Recent reviews by Ace Briggs

Enslavement, mass murder, grand larceny, ecoterrorism, illicit manufacturing, and now counterfeiting never had such a happy ending.

Would recommend Pokemon: Gun.

I know they see these reviews, so the message is simple:

Remove EAC and fix your draconian mod views or the entire game will wither.

Every round the series has been released, there have been more and more improvements made, and the latest is no exception, with the widest variety of jobs to do to date. Well done, Giant!

RIP AND TEAR UNTIL IT IS DONE, AND THEN RIP AND TEAR EVEN MORE

WITNESS ME

I've owned this game for just over 4 years now, and in those 4 years, I cannot say I've grown tired of it. If you enjoyed the mechanics of the first Portal game, this second serving of science will only satisfy you further. Between the beautiful graphics, quite good replay value, co-op mode, and the absolutely perfect soundtrack, I find myself constantly coming back to Portal 2 again and again, discovering something new each time I run through the story mode. With it's lack of violence and relatively calm language, Portal 2 is an all-ages game, perfect for the whole family. An absolute must for any gaming collection!

Although the storyline is solid, and the car models are beautiful, inside and out, the game's physics are atrocious. With only WASD controls, just about every car handles as though it is on ice. Using a race wheel may help, but for those who don't own one, your 2 options of tire-spinning full throttle or locked-up brakes make gameplay quite difficult at the best of times.

Along with the horrid keyboard driving controls, the NPC drivers tend make gameplay even less enjoyable. If civilian cars aren't gluing their rear bumpers to your front when you rear end someone at high speed, swerving with you until you stop, back up, and then swerve around them, the unreliable, inconsistent police AI will drive you mad. In some cases they can be easily outrun on a long, flat stretch, other times they keep up with you at speeds approaching 170 mph (I've clocked them) in vehicles seemingly as strong as tanks that handle like they are glued to the tarmac, while in standard, NPC-started car chases they barely crack 80 and drive like they're going on a Sunday cruise. Adding to the police chases is the cops' tendancy to spawn just ahead of you 2 seconds before you escape, making for incredibly aggrivating runs through San Francisco.

Last but not least is Ubisoft's game launcher. During the quite frequent spells when the launcher will not sync up with the Ubisoft network, the multiplayer game mode is deactivated. Out of my close to 100 hours* in the game, about 70 of those hours were done in 'offline-mode', a shame, as the few times I was able to play multiplayer with friends, even with the terrible controls, much fun was still had.

All in all, the graphics are incredible, the story line well thought out, and the variety of vehicles available is quite impressive, but the poor driving physics and terrible AI really drag the game down, along with Ubisoft's unreliable game launcher. I honestly wonder how the game was rated so high by professional critics.

*Contrary to what my Steam game hours may show, I have actually devoted closer to 100 hours to the game, beating the Campaign mode, and nearly completing all extra challenges. The Ubisoft game launcher system doesn't function too well with Steam when it comes to Steam acknowledging Driver: San Francisco has actually started, and in order to get Steam to recognize I am playing the game, I need to tab back over to Steam once the game has started and press the play button once again, which then 'officially' shows me as playing the game. After a while I got sick of bothering, and just played in 'non-Steam' mode, hence the low Steam hours.

It may be the older version, meaning it is fairly limited in terms of truck customization and map extensiveness (somewhat limited on total locations), but if you can get past that, its highly addictive, and for those who enjoy a good driving simulator, surprisingly good fun. The low price is also a very good selling point, giving you a pretty well-done, immersive game experience, more than you'd get from just the demo for Euro Truck Simulator 2. A good stepping stone to warm up for ETS2. Overall rating: 9/10, just wish the trucks could be customized a little more.

Real blood, real violence, tons of swearing, many real-world weapons, many different characters to choose from, epic soundtrack, the list just goes on and on as to whats so awesome about this game. It can take some time to really get the hang of things for those new to the game, but once you've got some time under your belt everything becomes even more epic. A HUGE upgrade in gaming from the wallet-draining TF2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7nRaxop_U4