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NieR: Automata

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It's a game that surprised me at least a couple of times. Here's why:

1) The story - the game takes place on the planet Earth but in a distant future, where the planet has been ruled by inteligent machines. The plot is full of twists and turns that change the perspective of the game a couple of times during the gamplay. And even though everything seems twisted it is at the same time very logical and well thought-through. If you like stories about androids, then it's a story for you.
2) The end is actually a beginning... The game has 26 different endings. As far as I know, some of them are more of a joke, but still, there a a couple of long and good ones. Moreover, to unlock some endings, you have to finish the game a couple of times. Three is the minimum! Fortunately, every ending differs a lot from the others, so it's not boring and repeated.
3) The robots - they are grotesque :D and they are not only killing machines, they actually have a need to undestand people and try to copy their behaviours. Watching them trying to come up with religion and stuff is pretty interesting.
4) Gamplay - NieR: Automata is an open-world RPG. There are a lot of main and side quests, a huge number of artifacts to collect, nice character-development system. But it's not that idle. It's a game with a lot of action. But you need to try it to see it. You cannot be bored with it, even after 15-20 hours of playing.
5) The construction of world you play in - it's big, it's open and you get back to the same places a couple of times to find something you didn't see before. You can easily feel like you're becoming the part of this world. At some point you start recognizing some places and feel more like home.
6) Graphics - to be hones, from the tech point of view the game looks average. Everything looks kind of old if you compare it to other games released this year. It seems like it's a game from 10 years ago. But on the other hand, it suits the character of this game.
7) Soundtrack - it is amazing, enough said.

All in all, it's not a perfect game but it's still in my opinion one of the best releases this year. It's really engaging, never boring, constantly changing. It is one of a kind and you should definitely try it.

I would give it 9,5/10 overall.
 
Command & Conquer : Red Alert 2 (2000)

The second game in the alternate C&C universe, I'm not using the word sequel on purpose as the game has almost nothing in common with the first. It's a comedy reboot of the universe. This means the story and cutscenes are completely brain-dead and almost surreal. They try to make fun of some stereotypes. Emphasis on try. As it ends up being cringy instead of funny.

Though I really disliked the style of the story the game mechanics remained the same. They eliminated the biggest issue of Tiberian Sun, which was being extremely slow moving and boring at times. I think they even went overboard with it. As the game became so quick that most campaign missions can be wrapped up inside of 20 minutes. Making the whole campaign no longer than a few hours. The only map that took somewhat of an effort to beat is the last where the enemy constantly throws superweapons at you.

The reason the maps can be beaten quickly is down to balance issues. Buildings have very few hit points, while vehicles have too much. This means most buildings can be levelled in seconds, and you can wipe out the enemy bases with 6-7 carefully selected units. Or less if they're elite. As units can level up in the game, making them exponentially more effective. They are levelled up when they reach a certain multiple of their own value in kills, this makes cheap units actually much more effective as they level up in the game much quicker.

I'm not really a fan of some of the new units in the game either. Like the tesla soldier or jetpack soldier. They're both pretty worthless. But there are a few new features that I liked. One is that soldiers can dig in, making them actually effective instead of just worthless cannon fodder you only use before you're able to build better units. (At least the allied ones). Another is that Allies / Soviets use different ore harversters, and the new prism towers are pretty neat, as they can combine their firepower, which makes them very effective when strategically placed. But also there are units that I hated. Like the spiders which were extremely annoying when used by the enemy, and worthless when I tried to use them. Or the prism tanks which are as bad as the prism towers are good. Expensive and slow as snails. Regular tanks are far superior due to their speed and much smaller cost.


+

  • maybe Kari Wuhrer? Yes, 17 years ago that would've been a plus.
  • Some new unit types
  • More variance between the factions



-

  • Cutscenes are not scaled to resolution.
  • went completely 180 compared to the serious tone of the first game, this is completely flippant, never for a second takes itself seriously.
  • can be finished quickly
  • The graphics somehow seems worse than the older games. They tried to add too much detail, seems cluttered, and like it uses the wrong palette. Reminds me of EGA games.


Scoring chart:

graphics/realization: 4/10
story/atmosphere: 1/10
gameplay/controls: 9/10

Overall impression: 6/10

It's enjoyable, but it never goes above and beyond being adequate.
 
And now for something entirely different:

Need for Speed: The Run (2011)

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I never thought that after NFS: Hot Pursuit 2, which clearly marks the end of the era of classic NFS games, I will ever play another arcade Need for Speed game again. The reason I changed my mind is because they peaked my interest with the idea of a long race, splitting the whole continent, and that the story is an integral part of the game, not just some lame excuse written in two lines.

Since this is the first racing game I review here, I have to tell you in a few words, that I'm a hardcore fan of realistic physics in games involving cars, and also realistic damage and crashes. But I'm not a hardcore fan of hardcore simulations. Confusing right? Wait I'll explain: Hardcore racing simulations force things like boring fiddling with car setups, strict rules, and most of the time uninteresting closed circuits. But I wish for the thrills of the streets, and to be in the drivers seat right away. This means there aren't many racing games that suit my taste. Because street racers almost always have lame arcade physics and controls, and they laugh at you if you try to play using a racing wheel and pedals. And the games that have good realistic physics and controls, usually don't have the game modes I desire. So far the closest game to my wishes was Test Drive: Unlimited, closely followed by NFS: Porsche which is no surprise as the two games were developed by the same now defunct company.

The Run is certainly on the more arcady side of the scale, in physics, but fortunately not the bad kind of arcade physics. Even though it's simplified, the cars still react to control inputs as a car should react. They managed to get the controls right, which is a rare thing among arcade racers. If I'm satisfied with the controls that's great praise for a racing game. Well almost satisfied, Because the way they implemented drafting in the game, is against all the laws of physics and aerodynamics. As you may know drafting means going in the thin air caused by a car running in front of you, which in short reduces aerodynamic drag, and makes it possible for you to achieve a higher speed as long as you stay in the draft of the car(s) in front. Now in this game, if you follow a car, that starts to fill a drag meter, and if you fill it up, you get a boost when you get out of the drag of the car, and so you accelerate wildly when you do this. So it's the complete opposite of what drag looks like in real life. Oh and of course if for just one second you get out of line from the back of the car you're following the meter instantly goes back to zero, so you have to start filling it again. I don't understand why did they do it like this. So average Joe can have a meter, that tells him if he's doing things right or not I don't know. I do know however that I hated it, and I wanted to shoot the designer responsible for it in the head so no trace of this idea would remain.

The story takes you on a race from San Francisco to New York. You start in 250th position, and the goal is to reach New York in first place. It all sounds great, there are a few race types: Elimination which is called battle here, simple race where you just have to overtake everyone by the end, and time trial runs. And then there are story missions, which usually means someone trying to run you off the road or shoot you to hell. And in a few cases you get a combination of them. Like win the race, while evading angry mobsters.

Everything sounds peachy until now, but the realization has many flaws. You can't really go wrong with time trials, so I have nothing against that. But in races and chases, the artificial catch up in the game is horrendous. No matter how well you drive, even if you have a flawless race, you still can't overtake your opponents before the last seconds. This means that the game is very annoying. You can run a flawless race until the last seconds and then make one mistake at the end and still loose. And this is compounded by the long loading times, even if you just want to restart a race you have to watch a loading screen for two minutes. I can't believe they couldn't have found a way to make it faster had they tried. And on top of that the game likes to place civilian cars directly in your racing line. So if you're going flat out you have zero chance to avoid crashing into them. And the AI opponents regularly fool you by jumping out of the way in the last possible second, leaving you no time to react to the oncoming car. Because of course you're constantly trying to fill your idiot drag meter, so you have to go directly behind them.

Another thing I disliked that the cars you can use in the game all have very similar performance, the stats that the game keep shoving in your face about the cars have absolutely no meaning, contrary to the narration of the game, that car choice is very important. And on top of that the only way to switch cars during racing is by stopping at a petrol station. Which means loosing a ton of time. And of course 90% of the cars are not usable in the story mode. And you can only unlock most cars even for regular races, by accumulating multiplayer points.
Even more disappointing is the fact that all races are predetermined in story mode. There is an exact number of opponents you have to overtake in each race. You can't overtake one more, or one less. Which is sad, because it'd have made the game much more fun and open ended. It'd have been great to be able to overtake more cars in a few races, leaving you room for error in later ones. Of course such a system would've needed some development to implement. But it would've worth the effort ten times over.

I read in some reviews that the races are too long in the game, but that's bullshit. If anything the whole game is too short. You only drive one tenth of the real distance of the race. Which ends up in 4 hours of gameplay for story mode. And even this short amount is divided into 50 individual stages. That averages out for less than five minutes/race. And if I subtract the loading time it goes to three minutes. So anyone complaining about too long races can come to me for a free slap. Thankfully I got the game for free, so I didn't worry about value for money.

+

  • The story gives alternate meaning to a racing game
  • Movie style implementation of the story
  • Graphics
  • Controls (for an arcade racer)
  • The few on foot missions are a good way to let off steam after some annoying races

-

  • The indivudal stages are too short
  • No freedom, the outcome of all races is predetermined, you achieve it or game over. And you can't even do better than the minimum.
  • The AI is unrealistic, they are so aggressive, they put kamikaze pilots to shame.
  • Too strong catch up, it's ok to have it in an arcade game, but this is way over the top.
  • The performance of the cars are too similar from beginning to the end of the game.
  • I think the story part is still not strong enough, I'd have liked more interaction with NPCs, and more cutscenes.
  • Loading times are too long, it should have worked on it especially for simple restarts.

Scoring card:

graphics : 8/10 The frostbite graphics engine really does a good job, the graphics is quite nice, no problems there.
realization: 5/10 the idea they had is the right one, but there is much room to improve in the implementation
story: 7/10 let's be fair, there is nothing new here, there are no elements of this story we haven't seen somewhere before
atmosphere: 10/10
gameplay: 7/10 deduction for drag, catchup, and too short races
controls: 9/10

Overall impression: 8/10 It's quite high, due to the fact that the game kept me going, it cemented me in the driver's seat. I almost finished the whole game in one go.

It's a really pleasant surprise. It seems to me that if I read mostly negative reviews from mainstream magazines about an arcade racing game, then I will like it.
 
Uncharted Lost Legacy

I'm a huge Uncharted fan. I've completed the previous 5 games in the series multiple at least twice each...even the Vita one. I like the mix of shooting, platforming, and adventure. Plus, the characters are typically well acted and the stories are compelling.

So...what does this one bring to the table? It was originally just going to be a single-player DLC add-on for Uncharted 4, but as the project grew it became a separate game.
The catch is that it's really only a single-player mission that's roughly 40% the length of Uncharted 4. There aren't really any new mechanics introduced beyond a lockpicking "puzzle" that borrows from a wide variety of RPG's as well as the Batman games. Running, jumping, shooting, collecting treasures, and driving are all borrowed from Uncharted 4. Thing is...there's nothing wrong with any of those things so that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't have any extended plot sequences and it does feature an "open world" sandbox-like area, which Uncharted 4 only lightly featured.

Pros:
  • Graphics. They don't get any better than this. Seriously. On console, on PC, on any platform. It's only 30fps, but it's otherwise unmatched.
  • Writing. Dialogue and storytelling are always a strength of the series and this game is no different.
  • Gameplay. While the game does nothing to innovate, it also does nothing to take away from the legacy of the series either. It's still fun, exciting, and challenging.

Cons:
  • Cost. It's a good value at $20 and probably even $29, but $39 is really steep for a single player experience that's less than 1/2 as long as the far more robust Uncharted 4.
  • Lack of Innovation. A tacked on lockpick-mechanic and a treasure alarm? That's weak. How about some new climbing or fighting techniques? A new gun or two? Anything?
  • Formulaic. In addition to the lack of innovation, the game lifts numerous sequences straight from the other games. Not in homage form, either.

I still enjoyed the game, but that's because I'm a fan. I also lucked into getting the game for $20 since I bought it when it was still supposed to simply be a DLC mission. As a stand-alone game that's 2/3 the cost of a full game, it's a tough sell. Yet as a DLC mission it's great. I think the cost and packaging lead to expectations that it can't really live up to. I honestly hope they just lower the price of it to $25.

At $40, I'd probably give it a 7.0. At $25, it's probably an 8+.
 
Prey 7/10

Some parts felt excellent, others drawn out and repetitive. Too many fetch quests or side quests that make you run back to places you just cleared. Lots of codes, key cards that are hard to keep track of. You'll get a whole bunch of not so interesting side quests thrown at you all at once, and some interesting ones. Problem is this hurts the flow, because you have to run back here, then back there, ect. You loose track of the interesting things.

Powers wise upgrades are too hard to come by, and the game penalizes you for using the fun ones. They needed to emphasize less on boring things such as health and more on the fun powers, because by the time you get the interesting powers and combo effects half the game is over. Quick saves were great and saved the game from turning into an entirely tedious mess.

When you do get the fun powers the game can be a blast. The station is interesting art-wise but sadly you're face deep into figuring out where you need to go or which place is quickest so you can finish those two side quests with minimal backtracking. You can ignore them and rush through the main story, but then you will lack the Neuro-mods to get interesting powers.

Keep with it because it sucks up front but does get better. But the game constantly switches between fun, tedium, and annoying preventing it from being a great game.
 
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Flogger23m said:
Prey 7/10

Some parts felt excellent, others drawn out and repetitive. Too many fetch quests or side quests that make you run back to places you just cleared. Lots of codes, key cards that are hard to keep track of. You'll get a whole bunch of not so interesting side quests thrown at you all at once, and some interesting ones. Problem is this hurts the flow, because you have to run back here, then back there, ect. You loose track of the interesting things.

Powers wise upgrades are too hard to come by, and the game penalizes you for using the fun ones. They needed to emphasize less on boring things such as health and more on the fun powers, because by the time you get the interesting powers and combo effects half the game is over. Quick saves were great and saved the game from turning into an entirely tedious mess.

When you do get the fun powers the game can be a blast. The station is interesting art-wise but sadly you're face deep into figuring out where you need to go or which place is quickest so you can finish those two side quests with minimal backtracking. You can ignore them and rush through the main story, but then you will lack the Neuro-mods to get interesting powers.

Keep with it because it sucks up front but does get better. But the game constantly switches between fun, tedium, and annoying preventing it from being a great game.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately the tedium got to me early so I dropped the game after 1 hour. But it's not even really the tedium that made me say fuck it. But the fact that the game borrows ideas from many great games, but fails to even come close to being as entertaining as either of those games.
 
M76 said:
Unfortunately the tedium got to me early so I dropped the game after 1 hour. But it's not even really the tedium that made me say fuck it. But the fact that the game borrows ideas from many great games, but fails to even come close to being as entertaining as either of those games.
Click to expand...

I was similarly close to doing that, but I'd say it is worth continuing. I don't mind if something borrows from another thing as long as they don't claim they're the first to do it, and I don't think Arkane claimed it was innovative. It gets better in some parts, but as I said, it has numerous ups and downs. It should have been better, but what they delivered was okay. I'll tell you one thing though, the tedium that is getting so common in SP games these days is getting to me. The side quest ratio has gone through the roof and sadly, a lot of it is of low quality. If you're going to make side quests account for more than 1/3 of the game, it better be similar to ME2 style side quests.
 
Mass Effect Andromeda 8/10

Preamble

This game got a bad rap, plain and simple. Very soon after its release, it was apparent there was a small group of internet tough guys and neckbeards spewing vitriol about this and that that wasn't really core to the game. And then groupthink set in redirecting dislike for some of these non-core issues in force towards the game's other imperfections. I'm going to try to avoid commentary of peripheral and social sort in my review. However, I will say there were points in the game and dialogue that made it obvious the writers/directors/developers were pushing an agenda that swung in a certain direction, so much so that parts left a bad taste even in my normally socially progressive mouth. At points in the game, I felt like I was being fed bullets in a corporate seminar on social awareness and political correctness. Ironically, I see races and creeds uniting more to agree on their distaste for the way some social ideas were sweet-syrup sickeningly forced in this game than anything else.

That said, we really don't see anywhere near this level of name calling and finger pointing against the myriad of other games out there that push puerile objectification (or much worse) of women. Many of the people who were crying "get the SJW!" are a squarely hypocritical bunch in this sense. There... points made, and I will try to let this context around the game lie for the remainder. On to the review...

Review

This game is a story of contrasts. Some aspects are superb, some are mediocre, and some are stupidly frustrating. Worth noting I played the basic version, not any of the "pay $10 extra for horse armor" versions.

Atmosphere and Environment - Environments are beautiful, especially some of the planetscapes. The first time I hopped in the Nomad on EOS to roam around I was astounded by the beauty of the horizon and landscape -- the same goes for the other planets. Each planet does have some similarities, but are different enough (especially the jungle world) that it seem like you are actually on different worlds. Weather e.g. thunderstorms, sandstorms is exceptional, and the rain effects are a nice touch, albeit they only appear on you, not companions or NPCs. There could have been more land-able planets, but I appreciate that the team likely got caught up sinking time into building out the main seven (?). Stations and ships (Nexus, Tempest) are squarely Mass Effect: decent, but layout and level design is a bit cludgy (as has always been the case with ME).

Graphics and Item/Character Design - Most of the broad-stroke items are categorically purdy. Ships, bases, celestials -- all excellent. Weapon and armor design is superb, each seems reasonably different while maintaining some design consistency. Textures are off-the-wall good for some items and effects especially at 4k.

Character design... Without speculating on any social agenda, I can't help but feel the designers were going for a "naturalized" or "truer to life look". Whatever the reason, most of the human characters look like 12 year olds with weirdly proportioned bodies. Not a huge deal, but off-putting. I feel like there's a balance between the idealized and the real portrayal of the human body in any fictional work like this -- and that was distinctly missed here. The alien races, on the other hand, look mostly very good.

Animations - I'm not getting the general hate for movement animations, but I only played a few hours right after release i.e. before the fixes, then mostly after the patches. Some of the body movements are terrific e.g. jump jetting. Facial animations are a different story... some are ok, but many are look comically bad or even creepy (recalling those Coney Island mannequins in horror movies). Eyes shift idly while in conversations, mouths can look detached from faces, hair is for lack of a better description, ugly and unnatural-looking. This is not uncanny valley territory, but just odd and bad animation.

Gameplay - One of the highlights of this game. It takes the combat in ME 1-3 refines it and adds some super fun mechanics e.g. jump jetting and dodging. Shots feel like they carry weight, and knock down effects are well implemented. Combat range is also hugely expanded from previous games that makes approach and sniping a lot more fun. Roving around in the Nomad is fun as heckfire, and the improvements can nicely improve the vehicle's movement and speed. Inventory is handled reasonably well, but the list layout of your items can get hard to manage if you're keeping many of the same category items.

Planet travel is annoying as heck, and was obviously fudged during editing: you can't skip a lot of the cut scenes and frames when focusing on planets seems jumpy. As for missions/quests, yes, some are fetch tasks, but others are intricately done and don't feel like "work". That said, it's no Witcher 3.

Story - Excellent concept, moderately well executed. Having to work towards mutual respect with the new alien race was well done; liked the idea of tracking down other arks. The main baddies aren't as frightening or ominous as the Reapers, but I appreciate the way they were slowly developed as the plot proceeds. Character loyalty plotlines are fun and varied enough to be interesting.

There was a missed opportunity here: the story could have been better interwoven with missions and resource gathering -- Oregon Trail in space, if you will. As it is, there really wasn't any perceptible risk to your wagon trail's survival.

Dialogue/Characters - I do appreciate that creating a world of compelling characters and engaging, quality dialogue in a game of this scope is a huge undertaking. That said, there are some lines of dialogues so bad and cringe-worthy they seem like they were (badly) written in Chinese then run through a bottom-shelf NLP translation. A few lines were so incredibly bad I threw my mouse down declaring "that's it for me today, folks". Some of the writers on this project should consider a career change. These verbal turds really are a shame as some of the dialogue is quite well written (or at least non offensive).

As for the VA, the actors did the best they could and there are certainly a few good performances (no one seems like they were phoning it in). There were a few occasions where it was extremely obvious actors had to record their dialogues separate from one another and didn't have proper coaching: one will pronounce a name one way, and the next actor will pronounce a name another e.g. "Tie" said this; "Tay" said that. It's the little things like this that pull back the curtain.

Characters are hit or miss, but I did notice I grew to like the two protags over time (my first impression wasn't good). I do agree in general that there really weren't any compelling characters as in the original MEs (with the exception of Jaal).

Closing

All in all, a fun game, worth the time (and certainly if you're a Bioware RPG and ME fan). I really don't think this should sink (or even pause) the ME IP or even the Andromeda plotline -- too many possibilities and potential.

Fin.
 
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L.A. Noire (2011)

This is actually one of the few games that I enjoyed on the console, but later when it came out for the PC, it didn't feel that good, the graphics were better of course, but I really missed the controller, and the feedback from it. It is a relaxed game most of the time, and the extra precision of controls didn't matter all that much most of the time.

I must emphasize that I think this is a game you either hate or you love, there is no middle road here. Thankfully I fell into the latter group.

I for one am really fed up with cookie cutter games being pumped out like from an assembly lines. Everyone trying to copy other successful games, or genres, like Bioware with Anthem broooaf. So it's refreshing to see a game from time to time going it's own way ignoring the trend.

The technology used in this game makes it possible to not only record broad animation with mocap technology, but the actual facial expressions of actors as well. This could mean record breaking development costs again, because now it's not enough for the voice actor to just sit in a recording room, sipping tea. They actually have to put them in a bright "clean room" with dozens of cameras trained at them. But I let the publishers worry about costs, as a gamer I'm just interested in the results.

And the result unfortunately are not without early failures. Since they recorded the facial and character animations separately in the game itself the faces of characters seem to have a life of their own. It's not overly distracting, or annoying just noticeable enough that I couldn't pass by the issue without at least mentioning it. The end result is an interactive movie but this time the characters are not in contrast with the 3d background because they're rendered by the engine as well, even though they have realistic facial features and expressions. Actually I was a fan of interactive movies in the early, mid nineties, but they vanished as fast as they came into the gaming world, without making much of an impact.

But to be fair the facial animations are not the only new thing brought to the table by this game. The gameplay is completely different from anything I saw before as well. It has five aspects to it.

The game puts you in the role of an aspiring police officer shortly after WW2. You go through the ranks in the game between different crime units, from being a patrol officer, to being a homicide detective.

The first aspect of the gameplay is driving, which is basically the same as in GTA. You use a car to travel between point A and point B within the vast game world. This can mean many destinations like residences of witnesses, suspects, or crime scenes, and the offices of the L.A.P.D. as well. Unfortunately the car physics are awful compared to any of the GTA games, I don't understand why couldn't they borrow that from Rockstar North. The cars in the game feel like they're being pulled on by a string. And it's not even about making it easy for those who don't want to bother with driving, because for them there is an option to skip the driving aspect entirely by skipping to destinations, much like you can when using a taxi in GTAIV. I only used this option once or twice regardless of the bad physics, because the time you spend driving gives you time to think about cases, and decide how to proceed, who you want to focus the investigation on, and also to clear your head, because the story and the numerous contradicting witness statements can become overwhelming at times. But these are all good things, making the game more realistic.

The second aspect of the game is crime scene investigation. This consists of finding evidence or clues in a small area, usually a house or a warehouse, or an alley. This part of the game reminded me of point & click adventure games. There is not much I can tell you about it apart from you're confined to a crime scene, or a house and you basically paw everything you can get your hands on to see if it's related to the case. I'm not trying to belittle this part of the game, because it has a really important role in the building of the atmosphere of the game, and also in the investigations. But there is really nothing else to say about it.

The third and most important part of the game are the interrogations. This is where the new facial expressions come into play. Because you have to rely on your people skills to determine if a person is telling the truth, withholding information, or outright lying to your face. You ask questions from the subject, and watch for their reactions. There is one thing wrong with this part of the game I have to mention. That the game allows you to ask questions in any order you wish. But then the conversations loose their coherence often. So just stick to the order the questions are listed if you want the scene to make sense. I don't get it why are you even allowed to switch up questions when the responses are clearly based on each other. So if you guessed right that the subject told the truth or not, your reward is some small bit of information that may or may not be relevant to the case. But you can solve cases even if you botch all the interrogations, you can even end up sending the wrong person to jail. But most of the time that only hurts your own pride, and of course the person you sent to prison. What I'm trying to say is that the game won't shove a game over screen in your face every time you miss something, which goes a long way in making the game feel real.

The fourth part of the game are the chases or pursuits. Of course it happens sometimes that when confronted the guilty party will try to escape. So you have to catch them either in a car chase or a foot pursuit. The car chases are not worth much because of the already mentioned bad physics and because they're scripted. They end when the script runs its course. The foot chases are more fun, because here you actually have control over it, if you can catch up with the runner you can wrestle him to the ground. Or if you can train your weapon on them long enough then you can stop them with a warning shot. The third option if you can't catch up, means ending up in a firefight or hostage situation with the suspect, and the only way out is to shoot them if this happens.

And with that we arrived at the fifth and last aspect of the game the firefights. Again there is not much to tell, it works just like in any GTA, because of the setting its most similar to Mafia. There is a cover system, but there is no health bar, if you get shot the screen turns black & white, and if you get shot again then you're dead.But if you take cover everything goes back to normal in few seconds. Because of the realistic feel of the game I expected something more realistic here as well, but you can't have everything.

And the interactive parts of the game are often interrupted with sometimes long cutscenes, also rendered with the game engine.

The biggest appeal of the game is the constant switching between the five gameplay elements. This means it doesn't get repetitive or dull even when playing for long hours. And I did play for long hours often because the game is engaging and the atmosphere and voice acting is great.

Actually there is one more thing to the game: Dispatcher calls. These are usually crimes in progress, that end up in a firefight or a chase. These are good, but towards the middle of the game I started ignoring them, because on many occasions they take place on the opposite end of the city than where you're headed. And since the game area is huge, this means driving 10-15 minutes in the opposing direction, for one short firefight. It's just not worth it. If I remember correctly during dispatch calls you can't skip to the destination.

During the game you work many cases, the ones at the first part of the game are interesting and thrilling, but towards the end of the game they become less interesting and boring, expect the big case that follows you through almost all of the game. Basically after your third posting the day to day cases start to become less interesting, with the last case of the second posting being the best case in my opinion.

There is one thing left that demands words, the story. In itself it's not very unique, but the way it's delivered and comes to a conclusion deserves every praise.

+

  • Story
  • Atmosphere (it deliveres the post WWII US very well)
  • finally an unique ending that is good (and can also suggest a sequel) Sadly with the closure of Bondi games that's not likely to happen
  • New type of gameplay
  • It balances the aspects of the game very nicely so it doesn't get boring.

-

  • After two thirds of the game the cases become less interesting
  • Sometimes the graphics gets ugly, especially during driving where the asphalt is a blurred mess just 10m in front of you
  • Sometimes you feel that some characters heads have their own lives separate from the body.
  • Scripted car chases, and car physics

Scoring card:

graphics : 6/10 _________The internal scenes look OK, but the external city / driving look awful, at least on the PS3 which I used for this game
realization: 8/10 _______They almost got it on their first try. Too bad they disbanded team bondi shortly after due to the astronomical costs of the game.
story: 7/10 ____________It's not really the story that matters, it's the delivery, and they got many A-list or close to that stars in it. Probably further contributing to the high cost, but in this case I think it was worth it.
atmosphere: 10/10
gameplay: 8/10
controls: 9/10

The game represents a completely new breed, and despite being the first of its kind it has remarkably few failings.
 
Gran Turismo (1998) / Gran Turismo II (1999)

This review will be more about my early obsession with car racing / simulation games than the game itself. Because to understand my disposition towards this game you need to know the story of how I first played it.

It began close to 25 years ago, when in an IT TV show I saw a racing game. And I was blown away by the complexity of it and the real-time 3d graphics. I later found ot that it was Indycar Racing (1993) by Papyrus. Until then all I known was the Test Drive series, and Stunts, those were great games too, don't get me wrong, but they were a stone axe compared to Indycar.

There were some other games that influenced me early on, like Car & Driver from 1992 by no other than Looking Glass Studios. Which was considered a terrible game by almost everyone, with it's wonky controls, and physics, but I loved it because it offered Driving in it's purest form, no restrictions, no strings attached. And the first game that dared offering more than 320x200 resolution with 3d graphics. The concept with this was very similar to Need For Speed. Take a well known car magazine, and sell a driving game with it's name. Only in 1992 the technology wasn't quite ready to make it a success, unlike three years later when EA released Need For Speed with Road&Track. Amazing how fast technology advanced back then. The earliest racing game with an open world and 3D graphics I think was Vette! from 1989, another game considered terrible by regular people, but I played it like it was the best game ever.

Of course there were racing games before these as well, but mostly 2D over the top view ones. But I don't want to bore you with those, rest assured I played a lot of those too, and loved many of them.

But being from a former soviet block country, you had to be in the elite to have a PC that could run games decently in the early 90s, before the fall of the iron curtain the best you could hope for is a Commodore 64 from the black market. After that you could get everything if you had the money. And I mean big money. A decent PC went for about 3 years salary of the average job holder. No kidding. Thankfully in a few years prices normalized not to western standards, but you could get a PC from 2-3 months worth of salary instead of 2-3 years.

Then came the PlayStation aka. PSX. And Ridge Racer which seemed amazing to us kids back then, and unattainable at the same time. But thankfully we didn't have to wait very long for thing to even out, or even turn back in favour of the PC camp. With games like Destruction Derby, Need For Speed, Screamer, Arcade racing games were at their heyday and we had lots of fun, in the mid 90s until...

Came a game called Gran Turismo in 1998, which was unrivalled and continues to be unrivalled on PC, there is simply no match for it, not that anyone tried to beat it. At least until MS decided to offer Forza finally, but I have my reservations about that, but that's another topic. Noone even dared to take the challenge up. So all we had is a longing, buying a PlayStation was out of the question, any money I could muster up as a high school student went immediately into some hardware upgrade, to be able to play new games, advancement back in the day was much faster than nowadays. Nowadays an upgrade means a few more FPS, back then it meant slideshow vs actual acceptable gameplay, every 1-2 years.

Thankfully due to that quick advancement of PC performance it far surpassed the PSX by the time Gran Turismo was released. And that opened the door for emulation. And by 1999 there were emulators that could run Gran Turismo at a playable level. By mid 1999 I was really happy to be a PC owner, playing Gran Turismo with better graphics than it had on the actual console.

Of course the appeal of the game was the classic career mode, you could buy an used car, from a small amount of starting money and race it, to get better cars and enter more advanced races.

I played the crap out of the game, I started dozens of careers, and never could have enough. Why is it so addictive? Because of the freedom it offers. With a choice of hundreds of cars, many of which are not untouchable supercars, but real-world vehicles that you can see on the road daily driven, but never get the chance to push to the limits, or upgrade / tune and test it as a race car.

The races in the game have only a power limitation so it's completely up to you what car you enter in them. You can buy a second hand sports car, tune it up a bit, and if you're lucky and skilled you can beat opponents with cars costing 10 times more than yours. And the satisfaction that comes from that is enormous.

To me this is the true appeal of a racing game. The driving itself is important too, but the preparation for races getting the best deal out of available credits, and then bringing the underdog to the top spot, that's the real thrill.

But don't get fooled by the marketing tag "The Real Driving Simulator" Gran Turismo is very far from being a true simulation. It's a well behaved arcade racer.

To me it's one of the most addictive games I came across, I couldn't put it down, there always was a race I wanted to do. So eventually I finished it, all races, all challenges, all trials to gold medal level.


+

  • Addictive
  • Soundtrack
  • Great choice of cars
  • Racing for credits and upgrades
  • Endurance races with real tyre management

-

  • For every race the game chooses one music and plays the one track on a loop, on longer races my head hurt after hearing the same (no matter how good) tune the 50th time.
  • Sometimes you can enter races with cars that are too fast, which makes winning very easy.
  • Catch Up : In shorter races you can't get rid of opponents even if you have a car 10 times faster they can't fall behind by more than a few seconds, making every mistake you make fatal. So in turn a long endurance race is much easier than a short sprint race, because you can open a gap to the opponents and don't fall back even when you make a mistake.

Scoring card: (not by today's standards)

graphics : 8/10
realization: 10/10
story: 0/10
atmosphere:8/10
gameplay: 8/10
controls: 10/10

Overall: 8/10

Gran Turism 2 came out not much later, which basically is the same game, with loads more cars (about 600 compared to 150 of the first one), more tracks, and more races to complete. It's more like a Deluxe edition than a real sequel, so everything about GT1 applies to GT2 a hundred percent. There are only minor differences. And a few upgrades.

The greatest testament of how much a liked the game is that I bought a PS2 twice for the sole reason to play Gran Turismo 3 / 4. Yes I first brought one, finished the game, and sold it, then in a year I did it again. I never owned any other game for the PS2 ever.

GT is still my favorite racing game series, and I can't wait for it to finally make it's debut on the PS4.This is the longest they took, and still it won't have a fully featured Gran Turismo mode. But it at least has a career mode, whatever that means.
 
XCOM2: War of the Chosen (2017)

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So here we are at long last, it's been almost a month since it came out, and I'll tell another reason later why is that significant, but only now was I able to finish it. And not because of a lack of interest, it simply became a long game, which is good. But the more important question is: Did it become a better game? Well, Yes and No.
If you're not familiar with the base game this review might seem incoherent or even unintelligible, so I assume a prerequisite knowledge of the game. You may want to refer back to my original review of the game from page 2.
I apologize in advance but I'll have to spoil some aspects of the game in order to properly review it, but these are not story elements, these are things that are revealed in the first 20 minutes of the game when you start playing it.

So let's examine the Yes part:

While the DLC doesn't give you a completely new campaign, it significantly augments the original one, They added a lot of new mechanics, new environments, new missions, new soldier classes, and a completely new subplot, or rather three new subplots.
The first new subplot/mechanic are the Chosen, who are according to the vague backstory they're given are some elite human-elder hybrid soldiers, who have been chosen to re-capture you, and whichever of them succeeds in that task is promised to become the ruler of Earth. So in essence they are enemies of each other as well as XCOM. Spoiler alert: You never actually get to see them fight each other, because only one of them can be present in a mission at a time. They can randomly appear on any mission, and are a pain in the ass generally. They all have infinite concealment, and can move half the map in one turn back and forth. Basically it goes like this: Chosen comes out of concealment attacks one or more of your soldiers (every chosen attack automatically knocks down soldiers) then goes back into concealment and disappears beyond the edges of your vision. There are three chosen and each have their own weaknesses and strengths, and as time progresses they start to become more powerful and gain new abilities. Before going deeper into the mechanics of how you can fight them I have to mention another new mechanic which is integral part of the war against the chosen.

These are three new resistance factions, you establish contact with two of them early on in the story, the third is completely optional, and you can contact them trough covert ops manually later. Covert ops is the new mechanic tied to the factions. These are basically missions, you don't control directly, only assign which soldiers should go on them, and sometimes they need extra support like you need to allocate intel, supplies, or even engineers or scientists to some ops. Except in some cases covert ops can be ambushed, if that happens you assume direct control of the last leg of the op as if it was a standard mission. This is the part where you curse if you assigned rookies to the op, if there is no ambush they can finish these no problem, but if there is, well you get the just of it. And since these missions only have 2-3 soldiers tops, you don't have much to work with. So the ops in many aspects replace the proving grounds facility from the base game, as many of the tactical advantages you could purchase trough there now you can only gain trough covert ops. There are just too many types of operations to list them all, so I'm only going to mention the most important one. Hunting the chosen. You need to finish a series of three covert missions with a particular faction and that reveals the location of the base of that particular chosen. Each chosen is assigned to a different faction. So in order to defeat all three chosen you need to contact all three factions and do their respective "hunting the chosen" ops. Then and only then you get the option to ambush the chosen at their lair, where you can actually kill them. During normal missions they just teleport away when their HP reaches zero. And here comes the first thing that I didn't like about the DLC. While the chosen are wildly different, their mission to take them out are exactly the same. You basically have to do the same mission three times on an almost completely identical map each time. Even the banter from the Avenger crew is the same on each mission. Which is weird since some of the comments make no sense at all when you do the mission the second or third time. They basically marvel at every aspect of the mission like it is the first one.

But the resistance factions are not just about covert ops, they each delegate one soldier to XCOM that you can send on missions. They are each a completely new class and have unique talents and abilities, and their level up is also different from regular soldiers. You don't just choose from two abilities, they have many unlockable skills, that you can buy using skill points gained on the field. (Skill points are awarded for flanking kills, height kills, and ambushes, as far as I could tell. And this is the point where I mention that the advanced warfare centre is also superseeded by this skill tree method. Your soldeirs no longer get random abilities after building the warfare centre, but you can choose their skills. If you have enough skill points that is. One mechanic I liked is that there are two types of skill points. global and individual. Global skills can be used on any soldier regardless of the kills of that soldier, individual skill points are awarded to specific soldiers and can only be used on that one soldier.

Unfortunately you can't really recruit faction soldiers until very late in the game, but there is a good reason for that, they are very effective and having more than one at a time could make the game too easy. For example one of the classes has an ability which if used (1 charge / mission) means the soldiers starts shooting off their guns until the ammo runs out, or all visible enemies are dead. You can basically kill an andromedon with one action, including the shell! On the last mission using this ability the soldier took down a sectopod an andromedon and a muton with one single action! Granted they already been weakened by an explosion but still.

So where was I, yes, new subplots. The third and final one are the Lost. These are basically zombies. They are present on missions that take place in abandoned cities (one of the new environments in the game more about that later) . And sometimes randomly appear on normal missons. They only have a weak melee attack, but they always travel in large groups. And their health is very random you can see ones with 2 hp, up to as much as 8. There can be so many lost in play at times that it literally makes the game crawl. No kidding, 10-20 easily. There is a fun but annoying mechanic attached to the lost. Each kill on a lost is a free action, but if you miss you lost your turn. This makes missed 80+% shots all the more annoying. But if you're lucky you can kill 6-8 lost with a single soldier even early on in the campaign.
We don't really get any information about why the lost are there, how did they become "lost", the game is even more vague about them as the chosen. They sometimes attack advent as well, but most of the time they advance on you, and they're attracted to explosions. Which means if you detonate something on a mission where there is lost presence that means you just spawned about a dozen of them.

So that's all about subplots. But that's not the end of new mechanics in the game. There are also new mission types, and as mentioned new environments. The new mission types include rescue missions in abandoned cities, where there is always lost presence. You basically need to get to stranded VIP with an unconscious soldier, and rescue them, by leading them back to the ingress point. And there is a new type of retaliation mission, where you don't have to collect individual civilians but help out the resistance who are actively fighting the aliens. They have their own turns. So you basically have a friendly AI controlled faction. And the third new mission type is very similar to the destroy the relay missions except in this case you need to destroy a psionic relay. The difference in mechanics here, is that there are smaller relays scattered around the map that if you destroy the turn limit goes up by one. The fourth type is resource gathering missions where you have to race against advent to tag supply crates for collection. And there was one more mission type that only appeared once for me: an assassination. The game is really fucked up balance wise, the same way as the hit/miss mechanics are fucked up. So the missions are not well balanced out, you don't get a specific mission type even once for months, while you get lots of another type of mission. Or you get lost presence for 10 straight missions, then nothing for ages. Even the avatar progress is random. Sometimes it refuses to change for months. Just sitting there. But we're crossing over into the negatives territory deeply here.

Before we do that let's mention that advent also got some new units. But they're not as exciting as yours. One is the priest, who is a psionic soldier, that has three attacks, usually it puts one of your soldiers into stasis, or makes another advent unit a "holy warrior" which means it gets shields basically. Or the worst attack it has is mind control, which succeeds much more often than when a sectoid does it.
The second new unit is the purifier, which is supposedly an anti-lost unit. Basically it's a flamethrower wielding trooper. It's not very dangerous, it's attacks usually only ignite the environment and don't even hit your soldier. It only presents a danger when it explodes, as sometimes they do when they expire. And the third is the spectre which is weird nano robotic enemy, that insists on looking like a soldier. But it's only significant attack is that it can clone your soldiers, making an enemy copy of them, and the process makes your soldier unconscious. But when you kill the spectre the clone automatically expires, and your soldier is revived. So not as dangerous as it seemed first, when I though the cloning actually killed my soldier. It's annoying that you still get the same banter when your soldier is knocked out as when they die.

The new environments include an underground layout with subways and sewers, the aforementioned abandoned cities, which offer balconies and tall buildings. And there is a new inner advent city environment where there are multiple levels. And there is a new outdoor environment where alien flora is dominating, much like the psionic gate mission in the original game.

So as you can see, there are a lot of stuff added to the game. With that in mind the $30 price for the DLC is not a bad deal. However, let's examine why I also mentioned No.

Apart from the issues with balancing the mission types, there are numerous other problems with the game, smaller and larger bugs, game breaking ones, and non-game breaking ones, but nonetheless bugs that weren't present in the original game.
  1. For example try lobbing a grenade on top of the building in the advent blacksite mission, you're guaranteed to experience a crash. I could reproduce this crash with almost perfect consistency even in different campaigns.
  2. The cause and effect relationship is almost always reversed, meaning things happen in the wrong order during turns, or are entirely omitted. For example an andromedon shell walks to a new position, the trail of acid appears before it even starts moving!
  3. When hacking the soldier only says it starts hacking after the fact!
  4. Overwatch shoots are triggered after the enemy stopped moving and already in cover.
  5. Overwatch shots are compltely non existent you only see that the enemy lost some health, but you didn't even see your units take shoots. This often happens when more than one unit is on overwatch.
  6. Retaliation actions trigger before the attack that would cause them.
  7. Explosions magically avoid some units that are in the centre of the radius.
  8. Status effects refuse to affect enemy units, it says it's on fire, it's visible it's on fire, but it doesn't loose hp at the end of turns.
  9. Invisible cover / see trough walls. These are two sides of the same coin. Sometimes the enemy will be able to attack you even when there is a full wall in front of your unit, and it shouldn't even be seen. Or sometimes there seems to be no cover in front of an enemy but still you get hit chances as if it's behind at least one full cover.
  10. Superior stock randomly only causes 1 or 2 damage on missed shots.
  11. Inability to pick up the body of your unconscious soldier
And I'm sure there were more bugs that I can't remember at this very moment.

But there are issues that aren't affecting the missions directly. For example some facility upgrades don't work. Like upgrading the resistance ring doesn't give a second slot for assigning covert ops as it is supposed to. In the base game during loading of a mission you could see the transport sequence and the briefing by central. Now during loading all you can see is a spinning xcom logo, and the transport sequence only appears after the loading is finished, so you can immediately skip.

Apart from bugs, they removed some mechanics from the game, like you can no longer recruit new staff at resistance HQ, there is not even a resistance HQ anymore. But the fly back to HQ button still appears after collecting the monthly supply drop, but now it's pointless. This change also means you can only gain scientists / engineers if you happen to get a mission where the reward is a scientist, this means you have significantly less staff. This is especially apparent on research projects, the whole game takes much longer this way. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the consistency of the game suffers, it's only up to luck how quickly you get enough staff to pursue certain projects. And since there is no resistance HQ you can't use it to generate intel either. So you get significantly less intel resources than before, meaning you can't really recruit soldiers/staff from the black market. Also with the new facility types, the construction area is too small, you run out of space before you build every facility, you always have to make compromises.

All in all, the campaign in the base game felt very consistent, the missions themselves were highly dependent on luck, but not the campaign itself, it was fairly certain what mission types and rewards you were given at a certain stage in the campaign, there was very little variance there. Now however the whole campaign feels like a random mess. No consistency to it at all. There isn't any consistency even to the types of enemies encountered. The base game introduced new advent units gradually the stronger ones appearing one by one on missions. Now you can encounter 3 new powerful enemy types on the same mission, way earlier than in the original game.

And they haven't released a single patch since it came out, with the amount of bugs and balance issues I encountered that seems strange to me. There isn't even official word about a patch yet.

Oh I almost forget, there is also a new game mode called challenge. It's basically fixed missions where you're scored based on your performance, and you can compare your e-peen to worldwide leaderboards. Pretty pointless in a game where the biggest factor in your success is luck. But at least you get to control random advent units in this mode.


+

  • Same game, it didn't get any worse
  • New environments
  • New mechanics
  • New units / factions
  • Longer campaign, with more mission types.

-

  • Mission types are too random, you don't get a balanced dose of each type. There are brilliant new mission types that you get only once or twice in an entire campaign, which is a shame.
  • Rescue missions are great, too bad the chosen are so impotent that they never really able to kidnap your soldiers.
  • Campaign is too random, there is no consistency, which can make the game extremely easy or extremely hard based on nothing but luck. (I've experienced both in separate campaigns started on the same difficulty)
  • Tons of bugs, so many, that it's actually uncountable, this should count as 5 negatives at least

Scoring card:

graphics : 6/10
realization: 8/10
story: 5/10
atmosphere:8/10
gameplay: 10/10
controls: 8/10

Overall: 7/10

It could've been great, all it needed was a little more polish. Still if you liked the game, this DLC is a must have.
 
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Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (2017)

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So what is this game, you ask? It's a psychological thriller, on paper at least. Much like Alan Wake. You play as Senua, the warrior girl, who is trapped in her own mind, and must face her own demons to escape the darkness that haunts her. There are a bunch of references to Viking mythology, so I assume the story takes place in that time and place. Before you pick up the pitchforks this is no spoiler, this is clear from the beginning of the game. And if you followed the development it was mentioned and explained numerous times by the developers as well.

I've been following the game's development closely for a few years, and was very excited about it right up until I saw the final trailers. Why is that you ask? Because I perceived that to be a huge downgrade in graphics or at least a sidegrade. They completely sacrificed crisp clear graphics, for modern as I call them bullshit effects. Tons of bloom, fake hdr, and depth of field was added with a nauseating amount of motion blur as the topping.

But I had hoped I'll be able to turn those effects off in the actual game and get the clear look back. But nope, you can't. You're stuck with the worst offenders, like motion blur, but most annoyingly depth of field, which makes your character blurry in the default third person view in which the entire game is played. My eyes started melting by the time I finished the otherwise not so long game.

I was also a bit disappointed because the developers boasted that they wanted to make the character to really look like a warrior and be believable in that sense, they even had a development diary explaining how they scanned the body. But the end result is not that convincing, maybe it's the lighting but the character doesn't look to have a warrior's physique.

The graphics of the game, is somehow not that good, the character (yes in singular as there is no other character rendered in the game than your own) looks good, at least the face when they show it in portrait. The facial animations are fully digitized like in La. Noire, so those are OK as well. The environment however feels weird most of the time, there is something intangible about it that makes it feel extremely fake. I've experienced this with other medium budget games before, when on paper it should look good, it has a good engine, it has large enough textures, but something just doesn't click, and it has to be the lighting, what else can it be?

So let's see the gameplay, the game has two distinct elements. The first is exploration, which includes the solving of some visual or logic puzzles. Or some combination of the two. Most of the time this is very straightforward, but there are a the few occasions when you're stuck walking aimlessly for half an hour in the same area, because you don't know what the hell are you supposed to do or where are you supposed to go for the solution. This is exaggerated by the fact, that running in the game feels slower than walking in 99% of all other games. And walking speed is like time stands still. The game area is not that big, usually you're confined to a few rooms. And most maps are pretty linear, but with the speed you're able to move everything feels like an eternity. And it can get very annoying when you're walking the same passage for the fifth time looking for a clue on what to do, or a side passage you missed. The game desperately needs an auto walk feature. I swear that my finger was pressing down on the forward walk key during 99.99% of the entire game, and it hurts. And adding insult to injury is the fact that the game forces you to do a ton of backtracking, almost every "chapter" ends with you having to backtrack to the beginning of that level. These are completely non-interactive, you just have to walk back to the start while not having to interact with anything or anyone, except for the voices in your head sometimes.

Ah yes the voices. There are a few distinct voices in your head, some imaginary some seem like wisdoms from a long lost friend or mentor. They usually offer clues on what to do, but most of the time they're not very helpful. The problem with being stuck for me lied with not being able to decipher the logic used by the map designer. Or when you have to line up runes with the view I got stuck a few times because you have to stand exactly where the devs intended you to stand, it doesn't matter that you can achieve the same visual effect from a different vantage point the game won't accept it, and you'll think that's not the solution when it is you just have to stand 3 steps to the left and 2 steps back. And the audio is completely designed for surround headphones, if you have a stereo setup like me, the audio of the game cannot accommodate for that. In most other games I get excellent positional audio despite having only two speakers, here it was a mess when I was supposed to follow audio clues.

And the second gameplay element is the actual fighting. There is definitely less fighting in the game than exploring. But still it gets very repetitive. There is only 2 type of basic enemy with some minor variation of equipment on them. The ones with a shield are hardest to take down as they block most of your attacks, unless you can use focus on them, or flank them. And during the first two thirds of the game I didn't even realize I had the focus ability during combat that is the Viking equivalent of bullet time, or sword time in this case. So I ended up fighting the enemies completely manually on equal terms for a long part, which made it even longer and repetitive. I don't know if the game never told me that I can use focus to defeat the enemies much easier or I just forgot about it. One weird thing about combat is that you're always confined to a small arena when you have to fight enemies. And you can't move around freely in the arena, as you're always focused on an enemy, and can only move relative to that enemy. And coupled with the absolutely tiny fov the game has, you have absolutely no overview of the area. And you can't see when you're being attacked by another enemy from behind. The fighting itself is only dependent on timing. You have to block, dodge, and attack at the right moment,and that's it, it really just goes down to how fast can you smash buttons. Sometimes when there are more than a few enemies they can corner you, which is very bad as you can't dodge then, but even worse you cannot see jack shit as the camera doesn't know where to go if you're backed up against a wall. Some battles takes ages, as the enemies just keep spawning for minutes. Apart from the basic enemies there are a surprising amount of boss-fights in the game. Unfortunately they're no different than any other fight, only that their attacks are more significant, and that they take more hits to defeat.

And finally all that's left to discuss is the story. Well you don't get any story directly in the game, but you can piece it together pretty well from clues what's been going on. The only part that wasn't clear to me was the end. But maybe it wasn't supposed to be clear as it definitely felt like they're teasing a sequel there.

+
  • Face and facial animations
  • Graphics (sometimes)
  • Interesting story telling
  • Good effort on voice acting (not great but at least they're trying hard from a limited budget)
  • The game does get better after the first few hours

-

  • Graphics (most of the environments) / bullshit effects
  • The few other characters that appear during cutscenes are clearly not rendered with the game engine but are actual clips of actors, thus they feel completely out of place and immersion breaking.
  • repetitive and boring sometimes
  • painfully slow paced
  • Lots of backtracking
  • Walking aimlessly until the W key gets pushed trough the keyboard
  • Not that good combat system (especially the lack of free movement during fights)
  • Unclear sequel bait ending.
  • Only 7 hours
Scoring:

graphics : 6/10
concept : 10/10
realization: 6/10
story: 8/10
atmosphere:8/10
gameplay: 5/10
controls: 6/10

overall impression: 6/10

Had I judged the game based on the initial 2-3 hours it certainly would've gotten a more bleak score. But it does get its act together. It even becomes slightly addictive. I wasn't just driven to finish it to get it off my plate but I was actually immersed in it.
 
The Evil Within

- 3rd person games still suck

- Controls were floaty and unresponsive

- Annoying crafting system, I want to play a game not scavenge for sticks

- Hide and seek based gameplay = dull as hell

- Learn how to win hide and seek scenarios by dying 10 times, no strategy or intelligence required, just trial and error

- Tiny maps which offer no freedom, you must time your trial and error puzzles by the second or else you automatically die

I don't think I made it two hours even. Add this as one of the few games I can't even be bothered to finish. I almost never quit games even if I hate them. But this game is more of the same trashy 3rd person garbage developers keep peddling (3rd person fucking sucks, get it through your heads) and I'm getting to a point where I'd have more fun doing absolutely nothing than trudge through these shitty games. Gone from my SSD and I doubt I will ever pick it up again.

4/10

Ryse: Son of Rome

- Another shitty 3rd person game, when will they learn?

- Can't choose direction of attack in combat

- Can't select target

- Can't dodge when you want to, game seems to decide when you can or cannot dodge

- Too many buttons do the same thing, which means 30-40% of the time your character does something else. Try to pick up an arrow, instead your brute will bash is sword and shield together like an ape

- Add all these together and you have no idea what the game wants you to do. Because your character will be mashing his sword/shield together like an ape rather than kicking a lever required for mission progression... so you will think there was some other step and you will run around for 10 minutes. But no, the controls just suck that much and you'll go back 10 minutes letting mashing the A button only for it to finally work.

- Did I mention it was shitty 3rd person? Enjoy having your view and vision blocked when you get close to a wall. You won't see jack shit, and add in the crappy controls and you will know how that ends.

- A lot of functions just don't work most of the time. There is an odd "slow motion" mode but activating it is very difficult. There is also an execution mode, but good luck getting that to work. Sometimes you can command friendlies to launch arrows. Good luck figuring out how to do that as your character auto jumps around like an ape.

- Menu is shit, they accomplished the impossible and made a menu impossible to fully navigate with either a controller or mouse / keyboard. Good thing you can switch between both instantly...

- Outside of shit controls, shit 3rd person, shit views and awkward "auto playing", the combat is just odd and repetitive. What few moves there are hardly come into play because they almost never work so it is more or less mashing two buttons. Don't bother running away or dodging, that only works about 10% of the time. Enjoy mashing the A and Y button!

- Interesting theme, okay graphics. I'll give them that.

- According to How Long To Beat, this thing will be over in 8 to 9 hours. Better than most games these days, which tend to be 30-50 hour slog-fests

The game sucks, and if you've played Batman Arkham City it is more of the same shit. Not as bad, but still crappy. Devs need to learn that the 3rd person experiment was a failure. It sucks in practically every game and is almost always unresponsive. It isn't the late 90s anymore FFS, make it first person. Unless you can pull off a Mad Max or Mass Effect (which half the time is spent out of combat) don't even fucking bother.

I'm not sure if I want to fight with the game to finish it either.

0/10

Edit: Revised my score as I played a bit more. It has everything you don't want in a game, and takes it to new levels. The controls almost never work, and you literally are not controlling the movement of your player almost all the time in combat. You have have to navigate around 5-6 bad guys to kill an important one within seconds but the game does not give the player the ability to move or freely select targets. The camera is constantly forcing the player to look into the ground, sky, or into a wall so you cannot see what is going on period. It is why the majority of third person games are trash, but this game takes it to a newer level. In combat you will almost never have an idea where your player is as you can't see them on the screen 80-90% of the time.

So I give this a 0/10. IMO some laws need to be put in place across the gaming industry, because games like Ryse are no different from other fraudulent thieves. The people who allowed this for sale need to be put behind bars because they're scamming people out of their money.


What the fuck is wrong with games these days?!
 
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I don't think I've finished a game since Baldur's Gate. I have no patience, get bored quickly, and the attention span of a Trump supporter.
 
crash-bandicoot-n-sane-trilogy-listing-thumb-us-03dec16


I bought the N.Sane trilogy and played through the first game. I miss games with a challenge, and it was fun playing each level over and over until I unlocked it 100%.
Very few of today's games make me want to replay them.

The graphics update is welcome. They did a great job by not re-imagining everything, but re-creating it, and the difficult gameplay is still there.

8/10

Now, do I want to start part 2, or, The Evil Within 2?
 
Filler episode incoming (from the archives):

Singularity (2010)

wGoZZIha_t.jpg

A decent but often overlooked game from the turn of the decade.

Since the game's setting is important for the game mechanics I'll explain it a bit, I say nothing that isn't revealed by the end of the first map, but still I'll put it behind spoiler, so if you want to you can avoid reading it here.
The game starts with an US satellite detecting a large burst of energy emanating from an old Russian research station. And of course the US being what it is (poking its finger in everyone's pie) they send a group of soldiers (who else? ) there. You're one of these men, but your helicopter crashes, and the anomaly that is the source of the energy burst, throws you back in time to 1956, when the base was still fully operational and busy as hell. The Russians were trying to weaponize a new element that is capable of manipulating the fabric of time. You find yourself in the middle of a botched experiment and inadvertently save the life of a person, not knowing that by doing so you fundamentally change the future. And when you find yourself back in 2010 after the anomaly subsides, the earth is ruled by the USSR, and from that point on, with a group called MIR12 who somehow (ex-machina alert) know that this is not how history should be, you try to put thing back as they were before you ripped the space time continuum.


The game gets its unique flavour from, the TMD or time manipulator device, that you get very early on in the game. You can use it to send things back and forward in time, well not exactly back and forth, because it stays there, but its age changes. You mostly have to use it to solve puzzles, it can also be used as a weapon, but it's not that effective for that.

If I wanted to paint the game in a negative way, I'd say it's a Half-Life rip-off. Indeed it is, but only in a good way. Because it only borrows good ideas from there, and tops it off with some good things of its own. The game mechanics, the gameplay, are very HL like.

One of the best assets of the game is the damage system. Average soldiers don't run at you with 2 magaznies of bullets in their chest. They can be disabled with 2-3 shots that only hit limbs. Which don't necessarily kills them but they are rendered harmless. So the gore is very realistic, to the dismay of the concerned parents association and other hypocrites.

But the game also has a very specific Bioshock sensation to it as well. That is due to the architecture and the rusty metal objects everywhere. And the augmentation system is similar too.

What I didn't like, is that the TMD can't be used on everything, only on a few prepared objects. It would've been good if you were able to manipulate everything with it even if just for the fun of it.

The graphics is pretty good, runs well.

The save system is checkpoint based, which raises the stakes, makes you more careful, therefore it makes the game more realistic. The problem with it is that you can only load the very last checkpoint, you can't go back if you pass a checkpoint very inefficiently. Because of that many times if I felt that a part of the game could've been done much better, I immediately tried again, before passing a checkpoint. The game is not particularly hard, so it's not a big problem. Just a small inconvenience.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Gameplay
  • The borrowed ideas are not wasted
  • Multiple endings

-

  • Bit too easy
  • TMD can only be used on mission critical objects
  • Short, 5-6 hours.
  • There are many special weapons, but most of them are useless because there isn't enough ammo, and many of them are self-endangering or cumbersome to use, but most are both.
  • It's not particularity gripping apart from one scene, I felt that the setting could've been better used in this regard, but the lack of difficulty also takes away from the fear level.

I give it a 7 out of 10, not more because it doesn't have any revolutionary things in it, it only uses the borrowed material well. Its a classic first person shooter, there is no branching storyline, no decisions (apart from the ending) the only thing interrupting the shooting, are the TMD puzzles.
 
Get ready, because I feel this one will piss off two of the most fanatical groups in the history of PC gaming.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)

hYzMH2jG_t.jpg


When I first saw the trailers for this game I immediately knew this is something I might like. But I was cautious, it's COD after all. The backlash from fanboys was brutal against it, they were raging against the machine, and shrieking: "This is not what we wanted! How dare they, make the game they wanted and not the one we demanded?" The like / dislike ratio on the trailer was abysmal.
And I felt the odd one out because I really liked it. But due to the backlash and shit thrown around. I held off on purchasing the game. I all but forgot about it completely (and what a mistake that would've been). When a few weeks ago, well actually only just two weeks ago, I noticed a game listed for 7.50. And I wasn't sure if that was the game I liked the trailer of a year ago or not. I had to double check. And when I realized it was in fact that COD game I didn't think twice about pulling the trigger. Even if the fanboys are right and this game was crap, 7.50? I was more than willing to make that bet.

So after that little prelude let's see what the game actually is? Well it's the space / scifi enthusiasts wet dream, that's what it is. It borrows ideas from many places, but implement them so well, that I was almost instantly hooked on it. As I got to know the game better and better, I started to feel smaller and smaller in comparison thinking to myself, "man, this game is amazing" . The last time I felt anything like that was with Mass Effect, when I first got out into the cosmos and was free to choose which planet to visit.

OK hold your horses I know this is not mass effect, but it sure as hell does a great impression of it in some places. You don't get the freedom, or the level of character interaction of mass effect, but it's still a story driven game, and a damn good one. Very strong emotionally, very engaging, brilliantly executed.
But it doesn't just stop there. I think this is the best impression of what we'll get for a very long time on what Squadron 42 was promised to be. (Told ya I'm going to piss off two groups) While Chris Roberts was just talking about making a story driven space sim with ground combat elements. Infinity ward went ahead and made it. Sure they didn't promise everything and then some. But they made a very solid little game. The space flight parts are much simplified it's not a space sim for sure, but I'm willing to bet my entire SC pledge that the ground combat part is infinitely better in this than the one SQ42 will ever have. (see what I did there?) But despite not being a space sim, the manoeuvring of your ship in space feels closer to reality than any of the so called space sims I played (Meaning X-wing &Co and the Wing Commander series)

At least you don't have to learn a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to fly. You use WSAD as directional trusters (eg move forward back, and sideways) space and ctrl to move up and down. And the mouse to change the direction you're facing. Which would make the dogfights a pain if not for the lock on aid, which is basically an auto follow feature, meaning when you lock on to an enemy your ship will try to roughly follow it's flight path, you only have to worry about hitting it with your gun. And speaking of guns, your ship has two weapons, onre rapid fire and one heavy but slow firing, that can be upgraded later, they have no ammo, they use an overheating mechanic. You don't have shields or any such damage management either. Apart from the flight and basic weapon controls you only have to use two buttons, one to release countermeasures, and one to fire missiles. As I said not a spacesim and I'll be the first to admit it. But still it's very enjoyable. At first I thought the space flight parts will be nothing but an afterthought. Instead they're very well designed and enjoyable on their own merit, not just as distraction. It lacks the complexity of a true sim, but there are none of those on the horizion, so thanks I'll gladly take this in the meantime.

As for the ground fighting, it's as much mass effect as cod. Meaning there are a lot of orchestrated grand battle sequences, that only cod does, but when it comes down to being in the trenches and fighting your way trough the battlefield and scifi corridors, then it feels very much like mass effect. You get a bunch of weapons to choose from, they're wildly different, and a lot of support equipment. Drones, hacking, grenades, anti gravity bombs, portable shield, you name it. Everything just feels right, nothing is out of place. If I have any complaint about the ground fighting it's the fact is the game tries to drive you forward as fast as possible almost all the time. There is no penalty for moving slowly usually, but immersion wise I always tried to keep up with my squad. Yes you fight with a squad here, sometimes with one partner sometimes an entire battalion fights at your side.

But I'm still not finished. The grand fighting sequences between capital ships even though they're only cutscenes (except the last mission, but that's very minimal control as well, and ultimately meaningless) had the vibe of Battlestar Galactica. When a game has the best parts of BSG, Mass Effect, and does what SQ42 only promised, it can't be a bad game can it? No, it can't. At least not to me.

As for the story it's pretty solid, it reminded me of the basic premise of the Expanse series, to mention another show I really like, which this game has something in common with also. The cast is full of A-listers, not AAA listers but many of the characters will be familiar up and coming or already established stars. And they do a good job, except for the cameo guy.

I don't know if it is common knowledge and only news to me or not so I'm going to put the identity of the cameo cast member behind a spoiler tag.
They gave a cameo part to Lewis effing Hamilton, I know the guy wants to be loved by everyone, but he's just trying too hard. His part in this was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Typical facepalm worthy deliveries of his three lines of text. It all felt like they're throwing a bone to him after he has been annoying them to get a part for months.

So back to the story. It's not as typical as you might think, the ending is especially unexpected, they string you on multiple times, and it still doesn't go the way you expect it. But I can't elaborate on it without spoiling too much. Oh and the idea behind the "Peace to the fallen" achievement is award worthy in and of itself. Almost made me shed a tear.

+

  • Walks the walk, not just talks the talk (yes I'm referring to CR)
  • A-List cast
  • Brilliantly executed story
  • It's a culmination of many things that's good in BSG, Mass Effect, Wing Commander
  • Unexpectedly good space fight sequences
  • And even better gunplay groundside (and in zero gravity)
  • Lots of useful goodies. I felt that everything has a purpose and an use, not just useless junk made to extend the list of weapon attachments and equipment.
  • Unexpected and well played ending.
  • Very nice graphics, the characters look almost lifelike.
-

  • DRM interfering with AV (at least I assume it's the DRM, they'll never wash off that bad reputation) I not just had to disable but completely uninstall the AV software for it to play normally.
  • Not quite a spacesim
  • I wished for more ways to interact with the crew.
  • A few choices wouldn't have hurt, the whole game is completely linear with no divergence (except for the optional raids that only give equipment upgrades)
  • A few weird animation issues, like characters looking and talking at you while madly typing away at their keyboards without interruption.
  • Checkpoint based saving only, you can't even save on your ship manually. So when I quit the game after each session it was always anyone's guess where I'll continue from.
  • You're the doorman! I mean literally you're the only person who can open doors in the game, NPC's always just stand there and wait for you. Except for the very last mission once someone else does it, I bet they made that only to troll you, so you cannot say you had to open all the doors. Well I can still say it. I had to open all the doors except for one.
  • You as the captain of the vessel not just take part in every ground assault you also pilot a fighter ship. Since you have no control over the story anyway, why did your character had to be the captain? It would've been more believable that way. The captain's responsibility is the ship, you can't just run off on missions except in star trek!

As you can see my gripes with the game are quite petty, so don't let the length of that list fool you, this is a very very good game.

graphics : 9/10
concept : 8/10
realization: 7/10
story: 8/10
atmosphere:10/10
gameplay: 9/10
controls: 8/10

overall impression: 9/10

All in all I don't care that COD fans didn't want this game, we would be that much poorer for it if it hadn't been made. Now that I played it I can recommend it without hesitation to any sci-fi / space fans.
 
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M76 said:
Get ready, because I feel this one will piss off two of the most fanatical groups in the history of PC gaming.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016)
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The thing is, there are at least two reviews necessary for CoD - the single player, and the multiplayer game. Maybe there's a co-op zombies game in there too. However, most review sites lump everything into one review that does not adequately address each facet of the game - and the MP side is what is talked about the most in community/Reddit/etc., which is a constantly changing half-meta-half-balance conversation.

Anyway - I used to enjoy some CoD campaigns but really just got bored of being led around by someone. This sounds interesting... enough? I dunno.

Enjoyed reading your take, but am cold on the game itself.
 
I finished Wolfenstien 2. I had fun with it.

Pros:
+ Gunplay
+ Sound
+ Storyline
+ Length

Cons:
- Too many cutscenes
- Some long drawn out sequences with empty spaces
- Feedback on getting shot
- Some ridiculous story elements that I didn't enjoy

I give it a 8.5/10. If you are a fan of shooters, go for it.
 
ghostwich said:
The thing is, there are at least two reviews necessary for CoD - the single player, and the multiplayer game. Maybe there's a co-op zombies game in there too. However, most review sites lump everything into one review that does not adequately address each facet of the game - and the MP side is what is talked about the most in community/Reddit/etc., which is a constantly changing half-meta-half-balance conversation.

Anyway - I used to enjoy some CoD campaigns but really just got bored of being led around by someone. This sounds interesting... enough? I dunno.

Enjoyed reading your take, but am cold on the game itself.
Click to expand...
I only ever consider SP in my reviews. MP might not even exist for all I care.
 
Command & Conquer : Tiberian Sun (1999)

I don't even know why I though it would be a good idea to replay this part of the series. It is after all the second most criticized part in the tiberium saga apart from twilight. The criticisms were mainly focused around the fact that the game is too focused on base building instead of attacking and fighting. And that the game is very slow paced due to this.

Well that is partly true, the game is slow paced, but it is due to the fact that resource gathering speeds seem very slow compared to previous games. And the units and buildings cost more to build. But it's your own damn fault if you get bogged down building a base, as there is no point to building up large bases with walls and gates and such, because the enemy no longer goes around walls they just make a hole in it wherever they are stopped by a wall.

The GDI campaign seems quite easy, as the enemy doesn't really commit many units to attacking you in early missions. And later in the campaign you get access to units that are way overpowered like the orca bomber or disruptor tank. The only unit the enemy has that can give a little headache is the artillery with it's long range. But apart from that the biggest challenge of the game is the goddamn awful pathfinding. Your units have to be constantly micromanaged not to get lost or choose extremely stupid routes to their destination, and more units get killed due to friendly fire than enemy attacks.

The last mission is only harder because enemy buildings get rebuilt instantly. just like in the original.

The story is not much, and despite having better quality actors, the acting is still terrible. Like they did this project between two movies during lunch break. Despite being known actors they are not doing a better job than the noname cast of Tiberian Dawn.

What's good about this type of game is despite it's age the graphics doesn't look all that dated. Like 3D games of the era. But don't worry, the lack of widescreen resolution support and the bad quality of the cutscenes will remind you how old the game is actually.

I also finished the NOD campaign, which I have to say is much better, the missions are better, even the cutscenes and the acting in said cutscenes is better. Not to mention that the units are much more to my liking as well.

I also tried the expansion: Firestorm, but it's not what I wanted. It's full of deliberately biased missions, where you have so many restrictions and so little margin for error, that it's no fun. And I want to have fun playing and not get frustrated.

Like you have to defeat the enemy within a time limit but you're restricted in what you can build and the enemy has a guard tower on every 2 inches of the map, thanks but no thanks. One or the other, but not both.

+

  • C&C
  • Gameplay
  • Graphics stood up well



-

  • Easy
  • Pathfinding
  • Due to the high cost of units and slow resource gathering there are long actionless gaps in the gameplay
  • Some missions are skippable (I don't know what is the purpose of this)
  • Overpowered gdi units.



graphics : 8/10
concept : 10/10
realization: 6/10
story: 3/10
atmosphere:5/10
gameplay: 8/10
controls: 9/10

Overall imperession: 6/10
 
Here's something to keep the thread alive.



Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010)


Believe it or not, this was the first game of the Call of Duty series, that I played as far as I can remember.

If it were up to the gameplay then this game would've failed to keep me playing until the end. The only thing that made me finish was the story, as by the end I was really bored with the brainless massacre.

Yes, brainless massacre, is the name of the game here, even through the black ops subtitle would suggest some sort of Splinter Cell like covert game. But that couldn't be further away from reality. The whole game is a crazy shooting race. Please don't make me laugh by bringing up that part where you actually have to sneak a hundred feet in the game.

It actually reminded me of the old point & shoot type arcade games, like Virtua Cop. Yes, you (usually) can move here, but the freedom factor is still close to zero, regardless of that. You move forward in a corridor, and shoot like hell, it's not even important to clear the levels, it's more about the advancing. You can't just stop in a cover, and clear a room to move trough it safely, because the enemies are constantly being spawned. The only way to move forward is to run like a kamikaze. Black Ops my ass. If you stop, the enemies just keep coming until you die, or run out of ammo, and then die.

Oh yes, scripting, there is about zero spontaneity in the game, everything is controlled by triggers and scripts, there are levels where you loose control every 30 seconds to a script.

You have AI partners on many levels, but they're just distracting. At least they don't die, but they only get in the way most of the time, and you often confuse them with enemies. They just serve as windows dressing in the actual fights, I watched them simply walk by enemies, and even if they decide to shoot at an enemy it won't die, unless you choose to shoot at them too. Their usefulness is limited to drawing some of the enemy attention away from you.

The game is so restrictive that I often felt I was watching a rolling demo, instead of playing a game. I thought that the Serious Sam games were the lowest form of FPS, but COD proudly shown it to me, that they can simplify this genre even more to make any kind of thinking or strategy completely unnecessary.

To write something that's not on the negative side of things, I have to mention the atmosphere, which is very good, it presents the Vietnam war era very well. But most of the credit for that goes to the soundtrack. Sometimes when a well-known classic starts playing, you really feel like you're in an nth. action flick from the eighties. And I mean this in the most positive way imaginable.

The story also could be called good, but I would've preferred to play out the story in real, instead of memory fragments from a madman. This way the plot twist didn't feel so unexpected, and everything after that just felt like they're taking the audience for fools.

I'm referring to the fact, that they managed to extract the information from the unstable mind of a broken soldier, and then he's the one leading the assault on the broadcast station. WTF? I wouldn't trust him to lead the laundry cart in the asylum.
And why did they have to send two puny choppers against the ship on US waters? why didn't they send in the fleet right away as we can see in the end? They were the ones blowing up the broadcast station, and not the few soldiers they dropped.

But they do take their audience for fools practically every way, this is already proven by the oversimplified gameplay, so nothing new there.

Another "interesting" thing in the game is that, there is a save&quit option in the menu, but I couldn't find a load option anywhere. So you can only start playing from the beginning of the actual map you're on.

+

  • Story
  • Atmosphere
  • Soundtrack
  • Graphics

-

  • Completely linear levels
  • Your life is a script
  • You can't stop, or methodically, slowly advance in the game, you have to constantly run like a crazy person.
  • The constant running becomes boring and annoying, and I just can't take the helicopter and plane minigames seriously. They're a joke.
  • No proper saves.

Well it's not that bad, so 6/10. If you want something really brainless then this is a good choice I guess.
 
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Resident Evil Revelations 2
on Nintendo Switch

I have been a lifelong Resident Evil fanboy who prefers the older games to all the new ones. I disliked 4, 5, and 6 and I think Code Veronica was the best RE out of all of them. That being said, I have beaten Revelations 2 before on Xbox One when it first came out but because I am now mobile I felt like replaying it on my new Switch and so I bought it (and for $20 it's a steal imo).

Graphically the game is indistinguishable from the Xbox One and PS4 versions. Frame-rates are tight throughout with the only slowing down during when shooting enemies through smoke (or likely just the smoke itself), but these instances were few and far between so not a problem. The story is okay, and the pacing of the game is a lot more in tune with what I am used to with the older RE games. The game was fun and I am glad I bought it again, and I will be playing Revelations next which I have also already beat once I PC but I have tried it and graphically it looks exactly the same as all the others.

I honestly can't think of any cons because I enjoyed it overall and already knew what I was getting myself into having beaten it once a while ago, but if you're a RE fan I definitely think it's worth playing through. Revelations 1 and Revelations 2 are what Resident Evil 5 and 6 should have been.
 
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M76 said:
As you can see my gripes with the game are quite petty, so don't let the length of that list fool you, this is a very very good game.

graphics : 9/10
concept : 8/10
realization: 7/10
story: 8/10
atmosphere:10/10
gameplay: 9/10
controls: 8/10

overall impression: 9/10

All in all I don't care that COD fans didn't want this game, we would be that much poorer for it if it hadn't been made. Now that I played it I can recommend it without hesitation to any sci-fi / space fans.
Click to expand...

I loved your review of this and I really wish people were more open-minded. I am one of the few people who buy COD games for the campaigns and Infinite Warfare was fucking awesome in terms of it's campaign. Action, tech, gameplay, and the new enhancements were cool as hell. I also loved modding my weapons. The sci-fi part of it was cool and the dog-fighting was a cool new thing as well. It really didn't deserve all the hate it got, but people tend to only review the multiplayer part of COD games anymore and I have really raved about this game since I originally bought the edition that included the modern warfare remaster.
 
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KickAssCop said:
Finished Forza 7. Best racing game ever. 10/10.
Click to expand...
That's vague. I'm interested in the game, but I'm not convinced by that. Is it anything like TDU? How are the controls, does it support a full 3-pedal setup? Because if not, then by definition it can't be the best ever.

I've recently tried the crew, but that was terrible. Subpar physics, ugly graphics, sparse scenery, not enough freedom (regardless of being open world).

I wish TDU still worked, but the servers (it's also a gamespy game) were shut down years ago, and I can't even install the dlc anymore.
 
Divinity: Original Sin 2

Fantastic game. I'm really struggling where to start with this one, and there's already been so much written on this title, so I'll be concise:

Gameplay - Classic isometric on steroids. Everything feels right from the inventory management to the combat mechanics (and tightened with better balancing than DOS1). So many items, so many ways to interact with the environment. My only gripe is there's almost too much "stuff" in the game, feel like I need ML automation to manage my inventories.

Graphics - Attention to detail is the apt phrase here. There's nothing mind blowing but effects are really cool-looking and the environments beautiful.

Soundtrack and Sound - Great soundtrack, near-perfect sound effects and some great voice acting.

Story and dialogue - Exceptional all around. Dialogue is some of the cleverest I've seen in a game. Fantastic character arcs and story branching (no one is holding your hand here).

In summary, this is the type of game that makes gaming worth your time and money. This game was an obvious labor of love for the team. For those of us who grew up on classic isometric e.g. Ultima VII, Balder's Gate, Torment, FO2 this is gaming nirvana.

9.5/10
 
Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

inquisition-1280-610x703.jpg


I wanted to post my review for this game a long long time ago, don't know why I never got around to it. I purchased the got (or whatever is the equivalent of that) edition of the game about a year ago, but never really got around to actually playing all the DLCs, the base game was more than enough of a grind for me. So this review is based on my initial playtrough of the game between the release in 2014 and March 2015. Yes it took a while, and it will become clear why as you read on.

So where do I begin to dismantle this monstrosity, I have no idea. Not because it is that solid as to not have weak spots. On the contrary, there are so many bricks loose in it, I can't choose which one to grab onto.

/ I'm actually reading my original words in Hungarian from 2015, and I can't believe what I'm reading, so this is not me being clever, I actually said this March 2015: /

"I have a feeling, that Bioware has strayed from the path, and if they don't turn around very quickly, they'll end up on the list of once great but now defunct studios, we're not there yet, but the signs are not good"
Click to expand...

Now after seeing the problems with ME:A, and their shift from single player to the always online multiplayer garbage anthem, I couldn't have been more right, but this is not a told you so moment, because I wish I was damn wrong.

So back to the game, as I already described it is a monstrosity. Multiple giant explorable areas, with hundreds of quests (I use the term as loosely as possible) because most quests really mean the worst kind of grind. This is a game, where the fetch quests are the breaths of fresh air. The game is basically about collecting shards, plants, and whatever garbage you can think of. There is even a quest that is basically about destroying rocks. I mean for fucks sake, we thought fetch quests were bad. This game is a perfect example of quantity ruining quality. If it was 3-5 times smaller with that much less quests it could've been great.

That said DA:I contains 10 explorable areas, some are huge, others are slightly smaller in scope. When I look at it, I think of this. It's like their goal wasn't to make a great game, but to make a game bigger than anyone else, but most importantly their direct competition, which was Skyrim then. And they went way overboard with it. I mean giant explorable areas are great, but pointless if they're not filled with enough interesting quests. And many of the tasks are exactly the same on each explorable area, sometimes with slightly different backstory, but you're still doing the same grind. Yes the areas look great, and they have their own atmosphere, but after the third or fourth you can't even be bothered to look around, because you know you'll just have to repeat the same shit you did on the previous maps.

Like find hidden items, which means spamming the search button indiscriminately in every area to see if it reveals something. Or close the 1000+1st rift the exact same way as you did the 1st. That shit got old playing oblivion, and it was better there. Or clear all enemies from an area systematically, which means killing 10 enemies then moving to the next room / clearing and doing it again, until you reach the end of the mission area. I mean this is MMO level garbage, not something I want to do in a story driven RPG.

And what makes things worse is that the main quests are exactly the same for the most part, with the only difference being that you get some cutscene with a few lines of conversation in between two waves of enemies. Of course #notall, there are a few (really really few) missions that give some fresh air in there, but the lot of it is repetitive as hell. That's why it took me over 3 months to finish.

And it doesn't help matters that the combat is extremely dragged out, apart from vastly lower level enemies you have to hack away at everything for long minutes. The worst offenders being dragons. Killing a dragon can take half an hour. And the game is otherwise not hard on normal difficulty, the biggest hazard of failure is from the game crashing. And of course it happened to me twice that it crashed when I was THIS close to killing a dragon after 29 odd minutes of slowly chipping away it's health.

But even exploration gets boring after you realize that there is nothing to discover apart from some generic loot items. Like they stopped to give a damn after designing the hinterlands, where there were a few hidden easter kind of eggs. And hunting for loot becomes utterly pointless after about level 10, because you can craft vastly superior items than what you can find as loot anywhere. And this defeats the purpose of most side quests because your reward for them is nothing but loot. The game acts as if side quests are important, to raise the standing of the inquisition but it just feels completely pointless. The only reason you need influence points is to open the next tasks related to the main quest. But if you do all the grind you can, you'll end up with about five times more points than you'll ever need. So here is my advice to you, if you're new to the game (fat chance of that after 3 years): Don't do it, ignore every goddamn grind in the game, and just do the minimally required amount. It's all pointless.

The whole game feels like doing some repetitive job on an assembly line. And the elongated grind casts a shadow over the main storyarc as well. After Haven, it lost it's "epic" factor completely to me. I no longer had the big picture in front of me, I was nothing but a fool in pajamas. I don't know which bright designer decided it will be a good idea to dress you as a jester in your HQ, while everyone else just wears their normal armor. And of course there is no way to customize your "casual" look.

I know the drill "look elsewhere if you want to play barbie dress-up" but no, just no. Having the option to customize doesn't mean you have to do it. So why do you want to take my fun away? I think it is an important part of an RPG to make your character yours, and not just by the choices you make, but also by the way it looks. Here the only thing you can customize is the face, which is more than nothing, but not nearly enough for me. Of course when you craft things the materials used will determine it's look, but you only look at stats anyway, you won't swap in a component that gives worse stats just because you want the blade to be yellow.

And talking of crafting let's have a look at the crafting/inventory screen. Which is terrible. People hated on ME:A's crafting screen, but that's like a million billion billion times better than DA:I's. It's so bad that I'd rather not even bother with giving new items to the squad until it was impossible to put off any longer. In order to upgrade an item you have to unequip it regardless if it's on you or on one of the squad. I could write a 5 page essay on what's wrong with the crafting in the game, but I'll condense it to one word: it is TERRIBLE.

With all the repetitive grind and running around looking for garbage, the playtime can go up to 70-80 hours, even without being a completionist. They could've leaned it down to about 30-40 hours, and then we'd have a much better game.

As I said the story works pretty well till you leave Haven, but it's like they fired the designers and replaced them with some rookies after that part.

And even the good things in the game have bad sides. Like the idea that you can send your people on assignments is great. What is terrible is that you have to go back to the HQ to be able to send them on a new mission. Why can't you do that by sending a message from the field? I was jumping so much from HQ to field to HQ to field to HQ that it was nauseating.

And the game has some technical flaws as well. Like the fact that it's completely unplayable from a HDD, you have to put it on an SSD, otherwise all cutscenes will be measurable in seconds / frame instead of frames / second. And loading times will be about 20 times more. And that's not an exaggeration but a conservative estimate. It also has mantle support but it might as well not exist,it doesn't bring anything to the table.

If anyone would've asked right after haven how is the game I'd have said "effing brilliant mate! " But the whole picture is not that sweet.


+

  • epic story and great pacing before skyhold
  • some really nice unique missions
  • graphics and visual design
  • huge explorable areas

-

  • crashes at the worst times
  • meh story, and terrible pacing from the point you arrive at skyhold
  • bugs (clipping, npcs popping out of nowhere mid air)
  • terrible inventory and crafting management
  • repetitive and drawn out
  • no real choices in the story
  • close quarter combat is terrible, useless, you can't lock on to enemies properly you run around trying to hit something but most of the time all you hit is air. Ranged classes work much better.


Scoreboard:

graphics : 9
story : 5
atmosphere : 7
gameplay : 6
controls : 3

Overall: 7/10
 
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M76 said:
Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

graphics : 9
story : 5
atmosphere : 7
gameplay : 6
controls : 3

Overall: 7/10
Click to expand...

You summed up my thoughts on this pretty well. To me, it felt like a grindy MMO without any of the rewards. The world was big just for the sake of being big. The quests were there just so there would be quests.

I thought the story was interesting enough, but about 1/2 way through, I was ready for it to be DONE.
 
Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Where to start with this one? Okay, let us start with the good. The graphics look nice, at least the landscape. The virtual world is pretty to look at. It runs well on my modest PC (GTX 1070, Ryzen 1600, 16GB RAM). Not a whole lot of bugs so far and nothing like CTDs. This is where the good ends.

The story is trash. It is a generic evil bad guy story, something about an evil drug cartel who took over the country. Occasionally you will get some loosely related audio files and a cutscene that has little significance.

The gameplay is your generic GTA/Mafia 3 knock off. You literally spend more time going from point A to B than actually doing missions. This is not sarcasm either. The map is big, about 10 times too big for the gameplay/story variety that is offered. There are numerous locations to pass by but there is no reason to stop there outside of grind quests. Shooting mechanics are terrible, like very other 3rd person shooter. The gadgets are nothing special and get very repetitive. The vehicle mechanics are shockingly bad.

There is no save system.

If you think Battlefront 2 unlocks are crazy, you will go nuts when you see Wildlands. Almost every piece of equipment is locked behind a paywall or grind quests. You do not even get standard capacity magazines out of the box. You do not even get a LMG or precision rifle either! Yes, you must grind for those to. Half the game revolves around doing the same side quest (interrogate a random guy) and then run across the map to find an accessory or firearm. Sadly picking up weapons does not unlock them, so even if you do pick up an enemies weapon you will loose it upon death or fast traveling.

Even your gadgets are locked behind similar grind/paywalls. Not only do you need to repeat the above and get "skill points", but you need to get resources. This means running up to barrels and pressing the E key, or running 2-4 kilometers to find a repeating side quest for each resource type. As an example, one mission required a 1 KM hike up a hill. Vehicles were at least 1 KM away, and the steep mountain required an air vehicle anyways. Once getting there I stole a helicopter, an then it required me to land it at a rebel base. Upon landing the helicopter flipped into the air and exploded. Because there is no save system there is no way to safeguard from these bugs, so you need to run back another 1.5 KM to get to the mission. I then tried a different one, this requiring you to steal a plane. The distance was further, a shocking 4.7 KM. I accidentally flew over an enemy base, which fired a missile. There is literally not enough time to change course once they start locking onto you, and the missiles seem to have 100% accuracy. I died. Respawn again, another 2 KM away from said mission. All in all, that was 5KM or so of traveling and nothing to show for it.

The story missions themselves are always the same and often just as short as the standard grind missions. Often they take 5-10 minutes. The main difference is in a poor attempt to enhance the difficultly they spawn enemies a few feet in front of or behind you. The crappy 3rd person mechanics make reacting to this a pain and enemies can kill you in 3-5 shots so good luck with that.

Overall it feels more like a armature project. Had the graphics not been good I would have mistaken it for some crappy free to play game.

Overall score is a 3/10.

Another flop from Ubisoft! What I do not understand is why the internet didn't attack Ubisoft like the did with EA. After playing a bit of both Battlefront 2 and Wildlands, Wildlands is far, far worse when it comes to pay to win / pay to play. And it to is a $60 title...

Edit: Revised my scoring after playing it a bit more. The flaws become even more notable when you play it for a while:

- Game breaking physics bugs. You can be driving along and then all of a sudden have your car launched 70 feet into the air. The big helicopters have horrendous problems with flipping as soon as you enter them.

- Unresponsive controls, too much emphasis on flashy animations. Trying to get someone in and out of a vehicle is a chore and you will probably die more from than than anything in the game. The "hold E" prompt for 2 seconds is enough to get you killed, especially when the game decides to do something else without your consent.

- "Press E to do this action" prompts are very, very particular. Good luck trying to grab that idiot wimp you have to interrogate because they lack the brain cells to run from a burning vehicle.

- Terrible design decisions and limitations throughout. For example, a pistol can shoot through a fence but a sniper rifle cannot. Good thing though is the enemy AI can! So enjoy bullet proof fences stopping .338 rounds while your enemy pecks you away with a 9mm SMG.

- Lots of limitations for doing things. If they want you to play a certain way they will force it. For example there is a mission that requires you to sneak into a factory using an enemy truck, but there are ways to sneak in undetected, such as via helicopter. But as soon as you enter the factory grounds your player will automatically blow up. If you like to be creative in your approach, this game is not for you.

- Constant placements of respawning surface to air missiles throughout the map. Because if flying for 3-4 minutes each time you get a new task wasn't long enough, apparently you must drive around narrow roads and canyons which will take you 15+ minutes.

- Adding onto the above, they do everything in their power to length the game. I suppose some people just give in and start purchasing unlocks, which is their goal.

- Other dumb limitations. You can't shoot a driver out of a vehicle as an example. The game makes you stop vehicles, without killing a person who you must capture frequently. The only method to do this is to blow up the escorts, which means stopping, launching a grenade, getting back in your vehicle, stopping again, launching again, getting back in. Then you must ram said vehicle off the road. Better hope the NPC doesn't exit the vehicle as it is moving, because they will kill themselves half the time. Refer to the above points as you play the game of attempting to grab an idiot who insists on sitting in a burning vehicle, with fighting off dozens of non-stop spawning enemies and helicopters just feet away.

- Enemies can shoot through walls and lob grenades through walls, even 70-80 feet up into a tower. Sadly, you cannot.

- Dumb AI all around. Sometimes they will casually walk by their slain buddies without a care in the world.

- Crappy menu system. I have still not figured out how to accurately apply different color schemes. Have the time it reverts to something entirely different.

- Everything is ssssssssssllllllllllllooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. The menu design is horrendous which makes swapping gear a pain in the ass.


TLDR: The game is a massive heap of shit, and should never have seen the light of day. You are better off getting ass cancer than playing this abomination!
 
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M76 said:
Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

View attachment 45973

I wanted to post my review for this game a long long time ago, don't know why I never got around to it. I purchased the got (or whatever is the equivalent of that) edition of the game about a year ago, but never really got around to actually playing all the DLCs, the base game was more than enough of a grind for me. So this review is based on my initial playtrough of the game between the release in 2014 and March 2015. Yes it took a while, and it will become clear why as you read on.

So where do I begin to dismantle this monstrosity, I have no idea. Not because it is that solid as to not have weak spots. On the contrary, there are so many bricks loose in it, I can't choose which one to grab onto.

/ I'm actually reading my original words in Hungarian from 2015, and I can't believe what I'm reading, so this is not me being clever, I actually said this March 2015: /



Now after seeing the problems with ME:A, and their shift from single player to the always online multiplayer garbage anthem, I couldn't have been more right, but this is not a told you so moment, because I wish I was damn wrong.

So back to the game, as I already described it is a monstrosity. Multiple giant explorable areas, with hundreds of quests (I use the term as loosely as possible) because most quests really mean the worst kind of grind. This is a game, where the fetch quests are the breaths of fresh air. The game is basically about collecting shards, plants, and whatever garbage you can think of. There is even a quest that is basically about destroying rocks. I mean for fucks sake, we thought fetch quests were bad. This game is a perfect example of quantity ruining quality. If it was 3-5 times smaller with that much less quests it could've been great.

That said DA:I contains 10 explorable areas, some are huge, others are slightly smaller in scope. When I look at it, I think of this. It's like their goal wasn't to make a great game, but to make a game bigger than anyone else, but most importantly their direct competition, which was Skyrim then. And they went way overboard with it. I mean giant explorable areas are great, but pointless if they're not filled with enough interesting quests. And many of the tasks are exactly the same on each explorable area, sometimes with slightly different backstory, but you're still doing the same grind. Yes the areas look great, and they have their own atmosphere, but after the third or fourth you can't even be bothered to look around, because you know you'll just have to repeat the same shit you did on the previous maps.

Like find hidden items, which means spamming the search button indiscriminately in every area to see if it reveals something. Or close the 1000+1st rift the exact same way as you did the 1st. That shit got old playing oblivion, and it was better there. Or clear all enemies from an area systematically, which means killing 10 enemies then moving to the next room / clearing and doing it again, until you reach the end of the mission area. I mean this is MMO level garbage, not something I want to do in a story driven RPG.

And what makes things worse is that the main quests are exactly the same for the most part, with the only difference being that you get some cutscene with a few lines of conversation in between two waves of enemies. Of course #notall, there are a few (really really few) missions that give some fresh air in there, but the lot of it is repetitive as hell. That's why it took me over 3 months to finish.

And it doesn't help matters that the combat is extremely dragged out, apart from vastly lower level enemies you have to hack away at everything for long minutes. The worst offenders being dragons. Killing a dragon can take half an hour. And the game is otherwise not hard on normal difficulty, the biggest hazard of failure is from the game crashing. And of course it happened to me twice that it crashed when I was THIS close to killing a dragon after 29 odd minutes of slowly chipping away it's health.

But even exploration gets boring after you realize that there is nothing to discover apart from some generic loot items. Like they stopped to give a damn after designing the hinterlands, where there were a few hidden easter kind of eggs. And hunting for loot becomes utterly pointless after about level 10, because you can craft vastly superior items than what you can find as loot anywhere. And this defeats the purpose of most side quests because your reward for them is nothing but loot. The game acts as if side quests are important, to raise the standing of the inquisition but it just feels completely pointless. The only reason you need influence points is to open the next tasks related to the main quest. But if you do all the grind you can, you'll end up with about five times more points than you'll ever need. So here is my advice to you, if you're new to the game (fat chance of that after 3 years): Don't do it, ignore every goddamn grind in the game, and just do the minimally required amount. It's all pointless.

The whole game feels like doing some repetitive job on an assembly line. And the elongated grind casts a shadow over the main storyarc as well. After Haven, it lost it's "epic" factor completely to me. I no longer had the big picture in front of me, I was nothing but a fool in pajamas. I don't know which bright designer decided it will be a good idea to dress you as a jester in your HQ, while everyone else just wears their normal armor. And of course there is no way to customize your "casual" look.

I know the drill "look elsewhere if you want to play barbie dress-up" but no, just no. Having the option to customize doesn't mean you have to do it. So why do you want to take my fun away? I think it is an important part of an RPG to make your character yours, and not just by the choices you make, but also by the way it looks. Here the only thing you can customize is the face, which is more than nothing, but not nearly enough for me. Of course when you craft things the materials used will determine it's look, but you only look at stats anyway, you won't swap in a component that gives worse stats just because you want the blade to be yellow.

And talking of crafting let's have a look at the crafting/inventory screen. Which is terrible. People hated on ME:A's crafting screen, but that's like a million billion billion times better than DA:I's. It's so bad that I'd rather not even bother with giving new items to the squad until it was impossible to put off any longer. In order to upgrade an item you have to unequip it regardless if it's on you or on one of the squad. I could write a 5 page essay on what's wrong with the crafting in the game, but I'll condense it to one word: it is TERRIBLE.

With all the repetitive grind and running around looking for garbage, the playtime can go up to 70-80 hours, even without being a completionist. They could've leaned it down to about 30-40 hours, and then we'd have a much better game.

As I said the story works pretty well till you leave Haven, but it's like they fired the designers and replaced them with some rookies after that part.

And even the good things in the game have bad sides. Like the idea that you can send your people on assignments is great. What is terrible is that you have to go back to the HQ to be able to send them on a new mission. Why can't you do that by sending a message from the field? I was jumping so much from HQ to field to HQ to field to HQ that it was nauseating.

And the game has some technical flaws as well. Like the fact that it's completely unplayable from a HDD, you have to put it on an SSD, otherwise all cutscenes will be measurable in seconds / frame instead of frames / second. And loading times will be about 20 times more. And that's not an exaggeration but a conservative estimate. It also has mantle support but it might as well not exist,it doesn't bring anything to the table.

If anyone would've asked right after haven how is the game I'd have said "effing brilliant mate! " But the whole picture is not that sweet.


+

  • epic story and great pacing before skyhold
  • some really nice unique missions
  • graphics and visual design
  • huge explorable areas

-

  • crashes at the worst times
  • meh story, and terrible pacing from the point you arrive at skyhold
  • bugs (clipping, npcs popping out of nowhere mid air)
  • terrible inventory and crafting management
  • repetitive and drawn out
  • no real choices in the story
  • close quarter combat is terrible, useless, you can't lock on to enemies properly you run around trying to hit something but most of the time all you hit is air. Ranged classes work much better.


Scoreboard:

graphics : 9
story : 5
atmosphere : 7
gameplay : 6
controls : 3

Overall: 7/10
Click to expand...

Pretty much, yeah. For me, this was also the Bioware goes-to-shit moment. Easily observable how they started designing their games around DLCs and add-ons, and that your progress is effectively monetized.

The only saving grace was the writing, but it's certainly not the level of previous Bioware games. That said, I get the impression the writers were forced to fit the story to a mold.
 
Flogger23m said:
Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Where to start with this one? Okay, let us start with the good. The graphics look nice, at least the landscape. The virtual world is pretty to look at. It runs well on my modest PC (GTX 1070, Ryzen 1600, 16GB RAM). Not a whole lot of bugs so far and nothing like CTDs. This is where the good ends.

The story is trash. It is a generic evil bad guy story, something about an evil drug cartel who took over the country. Occasionally you will get some loosely related audio files and a cutscene that has little significance.

The gameplay is your generic GTA/Mafia 3 knock off. You literally spend more time going from point A to B than actually doing missions. This is not sarcasm either. The map is big, about 10 times too big for the gameplay/story variety that is offered. There are numerous locations to pass by but there is no reason to stop there outside of grind quests. Shooting mechanics are terrible, like very other 3rd person shooter. The gadgets are nothing special and get very repetitive. The vehicle mechanics are shockingly bad.

There is no save system.

If you think Battlefront 2 unlocks are crazy, you will go nuts when you see Wildlands. Almost every piece of equipment is locked behind a paywall or grind quests. You do not even get standard capacity magazines out of the box. You do not even get a LMG or precision rifle either! Yes, you must grind for those to. Half the game revolves around doing the same side quest (interrogate a random guy) and then run across the map to find an accessory or firearm. Sadly picking up weapons does not unlock them, so even if you do pick up an enemies weapon you will loose it upon death or fast traveling.

Even your gadgets are locked behind similar grind/paywalls. Not only do you need to repeat the above and get "skill points", but you need to get resources. This means running up to barrels and pressing the E key, or running 2-4 kilometers to find a repeating side quest for each resource type. As an example, one mission required a 1 KM hike up a hill. Vehicles were at least 1 KM away, and the steep mountain required an air vehicle anyways. Once getting there I stole a helicopter, an then it required me to land it at a rebel base. Upon landing the helicopter flipped into the air and exploded. Because there is no save system there is no way to safeguard from these bugs, so you need to run back another 1.5 KM to get to the mission. I then tried a different one, this requiring you to steal a plane. The distance was further, a shocking 4.7 KM. I accidentally flew over an enemy base, which fired a missile. There is literally not enough time to change course once they start locking onto you, and the missiles seem to have 100% accuracy. I died. Respawn again, another 2 KM away from said mission. All in all, that was 5KM or so of traveling and nothing to show for it.

The story missions themselves are always the same and often just as short as the standard grind missions. Often they take 5-10 minutes. The main difference is in a poor attempt to enhance the difficultly they spawn enemies a few feet in front of or behind you. The crappy 3rd person mechanics make reacting to this a pain and enemies can kill you in 3-5 shots so good luck with that.

Overall it feels more like a armature project. Had the graphics not been good I would have mistaken it for some crappy free to play game.

Overall score is a 5/10.

Another flop from Ubisoft! What I do not understand is why the internet didn't attack Ubisoft like the did with EA. After playing a bit of both Battlefront 2 and Wildlands, Wildlands is far, far worse when it comes to pay to win / pay to play. And it to is a $60 title...
Click to expand...
Well I couldn't disagree more. I think it was good that you don't start the game fully kitted out with all the goodies, (it would've made it stupid easy) and unlocking them isn't that hard as you describe. It never even crossed my mind that they are kept from me to make me pay for them. And the side tasks are the opposite of boring, thanks to the brilliant map design no two missions are the same. The only activity I disliked was the protect the radio ones.

I'll dismantle your individual complaints later, right now I don't have time as I'm at work.
 
Flogger23m said:
I accidentally flew over an enemy base, which fired a missile. There is literally not enough time to change course once they start locking onto you, and the missiles seem to have 100% accuracy.
Click to expand...
Keep low to the ground, or find a path around it (it's supposed to be challenging).
If you want to get easy resources, just take the GL launcher attachment to those numerous convoys (you get half the reward if the truck blows up).
Flogger23m said:
Upon landing the helicopter flipped into the air and exploded.
Click to expand...
I think they fixed that bug?



If you weren't expecting grinding in a ubisoft open-world game well then :)
 
Flogger23m said:
Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Where to start with this one? Okay, let us start with the good. The graphics look nice, at least the landscape. The virtual world is pretty to look at. It runs well on my modest PC (GTX 1070, Ryzen 1600, 16GB RAM). Not a whole lot of bugs so far and nothing like CTDs. This is where the good ends.

The story is trash. It is a generic evil bad guy story, something about an evil drug cartel who took over the country. Occasionally you will get some loosely related audio files and a cutscene that has little significance.
Click to expand...
Yes, the story in itself is pretty generic, but the way you're placed in the story is pretty awesome. The story is not about you, it's actually the story of the CIA agents who hire you to avenge their colleague who went in too deep. The way it is presented is pretty fucking amazing, I don't think I ever felt so immersed in any story, especially not a generic story like this. As you slowly dismantle the cartel, and find new pieces of the puzzle and sometimes even see that some of the underbosses were just wrong place wrong time people, it truly humanizes the entire thing. There are not many other games where you can symphatize with (some of) the villains. The audio files are actually a very nice touch, they are a big part in humanizing the enemy, the story is seen by you as the soldier exactly as a soldier assigned to do the dirty work would see it, you catch bits and pieces of information, and think what you may of it. I think this is one of the thing that made the game truly immersive and outstanding.

The gameplay is your generic GTA/Mafia 3 knock off. You literally spend more time going from point A to B than actually doing missions. This is not sarcasm either. The map is big, about 10 times too big for the gameplay/story variety that is offered. There are numerous locations to pass by but there is no reason to stop there outside of grind quests. Shooting mechanics are terrible, like very other 3rd person shooter. The gadgets are nothing special and get very repetitive. The vehicle mechanics are shockingly bad.
Click to expand...

Shooting mechanics are some of the best I saw in any game recently, of course you have to dial up the difficulty to get your money's worth, only then it starts to become rewarding. Sure if you play like rambo in the open, it might feel like a generic 3rd person shooter, but on the realistic (or whatever that is called here) difficulty every confrontation becomes a challenge, and you have to be vigilant all the time you can't rush enemies, you have to observe, plan, and execute perfectly. I agree that vehicles move pretty badly however, but I've seen worse, much worse. However helicopter and plane controls are quite realistic for a game like this, if you get the hang of it. Also the gadgets are a godsent if you play on the proper difficulty, my favorite is by far the drone, not just for scouting out bases and tagging enemies, but later when you get the explosive upgrade you can cause all kinds of mayhem with it. Also one very useful gadget is the flash bang to be able to apprehend hostile targets. As for going to A to B, there is fast travel, you can jump to already explored areas. And you can get anywhere very quickly in the air anyway. Most safehouses will have a chopper, or there'll be one nearby guarded by only a few enemies. It's part of the challenge to get proper transportation.

There is no save system.
Click to expand...
There is no manual save system, which would not be a problem, the problem is that the checkpoint system is pretty bad, doesn't store enough information. Having manual saving would've reduced the value of stealth and planning in the game if you could just save every second there is no point in being careful.

If you think Battlefront 2 unlocks are crazy, you will go nuts when you see Wildlands. Almost every piece of equipment is locked behind a paywall or grind quests. You do not even get standard capacity magazines out of the box. You do not even get a LMG or precision rifle either! Yes, you must grind for those to. Half the game revolves around doing the same side quest (interrogate a random guy) and then run across the map to find an accessory or firearm. Sadly picking up weapons does not unlock them, so even if you do pick up an enemies weapon you will loose it upon death or fast traveling.
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Weapon unlocks are scattered around a the map, but they're pretty easy to locate, and frankly I never really focused on looking for weapons specifically, I unlocked them as I was doing missions, I got pretty good equipment quite rapidly, by about 25% into the game I already had every weapon I wanted, or close to it. And having the best weapons early in the game would've made it too easy even on the hardest difficulty. I already found it childishly easy on my second playtrough attempt because in the weakest areas there so few guards.

Even your gadgets are locked behind similar grind/paywalls. Not only do you need to repeat the above and get "skill points", but you need to get resources. This means running up to barrels and pressing the E key, or running 2-4 kilometers to find a repeating side quest for each resource type. As an example, one mission required a 1 KM hike up a hill. Vehicles were at least 1 KM away, and the steep mountain required an air vehicle anyways. Once getting there I stole a helicopter, an then it required me to land it at a rebel base. Upon landing the helicopter flipped into the air and exploded. Because there is no save system there is no way to safeguard from these bugs, so you need to run back another 1.5 KM to get to the mission. I then tried a different one, this requiring you to steal a plane. The distance was further, a shocking 4.7 KM. I accidentally flew over an enemy base, which fired a missile. There is literally not enough time to change course once they start locking onto you, and the missiles seem to have 100% accuracy. I died. Respawn again, another 2 KM away from said mission. All in all, that was 5KM or so of traveling and nothing to show for it.
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What paywall? Can you even unlock them by paying? I didn't even realize that. The game seemed perfectly paced for me, skills and gadgets get unlocked as the game gets tougher. I never felt that the game "owed" me any gadgets or upgrades earlier as I could get them trough normal progress. Tagging equipment might seem a hassle, but I somehow oddly enjoyed it perhaps because the animation for it is so well made. I didn't mind spending a few minutes tagging resources after clearing a base. And you don't have to tag everything, I certainly didn't I only did what was within a reasonable distance on the go, while clearing the bases. It's up to you to choose how much is too much. As for the hiking, you were doing it wrong. Those supply drops are meant to be reached by parachuting down. And since parachuting mechanics are not bad either I had nothing to complain about.
Of course heat seeking stinger missiles are 100% accurate, you're in a warzone after all, you have to fly low, and avoid flying over bases with sam sites, you can't outrun a missile, but you can evade it by flying behind an obstruction.

The story missions themselves are always the same and often just as short as the standard grind missions. Often they take 5-10 minutes. The main difference is in a poor attempt to enhance the difficultly they spawn enemies a few feet in front of or behind you. The crappy 3rd person mechanics make reacting to this a pain and enemies can kill you in 3-5 shots so good luck with that.
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I don't remember enemies spawning in front of me. Except in side missions, certainly not during the story. Altough if you raise all alarms it's possible I dunno. But again you're doing it wrong if all hell breaks loose. The art here is to scout out the bases, take out snipers, alarms and any other potential dangers. The best bet is to not let anyone get to an alarm.

Overall it feels more like a armature project. Had the graphics not been good I would have mistaken it for some crappy free to play game.
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I on the other hand think it's the best open world shooter type game since Mercenaries II. Probably because it is very similar to that. It is certainly 100% my choice for game of the year 2017 so far.

Another flop from Ubisoft! What I do not understand is why the internet didn't attack Ubisoft like the did with EA. After playing a bit of both Battlefront 2 and Wildlands, Wildlands is far, far worse when it comes to pay to win / pay to play. And it to is a $60 title...
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I don't know why do you feel that the game owes you all the best gadgets and equipment from the start. It's one thing to have to do 40 hours of grind as in bf2 to unlock a hero, but in wildlands everything gets unlocked at a very reasonable pace. I never felt that I was being held back. I never even went on missions specifically to unlock equipment, the weapons and mods I found while doing regular missions was satisfactory. The only things in the game that are actually behind a paywalll are a lot of the cosmetic items. Which is bad imo as well, but the equipment you can unlock by playing the game as it normally should be. What is pay to play in it?
 
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M76 said:
What is pay to play in it?
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I definitely agree it isn't pay to play and I love Wildlands. I think it's super fun and scratches my tacti-cool itch. The only thing I don't like that I can understand Flogger's complaints is what I felt with the weapons and attachments. It's great that there is such a enormous arsenal of weapons and accessories, but they really did feel like a grind to get. I was of the mindset that I wanted this weapon and I wanted it asap. Usually the way I play games with lots of weapons options is that I find one I like and I usually stick with it just like yourself, but the one I really wanted you HAVE to pay for. It even says it in the weapon list that it needs to be purchased. When you go to purchase it, it is only available in a set of equipment with a handful of attachments and some vanity items. I think the price was 2100 credits or something which is maybe like $10 or $15 (don't quote me b/c it's been a while since I played it). I honestly paid for it because I got Wildlands for free when I bought my 1080ti so I was okay with spending the money on it, and after I got what I wanted then I could REALLY enjoy the game. I am not sure what it is, but Flogger perhaps understands that there are just certain things when presented with a possibility of achieving them you want it right away and short of having to pay for it, you are right that most of them items can be had through progression but I distinctly remember seeing some of the weapons and being upset as to how long it would take me to get them. I haven't played in a while but I do remember something like that while playing Wildlands.
 
zamardii12 said:
I definitely agree it isn't pay to play and I love Wildlands. I think it's super fun and scratches my tacti-cool itch. The only thing I don't like that I can understand Flogger's complaints is what I felt with the weapons and attachments. It's great that there is such a enormous arsenal of weapons and accessories, but they really did feel like a grind to get. I was of the mindset that I wanted this weapon and I wanted it asap. Usually the way I play games with lots of weapons options is that I find one I like and I usually stick with it just like yourself, but the one I really wanted you HAVE to pay for. It even says it in the weapon list that it needs to be purchased. When you go to purchase it, it is only available in a set of equipment with a handful of attachments and some vanity items. I think the price was 2100 credits or something which is maybe like $10 or $15 (don't quote me b/c it's been a while since I played it). I honestly paid for it because I got Wildlands for free when I bought my 1080ti so I was okay with spending the money on it, and after I got what I wanted then I could REALLY enjoy the game. I am not sure what it is, but Flogger perhaps understands that there are just certain things when presented with a possibility of achieving them you want it right away and short of having to pay for it, you are right that most of them items can be had through progression but I distinctly remember seeing some of the weapons and being upset as to how long it would take me to get them. I haven't played in a while but I do remember something like that while playing Wildlands.
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Well I can understand it being frustrating, I know I wanted some weapons that I only got very late in the game, but it didn't take away the fun of the game, since the gunplay is so good, it was enjoyable with any weapon I happened to pick up. Before I unlocked the long range scopes, I used to steal sniper rifles from guards and use that. I remember that weapons are tied to specific areas, and the game told you which area to explore to get a specific weapon / upgrade unlocked, so it wasn't random. If you wanted something bad enough you could get it, but it was never the case for me, I went with the natural progression of things. The only thing that was a grind to upgrade are the rebel assistance things. The rebel ops were really repetitive, so I didn't even bother to do them. The vehicle delivery system was crap anyways, as it only delivered vehicles to the nearest public road, meaning when you were really lost in the middle of nowhere it was useless, so I didn't even bother to upgrade it as the radio op was the one I hated most in the game. I think that updated the vehicle delivery, but I might be wrong, regardless, I don't claim the game was flawless, but it certainly didn't feel like pay to win, or a flop.
 
zamardii12 said:
I definitely agree it isn't pay to play and I love Wildlands. I think it's super fun and scratches my tacti-cool itch. The only thing I don't like that I can understand Flogger's complaints is what I felt with the weapons and attachments. It's great that there is such a enormous arsenal of weapons and accessories, but they really did feel like a grind to get. I was of the mindset that I wanted this weapon and I wanted it asap. Usually the way I play games with lots of weapons options is that I find one I like and I usually stick with it just like yourself, but the one I really wanted you HAVE to pay for. It even says it in the weapon list that it needs to be purchased. When you go to purchase it, it is only available in a set of equipment with a handful of attachments and some vanity items. I think the price was 2100 credits or something which is maybe like $10 or $15 (don't quote me b/c it's been a while since I played it). I honestly paid for it because I got Wildlands for free when I bought my 1080ti so I was okay with spending the money on it, and after I got what I wanted then I could REALLY enjoy the game. I am not sure what it is, but Flogger perhaps understands that there are just certain things when presented with a possibility of achieving them you want it right away and short of having to pay for it, you are right that most of them items can be had through progression but I distinctly remember seeing some of the weapons and being upset as to how long it would take me to get them. I haven't played in a while but I do remember something like that while playing Wildlands.
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Yup. Had it been less unlock friendly it would have been a very average shooter with a nice engine. But it gets even worse, because I later found out that a lot of accessories were restricted to weapon types for no good reason. Take standard cap mags. I ran across one not too far from me, so I decided to get it. What a disappointment, because you can't stick a Pmag into an M4 in this game. So not even do the lock the standard mags, but they do it by caliber, and then randomly make brand X not work in gun Y.

Even all that aside, it just isn't a great game. Again, the lack of a save system is a PITA and just stupid. There are literally only 6-7 mission types, which includes side missions/grind missions. Steal the vehicle, kill the guy, interrogate the guy, do all of the above without making a noise so you can't use half your equipment, and whatnot.

Always nice to have an enemy spawn out of nowhere, spot a body, and fail the mission. Boom, the game sets you in an entirely different orientation, different equipment state, different time, and your getaway vehicle you tactically placed has vanished like a fucking ghost. Bonus points when it is one of those "don't get detected" missions and it spawns you right in front of bad guys, because that is an automatic fail within 3 seconds. Nothing tactical about this game (but I knew that, GR has been dead for a decade) but it only relies on gimmicks and just copies other lazy designs (Mafia 3 & GTA).

The last mission I played was one of those shitty "don't get detected" missions, except you have to chase down and interrogate yet another random fool you don't care about. Except you have to tail him to. But the game constantly places you too far to reach the target in time. It is literally impossible. By the time you get to a vehicle the "target is too far away" error keeps popping up on your screen. Automatic fail, each time. Great, you have to chase this guy down but you can't shoot enemies in the way, get a vehicle in front of them and you cannot physically run as fast as a car. That is fucking lazy design throughout.

I will say the game looks amazing and I wish it was 1/4th the size. Lots of cool things to see but since you're constantly flying/driving back and fourth you don't really have a time to just slowly move through the environment. It is a constant dash back and fourth.
 
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Flogger23m said:
Yup. Had it been less unlock friendly it would have been a very average shooter with a nice engine. But it gets even worse, because I later found out that a lot of accessories were restricted to weapon types for no good reason. Take standard cap mags. I ran across one not too far from me, so I decided to get it. What a disappointment, because you can't stick a Pmag into an M4 in this game. So not even do the lock the standard mags, but they do it by caliber, and then randomly make brand X not work in gun Y.
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That's not gunplay that's gun nut level stuff. The game is certainly not realistic, in terms of gunplay, I could've enjoyed some more realism as well.

Even all that aside, it just isn't a great game. Again, the lack of a save system is a PITA and just stupid. There are literally only 6-7 mission types, which includes side missions/grind missions. Steal the vehicle, kill the guy, interrogate the guy, do all of the above without making a noise so you can't use half your equipment, and whatnot.
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Lack of proper save system is a plus rather than being a con. If you can save whore that would take away all the tactical elements. Stealth is part of being tactical so I Don't get why is not making a noise a problem for you, not that there were that many missions of that type anyway. I really enjoyed the mission types, because the variance in environment makes every mission different regardless of having the same goals.

Always nice to have an enemy spawn out of nowhere, spot a body, and fail the mission. Boom, the game sets you in an entirely different orientation, different equipment state, different time, and your getaway vehicle you tactically placed has vanished like a fucking ghost. Bonus points when it is one of those "don't get detected" missions and it spawns you right in front of bad guys, because that is an automatic fail within 3 seconds. Nothing tactical about this game (but I knew that, GR has been dead for a decade) but it only relies on gimmicks and just copies other lazy designs (Mafia 3 & GTA).
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I'm really baffled by this because random enemies spawning really never happened to me. I watched the game in amazement, most of the time when you think an enemy came out of nowhere it just woke up from sleeping or walked in from another area, the patrol route of enemies is huge in this game, and there is the sleep mechanic that some enemies will be in bed at night. The only way enemies spawned for me during main missions is by arriving in vehicles, so I think you're mistaken.

The last mission I played was one of those shitty "don't get detected" missions, except you have to chase down and interrogate yet another random fool you don't care about. Except you have to tail him to. But the game constantly places you too far to reach the target in time. It is literally impossible. By the time you get to a vehicle the "target is too far away" error keeps popping up on your screen. Automatic fail, each time. Great, you have to chase this guy down but you can't shoot enemies in the way, get a vehicle in front of them and you cannot physically run as fast as a car. That is fucking lazy design throughout.
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Some missions are challenging, but impossible? no. I don't know which mission you are talking about, but there is probably a way to do it much easier than by running after a car on foot.

I will say the game looks amazing and I wish it was 1/4th the size. Lots of cool things to see but since you're constantly flying/driving back and fourth you don't really have a time to just slowly move through the environment. It is a constant dash back and fourth.
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I wish it was 4x the size. Hell I wish it was 100x the size, size is not a problem in this game at all. Except in fallen ghosts, where they repurpose the same bases as you had to infiltrate in the base game, instead of using one of the thousand other locations in the game, but that's also not caused by the size, it's just that the size is not utilized to full potential.
 
M76 said:
That's not gunplay that's gun nut level stuff. The game is certainly not realistic, in terms of gunplay, I could've enjoyed some more realism as well.
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It has nothing to do with "gun nut" level stuff. It is just dumb and another way to artificially length the game or make people pay up. Quality over quantity. I suppose if the made it 100x bigger, we'd start off with ultra gimped 5 shot mags, then have to find 10, ect.... for each and every weapon!

M76 said:
Lack of proper save system is a plus rather than being a con. If you can save whore that would take away all the tactical elements. Stealth is part of being tactical so I Don't get why is not making a noise a problem for you, not that there were that many missions of that type anyway. I really enjoyed the mission types, because the variance in environment makes every mission different regardless of having the same goals.
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It is the opposite. You can't assess tactics or figure out what went wrong when you're trying to figure out where you magically got teleported to, and where your items and vehicles went.

M76 said:
I'm really baffled by this because random enemies spawning really never happened to me..
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You probably never noticed. It happens fairly often.


M76 said:
Some missions are challenging, but impossible?
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... due to where the game decided to place you. "Tactics", yay. This game is as tactical as Gears of War / Unreal Tournament.

I wish it was 4x the size. Hell I wish it was 100x the size, size is not a problem in this game at all. Except in fallen ghosts, where they repurpose the same bases as you had to infiltrate in the base game, instead of using one of the thousand other locations in the game, but that's also not caused by the size, it's just that the size is not utilized to full potential.[/QUOTE]

M76 said:
...it's just that the size is not utilized to full potential.
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So you'd like them to further expand the size of the games by 100x with the same 6-7 missions, a map 100x emptier? If it is not utilized to its full potential then it is too big. Just a waste of time doing cut/paste stuff for what must amount to 10,000 times.

Anyhow, 5/10 is me being fair, IMO. I'd be tempted to give it a 3/10 but the graphics saving it from being that low.

Looks like I am not the only one who thinks this way either:
https://www.destructoid.com/review-ghost-recon-wildlands-425478.phtml
 
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