Review the game you finished recently.

[Armenius]

Battlefield 1, Battlefield 4 (Campaign). Grade C (average).
It is said that you should not buy a Battlefield game for its single player campaign, the best stuff is in the muliplayer mode. This is indeed true. DO NOT BUY EITHER OF THESE BF GAMES FOR THE SP CAMPAIGN! They suck. Look great, though.

Battlefield 1 is supposed to be better than 4. Okay, slightly better, but not much. Game is still too dark. Lots of dumb design decisions, like telling the player to use binoculars WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY! I do like that in BF1 they have an onscreen icon showing if you are crouched or prone, 4 did not have that. Story is slightly better in 1. 4 had a bunch of clipping issues, 1 seemed to fix that. Both are very short games. I did like 4 better for showing the player weapon stats. Despite fond memories of Call of Duty Modern Warfare and COD2, BF games are not even close in terms of quality for the SP mode.

If all this sounds bad, let's save the best for last. Even in 2021, the Frostbite engine that runs the BF games is amazing. Graphics are terrific and framerates are high. A+ for looks. Sound effects also excellent. Playing on the PC it blows away the consoles, even if you have an older GPU like a 1050 ti. If someone at Dice/EA ever decides to really push hard for a SP mode with quality of the classic COD games then that will be fantastic for gamers. Until then, buyer beware, not intended for SP.

The BF4 campaign was great, I don't know what you're talking about. Not as good as BF3, admittedly, but still up there. Arguably I think they went more in the direction of COD SP with the ridiculous set pieces in BF4 and that is why it wasn't as good as BF3.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Thief 3: Deadly Shadows

I'll start by saying I almost beat this game not long after its original release date. Either my saves got corrupted or something happened that made me not want to totally restart the game from scratch so I never did finish it. Until now, that is. I used 2 mods, just to improve QoL and give graphics a small uplift. I think the worst thing about this game is it came out during the time of the bad PC port era. The levels are really small before you have to go though loading portals to get to the next area. I think this hurts this game a decent bit since it would be a lot cooler if the mansion/estate you are in was just one entire level with no loading transitions that interrupt gameplay.

That said it's still lots of fun and I think this game and especially the first 2 Thief games would be terrific remaster candidates for nvidia's RTX tech. I don't usually like stealth games either but it wasn't that big of a deal because if I wanted I can just shoot the guards or use some of the kit items to mix it up. The fun gameplay and good story is why I'd give it a 7/10.

 

[Nytegard]

NEO: The World Ends With You

Overall, I have to say I'm disappointed. I enjoyed the first game, but this new game has far too much bloat. You have 300 pins in the game for attacks, but there really are only 20 different types of pins, so you end up with 15 pins of each type, that you have to relevel from scratch as you progress. And the same with enemies. There are like 15 types of enemies, yet 10 different versions of the same enemies. Same attacks , etc., the only difference being how much health and attack they have. It's one thing if it was an NES game to reuse assets over and over, but this should be a modern game.

Let's then take leveling. Gaining levels (max level 100) only gets you HP. In order to gain stats, you have to eat food. This food though costs money, and also, you can't eat food if you're full, and the only way to get hungry again is to kill monsters. So, you have to grind even more just so you can get stats, even if you have all the money in the world. And like many JRPGs, money is super hard to come by until 90% of the way through the game, at which point it becomes incredibly easy, and you're overflowing with it.

Then you have the difficulty. You start at Normal Difficulty, and can unlock 3 other difficulties. Once again though, you have to play through every single level of the game 4x in order to get all the pins, and you also have to pray that the pins drop, otherwise you're rerunning the level over and over. Some of the later enemies only have a 2-4% drop rate, which requires a lot of playing. And the game is fairly easy on Hard Difficulty, up until Week 3, at which point, you go from easily clearing hard, to struggling 2 difficulties lower on Easy difficulty.

And like many Japanese RPGs, the story starts off one way, and 95% through the game, when you think you're about to beat it, well, everything you've been lead to believe is wrong, and the last 30 minutes introduces a completely new story that was never hinted at previously.

Bottom line, if you like grind fests, go for it. If you're not a fan of grinding, skip this game.

 

[M76]

The Ascent (2021)

I wanted to love this game, but it just wouldn't let me. In fact it did everything to the opposite effect, and at some point you just have to give up trying.

The Ascent is an isometric cyberpunk shooter, a game style I always liked, but one which is hard to get right, and The Ascent fails to do it right.

The game starts out fairly well, the graphics is beautiful especially considering that the game is designed for a top down view. It is so detailed, that it wouldn't look terrible even from TPS or FPS perspective. Which ironically could've been what saved it, but later on that.

The shooting mechanics are excellent and while the aiming is a bit clunky you can get used to it. The game's difficulty is just right until about level 10, then it's like you are hitting a wall. If you spent weapon upgrades on basic weapons you might as well quit right here. I didn't even know there will be much better weapons later so I spent all of my upgrades on fairly basic weapons, so by the time I got hold of weapons that are much better I was unable to upgrade them. Which has left me utterly ill equipped to defeat higher level enemies. So if you do decide to play the game despite my recommendation against it. Hoard upgrade components as much as you can until you get the meaty weapons. Like the strikebreaker minigun or gatling rocket launcher that I can't remember the name of.

I even tried to give the game a second chance by starting a new game, but it would defy me even there. After defeating the first boss, the path ahead would not open. That was the point when I said fuck this game and uninstalled it. The bugs are almost as bad as with cyberpunk 2077, yet this game is not being dragged through the mud, but praised to high havens instead. Funny how biased people can get. I've got dozens of CTDs, especially during loading games. And I've heard horror stories about corrupted and lost saves.

As you've guessed the game only offers a single save slot and no manual save option. You can only rely on an erratic and unreliable save system, that won't even tell you when the game is being saved. Sometimes you'd be randomly teleported to a different checkpoint for no apparent reason. And when ending a play session it would be anyone's guess how far back the game will teleport you when resuming your game. And the worst thing about teleporting you back, is that enemies respawn in the areas you already cleared but loot and chests do not. You can only rely on enemy drops that are about as reliable as a 90 percent hit chance in xcom.

I touched briefly on the perspective too, which has a major drawback, the area you can see in this isometric view varies between fuck all, and 30 feet. And enemies can and regularly do shoot at you from outside your view, while of course you can't shoot back as you don't see them. And there are other issues with the camera as well, there are several locations where it is scripted to change perspective, and if you happen to be in combat then and there the camera movement will interfere with your aiming. Move a little and the camera turns, which in turn moves your aim as well.

I think the game would work much better as a TPS, the graphics fidelity is good enough for it. So then you could actually see the enemies before they are in your face. And this is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of enemies' sole tactic is to rush you. The game makes a point about drilling in the cover system, but it is made completely useless by the rushing enemies. You can't really use cover at all, because enemies reach you in 2 seconds, and there are always hordes of them, often spawning behind you as well for good measure.

We already touched on the graphics quality, but this comes at a hefty price. With RTX and 4K you'll need a 3080 at least to get smooth FPS even with DLSS. The game was also plagued with a stuttering issue however that seems to have been mostly eliminated by patches.

The sound design is very good, the sound effects are great. The same however cannot be said about voiceovers, which come off more like background noise than actual conversations. Since your own character has no voice, not even written lines of text, each conversation seems more like an exposition dump, than anything you can get immersed in. So in turn the story is completely meaningless, characters are not memorable, the game evokes zero emotion.

It relies purely on gameplay to keep you going, and it succeeded at that for about 6 hours, but then the aforementioned difficulty wall not just makes it hard to like the game, but literally impossible for me to continue playing. I might be a bellow average player, but no game that I actually wanted to beat has proven too difficult for me yet.

The pros and cons:

+

• Graphics
• Sound effects
• Music
• Shooting mechanics

-

• Difficulty spikes
• Prohibitive balance issues
• Awkward camera views
• Exposition dumps pretending to be conversations
• Uninteresting, soulless story
• Low visibility distance

Graphics/Design: 9/10
Bugs/Realization: 3/10
Story/Atmosphere: 1/10
Gameplay/Controls: 7/10

Overall impression: 3/10

I'm sad, because with balance tweaks the game could be very enjoyable, as it was for the first few hours, but I cannot recommend a game this inconsistent. Maybe a year from now if they completely overhaul the balance. It is no fun getting mauled by level 25 enemies on a mission that has a recommended level of 14.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Doom 64

So I recently picked this up on sale several weeks ago. Doom needs no introduction and I thought this was pretty faithful to the originals. Movement was a little weird and the music was more atmospheric especially when you got to hell but otherwise it was action-packed and lots of fun. I did not encounter many bugs and had no crashes that I can recall. Definitely worth the two bucks I paid and I highly recommend this to anyone on the fence.

Now on to Duke 3d....

 

[Flogger23m]

Resident Evil Village

The latest entry in the long running Resident Evil series is here. Like previous entries, this game tackles the horror, survival and puzzle genres. These genres themselves can be tricky to balance with fun, and horror games often have a difficult time being actually scary rather than gory or horrifically clunky. The few RE games I've played all have a lean on a particular part of the horror/puzzle/survival formula, and I'll get into how Village balances itself.


Welcome to the village.

From a narrative standpoint, Village takes place directly after 7. There are references to characters and events that happened in previous games, as one would expect in an series that has been running so long. I found the story to be decent and certainly well paced. It never lets up, and is present in all the places and tasks you partake in. The game only lasts around 15-16 hours at most, despite this it felt much longer because your mind seldom wanders off playing filler content. I found this to be refreshing. Despite that, I can't say the story was perfect. In the beginning there is one small hole/coincidence that felt out of place or too forced for me. There are multiple bosses/antagonists and the all had their own personalities and quests/areas. The end of the plot does explain some things that stand out about the player, Nathan, which certainly makes him feel more believable. Despite being a mostly satisfying story you can tell they were running out of ideas and trying to find ways to add to an already long running series. While good, the narrative won't be one you'll remember completely years later.


Map and art design is nicely done.

When it comes to the gameplay, RE: Village features a mix of horror, combat, crafting, and puzzles. However, compared to RE7, Village focuses more on combat. Compared to RE2/3 remake, it again focuses more on combat and a little less on puzzles. In general outside of one part the game simply wasn't very scary for me. This is due to many factors. Many of the enemies simply aren't designed in a way that look or behave in ways that instill fear. Many of the enemies are more monster like and aggressive. Because they get in your face more, you'll shoot your way out of situations more often than not. The combat itself is fairly good, but not great. This is because it still is based around horror gameplay, which means slower movement speeds. Luckily the game didn't feel too clunky, unlike most horror games. At some points in the game I had wished it was a regular FPS due to map design.


Resident Evil Village places a bigger emphasis on combat and action than the other genres it dips its toes into.

The game does require you to loot things, craft ammo, buy ammo and weapon upgrades and the like. However, this is typically brief. Weapon upgrades come at a sensible pace and are done nicely. Upgrades include more sensible things like higher capacity magazines or compensators. RE Village finds a good balance between giving new capabilities to the player and not becoming a tedious scavenging simulator. More games need to follow this approach, and I will say they handled this aspect of the gameplay nicely.


Weapon upgrades come naturally and are logical, like higher capacity magazines.

Map diversity is also nice. The game takes you through a village, castle, underground factory and more. This helps the game from feeling stale. Map design itself is mostly linear, but often allows for secondary paths. Occasional backtracking will come up, but that is part of the horror element. I seldom ran out of ammo, except at one point later in the game. This meant having to run around enemies to get where I needed to be which was a tense moment but didn't take unnecessarily long. Had I been better at conserving ammo or landed more hits, I likely would've avoided that situation. Enemy types vary from more simple zombies, to bosses with their own fighting sections, to monsters/mutants. None of them stood out from a gameplay perspective, or even from a design perspective. Though I felt they offered enough variety to carry the game from start to finish. Suffice to say, the gameplay was mostly solid throughout although not flawless.


A more simple zombie you'll occasionally go up against.

Graphically the game can look fairly nice. Lighting looks great, texture detail looks sharp as do things like smoke. Assets in general have a high quality in terms of 3D models. From an art perspective the game also did a good job of making each area feel unique. The game looks great while also running fairly well. Even with ray tracing on, I was getting 90 or so frame rates at 2560x1440 without many if any drops. Occasionally when minimizing the game I would get an issue with half FPS, but this is fixed with a restart. However if you don't minimize the game much this will not be an issue. I did not experience much if any of the stuttering, as I played post DRM patch. If it was there it wasn't very noticeable on the build I was playing which was a relief.


I do think the game looks fairly good graphically.

Sounds were like most games, average/good. Voice acting was good and sound effects were good.

Overall, there just wasn't much to complain about in this game. The checkpoint save system was sensible, I had little to no crashes so repeating areas wasn't a problem. All the things fell together to make a sensible, playable and enjoyable package.

8/10

Resident Evil Village is simply a fun game. It is well rounded, balances the various gameplay genres fairly good and doesn't overstay its welcome. The only caveat is if you are looking for a real scary horror game; Village might be a bit too action focused for your tastes.

 

[M76]

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

This won't be a regular review, just venting my frustration. This might be the worst "game" I ever had the misfortune of playing. Undercutting Sniper GW3, maybe even outriders.

Yeah, game in quotes, because this hardly qualifies as a game. Just a string of scripted events with boring walking in between. All occasionally interrupted by tedious fights with invulnerable, unkillable enemies.
Oh and of course the cheapest kind of jumpscares, that only make me angry with their predictability.

I abandoned RE2/RE3 remakes because they were quite tedious, but compared to this, they are master artworks of gaming, this cranks tedium to over 9000.

Not to mention the ludicrous, outlandish "story" that no amount of suspension of disbelief can make even remotely believable.

I'm glad I only paid $5 for this. Man, if Village is anything like RE7, count me the fuck out.

 

[Flogger23m]

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

This won't be a regular review, just venting my frustration. This might be the worst "game" I ever had the misfortune of playing. Undercutting Sniper GW3, maybe even outriders.

Yeah, game in quotes, because this hardly qualifies as a game. Just a string of scripted events with boring walking in between. All occasionally interrupted by tedious fights with invulnerable, unkillable enemies.
Oh and of course the cheapest kind of jumpscares, that only make me angry with their predictability.

I abandoned RE2/RE3 remakes because they were quite tedious, but compared to this, they are master artworks of gaming, this cranks tedium to over 9000.

Not to mention the ludicrous, outlandish "story" that no amount of suspension of disbelief can make even remotely believable.

I'm glad I only paid $5 for this. Man, if Village is anything like RE7, count me the fuck out.

How far in did you get? Story gets explained more as it progresses. It isn't realistic, but bio-weapon zombies aren't exactly realistic in the first place so you'll need some suspension of disbelief for anything in the genre.

Village is more action based without a doubt. 2/3 Remake lean towards puzzle solving, 7 towards horror, and Village more towards action. But if you didn't like RE2/3 Remake or RE7 it is safe to say you won't like it. And with the story connecting to RE7 it will feel disjointed if you didn't make it to the end of RE7.

 

[M76]

How far in did you get? Story gets explained more as it progresses. It isn't realistic, but bio-weapon zombies aren't exactly realistic in the first place so you'll need some suspension of disbelief for anything in the genre.

2 hours in maybe. Is it a "it's all in your head explanation"?
The premise of zombies is one thing, as long as the law of physics still applies. But I can't stomach total nonsense like gluing your leg back, or invincible zombies. Also the fact that you have to "play" the video recordings, is like kryptonite to immersion.

 

[Flogger23m]

2 hours in maybe. Is it a "it's all in your head explanation"?
The premise of zombies is one thing, as long as the law of physics still applies. But I can't stomach total nonsense like gluing your leg back, or invincible zombies. Also the fact that you have to "play" the video recordings, is like kryptonite to immersion.

That is fairly early in. No, the story is still very much a continuation of the story started with the first game. Of course it has been extended for a long while so new antagonists come along and the like. The game will explain what is happening as you go through it. Same for reattaching body parts, although it is fully clarified in Village.

 

[biggles]

Yooka Laylee C+ (slightly above average). First of all, cannot complain with all of the free games the Epic game store gives away. With fond memories of the classic 3D platform games from long ago we have Yooka Laylee. Mario 64, Rayman 2, Ratchet and Clank were excellent games so it is great to see a modern game in the same style. Graphics, sound, and music are all top notch. There are 5 worlds to explore and they are huge! There is an assortment of interesting characters. They do the same giberrish style of talking like in Rayman but the text is there to see what they are saying. Tons and tons of stuff to collect. This game will take you a while to get through. There is a lot of humor in the game. Some of it falls flat but there are some laugh out loud moments.

As great as all of this sounds Yooka Laylee is nowhere near as good as the classics mentioned above. Its biggest problem is that figuring out where to go, what to do, how to solve various puzzles is so obtuse you may never figure it out without a game guide. Also, the arcade games are not fun. The game really could have used a map screen as navigating the levels is a chore. Plenty of questionable design decisions. Example, in one level you transform into a truck with snow plow and you have to jump onto platforms in this vehicle. Awkward and not fun. So, safe to say it is a game brought down by its gameplay. But on the other hand, if you really like a challenge and like the feeling of accomplishment by "figuring it out" then bump up the letter grade by one. I appreciate the effort by the developers even if the game did not click with me.

 

[chameleoneel]

Crawl

One of the best party games I have ever played.

4 player, classic dungeon crawling gameplay. But....1 player is the hero and the 3 other players are enemies. Whoever lands the killing blow---becomes a hero. You gain separate experience for your hero and your enemies.

As an enemy, you can be ghost, which can control traps and objects such as barrels, treasure chests, etc. Or you can turn into various monsters and fight the hero, directly.

It has a sort of Rogue-lite element where, the game is played as a "run". Everyone together, gets 3 tries each run, to defeat the final boss. If you die----aspects of your character's experience carries over. And you can unlock new enemy types. There are I think 3 different final bosses.

There's a great variety of weapons and items. But the shop on each run is very limited. Which is fun, because you all share the same shop.

There are a lot of little details to go over but, its really fun and not too complicated to pickup and lends itself to learn-as-you-go.

Controls are pretty tight.

I been playing it on Nintendo Switch with 3 other people.

 

[modi123]

Wrapped up my time in "Nite Team 4 >:Military Hacking_". It was a pretty fun game, assuming the style is up your alley, and at the same time super frustrating.

The focus is less on the tools, which there are a fair number, but more on piecing together little nuggets of information to try new directions to get into a system, break a password, or find the right website to exploit to do what ever.

There are fancy in-game-OS skins, leveling up of points, in game trophies, and all that jazz. Additionally there is a pretty happening group of people for co-op and multiplayer play. The DLC also allows you to craft your own missions and nodes.

I had a good time, and the pay off of getting over a stumped step was nice.

 

[Deleted member 143938]

Wrapped up my time in "Nite Team 4 >:Military Hacking_". It was a pretty fun game, assuming the style is up your alley, and at the same time super frustrating.

The focus is less on the tools, which there are a fair number, but more on piecing together little nuggets of information to try new directions to get into a system, break a password, or find the right website to exploit to do what ever.

There are fancy in-game-OS skins, leveling up of points, in game trophies, and all that jazz. Additionally there is a pretty happening group of people for co-op and multiplayer play. The DLC also allows you to craft your own missions and nodes.

I had a good time, and the pay off of getting over a stumped step was nice.

I literally just played The Black Watchmen demo two days ago! Have you played it? The game along with the DLC is kind of a prequel to the events in NT4. I YTed the later stages of the full game and decided against buying it because of how obscure the few solutions I saw ended up being.. I would have been too frustrated, lol

 

[modi123]

The Black Watchmen demo two days ago! Have you played it?

No, I didn't know it existed. I may be taking a bit of a break on the games for a bit, but I'll keep it in mind. I am not too keen on the extra-'augmented reality' ish game.

Though it sounds like something along the lines of The Laundry Files.

 

[Armenius]

2 hours in maybe. Is it a "it's all in your head explanation"?
The premise of zombies is one thing, as long as the law of physics still applies. But I can't stomach total nonsense like gluing your leg back, or invincible zombies. Also the fact that you have to "play" the video recordings, is like kryptonite to immersion.

I quit playing the game many times in the first couple hours. The main house at the start with its whole "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" thing going on is the worst part of the game. It was the worst way for Capcom to start this game as it gets much better once you escape. My favorite part of the game is closer to the end of the game, but it seems that most people hate that particular part.

 

[Deleted member 143938]

No, I didn't know it existed. I may be taking a bit of a break on the games for a bit, but I'll keep it in mind. I am not too keen on the extra-'augmented reality' ish game.

Though it sounds like something along the lines of The Laundry Files.

When it came out in 2015/2016 you could sign up for RL events, but that passed already. The 'augmented reality' now is basically just doing google searches on RL websites like Wikipedia and the like to gather information to solve the puzzles.

I really like the sound of those Laundry Files books. I'll be doing a bunch of traveling in a couple months so will definitely be getting a couple to read. Really glad you mentioned it, that sounds right up my alley!

Going back to NT4 - have you had to "cheat" (by using YouTube or google to find walkthroughs) to get through many of the puzzles? Or did you manage to do most if not all by yourself? How would you rate the "this is too obscure and difficult"-ness of it?

 

[modi123]

Going back to NT4 - have you had to "cheat" (by using YouTube or google to find walkthroughs) to get through many of the puzzles? Or did you manage to do most if not all by yourself? How would you rate the "this is too obscure and difficult"-ness of it?

There were a number of times, recently, that I had to pop into Steam discussions for some direction. The problem is I was half way through the story when I put it down in February, and just recently picked it up totally forgetting the details of things. The Steam discussions were never quite giving the answer, and everyone seemed to collectively agree to be vague but helpful. Mostly just checking I was on the right path.

The only time I really hunted down a youtube play through of a mission was I was stumped on two things. One was an honest-to-god eight or so minute realtime password attack and that's will all the variable list filled out. I didn't think the game would make ya do that, but I was wrong and they would.

There was a second problem where an "sfuzzer" command needed to maxed out the time to find one last web address. The game was consistently under 15 seconds for everything else. Again, I didn't think the game devs would put that in there like that, but so it goes.

It was a fairly mentally challenging game and the real difficult parts were just having some obscure command (like remembering to scan for web addresses while inside a given system that had a count down timer until boot-out because certain addresses were only visible when "on that company's network"), or just extending out the time on some commands. Definitely more brain power on the puzzle side than the Portals or Myst. The game did ramp up the problems reasonably so it wasn't like you were chucked in naked.

 

[Flogger23m]

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139...

I've played many games that are repetitive, but don't think I've ever played one with as much backtracking and literal replaying of sections than Nier Replicant. This is a bland, shallow, derivative, unintelligent game that is masquerading as a piece of art that encompasses multiple perspectives. It falls flat, offering merely competent gameplay. If you enjoyed Nier Automata for its flawed game design but nice world building and discovering of the story, you will be disappointed in this. It has even more flawed gameplay without the rest to back it up.


The game offers are variety of bosses, which often end with a QTE attack.

Nier Replicant's gameplay is stagnant throughout. While this is a remaster of an older game, it is still very dated and bland even at the time of the original's release (2010). The game is largely a hack and slash game with powers. However, only a few powers are actually useful. The hacking and slashing isn't very fun either. In games like Nier Automata or the Batman Arkham games you can "dance" around enemies quickly, jumping from target to target, dodging and unleashing interesting combos or slinking back into the shadows. This isn't really possible in Replicant. The powers don't work very well towards this either. Combat just feels flat, quite literally hacking and slashing and unleashing a power or two as they recharge. There are various weapons but they are mostly worthless. You'll get one or two weapons of each type that are worth using, and then spend time gradually upgrading their damage by 1% here, 3% there, etc.


Gameplay is too simplistic without worthwhile options that are effective to change it up.

Quest design is horrible, as expect from Japanese games from the era. The main quests are okay, but even then are fairly repetitive. You'll revisit the same places and kill the same respawning enemies multiple times. Side quests are the worst fetch quests you can imagine. Seldom do they offer anything new. You spend more time running around fetching things. Thankfully, there is an inventory editor available for PC so for those quests you can cheat to quickly finish collecting things. The problem is, you can't really skip all side quests as some award weapons which are necessary to get all the endings.


General design of the quests in Nier Replicant.

The game is broken up into multiple parts (Route A - E). Route A of the game is also split into two sections. The second play through is part 2 of Route A again, with minor cutscenes and dialogue differences. The game attempts to show another perspective but falls completely flat. It essentially tells us that "the enemy feels to", which is extremely basic. It wasn't handled well and many other games have done the multiple perspective story telling design much better. The third play through is part 2 of Route A again (that isn't me mistyping) with around 40 minutes of extra cutscenes and a 45-60 second change in a boss fight. There is no reason for this part to exist, it should've been rolled into Route B. The last Route is Route E, which is new for the Replicant Remaster. It requires you to replay the first 3 or so hours of Route A part 1 again. You then get around an hour and a half of new gameplay, which is utterly worthless. Replaying things so many times simply isn't worth it for the tiny bit of story dialogue that is given. You're probably better off watching it on Youtube.


... what he said.

In summary, everything gameplay wise is underdeveloped. Basic combat, boring inventory management, terrible quests, repeating missions, uninspired map design, and more.


Nothing like a side of backtracking to go with the the main course: literal repeating of massive portions of the story.

When it comes to the story and characters the game is also lacking. It is enough to carry the game, but that is the best it ever offers. The story isn't clever, there isn't any hidden meaning and you'll need to suspend commonsense and give in to fantasy nonsense which covers up illogical bits of the story. In a fantasy game that is a given, but good story writing knows when to cover something up with magic nonsense and when not to.


There is a lot of useless filler with simplistic gibberish added to pad the story along.

Some characters are straight up cringe with bad dialogue. Actions for characters can be fairly dumb as well. The best character is your smartass book companion, who happens to be the only good character. Unlike Automata, there aren't sinister stories to be told in the lands or obscured tasks that you are required to fulfill before learning more about the world. In Replicant, things just happen. There isn't anything special hidden underneath the cringe anime design/dialogue.


Characters range from annoying, cringe, to smartass. Most character interactions are straight up painful to listen to.


The sound track is simply okay. Sounds are okay, but nothing special.

The game is stable. I don't think I had a single crash, or progress halted due to some failed trigger. This is the best aspect of the game. Graphically the game is very dated, given that it is a Remaster of an old game that is a given. But the original looked fairly bad for its time making Replicant look more on par with a 2010 era game. Maybe even older.


Tearing down the armor of these enemies isn't as fun or dynamic as it could've been. It boils down to being a basic hack and slash.


Was there anything good about this game? Not really. The first playthrough has a moderately interesting premise and mystery which is barely touched on. The basic action adventure aspect of the first playthrough is merely okay. But with story spread so thin, so much repetition, gibberish, idiotic dialogue and more the game becomes a test of your patients. Bad I known how repetitive the game would be and how unsatisfactory and little the extra endings add I would've stopped after ending 2 and watched the rest on Youtube.


Replicant completely misses the mark in making a believable world. Replaying will feature dialogue from other perspectives that squarely fall into the "well no shit?" category.


6/10

Honestly, I even think this score is too high but I chalk it up to not crashing or bugging out, which is sadly a rare trait for many games. If it was more buggy I would've given it a 4-5.

 

[applegrcoug]

I recently played through the remastered day of the tentacle. They cleaned it up really well. It brought back memories...full of corny gags. Great family game.

 

[Pivo504]

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

This won't be a regular review, just venting my frustration. This might be the worst "game" I ever had the misfortune of playing. Undercutting Sniper GW3, maybe even outriders.

Yeah, game in quotes, because this hardly qualifies as a game. Just a string of scripted events with boring walking in between. All occasionally interrupted by tedious fights with invulnerable, unkillable enemies.
Oh and of course the cheapest kind of jumpscares, that only make me angry with their predictability.

I abandoned RE2/RE3 remakes because they were quite tedious, but compared to this, they are master artworks of gaming, this cranks tedium to over 9000.

Not to mention the ludicrous, outlandish "story" that no amount of suspension of disbelief can make even remotely believable.

I'm glad I only paid $5 for this. Man, if Village is anything like RE7, count me the fuck out.

I totally agree with you man. I got 7 bc everyone was praising it. Can't deny the beg was spooky but it all went downhill fast when your fighting a weird family that talks to you it just killed the horror for me.. I played the Village demo and it felt more of the same from 7 so I passed on it.. RE 2 remake is still my fav next Gen re game.

Just finished Battlefield 1. Never knew these Battlefield games had such cool single player attached to it. I enjoyed bf v and 4 as well. Hoping the new one has sp as I don't care for bf multi

 

[CaptainClueless]

Red Dead Redemption 2

51 hours later, I've finally finished this so-called "masterpiece" of a game. Tl;dr - This was EASILY the most over rated game I've played in recent history.

Graphically the game is quite great looking, but it has a few major issues:

TAA looks like a blurry mess, and the DLSS implementation isn't all that great either (although still better looking than the original TAA train wreck).

Then there's the "HDR". It requires HDR enabled in Windows, which is just disappointing. The "game" mode setting, while a marked improvement over the laughably bad "cinematic" mode included at launch, still isn't all that impressive. Additionally, something about the HDR settings is completely busted. Sometimes the calibration settings will behave properly and 1100 nits (my displays max) will make the rockstar logo disappear on the calibration screen, but other times I'll have to crank it up to 3300 nits for it to disappear. Why? Lord only knows.

The menus are CLUNKY and SLOWWWWWWW. There's no reason it should take multiple sub-menus with multiple overly slow transitions to change a setting graphics setting or save the game. Any time I pressed the escape key to do something in a menu, my blood pressure would immediately spike up.

The story is overall mediocre, and the missions are equally so. It had some good moments, but nothing ever really pulled me in. There are games with side quests that are more interesting than some of the main story missions in this game. And the "epilogue(s)" feel like some tacked on garbage at best. Has almost nothing to do with the main story. Why they didn't try to milk another game or DLC out of it, I have no idea. Red Dead Redemption fans probably would have paid to eat that crap up.

Gameplay is also mediocre. Lots of useless features. The whole stat system, the health/stamina/deadeye "core" and bar thing, the bazillion various health items that exist... it all seems like Rockstar saying "look at all these super detailed things we can do!" instead of just making a good game like they did with GTA V.

And don't get me started on how the game will often slow you down to an absolute crawl (like walking through molasses) any time you get close to a story objective, or in camp. Beyond frustrating. Did anyone play test this game before launching it? How did they think that this was a good idea?

Without all the filler material and the game deliberately slowing you down at times, the true length of the story would probably be about half of what it currently is.

Objectively, I'd rate the game a 7/10. It's good, but nowhere near great. But factoring in the expectation that this would be a "masterpiece" of a game, and the seemingly unanimous critical acclaim it has received, I'd say it's maybe a 5/10 at best.

Controversial take: I'd say that Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone (since they were also originally console exclusives) were both SIGNIFICANTLY better games than RDR2 in every aspect. Actually, I enjoyed Mass Effect Andromeda more than RDR2.

 

[M76]

I think even 7/10 is overrating it. I Applaud your patience, I just couldn't finish the game it was so booooooring. I concur that HZD is far superior than it, and even MEA is much more fun to play.

 

[BeavermanA]

Red Dead Redemption 2

51 hours later, I've finally finished this so-called "masterpiece" of a game. Tl;dr - This was EASILY the most over rated game I've played in recent history.

Graphically the game is quite great looking, but it has a few major issues:

TAA looks like a blurry mess, and the DLSS implementation isn't all that great either (although still better looking than the original TAA train wreck).

Then there's the "HDR". It requires HDR enabled in Windows, which is just disappointing. The "game" mode setting, while a marked improvement over the laughably bad "cinematic" mode included at launch, still isn't all that impressive. Additionally, something about the HDR settings is completely busted. Sometimes the calibration settings will behave properly and 1100 nits (my displays max) will make the rockstar logo disappear on the calibration screen, but other times I'll have to crank it up to 3300 nits for it to disappear. Why? Lord only knows.

The menus are CLUNKY and SLOWWWWWWW. There's no reason it should take multiple sub-menus with multiple overly slow transitions to change a setting graphics setting or save the game. Any time I pressed the escape key to do something in a menu, my blood pressure would immediately spike up.

The story is overall mediocre, and the missions are equally so. It had some good moments, but nothing ever really pulled me in. There are games with side quests that are more interesting than some of the main story missions in this game. And the "epilogue(s)" feel like some tacked on garbage at best. Has almost nothing to do with the main story. Why they didn't try to milk another game or DLC out of it, I have no idea. Red Dead Redemption fans probably would have paid to eat that crap up.

Gameplay is also mediocre. Lots of useless features. The whole stat system, the health/stamina/deadeye "core" and bar thing, the bazillion various health items that exist... it all seems like Rockstar saying "look at all these super detailed things we can do!" instead of just making a good game like they did with GTA V.

And don't get me started on how the game will often slow you down to an absolute crawl (like walking through molasses) any time you get close to a story objective, or in camp. Beyond frustrating. Did anyone play test this game before launching it? How did they think that this was a good idea?

Without all the filler material and the game deliberately slowing you down at times, the true length of the story would probably be about half of what it currently is.

Objectively, I'd rate the game a 7/10. It's good, but nowhere near great. But factoring in the expectation that this would be a "masterpiece" of a game, and the seemingly unanimous critical acclaim it has received, I'd say it's maybe a 5/10 at best.

Controversial take: I'd say that Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone (since they were also originally console exclusives) were both SIGNIFICANTLY better games than RDR2 in every aspect. Actually, I enjoyed Mass Effect Andromeda more than RDR2.

I agree with a number of your assessments, although I actually really enjoyed the game world and exploring it. Had over 140 hours in it after completing the epilogue, and there's still more to see. So many times I'd be riding to a mission start, then get side tracked for a couple hours.

And yeah HDR was a pain. I'd have to turn it off and back on in Windows prior to launching the game for it to work every time.

 

[biggles]

Hey captain how would you say that RDR2 compares to GTA V or RDR1?

 

[Flogger23m]

Hey captain how would you say that RDR2 compares to GTA V or RDR1?

RDR2 is better than GTAV, IMO. Both have fairly similar quest design and enemy NPC design.

I'd put RDR2 and HZD as about on par. HZD has a bit too much grinding/scavenging for resources at times and some of the politics and therefore character iterations just aren't realistic. Otherwise, very good game. GTAV maybe a notch below. Then I'd say Days Gone and ME:A are another notch below those and about on par.

I liked all those games though. I even enjoyed Death Stranding which I played around the time I finished HZD and RDR2, but I'd rate Death Stranding more on par with DG and ME:A.

 

[harmattan]

Red Dead Redemption 2

51 hours later, I've finally finished this so-called "masterpiece" of a game. Tl;dr - This was EASILY the most over rated game I've played in recent history.

Graphically the game is quite great looking, but it has a few major issues:

TAA looks like a blurry mess, and the DLSS implementation isn't all that great either (although still better looking than the original TAA train wreck).

Then there's the "HDR". It requires HDR enabled in Windows, which is just disappointing. The "game" mode setting, while a marked improvement over the laughably bad "cinematic" mode included at launch, still isn't all that impressive. Additionally, something about the HDR settings is completely busted. Sometimes the calibration settings will behave properly and 1100 nits (my displays max) will make the rockstar logo disappear on the calibration screen, but other times I'll have to crank it up to 3300 nits for it to disappear. Why? Lord only knows.

The menus are CLUNKY and SLOWWWWWWW. There's no reason it should take multiple sub-menus with multiple overly slow transitions to change a setting graphics setting or save the game. Any time I pressed the escape key to do something in a menu, my blood pressure would immediately spike up.

The story is overall mediocre, and the missions are equally so. It had some good moments, but nothing ever really pulled me in. There are games with side quests that are more interesting than some of the main story missions in this game. And the "epilogue(s)" feel like some tacked on garbage at best. Has almost nothing to do with the main story. Why they didn't try to milk another game or DLC out of it, I have no idea. Red Dead Redemption fans probably would have paid to eat that crap up.

Gameplay is also mediocre. Lots of useless features. The whole stat system, the health/stamina/deadeye "core" and bar thing, the bazillion various health items that exist... it all seems like Rockstar saying "look at all these super detailed things we can do!" instead of just making a good game like they did with GTA V.

And don't get me started on how the game will often slow you down to an absolute crawl (like walking through molasses) any time you get close to a story objective, or in camp. Beyond frustrating. Did anyone play test this game before launching it? How did they think that this was a good idea?

Without all the filler material and the game deliberately slowing you down at times, the true length of the story would probably be about half of what it currently is.

Objectively, I'd rate the game a 7/10. It's good, but nowhere near great. But factoring in the expectation that this would be a "masterpiece" of a game, and the seemingly unanimous critical acclaim it has received, I'd say it's maybe a 5/10 at best.

Controversial take: I'd say that Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone (since they were also originally console exclusives) were both SIGNIFICANTLY better games than RDR2 in every aspect. Actually, I enjoyed Mass Effect Andromeda more than RDR2.

This is one of those games/things where, while I can see why people like it, it just wasn't for me. On paper, everything points to the game being right in my zone: subject, setting, time period, story, crafting, graphics are beautiful (despite some questionable technical choices). But in reality the detractions dragged it down.

The general clunkiness of the game is what really ruins it for me. And while I understand they were trying to make the animations and actions more realistic (and possibly subtly trying to set pacing), there's a point where realism can be frustrating. I don't need to see every plodding movement (and accompanying grunt) involved in saddling a horse. Also, there's just so much of it that seems tacked on and dilutes focus e.g. deadeye that seems indicative of unbridled scope creep.

I'm probably one of the few people in the world who actively dislike GTA games, and RDR2 was akin to those games. I'm glad people seem to find so much enjoyment out of it, in any case -- just not for me.

 

[Nytegard]

Finally finished Tales of Arise. I honestly think JRPGs are getting away from what I like (I use to like them), as I didn't really care for this one. This game is all about the grind, from grinding cut scenes (there are a ton), to grinding monsters, etc. It's your standard modern Tales fare, so if you've played the series and liked the latest ones, you'll probably like this one.

The game really feels like it wants you to buy the DLC. If you're playing Hard or Chaos difficulty, the DLC which unlocks items above 15 is practically a necessity. And of course, gold is hard to come by, until the end, at which point you are drowning in it. And the enemies, even on Story difficulty, take forever to kill. The main difference difficulty seems to make is how much damage they do to you.

The ultimate weapons (which of course, you can't get until you complete the game), do as much damage as the amount of enemies you've killed, capping at 3000. This is per character, so you'll need to kill roughly 18000 enemies if you want to max them out. By the time I platinumed the game, I barely had 3100 kills, and only my main character had enough kills to warrant using it. And of course, by the time you get the weapon, there aren't any more super bosses to kill. It's basically designed for Chaos Difficulty on NG+ for people who want to spend 500+ hours on the game.

Fortunately, getting to Level 100 is a synch. But not before you beat the game. I think I was Level 61 by the time I beat the game, but the final fights practically boost you to 100 with no need for the grind. So, if you want to buy your early levels, I guess this can help speed up the game, but there's no need to buy anything, outside of the accessory that allows you to carry more than 15 of an item.

 

[Scoobydo2]

Element TD 2
I just beat the game and to my surprise, I actually liked the game quite a bit.

It's a pretty standard tower defense game. It's graphics are too bright and bland. It's sound effects are not that great either and border on obnoxious.

What it lacks in technical skill they make up for in gameplay. The game is actually difficult! The best part of it is that every level has it's own strategy to really beat. It's not like most games where when you figure out the mechanics you can plow through it and win easily. This game requires learning the maps and levels and finding which towers will work best on each particular level in their optimal spots. Sometimes even the 'noobie' towers are needed at times because the advanced towers don't give enough of what you need in the situation.

The global achievements in the game indicate less than 2 percent have beat the game.

For any tower defense fan, I'd recommend you give it a shot next time it's on sale.

 

[CaptainClueless]

Hey captain how would you say that RDR2 compares to GTA V or RDR1?

RDR2 is inferior to GTA V in every conceivable way as far as I'm concerned.

Kind of unfair for me to compare RDR1 to RDR2, since it has been at least 7-8 years since I played the original. But I don't recall ever screaming at the original to HURRY UP or COME ONNNNNN. I remember it being one of the more enjoyable PS3 games I played. It was also considerably shorter than RDR2 (which is a good thing).

 

[zamardii12]

Finished God of War and Resident Evil Village on PS5.

Fucking awesome games.

 

[M76]

Far Cry 6​

All events and characters in this game are entirely fictional...even those based on real people.
Of course that is paraphrasing the funny fake disclaimer from South Park, but it is right on the money for this game. I'll elaborate on it more when I discuss the story portion of the game.
At first glance I didn't think much of Far Cry 6, but it has grown on me since. That does not mean that I think it is a masterpiece now, far from it. But now I'm convinced that it is a superior game to Far Cry 5.

The gameplay​

The biggest improvements are to gameplay. This game is more like Ghost Recon Wildlands than ever before, whether you consider that a good or a bad thing is up to you. I certainly consider it a good thing, as Wildlands is one of my favorite games from recent years. But don't worry, Far Cry is still an FPS, albeit they are forcing TPS view in camps for no reason whatsoever. That said Far Cry is still far less realistic than Ghost Recon, especially with some of its outlandish weapons. They are taking much more liberties with weapon behavior and attachments here.

The only bunker in the game as far as I know

The biggest improvement is that the tier system introduced in New Dawn is completely gone. There is still a level or as it is called here rank system, but it merely represents military presence in certain areas of the game world. How often are the patrols, and how well equipped and alert are the soldiers. But you can go to any region from the start of the game and defeat enemies, without hitting a level wall. Of course some enemies are more resistant to certain types of ammo and weapons than others, but there is no artifical barrier preventing you from taking the fight to any enemy.

What I do take issue with is that there are no difficulty levels in the game. I don't know why they decided to do this. The only choice is between story and a so called action mode. Action mode being regular and story mode where combat difficulty is highly reduced, to what we shall call journo mode. For games journalists who hate playing games, but still want to write about them, for redacted reasons.

Unfortunately even on action mode the difficulty is so low that I could waltz through enemy bases without a care in the world. The game only started to show some teeth when I reached level 10, which is about 3/4 way through the story. For reference I finished the game at level 13. And even beyond Level 10 I wouldn't call the game hard, except for a few specific missions, where enemies spawn in your face left and right. Otherwise most of my deaths were from self harm. As there are a ton of weapons that apparently blow up in your face if you try to fire them from hip high cover. Or accidentally launching rockets from an aircraft on the ground instead of throttling up, that was probably the main cause of death for me in the game.

You can take stolen vehicles to spawn points so later you can spawn them from there

There are a ton of weapons in the game, but most of them are sidegrades rather than upgrades. I already found my favorite weapons, that I used for the entire rest of the game within the first few hours. What is strange is that bullet drop is only implemented for sniper rifles, as in weapons that are categorized as sniper rifles by the game. (and tank shells - yes you can drive tanks) But nothing stops you from slapping a scope on an assault rifle and using it for the same effect.

What makes the game even easier is that the fire rate of pistols and assault rifles is only limited by how fast you can click. You can basically empty an entire 20 round magazine in 2 seconds. This makes even the basic pistol a far deadlier weapon than it has any right to be. And by far the most useless weapons in the game are shotguns. They do nothing. It's not even like in other games where they are weak from a distance but deadly up close, here they are useless from 10m distance and weak even from point blank range. Probably because body shots are worthless in the game, you have to go for the head on every enemy, even on regular unarmored ones. I accumulated 1600 kills in the game, 1200 of which were headshot kills.

There are "improvized" superweapons in the game called supremos, that I found utterly useless, and you can't even uneqip them. Why would I want to unequip them? Because your character looks like an idiot running around with a bunch of explosives strapped to their back in every cutscene. One of the villains even call you backpack, which is supposed to be an insult, but it is entirely apt. I hated that thing. I tried to use it maybe five times during the entire game. Four of which it did absolutely nothing, and once it killed me instead of the enemy.
Resolver weapons are improvised heavy weapons and are a tad better, although most of these have more drawbacks than advantages so I preferred to use traditional weapons instead.

Sorry if we are getting a bit long winded but I'm still not done with gameplay, feel free to skip ahead to the next headline, if you are not interested in this.

Swamp, unfortunately there is not much variety in the environment, this is a rare unique location

What is both a blessing and a curse is the size of the game world, it is far bigger than Far Cry 5, not as big as Ghost Recon, but certainly big enough. Why is this a bad thing you ask? Because travelling to mission locations is a hassle. There are five main regions in the game. A mid sized island where the prologue of the game takes place which is about 2 hours, then three large regions that you can complete in any order you wish, and the last is the capital city where you rarely venture, as it is too tightly controlled by the military and there is not much to do there outside of a few main story missions.

What I resented many times during the game, is that most fast travel spots have no vehicle spawning facilities. And fast travel spots are very rare to begin with. Plus until you take out AA guns travel by flying is impossible. Yeah it is literally impossible, because AA guns are fake, unlike in Ghost Recon where anti aircraft missiles can be evaded by flying low or behind terrain, here their shells have noclip mode. These issues all compound each other making trael to mission locations a chore.

Sometimes even acquiring a vehicle is a hassle, as traffic is negligible, and you are not supposed to hurt civilians anyway. You can order the basic car to you as a last resort, but even that is hit or miss, as it does not work if you are not near a main road, and even then sometimes the spawned vehicle will start driving away from you instead towards you. And to make matters worse the AI driver takes its sweet time getting out of the car every freaking time. It is so annoying that a few times I shot them in the head so they get out quicker, to the dismay of the game's morality police.

The controls of vehicles are an improvement over Far Cry 5, but still a joke by any human metric. Especially the plane. You can do a barrel roll without the pitch or yaw changing an inch. You can fly in a 45° bank and the plane will still fly straight as an arrow. It is so awkward and unnatural that it is impossible to get used to for anyone who has flown a plane in a game that gives a toss about physics. Comparatively the helicopter and land vehicles are acceptable, but still far worse than in Ghost Recon.

The airbase is so tightly defended that I walk in and fly out in a military plane without encountering anyone

These are the types of missions and activities in the game:

• Main Missions - Obviously these advance the main story
• Yaran Stories - These are basically side missions
• Treasure Hunts - Mostly text based missions with no NPC interaction, where you search for some hidden stash of resources by completing environmental puzzles. I didn't find them worth doing as resources are plentiful already
• Checkpoints - These are control posts on main roads that you can capture, essentially turning them into a fast travel spot, which is due the aformenitoned lack of fast travel points is the most useful side activity. But even after capturing all there are large areas of the map with no direct access by fast travel.
• Military targets - Similar to checkpoints, only these are rarer and bigger bases that you can take over
• AA Gun sites - Destroying the AA guns throughout the map is also useful, so you can fly around freely. This is also the location where you can get resources specific to buying resolver weapons and supremos.
• Raids - Help a bunch of guerillas clear a base and steal supplies
• Steal Supply drop - Go to a specified location then defeat enemies there within a time limit and then steal the supplies.

That concludes the gameplay.

Story​

The achilles heel of the game. It is hard to tell if the game is trying to be serious or satire, or outright comedy. Unfortunately this means that it doesn't work as either of those options. It has a serious villain, and stakes, but most of the good guys are goofy or outright caricatures. Like each character was written in a vacuum and none of the writers exchanged notes.

Look ma, I'm a ghost

I swear that most of the supposed good guys appear as such cringe inducing assholes, that I'd rather put a bullet between their eyes than help them in any way shape or form. And you are supposed to become friends with all of them, but the character development to support this is just not there. So the whole we are besties now attitude feels empty. I didn't really care any more about them at the end of the game than I did at the beginning. Which is a testament to how unrelatable these characters are.

Even the villains are written badly, they just are, with no backstories, just evil for the sake of being evil, with no discernible motivations, or goals. It's all a mess. This is not how you write a compelling bad guy or girl. The orange man doppelganger was especially hilarous, but in a bad way.

There is also a quite large choice you can make towards the end of the game, but your choice is never even referenced or mentioned again, not even by the guy whose plan you completely foil.

The basic premise of the story is not even that bad compared to the rest of it, despite needing a metric ton of suspension of disbelief to accept that a third world dictatorship invents the cure for cancer and nobody else in the entire world can replicate it, so they control the entire supply.

Senior dudebro being dudebro again

Another by now recurring issue I find with games written by what I assume are "progressives" is the unnatural reveling in violence by the "good" guys including your own character, who will laugh and utter snide remarks while massacring enemies. If you enjoy violence and killing then you are a psychopath or sociopath. A decent person does not enjoy killing their enemies, they do it out of necessity, not bloodlust.

What also gives a clear indication about the ideology of the creators is the lack of diversity among the main friendly characters of the game. 80% strong independent female, 15% low iq dudebro and 5% totally useless men.

Even the composition of the cannon fodder guerilla ranks is at least 80% female. Seems like Yara had a certain birth control for male children 20-30 years ago. Of course you can make excuses that all the males were taken to the toxin fields to work, but most of the prisoners you find in these places are also female. Or that the men were conscripted into the military, but even among those enemy combatants there is a noticeable female majority. Which will be awkward when someone accuses the game of glorifying violence against women. The only NPC who is guaranteed to be male is the slave who fetches your car. Of course if you yourself identify as a progressive you will say that I'm misogynist for noticing this. But how can I not notice when it stands out like a sore thumb? I never shot so many women in the head in all the games I ever played before as I did in this game.

And why is Dani always dirty as if crawled out from a garbage pile? The rest of the guerillas are never that dirty. And it's not as if you are some jungle dwelling guerilla, you have access to civilization, have a bath once in a while.
They also made sure the wearable costumes (even the bonus ones) are well distanced away from fan service. You can choose between looking just plain or completely awkward.

Graphics and technical stuff​

At first glance the game didn't look that impressive, there is a certain lack of variety in the environment, but occasionally it does shine. Unfortunately the high resolution texture pack is bugged at this time meaning some textures don't load properly. That said the game is amazingly well optimized it runs very smoothly without stuttering and very high FPS with maxed out graphics. This is probably the best running AAA game I've ever seen.
There were some server issues during launch weekend but those are gone by now, the game is stable enough to play. Last weekend it would crash every 10 - 20 minutes.
Otherwise bugs are quite rare, I've seen a few weird spawns like a soldier spawning inside a rock, or some conversation not triggering. But in general this is certainly a decent quality launch.

Pros and cons​

+​

• Runs great
• Decent graphics
• Large open world with no artificial barriers and level walls
• Plenty of activities
• Basic gameplay loop is enjoyable

-​

• Dumb afterthought of a story
• Badly written characters
• Too easy for the most part
• Supremos and special weapons are quite useless
• Cheating AA guns
• Missions where enemies keep spawning right in front or behind you
• Third person view in camps, WHY?
• Backpack supremo visible in every cutscene (at least helmets can be turned off)

The raw numbers​

Graphics/Design: 7/10
Bugs/Realization: 9/10
Story/Writing: 2/10
Gameplay/Controls: 8/10
Overall impression: 7/10

I don't recommend buying the game, just subscribe to ubisoft+ play it, then forget it. It's quarter the price, and in one month you can get the most out of this game.

 

[WarriorX]

SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE

Enjoyed the first game as a short game to play on a weekend. Basically this one was more or less the same with some of the improvements and skills that I found fun to play with. Game kinda dragged on as I think it should have been a few levels shorter and the difficulty of some levels was very unforgiving. Over all its was ok, played it and will probably forget it.

 

[TheSlySyl]

Metroid Dread:
Fuck yes.
9/10.

 

[harmattan]

Maneater

Late to the game with this one as its been sitting in my backlog for the past year after buying on deep discount. I've been playing a few hours ever couple days for the past 2 weeks.

Gameplay - 7/10

• Controls are responsive, attacks are acceptably crunchy. There are a few special moves, but mostly it behoves you just to hit the attack button repeatedly. Hitting a boatload of humans, taking them overboard 1-by-1 is satisfying.
• Upgrade paths are interesting, each with their respective utility. However, there are only a few (5-6).
• Travel is a bit disjointed in that it's not clear at first how to travel from area to area, and your spawn points/caves are few and far between
• Building your three primary resources (required for mutation upgrades) by eating things and finding resource pots is a bit of a grind
• You can expect 30-50 hours playtime if you do most of the side-quests and focus on 1-2 upgrade paths

Story - 8/10

• Plot itself is straightforward: avoid and hunt down the fisherman (and buddies) who killed your mom. The plot is driven by cutscenes interspersed around mission milestones
• Narration by Chris Parnell is well done with about a 70% chuckle hit-rate (for me at least, your mileage may vary). Not overbearing and doesn't overstay its welcome
• VA is top notch, save 1-2 of the mini-bosses who sounded like they phoned it in

Graphics/Sound - 7/10

• Decent, semi-cartoony models character design
• Environments look pretty but some repetitiveness and they could have done so much more with effects. Nothing fancy: It's what I'd expect from a late-stage 8th gen console game
• Good environmental audio, underwater sounds are well done, and effects to compliment the chompy goodness never get old

Performance - 9/10

• Runs well at 4k on my sig, extremely well optimized, had not a single crash in ~30 hours playtime

Overall - 8/10

• Mostly run-of-the mill, but a fun concept that's better than the sum of its parts. It's a great game to get your chompy-chuckly kicks out of in short 20-30 minutes spurts since you can easily pick back up later. I'd probably pick up the sequel, if one arrives.

 

[chameleoneel]

Observation, by Devolver Digital

Excellent graphics. Really makes you feel like you are on a space station. Everything looks right.

The premise of playing as the ship's A.I. robot sounds more interesting than it actually is---in their execution. And it basically comes down to the scripting/scenario writing. Despite having an pretty interesting premise----they don't do much of anything which really fulfills the fresh concept. Most of the game, you basically do little tedious asks for crew members. And it really doesn't support that they are supposed to otherwise be highly educated and trained people. I feel like a much better game could have been made around interesting ideas for the A.I. robot----and then write character scenarios around that.

The game also relies heavily on other modern game ideas, such as audio logs to fill in most of the story. And most of the audio logs are just people complaining/bickering. Is it realistic?.......I dunno.

there were some blatantly missing animations where a character would just teleport or instances of characters clipping through geometry---which seemed like lack of polish/time, rather than a bug.

that said.....the ultimate reveal is pretty solid and there were several moments where the immersion of the space station caught me pretty good.

 

[OneofMillion]

Diablo 2 Resurrected

What can be written - the game after the remake is as I remember it. Unfortunately, it is very short.
A plus in relation to the classic Diablo 2 is the increased drop of items - in the first act I got a unique diamond: O Which for years of playing classic D2 never happened.
Great gameplay and even better music

 

[MentallyNormal]

The last games I could remember ever finishing was either Strider for Genesis and Super Mario Bros 2 for Nes. These where on the original hardware.
I enjoyed both of those games and didn't even use cheat codes.
I give them two thumbs up.

 

[Flogger23m]

Deathloop

Do you like story based games, dynamic gameplay, a variety of approaches or a more guided experience? Deathloop tries to cater to all these aspects but never quite commits to any of them. There isn't much wrong with the game but in general the many options are rendered useless due to certain abilities, weapons and approaches just making much more logical sense.


The game can have some night lighting and generally, looks fairly nice.

Gameplay:

The game is an FPS with a split focus on being action or stealth oriented. This is nice as on the surface it gives you gameplay options. In practice, the game never figures out what it wants to be. This isn't quite Deus Ex Human Revolution or Mankind Divided, which allow the player to take a much more stealth approach or a loud, guns blazing explosive approach. Dealthloop is best played as a stealth game because enemies can very easily kill you. The protagonist, Colt, cannot take a lot of hits. You have three chances each mission. If you die you respawn nearby. If you die a third time, you're kicked out and must restart the day again. There are four maps/phases to a day, and each day offers three chances to not get killed. While it sounds great on paper, it essentially forces you to play stealthily.

The illusion of choice filters down to other design aspects. Powers are limited to two per mission. I assume this is an attempt to balance the game. The problem is if you choose a power that is based around stealth, you're not going to be able to be aggressive. If you go the opposite direction, tackling an objective using a stealth approach may go out the window.


This single shot, long range explosive rifle is fun but inferior to the SMG even at long distances.


As you progress through the game you get more powers. The problem is some powers are clearly much more useful than others. Some are largely impractical. Others you get too late in the game. You can upgrade powers, some of which allow for different effects. Again, getting all of these requires re-killing people multiple times. That is fine in of itself because the game often gives you other things to do. The problem is by the time you get the interesting upgrades for some of the powers the game is over. This carries over to weapons to. Some of the more interesting weapons can be a bit hard to find, and you get them too late. Some weapon types are clearly superior, such as the suppressed SMG which outclasses practically all other guns.

While the core game is fun, it is generally marred with an illusion of choice which makes the game feel more shallow than it could have been.

Objectives and story missions aside, the end of each day ends with you having to spend points to retain upgrades. You can't take them all with you. This gets tedious after a while, as you scrap, equip, or play musical chairs with the upgrades for your guns. After a few day cycles they should've just let you retain them all.


Speedloader, speedloader, how many times do I have to save or scrap these things? Just allow a mod to be applied to any weapon without tying it to a specific gun, so we only need to find a new mod type once.

Enemy NPCs are also a weak point. They are fairly unintelligent to the point it is often noticeable. Sometimes they don't hear or notice you killing their buddies nearby. Other times they might start detecting you through multiple walls. They don't react or fight realistically. I don't expect realistic tactics given the setting, but enemies will gleefully follow simplistic patterns to get themselves killed. At one point I alerted a building and retreated out the door. I shot someone in the face as they walked outside, another cautiously crept to the door unaware of the shotgun blast just outside. I shot him in the face. A second later, another. I sat there shooting 9-10 people as they walked slowly right into my shotgun blast. Not a single one seemingly could hear the gunshot to maybe run out the door or try and find another way around. Or even take up positions inside. Anything would be better than to walk towards the sound of gunshots right after your buddy gets blown to bits right before your eyes.


Nothing says tactical advantage like bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Map design is a highlight. There are four main maps, with different day settings. Some of the maps change drastically during each time with areas opening up, closing, and enemy locations changing, traps changing and the like. There is a good bit to explore. The maps are fun to traverse and find ways to get into things, or relearn of new routes. Some maps have some good verticality.



There are many other small things to nitpick about:

- Side quest tracking doesn't really exist. Side quests also seem to reset every day, which makes completing them even harder. Start a side quest, but need to do a story quest on a different map? Well next cycle you can restart the side quest. I stopped bothering with some of the side quests as a result.

- The lack of a save system is kind of lame. They should have checkpoint saves. I had one or two crashes and the lost progress was disappointing. It also means you're less likely to take risks, explore the gameplay mechanics, and end a mission early. Then restart the loop which means rewatching entering/exit cutscenes.

- Towards the end the time loop mechanic starts to feel very much like a gimmick due to things mentioned above.

- No map. The levels might be small, but still nice to have a map.


Choose your objective for the time of day you're at. Eventually this gets tedious.


Yes, the core game is fun. Lack of fine tuning your arsenal, some tedious aspects, and NPCs that are not bright just weight down the experience.

Story:

Time shifting. Uncovering secrets. Use your knowledge over the course of multiple loops to unravel a great discovery, twist, or just detail a well constructed world. Sounds great right? Well the game starts with the protagonist waking up to a mystery, and ends in a mystery. The main characters do not have much depth. The main antagonists you fight are little more than lightly described people you must kill, for reasons. The world does have some info, often hidden away and out of sight, but the general plot is very thin. The game starts with a simple story aspect. It failed to broaden what this means, why or how it started, and why the player should care outside of immediate gameplay concerns. The story is mostly quips and insults between two characters.

I must say I was very disappointed. Time travel stories can often have a lot of depth with twisting and tangling plots. Deathloop is shockingly simple and straightforward.


There are upgrades to better hack things like turrets or detonating trip mines, but you have to give up more important powers to do so. May as well shoot them all with your SMG.


Graphics / Technical Aspects:

Graphically the game looks nice. Lighting can look nice, and ray tracing helps however does not make a huge difference. In general I found the textures and 3D models to look fairly nice. Explosions, power effects, and other things can look a bit dated though. The game does have a nice art design. I am not sure how I would describe it aside from saying it has a slight cartoonish look.

The game did have some performance issues. Frame rate was fine but there was an unavoidable stutter when I played. I believe turning the shadow settings down to the lowest might fix this, but I do not believe I tried that. The stutter was constant, no matter what you were doing in game. Stability wise I crashed once or twice. There is clearly room for improvement, the stuttering was unacceptable.


One of the levels at night, which has different areas to explore.

Summary:

Deathloop is passable. It does not have the gameplay balancing or fine tuning that other similar games have. Some aspects just get tedious and repetitive. It has (or had) some performance problems. And the story is just flat and present opposed to being all encompassing and gripping. As a game it struggles with an identity crisis of being an action game or a stealth game without being able to do either well nor give you the option to switch it up on the fly. It does offer standard FPS/action game appeals, and the game is thankfully only around 22-24 hours long so it ends before becoming a complete bore.


7.2 / 10

I was hoping for so much more.

 

[M76]

If you die you respawn nearby. If you die a third time, you're kicked out and must restart the day again. There are four maps/phases to a day, and each day offers three chances to not get killed. While it sounds great on paper, it essentially forces you to play stealthily.

I'd say that doesn't sound good on paper either, too many arbitrary rules.