Recent reviews by Jack

Single-player is amazing.

Unfortunately, co-op isn't exactly a multiplayer experience.
The host is the one responsible for speaking to all the NPCs, as well as selecting missions.
If you click on an NPC to talk to them, the host is the one who decides what's said.
You will spend most of your time watching the host run around talking to people and clicking on things.
Inventory is shared, so it doesn't matter who loots what.

How have I not reviewed this, yet?
This game is wonderful!
Can't wait for number 4.

Voice-acting, combat, story, missions and side-missions, music.
It's all just damned solid.

This just makes me want to go play a better game.

A game released 2 years after Skyrim, and is inferior in every way.
Save yourself the headache and play a better game.

Bugged quests, pointless 'directions' to your objective.
Tedious, genuinely unfun combat. (Block does nothing)
Janky character and horse controls and movement, making it easy to get stuck between your unmountable horse and a tree.
Fast travel isn't fast.
"Waiting" time-scales the last hour making it a slog.

One bugged quest that STILL hasn't been fixed since release that soft-locks progress.
3 mods and a few console commands were required for me to pass that one quest.

I hope they fix it all in 2, but I'm not holding my breath with how gaming has been in 2024.

Pardon me while I slide down this shallow incline for 45 seconds before the game lets me play it again...

---

I gave it another 6 hours, and now I'm soft-locked again.
No.
Just no...
I'm not going back 2 hours.
Who play-tested this?

The story is great, and the reason I kept trying to play it, but the gameplay itself just isn't fun.
Elden Ring is more mechanically sound, Skyrim controls better, and the AI pathfinding is better in Mass Effect. Quest markers are better in every other game.

I'd make a YouTube video about how terrible this game is, but I don't even want to have it on my system any more.

Animal tracking is abysmal.
The graphics are crisp, but the game itself is just bad.

Buy a weapon.
Buy ammo.
Move weapon from storage to inventory.
Close window.
Open inventory.
Equip weapon.
Drag ammo to weapon on weapon wheel.
This is just tedious.

To make matters worse, there's no differentiation between tracks and blood, making you lose what you're stalking.
You hit an animal, and try to follow blood, only to find tracks instead.
They should be making the blood markers red instead of the same color as the tracks.

There is also no indication of which call/lure you're using unless you open the radial menu or your inventory.

Weapon descriptions don't include the caliber, leaving you to assume it's in the name of the weapon.
I spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to use the ammo I just bought with the weapon I just bought.

Again... tedious.
Don't buy this game.

Co-op is terrible.
There's no incentive to work together since the only person that gets credit and money is the one who took the last shot.
My friend and I kill a Black Bear with 2 shots, 1 each, and he's the only one that made anything from it.
When Farming Simulator has better co-op, there's a problem here.

Find another game to play with your friends. This one isn't very good.

Illusion of Choice : The Game

It's also very striking to go from no voice-acting, to one voice that is so over-edited that it's hard to understand the words at all.
Should have either all been text, or all been voice-acted.

The tedium of collecting all the star-signs, just to have them 'run out', making me go re-discover them.

I appreciate what they were trying to do with this game, and the art is amazing, but, the gameplay itself is just... boring.

Run to one place, click click click.
Run back, click click click.
Run to the first place again, click click click.
Go to bed.
Restart the next day.

The first one had charm, while this one feels like a room full of male writers making jokes about bodily functions and secondary organs (you know which ones I mean).

Dialogue 'choices' don't really mean anything, and the whole story feels like it was just kinda' slapped together.

The first DAH was better in its writing.

Miles makes a better protag than Peter, and I enjoy this more than the last one.
Yes, same mechanics and combat flow.
Yes, same city map.

The characters are more charming (without MJ bawking) and the story feels more Spider-Man...ey?
XD

It picks up after the last one and feel great to play.

The only 'gripe' I have is that it feels much shorter than the first title.
Almost 30 hours in the original.
Almost 10 hours for this one.
Everything else was fine.

Not sure why this wasn't a DLC.
Maybe buy it when it's on super sale.

Performance issues on a high-end system, mouse movement 'stutters' when I try to look around, making me motion sick.
Interface and menus could use a lot of work, as could the character controls.

I'll try it again when it's out of Early Access.
Speaking of, the devs asked to be nominated for a Steam Award for their Early Access game, which is kind of a red flag for me.
The product isn't finished, don't ask for an award.
The finished product could be different than what was nominated.
You could, say, win the award and then turn the game into a bullet-hell.

Yes.
YES!
This is a Spider-Man game!
THIS!
We need more of it, and we need it now!

Mechanics, graphics, music, voice-acting, map-size, web swinging.

The only issue is the number of collectibles, but even then, they're marked on the map for easy collection.
There's just so... damned... many.
O_O