Review the game you finished recently.

I just finished Deadpool for PS4.

3.5 stars out of 5

Really this is a PS3/360 game that they uprezzed slightly to sell again on PS4. The graphics and models are definitely last gen.

So I was trying to get myself in the mood to see the new Deadpool movie, and I saw this game on Ebay and decided to go for it.

The voice actor nails it. He even sounds a bit like Ryan Reynolds. There were a ton of funny lines in this game, and there were several moments where I laughed my ass off. That's the good part.

The bad part is that the combat is very unsatisfying and super mega repetitive. The gunplay is not satisfying either, you'll spend half the time running around waiting for your health to regen, shooting over your shoulder. While Deadpool can die, if you break away from combat just before death and run around, he can regenerate. This becomes a problem later in the game when you are surrounded by enemies blocking your path. You can teleport a little bit, but you don't go far and you can only do it so many times.

If you're sensitive to video game chicks with big boobs or super sexist behavior/dialog... wait.. why would you even be interested in a Deadpool game?

Later levels get really frustrating and death occurs often. The final level(s) had me so pissed off I nearly broke my controller in half. You have to defeat wave after wave, while jumping around (there are areas where you have to "platform" jump around, but while people are shooting at you). I nearly rage quit the game but after stepping away from it for a while and re-trying I was able to finally get through. This was on normal difficulty.

So imagine hand to hand combat similar to the Batman games (but worse) and fairly useless guns... with lots of timed jumping and running and teleporting. You get the idea.

But man, it is funny.

It's under 10 hours, maybe 8 if not for the levels you have to repeat 10+ times, and the checkpoint system is fairly punishing. AT LEAST it replenishes your ammo when you die, other games like Bloodborne have you respawn minus all the ammo you used before.

If the combat had been better, this could have been a 4/5. But it could have been worse.

If you like Deadpool and like his juvenile antics, you'll like this. Go pick it up on Ebay for $15. The internet is your friend when it comes to advice on passing certain levels.

Honestly, if it wasn't funny, this would be a 1 star game. So don't play it for the combat or shooting, there are better games for that. But play it for the humor.
 
I think the only game I ever actually finished was MYST.

That was a bit too long ago to review.
 
Titanfall 2

Amazingly fun game, imo. This was my first Titanfall game so I didn't know anything about the titans. I liked how they had personality and not just a suit of battle armor. Kinda reminded me of Heavy Gear in a way.

The story was interesting enough to drive the game. The pacing was good but I would have liked it to be a little longer, just to enjoy more of the action.

The graphics were nice and the movement had a great feel. The use of the Source Engine surprised me.

The combat felt good and responsive. Good mix of guns and loadouts for the titan.

Overall I enjoyed the game from start to finish.
 
Titanfall 2

Amazingly fun game, imo. This was my first Titanfall game so I didn't know anything about the titans. I liked how they had personality and not just a suit of battle armor. Kinda reminded me of Heavy Gear in a way.

The story was interesting enough to drive the game. The pacing was good but I would have liked it to be a little longer, just to enjoy more of the action.

The graphics were nice and the movement had a great feel. The use of the Source Engine surprised me.

The combat felt good and responsive. Good mix of guns and loadouts for the titan.

Overall I enjoyed the game from start to finish.
I was under the impression that titanfall was an online multiplayer game. :confused:
 
Far Cry 5

This one is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand it isn't horrible, on the other it feels rushed and is full of many annoying small issues. What needed to be changed from 3/4 was not, and what worked good was occasionally tweaked to make it worse than the previous entries.

Overlapping of important character diolgue is frequent from two story characters, such as after completing a mission. Less important dialogue will also play just as loudly; they should prioritize characters like most games. Play with subtitles on. Occasionally physics bugs get your vehicle stuck, horrible wing suit deploy mechanic, diolgue that gets cut off, enemies will spawn within visual range, and the draw distance can be a bit short.

Perhaps one of the most annoying things is how many times you get stopped by enemies, or animals, or something. Until you liberate an area you often cannot travel more than 100 meters without an enemy spawning right around you. Get in a vehicle, start driving, and enemy will ram into you. Kill them, get back in, drive for five seconds and again another enemy will come strolling down the road. The amount of crap that jumps out at you while you're trying to drive to an objective just gets in the way. It makes it hard for you to do what you actually want.

A lot of mission design is done poorly as well. Too many missions revolve around doing the same few things dozens of times. Each region requires you to free 20 or something civilians, which means stopping a van or driving up to some guys on the side of the road. It is okay to have that every now and then, but to do it 50-60 times throughout the game gets old quickly. Then there are missions which require you to "hunt" animals, which means spending 10 minutes finding an area for a particular version of bear and then holding down the trigger until they drop. More on this in a bit.

Upgrades do not come very naturally, unlike Far Cry 3/4. In those games if you played the game normally you'll get all of your perks. Not in FC5. You'll have to hunt to get perks. Enjoy driving around and pumping bullets into animals over, and over and over again to get your perks. You will also need to use companions, make them get kills and whatnot to get perks. Essentially you can't really play the way you want to, otherwise you'll never get enough points to get cool perks such as the take down techniques or wing suit. Cash is also a pain. Unlike 3/4 you will be cash strapped, and will need to go out of your way to hunt to get cash.

Our favorite weapons return (well the mortar from FC2 is still missing), although less of them. You get maybe 12 different weapons, a few variants of those. The rest are reskins. Considering FC5 is largely the same base game as its predecessors it is kind of shocking at how few weapons there are, and the grind to get them. Balancing is just off to. The M4 variant and one of the LMGs makes the rest of the weapons pointless. The big caliber lever action rifles would have been fun to use but they're worthless. They don't do much damage, have a slow rate of fire, are not accurate enough and take too long to reload. Unless you want to see your health dwindle rapidly it is not practical to use. Same with the pump action shotguns.

The game also does not seem to work well with take downs. Unlike the last two games, I seemed to die far more often when attempting a chain take down or similar. It felt suicidal and pointless to try it. That kind of kills the diversity of the combat by a notable amount. Likewise, not many chances for vertical take downs or take downs from below. The cool features are still there, but somehow due the re-balancing of the enemies and map design they are just not practical.

Story wise it is fairly mediocre. I found the antagonist to be the least likeable, least realistic, and most poorly done of the three games. The story made the least sense and relied too heavily on drugs/zombies. Montana itself didn't seem like Montana. I've never been there, but I know that Montana is not diverse. In FC5 about half the characters were not Caucasian, which stood out. The Caucasian ones also had southern accents which seemed very awkward and out of place. Really, it was hard to immerse myself into the setting because I couldn't tell what they were trying to portray.

The final knock against the game was is it was clearly designed for MP, not SP. Cut scenes often take place in a dark... nothing, with the protagonist speaking to you. I assume this is done because in co-op each character will be in a different location when a cut scene starts so they made an odd black background as a catch all for all players. A lot of spoken dialogue references the character as "they", and the game constantly tries to force you to do online stuff (to get perks quicker).

Outside of those issues, some of them bigger than others, we have Far Cry 3/4. Which is a good thing. When you weren't spending 15-20 minutes doing a fetch quest interrupted by constant spawning enemies the combat was fun. Throwing molotovs, a variety of explosive devices, surrounding yourself with fire to prevent enemies from charging you is an awesome experience. The big fire fights can be great fun. The well designed missions were great to play, and the overall fluidity of the combat is still great. It is an action packed FPS that still delivers a lot of great moments. It just needed some more time to fine tune, polish, and maybe some effort put into the theme/setting.

I'd give it a 7.5 out of 10.
 
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Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)

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Funny that. I purchased this game at release and only now got around to finishing it. The reason is quite simple. I re-visited the first reboot just before this was released. I originally abandoned that due to the annoying QTEs. But by 2015 I've gotten used to those enough to be able to pick up the game again. No, I didn't come to like them, just deal with them and get on with it.
And thankfully it seems that the whole gaming community is in a similar place about QTEs, because there seems to be less of them in most games nowadays. And they're certainly not a gameplay mechanic on their own. And this game is no exception to that regardless of the fact that it is over 2.5 years old by now. But I'm going on a tirade here, where was I?

So I picked up the first reboot again, and gotten to like it enough that mid game I decided to purchase the newly released sequel because I thought I wanted more. Well, as it turns out, I didn't want more of the same. At least not immediately. The game is very similar to the first, so much so that I quit playing after an hour maybe. These aren't meant to be played chained together.
I was meaning to pick it up for a while now. But I only did a few weeks ago. Funny enough I already ordered Shadow of the Tomb Raider. But this time I'm ahead schedule. So by the time that comes out I'll only remember the good bits of this game.

Not that there were many bad bits either. The game feels more complete than the first one. Every aspect is improved and / or expanded upon. Except for QTEs which are completely gone. Well almost completely, there is still one at the end of the campaign.
So gameplay is much improved, and it is very satisfying on its own. Which it has to be, because the shallow story won't carry this one on it's back. Yamatai was actually interesting, the backstory, the ruins, the collectible notes. But this frozen wasteland is the furthest thing from interesting.
Most of the notes are also uninteresting, and the narration is so painfully slow that I often just read the letters myself without waiting for the narration to finish.

So the game has to rely on gameplay for all it's appeal. But thankfully it succeeds there. I mentioned in the review of the first one that pulling down obstructions with rope arrows is oddly satisfying and empowering. Here almost everything feels the same, from melee finishing combos, climbing, jumping, to all kinds of physical things.
It might be getting tedious at this point, because I know this is only my fad, but I have to mention this for my own peace of mind. The character still doesn't look the part. All that jumping and climbing and fighting, and still zero muscle definition. Thankfully the cold terrain demands the wear of baggy clothes and jackets, so I could keep suspending my disbelief. But I just had to check out the commando outfit in the geothermal valley, it was a mistake.

So moving on. There were some aspects of the game that I didn't like. For example the fact that you had to fire alternative ammo by using the middle mouse button. Which was completely awkward for me, I wish you could just switch the ammo type regularly. I have no idea why they did it this way, it makes no sense to me.
Another issue is the dodge / counter combos. The feedback is awful. I never knew when I was successful or not, and never knew why I wasn't. I only realised at the very end of the game that some of what I thought were misses were probably hits, but I'm still not sure. If the player can't get used to or doesn't understand a game mechanic by the end of the game, well then that's definitely fucked up.
I also couldn't figure out how to use double / triple shots with the bow. And the inbuilt guides were meaningless. So that was another skill I never used. I say another, because there are a bunch of skills that are completely useless in the game. Or offer just minor convenience type help. While others are extremely helpful and improve a lot on your chances. And some are just there to increase the number of skills you can get, like the fact that you have to buy the finishing combo skill for every weapon type separately.

I also didn't like the way the in-game counter measures progress. It includes all the freaking meaningless hidden collectibles with equal weight as the main main main quest missions. So according to that I finished the game with 68% progress. Because I ignored collectibles apart from the ones that were on my way. It doesn't matter that I did all the optional tombs, and all the optional side missions. Well almost all, I think I forgot one. This brought the total game time to 21 hours. Which is not that much when I mention that this number includes the baba yaga dlc and the croft manor from the 20 year edition as well (the latter of which was pretty interesting and worth hitting up). The optional tombs are pretty good as well. Don't ignore them if you want some puzzle solving challenges. The puzzles are not that hard anyway, it's just a good distraction compared to the combat intensive main quest.

The game is surprisingly easy. There was one part where I had some difficultly, fairly early in the game where they throw a bunch of enemies at you and you're confined to a small space with no good cover. Apart from that I found the game child's play on the hardest difficulty level. And my skills are not what they used to be. My aiming is sluggish and slow.

What I was extremely annoyed about is the fact that I couldn't max out the graphics running on 2xGTX1080 SLI. In fact I think I had to reduce textures by two notches and hairfx by one to get acceptable framerates.


+
  • Gameplay
  • Jumping, climbing, combat, all the physical aspects
  • Some well designed levels
  • Mechanical puzzles

-
  • Lots of backtracking
  • Some redundant skills
  • never had enough crafting materials to even get close to tier 3 weapon upgrades
  • GTX1080 SLI is not enough for ultra settings
  • A bit too easy
  • The end bossfight was pathetic, like they didn't even do any play-testing, it just felt broken.
  • Lackluster story
  • Siberia is not very spectacular as scenery for the most part.

Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 8/10
story/atmosphere: 4/10
gameplay/controls: 9/10

overall impression: 7/10

What it gained in gameplay it lost on the story aspects. Hence it gets the same overall score as the first one.
I'm looking forward for the next one.
 
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So I just completed Crysis, Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 again.

I find the first one to be the weakest, while the destructive environnements are kind of fun at first they get annoying after a while, making it harder to pick up stuff, glitching all over the place, for some reason the game was also a bit stuttery at times, I'll just blame that on old software on new tech.

I also find the graphics while pretty good still missing some colour, it looks bland to me, what quake did for browns, this game does for greens, certain bits were a pain like driving with the tank, beeing out of shells and almost out of armour trying to continue while half a dozen rocket launcher missile fly around you, and if you die you are back in the same situation at the autosave point. Also the helicopter bit was kind of bad, less then on my first playtrough.

Still a solid game even if the last bit get's tedious floating around in those caverns trying to get my bearings. Also had some weird deaths on the ship which I can't realy explain.

I'll give it a 7/10

The 2nd one looks a lot better to me, also like the setting more, game ran a lot better too, less possibility to explore which in my case means I live longer since I don't run into unexpected crap :p

Vehicle controls are still wonky but matters less since you are not as fragile and have more ammo, had good fun stealthing around a bunch

this one get's an 8.5/10 from me

Third episode while it runs good when it's not crashing (mission 2 seems a real treat according to google searches) and looks great still has a few flaws not present in nr 2, laser pointer targetting while stealthed is broken in this one, suffers a bit from consolitis (levels are emptier very apparent in later levels probably due to memory limitations on the old gen consoles or something). You are also unable to carry both a rocket launcher and C4 like the previous one.

Gameplay is solid, handles great get's an 8/10 from me

Solid series imo was well worth playing trough them again, maybe I should look into getting the expac for the first one.
 
Frostpunk

I've finished all three scenarios that shipped at launch and wished there was more to it :/
Wonderful graphics and storytelling... no bugs to speak of... but the game feels limited :/
Game events are all scripted so there's very limited 'replayability' atm :(

Developers agree and more scenarios including an endurance mode are forthcoming :)
It's supposed to be mod-able, but it hasn't been enabled yet :/

I still enjoyed the hell out of it anyway, but new buyers should wait for a sale
 
Sequel to Descent Series ... OVERLOAD

many improvements over the earlier series releases but way too much flashy crap when things explode, missiles are fired, etc. Was hoping for a sequel to the storyline but there's zero cut scenes at least to the level I've played to thus far. Could have saved time/$$$ by not bothering with the cockpit framing stuff or if so, make it count

Nice that the original team released a sequel and I realize it's $30 MSRP but wish they'd done a bang up job ... then gladly would have paid more $$$ for it
 
Portal 2 (2011)
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I wasn't familiar with this game at all, I only heard whispers about the first Portal here and there, but knew nothing concrete about it.

Since I haven't played with the first Portal, I don't have the burden to compare the two. It was a completely fresh experience. All I knew before starting the game that it's a puzzle game centred around the portal gun. I was expecting a game without a story or real world setting, where the point is only to solve the puzzles and be done with it. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the game not only has a backstory, but a main character, a real story, and even a villain.

The first game received a lot of praise for the complexity of its puzzles, I don't know if that praise was misplaced or the first really is that much more complex. I'm saying that because the puzzles in this game are very very easy. Apart from one or two maps the solution was immediately apparent just by looking at the layout. I'm not joking, I installed the game on a morning and finished it by lunch. Maybe 5-6 hours. And since it is a puzzle game there is no difficulty setting, so you can't start again on hardcore, for a challenge.

I know that since the release of the game a lot of community content became available for it, but I can't take those into account. I'm not reviewing mods and community add-ons, only the game as it was released. Which is lacking in terms of properly challenging your brain. I don't want to spend hours staring at levels but a bit more complexity would've been welcome. I know that every game publisher wants to reach the widest audience possible, but I believe that the core gaming community is capable of more than this. I was literally flying trough the levels without pause. The difficulty of the puzzles are almost comparable to those in Rise of the Tomb Raider. OK, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the difference is much smaller than I'd expect.

Graphics wise it's on par with Half Life 2, maybe the textures became a bit higher resolution since then. So it's not going to mesmerise you with the visuals.

In the technical aspects however the game is flawless. It runs smoothly with high frame rates, without stuttering, and I encountered no bugs at all, not even minor ones. But Valve were traditionally good in this regard.

I enjoyed the story aspect of the game, and Stephen Merchant delivers a great performance as Wheatley. Without him the game would've been much flatter.

+

  • There is a story - this surprised me
  • end cutscene
  • Wheatley
  • Technically flawless

-

  • Puzzles are too easy
  • Thanks to the easy puzzles it can be finished in half a day.
  • Replay worthiness is 0.0


Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 6/10 (flawless but outdated even for 2011)
story/atmosphere: 9/10
gameplay/controls: 10/10

aggregate: 7/10

It's great fun, if you haven't played it yet, go ahead, it's less than 2 bucks in the summer sale.
 
That's a first - someone playing Portal 2 without having played Portal? Especially since the context is rather important given the plot/characters.
 
Portal 2 (2011)
View attachment 83950

I wasn't familiar with this game at all, I only heard whispers about the first Portal here and there, but knew nothing concrete about it.

Since I haven't played with the first Portal, I don't have the burden to compare the two. It was a completely fresh experience. All I knew before starting the game that it's a puzzle game centred around the portal gun. I was expecting a game without a story or real world setting, where the point is only to solve the puzzles and be done with it. So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the game not only has a backstory, but a main character, a real story, and even a villain.

The first game received a lot of praise for the complexity of its puzzles, I don't know if that praise was misplaced or the first really is that much more complex. I'm saying that because the puzzles in this game are very very easy. Apart from one or two maps the solution was immediately apparent just by looking at the layout. I'm not joking, I installed the game on a morning and finished it by lunch. Maybe 5-6 hours. And since it is a puzzle game there is no difficulty setting, so you can't start again on hardcore, for a challenge.

I know that since the release of the game a lot of community content became available for it, but I can't take those into account. I'm not reviewing mods and community add-ons, only the game as it was released. Which is lacking in terms of properly challenging your brain. I don't want to spend hours staring at levels but a bit more complexity would've been welcome. I know that every game publisher wants to reach the widest audience possible, but I believe that the core gaming community is capable of more than this. I was literally flying trough the levels without pause. The difficulty of the puzzles are almost comparable to those in Rise of the Tomb Raider. OK, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the difference is much smaller than I'd expect.

Graphics wise it's on par with Half Life 2, maybe the textures became a bit higher resolution since then. So it's not going to mesmerise you with the visuals.

In the technical aspects however the game is flawless. It runs smoothly with high frame rates, without stuttering, and I encountered no bugs at all, not even minor ones. But Valve were traditionally good in this regard.

I enjoyed the story aspect of the game, and Stephen Merchant delivers a great performance as Wheatley. Without him the game would've been much flatter.

+

  • There is a story - this surprised me
  • end cutscene
  • Wheatley
  • Technically flawless

-

  • Puzzles are too easy
  • Thanks to the easy puzzles it can be finished in half a day.
  • Replay worthiness is 0.0


Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 6/10 (flawless but outdated even for 2011)
story/atmosphere: 9/10
gameplay/controls: 10/10

aggregate: 7/10

It's great fun, if you haven't played it yet, go ahead, it's less than 2 bucks in the summer sale.

The co-op puzzles were a bit more difficult. I know you don't do online, but co-op is only 2 player. If you find someone to play with, it is really worth giving the co-op puzzles a try. I didn't finish all of them myself and probably won't, but there were some good ones.
 
That's a first - someone playing Portal 2 without having played Portal? Especially since the context is rather important given the plot/characters.
I've tried playing the first after 2, but it felt clunky. Exactly like when I tried playing XCOM after XCOM2. They feel too outdated afterwards.
 
I've tried playing the first after 2, but it felt clunky. Exactly like when I tried playing XCOM after XCOM2. They feel too outdated afterwards.

You can beat the first Portal in about 3 hours if that makes it easier.
 
Witcher 2

Think I ranted on this game previously, but figured I'd summarized it all into one post now that I am replaying parts of it.

Terrible game, aside form the diolgue and story. Even that falls apart as it relies too much on gibberish to make it sound smart when it really isn't.

Gameplay is terrible. Combat is horrid and comes down to button mashing the mouse one button. Perhaps the most boring combat in any type of game I've ever played. Turn it down to easy, because you want it to be over quickly before your mouse falls apart. That is how bad it is. Everything related to switching powers, equipment, and weapons is setup horribly. Movement is terrible. You can't walk off a small height, you must go around even the slightest drop in terrian. Often you will have to press mouse one (why!?) to continue moving. Actions are the same way. Very particular in the angle needed to activate mouse one.

GUI and anything related to human interface is appalling. The map makes no sense. If you zoom out to much it turns into an utterly useless map of the whole world, which isn't helpful. The items are tiny, blurry images that are hard to see. You can't switch from the inventory to the map or journal. You must exit those menus then re-open the other ones. It is hard to tell what items go where as there is no way to order what kind of weapon can go into the secondary slot. Quests are confusing as hell and you often have no idea what it wants you to do. It makes matters worse that there is no quick travel (or maybe there is, not that you'd be able to figure it out in the options). Enjoy running around figuring out what the hell the quest designers wanted you to do. Got to pad those game length hour figures!

There is also an abundance of picking up worthless crap; timber, flowers, cloth, all kinds of garbage. You need an obscene amount to craft anything, but considering how illegible the menu is and how much crap you have to sift through I can't muster the strength to go forward with such plans. The Witcher 2 is the epitome of adding so much fluff to a game. Walking into tent after ten to collect garbage and mash the mouse one button just isn't fun. It gets in the way of the few bits of the game that are passable. An example of a game that adds too much crap just to make the length artificially long.

Performance issues. It seems there may be a fix for it, but I have yet to find one for the stuttering. Opening menus results in a stutter, animations resetting, or NPCs skipping around. Just unacceptable. The draw distance is incredibly short as well. Foliage LODs change 5 feet away from your character. Frame rates seem to drop suddenly as well. Animations are garbage as well. Mass Effect 1 blew this game out of the water.

The only good thing about this game is the dialogue. In general it is well written. The story bits of the game can also be fairly interesting. Unlike Mass Effect and Dues Ex, it is hard to figure out what your diolgue options mean (the hints are not very clear). But the story can be interesting. Sometimes it delves off too much into fantasy gibberish, but can be solid enough.

Overall, very over rated game. It is a very below average game with only one decent aspect. It sucks in every other area. I hope the developers improve a lot on their upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, otherwise it will be another turd like The Witcher 2.

6/10
 
I completely agree, it is a terrible game, but still not as boring as the first one. But I'd put the dialogue and story in the terrible category as well, because that's what actually made me stop playing it at some point. Not the garbage combat, and controls.
 
I completely disagree. The Witcher 2 was a good game. The combat was its weak point, but everything else was well done. It was a nice evolution from The Witcher, although nowhere near the masterpiece that is The Witcher 3.
 
I completely agree, it is a terrible game, but still not as boring as the first one. But I'd put the dialogue and story in the terrible category as well, because that's what actually made me stop playing it at some point. Not the garbage combat, and controls.

Really? I thought it was pretty good. I can't claim to be knowledgeable about English dialect 500-600 years ago (in a fantasy land at that), but it sounded fairly period correct. Most of the conversations seemed pretty well done to me. But yeah, the rest of the game certainly was below average. Even for 2011.
 
Really? I thought it was pretty good. I can't claim to be knowledgeable about English dialect 500-600 years ago (in a fantasy land at that), but it sounded fairly period correct. Most of the conversations seemed pretty well done to me. But yeah, the rest of the game certainly was below average. Even for 2011.
It wasn't a quality beef on my part, I wasn't satisfied with the creative direction. I guess the quality was OK I don't remember exactly, it was a long time ago, But I do remember that I stopped playing it because I didn't like the way the character turned out to be, and some of the dialogue choices I Was forced into.
 
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War -

Fun RTS with an interesting story. Good mix of units but spamming space marines was usually enough to win lol.


Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault -

Continued the fun game play of the first but increased the difficulty of the missions at least for the Order campaign. There were some difficult scripted events and the anti vehicle capabilities of your units were not as OP as the space marines of the first game.

Both games ran great with no crashes or bugs that I recall. The games didn't support my 2560 x 1440 monitor by default but there are online fixes for that. I didn't bother with them and was fine with having black bars on the sides. The game does support 144 hz which was cool considering the games age.

Didn't touch MP of either game, as I was only concerned to play the story.
 
Detroit: become human

I did play on easiest setting, which makes the game more of an interactive movie (reminded me of tales from the borderlands gameplay wise from telltale), the graphics are very good imo, there were some slowdowns every now and then, but since it's not a reflex based game it does not really matter gameplay wise. Also some keypress sequences seem to be made for 3 handed people but this happened very rarely.

Now one complaint I have is that at the start it's not really clear what you have to do and how to do it which resulted in me having a different start then I would have liked. I also "failed" part of a mission later in the game because I could not figure out how to do it.

Not sure if this is a pro or a con, but I found it confusing playing a game with different characters beeing on opposite sides as you kind of have to "cheat" to get to the desired outcome (would need multile playtroughs to see if it is really the case)

I also have the feeling some parts were cut but this might be due to how the story unfolds depending on your choises.

It's pretty short but then again it's an interactive movie more then a game, I still had fun with it, the game looks great, the story is decent, bit predictable, but yeah which game isen't.

I'll give it a 7/10
 
Middle Earth: Shadow of War

HACK & SLASH! Seriously, great action/adventure game that expanded on the first one with so much more to do and see with a good story as well. Looks great even at high setting and it has a benchmark tool to check FPS.

Made me nostalgic for the LOTR movies too; which are approaching 20 years old, yikes!

Only con is the Gold Edition is 100Gb so be sure to have plenty of space before downloading it.
 
The post I was replying to was deleted, no luck with a refund.


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Not quite a review, but more of an observation on my recent replay of Mass Effect 2. I played as a full Renegade for the first time. I'm capable of being a helluva lot more of a mean nasty bastard than I thought. :LOL:

Game still rates a 9/10, of course. (y)

Now replaying ME3 with my imported ME2 mean nasty bastard character.
 
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So I just completed Crysis, Crysis 2 and Crysis 3 again.

<SNIP>

Solid series imo was well worth playing trough them again, maybe I should look into getting the expac for the first one.

You must play Warhead, it improves on the first game greatly.
 
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Wolfenstein II - The New Colossus (2017)

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I'm struggling here a bit. I don't know what to say about this game. It's been almost a day since I finished it, but I have nothing good to say about it. While I judged the first one to be a slightly better than average shooter. I can't say the same about this. This game is as generic as it gets.

There is absolutely no variation in the gameplay whatsoever. You shoot nazis, ad nausea. And during the pauses you play errand boy. Basically 99.9% of the levels in the game are built on an extremely simple template. You enter a general area, that consists of a few rooms interconnected by various corridors or a hub area.
And these have a few dozen of henchmen in it, two officers, who call reinforcements if not taken out quickly. And maybe three or four heavy enemies, that usually only get released when you finished off the rest. And when all enemies are killed a doorway opens where you can move into the next area, and repeat this until the end of the level.

Gameplay wise it is almost a carbon copy of Bioshock Infinite, but without its charm and stunning visual design.

It was fun for 2-3 hours, then it all started to feel like a chore, with no reward. So I bumped down the difficulty to the easiest after that. And honestly the game didn't feel any different on easy. Or I should say it wasn't more rewarding to play on a harder difficulty level.
The only thing that actually changed is how fast I could progress trough the levels. And that was a good thing that I could progress faster, because I was already contemplating abandoning my playtrough when it suddenly ended, to my surprise and even greater relief.

I didn't expect it to be over, because there was no build-up, the last map didn't feel any different to all the previous ones that came before that. I was half expecting this to be only a halfway point in the game, but when the credits started to roll I realized that was it really.

As for the story, it started out where the first game left it, and for a while it was OK, but slowly and steadily it devolved into complete madness. They jumped the shark so many times that I lost count, and I became completely indifferent to the story. Sure, sure the first game wasn't realistic either, but this broke my suspension of disbelief beyond any hope of repair.
Was this meant to be fun? Because except for a few small moments it wasn't. And I knew that Swedes and Finns are not particularly best friends, but the guys at machine games really went all out this time bashing the Finns. It just wasn't good comedy, it was the awkward comedy, where everyone is shifting uncomfortably in their chairs, waiting for the others to start laughing to see that it is acceptable to laugh or not.

And actually this notion carries on through the entire game. It was more awkward than funny. I can count the jokes on one hand that actually worked.

I've tried the freedom chronicles DLCs as well. The first one gunslinger joe, is more of the same as the main game, so I said no thanks, I had too much of this already. But the second one is a breath of fresh air to this stale game. Because it actually changes the rules and you can use a different more stealthy approach. Didn't get around to the third series yet.

Graphics was OK I guess, didn't really stand out either way.

Gameplay wise there were two things that really, and I mean really annoyed me: It was very hard to tell when you were being hit, I only noticed that I was being hit most of the time when I saw my Health and armour numbers on the HUD rapidly decreasing. And even then it was hard to tell where you were being targeted from, I had to spin like a carousel to find the enemy actually shooting at me. So the visual and audible feedback of the game is terrible. And this includes the goal indicators. There is a "hint" button in the game that shows where your actual objective is. But when you press it it flashes a tiny winy angled bracket that disappears within a second, most of the time I couldn't even find where it was on the screen before it disappeared. Of course 98% of the environments in the game are grey, and what color is the bracket? Yeah right: grey. So often after clearing one area I had to run around aimlessly while abusing the hint button to find the exit. As often the exit was a small opening or vent or ladder tucked away in one out of the way corner.

The non-combat sequences between missions in the resistance HQ, are nothing but a bunch of the worst fetch quests. Go here, talk to this one, go there, bring this, find that...Blargh!

+

  • A few good lines mixed in among thousands of weak and awkward jokes.
  • Runs OK, no noticeable bugs.
  • Freedom chronicles part 2



-

  • Repetitive gameplay
  • Awkward jokes
  • the story becomes beyond ridiculous, and jumps the shark more than once
  • the nazis are portrayed as so stupid that you have no reason to fear them, this is the nazi menace? A bunch of idiots? How could they have won the war if they're really this stupid?
  • Hard to tell when you're being hurt, and in turn hard to tell if you're hurting an enemy or not, actually almost impossible. You just shoot and have faith that sooner or later it will fall.

Scoring:

graphics/realization: 7/10
story/atmosphere: 3/10
gameplay/controls: 4/10

overall impression : 5/10

Not the worst game I played.
 
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Mirror Edge: Catalyst

The story was ok, nothing ground breaking but enjoyed it enough to continue. Some of the game play decisions resulted in frustration. Every time I got into unavoidable combat I would just dread it. Every combat encounter would kinda play out the same. Defeat the gun enemies, the stun enemies and whatever remains after that. I could never figure out how to disarm the gun enemies either, if it is even possible. The combat was just an annoying obstacle to me running. It just felt too basic.

When I wasn't in combat the game was fun. I did avoid all of the side content and only did the story. They spent too much time and effort on creating pointless fluff to clutter the map with. The movement system was good and only resulted in a few deaths caused by the character going the wrong direction. The game has a decent auto save system so if you plunged to your death you didn't loose much progress when in a mission.

Graphically the game looked good.

The first game really had something that made it enjoyable, the sequel tried but didn't have the same charm, imo.

I agree completely. There was one forced combat area that I lost so many times on, I almost stopped playing. The rest of the game was great though. Not on the same level as the first one, but enjoyable. I did a little bit of the collecting crap, and a few of the little side things, but ignored much of that. Which is strange, because I'm usually someone that likes to complete most of those sorts of things. I'm not usually a 100%er, but somewhat close to it. Overall, it's definitely worth playing. I just wish they ditched the combat "arenas". Taking care of the odd guard, or small group is actually kind of fun, but the areas with multiple waves just felt kinda stupid on this one.
 
I agree completely. There was one forced combat area that I lost so many times on, I almost stopped playing. The rest of the game was great though. Not on the same level as the first one, but enjoyable. I did a little bit of the collecting crap, and a few of the little side things, but ignored much of that. Which is strange, because I'm usually someone that likes to complete most of those sorts of things. I'm not usually a 100%er, but somewhat close to it. Overall, it's definitely worth playing. I just wish they ditched the combat "arenas". Taking care of the odd guard, or small group is actually kind of fun, but the areas with multiple waves just felt kinda stupid on this one.

Yeah the trials were too repetitive. There must have been 30 or so of two different side activities. Thankfully this game didn't require them in anyway. They were a bit difficult so I only did maybe 4-5 total. Considering it was the same as the story missions I felt no need to do them under a time limit. Otherwise pretty fun. Took about 12 hours to beat if I recall without doing the majority of the time trials which was great.

If you're going to put lots of meaningless and uninteresting side quests into the game at least make it not required to get content. Ubisoft, take notice.
 
Yeah the trials were too repetitive. There must have been 30 or so of two different side activities. Thankfully this game didn't require them in anyway. They were a bit difficult so I only did maybe 4-5 total. Considering it was the same as the story missions I felt no need to do them under a time limit. Otherwise pretty fun. Took about 12 hours to beat if I recall without doing the majority of the time trials which was great.

If you're going to put lots of meaningless and uninteresting side quests into the game at least make it not required to get content. Ubisoft, take notice.

Yep, that was the good part. You could do any that might catch your attention as being kind of fun, and ignore the rest. I hate being forced to do things like that in order to do anything that's actually important in a game. Sure, give a nice bonus item or something, but optional is nice.
 
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

I'll stat this off with saying this is one of the most over rated games in history. If you have played an recent Ubisoft game over the past few years, you've practically played BOTW. The game is a fairly standard open world action adventure title that does nothing innovative, nor does it do anything exceptionally well. The one area the game shines in is the lack of bugs which is typical of Nintendo games.

One of the short comings of the game is the pacing. The game gets off to a slow start. As in the first 10 or so hours are not much more than running around aimlessly picking up fruit and mushrooms. Eventually the game gets going and things start getting a little interesting and fun. Eventually you'll hit another downward spiral of aimlessness and fetching of worthless items which hurts the overall playability. There is a distinct lack of good story missions, story content and unique tasks. The ratio of simplistic, time filler content to meaningful content must be around 70 to 30%. Very skewed, and not in a good way.

Combat is a bit sterile. There are not many enemy types in the game. Combat against the standard enemies is very boring and severely lacking. There are a few interesting enemies that are fun to take down, but they are later in the game and not that plentiful. There are other quirks which make the game clunky. For example to switch to a shield you first have to un-equip your sword, then press the shield button. Most of the powers Link gets are pretty much worthless in combat. The few times it is required you won't realize it because you never use them in combat outside of some small instances that it catches you off guard.

Quest design is poor. The majority are old school low effort fetch quests. As in "go get me 10 versions of this obscure mushroom". In 2017/2018, that is just not cutting it. That summarizes the vast majority of the quests in the game, outside of 3-4 main story quests which themselves are pretty much all the same. Most of the game comprises of you running around a blacked out map (think Far Cry, Mad Max, Assassin's Creed, Watch Do... fuck it, most recent games) to find a tower. Once you find this tower you must, you guessed it, climb it. Then there are these shrines which have zero connection to the story in any meaningful way. These are puzzles which actually can be fun. You use these to upgrade your health and your stamina. After a while, entering a region and running to a tower, running around to fine shrines, running around during fetch quests climbing up blocky, empty mountains gets a bit old.

Running. You do a lot of running. And climbing. There are many areas filled with absolutely nothing worth seeing, but you spent 15 minutes climbing there anyways to see if that would change. Every area ends up being the same. Some ruins with nothing interesting to do or find. Just the same generic enemies and maybe a shrine. Did I mention the amount of climbing and running through a sparse empty map? Enjoy your absurdly low stamina wheel and a horse that controls poorly and gets stuck when not running in flat grassland.

The game offers a vast, huge world, but it is very sparse. After 15 hours you've done everything there is to do in the game. The rest is just repeating the same few tasks over and over again. Outside of looking at some occasional nice scenery, you just can't interact with it. Is there a story to this ruined village? No, just another shrine/puzzle. Does climbing up and then running around a freezing mountain range to find a lost goddess offer any impact to the story? No, you get shoes that help you run a little faster in sand. But you've probably finished the desert quests already. There is a severe lack of adventure & purpose to the world. Every place feels so generic and empty. There is about as much to learn about this world as there was in Just Cause 2; which is practically nothing. So many missed opportunities.

The few boss battles and boss levels are fun, but they amount to 5 hours at best out of a good 50-60. Once you get into the game some of the mechanics can be fun enough to hold your interest. It plays like most typical games these days when it is at its best. Fun, but nothing great.

A big problem with this game is size. There are roughly 12 areas in the map, but four of them have almost no purpose. They just have more shrines, a tower, and some generic fetch quests. They could have cut the size down, cut the travel time down, and filled the other areas with interesting quests instead.

Performance wise a few jungles/forests have frame rate problems, but most of the game runs well enough (around 30-40 FPS which is average for a console). Outside of small quirks in the controls such as difficultly locking on with a shield the game is well polished.

I'm not sure what people see in this game. I put close to 50-60 hours into it, visited all the areas, did most of the side quests, found all the memories, did all shrines I ran across. It simply isn't more than a bloated, engaged generic title.

7/10 <--- only because it was fairly bug free. If it wasn't I'd give it a 6.
 
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

I'll stat this off with saying this is one of the most over rated games in history. If you have played an recent Ubisoft game over the past few years, you've practically played BOTW. The game is a fairly standard open world action adventure title that does nothing innovative, nor does it do anything exceptionally well. The one area the game shines in is the lack of bugs which is typical of Nintendo games.

One of the short comings of the game is the pacing. The game gets off to a slow start. As in the first 10 or so hours are not much more than running around aimlessly picking up fruit and mushrooms. Eventually the game gets going and things start getting a little interesting and fun. Eventually you'll hit another downward spiral of aimlessness and fetching of worthless items which hurts the overall playability. There is a distinct lack of good story missions, story content and unique tasks. The ratio of simplistic, time filler content to meaningful content must be around 70 to 30%. Very skewed, and not in a good way.

Combat is a bit sterile. There are not many enemy types in the game. Combat against the standard enemies is very boring and severely lacking. There are a few interesting enemies that are fun to take down, but they are later in the game and not that plentiful. There are other quirks which make the game clunky. For example to switch to a shield you first have to un-equip your sword, then press the shield button. Most of the powers Link gets are pretty much worthless in combat. The few times it is required you won't realize it because you never use them in combat outside of some small instances that it catches you off guard.

Quest design is poor. The majority are old school low effort fetch quests. As in "go get me 10 versions of this obscure mushroom". In 2017/2018, that is just not cutting it. That summarizes the vast majority of the quests in the game, outside of 3-4 main story quests which themselves are pretty much all the same. Most of the game comprises of you running around a blacked out map (think Far Cry, Mad Max, Assassin's Creed, Watch Do... fuck it, most recent games) to find a tower. Once you find this tower you must, you guessed it, climb it. Then there are these shrines which have zero connection to the story in any meaningful way. These are puzzles which actually can be fun. You use these to upgrade your health and your stamina. After a while, entering a region and running to a tower, running around to fine shrines, running around during fetch quests climbing up blocky, empty mountains gets a bit old.

Running. You do a lot of running. And climbing. There are many areas filled with absolutely nothing worth seeing, but you spent 15 minutes climbing there anyways to see if that would change. Every area ends up being the same. Some ruins with nothing interesting to do or find. Just the same generic enemies and maybe a shrine. Did I mention the amount of climbing and running through a sparse empty map? Enjoy your absurdly low stamina wheel and a horse that controls poorly and gets stuck when not running in flat grassland.

The game offers a vast, huge world, but it is very sparse. After 15 hours you've done everything there is to do in the game. The rest is just repeating the same few tasks over and over again. Outside of looking at some occasional nice scenery, you just can't interact with it. Is there a story to this ruined village? No, just another shrine/puzzle. Does climbing up and then running around a freezing mountain range to find a lost goddess offer any impact to the story? No, you get shoes that help you run a little faster in sand. But you've probably finished the desert quests already. There is a severe lack of adventure & purpose to the world. Every place feels so generic and empty. There is about as much to learn about this world as there was in Just Cause 2; which is practically nothing. So many missed opportunities.

The few boss battles and boss levels are fun, but they amount to 5 hours at best out of a good 50-60. Once you get into the game some of the mechanics can be fun enough to hold your interest. It plays like most typical games these days when it is at its best. Fun, but nothing great.

A big problem with this game is size. There are roughly 12 areas in the map, but four of them have almost no purpose. They just have more shrines, a tower, and some generic fetch quests. They could have cut the size down, cut the travel time down, and filled the other areas with interesting quests instead.

Performance wise a few jungles/forests have frame rate problems, but most of the game runs well enough (around 30-40 FPS which is average for a console). Outside of small quirks in the controls such as difficultly locking on with a shield the game is well polished.

I'm not sure what people see in this game. I put close to 50-60 hours into it, visited all the areas, did most of the side quests, found all the memories, did all shrines I ran across. It simply isn't more than a bloated, engaged generic title.

7/10 <--- only because it was fairly bug free. If it wasn't I'd give it a 6.
It is Zelda. That is all that requires to get master piece status. Shigeru Miyamoto can take a shit in a box and stick Zelda on the box. People would still declare it is the greatest game ever.
 
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A big problem with this game is size. There are roughly 12 areas in the map, but four of them have almost no purpose. They just have more shrines, a tower, and some generic fetch quests. .
It almost as if you were talking abut DA:I
 
God of War (2018)

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 10/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Story: 8/10
Atreus: 2/10

I know I'm a few months late to the party for God of War, but I finally got it and played the shit out of it. I'm going back through to get 100% on it as I've done with every main entry in GoW.

This game looks great for a console game, the only qualm is the shadows - they have a gap between the character and the ground. Otherwise the game looks great and I don't know if it's the same on PS4Pro.

The story - I love the concept of the story and as with all the previous games they do a REALLY good job of giving you a purpose for the journey. The only thing I didn't like was Atreus - that little punk was annoying and the game would of been just as impactful without him. Though, there are two scenes where Christopher Judge shines as an actor, and you can feel the emotion when Kratos is talking to Atreus. The rest of the time I'd try to leave the kid as far behind as I could when running around - I felt like he's nothing more than a "Hey, what's this?" and it's a switch or lever I've already seen.

The sound is fantastic. They really know how to make each game sound visceral and really get you into the gameplay and give the illusion of a living world.

I do want to know a bit more to the story - but that's what sequels are for.
 
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

I'll stat this off with saying this is one of the most over rated games in history...

7/10 <--- only because it was fairly bug free. If it wasn't I'd give it a 6.

I thought I was the only one who felt this way. The game quickly becomes monotonous, the combat isn't very deep, the world is pretty boring, and the crafting is tedious. I gave up after 10 hours or so.
 
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

7/10 <--- only because it was fairly bug free. If it wasn't I'd give it a 6.

One of my top Zelda games ever. I beat it about a week ago. Thinking about 100% it but I have such a backlog.
 
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