Seneste anmeldelser af Lars

Godlike.

Released: Sep 2011
Developer: Ubisoft Reflections
Publisher: Ubisoft

Requires UPlay

+ Surprisingly strong single player story, characters have charm and attitude.
+ A lot of soul and jazz.
+ Well built 'sandbox'. Lots of garages, cars and upgrades to earn through side events.
+ The 'shift' ability which lets you possess drivers of other cars is cool and makes the game feel unique

- Atrocious AI rubberbanding in Race events.
- Car handling and physics barely passable for the time it was released, today's gamers will expect more.
- Feels dated visually, with fairly low quality textures and complete lack of post processing effects.
- Non existent player base. While online servers are still alive, don't expect to find people to race online against.

Despite some potential dealbreakers listed above I am still admittedly rather enjoying the occational romp around San Fransisco on this game. The story is written like an oldschool tv show and is generally enjoyable to play through, and its a great game to chill out with and do whatever events you feel like and increasing your car collection.

The main problem I have with Driver San Fransisco is the rubberband AI. During events and even campaigns, the other drivers stay glued to you. If you crash, the other cars will slow down to a crawl right around the next corner. If you drive like a god, so will they. I get that it is designed to make players of all skill levels feel challenged, but in practice when it is done as blatantly as here it removes all feeling of challenge entirely. You can quite literally go take a leak at the start line of a race, then catch up with the others and win.

Outside of that issue, which understandably will turn some away from the game, Driver San Fransisco is a pleasant game to relax with.

Developed and Published by: Red Hook Studios
Released: January 2016

+ Bone chilling occult setting with...
+ Great looking hand drawn art direction,
+ music that fits perfectly and...
+ an incredible performance by the game's narrator.
+ Challenging roguelite dungeon crawls full of death and horrors
+ Developers hellbent on making DD the best game possible for everyone
+ Unforgiving RNG which will lead to numerous adventurer's deaths

- In the normal campaign, no true failure state
- Developers hellbent on making DD the best game possible for everyone
- Unforgiving RNG which will lead to numerous adventurer's deaths

Darkest Dungeon is beautiful game that needs to be experienced, perhaps except by those who can not deal with unfair RNG occationally killing your characters.

Darkest Dungeon is also a study in why we as gamers can't have, and do not deserve nice things. It has been fascinating to follow the developers' journey through Early Access tweaking their game, attempting to make everyone happy, and of course always ending up enraging crowds in the community no matter which direction they take. Surely something games developers have learned from, for the future.

Developed and Published by: Triumph Studios
Released: March 2014

+ Rich and colourful high fantasy setting
+ Deep and challenging tactical combat
+ Beautiful soundtrack
+ Massive unit variety, with the different race and leader variations
+ In MP, only the host needs to own DLC for a match to use all the expanded features
+ One... more... turn...
+ The devs are active with the community, helping with issues and implementing features and fixes
+ Steam Workshop, and not the paywalled kind

- Very basic empire building
- Could use some more game changing magic spells
- Some slight balance issues
- Some of the original campaign maps feel lame, forcing rushes before the AI gets stronger
- Consistent lag in MP often up to 4-5 seconds on the strategic map
- Visually unimpressive, with jaggies and 'blocky' terrain features
- Low framerates on strategic map on my system far surpassing recommended specs, often down to 15(!) if Vsync is enabled

Age of Wonders III sucked me in and after 150 hours played, finally having finished all the campaigns I still want to play more of it. The base game is a solid fantasy strategic war game, and the two DLCs Golden Realms and Eternal Lords both add satisfying campaigns and a wealth of features and 'stuff', end result being a title that has a lot to offer.

I would have liked to see better empire building and management in the game, and it could look better, and run better. Even so I am greatly enjoying my time with this game and don't see myself deleting it from my hard drive any time soon.

For some reason I never looked twice at this game until I figured I'd give it a go recently. I'm an idiot.

It is somewhat hard to describe Warframe in a few short words but I'll try: Sneak around, backstab baddies, run in guns a blazin', parkour big maps with lots of secret spots, sliding launch jump kick things. Collect armours, weapons, mods and customize it all, the amount of stuff is enough to satisfy even the worst loot/gear hoarder. Beautiful visuals, high production values. Play solo, with friends or public games.

Considering this is 'just' a F2P game, I am honestly really impressed with Warframe.

Released: Oct 2011
Developer: Black Hole
Publisher: Ubisoft

• Campaign story lines are some of the better written and more interesting ones in the series.
  
• Pleasing aesthetic, good overall visual design.
  
• OST is a mixed bag but there are some very nice tracks as well.
  
• Factions and their units are well designed. Each faction has their flavour, and almost all combat units have unique traits and abilities.

• Uplay. Not that I am that much against it, but Uplay has deleted my saves for this game a number of times, it is infuriating.
  
• An additional THIRD DRM layer called Conflux that you must be connected to at all times to access Dynasty weapons or traits, even in single player. If you for any reason lose connection to it while playing a game, it will drop you to the main menu without even saving your game first.
  
• Technical issues. Black screen when loading Town or Battle screens happen frequently, forcing game restarts. With many mice, just moving the cursor on the screen makes the frame rate literally freeze to 0.
  
• Bugs. Dozens, if not hundreds of bugs, minor and major have been in this game since release. Not one frak has been given by the developers and the publisher to fix anything, focusing instead of pumping out DLC. Some examples: Many hero skills either do literally nothing, or act REVERSE. Picking 'Pathfinding' for example doubles the rough terrain penalty instead of reducing it! Almost all Dynasty weapons can severely cripple your hero permanently, when equipped. Some will reduce your hero's magic power each day it is equipped, 'Affinity' weapons increase your spell costs to unmanageable levels. Maps also have a number of bugs. I've several times had to restart a map from the start, after finding out for playing for hours that a keep I had to capture for a quest, simply did not spawn on the map properly, for example.
  
• Instead of getting a choice of skills, when heroes level they put points into a talent tree. I personally dislike this method, it takes the fun out of hero development. Once you learn what skills are good, you typically build all your heroes the same way.
  
• Atrocious AI. Some of the worst I've seen, possibly rivalled by the HOMM IV AI only. It literally doesn't play the same game as you. It is given huge amounts of resources each day. but even then doesn't understand the concept of upgrading its towns. It is given heroes and large armies for free every week to send at you, with a larger army each week. Wipe them out too slow and their free unit spam will soon vastly outnumber anything the players can buy in their towns. Adventure map armies also grow in the same manner, a strong design flaw that makes rushing for the win the single most important priority on every map you play, every time. I was very disappointed to learn how the game actually works in the regard.
  
• In combat, particularly during the campaigns, nothing comes close to the importance of healing and resurrecting units, to minimize casualties in each battle. It is basically the only really viable way to play the campaigns without losing too many units to be able to finish the maps. I would have liked to see other viable ways to play.
  
  
  Other thoughts:
  
  There isn't that much else to say. This is one of the weakest and most disappointing games in the series, which could have been pretty good if it was only given the chance. It is disgusting to see how this release was handled, with zero effort taken into patching out all the bugs and problems it suffers, Ubisoft instead only focusing on producing more bugged DLC's to sell. Game design wise I was not a fan of the simplified resource management and hero development either, but I could have lived with it if the rest of the game was in a playable state.
  
  It's a big shame, since I was actually really enjoying the campaigns, having tested the Haven, Necro and Sanctuary ones, but the gamebreaking bugs prevent me from being able to finish any of them. I am not interested in restarting them over and over to play around the bugs.
  
  For those looking for a high fantasy strategy game to play I would recommend steering clear of MMH VI and instead getting HOMM III Complete from www.gog.com, or perhaps try my personal favourite in the series, HOMM V with both its expansions, its patches and the superb AI improvement third party mod.

Released: Oct 2014
Developer: 2K Australia, Gearbox Software, Aspyr
Publisher: 2K, Aspyr


Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel (TPS) is Borderlands 2 (BL2) again, and as one who really enjoyed both BL1, BL2 and pretty much devoured all the dlc for those games it is a very enjoyable game to play. However, for those who didn't for any reason enjoy the previous releases, you can stop reading here, this game will not get you hooked.

New in this version is that you're playing on a moon, meaning in large parts of the game there is low gravity, and no oxygen. You're given Oz kits that allow you to boost for extra jump height as well giving you much more speed and maneuverability, as well as the ability to slam down onto enemies on the ground. Oh, and they let you breathe which can also be handy sometimes.

Most enemies you fight will also be wearing space helmets to allow breathing that can be shattered, making them suffocate. This is actually a significant gameplay change from BL2, since these helmets are much larger critical spots and easy to hit, unlike headshots in BL2 which could at times be tricky to land on erratic moving enemies. Another difference is that unless you're fighting in areas with oxygen, fire weapons can not cause burn damage, funny how that works.

Other gameplay changes include a new laser weapon type, the removal of Slag damage from BL2 (thank you!), the inclusion of cold elemental damage which can freeze enemies solid allowing you to shatter them with a quick melee strike, and relics being replaced by the aforementioned Oz kits. Last but not least TPS stars 6 new character classes, making TPS feel fresh despite its many similarities with BL2.

As someone odd enough to have actually enjoyed the stories told and the lore from the previous games, TPS delivers. The writing is hardly award winning material, but the story from the perspective of mercenaries hired by Jack before the events of BL2 has him starring as the main villain is an interesting one. TPS also features the usual humour and puns, for which the appreciation will of course be very hit or miss. Personally I've had quite a few laughs and will at least give a sympathetic smirk each time the game throws a funny at you.

If you're in the mood for more Borderlands, and haven't had a go at TPS yet, it is a fairly easy recommendation for me to make. Well worth picking up during a sale along with the season pass which includes a couple characters and a story dlc.

• Slag is gone, and all is well!
  
• Better PhysX optimization compared to BL2. I very rarely see fps drop below 60 even during hectic firefights on my trusty old GTX 680 2GB.
  
• While I was sceptical at first, the moon environment works quite well, and changes up the gameplay a bit from BL2.
  
• Enjoyable story and humour in the same style of previous games.
  
• New 'Grinder' machine in the main town that lets you combine weapons and gear into new, possibly improved ones. A smart move, meaning there's always going to be something to spend your money on. The cashmoneys in BL2 quickly lost any real value outside of buying ammo.

• Diehard BL2 grinders beware, TPS does not offer the endgame raid challenges and OP levels of BL2, because....
  
• Not long after release, the dev studio that released TPS closed its doors. Some of the DLC released was actually produced in house at Gearbox, just so there could be enough value in the season pass. It is looking extremely unlikely that there will be more DLC or other updates released for TPS.
  
• There's a few bugs. One particularly annoying bug is that your character sometimes gets perma-slowed after taking cold damage, forcing you to restart the game to be able to move around at normal speeds.
  
• Largely forgettable soundtrack. Some areas don't even have a music score, just ambient background sound.
  
• Re-uses quite a few uniques and legendaries from BL2.

Update 23/10/15: Just published a video review/letsplay/rant about the game also that can be viewed here, for anyone curious: https://youtu.be/XJrmefG17aw

Free to play Magic: The Gathering presented in the style of the earlier 'Duels of the Planeswalkers' games. No exclusive content that can't be earned with in game currency. The game uses a selection of cards from the latest 'Origins' set.

Magic Duels is plagued with bugs, ranging from inexplicable launch errors preventing many from playing the game, to infinite loading screens and some instances of cards not following the rules. There is also an unreasonable DX 11 hardware requirement which is plain sloppy programming, Duels could easily be software rendered.

Playing Duels online can really push my patience to its limits sometimes. Matchmaking fails most of the time, I often have to search 5+ times before finding an opponent, and getting into a match of 2HG has been 100% impossible. Players can avoid losing rank from losses very easily, making the whole mode a joke. Also, people playing this better enjoy battling poor AI opponents, since whenever you play a person in any mode, if there's a slight connection hiccup of any kind or the server acts up, your opponent gets replaced with the AI.

I can't in good conscience recommend the game to anyone in its current state, it is simply not release ready and I'd strongly discourage anyone from spending real money in the game until drastic measures are taken by the developers to improve just about all aspects of the game. Those desperate for a decent F2P MtG experience (such as myself) may be willing to forgive a lot of the shortcomings and problems this game suffers. It is frustrating, there's potential for a lot of good MtG cardslinging with this release, but it needs SO much work to be considered a good game.

Unfortunately I have little faith of Magic Duels recieving any of these much needed improvements simply because of the track record of the developer, Stainless Games, which despite imaginative boasts on their website are responsible for a lot of bad releases, from the recently released Carmageddon game which is a complete wreck (in all the wrong ways) to all the previous 'DotP' iterations, which ALL have had bugs and problems of varying magnitude that were never fixed. The amateurish online functionality in particular is something that has plagued all the earlier versions of 'DotP' and never seen improvements.

• Free to play MtG is in itself a very good thing.
  
  
• Tutorials, while annoying for experts, do a good job of teaching the basics of MtG for new players and also provide a quick shot of ingame currency for booster packs.
  
  
• Inviting interface, easy to play with either mouse or a controller.
  
  
• While you typically face certain easy to make deck types in online matches, the card selection is varied enough to allow for many diverse decks.
  
  
• Very fair monetization. Collecting currency for booster packs is easy, and there are no direct advantages offered by paying real money, other than saving yourself time.

• Bugs, bugs, bugs. Cards become invisible, graphical glitches making either the table or your cards turn invisible or black, bugged cards that don't follow the rules. Many can not launch the game, instead greeted with black screen or a crash. Interface bugs, not allowing menu elements to be used, or making them flash up nonstop.
  
  
• The online functionality is a complete mess. The worst I have seen in a long time. 1v1 ranked matches often take 5-10 attempts before successfully finding and loading a match with an opponent, and getting a match of the popular 2 Headed Giant mode is even worse. In a couple hours of repeatedly trying to play the mode I have not managed to get a single damn match going. When I do get a 1v1 match going there are often lag spikes or constant lag, which can make you misplay cards or not be able to pause at critical moments to use instant abilities. Servers are, still, very unstable and it is common to see your opponent get dropped from a game, very obvious when they suddenly drop out when they're just about to beat you.
  
  
• In online matches, a bad AI takes over whenever opponents either get dropped, quit or concede from a match. This is an insult, if my opponent scoops out I shouldn't have to keep fighting a second opponent, the match should be over. No excuses for this. Defenders say it is to prevent exploiting ingame currency farming but .. no. Just, no. It is extremely dull to so often have to battle the AI, and feels like the winner of the match is the one getting punished when the opponent quits. Not to mention if the AI pulls a miracle and does a comeback and wins the match, the remaining player also loses gold and rank, an extra slap in the face considering the very real possibility the opponent quit the game with an exploit to prevent himself losing rank.
  
  
• The online ranked structure itself is a complete joke. Players start at rank 0 and climb/drop 1 rank per match. Rank 40 is max. That's it. So little thought went into the online structure it would be comical, if it wasn't so sad. The ease of exploiting to save yourself from losing ranks further remove any semblance of accomlishment or prestige from climbing the ranked ladder.
  
  
• Very unreasonable hardware requirements. Magic Duels requires both a DirectX 11 compatible video card, and a sound card to run, for no logical reason. This is lazy programming for a simple looking turn based card game that could easily be programmed to be 100% cpu rendered. The sound is also something many will just turn off, requiring a sound card to run the game is.. really weird. On top of that the game lists as being Vista compatible, which it has been proven to absolutely not be. (Vista users might want to think about updating soon, tho, just saying)
  
  
• Duels can be played on PC, Xbox One and Iphone/pad, but has no cross platform multiplayer, and not even a way to use the same account between the platforms.
  
  
  
  But Couchfighter, why do you have so many hours on this game, or even play it right now if you don't like it? You silly goose!
  
  I'm so glad you asked, here's two reasons!
  
  1. I still wanted to complete the current card set, and gather up some coins for the next release, in the small hope that Duels recieves the many improvements it needs.
  
  2. In those cases when you actually get a working match without lag/bugs/crashes, Duels can be rather enjoyable indeed for a casual MtG enthusiast such as myself.
  
  Does that make up for the myriad of big problems the game has, that some like to pretend don't exist? No, I'm afraid it doesn't. If and when Duels gets the many fixes it needs I will be the first to turn that review thumb pointing the other way but until that happens, as a whole, I do not recommend Duels.

Open world first person RPG with complete freedom to visit or ignore all the post apocalyptic wonders you can think of. Settle in Megaton, or blow it to smithereens. Look for daddy and follow the main story line, or wander off wherever you want, exploring radiated sewers and metros, or get eaten by the charming wildlife. Spend half your time with the game outside of it, tinkering with .ini files, adding large numbers of nude mods, or applying fixes to make the game run better.

• - Fantastic post apocalyptic DC setting
  
• - Great audio work with immersive ambience and sounds, radio stations with news of your exploits and glorious 50's music
  
• - Great sense of freedom. Be the good guy in the story or the villain, or ignore it completely and do your own thing
  
• - The Broken Steel DLC improves the game in a number of ways with new content, higher level cap, and lets you continue playing after completing the main story
  
• - Mods. Fallout 3 mods can be much more finicky than Skyrim's to work well without crashes, but just like the other Fallout/Elder Scrolls games the mods you install can greatly improve your experience. Textures, quests, new radio stations, total conversion mods like the strongly recommended Fallout Wanderer's Edition, monster mods, weapon mods, prostitution mods, the possibilities are endless

• - FO3 can be a ♥♥♥htmare to configure correctly depending on your hardware and OS. For most players it runs well after some tweaking (There's good guides that walk you through this), but fair warning, not everyone on Windows 7/8 or other OS'es will able to get it running good
  
• - The base game, while mostly playable has a long laundry list of unfixed bugs and problems that Bethesda rely on unofficial patch mods to fix. (And they want to make money off modders, sheesh...) If it wasn't for mods, there is no way I would recommend this game to anyone. Mods fix bugs, make the interface more PC optimized, prevent crashes, make it look better
  
• - If you're planning on buying and playing this game without spending some (or much) time fiddling with mods and tweaks, you are quite honestly better off looking at another game to buy

Fallout 3 is a very rewarding experience if you can stomach spending a few hours working on fixing the game and applying your preferred mods in working order. It is a huge game that once set up properly will keep you entertained for a good 100 hours easily. Then you throw in more mods and start a new game, and.. yeah you see where this is going. However, if you don't want to invest some time into learning how to optimize the game and tailor it to your preferences, you are most likely not going to enjoy Fallout 3 a lot.

If you're brave enough to get a bit technical with the game though, I strongly recommend Fallout 3 for anyone into some good post apocalypse RPG goodness.

Modern take on Ghosts'n'Goblins with superb hack'n'platforming, randomized dungeons, skills to upgrade, loot to loot, secrets to secret and a family line of misfits with various 'features' to send to their guaranteed deaths.

Its brutal, sometimes unfair, but each time you learn something new and git a little more gud, and if you're a bit of a sadist, the whole thing feels rather rewarding.

Rogue Legacy is a very good game and is easily recommended to anyone who accepts the challenge of a little challenge in their video games.