Recent reviews by The Empty

The skinny: Tasteful goth 2d Darksouls. Be warned: avoid melee, go for magic.
Features a 12 year old wearing corpse paint, so 10/10.

No joke though, this goes on my short list of greatest games of all time. The writing, art design, and gameplay are all top notch, good enough to make up for it looking like a ps3 game and running like a ps2 one.

Can't recommend as a game as it's really only a barebones concept demo in a largely unfinished environment, but I don't regret buying it as the opening cutscene is possibly the best I've ever seen in a horror game.

An excellent remake. Manages to trim the fat of some sections without feeling like a cut-down experience.

A masterpiece which modern mainstream players will hate.

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This is why the ID Tech 5 engine failed to make a splash like the Tech 4 did. I used to think the early Unreal Engine 3 titles had bad texture popping issues. That was nothing compared to this. In addition, the game doesn't look especialy good, nor perform especial well.
As for the game it's self, its a half hearted mixture between Fallout 3 and Burnout, with an entire TWO quest hubs, a small, liniar 'open world', a suprisingly short length and an uninspired story.
Maybe next time, ID.

out of Ten.

Voice commands are a neat gimmic, but they don't work here. Random commands and poor recognition soon made me turn the feature off. Even with this mechanic them out of the equasoion, and Binary Domain is still a stellar and largly overlooked title.
The writing won't blow you away, the charicters are all cliche, and the story has been done to death before, but all three of these elements are still executed novely enough to more than simply keep you interested. In a nutshell, the game is Terminator action in the Bladerunner world, with Gears of War gameplay. What makes this title stand out the most though is an aspect of shooter games that often goes overlooked: the impact that your shots make on your enemies.
In a world overpopulated by zombie shooters, robots seem like a brave choise for a new ip. I think one of the main reasons people like zombies is that they splat rather well. Sega took this cue and actually made robots VISCERAL, and not in an Ash from Alien kind of way. The fantastic maner in which scrap metal is shead when these bots are shot makes combat a real charm. More games could learn from Sega's direction here.
The imact of bullets is somthing that rarely seems to get attention in games. It is for this reason that the origional Hous of the Dead remains a favorite. Sega really knows how to make 'em fall apart right! Somthing that The House of the Dead got right that this game has failed horribly at is having a decent cover. The Binary Domain cover couldn't have looked more generic if it actually tried to.

Le Robot out of Ten

Half Life 1’s GoldSrc engine is a modified version of ID’s Quake Engine. Where ID revolutionised the FPS genera with it’s full 3D engine and popular multiplayer component, Valve’s success with a Half Life 1 and Counterstrike arguably eclipsed ID’s title. Being the good sports they are, Valve remade Quake’s original ground breaking death match in their engine as a homage to the developers who built the FPS genera from the ground up.

Nine Inch Nailgun out of Ten

At it’s heart, Killing Floor is a simple coop based wave survival FPS with classes. What makes this game so endearing is it’s well balanced difficulty and excellent weapons. For a game that started out as an Unreal 2003 Mod, developer Tripwire have earned themselves a considerable following. I especially admire their continued development on the title even well after it has grown old.

Duke’s first step into the third dimension is comparable to Doom to the extent that Mr. Nukem himself makes the comparison (“One doomed space marine!”) when encountering a corpse clad in a familiar set of green armor (and I don’t mean bloody Master Chief!). Though the gameplay in the two titles are practically identical, and the weapons similarly excellent (though a little more novel in DN3D), where The Duke surpasses his predecessor is level design. The brown mazes of Mars and Hell are replaced with actual set pieces, resulting in far more satisfying levels. Whilst Duke’s ‘humour’ will be very hit and miss, depending on how the individual player perceives it, it can’t be denied that this game brings more to the table in terms of style and character.

In a nutshell, 3D Realms took the stellar foundation laid by ID and developed a far more compelling experience, making it a notable mile stone in the early history of FPS. It's too bad his reputation today lies in ruins.

Single Dollar Bills out of Ten

It took Frictional Games a couple of tries to perfect their take on survival horror. The original Penumbra (2007) was original and nicely atmospheric, but flawed due to its atrocious combat. I get that they were going for difficult mechanics to make the player favour flight over fight, but I felt that their efforts back fired and hurt the game over all. The sequel (2008) fixed what was wrong with the original, and made for an excellent experience, and its famous spiritual successor, the outstanding Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) finally got the devs the acclaim that they deserved.

It should be of no surprise then that when it was announced that the provocatively titled Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was to be developed by The Chinese Room (famous for their intriguing interactive poem Dear Ester (2012), I was plenty excited. Whilst the game they released certainly contained the excellent prose and visuals they introduced to us with their former game, I was disappointed to find A Machine for Pigs played out like a rather dull ghost train, rather than the panicky terror Frictional had accustomed me to. The entire experience was over in a few short hours, there was only two enemy encounters, and dying had no consequence other than to mysteriously erase my foe.

I’m not at all against games being presented as a linear art piece to simply immerse yourself in and ride out, but when I was expecting this title to be consistent with its predecessors, I was left entirely disappointed. I imagine that I would have enjoyed my time in the belly of the beast far more had the title not bore the Amnesia moniker. This situation reminds me of the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) earning a hostile reaction for not feeling like a Final Fantasy adaptation (no, calling a character Cid is not enough).

I Can't Remember out of Ten