The fact that many cr1tics rated the game 100/100 or very close to it should make you think. The game is undone. No balance to find, waay too much randomness for a supposed strategy game.
Regarding McMillen, this game is truly heartbreaking. After Legend of Bumbo flopped, then was never fixed, this is the second fail. It is a fail. But critics vote it 100/100 .... I think this quote says it best: "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
Mass Effect 1: I was expecting meaningful RPG elements because the game was advertised as such. What I actually find is you have 3 or 4 conversation choices, but whatever you chose it is never reflected in the resulting spoken dialogue! Already the "RPG" elements seem dodgy and like a marketing scam.
I will skip the useless dialogue choices and focus on the gameplay, hopefully it is better...
Games that demand constant internet connection to play Single Player and do not even allow to save or pause have no justification to exist. No gamer wanted this.
What's actually still even worse, the ultimate evil, every time you restart the game, you are shown the last location for a brief moment, as if to mock you, but then it gets reset to last town. 0/10
About the state of the game: I got the game with PS Plus and as long time Diablo fan gave it a try. Kind of boring start, but alright. Got character to level 50, came to some "Maneater" Boss - I could suddenly just walk through all the areas. Everything was dieing like flies. What?? Turns out the devs fuged up the enemy strength in parts... so from this point the game was kind of over for me, no reason to continue without a challenge. I think most of Blizzard devs at this point are just completely incompetent. They absolutely KILLED the franchise with this empty, broken game. Will never buy a Blizzard game again. The game looks nice, but that is all the positives. 0/10.
The second installment of a huge indie success somehow got the same issues as big studios: the game feels, and especially looks, rushed and full of problems.
I have 10 hours on the clock and can safely say, no matter what comes after, this game has the absolute worst beginning of any game I have ever played, and that includes hundreds of games.
The graphics look really really cheap. The cars, the tents... the player character....WHAT on earth is this?? Then the enemies at the beginning, are just ridiculous. Way overpowered. The progression is absolutely unclear and confusing. Did the programmer start with the end and had a stroke half way? What I know is, the first Axiom Verge is a great game, a hidden gem, the second is so bad, I'm going to pretend it does not exist.
What the heck happened to the PS4 version of the game?!?!?!? It is absolutely INFESTED with weird bugs and missing quality. The PC version was fine though, which makes this even weirder. So on PS4 the "animal instincts" ability is hardly working at all. You will constantly encounter instances where it just won't activate for no reason, it takes much longer than usual for no reason, will deactivate for no reason, will not color animals (you have to then repeat for it to work). Hunting wolves is almost impossible, as they "know" when you are about to shoot and conveniently glitch/jump to the side. The game will then ignore your input, like for axample shooting an arrow, or using the axe, because the game wants to force a button timing mechanic down your throat, again for no apparent reason but to make the game weirder and glitchier. At times you are unable to pick up items right in front of you. At times you will fall to your death for no reason, just the game bugging out. Animals you hunt will disappear into thin air, while continuing to make sounds. Wounded animals usually are slower, so you are able to hit them when in flee mode. But like 50% of the time this will not work, they still move fast and you can waste all your arrows because they also now have developed a sixth sense on when you want to release your arrow and jump to the side every time...
In summary: stay away from this half finished abomination and if you must, get the PC version instead.
Another political correct walking simulator slop game. Controls on console are so incredibly bad with no real way to properly fine tune, completely ruining the game for anything besides mouse and keyboard controls. That alone should be enough reason to stay far away from this crap. On top there is absolutely obnoxious narration and horrible voice acting from the get-go. The director is apparently an incompetent buffoon. Any overly positive reviews are 100% bought. There is nothing amazing to find here, only disappointment and missed opportunities...
I'm a little late to the party for this game. I had my suspicions on release, just by looking at the graphics style, but nothing substantial. Now that I finally get to play it, because of bargain and urge for nostalgia, as a big fan of the old Monkey Islands, unfortunately I see my suspicions confirmed. The game pushes "THE MESSAGE (tm)" really hard. Muscle packed boss-bi characters, injections of current-day social and political topics. Where earlier games inserted these jabs in a funny, non-intrusive way, here it's really just bad writing, you feel you are getting lectured all the time and topics are forced in that make no real connection to the game. Guybrush is reduced to shallow, soulless punching ball, especially for all the snippy female characters (which is basically all of them). I'm a few hours in. The game starts really lame and unfunny, but gets slightly better, and more true to the former iterations, in later progression. But for what it's worth, for the first hours of the game, I never laughed, chuckled or even smirked once. The absence of good jokes is really sad for a Monkey Island game, when this was the main selling point for the earlier games. But what almost bothers me most are the insanely over the top positive **** game even received a "game of the year" award...there is something very wrong with the whole "gaming journalist" profession. They seem to be reduced to nothing but henchmen for the studios, hyping up bad games for profit. In conclusion, disappointment immeasurable and day ruined. It would have taken another year or two in development to get good. As it is now, the game seems like a quick cash grab, with manipulative undeserved hype, banking on the success of its predecessors.
As a fan of the series, you can skip this one without regrets.
Congratulations on being technically good, which means playable without too many bugs, at release. Something you would not necessarily expect from today's big titles. On the game itself - god have mercy. It is all a game should not be. The critics who saw this desaster coming were right in every detail. Did the collective of gamers not establish like a decade ago, that cringe cinematics and autoplay scenes is absolutely not the way to go? Did bioware themselfes completely forget their own creations (Mass Effect) to go back from open choice rpg to those on rails where everything is forced? But I guess otherwise the political indoctrination written into every bit of this game would not have been possible.
Fantasy game and political messaging just does not mix. It is an abomination that will most likely be quickly forgotten.
As an 'hommage' this game does a huge disservice.
The art is ok, presentation is ok. Not too many bugs. The bad parts are the action (or lack thereof), the enemies, the enemy AI which is just plain ridiculous, the lack of impact of any of your weapons, the level design, enemy placements, item placements, you always run out of ammo, constantly.
Worst is the abomination of a save feature. You run to altars, which you can use ONCE. After that, you cannot save. The altars have the WORST placements, absolutely horrible.
After running around in some castles, xonstantly getting lost, with long streaks of no action at all,suddenly you enter a room and get completely wiped out by all enemies at once.
I have never build a level, but I am confident I could do a much better job at it than the Dev's of this game.
Following in the footsteps of Original Doom, this is an incredible game and another milestone for FPS! Imagine the same people playing Doom in their childhood for the first time, being blown away and glued to the screen, growing up to become game makers and then actually paying back a huge tribute to the most important game of the decade - that is Doom 2016. I was in awe about the creativity, homage, goryness and overall perfect art style! The music is something to behold - a totally new reimagination of the midi metal riffs of the original, taken 5 steps further - just awesome! The cherry on top are the Vulkan drivers which, when set up correctly, give you a flawless, fluid experience like no other and a huge fps boost. IF YOU DON'T PLAY THIS, YOU MISS OUT!!!
There is not much good to say about this game. The graphics look good in some parts, but in other parts they look washed out and horrible. It seems the developers clustered the game in parts and sometimes you play the well made parts and sometimes the bad parts of junior developers. The worst in the Wii U version are the controls. The game consists of jump scares and quick reactions, but the controls fight you in every step of the way. You cannot even adjust the turning speed. So you aim and move slow like a drunken slug, but the enemies just run at you in erratic movements, making aim sometimes a real challenge. If you miss too much, they swarm you and hack you to pieces. And that ladies and gentleman, is the main game mechanic. There is nothing else besides as I said the occasional well made surroundings to look at. The story and cutscenes are a mess in every way. In conclusion: stay clear of this game.
I'm much too late for the party, but I wanted to leave a comment on the game for posterity. The game is fine, however the control scheme is ABYSMAL. It's a game of racing against time and certain death. So basically you need precise, crip control. But what you get is a sluggish response to inputs and a character that takes FOREVER to turn or climb up a ledge. This is ridiculous in so many ways. It seems like producer "GO series" had never played any genre defining jump'n'run before to come up with such bad controls. By the way, it was the same for another of their games "10 second run", where the controls are runrelentingly bad. I only bought the game at the time because "nintendolife" advertised them as good. But in reality they seemed to write bought reviews to push sales, because for both games there was no single mention of the kind of controls you would get whatsoever.
Amazing game. It will pull you in with Metroidvania + RPG elements and make you happy by delivering a completely bug-free, incredibly polished, perfectly fine-tuned and creative variation on a jump'n'run. This is the core of video gaming condensed. I totally loved it. Such an amazing, rewarding experience to play through and find all secrets. I just hope after part 2 they will do part 3, 4 5 and 6!
Almost everything about this game was said already, not going to repeat that. The MAIN ISSUE with this game: - It is meant to be trial and error. Grinding, grinding, grinding, endless grinding until you know any level and any hard situation completely from memory. - It is mostly not "hard", it is unfair. That's a huge difference from fair games like Dark Souls. There is a lot of randomness in the patterns of enemies and projectiles. This goes so much against any notion of "skill-based". There is a HUGE difference between tough but ultimately doable, and sheer retrying to catch a lucky break and get a "doable" enemy pattern. - The collision detection is unforgiving to the point of unfairness. When you are unsure if something will hit you, when you might say "that will slightly miss", the game is sure - It will hit. Everything coming close is a hit. And everything is trying to get close all at once. Pair that with 3 hit points and stages taking 5 minutes to complete and you get a game where the main difficulty is lack of mobility coupled with randomness that creates undodgable situations ****.TIME.
This game is THE prime example of 1) why a game needs good gameplay, but does not necessarily need good graphics or cinematics and 2) the flaws with console shooter 'duck and cover' mechanics. In short - the game simply isn't fun to play. It is almost insulting to call this a game, it is more an interactive movie. The main reason for this, the game continuously shoves cinematic cutscenes down your throat, which you cannot skip or influence in any way. This might be acceptable at the start to explain any game mechanics, in a tutorial, maybe after a big boss fight. But in this case, it is overflooded with them and it destroys the experience. You shoot some enemies, solve a simplistic riddle - cutscene. Over and over and over. Just horrible. Let's come to the quality of the cutscenes, the storytelling - uninteresting in every way. The characters are badly written, in some cases caricatures of normal people. The decisions and script is hollywood at its worst, cheesy, boring, cliche. Sometimes it even gets weird, so weird and unbelievable in its story, a reminescent of the best worst movie of all time "The Room". You will laugh when it wasn't intended, because it is so hilariously bad. As a movie, this game also would have been a huge failure. The gameplay - The fighting scenes start ok, but detoriorate very fast, as you constantly need to hide behind stuff. Pure 'cover' mechanics also at its worst. There just isn't much to do. You press cover, wait for enemies to appear, press shoot to aim and shoot them, get hit, back to cover. Repeat ad infinitum. There is one thing only that did not make this a total desaster - the graphics. They look exceptional for an early ps4 game. But. They are also bland. Brown and gray colors dominate everything, but not in a good way. Where other games like Bloodborne creates athmosphere from the used color palette, the Order just misses to do so. It is 'art' in a scientific way, it simply won't be immersive sadly. All in all, this is, by far, the worst 'AAA+' game I ever played. I felt ripped off, cheated, to be lured in with graphics only to realize what a monumental failure this game is in any other aspect. I prefer playing 25 year old Wolfenstein 3D to this, because it actually is somewhat fun to play. One last thing to mention - the overly positive reviews are simply a mockery. I get thet people have different tastes, different realities. Sometimes they feel the need to justify a purchase, sometimes they have no broad frame of reference and so on. But still. As a sane person and gamer, you simply cannot judge 8 hours of bad gameplay and cinematics (that's basically all the time you will be able to get out of this game) for 60$ starting price as good or even phenomenal. Not with this gameplay and this cinematics. That is outright lying. Those reviews are bought, no doubt in my mind (sometimes very easy to spot when they write something dumb like 'don't listen to the negative critics' - yeah, right...)
