Recent reviews by TheBlackDog

It's a garbage game with garbage servers, garbage anti-cheat, garbage hit reg, garbage weapon and movement balance, garbage gameplay and garbage aim assist, all developed by a garbage dev team, and just to top it off, it's published by a garbage publisher. It's just garbage. I wouldn't touch it with a 50 foot pole if it wasn't free to play...
But alas, it IS free to play, and my mates seem to enjoy it for around 10% of the time they play it for, so here we are, playing a garbage COD game, enjoying it for 10% of the time and complaining for the other 90%...

...and unless more players START REFUSING to pull out their wallets and give away their hard earned money to a greedy, garbage publisher for garbage skins and DLCs, COD will remain garbage for the foreseeable future.

It's sad to see this franchise take a dive off an even steeper cliff every year. If only we could relive the golden era of COD in the late 2000's/early 2010's.

P.S. I think I've used up my "Garbage" quota for the year.

----- TL;DR -----
Overall, a great entry into the R&C universe, albeit with a few flaws that drop it down a bit in my ranking list. It's not the best game, R&C3 still holds the crown in my eyes, but it's a satisfying entry and well worth a play through. Wait for a sale if possible.

THE SWEET:
- Gameplay is smooth, combat is fun and the variety of weapons is great with most being fun to use, though it is missing a few classics from older games (Such as the Spitting Hydra)
- Graphically, this is one of the best looking games I've played, and it runs well on PC now, though you definitely need a beefy PC.
- Animations are fantastic for all characters
- Planet/Level design is great, bar a few annoyances like parts of Sargasso. and levels are incredibly fleshed out. Each planet has its own aesthetic and style.
- Enemy design is varied and intricate, including both old and new foes
- The Story is good overall, and characters are well acted, though their interactions can often be a bit cringe.

THE SOUR:
- Due to how much time was clearly invested into each planet/level, there is only a handful of them, and it feels like it could use another 1-2 planets to visit.
- The game overall is quite short. Not including Challenge/New Game+ mode, I finished the main story with all weapons and all collectibles done, in around 15 hours. A 2nd run through would probably only take 5-6 hours, though I feel replay-ability is somewhat low as I found myself just rushing through Challenge mode.
- Unfortunately some bugs still exist, most noticeably the final boss getting stuck, some of the glitch puzzles having floors you can "glitch" into, and randomly dying on rocks and objects for no reason, but these are minor issues.
- Unfortunately I feel that most of the charm and personality of Ratchet and other characters has been squeezed out in order to appeal to a younger audience, which I can understand from a monetary perspective, but it's still disappointing for long time fans and older players.

The definitive Halo Collection. Just buy it.

If you haven't had an existential crisis before, this game will change that...
Phenomenal game, that still holds up well today in terms of graphics and gameplay. The story especially, is fantastic. This is a must buy when it's on sale!

It's far from perfect, and it still has issues (Multiplayer desync and weapon/grenade inconsistencies, extortionate item store prices, no campaign DLC), but it's good to see it's moving in the right direction after 2 years, though it should've been like this from the release date. My honest rating now would be a 7.5/10 overall.
I didn't play Infinite between early 2022 and now as it was in a sad state, but I'm genuinely enjoying my time playing multiplayer with friends again, and hope to continue to do so as long as improvements are continually made alongside the addition of new content (Both free and paid). The hierarchy shakeup at 343/Microsoft should help things progress further too (NO MORE TEMPORARY CONTRACTORS).
What we really need though, is CAMPAIGN DLC! The campaign was pretty good, but it needs more substance. STOP WRITING BOOKS FOR THE 1% OF HALO PLAYERS THAT READ THEM, AND ADD THE DAMN STORIES TO THE GAMES!

Writing this review fresh off of finally beating the game, I can say it was a rollercoaster ride.

OatBF is a musical and artistic masterpiece, telling a simple but fairly interesting story full of emotion and magic. There is a lot to like here, including many good gameplay ideas that should work in theory.
However, the experience is unfortunately soured by some frustrating level design, repetitive combat, and sometimes overly complex/clunky controls which WILL cause unnecessary deaths. The manual save system also caused a lot of frustration for me.
You will find out quickly that this is a DIFFICULT GAME, even on normal difficulty, and I was very close to changing to easy a few times just so I wouldn't have to rerun whole sections for the 6th time (e.g. chase sequences which do contain checkpoints on easy), but I only gave in to 1 section.
I was mainly playing this for the story, and given I'm not an avid metroidvania player, had I known how frustrating it was going to be, I might not have bought it.

However, after taking some time to collect my thoughts, I am glad I got to experience it, and while I personally won't be playing it again or buying the sequel, for anyone who enjoys this style of game, there's plenty here to satisfy your tastebuds, and the experience alone is worth the discounted price.

Conan exiles is a good survival sandbox RPG with a lot of good aspects, but it's unfortunately still plagued with multi-year old issues due to Funcoms hunger for profit.
I only play the base game with no DLCs.
I first played in 2020 for about 200 hours, then recently another 100 hours. Most of this time has been spent on PvE content, with about 60 hours of PvP, so I feel I'm qualified enough to explore how the game has progressed in those 2-3 years on the Exiled Lands.

Love:
- Combat (Everything feels like it has weight behind it)
- Animations
- Graphics and overall art style
- Survival aspects and variety of enemies
- Base Building
- inventory Management and overall User Interface
- Progression (The grind is quite rewarding and not too time consuming, but be prepared to have a browser open ready to google any recipes you need!)
- Purges
- Thralls and Thrall management (Much improved since 2020, added great features to the base game which were first presented in mods)
- Huge map to explore which doesn't feel empty (Still leaves something to be desired)
- Large modding community (Many great QoL mods)
- Caravans outside settlements is a nice addition as they provide good rewards for killing or capturing sorcerers

Meh:
- PvE bosses and dungeons are quite daunting early game, but become trivial once you have tier 3 gear and a maxed fighter thrall, and besides 1 or 2, aren't really worth running again after the first time to get the rewards
- Besides your first time playing, low tier gear is almost obsolete as you can skip straight to the higher tier gear fairly easily by cheesing your way to it once you know how to
- Base Building can still be a bit jank at times with snap-on
- Server desyncs, stutters, disconnects and teleporting NPCs occur often, even on private servers at times when there was only myself online. You'll also just get kicked from private servers with no prior warning if an update is released
- The overall goal of the Exiled Lands (To take off the bracelet) makes sense, but the payoff of doing so is incredibly underwhelming due to the mediocre boss fights and the pathetic end cutscene. There isn't even an achievement for finishing. Also, if you're running coop, you need to do each boss multiplied by the number of players in your group so you can all finish the game, which makes no sense if you've done everything together already.
- Thralls are still unresponsive at times, and become a nuisance when they block doors every 5 seconds while following you
- The Golemns are interesting, but I feel thralls are still much more useful and versatile given they can heal and level up

Hate:
- Many bugs and exploits from 2020 are still present, as instead of fixing them, Funcom added new DLCs and a ridiculous Battlepass system, while also creating further bugs. Some exploits are hilarious and greatly reduce the grind in PvE, but they also make the learning experience and joy of unlocking and crafting higher tier gear and upgrades less rewarding.
- Climbing is broken at times as you often fall from climbing up ledges
- PvP is quite toxic, especially for new or solo players, and requires 100's, if not 1000's of hours, and intricate knowledge of the map to even have a chance of surviving. It's basically who can cheese who the quickest with the current meta builds, and you've already lost if you don't know or use every exploit that currently exists.
- Why isn't there a diagonal or vertical fence/anti climb piece to fill in base level gaps yet? Quite easy to get around standard fences in these situations.


Overall, I still recommend the game, but I would say it's best played on a private PvE server with at least one other player, so you can learn the game at your own pace. After that, explore PvP if you wish, and see if that's a rabbit hole you want to jump into.

Fantastic VR FPS shooter that feels great with reloading and gun handling, and supports a great modding community. Highly recommend it to anyone with a VR headset; This is a must have game.

An unpolished but cool little 20min experience, gives a glimpse into how awesome having proper full blown battles with Dragons in VR could be.

Fantastic, should be the default launcher for WindowsMR, but it works well with WindowsMR and my HP Reverb G2.