Recent reviews by Charlie

This is a severely underrated game. I originally played this game on the Xbox Series X and liked it so much, I bought it again on PC.

Great story, characters and a fun gameplay loop.

PC version runs reasonably well, if you have stutter or freezing, Google 'disable control flow guard' and allow an exception for the game's EXE file, can significantly boost performance on some systems.

Fantastic game, great story and combat system.

PC version also runs very well.

Very much enjoyed this title, I saw it during a promotional video on Twitter and decided to pick it up.

The game took me around 7 hours to beat and there is re-play value here, as there are multiple endings depending on the choices you make during the story.

Voice acting is very well done and graphically this is a gorgeous game with surprises and twists as the story unfolds.

If you don't mind walking simulators, I can definitely recommend this game.

I wanted to like this game, I have over 1300 hours in Batman Arkham Asylum, City and Knight and have been following Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League since it was announced at DC FanDome back in 2020.

It pains me to say it, but I have a hard time believing this game is made by the same Rocksteady that gave us such incredible and timeless games like Batman Arkham Asylum, City and Knight. I liked the closed alpha this game had back in late November/early December 2023 and wanted this game to succeed, but I cannot in good conscience recommend this game, especially given the asking price.

Spoilers may be ahead.

While the story is serviceable, I have issues with this game taking place in the same universe as the Arkham trilogy (or quadrilogy if you count Arkham Origins), it doesn't sit well with me and I think the only logical explanation as to why Rocksteady and WB tried to piggyback off the Arkhamverse would be to improve sales and reception, which based on early reviews and impressions, has backfired spectacularly.

There is also a strong argument to be made that the events of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League diminish and de-value the story of the original Arkham games.

It is for this reason, I will consider the Arkhamverse as ending with Batman: Arkham Knight. I do not care what Rocksteady or WB say, but Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is not worthy of being in the Arkham universe.

The gameplay I'm rather conflicted on, characters control well and the gunplay is better than I expected, and there are some missions that are genuinely fun, but the gameplay, especially towards the end is let down by a boring, repetitive and grindy mission structure that has no respect for the player or their enjoyment. I can only conclude at one point this game was meant to have loot boxes and purchasable weapons and items, that instead got morphed into mission rewards for completing boring and repetitive side-missions, which have minimal, if any relation to the story.

Towards the end of the game, I dropped the difficulty from medium to easy, this was after beating all the Justice League members (which as a side note weren't that hard) and this is a core issue I have with the game.

You would think the hardest parts of the game would be the Justice League boss fights, requiring you to use the abilities of all four main characters, but they aren't, the Justice League boss fights are rather easy by comparison to some of the side missions and activities, which just throw endless goons at you, some of which have invincibility or can only be taken down by certain modifiers, like grenades or shield harvesting, which don't always work well either and the game doesn't do a great job of explaining what all these combat mechanics do.

The game expects and wants you to grind out side missions and activities before proceeding, rather like a lot of Ubisoft titles, but this isn't fun, and runs contradictory to what Rocksteady themselves said about this game not being grindy and respecting the player's time.

Overall I'm very disappointed, we've waited 8 years and this is what we get... It's no wonder WB didn't send out review codes and why the studio founders of Rocksteady left the studio back in late 2022, they saw the writing on the wall and bailed.

This is an excellent remake of the original Dead Space, extremely faithful to the original game, with the added bonus of better graphics, sound and controls over the original.

The only negative is the game can suffer from noticeable traversal stutter, this affects the console versions as well.

Dead Space never received any patches or performance improvements, which is a shame to see.

An excellent remake that is faithful to the original Resident Evil 4, while also adding new elements and modernising the game.

I'm a huge fan of the Batman Arkham games, I've sank hundreds of hours into them and I consider them some of the best games ever made.

I had low hopes for Gotham Knights ever since the May 2022 gameplay, which raised a number of red flags around the graphical fidelity of this game, traversal, combat design and the cancellation of the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game.

I'm around 7 hours into Gotham Knights and while it's not as bad as I thought, I really can't recommend the game in its current state.

Here are some thoughts

- Even with an i9-13900K, 32GB DDR5-6000, an RTX 4090 and the game installed to an NVME SSD, it does not hold a solid 60fps at 4K with DLSS and Ray Tracing off; this is frankly unacceptable given this does not look like a next gen title

- The combat is nowhere near as fluid or engaging as the Freeflow combat system in the Arkham games

- Some of the main missions are structured like Arkham games and these are enjoyable, side missions are often repetitive and dull

- Traversal is absolutely terrible, every character should have had their Knighthood traversal ability from the start

- Customisation is great, you can change almost every aspect of your character

- Some missions are insta-fail if you get hit or spotted, I regard this as terrible game design as it can be very punishing on players who just want to sit back and relax. There is this one section where you have to escape some traps and I found it so hard I downloaded a trainer to get around it

- The UI is absolutely terrible, it does look like a mobile game

- Some missions seem to glitch out, there was this one mission where I had to deliver an organ and it would never load the waypoint on the map, I had to search for this online to figure out where to go

- Even though the game has no live service elements or micro-transactions, the game is built as if it's a grindy RPG like the recent Assassin's Creed games

I will add more to this review as I progress through the game

By recommendation right now would be only buy this game if you have a high-end PC and you loved the Arkham games. I would also recommend downloading a trainer so you can skip the grindy elements and start getting some decent gear and upgrades that actually make the game fun and worthwhile playing

This is a phenomenal game, I originally played and beat the Epic Games Store version and liked it so much, I bought it again on Steam so I could get achievements, which I still need to re-play at some point.

This is Quantic Dream at their best, the graphics are very good, especially face animations and the story is crafted to how you play, I've read that there are over 80 different variants of the ending, depending on the choices you make in the game and the outcomes from those choices.

In a single playthrough, this is probably around a 10-15 hour game, but if you re-play for different endings, character interactions and more, I could easily see this being an 80 hour plus game.

PC version seems to run fine, if you do get any stutter, set your Windows Power Plan to High/Ultimate Performance, that seems to alleviate most of the stutter.

I've enjoyed many of the recent Resident Evil games, including RE5, RE7 and the recent remakes of RE2 and RE3. I have beaten this game, but only once, I don't know what it is about this game, but I just don't feel inclined to replay it, which is very unusual for me with a Resident Evil game. The story was alright, as was the gameplay, but it was nothing special and on a replay, everything just feels dull and boring.

I really couldn't recommend paying full retail price for this game, the PC version also isn't the greatest and has frequent hitching and stutter, likely due to the DRM the game includes, which may get removed at a later date. This is not a PC issue either as I have an i9-9900K. 64GB RAM and an RTX 3090.

EDIT: 10th July 2021, it has since been confirmed that the Denuvo DRM this game uses is responsible for the frequent stutter and hitching this game has, so until Capcom remove Denuvo from this game, I wouldn't recommend buying it.

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