Recent reviews by Virtus

Debating giving a negative review because the massive balls of the bracken keep gliding across my face. But I can look past it for now.

I think people are way too hung up on the social hysteria of the game to admit this The Finals is pretty disappointing. One of if not the biggest rebuttal to criticism to some of the flawed mechanics that gets thrown out there are "the game has potential, the game just released, they'll fix it soon" Almost acknowledging the game isn't that great but could be in the distant future. I think we're completely forgetting that this is and has been the case with almost every game that has ever existed. Look at the state of standards in the gaming industry and how most games are now, our own expectations and standards themselves are lowering by the each year and we keep eating it up. The finals feels like it's still in open beta (which it should be). For example, a simple implementation that's not in the game, such as selective aim sensitivity for different weapon types and different key-binds for multiple builds of your choice. Why is this not in the game since launch?


Peformance & Anti-Cheat

The performance is sub-optimal where I am struggling to push 110fps in games with constant drops/stutters on the lowest graphic settings possible with lowered FOV and resolution with a 3070 & I9-10900. If we're talking about potential we need to think of a long-term strategy for a competitive scene in which this game is very competitive. Every single successful competitive game are optimised and accessible to low-mid PC's. You NEED a high end PC to play The Finals and that itself can kill the game and cut off large groups of people who want to play.

About the fps drops/stutters, I know it's the piss poor Easy Anti-Cheat. That shows the developers truly don't care about addressing the issues of cheaters, when they implement a half-measure of slapping a performance hitting "anti-cheat" that is ineffective with it's intended purpose of stopping cheaters. You have people server hopping from Asia to run away from the rampant cheating that has already occurred and the game hasn't been out for long. The devs need to at least try to do something about it by changing anti-cheats (which I doubt they will even consider). EAC is the shill and cowards way of pretending to care about cheaters. Even if most hate it, at least add phone verification to play comp, make it harder for cheaters to cheat.


Matchmaking

The game is truly only fun with your friends and guess what, so is every game. The matchmaking doesn't work as intended but I can acknowledge most if not all games can never get matchmaking to properly work as intended. Although that is not an excuse to leave it as it is and not attempt to implement certain measures to create a better matchmaking system. There is no way the "working" SBMM (skill based match-making) puts people in lobbies where you can double if not triple your team-mates scores on all fronts in terms of stats/performance and the system thinks that's perfectly fine. REPEATEDLY.

I would argue the matchmaking itself wouldn't be so inherently miserable if the voice-chat actually worked as intended. For whatever reason the developers have made voice-chat unusually difficult to use to the point that people simply don't bother with trying to use it. Either the VC doesn't work at all by bugging out and or no one is in VC. I can absolutely guarantee you many people don't even know there is a button (K) that allows you to leave and join VC which in return some are unknowingly in the abyss of VC.


Balancing

The balancing in the game is laughable and I think you all know it, even subconsciously. With a meta that centres around spam and easy to use gadgets that yield high value with low risk like defib and mesh shield for example. At least put a cool-down with how often you can use these gadgets (1-3 seconds) so you can't simply spam the up-time and value given. This in return will force you to use a little bit more brain power with when you should properly use these items to prevent spam value. I primary play heavy and medium and they are easily the most powerful pairs to play. 2-1 Either MMH or HHM doesn't matter that much. On top of the current spam you also get the constant barrages of mines, smokes and fire from multiple angles and teams. Call it "The Stall Meta"

I'm sure there's more but those are the main points from the top of my head. I really enjoy The Finals and it could grow into something bigger than currently is right now but I cannot and I refuse to be blindsided by the current state of the game and promises of a potential future. The Finals is disappointing as of now.

The community rewards toxicity

The player-base incentives others to join in the toxicity by creating a circle-jerk of toxicity itself. For example, since everyone else is toxic I may as well be myself. Friend and I played against this twitch streamer, ChikkinnTwitch and he had the other two survivors play friendly while they farmed points off my mate for a solid 15 minutes. After I eventually got the generators he killed everyone.

I'm going to make the claim (I can be wrong) that he knew the survivors that be on steam ect and told him where I was because after he slayed everyone else he knew straight away which specific corner I was behind. After this everyone in his chat, including himself went crazy. I don't understand the DBD community and how this equates to genuine "amazing game-play" It's trolling, toxic and ruins the experience of the game yet it's framed otherwise.

You shouldn't have to ruin others experience to be able to enjoy the game for yourself.

When you're not playing with your friends you start to see the games true colours. An imbalanced, poorly put together, did I mention highly imbalanced? Lazy, frustrating and amateur gatcha cash grab.

Game has had potential but it seems like the ship is already sailing. I can understand why the game is losing most of it's player-base already, It caters to no one.

4/10

We want the old and true feeling of Overwatch back.

Game is held back by its clunky mechanics and flawed combat

As much as I love the world, characters, story and atmosphere the combat is so unbelievably tedious, dull and flawed I can't recommend this to anyone wanting to have a genuinely fun experience. Little to no preparation pre-combat, so 90% of the time you will have at least one character out of place. Force dialogue before a battle so you physically can't prepare for a battle. Flawed and fake initiative system that does little to nothing as it's completely team turn orientated. So whatever team (you or theirs) goes first gets the advantage.

The game basically means for at least one of your characters to die during battle due to the insane one shot capabilities of everyone. So with this you would think there would be a large emphasis on the pre-combat phase by carefuly positioning your characters but as already stated, it doesn't exist. So put that into perspective with all things combat wise considered, you have a system where it defeats itself in what it's trying to achieve.

Not the mention the different classes that generally feel the same with little exceptions, messy character chain management (unchaining/re-chaining characters into position and having them being caught in battle due to dumb path finding) and slow reactions to your commands pre-combat which end up in you missing your turn completely because you were "caught". On the side we also have the bugs here and there, but thankfully I haven't encountered many game breaking ones like others.

What we have is essentially a game that imitates the idea of a "hard" game for the sake of being "hard" rather than being a meaningful strategically difficult game where your methodical choices actually matter and forces you to think.

6.5/10

I've finally gotten down to play RDR2 after many years and I've been enjoying it thoroughly. Although is it just me, or is the gameplay itself extremely dull and clunky. Constantly running into things, accidentally smashing your horse into people, having to press the shoot button twice to shoot once. Having outdated mechanics like QTE's and especially in moments where it's a do or die situation and the act of spamming F enough times decides the fate of a persons life. This is blatant lazy game design and it feels meaningless. There's a great lack of availability of options to choose from to how you want to play the game. For example, stealth. Stealth is not an option unless it's scripted and it's almost absolutely useless and pointless even to the point of impossible in some cases. Instances like these could be presented as "not a big issue" on its own per say, but as a whole it becomes a greater problem. The gameplay itself just feels off and clunky and unfortunately it does take away from the enjoyment I have for the game. This game isn't terrible or not worth its praise by any means and I don't want to say the game is overhyped but I do believe some aspects of the game have been overshadowed by the hype and hysteria surrounding it.

This seems the same if not a downgrade to civ 5. Why can you not play both expansions DLC's together? Economy and wonder building feels much weaker. The fact that it's viable and better to pump out 6 cities within the first 60 turns is not appealing to me. You could win and destroy with 2 cities the whole game in civ 5. I do not like the limitations you are forced to follow with building. Districts are annoying, wonder are a pain and you can't even build your own roads anymore. I've done games where the temple of Artemis somehow wasn't build until the Renaissance Era.

I cannot accept a program that has basic features broken. Colour schemes don't save, Profiles don't load or save anything, crashing and lots of progress lost.

The characters represented in this game are over the top and not in a good way. They are exacerbated to cringe beyond belief, with outdated humour from the youtube early days of 2008. The dialogue and "get to know you" scenes are drawn out and tedious. I couldn't care less about these characters as they have poorly underestimated the importance of character development.

On the other hand the gun-play is the most fluid and rewarding feeling I have felt in a very long time. From the sounds and all the unique weapons it's truly the highlight of the entire game. In addition the amount of combinations/mix and mash ups you can do is insane, there is so much variety. Killing enemies have never felt so rewarding with the addition of more gore too. This will make me sound like a psychopath but the sight of their exploding heads and bodies with blood and gore flying away gives your weapons the weight they deserve.