Ark8uilder

The game was really dragged down by the lack of biomes and enemy diversity, and I really almost dropped it in the huge desert segments. They got two huge collectathon maps that are both deserts and you barely have things to do, I could count maybe side five quests per map. Game would have been better as a fully linear game. Huge bonus for playing a hot chick, barely have that in modern gaming.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I had fun with it, like I used to have with the COD campaigns back in the day. I initially expected a longer playtime but ultimately was surprised and disappointed when it ended after the tenth mission, because I read that there are 17 missions. I actually said when the last mission started that I was starting to get bored but now I'm back into it. I guess I was just spoiled by RPGs that go for hundred of hours. Was definitely a breath of fresh air in a sea off chore games, can recommend it, but not for many hours, just for the experience. I couldn't even bring myself to do the challenges, I wanted to stay with the memory of the journey not the frustration of doing the same map ten times for some random challenge

First half of the game is a 4 or a 5. You get two bike riding missions, chemistry minigames, sidekick missions, one hour fun fair cutscene/minigame mission, a lot of padding, of cinematic and setting up. The lizard boss fight has THREE sequences that all use the same steam trapdoor gimmick even though THE AREAS CHANGE. YOU HAVE SIX BOSSES IN THIS GAME, and ONE OPTIONAL BOSS WHICH IS THE BEST ONE. Really? For the second game? Very uninteresting missions like mute gf spray painting, gay date, bike riding (again), three stealth shooter gf missions, rollercoaster riding with press X to raise hands and Y to shout. It's the second game and somehow it has less content. You only have ONE challenge event series on the map in the form of mysterio things. No more traversal challenges because now you have wings and they trivialized traversal, you're a jet engine, don't even need fast travel. The only redeeming part is the second half of maybe the last third of the main story. You get venom powers and then you play two missions as venom, the whole city is a chaos, Prototype style of warzone. I finally felt like I was playing a proper continuation of the first game. Worth buying at a discount if you enjoyed the first one. And power through the first half, it's a drag.

I expected more from the most nominated game of the year. I'll list the reasons I gave this score from most important: 1. Very unintuitive progression, with hours of backtracking. In the style of souls games, only you have a visible level, but unlike souls games, the SAME enemies (mime, pentak) are definitely stronger in some zones and weaker in others. You encounter them on the main story but you're at least ten levels underpowered. Also, whole missable side quests need you to remember a spot to come back to, more than ten hours later, in batman Arkham asylum style. You have to either continue where you can, struggle to beat an enemy for an hour or go somewhere to fight the same enemies again and again to farm exp. Good game, not even Chinese mmos do that anymore. 2. Very repetitive gameplay loop, as a continuation of the above reason, you're punished for your inability to dodge with fighting a lot of the same enemies over and over again until their hits do not one shot you or you get better at the one of the lowest evade reaction time in GAMING, at 0.15s, similar to hardcore games like sekiro. You have the same meta skills, same order of action for every fight, enemy resistance and weakness is a joke if you simply buff fire and put weakness to fire spell. Whole team can be fire focused all game, no problem. 3. In style of new game+ focused games, your whole first playthrough will be a mess. If you go in blind in elden ring, you can always return IN THAT PLAYTHROUGH and get something you've missed. In this game, you're locked. You're locked from one of the BIGGEST rewards in the game for picking the "wrong" choice. If you kill a white nevron, no more free 100 lumina points for you. If you don't duel with Maelle, you miss on one of the best weapons in the game. Your only solution? Simply reload the save before that bro. I barely got past the gestral village and I either uninstall this crap or play with a walkthrough the whole game so I won't have to farm because I was gimped out of zones, weapons and rewards. Five points for story, music and art style. I return here after finishing the dlc, the endless tower (without the frames) and Simon. The endgame is still split in two, the tryhard dodge and parry bros that learn these frustrating bosses, and the op minmax youtube builders that oneshot everything except the final dlc boss and Simon. Those were a matter of how good I managed to farm lumina points and become more broken than the boss itself.

Great way to convey the feeling of speed through the special effects. NFS Unbound delivers when it comes to adrenaline and good, stunt filled tracks. The burst nitro mechanic changes the style of driving and shakes things of for the better. The art style is an interesting addition once you see how it's implemented. That's where the pros end, some issues made this game a very frustrating experience. In the effort to revamp the genre, they made tracks randomly available and higher difficulties have only two restarts every maybe 6 or more races. Unmodded, this game is a mess, you are supposed to be ok with the results of the race, but colliding with unpredictable cop cars, traffic and ai drivers quickly turns this mechanic into a frustration inducing grindfest. This leads to a vicious circle of losing the race because your car is not upgraded and not having the money to upgrade because you lose races. Players that have not modded the game resort to exploits to get more money in the campaign to equip the cars and improve the chances to win. And you mostly do the same four or five races because you pick the ones with the biggest payout before the heat level becomes unmanageable.