Exanthius

As a long time Settlers fan who started with Settlers II in 1996 I can't even find the right words for my disappointment with this latest entry in the series. After the rocky beta and a lot of player feedback I was expecting that they would put that feedback to good use and listen to the fans. But after they announced that they would not send out review copies, I got worries. If a publisher does not want outlets to test and report on their game before it launches, it's pretty clear what's going on. Being a huge fan, I still bought it and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, the game falls short in every aspect. Where older titles had complex wares that needed to be manufacturer, managed and distributed, this game has a very simplistic way of handling resources. When it comes to the Settlers games, this is the most barebone of resource management. There is barely any challenge involved with it. The features of the game are extremely lackluster and makes me wonder where all the development time went. Only 13 missions, no map generator, no map editor, the already mentioned most basic resource system and a weird combat system that does not really fit the series are some of the game's shortcomings. In addition to that, the game has severe technical issues and that might be one of the strongest reasons why they didn't want anyone to see how the "finished" game plays before launch. The game crashes very often and due to the terrible auto save feature I constantly lose a lot of progress. The graphics are disappointing, too. It looks like a game that might have come out a few years ago. I don't understand why they did not use a more modern engine. Although I must admit I have no problem with the graphical style itself. It's cute. All in all it's a 1/10 for me as a settlers fan. It might be fun for others, but to me it looks like a cheap use of the settlers IP for a quick cash crab. Although it is very disappointing that the game shows how little heart and care they put into their product and how little they cared about a game that is at least playable from a technical point of view.

I just finished playing through the main "story line" and I'm so happy. Not everyone will love this game as much as I do, but if you a) like racing games and b) love graphical fidelity you are in the right place. This game gives you hours and hours of racing fun while providing you with one of the best console experiences of the last 10 years. The only major flaw I see is the progression system. You constantly get new stuff but it seems that this was a cheap move by the developers. Because regarding the major contents of the game, you progress by... um... random chance. I just completed a lot of radar trap challenges and suddenly I was champion of offroad races. I have never finished one of those races but I'm crowned king? Uhm, okay. Thanks, I guess? The story and the points you gather towards completing that story are absolutely meaningless. It does not make any sense at all.

I've never been a fan of rogue-like games. When Hades was released on Game Pass I thought "Ok, let's give it a try, it was very highly acclaimed after all". I thought I would put it away after my first run. 6 hours later it was 3 AM. This game is very well crafted, has a gorgeous art style, brilliant voice acting and super smooth and precise gameplay. This is not just a game about dying over and over again until you perfect your run. No, even after 20 hours I discover new story aspects, new fighting styles (due to the huge variety and possible combinations of weapons and upgrades (boons) and even new game mechanics.

When my Series X arrived I started this game just because I was waiting for my AC:V download to finish. I ended up playing Tetris for 4 hours straight and had so much fun. The gameplay is highly addictive, the sounds and music supporting every action you make make it so much more intense. I must admit, I did not expect this. When I heard about a Tetris game I thought "ok, let's try it, I mean it's Tetris, should be fun for half an hour or so". But this game takes the Tetris formula, adds a ton of LSD to it and delivers endless hours of fun.

I'm now 7 hours into the main story and feel difficulties to motivate me to keep playing. The main reason for this is that all too often I'm being pulled out of the immersion. Too often the NPCs get stuck in the environment and all too often the game stutters and does not perform very well. But, the worst thing is hearing two of your recruited guys talk to each other with the exact same voice although they look completely different. This concept just does not work for me. From what I heard they already had 12 different voice actors, but it just isn't enough unfortunately.

As a Soulsborne fan I try to play as many Souls-like titles as possible. Not only because I love this type of games, but also for comparison and to not miss the chance on a new take on the formula. In the past I have played games like Ashen, The Surge and Lords of the Fallen, and neither of those games were successful in pulling me into their world and gameplay as the originals by FromSoftware. If you play a title like this and have played games of the Soulsborne series before, you will inevitably draw comparisons. What intrigued me from the first minute I played Mortal Shell was the new twist on defensive systems. There is the classic dodge as well as a replacement for the typical shield block in the form of hardening your character. Hardening prevents all damage (from regular attacks as well as elemental attacks) and can be incorporated fluently into combat by being an ability that can me triggered mid-swing of your weapon and lets you finish your attack once hardening is done. However, this ability is on a cooldown. While the Dark Souls games let you take cover behind your shield almost as much as you want (depending on your stamina), the use of hardening has to be chosen wisely, because it can only be used once before being on a cooldown for a few seconds. This makes combat harder, but also more interesting. Aside from the harden mechanic, the use of shells - your replacement for classes or playstyles - is the other big difference from Soulsborne games. However, you cannot pick your shell right from the start of the game. You first have to find each shell and explore it in a way. This is a theme that is used throughout the game. Not only do you explore the shells or the open world, but also things like items. If you find an item you don't know what it does, until you use it. And the more often you use it, the more you learn about the item until you master it and get a little more out of it. Some might see this as an interesting encouragement to try out stuff. Others, like me, will try to eat a mushroom only to find that it is toxic and just cut off one half of your health - and health regenerating items are rare - and might get discouraged from trying new items, because they could do more damage than good. This might not be a problem for many people. The game runs super smooth on the Xbox One X. Although the download is only 4 GB, the textures have a relatively high resolution, the enemy models are mostly detailed (especially the bigger boss enemies) and the (post processing) effects look great and up to date. The framerate is constantly at 60 fps and so far I have not encountered any frame rate drops - but there is usually not much going on on the screen to be honest. I cannot give a higher score than 7/10 for some reasons. Despite making a good first impression, the game let's you know from time to time that it was done by only a handful of people and not a big budget development team. There were a few occassions that made me wonder if a little bit more money and maybe another 6 months of development time would have been good for the game. In my opinion this is most obvious when you do what you do most in this game: fight. The hitboxes of almost all weapons seem to be a bit off. All too often I found myself getting hit by an enemy attack that clearly did not hit me physically. In other games like Bloodborne or Dark Souls 3 you will always know if an attack will hit you or not (at least attacks from weapons). If the weapon physically hits your body, you will take damage. This is not the case in Mortal Shell. Weapon swings that visibly go past your body will often still deal damage. In the other mentioned games I could go into each encounter with full confidence, because I felt in control, I knew exactly what to do. In Mortal Shell I always have this thought in my mind that the combat does not work as expected. Another small problem is that sometimes movement and combat felt a bit "janky" and unpolished. There are too many instances of moments where I could not move for a reason I did not understand. All in all, I can recommend this game with some restrictions. For the relatively low amount of content I'd say that the current price of 30$ is fine. Although, I would recommend to wait until it drops to 20$, because you can complete the game in 10-15 hours which is rather short for this type of game. If you are full on Soulsborne fan and look for a new challenge: Go ahead and buy it right away!

This game plays and looks like a game that is outdated in every fashion. How such a poorly designed game can be the result of a development time of five years is beyond me. Don't waste your money on this.

I was hyped by the trailers showing off all the gameplay mechanics, but they did not show that the game gets repetitive very quickly. This is a typical 20 € game with a great atmosphere, but it is 70 € on the German Xbox Store This is 50 € too much and, to be honest, very shameless. All these years of waiting and delays for such a thin and overpriced game. What a shame.

Despite what you hear from Microsoft or other sources: This is not a AAA title. It might have been in 2012. I usually don't reduce games to the graphics, but if a title is advertised as THE exclusive savior of the platform with AAA quality, I simply expect more and not outdated graphics. AAA are games like Horizon Zero Dawn. With an experienced and resourceful developer. Don't get me wrong, I love my Xbox, but with exclusives like this, the platform is doomed. After the desaster around Scalebound and the how-can-we-put-as-little-content-as-possible-in-a-game Sea of Thieves, the platform lacks the AAA exclusive games. However, this review is about State of Decay 2 and not Xbox as a whole. So why did I return my copy to the store after 15 hours of gameplay? It's the classic problem with "open world" games that are advertised as being diverse in terms of content. The game gets repetitive really quickly and even after a few hours I was not immersed into the game. The reason for this might be the annoying bugs I encountered (indicator why it's not AAA) as well as the already mentioned underwhelming graphics. I can have fun with titles like Minecraft or games that focus on their art style (Okami). But when being promised a high quality game in 2018, I don't expect 2012 graphics. If you don't believe me, look at footage of this game and then compare it to other "big" titles. The price is not justified for how the game is performing in terms of story, bugs and graphics. It hurts to admit it, but this game damaged the Xbox platform more than it helped. Don't buy this game. Sincerely, a disappointed Xbox fanboy.

If it weren't for the "2018" in the title I wouldn't have known that it was just released. It was recommended to me on Steam and is quite affordable, so I gave it a shot, but I was very disappointed by the graphical performance. Everything feels a little bit "off", very artificial. I don't know what exactly it is, maybe missing Global Illumination or Ambient Occlusion, but something makes this game look years older than it is. It might also be the outdated animations. Bonus point for the ingame tablet. It's a modern way of organizing tasks etc. and works very well.

I was not on board the hate train before I got my hands on the game to see for myself. Unfortunately the early reports are true. The animations look like they are from 1998. Sorry, but this is just not acceptable in 2017. The eyes look like plastic, the animations are stiff and the facial expressions are creepy. Obviously there was no Motion Capture used to create the animations. Also I encounter a lot of bugs like false animations, enemies falling through the environment. The slow start of the game leads to a more interesting experience. However, you cannot expect quests like in Witcher 3. In Andromeda it is usually something like "Get to point A and scan. Ok now go to point B. Ok you are done.". The reason I give a 1/10 and not a 0/10 is the great skill system that let's you build the character you want to play. Yes, other games have done it before, but hey, at least they did SOMETHING like current gen games.

I tried very hard not to get too hyped, despite all the footage of the game, all the early reports of how good the game is and the great trailers Nintendo released. As a Zelda fan since 1998 with Ocarina of Time being my favorite game of all time, I was of course looking forward to the release of Breath of the Wild. A huge part of the excitement is caused by nostalgia, of course. After playing the game for around 20 hours I can already announce this game as my new favorite game of all time. It blew me away from the first steps. Every 2 minutes I encounter a new feature or detail that just makes we stare at the screen with an open mouth. It's not only the major features of the game, like the vast world to explore, the intelligent enemies or the well placed music. It's the little details that Nintendo obviously put a lot of effort in. All so often I think "Hmm.. let's see if this works" ... and it DOES. Every single time. I was in need of a fire to prepare some food, so I read the description of the flint and I just put some wood on the ground, placed flint next to it and hit the flint with a metal weapon. The wood caught fire and I had a nice cozy place to roast some apples. 10 seconds later the fire went out and I wondered why. Of course, because it was raining. I set up the next camp fire under a tree. The graphics of this game are stunning. Yes, it's a special art style but they really did a great job at creating moody atmospheres, detailed models and oh my god, the lighting is incredible. Besides Witcher 3, this game has the most beautiful sun sets that I just enjoy watching at for minutes. The game has flaws. But none of them justify a 0/10 rating. I don't understand why Metacritic allows that. THe performance on the Switch in TV mode varies, but is satisfying over all. The controls are difficult to learn and it happened that I died because I hadn't mastered the control layout, yet. On a side note: The sound design is on point. Everything makes sounds as you would expect them to do. Your wooden bow on your back makes wooden sounds as it continuously hits your wooden shield. The wind blowing through the grass while animals make their own noises made me forget how little music is actually played throughout the game. I have only made a few steps into the main story so far, but what I have seen up to this review made by jaw drop to the floor. Of course, a lot of nostalgia is causing this (and the tears in my eyes) but the story they're are building up from the beginning is compelling and makes me find out more about it. What I probably love most about the game is the feeling of being rewarded. You get rewarded for being curious, for exploring new places, for experimenting with techniques and gameplay mechanics and for taking that additional step through a forest, over a river or down a cliff. Not in Skyrim, not in The Witcher 3 have I felt this sense of adventure. Despite not being flawless this game deserves nothing but a 10/10 rating, for all the positives easily outweigh the negatives.

Initially I loved this game. The first few hours are exciting and overwhelming. You love every second of the first few hours. But then you realize that you will do the same three things for the rest of the game, so probably for 50 - 100 hrs: Gather minerals, recharge your equipment, fly to the next planet that is shockingly similar to the planet you just visited. The lack of variety is ridiculous given the fact that everything is based on procedural generation. Most of the planets are lifeless pieces of rock. Maybe this is something that you can live with because sometimes there are these "wow" moments, when you finally find a planet with a lot of flora and fauna. Based on these impressions I could rate this 5/10 being an average space exploration game for casual players. BUT: The game was announced with misleading information. This is a fraud. This is criminal activity. There are so many features missing from the game that were originally promised. The whole experience is based on lies that came directly from the developers. I understand that one or two features might be missing from a game when it launches, because time was short, but this game is basically missing everything that was promised. The only feature it delivers is the repetitive mining. That's it. You even get bored by exploration. Also you don't have any motivation anymore to find other players because you WON'T SEE THEM. As a fact the developers said that you will be able to see other players. Not even 24 hours later this was already proven false. Two players stood at the exact same spot and were NOT able to see each other. I will now try to get my money back from Gamestop. This is the biggest disappointment since I started my gaming career in 1992.