Ok, I've decided to start writing a series of "Red" blogs on N4G. I'm gonna talk about games and movies I played and watched as well as the upcoming stuff.
-Reviews-
(Games) TimeShift, Kane & Lynch, DiRT, Skate, Soldier of Fortune Payback
(Films) Atonement, Saw IV, D-War / Dragon Wars
-Previews-
(Games) Burnout Paradise, Turok
(Films) Cloverfield, 27 Dresses, Teeth
There we go:
-Reviews-
(Games)
TimeShift: 8/10
+ Cool and stylish intro movie
+ Great graphics from a technical standpoint
+ Attention to detail with some really nice enviroments
+ Cool time powers that actually work differently from Max Payne and FEAR time systems
+ Great and deep multiplayer along with some innovations
- Seriously easy even on hardest difficulty
- Short singleplayer
- Confusing and rather weak story with mediocre ending
Soldier of Fortune: Payback: 3/10
+ Some decent graphics but nothing that should bring so many frame-rate slowdowns
+ Cool over the top violence, blood and gore
- Terrible and linear level design that feels 10 years old
- Stupid enemy AI and problemic control
- Seriously repetitve
- Shorter than even some episodic games!
- Cheap design and production values compared to expensive price
- Huge bug-fest
DiRT: 7.5/10
+ Great presentation along with superb menues
+ Realistic and accurate controls
+ Lots of real life cars and stuff
+ Good variety of modes
+ Lots of content from career to many championships
- Not so hot graphics with terrible frame-rate (Mostly Xbox 360 version)
- Lack of enough non-Rally tracks
- Uneven difficulty
Skate: 8.5/10
+ Great graphics and superb presentation along with awesome intro movie
+ Incredibly realistic but fun controls resulting in real skating simulation
+ Lots of content, licensed material and stuff to do
+ Cool soundtrack and audio
+ Sandbox elements in a big city with enough freedom
- No real progress in gameplay after first half of game
- Seems too hard at first
- Gets repetitive
Kane & Lynch: 4/10
+ Psychopath known as Lynch, his dialogue and some of his crazy actions
+ Huge levels and fight areas
+ Full Co-op support
+ Cool and innovative multiplayer
- PS2 graphics with some serious frame-rate drops
- Weak Story that has good start and decent finish but the progress is horrible
- Lack of innovation in cover and shoot gameplay
- Terribly buggy implementation of said mechanic
- Weak enemy AI
- Linear gameplay until the final chapter(s)
- So many bugs and issues and feels seriously unfinished
- Really disappointing game from developers of Hitman
(Films)
Saw IV: 6/10
+ Seeing Jigsaw again
+ Seeing the story kinda continue after Saw 3's ending
+ Still pretty entertaining
+ Music is superb as usual
- Not needed sequel and obvious franchise milking
- Unworthy follow-up to the excellent Saw 3
- Direct-to-Video feel and look
- Bigger plot holes than previous films combined
- Feels really rushed
- Mediocre ending compared to awesome final scene of each other Saw
D-War / Dragon Wars: 3/10
+ Robert Forster
+ Some cool CG scenes and battles
+ A non-hollywood movie that tries to be Transformers...
- ... But fails most of the time
- Some scenes with terribly bad and obvious CG like choppers and such
- Terrible acting
- Horrible plot that makes Uwe Boll film stories seem decent!
- Worse dialogues
- Some scenes are good for a laugh but overall, watching this film makes you feel dumb (I was warned by great N4G member but didn't listen...)
- Terribly underused Robert Forster
Atonement: 9.5/10
+ The best book to movie adaptation ever
+ Easily the best picture of 2007 and worthy of it's Golden Globe best picture win
+ Terrific acting and proof that Keira Knightley can actually act sometimes
+ Superb and effective music
+ Unbelievably great photography, lighting, art direction
+ Best ending in years
-Previews-
(Games) (Scores are predictions)
Burnout Paradise: 8.5-9/10
+ It's Burnout!
+ Solid visuals and frame-rate
+ Insanely good audio
+ Finally getting the open-world in a racing game concept right.
+ Incredibly superb online opitons and seamless feel
+ No menu or loading...
- Which means no real retry option (Though they could have learned some stuff from Skate)
- Lacks of many classic modes specially the Crash
- May be to different for classic Burnout fans
Turok: 7.5-8/10
+ Good use of Unreal Engine 3 with great animations and effects
+ Revamping of a classic franchise
+ Adding dinsours to the usuall FPS mix
+ Great enemy / monster AI
+ Hollywood class voice acting
- Changing the IP too much, from Turok character to now more realistic settings
- Somehow color and lifeless graphics and some really Gears-ish spots
- Not so perfect AI and misuse of dinosours in it
- Another FPS!?
(Films):
Cloverfield: 7.5-9/10
+ A surprisingly well hidden movie
+ JJ Abrams as producer
+ Promise of a really different monster movie
+ Positive early word
- Not so big bugdet for such a film
- May be over-hyped
- Some may not like the camera / FPS viewpoint
27 Dresses: 5-6/10
+ Katherine Heigl of Knocked-up
+ James Marsden in another great role after Hairspray
+ A female director that might have a different view
- Some negative early reviews and press
- Not so suble direction
- Seriously cliched
- It's the time of bad comedy romantics
Teeth: 7-8/10
+ Superb and disturbing idea
+ Finally, a different horror movie with original idea
+ Great early buzz
- So many delays
- Censor problems
- Maybe too indie
It is done, hope you enjoy it :)
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
wow, thats alot of reviews, good job bro
i agree with your review of the turok demo
looking forward to your next blog :)
Aaaah, brilliant! I was wondering if you were ever going to start reviewing games yourself. You play enough of them to really know what you're talking about, which is more than can be said for a lot of professional reviewers....
I look forward to more of these blogs, but you've surprised me with your estimate for Burnout Paradise. I would have expected 9-10/10 from you!
And can I possibly and humbly suggest that you don't use a scoring system, rather a recommendation system such as:
- Must-have
- Highly Recommended
- Recommended
- Recommended for fans only
- Rental
- Not Recommended
- Avoid at all costs
(This particular system was written by Arkham)
I find it's harder to forget the meaning of words than the meaning of numbers.
Good luck!
Definatley gonna watch Atonement now. Also i'm glad someone besides me doesn't dismiss Timeshift and Turok as do do. I think they are good, fun games. Not great but good.
And by the way I miss crash mode.
nice job with the reviews too.
Could you please state which system you played the games for? I It would be a big help for people looking to purchase the game. Also, if you played it on both systems let us know which is your preference (I have both a PS3 and a 360 and sometimes I'm not sure which system to get the game for even after reading reviews/looking at gameplay footage online...i'm not depending on what you say to be the end all of reviews, but I trust your opinion enough)