Review the game you finished recently.

Finished COD MW3 MP Season Pass 1. I thought it was well done and the new guns are very nice. Also unlocked the hard to unlock LMG. Fruitful 2XP events as well. Solid 9/10 from me as I spent a ton of time on this and am about level 178 or something.
 
Lies of P (PC via Gamepass)

Lies of P is a 3rd person action game that is based upon the world of Pinocchio. While the setting and story make it at least relatively unique, the game has a gothic look/vibe that's quite similar to Bloodborne. The gameplay borrows heavily from the Souls games and Bloodborne. So much so that most people would easily mistake it for one. My wife thought it was.

Graphics: It's a good looking game. Not quite great (like the new Lords of the Fallen), but it's still a step beyond the Souls games that inspired it. It's tough to compare it to Elden Ring since the art style it different, but I'd say it's comparable. It has more advance lighting and atmospheric effects, but sometimes at the cost of details.

Sound: Audio is solid. You can hear enemies coming at you from different directions, the sound effects have impact, the music is high quality (although a bit sparse), and the voice acting is appropriate.

Gameplay: If you've played a Souls game or especially Bloodborne, you'll be right at home. At least as a melee-based character. There aren't a ton of options for playing a ranged character (at least without spending a fortune on throwing items), so that's something to consider. There are roughly 25 different weapons and to add some nuance, you can mix and match parts for most of them to create unique weapons to suit your liking. You have a mechanical arm, a la Sekiro, but it always felt like an afterthought to me. Damage and utility were always a bit limited and you only got a few uses without constantly needing to use finite items to use it more. Maybe I missed the boat, but I wasn't a big fan of it. Attacking, running, rolling, backstabbing, blocking, etc. all work like you expect from other Soulslike games. There are some nuances to parrying vs. blocking and the need to repair weapons, but nothing huge. How challenging is it? I felt like it fell right in the middle of the various Soulslike titles. Later bosses were beastly, but I would go for long stretches without dying in the middle of the game. Especially when not fighting bosses. If things ever feel too rough, you can summon an AI ghost to assist with boss battles.

Overall: Lies of P is a contender for the best Souls-like game that isn't from Fromsoft themselves. There are some things it does even better than they do, too. It isn't perfect, but it's a great combination of gameplay, challenge, visuals, and a pretty solid story. I guess you could probably knock it for lacking originality, but I like the Souls games and haven't tired of them yet.

88/100
 
Finished Ghostwire Tokyo. A bit weird game tbh. I really didn't enjoy it but kept playing because story had some intrigue. It had some of the worst mechanics as well like continuous busy work - slapping stuff to get ammo rather than picking it up, depositing souls, trying to pull cores, taking time to replenish health... all of which destroyed immersion from typical shooter formula. I would have liked mechanics similar to Immortals that relied on movement and skill rather than cheap delays to get the job done. I would give it a 6/10. It took me ages to commit to the game and I skipped most of side missions as they were repetitive af. Free on gamepass is free so can't complain too much. If you have nothing to play it might be worth having a look but it is just a mediocre game with a story that didn't do anything for me and gameplay which was borderline a sum of chores to perform rather than a game to enjoy.

Uninstalled.
 
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

Gameplay 8/10 - Classic homeworld experience, but an interesting twist being ground-based. Unit balance was excellent and the resource constraints playing on Hard made having good unit micro and placement critical. Very very enjoyable.

Story 7/10 - I actually rather enjoyed the story, lots of fleshing out the franchise and hopefully setting up Homeworld 3 for a strong story.

Value 5/10 - It isn't a $50 game. The entire campaign took me 10 hours, and that was with me taking it very slow and enjoying the gameplay. If there were another 10-15 missions I could see this being a full price offering.

Overall 7.5/10 - I'd strongly recommend picking it up during a Steam sale. The game is solid, just not worth the asking price.
 
Finished Trepang2.

Poor man shooter. Lots of bugs and stupidity. Average gameplay. I know people said it reminded them of FEAR games but not for me. It was just all around a average to bad time.
Gunplay was terrible, bullet spread was all over the place, the slow motion ran out too fast, difficulty was also all over the place. Guns took ages to reload, many times gun wouldn't fire after reload (not sure if it is a bug or feature?), no iron sights, dual weild was an exercise in frustration. Terrible graphics that required you to try to find red crosshair to find baddies since once guns started firing the screen flashes were too bright to show anything correctly.

I give it a very mediocre 5/10. The best part was it was only 6 main missions and you can completely skip the sides which is what I did. Don't waste your time like I did.
 
KickAssCop said:
Finished Trepang2.

Poor man shooter. Lots of bugs and stupidity. Average gameplay. I know people said it reminded them of FEAR games but not for me. It was just all around a average to bad time.
Gunplay was terrible, bullet spread was all over the place, the slow motion ran out too fast, difficulty was also all over the place. Guns took ages to reload, many times gun wouldn't fire after reload (not sure if it is a bug or feature?), no iron sights, dual weild was an exercise in frustration. Terrible graphics that required you to try to find red crosshair to find baddies since once guns started firing the screen flashes were too bright to show anything correctly.

I give it a very mediocre 5/10. The best part was it was only 6 main missions and you can completely skip the sides which is what I did. Don't waste your time like I did.
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Thanks for this.. I have been eyeing this one for a min. Guess I'm gonna skip it
 
Hellblade:Senuas Sacrifice

Bought it on sale for just $3 last weekend during the Steam sale and was hooked enough to beat it in two nights.

A different approach to what I'm used to when I think of hack n slash type games. Only, it's not really a hack n slash, more of an adventure style game with periodic points in the story that has combat.

All in all, I was very impressed with this game. The setting, sound, acting and some of the combat scenes were some of the most enjoyable in recent memory.

One thing to add is that the combat didn't overly bombard you either. Turning down every corner of pathway and there's another enemy. Not in this game. You can go 20 minutes plus without fighting and still enjoy the adventure side of things. And when combat does come your way, it was rather exciting.

Overall - I loved this game. The only downfall IMHO was there really wasn't anything to customize or upgrade.

The last chapter alone was worth playing through the rest for. One of the best endings in a game I've played.

Gameplay - 8.5/10

Action - 8.5/10 The last chapter pumps this number to an 8.5 from a 6 or 7.

Sound -9/10

Ending - 9.5/10

Overall - 8.75/10
 
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Been playing Wartales on the weekends, and Conan Exiles during the week after i get home from work. Also tried a little on PalWorld but not too much yet.
 
kamxam said:
Been playing Wartales on the weekends, and Conan Exiles during the week after i get home from work. Also tried a little on PalWorld but not too much yet.
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Haven't played Conan since the first or second year. I saw there was a big update recently. Worth getting back in to?
 
Tekken 8 (PC)

Your enjoyment of Tekken 8 probably depends on whether you liked Tekken 7, 6, or Tag 2. If you liked them, you'll probably like it. If you didn't, you probably won't. Didn't play any of them? Seems like an odd time to start playing the series, but to each their own! It's still Tekken. Unlike Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, the Tekken series rarely takes a step backward to change/remove moves or mechanics. Instead, each new Tekken game directly builds on the foundation of previous games. Tekken 8 is mostly no different, although it does feel a bit fresher than 6 and 7.

The new "heat" system gives your character a powerful new move with armor and lots of damage, although they don't activate instantly. Rage arts are back, but are slightly less prevalent since you have to be nearly dead to use one. Damage and juggles are as strong as ever, and 2 exchanges can spell doom in certain matches. Wake-up defense and ground hits appear to play less of a role this time around, though. I always thought Tekken 7 had issues with moves not always coming out, and it seems like this time around things work better. The new characters are a mixed bag. They all play well, although their designs, styles, and personality mostly feel phoned in. They're clearly running out of unique martial arts, after all.

What about the extras? The story mode is...interesting. I found it to be somewhat ridiculous, but I guess fans of certain characters (and anime tropes) might enjoy it. It's only about 90 minutes long either way. Each character has a mini story mode which I found much more enjoyable. There's a secondary story mode when you travel from arcade to arcade playing other AI players. It's fun and teaches you the game mechanics in a series of tutorials. It's shorter than I would have liked, but I found it enjoyable. Tekken ball is back, and it is what it is. After Street Fighter 6's absolutely massive amount of single-player content, Tekken 8's isn't quite as robust, but it's solid.

The training mode is about as good as it gets for fighting games. It has a robust practice mode and offers advice with techniques and strategy. The game has an AI "ghost" that copies your style and teaches you to play better. It even allows you to check out your online or local match replays to learn what you could have done better. It's not always user friendly, but the functionality is unmatched once you get used to it.

Online play is a mixed bag so far. Matches feel either great or awful and the stage you choose matters just as much as your bandwidth, regardless of your hardware or platform. Hopefully that's something that will improve. I've started playing "quick match" and setting the minimum requirements to 5-bars and I've never waited more than 30 seconds for a match. 75% of them are smooth, too. I'm sure that will change over time (as players leave), but it's at least a good sign for now.

So, is it good? It's Tekken, and it's probably the best version of the newer titles. Yes, the newer games can be a little overwhelming compared to the original 5 games. 30 years of piling on new moves and mechanics can be a bit much. It doesn't seem like the Tekken team plans to change their formula, though. If you like the last few Tekken games, you'll like this one. If not, I'd probably skip it.

8.5

Worth noting, I loved the old Tekken games and was pretty competitive through Dark Resurrection. I wouldn't call this a "return to form" or anything like that, but it feels a bit more like the Tekken of old than previous few.
 
Eshelmen said:
Haven't played Conan since the first or second year. I saw there was a big update recently. Worth getting back in to?
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I stopped playing for a bit, but am enjoying it. It's about the same as it was before but i like it so there i am. :)
 
Half Life Alyx:
D-. 6.5/10.

Graphics are good. Sound is good. The rest is shit that reminds you that Valve fucked off on their piles of money 10 years ago and hasn't done anything worthwhile except update the steam interface once in the intervening decade.

Controls are garbage. Goals are garbage. Combat is mediocre. It's a shitty game that should have been an FPS playing around as a crappy VR game. Do yourself a favor - download the FPS mod, play it as a fan-made extension to HL2, and move on. One of the worst VR games I've ever had the displeasure of playing, and I really want my 10 hours back. The opening saves it from an F.

Seriously - the controls are "hey, we found you can try to pretend to reload a gun in shitty VR! So NOW YOU HAVE TO MOTHERFUCKER!" Oh hey, you know how to use the pistol? Sucks for you - learn the shitgun. Err. shotgun. Fuck you - you died because outside of doom, which is FAKE, reloading a double barrel shotgun is actually HARD on the fly - but because you should want to use the shitgun, because we gave you a shotgun, you have to use it, even though you are much better at the pistol. Or I dunno, jacking off into the fuckers faces.

Seriously. It's a VR demo, it's outdated, and it's pretty much garbage. Skip it.
 
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lopoetve said:
Half Life Alyx:
D-. 6.5/10.

Graphics are good. Sound is good. The rest is shit that reminds you that Valve fucked off on their piles of money 10 years ago and hasn't done anything worthwhile except update the steam interface once in the intervening decade.

Controls are garbage. Goals are garbage. Combat is mediocre. It's a shitty game that should have been an FPS playing around as a crappy VR game. Do yourself a favor - download the FPS mod, play it as a fan-made extension to HL2, and move on. One of the worst VR games I've ever had the displeasure of playing, and I really want my 10 hours back. The opening saves it from an F.

Seriously - the controls are "hey, we found you can try to pretend to reload a gun in shitty VR! So NOW YOU HAVE TO MOTHERFUCKER!" Oh hey, you know how to use the pistol? Sucks for you - learn the shitgun. Err. shotgun. Fuck you - you died because outside of doom, which is FAKE, reloading a double barrel shotgun is actually HARD on the fly - but because you should want to use the shitgun, because we gave you a shotgun, you have to use it, even though you are much better at the pistol. Or I dunno, jacking off into the fuckers faces.

Seriously. It's a VR demo, it's outdated, and it's pretty much garbage. Skip it.
Click to expand...

I think HLA is very overrated, but damn dude lol.
 
KickAssCop said:
Finished Trepang2.

Poor man shooter. Lots of bugs and stupidity. Average gameplay. I know people said it reminded them of FEAR games but not for me. It was just all around a average to bad time.
Gunplay was terrible, bullet spread was all over the place, the slow motion ran out too fast, difficulty was also all over the place. Guns took ages to reload, many times gun wouldn't fire after reload (not sure if it is a bug or feature?), no iron sights, dual weild was an exercise in frustration. Terrible graphics that required you to try to find red crosshair to find baddies since once guns started firing the screen flashes were too bright to show anything correctly.

I give it a very mediocre 5/10. The best part was it was only 6 main missions and you can completely skip the sides which is what I did. Don't waste your time like I did.
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Good on you for finishing and giving such a solid review.
 
lopoetve said:
Half Life Alyx:
D-. 6.5/10.

Graphics are good. Sound is good. The rest is shit that reminds you that Valve fucked off on their piles of money 10 years ago and hasn't done anything worthwhile except update the steam interface once in the intervening decade.

Controls are garbage. Goals are garbage. Combat is mediocre. It's a shitty game that should have been an FPS playing around as a crappy VR game. Do yourself a favor - download the FPS mod, play it as a fan-made extension to HL2, and move on. One of the worst VR games I've ever had the displeasure of playing, and I really want my 10 hours back. The opening saves it from an F.

Seriously - the controls are "hey, we found you can try to pretend to reload a gun in shitty VR! So NOW YOU HAVE TO MOTHERFUCKER!" Oh hey, you know how to use the pistol? Sucks for you - learn the shitgun. Err. shotgun. Fuck you - you died because outside of doom, which is FAKE, reloading a double barrel shotgun is actually HARD on the fly - but because you should want to use the shitgun, because we gave you a shotgun, you have to use it, even though you are much better at the pistol. Or I dunno, jacking off into the fuckers faces.

Seriously. It's a VR demo, it's outdated, and it's pretty much garbage. Skip it.
Click to expand...
Tell us how you really feel?
LoL! Quite the unload for such a respected game.
You never named your HMD, GPU/CPU as for others to help your situation.
Have a feeling you weren't exactly looking for solutions though? Oh well not every game is for everyone on every day.
 
Starfield: Way worse than Fallout or Skyrim.

Even when ignoring the many QOL problems (seriously it is the same faults that have been fixed by modders in their last games - to go modding site, sort by dl's, implement top20 fixes. Then enable as an option, if the devs feel that strongly about default behavior). I had a really hard time getting to the Unity just once and it took a lot of mods.

Bigger issues:

Base building has zero value - there is no integration with the story or much interaction with the world or factions. In Fallout 4 I could at least imagine, that my bases helped the surrounding community. How about some trading with Ryujin Industries or some of the ship manufactories, work in some quests that only spawn when my empire gets big enough.

Planet exploration is pointless - Planets, plants and animals lookalike with minor deviation, buildings all look the same - same enemies, same shit. Hell, Spore had more going fore it :)

Level progression and NG+ is a complete cluster fuck of busy work. Want to see how all star powers function at lvl 10? Well say hello to the same minigame 240 times! There must have been XP boosters at some point in development.

Biggest issue:

So they went with the multiverse story. Ok, I think it has greater potential in a game, than in a movie (at least when comparing to the recent marvel dredge).

Then WHY are we forced through all of that dialogue where our choices make almost no difference?

Why must I wade through all of that insanely arrogant babbling of a whole slew of unlikeable assholes?

Why can't I, in this groundhog day galaxy, put people in the ground for good! I'm looking at you Ryujin Industries, The Crimson Fleet and the prick Benjamin Bayu.

If the main questline is disturbed, either don't give us direct access to the NPC or spawn "quest progress item/clue" in inventory, have singing telegram come by to further the quest OR just use cue the god damn hunter/emissary.

Let us miss out on quests, that just gives us more reason to do a ng+.

TL;DR The critical drinkers video covers a lot of the spoiler in principle:



View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wbze2o3WuY
 
sharknice said:
I think HLA is very overrated, but damn dude lol.
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~shrug~. Every single part is "look, we did VR!" - the flashlight on the hand? Cool - you get to shine lights around corners. The shotgun flick-to-close? Cool, it's like a real gun! Dragging ammo by hand? Okey dokey, fine - it's like a real gun. Pulling levers/etc - neat. Grenades... ok good luck since you can't actually let go of the thing you're holding to throw, it's weird as heck, but sure (same problem arizona sunshine has to be honest)! But...

That's all VR Demo stuff. In all that, they forgot to make an actually fun, entertaining game. It's all about showing off "VR Features!!!!" and not about "here's a damned good Half Life game that happens to be VR." You spend half your time poking slowly through dark corridors, manually reloading absurdly limited ammo into guns, flicking ammo towards you (we did physics in VR!), and while you can pick up everything in the game (Trash Collector - City 17 style!) there's absolutely nothing you can do with any of it... Throwing a brick at an enemy doesn't do anything. Swinging a board at an enemy doesn't do anything. You can't pry open things, or make use of the interactive world. After the first guy's office, flicking through things has no purpose - just plow through the game. The only thing worth picking up are the fuel cans (handy red that!) and throwing them near enemies to shoot - which is neat the first 3-4 times, and gets old around the 30th time. At least Lone Echo felt more ... involved? Connected? Not a rail shooter in VR, I guess. Arizona Sunshine did a better rail shooter, Lone Echo did a better interactive world, and Robo Recall makes a better "smash shit everywhere" game - and those are all older than Alyx. Oh, I guess you can throw bottles for a blind dude too. While scrambling for those two shotgun shells lying around.

It's polished as hell, but it FEELS like it was polished to sell Index headsets. It's a technical showcase, not a game. They forgot to add the fun.
funkydmunky said:
Tell us how you really feel?
LoL! Quite the unload for such a respected game.
You never named your HMD, GPU/CPU as for others to help your situation.
Click to expand...
Rift 1 and tried it on Quest 2 airlink. CPU/GPUs were 3950X/3070TI (Rift 1, tri-sensor) and a 10900k/3090 (air link). Both played without stutter or slowdown - it's a very pretty game, it's just not much of a ~game~. Just an on-rails corridor shooter with jump scares and limited ammo.
funkydmunky said:
Have a feeling you weren't exactly looking for solutions though? Oh well not every game is for everyone on every day.
Click to expand...
It just didn't really go anywhere. I wanted an actual game - not a technical demo. I'll admit I didn't finish it - got a bit past jeff and said "Fuck it, this isn't worth my time anymore" and moved on. Will be installing Into the Radius and Red Matter for my next VR games.

Honestly think it'd be better with the NoVR mod - just collect the bit of story to add to the HL lore, and wait and pray for a real next-generation game.
 
lopoetve said:
~shrug~. Every single part is "look, we did VR!" - the flashlight on the hand? Cool - you get to shine lights around corners. The shotgun flick-to-close? Cool, it's like a real gun! Dragging ammo by hand? Okey dokey, fine - it's like a real gun. Pulling levers/etc - neat. Grenades... ok good luck since you can't actually let go of the thing you're holding to throw, it's weird as heck, but sure (same problem arizona sunshine has to be honest)! But...

That's all VR Demo stuff. In all that, they forgot to make an actually fun, entertaining game. It's all about showing off "VR Features!!!!" and not about "here's a damned good Half Life game that happens to be VR." You spend half your time poking slowly through dark corridors, manually reloading absurdly limited ammo into guns, flicking ammo towards you (we did physics in VR!), and while you can pick up everything in the game (Trash Collector - City 17 style!) there's absolutely nothing you can do with any of it... Throwing a brick at an enemy doesn't do anything. Swinging a board at an enemy doesn't do anything. You can't pry open things, or make use of the interactive world. After the first guy's office, flicking through things has no purpose - just plow through the game. The only thing worth picking up are the fuel cans (handy red that!) and throwing them near enemies to shoot - which is neat the first 3-4 times, and gets old around the 30th time. At least Lone Echo felt more ... involved? Connected? Not a rail shooter in VR, I guess. Arizona Sunshine did a better rail shooter, Lone Echo did a better interactive world, and Robo Recall makes a better "smash shit everywhere" game - and those are all older than Alyx. Oh, I guess you can throw bottles for a blind dude too. While scrambling for those two shotgun shells lying around.

It's polished as hell, but it FEELS like it was polished to sell Index headsets. It's a technical showcase, not a game. They forgot to add the fun.

Rift 1 and tried it on Quest 2 airlink. CPU/GPUs were 3950X/3070TI (Rift 1, tri-sensor) and a 10900k/3090 (air link). Both played without stutter or slowdown - it's a very pretty game, it's just not much of a ~game~. Just an on-rails corridor shooter with jump scares and limited ammo.

It just didn't really go anywhere. I wanted an actual game - not a technical demo. I'll admit I didn't finish it - got a bit past jeff and said "Fuck it, this isn't worth my time anymore" and moved on. Will be installing Into the Radius and Red Matter for my next VR games.

Honestly think it'd be better with the NoVR mod - just collect the bit of story to add to the HL lore, and wait and pray for a real next-generation game.
Click to expand...

I feel mostly the same.

When they made HLA they didn't really make a VR game, they just made Half-Life work in VR. Yes it has nice graphics and is very polished, but the gameplay gets pretty boring once you get over the novelty of it being in VR.
There is nothing special about the gameplay in HLA that you couldn't do in a regular flat screen FPS.


Movement - they made the game slow paced so is easier to play in VR
The teleportation movement has absolutely no game explanation at all, it's just there for "comfort" and completely unimmersive. The gameplay is designed around this and this is how they expect you to play. Teleport somehwere, then shoot while standing still like a complete noob. It's all super slow paced, very low amounts of ammo, slow moving enemies. So even if you don't use the teleportation the gameplay still suffers because of it. The gunfights end up feeling tedious instead of fun.

Grabbing things - It's unimmersive to just walk over things to pick them up, but it's a lot harder to grab things so they made a gravity glove.
At least it's something actually explained in game with the gravity glove. But again it's just used as a way to make the game work. It's not something you could only do in VR, HL2 already had a gravity gun.
 
lopoetve said:
~shrug~. Every single part is "look, we did VR!" - the flashlight on the hand? Cool - you get to shine lights around corners. The shotgun flick-to-close? Cool, it's like a real gun! Dragging ammo by hand? Okey dokey, fine - it's like a real gun. Pulling levers/etc - neat. Grenades... ok good luck since you can't actually let go of the thing you're holding to throw, it's weird as heck, but sure (same problem arizona sunshine has to be honest)! But...

That's all VR Demo stuff. In all that, they forgot to make an actually fun, entertaining game. It's all about showing off "VR Features!!!!" and not about "here's a damned good Half Life game that happens to be VR." You spend half your time poking slowly through dark corridors, manually reloading absurdly limited ammo into guns, flicking ammo towards you (we did physics in VR!), and while you can pick up everything in the game (Trash Collector - City 17 style!) there's absolutely nothing you can do with any of it... Throwing a brick at an enemy doesn't do anything. Swinging a board at an enemy doesn't do anything. You can't pry open things, or make use of the interactive world. After the first guy's office, flicking through things has no purpose - just plow through the game. The only thing worth picking up are the fuel cans (handy red that!) and throwing them near enemies to shoot - which is neat the first 3-4 times, and gets old around the 30th time. At least Lone Echo felt more ... involved? Connected? Not a rail shooter in VR, I guess. Arizona Sunshine did a better rail shooter, Lone Echo did a better interactive world, and Robo Recall makes a better "smash shit everywhere" game - and those are all older than Alyx. Oh, I guess you can throw bottles for a blind dude too. While scrambling for those two shotgun shells lying around.

It's polished as hell, but it FEELS like it was polished to sell Index headsets. It's a technical showcase, not a game. They forgot to add the fun.

Rift 1 and tried it on Quest 2 airlink. CPU/GPUs were 3950X/3070TI (Rift 1, tri-sensor) and a 10900k/3090 (air link). Both played without stutter or slowdown - it's a very pretty game, it's just not much of a ~game~. Just an on-rails corridor shooter with jump scares and limited ammo.

It just didn't really go anywhere. I wanted an actual game - not a technical demo. I'll admit I didn't finish it - got a bit past jeff and said "Fuck it, this isn't worth my time anymore" and moved on. Will be installing Into the Radius and Red Matter for my next VR games.

Honestly think it'd be better with the NoVR mod - just collect the bit of story to add to the HL lore, and wait and pray for a real next-generation game.
Click to expand...
Fair enough :)
 
sharknice said:
I feel mostly the same.

When they made HLA they didn't really make a VR game, they just made Half-Life work in VR. Yes it has nice graphics and is very polished, but the gameplay gets pretty boring once you get over the novelty of it being in VR.
There is nothing special about the gameplay in HLA that you couldn't do in a regular flat screen FPS.
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It truly goes back to the novelty factor. There was a definite charm early on with what we could do in VR - "First Contact" as an intro via Oculus was brilliant (and is brilliant for newcomers) for a reason. As a way to see all the things you can do, move you into full body immersion, and let you play? It's awesome. Many of the early games were like that - you can "do" things that wouldn't make a ton of sense in flat-land, because if you couldn't it wouldn't make sense in VR (things being able to be manipulated, etc). We accept "that's not a real item" for a control hanging from a string in a flat-screen game, but that'd be REALLY weird to run into in VR. It's there, why can't I move it out of the way?

The issue is that the novelty wears off. Like early handheld games, or the first games with enough storage for FMV, or systems powerful enough to render real-time 3d - once the "shiny" is gone, you have to have a good game. Maybe if I'd seriously played Alyx when it came out I would have appreciated it more as an example of "shiny" and enjoyed it, but it does not hold up today.

And to be honest, they forgot the biggest thing when it comes to VR too - because it's the "real world" you have to anticipate that users might do something totally outside the bounds of normal, and handle that. Robo Recall does - if I grab a dude and smash him into another? It knows how to handle that. Not something they introduced, but "can grab enemies" + "can teleport with enemies" + "can smash things" = "can grab enemy, teleport to next enemy, and use first one as a baseball bat" is something handled. Or smashing them into the ground like a pissed off WWE dude (friend did that the first time - it handles it!). Or physically grabbing a bullet and smashing it like a pie into something's face - it handles it. They thought of all the "weird" things a user might do in the real world.

Alyx? Freak out and grab a brick? It's useless set dressing. Big barrel? Set dressing (other than feeding it to a tentacle thing). It triggers cognitive dissonance because in the real world, hitting something in the face with a pipe or a brick or anything would ~work~. And you know in other games it works! But in Alyx... they want you to handle things a very specific way (lots and lots and lots of bullets), which means that it... doesn't. And that instantly breaks me out of the game. Even more than teleporting or the like does (I'm used to my body jumping from place to place somehow). Valve thought that "pretty + HL world + good acting" = good game. And maybe it was at first. But now? Now it's a shallow rail shooter with limited interactivity.

sharknice said:
Movement - they made the game slow paced so is easier to play in VR
The teleportation movement has absolutely no game explanation at all, it's just there for "comfort" and completely unimmersive. The gameplay is designed around this and this is how they expect you to play. Teleport somehwere, then shoot while standing still like a complete noob. It's all super slow paced, very low amounts of ammo, slow moving enemies. So even if you don't use the teleportation the gameplay still suffers because of it. The gunfights end up feeling tedious instead of fun.
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Yup. Even in Robo Recall or Arizona Sunshine or many many others you can physically dodge - it works. Alyx? Nope - shoot straight the first time, and don't you dare miss. Sure you can hide behind things a bit - but ... that's it.

I'm actually tempted to enable god mode and infinite ammo and just roll through the rest - that way I pick up the story and see the shiny without having to trudge through the game (note - I'm not ever dying, but the slow, pick your way through to not miss any ammo or get ganked is boring as hell).
sharknice said:
Grabbing things - It's unimmersive to just walk over things to pick them up, but it's a lot harder to grab things so they made a gravity glove.
At least it's something actually explained in game with the gravity glove. But again it's just used as a way to make the game work. It's not something you could only do in VR, HL2 already had a gravity gun.
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The gravity glove is the one thing I'll REALLY give them. That's a great idea, an extension on HL2, and it works brilliantly. If only you could do more things with it other than "glorified extended grabber."
funkydmunky said:
Fair enough :)
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Finished Midnight Suns and all its DLCs.

Dope af game. Ending was a bit weird but I know what happened so not a problem. Finished all DLC as well which was very long pack (additional 12+1 missions plus each time you have to spend a night). Total about 65-66 missions if I remember correctly. Solid 9/10.
 
Lords of the Fallen 2023 (aka. Lords of the Fallen 2), PC

Like the original game of the same name from 2014, this is a "Souls-like" title with large/deliberate weapons, rolling, discovery hidden loot, and fighting giant challenging bosses. Gameplay-wise, it should feel familiar to anyone who has played the genre before. What the game adds is a magical lamp that lets you see an alternate version of the game world called Umbra. Umbra is similar to the normal game world, but it has additional enemies and unique paths that aren't normally visible or available. Seems neat at first, but then you realize that Umbra is where you want to be most of the time. There are more enemies and you're weaker, but the game repeatedly forces you into Umbra to progress anyway. After getting used to the game, you'll learn to pop out here and there to return to safety, but then pop back into Umbra because that's where everything important is. Along with traversing the world, your lamp also allows you to remove protective orbs that make enemies regenerate. That's a reoccurring gimmick for the first 60% of the game's bosses, too. They finally (mostly) stop doing that over and over in the later sections.

Graphics: This is a tough one. It's Unreal Engine 5, and at times it looks wonderful. On the other hand, there are issues with stuttering, artifacting, framerate issues, and nearly every other graphical issue you can think of. That's with top of the line hardware and using a wide variety of settings and upscaling methods, too. It's great at time, but awful at other times. Frame generation was in the launch version of the game and can still be enabled using the Steam command-line, but it's unreliable at best. It seems to cause more graphical corruption than usual and it can cause the game to collapse upon itself and permanently drop to 30fps in longer play sessions. It (finally) makes things look smooth, but at the cost of stability.

Sound: The audio is good. The sound effects, voices, music, etc. are really strong. You'll probably recognize some of the voice talent, too. No issues here at all.

Gameplay: Like I mentioned earlier, the game relies on the lamp/Umbra mechanic a LOT early in the game. It gets old after a few hours and they don't back away from it until you're really far into the game. The difficulty is also a bit odd. The first 1/3 of the game is actually pretty damn challenging and that's coming from someone who has played through all the other major titles in this genre a whole bunch of times. Solo, too. Some of those early bosses are quite the struggle and there's no quick/easy way to deal with them either. You just don't do much damage and they do. And of course they all have 2-3 phases and lots of attacks that obscure your view. Yet once you finally get the ability to upgrade your weapons and start gaining lots of levels, the game gets pretty easy. Bosses start dropping like flies because you got stronger and they didn't. It's odd. I rode the struggle bus for the first 10 hours and then blew through the next 20.

Overall: The game is long/large and there's a lot to see and do. There are lots of different weapons and approaches, too. Yet these things are the hallmark of most every Souls-like game. After the (extremely good) Lies of P and especially Elden Ring, this game falls flat. There are stretches where it isn't compelling and it actually isn't much fun, either. Especially when the graphics are going bonkers and you're growing tired of that damned lamp. If you can tough out the early sections, the latter half of the game is better. Yet I have a feeling a lot of people won't. I like this genre and I nearly bailed on it.

Lords of the Fallen 2023 checks a lot of the right boxes on paper, but it isn't always fun to play. It also still suffers from lots of technical issues in spite of being patched dozens of times since it launched 5 months ago.

If you're a fan of the genre and it's on sale, I'd check out the Steam comments section to see if people are still having technical issues. It's not a terrible game or anything like that, but it's a weak entry in the Souls-like genre,

C- (or maybe even a D+)
 
Resident Evil 4 Separate Ways DLC (PC)

This isn't a full game, but is instead a DLC for the Resident Evil 4 remake from last year. In it you play through the same story from the main game, but from the perspective of Ada Wong rather than Leon and Ashley. If you've played through the main story before, you'll remember her popping up 3-4 times and affecting the story in a few major ways.

So, what's different about this DLC? Most of the game takes place in areas you explore in the main story, but from different angles, at different times, or sometimes in different parts of the area. Is it recycling content? Sure. Is is appropriate? Yeah, definitely. That's how the storyline is supposed to work, and it does a good job.

What about the gameplay? It's similar, although it's geared around stealth and the use of your knife a bit more. You might recall that they overhauled the old RE4 to add stealth and knife elements to the 2023 remake. You might also recall that those things weren't used all that often, too. Separate Ways changes that. With Ada you'll find yourself sneaking around a lot more and knifing enemies a whole lot more. He other weapons are the same or similar to Leon's weapons (pistol, shotgun, rifle, bow with explosives), and you can level them up in the same way. You'll also collect treasures, fight ganados, etc. very much like in the normal game. If you liked that, you'll like this. If not, you probably won't. I did, and I had a blast with it.

How long is it? Roughly 30% the length of the normal game. There are NG+ modes and special unlockable weapons/gear available, too.

I'm a big fan of the normal game and I liked this just as much. Maybe a little more since it actually put my knife and sneaking options to use. Some of the level designs and bosses were especially good, too.

If you own the regular game and enjoyed it, I'd recommend picking this up, too. If you don't own the regular game, see if there's an option to buy the Gold edition (which includes this DLC) instead. It's a great compliment to an already great game.
 
Finished Final Fantasy 7 remake. 8.5/10. Some interesting gameplay and after a while was enjoyable. Didn’t understand much of the story but I am assuming things will be explained later on. Time to buy Rebirth and continue the journey.
 
Alan Wake 2

Alan Wake 2, or as I like to call it Alan Walk 2, is an amazing looking game that does not play quite as well as it looks. I also spent a little more than half of the game time playing as someone who was not Alan Wake. As a sequel to the first game, I found it a bit underwhelming with a few shortcomings. While not an awful game I don't think it lives up to the hype.

Alan Wake 2 Screenshot 2023.11.25 - 18.29.07.22.png
Alan Who? Alan, where are you! Certainly not predominant in your own games these days.

Gameplay design in Alan Wake 2 is nothing ground breaking. It plays similarly to other "survival" horror games. You have limited resources, and walk slowly. The player will spend a lot of time walking slowly. This wouldn't be bad if there was more synergy between the other design aspects. Specifically, if the game was actually scary and made the player naturally want to move around slowly checking every noise and corner. Much like its predecessor, this game is merely creepy. It has excellent atmosphere, but it does not use it well. Unlike the first game there are few climatic fights or even interesting setups. Typically, you will walk around and eventually walk into a few enemies. Because the game isn't quite scary enough it does not reach the intensity of similar games like recent Resident Evil games like 7 or 2 Remake.

Alan Wake 2 Screenshot 2023.11.26 - 01.35.05.79.png
Shadows are often enemies. They aren't quite scary enough to carry the slow paced gameplay.

Shooting is not that fun; very typical of slow-moving 3rd person shooters. Like other survival games there is some basic inventory management and weapons can gradually be upgraded. Though these often fall into an annoying issue that many games have; upgrades make weapons go from obscenely poor handling to normal as you progress. This isn't unusual for games. The problem with Alan Wake 2 is it doesn't rely on horror enough to make up for the odd slowness of the initial weapon handling. Map designs are typically open ended slightly, which is nice, although walking around to explore every bit of the map can be annoying due to walking speed. You will often back track a bit once you find keys to unlock new safe areas or supply caches and revisit maps a few times. Overall, the gameplay is okay, but can't quite figure out what genre it wants to be.

Alan Wake 2 Screenshot 2023.11.24 - 12.15.07.61.png
Amazing scenery both up close and in the distance.


The narrative is another aspect I found to be underwhelming and inferior to the first game. Typically, I found it to be fairly straight forward although the dialogue delivered is often a word salad trying to sound intelligent when it wasn't. Other times the second main character of the game, Saga Anderson, more or less tells you the story. You will collect some evidence and occasionally there are still holes in the plot. Then through a cutscene/dialogue sequence, the rest will just be magically told to the player by Saga. This cheapens the evidence board mechanic, which is something you will occasionally fill out manually to connect the dots in various plot lines. Finally, at certain points I found it to be convoluted. The first game was easier to follow yet had a more compelling story with more major developments throughout.

Alan Wake 2 Screenshot 2023.11.24 - 20.17.42.65.png
Occasional rambling that pretends it is say something profound.


When it comes to the characters, Alan Wake himself was okay. The problem is you spent slightly more time playing as Saga Anderson, who is annoying and unlikable. As aforementioned, Saga will sometimes outright tell you the plot out of thin air. How this happens is eventually explained, though it still comes off as lame and lazy. They wrote in some backstory which seems off just to make Saga play a bigger role and have some purpose. She also spends a lot of time and worry about her family, who aren't even characters in game. It makes it quite hard to care about her. It also makes it harder to follow the parts of the story that are interesting. The final bit I dislike about Saga was her accent. She was played by a British actress who did a bad job. Her pronunciation of things was so off, she couldn't even pronounce her own name. Certainly, an odd casting choice considering American voice actors aren't exactly scarce. All things considered I felt like this character was a drawback for the overall narrative and felt quite forced into the story.

Alan Wake 2 Screenshot 2023.11.24 - 12.03.32.31.png
Ignoring the not so interesting character, graphically some sections are about as close to photo realistic as I've seen in a real time game.


When it comes to graphics the game is quite amazing. I think this is one of the best-looking games I have ever played. The lighting looks very realistic. Reflections and the way lighting interacts with objects is stunning. Textures, character facial details, and small props have amazing detail. Detail in the distance is also quite high. The atmosphere is greatly enhanced by the excellent art design as well.

Alan Wake 2 Screenshot 2023.11.24 - 15.46.20.25.png
The art design is excellent.

Sounds, sound track and whatnot also enhance the general atmosphere. Voice acting is good with the exception of An-duh-sin.

Performance with ray tracing is quite demanding. Average frame rate, even with DLSS on, was around 60 in the forested sections. Performance increases when in urban settings. Although it is demanding hardware wise Alan Wake 2 does look amazing. Though some players may find themselves turning down a ray tracing setting or two when getting into the areas with lots of trees. Stability wise it is excellent. I cannot recall of any bugs. Remedy did a good job ensuring this was polished and working.

7 / 10
 
Flogger23m said:
When it comes to graphics the game is quite amazing. I think this is one of the best-looking games I have ever played. The lighting looks very realistic. Reflections and the way lighting interacts with objects is stunning. Textures, character facial details, and small props have amazing detail. Detail in the distance is also quite high. The atmosphere is greatly enhanced by the excellent art design as well
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did you play with path tracing enabled?
 
polonyc2 said:
did you play with path tracing enabled?
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I did. RTX 4070, Ryzen 7800X3D could barely keep pace with DLSS quality. At least in the forest sections. City area ran better. Excellent graphical showcase or to benchmark a GPU with. Too bad the rest wasn't as good.
 
lopoetve said:
Dark Souls. 9/10.

Look. It's dark souls. You either like it or you don't. Now on to DaS 2.
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Dark Souls 2. 9.5/10. I actually really enjoyed the slower, more methodical combat system in this one - and loved the lore, environment, and story. Minus points for the DLCs being ... not DS2, but more DS3/Bloodborne/etc... but still a damned good game. Fully platinumed on PC. Now Elden Ring to prep for the DLC! I'll come back to hit DS3/Sekiro later.
 
Elden Ring, Aka Miyazaki finally wanted to swim in liquid cash and sold out.

See my reviews on the Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and other Fromsoft games. Play one of those instead. My mom said "don't say anything if you can't say something nice," so... It's kinda pretty?

Every other part of the game sucks ass. Brutal ass. Look, just take your cock or other associated genitalia, put it on an anvil, and hit it with a hammer. You'll have more fun. Or if you want an open world shithole, go play an Ubisoft game I guess - I dunno, none of them are any good anyway.

F. 3/10 because it's pretty and there are a couple of fun fights.

Uninstalled at 10 hours. Fuck that shit.
 
I didn't finish it, but FF7 Rebirth.

I just don't understand the praise for this game. It's tedious to play, and it has your standard awful voice acting and nonsensical story.

The game itself is just a series of minigames that range from super easy to annoyingly difficult. Not due to the game itself, but the AI and camera for FF7 Rebirth are downright awful. For example, with the Chocobo races, you're zoomed in, and have to instinctually know where certain things are to the side of you so you can turn, whereas in real life, you'd have peripheral vision. And you basically have to manually control your team in semi-real time. One of the challenges was to kill a Mindflayer first before his two adds, but the adds die in like 3-5 hits, and the Mindflayer takes forever to kill. Now, you can put the adds to sleep, but your idiot teammates love to attack them regardless.

I got to Chapter 11 on Normal Difficulty, but I can't put up with this game any more.
 
lopoetve said:
Elden Ring, Aka Miyazaki finally wanted to swim in liquid cash and sold out.

See my reviews on the Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and other Fromsoft games. Play one of those instead. My mom said "don't say anything if you can't say something nice," so... It's kinda pretty?

Every other part of the game sucks ass. Brutal ass. Look, just take your cock or other associated genitalia, put it on an anvil, and hit it with a hammer. You'll have more fun. Or if you want an open world shithole, go play an Ubisoft game I guess - I dunno, none of them are any good anyway.

F. 3/10 because it's pretty and there are a couple of fun fights.

Uninstalled at 10 hours. Fuck that shit.
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This is surprising giving how universally praised ER is. I am not a soul guy myself though.
Nytegard said:
I didn't finish it, but FF7 Rebirth.

I just don't understand the praise for this game. It's tedious to play, and it has your standard awful voice acting and nonsensical story.

The game itself is just a series of minigames that range from super easy to annoyingly difficult. Not due to the game itself, but the AI and camera for FF7 Rebirth are downright awful. For example, with the Chocobo races, you're zoomed in, and have to instinctually know where certain things are to the side of you so you can turn, whereas in real life, you'd have peripheral vision. And you basically have to manually control your team in semi-real time. One of the challenges was to kill a Mindflayer first before his two adds, but the adds die in like 3-5 hits, and the Mindflayer takes forever to kill. Now, you can put the adds to sleep, but your idiot teammates love to attack them regardless.

I got to Chapter 11 on Normal Difficulty, but I can't put up with this game any more.
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I feel you I got to Cosmo canyon like 2 weeks ago and stop playing. The game is just gd boring filled with padding. I didn't find any mini game particularly hard but they were annoying. Game is a 3/10 for me.
 
You guys might be playing FF7 Rebirth wrong. I am 70 hours in and on chapter 13 point of no return but want to go back and level up a bit more. Combat is great fun but I can agree with rest of the padding a bit too much. I liked FF7 remake better due to linear gameplay. Having said that this game is not far behind for me.
 
vegeta535 said:
This is surprising giving how universally praised ER is. I am not a soul guy myself though.
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It is very strange... I really love the souls series - I never thought I would, but I've literally spent a year now running through them back-to-back. Elden Ring lost everything that made "Souls" special in pursuit of streamer-friendly flashiness and spastic 20-year-old-on-ritalin hyper reaction combat, and then slapped it in an empty open world that tends to lead you rapidly astray. You're literally just wandering between "traditional" souls sections and dodging overpowered and oversized enemies as there's no "plan" or sequence like all the others had. It's frustrating, not nearly as fun as it should be, and other than the "ego cred" you get for beating it, I'm not sure as many folks actually ~enjoyed~ it as they were proud they got through somehow, and like a tiktok weirdo, captured the one perfect run to claim that that's how it goes every time - skipping the 200 times they failed prior.

You can literally walk into nearly end-game enemies in the first 15 minutes - and while that's not uncommon in Souls games (both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 have paths that take you to end/mid-game content immediately if you're not careful), you'll find yourself continually stumbling onto it - because it's open world and there's no path (in both DS/DS2 it's going left instead of right, in effect) to hint at a different direction. So you're never sure if you suck - or if you just walked into the wrong cave. Or the wrong shack at the wrong time of the day. Starting out, it points you at a specific location - that you shouldn't try to go to for at least 10+ hours (level 30-40 minimum) - without any hint that ~maybe~ you shouldn't do that yet, and should explore instead. And when you go exploring, you can easily walk into end game content, or late game content, or get warped to the final area, etc - without realizing that's NOT what you should do. It's like the mario warp locations in SMB1 - only Mario makes it clear you are intentionally jumping ahead, while ER makes it seem like maybe you should beat that enemy because it's RIGHT THERE, instead of being a level 120+ boss.

Souls has always been about curated experiences. Brilliantly interconnected and laid out plans - and all polished to hell and back for how you experience it. There are branches and options, but it's always designed to flow. There's NONE of that outside the legacy dungeons in ER, and those have an unknown "you should hit this at X time" marker. Only way to know is to go pound your face into the wall to see if it cracks.

Past that though - the combat is literally built on input reading, and that's been proven. It's designed to be flashy, rather than "purposeful" like the prior games were, because it looks much more awesome seeing a dude flip around the screen instead of timing a dodge and counter attack in DS1. Every boss is memorizing the location/button input responses so you can create a shiny fight - rather than just mastering your combat style and feel and applying it. It's designed to feel pretty and look good on video, but not be as much fun to play - at least not in the same way. It reminds me of Doom Eternal's second DLC that way.

Add in tacked-on crafting (joy!), lots of buying random cook books (oh fun), grinding for levels (because open world!), and worst of all - they deleted any true NPC relationships since they're all just generic open world "I'm a merchant!" now characters... ugh.

The best way to play it is to crack open the PSN 100% guide, and following it step by step - it won't spoil the story, but it'll point out the wild criss-cross you're going to do to hit things in the right (ish) difficulty order, and let you have a chance at actually playing the game. With that you get steadily increasing difficulty, some occasional spikes, and actual growth. Otherwise - well, good luck.
 
Assassin's Creed Mirage (PC)

AC: Mirage is an odd game. It's the 13th major game in the Assassin's Creed series, and it's following the 3 largest and most complex games in the series: Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. Yet Mirage dials things way back from those titles. Instead of running roughshod across multiple cities and countries, you're mostly confined to a single city and its outskirts. Apparently the game was originally planned as a large DLC for Valhalla, and the team made it a full-fledged title instead. Rather than the "Souls-like" combat that was part of the previous 3 titles, Mirage has a hybrid of that combat style and the older "wait and counter" style combat from the old Assassin's Creed titles. It mostly makes combat a matter of either parrying or dodging enemy attacks. You can't really do much else since enemies always defend stray attacks. The various special attacks are all gone, too. I didn't hate the combat like it some other AC titles, but I definitely feel like it's a big step backward. On the plus side, the various other tools at your disposal (throwing knives, bombs, blow-darts, etc.) are much improved. They're actually quite useful.

The core gameplay and missions are exactly what you'd expect from the series. Probably too much so, since most of the missions feel like they were directly lifted from prior games and dumbed down. Remember exploring a series of huge pyramids filled with puzzles in Origins? You get to do that once in a tiny one. Remember tracking spies across 1/2 of Greece to find their secret lair in Odyssey? Yeah, you get to do that in a small section of Baghdad. Remember clearing out a giant castle full of guards and a super-powerful boss 10 levels above you in Valhalla? In Mirage you fight the same foes over and over again and the templated "bosses" show up when you kill too many guards. Everything is familiar, but lesser.

Yet AC: Mirage isn't a bad game. It's relative small/short (20-25 hours and a single map) and most things have been overly streamlined. Yet it's still kinda fun to play. It's something a fan of the series would probably enjoy in spite of its faults. The catch is that the game launched at a $50 price point. It's not a $50 game when you factor in how much more comprehensive the previous titles were at only $10 more. It's not even 1/2 the size of those games. The production and overall presentation = no better, either. It began life as a DLC and it feels like it. The final game is way too big to be DLC but it's too small to be a full game, too. At least one following up the previous 3 titles. I ended up buying the game for $30 only 6 months after its original release. That price felt appropriate for what I received, too. If the game launched at that price, I'd actually wholeheartedly endorse it, in spite of the game's flaws. What you pay for this game will probably dictate how you feel about it. At least if you've played the other games in the series. If you haven't...you'd be better off buying Odyssey or Valhalla for the same price these days.
 
Ion Fury Aftershock

Just completed this expansion and I'll keep it short and sweet. If you liked the original game it's highly likely this is worth your time and money. Lots of large, Build engine levels and plenty of enemies to kill with quite a few satisfying weapons. Certainly should be on your list if you enjoy classic shooters.
 
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Spent 85 hours on it. Wonderful game. Only issue was end game boss fight which pissed me off to no end.
 
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