well, apparently history repeats itself as a farce on Titan as well.

Isaac, Locked 'n' Loaded 

And if you are a Necromorph, better get outta his way! Because not only did he find his voice but he is on his very last nerve and they are recklessly stepping on it.

The graphics have received a refresher, the sounds will make you jump to the edge of your seat once more and the guns have been revamped (there are only a few new additions). Now, if only there was more ammo to actually use them without counting every bloody bullet!

An Engineer On Rails

Dead Space 2 is and feels very linear. If this game were an RPG it would had killed it. However, for a horror-TPS this is not necessarily a bad thing. The environments are nicely done, the story will absorb you (for almost all of the about 10 hours it lasts) and (although I could do with less hacking mini-games!) the gameplay never gets boring. From creepy corridors to zero-gravity chambers, Titan will keep challenging your skills.

However, do not get me started on the color-coded...GPS pointers! If anything ruins immersion, getting directions to the next ...save-point surely does.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are...

No Horror-game is complete without its dark-room segment. I still remember the intensity of the original Unreal when the lights suddenly went out and you had to fight your very first Skaarj - with only the muzzle-flashes to guide you. Dead Space 2 will not disappoint on this aspect. Not only is the game as atmospheric as the first one and the camera keeps playing games on you, but shadows and darkness are expertly used to heighten the tension.

DRM Vents The Game Into Space

Dragon Age: Origins was a phenomenal game that was a huge financial success - and (the original release) came with a simple disk-check. So did a number of other good games the same year. So, there is absolutely no argument that could possibly support EA's anti-customer decision to limit the number of installations to...5 (and now the title of this review starts to make more sense, right?).

Forget to revoke an installation token (or have your HDD crash on you or even change your hardware configuration) and you game keeps getting truncated more and more until nothing is left of it.

Overall, a solid sequel that deserved a more customer-friendly publisher.

It could certainly do without the ...Dim Mak it received just before it was let out the door.

Heraclitus Was Right...

...one cannot step into the same river twice.

I remember coveting after these shoes when I was in high-school. No matter though, my parents could not afford such expensive shoes for all three of us (back in the 80's not everything was manufactured by children-workers or cheap Chinese slave labor, mind you) so I never got them when it would had counted.

Some months ago I noticed these remakes of the classic AirForce1 shoes in store window and picked them up on a nostalgia whim. The shoes are sturdy and comfortable and they can be worn with either jeans or chinos. They are an excellent pair of weekend shoes, especially in the summer.

But, you know, it is just not the same...

Brutally UnCivilized

The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.

This Is Not A Civilization Game

A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this Civilization V, "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.

There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as, apparently, units are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).

Army Castration

Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why, Sid? Just tell me that.

You May Be bale to launch Into Space - Yet Cannot ...Climb Mountains?!

Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?

Unit Stampede

A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.

As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.

You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.

Can You Really Command Without A Central...Command?

The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, tough luck! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for annoying you.

You have very little control of your cities resource distribution and zero control of your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.

Speaking of the economy, when are we going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?

No Free Eye-Candy In This Universe. Not Even A Stale One.

The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to StarCraft II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.

The system I am running my copy consists of a P7 920 on a MSI Eclipse with 3GB of RAM and an ASUS nVIDIA GTX-480. Even with a couple years old PC in a WinXP environment (I refuse to forgo my game collection for the latest Windows OS), apparently I cannot even try the highest DX9 settings (the game crashes at launch) but I managed to optimize them with a mix of high and medium. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.

So one can only wonder: why should one need a Cray to run a Civilization game at full?

A Civilization Sold Like a Salami

In slices. Paper-thin DLC slices, that is. So far there have been over a dozen DLCs. All are sold separately and each one contains a small portion of what was supposed to be an essential part of the game. Were there any Civilization games in the past that did not include the Babylonians or the Persians? No. And when was the last time a Civilization game cost over $150 to be complete? Well, never.

The STEAM Of War

The game requires OnLine Activation (and perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.

This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...Call To Power III.

New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is not what a Civilization game plays like.

Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.

Sorry Sid, epic Fail..

The Art Of Real-Time S.T.R.A.T.E.G.Y.

The RTS genre had become pretty much saturated for some time now. The addition of more on-screen units and richer environments (with the consequent increase in hardware requirements) did little to invigorate it. In R.U.S.E., although you will recognize several classic RTS components, they are skillfully combined together and blended with a number of new ideas so that the end result seems fresh and innovative.

To say that R.U.S.E. was over-hyped would be an understatement. Nevertheless, it is one of the rare games that manages to live up to its hype and deliver hours of solid fun and enthusiastic immersion.

Strategic placement of your units will determine their line of sight and their range - but also their vulnerability to enemy units. Concealment and ambush are essential parts of the gameplay. For a game that presents units as oversized board-game tokens when zoomed out, battlefield realism is kept high with vehicles permitted to move only on roads (and thus cannot claim the advantage of higher ground) and nested units having to either be pummeled with artillery or circumvented in order to advance. Unlike tactical decisions, resource gathering has been simplified and kept to a minimum.

However, the real strength of R.U.S.E. lies elsewhere. What you will enjoy the most are, well, the...ruses. Whether you create a spectral decoy army that will divert the enemy or ask Bletchley Park to break his communication codes for you to be waiting for his units at the right location, those battlefield ruses are what make this game so great and immensely replayable.

Now, the good news is that UBISOFT has finally abandoned the idiotic DRM used in their latest games which required an always-on connection to their servers to play your game. The bad news is this game comes with mandatory OnLine STEAM activation, which makes it a piece of rentware it never becomes yours. This is what prevented me from giving this game full marks. Whether this bothers you or not, you can now make an informed decision.

Go Ahead, Make His Day!

Did you ever dream being able to run inconsiderate drivers who are too lazy to signal their turns or lane changes off the road and onto the sidewalk? How about spiral-diving amongst a swarm of black-clad enemies and bullet-time picking them out one by one? How about doing the same while skydiving? Or shooting bullets from your bare hand by simply holding them to the fire?

Shoot 'Em Up is an action movie that manages to both make fun of the action genre hyperboles and, at the same time, deliver a string of explosive action sequences. Sure, the plot is not the most deep but it far from paper-thin and, anyway, these are 86min of your life you will be glad you spent having fun.

The Academy gave ...The Hurt Locker an Oscar and they passed over this movie!!? Shoot 'Em Up deserves an Oscar for just two unforgettable scenes: the packaging-line shootout in Mr Smith's lair and the unique shootout/sex ballet with Monica Bellucci. Now, throw in Paul Giammati's smart-ass one-liners and you have yourself a movie which is great fun to watch.

Giammati may try his hardest to be the usual scene-stealer yet Clive Owen is the one who really delivers this movie. I am sure when they watched this, the producers of the James Bond franchise were kicking themselves for going with...Daniel Craig.

Start your year on the right foot. Draw a line and go after anyone who crosses it.