Recente recensies door Lars

I will re-write my recommendation after the launch dust has settled and the release of Ascent's first major patches.

TL;DR: Love some cyberpunk action? High tolerance for big nasty bugs, up to and including resetting your progress in the game completely? Dive right in. Otherwise, I suggest waiting a bit for bug fixing patches before putting your money down.

In a lot more words: The Ascent is an action shooter with rpg elements and worldbuilding, and twinstick shooter controls, set in a cyberpunk inspired world. If you like some light legged ARPG style combat set in a seriously delicious cyberpunk setting with gorgeous visuals and a banger hard synth soundtrack, this is probably right up your alley.

When you get going on this game and catch sight of the city you're playing in proper, I instinctively compare it to the biggest budget releases, and it holds up, darn well, in fact. Its unbelieavable that this game was brought to life by a very small developer team consisting of 12 devs.

Moving onto gameplay, the action bits play pretty well. At its core, the game plays like a very capable twinstick shooter, while looking sexy as hell with its extremely detailed setting, great music, overall solid sound design and violent explosions and effects.

The term 'Action RPG' in the adverts for the game should be interpreted in the loosest of senses, however. The only RPG you find here are a fairly basic character creator, skill points to specialize your guy or girl as you like, and dialogue options to fill out some lore for the game. The only decisions you get, is if you want to accept or decline sidequests.

One very important thing to warn about however is that the game is buggy as hell right now. Ascent was really not ready for release, but here we are. Expect crashes, items not adding to your inventory after picking up, quest mobs not spawning as they should even after reloading the game, effectively killing your playthrough, save files disappearing, also of course killing your playthrough, your characters' weapons randomly firing endlessly without you pressing anything, and more. I'm sure some reading this will feel the urge to chime in that they didn't have any bugs so the game is fine, to you I say, I belive you and I'm happy for you, consider yourself very lucky. Because this game needs bugfixes, badly!

- New to Mass Effect? Only partially finished the trilogy?

Don't just sit there, get this and go play! The Mass Effect Trilogy is a true masterpiece in terms of epic stories, characters you will love to bond with (or love to hate), sci-fi worldbuilding, deep and fascinating lore and truly impactful game choices. Play the games in order, and export your character and his choices from each game to the next. You are in for a hell of a ride!

- Expert ME player who has been through it all before, maybe several times to see all endings?

Pass! While the visual and QoL improvements are definitely noticeable and welcome in the first game, 2 and 3 recieved only minor facelifts such as dynamic lighting and shadows, lens flares and godrays and the like. There's mods to make the first game look better, including QoL improvements such as custom FOV. That's right, you still need to install a mod to get a tolerable FOV if you like most people play your pc games with a monitor half a meter away from your face.


- The titles are mostly well paced. Typically there's missions of varying length but rarely more than 30 mins per mission, followed by (optional but recommended) interludes where you chat with your crew to learn interesting bits about them, thoughts on the previous mission, or visit a hub city to do some shopping. On a few occasions, the amount of time spent just running around and talking to different people can be a bit much. I remember at least one evening I was playing this, and didn't fire my guns a single time because there was a lot of story bits to talk through. I don't mind it that much since as mentioned above I LOVE the lore and characters on offer, but I also know some people get anxious if the downtime is long between the action-bits.

- None of the titles are without their small or big annoyances.

In Mass Effect 1, planet exploration is mostly a timeconsuming drag, and while exploring the game loves to constantly make you do the little stupid hacking minigame. Despite some improvements to weapon accuracy, there's no getting around that the combat is definitely starting to feel outdated and a bit janky.

Mass Effect 2 can feel 'gamey' because they for some reason felt the need to present a results screen after each mission, sorta makes you feel like you're playing through levels in an oldschool FPS like Duke3D again. While exploring, every single planet you come across can be scanned for resources which is at least better than driving around on them like the first game, but it still quickly becomes a dull chore if you don't want to miss out on stuff. Also more hacking minigames.

Mass Effect 3 wisely ditched the busywork regarding planet scanning, and bypassing locks are done automatically, but it has its own annoyances as well. First and foremost, unlike in the first game you can't holster your guns outside of combat and explore places without looking like a space murderhobo. Pretty darn annoying since the camera is a close and over your shoulder POV the whole time on missions with its zoomed and narrow FOV.
There is also the matter of big, vital plot points that were cut from the game at launch, and sold as DLC. In this package you don't have to worry about that, but lets not forget what they tried to pull with this game, there is no excuse for doing that, ever.
Finally, the mission log is incredibly unhelpful for some reason. Often it gives no hints which system you're supposed to go to, and it does not update if complete their conditions. ME1 and 2's logs were much better.

Concluding thoughts:

Now it might sound after the paragraphs above that I hate these games but I assure you, the positives these games gave me FAR outweighed their negatives. Sadly this game cannot get a GOTY from me since there are no fishing minigames, but the experiences and feels I've had with Mass Effect Legendary Edition are among the finest I can recall, EVER.

Mass Effect as a trilogy is a strong 9/10 for me.
Mass Effect Legendary Edition, judged as a remaster for those who have done it all before comes out less favourably. Lets say a 5/10 for the nice facelift it gave the first game.

Game's a masterpiece. Get it.

Still here? Hades really has everything I could ask for in an action roguelite.

- Well polished gameplay that is just a delight, no small feat considering the pretty wild amount of different weapons and powers you run around with. Smashing up the Underworld is very satisfying.
- Lots of story, every character interaction is beautifully voiced, and a codex that expands with information and story bits as you play.
- I always feel like I'm progressing, no matter how bad my runs go. So far, each time I've died there is some new interactions with people or new feature to unlock, perfect for a short breather before diving back into the next run.
- Excellent visual style, making good use of parallax scrolling to give the areas depth, while keeping the center 'clean' so you can focus on what matters, dodging everything trying to kill you.
- Banging Greek Mythology Metal OST. I didn't know this was something I was missing in my life until I played this game.

Spacer's Choice Edition, nuff said.

I'm still in two minds about whether to recommend this remastered version of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010, or not.

On one hand, Hot Pursuit Remastered is still a fantastic racing game with intense chases and superb audio, and visuals that even when playing the original HP2010 today manages to look stunning. I can't be sure if it will capture new players as much as us nostalgic oldies who played the original version, but I'd like to think it holds up very well.

One of the main positives with this release is of course the crossplatform multiplayer, currently supporting PC, Playstation and Xbox systems all working together, and from what I've seen so far, connectivity wise it works like a charm (Xbox had to wait a day for Crossplatform to be enabled, but its on now). The other (for me, big) selling point this remaster offers is that for the first time on PC, it includes all the DLC that were released for the console versions, with new cars and races to explore.

As for the drawbacks, there are some. I mentioned already that the original HP2010 still looks amazing, in fact it also supports 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. Unfortunately as far as my own eyes can tell, the only visual touching up the game has recieved is AA options, lens flares on light sources (these look nice, will admit), and increased draw distance on distant terrain. It is still locked at 60 FPS, and I can not for the life of me point at a single texture or model in the game that looks like it has been updated from the original game.

The game runs smoothly at 4K60 for me now, but I did have problems initially. First my Xbox One controller didn't register. Then I had very noticeable stuttering, and sometimes drastic framerate drops while playing. From the forums I've gathered that some players are still struggling with this, which is of course a shame. There is also a problem in multiplayer lobbies where Team Autobalancing between races simply doesn't work. In the original game when one team wins events, the top players on that team will be switched to the other side to create more varied and balanced races. So far, this isn't working and needs adressing ASAP.

The developers also very mysteriously have removed support for Steering Wheel setups, which HP2010 did actually have (not at launch, was added in a patch). I still rely on my gamepad for my racing games, but I completely understand that this is a deal breaker for those who have this equipment. Lets hope it gets added again.

Finally, there is the discussion about the price of the game and if it delivers its worth. For PC players, this may be a hard sell, since there is no discount for owners of the previous versions and that the actual remastering of the game is so light handed/nonexistant. You will have to ask yourself if the DLC that were previously missing on PC, and futureproofing in the sense of having crossplatform multiplayer makes this worth dropping your money on.

For me, it does. I'm a fairly huge fan of the original Hot Pursuit 2010, and Crossplatform+DLCs justify me spending the cost of admission, but it is up to each reader to decide if what they get is worth it, for them personally.

If you got this far, thanks for your time, and hope to see you in Seacrest sometime!

A lot of reviews focus on the game having very visible traces of its F2P design philosophies. They critisize bugs, unstable online connectivity and lag which is still present for some, lack of vision for the genre, or that it just feels like a 'cheap' mobile game.

I just can't forgive them for removing the fishing minigames. I'm heartbroken, Echtra. Why did you do me dirty like this? I'm even willing to admit that this game DOES have the dressings of a proper Torchlight game at least on the surface. I actually find the gameplay with my sharpshooter fairly enjoyable on Hard, and you did come through and deliver the much asked for offline single player mode.

So why did you have to take away my fishing mini-games?

Edit: When I briefly tested out Early Access I noticed how the game has 'Lore' drops from books and such that shows a NPC presumably spitting lore at you Diablo III style, except there was no audio playing, nor any text to read. Allright I though, I'm sure they're adding that for the release and looked forward to muscling up a bit on lore for a franchise I actually enjoy a lot. HAHAHA. No, no they did not. I am disgusted by the continually sinking standards for what publishers considers a release ready game (when considering all the other issues this game faces, of course)

Another update: And what happened to having some fun with exploration? In the older games, you were constantly looking around for things that look out of place, hidden switches, torch puzzles etc which unlock hidden areas and treasures. In this game there is NONE of that. Don't bother looking, the map are just routes with nothing of interest to look at, with random enemes and champion groups, and a scattering of boxes and jugs you can smash for some gold. So sad.

This game is fascinating. They've perfectly nailed how it is to play a healer doing group content in your typical mmorpg, it is actually quite impressive how authentic it feels, well except you don't get 15 people screaming at you over Discord when everyone dies. Extra bonus!

Getting into the game you get your little safe haven where you can manage your equipment loadouts, sell things you don't need and spend your money on crafting and upgrading your gear. Your healer has 7 equipment slots, and the items you put on affect either your character, others in the group, or the whole party.

Once you've done that, you head into the dungeon and do boss fights! Some of these are really fun, and they feel like they'd be right at home being a raid boss in your favourite mmorpg. You gotta heal of course, but also manage buffs and debuffs on your party and the enemies, plan what targets the party should focus on killing, sometimes manage your party's positioning and so forth.

If you win, you get your level ups, new loot to scratch your head about whether to use it or not, plonk skill points beef up your gear, then do it again. Its a pretty basic cycle, but it is very satisfying. Perhaps you need to have an aquired taste for playing support in mmorpgs to actually appreciate what this game does? For me it works VERY well.

Unsure what my local currency converts to in euros at the moment but I assume this goes for around €5. For its price, this game is completely blowing me away with how much fun I'm having with it.

I won't pretend to be an allknowing wizard of the previous SoR games, but I have played them all including the fan remake, and I've really enjoyed them all. I've also played a lot of other beat/hack-em-up classics such as Final Fight, Alien vs Predator, both the D&D Mystara games, and Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, as well as newer genre entrants such as Castle Crashers, Full Metal Furies and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Video Game, and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

If that gives you anything to go by, then you can trust me when I say that if you're anything like me, you WILL LOVE Streets of Rage 4. This game surprised me. It has been so long since we saw an official Streets of Rage game, so I went into this with mellowed expectations. Those were immediately discarded and replaced by a stupid grin on my face as I'm mashing my way through the game.

The art, style, music and gameplay is all on point for what you would expect from a modern beat'em'up. Its also undeniably very faithful to its source games, while being easy to pick up and have fun with for newcomers. Add in lots of unlockable characters (special note here, the unlockable SoR characters from previous games PLAY like they did then, and it somehow still works, a testament to the game's efforts to follow its origins), online and local coop and different game modes, and you got yourself a very sweet punching package!

Edit: Based on early impressions though, theres something very wrong with either its matchmaking when playing public games, or its netcode. Its rather laggy in online modes!

This game offers a lot of very, very entertaining tower defending for your buck. There's classic TD, Reverse, Mazing, Hero mode as well as online Co-op and versus modes. Add to that a fairly decent campaign with lots of amusing dialogue, town upgrading, unit upgrades and a character skill tree and you have a TD that deserves an 'All Time Classic' badge.

Its almost perfect. If you like TDs and you haven't had a look at this game yet, go right ahead, you won't regret it.

I really only have two complaints about his game, and one of those is a very silly one. First off, the levels where you maze the routes of the enemies lack a little polish. The routes enemy waves will take is not always the shortest or the most logical ones. Nor do you get predictions showing you how their routes will change when you place down defenses, making it random, or at least trial and error, to figure out how to maze correctly. The second (very silly) complaint I have, is that someone should have been hired on the spellcheck the writing, and by that I mean fixing spelling errors and grammar. I told you it was a silly complaint!

I was only mildly interested in Warstone TD when I first saw it on the Steam Store pages, and I wouldn't have checked it out unless I got it included in Humble Monthly, but boy am I glad those boys corrected my oversight, this TD is a treat!

Feels like a good middle ground between the older Dirt games' very arcade style driving, and Dirt Rally's vehicle handling being too hard to git gud if you're not playing with race wheels and pedals. Nice enough events, enjoyable racing.

BUT. All progress even in singleplayer has to sync with Codemasters' atrocious 'Racenet' service. When this service is down, no joy of any kind. Was down when I was playing and trying to do some championships, and a quick search reveals this service goes down A LOT.

If your gonna demand an always online system for your games, its nice if your own damn services are running, Codemasters. Screw this game.