Recent reviews by Eqo

Relax on a beach. Explore your tropical island. Explore the ocean and a dozen other tropical islands. Explore secret caves. Explore vast cities. Explore ancient mysteries. Meet interesting characters from all over the islands, and even from other planets. Pet dogs. Raise chickens. Pet the chickens too. Craft things. Go fishing. This is a great game.

I enjoyed Deiland, and Summer in Mara is a strong improvement in every aspect. Every aspect. The world is so much bigger, and there's a lot more to do. Crafting is still a big part of the progression, but it doesn't feel tedious. The islands I've explored so far feel different from each other. The characters all feel unique.

Players new to these games will enjoy everything without feeling like they're missing anything. Players familiar with Deiland will also appreciate the references and tie-ins.

One minor thing that feels like a major thing to me is the fishing gameplay. I can catch fish! I feel like I'm actually doing something and have gotten better at it. Fishing in Deiland was mainly throwing your computer out a window in frustration unless you could literally see the future to know what random controller button would be the "catch" button this time, with only 0.001 seconds to press it.

I could probably type more, but I want to go play the game more.

I was hesitant to pay full price for a game so early in its development, and honestly I wish I'd saved my money.

THE GOOD:
The atmosphere and music are both relaxing. The characters are adorable. The crafting system is massive. You can build with much more than just blocks. Multiplayer lets you visit friends and build together. There's an in-game system which allows you to vote on what features the devs should concentrate on next.

THE BAD:
The devs put this game in the back of their minds to develop Defense Grid 2, so there were almost no noteworthy updates last year. Many significant features (story, character progression, combat) still aren't in the game. There hasn't been any word at all from the devs in 7 months, and I don't expect there to be anytime soon. I suspect Windborne will permanently stay in an alpha stage. Very unfortunate, since this game takes place in such a wonderful universe and has so much potential.

THE CONCLUSION:
If you want to spend time exploring a cute world and playing with blocks, there are worse ways to spend your money. Since this game isn't a priority for the developers, I cannot recommend buying it at this time. Hopefully someday the devs will put more effort into finishing Windborne, and at that point I will be more than happy to write a "Recommended" review.

Wow. That story. There are a number of twists along the way...and then when you get to the ending...wow! That ending shocked me. This game has (in alphabetical order) agony, hope, joy, love, regret, spite, suspicion, wonder. You absorb it all in less than one hour. Intense!

This game is a lot of fun. If you like Grand Theft Auto but want a straight PvP experience, this is for you. There are NPCs who give you missions, but the missions are all PvP. It's still fun to play alone when I have some time to kill, but it's a far better experience if you can partner up with at least one other person to help coordinate against your opposition.

A wide variety of mission objectives keeps things very interesting. It's rarely a situation of "kill all the cops before they kill you." Jacking cars, tagging walls, hacking satellite dishes, stealing people's organs for sale on the black market, bounties on high threat players, bombing buildings, mugging people, stealing and destroying evidence before it can get into a court, street racing, raiding electronics and jewelry stores, fencing the stolen goods, laundering money...it's crazy how much trouble you can cause!

Customization is awesome. You can apply custom graphics all over your car, your clothes, your body. People who don't like the in-game clothing options will often tattoo their own clothing designs right onto their characters' bodies. It makes for a really deep customization experience, and you'll regularly be turning your head to get a closer look at what cool customization someone else has come up with. It is amazing.

I have one complaint. This game is most definitely "pay-to-win." $40 of G1C (cash shop currency) gets you an amazing gun with amazing mods that eats through all other players easily. So if you usually spend $40 on a game you'll play for a couple hundred hours, go for that since you otherwise don't need to spend any money to play this game. People who spend money will often beat you no matter how skilled you become.

The cash shop has cheaper pay-to-win guns, but they expire after X number of days. The guns you buy with in-game money all expire after 10 days. Fortunately there's not much else to do with all the in-game money you accumulate so it doesn't really hurt.

If you accidentally buy this game when you are drunk, you will not regret it.

It's low definition MacGyver. Save the day within 20 seconds or the level explodes. Some of the puzzle solutions make sense when you're sober. Most of them only make sense when you're drunk. Once you master McPixel, you will find all other point-and-click adventure games to be very easy by comparison.

Very fun game! Imagine what would happen if Unreal Tournament had a night of passion with Firefly and Invader Zim. Co-op FPS+RPG featuring hilarious jokes, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, hilarious jokes, robots, lasers, hilarious jokes, spaceships, mutants, hilarious jokes, dragons, pirates, hilarious jokes... You get the picture.

The base game alone offers a lot. It took 40 hours to get through the story campaign, after which I was only level 33. The original side missions go up to level 50. Each of the DLC campaigns adds a full new story, new maps, new side missions, new items, and new skins. One DLC increases the level cap to 61 and another to 72, allowing you to unlock more skills for your characters. The "Badass Rank" system is unlimited, so in theory you can get infinite stat boosts to make your characters infinitely powerful.

The two DLC characters are very fun to play. They feel very different from the original four characters by bringing unique playstyles. Gaige has a giant pet robot of doom, and a stackable Anarchy mechanic which encourages you to sacrifice accuracy and clip size in favor of chaos and explosions. She also has the most adorable catchphrases. Krieg is a psycho (one of the enemies you commonly face) and is actually more effective without shields and when he's lit on fire. He regains his health by decapitating foes with a buzzsaw axe and bathing in their blood. His catchphrases are very disturbing, and you will either hate him or love him. There is no middle ground with Krieg.

I played the first 40 hours solo, and after experiencing the story I started playing through the DLC campaigns co-op with my friends. I'm a completionist and there are a ton of achievements, so I'll be playing the side missions and exploring the world to unlock everything. Co-op is definitely a fun experience, but the game offers a lot for solo players as well. I've played so much and still have not experienced most of the content. This game is definitely worth the money.

Gunslinger is by far the best game in the CoJ franchise. If you want a wildly entertaining single player FPS set in the old west, this is the game for you. You're a retired bounty hunter in a saloon where people buy you drinks to hear your stories. The further into the game you go, the more drinks you've had, so the stories get more exaggerated. When bar patrons catch you in a lie, the level quickly changes as you try to adapt your story. It's pretty hilarious. The cell shaded graphics look great. The skill trees in both Story and Arcade mode really change the way you play. I got through Story mode on easy difficulty in about 10 hours, and have since been replaying on a harder difficulty as well as spending time in Arcade mode. There are more environmental traps to watch out for on the harder difficulty settings, such as mining carts flying through tunnels which will kill you if you don't get out of the way in time.

Very fun! The main point of this game is to cause as much chaos and destruction as possible. I finished the main story when the map was only 30% complete, but there are 49 side missions across the three gang factions, and an unending supply of things to blow up and militants to slaughter. I never realized there were so many ways to kill someone using only a grappling hook...

This game is immensely entertaining. It's similar to Mario Kart, but as you level up the characters you unlock a lot of mods for your transforming vehicles to really customize how they handle. Using certain characters with certain mods gives strong advantages depending on which game mode and which map you're racing on. There's a lot of variety in the weapons, and you can use each in multiple ways. Game modes include typical kart racing with weapons, kart racing with no weapons, versus, sprint, drift challenge, boost challenge, ring race, battle royale deathmatch, and one where you have to blow up a giant tank without taking damage from fireballs and other obstacles. It's crazy.

You start with a wide variety of characters and unlock many more as you play. Sega also adds new characters in updates pretty often. There are characters from Sonic games, Company of Heroes, Crazy Taxi, Football Manager, Nights into Dreams, Skies of Arcadia, Space Channel 5, Super Monkey Ball, Team Fortress 2, Total War, Wreck-It Ralph, and more. It's actually rather absurd how many different characters and vehicles there are!

C class matches are a great way to learn the maps and controls. To win B class matches you need to start drifting. A class and Expert matches require a lot of fast thinking as you chain drifts with boosts and get to the shortcut routes. A class matches are very challenging for me.

The online multiplayer community is full of dedicated, skilled Sonic fans, so even today there is no problem finding intense matches.

What sets this apart from other shooters is the overall theme. Everything feels honest and real, from the syrettes and the malaria to the politics and ultimately the narrative. Without spoiling anything, I'll say your mission from the beginning is to take out an arms dealer, but as you get acquainted with other characters it becomes something much more. No matter which character you play as, you aren't a hero — you're not even a remotely good guy. As the story progresses you will come to terms with that fact, and how you deal with it is entirely up to you. By the end this game delivers a very powerful message.

I really like the open world and how missions can be completed in many different ways, both by teaming up with the NPC buddies (optional) and also by learning the enemies' realisitc AI. Enemies react differently based on the weather, time of day, which weapons you're using, etc. It's a really deep system if you want to learn all the ins and outs. Otherwise just play it like any other game and it's still fun.

There's a lot of variety in the landscape: jungles, plains, mountains, deserts, etc. There's also a lot of detail: Blades of grass part realistically when you sneak through fields. Hang gliders are a great way to travel and provide some amazing scenic views along the way. The Act 2 map is just as large as the Act 1 map, which I thought was already large enough for the entire game to take place in. That was a really great surprise.

The Fortune's DLC adds a lot of new side missions to complete whenever you want to work on them, which add a lot of lore to what's going on in the war torn country. It also adds a little ATV which is by far the fastest means of getting around, and a crossbow which shoots incendiary arrows that explode on impact.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed every hour of Far Cry 2. I found it to be much more immersive than the first game. It still looks great today, and now that Far Cry 3 is out the price is really low!