Recent reviews by =L4DA= Nathan

After several dozen hours, you'll understand how the basic mechanics work.
After several hundred hours, you might begin to understand the deeper mechanics.
And then you have to face the final boss: math.

If you thought this would be a strong follow up to the great Doom 2016, you'd be wrong.

Unfortunately this game is plagued by one major problem: Almost every combat arena is extremely poorly designed. They are almost all far too small and the enemies far too large, so the "fast movement" the game boasts of will quickly become a moot point as demons or environments box you in and there is no way to escape.

With enemies spawning in the center of pathways, enemies chasing you into melee distance, and enemies that all move and attack faster than you can react, you are almost constantly prevented from using the movement tech that the game requires you to use. While some weapons are capable of helping with this, they are all extremely limited, requiring a recharge time and/or taking several seconds to fire.

In addition, enemy projectiles are a constant barrage that while technically able to be dodged, there are more often than not simply too many to keep track of. As a result you'll take constant damage at any range and are forced to get close to enemies to restore health with glory kills. Unfortunately, enemies attack faster and do more damage in melee range, so you end up in a cycle of constantly being at low health, with nothing that can be done about it.

Combined, these issues are absolutely infuriating, making the game a chore to play and leaving you feeling stressed and miserable after each session. If games can make you tilt, I highly recommend playing anything else.

Assassin's Creed continues the trend of making the parkour worse with every entry. New features this time: Random crates/rocks/other tiny objects that you will constantly get stuck on because sprint is the same key as parkour, and the game will only let you drop/jump off an object *sometimes*. In addition, the reworked combat hasn't been fully thought through, making many of the combat encounters miserable, combined with the fact that most missions don't really have proper stealth paths and you're in for a bad time. Oh, and they pretty much removed the modern day plot, if you care about that like I do.

A fantastic story and off-beat tone make the Yakuza franchise a spectacle to behold. That said, I don't recommend playing on anything higher than Normal, as the combat design for this title isn't the best.

An absolutely stellar puzzle/metroidvania/murder mystery game. Set in a masquerade party where everyone is wearing masks, you know who the victims are, but only that the murderers are the mansion's staff. Given the supernatural ability to reset the day to 12'o clock at will, you must find ways to manipulate the environment to save the guests from the murderous staff. Dripping with intrigue and atmosphere, this game is a masterpiece and one of my all-time favorites now.

Extremely fun and emotionally powerful game, where the controls themselves are intertwined with the story. I recommend this to absolutely everyone, a piece of art that is a true masterpiece.

The start of the now long-running Assassin's Creed franchise, you are placed in the shoes of Altaiir, an assassin during the Crusades. This game possesses a very historically-centric plot and the parkour gameplay foundation that the franchise, and many others, now use.

First off, the gameplay has aged somewhat badly, particularly if you've played any other parkour movement games released since. The movement in this game is noticeably slower than its sequels, especially when climbing up the sides of towers and buildings. The combat, however, is both better and worse than that in the sequels. It is much simpler, not allowing nearly as many options in combat and can be very slow when fighting multiple opponents. On the plus side, it is more difficult than the newer Assassin's Creed games, actually providing somewhat of a challenge in combat.

Now, the real highlight of this game is the plot. While it may be told in a very weak way, with you doing the same things over and over in different locations and being rewarded with a monologue, it is a very thematically/morally strong plot. It addresses the nature of good and bad on a very deep level and if you enjoy philosophy or analyzing morality, you will love it. It's truly a shame that they dropped this plot strength in the later iterations of the game.

Overall, I'd recommend the game, as I feel it is still great fun, and the message is simply unforgettable.

A spin-off of Batman: Arkham Origins, this is a 2.5D action platformer set in the same world as the other Arkham games. While the level design is fairly well done and the game does a good job of providing Metroidvania-esque exploration, it fails in almost every other way. First off, while the level design is good, the navigation is a pain. The "world" is split into three maps, which you have to enter/exit from the front door/back door, which are not easily accessible from most of the map, causing a large portion of backtracking to be for the sole purpose of leaving your current area. To complicate things further, the map is very poorly displayed, particularly in regards to areas with multiple height levels, which can make finding your way around extremely obnoxious.

The freeflow combat from the previous games is forced into the 2D perspective, which makes targeting enemies impossible, (you can only attack people directly in front or behind you) and often times they will strafe into the foreground or background which makes it difficult, sometimes literally impossible, to hit them. The predator aspect has almost been entirely removed for this game, and when it does show up, performs terribly, as without the three dimensional movement, there is no way to hide or sneak about other than running away.

In addition, blocks/counters don't seem to register half the time and there are no rebindable controls, with the default controls being incredibly odd, making controlling an issue on top of the gameplay issues. In regards to plot, it is extremely simple and is told in such a simple way that you'll get the same level of investment in the game from reading a paragraph long summary of the plot on Wikipedia. In short, I highly recommend that even avid Batman fans avoid this game, as you'll only be disappointed at best, absolutely infuriated at worst.

After escaping from City 17, it's time to take the fight to the Combine, as this sequel has you exploring a variety of interesting locales outside of the confines of the city, culminating in a heart-rending finale that is guaranteed to leave you in tears. While the gameplay remains largely unchanged from the core game, a change in level design results in a different experience from both HL2 and Ep1.

A great, but short sequel to Half-Life 2, as you follow Gordon and Alyx's adventures in their escape from City 17. Very little is added here from a gameplay perspective, focusing instead on forwarding the plot and setting up for Episode 2.