More Miyazaki glazing slop. Its a soulslike/Sekiro style game with a turn based RPG skin. You have to use parry or dodge and failing those its punished excessively. Campfires, flasks, respawning enemies, unbalanced leveling, combat that swings between engaging and cheap with 1 or 2 shotting the player. The Lumina system is one of the few redeeming qualities that keeps it from veering completely into soulslike territory by allowing you to basically "glass cannon" most fights before some OP trash mob can 1 shot you. While the combat isn't outright terrible like a Miyazaki game, and it can be very engaging most of the time once you memorize move sets, the story and setting are pretty dull after act 1. Great graphics but weird world and world design, visually cluttered and fairly empty. Boring characters mostly and a nonsense story. The story is presented primarily at your campsite, its very pretentious and the overworld is comically weird (looks like toys in a playset meant to represent scale of travel between locations), I never really cared about any of it, didn't feel urgency or interest in the antagonist or their motives. Talking to living "brush" doll humanoid... things that occupy the world with a Charlie Brown "wah wah wah" style language is extremely boring. Its an unbalanced Sekiro-ish turn based RPG that I suspect was made with a lot of AI help. Not even close to being the flawless masterpiece everyone is claiming. Couldn't wait for it to end so I could free up that storage space.
Its a 20 (?) year old game with UE5 remastering the graphics. Its the same game, it just looks way better. It was incredible when it came out, but by todays standards a lot of these tweaked out, corn syrup chugging, low T kiddies are going to hate the slower pacing and dated design. Oh no, there's not a poorly designed boss every 2 feet to pad out the run time... Its still far and away better than the current era of woke proselytizing or the unending Miyazaki slop-fest (labeled as RPGs but have no stories or roles). This was when RPGs actually asked you to explore, to talk to NPCs, to make choices, to slow down and you know: ROLE PLAY. It has a good story, incredible graphics in UE5 and all the jank and dated design from that era. Great though not perfect, its an actual RPG, with actual exploration, quest markers, NPCs, dialogue etc. Its from an era before we called Miyazakis sh**ty action games "RPGs".
For it being yet ANOTHER Miyazaki slop ripoff, its actually pretty good. First time ive seen any developer actually iterate and IMPROVE on Miyazakis garbage design. Fun enough, interesting concept of no maps/handholding except most of the zones are small enough that you'll have them explored fairly quickly. Its gets stale by the 20 hr mark and fortunately thats when it ended for me. Story was crap, gameplay was good and the graphics are phenomenal. I got my $30 worth but I have no desire to ever play it again. Can we please move on from this Miyazaki "gluk gluk" fest? Please?
The glazing is legendary for this game. Terrible convoluted story, garbage Souls-ish gameplay, decent graphics. New games ****. In a word: Unbalanced. Large maps but mostly empty and little to discover. Plays more like a Souls-Like than a "Scrolls-like". You'll breeze through enemies in an area, only to stumble onto the boss and have the same build suddenly do next to 0 damage. If you manage to get past the boss, you go back to breezing through trash mobs again. It makes no sense. It plays like a souls game too. You can encounter a character at lvl 2, come back to fight him at lvl 24 and he'll still put you down with 2 or 3 strikes. Like a souls game, you can't engage large groups of enemies effectively, hit boxes are terrible and bosses often spawn adds ENDLESSLY while hitting you with special attacks that you can't see in 1st person. Getting stun-locked to death by Bears is the most hilarious, unbalanced Miyazaki slop in this game. This is absolutely NOT a "scrolls-like", this is closer to 1st person Dark Souls with the same annoying difficulty spikes/skill checks. Like Miyazakis slop games: its not skill, its muscle memory. Enemies hit like trucks until you (maybe) memorize their moves. Its a slog and I couldn't force myself to join the 13% (lol) of players that have finished the game. Just like Miyazaki's trash games.
Forgot, again, why I hate this game and bought this garbage for $10. The end of the Light and Darkness "Saga", the big narrative payoff, the culmination of all that has happened in Destiny 2 will be revealed... In the ******** Raid. For comparison, Vault of Glass in both D1 and D2, the most popular and played Raid in the game, is below 20% completion rate, on any platform. If you wanted to see the end of the game as a narrative/PVE player, don't bother. Its locked behind the Raid. Garbage developer and happy to them getting what they deserve.
Offensively bad. Terribly made. Hideous controls. The visuals are great. EVERYTHING else is heinous dog sh**. Enemies clip into objects (they can can shoot you but you cant shoot them lol), no more on rails shooting in vehicles, now you get to drive and shoot but not ever at the same time, you have to switch back and forth. You'll die instantly before you can react, then respawn into the same scenario, instantly dying 20 more times on spawning. Forced stealth sections with instant fail states. Armored enemies that can take more punishment than a tank. Crafting in mission in a f****** COD game, then when you down a bad guy and pick up his weapon... it has three bullets in the clip. THREE. Nobody on this dev team has ever played a game before, let alone a COD game. For the good of this industry, every single person at this studio deserves to be fired and the studio closed. Do not buy it on sale, don't play it, EVER. Play the remasters/originals, they're superior in every way.
Better than Fromsofts trash games, but still a bad game overall. Gimp the player, make the bosses OP - Another souls-like with an incoherent "no-real-story" and almost nothing explained in any regard so you can either A: beat your head against a wall as you fight bosses over and over, learning their move sets or gimmicks, B: Grind out xp/levels to essentially balance these dog sh** games or C: look up a guide online. Sense of accomplishment my a**, you'll get past one boss, go around a corner (literally, ONE corner) and there's another boss. Joy. The sheep love these games but the completion rates are comical (barely HALF of players get past the boss on the horse early on). Speaking of that boss (cant remember their names and dont care to), the devs knew the encounter design was so utter garbage that there's summon-able NPCs to pull agro and give you a chance lol. Its not difficult, its BORING. Example: Giant boss that pukes fire. Dodge, dodge dodge, strike ONCE, rinse and repeat until forced onto a platform where you'll dodge even more as you wait to strike every 2 minutes or so. Turns every boss fight into a snore fest. The lock on mechanic is HOR-RIB-LE, it either locks the target farthest from you or flips the camera around because they put a "reverse direction" command on the same button, it is the absolute worst feature in the game. And thats only when it works lol. Lots of hidden enemies placed just to annoy/frustrate the player. Can only jump while sprinting and is especially "fun" because your character lands and rolls forward at random. Its slightly (SLIGHTLY) less punishing than one of Miyazakis sh** fests, but thats like getting hit in the face with a smaller brick: Its a bad time either way. Its like Miyazakis games in all the ways that count: Garbage controls, shi*** lock on system, lumbering/boring/slow gameplay, excessively vague and difficult just to pad out the run time. I loathe Miyazaki for creating this trash genre when we used to get stuff like Revengeance, Otogi, DMC or Ninja Gaiden.
Gameplay is improved, zombies aren't so OP that a broadsword bounces off of their t-shirts now and they don't endlessly spawn behind you so you can clear an area and breathe for a few seconds. Night is more annoying, volatiles are everywhere and you're constantly chased to UV light points. Its not exciting, its annoying. However giving the player a reason to explore interiors at night is a plus. Story isnt as good as the 1st game. Gameplay and parkour are "better" but still glitchy AF. Set the game to "always run", you'll thank me later. Side quests galore, be ready for tons of filler. The last mission is timed with lots of jumpy stuff, and I'm sure this was meant to be exciting but when Aiden wont grab a ledge or wont shimmy left or right or any number of rando non-functioning parkour moments in the PARKOUR GAME... Yeesh. The parachute doesnt always deploy so youll hit the button like a maniac all the time and theres a bug that drops all audio out of the game randomly, requiring you to relaunch the game. Fun stuff. Just play Dead Island, they're way WAY better. In every way. Gorgeous game. Sh***y gameplay.
Last mission requires driving. Last mission bugged out. Died 10 times from random, invisible explosions. You don't restart as much as respawn, without replenishing ammo or fuel and with increasing wear on the vehicle to the point it wont drive. Game spawns in zombies that can run 60mph to harass you on your time limited route lol. Also will randomly spawn in 30 zombies in the road (pop!) to make sure you have a bad time. Game decided to work on the TENTH attempt and it finally rendered the rockets that were being fired at me, so at least I knew what was happening. The respawn system in the game (keep trying minus your xp, ammo and mandatory vehicle!) should be an actual crime. There's going to be people who cannot finish the last mission because of glitches and their awful respawn system. Awful experience. Techland makes gorgeous games, they unfortunately play like sh**.
Wildly overrated. Beautiful game, terrible gameplay. Combat is garbage, some people say you can target areas but in my experience a torso hit can result in decapitation so I guess I got the busted version. Zombies are Miyazaki levels of OP, not to mention some of the gigantic 12ft tall "Nephilim" variety who don't react to bullets or grenades but go down almost instantly if you use throwing stars. The parkour is cool but janky, half the time Crane wont grab ledges or wont move when he does grab them. The grapple hook is cool and only ever works half the time, every time. Game is also iffy on where the grapple can attach to, sometimes only 5 feet away, sometimes a hundred feet...??? The game will spawn zombies behind you constantly, which is funny when you walk into a clear, empty, open field. Making loud noises attracts screamer variants... except the game spawns them on top of you constantly regardless lol. This game is a dumpster fire in terms of gameplay, the only people giving it high marks are people playing in coop. Avoid like an outbreak.
Its a miracle these games got sequels. The 1st game is abysmal garbage with the worst enemy encounters you can imagine, glitches galore. Its a great game until you have to PLAY it. Last Light was better until it crashed and wiped my save game. On the very last level. That was after several bosses failed to even spawn. What a joke of a series. No wonder they're always on sale for $4 each, and that's asking too much considering how busted they are. Would rate negative if I could.
Sluggish, unresponsive gameplay that makes Eldin Ring seem like Ninja Gaiden. Loved the other games from this studio but this one is absolute garbage. I've never seen such clunky, unresponsive gameplay outside of a FromSoft game.
LOVED the beta. Gameplay, moment to moment mechanics are great. Solid foundation with lots of potential. Great visuals and performance. Synergy of powers are best in class. Story is Destiny 2-esque. The INSANE grind will kill this game. Its similar to Warframe, but somehow even worse. You have to grind for Amorphous Materials (relics) with worst-in-class RNG, then you have to grind for a sh** load of materials that ONLY drop from certain places in certain zones, in tiny amounts & only certain descendants can activate these things, so good luck if you dont have a certain character. Then after HOURS of mind-numbing grinding, you take your mats & amorphs to a very specific boss whos so imbalanced that it can't kill you, you just run out of ammo before it dies and there's no way to get more ammo, so you allow yourself to die to respawn with ammo. Worst grind in any looter shooter. You can run quick missions 20 times with drop chances of 25% and NOTHING will drop for half an hour! I ran 20 amorphs in a row trying to get 1 weapon part and it gave me the exact same piece, 20 times in a row. Normal mode is great, the hard mode/endgame grind is where the player falloff will occur, its FUBAR. ALL of this was done to drive you into the store and it makes Warframe look like a saint in the industry. Its one thing to grind a mission or a boss, but to grind 3 separate layers of boring crap, hours at a time just to get nothing after 30+ runs?! The Catalysts/Activators (Orokin Reactors) have hilariously bad drop rates, makes the hard mode worse because all the bosses are dps checks that REQUIRE you to upgrade your stuff multiple times. Literally hours wasted every day farming mats, farming amorphs, then farming bosses for NOTHING. Warframe is infinitely better. This current grind pattern will 100% kill this game. Shame.
Wonder if I'll get censored again? Lots of side quests/bloat, makes 16 hour game into a 30 hour one. Stellar Blade would have been SO much better as a focused, fast paced hack n slash like DMC or NieR. Its not a bad game, but it is not like NieR Automata other than its overall tone/music (The "Korean NieR" lol, nope). Its a Soulslike game with a few elements from NieR, complete with flasks, campfires and the slower "deliberate" combat these type of games have (ie anything more than a 3v1 encounter is usually a s***show). More fast paced than an average Soulslike, slower than a DMC/NieR type. The combat isn't as unforgiving as one of Fromsofts abominations, but if you removed the Souls-like garbage this would easily have been a perfect, ageless classic. There's a lot of little annoyances like maneuvers that require you to press a direction and a button only ever working half the time, bosses that endlessly AOE/Special attack (un-blockable insta-kill attacks lol), Eve not grabbing ladders, edges or ropes, etc. Its not a big deal, but the annoyances add up. Most of the combat is good once you get used to the timing, but the Souls-ish, garbage lock on mechanic can be frustrating. You'll take most of your damage from off screen enemies since Eve has the combat accuracy of a Stormtrooper without the target lock. You can't quickly turn or defend your back, dodge is weak and enemies love to stun lock you if they get behind you. Story is good, graphics are great, art direction is great, combat is good, performance is great, the only downside is the Soulslike junk. Promo stuff made the game look like DMC or NieR, instead we got 2B in a souls game. Still a great game, just really getting sick of everything being a Soulslike.
Outstanding action RPG with some of the best, most entertaining combat/gameplay loops around. One of the most robust character creators I've ever seen plus the RE Engine makes this game look gorgeous. There's actually people here comparing this to Elden Ring lol "ItS nOt As GoOd As My MaSocHiSm SiMuLaToR!" (with a 20% or less completion rate). The appeal of this game is the JOURNEY, the moment to moment gameplay, the exploration and discovery as you traverse the map, the unpredictable, chaotic fun of the encounters (have seen instances where Ogres/Cyclops wander into populated towns). If you're looking for dated combat and graphics, slow/clunky combat and non-existent storyline, go play one of Miyazakis/FromSofts lazy abominations. DD2 is fast paced, chaotic, well designed and FUN. Remeber fun? Nighttime sees reduced visibility and an increase in monster presence which heightens the tension as you explore the world, leading to some truly wild encounters. The story isn't groundbreaking but its interesting enough to get you from point A to B and theres certainly more actual story here than in Elden Ring. Combat is a blast with multiple vocations and lots of visual flare that makes taking down larger enemies all the more satisfying. Its an outstanding, detailed and beautifully crafted action game thats packed to the brim with great combat and exploration/game mechanics. Minor issue already confirmed to be patched out.
Hey, look at that: another garbage masochism simulator from Fromsoft lol. Really hoping their sales decline title over title so they're forced to make a game that isn't outdated, hyper-difficult, janky dog sh**. Hard to believe this is the company that made Otogi back in the day. Only rented this to see if it was playable. Its not. It's Dark Souls with mechs. Change the record Miyazaki.
This first game of this kind that not only offers difficulty options (bravo Team Ninja) but actually feels FAIR in its challenge. You can actually take a few hits, alter your strategy and turn the fight around in your favor. Fast paced, engaging combat- unlike literally ANY of FromSofts recent garbage-tier games. I don't get the complaints about the graphics, its a beautiful, detailed open world game (needs some performance patches though). Elden Ring looks and plays like unwashed a$$ and it gets praised by the sheep. Ronin takes a lot of inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima (Finally!) and a little from Nioh (Ugh) and the result is an outstanding action game. Combat is fun and I say that as someone who normally loaths anything that comes out of modern FromSoft or even the Nioh series. The masochistic "git gud" crowd can PRETEND to play on the harder difficulty (again, those completion rates for From games lol) and the grown adults who are flush with money but low on patience and time can just enjoy the game on their terms. Great story, great gameplay, beautiful world to explore without tons of filler nonsense. Tsushima still holds the crown for best combat system ever but this gets very close. Fantastic game.
Edit: Squeenix wants to be the thought police? Not only will I close my wallet, have a big fat zero ;) HUGE downgrade from Remake. The last 3 chapters are phenomenal, why couldn't Square have made the whole game like that?! Game is 20-30 hours but with the filler/open world bloat it could take upwards of 100 hours. Great graphics, good story, superb animations but many, MANY issues. Great until you hit Gongaga and then it falls apart because the open world garbage starts getting old and the focused narrative disappears until the last few chapters. 65+ Hours so it could FORCE me on a date with a f***** DOG. How about this Squeenix: let the player choose. What a novel concept! Has anyone in this hair-brained studio played a video game in the last 20 years? Romance "system" is so vague and poorly developed it REQUIRES a detailed external guide to get the outcome you want. Takes the ROLE PLAYING out of your RPG. No invert aim for shooting/flying sections, no option to heal during said sections using garbage controls. No block cancelling + stun-locking for so long you could get up and make coffee (not even joking here). Mini-games galore! All of them frustrating with controls so bad they feel like they're designed to be torture implements in Hell itself. Pointless open world filler plus Chadley is a huge negative. Comically difficult combat that's so poorly balanced it could be in a FromSoft game. QA was on vacation for most of the game. Last few chapters tighten up and it feels like a proper RPG again, essentially redeeming the garbage parts in the open world. Remake is the better game. Needs patches, balancing and otherwise.
An outstanding God of War-like action game with tight combat, light RPG elements that tells a cool story and doesn't overstay its welcome. Peak gaming from the 360/ps3 era.
Have you ever walked through a fern? Maybe some tall grass? Did it stop you in your tracks? The shrubs in this game make you act like you're traversing knee deep mud lol. The progression is so painfully slow, it might as well be a pay to win mobile game. This is a game made for 4 players, and the chaos and fun that can emerge from that type of gameplay. You can play solo but it doesn't scale and there's so little to actually do or see on your own that its not really worth it. That's also another problem with this game: its so bare bones that it REQUIRES 4 players to make playing it worthwhile because most of the fun doesn't come from the game itself but rather the company you share the experience with. If you're planning to play this solo, don't bother unless you're a masochist Souls type that loves this kind of "git gud" crap. The core shooty stuff is fantastic, but playing solo quickly becomes a boring chore. They also lock beginner upgrade materials behind difficulty settings. Not even Elden Ring is that cruel lol There's not really a lot of "game" here, worlds are visually varied but with the same bland copy/paste structures. The whole thing relies too heavily on other players to fill in the "fun" factor. Not recommended for solo players
First one was better. Bland story (High Republic, insert puke emoji), clunky Souls-ish combat. The arkham series got it right, why do these devs insist on modeling the combat after a broken Fromsoft game (sold to the zombie masses as a "feature"). The game is pretty fair until you wander up to a world boss and they kill you in 1 or 2 hits. There's difficulty options to balance out the unbalanced difficulty thankfully. You can't parry anyone behind you, a la Souls combat, so walking into a room full of enemies is an exercise in frustration. You have to be looking at the enemy to reflect blaster fire (lol), otherwise the mechanic doesn't work and you get pelted endlessly in the back as the melee enemies attack you. In sync. Spamming unstoppable heavy attacks or just attacking in sequence thus never giving you an opening (you can't even force push one away, you just get blasted from behind or attack as soon as you let your guard down to try and attack). Nothing says power fantasy like a Jedi that cant defend his back lol. This Souls style, clunky, busted gameplay is getting really old. Give me more Arkham style combat any day. Wait for a sale or play the first one. Its not awful but its nowhere close the the first one.
Improvements to gameplay and graphics, downgrade to story and characters. Lots of DEI/ESG "blue hair" nonsense and the MJ segments are AWFUL. The most epic part of the game is over way too soon. Its at its best when it lets you play Spider-Man in the Spider-Man game, but often too busy making you "enjoy" amusement parks, bike riding, street "art" and other things you could do irl. The first one was better.
An actual "next gen" console with lightning fast SSD/memory architecture, first class AAA game releases, multiplat games often run better and a controller with game changing haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. Would be the premiere console experience, if they hadn't done Xbox's strategy of "Lets make garbage controllers and we'll sell more controllers!". Worst controller build quality of any Playstation generation.
Overpriced given what's on offer compared to their competition. The UI is awful, takes twice as long to navigate compared to the PS5 menus and only half as fast. There's no real point to Xbox anymore, their games are trash and even those are starting to hit other platforms. Good retro console though. Game Pass is a plus, if only to save you money for actual AAA games available on competitor platforms. Controller feels cheap compared to the Dualsense and also requires a separate purchase of AA batteries (yet another instance of having less value for the cost) while also having none of the features of PS5s premiere controller (no built in mic, no motion control, no haptic feedback, no built in battery, etc). To put it another way: Xbox is like flying coach. PS5 is like flying on a private jet with a full bar and a built in Japanese maid cafe. It works as a "next gen" console but very little was done to innovate the experience.
There is no real open exploration in Starfield. This is kind of a "point and click game" with loading screens everywhere. No Mans Sky is leagues better at what Starfield tries and fails to do. The "honeymoon" will wear off and you'll realize that after about 20-30 hours you've seen literally everything the game has to offer. Copy/pasted across a galaxy with 1000 (empty, pointless) worlds to "explore".
Starts strong, really strong. It ends so poorly lol. Story is just as convoluted and confusing as Witch Queen with the same disjointed story as you stop in your tracks to level up so you can play the next mission. I don't know why everyone loves Witch Queen, this is just as boring and confusing. Cloud Striders, future people on an entirely different planet with "pronoun" preferences. They're basically hom0-erotic Nephelim. Its unsettling. Overall, terrible, boring, disjointed and vague story that would rather tell you, in boring exposition dumps, whats happening than SHOW you. I wouldn't recommend this if it was free, Destiny 1 has better story expansions. Its a grindy mess with even more non-matchmade activities. Sony, you overpaid for this crap studio.
"Best Campaign ever for Destiny 2!" cried all the media shills. The campaign is awful thus far. I can't progress because I'm under leveled (for the campaign! Lol wtf) but from what I've seen its just more of the same. Game is larger but not without costs as detail pops in mere feet away from the player. The levels are bland and lifeless and the Hive "city" (whatever its called) is just a bunch of random assets and blocky surfaces to break up the arena the game dumps you into. Shoot enemies, wave defense, point defense, BORING. There's still a quest from over a year ago I can't finish because you have to fight on an elevator, with waves of trash mobs and invincible enemies that never reload or relent. I guess it needs a full team and no one I know still plays this dreck. The narrative is an absolute dumpster fire "They have the light, not like your light, you must take their light and make them lightless in the psychic warfare of the ascendant plain where the worm-god cannot eat the carrots of the Slavduhn ritual shooty McDerp" Lol WTF is going on? It took a year of me not playing this game to forget why I hated it. Bungie once made great games, but that is clearly in the past. The Witch Queen is awful. Can we trade Xbox players Bungie for Bethesda? Bungie is making Bugthesda games look good.
Another bag of flaming dog-sh**, press circle to win "masterpiece" from the worst thing to ever happen to action games: Hidetaka Miyazaki. This crap was an interesting oddity in 2011. Its just dated and pathetic in current year. Another game praised by the D-riding fanboys for being "AmAzInG!" as they play for 30 minutes, rage quit, uninstall and leave a 10/10 on Metacritic. Hows that 10-20% completion rate for your games feel Miyazaki? Lol enjoy it while it lasts d-bag. How this won Game Of The Year, I'll never understand. I can't write a spoiler review because, as far as I can tell there is no story to spoil. Played nearly 80 hrs before giving up because nothing makes sense. You just run around and fight random overpowered enemies without any context. You can't level up until you randomly get to a certain campfire and some girl spouts some nonsense dialogue and then you... wander out to kill more enemies. Ooops you got hit more than ONCE by a open world trash mob enemy so "YOU DIED" even though you're lvl 100 lmao. MaStErPiEcE! Wolves appear out of a whirlwind for... reasons. ??? Most of the bosses are easier to fight (literally beat around 10 of them on the first attempt) than the random trash mobs of the open world. If that doesn't scream untalented, garbage game design idk what does. You'd be hard pressed to notice a difference between Dark Souls and Elden Ring apart from a bland, empty open world; the combat is exactly the same. Same animations, same lock on system, same "health vials", same slow clunky "combat", same grind grind grind from 2011. Melee skills are pointless, block only SOMETIMES blocks and only certain shields can parry (with the worlds shortest timing window). You get maybe 2 attacks per weapon (Light and heavy, MaStErPieCe!) The lock on mechanic takes a full second to respond the players input. Combat: Lure enemy out because anything other than 1 v 1 likely means death. Roll>slash>roll>slashx3>block>roll roll roll. Watching paint dry is more exciting. There's nothing substantial here. You still can't engage multiple enemies, you just have to shuffle around, hitting them one at a time with the same TWO moves. Yawn. Combat is painfully slow and cumbersome. Even over-leveling by 20 levels, you can still be staggered by the same low level enemies, in the same amount of strikes. It doesn't make sense. Even in Dark Souls 1-3 and Demon Souls there was a feeling of progression as you went. Not here. I'm sure its something to make the game even more artificially difficult. Bosses are OP (that first one on horseback is hilariously difficult) and don't have stamina to deplete or cooldowns on their combos (they get combos, but not you lol). There are no mechanics to speak of and there's really no point to melee "skills", blocking or tactics as all fights, large and small, degrade to fighting them over and over, rolling around like an **** until their patterns are muscle memory. Its beyond tedious. I guess if nobody played my games to completion but still bought and over-praised them, I'd keep making abominable garbage too. You can either look up a YouTube tutorial on how to properly level up or just wander aimlessly and hope you eventually find the characters that can give you an edge. There's nothing in the game to even hint at where they might be or what you should do next. Just wander aimlessly and grind, one measly skill point at a time. I don't get the love for modern FromSoftware games. Sekiro and Elden ring are awful, slow, boring games with no story or direction, garbage combat and barely 10 or 20% completion rates (ie no one like this sh**). I finished Dark Souls and Demon Souls, enjoyed them. This modern FromSoft is horrible, they're just milking a decade old broken engine and formula. If you like artificially "hard" (ie old, broken/garbage/poorly made) games or just really enjoy 2011 Dark Souls "combat": this is your game. If you like innovative, modern and polished games with tight, fast paced combat and a story to drive the experience: This game is not for you. I gave Sekiro a chance, I tried Elden ring against my better judgement. I'm done with modern FromSoft. These are AWFUL games. I want my money back. I'd rate -100 if I could. Miyazaki is literally the worst thing to happen to gaming, EVER.
My goodness, if it wasn't for Sonys stellar 1st party titles like Ghost of Tsushima I'd have already stopped gaming. Visual presentation is phenomenal for an open world game, with richly detailed environments peppered with things to do and enemies to fight. Not too much, but not tool little. The world feels lived in and realistic, driven by outstanding visuals, excellent performances, tight polished combat and a focused, well written story. Combat mechanics and encounters are literal perfection allowing the player to alternate between Assassins Creed style stealth or open combat initiated in a "Samurai standoff". 4 separate, easy to switch between stances for each enemy type can be earned and in combination with dodge and parry mechanics allow the player to effortlessly engage anything (and any number of enemies) the game throws at you. Upgrades are integrated into the world via hot springs, bamboo "strikes" and several others lending to the immersion and are intuitive and easy to understand. The map is regularly updated with waypoints and points of interest (ie, the game respects your time) Armor sets, sword sets, dyes, upgrade trees for weapons, armor and all skills round out one of the most feature complete and polished games ever made. Modern and polished, fast paced and tight, rewarding combat. You will absolutely immerse into the world and feel like an unstoppable samurai by the end of the game. Literal perfection.
I don't get the love for this game. It's definitely broken, but its received with praise as a "challenging FromSoft game" from gaming's worst developer: Hidetaka Miyazaki. If you think challenge = gimping the player by making enemies op and the player attacks hit like a water balloon, then yes its very "challenging". Lets be honest: without the artificial difficulty, the game would probably be 4-8 hours long, its the same **** tactic Miyazaki always uses to squeeze blood from a penny. The media and their sheep-like followers praise his games but look at the achievements on ANY platform: 10-20% completion rate for ANY game he makes. BeSt GaMe EvA! Enemies (all of them) rotate on invisible lazy susans to track you when you use dodge (making dodge pointless). Archers fire arrows that clearly change course (in the air! Lol) to track you. Enemies rarely react to being hit and their attacks can seldom be interrupted. Theres a specific move you can get for "crowds", I have yet to use it without an enemy interrupting it (and ignoring the move itself). Old, broken and poorly designed combat system lends to the games "difficulty" as you can really only engage in one on one scenarios. Camera system is horrendous is tight areas. Stealth isn't stealthy as enemies are always alerted when you perform a "stealth" attack. Its an old, outdated, broken design that is inexplicably excused away as "challenging", in almost all From games. More modern, polished games like Ghost of Tsushima allow the player to take on upwards of 20 enemies at once with combat systems that function properly. If you like broken, poorly designed games because they're "difficult" where said "difficulty" only exists to hide the lack of actual content: This is your game.
Worst in series. I have to make this 75 characters but if I try to type out an actual review, with no-no words about the "current year/PC" propaganda and messaging, they won't let me post anything. It's all very "stunning" and "brave" and the absolute worst Far Cry game ever made, on all fronts.
Boring beyond belief. Someone copy/pasted a Fallout game into UE4 and created the most bland, ugly game Ive ever played. Areas are lifeless and poorly textured, RPG mechanics are dull and pointless most times. Weapons are run of the mill. I bought the "complete" edition with both DLCs and I could barely get into the main game. I can't be bothered with a lengthy review. Basically: "I do not recommend" at any price point. I overdosed on boredom.
After the "Next Gen" update the game is finally approaching a stable, "finished" state although its not 100% there yet. There are still bugs on occasion but they seem to be the exception now and not the rule, the experience is much, much more stable... on PS5 with the next gen patch. The ray-tracing and improved graphics finally show off how good the Red Engine can actually look. Its gorgeous and detailed in a way few games are. The gameplay is improved, the driving is drastically improved, the overall experience on every front has been greatly improved... with the next gen patch. Its not perfect and there are still things that need to be addressed but for the first time, if you have a next gen console or a beefy PC, its finally worth trying out as its as close to a finished product as its ever been. And its pretty good.
This is NOT a Souls style game, its a "Rogue-Like" game (whatever that is). It is, point in fact, a lazy mess designed to generate articles and buzz from trendy game journalists. The focus here was NOT the player or the experience, and asking $70 for Returnal is absolutely shameful. In a Souls style game you can upgrade your character, develop weapons/strategies and come back to your game via campfires/checkpoints. Returnal has NONE of this. In returnal, you grind, as in similar games, to upgrade your charcater and weapons, usually in anticipation of a boss fight. However in Returnal, when you die you lose EVERYTHING and start at the beginning of the game. Liked that weapon you found and upgraded? Gone. All the materials you collected? Gone. Those mini bosses you cleared in the locked room? Fight 'em again. This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad except the world is proceedurally generated, the layout is randomized making matters worse because you now have no idea where all the keys/weapons/materials/bosses are located. Zero character progression, zero weapon collecting/tuning, zero resource collecting, zero respect for the players time, zero fun. This is... asinine. Foolish, idiotic, moronic, pick your favorite synonym. This game is designed to disrespect your time and money. The fact that the devs solution to "how to checkpoint" was to disable your consoles update feature and never close the game is... 7 shades of stupid. This game expects you to sit down and play through it, in its entirety, in order to complete it. Lmao what?! So it's designed for... kids/non-working adults? Who has time to play any game for 7+ hours straight?! Eventually you have to charge the controller. Right? lol. PROS: - Top teir graphics - Unique storytelling - Great atmosphere - Tight gameplay - Flawless Dualsense implementation CONS: - No progression, of any kind. Die once and start the entire game over. - No save/checkpointing. ...WTF, they expect you to lock down your living room/PS5, never closing the game in order to complete it (or die and start again lol!) - Randomized world layout makes getting familiar with the game almost impossible. A game with no checkpoints and perma death. Lol! - In a game like this, the simplest bug/CTD can ruin HOURS worth of playtime - UI is an abject disaster, cluttered and the polar opposite of "user friendly" - Active reload is an unwelcome feature in a game this chaotic - Mini bosses have shots that track you during a dodge, making the mechanic useless at times. - No respect for the player experience or time invested - Absolutely, 100% horribly overpriced at $70. This is a $20 AA game, AT BEST. Putting your entire living room on lockdown because you can't shut the game off is a appallingly bad decision from these devs. The "Pride and Accomplishment" excuses, a la EA, doesn't fly here. Housemarque, this is the last game I will ever play or buy from your studio. A overpriced, poorly designed, indie game. This is NOT a $70, AAA exclusive experience. Do not buy, even on sale, it does not respect your time or your purchase and does not deserve your hard earned cash imo. The first geuine disappointment on PS5. Housemarque and Sony: you should be ashamed of yourselves for asking $70 for this.
A showcase exclusive, displaying the potential of a true PS5 exclusive that sets the bar so astronomically high that it's almost unfair. Rift Apart is the first system seller of this gen. PROS: - Visual presentation so good, graphics so refined, you'll feel like you're playing a Pixar movie - Character focused story expands upon characters and universe without being inaccesable to new players - Multiple visual modes (Performance, 4k w/ RT, etc) - Refined gameplay mechanics with a mixture of old and new mechanics within stunning set pieces - Upgrade trees for each weapon - Extemely varied locations that encourage and reward exploration - Varied, inventive arsenal of appropriate themed weaponry - PS5 SSD allows for an entire gameworld to instantaniously change from one state to another (honestly shocking the first time it happens) or transport a charcater between completely different locations with no loading. - Story focuses on Ratchet and Rivet equally, developing/elevating both chracters without having to degrade either - Ridiculous attention to details (lighting, animation, voice overs, texture work, even hairs blowing in the breeze) - You can spend an embarrasing amount of time in the photo mode with all the options - DualSense implimentation is FLAWLESS and is by far the best example of how game changing Sony's new controller is with its haptic technology. CONS: - I miss the Disco grenade and the "Pixelate" gun from the remake. This is a system seller, easily 10/10 on every front. This is the game (for now) that you show off to your gaming friends who don't have a PS5 yet (sorry guys). The gameplay is as close to perfect as you can get and the visual presentation is so good that people who don't know better will think you're watching a movie. Absolute must have.
Playing this on a PS5: It's kind of amazing how broken this game STILL is. After the latest patch (1.2 I think) it actually seems worse. Anything 6 feet or more away from the camera was so low res you could have mistaken it for an N64 game and even then, they didn't look this bad. It was at this point I finally understood Sony's decision to remove it from the store. I feel bad for this game when it boots up and it displays the "Red Engine" logo like its something to be proud of lol. When it works correctly, it can be fun. It is NOWHERE near as immersive or complex as they claimed it would be (the crowd behavior and density is bad, it looks and feels like an abandoned city). Pros: - Shooting is pretty good, melee is "okay" - When it works, it is fun to play - Good "mature" story - Cyberpunk theme/backdrop CONS: - Its still broken, even after months of patches, its still broken on a fundamental level. - Missing lots of features that were promised: Branching/unique story, Owning property/apartments (You get an armory/gun wall... that you can't display guns on. ???) - Driving is horrendous - Physics are laughably bad - Light crowds and often non-existent traffic makes the city feel abandoned. - Police spawn instead of "arrive" at your location - Enough bugs and glitches to stretch to the moon and back - Weiners, weiners everywhere. On apartment walls, in shops, in bathrooms. I've never seen so many dongs in a game before. As bad as the PS4 version is on PS5, somehow the base consoles are worse. This is wrong, more so than most games before it because even a game like Anthem wasn't this broken at launch. Maybe Fallout 76 was worse. Maybe. This game was in early alpha, it wasn't even remotely close to being finished and even after (5?) months of patches and fixes, its still broken. CDPR had the respect and trust of the industry as well as the consumer and they just flushed it all down the toilet with this release. I fully expect them to declare at the end of this year that "its fixed" meaning they're going to abandon it, Andromeda style. Wait for a deep discount or for the "its fixed" declaration and probably don't play on base consoles.
This is NOT a single player/solo game. You can play that way, but there is no enemy scaling that adjusts for solo play. You'll still be fighting mobs of broken, lazily programmed AI regardless. And I played through it solo. Earth dead, colonize new world, superpowers. The story is barely serviceable, but its there and its decent enough. If you were expecting GoW Judgement or Bulletstorm levels of entertaining from People Can Fly, its not here. The shooty stuff is good, the weapons (mostly) are useful and pack an ever increasing punch. The cover mechanics are nowhere near as responsive for a studio that made a Gears game, often times your character will go zipping off at an odd angle. Sometimes hits don't register. Lots of weird little things. There's 2 major issues (for me) that killed this game: 1) Lazy programming. - Enemy AI has 2 (and only 2) behaviors: Enemy shoots with pinpoint accuracy from 10 miles away - Or more often, every single enemy on screen rushes you at the same time. I mean they all want to have their gun barrels touching your cheek. It completely destroys any ebb and flow to combat. 2) Cover mechanics and boss encounters are broken. - Often times all a boss has to do is swing their hand/claw at you. It doesn't matter if it actually hits you, because you'll take damage anyways. Even if you're a mile away. - Their special attack goes through cover, destroying the whole point of cover (we're talking stone pillars 10 feet thick). Again, destroys any ebb and flow that the combat could have had. Combine those two flaws together. Then imagine that literally EVERY enemy in the game can match your speed. You cannot out run them, regardless of who/what it is. Every enemy runs at the same speed. YOUR SPEED. You can't outrun them, they ALL want to be in your personal space, they never miss, they don't have cooldowns and they toss grenades like confetti. I can't imagine this would be fun with friends. PROS: - 4k/60 on PS5 - Guns are diverse enough to be interesting - Mod system is robust enough - Abilities are interesting for the most part CONS: - Graphics are decidedly last gen. Its not bad. Its not great either. - Trash story, uninteresting characters, cringy Pandora-like aliens (who live in Pueblo style houses lol) - Lazy programming/enemy AI - Boss encounters vary wildly depending on how broken they are mechanically - Most of the game design is extremely generic until the last 2-3 areas - No scaling for solo players, be warned. - Level scaling is broken, being one level under an enemy can mean thousands of hit point/health points below an enemy. - No matchmaking for endgame activities, you can "matchmake" to join other peoples parties, but they're currently booting players at the end of a run to keep the rewards for themselves. Good job, PCF. - Fade out and fade in, for every interaction, every 5 seconds. WTH??? - Boss powers (and sometimes bullets) go through walls, making cover pointless. - Lots of odd glitches, cover system is garbage (This studio made GoW Judgement BTW), bullets and sniper fire go through walls/cover. Lots of bugs and jank. I regret this purchase. Wait for a good sale (or rent on Game Pass if that's your thing), its not worth $60 in its current state. Probably never will be, it's problems are in the foundation of this game.
I feel sorry for Halo 5. If the marketing hadn't been an outright lie, if the writer hadn't pulled a Rian Johnson and completely ignored Halo cannon, character traits (important events from Halo 4 Spartan Ops), people might have had proper expectations. As it was, it even managed to disappoint me, and I'm a fanboy. The story isn't horrible (leagues better than Anthem or Mass Effect Andromeda, Destiny, etc) but its the weakest in the franchise thanks to a writer who fumbled the ball at every opportunity. Gameplay is very Halo with the new ability to aim down sights, boost and clamber over ledges. Great variety in locations and some really epic fights but overall a little more restrictive in level design when compared with, say, Halo Reach. The Halo sandbox is still there and you can have different encounters every time you play. Don't care about PvP, its not why I play Halo. Warzone firefight is fun but REQ packs (MTX's) keep it from being great - Heroic level enemies with very large health pools require vehicles/special weapons... which requires REQ packs. You can earn these but there's a moderate grind to do so. It keeps a lot of people from getting hooked on the mode. Overall good game, fun to play, great in co-op. No split screen. Marketing was nothing short of a lie and the story was a bit lackluster (they pull a "Halo 2" with this game).
Star Wars + Tomb Raider + Dark Souls = Jedi Fallen Order. This is NOT Force Unleashed. Its Star Wars Soulsborne. It's good but that learning curve is going to piss people off lol. Set after the prequels (pre-Disney, hooray!) it s possibly the first good EA published game in the last DEACDE. No microtransactions. No online BS. Single player story driven action game set in the Star Wars universe. Souls style game complete with "campfires", non-linear explorable zones and Tomb Raider-esque platforming. It's not perfect, but its really, really good. Hope this game gets the support it deserves so EA will back off of their usual BS. First $60 purchase I've made all year and I don't regret it.
I always thought this was a good launch game. The graphics were incredible for the time (locked at 720p on Xbone, booooo) and the gameplay, while simple, is solid and fun (just my opinion). There are quick-time finishers to every kill/combat scenario so if that's not your thing, keep on walking. Personally, l enjoy the finisher animations as well as the facial expressions on the enemy characters as they express pain (kinda dark I guess but tech wise, impressive). The combat, while simple, still has enough variation (timing, button combos, etc) and depth to keep your attention through the story and a well written campaign that scratches the surface of the corruption that eventually caused Rome's downfall. There is a light RPG-ish system that allows you to unlock abilities and executions and you'll unlock most on the first play through. It has a co-op multiplayer component (2 players) where you fight in the coliseum and keep the crowd entertained. I always enjoyed fighting alongside someone and keeping the crowd cheering through some crazy scenarios. Understand that, when I rate this, I rate it as an adult with a life, not a "hardcore gamer". I have maybe an hour a day to play games and for me, this game is perfect. This is a casual game, it's easy to pick up and play, you can play offline or online, it looks great and has enough depth and variation in the combat to keep things interesting. Buy it on PC if you are able. I was was surprised re-installing it on X1X to see it still locked to 720p. Oof. Looks great on PC though :)
This game is NOT for everyone. What is Death Stranding? It's a walking/delivery simulator set in a stunning sci-fi/horror open world with the expected Kojima-weirdness and a slow burn story. It doesn't sound fun. It shouldn't be fun and yet I cannot stop playing it. It's not an action game. There are elements of action, suspense, horror, sci-fi, etc but overall the game is about exploration and deliveries. That's it, essentially. You have to manage your carry loads, avoid or fight enemies across huge open world environments and make your deliveries. The overarching goal is to "rebuild/reconnect America" and bring people back together, group hug and all that. Basically, you spend lots of time walking, exploring and making deliveries. Other players can leave things in your world to be helpful (constructing roads, warning signs, ladders, climbing ropes, etc) but this is a single player game and a lonely one at that. You will occasionally encounter Mules (nomad porters), other friendly NPC porters or BT's (ghosts basically), but the majority of your time is spent traveling, pathfinding and managing cargo. It's oddly addicting and I really didn't think it would be. Then again, its the first unique game I've played in a very long time. It's very story/character focused and I love that.
Game is so epic it crashes at launch. Also, a base ps4 and Xbox can run this game but PC needs a minimum of Ryzen proc? Really Bethesda? Wow. Another "fantastic" PC release for Bethesda.
Massively disappointing. 4 player co-op open world looter shooter that's full of bugs, lacks content, has zero traces of Biowares storytelling, no waypoint system and has severe tethering issues in its open world. Looks nothing, absolutely nothing like the E3 demo and there aren't any story moments remotely like what they showed. Also, you can't see your loot when you acquire it (even though that was a thing in the E3 demo). Story is on par with Destiny 2 and from any other dev this would be forgivable but this is Bioware. Honestly, this makes the story of Mass Effect Andromeda more appealing by far. Why is everything so tiny? The trees are small, the buildings are small, the enemies are small, the mech things look too small to hold people even the environment looks severely scaled down to "miniature" levels. The scope is nowhere near what was shown. Someone at Bioware needs to learn about proper 3D scaling Core gameplay loop is fun, at least for a while. Enemies are tiny on screen and difficult to distinguish from each other and can range from brainless hordes or one-shot auto cannons with legs. Shooting is good, abilities are great but there's no variation in the weapon design at all. All you get is better versions of what you already have. A lot of the loot is garbage tier, simply there to pad out the illusion that there's "loot" in the game. Post patch there's still issues (its a modded version of the Andromeda engine, of course its janky). Glitches galore and loading screens everywhere and often. You'll spend most of your time looking at these loading screens. There's only one (somewhat small) zone/map and it all looks the same. No desert area, no snow area, literally nothing different in terms of environmental design. World is empty and lifeless. Fort Tarsis is worse, nothing like the bustling hub from the reveal trailer. The death of the last boss just cannot be excused. "Anti-climactic" isn't a strong enough word. The demise of the final boss has about as much impact and visual flair as watching a Tonka truck gently glide into an action figure. I had to pull up the scene on YouTube so I could rewind it a few times and make sure I wasn't imagining things. You thought Ghaul was bad? Archon from ME:A? The Monitor is a new low for gaming villains. I cannot believe this game came from Bioware. I could go on, but why? It's an unfinished game. It was not ready for prime time. It's as wide as an ocean and not even as deep as a puddle. Bioware had 6 years to make this game. 6 years. There is no reality where this game on day one is representative of 6 years of work. This was your last chance Bioware and you failed. Six. Years. What happened? Where's the content? I'll tell you: It's being drip fed as "improvements" and "add ons" or "DLC" ripped straight from Bungies play book.
Wow. Just... wow. A perfect masterpiece from start to finish. A benchmark for gaming in visuals, sound, game design and storytelling. Absolutely the best game of the 8th generation, hands down. This belongs in everyone's game collection.
The continuing saga of one companies quest to become the most "woke"... AC Odyssey is actually really good. There's a ton of stuff to do, a massive open world that sees the return of naval combat, tons of side quests, improved combat over Origins, a diverse skill tree, spectacular visuals in 4k and some Greek mythology thrown into the mix for added flavor. Story is "present", but difficult to follow at times. At a certain point it just stops altogether and forces you to grind out side missions before you can continue the main game (gotta drive you into that in game store for XP boosters!). The AC story is so convoluted and confusing at this point, I'm not even sure Ubisoft knows what's going on anymore. Something about Atlantis I think. The typical PC nonsense that Ubisoft is quickly becoming know for is present here but thankfully secondary to the actual game. Massive open world that will keep completionists busy for a long time and good combat. Your mileage may vary with the story.
Started out being lazy garbage. Has improved dramatically up until the "Annual Pass". The 1st "content" drop was Black Armory which was locked off to players who had not hit light lvl 600. Next "content" drop looks to rectify the "must be light lvl _____ to play" but its all about... Gambit. Now there's a new, sweatier version of Gambit and this new season is all about Gambit. Don't like Gambit and don't want to play it? Too bad because literally everything about the next update ties into that mode. There's also some Crucible nonsense, don't remember or care honestly. I had an initial spark of hope when Bungie split from Activision, thinking "finally, they'll stop making so many mistakes". Sorry folks, it wasn't Activision who was screwing Destiny up. It's Bungie. It's 100% Bungie and this latest update proves that.
