pslayer wrote:
Darksiders and Amnesia are Epic!
I'd feel a lot better about Darksiders if it had a better rendering engine. Right now, all the lighting is so flat it's ridiculous. Sometimes it looks like there's just one light in the entire scene. So when he's outdoors, War casts a shadow, but when he pops into a building, no shadow at all, even though there's a light source right next to him. Sloppy stuff. Not to mention, there are hardly any graphics options at all - straight-up console port. Anyway, at least it's fun.
Ended up uninstalling Black Ops before I finished it. Quite a disappointment on the single player side. Every mission pretty much involved you going up against waves and waves of enemy soldiers. No pacing, very little buildup of tension, uninteresting (and fragmented) storytelling, some substandard texturing and a noticeable lack of polish. For instance, I play with an inverted Y axis for the mouse, but every time I get to control a homing missile, it uses default mouse controls instead, which really screws up my momentum. It's a very basic detail to overlook, which is near unforgivable for a AAA title. I feel a little bad for wailing on Treyarch, but this playthrough has just reinforced the fact that Infinity Ward = CoD. Of course, now that West and Zampella have left IW, even that's not guaranteed. I'd recommend Medal of Honor over Black Ops, at least for the single player campaigns.
Also uninstalled Mafia II before completion - that game was getting seriously annoying. While I loved a couple of things about the game, there was way too much they screwed up. First of all, it's nothing like a sandbox game. You pretty much have one thing you have to do at any given time, and nothing else really seems worth going out of the way to do (unlike any worthy sandbox game). Also, you don't decide
anything for the character - he pretty much reacts in whatever way the story decides is best and you just have to tag along, willing or not. Yeah I know most games do this in some form or the other, but the better ones prep you to empathise with your character and align your goals with his. Mafia II does no such thing.