Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun

Earth 2030 is unrecognizable but war... war remains the same.

Continuing from the original game where Kane died but got better, GDI now kitted out with mechs instead of tanks, continue to oppose the Brotherhood of Nod who have upgraded their sneakiness to subterranean units. Tiberium is now wide spread and actual mutants also run rampant. They are handy as infantry though, since standing in Tiberium heals them while it still kills normal foot soldiers.

A little more and it might become Mech Warrior.

The live action cut scenes are at their finest here with a more serious tone to them, starring James Earl Jones and Michael Beihn as the leaders of GDI (who I played). Also the mission map is present here which is a big plus. The game play itself is fine though some build times were on the long side.

The Firestorm expansion continues the story with cyborgs and the Tiberium threat but honestly, its just more of the same - minus the high production cut scenes and minus the mission selection. Needless to say I didn't finish it. I give Tiberian Sun 4 veinholes out of 5. That's excluding Firestorm which would honestly only lower the score.

Blood Dragon - Tasty Retro Goodness!

I've never played FarCry 3 though I've been meaning to - however since I'm very stingy with the moneys I instead went for its cheaper throwback version called Blood Dragon and man is it a blast to play! It takes place in a post apocalyptic future where everything is neon (even the wildlife, because neon = future) and when you have mission objectives like "punch the nuclear reactor", you understand what type of game it is. Michael Beihn does a great job voicing the numerous one liners as the protagonist and there are a ton of places I was laughing my ass off while trying to complete objectives. The old school, lacking in animation cutscenes and questionable plot work well too for those of us who remember the old games that used that and the soundtrack really fits into the theme. The gameplay itself however is not old school at all, it is a polished and well-performing modern first person shooter with many sidequests to keep yourself busy for a few hours.

They shoot lasers out of their eyes!

It isn't perfect though - in my case it didn't like my graphics card meaning every 10 or so minutes it would crash out to desktop. This isn't too bad since you can save the game in most parts... EXCEPT when doing main story missions which uses the checkpoint system (and all checkpoints are wiped on reboot). My usual tactics of being sneaky had to go out the window to compensate for this, meaning I had to rambo my way through each as fast as possible. This brings me to my second problem, and maybe one that's only a problem for me: it's too easy. I was playing on the hardest mode, ramboing through everything (cover? what's cover?) and died maybe 3 times in the whole game. Then again what kind of 80's action movie didn't have an overpowered protagonist anyway? :P

Even with all the sidequests it is a pretty short game, but still definitely worth it for the low price - and I highly recommend trying it out!