Recent reviews by The Lurrax

i have loved this series since I first got exposed to The Silent Cartographer on the Xbox demo disk and replayed it until i actually got a copy. I am one of the few people i know that didn't have an issue with Halo post-Bungie. I liked Halo Wars ffs. Believe that, of any human being on this planet that would give this game a pass for certain shortcomings, I am that guy.
and yet, still, I have to say 'no'.

the campaign is actually pretty good so far. the matches I have been able to get into are actually rather fun, and vehicles not being as broken and overpowered [read: now having better ways of being countered] as they were in older entries is actually really nice. i so, so badly want to say I like this game.
But.
-Matchmaking is practically broken, 'skill based' matching either puts you against (or with) literal children that barely know how to aim or against people who do nothing but play FPSs competitively. This happens a lot with skill based MM, so it's hard to blame them, and when it finds that sweet-spot of people you will barely win/lose against, it starts feeling like it should, but that's only if it actually matches you without dropping. as a fan of Big Team, that playlist being more broken than the others stings a little more, and of course, crashing as the map loads after having waited several minutes to get into a match is always a treat

-speaking of, crashes. crashes. crashes. my god the crashes. the challenger crashed less after its launch. i don't think i've gone a single day, singleplayer or multiplayer, without a crash. no good reason either; okay temps, haven't been experiencing other crashes, and games much more demanding than this run just fine.

-kind of in tandem with crashes; mechanics to alleviate crash-related woes are practically nonexistent. what i mean by that is, if my friends and i try to get into a match and one of us crashes, that one of us is almost certainly not getting back in that match, *even if there is a bot on our team*. Also 2x xp boosts still ticking down in menus/while waiting for a match? that is a ridiculous way to run a game when the crash issues i'm describing are already well-known. alleviating things like that would at least make the crashes semi-forgivable.

-limiting out some of the most desirable features [Co-op campaign, forge if it's even still happening, LEVEL SELECT - rip cowbell skull on first playthrough] until *several months* post launch, although after seeing how broken the product that was produced is, I can kind of see why. still though, half a year after campaign releases to play it with my friends? whether or not I still care to replay it [and i will, i know what i'm about] how much of the playerbase will have moved on by then?

i can respect a game developer pushing their limits with an IP, and the open world concept used in the campaign, I'm finding myself actually enjoying, but most of the above shortcomings shouldn't happen with a developer given Microsoft money to handle this. that is a lot of development resources being pissed away on producing a product where the most stable part of it is the microtransaction menu.
maybe the rest of the fanbase would have been children about it, but i absolutely would have been okay with waiting another year if it meant a more complete, less crash-ridden experience - and literally nothing else. exact same quality gunplay as it is now, exact same quality campaign story, etc, but feature-complete and just a touch less crash-heavy, and i'd be set on thinking this is game of the decade.

i very much want this to get better, and i am holding out some faith in 343 that they'll patch out some of these problems, because underneath them is a solid title with good, familiar-yet-innovative mechanics, but right now i can't, in good conscience, tell anyone to put money into it.
All of this is subject to change if and whenever 343 figures themselves out; believe that of any game I want to claim is worth playing, it agitates the hell out of me that i have to say no on this one.

this is a damn good game. it takes a little getting used to the way that their targeting/LoS works [Line of sight is not quite as cut and dry in this game as i've found it in many other top down TBS games.] but the narrative design is on point, the voice they chose for narration is top quality, the mechanics are solid. I really don't have much negative to say about it, other than a personal preference for more robust role-play mechanics that this game doesn't have, but it's also not necessary for the story that it's trying to deliver. it's also worth mentioning that the soundtrack slaps.

overall a damn good experience. at the time of this writing, it is 2 dollars, 2.50 for game+dlc, which is a steal for a game of this quality.

Single player:
I originally beat this game back on the Xbox several years ago, but felt compelled to play through the whole game again, and holy damn am I happy I did.
I don't need to get into the mechanics of GTA; if you know what a GTA game looks like, you know what the mechanics feel like, but if you're one of the sorry few that don't, you are missing out. Not many shooters out there that give you both third and first person options, so that alone is pretty significant.

The writing for the story is top tier. beyond top tier. R* excels in their writing in just about every title of theirs i've played, but this one manages to pull off three main protagonists, and gets the player to identify with all of them. It is an impressive narrative feat that keeps this game pretty fresh for me, even after already having beaten it.

It was a damn good story, and I could see myself playing through it all the way once more. 11/10, my only complaint is that R* does not give a damn about single player DLC even though it'd be a guaranteed buy from me.

Online:
The nicest way I can describe it is saturated. The most honest way I can describe it is "not really worth it anymore". I admittedly haven't gotten back into it since before the latest heist update, so perhaps i'm missing out, but the online experience is hit or miss - the way R* online titles tend to be - but riddled with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that pay real USD to get an oppressor and be general ♥♥♥♥♥.
R* did what they could to squeeze money out of the title, and they did it at the cost of making online agonizing. At least when they try to gouge you for RDO gold, you can't buy something that makes you practically untouchable to new players; even a new login on RDO can easily pop a long-time player in the head and make short work of them. You throw enough money at GTAO [or get lucky enough to be in a server with a hacker that isn't an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥] and new players do not stand a chance in hell.

I really wish the game was better at putting likeminded players in the same lobbies [maybe people who make lots of MTXs should be in lobbies with eachother, for instance, instead of pitting them against people that grind for their money] or creating private instances.
If you can get past the trash behavior that R* encourages from their GTAO playerbase, it actually is pretty fun if you have some friends to approach it with. 7/10, 9/10 if you have good chums to persistently enjoy it with.

Very, very innovative platformer/puzzle game. The game length itself is nothing spectacular but the concept is wholly unique. The early game puzzles alone were interesting enough, and as if that wasn't enough on its own, it even finishes up with a half-3d, half-2d puzzle, which is a feat in level design on its own.

The level/puzzle design was absolutely fantastic, the amount of effort put in on the background 'real' world makes the sign-world feel that much more immersive. The soundtrack doesn't stand out, but it does fit the game world perfectly.

My only real lament is that it didn't even last me 4 hours, but this is definitely worth a playthrough.

this game deeply wounded me, 10/10 story. i will replay it the next time i want to feel hurt by a piece of software.

online community has some gems in it and people that try to make it a good experience, as well as people who do the very opposite, and as is custom, modders. that is a rockstar online game; at the very least, barring modders, you're on a relatively even playing field, compared to squabbling with some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in a mk II oppressor.
i desperately wish rockstar gave this game more love than it does, but it's at least playable, and a fun enough experience to keep my attention this long.

I'm not gonna lie, I practically mainlined this game from launch until now to get all the official endings, 100% side quest completion, etc, and just have a few achievements left to get as a different character build.

Mind you, I am not a completionist by any means; I say the above as a testament to how compelling this game is. Every side quest felt like it had some story-line relevance, even if it was only tangentially, in a way that made the game's universe feel alive.

This has its fair share of bugs, as does any and every other FPSRPG i've ever played [and frankly, that you all have played too; bugs are a staple of this genre], but I'd argue that, if CDPR is still working on making this game even better, more playable, and adding more content, I am hyped to see where they go with it.

This was a damn fine game. If you aren't an avid fan of FPSRPGs or Cyberpunk-themed things, maybe wait for a sale, but if this is your genre and/or theme, this is well worth the purchase. I recall having tons of issues with the Delamain questline, specifically with quest-oriented vehicles spawning blown up or impossible to get into. They have since patched this, thankfully, and appear to be taking any other similar game-breaking issues very seriously.

Be prepared to muddle with some settings to make it run smoothly, but it is well worth the effort to get this game running right. My only laments are that there's not much more game left for me to go through [for now], and that I don't have RTX equipment to experience the raytraced reflections.

This is a good ass game, especially given how rocky its development cycle is. I look forward to coming back to it when more content is added.

TL;DR: This is SWAT 4 mixed with Hotline Miami, and really good for that panicked adrenaline rush of "Do I risk being shot for a higher score, or do i just open fire?". That said, it is incredibly rough around the edges, and i really hope some of the more glaring issues get patched out.

I'm kind of torn because I really, really like the melding of SWAT 4 style objectives with Hotline Miami style gameplay; honestly, i've yet to see something this unique, and cheesy storyline or no, it's fun and nervewracking, which is just my style of game, but there are a few things that really get to me:

**this part was updated and is no longer relevant as of 1.1.1.
-aiming in cardinal directions [N,S,E,W] tends to be a little stiff; for instance, if i'm turning upwards from the left, the aiming will stall a little before it hits true north. My buddy i'm playing with hasn't seemed to complain about this but i've tried multiple controllers and have the same results every time. interestingly, the options leave the lowest deadzone setting at ".5", so i almost wonder if this is intentional, but...why? KB/M does not have this problem [because mice don't have deadzones, duh] so you might find yourself better served playing with KB/M. I'm just stubborn and like my controller.
****This has since been updated, however, i have to be honest, i'm not a tremendous fan of the change. it appears to have gone from a springing vector (i.e. what many top down shooters do; you aim where your controller is pointing) to a right stick controlled cursor. This is more reliable [not jamming on aiming in certain directions is certainly a welcome fix] but it certainly doesn't facilitate the kind of quick response time this game seems to demand; that said, you can plan around it by planning which direction you're aiming in before going into a high risk area.

-crashes. more crashes than should happen. Looking at the crashlogs, it seems to, more often than not, be tied to an "array reference" being out of range, which seems to be more of a coding failure than a hardware problem. I'd be interested to see the exact code because i feel like i can almost tell exactly what's happening [the specific methods having a problem have to do with highlighting objects when they're in interact range, which makes sense because it's been consistently when coming up near an object]
It's just a question of what pattern of doing this causes it, and if it's specific to co-op or if it can be replicated in singleplayer
-Hit detection on melee is a little too precise; with the above "aiming doesn't always go where you tell it" issue, this becomes a problem. if that was fixed, i don't think this would be significant enough to even mention.
-This game becomes a little bit more frustrating when it's just you and the AI partner. Not *bad*, but frustrating because you HAVE to think about where they need to be and how they need to be positioned before you even start acting. Again, not inherently bad, but definitely has that RE5 curse of "you're probably better off getting two copies and a friend" unless you're nuts and like that kind of strategic gameplay. If you liked SWAT4 in singleplayer, this probably won't bother you.

All in all, I would suggest nabbing this on sale, mainly due to the aforementioned issues. If you can get past those rough points and like the challenge that comes from not having open reign to shoot everything that moves - even if it wants to kill you, and occasionally gives you fake civilians with guns, this is a thoroughly enjoyable game.

Overall, Solid 7.5/10, 8.5 if some of the buggier parts listed above get addressed.
The soundtrack is 10/10 though, absolutely SLAPS.

Maybe it's just because I'm a sucker for indie games with dope aesthetics (and if it is, guilty as charged) but when you factor in this game's
-Newgrounds-flash-game-esque control scheme
-Off-the-wall dialog
-That fantastic monologue by An-C
-Did I already mention dope visuals? because dope visuals
-spastic 1-hit-kill style gameplay

...it's hard to not like it. If anything, the combat is a bit awkward to control if you're not used to it, but I'd hardly call that a complaint.

Very pretty game, and I am looking forward to nabbing future episodes.

Still trying to beat this on hardest difficulty, trying to beat this with 3 fighters is an experience.
Really fantastic flying controls, kind of short but has a ton of replay value. Huge recommend.