★★★★☆ All action all the time, awesome bosses, epic set pieces, classic one liners, lite weapon upgrades, babykin marine fodder, and slowmo to make it all even better.
★★☆☆☆ Get Company of Heroes 1, instead, if even. This sequel does nothing better, and too many things worse.
/rant Graphics look bad, run bad, and have practically no settings. Troops no longer have unique or even competent AI, where they used to duck and dive for cover, they now stand out in the open, like idiots, and take potshots at each other. You can no longer build a base, and the simple defensive structures that you can build are even less relevant. Nothing has been streamlined or made more intuitive, there is no effective way to select troops without manually grouping them, abilities breakdown in groups, interacting with troops inside buildings is still impossible, the UI and controls are lacking at best. If anything, the focus has been shifted to tedious micro-management, needed to spam and avoid grenades, reinforce troops, and manage squads at multiple points at once. The campaign has you playing as the Russians, they're worse than the Nazis, have fun. Most of the missions involve learning where enemy tanks will spawn, and then restarting so you can preemptively place mines there. Unit variety is practically gone, no more snipers, engineers, or rocket squads. There are like 20 people left online, so don't expect to play multiplayer either. The additional multiplayer modes also seem to be missing, coop wave survival and MOBA-lite. Disappointing, quite liked the first game, once upon a time ago.
★★★★☆ Embrace the meme! Be a sneak wizard with your magic phone. Explore a masterfully crafted open world playground.
Pro/Con Feature List: + StunGun + Pretty city + Nudle maps + Helicopter jr + SuperNinja flips + Radio on the go + Landmark selfies + Hide in plain sight + Swoop between cover + Fast travel from the start + Smack people with a yoyo + Replay completed story missions + Collectibles are actually rewarding + SideQuests flow into the main story + Coop seasons based on participation + Ridiculously fantastic clothing options + Stealth takedowns work in active combat + Line hacking puzzles integrated into the world + Coop works well enough, but only for quick side missions + NPCs have tons of idle animations and unique voice snippets + Hacks are actually integrated into gameplay and useful this time + Sticky player physics, easily ride on top of cars or moving objects + Huge, detailed, varied, colorful world, full of meaningful interactions + Puzzle solving is especially interesting when all gadgets get involved + Get away with anything, without causing police agro, and police chases are actually entertaining, when they do happen + While you can't jump, the vaulting system in this game is fantastic, both visually and functionally. I've played 100s of games, this is the first one where a vaulting system may actually be better than jumping. If you could jump it, you can vault it.
+- Lite factions +- Weak graphics and performance +- App style menu, not quite as functional as an actual phone +- Were they going for most "f*cks" in a video game? Did they win? +- In-world GPS works well enough, but is missing floating turn signals and blinkers +- Random friendly players seamlessly popping into your world is an interesting idea, but doesn't amount to anything +- Having to manually control window washer platforms all the way up/down is quite annoying, a single button press would do
- Awful tutorial - No checkpoints - Can't hide bodies - Open mic by default - uPlay instead of Steam - No down/revive system - Can't preview paint jobs - Smack dogs with a yoyo - No character customization - Hard transition into cutscenes - Active mission doesn't GPS by default - Can't see hacking tooltips while sprinting - Not sure this soundtrack qualifies as music - Quest list changes order every time you check it - Can't play the campaign coop, only grind fetch quests - When you do a cover takedown, you don't get back into cover - Hacking invasions are game breakingly intrusive, but they can be turned off - Accidentally cancel conversations with esc, since that's used for 100 other things - Too many interactions involve holding E (instead of just pressing it), and are followed by a short halfassed animation lock - Hacker vision is obnoxious, and needs to be on far too often - any time you're puzzle solving, or in a restricted area, or in combat - The way enemies detect you for having a weapon out and/or not auto holstering it is a bit clunky. Even moreso because you can call in "allies", who are actually enemies, and then they turn on you for no reason. - Steal people's money? Strange move for a super rich hacker group that's supposed to be for the people. Maybe the option to give them money instead? To buy followers (exp)? Especially considering how under-used money is.
★☆☆☆☆ AC:Unity is a fantastic, story driven, action climbing, open world, french assassin game - lost under a mess of bugs and broken combat.
Reasons to Buy: + Entertaining Story + Coop almost works + Theoretically entertaining gameplay
Reasons to Bail: - Awful story ending - Coop has even more bugs than singleplayer, and insane desync - Gameplay is broken, because of bad design and more bugs than Early Access
Pro/Cons Feature List: + Plot twists + Quality cutscenes and set pieces + Graphics look good up close, especially main characters
+- Cover system +- Crowd events +- Coop, but it needs a lot more fine tuning +- Visual equipment customization, but its tied to stats +- Default Eagle Vision works nicely, upgraded it gets annoying +- Combat and freerunning look good, when they manage to work correctly +- There is a decent variety in weapon types (melee rifles?), but you can only equip one at a time, and hidden blades aren't an option +- Finishers look cool but break combat flow. In ACB, finishers were basically the only attack, and combat worked around it nicely. +- Downward free-running is a good idea, but its buggy like everything else, and I don't see why there are different buttons for up/down/straight. Just make it work.
- Ships removed - Still pushing Abstergo - 1shot deaths everywhere - Can't whistle when hiding - Stat based button masher combat - Not a better love story than Twilight - Can't move the camera while downed - Synchronize when trying to leap of faith - Uneven terrain bugs the combat system - Ranged enemies break the combat system - Disguises are stupid OP, and stupid lame looking - When every plot point is a plot twist, they start to lose impact - Awful lockpicking minigame, stop the bouncing bar on the mark - LoDing/draw distance is quite poor, and the city is monotone gray/brown - Instafail stealth missions, instafail trailing missions, broken combat missions - Enemies often attack from offscreen, because the camera doesn't pull back for combat - Using meds displays the giant inventory UI, even when you're out of meds, which you usually are - Free running can be wonky, often comes to a hard stop until you waggle around to find a working path - Weapon stat comparisons aren't right, a spear with more damage than my sword takes twice as many hits to kill an enemy - The combat system is so poorly designed that the best/only way to play it is to throw down a smoke bomb and spam attack the stunlocked enemies - Whats the point of having health nubs if enemies do non-specific non-predictable amount of damage to them? 1 hit should take 1 nub. On top of that, you shouldn't be able to die unless already at 1 HP, like in ACB. - Bugs. A collectible outside the very first window re-appeared when I re-loaded my save, and can no longer be collected. Combat and movement regularly breakdown. Coop is super desync. Animations often fail to matchup correctly. Combat triggers both fail to appear and fail to register. Random NPCs exist in cutscenes. And many more.
* Can we just get ACB remastered in CryEngine UE4 or something? * Came back years later, after the Notre Dame incident, hoping they had patched ACU out of being the Fallout 76 of Assassin's Creed. Nope.
★★☆☆☆ Yet another overhyped indie game that doesn't live up to standards set by its decades old predecessors. Hollow Knight is the perfect example of why every modern game has a fast travel system and a giant yellow quest arrow at the top of the screen. Blindly backtracking to the same 20 dead ends, to see if your new ability/item works there, is a tedious, frustrating, insulting, waste of time.
Reasons to Buy: + You like backtracking?
Reasons to Bail: - Backtracking - Dark Souls style corpse runs, for more backtracking - Castlevania SOTN - Backtracking! - Arkham Asylum - Did I mention backtracking?
Pro/Con Feature List: + Rescue caterpillars + Choppable environment + Restore health via combat
+- Super dash is cool, but rarely useful +- Vague lore about... dreaming... ghost... zombie... alien... bug... things...? +- Hand drawn sprites are better than pixelated ones, but 2D graphics died decades ago for a reason +- Enemies constantly land cheap shots, but since you heal by hitting them, its not game breaking, just annoying +- The game becomes drastically more playable once you obtain the Mantis Claw (which allows you to slide down and jump up walls). However, instead of this being a baseline feature (like in Megaman X), with the potential to expand and become something great, its the highpoint of the game, unlocked halfway through.
- KickStarter - Currency grinding - Limited charm slots - No controller vibration - Backtracking simulator - Music is fitting; forgettable - The arena, especially level 3 - Pitfall "difficulty", both literal and figurative - Impossible to heal during several boss battles - Talk to every NPC, one too many times, every time - Weird cyan pixel in middle of screen the entire game? - Every area plays the same, basically just palette swaps - Dark Souls style corpse run system. Luckily you don't die often - Map only updates at save points, and only after you buy each area - Mobility upgrades are purely that, and have little-to-no impact on combat - The map is useless at best, misleading at worst, but you still need to check it every 5seconds - No story, motivation, or progression, just redundant backtracking for the sake of unrewarding exploration - Coin lumps (and secret areas in general) are stupidly unrewarding, even the tone that plays when you find one is disappointing - Your attacks knock you backwards, while this does make combat feel impactful, it also completely destroys combat-platforming - Rarely, if ever, are there shortcuts to help ease the obscene amount of backtracking. Even the game's version of fast travel does next to nothing - Unresponsive controls. Button holds are often ignored entirely, button spams are often ignored for hidden CDs, buttons for abilities overlap
A simple town portal feature would have gone a long way. Oh, whats that? There is a town portal feature? That unlocks after you've already completed the game? That about sums up the malicious incompetence that went into Hollow Knight's design as a whole. The ideas are there, they just aren't put together or paced properly.
Extended Ranting: On top of Hollow Knight having meh graphics, meh music, meh story, meh combat, meh level design, so much grinding that you accidentally got it pregnant, and even more backtracking than that - Its a huge barrel of wasted opportunity. The abilities you end the game with (double jump, air dash, wall ride, etc) should have been the baseline, and upgraded from there. This would also help remove a lot of the backtracking.
These upgrades could have been in a skill tree, to give the game more/any progression. Air dash could have the option to attack while dashing, and then be upgraded from that by turning the dash itself into an attack. It could also give iFrames, allowing you to dodge enemies when they get close. Dashing mobility upgrades could allow you to dash in any direction, and then to dash twice per jump. Tapping L2 (super dash bootan) could trigger a parry, fits in with the crystal lore, and several enemies already parry. Integrating the mobility skills into combat. And super dash should work upwards, if not an an entire flight system. Super dash could also bounce around objects and/or enemies so you can actually use it once in a while. The game also needs slowmo! Everywhere!
The teleportation system should have been unlocked much much much earlier, not one step before you beat the final boss. And it should allow you to teleport to any visited bench, which, even then, is a bit sparse.
Charms should have been unlimited, and you could toggle each one if you wanted. Once you have a build, which is very early on, practically every new charm you find is worthless, because you can't afford to equip them. This would make them a meaningful reward for exploration.
How bout a charm to heal by hitting enemies, instead of hit > mana > cast > heal. Or one to auto-attack enemies when you jump on their head, since the best way to kill every enemy is by bouncing on them.
Dream Nail? What does this at all contribute to the game? You can't actually use it in combat or exploration, its just another nonsensical excuse to grind and backtrack to the same places you've already been 2700 times. Maybe you could stick it into walls to hold your position and then heal or attack while stable. Maybe it could have the same attack speed as the normal weapon, not cause knockback, but also not gain mana, with the charge ability still working as it does as an additional (useless) feature. Maybe it could work as a ranged attack, since the only ranged attack currently in the game is a useless waste of mana. Something. Swimming could also use something, as it doesn't currently contribute anything to the game, and is just an obstacle for the sake of an obstacle.
★☆☆☆☆ More likely to crash than to win. An equal amount of non-skill is required either way. PUBG is not a shooter, its a pray2win cancer simulator, with more RNG and gambling addiction than Vegas.
- Pray to RNGesus you land near good loot. - Pray to RNGesus nobody else lands near you. - Pray to RNGesus the circle centers on you. - Pray to RNGesus you find a vehicle. - Pray to RNGesus nobody finds your hiding spot. - Pray to RNGesus your bullets hitreg. - Pray to RNGesus you don't get banned.
Such skill, much wow.
Pro/Con Feature List: + Neo coats + Bulletproof frying pans + Meaningful sound design + Rejoin matches if you DC + Surprisingly sane install size + Instantly leave games to join another + Decent amount of weapons/items/attachments + Items highlight when nearby, without being obnoxious
+- Destructible doors +- Fog is crazy. Rain is noise. No nights? +- Clothes; loot crate gambling to unlock +- Shrinking arena, but location is random +- Visual equipment, but half of it glitches inside your body +- Controls are mapped stupid wrong by default, but can be fixed +- Matchmaking is quick, but likely doesn't do any actual match making +- Vehicles? If they weren't the worst functioning vehicles of any game of all time? +- Skydive speed is shown on the HUD (only mentioning this because it isn't in Fortnite) +- FPP mode works much better overall, but has a ton of problems of its own. ADS still has a hipfire+ mode, inventory is invisible, shoulder graphics clipping, gun disappearing near walls, movement is sloppy, and it really highlights what a poorly designed game PUBG is. Also, FPP Solo is a stupid name, and it should be called Solo FPS.
- Hackers - Clipping - Campers - Lootboxes - No killcams - Prone blocked - Manual reloads - Despicable devs - No achievements - Weekly crate cost - Can't drink and drive - Killed by own vehicle - Closing doors is janky - Voice chat after you die - Leaning slows you down - Enter the wrong seat in cars - Mode preferences don't save - No option to toggle 3PS ADS - Guns start in single-shot mode - Waypoint doesn't show in-world - Pathetic character customization - Clothes pickups don't show color - Title card shows after every match - Inventory hotkey HUD doesn't exist - No feedback on hits, kills, or deaths - Can't jump while crouched, stand instead - Microtransactions, via Steam marketplace - Can't tell which direction you get shot from - Turn graphics down for an unfair advantage - Cancer community, turn off voice chat ASAP - Bullet impact sound louder than the firing one - For a game so null paced, TTK is 10x too fast - Spamming the pickup key fails to pickup items - Laggy, buggy, crashy, glitchy, broken, early access - Stats page is wrong, if it even manages to have info - Both 3PS and FPS views have major camera problems - Invincible in water? Or even worse hitreg when swimming? - Pickup inferior items and/or switch to ones you're already using - Opening doors doesn't have an animation, but cancels reloading - Worse shooting mechanics, netcode, and hitreg than the BF4 launch - Gunshot damage effect, even if you don't get damaged by a gunshot - Zooming to ADS doesn't match 3PS crosshair target, even in FPP mode - ADS sensitivity doesn't match, but has like 10 sliders for you to figure out - Can take damage during the skydive, when the entire process is automated - Squad up with random Chinamen, on open mics, who intentionally teamkill you - Boring map, made up of auto-terrain, and the same 5 buildings copy/pasted in groups - Graphics look bad and run worse. I've seen better textures in PS2 games. Trees LoD into existence 10 feet away, and grass draw distance is even more noticeable than that. All at a blazing fast 30 FPS on a 1070.
* Took ~90 minutes and ~4 matches to get my first win. * Received for free, from an (un?)lucky NVIDIA giveaway. * Fortnite recommended over PUBG, but Fornite not recommended either. * Ranked top 1%. They literally ban more hackers every day than there are people ranked higher than me. Seems legit.
★★☆☆☆ Borderlands 2 is a game about "87 Bazillion Guns", but only gives you 12 inventory slots, and shared loot in coop. That level of nonsensically bad game design applies to everything, from bad netcode to worse shooting mechanics.
The game feels like it was designed for coop, very badly. So it feels wrong to play singleplayer, but it feels broken to play coop. Some AI partners would probably solve this game breaking problem.
Pro/Con Feature List: + Vehicles + Skill trees + Sun shafts + Shield variety + Slot machines + No fall damage + Can see through idle scopes + Weapon variety, both visually and functionally
+- Doodle graphic style +- Aim Assist with keyboard/mouse +- Legendary weapons are gamebreakingly OP +- Reload some guns by throwing them like grenades +- Matchmaking is quick, but destroys story progress +- You can fast travel, but to places you've never been, and only from signposts +- Areas are varied visually, but have less gameplay variety than an MMO, and no unique stories or content to explore. +- The HD texture pack helps alot. Takes this from being the 2nd worst looking game of all time, to vaguely tolerable with a bad art style. +- Down before death, can rescue self by getting a kill, but too often happens with no chance to do so. In coop, other players can also rez you.
- Claptrap - Stat creep - Trash world - Laggy coop - Limited ammo - No town portal - Long ability CD - Limited inventory - Fetch quest simulator - Loot is shared in coop - Small, linear, zoned areas - Non-specific quest markers - Sprint toggle is clunky/broken - Character/Gender locked classes - Each class has only a single ability - Bad checkpoint-based save system - "87 Bazillion Guns", 12 inventory slots - Menus are clearly designed for console - GOTY edition doesn't come with all DLC - Coop with randoms is a disorganized mess - Backwards stat comparison on current gear - Skins don't show on your hands in FPS view - Coop scales enemies, lazy and game breaking - Weapon ADS (in toggle mode) is unresponsive - Writing tries too hard to be funny, and never is - "87 Bazillion Guns", but no way to customize them - Can't pickup ammo when full, but you can in coop? - Severe FPS fluctuations, sometimes 30, sometimes 130 - Tutorials are lacking, the ones that do exist aren't intuitive - Game opens with a dog being run over, and worse. Tasteful. - Hold-E for AoE-looting, but that also swaps your current weapon - Its so easy to accidentally skip dialogue that its basically a feature - Can only track 1 quest at a time, though they all update confusingly - Skipping sidequests = underleveled. Doing sidequests = overleveled - For a game with "87 Bazillion" gun variety, there's practically no build variety - In coop, only one player can see quest text, and its not even locked to the host - Texture Fade is the worst effect of all time. Is it supposed to be an art style choice? - Getting a kill should Second Wind the entire party, and/or coop rez should be instant - Character customization is pathetic, just a handful of color palettes, which can't even be freely customized - Some quest windows require you to press Enter, others work by clicking anywhere, neither of those is good design - Leveling is painfully slow, coop basically turns leveling off completely, because quests don't re-reward and levels don't scale - Unsatisfying shooting. Guns have huge sway and spread, even in ADS. Enemies are bullet sponges, that don't react to being shot, nor are there even hit-markers - Tons of minor bugs. Ground loot not auto-collecting, guns not auto-reloading when downed, crosshairs bugout if you get in a vehicle while gunzerking, etc - The world doesn't feel alive. Basically, every friendly NPC in the entire world lives in a single zone, and most of them only amount to bounty boards/quest dispensers. Every other zone is just a generic shooting gallery not worth exploring. - Stupid unbalanced classes. The Gunzerker's ult makes him invincible, gives him infinite ammo, and lets him equip 2 guns in a game all about collecting guns. How are you supposed to play anything else? Robogirl is just a straight up better version of turret boi. From what I hear, none of the others are even viable at endgame. At the very least, the turret should equip a copy of your gun or something.
- IRL footage for AI lady? They updated this graphic so it doesn't look as stupid - The first boss can be easily/commonly killed in an area that disables loot drops Seems like this was fixed, he now pukes his loot overboard if he dies in that area.
★★☆☆☆ Hero Siege is half Binding of Isaac, half Diablo, but either of those is a better buy.
Pro/Con Feature List: + Lite puzzles + Randomly generated areas + Enemy telegraphs with cast bars + Binding of Isaac style items (and potions), randomly impact playstyle + Overall game structure works well enough. Enter a randomly generated area, kill enemies, spawn boss. Basically, a rift from Diablo 3.
+- ARPG style lootquipments +- Circle strafe to the end of time +- Legendary+ items are stupid OP +- Everything scales with the player +- Exp from the Halloween quest took me from level 10 to 20 +- Runes can be freely swapped out, but have almost no impact
- Nothing is balanced - Can't enter buildings - Buggy and unpolished - Equipment doesn't show on character - Zoning often causes pets to de-spawn - Pixel art died 20 years ago for a reason - Items should auto-pickup, instead of F on them - Ability cost increases based on how much mana you have - Plopped into the world with no content, context, or direction - There is a bug(?), on a certain class, that can make you invincible - Half of the tooltips are missing, half of the ones that do exist are wrong - Randomly die too fast for no reason. Go from taking no damage, to being instantly dead - Not free2play, and yet, core content is locked behind paywalls. Including all of the DLC (which is core acts and classes), this game costs more than a TripleA product, but is nowhere near that value. - Worst UI of all time. Controls are weird, when they manage to work, G for back? FHG+WASD to navigate equipment slots to sell all. Half of the menus don't respond to mouse clicks. Half of them don't close when you press Esc. Half of the controller buttons register as different buttons.
* Would play better on a controller, if the button inputs weren't nonsensically wrong
* Recieved as a Gift, when it was on sale for $0.59
★★★☆☆ Hitman™ is a return to form, after the ugly, linear, action/shooter thriller that was Absolution. However, aside from social challenges, for optional replay value, and a decade worth of hardware upgrades, this entry does almost nothing better than Blood Money. Its also not as good at "stealth sandbox" as MGSV, which released a year earlier.
Pro/Con Feature List + Agent 47 + Intuition vision + Hide bodies, then wear their pants + Difficulty option makes meaningful gameplay changes
+- Exploration is largely removed, due to "opportunities", basically quest tracking +- Weapons and disguises are no longer collectibles, instead, linear score based unlocks, earned from challenges +- Actual mission content is very short/limited, but there is a large amount of optional replay value, provided in challenges. +- Loadouts are back, but not as good as Blood Money's. With no currency system to reward you for playing well, and no equipment upgrades +- Graphics look good, and run decently, but only ~30 FPS in large crowds on a 970, with vsync issues, and the game has hard crashed several times +- Disguises somewhat work again, with only a handful of enemies who can spot you. Less "hide in plain sight" than Blood Money, since you can too often be spotted in disguise. This should simply be handled by getting too close to somebody in the same outfit.
- Clunky doors - No FPS view mode - No multi-takedowns - Too much trial & error - Poorly integrated "Demo" - 47 never wears his iconic suit - "Bonus" mission, that costs full price? - Can't enable HDR, does it require DX12? - Minimap should show trespassing zones - Some challenges don't have descriptions? - Always-online DRM, in a singleplayer game - The episodic release of this game was idiotic - Story barely exists, and then ends on a cliff hanger?? - Locations aren't as good as Blood Money, though much larger - Shooting mechanics are rubbish, probably to encourage stealth - Graphic settings seem to have almost no impact on quality or performance - Clunky, near useless cover system, where you slide around corners into view - The setup of the tutorial is a bit ridiculous. Actors? That you murder? Fake murder? - Map layouts, item locations, NPC locations and routines, are always exactly the same - Escalations are incredibly lame content padding. Expecting you to run the exact same scenario, 5 times in a row, with a stacking tweak to difficulty each time (like more cameras or targets) - Button hold, instead of press, often required for actions. Theoretically, this is used to fix overlapping interactions, but it doesn't even accomplish that, and just makes all interactions clunky. - Challenges are too often best completed by quickloading. Too many require you to start in different places, exit in different places, or kill a target in different ways, forcing you to replay the level and/or quickload. Some of them are even extra ridiculous, like: Kill an enemy by electrocuting him, or, kill an enemy by getting his friend to electrocute him, but that second one doesn't complete the first.
★★★★☆ Basically, Rift is a (now) free2play version of WoW. It doesn't try to do anything new, unique, interesting, or better, only slightly different. And while WoW hit a low point with WoD, and a high point with Legion, Rift hasn't really gone anywhere since its release, nearly 6 years ago.
Pro/Con Feature List: + Every class has a pet + Standard MMO everything + Wardrobe collection, wear any gear from any class + Level scaling system helps keep parties together, and content relevant + Choose 3 sub-classes, for playstyle customization, which can be freely changed as you play + Many things have been streamlined, IE: Class trainers and class/soul unlocks have been removed. This is probably the biggest/only change/improvement the game has seen in 6 years.
+- Meh graphics and performance +- Housing system, in a private instance, with clunky placement tools
- Fetch quest simulator - Quest items, gathering points, and collectibles are not shared in coop - Smart targetting is broken, it only selects the target, doesn't followup with the ability - Auto-looting is clunky, there isn't an effective output of the items, and the loot window janks onscreen for a split second