Cordova

Shadow of Mordor is good, but simultaneously disappoints because of the potential you can see in it. It's perpetually on the cusp of greatness, but whether due to time, money, or design decisions (or some combination of the above) it feels like they made it decent enough and then said, "Yeah, pretty good, done." So it has a bittersweet aftertaste. Let's look at some of what makes it and where it falls a touch short: Characters - Talion (our main protagonist) is really cliche and unlikeable. A piece of cardboard from which we're supposed to experience the world around us. His ghostly sidekick (no spoilers) is much more interesting. I will say that the voice acting is actually quite superb. Atmosphere - The visuals and audio (soundtrack, ambient, and voice) are expertly crafted. And they make it easy to feel immersed in your surroundings. Combat/action - As you have likely seen in every review, SOM draws from Batman and Assassin's Creed, but honestly that doesn't matter, what does matter is how it's executed. The combat system is incredibly smooth and fluid and really let's you play with combinations between weapons. The downside is that you don't need to, you can just button mash 1-2 buttons and win in most cases. This brings me to the character progression system. Really really lack luster, they had a great foundation but the upgrades are more akin to God of War ability unlocks rather than creating a unique character. If they had put some more effort in this area, it could easily be a 9/10 game. So "action" the non-combat stuff like free running. It's shallow. It does everything for you, and I understand that makes it much much easier, but because it does it for you, it robs you of that feeling that you just pulled off a badass move or string of moves. This feeling is incredibly important in video games because they give the player a sense of ownership over the action. I feel more like a spectator than the Shadow of Mordor. Combat #2 More Kombat! Finish him! – Beyond the unexpected shallowness of the character development, the real pitfall is that combat is really inconsistent. Rather than create a cohesive system they slightly adjusted it for various enemies so that it doesn’t really work the same way throughout. For example, you have your standard parry warning which flashes a hotkey above an enemies head, you press it and you parry. Okay, makes sense! But then you have slightly tougher enemies captains/chiefs and beasts and sometimes they flash that hotkey or sometimes they flash a different hotkey, but if you press it when it shows up, it’s too late! It doesn’t function like the parry does. You need to know that they’re going to do that and be ready to press just before. Then there’s other creatures which don’t bring up the parry event and simply swarm you chipping away at your health. This is really bizarre as the entire combat system is built around you being able to handle all comers, so even if these enemies are 1-hit kills, you’ll find yourself low on HP just because that’s how it is. Combat #3 Wait it’s not over? – A deeper more interesting combat system would have solved this, but they opted for the “lots of enemies” approach. This is not as fun. There comes a point where you either just run away (because you’re bored of fighting), you just keep going despite being bored and slightly disliking the game because of it, or you eventually make a couple mistakes and find yourself dead because you’ve been fighting non-stop for an hour and you’re fingers are just done. I would have preferred fewer but smarter/better enemies that you interact with through a more robust combat system. Nemesis System – Ah the much vaunted nemesis system. To be honest it’s pretty cool, I’m really glad they made this and I hope to see it used to better effect in other games. It’s something that would make a great background system to a living dynamic world, but the way it’s implemented in SOM just leaves me wanting. The respawn mechanic is bad, again this is likely due to combat being shallow. A game in which death is more likely, like Dark Souls, a nemesis system would be amazing. But you really miss out on the bulk of the nemesis system if you’re “too good”. Part of the problem here is that the combat is too easy and their only solution was to throw dozens upon dozens upon dozens of mobs at you. Overall it’s a fun time despite its flaws, there’s lot to do in terms of side quests and collecting stuff, so if you’re a completionist you’ll have many many hours or orc slaying ahead of you. If you find it repetitive, then you’ll make your way through the game with relative ease but feeling a bit underwhelmed.

DA: Inquisition is a 6/10 game that you should absolutely play and is worth the money. So how does a 6/10 game warrant your time and money? Well, simply put, DA:I is greater than the sum of its parts. While most features in game are lack luster or poorly done, the game when taken as a whole entity is really quite good, I'll break it down below. I'll start with the bad news first: Combat - Here we have a system that fails as action combat, fails as tactical combat, and utterly fails as a hybrid. If you try to play it as an action game, you'll be frustrated at it's gross limitations in terms of movement, variation in abilities, and how banal the combat is. If you try to play it as a tactics game, prepare to be appalled by the terrible top down camera, the incredibad AI, the 360 damage enemy swings and the fact that unless you literally turn off every single ability, every party member has, by the time you've issued a command and unpaused the game to see it play out, they've already used their other abilities incorrectly and managed to fail at positioning. Crafting - The system isn't too bad, and thankfully Bioware was cognizant of the mess they made and gave us unlimited crafting material inventory. It's a case of, sure crafting can be kinda decent, but only if you enjoy A LOT of gathering. Each zone has its own materials and each time you pick one up you sit through the animation, even if it is just 2 seconds, after a few hundred times, you realize a couple hours of your game time has been dedicated to picking up stuff for the sake of +2 to a stat. Wheeee! The easy way to craft, of course, is to just remove upgrade components from looted gear and put it on gear you want. But then this bypasses the entirety of the crafting system as you no longer care about mats and schematics. Hmmm, not well thought out. Story - Typical "accidental hero rises up to beat a clearly evil bad guy" trope. It is what it is. And what it is, is bad. Choices are also meaningless, so that's no fun. Characters - Mixed bag, couple interesting ones, but I think they tried a bit too hard to be "unconventional" while somehow still managing to be boring most of the time. Game world & questing - Feels really disconnected from the main story and stuff like finding shards is really unrewarding and seemingly has been added as filler to pad the amount of time it takes to complete the game. Kinda sad. Okay, now the good news: Combat - So if the game **** as an action game and the game **** as a tactical game, how can combat be good? Well, at a certain point in the game (I'm not doing spoilers if you haven't noticed) you and party members get their class specialization trees! Wohoo! These trees show a completely different thought process than the base trees. They have something called - synergy. So while the action and tactics still ****, you gain real quality depth in party builds. As in, you can build out groups that really mesh well and to great effect. And that makes combat a lot more fun and a lot more satisfying. Those Epic Moments - When you get to them, they're so so good. They really just make you slow down and say WOW this is awesomesauce. Dragons - Look, do yourself a favor. Don't use guides, don't use glitches/exploit, just play, it'll be worth it. The dragon fights are tough and long and require effort, and they're so satisfying to triumph over. If you cheese it, you'll only be ruining one of the great things about this game, and you're just ruining it for yourself. Game world/atmosphere - It is expansive, and wondrous, and so well done. Really top notch and I think this is where bioware claws back the game from falling into bland terribleness. If you kind of forget about the main quest and play the game as an exploration/journey game you'll find it to be one of the best RPG's. There's so much to digest and see, you really get a feeling that the team in charge of world building/lore is a magnificent crew and the people who did the functional mechanics of combat are just there for a paycheck. Bioware could have completely removed the main story, and instead of "accidental hero vs baddie" it could be "adventurer goes adventuring, founds the inquisition and slowly gains power." That would have made a much better story as that's really the story of your character and the evil baddie is just a trope because someone was lazy. Anyway, in the end, it's a must play game. A game that succeeds despite its many flaws.

Okay, first things first, I can't talk about this game without bringing in Dark Souls. So, I'll give a comparative review and a stand-alone review which grades the game against itself as a game. Depending on which Souls game is your favorite, you may have a different view of the Souls games and LotF. In my eyes, Demons was the pilot of the franchise, a proof of concept if you will - and if you go back and play it today, it has aged poorly and is a fairly buggy game. Dark Souls was a masterpiece, a work of meticulous world building and attention to detail. Dark Souls 2 was a fun game, but it was a hack job of a sequel to the original. That's out of the way, now you know where I stand on the Souls games, now to compare LotF. Combat - LotF has superior combat and controls. Everything is absolutely precise, the game does what YOU want it to (assuming you know what you're doing). It's basically the DS1 combat system, but with added depth, it's everything I wanted in a DS sequel. Dks2 was departure and it did two things very wrong imo, it did not have the exacting nature of DS1 (hit boxes were terrible), LotF DOES have well constructed hit boxes - you're not eating phantom swings or getting hit while being visibly quite far away from . . . anything. Dks2's weapons didn't feel as differentiated as they did in DS1, and thankfully that's not the case in LotF. In LotF weapons have a great deal of variation on a sliding scale, just the smallest increment can be felt in gameplay and you might really enjoy swinging something with a speed of 94% but not something with 100%. That's how carefully constructed this combat system is. The range is broad, but you can really feel the difference between weapons. Story/Lore/Plot - DS1 hands down wins. I totally understand that some people enjoy a more accessible narrative, but LotF isn't compelling enough to warrant it. And it pulls me out of the world. It's kind of a pause that doesn't fit. Graphics - Well, LotF is much newer and gorgeous (though it does need a decent rig to run well). Visual aesthetics - This is the art style. You know, I like both. I do. I'm not one of those people who can't stand any certain type of visual stylization, I like realistic, I like exaggerated, I like cartoony. So I have to say I really enjoy the direction they took in LotF. And they kept it consistent which is important. Audio - Both games are top notch. The ambient sounds, the music when it's there is appropriately used on both games. Fun - I'll give the nod to DS1 here. The world and atmosphere really pulled me in deep and made me want to stay in the world and keep exploring. With LotF, everytime I start getting into it, y'know that feeling of traversing this citadel area, boom awkward dialogue with your typical good guy, evil, smarmy choices shows up and yanks me out of it. As far as difficult goes, it's much more challenging than Dks2, anyone who feels differently confuses me because Dks2 was a walk in the park. So, as a comparison DS1 > LotF > Dks2 This is the game that I wanted Dks2 to be. Now, for a look at LotF on it's own two feet. Combat/Controls - Tight, responsive, actions have good clear weight behind them appropriate to your equipment, it's hard to ask for a better combat system. The combo system offers a lot of options and as you get used to timing combos (picking up a new weapon means you need to learn new timings!) you really start to appreciate what you can do. You start attacking but then you see the enemies attack animation begin, if you time a light combo into a heavy attack you can generate a stagger to interrupt. Or if you need to finish off an enemy you can chain a heavy combo into a quick light attack for that last immediate bit of damage (say you're fighting multiple enemies and you need to quickly change targets). Really cool stuff. Visual aesthics - A very Warhammer inspired aesthetic, which I like, but it is what it is. If you like the big burly look with exaggerated weapons/armors then it's definitely for you. Graphics - So it's gorgeous, BUT it's not optimized very well currently (I believe there's memory leak) so it can make even a good system chug. This game studio hasn't made a game like this before and they went a big crazy with the draw distance. If you look over a ledge, everything is completely rendered for a really long ways out. Things that far away can be less detailed to save on resources guys. Audio - Everything is excellent, but the heavy breathing is a bit louder than I feel it should be. I like the effect, but when you're not in combat it's a bit much. Story/Lore - The story itself is fairly blandish, BUT they have a lot to work with if they want to build a world. There's so much they could go into and really flesh out and deep and layered world. If they make a sequel I hope they can show us something great. Fun - It's a tough game, but it feels so good to play, and you'll definitely fist pump when you down a hard area/boss.

I really enjoy a good turn based RPG, Blackguards has some merit, but something always feels really off. I haven't played a PnP RPG since my AD&D days so I'm not familiar with The Dark Eye character set and Blackguards does little to explain how to raise skills. Even when I'm at a trainer will all prerequisites and enough AP to buy the skill, it won't let me. So whatever. In any case I pressed on, but the game has issues that really irritate me. I know combat is based on dice rolls in the background, but it seems oddly skewed in favor of the NPCs. 95% chance to hit? Miss Miss Miss Miss Miss, oh well now my warrior is dead. Or maybe I'm lucky enough to hit, 4 damage with level 18 2h sword skill . . . whereas enemies hit for 15. Nice. Then there's fights like the gladiator gauntlet. 3 fights back to back, you don't get to rest or heal, no mana for your wizard (really wtf?), I don't get the thought behind doing that. Story is anemic for an RPG (let alone an "old school" rpg), haven't decided if I'm going to finish it - it's more tedious than fun.

The glowing reviews are almost understandable. It's a pretty good game, it just falls short by just thaaaat much of being great. At first the combat system made no sense, "what are these modifiers for my left and right clicks?" What's going on!? And then it makes sense and it's very exciting, a nifty system that I really like. But, here's where it falls short: It's really really limited in practice. You have rage as a resource and even though you have two bars of it, they both are depleted regardless of which skill you use. It would have been much better if each skill had it's own bar so you could juggle abilities. As it stands, you basically choose what you want to use and then you build up more rage by killing things. After you play for a while you really begin to feel how limiting it is to use basic attacks instead of combo attacks due to the rage system. The class system is also pretty cool, but again it falls just short as you have to heavily invest in a just a few skills, so even though there are various options, you will find that you've gotten a bit tired of the same skills after hours of play, aka there's little variety unless you spend all your money to respec. Mobs are another good/bad aspect of this game. The good is that bosses are interesting, very fun fights. The bad is that everything else even "special" mobs are boring, really boring. They just run up to you and that's it. Now, yes, it is an ARPG, and that's generally what happens in ARPGs, but I'm speaking very literally here. There's no mob variety in terms of what they do. They don't charge or teleport, or run away, or do anything. They just hit you. It's a real shame because the boss fights are actually top notch for the ARPG world. Music is also good/bad. At times it really fits the mood and then it goes off on this tangent where you feel like you're waiting in line for a Disneyland ride. Really odd dichotomy, threw me off. Lots of features and systems in place, nothing really cool happens with them. Alchemy, forging, stat buffs. It feels like they had a checklist of "things to add to the game" and then they did it, but they never put thought into them to make them special. I would have preferred only 1-2 systems, but done exceptionally well, maybe something that plays off of the combo system I dunno. Anyway, for the price it's worth giving it a go. I would say most ARPG fans will enjoy it, even if it's just a small bit of fun before you move on to another game with a bit more depth.

I had this game deleted on steam and forgot why. I remembered playing it and thought, "wait a second, didn't I like that game, why didn't I finish it?" So I reinstalled. Oh yeah, that's why. It's really a fairly fun game right up until you finish the first zone and it hits you like a sack of bricks when you see that you "start over" each time you progress to the next area. And for this reason I finally offer up a rating. I just can't fathom this design decision. You create skill trees and spell books and buildings and a host of interesting units. And then you tell me that I can't play with them until I re-earn everything. Guess what? I don't want to move my stupid squire around the battlefield anymore, I'm bored with him. So unless you honestly don't mind starting over every time you progress the story, I would pass this up. Had it not been for this single design decision I would gladly have given this game an 8+/10. It's just so demoralizing to have to play with the boring units all over each time. Imagine if you progressed to a McLaren in Gran Turismo and then you advance your career only to be told that you now have $10 again and have to drive a Sentra. The whole point of playing through the mundane part and leveling up your avatar/gear/etc is so you can have all the fun that comes with the new toys. Whatever, I can't get over it and because of that it is once again, deleted.

Hm, how to begin. Well, there's absolutely no reason to play this over dota2, LoL, smite, forge or HoN. The combat is surprisingly slow, but that's not because you need the time to employ tactics/strategy, it's just slow. There is no item store you're supposed to equip stuff pre-match. So during a game, if you're mismatched, there is no way to "build tanky" or utility, or damage, and so on. It's pretty uninspired, no last hitting, you just get xp for being around stuff as it dies. The only good thing they had are these crystals, leaf, well things that give you damage resistance if you capture them. So fights can be had by those, but they're really easy to recapture (5 seconds maybe) so even if you spend your time capping them all, someone can just take them back before you can get back to fight over it. I regret buying this game, I'm not going to continue playing it unless I hear about some miracle patch in the future that makes it fun. If you're going to release a MOBA these days, you should at least try to be somewhere near the standards of the big players (lol/dota2). I love LOTR, but don't get fooled like I did, pass this one up for now.

It's not really an ARPG in the traditional sense. What Akaneiro is, is a cross between Diablo and Sonic. Instead of scrolling horizontally and bouncing on things to collect rings, you attempt to blitz through levels to collect red shards which are currency. Each time you complete an area it goes on cooldown and you move on to the next, you can pay shards to reduce the cooldown time or just wait it out. So it really has an arcade feel, and combined with the art style makes for a pretty entertaining romp through baddie stomping. This is also why you will see people complain about the AI, they are under the impression that they are playing Diablo, but like I said, it's more akin to Sonic going really fast and jumping on heads. The gear is pretty snazzy, some of the particle effects are very nice, the abilities look good and feel fun to use despite a small selection. One of the cool things about the combat system is that it allows you to hotkey three abilities in three different sets. So one set can be all out damage, one for survivability and one for ranged damage or some hybrid. You can swap between sets with tab, it's actually pretty fun to see what you can put together when chaining harder mobs. Dash AoE Teleport AoE and so on. Is it the greatest game you'll ever play? Probably not. But it's one of those games that's definitely worth a go round, even if it's just to see the sights. Let's talk cash shop. You can buy gems/shard in the cash shop which are used for purchased items, skills, buffs in game. Of course, every mob you kill, chest you open, and zone you clear will give you shards. So it's a trade off between grinding a bit and paying money to avoid grinding. A pretty tame cash shop in the wider world of F2P games. If you're thinking about giving it a go, I say do it, but don't give up until you've done the first four zones. Once you finish the tutorial and get to the town, talk to each NPC just to get acquainted with the vendors. I still can't believe professional reviewers didn't know that you could train skills because you had to purchase them from a trainer. It takes all of two minutes and you'll know where everyone is. Remember, it's not a normal ARPG, it's an arcade game that's built as an ARPG. Controls (10/10): Simple, intuitive, open to create your own skill grouping and chain combos. 1 Visual aesthetics (9/10): It's a beautiful game. It's Sumi-e meets comic book, kind of like Okami. Only thing that bugs me here are the text boxes which have this very generic and cold font like someone typed it out on a notecard. Hey Spicy Horse, any chance at some handwritten text in game? It's an overlooked detail at this point, but it sticks out like a sore thumb when everything else is so pretty. Graphics (9/10): Mostly smooth, a few bugs here and there, but nothing that detracted from my enjoyment. Audio (6/10): At first I really enjoyed the music, but it's the same track all the time. Hopefully they add some variation for each zone. The other thing you'll notice is that weapons don't seem to have their own sounds, abilities do, but attacks don't. It's really very bizarre to hear your sword go "Thud Thud Thud" when you hit things. Could use some work in this department. Story (3/10): I'm going to go out on a limb and say that story isn't this game's main selling point. Dialogue? Pretty much non-existent. Plot? Anemic at best. It's just a step above, "bad things happen, stop bad things." I'm sorry to give it such a low score, but Green Eggs and Ham has more depth. Fun (8/10): And this is really why I gave it the 8. I don't grade on aggregate from the other scores, I base my score on how fun something is. After-all, it's a game and I play games for entertainment. It is fun, it's not something you can sit and play for hours upon hours, but it's worth playing here and there. If you're wondering about "end game" it really is built into the zones, each area is basically a speed circuit that you come back to on higher difficulties to see how fast you can blitz through and get a higher score. Like I said, it's an arcade game at it's core.

Money saving time! No point in buying this game. Especially considering you can play games like Warframe for free (and it's better than this thing). Low budget doesn't have to mean bad, but it really is an incoherent spamfest that you pretty much have to play coop in order for it not to be utterly ridiculous. I don't know why others were motivated to continue playing so many better games out there, just why?

On discount it's really worth picking up. Everything feels WH40K, movement has good weight, weapons are fun to use and melee combat is integrated excellently. Most shooters that have some type of melee attack have it as a emergency move for the purpose of having something to do when out of ammo. Not in Space Marine, it's part of the game and knowing which enemies you should spend time smacking around vs shooting makes the game that much more dynamic. Jump pack storm hammer? OMG best thing ever. I think they knew this and it only happens a couple times in the game, but if it was always available, I don't think I would have used anything else. Too much fun. However, it is linear and with everything in the WH40K universe to choose from, they could have done so much more. So -1 point for being too linear and -1 point for missing it's potential. But really fun and satisfying experience overall.