System

PC
PC
PC, PS2, XBox
PC, Mac, XBox
N64
PC, Mac, XBox, PS2
PC, Mac
PC, XBox
SNES, GBA
PC, Mac

Command & Conquer: Generals

Gametype:
Real Time Strategy

Overall Rating:

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This game does fairly well in gameplay, which I think it the most important part of any game. However, for the solo missions, you need to have the difficulty level set to max, or the game will be of little challenge. Unlike, C&C: Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge, where Yuri’s Army was much more powerful than the Allies or Soviets, C&C: Generals have three very well balanced sides. The Americans have good tanks and air superiority (The Comanche is awesome), China can mass produce infantry very quickly and has strong tanks, though little air, and the Global Liberation Army (the terrorists) have weak tanks and average infantry, but they do not need and power plants and their buildings can rebuild automatically after they are destroyed due to their underground tunnel network. Since America has the strongest make up of air and ground, they have a very weak superweapon, a particle cannon that cannot even destroy a building. China has an awesome superweapon, nuclear missiles, which, when detonated, cover your entire monitor in a deadly explosion. The GLA have scud missiles, which are nearly as powerful as China’s nuke.

However, this game has no plot, which ruins the fun that was had in all the previous C&C games. For instance, in Generals, the first USA mission is to liberate Baghdad (oh, btw, this game came out before Operation: Iraqi Freedom), but then the second mission is saving downed American pilots…. in Yemen? Once again, this game is like real life, you go where the terrorists are around the world. One terrorist, lets say, oh, one with a strong nation, Saddam, would have made a very good enemy in the game. Like, have conflicts and fighting for territory and such. Then there could of been a really good plot. But a release date while Saddam was still in power would have been very un-PC.

Overall, this is a good game with good replay value in the skirmishes. However, the plot is lacking and don’t play any Westwood games online, their servers lag big time and I was using a T1 modem. For online real time strategy, play Starcraft or Warcraft.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge

Gametype:
Real Time Strategy

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Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 most people’s favorite game in the C&C series. It has good gameplay and fun to use units. This game is a classic, but I doubt it will ever be held with as high esteem as StarCraft.

Unlike the previous versions of Command and Conquer, which start out with easy, insignificant missions, Red Alert 2 starts off with an easy, important / fun mission, defend the Statue of Liberty. The rest of the missions seem to follow in that easy to relate to intensity. In one mission you can destroy the World Trade Center, which, when the game came out, was probably taken not as hardheartedly as today (this game is pre-9/11). Other missions include defending Chicago, attacking the Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, etc. I found it funny that once Washington falls to the Soviet Union, US command is moved to Canada. Soviet missions include mainly attacking the US and trying to mind control the President. But later elimination of the traitor Yuri, which makes a natural flow into the expansion pack, Yuri’s Revenge. Most game’s expansion packs seem like they were designed after the game came out, such as the original game’s conclusion making it seem as if the enemy could not regroup or ever become powerful again. Thus the plot in this game is much better than the plots of similar real-time strategy games. The plot in Red Alert 2 is very well done, and though the plot in Yuri’s Revenge is very far fetched, it still has a much more logical flow that any of Blizzard’s games.

The units in this game are much more fun to use and diverse than all other C&C games, including Generals. Some American units can move through space instantly, such as the chrono-legionnaire. This plays a very useful role in harvesting, where the harvesters can chrono-shift back to a refinery. Soviet and Yuri harvesters get an anti-infantry gun. But Yuri’s harvesting is done directly at the site of the ore, which saves a lot of time. But as a balance, America and the Soviet Union can build an ore-purifier, industrial plant, respectively, which saves money. America and the Soviet Union are very well balanced sides, but Yuri is the strongest. His mind control units are very annoying to encounter. It is a great loss to see your most powerful unit in an army to be destroyed, but even worse to see it has suddenly turned to your enemy’s side, effectively increasing their side by a unit and decreasing your side by a unit. You can of course get your units back if you destroy the unit that is mind-controlling it, but any smart player will keep this units towards the back of his or her army.

The graphics and music in this game are not that great. But like StarCraft, those things do not matter much when considering how great a game is. Red Alert 2 is a late 90’s game anyway, at the time the graphics were not that bad.

Where this game fails is online play. Westwood’s servers are incredibly slow. I was playing with a T1 connection and the game still lagged. Blizzard’s battle.net games are slow only when you have dial up people playing with you. Westwood’s games are always slow. This causes online play to be boring and even annoying. Playing skirmishes against AI opponents is a nice alternative to online play, but C&C AI isn’t all that great. When set to brutal your opponent is quite hard to beat, but the AI is still very predictable, such as always attacking in groups of 3. Also, if you happen to manage to cut your base off from the rest of the map, such as by destroying all the bridges leading towards your base, the AI becomes very dumb and just sends water / air units at you and never bothers to repair the bridge.

Overall, this is a great game for playing the missions and fair for AI skirmishes, and like all Westwood games, terrible online. The units are fun to use, which makes the replay value slightly better despite the bad AI.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Gametype:
Modern Action Adventure

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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a gangster third person shooter meets monopoly. This game is one of the most fun games out there. Many people just like to load the game and spend their entire time running from cops. Others try to beat the game by playing the missions. Then even after you beat all the missions, you are still only about 50% done with the game since there are so many other things to do in Vice City. This gives the game excellent replay value, since it is really hard to beat everything the game has and it is just fun to fool around in the game. The graphics are very good and the music is a perfect way to get into 1980’s Miami, the era /city the game takes place in.

The missions in this game are generally fun and challenging. Some are really hard to beat without practice, such as “The Driver”. The plot in the missions is very good and makes hidden references to many gangster and mafia films, such as “Scarface”. It is fun to acquire stuff in any game, which Vice City does very well with it. Once you take out Diaz, the guy that screws you over in the beginning of the game, you can purchase businesses. With those businesses, you get new missions. Beating them helps the businesses prosper, and then they start generating daily revenue for you. Once you get a bunch of businesses, it feels like you own the city, a crime lord. And you did all of it starting off without any cash. Of course, the mafia from up north that sent you down to Vice City wants their money back, which makes for an awesome ending. If the missions ever get to hard, there are three cheats that are allowed, health, armor, and weapons. Any other cheat will damage the game, but these three cheats still keep the game quite challenging in many missions.

The changes in units and abilities from Grand Theft Auto III make Vice City a great game. In addition to cars, you get helicopters, planes, and motorcycles. The helicopters are by far the most useful of these, since it is very hard for the cops, FBI, or military to get you in the air because all they have is a police helicopter that can shoot you down if you linger in once place for too long. A nice ability that they made in Vice City is being able to get inside buildings, such as malls, stores, and clubs, but there isn’t much to do in them.

The graphics are very good considering when it came out. Some of the items in the game are so detailed; you cannot completely see them without the zoom of the sniper rifle, such as the label on trophies you win, etc. Also, the art deco in Vice City makes it seem just like Miami.

The sound and music are awesome. The songs on the radio are all from the 80’s, some real like 99 Red Balloons, or made up like Love Fist. In either case, both sound very well. Even the commercials on the radio are good. Like, it is worth loading the game and setting the radio to VRock just so you can hear the commercial to the movie, Exploder. It is so freakin funny. Here it is but keep in mind it is much funnier with all the different voices:

The sounds in the game are good as well, especially if you have surround sound. You can hear a car on your side move from in front of you to behind you as you pass it. There is of course are the usual street sounds, beach sounds, golf course sounds, etc.

There are also so many little things that add up to making this game great. Such as when you progress through the game, items start appearing in your hotel room and mansion (the items are memorabilia from past missions), trash starts piling up, etc. You can get extra heath by picking up hookers and then watching your car bounce up and down. The hidden packages filled with coke unlock little things like a tank. Many other things can be found by just exploring the city.

Rewards in the game are really good too. There is of course money, but as you beat certain things, you get better stuff. Like, when you kill Diaz, you get a mansion with a helicopter, limo, and Infurnus (a car nearly identical to a Ferrari). When you beat the final mission you get my favorite item, a hunter helicopter (nearly identical to an Apache), which you can use to do whatever you want, from vigilante missions to killing cops. When you beat everything in the game thus getting 100% completed, which I have not yet done since it is freakin hard as hell, you get your own bodyguards to follow you wherever you go.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is one of the best games I have seen, and by far the best GTA game ever made (San Andreas is not out at the time of this review). This game has been copied by other games (such as The Simpsons: Hit and Run), but never equaled. This game has everything, gameplay, music, graphics, and replay value. This is not the best game I have seen, but it is very close to the top. And with the price of this game decreasing due to its age, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a must have.

Halo

Gametype:
First Person Shooter

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I do not even know why I am making a review for this game. Everyone that plays video games knows that Halo is the best game Microsoft has made for XBox. Halo is also the most popular game for tournaments. This game is have rightfully earned such esteem. This game has quite possibly the best gameplay for any first person shooter game. The graphics are good. Since the game has come out, graphics have become much better, but Halo’s graphics are still good. The music is very good. It sets the mood throughout the solo missions very nicely. This game also has one of the best plots I have seen in a first person shooter. It is gripping and original. There are a few twists, none of which are simple enough for the user to predict.

The gameplay in this game exceeds nearly all first person shooters. The controls are fairly easy to use, and very difficult to master. In solo play, the enemies are intelligent. The will hide behind rocks and trees, and dodge grenades you throw at them. They run away when taking heavy fire, and know the proper times to use melee attacks. The terrains were made with combat in mine, yet they have a beauty to them, and could not look like a combat area at all. There are also no “crappy” guns. There are of course better guns than others, but weaker guns make up for themselves with better secondaries. Take the Covenant plasma gun, it is very small and used by the weakest of the Covenant, but its secondary fire can take out all your shields in one shot, and can follow the enemy to within a few feet. Having the ability to carry only two guns at once can be annoying at times, especially when playing against the Flood and the Covenant. The sniper rifle is excellent against the covenant, but has no effect on the Flood (the bullets go right through them), and the rocket launcher is very good versus both but has limited ammo. Thus you have to be creative in what you carry to be effective against both races, which means sometimes you would have to sacrifice normally strong weapons on one race when playing another. That can be a pain when you encounter the race that the gun you left behind is good on.

The gameplay in multiplayer just as good as solo play, if not better. Many people have devoted a great deal of time to become Halo experts. The solo play can be incredibly hard when playing against experts. I am a fairly good Halo player and I have beaten the final level on Legendary and all the other levels on Normal or Heroic. But when I went to two Halo tournaments at the University of Florida, one of them competing for a $5,000 Microsoft Halo Scholarship, I was knocked out in the first round, both times, in last place (of four). Needless to say, multiplayer Halo is incredible. It involves quick thinking, instant reaction with the controls, strategy, and memorization of the maps. The multiplayer maps were designed even more for combat than the solo play, and vary greatly in size and layout. There is also very little lag in multiplayer, but 4 people playing on the same screen ruins part of the game, as you can see what the other player is looking at. But many times you do not have time to look at the other person’s screen, that is, unless you are on a big map. Currentyl there is no Xbox live for Halo since it came out before Xbox Live was made, but the PC version of the game allows for multiplayer internet games.

The graphics are good in this game. Actual people look dumb and their walking is very jagged, but the land you play on is incredible. Parts of it look very much like earth and filled with beauty, alien-made buildings / craft you are in look much more unworldly. The graphics usually run very smoothly, with the exception of course of several grenades going off while at the same moment an army of Flood are running / jumping towards you while Halo’s laser defenses saw them down, etc.

The sound is the game is very good. It sets the mood in each level you play on and changes as you progress through the level. Enemy encounters make for quicker paced music, exploration makes for softer, more ominous music.

Due to the very good multiplayer and fun to play solo play, this game has probably better replay value than any other game I know. Halo has been out for a long time, yet still remains very popular. My guess it will remain popular until Microsoft releases Halo II.

Perfect Dark

Gametype:
First Person Shooter

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There are two games for the N64 that stand above all others, Perfect Dark is on of those games (the other being The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). Perfect Dark is a game that can keep you playing for years. It is the best first person shooter game for the N64. Perfect Dark is GoldenEye, one of Nintendo’s most successful games, completely redone: improvements everywhere. For instance, you can no longer see the arms of enemies near a door. Hell, Halo still has not gotten that right, you can see the Flood’s arms poking out near many doors.

They also made Perfect Dark very realistic, which is very responsible for its “M” rating. Gore does not make Perfect Dark better, but there were realistic everywhere, the guns look real, they reload very realistically, the rooms look real (example: Carrington Institute and dataDyne’s HQ have that modern cooperate feeling/look), the people look real, their English accents are real, well, you get the point. The graphics are good for N64, they are awesome compared to similar games like Quake II, but are not all that create when compared to more modern games like Halo. However, unlike Halo, the graphics are much more realistic. What strives a great deal from reality however, is the plot, which is awesome.

The game takes place somewhere around 2020, an era of corporate espionage. This is where your character comes in, a spy of the private organization, the Carrington Institute. You are sent to spy on dataDyne, in which you recover Dr. Carroll, an AI / laptop. The plots gets better and better as you progress, and then takes off once you meet Carrington’s “friend” Elvis, inside Area 51.

This game has excellent game play in both single player and multiplayer. Both require a great deal of strategy and skill. The single player missions greatly vary in type of surroundings, and strategy, whether it be, shoot bullets like there is no tomorrow or take things slowly is sabotage or espionage missions. The multiplayer usually lacks the sneaking around, being a very fast paced multiplayer. The maps for multiplayer are good. They kept some of the classic ones from GoldenEye, and added a bunch of new ones for Perect Dark. The guns are very well balanced, each gun having a secondary weapon. For instance, the laptop gun, a fully automatic weapon that folds into a laptop (think spy), can be deployed into a stationary sentry and fire on all enemies within range. The multiplayer is one good enough to have tournaments, and before Halo, this was the game to play with at your friend’s houses.

The Sims Deluxe and Hot Date

Gametype:
Virtual Life

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Plot: N/A

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The Sims is a lot like the game of Life. You start off with nothing, no skills, no friends, and a little money, and you have to work your way up. I really liked this game at first. It is fun to watch your character grow, make friends, get promoted, get married, have kids, and get bigger, better homes. This game can be very addictive early on, it’s always, just a little while more, I need to make my character happier (their mood in 8 different areas is displayed at the bottom of the screen), a better mood makes learning skills possible, and you will probably do better at work and with making friends with a good mood. However, after a while, the game can get a little annoying. It is micromanagement to the extreme. Especially when you tart having families. I usually start off with two people, already married, then in time, have about 4 kids, so that is managing 6 people, which can get somewhat hectic, but luckily they have a bit of AI and will act on their own, like if are hungry, they will eat.

However, once you get the cheats for this game, playing it becomes pointless. Why have a job when you can type “rosebud” and get $1,000? Why bother keeping up with relationships when a painting of Sean Connery (a download from someone’s website) can make all your neighbors your friend? The same goes for skill and personality.

The Sims has fair graphics and really appropriate music and sounds. Like, in the buy menu, it has music that makes you feel like you are in some 1950’s showroom buying a toaster. The sounds are very realistic and they made each area have the proper feel for the area. I don’t know what it is, but the neighborhood feels like a neighborhood.

This game has a ton of expansion packs, but I only liked it enough to get one other, Hot Date, which I kind of cool, but not worth twenty bucks. With it you can go downtown, which is very much like a town’s downtown and not a city’s downtown, aka: it looks like a very small community. You get more social options, which makes it much harder to make friends. It’s nice, but not all that great.

The feature that I think really saved this game is the ability for people to make their own objects in their house and outfits for their characters. Like, you can have Darth Vader marry Britney Spears and other weird stuff. You can download some really nice objects, like, I got this whole wine cellar set, a Japanese bed, a huge amount of outfits, a trashcan which turns garbage into money, pillars, stairs, soda machines, new plants, new tile, roofs, and wallpaper. Wait a second, I sound like I am playing house! That’s what this game really is, playing house. Once you realize that, your desire to play really stops. However, this is one of the top games girls like to play. About half the number of the Sims websites are done by girls, which is saying a lot. My desire to play the Sims has died down, it is a thing of the past, a game I no longer play. Why? Because it lacks gameplay, which if you have read any other of my reviews, is the most important part of any game. The gameplay in the Sims is not good or fair, but annoying. A new Sims is going to be coming out soon, but it looks like it is just like this game, but with better graphics, much better graphics. There are some people who created very pornographic stuff for their house. The newer the Sims have much more realistic, 3D, people and objects, which makes me wonder what horrors await this game online.

StarCraft: Brood War

Gametype:
Real Time Strategy

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StarCraft excels in one only one area, but that area have made StarCraft a very long lived game, still being played by many people to this day. That area is gameplay. StarCraft has quite possibly the best gameplay of any real-time strategy game. Any game to survive this long must have excellent replay value. The multiplayer online games, combined with excellent gameplay, have made this game one of the most played real-time strategy games. All three sides are very well balanced. That is, unless you are in a very long game as Protoss and you mind control another race’s worker and then play as multiple races, which is really hard to do unless you have an ally. The units in this game also make for very creative tactics. Occasionally you will be playing against someone who does something really insane, and you’re like “wtf?” But it works. Such as when playing as Zerg, the side that is entirely biological and works best with swarm tactics, a player could build huge amounts of overlords, which are not limited by supply, and then when you attack, send in a bunch of overloads to distract the enemy defenses while your attack units move in, or a Protoss strategy of sending in an arbiter and recalling a huge amount of reavers and completely annihilate the enemy’s harvesting, or a Terran strategy of having a line of tanks defending an area and then send in a ghost to nuke the enemy defenses, then move your tanks in, while your ally defends against air. But with several races playing on the same side, your attack possibilities are near infinite. Blizzard (the makers) also have very reliable online servers that are fast, which makes it much more fun than the incredibly slow Westwood servers that Command & Conquer uses.

This game is pretty much crap in all other areas. The plot of the single player game is really stupid and unbelievable. The music is terrible, and the graphics are very 1998. The video cut scenes are not that bad, but they are related to the plot, so that makes the cut scenes dumb. But StarCraft players do not really care about these things.

Another feature that makes this game last is an easy to use map editor. Games like the Command and Conquer series do not have one, which is a real shame since C&C units are almost exclusively ground units, which could make for some really interesting battles if you could design the ground. Most maps that are played online on Bizzard’s Battle.net for StarCraft are not maps made by Blizzard, but ones created by StarCraft players. Most maps people create are unsuccessful, but a select few have become popular. I have created about 6 maps, only 1 people thought was good, but I have only once seen a game set up with the map I made.

To sum this game up, it has the best gameplay I have seen of a real-time strategy game, with excellent multiplayer capability, but has terrible graphics, music, and sounds.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Gametype: RPG

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*best plot ever*

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One of the best features of this RPG game is an excellent plot. This plot is worthy of being made into a movie in my opinion. The plot itself is filled with history of all the events that led up to what you are facing. As you get companions you can learn about their past by interacting with them, and since you can have 3 characters at a time active, they can interact with each other. Their past also relates to the game events. However, these things alone do not make a great plot. What makes this game outstanding is the plot twist in the middle of the game. It’s one of those twists that you get subtle hints about throughout the game, but is so outrageous that you would never think of it on your own. Then, one it is spelled out for you, it can lead you on to think like, “no, it can’t be, I am probably being lied to”. Then, once flashbacks put everything in order, it makes a really scary kind of sense. I really liked to be surprised like that. There are hardly any games that do this with such detail.

The gameplay is very good. The battle scenes can take some getting used to since it is RPG battle and you order what type of your attacks your characters can do, plus they can do their own attacks without your intervention. It is similar to Super Mario Bros. RPG is that way, but you can pause it when you decide, pausing isn’t mandatory. The only flaw this game has is replay value. True there are many different options to each conflict you face, but after knowing how to solve things it looses some of the initial excitement. Also, it usually takes 30-70 hours to beat the game, depending on how many side tasks you do. For replay value: You can play as three different types of characters: soldier, scout, or scoundrel, and as two sexes, male or female, and can choose one of three different types of Jedi, Guardian, Sentinel, or Consular, and can pick two sides, light or dark, but you do not have to stick to one side throughout the game, though it is best to. So there is some replay value in the game due to being different characters. Another gameplay flaw is that you cannot go back to all the worlds you have been to once you go to the final planet, but this is necessary for the plot, still, it would be nice to go grab stuff and play around once you get a really powerful character at the end. However, even with these flaws I still rate this game as the best I have ever played.

Super Mario World

Gametype:
2D Action

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Plot: N/A

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WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos and Frozen Throne

Gametype:
Real Time Strategy

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