akarnokd

It's a mess. Technical issues, stability problems, awkward design choices, glitches. Wait for patches, driver updates and possibly overhaul mods. The negatives: - Didn't run on Intel Arc on Premium Access release day. A bit better now. - Performance and stability issues. - Design choices, such as storage not connected to crafting. - Space combat is not that good with mouse and keyboard. - Small glitches. - Planetary traversal is tedious. - Low inventory capacities. - Repeating locations. The positives: - Exploration. - Planetary surveying. - Discovering new and unique locations. - Vasco's banter. - Environmental storytelling. - The smaller sidequests.

Wasn't that bad, wasn't that outstanding either. What I liked: the environment, the music, the gunplay; finally, guns! What was meh: practically went through the whole game with a suppressed armor piercing M16 S/L. Sniped half the enemies, killed point-blank the rest with headshots. I don't see why use any other ammo type. The guy from the Mandalorian was pretty underutilized. Amigos were cute/funny but ultimately useless; they got hit by cars far more often than they killed an enemy. Finished the game in 60 hours but have to keep it around for 3 weeks because of an achievement that mandates weekly activity. What I disliked: too few fast travel points, ugly default textures (no VRAM for HD textures), half the story or quests are less sensical, RPGs and anti-tank weapons are waste of ammo against an actual tank.

I liked collecting the wealth, participating in most world events and hunting down artifacts. The story is okay, although it felt not that connected to AC in general. Graphics and performance was acceptable on my old rig matching the minimum requirements. The terrain was more flat than Odyssey and thus had to climb much less. There were a couple of annoyances though. Many in-game actions have no in-game indicators of what to do so I had to look them up online. Cairns were sometimes hairy due to unable to change perspective or rotate the rocks the right way. The density of fast travel points were also not that great. Played and maxed out the base game and the two DLCs within 140 hours. I don't feel like replaying it again.

An atmospheric 3rd installment of the Metro franchise, now with a much clearer way to achieve a good ending or a bad ending, given that in the previous game, Artyom died as it required quite an effort to get the good ending. I remembered Anna but not the other guys so can't tell much of the characters. The story is okay and the world atmosphere is fantastic. That post-soviet world building was very accurate. I liked the open-world maps. The main drawback of the game is that one can't skip cutscenes and dialogs, which for the subsequent playthroughts (i.e., Ranger Hardcode or Iron Mode) was kind of frustrating. I found sneaking to be not fun and particularly hard sometimes. Also the game crashed a few times, once during Iron Mode so I lost half a map worth of progress. As for the Epic/Steam debacle, I bought it on Steam discounted after it was released a year later. The exclusivity wasn't such a nice step from the publisher/devs but I knew I won't have the time to play the game right when it released anyway. So I got it cheap, with achievements, guides and most problems already iron'd out.

I only played it just recently (~4 years after its release) as I was a bit afraid of the stealth mechanics and the influences of current day politics on its story. Played to see both characters with both endings and I enjoyed it. The visuals are great, run well on my PC. The no-kill not-detected no-powers run was quite intense. For comparison, I tried to play DH1 again but got bored on my kill-everybody run as it wasn't as fun as sneaking around undetected. What I'd change is to allow a chapter select and allow each map to be played for the no-kill not-detected style achievements individually, without the need to replay everything from the start. That being said, it was nice I could speedrun most maps to get those last collectibles (most cutscenes and conversations can be skipped).

It is still a good fun as it was back in 1999 when I first played Duke Nukem. I remembered most of the maps and many secrets even after 21 years.

I never played any previous Star Controls and picked up the game thanks to the Ars Technica extened interview with the creators. What I liked: - the music - resource gathering - most of the story - the animated and voiced hail screens - many of the UI conveniences What I disliked: - combat, especially space combat with that vectoring-thrust mechanic - massive framerate drops due to particle effects on planets - no easy way to see what new tech unlocked - the star system/hyperspace drifting - some form of list or indicator showing all planets in the system - the "realistic" lighting of planets that made many of them just blend into the background - no indication what planets I cleared - point of interest markers not removed - the Kzanti that hail you all the time and no option to just shoot them immediately or make them go away for good

Bought the game on sale, already regretting it. It is practically unplayable on Windows 7 right now due to mysterious hangs; couldn't get past the intro mission. (Suggested downgrading to previous version worked a bit, then the game now constantly crashes to desktop.) I could put in a few hours on Windows 10 though. The game is mediocre and not much fun. JC2 and JC3 were way better. The main issue is with the map density and ammo supply. The map is huge but sparse and trying to get from point A to point B is tedious. There is no minimap nor a compass that would highlight nearby interesting places. Rico carries 2 weapons (so-so) and a really low amount of ammo (i.e., 160 rounds for the assault rifle). I don't see any way to upgrade the capacity. Yes, enemies drop ammo, except when you have to protect or stay in a zone and can't reach out for the ammo drop. Shooting feels odd, driving is not that responsive, helicopters are mostly fine. Fast travel is limited. The missions are average but now they are the gate to free a region. The game is riddled with stunt side missions which I always hated due to troublesome mouse+keyboard controls in any JC games. The controls are generally awkward. Mouse doesn't work in most menus, one has to press the main ENTER to accept things which requires either moving off the mouse or reaching over from WASD. In conclusion, it is not worth to buy or even play this game.

It is an interesting game. Starts out a bit clumsy but the middle parts were quite enjoyable. I felt at the end that I barely accomplished anything. The writing and dialogs were great. Not too chatty, sometimes whaky and there was an option to my liking almost always. The companions were fun. Adding a face to the ship's computer was a great idea. The gunplay was okay, never felt underpowered or overpowered as I played on the lowest difficulty for the story. The game seems to generate a lot of guns, armor and helmets but I never cared for them much. One can "upgrade" existing items for a price. Also I never cared for the food and stim items (could be nice for a food build though). There are choices, skill-based options but other than arranging an alliance between two settlements, one has to decide for one or the other side. I decided to talk most my way through. The graphics was okay, but running with very high on my system frequently caused FPS drops at the bigger locations. Nothing devastating. The NPC faces were odd and felt very New Vegasy, even though the engines are completely different. One disappointing thing was the price, €60 (which is quite steep considering exchange rates to my local currency) for a AA game from the Epic store with 20-25 hours of playtime. Were it like €45, no complaints.

+ Areas look nice and bigger + Many guns with interesting effects, fire mode changes + Interesting story kept me going + Quality of life improvements, fast travel, location progress displays + Funny moments + Verticality - Fast travel and vending machines are few and far between - backtracking respawns enemies. - Stutter and hickups on recommended system set to low - Directional audio oddities - Some characters are written to be more dumb, other characters are now smarter - Bullet sponge enemies - Lack of ammo, expensive ammo, low ammo carry capacity - Expensive deck updates - Bugs: quests not progressing, physics anomalies, UI problems - Some jokes fall flat and are basic - Weapons get outdated, no way to level them, rarely get something equal or better - Reload takes too long - Sniping/scoped weapon sway annoying - Some annoying jumping puzzles (where you fall out of the map and die) - Ledge grabbing doesn't work sometimes

Nice looking game at the intersection of Doom, Rage, Mad Max and Red Faction: Guerilla. Kind of short, both on the main story and the extra content; finished it in 25 hours maxing out all collectible items. It has a few bugs, such as audio not playing, mission no-progression. Unfortunately, it lacks the athmosphere of the first Rage and the quest design is a bit dull. Felt like I'm working; go there, clear enemies, collect hidden items, repeat. The UI is nicely done, showing how much items to look for at each location, but there is no per-region summary or progress indication. Discovering locations is kind of a hit-or-miss as the detection range on the road is too short. For example, I finished the main quest and didn't know where to get the last 2 weapons and last augmentation; had to look it up online. Driving around is interesting once, but becomes boring pretty soon. There are a couple fast-travel locations but generally, everything is so out of place that one has to travel half the map to mop up a location. The driving is generally okay but the racing is hideous with mouse+keyboard, plus there is a bug that can make you lose the mandatory race mission when the AI gets teleported to the end of the race taking your first place away. One annoyance was the interruption from mission completed screens, telling you how much cache and points you earned. These could have been simple popups so that they don't break the flow of the game. It ran decently on my machines with 1060 on High and it is recommended to update graphics drivers. I haven't encountered crashes or overheating issues. The game is ALT+TAB friendly.

A glorious mess. Audiovisually enternaining with the intrigue of exploration contrasted by bugs, bad design decisions and constant nerfing. As if the design goal was to prevent players from getting strong, powerful, rich and well equipped. I didn't miss NPCs and their life story and liked the terminal/robot/holo way of getting to the point and issuing the next quest. Discovering locations is exciting but there is no "cleared" marker and practically one is expected to return for more scavenge. Ballistic weapons felt underpowered, not a decent sniper rifle like my all-time favorite New Vegas Anti-Materiel rifle. Melee on the other hands feels very effective: even without building for one, using a legendary super sledge wrecks most enemies pretty quickly. Perk cards are okay but I liked Fallout 4's approach where I could have all the perks I wanted at level 80: hoarding, damage improvements, defenses, crafting, etc. at once. Instead, limited points and card swapping. Camps and workshops make little sense. Camps despawn and likely won't respawn upon login due to location conflicts. Workshops provide so little resources (just nerfed) that you have to take pick them up periodically or they stop producing. It's too easy to get overencumbered and thus kissing goodbye to fast-travel. Living like that for weeks makes you appreciate the landscape and hate the middle section of the map as there are very few ramps leading up to it. This comes very annoying when there is a quest stage sending you between the regions or a timed event you won't be able to reach in time on foot. PvP doesn't seem to be worth it and should have been a separate mode entirely, maybe after one completes the main story and is at least level 50 (the max level for weapons also) so there everybody has an equal start and build/skill is the dominant factor. There are several dozen major bugs (too much damage bug, stats and cards not working properly bug, uncompletable quests, etc.) so in order to avoid the frustration the early birds have suffered through, I recommend waiting for 6 months and far more impactful patches at least.

I backed this game over 6 (!) years ago and when it finally delivered, I was disappointed. The concept was interesting: build your own ship layout based on client requirements, sell it and profit. Unfortunately, the game got way more convoluted with star systems, trade, mining, combat etc. I failed a mission in the tutorial because I couldn't micromanage the test crew properly. At least there is an auto-resolve option for those tests but in that case, one likely never knows if there is a problem in the layout after all. The background music is nice but the UI sounds are still those high-pitched effects that annoyed me from very early on.

The UI is borderline ugly and inconvenient to use. I played the tutorial and I found the space combat simply too convoluted.

I wanted to like this game as it looks great and should supposedly have an interesting story. Instead, it was really tedious and there was practically no hint about what to do and how to do things. The inventory is small, the depths are crushing and the recipes are few and far between. I read walkthroughs, looked at videos for inspiration yet none came. I found the steps so convoluted and the difficulty of underwater navigation that I simply gave up after 14 hours. Maybe this game is not for a casual, all-in-one go gamer like me.

I was disappointed by this expansion. One can create a fresh, level 40 character for it but be careful about distributing the skill points. I had to restart because my character was unable to pick up the most basic leveled bows due to lack of strength. The story and the map was okay and finished on level 47 after 20 hours on easy. I'd have expected more progression. The loot drops were mediocre; over the course of the expansion, I could replace my bow 2 times with a more powerful one. I'm a big hoarder so sold everything dropped, which made me a multi-millionaire but the vendors had nothing of use for me. Also there were a lot of trinket drops (the ones you have to combine 3-5 of) but never got to enchant my equipment. The enemies did scale beyond me and it took more and more time to defeat them (partially due to all those outdated equipment).

Mostly the same as the original Red Faction: Guerilla with some updated graphics and the same annoying open-world wanted-level mechanics as before. I still found it quite fun to hammer buildings and walls (even though they don't give much reward). The "deconstructor" sniper was also great fun, despite the low ammo and that some debris couldn't be cleaned up no matter how many shots were fired. Also the area of effect weapons have could have been larger.

It was interesting story-wise, but eventually had to look into guides and forums to find out what to do or where stuff is supposed to be.

More of the same routine as with the vanilla game. It's okay and looks nice but the extra story isn't that compelling.

More of the same with interesting locations and tedious terrain barriers that take long to go around or over. Also plus Steam achievements! I haven't found any interesting loot drops, but that's not an issue as one can upgrade equipment in Origins so they never get outdated or underpowered.

It's a fun game, better in some ways than its predecessor, but overall the same gameplay mechanics and balancing decisions can eventually remove the fun. Namely, all those effects that punish you for being a big empire. You have to grow because of the special resources scattered around. The faction-specific story elements and achievements can keep one going on but eventually, the churn to research tech from scratch over and over gets old sooner or later.

I've played Take on Mars from early on and had a lot of fun with the rover missions. Unfortunately, the game took 4 years to develop and when it was about to be released, the rover missions were removed in favor of a fancy survival-astronaut mode for some reason (later they put back the rover missions). I found the manned mission to be mostly tedious. Time passes too fast and somehow the nights last way longer than the days. I had to build and manage equipment in pitch dark. Of course one can use thermal/night vision, but then the displays are unreadable due to the glow. Second, food and water run out too fast, which is bad if the mission wants you to preserve those. Third, grabbing and moving things around causes all sorts of physics glitching and jumping around, sending items fly all over the place. Fourth, those damn cylindrical containers that you can't put down properly and they start rolling downhill unless you can stand next to them to stop them. The physics is annoying. Unfortunately, there is not much official content, the game time is mostly spent on getting from A to B really slowly and I can't see much replay value.

Prague is interesting at first but then soon becomes tedious to navigate. Missions are so-so and often difficult if one wants to do pacifist/no alarm. Speaking of which, unlike the previous game, there is no stats screen to check if one accidentally got somebody killed or an alarm was raised in absentia. Nevertheless, the game looks great but some locations have massive framerate drops for some reason. Jensen is snarky as ever with a lot of NPC talk (skippable). The Breach mode is interesting at first but becomes boring after a few hours. It has challenge modes with unfathomable time/score requirements. In addition, it requires a lot of clicking to start and setup any server run. There is a lootbox opening screen where you have to click 3 times to open, reveal and store the rewards.

Slightly above average game for me. Gameplay-wise feels more polished than WD1 and finally I could properly drive cars with mouse and keyboard (I stopped playing WD1 after an hour due to this). The story is mediocre and boring. Collectibles are there so you can access more collectibles? The city is boring, missions range from interesting to boring as well. I couldn't care much about the characters either. Unlike Far Cry 5 and Assassin's Creed Origins, where the environment carries half of the game, there were no real interesting locations in San Francisco for me. There is an in-game app so that at least you have some incentive to visit landmarks, but not much else.

Far Cry comes to the United States where guns are plenty but ammo is premium. Where you get harassed by wild and household animals every 5 meters except when you take a hunting mission and they practically disappear from the landscape. The landscape is fabulous and helicopter sightseeing is fantastic, especially because plane controls are terrible with mouse and keyboard. There is no rain so you can wash your cars with sponges, bare chested bald bullet sponges easily eating multiple high caliber bullets to the head. You'll be tasked to take down a family, but they will take you down first, 9 times, while you fly through the sky or hide in a bunker nobody ever heard of. At the end you'll face a choice, an important choice, whether or not start the final main mission to witness a pointless and unsatisfactory ending. Pros: - U.S.A. setting - Visuals are stunning - Well optimized - Side missions are varying and interesting - Characters are funny - Hunting, fishing (after you get high power gear) - Cars, helicopters - Chaotic firefights while chased by an airplane and wildlife at the same time - Free roaming - Mars setting in later DLC! Cons: - Constant harassment by enemies and wildlife - Terrible scripted main missions - Repeatedly getting abducted from anywhere (seriously, when you see the prompts, just stand next to a road and wait) - Not enough and underpowered weapons (i.e., no Vector SMG?) - Unable to carry more of .50 cal ammo and bait (due to balance?) - Story is basic and weightless - Ending(s) Verdict: 7/10 - buy if you never played Far Cry before, wait otherwise (for patches and all-in-one release).

I've enjoyed the game quite a bit. It has great replay value as you can select a "Mystery" per new game that provides some extra story, tasks, goals or research options. Pros: + Great graphics + Attention to many details + Fantastic soundtrack + Mars setting + Interesting story-like elements + Mod support, helping with a bunch of cons below Cons: - Difficult to micro-manage resources, colonists and drones - Vanilla: slow gameplay, even on [>>] - It appears the game runs on 60 FPS (smooth scrolling) but the moving drones start to "warp" after certain amount of objects in-game - Vanilla: storage capacities are too low - Vanilla: some products require factory operated by human

Visually speaking it is a great remake and large nostalgia factor. Other aspects are less so, which is not the fault of the remake but the original game I guess. I played that a long time ago and can't remember all the aspects, but I remember the first variants of the remake had control and UI issues. Most of them have been fixed in Second Contact. The notebook organization is frustrating after some time. Weapon naming is confusing. No quest markers or aids(really old game). Fetch quests across hard to traverse terrains. Regions accessible through several hops at opposite ends of the maps. Non-remastered audio (originals were recorded in low-f only?). Sponge enemies.

Pros: - Egypt, beautiful visuals - Upgrade your favorite weapons to your character level - No need to be stealthy - No "listen/follow without being detected" - No quest challenges, or ratings - Predator bow and its arrow control feature Cons: - CPU demanding, played with 30FPS cap to reduce fan noise - One of the game updates reduced quality and introduced texture pop-ins - Climbing down is not as fluent as in AC:S - Territory levels, first you encounter +3-5 level enemies, then you power level to compensate and now suddenly you one-shot everybody with the predator bow - Predator bow quill size - Setting up arena battles incurs a lot of clicking and waiting for the game to load menus - Accidentally killed someone too early and the game enabled bounty-hunters + 15-20 levels above me

I pretty much enjoyed this 4X space strategy game, despite a few game and UI shortcomings. Pros: Scanning, mining, building, auto-polulate ship designs. Semi-voiced tutorial. So-so: research being random (may take some time for the auto-explore to show up) Cons: - Lack of a few conveniences, such as the need to select a ship then right-click on a system to get it scanned/mines built; I'd like to right click on the system (no ship selected) and issue "scan this..." or "build mine & research stations here" and the nearest capable ship to do the tasks. Same is true for special projects. - Message boxes break the flow, sometimes pausing the game (sometimes not). Also messages are too verbose and with large galaxy and long game time, they tend to repeat. I'd really like an option that only shows a bare minimum about them in a non-intrusive way when no decision has to be made in the situation. - Less clicks when researching. There are limited research options per category and I have to click twice (once on the "select research" and once on one of the options) to start the new research. - Reduce anti-expansion measures upfront. One of the design decisions often taken by such games is the introduction of approval or anti-expansion effects into the gameplay to "balance" out the possibility of exponential expansion. For example, having a couple of frontier stations drains the approval, preventing colonization of planets that happen to be in that station's range. I consider this a systematic flaw in such games and I don't know how the underlying issue could be solved by other means.

I've seen many times that when a game goes 3D, it loses quality on other aspects. Syberia 1 & 2 was reasonably looking in their times but were jam-packed with atmosphere, interesting puzzles and story elements. Unfortunately, Syberia 3 was a bit of a letdown to me. The story was a bit mediocre, the characters simplistic and the runaround mundane. The puzzles weren't that challenging once one figures out there was an interaction point missed somewhere down the line - even when hints are enabled - that was somehow overlooked because the main character faced the wrong direction when walking by and didn't prompt. Other times, the interactive points went offscreen and had to reload from autosave. Ah, autosave. There is only one save which you should backup periodically just in case and there is no way to save at any time. Technically possible, but I guess manual save had to go so people don't (easily) save-cheat on the 3-4 puzzles which have achievements attached doing them right the first time. The camera was terrible at times, not changing perspective when needed, other times changing and the direction keys suddenly meant different directions so the character started running back where she came from. But the biggest enemy were the stairs on themselves or combined with the camera angle shift: I spent a minute trying to climb the stairs to go up and down because the direction keys had reverse meaning on the top compared to the bottom of the stairs. The voicework is disappointing. The main character got the classical (English) voice from the previous versions but almost all the others have fresh young voices often sounding ridiculous when attached to a middle or old aged NPC. Other times, they sounded like the VO was recorded over the phone and not in a proper studio. The story was also non-engaging, even though picking up from where v2 left off, the premise of getting from A to B while military C is chasing the group I was unable to identify with. Maybe I missed explanations in game but the stage was kind of arbitrary. Maybe the only memorably thing was the music.

It's not a bad game and I pretty much enjoyed it but also found a couple of "meh" with it. Finished the main story and almost all non-bugged side-quests in 77 hours with stock girl Rider. No romance. Due to the half-open worldness, I don't feel going back to the very beginning and redo all that planet hunting and traversing. Pros: exploration; going to distinct and unique environments; resource gathering; combat; research, crafting, modding; the Nomad. Cons: character animations are a bit of a letdown, but stopped watching their faces pretty quickly; story could be considered simplistic; UI is too convoluted with its directory structure that could use some filtering/searching options; several task-level bugs, one loyalty mission bug I've encountered. System-level planet-to-planet hopping animation was annoyingly after a while. Have to take off to read emails.

Waited nearly 2 years to have a decent GPU to run this. It is somewhat more of the same with small improvements such as auto-descent. The menus and the map work well with mouse and keyboard. I'm glad the co-op missions were solo-able. Generally, it feels a bit tedious and grindy, but at least the progress on collectibles is clear. The story is okay, there's barely any "tail" missions but sometimes the quests are difficult. The parkour-AI is somewhat better but often had its own mind, jumping on each nearby desks or refusing to climb/descent at times.

Looks great, runs great except crashes during certain fights (even with latest patches). Too bad they didn't fix the old bugs and the gameplay feels a bit boring nowadays.

I liked this game, not many RTS' come out these days. I played the campaign and loved each mission, too bad it was that short (8 hours). I got it on 66% sale and since I'm not interested in multiplayer, it was a worth purchase at that price.

This is an odd game, full of potential yet hollow and lacking of content. All those generated animals, plants and planet surfaces are nothing but a modulo on a pseudo-random generator someone chose a seed. Everything looks quite similar after a while and if it weren't for the milestones or achivements, I wouldn't have bothered with looking at animals at all. Plus, the game is full of transition animations: letterboxing on encountering an NPC, zooming out on the first save - all interesting in the first few hours but then the whole game feels like work I wanted to get over with. Travelling between stars is also time wasting; I don't think the game loads but has a fixed delay no matter what. Also, there is no straight travel but from star-to-star so even with max hyperdrive, for each 1600 lightyears I got closer to the center by 600 lightyears (~300 jumps x 90 seconds? Gave up and modded it). Traversing a planet is also tedious, slow walking speed and such, but just like with the Mako from Mass Effect, there is two side of it: the terrain. The fractal like structure generated really looks realistic, except I havent found any planet with miles of flat surface (that is not water). Flying around is fun, not crashing at all, but often I really wanted to look down to see where I land. Given that, I wonder why there is no such thing as auto-landing near a point of interest or trade post? The game lacks a ton of video-advertised features, some of them forgiveable while others are not. I believe many features didn't make the release because of stability or balance issues. However, the poorly designed UI has no excuse. There is nothing really to own, no reason to hoard, there is nothing to go back for and once all languages, milestones and achievements have been reached in the current game, there is nothing to play for. The inventory space is small but expandable relatively easily but I felt the stacking of resources is too low, plus there are items that don't stack for no apparent reason. In addition, the mouse handling is worst of both PC and console worlds: PC players have to hold a button like the console ones instead of clicking and console people have to move a mouse-like cursor?! The graphics looked okay to me and the game was stable on my machine with GTX 660, but a GTX 1060+ really helps with smoothness and framerate. The sound is okay but some contextual ones are quite repeating after a while. The technology seems to be there and hope they can expand it with more content, but note that they can't change the seed or the generation algorithm because that would break existing content (i.e., your current location generated a planet beneath you and with an update, the same coordinate is now within a space whale...). Is it worth a full price? I don't feel so. (Bought it 4 days after the launch, played the vanilla game for 6 hours, played another 50 hours with all sorts of convenience mods; reached the center and gave up for now.)

My memory about Just Cause 2 is a bit faded but Just Cause 3 feels an improvement over the previous version. The graphics looks great (on my minimum requirement video card that is), the framerate was high except a few cases where either many explosions happened or the game had to load someting from my HDD. Yes, it had loading times ~30 seconds but only around missions; roaming in the open world was hardly affected by loading. Unlike Fallout 4, where the a 30 second radiant quest is followed by a 30 second loading screen (on SSD!), here the action goes on an on for half a hour before loading happens. I enjoyed flying the helicopters but hated all other vehicles; controlling cars and most notably planes with mouse and keyboard was really bad for me - I mostly skipped challenges with them as well. Getting around otherwise was easy and the rebel drop system is cool, although the cooldown was a bit long for such fast-paced frenziness. The story is simplistic but the action and blowing stuff up was quite enjoyable. I never felt repetition when taking over towns and outposts. I belive JC3 has fewer settlements than JC2 because I can remember I got bored after two dozen locations in my JC2 replay. The map is huge but more desolate and covered mostly in water; however, the stuff density was okay for me. The final positive thing was that clearing the heat level happens much faster now. One problem with such sandbox games is that in many games, you start keep accumulating "wanted" level and you can't get away from your chasers; they will hunt you across the map and every shot fired at them just makes things worse. In JC3, I could simply hide somewhere for a minute to get things cleared. The game has a few negative sides and annoyances. Crash to desktop, heat seeking missiles not locking on, falling through the terrain and the constant "XY beat your best score in Z", i.e., the always online, 2 minute login leaderboards which can't be disabled unless you pull the plug on your internet connection. Just Cause 3 was a great fun, and even though you can re-oppress settlements, I don't feel the urge to take on them again or replay the game.

I found Fallout 4 to be a nice next episode in the series. I'm running it on medium on a slightly above-minimum spec'd GPU but the world looks great, the places are unique enough and are now filled with stuff. Unfortunately, the game has limited support for 4:3 aspect ration and I have to run it in a window (otherwise the UI gliches). I experienced frame drops when enemies are numerous, the environment too complex or having too much fire around me. The UI is acceptable and finally I can use the key E to accept a dialog (which requires a mod in Skyrim?!). I also like the fonts are big and the environments are bright (unlike Witcher 3 where I once failed to exit an Inn because I couldn't locate door in the darkness). The economy seems to be scaled back, armor and weapons sell for tens of caps. When I clear out a location, it yields only about 400-900 caps which I usually spend on ammunition and relatively expensive Rad-Away. However, about 20 hours into the game and with the right perks, ammo won't be an issue anymore. Big positive property is that crafting has now real impact; I pretty much liked improving my armor and weapons and cook my food and investing in the associated perks proven to be rewarding. In addition, cooking now removes rad from the food, however, I don't think classical food such as Pork'n'Beans can be cleaned this way and as such are now useless to me at this point. In previous games, you had to earn the right to use a Power Armor whereas here you get it as part of the main quest. This may seem odd and non rewarding but I think the game is balanced around it acceptably. It runs on fusion cores which are rare so you won't try to use it all the time except in hairy situations. For example, I run into a pack of Super Mutants of which 1-2 were way over my level. Returning with a Power Armor leveled the field nicely. I don't mind the radiant quests either because of the XP reward helps reaching the next level much quicker. Otherwise, I didn't invest to much in the main quest line so far so I can prepare myself for it (hope it doesn't level enemies). Indeed, side quests so far are a bit uninspired: kill or fetch, not boring but not exciting to me either. One negative thing about how the first few hours and levels I've spent is the fear of the environment. You are at a low level with simple guns with which you can't properly hit a Bloatfly or a Ghoul running at you 2x as fast than in FO3. I was afraid to take any of the starting quests because of the "show-off" with the Power Armor in the beginning: what if I run into a pack of Supermutants or Deathclaw with my little pistol? If an early quest sends you across the map, who nows what the intended levels are? But one has to go out to get XP to get perks to be able to upgrade stuff and once I got over the start, now I'm more confident and whenever I see some location, I go in without any fear by now (and get back in a Power Armor if necessary). Given the new dialog wheel, I liked the previous list-based conversations (modded to show more lines) better as I find it a bit difficult to hit those small arrows on screen (are there keys for those?). Big positive thing that you don't have to open the transfer dialog (which was becoming quite slow to show up in FO3 and FNV) for containers but just point at them and loot them directly and immediately. I haven't experienced any quest/game breaking bugs yet but had plenty of the ordinary bugs: Pip-boy and weapons invisible, stuck in rubble, CTD. Enemy pathing is sometimes buggy and they get stuck on things (which of course makes them easier to kill). Perhaps the worst technical problem I'm facing is the loading time when fast traveling or entering/exiting a building. It can take up to a half a minute until the game loads up despite it runs on a 500MB/s SSD. I know this game is like 4-5x of Skyrim but Skyrim transitions rarely take 2-3 seconds on the same SSD. (I utilize this time to check my emails and social network sites...). Bottom line is that this game is indeed more intended towards those kinds of people who want to experience a game without limits in a streamlined fashion (i.e., who have a daily job and/or family) and don't really want to spend time on too many branches and replays.

It was a surprisingly good sandbox game. Great framerate, good tracking of progress and collectibles, unique and diverse locations. It was a bit light on story but it didn't bother me much; I enjoyed the driving around and collecting stuff. There were, however, a few minor annoyances. It was hard to see anything in dark locations even with the flashlight and the hand-to-hand combat was tedious after halfway through. In addition, many upgrades to the car and Max are gated behind main story progress so one can't really prepare itself by doing side-quests or collecting stuff upfront. The cars handled relatively well with keyboard and mouse, except in races were I found it difficult to make small adjustments and ended up facing backwards too many times. In conclusion, this is a good game and was worth its cost.

Ever since its release, I haven't seen any modern-combat strategy game that got close to Joint Task Force (I didn't like the modern mod for Company of Heroes). The game looks surprisingly detailed after all these years and run always fine. The campaign is mostly bug-free, although the music goes away if I fail a mission and I have to restart the game. The other thing, which might be an exploit or a deliberate design choice are the civilian cars: usually there are plenty of them to block off paths so the AI gets stuck behind them and I can effortlessly win the map. This is most apparent on the final map where the enemy vehicles are so numerous that I don't know how to win without this strategy. The music tracks are aming my all-time favorite game music tracks, I like the music of the main menu and the credits.

After all these years, HL2 feels and still plays as an excellent game. I replay this game once or twice a year ever since its release. Great storytelling, voice acting and physics.

I was excited to see a real time space strategy with lots of achievement on steam and pre-ordered the game for the price of an AAA title. Never again. The game was practically unplayable and buggy; the first patches did nothing valuable. Then the developer filed for bankruptcy with no hope from the community side to make this game ever playable. Unfortunately, there was no refund available from my country. The sad thing is that the game was still available for purchase for months after.

I held off on this game in the hope it gets patched to be usable with keyboard and mouse, but gave up on waiting. It is ever so slightly tedios, places and dungeons are now lush and unique. It is full of fetch quests but I'm a collecting guy and most items were properly marked on the map. I played the prequels but too long time ago so didn't get most backreferences. I've completed most sidequests but unfortunately but lost two my best companions, and their hand-crafted equipment so no point continuing. The controls aren't that bad and after remapping keys to be a regular TPS, the only thing left is the need to continuously press the right mouse to look around: some toggle options would be nice, although I got used to it (similar to Assassin's Creed where I almost always free run with shift+right mouse. The game has some bugs: uncollectable collectables, hangs and stutter in cutscenes (played on high with GTX 660), but at least haven't run into any showstoppers. Bugs are common in newly released games, but not fixing them for months has no excuse. After spending 70+ hours, I don't feel any urge to replay with a different build.

It's a good game, funny, great visuals and voiceover. However, there are a few negatives: - feels tedious to replay, - inventory sometimes blocks the object to be interacted, - puzzles' logic are sometimes not my logic; kept forgetting that one needs to retalk to people and retry using items, - it feels a chapter is missing at least; perhaps the story's resolution will happen in a sequel, - bugs; some small ones, some cutscene hangs, one or two game breaking. In conclusion, the game is worth playing.

I've been holding off on this until the patches and now with 1.7, I'm enjoing the game as much as I enjoyed Far Cry 3. Doing missions and collecting stuff is good as usual. However, there are quite a few annoyances: - Body armor is practically useless, gets reduced after a few hits, including animal attacks. - Animal attacks everywhere, can't get to a mission location without being attacked and wasting ammo and health. - The helicopter is great but can't remember where they are except a few places and the map only shows them if they are next to you. - Some towers have helicopters but they can't be fast travelled to. - 50% of the time, if I fast travel to an outpost and try to leave for a mission/task, the outpost gets attacked and I have to turn back to help out which wastes ammo and health. - High powered sniper rifles able to take down heavies come too late in the campaign, when there are less useful. - Performance is acceptable but hiccups due to loading happens quite a lot despite being installed on an SSD. - Enemies teleport sometimes, which makes picking them off from afar difficult because if the shot misses, they get alerted. - I don't get the weapon accuracy, especially the bow. Sometimes I need to compensate for distance and drop, other times not. Enemies tend to sway their head quite more often than in FC3. - Unmemorable location names; can't name any of them. - There are lot of collectibles and they don't show in the map if it is zoomed out to far; I wish you could jump back and forth between the locations of certain collectibles. - I spent the first 10 hours hunting for animals so I could get my equipment levels up. Starting out with a single weapon slot is ridiculous. In conclusion, its a good game but doesn't go much further than FC3; if you liked FC3, collectibles, free roaming and sandbox gameplay, you should play this game.

Quite a good looking game. However, the levels were really long, tedious and a bit boring. Maybe I didn't get the crafting system, but as the game progressed, it took more and more hits to kill an enemy. At the end, I only used lightning because the chain effect would deal damage to other enemies, saving time. The story feels a bit disconnected, never understood how we got from one boss to the other. Some UI text were really tiny (~5 pixel), barely could read them even from up close my monitor.

I played it for like 3 hours, then an additional 4 hours in my dreams. I sometimes continue playing in my dreams, but only for the very best games; so this has to be one. I played all Borderlands games thus far and was immediately captivated by this installment. I was a bit afraid how they would convert the loot and gore fest of the original games into a point&click adventure, but I'm satisfied with the results: where you would shoot the bandits in BL, now you get past them utilizing cutting-edge ... conversations. It features QTEs and there is short a timeout on conversation options; it keeps the exciting up, but I found myself choosing an option due to the time pressure and not having enough time to think through the possible consequences. On e one hand, this is mildly frustrating, on the other hand, gives an incentive to play the game again and again. Voice acting is good, but doesn't feel as good as in BL2. Iconic sound effects are in the game, but they sound odd and unpositioned in the 3D scene. Graphics looks good and is performing well, but the settings lack fullscreen toggle (although alt+enter works), v-sync and certain resolutions make part of the menu fall off the screen.

This isn't that bad **** as some recent greenlits are, but still its length and quality asks for a sale. The music is great but the story is a bit shallow. Enemies are a bit annoying if you go on the stealth route because if they detect you even for a single frame as you shoot at them from cover, the alarm is raised instantly. Game settings are limited and apparenty doesn't support my monitor's native resolution so I had to play it in window. Graphics is limited but at least not demanding. In conclusion, it provides some fun for a couple of hours.

After so many years and full Steam support coming up, I've replayed this game and finished it under 20 hours minus some collectables. The destruction mechanics is as fun as ever. Visuals are good and the music is non-intrusive. However, the game has some shortcomings and outright frustrating properties. For example, you can "collect" ores and supply crates yet only a grand total is given and doesn't list how many of each remained in a particular sector; forcing the player to sweep the whole map just for the last few of them. Being a console port, it was a bit difficult to get used to how the movement controls work on the character and in vehicles (no strafe but full body turn). Driving via mouse and keyboard gave me the most frustration. Sometimes, the vehicle wouldn't turn, sometimes it would turn a lot for the shortest keypresses. The smallest bump throws it into the air or starts drifting; all these come exponentially when one does the driving challenges. I know its Mars with 1/3 gravity, but steering shouldn't be this difficult. By the way, mission are quite strange in respect of their location. The marker sends the player somewhere, then there is usually a 2 minute long driving section to get to the actual mission location. I don't get it why missions couldn't be started way closer to the intended target area? The final annoyance was with the limited ammo. Some say they are gerrillas so live with the limited resources, but they should be able to carry more ammunition (or have upgrades to them), especially when half a clip is needed per enemy or half stock per building. Enemies seem to be smart as they take cover and (sarcastically) spawn behind the player; health regenerates but usually there isn't a quiet spot where it would. I often found myself surrounded and seemingly cleared areas produce more enemies pretty quickly. In conclusion, it is a decent game, but clearly doesn't have the advancements in mechanics, dos and don'ts in making sandbox games.

Fantastic visuals and voice acting, light on story and puzzles. I'm quite interested in the "consequences", but until the whole thing is released, there is no point in replaying anything; it would just mess up the choices. On the technical side, it has several graphics options but no built in framerate limit and even forced vsync doesn't seem to work; my system can do lots of frames per second at a cost of noise which I only accept from few games.

Interesting in-between installment. The story is acceptable, the new gameplay mechanics is mostly okay. I played BL2 a lot of times, and lately with mods that let me run faster and jump higher, making the backtracking much easier, so TPS' mechanics was familiar, but with the welcome stop-the-flying-and-land ability. There is a modest amount of backtracking and ton of edges and invisible walls that hinder most direct route. Sometimes I was caught up in slightly tilted surfaces and some small steps my character couldn't step over. The game was quite stable but hung a few times until my internet connection returned. At first I thought the butt-slam and the huge amount of elemental barrels will be fantastic, but 90% of my deaths were caused by those barrels and unwanted slams around them. Otherwise, most boss battles felt easier. I found a few bugged challenges and some quite evil ones. I'm not really satisfied with the loot quality in TPS; since it has a bigger pool for the random loot to chose from, It becomes even less likely you get a better version of your current favorite weapon. I got a nice sniper rifle at level 12 and had to retain it till level 23 to get the next better with the same elemental damage. The grinder is a nice addition but still random enough and due to the backpack limit, you'll end up hoarding the to-be-grinded weapons much longer than before. The legendary drop rate seems to be lower as well. The mouse look felt a bit strange, quantized, so targeting distant enemies was difficult due to large jumps even for the slightest mouse movements. The voiceover is good and the character talkback is a good addition, but since I'm not familiar with the Australian word jokes and style, It wasn't as funny for me as BL2. The location and background music is not memorable at all sadly. Some say one shouldn't consider the price as a factor int the score, which I agree with if the said game is really good, otherwise you'll feel regret about your impatience till a sale. I would say, this is what a 90s expansion packs looked like; almost an entire standalone game but still overshadowed by the main game. Which is sad because I'm sure a lot of design and development effort went into it. I'm not sure if I'll buy any of the DLCs on this one.