Review the game you finished recently.

Meh, I should really re-install the game, I haven't played any of the DLCs yet.

M76 said:

Meh, I should really re-install the game, I haven't played any of the DLCs yet.

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Yeah that was a hurdle for me too, I'd largely written off this DLC but decided to give it a whirl.

If you are going down this route, I would straight up skip the other two, honestly.

A Criminal Past > System Rift > Desperate Measures

M76 said:

You know my gaming schedule? In the past two weeks I haven't played any game at all. I have a lot of reviews already written, I don't actually finish all the games when I post their reviews, but I did finish them at one point and written their reviews.

Click to expand...

So none of these are games...you've recently finished?

piscian18 said:

So none of these are games...you've recently finished?

Click to expand...

Not every single one of them, no, only some. But I've written all the reviews when I recently finished them, so technically I'm not breaking any rules.

Talk about nitpicking, I thought it was no problem to post reviews in the thread I created to post reviews into.

If I could I'd remove the "recently" from the thread title, but I can't. The only reason I put it there is because people tend to idealize games that they played a long time ago and it wouldn't make an honest review.

Resident Evil 7- 8.5/10. It is actually pretty horrific and gruesome and it definitely deserves a high mark. I only gave it 8.5/10, though, as there are some unexplained parts in the game and some are just pretty off in terms of the storyline. Otherwise, it is a pretty good game and a great one that will reinvigorate RE fans from the "horrors" of Resident Evil 6.

Uh..

Can I review a game as someone else?

piscian18: "Uncharted 4 was total shit, I mean, you walk around and find stuff? I can do that in real life. Horizon Zero Dawn looks like shit too, because there were leaves everywhere. Awful. P.S. I'm old and crabby."

ghostwich said:

Yeah that was a hurdle for me too, I'd largely written off this DLC but decided to give it a whirl.

If you are going down this route, I would straight up skip the other two, honestly.

A Criminal Past > System Rift > Desperate Measures

Click to expand...

I liked the first two DLCs. They're not massive contributions to the story, but DLC rarely is.

Elory Besus said:

Resident Evil 7- 8.5/10. It is actually pretty horrific and gruesome and it definitely deserves a high mark. I only gave it 8.5/10, though, as there are some unexplained parts in the game and some are just pretty off in terms of the storyline. Otherwise, it is a pretty good game and a great one that will reinvigorate RE fans from the "horrors" of Resident Evil 6.

Click to expand...

8.5 is a high mark. I consider anything beyond 7 as a great game.

Stories Untold

I’ll get this out of the way now: Stories Untold (Steam: PC) is difficult to review as a game, but as an experience it’s unique, deeply atmospheric, mildly frustrating, and will string you along for a maybe-enjoyable two hours, tops.

There are three major elephants in the room to address, and yes we’ve got a room just big enough:

• yes, it really aims for, and achieves a *Stranger Things* vibe
• yes, it really is mostly a typing-at-a-terminal-simulator game
• yes, it really is both “maybe-enjoyable” and about “two hours, tops"

On paper, this is not glowing praise, and in many ways recommending such a short and shallow gaming experience for $9.99 (on sale for $8.49 until March 6) is incredibly difficult to do, as the best way to experience the game’s plot (and many of its actual mechanics) is to walk in, blind. The surprises in the plot deserve not to be spoiled, and while some may see the ending as a bit telegraphed, it’s how you get there that matters.

The first episode in the four-episode game is named The House Abandon, and it’s the most traditional: you’re sitting at a terminal (a fictional cassette-tape-based 80’s computer) and interact with it by typing out commands. Going into more of the plot would give away too much, but it’s here that both the terrifying potential and mind-numbing frustrations begin to creep out of the darkness, so to speak.

This is hardly the first game to present a terminal within a terminal (i.e. the computer you’re sitting at), and the mouse does gently nudge the viewpoint on the screen slightly, as well as let you zoom in and out. The environment around you- in the first episode: the desk lamp, the phone on the wall, the photos on the desktop- soon proves to be as much of the experience as the words on the screen. And it’s the words on the screen that provide some of the game’s most unintended terror.

Maybe you’re more familiar with Interactive Fiction as a game genre; I’m not, and some of the nuances in how the game parses your words can begin to overshadow the tension and pacing it works so hard to produce. When I type out “walk around the house,” “go to the side of the house,” “walk along the house,” and the game tells me it doesn’t understand any of it until I type out exactly “follow the yard,” I come close to rage-quitting the game completely.

With time, you may grasp the precise wording of verbs and objects in order to proceed smoothly, or, maybe you’ll do what I did, which must be the text-based equivalent of stumble around clumsily knocking into every wall and reaching for things you can’t interact with. Also, I entered the front door and tried to tell the game to “lock the door behind me” for definitely more than several minutes before giving up and letting this particular horror story trope come to fruition.

I do believe, however, if the idea intrigues you, and perhaps if you’re not scared away by the thought of a “sitting at a terminal playing a horror interactive fiction game with a fiddly verb parser”-simulator, the experience (which does not really lend itself to multiple playthroughs), it’s worth your time and money. The first episode, The House Abandon, was originally a free standalone game available here but if you get more than five minutes in, I would say it’s worth playing the polished version available in Stories Untold.

Well, here is another review I didn't write recently. Actually I finished this game right after Mafia II. On 2010/08/20. I can't believe you made me write a trigger warning before my post, just how far have we fallen?

Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven (2002)

Originally I wanted to finish the game before Mafia II came out, but I spent my free time on other things, so I couldn't. But due to the shortness and lackluster nature that I had to fill the void it left in me. And what better way to do that than with the original game?

Despite not playing the game for years I still remembered all the missions frame by frame almost. Unfortunately this did take much away from my enjoyment of the game. But this also shows how big an effect the game had that I still remember 5-6 years later everything about it. Most other games I finished that long ago I can't remember a damn thing about. Of course the fact that I finished the game at least 4-5 times in the 2 years after it came out must have contributed to that.

Everyone knows the game, and if you don't probably my measly review here won't convince you to play a 15 year old game, so I won't detail the usual stuff that much. The graphics is terrible by today's standards, honestly the polygon count and texture sizes were considered low even in 2002. But I must give it to the game that it runs without a hitch on a 64-bit Windows 7, and can use any widescreen resolution including 16:9 and 16:10. Most other games from the era had serious issues when you wanted to run them in widescreen resolutions.

The game has a very well told story, it doesn't feel rushed or without context as some missions in 2. Sometimes the driving can be a bit repetitive, when you have to go the other end of the city and back during a mission. But the game is better at driving physics than most simulations of the time. It's actually a simulation, that fully supports wheels, and it's even recommended to have a wheel for it, or other type of analog controls for driving. Heck, the game even supports using a clutch pedal. Which is not a standard thing even today even in dedicated racing games. I'm looking at you gran turismo. (I know it can use the third pedal in various systems but it only acts as a digital switch in the game, and can't really be used as an actual clutch, it's detrimental to the game)

The action part of the game due to a lack of cover system (which was normal for 2002) is very hard. You can take cover behind objects manually but you can't shoot enemies from behind them because you'll always hit the cover. So you have to get out in the open to take them out. Which is hard, to do: Get out, aim, shoot, get back before getting hit.

If I'm ever going to make a top 10 games of all times list this would be on a very high spot on it.

+

• Atmoshpere
• Story
  
• Music
  
• Overall impression
  
• Driving physics
  
• Wheel support
• freeride extreme
• mod support

-

• Graphics
• NPC Police AI
  
• The story could be a tad longer, but it's still twice as long as Mafia II without the ripoff DLCs.
  
• I wish there were more story missions that take you to the countryside
  
• It felt easier than I remembered from way back when, my gaming skills must've improved since.

I don't like giving 10/10 score for anything, because that would mean there is no room for improvement, and I haven't seen any game that had none. But this is as close to a 10/10 as you can get by 2002 standards, and certainly a strong 9/10.

Spelunky.
After 76 hours, I finally made it to and beat Olmec. (Without shortcuts even.)
Game is awesome - and very hard, very old school. You will die A LOT.
One of the best rogue-likes I've played (along with FTL and Risk of Rain).
Unforgiving and brutal in its nature, but satisfying when you do good things.
Now, onto beating King Yama in Hell.

Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017)

So this is why damn FUD is dangerous as hell. I was ready to write this game off as another mistake of my trigger happy buying fingers after I saw the shitstorm the trolls of the tube whipped up during preview week. When the game didn't warrant more than some mild turd flicking.
So there, I've needed to make that clear before delving deeper into the intricacies of the game. Because it's worth delving into, since it's a very good game, contrary to what they'd have you believe. And I'm not saying that as a rabid ME fan. I actually got called that for daring to look at the game objectively, instead trough the red cape which has EA written on it in blood.

I was reluctant to first start the game, as I was expecting a great disappointment which sadly I had part in quite a few recently (Dishonored II, Mafia III are the sorest thorns). But my first impression was that the game feels very polished. Some were describing it as no more than an alpha release, which is utter bullshit.
My first fear was the character generator. Which was heavily criticized and scorned upon by many. The game was dragged trough the mud for providing only ugly faces as the starting point. Of course that's not ideal, but it was exactly the same in all previous ME games. The default preset faces except for "canon" Shepard were terrible.
But to be honest on my first try I could get better results from this character creator than I ever could with any of the previous games in the franchise. So that's how much merit is there to the detractors. Which is not the exception to but part of a pattern.
Is the character creator great? Far from it. They even took away a few options that were available in the previous games. But if I can create a custom character that looks appealing to me, then I'm content. And as I said I could do that on my first try. So moving on.

The most scowled upon thing from the game was of course animations. And this is where some turd flicking is warranted at Bioware. Some facial animations especially concerning lip sync were weird to say the least. Almost crossing over to the uncanny valley at times. But curiously the worst of it is concentrated towards the beginning of the game,
Maybe the first 10 hours of the main story. Later the issues became less and less apparent, and by the end of the game I could barely notice any problem. Which could have something to do with the patch that was released during the middle of my playtrough. But I must emphasise that the lipsync and facial animation issues became less apparent later in the game even before the patch.
Like the developers were working their way back from the end of the game to polish these.

But it's hard to focus on facial animations alone, when you're looking at the environments the game is throwing at you. Your first steps in Andromeda felt amazing. That true explorer feeling. The first chapter of the game was a wild ride, and it was great. The designers went out of their way to make the first planet you land on really look something.
The graphics is quite beautiful, not ground breaking, this is not the next Crysis but it's nice to look at still. It's a huge leap forwards from Dragon Age Inquisition. However there are negatives concerning graphics that I must mention. Well not graphics specifically but still it falls into this category. There are two core issues here.

1. The faces of most human NPCs are damn ugly, not all of them but about 90% of them. Which makes me believe this is a concious design choice aimed to appease SJWs. They should know that you can't please an sjw, no matter what you do you're sexist, misogynist and racist. Don't even try, which the example show greatly "You put a trans character into the game, that's not up to our standards? HOW DARE YOU?" Fucking lunatics infiltrate and ruin everything for everyone else. The most obvious example of ugly faces is the default female Ryder who they made into this goofy looking thing. It's absolutely distasteful. If I were the actress who gave her likeness to the character I'd sue their assess for this if I could. But I guess they put clauses in the contract preventing that. And I'm sure the goofy look of the character goes a long way to exaggerate the facial animation issues. So for the love of all that's holy don't go default look. And the second most obvious examples are the Asari in the game. Who were always portrayed as beautiful. Well not anymore. Their puffy faces hold no beauty anymore, and they also seem to be clones, which brings us to the second issue.
2. All and I mean ALL alien races use a single face model for all characters. (Except for a very few key NPCs) and that includes the Salarians, The Kett, the Krogan, the Turains, and the Asari as well, oh and I forgot the Angara, of course they're all clones too. They all have the exact same head. Even your own Asari doctor on your ship, who is supposed to be a key character shares the exact same copy paste face as 98% of all Asari in the game. They only try to differentiate some characters with face paint and It doesn't help. Unacceptable.

While we're talking about characters I have a few not so nice words about sound design as well. Or more specifically voices. Alien voices that is. In previous ME games the Turians/Krogans/Salarians, all had very specific voices unique to their race. Here that's poof completely gone! It's absolutely weird that some characters sound right as they should, but many just speak in plain human voices.
Like the sound team didn't have time to give all the recorded conversations the necessary effects to make them sound like their species should. Because I can tell you it's absolutely immersion breaking when a Krogan female starts barking with a 100% undistilled human voice. (Or is that racist now?) I'm confused what is this, why?

OK calm down, it's not all bad. Let's look at the story. I didn't like it much at first, but it does pick up, and ends on a high note. I can't go into any details without spoilers, but the quality of the story can be defined with a monotonic nondecreasing function. What I especially like is that there is a proper epilogue to the story this time. I miss that from every game.
Novels used to have them, but movies / games almost never. They always end after the final climactic point, and poof nothing else left, out of bullets. Here there is a part showing the aftermath, and a time to reflect with other characters, and they also included a nice surprise.

And mentioning characters at first I was skeptical about them, they seemed bland and uninteresting. And that only changes after / during their loyalty missions. Yes there are loyalty missions again. Although I don't think they have the same consequences if not done as in ME2, but I'm not sure as I did all of them.
Unfortunately the loyalty missions only became available later in the game, if you're a completionist that could be as far as 50 hours in. So until then you have almost no real connection to your crew. Which brings us to another weak point in the game.

Pacing. The way missions are given and the way interaction options open, and the way some don't go away ever. All side missions and all loyalty missions in the game are tied to a very limited number of key points in the main storyline. Meaning they don't unlock gradually as you progress trough the game. But at certain points 15 missions became available at once.
And even messages you get suffer the same fate. In ME2 you got messages one by one gradually. Here nothing for 10-20 hours. Then BAM! you get 25 new messages all at once, you probably won't even bother to read. I'm sure as hell didn't I've skimmed some.

I have to mention the enemy AI as well, which seem to work well in close quarters, but in open areas they loose their way. If you're too far away they don't even react to you. You can pick them off with sniper rifles without them doing anything they don't even try to close in on you.
You can also circle around them, if you give them a wide enough berth they get confused, they don't even turn to fight you. I'd often go in closer because it would've just been too easy to exploit these shortcomings of the AI.

And to scrape the bottom of the negatives barrel the bugs. Yes there are some bugs. Some weird ones, some random ones, and some annoying ones. The most obvious bug is character spawning. Often they'd spawn 50 feet in the air and then fall down from there, or in some cases get stuck floating in the air.
This is a very immersion breaking issue, but it was already present in DA:I although it seemed to occur with less intensity. Another issue is that some quests simply won't go away, you can't finish them. These are the two main bugs, the rest is so random and occur so rarely that they're no more than minor annoyances, sometimes they only warrant a laugh.

Let's have a few words about the interface, yes I've said I've scraped the bottom of the negatives barrel, there is nothing left in it and I meant it. The interface needs some time getting used to, but it's not as bad as it seems at first, and it's certainly not the worst as some would have you believe.
I'd say it's about the same level as Skyrim in the interface department, maybe slightly even better than that.

I must mention the spaceflight sequences if nothing else then to antagonize the haters. Because I loved them. It gives deeper immersion that you're actually flying trough space and not jumping between points in a videogame. I didn't skip a single one of them even after they put the option in. If anything I wished the distracting "TAB to skip" text would go away.
It would've been even better if the sequences were shown looking trough the viewscreen from the bridge of the Tempest, and not just plain on their own.

The combat in the game (if you don't exploit the above mentioned issues) is fast paced and fun, I didn't find an issue with balance in it either. Some people found some brutal overpowered builds in the game, but that didn't affect me, you have to be pretty hardcore to get into that level. It only really affects NG+, where balance is an issue, but as I never ever played a NG+ in any game it doesn't concern me.
I like to start with a clean slate at all times. By the time I finish a playtrough I usually get bored with my character anyway so I'd rather start a brand new than use the same again. Which I'm going to do I mean start a new game right away, not many games can achieve that. I wanted nothing to with DA:I after finally beating it. But I didn't re-start immediately any previous Me game either, altough ME1 and ME2 did get at lest a dozen replays eventually. I'm not sure this game warrants that many, I see maybe 2 or 3 in it tops, as there is not that much to do differently in it.

And now that I mentioned combat it come to me, there is another negative in the game. At least something I hated. The favourites thing. Which means you can only ever use three of your skills at once. And you can only access your other skills by switching favorites which resets cooldown on your all abilities making it useless during combat.
So you'll end up using the set of skills that are the most useful at all times. Making levelling up in the game after about level 45 pointless, since by then you maxed out all your passive and your three favourite skills. And the same goes for profiles. Which I'd rather have made into specializations that are permanent. Rather than something you can change mid game.
Yes I understand that it's explained by the lore, but I still don't like it as a design choice. Basically it means you can be a vanguard and an engineer in the same playtrough. All you have to do is switch profiles. That detracts from replayability IMO.

I think I got everything out that needed saying.so let's have the shootout.
So let's see the final verdict
This game could've been a strong 8 if not for the bugs and other issues with it. They were blown out of proportion, it's still a great game despite them, but the issues do exist, but they don't exist in a vacuum, there is a ton of good things besides those in the game that far outweigh the inconveniences they present.

Zelda: BOTW - 8/10

Pros:
Good open overworld
Lots of shrines
Different take on weapons
Horses
Glider traveling
lots of armor, weapons
cooking / crafting

Cons:
Lack of complex Temples
No complex Bosses (all were easy)
Items have no use outside of combat (no longer opens up new areas)
Storyline was lacking
No Ganondorf
weapons break within twenty uses
villages lack any substance
lack of villages

Far Cry 3 (2012)

My first impression of the game were very negative. Later as I got used to the fact that you can't actually influence the story at all I started to enjoy it more.

If you follow one rule, that is you don't get off the path laid out by the developers, then the game's actually very good. Despite being an open world game it's very restrictive in regards of what you can do. Basically your only choice in it is how many side-missions you do in between the main story tasks. My opinion of the side-missions is not very good, I found most of them pointless and boring. Like the racing/transporting, hunting/assassination ones. There are actually two types of activities (I don't use the word mission on purpose) in the game that I actually liked.
The first one is the climbing of radio towers. The game is already very pretty, but looking down from these to the surrounding terrain really is awesome. And the game also emphasizes this by flying trough some notable locations in the range of each particular tower. I also like the idea that you reveal sections of the map by activating these towers, so it has a purpose as opposed to the previously mentioned side missions.
The other activity I liked is taking over bases in the game. It's really a rambo like experience, the AI is very life-like, the enemies act as real people would act in most situations. They call for backup, some of them attack, some of them retreat. I haven't found any glitch or AI problem that could've been exploited to easily kill enemies. Which is a good thing. Taking over bases also has purpose, because it makes the terrain safer to travel. Since in areas controlled by friendlies there are no enemy patrols, you can just go about your business without worrying about someone shooting you in the back.

In some reviews I've seen or read they compare the game to Skyrim solely because it has crafting in it. But there is a fundamental difference. In Skyrim you can craft special items. In FarCry 3 you're forced to craft even the most basic things. I mean the only way to increase the size of your inventory is to craft pouches from raw animal skins. That's just sick. There is absolutely no other way. You can't buy a backpack in the shop, you can't take equipment from enemy soldiers, all you can rely on is skinning animals. Even when you get the mercenary outfit later in the game, you're still limited by the size of your leopard ball-sack pouch. I'm sure you don't look stupid wearing your pigskin backpack over the expensive merc gear. Even the amount of money you can carry is limited to 1000 by default. And you can carry only one weapon regardless of its size, and only one magazine worth of spare ammo. I see what they were trying to achieve, but why can't I have a choice at least in this regard? Let me buy my equipment or loot it, or whatever. I never liked crafting in most games, and I was perfectly fine without it in Skyrim, or Fallout, because you can acquire every common tool and weapon in other ways as well. And I get bogged down by crafting in a game that's not even an RPG? It seems so. It's not that I haven't tried, but even after camping for half an hour at the marked rocky ridge I couldn't find one single mountain goat to increase my weapon carrying capacity. Because by some ill-founded logic you have to find a specific animal for each purpose. You can't use pigskin to make weapon harnesses, apparently the only skin good for that is goat. I had to finish the game using only one weapon. Which was quite difficult, but I just couldn't find the necessary materials to craft a weapon pouch. My only saving grace was that I crafted a spare ammo pouch as part of the tutorial so at least I could carry 2 magazines. Of course during the tutorial the game sent me to a place infested with hogs, but later I couldn't find those either. But I saw plenty of mountain lions. Which are useless as far as crafting goes, but they can appear out of nowhere when you least expect it, even on beaches. And they're way too strong, it's like a grizzly on steroids. Once I saw a lion single handedly wipe out an entire fortification of enemy soldiers, their backup included. That's at least a dozen heavily armed soldiers. It was hilarious. Talk about balance issues.

I already praised the graphics in the game, but the curious thing is that they don't achieve it by using more detail on objects or larger textures. No, the reason for the great graphics is lighting. Which is very well done, especially at dawn and dusk. The only downside is that the night is very poorly implemented. Basically it is not dark at all, it's like they only replaced the blue sky with a black one.

The game reminded me somewhat of Mercenaries II, I loved that game, you had to capture compounds the same way there, but it was much better, because your allies didn't just stroll in gloriously into the base cleared by you, they helped during the capture as well. And you could call for support, or supplies (even vehicles) at any time. Here you're completely on your own most of the time. If you drive into a ditch and can't get out, you're in for a long and boring walk.

The combat closely resembles FarCry 1, which is a good thing. The firefights are very realistic and enjoyable.

Another problem source in the game is the save system. They're using some sort of checkpoint based thing, but it's very poorly implemented. It stores almost nothing. I attack a base from the north, and when I load back the checkpoint it puts me on the south side of the base, where I've never been. Also collapsed buildings, right themselves when loading. Your vehicle disappears. The enemies reset to a preset popsition. I actually tried this in a mission: I ran through to the next checkpoint leaving all enemies alone. They of course eventually caught up with me and killed me. But when the checkpoint was reloaded, they miraculously disappeared. Probably because the level designer thought that you can only reach that checkpoint by eliminating all enemies . They really shouldn't assume anything in an open world game, but more to the point, they shouldn't use a checkpoint system in an open world game at all.

I couldn't really immerse myself in the story, firstly because of the reasons mentioned before (lack of choices), and because of Houdini himself. Sorry I mean Brody, who actually escapes from impossible situations half dozen times during the game. I know "suspension of disbelief", but I just can't suspend my disbelief that much. After he gets loose the third time anyone would just shoot him in the head when he's captured for the fourth time, but noo, they just time him up badly again, so he could get free again. The other problem I couldn't wrap my head around is the way he turns from spoiled brat into rambo in a matter of minutes at the beginning of the game. I don't know why were they forcing that mystic crap either, in the end it had no point at all.There was no big revelation or anything so why did we need it at all?

And I didn't like the bossfights either. You're dying, then suddenly appear in a dream-world, where you defeat the boss, and then magically reappear in reality, with the boss dead and you unscathed. This is truly a case where less would have actually been more. I'd really have liked a plain straight up fight a thousand times more.

+

• Visually stunning scenery
• Gameplay (at least the firefights)
• Vast open territory to explore
• Radio towers, and base capturing

-

• Forced crafting (and impossible to find animals)
• Lousy checkpoint based save system
• Lots of walking after loosing your vehicle.
• Completely unbelievable story

Graphics / Realization : 8/10
Story / Atmosphere : 3/10
Gameplay / Controls : 9/10

Overall : 7.5/10

Another week has passed, which means I'm dragging another game out from the attic.

Heavy Rain / Move Edition (2010)

This game truly takes quick time events, and awkward gestures to a whole new level. But let's not get so far ahead of ourselves. When I bought my first PS3 system, I downloaded the demo for Heavy Rain, and I was so impressed with it, that on the next day I bought it in the first store that had it on the shelf. I started playing it, but somehow I got bored with it. This was of course before the move edition of the game came out. But later I upgraded my system with a move controller, and you can actually update your game to the move edition by downloading a free patch for it, which was unexpected. But even then it didn't feel right on my tiny 23" screen. What really changed things was when I got my 51" TV. The move edition of the game is much more immersive. In a way I'm sad that they dropped support for the move later, and not even Two Souls could utilize it.

This changed the whole move experience. By standing in front of the screen it's much easier to immerse yourself into the game. And the standing in fact makes it more realistic. I couldn't imagine playing a move game sitting down.

The story revolves around the investigation into a serial killer. During the game you get to alternate between four characters. One of them is a female photo-reporter suffering from insomnia. The second is a failing architect, who just lost one of his sons, and in turn his marriage. The third is a rookie FBI agent with a drug addiction, who is sent to aid the police investigation. And the third is a private investigator, who is also looking to collect clues about the serial killer.

Who you're controlling is not your choice, but in each scene or level, you have to take control of a specific character. Most of the time they're walking their own paths, meetings between them only occur later in the game. Which sometimes lead to some confusion, when I didn't know which one I was going to control at any given moment.
The best thing about the game, that it's truly open ended. Many characters can end up dead, and you still get a conclusion to the game. Or if you're very persistent and lucky and refuse to give up, you can save them all, but the conclusion to the story can be very different as well.

There are a lot of turning points in the game, but these are not clear choices. Instead most of the time what happens next is determined by your ability to do QTEs, or to solve puzzles. I'd need at least five or six if not more playtroughs to find all the little branches in the story. The only game I remember that was able to deliver a similar experience was the original Deus Ex.

Unfortunately the game only supports 720p, but it doesn't look as ugly as some games in 720p mode. This looks clear regardless of the resolution. But the best aspect of the game is the detail of the characters, mostly faces. I hazard that it's better than LA Noire in this regard. And since they use a different method, the faces don't come off the heads like in that game.

One personal aspect to me is that one of the characters, the photo-reporter, is very similar to one of my girlfriends from way back when. If I didn't know better I'd say they based it on her. The looks, the style, even the hobbies photography and bikes are dead on.

So personal history aside, to me the most questionable aspect of the game is the actual gameplay. Almost everything is done through QTEs. So I don't feel in control, just as a guiding hand. Assisting the characters, but not actually controlling them, just nudging them left and right. In slow non-action scenes sometimes you have to press 3-4 buttons simultaneously while doing some gesture with the controller. Some of the instructions seemed downright impossible to do, for a human being, with five fingers. Action scenes are made up by the already mentioned QTEs, where you have to be very quick to react, in early levels you get 3-4 chances to miss, before the QTE is failed. But later towards the end. and in important scenes, one mistake and you're already viewing one of the negative outcomes to that particular scene. And since I'm a maximalist I kept trying again at times. Which was hard on my nerves. I admit to throwing the sixaxis controller to the ground a few times during the game. If you want to retry a scene you have to be very quick to quit the game before it actually saves over your progress with the bad result. Doing this might sound like cheating, but I couldn't have lived with myself if I didn't save some of the characters, or achieve a desired outcome in some scenes. I failed 90% of the QTEs on the first try anyway so I said this wouldn't do. The most annoying thing is when the camera doesn't pick up your gesture. Or when in a slow scene the game show that you still have to move few inches to a direction, but if you move another inch the move gets out of the viewing angle of the camera, which results in failing the whole sequence.

I think half of the failures in quick time events are not due to me not reacting in time, but due to the system not recognizing my move, or not recognizing it as I intended it to be.

But these "misunderstandings" are not limited to the move, but also happen when you have control of a character and have to move using the analog stick on the controller, many times he would start fumbling in a very different direction than I wanted to go.

The story is being built up very neatly. You get more and more clues as time passes. Until finally the big picture forms. And here the big picture really makes sense in retrospect, there are small clues to it in the entire game. The the ending should have been longer, and should have given the chance for all still living characters to get closure.

In style and atmosphere the game is very similar to LA Noire, but it gives a wholly different gaming experience.


+

• Nice graphics, despite being only 720p
• Movie like experience
• Great story from beginning to end
• Perfect atmosphere
• The characters are not black and white, everyone has their flaws and virtues, some good guys are bigger jerks than some bad guys.

-

• Extremely long loading times, it reminded me of the C64 without a turbo cartridge.
• It doesn't give you a chance to replay failed QTEs
• Control hardships
• Maybe a bit too depressive

Scoring chart:

graphics/realization: 7/10 characters are beautiful, but some backgrounds are very weak, camera movements are sometimes awkward
story/atmosphere: 9/10
gameplay/controls: 7/10 I have no problems with it apart from when it does something completely different than I Intended.

Overall impression: 9/10

I want more like this

Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen.
A fun open world action RPG type game that has an enjoyable combat system. Instead of just the normal hack and slash at an enemy's feet, you also can climb on the large enemies and attack various weakpoints, some of which are critical to defeating it. I found this to be a fun mechanic and helped with keeping the game different from other RPGs( I understand this isn't the only game to do this).

Creating your party of NPC characters was also a little different from other games. Adding an optional online aspect that let you hire NPC made by other players. When hired, the NPC would gain knowledge about enemies, locations and quests. They would talk about weaknesses of an enemy, ie "Go for the eye" or let you know about something interesting in the area. Sometimes they would even go running on their own leaving you behind to run toward a quest location. The NPCs also depended on the owner of the 'pawn' to gear them out so some of them were better geared then others.

The graphics considering the game's age was decent. Day/night cycles often created nice looking environments with long draw distances. Night time not only was dark and required a lantern to navigate easier, but also had more difficult enemies appear in the game.

The story is somewhat interesting and it made me want to at least finish it. It had some interesting key moments in my opinion, but perhaps not the highlight of the game.

Things I didn't like, was that the game difficulty was uneven. Some enemies were very difficult and seemed to appear to early. It is possible that I didn't 'grind' enough side content to improve my level enough. Also finding upgrades was tedious. Often it seemed the best upgrades were bought and finding them either required luck, or reloading a save to re-open a chest. I did consult a guide to help me identify good weapon locations due to the RNG of finding them in a chest. The game was a little rough for the first 10 or so hours but after that the game become more fun for me as my character started to struggle less. Also finding the right class, which are called vocations in the game also helped improve the game's fun factor.

Overall I did have fun playing the game which took me about 40 hours for a play through. There are options for new game+ to continue your character so I may revisit the game in the future.

Command & Conquer (1995)

I've gone back even further in time to get my next subject. This is the game that truly introduced me to the RTS genre. Yes there was Warcraft before it but that was pretty meh for me, I wasn't really into the medieval / fantasy thing.
Well I'm still not that into that even though I'm able to play games like TES, but I'll take sci-fi or cyberpunk any day over those, even steampunk is much preferable to fantasy.

Actually I did play Dune II before this and even liked it to an extent but it wasn't as big an influence on me as this game, and besides I didn't even know that it was an RTS when I played it.

This game was released at a time when even a pirated copy of a game was unattainable for someone from the former soviet bloc due to the price. So for months I could do nothing else but look at screenshots from the game in magazines. Until Christmas that year when my parents got me a glitchy pirated copy. For someone in Hungary at that time we well pretty well off, but not that well off to be able to afford a retail game. It cost somewhere in the ballpark of 1.5 weeks of salary for the average citizen. I mean the pirated copy, not the legal one. That was basically unattainable by anyone but the upper crust, weighing in at about 1 months of salary of the average citizen.
So social history aside, the game is great, although playing it today it feels pretty lame, but not in that appalling way, but comparatively to what I though about it back then. What then seemed huge and complex maps now seem small and simple, but the 320x200 resolution of the DOS version of the game kind of made the maps look bigger. I don't miss that pixelfest, but I have to admit I miss the installer of the dos version, which is one of the best installers of any game to date. Already part of the experience that one. While the windows version does have the perk of 640x480 resolution, but only comes with a basic installshield installer. Oh and the 95 version also shows black lines between each line of the FMV cutscenes instead of properly upscaling, so that also is a big negative, of course by today's standard watching 320x200 video seems laughable, but back then FMV on a computer was exorbitant.

Unfortunately the missions also didn't stand up to the test of times that well, what seemed long and hard translates to short and easy in most cases. The only way the AI can give you any kind of challenge is by cheating, or if the odds are stacked against you heavily as is the case in the Covert Operation mission pack. AI cheating in the game is pretty obvious, for example one harvest for the AI means all tiberium stores are fully loaded, meaning it gets 5000-10000 depending on the mission, while you get 700 for the same. Also the AI is capable of rebuilding any building instantly on any part of the map. You destroy a guard tower, in 2 seconds it's back. The only way to beat the AI is by cheating yourself as in positioning units in the places of destroyed buildings so it can't rebuild them.

But probably the biggest issue of the game is unit pathfinding, and the map design unfortunately exaggerates the pathfinding issues tenfold by having numerous chokepoints on maps where only one unit can pass at a time. And if you try to send a group of units trough said chokepoints as soon as the first units starts to cross it, the rest detects the path as blocked and immediately start to turn around and find an alternate route even if that's leading them trough enemy fire zones or the other end of the map. And most units react painfully slow to new commands. This issue almost entirely invalidates the games biggest innovation that is grouping units. Because even in the open when you try to move a group, they'll immediately try to go around each other often resulting in half or more of the units starting to move in the opposite direction you wanted them to. Leaving enemy units to get in many hits before your units can even take up firing positions.

This means the only good tactic in the game is to set up a firing squad of units then try to lure the enemies in front of them with a fast unit. Which is pretty easy since attacking the harvester of the AI works as a trigger. Because it immediately sends all of its units to defend the harvester if you attack that.

Another common exploit in the game is walling in the AI, which I used often back in the day to beat "hard" missions. But I had no reason to use it now, the game doesn't feel that hard as it felt to 12 year old me.

The FMV sequences are shot in ugly greenscreen, with appaling CGI backgrounds, mastered in whopping 320x200, but thankfully they're short, but hey in 1995 this was the holy grail. As far as acting goes, from the cast the best performance or I'd rather say the only acceptable performance by any serious standards comes from the guy who is not a professional actor. Joe Kucan, was a legend among gamers back in those days.

+

• It's C&C!
• Original Soundtrack about the only thing in the game that still holds up today. Frank Klepacki you're a genius.
  
• The graphics aged pretty well, but then again 2D games usually do, early 3D games however...
  
• I really can't say anything else flattering by today's standards

-

• Not sure if it's fair to mention this but it crashed a lot on W10
  
• Before the time of autosave so don't forget to save manually at the beginning of missions, I sure did the first few times, modern gaming made us lazy
  
• AI pathfinding, exploits
• Enemy AI cheating, but it's OK otherwise it would really be too easy

Scoring chart in 1995 terms:

graphics/realization: 10/10
story/atmosphere: 7/10
gameplay/controls: 9/10

Overall impression: 8/10

This is a piece of history right here, I was going to say best left undisturbed, but fuck that, I actually enjoyed playing it despite it being so out-of-date in almost every way.

Previously on Max Payne....

As a prequel to my Max Payne 3 review, I'd like to share my quick thoughts on the first and second instalments of the game.

Max Payne (2001)

This is a game that is still worth replaying it gives a much more satisfying experience than new, over scripted, restrictive action games. In my memories it lives as the first game that gave a movie like experience. The first game where the storytelling was more than what we expected from videogames previously. This story could have worked as a real feature length film.

Apart from the dated graphics it could still hold it's own against any newer game.

I don't know why did developers lost their way. Back then it was crystal clear what a game needed to be. You go trough the levels, killing the enemies, but the setting, and the number of enemies is quite realistic, unlike Max Payne 3 for example. You don't do impossible things in it. Don't jump off from ten stories and walk away. Don't survive ten thousand bullet holes in your body. It feels much more down to earth. And the same problem is present with movies as well these days. The heros always survive so impossible stunts and situations, that take all the risk, all the tension away. You can no longer relate to the heroes in any human way. They're feelingness, fearless, supersoldiers. You just observe the hero from a distance, in max payne you feel you're right there in the trenches with the hero.

+

• Story
• Gameplay
• There is a real SAVE system, with capital letters. This is something developers forgot how to do nowadays*
• Bullet time
  
• Atmosphere
• Narration, and comic book style cut-scenes
• Simple and reliable controls

-

• Fairly short
• Towards the end, the last few levels, it's a bit too hard. Enemies take a whole magazine to die. But still at least it's consistent. You clearly feel when an enemy will fall, it doesn't seem completely random.

* I know they didn't forget, only opted to get rid of it because it's a challenge to implement, and the lack of saving also generates another benefit to them, It makes the game seem longer than it actually is, by having you replay the same parts of the game over and over if you die.

Score card:
graphics/realization: 6/10 even by 2001 standards the graphics could have been better, they worked so long on the development of this game, that by the time it was released the graphics was yesterday's news.
story/atmosphere: 10/10
gameplay/controls: 9/10

Overall impression: 9/10

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003)

I only finished this game twice up to now, compared to at least 10 times for the first one. Back then I never imagined we'll have to wait more than eight years for the next Max Payne, and that it won't even be developed by Remedy. But I'll talk about that in my review of the game Rockstar put out. If I can finish it without blowing a gasket.

There aren't that many changes compared to the first. The graphics is much better, tthe textures are larger by magnitudes, and the character models are much better looking. Sometimes you have AI partners in the game. Fortunately contrary to many other games they actually help you here and are not only anchors. The game also became a bit easier compared to the first, but I welcomed that change. Anyone who wants to go mad can finish it on New York minute. Or just play with the third. (mostly that's not hard because of the challenges, but because of the control issues it is driving me mad)

+

• Everything that was good in the first is still there
  
• Graphics
• AI partners really help and not annyoing
  
• Assuming direct control of Mona Sax
  
• Right difficulty.
• Havok Physics

-

• It took me 8 hours to finish the first game, this one only took five.
• Apart from one character all the major npc's are from the first game, including villains and allies.

Score card:
graphics/realization: 7/10
story/atmosphere: 8/10
gameplay/controls: 10/10

Overall impression: 8/10

I love Max Payne 3 though from a pure gameplay experience. It's the Tony Hawk of murder simulation.

Max Payne 3 (2012)



It was only trough great difficulty and pain, that I managed to beat this game. Although I'd be lying if I told you that it was all pain, and no fun. But this game is a great example of how to make an otherwise fun game into a mind-blowing pain in the ass, with a few bad design decisions.

Let's start by stating that this game is only a Max Payne game by name, the main protagonist could have any other name easily. It doesn't feel like you're playing a sequel to the classic games. It feels like a reboot even though technically it isn't one. It has hardly any connections to the past glory of the franchise.

It's a typical remake like for example John Rambo, with a staggering body count, but still it fails miserably to live up to its predecessors.

The film-noir atmosphere went down the gutter, as well as the comic-book style cutscenes. There is hardly any night levels in the game. This is just a typical TPS game, without any of the added value of previous Max Payne games. Of course there is bullet time, but that's the only thing remaining from the legacy of the franchise, but even that is borked. The mood is shifted to a South American cartel, drug trafficking thing. Which wouldn't be bad, if you wasn't expecting a Max Payne style noir game.

Story wise by far the biggest shortcoming of the game is that it offers no rewards, no satisfaction at all. Almost all your missions end in some sort of prescribed failure, not even the final big confrontation offers any kind of a satisfaction. You retire a corrupt politician and a corrupt police boss, so what? There are hundreds more of those in South America. As one character in the game put it very wisely: "You're not making any difference"

The devs must have thought that making you fail in almost every single mission is enough to create a noir atmosphere. Well it isn't, but it sure as hell creates a frustrating experience.

This is a game where Max Payne allows himself to be bullied and shamed, due to self hating. And on top of that he's constantly murmuring miserable self pitying lines to himself. The only thing more pathetic than that are his stupid, pointless actions you can't do anything against. And to keep reminding you how pathetic and broken your character is, every time you pick up painkillers during the game, he drops some snide remark about it. I was under the impression that this is a parody of the old Max Payne, the whole time. I can't even fathom why did they think it would be a good idea to turn the iconoc protagonist into a completely unlikeable asshole.

OK the story might be bad, but the gameplay is at least there, right? Nope, I don't even know where to start with all the small but all the more annoying gameplay / design issues.

Of course the game has no proper save system, why would it? Only checkpoints, and the worst kind. It doesn't even record the amount of health you have when you reach a checkpoint. If the checkpoints are well placed then this would only be mildly annoying, not in this case though. Some checkpoints are so far apart, and so badly placed that your head burns into a piece of coal out of anger by the time you pass a segment on the 18th try. Like there is a heavy hard to defeat enemy, and there is no checkpoint before it, so if you fail to beat it, then you have to complete an already challenging segment leading up to it again. I'm not against a challenge in a game, but it's not a healthy challenge that I have to complete some parts of the game over and over again, in order to try beating a boss. It's madness! And we are in south america, not greece.

And then here is the aiming. Which is perfectly good, up until the point you turn on bullet time mode which of course is the most recognized and famed part of the franchise, now rendered useless: Because in bullet time mode, not only time slows down, but the aiming speed as well, making it pointless to use.
By the time you nudge the crosshair to the enemy in bullet time they'll shoot you to hell just as they would've without using it in the first place, only now you can see your death play out painfully slowly. It has some use against enemies far away, so you aim at them roughly and then fine tune in BT mode, but in every other case it hurts rather than helping you.

And the damage system, which is another mind shattering thing in the game. It feels completely random, both for the player and enemies. Sometimes one shot drains half of your health, other times, someone is pumping bullets into you from point blank range, and your health bar is barely lowered.

Sometimes you can one shoot kill an enemy, other times they get up even after filling them up with three magazines of bullets. And then there are armoured enemies, that are the most random. At times I couldn't defeat them even by emptying all my weapons into them, other times somehow they just die after a few hits, and I'm not even doing anything differently. It truly feels random. If there is a strategy to it then it beats me.

There is a cover system in the game, which has one problem: By the time I got used to it, I almost finished the game.
It's so archaic, that the only way to come out of cover is by pressing the cover button again, you can't simply move out of cover by moving in the opposite direction like in most modern games. And most of the time the camera view is so awkward that you can't aim at the enemies from cover. And there is no jumping from cover to cover in the game either. And on top of that coming out of cover seems like bullet time even in normal. So if you see a grenade hurtling towards you and you're in cover, don't bother, just reload immediately. Because there is no way in hell that you can come out of cover in time and manage to move far away to avoid the blast.

There is also an interesting new feature in the game, which in concept a very good idea. This is called Last Man Standing, it works like this: If you have painkillers, and someone shoots you and your HP reaches zero. Then you don't die, but the painkiller is automatically used up, and you have to kill your wannabe killer in a bullet time stand-off. This all sounds good, because if you kill your attacker then you don't die, and so the flow of the game is not interrupted by having to reload a checkpoint. But thanks to the miserable cover system most of the time you can't aim at your attacker, and the stand off turns into watching Max die very slowly, while you're breaking a finger trying to reload. Because you guessed, you can't use the reload function during the stand off, so you have to wait until you're dead even if you have zero chance of hitting the enemy. So the very thing they intended to keep the game flowing achieves the exact opposite of that, truly marvellous.

And if we're talking interruptions to the gameplay, then the most annoying one is this: You don't simply walk through doors here, the doors walk trough your patience. The game has to show Max opening every god forsaken door in a cutscene. And with every cutscene the game automatically switches to your primary weapon. EVEN IF THAT DAMN GUN HAS ZERO AMMO LEFT IN IT.

And another thing bothering me trough the game was that it seemed that all your enemies had an army of soldiers everywhere. You go into a completely random building anywhere and it's filled with enemy combatants to the ceiling. Even on the streets, you travel through the city and on every corner there is a battalion of enemies. There is absolutely no reality to it. The number of enemies in the game is staggering. I stacked up more than 1700, yes that's seventeen-hundred kills. Just in one playtrough.

And if that wouldn't be enough to keep you from getting immersed in the game, they decided to show every single hit from enemy fire as a bullet hole on your character's body. It's so disillusioning that it's almost unbearable. It would be good if this was a terminator simulator, because then it would be all right to have 50 bullet holes and still move like nothing had happened. But why do you have to do this with a human? Why can't you leave me believing that my character is so lucky and badass, that hardly any bullet touches him? Why do you have to go out of your way to yank me out of immersion after each firefight, and remind me that this is only a pathetic and unrealistic game?

And on a final note I want to emphasise one positive thing about the game. The level design is excellent, even though the game is completely linear, you never feel closed in or herded. Each map has a very open feel to it.

+

• Graphics
• Level design

-

• A story without any satisfaction
• Ending with no redeeming value.
• It's so obvious from the start who will be the badguy, that I was expecting it to be a red-herring, but sadly it wasn't.
  
• Annoying gameplay issues (cover system, save system, random damage, bullet time aiming, last man standing, cutscene weapon switching)
• A self pitying, worthless burlap sack of disappointment for a protagonist
• No real connection to previous games.
• Thousands of enemies everywhere even in places where there shouldn't logically be any.
• Bullet holes shown on your character

Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 9/10
story/atmosphere: 4/10
gameplay/controls: 2/10

overall impression: 5/10

I never want to see this game again in my life, the annoying gameplay made sure of that.
Even though the beginning had really good atmosphere, it all fell to pieces after the first chapter.

ALAN WAKE 8/10

• love the gameplay
• has story twist
• good graphics

Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 (PC).

Gameplay: 10
Controls: 9
Graphics: 10 imo (Can't go wrong with CryEngine)
Story: 3

Overall I really liked this game. I glanced at the mixed reviews on Steam and most of them talk about everything pre-patch which most if not all those concerns have been addressed. Talking about bugs while important doesn't equate to a good or bad game imo b/c every game has bugs and I beat the game without the patches and had none of the issues that other people complained about.

The game itself is a fantastic value. $50 for the Season Pass Edition and I have gotten over 30 hours of entertainment out of it. Stealth games really scratch a itch for me that few games can satisfy and few have pulled it off like this. The controls, even the climbing are great, the sniping and action are great. One down-side is the long initial load-time, but after that the fast travel is very quick so it makes up for it. I will definitely revisit the game again with all my unlocked weapons once I can. Few will likely agree with this review, but I don't care because I really liked it for what it is. If you don't go in with much expectation I think you will be pleasantly surprised. I also think that one Steam review was very inappropriate talking about how it's a bargain-basement game and isn't worth $10. Absolutely not the case. This game can also not be judged by their previous two attempts in this series; they did a lot right in this game and there is a lot to like if you like stealth games, sniping, and being tacticool with silenced weapons. I believe that for their budget, and the size of their development team is deserves credit and to me it is a sleeper hit as of right now.

Contrast
Got this game for my wife to play. It's a decent game with a cool mechanic of "shifting" from the physical world to the shadow world, which works well, but it is possible to abuse it and break the game in some areas. Thankfully the game doesn't truly break, the character just gets stuck until you jump over and over to finally move.
Throughout the game the story is unfolded through memories that play out as silhouettes on the walls.

It is a stylistic game that if you haven't checked out, you should.
Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 7 (the artistic choices make up for it, but the game runs on UE3 which is showing its age.)
Story: 7

The Park
The Park is a horror walking simulator. I didn't know that going into it. I knew it was horror, but I expected to be chased or in real danger. Thankfully it was on sale and I got it for less than $5.

With that being said, this is a really well done story. You play as a mother whose son runs into a them park as it is closing. There is a legend and rich history to the park that unfolds as you play through and find newspaper clippings and handwritten notes. The mother also reminisces about certain memories she had there as well.

The game is really well done, especially as shit starts hitting the fan, and the way that they portray the mother's sanity chipping away is really well done.

Story: 10
Gameplay: 3 (it is literally just walking)
Graphics: 7


Outlast: Whistleblower
I played Outlast quite a while ago and with Outlast 2 coming out, I wanted to play the DLC I've had for some time before I got Outlast 2. I put it off because I assumed it'd be more of the main game, which it is in a way, but it is also a lot different.

In the DLC there are a couple of chase scenes, but the real horror comes more from the deranged protagonists. In the main game you just had the Dr. with the scissors, the Big guy (Chris?), and the molester that is constantly chasing you, with a few others garden variety psychos that weren't really dangerous.

In the DLC you have the cannibal (That buzz saw man!) and The Groom (this guy was crazy, and awesome!) They were very intense, and I was more scared of those two than any of the protagonists in the main story. Also, the groom mutilating the bodies was awesome and twisted. They need to make a horror movie based on him!

The way they tie the DLC into the main story works well, and the fact that they both take place on the same night is a great idea. I just wish at one point they would of done what Gearbox did in Opposing Force (or was it Blueshift?) where you look through a vent and see Freeman being dragged by marines.

Overall though, I'm VERY VERY happy with the DLC. I wish i would of played it earlier though.

Gameplay: 9
Story: 9
Graphics: 8

So I'm just in the process of playing Ghost Recon Wildlands, and it reminded me of an old game. Well actually that's an understatement it is for all intents and purposes an almost complete ripoff of that old game:

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (2008)

This game caught me completely unaware, I didn't really know anything about it, I found it in the discount bin at a store. I really had no idea it will turn out to be the game I'll use as a positive example for open world games.
The story might be simple, but I don't care, the keyword here is gameplay. The game mechanics are the best I've seen in any open world game, and the atmosphere is excellent too. It doesn't take itself extremely seriously, and it suits it very well. But this lack of seriousness only affects the storytelling and conversations, not the actual gameplay.

Everything just fell into place nicely, I really felt that I was in a South-American country, that's stricken with civil war, with numerous third parties warring over the resources of the land.

You assume the role of a mercenary soldier, who got stranded in the country due to some unfinished business. I have to applaud the designers, because, you can actually choose from multiple characters to play as, but what's really awesome is that your hero is not made to appeal to your everyday values, they made to be believable as mercenaries, so they have questionable moralities at best. Even the female choice is made to look like someone who can get the job done. To me this makes a world of difference. But what really sets the game apart is the freedom you have. You can go about accomplishing your missions any way you like, there are no restrictions here. You can rush the enemy base in tank, attack from the air, sneak in on foot, or if you have the funds, call in an air-strike. Yes you can really do that in this game.

The area to explore is huge, I only managed to discover a third of it thoroughly, by the time I finished the main story line. Not because it was bad or short, but because the area is so large. And it's not just some fancy scenery either. The world truly feels alive, there are guerilla bases in the rainforest, NATO bases, Oil cartels, even North Korea decides to drop in a few troops. Oh and of course China wants a piece of the pie too. And the best thing, every single building or object is destructible, so if you have the firepower you can go through a city in a straight line.

Of course you can acquire missions from almost any of the factions present in the game. Even switch sides in the middle. But be aware that your actions are not without consequences, if you get on the bad side of a faction, they'll attack you on sight later.

There are three types of missions in the game you can do to get more funds. These include missions from faction leaders, headhunting to bring in wanted people dead or alive. Yes it matters, you can either submit the photo of the dead body, and get half the reward, or submit the person, and get the full reward. And the third type of mission is destroying key targets. Each faction has a list of targets they wish to be destroyed.

But of course not everything in the garden is a flower, there are some flaws in the game, for one here is the save system (I know I have a problem with those every time). This one only records the objectives you completed in a mission, but doesn't record the number of enemy soldiers remaining, or their positions, well it doesn't even record your position. So if you die during a mission, you can expect to be place somewhere you never been before. The other problem is, that while the terrain is varied, the missions not so much. About a third into the game you really start to feel that you're doing the same tasks over and over again, just at a different target. Headhunging does offer some variety, because it's about getting into a base, capturing the person you're after, then getting out. So there is some variation due to the terrain, and due to your methods. Later when the money is not so important you can even waste the person from a distance and not bother with clearing out the base to be able to take the prisoner alive, or to be able to hand him over to the faction that wants him.

Commandeering vehicles, is not as easy as a touch of a button. You can take over each vehicle in a Quick Time Event. And the complexity of the QTE is in proportion to the value of the vehicle. You can take over a simple jeep in a two part QTE, but you have to do a long QTE sequence to get a tank, while taking over an enemy helicopter is almost impossible. I'm usually against QTEs, but in this case I feel they're appropriate. My only problem with them is that they're tailored to the reflexes of a space monkey overdosed on adrenaline, the keys are shown for a very little time, and on a random area of the screen. I believe it's impossible to get any of them right at first for a normal human being. Maybe Flash could do it. Fortunately they're fixed for each vehicle, so after you memorize the sequences it actually becomes fairly straightforward to take over smaller vehicles.

Apart from the quick time events, the controls are all right, The default keyboard layout needs some getting used to, and I was just too lazy to change it, that's not really the game's fault though.

The vehicles handle well for an action game. The graphics is fair. For the size of the world and the things you can do it's OK.


+

• Atmosphere
• Gameplay
• The taunts voiced by your character, and lots of other comic relief moments
  
• Huge and interesting area to explore
• Everything is desructible
  
• Tons of usable vehicles and weapons (you can use any vehicle or weapon you see in the game)
• Multiple ways of solving missions
• You can call in supplies, and vehicles to your position, so you never get stranded without weapons or means of transportation.

-

• Missions become dull and monotonous later in the game
• Bugs: Like ships flying upside down, your helicopter won't drop the supplies you asked for
• Save system
• In theory it's possible to create custom vehicles at your base after you acquire the mechanic. But to do this you need to find parts scattered around the map. While I wasn't specifically looking for these, I expected to be able to have some custom vehicles by the end of the game. But I didn't even have enough for half a car by then, which is a little over the top imo. It should be easier to find these parts.
  
• To call in air strikes you have to put up a smoke beacon, but to do that you have to get in close to the target, which kind of makes it pointless to call in air support if you have explosives with you.
• Tanks are virtually invincible to regular weapons, this means some missions become a walk in a park if you use tank for them. Since you can level an entire enemy base with just one tank. But this is mostly specific to the first half of the game, later on there are many RPG soldiers as well.

The rating:

graphics/realization: 6/10
story/atmosphere:8/10
gameplay/controls: 8/10

overall impression: 8/10

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition

Sleeping Dogs is a GTA style game sent in an open world Hong Kong. It is more martial arts and melee focused compared to GTA but it does have guns that you get to use for certain missions.

The main story missions were enjoyable and kept me entertained. It had some nice character progression with a good mix of likable characters. Some of the side content felt repetitive and not too varied.

The combat reminded me of the fighting in the Batman Arkham games. You spend most of the time using the counter and other combat moves you unlocked throughout the game to defeat most enemies.

The save system is checkpoint. Some missions were more difficult then others because of how infrequent the checkpoints were.

There was also some bugs in the game that made characters disappear and reappear but I didn't experience any game breaking bugs,

Graphics are nice for the age of the game. Game ran great with no crashes.

Crysis (2007)

I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I looked up the release year for this game. Boy time does fly when you're wasting it on a day job. I already finished the game once when it came out, emphasis on once. So it didn't impress me that much.

It's actually a great game, up till the point when you start fighting aliens in it. From that point on it started feeling like a drag, and I only finished it out of curiosity about the story. Not for the merits of gameplay.

I didn't touch the game with any sort of tweak or mod, and I updated it to the latest version available, despite this it was still riddled with bugs. I could almost say that I died more often due to some glitch than actually getting killed by enemies, even tough I played on realistic difficulty.

As I mentioned I only enjoyed the game while I had to fight soldiers, but this part of the game feels exactly like FarCry. The only notable difference is the improved graphics. The AI almost seem to be worse than in that first Crytek game. The green swimming things, are certainly having some troubles in their brains.

From the game mechanics I disliked only one thing. The thing that the whole game is built around basically: The nanosuit. Sounds crazy? Wait I'll explain. The developers adopted it as their trademark, their masterpiece, the thing that lifts them out of mediocrity, but I hated it both in the context of the story and the gameplay. The whole game is geared at making you make use of the suits capabilities. For example if you use cloak the enemy won't notice you even if you stand right in front of him. But if you don't use it, they'll spot you from miles away in the bushes behind three rocks and four mountains. Compared to this in Far Cry you could hide or sneak up on enemies, but it wasn't impossible or child's play either. But here it's either one or the other.

I mentioned bugs before, so I'll give some examples. I can't count it on my hands how many times I got stuck in objects, walls, or staircases in the most innocent situations in the game. Sometimes one misstep and you instantly die, and I don't mean dying of gunfire, I mean you fight your way trough twenty soldiers only to die in a stairwell, because of the fucked up physics engine. Of course getting stuck with vehicles is even easier than on foot, you have to avoid even the smallest objects while driving any vehicle including a tank. I also saw enemies who failed to show when they were giving away brains, so they'd just stand there doing nothing. And I also saw enemies that wouldn't die. Gunfire didn't hurt them. All the bugs one needs to ruin the gameplay.

As far as the story goes it's almost non-existent. They tried to imply some sort of attachment between the characters, but it all felt weightless, and unauthentic. Mostly because you hardly ever interact with them during the entire game, including but not limited to the cutscenes.

The big boss fight at the end of the game felt like something out of a side scrolling platformer game, I almost felt nostalgic.

As far as the graphics goes it's still acceptable today, but don't expect ground breaking visuals from a ten year old game.

+

• Gameplay (before aliens)
• Huge arsenal of vehicles and weapons (tank, vtol, apc, cars, and lots of exotic and ordinary weapons)

-

• 10 hours on the hardest difficulty
• Gameplay (while fighting aliens)
• The story is not developed enough
• lack of interaction with npcs
• The ending lacks any form of closure it feels like you just finished the first chapter in a game

my overall impression: 6/10

Before I shut up, I want to say a few words about:

Crysis Warhead (2008)

Because I don't think it deserves a separate post since it's basically the same game with new missions, or rather the same missions only with another character. If it were today this probably would have been released as a DLC, and not a stand alone game at all.

So here are a few thoughts:

+

• Gameplay is good all the way. You fight soldiers almost always, but even when you encounter aliens it feels better than the original game
• Much better main character, and storyline, not that it's hard to improve on the original
• Level design is much better, and so the missions are more enjoyable.

-

• Less than 5 hours long, and they actually sold this as a stand alone game.

my score: 7/10

I loved both, Crysis is certainly better than a 6 (IMO). The "short" length didn't bother me, because the gameplay is still better than a lot of games on the market that are longer but crappier (GTA, Mafia 3, and all clones of them). Plus how you approach many of the missions can change the gameplay a lot. Certainly worth replaying the earlier missions. Or spawn an APC on the very first mission. Warhead was good to, but much more funneled from a map / gameplay perspective and did not offer as much freedom when it came to approaching a target.

Gameplay wise, I'd actually consider it to have aged well compared to what we're getting these days. Nice, short, and to the point with an arsenal of fun weapons / gadgets to use.

One thing I did find ironic (not against you personally) is the complaint that Warhead was a standalone expansion. Game devs get hit either way. Hit for smaller DLCs, and even bigger proper expansions. If anything Warhead is an excellent example of an expansion. Updated graphics, lots of content, ect. Better than those quest based things most games do these days anyways.

Flogger23m said:

One thing I did find ironic (not against you personally) is the complaint that Warhead was a standalone expansion. Game devs get hit either way. Hit for smaller DLCs, and even bigger proper expansions. If anything Warhead is an excellent example of an expansion. Updated graphics, lots of content, ect. Better than those quest based things most games do these days anyways.

Click to expand...

It wasn't an expansion they sold and marketed it as a standalone game. If it was an expansion like Dragon Age Awakenings I'd have no problem with it. Actually graphics wise I think Warhead was worse than Crysis. It was made by a different studio (Crytek Budapest).

M76 said:

It wasn't an expansion they sold and marketed it as a standalone game. If it was an expansion like Dragon Age Awakenings I'd have no problem with it. Actually graphics wise I think Warhead was worse than Crysis. It was made by a different studio (Crytek Budapest).

Click to expand...

It was a standalone expansion. It was a half priced, similar to a number of standalone expansions. IMO I'd like to see a return of these compared to the smaller piece meal DLCs most games have these days. I know a few games did this recently, but don't recall which.

Flogger23m said:

It was a standalone expansion. It was a half priced, similar to a number of standalone expansions. IMO I'd like to see a return of these compared to the smaller piece meal DLCs most games have these days. I know a few games did this recently, but don't recall which.

Click to expand...

Then I remembered incorrectly, I thought it was a full price game. I only got it later in a package deal.

Lords of the Fallen. It's dark souls without any of the precision, wonder, challenge, or charm. I made it through and I still have no idea what it was about or why I was fighting really shitty enemies for 12 hours. It's a beautiful game, and that's it. Gear is trash, monsters are trash (seriously, some of the worst designed enemies I've ever faced), bosses were trash (beat every single one on the first try), gear was trash, loot was trash...you get the point. It was still kinda fun thrashing aimlessly through enemies, but it got old quick. Probably could have been a good game, but it either failed due to lack of money and/or terrible direction.

Ultra Street Fighter 2: The Final Challengers for Nintendo Switch

It's Super Street Fighter 2 with 2 new (mostly broken) characters. They incorporated the re-drawn artwork from HD Remix but offered none of the balance changes. Not that the game can ever truly be balanced, but I don't understand why they didn't include at least the option to keep those tweaks. As a result, some characters are much, much better than most others.

Online play is there, but thanks to the Switch's network being so poor (and nearly everyone on WiFi), about 50% of matches involve spamming moves that take advantage of latency. I want to like this game, but it's a tough sell for all but the most hardcore fans.

The extra modes are a waste of time and effort.

I'd give it a 5/10. It could probably earn a 6-8 if online play was better, the price was lower, or the HD remix changes were intact.

[Addendum a month later]

Most of the audience has seemingly disappeared. In spite of setting the game to accept people of any skill/region/controls, I still see the same players nearly every time I sign on. On the plus side, I do still get matches...even if more than 1/2 of them are from outside the US. If I choose to only play US players, the wait for a match can take a while.

I also see 90% Violent Ken and Akuma players. Violent Ken is strong, but balanced out by his oddly high-angled jump. On the other hand, Akuma is light years better than any other character and it isn’t even close. It’s why he was banned from competitive play back in the 90’s. Hell, even HD Remix couldn’t even fix him. There’s no way to ban any characters, so hopefully you don’t mind seeing him 70% of the time. It's a borderline "win button" if anyone has ever played the game even casually. I also hope you're good at the game because the casual audience is long gone.

Fallout: New Vegas (2010)

I declare here and now, that this is one of the best games released in 2010. I didn't expect it to be any better than Fallout 3, so I was really surprised. To me the original Fallout 3 was boring, I only finished the very short main quest in it, and then quit playing, after reaching like level twelve or so.

But New Vegas is completely different right from the start. The atmosphere is much better, the scenery and terrain is more interesting. There is much less recycling apparent in the map design. I hated this in Fallout 3, that there were dozens of areas that looked and felt almost exactly the same. I have to admit that at first New Vegas gave me quite a scare, because I managed to stumble upon some areas very soon after starting the game that were very similar to areas from Fallout 3. But that's not the case at all. Even the vaults that you find in this game have something unique that completely separate them from each other, and the vaults in Fallout 3.

The game is very strong on side quests, you're not condemned to menial errand boy stuff. Which is quite the irony, since your character is a courier according to the story. Almost every quest I acquired was interesting, and I was genuinely motivated to finish them. It never felt like chores that you only do in order to get them out of the way. Most of the time the main story is also advanced trough side quests. Every open world RPG should be made like this. Since many feels like that the talented writers and designers do the main story, and the less talented and newbie designers get the menial task of doing side quests. Which always leaves a huge contrast in the quality of the quests. Instead they should make interesting and equally good side quests. And after they have enough side quests, then start making the main quest. And this way the game world wouldn't feel like it's revolving around you or your goal. And also the side quests should be equally good only much shorter than the main quest. In my opinion a side quest should be at least 1-2 hours long, and not 10 minute distractions, like "go here and kill 3 ghouls".

Another good thing is, that your actions have some weight. What you do during the game decide what endings will be available to you. No matter how I tried to please every faction in the game, it's impossible. Eventually you'll end up on the bad side of someone. It's not like in Deus Ex IW, where you can do no matter what, and still be able to finish the game on any side. There is nothing like that here, if you do enough things against a faction they'll eventually shoot at you on sight.

This means that the game has a lot of replay value, if you switch up whose side you play on, you can play a very different strain of missions. And also if you decide to advance other skills you'll have to use different methods to complete missions.

There is only one thing that's still a gaping hole in the game. The lack of vehicles. It's almost impossible for me to imagine a post apocalyptic world without Mad Max style cars and trucks. Not to mention that it would spare you a lot of walking over empty wastes. The map is slightly smaller than in Fallout 3, but it's still big enough to cry for a faster means of transportation. Yes there is fast travel, but you can't use that to go through hostile territory, because it will put you near the enemies. And you can only use it to go to areas you already visited. And I'm continuing to wait for this as F4 still didn't have any other means of travel than by foot.

One of the best new features in the game is the hardcore mode. It's basically a realistic mode, where you need to eat, and drink, and sleep (not just for levelup). This might not sound much, but it improves the game experience tenfold. Finding clean water, and radiation free food becomes a priority. Which is an essential part of any post apocalyptic experience. It's balanced well, you don't have to eat and drink every 10 seconds, so it becomes a distraction. And the adverse effects are very slight at first, so it's not like instant death if you can't find food in a few seconds after getting hungry. Will you eat the slightly irradiated food, or hold out until you find clean food? It's always a dilemma. But a welcome and very appropriate one. Actually there is one more difference in hardcore mode, that ammo has weight too. So you can't carry an endless supply of ammunition for all weapons constantly. Everything that makes a game more realistic without becoming a nuisance is welcome by me. I don't even know why didn't they include this mode in F4, it was so much better.

This hc mode gives purpose to foodstuffs in the game, without this there is not much point to having them in there, they don't give much of a health boost. I'd welcome a hardcore mode in the next Elder Scrolls as well. Actually they should have included it in Skyrim already.

+

• Varied environments and terrain
• Interesting and enjoyable side quests
• Despite being an expansion and not a completely new game, it's longer than most games nowadays. I finished the main story in 24 hours without touching many of the side quests, and discovering only about two thirds of the map.
• Many items and objects that are actually useful.
• The world doesn't revolve around you.
• Lots of choices to make, almost every situation has multiple solutions, depending on what skills you have. But it can also happen that you can't solve something lacking the skill and/or equipment
• Sandstorm (too bad it's fixed to one specific area on the map)
• Hardcore mode
• After finishing the game, the narration tells you how you affected the life of almost everyone you came in contact with.
• You can use a companion as a mule, to carry supplies you want to sell.

-

• The Graphics is not the best, especially the characters are too rough. The thing I hate the most is that all NPCs have the exact same body as the player. Everyone is the same height and weight with average build. But amongst the NPCs there are a lot of repeating faces as well.
• There are no means of faster travel, you have to walk everywhere. Especially at the start of the game, when you haven't discovered any fast travel locations yet. Later you can jump to the closest discovered location to your target (if it's not hostile).
• Balance problems, the start of the game was too easy, the middle too hard, and the end too easy again. Towards the middle of the game I was travelling through a valley that was full of Cazadors, it was almost impossible to cross, despite having a companion with me.
• Your companions fall very quickly in fights, and many times they want to melee the enemies for no apparent reason. And if you try to give them a new weapon they use up all the ammo in the world in a few seconds. (At least the ammo for their base weapon is unlimited)
• You can create useful items and potions in the game, but they need so many different components, that I never bothered to collect them all, to craft something. If the carrying capacity would be unlimited then it would make sense, because then I'd have collected everything and eventually come up with enough stuff to build something. But with the limited capacity, I only picked up high-value and already useful things.
• Automatic guns use a lot of ammo, there is just not enough to make them useful, and you can't buy larger amounts from merchants either.
• Heavy weapons are very rare, and even if you find one, you can't use it because you'd need others to maintain it. And weapons in poor condition brake and do very little damage, even heavy ones. And asking NPCs to repair them often costs north of 10.000 caps. Which makes them totally useless.
• The damage you make with weapons depends on your skill, which is stupid with firearms. Why would my skill with the weapon alter how much damage the bullet coming out from it does? The same goes for explosives. Aiming can be skill dependant, movement, and reload speeds, or even equip time, but damage? That's stupid.
• You can only have one companion at a time.
• At some locations the enemies respawn, while at other locations where it would actually make sense for new enemies to appear you can only find emptiness after going back a few days later.

9/10

Couple of points about New Vegas:

1. For ammo, there are 2 merchants that stock rather large amount of ammo of all sorts, the Quartermaster in Hoover Dam, and Khan Quartermastre, of all people, but those two merchants are vague enough that it's generally easy to miss.

2. New Vegas actually attempts to correct some discrepancy between the Capitol Wasteland and the original Fallouts, one such being the two completely different Plasma rifles (the old Plasma rifle is called Plasma Caster in NV), and there is a unique weapon in one of the old company plants (in the interest of spoilers and the fact I actually can't remember which one) called Q-35 Quantum Modulator, which is a prototype of the Capital Wasteland version of the Plasma Rifle, and the background story of that particular weapon design. It also explained the presence of Hellfire armor enclave used, and I can't remember if there was any attempts at linking the different Advanced Power Armor designs (NV one is much more faithful to the original Advanced Power Armor, and I believe it explained the Advanced Power Armor in FO3 as MKII).

To appreciate a lot of the teeny bits of NV lore, you'd need to have played the Original FO's. EG it makes glancing references as to the origins of that crashed vertibird in Klamath and one of the Casinos, as well as Arroyo.

I never could really get into the old Fallout and Fallout 2 games. When they were new I was an outright anti-rpg guy. I loathed everything with skill trees and levelling and such "nonsense". Although I have both on original CDs, but I never played them for more than 30 minutes.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands (2017)

Possibly the best game released this year. I could end my review right there. But of course I won't. I have to admit I'm a little at a loss of words. I don't know what to say about the game. It's an open world action game, where you and your three man crew has the task of dismantling a Bolivian drug cartel.

It is a huge undertaking, and the game matches that as it is a huge game. Over a hundred missions, tons of bosses to capture or defeat. The game area is freaking huge, probably the largest of any open world game I've seen to date. And it looks great. Especially from up high. I haven't been awed like this by looking down at the scenery in a videogame since I first played Flight Unlimited.
The difference is that here you can actually get down on the ground and explore everything. The rest of the graphics is not that special let's say it's acceptable.

But this game is mostly about the gameplay, and it delivers in that regard. It's very similar to Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, both in setting and execution, with one important distinction. You're not a freelancer, you can only work for one side in this game. That's a bit of a disappointment to me. It would've been great to take on side missions during your fight with the cartel, from various other smaller factions or civilians. Sadly that never happens. There are only two types of missions. Story missions, and rebel ops. The former advances the main story, I'll talk about those later, the latter are a set of missions aimed to help the rebel resistance against the drug cartel. If you do rebel ops you can increase the rebel presence on the streets and the efficiency of the "rebel skills" each type of mission improves a different skill. And here's a list of missions / the corresponding skills.

1. Supply drops: An air dropped packet of supplies meant for the rebels located at some hard to reach area of the terrain, usually only reachable from the air. (either by landing a helicopter near it, or jumping out of a plane and parachuting there). This improves the "rebel spotting" skill. It can be used to tag enemies in a small area. I didn't have much use of this skill, most of the time I performed my own spotting, it's more fun that way, only useful if you don't have the patience to stake out enemy bases.
2. Supply convoys: Self explanatory, you need to seize important cargo carried by the cartel convoys. The reward is the supply you capture from them. If the truck is destroyed during the attack you can still claim a fraction of the cargo and complete the mission successfully.
3. Steal the supply plane / helicopter: Same as above only this time you have to steal a helicopter / small plane filled with cargo. These aircraft seem to be more fragile than regular ones. And every time there is an enemy lieutenant near them who tries to fly away with the plane / chopper at the first sign of trouble. After you get the plane you have to take it to a rebel landing zone. Which is easier said than done, often these landing zones are poorly located and very far away and / or very short with multiple obstructions in the way. There is nothing more infuriating than hitting a mobile lamp post during landing and the game declaring the mission failed. After taking out tons of enemies flying the plane for minutes, avoiding radars and AA missiles only to be taken out by a poorly placed work light.
   
4. Turn on the radio: These are small propaganda broadcasting stations. That if you turn on it starts broadcasting anti cartel propaganda, and immediately a ton of cartel soldiers attack it, and try to destroy it. Better leave these missions for later, as they're extremely hard to do until you get the grenade launcher attachment for the assault rifle, which allows you to kill incoming enemies before they get out of their car, or while they're still closely grouped together after getting out. These missions improve the mortar skill. That you can ask the rebels to bombard an area. This is another skill I haven't really used. Didn't see the point. It can be useful against heavily armoured vehicles, or large groups of armoured soldiers. Most of the time I simply forgot there was even a skill like this.
   
5. Intimidate cartel leader: You have to grab a specific cartel leader and make them tell their cartel pals about how you humiliated them. This is not easy until you unlock the flashbang, because how do you capture a hostile enemy alive? You can't shoot him and if you try to advance on him he'll shoot you. Of course the other way is stealth. This improves the guns for hire skill. Whihc allows you to call rebel reinforcements to your location. Quite helpful when the pressure gets too high.
   
6. Network towers: You have to disable two network antennas in quick succession after each other. These are probably the easiest side missions. You can usually reach the next antenna in half the allotted time, and often they're only guarded by 2 or 3 enemies. This improves the rebel diversion skill. I admit I haven't even tried this skill during playing the game. In theory you can call rebel reinforcements to a specific position and not just on your own with this.
7. Network stations: You have to enter a fortified radio station by blowing one of it's entrances, and hack the computer there within a freaking time limit. These are the hardest and most annoying rebel ops for sure. Not only you have to run into a building with small cramped places where a ton of thugs are waiting to ambush you you have to do it within a very short time limit to be able to complete the hack in the time limit. I avoided these like the devil. They improve the vehicle drop-off skill. Which as the name says you can ask the rebels to send a vehicle to your location. It's a very useful skill, or would by if it wasn't implemented very poorly. For starters the vehicle is often dropped at the most inconvenient positions. And it can only appear on main roads, nowhere else. So if you're in the middle of nowhere the vehicle often gets dropped off beyond your reach or line of sight even. And often close so close to an enemy base to render it useless. Very annoying. But the biggest issue with the skill is how immersion breaking it is. In Mercenaries 2 the vehicle drop off skill was done by airdrop ie.: a helicopter appeared and dropped the vehicle in the location where you put up the smoke signal. Here, it materializes out of thin air in front of your eyes. Why?

I think that's all the side missions covered. The main story is divided by the regions of the map. Each region is responsible for a different cartel goal for example smuggling or manufacturing, and each region is controlled by a different "bouchon" on underboss. When you enter a region most of the time your first task is to gather intel. (but there are a few exceptions to this rule) You have to infiltrate enemy outposts and find some computer or hack a phone or simply gather evidence the old fashioned way. Each piece of intelligence will unlock a mission, or two. And these missions will usually lead to others. Until you've done enough damage for the underboss to show up, so you can deal with them. And every arm of the cartel hase a big boss, who you can only get access to after taking out several of his/her underbosses.
The main story missions are quite varied. Sometimes you have to sneak in somewhere undetected, tail or observe someone. Other times you have to interrogate bosses, or capture them and take them to a rebel hideout. Other times you simply have to cause mayhem, like destroy equipment or drugs, or kill leaders. How you approach missions is entirely up to you. Go in guns blazing the front door, attack with a helicopter, or meticulously stake out the enemy and pick them off one by one silently. Everything is possible. The level design is very good, every shield has a crack, you'll always find a back way into every stronghold.

Often your missions will take you to unidad bases. I haven't talked about them until now, they're the third faction in the game and the most annoying one at that. They're bolivian security forces, paramilitary. Heavily armed and well equipped. They often patrol with cars and helicopters as well. And they always tend to show up at the most inconvenient times. And if you fight them, there will only be more of them. So if unidad decides to show up during one of your missions you might as well give up because more often than not they'll cause you to fail. Either by preventing you from focusing on your mission, destroying your vehicle, or simply killing you wit their overwhelming numbers alone. And they seem to have eagle eyes. They can spot you from a mile away driving the most inconspicuous car. There was a mission in the game which was supposed to end the cooperation between unidad and the cartel, but I swear they only got worse after that.

The combat is very fluid. And the feedback of the game is great. There are tons of weapons to unlock, which is necessary as the base weapons are not that great. You can find the weapon matching your playstyle. And you can customize your character, albeit mostly only the clothes as you can't change the body at all, and there only a few preset faces to choose from. It feels to me that they wanted more in-depth customization but they ran out of time before fully testing and implementing it. I can only hope they'll release it later as a DLC if it was ever their intention.

The story of the game is more concentrated to learning about your enemies and the cartel, their associations. I loved the stylized movies about each cartel member, and the "word of sueno" They're not cutscenes more like story telling trough symbolic imagery, and narration. They do a pretty good job at humanizing the cartel leaders, at least some of them. Sometimes you actually feel like a dick for pulling the trigger, but other times there is absolutely no doubt you're doing a service to society by killing them.

However besides the good things there are a few issues with the game. It eats up the GPU, I had to set drawing distance and shadows to the lowest settings to get playable frame rates out of it. I'm not sure even an 1080Ti could get the game to run fluently with everything maxed out even at 1440, definitely not at 4K. But let's say the visuals warrant the extra hardware.

There are some obvious balance issues. For example gun emplacements (gatling guns) seem to loose all efficiency when you use them. It's compltely impossible to take out an enemy from more than 30-40m with them. Even though the enemy can insta killl you with a gatling from 100 meters.I observed that phenomenon with a car mounted gattling gun that no matter how many hits went in the enemy wouldn't drop until I went in very close. On the other hand the APC is extremely overpowered. If you use it you become virtually unstoppable. And your ai partners shoot with 100% accuracy as gunners with the APC. They instakill every enemy. The only risk to you is going to close to an enemy so your own shell could hurt you. Apart from that you can easily take the most fortified bases with dozens of heavy enemies helicopters and gun turrets without breaking a sweat in an APC. Thankfully they're only available at a few specific locations so I only used it a few times during the game. Albeit the last final mission would probably be impossible without it on the hardest difficulty which I played at. I choose that because that's the closest to reality as possible. At times the game still seemed very lenient to the player, as you can take many hits before dying, especially after upgrading the bullet resistance skill. So I'd say overall the game is a bit on the easy side even on the most difficult setting. But it can still be annoying at times.

Weapon penetration seems to be non-existent. Even though it's a metric the game shows for each weapon, bullets don't seem to hit enemies trough even the thinnest of covers. Sometimes you can't even shoot between handrails. And you definitely can't shoot trough any vegetation not even grass.

There are combat helicopters in the game, but with the wonky controls it's near impossible to aim them at enemies properly. So they're quite ineffective. Even the heavy transport helicopter because of the already mentioned ineffectiveness of gatling guns at range.

Enemies seem to grow out from nowhere in a few seconds. You search the entire outpost with drones, mark all enemies and when you attack there are still dozens of unmarked enemies coming out of the woodwork. Or when you're on a critical mission and unidad decides to interfere. Or when you fail a missoin, and each time the game makes it it's purpose to put you into the most inconvenient position. At least 500m from your goal, in low ground, with no vantage point on the base, and with no roads and no vehicles nearby. So you can run for minutes trough empty land before you can retry the mission. It's the most annoying thing in the game, besides the fact that if you fail the third part of a three part mission you'll have to restart from part1.

Another thing that got on my nerves that a couple of dozen times when I wanted to enter a vehicle I accidentally sat on the back seat. And it takes a hell of a lot time to get back out and get in the front. Small but very annoying design oversight. They should have made the driver's seat have priority over any other position in the vehicle.

And while we're talking vehicles, helicopter controls were not really straightforward it took me quite a while to figure it out how am I supposed to to drive them. but after figuring it out with no help from the game mind you they're quite fun. Planes are pretty straightforward except for a big bug, or design issue IDK. That if you use the elevator the brakes won't work. I always crashed during landings until I figured out that if I pull up or down during braking the brakes won't work which is completely stupid. So I always overshoot landing strips or crashed into obstacles at the end of the runways.Because I was instinctively pulling the stick backwards to try to loose momentum.
Bikes are completely useless. They're bouncing and bumping around wildly never going where you want them, and you always fall off when you least expect it, and not when you bump into big obstacles or when you fly 200meters. And if you fall off you die every time.
Cars first seemed awful but after getting used to it, it's not that bad for the game. Obviously I didn't expect a simulation, but it could be better. And Mafia has shown us that just because the game is an action game the cars can still handle realistically.

And the night is your enemy in the game. You can't see jack shit during the night. But the enemy can see you just as well as if it's high noon. I often wouldn't even start missions during the night, as it's only a disadvantage to you. Or at one time I kept and kept re trying a mission all night, until finally I was able to complete it when it was daylight again.

The provinces in the game are ranked 1-5 by difficulty by the game, but honestly I didn't find much difference between their difficulty. The ones marked with 5 definitely didn't stand out. And I haven't noticed that the ones with 2 skulls or would be particularly easier either.

As for overall game quality. The issues are not that many. I encountered bugs, like falling trough the terrain or getting stuck under debris or in certain areas but overall the build quality of the game is pretty good.

Except I just found out recently that the game actually showed me the "bad ending" when it was supposed to be the "good ending" based on the completion level of story missions. It turns out even if you do everything proper the game will present you the bad ending for the first completion of the final mission. So you have to finish the mission twice to get the supposed better ending. And to top it off the last mission is one of the least enjoyable in the game. Actually not one of, it's THE WORST mission. And I've seen numerous reports of this around the net, it was even reported on the ubisoft communities as far back as march, and a supposed community manager supposedly forwarded the report to the supposed developers. So it should've been fixed by now ten times over. But it's still the same.

So fuck ubisoft, and fuck denuvo because -I suspect that's the reason the game pauses every now and then for a few seconds on my computer, and also the reason the game takes an eternity to load from the desktop.

So to sum up things. The game is Mercanaries 2 2.0, while still lagging behind that game in a few areas, it improves in many others. Like storytelling, graphics, combat, scenery, level design, the size of the map.

+

• Graphics from up above
• Size of the game area
• Level design
• Choice of weapons
• Storytelling methods
• Gameplay
• Lots of missions
• 40+ hours for the story missions alone without DLCs

-

• Relocating you to the middle of nowhere after failing a mission / checkpoint based save system
  
• Some balance issues with a few weapons / vehicles
• Unidad too agressive, can detect you anywhere in anything
• AA missiles can hit you even after you land. And your altitude seems to be relative to the AA gun itself, not the ground below you. You can fly under the tree canopies and still get targeted if the gun is in lower area.
  
• Hardware requirement
• I think there is still much untapped potential in the huge game area.
  
• I sorely missed a train heist mission.
• Wrong ending bug.

Scoring card:

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

overall impression: 8/10

The only reason I'm not giving it a 9 is because in some areas it manages to lag behind Mercenaries 2, and because the save system is checkpoint based.

AVP Classic 2000


I'm going to do three different posts, one for each species.

The First species is none other than The Alien.

I played and beat this game when it first went gold, and actually still have the jewel case. I re-purchased it when it went on sale on Steam because Rebellion still deserves a few dollars for this game, and with the release of Alien: Covenant, it got me in an Alien game kick.

When you first load this game up, the menu is basic, but very fitting for the Alien, with the organic green background.

The moment that you choose a species and mission, you're greeted with a black screen, text describing the mission, and a blue glowing loading bar which doubles as the Alien's life bar. (It is cool enough that it was used twice!)

After a brief cut scene where a marine kills an Alien, the game starts off in an Alien Temple. When I first played I was on a 4:3 CRT monitor... Now playing on a 20" widescreen, the fisheye and extended FOV for the Alien is a little disorienting at first, but I quickly got used to it. At first I immediately ran into the only exit to the room, a tunnel which quickly leads up. I forgot to crouch, and ran a bit, then slid back down. I remembered that the Alien could literally climb on any surface. So to catch my bearings, I turned around in the starting room, crouched, and just climbed around until I got it down. Then I dropped off the ceiling and then climbed up and through the tunnel. Shortly after a bit of travel through pipe-like tunnels, and a huge drop, I found my first victim, with a green aura around her. The one thing I didn't forget about this game, was the ability to "taunt". The Alien let out a hiss and the poor girl starts whimpering and then she crouches over and puts her head in her hands, knowing her fate. I center the screen over her head until the jaws show up at the top and bottom of the screen, and then I bite off her head. The glowing blue health bar glows mostly white with a little bit of blue now as the health is at maximum. I then turn around, and there was another NPC that decided to startle me and throws a molotov cocktail. I catch on fire and very quickly burn to death. The Alien, while powerful, is also quick to die.

I start the level over, and not repeating the same mistake, decide to save before I drop down to the room with the NPCs. I smile as I see across the top of the screen: "Saves left: 2"
I miss the toughness of old games, limited saves, hell, manual saves as the only means of saving your progress.
I kill both NPCs, and still get caught on fire. I remember though that quickly running will extinguish the fire. After a couple of seconds the flames are gone and my health didn't suffer too badly.

I round a corner, and hear a turret. I slowly approach the corner and peak around. The turret immediately fires and I quickly back up. Not wanting to get torn to shreds, I look around, and see a vent cover. I climb the wall, break the vent cover, and make my way through a series of vents. I knock another cover out at the end, and see several NPCs glowing blue and one red, in a pit. I drop down and reign terror on them all, taunting them as I claw their limbs off. I then climb back up and now that I'm behind the turret, I tail whip it and disable it.

That is the thing about playing as the Alien, knowing how vulnerable you are, you can't just rush into places. You have to use stealth and alternate routes to avoid death.

The levels are nicely varied, with multiple paths and options to get to the end. The graphics aren't terrible, they still hold up kind of well, and the gameplay of the Alien in this game is ahead of its time.
Oh, I do wish the predators showed up earlier than the last level, and they were too easy to kill.

All in all, I'm glad I decided to replay it, and I'm excited to get into the Marine and Predator campaigns.

Pros:
Unique perspective and movement
Taunting humans and making them cower in fear
Manual Saves
Minimalistic HUD
Well thought out levels with multiple paths
Sound design


Cons:
Graphics aren't as great as they once were
Predators die too quickly
That's it, I can't think of any thing else

So the Alien Campaign for me, gets a 9/10

Red Dead Redemption (PS3)

Graphics/Realization: 8/10
Story/Atmosphere: 10/10
Gameplay/Controls: 8/10

Overall impression: 8.5/10

When I first started this game, I had just gotten out of the hospital for some seizures and mentally, I was just getting my feet under me again. Between the anti-seizure medication, and other issues I was working through, I just wasn't into gaming, after a solid 30+ years of playing computer and console games. My wife of 17 years was honestly concerned that maybe the seizures would have changed me in that I wouldn't be interesting in playing games anymore, which she and my 3 kids enjoyed doing. I picked up the PS3 controller, started up the game, and felt the youthful excitement of starting a brand new game and feeling fully immersed in the story, instantly relating to the main character, not necessarily on a shooty/stabby level, but the feeling of disconnection from the "bringing civility to the savages" level.

The decision making wasn't necessarily on the level of Bioware's games, but I liked the idea of choosing to ride by a "damsel in distress", or stopping and shooting her and her cohorts in the face. From a high level perspective, it was basically Grand Theft Horse, but that's basically Rockstar's bread and butter, so you know what you're getting when you play it. I played the game from the train ride into the wild west, all the way to the final standoff, and while it took me about a month to finish it, but I felt satisfied with the ending. From a graphical standpoint, like with many other games, it would look and probably play better on a PC, but it is what it is. Much of the desert is various shades of tan, but it never felt boring, and reaching the forested area felt like a welcome change of pace regarding the landscape. The landmarks and various buildings felt real and it was fun exploring the landscape and shooting varmints, both 4 legged and 2. Riding at night felt exhilarating, with the outlines of trees and cacti racing by and the moonlight guiding my path, it gave the impression of speed not really expressed with riding in an automobile.

There were times where I felt the story dragged a bit, but I never wanted to stop playing. Without being too dramatic, I needed this game to help me transition back into gaming after feeling nothing, and I would buy a PC port sight unseen, maybe even preordering it. In my opinion, it's the finest game in this particular setting, and I think it would benefit greatly with a refresh into modern hardware. Maybe it doesn't redefine the open world genre, but damn did Rockstar make a hell of a game.

Command & Conquer : Red Alert (1996)

After playing the first C&C recently I went on to play Red Alert. Or at least I tried to. Unfortunately this one is even more plagued by the crashes that I experienced with the original. So much so that after a few missions I had to completely give up on the game as it would crash every 5-10 minutes, which is no fun. The only way to finish the game now is saving every minute to don't loose much progress.
So I'll try to rely on my memories from the last time I played the game, which was in 2010. I don't remember having any crash issues back then, so thank you W10, you ruined yet another thing.

As far as I can remember this was the most anticipated game ever by me. The game was released only a year later than the first. Which would be considered a rush job today. And it kind of is, but that doesn't take away anything from it. It only improves on the original. Yes, it uses the same engine, yes it uses some of the same units. But that's OK. It never bothered anyone.

The game is set in an alternative universe where WWII didn't happen, but the cold war escalated into a kind of WWIII between the allies and the soviets.
The two factions in the game have completely different units similar to the original. The Allies have mobility and stealth on land, and the navy on sea. While the soviets rely on brute force on land, and use stealth on sea. In my opinion this is the best balanced game by far of the franchise as far as factions go, despite the two being so different that they barely have any common units.
The graphics remained the same, even the FMV quality is the same. But the acting is much better this time. This game still has a serious tone to it. Which I much prefer over what they did to the alternative universe in later games.
The AI is much improved, it doesn't rely on cheating as much anymore, and there are no obvious exploits this time to beat it. As far as I can tell the only cheat on the part of the AI that remains is the money cheat. That one harvest replenishes it's stores completely.

The biggest change I guess in the game, is that there are some missions taking place inside bunkers. Which are quite difficult. You'll either love or hate these. The maps are much larger, and of course there are battles that take place mostly on sea, and forcing you to invade isolated islands where there is no land connection.


+

• It's more C&C!
• Soundtrack if possible it goes one step beyond the already brilliant music of the original.
  
• Slightly improved artwork over the first, but the engine remains the same. Plus they added snowy theaters.
  
• Much improved acting
• Serious tone
• Large and varied maps
• Much more unit types

-

• Crashing made it unplayable (not the game's fault but I have to mention it)
  
• AI pathfinding
• Enemy AI cheating
• Gap generator - the most annoying unit / structure ever conceived.
• Superweapons are worthless this time.

Scoring chart:

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

Overall impression: 10/10

By far the best C&C ever created.