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Score 10/10 Witcher 3 - Excellent graphics great open world. Combat system that is interesting, but ok. Really good storyline and just dialogue is really well done with all the accents and all. 2 Replays.

Score 10/10 Dragon Age: Inquistions - Excellent graphics, love all the open world and different places that i can travel too. Combat/Armor system is really fun and interesting one of the better systems in RPG, i really like crafting really broken weapons, artificier archer is probably the most fun spec and it got insane dmg, and it is always giggle to carpet bomb with traps and small bombs. Tried most speccs but artificer is really strong and fun. KE was decent fun also, near imortal (after nerf) still fun. Story is decent on mainquests. Can rush or enjoy, done both. 5 or something Replays.

Score 10/10 Mass Effect 1 - Always great and a game i will never forget the magic i felt when i played it the first time. It is almost not fair to review this today but i always do a run through now and then like rest of the series :p combat is aged but very fun and effective and graphics is very aged also but it is still enjoyable. Storyline is great as it always was one of the strong points and all the fun ppl u meet like Garrus, Liara, Tali'zorah are my faves anyway. And the fun places u go! All over the universe.. And meeting reaper Ai first time is hilarious hehe. 10 Replays.
Score 10/10 Mass Effect 2 - Another great game, combat is confusing and skills seem to be near useless, prety much just sniper shots outkill anything. When abilities no longer work on shield they are prety much a sidenote. I think this game added alot of neat things tho like relationships to crew and missions. And the final battle and all same like first great story and just awesomesauceome. 5-6 Replays.
Score 8/10 Mass Effect 3 - Like previous titles still a great game and combat, well i just snipe things lol :p Story is nice and compare to most ppl i thougt ending was awesome. Meeting Javik is certainly interesting, last prothean. 3 Replays.
Score 8/10 Mass Effect Andromeda - Highly underrated game that deserves much better review, maybe not a 10 star game but, the crying minority ruined it, did have some bugs at release but nothing major i encounter only 1 that were a bit tricky but i managed to circumvent it. Graphics is probably some of the best iv'e seen in games, and there are tons of really nice and different places places to visit. The combat system is by far the best in ME series, only thing i think sucks is not much effect vs shields but not as bad as ME2, as u can ability to remove shields ++. But worst is just lack of diversity like u can run max 4 skills wich leaves out potentially alot of interesting stuff that could be done. Sniper is still very much op hehe, but not so broken like in ME3. The story is good enough, but side quests are really uninteresting for most part. Main story could be better i think and not much more mystique left, potential new release with more in depth about the remnant possible. And sad to leave Shepard and crew, im not alone to love these guys haha. I dont give shit how they do it but... i rather see shepard again haha :p

Score 7/10 Ghost Recon Wildlands - Best graphics iv'e seen in a game without a doubt. Combat works, sneaking is more fun, but gunz blazing works aswell, lot's of cool guns. Story is really not exsistant, it get old quick and. It is a open world shooter with Ubisoft model that they deployed in all recent games of the same type. Only played coz i got for free with my card.

Score 7/10 Dirt 4 - Great graphics. Close to Dirt Rally, very fun and semi realistic! Prety fuSn.

Score 10/10 - Battlefield 1 Really good graphics and highly optimized, alot of fps for graphics! And all these great maps are just unbelivable.. From deserts to argonne forest ++ Combat is some of the best iv'e seen in fps, it migth not be realistic but movement and sense of holding and firing weapons is just insane, this is so well crafted unlike anything iv'e seen and i played all BF since first one 100 years ago along with most fps games. Try going back to play anything else fps related it just seems like u hold cardboard guns that seem to be dead. Only cons is no team balancing so ppl abuse join winning team or go with squads.

9/10 - Rise of the Tomb Raider Superb graphics, some ligth thinking and funky climbing! Story is ok gameplay is good.

10/10 Horizon Zero Dawn - Great graphics for ps4, its nearly unbelivable what this shitty piece of hardware can run lol. Absolutely loved the story! Combat is very cool, traps could be a bit tricky, and stealth is best aproach always, but then again im near cripple levels on ps4 :p where i shoot out any difficulty in fps on pc i go low on ps4. Love shooting of disc launchers or whatever from some mechs and pewpew tho! Loved the story and especially fun to see Agent Philip Broyles from Fringe tv series, forgot actor name but.

7/10 Diablo 3 - Shitty graphics old game. Gameplay is really fun, very repetative but fun for a while. Seasons suck donkeydicks was rated 60 or so DH at some point but it is just endless farm for paragon, dull AF. Nice couch Co-op on ps4.

10/10 The Last of Us - Great graphics again for Ps4. Combat system that work well and is interesting and fun. The story however is the real winner, and just traveling across the us with all these zombies and whatnot. 2 replays!

8/10 Crysis 3 - Graphics still hold up today and it was first with 1080ti i could get decent frames at 1440p xD maybe a little poorly optimized but. Combat is ok, standard fps for most part. Story isnt the greatest. But it is an enjoyable game in some way. 3 replays.

Wow now im so tired, im not sure im much of a game reviewer but lol! I know i left out a bit that i will add. Im not 100% sure on timeframe as i dont really think much about time, but it is reasonably recent within 2 years. Safe to say i have a few games under my belt in my career.
 
Tales From the Borderlands.

My first Telltale game. BL1/2 hardly had much of a story, but I found this enjoyable. Actually I found it more enjoyable that BL2 itself. Being a game comprised mostly of QTEs and story content I will say the story was nothing superb. I would have hoped for something on par with Mass Effect, Deus Ex or even Witcher 2 but considering the source material I suppose they did an okay job. What I did enjoy about it were the decisions which would have some impact. The scale and impact wasn't all that meaningful; roughly on par with Mass Effect 1/2/3's choices. Some notable impact but nothing to change the end of the story. However it was refreshing to get straight to the point and not deal with half a dozen fetch quests, stick looting, and repspawning bad guys to get to the next one. Humor wise it wasn't that funny, but certainly not as shoehorned as BL2. An interesting kind of game that feels like a movie, but you do have a minimal amount of decision making.

It would be interesting to see Telltale tackle a more developed theme or IP with some depth. Most of the other franchises they license seem to be fairly simple minded as well (Batman, ect.). A Mass Effect side story would certainly be interesting to see.

Overall I'd give it an 8/10. While it wasn't superb you didn't have to waste half your time beating around the bush to get to the interesting bits.
 
Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014), 3/10 story was okay, gameplay got repetitive quickly, felt like I was playing Doom, you go somewhere, trigger activates, hidden door opens and enemies attack.

Would not recommend, another medicore shooter from id.
 
Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014), 3/10 story was okay, gameplay got repetitive quickly, felt like I was playing Doom, you go somewhere, trigger activates, hidden door opens and enemies attack.

Would not recommend, another medicore shooter from id.
Except it wasn't made by id. I think you just made your whole opinion on the game seem like a mightily uninformed one.
 
Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) /complete edition/

TmDCMbYt_o.jpg


I've never been so speechless when it comes to reviewing a game as now. For a lack of better ideas to describe the game I have to start with this stupid analogy: What will the offspring be like when you crossbreed Tomb Raider with Mad Max? You guessed it: Horizon Zero Dawn. No, I don't mean the franchises in general, but the recent games. Now you could say where are the similarities to Mad Max, did I go crazy? No, I didn't. Mad Max came up because the game feels, looks, and plays so much like Mad Max that I thought if it isn't using the same engine it was at least developed by the same people. But to my surprise neither of those two things are true. Anyway I digress. Let's get back to the game.

What is Horizon Zero Dawn about? It's set in a world where humans live in primitive superstitious tribes and the lands are covered by strange animal like machines. You assume control of Aloy a young Nora girl who was exiled from her tribe for "having no mother" therefore raised by another exile an experienced by the rules hunter called Rost, who is kind of a father figure. The game quite brilliantly I might add, doesn't start in medias res. But first picks up Aloy's story when she is only 7 years old. This is when she is first exposed to the relics of the "old ones". The title as the tribes refer to the people who lived some centuries before and left behind numerous relics scattered trough the world. I'm a sucker for a good mystery of this kind, so I was hooked right away. Clues on what might have happened are mostly given by voice and holographic recordings that remained intact trough the years, like in System Shock 2, another favorite of mine. But what will be the game about if the world is only populated by docile machines and primitive humans? Well as it runs out those machines are not as docile as first thought. And there are some other forces scheming in the background as well when the game really begins there is a rumour going around that the machines were getting more and more aggressive trough the years first never hurting humans, then only attacking when provoked, but by the time you get there most machines will attack humans on sight.

So without going into spoilers the story revolves around three major plot points: 1. Find out who were your parents; 2. find out what happened to the old ones; 3. find out why are the machines acting more and more aggressively and try to reverse the process. Of course for me the most interesting part of the game is the second, not that the third is not an important goal as well, but that involves a lot of fighting and very little exploration. When I first started the game it seemed, or at least I had hoped that the exploration and combat will be well balanced. Sadly this is not the case. The exploration and actual clues are concentrated around a few choke points in the main quest. And outside of those you can hardly find any worthwhile information or explorable ruins. Sadly these quests where you actually find answers are few and far in between. But when you are doing them you get an overload of information sometimes. Like you go into a room and find half a dozen recordings that is a little boring to sit trough all at once. Some of the recordings are pretty long as well 2-3 minutes or even longer. I didn't mind them, but I fear to some people they might have been too much, and even I felt at times that they should've been spread out much better. Instead of having all clues on the same 3 main plot missions, why not scatter smaller, less revealing recordings throughout the entire game world?

So the game is clearly dividable into segments of exploration and segments of doing chores and harvesting resources. Most of your crafting materials comes from machines, so you have to hunt them as pray as well as fighting for your life. At first I found the hunts exhilarating and fun, but it got old for me after a 8-10 hours of doing nothing else. The combat is one of the least favorite parts of the game for me. Most machines, especially, the larger, tougher ones, only have a few tiny weakspots that you have to hit in order to cause any significant damage. And with my innate hatred of console controllers, (stemming from the fact that I can't aim for shit with them) most fights in the game, were no fun at all, but exercises of utter frustration and rage. I started the game on medium difficulty then had to lower it to easy when I encountered my first cauldron. Cauldrons are giant automated manufacturing facilities where you can learn how to override machines (turn them into allies), and are always guarded by a huge boss machine that you have to fight in a relatively small confined space where you have nowhere to run or hide. It was at this point where I almost broke my controller for the first (but definitely not last) time. So I decided pride be damned I'm switching to easy. And I have to say even easy turned out to be more than what I bargained for. In this first cauldron easy didn't even feel easier than medium. I think they missed the mark with that one. Between story mode (which is basically a joke) and easy there is a Mariana trench in difficulty. While between easy and medium there might be a little 2 foot ditch. I don't even want to know what hard and ultra hard feels like, when on easy you can be one hit killed by many machines (but not from IX) The easy difficulty only started to feel actually easy after I massively over leveled compared to the recommended level for the quests. After I finished the Frozen Wilds (where most of the bosses I was only able to defeat on story mode) and I went back to the main quest I was 20 levels above the recommendation, so then easy really was as easy as an easy difficulty level should be IMO.

...Speaking of cauldrons. WTF? I mean literally WTF? This game came out almost at the same time as Mass Effect Andromeda did, and I have to say there are some uncanny similarities between them. The cauldrons of HZD are almost carbon copies of the vaults of MEA, or vice versa whichever you prefer. Their designs, their purpose and their function all overlap much more than what I could chalk up to mere coincidence. I don't know and I don't mind just something to think about, and it's strange there wasn't a bigger fuss made out of this. Perhaps because no one actually played MEA? (and even liked it as I did).

It is with a heavy heart and some bitterness that I admit this but this games is one of the best looking I've seen in recent times Why is this a problem? Because this is a freaking console game, running on sub par hardware. This means the PC gaming industry is either sitting on its hands or completely lost. Just look at this shit:

K8vTGnyO_t.jpg
sM6gEeZT_t.jpg
4pWKWXul_t.jpg
K0Cdl3w7_t.jpg


The only game that can contend with this on PC is Wildlands. OK, I think that still looks better, but I'm definitely not comfortable with this. What's next, the console master race?

Another thing worth writing home about is the musical score. The story is already great, but some musical underscores with the right timing give it a huge boost emotionally on top of that. The music never becomes annoying, but there were some issues with sound design. Or it is not even sound design but game design. For example Aloy mutters to herself many times some useful remarks during exploration but on many occasions I couldn't hear it because I was listening to a recording at that moment or the dramatic music just kicked in and there is no way to repeat these. Another issue I've noticed are the conversations with NPCs. They've done fucked it up. They copied the conversation wheel design from Mass Effect for no damn reason. Because most conversations feel like they were written with a very specific order in mind. And if you select them in the wrong order the whole conversation turns into incoherent rambling. Because some option presumes that another one was already exhausted and serves as a continuation of that thought. Why give the opportunity to choose if the conversations weren't written with that in mind? This bothered me beyond measure.

...But not as much as the freaking lootboxes. Everything is a lootbox, the whole game world is a lootbox. You get lootboxes for completing quests, but also can purchase them from merchants. This is completely stupid. This shit got to go. I want no stinking lootboxes in my games. This means there are not even unique or special items in the game, you just get a random reward for your efforts every damn time, most lootboxes just contain common junk, some has rare items, but never unique ones. You can't even craft unique items, all you can craft is supplies like ammo and health. Weapons and outfits you can only modify with mods that add for example damage or status effects to it. Or in case of outfit it can add resistances.

The game is only 44 hours long, at least it was that long for me with the frozen wilds included. I say only because it felt at least twice that. As I've mentioned by the end I got bored with the frustrating combat, and just wanted to get it over with. I just found out that it was only 44 hours and some minutes according to the latest save. I've played almost 8 hours today but I was finally victorious.

There is one particular quest in a the game that is representative of everything that's wrong with games today: Fetch quests. But this is no ordinary fetch quest, this is a troll quest. The ancient armor quest. You come upon a bunker in the game where locked away there is a power armor of sorts. But the door is locked and you need to collect a few power cells to open it. They're very hard to come by, almost impossible to find them all, but when you go back with the required amount and the door opens you get a slap in the face, because inside you'll find another lock, that requires even more power cells to open. At this point I said fuck it, and ignored the quest. The power cells are hidden in places that you only visit once like the FARO hq and if you have to backtrack that's mighty inconvenient. I don't mind running a few errands but this is as close to the designers showing the middle finger to the player as it gets.


+
  • Graphics
  • Story
  • Concept
  • Music
  • Locations
  • Exploration

-

  • Lack of worthwhile (living) characters apart from Aloy (well arguably Olin, Eerend and Sylens, but you interact with them very little and only for a small fraction of the game, not enough to get too attached to them)
  • no unique items
  • lootboxes
  • easy difficulty should've been positioned closer to story, and farther away from medium
  • some AI difficulties (well actually when the stormbird got stuck it helped a lot in taking it out, but still a bug)
  • hunting for resources and replenishing crafting materials quickly turns into a chore
  • if you run out of ammo crafting materials during a fight you're fooked
  • Bungled up conversations
  • the balance between exploration and combat is not ideal


Score card:

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

Overall impression: 8/10

After the first few hours I'd have said GOTY but my enthusiasm slowly diminished as I realized that between each exploration and secret I find there will be 8-10 hours of fighting, collecting crap and running errands without much reward. If I never ever see a lootbox again it will still be too soon.
 
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Horizon Zero Dawn (2017) /complete edition/

TmDCMbYt_o.jpg


I've never been so speechless when it comes to reviewing a game as now. For a lack of better ideas to describe the game I have to start with this stupid analogy: What will the offspring be like when you crossbreed Tomb Raider with Mad Max? You guessed it: Horizon Zero Dawn. No, I don't mean the franchises in general, but the recent games. Now you could say where are the similarities to Mad Max, did I go crazy? No, I didn't. Mad Max came up because the game feels, looks, and plays so much like Mad Max that I thought if it isn't using the same engine it was at least developed by the same people. But to my surprise neither of those two things are true. Anyway I digress. Let's get back to the game.

What is Horizon Zero Dawn about? It's set in a world where humans live in primitive superstitious tribes and the lands are covered by strange animal like machines. You assume control of Aloy a young Nora girl who was exiled from her tribe for "having no mother" therefore raised by another exile an experienced by the rules hunter called Rost, who is kind of a father figure. The game quite brilliantly I might add, doesn't start in medias res. But first picks up Aloy's story when she is only 7 years old. This is when she is first exposed to the relics of the "old ones". The title as the tribes refer to the people who lived some centuries before and left behind numerous relics scattered trough the world. I'm a sucker for a good mystery of this kind, so I was hooked right away. Clues on what might have happened are mostly given by voice and holographic recordings that remained intact trough the years, like in System Shock 2, another favorite of mine. But what will be the game about if the world is only populated by docile machines and primitive humans? Well as it runs out those machines are not as docile as first thought. And there are some other forces scheming in the background as well when the game really begins there is a rumour going around that the machines were getting more and more aggressive trough the years first never hurting humans, then only attacking when provoked, but by the time you get there most machines will attack humans on sight.

So without going into spoilers the story revolves around three major plot points: 1. Find out who were your parents; 2. find out what happened to the old ones; 3. find out why are the machines acting more and more aggressively and try to reverse the process. Of course for me the most interesting part of the game is the second, not that the third is not an important goal as well, but that involves a lot of fighting and very little exploration. When I first started the game it seemed, or at least I had hoped that the exploration and combat will be well balanced. Sadly this is not the case. The exploration and actual clues are concentrated around a few choke points in the main quest. And outside of those you can hardly find any worthwhile information or explorable ruins. Sadly these quests where you actually find answers are few and far in between. But when you are doing them you get an overload of information sometimes. Like you go into a room and find half a dozen recordings that is a little boring to sit trough all at once. Some of the recordings are pretty long as well 2-3 minutes or even longer. I didn't mind them, but I fear to some people they might have been too much, and even I felt at times that they should've been spread out much better. Instead of having all clues on the same 3 main plot missions, why not scatter smaller, less revealing recordings throughout the entire game world?

So the game is clearly dividable into segments of exploration and segments of doing chores and harvesting resources. Most of your crafting materials comes from machines, so you have to hunt them as pray as well as fighting for your life. At first I found the hunts exhilarating and fun, but it got old for me after a 8-10 hours of doing nothing else. The combat is one of the least favorite parts of the game for me. Most machines, especially, the larger, tougher ones, only have a few tiny weakspots that you have to hit in order to cause any significant damage. And with my innate hatred of console controllers, (stemming from the fact that I can't aim for shit with them) most fights in the game, were no fun at all, but exercises of utter frustration and rage. I started the game on medium difficulty then had to lower it to easy when I encountered my first cauldron. Cauldrons are giant automated manufacturing facilities where you can learn how to override machines (turn them into allies), and are always guarded by a huge boss machine that you have to fight in a relatively small confined space where you have nowhere to run or hide. It was at this point where I almost broke my controller for the first (but definitely not last) time. So I decided pride be damned I'm switching to easy. And I have to say even easy turned out to be more than what I bargained for. In this first cauldron easy didn't even feel easier than medium. I think they missed the mark with that one. Between story mode (which is basically a joke) and easy there is a Mariana trench in difficulty. While between easy and medium there might be a little 2 foot ditch. I don't even want to know what hard and ultra hard feels like, when on easy you can be one hit killed by many machines (but not from IX) The easy difficulty only started to feel actually easy after I massively over leveled compared to the recommended level for the quests. After I finished the Frozen Wilds (where most of the bosses I was only able to defeat on story mode) and I went back to the main quest I was 20 levels above the recommendation, so then easy really was as easy as an easy difficulty level should be IMO.

...Speaking of cauldrons. WTF? I mean literally WTF? This game came out almost at the same time as Mass Effect Andromeda did, and I have to say there are some uncanny similarities between them. The cauldrons of HZD are almost carbon copies of the vaults of MEA, or vice versa whichever you prefer. Their designs, their purpose and their function all overlap much more than what I could chalk up to mere coincidence. I don't know and I don't mind just something to think about, and it's strange there wasn't a bigger fuss made out of this. Perhaps because no one actually played MEA? (and even liked it as I did).

It is with a heavy heart and some bitterness that I admit this but this games is one of the best looking I've seen in recent times Why is this a problem? Because this is a freaking console game, running on sub par hardware. This means the PC gaming industry is either sitting on its hands or completely lost. Just look at this shit:

K8vTGnyO_t.jpg
sM6gEeZT_t.jpg
4pWKWXul_t.jpg
K0Cdl3w7_t.jpg


The only game that can contend with this on PC is Wildlands. OK, I think that still looks better, but I'm definitely not comfortable with this. What's next, the console master race?

Another thing worth writing home about is the musical score. The story is already great, but some musical underscores with the right timing give it a huge boost emotionally on top of that. The music never becomes annoying, but there were some issues with sound design. Or it is not even sound design but game design. For example Aloy mutters to herself many times some useful remarks during exploration but on many occasions I couldn't hear it because I was listening to a recording at that moment or the dramatic music just kicked in and there is no way to repeat these. Another issue I've noticed are the conversations with NPCs. They've done fucked it up. They copied the conversation wheel design from Mass Effect for no damn reason. Because most conversations feel like they were written with a very specific order in mind. And if you select them in the wrong order the whole conversation turns into incoherent rambling. Because some option presumes that another one was already exhausted and serves as a continuation of that thought. Why give the opportunity to choose if the conversations weren't written with that in mind? This bothered me beyond measure.

...But not as much as the freaking lootboxes. Everything is a lootbox, the whole game world is a lootbox. You get lootboxes for completing quests, but also can purchase them from merchants. This is completely stupid. This shit got to go. I want no stinking lootboxes in my games. This means there are not even unique or special items in the game, you just get a random reward for your efforts every damn time, most lootboxes just contain common junk, some has rare items, but never unique ones. You can't even craft unique items, all you can craft is supplies like ammo and health. Weapons and outfits you can only modify with mods that add for example damage or status effects to it. Or in case of outfit it can add resistances.

The game is only 44 hours long, at least it was that long for me with the frozen wilds included. I say only because it felt at least twice that. As I've mentioned by the end I got bored with the frustrating combat, and just wanted to get it over with. I just found out that it was only 44 hours and some minutes according to the latest save. I've played almost 8 hours today but I was finally victorious.

There is one particular quest in a the game that is representative of everything that's wrong with games today: Fetch quests. But this is no ordinary fetch quest, this is a troll quest. The ancient armor quest. You come upon a bunker in the game where locked away there is a power armor of sorts. But the door is locked and you need to collect a few power cells to open it. They're very hard to come by, almost impossible to find them all, but when you go back with the required amount and the door opens you get a slap in the face, because inside you'll find another lock, that requires even more power cells to open. At this point I said fuck it, and ignored the quest. The power cells are hidden in places that you only visit once like the FARO hq and if you have to backtrack that's mighty inconvenient. I don't mind running a few errands but this is as close to the designers showing the middle finger to the player as it gets.


+
  • Graphics
  • Story
  • Concept
  • Music
  • Locations
  • Exploration

-

  • Lack of worthwhile (living) characters apart from Aloy (well arguably Olin, Eerend and Sylens, but you interact with them very little and only for a small fraction of the game, not enough to get too attached to them)
  • no unique items
  • lootboxes
  • easy difficulty should've been positioned closer to story, and farther away from medium
  • some AI difficulties (well actually when the stormbird got stuck it helped a lot in taking it out, but still a bug)
  • hunting for resources and replenishing crafting materials quickly turns into a chore
  • if you run out of ammo crafting materials during a fight you're fooked
  • Bungled up conversations
  • the balance between exploration and combat is not ideal


Score card:

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

Overall impression: 8/10

After the first few hours I'd have said GOTY but my enthusiasm slowly diminished as I realized that between each exploration and secret I find there will be 8-10 hours of fighting, collecting crap and running errands without much reward. If I never ever see a lootbox again it will still be too soon.

I figured the way you were talking about the game in the HZD thread you wouldn't rate it too high, esp on controls, but you rated it higher than I thought you would on everything else and overall. After putting well over 150 hours into the game myself across 2 complete play-throughs on normal and ultra hard difficulty, I agree with about 80% of what you said. But I'll contrast with your negatives at least from my own personal findings.

I personally didn't think anything of the "lootboxes" (forgot what they're called in game), as I would just open them all without even looking at or caring what was in them when I was at any merchant and would sell off all excess items I had all at once including what I had collected from the lootboxes. It was just another way to randomize and bundle items and supplies given to you for quests, I think. I never once bought one from any merchant and would only touch them when I was already at a merchant so items from them weren't taking my limited inventory space and I could sell off most of the stuff from them all at once at that point for shards. So in a way, I'm kind of glad and see why they gave you these rewards through lootboxes so you could still receive them if your inventory was full and you could hold onto them for as long as needed so you can decide to use/drop/sell them when the opportunity comes.

The only issue I had with the controls was the annoying item selector on the D-pad, which made it really hard to select specific heath items or stat boosters in mid-combat, otherwise I thought the controls were pretty well done and felt good to me and using the slow-mo abilities, esp. while jumping/sliding, more than made up for my aiming handicap with the controller.

I never completely ran out of ammo during fights even on ultra hard, maybe specific ammo during tougher battles, but even then it was very rare. I usually kept at least 8-10 slots full of each type of ammunition though, so 80% of my inventory was pretty much allocated to different ammo types with the rest for collectibles and parts to buy special items.

I can understand your argument against the conversation wheel about it being unnatural at times if you just jumped around randomly through the different speech options, but I always did the conversation options in the same order, which I'm assuming is the intended order so that the conversations always flowed naturally for the most part. Then if you wanted to hear something again, you could always go back to hear a certain inquiry again, which is the whole point in having a conversation wheel, I think; to generally follow the same order in conversations, but give you the option to go back to hear things again if needed.

The troll quest you're referring to actually says right on the quest menu that it requires 5 power nodes to unlock the Shield Weaver armor. I noticed when I first discovered the "ruin" where the Shield Weaver armor is that you only need 2 power nodes to get through the first set of doors too, so I went back after I got 2 power nodes to see what was behind them. But I still knew I wouldn't be able to get to the armor without the other 3 nodes from seeing the requirements on the quest menu. If you missed one of the nodes like the one at Faro HQ, backtracking to it really isn't an issue; just fast travel to it and it takes maybe 5 mins to climb the tower again up to where the power nodes is.

So without writing my own review or adding any more to yours, I'd only change the following ratings from my personal experience.

Gameplay/Controls: 8/10

Overall impression: 9.5/10
 
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I figured the way you were talking about the game in the HZD thread you wouldn't rate it too high, esp on controls, but you rated it higher than I thought you would on everything else and overall. After putting well over 150 hours into the game myself across 2 complete play-throughs on normal and ultra hard difficulty, I agree with about 80% of what you said. But I'll contrast with your negatives at least from my own personal findings.

I personally didn't think anything of the "lootboxes" (forgot what they're called in game), as I would just open them all without even looking at or caring what was in them when I was at any merchant and would sell off all excess items I had all at once including what I had collected from the lootboxes. It was just another way to randomize and bundle items and supplies given to you for quests, I think. I never once bought one from any merchant and would only touch them when I was already at a merchant so items from them weren't taking my limited inventory space and I could sell off most of the stuff from them all at once at that point for shards. So in a way, I'm kind of glad and see why they gave you these rewards through lootboxes so you could still receive them if your inventory was full and you could hold onto them for as long as needed so you can decide to use/drop/sell them when the opportunity comes.

I think they were actually called "extraordinary reward box" and "shard gambler's box" and such. That's exactly the problem with them what you describe. They're worthless, you get random garbage for completing quests that you'll just break down into shards, or sell to merchants anyway. Instead of getting an unique item like in any "normal" RPG. I never bought them from merchants either. That kind of already questions their existence in the first place. Merchants shouldn't sell random garbage that you can gamble on. But useful and rare items, that are hard to come by.

The idea that you can receive quest rewards in form of lootboxes when you have no inventory space is great, if that was the only use of the lootboxes it would be fine. But even then you only know what you got when you open them. To achieve the same effect I'd have made a separate inventory space, where the game places quest rewards right away so you can see exactly what you got, but you would not be able to equip or sell them until you move them into the regular inventory. Surely that's a better way than using lootboxes where you don't even know what was your reward.

But as I said, my biggest gripe with the existence of these, is not that they're there, but they're there at the expense of unique quest rewards and unique loot items.

The only issue I had with the controls was the annoying item selector on the D-pad, which made it really hard to select specific heath items or stat boosters in mid-combat, otherwise I thought the controls were pretty well done and felt good to me and using the slow-mo abilities, esp. while jumping/sliding, more than made up for my aiming handicap with the controller.
I also switched to the wrong item many times with the selector. But my other big issue with controllers, is that I constantly mix up which button I have to press for specific actions. Especially during combat I always mix up everything. Jump instead of slide, or attack instead of crafting ammo, or simple strike instead of silent strike. I just can't remember which function is tied to what button or stick or lever, or craphandle.
On the PC I have a regular control scheme that I'm used to and can assign any and all functions to my regular keys in any game. So I always know instinctively which keys to press, because the common functions are the same for all games. But on the console, every freaking game uses a completely unique control scheme, where the buttons and sticks always have completely different functions. This drives me nuts. I know this is not a problem specific to this one game, but it doesn't make me hate it any less for it. The first console game that will get a 10/10 for controls from me will be the one allowing KB+Mouse controls. Until then I guess 5/10 is the ceiling. I know Killzone did that on the PS2 already, but haven't heard about any other game supporting it since then.

I never completely ran out of ammo during fights even on ultra hard, maybe specific ammo during tougher battles, but even then it was very rare. I usually kept at least 8-10 slots full of each type of ammunition though, so 80% of my inventory was pretty much allocated to different ammo types with the rest for collectibles and parts to buy special items.
Wait, what? The ammo is not even stored in the inventory but specific ammo pouches for each weapon. You can only store the materials used to craft ammo in the inventory. The ammo you can store is minuscule even after doing all the capacity upgrades. It never lasts me half a battle. And my biggest gripe is that you need shards to craft the most common types of ammo, while shards are also the currency in the game. I learned this the hard way when I first scraped together the thousands of shards for a badass armor, purchased it then realized I can't fight because I can't craft arrows. I had to actually sell a few of my weapons I never intended to sell, to get a few stray shards to be able to at least craft enough arrows to last me until I could collect enough shards again. No consumable in a game should have multiple functions. That's game design 101.
I can understand your argument against the conversation wheel about it being unnatural at times if you just jumped around randomly through the different speech options, but I always did the conversation options in the same order, which I'm assuming is the intended order so that the conversations always flowed naturally for the most part. Then if you wanted to hear something again, you could always go back to hear a certain inquiry again, which is the whole point in having a conversation wheel, I think; to generally follow the same order in conversations, but give you the option to go back to hear things again if needed.
But you see, why is the option there if I'm not meant to choose? It's a bit out of order that you blame me for "jumping around randomly" if the game offers that option. I didn't choose randomly I choose the option that seemed the most pressing, most interesting, or most relevant.
The troll quest you're referring to actually says right on the quest menu that it requires 5 power nodes to unlock the Shield Weaver armor. I noticed when I first discovered the "ruin" where the Shield Weaver armor is that you only need 2 power nodes to get through the first set of doors too, so I went back after I got 2 power nodes to see what was behind them. But I still knew I wouldn't be able to get to the armor without the other 3 nodes from seeing the requirements on the quest menu. If you missed one of the nodes like the one at Faro HQ, backtracking to it really isn't an issue; just fast travel to it and it takes maybe 5 mins to climb the tower again up to where the power nodes is
I didn't notice the description of the quest until after I was faced with the second set of problems. Even if I concede that the quest description is warning enough this is still a fetch quest of the worst kind. In reality you should just be able to remove three power cells from the outer door after opening that. If I remember correctly you even do that inside the water plant.
 
I think they were actually called "extraordinary reward box" and "shard gambler's box" and such. That's exactly the problem with them what you describe. They're worthless, you get random garbage for completing quests that you'll just break down into shards, or sell to merchants anyway. Instead of getting an unique item like in any "normal" RPG. I never bought them from merchants either. That kind of already questions their existence in the first place. Merchants shouldn't sell random garbage that you can gamble on. But useful and rare items, that are hard to come by.

The idea that you can receive quest rewards in form of lootboxes when you have no inventory space is great, if that was the only use of the lootboxes it would be fine. But even then you only know what you got when you open them. To achieve the same effect I'd have made a separate inventory space, where the game places quest rewards right away so you can see exactly what you got, but you would not be able to equip or sell them until you move them into the regular inventory. Surely that's a better way than using lootboxes where you don't even know what was your reward.

But as I said, my biggest gripe with the existence of these, is not that they're there, but they're there at the expense of unique quest rewards and unique loot items.


I also switched to the wrong item many times with the selector. But my other big issue with controllers, is that I constantly mix up which button I have to press for specific actions. Especially during combat I always mix up everything. Jump instead of slide, or attack instead of crafting ammo, or simple strike instead of silent strike. I just can't remember which function is tied to what button or stick or lever, or craphandle.
On the PC I have a regular control scheme that I'm used to and can assign any and all functions to my regular keys in any game. So I always know instinctively which keys to press, because the common functions are the same for all games. But on the console, every freaking game uses a completely unique control scheme, where the buttons and sticks always have completely different functions. This drives me nuts. I know this is not a problem specific to this one game, but it doesn't make me hate it any less for it. The first console game that will get a 10/10 for controls from me will be the one allowing KB+Mouse controls. Until then I guess 5/10 is the ceiling. I know Killzone did that on the PS2 already, but haven't heard about any other game supporting it since then.


Wait, what? The ammo is not even stored in the inventory but specific ammo pouches for each weapon. You can only store the materials used to craft ammo in the inventory. The ammo you can store is minuscule even after doing all the capacity upgrades. It never lasts me half a battle. And my biggest gripe is that you need shards to craft the most common types of ammo, while shards are also the currency in the game. I learned this the hard way when I first scraped together the thousands of shards for a badass armor, purchased it then realized I can't fight because I can't craft arrows. I had to actually sell a few of my weapons I never intended to sell, to get a few stray shards to be able to at least craft enough arrows to last me until I could collect enough shards again. No consumable in a game should have multiple functions. That's game design 101.

But you see, why is the option there if I'm not meant to choose? It's a bit out of order that you blame me for "jumping around randomly" if the game offers that option. I didn't choose randomly I choose the option that seemed the most pressing, most interesting, or most relevant.

I didn't notice the description of the quest until after I was faced with the second set of problems. Even if I concede that the quest description is warning enough this is still a fetch quest of the worst kind. In reality you should just be able to remove three power cells from the outer door after opening that. If I remember correctly you even do that inside the water plant.

I was addressing your negative of "if you run out of ammo crafting materials during a fight you're fooked", so I was talking about me never running out of materials for ammo in mid-fight. Of course I would deplete the ammo in my pouches mid-battle a lot of times, but crafting more mid-battle wasn't much of an issue either since it slows the game down significantly so you can do it in semi-real time. I also never completely depleted my shards like you did and put myself in that position of having to sell off weapons or something in order to make ammo for anything else, as I saw on the in-game weapons wheel right away what materials were required to craft ammo and they all showed shards along with whatever other materials. Until the Frozen Wilds DLC made me buy all the newer weapons and armor, I usually had an over-abundance of shards too and the only thing that kept me from buying any special items was usually the rare parts needed to buy them on top of shards (like a specific heart or skin or something).

I definitely agree with you about consoles needing to support kb&m controls, at least in single-player and co-op games. Esp. since I mostly play my consoles at the same desk and monitor/TV that I use for my PC anyways. Another game that supported it on PS2 was Half-Life, which was great and it even let you remap all controls and adjust mouse sensitivity. I hoped that meant more console games would be supporting it in the future, but apparently that wasn't the case. But in the mean time, I've been getting by alright with the controllers on consoles well enough to where I don't feel too handicapped by it for the most part or at least nearly as much as you seem to be.

I understand the rest of your negative points though, they just didn't really detract from the game in my experience and therefor don't completely agree with most of them. S'all good though man, it happens. I'm glad you were still able to enjoy the game for the most part though.
 
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The Crew PC – Ubisoft

This is a review of my single player campaign

Story 7/10

I enjoyed playing the story of Alex Taylor out to avenge his Brother. It wasn’t a deep story and it took me several missions to get invested in Alex, but it was plenty to keep you playing. You meet some interesting characters along the way while tracking down your target across the states.

Graphics 7/10

Graphically “Good”, detailed cars, weather effects and damage had great animation. Not a graphically demanding game so I was able to Max it out at 1080p60 with my 1050TI

Sound 9/10

I like driving games where the cars have “bite” to their engines. These sounds do not disappoint. The cars sound as they should, I’m not sure they are sampled from the actual cars, but they are good enough to be believable. The built in music tracks will repeat a lot so be sure to change the radio station often, put it on random, or turn it off. Voice acting is good, but a bit cartoony at times. It doesn’t take you out of the game though.

Controls 6/10

I had issues with my Logitech rumble pad and Xbox 360 controllers when driving the cars. They wanted to drift a bit even with no directional input. I went keyboard and mouse with this one and felt that I had and was given good control over the car and views. Some cars can be very floaty until upgraded so initial control wasn’t spectacular but got better later on.

Gameplay 7/10

This is a large open world driving game with tons to do, many races to win and skills to build up. You can spend as much of as little time as you with on the non-story elements but all the extras give you experience and help level up faster. Racing was fun but frustrating at times, rubber banding of the AI is real and in full effect here. The police can catch up to you no matter what you drive it seems, but the other AI drivers aren’t quite as severe. During races it really feels like AI cars are placed in specific locations and lines in which you would normally take. This added to the complexity of races as that would help you not cut too many corners. There are plenty of cars and trucks to pick from and the added types Dirt, Street, Race, Raid and so on keep the gameplay varied. Since you’re driving across the country you’ll have the opportunity to drive through dirt, snow, rain, grass and everything else so you need to get some cars in your stable with the correct attributes for the terrain. Some story missions require you to have a certain spec car so you won’t always be driving the same thing. I like how the side mission races can help prepare you for races later down line like when you have a severely under powered or wrong type of car and have to improvise. I did tons of extra skills and races so by the time I was at the end of the game most races were as long as I don’t crash, I win.

Overall 7/10

I was never bored with the game as it had much to offer and you could do as much or little as you wanted as long as you completed story missions eventually. For free, there was a huge amount of content, you could pay and get more but I opted to just see what they give you. Good graphics, great sound and a rock solid experience kept me coming back to further my career and finish the story.
 
Driveclub (2014)

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One of the supposed launch titles of the PS4, that got delayed, but it didn't really matter, the game is still not very good.
It didn't take me long to realize that this game was a bad investment. No, I haven't finished it technically. But I did finish it because I doubt I'm coming back for more.

There is not much to finish anyway, as the game doesn't have a campaign or career mode, just a bunch of random races, that will unlock other random unrelated races, no progression, no sense of achievement, nothing that would make it worth playing for me.

And if you run out of random uninspired races on tracks that might as well be randomly generated they're so soulless. You can purchase additional events and challenges from the store. Yeah you heard right, they're selling additional races for at least $2.50 a piece. Comparatively polyphony were giving out weekly free events for their GT games since 5, for absolutely free.

The game is 3.5 years old by now, who do you expect to buy additional races for it after this time? Ridiculous. Not that it was a fair idea to begin with but to still sell them and not just release them as a free update for the game 3 years later is beyond belief.

Physics? What physics? The cars feel like hoverboards on a river, you turn and they will turn without any feel to them, if you go into a corner too fast (which is hard already but later about that) they will simply not turn in. I deliberately don't use the term "understeer" because it doesn't feel like an actual understeer effect with all it's physics and qualities. It simply means the car will turn on a larger radius than the corner has, if you don't slow down enough for it. But it still feels like a slotcar.

And the same goes to oversteer. Which will almost never happen in the game naturally, it seems to be tied to braking. If you don't apply brakes the car will never oversteer regardless of how hard you yank the steering wheel. But if you apply just a slight amount of brakes it will immediately snap into an artificial fully controlled, staged drift. Which I guess was OK in 1995 in Screamer when computers weren't quick enough for any realistic physics and we weren't spoiled by better and better racing games that came since.

So let's get back to the tracks. They feel soulless because they have virtually no corners to speak of, just long winding bends that you can take flat out 90% of the time. But even the "slowest" corners can be taken at 60-70mph, these are not corners, but as I mentioned it is like driving on a river, and the lack of proper corners amplify that effect.
If a corner looks like a tight bend on the mini map it will probably be a slight liftoff at 120+mph. If it looks like a hairpin you might even have to go bellow 70mph. But it doesn't really matter, you see, because there is no mechanical damage and rebounding off the wall doesn't seem any slower than braking for the corner.

The AI opponents are no good either. They seem to be pulled along on strings, and the harder the race the faster they're pulled. You can't rely on drafting or braking late (lol there aren't even braking zones) in the game because regular physics don't apply, and to the opponents not even the lame fake physics do.

Did I say drafting doesn't apply? But it does. The game awards you points for going behind another car, to bad you can't feel the effects of it because even if that opponent drives the same car as you it will still simply keep pulling away from you in a straight line. It also awards points for overtaking and doing a clean sector. But I ask why? The purpose of the race is to win, isn't that the reward itself to be first? Why do I need points for overtaking people, or doing a clean sector? Is the narcissism of the current generation gamer that bad you have to give them a carrot mid a 3 minute race to keep them appeased? I refuse to believe that. There is even a mini game where you get points for driving on a predefined line in a certain section of the track. It doesn't matter how fast you are, just drive the line get the points. Absolutely ridiculous.

As for graphics, the scenery is sparse, at first glance. Ugly at a second glance. But there is a strange atmospheric effect on it that makes everything hazy and dream like. I felt underwater on most tracks, and the overdone motion blur effects don't help either. They make the game tolerable on internal camera only. I love the bonnet camera in racing games but here it's unplayable, as anything outside of the mid 25% of the screen is blurry all the time.

The game seems desperate to show off it's weather effects, that are not bad, but annoying as hell. You can expect either rain or blinding sunset on at least a part of every race. I don't know what's the big deal, the same rain effects were first done in hard truck decades ago. 1998 to be precise, I was truly impressed by them then. Now, not so much.

The sound effects feel very weak as well. With the hazy graphics together they truly make the game feel like it's underwater, or a dream (in the worst possible way). The engine sounds doesn't have any character. Like the frequency range is clipped both high and low, so the game sounds like it's played on one of those old sokol radios.

+
  • You tell me

-

  • physics
  • lack of campaign or career mode
  • paid content
  • uninspired tracks
  • sound effects
  • graphics style
  • obsession to show off the weather effects in every race

The game seems to have a cognitive dissonance, it acts in some places as if it wants to approach cars and racing with the respect it should, but does everything to the opposite effect in practice. Yes, showing the player getting into the car is a great addition to immersion, if you already have the important bits nailed. Otherwise it just feels like you're mocking driving game enthusiasts.

Scoring chart:

graphics/realization: 4/10
story/atmosphere: 0/10
gameplay/controls: 4/10

Overall impression: 3/10
 
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Quantum break pc steam version

Story I found decently enough as far as time travelling goes, the "series" in between chapters made for something new, I would not mind seeing more of that in other games.

Gameplay was good but it is easy to get blocked by the envirenomment when warping around, I should have been more thorough when looking for the upgrade thingamajingies, could have helped me here and there. The final fight was a giant PITA but a dozen orso tries and I finally got it, annoying one shot mechanics though.

Graphics I found great even for a slightly older console game, sound was good too.

There is some replayability option to check out the different choices you have to make but since it's very story driven and linear that's limited espacially since it mostly affects the series, not sure about the game itself.

All in all I would give it a solid 8/10
 
Gran Turismo 6 (2013)

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So while I deal with another "creative" crisis, I'm looking back at my first impressions of currently the latest iteration of the GT series. (If you're not counting Sport, and I'm definitely not counting it)

I was still actively playing GT5 when GT6 was released, so it's inevitable that I'll be comparing it to the "old" version.
It is also a sad occasion because they announced the shutdown of GT6 servers, so all online content will be gone by the end of March.
Which is a damn shame, as Sport can't hold the candle to any previous full GT version. But I'll talk about the shortcomings of that game when I'll review it. Currently I'm not even sure it is worth my time.

So what did GT6 add to this long standing series? Well not much. It took one step forward and two steps back.

The intro itself is nice and long, but boring as hell, so I won't be watching it ever again. A good intro you can watch each time you start a game, guess that makes this a bad intro, regardless of the artistic value.

The first thing that I already disliked that the game before doing anything before seeing any menus or settings, throws you into a car and orders you to drive.
Of course my programming doesn't allow that, so I immediately quit the game, which it nterpreted as if I completed the course. LOL.

Fortunately after this you get into the main menu, a menu that is very simple and plain compared to GT5, or any of the previous games for that matter. (and this is not a compliment)
The menus should radiate the Gran Turismo feeling, but these menus don't have any feeling to them. It's functional I give it that, but I liked the fancy menus much more.
The menu of a Gran Turismo game should be an art installation. A freaking monument to cars and racing. My favorite is still the map style menu from GT4.

For what it's worth there are things that are improved, like the pre-race loading screens, they made those fancy and good looking, so instead of staring at a blank screen you can see the start list and the track from a bird's eye view while loading.

But to my dismay the game still wouldn't let me go my own way. It forces you to go and buy one specific car, you can't even choose what you want for the money you have, it makes you buy a crappy Honda Fit, I hate that car.
I don't understand why can't I do what Gran Turismo is supposed to be about, that is making the most of your credits, and go racing for more credits. Thankfully after I bought that piece of garbage the game let's go of your hand.
So after a few novice races I bought a new car and sold this one even if it meant getting less than 25% of the money back for it. If I hate anything it is games that don't let you do what you want within the game's own rules at first.
Just let me stumble and fail, so actual success can feel something later. Instead of guiding me down the safest road like some incompetent fool.

Then I was forced to come to terms with the fact that used cars are no longer a part of the game. There is only one dealership where you can get every car, from oldest to newest.
And the standard and premium cars are mixed in together without clear signs of which one is which. (for those who don't know, standard cars have less detailed models, and have no interior view)
In GT5 you knew that anything you buy in new car dealerships will be a premium model, and what you get in used car dealership will be a standard model.
Yes yes, you can tell before buying the car that it is a standard model, it wasn't obvious at first, and if I remember correctly that was added later to the game in a patch.

Because when playing the game for the first time I managed to buy a standard car without knowing what I was doing. With the fact that you can only sell cars at a huge loss I had to force myself to race the standard car, actually in the heat of the race you can barely notice it.
I prefer the bonnet view to the internal anyway.I think the internal views are too dark, it seems as if I'm driving with a welding glass in front of my eyes.
But before racing my newly acquired car I wanted to tune it up the a bit, that's when I found out that they "streamlined" the tuning options as well. Without going into detail I can say that you have less options than in GT5, I thought a sequel should be an improvement over or at least as good in everything as the predecessor.

To keep the balance here is another aspect which got better There is a big improvement in the physics of the game. You have a much more direct feeling of the cars and tracks, you can almost feel the tyres rubbing against the tarmac, you get a great sense of traction and the limits of traction, and you can feel when you're driving on the limit.

Graphics wise there wasn't really much room for improvement, GT5 already pumps the maximum out of a PS3, so there are only little things here and there, like headlights seem to be better at night.

At first I thought they removed license tests from the game ( a trademark of the GT series where you do short driving tasks against the clock to unlock more advanced races). But no, they just changed it up. Now you first have to race to earn the right to do the licenses, it used to be the opposite.
Which actually makes sense, or it would've made sense. Let me explain. The license tests were damn hard in previous GT games, especially to get gold on all of them. (I'm proud to say that I did manage that in all previous games). So it makes sense to put them after the races that are not that hard, especially if you go with an overpowered car.
But here is the problem. They made the license tests easy, so now it makes no sense to be after the races, I used to piss blood trying to do all the license tests to gold level in previous games, now 8 out of 10 times I get gold on the first Try!. That is ludicrous. Even on a track I never driven before I don't even know the ideal racing line and I get a Gold on first try?

Most races are pretty easy anyway. In theory it should be balanced as the game ranks cars based on Performance Points, and you can't enter a race with a car that has more PP than the limit. The problem is that PP doesn't really work. I'm not sure what exactly it is based on, but sometimes there are huge differences between cars with similar PP.
The game seems to assume to much PP for underpowered but well balanced cars, and too little for overpowered poorly balanced cars. So in many races you can enter a car, that will wipe the floor with the competition.
I often deliberately entered races with lower performance cars to even the odds and have some fun racing, instead of overtaking everyone on the first lap, and have nothing to race against but my previous fastest lap for the rest of it.

There are actually a few hard races in the game, but I think that's not by design, more like a fluke. Some races you'll have an opponent with a car that stands out the pack so much it's ridiculous. Like the race Cobra on the classic muscle car race, or the "sucker" car on the 70s racing cars event.

Apart from normal racing modes the game also has additional challenges that are interesting and often fun, and actually offer a challenge.

+
  • Graphics for PS3
  • Physics improvements
  • Challenges
  • Still plenty of races to choose from and varied enough
  • Some weird but fun fictional tracks
  • Plenty of iconic real world tracks
  • The choice of cars is still amazing
-
  • Menu is functional rather than iconic
  • Most races are too easy
  • You get enough money after just a few races to never worry about racing for money ever again
  • Many of the classic GT tracks are sadly absent
  • With no used car dealerships, the whole idea of a career mode seems to serve more of a placeholder effect.
  • Still many iconic cars are only represented as "Standard" models, which means they still have PS2 level of detail and no interior.
  • Internal view is useless, because it's too damn dark.
  • No, that's not how the clutch should work polyphony, have you ever driven an actual stick shift before?

I feel I have to expand this last one further: In this game you cannot slip the clutch.. I had to disable manual clutch in the game because it is so useless. It is as if they just bound a digital on off switch to the extremities of the clutch pedal.
So in order to shift in manual clutch mode, the clutch pedal has to be 100% depressed to the end of it's range, before you even touch the shifter. And it has to be back to its highest point to engage.
And if you miss a shift because you touched the H shifter just a ms faster than the pedal hit the floor, you are forced to lift off the clutch pedal completely and then depress it again completely to be able to get the car into any gear at all. Loosing about two decades in the process.
I've tried playing with a manual clutch, but the experience is awful, frustrating and completely pointless. In real cars you don't have to press the clutch all the way to the floor before you can start moving the stick. Hell if you know where the clutch disengages completely you don't have to fully depress it at all.
If you lift off the accelerator there is even a moment of zero load as the revs start to drop when you can get the transmission out of gear and with rev-matching get it into another gear.without as much as touching the clutch.
But here the clutch pedal is just a digital switch labelled: Allowed to change gear / not allowed to change gear

Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 8/10
story/atmosphere: 2/10
gameplay/controls: 6/10

Overall impression: 7/10
 
Assassin's Creed Origins

Gameplay - Probably the "tightest" in an AC game, but somehow lost some of the fun factor from Syndicate, Black Flag or Unity. It's almost too easy climbing on stuff.

Inventory is awful. It's like managing a slot machine UI.

Same with fight mechanics. No more is there a timed "dance" with your opponent. Just mash button A to win. very much like Dragon Age 2 in a way.... And not in a good way.

Graphics - Excellent all around. Nothing to fault here.

Level/world design - Certainly took cues from Witcher 3, but there's something "off", not sure how to put my finger on it. World map is absolutely huge.

The Historical Tour - worth special mention. Terrific addition for history nerds like myself.

8/10 (7 without the historical tour add-on and attention to historical details)
 
I finished Metro Last light redux which I abandoned after a couple hours last time I played it, can't remember why though.

The game is getting pretty old, but imo still holds up decently graphics wise, I did see some janky animations on mobs that are far away but nothing gamebreaking. I would have loved to see some more different enemies. The dark tunnels can get a little confusing at times, got a bit lost a couple of times.

Gameplay is not bad although jumping is mostly useless as he can't seem to jump higher then some 90+ old with a wooden leg. There are a number of different weapons to be found with different mods but I played most of the game with a silenced pistol, machine gun and some funky shotgun.

I did have 1 random crash during a hectic fight but other then that no issues.

Story is nothing special imo but it's not bad, I had a decent time with the game and would give it 7.5/10
 
Far Cry 5 (2018)

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Fuck this game, no literally fuck this game, fuck it a thousand times, no a million, billion times! I hate it. And it wouldn't be terrible by default, but it's the most annoying game I've played wrestled as far as I can remember.

It has no reason to exist. It is Wildlands, but it is at least slightly worse than that in every aspect. But in some aspects it's much worse.

I haven't felt more disappointed after finishing a game before. It lets you do the side missions and the chores and the sometimes fun but mostly just let's get this out of the way story missions. Only to wrestle control from your hands when the real important bits should start. And at other times as well.
Like on a schedule the game will take away control each time you reach a certain completion level in a region. You know exactly what will happen, and it is nothing but annoying. You have to sit through or sometimes thank god (pun intended very much) you can skip these awful sequences of verbal diarrhea.

They add nothing to the game, you're on a mission and suddenly you're teleported away, interrupting the flow of the game, to watch these predictable "let's get the fuck on with it" sequences. And you can't do shit about them.
Player choice is non-existent. For a game that prides itself that you can finish it in 10 minutes with a choice, it never ever gives you the chance to defy things ever again. You have to sit trough and painfully get trough the terrible nonsensical writing without being able to object to it just once.

Let me tell you how annoyed I was with the game at times, for forcing me into these situations without choice, and taking away every fucking boss battle I was looking forward to and turning them into nonsensical virtual battles.
I would leave the game running in the background in a window for 15-20 minutes waiting for the situation to go away, or to get a chance to do something that is not predetermined. I'd try to walk in the other direction in the bloody awful bliss sequences a dozen times to no avail.
I'd press alt-f4 in the middle of the unskippable cutscenes hoping that it would make it stop and let me skip it but no way.
You have to sit trough the entire theatrics and act surprised at the twists that are obvious even if you're looking down from the moon. Well you don't actually have to act surprised, but it seemed like to me that the writers didn't intend them to be predictable.

Not to mention that it doesn't make a shred of sense in the context of a story either. You're captured at least a dozen times in the game, and they still won't kill you. It makes the whole game stupid. That they can choose to capture you at will, but they cannot best you at any other moment in the game.

It is as if part of the development team didn't get the memo, what type of game are they trying to make. Some of it tries to be funny, some of it edgy, some of it serious. But these aspects don't augment each other, instead they cancel each other out.
The topic is ripe for gritty noir storytelling, that is truly sad and realistic at the same time. But this is none of that. This is a textbook case of cognitive dissonance.

What about the game mechanics themselves? Well as I mentioned it is Wildlands only everything is a bit smaller, bit less, a bit uglier, and a bit worse.
You have three regions each with an under-boss, that you have to defeat, it is exactly the same story. Except here you don't actually get to fight the bosses, at least not in the real world ever. You're forced into these awful uncontrollable situations that I tried to run trough as fast as humanly possible they were so painful.

The filler bits are not that bad, even if the game ultimately falls short of wildlands in this as well, the basic capture the outposts, and side missions / activities are enjoyable on their own.

From a technical aspect the game also falls short. Gunplay is worse than in W also, less weapon choice, no prone position in the game, less fun, the crosshair is moving around and is not fixed to the middle of the screen, and I don't mean during aiming with a sniper, I mean all the fucking time, it is like wrestling with the game again.
It's much easier to hit enemies from a distance than from point blank range. Visual and audible feedback of hits is minimal, sometimes I'd stand 2 feet from an enemy and still miss 70% of the shots.

Graphics is also a two edged sword, from up close it looks good, but there is terrible pop in, and detail ends very abruptly about 50m in front of you. The pop in is obvious while walking / driving on the ground as well, but as soon as you start flying it becomes terrible. Enemies and vehicles and building models with more than 10 faces only appear if you fly well within detection range of them.
And while we're on the topic of flying, helicopter controls are a joke. It's not just simplified it is so simplified that you might as well not even have it in the game. Wildands got helicopter controls right, it was relatively easy, and great fun to fly them. Here it is boring as hell because of the lack of physics and any connection to reality whatsoever. You can't even crash the damn thing you fly into trees and buildings and nothing will happen. And tell me why the hell do helicopters have flares on them? There was never once in the entire campaign an occasion where one would need to use it. And the aiming difficulty extends to the choppa and planes as well. It would seem that if the enemy is too close to you bullets will just avoid them, like they're deliberately going on a detour around enemies, because the farther away they ere the easier to hit.

I was really hoping of getting at least for the final big boss a real boss battle, and not these annoying fake encounters, where normal rules don't apply, but it turned out worse then the rest of it and even more nonsensical.

The fuck you in the face ending is far from being the worst problem in the game. I might even have liked it for it's unique nature if not for all the annoying shit I've had to endure to finally get there. But as it stands now, I can only reiterate my opening statement: Fuck this game, and fuck it's ending. If you force the player to be your bitch trough the entire damn campaign at least have the common courtesy of giving them the last laugh.




+
  • Main gameplay when you're in control
  • Graphics up close
  • Good voice acting, too bad it's wasted on such a lousy and terrible story that's told even worse.
-
  • Boss fights or what passes for that in this game
  • The game wrestling away the control from you at every turn
  • Helicopter controls
  • The map is unbalanced. Out of the three regions only one is fairly enjoyable as far as filler content goes
  • The painful elongated verbal diarrhea that comes after each time you're forced into the back seat in the story
  • Terrible pop in, and lack of detail in graphics at a distance
  • The awful useless multi tiered weapon wheel
  • The whole process that is necessary to re-acquire weapons you already purchased after loosing them.
  • The same process of jumping trough menus and the getting to one of the few spawn points to be able to spawn a damn vehicle.
  • The help is useless. I mean the recruitable fighters and specialists.


Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 6 out of 10
story/atmosphere: -∞ out of 10
gameplay/controls: 6 out of 10

Overall impression: 5 out of 10

If they gave me a campaign DLC for wildlands of similar length (14h) I'd be 10 times happier than with this game.
 
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Driveclub (2014)

It does have a career mode..... lol. Single Race and Random Event are clearly listed. The career is the other option. You start out at the lowest performing class and you have to race through the events and place in the top spots in order to progress through each car class until the end. Just figured I'd put that out there because your review isn't accurate in case anyone reads it and hasn't played already. I think Drive club is a pretty damn good racing game that looks gorgeous to be honest. Just me though.


Anyways....

I just finished Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

Wanted to play through this one before Wolfenstein II. Played through the New Order a while ago.

I see no reason to go into a crazy detailed long review like some of these here so i'll keep it short. This is an excellent story driven FPS worth playing especially if you're a Wolfenstein fan. It's a shorter game then The New Order and The New Colossus but has better content story wise I think. I like its old school feel much better. I love the fact that it brought back the Nazi zombies too which the other games are lacking. The other 2 Wolf games feel like a Hydra style Nazi war machine enemy without any of the creepyness from the older games. Luckily The Old Blood gives a taste of that in between the other games. Its downside is that it's a bit short lived and not nearly as involved as the other games. Playing through The New Colossus now and there's much more to do but I knew that going in. If the Old Blood was a bit longer and evolved it would have been a 8.5/10 easy.... but I'd say the way it turned out it's a 7.5/10.

7.5/10
 
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It does have a career mode..... lol. Single Race and Random Event are clearly listed. The career is the other option. You start out at the lowest performing class and you have to race through the events and place in the top spots in order to progress through each car class until the end. Just figured I'd put that out there because your review isn't accurate in case anyone reads it and hasn't played already. I think Drive club is a pretty damn good racing game that looks gorgeous to be honest. Just me though.
I mentioned that, you race to unlock even more random races. A career mode would require some kind of in game currency that you accumulate to buy cars to enter other races. Or at the least a championship season where you race for points. This has neither. So I cannot call it a career mode.
 
Far Cry 5 (2018)

View attachment 64152
...

+
  • Main gameplay when you're in control
  • Graphics up close
  • Good voice acting, too bad it's wasted on such a lousy and terrible story that's told even worse.
-
  • Boss fights or what passes for that in this game
  • The game wrestling away the control from you at every turn
  • Helicopter controls
  • The map is unbalanced. Out of the three regions only one is fairly enjoyable as far as filler content goes
  • The painful elongated verbal diarrhea that comes after each time you're forced into the back seat in the story
  • Terrible pop in, and lack of detail in graphics at a distance
  • The awful useless multi tiered weapon wheel
  • The whole process that is necessary to re-acquire weapons you already purchased after loosing them.
  • The same process of jumping trough menus and the getting to one of the few spawn points to be able to spawn a damn vehicle.
  • The help is useless. I mean the recruitable fighters and specialists.


Scoring card:

graphics/realization: 6 out of 10
story/atmosphere: -∞ out of 10
gameplay/controls: 6 out of 10

Overall impression: 5 out of 10

If they gave me a campaign DLC for wildlands of similar length (14h) I'd be 10 times happier than with this game.

But is it any good? :)

I understand your points and agree with most to an extent, but c'mon, it's not that bad. It's just a continuation down the path of focus-group-tested vanilla mediocrity -- a place most AAA games have been going.

I do love the "controversy" this game has stirred up (read: dropped serendipitously by Ubisoft marketing to bolster interest). All in all, the game is pretty gosh-darned milquetoast and goes out of it's way to not offend anyone.
 
But is it any good? :)

I understand your points and agree with most to an extent, but c'mon, it's not that bad. It's just a continuation down the path of focus-group-tested vanilla mediocrity -- a place most AAA games have been going.

I do love the "controversy" this game has stirred up (read: dropped serendipitously by Ubisoft marketing to bolster interest). All in all, the game is pretty gosh-darned milquetoast and goes out of it's way to not offend anyone.
That's one of my problems with the game. Given the genre and the subject matter, it is extremely timid.

No, it's not that bad, but as I mentioned, ghost recon wildlands makes this game completely redundant. It has the same gameplay and does it much better than this. And the subject matter is not utilized even to ten percent of it's potential by FC5. I think Wildland utilizies it's own subject matter very well. While most people think it's story is uninteresting. I Think it's execution is almost perfect. I felt a level of immersion playing it, that only a few truly great games offer. You weren't the center of attention in it, but felt like only a part of a bigger story, but a crucial part nonetheless without becoming larger than life. Most games fail immersion and suspension of belief because their heroes become implausible. As is the case with FC5 and also was with FC3. Just replace spoiled brat with rook. Both are implausible as the killing machines they become in the course of about 10 seconds.

This can even be extended to the tomb raider reboot. What was the original about? Mostly your enemies were tombs and tricky traps, and a few wild animals. In the remake Lara kills people by the dozens right from the very start. It's completely off the rails. But I digress I don't even why I went down this road, but it's something to think of. Games should focus on clever stories and gameplay without having to kill hundreds of henchmen. It has become ridiculous. And I first noticed it with Max Payne 3. You literally have to kill over a thousand people in it. But it's the same thing with uncharted and every big budget title I play nowadays.
 
No, it's not that bad, but as I mentioned, ghost recon wildlands makes this game completely redundant. It has the same gameplay and does it much better than this. And the subject matter is not utilized even to ten percent of it's potential by FC5. I think Wildland utilizies it's own subject matter very well. While most people think it's story is uninteresting. I Think it's execution is almost perfect.

Haven't played FC5 yet but one being FPS is a big difference. FC3/4 were very fluid in your actions whereas Wildlands was clumsy. Very clumsy. They took the worst limitations of 3rd person and stuck with them. The story was lame to, and that is putting it mildly. It was lazy throughout. Every enemy = a sicario which translates to hitman. Every single bad guy in the cartel was a hitman? Doubtful. It was Mafia 3 levels of lazy where you see Lincoln Clay shouting aloud as if he was on a cellphone like in GTA, except there is no phone or earpiece on the person because it is the 60s. Wildlands and Mafia 3 are easily some of the most bland, formulaic games to have come out in years IMO.
 
Haven't played FC5 yet but one being FPS is a big difference. FC3/4 were very fluid in your actions whereas Wildlands was clumsy. Very clumsy. They took the worst limitations of 3rd person and stuck with them. The story was lame to, and that is putting it mildly. It was lazy throughout. Every enemy = a sicario which translates to hitman. Every single bad guy in the cartel was a hitman? Doubtful. It was Mafia 3 levels of lazy where you see Lincoln Clay shouting aloud as if he was on a cellphone like in GTA, except there is no phone or earpiece on the person because it is the 60s. Wildlands and Mafia 3 are easily some of the most bland, formulaic games to have come out in years IMO.
Wildlands is one of the best games I've ever played. It's easily on my top 10 list of all times. Mafia 3 is not even a footnote, they can't even be mentioned in the same room.
Sicario was just the name the agents used to call the enemy, like they always give some name to enemy combatants. Just like not every German soldier in WW2 was a political nazi.It's just a convenient but technically incorrect way to refer to them.
Lazy, and lame? Those are just words without explanation. What was lazy about it? Why was it lame? What does fluid vs. clumsy mean? I have no idea what do you mean by these statements.
The story in Wildlands was simple, but most stories in the real world are very simple. That's why it felt refreshing for a change, that there were no painfully executed twists and double agents and plants and red herrings in it. You went there to do a job and that's it, there is no magical, unbelievable padding in the story.

As for FPS vs TPS, that's not a relevant distinction to me anymore. I used to be one of the FPS > TPS guys, but I don't care nowadays. A game can be good or bad regardless of the pov.
 
As for FPS vs TPS, that's not a relevant distinction to me anymore. I used to be one of the FPS > TPS guys, but I don't care nowadays. A game can be good or bad regardless of the pov.

GR:W has FOV support for third person and it's one of the only (or... the only?) TPS I can play at FPS distances to my monitor.

I need to use a controller for The Division because I have to sit further away. Same with Tomb Raider (actually I played that at couch distance, mirrored to the TV via a Shield), Hellblade, etc.
 
Sicario was just the name the agents used to call the enemy, like they always give some name to enemy combatants.

No, sicario means hitman. Not every bad guy is a hitman. It would be like calling every armed person you encounter a sniper. Again, just laziness.

Lazy, and lame? Those are just words without explanation.

See above or on a previous page.

What does fluid vs. clumsy mean? I have no idea what do you mean by these statements.

Your camera view gets blocked, your character disappears, ect. Terrible. And your character gets stuck on many things, movement is robotic (although not ArmA bad). How the player interacts with everything in the game is horrific. Bouncing helicopters of death were not any fun either.

The story in Wildlands was simple, but most stories in the real world are very simple.

It was simply bad. It was a typically overly dramatic TV series grade story. Cheesy, unbelievable, awkward moments through around every now and then to keep you from falling asleep. It wouldn't have been that bad if the gameplay was interesting, but it was a typically poor 3rd person shooter with all the standard shortcomings. Had the game been released in 2003 it might have been a decent title, but it was dated by well over a decade by the time it arrived.

As for FPS vs TPS, that's not a relevant distinction to me anymore. I used to be one of the FPS > TPS guys, but I don't care nowadays. A game can be good or bad regardless of the pov.
[/QUOTE]

It can, but you should built the game around its strengths. If it is a fighting game, action adventure, or heavily story based RPG 3rd person is great. But Wildlands was anything but those. It was constant cut/paste set piece shooting scenarios, and 3rd person is terrible for shooting compared to 1st.

Instead of real gameplay depth they give you 20 different T shirt options, 30 different shorts, a dozen stupid haircuts and other crap. They could have made the customization somewhat interesting had there been different armor types / levels or something, but again they were too lazy to do that. Fetch quests and unnecessary, borderline insane customization can fill in when you don't have any good ideas.
 
GR:W has FOV support for third person and it's one of the only (or... the only?) TPS I can play at FPS distances to my monitor.

I need to use a controller for The Division because I have to sit further away. Same with Tomb Raider (actually I played that at couch distance, mirrored to the TV via a Shield), Hellblade, etc.
Haven't thought of that before, but now that you mention it. Yeah, many TPS games have terrible FOV, I hate that so much. Maybe that's why for a moment I didn't even realize that FC5 was a FPS and Wildlands was a TPS, it just wasn't an important distinction.
 
No, sicario means hitman. Not every bad guy is a hitman. It would be like calling every armed person you encounter a sniper. Again, just laziness.
I'm not sure if you're deliberately not getting the point. Let me try to get it trough to you in an example: Do you think that every German soldier in WW2 was a national socialist? Because nazi means national socialist, doesn't it?

Your camera view gets blocked, your character disappears, ect. Terrible. And your character gets stuck on many things, movement is robotic (although not ArmA bad). How the player interacts with everything in the game is horrific. Bouncing helicopters of death were not any fun either.
Are you sure you're not mistaking this for another game? Even after the 1000th time I found myself still admiring how fluid and perfect were there animations for tagging supplies.
It seems to me you're just scrambling to find reasons to hate the game. But you are free to not like the game, without reason, you don't have to justify it to those who like the game.


It was simply bad. It was a typically overly dramatic TV series grade story. Cheesy, unbelievable, awkward moments through around every now and then to keep you from falling asleep. It wouldn't have been that bad if the gameplay was interesting, but it was a typically poor 3rd person shooter with all the standard shortcomings. Had the game been released in 2003 it might have been a decent title, but it was dated by well over a decade by the time it arrived.
Piling on more adjectives doesn't provide any meaningful information. For what it's worth I loved the story. I don't understand what is unbelievable in it to you. That the US government would send agents into foreign countries? Or that the local police would be highly corrupt to the point of almost working for criminals? The least plausible thing in the game is that a cartel would come to openly control a country, the rest however either happened historically, or even going on now. I'd be hard pressed to think of any game that is more believable. Just for kicks, what game do you think has a believable story?



It can, but you should built the game around its strengths. If it is a fighting game, action adventure, or heavily story based RPG 3rd person is great. But Wildlands was anything but those. It was constant cut/paste set piece shooting scenarios, and 3rd person is terrible for shooting compared to 1st.
I don't remember a single location in the game that was copy and paste. All were unique, and each gave a different challenge. Either by their geographic location, it's defenses, or layout. But mostly it was always the combination of the three. In fact I don't remember any game that had such variance in it. From salt flats to dense jungles, to rocky mountain sides, to snowy peaks, to ancient ruins, marshlands, deserts, open pit mines, underground mineshafts, airports, huge military bases, small outposts, villages, a huge dam, railway yards, bridges, large towns, prisons, ports and that's far from a comprehensive list, there were dozens of other amazing locations. It literally had everything, and you're calling it cut and paste, what is wrong with you?

Instead of real gameplay depth they give you 20 different T shirt options, 30 different shorts, a dozen stupid haircuts and other crap. They could have made the customization somewhat interesting had there been different armor types / levels or something, but again they were too lazy to do that. Fetch quests and unnecessary, borderline insane customization can fill in when you don't have any good ideas.
The customization options are completely irrelevant to the quality of the game. It is not good because of it. If there was zero customization it would be all the same to me. I never spent a single credit on custom badges or anything they offered trough micro-transactions as it is completely irrelevant. I can't even say the game is good in spite of it, because it doesn't matter. The game was just good, and besides it had customization options.
 
I'm not sure if you're deliberately not getting the point. Let me try to get it trough to you in an example: Do you think that every German soldier in WW2 was a national socialist? Because nazi means national socialist, doesn't it?

You're missing the entire point. "Sciario" isn't a generic term for bad guys. It means hitman.

Ten drug cartel members are in a village. Three are sicarios (hitmen), seven are low level guards. You're doing recon (pun intended since it is in the games title). You need to prioritize targets because once the shooting starts you may not be able to kill all before they flee to a vehicle and need to take out the priority targets.

Are you still going to call all ten of them "sicarios"? No.

Just because the cartel has a few snipers, do you call all the guys that work for them snipers? Of course not. That would be equally stupid.

Your analogy makes no sense. You're referring to nicknames for an enemy, not a type of combatant. For example you can call a German a "Nazi sniper" or "Nazi anti tank soldiers".

I think you're confusing "sicario" with Tango, Terrs, X-Ray, ect. which are code names for terrorists. As they don't belong to a nation or legitimate faction hence the quick in field nickname. "Three tangos, two snipers, one rifleman". What you're saying is "Three sicarios, two sicarios, one rifleman". It makes no sense.


See? Laziness. Lack of effort on the developers part and it shows.

Are you sure you're not mistaking this for another game?

No. It makes me question how much you've actually played the game because this happens fairly easily once indoors... like practically all 3rd person shooters.

It seems to me you're just scrambling to find reasons to hate the game.

I keep posting plenty of reasons but you seem oblivious to them. Besides, the game was panned as being mediocre across the board. I think that is telling.

But you are free to not like the game, without reason, you don't have to justify it to those who like the game.

Same to you, but to deny the problems and make the game out to be a masterpiece is just awkward. It literally was a game designed around generic game check box requirements (open world, repetitive, lots of pointless customization, multiplayer infused) riding off of the name of a formerly good series. To claim this isn't true just isn't in sync with reality even if you liked the game.

Piling on more adjectives doesn't provide any meaningful information.

I've already done plenty of that, you can previous my previous posts on this game. Easily a 5-6 / 10. But then again I can't stand lazy games more than the big review sites, which is why my review was lower than theirs.

For what it's worth I loved the story. I don't understand what is unbelievable in it to you.

Everything about it and how it unfolds. Again, TV series grade cheesiness. The cutscenes, the characters, their actions and everything was off. Fine for what it was, a low effort phoned in story.

I don't remember a single location in the game that was copy and paste.

Then you didn't play the game. The buildings are clearly reused dozens if not hundreds of times. Often in the same area.

All were unique, and each gave a different challenge.

Overstatement of the decade. If you applied that logic fairly to other games, Mad Max, Far Cry 3/4, Assassin's Creed, and every other checkpoint based open world game should get that praise. Tweaking the layout slightly and the surrounding foliage isn't a big feat nor is it enough to keep the gameplay fresh when it is so limiting in the first place.

In fact I don't remember any game that had such variance in it.

Just about any game with unique levels would qualify for that... and there are dozens upon dozens.

From salt flats to dense jungles, to rocky mountain sides, to snowy peaks, to ancient ruins, marshlands, deserts, open pit mines, underground mineshafts, airports, huge military bases, small outposts, villages, a huge dam, railway yards, bridges, large towns, prisons, ports and that's far from a comprehensive list, there were dozens of other amazing locations.

All empty, desolate areas just mean to lengthen the game by making the player run around and steal vehicles to get from point A to B. All generic cut/paste outposts with the same gameplay throughout. Oh wow they moved the watch tower and added snow to the ground, its entirely different. /S.

As I mentioned previously, the only good thing about the game is that the terrian looked nice and varied. But that doesn't result in different gameplay mechanics. AI spots you just as well in foliage as they do in open terrian. Thanks to 3rd person and the odd tag system you can see enemies just as well regardless of terrian to. As far as I could tell, camo uniforms didn't help either. I suppose that would require effort and making a unique game experience, and not be the easy generic open world template Ubi sought to create...

The customization options are completely irrelevant to the quality of the game...

Indeed. It is typically something you do when you lack the desire to innovate or put effort into other areas. The generic, lazy games tend to be full of worthless (from a gameplay) perspective cosmetic crap. Which Wildlands certainly is.
 
Gears of War 4.

A game which brings back the horrible 3rd person shooter of the 2006-2010 era with all its nastiness. But somehow manages not to be outright terrible. Let us start off with the bad. The 3rd person aspect and everything about it. The game is clunky, slow and awkward to control. GoW4 places the camera close to the character and often switches to an over the shoulder position when doing a lot of tasks. This amplifies the shortcomings of the 3rd person perspective and you often lack situational awareness that you need.

Control input is slow and too many functions are tied to a single button. I decided on using an Xbox controller and that does not resolve the issues. Aiming is slow and awkward even with a mouse, but the movement with the keyboard was fairly bad so I decided to used the controller.

The weapon and combat dynamics are too repetitive. There is not a lot of variety, and of the weapons only half are worth using. Grenades are hard to come by which makes the combat even more stale. Enemies are bullet sponges which means you hold down the trigger until they drop. Flanking isn't worthwhile. The most practical thing to do is get behind cover and hold down the trigger. You will win eventually. For a game that centers purely on combat, it just isn't fun.

There are some melee options such as pulling a bad guy over a wall but you seldom get the opportunity to do it and it offers no real advantage. The chainsaw bayonet is cool but you have to awkwardly rev it up, and then slowly lumber towards an enemy. I'd like to charge an enemy with a bayonet, not stumble along and walk up to them.

The story is terrible. I suppose if you had played previous games it might hold some nostalgic value, but even then there are not a lot of worthwhile events that happen. Clearly the game was designed just to stretch the IP out further because it doesn't build into anything substantial.

The other shortcomings are technical. The game freezes every 1 1/2 hours, often during cutscenes. Sometimes cutscenes have some stutters even when it doesn't freeze. The load times are obscene, probably a good 3-4 minutes on a 6 core CPU, with 16GB of RAM and an SSD. It takes well over a minute to get into the menu. The install size is equally absurd, at over 100GB. Otherwise the game runs nicely and looks good, but clearly it needs some patches that will probably never come.

The good? The gameplay manages to be somewhat fun. Clearly it could have been better, but the lack of busy work, chores and other menus to sift through allows you to simply enjoy what the game has to offer. Shoot monsters or robots around 20-25 times each, slowly run up to one and cut them in half with a chainsaw, push through a mission and rinse repeat. The game can be fairly easy on normal which is a good thing, as some of the checkpoints are awkward and force you to rewatch cutscenes and similar.

The total length is around 9 hours, which is perfect seeing how the game is fairly shallow. You can easily finish this on a weekend and simply be done with it. You'll know it is a mediocre game, but if you need to turn off your brain and don't have anything else to play this is a good candidate.


7/10
 
You're missing the entire point. "Sciario" isn't a generic term for bad guys. It means hitman.

Ten drug cartel members are in a village. Three are sicarios (hitmen), seven are low level guards. You're doing recon (pun intended since it is in the games title). You need to prioritize targets because once the shooting starts you may not be able to kill all before they flee to a vehicle and need to take out the priority targets.

Are you still going to call all ten of them "sicarios"? No.

Just because the cartel has a few snipers, do you call all the guys that work for them snipers? Of course not. That would be equally stupid.

Your analogy makes no sense. You're referring to nicknames for an enemy, not a type of combatant. For example you can call a German a "Nazi sniper" or "Nazi anti tank soldiers".

I think you're confusing "sicario" with Tango, Terrs, X-Ray, ect. which are code names for terrorists. As they don't belong to a nation or legitimate faction hence the quick in field nickname. "Three tangos, two snipers, one rifleman". What you're saying is "Three sicarios, two sicarios, one rifleman". It makes no sense.
I'm not missing the point, I just assume the word sicario is used as a nickname for all cartel goons. You make it into a problem, I assume it's a non problem. Because when your team spot actual snipers or heavy machinegunners they'll refer to them as such.

See? Laziness. Lack of effort on the developers part and it shows.
What would your choice be for a collective word for generic cartel guys? Even if it is laziness to call them sicarios, I'm not bothered by it.

No. It makes me question how much you've actually played the game because this happens fairly easily once indoors... like practically all 3rd person shooters.
Then I guess it is a good thing that 99.99% of the game takes place outdoors. Maybe that's why this hasn't left a lasting impression on me. Don't get me wrong, I'd have preferred the game to be 1st person, but I still enjoyed it.

I keep posting plenty of reasons but you seem oblivious to them. Besides, the game was panned as being mediocre across the board. I think that is telling.
Well, who says I have to agree with the majority? There are plenty of movies that I love that have 4-5 scores on IMDB.
Same to you, but to deny the problems and make the game out to be a masterpiece is just awkward. It literally was a game designed around generic game check box requirements (open world, repetitive, lots of pointless customization, multiplayer infused) riding off of the name of a formerly good series. To claim this isn't true just isn't in sync with reality even if you liked the game.
It depends what do you mean by series, all Tom Clancy games? Because that has become such a broad thing, that it's pointless to even call it a series. I don't think the game is a masterpiece, it just excels on the gameplay level. It copies Mercenaries 2, and fall short of it on many fronts. I even mentioned this in my review.
This game is like FarCry, most people would say it's a generic shooter, but it's one of the best experiences I've had. Same with this.


Everything about it and how it unfolds. Again, TV series grade cheesiness. The cutscenes, the characters, their actions and everything was off. Fine for what it was, a low effort phoned in story.
I like it because it is not centered around the player. I always felt the main character here is not you, but your handler. You're just a group of mercs doing the dirty work. And that's what makes it believable to me. But then again, I think many B movies have the same charm, they don't try to be flashy and bid higher than everyone else, just tell a story.
It's fair to say this is not a story driven game, it just serves as a backdrop so you're not running around completely without goals.

Then you didn't play the game. The buildings are clearly reused dozens if not hundreds of times. Often in the same area.
Every open world game reuses buildings, show me a game that doesn't re-use building models at all. I was referring to the layout of the bases and outposts that is completely unique in every single case.


Overstatement of the decade. If you applied that logic fairly to other games, Mad Max, Far Cry 3/4, Assassin's Creed, and every other checkpoint based open world game should get that praise.
How do you know I didn't? Mad Max was one of the first games I reviewed in this topic and it gets plenty of praise from me. I also liked FC3, altough not as much as Wildlands, but still found it enjoyable.


Just about any game with unique levels would qualify for that... and there are dozens upon dozens.
Not really, the game is not just good because of the variance, but because it gets the basic gameplay mechanics right. It feels good to play it, similarly to Mad Max, or HL1, or HL2 for example.


All empty, desolate areas just mean to lengthen the game by making the player run around and steal vehicles to get from point A to B. All generic cut/paste outposts with the same gameplay throughout. Oh wow they moved the watch tower and added snow to the ground, its entirely different. /S.
I don't really know what do you want. Every game has the same gameplay throughout. It's not like Doom suddenly becomes a chess game after level 3, or Skyrim would turn into sokoban after level 10. Of course the game has the same gameplay for the entire time, I wouldn't even have it any other way. In fact when a game ditches it's gameplay elements midway it is almost always a disappointment.
Being open world just means that the levels don't come in order after one and other on a string, but you choose the order in which you do them. It's hard to accuse the game of being empty and desolate, there are so many missions and outposts that it was actually hard to get out of the action for a few seconds.
The one thing I'd say which is a negative here, that there is not much to find, there are no unique secrets or hidden treasures in the game, and that's a big negative.

As I mentioned previously, the only good thing about the game is that the terrian looked nice and varied. But that doesn't result in different gameplay mechanics. AI spots you just as well in foliage as they do in open terrian. Thanks to 3rd person and the odd tag system you can see enemies just as well regardless of terrian to. As far as I could tell, camo uniforms didn't help either. I suppose that would require effort and making a unique game experience, and not be the easy generic open world template Ubi sought to create...
The AI won't spot you in foliage just as easily, in fact I think stealth in the game was almost too easy. If camo uniforms made a difference, that would put the game eerily close to being pay to win. If you couldn't buy outfits for money then it would be a good thing, but as it stands, we're better off if it doesn't matter. But of course the best would be if there were no microtransactions in the game at all.


Indeed. It is typically something you do when you lack the desire to innovate or put effort into other areas. The generic, lazy games tend to be full of worthless (from a gameplay) perspective cosmetic crap. Which Wildlands certainly is.
And that's where we have to disagree, because from a gameplay perspective I do think Wildlands is almost perfect. That's why I spent 77 hours playing it so far.
 
Allright, let's get back on track. And review some games. I'm actually running out of archived reviews, so I'd better start finishing some games soon to have something to rant about. In the meantime here is something old.

The Chronicles of Riddick Escape From Butcher Bay (2004/2009)

download-free-full-games-for-pc.jpg


I am one of those people who loved the first two Riddick movies, (the third was terrible imo). So of course I immediately finished this game when it came out in 2004. I learned that they released an updated version in 2009, accompanying the sequel, Assault on Dark Athena.

This release includes improved graphics, which I couldn't tell by looking at it, but that's only my memory playing tricks on me, after checking out the original as comparison I can say it's quite a big improvement. This is emphasized by the fact that the hardware requirement of the game is increased quite a bit as well. At the time of my first playtrough I used an nVidia 9600 GT graphics card which in 2009 it was a good mid-range card. I thought that a remake couldn't possibly need more hardware than that. I was dead wrong. The game was like a slideshow on that poor 9600GT when maxed out.

With this game it's exponentially true that time makes everything seem better. I remember it as a great role playing game with player choice and great graphics, but going trough it again, the story is completely linear, the maps are small, with hardly any objects in them. Which is acceptable for a cell block, that there are no items that can be used as weapons by the inmates. But the guard's quarters and office levels are just as barren as the cell blocks. The level of detail in some levels reminded me of Wolfestein3d.

The game has three selling points that make it better than average shooters. One is the atmosphere which resembles the mood of the movies very well, the second are the one liners that Riddick keeps dropping. And the third are the RPG elements, that are indeed limited, but still a welcome addition to any shooter.

The story has a pretty simple structure, it goes like this: Riddick arrives at the prison, and he gets thrown into the least secure part of the prison, and after he stirs up enough shit, he gets thrown into a bit more secure part of the prison. And this scheme repeats a few times, until he visits all the various cell blocks in the game. Of course this is a very simplistic explanation of the story, but I don't want to start dropping spoilers. Each of these so called cell blocks are copied from somewhere, I think I've seen all these concepts in some movie or game before, but it's not a problem, the game uses the borrowed material well.

This game also has the loathed checkpoint based save system. For example if you screw up badly in the game, but you still manage to reach the next checkpoint with a tiny bit of health, your savegame gets overwritten, and there is no going back. This happens very easily since you never know where the next checkpoint will be. And then you stand there with no bullets or no health to do the next part. The only help you get in these situations is that if you die five times at a checkpoint the game gives one bonus point to your health.

As I mentioned the good things in the game include, the fact that the atmosphere of the movies is recreated remarkably well. The RPG elements like trading with other inmates, conversations, getting into prize fights. The ability to use stealth instead of brute force.

I enjoyed the game and if you don't expect anything original the story is all right and twisty enough as well.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Gameplay
  • One-liners
  • RPG elements

-

  • Graphics
  • Simplistic map design
  • The almost complete lack of objects and props, if you find something on a level, then you can be 100% sure that you'll need to use it
  • Checkpoint system with no going back

All in all, it's worth giving a go to this game, the story and atmosphere will make it worth your while, especially if you like the movies like me. It gives a back-story to the character, and you even learn how he got his fancy eyes.

As a remake I only give it a 4 out of 10, because it didn't improve much on the original, apart from the hardware demand. At least they could've filled the hollow office levels with some furniture. The game itself is a strong 7/10.
 
Mario Odyssey

Shit controls. They're horrible. You can't aim, buttons fail to activate about 50% of the time. The game should not have seen the light of day. Did I mention shit controls? Fuck you Nintendo. More than likely a patch will cost $15.

5/10.
 
Mario Odyssey

Shit controls. They're horrible. You can't aim, buttons fail to activate about 50% of the time. The game should not have seen the light of day. Did I mention shit controls? Fuck you Nintendo. More than likely a patch will cost $15.

5/10.
I agree if you are using the joycons. Controls are a lot better if you use the pro controller or like me get the dongle to connect a PS4 controller to the switch. Made playing switch games a whole lot better. It is lame you have to go out and put money into better controllers then what comes with the system.
 
Allright, let's get back on track. And review some games. I'm actually running out of archived reviews, so I'd better start finishing some games soon to have something to rant about. In the meantime here is something old.

The Chronicles of Riddick Escape From Butcher Bay (2004/2009)

View attachment 68786

I am one of those people who loved the first two Riddick movies, (the third was terrible imo). So of course I immediately finished this game when it came out in 2004. I learned that they released an updated version in 2009, accompanying the sequel, Assault on Dark Athena.

This release includes improved graphics, which I couldn't tell by looking at it, but that's only my memory playing tricks on me, after checking out the original as comparison I can say it's quite a big improvement. This is emphasized by the fact that the hardware requirement of the game is increased quite a bit as well. At the time of my first playtrough I used an nVidia 9600 GT graphics card which in 2009 it was a good mid-range card. I thought that a remake couldn't possibly need more hardware than that. I was dead wrong. The game was like a slideshow on that poor 9600GT when maxed out.

With this game it's exponentially true that time makes everything seem better. I remember it as a great role playing game with player choice and great graphics, but going trough it again, the story is completely linear, the maps are small, with hardly any objects in them. Which is acceptable for a cell block, that there are no items that can be used as weapons by the inmates. But the guard's quarters and office levels are just as barren as the cell blocks. The level of detail in some levels reminded me of Wolfestein3d.

The game has three selling points that make it better than average shooters. One is the atmosphere which resembles the mood of the movies very well, the second are the one liners that Riddick keeps dropping. And the third are the RPG elements, that are indeed limited, but still a welcome addition to any shooter.

The story has a pretty simple structure, it goes like this: Riddick arrives at the prison, and he gets thrown into the least secure part of the prison, and after he stirs up enough shit, he gets thrown into a bit more secure part of the prison. And this scheme repeats a few times, until he visits all the various cell blocks in the game. Of course this is a very simplistic explanation of the story, but I don't want to start dropping spoilers. Each of these so called cell blocks are copied from somewhere, I think I've seen all these concepts in some movie or game before, but it's not a problem, the game uses the borrowed material well.

This game also has the loathed checkpoint based save system. For example if you screw up badly in the game, but you still manage to reach the next checkpoint with a tiny bit of health, your savegame gets overwritten, and there is no going back. This happens very easily since you never know where the next checkpoint will be. And then you stand there with no bullets or no health to do the next part. The only help you get in these situations is that if you die five times at a checkpoint the game gives one bonus point to your health.

As I mentioned the good things in the game include, the fact that the atmosphere of the movies is recreated remarkably well. The RPG elements like trading with other inmates, conversations, getting into prize fights. The ability to use stealth instead of brute force.

I enjoyed the game and if you don't expect anything original the story is all right and twisty enough as well.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Gameplay
  • One-liners
  • RPG elements

-

  • Graphics
  • Simplistic map design
  • The almost complete lack of objects and props, if you find something on a level, then you can be 100% sure that you'll need to use it
  • Checkpoint system with no going back

All in all, it's worth giving a go to this game, the story and atmosphere will make it worth your while, especially if you like the movies like me. It gives a back-story to the character, and you even learn how he got his fancy eyes.

As a remake I only give it a 4 out of 10, because it didn't improve much on the original, apart from the hardware demand. At least they could've filled the hollow office levels with some furniture. The game itself is a strong 7/10.

Agree with you on all points here. Despite all of the detractions you mention, it somehow pulls off being an excellent game. There are some things done really badly, while others are top notch e.g. stealth mechanics, lighting, dialogue, atmosphere, satisfying weapons (the "shiv" is, IMO, one of the finest weapons in any game -- so satisfying).

The only part I'd disagree is on the checkpoint system. I recall it really forcing you to hone your skills, look for better ways to solve problems, and added an element of value to your health another system wouldn't have.

Have you played Dark Athena? I think it's been sitting in my backlog for 5 years now, but never had time to pick it up. It sort of looks lik a continuation of Butcher Bay...
 
Agree with you on all points here. Despite all of the detractions you mention, it somehow pulls off being an excellent game. There are some things done really badly, while others are top notch e.g. stealth mechanics, lighting, dialogue, atmosphere, satisfying weapons (the "shiv" is, IMO, one of the finest weapons in any game -- so satisfying).

The only part I'd disagree is on the checkpoint system. I recall it really forcing you to hone your skills, look for better ways to solve problems, and added an element of value to your health another system wouldn't have.

Have you played Dark Athena? I think it's been sitting in my backlog for 5 years now, but never had time to pick it up. It sort of looks lik a continuation of Butcher Bay...

But you can't really do better, if you're locked in to your first solution all the time, no matter how bad it might be. There was one map in particular where I didn't know what to do and ended up shooting all my bullets in frustration into walls, then I accidentally stumbled upon the way forward and ended up without any.

I tried Athena way back when it came out, but tossed it after half an hour. I'm not 100% certain why, I think it had something to do with the game forcing you to use combat and not allowing stealth like the first. But I'm not sure, it was so long ago.
 
Full Mario Odyssey (aka Mario GTA) review.

Controls are utter crap. Half the time your character will do something entirely different. This gets you killed frequently. You'll die due to deactivation of controls or the game deciding to actuate a different action than what you were actually doing. It is bad enough that I would support a motion to pull the game from shelves and offer refunds to all customers until they can release a working game. Until then don't buy the game. If you must play it, wait until the Swtich gets cracked. There is no excuse to have non-functional controls given their budget. Nintendo should be subject to all Lemon laws applicable and people should be forced out of the business and/or sitting behind bars.

Outside of entirely broken controls the game is repetitive. There are hundreds of moons to get, but the majority are repetitive. The majority are obtained by doing repeating mini games and side quests... that repeat over, and over and over again. Each map has about half a dozen of the same activities. You'll end up doing the same type of thing about 30-40 times by the end of the game. Very much like a shallow, cut and paste GTA game.

The bosses are also the same four which repeat time and time again. All of which are very similar to. The unique bosses per level are gone.

Finding moons range from stupid easy to frustrating merely due to broken controls. There are about 500 too many. There should have been less moons but more clever ways and activities required to get them all. You seldom see a moon and think "so how do I get that?". You end up walking upon the same damn mini game and proceed to do the same thing once again to get a moon. No fun in finding them, no fun in getting most of them.

The levels themselves are okay but just don't offer massive gameplay changes. Traversing the map doesn't give any new challenges. They just end up feeling very similar. It might be a bit of nostalgia because the last Mario game I played was 64, but the levels, ways to traverse them, and finding stars were a lot more unique. Very few repeating mini games and each star required some thinking to get.

Overall I'd give it a 5/10. A complete failure.




I agree if you are using the joycons. Controls are a lot better if you use the pro controller or like me get the dongle to connect a PS4 controller to the switch. Made playing switch games a whole lot better. It is lame you have to go out and put money into better controllers then what comes with the system.

Yeah I'd seriously consider getting a Pro Controller, but the MSRP is crazy. What really gets me is that you can't charge the joycon grip without a $25 charging grip as well. There are aftermarket ones for $15, but Nintendo should've included a USB-C port to the standard grip. Overall a nice system but it seems like they're unnecessarily trying to get you to pay more for accessories.

Mario Odyssey itself is great but some of those controls (at least with joycon + grip) are just horrid. Take fast swimming under water. 50% of the time Mario decides to butt smash. The problem is the game is all puzzles which require precise controls. If the controls don't work, the whole game falls apart.
 
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Finish a game? I'm not sure I've actually finished a game since.... Borderlands 2? I've given up a couple hundred in frustration though.

I took a look at my PS4 stack of games the other day and laughed. So many games that will never be finished.

And let's not start about my Steam backlog... I could quit my job tomorrow and only play video games for the next 5 years and I don't think I could catch up.

edit - I remembered I did finish Xcom 2. That was fun but punishingly hard. I might revist that again if the new DLC gets down to $5.
 
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A quick run down of a few games I played in the last few months...

Subnautica
I found this game to be amazing. Enjoyed every minute of it. Subnautica is a open world survival and exploration game set on a alien planet that is mostly water. Loved exploring in the game. At times when the music kicked in, the increase in tension would make me anxious to go on and it not even a horror game. Also includes casual modes if you don't want to worry about some of the dangers and want to just build bases.

Quantum Break
For me the game was enjoyable. Very narrative focused instead of game play as a lot of the game is reading, listening or watching the long cut scenes( it has live action cut scenes too). The story is about time travel which I found to be done well and not too confusing. Game play wise, it is average. You get some cool abilities and shoot stuff, no break through gameplay wise but it does mix in the time abilities well. Graphically the game looked great, no performance issues or bugs that I encountered.

Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter
My first Sherlock game and first game in the genre. Finding clues to solve the mysteries was fun. I would have liked to have more clues and to expand on the how and why of some of the mysteries. I felt that some of the reasons was just explained without the clues actually matching, maybe my deduction skills are just bad.

Tacoma
A walking simulator. You explore a space station in the near future trying to determine what happened. You relive momements of the crew using a sort of augment reality system that lets you pause/rewind/fast forward the events as you put the pieces together. I had fun but it was under 2 hours to complete.
 
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I just finished the main story of God of war 4 on PS4, I thought it was pretty decent altough a bit short, the end felt a bit rushed hence why I'm still running some side quests I put off not knowing how close to the end I was. Atreus get's a bit annoying halfway trough the story which feels somewhat forced although some of his lines are pretty funny during that phase.

Graphics are very good imo, gameplay felt a bit off, dodging out of the way was kind of hit and miss, this worked waaay better in Horizon zero dawn. Also trying to throw my axe more then once resulted in me doing a special attack in stead wasting a bunch of resources, but overall it's not too bad. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy but do require you too look around a decent amount, also some revisiting of early locations is needed to open stuff you could not access at the start (like in the early Zelda games).

The 2 dwarves who run the shops all over the place are good fun, especially the neat freak.

All in all a solid game, get's an 7.5/10 from me.
 
Mirror Edge: Catalyst

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

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

Graphically the game looked good.

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