Recent reviews by Aeternus

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P R E V A I L S!

Helldivers have successfully removed the automation infiltrators from SONY Headquarters! Change your reviews, boy, Mission Accomplished!

This game has an interesting crafting system, large environments, and a substantial variety of weapons and enemy types. Enemies feel very different and require different strategies to defeat, weapons are varied and completely change your combat strategy. However, toward the halfway point of the game and onward, all missions are clearly designed with multiplayer in mind and bosses become substantially stronger. Unfortunately, the approach to multiplayer fails in every possible respect.

Multiplayer servers and direct connections fail every 6 - 10 minutes, forcing a complete restart of the game by both parties. These errors create error-messages that pop up on-screen often in the middle of combat, requiring you to click on them with your mouse to continue, while being attacked by the bosses. Today I tried to play with my friends for a few hours, and spent the entirety of those hours trying to complete the same 30minute mission without everyone dropping out and needing to restart their clients.

The game is, technically, playable -- but a waste of time until servers are fixed.

Audio: 7/10 (Repetitive sounds, average voiceacting)
Graphics: 7/10 (Odd base default gamma/brightness, below-average optimization, no ultrawide support)
Gameplay: 10/10 (Plenty of variability in enemies and weapons, and approaches to battle)
Multiplayer: 0/10 (Functionally impossible to use for any substantial length, requires frequent full client restarts)
Story: 10/10 (Unique experience feels like proper adventuring, detailed and very different environments that affect gameplay experience and combat, in addition to their eyecandy and lore)

Average: 6.8/10

Tomb Raider is an excellent third-person classic action-adventure game, holding true to the real spirit of Indiana Jones classics. Tomb Raider is packed with action-filled chapters that are not only exceptionally scenic and well-designed, but also follow a cohesive and interesting plot. Tomb Raider never loses the spirit of adventure throughout its journey, though it manages to add in a fair measure of suspense and minor dashes of horror (mostly through decayed bodies, dismemberment, gore and bonestrewn caves).

The game has a fair amount of cutscenes where keypresses must be executed on time. This can partially interrupt the flow of the game, but in most cases these are executed seamlessly. Combat follows the shooter style, but emphasizes use of cover in higher difficulty levels. Enemies are never challenging, but feels exciting and tense through a massive variety of locations and constant environmental interactions. Battles are fought on sinking ships, exploding fortresses and other such action-filled locations, though again; these are very rarely anything close to challenging. Weapon customization is very extensive and complete, allowing for a great variety of playstyles. Unfortunately, weapons becomes swiftly overpowered. With three powerful weapons at one's disposal, with any one easily strong enough to end any encounter without even changing magazines more than once, combat is a breeze.

The locations are truly atmospheric and epic, but a good player can find almost all collectibles on his or her first playthrough. The game's plot and tense action scenes hold it together, so once the game is complete, there is almost no incentive to return to seek out a handful of collectibles or complete worthless in-game achievements, such as destroying all the mines on a beach for bonus experience. However, the first playthrough is easily a satisfying experience.

TLDR:
An amazing interactive action-movie of an experience, full of the spirit of adventure and in the wonderful same style as the classics of Indiana Jones and the likes. Excellent story and characters, amazing scenery and well-scripted dialogue. A great experience, but no replay value.
9.5/10