Overlord 2 Review

30 June 2009

The Good: Let you play as evil side, good humor, a lot of environments to explore, large variety of enemies
The Bad: The AI is still weak

You play as the Overlord (not the same one this time), an evil creature of darkness. Your mission is to bring destruction to the world. It’s your responsibility to bring down the reign of good and show the world who’s the boss…probably. As you play the game, you will realize that the Overlord is not (too) evil. The true evil is those who disguise as the good guys.

Just as the previous Overlord games, you have 4 type of minions to command, each one has their own specialties and weaknesses. It’s your job to command them in the name of evil and lead them into victory!

In Overlord 2, your minions can level up much like the RPG games. Higher level minions can have different title (aside from browns which depend on their equipments). Fallen minions can be resurrected at graveyard for a cost. As expected, higher ranks require more to return to the realm of mortal.

Another new feature is the ability to tame creatures, making them much stronger and give them special abilities (Each type of minions has different type of mount)

Forging is also different this time. Now, the Overlord lose the ability to upgrade his gears but his equipments come with special abilities such as fire and poison (much like most fantasy RPG games)

You also have a large variety of spells to choose from. But they’re not really effective and sometime make me forget that there are spells to cast.

Terminator: Salvation Review

26 June 2009

The Good: Terminator universe, interesting cover system
The Bad: “too Machine”, nothing that hasn’t been done before

Terminator: Salvation offers an interesting environment just as expected from a game that is based on the movies. The enemies are really detail and awesome. The weapons are flashy just as expected from a Terminator game (although it’s not “realistic” in term of damage)

Although intimidating, the enemies are not intelligent at all. I don’t know if they just tried hard to remind you that you’re facing the machines or they just don’t know how to make the AI. Either way, the machines in this game are too stupid and will make you wonder why humanity can be threatened by them.

The real gem of this game is its cover system. You can dash from cover to cover to flank the enemies (some enemies require flanking to destroy). It’s really easy to flank them as well thanks to the AI.

Prototype

14 June 2009

The Good: Satisfying brutality, open gameplay, interesting powers

The Bad: Terrible AI, weak stealth system

You are a mutant with the ability to transform your body into nearly anything imaginable and super strength. Using that ability, Alex Mercer (your character) can transform his arm into a large variety of close range weapons and use his strength to destroy anything stand in his way. Alex can even consume NPC to regain heath (which can be regen by not getting damage) and take his/her form. He can transform his legs to climb up buildings (believe me, he’s better and cooler than Spiderman in this job)


The AI in this game is really bad. You can kill a person and everyone won’t even notice that you just sent him flying across the street. They can just stand there and watch you transform into another person. All of that will happen unless you perform those actions right next to them. If you happen to damage (and destroy) a car, no one will get out of it, as if they really want to die with their precious cars.

Stealth system is not a good point either. Maybe because Alex is so powerful, it’s become useless to use stealth.




Alex’s powers are fun and impressively brutal. His arm can transform into claw, hammer, and whip (my favorite weapon so far)… He can also use every weapon and hijack military vehicles.

The city is large and pretty detail but it’s really boring after a while. The city controlled by 2 factions. There is a large variety of collectible and side quests.

Although flawed, Prototype is a great game to play. There are not many games that allow you to become a super villain and wreak havoc across the entire city.