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Never played the first two, but Chaos Theory had some decent replayability to it. So even if you can finish it under 10 hours, a lot of the missions (IMO) offer enough variety for a second try. Unless you played through it back in the day, the co-op had some excellent missions to. Sadly I never finished all of them.
 
GTA V - 7.5/10

I just completed the single player campaign and while it was a step above GTA IV, it felt much shorter. The world was more alive and brighter than the bleak rainy world in Liberty City, but it feels like there's a lot of unexplored opportunities, probably visited in the multiplayer version. I liked the heists and I guess I just wanted more of what they were giving and it feels like they were holding back. I also appreciated how they were tying up loose ends from GTA IV, which was pretty cool.
 
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Remastered.

I loved the original CoD4. It was the first call of duty I ever played and it made me get into online console gaming. The Remaster was a rollercoaster experience.

First thing, it ran like crap on my hardware for most of the game. I was using an old xeon (q9650 equivalent) with an AMD r9 290. I was being murdered by the CPU bottleneck. Can't fault the game for that too much other than to say poor optimization as the r9 290 could've been the culprit since it was known to have issues with this game as well.

The graphics were noticeably better during cutscenes and more scripted moments. The majority of the game looked not much better than before though. The color palette looked washed out on a lot of levels.

The gameplay is what really mattered to me though. It was the same game. Everything sounded and felt the same as it did years ago. This is good. I like when developers don't try to balance and change things with the times on remasters.

Overall 8/10.
 
Deus Ex Invisible War (2003)

Yes I'm going back in time quite a few years again. It's hard to believe that it's been already over a decade since this game came out. The memories of its release are still fresh in my mind. Either time started moving faster, or I'm getting old.

The game wasn't without its initial problems. When it first came out it was a mess. They accidentally left the HUD on console parameters, so it was almost in the middle of the screen on a PC monitor. It ran like a slideshow on any hardware that an average student gamer (like me) could afford, and the realistic difficulty setting was messed up (it took 5 shots in the head for enemies to die)

The game also had some very forward looking graphical features which meant they compromised in other areas, of course this didn't sit well with the average uninformed gamer. (that included me at the time, so I don't mean it pejoratively)

So it's not a recent thing that games are released in an unfinished condition.

But they patched the game and solved or improved on all of the above issues.

Unfortunately that didn't help much with the reputation of the game. It went down in history as a disappointment and a failure. But it's not really that bad. When you look at it objectively it is a great game.

So those who dismissed it based on the first pre-patch impressions, made a mistake. Because behind all that, IW is actually a very good game that while doesn't live up to it's predecessor in complexity, still offers a very immersive and enjoyable gaming experience. In my opinion it's a far better game than the remake DX: Human Revolution.

And while many people praised Mass Effect for the ability to play the game both with a male or female character, they forgot that Invisible War offered the same choice 5 years earlier.

The game offers the same murky dystopian atmosphere as the first and then some. The story is as good as it gets. The roles of good and bad are even more blurred, you can play to the benefit of either of the game's major factions. Like the power hungry illuminati, or the survivalist omar, the secretive knights templar, and a few more.

They overcome the subject of effects of the ending choice in Deus Ex quite well. There is no save import, instead, the setting is like if all endings happened simultaneously. (spoiler for DeusEx 1) If you did not yet, I strongly recommend that you play the original game before spoiling it, it's in my view still the greatest PC game ever created.

Helios and JC Denton merged their conciousnesses
The Aquinas router was destroyed
The Illuminati rose to power


The biggest problem of the game is the fact that it was co-developed to the Xbox and the PS2, which means all the maps are smaller, and even these smaller maps are divided to even smaller areas. Sometimes it takes 5-6 area transitions to finish a side mission, which makes them quite a chore. There were only two maps that I actually liked, the Versalife facility on Antarctica, and Trier, which reminded me of NYC with a bit of Paris flavour from DX1.

Let's have the +/- shootout.

+

  • The atmosphere is as good as it gets
  • The places you visit are quite varied and well designed within the given constraints
  • You can't run trough levels without thinking, because you'll find yourself dead in seconds
  • The story and the future it paints is very believable you don't need suspension of disbelief to get immersed.
  • The story is interesting and captivating, you'll be interested to know what happens next at any point.
  • Numerous references to the first game

-

  • Much less intrigue and conspiracy, all the factions are acting out in the open, even the "invisible hand" illuminati.
  • stupid AI, you almost have to dance in front of them to take notice, and when they do, they start running at you without consideration, so if you hide behind a corner you can take them all with a sword easily.
  • The decade old graphics that wasn't considered very good even back then seems that much worse now, and I didn't find a single active "re-texturing" project for it.
  • It can be finished in 6-7 hours easily.
  • The complete eradication of RPG elements
  • All weapons have the same ammo, from slingshot to atomic bomb. The only difference is the amount they use for one shot. So it's very easy to waste all your ammo with powerful weapons, and then you're screwed. I admit that I used ammo cheat because I couldn't bear the fact that if I take 3 shots with the railgun then I can't even use a cattle prod anymore.
  • Because the game had to be run on PS2, and XBOX, everything is small in scale to be able to fit in the memory constraints of those consoles. There are almost no external maps, and the ones that you get are smaller than most internal levels in DeusEx one. This also means you get a loading screen between almost every room.
  • You get contradicting missions from all factions on all levels, who all want you to work exclusively for them. But it makes no difference who you prefer during the game, you can still choose any faction in the endgame, even one that you screwed over every chance you got until then.
  • bad inventory
  • it's impossible to properly loot ammo from fallen enemies, because you always end up picking up their carcasses, and if you're in a small place you can't even put it down.

8/10 it really is that good, just give it a chance don't let the bad reputation of the game dissuade you.
 
I'm determined to keep this topic alive.

Dragon Age: Origins (2009)

I have a love hate relationship with this game.I tried to finish it four times, before I was able to get to the end of the story. Mainly because it always failed to keep me interested. After 4-5 hours there is nothing new in the game, and I always got fed up with the seemingly endless and pointless conversations in it. And the combat system makes the actual combat a chore instead of fun. The outcome of individual battles mostly depend on how you distributed skill points. And if you go the wrong way in the skill tree by the time you realize it you're f*cked. And you end up with a bunch of useless spells and abilities, and a completely ineffective team. Twice I had to restart the game from the beginning, because I reached a point, where I simply could not defeat the enemies, my team was just too weak, no tactical superiority could help. In battles I felt more like a spectator, than anything else. Too much depends on the squad's skills compared to tactics.

Thanks to this feeling of helplessness the game is more annoying than relaxing. In battles you can either tell your squad members to stay put, or allow them to move around freely, but neither works well in practice. If you let them roam free, they break away and run into the scores of enemies like they have a death wish. If you stop them, they simply won't attack at all most of the time. The only solution I found is to micromanage all squad members, who to attack, where to move, and when. This means literally bringing up the tactics screen every two seconds and issuing new commands to everyone. Otherwise you can bet someone will do something stupid, like leaving a half dead enemy and attack another one with full health. You can't prepare for even half of the eventualities with the tactics menu, because there are only so many instructions you can give to a character before they start contradicting. Tactics are allright, for non-combat spells and abilities, like healing, but not for combat. If you give them too many instructions they'll jump around doing nothing, because too many conditions are met at the same time. They'll never finish anything.

For example I can set up my mage to use a lirium potion when it drops bellow 10%, but there are a hundred other factors to take into account if it's really needed or not. For example if there are no more than a few enemies, then it's a waste. And you can't make tactics dependent on complex conditions. So your squad will always perform at a compromise. and not to the best use of the resources and their abilities.

I had another big issue with the game. There is just too many special abilities and spells, so many in fact that you can't even fit them all on the quick menu. But if you want to survive you must use all abilities all the time as soon as they're available. You can't just select the best abilities and use those exclusively, because everything has very long cooldown. Some abilities can only be used once during a battle. And you can't win by using basic moves. So you just keep shoving everything you have at the enemies, and hope that by the time you threw everything at them, some ability you used before can be used again. I would've preferred to have only a few special moves, and much more passive skills that are always active.

Speaking of annoying, I don't consider myself a casual gamer, I finished dozens of games, many on the hardest difficulty. But in this game I had my hands full even on easy. There were a few battles where I could only depend on luck and a dozen retries. And I can't even say that the game is hard where it needs to be hard. The important battles and bossfights really are easy on easy difficulty, but there were a few side quests, where I encountered almost unwinnable battles on easy difficulty. I can't even begin to imagine how to win those battles on hard difficulty.

But enough of the negativity, let's speak about what's good in the game. Like the story, and the multiple endings, but most importantly the multiple beginnings of the game. This one is really good. Depending on what character you select, you get a completely different origin story, and a completely unique "family" quest that's there through the game. This makes you want to try with every character. If only it'd be interesting enough to finish the game with each one. I finished the game in 24 hours, but it felt more like 80, because of the boring parts, and repetitive annoying fights. I also liked the graphics.

I only have one more complaint, but it's not specifically to this game, but to all rpgs. That your character's attributes don't affect their looks. A character with 10 strength looks the same as one with 50. For example in oblivion you even get remarks from npcs if you have a high strength attribute, but you still look the same as everyone else.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Story
  • Characters
  • Graphics
  • Multiple backstories dependent on your character choice

-

  • Fighting
  • I never got any use of money in the game. There isn't a single merchant in the game that would have anything remotely useful, or if he does have something it costs so much that by the time you have the money for it, you already have much better equipment.
  • Boring conversations with npcs
  • Your character is mute
  • Repetitive gameplay
  • Not balanced well, some parts of the game are extremely difficult even on easy.

I'm not going to say that this is a bad game, but it's not what I'd call great either.

graphics/realization: 8/10
story/atmosphere: 9/10
gameplay/controls: 2/10

overall: 6/10
 
I'll go with a non-traditional one that you can't really "finish" in a traditional sense, but I've put a ton of time into.

Street Fighter V

After Street Fighter IV ended up being a huge hit that essentially re-ignited the series after a decade-long lull, SFV takes a few steps forward and a few steps back. The Ultra meter is now gone and replaced with a V-Gauge. The V-Gauge can trigger V-Reversals (think Alpha Counter) and V-Triggers. They give characters temporary new moves and/or move properties. Focus attacks are gone in favor of V-skills, which are like another special move but with special defensive properties.

While Street Fighter 4 concluded with 45 characters and dozens of game modes, Street Fighter 5 launched with only 16 characters and 6 DLC characters. The DLC characters can be earned via in-game currency, but it can be very time consuming to get more than 3 of them without spending additional money. Did I mention that the game is $60, season pass is $20, and yet that STILL doesn't include all of the various costumes and stages? They keep introducing more, yet none are free!

Game modes are sparse, although Capcom did add a story mode after the game was released. For some odd reason there is no arcade mode and the features in the various training and challenge modes are stripped down.

So - how is the actual game? Opinions will vary depending on what you did and didn't like about the previous games. On the surface, it feels closer to Street Fighter 3 than 4. There is a stronger focus on ground based attack priority/distancing (aka. "footsies"), moving in and out of range, and throw mix-ups. While SF4 had lots of different attack ranges, most of Street Fighter 5 takes place at either medium or close range.
Extended combos featuring lots of precision inputs are almost entirely absent. Attack links are very loose and I can't think of any that can't be accomplished by rapid pressing buttons in sequence.
This makes the game a bit more strategic and slower paced, although increased damage can make matches go from slow to over in a flash.

Classic characters like Ryu, Zangief, and Cammy feel familiar enough to keep fans happy while still being different enough to justify this being a new game. Others like Dhalsim, Nash, and Ken were tweaked a bit more and feel fresh without being totally different. What about balance? While some characters (Chun Li/Mika) feel more powerful than most of the cast, no characters are completely powerless. Compared to earlier SF games where the "worst" characters felt helpless, SF5 has a better default balancing scheme than probably any other title in the series. I can imagine that after a few yearly balancing updates that will continue to improve more. There's also the possibility that Capcom focused on balancing the game for casual play rather than high-level tournaments. Many of the things that make the best characters overpowered are almost entirely absent in casual play.

Good:
Graphics are excellent
Casual play feels balanced
Fundamental-heavy gameplay makes it more approachable
Classic characters are a good mix of familiar and new
Online play is typically pretty good

Bad:
The game is $60 with an additional $20 season pass that STILL doesn't include all of the content
Game modes are sparse at best and the game feels unfinished nearly a year later
There is a ton of DLC and in spite of bad reviews, Capcom loves charging for everything
High level balance is better than some previous games, but the best and worst characters definitely need tweaking
Hype moments are nearly absent thanks to too much of a back-to-basics approach
The game is technically faster than SF4, yet it doesn't feel like it at all
Server issues can be frustrating

As of right now I'd give the game a 6/10. However with "season 2" coming soon, that could improve dramatically. Adding a free arcade mode and changing the way paid DLC works would help dramatically. Balance changes, more characters, and some additional V gameplay additions too.
I'm not sure this game can ever get higher than an 8 out of 10 without borderline starting over, but I could be wrong.

EDIT: Season 2 is incoming. Akuma is the first character and there will be 5 others. Early versions shown at the Playstation Experience only show minor tweaks to the actual game. Mostly balance tweaks with little to no changes to the V-system so far. Hopefully some additional (major) tweaks are incoming to keep the game fresh.
 
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I'll keep this short, since it's only an expansion to Origins and not a completely new game.

Dragon Age - Origins: Awakening (2010)

I had the profound feeling that the designers involved with this one are not the guys responsible for Origins. In fact It felt much closer to the style of Mass Effect 2. The story and the campaign is very similar to that one. In terms of the main storyline being in the background, and you're focused on recruiting and side missions. And these side missions are much more complex than anything in origins. The schema is almost the same as in Mass Effect 2, you recruit squad members, and do "loyalty" and side missions, and you upgrade your fortress, for the final confrontation. And the main story barely moves forward during this.

The whole game feels like if a much better design and test team had worked on it, than on origins. The difficulty problems are a thing of the past, there are no longer impossible fights that you can only win with a shitload of luck. The maps are much better as well. I half expected to see a lot of copy pasted material in it, but to my surprise there is a lot of new original content, and the level design is better as well.

If Origins were anything close to Awakening, then it could've stepped out of Mass Effect's shadow. But since this is marketed as an expansion, mostly only the people thrilled with origins bought this, so it doesn't expand on the fanbase much. It's rare when an expansion is as good as or better then the original game, but in this case it's a huge improvement.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Story
  • Characters
  • Graphics
  • The most annoying gameplay problems of Origins were rectified.

-

  • Your character is still mute


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

overall: 8/10
 
Transport Fever (2016)

You done fucked it up!

This game was supposed to be the holy grail for Transport Tycoon Deluxe fans. And it's almost great, but they faceplanted right at the threshold of greatness and badly. The game is 90% well designed, but that remaining 10% makes the whole experience frustrating and infuriating at times. Instead of satisfying and soothing as Transport Tycoon was.

The developers made a few inexplicable design choices, that make some aspects of the game really frustrating and trial / error style. And when questioned they keep deflecting by saying "this is not transport tycoon, it's not supposed to work like that". But the problem is that it works in arbitrary incomprehensible ways.

By far the worst offender is the cargo handling engine of the game. That works fine if you keep things simple, one origin, one destination, haul cargo, end of story. The problems start when you try to set up lines more complex than a nail. Like multiple cargo types, or different cargo destinations with one origin point, and the mix of those. Since everything is handled fully automatically. You can't tell the game which cargo to transport where, you're entirely at the mercy of the engine. And as I said for simple things it will work, for anything complex cargo starts to turn up at the most unexpected places, where it absolutely doesn't belong.

Like you have a docks, where you drop off say stone and iron ore. You want to transport stone to the construction material plant, and iron ore to the steel mill. That's two lines, no problem whatsoever. But steel mills have a by-product called slag, that's also needs to be taken to the construction materials plant. Now try to set up a line between the steel mill and the plant, and things go haywire very fast. iron ore will end up being transported to the materials plant, and dropped off there for no reason whatsoever, slag will end up at the docks, because the game tries to use connecting routes to transport cargo. And you end up with a big mess on your hands. Because the trucks you intended to transport stone from the docks to the plant, will instead be tied down transporting slag that is not even supposed to be there.

It's a complete and utter mess. With no manual overrides. The only control you have is by locking vehicles in to one cargo type. But then you completely cut yourself off from the option of transporting a different cargo on the way back. Your vehicles will be empty half the time which is no good for profit.
And the automation problem extends to routing as well. You have no control over which road vehicles should take, and the game always chooses the shortest route and not the fastest one. So building relief roads won't do much good.

And that's not even all. There is no overtaking of vehicles in the game. And not just on road, Transport Tycoon had that feature in 1995, but let's gloss over that. Even fucking ships can't overtake each other. So if I put a regular ship capable of 25kmh on the same line as a hovercraft capable of 100kmh the hovercraft won't for the love of anything holy overtake the slow moving regular ship. OMFG,
This means you can't mix different vehicles using the same route segments, because they'd end up going with the speed of the slowest vehicle on the line anyway.

It's ridiculous. You have to use the same vehicles for all your lines that have overlapping segments, so they don't get bogged down by each other.

And road vehicle depos are a mess as well. You can't use full load for any line, because they get blocked immediately, and the large depo is not much better either. The only difference between the small and the large one is that the large has 3 loading bays instead of 2. But that too will be blocked very fast by just one vehicle set to full load.

And there is also a problem with trains. One line will only ever use one platform at a station. You can't have two trains assigned to the same line drop off cargo at different platforms. Even trough the station has 3 empty platforms, the trains will wait at the entrance until the previous one have left the station. So no highly efficient cargo hubs, like in TTD.

And to not go without mentioning planes, they are utterly and totally useless. Illogical, and inefficient. For example taking off planes have priority over landing planes on runways!!!! So if your plane tries to land and it's two feet from the tarmac, it will still get overridden by the plane trying to take off. Sending it off into a ridiculously long and time consuming circle to try again landing later. So you can end up with some of the planes just circling for months or even years without landing.

And newer planes have absolutely no benefit to buy, they have too little capacity and they are too expensive. It's ridiculous that the plane with the highest capacity is the Concorde up until the nineties. When they finally add a plane with higher capacity than that. Speed is completely irrelevant in the game anyway, because all planes manoeuvre around 200-300kmh, and almost never reach their top speed within the game area, since it's too small for air travel to be effective. This means the DC4 constellation developed in the fifties is the best and most efficient plane to use while it's available, up until the eighties. This aspect of the game is the least balanced and therefore most useless.

Let's have a few words about the campaigns. At least they made an effort on it, but it also has aspects that drives you mad. Like introducing an arbitrary scale measuring willingness to travel, which you supposed to raise somehow, but you don't know what affects it and how. The game only has 14 missions divided into two 7 mission campaigns "Europe" and "America". The missions within each campaign are completely stand alone, there is no connection between any of them. Even the difficulty of missions is random, you can't feel a linear ramp. Some of them are fun, some of them are frustrating. Mostly in the European side. The American campaign seems much better.

Construction is a bit wonky too. But it can be managed. If you try to build a depot or any station directly connected to a street, it will cost 2-3 times more, than if you simply build it without street connection then connect the street manually. Road and rail construction must be micromanaged segment by segment otherwise it will cost astronomical amounts. Sometimes the game will refuse to do some construction unless you remove the already existing rail and start from scratch. And the landscaping tools are totally useless. You can only manipulate land using concentric circles, It's like the smoother tool in photoshop, you can't make concrete adjustments just trying to smudge things over, but it's time consuming, and the end result always looks like crap, and totally unrealistic.
The game sometimes puts huge slope changes into roads and rails too. With roads it's not that big of a problem, but it looks ridiculous when a train goes over such a slope change.

Also there doesn't seem to be much willingness from the devs. to improve the questionable aspects of the game. They released a stability patch for the game a few days after release, but since then all quiet on the western front. And that was almost month ago. At least they should issue a statement "We know about the shortcomings, we're working on it" But this silence makes me feel like they have taken the money and ran.




+

  • Graphics
  • Passenger traffic handling
  • Some fun missions
  • Ability to sell all vehicles on a line with one click

-

  • Annoyance and frustration due to automated cargo handling.
  • Routing
  • Single platform for one line
  • No overtaking for any vehicle land or water
  • arbitrary metrics you should somehow appease
  • No manual overrides
  • Wonky construction refusing to build some things
  • Ugly and unrealistic landscaping
  • Too few vehicle types, no alternatives to choose from.
  • Trains are too expensive, often a railcar costs more than the locomotive
  • Double heading trains doesn't seem to make any difference apart from doubling running costs
  • Construction is allowed while paused, so you can basically build up your whole infrastructure within a day
  • Air travel is an useless gimmick
  • Using full load will most certainly block the cargo hub, due to fluctuating cargo avaialibilty
  • Unexplainable strange behaviour of passengers using strange routes to get to their destination, or not using your routes at all at times. And bsinesses not releasing cargo while demanding that you transport more.
  • Cargo locked in to destinations, there is no reallocation based on demand changes during transit.
  • Supply never matches demand, meaning the facility only taking 10 units / year will be allocated 100 or 1000 while the facility demanding 800 will be allocated much less.
  • Upgrading just one station / depo / bus stop connected to a line, will erase all cargo / passengers waiting on that line at any station trough the entire line.


graphics/realization: 7/10
story/atmosphere: N/A
gameplay/controls: 3/10

overall: 4/10
 
Mass Effect (2008)

With the release of Andromeda looming it's time to put up my 5 cents about this trilogy. It's high time anyway since I often use the games as benchmarks in my other reviews.

As per my usual 2008 self at first I didn't like the game. Back then I wasn't used to RPG elements. I believed the game to be boring, and I hated the lift sequences, I hated the combat, I hated the dialogue, I hated the adventure elements, and I hated the inventory. It took me three tries to properly immerse myself into the game. On my first try I choose a vanguard to play as, but it was a miserable failure. I never even left the citadel. On my second try, I choose a soldier, which was a better choice, but I left the game on auto-levelup due to my belief that a game shouldn't be about fiddling in skill menus, and due to my prejudice against "magic" and "special abilities" and out of small mindedness I refused to use any biotic abilities. I also wasn't used to games where you have a squad so I completely ignored the squadmates. I didn't use the inventory system either. I actually played the game to almost the end using the weapons I had at the start. Because I was so prejudiced against RPG elements and fiddling with the character and inventory menus that I completely ignored it. This of course made the game impossibly difficult even on easy. So my second play-trough was a failure as well. But at least I managed to leave the citadel, and the freedom it gave blew me away.

I couldn't believe, that I had my own spaceship, my own crew, and I could go to any planet I wanted to. And even land on many of them. This kind of freedom in a videogame was unheard of. At least to me. I felt like I was in an episode of a Star Trek show. So after that I took a big breath and decided to start the game again, and ignore my prejudice against the RPG elements. I actually believed that a game should be all action, and everything else was a distraction I didn't want to deal with. I was so stupid.

So when I started playing the game as it was meant to be played, and I started enjoying the cutscenes and conversations instead of moaning for action. Everything fell into place. Well almost everything, but I'll get back later to the negatives.

So the game is a mixture of an adventure game, a third person shooter, and a role playing game. I never saw anything like it before, I had played and was familiar with Kotor, but compared to this it's a clumsy relic from the bronze age.

The game's most important aspect is the story and the characters, that get you hooked on them, if you let yourself that is. (what I failed to do during my first encounters with the game). After that you can't put it down. I finished the game in three days after this. When I was barely able to spend half an hour with it in one sitting before I let go of my misconception about RPG elements.

The voice acting, the story, and the characters make this one of the most amazing games of its era.

But as every coin has two sides, this game has some drawbacks as well. The worst of these is the inventory system in the game. There are a million types of weapons and mods, and ammunitions and other items in the game. You can often find more than fifty items in a single mission alone. And your inventory is limited in it's size, so you can't just keep accumulating stuff. You can't just ignore loot either, lest you get yourself into the situation I was in before my enlightenment. And if you reach the 150 item limit, you can only discard items one at a time. And only category by category. You have to go trough unused ammo mods, unused weapon mods, unused assault rifles, pistols, shotguns, rifles, grenades, armor, armor mods, all separately. And the highlighted item is always the one you're using. So if you go berserk on the "omni gel" button you'll end up dissolving your best items. So in reality to dissolve one item you have to make three separate clicks, on three separate parts on the inventory screen. So discarding 100 items, assuming that you find 50 useful and want to keep those, means you have to make 300 clicks. And you have to do this at least 4-5 times during a playtrough. I can't imagine why no beta tester realized that this system is completely impractical.

Another problem is that apart from the main story missions, every side mission takes place in the same three map layouts, they only move around some items in the rooms. They used a level designer called copy&paste. And it's not just reused textures or a few objects, the whole map is exactly the same three for all side missions.

And another thing about planets, is that each planet you can land on is completely barren. There is zero vegetation, and objects, apart from the planets connected to the main story. It's like they made all of them using Terragen, and dropped the few mission critical objects on them afterwards.

If you play a normal game you can finish it in about 20 hours, but if you're a maximalist like me who wants to do every little sidequest, then it can be 30 hours or more depending on your pace.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Addictive
  • Story
  • Characters
  • Graphics
  • Sound and Music



-

  • CTRL-C CTRL-V levels
  • inventory system
  • the first part of the game, until you leave the citadel for the first time is pretty boring, and can deter undetermined people from finishing the game


This is the beginning of the best Scifi game franchises, it might not be perfect. And it's combat is clumsy by today's standards. But if you're new to the game and let this deter you then you're missing out on a lot of good stuff.

graphics/realization: 7/10
story/atmosphere: 10/10
gameplay/controls: 5/10

overall impression: 8/10
 
Dishonored + DLCs

Not feeling like writing a long review, but I just blew through this the last couple of weekends and it really did end up being a great game. The hardest part to get past for me was the graphics (they really are atrocious, even when it was new they were bad) but the gameplay, the story, the world, all were awesome. The DLC was great as well (albeit not overly long) and added a lot to the story, from a different perspective since you play as a different character. Plus, if you play both DLCs in a row, they sort of fit together so it's almost like one larger expansion if you want to think of it that way.

Overall I would give it a 7.5/10. Probably would be 0.5-1 points higher if it wasn't so bad graphically, and I hate to say that but for me it really does detract from the immersion at times.
 
Mass Effect 2 (2010)

Since it is a sequel, I can't pass up the opportunity to compare it to its predecessor. The first thing you notice when you load up the game after ME1 for the first time is the graphics. It is a huge improvement compared to it, even though it uses the same engine (UE3). And the hardware requirements on the PC are even less than that of ME1, it runs perfectly on my weak ass AMD "gaming" laptop. Whereas it was struggling badly with ME1. So points for that.

The second thing you notice are the small but very significant UI and control improvements. Every change they made is for the better, except one little hiccup. Which I'm sure is not intentional, but rather an oversight or a bug: When you change your weapon on the tactical screen, there's no way to alter that choice. So if you click on the sniper rifle by mistake when you wanted the assault rifle, you cannot revoke it. You have to close the tactical menu, when your character changes to the undesired weapon, and you have to wait for the weapon change to finish, and then go back to the tactical screen, and try to not make the same mistake again. This thing has forced me into uncomfortable situations during combat many times. But it's not a big deal, since combat is much easier in this game, compared to the first. The only difficulty that can give you a moderate amount of challenge is insanity. But after roughly a dozen playtroughs even that feels like a walk in the park. Yes I played this game that many times, it's so good. In fact I'm in the middle of a playtrough right now.

The story of the game focuses more on preparing for your big mission, rather than doing it. This means that you have to focus on recruiting your squad members, the characters don't want to tag along automatically like in ME1. You do side-missions roughly 80% of the time. But it's not a problem since these missions are designed just as well, if not better than main story missions. Not like in M1, where side missions were probably made during lunch break in the Bioware offices.

The focus is shifted towards combat, so there is much less searching for answers going on, and when there is, usually the first NPC that you bump into, has all the answers.

Many people probably applaud the fact that they've taken out the Mako from the equation. But I miss it, it greatly exaggerated, the freedom factor of the game, that you were able to roam planets with it. I know that the Firewalker DLC provides you with a replacement vehicle, but it gives no exploration. All the missions you do with it are linear, and constrained in movement. The only missions that gives you a bit of freedom with the Hammerhead is Overlord, and even that's restrictive compared to ME1's planet exploration. And I don't like the vehicle either. I'm more of a feet on the ground guy, so this quasi-hovercraft is not my style. And it has seriously weak armour, a few shots and it's destroyed. So combat feels like a cat & mouse game with it.

In the odd event that you never played ME2, you may ask the question: If there is no vehicle how can you explore planets? Well sadly you explore planets through a repetitive, and boring resource gathering planet scanning minigame, Which is just a chore only there to boost the time needed to finish the game. There is literally no challenge in it, you just have to do it, if you're a maximalist and want to gather enough resources to buy all upgrades.

But the same goes for hacking and lock picking as well. It's next to impossible to fail in them, and there are actually purchasable upgrades to make them even easier. They certainly fit the narrative better than the frog game in ME1, but that's all the praise I can say about them. When I first saw the lockpicking, I thought you'll actually have to trace the connections on the PCB, to be able to open the doors like in Cyberia, (I doubt anyone remembers that game), but sadly it only serves as window dressing here. It boils down to a simple find the pairs game that has 6 unique pairs at most. Hacking is done by finding specific code segments in a scrolling display. It's only an exercise for your eyes, no thinking or strategy needed at all. Sorry I'm a sucker for good minigames I was domesticated with System Shock 2.

The inventory system was completely scrapped (not the choice I'd have made) but at least, there are no more scimitar one, two, three, four, five, etc. and the like weapons. And you don't have to change weapons after every corner because you found one that does 299 instead of 297 damage. You can't even change your loadout during missions at all, only when you find so-called weapon lockers. Which is not a good thing, because if you take the wrong weapons on a mission you can screw up bigtime.

Without any paid downloadable content the game takes roughly 24-28 hours to finish. Which is OK. But really you want to play the game with the DLCs, which adds a few more hours to it. So you end up with 35 hours or more in total.

Unfortunately the game is not without bugs, the most awkward bug is when your character's head gets locked in after a conversation. So after you finish a dialogue with an NPC and start walking away, your head still tries to look at the NPC you talked with. It's right in the uncanny valley, which freaks me the fuck out.

The other problematic thing is the non-combat AI of your squad members. They're all over the place, running around like madmen. It's really pathetic. They keep dropping behind, they get stuck in objects all the time. And if they drop behind too much the game simply respawns them right in front of you. Unfortunately they like to lag behind even on combat missions. It happened more than once that they disappeared and I had to finish off waves of enemies all alone. The funniest part is when some dialogue is triggered during this time. Your hear them speaking but can't see them anywhere.

One more issue is dialogue with crew members. If you don't speak to everyone after each significant mission, some conversations can be triggered after they long lost their meaning. The most extreme example of this was when someone reflected on a mission I did 20 hours earlier. But the opposite happens as well. You do a mission for someone, and in 10 seconds after informing them they're already telling you about how they're reaping the benefits of your actions.

So to sum it up there are six types of missions in the game.

  1. The ones relating to the main storyline. These are few and far between. And you have to be very careful about choosing when to do these missions. Because there are consequences for doing them too soon and unprepared, and also for too late as well.
  2. Recruiting missions where you have to convince the people to work for you, this means fighting trough waves of enemies to get to said characters (except for the characters you get automatically) and after convincing them to join you, fight trough a few more waves to escape from whatever situation you're in.
  3. Loyalty missions. These are similar to the Family armor, and doctor Saleon missions from ME1, only here they have more of a significance, and much better designed and complex. By doing the loyalty mission of a squad member, not only you unlock some new talent for them, but make their survival more likely in the endgame.
  4. The fourth type are side missions acquired by scanning planets. These are usually very short distractions. Still much better than the side missions in ME1, and they all have their own unique maps where they take place, no CTRL-C CTRL-V going on here.
  5. Missions given by NPC's in person, usually very short talk to someone because I'm too lazy to walk 10 feet to talk to them myself missions.
  6. Missions given trough messages or email (basically all the DLC missions)
+

  • Atmosphere
  • Gameplay
  • Graphics
  • Story
  • Music
  • Sound
  • Characters
  • Actual Character development happening in front of you
  • One of the best final missions ever created, where your prior actions and choices all matters in the sense of how well can you pull trough.
    It's possible for every character to die including the entire crew of the Normandy

-

  • Too few main story missions
  • AI
  • Dialogues triggered too late or too soon.
  • Recruiting missions all have the same scheme. First you have to talk to someone who tells you where to find the guy, but most of the time the first person coming your way can point you in the right direction. Then you have to fight through a bunch of enemies to get to the guy you're looking for. Then usually you have to fight your way trough another battalion of enemies to convince the guy to join your cause.
  • Missions acquired from NPCs are very simple, they usually done by picking up something and delivering it to another NPC. Or talking to someone who is standing not five feet away from the one giving the mission.
  • Complete lack of inventory It's one way of fixing the mess that was in ME1.
  • Almost all RPG elements are cut. You only can upgrade the characters four basic skills, which are already given. There is no way to acquire new skills, or for any meaningful way to do a different character based on distributing skill points differently. The only meaningful choice is when you choose your class and bonus skill at the beginning of the game. But that choice is super important. Make sure the class you choose fits your intended playing style otherwise you won't be happy during the action.
This is a great game no doubt about it. It's certainly up there in my Top5 of all times. Or possibly even Top3. I want to give it a 10/10, but I can't due to the lack of inventory and meaningful leveling.

Scoring card:

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

Overall impression: 9/10



Finally some words about the DLCs:

The shortest and most insignificant of all is Zaeed: The Price of Revenge. It's just another loyalty mission, you fight your way through a bunch of Blue Suns and voile it's done in about half an hour. About the only redeeming quality is that you get a pretty good squad member with it. 5/10
Kasumi: Stolen Memory, is the most interesting DLC, here you have a non-combat part, which is a much needed break from the constant fighting in the game. Unfortunately it is very short, and much simpler than the premise would initially suggest. However Kasumi is a pretty annoying squadmate, I rarely used her outside this mission. 7/10
Overlord: I liked this one the most, it's the most complex DLC, and the most varied. it gives the best value for the money. Basically you have to thwart a Cerberus AI experiment gone bad. 9/10
Lair of the Shadowbroker: I felt that the price bump for this DLC is unjustified, it doesn't give you more content than Overlord, but costs more. But it tells a very integral part of the story. So it feels like it was cut from the main game to cut development time, and also bank in on selling for an additional fee. 8/10
The Arrival: The biggest disappointment to me. None of the squad members get new dialogue. You can't even take them on the mission. Which is a bummer. But the mission itself is not bad, and it explains the beginning of ME3. 7/10

All taken into account I can say that all of the DLCs are worth owning for one reason or another*, and the game wouldn't feel complete without them. Too bad you still have to fork out the same kind of money for them as when they were new.

*Except for Firewalker Pack, which is not really a proper DLC anyway. It adds next to nothing to the story. Guess if you like the vehicle in Overlord, then you might want to get it, otherwise it's not worth it.
 
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I agree on ME2, easily 9/10, but the RPG nerf and weird inventory kept it from being perfect.
 
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Mass Effect 3 (2012)

Where should I begin? Yeah right: What the bloody hell was that? Are they serious? I swear I thought at the end of the game, that this was some bad joke or another of Shepard's dreams, and the real ending is only now coming.

One thing is sure, I'll never forget how Joker emerges at the end from the Normandy almost hand in hand with Javik, If I wanted to do a parody of Mass Effect I would've thought up that sequence myself.

But let's start at the beginning, because there were other disappointing things in the game as well.

A few weeks before the release of the game one of the people on the writing team said in an interview that he doesn't like video games. And at that time I was the fool defending it, saying that a writer doesn't need to like games to do a good job. But it was a mistake to defend them. During the playtrough I felt more than once that their intention was to make me hate the game. I believe if someone never played a video game in his/her life, then starting with this game can deter them from ever wanting to play another game again. And before I get accused of speaking strictly out of hate, I will elaborate on the aspects of the game that fuel this thought.

It started just fine, I'm not a fan of time warp, when the story jumps in time between sequels, but here we didn't miss much, not much has happened since the end of ME2. The only thing worth mentioning, is that your really need to have played both The Arrival and the Lair of the Shadow Broker, because the events in those have a crucial role in setting up the set for the beginning of ME3. At the beginning of the game I didn't feel any negatives, the game just kept throwing new missions at me, I could barely come up for air. But sadly it was all an illusion, I soon found out that all the side assignments are trivial, they almost solve themselves. Almost all is solved by picking up an object or using a computer, which I would do anyway regardless of having an assignment for it.

But the aspect of the game that made me hate it most of the time is the action. The game doesn't present healthy challenges, but tries to annoy you at every corner, by forcing you to use a specific strategy. You can't solve problems in more than one way, you can't even use your favourite strategy in firefights. I think an RPG should be about using your favourite tactics, and tailoring your character to suit that tactic as well. No you can't do that here, because enemies are designed to be annoying. There is one specific enemy that is invulnerable by conventional attacks, and it's not even a boss, just a footsoldier. To become completely immune to weapons fire just by holding a steel plate in front of you is just stupid. And many of the opponents are too durable. The combat simply seizes to be fun when the enemies need 625 bullets to die. The hero Shepard dies in 3-4 hits, while the enemy grunts take hits like one-man armies. I don't know maybe someone likes it if there is a bossfight like battle at every corner, but I'm not one of them. And like this was not enough, most enemies are lethal if they get close to you. This means that Vanguard style warfare is already pointless in the game most of the time, because you have to keep your distance from enemies. And it's only my luck, that I just happened to start the game for the first time with a you guessed, a vanguard. Ant it's not like I'm a casual gamer, I finished the previous two games on insanity more than once.

The most annoying thing in the game is that at specific plot points you're destined to fail No matter how well you fight. This should be the biggest selling point of such a game, that things really depend on you, and not just on a pre-written storyline. I hate that I have to cite DeusEx as an example again. In that there are epic fights, were you're destined to fail, but you CAN win them regardless. And if you do, then you get very satisfying rewards, without much change in the storyline. But it means that your efforts are not in vain, because you CAN win. Here if the writers thought you can't win, then you can't win, period. It would've been a huge positive in the game, if for example you could've defeated Kai Leng on Thessia. But no you fail no matter what you do, and how well you fight. This just makes me mad. In DeusEx there are numerous occurrences where you have multiple opportunities to kill off someone. And if you get them early, it means one of your later missions will be much easier. It's a huge thing, and really makes you feel part of the story, rather than a tool in it. Or a fool in this case.

I know that there were multi-purpose action buttons in ME2 as well, but it was never annoying. In ME3, half of the time I died because Shepard took cover when I wanted to run, or rolled when I wanted to take cover. It's annoying even out of combat, It happens so many times, that you want to use a computer console, but instead Shepard takes cover under it. What's up old buddy you finally lost your marbles? Did the rEApers get to you?

And what about player choice? Jack would say bullshit, there are no real choices here.What you have is a scam. You think you made a choice but the same thing will happen regardless what you choose. I tried more than once to try both choices in the game, but in all of them the bottom line remained the same. The only difference you make is what war asset is listed among your allies. And we arrive at another sour point of the game. In Mass Effect 2 acquiring people, and winning their loyalty had a point. You really needed specialists, and their loyalty to successfully complete your mission. But here the whole search for more war assets was completely pointless it makes zero difference in the way the story plays out. There were no point were Aria's mercenaries helped me, there were no point, where any other assets meant anything. The only point in getting the assets is to unlock all the endings.

Of course there are good aspects in the game as well, and some great character moments. But some idiots infiltrated the design team, and turned the rest of the game into a disaster.

All previous minigames were removed, like hacking, lockpicking, scanning. In replacement we get a stupid evade the reapers on the galactic map game. Which is even more trivial than the previous ones. I don't know what did they want, to make the game solvable with a toddlers brain capacity as well?

And the freaking dream sequences and the ending. In both you're crawling with an ant's speed endlessly. I don't get it why not make those sequences as cutscenes. The interaction is pointless, since all you do is strain your finger on the movement key.
And the other thing missing from the game is the vehicle. There is no drivable/flyable vehicle.

The conversations, have much less player oversight, in many of them you only have one or no opportunities to choose an answer, when the conversation itself goes on for long minutes.

I expected some epic battles from the game, where the Normandy, and the crew goes head to head with both the collectors, and the reapers. But instead in the majority of the game your enemies are damned Cerberus soldiers. It all feels like that the main adversary of the game is not even the reapers but cerberus.
In the first half of the game I was hoping that I just saw the tip of the iceberg and later there will be some real epic battles, but no. In the whole game you only get to fight one single reaper, and even that battle is pathetic. You're confined to a relatively small area, and all you have to do is dodge its beam, and point a laser at it when asked.

And now let me speak about the ending this can be considered as spoilers by those who haven't played the game yet (is there anyone?).
The ending is completely pointless, not just the starbrat, but the fact that there is no real ending, no complete accounting of losses, you get no information about the faith of any of the characters, that you become attached to. Not just Shepard's faith, but all the others as well. And the extended cut is just a miserable attempt to rectify some problems, I can't take a slide showing a character in some distant vista as closure. And most importantly we have absolutely no idea about the faith of the galaxy. How do things fare after the battle ends everywhere. And what are the differences between control, synthesis, and destroy? From what I saw, extended cut included, the only difference between the endings is the color of the relay explosions.
So to sum it up, the ending we get, is zero, nil, nothing, it's worse as having no ending. And this is where one of the greatest fan fictions come into play: The Indoctrination theory. I'm quite a fan of that theory, (not so much of the others floating out there). Yes it means there is no conclusion to the story this way, but I gladly give up the ending we get, when the theory reconciles all the fucking bullshit we get, and all the glaring plotholes and inconsistencies in the story. And it fits so well into the narrative, that it's unbelievable. Like they planned this to be the story originally. All the small hints, and weird things that fit past events point by point.
So it's safe to mention here, that the indoctrination theory suggests that everything that is happening after being hit by the reaper beam at the end when you are running for the transporter is an attempt to finalize your indoctrination. It suddenly gives meaning to all the dream sequences we got before. And it tells us why are the controls the exactly the same here as in those dreams. Plus there are other hints trough the game that you're being indoctrinated as well. And I'm not referring to the kid in the opening, that could easily be dismissed as random laziness from the devs, But the humming sounds you hear on the Normandy, that Vega specifically mentions. Plus the shared memories with Vega about how you get recruited into the N7 program. They're the carbon copies of what the cerberus crew experienced on the derelict reaper in ME2, that you saw in the footage. I can't dismiss that offhand. So if we establish that the part played out in the citadel is just an indoctrination attempt playing out in your head, then suddenly it makes sense, why are there architectural elements from your memories, that never existed on the citadel before. Also exlpains where anderson comes from, and how does he get there before you when there is clearly only one entrance to the place. It also explains why you have a bullet wound at the end in the exact same place where IM shot anderson. Because there is no IM, there is no Anderson, there is just you, and IM and Anderson represent the two parts of your consciousness the one succumbed to the indoctrination and the one resisting it.

And it this context the final choice is not about the faith of the galaxy. It's just the faith of Shephard. Blue: You're indoctrinated just as Saren, and the Illusive Man was. Green: You accept the lie fed to you. Basically you're still indoctrinated they just don't have complete control over you yet. And red: You resist the effects of indoctrination, and you don't become a thrall of the reapers, and if you had enough war assets you live to fight another day (the infamous breathing scene which takes place on earth) Suddenly another plothole plugged because how else you'd have gotten back to earth, unless you never left in the first place?
I think this interpretation of the ending is magnitudes better than taking it at face value, demeaning all the previous experiences and choices. Yes it doesn't give a conclusion to the outcome of the battle, so what? Did HL2 ending on a cliffhanger erase the value of the game? No it didn't.



+

  • Music
  • Character moments (some of the greatest character moments in the series, it's pure fan service, especially in "The Citadel" DLC, so much so that I decided to write a completely stand alone review of that)
  • Graphics
  • Gameplay
  • Action sequences
  • Atmosphere (it truly feels that you're in a war, the drowned sounds the overall vibe, the refugees pouring in at the citadel)

-

  • Trivial, self-solving assignments
  • Too durable, almost indestructible enemies with overwhelming firepower
  • Boring and meaningless galaxy exploration, all you can find is war assets, but as I said hunting for those is nearly pointless
  • The ending, which is an insult at face value
  • Dream sequences and the last level (they needed to be cutscenes, and cut 10 times shorter.
  • it has the potential to be something truly great, this is a negative, because it makes it all the more infuriating that this is what they shoved in our faces.

When I read the novel Deception, I was hoping that the game will make up for that piece of shit, but sadly no. I'm not saying that the game is as bad as Deception, but if the previous novels and ME1 and ME2, are 10 and Deception is 1. on a scale of 10. Then ME3, is about 5, on the same scale. I don't want to speculate whose fault is it, it's probably due to the poor judgement of multiple persons from both EA, and Bioware, that we got this poor excuse as a closure to the series. I was expecting the game of the decade, but got the disappointment of the decade instead.

Scoring card:
graphics/realization: 7/10, I expected some improvement over ME2
story/atmosphere: 8/10 disregarding the end.
gameplay/controls: 7/10

Overall impression: 6/10

It's certeanly not a bad game, but it's very far from what I expected. It seems unfinished, with a lot of untapped potential. The war room is a great idea, only to be completely under utilized.

And finally a few words on the DLCs

There was a big uproar from everyone that one of the crew members was not included in the game, but came as a DLC. I don't understand that. ME2 had two crew members as DLCs, so this is nothing new. Also the DLC did come as standard with the collectors edition, which was $60, so you only missed it if you cheaped out and got the regular edition without all the good stuff. Sure I'm not a fan of DLCs, I just don't understand why did it became such an issue here.

Leviathan: The first DLC is quite extensive, I don't want to spoil it, but it's pretty entertaining investigation into some strange occurrences around the galaxy. And it gives you an insight into the first species hunted to extinction by the reapers. 9/10
Omega: A very action oriented DLC, not much to say here, if you liked the action in the main game, this is more of the same, it feels a bit like the multiplayer, some of the battles you encounter in it. And it has a proper classic bossfight at the end. 8/10
Citadel: I'll write a lengthy analysis of this in a later post.
 
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Public announcement: I've added a list of all the reviews I posted so far into the opening post of the thread. Now back to mass efffect.


Mass Effect 3: Citadel DLC (2013)


The first thing I want to tell youl about this DLC right away is that it was able to keep me nailed trough midnight and then some. The fact alone that it kept me going so far into the night, is proof that it is not as bad as some would have you believe.

The best description I can give you about it that almost nothing about this DLC is what you would except. Especially in the regards of interaction with your squad.

The most important thing I want to clear up is that they actually give you a reason to hang out on the Citadel, and the reason is not just go partying because you don't give a crap about the war. Some might argue that it's not a very good reason, but it was enough for me to put aside my reservations about the DLC.

Citadel is clearly divided into two parts. One half is the storyline conspiracy part, and the other is hanging with your mates.

First I'm going to dissect the story part, which I believe is the weaker of the two. At the beginning it felt really cheesy, I didn't know to take it seriously or not. I only realized a bit later that it was meant to be taken seriously. There is a mission where you have to sneak around avoiding guards and security cameras. Which was a good distraction from the usual ME gameplay, but it was just too simple and short to really get into the hang of it. That reminds me of the Kasumi DLC from ME2. By the time I started really enjoying the level it was already over. And sadly after that it's only a bunch of firefights throughout maintenance areas of the Citadel, and the so called Council Archives, with soldiers that are almost exact copies of the Cerberus troops from the base game, they only look different. So they're actually reskinned Cerberus troops. That annoys me, because it means that the developers opted for the cheapo way of adding content. By using the same type of units, they can use the same behavioural routines and AI for them as the Cerberus soldiers used. They're supposed to be some elite mercenary group formed by dishonourably discharged alliance soldiers, that's the part I had the hardest part believing. How come we never heard about them before? And why are they following the guy leading them? There seemed to be no nothing in it for them at the end of the line, if they succeed.

The story part ends with a bossfight, that is not very satisfying, because its overly scripted. It plays out exactly the same no matter how good you are. Until the time comes to actually kill the boss you can't kill him (its like kai leng on tessia all over again) if you manage to get his health off he immediately recharges to full health. I think I would have killed him 6-8 times at least by the time the game actually lets you end the fight. (Someone told me he uses medi-gel but I didn't pick up on that when I played)

Of course there are some good moments in it, but apart from that its short, and the fights are not very unique they feel exactly the same as fighting Cerberus, so there's nothing new there.

The ability to work with more than 2 squad-mates they shown in the trailers, is a scam, they're not actually in your team, but separately running around, much like in the ending of ME2. You have multiple teams and you only hear from the others on the radio, and sometimes you see them running around like crazed rats, but that's all.

And another disappointment to me, that you only can use the same team mates you use in the base game already. You can't fight again with Miranda, Jack, Samara, or Jacob, or anyone who is not already selectable in base ME3. That's the part I felt most mislead by. Because they suggested in the revel of the DLC and even in the trailer that you could fight again with your old mates. But the fact is the only "new" character you can take with you during the missions is Wrex. I truly beleived all your old partners in crime will be in the story part, and not just some training simulation crap. Which feels exactly like multiplayer only the maps are smaller, and you have an AI partner.

So enough about the story part. The "social" part consists of three things. You can roam in a new part of the citadel, where there are a few points of interest, but since I don't think that's very important I won't waste words on casinos and the other silly minigames. The important part is that you can meet up with some of the old and new squad either randomly or by invitation on the citadel. In most cases these meetings were very-very short except when you meet your LI, but they at least give you new character moments. You also can customize your apartment with a few things, did I mention you get a large luxury apartment on the citadlel? One of the more interesting parts are the datapads scattered around the apartment where Anderson speaks of various topics on old recordings. It's supposed to be Anderson's old apartment. I really enjoyed those (I think Keith David is the best voice actor in the entire ME series, he really makes Anderson come to life).

There are two things left to discuss, the first is the ability to invite squadmates or previous acquaintances to the apartment and have a chat with them. These mostly depend on the person you invite, since I don't want to spoil anything I'll only say that while some are less satisfying and short others are really great. Not everyone is available to invite right off the bat, its like, you do one interaction which then makes a new one available.

The last thing left to discuss is the party that you can host. Which felt really really weird to me. It had a really weird vibe to it. There were a few great character moments in there, and some characters were really funny. It would have made a hell of a lot more sense put after the ending (had there been a proper ending) And then the mood could've been explained with the losses, and it would have made a great conclusion for the characters. But in the middle it just feels weird, when everyone is strolling back to the Normandy on the morning after. It's feels completely disconnected from the main storyline.

+

  • Some great character moments
  • Funny dialogues
  • bitter-sweet, feel-good mood
  • Lots of opportunities to speak with mates
  • Ability to spend more time with LI, even if it's someone not available in squad.
  • Anderson's recordings

-

  • The conspiracy part is not very well made, it's right on the margins of suspension of disbelief
  • Recycling of Cerberus troops
  • Only able to use regular squad in story part
  • Some character interactions are really short and/or dissatisfying I craved for more in most cases.

In conclusion this DLC is pure fan service. It's about the characters, not about the cheesy quest you get with it. But at least this story comes to a satisfying conclusion unlike the game at large.

I give it a 7 out of 10
 
The last game I finished the campaign... Hmmm... Been awhile.

Mass Effect 3 - No DLCs. Skip my summary below. Thar be spoilers!!!

Disgusted... Simplistic, shallow, rushed, moneygrab DLC'd cash-cow, unwanted stepchild... I felt like nothing was resolved. Seen Joker & Liara step out of a busted Normandy on some random jungle world with no contact with anybody. Dammit, I'm Harbinger now wheres my power so I can rebuild the mass relays and at least communicate with my friends and family?... I watched my buddy play it since he started in ME1 with 100% completion on both (I only started in 2) and it completely ignored half of his decisions almost first thing. Glad I didn't burn 300 hours on Mass Effect. He felt the same way I did, but he gave it another chance with the DLCs and liked it better. I haven't played it since. well, it came out and I completed it. Also sucked because we ddn't play it multi-player and were *penalized*. I have seen him play with the DLCs but I have no more like/dislike to the characters, the story, or anything else. Get that attached (not creeper like) to characters and the story only to be pissed on by a half hearted ending. Once bitten, twice shy.

If they (Bioware/EA) would have run with the "indoctrination theory" with their DLCs, that IMO would have been one of the most epic gaming experiences and I would have gladly bought the DLCs and would still probably be playing Mass Effect. But no, its all collecting digital dust in my archives and filing cabinet.

Mini Rant: I'm not against DLCs, even paid... EXCEPT: Paying $60 for an incomplete campaign only to milk another $30 out of people to get the "whole story". No, just no. Give me the stuff needed to resolve the story the first time I buy. Give me DLCs (paid or not) to expand and learn & experience more of the game world but not having it wont kill the campaign. Rant over.

Edit I didnt read past the first few posts in this thread... I see ME3 was mentioned some more... Time to do more reading...
 
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Destiny: Rise of Iron


I’ll preface this with a note that this is technically a re-play of Destiny. I actually bought the game at launch and won it a week or two later. At that time, there wasn’t much to it. Once you killed the final boss you could play one of the few raid missions, grind better gear, and play MP in the Crucible. Yet there was a lack of end-game content. It felt like a race to level up only to have nothing else to do once you did. I bailed on the game after a few weeks.

Two years later, and after having a friend swear the game was better, I came back.

Rather than use my level 20 character to pursue new things, I started over and leveled up from scratch.

The first thing I noticed is that the level cap was now 40 and the leveling up system was much more straightforward. Daily missions were easy to diagnose and complete.

The menus were cleaner and the quick-tracker worked well. Oh yeah, Peter Dinklage’s voice was long gone and replaced word for word by someone else.

As I progressed through the game, I noticed that the missions were no longer “run to this spot and defend it from waves of enemies.” After completing an area, you could now go back and complete side missions or just run around and explore. The further I got, the more missions would show up, too. Like dozens of them. Side missions that offered as much if not more content than the main ones.

Once I completed the main (shipping version) of the plot, I then discovered that the entire game was changed by the “Taken King” elements. Even more missions, tweaks to other areas, and a whole new side story with a massive new map. In fact, so much content that I never have completed all of it. I got most of it, but some of the items require a raid group, which I haven’t really messed with.

Bored of the Taken areas and missions? The Rise of Iron areas offer additional content, too. While the new areas, tweaks, and missions aren’t quite as comprehensive in nature – they did seem to add a ton of new gear.

I ended up spending more than 2 months playing Destiny nearly every day and I’ve had a great time doing so. It isn’t perfect and there are some tweaks I’d like to see, but that doesn’t change the fact that the game has become what Bungie claimed it would be now. It's not quite Diablo or Borderlands, but it's actually better than either in some ways.


Pros:

  • Great shooting mechanics
  • Tons and tons of content for both SP and MP
  • A wide variety of maps
  • Classes have been diversified more to add variety
  • Tons of gear that offers a compelling reason to keep playing

Cons:

  • Odd UI that doesn’t let you use items quickly or get tower missions quickly
  • Not enough weapon variety (there are only a few types with random properties)
  • Raids don’t allow you to pair up easily
  • What in the world is up with the entire plot of the game being outsourced to a website you can’t access in-game?

Overall 8/10
 
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It's only fair that I post my review of

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed (2009)

After taking the piss out of it's sequel earlier.

I started playing this game soon after its release, on the First of November 2009 to be exact. But it took me a year to finish it. Not because It's that bad, but because I got fed up with it. Some parts of the game are way too difficult and frustrating. I'm sure many of you heard about the controversial Star Destroyer scene. Where you have to pull it out the sky using the force.

Actually this is one of the biggest failings of the game, not the difficulty, but the lack of tutorials, almost every task in the game is easy, once you find out what's the best method to do it. Even bringing down the Star Destroyer is child play if you know what you have to do. That's where the game fails miserably, it doesn't tell you how to do it, just do it, and that's it. And many of the other bossfights are the same. There is probably a pattern to follow for each, but many times I failed to find it. I was just hacking away at them for minutes, to no avail, and sometimes their hp would drop a bit, but it all felt random to me, I didn't know what I did right when I did manage to lower their hp.

So due to my frustration I stopped playing the game about three quarters in, and only picked it up almost a year later again. When I finished it in little over an hour. The whole game is about 8 hours long, which would be reason for me to whine for it's shortness. But due to its frustrating nature I had more than enough of it. It's advisable to get a replacement keyboard and mouse or controller for the console, before you start playing, so you have an escape plan if you manage to break something in a fit of rage.

The game is a typical third person view action flick. You basically have to destroy everything that moves in it. The story takes place between Episode III and IV, but closer to the latter. They made a good job in fitting it into the main story of the movies. I don't remember any major discrepancies in the story. And I have to say I really liked it, probably that's the saving grace of the game, that's why I came back to finish it. In a game like this where you just flow with it you can't expect anything else from the story, other than it being to your liking. There are no choices or branching storyline. This coupled with the frustrating bossfights means that replayability is zero.

Gameplay is very fast paced, but in order to play effectively you'd need to learn an array of combos and special moves. And these are so complicated and hard to reproduce as fatalities in Mortal Kombat. So most of the time I just smashed the action buttons randomly and hoped that some moves might come out.

The movement and fightings controls are decent, there are only two things that makes your life hard: targeting and aiming. When I used force lighting it almost never went in the direction I intended it to. If you have an enemy in front of you and a destroyable object in the background somewhere, it will always hit that object in the background. This made me mad. The other problem child is force pull, the typical Darth Vader ability, where you want to slam objects into the enemies. I was maybe able to aim the flying objects in the right direction one out of twenty tries. But it would have been a really helpful ability if not for this problem. And I already mentioned the randomness of bossfights. You chop away at the boss and sometimes it has an effect sometimes nothing happens for minutes. The other problem with these is that you're enclosed in a small area, and the camera switches to a special view, that makes it even more difficult to aim your force abilities.

The only thing worth noting about the cutscenes is that the facial animations were piss poor, so much so that it ruined the atmosphere occasionally, because you get fixated on the poor animations.

I forgot that there is actually one choice in the game. There is an alternative ending, that I wasn't able to try, because as soon as I finished the game it deleted all my previous saves. I don't know if this is a bug, or intentional so you couldn't check the alternative ending without finishing the game again, but there is no way in hell I'd finish the game again just to see a few seconds of alternative cutscenes.

+

  • Story
  • Atmosphere
  • Fast paced gameplay

-

  • Random bossfights, where everything seem to work by chance
  • Difficulties in aiming and targeting
  • Character animations during cutscenes
  • 8 hours despite the countless retries of some maps and bossfights
  • Some parts are just too difficult and frustrating, there were parts that I tried at least two dozen times before finally succeeding.
  • Not worth to replay
The game is not even comparable to the second, it's leagues better, it's actually worth playing, so I give it a 7/10
The figure might seem a bit high after all I've written. I admit in hindsight I don't know why I gave it this high of a score, but I must have enjoyed it that much, or maybe I was just biased because I really loved the character of Juno.
 
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (PS4)

Picked this up over the Holiday break on PSN since it was on sale for like $8 and this was the first break I'd had to play any games since the Summer when Uncharted 4 launched, which is what prompted me to buy a PS4 since I'm a huge Uncharted/Naughty Dog fan, but I've always been a big TR fan as well and have played through the original games on PS1/PC. Since these games are similar, it's hard to not compare them in most aspects of the game.

Graphics/performance: Definitely above average overall for the time it was released, but I felt the facial animations were a bit off and I encountered a lot of frame rate drops and stutters while playing.

Gameplay/controls: Excellent. Gunplay was easy and fun and I enjoyed the weapon upgrade system as I played through the game. I didn't care much for the quick-time events in the game, but fortunately they were few and far between.

Story: I thought the story itself was somewhat unique and interesting; the whole mystery of why no one could leave the island everyone was stranded on and why all the inhabitants are forced into a cult to serve the island's Sun God lady. But it was kind of hindered by the mediocre script and supporting characters. They weren't bad, but coming from Uncharted, the characters weren't nearly as natural or interesting as Naughty Dog's offerings.

Sound/Audio: Pretty good. The soundtrack was adequate, but forgettable. Environmental and weapon sounds were notable.

There didn't see too much reason to play through the game again other than to play on a harder difficulty and with more weapon upgrades. Not sure if there's an online aspect of it, I don't have PS+, so I wasn't interested.

Overall, I'd give the game a 8.5/10 and would recommend playing it.
 
I've just r
T4rd said:
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (PS4)

Picked this up over the Holiday break on PSN since it was on sale for like $8 and this was the first break I'd had to play any games since the Summer when Uncharted 4 launched, which is what prompted me to buy a PS4 since I'm a huge Uncharted/Naughty Dog fan, but I've always been a big TR fan as well and have played through the original games on PS1/PC. Since these games are similar, it's hard to not compare them in most aspects of the game.

Graphics/performance: Definitely above average overall for the time it was released, but I felt the facial animations were a bit off and I encountered a lot of frame rate drops and stutters while playing.

Gameplay/controls: Excellent. Gunplay was easy and fun and I enjoyed the weapon upgrade system as I played through the game. I didn't care much for the quick-time events in the game, but fortunately they were few and far between.

Story: I thought the story itself was somewhat unique and interesting; the whole mystery of why no one could leave the island everyone was stranded on and why all the inhabitants are forced into a cult to serve the island's Sun God lady. But it was kind of hindered by the mediocre script and supporting characters. They weren't bad, but coming from Uncharted, the characters weren't nearly as natural or interesting as Naughty Dog's offerings.

Sound/Audio: Pretty good. The soundtrack was adequate, but forgettable. Environmental and weapon sounds were notable.

There didn't see too much reason to play through the game again other than to play on a harder difficulty and with more weapon upgrades. Not sure if there's an online aspect of it, I don't have PS+, so I wasn't interested.

Overall, I'd give the game a 8.5/10 and would recommend playing it.
Click to expand...

I've just realized now that I read it from someone else that this plot eerily resembles the plot of Lost. I.e. being stranded on a remote island in the pacific, that is uncharted, where strange things happen, and you can't leave. I'd even call it plagiarism. How did I not see that until now.
 
M76 said:
I've just r


I've just realized now that I read it from someone else that this plot eerily resembles the plot of Lost. I.e. being stranded on a remote island in the pacific, that is uncharted, where strange things happen, and you can't leave. I'd even call it plagiarism. How did I not see that until now.
Click to expand...

Haha, wow, you're right. I only watched a few episodes of Lost with my wife, so I totally forgot about it and didn't realize this as well.
 
That actually gave me an idea. This is the first review of a game that I've ever written, so judge it accordingly.

Lost - Via Domus (2008)

A game with a great story and some mistakes. Or rather shortcomings. I really liked the minigames, the graphics is good-mediocre. The atmosphere is as good as it gets for a lost fan. But there are some very annoying things. The levels of the game are completely linear, despite mostly being set in a jungle, there is no deviation from a small corridor whatsoever. There is a completely fleshed out RPG style inventory and trade system, that is almost completely pointless, since you can finish the game without actually trading except at the part which serves as a tutorial for the trading where you must use it. You don't need to buy anything ever, because you can be damn sure that if you need some item to solve a puzzle or to progress somewhere, then you'll find that very item right there or shortly before then on the level.

The game came out between the 3rd and 4th seasons of Lost, so it's in a kind of a void. It follows the lore of the show that was revealed in the first 3 seasons, but it completely ignores and is incompatible with everything that happens in the show later. If you already watched the entire show it will be a weird thought experiment at best. Luckily I played the game as it came out when I only saw the 3 first seasons.
But if you haven't seen the show yet and plan to watch it, you must not play the game until you watched the first three seasons, because the game basically spoils every major plot point from seasons 1-3 in the first few minutes of it.

+

  • Good engaging story
  • Great atmosphere
  • Good minigames

-

  • Completely linear maps
  • Easy puzzles
  • Fleshed out inventory and trading system that has potential for making this a much more complex game, but ultimately not utilized at all.
  • only 4.5 hours gameplay
  • First time I saw QTEs in a game.
  • No replay value

7.5/10
 
Styx: Master of Shadows
Hours to complete: 16

Styx is a 3rd person stealth game. It is highly recommended to avoid combat due to the lack of combat moves and a character that dies in 1-3 hits. You can assassinate enemies however for stealth take downs.

I started the game on the highest diffiuclt but difficulty seems to mostly affect detection speed. After several deaths caused by enemies nearly instant detecting me, even when I thought I was safe, I lowered it. By lowering the difficult it gave me a few extra seconds to react.

Movement is not very fluid. I was expecting more control of the character but it felt limited. This resulted in unintended deaths caused by falling, or dropping into a group of enemies because you missed the ledge.

I did enjoy the character and the voice acting of the main character that you play. The rest of the NPC are OK. None of them stood out as interesting characters, imo.

The environments were varied and did offer various ways to reach your objective, but the game is fairly linear. The only map in the game is a static map of the level and it doesn't show your location. There is a objective marker to help point you in the right direction.

The story was OK. It did make me want to keep going to see where it would lead me.

Overall I did enjoy the game. I feel no reason to replay it though. For a sale game I feel I got my money worth and look forward to the upcoming sequel.
 
Alien: Isolation (2014)

I could only snap my fingers in satisfaction after I finished the game. No comment was necessary I know this was a great game. Of course it's not without it's flaws, but the guys at Creative Assembly made a game that not only is worthy of the Alien movies, but goes one step beyond, because it's even better. If not for the fear I'd have probably finished the game in a few days. And not because the game is so short. But because this game can keep you up at night if you play too much. And this is not a game full of cheap scripted jump scares, you're in constant fear all the time, because of how unpredictable the alien is. There are a few scripted events, but only one of them was obvious.

There were a ton of negative commentary about the game, included amongst the detractors infamously the developer of vanishing of ethan carter, who outright called the people liking this game stupid on his blog, then edited his post to make the commenters look a-holes, when there was nothing offensive anymore in it. But enough of that. I added the guy to my list of deplorable developers right up near Cliffy Bleszinski. So I won't accidentally buy any of his future products.

Apart from him the people badmouthing the game were those who wanted compansation for the shit that was Colonial Marines, and went into the game looking for an action flick. Well this is not that. And trying to play the game as such will give you nothing but frustration. This game is based on the oriiginal Alien movie. The Xenomorph here is not the cannon fodder they later made it into in the franchise. It's an opponent you must understand and respect as the perfect predator, that you have to outsmart and avoid. The best metric to see if you have the right approach to the game is to see how quickly you reach the point where you first encounter the alien in it. If you got to that place in less than 1-2 hours, you're doing it wrong. Either quit now, or prepare to seriously change your attitude. You can't run around here flashlight flashing in the open like some Rambo, you have to take measured steps, assess the risk vs. reward of your every move. And only do something if you're damn sure you covered all your blinspots and have an exit strategy. One wrong turn or one careless move and you can find yourself staring down the xeno, from a few meters. And this in the early parts of the game is hundred percent death.

The first mission where you're pitted against the alien, is a kind of an initaiation. If you can beat that, then you'll be fine for the rest of the game. This is a true test, because it's probably the hardest mission in the game. I bet this is the part where tons of rage quits and bitter reviews were created. This is a map with small corridors and no "safe spaces". Even I had a hard time beating this part, regardless of taking my sweet time getting here (took me about 3 hours) I stopped like a tree stump at every noise, and only tiptoed forward. But despite that it took me dozens of times to finally beat the alien at his own game. You must shed your instincts that you picked up from toying with the stupid AI in other games. It won't work in this one. You can't just wait in your hidy-hole for the danger to pass. It never will. In fact the longer you stay in one place the more likely you'll get caught. There is no other way but to get a handle on your fear, and be on your way as soon as the alien is far enough, but before it starts backtracking. You can buy yourself time with distractions, like noisemakers, smokebombs, but in many cases even a simple flare thrown at the right place at the right time can be enough to distract the alien long enough for you to pass open areas with no cover.

Of course the AI isn't flawless in this game either. Just a lot better than what you used to. And you always seem to be in the same place as the alien. Which can be perceived as cheating from the game, so it can get frustrating.

The most brilliant part of the game is that the alien's behaviour changes trough the game towards you. First it takes you as simple prey, then it becomes more cautious with you after you made it bleed a few times. It could even retreat in certain situations at the mere sight of you. But if you try to use the same trick on it one too many times it will be less and less effective. First it can be sent scampering with one burst of flame from the flamethrower, then you'll need to use progressively more fuel to make it retreat, and sometimes it won't even retreat that far. So stealth must be your first tactic.
So contrary to some people saying "the game is over once you get the flamethrower" it's no less frightening and tense even then. Unless you play in chicken mode. When you're fumbling with an electric panel and you hear the alien's screech, that signals you're fucked, then the game is over but not for the reasons they're saying it is over.

But apart from aliens and facehuggers there are other dangers on the station as well. Like the discount androids that for some some reason start to act wonky. They're slow and they're not as deadly as the alien, but they're creepy as hell. And in numbers they can force you into a corner which is bad for ya. And then there are other human survivors. There are peaceful ones who won't mind you. There are those who won't hurt you if you stay clear of them, and then there are those who'll attack you on sight. They can be used as alien fodder. They provide the distraction you need to slip past the alien. Or if not, they're pretty easy to dispose.

If you know System Shock II then I don't have to tell you much about the gameplay. There are breakable locks, security cameras, voice reocrdings, and hacking. The missions are usually about getting somewhere to do something then get back to a safer part of the station. It sounds dull this way, but the circumstances are so varied that it never gets boring. As you acquire more and more tools you can open up areas of the station previously inaccessible. Your first tool is the wrench, which apart from doubling as a weapon can be used to manually open doors that were sealed with a magnetic locking mechanism. And it can also be used to flip industrial switches. Then you get your hacking tool, to crack electronic locks or computers. The hacking minigame is hands down the best I saw in any game ever. It doesn't break immersion at all, it's integrated seamlessly. And finally you get access to the blowtorch that you can use to cut open emergency hatches. Or to access the manual overrides for doors. And there are various fuse/routing boxes trough the levels that you can use to manipulate lights, and air filtration systems, alarms and sometimes to route power to doors.

Of course on alien game would be complete without the ability to use vents. But those are probably the least safe places on the station as the alien uses them as well. So if you think you can camp there and the alien won't find you think again. And especially avoid overhead openings in the ventilation systems especially if there is movement coming from there. And if you see drooling, well that speaks for itself.

The game is not short. Some even said it's too long. But a game can only be too long if you're not enjoying it. And I enjoyed it all the way. Depending on your speed 15-20 hours is the expectable. The difficulty determines how easily you're detected by enemies, how many equipment and crafting material you find. Yes there is crafting also. Lots of useful stuff, medkits, flares, bombs, and so on.

The graphics is flawless in my opinion. And it runs smoothly even in 4K. Some wiseguy on steam decided the game is not flashy enough so he made a hack that turns up reflectivity of the surfaces tenfold, and enhanches the edges of shadows, but these just spoil the intended look of the game, instead of improving anything.

The story is not too complicated I won't even go into detail: Surveive! That about sums it up. But the ending is a slap in the face, and very obvious set up for a sequel. (That might never even happen?)

The save system in the game is quite unique, some might not like it, it's not bad, it's tamper proof you can't use it to gain advantages in the game. You can't just run to the next checkpoint and be scott free, because you have to manually save at wall consoles, and you can't use them with 12 androids and an alien in tow. This gives some funny situations where there is the save point that you wanted for ages, but you can't stop because the enemies trailing you would catch up.

The controls are allright, but the UI could be better. Especially crafting, and the inventory. I died a few times because I couldn't select the right item fast enough. Bringing up the inventory doesn't pause the game, only the map does. The other issue is that if you want to use something it has to be in the dead center of your screen otherwise it won't work. This is not funny when you're running away from danger and want to get into a vent quickly but you have to fiddle with putting it centerscreen.

+/- shootout


+

  • Atmoshpere
  • Gameplay
  • Soundtrack
  • Graphics
  • Long enough
  • Alien AI and its evolution
  • Scary as hell




-

  • Sometimes the AI is just too unpredictable. Even if you use the right strategy you need a crapload of luck as well
  • Limited replayabilty
  • The last level of the game seems to have been rushed, even the save system turns classic checkpoint based here
  • Sequel bait ending
  • Lip-sync and facial animations.




Score card:

Graphics/Realization: 9/10
Story/Atmosphere: 7/10
Gameplay/Controls: 10/10

Overall impression: 9/10

Not for the faint hearted, and certainly not for people looking for a shooter.
 
Homefront (2011)

I started this game completely blind, I knew nothing about it beforehand. You could say I was window-shopping with it. That said I had no expectations going into it. So I was surprised pleasantly. Right from starting the game it feels like it's made by professionals, I found no gameplay hindering bugs or annoyances. The graphics is very good, the textures where it really counts are high resolution.

The recipe for the game is easy: Take all successful action games from the past decade and steal as many good ideas from them as you can fit in a game, and then stir until it actually feels like a game and not Frankenstein's monster. I think I don't have enough fingers to count how many elements I saw in the game that were directly lifted from other big games that come before. This includes the story, level design, gameplay, minigames, almost every aspect of the game had something familiar in it. There are hardly any original things in the game.

But the funny thing is that I didn't mind all the copying. Because all the elements they copied they either copied well, or even improved upon them. It doesn't matter that the ideas came from a dozen different places, they all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, nothing feels out of place or weird.

As a side effect of all the elements that they crammed into the game, the levels are vastly different and ever changing, the game never gets boring or repetitive.

Well actually it's hard to get boring when the whole campaign can be finished in less than 5 hours.


+

  • Atmosphere
  • Gameplay
  • Graphics
  • Just the right amount of difficulty
  • All stolen ideas are implemented better or as good as the original counterparts



-

  • Less than 5 hours WTF?
  • Nothing new or original in it



graphics/realization: 10/10
story/atmoshpere: 9/10
gameplay/controls: 9/10

overall impression: 7/10
 
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Resident Evil 7.

11/10

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Batman Arkham Knight

A horrible game, like its predecessor. The first game was good, but average. Lacked the fun and a narrative worth following compared to similar fighting titles like Sleeping Dogs, but it was fun enough. Knight is a repeat of the second game. Entirely broken controls, zero communication on what they expect the player to do and repetitive. The game is very repetitive in a bad way. There are lot of sequences in which you must scan something, or some other similar mundane task. You will spend 10-15 minutes looking at an object trying to scan such a small particular area of it or it will not register. You must look at these things at the exact angle. To make it more "difficult" occasionally the game introduces some bat shaped drone which pans around a massive area, in which you have no control over. Making finding that particular angle that much more frustrating.

Controls are a combination of non-functional, poorly configured and entirely intuitive. Conventional and logical control layouts are thrown out the window. For example, take the driving controls. Every arcade like racer utilizes the RT and LT for reverse/accelerate. Arkham Knight decides to use the X button for reverse. Most of the combinations for fighting moves would require the human hand to be shaped differently, or the Xbox controller redesigned. For example, some moves require you to move one thumb stick up, the other down, while mashing the Y button. This requires you to shift your grip which takes too long to activate said move in time.

There are other massive flaws, such as the game taking control away from the player during fights. If you want to focus on a bad guy and whither him down too bad. Because your character will decided to jump backwards to start fighting another guy who was not even on the screen. There is no method or logic to this. Coupled with the horrendous controls above, the special fighting combination moves are impossible to utilize. This game is no Sleeping Dogs or Mad Max in that regard.

Story wise it is the same gibberish from the first two games. Certainly not worth playing the game for.

I am not sure how you could take such an average game like Arkham Asylum and utterly trash it in not one but two sequels. On the bright side, the graphics look fairly pretty and the game seems to run decently on an i5 and GTX 1070.

Overall it is a slight improvement over its predecessor, but still utter trash. Rocksteady should have been put out of business after Arkham City, and Arkham Knight only solidifies this sentiment. How many more times will they steal customers money with no shame or intention of fixing their products?

Overall Score: 4/10
 
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Yeah, no way I'm writing all that crap the rest of you did.

Rebel Galaxy: loved it. Certainly not perfect, but I loved every minute of it. Great graphics, awesome soundtrack, and really fun gameplay. I'm praying for a sequel.

Starpoint Gemini 2:. Piece of crap. One of the buggiest, poorly designed games I've ever played. Felt like a beta that was nowhere near ready for release. Tons of potential pissed away by lazy implementation.

Doom 2016: fucking loved it. My goty for 2016. 25+ hours of bashing in demo skulls. Gets a little repetitive late game, but there's plenty of variety to keep it interesting.

FO4: feels like a job that I'm reasonably content with. Like, I don't hate going to work every day, but there are other things I'd rather be doing. Same Bethesda RPG we've all played half a dozen times. Buggy, dated, weak rpg elements. Yet, somehow, I still played the hell out of it. They still managed to make an enjoyable game, but ffs, they need a new engine and some new ideas.

Honorable mention (6-8 months ago) the Van Helsing series: First two were pretty good, third one is a pile of garbage. Don't even get me started on Deathtrap, the tower defense spin-off. Only game I've ever been really angry about paying full price, it's like a bad mod someone made for Van Helsing. Just a total piece of shit that the devs abandoned.
 
Man, some of you guys go crazy with the formatting.

I'm thoroughly impressed.

The 2 games I've recently finished are Grand Theft Auto V and DOOM 2016.

For Grand Theft Auto V, I'd have to say the mid-area of the story/game isn't really too great as far as story goes. You only really get into it when you go through the missions which unveil the story more.

DOOM is absolutely amazing. What a game! It's a fun challenge for sure on high difficulties.
 
Q.U.B.E. (not the director's cut)

Puzzle platformer. It's like Portal except there's no story (a story was tacked onto the Director's Cut and is said to be quite bad), there's no dialogue, and it's not all that fun. Your character can manipulate blocks that come out of the walls at pre-determined locations. You use these to solve platforming and ball puzzles. The platforming ones are occasionally quite fun. The ball puzzles are all awful. Some trippy visuals at times and it would probably make you feel sick in VR (in a good way). Some of the puzzles were reworked for the Director's Cut but I'm not going to replay it to find out if it's an improvement.

Basically, it feels like a Portal-type knock-off tech demo with rare flashes of greatness. It took me about 5 hours to finish, and for the last 2 I was ready for it to be over.

4/10

I think i paid about $2 for it so I don't feel ripped off, but I certainly wasn't impressed.
 
Resident Evil 7


8/10


I enjoyed the game a lot, but it felt a bit short. Some of that probably relates to the first area essentially mirroring an earlier tech demo. The end is also very abrupt and unsatisfying. It felt like the game was building up to a final chapter that never actually happened. We’ll see if the upcoming (apparently free) DLC might flesh things out a bit more.


The graphics and sound are terrific with 2 (ultra-minor) exceptions. Metal and wet surfaces all have a weird shine to them that’s distracting. Also, running with the shotgun sounds like shaking a spray can. Otherwise, the sensory experience is terrific. Tons of graphical options, great HDR implementation, and solid acting add to the experience.


Outside of bosses, there are only a handful of different enemies. Yet the game is so well executed, you’ll find that you won’t care. Condemned was also like that and it was a classic.


Ammunition and health items are either plentiful or sparse depending on your approach. Once you figure out that most enemies are better off being avoided, you’ll have fewer issues. If anything, running out of inventory space is a bigger concern. The pacing of the game is odd in that there are stretches that are very challenging followed by stretches that are comparatively very easy. An early boss encounter is the hardest in the entire game and it serves as an annoying roadblock since it renders your gear irrelevant. After struggling with it (mainly due to the mechanics of it), I probably only died another 2-3 times for the entire rest of the game.


There’s no NG+, but there is an extra Hard mode with additional items and slightly revised content.


Pros:
  • Graphics
  • Sound
  • Presentation
  • Experience
  • Good use of new tech (HDR)

Cons:
  • Length
  • Pacing
 
Mad Max
Time to complete: 26 hours
Mad Max was a decently fun game. Game however stared to feel repetitive after about 15 hours and really repetitive after 20, I did nothing but main story missions after around 20 hours. Completing most of the side content wasn't required to beat the game as the final boss was pretty easy. Some of the mid game bosses gave me more of a challenge. Also considering the game is set in a wasteland, the graphics were pretty. Overall for the price that I paid during a steam sale, it was a fun experience.
 
resident evil 7 and it was fucking awesome.

and im currently doing my third run on it :p
 
Far Cry (2004)

Most people think this game isn't worth their time, they just think of it as some techdemo. I think it's insanely underrated. It's one of the best games I've played. It could even make it into my list of top 10 games, if I'd ever make one. I think it's partly undervalued, because on easy or normal difficulty it really is only a shooter in the jungle. (I don't know why, but I've seen that many people have a problem with it's jungle setting). But if you start playing on Realistic difficulty, then it gives you a completely different experience.

On realistic difficulty you get into the game with the same chances as any NPC in the game. You can only take a few hits that is one without a bodyarmour, or two with armour. This means that you have to plan your every step, you can't just rush into an enemy base without thinking. You have to plan your attack, and time it correctly. This is where tagging each enemy with the binoculars really becomes a necessity, and not just some useless gimmick you never really need. You have to value each target, and take out the biggest threats first, like snipers in towers, or soldiers close to alarms. And sneaking will be key. An assault rifle with a silencer will worth its weight in gold to you. If you don't make noise, you won't have the entire base coming down on you. Against multiple enemies you have zero chance of survival in open battle, like in reality. The only way to success is to sneak close undetected, and take them out one by one unseen, or pick them off with a sniper rifle from a distance if you can get one, and fancy spending the ammo. Or you can try, and lure them out, or blow up a group with a well placed explosive.
You can use any tactic that would work in real life. But you can't just rush them blindly.

So now we're not talking about an everyday shooter, but a stealth tactic game. Think Splinter Cell or Rainbow Six, only with more open maps, where you have absolute control on where to attack, and how. The only exception is the last map, where it goes a little old school, with doors closing behind you, and enemies coming out of hidden rooms. Exactly like in doom. But I can't emphasize it enough that this is just on the last few minutes of the game. The open maps with miles of ground to cover before, offset this by a league.

And it's not just a tactic game either, it's survival horror too, there are levels where you'll be running for your life, and fear every dark corner. Here you have everything to loose if you get jumped by a mutant. It's not about loosing an inch of your hp bar, it's life or death. On normal difficulty these levels offer nothing, but on realistic it's an experience like no other. And the checkpoint based save system makes sure you can't save whore.

True, sometimes it becomes more than you bargained for, when the distance between two checkpoints seem endless. But most of the time checkpoints are placed at exactly the right places. And the game stores almost every information needed, your position, the enemies position. The only thing it doesn't store, is the awareness, of enemies. So even if you had all enemies crazy mad to get you, after loading they'll be calm as sheep. But it's not that big of a problem. When most games using the checkpoint system fail to save even the most vital pieces of data, for example Far Cry 3, which doesn't even store your own damn position.

All in all, the controls are good, there were a few bugs, but I played the game on a V1.0 installation for a long time (newer versions had some graphics bug, and I only found the solution to that problem halfway through the game). Level design is great except the last map. For today's gamers the graphics might seem dated, but back in the day this was cutting edge. It certainly looked better in my memories, but you won't get a heart attack because of the ugliness, it's completely playable even today. Only the lighting seems dated, but mostly on external levels, indoors it looks ok even by today's standards.

The only downside to the game is the story, or the lack of one. There are hardly any cutscenes and even the few they made are short (few seconds short) and meaningless. I think none has more than three lines of dialogue and a length over 15 seconds.

+

  • Atmosphere
  • Gameplay
  • Graphics (while keeping in mind that this was released years ago)
  • Aggressive AI
  • lots of weapons
  • Drivable vehicles
  • Back then quantity didn't mean lack of quality, so it's long enough, while not sacrificing quality even on later levels.

-

  • A few small graphics and gameplay bugs
  • The last map
  • Since every enemy wears armour, the only way to go is head shots, even the basic soldier can take dozens of hits into the body or limbs, which is a bit excessive, it should at least cripple or disable them
  • Undeveloped story, you only get hints at the big picture
  • Short and meaningless cutscenes
  • Explosives has too small damage, and radius

8.5/10
 
horrorshow said:
You play games too much brother....
Click to expand...
You know my gaming schedule? In the past two weeks I haven't played any game at all. I have a lot of reviews already written, I don't actually finish all the games when I post their reviews, but I did finish them at one point and written their reviews.
 
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