Recent reviews by Audax Tenebra

I just 100% this game again (first time was on the OG release) and I gotta say, the Definitive Edition is definitely the best way to play the game now, the only weird thing for me was Asuka's model (she looks WAY TOO CARTOONY and goofy) but besides that the game runs fine, looks good and has major improvements when compared to the original like checkpoints (no mid-mission checkpoint tho, but at least you dont have to worry about saving every each mission), being able to walk while shooting with all guns which is A MAJOR improvement (and something not even mods can achieve on the OG), you have NO IDEA how much this makes the game more enjoyable, I cant even go back to the OG after this, rly.

There's also a new GPS system and an actual in-game map (Yeah the OG didnt have a map menu, you had to remember the layout of the city), these two last points dont affect me as much because of how much I played the OG but I can see how big of an improvement it can be to new players.

Overall, despite a few balancement flaws and repetitive gameplay (things already present in the original version), the game is rly good and the remaster is finally playable (despite what a few pedantic purists with your usual reddit behavior might say). Now onto Vice City and see if I can say the same about it.

The game can be pretty fun, but then the actual bad part ruins the experience for me. The movement is clunky af, Spider-Man is so bad you cant imagine bro. The default controls for him are awful and he keeps getting stuck on walls because they thought it was a good idea to make the climb button the same as the jump button (which you'll be nearly always pressing when escaping cuz he has double jump).

The performance is awful, typical UE5 title. The amount of visual clutter is annoying and you'll automatically just go "RANDOM BS GO!!!" cuz you can't see or understand what's happening. The audio is also awful, many times I'll be getting hit by a Iron Man who's 55kms up in the air and I won't know where the shots are coming from because it has no sounds. The amount of unskippable animations and screens in the menus is legit annoying and gives a cheap vibe.

And the worst of all are the totally unbalanced broken heroes like Iron Fist and Scarlet Witch, ESPECIALLY SCARLET WITCH. These mfs rly looked at Moira from Overwatch and thought "What if she had a 2nd phase to use and a bomb? Wouldn't that be great???!!? Also, make her fly and give her a DVA bomb as ultimate". I never saw a hero so broken and so unbalanced in all my life. It's literally "Hold Button to Win". She literally has aimbot that can suck you from a mile away and if she cant, well, she's just gonna fly to you and if things get messy she'll just fly away instantly cuz she got TWO PHASES. What in the actual F*CK BRO.

Iron Fist is simply a damage sponge unlimited punches mf. If he holds RMB to enter defensive stage and then releases it you better just give up bro cuz he CANNOT be stopped. Bro ONLY NEEDS to hold the LMB and you'll die in seconds and he'll self heal right after. Punisher is also OP af, bro has CSGO levels of damage in a hero shooter lmao.

I was rly rly excited for this game because Overwatch 2 is awful, but after the honeymoon phase I can see how bad this is. It's a clunky, cheap, unpolished mobile game forced on PC. It looks, feels and plays like those YouTube Ads games or Facebook games. I rly hope it gets better eventually with better balance, matchmaking and role queue. But the way it is now it's total chaos and will probably end up like XDefiant.

Edit: Having unlocked ranked and quickly climbed to Plat 2 (literally top 2% players currently) totally Solo, I can say this game's matchmaking is as horrible as Overwatch, there are NO BALANCED MATCHES AT ALL. It was either stomp or getting stomped, no in between. There was only THREE matches where the average kills, etc were balanced, the rest (about 40-50) always had one of the teams getting 20-30 kills average while the other one was stuck at 5-10 kills, literally no in between. If you think this game wont be using malicious tactics to make you addicted then think twice, NetEase is just as money-hungry as Blizzard, they just have a little more support for now because of how trash Overwatch is. If you're easy to get addicted with MP games then stay very far away from this game, it'll try all the tricks in the book to make you stuck to it in the off-chance you might buy skins, battle passes, etc

Amazing game and PC port. The price is bad tho. But the port itself is amazing and probably the best Rockstar port second only to GTA V. The recommended specs are for 4K60 and the game runs even on a toaster (not rly tbh, your GPU gotta support DX12). Only thing missing is AMD FSR FG and please fix the weird graphical glitch that happens on trees' borders. It also happens on the Switch version. Other than that, amazing port and history was made here. Rockstar can keep Double Eleven for upcoming ports imo. Maybe a GTA IV remaster for Switch, PS4 and PC?

The game itself is really fun and good, the problem is how the devs treat it. There hasn't been a single update in months already and the game is riddled with optimization problems and crashes. Pretty much any upscaler that isn't XeSS or TSR will crash the game at the end of a cutscene, it's legit annoying, I had the game crash 8 times in a row because of using DLSS, how did they mess up so badly? It's a UE5 game, it's literally a button to inject DLSS in the game. The game is sponsored by Intel tho.... Take that as you will. Frame Gen also crashes the game, the game graphics settings do nothing. Low to High is pretty much the same quality and performance-wise. Dont buy full price, either get in a huge sale or dont buy it in this state.

Great game overall. Not mid like the main game but definitely not better than EP 1 imo. The atmosphere here is way "cooler" and blue which I like, but personally I enjoyed the orange, apocalyptical feel EP 1 had, together with the desperate feeling it gave you.

Story is great overall, Barney doesnt show up which is a bummer but Magnusson is funny in the way he remided me of actual unhappy school teachers I had lol. The bit where Alyx gets attacked and we have to save her was very cool and raised the stakes a lot. Oh and the "Dr. Freeeemaaaannn" scene is my favorite GMan scene ever together with "Time, Dr. Freeman?", I kept screaming in my head "No, no no no no, wait wait" like that Punisher meme when Gordon, Alyx and Eli go to... that final place, I mean, not gonna spoil it but I think nearly everyone already knows about it, right?

Gameplay is fine, no super charged gravity gun here but we got a Mustang which is cool and fast, although half the game is spent on it and the final battle is also on it. Speaking of which, the final battle is just chef's kiss. I love the concept of having to move around a big open area while giant monsters like Striders are on their way to destory the base. Having to go to a storage to grab supplies and Magnusson devices (which are the main reason why this battle isn't tedious, unlike the main game Striders battle with common RPGs) knowing that a Strider is on his way to the base and the having to hurry to kill the Hunters so you can destroy the Strider and then praying you dont miss cuz otherwise you're gonna have to go all the way back is just peak level design on these games.

The achievement for this section is also pretty hard because of some cheating striders that run to directly aim on the buildings, but you're kinda incentivized to go after it, the buildings they aim are very important because they store health, suit power and Magnusson devices in a convenient path, without them you can get overwhelmed pretty quickly, which happened to me the first time I played the mission. ♥♥♥♥ the gnome achievement tho, all my homies hate the gnome achievement.

From what I've heard this was the least liked game from the "Half-Life 2 Saga". Mainly because it didn't add much to it. Well... I actually prefer it over the main game.

The main issue I had with the main game was that every cool thing, or actually anything in general, overstayed its welcome way too much. Throwing a dozen striders on us in the span of 15 minutes. A bunch of physics puzzle to showoff the engine. Spamming enemies after we get the Super Charged Gravity Gun, etc. This game fixes it all. Mainly because it is an Episode so it is shorter, but that worked out very well. There's not one section I felt that overstayed its welcome. Every mission had something different and was fun and cool in its own way.

The game is definitely easier though. I played both on Normal and this one I even got the "don't kill any stalkers" achievement accidentally because I thought they were actually a puzzle xD. The "gnome" achievement in this game is the One Free Bullet which you need to complete the entire game shooting only one bullet in a required place. I got it first try because I was having way too much with the gravity gun and the game was pretty much made with it in mind.

Overall great experience. Loved the zombies underpass section. The music is incredible, especially the one that plays during the hospital gunfight and the fantastic "Guard Down" that plays right after the Antlion Guard battle.

The story is meh. I like it because of the sense of desperation and running out of time it gives, seeing City 17 finally getting destroyed and us winning against the Combine for a while was pretty cool. Overall it doesnt add much to the grand scheme of things. You can watch or read a summary if you want to skip it even though I dont recommend it because this game is incredible fr.

Now, let's see if Episode Two can top it out for me.

That basically defines my experience with Half-Life 2. I can see why it was groundbreaking when it released but compared to Half Life 1... this game is awful as a sequel. Maybe it's just me that prefers the first game over this one but oh well...

Driving missions go for way too long, I gave up during Water Hazard when I was younger because of how boring it is. Highway 17 is also long and boring but the atmosphere makes up for it.

Puzzles aren't hard but are annoying af, breaks totally the pacing and is just a demo for the "new" physics engine. That's a thing with this game, ppl love to say that less is more but this game simply ignores it. Take Chapter 11 for example. You fight Striders. On Normal difficulty, each take 6 to 8 rockets to kill and they are very very deadly. The game throws two at you first, but then it throws more two right after, and then another one in a tunnel chasing after you, and then more 2 to fight on a rooftop, all in the span of 15 minutes. It ain't hard because you got plenty of cover, but it's just boring af and when you're done you dont want to even replay the chapter again because of it.

Final missions are borderline Xen territory from the first game. Pacing is weird af. You get the Super Charged Gravity Gun which is cool... for the first 5 minutes before the game thinks "OH, YOURE HAVING FUN???? Time to throw 40 enemies on you just because more is better, amiright????". The atmosphere makes up for it tho, the Citadel is incredible and pretty much looks like a modern game.

The artstyle itself is incredible, I gotta give it that, although I do prefer the industrial scientific look and style the first Half Life had. This review is one of the few not blinded by sheer nostalgia and as someone who loves "boomer shooters" I can guarantee it ain't biased at all.

Most boring of the expansions. worst level design as well. Half the game you're walking through vents or making fetch quests

Game is legit trash, play the first one.

This is the first time I actually regret buying a game. I bought the Brutal Edition because I loved the first game, well.... they simply ruined everything good from the first game in this one, and what they kept, they broke.

The game is full of broken mechanics, bugs, and simply feels way too rushed and unpolished. Wallrunning doesnt work properly most of the time, Jack fails to stick to walls or simply unsticks from them mid wallrun, gets stuck in geometry. I noclipped to limbo a bunch of times during my gameplay doing simple stuff like... running! That gotta be game breaking aint I right?

Combat is okay, the added enemies are copypaste of past enemies or simply are inconsequential, like, remember that annoying laser robot that looked like Robocop's ED-209? They added another enemy like that but with whips this time, aint THAT FUN???? It also doesnt hit the same as the first one mainly because of the sounds being awful and the way Jack carries the sword now, like why change it? It looks like he's holding a stick now lmao.

Speaking of sound design... I think the first game's composer asked for more money and they fired him for it because this game's music is legit awful. I can't remember ONE single track from the entire game because it all feels and sounds the exact same. The first game had legit memorable tracks like the menu one or when you're entering Mara's lab. In here it all sounds like your copyright free generic techno music from YouTube.

Another huge downgrade were the graphics. It looks cartoony and realistic at the same time, like they had clashing artistic choices in the team or something. It legit looks like that awful Kong game sometimes, huge downgrade from the first game which is incredible rly, since this game not only lacks Raytracing but the performance is simply horrenduous.

I have a beefy PC for this game's specs sporting a 12400f paired with a 3060Ti and the FPS simply dropped from 120 to 30 and 40 randomly, ruining streaks, combos, etc. Probably an Unreal Engine issue but cmon, optimize it before releasing it, the first game didnt had those issues AT ALL and had better graphics.

The worst of all definitely is the new bike, the scripted missions are most of the time cool. But the "open world" sections are stuff from nightmares. Trying to collect stuff for the platinum and spending more than the enough time on the bike to finish the game is a horrible experience. It always gets stuck in geometry, always bugs out, the controls are inconsistent and some of them they never actually teach you about it like the handbrake function that is legit useful.

The story is just boring, that's it. I legit didnt care about the characters, the new HUB thing is annoying most of the time and this is one of those games you simply dont care about the story, you just want to play and kill stuff, kinda like Doom Eternal. The devs tried rly hard to put some huge in depth lore behind this but it rly only feels edgy af and legit cringe. The villain acting like a 13 yo child screaming swearwords just cuz was legit funny and cringe af lol, especially because I know the devs were trying to make us take it as serious as possible. Jack now acts more human (not much more compared to the first game) and the new side characters are annoying. I actually miss the Architect talking in my head while I ran through Dharma City neon signs... oh and btw, this game has nearly no Dharma City Neon levels. It stopped being a cyberpunk game and became more Mad Max, which I dont rly like that much but thats my opinion.

Overall awful game imo. It's fundamentally broken and the first game is objectively better. It scratched that itch I always had about playing as super fast cyborg ninja (I love Metal Gear Rising and playing Genji in Overwatch) so I almost instantly felt how bad the game played when I got my hands on it, and I did platinum both of the games and I fr say this, if you wanna buy it, buy the first game. If you rly want this one buy on a huge sale, it's not worth it, rly. If they ever make a Ghostrunner 3 the devs are not having my money, hugely disappointed.

Fix your f**king game Valve

Game is full of aimbots and possibly RCE exploits that make hackers take control of your PC. DO NOT PLAY IT. AVOID AT ALL COST