Recent reviews by Dapper Raptor

Full disclaimer - I'm about 11 hours into the game atm so still a lot more to go, but I've got a good handle on the game as a whole at this point.

Just Cause 4 is a lot of fun. It is the best the series has ever looked, runs incredible well (for me - your mileage might vary based on the forums/discussions), and is very highly polished mechanically compared to previous entries in the series. The expansion to the grappling hook/tether system is really cool and makes for alot of fun that you can have without ever even touching the quests (once it is all unlocked that is - some quests are needed to unlock it). Honestly, I think that if you are a big fan of the franchise, you will enjoy what is here, and if you are a newcomer you will have a blast just causing chaos. However, theres a few issues I have with the game.

For starters - as much as I don't really care about the narrative in this franchise, the cut scenes are absolutely disgusting. They honestly look very dated, and look nowhere near as nice as the actual game, despite having clearly been recorded-in engine. It looks like they were recorded at a relatively low resolution, and had some pretty awful colour grading applied to them that just makes them look awful. I've been streaming the game and everytime a cutscene pops up my viewers are shocked at how bad they look.

Outside of the cutscenes, there's some visuals that look a little odd. Things like water effects (waterfalls and splashes) look a bit dated, with very sprite-based visuals, rather than actually looking like particle effects. Character models are pretty bland, but not necessarily bad. Hair on characters though has a weird habit of looking incredibly fake when lit in certain ways.

But I'm more than happy to settle for the visuals given how incredibly smoothly the game runs (again - for me on my system - a lot of people are experiencing issues with that). What I'm not happy to settle with is the reduction in gameplay made in some parts of the game. You nolonger free up settlements by destroying key structures like in the earlier games, instead you just do some stunts and some pretty simple missions to mark them off as complete and get upgrade points. There's a lot more explosive structures and items around the map, but they are just there to play with - they don't have any real need to be used. I know a lot of people had complaints about Just Cause 3 feeling too formulaic - you go to a base, blow up everything red, kill the commanders, move to the next base, rinse repeat. But in JC4, Avalanche have completely removed this formula, and instead just gone with "do these quests in this region". While I appreciate the fact that they addressed concerns from JC3, I think they honestly went about it wrong - keeping the checklist base clearing and adding in some quests would have been a much better move IMO, but even so, the quests in place almost always just ammount to "go to the waypoint, stand for a second, move to the next one". The quests involved in gaining control of an area are very repeatative and fairly plain and boring. And with nothing else much to do in the area, it just feels very shallow. Add to this the fact that even when you control an area, you can blow up structures to build up the chaos meter, which makes no sense, and the fact that areas in general feel a little less special this time around, and you kind of have a less exciting experience than JC2 or 3. The map in JC4 is apparently the biggest ever for the franchise, but it also feels like there is a lot more empty space this time around, which is a shame.

Collectibles have also been removed from the game. In previous games you would hunt down shrines, caches, audio logs, etc. In this one, at least so far (again - 11 hours in), there is nothing like this. This has instead been replaced by a handful of missions where you explore fairly simple tombs. I haven't finished off this quest line yet so it is entirely possible this will yield some collectible setup, but it seems unlikely given it hasn't yet been introduced. I know some people don't enjoy collectible scavenger hunts - but they were a fairly big part of the franchises lineage until now and their abscence feels wrong.

If you are coming at the franchise completely new to it - I think you will have a good time, as long as you go in expecting action over narrative and you are the sort of person who enjoys playing about in a sandbox. If you are a fan of the franchise, I still think you'll have fun, but it is a bit of a sidestep for the series, rather than an improvement or evolution of the formula. I'm glad to see it running well, looking nice (for the most part) and so on, but I can't recommend it over JC2 or 3. If steam had a "neutral" stance on the review, I would be giving it that, but as it is I'll give it a thumbs up with an asterisk - the asterisk being all the points listed above.

One of the best action rpgs I've played in like a decade... Very surprisingly impressed with it. I wasn't expecting much at all. GG Ubi.

As a huge fan of Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2, but someone who was disappointed with RCT3 and the modern attempts to recreate the genre, this game is exactly what I was looking for. It gives a very similar experience to RCT2, with just enough new ideas and flair to keep things feeling fresh. Easy recommendation.

Honestly the best fun I've had with my vive so far. Very unexpected!

It's bad. Don't play it. ezpz

Amazingly fun game with WAY more depth than it seems like it should have :)

To be honest, the game itself is hot garbage. It's poorly made, looks like a 5 year old title, and has pretty bad performance issues even on good hardware. But get the right friend in there with you and its a blast. Solo and squad mode are lame af, but duos is excellent with a buddy :)

I've been a Quake fan since 1997 when I first played Quake 1. Quake was what got me into gaming... when they announced the new Quake was going to have champions... I was cautiously optimistic.

The champions themselves are not the problem at all. The main problem with this game is the community whinging about every damn thing, and the fact that the developers keep flip flopping backwards and forwards based on the community whinging. As a result the game suffers from it and 90% of the time is dead with no players. I wouldn't bother unless you get it for free, and even then... it's iffy.

Picked this up after seeing about 5 minutes of a let's play because it looked like fun. This is an amazing basis for a great game and as long as the developer continues to add more content and such, it will be an amazing game.

So this is just a minecraft clone right?
Wrong. It has a lot of similarities to minecraft, but it also has a lot of similarities to dwarf fortress. Whilst you build structures with blocky resources you collect int he world, the reason you do this is to set up a working colony. You build a farm and recruit a farmer. They, in turn, product food for your baker to make into better food. But, as soon as you start recruiting your colonists, zombies will start to attack at night, so you have to recruit guards. This in turn, not only increases the amount of zombies, but also the amount of food you need to remain healthy as a colony... and so it goes!

Currently, the games weakness is that after a few hours you run out of things to do, as once you have a reliable food farming system down, the zombies, even when you get a lot of colonists, don't offer a good challenge. This is fine - as the game IS in early access. As long as the developer is able to build upon the foundation they have laid here this will be an amazing game.

Long story short - if you like Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress, Rise to Ruins, etc. and you actually understand what early access is, give this a go!

Prey [2017] is probably one of the best games I've ever played. Only a test of time will tell if that statement is hyperbole, but at this point, I am 100% behind it.

I honestly don't want to go into too much here, as I think it's one of those games that the more you read, the less you will enjoy your experience... but Arkane have really outdone themselves here.

Narrative: Whilst some points of the story can feel a little understated, I think as an overall package, the entire plot comes together nicely. Yes it's a plot about fighting aliens on a spacestation, and it includes all the standard tropes you would expect to see there, but it also is a plot about a character who finds themselves unaware of who they are, and how they grow as a person during adversity. I think that this second facet of the story is really the more powerful narrative in play here, and definitely comes across as the intended focal point to me. Morgan's decisions throughout the game, whilst they may not drastically change the gameplay in most cases, carry weight with them that is seen through to the end, and things that we usually take for granted in games, such as motivation and consequences, have real weight, even if sometimes not realised at the time.

Graphically: You're either going to like or not like the artstyle. You can pretty much tell from one or two screenshots where you sit here. It's similar to Dishonored and Bioshock, whilst also feeling reminiscent of the Alien franchise. It all runs very nicely and smoothly, something that I was quite surprised about given it's running in CryEngine.

Audio: The music varies from amazing to mildly forgettable, but always feels right. The sound effects on the other hand are awesome, and really add to the overwhelming fearful atmosphere present in the game. The Typhon are a strong overbearing enemy that, even when you are at your most powerful, can easily kill you if you get careless, and the sound design, from the creaks of the station, to the Typhon themselves, to the audio cues that trigger fake jumpscares, or legitimate ones, really add to that constant balance between making you feel capable and disempowering the player.

And gameplay: Honestly - I don't even know what to say here. The game feels absolutely amazing. From the incredibly well designed spaces that hide so many secrets and diverging paths, to the satisfying combat, to the compelling push to keep exploring, everything meshes really well.

I honestly think this is a game to remember, and it takes so many cues from great games like Half-Life, Dishonored, System Shock, Deus Ex and Alien: Isolation. If you think you are interested, you are probably going to love it.