Amazing game. One of the most creative and fun puzzle games ever made, best since Tetris, I'd say.

It really is a game like no other.... It's basically the first FPS game I ever played when I got my first computer and it's...AMAZING. You're an unstoppable BA that runs around mowing down Nazis, zombies, and mutant, cyborg abominations. What's not to love? The newer Wolfenstein games are...fine, but this...is truly something special from a bygone era.

What can I say about this game? IT'S GREAT, I ADORE IT. It's the first time EVER IN MY LIFE I made a preorder, digital or otherwise. It's amazingly fun and amazingly funny and just all around amazing. Not perfect (not Bioshock), but sooooo delightful.

Yes, everything you heard about Gearbox's shady bussiness practices is true: this "remastered" edition is just the original game repackaged with a slight visual upgrade (as if the game didn't look awesome for its time and doesn't still hold up today) and the few things that have been added don't warantee the price-tag. All true!!!! And if you own a WORKING version of the original, DO NOT waste your money on this. If you've never played the original, however and you want it on PC, yes, totally buy it, even at full price. Or if you're like me, and have the game on Origin and can't play it anymore because of the devs simply REFUSING to patch out the bulls**t GFWL DRM, ALSO buy it!!! Although you might want to wait for a BIG price reduction first. Not that the game isn't worth every penny of the 46 bucks it costs now, just that asking money twice for the same game is sort of disgusting. I think something like this is what they were waiting for, so People Can Fly DELIBERATELY refused to patch it out, so that fans will buy this thing again. We should have gotten it for FREE!!! It disgusts me to see the lows they'll go for a quick buck. But I fell for it..hook, line and sinker. Because I love this game THAT much.

Next part of the review is for people who haven't played it and want to know about game-play and story. Everything is awesome! This is the only game where you can kick people in the face and send them flying for tens of meters in slow-mo, drag them to you with an energy whip (and then kick'em in the face), fling them into giant cacti and protrubing metal bars or..shoot them in the...uum "medicine bag" and kick their faces off as they beg you for mercy, while holding their hands to their genitals. If that doesn't sell you on this game, NOTHING will. And there are close to a hundred of these nifty tricks called skill-shots that you can pull off, each giving you more skill points than the other, for dispatching your enemies "in style". Or as the protagonist puts it..."murder as an art form". And their names are absolutely HILARIOUS and more times than not you'll execute them just to get them written on your screen and laugh your head off. But the points aren't just for show, they serve the game-play as much as it serves them. You don't earn enough, you don't have currency with which to buy ammo. Which is a damn shame, cause the weapons in this game are all ridiculously amazing (or amazingly ridiculous, depends on how you want to put it): you have a thing that shoots two mines interconnected by a chain, which latch onto enemies and can be manually detonated for tons of fun, a cannon that would put the one from Serious Sam to shame (because the cannon-balls bounce around like beach balls) and...my personal favorite, a repurposed mining tool that shoots godd**n high-speed drills at enemies...HELLS F***ING YEAH!!!!! Even the more "conventional" weapons are geared towards psychotic chaos and mayhem: the revolver shoots explosive flares that launch people in the sky, the sniper rifle has smart, fully guidable bullets (a mini-game in itself) and the shotgun has a wider spread and a more destructive capability than the one in Painkiller. All it needed was a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning (or one with t*ts, that's on fire)...oops, wrong game :)). Do I really need to talk more about this?

The story is pretty dark, serious and dramatic for such a tongue n'cheek game (although it won't win any story-telling awards like Bioshock, Max Payne or Spec Ops The Line) and that might turn people off a bit, but I like the daunting contrast, to be honest. The characters are all caricatures that speak almost exclusively in curses and puns...and I wouldn't have it any other way. Words like "a*s", "f*ck" and most especially "d*ck" form the basis for most sentences and it's hilarious. Although it does get old after a while, I won't deny it (as most good things tend to when you exaggerate with using them). And not all the jokes land. But the game does benefit from the superb voice acting talents of Steve "The Man" Blum and Jennifer Hale, so that's always a plus.

The "remastering" wasn't a completely smooth trip and the game has some bugs and visual glitches, but nothing major or game-breaking. Original had some minor problems in that area too, at least on release, so that can clearly be worked on in post. And some minuses have been carried around from the original: EXTREMLY linear, no jump button except a contextual one for hopping obstacles and some weird level design in some places. I'll still give it a thumbs-up, just for how fun and funny it is, but make no mistake, it is a shameless rehash that exploits your love of the original for cash.

To summarize: must-own for people who never played the original, don't bother if you have the original on a console and wait for a sale if you have it on Origin and can't play it anymore because of the damn GFWL.

P.S. Oh right, about the novelty of playing as the King himself, Duke Nukem, I don't think it was worth preordering just for that (although with the 10% price deduction it might have almost been), but it is pretty funny and they exploit it for some unexpected meta-humor about him not supposing to be in this game (didn't think they could make the dialogue in this game even funnier). Although I still prefer Steve Blum by a mile, especially since they didn't lip-sync his dialogue, which is pretty off-putting (not as bad as people whine about it in other reviews, though). At least he finally has a game worthy of his "greatness". HAIL TO THE KING, BABY!!!!!

What more can be said about this game that one doesn't already know? Well, I guess I'll just express my own opinion: I LOVE IT!!!!! It is one of my favorite video-games post-Bioshock. Why? Because it has the back-stabbing and jumping from rooftops on enemies' heads a la Assassin's Creed and the awesome free flowing melee combat a la Batman Akrham series and manages to do them both better than the games that invented them. And it's set in the LOTR universe... It's a nerd wet-dream.

Does it lack game-play innovation? Yeah, it kinda does, to be honest. But who cares about that, when you can massacre hundreds, thousands, hell, maybe even tens of thousands of orcs and in theory the fun NEVER stops? Seriously, you kill so many ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ orcs in this game, uh...sorry, Uruks, that it could have been called Orcs Must Die - Tolkinian Edition, or maybe Genocidal Ranger, given that it seems you're trying to single handedly extinguish the entire orc population of Mordor. Other good alternate titles: Undead Bromance: Murderous Intent, Orc Genocide 2014, I Was an Emo Orc Killer.

So the main attraction of this game is killing orcs in the body of an undead gondorian ranger called Talion, who is being kept alive by the wraith of some mysterious elf dude, that possesses him, but still lets him steer the wheel...mainly. He does this to avenge his family, which got slayed by Sauron's minions, but that is gradually lost on the player when he'll most certainly get pulled in the excitement of killig ALL the orcs. And you accomplish this mainly by chopping them to bits with your ridiculously over-sized gondorian sword, Urfael (I thought only Aragorn was trying to overcompensate for something, but it looks like all gondorians are). You can also ventilate their skulls with your wraith buddy's phantom elven bow, Azkar or stabb them from behind with your dead son's broken sword, called Akarn, now repurposed as a dagger (kinda grim). You also have some very amazing magic powers, because it turns out that the wraith can grant Talion abilities similar to those granted by the One Ring (always felt sligthly curious to me, given that in the movies and books, all the One Ring ever does is make people invisible and gradually lose their minds). And the game even has a super-awesome and well-thought out pseudo-RPG leveling up system with upgrades to both basic stats, like health and how many phantom arrows you carry, as well as to Talion's sword swinging murder moves and the wraith's magic. These range from incredibly gruesome and satisfying to pull off executions (beheadings are my favorites), to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ teleportation strikes, and even making orc-heads explode like pumpkins, all culminating with the ability to brain-wash orcs and use them as sleeper agents within their ranks. Yes, it's as exciting as it sounds and it sounds absolutely AWESOME. There's also a system of magic runes for all your weapons that can grant extra-abilites. My favorite and the one I always use without exception is health-steal, which can definitely keep you alive in a pinch. And as metioned, you can also use parkour like in the AC series.

The game exceles at game-play features, but story-wise it is unfortunately nothing to brag home about. The story isn't bad per say, but it is very bland and uninteresting, to say the least (even though there are a few twists that may peak one's interest) and as a major LOTR nerd, I was pretty disappointed at first. But I was surprised at how quickly I got over it when I started immersing myself in the glorious orc killing. It is sort of a failed opportunity, given the richness of the universe, but truth be told, Tolkien's books wouldn't be what they are without Peter Jackson's incredible movie trilogy, cause the storytelling is often times obscured by the abdundance of landscape description details. There, I said it, the LOTR novels are slightly over-rated, you can proceed with my crucification, nerds :)).

But fear not, story enthusiasts, cause it's a sand-box and it takes the numer 1 rule of sand-box games, which is allowing you to build your own experience regardless of the quality of the story, and takes it to its absolute n'th degree. And it does this by using the infamous, by now, Nemessis system, or as I like to call it..."the black book of orc commanders"... Because all of the orc commanders have specific names and MOBA-like titles (anyone that has ever played LoL or DotA will understand what I'm talking about), as well as actual personalities. The names, and especially the titles, are absolutely hilarious and all of the "politics" of their society revolves mainly around petty squabbles for power and killing each other. You can investigate them, find out what makes them tick, specific ways to kill them and can get involved in said petty squabbles. Couple this with the aforementioned ability to brain-wash them, as well as their hilarious personalities (most are very one-note, revolving around one trait, but still more rounded up than the "protagonists") and lines and you have a recipe for endless hours of organic fun, even after you finish the lack-luster story campaign. Oh yeah, if one of them kills you, he becomes a captain and if a captain kills you, he becomes even stronger. This makes death actually mean something (similar to the Dark Souls series) and thus gives you an incentive to avoid it. And the game can overwhelm you with numbers at almost any battle (especially in the orc strongholds), so even with Talion's powers and the pretty forgiving Arkham combat system, you can be sure that it's far from a walk in the park and you'll often find yourself running and hiding, rather than fighting them head-on. The side quests that don't involve the power struggle system of the orcs are ok, but they're just marginally better than the main quest. They mainly involve bragging about the power of one of your three weapons by doing a specific task that involves only said weapon (more stealth killing for the dagger, more open killing for the sword and more head ventilating for the bow), as well as rescuing the poor sod humans that live in Mordor (yeah...humans actually live in Mordor...the morons).

As for the remaining elements, which are graphics, sound and music, the game is very competent, even if not particularly impressive at any of them. And the optimiziton is top-notch, so you can be sure it runs perfectly on most systems (within reason, of course). Soooo...not much left to say. Maybe just...in the words of the great Samwise Gamgee, "what are you waiting for????" Get to it and start killing some orcs, ranger!

SCREW THIS GAME. It s*cks bigtime. It's REALLY BAD. And not even the "good" kind of bad, like Ride to Hell Rettibution or Rogue Warrior, games which are so stupid and ridiculous, that they're hilarious. Nope. This is almost all bad, all the time: boring, bland, uninteresting and not fun at all. It has almost no redeeming factor.

Where to f***ing start? The story... I never thought it was anything to write home about when I read the synopsis, but...this is just s*it. It looks like a horribly written, lame-*ss knock-off of G.R.R.M.'s work. Except the zombies in here don't even have anything to do with ice, despite them being animated by 7 ICE Lords. There's not even any winter (as far as I played). Why the f**k do they even call them Ice Lords????

The voice-acting...HORRENDOUS. Everyone talks either like a robot or like they're high on every opiate known to man. The dialogue options make Bioware's wheel of responses feel like a masterpiece. So it wasn't enough that the story was s*it, they also ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the story-telling with some truly idiotic dialogue. Way to f**king go...

Possibly the worst part of the game is the combat system. I have NEVER seen a game like this that can try so hard and succede to make you look like a total pus*y when playing it. I know it's supposed to be an RPG first and foremost, but...NO, JUST NOOOOOO!! I never thought I'd see a real time, sword swinging combat that can actually manage to feel more boring, unintuitive and unnatural than turn-based combat. Why does my dumb-*ss, supposedly highly trained, meat-head mercenary character swing his sword like an old man with congestive heart disease that forgot his beta blockers at home? (doctor humor ha ha :-p ) And why is there almost no ammo for the cross-bow in all the terain I managed to cover in the 4 hours I managed to last through this game before I got thoughts of suicide? Despite the cross-bow being much more effective than the pathetic melee weapons in this game. And why do all monsters have pathetically telegraphed attacks to warn you when you have to dodge or block? And why can't I jump or dive-roll? This is HORIRBLE. I'm not asking for spectacle fighter level of combat, like in the DMC or GoW series, but... I dunna, they could have just riped-off the combat system from the Arkham games. ANYTHING WOULD BE BETTER THAN THIS! I mean, WB has no shame in rehashing it in all of its other sand-box games and they didn't patent it or anything. Fable did a much better job in 2004. There's a similar, semi-obscure low-budget pseudo-RPG called Venetica that also did it better. There's no excuse for it!!!!! And since we're on the subject, this is a f**king RPG, right? Why the f**k is it linear as hell and with horrible corridor-based level design? It should have been a sand-box, ffs... Even the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flame demon powers are a joke. Most of them are useless, even the ones that aren't, they waste ALL mana after aproximately 3 casts. And it takes FOREVER to recharge. Because I'm sure that someone getting possessed by a demon, does it so he can look like more of a worthless pu*sy. The leveling-up and character progression system is also bland, stupid, lame and boring. I s**t you not, there's actually a feat that you put a single point in and increases sword damage by 2. WOW!!!! Don't even get me started on the useless daggers and the stealth system, which is more broken and useless than in Fallout 3. Don't get me wrong: the game is EXTREMELY difficult, but for ALL the WRONG reasons: clunky combat with sh*t controls. Almost all fights are won through trial and error and attrition: chaining 2-3 stabbs with one block or dodge and rincing and repeating about 10-12 times until the enemy dies. I am totally serious when I say I had a fight with 4 guys that actually lasted about 10 minutes. Yeah...I timed it. Thus, the fun-factor is almost ZERO. Why do all the games want to be Dark Souls? If you're going to rip-off a classic, at least do it right, ffs.. Being hard and unforgiving is not the same as being unfair, stupid and not fun.

The graphics are unimpressive, but serviceable. But even that little piece of praise goes out the window, because the game is optimized like ass and manages to actually run worse than much better looking similar games, such as Shadow of Mordor. Of course...

So is there anything good I can say about this game, you ask? Well, there's the music. Yeah...as much as I'd want to bash this too, I have to admit: it's pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sweet. It suits the general atmosphere and feel of the game perfectly and was actually soothing enough to keep me from throwing my monitor out the window in rage of this awful garbage. Does it redeem the game at all? F**K NO. It'd be like re-watching Frozen, just because you like "Let It Go" (well, Frozen is actually a pretty good movie, especially for Disney standards and comparing it to this game is quite harsh and unfair, but I wanted to highlight the idea that music can't make you like something you don't have any other reason to like).

Conclusion: It's not by any chance, the worst game I've played, but it's actually the first one that made me want to be able to get a refund. I got it for 6 euro, which was an 80% discont and I still feel I over-payed A LOT. You really have to have a lot of nerve and some balls of steel to charge 30 euro for this game... Alas, I played 4 hours of if, so it's too late now. Probably never will again. STAY AWAY! FAR, FAR AWAY. DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY on this game, like I did.

Score: 4 out of 10 - PRETTY ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BAD

I'm sorry, I thought I was playing a Serius Sam game and what I got was a modern military shooter dressed like Serious Sam. I dunna what happened here, but while I can respect them keeping the old enemies as they were, the fact that they changed the weapons to look like modern equivalents, that you'd likely find in CS, just pisses the hell out of me. But the worst part of this game is the absolutely horrendous and confusing level design that, I kid you not, gave me blistering head-aches. Serious Sam has always had big, open areas easy to navigate without any hand-holding, filled to the brim with colorful, easy to spot enemies that you can blow up to your heart's content. Now you throw me into some post-apocalyptic Cairo urban jungle and you expect me to enjoy it???? GTFO!!!!!!

It seems this game tried to blend the old-school with the modern (it even has reflex-sights and iron-sights zooming when aiming the weapons) and just failed miserably...like some other game we know that shall remain unnamed. If you want to go for nostalgia value, then go for it, like Wolfenstein The New Order did, don't start ruining my childhood with this monstrous hybrid of two eras. It just can't be done. I mean...ffs, they even gave up on the insanely over-the-top color palette and everything is brown now. Even the monsters have started blending in the background, which makes them really hard to spot and shoot (making an already pretty difficult game be downright impossible...FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS). It's just faded and bleak, anything but the aspect of a classic Serious Sam game.

Evene the humor has fizzled, Sam not having a single one-liner that can even come close to things like: "Look ma', I'm a lumberjack" or "Let that be a lesson to you: there will be NO BUGS in this game". Instead we get something like "-Do you really need to blow everything up? -I absolutely do!" REALLY????

Bottom line...it's not as bad as..you know what, but it's in no way something I'd ever recommend to a true fan of the original games. As frowned upon as it is, Serious Sam 2 is a MUCH bettergame than this, if you ask me.

Just in case you live under a rock and didn't know, Bioshock is an FPS with some RPG and survival-horror elements, designed by Ken Levine(the creator of System Shock and System Shock 2) for 2k Games. It features a dystopian underwater steam-punk city called Rapture, where science was free of ethic or penal laws, morals and religion, which led to advances in genetics which gave people super-powers. These super-powers then drove most of them ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ insane and made the whole city go to hell.

So let me start this review with this simple tagline: best game EVER!!! Ok, that might be stretching it a bit, since not all people love the FPS genre as much as I do. So I'll just say this: best FPS EVER.
Of course a lot of people will say I'm exaggerating, but let's just look at this objectivally:

Pros: +Story
+ Dialogue (or more correctly monologues)
+Combat
+Eploration
+RPG elements
+Graphics
+Atmosphere

Cons: What, are you crazy? NOTHING. Ok, I'm kidding...just some minor imperfections, no game is flawless.

Let's elaborate on this. (If you haven't figured it out yet, this will be a long and in-depth review. You have been warned):
First of all, we'll talk about story. You tell me a game with a better story and way that respective story is told, than this game. Can you? Of course some people(the ♥♥♥♥ percentage) will give some laughable answers like Half Life or Halo. I mean...come oooooon. Half Life is just the eternal alien invasion cliche. Yes, it does have some interesting elements that set it apart, but it's not particularly well told and is very ambiguous. It's more like a pretext, than true storytelling. And Halo is basically Starship Troopers - the video game...BOOOORING!!!!!! I'm sorry to all the Halo fans, but I gotta tell you the ugly truth: that game is HIGHLY OVERRATED. While Bioshock has a unique setting, plot-twists that, I have to be honest, I did not see coming, an extremely intelligent villain that could spout something other than how he'll kill the hero or how he'll achieve total world domination. Oh, and it also questions the very nature of life, mortality, humanity, morality, business and commerce, crime, science and ethics...you know, little stuff like that. All while others make games about an invincible MI6 agent who stops cartoonishly evil villains from taking over the world by killing everyone in sight. S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Shadow of Chenrobyl and the two Metro games also have hugely interesting and deep stories, the way I thought only games from the ex-Soviet space could. They're the ones I'd put closest to this game in the storytelling department, but I just think Bioshock goes a little bit further, the proverbial extra-mile if you prefer. Yes, I do think Bioshock Infinite's story is good too. But is it great? NO!!! Why? Because it goes so far up its own ass, especially after opening the parallel dimensions can of worms, I just couldn't follow it at times, even though it does wrap things up pretty nicely. And no, I don't think Bioshock is at all similar in story with System Shock 2. And it is far superior. It has tons more imagination and creativity and tells its story much better. The only sad part it has(sort of) is that the protagonist has about as much personality as a sea sponge, which is the major flaw of ALL silent protagonists. But it's ok here (certainly a lot more acceptable than in Half Life) because the story's not about him. It's about the world. And so he's just a pair of eyes for us to witness this world and the story it has to offer, which we've already established is magnificent.

Now, let's talk about the graphics and overall atmosphere of the world. It didn't impress that much at the time, since S.T.A.L.K.E.R was already out and it had beautiful outdoor scenries and a few months later Crysis came and blew them both out of the water, but this is indeed a BEAUTIFUL game. It may be indoor only and you don't get to do any swimming, but DAAAMN, Rapture is so pretty (albeit creepy as hell at them same time) and so well rendered. I used to just stop and look at the surroundings and imagine how awesome it would have been to live there (you know, BEFORE it all went to hell). And the feel and look of the '50s is captured PERFECTLY, dystopia and all. And, like I said, the atmosphere is creepy. It's not actually a survival-horror FPS like F.E.A.R or Doom 3, but the creep-out factor is over the edge in this game. It's impossible not to be creeped out when you see everything that was once so beautiful now gone to ♥♥♥♥ and that these...creatures (for lack of a better word) that roam the halls (splicers, Little Sisters and Big Daddies) used to be human, but now have either lost any trace of humanity or still keep a fragment of it in their ru(a)ptured (pun intended) minds, between all the nonsense they're spouting ("Jesus loves me, this I know/ Cause the Bible told me so") and them whacking you with a pipe, thinking you're "the monster". Could it be that they're right, though? With the way you're killing them all, mercilessly? Nah, wipe those thoughts away and keep going. You're only defending yourself, after all. Creepy, heavy and encumbering. Just the way I f***ing like it. This makes every return to Rapture fill me up with dread, but also with a strange, eerie, totally unexplained joy.

But maybe you don't care about that as much as I. How's the game-play, you say? Totally f***ing awesome. This is a game that lets you play as a strange combination between Humphrey Bogart's Samuel Spade from The Maltese Falcon and Milo Ventimiglia's Peter Petrelli from Heroes (obscure nerdy reference alert), who has been muted for some strange reason. Now those are a couple of names I never thought I'd ever put in the same sentence. Bioshock seems to constantly manage the impossible. So this means that the combat is fun as hell: you shoot lightning, fire and ice from your hands, weapons are fun to use and feel powerful, the selection is unique, even if the individual weapons themselves aren't, you have a telekinesis ability that makes Freeman's gravity gun pale in comparisson, you hack security machines and use them against enemies, you can impale enemies to the wall or leave them hanging from the ceiling, there's a surprisingly rich role-playing system of passive abilities, you can even sick killer bees on them, ffs And it's not just combat that's fun. There's also the exploration element: you find food, ammo, money, vending machines to spend that money, codes for opening doors, recordings that tell you more about the wonderful world you're in, funny posters, you hack safes, you can even get hammered (and it's freaking hilarious). Just awesome. It isn't quite the best fun I've ever had with an FPS' game-play, to be honest, but topping off Half Life 2 or the People Can Fly games (Painkiller and Bulletstorm) is pretty hard. Definitely up there, though.

So there you have it: a game that's almost perfect in all of its main areas. Does it have some flaws? Sure, like any game, but nothing that stands out like a rabitt's ears. There's the hacking mini-game which isn't very awesome(not horrible, though), it's a little bit on the easy side, especially compared to the brutal and unforgiving System Shock (although The Big Daddies will offfer quite a challenge, at least at first), some weapons and plasmids become useless and the ending is a tad bit disappointing compared to the rest of the story. All minor gripes, though.

So let's do a summary and put it all in maths:

Game-play............... 9.2
Story........................ 9.8
Graphics................... 10
Atmosphere.............. 10
Overall Feeling.......... 10

So the final score is a very solid 9.8. So yeah, most definitely the best FPS of all time. Anyone wo diagrees with me can challenge me to a boxing match. Same way Uwe Boll did with his critics :D.

P.S. He beat them all to a bloody pulp :-p.

Gotta love this game. In terms of atmosphere and storytelling, it's pure genius, shining, unhindered brilliance. Gameplay not bad either, one of the best enemy AI I've ever sen in an FPS.