Recent reviews by Salad

Watched the traffic in Puerto Sombra go insane, driving off the road, honking at walls, running over old ladies (which triggered the combat music) and all Saul Myers could do was yawn.

Boiling Point is super janky, partially insane, very interesting mechanically, and pretty fun overall. Similar to Deus Ex, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., TES III: Morrowind, and Far Cry 2 - except it pre-dates two of those!

My only serious, show-stopping gripe with the game is the unpredictable save corruption bug. Strongly recommended to jank enjoyers, but if you're looking for something polished, stay away.

(Played with the unofficial patch installed)

Kinda like Burnout but off-road on dirtbikes and ATVs with an emphasis on big air and generally defying physics. It's a little janky, but not too much.

DUSK is a superb retro horror shooter that stands alongside the shooters of old, and even surpasses them in some ways. The guns are all great, the atmosphere is fantastic, the soundtrack is awesome, the levels are excellent and for ♥♥♥♥'s sake buy DUSK already

10/10

"REMEMBER MY NAME. RESPECT MY SKILLS. DEATH, AND DEATH, AND... DEATH. Ow, pain! Stop it!"
- Simon Bukner

NecroVisioN is a supernatural WWI shooter loosely based off the Painkiller mold. It's also made by The Farm 51, which means it's pretty fun and has heart and interesting ideas, but it's janky as all get-out.

+ About a third of the way into the game it starts going nuts and things get interesting real fast
+ The Shadowhand is almost as cool as the Painkiller from Painkiller
+ Decent graphics
+ You get to ride a janky dragon

/ The level of jank is through the roof
/ Pretty average shooting
/ Not the worst voice acting I've heard
/ Decent but very, very repetitive soundtrack

- Fairly sluggish movement
- The machine guns shake the screen so violently you'll probably lose track of what's going on
- First third of the game is just okay
- Gets repetitive at times
- Useless iron sights

Worth playing, but don't take it too seriously.

7/10

Re-enact all of your favorite moments from the movie John Wick, such as:

The part where John Wick fired rockets at civilians
The part where John Wick killed a thousand cops with a bow and arrows in a couple of hours
The part where John Wick took his man-portable minigun and went out of his way to kill an Elvis impersonator for no reason
The part where John Wick wore Majora's Mask and shot a thousand more cops with his signature guns akimbo
The part where John Wick told a mortally-wounded clown "YOU CAN DO IT" and that was enough to make the clown resume his murder spree
The part where John Wick set every single person in a car shop on fire and drove off in the most expensive car they had
The part where John Wick cooked meth while simultaneously killing another thousand cops with the dumbest-looking gun you've ever seen
The part where John Wick said he's back

None of this happens in the movie, except the part where John Wick says he's back.

And then he shoots a rocket at a civilian.

What? Oh, right, the game!

+ The guns and gunplay feel good and weapon customization is neat
+ The characters are fun
+ Excellent soundtrack
+ Surprisingly decent driving mechanics, considering driving was added post-launch

/ P2P netcode means you can usually play with minimal noticable lag, but it also means you'll usually see a very different scene from the host and you'll sometimes see NPCs (and players) walking through walls and hovering in mid-air

- Runs on one of the strangest engines I've ever seen
- Many, many stupid mechanics (Grenades and rockets getting shot out of the air, weak enemies dealing extreme damage, hidden weapon stats, almost everything about stealth, Cloakers, Shields, Tasers, etc.)
- A whole heap of paid content
- Team AI is generally useless

It's stupid and I hate it and I couldn't stop playing it for a long time.

7/10

--- The Lost and Damned ---

I'd heard that TLAD was mediocre and paled in comparison to the base game and The Ballad of Gay Tony, but I actually liked it a lot more than the base game.

+ Johnny handles motorcycles way better than Niko handles cars
+ There aren't any really bad bikes (while most of the cars are terrible)
+ You can get bikes for free and guns at a discount whenever you want by calling your gang members
+ At the end of an early mission, the game tries to make you think it's gonna go all San Andreas and let your gang get pushed around by a couple of corrupt cops, but you just go kill them in the next mission
+ You don't get called to go do things with your friends all the time
+ This game introduces the sawn-off shotgun, which is the most hilariously overpowered gun to use on a motorcycle
+ Also introduces a few more guns that are more interesting than anything in GTA IV: An automatic pistol, a street sweeper shotgun and a grenade launcher
+ I enjoy playing as bikers in games and Johnny has a sweet jacket

/ The story is still generally joyless
/ The story is short, but there are a lot of side jobs, gang wars and races to do as well
/ Johnny flipping his ♥♥♥♥ in combat for little reason can be alternately hilarious and annoying. "F*** YOU! F*** YOU! F*** YOU F*** YOU F*** YOU F*** YOU!" (this is all one line)

- Only 2 safehouses, both very close together, and you can only use one or the other for most of the plot
- Johnny runs slower than Niko and Luis if he's holding a weapon
- The bike handling is still iffy, and the 4-wheeled vehicle handling is iffy at best
- The death metal station has like 8 songs on it so if you listen to it a lot it will repeat all the time
- No character customization

TLAD is still no San Andreas or Vice City but it's a pretty good game.

B.D. Joe & All-Stars Racing Transformed is wonderfully arcadey, bright, colorful, runs silky-smooth and is generally a truckload (or boatload (or planeload)) of fun to play. It's the best racing game I've played in a long time.

+ Colors! Cheer!
+ Arcadey
+ Challenging
+ Makes very effective use of Wii-tier models & textures - Looks great and runs very nicely
+ I've only played a couple of the games represented in this game for a few minutes apiece and I still love almost all of the characters (Amigo)
+ Good soundtrack
+ Lag shouldn't effect your movement too much online, with one major exception...

- Vehicle-on-vehicle collisions online. Good God, the vehicle-on-vehicle collisions online. Some games try to handle physics but it still doesn't work too good. This game just doesn't handle physics. They don't even work for the host player. Works okay offline, though.
- S-Class AI tends to be a bag of ♥♥♥♥♥
- There is a ramp on Burning Depths that you can crash into while trying to go over it, and you will lose if this happens. This is dumb.


Verdict: I love it.

9/10

"Killing Floor is... set in the devastated cities and countryside of England... You and your friends are members of the military..."

Or maybe you're in an American hillbilly cottage. Or the Aperture Science labs. Or Hell. And maybe you and your friends are a robot, a man in a chicken suit, a scientist, a DJ, a fireman and another guy wearing a chicken suit. I'm not sure.

Whatever, go buy your AA-12s, flare revolvers, automatic grenade launchers and Claymore swords and scatter some Specimen parts around whatever environment you may currently be in.

Don't forget the British accents and the sick heavy metal/industrial/drum & bass soundtrack.

What other game lets you put on a neon pink superhero costume and space helmet, take down a fighter jet (that shoots lasers) with exploding squids, and then dance on the burning wreckage?

"Hold on... Where-? Where the hell's my car? Where the hell's my BODY?!"

Fun stuff. Don't let it sit in your library for 2 years before playing it like I did.