Review the game you finished recently.

[chenw]

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (2000)

Your very own Voyager Episode

Yep, that's right, that is what this game is. At least it felt like that for me. Through the whole play-through I felt like I was taking active part in a real episode of the show. And one of the better ones at that.

However I wouldn't recommend the game to someone who is not a devoted Voyager fan, because that's the real value in it. The references to the show, and the characters that we became so fond of in seven years. And almost all the major characters appear in the game, voiced by the actors who actually played them in the series, so that's a big plus. Usually they don't pay attention to this in VG adaptations. Especially in a game this old, when the budget of video games were a fraction of what it is today.

If you haven't played the game back when it came out, and you're a big fan of the show, I'd recommend that you give it a try, even though the graphics are dated. But hey, its a fair price to pay to be able to roam freely in voyager's corridors (this feature only becomes available after you install the latest patch for the game) Also if you can look past the graphics there is a very decent storyline, which would've made an excellent two-hour episode for the real show too.

Unfortunately the game-play can be a bit boring at times towards the end, but its worth fighting your way through, for those very special Voyager moments.

8 out of 10

Amen to that, I played at the time where I was familiar with the show, and know of all the main plot characters. Wasn't all that much into Voyager at the time, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the game.

Pity that Infinity Modulator never made it into the rest of the universe lol.

 

[DF-1]

Rise of the tomb raider PC.

The game has two forms of cutscenes, pure video and the game rendering, at least from what I could tell. I play at 21:9 and the pure videos always shrunk the screen to 16:9 format and went to 21:9 when the gameplay started again, so it sort of took me out of the game each time.


The random scattered audio logs were just too much at some points, take five steps, audio log, another five steps another one. Or when you're in some crazy combat moment they put an audiolog on the ground, just stops the game for 30 seconds to tell you about some uninteresting bullshit. I do appreciate that they were voiced.


Outside of cutscenes the facial animations are just plain garbage. people move their mouths millimeters up and down when they talk (including lara) and it just looks like something from 2002.

It has a lot of the same problems that Uncharted series, with jumping from thing to thing and falling unexpectedly, among other things.

Also the main story point was really stupid, he could've just done it himself and saved everybody the trouble so that it didnt need defending. Thats one sure way nobody gets to it...

The stealth kills seemed to not be stealthy most of the time.

overall I liked the game in the beginning, but started to really dislike it towards the end, the platforming was the main problem of that.

the game wasn't very hard combat wise, even on harder difficulties, I think I might have died maybe 5 times in a gunfight but well over 50 just trying to climb stupid things.


overall, 7/10.

 

[KickAssCop]

Doom 10/10.
Witcher 3 Blood and Wine 9.8/10.

 

[Nebell]

SOMA 8/10.
Great atmospheric horror which was a bit short and the story was rather predictable. Nonetheless the game was very fun. We need more steampunk/machinerapinghumans horrors! -2 for predictability (in my case).

The Division 8/10.
I might get raped for saying this, but this game is fun as long as you don't see it as pure RPG or pure shooter. I expected it to be something in between, something like Borderlands. And boy does it deliver!
PvE is a lot of fun in this game, especially now with The Underground DLC which adds randomized "dungeons". I wish there was more variation to items as it's way below Borderlands, but I guess it's like that because The Division is also a PvP game. Now most negative reviews are probably made by those who enjoy PvP and don't understand that the game is actually a MMORPG/shooter. There is grinding involved, just like in every other MMORPG. It's fine. PvP is fine too when you actually think about it. No, this is not CS or Battlefield, in MMORPG games enemies are supposed to be "bullet sponges" and take more than 1-2 hits from your gun. Therefore, I give this game 8/10. -1 for item variation and -1 for cheaters who (used?) to ruin PvP.

 

[M76]

The Division 8/10.
I might get raped for saying this, but this game is fun as long as you don't see it as pure RPG or pure shooter. I expected it to be something in between, something like Borderlands. And boy does it deliver!
PvE is a lot of fun in this game, especially now with The Underground DLC which adds randomized "dungeons". I wish there was more variation to items as it's way below Borderlands, but I guess it's like that because The Division is also a PvP game. Now most negative reviews are probably made by those who enjoy PvP and don't understand that the game is actually a MMORPG/shooter. There is grinding involved, just like in every other MMORPG. It's fine. PvP is fine too when you actually think about it. No, this is not CS or Battlefield, in MMORPG games enemies are supposed to be "bullet sponges" and take more than 1-2 hits from your gun. Therefore, I give this game 8/10. -1 for item variation and -1 for cheaters who (used?) to ruin PvP.

Bullet sponge is not a problem if the game is turn based. But if it's an action/rpg then it's a deal breaker for me. That's why I'm not even thinking about touching division with a stick.

 

[ghostwich]

Inside, by Playdead

A deeply moody and somber 2D platformer, Inside is another look at minimalist gameplay with a much darker (I would say not child appropriate) plot than Limbo, if that was even possible. It is short in a way I would describe “succinct” but satisfying - at times the grim environments and tasks create a weariness and fatigue that is never truly released upon clearing an area. That said, it is a gaming experience and I would recommend highly.

It's in my list of bests for 2016.

 

[Bloefield]

Well I just finished Rise of The Tomb Raider.
I really liked it.
I've been absent for a while and thought I hit a time warp coming back here after so long and seeing familiar names.
Star Trek Elite Voyager dam! I remember that.
ps my sig is the same except for 18gb ram and a GTX960

 

[M76]

Beyond: Two Souls

Before playing the game I avoided every review, every forum topic, and basically every source of information about Beyond, as I wanted to avoid any spoilers. So basically it was all new to me, I had no bias getting into it. I'll try to be as spoiler free in my review as possible, but there might be a few minor details that are necessary to explain my feelings on the game, but the game is more focused on whys rather than whats anyway, so most facts can't even be considered spoilers about it.

The clever thing about the game is that the story doesn't play in a chronological order. You see episodes from Jodie's (the main character) life encompassing 15 years in random order. Between the age of 9 and 24. To be honest I can't decide if this twist is a curse or a blessing. Knowing facts from later events can certainly sway you in a direction when you play an earlier episode. At least It certainly made me choose differently in some cases knowing what I did from later episodes that I played earlier.

The basic premise is that Jodie is in an inseparable connection with a ghost like entity she calls Aiden. This entity gives her special abilities, that of course makes her the outcast as a child, other kids pick on her, as an adult everyone wants to use her. This pre-sets the dark mood of the story, you already feel that this story can't have a happy ending.

Before dwelling into the story I want to explain the controls of the game. Which I'd rather not even call controls, because you're not really in control ever. The interaction begins and ends with nudging the story along some predetermined paths. You don't initiate any action, you just help Jodie do what she wants to do. You can't make any life changing decisions until the very and of the game, which makes sense, since otherwise the chronology would have to be in order. This doesn't mean you can't make choices, this just means all roads lead to Rome eventually. The degree of freedom is a bit higher when you control Aiden, but it's only a pretence. You might be able to move around freely in three dimensions, but the things you can interact with and how you can interact with them is very limited. Basically limited to mission critical things only. The biggest choice you can have is when there are 5 objects to interact with and it's enough to interact with 3 of them to move the story along, so basically you choose if you want to fuck around with the toaster, or make the lights flicker, that's your freedom of choice.

Let's move on to action sequences, I think the creators really had or have the wrong idea about what players want. Action is done by moving the right stick in the correct direction when the action turns to slow motion, that's it, nothing more, that's your level of involvement. And the correct direction is not something you choose it's predetermined by Jodie. So she starts a left to right punch, then you have to push the stick to the right to finish the movement, end of story. And the worst is, that everything is relative to your view, and not to the character. So if the camera is in front of Jodie, then suddenly you have to invert your every movement, so a left to right move, becomes a left nudge on the stick. I never could wrap my head around this, I always thought relative to the character. Almost all of my mistakes were caused by this. But it doesn't really matter, since the game is still so easy that you can play it blindfolded. Compared to this Heavy Rain's easiest mildest levels made me piss blood. And I played this game on normal mode, imagine that there is a casual gamer mode in it too. How hard can that be?

Another thing about action sequences that made me loose immersion often, is that Jodie is a slim and small girl, no more than maybe 5'3" or 160 cm. But she takes down 250 pound men like it was nothing. And not with help from Aiden, this is just by herself. OK, according to the story she takes basic hand to hand combat as part of her training, but that doesn't substitute for physical strength. Suspension of disbelief on steroids is what you'd need to get over this.

And speaking of gameplay, since the game is so easy on the action side, people might think that it makes up for that with the puzzles, Heavy Rain was strong on puzzles as well right? Sadly they'd be mistaken, there aren't any puzzles in the game, apart from one level, but I wouldn't even dare call that a puzzle.
So sadly we have to conclude that Beyond draws a blank on gameplay. The player basically has the role of an observer. So it makes up for this with the story right? Heavy Rain had a great story, with multiple playable characters, many forks and decisions, but no matter how you do it, it all came together at the end one way or another. But Beyond relies solely on manipulating your emotions, with sad and moving scenes, which of course works many times, but it doesn't make up for clever writing. And it doesn't really give closure, not by a mile. You don't even get some fake science explanation. You just have to accept everything and be quiet. That might work for someone who believes in afterlife, or the spirit realm, but I can't get no satisfaction from that.

I'd like to add a few words about the bonus level coming with the collectors edition of the game. Yes I so blindly trusted Quantic Dream, that I went for the Steel Book edition. But it was only 5$ more than the basic, so not much extra hurt on my wallet. They were announcing it as 30 minutes of extra gameplay, well that's a lie by definition, there is a thirty minute time cap on the level, but it can be easily finished within 15 minutes. I took it very slow at first, I didn't even use the run button at all, and I ended up doing it in 18 minutes. For which the game reprimanded me, that I was so slow. and made me do it again, so I did it and finished it in 8 minutes. So if I add up the two it almost fulfils the promise of 30 minutes, but i didn't think it would be made up by repeating the level over and over again The level by the way is a Portal style series of tests, the only difference is that you use Aiden instead of a Portal Gun. But the difficulty of the puzzles is on the pathetic level here too. Not comparable to Portal. But I liked it anyway so I'm not mad about spending the extra money.

So let's see the pros and cons


+

• Graphics (For the PS3 this is amazing stuff, even for my PC adjusted eyes it's beautiful so big plus on this one)
• Basic premise
• Emotional, and strong scenes
• It's not short, I played for two days while only stopping to sleep and eat.

-

• Lame controls that are relative to the screen and not to your character.
• Too easy
• You have no real role in the story, you're only there to assist and nudge it left or right
  
• Zero freedom in gameplay
• You basically choose an ending by choosing A B or C from a list at the end of the game, it's not entirely determined by your actions during the game like in Heavy Rain. Well the options available to you are determined by your previous choices.
  
• Sometimes it takes a lot of moving around like a crazed rat to make some interact points show up.
• There is a lot of potential in the Aiden Jodie team, sadly the game never fully lives up to that potential.
• The usage of the name Aiden is not very wise since there was a main character in Heavy Rain called Jayden, so it always reminded me of him each time Jodie said Aiden.But that's probably just my personal beef.

All in all this is a good game, but it could have been a lot better, with some tweaks. For example if action sequences would've been real TPS levels, but it seems Quantic can only make QTEs.



Scoring card:

graphics : 10
story: 7
atmosphere: 10
gameplay: 5
controls: 4

Overall impression: 6.5/10

 

[M76]

Bioshock (2007)

I really held out on playing this game for a long time. I always take it as a bad sign if something receives too much hype. I don't like overhyped things because there is no way in hell they can live up to my expectations. I know for a fact that there can be no perfect 10 games, or movies for that matter. The gameplay trailers I saw from the game before its release didn't help either. I'm thinking of the video where the player is fooling around a big daddy with a revolver. So in the end I managed to completely avoid playing this game until late 2009.

With the hype gone I thought I'll be able to delve into the game on my own terms. Unfortunately some bug prevented me from even starting the game at first, so instead of playing I ended up surfing the net and forums for a possible solution to my problem, fortunately I found one. But of course this immediately revived the bad aura of the game in my subconscious.

Sadly the start of the game didn't succeed in dispelling my revulsion towards it. It just didn't feel right somehow. Something didn't click on the first few levels, but later it does get better, and some atmosphere starts to materialize when you meet your first big daddy / little sister.

The biggest problem of the game is that it tries to mimic System Shock II. It uses exactly the same game mechanics, only with different names. But it falls short of it's predecessor in almost every aspect.

The gameplay, the, audio logs, the weapon characteristics, the research, all feels almost the same. Even the story twist is almost exactly the same as in System Shock II. The only difference is that the research and the hacking is greatly simplified, which is a shame. Since I liked both the way they were. And of course space is replaced by water. But apart from that it's a carbon copy, nothing else.

If I didn't know System Shock I'd probably be among the ecstatic praisers of the game, but luckily for me (and unfortunately for Irrational Games) I do know System Shock II, in fact it's one of my all-time favourite games.

+

• It's almost exactly like System Shock II
• Atmosphere
• Gameplay
• Cutscenes

-

• It's almost exactly like System Shock II
• After a time it becomes repetitive
• To few types of enemies, basically you only get splicers and that's it. Big daddies are to few and feel more like bosses than regular enemies.
• You can carry a maximum of 500 credits. I have no idea why they put this limitation in the game, since you can spend 500 in a matter of seconds at a vending machine. And why have a five digit counter if it maxes out with 3 digits?
• It's short, I didn't measure the time it took to finish it, but it felt short.
• Hacking, sometimes it's impossible to solve puzzles even, ones designated as easy by the game. While at other times even the hardest ones are very easy.
• Hacking is simplified compared to SS2, if you fail a hack here, there are no irreversible retortions, you only loose a bit of health. (In SS2 the box exploded, permanently destroying it's contents)

I say it's a 6 out of 10. It could be a strong 7 or even 8 if I didn't know about SS2. But they can't sell a knock-off to me, after seeing the real deal.

 

[M76]

Bioshock: Infinite(2013)

I'm sure I'll get a lot of grief from angry fans for the bashing of this game. But I don't care, I have no reputation to uphold, or sponsors to please, like gaming magazines. But what's not to like? I'll try to summarize the things that made me bitter about the game here.

The first thing that made me uneasy is that they throw the player into the game without much explanation. You just know that you're someone going somewhere, to rescue someone, from someone else, because you owe money to someone. No prequel, no back story for the character, no nothing. This of course bothered me, I wanted answers and rather sooner than later.

The second thing that shocked me is the graphics. It's sub-par. I'm not saying it's not pretty, it's nicely designed, but it's too cartoony for my eyes, the objects are simple, and the textures are very low resolution. I expect a 10/10 game to excel in all departments.

By the time I was trough the baptism, and "false shepherd" scene I was convinced that at best this will be a nice shooter. Because it was obvious that player choice is not something the game offers. You're constantly being herded, on many occasions you're not even allowed to move the camera an inch. It feels like you're just a spectator looking in, and not actually taking part in the events. I couldn't even have immersed myself in the story, had there been any. Story that is.

So what is the game about? I don't know. A bunch of action bubbles? You reach a point on a map, and you can't progress further until you eliminated all enemies. Then comes a few corridors, or streets, and you end up in another action bubble where you again have to kill everyone to move forward. That's about it.

It still could've been a great game, but sadly it's not. The action is repetitive, boring, and sometimes even annoying (when the enemies keep coming out of nowhere and you've already died 10 times over). Your weapons and perks are ineffective. You constantly run out of ammo, you die, and you're reborn, and then you die again. But it's no matter. Because in this game it's even beneficial to die. The game mechanics are completely messed up. You have to play to die. Ok, you don't have to, but what else is there to do, when you're out of ammo, and can't find any. But if you die you're reborn with a full clip, with only a few dimes missing from your credits. It would cost more to buy ammo from a vending machine, if there were any in combat areas. (that actually sell ammo)

As you progress through the game the enemies get tougher, but your weapons not. (you can buy some damage upgrades, but its as useful as giving a drawn map to a blind man) Some boss enemies you have to maw at for minutes to put them down. And if you die doing it, well his health will be refilled too. So there is no point in retreat either. If you kill and you die that's no problem, because enemies don't come back to life. But if you try to run, and then you die, the enemy you let walk away will have it's health boosted. But the most annoying thing is the lack of ammo, especially when you have to fight the big bosses. Because if you run out of ammo and die their health will be boosted too. So the only way to kill them is to bring their health down to zero without dying even once while doing it. That's easier said than done, when the boss keeps throwing henchman at you without end. And don't think for a minute that you can at least get ammo from fallen henchmen. Because for example you can pick up 5-10 bullets for the machine gun from a fallen enemy, if he actually carries that weapon, but you need at least three times that amount to kill an average enemy towards the end of the game.

Another thing in the game are vigors. These are powerups that give you abilities, that are most useless. During my playtrough I only found two of them slightly useful. One of them is the first you get, early in the game, that you can use to turn turrets and robots against your enemies. But you can only use this twice, and then you're out of salts. (Salts are the fuel for vigors - don't ask why) There are others like spawning crows, magnetically shielding yourself for a few moments, or throwing fire around, etc. But they all use up your salts very quickly without making much of a dent on enemies. The only other vigor I found somewhat useful is the shocker. Because that interrupts the enemy that you hit with it. Giving you enough time to kill them before they kill you.

There is actually one really great thing in the game. Your companion, who you get fairly early (about 2 hours in). This is the first game where a partner is not annoying or obstructive, but really helpful. Well she won't fight for you one bit, but she won't get killed either. So you don't have to babysit her. And she can give you health, salts, or ammo, if you're low on them. She won't keep you always stocked, because within a certain time interval you can only get one item from her, but its still very relieving when you occasionally get thrown a health pack just before you're about to die. The best is when you get ammo from her, because she throws you a new weapon so you don't even have to reload. This doesn't sound much, but you'll see, the fighting in the game is so fast paced, even the 2 seconds you win by not reloading is extremely helpful.

Well actually at the game's end I found out that they're so vague about the story, because otherwise the twist ending wouldn't work. But it's not a trade-off that's worth it, not one bit. I didn't like the ending at all. Frankly I don't even understand exactly what was the point of anything that I did during the game. It all seemed so pointless that it didn't even felt like a victory. No satisfaction at all. If the key is really what they say it is, then you could skip everything between the first and last one minute of the game and still get the same result.


+

• Atmosphere
• Companion
• Graphics design
• Sound/Music
• Cutscenes and conversations with Elizabeth

-

• You can get stuck in even the smallest objects
• Repetitive fighting
• Constant shortage on ammo
• Vague story until the end.
• Outdated cartoony graphics
• Lack of choice (maybe mass effect had spoiled me, but I want more control over the story than not dying/dying)
• You're constantly herded, can't do anything to avoid your faith.
• Useless weapons and vigors
• You die more often than Kenny in south park.
• Irrational really should try and make something new, and not reuse the same template again and again for the nth time.

Judgement time: 6.5/10 I still can't believe it got 10/10 reviews, even if I'm stupid and this is the best story ever, the graphics and the not so revolutionary gameplay should lower the score a little bit at least.

 

[Domingo]

(2016) Doom

Pros:
Mindless fun
Feels like a modern update to the originals
Great graphics combined with intentionally high frame rates
The weapons are a fun mix of old and new
It offers a fun mix of play mechanics that never get needlessly complicated

Cons:
The last 1/2 of the game is monotonous and the level design for the last 3 levels is weak
You fight the same waves of enemies (in the same order) repeatedly
There are only 3 bosses and you only fight them once each

It's a 7 out of 10. It's fun, but the game actually gets worse the further you get. Level design devolves into one arena after another with the same enemies you've been killing for hours. No new play mechanics are introduced after you get the jump boots in level 5 (of 12). Later weapons and mods fall flat and the Gauss Rifle + Super Shotgun are never equalled. Yet even with this letdown, I felt compelled to keep going and the game never ceased to be enjoyable.

 

[zamardii12]

Bioshock Infinite

9/10. Loved the game. The first 30 minutes had me in tears from the moment I saw Columbia. It was awe-inspiring. The action and pacing of the game and story was decent, but it doesn't get a 10 from me because the center of the game felt "padded."

The ending I am still trying to ponder because it seems incredibly complicated with multiple universes and all kinds of other things I still don't understand.

Overall it was a incredibly well-made game and I am now playing the DLCs which take place in Rapture which is pretty cool.

 

[RazorWind]

Abzu:

It's best not to go into Abzu with unrealistic expectations; full price for this is $20. The good news here is that the quality of the game is almost AAA level - the bad news is that there's only $20 worth of it. I really liked it, though. The first few levels especially are really pretty, with colorful kelp farms and brightly colored fish. The last level is a total blast, too.

My rating: 8.5/10
Pros:
It's beautiful and relaxing, like a garden.
My girlfriend liked it too.
It's a nice departure from the typical game structure.

Cons:
It's not very long - I was able to play through it in about 3 hours. Most reviews say about 90 minutes, but if you rush through it, you're missing the point.
The controls are a little fiddly.

 

[Q-BZ]

Abzu:

It's best not to go into Abzu with unrealistic expectations; full price for this is $20. The good news here is that the quality of the game is almost AAA level - the bad news is that there's only $20 worth of it. I really liked it, though. The first few levels especially are really pretty, with colorful kelp farms and brightly colored fish. The last level is a total blast, too.

My rating: 8.5/10
Pros:
It's beautiful and relaxing, like a garden.
My girlfriend liked it too.
It's a nice departure from the typical game structure.

Cons:
It's not very long - I was able to play through it in about 3 hours. Most reviews say about 90 minutes, but if you rush through it, you're missing the point.
The controls are a little fiddly.

Thanks for this. It's on my radar.

 

[ghostwich]

The Turing Test

Worth playing. Provides some food for thought if you're into things like the Turing Test, and the Chinese Room problem. Gets pretty stale unfortunately, and is a bit of a drag - you get the feeling the developers felt they had to add levels to pad the game but it would have been better off like Portal (1) as a tighter, shorter experience. Voice acting is okay, music is fantastic, but plot is shaky at times.

Play if you like:
- Portal
- Moon (Moon (2009) - IMDb)
- Westworld (Westworld (TV Series 2016– ) - IMDb)
- The Talos Principle
- thinking about AI

Unfortunately:
- felt too long
- plot falls apart
- does not go "far enough" with some of the more interesting ideas
- one optional puzzle requires backtracking about 75% of the game (or cheating by looking it up on YouTube)
- puzzle mechanics are generally more tedious than inventive

 

[Matthew Kane]

Battlefield 1 Single Player Campaign Mode:

5/10

-lackluster, lacking content and really bad.

Multiplayer Mode

9.5/10

-half a point from perfect due to cheaters and glitches when you play as a medic.

 

[harmattan]

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Pros
- Superb graphics
- Excellent level design
- Well-done voice acting and dialogue
- Compelling story and pacing
- Choices generally affect the story
- Good atmosphere
- Fitting and compelling soundtrack
- Good re-playability

Cons
- Item mechanics and inventory stuck in late 90s (suppose some will find this endearing)
- Awful lip-sync and bad facial design
- Game mechanics a bit too predictable
- Story ending very anti-climactic, a definite DLC/sequel setup
- Jensen/Deckard's hair

All in all, I'd say 8.8/10.

 

[M76]

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrm (2011)

I never was a classic RPG guy, on the contrary, for a long time I blindly hated the genre, I didn't understand what can be fun in fiddling in skill menus, ability trees, character generators, and such. But I slowly started to come around, the actual turning point was somewhere between TES3, and TES4, when Morrowind came I still couldn't be bothered with RPGs. But then came games like System Shock II, and DeusEx, that completely turned my world upside down. So when Oblivion was released I was waiting for it with my arms open.

But that's ancient history I hope Skyrim still interests some people so here goes:

I shall jump into the thick of it right away. The game uses the same engine as used by all recent Bethesda games. So all its known and hated shortcomings and stupidities are present here as well. Like the physics engine which sometimes produces outlandishly stupid things, flying objects, flying mammoths, But the AI isn't far behind either with its scuba-gazelles and such. Unfortunately these things can break the immersion right away for me. But the good news is that that's the end of major negatives, there were a few minor issues I'll detail later, but nothing game breaking.

To me the biggest failing of Oblivion was that the side quests were not interesting enough. They either involved boring, repetitive and menial tasks, or were trivial. There were a few small exceptions from this rule, but most side quest only had you clear a dungeon. Fortunately in Skyrim they seem to have paid much more attention to side missions, the main storyline doesn't even stand out. There are many side quests that are better and even longer than the main storyline. This game has a staggering amount of content in it. You think that you explored most of the map, and your realize that you barely touched on it. Thankfully the huge map doesn't automatically mean that you always have to take 20 minute treks all the time because the major hubs can be reached by carriage from the very beginning of the game for a small fee. So if you happen to get a quest that takes you to the other end of the map where you never been, it doesn't begin with 20 minutes of running through everything like in Oblivion, because you can "jump" to the nearest hub. But even if it were so it wouldn'tt matter because the designers have outdone themselves this time. The word is extremely rich and beautiful, there is always something to look at, no matter where you go. And when you think you can't be surprised anymore you realize that

Spoiler: exploration

The mountains contains a Dwemer cave system so vast that it's almost a third of the topside terrain. And not a bit less breathtaking either.

What's not good about the game is usually inherited from the console version. One such thing is the menus, which is pathetic by PC standards, almost useless.

There is a feature in the game that seems welcome by most, but I hate it:You can't clear areas permanently. The next time you visit it will be crawling with enemies again, even though the map proudly displays the cleared subtext next to their names. And if you go there by fast travel you often end up in the middle of a fort with fifty enemies around you. They really didn't thought this trough did they? OK let's have the enemies respawn, it's only natural that someone would claim a cleared fort after a period of time. But then let's place the damn fast travel points in such a way that you don't end up in the middle. Anyway I see no reason why anyone would want to clear the same place again and again, I only go back to previously cleared areas to use as jump points to reach other undiscovered but nearby places.

Finally I want to suggest one thing. Don't put off the main storyline too long, try to finish it as soon as you can, because after a few levels it becomes childishly easy. While on level 10 I could barely defeat a dragon, which was very good and thrilling. But on level 30. Any dragon on the main quest can be done in a few hacks and all I see is dragon soul absorbed. And I didn't even max out any abilities yet, there was still plenty of room to improve.


+

• Beautifully designed scenery
• The dungeons are not all the same, each seem unique
• There is probably more content in this game than 10 randomly selected other AAA games added together.
• Interesting side quests, there is much more than take it here, kill it, or collect it.

-

• After about level 25. the game suddenly becomes very easy. I could defeat legions in open battle if I wanted.
• Console style menus
• The game is tailored to the abilities of the consoles there is not enough scalability to use the additional resources available on PC
• Buggy, stupid phyisics
• Re-spawning enemies
• Most of the NPC-s involved in some quest are immortal, if their HP reaches zero they simply rest a little, and then they're all good again. And some of them can even be companions, so you don't have to do anything they'll kill anyone eventually, since they can't die.
• At the beginning of the game I killed someone in a city, but the body never disappeared, even after months it was still there, and each time I went there, there was a horrified crowd around it.
• Your alliances doesn't mean anything you can be a major member in rival organizations without any problems. By the end of the game I was some sort of leader in almost every group/brotherhood. But it was all worthless since you can't do anything you can't lead.
• I don't know about you, but to me the "I'm a prisoner but I don't know why" beginning has lost its novelty.

Scoring card:

graphics : 8.0 (nice design, but ageing engine)
realization: 9.0 (some minor issues)
story: 5.5 (the main story is short, and not at all that interesting)
atmosphere: 9.0 (I only wish I could unsee the flying mammoths and the npc-s set on lower-earth orbit by giants)
gameplay: 8.0 (gets too easy on higher levels)
controls: 7.0 (the console style menu and inventory makes your life miserable)

Overall impression: 8.5

 

[Mad Maxx]

Mass Effect Trilogy

I love the ME universe and replay these games several times a year. Can't wait for ME Andromeda!!

Despite some well-documented flaws, the ME trilogy always gets a 9.0 rating from me.

 

[dgz]

Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (2000)

Your very own Voyager Episode

Yep, that's right, that is what this game is. At least it felt like that for me. Through the whole play-through I felt like I was taking active part in a real episode of the show. And one of the better ones at that.

However I wouldn't recommend the game to someone who is not a devoted Voyager fan, because that's the real value in it. The references to the show, and the characters that we became so fond of in seven years. And almost all the major characters appear in the game, voiced by the actors who actually played them in the series, so that's a big plus. Usually they don't pay attention to this in VG adaptations. Especially in a game this old, when the budget of video games were a fraction of what it is today.

If you haven't played the game back when it came out, and you're a big fan of the show, I'd recommend that you give it a try, even though the graphics are dated. But hey, its a fair price to pay to be able to roam freely in voyager's corridors (this feature only becomes available after you install the latest patch for the game) Also if you can look past the graphics there is a very decent storyline, which would've made an excellent two-hour episode for the real show too.

Unfortunately the game-play can be a bit boring at times towards the end, but its worth fighting your way through, for those very special Voyager moments.

8 out of 10

One of Raven's very best. In all honesty the game doesn't seem like much until you stat playing it. The Quake 3 engine feel was/is real. Levels and weapons were pretty good, too.

 

[M76]

Mass Effect Trilogy

I love the ME universe and replay these games several times a year. Can't wait for ME Andromeda!!

Despite some well-documented flaws, the ME trilogy always gets a 9.0 rating from me.

I feel the same way. But I had an overdose of the trilogy a few years back. I must have finished ME2 at least 10 times, and ME1 somewhere between 6 or 8 times. ME3 I only did 3 times so far. I wasn't able to replay them in the past 2 years. I tried but always ended up abandoning a few hours in. But I plan to do at least once more before Andromeda. And this will be the first time I'm finally able to see pinnacle station, since EA put it on origin and it became available.

 

[psy81]

I feel the same way. But I had an overdose of the trilogy a few years back. I must have finished ME2 at least 10 times, and ME1 somewhere between 6 or 8 times. ME3 I only did 3 times so far. I wasn't able to replay them in the past 2 years. I tried but always ended up abandoning a few hours in. But I plan to do at least once more before Andromeda. And this will be the first time I'm finally able to see pinnacle station, since EA put it on origin and it became available.

LOL that's a lot of play throughs but yeah my favorite trilogy of all time hands down. I don't think I've ever been so immersed in a game like ME series and I don't play any even RPGs.

 

[GOD'SlittleSERVANT]

M76, are you a professional gaming reviewer?

 

[WarriorX]

After sitting in my library for years I decided to play and beat World in Conflict over a weekend. It is a real time tactics strategy game that uses supply points to reinforce your units instead of base building.

Overall I enjoyed the gameplay and single player campaign. For an older game the graphics still look pretty good and I had no issues running the game on Windows 10.

The Soviet Assault expansion didn't work unfortunately, as the mission would load but nothing else would happen after loading. The game seems to be no longer available on Steam, maybe due to issues with running the game.

 

[M76]

M76, are you a professional gaming reviewer?

No, I'm not. But it's flattering that you'd think that. It's just a habit I picked up.

 

[[Paragon]]

After sitting in my library for years I decided to play and beat World in Conflict over a weekend. It is a real time tactics strategy game that uses supply points to reinforce your units instead of base building.

Overall I enjoyed the gameplay and single player campaign. For an older game the graphics still look pretty good and I had no issues running the game on Windows 10.

The Soviet Assault expansion didn't work unfortunately, as the mission would load but nothing else would happen after loading. The game seems to be no longer available on Steam, maybe due to issues with running the game.

Odd, I reinstalled via steam and played it a bit a few weeks ago, like I do every couple of years. I didn't have any issues running it. Great game, good story, nice voice acting. I wish we could get a sequel, calling in daisy cutters and A10 strikes is extremely satisfying.

 

[M76]

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (2016)

I don't really know what can I say about this game. It's Human Revolution 2.0. The good thing is that they improved on HR on many areas, including some I specifically mendtioned.
If I invent a scale where Human Revolution is "1" and the original Deus Ex game is "10", then this game should be somewhere around 7 on that scale. So there is a lot of improvement.

I didn't much like the beginning of the game, it felt off, out of place, especially with the unavoidable bloodbath at the end. But after the first mission things soon return to order, and the game starts to feel like DeusEx. In fact much more so than Human Revolution ever did. Partly thanks to the fact that the setting is almost exactly a carbon copy of the original setting in DeusEx.Regardless of the fact, that one takes place in Prague, and the other in New York. But hey, copying your betters is not a sin in my book. The similarities don't just stop there, in both games, you leave the city only to find it under martial law when you return.

But the similarity disappears with one very specific thing. In the original game when curfew was in effect you could still relatively easily move around the city without confrontation using the sewers, the rooftops and the apartments. Here that is not the case unfortunately. Sure there are a few places where you can cut trough a rooftop, but it's not enough. Most of the time you had to rely on sneaking around in the open, because even the apartments that are accessible have absolutely no secondary exits, so the only way out is the way in. So you can't use them to cross a city block avoiding the police checkpoint as you was able in the original. And on top of that the sewers aren't that good too, they don't form an interconnected web under the city, only small isolated sections under specific buildings where they can be used to infiltrate certain areas.

What the designers did improve upon are the vents, well they are still not perfect, but far less obvious than they were in human revolution. Now sometimes they do lead nowhere or to irrelevant places. Now the only thing left to improve is the network, since they show the same symptoms as the servers, they only serve as bypasses but they're all isolated, they never form a full system. I don't understand why do they need to be told how to do it, when the people designing DX in the last millennium already got it right?

Well maybe for the third try they'll get it completely right? Since the game seems like a prequel, a set up. It is like a first chapter of a much bigger story. If I continue to compare it to the original I'd say it's like if that ended after leaving New York. That said here you never really leave Prague, that's the only hub area you ever get access to. You only get three away missions from there. If I count the first one already as an away mission. So the setting gets boring after a while. You run around the same places most of the time.

On a more positive note side missions weren't neglected, they are really good, too bad there is not many of them. Assuming I found all side missions but I think I did.

They improved the biggest issue with the inventory, that you couldn't store more than one bioenergy in the same slot, now you can similarly to the original, great news indeed. Unfortunately the other big flaw of the inventory remained that weapon upgrades take up inventory space. At least not as much as they did before. But with all the various types of ammunition and loot you can collect you'll still be having a very hard time managing your inventory. Don't forget to sell valuables often.

The action is better than it was in HR, even without augmentations you can fight effectively. The cover system is a bit archaic but it works well, I forgot it even existed for a while during playing, because you need to press a separate key to move into and between covers, it's not seamless as in most modern games. The different ammo types have much more of an impact on what they're good for. I'd say overall the combat is not too hard, it's more on the easy side. The only problem about combat is that the game sometimes wouldn't let you initiate a takedown, the prompt just won't come up. I noticed that this often happens when the enemy is coming up stairs and you stand in the corner. Sneaking is pretty easy too, after you purchase the aug that shows the field of view of enemies on the minimap including cameras. So the invisibility aug is kind of pointless again, because it consumes so much energy and sneaking is so easy regardless. And there are other augs that are pointless too, like the tesla, or typhoon. Both need ammunition, that you can't find anywhere. During the entire game I found maybe one typhoon ammo and zero tesla ammo. And buying it is out of the question even if some vendor has it, it will be too expensive to worth it. And it's not like you can kill merchants to get the merchandise. I mean you can kill them, but you don't get their stash.

Speaking about killing, the game has no consequences for your actions whatsoever. At one point during the curfew I lost my patience because a bunch of cops were camping at the exact place I needed to get to, and there was no way of getting in without getting seen. So I decided to cull their numbers, with the reinforcements included I must have murdered a dozen or so. But it was as if I did nothing wrong. Noone confronted me, noone even commented on it. Like it never happened. And the funniest thing was that the civilians being rounded up still acted as if they were being held at gunpoint, when in fact all cops were cleared out from the area. So NPC AI is not very good, their search patterns are weird, and sometimes they will walk backwards.

Augmentation upgrades are again showered on you, I had a bunch left over by the end of the game that I didn't spend because I couldn't use them on anything useful. So it's basically the same way as in was in HR.

The story is allright, they're still ramping it up to be some kind of prequel for the original deusex with tons of references to people, places, and groups from that. But if course it can't be a prequel because the state of the world is completely different. But as I mentioned it's incomplete, feels like the first third of a three part series. And it's length reflects that slightly. I finished the entire game in 20 hours, including all side missions, without rushing, often taking my time exploring, and talking to NPCs when possible. But most NPCs don't have too much lines, they'll repeat the same conversation over and over. Unlike in DX where you could have an exchange lasting twenty minutes with Echelon IV. And the worst offenders are merchants. They' recorded a bunch of lines for them depending on the situation, but he game just randomly chooses a response, regardless of the context. Including Adam's response. So the conversation sometimes seems completely surreal, other times when the randomly selected lines match it feels perfect. And if you go back to the same merchant twice it will start the same introductory conversation again that you had before.

Finally a few words about graphics. Overall the game looks great, and I'd like to say it runs great too, but my definition of great is different than most others. I'm perfectly fine with 30 fps. And for me the game maxed out on 1440p ran 33min 38 avg and 47max fps according to the inbuilt benchmark. I'm fine with that. I won't feel the need to upgrade my GPU until the AVG starts dipping bellow 30.
+

• Great Atmosphere, reminds me of the original DX
  
• An improvement in almost every regard over HR
  
• Great graphics.
  
• Well designed, and interesting side quests
• You can choose to kill almost any npc
• You almost always have a choice between fighting and sneaking around.
• Very well done characters, they feel really unique and interesting.

-

• Still not as good as the original.
  
• Archaic cover system
• Menus hard to navigate, especially hacking and inventory.
  
• NPC AI.
  
• You only get a third of a story, and 20 hours of gameplay.
  
• Your actions have no consequences.
• Augmentations are not essential life savers, but small perks, that don't feel nearly as important as they should be.
• Why do all augs have their trousers cut off to reveal their prosthetic legs?

Scoring card:

graphics : 8.5
realization: 8.0
story: 6.5 (deduction due to it being a bait for a squeal nothing more)
atmosphere: 9.9
gameplay: 8.0
controls: 8.0

Overall impression: 8/10

 

[Domingo]

Gears of War 4 (PC version)


Pros:

• Runs well with lots of scalable options to run on different hardware.
• Good (but not amazing) graphics.
• Different modes like SP, MP, and Horde keep things fresh.
• Feels polished out of the box.
• Enjoyable new and old weapons.
• Phenomenal audio. Maybe the best use of surround effects in an action game to date.
• Decent-length SP campaign.
• AI assistants that aren’t that bad.
• Horde-like Replicator battles add a new wrinkle to the SP campaign.

Negatives:

• SP campaign starts off strong but falls flat with long/tedious chapters 3 & 4, which account for about 60% of the game.
• Why are there destroyable pods everywhere – seriously? Was this an achievement they forgot to activate?
• MP still feels clumsy thanks to cover mechanics working well for deathmatch. Gears MP probably shouldn’t be about roll/shotgun, but it is.
• Enemies rarely pose much of a threat beyond insta-kill grenades thanks to the revival mechanic and ally AI being better than enemy AI.

Overall:

Like the other Gears games? This is 100% more of the same. Chapter 2 teases better pacing only to have the last ½ of the game fall flat. Horde-like defense battles are fun, although they’re so poorly setup they earn an eye roll each time they’re used. Difficulty is uneven and it feels like you only ever die due to instakill explosives you can’t always react to.


The game is fun, but it’s extremely uneven. Chapters 2 and 5 are excellent and the rest of the game feels like a bunch of empty levels (with minimal lore) connecting shootout arenas.


6/10

 

[doughead]

Battlefield 1

Pros
- Next-gen graphics
- Excellent sound
- Hollywood blockbuster caliber cut scenes
- Creative and interesting storyline and narrative for different game segments
- Slow pace and easy gameplay (I like to play games to relax, not as though I'm completing chore are chores)
- Feels like "playing" a Hollywood blockbuster movie
- Did I mention the graphics? It really showed the true potential of my GPU upgrade

Cons
- Too short (campaign mode)

 

[M76]

Brace yourselves, this one will be long. Here is the review of the full Splinter Cell series. I re-played or in some cases played for the first time the games in 2010, except for Blacklist which I played in 2014 despite pre-ordering it.

Tom Clancy's Spliner Cell (2002)

Arguably it is the ancestor of all stealth action games, or at least the game that made this kind of games popular.

Spoiler: Click for full review (no actual spoilers)

You would think that looking at a game that was made more than a decade ago is asking for trouble. But you'd be wrong, it has nothing to be ashamed about compared to today's flashy games. Graphics is acceptable, and controls are as good as if not better than anything today. The only thing that somewhat bothered my eyes was that they used the same low-poly character models during cutscenes as they used in-game. Even those characters look like they've been carved with an axe that never even appear in-game. And on top of that the compression algorithm used on the cutscenes is really poor, I don't understand if they're already using low-poly models in it, why not just use the game engine to generate them real-time? Why use over compressed bink? Apart from that the graphics is totally acceptable, even today. You won't be disgusted by it. The only exception are the vehicles that appear in the game, it seems that the game's artist had some kind of anti-talent when it comes to vehicles, because all trucks, cars, look utterly terrible in the game, even their texture maps are a magnitude smaller compared to other objects.

The gameplay is known to almost everyone: While you can shoot at everything that moves, it's far from the best tactic in the game. There are some missions where you're not allowed to shoot anyone. But it's not recommended to start playing guns blazing anyway because the ammo runs out very quickly, and you hardly if ever find any ammo during missions. Because of course our hero uses some fancy CIA weapons that have special ammunition, and you can't take weapons from enemies either. So the best and only solution is stealth. Personally I don't fancy sneaking past enemies because I hate to leave potential threats in the path of my retreat. The only times I did have to sneak past enemies where large open spaces where I couldn't isolate and take down enemies one by one. The maps are remarkably well designed, the only negative aspect about them is that you usually only have one route, if a door isn't leading to your goal, then it probably won't open. They should have made more effort in this regard, because the "lock jammed" pretence got old very fast. Especially when there is a change of plans and suddenly a door that was jammed just a few seconds ago becomes openable. I think they should have let you go into places you're not supposed to, you wouldn't find there anything of interest anyway. It would've added much to the realism without much effort from the devs.

The difficulty of the game is average, which is strange because in my memory it was stored as impossibly difficult, from the time when it first came out (I haven't even finished it back then), but now I was able to finish it and I didn't even break a sweat doing it. But there is always the possibility that I remember some other game, after ten years its hard to tell them apart. I thought the wave of short games started later, guess I was wrong about that too. Because this game is indeed pretty short, it only has 10 maps/missions and I already included the tutorial in that number. On average it takes about 30-40 minutes to finish one mission. But the tutorial is only 10 minutes, and the first real mission didn't took more than 15 minutes either.

One interesting aspect of the gameplay is that you can often take thumbdrives from fallen enemies, that have some message on them. It's a good distraction, the only problem is that most of these messages are meaningless. Any significant data is stored by the game automatically anyway. Like door passcodes. Uninterestingly almost every time you can find the code for a locked passage on the person standing guard in front of it. I think there was only one door in one mission where I had to go a bit further away to find the code for a locked door.

I rounded up a lot of negatives about the game, but regardless of those it's a good game, the atmosphere is great, the gameplay is great, the overall look and feel even reminded me a little of DeusEx. (which I consider one of the best games ever made) While the story is not very original and has no real twists, it's solid and gives a great deal to the atmosphere.

+

• Atmosphere
• Graphics (for 2002)
• Gameplay

-

• Very short
• Your visibility seems to be completely detached from your visibility. What I mean is that it happens that you can see yourself on the screen clear as sky in the third person view, but the game tells you you're completely invisible, and the enemies really don't detect you. And the opposite happens often too, when I'm standing in a dark corner I can't even see myself, but the enemies still find me easily.
• If one of the bad guys detects you all of the enemies suddenly know where you are, and start shooting or running in your direction. It's like they have some kind of telepathic connection.
• It's the same when you attack someone. No matter that you're completely hidden, suddenly everyone knows where you are. This means that if there are more than one badguys in a room you have no chance against them. But if you lure them away where they can be taken down one by one then it's like they become cattle strolling into a slaughterhouse. Even if there are 4 corpses on the floor in the open, the fifth guy still walks into your trap without hesitation.
• The doors can only be opened when standing right in front of them, and you even have to put away your weapon to open doors, so if there is an enemy standing on the other side you're completely in the open and vulnerable for a few seconds, which is more than enough for them to take you down, especially towards the end of the game.
• Low picture quality in cutscenes
• Every freakin door in the game closes automatically after a few seconds, and not just automatic doors, but the door of the last closet too. It's the most annoying when you want to take a body into another room. Because by the time you reach the door with the corpse on your shoulder it closes, and of course you can only open the door if you put down the body. I swear that most of the already short gameplay was accumulated by me picking up and putting down bodies and opening doors. It got so frustrating that towards the end of the game I didn't even bothered with moving bodies, I left every one of them where they have fallen, no matter what.
• Despite being a super-spy Sam Fisher has really bad aim, it's almost impossible to hit anything that's further away than 40 feet even with a scope. I often used up a whole magazine of ammunition by the time I was able to shoot down a light or camera from a few meters away.
• And on top of that the cross-hair is huge and not translucent which means you don't even see where you aim exactly.

Despite the extremely long list of negatives, this is a game you don't want to miss. I truly enjoyed playing it.
So it's a 8 out of 10

Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (2004)

I could copy here almost everything I've written about the first instalment of the series they're so similar. There are only some minor differences noticeable, even the graphics is only slightly improved. It's uncommon to have so little change for a sequel, especially because they had almost 2 years to develop it after the first game. I know most fans are usually against any change, but I don't consider myself a fan of the first game, so I can get away with that. Well let's see what they actually changed:

Spoiler: Full text under here

The first and foremost change to my relief is that now you can actually open doors in the game while carrying an unconscious body. It seems back then there were some developers who actually listened to fan feedback. Because this was one of the biggest annoyance in the first game. They also introduced the ability to shoot while hanging from the ceiling as a bat, but I never really needed to use this ability.
Another part where they probably listened to feedback are the cutscenes. The compression is much better, no more artifacts and overcompressed video. And they also replaced the low-poly character models with high polygon count ones. Unfortunately the models despite having 2 magnitudes more polygons are still not very well done. And the same can be said about the animation as well. But at least you have to give them credit for trying.

And that's it, we are at the end of the list of changes to the game. Sadly the other most annoying gameplay issue is still present unchanged: The enemies are still telepathic

About the story, it's even less interesting than in the first game, and also slightly confusing at times. More than once I felt that I was just doing random missions without much connection between them. Other times I got orders I had absolutely no idea why do I have to do. Maybe it was intentional to emphasize the feeling that you're just a field agent and decisions are made above your head, I don't know. At least the missions themselves are more interesting and complex than last time. It's not just about sneaking through the entire level and you're done. Sometimes you have to seek out contacts, follow someone in secret, or even kidnap and question a person. There are missions where you're not allowed to kill anyone, and missions where you're explicitly told to leave no witnesses (eg. kill every last person you come in contact with)

+

• Atmosphere
• Gameplay
• Complex, always changing missions

-

• This is short as well
• Your visibility seems to be completely detached from your visibility
  
• If one of the bad guys detects you all of the enemies suddenly know where you are
• It's the same when you attack someone. No matter that you're completely hidden, suddenly everyone knows where you are.
  
• The doors can only be opened when standing right in front of them, and you even have to put away your weapon to open doors
  
• Low quality cutscenes (animation and models)
• Every freakin door in the game closes automatically after a few seconds
• Despite being a super-spy Sam Fisher has really bad aim. Unfortunately this still stands with only one minor difference: When using a sniper rifle you can hold your breath which grants you the ability to shoot straight for one or two seconds. But in every other situation you're still screwed, despite having your crosshair nailed on the enemy, you can empty an entire magazine into him before he actually dies if you're not doing a stealth attack.
• If I'm judging by 2004 standards then this graphics quality is not good enough anymore. Far Cry which was released the same year runs circles around it easily in this regard.
• The story is hard to follow, missions are only loosely connected, to the previous ones.

Honestly it didn't feel that I was playing a new game, more like a V2.0 of the first game with some new missions. And because of that it only deserves a 7 out of 10.Not that it was worse, than the first game, on the contrary in many aspects it is better, but they shouldn't expect to sell the same thing twice and get away with it. I really hope I'll see much more improvement in the third game, because by the end of this I was starting to get bored by the repetitions in gameplay.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)

Let us see if third time is the charm, shall we? Well in the case of this series it very much seems like it. Cause they mended most of the annoying things present in the previous two games.

Spoiler: Full review here

The graphics are much better than in the previous two games that's obvious from the get go. The character animations have been refined too, both ingame and in the cutscenes. But for me the icing are Sam's quirks towards Lambert, and during interrogations. Did I say interrogations? Yes, because in this game you can interrogate almost every random soldier, and while most of them only tell you trivial things you would find out easily anyway, it's still fun to do because of the dialogue. I only remember one or two repetition of lines in the entire game, so it doesn't even get boring.

You don't have to rely solely on the video briefings before missions to find out what you have to do, now each analyst briefs you thoroughly on those aspects of the mission that are relevant to them. And fortunately you don't even have to read these, because they really tell you in real speech. Unfortunately that's not common practice in most games even today.

But in turn you get much less input during missions about what to do, where to go. You're more on your own, like a real field agent. It happened more than once that I actually had to think about what to do, which is a big plus. Games where you actually have to think are getting very rare.

You can choose your gear before each mission, but actually this is one part of the game that is pointless as it is. I tell you why. Because you can't choose individual pieces of your equipment. You can only choose from three pre-defined outfits. And since you never know what tools you'll need during the mission you always have to take the gear containing the stuff that's not replaceable when needed. Which is always the default getup.

Finally it seems that your enemies don't have a psychic connection anymore. They no longer converge on your position instantly when you've been seen by one of them.

Now you can actually control how wide you're opening a door, so you can peek through, to check for danger behind it. Or you can also kick them down sending enemies flying behind them. A tactic keenly used by enemy combatants as well. It's really funny when they hear a noise and they start kicking down all doors around them. But more importantly the doors no longer close by themselves. They can be closed the same way you open them if you wish to.

I believe this game was in development even before the release of Pandora Tomorrow, otherwise I don't think they could've implemented so many improvements.

There is one more difference which is neither good or bad, just worth mentioning that they removed the osprey from the game, so you no longer have a regular means of transportation to and from mission areas. Another difference is story related: Sam's daughter didn't even get mentioned in this one, which is a bit strange, but not a big issue. And on the fun side of things apart from the interrogations and one-liners thrown at Lambert by Sam, he also gets his fair share of teasing from Grim about his age. I really liked those, probably this is why I love Grim so much.

After each mission you get a performance analysis, where 100% is the perfect mission. Every small thing affects the final score: the number of alarms triggered, the number of enemies killed, how many times you've been detected, etc. Ofc. since this is still a stealth game to get the perfect score you don't have to kill everyone, on the contrary you're not allowed to kill a single soul, you even have to avoid stepping on ants (just kidding), It's a good challenge for maximalists, for me it was just a fun fact, I didn't care about it that much to actually repeat a mission because of a low score. My best result was 98 percent and my worst botched mission was 27, but it was a mission complete nonetheless.

Well actually there is something they failed to fix. Sam still doesn't know how to shoot straight. The fire fights might even be a bit more biased towards the enemies than in the first two games.
Another change for the worse is that they removed the auto-save feature from the game. It doesn't even save at the start of new missions. It happened to me more than once, that I forgot to save, and when I tapped quickload I found myself on the previous mission. And ofc, because I'm back on the previous mission, the "restart mission" option is off the table as well. I've sent more than one curse words towards random relatives of the developers because of that. I only got used to having to save at the start of missions for the last three or four. I don't understand how could this shortcoming slip past all the testers.

I was doing some calculations and arrived at the conclusion that this game was a bit expensive way of fun, because it's only six or seven hours long. There are still only 10 missions. Which means you paid about 10 bucks for each hour of gaming. But I think it might just be worth it. Especially now when you can pick it up for 10 or less.

The missions seem a bit easier now, and you're not forced to use stealth. Apart from the scoring system, there are no repercussions for leaving a pile of bodies behind.

The story is a big improvement over Pandora Tomorrow but I think it's even better than the first game's. You can feel like Jack Bauer albeit not for an entire 24 hours.

All in all it's a really big step forwards in almost every aspect.

+

• Atmosphere
• Graphics
• Gameplay
• Dialouge and one liners
• Story

-

• Really short, 7 hours tops.
• Your visbility is not related to your visiblity....ah I won't write it down again
• Sam is still not big on aiming
• Lack of autosave on mission starts
• Various interactions doesn't have any priorities. It happened many times that I was sneaking up on an enemy from behind, and when I wanted to grab him Sam casually turned on the light switch next to the guy. Or started picking up the body lying on the floor next to him. It would've been obvious to me to make "grab the effing soldier" the first item on the list and not "take out the garbage"
• Opening the "Opsat" screen doesn't pause the game. Of course it's more lifelike this way, but I feel this is just a notch too much reality in a game like this. If I wanted to achieve reality I would've taken out the full 3D automap that has all buildings down to the last detail in it instead.

Verdict: 9/10

To me this is the best part of the series. It's a big downhill after this, but it does get better later.

 

[M76]

Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006)

Even before finishing the previous game (Chaos Theory) some friends have forewarned me about this one. They said it's a horribly, terribly bad game. But of course I'll make up my own mind about it. When did I let negative, but especially positive reviews get in the way?

Spoiler: Wall of text under here

The game is built very differently compared to the previous ones, it's not divided into 10 clearly separatable missions. Basically the whole game is one big mission. And this is a refreshing difference, I might have found it dull to just have ten new missions following the same scheme again. Another new idea I really liked were the undercover missions, unfortunately their novelty vanished fast, when I realised that it's almost impossible to get caught doing things for the other side while pretending to work for one side. And you always have plenty of time to spare even after doing everything for every possible faction. And while you encounter a lot of NPCs during these undercover missions you can't initiate any kind of conversation with any of them unfortunately. I'd have really liked if they put in some everyday tasks into these missions, so you could mingle to avoid detection, but no. You can't even sit down on a freaking chair after finishing all the tasks. You have to stand around like a fool until the timer runs out and the mission can be completed.

Another thing I liked in the game, that sometimes you have to make some impossible decisions when there is no right choice only two or more wrongs. It really helps the immersion, and the story.

As I've said the game itself is not bad in my opinion, but I do have to admit one thing. It's probably the buggiest, most unfinished game I ever had the misfortune of playing. I'd be embarrassed in the developers place to even label it as a beta, not to mention selling it as it is. There was everything you can imagine, getting stuck in objects, taking damage or dying by doing something in small spaces, and the list goes on... But the most disgraceful thing was that no matter what I did, the game just wouldn't trigger the ending video. It just switched to an external camera and wouldn't do anything, I did the ending about 5 times, with patches, without patches, after reinstalling, but nothing helped. (Thankfully the ending was pretty easy to do as well, otherwise I would've gone mad) In the end I had to watch the ending cinematic by looking it up on youtube. And as I found out there is a bonus mission in the game that I couldn't do either because I'd only get access to it after the ending video. So this was probably the first and last time I found a gameplay video on youtube useful.

Unfortunately the length of these games seems inversely proportional to their number in the series. Cause this one is so short I barely even noticed it. It took about five hours from start to finish.

The story is a bit scrubby, like it was written by aspiring youngsters. Lots of the most common clichés appear in it. Like when they try to convince you about something without any prelude. For example (major story spoilers):
Spoiler
When Enrica interrupts Fisher lurking in her room. They barely broken words before that, and she still doesn't show the least amount of content. And if you save her mid game she doesn't even get upset at the end when it comes to light that you're and undercover agent aiming to bring down the organization she believes in

I found these bits totally unrealistic in the story. I know games are not realistic most of the time. But the story at least should be believable There is already a very big barrier to getting immersed in the story. That you basically learn nothing of the organization you're supposed to infiltrate in the game. You hear nothing about their goals, or their ideology, all you get is "Phew terrorist scum"

Despite the game having a main storyline the individual missions you're sent on during your undercover stint have no connection to each other, and most of the time to the main story either. During these missions you always get contradicting orders from the NSA and the JBA (the organization you're in cover with) I thought it would be fun doing the balance act between two sets of orders. But unfortunately the missions are always orchestrated in a way that you can do good on both sets of orders without compromising the other. For example your terrorist boss conveniently leaves you alone for half an hour when purely by chance you have to do an errand for the NSA that takes exactly half hour. Because either they won't be looking for you while doing something for the NSA, or the chance to get back to your post will be built into the mission conveniently. That means the thrill goes completely non-existent by the third mission.

The characters aren't very well developed either. You can't really grow to like or even hate anyone. Maybe except Moss.

The graphics quality seems to deteriorate over the missions towards the end of the game. It's clear as sky that the devs were rushed like hell to get it out on time. That explains the bugs as well.

As for controls, the moves and actions available to you are exactly the same as before. But nonetheless they completely rearranged the controls for no apparent reason. It isn't any more straightforward or easier just different than before.

The difference in gameplay is that they finally got rid of the visibility indicator, so no more moonshining for Fisher. But they also got rid of the health bar so you can only guess how injured you are, and there are no medkits and similar things either. Instead Sam heals over time. I'd love to be that person, whose gunshot wounds heal without any medical attention in a few minutes

On some maps the enemies constantly respawn which resulted in some hilarious situations. At one occasion if I shot a soldier, then turned away the view only so much that he got off screen, and turned back, he was standing again At first I thought they made a clever NPC that only pretended to be dead, but no, I could shoot him 10 times and he would still reappear for the eleventh time. And it was not even the same soldier, but a soldier appeared in his place.

The savegame system is buggy as well. I was driven insane by it. For example if you're in a game, the load game option is not working anymore, you can choose any save, the game even asks you if you really want to load it, but no matter what you answer nothing happens. The quick save feature only works within one game session. So if you save your game with quick save then quit, or the game freezes, if you restart it you can't load your quicksave, because Quick load only becomes available if you already used quick save at least once during that run. The game gives you a save message every now and then as you progress, you'd think it's autosave, but WRONG, because if you try to load the game will throw you back to the last quicksave point. (Not just the quickload, but the "Load last save" option as well) IT happened many times that the game corrupted the quick save and it wasn't loadable, fortunately the game stores the last four saves parallel. So you can try and go for the one before that if this happens (and it happens a lot)

The bugfixing must have went something like this:
- Hey boss, we still need to fix the quicksave issue, the gamers will be outraged if they loose their progress ingame.
- Don't worry, we put in four quicksave slots, it's unlikely that the game would corrupt four saves in a row.
The funny thing is that the game doesn't list the saves by time and date, just throws them in a list without any particular order. And since they can't be named, you just get a list that consists of savagames that are all named "SAVE" without even a number next to them. So the guesswork can start about which is the latest that actually works.

+

• Atmosphere
• Gameplay
• Hard decisions
• Missions with contradicting orders (as an idea, not the way it's realized)
• Undercover mode (as an idea, not the way it's realized)

-

• 5 hours to finish the main campaign
• Tons of bugs
• Respawning soldiers
• Believe it or not, the enemies are telephatic again
• At the JBA base even the last janitor is above you in rank even after proving yourself in numerous missions.
• Junk save system

Seriously how can I rate this heap of crap that would otherwise be a decent game if not for the bugs? If I completely take the bugs and overall programming quality out of the equation then it would deserve a 8/10. But if I look at the build quality it would deserve an 1/10. I'll avarage it out at 4 out of 10.

I'd gladly recommend the game to anyone, but the bugs prevent me from doing that. Only consider it if you fancy pulling your hair out.


Splinter Cell: Conviction (2010)

I was pondering in my head about how I would justify wiping off all that the Splinter Cell franchise stood for before this game. Because that's what the developers did with this one. They created a completely different game. And they haven't stopped at there either. They even went as far as to repurpose characters. For example they took Grimsdottir (a character I was very fond of in the previous games) and redesigned her into some badass field agent, they even changed her look completely. I assume of course that their goal was to appeal to wider audiences with the game. I don't presume to know if that worked out for them or not. What I do know is that they managed to piss off almost every fan of the previous games with these changes (including me).

Spoiler: Here be another wall of text

They really tried hard to shove every popular cliche into the game: conspiracy, kidnapping, traitor, Iraq, the most important tools that make a season of 24. And of course they couldn't refrain from using the most banal cliches of them all: Let's show the last scene of the game, and then jump a random amount of time into the past.

I see this tool used more & more. But while I can justify its usage in TV, where you want to persuade the viewer not to switch to another channel, in a video game it's pointless. I already bought the damn game if I'm playing it, you don't need to show me some juicy scene from the middle, or the end, to make me want to play it. And I don't want to see where the story will eventually lead to, you have the opportunity to build it up, you don't have to start with a loud bang, I won't switch to the "Atari channel". I didn't throw away Unreal because it started with a completely non-combat level, I didn't throw away Half-Life because it started with a ten minute long "pointless" tram journey.

The funny thing is they already had a good story, so this just made the usage of all the cliches that more pointless. Sometimes Video Game designers really come through as blatantly stupid to me.

What becomes apparent from the minute you start playing, is that the visuals was of paramount importance to them. For example some cutscenes are projected onto the walls within the game word. I could appreciate that in a tech demo, or in demoscene. But in a story driven game? Not so much. It really looks cool, and I applaud their programmers for being able to do that, but it's distracting, and you can't see the cutscene clearly either. I admit it has some benefits in terms of building tension. But if it were up to me, the idea would've went down the scrapper.

But the bigger problem is, that they project your objectives onto the game world using the same method. Nothing can throw you off the experience quite the same way as seeing your mission objectives spelled out on the wall in ARIAL BLACK when entering a room. And projection is the right word, because if you step close to the wall, the letters are shown on your character. (If this were a forum post I'd put a facepalm meme here)

The gameplay is not even reminiscent of the Splinter Cell I used to know. It's 90 percent action, and 10 percent stealth. But you have no choice in it at all. The level design and scripts make sure of that. On the levels they intended as action levels you can't use stealth, because you can only progress after wasting everyone in cold blood. Yes in cold blood, this is one thing I really disliked about the game. That now Sam kills everyone without a second thought, there are no longer non-lethal takedowns in the game. And most of the people you kill are just soldiers or agents like you following orders, who ended up on the wrong side of the story. It's not like you're killing enemy combatants.

As I've said ninety percent of the game is action. So they implemented a combo system in the game, which works like this: If you kill someone in close combat you get the opportunity to mark three or four (depending on your weapon) other guys to death. And after marking the unfortunate victims, Sam executes them in a cutscene, serving one bullet to the head to each. And you're forced to this method, because the one thing they managed to carry over from previous games is that you're still useless in open gunfights. So through the game you'll be striving to somehow separate one soldier from the rest to kill that in hand to hand combat, so then you're able to take down a few more like this.

The interrogations have lost their importance again. You can only question a few key characters through the game, and even those are comical. Sam holds the person with one hand by the throat like some terminator, and you're confined to a four by four square you can't move outside. If you take the person to some object within this space then Sam will automatically use that object to "aid" the interrogation. But since there are only three or four interrogations in the entire game this didn't take too much effort to implement. But if you don't move close to any object, then one animation repeats itself all the time. Yes ONE, pathetic.

The most annoying design flaw in the game to me is that the game now indicates that you're hidden by turning the screen to black and white. Unbelievable. Of course there are no more spy tools in the game either like nigh vision goggles and thermal cameras, since you can see like an eagle in pitch black, only in black and white. (facepalm no. 2)

The save system is a checkpoint based one. And one that won't be your friend. The checkpoints are very sparse, and many times they're placed before a long animation. So if you die you have to watch the same goddamn animation over and over again, because there is no option to skip it even after the 10th time. And it also does happen that the game puts you into a serious firefight against waves of enemies and there is no checkpoint after it. Instead you go forward and have another firefight, and if you die you have to do the first one again too. It was challenging even on Normal difficulty.

They completely overhauled the controls yet again. Almost every action is contextual, so it happened often that Sam didn't do what I intended him to do. For example rolling and taking cover are bound to the same button. It was hilarious and mind numbing at the same time when Sam instead of taking cover near a door frame rolled into the room filled with enemies like a hedgehog. And this happened almost a third of the time when I tried to take cover in the game. But at the same time there are other functions that should and could use one button or be more intelligent. Like the mark&execute function. You have a separate button to mark enemies, another one to unmark them, and to carry out the executions you use a third button. And also if there are two enemies standing behind each other, no matter what you do you can only mark the one standing in front. And also if an enemy walks out of the room you're staying in, his mark doesn't automatically get cancelled, but you have to cancel all the marks to get him unmarked. Asmall inconvenience, but one that annoys you through the whole game.

The various gadgets and equipment you can have through the game like grenades, mines, remote bombs, and such are completely useless, because they have so small yields, that they only take out an enemy if he's standing right on top of it. And even then it can only take out one enemy, or maybe two if you're extremely lucky. But if I have the opportunity to throw a grenade at an enemy, why shouldn't I shoot him instead? At least that's silenced. There are also flashbang and emp grenades in the game, that affect a larger area, but they only disorient/disable enemies for a few seconds, so basically all they're good for is to announce your presence to everyone in the area.

If a checkpoint is located close to a weapons stash, then after loading you always loose your weapon apart from the basic pistol. And you have to pick up the weapon again. But this is tricky, because the action is not paused so the enemies might come at you at once after you load the save, so you don't have time to properly gear up, sometimes you hardly have enough time to pick up the first weapon you can get your hands on.

After the lots of negativity, I can only mention one aspect of the game I actually liked. The enemy AI: They are constantly throwing grenades at you, use blind shooting, try to flank you, and never leave you the opportunity to catch your breath.

+

• Atmosphere (Some levels are actually well designed, they can't ruin it completely with the projections)
• Gameplay (at first glance it's horrible if you're expecting a stealth game, but for a brainless shooter it's pretty good)
• Cover system (when it actually works)
• decent AI (although sometimes they do act like livestock in a slaugherhouse)

-

• Short
• I got stuck in objects more than once, this is especially joyful when you just finished off a ton of enemies but not yet reached the next checkpoint.
• Sometimes enemies see you through walls
• Bullets often reach you in cover
• Rewritten characters from previous games
• Cliches in the story
• No decisions
• Completely linear levels
• You're forced to use action, you can't choose your gameplay style
• Objectives projected on walls
• Badly placed checkpoints
• Not much similarity to prevoious games.
• Control issues
• Black & White darkness
• There is no hacking, or lockpicking or any similar minigame.

If I try to value the game objectively it would be a 7/10, but I just can't forgive that they threw everything out the window that Splinter Cell was before. So I'll be harsh and give it a 6 out of 10

 

[M76]

Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013)

Unfortunately I have to compare this to Double Agent because again they managed to release a piece of crap in regards of QA. Maybe they shouldn't have outsourced the actual QA portion of the development to an Eastern European country infamous for their shit work quality. And I played the game after a year of patches were already released for it, what was it like originally? And speaking of patching that's a disaster in itself. The only way to patch the game is to start the game and have it look for patches automatically, and if it finds a newer version it installs it. Sounds good? Right, but the game only ever installs the next patch, and there is no cumulative update. So you have to quit and re-start the game until it finds no more updates. A bit how like windows update works, only this one takes more re-starts.

Spoiler: Continue to read...

Before playing I didn't consider the patching issue as an indicator of the overall quality of the game, but sadly it was. During my playtrough it must have frozen or stopped working unexpectedly a dozen or so times. But the problems don't end there, there are other minor and not so minor bugs scattered trough the entire game. The most ridiculous of these was when I shoot a guard dog, only for it to get back up a few seconds later, and run off the map in a straight line, clipping trough everything. I'm not joking this actually happened. And a similar thing happened when a soldier went off map, and kept shooting me from outside the map, but I couldn't shoot back because the level boundary blocked my bullets. And this was on a level where the mission was to kill all enemies, so I had to reload.

The gameplay is similar to older splinter cell games, as in you have to use stealth to corner the enemies, because in open fights you get overwhelmed even by the lowest form of thugs. Thankfully there are a lot of options when it comes to eliminating enemies. There are at least ten ways for murdering them. And the game even scores you based on how you murder them. If you use a silent non-lethal takedown that's the best score, if you silently kill them you get slightly less, and if you kill them openly you get even less points. And this actually has value in the game, because you get credits after each mission based on your score. Credits that you can use to improve your headquarters and equipment. They even created a small animation that counts up all the aspects that make up your final score, which would be effective, if they didn't screw this up also. Because on the status bar on the top of the screen the credits indicator already shows the sum you got when the game is still counting your score.

The game has primary campaign missions, and some secondary side missions. You can get 4 types of the latter, each type from a different squadmate. The first type is where you have to infiltrate some facility silently. Do your job then slip out unseen as well. These are the hardest, but the most fun as well, they're hard because there is no saving here, you have to do the whole mission in one go. The second type is when you have to clear all enemies from a map, this is quite hard as well, because if you're detected just once reinforcements arrive which means that you have to deal with 25 instead of only 10 soldiers. These missions are always two part, and thankfully there is a checkpoint between the two parts. Otherwise they'd be quite impossible to get right. The third mission type is when you have to hold out wave after wave of enemies. Basically it's the carbon copy of ME3's multiplayer. The fourth type of missions I didn't try because it only works in multiplayer. And I don't care about that.

And speaking of Mass Effect, I had a feeling that they also borrowed the idea of having your own "ship" from there, because the whole vibe is very much like that on your flying HQ. I even think that somehow Sam Fisher even looks somewhat like default Shephard here.

Others mentioned that the protagonist is no longer voiced by Michael Ironside, frankly I didn't even take notice of that. But apparently it's a big negative.

The most of your earned credits must be spent on improving your gear because your basic weapons are very ineffective. A well upgraded sniper rifle and some luck is enough to take down heavily armoured enemies. You need luck because sometimes the bullet will only make their helmet fly off, instead of killing them. And hitting them a second time after they start frolicking around is very hard. And heavy soldiers are very annoying enemies anyway since they are immune to most attacks including gas, melee, and electric prod as well.

The story is the most clichéd one you can imagine. A new terrorist group wants to do bad things, and you're the only one capable of stopping them, because every one else is sitting on their hands or something. Even when it would be obvious to send in the military, you're still being sent alone. The twists in the story are foreseeable from miles. And the whole game comes down to a very stupid and annoying bossfight.

I'm not saying this is a bad game because gameplay is actually fun, but there is nothing that we didn't see before.

The graphics is OK, not great, but at least it ran well. Except during the HQ, where for some reason it kept slowing down.

The checkpoint based save system was OK during the campaign.

The controls on the other hand have some serious issues. When you're in cover all the movement is relative to the camera, and not to the character, which made me crazy, and the same goes for climbing. Other issues include the character missing the intended cover and going into the wrong cover facing the enemies. Or he will turn on the light switch instead of opening a door.

Another stupid thing is hiding the bodies. Which is only possible in designated "corpse dumpsters" you can't put the bodies anywhere else, even throwing them off a cliff doesn't count as hiding them. But there is very few of these dumpsters in the game, so the whole idea of hiding bodies looses it's point.

I think I mentioned everything that I wanted.

+

• Scoring system
  
• Since you're transported to your HQ after each mission the immersion is not broken
  
• the basic stealth and enemy hunting gameplay still works
  
• the game made a return to it's origins after the action style detour of conviction

-

• freezing and hanging
  
• bugs and other stupid errors
  
• really underwhelming bossfight
  
• extremely hard side missions
  
• clichéd story
  
• I still can't feel the vibe of the objectives being projected within the game world

What it lacks in story it makes up for in gameplay.


Scoring:

Graphics: 7
Story: 3
Atmoshpere: 7
Gameplay: 8
Contorls: 5

Overall: 7/10
Despite it's errors It's worth playing

I had to split it three ways otherwise the forum wouldn't let me post it. Apparently there is a 20000 character limit for posts

 

[JayteeBates]

M76 you really have a treat in store if you have not played Witcher 3

 

[M76]

M76 you really have a treat in store if you have not played Witcher 3

I'm not so sure about that. I played Witcher 1, didn't like it much, gave up after an hour maybe. I played Witcher 2, also, didn't like that one either, got a little further maybe 3-4 hours in before calling it a day. After that I'm not very enthusiastic about Witcher 3, maybe when it gets under €10.

 

[Nenu]

I was similar with Witcher 1 and 2. 3 is altogether better.
I'm on the DLC now, expertly written and I havent even started the last one which is acclaimed the best of all.

Having a break from it for a coffee and bit of [H].

 

[zamardii12]

Firewatch. Brilliant dialogue. Beat in less than 3 hours. Would'nt pay more than $10 for it though. Downside is that the dialogue options don't yield different endings. It ends the same every time which sucks b/c it doesn't make me want to play it again too much.

8/10

 

[MavericK]

I was similar with Witcher 1 and 2. 3 is altogether better.
I'm on the DLC now, expertly written and I havent even started the last one which is acclaimed the best of all.

Having a break from it for a coffee and bit of [H].

I haven't played all the way through Witcher 3 yet, but I agree with this. Couldn't get into 1 or 2 but 3 has more of a Skyrim-ish feel to it. More open-world, not nearly as linear as the others.

 

[MavericK]

Rise of the Tomb Raider

I liked this one - didn't 100% everything (and not sure if I will, either), but it was a lot of fun. If you liked the first one (not the original, but the reboot), you'll like this one. A lot more of the same.

Which...is also kind of the downside. Didn't really feel a whole lot different than the first game, but the story was interesting and the graphics are amazing. Lots of intense (albeit linear) sequences where you are running, climbing, jumping, etc. As with all games of this type, the grab detection can be finnicky, but overall it wasn't too bad.

I did encounter some glitches where an enemy wouldn't spawn properly, or they got stuck in a wall somewhere, or something of that nature which kept me from progressing. Killing myself and respawning seemed to fix it most of the time, but it was still somewhat annoying.

Overall I'd probably give it a 7.5/10. If I hadn't played the first game already, it might be a bit higher because it is an excellent game, but it did feel a bit overly familiar from the start, and about halfway through I was starting to get a little bored. For completionists/collectors, though, there is a SHIT TON of stuff to find. I am not really one of those people, so I don't know that I'll go back to it.

I haven't tried the Expeditions or Croft Manor stuff, so that may bring me back for a bit, but I think it's mostly just score attack stuff with card modifiers (the card mechanic feels weird in this type of game) so I don't know if that'll hold my attention.

 

[Nenu]

I haven't played all the way through Witcher 3 yet, but I agree with this. Couldn't get into 1 or 2 but 3 has more of a Skyrim-ish feel to it. More open-world, not nearly as linear as the others.

Not often someone chooses exactly the words I was thinking heh.

 

[rezerekted]

Finished? I haven't finished one game in years. I have so many games I don't have time to finish them and flirt from game to game. Think I have played a total of about 2 hours of Bioshock and it is still installed so guess I should try and finish it one day, maybe next year.