Grand Assault's Games > Game reviews by Grand Assault

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun review

Posted : 1 year, 11 months ago on 14 December 2007 06:57 (A review of Medal of Honor: Rising Sun)

A horrible game which was let down drastically by its awful control system. I've described my beef with the MoH series in other reviews, but this game was exceptionally awful. The setting was dull, the entire budget was clearly all wasted on the Pearl Harbor rip-off scene and despite spending (literally) hours trying to edit the controls so that they were in any way useful, I still couldn't get anything to work.

The absolute end of the line for MoH and me.

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Sudden Strike II review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:43 (A review of Sudden Strike II)

I really wanted to like the Sudden Strike series. It was something I always tried to make interesting. On the one hand, it was good that I couldn't just rampage through a level with all of my tanks at once, but on the other hand all I ever could do was inch forward with a sniper and an officer in a feeble attempt to make any ground before they were inexplicably picked off by an artillery barrage launched from the other side of the map after having been spotted by a soldier randomly standing around scratching his head.

I thought they might have ironed out those problems with the release of a sequel, but after five minutes I realised all I was doing was highlighting my howitzers, grouping them, and then shelling the hell out of the surrounding area for about ten minutes. Then I realised that my fully loaded supply trucks couldn't reload any of my tanks, troops of artillery and I took the game back in disgust.

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Medal of Honor: Allied Assault review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:33 (A review of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault)

Whereas the PC version of this game inevitably urinates over its console counterpart from a great height, it is still only a Medal of Honor game and as such, shares all of the faults and failures of the rest of the series.

Aside from stealing all of their games from the plots of various war films, the MoH games are also extremely predictable (about 10 Germans will always run out from nowhere/an area you just cleaned out when you get behind a heavy machine gun) and immensely frustrating (shooting someone in the head with a sniper rifle will not kill a man and he'll get back up after and shoot you).

The Normandy Beach landing in this game is a highlight and for the first time in the series, it actually manages to raise some tension, but after that, it's all a bit of an anticlimax and any hope you had of some team-based combat is destroyed when you find that you, and you alone, are going to be responsible for saving the world again.

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World Cup 98 review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:29 (A review of World Cup 98)

Awful, awful game that was rushed through production and released extremely quickly to coincide with the World Cup from which it got its name. The problem is, Fifa 98, a fairly decent game, was already out at this time and it had the highest number of international teams I've ever seen in a football playing sim. In Fifa 98 you could cover qualifying, right through to the tournament. It had much more of a lifespan. This was just an extremely poor thought out game designed to cash in on the tournament.

I hope they'd never get away with this in todays gaming climate!

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Crash pun.

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:25 (A review of Crash Team Racing)

A game engineered purely to cash in on the carting craze which kicked off around this time and spawned a lot of other awful rip off games (Chocobo Racing for example). There is no doubt that the cast of the Crash Bandicoot is zany and colourful enough to warrant their inclusion in this genre, but nobody could ever really play this seriously without feeling that they were just playing another Mario Kart rip off.

If you've never played Mario Kart and thus don't know any better, then you might just enjoy this.

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Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:22 (A review of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos)

An RTS game that I really didn't enjoy, which is quite lucky I suppose, considering the brand name is now not only associated with with the dregs of the gaming world, but with the most inept and awkward human beings on the planet.

This game was repetitive and fairly ill-conceived. I didn't like the power up system at all and whenever I played it online I found myself rushed by ridiculously overpowered armies in about thirty seconds flat. All of this makes for an RTS that sucks a lot of balls.

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DOOM 3 review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:15 (A review of DOOM 3)

Could have been so much more. Impressive graphics on the pda and monitor screens, but the rest of the game is plunged into darkness and you can't see anything. Just about every horror cliche is packed into this sequel and they come at you thick and fast:

- "I heard a strange noise in the basement, I'm off to investigate."
- "They're coming out of the goddamned walls!"
- "We're all dead, we're all gonna die!"
- "You're a soldier and that is a direct order!"

etc etc. There is even a highly predictable soldier-gone-bad to top it off. Hilarious if played in like-minded company, you could probably make a cliche drinking game out of Doom 3. Oh and despite mastering inter-planatery transportation, the space marines haven't yet devised a torch that attaches to your body armour/weapon, so you can only use one at a time. Great.

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Crackdown review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:09 (A review of Crackdown)

This game is really enjoyable. I'm not sure how to review it though, it's just like GTA: San Andreas, only you can jump really high in the air and you can get the cops/gangs off of your tail by killing gangs/cops. The wanted level works more as a karma level than on San Andreas.

The story tries too hard to be hard and serious. I prefer the more laid back style of GTA. The levels felt a bit claustrophobic too. A sequel will no doubt be an improvement.

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Halo: Combat Evolved review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 06:03 (A review of Halo: Combat Evolved)

In all fairness, I have often wondered what sets Halo apart from other console FPS games. Maybe it is the vehicles or something that regular console gamers are not used to seeing (despite the fact that Unreal Tournament does it bigger and better :) ). Or perhaps it's because Microsoft pump so much advertising into it? It certainly isn't the plot which actually sucks across the entire trilogy, so I guess I'm still at a loss to explain its appeal.

One problem I have with playing FPS games on a console is the fact that it takes you ages to scroll the cross hair across the screen to target your enemy, but I notice that Halo seems to rectify this as a problem (maybe by adjusting how much damage you take, or giving you more armour...). This makes it a lot less stressful for an avid PC gamer, considering everything takes twice as long to kill.

The multiplayer is also undoubtedly a highlight. More games need this option of cooperation. I doubt I'd have ever played it without friends to rampage through the storymode with.

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Deus Ex: The Conspiracy review

Posted : 1 year, 12 months ago on 4 December 2007 05:54 (A review of Deus Ex: The Conspiracy)

A strange, cut up and modified version of the PC game. I'm not often in a position to comment on the differences between a console and PC version of a game, but I happen to have played both in this case. The PC game is, without doubt, my favourite of all time. This version adds lots of strange little rooms to cope with the excess loading times (which are all too frequent).

Thank God the PC game was produced before the console version, unlike modern day games whereby truly epic games are dumbed down for the console market before they even reach the shelves of PC gamers. Play the PC version, it's a lot more fluid.

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