But really, you are Desmond, who is in a coma from the last game, thus his best “friends” decide that the way to keep him alive is to throw him into a machine called the Animus so he can relive Ezio’s life so that can save his. However, that doesn’t go as well as they expected and Desmond loses his grip on reality! That’s totally what we wanted! And now he is banished to living in a reconstructed subconscious called Animus Island.

This setup promises that you literally fight to survive, thus Revelations is obviously going to be a super exciting iteration of the Assassin’s Creed series, right?

I'm 50 years old and at the top of my game AND ALSO THIS TOWER! Take that 20 year olds! I'm so hip! OH SHIT, MY ARTHRISTIS

NOPE. In fact, this is a pretty poor version of Assassin’s Creed. The single player is incredibly short compared to Brotherhood, and does not feature a lot of the fun mechanics that breathed life into the series. In fact, it feels like Ubisoft decided that their previous designs were way too good, so they scrapped them in order to make something terrible.

And they did that by improving fucking up how the characters look and feel. Ezio, who I understand is older, moves like he is a drunken man with two broken legs and afflicted with several seizures. Yet during loading sequences, Ezio moves like a bullet, which is totally how he maneuvers in the actual game. You’d think a game that requires a lot of sneaking, escaping, chasing and climbing would feature a character who would be able to do that, right? Guess not.

However, it’s not all that bad. Ezio’s poor movement can be forgiven a bit, thanks to the introduction of the glorious hookblade, which is singlehandedly the most useful item in your arsenal. You can use the hookblade to grab people, trip people, jump faster, grab ledges easier and use it to zoom down the few ziplines around the main world. Unfortunately, I found that ziplines tended to go in the direction I didn’t need to go in, thus rendering their usefulness pretty abysmal.

Because using the hookblade is fucking sweet!

Speaking of not being able to use stuff to your advantage, I would like to point out that bombs are the most worthless item in the universe. You will only ever use them when the game tells you to, because why the fuck would you use them at any other point in time. They take way too long to explode, do barely any damage, and alert everyone in the nearby area to you. You might as well just use your Assassins to handle any diversions, because the Assassins bar reloads faster than it takes for a bomb to explode. And even though you can make bombs of various types, you’ll only ever use the impact bombshell, because all the other ones are so rare.

The faces of every character look absolutely terrible. I still understand that everyone is supposed to be older, but the facial animation looks horrific. And who was in charge of this amazingly handsome face? Mrrawr, rawr.

Hi gurls

Sadly, you don’t get to see this glorious face all that often because you are going to be way too busy playing the super fantastic, totally awesome tower defense minigames! OH BOY! In these sequences, you are faced with real time strategy using a currency system with a fixed earning rate, thus you are constantly trying to catch up with the Templars who have flamethrowers while you still have crossbows and rocks. Oh joy!

These minigames are extremely annoying, because the game pulls stupid ploys so that the player can never get a 100% synch for them (which requires you to not lose any units). And just in case you were managing to defeat the Templars, ACR will throw war machines and overpowered bomber units who can destroy any barricade in one shot. Wait, you wanted to win? Nope.

Which would be just a platformer, but something feels similar...

Now remember Animus Island? That’s where you go to talk to Subject Sixteen (and his incredibly sexy face) and allow Desmond to focus on his past.  It’s really annoying because Desmond is a whiny bastard and his levels have a Portal-esque platforming feel but without the Portals. The worlds are cool looking, but that’s just to hide how frustrating they because Desmond cannot jump for crap and falls off platforms really easily because his shoes are made out of butter.

Even so, the missions still have the Assassin’s Creed feel, but a lot less of the “run around in ancient ruins”, “race some thief/assassin”,  and “chase this escaping Templar in an old crypt” missions. Many of those mission types don’t even exist anymore, which is both good and bad. I liked the ancient ruins puzzles where you climbed around a lot. Those were pretty fun, Revelations has about three of them in total, and they pale in comparison to the ones featured in Brotherhood.

Luckily, Revelations redeems itself with its multiplayer. The netcode has been dramatically improved. Games are incredibly easy to find and they handle like a dream. My only complaints are that there are not enough maps, and the fact that you have to buy weapon upgrades (not with real money, mind you) is lame.

Overall, Assassin’s Creed Revelations is a testament to the fact that just because you can have six development studios working on a game at once in order to push it out in a year, doesn’t mean the game is going to be very good.

Verdict: PASS (but buy it if it is on sale)

The game looks nice and the developers spent quite some time in the visual appeal department, while shunning the issues with the gameplay.

You’ll get bored with this game rather quickly.

Verdict: PASS

I want to make it clear that MNC is not really TF2, since the only thing it shares are the classes, apart from that there isn’t much more in common. The characters are original enough and the class base traits and roles are unique. The game is goofy, chaotic and rather fun and the community is rather lively so it’s easy to get into games pretty quickly.

MNC is one of my favorite Xbox games, and now that it is on the PC, I’m ecstatic. The content provided on the PC exceeds the Xbox version. And with a high replay factor, there really isn’t much to lose.

Verdict: BUY

Note: This is one of my old reviews that didn’t transfer over when I first started reposting Steam reviews on this site.

And this form of gameplay takes time getting used to, mostly because you have to account for the fact your opponent could have killed one of the units that you are about to move. Unfortunately, this can be a cause for frustration, as there are quite a few maps where units will be stacked up against you, but you don’t really have control over this as maps are randomly generated. And with all randomly generated content, there’s always the case where you get a really bad seed and your experience isn’t as fun or balanced as others.

You better answer yes.

But looking past that, Frozen Synapse is a well polished game. The developers have literally implemented TONS of features that you wouldn’t expect to find in a computer game (like the in-game IRC client). Though that might be because the game is powered by the Torque Engine, which is easy extensible and tends to always output very pretty games.

Speaking of pretty, the color scheme is nice, if a bit samey, there really isn’t any variety to it other than Dark Blue, more Dark Blue, a smidgen of Dark Blue, and did I mention Dark Blue? Luckily it blends together really well and looks well designed. The same can’t be said for many of the game’s prompts like the unit actions menu. If a unit cannot do an action at a specific place, please don’t even show me that action. This way the menu isn’t so large and obtrusive in comparison to the incredibly tiny unit modifiers, because the game doesn’t scale properly for high resolutions. Fantastic.

Now the problem with a lot of indie strategy games is that their player base dies out within a month or is dead on arrival. But with Frozen Synapse, you won’t have to worry about the multiplayer dying out quickly. Frozen Synapse has a great online community that you are always informed about EVERY SINGLE SECOND in the form of player invites. I was trying to play a couple of campaign missions, when I was bombed with eight invites to start a multiplayer game. It’s great that the community is so lively, but maybe I just want to explore the game a bit without the constant prompts. Don’t believe me? Let me show you:

Short of switching the game to offline mode (why would you ever want to do this), there is no way to turn off the invites.

On the plus side, multiplayer is extremely well designed for this type of game. There are a lot of game modes, and how you play them is rather cool. In a sense, multiplayer skirmishes are state based, in which you don’t actually have to be connected to your opponent to play a game. One person could perform some actions and then leave and the next time they play, they can continue the game by committing new operations to perform. In my opinion, this is a really good idea.

Best part is that he's a main character and no one likes him.

The same cannot be said about the campaign story. It really isn’t all that compelling and the characters are rather bland. But it’s all okay because all you need to know is that you are some technological simulation thing that allows you to fight without you actually dying. What’s important is the thrill of having your plans work out. It is incredibly rewarding to see a move set be executed perfectly.

In the end, Frozen Synapse is a decent time waster that doesn’t require your full attention. It’s the equivalent of telling someone what moves to make in a game like Chess, but leaving the outcome of your moves up to chance more than anything.

Verdict: Depends. If you like strategy games, you should check this out. If you don’t really fancy strategy games, then pass on this.

And I absolutely HATE it when your opponents can easily cripple you by taking out your resources, while you are busy trying to make a remote base. It throws you into this scenario where you either have to cheese it or sell your units to bulk up your defenses for your main base. I’m more of a turn based strategy gamer, so I like the fact that someone cannot pull a game winning move while I’m busy doing something else.

With DETOUR, there is no wait time for an object to be established, no “welp, there goes my base”, or resources that need to be collected by scavengers. You constantly get a flow of money that allows you to have access to whatever the hell you want, right now.

Explosions feel really really satisfying, man.

And it’s incredibly fun, because the gameplay gives you this sensation of being in control but at the same moment, being surrounded by chaos. At any point in time you have to deduce whether you should build roads, destroy your opponents’ trucks, manipulate the cops or all of the above in your quest to get your trucks to the other side of the board first.

The campaign is good too, though some people might find it a tad easy. However, the writing is what takes the cake, and the kooky characters you encounter are quite a delight.

MY ONLY WEAKNESS.

The biggest problem with DETOUR is the longevity. Unless this game is picked up but a good community, I don’t see it living very long.

Fortunately, the developers already have a pretty solid gathering building up, so I’m not too worried. But even if there aren’t a lot of people, you can still play with bots and with the built-in map editor, you can come up with a lot of crazy scenarios.

Overall, with the great music, outstanding writing, chaotic gameplay and extremely cheap price tag, DETOUR definitely feels like it’s worth a purchase.

Verdict: BUY. You can check it out on Steam by clicking here.

Yes these shots were taken from the spawn because it's

difficult to take pictures with bots constantly firing at you

The campaign is rather unique, blending single player and multiplayer in a way that’s not exactly co-op. With Brink, you can play single player and have people come join you (even if they are working against you [if that feature worked]) and work together to get objectives done. And it’s an interesting idea, but it doesn’t work in practice.

Brink reminds me of APB. It looks nice, but the game is shallow. The ideas are there, but the flow is broken. It feels like the developers didn’t playtest enough before they released the game and hyped it excessively.

Maps are incredibly hard to navigate, and unless you have previously explored the map (Wait, you wanted time to explore the map? Nope, you need to go complete these objectives before Mr. Announcer decides it’s time for tea and calls off everything) you will be lost. SMART is really just a running and climb over wall button, it doesn’t show off anything super innovative. It has elements of parkour but it’s so basic, I mean, we were promised stuff like wall runs, flips and rolls. This is not the true parkour we were promised, this is just obstacle navigation that flows decently.

Side note: Flashbangs should not work like this.

Sadly, the story ends anticlimactically, with some talk about “you win!” but nothing really goes on from there. Gamers never see themselves stop the uprising, our characters never do anything after the last mission. Somehow, this one mission stopped an insurgency or allowed us to escape the ark. We never really see much of what happens behind the scenes. Luckily, there’s an extended ending for both sides, oh wait, it’s just some guy looking wistfully at the sunset while the Ark appears to have burst into flames. Wow.

Lag absolutely ruins this game and it has nothing to do with people’s connections, the problem stems from Brink’s shitty netcode; it is absolutely horrible! In fact, every time someone joins a game, a host migration is attempted. I checked the console and saw, on average, three attempts initiate when a player joined. This is unacceptable!

You have ran past three people and haven't revived anyone. You are amazing.

Which leads to my critical point of Brink: It tries(?) to be a team based game and fails miserably. The game never focuses on working as a team! Most of the time you will spend yelling at teammates for ammo or health or whatever because they don’t know how to perform their roles.

Part of this is the fault of the indicators for help. They get all blurred together that it’s really hard to make out who needs help the most. And the game never prompts you or directs you to who needs help the most unless it’s super critical (someone lost all their ammo in all guns, or they are incapacitated). Even the game has this problem where you’ll end up trying to heal someone only to get the guy who just ran by him. Often times you’ll buff someone or revive them only for them to be killed (thus you waste your supplies and will probably have to throw out another one).

In the end, Brink is a game that has interesting ideas, but a terrible campaign (you’ll only play it once) that lacks content, and a poor story kills it completely. Brink is basically a campaign mode.

Verdict: Avoid. It’s a rather disappointing game that is not ready for prime time. The community feels like it would be short-lived when there are plenty of other FPS games that have better features and a stronger execution of game mechanics than Brink.