Mandala

The colours in the remasters are disgustingly over-saturated. In many situations, the colours look smudgy, like they're bleeding into everything. Why are the characters in VC orange??? Why are characters in SA so much darker than in the original game??? Why is the contrast so harsh and why does it make things way too dark in many situations??? And why is the coloured light from light sources way overdone??? It's as if these remasters were designed by somebody who is colour blind. And many of the character models are abominations compared to the originals. They didn't preserve the original style at all, but did a much worse way-over-the-top parody and cartoonification of it.

This is tough to rate, because the underlying game, if it can be looked at apart from the technical issues at its launch, is an easy 10/10. The gameplay, the atmosphere, the graphics, the music, the narrative, are all fantastic and top-notch. But the game has lots of bugs in it right now, and some are spoiling of the experience. If, and hopefully when, the bugs get addressed, the game will easily be 10/10. Aside from all the stuff that's fantastic in the original game, the artistic detail in the new graphics is incredible and it makes everything else that was already great about the game feel even better.

CodeMasters is review-bombing WRC because it's a much better game than anything they've done since DiRT Rally 1, or even DiRT 1.

This game feels dead. There's no significant story happening. The player characters are psychopaths who are as evil as anybody they kill in the game. There is no journey, no personal searching and meaningful objective. And so, I've found Syndicate extremely difficult to play through. There's little to nothing that's engaging about it. How did the AC series fall from its high of Black Flag to Unity and then Syndicate? And now to Origins and Odyssey. The series is dead. Whoever has been writing AC scripts and dialog for Ubisoft since after Black Flag is a talentless hack. And these games clearly have not had good direction, either. They've become soulless and moronic husks, undeservedly bearing the AC name.

The story in AC Origins is entirely dull, the side-quest writing is entirely abysmal. The writing in this game is like it was done by a lame 10 year-old. And the NPC voice-acting is atrocious. The only way to possibly enjoy AC Origins is to skip all of the dialog because it's that bad. There seems to be 1 person doing all of the non-mainstory male voice-overs, and 1 person doing all of the female VOs. The person who does all the non-mainquest NPC male voice-overs can't control their French accent, and so the voices are clearly a person with a French accent attempting an Egyptian accent, but doing a poor job of it. The combat in Origins is supremely boring. There is nothing inspired about the writing, characters, combat... OC: Origins is generic action-adventure game #3586. Nearly everything that made the AC games exciting and interesting is gone in Origins, and Origins doesn't replace those elements with anything appreciable. Origins is a hollow shell **** and a betrayal of what the series used to be, and it is a complete waste of an origins story. Enough with these garbage filler games: Origins, Odyssey, and even (though not as bad) Syndicate and Unity. We need Assassin's Creed to come back. This series has fallen so very low into sub-mediocrity that everything after AC4 is going to have to be retconned to save it.

AoE II HD is a remaster of the original game, which itself is possibly the greatest RTS made, still to this day. My initial review of AoE II HD gave the remaster a middling score, and was critical of some horrendous artwork that replaced the better original artwork, but those things have mostly been long-since restored by the 2nd developer to work on AoE II HD, after the original developer moved on to other projects. AoE II HD has received dedicated updating since its release, and has come a very long way in improvements to its functionality and presentation. As it currently stands, AoE II HD is a remaster worthy of a king. As for the game itself, beyond the remaster's quality, AoE II (AoK) is an expansive game with gorgeous humongous (or tiny, if preferred) environments, sprawling tech trees, long and numerous story-driver single-player campaigns in addition to an excellent random map-generator. There are many civilizations to choose to play as, each with unique traits and special tech or units. There is a significant focus on city-building, and resource gathering.

To put the criticisms for this game into usable context: If AC3 were to come out as a new game in the series right now, with modern graphics, it would be hailed as the best AC game since Black Flag, and a return to the meaningful writing and world-building, which was absent in Unity and Syndicate. To provide further usable context, all the poor ratings for this game that are focused on bugs and poor optimization are no longer relevant, due to the game having been patched and also due to average hardware now being well beyond what is needed to play this game at high graphical settings. That said, poor PC optimization is something that has plagued AC titles, including all the ones released after AC3 until now. To put criticisms of AC3 into even greater context, the previous full game in the AC series was AC2 (which had a trilogy based on it), and is regarded to be the best game in the series. So, whatever full AC game came next was going to be judged the harshest of any AC title. Looking at all these factors, I think that the conclusion is that AC3 isn't at all a bad game, and in fact might be a very good game, just released under, and judged by the harshest circumstances. I agree with that evaluation, and I think that AC3 is one of the best AC games... although it would be great if all other AC games had been bug-free, with AC2-level writing, and with great PC optimization - but that's not the AC series that we have. And since most games post-AC3 (Black Flag is the notable exception) have been substantially more boring and less conceptually-complex than AC3, then I think that it's time to retrospectively recognize that AC3 is a lot better than it has been given credit for being, and is one of the AC series' better games.

GTA V is an improvement over GTA IV, easily, but it's not up to GTA San Andreas' level of craftmanship. GTA V has less sense of urgency, exploration, adventure, excitement, creativity, and running wild and free than GTA San Andreas accomplished, and the GTA V mission layout is inefficient and seems like it was done to artificially elongate player play-time. With GTA V, Rockstar seem to have proven as de-facto that they do not have much competence at PC game-making, as the UI in GTA V is pretty hodgepodge thrown together, the minigame controls that come up in GTA V missions are very erratic / inconsistent, and accessibility for things in GTA V can be really non-intuitive, and not in line with expected functionality. Rockstar seems to clearly be a console developer who has made an effort for the PC version, but have little familiarity with the PC gaming experience. A lot of their design choices in GTA V are abysmal, and beneath average usability. They need to get their heads out of their own asses, and open their eyes and figure their **** out better. Maybe they're expecting a free pass without doing the proper work owed. The city of San Andreas is very nice, but it feels like GTA V doesn't make enough use of it. There is a lot less of a feeling of exploiting every opportunity in GTA V than there is in GTA San Andreas. GTA V is just a lot more normal than GTA San Andreas, and maybe that's why they made the Trevor character - to compensate for lacking an innate creative zaniness in the writing, mission design, overall main story. But as the player, I've wanted to kill Trevor off all along, and don't enjoy playing as him, or his contribution to the story. I think that the character Trevor doesn't **** character Trevor is crazy, but RS don't seem to have known what they were trying to accomplish by it, and it feels a bit as though it was done just to see what it was like, or just to grab people's attention with vapid shock value. Having better design in the game would instead be a satisfying player draw, and Trevor seems gimmicky. The story in GTA V feels a bit mundane, and it makes the individual mission shine less, and have less sense of important purpose within them. Kind of feels like like just dealing with things while nothing more interesting is going on. The GTA V mission design is all criss-crossed across the map, so it's not like GTA San Andreas, where you'll have a bunch of mission development in an area - instead, GTA V has the player driving not especially interesting distances between each mission, and it's reducing of engagement. Maybe RS had fewer missions and tried to stretch out the playtime with this design. Whatever their reason, relying on such a tactic doesn't help the game, but makes it clear that a lack of design quality is present. GTA V is OK, the graphics are good - but RS hasn't employed as masterful a touch in this product as they did in GTA San Andreas, and some things in GTA V feel like RS were trying to hide recognition of that by using noisy distractions. I hope RS start earning their reputation again, rather than riding on it.

DICE are a crap studio, and they make crap games. They used to make good games, however. Battlefield 4 is just Battlefield 3 with some improvements that should have been there from the start, and Battlefield 3, itself, was a shoddy game, targeting the Call of Duty crowd. The original run of Battlefield games on the PC were entirely different creatures than this new style, and this new style isn't worth half of the original. It's cheap, it's simplistic, it's boring. DICE, these days, are also terrible at map design and UI design. DICE, throughout their history, have been repeated sell-outs, evidently not actually caring one bit about the games they make. As far as I can see, it's all just looking for money with them, and their messed up priorities has caused them to make much less than they otherwise would have. Selling to EA for $5 million right before Battlefield 2's launch? Holy, holy cow. They were too inexperienced and unaccustomed to money and got way to excited at a terrible, terrible, terrible offer, and they jumped on it. Since then, I think they've been desperate to make up some of the massive revenue that they know they lost, and just keep on making highly bad decisions, one after another. They also are one of the worst companies when it comes to releasing stable products. Every release of theirs is drowning in bugs and issues. And they never care, and never improve they actually just keep getting worse. Terrible company, boring game.

Game ****. Generic gameplay, boring, monotonous, pretentious... it's just all around stupid. The original Bioshock also ****, so I guess it doesn't fail to be a proper sequel.

Revolution is obsolete on launch by Armageddon... just as Reloaded also was. Wait for Armageddon to be sold on Steam (it's already on there, those of us who were aware grabbed it as a preorder b"bonus" for Revolution, though really we were buying Armageddon and got Revolution as a free bonus), or grab it now through Amazon and apply the latest patch. It's not that Armageddon can't be topped (it very well can be), it's that Team17 has never even tried to. 4 worms per team, small maps, bad graphics, low customization??? Everything they do is taking leaps backwards instead of forwards. It's extremely mind-boggling behaviour.

I didn't like the first two Max Paynes, but I loved this one. Great game, and one of the most enjoyable I've played in the last few years. I play several different games a week (play, not complete), and complete a good number of them in a year. I think this is the best Max Payne, and the gunplay was just plain fun to me. Although, I didn't like towards the end of the game where enemies all had bulletproof vests and you have to headshot them for a kill. That's never fun. But throwing your arm around a corner and planting 3 bullets in a guy's chest and watching them drop is great fun.

Diablo 3 is maximum boring and redundancy. Diablo 2 is a better installment in the series, while Diablo 3 loses any semblance of seriousness in the environment and characters. I wish I hadn't spent $60 on it, it totally does not live up to the previous games, and is nothing but a total snore fest. Blizzard and gameplay are like oil and water, they just don't go together. Same thing is to be said for Blizzard and dialog, as Blizzard just seems to **** at it in every game they make. If you're thinking about buying this game, save your money. Diablo 3 won't cure your boredom, it'll just make you kick yourself that you're down $60 as well.

I've beat both Portal and Portal 2. Portal 1 is ok, and my favourite of the 2. Portal 2 is pretty boring, tedious, and is extremely drawn out for what it is. The hype surrounding this game is just that... hype.

Been on the 3dR forums since '97, have the magazine in which DNF was revealed, still say that Duke3d is the greatest FPS ever made... but DNF is total crud. Seriously, the only reason to play it is just to see for yourself the abomination that it is. This is a nearly heart-breaking Duke Nukem catastrophe, I wish I could go back in time 14 years and tell myself to not wait for DNF and not waste attention on it because it's going to blow to the fullest possible extent. The only problem with that, though, is that I'd never believe my future self, as I had so much confidence in 3dR... and how could I not? Considering they made Duke3d, as well as releasing dozens of fantastic smaller games prior? How the mighty have fallen, and how greatly sad it is Be warned, there is absolutely nothing old school about this game, not in the least, and especially nothing resembling Doom or Duke3d style shooting. This game is the exact opposite of Old School. DNF is slow moving, with slow movement speed, limited sprint ability, few enemies with combat that is spaced far apart, 2-weapon carry-limit with universal ammo crates, regenerating health, quicktime events, and wtih completely linear & boring level design. Anybody who dares try to trick you into buying this game by suggesting it is old school in even the slightest manner is lying to you through their teeth or simply has convinced themselves of a lie to rationalize the 14 years they've wasted waiting for this game. DNF is no more old-school than it is a space-pony training RPG that takes place on Mt Olympus.

Arma II and its expansion do require a powerful PC, but that's because its high graphical fidelity. Xalex mentioned in their review: "Other sandbox games do not have this issue at all, for example farcry2 and fallout3. Those game I can run on max settings with atleast 40 fps, ArmA i am glad if I get 15 fps" The above quote is ridiculous because it's akin to saying "I can run the original DOOM on max and get 400 FPS, but on Far Cry 2 I only get 40 FPS." Obviously, games with lower graphical quality are going to run better. It doesn't mean that a game is horribly unoptimized because it doesn't give you the same FPS that much visually simpler games give you. Xalex' request to "Optimize the game and make it playable on normal computers" suggests they don't understand what optimizing is. Making it playable on "normal" (aka middleware) computers would have nothing to do with optimizing it, it would instead require reducing the graphical quality. Or, they could play the game on low graphics settings and let those with powerful computers enjoy the great graphics that games like Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 aren't in the realm of providing.

This game was weak. It seemed completely uninspired, with the4 most generic of action. On top of that, it has an auto difficulty adjusting issue where if you load a saved game after you die, the game will keep getting harder until the point where it's impossible. The only way to avoid that is to not load a saved game when you die. It's completely stupid. Who doesn't load saved games when they die? I loved the original SiN, and was hoping for a lot from this. It's no wonder that Ritual packed up shop after this game failed in the market. I don't know how anyone could expect success by releasing the most bland and recycled FPS on the market.

** -- >>> I wanted to clarify to people that take issue with others saying that the reviews are bribed / paid off, that the claims of bribed scores are CORRECT, and it isn't just ActiVision who do this. Review sites make revenue by having people visit their site, and if other sites are putting up the first reviews of the latest hot game, people will go to them instead. Game publishers buy off high review scores by telling sites that they will receive an advanced copy of their game for review ahead of the retail release date ONLY IF the game receives a score of >80, or >90. They won't make this condition to all review sites, but they will to the popular ones, whose reviews will affect opinions the most. The incentives given for high scores also go beyond that. If a review site gives a score the publisher doesn't like, they won't receive an advance copy for future titles, putting that review site at a disadvantage to other sites that can review the game ahead of them - and when a site is blacklisted by a large publisher like ActiVision, that can mean a LOT of titles that will be missed. Call of Duty is ActiVision's biggest title, you can be damn that sure they've put more score manipulating muscle into this release than any other release has seen before it. This score manipulation regularly taints big-name games, and you should know to not trust review sites all that much, because their noses are often firmly up the arses of the companies whose games they depend on being able to review early to generate their site traffic for revenue. User feedback has become far more valuable that site reviews. However, a lot of simple users out there who don't have much game experience will assume that the game they're playing that got fifteen 100/100 scores is truly the best, and those don't-know-better easily manipulable people are the ones the score-doctoring tactics aim to influence. Metacritic, itself, has been lobbied by publishers to remove various negative scores from its site, to make games look like they were received better than they were. As far as I know, Metacritic has rebuffed all such lobbying. Now my review: I've played only the sp so far, and it's typical CoD boredom, for me. I hardly feel like I'm playing, and what I'm watching isn't very exciting, either. The graphics are bad, but hey, it's designed for ancient console hardware, and not contemporary PC hardware, so it's not very surprising. Frankly, I loathe the cheesy cliche Vietnam characters and lines, which now (if not already ages ago) seem like a bad parody of a bad parody. I have some un-ignorable performance issues, the same ones which many others are also experiencing, detailed on various forums (Steam forums, ActiVision forums, & others), despite having a robust PC. This game will satisfy the kiddies, who are wowed more by the constant scripted business of this rail-shooter than by involved and in-depth gameplay.

** -- >>> I wanted to clarify to people that take issue with others saying that the reviews are bribed / paid off, that the claims of bribed scores are CORRECT, and it isn't just ActiVision who do this. Review sites make revenue by having people visit their site, and if other sites are putting up the first reviews of the latest hot game, people will go to them instead. Game publishers buy off high review scores by telling sites that they will receive an advanced copy of their game for review ahead of the retail release date ONLY IF the game receives a score of >80, or >90. They won't make this condition to all review sites, but they will to the popular ones, whose reviews will affect opinions the most. The incentives given for high scores also go beyond that. If a review site gives a score the publisher doesn't like, they won't receive an advance copy for future titles, putting that review site at a disadvantage to other sites that can review the game ahead of them - and when a site is blacklisted by a large publisher like ActiVision, that can mean a LOT of titles that will be missed. Call of Duty is ActiVision's biggest title, you can be damn that sure they've put more score manipulating muscle into this release than any other release has seen before it. This score manipulation regularly taints big-name games, and you should know to not trust review sites all that much, because their noses are often firmly up the arses of the companies whose games they depend on being able to review early to generate their site traffic for revenue. User feedback has become far more valuable that site reviews. However, a lot of simple users out there who don't have much game experience will assume that the game they're playing that got fifteen 100/100 scores is truly the best, and those don't-know-better easily manipulable people are the ones the score-doctoring tactics aim to influence. Metacritic, itself, has been lobbied by publishers to remove various negative scores from its site, to make games look like they were received better than they were. As far as I know, Metacritic has rebuffed all such lobbying. Now my review: I've played only the sp so far, and it's typical CoD boredom, for me. I hardly feel like I'm playing, and what I'm watching isn't very exciting, either. The graphics are bad, but hey, it's designed for ancient console hardware, and not contemporary PC hardware, so it's not very surprising. Frankly, I loathe the cheesy cliche Vietnam characters and lines, which now (if not already ages ago) seem like a bad parody of a bad parody. I have some un-ignorable performance issues, the same ones which many others are also experiencing, detailed on various forums (Steam forums, ActiVision forums, & others), despite having a robust PC. This game will satisfy the kiddies, who are wowed more by the constant scripted business of this rail-shooter than by involved and in-depth gameplay.

** -- >>> I wanted to clarify to people that take issue with others saying that the reviews are bribed / paid off, that the claims of bribed scores are CORRECT, and it isn't just ActiVision who do this. Review sites make revenue by having people visit their site, and if other sites are putting up the first reviews of the latest hot game, people will go to them instead. Game publishers buy off high review scores by telling sites that they will receive an advanced copy of their game for review ahead of the retail release date ONLY IF the game receives a score of >80, or >90. They won't make this condition to all review sites, but they will to the popular ones, whose reviews will affect opinions the most. The incentives given for high scores also go beyond that. If a review site gives a score the publisher doesn't like, they won't receive an advance copy for future titles, putting that review site at a disadvantage to other sites that can review the game ahead of them - and when a site is blacklisted by a large publisher like ActiVision, that can mean a LOT of titles that will be missed. Call of Duty is ActiVision's biggest title, you can be damn that sure they've put more score manipulating muscle into this release than any other release has seen before it. This score manipulation regularly taints big-name games, and you should know to not trust review sites all that much, because their noses are often firmly up the arses of the companies whose games they depend on being able to review early to generate their site traffic for revenue. User feedback has become far more valuable that site reviews. However, a lot of simple users out there who don't have much game experience will assume that the game they're playing that got fifteen 100/100 scores is truly the best, and those don't-know-better easily manipulable people are the ones the score-doctoring tactics aim to influence. Metacritic, itself, has been lobbied by publishers to remove various negative scores from its site, to make games look like they were received better than they were. As far as I know, Metacritic has rebuffed all such lobbying. Now my review: I've played only the sp so far, and it's typical CoD boredom, for me. I hardly feel like I'm playing, and what I'm watching isn't very exciting, either. The graphics are bad, but hey, it's designed for ancient console hardware, and not contemporary PC hardware, so it's not very surprising. Frankly, I loathe the cheesy cliche Vietnam characters and lines, which now (if not already ages ago) seem like a bad parody of a bad parody. I have some un-ignorable performance issues, the same ones which many others are also experiencing, detailed on various forums (Steam forums, ActiVision forums, & others), despite having a robust PC. This game will satisfy the kiddies, who are wowed more by the constant scripted business of this rail-shooter than by involved and in-depth gameplay.