KickAssCop
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2003
- Messages
- 7,941
Far Cry 6. 8.5 puta maricon pinga guerilla / 10.
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playing?I ever had the misfortune of playing.
2 hours in maybe...
WTF are you talking about. This is ridicilous. Why are you trying to create a false narrative? This is worse than outright lying.you're so obsessed with the concept of reviewing games that you are forgetting to actually 'play' the game...a lot of big AAA titles you're only getting through the prologue/tutorial after the first few hours...can someone really review RDR2 after 2 hours?...Last of Us 2? Assassin's Creed: Valhalla etc...2022 has some huge games such as Elden Ring, Dying Light 2 etc which require some time before you actually get to the heart of the story...maybe you should stick to reviewing indie or mobile games which can be completed in a few hours
Yet you are trying to present a narrative where I'm reviewing games after the first 1-2 hours.This won't be a regular review, just venting my frustration
I can already hear in my mind the excuse. But no, having to repeat an hour long tedious but not particularly hard section is not a healthy challenge. It's not even a challenge, it's just the designers showing me the middle finger while wasting my time. The hard bit would be just the same if I was allowed to try it again without having to go through everything that lead up to it. This is the equivalent to a permadeath mode in other games. But here it is the only gameplay mode."Oh you, just hate a challenge in games"
Correct - I am doing Yukon last after playing base game + the other Year 1 DLCs and am clocking over 400 hours.Snowrunner
That said there is enough content in the game to last a lifetime. There are so many missions and jobs to take on that doing them all should take hundreds of hours by my estimate.
The first few hours of RE7 are the worst. It gets much better once you leave the house for the first time.WTF are you talking about. This is ridicilous. Why are you trying to create a false narrative? This is worse than outright lying.
Here is what I said about RE7:
Yet you are trying to present a narrative where I'm reviewing games after the first 1-2 hours.
You should be ashamed for using such underhanded tactics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_(video_game) said:The game was not developed with an overarching plot structure in mind and this was implemented as something of an afterthought towards the end of development. The initial idea for relating the plot in-game came from Black's director, Alex Ward, who wanted to have a radio-play-style voiceover spoken over a 'black' screen.
Back 4 Blood (PC via Game Pass)
Graphics 9/10: The game looks good for the most part and runs well. On high-end hardware you'll find that 4K and 100+ FPS is perfectly doable. The environment isn't as detailed as say, the Last of Us 2, but you'll be moving around so much and so quickly that you probably won't notice. The game is known to cover your screen with huge volumes of zombies along with status effects, fire, explosions, etc. all without bogging down. I can't think of a single instance where things bogged down or crashed.
Sound 8/10: The sound effects and music are appropriate. Not great, but not really flawed either. Voice acting is intentionally campy. Maybe too much so, honestly. There really isn't much else to say.
Story: I'm not even going to score this because the story is basically about a zombie outbreak in western Pennsylvania. That's really pretty much it. The game adds some additional touches and background here and there, but your goal is almost always to kill everything and/or make it to a safe room on the other side of the map.
Gameplay/Overview: Back 4 Blood is essentially an attempt to revive the Left 4 Dead series by another developer. It's unapologetically similar in a good way. It has the same setting, the same gameplay (mostly), same look, etc. It also shares the game focus on multiplayer (or bot controlled) team-focused play and the option to play as the zombies vs. survivors. If you like the older games, you'll probably like this one.
That isn't to say it's perfect, though. The game adds card decks to the mix, which can boost certain attributes (and enemies) to add some randomness. I find that the cards affect things more than I'd like. Certain types of zombie status effects make them incredibly powerful. Others cards might as well not even be there. I'm not a fan of randomness affecting a game like that. Certain zombies are better than others to begin with, and with cards in the mix, that gets amplified. I feel like L4D had better balance to the enemy types. In terms of playing the survivors (what most people will be doing) the game is needlessly long and too large to sustain itself. The game has 30+ missions and roughly 1/3 of them feel phoned in. I wish the developers cut down the sheer number of missions and put that effort into other areas instead. The game starts to drag by the end of chapter 2 and some levels feel phoned in compared to others. I like the variety of weapons and there's definitely something for everyone. It might seem like some weapons aren't as good as others, but upgrades and varying situations surprisingly do a nice job of balancing them out. Worth noting, the difficulty is all over the place. Some levels are absolutely a breeze while others are soul crushing. The final levels are especially difficult and overwhelm you with volume and chaos.
Overall: 7/10. I like the game. I wish it was shorter and less repetitious. The devs went with the strategy of adding more content instead of curating what they had. It still absolutely works, but it makes for an inconsistent experience.
DLC is in the works
It needs a bit of dlc, mainly it needs to mix in more elements from L4D like gather and defend points. It could also use more maps with a darker enviroment, and more special infected.Honestly, I don't know if the game needs DLC. At least level-wise. It's too big as it is. Some new weapons and monsters could be welcome I guess.
Just finished Deathloop and I agree completely with your assessment. It's a good game. It's an Arkane game, yes. But it doesn't really know what it wants to be. Is it a straightforward shooter? A stealth-assassin game? A story-driven RPG? Ehhh... sort of all of them. I like the time loop premise in concept (someone had to try to integrate it into a game, after all). But it ends up being more tedious than fun, likely as a time loop would be in reality. The dialogue is snappy and VA excellent. It definitely takes stylistic cues from great games e.g. NOLF, XIII.Deathloop
Do you like story based games, dynamic gameplay, a variety of approaches or a more guided experience? Deathloop tries to cater to all these aspects but never quite commits to any of them. There isn't much wrong with the game but in general the many options are rendered useless due to certain abilities, weapons and approaches just making much more logical sense.
View attachment 408027
The game can have some night lighting and generally, looks fairly nice.
Gameplay:
The game is an FPS with a split focus on being action or stealth oriented. This is nice as on the surface it gives you gameplay options. In practice, the game never figures out what it wants to be. This isn't quite Deus Ex Human Revolution or Mankind Divided, which allow the player to take a much more stealth approach or a loud, guns blazing explosive approach. Dealthloop is best played as a stealth game because enemies can very easily kill you. The protagonist, Colt, cannot take a lot of hits. You have three chances each mission. If you die you respawn nearby. If you die a third time, you're kicked out and must restart the day again. There are four maps/phases to a day, and each day offers three chances to not get killed. While it sounds great on paper, it essentially forces you to play stealthily.
The illusion of choice filters down to other design aspects. Powers are limited to two per mission. I assume this is an attempt to balance the game. The problem is if you choose a power that is based around stealth, you're not going to be able to be aggressive. If you go the opposite direction, tackling an objective using a stealth approach may go out the window.
View attachment 408042
This single shot, long range explosive rifle is fun but inferior to the SMG even at long distances.
As you progress through the game you get more powers. The problem is some powers are clearly much more useful than others. Some are largely impractical. Others you get too late in the game. You can upgrade powers, some of which allow for different effects. Again, getting all of these requires re-killing people multiple times. That is fine in of itself because the game often gives you other things to do. The problem is by the time you get the interesting upgrades for some of the powers the game is over. This carries over to weapons to. Some of the more interesting weapons can be a bit hard to find, and you get them too late. Some weapon types are clearly superior, such as the suppressed SMG which outclasses practically all other guns.
While the core game is fun, it is generally marred with an illusion of choice which makes the game feel more shallow than it could have been.
Objectives and story missions aside, the end of each day ends with you having to spend points to retain upgrades. You can't take them all with you. This gets tedious after a while, as you scrap, equip, or play musical chairs with the upgrades for your guns. After a few day cycles they should've just let you retain them all.
View attachment 408029
Speedloader, speedloader, how many times do I have to save or scrap these things? Just allow a mod to be applied to any weapon without tying it to a specific gun, so we only need to find a new mod type once.
Enemy NPCs are also a weak point. They are fairly unintelligent to the point it is often noticeable. Sometimes they don't hear or notice you killing their buddies nearby. Other times they might start detecting you through multiple walls. They don't react or fight realistically. I don't expect realistic tactics given the setting, but enemies will gleefully follow simplistic patterns to get themselves killed. At one point I alerted a building and retreated out the door. I shot someone in the face as they walked outside, another cautiously crept to the door unaware of the shotgun blast just outside. I shot him in the face. A second later, another. I sat there shooting 9-10 people as they walked slowly right into my shotgun blast. Not a single one seemingly could hear the gunshot to maybe run out the door or try and find another way around. Or even take up positions inside. Anything would be better than to walk towards the sound of gunshots right after your buddy gets blown to bits right before your eyes.
View attachment 408033
Nothing says tactical advantage like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
Map design is a highlight. There are four main maps, with different day settings. Some of the maps change drastically during each time with areas opening up, closing, and enemy locations changing, traps changing and the like. There is a good bit to explore. The maps are fun to traverse and find ways to get into things, or relearn of new routes. Some maps have some good verticality.
There are many other small things to nitpick about:
- Side quest tracking doesn't really exist. Side quests also seem to reset every day, which makes completing them even harder. Start a side quest, but need to do a story quest on a different map? Well next cycle you can restart the side quest. I stopped bothering with some of the side quests as a result.
- The lack of a save system is kind of lame. They should have checkpoint saves. I had one or two crashes and the lost progress was disappointing. It also means you're less likely to take risks, explore the gameplay mechanics, and end a mission early. Then restart the loop which means rewatching entering/exit cutscenes.
- Towards the end the time loop mechanic starts to feel very much like a gimmick due to things mentioned above.
- No map. The levels might be small, but still nice to have a map.
View attachment 408040
Choose your objective for the time of day you're at. Eventually this gets tedious.
Yes, the core game is fun. Lack of fine tuning your arsenal, some tedious aspects, and NPCs that are not bright just weight down the experience.
Story:
Time shifting. Uncovering secrets. Use your knowledge over the course of multiple loops to unravel a great discovery, twist, or just detail a well constructed world. Sounds great right? Well the game starts with the protagonist waking up to a mystery, and ends in a mystery. The main characters do not have much depth. The main antagonists you fight are little more than lightly described people you must kill, for reasons. The world does have some info, often hidden away and out of sight, but the general plot is very thin. The game starts with a simple story aspect. It failed to broaden what this means, why or how it started, and why the player should care outside of immediate gameplay concerns. The story is mostly quips and insults between two characters.
I must say I was very disappointed. Time travel stories can often have a lot of depth with twisting and tangling plots. Deathloop is shockingly simple and straightforward.
View attachment 408041
There are upgrades to better hack things like turrets or detonating trip mines, but you have to give up more important powers to do so. May as well shoot them all with your SMG.
Graphics / Technical Aspects:
Graphically the game looks nice. Lighting can look nice, and ray tracing helps however does not make a huge difference. In general I found the textures and 3D models to look fairly nice. Explosions, power effects, and other things can look a bit dated though. The game does have a nice art design. I am not sure how I would describe it aside from saying it has a slight cartoonish look.
The game did have some performance issues. Frame rate was fine but there was an unavoidable stutter when I played. I believe turning the shadow settings down to the lowest might fix this, but I do not believe I tried that. The stutter was constant, no matter what you were doing in game. Stability wise I crashed once or twice. There is clearly room for improvement, the stuttering was unacceptable.
View attachment 408043
One of the levels at night, which has different areas to explore.
Summary:
Deathloop is passable. It does not have the gameplay balancing or fine tuning that other similar games have. Some aspects just get tedious and repetitive. It has (or had) some performance problems. And the story is just flat and present opposed to being all encompassing and gripping. As a game it struggles with an identity crisis of being an action game or a stealth game without being able to do either well nor give you the option to switch it up on the fly. It does offer standard FPS/action game appeals, and the game is thankfully only around 22-24 hours long so it ends before becoming a complete bore.
7.2 / 10
I was hoping for so much more.
Prey might be one of the best "under the radar" titles from the last decade. At least titles from a major developer. I wish they named it something different as I'm sure that's done it no favors.
I think Prey 2017's issues were around lack of a focused brand, and that it doesn't immediately hit you over the head as a great game. People (reviewers included) didn't really know how to describe it, and many people put it down after the first hour or so since there's no immediate dopamine pay off. You really need to stick with it for a few hours to get it's value. It was advertised as a AAA, yes, but people didn't really latch onto it. As such, I'd definitely qualify it as a sleeper hit since a good many people didn't get into it until they bought on discount or picked it back up after a long time.What? Prey was huge when it came out. Not Skyrim or game of the decade huge, but it was very big.
They definitely could have used a different name though. I wish they would have kept it for a sequel to the 2006 game, but that was probably never going to happen anyways.
My main issue with prey is the enemy design, found it annoying and gave up after slightly less then 4 hours according to steam, it's one of those games I keep installed with the intention of fninishing it someday, doubt it will happen though.I think Prey 2017's issues were around lack of a focused brand, and that it doesn't immediately hit you over the head as a great game. People (reviewers included) didn't really know how to describe it, and many people put it down after the first hour or so since there's no immediate dopamine pay off. You really need to stick with it for a few hours to get it's value. It was advertised as a AAA, yes, but people didn't really latch onto it. As such, I'd definitely qualify it as a sleeper hit since a good many people didn't get into it until they bought on discount or picked it back up after a long time.
Also, agreed they could have even done with a different name and left "Prey" to the original IP.
All this Arkane tried to rectify with Deathloop: over-the-top poppy style, gimmicky story and game mechanics, and jazzed-up UI.
I went Typhon shield power and shotgun/glue as my first upgrades and just went toe to toe with most of them. It was fun blasting them right in the face.My main issue with prey is the enemy design, found it annoying and gave up after slightly less then 4 hours according to steam, it's one of those games I keep installed with the intention of fninishing it someday, doubt it will happen though.
I think performance issues is one reason I rarely buy/play new games. I just did on Halo (due to gamepass) and had some weird performance issues as well that I'm sure will be fixed with the first major patch. Nothing game breaking, but certainly a minor annoyance that won't be there later.Deathloop (PC)
Graphics: 8. The game looks good, although it doesn't look amazing. When it launched there were stutter and performance issues galore, but those have mostly been fixed. Adding DLSS for Nvidia owners helped a lot, too (AMD always looked/worked fine). The thing is, for a game that intentionally doesn't have a lot of detail to objects, it needs some horsepower. Not sure that's justified and it looks like a game that would run fine on older hardware.
Sound: 9. The music, sound effects, dialogue, and acting are well done. Simple as that.
Gameplay: 7. You can play the game in a few different ways, but it never feels like it does anything particularly great. As a shooter it's pretty thin and as a stealth game you don't have enough tools. The game pushes you (aka. almost forces you) to approach certain levels certain ways, too. You have options, but eventually you kinda have to do things their way.
Overall: Deathloop is interesting because it's a shooter with only 4 maps. You have 4 times of the day you can visit those 4 maps. The goal of the game is to kill 7 bosses in a single day. The trick is, that's impossible without triggering a bunch of in-world events that make multiple bosses appear on certain maps. What that means is that you're going to have to go to those same maps over and over during different points of the day to unlock clues. Those clues will unlock events/doors that will eventually allow you to setup a "perfect" timeline when all 7 enemies can be killed. The good news is that the 4 maps are incredibly well done and dense with character, personality, and lore. The bad news is that there are still only 4 maps. You're going to get sick of them. I found simply approaching the different bosses and killing them sans a perfect run to actually be way more fun that the "perfect" run you setup in the end. By the time you get toward the end, you're going to be speedrunning everything because you're so tired of those maps. Occasionally you'll also be invaded by Julianna, who can be controlled by other players or the AI (depending on your settings). Those encounters are interesting and vary depending on your firepower and hers. You might be just starting and the invader has hundreds of kills, or you might be loaded with premium gear and the other player is in their first match. My experienced with it were all or nothing and I didn't care for the mechanic as a result.
So, is Deathloop good? Yeah. I liked it in spite of its flaws. Arkane does a good job of giving their characters and worlds personality. Deathloop does that in spades. It's fun to explore once you learn how to manipulate the world. At least for me, there was a learning curve to how the world (and UI) works. Once I got things down pat, I had a fun time with it...until I started to get sick of it near the end. It probably isn't for everybody and I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the Dishonored games or Prey, but I'd still give it a solid score.
7.5 (maybe as high as 8.0 if I didn't have performance issues that took 6 weeks to resolve)
I think performance issues is one reason I rarely buy/play new games. I just did on Halo (due to gamepass) and had some weird performance issues as well that I'm sure will be fixed with the first major patch. Nothing game breaking, but certainly a minor annoyance that won't be there later.
Yeah with halo the nvidia low latency feature simply did not work. I would get weird lag/stutter at times with fps staying north of 100 fps the entire time. The cutscenes would also sometimes lag weirdly as if you were dropping to 30 fps. I recently played Prey and it ran great. Almost done with fallen order and it also looks and runs great.I definitely get that. I feel like there was a period where PC games were launching in an optimized state most of the time. That is NOT the case at the moment and it has probably been 3 years since it was. I do feel like most games tend to be in good shape after 2'ish months, though. With some luck, that's enough time for a sale to occur, too.
In the case of Deathloop, it was a mess on day 1. Almost unplayable on my setup (5800x + 3090). Lots and lots of jitter/stutter and performance issues. They patched the game a couple times in the first month, but it still wasn't quite right. They finally put out a "major" update 6-8 weeks after release that added a bunch of Nvidia features and fixed most of the stutter. Even now the game does have a weird visual "shake" to the world that I can't help but see when I'm looking for it. At a certain point you stop noticing or caring about it, but it's still there. It almost looks like a head bob effect, but that's even with that turned totally off.
I enjoyed all the resistance games. I really would like them to release HD remaster for them. Sadly it seems it is a dead series to Sony.View attachment 436356
Resistance: Fall of Man is a first-person shooter set in an alternate history. Many of its gameplay features stem from this, most notably the weapons. Some weapons are based on real weapons circa the 1950s, while some weapons are futuristically altered in accordance with the game's storyline.
Gameplay - 7/10 - The gameplay was a clear rip off of Halo, with a lot of the enemies modeled very closely to the covenant. It's slow paced, but not too slow, and has some interesting weapons that are fun to use for a bit, but I found myself going back to the standard alien rifle, the "bullseye" - mainly because the ammo was plentiful. Overall the gameplay was nothing to write home about.
Graphics - 7/10 - The art style they were going for works, the golden color palette makes the game feel like an old war movie, and the aliens are pretty cool. The environments were good looking too, but the human characters when in cutscenes looked washed out.
Story - 7/10 - Around this time it seemed popular to turn the main character into a "super human" somehow. In F.E.A.R. the pointman was born with powers, in Quake 4 you became part Strogg, in this game, you become part chimera. So it was a trope at the time, but did explain auto healing, and the ability to become a bullet sponge (which the narrator brought up during a cutscene even.)
There is an Alien invasion in Europe and for some reason that doesn't make sense, America is staying out of the war, except for a small group of elite soldiers sent in. If there was an alien invasion, I think all countries would pitch in. You play as one of the American soldiers, get infected, and help stop the invasion by traveling all around Europe.
Audio - 7/10 - The audio was good, nothing special, the guns sounded good, the aliens had mostly unique sounds, and nothing repeated enough to be annoying.
Pros - Plenty of gunfire, gameplay is like Halo, if you like that you'll like this
Cons - Not a spectacular game, just a mediocre game overall.
I have the first two, I'm keeping an eye out for the third. Due to how mediocre the first one was though I'm taking a break until I play part 2. It wasn't a terrible game, just not great. After thinking on it more it's a hybrid of both Halo and Half-Life 2. Hopefully 2 and 3 are more fun and original.I enjoyed all the resistance games. I really would like them to release HD remaster for them. Sadly it seems it is a dead series to Sony.