sanchokobe

According to Steam, I've logged 30 hours of time playing Payday 2. Let me be perfectly honest: I hate this game. I'm impressed I was able to stomach it for 30 hours. I hate the last-gen graphics. I hate the horrible AI. I hate the terrible campaign design. I hate the half-arsed storytelling. I hate the cringe inducing voice acting. I hate the problematic hit detection. I hate the confusing gameplay design choices (Why does a body have to be in a bag in order to be picked up? Why are you only allowed to carry two zip ties?) I hate that an awesome soundtrack was ruined by being associated with this train wreck ****. This game could've been something fantastic. It's truly an interesting concept in cooperative shooters. But everywhere you look in this game, it just reeks of lazy design, lazy programmers, and not nearly enough time spent on QA. I give it points for being a poorly executed great idea. And I also give it points for having a soundtrack that deserved to be in a better game than this.

Here's how I determined this was a good game and worthy of being purchased. I downloaded the demo, which is just the first stage (Windy Hill Zone 1). I played it, then I played it again. Then again, and again after that. Next thing I knew, three hours had gone by and all I'd been doing is playing one stage over and over again. The last things I did before turning in for the night were buying the game in the Wii U shop and starting the download. There's a bit of a learning curve as far as the controls are concerned, but after awhile, I find them to be far more responsive and precise than Hedgehog Engine games. My only real complaint about the controls is the unnecessary addition of color powers, which appear to have been added simply because they felt they had to put something in the game that utilized the gamepad touchscreen. I don't like the very idea of the gamepad touchscreen in just about every Wii U game I've played. Having to shift and refocus your eyes back and forth is awkward and uncomfortable. In a game like Sonic, it really breaks the flow, although Sonic Team was smart enough to make the game pause after using a color power to give you a chance to reacclimate yourself with the TV screen. As far as the people saying it's copying too much off of Mario Galaxy, so what? That's what Sonic has always done. Sonic games take the elements from Mario games and speed them up. Sonic 1,2, and 3 copied Super Mario Bros. Sonic Adventure copied Mario 64. Sonic Lost World copies Mario Galaxy. It doesn't matter as long as the games are good, and this one is good.

It's a nice thought, but it wasn't worth $20. It wasn't that great a story. It seemed like something a sexually confused high school girl would write in her diary. Roger Ebert is laughing in his grave. If you want to play an interactive visual novel that has a truly gripping emotional story, check out Katawa Shoujo or Analogue: A Hate Story. And Katawa Shoujo is freeware!

A fantastic game. Beautiful hand-drawn and hand-animated art, memorable characters, engaging and emotional story, brilliant atmospheric soundtrack, and the gameplay hits that sweet spot of "easy to pick up, difficult to master". What is truly amazing about this game, however, is the story of its development. With the exception of the music composed by Hyperduck Soundworks, everything else in this game (design, art, story, programming, EVERYTHING) was done by one person working unassisted. And this one person went into this with zero knowledge of game design and programming. He taught himself everything as he went along. The fact that he was able to start from nothing and produce a game of such impeccable **** is a tremendous achievement, and truly inspiring. The game deserves a playthrough based on that fact alone.

Let me start by saying I have never played Minecraft. Now then, I simply cannot understand this game's popularity or high score. I've played this game for several hours, given it several second chances when I read about updates, and every time I've found this game to be an incredibly frustrating experience. The controls are stiff and unresponsive. The graphics are terrible even by pixelart standards. The music is irritating. The interface is confusing and incredibly unintuitive. The activities are dull and tedious, even when you have a friend join you. These activities are made worse by the fact that when your "world" is generated and you pop into it, every single monster that pops into the world with you automatically homes in on your position. This means that your attempts to complete the tedious activities are constantly interrupted by unrelenting attacks from monsters that you have to fend off by slowly and clumsily swinging your largely ineffective weapons at them. Trailers and advertisements for Terraria claim that somewhere at the end of all this monotony there is the reward of action and adventure, but I've watched some online videos of said adventure. Quite frankly the destination does not appear to justify the frustrating journey. I would give this one point for being a relatively fresh idea, but charging $10 for this ($15 when it was first released!) is tantamount to robbery. Even $5 is pushing it.

It's cute. It's fun. It's inexpensive. You can't go wrong. That's all I have to say about it, but I need to keep typing stuff in order to post this.

I've never played any other game in the Assassin's Creed series. While I'm probably sure the ideal version of this game is the PC version (For the graphics), I have to say I'm glad I bought the Wii U version. Being able to turn off the on-screen HUD and use the gamepad for your minimap, health bar, etc. is a little thing that makes a big difference to me. There are some glitches (which I understand are not Wii U exclusive), but the game is simply massive, so glitches don't surprise me. I just hope they get fixed, and that isn't something Ubisoft has a good track record of. Still I spent just about every waking moment over Thanksgiving weekend playing this game, so it must be doing a lot of things right.

The game itself is damn near perfect. An improvement in every way over Arkham Asylum, which was also damn near perfect in its own right. However, I must dock three points from the PC version. One point is for the SecuROM DRM, and the other two are for Games for Windows LIVE. Why two points for that? Because you are required to sign in to it, otherwise you aren't allowed to save your game. This means there is essentially two different brands of DRM in this game, PLUS you must have an active internet connection to play this offline single player game. That is absolutely disgusting. Shame on you, Warner Bros.

Fantastic game--the best JRPG I've played in years--but it isn't without its flaws. The first and most glaring thing everyone will notice is the graphics could be classified as PS2 quality at best. I would say later PS2 games like Final Fantasy XII and Xenosaga Episode III had better graphics. We've seen with Skyward Sword, Super Mario Galaxy, and others that the Wii is capable of more than this. However, when one sees just how huge this game is, Monolith can be forgiven for skimping on the graphics. I would guess the graphics were watered down because the game wouldn't fit on a single disc otherwise. There's tons of geography to explore, items to collect, and sidequests to complete, and that's only a fraction of things to do in Xenoblade. Even so, the game's graphics look like something from a ten year old game, and for that I cannot give it a perfect score. Gameplay wise, there are elements of both Japanese and Western RPGs, as well as MMORPGs. All three genres are blended together quite well, though the ability for your character to jump seems to be rather buggy (and generally unnecessary). I also have yet to hear any music that compares to the compositions of Yasunori Mitsuda or Yuki Kajiura in previous "Xeno" games. One more thing that may put some people off is the US localization was basically copy-pasted from the European release. The characters all speak with a UK dialect (everyone is called "mate", armor is spelled with a U, etc.) It didn't bother me, but some people may get uppity about it. Monolith and Nintendo get big kudos, however, for including the option to switch between English and Japanese voice tracks. Long story short, this game is hands down the best RPG on the Wii to date. It's a must-have for JRPG fans, and many western RPG fans will enjoy it as well. I know it'll keep me busy until The Last Story is released in June. :)

Not as good as F.E.A.R. 2, nowhere near as good as the original F.E.A.R. The game gets points for outstanding enemy A.I. and some originality in the co-op department. I also like the reduced ammo capacity, which forces you to be a little more careful where you shoot, but why only two guns? What was wrong with three? The graphics are not as good as F.E.A.R. 2. There's absolutely no excuse for that, even for it being a console port, but Day 1 could redeem themselves somewhat if they follow Crytek's lead and release a DX11 texture pack in the near future. The keyboard controls are unnatural and the mouse control is unresponsive. The cover system is an unnecessary addition. There was nothing wrong with how it worked in F.E.A.R. 2. What happened to the story?! What happened to exploring every room to find snippets of lore and backstory hidden in files or voice mails? Most importantly, what happened to the scare? The game will make you jump at times because oh no a light bulb burst, etc. But it won't frighten you like the first two games did. This is the biggest disappointment. Day 1 simply can't bring the scare the way Monolith did. Right now it's 4/10. If Day 1 gives us some patches to smooth out the mouse controls, and if they release a DX11 texture pack, I'll bump it up to 7.

Give it another try. There have been two major updates since the release (which I agree was incredibly sub-par), and there's one more major update scheduled to happen still this month. Many of the major issues have been addressed. The UI has been totally revamped, and is more responsive. Crafting has been streamlined. Controls are now more customizable, especially for mouse + keyboard people. There have been countless other improvements on top of those, and more are on the way, such as an item search in the market wards, and drag-and-drop functionality in the gear window. Also, Square Enix has done something that I personally have never seen a game company do. They admitted their failures, publicly apologized for them, promised to fix them, and they are repaying their customers by suspending all subscription fees until the game is an acceptable level of quality. They are making good on their promise. The game has vastly improved from where it was in October. It deserves another chance.