Duke Webem Archives: Reviews
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29 April 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV
Otherwise, GTA IV is the 10/10 you were expecting. Almost everything you do in Liberty City would be good enough to drive its own game, and the best parts would be good enough to outrun the competition, but the reason it works so well is that Rockstar has made a game that requires no patience [...]
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10 December 2007
Unreal Tournament III
As good as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Frontlines: Fuel of War and Team Fortress 2 are, Unreal Tournament III is the most intense and ridiculous of the bunch. What it lacks in terms of bold innovation, it more than makes up for in terms of raw playability and refined execution, and Epic has come up [...]
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20 November 2007
Mass Effect
For what it achieves in delivering a compelling narrative and wonderful atmosphere, BioWare deserves a huge amount of credit, as there are few games that come anywhere near it in this regard. The dialogue system, and the impact it has on individual missions and the game as a whole is exceptional, adding greatly to the [...]
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13 November 2007
Assassin’s Creed
It’s a fitting end to a game that starts off brightly, wriggling elusively as you try and grasp what’s going on, delighting in the mechanics and beautiful visuals, before sinking into a pattern that, while fairly gratifying, never evolves and ultimately becomes a bit boring, and quite amazingly repetitive. After each briefing, you travel the [...]
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23 October 2007
Conan
Conan doesn’t set its sights high enough to set anyone’s world on fire, and there’s not really enough meat on the bone to recommend an immediate full price purchase, but it is a well-paced and generally satisfying hunk of tongue-in-cheek gory action. The lack of real depth to the combat engine means it’ll never match [...]
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21 August 2007
Bioshock
BioShock is the ultimate rarity: not only does it live up to its lofty promise, but exceeds it through simple, old fashioned talent and imagination – not to mention verve, style,class, wit, and sheer bloody-minded ambition. It takes the tired, worn-out FPS genre by the scruff of the neck, reinvents and bend it out of [...]
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26 June 2007
Overlord
Overlord may remind the more experienced gamer of a mass of things, but it’s only so identifiable as they’re conventions which relatively few games have used successfully. And when a few quick clicks send a spindly-limbed wave heading over to cause havoc, it’s its own thing. As much of a monster as you are, when [...]
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25 June 2007
The Darkness
In a year absolutely crammed with interesting-looking first-person shooters, you’ve got to come up with a game of extraordinary quality to rise above the competition. The Darkness has come along at simultaneously the best- and worst-possible time: on the one hand, it has arrived before it risked being drowned out in a fiercely competitive market, [...]
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19 June 2007
Colin McRae: DiRT
A lengthy and eclectic career mode is just the start of what DiRT offers, with Championship mode allowing for full-length rallies to be played out and Rally World mode letting you play any course that has come up in career mode. The Live side of things is equally bountiful, offering Forza fans and Gotham kids [...]
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7 November 2006
Gears of War
In a sense, Gears of War lives up to expectations in that it’s one of the most intensely beautiful-looking games ever made, but is one that plays by the rules in the gameplay stakes. If you want to gorge on a next generation audio-visual feast then Gears of Wars is a king’s banquet. But what [...]