ThinkSamich

Want to love this game, I really do. The combat feels great, shooting is solid. Movement is tight, and the parkour system realistic. So why is no one playing it, why are queues so long? The main issue with this game for me is the randomness of loadouts. There is too much RNG in what items you end up equipped with. You win a loot-card that has a main-hand, sidearm, and melee weapon. Each of those items can be completely different. Then you have up to 3 traits on each card as well. On top of that you have different tiers of cards, this recipe ends up leaving you with a lottery based reward system that I would consider a disaster. The abysmally low currency gain you get from actually playing the game compounds the issue. No doubt it was an economic decision from someone over on the Production/Development team to leave players in a constant grind or starved for currency. The whole point of the game is to push you towards micro-transactions. Micro-transactions fuel your crafting and crafting lets you take a stab at the lottery system to end up with that 1/10000 perfect loadout. You are forever chasing that dragon, it may as well be some kind of drug. Leaves me really disappointed, I think the characters have a lot of heart and the maps are fun, but these people have killed their own game with the money making model. Also, it takes way too long to actually get into a game. Work on the down-time. Gameplay 8/10 Graphics 8/10 Optimization 8/10 Progression System 3/10

Somehow Team Ico has turned the gaming industry on its head and made people change their minds about escort quests. I suppose the change of heart is happening somewhere with the emotion this game captures, but for the most part I really can't understand the overwhelmingly positive reviews. Team Ico has always done a good job of making me feel lost in video games again, a feeling from my childhood. The Last Guardian is another world to find yourself lost in, but it doesn't come without its ugly bumps, bruises, and cuts. Team Ico games have always had significant flaws, Shadow of the Colossus had some of the worst controller input lag I have ever experienced in a game, once paired with your horse the issue gets even worse. Just like SoTC, The Last Guardian has a wonderful idea, an amazing landscape and environment, and wonderful puzzles. For The Last Guardian, the issue is the difficult to work with AI. Despite only needing a very few amount of inputs per puzzle room is among the most annoying issues. I suppose this comes with the territory, which honestly at this point I'm starting to question. The swimming controls in The Last Guardian are to the Horseback controls in SoTC, both very raw and unrefined setups. Similarly, both games SoTC and The Last Guardian also suffer from low framerates and framerate spikes. For SoTC this made the controller input lag much worse, The Last Guardian suffers some from it, but definitely not nearly as bad as SoTC. The PS4 pro will help you a little in this regard, but you're still going to suffer from these issues. There is more that could be said about the game, but at this point the effort seems fruitless. You will either love it or you will hate it, if you have followed the series it's going to have a nostalgic feel for you. If you are a newcomer I suppose its a toss up. I can't recommend this game, but I also cannot condemn it. I rated it a 6 because I feel like it has everything necessary to be considered a game. It does however, need a lot of quality time spent on refinement to be great. At this point I feel like Team Ico are master world-builders, and definitely know how to capture emotion and tell a story. But perhaps they should leave everything else up to another team that could set a standard for gameplay mechanics appropriate for this decade.

The game is beautiful and I want to love it, but there's just so many breaks from an already lackluster action meaning fun is not allowed. I have always looked at Darksiders in my gallery of Steam games and wished it was more, but it's not. This update doesn't change that, graphics are greatly improved, you may even call it modernized. The art style with the series has always been unique and appreciated. So we may as well get it out of the way. This game is beautiful, the art always has been. Graphics were never the problem, but this is what the "Warmastered" update chooses to address. Everything wrong with the game lies within gameplay itself. Levels are linear, "hidden" items in the world are two steps off the beaten path. Combat is almost exclusively limited to a two button system with the occasional "press b to enter scripted win move". The game is a hack and slash and about as brainless as the genre can be. If combat is not disappointing enough, there are constantly scripted breaks from the action interrupting your fun. Maybe you can get over the cut-scenes if you enjoy the story, but the true villain of this game is the level layout and geometry. Whether you're in an occupied city or slumming some part of the underworld, your combat is going to be constantly interrupted by scripted "Press A to slide/climb/interact" events. This has always been the biggest failing factor of the game for me, the pacing is just not right. I'm a mountain of a man, one of the four horseman, I swing a sword that's probably 10 feet long and destroy everything in my path... yet I don't have the mobility to clear a simple gap or climb a wall in a manner appropriate for the character. Instead I will be constantly interrupted by these terrible immersion breaking events. My last issue with the game, the questing system. After arriving that the first "hub" and receiving a series of quest, I found myself being instructed to "Kill 50 enemies", and then "Kill 50 enemies without losing health". and then "Kill 50 enemies with air attacks", "Kill 50 enemies with [variable]". This is not fun to me, it will never be fun, it's lazy and I don't understand how this game ever had the following it did. The story must be great, but I can't get past everything this game is missing to experience it.

Wow, I am disappointed to say Mad Max is mediocre in every way. I would compare the general game elements and open world to an Assassin's Creed title. The way the protagonist moves and behaves between bright yellow scripted elements like ladders and ledges left a bad taste in my mouth. The constant "press E to interact" is downright obnoxious and about as far from my expectations of gameplay could possibly be. Press E to kick down gate, press E rapidly to open chest, hold E to loot contents of chest... you get the idea. As far as hand to hand combat goes, it's a direct replica from the recent Batman games. Light attack, Heavy attack, Counter attack when enemy glows. There's a skill system for gaining a few special abilities, but they really add next to nothing to what I would consider a bland and shallow system. The combat is so extremely boring immersion is directly effected, and as a result I feel like I'm not actually playing a video game at all. If you aren't concerned yet, surely this next bit will raise some red flags. The worst thing about the Mad Max game by a long shot is the driving. It is a completely vanilla, bare-bones arcade driving experience. Vehicular physics should have been the main focus of the game, instead it's just another card in a deck of clones. I'm not looking for a racing simulator with tire pressure and a realistic suspension deformation system, but when I was told there was going to be a game based on a series renowned for its vehicular combat, I expected more than the driving physics tech demo for the Havoc physics engine. If you have played the recently released Metal Gear Solid V, you know the driving physics in that game aren't particularly impressive. The sad thing is, they are better than what is available in Mad Max. Enemy AI makes the bad driving physics laughable, of course when you're speeding along and playing "how the game is meant to be played" the illusion of decent gameplay is there. Anything outside of this is just not fleshed out. If you slow down to a near stop the enemy AI gets extremely confused, and starts to bump into you slowly over and over again which I can only compare to the way a puppy tries to entice its siblings into a playfight. The vehicle upgrade system is pretty darn cool though, and I was happy to see how each level of upgrade actually changed the look of the car. Actually, while we're talking about visuals, I should say the majority of the game's visuals are quite impressive. I am absolutely blown away by how incredible the wasteland looks, I have no doubt the majority of time was spent setting the scene and making sure the game had that "dead" post apocalyptic feel. Even though the game takes place in a desert, the developers did a good job giving each area its own personality to stand out from the previous one. Unfortunately this just makes the game that much more disappointing, like we're given a sneak peek of incredible places we will never feel like we're part of. All-in-all you're going to be stuck looking at a beautiful game through a glass window, because no matter how hard you try you just can't connect with any of the gameplay, no fun allowed. Press E to eat, press E to drink, press E to refill gasoline... press E to climb ladder... press E to immerse yourself into wasteland... if only. The overwhelmingly positive reviews for this title absolutely blow my mind, I don't see how anyone could be entertained by this game for more than an afternoon.

It's Thursday, May 21st. The Witcher 3 launched on the 18th. The developers have released two patches to address issues and community concerns already. I have 28 hours of playtime under my belt and I can honestly say this is the most fun I have had in a video game in over a decade. A single player video game, even longer. The Witcher 3 is a 10/10, CD Projekt Red has hit a home run with this one guys. The main difference between this game and other RPGs is the quests are all wonderful. Every side-quest is well thought out and fun to complete. There is absolutely none of that "kill 10 x and loot 8 y" nonsense that plagues modern RPGs like a pox. Everything I have experienced in this game has been consistently enriching and enjoyable. The Witcher 3 even comes loaded with a full-blown TCG that is associated with quests lines of its own that span the entire continent. I have enjoyed traveling from village to village to challenge innkeepers and win their special cards as much as I have enjoyed hunting monsters during witcher contracts. It has been a long time since I felt the need to eagerly listen to and dissect every piece of dialogue in a video game. The voice acting is top notch, leading to wonderful, compelling character encounters. In terms of side-quests there is so much to do, so many monsters to hunt, so many problems to solve, and so many Gwent cards to win that most players will find themselves completely overwhelmed in the best possible way. The combat is a stellar improvement over The Witcher 2, adapting to the type of monster you're encountering is probably the most exciting part for me. Bringing down a wyvern with a crossbow just feels wonderful, binding a wraith to the physical plain to do maximum damage really immerses you in the game. Preparing for a tough monster during a contract quest feels great, going in knowing you're prepared for the situation is as rewarding as collecting the sweet sweet loot after. It has been a long long time since a game convinced me it is occurring in its own world, but the Witcher 3 does it. The last time I felt this way was Ultima Online, circa 1997. Like I said at the beginning of my review, The Witcher 3 is a 10/10.

Reason for the score: Game is unfinished. To put it simply, the physics fall apart when you begin to play with them. If you try anything aside from driving around the track (doing what the game wants you to do) the physics just don't add up. There is not a tire heat system, so don't expect much in terms of simulation. The game is visually appealing, the bikes are beautiful, but the "Ride" is stuck somewhere between Arcade and Simulation, no matter how much you tweak the driving aids. I would assume the title was pushed out with a barebones setup, it certainly looks promising, but in the long run fails to deliver a positive experience.

Ehh.... Scholar of the First Sin starts off strong with better performance and some enemy placement that seems to make a bit more sense. Veterans of the series will be happy to find out the Heide Knights have found their way home and even seem to have gained some missing AI. Also, torches are finally necessary in some spots. For a moment, you start to feel as if this is the product we should have received during the original release, and From has come back to right all their wrongs. Unfortunately this "refinish" fails to take fight after the first few hours of the game. Some of the new enemy placement compliments the game, but a lot of it seems completely arbitrary, it left me saying to myself "what is this guy doing here, he doesn't fit here..." That's not the worst of it though, someone decided they would add in several more petrified statues to block your path, this probably doesn't seem like a big deal at first, but you soon realize all this does is cut your exploration options in half and leave you with a very strict path to follow early in the game. Finally, From decided to actually give us the Pursuer they promised from early game development. He's the same old guy though, just decides to pop in at the worst of times. Good luck fighting him with archers bearing down on you, and packs of dogs at your heels. This screams cheese, I don't think it's what anyone wanted from the fight. Verdict: This is still the formula I as a fan do not want the series taking. I firmly believe you should not "spice up" old encounters by dropping in 4-6 lesser enemies to stunlock me to death. For that reason the new pursuer feels cheap, as does quite a bit of the arbitrary NPC shuffling you guys did. Possibly the biggest disgrace here is deciding all of this was worth $50, even as a standalone it should have taken place of the $40 product at the very least. Players with existing copies of the game should have gotten this content for free, they should not be punished over the limitations a strict publisher caused the original game to suffer. I assume bundling the DLCs with this refinish is From's way of strategically circumventing that though. The majority of what you get with this product can and should have been pushed through with content patches. Players have been complaining about the hitboxes on the last giant since week one, so it's nice to know that From has finally responded by adjusting them and charging for the bug fix. While we're talking about what players shouldn't be charged for, they should not be paying for the lighting that was intended to be featured with the original product. The only thing that From could justify charging for at this point is the graphical upgrade, but even that is debatable after the massive downgrade the game suffered during the original launch. What can you do though? The bad decisions of From Software do not even surprise me anymore.

Visuals: This game appears to have a made-up resolution. 1920x800? A nasty trick to get around console hardware limitations, hopefully it doesn't become a trend. Otherwise it looks pretty good, probably the best looking game the PS4 has seen. A lot of time was spent on the player model your camera will be parked behind for the duration of the game, so naturally that looks great. Past that most of the level architecture is mediocre, but If you can get past the totally out of place permanent black bars you will enjoy the game. Gameplay: This is a third person shooter with the occasional sniper rifle putting you in first person mode. You would assume the gameplay would be centered around shooting mechanics, but it's not. Bullet trajectory is completely nonexistent, shots have no penetration whether you're shooting rebels or otherwise. The second you pull the trigger the round hits whatever your crosshairs are on, leaving the player with an unshakable feeling I can only describe as "laser-tag like". This is the sole reason I chose to score the game a 5, it simply fails to deliver compelling core gameplay mechanics for a "next-gen" console. The game sticks you in several close quarter combat situations where enemies are at a max range of maybe 30 yards, but you are encouraged to use a sniper-rifle. Using a scoped weapon at this range is completely nonsensical, and often times you find that enemies are so close they outrun the scrolling speed of your scope. You also face dozens if not hundreds of quick-time events throughout the game, something I still consider a gimmick unless you're playing a rhythm game like Osu! for example. The "inspect" feature that gamers who played L.A. Noire will be immediately familiar with serves no practical purpose, so why is it in the game? So what did I enjoy with the game? Well, the Thermite Rifle was awesome. That's all I have to say, everything else was unremarkable in every way. The voice acting was inconsistent and accents annoying. The cut-scenes were beautifully done, but this was supposed to be a game. The shooting was amateur league stuff, and the AI was downright stupid at times. Absolutely zero replay value, confident you would fall asleep the second time through. The atmosphere? Great. The story? Leaves so much to be desired. The actual product? A failure, plays out like a developer that was either overwhelmed by the project or flagrantly abused by the demands of their producer. Not really shocked though, launch titles always over-promise and under-deliver.

.mis ming pileesnot ai ofs ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot as ming pileesnot a

As many have already stated, Dying Light seems to bring together a bunch of good features from other titles without actually trying anything new. It's like a vegetable stew of tried and tested features with Dead Island as a base. The game feels like what Dead Island should have been in the first place, in fact I spent a lot of time saying "oh, I've done this before in Dead Island." "Oh hey, it's the office building with an excessive amount of breakable glass, just like Dead Island. Oh, it's that annoying part of the game where I have to traverse the sewers again, just like Dead Island." Techland, no more long corridor sewers please. I'm on the fence with Techland, there's so much they do undeniably right. They seem to be experts at setting atmosphere, the city overlooks in Dying Light are beautiful. The map was done by a group of studied individuals who must have planned it meticulously. Walking into a room and reading the story of the last moments from the corpse on the floor, just from the visual cues in the room is something only a handful of games do right. Dying Light is one of those games. One final standout feature, zombie AI evolves throughout the game. The zombies get consistently more aggressive and it's a fantastic touch, most RPGs would have scaled the health and been done with it. Techland goes above and beyond. At the same time, there are a lot of issues with the game, and several reoccurring mistakes Techland seems to make. Optimization is one of them, if you think back to the launch of Dead Island, the game was notoriously poorly optimized for the PC to the point where hundreds of Steam users demanded and received refunds. Dying Light isn't quite this bad, but it does have a barrage of optimization issues that will keep the average PC user from enjoying the game. From here there are just several design issues that I personally do not agree with. The permanent film-grain effect is horrible. The way the dead island/dying light engine makes the textures of everything in the environment look like they have a thick layer of wax over them bothers me. There seems to be far too many dark places unoccupied by virals during the day. The Parkour system works most of the time, but when it doesn't it will be during the worst times possible. The way the game handles death seems rushed at best, you're slapped with an XP penalty and respawned at the nearest safehouse. You can watch virals spawn from the air endlessly if you make enough noise, shouldn't they stop coming at some point? The way they handle zombie hordes is tricky, there are much more zombies on screen than can be active at one time. It seems like roughly 8-10 zombies can be actively pursuing you at any give time, the other zombies on the screen are idle. There are lots of assets reused from Dead Island. It's important to note that the things listed in this paragraph do not necessarily change the score of the review. I understand they're quite specific, just issues I find bothersome. With all of that said, Techland is a company I am excited to see grow. I would be excited to see them on a fresh game engine. They just need to step out of their comfort zone.

A beautiful world that fails to offer more than a dull experience. The weapons are dull, the enemies are dull, the item upgrades are dull. Combat takes unnecessary breaks between long linear corridors, which is a surprise, considering the size of the game world is nothing more than an illusion. The way the mission system operates is lazy at best, the unnecessary backtracking between objectives exposes a lazy, unfinished system which constantly kicks immersion right in the gut. It's a "next-gen" launch title, and functions as such. Uninspired and dull of emotion, so much potential thrown away. I can't believe this is the game that was praised so highly during its launch.

150 hours Demons Souls 400 hours Dark Souls (cross platform) 80 hours Dark Souls 2 I cannot stand behind this DLC, it has too much of the "recycled" feel to it. As many other reviewers have added the majority of the trash mobs are just uninspired. There is a large section much like Lost Izalith that serves no other purpose than "filler" content. 2/3 boss fights are unoriginal to the point where they actually reuse major assets from the core game. At one point in the DLC you traverse a hive where the NPCs within all break your armor, I feel like this was a terrible idea. The PC version of Dark Souls 2 already had major issues with decreased weapon durability, so this was kind of a slap in the face for us. I think it was just something nobody was willing to deal with so soon. "Too soon, etc etc" The mage boss fight is unremarkable in every way, the AI is lazy and weak, if not for the ability to summon additional things to attack you it would be completely trivial. It's unfortunate From has to fall back on this multiple enemy boss fight strategy so often, because they rarely do it right. Dark Lurker was probably the only great multiple enemy fight in all of Dark Souls 2. The NPC red phantom invasion in the DLC appears to have unlimited stamina, attunement slots, and a casting speed that is through the roof. He just has unlimited everything, it's not exactly anything new or remarkable, the AI is not improved, you can still walk it through doorways and use the same exploits to your advantage. Which is fine I guess, I wasn't exactly expecting improved AI, but I feel like this kind of blatant stat padding is a step in the wrong direction for From. This method of increasing difficulty will eventually cross the threshold from hard to "unfair", which is exactly what this game doesn't need. The other "red phantom" NPC encounter is a boss fight, where you face three NPCs. Enjoy dodging a dragon tooth wielder whose attack animations skip frames. This fight was cheese through and through, and it really made me wonder where From was going with it. Is this satire for the direction the series is heading? I feel like this type of thing is exactly what these developers do not want. The last fight is a dragon, and I refuse to spoil it. It's a well done fight, at times it feels like the hitbox on the tail suffers from the same issues that the Last Giant had, but that just may all be in my head. Otherwise it's a wonderful fight, and easily the only worthwhile boss in the DLC. Level architecture is satisfying, often impressive to me. I enjoyed exploring much more than I did fighting anything in the DLC (except the dragon). There are a few neat weapons added with the DLC, I was satisfied with the loot choices, even if a piece or two did feel gimmicky. I want to leave this bit somewhat vague, because nobody likes spoiled loot. All in all I just found this DLC mostly unremarkable. There is a little bit of awesome sprinkled over a whole lot of filler/reused material. I was left unsatisfied with the mage fight, mostly from a mechanics standpoint, but also in a little of every other way. I do not like what From did with the NPC phantoms in this DLC, it's a step in the wrong direction. I also do not like how this DLC has been broken into 3 parts, I feel it would stand much stronger as a whole. I probably wouldn't judge these throwaway bosses in the first section so harshly if I still had half a dozen more to fight later on. I am left feeling that the split of the DLC into three parts wasn't the original idea, because this section (part 1) feels more like a teaser or demo with introductory or "warm up" bosses than anything else. I don't want to sound melodramatic, but at times I felt like I was watching a good series die. It really seems like the fans are being milked with mostly mediocre content.

I decided to try it because I had read others describe it as "like Dark Souls", the game is certainly nothing like the play-style found in Dark Souls, quite the opposite really. The only elements you will find here that are similar to Dark Souls are the fact that things drop souls for you to collect when they die, and the PvP system(if you want to call it that) or way of interrupting the worlds of other players is certainly a beefed up copycat of the Dark Souls "see phantoms from other worlds" system. Sending NPCs after player phantoms isn't exactly PvP in my book. Whether or not that is bad will be up for you to decide. What this game does have is a few features that I have yet to see anywhere else. Neat "bells" that certainly make you do a double take. Your character in the game is quite larger than humans, you are probably the size of a building. Multiple humans can ride you into battle, you can eat/throw these humans. You convert human alters to the faction of your choosing (you pick from Light/Void/Dark at the beginning of the game) and it's a way of controlling territory in the multiplayer aspect of the game. Faction influence seems to play a large part in the end-game PvP/Multiplayer. All of the Armor and Weapons are purchased with Souls you have collected. You can also speed up this process with micro transactions, and they are everywhere. Free to play games with micro transactions are quite common these days, as far as I could discern there are no weapons available only to paying customers, so at most you're saving yourself a few hours by spending cash. There seems to be an agenda here on Metacritic where a lot of reviewers are calling the title, "pay to win" however from what I saw everything in the game can be attained without spending a dime. At most you're paying to skip a grind, which is something I don't want to downplay because it is a growing issue, but certainly not "pay to win" where players get unfair advantages with items or abilities only attainable through a cash shop. For me the biggest deterrent of the cash shop to me was the lacking gameplay. For lack of a better term the combat is quite "Vanilla", a hack and slash with a few extra abilities determined again by the faction you choose. Weapons seem to offer different abilities, but nothing that was able to keep me interested. For me combat is where the bulk of my score deduction took place. Points were deducted for overall clumsiness and the lack of fluidity in combat. It seems like difficulty is increased by outright swarming the player with hordes of enemies where damage becomes inevitable no matter how well you play. The artwork isn't spectacular but I wouldn't consider it bad either. Actually I found it quite nice to look at. It certainly should not be something that keeps you from playing the game. Overall this game is something new to try, but nothing I would plan on spending a weekend on. To me it has potential to have a good foothold in the market as a free to play game because it looks so promising for what it is in Beta. In the grand scheme of things though it can seem quite elementary. The title has a long way to go if it plans on trading punches with anything beyond smartphone titles. I gave it a 7 because the foundation looks nice, but without the addition more complex core gameplay mechanics the game is going to be left behind the times. Push the cash shop to the side and work on combat/core gameplay if you want your title to succeed.

10/10 BEST GAME 100/100 B E S T G A M E |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| XXVV3InsfiGYUcMGn5IJ lWiEMeqMtAttC8j1dR0d asQhozubbCIeTFOMQm3q DjCsXFcIXkQqRge2kYJT mKFUjFnTICG9Ry2IcuDr 33SDSSQcFYXyIcxVJKUi XGAhCd5PYQuLZCZ6jA41

Ghost Recon: Phantoms doesn't know what it wants to be. The mobility system has you leaning against walls, under barricades, rolling around corners, and even firing while you slide across the ground. Sounds good, until we talk about the accuracy system. Accuracy is severely diminished in a "realistic" or "simulator" type fashion. It doesn't make sense to mix the gears of war style cover + run and gun mobility systems just to slap huge accuracy penalties on mobility. The game also relies heavily on micro-transactions. The type that give you silly advantages some would refer to as"pay to win" or "pay to be competitive.' The first five or six levels will have you fooled, as the matchmaking algorithm is pretty good about matching you with other newbies at that level. Around level 8 or so, you will learn that the player with the biggest wallet has the best score, every round. Micro-transactions are tied to fancier gear like grenades, and even arbitrary things like reload time. That's right, you can pay to reload your weapon faster. Some of the purchasable gear is outright ludicrous and will make you feel as if you are shooting at people with an airsoft gun. This game had an image and an idea, but lost it somewhere along the way. Still, these pay to win type games have shown success in the past, so I wouldn't doubt it if Ubisoft is turning a profit from this game. Continuing the way it is, no legitimate gamer or competitive league will ever take this title seriously. It's a shame there isn't some "Vanilla" game mode, where equipment is normalized. The core gameplay is quite satisfying, despite the movement and accuracy systems contradicting one another. It's a shame greed got in the way of what was once a promising title.

It's bad, the end. Seriously, just head over to the official forums if you want reviews for the game. Duke Nukem Forever was a promising title that failed on many fronts, hyper-sexualization is the only thing that allowed this game to not drown in its own fail... and i would suspect that's the only reason the older Nukem crowd even played it.