Great art, nice character design, good gameplay balance. Nice enough community that they don't get upset in chat or trash talk. All of that can't save the game's matchmaking, which is incredibly unstable and unfair. I was topping the efficiency charts on my team, but even then the enemy scores were always 10x higher than us. It really pairs you against a whole team of people with special avatar icons vs a team of brand new players. It suffers frequent disconnects with no option to reconnect. If one player leaves matchmaking, everyone has to leave. It's a huge waste of time compared to other moba games that just load a new player in or allow them to reconnect. There seem to be no penalty for crashing the game for everyone else, as you can just immediately start a new game after getting DC'd, at least. I played Gigantic in Beta years ago, and it seems they've added no new maps. It's very repetitive, even for moba/ team objective game.
Just reviewing the story missions of the base game here. This is one of the worst story experiences I've ever had. Mediocre voice acting; a lot of the minor actors sound like they just wandered into the studio. Very strange mechanics, like turret sections where you have to press the number keys to move and shoot the turret, or escort missions where you have to stand right next to but also slightly ahead of the NPC at all times to get them to move. TERRIBLE story progression. All that happens is you meet a few new characters, they die or betray you, and the other characters (most of whom have no personality beyond their fantasy race) are surprised. Then you beat the main boss by hopping on a turret and spamming 1 for 5 minutes straight. After peaking ahead at some story content for the "Path of Fire" expansion, it does seem like their writing ability and use of mechanics gets better over time. But the base game is so atrocious and skippable, please do yourself a favor and just skip all the cutscenes. You don't need to know anything besides the Jolly Green Giant guy is the main hero for apparently no reason. That's it.
Easily the best open world and minimalist UX experience ever invented, nearly ruined by its being a technical dumpster fire. While amateur critics lambasted games like Cyberpunk for sporadic texture glitches, Elden Ring features server disconnects in a single player game, a plethora of CTDs, save corruptions that will see dozens of hours of progress lost, multiplayer disconnects, and a complete lack of matchmaking in multiplayer that will make gameplay with a friend a slog of level 100+ players camping level 1-30 areas. Elden Ring has an expansive and meaningful world and rich, perfectly understated lore. Unfortunately, it struggles at being a game underneath everything it does well. Monsters will hit you through walls, iframes on dodges and hitboxes on attacks are imperfect, and the class/leveling system is skewed in importance early on due to the game's prioritization of level over stats as an expression of the player's power. It's a great game. I just wish they spent a little more time making the gameplay enjoyable and maybe consider using their cloud system to protect players from save corruption? This is the first time I've seen save corruption in over a decade, and it's inexcusable. That alone is worth taking two points off the total score.
Hello Neighbor is one of the worst games I've ever played. It least it looks alright for a hellscape and doesn't crash as far as I saw in an hour. But the physics are terrible (and the game constantly relies on them), the controls are awful, the story is like a fever dream, the progression is so obtuse that every other step requires a strategy guide, and it's just not fun or scary. It actually gave me a headache. Do not even attempt to play this trash.
Death Stranding is one of the most brilliant games I've ever played. It's also probably the most divisive game I've ever seen. Either you really love it or you really hate it. Either way, this is not the game you were expecting, as there's nothing else like it. This is a game about the journey, so if you're looking for a cheap dopamine hit, I'd recommend looking elsewhere. First of all, this is no action game. For the most-part it's a laid-back walking simulator with open-world decisions making (route planning, mostly), community single-player (ala Journey), and long cut-scenes. I don't agree with people saying it takes a lot of patience, but its not a game you can easily brute-force your way through. There is combat that makes up about 10% of the game, and it is quite simple. You've got grenades, guns, and fists, not very unlike Metal Gear. It'll have you hiding behind things, advancing down corridors, unloading on enemies. Death Stranding also has stealth, whereby you'll be crawling through areas past ghosts who are rooted or patrol a small area, trying not to alert corridors of enemies, or sneaking through tall grass in the open world. The world design feels fantastic. It looks nothing like the continental US, but it feels so much like a real place. The graphics are some of the best ever employed. The world is a main character here, and makes up the majority of the challenge you'll be facing, which is perfect for a game about traveling across the US mostly on foot. The world is populated by lovely mountains and crags, rolling fields... The whole time I kept thinking 'Final Fantasy 15, eat your heart out', which is the closest thing I can compare it to, but that game so pales in comparison as an epic roadtrip. The story, for once in a Hideo Kojima game, wraps itself up and feels complete. Through most of the game it feels like a lot of symbolism and campiness, but damn does it come through in the end of tying all the loose ends together. And not at all in an obvious way. Still, there's a lot of symbolism that crosses with other Hideo Kojima games. It feels like this is the story he wanted to tell all along with the Metal Gear series. As such, the game is way more abstract than a classical adventure; more like a psychological thriller than anything in the action genre. The player is wrapped up and swaddled with story at every turn. This is probably the most generous game with full 3D cutscenes that's ever been made. All the characters are brilliant, and even though I spent dozens of hours with them, it left me wanting more and more of those interactions. The community features are brilliant. You can build bridges and ziplines for other players to use. Build them various way stations. Put warning signs for other players, ala Dark Souls (but simpler; no 'try using both hands' placemarkers). Let them use simpler tools like your ropes and ladders. You can then like the works of other players. You can also recover the lost cargo of other players or interact with their deadbodies which binds you together. Or you can request they make deliveries to you. The whole thing leaves you feeling very connected to other players in a way that I haven't seen in a game in years. Whether they placed a sign in the perfect place to help you out of an open-world chase, or they had that latter in just the right spot to avoid a ghost, it's just a flood of appreciation for other people. For the controls, I think people really over exaggerate that they're "bad". This is about as engaging as you can get for a game about walking. The weight of everything feels so satisfying, especially after you get exoskeletons that let you jog around with a ton of weight on your back. But it's not nearly as hard as people have said. Just holding both triggers is usually enough to keep your character stable. And the vehicles are not too difficult to control. You're not meant to drive literally everywhere, this is a game about crossing mountains. You can't cross a mountain in a van, can you? Just get out of the car/bike. I had more frustration reading the complaints of other people than I did over 51 hours playing the game. All in all, Death Stranding is a brilliant experience. It's by no means for everyone. If your idea **** time is best paired with a Mountain Dew, you'll probably not like it. But if you like something that's often slow or thoughtful, and so analytical that it'd make your English teacher weep tears of joy... Play it. You'll not be disappointed. Or if you're the kind of person who likes something to do while listening to a podcast, you'll probably also enjoy the gameplay (haven't tried it). Regardless, give it a try. You'll either love it or you'll hate it, and that's not even a gamble if you wind up loving it.
Doesn't even work. It's a common complaint that this game is a massive download, and after it's all done installing the game won't launch. There's no technical support. None. Either the game works for you or it doesn't, and too bad if you wasted all that time and data in the process. I have at times managed to get it working in the past. it's just another MMO with rush-grind levels. You hit something with one ability slot until it dies as an overpowered deity at the very start of the game. You might as well play World of Warcraft or any single player RPG. The miniaturized world scenes from the Elder Scrolls games are nothing to write home about; the set design seems phoned in and designed by committee; very lifeless. The classes seem to be random and have nothing to do with the classic Elder Scrolls experience. It doesn't feel like an Elder Scrolls game.
Alien Isolation is the best horror game I've played since the early Resident Evil titles. It has everything from unsettling silence; hiding while fearing for your life; running for your life; jump scares; fear from different threats such as the slow patrolling packs of men, unrelenting machines, and the often clever alien. Its an incredibly long game for a triple-A story-based title (about 25 hours compared to the usual 8-15), and while I don't necessarily see that as a good thing, its not nearly taxing. In fact, since there are basically no Triple-A games that do the 'hiding from intelligent hunter' mechanic,especially from a single AI hunter, the gameplay length is definitely welcome. However, the story rarely has any context or complexity, and the actual ending is precipitated by one tease after another. The exit is usually completely obliterated right before you get to the end anti-climatic and invoke Murphy's Law in an almost comical way. It's like, your ID card needs to be refiled, or a ventilation shaft connecting to your escape ship needs to be repaired. The final ending scene is horribly uneventful, makes no real sense, and is just there for a sequel placeholder. Despite the fact that I enjoyed the gameplay, I'd rather not have a repeat of this very long and repetitive game. In any case, the ending is so poorly thought out that most of it is done with TWO-DIMENSIONAL ANIMATION. What? The rest of the game used 3D cutscenes. They must have run out of budget by the 24th time your escape didn't work out. The gameplay was good, the set design is very Alien franchise, but don't expect much from the story beyond some filler logs.
The only reason why this is getting rave reviews is because "Bethesda bad." That's literally it. Outer Worlds is definitively the weakest entry in Obsidian's collection of narrative RPGs, and it shows from beginning to end. No doubt they "outdid themselves" in making a 3D world that looks vaguely like something Bethesda's B-team would drop. People saying this is the bug-free Fallout seemed to have been playing a very different game from mine, where it only took a few minutes before I got stuck in the terrain or events in a quest chain refused to trigger, forcing me to kill the quest NPCs I was trying to work for. In any case, regardless of who made it, Outer Worlds is a mediocre game with mediocre writing, a cheap cash-in on other IPs like Firefly and Bioshock. The world is lifeless, with "failing corporations" standing around waiting for you to destroy them. Companions just decide to pop on your ship, and are so inconsequential to your journey that you can just immediately ask them to leave your ship, your party, and your life, where they'll no-doubt sit and sulk where you first found them until you decide to take them on the most bland, sunset tone adventure media has ever seen. This game just makes me want to read a book. At least in a book, something happens within the first eight hours. In Outer Worlds, I'm CRAWLING along, doing the most inane sidequests that have already been in other Obsidian games. The last one I stopped on was "investigating" a murder. I went to the dead person's house, the game told me who to talk to, I talked to them, and then they told me who the murderer was. I went and beat up the murders. Wow. Are these really the people who made KOTOR2? Pillars of Eternity? I'm expecting a shred of Narrative complexity here. Just a shred. Please. Right now I'm playing it a few minutes or an hour at a two at a time. It's like a train wreck in very slow motion which I'm mildly in engaged to glance back at every now and again. Maybe it'll get better, but looking at the fact that I've completed most of the scanty, miserable skill tree and am impervious to enemy attacks on normal difficult, I'm pretty sure the game is about to wind to a sudden conclusion. If the game gets better at some point from here, I'll leave an edit.
"Gears 5," not "Gears of War 5" is one of the most disappointingly mediocre games I've played in the last five years. It is so god awfully behind the curb of other franchises which are actually trying to spice things up, Gears 5 doesn't even try to innovate beyond making its name shorter. Nearly a month after launch, Gears 5 is still very buggy, with characters getting stuck in scenery, easily getting **** behind unfinished invisible barriers, and triggers that don't activate. The new 'third player' slot, Jack, is responsible for most of this, with his triggers not appearing sometimes, and his "floating" movement being so poorly programmed that he gets stuck on level terrain in places. Mind you, this is a character that doesn't ever touch the floor. Not to mention cutscenes that don't even trigger if you're playing as Jack. The story is worse than Gears of War 3. There's no plot until over halfway through, and all the plot that's introduced about 4 hours into the game just works up the presumed protagonist for Gears 6. Gears 5 is so bad, however, I would think only Microsoft's cash injections could save the series from the scrap pile. In any case, the game introduces or reintroduces side characters, kills them off, tells you to be sad about it, and then they're never mentioned again. Rinse and repeat for nearly every chapter. Ultimately, it ends on the worst cliffhanger I have ever, ever seen. The multiplayer is standard Gears of War fair with introduced casual modes that take the original Gears of War flavor of 'getting destroyed by the host' and uses server pockets to make the ping variation between players less frustrating. Being another third person game, however, with barely any competitive scene, I have no idea why you'd chose to play this over Fortnite, which runs on the same engine and has effectively the same gameplay besides building and "rodeo running."
One of the worst games I've ever played. It's essentially a point-and-click turned into a platformer, with the inventory system removed. The 'puzzles' consist of grabbing item, running with the item to a spot, using it, then having two of your character press a button while the third one progresses. Over and over you repeat this process. Despite long walks, there's no way for your characters to move automatically toward the terrible busywork set before you. How do you like 1990s direct-to-video cartoon movie sequels? Because the humor in this game is dead on if they were going for "complete afterthought" with the writing. The game's writers actually thought "I have to fire that shopkeeper, I think he's stealing from me" and a gold minor saying "Back to hoarding more gold" are funny lines. They repeat the same joke of naming the torches random things like "torchy mctorchson" over and over again throughout the entire game, but even that lameness is poorly executed. They recycle the names in a loop. Wow, randomly generated joke! Who doesn't love humor that's dependant on odds and localizations? On XBOX 360 (I played the version emulated on Xbox One), the game runs terribly, and that only compounds the fact that the platforming (ie, trying to speed up the incessant climbing ladders of ladders required to get anywhere by falling down shafts and grabbing the ladder/rope at the last second) even more annoying. Framedrop after frame drop. I'm not sure how so many people love this. It's like a bad custom map of Little Big Planet. The only redeeming feature is the model art.
ArcheAge started as a very attractive concept, but its developers and publisher were too blind to capitalize on that potential. It starts out as a decent open class system questing MMO, which goes on for about 40 levels (or ~200 hours). Suddenly, the game becomes about literally farming. Raise animals, raise plants, ship their products across the map to get money and experience. There is no end-game, aside from a handful of grindy dungeons for which parties are rare and the rewards are inconsistent. Pirating in ArcheAge is clearly the best part of the experience, allowing for separate dynamic rolls like boarding party, captain, cannoneer, radar operator, small craft operator, harpoon operator, etc. Most of these rolls can be filled by a player of any level, which is a great way to get your more casual friends involved. Pirating when it goes well is a brilliant experience, but groups for doing so are usually cloistered, elitist, and the game's massive gear depravity/dependence virtually nullifies the importance of every roll except boarding party, captain, and harpooner. Furthermore, trading has become significantly less frequent as the current (1.7) patch's focusing is aimed toward indefinite PvE farming. This was a huge waste of potential, where the game's most promising feature could have been expanded instead. Otherwise, the game is chore-ish at best, requiring hours to just complete money making tasks, which are not fun in the slightest. Its something to do with friends or while listening to an audio book. Its like the MMO equivalent of Cookie Clicker, but it is not an idle game and it is not about min-maxing industry. The game's focus is on repeating similarly menial tasks ad infinitum until you don't want to get out of bed in the morning and face another few hours of grind. Abuse of cosmetic item drop boxes for cash is rampant. Player purchase a box for real life dollars and each box has an extremly low drop rate, with best reported drops around 1 in 8 chance, dropping to such abysmal rates as 1 in 100. Most free to play games selling cosmetic items actually let you buy cosmetic items, not simply have a random chance of getting them. In this way, the publisher exploits the addictive nature of the MMO. I would recommend this game for leveling up with a friend, its as good as any other MMO for that. Its something to do. But most other MMOs, even free ones, have some kind of meat past that point. ArcheAge offers practically no endgame despite being in development for years and having been released in US beta for about two years. This is not acceptable for a released MMO title which is making good revenue. The developers seem to have given up and reverted to a cell phone game style pay to pay model.
The worse expansion pack for The Sims 3. It adds tall buildings (which cannot be replicated by the player), apartments (only one per buildings), and vampires. Vampires are basically Sims that can't stay outside for long in the day. They get extra stat boosts at night, and they can hunt people and sap their motives(?), turn them into vampires. They lack cool features of The Sims 2 vampires; no bat form, and daytime doesn't effect them as much. In addition to these features, a host of bugs was introduced. The vampire hunting trait can make sims, the Vampire and the Sim, spazz out and fly around the map, or other weird stuff. Its nearly impossible to ride an elevator, forcing the player to cheat with a teleport to get to clubs in tall buildings. Bars have lots of bugs, with Sims often getting stuck in them when they close. The game "fixes" this by teleporting Sims out of tall buildings after closing time, but this does not work in other establishments. The buildings included in the game look nice. Other than that, this expansion pack is a bust. Don't get it unless you needit for user created content.
I'd have to grade on the curve of its predecessor, The Sims 2, quite a bit here, as The Sims 3 was an arbitrary reinvention while The Sims 2 still had some years left in it. The main feature of TS3 is the living neighborhood, followed closely by the traits system which allows one to create varied Sim personalities. I believe this was previously done with a motives system, which has been carried over to The Sims 3. However, the new features caused the developers to sacrifice key elements of gameplay from The Sims 2, like the Memories system and well developed game progression. The Sims 3 functions less like a game or an art studio (making screenshots and stories was much easier in TS2), TS3 behaves like an open world sandbox simulator. There's very little love or detail to any one aspect of the game, and like many open world games, its variety, more often than not, means a host of bugs, glitches, and limited fix patches (if any). Indeed, glitches and horrible memory leaks from the game's launch are still present in the game, along with all the bugs and gltiches added with each new expansion. The art style is sterile and lifeless. Characters seem to have no emotion. The traits system is rarely used, sometimes effecting character idle actions, desires, and certain interaction, but the developers constantly made oversites in preparing the traits. For example, a technophobe hates it when a television is on, but he's more than happy to use a smart phone or listen to an electronic radio. Sims with the 'Good' trait can do little other than send donations to charity. Insane Sims do little outside of idle interactions, where they talk to themselves or play with a brick. Very unimaginative. The aging and story progression system is appalling. Not enough options are given, and what options are there do not work properly. If I say 'all story progression off', my Sims will still have affairs and relationships, adopt kids and animals, buy cars, get jobs, etc. Neighborhood aging can't be turned off with the house selected still being on, so if I just want to play with one family while making the neighborhood static, I can't do that. If I want full free will, full story progression, sadly the developers haven't programmed that! Sims will not get married and have children. Slowly all of your unplayed Sims will die off and be replaced by their adopted children or random NPCs. The cheat system is also very lacking. In The Sims 2, one had the 'Tombstone of Life and Death' where they could kill sims, make sims related to eachother, make them married, make them pose in whatever way you want. There's NOTHING like that in TS3. There's not even a mod that does all these things well. Creating Sims is better, but there's still no height adjustments, or other body size adjustments, so you'll never really be able to make anyone who's shorter or taller than 5'8. Architecture is totally scrapped. In The Sims 2, the architecture system was so avante gard, it was used in place of architectural programs. TS3 simplifies house building, taking out stuff like dormers, certain roof types, and other specifications. The base game is rather bare-bones. You have careers, sim interactions, and collectibles. Not really anything beyond that. All in all, its a fairly large game with lots of Facebook-game-like stuff to do, and tons of unloved DLC disguised as expansion packs. If you can get over the graphics and world play differential, get The Sims 2 instead. Its a much more well put together, fun, and creative experience.
At first this looks like a good space fighter sim with some Zone of the Ender mechanics, but man did they ever get it wrong. Whoever did the game balance doesn't know what they're doing. Maybe they used to make board games? I'm not sure. But the regular ship takes forever to build up one volley of shots. This means taking out 20 fighters (a common objective in the first 3 missions) can take about 20 minutes. Why would they do that? Restrictions are fun! Let's restrict everything! Like the Strike Suit. You'd think, "okay, cool robot form that's even in the game title: Of course you should be able to change that whenever you like, right?" Wrong. You have to destroy debris and enemy fighters to 'power it'. How does that even make sense? Shooting in the Strike Suit turns into Motion Blurr City, which is extremely laggy. There's also no lead targets in Strike Suit mode, so good luck hitting anything with primary fire. The suit itself seems terribly underwhelming. Its best attack when you first get it is a volley of missiles. Not very exiting, and doesn't make you feel powerful. The game was advertised when it came out as if this was a successor to the Zone of the Enders series. No. Its just a cheap powerup gimmick in a space sim with a standard engine (think Star Wars: Star Fighter on the PS2, but not as easy to control or as intuitive). The balance is abismal. The story seems interesting, but every time you think a level is going to end you get "wait, we've got 50 more fighters inbound" and it just makes me sigh. I gave up after 10 minutes of the Strike Suit being seeming utterly useless and unable to kill even one turret on an enemy frigate. Maybe I'll come back to it one day and find out something I missed, but man does this game make me want to cry. I love Gundam and Zone of the Enders stuff, but this is such a poor attempt at copying those games. I feel like the design team got the wing suit idea dumped on them at the last minute while they were making a space sim. They still managed to mess up both aspects of design. Kudos?
Average, bland game with no personality. Very buggy, doesn't make you feel powerful, voice acting is average to dreadful. Storyline is forgettable, and you can't skip it at all. There's no even a volume slider! At all. What is this, an IOS port? Constantly spawning enemies instantly dodge your electrical shocks, so combat feels like the game is trying to resist its own mechanics in lieu of fun or challenging gameplay. Upgrades are just Metroid-vania type time wasters which don't really make your abilities more interesting, and progress on a two short trees based on your alignment. So, basically, the only choice you get, gameplay wise, is when to acquire your slightly upgraded abilities. Still, its a pretty fun game. Its just not something you'll want to spend a lot of time on. It plays like a mash between The Force Unleashed, Crackdown, and DC Online. The side quests are so bad, they might as well be MMO grind missions. I just found it to be a waste of time, and that the mechanics were designed to slow you down.
I've been playing since EU3 IN, and while this game lacks the labyrinth of content featured in EU3, its much more focused, much more accessible, much less boring. Its decidedly easier to play from the start date to the end, and gameplay stays pretty playable and constant throughout, where I would usually quit EU3 by the 1600s. All in all, its a fun game, and a nice change of pace from other PI titles. Before EU3 was like a dumbed down version of Victoria 2, but now the EU franchise stands on its own among the PI titles.
Changing my rating, as I quite like this game now. I've been playing for like 8 hours today. Once you get past the voice acting and realise to play it the obvious way (get pistols and melee with technical skills, play on easy, stealth) its quite enjoyable.
Papers, Please, is an amazing Cold War Nostalgia, distopian thriller with lots of options and great story-telling. A story about a civil servant in a wide variety of situations, which surpasses many thrillers I've watched and read. Its not even light on gameplay, as just the simple interactions with would-be immigrants can be played out in several different ways with several different choices, and how well you do your job reflects the outcome. If you like mysteries, or thriller stories, or puzzles, bureaucracy and management, anything like that, you should love this game.
Its not 'better' than Arkham Asylum. They're two very different games in design. 'Asylum' was a much more well-rounded, better paced game. 'City' is like an episode of Batman The Animated Adventure, with little sense of direction and much more of an episodical nature, focused on encountering all your favorite characters rather than telling a story. In fact, the ending of 'City' is bland and disappointing. The pacing in-between is far-fetched, trope filled, and drags on. Don't get me wrong, it has plenty of good parts. But nothing in the game ever feels complete. Even when the game ends you never really feel like you accomplished or even finished anything, because the nature of the story-telling is so oblique (not in an artistic way) and generally lacking depth. Even completing the game 100% is unsatisfying, unlike the last game. The story between Cat Woman and Two-Face feels like it was translated from Korean into Serbian, then back into English on Bablefish. The Cat Woman parts, especially her interaction with Batman, rarely make sense. The design and atmosphere of Gotham is nice, if at times seeming unrealistic/fantastic, small, and strangely laid out. The combat has made a slight improvement from 'Asylum', and there are new gadgets, but few really get used in any remarkable or new way. The detective mode is still simply looking around the room until your cursor changes. There are plenty of bugs with combat, goons, and frustrating areas. I did enjoy this game, but it was quite disappointing for me. The length was nice, but the whole thing seemed rushed and poorly thought out, and gives the impression that it was the combination of several different development project. I'm calling this one a franchise milk. Its not nearly the open world wonder it claims to be, and where it excels just barely surpasses where it flounders.
Amazing game. Best space simulator I've played, and a ton of fun. Hours and hours of playtime to be had. It could use some more content and further expansion, because its a marvelous base. A warning, though, its a killer to people who don't like to think or who can't learn (as witnessed by the few negative comments saying "this is impossible"). It might help to watch a YouTube Let's Play of it before you jump in.
The classic Dynasty Warriors game. Great gameplay, great progression. KOEI had ruined the series by DW5, making it a horrible, easy grind-fest. This game is not that at all. You need to make tactical decisions on the fly, and use cleverness to win battles and beat advanced enemies. If only someone would make an MMORPG of this instead of that horrible DW Empires water-down that is DW Online.
Don't buy into the hype. This is a very obscure and niche game. The graphics did not age well, the movement and gameplay is not fluid. The cutscenes look great for the time, but the story is a miserable trope-fest. Level design is poor; think of a free-roaming, instanced Dynasty Warriors map. The game forces a tutorial on you (shoot, swim, interact), but then dumps you into a free-roaming environment with no direction. I was told I wouldn't be disappointed by this game, that it still plays well and uniquely, that its still beautiful. Not true at all. The game plays like a free-roaming Crash Bandicoot with guns, and the levels look bland with a low field of view. If you want a true space exploration and fantasy game from the 90's, try The Dig from Steven Spielberg. I can't get into this game at all.
Another bad Red Faction game. If Guerrilla was bland and disappointing, Armageddon certainly delivers on the downward trend. Were the landscapes repetitive in Guerrilla? Get rid of free-roaming altogether. Was the AI bad in Guerrilla? Lets make enemies that can't hit you. Was Guerrilla too easy? Let's make you invincible. Was Guerrilla's physics engine bad? Let's scale it down so that damage is even worse and less realistic. Admittedly, some of the touted features sound cool; exploring an underground world, piloting huge machines. But who has the patience to wade through all of those enemies who can't hit anything, or to listen to the horrible storyline progression? The Ruin mode is sad, disappointing small, and restrictive, but at least they give you a 'freeplay' mode this time. Infestation has you running around, hunting monsters which can't kill you unless they hit you with an explosive. The best thing about the game I've seen so far is the Magnet gun. Everything else seems like a step down from a step down from a step down. If only they'd put some effort into a RF game instead of blowing all the budget on advertising.
One of the best games ever made, certainly one of the best from the modern gaming era. Amazing ambiance, hilarious and sometimes deep/touching story. It has some good puzzles, but I feel like overall its an interactive story leaning more into the adventure genre. Portal 2 offers a lot of playtime with some replayability. Its a game you'll love and the quotes will get stuck in your head. It may be a little too smart or not pretentious enough for some people. I'm not really sure why anyone would give this game a negative review, except to arbitrarily counter all the positive ones.
I reviewed this in 2011, but now I'll review it again. This game is a prison. Its somewhat addictive, but not enough to keep me away for whole weeks while still subscribing. Before they did the server swaps, the game was a ghost town. Now the servers have pops akin to what a medium pop on the old 50+ server system had. The main character storyline is good most of the time, and your choices do mean something. But the main story is too few and far between. The planet stories can be okay, but more often than not its bad. Sometimes, like Imperial Taris, its a sort of "anything you can do I can do better" sort of thing, which was really lame. The side quests can be cool, but usually set you up for some disappointment. The companion stories are all usually very cool, but a lot of content was seemingly cut and you can not go on their adventures. Its always a matter of "I have to do this alone." The main story is the only thing I find enjoyable about the game, and yet one must wade through tons of sub-par content to get there. This makes the game a massive time sink. The developers intentionally forced people who enjoy a standard fair game to play with MMO diehards, WoW 'heretics' who wanted something better. I do play MMOs, too, and have gotten to endgame PvE in WoW a few times (though I tend to prefer PvP), but this was much the same monotony from WoW. This is really EA's fault for allowing the rebel WoW community to dictate how the game was made, and yet the WoW crowd wanted something better instead of a carbon copy. The game was better in Beta. None of the beta testers were complaining as far as I saw. The game was significantly difficult, yet people enjoyed the pace of progress. We had some disappointments, like design story decisions on the planet Taris. And then right before the game released, they changed how PvE worked. No longer hard and few fights, but lots of boring ones. Endless trash mobs instead of stuff that was fun to fight. The game changed from being a hero to being a jogger, trying to get through areas as fast as possible. Anyway, the game is now a smoldering ruin. The cash shop model is very bad, especially the unfairly priced stuff like 'pvp tickets'. The game may be worth $20 for the game and a free month, just to see one storyline (which you may accomplish if you're dedicated). The game is boring and repetitive after your first through playthroughs, but it has its moments. PvP is good if you're in to that, but most people aren't and utterly stink at it. The 50+ stuff is extremely gear based, which defeats all semblance of fun for anyone not geared out. Haven't played the newest stuff, but before the expansion, the endgame content was severely lacking. Raids were short but too hard for the average player, flashpoints use the same tilesets from the earlier flashpoints (its like they assumed nobody would play the earlier ones). All in all, the game seems like it might have changed direction in developement, and certainly did after its initial financial crisis.
I wrote a scathing review before, but I have to say the game isn't quite that bad. Sure, it has a quite a few crash bugs and falls flat in some places, but altogether the regional map is nice and the development of the city is fun to watch and manipulate. There are some annoying things, like terrain pathing for building placements (like, a lot of the time housing built on a hill will just make a garage spring up). But more than that isn't to be expected from a 10 year old game, which was just getting a grip on its technology. Still, here's some points from that old review that I still think are worthy of consideration: "SimCity 4 loses much in the way of atmosphere from the previous title. The great caricatures from SimCity 3000 are replaced with sprites from The Sims (classic) when Sims 2 was already out. What? There's still the uptown jazz, but some of it is annoying and repetitive. Graphically, its only a marginal improvement over SimCity 3000 and doesn't fully utilize hardware available at the time. As to mechanics, there's not much to do but zoning and planning. One of the reasons why SimCity (2013) revolutionizes the series is because it gives you something more to do than just lay down streets, pipes, and zones. Once you get everything layed out, you'll find there's nothing to do but build a new city. There's also some arbitrary things like power lines, which have no real purpose except making islands a little harder to play. Not really, because you can just lay down one wind turbine and its all good."
One of the best games on the Xbox 360. Great music, nice storyline, humor isn't too over-the-top. You really get involved in the game world. The art direction is amazing, and the atmosphere makes you feel like a kid again. Its also a decently lengthy game. The gameplay is fun, though a bit wonky at times. But, hey, who's made an enjoyable game about being a school kid before? Considering the uncommon medium, Bully does a fantastic job. Can't wait for the sequel.
Amazing, beautiful, brilliant. Riveting storyline. Very easy to become emotionally attached. Heart wrenching. It takes a person who can appreciate art, who is not overly serious all the time. Some people might not consider it a 'game', because it plays more like older RPGs without the battle system (and just the town exploration/social stuff).
There's only a few towers and upgrades, but there's a ton of modes and three difficulties for each, along with several levels. The modes aren't all that different. The game sort of spices things up a bit by adding lots of entrances and exits per map. Personally, I'd rather have simple paths and persistent tower leveling (rpg style) over the course of the game. The AI isn't as good at TD as those in Warcraft III, which was some of the first TD games (although the AI in Warcraft was pretty well programmed already, they still had to map it). Creeps never change direction unless they absolutely have to, so you'll sometimes get them going to a row of stun towers and throw AOE towers even when there's a safer path open. The game would be better on IOS, I think, because its a little thing you can do in the background. Making it a bulky fullscreen program maybe wasn't a good idea. The game isn't extremely well implemented, and a few fire spray towers will cause massive slowdown. Its a pretty good game to get in a bundle but I wouldn't buy it on PC if I had a choice.
This is probably the best strategy game I've ever played. It lacks in some departments (like customization and depth for specific countries/areas), but it can be played in so many styles so many ways. I've logged 434 hours, and many people have logged over a thousand hours; when's the last time you heard of a mostly single-player game where that was possible? This game is great for making stories with all the different characters and possible interactions. A lot of room for modding, too. I would say this is a 'must have' title. It may seem complicated to anyone who hasn't played a Paradox game before, but its easy to learn if you have the intelligence to troubleshoot a PC.
This game looks nice. Otherwise, its a whole lot of waiting on the low end of play. This is not something you play casually or like other MMOs. You grind out funds and skills for months, then you can do the presumably interesting stuff. Its not a space simulator. Its kind of a 'fish tank' game where you watch everything. Pretty much everything is automated. The idea of all this advancement is cool, but I don't know why someone would sink that much time into the low end play which is boring. Even the people who play it all the time say its almost impossible to stand while sober.
I enjoyed playing this game. It has a lot of faults and its extremely short. I would probably feel bad about the purchase if it hadn't been in a bundle. The weapons are usually fun to play with, the dinosaurs are dumb but sometimes hard to deal with. The vehicles you get in end-game are very cool. Its multi-player only with few players and what servers are available aren't stable. It also takes too long to play, and then, one play-through is enough. I have no desire to play it again. If you're looking for a dinosaur survival game, I'd say look elsewhere. Its not up to par with, say, Dino Crisis 2 which came out in ~1999. But if you get in a bundle then try it out.
This game makes me want to throw up. I played 2003 mods of Star wars: Jedi Academy that were better space battle experiences. This is not up to the standards of even free-to-play games, and the pricing model is shockingly abusive.
This game is amazing and fun. Its a bit glitchy and unfinished looking, but the physics and puzzles are great. I loved experimenting with the goo. I wish they'd come out with a sequel where the puzzles directly involve experimentation. I have no real complaints about this game. It can be odd and buggy at times, but its easy to overlook that with how charming the game is.
Incredible game. This is extremely fun and a great way to hang out with people. If you're a fan of the Aliens series or if you like sci-fi horror or team games, check this out. There are some quirks with balance and such. For example, one side might be able to get a cheesey snipe on important buildings in some areas. Its a multiplayer only game, so success and fun games rely on the competence of players and how well they work together. Speaking of which, the community is super friendly despite the troll era every other game and website is undergoing. I've played this for over a hundred hours. Never gets old, despite pretty repetitive maps. I do wish, though, that there were some cooler things like sealing off vents. Maybe if they had a spaceship scenario ala Warcraft 3's 'Parasite' where engines, life support, and power can be shut down. That would be a really cool role-play environment. The RTS element works pretty well, but it takes time to learn and if you do it wrong or in a way people don't like you get a lot of backlash. The success of the marine commander depends so much on his marines that it almost makes the aliens, who don't, imbalanced. But that adds to the onslaught/zerg nature of the aliens. All in all, its a really good game and its certainly worth it.
This is a terrible port **** game. There are massive memory leaks, and it doesn't run very well in general. At one point when you walk into the subway, the game slows to a crawl; I know I'm not the only one, NerdCubed had the same problem. I have Portal 2 which looks better than this and runs better than this on my computer. Maybe its good if you have a high powered gaming computer, but you shouldn't need it for such a technically sub-par game.
A half-hearted console port. As far as gameplay goes, its fine if you want a mid-tier third person shooter. The physics are cool if you just like breaking through walls with a sledge hammer. Otherwise, its model of structural damage and collapse isn't as good as some free 2d flash games. The storyline isn't anything meaningful or interesting. Level design is bad. There are no features of a console game to speak of, modders are almost non-existent, and the Games for Windows interface further blocks what you can do with the game. Each level is a reskin of the last, except with an arbitrary color scheme. The first level you start in is red, then orange, then green, then blue. Why? Its very ugly and plain. There's nothing cool to blow up except one huge bridge (which is one of the only really cool and interesting thing about the game) and two sky **** which have indestructible hard-points which make it only possible to destroy them one way. Why would they do this in a game who's only appeal is that you can destroy stuff? The multiplayer is pretty good. The different backpacks make gameplay interesting. For example, you can be a 'rhyno' backpack wielder with a sledge hammer, and wreck through walls to surprise targets. However, the multiplayer is buggier than on console and I don't think there are as many players. There is little moddability. With such potential with the destruction engine, why not a system where you can add and design buildings? This is an insult to PC gamers, just handing them a console port with no attention to the things PC gamers expect. You can't even use cheat codes to, for example, get rid of the bad guys so you can sandbox destroy stuff in the world. Even if you have a minimal destruction save file there's still not much to blow up in the world. The progression system feels so limiting. Just Cause 2 got guerrilla warfare right. In this game, there's no place to hide or anything. You just kill people and blow stuff up to unlock new areas. So lame. I don't want to have to sit through your bad storyline just to play the game the way I want to. I only payed $5 for this game I feel like I wasted my money. I was really disappointed that this is the only non-indy title that tries to emulate destruction physics and it totally fails. I liked it better on Xbox anyway.
Oh, and by the way, the game isn't confusing at all. Most of the little numbers and windows don't really matter; take a liberal market government if you don't like building factories. Play as France your first time; the game basically plays itself. There's also plenty of hotkeys for most symbols.. Why tell yourself you're overwhelmed? Just decide to learn.
Brilliant atmosphere, immersing you in Japanese culture. Great and varied gameplay, lots of units, upgrades, and government management. The online play, though, can be dodgy: with people farming their avatar level by rigging siege matches (for example, they will take nothing but gunmen on a multi-tiered castle and take infantry moral reducing abilities).
Certainly my favorite Zelda game. Lots of fun content. cool storyline with a great ending, one of the best game atmospheres ever created. Beautiful graphics, great gameplay; although some dungeons are forgettable.
Some works of art are beyond criticism. Other things may be better than it, but its still as good as anyone could reasonably expect something to be. Ocarina of Time is that way. I've played through it, probably more than any other game. There's so much detail that, even though relatively linear, the game has better replay value than most I've seen. Even with my many playthroughs, I know there is some content I haven't seen. Crossing the desert -still- feels like a wild quest into the unknown, every time. I do, however, think Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game.
So bad. The game is pretty classic Dynasty Warriors, but they took out everything that made it fun. Love huge battles? Too bad, the maps are small. Love plowing through armies for an hour and working out which routes to take to avoid the main general getting killed? Sorry, there is no main general and you only have 15 minutes on any map. 15 MINUTES! Every map? The game has about 8 or 9 modes, and NONE of them go over 17 minutes. This game is really imbalanced and is hard on noobs. There is basically no tutorial as far as I can see. You get a 15 minute starter quest telling you how to hit things, and guess what, you are FORCED to do it. Yes, thank you, I've been playing Dynasty Warriors for 10 years, I think I know how to pull off a combo. But how do I get new gear? What should I do first? Everyone you face in Melee mode, starting out as a guard, is going to be stronger than you. Much like Shogun: Total War Online, players are allowed to set up ranked matches (because the devs are stupid), so you get a ton of people rigging their matches. Combos are insanely powerful. You can get hit by an opponent while you have full health, and NEVER be able to recover from it. In some ways this is DW at its core, that you can basically killed lower ranking officers in one flurry. But I feel like I have no control over my ingame progression. You can choose to play alone, but why? Its an MMO.. Did they expect people to get the game because its a free version of DW? Why would I pay money at their item shop if the game is so biased against new players who like to play with other people? Otherwise, the game mechanics are like DW. You don't get a bow, and every officer doesn't potentially drop new items for you as far as I have seen. In the original DW you run around killing bosses and 'farming mobs' a bit, and that honestly seems a lot more skillful and fun than this game. Who doesn't love running for their life from an insanely powerful boss and trying to get cheap shots in on him? That isn't in this - and I guess that's why the real DW series costs money. The community seems pretty varied, but, like in most MMOs, they are terribly afraid of communicating with other humans. If you talk, you may be greeted by a helpful person, complete silence, or someone telling you a Yo-mama joke.. But usually silence. The game might actually be fun if you -really- like farming by yourself. Crafting looks like a headache and a farm fest, and you have to do a stupid quest just to unlock it. I don't understand this game. The 15 minute timer tells me its a casual game, but everything else tells me its for die hard farmers. PICK A NICHE AND STICK WITH IT!
Unremarkable. This game has bad AI, graphics, and mechanics. There's no redeeming feature at all. I rented it because I thought the orbital drop mechanics would be cool. Well, it really doesn't add any flavor to what is a D list video game. Imagine Star Wars: Battle Front mixed with unreal tournament and a bad, linear gameplay engine. Not worth even a rental.
