Fatal Frame has a truly haunting atmosphere, something which many "Survival Horror" games can't seem to manage whatsoever. It is genuinely quite creepy walking around the house, and snapping ghosts alone in the dark with no one to help you. For that alone I gave it a fair score. The issues arise when you notice how badly everything is handled gameplay wise. Movement is incredibly stiff and you'll find yourself catching on numerous conrners and furniture etc. A stark contrast to the ghosts, who never seem to have any issues moving around. Hiding beyond the bounds of the game area, teleporting behind you, and at times stunlocking you with their grabs. Things that can be interacted with often need pinpoint precision to view or pick up, resulting in button mashing and often skipping descriptions by accident. What starts off as incredibly eerie and genuinely haunting experience quickly becomes an exercise in frustration, and results in all feeling of "horror" evaporating very quickly.
Having skipped Diablo III, played a lot of POE and returned to Diablo IV, it is utterly disappointing. Awful load times and lots of choppiness on a PC far better than the recommended specs. The UI is awful and the game is generally dull. I really have no idea what the appeal is.
Based simply on the first few hours of the first game in the collection, the game is just awful to play. General movement and basic combat feels atrocious and not very well executed at all. I would have put in more time if it was enjoyable to play, but sadly it is not. I was hoping for something challenging to get my teeth sunk into, but the game stumbled coming out of the gate.
I'm a big fan of the souls series, the King's Field games and have enjoyed a few armorded core titles. This is easily my least favourite of the Souls type games,and the one i am most surprised about. Reading the positive reviews, you'd think this was the best game FS have ever made. Unfortunately, these do not reflect the product itself. It's a slow, choppy mess ****. Combat is dull, changes made in an attempt to differeantiate it from souls are surface level and simply tedious. Performance is atrocious, with a low frame rate and a constant unstable frametime that means the game is constantly stuttering regardless of what you are doing. Hats off to anyone that persevered with this hot mess, and found enjoyment in it. But I personally found my time far to valuable to endure this shambles ****.
Be wary of the 10/10 reviews here. I get this game may have been enjoyable for some once they ignore all it's obvious flaws, but this is in no way a 10/10 game. They are all questionable at best. This could have been a fantastic game but unfortunately it suffers from some fundamental flaws. Input response is utterly dreadful, which hinders the player in the most simple platform sections, never mind combat. Even ascending and descending ladders is a fickle feat. There seems to be some choppines in performance, too. Which is wild for such a game. Even just leaving a shrine feels a little bit janky. Combat it's is rather underwhelming, with poor feedback and a wealth of abilities that do very little. The level design leaves the player wanting, too. The Menu and UI in general is a bit of a mess. How difficult is it make the map select/back and just have the game pause when in a menu? Nope, the player must cantantly flip back and forth betweeen the maps and inventory etc. It looks very pretty and has some nice music, but that is all i can say positively about it. It really needed some more time in the oven to have many of it's issues ironed out.
CYGNI: All Guns Blazing is sadly a very disappointing little game. I imagine having a visual style that is more modern than most other shooters helped bump up the "critic" reviews, but lets be clear...this isn't a good game by any means. There have been plenty of poor shooters over the years, but the praise this one is getting just seems REALLY peculiar. I really wanted to like this, but it has some pretty massive flaws. Any and all difficulty seems to derive from sloppy controls, lack of visual clarity and mind numbing enemy and projectile patterns. Some incredibly fundamental basics of any shooter. There's no satisfying feedback from destroying or defeating anything, and nothing to grip you and keep you coming back for more.
A barely playable mess ****. Even at the time of release, this game was barely playable. Stiff movement, terrible controls, idiotic AI, the whole works. Rockstar have been making the same game time and again since GTA III and its clear as day in this rendition. Almost at 100% completion and its been an absolute slog, just because of how badly made it is. It can be hilarious at times, but not for the right reasons. How anyine has been giving this game more than a 6 or 7 over the last 13 years is hilarious, too.
I enjoy souls games, "Metroidvania" games, lots of difficult platforming games and exquisite pixel art. Sadly, this game only gets one of it's main draws right, and that is the presentation. The game looks great and the attention to detail is awe inspiring. The game is an absolute dog to play, though. Slow and clucky and nothing ever feels very good. Even after to learn all the enemy behaviours and manage to evade or destroy them without issue, it all just feels incredibly slow and laborious. Simple map traveral is a nightmare at times, too. Failure to go down ladders, hanging on ledges you didn't want to hang on, getting stuck in walls etc. Enemies seem to experience the same issues at times, oftengetting stuck within other entities. Given the sheer amount of backtracking that is required in this game, this will be a common issue for most players. Looks and sounds great, but it is not a good game at all.
What could have been an incredibly entertaining and challenging game, is marred by cheap shots, poor weaponary, questionablely tedious boss design and an inability to see the projectile against the given backdrops. Controls are tight, the game looks and sounds great, but unless you dodge every single enemy attack you are going to be left picking away at everything with a peashooter.
Though the game obviously looks wonderful, the game itself is dire. This is an incredibly bare bones "jrpg", with next to no character development. There is no reason to grind and the developers went out of their way to make it a chore to do so. If you just want to experience the story/journey, then you may enjoy it. But there is very little actual RPG elements here to speak of.
This is probably one of Bethesda's poorest outings to date, if we ignore FO76. What we have here is Fallout 4, a disappointing sequel to a beloved franchise, thrown into an incredibly shallow space setting. Most quests are simply walking back and forth between a few people, constantly waiting for doors to open and/or simply fast travelling everywhere. This has been their format since Oblivion, and their lazy design in this regard necessitates the fast travel mechanic. Which is why it is arguably more prominent here than in any other game. Bethesda haven't learned how to make better quests, they have just made much more of them and allowed other mechanics to smooth over the poor designs. Sometimes you'll find that fast travel to a location is locked off for some reason, but if you choose to use the mission listing to plot the route there, it has no problem allowing you to travel there. It all feels very lazy and ill-thought out and makes the notion of exploration laughable. Combat perks are once again just damage buffs 90% of the time, with very few actually relating to any sort of "skill" advancement. This has been a thorn in the side of BGS games since Skyrim and it doesn't feel any better here. Though at least there are some other options here and there to pick from. There isn't really much to ship combat either. If you have played any space exploration game in the last 20 years, it will all seem very familiar and arguably dated. I'm not really sure why it's causing such a stir. All in all, there is a lot of pointless and unrewarding things to do in this game. If you like doing lots of pointless unrewarding things in a terribly buggy and poorly executed game, you will truly love this. There is a lot of talk about "Game ****", and I think it comes from those that don't understand just how shallow and poorly implemented all of this is. There is nothing special here, just a LOT of half baked content.
Though it looked great at the time and arguably has held up in that regard, the game itself is actually pretty poor. Incredibly slow movement, awful gunplay, skills that are useless more often than not and a trait seen quite frequently in many AAA shooter titles of that time...style over substance. See a lot of reviews here stating "best fps I've ever played", but none seem to really explain why. Which is incredibly telling. The physics are fun for a few seconds, until your jeep shoots into the sky for absolutely no reason, but that's all the fun there is to be had here.
This may be one of the worst games I have played in quite a while, it's an utterly tragic affair. It tries really hard to blend rpg, platforming and shmup elements into some cohesive story rich experience, which is **** it simply stumbles and smashes it's face at every step. The "platforming" sections are marred by awful camera function and instill a massive sense of pointlessness. The exploration is a waste of time in the empty, boring world, which can take an age to traverse at times. The general combat is tedious and repetitive, with next to no satisfying payoff at any point. Shmup patterns and controls feel amateuring at best, leaving anyone with any experience in the genre bored to tears or laughing out of despair. The only redeeming factor is the soundtrack, which is just wonderful. It's just a sad fate for the composer, that their talent and hard work is forver attached to this sad excuse for a game. How anyone is giving this 5-6/10 is confusing enough, seeing the 10's on display is just outright hilarious. Quite telling that they often never say what is actually good about it and just call it a masterpiece. Avoid like the plague, or just watch a longplay and play anything else. You'll have served your time better in the long run.
This may be one of the worst games I have played in quite a while, it's an utterly tragic affair. It tries really hard to blend rpg, platforming and shmup elements into some cohesive story rich experience, which is **** it simply stumbles and smashes it's face at every step. The "platforming" sections are marred by awful camera function and instill a massive sense of pointlessness. The exploration is a waste of time in the empty, boring world, which can take an age to traverse at times. The general combat is tedious and repetitive, with next to no satisfying payoff at any point. Shmup patterns and controls feel amateuring at best, leaving anyone with any experience in the genre bored to tears or laughing out of despair. The only redeeming factor is the soundtrack, which is just wonderful. It's just a sad fate for the composer, that their talent and hard work is forver attached to this sad excuse for a game. How anyone is giving this 5-6/10 is confusing enough, seeing the 10's on display is just outright hilarious. Quite telling that they often never say what is actually good about it and just call it a masterpiece. Avoid like the plague, or just watch a longplay and play anything else. You'll have served your time better in the long run.
Cyber Shadow starts off fairly well. The music is pumping, it has a very retro aesthetic that i tend to like and initially it feels like it controls quite well. Initially, I say. Eventually, if you pay attention hard enough you'll notice that the game often doesn't respond to your inputs. Given the game eventually requires you to make zero mistakes, this becomes a massive issue. Even in fairly easy sections, it's quite evident the double tap to run doesn't always trigger, or the tap to counter a projectile. This causes huge amounts of frustration, even in simple areas you have already been around before. The tap towards a projectile to counter it is also just a dreadful implementation of the mechanic, which they've decided to make out of some notion of NES authenticity than anything else. Another button would suffice much better. The game keeps dropping to solid 54 FPS from time to time too, then rectifying the issue a few minutes later. You can close the game and re-open too fix this too. It makes it seem really choppy and I can't find any reason for it, across two computers with different hardware. It could have been fantastic, but they opted for sloppy control implementation to make areas artificially harder than they really are. That's just bad design at the end of the day.
A very disappointing title here. Performance issues abound and just a lack of any real coherent gameplay. Simply walk for long stretches of time, as the game refuses to let you run in many of the rooms, solving what can barely be considered puzzles. Then running away from things when it wants you to endure a chase scene, that almost feels like I'm playing Dragon's Lair again or those terrible chase levels in games like the Lion King or Crash Bandicoot!. Enagements only become mildly challenging when the interaction mechanics of the game cause you issues. There are, irritating camera angles, a very narrow playfield because your display is split between two different world views...which inherently works against the game all thre way through. It's a bizarrely dreadful design choice, to say the least I'm a big fan of horror, old slower paced adventures and I can see what they were trying to do or achieve, but it's a tedious farce that isn't enjoyable to play at all. Regardless all the performance issues, there is just very little positive to say about it...other than it'll cost next to nothing to play on gamepass. You can't find much better games than this mess.
While all the core mechanics of a modern tetris game are here, this game has some massive flaws that I'm surprised were not addressed before release. The sudden changes in tempo though interesting at first, just come across as lazy and ill-thought out after a few levels. Suddenly halving or doubling the tempo comes cross as being incredibly lazy and does very little to add any excitiment to the game. There is also the issue the music being reminiscent of chart fare electronica, which is not going to appeal to large swathes of people. Some of the visualisations and brick aesthetics actively hamper your play, leaving you not being able to see what is there in the play feilds or quickly acknowledge what is coming next. Which becomes a massive factor when experienced in unison with the temp changes mentioned earlier. There isn't even a restart option in the settings menu, to quickly pick up from your checkpoint. Which is poor design 101, especially in a game that is designed to be intense and frustrating. Though enjoyable enough for a short while, there are much better Tetris games available from the last 30 years. I'm just glad it was on Gamepass and I didn't buy it.
While all the core mechanics of a modern tetris game are here, this game has some massive flaws that I'm surprised were not addressed before release. The sudden changes in tempo though interesting at first, just come across as lazy and ill-thought out after a few levels. Suddenly halving or doubling the tempo comes cross as being incredibly lazy and does very little to add any excitiment to the game. There is also the issue the music being reminiscent of chart fare electronica, which is not going to appeal to large swathes of people. Some of the visualisations and brick aesthetics actively hamper your play, leaving you not being able to see what is there in the play feilds or quickly acknowledge what is coming next. Which becomes a massive factor when experienced in unison with the temp changes mentioned earlier. There isn't even a restart option in the settings menu, to quickly pick up from your checkpoint. Which is poor design 101, especially in a game that is designed to be intense and frustrating. Though enjoyable enough for a short while, there are much better Tetris games available from the last 30 years. I'm just glad it was on Gamepass and I didn't buy it.
If games where given ratings based on how well they mimic movies and provide a cinematic experience, then RDR2 would have an easy 10/10 rating from everyone that had played it. Games are meant to be given ratings based on how well they play and fortunately for RDR2/Rockstar, many players and reviewers have forgotten this. It's currently sitting with some of the best scores possible, while being fundamentally broken in many **** that is almost hilarious. The game is arguably gorgeous and there is plenty to do; large areas to explore, lots of people to interact with, a vast array of animals to hunt and resources to collect etc. Unfortunately the main controls and general gameplay are as archaic and badly executed as you could make them. General movement/horse controls and basic inventory/weapon selection makes you wonder if they have learned anything since RDR1, or just any other game in the industry. Missions leave you stuck in the middle of nowhere without your horse or your equipment, which is probably a lesson in how important these elements **** can be bypassed by a simple save and load to retrieve your horse. Getting on and off your horse seemingly resets Aurthur to whatever weapon it feels like. Walking around camps is a slow tedious chore. Poker games still last forever due to AI players being overly cautious, with very little payout for time wasted. Skinned animals drop into existence when an area is left and returned to. Dying just results in you being plonked somewhere nearby with a minor cash payment removed. it's all very shallow and either pointless, overlooked or poorly executed. That's just a few examples, but it's a small sample of how a product can actually be a beautiful looking polished turd. It just gets some points for being that polished visually and for cinematic **** problem is the polish isn't where the game needs it. It's certainly no GOTY if you actually like good gameplay.
Played this a bit on 360 around it's original release. It wasn't that great then and it hasn't well either. Generic hack and slash combat with very little to offer in any capacity. Take Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, skew gameplay heavily in favour of dull and repetitive hack and slash, add some well known voice talent. Hope and fail to make an enjoyable or engaging game. So many games have done what it tries with far better results, so think twice before spending any cash on it.
Though the first few hours with this game were quite positive, i fell off it incredibly quickly. From the get go, it feels like it's scratching all the right itches from a Dark Souls perspective. Lots of grinding, an array of weapons and armour to upgrade, lots of hidden areas and locations to explore etc. The cracks start to show once you've spent some time with it, and it really is a kick in the teeth after the initial high. The combat is definitely lacking. Lots of shoddy hit boxes, some bizarre enemy tracking, lots of animations that completely obscure the play area onscreen and attacks that visibly miss you by a mile still seem to connect. All resulting in an experience that doesn't have much weight or consistency, which is the core of experience in a Dark Souls style game. The areas are also incredibly linear and broken up with some rather dire cutscenes and a story that is poorly written. There are likeable characters despite the writing, scenic locations, it runs well and is easy enough to get into, but it just falls flat in it's core gameplay. It's a massive disappointment unfortunately and doesn't really measure up to similar titles in the genre.
An enjoyable action focused return to Raccoon City. It's short, sweet and doesn't outstay it's welcome. It seems like Capcom decided to remove a chunk of the puzzle solving aspect and just focus on action this time around, which isn't too far removed from form the original RE3 when you think about it. The original was lacking in puzzles in comparison to RE and RE2, so it makes sense this time round as well. It makes for a very streamlined action heavy experience, but it's really quite enjoyable. Nemesis is also a far superior antagonist than RE2's Mr X, actually putting the player in some precarious situations. He's not some slow, lumbering entity that acts as more of a nuisance than any actual threat. It might be a little short for a lot of people(all of the original RE games were short too), especially with that high price tag, but there is more than enough reasons to play through it more than once. Not the best game in the series by any means, but certainly more enjoyable than many of them. Ignore all the low scores, there is literally nothing wrong with this game other than it maybe being a bit short for some people, those that may have no interest in repeat plays etc.
A masterclass in how developers should create an RPG. Large open areas, complete freedom to go where you want and the ability to create and develop your character any way you please. Lots of missions which can also differ depending on your skills and reflect nicely on how created your character. Lot's of interesting characters and locations, simple but engaging turn based combat, atmospheric soundtrack and plenty of wonderful artwork. It all makes for an oppressive and bleak adventure that will punish anyone that makes careless mistakes but rewards those that think things through. Easily one of the best games ever made, never mind just RPGs.
Although it looks very nice and the game engine is great, the game itself is rather lucklustre. The game relies heavily on the family interactions as the only real interests, but the rest of the game is just walking around areas avoiding large slime enemies. Most of which can be dispatched quite easily with the basic knife. Lots a of scripted interactions to instigate the family, which results in characters popping out right in front of you, despite you knowing exactly where they were located. There are a few puzzles littered around, but they take moments to solve. There are VHS' for you to catch up on some narrative and backstory, in which you can actually recieve game over states...which makes no sense at all. All in all, it's a very shallow and uninspired game. Not "bad", but it's certainly not good. It got a lot of rave reviews, but i'm really not sure why. Maybe it's a better experience in **** knows?
Despite the sluggish controls and awkward movement, there is a lot of fun to be had with Syphon FIlter. The large range of weapons and tools, interesting level layout and progressive mission objectives and criteria make for an intersting experience. Voice acting is surprisingly good and some of the weapons sound fantastic for the time. Boss battles are the only thing that bother me, to be honest. Enemies shooting you from beyond the draw distance is some grade A crap, but is easily subverted in the end.
Though treasured by many and often cited as being one of the best games ever made, Zelda OoT is not without it's flaws despite being a reasonably enjoyable game for the most part. There is a reasonably large world to explore, if a little barren. interesting people to engage with, if few and far between. Plenty of weapons and special items to use, if all a little awkward to use most of the time. As most of the 10 responses show, there are a lot of personal investments in this game, whether due to nostalgia or a deep love of the franchise or even Nintendo. Some even seem overtly defensive. I like the game and enjoy the series, but there are better titles to be played within the series itself. Never mind other franchises. Great music and a generally pleasant world to explore are marred by awful camera angles, terrible controls, ugly graphics and just a sense of very little to actually do. I'd rather play Link to the Past or Link's Awakening instead, as they are just far better games.
Rather dull and tedious combat, irritating characters and dialogue, lots of driving around a rather lifeless and boring world. It looks nice and runs really well on PC, but is just a chore to play with very little to offer players that have hundreds of other options.
Though not a bad game, TLOU is a rather overrated game. Though it is well written and well performed by the voice talent, the gameplay itself is rather lucklustre and doesn't really hold up to all the praise it's given. I keep seeing "amazing gameplay" mentioned in the reviews, yet none of them seem to explain what that means to them. What i found was a rather shallow and linear 3rd person action game, with some stealth elemnts and light crafting. It has a well written script that is wonderfully performed, but is let down by some fairly mediocre gameplay. It fits perfectly into the 'watch a longplay rather than play yourself' catagory. if you reel in the hype. look at the game ****'s not really all that great a game.
Just a wonderful little game. It has a lovely cell shaded look to it and has a sense of humour that I find to be best described as very "British" more often than not. That may be a problem for many, but i quite enjoy it. It is a first person rogue-like, a FTL meets System Shock with a sprinkling of some Rogue Legacy-like mechanics. A player makes their way across space, stopping by deserted ships along the way. The player must scavenge resources, food and ammo from these ships and either avoid or fight those entities that may be dwelling inside. You will die a lot and make plenty of mistakes, but that is half of the fun. Probably one of my favourite games of 2019 at the time of writing this, and only gave it a 9 rather than a 10 due to the fact that it can be quite repetitive. Though repetitive can be a positive factor for many, so take that as you will.
The game runs/performs really well and can actually be quite fun when you are finally given the opportunity to just unleash hell on your enemies. Unfortunately it suffers from the same problems as the first game, then ramps those problems up to 11. Just as you are getting into the swing of mowing down countless enemies, you are thrown into long cutscenes and a boring hub area where you have to fulfil pointless tasks and endure dreadfully cringe-inducing dialogue segments. It really slows the game down and just seems like terrible pacing. I'm sure it's fine if you just skip all of that, it's just a shame that it's half of the game.
This is possibly been the most enjoyable "new" FPS i've played in a long time. It's just balls to the wall action all the way through; with impressively complex maps, a variety of hilariously lethal weapons, mounds of game/movie references and buckets full of gore and gibs. Not to mention amusing commentary from our bad-ass protagonist. There are some pretty damn good tunes to he heard too, though i did end up turning it off so that i could hear the enemies and the ambient sounds a little more clearly. There's no long drawn out dialogue and narratives, no excruciating cut-scenes, no hub areas where you needlessly fetch things for your friends, no hiding behind corners to heal up, no way-point marker directing you to your goal, no escort missions, no faux political stances or virtue signalling. It's just an old-school bullet fest, which is sorely needed in this industry today. I only have one real complaint, which is that the enemy AI isn't the smartest. I've seen numerous groups of enemies tucked into corners at times, and many getting stuck behind doors and other moveable assets. That said, it means i can make use of some of the explosive weapons! I've seen numerous people experiencing performance issues, but haven't witnessed any myself. It's consistently whirring away at around 220-240fps on my machine, and stays solidly locked at 60fps on one of the other PCs i use. I see there are a few 0 or 1 scores here now, which is completely absurd, unless you genuinely can't run the game. I understand it's not for everyone and the 6-7 scores make perfect sense, depending on what you are looking for in this type of game, but it's almost like people are hating on it for some other reason other than the content of the game. So keep that in mind when reading them!
Though FFV itself is a wonderful title, arguably one of the best in the series, this PC port is a travesty. It boggles the mind how an official release being sold at that price could be inferior to playing the game via your SNES, GBA, PS1 or your favourite emulator. Performance is choppy, there can be issues with fullscreen mode not working correctly, the UI has been overhauled and it's just a really poor presentation overall. Avoid at all costs and just play the SNES or GBA versions.
Probably the most generic and middle of the road sandbox game you'll play this generation. This game does what many have done before and doesn't bring anything else to the table, so you may as well just dust off Crackdown 1 or 2, or something like Saints Row IV. It's not terrible, it's just a resoundingly "Meh" game. Why it took this long to develop is completely bewildering. Do yourself a favour and try it out when Gamepass is £1 for a trial period, it's not worth any more than that.
