A boring walking simulator occasionally broken up by puzzles that an 8 year old would easily solve and every hour or so you get to shoot a monster for 5 seconds. The game fails as a detective game because it railroads you through the main plot so there is no actual need to engage your brain. The game fails as a survival horror game because it throws so many items at you and there is such a limited amount of combat and, frankly, you can just run past every enemy easily if you want to. The game fails as a horror game (unless the game occasionally going "OOGA BOOGA" by flashing some images on the screen unexpectedly is good enough for you). The plot is 20% self-indulgence self-inserts by the Devs and 80% just hundreds of cliches smushed together all of which have been done better in other franchises ("Mom, can we buy Twin Peaks" "We Have Twin Peaks at home" *Twin Peaks at Home: Alan Wake 2*). The only saving grace is that that the graphics are pretty and I like that some studios are still investing in live action cut scenes.
Pros: +Good graphics +Good story +Solid combat +A few QoL improvements from the last game +Good sound track. +Generally smooth experience (one or two occasional minor bugs mentioned below). +Runs well on PS4. +Lengthy game (i.e. worth the money). +Lots of optional bosses. Cons -The story is not as tightly focused, emotive or as well written as the 2018 game. -The sections where you play as Atreus drag and should really have been cut down (especially the first one). -Some minor graphics bugs (on two occasions the enemy skins didn't load for about 10 seconds so they were invisible but I'm on original PS4 so, honestly, I'm actually amazed there weren't more graphical issues). -I think I'm meant to like Atreus but he's low-key (Loki, get it?) sort of annoying. -Too much American and modern slang sometimes ruins immersion. -Characters blurt out the answers to puzzles pretty much immediately and there is no way to turn it off. Generally, very minor quibbles. Definitely recommend.
I have been a fan of Total War games since Shogun 1 and have particularly enjoyed Total Warhammer 1 & 2. Unfortunately, this is just really, really disappointing. I'm not quite sure what they were thinking with the changes they made because almost all the changes are for the worse compared to WH2. The new settlement towers and barricades? Pure cancer. The towers in particular are utterly unbalanced and make every battle a slog. I say every battle rather than just "siege battles" because the AI absolutely refuse to fight you on the open field unless they outnumber you hugely. I've had three open field battles in 6 hours of play. Big, fun set-piece battles are meant to be the centrepiece of this game and this one fails at it's most fundamental level. The new mechanic where rifts into chaos randomly appear in your territories every turn? One of the most annoying mechanics they could have devised. Not only is there no way to prevent this but they take your provinces from 0 to 100 corruption in three turns, discourge enemy agents into your lands and often enemy armies. This means that the only viable tactic is to turtle and spam end turn since, if you expand, you cannot protect your provinces properly. The game economy is broken. This makes having more than one army nearly impossible (especially due to the necessary turtling) and good luck saving enough money to get decent settlements unless you farm Slaanesh's rewards. Does it have good AI? LOLNO, all AI factions at war will make a beeline for the player no matter how stupid it is to do so. This has always been an issue but it's so much worse in WH3. The AI also outright and blatantly cheats in respect of the main quest (you can watch it do so in front of your eyes) but, even worse, if they collect all the souls before you that is an instant game over and there is no option to buy more time by defeating them in battle. The UI? Far inferior to the WH2 one. Optimisation? It runs like a legless paraplegic on a floor made of needles. Look forward to constant graphical glitches and stuttering. Bugs? Quite a few game breaking ones but you'll only find out after having wasted several hours on a campaign. I am going to have to ditch the game until the big combined map comes out or until there is mod support to get rid of the many, many issues because the gameplay is actively anti-fun at present and that is coming from someone who actually quite liked the Vortex campaign in WH2 (which a lot of people complained about). Very sadly, this is the first TW game that I simply cannot recommend. Hopefully they'll fix some of this in patches but I suspect that much of it is unfixable because it represents inexplicable design decisions which would need to be redesigned from the ground up. Regardless, I'll keep an open mind and I hope that I can change this review to a positive at a later date.
I am very frustrated by this game because what could have been a perfect game is rendered mediocre by lack of attention to actual gameplay. What does this game do well? Firstly, the atmosphere is absolutely fantastic. The depiction of mental illness is managed tastefully and accurately and the voices in Senua's head very often mirror your own thoughts. Indeed, the voices will often warn you when an enemy is about to attack from behind and, after a while, you are forced to admit to yourself that you've come to rely on the voice much like Senua has. That part is great. What part is mediocre: The story. There's really not much there for all the game's feigned deepness and, without spoiling things, the end is a massive anti-climax. The aspect that lets the game down is really everything about the gameplay. There are three things you will do in this game: Combat, puzzle solving and moving between areas for combat and puzzle solving. Now, I'm not averse to either one if they are done well but both are exceptionally boring and repetitive here. COMBAT: With the exception of two semi-bosses there are three enemy types. (1) Viking with shield, (2) fighter with two swords and skeletal cow's head (3) large guy with a giant axe. Be prepared to fight these three copy & pasted enemies over and over and over again in more or less the same order. In this game once you've had one fight then you've basically had them all. Even the repetitive nature of the encounters could be worthwhile if the combat mechanics were interesting or fun but instead you will find yourself doing exactly the same thing in each encounter; block, stab, block, stab, block, stab, charge magic mirror *killing spree*, block, stab etc etc etc. If you're fighting giant axe guy then you will substitute dodge in place of block but that's about as diverse as combat gets in Hellblade. PUZZLES: 90% of the puzzles involve lining objects up in order to make a symbol appear. This is never particularly difficult but often involves lots of repetitive running about at Senua's irritatingly slow jogging pace. No matter how you look at it, this puzzle is simply not very fun and the repetitive nature of this was tedious and boring. The other puzzle is to look through a magic portal which makes reality on the other-side subtly change, this was a fun mechanic the first few times but, again, it is used to death in one section and then never used again. Often it feels that the actual gameplay was an afterthought. I suspect that the game developers created a pseudo-walking simulator and then thought "this feels empty and short lets add some filler in to pad it out a bit". This brings me to my final point, the game is very short. I would estimate a four - six hour play time depending on how quickly you progress. I finished it in around 5 hours and that included exploring all the areas fully. I certainly wasn't sorry to see it end as, by that time, I was thoroughly bored but if you measure game value in a ration of gameplay hours to money spent then the game is probably not worthwhile. In summary: I really really wanted to like this game and the game deals with some concepts fantastically but it is let down by a lack of real depth and by poorly implemented gameplay.
Dead Island is a fun and unique game which is let down by a poor storyline, repetitive fetch quests and a poorly conceived respawning system. Obviously the thing that catches everyone's eye is the combat in the game which is done remarkably well. Very few games can bring the same satisfaction when you swing an oar into a zombies face or break the arm of a flailing brute with your trusty baseball bat and nothing is quite so satisfying as timing a machete swing correctly and perfectly decapitating an infected charging towards you. Many hours can be spent testing out new weapons on Zombies and seeing the satisfyingly gory effects without getting bored. However weapons break down with annoying frequency making for some tense (and often annoying) dashes back to a safehouse to repair them. The magnum opus of the game is it's landscape which is simply breath taking at the times you can stop fleeing from zombies long enough to appreciate it and the open world aspect of the game is rather well done. Something which is less than breath taking is the storyline which offers tantalising questions such as "how did this happen?", "why am I immune?", "who is the mysterious voice on the radio and are they on our side?" but then either completely fails to answer them or does but in a totally ludicrous way. The ending is similar with a plot twist which is so utterly ridiculous that it seems that the writers just threw it in there because they had a checklist and "plot twist" wasn't ticked yet. Similarly some of the side missions are just as poorly thought out [Very Minor Spoiler] as in one a thirsty woman implores you to fetch and bring back water because she is dieing of thirst while she has five or more full cans of drink dotted around her house. [Spoilers End} Similarly the characters are just really annoying and the player feels very little empathy with the at best bland and at worst very annoying personalities of the characters. Another problem is that almost every mission is a fetch and bring back mission, this is made bearable by the fact that driving in the game is rather fun but there is only a certain amount of times I can run over the same 12 respawning zombies on the same stretch of road before going from point A to point B and then back to point A again gets tedious. Another large problem is that there is almost no penalty for dieing, there is a minor penalty for dieing which is that you lose a very small amount of money and then you respawn (often close to your objective). This may not seem like much but it takes away the survival horror aspect **** which is based on survival horror. While this review probably makes the game sound terrible the first person zombie killing open world based gameplay is actually fun enough to help you get over these horrific flaws in the game. After writing this I have no idea why I like it enough to give it a 7/10 but the game does have a certain charm and the gameplay is a redeeming feature and certainly the "Who Do You Voodoo" song in the intro is worth at least two points all by itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful" and, with that in mind, I would certainly recommend playing Skyrim which is beautiful right down to the butterflies. The game world is fantastic and vast - after around 40 hours of playing and I am yet to visit large areas of it - and the landscape varies wildly from arctic tundra to verdant grassland to mountain passes to rushing, rapid filled rivers. The graphics are fantastic and not only does the world look great but so do the NPCs and the items. There is even an option to rotate and zoom in on items and when doing that you really can see how lavishly detailed some of them really are. Some negative reviewers have claimed that the graphics have not advanced from Oblivion but as someone who got into The Elder Scrolls Games late and therefore only finished Oblivion three days before Skyrim was released I can tell you that the two are worlds apart in terms of graphics. Similarly the storyline for Skyrim is solid. While I would say that the storyline is not as good as Oblivion's (it has a high bar to beat, lets be honest) that is not to say it is bad as it is filled with depth, drama and characters which make you care what happens next. Even the books dotted around the landscape and city book shelves are amazingly well written and add depth, quests and some of the short stories even have plot twists of which Phillip K **** would have been proud. Combat has been vastly improved from Oblivion firstly it is easier to play as an archer or mage in Skyrim as Oblivion did not make it easy to be either primarily. Similarly the actual fights are more fun in Skyrim as in Oblivion you'd slash at a goblin and, after its life ran out, it would slump peacefully to the floor as if it had fallen asleep. Instead in Skyrim enemies can be thrown backwards by a strong slash, beheaded or run through with your sword. The whole "shout" system also adds a new dimension to experiment with in combat. However, to me, the most important improvement is that every dungeon is unique which always makes it interesting to explore unlike in Oblivion where seeing the same rooms in a different order each time you visited a new dungeon got boring really fast. Other reviewers have mentioned glitches and I feel i should address that next. I think I am one of the lucky souls who has not encountered a single problem with this game and neither a graphical glitch nor a quest breaking bug has occurred for me. However, I think that some of the people with the problems are PC users who are mistakenly commenting on the xbox360 version's page rather than the PC version's page as they tend to mention their glitch experience in the same breath as mentioning that they have "an awesome rig". While swords, sorcery and dragons may not be everyone's cup of tea I did recently introduce a friend to the game who had previously, rather immaturely, referred to anything in the fantasy genre as "gay" and has now logged 86 hours of gameplay so it seems to be a good crossover game. In conclusion there I can find little to fault Skyrim for while having nothing but admiration for the designers of this game. From me it gets a well deserved 10/10.
To begin I'll say that I really wanted to like this game. I was a massive fan of the original and the hype coupled with the live action advert for the game had me incredibly excited, nigh orgasmic. As such I had this game pre-ordered for months before the actual release and I was thoroughly prepared to like it. Unfortunately it is simply not a very good game. The characters are boring, eg Adam being a stereotype of every action character ever, and you never find yourself actually caring what happens to any of them. The story is really quite simple and plot twists can be seen miles off. Similarly, the graphics for the game are not up to standard and look about 3 years old and the voice acting is rather bad. A further note on the graphics is that almost everything is orange, black or green, at first glance this looks futuristic but after a while the lack of colour (along with the unimaginative level design) variety makes every other area look the same. My biggest gripe however is that this was marketed quite heavily as an open world game, when it is in reality very very linear. Similarly, it was heavily implied that the AI would be intelligent, this is simply not the case! They are mindless, they will find a body be alert for 45 seconds and then go back to moving around like nothing has happened. Similarly in combat they simply line up to be shot, there is very little use of tactics by the AI. As another reviewer said, this game tries to be all things to all men and while not totally unsuccessful it does not do any of them well. The stealth is fine but not up to the standard of Metal Gear Solid or Splinter Cell, the combat is frustrating but even at it's best it does not even come close to the standard of many other FPS games out there. The designers should have focused on making the game really good, even if it meant focusing on just combat or just stealth rather than making a mediocre mix of both. Similarly, the game can't decide whether it wants to be first or third person, this breaks immersion in the game and is remarkably annoying to use. Another issue is the whole "moral choice" aspect of the game, these choices have no effect on the game. Characters will re-act the same to you no matter how you act. Gun down half the police force and within 30 seconds the remaining police love you again. Choose a morally dubious solution to a crisis? No problem because it has no bearing on anything that happens in the game at all. Very poorly done, at least other games with similar choice systems have consequences for your actions. Rarely do I feel bored while playing a game but this game has managed it which is a shame because I was really excited to play it. I'm not saying that it's not worth playing, and there will certainly be some people who enjoy it, but I would say that it's not worth £39.99 and that it does not live up to the hype and glowing reviews that it has received from reviewers. Wait to buy it in a sale
I have played every Total War game that has been released so far since the original Shogun TW and I can tell you that in my opinion this is by far the best. The graphics are beautiful, the individual units are lovingly detailed and the campaign is really enjoyable. I have so far got 162 hours of playtime out of this game according to my steam profile which is by far more than you'll get from playing most other games. In terms of things the game has done really well I would cite the AI as being very good, especially on the harder difficulties. The historical research that has gone into the game is also impressive and so is the gameplay as a whole. For me, this game would easily get a 10/10 but there are a few things which let it down. The multiplayer and co-op campaigns are hopelessly broken and months later Creative Assembly has still not fixed this problem which is shocking in itself. Similarly the AI has a tendency to spam archer units (which seems to b a problem with every total war game so far actually), which results in some very annoying battles especially as archers seem to be rather over-powered in the game. However, despite that issue the AI, as I previously mentioned, is on the whole very good. If CA were to fix these problems then for me this would be a perfect game. However, part of the reason I'm writing this review is due to glancing at the "Negative" reviews below. While some raise valid points others are just plainly ridiculous. For example one person has given it a 2 after playing it for over 350 hours and cites his reason for this as "lack of replay value". This begs the question, "what was he doing for those 350 hours?"! Staring at the title screen? I have played the game for less than half that amount of time and have finished and replayed it over 8 times which is hardly a negligible amount and more than almost any other game. Other criticisms include the lack of unit types, this I find strange. While in most total war games the concept is nation against nation, with all the differences in military development, equipment and strategy that would entail. However, Shogun 2 is a country in the grip of civil war. There would not be dramatically different units for each clan as their military development would generally be along the same lines as their neighbouring provinces. It would be like expecting Sussex and Kent to have dramatically different units in a theoretical England Total War or expecting Rhode Island and Connecticut to be dramatically different in a hypothetical America Total War. The small unit varieties of Shogun 2 are part of what makes it realistic. Similarly, having said that, it's not that there is a lack of unit variety in the game anyway. There are less unit types than previous Total War games certainly but that is not the same as there not being any variety at all, there is just the right amount of variety and for those who disagree there is DLC which offers more units at a cheap price. Similarly, a lot of the complaints are from people who simply can't figure out how to play the game properly. For example, with diplomacy I was also slightly frustrated with it when I began playing but as I played the game more I figured out how to use it properly and I no longer have any problems with it. I feel it's unfair to blame the game for your own lack of ability when playing it. In summary, the game is great but not without flaws. Ignore a lot of the moaning you hear about the game, some is valid and some is not. Engage your brain to realise the difference. However, do NOT buy this game if a large part of your motivation behind purchasing it is the multiplayer, you will be very disappointed. DO buy this game if you have enjoyed the single player campaign of the other Total War games and don't mind a little bit of extra strategy involved in the gameplay.
