As other reviews mention: the remastered graphics have terrible lighting. But, you can switch between the remastered and original graphics at will. As for the game itself, I'm not sure there are many people who find tank-control platforming fun. Likewise I don't think there are many who find tank-control combat fun. But if not for platforming, if not for combat, why play this game? All that's left to find enjoyment in is wandering around labyrintine levels while admiring the heroinne's rear. In other words, you'll have as much fun here as with a walking simulator.
In principle, there's nothing wrong with making a single player campaign out of a multi player game. Quake 3 did it, Unreal Tournament did it, Mario Kart and racing simulators do it. The thing is, these games put significant effort into developing bots that are fun to play against, and they don't require the completion of gimmick challenges for victory (ex: "win a round in 45 seconds", "kill an enemy with your knif").
The animations are poor - for example, your pistol won't move every time you fire. The AI is exceedingly simple - for example, enemies will often get stuck on terrain. The levels are bland and repettetive - for example, there are multiple empty circular arenas. The only challenge when playing comes from when the developers spawn enemies behind your back in cramped areas without warning. Natrually, this leads to save scumming.
Alpha Centauri is a sci-fi themed spin-off of Civilization II. The AI is still brain-dead, the graphics are even uglier, and the balance is awful. The developers got rid of the fortify ability and scrapped the infantry/armour/artillery triangle - the result is an offense focused positioning game. I'm sure every player of Civ II thought what the game really needed was more micro-management. By rushing laser speeders, you can comfortably wipe your neighbouring opponents off the map before they even get off the ground. Three mods attempt to fix the balance - Thinker makes the AI smarter, Growth removes features the AI struggles with, and Will to Power tries to re-balance in the style of the original Civ II. Having tested all of them, I can say that none of them are able to make enough fixes to make Alpha Centauri worth playing.
Review of Single Player only. Forget about Gears of War and Uncharted - Descent is the prototype cover shooter. Hard to believe the developers didn't intend it to be so given they designed their levels as a series of tight corridors with mostly 90 degree angles, and placed various missile 2-shot-kill and minigun hit-scan enemies behind them. Well, it turns out that when you do that, the only way the player can win is by looking up guides to see where the enemies are beforehand, edging one pixel past the corner, and firing a missile. I figured this out after 3 frustrating hours of trying to play this like a normal game. I looked up a walkthrough on YouTube of level 6 to confirm this before I gave up. I'd suggest you do the same before you bother with this game. Genuinely amazing soundtrack though, +1 point for that. ((Reviewed with Redux mod.))
Terribly boring. You will spend the overwhelming majority of play time wandering around the proceduraly generated floors fighting trash mobs. Because you can rest to full stats after every combat with no penalty there is no danger in these fights. The only fun comes when the RNG throws a mini boss at you. When newbies complain about this on the forums, they are advised by the players to turn on auto-explore and only take manual control of their character when a boss shows up. In other words, the game is so boring that even the dedicated players don't actually play it.
This is a game that lies to you constantly, trying to give you the illusion that your choices are influencing the plot. In reality, there is only one ending. Puzzles are far too basic to recommend it if you're looking for a point & click game.
There are only 2 enemy types all game, you get infinite ammo, levels are linear, and puzzles are juvenile. Driving and open-world sections are half-baked. The only reason to play this game is for the story. Where other reviewers see Lynch and quirkiness, I see Anime and cringe.
Just like with the original, for a puzzle game, there is excessive luck involved in trying to get 3 stars in every level. You can shoot at the same trajectory and get wildly different results. If you only try for 1 star the game will be a fair challenge, more tough than the original. But the randomness is too frustrating to recommend playing.
Just like with the original, for a puzzle game, there is excessive luck involved in trying to get 3 stars in every level. You can shoot at the same trajectory and get wildly different results. If you only try for 1 star the game will be a fair challenge, more tough than the original. But the randomness is too frustrating to recommend playing.
For a puzzle game, there is excessive luck involved in trying to get 3 stars in every level. You can shoot at the same trajectory and get wildly different results. If you only try for 1 star the game will be very easy for an adult, though it could be fun for children.
I played the first mission. I ran across snow and asphalt to stealth kill a patrolling enemy from behind, he didn't even turn around. A sentry saw me run behind a house, started shooting at me, walked over to where he saw me, and finally spun around and walked back to rest without checking behind the house or calling for help. I killed a soldier and a patrol group of three found the body, shouted "alarm!", then resumed their patrol as though nothing happened. I then shot and killed this patrol group, but the guy who spent the entire mission smoking two houses away didn't hear anything. A guard started shooting me and I killed him - someone heard him shoot and ran over so I killed him - someone else heard him shoot so he ran over and I killed him as well. Judging by the stellar reviews, it seems most find this level of AI programming acceptable. I do not.
Plays like a grinding mobile game. You dig through the map looking for gems. When your inventory is full, you climb back up and sell to buy upgrades that let you dig faster/longer. Along the way you will find main dungeouns (~3 mins long) and side dungeouns (~1 min long) which contain a basic platforming puzzle/challenge. Platforming is extremely basic, combat is an afterthought. I played for an hour and didn't die once. As if to underline the casual target audience, there is a waypoint marker telling you where to go.
I'll start with the good - the graphics and the general atmosphere are pretty immersive. Steam reviews complain about too much dialogue, but in truth the majority can be skipped.
The problem with the game is that in my 90 mins of playtime 13 out of the 15 puzzles that I solved were simple variations of "guess the keycode". You basically click on everything in the room until you have all the hints, then just read into them to figure out the right code.
Reading these reviews, you'd get the impression that Pathologic 2 is a masterpiece of storytelling that chooses to use the video game medium to accent it's depressing world-building. What you actually get is an unfinished kinetic VN where nothing you do matters - you can quite literally ignore all the quest lines and do nothing but satisfy your survival meteres all day and you will still get the same choice between the same 2 endings (lookup the speed runs if you don't believe me). Amusingly, fans of the game will say "that's exactly the whole point of the story - nothing you choose in life matters!" If you don't enjoy survival games and don't like "deep" pseudo-intellectual stories like Disco Elysium you probably won't like this one.
Review of single player only. The game consists of 15 or so campaigns developed independently, and they can be played in any order (there are dozens of other fan campaigns as well). Easily 100+ hours it'll take to beat. You probably won't want to, though; I quit after the first five. The problem with the game is that the AI doesn't know how to defend - that is, it will never decide to hold a choke-point or to fall back and regroup. All it knows how to do is to continually produce units and mindlessly throw them at you. Some campaigns, such as "Liberty" do a really good job of obscuring these issues by having your enemies be idiots (orcs, undead, animals, etc...), designing unique scenarios where the AI doesn't have a reason to defend, or hard-coding defensive objectives for them. Other campaigns, such as "Heir to the Throne" have missions where you are supposed to take an enemy city but all their units charge out of their fortifications into the moat in order to attack you. Since most all the campaigns were created by different developers, they are all of variant quality. 7/10 for "Liberty", it's about 5 hours long and worth the free download alone.
If reading a nihilistic "Choose Your Own Adventure" linear story (only one ending) written by self-described communists wherein you play as a godless alcoholic who has no self-control is your idea of fun... go ahead.
There are mostly 3 enemy types in the game and you fight all of them the same way - you wait patiently for them to amble into melee range and then spam spacebar for 30 seconds. Sometimes you have to fight 2 at a time, or even a bossfight - for these, you run away and shoot them while they slowly approach. That's it, that's the whole game. This is supposed to be one of the best videogames of all time? Just like Last of Us, it doesn't matter how good your story is if your gameplay is trash. --Reviewed with Enhanced Edition mod
Imagine RE2 without any inventory_management/backtracking but with several open-world levels (that is, not just a corridor). Unfortunately, the inventory is a core part of RE's difficulty, and without it the only challenge Silent Hill offers is the awkward camera angles.
Designed with multiplayer in mind, Close Combat 2 has you facing off against your opponent in Operation Market Garden. The Allies must push through ~40 maps spread across 10 fronts while the Axis try to stop them. On each map there are ~5 control points that must be captured in order to move onto the next map in the front. Maps are designed with historical accuracy, and the numbers of your forces are also historically accurate (though you can nerf/buff players if you like). All your forces can do is move, shoot, and pop smoke. However, you have various units, such as mortars, mg, tanks, etc... that still make it very interesting. Gameplay reminded me of Company of Heroes, but much better. So why the low score? The trouble with the game is that it is historically accurate - it is over 30 hours long. If you don't find anyone to play with you for so long then you have to play against the computer. The AI isn't bad, but it doesn't hold up for 30 hours. By 15 hours I had learned its ins and outs and got bored.
Hasn't aged well, unlike the first few games in the series which are still quite fun. Levels are mostly linear and puzzles are trivial. Enemies forget how to run when they get close, conveniently giving you time to shoot them. You can't move while aiming, which does keep the game challenging but isn't intuitive with the over the shoulder camera. Others have described the game as a kind of rail shooter, kinda like Half Life 2 - Alyx. Worst of all, this is the first game in the series to introduce dynamic difficulty, wherein the game gets easier the worse you play. Despite all of this, the game manages to entertain, especially the more casual gamers.
Starting with the good, RE7 returns the series to the classic semi-linear progression style - where you can explore multiple rooms at a time in any order of your choosing, but there is only one correct way to go in order to progress further. First person combat works well, especially for the boss fights. Now for the bad - although exploration is back, there are very few puzzles and most of the time you are just searching for items. The combat gets repetitive due to the fact that outside boss fights there are only four different enemy types all game, and they are mostly basic quick/normal/slow variations of the same creature. The worst part is that the developers tried to make the game "scary" by adding invulnerable boss enemies like Nemesis or the alien from Alien: Isolation that you have to try to sneak around, by adding laughable jump scares, and by adding scripted slow walking simulator sections, the most scripted of which is a blatant rip-off from the JigSaw movies.
An improvement over the first 2 games in that the combat mostly works and the plot mostly makes sense. Unfortunately, enemies are still stupid in combat, and they still follow the same scripted patrol routes in stealth (looking at you - guy who takes a piss every single minute), there are still plot holes, and still none of your choices really matter and you just get a Mass Effect 3 ending. Excessive profanity and usage of our Lord's name in vain bring it down to a zero. Reviewed with Hardcore Revival and Ruby's ENB mods.
The impression I got from playing RE3R is like as if I were playing a half-effort fan mod for RE2R. It's clear minimal effort was put into making this game, it's clear there was little enthusiasm or "soul" involved. And just like RE2R the game is burdened with cut content and dynamic difficulty.
I've never played a game with a presentation as bad as this. That's not because the textures are ugly or the menus are confusing - it's because everything feels so cheap. Especially in combat, it is not clear what is going or what status effects your heroes are under. Speaking of combat, it is nicely done. It is largely about kiting enemies using your various abilities while you wait for your main spells to recharge. Sounds boring, but it is fun when it works. Different fights have different objectives and modifiers to keep them interesting. Unfortunately, the enemies don't get enough abilities and the difficulty soon becomes trivial. The first level was fine, but I cleared most fights on the second level (out of ten) on my first try. Based on the game forums it only gets easier, so a quick DNF for me. Games should get harder not easier as they go on - just shows the devs either cheaped out on proper balancing or couldn't make it work with their combat system.
This games is like if someone took XCOM: Long War and made it into a JRPG. Unfortunately, like almost all JRPGs, the combat is lacking. Darkest Dungeon is fun for 10 hours or so, but it's far too shallow to hold your attention for the 50+ runs you'll have to play in order to beat the game.
Playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker is like working a boring repetitive job... Well, I'll give them 1 point for immerssiveness :) In seriousness, this is marketed as a relaxing puzzle game. But if I can't play with 1 hand then it's not relaxing; if you give me the same puzzle over and over again with minor variations then it's no longer a puzzle; if you don't offer any serious penalties for doing a bad job then it's not a game. As steam reviews mention, game is unfinished and there are un-skippable cutscenes.
Each level has 2 maps - the overworld and the underworld. Your base is in the underworld, the enemy base is in the overworld - you have to defend and train units then raid the overworld to complete your objectives. The problem with the game is that it is too easy and simple. In the underworld it plays like a tower defense game, but you get to make the maze, so you can just make a big zigzag. The overworld plays like Warcarft III, but it is basic and there is no strategy, usually whoever has the most units wins.
The game should be renamed Civilization Zombies, because the AI is ****. They will send siege units to battle your infantry, they'll suicide their army on battles they can't win, they'll build settlers while you're in the middle of taking their city. Of course to make up for it they have huge bonuses and numerous cheats, such as full map vision and walking on water. Don't get me wrong - the core game itself is excellent, and much better than the recent games. But unless you have 6 partners to play with, don't bother. When playing against the AI Civ 2 is addicting, yes, but it isn't fun. There's a difference.
Giants is a hybrid FPS/TPS with lightweight floaty combat, similar to C&C Renegade. There is no inventory/ammo management or map exploration, the basic game loop: you go to the map marker, kill/fetch the target, watch cutscene, restock on items and repeat. Enemies are stupid and there are no difficulty levels. Again, the combat has no weight to it and in general the game feels very cheaply made. As you can see from the other reviews, the only thing the game has going for it is the humour. The characters have funny accents, say bad words, and even make pp jokes! Highly recommend /s
Before I write a review I usually read over a few of the recent reviews so that I don't end up repeating what has already been said. One of the recent reviewers typed "combat is bad, sneaking is bad, charater building is bad, graphics are bad... 10/10" The game is so highly regarded by the gaming community that people feel compelled to give it a perfect score even though they see many problems with it. Game is currently sitting at 9.2/10, and it is certainly not that good. Everyone praises the story, but it does have a few holes in it. Your choices do not matter. You can save someone's life, you can kill "to-be" villians early on, but none of this affects the plot, which is entirely linear. Want to stop following that obviously manipulative guy telling you what to do? Too bad. Don't want to ally yourself with a cringy statnic goth-girl? Too bad. At the finale you always have the same 3 choices for an ending, Mass Effect style. Gunplay is awkward, but this is on purpose to try to get you to use stealth. Enemies are blind, however, and won't notice you until you reach a certain proximity. You can trigger an alarm and defeat a group of 10 enemies, but the next batch a block down the street will still be patrolling regular routine as though nothing happened. Also, the XP system encourages you to save cats so you can upgrade your radiation resistance. Where the game does shine is in it's level design. The levels are large and there are always multiple ways of reaching your destination, based on your skills. The worldbuilding is great with lots of little books and emails, if you like to read through that sort of stuff. And the plot itself is thrilling if you don't want to fight it, and if you don't think about it too much. It's a good game, but not a 9/10. --Reviewed with "Give Me Deus Ex" version
This is not survival-horror. The levels are entirely linear and there is no inventory. Combat is basic and bare-bones. Other reviewers call it clunky and heavy, but I found it unique and interesting. A great turn-your-brain-off game for when you're not in the mood to play something more demanding.
The regenerating armour and ammo trivializes the difficulty. The game is littered with health and ammo pickups to make it even easier. There are about 7 enemy types, but the only ones to watch out for are the 2 big ones that do half your health bar damage in one hit. The others are just a nuisance, because you know a health refill will drop any second. There are 12 levels, each about 20 mins long. 7 base game levels + 5 dlc levels. All the levels are completely linear. They do have "secrets" which amount to checking behind the corner for money pick ups. Money is used to buy new weapons and upgrade stats. 10 weapons in total, but I found myself only using 4. Keep in mind the Redux version includes an overpowered dash and sprint feature which removes any challenge whatsoever from the game. I'd highly recommend to refrain from using these new abilities.
You cannot play a good character in this game. The 4 guilds in this game are: thieves, assassins, usurers, and violent soldiers. You can technically ignore their quest lines, but if you do so then you will be severely under-leveled. And since this game is difficult, you need as many levels as possible. The combat is boring. What makes it worse is that it is always solo, you never control a party. Fortunately you can ignore the combat completely, as almost all quests can be resolved by passing dialogue skill checks. Unfortunately, doing so de-facto turns the game into a visual novel. As other reviewers mentioned, because every quest can be solved either by combat or by skill checks, you are encouraged to dump all your level points into either combat skills or non combat skills. Splitting the points makes the game extremely difficult (read: save-scumming). But putting all your points into combat results in a boring whack-a-thon, putting all your points into dialogue results in a boring choose-your-own-adventure game. Still, a positive - there are many different routes to take, many different ways to solve quests. These choices do have some consequences. Choosing certain builds will lock you out of certain quests, will even lock you out of certain areas, so there is a lot of replyability.
Mr. Hitchcock famously said that drama is just life with the dull parts cut out. Mr. Barlow apparently disagrees. His idea of drama is 5 hours of unedited skype calls. That is, "how was your day?", "how is the weather?", and lots and lots and lots of flirting.
Review of Single Player Campaign Only. As I pointed out in my review of Total Annihilation, 90% of all RTS games fall into the same trap - nearly every single mission is the same. You start out with a small base while the enemy has a huge base. The enemy does nothing with his army and just sends out a few token units at you while you turtle and build up. Then you attack and win. Piece of cake. The only real challenge comes from resources - you have to win quick before you run out of money. But! With an infinite resource system, this challenge is gone! And to make matters worse, with Supreme Commander the developers have designed the missions in phases. I'll explain with an example of the last level I played. You start out on a map with 2 islands, where you have to build an army and destroy the enemy base on the other island. After that phase, the map expands and 2 more islands are introduced. It turns out that there is a second enemy base where everyone was just sitting constipated waiting for you to advance the mission! OK fine, you defeat the new base. Now phase 3 - map expands again, 3 more islands, 1 more enemy base. Phase 4 - No new bases, the enemy just continually spawns units off-screen until you build 3 new buildings that you just unlocked. Phase 5 - 1 more enemy base. Phase 6 - 3 "boss" units are spawned that you have to kill. Every level is similar. You fend off a few repetitive attacks, build up an army, kill the enemy base. Now there is a new base - rinse and repeat. There is no challenge, you are never in trouble of losing. If you want, you can even cheese the game by stopping short of advancing to the next phase, spam power generators (infinite resources) and then advance. Here is the point - the game is boring. You do the same thing over and over again, and you are never challenged or feel like you are losing. The only time you will lose is if you neglect to keep building power generators. And yes, that can actually happen. Why? Because each level is over 90 minutes long! With all those phases, you get bored and just want it to be over with. There are so many positive reviews here, they must be reviewing the multiplayer. There is a popular client "Forged Alliance Forever" with a ladder, and regular tournaments, and leader-boards, etc.... BUT, if you're like me and you want to try this game for the single-player, I recommend you don't.
The game is bad. Not terrible, but not worth playing. It is obviously a console port. First, the game is ridiculously easy. You can unlock invisibility as soon as the second level. When invisible, enemies cannot see you and you can literally walk straight past them. And, it lasts for a minute! With an item that allows an instant recharge! Also, unlike the first game, here you start out with perfect aim. So right from the start you can score silenced headshots on all enemies from accross the room. It's not until 2/3 of the way through the game that some enemies start wearing helmets to resist. Some people don't like the aiming system in the first game because it makes combat awkward, but here you can just walk around like Terminator killing all enemies on the map no problem. Finally, the AI is stupid. You kill a soldier, "Huh, what's this?" you kill him, next guy comes "Huh, what's this?" you kill him, next guy comes.... Second, the levels are very linear. Statue of Liberty in the first game was a huge island with about 3 different ways to ascend. In this game you have a tight circular corridor and a few turns where NPCs are waiting to talk. There is only one way into the statue. The whole game is like this, and the cramped design makes stealth without invisibility frustrating. Load screens are constant and long. Third, the plot is boring. The voice acting is just as lifeless as the first game, and there aren't any huge in-your-face plot holes, but there is no connection with anything. There are a few factions to side with, and you have people constantly rambling at you over your mic trying to get you to side with them. But they never explain any ideology or goals, they just yell at you. There is no worldbuilding, in other words. Each level you can choose which faction to side with, but ultimately none of it matters they always call you and say "so, you double crossed me... well, I'll forgive you if you help us next time." In the end you get 4 endings, none of which feel properly developed, and the game actually calls you a **** if you choose the purity ending :)
This is a game you cannot win. You are presented with a series of some 200 videos (total 90 minutes long) of police (inaudible) interviewing a woman regarding her missing husband. The catch is you cannot watch them in order, but have to search by guessing key words which gets you only the top 5 matches. Once you watch a certain number of the key videos, you get a popup asking you if you want to quit or you can keep going to try and find more videos. That's it, that's the whole game. Notice you do not have to do any detective work, or find clues or solve any mysteries. The whole gameplay consists of watching a woman talk for 90 minutes. You just keep searching for videos until you decide to stop (or you can just watch them all in order on YouTube). Now the mystery is well done and there are lots of twists and turns to find. I liked the acting. It could have made a good movie, but this video game format is just contrived and frustrating.
The best thing I can say about Return of the Obra Dinn is that it is unique. The premise is that a ship with a crew of 60 had gone missing and has now resurfaced. You are given a personnel manifest and your task is to put a name to each corpse. Your only tool is a magic device that allows you to view a flashback of the moment each corpse died. To make things easier on you, the game will let you know every 3 correct matches you make (makes it way too easy IMO - should have added difficulty levels). What is unique about the game is that you do not have any sort of inventory to manage, or witnesses to interview, or puzzles to solve for unlocking new areas. All you have is a ship filled with dead bodies and your little flashback device. But don't mistake this as the game being hardcore "bring your own notebook" type game. The game takes care of all the legwork you could want - it will record names to persons matches you made (so in a flashback you can tell who is who), it will order the flashbacks from first to last, and it will give you a map so you don't have to remember anything. Everything is taken care of for you besides your one task - matching the name to the body. You'll be able to do this through various hints in the scenes. For example, you'll hear someone referenced by name, or you'll hear him speak a different language, or you'll see he is dressed different, or sleeps in special quarters. Lots of little things, a few of which are a bit contrived. Basically it is through guesswork and process of elimination you'll be able to win. To give you an idea of how this works, as an example in one flashback you'll see 3 men playing cards and speaking Russian. You check the crew manifest and confirm there are only 3 Russians on board. You see a funny hat next to hammock #41, then in another flashback you see one of the 3 men wearing the hat. Now you know he is #41 on the manifest, you can cross him off. The other 2 russians have different job descriptions - one works as a sailor the other as a deckhand. In yet another flashback you see one of the 2 scrubbing the floor - now, out of the 10 deckhands on the manifest, you know this is the russian speaking one. Cross him out. The sailor you can guess by process of elimination. Done. This is a more or less simple example, but that's essentially what you'll be doing all game for all 60 crew members. It's not exciting, but it isn't terrible either. An average game that has been exalted only for being unique compared to the regurgitated AAA slop that most every studio produces these days. One thing other reviewers aren't mentioning is just how morbid the game is. I'm not very squeamish, I've played other fantasy horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, but this game is particularly depressing. You will literally spend 90% of your playtime watching people die, hearing them beg for their lives, and all set to a funeral soundtrack. Not very fun.
In The Sinking City, Frogwares attempted to take the point and click mystery gameplay of their second line of Sheclock Holmes games (The Testament Of, Crimes and Punishment, The Devil's Daughter) and merge it into an open-world thrid-person shooter in a Cthullu horror setting. They failed in all respects. The first line of Frogwares' Sherlock Holmes games consisted of ordinary point & click gameplay. You search for clues on the screen, you combine items in your inventory to solve puzzles, and you play minigames. In their second line of games, Frogwares added the deduction screen - you now had to take various conjectures and deduce the culprit on your own. They were praised for this innovation and their games received high scores. But Sinking City does away with most of this mystery gameplay. Because it is a third person shooter, you don't have a cursor on the screen - so you don't actually search for clues, you just walk around the crime scene and click on all highlighted prompts. Neither do you have an inventory to solve puzzles, and there are no minigames. The deduction screen returns, but you don't actually deduce anything - it's only purpose is to provide you with different "moral choices" (which, of course, don't impact the story). The only time you actually use your brain is when the game tells you to search an archive - you will have to pick the correct archive to search (out of ~10) and then pick the correct categories to serach (out of ~4). That's it. And this is on the hard "detective mode", mind you. The shooting isn't terrible, but it is outdated. It reminded me of the first Mafia game, in that it is very floaty without any snapping onto cover or anything. Occasionally you fight humans, mostly you fight monsters, of which there are 4 enemy types and 2 boss fights. The only challenge will be in conserving your ammunition. There are also aquatic sections where you dive through the depths, these are very short and simple. The story is awful. This is a mystery game where half of the mysteries are solved because of a confessional letter conveniently dropped at the scene of the crime. The other half of the mysteries are solved because your character has a superpower that allows him to see what exactly happened in the past. You will examine the scene of the crime, arrive at a dead end, then use your powers to re-construct the scene of the crime where you will see the bad guy say "haha, now that I killed him, I'm going to go to my hideout at 321 Baker St. where no one will find me muahaha". And then you go there and find him, the end. The overall story is about a monster who is trying to destroy the world. You likewise don't have any initiative or figure anything out, you just go along and do whatever people tell you. There are some choices you make that don't affect the plot. At the end you are given 3 endings Mass Effect style. The open-world fails because traversing it is boring. To compare Sinking City again with Mafia, in Mafia by the time you finish the game you have pretty much memorized the city because it's that fun to just take time to drive around. Here you only have 1 boat, which is slow to drive, and it can only take you around half the map. The other half you just walk on foot. Nothing interesting happens, no little events pop up like in GTA, you just walk around the empty streets and that's it. As if they realized how awful their design is, the developers added fast travel locations on every few street corners. And the presentation is just as rushed as the design. All characters read their lines without any emotions. Numerous fade-outs where they didn't bother to animate. Just a very cheap game overall, a quick cash-grab.
This game is like Hitman Absolution but even more linear and with bogged down dialogue and RPG mecanics. There' s no point playing it unless you really like linear stealth games.
Gearbox took the core elements of the Borderlands series but it's almost as if they copied them into the Call of Duty engine. Playing Borderlands 3 feels like playing Call of Duty, Battlefield, or any other crappy ADS lock-on shooter. If you don't like those games, you won't like this one. Even worse, playing solo this is by far the easiest game of the series. I can count the number of times I died on my hands.
XIII is a linear corridor shooter that makes Call of Duty look good. Gameplay is a clunky console port with way too much hand holding. Lack of quicksaving and unskippable cutscenes are just the cherry on top.
- This is literally a reskin of Dark Souls 3. Which Dark Souls 3, by the way, was a reskin of Dark Souls. This company has been making the same game for over a decade now and they're getting away with it. - This game is too long. If you've every played a Souls game, then you've already played this game. Same combat, same weapons, same mechanics. Now take Dark Souls and imagine it's twice as long. Games can be long if they successfully introduce new ideas to spice up the gameplay. But here you've already seen it al before; there's next to nothing new here. Add to that the recycled bosses and enemies, and you'll quickly grow bored - The bosses in this game are balanced around mimics. That is, summoning an npc to help you. If you do not summon, bosses will be so hard and unfair you'll think it is the hardest Souls game yet. It you do summon, you'll think it's the easiest. I don't like Co-op play and am disappointed it has been forced here
- This is literally a reskin of Dark Souls 3. Which Dark Souls 3, by the way, was a reskin of Dark Souls. This company has been making the same game for over a decade now and they're getting away with it. - This game is too long. If you've every played a Souls game, then you've already played this game. Same combat, same weapons, same mechanics. Now take Dark Souls and imagine it's twice as long. Games can be long if they successfully introduce new ideas to spice up the gameplay. But here you've already seen it al before; there's next to nothing new here. Add to that the recycled bosses and enemies, and you'll quickly grow bored - The bosses in this game are balanced around mimics. That is, summoning an npc to help you. If you do not summon, bosses will be so hard and unfair you'll think it is the hardest Souls game yet. It you do summon, you'll think it's the easiest. I don't like Co-op play and am disappointed it has been forced here
First of all, this is a Dark Souls rip-off. It takes the core mechanics, but adds a new combat system. That's the good. The bad is that the game is super repettitve. 99% of enemies you fight are either: soldiers (with 1 of 10 weapons), zombies (1 type), demons (8 types). That's it. Some levels have dogs, some have spiders, and 2 have weird jelly blobs, but 99% of the game is fighting the same 3 enemies. This could be fine if the game were 10 hours long, but it is 80 hours with 28 main missions and almost a hunderd side missions. All are linear. And if you try skipping the side missions, you'll end up like me - 100 levels down by the end (from recommended level 250). It's a grind fest and not worth is unless you really love playing Dark Souls.
