Jetpil0t

"So Tight!", "not really?". I played the early release copy and this version has come a long way. However the game certainly needs some balancing and polish to really excel. Enemies make zero noise so spawning behind you often is frustrating, enemies all rush you and path finding within levels is linear to non existent, rather than encouraging you to move around the space you simply backpedal and bunny hop about which ends up less serviceable than slow rolling the game picking enemies off, which isn't all that fun in this game, weapons feel weak especially if you boost through grouping packs and the shooting ends up as bullet sponge tedium, armor and ammo costs way too much. The entirely random nature of it really adds little to the gameplay, it would be better served if it was designed carefully and balanced throughout with multiple difficulties ala 90s shooters, so its sort of as if these guys didn't really play shooters in the 90s? The rouge style format simply doesn't feel suitable inside this game and takes away much of the fun with many runs just being a depressing slew of horrible weapons, upgrades and level layouts, something that wouldn't crop up otherwise. The procedural nature certainly provides more re-playability in theory, but ultimately just boils down to being more frustrating and repetitive than adding anything interesting or fun to the game. I like the games style and it's fun, but in the end it kind of ends up being aggressively repetitive, unbalanced and tedious like so many rouge style games do. Rule number one of a shooter is that a gun can never be too powerful, this game makes the classic mistake of confusing difficulty with tedium and thats a shame. Perhaps after some balancing and design changes this could be a fun game to rip through but currently, just spool up a copy of the Marathon 2 or Quake 2 if you feel the need for some throwback 90s style shooting. Also why the **** is the Wolf3D throwback arcade stack in game got no mouse support, makes it impossibly lame and basically impossible on PC.

The look is probably the most appealing part of the game and even that wears thin under closer scrutiny with poor animations, performance, clipping and model quality, especially as a UE4 title. There are some compelling gameplay additions and amusing moments if you can stand to play this game to it's bitter end (I had a few chuckles, but very few), but none of which are compelling enough to recommend doing so. The controls are pretty bad overall, keyboard or controller and more or less take away from the moderately passable gameplay to where it is generally more frustrating than fun. I don't have any particular opinion about the themes in the game, certainly there are more violent games but I don't really think what is here is all that significant. The game itself isn't particularly great and if you are trying to sell a game on violence and headlines alone, the violence itself isn't very shocking either (no melee weapons, dismemberment or children) so some respects it's odd they held back when it's really the only merits on which this game is selling. Regardless of why you came to play this, you will probably leave disappointed.

An impressive game with a probably too many technical issues and design problems to really surpass The Witcher 2 as far as overall quality, especially from a gameplay standpoint. Still worth playing, but probably only if you are coming for the story, the combat and game systems here just aren't up to the task. Starting off with the game's strong points: The environment detail both in visual fidelity, effects, size and density is impressive to say the least. The voice acting is generally top notch and there is quite a lot of it. The side quests tend to be pretty compelling and avoid the usual traps of simplistic "fetch this" and "kill that" design. The character skills and build options are a nice new addition, although arguably unnecessary due to the pretty shallow difficulty. Enemy design and abilities can be interesting. Unfortunately the core mechanics of the gameplay really let down the game overall: Combat animations, timing, interrupts, collision detection and hit detection are all really loose and inaccurate, this is not a tightly wound combat system. The controls in general aren't great moving around the environment, collision detection and button assignments and universally awful. The horse is awful, it gets stuck, glitches, animates poorly and has horrible controls and collision detection. Combat on horse back is a total farce. The loot system scales loot, but not enemy levels, so this leaves you with a very unrewarding loot system and gear progression that heavily favors crafting and leaves you with very little, or in fact no found gear that is really very compelling. Enemies don't scale levels at all, so doing low level quests later in the game leaves all your foes falling in a single hit, on the other than it really just serves to limit you from taking on higher level quests at your discretion, for no particular reason. Enemy AI is generally quite poor, they get stuck on objects, fail to be able to hit you when you stand next to them in certain positions, fail to move at all on occasion, attack and block at random intervals, regardless of difficulty. Difficulty scales only enemy health and damage, not skills, timing, attack patters, dodging or aggressiveness. It's a level based game, so having difficulty that only scales health and damage just level caps your questing, which actually makes the game less enjoyable. Not to mention and inordinately long list of technical issues from crashing, animation issues, visual rendering issues and so on. Most of these issues actually were not present in Witcher 2 and likely a bi product of being an open world adventure this time around. Here, you are clearly sacrificing the tight controls, combat and leveling structure for the sake of having an open world experience, albeit a very nice looking one. I feel as though the game would probably have been better served in a more linear format, as that wasn't a particular problem in the previous title, and the trade-offs here really undermine the game overall. It's not a bad game, if they balanced some of the underlying leveling and loot systems by scaling enemies and not scaling gear, tighten up the controls, contact animations and collision detection it would really be a 9/10 or better game. In it's current state, you really are just playing this one for the story. I would wait for the Enhanced Edition, much as you should have done for The Witcher 2. The hype train is real with this one, although the story is great and the visuals are compelling, there are so many mechanical pitfalls and technical problems here it really is a bummer. 7/10, Enchanced Edition, probably an easy 9/10.

A really excellent game marred by fairly significant performance issues on PC. There is a lot to like here, the gameplay is smooth and well executed, difficulty level pis well tuned, story is substantial and interesting and side quests and missions are sizable, diverse and rarely repetitive. The enemy design and difficulty level is really well crafted, which is rare, especially in these types of open world games. Enemies are diverse and challenging and while there is no difficulty setting, players can moderate their own difficulty level through their play style which measures anywhere from moderate to quite difficult. The quest design is a real stand out too, as you rarely undertake any pointless or tedious quests and unexpected things consistently take place throughout, keeping things interesting and always worth doing. However the games performance on PC leaves quite a lot to be desired. I have played this on an R9 290 and a GTX 970, AMD GPU performance borders on unplayable while nVidia GPU performance is merely average despite the prevalence of nVidia Gameworks and proprietary features. AMD CPU performance takes a real hit too as the game seems to be not so well optimized leaving the single core performance of Intel CPUs at a significant advantage. That being said, the game presents with very few if any technical bugs, so hopefully any developer efforts will be focused solely on optimization. Quite a shame really as there are so many well crafted systems in the game, it's hard to fault it elsewhere and a real stand out title to get things kicked off in 2015.

While admittedly short in it's run time, it is an excellent showcase for the evolution of the Metal Gear formula and an all round high quality PC product. So the game is a single sandbox area wherein the game guides you through a primary mission padded along with some excellent albeit brief cut-scenes. The initial mission is quite brief, but once you have beaten it several more missions open up to take place in the same area. The missions design is excellent, especially for this type of game and offer some really serious replay value with lots of different options and strategies to explore each time. I would estimate several hours of content here, which is more than acceptable for the price and the quality level of what is here is outstanding. Tons of visual options, optimized really well and KB+Mouse controls I found surprisingly better than the controller. This is a top to bottom polished PC version of a really top notch Metal Gear experience. We will be waiting for some time for the Phantom Pain to be released on PC, but Ground Zeroes demonstrates with almost certainty that the wait will be worthwhile.

I really wanted to like this, I enjoyed DA:O and even DA:II (although to a lesser extent) however this game and all of its 90+ review scores has my mind blown. Perhaps it was simply the slew of terrible big budget games this year, but this game really let it go. I think if you compare this to the something like The Witcher 2 (which you obviously should), you will find that the controls, visual design, story and world design leave a lot to be desired. This game more closely resembles an MMO in the quest style, controls, level design, and combat scenarios than a high quality single player RPG. While the story is compelling, literally everything else about this game is a chore and significantly worse than previous Bioware titles. Controls are intended to have a weighty feel but end up more sluggish and disconnected, rendering combat more tedious than fun. Moving behind enemies and breaking from combat is painfully difficult and clumsy with the "tactical" mode being more of an unusable slap dash feature check than anything well crafted and useful. Quite simply the control system from movement, attacking, blocking to tactical positioning is poor, unresponsive and slow. I have played this with an Xbox controller and KB Mouse and while the controller in many ways feels more direct, the tactical camera, inventory management and so on are much worse. Really if you enjoyed the responsive combat, tactics and controls of The Witcher, this by comparison really feels no better than Guild Wars 2 (or similar). You cannot customize mouse controls or any Xbox gamepad controls along with a slew of other control oddities. Your character bumbles along over pebbles and stones, hopping up and down blocked by ankle height objects placed in the most awkward places, it screams of auto-generated horribleness. The world density is quite low with objects, supplies and enemies popping out of the map and re-spawning rather randomly. The simple act of looting anything apparently needs to take forever in this game and with loot everywhere it becomes one of the first problems you will notice. You can see that the environments are anything but hand crafted and once you explore any area you notice it is horribly bland, empty and overly similar from place to place. There is reasonable quest density but the quests involve more running from place to place than the multi-part, choice filled story driven side quests seen in (again) something like The Witcher or even Mass Effect. What we have here are mostly fetch quests the likes of which you have see in every MMO before. Enemies don't scale either, so regardless of difficulty if you attempt anywhere near moderate completion within an area, you will overleveled for most of the game. It really feels like they copy pasted half the quests for content, which leads to repetitive and simple quest design with no balance leaving you overleveled on anything other than the hardest difficulty. Difficulty again really comes down to leveling, the hardest difficulty really just means you can only battle enemies at your own level, dropping the difficulty allows you to challenge higher level enemies and finish the game without doing as much side content. There is no discernible difference to enemy design, strategy or character balancing. I finished the game on Hard, with 4 Warriors, no potions, no tactical camera, doing less than half the sidequests and failed to die once on my first playthrough. I mean the Witcher showed us that difficulty can open up new enemies, new behaviors in AI, even new bosses and require more use of magic, potions and strategy, here we have nothing more than health and damage increases with half of the in game mechanics being almost entirely unnecessary, it really blows my mind anyone would rate this a 90 or more. I think people on console hardly notice the painfully striking MMO type design blunders and balance issues, which is why PC people have appropriately nailed this game to the wall and for than than just the technical problems. So there are interesting design elements around the War Room and how the break up the world into smaller regions. While after some time this feels largely arbitrary and designed to hide world gating, loading and story progression, it's interesting and worth noting as a plus. The story is good, but it's an RPG, so it basically has to be. However the controls, balance, level design, quest design and technical problems that plague this game make it to strikingly average it is ridiculous. It's not a bad game, it's just really not a very good one. To that end I have no idea why everyone reviewed this so highly, perhaps as a console experience it's reasonable or perhaps only series fans were reviewing the material, but honestly I would take critic reviews with grain of salt.

While it is far too similar to Far Cry 3 with a mix of mechanics from Blood Dragon to really be considered the next full release in the franchise, it is still an enjoyable game for fans of the series. The game makes improvements to mechanics, density of content and graphics, however the story and characters are weaker this time around with various issues from Far Cry 3 are still lingering. Forced mouse acceleration, constant frame stuttering, limited audio options and unskippable cutscenes mar an otherwise good experience at launch. Probably more aptly named Far Cry 3: Kyrat Dragon than Far Cry 4 it is still an enjoyable, lengthy and visually sumptuous experience with about average PC stability and performance at launch. Some of the missions try new things and fall painfully flat due to either poor execution or weak mission design, however some other missions really stand out with interesting and unique designs that work well. While neither a flawless nor consistent experience throughout, when it's on, it really delivers. If you played Far Cry 3, you really won't find any surprises or innovations, but what you will find is a solid follow up with enough improvements and plenty of content to satisfy. It is sure to say however, Far Cry 5 will really need to step it up, as more of the same really won't fly in another outing.

Horrible performance, which is laughable given the game has had plenty of time to ported properly and didn't launch alongside the original. Optimization is terrible and runs poorly on even very high end hardware with few graphics options available to allow you to tweak said terrible performance, although I didn't encounter too many bugs which is nice. This game follows the latest trend of releasing poor quality ports of games that should, with comparatively moderate effort to last generation, be ported with ease. But for whatever reason, arguably financial, you end up with weak, buggy and poorly optimized releases. Given the Xbox One runs an x86 processor, AMD GPU and Direct X, it is simply cost cutting and effortless porting that leaves this game running so poorly on PC. What a shame as it's actually a pretty enjoyable game overall.

An impressive re-release for those who haven't played the Original Metro 2033 or Last Light and an ejoyable re-play if you haven't played Metro 2033 since launch. Excellent value and significantly improved visuals over the original Metro 2033, while Last Light remains largely the same with the inclusion of all DLC. The price here is excellent for what is on offer, the games are bug free and well optimized and don't now require such a high end PC in today's market to get the most out of the tem, making them more accessible than the originals and certainly worth a play through. Really very little to complain about here, great games, improved visuals and for a great price.

The DRM baked into this game results in horrible PC performance, which is a shame as the game is generally quite enjoyable. If you enjoyed Dark Souls, or perhaps if you couldn't quite get into the more hardcore nature of that game, this game has quite a lot to offer. This game doesn't really stand out other than being a more accessible and arcade style Dark Souls type game, which isn't a bad thing, but probably won't satisfy Dark Souls devotees. Certainly raises the bar for the studio, who have released a long list of uninteresting and/or broken games, so it's nice to see them finally land a hit. The key thing here is that the DRM here hurt people who paid for the game, which is a really unfortunately and unwelcome position for a studio to be taking. Currently the game remains uncracked, but only for a time, meanwhile people who have purchased the game are left with middling performance even on high end PCs, which otherwise tarnishes a game that is generally quite well made, graphically impressive and enjoyable overall.

i5 2500k @ 4.8Ghz, 16GB RAM, R9 290 overclocked on water, Can't get 60fps stable on lowest settings with no AA/AF @ 1080p. Another system I have i74690k @ 4.6Ghz, 16GM RAM, GTX 970 overclocked on water, better performance, but still can't get stable 60fps @ 1080p on any settings. What a complete joke. Despite that the game is buggy as hell, constantly falling through floors and heaps of crashes, not to mention heaps of NPC spawns on roofs and in mid air, the list goes on and on. This is at best a Beta build of the game, arguably they would have released this in 2015 and fixed most of the problems, but they have rushed for the busy November games launch window and as a result this game is woefull. I will be returning for a refund through Origin, the amount of problems are so vast, bug fixes and even moderate optimization isn't going to be realistic for some months. Given it's appalling reception, expect to see it go on sale quickly as well, I wouldn't recommend this at all in it's current state, for any price. Just wait and pickup Rouge whenever it comes out on PC, given its based on the AC4 engine and has a delayed release, it will most likely work properly and give you some PC assassins creed between now and whenever they expect to finish this release. Most insulting game release this year, by far, and goes toe to toe with the worst games of all time as far as a PC release. Even on PS4 I the framerate dips into the 20s or lower frequently, with loads of pop in and gross textures. This game needed another year in development, obviously. Greed at it's finest.

The absence of dedicated servers on PC once again makes this yet another multiplayer disappointment. This is by the far the single biggest reason to avoid this game on the PC on principle and in practice. The single player I found to be typically derivative from previous titles in it's level design and story (so expect nothing new here) however this time however it has included (and to a much more subdued extent) mechanics borrowed from other shooters. These additional mechanics offer very minor, but welcome improvements to the single player gameplay overall, but you could play the respective source material and enjoy these various mechanics to a much fuller extent through significantly better single player experiences, so there implementation here with no real innovation doesn't feel worth while overall. Visually it looks superior to Ghosts, but by about as much as each COD game generally improves visuals every year. Certainly the visuals put on show in the trailers are from pre-rendered cut scenes, which look significantly better than the game play, even maxed out on PC, which is fairly misleading. It does however run significantly better and comes with plenty of quality settings, which is a welcome change. Many reviewers have touted these improvements to really freshen up the series, however this is only because the series suffered from extremely derivative and repetitive content for so many years. On it's own it is the iterative improvement each new installment should be, but offers nothing revolutionary like United Offensive or Modern Warfare did back in the series prime. This game sits above many of the series worst entries, but falls significantly shorter of the series highs. I wouldn't recommend this on PC if you are interested in the multiplayer, you don't have any dedicated servers and so much like Ghosts the community will be next to nonexistent in only a few months. I wouldn't recommend the single player on it's own especially for the full retail price. If you are interested in what's here, Crysis Warhead is very similar and significantly more enjoyable and well made single player game and it also has the advantage of looking better than Advanced Warfare, despite it's age. Overall I wouldn't recommend this installment, the lack of dedicated servers and ho-hum single player do nothing to justify the price or stand out from the last few installments overall. Perhaps a return to WW2 that focuses on core mechanics is what the series needs to really deliver once again. Or perhaps it's finished and it's time to move onto other more innovative franchises, only time will tell. 6/10

This game borrow features and mechanics from your favorite games, however it manages to improve on then mix these features together so well, it doesn't matter that you have seen it before, becuase you have never seen it done this good. The game doesn't simply rely on familiar features, it introduces the Nemisis subsystem that not only sets the game apart from its source material, it is a genuinely innovate approach to open world encounter design. The license seems like an unnecessary side dish, however it is integrated well into the rest of the game and doesn't assume LOTR knowledge or interest in order to be effective. The game is excellent, this is a master class in how to iterate and innovate and the same time.

Very limited features for any driving game in 2014 and feels every part the mediocre free to play experience you might expect. The driving is a strange balance between sim and arcade and does neither well with an end result that is as confusing as much as it is uninteresting and unenjoyable. The visuals are great with steady framerate, but no more so than any other driving games released in the same year. Layered in social features, this game probably caters well to it's target demographic, but as a game in its own right, its lack of features, poor launch quality and wholly uninteresting core driving experience make this one of the most forgettable driving games in recent memory.

The most compelling component is the games story, which is interesting, builds well and ends nicely, but don't expect a lengthy or complex plot. The visuals are excellent and the game runs great with no bugs or performance problems. However the puzzle and encounter designs never really develop in complexity or mechanics beyond the first set piece and the quality of the gameplay and puzzles even seems to taper off as you progress towards the end of the game. Overall the game is somewhat light on content and perhaps a little to light to really be engaging for its admittedly brief run time. However the game is an interesting mix of detective mechanics with walk around story exposition that would make for a more compelling game if it only it were filled with more puzzles, more complex puzzles and more story to explore. Looking forward to this teams next endeavor.

Overall the game makes great use of the license and introduces a few really great mechanics into the non combat horror game formula, while allowing you light combat options in limited situations. I did however find the level design and encounter design to be very linear and repetitive. Animation quality isn't great. The small amounts of combat that are in the game feel very poorly put together. The save system can create huge frustrations with infrequent checkpoints placed behind quick time events and story components. This type of game is generally quite short and available for less than full retail, thus with this title coming in at full price it feels extortionately padded out to justify it's price. This in turn reduces the quality of the game considerably and is probably one of it's most noticeable lows with some sections dragging on into an hour or more of walking around. There really isn't any replay value here and the DLC is both short and overpriced. On the plus side it looks great, highly atmospheric and true to the genres well executed formula. If you don't already enjoy games like Outlast or Amnesia, you really won't enjoy this one. However if you do enjoy this type of game, Alien Isolation adds a few interesting chemicals into the mix and makes good use of the Alien License. Fortunately too it is a strong PC release with plenty of graphics options, very few bugs and performance is excellent.

Unfortunately this is a poor quality port of a reasonably good game. If you enjoyed any of the Resident Evil games you will know what to expect and quite certainly enjoy what is on offer here. If you look at the finer points of the level, enemy and overall gameplay design you will start to notice while this is a solid survival horror game, the overall design and execution is a little rough around the edges and becoming a little dated. Still an enjoyable game, but likely only if you already a fan of the genre. On PC however, this is a really poor quality port. The framerate is locked to 30fps, aspect ratio and FOV are both locked and the framerate is both poor and inconsistent. You can boost the framerate to 60fps by enabling the console, however this has various problems associated with it. Various environmental effects are noticeably still rendered at 30fps, you will get noticeable frame time and stuttering issues, as well the game struggles to stay above 60fps consistently even at only 1080p. Despite the use of a high end graphics card, you will still experience poor performance as the game underutilizes the GPU, as well it is has horribly unoptimized multi-threaded CPU performance to boot. Altering the aspect ratio reduces the effective FOV and you cannot increase the FOV, leaving very little adjustment available here. The Ultra Wide aspect ratio also will not display full screen on Ultra Wide displays, which is especially horrid as you end up with black bars on top and on the side of your screen. The game also crashes infrequently throughout. I would recommend this on PS4 or Xbox One, but the framerate drops away from 30fps quite often. So while on one hand I wouldn't recommend this game on PC, as a PC game, I would still recommend it over the console counterparts. Load times on the PC are significantly faster and you will be able to maintain a steady 30fps at a native 1080p with a reasonably powerful PC, just expect to have virtually no level of customization and essentially a console style experience from top to bottom.

The game is more akin to Borderlands 2 DLC than a full release, while there is quite a bit more content here than a typical Borderlands 2 DLC, it is largely repetitious and with very little in the way of compelling new features, visuals or content this makes it difficult to recommend at $60. Borderlands 2 was fantastic and the DLC that went along side that game was quite good, however it has been some time since this original release and in 2014 I just dont think the game holds up all that well. The visuals are dated, the impact and quality of the writing has tapered off, the shooting feels mechanical and flat and features added here that attempt to mix up the formula feel very minor, unoriginal and probably should have made an appearance earlier in Borderlands 2 DLC. If you really loved Borderlands 2, you will probably enjoy what is on offer here however really only if you are looking for more of the same with a few twists. People hate to see padded out re-hashes of old games shipped at full retail prices and unfortunately this feels exactly what we have here. If this game was cheaper, shorter, less broken and released a little earlier in the year everyone would likely be more than satisfied, or simply un-interested. I am the latter.