Recent reviews by Pyrociraptor

Edit:Sony has reversed their stupid decision.


Helldivers 2 is a great, chaotic co-op game that has some surprisingly deep mechanics; For a game about dropping in hot, the stealth mechanics are surprisingly solid.

Thought at the moment of this review, some weapons could use a buff, the gunplay feels great.

The game doesn't inflate difficulty by turning enemies into bullet sponges; Instead, it swarms you with tougher and rougher enemies, but each enemy can be dealt with.

I wish the servers would either work, or that the game wouldn't decide to break some random file every time.

The base of the game is actually quite great; A somewhat realistic military vehicle fighting game, without too much realism; And mostly divided in three parties; Ground Battles, which features mostly tanks, Air Battles, which features only Planes, and Naval Battles, which features mostly only boats. Most people, myself included, only tends to play Realistic Ground Battles, but that particular gamemode suffers from a lot of things:

Currently sitting between 40 to 50 maps for Ground Battles, with multiple gamemode variations (and thus, play area, spawn locations and objectives locations) on each map, the game only has 2 or 3 maps that are actually great in most Battle Rating (tier of vehicles, basically). With 5 or 6 maps that can be decent depending on the BR, and maybe your choice of tank, and the rest of the maps being as pleasant as running a cheese grater along your delicate areas.

To be more specific, a large majority of the maps are mostly open fields, with maybe the occasional small town. Now, while somewhat realistic to real life tank warfare, in terms of gameplay, it doesn't translate well; Many open maps tends to suffer from the same problem: One of the designated team's spawn points are in a place that can be sniped from afar, not giving much chance to spawning player to fight back; The spawn protection system being mostly a delay of the inevitable.

The maps' variations often features non-sensical play areas; Turning large maps into a corridor of death and boringness.

To follow on the questionable map designs of Ground Battles, gamemodes dictate the map's play area and variation.
- Battle, a gamemode where each team has their own capture point to defend, while trying to attack the enemies'. The game ends if either one team fully captures the enemy's capture point, or one team has no respawn tickets remaining (A ticket system similar to the Battlefield franchise).
- Conquest, A gamemode that's basically King of the Hill; Teams wins by depleting the enemy's tickets, and whoever is holding the control point will cause a constant ticket drain on their enemy.
- Domination, similar to Battlefield's Conquest gamemode, in which three points are available on each map, and whichever teams hold a majority of the points will cause a drain on their enemy, until one team depletes their ticket and loses.

The main issues with those gamemodes is that we've had the same gamemodes for years, with no variation, attempt at making something new, and with each gamemode's map variation seeing more and more restricted play area. For many years, the community has asked for new variations, like Enduring Confrontation (a gamemode where you could pop in and out and could last up to three hours.)

In Realistic Ground Battles, a player's line-up can be composed of Tanks... and planes (and helicopters at higher BR). While the presence of planes for a combined battle isn't the problem, it's the ease of access to them which frustrates a lot of player; A mediocre player can just take a fast, light tank with scouting abilities (Which marks enemies on the map for your team, and gives you points if they're shot at/destroyed by your teammates), either rush to the point, or get one assist, and be able to respawn in a plane with enough ordnance to destroy 6 enemy vehicles; Enemy vehicles that, in most BR, won't be able to fight back against an air threat due to a lack of either Commander Machine Gun; or a lack of elevation on said machine gun.

While the Ground trees features SPAA (Anti Aircraft vehicles), shooting down enemy aircraft barely gives any Experience or Silver Lion (the in-game non-premium currency), barely incentivising the playstyle; And for many SPAAs, you'll barely be able to get kills on most tanks you'll face due to your guns' low caliber.

While I don't want Airplanes entirely gone from GRB, I do wish it would require more to get one; Currently, many tank on tank fights (outside of the highest BRs, above 9.0) usually requires to try and aim at critical areas of a tank; Try to know where the Tiger II's ammo rack is, or where to pray and shoot when facing an Object 279. A plane, however, can just dive at a tank, spam spacebar (the default key to drop/fire ordnance) vaguely in the general area, get a kill... And in the case of many CAS players, crash into the ground as their only goal was to 'Revenge Bomb' you.


One of the most frustrating experience within the actual gameplay, is a lot of inconsistency and frustrating mechanics: High Explosive shells (or similar shells) never being consistent is, in my personal case, the biggest grip I have:
Some High Explosive shells, which can easily have between 10 kg to 20 kg of TNT equivalent and could easily destroy many armored tanks, have often failed to do any damage on vehicles that can only be described as a slightly up-armored toyota truck with a gun. And in the reverse situation, I've often seen situations where the HE shell of a small caliber 20mm gun vaporize a Maus or an IS-7, because they've hit it in a weird spot.

Talking about weird spot, the game also has a large problem with "Volumetric": A system, in theory, that sounds great: Shells aren't just a magic pixel-width entity that see where it hits and see if it penetrates or not, but rather an actual shell with a physical model for collision calculation. In reality, it results in a lot of situation where large shells simply don't do anything because of a weird funny angle (Ask any war thunder players with a few hours in about t-34-85 driver hatches, or how many shells they've lost to a tank's tracks.)


Now, the most important thing we want to see a proper change is the game's economy and grind. While I can understand, and do personally enjoy in many games, the principle of grinding a bit to get better gears and items, in the case of War Thunder, the grind is just frustrating. While you'll quickly reach BR 6.0 for most nations, after this, the progression starts crawling to a halt; You'll need to unlock parts for your vehicles (like better turrets rotation system, FIRE EXTINGUISHER, repair parts...) or you'll just suffer; And also starting, for most tanks, with shells that could only be described as pure pain.

You'll spend hours just to get ONE vehicle; Suffering through the questionable map and gamemode designs, often unable to actually get more experience because either someone in a light tank rushed the point, got a plane and bombed you, or because you got spawn camped from 2 km away.

Combined with terrible gain after each battles, that mostly base itself on active playtime, you'll be playing a lot to barely progress.

While it hurts me to say this about a game I really do enjoy the core gameplay, I'd recommend you stay away from War Thunder until Gaijin decides to put some love into this game.

Firstly, the concept of the game is something, I'm sure, many of us always wanted, and definitely fills that role. You can either try to recreate various tanks, or create your own, unleashing your inner world war engineer.

The game is, however, still in a very early stage. At the moment of writing this review, you are unable to make smooth, curved edges for either the hull or the turret. You're limited to only one "main" gun, so unable to make multi-gun tanks such as the B1 Bis or the M3 Lee.

While the turret can be offset horizontally, the game lacks, so far, the possibility for asymmetrical designs is missing. While there is a gun mantlet choice which offer some possibility, it remains quite limited for the moment, and hopefully you'll be able to make things such as SPG in the future.

Steering and Driving could also use a overhaul, as hitting a puddle tends to make your vehicle violently steers to one side and lose control.
A few more key binding options would also be nice, such as something to manually control the gear, and a few info tips or a small tutorial would absolutely be welcome.

It still is fun despite its early access status; If you're unsure if you want to buy it, I would recommend waiting for a few updates.

This game has a lot of potential, and hopefully future updates will unleash all of it.

This game, and the whole franchise, is an experience. A mix of a main quest of a Serious Yakuza Drama that'll easily make you tear up, and the crazy substories that'll make you question your sanity, with an absurd amount of mini-games (including, of course, the Karaoke.)

The game's cutscenes choice are a bit confusing; You'll go from a full movie-like cutscenes with voice acting, to in-game rendered cutscenes with text boxes that are also voice acted, to simple text boxes, to still image with texts but voice acting.

The combat, the big thing of the game, is amazing, and brutal; You'll spent your first few hours of gameplay cringing at the sheer pain dealt to whoever Kiryu or Majima is facing, before fully embracing the violence of it. The mix of 3 styles (4 styles later on) for both character gives personality, and each heat action will make you want to do it again, especially with situational heat actions (Ex: grab an enemy near a railing in Kiryu's Brawler style if you want to visibly feel pain for someone.)

The mini-games are varied and quite amusing; From the famous Karaoke to the phone dating minigame, there's lot of variation, including a few one that might drive completionists mad (Such as Mahjong or Shogi).

The game's OST are, like for the rest of serie, quite amazing piece of works that'll make every fight memorable, and will remain in your memory, and in a good way.

Now in terms of control, I absolutely recommend you play with a gamepad/controller, as the game poorly handles keyboard/mouse gameplay; I've finished the game with each configuration, and playing on mouse&keyboard made it more difficult than it should.

Some boss fights may end up being frustrating, but I recommend to any new player to the serie to always stock up on health items (food and energy drinks).

After almost one year of playing, Warframe has been a game I keep coming back, always pulling stunning updates.

Warframe got the most amazing movement system I have seen in any game; You quickly get familiarised with it. Many weapons and warframes are surprisingly fun, and many missions, while repetitive, are quite enjoyable. The game's sound design and OSTs are truly out of this world, and the developers listen to the community. Any items can be obtained in-game (bare for 'founder items' that were a once in a lifetime exclusivity) by farming (sometimes, quite a lot.)
The story, and cinematic quests, are of an amazing quality.
The ingame premium currency (platinum) is not like other F2P game where you can only buy them; You could, as stated previously, buy it, or farm a few items and trade those for plats with other players.


However, the game has a few flaws:
- A lack, if not absence, of proper in-game tutorial. While playing Warframe, you'll have the game's wiki open. A lot; Barring informations about enemy, drop chances and loot tables, many important mechanics of the game, such as weapon/warframe modding, lacks any proper explanation for newer players.
- Noob traps, Items in the market made to take inexperienced player's plats.
- A few frames that are out dated, requiring reworks (Vauban as an exemple) or some serious rework (Wukong).
- Some really awful grind; While the grind in general isn't that harsh, certain items' grind will make you wish for death.

Overall, I would still heavily recommend this game; Even without giving a single cents in, you'll have a lot of fun, as no mechanic in-game requires you to pay anything; Only cosmetics or rushing item construction. (You'll still need, if you want to expand your arsenal, warframe and weapon slots, but the amount of plat they require is an easy grind.) Warframe is one of these kind where I'm proud to say I've spent more on cosmetics and other 'pointless' items than I would for any AAA game.

So it's free, it's enjoyable, and you'll never get your soul back. Try it.

The game has an original concept and fun ideas, with an amazing physic-based engine.


However, in its current early access state, I would recommend waiting until the lag issues are fixed, as it makes the game unplayable.

The SP of the game is amazing, with a captivating story line and Side-missions that aren't annoying "find 100 bird feathers on place nobody goes to."
The characters are interesting to play with/as, while the antagonists really make you want to get rid of them.

Compared to previous game, NPCs are now a real threat and challenge, spicing things up.
Except for some small bugs, the SP is a masterpiece.


However, I can't say the same for GTA Online. While it does feature some interesting heists, missions and gameplay, the grindfest it is ruins everything. I can understand, to a certain extent, having a certain micro-transaction system for a "Game" that receive free updates, but Rockstar has done so that getting a good majority of any special content of an update (New buildings, special weaponized vehicles, etc...) Cost around $30,000,000 per updates.

That's 281.25€ of Sharkcards per update. You would think they would add more ways of making money. But to reach just 1,000,000$, here's your solutions:

Farm and Refarm missions rewarding you around 25,000$ for a mission that can take up to 20 minutes to complete. That's up to 800 minutes of gameplay, or ~13 hours.
You'd say "Seems fair, you have to earn it"? But remember, rich people can just buy a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of shark cards (Accurate name seeing how they're sharking us), buy special vehicles that can one-shot anything and transform these 13 hours into an endless loop of pain and frustration.

Grindfest apart, even Blizzard and Valve together manage to make more proper balancing to something than Rockstar can. If you're planning to buy a giant military plane to show off, you're better off buying yourself a golden dildo as a small flying bike can fire more rockets in a minute than all of history's rockets artilleries have fired throughout the ages.

The balance choice doesn't make sense. A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ car with 2/3 metal sheets on its side can withstand more direct-hit rockets than an actual tank can.




So in a TL;DR:
SP is good, Online is only good with friends for heist. You're better off wearing an underwear made of sandpaper if you're thinking of enjoying the GTA:O experience

A cute and interesting game. Worth its money, and fun to replay.

Play as the most badass Protagonist ever, going straight to Hell to PUNISH Demons.


Pro:
- Unlike most of other AAA's games that censor certain things just so "everyone can play without feeling bad etc etc..", DOOM goes back to what made it really popular: VIOLENCE, GORE AND BLOOD
- You don't get PTSDs from traumatic events. You ARE the Traumatic event.
- Even thought the weapon choices may seems limited, the upgrades on them feel like having a whole new weapon
- Glory kills. Rewarding you for doing Brutal things.
- Maps: Even though the """Story""" and maps are somewhat linear, each maps are worth exploring to get all of the secrets.
- No story, only shooting. Seriously, if you play DOOM for the story, you should rethink your life choices.
- The soundtracks. Seriously, they're awesome.
- The snapmap feature allows everyone to make their own Hell and share it with everyone else.

Cons:
- You may or may not get really violent with things.
- The multiplayer feels... a bit apart and too generic.