Fireantus

It doesn't deserve a 10 but need to put it to counterbalance some salty fools giving it way too low. It feels like the best, richest base game Paradox released as of late - plenty of events, stories, traits, combos, skills and features to fiddle with. Each culture brings unique flavours and minor system, each character can spec into one of 5 grand skills that chance the gameplay focus quite a lot and then each of that can specialize further into three branches, each offering unique events, challenges and outcomes. It is not endless by any means, but the depth offered as a start of a surely huge base of DLCs to come it is pretty rich and extensive, so kudos for that - it is, indeed, a time sink you can dig into pretty hard. The accessibility of it piss of some old grumps, because they feel they are loosing their 'Elite' feel with more casual players being able to pick it up, but as a big UX/UI lover, I am delighted to see how they streamlined SO MANY processes, options and info-dumps. Getting all the information you need to make any decision is much easier, the combat is informative, fluid and easy to grasp while still offering quite a bit to fiddle with (Prowess, Knights efficiency, Rock-Paper-Scissor of Men-At-Arms and their terrains bonuses, buildings that improve them in some ways, personal skills of the commanders). Despite that, the game even give you a banal tooltip before moving into combat straightforwardly telling you the chances of losing or winning. It's elegant. It's quick. And easy to step into. Easy to step into should be a tagline for this game. Despite it having layers of stuff to learn and explore (Faith rules and actions, realms laws and management, county upgrades, decisions, court management, vassals management, to name the key ones!) all is laid out as clean as possible, neatly ordered, put together with clever simplicity, almost guiding you to always be able to see what you need to see to play without frustration. It is, by far, the best of their Grand Strategies to begin the adventure with the genre right now. I am tempted to say it is also most forgiving due to the Dyunasty system (you don't lose the game as long as you have a heir to jump onto, so even dramatic loses to the realm ain't a Game Over), but that would be a bit much - the game still offers a steep learning curve that will require your attention, focus and constant rerolling ;)

I think I understand the negative huffing about this game - mostly because it is very different and requires a shift or perspective to enjoy. This might already ruffle people who just wanted MORE of DOOM'16 which was quite a blast. But Doom Eternal isn't a straightforward filling of the same ordeal, just bigger and nicer looking. It's a different beast. It's more... tactical. In Previous Game you could just sport Super Shotgun and literally never change your weapon. You could maybe sometimes smash that BFG button, but that's about it. ETERNAL allows this, but it warns you heavily, that this is a very hard approach and not a recommended one, since enemies now varies in which weapon and tactic is well suited for taking them down. It can be irritating, because it feels like the game forces you to play in the exact way the designers want you to. It feel a bit hand-holdy. It feel forced. AND YET, if you stop resisting, if you give in and accept their systems, the game is still unyieldingly fun and engaging. It just clicks at certain point. You will freeze a clump of mooks, put them alight with flamethrower, blast them with a few rockets and collect all that juice and armor, saving one mook for a chainsaw pinata for ammo. It becomes so fluid, so tense because of the ONSLAUGHT of demons matched only by their ferocity. You need to be faster. You need to make correct decision. You are given plenty of tools to tackle a problem, and you will discover that you can utilize various tactics still. Charge the heat blast for the plasma when dealing damage, taking that Hunter shield down when using the blast for heavy Crowd Control as it staggers and does big damage too... Dash to the side, switch to the Shotgun, blast some harassing heavy. Jump away, rocket launcher to punish that Pain Elemental in mid air with lock on rockets. Land with your heavy cannon ready with scope to **** off weapons of that mancubus... It's a beautiful dance, and for it, I really enjoyed the game.

Of all the goose games we got so far this one is the far the goosiest. Honking good fun.

A brilliantly fun little RPG with a very well done, fluid and entertaining combat mechanic. It's simple, it's quick, it's charming! For fans of SteamWorld it might be a bit of a mixed bag - sure the art style is there and it's as whimsical and charming as ever, but the characters acts less like robots and machines and even slip it into their language, making it feel a little strange? Otherwise though, the writing is often quite funny, characters have clearly defined personalities and the story is developing nicely and with quite a swift pace. The biggest plus for me is the Combat system. The cards are astonishing and building a tight, 8 card deck that works and combo well with other characters kit is quite a fun mini-game of its own. I read some previous reviews and while I don't want to negate their experience, I am not sure if perhaps something was skipped and omitted in their playthrough? On merely chapter 5 I have quite a lot of different cards crafted and quite a collection to pick from for all characters but Orik (since he just joined the party). They are already enough to shift the characters into different roles - I can make Copernica into a fierce fire mage, supported by Armilly who damage herself for more damage and decrease fire resist to foes with a heavy tank Gallo kitted entirely for regen, healing and shielding. The fact that it's editable on the fly between battles means also that you can and should outfit your team to match the enemies in the location (For example caves are choked with Redcaps who have some resist to fire damage, to fire mage Copernica is not as effective as kiting her with Ice and Electiricy). I have no idea why Healing/Shielding is a waste of time and cards? Perhaps it is later in the game, it is entirely possible and will see, but up until now it's my bread and butter - getting the regular expendable health every few turns is great in shaving enemy damage down by a major degree, limiting my time on healing and using items between combats to keep the team healthy. If there are any minuses in my sight, well, there will be two: - Battles are a bit repetitive. Every area is seeded with like 3-4 enemy types and you will encounter them in various combinations. Later on they remain the same, just with different color scheme and perhaps 1-2 extra cards with new moves to keep you on your toes. That would be passable but... Bosses I encountered are also reskins of regular enemies, which is not acceptable (not always, but it happens!). - Navigating the map is a bit tedious and require some solid backwalking to get all the juicy chests. This is important, because if you don't explore the area to its 100%, you will feel lack of resources, money and cards which are hidden in the chests across the maps. In the first map alone (the town) you can get, if I recall well, 2-3 new card types for Gallo alone! If you don't explore and miss them I can see how you can feel like your options do not expands at all. Therefore the game force your hand and you must explore fully to get the fullest experience with minimum frustrations. All in all it's a fun, charming game that completely **** me in. It's funny, it's dynamic and have surprising amount of flexibility behind its systems. 9/10, strong recommend for this low price.

I really wanted to hate it. First, because it's Battle Royale, and every other BR game I played before seemed so god damn pointless. Second, because it's EA or at least under their roof, and we all know - EA is worse than Satan. Unfortunately, I also tend to be honest with myself and this accursed piece of **** game is just really fun. Gunplay is great. Guns differ vastly, there are MULTIPLE powerful guns to utilize and they pack quite an audio-visual punch, Mobility is fun and very fluid - you slide, gain momentum, jump to slide again and wallclimb. Once you get into a chain of motion, it's very good. And the rest? It's Battle Royale that fixes my main issues with other BR games. You have fun, engaging respawn system, that really let you build yourself back from a bad start. You have a STUNNING pinging system that let you communicate with astonishing detail without heaving a mic on or listening to some whiny brats. The map is brilliantly made, with both wide spaces, tight building and plenty of verticality. Add ziplines everywhere, dropship and droppods and you get one surprisingly tactical game. Comparing this to Overwatch is kinda ridiculous. In OV all heroes are very, very unique beings with everything differing between them. Here the passives, ults and abilities are more like... Cherry on the top. Sure, they can be a huge boon when used well, but honestly it's still steady hand, cold blood and good reactions that will win you the game, not any ability. It's... first BR game that really pulled me in.

Bethesda banned people for using graphic improvement mods and ask them to write essays about why it's so bad. A company. From which you PURCHASED a product. Ban you from using a product you paid for. A product you DID NOT misused. And ask you to write a **** schoolyard essay about why you are a bad person in their eyes. Well that's a big no from me, guys.

Bethesda banned people for using graphic improvement mods and ask them to write essays about why it's so bad. A company. From which you PURCHASED a product. Ban you from using a product you paid for. A product you DID NOT misused. And ask you to write a **** schoolyard essay about why you are a bad person in their eyes. Well that's a big no from me, guys.

Bethesda banned people for using graphic improvement mods and ask them to write essays about why it's so bad. A company. From which you PURCHASED a product. Ban you from using a product you paid for. A product you DID NOT misused. And ask you to write a **** schoolyard essay about why you are a bad person in their eyes. Well that's a big no from me, guys.

It surprised me, because I expected it to be a bland, boring copy of Dark Souls. But it wasn't. It is enchanting. It has great style. The fight is much heavier and methodical, more gimmick-driven and careful. The bosses are surprisingly fun and the story and vibe is much more lively and positive! It's a delight to even travel back to the main hub town as it slowly but steadily being rebuilt and repopulated, making for a fun return. It's a great game so far with mechanically smart combat, lots of character and gripping story.

Just like Subsurface Circular, it completely took me over. It's short. It's brief even, but it doesn't matter to me, since it pulled me under its surface with a mighty pull. Once you start, you just can't put it down until you are done. It's a simple game really - read with care, notice key words, ask proper questions, push things forward. But the tension is always there, the scenario is fun (even if it is a little far-fetched for someone in the field of medicine) and the characters feel surprisingly alive. Great little story driven game.

Orwell delivered more than I asked for. It's short, but that's not a problem for me, for I am exactly in the market for short, story driven games. The decision matters to a nice degree, which was a really fun thing about this game! I really felt after two full finishes that doing different things brings out differing outcomes (even if the main story, of course, remain intact). It's a fun game of picking up puzzle pieces to assemble a bigger picture and deciding how the picture will look in the end. It has neat music, solid characters, surprising amount of suspense and is a very good purchase for anyone looking for a Single Session game with some thrills to it.

It's extremely engaging. I honestly didn't expect this game to **** me in so mightily, but it did just so without any issues. It's tactical, but not tedious. It's fun, but never too easy to dismiss. It has solid story, massive amount of loot, plenty of characters to include in your teams, randomly generated levels to go through and is just such a great blast for anyone, who enjoys a turn-based tactical combat. The best part for me is kitbashing your team to suit your playstyle. Characters differ a lot with their utility and roles, and so you can tailor your team to your liking. For example my usual 3 robot team consist of a massive tank with huge HP pool and powerful, explosive weaponry. A swift flanker that can cross the level rapidly and get into great positions to shotgun enemies in their backs. And of course the stalwart captain with her sniper weapon for precision headshots and splendid set of restorative abilities. But you can also have self-repairing attacker with cover-ignoring lightning, a beefy melee fighter, a berserker that deals more damage when hurt, a specialist that disables opponents, a combat engineer with piercing shots and smoke grenades... Add to that plenty of weapons and items to mix and you can really customize your team every time you go into battle. Game looks great, sounds great and plays great.

Seriously, even if the game was a Second Coming of Christ in gaming, with graphis that melts your soul with goodness and plot that put Godfather ang Gilgamesh to shame, the game need to be destroyed by the microtransactions that came from the depths of hell. In this "game" you need to pay 10 dollars for a new save slot. Holy ****

Let's be honest here. This is the worst looking DOOM 2016 variant. We all know it, and need to acknowledge it. Also, it doesn't matter at all, because to my awe and astonishment, DOOM on Switch runs surprisingly smooth vast majority of the time, and the graphical downgrade is made in such a way, that it doesn't distract you from what makes DOOM such a splendid game - G(l)orious Fun. It's always, ALWAYS fun to pack some shrieking demons full of bullets or wrench their heads off with your bare hands. And Switch version might be the **** when it comes to the visuals, but no other version allows me to pack this game with me /everywhere/. I can and I am slaying demons every morning on my daily tram commute to work. I just sit there for 20 minutes, headphones on, killing them by the dozen. Holy **** wholesome slaughter always within your reach is a dream come true.

Have to give it a 0. But the game itself is 7 or even 8. See, it's nothing new, but it is done really well. Great visuals, fantastic audio, lots of model and loot (which on its own is not bad! I mean, gaining new stuff through grind in games have like, 20 years of tradition now). It looks, taste and smells like a really fun, bombastic casual shooter within one of the most well known SF universe, right? But EA. Electronic "Arts". You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. They wanted you to pay top dollar for a game, Game, that would sell in millions of copies, because it's a huge, AAA Star Wars. But now, they needed more. They needed them dollars in your piggy bank. They needed the pennies stuck somewhere in your sofa. They wanted the little coins from the depths of your wallet. They wanted you to send them your credit cards with PINs directly via mail. They wanted you to put another mortgage on your house and sell your grandma, so you can give them the money. Their Greed came straight from Satan's Balls, and for that, they need this punishment.

It was my first 3D Super Mario game. I never had a chance to play Sunshine or dabble with the N64 cult classic, so I went into this Mario without the glasses of nostalgia or any prescribed expectations. All I wanted is a neat, fun, interesting 3D platformer, that will require of me precision controls, mastering the many movement options, solving some in-space puzzles and be enjoyable in the basic game loop. And oh boy, Super Mario Odyssey delivers in spades. I was truly shocked about how well paced and tightly packed the game is, when still managing to offer something new pretty much behind every corner! First, the plot – It’s as rudimentary as you can expect from a Mario game. Big B kidnaps Princess P, this time to marry her in style. He has henchmen, who are silly. You, the plumber-jumper, must save the princess, but this time you have a magical buddy who wants to save his sister (in form of a Tiara). That’s it. Your goal? Chase the big Baddie through various maps, gather LOTS of same thing to fuel your travel. Simple, but that’s fantastic, and here’s why – It gives clear goals for every stage and shiny, singular objective for your whole journey. You don’t get muddled down in your fun, you don’t worry or bother about character arcs or some big turmoil. You jump between beautifully crafted maps to tackle the same problem in vastly differing way. You know there is certain amount of Things To Find, but gosh, each level varies with enemy types, environmental traps and game mechanics needed to cross it. And it works fantastically because… The map design is mind-blowing, to a point, that I believe it will be taught in game design courses. The game is not Open World. It’s just old stage-after-stage gameplay. But that’s amazing, because every stage differs VASTLY from another. In music, style, visuals, but also in core gameplay mechanics needed to traverse it, focusing on different skills and different approach. Some levels are superbly vertical, some display tremendous amounts of hidden passages and nooks to find out. Others are riddled with hazards to cross, while other are vastly open, and require a curious eye to look for irregularities to spot. Every level feels like a breath of fresh air, always delivering something new to pick a player curiosity to explore and experiment. Maps are also very tight. They are not small, most of the time, but they are also not vast and empty. In fact, every corner of the map is an offering of a new challenges, both minor and major. Another beautiful thing is the scope of game difficulty. It’s organic, in a way, that you can finish the game with minimal challenge. Each level requires you to find a certain amount of Power Moons. And to get them, you really must do a series of rather easy tasks, most of the time. BUT each stage consists of so many more Power Moons than you require, and its unique currency… And to gather them all, you will face challenges that are much, much harder, and will truly test your patience and great skill in mobility. So, the gameplay is stellar. It’s fun, it’s as challenging as you want it to be, it’s always fresh stage after stage. And it looks amazing – it’s colorful and cheerful, of course, but every level feels as its own creation, conveying the theme and mood beautifully, with spectacular music helping greatly to set an atmosphere. Lastly, it’s important to notice the astonishing controls. Nintendo really nail this stuff, and Mario moves with pinpoint, godlike precision. Every jump, run, roll and bounce is so precise, you can execute some stellar moves to cross long vaults, narrow lines or other hard mobility tests in game. And playing on two Joy-Cons really shows how smartly they used the motion of their pads. It’s fun and precise, and I love it.

I was looking for a fun MOBA to play for a long time, but when the idea of the genre sit with me well, the density of its mechanics, extremely competetive and rather sour atmosphere surrounding them and the fact that the market is utterly, crushingly dominated by three titles made it a hard task. Fractured Space filled that role for me for a while, but with about 300 players online a day it is on its way to the games haven…. And then, Gigantic appeared. It caught my attention first with its looks and design. It was colourful and fun, but not childish. It had a strong visual identity and to my surprise, characters were all pretty well thought-out and just straight fun! Crazy moustached alchemist, old witch granny, owl musketeer… It all clicked with me enough to give the game a try, and I was enchanted. Because Gigantic for me delivers the MOBA’ish formula that just is extremely approachable, and here’s why… The game is simple. My biggest gripe with most MOBA’s is how complex and layered their mechanics are. Towers, cores, upgrades, equips, consumables, lanes, minions – there are a lot of tightly woven components to a classic MOBA that make these games tough to learn, offering a steep learning curve, which is not a bad thing on its own. Plenty of people enjoy a challenge of ‘getting good’ but MOBAs are also infamous for being extremely toxic. You are either good on the spot, or you need to listen to the ultimate blamefest, every game. Gigantic on the other hand offers a lovely, pretty unique and simple set of mechanisms. Summon creatures that aid you at certain spots and produce power for your Big Guy (titular Gigantic beast). Kill others and their creatures to gather more Power. If your team gets 100 power before enemy team does, your Big Guy goes for a friendly visit to the enemy Big Guy to hold him down so you and your teammates can spank him good. Each Big Guy have three wounds and loooots of Health Points, so it will take usually a few power-races to take them down. And that’s it, pretty much! It’s much, much simpler formula, and I am sure not everyone will like it, but for me it fits perfectly with the game dynamics, because Gigantic is a third person action-shooter-rpg kind of mixture, where everything happens really, really fast. So if you will need to spend extra time on some additional, convoluted mechanics, it would just create frustrating downtime and plenty of confusion. In this setup you can focus on properly picking skills from a narrow tree of choices as you level up in each game, working with your team to deliver good pushes and defences and just do your job to push your Big Guy to victory. Which is great, because it happens naturally and you can really just try to enjoy playing your champion well! All in all, so far it’s hard to say how’s the balance, but the content is solid. Sure, there is only one game mode and just three maps, but with a lively and fun roster of characters, some extra creatures to pick from and the fact that at this moment all characters sees play, well, it’s a really solid entertainment that I can recommend! If you’re looking for a light, easy to access MOBA’ish game, this one should fit you perfectly.

I wanted to write a huge rant, but this game is so tiring I just can't. So, TL;DR - This game is work. Boring, crummy, soul-draining and mind-numbing work. It's the most tedious RPG I ever player and it feels outdated on release... As in I didn't expect an AAA game released in this age to have such a terrible approach to a player time. The game is ENDLESS backtracking. In a quest that takes an hour to finish you will literally spend 40 minutes on flying through same planets and watching same 3 cutscenes over and over again only to spend 5 minutes in actual conversations in the quest. See this is it. I don't care about enforced SJW agenda. I don't care about uggo-female characters. I don't even care that the graphics and animations are sometimes pretty wonky. What maked me hate this game with a mild passion is how terribly, utterly boring it is. I did ALL the planets and invested quite a lot of time in this barrell of tar just to see if it picks up at any time, but it doesn't. This game hates you and wants you to be bored to death so when something slightly more exciting happens, you say your prayers and thank the gods... Avoid this RPG with quests taken from 2001 MMO's.

It's a sad attempt really, and it's a shame, because the game idea and look are both pretty neat. I mean, who don't want to fly a monstrous capital space ship into the fray? However Dreadnought is just... awful. I played a couple of hours, and we steamrolled or got steamrolled in a dumb as hell Team Deathmatch mode that was basically either both sides standing in place shooting at each other or two sides circling around scoring some hits. There was no strategy, no planning, no fun in these enounters and all ships pretty much felt the same, despite their assigned roles and guns... Mostly due to gameplay muddling down to "Lock onto a SLOW AS HELL big target and keep pressing Left mouse button to smash". This turned out to be obviously extremely boring and without even a smidgen of a thrill to it. Add the constant **** to get 'Elite', painful, World of Tank'ish grind through the tech tree and stupid as hell tutorial and you got a really bad game. Even steering your ship is clunky! No strafing? No side boosters? You feel like you are moving a very obsolete wooden barge, not advanced spaceship. Conclusion? Go and spend your cash on Fractured Space - their MOBA mechanics, tight controls and fantastic menu of very different ships offers what Dreadnought would like to be... Just Fractured Space does it really well.

TL;DR - Fun. Whimy. Frustrating. ARMS is a really goodf, fun game, that offers superb audio and visuals delight, extremely quick and adrenaline-pumpin' gameplay and sterling Online Party mode. Yet, it's often Nitendo Hard, it's frustrating to learn and often makes you wanna wail in outrage. Problem for me in ARMS comes from me **** at it big time. I am terrible at this, unable to dodge, unable to duke it out, unable to grab... I don't pull this game grade down because I ****, it happens. But I have to say that lack of any proper learning curve is a bit frustrating. Nothing really is explained except basic of controls. It's not inherently bad! I like games that doesn't hold my hand through everything in the game, but still in a technical game like ARMS, where mechanics are the key, I'd love to know things beside the control sheme - like what's the delay between movement options and hits, how to negate grab attempts, what items dropping on the arena do and mostly what each ARM does - because fluff text express it in some way, but I'd rather have hard stats telling me how much damage, how fast and what gimmick an ARM offer to the player. Thanks to extremely quick matches and the arena combat it is hard to learn from your own mistakes, because it's hard to see what you did wrong. In a single match I can completely win one round without being hit only to lose two next rounds being completely destroyed, as all hits suddenly miss, all opponent grabs land no matter what I try to do and in the rapid anarchy on the field it is very hard to pinpoint the areas in which I failed and need to practice. This issue grows expotentially for me due to assymetric characters, each having a very different lag between moves, movement lenght and speed and so on, and so on. But the frustration and steep, confusing learning curve is pretty much the game only flaw. Everything else is spotless and I can see how you can really love this game when you learn the mechanics and technical gameplay of combat. Music is upbeat, fun, energetic. Visuals are splendid! Colorful, bright, with fantastic light effects and very tacticle feeling behind every punch you throw. Characters are nice, whimsy and fun in their own way. Game mods? Solid bunch. Grand Prix offer very back-to-the-roots grand championship tower, where you climb up difficulty and all players in the roster to fight a boss and win. Versus is bread and butter of this game - duking it out with a friend is an absolute, blood rushing, laugh inducing delight. And online party mode? Glorious. Sure, some mini-games are unispired, but it works like a charm. Even waiting in the lobby is fun, and it's so dynamic, so fast, that when you enter the party mode you can just sink yourself into the game for hours just bouncing between random fights with random folks online.

TL;DR – Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is pretty much the best open world game I ever played, overcoming for me even a brilliant experience from the Witcher 3, the old but trusty vastness of Skyrim quests and the freedom of approach in MGS5: Phantom Pain. The sheer physicality and material tangibility of the world opens up countless possibilities to the player, not limiting us in any way and most importantly, treating a player with respect, never really holding our hands and trying to explain to us what’s what. You need to find your own way, your own solutions and spark that exploration desire within you. Okay, now that the short brief of the review is out, time for some thicker explanations. I am not a Zelda franchise fan. The only other Zelda I played was Link to the Past more than 15 years. I am not therefore married to the game lore and characters and general style. At one hand, it means I am definitely not blinded by thick glasses of nostalgia, but at the other hand it means I cannot really talk about ‘series atmosphere’ or common grounds with the other games in this big franchise. As for the moment, I put about 50 hours in this game, conquered three divine beasts and got my Master Sword. Did some side quests, explored nearly every region to some degree and had a complete blast doing so! Here’s why. The game tells me that I am stupid. Or in search for a better word, just too comfortable. Simply put as gamers nowadays we are pretty used to being pampered by games, led by hand, have our games tells us exactly where we should go, what we should do in rich detail, so we don’t get frustrated, lost and impatient. Look at Witcher 3… It is an extremely fun open RPG, but when you pick a quest you don’t really need to figure things out on your own in most cases. You follow the breadcrumbs objectives on the map, or a rather obvious trail of blood or scent and ultimately, you are being led step by step to the quest conclusion. In Zelda quests, you often are given the bare minimum or not even that! Just ‘There is a bridge somewhere near the broken stone, and maybe there is something to it’. Or ‘There a legendary bandit somewhere in this region. Have fun finding him!’. And so on and so on. You are given a hint, a nudge, a little snippet on info, and what you will do about it is your very own decision. Frankly, even in the game tutorial phase the game tries to tell you that. Old Man tells you to find the shrines, give you a hint to use your scope and that’s that! There are no flashy objective indicators of any kind, you need to find the shrines yourself and mark the on your map with your own hands. And frankly, I love it… Because the game managed to tinge my exploration desire in a big way. Yes, there is plenty of nothing. There are vast empty spaces of grass or sand or snow, but they also have a purpose – they don’t just exist to create a grander scale in the map, but also fills me with quite an irksome urge to find something and manage to spark my interest whenever I see something even a little out of place! Now when on a horizon line I see a curious tree, a ruined building, a cavern or unusual stone formation I will most likely abandon my straight travel to explore such things… And more often than not I am rewarded with a fun little discovery! Perhaps it was just a Korok or a buried treasure with some little reward, but just finding it was rewarding enough for me! And sometimes I find something big and extraordinary and it feels me with a glorious triumph and fuel my desire to wander around and poke under every stone. The best example of that is my gradual change of attitude towards walking around. At first I ignored my surrounding. I went straight to combat, I didn’t give a notion to the tall grass or trees or rocks. Later I started to sneak, to look for alternate routes... And even later I was quite happy to make tree-bridges, catapult myself with Stasis and big boulders or create flying rafts with my octo-balloons! The wonder of exploring goes greatly in pair with internal game logic and physics of materials. Wood burns down. Metal conduit electricity. Water is wet. Rocks are hard. It sound silly, but it offers some ridiculous consistency! Need to activate an electric-triggered gate? Don’t look for a second battery, make a trail of metallic weapons from the first one to cheat the riddle… It is possible. Like so, so many other things. Cut down trees to roll heavy log down the hill to crush enemies, burn the grasses to get air updraft, lock time on nearly everything to mess with it… Possibilities are outstanding. Too add to that… Game is pretty to look at. Characters are fun. Locations differ a lot. Weapon system, where tedious, is superbly fun to manage from a mechanical perspective. Music is fantastic. Stories you uncover are really engaging in most cases. Crafting is superbly entertaining! This game for me is an open world game done right.

The Sadist Architect Simulator! Embark on a journey to device the most horrible, blood-curdling and fury inducing traps your sickening, twisted mind can develop! Use plethora of deadly toys straight from only the highest quality nightmares of an insane mad scientist to really make a life of an adventurous plumber a living hell! But that's not enough! If it tickles you fancy to watch your friends and beloved suffer, make some levels and with a gleeful smile drop'em on them... Watch as their patience melt and ire emerge as your clever, cunning and cruel level design strip them of their humanity! Want more? Of course! You are a proper monstrous maniac, so upload your death traps to the network to let masochists all over the world torture themselves! You barely have to invite them to try your horrors! Pain! Suffering! Endless dingle sounds of merry death! You will find it all in the glorious game of endlessly killing a small moustached italian in overalls and a curious fancy to the shrooms!

This game is good. Like, really good. I read some reviews claiming it’s very barebones for the high price and I can somehow see it, but now, when I write this review, this game got enough updates to put some meat on the bones and so it is clearly not an empty, hollow skeleton it was at the release, so… Right now, if you think about buying this, I rise a thumb up and recommend because SPLATOON is FUN. The whole idea of making their very own online shooter that will be non-violent (as much as the genre allows!) was a daunting task to put it softly, and yet, they managed… The game is whimsical, colourful, funny and most importantly, ridiculously exhilarating, right now it is my #1 game for stress relief! Why? Let’s take a brief look… --- Look and Feel --- The game looks like a candy! It’s absolutely beautiful in every possible way… Yes, it is not next-gen graphics, it does not strive for realism, it does not provide astonishing light effects and some mind-boggling details to focus on. It doesn’t have to, because it knows what it want to be. And it want to be a bright, enjoyable world full, bah, rich in colour and this light mood that makes you firmly believe that even if you do shoot others into explosive oblivion of ink, it’s more a game, a fun play than actual fighting and fierce competition. Characters are just charmingly cute, the details and rich choice of their customization through outfits adds a big and delicious touch of personality to each Squiddo… Arenas are quite different from each other, well designed and most importantly, beautiful to look at! Even more attention to detail was put into… The ink! The whole painting the land process looks real, feels real and matched with great music and sounds effects give you this delightful “get dirty and wet with the paint” feeling. Animations are also on point, smooth, nice… Enjoyable. This is a beautifully looking game in the very Nintendoish way. Bright, happy, colourful. --- Cogs and Gears --- So, the game is still pretty bare, but bear with me (no pun intended… perhaps!). As for online multiplayer shooter it still lacks some essential tools, like the long awaited teamspeak which will never come due to two issues – first, there are no regional separation, and so you can have a mixture of all languages in a single team. Hoping all of them will talk English is selfish and vain. Secondly, and I understand Nintendo here, is the vile hatred and pure acid it would bring… Show me ONE online game in which players are polite, not-swearing wads. Nintendo want none of that in their colourful game on the consoles for families, right? Putting that aside, the game still do not have rich selection of Arenas (it’s hardy Q3A…), the special abilities on the gear offers miniscule bonuses and the gear is made in such a way that any chance to make builds is horribly squandered and the weaponry, when quite balances, does not really offer anything extremely unique in feel. Which is fine, because thanks to that the games are more balanced. It might piss off hardcore players who expect game solely based on skill, but Splatoon never aimed to be “Nintendo variant of Quake”, but a light, quick shooter to have some fun. And they surely did that well. --- Fun Factor --- Oh gosh… Plenty of that here! This game is insanely fun and basically thanks to this elusive and hard to define factor I am giving it such a high grade. On the first look it might feel a little wonky, a little empty in content, easy to burn through… And, on some level, this is true. However it is very important to notice, that even when you are piledriving through the game, it always remain extremely fun. Each fast paced match is thrilling and awesome. You very rarely feel that there are some defeats that you cannot win through if you pull your act together (and usually it happens only if one of your team member is AFK or disconnect). Even the repetitive maps have surprisingly high refresh rate, as you rarely focus on the arena alone, and more on the fast paced play going on, trying to cover it all in ink and splat some fools that come to your sight… Even extremely simple and straightforward single player campaign is so fast-paced and breakneck you do not really find yourself thinking “well, this is dumb” but rather “woo-hee, here we go!”. All in All, Splatfest is growing nicely. New maps, new modes, new weaponry is coming as we speak, the game expands… And I still continue to love it and I feel better if during a day I burn 30-40 minutes splashing ink around.

Mario Party 10. A game in which you and your friends are supposed to have lots of casual, lighthearted fun. What's not to love in this recipe? Gloriously colorful graphics, beloved characters, simple formula, astonishing Nintendo Sound Delight, quite a lot of really fun minigames... Really, what is here not to love? Quite a few things, sadly. See, I am a newcomer to the series. I know that earlier installment of this game had a different core of a mechanic, in which each player had its own pawn to move around the board, strengthening the sense of competition. You could easily see who was triumphing and who was falling behind. And therefore, I understand Nintendo decision to change it and drop all players into a single vehicle, so all of the players progress the same way and the victory is mostly decided on how well they are handling themselves in the minigames and of course on a stroke of luck. Less frustration, right? And you know what? It works! Thanks to this change in the core mechanic all players are always engaged 100%, because no one have a feeling that they are horribly behind others with no visible chance at redemption and victory. And that is the point in which Bowser Party mode fails to some degree. I /love/ the idea of this mode. Gosh, it's pretty darn brilliant! A whole team of friends fighting not against computer, not between themselves, but against another living player who not only try to outwit them in various mischievous ways on the board but also will test his buddies mettle in brutally delightful minigames of carnage, where as Bowser we aim to eliminate other players swiftly. It sounds, looks and at first plays beautifully, it looks like so much fun! And it is! Sometimes, that is... The biggest failing in Bowser Party is how uneven the games can be. We play one time, and it's amazing - lots of tension, narrow escapes, reviving buddies by winning hearts, minigames pretty much every round... It was a total blast! But then we play another game, and it's the Most Boring Thing in the Universe. Bowser tosses like a pansy and can barely catch the party once or twice in the course of whole game... Basically turning the whole experience into tossing a dice and moving through the board. Thrilling? i don't think so. The elimination also kills the fun, it's a usual problem with the 'you are out' mechanic. It's a party game, right? I and /all of my buddies/ wants to have fun, right? So how can they have fun when I basically out them off the game? I had a game once when 3 out of 4 players were eliminated halfway through the map and until the very end of the game they never jumped in... And so 3 people were just watching 2 others plays. Riveting. And to add another minus to the list above... /THREE/ boards? THREE? Huh... The boards are lovely, both in look and design, and they offer quite a bit of fun, but since they are always adamantly the same, the replayability of them dwindles rapidly away. Shame! Why 7 then out of 10? 7 is quite a high grade, it means "it's good, It's fun, but it is flawed enough to not be considered great in any way". And that's MP10 for me... It's beautiful. It sound amazing. It /offers quite a few sweet thrills/ and you will have fun with it. But it lacks meat on the bone, so to speak, and on occasion it will let you down...

This game is golden. I don't want to give it 10 out of 10 simply because I barely started playing it with 5 hours in the basket, but so far, it showed me something great... It showed me what Dragon Age series could be if it wasn't governed by the biggest scumbags in the industry, that is EA. Don't get me wrong... I really enjoyed Dragon Age Inquisition and would gladly give it a solid 7 out of 10, it had some good points, it had some bad points, but it was a pleasant experience... But since I /just/ about finished DAI and jumped straight on the Witcher I can see how these games should actually be! Everything Witcher 3 does, it does better. World is "semi-open", just like in DAI, but it much, much better in scope! It feels more alive, have more NPCs and a ton of things to do on your very own. Side Quests are /brilliantly fun/ and engaging instead of the classics of yore, like "go kill 10 things" or "deliver this **** to the other side of the map, plox". The amount of things you can find, collect, craft and explore is outstanding for a game that isn't fully open world, like for example good ol' Skyrim... Not to mention, the game looks just brilliant; textures, light, even drawing distance... It is truly enchanting. Fighting is another thing that make it fun. Okay, so, yes, a lot of reviews will tell you that fighting is nothing unique, innovative or brilliant, but it is also not bad at all - just a good, entertaining system without a flare. I can agree with it, but I'd like to add something to it... Fighting system in Witcher 3 can be as fun as you, player, want it to be. You can just plough through most fights with basic attack & roll, patience and one sign you like to use, sure. But if you truly want to be a master Witcher that literally tear apart any beast that comes into sight, you need to explore every bit of the mechanic and invest your time into it... Brew tinctures, potions and oils. Prepare bombs. Master the 'signs juggling'. Understand the attack patterns and skills of your target. And most importantly, REALLY read the bestiary file since the amount of info you can get from this thing is outstanding. If you do all of this, trust me, you will feel like a true expert in slaying monsters, and you will realize that all this tough fights suddenly became easy as cake when you take your time to prepare for them... So far though my biggest joy of Witcher 3 is, well... The Script. Writing. It was always a major standpoint and feature of this series, to never make any character, even the lowliest NPC a one dimensional dork. There are no "shining pure Knights" or "Dark evil people" here. Everyone meddle in the grey zone. Everyone do bad things for different reasons, or their good deeds never go unpunished. Every choice you make (and there is a massive amount of them!) can turn back on you in the most twisted, curious and unexpected of ways. It is thrilling! Another great point is a simple fact, that the writing is /GOOD/. Characters talk and seems real, they are cynical, sarcastic, snappy, impatient, but also jovial, energetic, enthusiastic, disgruntled... Whole spectrum of emotions, both in spectacular voiceovers as well as, gosh golly, face mimics and movements. Maybe it strike me so well because I just finished Dragon Age Inquisition - which had great voices and good acting, but the models of characters during dialogues were stiff, unmoving, sad mannequins. Here they really seem so alive! Eye shifting all the time, eyebrows working, jaws clenching, lips curling, hands moving around, stance changing. You can SEE their emotion on their bodies and faces. It is truly great... If you are looking for a challenging RPG with amazingly good and overfilled world, fun quests, mature script and awesome scope, Witcher 3 is going to **** you in and you will sink too much time into it, trust me :D