Game Reviews Part Four

My Game Reviews

# - C | D - G | H - M | N - Q | R - T | U - Z

Game	Platform	Review	Comments
NBA Jam	Arcade	Good	Just like every other arcade-style sports game, much better than any sim game of that type. Makes basketball actually fun.
Nethack	PC	Good	A well-done dungeon crawler with minimal graphics but absolutely incredible depth of gameplay and fun. One of the original and best true roguelikes.
Neverwinter Nights	PC	Meh	A JRPG-wannabe story-heavy RPG. Decent controls and gameplay plus it does have an awesome, very powerful custom module builder, but the main game is very disappointing.
New Super Mario Bros.	Nintendo DS	Meh	A game with decent enough controls and acceptable gameplay (a bit floatier than the originals) but with artificial difficulty that makes the JP Super Mario Bros. 2 child's play by comparison.
New Super Mario Bros. 2	Nintendo 3DS	Meh	Same as the DS game, it's passable enough to not be bad but has the same floaty, imprecise controls and artificial difficulty the original NSMB had.
NFL Blitz '99	Arcade	Good	I'm not a handegg (American football) fan, but simplifiying it like this makes it incredibly fun. Just like NBA Jam with basketball. Maybe they should do that in real life. What a concept.
NiGHTS into Dreams...	Saturn	Good	An incredible game that involves scrolling through a 3d environment but with 2d controls (what a concept) with amazing flow and gameplay.
Nuclear Throne	PC	Good	Incredibly addictive top down shooter with tons of replayability.
Nyan Cat: Lost in Space	PC	Meh	A one-trick game that is interesting for a short time but has no real depth.
Okami	Playstation 2	Bad	Boring, pretentious, story-filled action/adventure/platformer/whatever with laughably bad controls and full of gimmicks.
One Finger Death Punch	PC	Good	What seems like a simple mobile-style game has tons of personality and fun and addicting gameplay. It has no right to be as good as it is.
Orcs Must Die! 2	PC	Good	A solid dungeon defense game with tons of replayability.
Oregon Trail	Apple II	Great	Dying of dysentery shouldn't be this fun. Part educational, part just pure joy, this is a legendary game everyone should play.
Organ Trail	PC	Good	Almost as good as the original while adding zombies. Still died of dysentery.
OutRun	Arcade	Good	Just a nice drive with amazing tunes. Amazing how something so simple that isn't even really a serious "racing game" is one of the best racing games ever.
Pac-Man	Arcade	Good	Not quite near-perfection as the following Ms. Pac, it's still a fun romp even if you can cheat your way through many levels by memorizing a pattern. Groundbreaking game and still lots of fun.
Pac-Man 256	PC	Good	An infinite runner game with all of the fun of Pac-Man thrown in. A lot of mobile game trappings but still more than good enough to keep you going to 100% completion.
Pac-Man Championship Edition 2	PC	Bad	Somehow sucks all the fun out of playing Pac-Man with irritating gameplay.
Pac-Man Championship Edition DX+	PC	Good	Somehow miles better than Championship Edition 2 with solid controls and gameplay.
Painkiller: Black Edition	PC	Good	A pretty solid shooter with a few gameplay issues and uninteresting levels, but still fun to play.
Panzer Dragoon Zwei	Saturn	Good	A semi-on rails shooter with a fantastic feeling of motion and fluid gameplay.
Paperboy	Arcade	Meh	Frustrating controls and gameplay drag this classic down a bit but it's still a better overall game than many modern offerings.
Paranautical Activity	PC	Meh	A pixelated shooter with randomly generated levels, its artificial difficulty and gameplay really hurt the experience.
Parappa the Rapper	Playstation	Meh	A simple call and response rhythm game with the "success" window being set way too tight and seemingly randomly accepting freestyle successes. It's very charming and the music gets stuck in your head, though.
Peggle (series)	PC	Good	A pretty enjoyable skill/luck based puzzle game that can get sort of addicting at times.
Pikuniku	PC	Meh	A charming little platformer/adventure game with some problematic control issues and unclear and seemingly random advancement goals that drag it down.
Pitfall!	Atari VCS	Good	A fun and revolutionary platformer where your mission is to collect as many treasures as you can find. Oh, and survive. Good luck with the crocodiles.
Pitfall 2: Lost Caverns	Atari VCS	Good	Adding an actual world to explore to Pitfall where your goal is to collect treasure and the adventurer's friends for an actual game completion makes this sequel so much more than the original.
Plants vs. Zombies	PC	Good	We don't like zombies on our lawn. Nice tower defense game with plants repelling a zombie horde.
Pokemon (series)	Gameboy	Bad	Mash up cockfighting with My First JRPG for Little Children and you have this annoying game with a billion sequels (all exactly the same) that seems to have taken over the world somehow.
Poker Night at the Inventory / 2	PC	Meh	Well, it's just poker, with some famous characters for humor along the way. It really doesn't enhance the base experience of just playing poker that much.
Portal	PC	Good	An incredibly simple yet mind-expanding mechanic that puts you in a world where the story unfolds without a lot of game-stopping interruptions. Very short, though.
Portal 2	PC	Good	More of the fun from Portal with some extra elements to bend your brain in more ways. Could be a bit shorter, though, as the concept gets tiresome after playing a while.
Prey (2006)	PC	Meh	Decent enough FPS with a portal gimmick that enhances the experience a bit, but gets bogged down by very frustrating gameplay sections later in the game.
Primal Rage	Arcade	Bad	Sluggish controls and gameplay make this just a gimmicky fighting game that tried to capitalize on the success of all the other fighting games at the time.
Professor Pac-Man	Arcade	Meh	Unique arcade brain-teaser quiz game that uses Pac-Man and colorful graphics to ask the questions which gets progressively harder while you are racing the clock to answer. Interesting but can get sort of boring.
Project Heartbeat	PC	Good	A Project Diva-like game for the PC. A lot of user-made downloadable (from the game itself) songs and smooth gameplay make it fun, to a point -- skill levels seem to be set too high.
Psychonauts	PC	Bad	A very story-heavy 3d platfomer/adventure game with lousy controls and gameplay. Don't understand the massive hype over this one.
Q*Bert	Arcade	Good	Change the color of the pyramid. That's all poor little Q*Bert is trying to do. Why do so many enemies want him dead? A fun game that needs a diagonal 4-way controller for precision.
Qix	Arcade	Good	Draw the outlines of boxes in the play area while avoiding a randomly moving and swirling Qix and sparks that move along the edge of the playfield and the boxes you create to fill up the area over a certain percentage. A very challenging and good game.
Quake	DOS	Great	The only FPS that can stand up there with the original Doom. Legendary and near-perfect example of how games are supposed to be.
Quake II	PC	Good	Quake is supposed to be dark, Lovecraftian horror. This is a techno-nightmare gone wrong. It shouldn't be called Quake. It's still pretty fun, though.
Quake III Arena	PC	Good	A very tight and fun multiplayer-focused Quake game with creative and fun maps and near-perfect gameplay.
Quake 4	PC	Bad	There's really nothing good here as it tries to run you through some story-based adventure with forgettable, well, everything, and not great gameplay.]