Recent reviews by MP-Ryan

If you love Portal and Portal 2, then this game is for you. It's more Portal, and it's very well polished and professionally made. While I would have loved more time with some of the characters (and more development of them), and while the ending felt rushed and somewhat incomplete, on the whole this is a fantastic love letter to the Portal universe from a dedicated team of modders who made it purely out of their own free time. Huge kudos to the development team - this is genuinely a work of art.

If you've played Half-Life, you should play Black Mesa.

If you haven't played Half-Life, you should absolutely play Black Mesa.

Pretty much perfect. Can't give it any more praise than that. Well, except for the glitchy hat and pizza and teleporters/ladders/vents but hey, that's not mandatory.

As many have said before me, this game is Arkham Asylum meets Assassin's Creed meets Tomb Raider (the reboots). A fairly simple yet fun game with a lot of systems depth, the real story in this game is the stories the Nemesis system creates as you encounter enemies who have defeated you (and you defeated) again and again with new powers and fears. The written story drives the plot forward and is competently executed, but is nothing all that special - it's there, it serves its purposes, and it pushes the gameplay. The gameplay itself is a real treat - never so difficult that it drives you away in frustration, but not a cakewalk that will leave you unegaged either. The upgrade trees have depth and make you considerably more powerful as you go, but there are plenty of opportunities to take on your own challenges. For those who are not Tolkein fans, the backdrop of the game could have just as easily been any fantasy or sci-fi setting. The LOTR use with the orcs makes for a fun little foray into Tolkein's world, but it is by no means essential to know anything about it to enjoy this game.

It goes on steep sales now regularly, and is well worth picking up.

Dishonored is a game that pays fitting tribute to its predecessors in the stealth-action--RPG genre; games like Thief and Thief II, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution among others.

The game explores player choice in a backdrop with a stunning amount of world-building detail, immersive and compelling mechanics, artsyle, and rich story. It's at its best when you sneak your way through the corrupted City in a non-lethal run, but it is sufficiently balanced that all kinds of playstyles can - and should - be explored.

Above all, the game is fun, immersive, and highly enjoyable. I can't sing it's praises enough. It has been criticized for flat characters in NPCs, which I can understand if not entirely agree with, and it has a few minor frustrations (spawning enemies in a stealth game), but this game shines. It's a must play for anyone who enjoyed the titles I mentioned a the start of this review, including the DLC.

The continuation of the excellent Morrowind and Oblivion, Skyrim streamlines many of the biggest complaints fans had from those games (the obtuse and painful levelling systems among them) and continues the experience of the biggest open-world fantasy RPGs ever made.

Like the previous games, you're going to want to get the Unofficial Community Patches (Google it) to fix some of the more glaring issues, and the modding community is huge.

Much like the previous games, Skyrim also suffers from some lack of depth; the consequences of player actions are limited in overall scope, which is unfortunate. This is similar to other bethesda games, including The Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises. Ultimately, depth gets somewhat sacrificed for the huge scope and freedom of the game.

That said, Skyrim is still an amazing experience that any fan of RPGs of any kind should strongly consider playing. The 'lack of depth' critique only holds true in comparison to other fairly linear RPGs (Deus Ex franchise, Mass Effect, Witcher, etc) and should not be taken as a negative so much as something Bethesda needs to work on going forward.

Perhaps this game was good when first released on consoles, but it hasn't aged well. It's pretty much the epitome of terrible console port - starting with the menu and exit game mechanism that makes it literally take several minutes to quit unless you press ALT-F4. Seriously Ubisoft - 6 menus to quit the game?

Beyond that, as the game is called Assassin's Creed you would be forgiven for thinking it will be about stealth assassination. Generally, it's not - very few of the true assassinations in the main plot allow different angles of approach or stealth mechanics. You would assume an assassin would prefer to avoid doing their work in public, or would prefer to use a handy bow from a nearby roof - you would be wrong, though. Rather, you are expected to get in close, which inevitably means getting into combat. That's also a strike - the combat is bloody terrible. Again, the console port-ness appears, as the combat is typical of other console ports (I'm looking at you, Prince of Persia Sands of Time) and is not at all intuitive for PC players. Much of it relies on timing moves, which don't appear to register well, and are better suited to a controller. In fact, the majority of the game is best suited for a controller - or to be watched in a LP rather than played.

TL;DR: For a game that was published well after the Thief series, Deus Ex, and a myriad of others that contain aspects of stealth assassination, they all do it much better than Assassin's Creed. I bought this for $7 and I drastically overpaid.

NOT recommended.

I cannot say enough good things about this game. If you like System Shock 2 and the original BioShock, you'll love this.

While Bioshock Infinite has received considerable amounts of criticism and praise from various members of the gaming community at large, both largely miss the mark. Infinite manages to tell a story by juxtaposing gameplay, environments, and narrative that are largely at odds with each other through most of the game and can appear quite jarring. This is intentional. There is supposed to be dissonance and conflict between the actions you are required to perform, and the story which you are a part of. To say Bioshock Infinite is about the themes of racism, jingoism, and American Exceptionalism is to miss the point entirely; it's like saying "Gulliver's Travels" [Jonathan Swift] is about a man who travels to various countries and meets non-human inhabitants.

Superficially, Bioshock Infinite is a shooter/action game with interesting narrative and escort mechanics that may feel at odds with the shooter gameplay. Truthfully, Bioshock Infinite is an experiment in gaming as art, and deserves to be played on that basis alone.

That said, unless you get them for cheap, skip the DLC - the arena is a fun extension of the BSI combat system and is a blast if you're into that, but the Burial at Sea episodes are a supremely unsatisfying extension of the BSI story and linkage to the events of Rapture.