Solid game with lots of polish, but with some very annoying flaws.
923327
Don't let the PC users' reviewbombs scare you; there are no performance issues on the Playstation 4. This game is really fun and might as well be Arkham City 2. The bad things? Sidequests can be very repetitive, the story's twists can be deduced by Batman franchise veterans half an hour into the game, and (although fun to drive) there is WAY too much Batmobile business going on here.
3731450
Let me start by saying that Gears of War is an outstanding game.  It is very well polished with no major glitches and excellent graphics.  I can say with a high degree of confidence that most people will find it to be worth their while.  Please excuse my gratuitous comparisons to Halo in terms of quality.

That said, I was disappointed in several departments.  The much flouted cover function can seem almost broken quite often; since the A-button is entirely context sensitive, most people will find themselves getting killed in horribly frustrating incidents.  For example, (and this has happened to me) a player might try to roll away from an enemy only find their character slam himself behind a piece of cover and get killed.  Other aspects of the gameplay, such as the chainsaw bayonet, can prove equally frustrating, since a single hit will stun your character while he is revving his chainsaw.  At its best, the Gears single player campaign approaches the brilliance of Halo.  Unfortunately, these types of moments have the player shouting at the screen and throwing his or her controller just as often as they have the player dropping their jaw in amazement.

Overall, however, the single player is tremendous.  Unfortunately, and counter intuitively, it's no fun to play by oneself.  The horrible ally AI limits the player to the lower difficulty levels, so unless you have either an XBOX Live account or a good friend to play with the campaign is no good.  Once you add that second person, however, the game really takes off.  I have finished this game once on the easiest difficulty setting, once on the medium difficulty setting, and am now almost done with it on the highest difficulty setting.  This game entices the player to go back and try it on a harder difficulty, since (at least for me) it is a slow game to learn.  I can honestly say that this is one of the most satisfying single player experiences on the market.

For me, the multiplayer is sub-par.  It feels far less precise than Halo 2 did on XBL, and the matchmaking system in miles behind Halo 2.  This is an often mentioned complaint, but i figure i might as well say it again.  Now, I am terrible at Gears multiplayer, so please take my assessment of it with a grain of salt.  Practically everyone I know who has played it enjoys it, so even if I don't recommend it I'm willing to wager that you will.

Overall, Gears of War is a solid game marred by some of the annoyances I mentioned here as well as myriad others that can simply drive a gamer crazy.  I hate having to sit through dialogue every time I die in campaign without being able to skip it, and the one vehicle portion is a bit of a mess.  These complaints don't make me regret owning it, however, and if I were to pick a list of the top five games for XBOX 360 there is no doubt that this would be on my list.  I just wanted to warn prospective buyers that while Gears maintains a consistent level of excellence, it is the most constantly frustrating game I have ever played.  So please, don't let this article dissuade you from buying it, and don't expect yourself to have the same complaints as I have.  Just be warned, despite what many might be saying, this probably isn't the best game on XBOX 360.
3645981
firstly, this game is definately the best game so far in it's genre. do not hesitate to buy it. single player 'easy' mode is fine and over quite quickly, but the remaining difficulty levels prove far more challenging. this sets you up nicely for the online play, which is where i think this game really excels. you have to bring your A-game to the table online to really get into it though. however this is also where the frustration (and annoyance sets in). if only the following could be banned online: 1. immature trash talking kids 2. clicky groups constantly congratulating themselves or crying when they lose 3. unsociable retards. your gaming experience online is ruined by these 3. when you can find people other than these it is truly an exciting, fun and otherworldly experience. lastly, when developing the sequal please make the character move more quickly, crouch anywhere and not stick to everything...thx
1470636
I struggled if I should give this a 3 or 4 star rating. In practice its really more like 3.5.

I really want to love this game. There is a ton of fun to be had in it with the exploration, resource gathering and management, and the overall concept. In a regard, it is sort of like having young children. You love them despite the frustration they constantly bring upon you.

The game's Sentinel (aka Police) system including the mining of resources as a crime is ridiculous and frustrating. You need to mine to proceed and the game expects you to. Having to fight off these robots to do such a mundane task is infuriating.

A lack of a functional map or even the ability to set waypoints means you better enjoy what you find while you are there because you are never going to be able to find it again. The same is true for entire planets and star systems. Why they don't include at least something basic to help you at least remember where you have been is beyond me.

The above coupled with a constant "fuel is burning" system where even on the most earth like hospitable planets you are always fighting a timer for life support is slightly annoying. If you happen to be on a toxic or extreme planet you sometimes can't venture more than a few meters from your ship. Finally, with the default ship the fuel consumption for taking off and landing is very high while basic planetary propulsion seems to use almost no fuel. This makes it very hard to use your ship to get around the planet faster because you need to stop and hunt for Plutonium every 3 landings even if they are close together.

So, I feel like I have focused mostly on the negatives but that is because the game is otherwise very enjoyable. These odd design decisions mar what is otherwise a really interesting and fresh experience.
4583916
Legend of Heroes is a good game, but it has a few flaws that are just terrible, and really bring it down.  If only Bandai had taken the time to polish it a bit more, it would be a great game.

While a bit linear, I found the characters engaging and really looked forward to the next bit of the story as I went through the game.  Without spoiling the ending, I thought that the last dungeon was done well, and reminded me of playing Final Fantasy IV or VI.

My major beef with this game is the translation.  It is just horrible.  There are constant spelling errors, sentences that just don't make sense and words that are just mixed up.

Other minor things bugged me as well...  some prompts you are given to select an option have the unfortunate problem of being smaller than the border created to go around them. (This happens when resting in people's homes sometimes)  Or another minor flaw is often when someone important speaks, the game colors their text blue... but then the next 10 lines of dialogue from the normal characters are blue as well.

Apart from the sloppiness there, I really did enjoy the game...  It was better than I expected it to be.
1056894
I've been playing this game series since EU2 (Love that game) and I thought the additions made to EU3 were great.  I loved the different government types (I always thought having a royal marriage with the USA was hilarious in EU2), national ideas, spys, and colonial tweaks were great.  However, I always had the feeling that EU3 was unfinished and unpolished, and just overall very clunky.  It's my belief that EU4 is what EU3 should have been.

The interface is sleeker and easier to navigate, and the tool tips are very helpful.  There are meriads of changes that have been implemented.  Rather than having to deligate monthly funds into research, military, colonies and other things, you are now given a system of "power" points.  You earn a certain number of these every month and you can choose what to do with them, like research, stability increases or whatever is appropriate.  I will gripe that the new system is less realistic with real countries, butthe new system is more fun, makes it easier to get money, and stops you from going OCD over your economy tab.  The AI is a big improvement.  I always thought the AI in EU3 were a little soft and weren't as aggressive as in EU2.  EU4 AI are much more aggressive and impose a greater challenge, which is fun. I'm still playing through the game and haven't seen all the changes yet but It's a solid game. If you're new to the series, this is a great place to start.

A couple gripes that I have with the game are as follows:

The country management UI is not scalable to different resolutions.  I use a 1920 by 1080 monitor and the country managment UI is still this tiny little window where all of your decisions are minimized.  It's really annoying to have to maximize and minimize all the diplomacy tabs all the time.  There are mods for this on the Steam workshop that work well, but UI scalability should have been built into the game from the get go.

Another thing, the holy roman empire is a pain in the a#$.  They were annoying in EU3, but now it's just nearly impossible to do anything with them.  If you take lands through conquest, everyone immediatly hates you.  I suppose it's more realistic, but it also gets frustrating when you have a billion tiny countries declaring war on you at once.

Theres other things I don't really like but I'm not gonna bore you with it.

Overall, it's a great game and very approachable for beginners into paradox grand strategy.
4406461
fun and frustration mixed. i love the characters, environments, music. all but the frustrating camera and the beast not listening to commands. I recommend the game for the experience but be aware of these issues. if those points were solid, i would give it 5 stars. but with the issues its 4.
2605294
The game is well adapted to Kindle in terms of visuals and gameplay, but there are some flaws that can be easily fixed and I am demanding an update sooner or later. (I wonder if the game is rushed for the holiday season.)

First of all, even the hard AI is not challenging enough. They sometimes offer silly trades by offering just a small amount of cash (10% higher than the original purchase price) and you can also fool the AI easily with cash.
What's worse is that obtaining monopolies is easy too. For some reason, while trading, the AI does not care too much about whether you will be getting a monopoly or not.

In terms of hardware, Kindle can handle a better AI. I remember playing more challenging Monopoly games on my 33 Mhz PC 15 years ago. The AI level on Kindle Monopoly should be able to match at least the AI level of this old Monopoly for Windows.

I also have the Monopoly game on my smartphone and the AI of the smartphone version of the game is much better than the AI on Kindle.

Another issue is controlling the game. Controls are a bit annoying. The full keyboard system for trading is well thought, but other than this, the controls are below average. For instance, you must press the 5-way after every event. What I mean is that the AI turns cannot be automated and everytime an event takes place (rolling dice, purchasing property, paying rent, etc.), you must press 5-way to continue. It gets boring after a while. There should ben an option to skip AI turns without pressing any keys.

There is a similar issue with property management controls. You can buy houses only one-by-one and it is time consuming. The sequence is like this:  go to a property, press 5-way to select manage, then press 5-way again to buy houses, then press again to confirm, then press back twice to exit property management mode, then press an arrow key to manage the next property and repeat the same steps to buy a house.

Except trading, the keyboard is not utilized at all. You only use the 5-way. I was expecting a better control method that utilizes shortcuts to reduce the number of keypresses.

Briefly, the game can be better. I think that it would be a good idea for the developers to go over the smartphone version of this game for improving the gameplay experience. The game may have been a bit rushed.
661038
This is one of the best games puzzle-wise, that I have played in a long time. Most of the puzzles were just right; and they made a lot of sense, unlike some games I've played. The puzzles made it worth the problems and playability issues we encountered. I was disappointed with the controls and the bugginess of the Windows version. There  are a lot of 'empty' screens to click through. Although a 'warping' feature is provided for faster movement, it is often confusing. Also, the habit of the camera 'helping' you out by turning a corner for you can be very disorienting, especially in a maze area. Despite loading the patch and following the instructions for the sound, we often played without sound (which makes it difficult to determine the outcome of a puzzle and whether it was solved if the cue is an aural one. The end of the game hinges on sound as well, and we eventually played the audio file directly off the CD in order to hear it. A little QC / playability analysis and debugging would have gone a long way and made this a 5-star game in my book.
2067195
This was an ambitious game for any developer.  Four fully fleshed out universes for Spiderman, each with its own art aesthetic, enemies, moves, abilities, and so on.  There are some excellent (and not so excellent) Spiderman games in the license's history that set a decently high bar.  This game could almost have cleared that bar, but a few issues are weighing it down, and it took the bar in the face at high speed instead.

The biggest issue is with the controls, which is doubly a letdown because the developers started out on the right track by not fixing what wasn't broken and sticking with the excellent and intuitive control conventions established for Spiderman in previous titles (I became familiar with them in Web of Shadows).  Hold RT to swing, hold another button to quickly pop up and gain altitude, hold A to increase swing speed (and thus momentum), and so on.  The attacks are similarly familiar to console Spiderman veterans with light and heavy attacks, parries, web strikes, web shots, and etc.  Unfortunately, something's gone wrong with this title.  The controls are muddy and unresponsive, where in Web of Shadows, the controller felt like an extension of your hands.  The camera careens about madly when you're locked onto an enemy, often putting your viewpoint in awkward and uncomfortable areas at best, and inside level geometry at worst, blinding you entirely.  There is one particular Battletoads-esque sequence with a sniper rifle, and let's just say that Battletoads did it a lot better.  Sorry guys.

The art in this game is fantastic.  Each area has something going for it (although I wasn't a huge fan of the 2099 environment, it wasn't BAD, just not my style).  The cel shaded Amazing Spiderman universe has got to be my favorite, just barely edging out the Spiderman Noir universe.

I thought the linear gameplay might hinder this title, since I'm a sandbox game fan through and through, but it really doesn't.  The environments are varied and interesting.  Well built and rendered.  It's a very pretty game.  Younger kids (though I recognize it's a T rated title) would probably love it.  It's got action, it's got superheroes, it's got super villains, bright colors, and eventually, in most cases, a dedicated round of button mashing will win the day.  Spiderman will do all sorts of impressive looking things just by chaining various button combinations with or without a lot of deliberate thought.  You can get fancy and flourishy if you want to, but it isn't truly necessary outside of a few gated challenges.  This is no problem in a beat-em up.  It's fine.  I welcome this style gameplay.  Web of Shadows is among my favorite games, and this title continues the tried-and-true formula.

The developer bit off a lot with this title, and I think it turned out to be more than they could chew.  The game feels unpolished and unoptimized.  It needed a few more months to cook with a couple of experienced XBOX 360 developers who could have tweaked the performance and gotten better control response out of the engine.

The environments are top notch.  The gameplay is well considered.  The plot, is, well, it's Marvel Spiderman camp, and that's GREAT.  It reminds me of Superfriends on saturday mornings in the Fall at my grandma's house in my Dukes of Hazzard pajamas.  Rubbery control response and an erratic camera make it a bargain bin purchase or a rental.
1294959
First of all let me say that I am giving this game an overall rating of 4 stars because of the outstanding graphics and good story. This game has some of the best acting with Anna Torv (Fringe) as Nariko and Andy Serkis (Lord of The Rings) as King Bohan. The game play leaves a lot to be desired. The game is supposed to have certain combos that you can do but they just don't seem to work in the game, and even if they did, you wouldn't have enough time to pull them off because as soon as you are in the middle of pressing the buttons for a combo it is broken up when you are hit, and you will get hit. When you get hit your character freezes for a moment (too long of a moment) and you get hit again because you can't dodge or move. Also in the middle of combat you cannot stop a motion which also causes you to get hit alot. This will become very frustrating. Boss battles also seem to drag on a lot longer than they need to, especially the last one. With such a frustrating control scheme you will want to smash the controller many times. The game just comes down to being a button masher. For some, that may not be a bad thing but why have a combo system if you cant really use them during actual game play. There also should have been an aiming system for the rocket launcher when you have to kill five hundred enemies because the rockets will hit the first object in the game it comes across which is usually a barricade, which means wasted rockets. The motion part of the game was not bad and I actually enjoyed most of that after I got used to the controller, but they may have overdone it a bit. Bottom line is, this game will frustrate you because some things just don't work as they should and some things are overblown. Not being able to control the camera angle 360 degrees is also annoying. Game developers need to realize that making a game challenging does not mean making a game frustratingly difficult. When a game becomes frustrating and difficult, it is no longer fun and enjoyable.
1367198
I understand why people are impressed with this game.  It has fantastic level design that it burns through at a rapid clip, seldom requiring you to backtrack.  The characters look good and are well voice-acted, and the plot is good for a video game -- meaning it's a string of recognizable cliches from movies.  The plot usually feels tightly constricted, like you're discovering what brief action you need to do to get to the next cut-scene (there's a level where if you kill everyone by stealth you can't progress past some wooden window shutters, for example, even though there are RPGs lying all over the place, and when you finish the game and get access to all weapons, you can only use them in some scenes because of continuity problems) but sometimes you really feel like you're exploring.

The problem is the playability.  I've been playing videogames for a long time, and I played this one to the end, but I just can't understand why they paired this quality of design work with such crappy programming, particularly regarding character controls.  The hardest parts of the game, which will take you the longest to solve, aren't architectural puzzles or boss battles, but rather trying to get your character to do simple movements under time pressure, like line up facing a ladder so he can climb it.  There's a "take cover" feature that works well, but trying to get out from cover works spottily, often leaving you glued to a wall or a plant while your enemy has time to slowly turn around, notice you, and kill you.  The game fails "the plank test":  the character is meant to be highly athletic, but has trouble walking a plank twice the width of his shoulders without diving off into space over and over again.  It's very, very aggravating.  (To be fair, one of the worst instances is toward the beginning, where you can duck-walk right into a guard without being able to stand up and attack him in anything like a normal fashion.)  The game is also quite buggy, and -- I'm serious, look it up in the forums -- has a tendency to overheat the PS3.

I imagine that some day someone will redo the programming and re-release this game with functional controls, and it will start to resemble what other reviewers claim it is now.
4119913
The game is entertaining and clever. I often find myself stuck in a level for a long time, giving in and searching for help online, and realizing that I would never have figured that out without help. It's definitely challenging. There's a lot of gameplay here... many, many hours. The humor and writing aren't terrible either.

There are a couple aspects of this game that are particularly frustrating. The controls aren't amazing responsive, this becomes a big issue later in the game (especially swordfights) and in the musical mini-games (which sometimes seem to be offbeat to the music playing, but as a musician/percussionist, I'm never happy with the accuracy of music based games).
91994
Its good to see that Christopher Plummer and David Warner decided to  reprise their roles as General Chang and Chancellor Gorkon. The cutscenes  with them are fantastic with performances that rival the movie. Seeing them  alone might make several Star Trek fans want to purchase the game. However,  the other actors are not as polished, which may be of some concern to some  gamers.
The game allows you to fly eight different Klingon ships with  various weapons and power levels for each vessel. This is one of the  highlights of the game, as you get to destroy the enemies of the Empire  with several cool-looking ships. The enemies of the Empire include the  Federation, Romulans, the Gorn, Tholians, and the Shakurians(?). There are  about twenty-five missions in the game, so no gamer can really complain  about the game being too short. The graphics are good, but it looks a  little dated. Maybe this is because the game was over a year late. How  sad!
The game does suffer from some bugs. First, the enemy ships have a  tendency to try to ram your vessel. This is extremely annoying and  frustrating at the same time. This has been a problem for many gamers, and  you should be aware of this if you want to purchase the game. Also, you  need to be aware that Interplay will no longer offer any support for this  game. The design team has been broken up to work on other projects. So if  your expecting updated patches and expansion packs then you can simply  forget it.
3335057
I love so much about this game I want to say it's one of the best I've ever played... I want to but unfortunately I can't. Make no mistake; this is a very good game. However, a variety of small issues and details conspire to rob it of the greatness it deserved.

The core gameplay elements work very well, and I love how magic was integrated. The AI is far better than I have seen for a long time, especially where stealth is concerned. And the city Dunwall is vibrant, beautiful, and alive (or not so alive in some cases); the atmosphere presenting by the visuals alone is enough to sell much of the game. Where Dishonored really suffers is in its dialog and, ironically, its characterization of Corvo, the protagonist. The dialog often seemed to exist more because the designers felt the players expected conversation than because it was needed, and, in some cases, dialog was used to try to press a sense of importance about events that felt a bit artificial to me. And Corvo feels somewhat lacking in personality; why does he need all these people impressing the gravity of the situation on him, anyway? Given what happened in the first place I'd expect he'd be more than motivated enough already. I appreciate the idea of giving players freedom to imagine their character acting how they what him or her to, but I think in this case a greater degree of expression would have been better.

I would urge fans of Deus Ex, Thief II, and the like to give Dishonored a try (it's not like there are many of the type to choose from these days), but be aware that it's not going to be on quite the same level as the aging greats.
1628225
First and foremost, the taskmaster challenges. They open way too late in the game, and when you can finally access them, they're complete garbage. They're not challenging, or fun, they're just pointlessly frustrating; and a lot of the in-game content is locked behind them. That's my biggest complaint. I would also note that there aren't enough base tokens unless you clear the bases just so, which is also a pointless waste of time and effort, though the challenge tokens become a problem before the base tokens do. It's honestly BS that you can 100%  the game and still not have access to everything, due to contrived and pointless requirements which don't contribute to completion or to gameplay or to the story, and which seem to exist for the sole purpose of constraining the freedom of the player to play the game in the way that they see fit or otherwise enjoy. Which completely sucks.

The second problem is that the stealth, both when playing as Spidey and when playing as MJ or Miles, leaves a lot to be desired. It's impossible to fully stealth bases as Spidey, for instance, since the enemies automatically detect you at wave 2. This isn't game breaking, but is an annoyance for someone who likes to play it slow and smart, and would like the stealth aspects of the game to be more fleshed out.

Missions as MJ or Miles don't offer enough direction, making it too easy to mis-step, unnecessarily forcing the player to start over, and breaking the immersion.

Lastly, there are two bugs: there's a glitch in the animation when beginning a swing from a dive or rapid descent, that's not noticeable at first but gets annoying after you've played for a while (since it both slows you down and looks bad); and occasionally the game crashes when using suit powers.

Complaints aside, the game looks good and feels great, traversal is fun and fast, combat is adequate; Though there need to be more ways way to take down brutes, shield combatants and baton combatants; the dodge button often doesn't work; and there's occasionally no way to break out after getting boxed in, leading to an unnecessary death. I would also note that finishers are basically useless, since health depletes so quickly, and since the focus bar barely heals you at all, fills very slowly, and only holds 3 charges. Your only real option if you get depleted and are low on health (which can happen frequently since the dodge button doesn't work at least 35% of the time, and due to the health, healing and focus related issues I've already pointed out), is to swing around to build up focus (which build faster from swinging than from combat, for whatever reason), spamming the heal button while dodging bullets and rpgs and sometimes boss attacks until you're well enough to fight again; which, while not the worst thing in the world, doesn't really inspire much confidence in Spider-Man's competence in combat (or at the very least, in first aid), and makes finishers a risky luxury rather than a useful tool.

Flaws aside, I enjoyed the game, and am waiting, albeit impatiently, for NG+ mode and the upcoming DLC. Maybe then I can unlock all the suits...
2506943
This is a somewhat flawed game that has a lot of strong points.  The first is the overall story.  I think they did a really nice job capping the story that was always the most interesting part of this series.  It is kind of hard not to get into the epic struggles and plots among gods and Fal'cie that have been the underpinning of the story.  I do not want to give spoilers, but the game approaches the 500 year gap between it and the previous title with a fairly unique plot device that I don't recall from any recent game.  The battle system is also a huge change that was a great hit.  The combat is fast paced, requires you to plan and pay attention while avoiding both straight button mashing and the program-a-character from FFXII,  The number of ensembles (i.e., pretty dresses and stylin' pant suits that give Lightning different abilities) can be overwhelming, but gives you a lot of choice in how to play and how to specialized for different environments.  The map is huge, and beautiful.  The equipment customization is a lot of fun (dress-up Lightning Fun-Time can keep you busy for a while), but one gripe is that weapon and shield improvement is left for a New Game + rather than being an option in an original game.  I always hate New Game +'s that almost penalize you for playing a game completely the first time.

For me, Final Fantasy XIII-2 was the high point in the series.  This game lacks the freedom of movement through the story and interesting time travel replay system that made XIII-2 so enjoyable.  You control where you go and when, but nothing really changes except the difficult, so replay value is limited.  Quests in this game can be a little repetitive ("kill this, collect item as proof return", or, for variety, "I need this, you can get it from a treasure sphere.... or by killing this monster).  The upside of all the monster killing is that the game actually allows you to drive a species to extinction, after which no more show up.  Not sure that I have encountered that in other games, so at least gets a bonus for originality.

Another issue is that the characters are pretty flat and in a lot of cases down right depressing (until Lightning beats them until they are happy... or something along those lines), with Lightning herself being the chief Debbie Downer.  Yes, it all fits with the storyline and it is all explained, but that still doesn't make it that fun to sit through.  You can whiplash in all the times you will watch characters go from suicidal to saccharine levels of hope for the future in the mere moments.

On a final note, the timer/countdown is really not that pressing, especially on a first play through on Normal, if you make use of your abilities and half of your brain, so don't let that dissuade you from buying the game.  I dropped this one star as I realized that the game is completely lacking in the side-game/min-game element (no cards, no sport, not even a casino game or two).